Let's get something down here. It's been too long.

I was all set to make a great joke, but then I didn't get around to posting last week. The joke: "Yeah, so the kids up here were pretty disappointed on Thursday. You see, they should have had a snow day. But they couldn't - they were on spring break."

See, so it's not that funny of a joke, and it wouldn't've even been funny when it was pertinent, and I've reached a new low by not just writing about the weather but, indeed, by leading with the weather. The weather! Who am I? My grandma!? (She doesn't read this. I'm hopeful my mom won't try to explain what a 'blaag' is to her. Nothing good could come of that, I don't think.)

So the point is, yeah, lots of snow. Lots and lots of snow. We haven't cracked 35 degrees in about two weeks, though there exist rumors of 50s and sunny on Monday. Though I'd imagine it'll be 50s and sunny with snow still on the ground.

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I've decided that I need to decorate. The problem here is that I have no taste, nor a sense of color. I've successfully hung discarded mirrors, though I'm not sure that two different-colored mirrors in one corner of a dining room is a particularly good use of two different-colored mirrors. Though, to be certain, one mirror gives me a great view of the fake plant when I'm sitting on my couch, and another gives me a great view of the washer/dryer-covering shower curtain when I'm standing near it. So both are pretty good uses, I guess.

I own a total of about seven photographs, and I've decided that three are worth framing.

The inventory:
- New Year's 2002, Apartment E2 - I'm wearing what appears to be a tiara, and Harper appears to be drooling
- August 2006 - Nemo and Carrie. I'm not in the picture, because I don't think there exist any photographs including both myself and Nemo (unless it was a Rovell-snapped photograph from that NUR football trip to Indiana. We totally listened to a capella for the entire drive home, after an awful game - "Rud's got Antwaan. Rud's got Antwaan." But he doesn't have batteries.). The highlight of this particular photograph is the gigantic D-Nemo yawn in the background.
- May (June?) 2006 - Me and Gurs and Bullshot and Sharon. I think it's a pretty successful picture, though I'm sweatier than I'd like to be. It happens.

As trips to Target on consecutive nights can attest, these are 4" X 6" photos, not 5" X 7".

These will look nice on the bookshelf, though first I'll have to find somewhere else to put my Vinny Rottino bobblehead. How tough is it to put three snapshots in frames and on top of a bookshelf? Tough enough, apparently. It's taken three days. Small steps.

I've also got a nice vertical frame suitable for holding three horizontal pictures. I don't know where it'll go. We'll have an elder-Rud wedding photo with my brothers, a self-taken airport photo with my sister from February, and an as-yet-undetermined one.

This counts for news these days.

I should note that, on the second trip to Target, I definitely was tricked into buying some Kashi Go Lean Crunch ($2.50, so not a bad deal) due to excitement over the 'Serving Suggestion' on the front image. Turns out, it didn't come with blueberries. Crap.

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I really like The Thermals' most recent album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine. I decided that I'd like to purchase their previous album.

You've not lived until you've had this conversation:
Clerk: Thanks for calling Borders. Would you like to preorder Harry Potter?
Me: No, thanks. I was wondering if you'd be able to order a CD for me.
Clerk: Sure. I can see about that. Who's the artist?
Me: The Thermals.
[pause. typing.]
Clerk: And the CD you're looking for?
Me: Eh. Well...
Clerk: Fuckin A?
Me: Yeah, how much is it?
Clerk: $13.99.
Me: Yeah, let's do that.

Point is, I totally choked when there was a totally legitimate (semi-legitimate) reason to say "Fuckin A" in a grown-up setting. I really blew it.

(It's reasons like this exchange that only bad can come from my grandma learning about this here 'blaaaag.' Then again, ...)

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I got a great gift last Saturday when the Sports Illustrated featuring Corey Brewer on the cover finally arrived: A Gary Smith article. I think Gary Smith is probably America's best living writer, not that I'm entitled to have an opinion on something like this. And not the best living sportswriter, or the best living journalist, but the best living writer. Period.

He writes about four or five times a year for Sports Illustrated, but I think those four or five articles probably pay for the subscription by themselves. His Pat Tillman piece was one of the most thoroughly-reported and absolutely engaging/depressing/uplifting in its own way things I've ever read. It's already moved with me twice, and I've read it at three different home addresses.

This one, which may be his first article since then (? - Seven months? Can't be.) is about the 50th anniversary of the integration of Little Rock Central High School, which also happened to be the home of one of the greatest assemblages of high school football talent ever. An all-white team, of course, and nine black students that year, though one was expelled, and how they were at times escorted through the halls by the National Guard.

And the article's about how the team was definitively instructed to not get involved in the situation.

The article switches perspectives constantly - the guilt, or the denial, or the embarrassment of that old team, and their reticence to even go back to campus - intertwined, of course, with the history, and those players' perspectives on it, while mixing in anecdotes and attitudes of the current team, a multi-racial group that represents what is still one of the best high schools, academically, in the country.

My favorite part of the history, from Smith, regurgitating a former player: "Hell, no, he wasn't for integration any more than most of his team was, but for God's sake, if the adults had just stayed out of it, the kids would've accomodated the change. No one consulted them, even though it was they who would pay the price."

If you've not read it by now, I'd imagine you won't, but, gosh, the final portion of the story is just so well done. It imagines a meeting between the two teams, something which will never happen:

...Why, [the current team] would even assume that they'd be seeing the old Tigers here again on Sept. 25, when the world shows up on their front lawn for the big anniversary. But wrong again. No, some of their predecessors would tell them as they bid farewell. Too many years of feeling stereotyped, ignored, forgotten, and stigmatized.

This get-together would be it, the only chance for 67 teenagers to hear the story. The one about how a bunch of old white guys, best damn football team in the United States, got an inkling of how it feels to be black.

It's jarring. Wild. We'd compare it to O'Henry if this were seventh grade.

It's just so, so well done.

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This Don Imus thing. Just briefly. It's easy to excuse him, some say, because, "Hey, he's old! Old white guys are racists, after all, and they don't get gays or Latinos or Asians. Remember how Billy Packer said 'fag out' and how Tommy Heinsohn referred to Yao's 'chopstick hand?'" (Of course you don't.)

Here's the thing, though, friends:
The phrase 'nappy-haired hos' didn't exist when Imus was growing up. That's pure-1990's racism. He shouldn't be so dumb, but I guess that's kind of his thing. The bigotry, not the stupidity, that is.

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Me, I'm more interested in Sanjaya. Sultry.

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I got to talk to Jenny last weekend. That made me pretty happy. I get to see her next weekend. That's pretty super fantastic. I'd also like to see Bullshot and, if it can happen, HotPocket. We'll have to work on that. I think Jenny and Bullshot and HotPocket and The Boy could be a pretty good crew. We'll see if it can happen. Saturday? The 21st? Yes!