Category Archives: Michael Jordan

06/25/2013
3 Comments
Aaron Carter, Anne Rice, Arab Spring, Chicago Blackhawks, Jezebel, Michael Jordan, New Kids On The Block, NPR, Paula Deen, Qatar, Racism

Your Daily Hot Air

World To End

Yeah. We humans have hit bottom. There is no hope left. Our time here was sort of interesting. We came up with Shakespeare, Gershwin, Apollo 11, quantum electrodynamics, Arrested Development, pizza, chocolate, and Gandhi.

All of that has been negated by two very recent developments, both of which are documented by Jezebel.

First, vampire-obsessed author Anna Rice identifies the real victim in the Paula Deen dust-up:

From Jezebel

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And as if that isn’t bad enough, violent gangs who identify themselves by their affiliations with boy-bands are now roaming our streets:

From Jezebel

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Humanity is survived by no one. It was 4 million years old. Services have not been announced at this time.

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Meet The New Boss; Same As The Old Boss

NPR carried a report this morning on the outgoing head of Qatar handing power over to a new leader yesterday. It was, the reporter said, the first peaceful transfer of power in the Persian Gulf sheikdom since it became an independent nation in 1971.

The reins passed from the 61-year-old Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, 33. The now-former emir had himself seized power in the tiny oil nation in a 1995 coup. The fact that the transfer of power took place without the seemingly obligatory uprisings, streets riots, government gassings, air force bombings of rebel strongholds, and assorted beheadings and gang rapes that have become signatures of so many other Middle East upheavals was hailed in the report.

“… [T]he transition — a rarity in a region where leadership changes are nearly always triggered by deaths or palace coups — also sends a message to the wider Middle East. It appears a sweeping response to the Arab Spring upheavals and their emphasis on giving voice to the region’s youth….”

So reads the online version of the report. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Peace. The spirit of the young. The freedom of the Arab Spring.

My response? Cut the horseshit, NPR. Sheik Tamim is the son of Sheik Hamad. The elder boss reportedly is seriously ill. So he decided to allow his kid to sit on the throne a little early. The sole highlight of Sheik Tamim’s resume prior to yesterday’s promotion was the title of Crown Prince. If that’s a “transfer of power,” then the Koch Brothers are social workers.

Gold

The Real Qatari King

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Here’s a thumbnail description of Qatar’s government: It’s an absolute monarchy with no independent legislature and in which political parties are outlawed. The old man sheik promised to hold parliamentary elections back in 2005 but they were cancelled. No new date has been set nearly a decade later.

So, really, the big news out of Qatar is — not a damned thing has changed.

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Almost Heaven

When I was a kid, I actually believed that my Chicago sports teams were ineligible to win their respective league championships. True. My Cubs, Blackhawks, Bulls, White Sox, and Bears (listed in the order I cared about them) never, ever once mounted a realistic challenge for the title during the endless years of my impressionable youth.

Santo & the Cat, 1969

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It reminds me of a story an old pal who’d grown up in Brooklyn once told me. He said his older sister had a vague awareness of pro sports when they were kids (and, by the way, in a big city, the only sports that count are pro sports; which explains my continued amazement at Bloomington’s passion for the IU Hoosiers teams). This Brooklyn guy said his sister had the understanding that baseball’s World Series, under the sport’s rules, was an annual contest between the best team in the National League and…, the New York Yankees.

Sports Illustrated Photo

They Always Won

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Makes sense, no? The Yankees won the American League pennant every year but two from 1949 through 1964. To a kid growing up during that span, that’s pretty much the whole of human history. I mean, when I was seven years old I thought that John F. Kennedy had been president forever. It took me years to wrap my head around the fact that he only was in office for a tad more than three and a half years.

Anyway, my Blackhawks played in the Stanley Cup finals in 1971 and ’73, losing both times to the Montreal Canadiens. I was 15 and 17, respectively. And the ‘Hawks failure to win the Cup those years reinforced the notion that Chicago teams simply would not win championships in my lifetime.

It wasn’t until the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1985 that I could enjoy a Chicago championship. I was 28. And, at that, given my indifference to football, the Bears’ big win was pretty much a yawner for me.

