Hoosiers! And the day after my beloved IU Hoosiers win their first Big Ten regular season basketball championship in 20 years, we speak now of the other beloved "Hoosiers." New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on what makes "Hoosiers" not just a great sports film, but a great film for the ages

Opening scene and credits of MGM's 1986 "Hoosiers," with Jerry Goldsmith's iconic Oscar-nominated score. Uploaded June 1, 2012. http://youtu.be/tUqhPsZh93Y

NYTimes video: N.Y. Times film critic A. O. Scott reviews the beloved 1986 MGM film "Hoosiers" about Indiana high school basketball -and personal redemption- set in 1951, and why it still remains a film for the ages. Uploaded March 3, 2009. http://youtu.be/AzgOZ0xHCEA

And on the day after my IU Hoosiers win the Big Ten basketball regular season championship for the first time in 20 years, a game they appeared certain to lose to Michigan in Ann Arbor before coming back in the final seconds, we speak of the other beloved "Hoosiers."

In 1986, I was living in Evanston, Illinois, the suburban home of IU Big ten rival Northwestern University, located on the shores of Lake Michigan, a town full of bright and fully-engaged professional, academic and management types just north of Chicago, and a world separate and apart from the life I had known and led in North Miami Beach and in Bloomington.

Then as now I was a big sports fan and avid movie-goer, a lover of not only classic films, but the worlds of advertising, journalism, American and European history and politics.
And like many of you reading this today, a sucker for smart and knowing well-made films about comebacks and teamwork and overcoming adversity against all odds, including those of self-sabotage, as was the case with Dennis Hooper's character in the film, where he played former basketball star-turned-alcoholic father and assistant coach "Shooter" Flatch



In short, I was the perfect demographic for the MGM film that came out that year loaded with a cinematic all-star lineup and a narrative that was straight out of both Indiana and Hollywood, loosely based on a story I'd known for years since leaving South Florida in the rear-view mirror for the Cream and Crimson of the beautiful rolling hills of southern Indiana and Indiana University in Bloomington, late in the summer of the year that the film 'Breaking Away" had been released to popular and critical acclaim.

Because of who I knew and what my interests and passions were, I'd been hearing and reading about the film from the very beginning, even before it was ever shot, from friends in Los Angeles involved in the entertainment industry and thru my avid and copious reading of the film industry trades I usually bought most weeks, like Variety.

From the crucial initial choices made in on-screen casting as well as those behind-the-screen with respect to the writer, director and even the film's composer, I knew that it could be a very special film indeed if all the stars aligned, and yet you never know how these things will go, despite the talented team you assemble.

So, it was with all of that history and knowledge very much front and center in my mind that I found myself one cold night in Evanston literally leaning against a wall while in line outside of a movie theater, forced by timing to listen to a bunch of jaded and self-indulgent NU grad students blabbing about the film and story in ways that bore absolutely no resemblance to what the reality was or what was soon to come.

As ridiculous as it sounds now, they even joked about leaving after an hour because how could this story about Indiana high school basketball possibly turn out to be anything worthwhile, even with Gene Hackman.
Yes, they really said that.

But you know what I did?
I kept quiet.
I kept my mouth shut and refused to play the Marshall McLuhan card as Woody Allen had does in his Oscar-winning Annie Hall.
You know what scene I mean.



I found myself there at that point in time because I'd had the good sense and foresight many months before to call in some IOU's from folks I knew around the Chicago area who were very much, yes, "in the "Loop" in the Loop.
The sort of people who know things before the masses and have unusual access because of who they are or what they do.
Since I wasn't afraid to reciprocate, I was also never afraid to ask for favors when it came to something important, as long as it was legal and above board.

I told them, these media and business mavens, that I wanted to be in the audience for the sneak preview of "Hoosiers " weeks before the film actually played in Chicagoland, and if possible, somewhere near Evanston.


