chalkdust

In ascending order, the cutest animals (not counting baby animals, almost all of which are cute):

• Bunnies. Quiet thoughtfulness. I wonder if this impression I have of them is influenced by Watership Down.
• Platypi. I think I relate to their unique, difficult-to-categorize place in the animal kingdom.
• Aardvarks. Did you know that aardvarks are anteaters, but not all anteaters are aardvarks?
• Polar bears. I could spend hours just watching polar bears. They were my favorite thing at the San Diego Zoo when I went in 1984.
• Cats. I’m a recent convert, but one thing I love about them is the way they are often the only animate thing in cityscapes. Meowing is pretty cute, too.
• Sheep. I don’t know what it is, but I am drawn to them. Their mild-manneredness and gentle demeanors? Not sure, but I want to own sheep someday.
• Penguins. In that summer of 1984, I also went to Sea World, and if I’d been there alone, I’d have spent hours in the Penguin Encounter.
• Dogs. Oh, my goodness. Man’s best friend, indeed.
• Sea otters. I really want to plan my next trip around seeing some otters in California sometime in the next year. They’re so cute!

I felt it the moment the cold hit me. It was about 12:30 Friday night. At 12:25, I was fine. At 12:30, I was sniffling and my nose was running. I did the podcast anyway and then Saturday I did Cathy’s good-bye picnic at Kailua Beach. Spent all day Sunday in bed and then more of the same Monday.

Actually, Sunday night I got a little crazy (too much sleep and bad dreams to boot), so I walked down the hill, picked up some groceries, and had dinner at McD’s. Monday night I did the same thing. It’s not a lot, but it’s fresh air, it’s getting my body moving, it’s getting out of the house. Made a big difference both nights, too, but then I got home sorta amped and I’m worried about getting my body clock back in sync with the rest of the world in time for the start of school.

The best thing this week is the phone call I got from the director of the M.Ed. program I’m trying to get enrolled in for the fall. She worked the phones as if it were her own son’s education at stake, and finally convinced the business office at UH-Hilo to release my transcripts, meaning I’m pretty much good to go, once I secure the tuition money. Whew.

I ordered a couple of books last week and one of them, the new Boondocks anthology, has kept me pretty busy between naps. The first collection, Because I Know You Don’t Read the Newspaper, was the funniest thing I’d read in ages. Subversive, creative, unpredictable, and just hilarious. Aaron McGruder has moved almost completely away from the cultural stuff and totally into the political stuff, which he explains in the intro to A Right to Be Hostile, which I didn’t purchase because it was made up of the first two collections, plus some new strips. I appreciate his convictions and his willingness to walk where other artists don’t go, but he sacrifices humor in order to go there. A lot of humor. I’ve chuckled a few times, but mostly my response is just a quick nod. The first collection had me howling. It’s kinda sad, but as I’ve said, I totally understand why McGruder feels he has to go there.

R has come home from her trip and has been strangely friendly. It’s still not what it was — I mean, if I don’t call her first, we don’t talk at all — but she’s actually picked the phone up when I’ve called a couple of times, and when I called last night because of my bad dreams, she at least called me back the next afternoon. I don’t know if that’s progress or what. She and Mr. HBA have come back from their trip apparently still close. I was kinda hoping they’d come back hating each other. I’m terrible, I know.

My latest cooking project has been whole-wheat biscuits. I started with the most basic of recipes (whole-wheat flour, water, oil, baking powder, and salt) with the intention of working with one or two more ingredients at a time. The trouble is the whole-wheat flour. Most of the recipes I’ve seen call for half whole-wheat, half all-purpose. It’s not the easiest of ingredients to work with, this whole-wheat flour. You can see why flour became what it did — I mean, who doesn’t prefer light and fluffy to dense and hard? Then, it seems that all the things that make biscuits good are on the bad list: eggs, shortening, milk, and butter. What’s the point of making something with whole-wheat flour if you’re going to mix it with an equal amount of all-purpose flour and then add all that other stuff? There’d better be some point, or I’ve got four and a half pounds of whole-wheat flour that’ll just go to waist.

The best thing about the picnic at Kailua (a beach I have never liked) was Harry Potter talk with Anto. I’m playing with the idea of planning a talk-about-Harry get-together for grownups. Some decently priced restaurant with a party room, like the Wisteria (r.i.p.) used to have would be cool.

By now you already know who Sonya Thomas is — she’s that amazingly petite and slender Korean-American woman (I’m assuming the American part, actually) who finished second at this year’s Nathans Famous hot-dog eating championship at Coney Island on the fourth of July. I first saw her on Jimmy Kimmel and was really impressed. She’s pleasantly nice and silly, like a lot of my friends, and seemed like someone I could hang out with.

