disavowel??
nah, baby--*dat* a vowel.
*dis* a "vowal".
I'm going to get to the Wire soon as I finish Scrubs. Then I'll come back and comment on all these posts when everyone else is done with them.
It would be funny to do long posts about Scrubs in the style of Sausagely and Ogged's Wire posts. Wait, then I'd be more like Ann Althouse. Hell.
Ogged, why don't you blog about Veronica Mars any more?
why don't you blog about Veronica Mars any more?
Because I got tired of all the Buffy discussions.
Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers
Don't you think Randy is as socializable as Namond? He's never made the choice the get involved with the game (much, I think he was an occasional little hopper at the beginning of the season) and he had an intact, though foster, family until it got firebombed.
What Randy's fate is going to be now, getting beaten and maybe worse in his group home, is up for debate and we don't know if his foster mom is going to recover, but he's still at least got more of a shot then Michael.
6 - Dude, what was up with last week's Scrubs "Abortion! It's Hilarious!" episode? Was I the only one who thought that was just so effing weird?
You could always start a Buffy thread and ban VM talk. That would keep things on topic.
6: I think they recognized the baby-saturatedness of that episode and felt compelled to put in an anecdote.
BTW, Becks, great vagina!
ogged, how long did this latest hiatus last? three days? four? i've been away for awhile, but you seem to be posting every 30 seconds.
What hiatus? I'm on the kind of hiatus that allows posting, if I'm on hiatus at all.
Don't you think Randy is as socializable as Namond?
Yeah, totally. If I were trying to develop that idea, I'd probably drop that word. In fact, Randy isn't much of a corner boy at all, either in aspiration or temperament.
BTW, Becks, great vagina!
This new salutation is going to catch on, I can tell.
Someone tell me what I'm talking about.
17: Well, I could have used it on Ogged but I'm still trying to chivvy him into a VM thread so I'm playing nice.
17: Salutation? I thought it was more like an interjection.
It'll never replace "Great googly moogly", I'll tell you that.
I generally agree with you about Namond. This is hard to see since Narratives generally underemphasize the usefulness of wimping out as a strategy.
On the other hand, Namond did go to gym and talk big right after Michael beat up the little kid. Namond is kind of a dick; but he can still grow out of it.
>Al Gore didn't manage this much insight until he was in his fifties.
I did not know Al Gore sr. was an OG.
I have stated elsewhere my almost complete agreement with Ogged. Screw these non-believers, BTW...
And since people have asked, does anyone else think that VM is drastically worse this season than the first two?
Becks, great vagina!
Once again, I must ask whether we are expected to just take this on faith.
Cool, a man-post, just when I needed a place to observe: When will Tony Kornheiser die of whatever wasting disease he seems to have contracted? Have you noticed how skinny he is? He just rapped, "Rexy ain't sexy/ He's causin' apoplexy!" I hope it's soon.
Also: Is it reasonable or responsible to ask Mike Ditka his opinion on Chicago staffing decisions? Ditka said before the game that he'd pull Grossman if he were coach—as if he were not, in fact, The Coach of the Chicago Bears For Fucking Life. I can only imagine that Grossman is still warming up to play, and not committing hara-kiri, because no one in the stadium has is watching the pre-game commentary.
Not the vagina of today, no.
Vagina yesterday and vagina tomorrow, but never vagina to-day. Ain't it always the way.
does anyone else think that VM is drastically worse this season than the first two?
Yes. The last two or three episodes were good, but the rest of the season was decidedly mediocre.
The Coach of the Chicago Bears For Fucking Life
It's ok. People in Chicago realized, before the rest of the country, I think, that Mike Ditka is totally out of his gourd.
26: The campus date rapist story arc seemed weirdly dated to me. Not that I expect that date rape has gone away or anything, but there was something so early '90s about the assumptions underlying that storyline that it just didn't ring true to me. I find it hard to believe that these issues are playing out on campuses now exactly the same way they were 15 years ago. Maybe someone who's actually spent some time on a college campus lately can enlighten me here.
Also, it's been pointed out elsewhere (TWoP?) that Veronica's a lot more sympathetic when she's playing off her dad and Wallace, both of whom haven't been around as much so far.
Speaking about football, this is an awesome parody of Greg Easterbrook.
Ditka's got a nice restaurant, though, also called Ditka's.
Maybe someone who's actually spent some time on a college campus lately can enlighten me here.
I've spent a lot of time on a college campus lately, but I've never seen Veronica Mars. Sorry.
Vagina yesterday and vagina tomorrow, but never vagina to-day. Ain't it always the way.
This is creeping me out.
ogged is exactly right about Namond. Kills me to say it, but there it is.