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That's how I came to be standing in line with a special pass from a film-related concern to attend a special sneak preview of "Hoosiers" at a then-extant movie theater on Central Avenue, located across the street from the Wildcats' athletic facilitiess, the-then Dyche Stadium and Welsh-Ryan Arena.

Hickory High head coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) gives his underdog Huskers some pregame reminders and encouragement just moments before the start of their championship game against South Bend Central. Preacher Purl (Michael Sassone)  delivers a message that seems tailor-made for the upset-minded team. Uploaded February 13, 2011. http://youtu.be/3gKbrj2nZis

"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."

- Preacher Purl encouraging the underdog Hickory High basketball team before the state title game against heavily-favored South Bend Central in 1986's Hoosiers 

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechhoosiersfinal.html

The rest as they say is history.

I've seen this film well over 25 times from beginning-to-end, less than some, but surely more than most.
Though that's still less than I've seen "Breaking Away," a film that I know inside and out like I know the smiles of my three adorable nieces in any large crowd.

More on the Mary Ellen Klaas Syndrome and its negative effect on Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald readers: Fact-checking the Tallahassee bureau reporter, due to her sheer lack of curiosity and fairness about facts and context, is a full-time job; Her calling John Couriel a "sleeper" a month before FL Senate 35 race against Gwen Margolis is proof of how little attention she pays to what's going on, and her editors' sleepwalking ways

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More on the Mary Ellen Klaas Syndrome and its negative effect on Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald readers: Fact-checking the Tallahassee bureau reporter, due to her sheer lack of curiosity and fairness about facts and context, is a full-time job; Her calling John Couriel a "sleeper" a month before FL Senate 35 race against Gwen Margolis is proof of how little attention she pays to what's going on, and her editors' sleepwalking ways 

In a state that is, literally, drowning in them, Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee bureau reporter Mary Ellen Klaas is consistently one of the best (and therefore among the worst) examples of a print reporter who reveals so much more than they think about their own views and notions about public policy, simply by the patterns that emerge by the facts they choose NOT to include, by whom she chooses NOT to interview or quote, and by what she conveniently forgets to mention to readers or remind them of.

More often than should be the case in a state this large -the fourth largest in the country I remind you- and whose capital is so poorly misunderstood by the great majority of its own citizens, so many of whom have NEVER been to Tallahassee...
It's the closest thing we have in the Southeast United States to the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea.

Is there any state in the United States with a larger percentage of its full-time residents who have NEVER been to its state capital than Florida's?
Having grown-up in South Florida after being born in San Antonio and living for a few years in Memphis before my family moved here when I was seven, this odd-yet-true fact about the people who live in this state has always been my reality and one of the reasons I believe this state has always been so much less than what it ought to be.
Look at how it's laid out, like it's still 1845.

In the same way that all those years of my being at Indiana University in Bloomington showed me that Indianapolis was the most perfectly-centered state capital in the country, because it was almost impossible to ever find anyone who'd lived in the state for more than a year who not only hadn't been there, but who also knew where a lot of places were located, like good restaurants, good parks and good people-watching spots..
It's their particular reality like this dubious fact is ours and here's why I bring this up.

For those of you reading this far from South Florida who don't ever think about it, the Florida state capital is actually at roughly the same longitude as Cincinnati, Ohio and is actually farther west in the country than Detroit in the Midwest
I take it for granted but...

Well, getting back to Klaas, an example of the sort of thing I've written about in emails to friends, acquaintances and others "in the loop" in the past because her articles are so consistently and objectively ridiculous, both the first time you read them and in retrospect months or years later.

I would say that, conservatively, I have probably written about her in similar emails about 25 times in the past 5 years.
But I seldom mentioned them here.

-----

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/09/3040954/margolis-is-outraised-by-surprise.html

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/senate-veteran-margolis-faces-fight-newcomer

ELECTION 2012

Margolis is outraised by surprise newcomer in Senate race  

A Republican newcomer is hoping his moderate message will unseat venerable state Sen. Gwen Margolis in a newly drawn Miami district.

