Jackie Chan can get that torch…
By Lawrence | April 9, 2008
He is the mutant of choice, no doubt. I don’t even have to go through the possible ways that Jackie Chan could get that torch. You know it would change hands two dozen times, as fists, legs, heads, shirts used as restraints, police clubs, mace, police dogs, helicopter blades, mace (medieval kind with the ball and chain), and the torch are all used in a glorious canvas of fisticuffs and brouhaha (kind of like a Jackson Pollack’s guide to the martial arts).
But can Jackie break through the security on the bus?
Better yet, can we call ‘the bus’ something else? How about, The Chariot of the Flame.
Can Chan breach the Chariot’s shiny walls and tinted glass? Come on now, people. You know he can… Shirt wrapped around the forearm, smash through the glass. Pull out one of those blowing accordion things used to blow up the embers in the fireplace. Fight off the shocked athletes and trainers with the accordion thing. Chan loses the accordion weapon thing, but then, while wrestling with a large German shotputter, ends up sitting on it with the nozzle pointed at- you guessed it-The Eternal Lantern aboard the Chariot of the flame.
That is just one of many, many scenarios…
Topics: Politics | No Comments »
This is going to be more complicated than I thought
By Lawrence | April 7, 2008
from the AP :
France’s former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch was extinguished along the route, the Olympic flame itself still burned in a lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights. A Chinese official said that flame was used to re-light the torch each time it was brought aboard the bus.
Whoa! Hey hold up now! That is cheating! So let me get this straight: it is NOT the handheld torch conveyed through busy city streets and (traditionally) cheering crowds that is the undying symbol of Olympic glory. No, the handheld is just an auxiliary symbol, a mass produced thing, free to be snuffed, relit and snuffed out again. Like a vampire served up a garlic flavored soy-burger in a lame attempt to kill it, it is just going to keep coming back. Clearly, what is needed in this case is to get close to the ORIGINAL VAMPIRE.
The original vampire is the master, the sire, the one whose act of wanton bloodlust gives all subsequent vampires the gift of the night. In this case, the OV is an itsy bitsy flame in a candy ass lantern aboard a bus closely trailing the torch procession.
In order to cancel the Olympics like I said in my last post, it turns out that we will need to actually board that bus and extinguish the LANTERN. The torch itself just won’t do. In fact, torch route officials were themselves smugly blowing it out in order to preempt a successful act of protest, then retreating to the bus secure in the knowledge that the real flame was safe in a little glowing glass and wire enclosure. Which, of course, is itself ensconced in a metal and glass protective shell casing known colloquially as a bus.
So the blanket idea is a no go- it is just going to get some poor souls arrested, imprisoned and branded as terrorists for nothing. Instead, what we really need is some kamikaze lunatic with thick bones and skull and powerful leaping abilities, who can generate enough upward and sideways force to smash through the bus glass and annihilate the lantern before anyone can stop him (or her. or IT!).
To pull off this maneuver, it might help if our volunteer mutant has a distraction. Maybe some of the protesters can continue acting as if they really believe the handheld torch is the genuine article, and can occupy security forces with their catcalls and fire extinguishers. Then, a group of Asiatic protestors who appear to be sympathetic to the Chinese cause can make their way nonchalantly to the bus. To pay homage to the real flame, perhaps. But in their midst, our mutant will lie in wait! And as soon as he/she/it senses the opportunity, whammo! Say sayanaro to the flame, baby! Those javelins will have to wait till 2012!
Now that the real secret of the flame is out, I expect the Chinese to use any and all methods to protect it. So it would also be strategically viable to have a backup mutant. Telekinesis is not out of the question; a spoon-bending Neo could simply levitate the lantern and smash it to bits on the walls of the bus. Or more subtly, just produce a cool, soothing breeze directly adjacent to the flame.
I am a strong proponent of the mutant line of attack because it is essentially non-violent and will not cost any human life. The Dalai Lama would want it that way. It might be possible to simply take control of the bus and drive it off a bridge and into the forceful currents of a river, but that would violate the Buddhist Precepts.
Topics: Politics | No Comments »
Let’s put out that torch people! Here’s how!
