kevincure.com

October 13, 2003

The Victory Ergo Riots is a good name for a band.Whew, been damn busy recently. I’m working putting together a my magazine/online zine for work, came back from a debate tourney this weekend (more on this), knocked off three midterms with two to go, playing intramural volleyball, and hittin up little Vietnam and the ghetto flea market with my crew.

Oh, and rioting, of course. The Red Sox were playing the Oakland A’s in the baseball playoffs. Many commentators say it was the wierdest series ever. The A’s went up 2-0 in a Best of 5. Then they blew the 3rd game - the Red Sox hit a home run in the 11th with the score tied 1-1 to win it. But Oakland scored *twice* earlier in the game and didn’t get runs. One time the runner thought the umpire called interference and stopped running, getting tagged out. The other time, the runner bowled over the catcher at home and hurt his ankle. As he hobbled to the bench thinking he’d scored, the Red Sox catcher noticed that he never actually touched home plate. So Varitek (the catcher) ran to the fence, picked up the ball, ran over almost to the A’s bench and tagged the guy out. No run. Game 4 was almost as wierd, another come-from-behind Sox win. So Game 5, 21 of us are watching in a tiny room.

The Sox go up in the 8th 4-3. A’s batting, bottom of the ninth. They get the bases loaded with two outs. Derek Lowe strikes out the last batter looking, Sox win! All of us ran outside onto Bay State (my street) heading toward Fenway (about 2 blocks away - it’s the stadium where the Sox play if you didn’t know). Even though the game was in Oakland, there were like a thousand people near the stadium when we got there. We’re banging on cars, taxi drivers are honking and giving the thumbs up, people are climbing on buildings and billboards. A few minutes later, there are a police-reported 10000 people at this tiny street corner. Girls standing on cars flashing the crowd. A couple cars and every trash can get flipped. Guys standing on huge billboards are burning Yankees flags while everyone chants “Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!” Other people light off fireworks in an empty parking lot. Madhouse, but wicked fun. On the way back home, all the cars on Comm Ave are stopping and high-fiving people out the windows. I met an Iranian taxi driver who broke his horn from honking so much. I got a cop to high-five me while he was supposed to be doing riot control :-). So sweet.

If the Sox beat the Yankees in this series, the town is literally going to go crazy.

And how bout them Cubs, too? We’re going to the World Series, yo. My poor grandfather is huge Cubs fan, watches all the games. And the last time his Cubs made the Series, he was in high school. The last time they *won* the World Series, his mother was in elementary school. So this year has to be the year.

Ok, so debate. This weekend was the Harvard tournament - biggest tournament our league (APDA) has ever held. 170 or so teams from Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, Cornell, MIT and all the other big name schools. In any case, BU fucking rules. Me and my partner topped the 70 other novice teams (novices are people in their first and sometimes second year in APDA) to win and another BU kid won overall. Me and my partner were 27th overall. The Harvard tourney usually has more than half of the top finishers at Nationals plus some of the top Canadian teams, so sweetness. I got a tight 18″ tall trophy (it’s got a guy on a podium waving his fists, hehe). We beat the team that finished 18th overall and had our only loss to a team that finished ninth and made the Semifinals at Nationals last year. Not too bad for a second tournament, huh?

The guys at the top of the debate ladder are wicked hardcore - a couple of them won Rhodes Scholarships last year and tons of old APDA people are bigshot lawyers and DC speechwriters. Hell, they even have a Fantasy APDA League (like Fantasy Football for poindexters, hehe). I think I’m only gonna go to a few tournaments this year (definitely MIT and Yale, probably Brandeis and Cornell, dunno what else) but I’ll letcha know how we do. If you get a chance, debate is lotsa fun plus you get to meet a lot of people that are really, really, really smart.

One last funny story: In one of the later rounds (semifinals, so we had a panel of three judges plus a crowd of 40 or so), people asked me after whether I had a beat going in my head, because I guess I was arguing on some kind of rhythm. Someone told me one of the judges was nodding along to it, hehe. Good times. (This round was also cool because we ran the case that “Third-world sweatshops are a good thing” and demolished the team from Brown that we were up against; this case is cool because it sounds like you’ll have no chance of winning but, in fact, it’s pretty obvious that sweatshops are a necessary evil when you think about it).

The BBC, of all places, has a fair and balanced article on whether we’re winning the war on terror.

Hey, check it out: Ace is Pac-10 in digs. Crazy. My sister’s team is like 18-3, I think. Not too bad. However, none of them nailed the big chick on the other team in the face with a spike like I did in intramural volleyball last week. Mwahaha! =)

Space is rad. And China is going to space sometime later this week. The US and the USSR are the only countries ever to send a man into space, so this is pretty big news, especially for China. Xinhua (the Chinese news agency) has an English page covering the whole space flight. China’s leaders said they eventually are going to the moon, a feat only the US has accomplished and something that hasn’t happened for almost three decades. Here’s hoping that future research leads to space tourism - I really want to go to space before I die.

Krugman is a great economist, but this is why his NY Times articles are so damn annoying.

Forbes magazine had an article on the health benefits of gettin’ yo freak on, but this one was so not needed: “Seminal plasma contains zinc, calcium and other minerals shown to retard tooth decay. Since this is a family Web site, we will omit discussion of the mineral delivery system. Suffice it to say that it could be a far richer, more complex and more satisfying experience than squeezing a tube of Crest–even Tartar Control Crest.” Gah!

A Mass. state representative proposes a resolution calling on all Bostonians to refuse to shop at stores selling Yankees merchandise within a mile of Fenway. He clarifies that this rule does not prevent selling “Yankees Suck” merchandise. Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesman asks “Why only a mile?” Massachusetts is cool.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson thinks Iran would be better off if the US tossed the current regime by any possible means. Mikhael Gorbachev teaches at Brown. I tell you, we live in a strange world. (Speaking of Iran, here’s to the woman who won the Nobel Peace for her work on Democracy in Iran; I’m still rooting for Vaclav Havel to win in next year, though, that guy rules)

A Flash-based guide to Electronica. Dunno the difference between Chicago House and Speed Garage? The diffence between Epic Trance and Symphonic Trance? Full audio samples. Very rad.

So now that September is over, here’s the top 12 songs from the last quarter:

Three club tracks, 4 sorta club tracks, two rap, two rock and Brightman. Good stuff.

Prime Cuts

“Never Coming Home” by Sting
Off Sting’s new CD and produced by BT (though it’s nothing too techno-crazy). Four minutes in, the song breaks into a piano solo with a drum machine backbeat. It’s rad. Stiegs mentioned that there’s “A Letter to Elise” by The Cure, which is not only rad but also a good song. The Cure (not this Cure) are one of my favorite bands, they rule. Golden Shower’s “Video Computer System” is the best videogame techno song I’ve ever heard. It’s like a freakin’ Atari Rave in there. Client’s “Rock and Roll Machine” is Duran Duran 2003 with females and a wicked cool video.“12:51″ by The Strokes
The Strokes are really good at making songs get stuck in your head. “Come On” by Lifestyle is a synthpop track from a Boston group I think I’m gonna see next weekend (and then DJ Sasha in three weeks!). Iio’s “Smooth (Airbase Remix)” is blowing up the clubs.