My Random 2014 Rewind

Normally, I match the number of noteworthy news bits from the last year to the year itself (14 for 2014, etc.) but since I'm publishing this in 2015, we'll do a plus one. So without further adieu, here is your 2014 year in review.

Hey, that rhymed! (Ficky, ficky, fresh!)

A Nightmare on Main Street – The shooting of 21-year-old Michael Brown sparked a national debate (and in many cities, outrage) over the not-guilty verdict and acquittal by a grand jury who indicted Ferugsson, MO police officer Darren Wilson for shooting an unarmed Brown seven (7!) times. Call me old fashioned–and yes, context matters–but shooting an unarmed man 7 times (he fired 9 times btw) isn’t quelling civil discord. Unfortunately, the only other person who could give this any perspective is dead. 

Gamergate – In August 2014, the debate over sexism in video games came to a head due to ongoing harassment and threats–primarily targeting women–in the video game industry. Everything from rape and death threats to bomb threats highlighted the maniacal state of ethical issues like sexism and misogyny in the video game industry. Many women in the gaming industry have been victimized by harassment and threats to themselves and their loved ones for calling out the inequities of the industry. Feminist culture and industry critic, Anita Sarkeesian who released a video manifesto on the very male-dominated face of gaming, characters, development, and propaganda was at the seething heart of this growing cultural and media scandal. Rest assured, this one is just getting started. 

Sony: The Interview and The Hack – The Christmas Day DDOS attacks on the world’s largest entertainment and media servers included spamming the servers of Amazon, Xbox Live, and Sony PlayStation as well as leaking vital Sony financial, movie and employment info. This culminated in the unauthorized release of the Sony film, The Interview online. Ultimately, this did little to motivate people to see a film that pretty much no one wanted anyway.
Computer terrorism, it appears, has arrived. 

Oh, Obamacare –Also known as the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s landmark blueprint to reform health care was plagued by technical glitches and consumer confusion. Under heavy crossfire from conservatives, the salvos are getting loaded as the real battle to keep it begins. Standby for a looming Supreme Court case that threatens the entire program.

I knew those Jell-O® pudding pops tasted funny – We really lost two great comedy minds to tragedy this year. Robin Williams (see below) and the 80’s sweater man himself, Dr. William Cosby. Creator of the Cosby kids (a.k.a. Fat Albert), I Spy co-star, and America’s perfect Dad Heathcliff Huxtable. Cosby is / was a entertainment media super-mogul—who just so happened to like drugging women and sexually molesting them ruffi style. At the time of this post some 20+ women dating nearly four decades have stepped forward with similar allegations of sexual misconduct. Since, all future projects with TV and movies and all re-runs of Fat Albert, I–Spy and The Cosby Show. “Hey, hey, hey… its a faaaaat class action suit!” Coming at ya, Cos.

Ray Rice: The Slugger Chronicles – The scathing video of Baltimore Ravens running back, Ray Rice punching his then fiancé (now wife) out in a casino elevator brought the conversation of athletes and domestic abuse to the American table of discussion once again. He is far from the only culprit but listen, a 265-lb pro football player shouldn’t be hitting ANYONE… other than other 265-lb pro football players.

Tragedy in the Far East – In February, (and then again in December in 2014) the world held its collective breath when a Malaysia Airlines flight first went way off course and then went missing, later to be declared a crash out deep over the Indian Ocean with all aboard lost. To this day no one know s why these two events occurred but it is the stuff of nightmares and not very a good year at all for Malaysia Airlines. 

I Saw What You Did Last Night  – At this point there is no understandable reason why anyone should be surprised by anything movie stars do. I mean who else has naked sexy-time pics of themselves on their phone these days? Its so 2004. Sure they were ‘deleted’ but any 4th grader knows anything that's been digitally trashed can be recovered. If you live in a world were your career is affected by technology you don’t understand, then you deserve anything that happens to you. So, J-law, calm down, those naughty-girl pics of you as a naked Catniss Everdeen only helped you. Stop pretending you’re so outraged. The real tragedy is that you took the pics in the first place. 

The Walking (Ebola) Dead – So, color me lost on this one but hasn’t Ebola been around for like, a kajillion years? How was it that this Walking Dead kind of pandemic disease made its way into the US? As a nation, this country was completely at a loss for how to deal with the mother of all viruses and several infected people in New York and Texas lost their lives. Though the CDC was Johnny on The Spot, I fear this isn’t the last of this deadly killer. 

Mork Signs Off, One Last Time – As with every year we lost a whole lot of really stellar folks in 2014 but none will eclipse the loss off comedy legend Robin Williams. Known for his campy 1970’s alien funny-man role as Mork from Ork, Williams was one of Hollywood’s most esteemed funny-men. Tragically taking his own life, we were lucky to enjoy a slew of unforgettable movies from one of the very best. So, Nanu, Nanu, Genie. Godspeed. 

Cold Days in Hell – Welcome to the SOCHI 2014 Winter Olympics. Take a region just an hour away from a savage, bloody civil war, add packs of wild dogs (in the hundreds!) and award it the largest international sports competition in the world and hi jinks ensue. What was laughable, was the Wifi didn’t work (kind of important when thousands of media correspondent from around the world will be on hand), the showers didn’t have running water and the hotel staff at the event would steal liberally from its patrons. (Sigh)

Kicking Old Habits For New – If you were near a TV set this past summer then all you heard about was the American Soccer Team during the FIFA 2014 World Cup and how this was “our year.” And by that we meant, this was our year that every sports nut who was tired of Baseball, jonesing for Football and between Golf tournaments, needed yet another reason to take a two-hour lunch and get faced while pretending to be passionate about a sport they knew nothing about. Welcome to Soccer in America. Oh, and congrats, Germany. 