By Lawrence | April 6, 2008
Watching the news today, it was interesting to see two shining, symbolic beacons of freedom working at complete cross purposes. In the red corner, weighing in at 11 incarnations, the Dalai Lama! In the blue corner, fighting out of 3000 years of history, from Athens Greece, the eternal Olympic flame!
Now we all know that if the torch goes out, the Olympics will have to be canceled. That means that China will be left with a very embarrassing stadium bill, and all that work to de-smog the air of Beijing will have been for naught. So in the spirit of bringing China’s economic hopes and dreams to a standstill, here is the absolute, foolproof method for putting out that damned torch!
In London today, one man clearly had hold of it. He had gotten past the cordon of cops, then the inner layer of protectors, running right up to the bearer herself and grabbing hold of the beacon. He had it in his hands! Now, if that man would have just had a blanket…
a nice, flame retardant blanket or similar piece of cloth. Something that is not going to go up in flames itself, but smothers flames like a good cloth should. Surely, it would have taken little extra effort for this brave soul, accepting certain arrest/police beating, to carry a blanket on his person…
unless, of course, enough souls in the world don’t really want the torch to go out. In that case, a protective psychic shield of sorts could end up surrounding the torch, preventing perpetrators from using simple, effective means for extinguishing. Perhaps the world’s souls are of two minds- they do want it to go out, but also, they don’t. It is a confusing thing. I mean, there are so many memories with the flame, Muhammad Ali quivering from Parkinsons but bravely lighting it in Atlanta jumps to mind for me. Plus there is that whole thousands of years of tradition and history. But then again, the Dalai Lama…
Well, Paris is up next. If ever there were a group who could find the vive la verve to douse the flame…I think it is the French. Maybe some greasy fries in mayonnaise would do the trick.
I promised my wife I would mention her idea: a giant parachute landing on the torch from the sky. I tried to explain the multiple problematic aspects to this plan, but she really wants this crazy parachute idea ejected out there into the ether. I think it’s really dumb, but there you have it.
My wife and I do agree that it is time people stand up for something that stands for freedom. And in this case, the Dalai Lama wins out. It is time those smug Chinese government officials stopped getting away with violating the civil rights of whomever they please, then lying through their teeth and congratulating themselves for it.
And the same definitely goes for a certain illegal, unelected junta that has gripped the soul of America like a poltergeist. Just to be fair about it.
Topics: Politics | 1 Comment »
Defining and really getting at the thesis and the thesis statement
By Lawrence | March 13, 2008
Before you read this, you should have a strong blueprint in place for your papers thesis, evidence and presentation.
We know what a thesis is: the idea your paper purports to prove. The thesis statement is actually quite different; it is a literal (literally here, meaning, well, literally, based upon words) representation of the idea of your paper, born actually in your magical mind.
Like the big bang, the thesis is a momentary perception, a flash of insight in which the entire panoramic beauty of the paper, the tangled relationships between the ideas, is fully and completely apprehended in all its splendor.
When you ‘get it.’
You actually ‘get’ your paper in an instant, and no guide or piece of advice can ever substitute for that moment or do it in your place. If you choose to enlist the services of goodtermpaper, somebody else will carefully research your assignment and then ‘get’ your thesis for you. They will capture a unique idea from the universal currents. They might read up on Plato in the afternoon, jotting down idea for an outline. But it may be over dinner, or the next morning, that the flash of insight occurs. The flash is really a reward for hard work and careful consideration- some ‘portion’ of your being, your mental focus, must be invested in the problem.
The universe will only tell you a solution if you are paying attention! And in the case of Einstein, Newton, Rembrandt, and the like, the universe really does insist that you be paying a great, serious, awful big amount of attention to it. But how else to appreciate its beauty? Newton was so attuned that he ‘got’ the inverse relationship between gravitational bodies. He just ‘realized’ that every rock, gas giant and nuclear furnace in the sky is exerting an attractive force on every other.
Of course, Newton’s real work then commenced- plotting the trajectories and positions of these bodies! But it was that moment of insight that unfurled a lifetime blueprint of work and commitment for Isaac. Newton didn’t know why gravity existed, he only said, ‘I have described it. We cannot ever pretend that we actually understand why it is that two seemingly inert bodies possess this tremendous innate force. That’s just the way it is baby!’
