Draft Thoughts

My favorite sight at every NBA draft is the photo op of a seven footer and diminutive commissioner David Stern. It's too bad Manute Bol was only a fifth round pick, although we at least had the good fortune to see him be teammates with Muggsy Bogues on the Washington Bullets, which should be O's Fan's favorite team.
Someone should explain something to the people at ESPN who wrote and approved the draft factoids that scrolled across the screen over and over and over last night. When Adam Morrison of Gonzaga became the number three pick last night, he wasn't the highest pick from that school since John Stockton went to O's Fan's favorite team with the 16th pick in 1984. Morrison was just plain the highest draft pick in school history.

It was good to see the other day that New York Knicks owner James Dolan publicly gave Isiah Thomas an ultimatum of one year to make significant improvements in the team that Zeke ruined. If last night is any indication, the smiling assasin either doesn't take Dolan seriously or just doesn't know what the heck he's doing. After all, when the best props you get for a first round draft pick is Spike Lee calling it a sleeper pick while holding back the laughter, it's not too soon to be updating that resume. Then again, Thomas might want to consider totally omitting his Knicks' tenure from his CV.

The Final Inspection

The Marine stood and faced God,

Which must always come to pass.

He hoped his shoes were shining,

Just as brightly as his brass.


"Step forward now, Marine,

How shall I deal with you?

Have you always turned the other cheek?

To My Church have you been true?"


The soldier squared his shoulders and said,

"No, Lord, I guess I ain't.

Because those of us who carry guns,

Can't always be a saint.


I've had to work most Sundays,

And at times my talk was tough.

And sometimes I've been violent,

Because the world is awfully rough.


But, I never took a penny,

That wasn't mine to keep...

Though I worked a lot of overtime,

When the bills got just too steep.


And I never passed a cry for help,

Though at times I shook with fear.

And sometimes, God, forgive me,

I've wept unmanly tears.


I know I don't deserve a place,

Among the people here.

They never wanted me around,

Except to calm their fears.


If you've a place for me here, Lord,

It needn't be so grand.

I never expected or had too much,

But if you don't, I'll understand.


There was a silence all around the throne,

Where the saints had often trod.

As the Marine waited quietly,

For the judgment of his God.


"Step forward now, you Marine,

You've borne your burdens well.

Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,

You've done your time in Hell."

~Author Unknown~

It's the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us the freedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us the freedom of speech.

It's the Soldier, not the politicians
That ensures our right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag.

I Am The Flash

Which Superhero are you?

Garbage, Garbage, Garbage, Garbage, Garbage Chameleon

Boy George ordered to Sanitation Dept.
Some stories are just so perfect that I cannot think of anything to write to make it any more humorous or interesting than it already it is.

Follow up: My partner asked why I find this story so amusing. After all, people with talent levels much greater than that of Boy George get in trouble all the time. I guess what makes this story so darn funny is the mental image I have of Boy George, in all his 80's drag regalia, picking up trash on the Great Lawn in Central Park.

Report: Headline Writer Can't Read

This morning I read online of the attack by terrorists who snuck underneath a Gaza border crossing and killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another. The article very openly stated that Hamas took credit for the attack.

I just went on my computer again to see if anything, besides another great Tigers victory, happened today. I saw the following headline on Yahoo News: "Israel Blames Hamas for deadly attack". I immediately and naturally feared that another attack occurred since this morning. Once I read the article, I realized that it was the same attack. The article, from the Associated Press, of course accurately reports that Hamas took credit. This begs the question-Why the misleading headline? Writing that someone blames another implies that the accused's guilt is in question. There is no question here.

Parent, Sue Thine Own Self

According to this article, a fourteen year old girl and her mother are suing MySpace.com. They allege that the website is responsible for the girl's sexual assault at the hands of nineteen year old man she met online. The plaintiffs' attorney is demanding that the company pay his clients one percent of its worth. Even if the company is only worth one dollar, that payment would be too much.

End Of An Aira

Last night we had another meeting of the MNFBBQ. While each and every MNFBBQ gathering is special, even when the movie is "White Chicks" , last night's event carried special significance. It was Air's last get together with the MNFBBQ, the great organization that he co-founded, before his and Veev's imminent aliyah. With my going to Louisville this coming weekend and him leaving town next week, it was also probably the last time we will see each other before either we go to Israel or he comes back to visit and, of course, welcomes me to our shul.

