I Am Shrek.

Oden vs Durant

I guess it's good for the NBA that this "battle" has captured the attention of the sports world. Personally, I'm more concerned about who the Pistons will take at 15 and 27, but we'll get to that in a minute.

I would take Greg Oden over Kevin Durant 100 times out of 100. Oden seems to be Hakeem 23 years later. He'll never be a great scorer, but he will average 12 boards a game for 10 years and play great defense. No question there. Durant, on the other hand, seems to be a glorified T.J. Ford. Which is OK, i guess, if you're into that sort of thing. Greg Oden also seems to be funny and smart. The NBA could use a little dose of that sometimes by someone not named Tim Duncan or Shaquille O'Neal.

With that out of the way, I heartily endorse the selection of Nick Young at 15 and Aaron Afflalo at 27. NBAdraft.net has them exiting the building tonight with neither player. I am not a fan of that. I've followed Nick Young since he almost came to St Joe's in 2004 and he has developed nicely since then. He's the type of quick, long, lean player the Pistons like and utilize well. So is Afflalo. They got their inside guys with Maxiell and that guy from Senegal. Now it's time to speed up the game with athletes that can emulate the conditioning of Tayshaun and Rip.

7:30 Eastern, ESPN. I'll be watching the post-coverage on NBATV also. But not til DC United try to get back on track. That's on ESPN 2.

Meanwhile, let's give some props to Kenny Rogers. Dude is back.

Quick takes

You may have noticed that they're haven't been any posts lately. Or maybe you haven't noticed. I'm not exactly raking in the hits. Part of the reason for this (the lack of posts, not the lack of hits) is that I don't want to comment on a lot of stuff. I refer to the entire United States outside the Capital Beltway as "The Real America." "Real Americans" inhabit TRA. Real Americans have different interests and priorities than those of us not in TRA. For instance, there are other news stories besides immigration, Paris Hilton, and Iraq. So usually, I wouldn't touch this stuff. But in an attempt to be a Real American by doing something other than watching Washington Journal (sorry, the C-Span WJ page is not functioning) on Saturday morning, I offer you Tha Suburban Original's Quick Takes, Volume 1, Number 1. Perhaps this will become a regular feature. If I can remember to do it. I'll increase my curcumin consumption, and perhaps that will help.

1. The 2008 Presidential campaign - if anyone has made up their mind as to who they're voting for, I am concerned for you. If you've TRIED to make up your mind already, I am concerned for you. I would feel a lot better about the campaign if Clinton, Obama, Hunter, Brownback, et al were on the floor voting. You know, doing the job that American taxpayers are putting money in their pockets for.

2. Paris Hilton - She's famous because she's the kid of a hotel magnate and had a homemade porn tape leaked online. That makes her like a half-step above Dustin Diamond. Yeah, I went there.

3. Kobayashi's inability to compete in the hot dog eating contest - I haven't made a lot of anti-New York rants on this site. I will atempt to stay on focus here. But does anyone outside the New York area actually like Nathan's hot dogs? They're horrible. That "special taste" they have is just gross. They always look like they've been fried in something, and I think it's also pretentious that they manufacture their own mustard. It is my humble opinion that there is no finer meat than Koegel's and no reason to purchase any mustard other than Plochman's. I will note, however, that both are extremely difficult to find on the East Coast, so I have learned to love Esskay Oriole Dogs (or "franks," I guess) and have learned to tolerate Gulden's.

4. The Dick Cheney executive privilege thing - I'm going to be honest, I have never cared about Dick Cheney. Many may find this ironic, since I'm sitting about four blocks from his office right now. However, the Washington Post has done a four-part series this week chronicling his tenure as VP and it has been mostly fascinating. I urge all of you in TRA and beyond to read it. While I can't say it's made me care about Cheney, I do agree with someone who commented to me the other day that it is a must-read for political science students, particularly those studying the Executive branch.

5. Iraq - I am Iraq-ed out. Can I be the only person who feels this way? Seriously?

I have nothing else right now. Hopefully this will emerge and I can rant on other stuff in this format. Curcumin. Right.

Humanity

A long time ago, I lived in an old apartment building in Philadelphia. My apartment was on the third floor of this building. The ceilings in the building were probably 12 feet high, so on the third floor, you were a ways up, maybe 50 feet from the ground. It overlooked a busy intersection right on City Line. I used to turn all the lights off at night and stand at the window in the dark. I said one time it made me feel more "human." My girlfriend, now my wife :-) , asked me what this meant. I didn't know, and I still don't. There was just something about it that made you feel like part of this big thing, like everyone who was going somewhere had similar goals and dreams, and they were all working together to make the world run. I've never been able to feel the same sensation; now I live in the suburbs in Virginia. Sometimes in the fall, after the frogs and crickets are gone for the winter and the air is crisp (this doesn't happen until about Thanksgiving here - how I miss the Upper Midwest), I feel something similar. But not the same.