So that is what a thesis is.
It is pretty obvious, also, what evidence is. That is the anecdotes, stories, statistics, quotes, history and interpretations that all, in some way, add to your growing and compelling case that you are right about your topic (or left, if you like). Although they come in varied forms, they maintain a thematic coherence by being related to each other. As your paper’s author, it is your job to ’set’ the thematic coherance and all relationship aspects between a group of elements. These elements may appear loose, disjointed on a mere surface examination, however- they are the elements that you chose for your paper, so they better have something to do with each other! 
You are the codemaster for your project. Think of it like a safe, as in, to keep valuables. Then, in turn, think of a safe as a filter, because that is really what it is, isn’t it? A safe ‘filters’ out access from those individuals who know the code on the lock. If they know the code, and can physically maneuver the mechanism, then they get to access. If they don’t, then they don’t. A safe is a very strong filter and attempts to break its code, like for instance with crowbars etc, will probably meet with failure if it is a good, strong American safe made out of real good metal. If it’s a good safe like that, then the molecules themselves will form a virtually impenetrable code that hammers et al will not be able to overcome. Molecules interlock, attract and repel one another in a code that is almost beyond comprehension. I think it is called organic chemistry and while my Dad and sister excelled and are excelling at that, my knowledge of the field stops at tinker toys. But that is why we have droves of experts at goodtermpaper.
Now, a nuclear explosion could easily break the code even on stainless steel, and the explosion would be granted access. Let’s just say that God holds the codes to all things, so the less safes you construct again Her/Him/It/They/Yoda, the better.
So in your paper, you are basically the god. But are a god venturing out into unfamiliar terrain, where information will attack you, appeal to you, seduce you, betray you and leave you for dead (well, maybe that’s a tad extreme, but you could get an F). That is because the information itself is sentient, alive, and strongly related to other pieces of information in its environment. Today, Hilary Rodham and Barack Obama stories contest, wrestle with, hunt and stalk one another on the seething digital saranghetti. It is every term paper god or sound byte for itself, as river access (real, substantial, truth telling, grounded and informative journalism) is at a dear, vanishing premium.
Now it is not really all that bad. Your teacher is aware of the environmental perils that await your god like expansion into knowledge, and everyone in your class is competing in the same plane.
And just to be clear, you are competing. Depending on your professor’s pedigree, length of tenure, temperament and ‘office political climate’ of his or her department, your teacher will grade the students along a predetermined scale. Now to be sure, the actual quality of the class in general will be taken into account, but past history and the above factors will have created some grading habits in your prof’s mind. They are human too, as you probably have realized by now (unless you subscribe to the killer robot theory).
So you are competing with your classmates, each of your trying to pull unique, substantial and creative interpretations of information out of pretty much the same resources, and sometimes for the exact same assignment. If you have a term paper or some freedom to choose- that is better in some ways, worse in others.
As you do this, you should strike a balance. An introduction is a good place for a story, compelling anecdote, bleak fact- depending on your assignment. An environment paper? Bleak fact is perfect. Paper on Mary Lou Retton? Definitely story. Politicans and government? Some juicy, telling anecdote (although bleak fact also comes to mind…inspiring, transcendent truth…?nah) These things all have strong emotional connotations for readers. However, you are conducting an orchestra, and you don’t want to linger on the sad, enraging or even upbeat notes forever. You want a change of pace, like a slider and a fastball (I am playing fast and loose with the blog, but you should never, ever mix this many metaphors in a term paper.)
Usually, an emotional or controversial introduction is best served by deploying your hardest, best evidence immediately following your thesis. A term paper is a fight for your teacher’s attention- they are bored, tired, and reading at least some papers from kids who don’t know a lick about how to write- so hit hard and fast with the best you’ve got.
As always, your paragraphs should follow the PIE format- present your idea, illustrate with evidence, and explain how it all relates.