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS, HERALD/TIMES TALLAHASSEE BUREAU

October 8, 2012

In what may be the sleeper legislative campaign of the season, Sen. Gwen Margolis, the veteran Democrat from Miami, is getting a run for her money — literally — from Miami Beach lawyer John Couriel in the newly drawn coastal district.

Margolis has loaned herself $160,000 to win re-election to Senate District 35, which stretches from Golden Beach to Homestead. But she is being out-raised and, thus far, outspent by Republican newcomer, John Couriel, a Miami Beach lawyer.

Couriel, 34, has collected $213,830 in campaign contributions to Margolis’ $174,093 and has won the endorsements of former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. A Harvard-educated lawyer, Couriel quit his job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami to run for the seat and vows to out-campaign Margolis, 78, a former state Senate president who was first elected to the state House in 1974.

“I’m hustling. I’ve never done this before but I’m not going to be out-worked,’’ Couriel said Monday during a break from walking door-to-door in Pinecrest.

Couriel has the trappings of broad Republican support, from the endorsements of party icons Rubio and Bush to a political committee running attack ads against his opponent. But there is one notable absence: his race is not among the must-watch contests receiving cash infusions from the Senate Majority, the political committees controlled by incoming Senate leader Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.

At a meeting with reporters last week, Gaetz singled out the races that could produce upsets and Couriel v. Margolis wasn’t among them.

“Sen. Gaetz and I are friends,’’ Margolis said Monday, noting that the Niceville Republican lived for years in her Miami Shores district and supported her.

Couriel says he is undaunted that he’s not getting more attention from Senate leadership. “I am assuming I need to do this on my own,’’ he said.

He said he’s running because he believes voters want a change. “The purpose of public office is not to honor someone by electing them to office. We elect someone to work for us and I’m running because I think I could do a better job.”

The district trends Democratic, with nearly 60 percent voting for Obama in 2008 and Alex Sink in 2010. But Democrats do not comprise a majority of the district — 45 percent are registered Democrat, compared to 28 percent registered as no party affiliated and 27 percent registered Republican.

Couriel believes he can reach independents and crossover voters with his moderate Republican message. He ticks off the statistics in previous races to make his case.

"Rick Scott doesn’t do well here,’’ Couriel said, but Republican Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater barely lost the district in 2010 and Rubio beat Democrat Kendrick Meek in the U.S. Senate race. "That tells me that many Democrats are soft.’’

Margolis has been a fixture in Miami Dade politics for decades, and Couriel must not only introduce himself to voters but bring down Margolis’ image in the process, an expensive task in the long coastal district.

“To effectively run an aggressive campaign against Sen. Margolis is going to take a lot of money,’’ said Christian Ulvert, a Margolis advisor and Democratic consultant.

-----

Here's the real kicker, which I described last Wednesday in yet another email to the same people who received a link to the first article above.

I swear, I'm not making this up. 

On Tuesday the Miami Herald endorsed a candidate for the Florida state Senate, John Couriel -a Miami native, Harvard Law School grad and currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Miami- whose first name they never mention -or anything else about him in their endorsement as it appears online!

So what the hell kind of endorsement is that?

John Couriel in FL Senate District 35 http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/15/3051440/state-senate-districts.html

More evidence of the very low state the Herald has fallen to before our eyes.
In this article from last week, the first time the Herald mentioned John Couriel since he  announced he was running, their reporter, rather ironically considering their poor coverage of local news and politics, chose to start the article thusly: "In what may be the sleeper legislative campaign of the season..."

Actually, it seems more like the reporter, Mary Ellen Klaas, is the one who is playing Rip Van Winkle, since she reported last week that four weeks before the election, a first-time candidate has out-raised and out-spent a forty-year career politician with very high name recognition, and who was formerly the President of the Florida State Senate and after that, a Miami-Dade Commissioner.

(Margolis is someone whom I met a lot while growing-up in NMB and being very involved in county Dem politics and campaigns, including at functions in North Miami circa mid-1970's that my mother attended when I was Junior High age.