Mrs. Original's best friend has leukemia. She's gone into remission twice, and twice, the cancer has reappeared. It's not looking good. We're not sure how she feels about this, or the implications of it. Death is scary. Especially if you're a few years removed from being a kid. I wake up every day and look at my house, my wife, my son, my body, and all the stuff I am blessed with, and it seems strange that this could happen to anyone. This is a situation we've been dealing with for a long time, as my best friend has muscular dystrophy. I rarely speak about it with anyone. I don't even like to think about it. Every day that he wakes up, he's outliving his life expectancy. I've never said, written, or outwardly expressed the fact that he will die. It's hard to come to terms with. One of the steadfast realities of life, and of "humanity," is that you die when you get old. But here we are faced with this.

So we'll both be losing someone; people who have deeply inspired us, and in many ways, changed our lives. We don't know when, but it won't be long. I've spent so many days in my life trying to make myself strong, physically and mentally. It won't help with this. The hardest thing for me is that there isn't anything we can do to release them from their condition here on Earth. But maybe Earth isn't the most important thing.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society: http://www.lls.org
National Marrow Donor Program: http://www.marrow.org/
How to Donate Platelets: http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_19_,00.html
Muscular Dystrophy fact Sheet and Society Listing: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/md/md.htm

Please do what you can. Thanks.

In Just 9 Days, So Much Can Change

It's been a while since I had a really introspective day. I used to have these a lot. Then I got married, and three years later we were joined by the youth. Introspective minutes are more the order of the day now. But I had a life-changing experience Sunday. And yes, it involved church. But to quote the illustrious Q And Not U, "Something beautiful happened in the church house, but it didn't have to do with God." Actually, this wasn't beautiful, either. I had a confrontation with a parishioner.

We were in Tha Jerz this weekend. At church by the in-laws' house, there's a crying room. We like to use that so the youth can express himself freely whilst the rest of the church enjoys its collective silence. About halfway through Mass, a woman entered said crying room alone. We'd seen her there before; she coughed, hacked, and wheezed a lot. Sneezed, too. No kids. It is a mystery to us why she's in there. I was chided by Mrs. Original last time for not speaking up about her presence, so I decided to impose my philosophical will. She appeared ill again for the duration of our stay in the crying room, and there was another baby in the room who couldn't have been more than 8 weeks old. I kept it real and didn't use profanity or any insults. I simply told her that I felt she should sit elsewhere (MANY empty seats in the main church) and not in a confined space with infants present.

I tried to apologize to her in the parking lot afterwards and she lit me up. I half expected her to tell me she had emphysema or something like that (which would have warranted an apology from me), but instead, her defense consisted of statements like "Babies have more germs than adults!" and "Do you wash your hands every time you go to the bathroom?" Incidentally, the answer to that question is an emphatic YES for me. I wash my hands about 200 times per day. I wash my hands so frequently that they look like bloody stumps all winter long. She stormed off to her car and we went to ours. Or I should say I walked to the car, because at this point I had been abandoned by all family members. The crowd that had gathered for the shouting dissipated, and for me, that was the end of it. Mrs. Original, however, is refusing to let this die. It's driving me crazy. This woman should not have been in there acting ill. I'm the parent of an infant in a world where some idiot from Georgia with TB can take an intercontinental plane trip. Gotta act.

It's All Fun and Games Until They Add "Newsradio" to Nick at Nite

In an effort to avoid talking about the Pistons, we'll have another topic today. Early 90s nostalgia is great. I've had that kind of day. I'm listening to Ride's Nowhere right now, and I just finished listening to what I'm going to bore you with now: St Johnny - Speed is Dreaming. Hmmm. No link, right? That's because there's hardly anything out there on this album, let alone the band.

The "alternative" arm of Geffen Records, DGC, signed a ton of bands in 1992-94. St Johnny was picked up on a recommendation from Thurston Moore, which tells you something about their sound. I first heard St Johnny in 1995 on the Buy Product compilation, by which time they had released a very average followup and DGC was beginning a freefall to irrelevance. I heard a couple of other songs, but in the pre-Napster days, hearing anything this obscure off of a college campus was tough. I was 15 and not in college. When I saw Speed is Dreaming and Let It Come Down (the very average followup) in the 5 for $10 bin in about 2000, I had to have both.

Speed is Dreaming is equally Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and Nirvana, with some shoegazer-like harmonies mixed in. There are times in nearly every song where you swear J Mascis should be listed in the songwriting credits or you just expect the guitars to fall apart into some 10-minute meadow of feedback. The strongest songs are probably "A Car or A Boy?" and "Stupid," the opener and closer, respectively. As someone pointed out on a message board, you can get this for less than $3 including shipping on Amazon. You should own it, and feel like you're at Second Stage Lollapalooza 1993 EVERY DAY.