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February 26, 2004
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
I've blogged on this before, so this is repeating myself a bit. But current events warrant saying it again. Kobe Bryant and his lawyers are scum-sucking, malodorous, disgusting people, and I hope he spends the next 10 years as the MVP of the Colorado Penal League while dodging rapists of his own in the Eagle County Jail weight room.
Bryant's defense attorneys have now officially subpoenaed his victim to provide her medical and sexual history into evidence. Their line of defense is that this woman sleeps around, so whatever Bryant did to her is okay. Let me state one thing unequivocally: let's pretend for just one pathetic second that the "evidence" is accurate - that the girl in question had sex with three different guys in three days before meeting Kobe. It doesn't matter. No means no. No means no if the girl is a chaste virgin, and no means no if she's the kind of girl you don't take home to mother. No STILL means no if the girl's just finished taking on a football team or filming a porn movie. No means no if it comes from Britney Spears or Britney Skye. No means no. So when she said no to Kobe, her entire medical and sexual history became completely irrelevant. Period. End of sentence. Or hopefully, the beginning of one. Here's hoping that Kobe Bryant is sentenced to 15 years of dropping the soap in front of guys named "Bulldog," "Snake," and "Blade."
TURK WENDELL, YOU ARE MY HERO
Kind of sad when all it takes to become a hero is stating the obvious and telling the truth. But Colorado Rockies' pitcher Turk Wendell just made my Top Ten Favorite People List of 2004 for his statements yesterday regarding Barry "Juiced" Bonds.
"If my personal trainer, me, Turk Wendell, got indicted for that, there's no one in the world who wouldn't think that I wasn't taking steroids," Wendell told the Denver Post. "I mean, what, because he's Barry Bonds, no one's going to say that? I mean, obviously he did it. (His trainer) admitted to giving steroids to baseball players. He just doesn't want to say his name. You don't have to. It's clear just seeing his body."
Wendell's right. It's obvious. However, for a member of the baseball players' union to break from the pack and admit it out loud? It took guts, Turk. And that's why you're on my list of favorite people.
SOUND KINDA FAMILIAR?
Thanks to Marine's Girl for posting this quote from Ted Kennedy yesterday: "The constitution has often been amended to expand and protect people's rights, never to take away or restrict their rights. By endorsing this shameful proposal, President Bush will go down in history as the first president to right to write bias back into the constitution."
Ok, so that was Kennedy's quote from Wednesday. Look at my blog from 1:26 a.m. on Wednesday. You think perhaps someone on the Senator's staff was cribbing a little bit? (grin) I tell ya, they oughta hire me to write for these guys.
GETTING THE CURMUDGEON TO BLOG IS LIKE PULLING TEETH! ER... WAIT A MINUTE...
So today's the day, I am finally having that abscessed tooth removed. I get to go back to Dr. Strangelove's and have them put sharp things in my mouth for fun. Anyway, one of two things will happen. Either I will be so miserable from the tooth that I don't blog for days, or I will be so bored from sitting around unable to speak that I blog 70 zillion times. Either way, I'm hoping for a really good painkiller prescription. ;-)
TOP TEN LIST... #7: BARCELONA
I've traveled to Spain for both business and pleasure, and I must tell you that it's absolutely my favorite country to travel to. I love Spain. And while I prefer Madrid or the Costa Blanca (Alicante in particular), this list is about places I've gone for work, so that means that Barcelona is Spain's representative on my list. That's no tragedy, though - Barcelona is a beautiful place. Much of the architecture is designed or inspired by native son Gaudi; whether you like him or hate him, there's no denying that Gaudi's work is unique and unlike anything else you'll see out there. The city is right on the Mediterranean, so there's a temperate climate; even in January it was pretty nice out, in the 50s or so. The 1992 Olympic site is beautiful, atop Mont Juic (don't know that I'd call it a mountain, per se, but it's a very, very tall foothill on the southwest side of town), and once you get up there you get an amazing view of the city and the surrounding mountains. The people were very, very friendly; I particularly remember a cab driver who was so pleased that I was even trying to speak Spanish to him that he turned the radio down and spent the whole ride talking to me in English and giving me Spanish lessons. They speak a dialect of Spanish there, Catalan, which meant that even my limited knowledge of Spanish was not real sufficient - so I appreciated his efforts, believe me.
Barcelona was also the site of one of my more adventurous travels. My Spanish vocabulary doesn't go too far beyond, "donde esta los banos?" "una cervesa, por favor," and "gracias." (Okay, a little further, but not much. Every other time I've been to Spain, I was accompanied by someone who spoke the language fluently.) So naturally, upon arriving at the airport, I decided to take the subway to my hotel instead of taking a cab. (I think I was being cheap and trying to spend 2 euros instead of 30, or something like that.) I got on the train, and realized that a) I had only a general idea of where my hotel was and which stop to get off at; b) I could understand neither the maps nor the station announcements, so I was relying on counting the number of stations between the airport and where I thought my hotel was; and c) even if I guessed the right stop, I still had to navigate streets I didn't know, with signs I couldn't read, to find the hotel a few blocks from the stop. So I started figuring that I'd perhaps made a mistake in trying to save some money.
However, everything turned out fine - and that emboldened me. I had one afternoon of down time, about four hours where I didn't need to be anywhere. So I left my hotel with only a map in Spanish, about 100 euros just in case, and no particular clue where I was going. I went on a walking tour of the city, going through the backstreets and into neighborhoods to see what the town was really like once you got away from the main drag, Avenguda Diagonal, where all the hotels were and where everyone spoke English. I saw bakeries and wine shops, little community churches and delis. I somehow ended up near the bullfighting ring in the center of town; I managed to find my way up to Mont Juic and the Catalonian Museum of Art just across from the Olympic site. From the top of the steps of that museum, I was rewarded with a great panorama of the city. That was one of the most enjoyable walks I ever took - certainly one of the only four hour walks I ever did. I heartily recommend Barcelona - or anywhere in Spain - if you're looking to go to Europe.
