Author: KcM

After the Falls.

Well, my two Finals contenders are still alive…still, the 2007 NBA post-season is proving once again that I know very little about basketball. I can’t say I predicted the ugly Miami implosion, the Mavericks’ brutal collapse or yet another first-round falloff for T-Mac and the Rockets. (Then again, not many did. I also wrongly had Toronto over NJ too, but, as I said, that was more due to wanting to see VC get his karmic just-desserts than any basketball sense. Ah well.) At any rate, here’s hoping Phoenix and Golden State can keep moving forward in the West. Sorry to the Utah fans out there, but a Jazz-Spurs Western Conference Final really sounds too boring to contemplate, and either of them up against almost-assured Eastern winner Detroit doesn’t sound all that relishable to me either (even if it would be nice, a la ‘Zo and Payton last year, to see C-Webb get a ring.)

“The Other K-Street.”

“Congressional Republicans have been renowned — and often criticized — for harnessing the clout of special-interest groups and lobbyists to advance their agenda…After the 2006 elections, left-leaning groups now conduct their own, similar meetings to advance the Democrats’ cause.” The WP delves into the new Democratic tinge of the K-Street lobbying world. Hmm. Well, I guess I’ll take a left-leaning lobbyist over a right-leaning lobbyist any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but I would hope the Pelosi House keeps this new K-street bunch at further remove than did their predecessors. Both Democratic reps and liberal interest groups have displayed their reluctance to commit to real campaign finance and lobbying reform in the past when the tide’s swinging their way, and I fear, once the cash starts flying around in earnest, that this liberal-leaning slope will get just as slippery in very short order. You don’t wear the ring, people. You destroy the ring.

Rooms in New York.

“Sexual tension is at the heart of Hopper’s Room in New York, a scenario we peer at through an open window. Home from work, the man reads the sports page. Dressed to go out, the woman plays a single note on the piano, knowing it will annoy him. Their faces are almost as featureless as the blank sheet of music on the piano. Separated by the abstract expanse of the tall brown door, they are literally out of touch. But look a little closer at that fleshy pink armchair…Doesn’t that pink chair look unsettlingly like a huge hand, a jutting thumb and curled fingers, ready to clutch the unsuspecting man from behind and give him a shake? Is this the woman’s fantasy?“

Mount Holyoke English professor Christopher Benfey surveys “Edward Hopper’s secret world” for Slate, commenting at length on a painting whose iconography I’ve been shamelessly pilfering for years here, at the personal site, and elsewhere. Interesting…I always felt the picture captured a state of anomie and self-inflicted loneliness more than it did sexual tension — It’s a furtive through-the-window look at two people crammed into a tiny little room in New York basically ignoring each other. Or, more to the point, the man at left, caught up in the newspaper (news, not sports!) is so distracted by the world at large that he’s shut out his neglected lover at the piano: In his attention to distant events, he’s missing out on the beautiful things in his own life. But, hmm, that chair…

The “Go Obama” Party?

“‘I disagree with Obama on the war but I don’t think it is a test of his patriotism,’ Martin says. ‘Obama has a message of hope for the country.‘” Come on aboard, you won’t hurt the horse: Disillusioned Republicans wander over to the Obama bandwagon, including “Power and Weakness” author Robert Kagan. “In an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was ‘pure John Kennedy’, a neocon hero of the cold war…’Personally, I liked it,’ Kagan wrote.” And, really, after seeing what the Republicans have to offer at the first debate last week, can you blame him or anyone else for defecting?

DeLay cries foul.

“We have cooperated with everything. We’ve given them everything, including computers; they’ve taken computers that I had here. They’ve gotten everything that’s got anything to do with my life.” A deposed Boss DeLay decries his treatment by the FBI, taking particular umbrage at the investigations into his wife Christine: “She did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.” Underpaid? Christine DeLay, it may be remembered, was paid $500,000 in PAC funds by the DeLay campaign, $3,300 a month for three years in funds apparently skimmed from the US Family Network, and another half-million in a retirement account set up by former DeLay staffer and lobbyist Edwin Buckham.

Oarsmen of the Caribbean.

Back as of Monday from the Dominican Republic, where I enjoyed a crew reunion weekend in lovely Cabarete, a friendly backpacker-going-on-tourist town rife with European ex-pats and kitesurfing experts. With the local reputation in mind, we spent much of the weekend taking kitesurf lessons at Extreme Cabarete (kitesurfing, skate park…that’s extreme in the Harold & Kumar sense), enjoying sun, surf, food, drink, and the rather underwhelming De La Hoya-Mayerweather fight at the many restaurants and nightclubs along the beach, taking in more of the local flavor in neighboring Sosua, and staying up into the wee hours at our hotel, the (highly-recommended) Cabarete East, indulging in marathon sessions of competitive backgammon. (Yep, that’s how we roll.) All in all, a very fun trip…although unfortunately a sore throat I brought with me to the island on Thursday had metamorphosed into a full-blown virulent cold by Sunday, and I’ve been waylaid in bed the past few days trying to recuperate. I must say, it’s more fun to feel sick under the Caribbean sun.

New Leaders in the Old World.

“Within the next few weeks I won’t be the prime minister of this country. In all probability a Scot will become prime minister of this country and that’s someone who built one of the strongest economies in the world and who I’ve always said would make a great prime minister.” With recent tough defeats for Labor in Scotland punctuating his closing weeks, Tony Blair announces he will make an announcement tomorrow concerning his forthcoming resignation and likely replacement by Chancellor Gordon Brown. And, across the channel, France elects Nicolas Sarkozy as its new president, a conservative who’s seen as both US-friendly and Dubya-friendly. Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne wonders what recent events mean for European — and American — progressives. Update: Tony Blair announces his last day: June 27.