Entries from March 2006 ↓

Hey next time I go shooting my blog off about the best conference in men�s college basketball, stop me, will ya. We went oh(!) for 3 in first round action Thursday, including losses by Seton Hall, Marquette and the alma mater. Oy! In our defense, because our teams play such a tough regular and post season schedule, we�ve been beaten and battered so bad, some of us have nothing left by NCAA tournament time. The �Cuse had to battle through four straight grueling games to win the Big East Championship. Those guys are more than half my age, but I know if I put in just one long day, it takes me two to recover. I can�t imagine four in a row. Let�s hope the remaining five teams can carry the flag this weekend.

Erin go bragh! �Tis St. Patrick�s Day, it is. Ah, the streets of New York will be covered in green today as the sons and daughters of Ireland celebrate by marching up Fifth Avenue. This great-great-grandson of Ireland (on my mother�s side) will bypass the festivities, thank you very much, as will New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. She�s not partaking because the organizers of this quasi-religious affair don�t allow gays and lesbians to march. Quinn is the city�s first openly lesbian council speaker and third highest elected official. She�ll sit this one out in protest. We�ll both miss seeing all those violations of the city�s open container laws.

In politics across the river, Newark, NJ Mayor Sharpe James filed papers to run for a sixth term just before Thursday�s filing deadline. The mayor, who some see as either a champion of the people or an embarrassing example of corrupt machine politics, is now poised to once again face opponent Cory Booker, who James defeated in a close race in 2002. That election, chronicled in the Academy Award-nominated documentary Street Fight, pointed out the extent to which James and his organization would stoop to win, going so far as to suggest that the light-skinned Democrat Booker was actually a white Republican. In some less-informed parts of Newark, that tactic apparently worked. The city�s bipartisan election will be held May 9.

Finally, some kind reader, I know not who, purchased a gift for me off my wishlist, apparently quite awhile ago. I know this only because I happened to look at the wishlist in purchased mode and saw the item there. I don�t know if it was a holiday present or a birthday gift, but it never arrived. Perhaps, whoever you are, you�ve been wondering why I never thanked you. I do thank you, I just don�t know who you are nor did I receive the package. I hope it is not too late to inquire with Amazon.

No, my computer hasn�t been fixed. Yes, I�m frustrated.

On the one hand, it�s a good thing because I�m spending less time online. It was quite easy for me to come home from work and vegetate in front of the computer, blogging, reading blogs, emailing, surfing, IMing and anything else you can do. I�ve since started a diet, gotten to the gym several times a week, done some serious cooking and gotten to bed at a decent hour every night. It is conceivable, I�m willing to entertain, that I was/am too addicted to the Internet. Maybe the hard drive malfunction is God�s way of telling me to get a life.

Speaking of which, the hard drive is still under warranty, so its actual replacement shouldn�t cost me anything. The data extraction however comes at a price, but it�s one I�m willing to pay. I have also, finally, purchased a backup storage device, after about 16 years of flirting with danger. We Mac users sometimes get lulled into a false sense of security. While I�ve had hard drive problems in the past, I�ve never ever lost data because of the way they are partitioned. But you never want to light three cigarettes on one match either. So it is now time to make backing up a regular part of my daily tasks.

Not having a computer couldn�t come at a more inopportune time however. It is March Madness, my second favorite time of the sports year after football season. After my alma mater, Syracuse, staged a miraculous display of basketball talent to win the Big East Championship at Madison Square Garden last week, taking four games in four nights, they transformed themselves from a bubble team to a fifth seed in the NCAA tournament�s Atlanta bracket. It was, incidentally, the best basketball anyone in New York has seen at Madison Square Garden all year! (Maybe the Knicks could play all their games on the road and Big East teams could play all their games at the Garden?) If I had my computer, I would love to be able to blog regularly about what�s happening.