Things changed, of course, with the arrival of one Michael Jeffrey Jordan in my town. My Bulls won six NBA titles in eight years during the ’90s. And then, as soon as Michael Jordan went away, so did the Bulls.

Jordan, 1991

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By the time I was almost 50, I figured it could only take the all-too-brief appearance of some demi-god to enable a team I rooted for passionately to win in any given year.

The White Sox sneaked into a World Series win in 2005 but, to be frank, that was bittersweet. It mainly reminded me that my Cubs, the one-and-only true sports love of my life, hadn’t won the World Series since 1908. Still haven’t, BTW.

The Blackhawks remain number two in my heart. I wasn’t assumed into heaven when they took the Stanley Cup in 2010, but I did cruise the streets of Bloomington with my radio blaring that night, honking like a nut now and again. Had I been back in Chicago, I would have been one of tens of thousands doing the same thing. Here, I was one. Period.

I sat alone in my garage office last night, chewing my fingernails while listening to the live stream of WGN radio’s broadcast of the game between the ‘Hawks and the Boston Bruins. With just over a minute left to play, the Bruins led 2-1. The ‘Hawks pulled their goalie to put an extra attacker on the ice, usually a desperation move that indicates the game is over. teams pull their goalie when they need a miracle.

My Blackhawks got two miracles within 17 seconds yesterday. They scored twice and won the series, taking the 2013 Stanley Cup. I yelled. I clapped. I pounded on my desk. I put up a pile of goofy, giddy Facebook posts. I was a kid again.

From Facebook

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My teams can win titles.

By all rights, I should be assumed into heaven should my beloved Cubs ever win the World Series. Problem is, I don’t believe in heaven. Sigh.

CNN/Bleacher Report Photo

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01/01/2013
3 Comments
Albert Einstein, Barack Obama, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cubs, Chief Keef, Ernie Banks, Guns, Interscope Records, Iran, Jed Hoyer, Lil Jo Jo Coleman, Lovie Smith, Michael Jordan, Northbrook Illinois, Theo Epstein, Universal Health Care

The Pencil Today:

HotAirLogoFinal Tuesday

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THE QUOTE

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

Einstein

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HAPPY N. Y.

Things I hope for this year:

◗ Barack Obama makes it through all 365 days without a serious attempt on his life.

◗ The gamesmanship between Iran and the West peters out.

◗ Someone (besides me) comes up with the bright idea of imposing an embargo on gun manufacturing for at least a year. We’ve got plenty o’guns already; let’s chill on making new ones for a while, no?

Guns

Plenty

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◗ The Loved One continues on in sterling health.

◗ My faulty cardiac cellular structure does not betray me and go haywire just yet.

◗ Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, et al continue to make positive strides in their remaking of the entire Chicago Cubs organization.

Image by Kyle Terada/US Presswire

Hoyer (L) & Eptsein: My Happiness Is In Their Hands

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◗ Certain friends who suffer right now from mental and emotional distress can find relief.

◗ We move significant steps closer to:

  • Universal affordable health care
  • Universal affordable safe, secure housing
  • Universal affordable access to education, including colleges and universities

◗ Thousands — nay, hundreds of thousands — of new visitors to this communications colossus.

Multi-cast Tower

The Electron Pencil Tower, Outside Beautiful Bloomington

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THE ELECTRON PENCIL COVERS THE EARTH

How cool was 2012? I’ll tell you how cool.

The Electron Pencil drew readers from 176 countries on this mad, mad planet. I mean, we even got readers from such exotic outposts as Suriname, Cameroon, Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, and Moldova. Truth. That’s what WordPress tells us.

TajikistanOur Most Loyal Tajikistani Reader

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Whoever you people are, thanks.

Our next goal? Mars.

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NICE GUYS FINISH….

The hell of professional sports is that the best people are far too often the worst coaches.

For instance, Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith was fired yesterday after leading the team to an overall winning record of 81-63 in his nine years at the helm. He even led the Bears to a Super Bowl, where they were demolished by some guys wearing blue from Indy in 2007.

From all accounts, Lovie Smith is one of the calmest, most compassionate, most dignified men in the entire sports world. That’s quite an accomplishment when one considers the typical NFL field boss has the morals and character of a mafia don.

