33

It's my Larry Bird birthday, today.
No more Magic Johnson for me, because he was No. 32, not because I've somehow lost my supernatural sexuality. (Side bar: As I was working that line out in my head, I came up with my new favorite nickname for male genitalia -- the Baldwin Brothers. As in, "Oh man, he slammed the car door right on his Baldwin Brothers!")
I feel a little older, a little slower, but I can still pass and hit the 3.

Sofia's Pop Life

The kids love the bubble wrap.

I can't help it

I still like the high-five guys.

Good morning, America

For the first time in our history, Michelle Obama and every other American from David Duke and Donald Rumsfeld to Michael Jackson and Jesse Jackson, woke up this morning with a black President.
Seriously, did you really think this day would ever come?
I bet those people who used to write to The Chronicle saying it was required of us as American citizens to always blindly support the President, even as George W. Bush and his handlers were misleading us to war, didn’t think it would. (And by the way, starting today, feel free to fairly criticize and the critique President Obama’s decisions and policies, because as we used to say in elementary school, it’s a free country.)
For a long while, it was hard enough to imagine waking up without Bush as President. We’ve learned that eight years can be an eternity.
It kind of felt like the person you really didn’t want to invite to the party was the first to show up and the last to stumble out the door, finally getting the hint to leave after he ate all your chips, choked on all your pretzels, borrowed 10 trillion bucks, spilled your grandpa’s ashes and made out with your sister.
OK, that last one was probably Bill Clinton.
But this is a new era, and we’re supposed to forget about the past and think only of the future and the current problems we must solve. Quickly, please.
Just allow me to reflect for a moment. Exactly 700 days ago, or one year and 11 months ago, I officially announced Barack Obama as my choice for President of the United States. I say this because I want you to know that I can pick a winner and because it demonstrates, I think, that I’m a genius. And also because it shows deep down inside, I did believe we were good enough as a nation to get to this monumental, definitive moment.
The idealistic part of me, the part that believes in the greatness, capability and potential of America and gets a lumpy throat (without the aid of carcinogens) reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, knew we had it in us to elect the bi-racial son of a Kenyan Muslim to be the leader of the free world, and for that matter, our little old country, if he was the best person for the job.
I knew we had the conscience to finally make good on the vision offered in our most important poems, our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Barack Hussein Obama’s election has made that romantic American part of me much, much bigger, but not so big as to think that all of our racial problems have been solved because 52.9 percent of voters went Democratic in 2008.
Last week, The Chronicle’s editorial on the historic nature of Obama’s inauguration quoted an educational website that managed to overstate the effect of his election as the 44th President of the United States of America. It claimed that “A race of people once exploited and taken advantage of has now taken an equal place in American society.” I hope that’s not what they’re teaching in school today.
The election of a charismatic, amazingly gifted politician by a relatively small margin considering the current political and economic climate in the U.S. may be a huge Hail Mary in the absolution of our nation’s original sin of slavery, but it cannot cure the ails created by 400-plus years of systemic racism and inequality. I hope we’re not too naïve to believe otherwise.
As my commentating colleague and fellow Indiana University alum Tavis Smiley said on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Obama’s election is “a down payment on King’s dream, not the fulfillment of King’s dream.”
Today, on the first full day of Obama’s presidency let’s resolve to remember that, and just how great we can be.

No awkward moments

We had a great meeting this morning.

Today is the greatest

'Great Moments' finale

Letterman presented his show's last "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" bit last night and included this farewell montage:

Here's another homemade one:

Blurb is even better than I thought

I'm not sure what this means exactly, except that a lot more people have viewed my book, but the extremely intelligent and discerning people at Blurb have selected The Best of Can You Dig It? Vol. I as a "Staff Pick."
I knew it was only a matter of time before this kind of critical acclaim came rolling in, and I'm flattered. There's even a pretty little sunburst next to it, the same kind they stamp on Oprah's Book Club selections or Pulitzer winners.
Now buy the damn thing.

Favorite Things 2008 Wrapup

Here it is, the highly anticipated rundown of Can You Dig It?'s oh-eight favorites.

Favorite Hip-Hop Album: Q-Tip definitely cleans the gunk out of our ears with his long-awaited solo CD, The Renaissance. Released on the same day Barack Obama was elected President, The Renaissance delivers new hope to rap fans who like good music.

Favorite Movie I Can Remember: I've tried hard to think of another one, but the one that keeps coming to me is Wall-E.



Favorite Oh, Now I Remember Movie: Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. The beginning is as bleak and quiet as Wall-E, but then, as the title suggests, it gets much crazier. Daniel Day Lewis won the Oscar.


Favorite Movie I Won't be Able to See Until DVD: Synecdoche, New York. Charlie Kauffman's movies hurt my brain in a good way and Philip Seymour Hoffman is my favorite actor, but I doubt we'll see this one come to Greenville.


Favorite Personal Tragedy/Photo of Me: My streak of never having a bloody nose ended in January with this great photo to document my fall from grace.


Favorite Gossip Site: I Don't Like You in That Way is the crude, depraved thinking heterosexual man's celebrity gossip site. It has all the celebrity news you crave without the catty queeniness of Perez Hilton. The commentary is wittier, if a little offensive, and sometimes it's just skin shots and breasts slips from minor list celebrities, but that's how I found it in the first place.


