Kevin Marshall's America
If you donate $15 to Special Olympics of New York between now and Sunday at midnight, I will personally draw a portrait of you. UPDATE 7/29/11 – extended through the end of August!
I say crude because my artistic skills are, to put it kindly, lacking. To put it not so kindly, I am terrible at drawing and never took to it. But what do you want for $15? It’s a crude drawing. I do spend time on it, carefully examining the picture and doing my damndest to present an accurate and artistic representation. It may be crude, but rude it is not. I draw once every few years. But when I do, it’s with nothing but love.
To give you a taste, here’s a picture of me:
And here’s a picture I drew of myself:
And you can have one too for just a small $15 donation. GET EXCITED.
For more information on my Stuntraising efforts and the Over the Edge fundraiser as a whole, click here.
Pfeil Hardware, nustled on the corner of 3rd and State in downtown Troy.
PLUG! I just wanted to give a quick thanks to Pfeil Hardware in downtown Troy for their generous donation towards our goal of raising funds for Special Olympics New York through the Over the Edge fundraiser.
Pfeil opened in the location of the old Stanley’s. I recall making trips down there as a child, and the excitement that was had in leaving our crowded apartment for the open space of downtown and our very own department store. Then one day it was gone, and it remained vacant for the entirety of my adolescence, teenage years, and until recently my entire adult life. For me, that large empty storefront – cavernous and littered with a decade of informal repairs and dilapidated materials – exemplified the economic situation of the city. Where once there was a thriving department, there was instead for many years an empty, ghostly shell.
But now, finally, a business has occupied the space. And not just any business, but one that is steadfast in its dedication to building and becoming a part of a thriving community. Pfeil Hardware is, naturally, a business. But it can also serve as a symbol for all the positive change that has occurred in our city over the course of the last five years and the hope that things can and will be better, so long as the right people are involved.
All indications are this is definitely the case. So thanks again, Pfeil, for your continued contributions and in particular your generosity to my goal of raising funds for the Special Olympics of New York.
Also, if you get a chance, like them on Facebook.
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Check this space later today for another fundraising announcement! If you would like to donate and help us meet our goal to get thrown off the Crowne Plaza, CLICK HERE.
Chuck Miller asked if I would read the prologue to his novel The Robins of Iverhill if he donated $50. I accepted.
Here’s the mp3:
The Robins of Iverill – Prologue
You can purchase The Robins of Iverhill on Amazon.com. Chuck also has it available on his blog.
For more information on the Stuntraising campaign or to simply donate to Special Olympics New York, CLICK HERE.
Thanks to everyone who has donated so far to New York Special Olympics! To get me and my teammates to rappel off the Crown Plaza and have a little fun yourselves while giving to charity, CLICK HERE.
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Like almost everybody else this weekend, I felt an obligation to go see the film adaptation of “Captain America.”
Growing up I was a big fan of the book. What intrigued me about the character wasn’t that he was a man out of time or that he was a symbol of perseverance and American pride. Rather, it was the stories that were written portraying him as a man conflicted, often finding himself at odds with what his government wanted him to do in the name of his country. Most Captain America stories, particularly those written in the 1970s and 1980s, were a far cry from the jingoistic image of Cap slugging Adolf Hitler smack dab in the jaw. In more complicated times with menacing but not unequivocally evil challenges to our nation’s position in the world, the genetically enhanced kid from Brooklyn often put honor before policy. On more than one occasion when faced with the choice of falling in line or continuing as Captain America he gave up the mantle entirely and “retired.”
The trap for comic writers is that in writing these stories they can potentially isolate part of their audience. More importantly, unless it’s done carefully, what’s intended as a creative statement on what it means to be an American can come across as goofy and contrived. They are, after all, comic books.