After your hard evidence paragraph, the next paragraph could be more evidence to back up your thesis. It could also be exposition, where you expound upon your topic. To do this, your evidence paragraph will need a good concluding sentence as a lead in to your expoundatory topic sentence. This is extremely important and is probably the number one underrated, specific reason for why papers get marked down to Bs or Cs. No transition game. The same thing that dooms basketball and hockey teams- passes through the neutral zone. They can’t get broken up, they have to connect, just like your transition sentences- those sentences at the beginning and ends of your paragraphs.
Honestly, I can’t stress this enough. You can say almost anything- well, you have so much more leeway for creativity, speculation, if your transitions are airtight. This is a psychological and comfort issue with your professor. If your paper flows smoothly among its ideas, there is far less traction for the Red Pen of Death to grab onto. Grammar mistakes are part of this too- your paper should be free of them, and run a grammar AND spell check on a word processing program that has one (Open office doesn’t, for some damned reason). If you are free from mistakes, and you transition well, your paper will have a distinct voice that gets an uninterrupted reception in your teacher’s mind. She won’t be stopping very much to correct, to think to herself sternly what should be there, if you were a good writer. Everything good WILL be there, if you transition.
Topics: Term Papers and Essays | 1 Comment »
Term Papers the Expedited Way!
By Lawrence | March 10, 2008
Last we left off, we were discussing how to go about constructing a very large project and all of the elements you would require for that. However, if you are working on a short deadline and you are also stressing over the assignment, chances are your paper falls somewhere in the 3 to 8 page range. This is a common middle ground for assignments that teachers love to inhabit. Not coincidentally, it is around the three page threshold that your paper will start to demand a little more than a haphazard jotting down of your thoughts. As you are expected to expound upon your topic at some length, you will find it useful to organize your points.
Lacking organization, you might start off well with a very cogent piece of writing that tackles your subject head on. Still, the chances that you will run out of steam, or put down a paragraph in the completely wrong place, go up if you do not organize.
How can a paragraph be in the completely wrong place? Don’t I, as the author, enjoy poetic license?
No, you do not, because you are writing a report, not a poem. Creativity is valued at university, but it must know its place for most assignments. For term papers, creativity is the hand-maiden to Queen Organization. Creativity must wait for the Queen to finish her point before jumping in to add sparkle to the writing, or to steer the paper into an unusual line of pondering, etc. The Queen must be a stern monarch and not let her servant get out of hand.
A paragraph or passage can be in ‘completely the wrong place’ if it obviously writing that is appropriate for one area of the paper like intro, middle or conclusion, and it finds itself in the wrong section. Like a bra on the magazine racks at Wal-Mart, it stands out.
Let’s say you have an 8 page paper on Medicaire, and your thesis is that “…the hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the government contribute to the dysfunctional expenditure that is crippling America.” If you had a thesis like that, you may want to apportion out the responsibility to your four primary contributors in succession. That is, you would fully discuss hospitals’ role, then insurance companies, and so on.
If you just start right in on an 8 page paper like this, without planning, it is pretty likely something to do with pharmaceuticals would end up in the insurance section. This is not such a big deal if it happens once, or twice, but a paper filled with a random recounting of facts is going to lead your teacher to conclude that you did it in a hurry.
The trick is to do the paper in a hurry, but make it look like you took your time.
There are lots of ways to organize the medical paper; you could go by date, listing the relevant actions, legislation and scandals chronologically. Or you could come up with a list of core events or issues that have most strongly shaped the outcome of Medicaire, and ‘cross reference’ them with your primary actors. For example, one core event could be the rise in cost of malpractice insurance. You could do an italic header The rise of Malpractice, then explain how hospitals, drug and insurance companies and the government contributed to malpractice.
There are lots of paths to take with your paper. Whichever one you choose, make certain that you define it well, and then stick to your own plan. Bad grades happen when creativity gets out of hand. If Maid Creativity lowers your grade, then she is a haughty poseur whose masque has been stripped away and true identity revealed- Sloppiness! And people who cling to their right to be sloppy in the name of creativity are fast and loose thinkers. They do not realize what is in their own best interests. Don’t be one of them, kids! Do your papers the right way- the GoodTermPaper way!
