Thursday, September 22

Big Hole News


That's Mitch Daniels there in shirtsleeves. The short one in shirtsleeves. Memo to photo-op co-ordinator: for the next groundbreaking make sure Dr. Ruth is invited.

Note that Mitch is standing between the woman from Black Expo and dashingly handsome Hall-of-Fame lock Peyton Manning, while Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson is at the end of the line, next to Myles Fucking Brand, the man who fired Bob Knight at IU and thus ranks somewhere between Morgan's Raiders and Genital Herpes on the Hoosier popularity charts. This answers the question of to whom the Indiana constitution awards executive power over publicity photos.

Touchdown Jesus H. Christ, it was ground breaking Monday on our new half-billion dollar corporate welfare for the NFL football stadium, and from the artificial excitement generated by the local news hairdos you'd have thought Magic Johnson opened another Starbucks. They all had their anchor duos on remote, and helicopter shots, natch. Channel 8 even filled a little downtime with video of a crane picking up debris from the stuff they knocked down to make room.

In a pregame warm-up last week--I hadn't found time to work this little tidbit in earlier--8's Mary Milz reported that the groundbreaking would use shovels and would just be ceremonial as the real groundbreaking would employ machinery. No, I'm not making that up, and yes, she seemed for all the world to be telling us something she thought we might have questions about.

And Holy John 3:16, they didn't even break ground! They gave 'em a little sandbox to play in. You can see it there in the picture.

I got to see the Daniels interview with 13's crack reporters, who asked him to describe the headaches involved in getting the project off the ground. I'm not sure if Mitch appreciates anyone making public references to his head, which sits atop a rather diminutive body and is covered by hair which seems to come from the side instead of growing straight up like most people's. I waited to hear the Governor explain that the hardest thing he had to do was pretend to be sitting on the sidelines encouraging a deal when in fact he and his party were screwing things up just to make sure the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis didn't get all the credit. Not to mention managing to underfund the project by $450,000 through their own incompetence, money which will now come out of the rainy day fund. Because no one could have predicted we'd get a half-million dollars' worth of rain so early.

It didn't happen. He just made some shit up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

doghouse, count among me the hoosiers who praise miles brand for firing bob knight.

i'm an alumnus of indiana univ, and finally joined the alumni association, fwiw, after he canned that red-ass.

every sept. 10, i open a bottle of miller high life (the champaign of beers, btw) and drink it from the one only champaign class to celebrate the anniversary.

april 30, 1945 -- hitler commits suicide.
august 8, 1974 -- nixon resigns presidency.
september 10, 2000 -- knight fired as i.u. basketball coach.

sic temper tyrannus.

and as for you bob knight fans, go to hell or lubbock, texas -- whichever one's hotter.

p.s. duck faniels!

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Ah. I just realized I worded that poorly, probably for the sake of the joke. Firing Knight was probably one of the least objectionable things Miles Brand did, though it certainly didn't win him any popularity contests, and if it could have been handled worse by linking it to a requirement that all students wear their underware on the outside.

He's Miles Fucking Brand to me because, instead of reversing a failing university culture, the thing he was hired to do, he stomped on the gas, put on not one but two golden parachutes, and bailed out as she went over the cliff.

(For the uninitiated, Brand left IU with time still remaining on his contract to become the President and Chief Hypocrite of the NCAA, and still managed to wrangle a contract which allows him to return to IU at any time as a supernumerary at something like $800,000/year for as long as he remains interested in cashing checks.)