But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me

rrgirl contributes in Jesus Loves Me. Yes, I Know.:

it took a while to find this, and while the quality is poor, the video has a sweetness you’ll never see in a studio recording or concert:

Wow! What a great song! Thanks for sending the link. The video makes it feel like I’m in the livingroom with them. Most excellent.

As regards God:

Pascal’s Gambit states that it is better to believe in God than not because if you believe in God and He exists then when you die you’re in Fat City, but that if He doesn’t exist then you don’t really lose anything. Conversely, if you don’t believe in God and He does exist then you’re, like, screwed; if you don’t believe in Him and He doesn’t exist then it doesn’t matter.

The way I see it: if God exists that’s fine, but if He doesn’t, I’m cool with that, too. Einstein said God does not play dice with the Universe, but to me if we are all here just by accident then it makes each of us that much more miraculous and should inspire and compel us to live the best life we possibly can.

It’s too bad I got us kicked out of Sunday School. It was like we had one foot in the Kingdom of Heaven, and then were asked to leave. But that’s left me to decide for myself what I want to believe in, and it’s kind of more fun this way.

NB: If you wind up in purgatory you can expect to see DP and KO there, as KO feels that’s where they are headed for creating the monster called SportsCenter.

Let the Mystery Be

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you’re gone you’re gone forever, and some say you’re gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

Instrumental break.

Some say they’re goin’ to a place called Glory and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact.
But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to purgatory and I don’t like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

Everything I Learned About Men I Learned from Sports Radio

(Well, not really, but allow me that bit of poetic license here.)

• Men would rather be kneed in the groin than be spat upon.
• Spitting on another man is the lowest thing another man could ever do.
• Working out and getting ripped is great, but if you admire another man’s body you’d better darn well be envying his six-pack or other manly endowments and not lusting after them.

Two days of DP-less DP Shows. Ick. I am seriously unmotivated to catch up on the show when he is not hosting. But I did listen to most of the Thursday and Friday shows over the weekend. When did the “John Amaechi story” morph into the “Tim Hardaway story?” Not to sound callous, but I am a little tired of that discussion. And baseball season is right around the corner and I want baseball talk. (It was great to hear Peter Gammons on Thursday’s show; now that spring training is in full swing I hope the Dalai Lama works his way back into the DP rotation.) But I confess that a lot of what I heard was a revelation to me. Not all in a good way, but it’s useful to hear other points of view. It can be grating, but through what better prism to examine my own beliefs.

I didn’t think Amaechi’s coming out would be such a big deal. I really didn’t. And the remarks made by Hardaway, some of ESPN Radio’s listeners, and even some of the shows’ hosts and guests surprised me. Steve Kerr said he was shocked by Hardaway’s comments, adding that “maybe it’s my own naïveté” to have assumed a greater open-mindedness. Book me a seat on the S.S. Naïve with Kerr.

Still, I was heartened by the listeners who emailed or called in with support for Amaechi and their understanding of the prejudices experienced by gays. Some of that understanding has come by almost grudgingly, confronting their own biases after finding out that someone in their family is gay. But that’s what happens: Live and learn.

Anonymous writes in Naked in the Shower and Other Reasons why Heterosexuals Fear Gay People:

Agree with you that the media is looking to put spin on the story, but shouldn’t any intelligent person have an opinion on the issue? LeBron looks like just another dumb jock. Some of these guys act like they’re living in caves. Pick up a newspaper!

But you don’t learn to be tolerant and accept others by taking an ethnic studies or gay studies class or reading about other cultures in the newspaper. Any exposure to other cultures is good, but I don’t think you internalize tolerance unless you live it. The education is incremental; it’s what you learn by going through the paces of every day life.

I was raised in a very live-and-let-live atmosphere. We were taught to be respectful and polite. My parents weren’t Christian, but it was a very Do-Unto-Others lifestyle. My older cousins who were at university befriended students from all over the world; they were invited to our family parties, which would thus turn into something resembling the U.N. — there would be a people from Kenya, Indonesia, Germany, Mexico, Brooklyn. (New York City was a foreign country to us back then.)

When I was young I heard people refer to certain men or boys as “sissies” or “funny” or something in the local vernacular. Words that did not connote outright hatred, but a definite suspicion that someone was different and not “right.” I don’t remember when I first heard the words “homosexual” and “fag.” For college I went off to school at NYU, plunked right down in Greenwich Village which, along with San Francisco, was probably considered a mecca for gays back in the 1970s. I think my “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment came when I was strolling around the Village. Two men with their arms around each other were walking towards me. One guy was shirtless and very hairy; he wore large dark glasses, a small leather vest and — I kid you not — shiny gold hot pants. They were chatting up a storm, laughing, and looking very happy.

Picture a hairy guy in a pair of these:
Go ahead. I dare you.

I double-dog dare you.

(I’m assuming they were gay. [How many straight men would be secure enough in their manhood to walk around in a leather vest and shiny gold hot pants?] But even if they weren’t I could tell right then and there that New York City was not at all like my hometown.)

The gay students I met at school didn’t seem very different than me. Some were flamboyant, but my roommate was flamboyant, and she was straight as an arrow and a smokin’ hot chick who attracted loads of attention. (Of all the odd couples that dormitory rooming assignments created, I think we must have been the oddest. We were Mutt and Jeff, and I was the mutt.) I remember one gay guy who lived in my dorm: he was from Cleveland and was studying art history in the hopes of becoming a museum curator and eventually a museum director. I had never met anyone who wanted to be a museum director; I thought that was way cool. Everyone I knew from back home wanted to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, or engineers.

So I didn’t come to my acceptance of gays in any grand epiphany. It just grew on me. It just happened to be that the first openly gay people I met were smart and pleasant and fun to be with. That all went onto the Mental Scorecard. Since then I have met and known gays who were selfish, immature, and self-centered.

News flash: Gays no different than the straight people.

Oh, sure, they have a different sexual preference, and this is what causes consternation amongst some straights. Me? I like to think that I’m the altruistic, pro-social type, but when it comes to sex life I’m really a lot more interested in my own than in what other people are doing.

Il mio male?

rc adds in Jesus Loves Me. Yes, I Know. :

that story was over and done with until hardaway opened his big fat mouth. and where were dan and keith when we needed them?

It’s unfortunate that Dan and Keith weren’t on the Thursday and Friday shows. Dan is so much better than John Seibel and Josh Elliott at managing a discussion, and as goofy as he can be he brings a lot more experience and thoughtfulness to the table when dealing with social issues. DP and KO are much more than just “sports guys,” something that irks a segment of DP’s audience — that segment who believes that sports exist in vacuum outside of any social context. (KO is also great at engaging people in conversation; he should do more interviews on Countdown.)

Karl comments in Naked in the Shower and Other Reasons why Heterosexuals Fear Gay People:

It’s insecure people who can’t deal with differences - differences in sexual orientatiton, skin color, religion.

As DP likes to say: If you’re afraid, get a dog.

(We have cats.)