Topics: Term Papers and Essays | No Comments »
Barack Hussein Obama
By Lawrence | March 7, 2008
Oh man. Did you know this? I did not, until recently, when someone introducing McCain at a political rally let it slip. Barack Hussein Obama.
Oh woman. This is terrible news. That Barack, the quintessentially eclectic savior of modern American politics, he just had to be THAT eclectic. Oh, Barack. Hiding nothing from your past. The marijuana use. Born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia. Muslim Grandfather, chiefly agnostic father who you never knew…a Christian conversion in a huge metropolitan American church, to sanitize that history and make palatable to Americans…
‘No,’ I can picture Barack saying. ‘I will NOT go to the courthouse and get this middle moniker dropped, or changed. I yam what I yam.’
Great. just great. Let me ask you all something: why haven’t we heard of this middle name before? (or have we, and I am just ridiculously out of touch? I have missed entire pop culture and musical epochs while being ensconced in a cocoon of self inflicted emotion before, but…) Barrack Saddam Hussein Obama Bin Laden. Why isn’t Hilary harping on this?
I will tell you what I think: this little tidbit is being saved for the general election. We heard it first from the McCain camp after all, but the announcer just let it slip a little early. When this little nugget comes out…
will we be doomed to another Republican and perpetual war in the Middle East just because the guy is white with an Irish name?
Americans will see past that, not judge the book by its cover? hmmm, show me. show me when we have seen past something like that.
Topics: Politics | 2 Comments »
Hurry up term papers, part three
By Lawrence | March 4, 2008
Once you have committed to following your prof’s instructions, the best way to fulfill that commitment is through an outline. This does not need to be an elaborate document with Roman Numerals governing your margins; I have scribbled hasty, barely legible outlines on scraps of paper, the back of a business card, even. Sometimes, three or four phrases are all it takes to suggest to your mind what it should be accomplishing.
Remember, this is your blueprint for your own mind to follow- so of course, it must be written in your language! Scribbled phrases, abbreviations, and suggestive arrows, exclamation points and ellipses work for me. This is an ad hoc ‘language’ that I can compose on the fly, take down, and then refer back to and remember- at least for those brief couple of hours in which I will be writing the paper! I might not be able to make sense of it next month, but that doesn’t matter.
Some ideas for outlines for the way in which YOUR mind works:
color coded post it notes. If you had an assignment on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, you might use red for the character of Martin Decoud, blue for the fate of the imaginary republic, grey for notations about the author himself.
note cards, or alternatively, sheaths of butcher paper. note cards allow you to put down distinct ideas on each card, and you can use different colored pens to create the same concept differentiation in the Nostromo example. If you are having trouble organizing your paper, you can just write down all your ideas on cards, randomly, and then sit in front of them and figure out how they all fit together. Obviously, you need some time to to really ‘feel’ the cards, hovering and savant like on the floor, but if you’re in a hurry, just tear up a few scraps of paper and hastily move them around until they make sense.
Hey, you’re not making any progress just sitting there, tapping your pencil into the tab key, are you?
The butcher paper is a trick I heard about from writers of long, involved novels. Maybe that’s not your assignment, but 10 or 15 page research papers are not uncommon even at the undergraduate level. For a study of that magnitude, you need to have a clearly delineated relationship between all of your data bits. A large paper needs to be constructed on a wide, convincing base of various kinds of evidence. Some of this evidence should kindle the reader’s emotional side; for a persuasive paper, an introduction that tells a horror story about a troubling problem or an inspirational tale about something positive is very effective. But of course, this should be quickly followed up with hard facts and statistics.
Topics: Term Papers and Essays | No Comments »
Writing a term paper in a hurry, Part Two
By Lawrence | March 4, 2008
So what kind of game plan takes into account stress, hurry, fatigue and distractions? Let’s call it the GoodTermPaper bare necessities plan.