Which is why this film focuses on Captain America in simpler times with an evil enemy. And it works. The action scenes are intense, the CGI is very impressive (particularly the seamless trick of creating the illusion of a ninety-pound pre-serum Chris Evans), and as Roger Ebert noted in his review, it includes a love story that you actually want to see and enhances rather than detracts from the narrative. The film also makes an effort to remind us that what makes Steve Rogers as Captain America an effective hero is the former part – Steve Rogers – rather than the latter. That ninety-pound kid has an organically heroic nature even before he meets the man that changes him forever, and while admittedly cheesy at times (a conceit one must make when going into any summer blockbuster let alone a comic book flick), it surprisingly doesn’t come across as melodramatic.
The film does much to set up the story and anticipation for next Summer’s long-awaited “The Avengers,” which will team the revived Captain America with the other franchises established by Marvel: Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk, among others. What will be missing, though, is what makes this the hands down best superhero film since “The Dark Knight” and arguably the equal of Marvel’s other great offering “Iron Man”: a focus on one man, one protagonist, with one journey. The greatest challenge “The Avengers” will face won’t be Loki or Hydra, it’ll be measuring up to the surprisingly high measuring stick of The First Avenger, as the title calls him, “Captain America.”
BONUS: The trailer for the 1990 “Captain America” film, which featured Cap jumping onto the back of many a van.
The Times Union chose the 2010 contest between Randy Couture and Mark Coleman as one of their highlight pics, which is unfortunate because that fight was pretty terrible.
James Odato has the story in today’s paper:
The reason for the technical knockout, according to officials with Ultimate Fighting Championship, the group behind competitions, is retaliation from organized labor. UFC’s officers say Unite Here, the powerful hotel workers’ union, is sending a message to owners of a string of Las Vegas hotel casinos, who own controlling interest in UFC. Brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertita. of Station Casinos, own UFC through parent company Zuffa LLC. A Las Vegas union local reached out to its New York brothers to make sure that mixed martial arts never gets to the floor the Assembly because the Fertitas run one of the largest non-union gambling enterprises in the nation, said Lawrence Epstein, UFC’s executive vice president.
“The hotel workers union are the only anti group,” he said.
Josh Gold, of the Hotel Trades Council, of which Unite Here is a member, says it has fought the legislation in Albany because the sport doesn’t offer fighters protections from “unscrupulous promoters” and “exploitive” contracts. Its opposition memo only names UFC and none of the other operators who could bring more than 100 fights to New York’s auditoriums annually. That might not be surprising given UFC is the most active industry representative pushing for the bill.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/MMA-s-toughest-match-1576255.php#ixzz1T7if8VTv
This goes against what many have insisted, which is that the blockage is merely a matter of concern over safety and culture.
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Also, “Fight Test” is the first track of the Flaming Lips’ album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” This was brought to you by Aliceperson, who on Friday donated $25 to Special Olympics in exchange for me sneaking a “Flaming Lips” song title into a sports-related blog post. For more information on our Stuntraising efforts for the Special Olympics, please click here.
ALSO: that video I talked about on Friday? Well life, a bad sunburn, and Captain America got in the way of that happening that weekend. I will put it together as soon as I can and post it.
Professional, clean, and calculating. The facebook profile photo of a man who blew up a dozen and gunned down eighty.
There were two attacks yesterday in Norway. In one, an all too familiar disruption of civic operation and organization that took the lives of nearly a dozen and counting in downtown Oslo. Then, just hours later, a different kind of terror altogether, one that seems unfathomable: a lone gunman opening fire on a youth sumer camp on a nearby island, killing over 80.
Both two very different faces of terror committed by the same man and, presumably, for the same reasons.
Those reasons aren’t yet clear and they may never be. Many of his online writings have been compiled by journalist Doug Saunders. The writings reveal a man expressing nationalistic and right-wing beliefs with a very toxic rhetoric and nasty tone that he attempts to veil with polite, yet dark, sarcasm. Though they may in retrospect provide a clearer picture of the man that shook the world and compromised the feeling of safety and well-being held by the people of Norway, they do not scream “terror.” Many of the words and ideas expressed are ugly, but none even provide a hint of the possibility that the author could be capable of single-handedly gunning down over eighty children (an act that I can’t even wrap my head around).
