Urban Meyer Is From My Hometown--So What

        


          In my hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio there are now three signs posted in various areas on main roads as you enter into city limits from the east, from the west and from the south. They announce that Urban Meyer was born here. Urban Meyer is a college football coach and by college football standards, a very good one. He became well known to college football fans in the last half dozen years in large part by his winning two National Championships as the head coach of the Florida Gators between 2005 and 2010. Last year, in a sorta homecoming, he became coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes and in that first year they did not lose a game (Although they were Bowl ineligible due to NCAA Violations and thus didn't get to play in a big finale.) He's probably the hottest football coach in the land.

          In terms of Division 1 A Football Programs, Urban Meyer's winning percentage ranks first out of all active coaches. He has coached at Bowling Green St, Utah, University of Florida and now Ohio State and has had major success at each program, not to mention becoming a multi-millionaire in the process.Ok. So he is a really good football coach at the collegiate level and a wealthy individual. I think we can all agree on that.

          But does this fact really give credence to having his name being erected as representative product of the pride of Ashtabula? I have my doubts. Is this what Ashtabula is trying to extol as some sorta demented claim to fame? And do you really need three signs so as to not miss a single person entering into 'Urban' territory and have them miss out on the idea that they are in the glorious proximity of where once Urban Meyer might have walked down the street?

          Though of course he only lived in Ashtabula until college and never moved back he has made special appearances in Ashtabula over the years helping out local sports organizations and their ilk.
From what I can gather he has donated his time and money and influence and is prolly not a bad guy.

          But c'mon. HE IS A FOOTBALL COACH.

          So he was born in Ashtabula and left as a teenager. If we take even a cursory glance at the History of Ashtabula we can find great people who maybe weren't born in Ashtabula but spent the majority of their lives there and whose actions are deserving of serious public recognition. Surely if Urban Meyer has three signs posted up than some one like William Hubbard, who was a member of the Ashtabula County Anti-Slave Society, and who ran a house on the underground railroad to help free slaves in the times before the Civil War should have just as many or more. Its unknown precisely how many slaves he helped but his house was very close to Lake Erie and so he would house them until they could escape across the lake and into Canada.

         One surviving record indicates there were 39 slaves hiding out in his basement and hay loft at one time. To them the place became known as 'Mother's Hubbard's Cupboard'.

         To Ashtabula's credit, the old Hubbard House still stands and is now a museum open in the summer and is actually cool as hell if you're history nerd like myself.(Too bad its only open in the Summer.)

         I'm not bashing Urban Meyer or demanding that his shiny aluminum signs be torn down or defaced but it would be nice if the leaders of Ashtabula, whoever they may be nowadays, exercised a little perspective.

         In a place whose downtown is filled with abandoned buildings, whose unemployment runs rampant, where only shreds of community involvement still exist, (outside the sports community) where old school building get torn down and where the only thing being built are 'Family Dollar' stores, it would be nice for them to understand this basic truth: You have to be extremely intelligent to be a great football coach but dumb enough to think it matters.

Lets Talk About Guns!

Guns! Guns! Guns! What do we do about them? How does what we decide to do about them affect out 2nd Amendment rights as American citizens? Guns! This is the hot topic nowadays on CNN  or your local facebook news feed or where the hell ever and I'm sure the tone and texture of the conversation differs depending on which part of the country you happen to be in at the time.

Obama has passed a series of executive actions related to gun control ( though I hardly doubt any of which will actually prevent something like the Newtown massacre from happening again.) Senator Diane Fienstein of California wants to ban all assault weapons and is introducing a bill to that effect which according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer has no chance of passing. Guns! Guns! Guns! We Americans love our Guns don't we? Do we?

I like watching Bruce Willis cap the bad guys in DIE HARD just as much as anybody. I grew up playing with GI JOES and each little action figure came with his own special gun. We grew up watching movie upon movie upon movie where no matter the plot, gunplay figured a prominent role. Recently, as a Christmas gift I bought my little two year old nephew a toy gun that shoots soft darts that couldn't hurt a fly. But then afterwards I thought, is this where we start our infatuation with guns?

Maybe I should have got him that rad coloring book instead. Now wait. Just because I like DIE HARD and just because I grew up watching action movies where people getting shot and killed was routine, does that make me a homicidal maniac? Does it even mean that I might enjoy firing a gun at a target or an unsuspecting deer out in the woods during hunting season? What the hell does it all mean?