It doesn’t hurt that she’s kinda cute, too. Well, maybe it hurts a little, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Sonya’s really good at what she does, obviously, and routinely beats up on men twice or three times her size in the competitive eating arena. I really like her attitude — she seems to understand that in order to be seriously competitive, you’ve got to take the competition aspect seriously, but she also seems to understand that this is competitive eating we’re talking about, not Olympic swimming.

I root for Sonya whenever I get the chance to see her in action, despite my moral objection to competitive eating itself. I’m only mildly opposed to competitive eating anyway, and even less opposed to competitive eating when its participants are cute, slender, Korean-American women.

However, what I really hate is this nickname she’s got. “The Black Widow.” It’s in her URL, even. Every freakin’ time she’s spoken about or spoken to, it’s Black Widow this, and Black Widow that, and the name just doesn’t fit! Plus, it’s a name she chose for herself. A good nickname needs to be something someone else hangs on you, unless you’re a professional wrestler, and while competitive eating as a sport is only a step ahead of pro wrestling, the outcome at least is not predetermined, so it is more contest than show, and in this arena, you’ve got to let the nicknames come however they come.

So that’s my first problem. She chose the name for herself. Another thing that bugs me is she doesn’t look like someone you’d call “The Black Widow,” does she? Heck no. She’s too cute. Too girly. Her appearance doesn’t strike any kind of fear into anyone. She’s more like a little kitty than a black widow.

This is a smaller objection, but the Black Widow name is also undoubtedly racial. I don’t mean racist-racial; I just mean race-related racial. I don’t mind that by itself, but because she doesn’t look anything like what a Black Widow should look like, everyone’s ready acceptance of this nickname seems to be related to the fact that she’s an Asian woman. She’s got that exotic, mysterious look that Asian women have when surrounded by Caucasians and Africans. Of course, she’s only got it in its minimal amount, because as I say, there’s nothing spooky about this look. She doesn’t look like she could trap you in her web, or deceive you until it’s too late, or lure you into submitting to her will, or any of these mysterious, exotic ideas men get when they see lovely Asian women. Again, I don’t have a problem with wanting to call an Asian woman “The Black Widow,” but if the only reason you’re calling her that is that she’s Asian, when the name doesn’t match her for a second, well, that’s wrong. A little.

My biggest problem with Sonya Thomas taking this name for herself, though, is that the name was already in use by someone else for ten years before Sonya burst upon the scene in 2003. Yes. There’s already a Black Widow, and she didn’t name herself — in fact, she was reluctant to allow people to call her that, but someone pinned the name on her, someone asked her about it, someone published it, and that was that. She was the Black Widow.

Jeanette Lee, one of the best professional billiards players in the world and certainly the most celebrated, is the only Black Widow I will acknowledge. Look at her! She’s got that look. She looks like someone who, even if someone else had the name before her, would easily wrest that title away because here’s your prototypical Black Widow. When she first tried to make a living shooting stick, she’d appear in pool halls and when the guys tried to hustle her for her money, she’d kick their butts, outhustling them (“I only took money from guys who were out to take my money,” she has said). That’s why a guy who ran a pool hall began to call her that! So not only is it a name someone else gave her, there was a good reason for it. The name fit.

Plus, it’s billiards, which I’ll admit is only a few ladder rungs above competitive eating in the sports world (I love pool, but it’s no sport!), but it is much more suited to having a star named The Black Widow. Look at the nicknames in competitive eating: “Cookie” Jarvis, “Hungry” Hardy, “Yellowcake” Subich. Sonya needs a name like that. How about Blackberry? Sonya “Blackberry” Thomas. See? She looks more like a blackberry than a black widow, that’s for sure.

And it’s not like nobody knew about Jeanette Lee. She had a pinball machine named after her, which was in all the arcades in the country back in the mid-nineties, called Black Widow. And lots of people from all over play pool and would therefore have seen Jeanette’s posters on the walls of billiards halls. Jeanette has endorsed Cuetec cues (one of which I am the proud owner!) for a decade, and Cuetec has done its best to make sure everyone sees and knows Jeanette.

So. Sonya “Blackberry” Thomas, if you’re out there vanity-surfing someday and stumble upon this humble online journal, take it from an admirer. You’re no Black Widow. Do yourself a favor and get a different name. I’ll even pay for the domain name. And set up your website. Whoever’s doing your site now is doing you no favors!

And Jeanette, if you’re vanity-surfing someday and stumble upon this humble online journal, give me a call sometime if things don’t work out with you and your husband. I’ll let you play with my cue stick.

