Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

Well, this Saturday is November, the month where the contenders break apart from the pretenders in SEC play.

LSU is playing out of conference this weekend against La. Tech, and although there”s no SEC implication, my Tigers find themselves in BCS contention and therefore all games matter this year.

As I”ve said many times, LSU would typically fall on their face in a game like this; coming off the big win over Auburn. When set up for success, we typically choose failure. Performance in games like this is the key to judging Nick Saban in relation to Gerry DiNardo, Curley Hallman and Mike Archer - who all failed to turn good starts into great seasons.

And so we welcome La. Tech to Baton Rouge Saturday night. La. Tech is 4-4, having beaten UL-Lafayette, Michigan State, UTEP and Nevada, and having lost to Miami, Fresno State, Boise State and Hawaii. They”ve got a big mixed bag of results so far in 2003.

The team throws a lot, averaging 323 yards in the air (and only 136 on the ground), and they can score (28 points a game). Of course, this is against a very diverse set of opponents. They rang up 435 passing yards against now-9th-ranked Michigan State, for example, and only 165 yards the next week against Fresno State.

Inconsistent, to say the least.

LSU gives up 201 yards passing per game, but only allows 9.5 points (tops in the NCAA). And La. Tech is quite generous (315 yards passing, 186 yards rushing, 30 points) in offense allowed.

On paper, it”s an LSU win for sure. The X factor is “The LSU Letdown”. My money is on Saban not allowing this to happen.

LSU, 42 - 20

Elsewhere, the Crocs play the Bulldogs in the annual “Florida beats Georgia” game in Jacksonville. I”ve had a lot of discussion with folks about who I “should” be for in this game. On the one hand, if Georgia keeps winning, our win over Georgia will help us out in the final BCS standings (assuming we also win out). On the other hand, if Georgia loses, that sets up the chance that the SEC East champion could be decided by a vote of athletic directors. Could you imagine the day when that vote is happening? Here in Atlanta it would be like how everybody crowded around TVs to watch the OJ verdict.

But leaving aside whatever I”d like to see happen (I”m still not 100% sure), I think the Crocs are on a major upswing, with Chris Leak really coming into his own as an SEC QB. And the Dawgs are hurting bad, especially on defense. I think they”re starting a cornerback who”s 5″4″ this weekend.

So I like the Croc offense to break out in this game. Florida, 31 - 27

Arkansas at Kentucky - Back-to-back-to-back SEC losses really dropped a turd in the Hogs” punchbowl. They have much, much less to play for now. Kentucky is on a roll (by Kentucky football standards), having been competitive against Florida and South Carolina and then beating Ohio and Miss St. I like the Cats” passing attack here. Kentucky, 31 - 21

South Carolina at Ole Miss - I should pull for the Cocks here, wishing a first SEC loss on Ole Miss. But the Rebels still have to play Auburn before meeting up with us in a couple of weeks, so I won”t worry too much about this week. Besides, it would be great to have the LSU/Ole Miss game mean something for the first time since the early 1970s. Rebels, 42 - 14

UL Monroe at Auburn - Don”t poke the Tiger, please. Bad start, big recovery, loss to LSU to take a backseat in the SEC West race. Look for Auburn to light this one up big, big time. Auburn 63 - 6

Duke at Tennessee - Duke comes to Knoxville in November? Seriously, Why does the ACC”s worst team want to take this kind of abuse mid-season? Have they not had their asses kicked quite enough yet? Vols, 38 - 3

Digging through referral logs tonight, I noticed a visit from a Blogspot blog I did not recognize. Turns out some of my work is referenced and rebuked on a blog called Silver Rights, which is focused on “civil rights and related issues.”

I thought about emailing the writer of that blog back with my rebuttal, but then I figured it”s best done here for the public record.

The first swipe at the Cap”n came in a blog titled Southern blogger strikes out in anti-hate crimes argument. This was in response to the piece I wrote (in long form at Blogcritics.org) about the Little 5 Points “hate crime” trial.

In that blog I”m called a “conservative” (I am not) and it charges that I believe hate crime laws “are an avenue for legally abusing white people” (I do not).

I”m not sure where Silver Rights got the second bit. Obviously not from reading my blog. My blog said all crime should be treated equally.

And if “hate crime” laws are such wonderful things that punish people more severely for crimes motivated by “hate”, why did the two defendants convicted of the “hate crime” end up with a total of just 8 years in prison when the charge they pleaded guilty to (aggravated assault) carried a maximum 15 year sentence by itself?

If the judge was so damned outraged by the crime, why did he give them less than half the sentence he could have?