Air and I exchanged a very brief man-hug afterwards. That's the extent of the sentimentality I will express, but I do want to say how much I admire the decision he and his family are making. As Macabee said the other night at the bon voyage barbecue, making aliyah is not an easy decision to make and an even harder one to execute. Aliyah is obviously an ideal of many of ours, yet most of us find a way to justify delaying it. At the same time though, it means leaving what you call home and all your friends and family for a new life, filled with all its uncertainties, six thousand miles away. For many, it means changing lifestyles both culturally and economically.

It's much easier said than done. Air and Veev aren't just saying they want to make aliyah. They're doing it. It will mean learning to read and speak Hebrew fluently, beyond "ani iparon," but they're doing it. It will mean finding new jobs, but they're doing it. It will mean creating a new social network, but they're doing it. Most important, it will mean that Air will have to wake up at 3:30 every fourth Tuesday morning to barbecue, but they're doing it. We all talk about it but they're doing it. We wish them only the best.

As an aside, shame, shame, shame on Jerry for making Air's last MNFBBQ meeting a viewing of "Date Movie." Before meeting Lesley, I had gone on a handful of dates. Some were great and some were painful, but none matched the mind numbing and at times unbearable idiocy of "Date Movie". It wasn't quite "White Chicks", but it was way too close for comfort. The only saving grace for the evening, besides the Romanian hot dogs and burgers, was that the movie was thankfully short and we were able to watch the end of yet another Tigers' victory and the Carolina Hurricanes' Stanley Cup clincher.

This Land Is My Land, This Land's Not Your Land

It would seem to be common sense that if you own land and someone used that land without paying rent, you would have the right to evict that person with no questions asked. While you and I may think so, Hollywood has-beens like Danny Glover and Darryl Hannah disagree. According to this story in CNN, Los Angeles property owner Ralph Horowitz is not acting morally in asserting his property rights.

Horowitz has allowed some people to grow a garden on fourteen acres of his land in Los Angeles for the past ten years or so. He has not charged any rent. He has instead been covering all the mortgage costs and taxes. Now Horowitz wants to make economic use of his property and build a warehouse. That, of course, requires removing the gardens. Horowitz went through the proper channels and obtained a court order of eviction, which is where Hannah and her crew enter the picture.

Hannah and others climbed into a tree on the property while others chained themselves to concrete filled barrels to protest Horowitz's evil. Hannah said that her stand was "principled" and "morally right." I don't know where Hannah learned her principles and morals, but they sure don't square with those of this country. In the United States of America, subject to certain rules, land owners have the right to decide who can use their property.

If Hannah and the rest of her celebrity do-gooders had so much compassion for the displaced gardeners, they would have anted up the money to buy Horowitz's property for the market rate or some other land for the new gardens. Even better, I'm sure that Hannah has some space on her front lawn that people can use.

Drive-A-Thon 4

In case any of you have forgotten, and shame on you if you have, tomorrow is the fourth annual MNFBBQ Drive-A-Thon. While our valiant road warriors will be leaving at 5:30 a.m. for Chicago and returning later in the day with Burger Buddies and Romanian mean, I will resume my role as man on the ground at Burger Central. I, and hopefully Noah Daddy, will be blogging throughout the day at the official Drive-A-Thon website.

By the way, while it is too late to order meat, you can still make a donation to Hazon Yeshaya, Israel's largest food bank. Just get one of us a check made payable to the "Young Israel of Oak Park Charity Fund." Remember, this is Air's last Drive-A-Thon before making aliyah. Let's send him off in style.

Enjoy Your 72 Raisins

This morning, with Lesley away on business, I was able to turn on the television while getting dressed. I flipped to the news to hear cheering. When I looked at the television, I saw a press conference in Iraq. The cheering was from the press corps itself for the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed yesterday. The American media, retaining its supposed objectivity, sat in silence when President Bush briefed them a few hours later.

Regardless of whether you think going to war in Iraq was the right thing or how you assess the progress, or lack thereof, since it started, Zarqawi's death is a tremendous development. He was the number two man in al Qaeda, whose laundry list of terrorist activities is infamous. Those who oppose the war, whether from principle or simply due to hatred of everything Bush and/or Republican, are already pooh-poohing this Zarqawi's death as inconsequential. After all, they argue, there are still plenty of terrorists looking to kill us. That is true, but it overlooks a few major factors.

First, the members of any entity, whether a terrorist cell, private company or democracy, all suffer a certain amount of discouragement and lack of morale when the leader they admire and follow is killed. Second, it is already well known that his death was the result of good intelligence. In other words, someone with inside information assisted in the killing. You have to imagine that al Qaeda members will be constantly looking over their shoulders with a great deal of distraction. Third, imagine Israel taking the same approach to killing terrorist leaders that the naysayers are professing this morning.

