kevincure.com

October 28, 2004

And I haven’t actually disappeared - midterms, the greatest comeback in sports history, huge street celebrations, getting started on my book, playing football, seeing my favorite musician in a private (!) concert, the election…whew. But, loyal reader, fear not, as I’m still around.First, the election. Kerry is a douchebag but I voted for him anyway. Look, Bush and his team are incompetent. No matter how much you agree with their positions, they do not have the wisdom to actually enact policy that will accomplish those goals. No matter how much Kerry screws us with his idiotic rhetoric on trade, his unfounded belief that the UN will save the world, or his rejection of subsidiarity and embracement of the Nanny State, he still won’t make as big a mess as Bush has.

That’s not to say that I’m voting for democrats down the tally. I sent my ballot back to Oregon the other day - 2 democrats, 4 republicans, 3 libertarians and a “No” on every initiative on the ballot. I urge my buds in Oregon to toss DeFazio - he is an anti-NAFTA, anti-trade, anti-growth democrat throwback that will keep Oregon poor. I also urge my buds in Oregon to consider some libertarian votes this year - the libertarian running for Secretary of State, especially, is eminently qualified for the position. Why “No” on all the initiatives? Binding initiatives are a terrible way to run government. Let your representatives know that you want to live in a Republic, not in an Athens with 4 million citizens.

Prediction: Kerry wins by a solid 20-30 votes. The youth turnout is especially high. Kerry gets blown out in the Midwest by even more than the polls suggest. The election won’t be final until *atleast* the 3rd, since Oregon and Hawaii, among others, won’t have final vote tallies, and automatic recounts will be triggered in minimum 2 states.

From Naima: Best Mastercard commercial ever.

So as you may have noticed: THE CURSE IS DEAD! HOLY SHIT! The Red Sox managed the greatest, most-destiny-laden comeback in the history of…history. Honestly. The Sox were down 3 games to 0 to the Yankees, 9th inning, down 4-3, with Mariano Rivera, only the greatest reliever EVER on the mound. It was Over with a capital O. David had a better chance of coming back to beat Goliath than the Sox did of winning the World Series. But they won. And they never looked back. Four games to three against the Yankees. Four games to zero against the Cardinals. First World Series since 1918.

Don’t believe in destiny? The Celtics won their first championship against St. Louis in 1957, the Bruins broke a 41-year Stanley Cup drought against St. Louis in 1970 and the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl against the Lou in 2002. Then the Sox come up against the St. Louis Cards in the series. Want more? The Sox had not only had the World Series escape their grasp since 1918, but they’d never beaten the Yankees in the postseason since then. Until this year. How about this: A kid who lives in Babe Ruth’s former house got hit by a foul ball earlier this year while at a game at Fenway and had two teeth smashed in, breaking the curse. This is the craziest though: Game 4 of the Series began at 8:25. From 9:30 to 12, a total lunar eclipse was visible for the first time in years in North America, with Boston one of the only places in the US where it was not cloudy and the moon could be seen. The Moon turns red in an eclipse. That’s not a coincidence, my friend.

There have been absolutely crazy street celebrations over the last couple weeks. When we came back and beat the Yankees in Game 4, we rioted in Kenmore. And after Game 5. And Game 6. After we beat the Evil Empire (curse alert: the “Miracle on Ice”, where the US team (mainly Boston kids) beat the USSR (aka The Evil Empire) in the 1980 Olympics had a final score of 4-3) in Game 7, 80000 people hit the streets near my house (Kenmore Square). It was a great time, but the police got completely ridiculous and ended up killing a 21-year-old college student and maiming two others (all innocent). Last night was another huge celebration with chants, songs, flashing, yelling, the works. The police again went completely overboard; at 2am, 100 police (no exaggeration) in riot gear marched down my quiet residential street 3 blocks from Kenmore firing tear gas and screaming at people to get inside their houses. I don’t know the reason for this - there was no vandalism, no wild parties, no loud music, nothing. It was rather strange - now I know what East Berlin was like, heh. In any case, I’m trying to speak before the City Council about the affair.

