Game of Thrones, Mid-Season 2 Grades

Tyrion Lannister

Tyrion: Big Impin’ in Season 2

Way back in another career, I covered the NBA and an annual rite was assigning grades to players at mid-season. Nowadays, the only seasons I obsess about are those of HBO’s Game of Thrones or as the late, great Khal Drogo once put it, “Trrhones.” Had I been swept up in the show last season the way I am now, I would have graded Daenerys’ Sun and Stars a B, for badass. Alas, the heralded horseman suffered a death by pillow which, combined with the beloved Eddard Stark’s death by neck trim, shocking for those who didn’t read George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, means two central and interesting characters down in Season 1 alone (I don’t count the sniveling Viserys, whose death by helmet was a welcomed comeuppance, as a central character). Fortunately, Westeros is teaming with players begging to be graded with five of the Season 2’s 10 episodes down.

The Clash of Kings season was meant to be epic and vast in comparison to the first, and so far it has been. There’s already been a great episode with a great name, What is Dead May Never Die, that sounds like the Bond film that should have come after Goldeneye. Westeros and beyond this season reminds me of the U.S., circa spring of 2008. Back then, the winter of Obama was coming, but the country still was ruled by the enfant terrible George W. Bush, and Obama and Clinton and McCain (he being the Balon Greyjoy of the bunch) were vying for power, with the land under siege by the likes of Al-Qaeda and Wall Street and wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then as now in Westeros was a great time to be a blogger, only now we don’t have to employ ravens as a delivery system. Speaking of media, if the Trrhones got commentators, ala The Hunger Games, let them be A.Ron and Mad Brew from The Night’s Watch, the smart and funny, best unofficial Game of Thrones podcast of the bunch.

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Susan Cronin’s Unforgettable Life

Susan Cronin

Several months ago, my late, great friend Dr. M Susan Cronin asked me if I’d write about her after she was gone.

“I don’t want to be forgotten,” she said.

Susan was so wise about so many things, it’s hard to imagine that she didn’t have a better sense of how unforgettable she truly was. Who else, for example, has ever witnessed a llama fend off an eagle, which tried to fly off with a prized rooster? The eagle initially grabbed up a hen, but dropped it when the rooster attacked, then was snatched instead. As the eagle started to flap away, Coco the llama hacked up a massive spitball, hit it and forced it to abandon the rooster and fly away.

Born Jan. 29, 1942, in New York, Susan lived 70 relentless years filled with such wonders. During her lifetime, she fought off Hodgkin’s lymphoma, two open-heart surgeries and breast cancer. A rare form of leukemia finally claimed her on April 12, 2012, but Susan got her licks in against that, too.
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Mad Men and the End of Linsanity

The signs all are there. The end of a news cycle. The end of a coaching tenure. The end of focused, team basketball in New York.

The end, that is, of Linsanity. And, for many reasons, the end of watchable professional basketball.

Jeremy Lin, Mike Woodson, Carmelo Anthony

Jeremy Lin, Mike Woodson and Carmelo Anthony.

If you’d hoped this NBA fairy tale was going to end with Jeremy Lin turning the corner on a high pick and roll, popping for a jumper in the lane or tossing up a short lob for Amare Stoudamire to win a championship, your dreams were crushed not when Mike D’Antoni resigned as Knicks coach on Wednesday, but when interim coach Mike Woodson confirmed he was going with the status quo. Not the new old status quo (Lin and team-wide distribution) but the brand-new, old status quo (return of Carmelo Anthony and the black-hole offense).

Ugh.
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The Bad Fortune of Linsanity

Bad taste

I don’t even have to sample Ben & Jerry’s limited-edition, Jeremy Lin-inspired flavor to know that it is tasteless.

After the furor the past week over race and ethnic profiling in over-the-top media coverage of the breakout star of the New York Knicks, for something like this to happen not only is inexcusable, it’s arrogant and incredibly stupid.

Ben & Jerry’s has apologized, but it seems they replaced the fortune cookie bits in the new ice cream flavor mainly because customers complained they got soggy.
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Linsanity’s Yellow Peril

This headline on ESPN's mobile website was removed.

During the hours before the “chink” references at ESPN, I was convinced that many Asian Americans were willing to overlook Floyd Mayweather, Jason Whitlock, the New York Post’s “Amasian,” and myriad other public indignities in order to experience something so joyous and so spectacularly surprising as Jeremy Lin that even we, the people who are like him, have been conditioned to never have expected it.

Less than a week ago, in trying to explain what Lin means to Asian Americans, I wrote on ESPN.com that his feel-good run in the NBA would be a test of ”an Asian American’s ability to take the bad with the overwhelming good.”

We couldn’t be allowed to have even a fleeting, rapturous moment without the bad-good equation being utterly turned on its head by such a torrent of racially motivated indignation and political-correctness backlash that feels, in some ways, like open season has been declared on Asian Americans. I feel stupid and ashamed, true to my cultural conditioning, I suppose, that I ignored the reality of living in HaterNation, a place where the meek are allowed to rise because the mighty so enjoys shooting them full of holes during the inevitable fall. The past few days have taken us beyond that.

That “Chink in the Armor” happened is so unbelievable to me, it still feels like a bad dream. But it wasn’t the end of Linsanity; it hasn’t even been the worst part. Americans who are not of Asian descent are hijacking the discussion of how Asian Americans would like to be talked about, and that is the real kick in the groin.
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Carl Ervin and a Point Guard’s Vision

Carl Ervin once wrote in my Cleveland High School yearbook, “Thanks for making me famous.”

The late Carl Ervin, with his daughter Karlee and wife Penny, at his Seattle U. Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Over the years, I tried to argue with Erv that it was quite the other way around. But he loved to debate, and I figured that one day we’d be rocking on a porch having the same discussion over and over again.

But that’s not happening. Erv, one of the greatest high-school basketball players I’ve ever seen, lost a battle on Saturday with pancreatic cancer that I didn’t even know he was waging. Which is funny to say because we talked on the phone. And even at the beginning of the year he was lobbying me to attend the banner-hanging and jersey retirement ceremony at our alma mater.

I couldn’t attend because of personal matters and work obligations that now seem so trivial. Erv was relentless, but not once did he say, “Dude, I’m sick, you need to come.” Instead, Erv, the master facilitator and leader, said, “Man, you were as big a part of this as anyone.”
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Of King James, Dexter and a Culture of Comeuppance

What comes around, goes around.

Where and when I grew up, we’d say that so often, it became a way of life, a way of thinking and believing. A lot of NBA players come up in similar circumstances, so I can’t imagine that they didn’t also hear that bit of wisdom uttered a time or two.

LeBron: What Comes Around

Did they simply fail to listen? I mean, was LeBron James so intent on taking his talents to the NBA that he grew deaf while growing up in Akron, Ohio?

I don’t know the guy. He came after I stopped covering the NBA. After 17 years, it had become, for me, a league of antics. You know what I mean: Whenever there’s a crowd of adults, some kid runs up to the hot microphone and starts singing, or some boy throws a frog into a flock of girls. After starting out knowing Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson and Michael Jordan as genuine people, the league for me had devolved into a silly show with its players clamoring for more and more attention, as if all the dollars weren’t enough.
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