The Global Game: Vol. 1, Issue 4 (Special All Star Weekend Edition)

IN THIS ISSUE:

-- MIDEAST TURMOIL CONTINUES

-- BATTLE LINES DRAWN IN WISCONSIN

--TGG OLD SCHOOL JAM OF THE WEEK

-- HOW THE RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER

-- GRAMMY FOLLIES:
WHY OLD SCHOOL IS BETTER THAN NEW SCHOOL

-- HOLLYWOOD "WHITEOUT"

-- GQ'S LIST OF
"THE 25 COOLEST ATHLETES OF ALL TIME"

-- TGG'S LIST OF
"THE REAL 25 COOLEST ATHLETES OF ALL TIME"

As the week ended, revolutionary winds continued to blow throughout the Middle East. Egyptians had a "Day of Victory," once again flooding Tahrir Square --- this time to celebrate the week's anniversary of the departure of Hosni Mubarak and to continue to press the Army to move forward with

the democratic process.

The Day of Victory

Meanwhile, protests broke out in Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The most dangerous situation appeared to be in Bahrain, where the monachy initially resorted to violence and where the Western powers feared that the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet which watches over the strategic

Straits of Hormuz (through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes and which lies between the Scylla and Charybdis of Iran and Saudi Arabia)

might be in jeopardy...

A Vital Chokepoint

Not to be outdone, at home an equally titantic struggle was unfolding, as Republican governors across the nation took dead aim at public sector employees. Ground Zero was Wisconsin, where new Governor Scott Walker put forth a budget plan that called upon state workers to contribute 5.8% of their pay to pensions and pay at least 12.6% of health-care premiums. Most ominously, Walker's budget bill would outlaw collective bargaining for most public sector employees. Similar plans were on the table or expected from Republicans in Ohio, New York, and California, among other states.

President Obama called it right when he said the Wisconsin bill "seems like more of an assault on unions."

In perhaps the quote of the week, Gov. Walker retorted --- to the President of the United States of America --- "when your budget is fixed, you can stick your nose in ours."

"It's Not Like Any Union Members Voted For Me, Anyway"

With so much at stake, the rhetoric (and the cartoons) on both sides boiled over quickly...

Unfortunately, Obama was limited in his response, in light of the fact that one of his first acts after losing the midterm elections had been to throw federal government employees under the bus by announcing a looks-good-means-nothing-in-the-big-deficit-picure freeze on their pay.

Knowledgeable political observers could not believe that this was happening in Wisconsin, of all places --- Wisconsin, historical home of the Progressive movement and for as long as most could remember, one of the most forward-looking states in the Union. Wisconsin workers were fighting back, however, and the lines for the showdown were drawn.

The Global Game, for one, believes that such a confrontation is long overdue. In the words of TGG's Old School Jam of The Week, it was time for someone, somewhere, to....

The assault on union rights in Wisconsin seemed to be just one more piece in a growing puzzle of evidence that even in a time of growing income inequality, the institutions of the United States of America, from Washington to Wall Street, were dedicated to seeing the rich get richer....

In a provocative piece in Rolling Stone, crack investigative journalist Matt Taibbi asks
"Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?"

"Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other
rich and famous people."

Even as the New York Stock Exchange, that fabled icon of U.S. capitalism, was up for sale to the Germans, some were beginning to question whether some of the basic underpinnings of capitalism even worked anymore. Felix Salmon, a well-known financial blogger, argued that it was irrelevant because the capital markets no longer functioned except for the favored few:

"What the market is not doing so well is its core public function: allocating capital efficiently. Apple, for instance, is hugely profitable and sits on an enormous pile of cash; it is thus very unlikely to use its highly rated stock to pay for any acquisitions. It hasn’t used the stock market to raise money since 1981, and there’s a good bet it never will again.

Meanwhile, the companies in which people most want to invest, technology stars like Facebook and Twitter, are managing to avoid the public markets entirely by raising hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars privately. You and I can’t buy into these companies; only very select institutions and well-connected individuals can. And companies prefer it that way."

Somehow, none of this was made better by reports that the Kardashian family made
$65 million last year...