From the Boston Globe

“Good” Isn’t Good Enough

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But poor Lovie apparently lacked the cutthroat necessities to push his players and entire organization past the point of fairly good to that of dominant. He wasn’t a killer, as the term is defined in the uber-biz of games for pay.

Lots of folks who cheerlead for high school and college sports programs claim that participating in the games is great for the moral and character development of young men and women. Team play, they say, prepares youngsters for success in life.

My response? Man, I hope not.

Amateur sports have bought into the win-at-all-costs mentality of the pro games. Most states’ highest paid employees are the coaches of their university football or basketball programs. Character? Hah! Just win, baby.

Scene from "The Godfather: Part II"

The Next Bears’ Head Coach?

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I don’t feel sorry for Lovie Smith, the man. He made a pile of dough disappointing the very demanding Chicago football fans. Neither he nor his children will have to worry about their next meals for the rest of their lives.

Our mania for sports (of which I, a live-and-die Cubs fan, am all too much a part) teaches us too often that good, civilized men are failures. I feel sorry for us.

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PROGRESS, SORT OF

When I was a kid, my Uncle Vince and his family lived in the tony Chicago suburb of Northbrook.

Uncle Vince (who’s still alive and kicking at the age of 96, BTW) bought his home in the late 1950s when Northbrook was still ringed by farmland. He got in when the getting was good. Within 25 years, Northbrook had become one of the meccas to which extremely comfortable white families could escape from the big, bad, scary (read, increasingly black) city.

My own family was still in the city — admittedly on the outskirts, but, nonetheless, my suburban aunts and uncles would constantly pepper my parents with pleadings to “get the hell out of that shithole where people live on top of each other.”

Uncle Vince’s Northbrook house was straight out of a real estate man’s wet dream. It had a broad front lawn. A garage door that opened at the click of a button from inside the car (a wonder in that day and age.) An automatic dishwasher. Air conditioning (we had windows.) A chime doorbell, as opposed to our raucous buzzer. Uncle Vince’s backyard was more than an acre which, in my neighborhood, would have covered some half dozen homes and yards.

Seemingly every time we visited Uncle Vince, my cousin Tony would be washing his brand new Pontiac Grand Prix on the big driveway in front of the house.

Pontiac Grand Prix

A Rich Kids’ Car

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I always thought that Uncle Vince was as rich as the Rockefellers. At the age of seven, I figured his home was a mansion.

The one thing folks in Northbrook didn’t have was black neighbors.

This fact was brought home to me one day when I overheard Uncle Vince telling my father about a horrible, alarming incident that’d happened on the block the previous week. Uncle Vince spoke in hushed tones, as if loath to shake up the women and the kids.

A black man had been seen walking down the street.

Pete Seeger & Friends

Someplace Other Than Northbrook

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Neighbor had consulted with neighbor. Certain high-ranking municipal officials had been notified.

Uncle Vince tried to put a good spin on the incident. Perhaps the black man was in Northbrook to do some menial labor. Or maybe he was lost.

Then Uncle Vince and my father fell silent, as if in contemplation of a too-horrible alternative.

Not that my family’s Chicago neighborhood was an integrationist’s dream, mind you. One day, a couple of years earlier, while I was walking to the grocery store with my mother, a black man had passed us by, the first I’d ever seen in the flesh.

I gaped at him as he passed. Ma clunked me on the side of the head and hissed, “Don’t stare!”

Still, the man fascinated me. “Ma,” I asked once I was certain he was out of earshot, “what’s wrong with that guy?”

BB King's Hand Photo by Mike McGregor

Why?

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“He’s just going to work somewhere, I guess,” she said.

“Oh.” I pondered the situation and then came to a conclusion. The man had a job that made him extremely dirty. Perhaps he dug holes somewhere nearby. Why else would his skin be black?

“Ma?”

“What?” she said, edgy, aware of the Pandora’s box lid being lifted.

“Why doesn’t he just take a bath?”

She clunked me on the side of the head again.

Only later, when I was eight, did I learn what the man’s problem was. Mr. Mitchell, our neighbor from across the alley explained it. The man, he said, was a nigger.

I went inside. “Ma,” I said, “what’s a nigger?”

She clunked me on the side of the head.

Eventually, I learned to duck when asking tough questions. I also learned that black men stayed out of places like Northbrook and Highland Park and Palatine and Glenview. It was no more likely that a black family would live in any of those places than they would on the moon.