In any case, THE RED SOX ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS! It’s crazy.

This is for Josh: Is Mario Communist?

2blowhards, one of the most erudite blogs around these days, on why gentrification has its benefits. There is a paradox in rental neighborhoods, isn’t there? People have an incentive to keep their neighborhood grimy, because otherwise rent will go up as people want to move to a now-nice neighborhood and the people who made the neighborhood nice are forced to move out because of the higher prices. Controlling rent to allow older residents to still live there has a million problems (every economist, right-wing or left, agrees that rent control causes more problems than it fixes; see Paul Krugman for more).

Another interesting recent story on how often pickup lines work: Turns out the guys take up the offer “Want to come over and sleep with me?” 75% percent of the time, while girls never do. The rate on “I’ve been noticing you around campus and find you attractive. Would you like to go out with me tonight?” had a 50% success rate for both guys and girls.

And third from the world of academia: On the island of Flores (east of Java in Indonesia, near Komodo Island, home of the eponymous dragons), skeletons were found of a branch of humans (homo floresiensis) standing three-feet tall was discovered. More interestingly, this species lived on Flores until at least 13000 years ago. They used fire, tools and must have contacted humans of our genus who were living in the area at the same time. When did they disappear? Dutch sailors reported in the 16th c. that locals talked about a mystical small-statured people who lived in caves around Flores. Make of that what you will.

Tom the Dancing Bug, one of the best online cartoons, on free speech zones. Comedy gold. If you’re not a Salon subscriber, click “One-Day Pass” and you’ll be able to see the comic after an ad plays. (And further a story from Canada on the decline of free speech. Quite harrowing. Oh, and speaking of “too free” speech, check out the transcripts of Bill O’Reilly telling his coworker what he wants to do with her loofa, hehe.)

Unspectacular Doors of St. Louis: Quite interesting site if you like design.

I’m officially going to China now in early January - t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. I finally tossed T-Mobile and got a phone from Vonage, which is VoIP, meaning the call goes across the internet. This is cool because a) it’s cheap, and b) when I’m in China, you guys can just call my normal 617 area code number and I’ll pick up. No international rates or anything like that.

Last but not least, music. A few weeks ago, my bud asked what I was doing that night; his friend who goes to Berklee School of Music was taking turntablism (really, they offer a course in this) and BT, my favorite musician, had shown up and given some impromptu lessons. Rad. But even radder, he was going to give a private mini-concert for Berklee kids the next night. So we crashed it, and it was awesome. BT was playing in a room about the size of a bigger family room at your house. The speakers were blowing up and he was using crazy technology - a professor was waving his hand around a curved sensor and adding noise and gravel to the track, while BT was simultaneously using two laptops, a keyboard and a blue light (which added a stutter edit of note length dependent on how high your hand was) to play custom, on-the-fly remixes of his tracks. He then chatted with the crowd for an hour or so, and singed autographs/took pictures. It was awesome. Yay BT!

Prime Cuts

“Dream” by Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee is back with a ridiculously hot beat for this garage track. Also check out “Everywhere” by Dizzee Rascal, Dizzee Rascal’s “Get By” and “Imagine” by Dizzee Rascal. For the old school British tracks, Spiritualized “Cool Waves” is the best mid-90s track I’d never heard. This is great “time for bed” music (though not in the Marvin Gaye sense).“Golden Touch” by Razorlight
Razorlight is the hot new rock band, I’m told. Razorlight’s “In The City” also has a rollicking chant at the end. Good stuff. “Close Edge” by Mos Def is the best track of Mos Def’s new album, and not just because it samples Grandmaster Flash. “Heartbeat” by Annie is a very addictive piece of synthpop/club. And since we talked about China earlier, how about “Pei Ni Qu” by The Flowers, an upbeat, rolling pop-rock track, and (Track 1) by Second-Hand Roses, a rock track with more traditional Chinese instruments (plus the electric guitar and drums, of course). Let me know if you want either of these - I’ll IM them over to you.