My favorite victory riot story is one a coworker who lived in a highrise on Michigan Avenue in Chicago told me. After Michael Jordan's Bulls won their second title in 1992, she watched a mob of drunken yuppies smash in the front window of Chicago's finest small bookstore, Stuart Brent's (where I'd seen Nobel laureate Saul Bellow browsing), and loot coffee table art books.
June 17, 2010
And two tacos, too!
My favorite moment of the radio broadcast of the LA Lakers' 7th game victory over the Boston Celtics 83-79 for the NBA title was when it was announced with 90 seconds left that if the Lakers held the Celtics under 100 points, then everybody in attendance (going price $1100 per seat) could use their ticket stub to get two free tacos at Jack-in-the-Box.
My favorite victory riot story is one a coworker who lived in a highrise on Michigan Avenue in Chicago told me. After Michael Jordan's Bulls won their second title in 1992, she watched a mob of drunken yuppies smash in the front window of Chicago's finest small bookstore, Stuart Brent's (where I'd seen Nobel laureate Saul Bellow browsing), and loot coffee table art books.
My favorite victory riot story is one a coworker who lived in a highrise on Michigan Avenue in Chicago told me. After Michael Jordan's Bulls won their second title in 1992, she watched a mob of drunken yuppies smash in the front window of Chicago's finest small bookstore, Stuart Brent's (where I'd seen Nobel laureate Saul Bellow browsing), and loot coffee table art books.
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57 comments:
Steve, Why was that your favorite moment??? Don't you know that if people could afford seats to the game they wouldn't be impressed with a free taco? You will come to rue the day i started following your blog.
Dan in DC
Steve- you should be on twitter- make it happen
the most annoying thing about basketball is foul calls are almost completely arbitrary
the most annoying thing about basketball is foul calls are almost completely arbitrary
On the street, there are no foul calls.
but on a serious note, the above is why Tim Donaghy keeps promoting the idea that the NBA is rigged. Bill Simmons has also jokingly promoted his theory that the 1985 NBA lottery was rigged too.
I agree that of all the major sports, basketball is most affected by the refs. However in this era of slow mo replay for TV viewers, we can more aptly characterize their performance and usually it's pretty good (IMO).
Ah but Steve, they had kettle-cooked shells that were artisanally handcrafted by free-range Oaxaquenos.
One way to look at foul calls is that they are secondary awards for setting yourself up for a good shot. If you manage to drive a lane to the basket, you've kind of earned the foul call, or if you managed to get off a good jump shot and the defender has to scramble to block, you've earned a foul call.
On the other hand if you just try to haphazardly make your way to the basket, or try to barge your way in or just throw up a jumper you're not likely to get the call.
It's kinda like baseball where a good throw that beats the runner to second will lead to an "out" call, regardless of the fine points of whether the tag was applied before the runner actually touched the bag.
I agree that of all the major sports, basketball is most affected by the refs. However in this era of slow mo replay for TV viewers, we can more aptly characterize their performance and usually it's pretty good (IMO).
The NBA refs are definitely the best in the business. They spent the most time training and reviewing their new theories, procedures and videotape. They're also full-time employees, unlike the NFL officials who are mostly just part-timers with other jobs.
I see a flow of narratives here: few people will redeem such a coupon; Jack in the Box will probably see a net gain from collateral purchases; it is partly a reward for electing to be a fan, somewhat akin to getting a taco and more for electing Obama et al to office.
the most annoying thing about basketball is foul calls are almost completely arbitrary
Does "call whatever you have to to ensure (a) the finals go to 7 games and (b) the larger market team wins the earlier rounds" count as arbitrary?
victorian dance hall
Steve, the other night I went to hear Jeremiah Wright sermonize at a local black church and I got him to autograph your book. He wrote to "stay strong."
Last year I was in LA for work for 2 weeks, and attended a Dodger game. There was a similar Jack-In-The Box promotion. Right after the game, I went to the nearest one, but they ran out of tacos!
There were quite a bit of hungry PO'd Dodger fans, but no one rioted, fortunately!
Bellow?
Not another immigrant (unlike those native born yuppies).
Speaking of ref's...The ref in the US-Slovenia game cost the US 3 points! His calls were, um, fishy
Bill Simmons has also jokingly promoted his theory that the 1985 NBA lottery was rigged too.
It had to be. Even Knicks fans I knew so.
Mmm, taco (Homer drool).
Tim Donaghy has been analyzing each game's missed calls on Deadspin.com. It's fascinating reading and also offers a view into the psychology of being a ref, especially when one team is far behind...and some of the "make up" calls, too.
http://deadspin.com/5565162/tim-donaghy-on-game-6-the-refs-get-a-night-off?skyline=true&s=i
I agree that of all the major sports, basketball is most affected by the refs.
