The Irony and the Ozzie

 

            Irony is all around us; it's like rain on your wedding day.

It's a free ride when you've already paid.  That’s right.  If Alanis Morissette can understand the concept of irony so too can the Miami Marlins. 

            We were all shocked and appalled when Ozzie Guillen told Time Magazine last week “I love Fidel Castro ... I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherfucker is still here”.  For the manager of a team that plays a camouflaged boat ride away from Cuba in a shiny new stadium set in the urban “Little Havana” section of Miami, this obviously wasn’t well-taken.  As Guillen and his Marlins dropped two of three from the Phillies earlier in the week, the team’s brass gathered to decide upon an appropriate response to their new manager’s comments. 

            Before I get to my main point, let me educate the reader a little about Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  While in office, Castro turned his country into a suppressive communist state.  While the physical manifestations of his regime may not be clear at first glance, neither will they be any more transparent after a second, third, or fourth look-see.  Reason? Cuba is censored more than Wal-Mart’s cd aisle.  In 2008, Cuba had 28 journalists in prison.  Special permits are required to use the internet for the common people.  All other forms of media and entertainment are heavily censored.  Think Hunger Games, without Lenny Kravitz or Woody Harrelson. 

            NRA people can kiss their rifles and the religious can thump their bibles, but the freedoms that I can’t live without are speech and the press. 

            So, the Miami Marlins decide to suspend Ozzie 5 games for his comments about Castro. 

            Castro throws a journalist in jail for writing something.  The Marlins suspend Guillen for saying something.  On a much, much smaller scale the Marlins are suppressing free speech.  They are not a government; they are a business, but this only underlines the growing power of corporate America.  If the Marlins knew they wouldn’t lose anyone’s money, they wouldn’t even address the Castro comments. 

            As I hope I have expressed, I do not agree with Castro, do not like him, and have empathy for those in socialist Cuba.  However, the punishment for Guillen’s comments should be from his peers and the world around him.  Why should a man’s livelihood be taken away for a political statement?  As you go more and more to left of the political dial, where is the tipping point of acceptable speech?  Saying I love Obama is okay, but if you take it to another a level and say I love Nelson Mandela, is that not okay? 

            If I offended you by this column, good; you have a right to be.  People have the right to offend and the right to be offended.  God Bless the USA.

Reflections on Attending Wrestlemania XXVIII

  I don’t think I was ever more excited to wake up at 4 AM after 3 hours sleep than when I got ready to fly to Miami for Wrestlemania XXVIII on Friday, March 30. The flight was quick with the only inconvenience being that I had to cover my ears with headphones so as to not hear two jackasses behind me try to spoil the ending of the 3^rd book of The Hunger Games. I quickly got in a shuttle with some other wrestling fans to our hotel and made it to the Hyatt Regency Miami just before lunch time. Because my  two buddies Justin and Anthony were not going to arrive for a bit, I decided to venture out, check out the surrounding area, and grab some lunch.

WRESTLEMANIA XXVIII PREVIEW and PREDICTIONS

The Granddaddy of them all has arrived as Wrestlemania commences at Sun Life Stadium in Miami, Florida this coming Sunday. I will be attending the festivities with fellow Horsemen Avenue bloggers Anthony Zorzi and Justin Dibiase this weekend. WWE has done a great job in creating three super match-ups and putting together a solid undercard. It’s time to look at what is scheduled and what I think will happen.

AMERICAN IDOL Top 9 POWER RANKINGS

     American Idol season 11 is well underway with the most well-balanced collection of talent the show has had in years. The judges have gotten back to critiquing the performances this year, which is a shock since Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez added nothing but star-power last year. The race is on to see who will make it to the finale at the Kodak Theater and fight for a recording contract. Here is where I believe the contestants stand at this point in the competition.

Monday Night Musings

            Ever notice the difference in the way some people pronounce the word “the”?  When they are around friends in a comfortable setting, they say “thuh”, but if they are at work or trying to sound professional, they say “thee”. 

