1. Yeah, I know. Thanks to every person who saw me Saturday for reminding me that Ohio State actually did in fact cover that 44-point spread. 45-0. With trick plays and on-side kicks. Sometimes you eat the bear........
2. Not only did I not have a costume to wear for Halloween this year, but I also got tired and decided that a trip to the netherlands of Williamsburg would be too much of an effort at 11:00pm on a Saturday. Granted, I had to work and was up at 5:50am that morning, but still that is pretty bad. I've got my third straight working Saturday this weekend, but perhaps after that I will be able to return to some normal level of social activity.
3. I almost feel like I should apologize to most of my friends before I say this but as of now I don't consider It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to be a good show anymore. I vocalized my opinion a month ago that I felt like a few of this season's episodes were pretty weak. Then I saw a good one and resisted the urge to overreact. At this point though, I've seen six or seven episodes of this season and I think that's enough to pass judgement. It needs to go away and let us fans enjoy the goodness that it was. I'm not sure how to explain that it's possible, but the show is both trying too hard and mailing it in at the same time. I've found myself noticably uncomfortable (not the kind of uncomfortable that is cool from the show being edgy but from it being bad) several times this season. They clearly don't have enough good ideas to get through a whole season, and unfortunately the idea of a two or three episode TV season is unacceptable to people who make those decisions.
I'm going to keep recording the episodes this season and watching them when I get around to it but I've abandoned hope that I'll get anything as good as I used to, and I'm not going to lose any sleep if I miss an episode or two entirely.
4. Yesterday was the New York City Marathon, and since I'm a poor supporter of things even personally interesting to me, I didn't watch any of it, even though it passed just three-quarters of a mile from my apartment, and I was awake for all of it. I don't know, I did laundry.
But Sara did go, and she told me something that will never ever fail to disappoint and agitate me. Apparently, not only were people using electric-controlled wheelchairs during the race, but the crowd was also cheering these people on.
A long time ago, I came to peace with wheelchair divisions in marathons: a marathon is a hugely inclusive event, and not just a race for fast long-distance runners, so including a division for wheelchairs and having them start early so they don't get in anyone's way is perfectly fine. Sure, succeeding at pushing a wheelchair for 26.2 miles isn't even close to the same accomplishment as running the same distance, but the purity of the race is still there, so bully for them.
HOWEVER.........a wheelchair that is electrically-powered is just ridiculous. Not only that, but it's offensive to every other regular wheelchair participant, and especially the thousands of bipedal participants.
I understand fully that large marathons in 2009 often devolve into little more than parades, but still within those floating happy masses are many many people who are pushing themselves physically--much slower than those at the front of the field, but inside their weaker bodies the punishment they are inflicting and the stress they are struggling to overcome is at least in the same ballpark. If you are being powered along in an electric wheelchair and accepting the admiring cheers of all the supporters along the way, then you are really just a soulless embarrassingly self-centered asshole. Thousands of people wouldn't turn up, and the city wouldn't block off miles and miles of roads to traffic, and big companies wouldn't pay millions of dollars to sponsor the race, and many many countries arond the world wouldn't pay attention if the "New York City Marathon" were just a parade or a contest for people in electric wheelchairs. The reason this person received a warm response was thanks to the great effort and sacrifices made by so many other people.
I'm doing my damnedest not to analogize this situation. To do so is my wont, but in this case I think it would almost subtract from the absurdity.
Again, I don't care if this person was the reincarnated carcass of Pat Tillman, or an AIDS patient just hours from death, or Mike Bloomberg's adopted daughter who was saved from a North Korean sex slave trade. Any of that would be totally irrelevant. He/she had no business in the race. The marathon is about achievement--physical achievement--and the presence of an electric wheelchair debases the whole damned thing. It disgusts me immensely. Assuming this person had an actual number, someone at the NY Road Runners, or ING, or whoever allowed him in, should either be fired or never allowed to work with the marathon ever again, and then subjected to Reality courses, the same way drunks are required to attend AA, or domestic abusers might have to attend anger management classes.
3 comments:
agreed. electric wheelchair = many things but not worthy of a marathon. now, consider for a second that there were a person from the Achilles Track Club escorting this "participant" Achilles is an amazing organization with amazing volunteers who help disabled people walk, crawl, scoot and otherwise finish a marathon under their own power. It is really inspiring when you see a guy with no legs on a skate board using his hands to push himself along. go-ahead and try that yourself. But an electronic wheelchair with an escort... I bet that person was throwing out candy.
I've pretty much only seen the first two seasons of Always Sunny, and liked them. Though when I finally watched the "Gang Solves the Gas Crisis" episode last month, I didn't think it lived up to expectations.
I'd been planning on catching up with the show, but I realized it was more for the sake of saying I was caught up with it, and less about if I really enjoyed it.
It's not a bad show by any means, and I like some of the characters. But there's a certain quality it has, something I can't put my finger on, that I don't find appealing enough to make me keep watching. At times it does feel forced.
The fact that I think It's Always Sunny is more or less dead as a quality show shouldn't take away from it's former aptitude. For a couple years, it pretty consistently delivered the awesome. It was never a great show but it knew what it was and was great at it. I think this is just an instance where they need to take a page from Britian's book: end it and move on.
Also, rereading the post, I think when I called the motorized wheelchair person "soulless" it was a bit much. The whole situation is reprehensible, as are all the people along the way that made it possible, but to single out the actual person was to make a greater assumption than I meant to. It could be easy for the person to get carried away so that the end result is much more than he/she ever intended. Doesn't make it right of course, but I'm ok with excusing maybe 5% of the blame.
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