The big news today was the massive disparity in fouls called [and free throws attempted] for the series, together with Rasheed Wallace's attempt to enter the officials' locker room and talk to Danny Crawford after the final game.
Between having a, ah, "tribalist" as its high priest in the front office - legalistically & rent-seekingly choosing the winners & the losers - and, opposite him, legions of young, illiterate, feral, gangsta thugs as what passes for its "talent" pool nowadays, the NBA is almost a perfect microcosm of what our society at large is rapidly degrading and disintegrating [and yes, John Derbyshire, DEVOLVING] into.
Take from the spectacle of it what life lessons you may.
That it's Jack in the Box makes it all the more ridiculous; their tacos look like they were prepared in one of those steamers for pressing pants, with a little squirt of "meat", the consistency of which suggests it came from something like a toothpaste tube. Atop that the little pubic patch of lettuce, representing the green food group, comes off like a smirking wink.
They sell them two for a dollar sometimes; we used to call them "drunk-food" because they're most appealing at the tail-end of a binge, they're cheap, and available 24 hrs. a day.
I see LA is now experiencing rioting after Mexico's World Cup victories.
I was at a local pub last night, not intending to watch the game, but did anyway. Of the fairly mixed crowd, almost all the Laker fans were NAMs. Someone explain that for me.
Speaking of ref's...The ref in the US-Slovenia game cost the US 3 points! His calls were, um, fishy
Was he an affirmative action choice? Sure seems likely (refs are apparently chosen by quota by continent), but that Spaniard in the Germany game was awful as well.
I first misread Jack in the Box tacos as Taco Bell tacos. Is there a difference? Google reports more than a half million articles on this question.
All this blather about modern US school deficiencies neglects the new reality of Google. Why bother to study when formerly unobtainable answers to vexing questions like this, are now literally at our fingertips?
Albertosaurus
OT: Can we get an IQ estimate on Koman Coulibaly?
I wonder what John Judis thinks about this.
Mexicans like basketball?
" Anonymous said...
the most annoying thing about basketball is foul calls are almost completely arbitrary"
I am still under the influence of the disgraced ref Tim Donaghy's story of fixing the series so that the finals go for the 7 games - obviously more money and better TV ratings when that happens.
To the point I wrote about it.
OneSTDV said...
"I agree that of all the major sports, basketball is most affected by the refs."
Please research soccer...
Truth, what's you point? Catholics in North America are prone to rioting? Go ahead and jitterbug on the grave of White Protestant America. But after that, then what?
Don't tell me that my post about the corruption of the officiating and the David Stern-Ron Artest dichotomy got censored.
It was such a good point that I was making.
Ugh.
Truth said..."Do you fucking morons spend your entire lives with your brains In the wrong gear?"
Interesting comment on that video to which you linked from Brandon, a Canadian: "Most of those rioting are not French Canadians, they are Haitians from North Montreal that immigrated here."
Hey Truth,
I don't see the perps in your video. Why do you assume that they're white just because they're in Canada?
Here's from the poster (and presumably cameraman):
Just to set the record clear, I didn't see one canadiens fan break/smash anything. Most of the delinquents were just guys dressed in black.
And a commenter:
Most of those rioting are not French Canadians, they are Haitians from North Montreal that immigrated here.
And Wikipedia:
Some 26% of the population of Montreal and 16.5% that of Greater Montreal, are members of a visible minority (non-white) group.[66] The most numerous minorities are Blacks (7.2%), Moroccans (2.8%), Latin Americans (2.1%), South Asians (2%), and Chinese (2%).
If you want to play that game, why not pick Sweden? The country is even whiter than Canada!
Off topic:
The world of human biodiversity should be absolutely on-fire about this study:
"Females May Be Naturally More Prone to Stress."
Why are Mexicans celebrioting?
How many Mexicans are on the Lakers? How is it their victory? It'd be even funnier if LA were majority Vietnamese or Hmong. Imagine all those guys celebrioting over victory of a basketball team that is mostly black and hasn't a single Viet or Hmong in it.
OT
Would you like some diversity with those tacos?
Speaking of diversity (and I just did), I found this ever so inspiring:
Bloomberg: Learn to Embrace the Tension of Diversity
A good question is, why did fans riot after a win? Rioting after a loss, especially if there was a bad referee call, makes more sense.
Tim Donaghy is a compulsive liar. Part of his trashing the other refs is to cover up the fact that he did in fact fix games, as has now been definitively proven . His cover story was that he didn't fix games but was able to predict their outcome because the NBA effectively fixed them, so naturally he's going to push that.