Terror manifests itself for a variety of reasons. Over the course of the last four decades we have seen murder and mayhem used as discourse for extreme left Marxists, anarchists, Islamic fundamentalists, nationalists, government separatists, and a myriad of others up, down, and across political spectrums. They are people of varying shades, creeds, tones and temperament. The one common thread – the only one – is a chilling disregard for human life and, perhaps, a deep-rooted disdain for all things other.
So while we explore and examine the reasons behind this tragedy, we should ask every question but be careful not to ascribe too much to one area or another. Such has been the fault in the past of society, media, and governments, with embarrassing and at times disastrous results. We should avoid this folly, because unlike terrorists, terror itself has no bias.
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Appeals to our better angels rarely go heeded. Such is the case with my quest to raise $1,000 for the Special Olympics of NY through the Over the Edge event. And now I have a teammate – Meghan Nolan – who I also want to help get to that grand mark.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and so I’ve decided I’m going to provide more services in exchange for donations.
That’s right. I’ve become a prostitute. But for a good cause!
My first occurred yesterday, when I offered to do a dramatic re-enactment of a video of composer Adrian Munsey’s “Lost Sheep,” where he holds a goat and bleats behind an orchestral accompaniment.
In addition to the StuntRaising announced on this blog, I’ll be making side deals with folks through Twitter – @KevinMarshall. These will consist of both proposals from me, shout-outs, and solicitations from other Tweeters that send an @ reply to me. For example, yesterday Chuck Miller offered to up his donation to $50 if I read out loud a chapter of his choosing from his novel The Robins of Iverhill, and I took him up on it (post with full audio forthcoming).
Mind you, if you make an offer, whether or not I accept is solely at my discretion. Make them intriguing, but not ridiculous. For example, I’m not going to run head-first into a brick wall for a $20 donation. I may, though, post a video on the blog wishing your mother a happy birthday for a $30 donation.
So keep an eye on this blog and follow me on Twitter for more opportunities to maximize your donation!
And of course, you can still donate even if you don’t partake in these challenges. Even as little as $10 goes a long way. For more information and to donate, click here.
If one of you donates $50 to Special Olympics of NY, I will perform a dramatic re-interpretation of the above video and post it first thing Monday morning.
UPDATE: it is done. Thanks to Jason Purvis (and read his blog here)!
BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER: Did you know that if just half of the people that read this blog post today were to donate just $5 to Special Olympics of NY, I’d not only meet my goal of raising $1,000 for the organization but beat it by a factor of three?
If you haven’t already, click here to learn more and donate. There’s incentives for giving more, but even a little bit can go a long way.
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A recent Heritage Foundation report (What is poverty?) has created a stir and ignited a debate over who we consider and what we mean by the “poor” in this country.
Roger Green, on his blog, weighed in with his assessment:
My initial inclination was not to even to address the issue. After all, it was one of those unwinnable arguments with people of a particular mindset And look at some of the items- Owning a refrigerator? Probably provided by the landlord; ditto the stove and oven. Air conditioning is a necessity in much of the country. TVs are relatively cheap form of information and entertainment. Even people in Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa have cell phones. And are these new items or second-hand?
– “Let the Poor Sweat,” 7/21/2011
A very apt point. He goes on to present an even more pointed observation from a colleague of his:
Another data colleague reflected on the interesting responses of who “bought stuff when employed, and now haven’t worked in years and it’s difficult to replace what they have. Where Heritage sees luxurious poor people, I see a desperately sliding middle class. And there’s no substantial research here to prove either view is right.”
The report itself can be interpreted in a myriad of ways depending on how you look at it, particularly since it possesses a pre-determined slant and bias in both concept and execution. Though it attempts to present the data as discovery, it is instead an argument that’s made with cherry-picked square statistics shoved into round pegs. It is also, as Roger points out, willfully omitting various scenarios both here and abroad. Are electronics an apt measurement of poverty? Not if we are measuring against regions that have less access to them (ie a person could be just as poor as someone across an ocean but be more likely to have a specific item because there’s a store near them) and when there are no shortage of destitute regions that have access to things like cell phones.
