Des Temps

Tag: sports

  • Horse Racing and Dog Fighting?

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    So. Anyone else out there see similarities between horse racing and dog fighting? At its root, both the horses and the dogs bear the burden of our desire for entertainment. And when they give their lives in the process, it’s in the name of sport. While I know that I cannot draw a straight parallel between the Michael Vick case and Eight Belles’ death at the Kentucky Derby, they look like kissing cousins. In a cloying New York Times article today, noted author and horse breeder Jim Squires says:

    Horses break their legs running across pastures with no one on their backs. Whether wild or domesticated, they race with one another and often try so hard they hurt themselves. They run through fences. They kick each other regularly, often breaking their own legs and those of others. They, too, have to be euthanized. Horses who never saw a racetrack in their lives founder regularly from mysterious causes and end up like Barbaro.

    Ain’t that just a paddock full of pony tears. Dogs fight each other too, don’t mean that we should be building pits for it. Or that we should be racing young horses well before their bones are fully formed. Makes me think of an E.T.-era Drew Barrymore on coke. And Squires then asks:

    …why can’t we can quit pushing horses into the gate on television and whipping them to make them run? If the trainer can’t train his horse to go in the gate and the gate workers can’t put it in there without force, scratch him. Usually there is a reason a horse does not want to go in there. And usually the horses that want to run don’t have to be whipped. Beating a horse during a race and having it break down under the rider and lose its life is no way to build public support and attract new owners to this sport.

    With the practice of beating ingrained in this sport, is it easy to mill about in madras yet detain dog fighting do-rags? All too easy. Read another take on the tragic death of the filly and the brutality of horse racing, penned by the eversage Start Snitching.

    I’m off to a bullfight with Hemingway and Almodovar. The bulls like dying this way, ensconced in art, roses & honor.

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    Related Links:
    NYT bit about death by jumping.
    Eight Belles/Sean Bell

  • Steroids, Sopranos & Hilly the Clint

    this just pisses me off.George Mitchell and his legal eagles are bad-ass. I’m glad to see that the ‘purity’ of the National Pastime is nekkid on the table and knickers in a twist. But it ain’t a big secret, I mean being incredulous about juicing in baseball is like Renault in Casablanca being “Shocked, Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”
     
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    Let’s be real: Cheating is part of the American Way. The USA was built violently from the ground up and then expanded west Deadwood style. Jay-Z is on the cover of Fortune Magazine – his beginnings as a businessman are rooted in the ‘illegal’ drug trade – and he is now on the legal side of things. So what message does the magazine cover send to corner boys? Keep your head down and work at McDonalds? Don’t think so.

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  • Difference Engine.

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    What’s interesting?
    The lightest points always grab our interest.
    Movement grabs our interest.
    Promise is interesting.
    New is interesting.
    Loud is interesting, as is weird.
    We’re vying for interest. Your interest.
    Info-sthetics manages understanding information, but not interest.
    Entertainment manages interest, but often, not understanding.
    Interest begets entertainment, understanding, motivation, and the flip reverse of this.
    The things that are often the least interesting, if painted in the right manner, would grip us in blockbuster numbers, which would change the world.
    Colors are interesting.
    Texture is interesting.
    Conflict and emotion are interesting.
    Suffering? interesting.
    Interest fuels emotion. More often, emotion fuels interest.
    What do you want? What are you looking for? What’s in it, for you? What’s your bag? Deal? Situation?
    What are you interested in?

    Interesting: Speech.
    Interesting: TED.
    Interesting: Understanding.
    Interesting: Love.

    (p.s. since posting this entry, the cyclist pictured above tested positive for an homologous blood transfusion, meaning he was caught illegally transfusing somone else’s fresh lab-treated red-blood-cell-rich blood into his body in an effort to gain an unfair advantage over his competition, which advantage he did gain, winning 2 stages of the tour de france, even after a spectacular failure and appearance of irrecoverable weakness earlier in the race. interesting.)

  • Why Eldrick Rules

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    Has there ever been a media personality like Eldrick Woods? And aren’t you glad no one ever started calling him T-Dub? (T-Dub on the V.O.!!!). He’s something like the fourth Chipmunk, but cocky, and a cold-blooded killer in his profession. Add to that the fact that he may be the first athlete to become a billionaire, and, like Snoop Dogg, he wears his own clothes. In fact, he might be the only man on earth who is allowed to carry around a stuffed animal — a tiger naturally.

    Actually, he has someone else to carry it for him. (Yeah!)

  • Nike and Transformers

    ss_shockblast053.jpgMy parents recently turned my old bedroom into a study, so down in DC this weekend I sifted through boxes of youth. I found cutouts of early 90’s Nike ads featuring athletes like Jerry Rice and Nolan Ryan talking about overcoming adversity to acheive goals.

    Bench press your weight.
    Master a 3rd language.
    Call Her.

    As a kid, I had stuck them on my walls for inspiration to better my sports game and likely life in general. I broke several bones along the way, but never made the starting lineup. No worries, I persevered and now run with first-team. Staring at those ads in my parents’ leafy neighborhood, I thought about a recent story by writer Dallas Penn. To get focused and redouble your efforts, check out his piece about ScatterBlast. Then head outside and call winners on the toughest court.

    (Just Do It)