I thought the reffing in Game 7 was pretty good, they allowed a very physical game, with no bail-out calls for Kobe (he loves those).
The victory riot story sounds too good to be true, but if you replace "drunken yuppies" with "drunken Irish" it seems more than plausible in Chicago. There were lots of heavy drinking young Irish state college grads working and living in downtown Chicago in those days. Probably they have all been replaced by Turkish and Indian immigrants by now.
""Most of those rioting are not French Canadians, they are Haitians from North Montreal that immigrated here.""
Oh yes, I forgot, just a few of the plethora of Haitian Hockey Fanatics!
I'd never heard of Jack In The Box prior to going to California for the first time in 1991 or so. They had a deal for a burger, a fry, and a taco for a buck thirty nine. Awesome. The burger had a uni-condiment, orange in colour (mutchup?)
Truth: you're forgetting Anonymous' rule of Americans talking about Canada: they never, ever get it right (corollary: meh, who cares?). You know less than squat about Canada, don't even try.
Yes, most of the Laker fans are Mexican. The Rioters waved Mexican Flags (KNBC4LA has a slideshow documenting this, so does the LA Times).
Hey Truth,dont worry. You should have seen the massive rioting in Chicago after the Hawks won the Stanley Cup! Yes i know you didnt hear about it--the media is covering it up.( BTW,I can personally guarantee you that A)Blacks and Mexicans are extremely indifferent to hockey, B)Mexicans DO like B-ball.) Anyway this 100% white crowd almost tore the town apart;massive police response,blood everywhere. Chaos. Oh wait-never mind!:) Richard Roepr--of Roger Ebert fame--wrote a column expressing his disappointment(sob!) that there were not more fans of color getting into the Hawks spirit;he has decided that the NHL needs to,yes,he really wrote it,to "reach out" to them! Or not...(Side note Richard is from Dolton,Il,current demo= African American 82%. I wonder why he doesnt live there anymore?????)
Victoriot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Riot
The Richard Riot was a riot that occurred on St. Patricks Day (March 17), 1955 in Montreal, Quebec. Maurice Richard, the star ice hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens, was suspended for a violent attack on a linesman and it provoked a riot at the Montreal Forum that spilled out into the streets. Some commentators have linked the Richard Riot with the birth of Quebec nationalism and the Quiet Revolution.[1]
Hee hee.
Wrong gear? Out of gear entirely.
Truth said..."Oh yes, I forgot, just a few of the plethora of Haitian Hockey Fanatics!"
Ah, a link to HuffPo. No chance they'd ever edit the selection of available photos to reflect their leftist agenda.
"You know less than squat about Canada, don't even try."
I once heard a brilliant exchange Between Boomer Esiason and Shannon Sharpe on the NBC NFL pregame show, it went something like this:
Sharpe: Kyle Boeller sucks, he's the worst QB in the league!
Esiason: What do you know? You've never played a day of QB in this league!
Sharpe: I've never been to medical school either, but when my stomach hurts, I know something is wrong!
Thanks for the photographic evidence, Truth.
Interestingly, John Henry's Hammer, who earlier said he considered Mexicans white, jumps in to join Truth in defending the rioting Mexicans. Why not point to the footage as evidence of white misbehavior, then? Instead you had to dig up stuff from 1955 Canada. It's not your intention, but the faint damn ends up a praise all the same.
A piece of advice: try English soccer hooligans instead.
Keep spreading the word about whites behaving badly, gentlemen. Maybe it'll finally cause a black & brown flight away from whites.
"The victory riot story sounds too good to be true, but if you replace "drunken yuppies" with "drunken Irish" it seems more than plausible in Chicago."
"Some commentators have linked the Richard Riot with the birth of Quebec nationalism and the Quiet Revolution."
"Yes, most of the Laker fans are Mexican. The Rioters waved Mexican Flags (KNBC4LA has a slideshow documenting this, so does the LA Times)."
All Catholics. American Protestants don't riot (white ones, anyway).
OT
"Unless she gets over one-third of the Latino vote, I don't care how much she spends, she's not going to win," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant who publishes the California Target Book.
I wish I was a "Republican consultant", even a former one -- then I could get work no matter how innumerate and stupid I was.
And in case you missed the reminder of how your time is so over, this article about how important "Latinos" are is from Seema Mehta.
