By John Y. Brown III, on Sat Mar 31, 2012 at 11:30 AM ET  Are we mostly getting our “game face on” Saturday– or getting our hate face on?
I love the outrageously fun interstate stare down this week between UL and UK.
The smack talk: clever put downs and cleverer retorts and most of what goes with it. Most of it is in good fun, to be expected and a healthy and natural fan activity given the rarefied Final Four positions our state’s two remarkable basketball teams have achieved this year.
But there is a line where we start to sound loopy, goofy, nonsensical and downright mean-spirited if not a little demented.
The key is being cute, clever and competitive. Be like a happy warrior who relishes competition rather than a rambling insulter and hater.
 After all, Sunday morning will be here soon enough and the world be back to the way it was last week–pre Final Four with UL facing off against UK.
So, before you rush out and buy this t-shirt or its corollary suggesting you do the same if you hate UK, I have a different suggestion.
Just Breathe.
And, most importantly, have one heckuva fun time. This may not happen again. For another year.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 27, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  How do you know the parent-child relationship has changed?
Forever?
Think of those sweet conversations. Explaining the mysteries of where God lives; of how TV marketing works; reading Catcher in the Rye and smiling knowingly together at the bad words; chatting up sports and politics –as you, the parent, realize he’s closing in on you.
And then one day, there’s a small crack in the universe, and your role as big “P” parent to the little “c” child is whisked away.
For me it was a conversation in our kitchen yesterday.
Child: “So Dad, have you gone through a mid-life crisis yet?”
Parent: “Well…ummm. Well. I guess. I think I have.”
Child: “Think? Uh, it usually happens in your early 40s and your 48”
Parent: “Yeah. No…I uh…I have. Yes. I was in my ….probably late 30s. I was precocious (Laugh)”
Child: “Do you know why you went through a mid-life crisis?”
Parent: “Yeah. I mean…not really. I mean I do from a spiritual standpoint. I mean…look, when you get to mid-life it’s depressing. You either haven’t achieved your dreams so you are depressed. Or you have achieved them and they haven’t brought you the happiness you expected, so you are depressed. And so, you know, you recalibrate your goals and values for the second half of life.”
Child: “No, that’s not why. That’s an interesting explanation but the real reason is menopause.”
Parent: “Male menopause?”
Child: “No! Female menopause. There is a high correlation between when wives go through menopause and when men go through mid-life crisis. You are good with psychological theories but that’s the scientific explanation.”
Parent: “Well, but I had mine and mom hasn’t…I mean. What is menopause anyway? Exactly? I mean, I know …sort of but….the exact, precise, scientific definition of menopause?”
And that’s when the universe cracked.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 6, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Great fails in family myth making opportunities.
All families need stories that make them better than they really are. The key is that the have to be believable (or willing to be believed) and told by a credible elder of the family.
Usually repeatedly.
When I was about 14 and felt about as confused and insecure as, well, a 14 year old should, I was alone with my grandmother (Mamaw) and struck up a conversation that had great potential.
We were watching TV at her house and she was eating a PB&J sandwich and half paying attention to me. I loved her more than about anyone. She told things like they were. She lived in Muhlenberg County and although she never finished high school, I always felt she was smarter and wiser than my other grandma who was Phi Beta Kappa.
Plus, I was her favorite grandchild.
I’d been hearing about other kids at school who were making straight A’s and were National Merit Scholars and geniuses so on.
“Mamaw,” I asked, “You know how some kids are gifted intellectually?”
“Oh, I suppose. Your Uncle Jim Bob was.” (Jim Bob was her son and she liked him more than even me.), she replied predictably.
“What about the grandchildren, though?” Mamaw?
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Well, when we were younger did any of us seem, you know, kinda gifted or especially bright or special in some way?”
My grandmother took a bite of her sandwich and without ever looking away from the TV responded lovingly (in her own way), “Well, none of you were retarded or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.”
That ended the conversation as well as my hopes of being gifted at anything. I never got to tell her that wasn’t what I meant. But I always loved her—even after that. And sometimes the gift of loving candor is better than being gifted at some random skill anyway.
By Artur Davis, on Wed Feb 22, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  JFK revisionism is always jarring, but no longer surprises. The disdain toward John Kennedy in conservative intellectual circles seems borne out of contempt that he was what the right suspects about Barack Obama – unaccomplished, stylistic rather than substantive, a media darling who rose on the wings of a star-struck press.
