RANDOM CLICKS
next stop: colorado
1) It's remarkable how, in the space of two weeks, the California Golden Bears went from national championship contenders to...well...the California Golden Bears. For all the collective desire to see them go to the Rose Bowl...they did on Saturday. And lost. For the second week in a row. To an unranked team. With ASU and USC still on the schedule ahead. Well, the dream was alluring while it lasted.
2) That said, what a remarkable week for the Red Sox. I caught the very end of Game 4 with a bunch of diehard Sox fans and the mood was just glum. Then Beckett mowed down the Indians in Game 5. Then the Sox lit it up last night. And tonight they cemented their reputation as the most dangerous comeback team out there. After all, what's 1-3 to a team that came back from an 0-3 deficit to the Yankees just three years ago?
What a great game too, what with the nutty errors, bad coaching calls, and an unlikely, heroic performance from a player who's only 5' 9" but was batting like a giant. His 2-run homer was a thing of marvel, not to mention his bases-clearing double that put the game on lockdown for the rest of the evening.
3) So Indian Americans have their first governor, Bobby Jindal. On the scorecard for Asian American political progress...be careful how you mark this one. On the hand, it reflects the increasing political and social integration of South Asian Americans and in essence, of Asian America as a hold. On the flipside, it's hard to feel that excited about a Bush loyalist and unambiguous social conservative now in charge of a state still reeling from the aftermath of Katrina. In short, Jindal represents practically everything wrong about the right-of-the-right conservative movement right now. (See Vijay Prashad's dissection of Jindal and the politics of ethnicity).
It's no big secret that Asian Americans are the most likely to lean right amongst different American ethnic groups. However, most of the prominent Asian American politicians have generally gone left. It will be interesting to see how long appeals to electing politicians on the basis of ethnicity (rather than, you know, policies and ideas) will hold sway.
4) Lastly, R.I.P. to Lance Hahn, of the band J-Church. Back in the '90s (I can't believe I'm using that phrase), I heard of the group all the time, living in the Bay Area, especially since Hahn was one of the first Asian American indie rockers of any renown then. I never met Hahn but everyone in those circles always noted what a nice guy he was. Hahn was only 40.
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