And if the government bans assault weapons, will this keep innocent people safe from violence? Or is it really a tactic to get guns out of the hands of citizens so the government can enact their tyrannical master plan and control the masses without the masses being able to fight back? The latter seems to be the opinion of conservatives who lately have been defending their Second Amendment rights with the zeal of a baptist preacher on Sunday.
I go to the art museum and look at the guns and rifles from the middle ages. Aesthetically speaking, some are quite beautiful with their ornate stocks carved from ivory by hand by a craftsmen five hundred years ago.

On this topic everybody seems to have their opinion and their diatribe ready to unfurl. I don't know what to add or what to subtract. I personally am not a gun owner. I see no reason to own a gun. Some people feel the need to own a gun for protection. Ostensibly, that makes sense I guess. I lived in NYC for three years and never once felt like I needed a gun for protection. Some people like to go hunting. I get that. I can understand that when you go hunting, you use a gun.OK, but it does seem stupid to be a 'proud gun owner'.  Some people are just so proud of their guns and of the power they possess and that rubs me the wrong way and seems about as dumb as being proud of your shiny new car. Maybe if I owned my own gun and started shooting at the moon I'd get hooked and love guns and understand better those who are furiously against the government trying to control them.

Maybe if I had my own assault rifle like the kind used in the massacre in Newtown, I'd get a big rush of adrenaline and feel its power course thru my veins as I obliterated pop cans in some field or blew away a deer in five seconds easy and as soon as I got back on facebook I 'd post a big splashing sincere defense of my Second Amendment right to own firearms. For the time being, I'll just watch DIE HARD 2 and next Christmas I think I'll buy my little nephew a book instead.

Mona Lisa Is Now A Space Explorer

           Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' is one of the world's most recognizable paintings and paradoxically, probably the least truly looked at image in contemporary life. Its become so ubiquitous and so manipulated, with its use on credit cards, t-shirts, websites, social networks, TV shows, etc., that who the hell nowadays actually takes the time to experience the actual Mona Lisa? Art Critics and Art Historians and Academic aficionados? (Of course this all points to a much larger issue I have with Art in 21st century life but will not digress into at present.)You might answer: all the millions of tourists or visitors who go to the Louvre each year. Right? Well, not so much as you find out when you actually go to the Louvre to see for yourself as I had the chance to last summer.

          I mean, I didn't go to the Louvre with this as my purpose in mind, but I was certainly curious. Anyways as soon as you locate where in the museum the painting resides, you enter in and see a throbbing mass of people with their cell phone cameras out and clogging in front of the small, framed, object. Nobody is actually looking at the actual painting. 

          A million digital pictures are being taken through various quality cameras. Hours and hours of digital video accumulates and incorporates the crowd and the noise and the other picture takers. I bulldozed in as far as I could, got the best look I could but the swarm was too much for me and a few minutes later, I retreated. 

         Did you know that just the other day NASA( you remember them) beamed a digital image of the Mona Lisa 240,000 miles to a Satellite near the Moon? Its part of experiments in communication between earth and space and to eventually transmit information through space. There's a brief thing about it on slate.com. You might want to check it out.

         NASA broke down the image by a 152 by 200 pixel grid and then used a lazer to send it. Special software then rebuilt the image when it arrived and corrected all sorts of blemishes and fragments caused by the journey itself. Its safe to say the mona lisa is now the most fucked with image of a painting of all time. And it also reminds me of something William Burroughs wrote--something to the effect of "when scientists with all their money and gadgets discover the outer reaches of space, they'll find that artists got there first." Something like that. It also reminds me that when it comes to art works nowadays, we live in a 'surface' culture. 

On Federico Fellini's 8 1/2

        

          To me and my way of experiencing movies on the big screen, Fellini's film, '8 1/2' is a true masterpiece of cinema and great piece of Art. It gets better every time I see it. Where to begin? Well, here's what I like about it: The film has a fluid and poetic movement that never subsides even when we go into melancholy flashback sequences or when we slow into serious conversations between Guido and his wife about Guido's infidelities and constant lying. The camera moves and pans and dips and rises. The characters are always moving too; whether it be shuffling in line to take the 'cure' or dancing or wondering around the grounds of the health spa or goofing around or the last scene where all the characters gather in a circle and hold hands and rotate in a communal celebration of life and love and art.