She's the very same woman who, while I was living and working for 15 years in Washington, D.C., before it was finally built decades after it was needed, strongly considering making the William Lehman Causeway Bridge, that connects Aventura to Sunny Isles, a toll bridge, unless she got her way on something involving tax revenues!

Imagine traffic on glacial U.S.-1/Biscayne Blvd. now next to Aventura Mall if there was a toll road next door -actually worse than it is now if possible, which IS very hard to imagine, given how many times I've felt like I was going to run out of gas (and patience) while creeping along one block at a time in the afternoon. You remember, don't you Aventura, Sunny Isles and Hallandale Beach? Imagine if she had had her way!)

The new district is so enormous and obtuse that on the north it goes from west of the Florida Turnpike in Hollywood, down to an area in Miami-Dade County where I lived in the early 1980's when back from IU for the summer, many miles south of downtown Miami, back before they were calling it Pinecrest. Plus, that district as currently drawn also includes Key Biscayne!

See for yourself: http://maps.flsenate.gov/de1/map.html?plan=fl2002_sen&district=35

Key Biscayne?That's f-ing preposterous!!!Hollywood to Key Biscayne? Why?
Why do you think -so that Hispanics can vote for Hispanics, Blacks can vote for blacks and Jews can... and some reporter somewhere in the future can opine about why it's hard to find someone with voter wide appeal in South Florida who is not a demagogue.

In South Florida politics, outside of municipal races, you don't need to be smart, savvy, hard-working, conciliatory or even have good ideas that can make it possible for you to get positive things done, you simply need to be one of three favored ethnic demographics -that's it!

So given Couriel's not-insignificant accomplishment, why did Klaas and the newspapers NEVER write anything about him and his efforts all year, before last week?

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=%22Couriel%22

Like how he managed to accomplish all this?

Why the apathy and indifference?

That's the media landscape we live in in the year 2012 in South Florida.
It's forever the dog that doesn't bark!

Yeah, plus everyone's an expert after the fact!
Not a sheep dog or a watch dog but rather a lapdog! 

Richard Mourdock: Precursor or anomaly? Greg Garrison and Charlie Cook adroitly pinpoint where Sen. Richard Lugar eventually lost his way, started losing the trust of Hoosier voters, then lost in a landslide due to the dis-connect. Points largely lost on a predictably apoplectic Beltway MSM

Richard Mourdock for U.S. Senate campaign video: It's time.... for Richard Mourdock. March 3, 2011, http://youtu.be/0EE8jJ2Jhu8

Richard Mourdock: Precursor or anomaly? Greg Garrison and Charlie Cook -separately- adroitly pinpoint where Sen. Richard Lugar eventually lost his way, started losing the trust of Hoosier voters, then lost in a landslide due to the dis-connect. Points largely lost on a predictably apoplectic Beltway MSM

The best reasoned analysis I've read thus far of why Sen. Lugar lost in the GOP primary last week -and lost badly- is by the one-and-only Charlie Cook last week and Breitbart.com's  Greg Garrison today.

THE COOK REPORT

Lugar’s Downfall

Don’t just chalk up the Indiana Republican’s primary defeat to the tea party. It’s more complicated than that.

By Charlie Cook

Updated: May 11, 2012 | 1:39 p.m. 

May 10, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

One way to explain Sen. Richard Lugar’s loss to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in this week’s Indiana Republican primary is to attribute it to a tea party takeover of the GOP. A second explanation is that a venerable public servant overstayed his welcome and ran for reelection one time too many. A third is that Lugar was too focused on international relations and grew too distant from his state—that he didn’t keep his political fences mended back home.

Read the rest of the column at 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/lugar-s-downfall-20120510

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Breitbart.com 

LUGAR: 36 YEARS OF PUBLIC SERVICE

by Greg Garrison

May 16, 2012

He was 16 when I was born, Mayor of Indianapolis (my home town) when I was a student at IU, and off to the US Senate when I was a ripe old 28; been there ever since.  And a few hours after having seen him take a beating most uncommon in American politics—he lost to Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock by 21 points in yesterday’s primary—the confetti has just stopped floating to the floor and empty beer cans have barely stopped rolling around as we look with mixed feelings at the phenomenon just experienced.  

