Mid-week Update

It has been pretty busy the past week. Lots of rescheduled events from earlier bad weather all crammed into the last two weeks befor Regionals start. I will have my articles updated later today as they go up.

I have taken a major step up in the the way I write, I bought a laptop. It is a Sony Vaio that was relatively inexpensive (not after the bag, Office, wireless mouse, anti spyware, etc) and came with $30 instant savings (WoW!!!) and a $100 mail in rebate(What do I need to do to get you to drive this laptop off the lot today?) that takes 8-12 weeks to process.

It is a little overwhelming though. I have a strictneurotic routine when exiting my car upon arriving at a destination: check for keys, pat for wallet, check for keys (yes twice at a minimum) check for phone. It is tiresome and people laugh at me ll the time when they see me acting like Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets”  just to insure that I don’t get locked out of my car, especially without my phone,I may just end up as a useless tub of goo if that happened. Anyway, now add in my computer and all hell has broken loose…I have to make sure the car is locked, a lot.

Monday, I played in the St. Joseph charity golf tournament at the Greens of Shawnee. The team was sponsored by Carter Glass, which was awesome, however the team was not awesome. I played with Pat Carter, Tim Carter and Brent Boydson. It was a four-man scramble (you all hit and take the best shot, then all four hit from the determined “best” shot for the next stroke, so on and so forth). I’ll just let you know that I am the worst out of the four golfers hands down, but to show how poor our team did….we used a lot of my shots. Not good, but very fun and I couldn’t have asked for better company. It was a great turnout but they hope for more next year, which I think the school, church and neighborhood would benefit greatly.

Trust me, if you just picked up a golf club today for the first time and practiced a couple of times before next year, you would probably beat our score. Finishing three under when par is your friend is lame!

Saturday and Sunday the Kansas City Chiefs did something unexpected, they energized their fan base by drafting intelligently for the first time in years. Many experts said that KC did the *cough* Best *cough* out of any team in the draft.

Holy crap! The Chiefs? I guess only time will tell, but the draft is usually about optimism if you live in states other than Kansas, Missouri and the city of Miami.

There was one disturbing note from the draft though that was non-Chiefs related.

I saw an Under Armour commercial that really bugs me. A couple of weeks back I read an article by ESPN Page 2 columnist Jemele Hill about the image of the black athlete and how “he” is portrayed in white mainstream America. I rarely agree with Hill’s opinion and think she goes to the race well too much when it isn’t pertinent, but she was spot on this time.

Her article was a reaction to this photo:

and her response:

“A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest.”

(you can read the whole article here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/080320&sportCat=nba )

That image has been stuck in my mind since and I thought of it again on Sunday when I saw this commercial:

 http://youtube.com/watch?v=4D2MqfPJ4T8

 It just drew an eye-opening parallel of the animalistic/barbaric portrayal for me and thought I would share it through my point of view with you.

I don’t like thinking about race in sports. I wish we could enjoy our sporting events with no skin color attached, but that would just be burying our heads in the sand and naivety by the masses is what encourages ads like this in the first place. That would also make us politicians and we don’t want that. 

I would love to have a discussion on the issue to learn more about it? Drop me a line and let me know what you think.