In my college years, it was the left-wing that was just as fierce – to them, Kennedy was a cold warrior who dug our grave in Vietnam and almost postured and bluffed into a nuclear war. To younger African American intellectuals, he was too passive on civil rights, too much of a follower to deserve the spot on the wall next to Dr. King in the grandparent’s living room.
 There is something that is meaner, though, in this week’s round of coverage of Mimi Alford’s tell-all regarding an affair between herself and Kennedy during her stint as a White House intern. Timothy Noah, at the New Republic, tops it off with a headline, “JFK: Monster”. But he only goes where others have gone this week: a condemnation of Kennedy as a psychological torturer, a crude user of a 19-year-old, and a voyeur.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Covering the JFK Affair
By John Johnson, on Fri Feb 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  1985 was the first baseball season when I truly became a fan of the sport.
My team was the New York Mets. I became a fan through the legacy fandom passed on
by my Uncle John, who used to take me to Shea stadium. That summer we constantly exchanged stories about the team, the pitching, and hated St Louis Cardinals, and one very special catcher–Gary Carter.
I remember that summer being the first when I really understood box scores and baseball standings. As Fall approached, I anxiously counted the number of wins the Mets needed to overtake the Cardinals. Realizing as the days of the regular season dwindled the Mets were going to run out of time..there only chance to clinch the NL East was a sweep the last weekend. Time ran out…a 98 win season just wasn’t enough. And disappointment filled me realizing that only one team can win the
championship…and even in a season as long as baseball, there was still such a
thing as having not enough time.
 Time running out on the 1985 season was the first thing I thought about today
when I heard that one of the bedrocks of the Mets team in 1985 and 1986, Gary Carter, died tragically yesterday of brain cancer at the age of 57.
The next season–1986–the Mets exploded our of the gate to run away with the NL East. I followed every game that season. 1986 was, to steal a phrase from this website, a season of “recovery”….the unfinished business of a season where they got oh so close but time ran out. Gary Carter was right in the middle of so many of those 108 wins that year. He was the steady presence in the battery raising the game of Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, and Rick Aguilera. He was a constant home run threat to drive in Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry. The stats speak for themselves…24 homeruns, 105 RBIs.
Read the rest of…
John Johnson: The Kid Passes On
By Greg Harris, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET From the heart? Or from Hallmark?
I’ll be buying a nice Valentine’s Day card for my wife.
The big kind that requires a special envelope big enough to for the over-sized card, ribbon, and frilly stuff attached to it.
But I’m also going to do something else.
I’m going to write–in my own words—a personal message of how I feel about my wife, how much I love her and appreciate her.
Sure, I’ll find the card that most closely says what I mean.
But if I don’t write something myself, I’ve outsourced to Hallmark (or another card company) the job of telling my spouse what she means to me—and that just doesn’t seem right somehow.
Some people might say they aren’t eloquent and prefer let the card speak for them. But a simple and non-eloquent personal message from the heart beats the most eloquent message written by another for the one we love any day of the week.
And especially on Valentine’s Day
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Some random Valentines Day musings on the latest professional sports phenomenon, Jeremy Lin — the Harvard grad and current New York Knicks basketball point guard, who came out of seemingly nowhere to light up a sports nation frozen in the post-Super Bowl, pre-March Madness tundra of February:
- A recent Sunday ritual of mine — donning a Tom Brady jersey and stepping up to the bar at my neighbor Buffalo Wild Wings — continually was challenged by by fellow Kentuckians who’ve wondered how I became a New England Patriots fan. The first reason — my man-crush on Pretty Boy Brady (as revealed in this piece about Pretty Boys I Begrudgingly Admire) — is not sports bar-appropriate. Neither is the other — my seven year tour of Harvard University — so I would mumble something about living in Boston. Next year, I know I can lift my head up proudly in this basketball-fanatic town and announce, “I went to the same school as Jeremy Lin!”
- One previously unremarked consequence of our Twitter and Facebook dominated world is how quickly jokes now become old and clichéd. Over the weekend, I must have read 500 tweets struggling for a laugh by adding appending “Lin” to a word or making some pun with a word that can be transformed somehow to use “lin.” (I.e., “Linsanity” “Blew up like the Lin-denburg”) Yesterday, I received an email from a fellow Harvard alum (see now I don’t need to hide it!) who passed on this bon mot: Jeremy Lin’s ball-handling is so sick; the other teams are in need of some insu-Lin. My response? That joke’s so February 10.