First, read your teacher’s instructions for the paper front to back, several times. Highlight, underline or otherwise indicate important points to follow. Even if you read nothing else, read those instructions! They are your best chance at getting an A, especially under time constraints. Even if your paper is sloppy, transitions poorly, meanders and bullshits its way through important points about which you have limited knowledge, you MAY still get a B or C IF your paper adheres to the teacher’s instructions. If the instructions say to discuss Napoleon’s military genius AND his economic and political blunders WHILE reflecting upon his legacy and contributions to the modern world, then:
You should open with a discussion of a battle and talk about the tremendous gains Napoleon made through that and other battles. Then you should move on to mistakes, and how it was such a shame that a great genius was so dumb about other important points. Throughout the paper, you should mention the Napoleonic law codes, which were a great boon to civilization. Even if you get some facts or interpretations wrong, your teacher will respect the fact that you respected HER plan for the paper. There is a very important reason why this is true:
The human brain has expectations. Your teacher has already seen the perfect paper for this particular assignment in her mind’s eye. She knows the essential story that it tells, and how it moves from one portion of that story to the next. The closer you can come to emulating this internal mental model of your professor’s, the higher your grade will be.
Of course, you could try to blow your teacher away with an outside the box concept- that might work and get you an A+, it might get a C. Some people admire creativity, while others consider it a nuisance and impediment to what they wish to accomplish. You should definitely try to formulate a judgment about your teacher’s character before going outside the box!
Topics: Term Papers and Essays | No Comments »
Writing a term paper in a hurry
By Lawrence | March 4, 2008
We’ve all been there- a term paper or essay assigned over a holiday break, or during the week the kids are sick- it is easy and understandable to put off the necessary steps of writing when fulfilling the necessities of life! In an ideal writing world, Monday would be for simply reflecting upon and enjoying the topic, just getting your brain energized for the fun task of writing a creative report! Tuesday would be when you would go to the internet or the library, looking for good, credible sources with vibrant quotes and clever arguments. Maybe you would photocopy or take notes. Wednesday would find you hard at work, integrating all the sources and their perspectives into your own, unique outline for your paper. Thursday would be rough draft day, and you would still have Friday to look things over and check for spelling. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, the programme I have just described above usually only applies to Ivory Tower Intellectuals. ITIs have full scholarships and tons of time for writing and homework. They are the modern day scribes- the kind of folks who used to be kept at the nobles’ and kings’ courts, busily transcribing on parchment the exploits of their sponsors with quill pen.
Today, we have Vista and OpenOffice instead of calligraphy. And you don’t have time to mess around.
On Monday, you rushed off to morning classes in a hurry and had a pop tart in the car for breakfast. ‘Lunch’ was taking little Melinda to the Doctor’s office, to get an opinion on the rash that she has been scratching incessantly. Work (the paid kind) starts at 2:30, and goes till 8 (its only part time). After doing data entry for six hours and sitting stationary in class for three hours that morning, you decide to jog home instead of taking the bus (let’s assume you live and work in a nice part of town and can go jogging at night). You get home at nine, and read Melinda a story and have a long talk with Bobby about school bullies. Their Dad made dinner, so at least you don’t have to cook. At 10:30, you sit down at your computer and review your school assignment. You are just starting to google topics and articles when the phone rings-this time your Mom, and it turns out your Aunt Gladys has been admitted to the hospital for diabetes. The family is very concerned, and you spend another 45 minutes calming them down…after hanging up, you decide to put off starting your essay until tomorrow…
What happens on Tuesday? Wednesday? Whenever you can find time to write, it may amidst severe distractions or interruptions. You need a game plan to stay focused under the most extraordinary conditions, and with the shortest amounts of time possible in which to work.
Topics: Term Papers and Essays | No Comments »
I buy bad things
By Lawrence | February 19, 2008
my wife just told me ‘you buy bad things.’ this was in response to wanting to buy, for $2.95, a 30 day trial of derek gehl’s Insider Secrets Marketing Program. Wow. the ISMP, that is.
Lawrence: “It’s only $2.95 for a month, and then at the end, if you want to continue, just $212 more!”
Gitta: “You buy bad things.”
Lawrence (face now ashen): ‘…hmmm’ “Hey wait a minute! Stop telling me that! I buy good things too!”
Gitta: “Okay.”
so we decided that before i would buy it, i would call the 800 number tomorrow (its past midnight now), and find out their exact cancellation policy. If the CP mandates an Iranian postcard with invisible ink, then it will obviously become a draconian, kafkaesque carnival of pure joy to free my slender, shiny, silver credit card digits from their clutching, hissing Corporate snake mouths.