In a somewhat related event, the USS Cole is redeploying to the Middle East today. For those who don't remember, certain wrongdoers attacked the Cole in 2000 while it was sitting in the Yemen port of Aden and killed seventeen American sailors. Every one of the top ten stories on Google News on the Cole label the perpetrators as generic "terrorists." Not one of the stories mentions that the terrorists were members of al Qaeda. People seem to forget that al Qaeda's attacks on American interests , including the Cole, and two American embassies, predated 9/11. This is an institutional failing of a basic tenet of journalism, to report the "five W's" of a story. One such W is Who, as in who the terrorists were. They are al Qaeda, whose membership roster is thankfully shorter by at least one very evil name this morning.

Just A Kid Trying To Get A Ball

Many teams' fans demonize someone they feel, correctly or not, ruined their team's chances for a championship and/or doomed the team to years of futility. Those fans would scream bloody murder if their team even contemplated having the villain play for them. While the Detroit Red Wings rebounded the next year to win the first of two consecutive Stanley Cups, the idea of Claude Lemiuex wearing the winged wheel became unimaginable forever once he laid that cheap shot on Kris Draper in the 1996 Western Conference Finals.

I therefore find the story of Jeffrey Maier so ironic. You see, Maier was a twelve years old New York Yankees fan whose father took him, also in 1996, to the House that Ruth Built to see the first game of the American League Championship Series between the home team and the Orioles.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, the Yankees were losing 4-3 when Derek Jeter, with a man on base, hit a deep fly ball to right field. Just as Orioles outfielder Tony Tarasco was about to catch the ball, young Mr. Maier reached over the fence to snag it himself and instead knocked it into the stands.

It was a clear case of fan interference, which meant that, since Tarasco most likely would have caught the ball but not for Maier's actions, umpire Rich Garcia should have ruled the play an out. Garcia instead called the play a home run, thereby making it a tie game.

The Yankees won the game on a Bernie Williams home run in the eleventh inning. The Orioles never recovered. The Yankees won the series four games to one and then the first of four World Series titles in five years. The Orioles, on the other hand, returned to the playoffs the following year before commencing a string of eight consecutive losing seasons. I know that you Tigers fans are probably thinking, "Eight seasons? Big whoop. Try thirteen." But that's not the point. Orioles fans never forgave Maier and even blamed him not only for the Orioles losing what he caused to be a tie game, but the rest of the series and the next decade.

Anyway, fast forward to 2006. Maier, now 22, just graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he set the school record for career hits and finished with a .375 average. While he is not a sure thing to make the major leagues, one of the teams considering Maier is, you guessed it, the Baltimore Orioles. I'm sure that the team's followers, including Zwicker Blog reader O's Fan, have a few choice words on the subject, which I hope he will share with us.

Busted

The saga of Elijah/Norman appears to be over, at least as it touches on this community. Yesterday evening, undercover Southfield police arrested him when he was picking up dinner at one of the local kosher pizza shops.


Lesley and I, along with our neighbors and respective rabbis, had been deliberating whether to alert the authorities. By the way, while I have not finished reading it yet myself, you can read a great analysis of the halacha of reporting a Jew to secular authorities here. A few factors led us to the conclusion that we had to stop this guy. First, his fiancee, Bonnie, had left a threatening message on Anne's voicemail. Bonnie was rather upset that Anne and Anne's friend had been slandering Elijah/Norman's good name. Also, I pulled Elijah/Norman's arrest report from the Plymouth Township police department. His home invasion charge stemmed from breaking into an acquaintance's house with which he was familiar, specifically about where valuables were located. None of us wanted to risk coming home one day to find this guy in our house not knowing how violently he might react. The only thing deterring us was that, based on that voicemail and things Elijah/Norman said to other people, we thought he knew we were on to him and that he would just slink away. On the other hand, if we reported him, we had no idea how Bonnie, who has a severe case of bipolar disorder and probably had no idea what scum he was, would react.


Meanwhile, as we and our neighbors deliberated about reporting Elijah/Norman to his parole officer, merchants within the local Jewish community had been talking about this guy who was writing bad checks all over the place. The police told a neighbor who was at the arrest that they suspect him of defrauding, using bad checks and credit cards he ordered in Bonnie's name, stores all over the metropolitan Detroit area to the tune of $14,000. The one local establishment that Elijah/Norman had not cheated was the pizza store, but the owner, who remembered him, became aware yesterday morning of his spree. Yesterday afternoon, he called to place an order. The owner called the police, who sent undercover officers to arrest him. While another companion went into the store and the owner stalled her, police pulled Elijah/Norman from his car and arrested him. Bonnie apparently had a total meltdown. There is no indication whether Bonnie and the companion got their dinner.