Read the rest of…
The RP: I Heart Jeremy Lin
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET There is an important difference between having talent beyond measure and being a person beyond reach.
I never thought that would be the legacy for pop star Whitney Houston. But it just may be.
I think it was 1985 when I first heard of–and later saw live at Rupp Arena–Whitney Houston. It was a remarkable and unforgettable performance.
She had a God-given gift–a soulful yet cheery voice that filled up the entire arena and left everyone in awe. She was also beautiful, graceful and seemed to “have it all.”
She was, so it seemed, untouchable. There was nothing critical that could be said of this pure-hearted girl raised in the church who was taking her gospel-trained voice and quickly becoming an international pop diva.
 But surely not the usual kind of diva, right? Whitney would be different–it was assumed.
But in the end, none of us are different. None of us transcend the temptations, the human failings and foibles that endanger us all.
Whitney Houston died yesterday far too young–and far too unrecognizeable from the person who we were introduced to over 25 years ago.
Why? It wasn’t Bobby Brown, or just drugs, or just ego and the inevitability of success gone to her head, or fans demanding perfection where there is only a woman.
Although Whitney Houston wasn’t “untouchable” she did manage to become “unreachable.” And that is when tragedies, like her untimely death yesterday, are made possible.
It’s not that celebrities are too different or too good or too anything to reach out for help.
It’s that sometimes they cross a line into “believing” they have become something else (maybe a brand, a business line, or just a bigger than life superstar) and have forgotten how to sidle up along the rest of us and say the simple–but painfully difficult– words, “Could you please help me?” And mean it.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Feb 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET A true Fish Tale.
I don’t have a “Bucket list” just yet (I’m still not conceding death is an inevitable option) but do have a “Parent list,” a list of about 10 things I want to do with my children before they leave home.
This happened 7 years ago when my son, Johnny, was 10 years old. I had recently checked off “Flying kites” and “Going fishing” was on deck.
We decided on a Sunday afternoon and immediately started by packing a picnic basket. True, I had never really been fishing and only imagined what I should do…but a picnic basket seemed like a no brainer. My daughter made ham sandwiches and packed them for us.
On the way out the door I shrewdly remembered we’d be sitting in grass and grabbed a throw blanket for us to sit on while fishing.
We went to WalMart and bought fishing poles. We found a public lake nearby and set up our gear and lay down the throw blanket.
I tried to demonstrate casting for Johnny. “Watch me, honey. This is how you want to do it.” I shanked it into the marshy grass.
After untangling it I realized in addition to a flubbing the cast I had not baited the hook. I had forgotten to buy bait and had to improvise.
What to do?
Those ham sandwiches had stringy, soggy slivers of ham that I reasoned could be confused for a worm by a fish that wasn’t paying attention or had below average intelligence.
So, we baited our lines with ham and cast like two men who had never before had to eat what they killed. Our lines intertwined and as we tried to unravel them it began to rain…..
A Fish and Wild Life officer pulled into our lake and walked toward us and barked, “Excuse me. Do you have a fishing license?” I said, “Oh no! I didn’t know we needed a license officer.”
He looked at the intertwined fishing lines with soggy ham hanging from the hooks and then at the throw blanket we were standing on and said in an almost whisper,
“You don’t fish much do you, sir?”
There was really no point in me responding. It was what is called a rhetorical question—a questioning device that is rarely used by law enforcement unless the person being questioned has failed so badly at something that further evidence isn’t necessary.
He let us off with a warning and we packed our belongings and sat in the car waiting for the rain to let up and split the second ham sandwich.
My son noted, “I’ve never been arrested before, Dad.” I explained this whole episode would help with his “street cred” at school but not not give too much detail about the cause of our brush with the law.
We both seemed to like the idea of feeling a little like outlaws, especially if it meant not having to fish.
Afterwards we drove to a more modern place for fathers and sons– where we played video games and miniature golf and raced go carts.
None of which were on my “Parent’s List,” which I have since thrown away.
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The Recovering Politician Bookstore
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After all, Sunday morning will be here soon enough and the world be back to the way it was last week–pre Final Four with UL facing off against UK.