So, several people mention NAM celebratory rioting and it's taken by the minority opposition here as the assertion NAMs are more prone to this type of recreational violence than whites (not that anybody said that, but let's play along);
Wheeling into action Hammer goes back over fifty years and into another country to cite an instance of drunken sports hooligans rioting in reaction to a perceived slight (irrational mob behavior but very different from the celebratory rioting that has become the US norm);
not content with this rule-proving exception, he then notes how this incident may have contributed to the splintering of a liberal democratic republic along linguistic and ethnic lines--apparently oblivious to unsettling similarity between that and Mexican ethnic chauvinists rioting in US streets, waving foreign flags.
Somebody hand this guy one of those paddles with a rubber ball attached to it.
This is the opposition, and they're winning. Abandon all hope.
Generally English soccer hooligans are quite disciplined. They restrict their violence to other soccer hooligans.
And not just random groups of opposing fans. The fighting is restricted to elite groups of hooligans.
These days with mobile phones, Facebook, Myspace etc they can orchestrate their meetings to the point where civilians are barely involved at all. Its almost South Koreanesque.
"Ah, a link to HuffPo. No chance they'd ever edit the selection of available photos to reflect their leftist agenda."
Yeah, Kylie, I get it; not only did they "edit the selection of photos" they probably also paid actors in L.A. to re-enact the black Haitian riot!
I hate that liberal media such as in Oil town Calgary! You don't get much more liberal than in the Houston of Texas, now do you.
And how about Youtube, can't get more limp wrist Pinko than that! Geez, it must have cost that guy a fortune to hire all of those extras and rent out Universal Studios Backlot.
And while we're on the subject of Haitians and Catholics, I didn't know that there were many of either In Edmonton.
And hey, tangentially, we all know the AP
IS as liberal as they come, right?
""Yes, most of the Laker fans are Mexican."
News Flash: Most of the people in L.A. are Mexican.
"American Protestants don't riot (white ones, anyway.)"
I didn't think little things like contrived national boundaries mattered in HBD, dangit, you people keep changing the rules!
Not that it Matters much anyway Sport.
They were rioting in Montreal long before immigrants arrived in large numbers.
And the recent hockey riots involved plenty of native born Quebecois, as Truth easily demonstrated.
White American kids riot too:
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-kids-are-all-white-by-tim-wise
There's no such thing as a "rule proving exception." You might try the phrase "rare exception". Except that it's not nearly as rare as you would have us believe.
Pointing out that Anglos and Canucks also behave badly isn't a defense of Latino bad behavior. By all means, lock 'em up.
But they're still white people, with a mix of Asian and European genes, who speak a European language and belong to Europe's major religion.
They behave badly, just like the Irish Catholics did. These are your people. Embrace them. They like you, why don't you like them back?
Didn't Dennis Dale roll with los amigos when he was kid? Why no love for your homeboys?
Between having a, ah, "tribalist" as its high priest in the front office - legalistically & rent-seekingly choosing the winners & the losers - and, opposite him, legions of young, illiterate, feral, gangsta thugs as what passes for its "talent" pool nowadays, the NBA is almost a perfect microcosm....
Thank goodness Seattle "lost" the Sonics. The city voted in a referendum not to spend any public money on sports stadiums. You all should hope your cities grow some balls to do the same thing.
Point taken, Henry, and sorry about the diss; as for this:
Didn't Dennis Dale roll with los amigos when he was kid? Why no love for your homeboys?
Lots of love--and a few relatives, too. But no delusions. And I can't say that I "rolled with" anybody hardcore, either.
This is why I find the situation hopeless--you can't say the obvious, that a southwestern US dominated by Latino politics is a bad thing, without being accused of "hating."
JHH:
Barack Obama probably has a lot more European genes than most Mexicans I see on the streets (and no, they don't look like telenovela actresses). Is Obama white?
Yes, drunken Irish are white, as are Russian gangsters. Ditto John McCain, George W. Bush and Vincente Fox. Who ever said whites are perfect?
But the average Mexican illegals and their children are mestizos and even pure Amerindians. I'd consider Turks, Afghans, and Persians white before I do them. As Steve himself once said: Turkey is a whiter place than California.
PS I'm (East) Asian. And no, don't be telling me to "embrace" Latinos, either. We have enough problematic people among our ranks. Google away!
Rioting is like crime. Every group does it. At issue is which groups riot more. And how far which group can rise above the culture that's behind rioting.
Tacos!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/taco-bells-five-ingredients-combined-in-totally-ne,3781/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/taco-bell-launches-new-morning-after-burrito,918/
Wasn't that the last recorded thing that Jim Morrison said? "Hey, let's get some tacos."
Oh, hey, another North American sports riot that will rapidly vanish down the Orwellian Memory Hole, after which the media will go back to pretending that this sort of thing only happens at foreign soccer matches.
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