But I really don’t expect anything of the sort. However, there is one problem- the special deal only applies to the first 300 customers! OMG, OMG! I hope, between, now and then, that 300, well even 299 people calling in ahead would present problems, what if I can’t get to the phone…
In all seriousness, though, two years ago, in Miami, I was seriously considering joining Shaq’s gym on the spot because of a similar promotion. I think they had the magic 300 number also, maybe it was the first 250 customers. This was right after Shaq’s LA trade, during that first year, when the Heat got as far as Detroit but Wade the Flash tore an abdominal muscle in game 5, I believe. The Heat lost in seven games that year but had a sweet championship parade for the Greater South American Metropolitan Capital the next year.
So Shaq was opening up this gym in Coconut Grove, which is probably second only to Miami Beach itself for a desirable place to hangout or reside. I lived very near this area actually. But ha ha, I lived in the Black Grove, just a stone’s throw away from the rich Grove, but the difference was literally night and day in just a few block’s walk. Grand Avenue, home of the annual Goombay (sp?) festival, where they probably long since torn down the concrete block apartment buildings in which I lived, and widened the street to make room for condos and high rises. That, at least, was the hubbub when we moved out of the area. They were pretty much going to redo the entire street to make it Miami Vice pretty and push everybody back. There was not really a football field’s worth of uninhibited nature in Miami. There were gigantic cranes all along the marina, hoisting I Beams into place for new high rises. Of course, there were beautiful parks and goreous causeways looking out onto the crashing oceans, and that was extraordinary. But not enough room to roam.
I lived in the Black Grove, in a $450 a month apartment, but I found work by the mall. First, just a little pizza place job (the graveyard shift) to pay rent. We had just exhausted our pile of junk car driving down from Twin Oaks Community, which is another story for another day, as the saying goes. We laid our last $900 down to cover first and last or whatever, and moved into a 14 unit apartment complex just a hair’s breadth away from ghetto central. Real hardcore ghetto was West down Grand Ave 7 or 8 blocks. There, while (IDIOTICALLY! STUPIDLY!) walking through the ghetto to the bus station with luggage, we were nearly mugged (the luggage was for a movie extra gig, and everyone had to show up with some luggage b/c it was being filmed at an airport). I say nearly mugged b/c while a gun was flashed, it was not fully drawn, and while our attention was engaged, we were not spellbound or rooted to the spot. We hemmed and hawed and retreated and he threatened, until God sent a ‘random’ car down the street to break up the encounter, at which he ducked away for a moment, and we ran away, screaming our heads off!
The corner near where I lived was merely a crack dealing pavillion. It even had tables and chairs inside of a large fenced in area, like it was some kind of community rec area. I am white so I obviously never went in there, so my memory is fuzzy.
No one ever threatened to kill me because I was white. One time an old crackhead lady tried to mug me because I pulled out nearly $200 at midnight on the street, one block away from aforementioned crack dealership. You see, one of my buddies, a street hustler named I don’t know what, someone I used to hand out some leftover pizza slices to when I went home from that job, had come up to me and asked me for a dollar. I had had a pretty good night at the rickshaw (I didn’t get to this part yet, be patient), making nearly $200, so I was in a plenty charitable mood. Problem was, I didn’t have small change on me in another pocket. So I pulled out the whole wad in a sort of mini wallet with a string neck-chain, and this wobbling, twitching, charming woman sauntered on up and grabbed hold of the string!
I still have hold of the money purse, of course, so I start screaming my head off, yelling HELP, HELP!, and my friend the hustler just kind of laughed and backed off, he didn’t want any part of robbing me but wasn’t really going to help me either. In fairness, he probably saw the wobbly crackhead far more than he ever encountered me.
One of the large black women from the building came out onto the common balcony, but they were all sort of nonplussed too, I think ( I was very focused on my $200, so again, sketch memory), they were trying not to burst into outright, uproarious laughter, out of respect for me, but it was a near thing.