Vagina today, vagina tomorrah, vagina forevah!
I'm not sure I agree with your evaluation of the situation, ogged. Why does making a "conscious, considered decision" to leave a situation make Namond more deserving than Randy or Duquan?
Randy made the right choice over and over; Dukie's ultimate choice was disappointing, but hard to call a major moral failure when put in the context of the options open to him. Both Randy and Dukie understood the landscape surrounding them: Randy knew he couldn't fuck up, and Dukie knew no one was coming to save him. Both acted accordingly and laudably. Namond didn't; all he did that sets him apart is that he had a revelation. Introspection's great and all, but it's not an end in itself. Namond didn't take heroic action to change his fate; he just shut down, gave up, and was lucky enough to have someone nearby to save him.
Dukie and Randy may not have undergone the sort of personal transformation that Namond did, but they had already more or less figured out what they should to be doing and were doing it. It seems like that ought to be what counts.
=~ s/all he did that sets him apart/all that sets him apart/igx;
Vagina today, vagina tomorrah, vagina forevah!
So your date went well, I get it.
Yeah, I seem to have fallen into that pattern. It always seems like a good idea at the time.
Tom, I don't think you can be right about Dukie. He clearly made the wrong choice -- the right choice was to take Pres's gift on into high school, and he failed -- for obvious and maybe overwhelming reasons, but he failed.
Randy's a more difficult case -- he appears to have acclimated himself as an independent hustler (his candy-dealing business). He made a couple of errors -- getting involved, peripherally, in Lex's murder, and then telling that (reasonably odious, I think) teacher about it. He's caught between The Man (woman, in this case) and The Street, and he got crushed; I think his story parallels that of Bubbles this season.
You're right, Dukie's season-ending decision complicates things. I sort of view it as what happens after he'd given it his best shot, yet still not been saved. What else was he supposed to do? I don't think we can reasonably say that his fortunes were likely to continue the upward trend that Prez had begun. He knew high school was going to be a return to the way things had been. Besides, he's now dependent on Michael for shelter. Given that, it'd probably be hard to turn down work on the corners. He tried, but there's only so much a kid in that situation can reasonably be expected to do.
Dukie and Randy both lucked into having saviors, and they both did a pretty conscientious job of keeping them. Both lost them for reasons beyond their control, and are now making the best of a fairly hopeless situation. I suppose that the difference between them and Namond might just be one of timing: Namond's found someone to save him later than Randy and Dukie did. He now seems likely to work to preserve that situation the way they did, so maybe he's no worse than either of them. I just don't buy that he's any better. Unless sulkily playing Xbox or escaping down an alley counts as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, Namond didn't make any bigger or better moral choices than Randy or Dukie. He just avoided making worse ones.
Come to think of it, the only one of the boys who made a daring and original choice to improve his situation is Michael. And he did it for Bug rather than for himself. By the self-actualization criteria ogged seems to be laying out, I'd say he's the most deserving of the boys. The fact that he's a murderer complicates matters, but I think there's something to the idea that Michael's violence is a sort of self-sacrifice (explicitly for Bug and Namond, and now kind of for Dukie as well). Or maybe it's just his charisma that's leads me to partially excuse his actions.
See, I don't get Michael as charismatic -- I thought he too readily rejected Cutty's advice / patronage. I understood what he was doing for Bug, but I had a real hard time with him getting Bug's father killed, and I couldn't really admire his beating down Namond's little-kid sidekick.
I don't mean to criticize the other boys' actions at all, Tom--not in this post, anyway. What I was taking issue with is the notion that Namond was the unlikable one who lucked out. I think he did something that's extremely hard to do, which is to realize that he doesn't want to be what everyone expects him to be, and then, to say so, out loud.
49: Yeah, but the Cutty situation is complicated by the existence of Bug's Dad. And the beatdown certainly wasn't something to be applauded, but it was clearly being done to protect Namond.
50: See, I do think he lucked out. Bunny's availability was a little too deus ex mechanical for me to give Namond credit — if Colvin hadn't been around, I don't think Namond's admission of weakness would have meant anything.
if Colvin hadn't been around, I don't think Namond's admission of weakness would have meant anything.
Well, it would have meant the same thing, but it might not have done him any good. It might have gotten him killed, for all we know. Sure, he was very lucky to have Bunny around, but he still did a difficult and admirable thing.
I had a real hard time with him getting Bug's father killed
Really? What choice did he have? He asked his friends about social services first, right?
I don't know. R-U-N-N-O-F-T, maybe. A warning? I don't know. It's not like I say I would have done better. It does seem hard, though.