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Politics

(Via Pitchfork)

There was a moment when I just sat staring at the scene in Chicago’s Union Park. It was on Sunday, the last day of the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival. Caribou was playing on the main stage, the smell of marijuana was pungent, and I was enjoying a hot dog. There were people everywhere. Most crowded at the front of the stage for Caribou, some standing idly talking with their friends, and others, like myself, nodding along to the bassline of “Can’t Do Without You.” It was a moment of clarity that I experienced in a festival (my first) marked by a rush of emotional states which played out like a roller coaster through a grueling three day plunge. There was CHVRCHES’ maelstrom of synth, Freddie Gibbs putting Pitchfork on blast for previous line-ups, an actual maelstrom that shutdown the festival for all of 20 minutes, the dirge of listening to Panda Bear and the rowdiness of A$AP Ferg’s energetic dorkiness. Yet, throughout all of it, festival goers noticed a fair amount of community throughout the throngs of festival goers. We weren’t inundated with a slew of corporate sponsors, distractions and a disorienting amount of people. That community created an atmosphere in which we could enjoy the acts, no matter how close or far away we were from each respective stage. It was a community I was glad to be part of for three days.

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Courtesy of The Augusta Chronicle

Today, as I’m writing this, the Masters have begun. People have come from all around the globe to experience the flowering dogwood, the spectacularly manicured lawns and a cheap Southern staple known as a pimento cheese sandwich. It’s also a rite of Spring and carries the connotation of a certain unofficial changing of the seasons for some. To be sure, this is a golf tournament, but the significance it has taken on over the years for a certain demographic (read: white people) as an event has rendered it a sacred retreat, a place to escape a world constantly screaming at their privilege through social media and otherwise. It’s an event that admires and supports privilege through a tangible avatar, the sexualization of female patrons, and Gone With the Wind-like romanticism provided by CBS and ESPN. All of this is a problem.

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Courtesy of ESPN

Courtesy of ESPN

If the Major League Baseball All-Star Game had a place in American History curricula, 11-year-old me would be a figure taught alongside Boss Tweed. The democratic nature of electing the Midsummer Classic’s starting lineups was intoxicating to the dorky kid who watched coverage of the 2000 Florida recount every day after school. I was a conniving little bastard and when it came to finding ways to stuff the ballot box, I took my lessons less from old Joe and Jane Stadium Usher, who’d hand out ballots at the ballpark than I did from Chicago’s Daley clan.

No strategy was beneath me. Paying friends a few quarters to punch out the bags of ballots I’d bring home from a trip to Candlestick? Check. Fabricating email addresses to run up totals in the early days of online balloting? Yep. I was a foolhardy kid who thought that my dirty tactics made a difference in who’d trot out to represent their league each summer, and I took that shit seriously. It probably would’ve been good practice for a career in politics.

Over the years, the dynamics of voting in players for the ASG have changed. Over the years, online ballots have eclipsed voting at the ballpark as the preferred way to select the game’s starters. Teams now solicit fans to pull out their smartphones, click an app a few times, and presto, send the hometown nine’s best to the game. The speed of voting online has made it more effective than even the most mischievous fan could manage via the old-fashioned, Bush v. Gore-inducing, punch card manner.

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Adam Silver

Courtesy of Fansided.com

In the wake of Donald Sterling’s eviction from the NBA, a lot has been made about Adam Silver’s reaction. Some have applauded his decision, others think it won’t help a damn thing, and a few find it to be a violation of certain inalienable rights. I think Adam Silver made an easy call when it was certainly the most agreeable to do so. For some reason, this has been read by some as an indication that Silver had the better judgement to do what David Stern did not. Let’s re-evaluate this though: if those tapes did not come to the surface, Sterling would still be a despicable guy holding ownership over one of Los Angeles’ hottest sports entities.

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Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon with American sweetheart Rosario Dawson – Courtesy of Old School 105.3

On Wednesday, around 3 o’clock, I was scrolling through Facebook when I noticed a status from Creative Loafing Charlotte which indicated that the mayor of our fair city, Patrick Cannon, was being arrested on charges of theft and bribery. I couldn’t believe it. In Charlotte? In sleepy Charlotte, NC? Where nothing happens? Where we are maligned constantly by national publications for being perceived as boring? Well, guess what: We are now in the ranks with some of the most esteemed, cultured cities of this United States and their histories of corrupt city officials. Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles and the like – they are about that life, and so are we!

 

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MonumentsMen

George Clooney’s Lecturing, Sanitized Vision of WWII…and Art

Everyone looks good in The Monuments Men. I think that’s part of the perk and charm of being in a George Clooney movie. He’ll crop your crew cut just right, perfectly light your skin’s aging complexion. He’ll make you feel chummy and invincible on set. That would all be fine if his latest directorial effort weren’t a World War II film. Instead of peril and suspense, you get silly vignettes of middle-aged veterans motoring along to their own internal River Kwai March. There’s a dissonance between the movie Clooney has made and the one we expect to see. Even the bullet wounds shed little blood. Read More

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It started on a Saturday afternoon watching college football. I was with a few friends enjoying some adult beverages when we started guffawing at foreign policy. In a Dr. Strangelove-esque turn of events, we started laughing at the thought of the United States putting in the incorrect coordinates for a nuclear attack. The destination of those incorrect coordinates? Antarctica. That’s right. A continent without any countries or human inhabitants that hate us. In the end, the ice caps melt due to this erroneous strike, and whole countries flood. We’ve turned this place into Waterworld, and we are no longer back-to-back any war champs. We are just all fighting for sand. The scenario was hilarious because of the implausibility of everything. Until I realized, in my drunken state, that I could petition the government, and I could get the wheels rolling on this thing with a plea for our government to do something about the one place that does not have a representative government or an established people. Hell, they don’t even have a flag, for crying out loud.

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