See, Silver Rights, I”m for stiff prison sentences for all violent crime, no matter the motivation. In my world, these shitheads would have gotten - and served - 15 years. In the real world of “hate crime” laws, they were convicted of a “hate crime” and still only got 8 years.

Do you, Silver Rights, feel better with these racist losers serving 8 years in prison after being convicted of a “hate crime”, or would you have rather seen them serve 15 years for aggravated assault alone? I know the victims of this attack were none too happy with just 8 years.

Also, Silver Rights cited FBI statistics on “hate crimes” as evidence that “prosecutions, which are few, include whites as victims some of the time.” Sorry, you”re wrong. The FBI statistics are for reported incidents of “hate crimes”, not prosecutions for hate crimes. Maybe you should spend some more time on your research.

The second appearance Cap”n Ken makes at Silver Rights is in a piece on MLK Boulevard, a “documentary” airing on Discovery Times.

In a blog titled Filmmaker explores “MLK Boulevard” the Cap”n is again referenced and rebuked.

There”s so much misinformation about my review of MLK Boulevard in that blog, I”m going to have to pull out the • and go to bullet points:

• “Cap”n Ken, a blogger from Louisiana …” Wrong. Maybe the URL eastatlanta.blogspot.com or the tagline “The official blog of East Atlanta” should be a clue there. But I guess “from Louisiana” sounds better when you try to paint me as a bigot.

• “… he holds the filmmaker in such disdain that he refuses to refer to him by name …” Nice leap of logic. The cracker writer from Louisiana really must hate this black filmmaker, huh? HE WON”T EVEN SAY THE BROTHER”S NAME!!!! Actually, I just didn”t note or remember the guy”s name. But way to go with the biased assumption.

• Cap”n Ken “accuses him of having faked footage in the movie without any support for the accusation.” Maybe Silver Rights should actually read the pieces of my blog he/she excerpts. The third paragraph you lifted from my blog (the one where I make that “accusation”) explains in detail what led me to that impression. To wit:

Now, the tape of this City Council meeting was taken from the local public-access cable channel. Such low-budget, government-run productions typically do not cut away from a council person as they are speaking to show others” reactions. I think the filmmaker - ala Michael Moore - assembled little bits and pieces of reactions (probably to unrelated things) and edited them together to create a certain impression of what happened. That”s all too typical in these “documentaries”.

• Silver Rights lifts this paragraph from my blog in which I state my understanding of the documentary”s intention:

Is the renaming of a street in honor of King a fitting tribute, or is it a meaningless gesture that does nothing to promote King”s vision and is just the default tribute required for all cities to pass NAACP muster?

and labels this “In a rhetorical question, Cap”n Ken says”, and then concludes that “his position — that such tributes are empty …”. Um, how”d you score in reading comprehension back in grade school? See, that paragraph states what the documentary is supposed to be about, not some conclusion I have drawn about the naming of streets after King. Pay attention, now.

• The last part of that paragraph “… is just the default tribute required for all cities to pass NAACP muster?” is labeled “his sneer at the NAACP”. Wrong. Again. No surprise. There”s no “sneer” at the NAACP in that line (as my wrapup below will explain), but Silver Rights is apparently so biased and so convinced that the Cap”n is some Louisiana conservative cracker that he/she reads everything as bigoted and negative.

See, here”s the thing … this documentary should have (and purported to) explore the question of whether naming streets after MLK really does anything to promote his legacy, or is it just the basic minimum requirement for a city to “go along” with the standard MLK tribute. I think there are a lot of cities that feel pressure from the NAACP and others to “honor” King by renaming a street, and I think cities often just go along to avoid any negative publicity. So instead of places looking deep into how King”s legacy should be honored and his dream carried forward in their community, they rename a street and move on.

It would have been nice for the filmmaker (I don”t remember his name - what a racist I am!) to actually explore that idea. That would have been worth time on my DishPVR 721. His leftist, afro-centric, predictable mockumentary did nothing to explore the issue.

Leave it to the nutjobs at PETA to use the Roy Horn tiger attack as a platform for pressuring LSU (and Southern) to get rid of their live big cat mascots.

PETA sent “urgent letters” yesterday to the universities” chancellors urging them - in the wake of the Roy Horn attack - to immediately retire the cats to sanctuaries “before similar tragic incidents strike at their schools?? campuses.”

Of course, Mike V isn”t led around Tiger Stadium on a leash.

Nonetheless, PETA is pleading with the universities to retire the cats — which “pose the very real risk of attacking trainers, students, or members of the public with virtually no warning.”

In its press release about the letters, PETA only mentions in passing the idea that keeping the cats in cages near football stadiums might not be such a nice thing.

