The Edification of Xenophobe Michael Kay
The New York Yankees are the most successful franchise in the history of sport — and they deserve to have a non-xenophobe as their main television play-by-play announcer and as the host of CenterStage on YES.
Cities Paying for Grades
When I was growing up, children were expected to get good grades in school because it showed they had a love of learning and were dedicated to being a proper part of society; however, that didn’t mean some Lincoln, Nebraska children with smart parents were not paid $200 USD for an “A” grade, $175 for a “B” and so on along a sliding scale in 1980’s dollars.
Fenway Fans in Blonde Masks: The Power of a Semiotic Social Mob
Over the weekend there was a tremendous moral correction of a public figure offered in public — in jest — but its semiotic relevance is an earth-shattering expression of contempt for the facade of stardom and its perks of temptation. New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) — the highest paid player in baseball playing on the team with the highest player payroll in the biggest media market and currently stuck in last place in the American League East — was caught by photographers with a blonde stripper that was not his wife. Boston Red Sox fans — perennial rivals to the Yankees and currently in first place in the same division — jabbed A-Rod Friday in Fenway Park as he prepared to take the batter’s box:
Continue reading → Fenway Fans in Blonde Masks: The Power of a Semiotic Social Mob
The Yankee Ingrate
There’s nothing quite as annoying as an ingrate. Add “surly” to the personality of the ingrate along with $43 million in salary over two years to win 34 games playing — not working — baseball and you have the nasty Randy Johnson.
Randy Johnson never fit into Yankee pinstripes.
The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous
I recently heard on the radio 45% of American Black males do not graduate from high school. Why does their education end before their 18th birthday? Is there something culturally askew where education has no value? Are they born not to succeed in life? Is there a genetic code that denies them fruitful opportunity for living? The answer to those questions is a resounding: No!
Continue reading → The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous
Every Time I Think of You, I Smell Something
In a recent article, Every Time I Talk to You, I Hear Sirens, we discussed how sounds define your environment. Today, using the same places described in the previous article, I hope we can investigate if smell is even more strongly related to place and memory than sound.
Is smell more valuable than hearing?
Washington, D.C. – Eastern Market:
We lived near the Eastern Market Metro station. There was a large, indoor, sort of farmer’s market nearby – that gave the train station its name — we passed through every day. The food was always fresh. The smell of raisin scones embedded in your clothes was a warm and welcome scent that perfumed you throughout the work day and reminded you that, no matter what happened, your scones always loved you.
New York City — Columbia University:
When we were living in Morningside Heights near Columbia, The City had a garbage strike. When an urban core has to deal with a garbage strike in the dead of summer things quickly begin to rot on the sidewalk. And in the streets. And in your mouth. And there is no harbor from the stench of six foot mounds of black garbage bags that line every sidewalk and street corner. Even if you breathe through your mouth you still smell the putrid sting of vomit that bleeds into every crevice and populates every pore.
Continue reading → Every Time I Think of You, I Smell Something
Every Time I Talk to You, I Hear Sirens
When we lived in the Alphabet City part of the East Village in New York City our apartment building was located one block away from a fire station and two blocks from a hospital. Having on-duty firemen and working doctors and nurses as your neighbors was a great comfort in a dangerous city, but one of the requirements of having such close proximity to first responders was dealing with the continuous caw of sirens 24 hours a day.
The Purity of Evil
There was a Spanish fellow I knew a few years ago in the Bronx — we’ll call him Georges — and he was a gang banger. He had a wife and many children with several women. He wore a bald head by choice and he was as wide as he was tall but muscles packed his small frame. He used to hang out in the building where we lived and he was always around and if the guards would ask him to leave, he’d just meander back — and that is the true definition of Evil — always there, always percolating, forever readying an attack in the guise of friendship and faked normalcy. Every time I saw Georges my stomach would twist.
Lucky in Harlem
When we moved to New York twenty years ago from Nebraska — after first deferring through Washington, D.C. for a year — we rented a giant, three axle, Ryder truck for the price of a van — they were out of vans when we arrived with our prepaid reservation — and we motored into the muggy urban core of the Big Apple by driving down the wrong way of a one way sliver of Riverside Drive near Columbia University in the repressive heat of a mid-August afternoon.
The Shared Legacy of a Solitary King
No blog that tries to address issues in the urban core can let Martin Luther King, Jr. Day pass without a deliberate salute to a man who dedicated his life to improving keystone images in an Urban Semiotic.
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