“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Gandhi

Might as well. Seems like no one wants him to be able to do anything anyway. I can’t help but laugh and be saddened at the same time when I see him held in a similar regard to a Nazi war criminal. Vick did something horrible for certain. His situaiton, however, mirrors those of clients I work with and sheds a light on why cycles keep repeating. It also shows the hipocracy of people in this country. Let me ask a question that I’ll revisit later. How many PETA protestors show up at Preakness, the Kentucky Derby or Belmont Stakes? The crux of this whole issue is not what Mike Vick did, but what he’ll do now. I don’t mean showing contrition, or speaking out about animal cruelty. I mean the fact tha people want to see him suffer. He went bankrupt on the strength of sponsors backing off and the Falcons reclaiming money. So beyond losing any prestige from playing in the NFL…he also lost his money. So now we have a broke, unemployed, ex-con who no one wants to touch and what do I keep hearing? That no one should, he should be banned for life from the NFL. No one should hire him. He should curl up in a ball and die. So I say…kill him then. Enact all of your cowardly online declarations and put him out of his misery, make him suffer first like some of you suggest he should. Despite what he’s done, he’s out now. In other situations people always talk about paying your debt and rejoining society. Yet not as many people are willing to hire people with records. So you want them to become productive, but won’t give them a chance to produce? You say what Vick did was too horrible? Well let’s go back to horse racing. People have eased back on running Fillys in certain races…but they still run horses that are a bit too young. Remember Barbaro? That wasn’t a one time freak accident. Despite all the attention that horse got…nothing changed about racing. I still don’t see PETA ads encouraging me not to support horse racing. There’s not commercial with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background while images of sad looking horses are displayed. The interesting thing about horses (and why it was considered a mercy to shoot one with a broken leg) is that running is a central part of their life. They naturally run…like when they experience pain they try to run from it. So a horse with a broken leg would hurt it self even more trying to escape the pain it’s feeling. Even worse is the actual build of a horses leg and how damage can compound. Most people would rather kill the horse than spend the money it would take to properly care for it in that situaiton. Dogs are cuter and easier to own. I don’t hear any outcry over people making insects fight. I guess a Stag Beetle doesn’t come across as well on a poster. Even worse then the general hatred Vick is getting, has to be sports writers. “We need to know that he’s learned his lesson.” The only way you’ll know is if he’s caught with another dog fighting ring. Other than that how can you tell if he’s sorry. Hell how can you ever tell if any athelete is ever sorry for anything. If they break down in tears complete with sobbing and snot bubbles will that seal it? Maybe if they do a Nancy Kerrigan. What reallly kills me about Sports writers is the “it’s a privilege to play in ‘________’ league”. No it’s not, that’s something nerdy fans who could never get on a team say. People aren’t allowed into professional sports for any other reason than demonstrated ability and even though you’re just a commodity to be used and traded. If it is a privilege, would someone revoke Farves so I don’t have to keep hearing about him playing the, “maybe I will” game. If it’s such a privilege why didn’t they just let Ricky Williams retire instead of taking back money he made in previous years? My job isn’t a privilege and if have issues and resign they don’ demand money back. Hell you can turn down awards and they don’t demand anything from you. All of this makes Michael Vicks situation so much more ironic to me. It’s not like he’s just going to rake in Millions of dollars. Who’s going to sponsor him now? Jason Taylor has never broken the law and he got a miniscule contract this year considering his body of work. Vick would be lucky to be a special teams player….yet people will still be pissed because he isn’t being made to suffer. So kill him. That way I won’t have to watch this spectacle any longer. I won’t have to turn on the news and see a 20 reporters standing on his lawn while legally he can’t even speak to them to tell them to get off of it. I won’t have to watch him absorb hits and play through pain. I’m sure you can think up more ways for him to suffer. So implement them all.

Not the robots. The city…I’ve been watching over the last few years and my city is changing all around me. Some of it is good, some of it is cool, some of it sucks arse. It makes me think about my younger days and the things I loved in the city. More than anything it reminds me that you can’t manufacture cool. Let’s hold up two areas for comparison.

Charles Village:

around late 90’s early 2000 I spent alot of time around this area. I could walk there from where I grew up and I knew a lot of people who lived in the area. The majority of them were college students or dropouts who lived in the apartments all around. The rent wasn’t crazy, but at that age you needed roommates and they were mostly Three story converts so each had some personality to them. Golden Temple was right next to Wazobia’s so you could buy (if you had the money) a Carlton Marshall and some incense then grab a dope salad (best salad bar ever). A few blocks down Charles St. there was Concious Heads where you could get a cut and buy a book. You could walk to the park and kick it or eat on a roof top of one of the apartments. There were decent liquor stores in the area so you could always get a Stout and even some Woodchuck cider if you felt like it. Perhaps it was the high number of students (and drop outs), but there were alot of artists in the are. I can think of two different recording studios on one block not to mention what may have been tucked away. In a word…it was cool. Harmonic convergence kind of cool. Even if for some reason no one I kne was home, I could still go to Charles Village and kick it. More than likely I would randomly meet someone who I become familiar with….especially the opposite sex…Charles Village was a great place to meet women. Either at Golden Temple, a Hopkins party (sisters at Johns Hopkins were so lonely) or just randomly in the street. There were also several “black market venues” in the area. It makes me glad I’m reformed because then I learned that the sad part about dudes who sold weed was that they tended to be home so everyone could get to them, but nobody hung out with them. I always felt a mixture between wanting to invite them along and wanting to hurry up and leave to do my thing. Ahhhh youth. I’m quite sure I heard more new music, wrote more songs, tried more food and flirted with more women in Charles Village than any other place in the city.