I Dare You To Dare Me – You must have been on another planet this past summer if you didn’t hear or see anything about the ALS Ice Water Challenge. In the most egocentric awareness campaign of all time, throngs of well-meaning do-gooders challenge each other endlessly to dump water on each other within 48 hours or donate to the ALS foundation. I got just as caught up in this as everyone else. Maybe next time, we don’t make it about us and instead make it about the disease. The victims need financial help, not a viral campaign of do-nothing awareness. Just a thought.

Last Comet Standing – The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission achieved a first in 2014, sending a lander onto the surface of a comet. Millions of curious viewers world-wide tracked the landing on Nov. 12 in real time–on TV and online. Landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, was so hard that the lander’s anchoring harpoons couldn't sink in, and it bounced twice before settling down. Churyumov-Gerasimenko continues its course that rounds the sun, hopefully with more information to come.

Apple Doesn’t Miss A Beats – How’s this sound? In May of 2014, Apple writes a $3 Billion check to acquire Dr. Dre’s Beats Electronics and Beats Music — by far the largest acquisition in Apple history. Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre joined Apple. And even though the Beats brand will remain separate from Apple’s, when you think Apple, think funky Beats. 

Happy belated New Year to all my readers and a prosperous and joyous 2015 to us all! 

Why Ferguson is such a personal outrage

This is NOT the post you think it is. 

As a man of bi-racial heritage, I find it difficult to swear racial allegiance to one “race” or another. Like I have shared with my four bi-racial children, when two people of two different colors come together and create life, that child is now a unique and distinctly different "color." When you mix red and yellow, you get orange. Orange is now a uniquely separate thing with its own properties and identifying characteristics.

Seeing things through a racial filter has-at best–always been tough for me. There were a lot of different nationalities of kids I played with growing up in my inner-city  Boston neighborhood. As an adolescent, I played with  2 Ethiopian kids (brother & sister), 2 Haitian brothers, a bi-racial boy, two white kids (brother and sister), 2 Black kids and another white boy who lived above me (it was a 24-unit, four-story tenement). We knew nothing about racial segmentation. Nor did we care, we were too preoccupied with having fun together, rain, sleet or snow.

So when a young back man is gunned down by a white cop (the young man was unarmed and the cop shot him six times at point blank range), I'm stunned. Not by the event, not even by the outrage of the multi-nationality of the protesters. I am not even off-put by the scores of police using dictatorial-style military tactics to ‘disperse’ the crowds. I am appalled by the reactions of those of us who are so far removed from these events and yet have so many opinions about it. 

Facebook and Twitter exploded just hours after the news broke and the chose-up-siders went to town. Memes that explained outrage over how a black cop shot a white guy and that got no news coverage, where were the protesters for that? Really? What about the two black guys who beat up a poor white US veteran and the story never got any media play (something I find astonishing since we all somehow know about it). Then there’s the multiple stories of how the young man, Michael Brown, had (allegedly) robbed a convenience store of a cigar a day before being killed. He stole a cigar. When did the crime for THAT warrant an immediate execution-style death?

Here’s what we know; a young man (who was slated to start college course two days after being killed) was gunned down by an officer. I don’t know what the officer’s motives were, I wasn’t there. But 10 shots were fired. Ten. Six found their mark. Two to the head, four to the body–anyone else find this excessive? And a white cop, Darren Wilson, patrolling in an all-Black neighborhood, that has had a history of racial tension with the police, is not a good backdrop. 

The brutality of the police was mind-numbing to me. The dismissal that this was not a racially motivated event. The police chief of Ferguson said, in a press conference, "this was not an excessive use of force the officer, discharged his firearm not many more then two times.' ("Not many more?")

Tear-Gas, rubber bullets, footage of cops antagonizing and goading protesters. Name calling (albeit on both sides) made me ashamed and fearful for our country. Did I really watch a news clip of a police officer calling people who are outraged and fed up with injustice “animals?” What the hell? Its a scenario as volatile as any imaginable. 

The specter of racism hangs over every facet of our society. It has not gone away. It will not go away. Not until every single factor gets addressed. It is NOT okay that anyone loose their life over anything. Period. Even if Mr. Brown was charging the cop, they are trained to put someone down with non-lethal force. But that's not what happened. If this was a white man, he would have been pepper-sprayed or tazed. You know it, I know. The officer Wilson knew it. And now, Michael Brown, son, friend, would-be college attendee knows it. But the cost of acquiring that knowledge cost him his life. 

This all brings me back to when I was playing with children from a spectacular number of nationalities and ethnicity when I was growing up. I knew nothing of race, each kid was as fun as the other and figuring out how to play with so many kids was our challenge, not race. 

My offering for progress. 

In 2013 I traveled to Atlanta and met a life-long friend and his wife (he’s Jewish BTW) and we all went to DragonCon, the big Sci-fi convention held there every year. While there, we attended a panel of stars from the great Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica. A panel which included actor Edward James Olmos. In a giant exhibition hall of nearly 5,000, he explained how his belief system informs him that there is but one race… the human race. That nationalities are just political excuses to divide us and drive derision. 

He then challenged the crowd to embrace and spread this vision and to recite the catch phrase of the colonial fleet. We all stood on our feet to utter, in fist-pumping unison the prophetic words; “So say we all!” The entire throng chanted back “So say we all!” Exchanging this phrase back and forth, louder and louder until the thunder of more than 5,000 people shook the very halls of the Atlanta Hyatt’s convention center. Remembering It still sends shivers down my spine. 

Edward James Olmos is right. When there is no black race or white race but just a human race, humanity can truly take a step toward bettering itself. If it had happened sooner, young Michael Brown would be alive and in his first semester of College today. And the national tarnish of racism would be a distant memory. 

So say we all.