Read the rest of the post at:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/16/lugar-36-years-enough

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Both before and after I first moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1988, where I lived and worked for 15 years, other than maybe Sam Nunn in Georgia, Daniel Inouye in Hawaii or Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts, I don't think there was another senator more firmly linked in the minds of both voters and the local and national news media with their own home state than Dick Lugar was with Indiana, who was already a U.S. Senator when I first moved to Bloomington from North Miami Beach in August of 1979 for my freshman year at IU.

Then, and for 25 years afterwards, it was simply inconceivable for anyone who knew anything about Indiana politics and the people of the state to imagine any logical scenario where he would ever lose an election, even if he should've retired after his last term ended in 2006. 

Thirty years was long enough, though, and lots of voters who had voted for Lugar their entire life had become disenchanted with both him, his policies and his increasingly-curious priority choices.

As I've mentioned here previously, too, I was actually at the televised Birch Bayh-Dan Quayle Senate debate at IU in 1980, sitting in the second row of sweltering Whittenberger Auditorium at the IMU, where I usually sat to watch films on weekend nights, glad to be somewhere where people cared about ideas and public policy, even if they weren't always the ones that I agreed with or thought were most logical or reasonable.

After growing-up in the completely unrepresentative South Florida of the 1970's, with no Black or Hispanic congressmen and everyone on the Dade County Commission voted in at-large, the best-case scenario for lobbyists, I was happy to be somewhere where every vote counted for something.

A place where actual political debates took place, even if they didn't exactly match the lofty rhetoric of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; the election Lincoln lost in case you forgot, before he was elected president two years later.

On Election Night 1980, I spent a lot of time going from one place to another for various election return parties, on and off-campus, in retrospect, the news about Bayh losing to Quayle was merely the precursor.

I eventually made my way tothe dorm room of a friend there at Briscoe Quad where I lived that year, a friend who just happened to be the IU Student Association president.

As first, George McGovern, John Culver and other well-known Dems bit the dust, and then Reagan was acclaimed the winner over President Carter, the large crowd became the very personification of an election wake, filled with gallows humor -and clever remarks about someone making a race competitive by only losing by ten percentage points!

The next time I was in a place that Blue and sad following election returns was at The Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill for the mid-term 1994 elections, when I thought the GOP would take the House, but my friends on The Hill told me that my famous intuition was wrong, something it rarely was.

By the end of the night, many of my friends were actually crying real tears as they saw their always-interesting Capitol Hill jobs get eliminated before their eyes, when their bosses lost in the Gingrich Revolution, while people who for years had been on the Majority Staff of House committees realized that the new math would get them gone, in part, because of how they'd run things and treated the Republican staffers.

Karma, it's not just a chameleon.

-----

Howey Politics Indiana: http://howeypolitics.com/

NPR Audio: The Bigger Picture Of Indiana's Senate Race: 

NPR's Scott Simon talks with Hoosier political analyst Brian Howey of the Howey Indiana Politics newletter about Richard Mourdock's landslide defeat of Sen. Richard Lugar last Tuesday in the GOP Senate primary

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/12/152561169/indiana-senate-race-the-bigger-picture

http://www.youtube.com/user/MourdockforSenate

If you watch the NFL Pro Bowl on Saturday from Iowa, look for this TV ad by students imploring Hoosier governor Mitch Daniels to run for President

My Man Mitch [HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TPHzH-gHA

No need to worry, Chris Good of The Atlantic Online is on the case.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/mitch-daniels-is-the-man-in-this-girls-life/70366/


CBS News Early Show segment on Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, April 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFlc4W1bL6Y