Times change, though.

Michael Jordan lived in Highland Park when he was the toast of the town. When I was small and Ernie Banks was Chicago’s favorite black man, he had to live in the South Side neighborhood of Chatham, which was black. Progress.

Ernie Banks

Not A Good Neighbor?

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Today, I learn that the rapper Chief Keef has bought a big, comfortable home in Northbrook. Chief Keef is not white Chicago’s favorite black man. His first album, “Finally Rich,” debuted a couple of weeks ago on the Interscope Records label.

The album includes the songs “No Tomorrow,” “Hate Bein’ Sober,” “Laughin’ to the Bank,” and “Ballin’.”

Chief Keef won’t be 18 years old until August yet he’s already gained a startling reputation. He’s been busted on a weapons charge and is being investigated in connection with the shooting death of rapper “Lil Jo Jo” Coleman — a homicide which Chief Keef mocked on his Twitter page. He has posted a video of himself firing a gun at a shooting range, a violation of his juvenile court probation. He has threatened critics with violence. He has also posted an Instagram video showing him getting a blow job.

Chief Keef

Northbrook’s Very Own, Chief Keef

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No, Chief Keef is not Chicago favorite black man. He’s not even a man yet.

He owns a home in Northbrook, though.

He’s made a lot of money in his short life so far. Money absolves a lot of sins.

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11/27/2012
1 Comment
670 The Score, Armodafinil, Big Pharma, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Cephalon Inc., Dr. Joseph E. Murray, Excessive Sleepiness, God, Grover Norquist, Indiana National Guard, Keith Richards, Michael Jordan, Mitch Daniels, Nuvigil, Organ Transplantation, Shift Work Disorder, Southern Comfort

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I’m back.” — Michael Jordan

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GOD, THE JERK

Can anyone dispute it?

Case in point.

The guy who performed the world’s first successful organ transplant, Dr. Joseph E. Murray, has died. Officials at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston announced his death yesterday.

Murray (center) Performing The First Successful Organ Transplant

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Surgeons had been trying to transplant organs for decades before Murray hit upon transplanting the kidney of an identical twin into his brother in 1954. That was the key. All previously transplanted organs had been rejected by the receiving body. Murray was the guy over whose head the light bulb snapped on.

He figured it was genetics that caused all the rejections. If only, he concluded, you could transplant an organ from a donor whose DNA precisely matched the receiver. Ergo, twins.

It Just Might Work

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After that, doctors all over the world quickly learned how to transplant other organs and how to swap parts between non-kin. Now, of course, organ transplant is routine.

Anyway, Murray told an interviewer once that he faced a lot of heat when he was doing his groundbreaking work. People called him Doctor Frankenstein, natch, and other shook their fingers — and their Bibles — at him.

Yup. The pious of this holy land warned Murray in no uncertain terms that god was steamed over his work. It was unnatural to take the kidney from one human and place it in another. It violated god’s law.

Teed Off — As Usual

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I, for one, am thrilled that Murray ignored them. “We were just doing our work,” he said.

Since that time some 600,000 people have had their lives extended by organ transplants. The figure surprises me; I would have imagined many, many more folks would have received new kidneys and hearts and skin.

Here’s another thing I can’t quite grasp: As long as we as a species have decided to invent a god — that is, the creator of the Universe and the guy who has given us a guidebook for our behavior — why did we have to invent such a jerk?

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I’M TIRED — ERGO, TERRIBLY ILL

Let’s stick with medicine. Only this has to do with how that particular science too often can become little more than a tawdry business.

I drove my sister up to Indy yesterday afternoon so she could catch her flight back home to Florida (where it was expected to be sunny and in the low 70s; I hate her.) By the way, The Loved One and I handled Thanksgiving weekend’s Glabbie Invasion fairly well. In fact, the whole gang seemed on reasonably good behavior: no blood or weapons were drawn and Gov. Daniels was able to demobilize the National Guard units he’d put on alert Wednesday night just in case.

It’s Okay, Boys, You Can Go Home Now

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On the way back, I flipped through the channels and was able to pick up 670 The Score, one of the sports stations out of Chicago. A commercial came on for something called Nuvigil® which, technically, is the generic pharmaceutical compound, armodafinil, and is produced by Cephalon Inc.