And that”s a point worthy of debate.

But, no, PETA is looking to keep its post-Roy publicity windfall rolling. There”s nothing like a near-fatal attack on a celebrity to increase PETA”s profile.

Also, big props to The Advocate (the Baton Rouge daily, not the national gay newspaper) for including an archive photo of Mike V from the day back in 1990 when the cub was introduced to his new home at LSU:

See, although I”m not in this shot, I was actually in the cage with Mike when this photo was taken. The guy at the top right was an LSU PR photographer, and I was a student writer in the PR office at the time. I had ditched a class and was heading out to my car when I saw the crowd at the cage. I talked the photographer into letting me be his “assistant” for the shoot and got to get in the cage and play around with Mike for about 30 minutes.

Only now do I see the very real danger I was in.

Our weekend of moving was eventful, to say the least. I could write about 10 separate blogs on it if I were so inclined. But I”m not feeling that ambitious today, so just the highlights.

• The L5P U-Haul place has closed down; and that”s the good news. I”d made a reservation for a 17-foot U-Haul truck earlier in the week. The wife had looked up the number for Little 5 Points Storage Wednesday while I was waiting on the DishNetwork girls. The truck was booked 3 p.m. Friday to 3 p.m. Saturday, which would give us time to move some small stuff with Char-lez Friday and the big stuff with Tom Saturday (Tom is a move-day maniac and can move a small house full of things in about 15 minutes. Plus, getting him to move my heavy stuff is payback for having to tote all those damn books of his when he moves).

So after picking up Grant Central and having the first official meal in the new place, Char-lez and I headed up to L5P Storage only to find an empty building (I was not aware it was part of the big Moreland shopping center project) and a demolition guy cruising around on a forklift. So I called the wife, who said she asked 411 for “Little 5 Points Storage” and that was the number she gave me. So I did the same, got a number and called it. It rang through (with no “this number has been changed” or anything) to the U-Haul place on 14th and Howell Mill.

Yes, the guy said, this is where I had made my reservation. But, no, they don”t have my truck. Turns out the guy who had it Thursday had decided not to return it. Being told they were going to get an arrest warrant for him was of little comfort. I was told they have a 10-foot truck I could come get, but it would have to be back before 8 a.m. Saturday. And they could not guarantee me that there would be any trucks available Saturday.

This was the moment our moving plans changed. Faced with the prospect of having no truck Saturday, I knew we had to be set up and living in the new house Friday night.

Thus Char-lez went from box jockey to bona fide Moving Man, and instead of small appliances and bags of clothes he was tasked with helping move the 600-pound sofa and 2,850-pound bed.

It was appreciated, my brother.

So we moved late into the night; having given Char-lez his release after the really big stuff was over, got no sleep because our Little Black Dog kept waking up (and freaking out) to the smells of the former owner”s dog (the smells didn”t seem to bother the Big Brown Dog), and got back over to U-Haul right at 8 a.m. to stake out a 17-footer.

Luckily, they had one, and I was back at home by 9. Tom was a bit surprised - and maybe disappointed - to see all of the furniture in the new house when he showed up at 10:30, and he played the role of box jockey. He stuck around to suck down Maker”s and Diet Cokes - yes, it is an excellent housewarming gift - and watch LSU (also his alma mater) stick it to Auburn.

• Does Dish pay these people by the hour? The “advanced techs” from DishNetwork showed up about 1:30 on Friday to finish my installation (if you remember, the Dish girls who came out Wednesday were only able to get reception from one satellite and were baffled by the DishPVR 721).

I watched the advanced techs closely, and my theory that the Dish girls had not, in fact, given me a DishPro Quad LNBF was validated. But that was only half the battle.

After about an hour on top of the house, the advanced techs realized I was not going to be able to pick up the 119 satellite with a roof-mounted dish. I can”t remember anything I”ve dreaded telling the wife more than “they are going to have to mount the dish on a pole in the backyard.” Fortunately, the pole is pretty well hidden from view (at least from the deck; our neighbors get a pretty good view of it).

While Char-lez and I were on our great truck hunt, the Dish guys planted the pole, poured some Quikrete and buried the cables running back to the house.

The Dish girls spent 5 hours at the house Wednesday, and the Dish guys were there for about 3 hours Friday. That”s 16 man hours and a decent amount of equipment and supplies. This would have cost me nothing, except I had to buy a Quad LNBF, which cost me $50. And they make money at this?

• Yes, the humiliation is worth the cash. You may remember from my Pennies & Pounds blog that we had 37 pounds of pennies living in the world”s ugliest wedding present at the old house. Based upon my careful calculations, I estimated there to be between $53.96 and $67.13 worth of Little Abes, depending on the mix of pre- and post-1983 coins.