See this opinion piece from the FoxNews Channel's website:
Mitch Daniels for President In 2012
By Liz Peek
Published January 13, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/13/mitch-daniels-president/


Fox Business News - Should Capitol Hill Listen to Indiana? Jan 3, 2011 - 7:30 - Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on his success in reviving the state's economy and abilities to curb union power.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4483750/should-capitol-hill-listen-to-indiana/


C-SPAN founder and Purdue grad Brian Lamb interviews Mitch Daniels for Q&A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNy7Dz_1OzI

Draft Mitch Daniels for President 2012 YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/draftdaniels

Website: Students for Daniels
http://www.studentsfordaniels.com/


http://www.in.gov/gov/


Governor Mitch Daniels YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/INGovernor

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Later in the day... it turns out that if you can see this TV ad in Iowa on Saturday-or anywhere else for that matter- you have latent superpowers, because the Pro Bowl, whcih I haven't watched on TV since the early 1990's, is actually on SUNDAY!
Mea culpa.

Robert Indiana at Etra Fine Art Gallery, Booth 501 at Miami International Art Fair, January 13th - 17th, 2011

American artist Robert Indiana -nee Robert Clark- holds a special place in the heart of most well-educated native Hoosiers, as well as those who are "Hoosiers by choice" -to use the phrase that I and my out-of-state friends at IU used to describe ourselves- as a leading proponent of the American pop art movement.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/662616/robert-indiana.html http://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/robert-indiana/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Indiana http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=%22Robert+Indiana%22
http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=1&tid=2034469&print=1

----- Etra Fine Art Gallery - 50 N.E. 40th St. - Miami Design District - Miami www.etrafineart.com

Booth 501 at Miami International Art Fair,
January 13th - 17th, 2011

www.etrafineart.com

The Hartley Elegies consist of 10 large-scale prints created by Robert Indiana in admiration of American modernist painter and poet Marsden Hartley. These pieces are often considered the most powerful and successful works he ever produced. Indiana views them as his most personal because they reflect not only his identity, but also that of his idol Marsden Hartley.


The imagery in Robert Indiana’s The Hartley Elegies is drawn straight from Hartley’s 1914-15 “German Officer” paintings. They encompass symbolism from Hartley’s paintings, as well as Indiana’s, into an anomalous hard-edged style. Critics and scholars agree that The Hartley Elegies are one of the most compelling and substantial works of art ever created by Robert Indiana.


In Liz K. Sheehan’s catalogue essay, “Robert Indiana: Painter of Signs” she writes, “the Elegies cement and celebrate the numerous connections between two men, their lives and artistic achievements, and honor one of Maine’s most celebrated artists. The full suite of ten serigraphs, reproduced together for the first time in this volume, is one of Indiana’s most complex projects. Robert Indiana’s signs point us toward a broader understanding of Marsden Hartley’s work and the inspiration it holds for contemporary artists, who continue to find relevance in its depths.”


Robert Clark adopted the name Indiana as a tribute to his home state. After receiving a degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1953 and a traveling fellowship to Europe, he moved to New York City. He became part of an artist community that included Ellsworth Kelly and Jack Youngerman, and began to experiment in geometric pop art styles.


Although he came to prominence during the 1960's, his concerns have always differed greatly from those of his contemporaries. Whereas the general pop movement took interest in the mass media and trappings of consumer culture, Indiana was drawn to Americana and national and cultural identity. Indiana now lives in Vinelhaven, Maine – the same town that Marsden Hartley once worked.

www.etrafineart.com

South Beach Hoosier Time Machine: Revisiting Tim Padgett's "Revenge of the Hoosiers"

Given the chance that the world and our small
part of it in South Florida could be firmly and
fatally knocked-off its axis at the possibility of
the New York Jets actually making it to a
Super Bowl being played in South Florida
two weeks hence, and the Jets even using
the Dolphins training facility in Davie as
their practice facility if they beat the Colts
later this afternoon -to the apparent delight
of the smug, not-so-bright marketing
geniuses dumb enough to be quoted by name
here, in the perfectly predictable Herald
pre-Super Bowl puff piece full of cliches
http://www.miamiherald.com/614/story/1442833.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1 -
I wanted to bring up a heretofore unmentioned
yet positive reason to root against the Jets:
civility.