Armodafinil is prescribed for people who suffer the dread disease, Shift Work Disorder.

Yes, the mad scientists and captains of industry who run Big Pharma have now transformed the yawn into an ailment.

Quick, Call An Ambulance!

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Shift Work Disorder has become so ingrained in the doctor’s office culture that it’s referred to almost affectionately as SWD. You know as well as I do that whenever something becomes an acronym, it has become part of our human genome.

So now the fact that people who work overnights and have trouble getting enough sleep are viewed as suffering from a horrible malady and — whaddya know?! — need these new, miraculous little pills.

In fact, there’s a mysterious symptom of SWD that bedevils its sad victims. It’s called ES. Lord above, please don’t ever let me have to bear the horrors of ES. Scientists, chemists, and doctors must work around the clock to battle this scourge.

Somehow the heroic folks of Cephalon who put out the outfit’s website have mustered the courage to actually define ES. Yes, they have steeled themselves to type the words Excessive Sleepiness.

He Needs Pills, Stat!

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The marvels of modern science! Who would have though that if you work nights and aren’t able to get enough sleep you’d become, well, sleepy?

Now, the sane among us agree that the optimal cure for SWD and its little brother, ES, is to look for a day job but, of course, that would preclude the need for Cephalon Inc.’s new, miraculous little pills.

It’s funny. There’s a group of people who have long had to work late into the night and have had trouble getting to sleep after their work shifts. They’re called musicians.

Musicians are notorious for having drug problems. Read any rock or pop or country star’s autobiography and nine times out of ten it’ll include several chapters on the author’s mighty battle with substances.

And just as invariably, they ascribe their early propensity to self-medicate to the twin needs of getting themselves up for their performances and then getting themselves down so they can sleep. They take speed or cocaine to prepare for the night’s gig and then they gulp downers or smoke pot or drink Southern Comfort (the foulest spirit ever distilled, BTW) to lull themselves into the arms of Morpheus.

Dr. Richards, I Presume

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It’s an ugly vicious cycle, brought on by the performer’s need to make piles of cash in the short period that they may be popular and to provide ongoing employment for the dozens of people who depend on them. This kind of drug-taking is frowned upon.

Yet Nuvigil is advertised all day long and doctors prescribe it by the bushel-full.

Yet another thing I can’t figure.

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GO AWAY, WOULDJA?

As long as I’m harping on the imponderables, how about this?

Who does Grover Norquist think he is and why in the world should we pay an iota of attention to such a grim-visaged, rigid, morally superior ideologue?

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08/05/2012
1 Comment
9/11, Huffington Post, Marijuana, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Olympics, Oscar Pistorius, Performance Enhancing Drugs, Sears Tower, The Onion, Track and Field, Willie Mays, Willis Tower

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

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THE DEAD DO IMPROVE

NPR marked today’s 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe with the usual navel-gazing about whether the movie biz used her or she used it.

Marilyn Monroe is becoming smarter by the year. By 2025, she’ll probably be known as an intellectual who dabbled in acting.

Blonde Bombshell Or Scientific Genius?

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HURRY!

One of my fave annoyances is the growing tendency of people to write “Love you” when they mean “I love you.”

Is it really that much of an ordeal to key in the letter I and the extra space? Will doing so make the writer late for an important appointment?

I’m Late! (I’m Late, I’m Late, I’m Late)

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“Love you” strikes me as impersonal and lazy.

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ONE FOR ALL

If you’ve kept up with the screeds in these precincts of late, you know how spectacularly bored I’ve always been with the Olympics.

The track and field events are going on now. Funny thing is, I really like these competitions.

A Pole Vaulter Narrowly Misses The Sun

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It occurs to me I’d actually like the Olympics if the games were limited to track and field, tests of the capabilities of individuals representing their countries.

That was the original intent of Olympics, not only in ancient Greek times but when the Olympiads were re-instituted back in 1896.

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POT O’GOLD

It’s a good bet marijuana may be legalized in my lifetime (assuming I don’t drop dead tomorrow afternoon.)

Oh, Wow.

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Will there be any more important catalyst in the long, slow slide toward legalization than the career of one Michael Fred Phelps II, history’s most decorated Olympic athlete and noted pot smoker?

