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Is My Dad A Terrorist?

This was my first thought when I heard that a barber shop quartet of terrorists, including one Haitian man, were planning on bombing two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, only to have their plot foiled by the FBI.  See, my parents live in Riverdale and my Dad is Haitian, which based on the Jewish and Irish dominance in the neighborhood demographics gave my Dad a 1 in 10 chance of being involved.  I am also surprised that my Mom did not report him to the FBI just because it would get him out of the house.  Til death or Patriotic Act do they part.

In all seriousness I ran by the synagogues all the time (which I can probably no longer do without arousing suspicion) and have attended Bar Mitzvahs at one of them so it is sort of creepy.  But perhaps now when I say I am from Riverdale, people will not say “like the Archie comics.”

But can it be a shock that Haitians are quickly becoming the hot new thing in terrorism?  They are like the Zac Efron of global jihad and this is their High School Musical 3.  A few years ago, a “plot” to bomb the Sears Tower was uncovered and involved a handful of Haitians in Florida.  I quickly began joking that this was preposterous.  I believe my joke was – “Really, Haitian terrorists?  What were they going to do give the Sears Tower poverty and AIDS?”

The fact is that Haiti has been sitting right near the United States for 200 years and is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  It is also full of brown and black people.  Poverty and melanin are, after all, the two biggest indicators of future terrorists/enemies of the United States.  There may be a silver lining though – if eventually Haitian detention camps are started I feel like my blog and Tweets will be followed by many more people, even if most of them work for the government.

Furthermore, it turns out this latest plot was wrught by prison converts to Islam and not by some homegrown Haitian sect.  Alexis de Toqueville famously wrote that you can judge a country by its prisons.  So apparently our country can be defined by rape, weight rooms and turning people into worse people than they were before.  In other words America is a 300 million member fraternity.

I have said it repeatedly; there are only a few ways Haiti can save itself and get help from the United States:

  1. Become Communist so that everyone can get a Coast Guard Escort to stay in the United States.
  2. Find Oil.  Or…
  3. Try to become the 51st State.

And since these plots have been foiled perhaps we can focus on the atrocity that America has committed, namely, voting Kris Allen American Idol over Adam Lambert.  I have not been this angry over a vote since John Kerry lost to George W. Bush.

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A Night of Ridiculousness

 

The New Yankee Stadium & The Season Finale of 24

 

PART I

Last night I was engaged in not one, but two events of gross excess.  I went to the new Yankee Stadium for the first time last night and was treated to the most gaudy piece of architecture south of Newport, Rhode Island.   I began my evening at the Hard Rock Cafe where a tasteful mix of Bronx natives and aspiring actors served me some decent food in a chaotic environment.  My plan for any future games will be to go to the Court Deli (as any good Bronx native/cost conscious human being should go – they have better french fries than the HRC anyway), but I wanted to soak up as much of the new amenities as I could on my first trip.

After the Hard Rock cafe I strolled around the stadium for about an hour burning off some of the 45,623 calories I had consumed (according to the helpful/guilt inducing calorie counts in the HRC menu) admiring all the amenities of the new stadium.  Here are a few:

  • Helpful greeters before the game and people directing you to the subway after the game.  Wow – when they expect a greater influx of rich people (given the ticket prices) they really go all out.  Sure, the charm is almost completely gone and it feel s a little like the manager of Chotchkie’s is running the Stadium (Office Space reference), but that is a small price to pay for the Roman Coliseum that is Yankee Stadium.  Did people not need help getting around or getting to the Stadium last year?
  • The sushi bar and farmer’s market stands – what would a baseball stadium be without these classic additions.  Take me out to the ball game, buy me some sushi and pomegranate…
  • There is a roped off bar in centerfield.  Because nothing says classic baseball than artificially pumped up exclusivity, privilege and status.  I assume wine bars and tapas bars are coming soon behind home plate, as well as some stylish new one word named frozen yogurt place – perhaps called “Juice.”
  • There are what appear to be at least 5 or 6 large stores dedicated to selling Yankees merchandise.  It is as if the Stadium is screaming, “WE NEED TO SELL A LOT OF STUFF TO MAKE A PROFIT.  OK THAT’S NOT TRUE, BUT WE FIGURED WE GOT TAX PAYERS TO PAY FOR A LOT OF THE STADIUM – NO NOT YOU D-BAGS FROM JERSEY, JUST YOU NEW YORKERS,  SO WE FIGURED WE COULD SQUEEZE MORE CASH OUT OF YOU.”
  • There is a small art gallery in the stadium, curator included.  See #2 and realize that I did not exaggerate nearly enough.
  • Forced nostalgia.  Everywhere you walked pre-game there was epic music playing and slow motion video every fifteen feet.  It is as if the Stadium is telling the Twitter/YouTube generation, “Don’t worry about forming your own memories or nostalgia, we are beating you over the head with sentimental sensory overload so that you don’t have to experience nostalgia, we’ll simply tell you what your nostalgia is.”
  • Energy Overload – I was told that the new Yankee Stadium has a significantly larger carbon footprint than the old one (the 1700″ HD flat screen probably has something to do with that).  The comparison is like the old stadium is the carbon equivalent of an old Asian woman with bound feet and the new Stadium is Shaquille O’Neal.