Favorite Book: Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is probably the best book I've ever read. It's the epic story of a Dominican family in New Jersey suffering through a multi-generational Fuku curse. Oscar is an overweight "ghetto nerd" who fails to live up to the image of a macho Dominican playboy, and instead is drawn to the world of science fiction and comic book fantasies. It's impossible to summarize, but it's sad, funny, educational and a showcase for language and the power of books. It also won the freakin' Pulitzer.



Favorite Book II: Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End is a great novel about work, made even greater by the fact that I acquired it from Barnes & Noble by exchanging the crap business world self-help book given to me last Christmas by my former employer. It's about life at a Chicago ad agency heading for the tank, and reading it while my own company was sold and closed made me feel much better.


Favorite Accessory for the Unemployed Man: My Greenville County library card is the only card I'll ever need. Although I'm still a little uneasy about where my borrowed books have been (I know where I do some of my reading and don't want to imagine some stranger doing the same thing) and it seems like every book I get has boogers smeared in them, it feels like Christmas every time I come home with an armload of books, DVDs and CDs. They have a great collection, even though the music section is heavy with discs by artists only library employees listen to (I think they have the complete Bodeans and Cowboy Junkies catalogs).


Favorite Campaign Show That I Don't Watch Anymore: "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" has outlived its usefulness to me now, but I was a devoted follower before Nov. 4. I realized even then that he was crazy and over-the-top, but we progressives deserved to be treated to a little of that for a while. Now, go read The Economist.


Favorite Guilty Pleasure: The wife put every season of "Nip/Tuck" on our Blockbuster queue, now I can't stop watching -- literally and figuratively. It's crazy, there's a little too much man butt for my taste and the son looks freakishly just like Michael Jackson, but it's interesting all the same.


Favorite Thing My Daughter Says: "Poopy in the potty, Daddy." She's the next Lil' Wayne!



Favorite Moment of Trying to Turn My Daughter Into a Mini-Me: This is Sofia -- pink dress-up clothes over a Bob Dylan T-shirt slam dunking on Christmas.



Favorite Show for Kids for Adults: PBS's Word Girl is the one show Sofia and I enjoy equally. Fifth-grader Becky Botsford and her monkey Bob fight a slew of very funny super villains (Dr. Two Brains, Granny May, Chuck the Evil Sandwich Making Guy) as Word Girl and Captain Huggy Face. Word Girl, "from the planet Lexicon" is blessed with a big vocabulary, which she somehow uses to fight crime. Saturday Night Live's Chris Parnell is the narrator.


Favorite British White Guy Retro Soul Album: Like Raphael Saadiq's The Way I See It, Jamie Lidell's Jim shows how going retro can still be creative and futuristic. Lidell covers a wide range of funk and soul ground, at times sounding like Prince, other times Sam Cooke, which for me is the perfect mix. Get this now.


Favorite Other Album: She & Him's Volume One, 36 minutes of great pop sounds, from '60s girl group vibes to torchy ballads, made me fall even harder for Zooey Deschanel. Her voice is like a honey-soaked menthol cigarette dipped in rose water on a pillow stuffed with cash. There isn't a mediocre song here.


Favorite Stuff My Wife Introduced Me To: Carolina is the queen of my heart and she's introduced me to a lot of great stuff over the years (balancing my checkbook, to-do lists, fatherhood), but she had an especially great year in 2008. She brought me My Favorite Blog I Wish I Started (Stuff White People Like #119 Sea Salt, #116 Black Music That Black People Don't Listen to Anymore) and My Favorite Blog I'd "Like" to "Contribute" to (The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks).


Favorite You Stole My Idea: Brokers with Hands on Their Faces. You remember my post about photo cliches in the coverage of the Cubs and the economic downturn? Well, they stole my idea. I just hope they're not making any money off it.


Favorite Frozen Dinner: Ethnic Gourmet's Chicken Biryani. At $5, it's expensive, but worth it.



Favorite Politician: Our President-elect would seem the likely front-runner here, but I'm going to pick Bill Richardson instead. He started the year as a Democratic candidate, bowed out and watched the Super Bowl with Bill Clinton, grew a beard, then did the right thing and endorsed Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. How much influence that had on the outcome I don't know, but it was smart.


Favorite Music Video/Cultural Phenomenon: I've only watched Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" video once, but that's all I need. It's the kind of sexy that requires me to avert my eyes to avoid convulsions, kind of like Salma Hayek's revealing appearance on "30 Rock" last night. Think what you like about Beyonce, you can't deny her ability to tap into our collective consciousness to create catchy songs and defining pop culture nuggets. Even my 2-year-old does the little "Put a ring on it" hand turn when she hears the song. I also like that the choreography was inspired by dancer Gwen Verdon's number on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1969.


Favorite Friend's Web Site: My good friend Becky officially launched her site in the early hours of 2009, but I'm including it here because I'm sure her excellent photos were taken last year. Good job, Becks.


Favorite Column: Larry David summed up all my feelings about the election in this piece on The Huffington Post.


Favorite Friend: You, for reading.

Hack

The digital headquarters of Can You Dig It? has been compromised.
A vicious cocktail of spyware, adware, trojans, etc., has infiltrated our laptop system and made computing a living hell. One benefit, though, is that the attack has thoughtfully provided desktop shortcuts to two gay fetish sex porn sites.
We're now broadcasting this emergency communique from the desktop unit in the guestroom bunker. It's an upstairs bunker, which I think is an oxymoron, but we're making do with what we have.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of our Favorite Things 2008 series coming soon...