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PERFORMANCE ENHANCING

One last Olympics note (today).

Look, I admire Oscar Pistorius‘s dedication and discipline as much as you do.

AKA: “The Blade Runner”

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But, honestly, the man is wearing a pair of springs.

How is that different from another athlete using performance enhancing drugs?

Sure, you might say poor Oscar was born without fibulae in his legs and had to undergo a double amputation when he was 11 months old so how can we deny this courageous man the use of his springs?

Well, that’s the point. I was born without the exquisite musculature and fantastic hand-eye coordination of Willie Mays. So why can’t I try to ameliorate those disadvantages with a few cycles of anabolic steroids?

Willie Mays On A New York City Street

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See, sports competitions aren’t democratic contests. When it comes to games, not all men or women are created equal.

That’s why some people win Gold Medals or Most Valuable Player awards and others don’t.

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HUMOR IS A ROUGH GAME

The Onion‘s taking heat for doing a faux news video showing a jet headed for a crash into the Willis Tower.

Formerly known as Sears Tower, the Willis was, until recently, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The joke is Sears operatives, flying the company jet, are attacking the interloper into their formerly sacred space.

From The Onion

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Sound familiar?

Again, it’s a joke.

The Onion is a joke newspaper.

Many in New York and elsewhere detest the idea of jokes about 9/11. One woman was quoted as saying in the Huffington Post, “That’s not funny.”

She’s right. To her, it’s not funny. My suggestion? Don’t laugh.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

I Love Charts

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❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

Click For Entire Story

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❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

♢

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Original musical written by young people, grades 4-11, “Dream & Nightmares”; 2pm

◗ Fairview United Methodist Church — Concert of songs, arias, and duets from Broadway & opera; 2pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast”; 3pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Weeds of Eden; 5-7pm

◗ Bryan Park — Sunday outdoor concert series: Afro Hoosier International; 6:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 7pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; opens Friday, August 3rd, through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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05/26/2012
2 Comments
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Bill Maher, Book Corner, Donald Trump, Dr. Joseph Mackey, Ernest Hemingway, Eye Center of Southern Indiana, Jamie Dimon, Lady Gaga, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Sleep, Steve Wozniak, Tea Party, The Godfather Part II

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” — Ernest Hemingway

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Scary? Scary How?

Just a tidbit from Bill Maher’s latest spew:

“If Obama were as radical as they claim, here’s what he already would have done: pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, given us Medicare for all, ended the drug war, cut the defense budget in half, and turned Dick Chaney over to The Hague. Here’s what Obama actually did: he cut taxes and spending…, he didn’t go on a spending spree, he didn’t break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks — they’ve only gotten bigger and fail-y-er. That’s not what liberals wanted; that’s what conservatives wanted…. [U]nder Obama, there’s more drilling than ever. That’s not what environmentalists wanted; that’s what conservatives wanted. Obama spent most of last year conceding the Republican premise that government needed cutting. That’s not what progressives wanted; that’s what the Tea Party wanted. The Dow was at 7949 when he took office, now it’s at 12,000 and over. Corporates profits are at their highest ever. If he’s a socialist, he’s a lousy one. He could not be less threatening if he was walking home with iced tea and Skittles.”

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I DUNNO. WHADDA YOU WANNA DO?

Don’t do a single thing today until you visit the Pencil’s GO! Events Listings.

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SLEEPLESS IN SUCCESSVILLE

I am a world champion napper. Napping is one of humankind’s finest pursuits. A day spent without a nap is a day wasted.

I’ve been partial to naps ever since I emerged from the womb and yawned.

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Imagine how thrilled I was when my cardiologist told me that due to my congenitally malformed heart, I ought to take a nap whenever I feel the need for one. (Almost as giddy as when he told me drinking a glass of wine and eating a piece of chocolate a day would be of great benefit to me — I nearly kissed him.)

Now, I love working at the Book Corner save for one terrible drawback — Margaret, the owner of the place, won’t let me take a nap while I’m on the clock. The tyrant.

Apparently, much of the world seems to be able to get by without naps. Poor souls.

And, if I can believe what I read, there are those who have energy to burn, who are on the go, go, go, all day long, who can get by with only three or four hours of sleep in a night.

Crazy, no?