Other than those things the Stadium looks great and I saw a great game (Yankees won 7-6).  So if you like your baseball like you like your trophy wife, attractive, expensive and soulless I think we have found your stadium.

PART II

And if you like your television loud and absurd then I am sorry that 24’s 7thseason ended last night.   Rumor has it that Season 8 will be the most explosive ever.  In it the writers will have condensed 14 months worth of time into 24 hours, which people will still believe if the show continues to post incongruous times on screen.  Jack, who clearly survives at the end of Season 7, will have to stop terrorists who plan on destroying 350 nuclear warheads at 350 different locations around the world.  Unfortunately the only people who can help him are Tony Almeida, who makes a deal for immunity, ex-President Logan, who has been exiled somewhere and David Palmer whose head was blown off in Season 5, but is secretly still alive.  One bomb will go off only killing competent screen writers, but Kim Bauer will be kidnapped.  Jack will have to sacrifice his life to save Kim, but only after he tracks down the the cure to AIDS, rebuilds the World Trade Center and uncovers Jimmy Hoffa’s body.  But before all this can happen, Jack must be brought out of retirement because he is at peace with himself and regrets all the people he has murdered.   And in the final twist (7 minutes left in the season) Jack realizes he has been the bad guy the whole time and must torture himself and kill himself to stop the attack.  You heard it hear first – Season 8 will be the most explosive season ever!!!!

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The New Yankee Stadium

If you thought the American Pastime needed more meatpacking district influence – here’s your baseball stadium.

A couple of days ago I received an amazing investment opportunity in the mail.  If I invest the GDP of a small country I can receive some entertaining sports surrounded by all the bells and whistles of a Manhattan club delivered in the form of a product that has had diminishing returns over the last decade.  That’s right I received my Yankees prospectus a/k/a ticket information and fan guide in the mail.

Like General Motors the Yankees have cost the American taxpayer more while providing less over the last several years.  There are several problems I have which were only augmented by the mailing I received.

The Prices

The Yankees, my second favorite team in all of sports, belong up there with the executives who received bonuses from AIG.  The ticket prices are absurd – it literally feels like what a night out to a Broadway play was before Broadway had to sell out to get seats filled in the theaters.  Baseball was not supposed to be high society  – it was supposed to be a day or night for families and working class folks who could enjoy entertainment with superstars without a bank loan or a blow job being involved.  There are now six (that’s six) special tiers of tickets for which the prospectus does not even list prices.   Presumably because they are so special and elite that only people with American Express black cards can even hear the prices without going deaf.

The Bronx

The Stadium was completely unnecessary and with the economy as it is , completely irresponsible.  What’s worse is that with the hollow promises brokered by the Yankees and the city and in part by former Bronx Borough President Adolpho Carrion, the Yankees got a subsidized stadium and in the process destroyed a massive, well-attended park with no equivalent replacement in waiting.  In one of the poorest communities in America, do you think destroying a quality outlet like a park with softball/baseball/soccer fields, a track and all sorts of other amenities is a wise decision?

The other promises that are often made – pumping money into the community, a school structured for high school students interested in sports management, etc.  seem to not be panning out.  Even worse is that all the restaurants (NYY Steak, Hard Rock Cafe) will actually probably take from the local businesses that thrived with the extra customers coming in for games.  Why would a tourist try local fare when they can go to the more familiar and ethnically-cleansed Hard Rock Cafe.

I would also love to know if Bronx residents were given priority for jobs created by the stadium and all its surrounding new businesses.  The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate in the city and this could have been an opportunity to make a small dent in it (very small, but at least meaningful as a step that says the Yankees will give something back – even if it is only salaries earned).

The Stadium

This thing looks beautiful.  Plush lounges, high end suites, a sports bar in centerfield, numerous quality food retailers at the stations in the stadium are just a few of the upgrades.  Hell, there’s so much at the Stadium that if they have a store producing Latino people they could render the Bronx completely obsolete.  However, isn’t this a fu-king baseball game?

Will there be a cover charge on top of tickets and techno blaring as you enter the stadium and some giant black dude frisks you and some sleazy grown-up prep school kid asks you if you party?  The American pastime should not be so slick and corporate looking.  People used to go to baseball games for the game – but now it seems that Manhattan spirit of needing to be seen has officially immersed itself in the Bronx, even if that immersion does not spread 20 feet outside the Stadium.  Now you can say “I have tickets to the Yankees” and it can mean more than “I like baseball and the Yankees.”  Now it can mean “I like status symbols and high fives.”  It won’t be long until Yankee fans become, due to financial restrictions and character depletion, like an LA Dodgers Crowd – famous for arriving in the 3rd inning and leaving in the 7th inning.

The old stadium used to be called The House That Ruth Built.  This one seems to be destined for The Club That Douchebags Inhabit.  Or maybe in the spirit of its apparent inspiration, just call it Stadium.  Or Douche.

I have my tickets for May 18th.