Tiger, perfection and the media

I really wanted Tiger to be perfect and untouched by all the dirty business of being rich, famous and perfect. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because he's an interracial guy in an interracial marriage dominating a sport he's not even supposed to be playing. He's defied the odds and I guess I hoped that would translate into his personal life.

I had the misfortune of watching some CNN over the weekend while the Tiger story was "breaking." I think what bothered me the most was not that Tiger might not be a perfect person, but that the media seemed to be taking great glee in the opportunity to tell the world about it.

Why was Tiger driving so late, they asked. Just think of the possibilities!

Anyway, here's an interesting blog post on the whole ordeal from Time's James Poniewozik.

Palin as Prince

I hate to add to the media frenzy over Sarah Palin's book tour for her trashy little Hollywood tell-all, but I just can't let the fact that she raided Prince's closet for a dinner date at Billy Graham's house slide by without a mention.

Let's try this:

Prince sang about "23 positions in a one-night stand."

Sarah Palin has 23 positions she doesn't understand.

Maybe you can spend your day coming up with some others.

Newsweek

We're nearing the end of our subscription, or as callers to the newspaper office down in Clinton frequently used to say, "our prescription," to Newsweek.

Ever since they redesigned and refocused their content in an attempt to survive the internet news age by concentrating more on news analysis rather than news reporting, it's tried a little too hard to be intellectual and instead has come off egg-headed. When I want that, I'll go to The Economist.

And Newsweek's cover headlines have grown tired with their overuse of of parentheses. Last week it was "How We (could have) Won in Vietnam."

This doesn't mean that once in awhile there isn't some good stuff in Newsweek. Editor Jon Meacham is a smart guy with a great vocabulary and an amazing grasp of history, which he doesn't seem to mind showing off. Still, even if it feels like homework, I read his column most every week.

Meacham's column in this week's issue, the one with the cover that so offended Sarah Palin's feminist sensibilities, is especially good. There's a Barry Goldwater/Richard Nixon analogy, but then Meacham makes a point about how the current political climate is ruining the chance for compromise in Washington, citing our own Lindsey Graham getting "censured" by the Charleston Republican Party for working with John Kerry on climate change.

This is what Meacham says, and I like it:

"The middle way is not always the right way -- far from it. But sometimes it is, and a wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?"

What I'm hearing

Even though they look like a modern-day Manson family, I can't help but like these guys and a couple of their songs:



Carolina just said of the lead singer, "I bet he tells the rest of them what to eat."

I like some of this Handsome Furs stuff, too. No cultish vibe here:

Nerd alert: The search for 'Dragon's Lair' and our rotting brains

The other day I was stumbling and mumbling my way through a conversation with a coworker about how the internet has made us all dumber. What I meant to say was the internet has turned our brains into jelly because we really don't have to remember or retain any information. Every fact, date, name, or whatever is just a quick search away.

Like my dormant stomach muscles, my brain doesn't have to work very hard anymore to recover long-lost information. I just Google whatever I'm looking for and eat another peanut butter cup during the time I just saved.

Take tonight, for instance. I spent about 40 seconds trying to remember the name of a forgotten arcade game before I gave up and Googled it.

I wasn't an arcade nerd growing up, but I remember this game that was a huge deal for a while because the graphics were cartoon-level art instead of bleeping blipping squares and dots. It was such a sensation for about a summer, when word-of-mouth still spread by word-of-mouth, not message boards or Web 2.0.

I think I got to play it once. If it wasn't broken, there was always a long line. If I remember correctly (I can't Google a personal memory, or at least I couldn't before I wrote this post), I couldn't manipulate the joystick to control the awkward movement of this cartoon guy on the screen and ended up just running him off a cliff or something three straight times.

Game Over.

So, now it's 30 years later and I'm sitting here watching this Little Mermaid crap with my daughter and something about the animation reminds me of this elusive game.

What was that called?

A search for "80s arcade games" took me to a wiki page with a long list of games. There it was. Right there under 1983.

Dragon's Lair.

Yep, that's it. I just needed to confirm its existence. I didn't imagine that memory.

I should have stopped there, but I didn't. I ended up on Dragonslairfans.com, which gives you way more information than you should ever have about it. There, you will find a blow-by-blow account of one man's quest to get an original arcade version of Dragon's Lair up and running again. It includes nerdilicious quotes like this:

"So, I power up the Sony LDP 3300, the EuroDL card is also pluged (sic) to the original Atari DL PCB, and the computer runs the prg to remap laser disc command to the Sony LDP..."

Wow. But God bless him. He got it going.

And, of course. You can buy the T-shirt on the internet.

Quickies: 4

I feel funny.

Quickies: 3

I think all of this talk about there being a big Republican comeback and rebuke of Obama because Democrats (one of which was named "Creigh") lost two gubernatorial elections is way overblown.
Give it another year, when we actually have some congressional races, before we start singing "Wind of Change."

Quickies: 2

I stepped in dog shit twice on Halloween. I think that means I get 13 years of good luck.

Quickies: 1

Of course, we saw "This Is It" last weekend. It may not present the whole truth about Michael's preparations for his big comeback shows (never once did they mention hospital-grade sedatives), but it definitely showed his talent was still intact. I needed to see that.
I can't imagine many 50-year-old prescription drug addicts being able to do the things he was doing in these rehearsals. Amazing.
On a side note, I love the picture above. It was taken by my former employer, Kevin Mazur, who was doing the photos for Michael's tour book. I think all of the photos you see from the rehearsals are his and they're pretty great. This one, especially, is iconic.