Not that another is really needed for the most
devout South Florida sports fans, who continually
despair of continually seeing a certain crowd
who loves to flaunt their so-called 'individuality'
by their wearing of a New York Yankees or
Mets caps, like lemmings.

This is always grating, but most galling when
observed among young kids or adults who
never actually lived there when anyone named
Seaver or Mattingly were playing.

Their much-older counterpart are equally
known to us, droning on incessantly about
stick ball really being... blah, blah, blah...

Sorry, I've already tuned you out.
This isn't 1947 and you aren't some skinny
Italian nine-year old kid in Brooklyn, capisce?

You also aren't Pele wrapping string and tape
together in your poor neighborhood in Brazil
in the early '50's to make a ball because you
are so jaw-droppingly poor.

You're from the largest city in this country,
and yet you are continually crowing and
bragging about things that have nothing
at all to do with anything you or your family
ever did or said.

And need I remind you, you are
living here, too, no?
End of diatribe, sort of.

Well, except to remind you that when the
Jets beat the Colts, Nixon still hadn't been
sworn in.

That reason to bear the Jets animus maximus
is the possible infusion into rude and antagonistic
South Florida of some well-needed Midwestern
friendliness, or if you will, some Hoosier
hospitality.

The nice welcoming cool breeze to wash away
the unrelenting torpor of humid heat and
smugness that so often pervades this place.

Sort of like what we had regularly around the
holidays in the '70's and early '80's when the
Big 12 Conference Champ always played in
the Orange Bowl Game, and tons of
well-mannered alums from Nebraska,
Oklahoma and even Colorado were all over
Miami spending money and enjoying
themselves, sometimes even saying how
much they envied us living down here
with the weather and the water.

The very same ones that grew fed-up with
bad service, high prices and non-English
speaking personnel -esp. in hotel
parking garages- and the ever-present
threat of crime near downtown Miami
and the OMNI when that was actually
something and not just an
embarrassing eyesore.

And they were chased away, too, based on
my conversations with those fans, here and
in other towns where I met them years later.
They felt unappreciated.

If the Colts win as I expect and hope, do you
really think you'll run into quite so many
people playing know-it-all smart aleck
over at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino
in Hollywood, over at The Clevelander
on South Beach or eating somewhere on
A1A in Hollywood, talking far too loudly
about real estate, and how they speculated
in South Florida real estate for years
-hello Radius and Duo!- but were
smart enough to get out in the nick of time,
as we would if the Jets are here?

Let me answer my own rhetorical question:
No, you won't.

Before you watch today's AFC Championship
Game between the Colts and Jets, be sure
to read this almost three-years old piece by
TIME's Miami Bureau Chief Tim Padgett,
a proud and brilliant grad of Wabash College
by way of Carmel, Indiana, and, as it happens,
one of the most prescient Latin America
political reporters in the country.

And I'm not just saying that because he's a
Hoosier.

In Tim's case, a Hoosier-by-birth, as
opposed to my sister and I, who were
Hoosiers-by-choice, as she followed me
from North Miami Beach HS to Bloomington
three years later, in 1982, even staying in
Briscoe Quad, the same dorm near
Assembly Hall and Memorial Stadium
where I lived for my first two years there.

Why does that name Padgett sound so
familiar?

Yes, because in September, as you read here,
Tim wrote the definitive analysis piece on
South Florida in the 21st Century.

His piece was an Internet sensation nationally
precisely because it resonated with everyone
who knows anything about this area, whether
they live here or just visit.