But I won�t have access in the evenings and weekends, so I have to say my piece while I can. First, we hate Duke. Let�s just get that out of the way. Never liked the team. They play in an over-rated conference where they beat up on easy opponents on their way to a perennial league championship. They are Number 1 seed in the Atlanta bracket and face Number 16 Southern University, an historically Black college and my mother�s alma mater in the opening round. We can hope for miracles, can�t we?

Second, the best conference in NCAA Division I Men�s Basketball placed a record eight teams in the tournament, and could have sent nine, but that would have been greedy. Nobody cake walks through either the Big East regular season or our tournament. We beat up on each other (and any school from any other conference), but then we circle the wagons and root for each other in the big dance. Two of the four Number 1 seeds are from the Big East, Connecticut (who lost to the �Cuse in our tournament) and Villanova. An all-Big East Final Four is something we dream about regularly in these parts.

Unlike the annoying Billy Packer who seems to think accomplishments in past seasons should be taken into consideration in filling out this year�s brackets (he�s an ACC ass kisser), I�m delighted to see small schools from small conferences getting in through at-large bids. The Great Danes of the State University of New York at Albany, from my old stomping grounds, have made their first trip to the tournament after just seven years as a Division 1 school. They are a 16th seed in the Washington, DC bracket. The 15th seed in the Oakland bracket is a school called Belmont. I didn�t even know where the hell they were from until looking up the link just now, but I�m glad they�re in because it gives little schools everywhere reason for hope.

Hampton plays Monmouth tonight in the play-in game, the winner to go on as the 16th seed to face Villanova in the Minneapolis bracket. Then things get underway hot and heavy on Thursday and Friday. In three weeks, it is the most exciting concentration of basketball you�ll see anywhere all year. The NBA and its overblown regular and post-season set up, should take note.

Did you see the Sopranos season 6 premiere Sunday night? The long-ass wait was worth it. They are setting up some very interesting storylines to play out this year. The fun of this series has always been distinguishing between what people say and what people do. Everybody lies to everybody else to protect their own interests. That�s because everyone is trapped in a life they really don�t enjoy, which causes them undo stress, and from which they feel powerless to escape. For the uninitiated, this show is less a �mob story� and more a psychological case study of dysfunction and people�s inability to effect and manage change.

This year�s opening episode pointed out the harsh realities of life for Mafia families and underlings. With Brooklyn boss Johnny Sack in the can, his wife Ginny is dodging bill collectors and repossession notices and can�t even afford makeup. His acting boss Phil Leotardo is making nice with the New Jersey crew only because that�s what Johnny wants. Soprano soldier Gene Pontecorvo learns the hard way that nobody retires from the mob. When Tony�s captain Ray Curto dies suddenly, the guys all turn out to honor him, not knowing he was a long-time FBI informant. Carmela got a nice new Porsche from Tony, but should she learn a lesson from Ginny and start putting assets in her own name now?

With Tony paying the price for not putting Uncle Junior in an assisted living facility, who�s going to run the Soprano family in the interim? Silvio? The slimmed down Vito? (There are more than new clothes in his closet.) Paulie Walnuts? Will there be an internal power struggle, or will Phil Leotardo seize the opportunity to get even with the Soprano crew and extend his reach across the river? Stay tuned.

Hiatus, yes. Retire for good, never!

The good bloggers always return.

Gordon Parks, the first black American photojournalist for Life magazine and the first leading black filmmaker with movies such as The Learning Tree and Shaft, died Tuesday at his home in New York. He was 93.

Social Critic Was Armed With Lens (Chicago Tribune)

Gordon Parks, A Master of the Camera, Dies at 93 (New York Times)

Photographer Documented Poverty’s Toll (Los Angeles Times)

The laptop is in the shop again. Hard drive problems caused the screen to go out. The hard drive was replaced just last year, so somebody owes me big time. Consequently, updates to this site will be sporadic at best. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, do take the survey.

It’s probably time for a new computer or two.