Eventually the string broke or she let go or something, and I had the money. She was real nasty afterward and reached into her pants and started threatening like she had a piece. I immediately backed off and went into the building. Even as I was retreating and she was advancing, however, I suddenly sprang forward, like I was going to charge her, but didn’t. And she backed off for that instant. But I still respected the possibility of the gun, even though logically that was an absurdity. If she had really possessed the gun, of course, she would long since have robbed me blind. But in that kind of fast paced situation, you react on habit and instinct, not conscious thought.
We called the police but of course she just lurched away and blended in amongst the greater army of the drugged undead. It is a really sick, sad thing that crack does- it looks like the entire nervous system is shortcircuited, and the tendons make normal human facial expressions into grotesque caricatures. She did come back later that night to thump menacingly against the building until 3 or 4 in the morning (I am not kidding.) And I was too scared to go out and do anything.
One of the young guys in the building suggested that I should not have hesitated to hit her square smack in the face. Far from hesitating, this thought actually never even occured to me, for some reason. I was more in the screaming for help mode, even though I was a hulking, gleaming rickshaw driver that outweigh…well, she was a crackhead, so you get the picture. But I never thought to hit her, I guess I more just wanted her to disappear…
If it was a man, I would have kicked his arse no problem, of course. That goes without saying.
So anyway, I was running the rickshaw after I quit the pizza place. A rickshaw is pretty much the same as in China, It has two wheel with a seating carriage on top and two bars that extend forward for the runner to grab hold of. Our rickshaws were all metal, and the bar went all the way around the driver (i.e. there were bars to the side and they were connected by a bar in front). This was important, because we were expected to do tricks.
The tricks involved the simple jump, a brief, uplifting thrill for the passengers in back, or a more elaborate run, gently tilt and gather sideways momentum, jump and maintain a spin for as long as possible. The end of this move would involve the metal back of the rickshaw scraping against the pavement, the bars (and driver) perpendicular to the ground, while the driver stands on the passenger’s footbar and looks down on the uplooking riders. Then, the driver can pretend to step or fall on them, all the while holding onto the bars, but the kids in the rickshaw don’t see that, they only see the feet!
Other moves were spider man, which was the same as the jump and spin except running and using the feet against a wall to complete the turn. Superman was putting the bar of the rickshaw down, stepping outside of the cage entirely, then going to the front of the rickshaw and picking up just the front bar. You would pick up the bar, all the while looking at the passengers, threatening to simply throw the bar up and drop them straight backwards (you don’t ever actually do that b/c they would hit the ground too hard). But you threaten it, then throw the bar up and allow the rickshaw to pick YOU up, and forward, while you swing your feet in the air, directly above and in front of the faces of the passengers. While this is a straight drop to the ground for the riders, it is not hard b/c the driver’s weight is balanced against the carriage weight. To bring them back up, just step on the passenger foot bar, grab the main front bar, and swing forward!
So I was running this rickshaw and almost signed up for Shaq’s gym, it was just opening, and there was a special deal but I had to sign up for a whole year. The guy had a table out front, and on it were only 300 spots for signatures! I was mighty tempted, but what saved me from a foolish purchase, from a ‘bought bad thing,’ according to Gitta, was the lack in the gym of a sauna. I need a sauna in a gym, like my ascendancy over street hooligans (male), that also goes without saying.
So I didn’t sign up. It was pretty ridiculous anyway, a rickshaw runner signing up for a gym. If you made $150 in a night, you probably did 7 rides. Each ride is 10 to 15 minutes of the most extraordinary kind of exercise I have ever experienced, and will never experience again! I think I put on 20 lbs of muscle just in my legs. We weren’t bulky though, more like chiseled, bordering on wiry (we were alot better paid and probably fed I’m guessing than our Oriential counterparts). I built some strength in my arms from that but really not that much. During the year that I ran the contraption I had about the best endurance that a human can. Ultimately, I acquired some injuries that forced me to quit and start doing some work at which I can sit down. It took me a couple of years to heal from the injuries fully (nagging muscle tears and such)- while the experience was worth it, I DO NOT recommend rickshaw running as a viable commercial venture. Unless you are Arnold.
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