            It’s just another example of people losing their identity to what amounts to a subconscious social magnet.  If someone’s around it long enough, at work or at school, it’s bound to seep into your speech like a baby first learning a language.  You start using the same words, phrases, sentences as the people around you.  I’ve been at my office for almost three years and I catch myself using phrases that I’ve heard from co-workers.  Part of me is sad that I can no longer talk like “myself”, but what do I really talk like?  What I sounded like before was only a reflection of my surroundings at the time.  When I was in college, I probably sounded like the students around me.  When I was in elementary school, I probably sounded like a whiny little boy.  Sometimes conformity happens to “thuh” best of us.

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            I saw an ad in the paper the other for “Skinnygirl Vodka”.  The ad had a thin woman holding a bottle of the booze, smug yet surprisingly hungry looking. 

            After all the hullabaloo the media made over the Jeremy Lin “chink in the armor” comment, I didn’t understand how “offensive” things are selectively chosen by the media.  “Skinnygirl Vodka” is a product that glorifies the Hollywood eating-disorder girl look and snubs its nose at everyone else.  It’s not even called “Averagegirl Vodka”.  Now I’m usually not an advocate for overweight women, but consider this, whom do you think is more affected here? Jeremy Lin after reading “Chink in the Armor” on ESPN.com or a depressed, overweight girl that opens up the Philadelphia Inquirer in search of the day’s news and is instead reminded of what she should look like and who she should be. 

            I don’t think that Chinese people should ever be called “chinks”, and I think the ESPN worker should have been reprimanded, but the media fake outrage over stuff like that is ridiculous.  Let ESPN handle its own worker.  We don't need Al Sharpton to exhort live on his dumb show.  I am starting to believe that every media outlet has an entry-level job for trolls that sift through endless material looking for the next chance to blow the whistle on someone.  Lin himself said he wasn’t upset about it.  Since when is the media the moral police?  If you want to protect the Chinese from being called names, then you should also stop selling ads to companies that suggest fat girls aren’t good enough (it’s offensive to them), stop making fun of short people (it’s offensive to me), stop reviewing restaurants that serve veal (it’s offensive to vegans).. Maybe we should all just shut up because we are eventually going to offend someone, aren’t we?  

Wrestlemania 28 - Entry 1

Do you remember that Christmas when you came tripping down the stairs to see those shiny presents?  There was the one present that was neatly wrapped, but by its shape and prominence in front of the twinkling tree, you knew exactly what it was. 

                Santa came to work today.  My present, carefully wrapped in a slim FedEx shipping sleeve, left very little to the imagination.  I knew exactly what it was.  I ripped through package and found, expectantly, three crisp tickets to Wrestlemania 28 in Miami, Florida.  In one month’s time, fellow Horsemen Avenue writer Anthony Zorzi and I will fly down to the land of LeBron and C.S.I. spin-offs,  We will be meeting up with my long-time college bud and Horsemen Avenue contributor John “The Entertainment Blender” Sturgeon for a weekend that will kick off spring, baseball season, and warm weather. 

                As the mega-event draws nearer, I plan on updating the blog with personal Wrestlemania 28 thoughts.  In addition to the wrestling festivities, Z and I will be attending one of the first ever games played in the spectacular new Marlins stadium. 

                As far as the actual wrestling is concerned, the main event could be one of the most epic battles of all time; that is to say if WWE books it correctly.  The Electrifying One vs. The Doctor of Thuganomics.  The Rock vs. John Cena.  In reality, they are average in terms of overall wrestling ability but are masters of “puttin’ on a show”. 

-More to come in the month leading up to the event at Sun Life Stadium.

JUSTIFIED continues to kick ass and take names for FX

Back in 2010, I was pumped for the debut of Justified, an FX series based on infamous crime novel writer Elmore Leonard’s short story, Fire in the Hole. The main character of the show is U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a rugged, tough loner with a cowboy hat who happens to know how to use a gun expertly to get out of precarious situations that he encounters protecting Harlan County in Kentucky. In the Pilot, his chief adversary and rival Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) starts blowing up churches and other buildings with a rocket launcher. Raylan eventually finds Boyd and puts a bullet in his chest. With great action, novel-like dialogue, and excitement throughout the pilot, the foundation was laid for a great series.