         And then we have the score by Nino Rota which when combined with certain imagery moves me to the verge of tears especially when Guido flashes back to when he was a child and he's placed in the wine cauldrons with the other kids who are jumping up and down and splashing in the grape liquids and how he's carefully and tenderly tucked in bed by maternal women. There are so many things in this movie that strike a personal nerve with me I won't go into all of them. ( I was basically raised by wonderful and caring women as well.) That theme by Nino Rota, ah how beautifully melancholy and full of the pangs of time having gone by. When I recently saw the film at the Cinematheque in Cleveland, it was during this scene I had to wipe my eyes to keep my friend from noticing. I love how Fellini blends reality with memory and imagination and does so in such a seamless way.

         Marcello Mastroianni as Guido is pitch perfect as Fellini's alter ego.Whatsmore, Guido's own shortcomings and flaws when it comes to relationships with woman can't help but to remind me of my own.  It's not fun to admit how well I feel like I can relate to Guido throughout the movie and there is an element of confession that I find interesting even if it can't right all his wrongs.

        And I would be leaving out a huge element of appeal if I failed to mention the beautiful black and white cinematography by Gianni di Venanzo. Heart of Hearts, I LOVE this film. It bursts with the joy of life, the pain of regret and what sometimes seems like the unbridgeable gap between men and women.

Nostalgic Glimpses Are Sweet

Hints To Figure Out Who The Person Is In The Mystery Image

Mystery Image for the Month (January)


Hint # 1: She was born in the 1800's on the outskirts of an Eastern European town.

# 2:  She was leader of a radical feminist movement that revolted against the men of town.

# 3: One of her nicknames was 'The Bitter Queen'

# 4 She was rumored to have castrated three different men. That claim has never been verified.

Mystery Image of the Month (January)

Packet of Chicklets When You're 6 yrs Old

(From the craigslist universe archive #2) I wish I could afford an assault weapon and Holy Cow Pies Batman

I wish I could AFFORD an assault weapon

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Date: 2013-01-05, 3:33PM EST

 qwdfdeffcceei@craigslist.org

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I've been to the gun shows looking for one of these high quality/high capacity guns.
Must be nice to have that much money to piss away.
Same goes for a higher caliber pistol.

It will be cheaper to move somewhere far away from assholes.
That's exactly what I am going to do.

• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with sermons or other solicitations

re.holy cow pies batman (nc) (okayyyy???)

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Date: 2013-01-06, 12:17AM EST

 xphdk-352343434972@pers.craigslist.org

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In the first place asshole-I am a black female. I have plenty to make me happy. I just like visitin' this board cuz it be a fun place to spew off nonsense n have a lil fun. 

2. I don't give a fuck about who be havin guns or what they do with 'em(unless I am involved I don't give a rats ass).........................so for you to pass judgement you lil bitch(or i'm startin' to get the inclination that you are perhaps a fat white bitch hoe) is arrogant and u need to shut your conceited trap biotch!!!! I think that's 'nuff said cuz I have a feelin I know who yo ass is biotch!

• Location: okayyyy???
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID:35256567774

On 'Django Unchained'

A few words on Quentin Tarantino's new film 'Django Unchained'.

                        I have several friends on facebook who are ranting and raving about this film and clamoring to go see it immediately a second time because to them it was just that good. I wish I shared in their unbridled enthusiasm and full acceptance of the film. I love Quentin Tarantino. I don't like everything he's done equally but I am always glad when a new Tarantino movie comes out because no one makes 'em like he does and he is, in my opinion, one of the top three or four most influential directors of the last 50 years no matter what. He is able to distill our collective love for movies in general and lay it out for our enjoyment in clever ways. I like all the self referential humor, the pop violence, the centrality of the music, the way he has his characters put on an act so it becomes and act within an act and of course, just the way his films look.(Credit to some wonderful Cinematographers)