The real issue, for me, is the hostility and disdain that so many hold for the poor and lower middle class in this country. Regardless of which Presidential Administration you hold accountable, the lower and middle classes are far worse off than they were a decade ago. Yet here we have “reports” such as this which not only attempt to deflect criticism of our economic and domestic social policies, but in a very real way provide a pre-emptive chastising of our nation’s poor.
While some are telling the poor that they’re not poor enough and that they don’t know just how good they have it, there are others who have a more visceral dislike and distrust of them, exhibited through displays of disgust or outright omission of them from their world view.
One local blogger was accused in some local circles of belonging to the latter camp when she tweeted her observations of a visit to the SSA office in Albany:
When I initially saw the tweet I was fairly shocked by the brazenness of it, but it had been through numerous Retweets and as such were devoid of context. When I realized she was referring specifically to one woman (explained through replies to other concerned tweeters after the fact) it made a little more sense and seemed relatively harmless. That’s the general problem with a service like Twitter, where you have 140 characters to make an observation that might require a more careful or exact handling of execution and better choice of words.
It does speak, however, to the fact that there are two Albanys (as there are two Troys) – the Albany that’s presented and represented in the Times Union proper and appropriated onto its own “blogosphere,” and the Albany that includes places like Arbor Hill. In Troy, it’s the North Central neighborhood that is the forgotten city, largely unseen by those whose voices carry furthest in local media. These are areas that are treated with disdain with people vowing never to travel through them without sufficient protection or locked doors. That is, when they’re acknowledging the existence of these areas at all.
We’re faced with some very real choices and dilemmas when it comes to the nation’s poor, but they are obscured by those that continue to universally judge them as a lesser people who earned their situation through karmic retribution or bad work ethic, and who judge them by throwing them onto digital pillories and in reports that tell them that they’re not poor enough to deserve our compassion.
All of this does a great disservice to the cause of reform and economic recovery, but unfortunately, it’s likely to continue until we all grow up a little and become willing to acknowledge and confront the reality of poverty in the United States. Part of that reality is that, yes, some of them go to the SSA office, and some of them own X-Boxes. But that doesn’t mean they have it all that good.
NEWERMIND
To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Nirvana’s breakthrough LP, SPIN magazine has compiled a tribute LP that includes Restoration Fest headliners (and personal Kevin Marshall’s America faves) Titus Andronicus covering “Breed.” The full track listing:
- “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Meat Puppets
- “In Bloom” Butch Walker
- “Come as You Are” Midnight Juggernauts
- “Breed” Titus Andronicus
- “Lithium” The Vaselines
- “Polly” Amanda Palmer
- “Territorial Pissings” Surfer Blood
- “Drain You” Foxy Shazam
- “Lounge Act” Jessica Lea Mayfield
- “Stay Away” Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band
- “On a Plain” Telekinesis
- “Something in the Way” JEFF the Brotherhood
- “Endless, Nameless” EMA
To download for free (before July 25th), visit SPIN’s Facebook page.
House of Balloons
The Weeknd is the alias of Toronto R&B artist Abel Tesfaye and his first release. The album’s an amazing and moving listen, making it one of the best reviewed albums of 2011 so far and even topping some half-year lists (such as Metacritic).
And it’s available for free.
Click here to download from The Weeknd’s official website and give it a listen. You won’t be sorry. I’m not even really that much of an R&B guy and I fell in love with it on first listen.
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I like to think that, by providing you with a link to these two great listens, I saved you anywhere from $20 to $30 you might spend on inferior offerings. Why not take that money you saved and donate it to the NY Special Olympics? They sure could use your help, now more than ever, in providing assistance and services free of charge to over 47,000 young differently abled athletes throughout New York State.
STALK ME