It’s a good thing Jesus got me first, else baseball would be my religion, and these broadcasters would be my pastors.

In ascending order, the best baseball broadcasters I’ve heard:

• Vin Scully
  He’s the old master, the consensus Lord of Baseball Broadcasting, and he deserves it. Ask anyone–and I don’t mean just baseball fans–to close his or her eyes and imagine the sound of a baseball broadcaster, and everyone imagines the voice of Vin Scully, whether he or she knows it or not. Everything Vin says is poetry, school-lesson, sentimental journey, and sermon, all at the same time. The only reason he’s not higher up on my list is that I haven’t seen very many Dodgers games.
• Jon Miller
  The dean of ESPN baseball, Miller could make his living on the talk-show circuit if he wanted to. He’s absolutely hilarious on talk shows. He does this impression of Japanese baseball broadcasters doing their best Vin Scully that has me holding my stomach from laughing so hard. I heard him on a national radio talk-show once, and he had the crew laughing so hard you could hear it. He’s great with Joe Morgan, his ESPN broadcasting partner, and he’s even better solo.
• Joe Buck
  His father is a broadcasting immortal (in the Hall of Fame), but I honestly remember only a handful of games called by Jack Buck–all of them playoff games or World Series games. Joe is the absolute best of the new-wave, second- and third-generation broadcasters. He’s obviously smarter than anyone else in the stadium, and he manages to be cooler and funnier without alienating his audience. He holds the game at armslength, understanding (and making you understand, too) that it’s just a game, but at the same time believing (and making you believe, too) that baseball’s also something sacred and profound. I love what I do, but if I could trade lives with anyone in the world, I’d choose Joe Buck. Or Julia Stiles, ’cause then I could see myself in my underwear. (stole that joke from yesterday’s Frazz!)
• Skip Carey
  The oft-parodied stalwart of the Atlanta Braves’ broadcasts for longer than I can remember, Skip is the son of broadcasting legend Harry Carey and the father of Chip Carey. The entire Braves’ broadcasting team is terrific, but Skip has been the cornerstone and heart of these broadcasts, and he’s terrific. I love it when, in games that are pretty boring because one team is ahead by clearly insurmountable numbers, Carey doesn’t pretend the game’s at all interesting anymore. “Well, it’s better than mowing the lawn,” he’ll say, “so don’t go anywhere!”
• Hank Greenwald
  One of the reasons baseball is adrenaline-rush, brain-massage, and lullaby all in one is guys like Hank Greenwald. One of my favorite things to do with a baseball game is just turn it on (on the radio or tv) and take a nap. I did this a lot in college at UH-Hilo, where a local radio station carried the Giants’ games, when Greenwald was the play-by-play guy. The guy could call a game like nobody’s business, could relate a story like your grandpa, and could wax poetic about all the seemingly meaningless things baseball fanatics love to wax poetic about. I wish I had some of those games on tape, just for days when I have time to get in a good forty-minute afternoon snooze.
• Bob Uecker
  Baseball fans know better than to fooled by his idiot persona or by those hilarious Lite Beer commercials. It’s true that Uecker batted an even .200 for his career, but he was a catcher, and he caught some of the greatest pitchers the game’s ever seen. There’s a reason you keep a guy out there for all those years even though he’s a lousy hitter; the catcher is the quarterback of the team and usually the smartest guy out there. One of my huge regrets in life is that I don’t live somewhere that broadcasts Brewers games. I’d listen to Uecker broadcast paint drying. Oh, if you don’t know who this guy is, yes you do. He was the guy in Major League who took swigs of whiskey between pitches while broadcasting the games: “Juuuuuuust a bit outside!” In the Lite Beer commercials, he was the “I must be in the FRONT ROW!” guy. He was also on Mr. Belvedere, but you probably don’t remember that.
• Bob Costas
  He does a million things, including an HBO show, NBC’s Olympics coverage, and, once upon a time, the original Later show, but everyone knows that what he will eventually do, when he decides to slow down a little, is chuck everything and find a team who’ll take him, and just broadcast Major League Baseball, his first love. Better than anyone else I can think of, Costas understands why I love baseball. His reasons are my reasons. If these guys are the pastors of this religion, Bob Costas is the Pope. Costas and Joe Buck are both from St. Louis and both Cardinals fans (‘though Buck won’t admit it publicly), so it would be just lovely if they’d both settle down there and do games together. I know they’re both play-by-play guys, but that’s okay. The guys in Atlanta take turns doing play-by-play and color commentary, and it works for them.