Still buzzed from some old school, late night Ultimate with the ASU club team. Diablos Captain (and Sprawl player) Brady asked if we could scrounge some guys together and give them some competition. We got about 11 or so together and played them from 9-10:30 tonight. Pretty exciting; this was kinda Justin's and my (nay, Justin and I's!) first official Sprawl event. Tough game at first; predictably, ASU came out running really hard and putting up some nice hucks. Didn't help that I started things off with an under-warmed up, too low huck to JD that got D'ed. Yeah, my first throw as a Sprawl cap'n was a turn intended for the other cap'n. Yikes. Anyways, we exchanged points for a bit, then pulled up by a break and took half 7-5, then busted out a trap zone that befuddled them. We ended up winning 13-5, and got some pretty heady play from a lot of dudes. I got my act together, too, playing okay on D but putting up quite a few hucks and scoobers/hammer for scores. Really fun night; ASU looks pretty solid / athletic, a little off with some throw-choices, but that's more or less par for the course for a college team v. club team. I like our farm team. :) I like our club team, too - great to get out on the field with Les Dudes again.
Other news: had a bit of an embarrassing moment at school today. A little background - there are lots of "fashionable" guys and gals at ASU, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. And as with generally any American style situation, the gals' fashion choices stand out quite a bit more than those of their male counterparts. The standing joke is that there are 65,000 students here, but only clothing enough for 40,000. Ha. One of the more interesting fashion phenomena is that the instant the thermometer drops below 78 degrees, a lot of the gals bust out their ASU hoodies (or even worse, fur-lined hoodies) and Uggs, aka ridiculous $300 fur-lined boots. Only they generally don't adjust the rest of their clothing to match and end up walking around in a sweatshirt, butt-length shorts / miniskirts, and knee-high furry boots. I don't think this is me being prude or unhip; they just look kinda ridiculous. Absurd, even. The moniker that has arisen for this ridiculous ensemble, or I suppose the girls who wear it, is "Eskiho." It's a name that's as ridiculous as the outfit, and generally grabs a few laughs. Note also that it's generally not said to people or even behind people's backs, but is a joke told about the fashion phenomenon. I.e., I've never heard anyone say (nor have I said), "Here come some eskihos," or anything like that. It's always in these abstract, what-the-hell-are-kids-these-days-thinking sense (which I suppose says more about us than said kids).
So today in lab, someone was wondering why there had been a camera set up immediately outside our building, and I made some crack about the photographer doing a National Geographic spread on the migratory patterns of the Southwestern Eskiho. One of my labmates then pointed out that she didn't like this word as it was a "sexual-habits slur." Ouch. I felt immediately bad, and I have to grant: this is certainly a gender-un-neutral derogatory term, and "ho" is certainly a gendered slur aimed at the sexual habits of women. I'm generally sensitive to these sorts of PC speech issues, but oddly, this offense hadn't really occurred to me - the joke is so much about the idiotic fashion and not about anyone's sexual habits that I hadn't thought of it. But yeah, point taken, pretty rude to call anyone a "ho" in any sense, even if it is more a comment on absurdity of still wanting to bare one's thighs while one's toesies are cold. I guess it fails to hide behind a sort of "hey, you are dressing rather unsubtly provocatively / like a sex worker in a way that is logically incoherent, unless you have come kind of weird circulation issue" claim. Oh, and "all that fur is stereotypically what you see Inuits wear." That, too, I suppose is breaching some sort of code.
So anyways, I pacified the offended by saying, "withdrawn!" and promising never to use the term again. But I demanded that we needed to come up with a new word for this phenomenon, because I still need to be able to talk about the goofy styles I see, just not in an offensive way. So - if you can come up with a solid term for this Uggs/Mini/Hoodie combo that doesn't involve sexual habits or Native Alaskans, let me know. In the meantime, I've devolved to groaning, "UGH!" every time the fashion comes up. And that will only work for so long.