Do I Have To Do This?

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Bill Clinton is one of those people. I suppose any number of presidents and aspirants to that sleepless office have less than the average bear’s need for slumber.

I’ve met dozens of people who are great successes in business and entertainment, many of whom view sleeping at night as a kind of annoyance. They can’t get anything done when they’re asleep, they complain. They’re aghast at the idea of taking a nap.

Man.

It seems as though the real hard-chargers in this mixed-up world, people like Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Wozniak, Jamie Dimon and any Mexican drug cartel boss worth his salt rarely go to sleep.

Who Has Time To Sleep?

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Maybe that’s the key to their fabulous success. Maybe that’s why Donald Trump and Lady Gaga are who they are. They’re blazing trails while the rest of us are laying on the sofa.

Oh, sure, they have piles of dough. Big deal. I’ve got my naps.

I was thinking about all this yesterday when I went to go see young Dr. Joe Mackey at the Eye Center. I went in for my one-week follow up exam after eye surgery. The verdict: All is well. That’s pretty much all Mackey said to me.

As always, he was in a mad rush.

I’ll bet he’s one of the people who don’t sleep much. The guy darts from room to room like a crystal meth fiend. He once told me that on his day for surgery he performs 14 or so procedures. Sheesh! The other days of the week he’s peering into and jiggering with the eyes of dozens and dozens of people each day.

If I tried to keep up his pace for fifteen minutes I’d have to take a nap. A good long one — 45 minutes, maybe, or an hour.

What An Exhausting Day!

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On the bell curve of human sleep needs, he and I occupy the opposite flanges.

Guys like Mackey, big time sports stars, Hollywood actors and actresses, corporate CEOs, big city mayors — all sorts of high achievers seem to be racing every minute of the day. And their days last from before dawn often until after midnight.

Mackey could have elected to live a nice, relaxed lifestyle. He could have opened his own opthalmology practice in some far off locale where he’d see a couple of patients a day. That’s what I would have done. He could do one eye surgery a week. Maybe one every couple of weeks.

Then he could take a nap.

You’re My Third Patient This Month!

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But he chose to go to work for a multi-million-dollar eyeball factory. The Eye Center has dozens of employees, its own surgery center in the basement, enough high-tech, high-buck machines to fill a medium-sized warehouse, and most likely a huge debt load. If you work for old man Grossman and his partners, you’d better be ready to hustle from room to room, checking patients out and sending them home, calling for the next one, chop chop, saying only what you need to say, generating revenue.

This, said Hyman Roth to Michael Corleone in ” The Godfather Part II,” is the business we’ve chosen.

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We talk a lot about doctors needing a comforting bedside manner these days. We need the doc to hold our hands while she tells us to lay off the pie and the french fries. That’s fine for a general practitioner. They have to lay the oil on us if only to get us to open up and tell them about the ache in our knees or the funny mole on our back.

But specialists like Mackey don’t need to cajole information out of us. They’ve got special skills and devices that can tell them a hundred times more about us than we ever could. Then, when it’s time to act, they wield other devices like Jedi knights, they flutter their fingers over our most fragile organs with a deftness that borders on magic.

Has The Patient Been Prepped?

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Mackey shined some tiny beacons into my eyes and muttered notes to an assistant who transcribed his impressions at the keyboard. “Terrific,” he said. “Excellent.” “Very good.” “Healing well.” “Vision better than can be expected.”

I felt flattered, as if somehow I had a hand in the whole procedure. “Yeah,” I said, “I feel great. No complaints.”

Dr. Mackey recoiled slightly from his machine, as if he were surprised I was there. And you know what? He probably was.

He’d been commenting on his own handiwork. He’s a borderline magician and he knows it.

Voila — You Can See!

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And the truth is, without that confidence, without that arrogance, he wouldn’t be one-tenth as good as he is.

How big does your ego have to be to carve up another person’s eyeball and hope not only that you don’t blind the poor sap but can actually make him see better?

Answer: Huge.

Mackey pulled his diagnostic machine away and wished me a pleasant weekend. And like that he was out the door. He moved so fast I thought there’d be a sonic boom.

Dr. Joe Mackey is of a different breed than I am. Maybe even a different species. But that’s what makes him so spectacularly good.

Me? I’m gonna take a nap.

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