Harbor East:

This is the new….when I was really running around this town there was no Harbor East…it was just the end of President st. You could walk through Little Italy to get there…but the only reason would be to get to Fells Point (which was and still is cool). Now there are several things in this area…Whole Foods, Landmark Theatre, Roy’s, Teavolve (which used to be closer to S. Broadway)….there’s a lot of stuff there. The problem with it is this: it feels like it’s trying to be cool which makes it a pretender. I like Landmark…I go to that Wholefoods…I just don’t have the urge to hang out in the area. Harbor east is like that kid that had all the new toys and video games…but no one wanted to go there house. You would avoid them to hangout in someone’s yard throwing rocks. It wasn’t that you didn’t like them…they just tried to hard so they weren’t as much fun. Plus they relied on their toys too much. Harbor East I think, has a bad location if you really know Baltimore…there’s good food in Little Italy and on S. Broadway. The Harbor has a bunch of stores and food spots, but S. Broadway has just as many and you don’t pay tourist money. If you want to do both you can jump on a water taxi that will take you to the heart of either. Harbor east is literally surrounded by these areas and on the south side…water. The area was plenty of new condo’s and parking garages there’s a good place to buy wine and some cool stores. Yet it’s just not cool.

This is what happens when people try to manufacture cool. Charles Village had things in the area to patronize, but it was cool mostly because of the people that came into the area. Harbor East doesn’t have that. Actually it never will. I mentioned this to my girl and she quoted some show that said if you want to find an “up and coming” area, look for where artists live. Eventually that area will be built up and this way you can get in before it prices rise. The bad part about this is…once it’s all built up the artists won’t be able to live there anymore so what initially made it a cool area has been pushed out by….people’s desire to live in a cool area. You can’t manufacture cool…you can be cool, you can join in on cool…but you can’t build it from the ground up, not when we’re talking about a city or part of town. It’s not about stores and design that make and area cool it’s about what happens there. Hampden is similar to a lot of places in various cities…but how many bother to have a festival? South Broadway benefits from it’s proximity to the Harbor and the Water Taxi, but there are stores there that attract certain people. In the end you get a decent mix of people. However, that area has been like that for years. The Harbor has been there for years….but no one really wants to hangout there either. Most people I know wonder why tourists bother to come there in the first place. You can’t manufacture cool.

“You can’t even comprehend what I am! I’a a force o’ nature — the beast in the wild! That little runt you’re all so scared of is nothin’ but a pale imitation o’ me!”
—–
“It’s Latin. Back in the days of the Roman Empire. ‘Quod sum eris.’ ‘I am what you will be.’ No matter where you go, no matter what you do or don’t do, it can’t be stopped. You are going to become… me.”
Sabertooth

In honor of the Wolverine movie coming out and the fact that geeks usually have something to complain about when comic movies are made, sometimes I’m one of them, I thought it would be interesting to look at one complaint about the film from a different take. The biggest group of complaints about any comic book movie rests in getting things right. If it wasn’t like that in the book many geeks won’t like it. However, sometimes there is a bigger issue with the comic than the movie…that issue my friends…is retcon. So here’s the complaint I’m working with:

Geek voice: “Wolverine and Sabertooth aren’t brothers.” That’s true…now. The relationship between Sabertooth and Wolverine is complex and depending on what writer was working on the books at the time it has changed…a lot.

1. Same Person, kinda - John Byrne drew a face for Wolverine and upon learning that John Romita Sr. had done one that had been used…he turned this character into Sabertooth a villan for Iron Fist

3. Father - After creating Sabertooth Byrne, who had fought to not have Wolverine dropped early on, wanted to make him Wolverine’s father (Chris Claremont wanted this as well). Later writers didn’t.

3. Brother - Origins depicted Dog Logan as Wolverines half-brother (who hated him) he had a strong resemblance to Sabertooth and it was revealed that this was going to become a possible origin of their fued. (The writer didn’t intend this, but said it wouldn’t bother him if another writer did it later). Later writers didn’t.

4. Members of rival clans - Some story line in another book had them as members of rival Wolf and Bear Clans that had been fighting throughout history. Other writers did not pick up on this.

5. Son - It’s a different continuity for certain, but in the Ultimates they made Sabertooth Wolverine’s son.

6. Lupines - So a continuing Arc is has some dude named Romulus as a mastermind behind the experiments and tampering done with Wolverine. This dude has an interest in all the “Feral” type mutants. In this arc Sabertooth has been used as one of Wolverines “handlers”.

7. Teammates - One thing that hasn’t changed once established is that at one time the two were teammates working for the CIA and they were both part of the Weapon X project that gave Wolverine his Adamantium skeleton.

8. Rivals - This also never changes…so much so that at one point Sabertooth was apart of the X-Men and when Wolverine heard (he wasn’t around at the time) he came straight to the Mansion and the two of them started scrapping.

8. Whatever comes next - A retcon is a tool for a writer to change something in a stories history. Or for a different writer to toss out his predecessors idea so he can do whatever he now wants. So down the line who knows what the relationship will be?

WWWD:
Wolverine: “I… urkgl.. wanted to know what you… what you meant by.. ‘quod sum eris.”
Creed: “What? You ask me that now after all these years? You can go to hell.”
Wolverine: “Been there. They got your bed all made up and ready for you. Got a feelin’ though. A real sick feelin’, Creed.. that we’re going to be sharing a room together down there.”