Oh, also in lab today - LiJing gave a talk today on the history and science of the "Hayflick Limit." It's the cap on the number of divisions a cell line can undergo before the telomeres get too short and the cell enters senescence. LiJing pointed out that a poet, an indie band from Houston, and an electronica group had all used "Hayflick Limit" as a title in their works. This was somehow supposed to indicate a pop culture relevance external to the scientific study of the topic. People were arguing over whether this was worth including in the talk - L had gone about ten minutes over and was looking, as Andrew said, to use a hatchet, not just a scalpel. Some thought that this info was superfluous, some thought it was a good selling point and would get people talking. Huh? I pointed out that, strictly speaking, three random works including a term hardly makes it have "a pop cultural impact." And wow, some people in the room got this, and some SO did not. When pressed, I said that the point was that you can take almost any scientific term and it's virtually guaranteed that some indie band nerd out there has written a tune about it. I.e., not every slapped together reference to a topic represents an impact. This was met (again, by part of the lab - many people were nodding "Nyet's right" or pointing out the difference between popular culture and Popular Culture) with incredulity. The exact quote was "It's not like any band is writing songs about telomerase."
Au contraire...
Anyways, a weird interaction, because here we are on the one hand arguing about every little esoteric factoid, trying to be as historically rigorous as possible, yet we were about to advise L to make a unfounded claim about the social impact of this term to "sell" her talk. I'm not really down with that; I'm also generally against these sorts of "the zeitgeist" claims about pop cultural impact. We're fractionated, people; I don't care if the band is called "The Airborne Toxic Event." I'm not about to pretend that it's not just the hipster-namedrop of some indie-dude but really some sort of mass impact that Don Delillo is having.
Anything else? I spent two hours this morning getting continuously educated by my TA-job-employers. I theoretically learned some tips for teaching a large class. I submitted the proper forms and passed the appropriate quizzes. Competence indicated! Johnny spent a solid five minutes trying to convince me that Sting's solo career is superior to his work with the Police. He's obviously forfeited all rights to be taken seriously in future music discussions. (I mean, he might as well have said that "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" was a masterpiece). Beck and I got some delicious $4 cheeseburgers at Maizie's Bistro in central Phoenix for dinner (yes, pre-scrimmage cheeseburgers! I did not major in kinesiology). Fun date; Beck continues to do an excellent job tracking down and trying out all the good restaurants in our new hood.
Oh, and yeah - SHUT UP ABOUT THE 4th DOWN, TALKING FOOTBALL HEADS. I will never understand the non-existent intelligence baseline of sports commentators. *Some* people are at least clever enough to point out that given even a normal offense, let alone the Colts' high octane supershow, going for it on 4th down was the proper percentage play. What is extraordinarily disappointing to me is that no one is mentioning that if BB really had this all planned out and wasn't just shooting from the hip, then perhaps a run on 3rd down (if nothing else to take the clock down to the two minute warning) was in order. That's the weirder thing to me; not the BB went for it on 4th, that he acted as though he didn't plan anything in advance. How do you not have some sort of decision-tree set up in your head approaching that last series? Anyways, the game disappointed me badly; it's just terrible to be unable to defend that lead in the 4th. Blar.
AS long as I'm accounting for miscellaneous things here... Beck and I went on the Thursday evening Scottsdale Art Walk a couple of weeks ago, and it was MUCH nicer than the downtown First Friday experience. Lots of galleries, hip people, space to breathe, etc. We'll definitely be making that a biweekly experience. We've also been hitting up the outdoor film showings at the local mall; so far we've caught The Birds, West Side Story, and Diamonds are Forever. It's a fun time, and nutty - I got there an hour early for WSS and almost didn't get a seat. People show up way early and make a picnic of it. Anyhoo, good to be getting out and about in our community. Good also to have Beck bring calzones to the movie and follow it up with Mojo. The good life.
Alright, time for bed. Full day at school tomorrow and a VOTS-league showdown with Justin's* May Cause Dizziness. Should be fun. I'll let ya know.
* - Oh, btw, apparently I gushed a little too effusively in the Sprawl post. Justin asked how much he owed me for the writeup and said he was going to show it to his mom or something. Hey - I only blog the truth. Except for that speed of light thing; that was a little over the top. At least I haven't referred to JD as the "Hey There Delilah" of VOTS Ultimate yet. I imagine only Beck will get that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment