Hemingway does the Super Bowl, files late

February 3, 2015February 3, 2015 ~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

This year there were many victories. The Patriots captured the big town beyond the frozen lakes where the Vikings sail and there was a victory over the Chiefs on a great plain and the Pats went back East and crossed the bay to a fort with a field of false grass near a large building with a restaurant on many floors in a village called Foxborough. The town was very nice and the fort was very fine. There were more victories and the townies toasted the Pats in the cafes and bawdy houses.

The leaves fell and a cloud rolled off the bay and suddenly the Pats were in it and it was snow. The winter took hold and the town was different. The war was changed too. The Pats broke camp and flew south and west to a bawdy house in the desert for the final battle. The day was clean and cool and the night was even better. The Pats and Seahawks fought till they were weary and left the field.

I watched the second half on a flat screen at a galleria and ate spicy Doritas and drank Asti with Miss Barkley. “Call me Catherine,” she said. The galleria was very nice and Catherine was very fine. We held hands. Katy Perry lip-synced “Firework” and sailed around the field on a boom crane and shouted “God bless America.”

The troops fell into line and trotted back onto the field. The Seahawks brought up trench mortars and blew a big hole in the Pats’ front line. The Pats regrouped and counterattacked. The Seahawks held the line and attempted a coup de main. It failed and the Pats prevailed.

I was on assignment but the night was young. I told Catherine her hair was very beautiful. We drove for hours and jumped into a boat and rowed to a hotel in Switzerland. “And you’ll always love me, won’t you?” Catherine said.

In the morning I rolled out of bed to write my story. I stared at the blank page until I remembered the details of the game. The players wore splendid uniforms and butted heads often and were very brave. In a few weeks I won’t even remember who played. I filed my story and put on my coat and walked out into the rain.

Editor’s note: Last year I sent Virginia Woolf to cover the game, but she made a mess of it. It was a boring affair, so she left early and filed something about a lighthouse.

You may not love football

February 3, 2015February 9, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

But you’re still paying for it!

If you’re a U.S. taxpayer then you’re subsidizing the wildly profitable National Football League, regardless of whether you’re a fan.

The NFL is the most profitable pro sports league in the U.S., raking in an estimated $1 billion in profits on $10.5 billion in revenue last season, figures that are sure to increase this year.

Those massive profits are made possible in part by the billions of taxpayer dollars that local governments spend on teams, coupled with tax breaks worth hundreds of millions for the teams, the league, their sponsors and fans.

Here’s a rundown:

Stadium construction: Twenty new NFL stadiums have opened since 1997 with the help of $4.7 billion in taxpayer funds, according to an analysis by the advisory firm Conventions, Sports and Leisure. Local governments pony up to build these venues to attract or keep teams in their towns.

Two more stadiums now under construction in Minneapolis and Atlanta are being built with $700 million in government funds.

Taxpayers paid for most of the University of Phoenix Stadium, which opened in 2006 and is home to this Sunday’s Super Bowl — to the tune of about $300 million.
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Other people’s money

February 3, 2015February 3, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Oh, look: Chris Christie, living high on the hog on someone else’s tab. Again.

Remember when he had the biggest expense accounts of any U.S. attorney, always staying at five-star hotels and ordering lots of room service with his “close advisor” Michele Brown?

They got him

February 3, 2015February 9, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Remember when I asked for donations of duffel bags and suitcases for foster kids? The woman I worked with to set it up was Kim Jones, the victim in this seemingly random shooting death several weeks ago. It had me really depressed, I didn’t want to talk about it. But I feel a lot better now that they got the guy who did it:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An assistant director at a child advocacy organization followed and shot his supervisor as she waited at a bus stop so she couldn’t report him for stealing about $40,000 from the organization, police said Monday.

After the slaying last month, Randolph Sanders told a television station that he was “stunned” by the death of 56-year-old Kim Jones, a mother of two.

“She was incredibly happy,” Sanders said in the interview with WPVI-TV in Philadelphia. “So this is – this is just disturbing.”

But over the weekend, authorities say, he confessed to shooting Jones once in the back of the head in what homicide Capt. James Clark described as “a premeditated assassination-style” killing.

One of the things that depressed me was how many people insisted to me the cops would never bother trying to find the shooter, because the victim was black and it happened in North Philly. I knew that wasn’t true — if there’s anything that gets cops motivated, it’s finding the killer of someone they think of as a “citizen” (as opposed to a scumbag). And social worker Kim was a solid citizen. Heck, she was even standing at the bus stop listening to gospel music on her headphones when she was shot.
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