Sunday night, I decided to take another stab at lugging them up to the CoinStar machine at the Ghetto Kroger. I tried this a week or so ago, only to discover the CoinStar was out of order (after experiencing the CoinStar process, it”s amazing to me that they don”t break down every hour or so).

But this time it was working. I plopped my Amazon.com box full of pennies down on the CoinStar and began dumping coin out of the Ziplocs inside.

Thirty Seven pounds of pennies takes about 20 minutes to feed through the CoinStar. And the CoinStar is like a Vegas slot machine in reverse. It”s a constant clang of metal as you feed coins into it.

If I wasn”t sure the people coming in the door were almost all thinking “damn, I wish I had that much money”, I”d have been pretty embarassed.

The final count was 6,379 pennies, which the math whizzes among you know comes up to $63.79. That”s right in the middle of my $53.96 - $67.13 estimate. Pretty good guess using just a bathroom scale, if I do say so myself.

OK, I admit it. I was completely wrong about the LSU / Auburn game.

It turns out we could hold those Tigers to our season average of just 53 yards rushing (actually, 50) and break their defense for an assload of yards and points.

I”m glad Char-lez couldn”t make it over to the new house to watch the game with me and Tom. It was ugly.

So now LSU is 7 - 1, ranked 7th in the nation and poised (with wins over Ole Miss, Alabama and Arkansas) to get back to the title game in Atlanta. We play La. Tech this weekend in a tune-up for the SEC homestretch. This is where we usually fall apart. We”ll see if Nick can hold the boys together.

Elsewhere: Tennessee / Alabama got real fun at the end. Tom and I put the LSU game on DVR hold while we watched this one wrap up. I got the pick right.

Arkansas / Ole Miss - Eli continued his run through the SEC. The road gets tougher now, boy. But I got this one right, too.

UAB / Georgia - I loved seeing the Dawgs stink the joint up again. I”d have been happy to give up this pick to see them lose. But no.

Miss State / Kentucky - Got it right.

Vandy / South Carolina - Got it right.

Damn, 6 - 0 for the week! No real shockers in my picks, but feels good nonetheless. That puts me 53 - 15 for the season, 7 - 1 on the Tigers.

Our (now) former tenant “Randy” is a really cool guy. He”s got this Moby / Michael Stipe vibe going, works in the Internet world and has great taste in music, art and - of course - houses.

So I was pretty apprehensive about our scheduled meeting last night to hand over the keys and make him officially our former tenant. This was because as of yesterday afternoon the house was still just plain filthy.

I”m talking bags of garbage all over, boxes - empty & full, intact and broken apart, you name it - everywhere, leftover crap from the yard sale in the garage and not a lick of cleaning having been done.

We saw this on Sunday after the yard sale was over. I figured Randy would probably get stuff cleaned out Monday. So I go over Monday night … exactly the same. Tuesday night? Nothing had changed. Wednesday at noon? Still a filth pit.

With us moving Friday and Saturday, this was not a good thing. I quickly arranged to have the cleaning crew who”s doing the move-out clean on the old place come out today and clean the new place, figuring I”d take the cost out of Randy”s security deposit.

But I still dreaded the 6:30 house hand-over. I didn”t want my last experience with Randy to be unpleasant. Because up until this, things had gone just fine.

I was prepared, however, to be a jackass about it. The house was getting cleaned Thursday, and Randy”s paying for it. And we”re moving Friday. End of story.

I anticipated his potential reaction that, technically, he”s renting through the end of October so he”ll clean the place when he damn well pleases.

I even thought maybe he thought it was next Wednesday we were doing the handoff. I nervously awaited his arrival.

Then at 6:20 he bounds through the door. He”s smiling, friendly, asks how things are and all that. I give him “Things are good. The house is pretty filthy, though” as my lead in.

He comes back with “I”m here to make a deal. I had every intention to get over and finish up here, but honestly I”m just not into it. I”d rather be working on my new place.”

So I tell him I figured as much, had already ordered the cleaning crew, how much it would cost and that I”d just take it out of his deposit.

He said the price seemed a little high, then laughed and said “but you have me by the short ones.”

After I agreed to buy the brand-new 17″ monitor and two Sony CD changers he”d left behind for $50 and told him I”d deal with the rest of the yard-sale stuff if I can take the tax writeoff, we talked shop for a little while and he was off.

He says he”s having a housewarming party at the new place, and we”ll get an invitation. We”ll invite him back over to his old place for our party, too.

And thus ends the saga of Randy and The House Hunt. I call this episode: “The Final Burial” 0