Goons: Indoor Lax Style

Below is a passage verbatim from a Village Voice article on the new Indoor Lacrosse League and the local team the New York Titans (who split their home games between Madison Square Garden and Nassau Colesium). It makes me remember the days when a wok lid was a frisbee, when making holes in walls was deemed a questionably okay pastime by some other than me, and when being asked, "What percentage of freak - goon - creature - dork are you?" was the start of a normal conversation. So, without further ado, here is the article:

Village Voice:
As in the NHL, indoor lacrosse teams usually have a "goon" - hockey players prefer to be called "enforcers," but NLL defenders don't get to be so picky - who'll fight opposing players when necessary in order to protect their more talented teeammates and fire up the crowd. The best offensive players aren't supposed to fight, because their team can't afford to have them get injured or land in the penalty box, but for those same reasons, opposing teams are constantly trying to provoke Boyle and Powell. "You'll get gooned up, but you have to keep your compsure," said Boyle, which led to the following conversation:

Boyle: You hope that your goon comes in and messes with their goon, and they goon each other out.

Powell: And you hope your goon is tougher than their goon. Or you will get gooned.

Boyle: Right, exactly. Because otherwise their goon's gonna beat up your goon, and then that goon's just going to keep beating the hell out of you.

Powell: Gooning.

Vegas, baby. Vegas.

Bill Simmons, also known as the Sports Guy, often writes very funny columns about how sports and life intersect. for ESPN. Some are just too wonky (in a sports sense) for me and the fact that he is from New England and therefore loves the Red Sox and the Patriots rankles me to no end. So, I read his column now and again but not religiously like some sports nuts I know.

That being said, his recent column titled Hip Hop Woodstock in Vegas about the recent NBA All-star game in Vegas was not only long but laugh out loud funny. I'm sitting in the Hard Rock Casino right now still laughing as I think about what he said and how its so true. Enjoy.

Via Ryan

Science versus Faith

Want to see the differences beween a scientist's mind versus a man of faith's brain? See below:

VS.

'Nuff said.

Via Neu and WellingtonGrey.net

Bean Town Needs To Feel Relevant

This humor clip perfectly illustrates what I feel about the recent Adult Swin Bean Town debacle. Long story short: it has a major inferiority complex and needs to feel relevant when it really isn't. Enjoy!

Via Neu

Why did Prince cover Foo?

I like many people was pretty surprised when Prince covered the Foo Fighters song "Best of You" during the Super Bowl half time show. The Foo Fighters were just as suprised as you and me because Prince wasn't happy a few years back when the Foos covered his song Darling Nikki on an Australian release. He even said to Entertainment Weekly that he didn't appreciate the Foos (or anyone else) covering his work, and that Grohl and company should "write [their] own tunes."

So, was Prince covering the Foos because he's a fan or because he wanted to flip them the bird? Regardless of why Prince did it, it was awesome.

Via Jessie

Rules for the Middle East

Five US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the past 3 weeks. Four Marines were killed today and the number of Americans killed in Iraq is now above 3,100. Today I heard that Hamas and Fatah have decided for the next day or so to stop killing each other in Gaza but the likelihood of that happening is low to say the least. All of this stryfe makes me think of a recent Thomas Friedman column at the end of the year where he updated his rules of Middle East reporting which work equally well for diplomacy.

For example, rule 14 is especially striking to me after my recent non-UN sponsored fact finding mission to Israel: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

After the jump, please read the rest. They are really thought provoking.

Via Neu

For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I’d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they’ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.

Rule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer yes, you can’t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany — not Iraq.

Rule 3: If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all — they won’t believe it.

Rule 4: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I could paper my walls.

Rule 5: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning’s paper.

Rule 6: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.

Rule 7: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab pols is: “We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it’s too late. It’s all your fault for being so stupid.”

Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.

Rule 9: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, “I’m weak, how can I compromise?” And when it’s strong, it will tell you, “I’m strong, why should I compromise?”

Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.

Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”

Rule 12: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq’s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.

Rule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.