See my original Sept. 6, 2009 post about his
article, which I titled,
Dear Florida, California, Michigan & Illinois:
It's over. See ya in the rear view mirror!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/dear-florida-california-michigan.html

TIME
Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents

By TIM PADGETT/MIAMI

There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them. One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

See the rest of Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

A short amusing TIME piece by Tim on
his hometown of Carmel, north of Indy,
and their seeming love affair with roundabouts
or traffic circles, was here:

You Want a Revolution
By TIM PADGETT
September 4, 2008
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838753,00.html

Carmel in the early '80's was sort of like...
well, for our purposes here, like Miami Lakes
in the late '70's when that was almost like
Dolphin City, with so many coaches and
players living there.

Except Indy had no NFL team then, as that
was Bears and Bengals territory, and we got
all their telecasts on CBS and NBC on the
Indy stations.

Carmel was very affluent, well-educated,
and had lots of smart kids, just like HML
back when they were also the dominant
South Florida high school in sports, even
having lights on their HS field, which meant
the baseball team could play at night when
more people could watch and that their
elite football team could practice in
something other than 94 degree sunshine.

(My senior year, the HML valedictorian
famously ripped the school's emphasis
on competition and sports at their graduation
ceremony, which everyone heard about
as there were both School Board members
and Channel 4 TV cameras present.)

When I was at IU, Carmel meant Mark
Hermann, the Purdue QB, who'd been
a HS star for the Greyhounds.
Carmel bad, Purdue bad!

A Purdue QB from Carmel?
Well, as it was explained to me, not unlike
what Richard Lewis would say about his
dating: two wrongs don't make a right!

IU students from Carmel, like people who
went to Harvard, were always quick to let
you know it.
Didn't mean they were bad, just perhaps
a little too quick to pat themselves on their
back for something that had nothing to do
with them personally.

Hey, that's just like that class of former
New Yorkers in South Florida I was just
impugning a few minutes ago!

By the way, while I was at IU, the NCAA's
HQ was located in Kansas City, and didn't
move to Indy until a few years after I'd said
au revoir, http://www.ncaa.org/

If any of you are interested in the job,
nominations for people interested in becoming
the NCAA President must be received by
March 10th.
See: http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/ncaa/ncaa+news/ncaa+news+online/2010/association-wide/ncaa_president_description

Revenge of the Hoosiers By Tim Padgett
February 5, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1585951,00.html



"In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation." -South Beach Hoosier, 2007

C'est moi!

Updated; IU, Bloomington shocked and dumbfounded by stabbing death of English professor Don Belton; hundreds brave cold to attend candlelight vigil; Michael Griffin convicted of murder, sentenced to 65 years in prison

  
wish YouTube Channel video: WISH-TV, Indianapolis - Hundreds attend vigil for slain IU prof outside Monroe County Courthouse. Uploaded January 1, 2010. http://youtu.be/XAEqoQSa8vg

Related article:
Hundreds attend vigil for slain IU prof
Updated: Friday, 01 Jan 2010, 6:12 PM EST
By reporter Liza Danver, editor Hyacinth Williams
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/south_central/hundreds-attend-vigil-for-slain-iu-prof


Above, Indiana University Assistant Professor of English Don Belton,
Photo: courtesy of Indiana University

I first heard about this terrible incident just before the Michigan at IU basketball broadcast on ESPN Thursday afternoon, when I was checking my myriad Hoosier media sites for any last minute info.

Unfortunately, TV news-gathering is never much in evidence over holidays, and that's as true in Indy and Bloomington as much as it is here in South Florida.

It just seems so much worse in Miami because there's so clearly a higher percentage of news reporters here who seem to prefer doing "soft" stories, rather than ones that require some degree of mental acuity and resolve.

For more on what happened, please see http://justicefordonbelton.com/
---------
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/
IU News Room
IU community shocked, saddened by professor's death
December 29th, 2009
Read entire official statement at
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/12982.html

---


wish YouTube Channel video: WISH-TV, Indianapolis - Police: Slain IU prof mentioned suspect in diary. Reporter Daniel Miller on the latests news in the slaying. Uploaded December 29, 2009. http://youtu.be/5ImX02RoVZI