Epistemological violence in America

The line between virtual and physical reality blurred a tad more during the ten minute period in which I found myself waiting for a bus on the corner of Western and Milwaukee last night. This solitary and seemingly commonplace action turned into a live-action episode of COPS when screaming police sirens and screeching tires suddenly shattered the normal sounds of the city at night.
In a scene pulled directly from GTA, I looked on in shock and awe as two police cars, one regular and one unmarked, chased an Astro van (a fucking Astro van!) around a cluster of buildings, shaped triangularly by the intersection of Western (running north/south), Armitage (running east-west) and Milwaukee (cutting diagonally across the others). The unmarked car followed tightly behind while the police cruiser tried to get around and cutoff the Astro van, the driver of which must have spent many hours behind the wheel (or the Playstation controller), because this guy had moves: making a quick sliding stop AND then deftly turning an alley when it seemed that he’d been boxed in, edging out the police cruiser around a corner, and leading the two cars in a chase that lasted at least several minutes and that required additional cars called for backup.
I think it goes without saying that the entire affair had ‘botched drug deal’ written all over it.
I'm fortunate that seemingly unconnected events led me to serve witness to it all.

Completely bizarre happenings on the El ride home yesterday: I boarded the Brown Line at Belmont around 5:30 and was made to stand until a number of people disembarked at Paulina. I sat down on one of the seats parallel to the doors, next to an absurdly tan 20’s-ish girl who looked much like many other girls of a similar age, class, and disposition in the city.
At some point, I believe around the Irving Park stop, she asked an older man sitting across from us a question, and since I was listening to music (Wolf Parade) on headphones, I didn’t hear what she said. In keeping with my nosy, I mean, inquisitive nature, I stealthily stopped my CD player to hear what was being said. The girl asked, “This is the Brown Line, right?” to which the man nodded affirmatively. Then, the girl stated, in an unsolicited manner, “It’s just so different than Alaska”.
Several questions immediately came to my mind, such as, what brought this girl to Chicago from Alaska? Did she just arrive here? Why is she on the Brown Line by herself, and where is she going? Also, how was someone from Alaska so damned tan in January?
I assumed she had her reasons and knew what she was doing, so I went back to listening to music and staring through the window.
After several more stops, I was almost home and the train was mostly empty, but the girl was still there and a middle-aged woman had sat down adjacent to us. After a moment, I noticed that the woman was staring at the girl and trying to not be terribly obvious about it. I glanced over at the girl, who had her head burrowed into the faux-wooden panel between herself and the doors, and was using her arm to hide her face. It was clear that she was crying.
As I stood up to exit the train, I was able to take a good look at the girl, who had emerged from her huddle and began to frantically search her purse for a tissue. Her face wore a look of complete fright, and again I wondered what exactly she was going through. She began to lean forward to ask, through her tears, the middle-aged woman how she might get to a particular address, which sounded like 3100 Irving Park, as I walked through the doors onto the El platform.
The good news was that she was at least in the vicinity of where she needed to go, and the woman on the train seemed eager to help her. The bad news was that the girl was obviously in over her head in the big city, and seemingly was mired in some sort of turmoil beyond being lost in a strange place.
I wanted to help this girl, ask her if she needed help in getting somewhere. Instead, I adopted the alienated city-dweller stance and did nothing. I figured that other train riders, particularly the middle-aged woman, would think I was some sort of smut peddler interested in putting this Alaskan on my creepy-as-shit website, and I let that stop me from doing anything.
So I ask you my dear readers (who at this point may well consist only of Vinnie), could I have offered some assistance to this girl without coming across as the scary guy on the train that wants to abduct/kill/do-God-knows-what her? Was I a coward for letting other El riders’ hypothetical judgments of me control my actions? Does it really matter anyway?

For the record, I just didn’t want to see an extraordinarily tan girl from Alaska be enveloped by the flesh slave trade.

Everyone, keep your eyes and ears open for such a girl prowling the western portion of Irving Park (hopefully not under the watchful eye of a man wearing gold chains and a fur coat).

I spent a portion of my (observed) New Year’s Day holiday afternoon watching the Fiesta Bowl - a decision that I have come to regret deeply. As a known sports fan, the fact that I chose to watch football on a day off from work should not seem out of the ordinary, but I am very discriminatory in choosing which sports receive my attention, and as such I rarely chose to watch college football. I demand a high level of quality, and cannot be bothered by anything less than the greatest athletes in the world. It is for this reason that I generally regard college athletics as inferior and therefore unsuitable for viewing. That anyone chooses to watch a bunch of 20-year-old Speech Comm majors chuck three pointers or run the option, rather than behold the greatness of athletes such as Lebron James or Peyton Manning completely baffles me. Despite these prejudices, I tuned in to see Notre Dame take on Ohio State in a match that held no personal significance, and little football significance for that matter. At times, it seemed that the only issue of any importance in the game was whether a skanky college girl could cheer for her brother or her boyfriend.
Had I had the foresight to watch the game with the volume turned down, it wouldn’t seem like I had pissed away several hours of my life nor would I now hold a grudge against Brent Musburger, who served as the game’s commentator. Musburger has been in sports broadcasting for many years, and is generally well respected by those in the know. According to Wikipedia, he is considered to be the second greatest college football announcer ever. Some quick Googling produced the fact that Musburger is considered by Notre Dame fans to be virulently against their school, which I didn’t notice during the broadcast. What I couldn’t help but notice was Musburger’s countless mentions of the fact that the sister of Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn is dating Ohio State Linebacker A.J. Hawk. It would have been sufficient to mention this fact once and in passing, but Musburger was steadfast in dropping random tidbits of information about this most uninteresting triumvirate. The first reference came several minutes into the game and was accompanied by a quick shot of said girl sitting amongst Notre Dame fans. From this point on, any big play by either Quinn or Hawk apparently warranted a cut away to the stands to see her reaction. A play in which Hawk sacked Quinn (and I’m talking about football here), which occurred with increasing frequency as the game progressed, brought about extended coverage of the skanky Quinn and inspired a stream of pseudo-celebrity mindbarf from Musburger. The girl in question, by the way, looks like the alternate universe Ashlee Simpson that never made it beyond a guest spot on a paternity test episode of Jerry Springer, and was shown most of the time either draped over a friend like a cheap skank coat or looking at her cell phone. By the second half of the game, she had accumulated airtime at least equal to her brother, who was the goddamned quarterback!

It’s impossible to say whether Musburger’s insistence on plugging the female Quinn was due to his own infatuation or because someone behind the scenes of ABC’s broadcast thought this subplot deserved such an asinine level of attention. Regardless, I’d like to give Musburger or whoever is ultimately responsible a good shot in the chops. (In defense of the game’s color man, who’s name I do not know, he exhibited no interest whatsoever in the Hawk-Quinn affair). The end result is that a nearly four hour-long broadcast was rendered almost entirely unwatchable.
At the risk of betraying my own neurotic tendencies, I’ll admit that I was screaming at Musburger to stop mentioning the wannabe Lindsay Lohan by the time Hawk took down Quinn in the third quarter. Yes, I do realize that he couldn’t hear me.

Until yesterday afternoon, I had been largely ambivalent toward Brent Musburger, and placed him somewhere between Marv Albert and Bob Costas in the sports commentator pantheon. Now, after the skanky Quinn debacle, Musburger will join the likes of Bill Walton and Johnny “Red” Kerr, both of whom require judicious use of the mute button.