                       The first half of this movie is borderline great. The Dr Shultze character played brilliantly again by Christophe Waltz in some ways steals the show and for me in some ways overshadows Jaime Foxx's Django. The early scene where Dr Shultze comes upon the slave traders in the night is Tarantino at his best from beginning to end.  The whole bounty hunting section with Django gaining confidence and wearing new fashionable clothes was funny, violent and entertaining and we're flowing along with bursting colors and natural locations from cinematographer Bob Richardson, and the pacing is good and then we bumble into the Leonardo DeCaprio section with Django trying to find his wife and rescue her. For me, this is where things become very unfortunately flawed. Here's just a few: Why concoct the ruse that Django and Dr. Shultz are in the business to buy a Mandingo fighter if Django's wife can simply be purchased? I could understand it if Leo's Mr. Candy's character was in love with her--then an elaborate ploy would make more sense. But apparently Mr. Candy didn't really mind giving her up as long as it was for enough money.The scenes back at Candyland just didn't work well.  If it was a place renown for its Mandingo fighting, we saw no visual evidence of it--And really, for me, as soon as Dr. Shultze's character is removed, the movie loses a big part of its magic.

                       In conclusion, something still bugs me about Jamie Foxx in the role as Django. I wonder if Will Smith or somebody would have made a better fit. Still, its the most realistic western I have ever seen and probably one of my favorites within the genre though to be honest I haven't even seen most of the classic westerns. The source of much controversy, the constant use of the N word, in my opinion, keeps the reality of the piece in its authentic skin and vibe. While I didn't go as berserk for the film as some of my friends, there is still alot to like and admire and soak in with this picture. It may not be my favorite Tarantino film but its certainly not my least favorite either. What if, because of how beautiful she was and how she spoke fluent German, Dr. Shultze falls in love with Django's wife and conflict ensues? Or even if Mr. Candy... Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll go see again myself. What the heck.

Van Gogh's Portrait of Adeline Ravoux

                      If you are ever in Cleveland and you don't know what to do, if you think it's all abandoned buildings and ole' steel mills and grey smoke stacks and bleak skies, well then take a turn and visit the Cleveland Museum of Art. There, among many many things, you will find a painting that Mr.Vincent Van Gogh painted in the last months of his life in 1890. It is the portrait of 13 yr. old Adeline Ravoux. Though I get annoyed at reading descriptions of paintings in Art books, I'm gonna give it a shot as long as you remember the only real way to experience paintings, is in the physical world, in their presence/absence sorcery exchange.

                    Up close you can see the thick brush strokes of her face and light hair. Her eyebrows are bent in consternation. Before I read officially that the person in the painting in real life was 13 yrs old I figured she was several years older. The thick globs of paint for her hair, her dress and especially her face with its look of resigned sadness as she peers out at nothing in particular indicate a laborious heaviness. She seems to carry the look of one who has been put to work hard her whole life. Her look says I am sick to death of manual labor and I will not wear a false mask or put on an act. Since she was the daughter of the man who owned the Inn where Van Gogh was staying in Auvers, north of Paris, one could assume she was kept busy tending to rooms and guests and a multitude of chores.

                    And it seems we juxtapose this heavy, gritty blue collar feel against the beauty of this vital young lady with her long hair pulled back in a tail and whose colors and color combinations do something to me mysterious and effect the overall vibe of the painting like the colors in a hip current film by Tarantino or the Cohen Brothers and seems futuristic for its time. Imagine sea-foam green, almost a fluorescent green but not really,(this is her dress) and imagine it against a thick black background.  Now imagine her face. She does not look at the viewer. She seems to be biding her time until she may be freed from this posing obligation.

                    Perhaps the girl's Father wanted a painting of his daughter and maybe it paid Van Gogh's rent for a few days. I don't know and I don't need to know. Every time I am in Cleveland and at the Museum I go back to this painting. I like to see her as someone in her twenties who didn't let the grime and shit and labor of life bring her down. Instead she shined and followed her dreams. I thought about easy metaphors about the city itself but I thought again. Then I thought about how this painting was once owned by one of the wealthiest families in Cleveland. Let me re-focus.

                   She is the way I like women. No make up, nothing opulent and gaudy. Though Van Gogh's use of color is bold and full of force and a big reason why this appeals to me on different levels, its also the appeal of Adeline's disgruntled yet stoic patience as she waits to be set free from the pose, perhaps from the Inn, her Father, from her life style. She's too damn pretty and too damn smart to just be the Inn Keeper's Daughter.