Only In America

While many felt that the rise of the Kardashians called into question the very meaning of American culture, others preferred not to ponder such deep questions and simply sat back and enjoyed the
53rd Annual Grammy Awards

Even the Grammys, however, resurrected one of The Global Game's ongoing themes:

"Why Old School Is Better Than New School"

Why Old School Is Better
Than New School,

Chapter 2:

MAKING AN ENTRANCE
TO THE GRAMMYS ---

NEW SCHOOL

Lady Gaga Arrives at the 2011 Grammys

MAKING AN ENTRANCE
TO THE GRAMMYS ---
OLD SCHOOL

J. Lo Arrives for the 1995 Grammys

Why Old School Is Better

Than New School --

Chapter 3:

NEW SCHOOL POP IDOL

Ushering In A New Era

OLD SCHOOL POP IDOLS

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

TGG supposes there is no accounting for musical tastes. However, as the New York Times pointed out in a blistering critique of diversity in Hollywood, entitled
"Hollywood's Whiteout," somebody should be held accountable for the fact that American filmmakers seem to be able to make movies about everything and everyone except people who happen to be
black, brown, yellow or red:

"Crammed into this year’s field of 10 best picture Oscar nominees are British aristocrats, Volvo-driving Los Angeles lesbians, a flock of swans, a gaggle of Harvard computer geeks, clans of Massachusetts fighters and Missouri meth dealers, as well as 19th-century bounty hunters, dream detectives and animated toys. It’s a fairly diverse selection in terms of genre, topic, sensibility, style and ambition. But it’s also more racially homogenous — more white — than the 10 films that were up for best picture in 1940, when Hattie McDaniel became the first black American to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in “Gone With the Wind.”
In view of recent history the whiteness of
the 2011 Academy Awards
is a little blinding."

"A Little"?

Meanwhile, in that sporting calendar pause known as "The Time Between the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four," GQ Magazine came out with its list of
"The 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time."

The publishing of the list raised several questions. Primary among these was,

"WTF does GQ know about being cool or being an athlete?"

Nevertheless, in the interest of public service, TGG presents the GQ list below:

First, however, also as a public service, we note for all of our readers who happen to be front-running, fair-weather, spoiled, whining, get-all-the-calls-in-the-playoffs-because-David Stern-wants-our-team-in-The Finals
Lakers fans, that one name is most decidedly

not on the list:

How Cool Is That?

GQ's "25 Coolest Athletes of All Time"
(GQ Did Not Rank Its List,
But Tom Brady Was On The Cover)

Joe Namath

Mario Andretti

Allen Iverson

Bjorn Borg

Arthur Ashe

Pele

Walt Frazier

Evel Knievel

Jean-Claude Killy

Pete Maravich

Tom Brady

Muhammad Ali

Julius Erving

Bob Gibson

Bo Jackson

Arnold Palmer

George Best

Derek Sanderson

Tim Linceum

Kenny Stabler

Michael Jordan

Gary Player

Ted Turner

Jim Brown

Kelly Slater

Michael Jordan

Are those truly the
25 Coolest Athletes of All Time?
In the words of TGG's
Senior Vice President for Editorial Standards,
Chad Ochocinco (nee' Johnson),

"Child, Please!"

Global Game readers know better than that! So we were determined to bring you
our very own
"The Real 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time" List. And the coolest thing is --- we're going to let you nominate #25
(or your own entire list if you want) yourselves!

But first, we had just a few rules:

No golfers, surfers, Boston Celtics or Frenchmen (unless they had scored the winning goal in a World Cup).

With that, The Global Game's list of

"The Real 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time":

25. TBD Global Game Readers

Submit your nominations in "Comments" box

at the bottom of this post.....

24. JAMES "FLY" WILLIAMS

Baller

Averaged 29.4 ppg as a freshman at Austin Peay University in 1973, leading The Governors to their first
NCAA Tourney bid in memory.

Because His Nickname Is "Fly" and Yours Isn't

23. BILL WALTON

Truthteller

NBA games are not the same without him.

21 for 22 performance in 1973 NCAA title game against Memphis State one of all-time best

performances in any sport. Ever.

"I'm Smarter Than You --- And We Both Know It"

Always Did It His Way

22. PEGGY FLEMING

Olympic Champion

Still Sets The Standard for The Winter Games

Grace Under Pressure

21. BILLY MARTIN

Animal Trainer, The Bronx Zoo

When asked by the New York press why they should believe him instead of George Steinbrenner or Reggie Jackson concerning the turmoil in the Yankee clubhouse, famously responded "because one's a born liar (Jackson), and the other's convicted (Steinbrenner, who was found guilty of making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon)."

Instigator of the original nightclub brawl at the Copacabana in 1957, where he and his Yankee teammates celebrated his 29th birthday, Martin would be unceremoniously
traded to Kansas City
soon thereafter, as Yankee management felt
he was a "bad influence" on Mickey Mantle.

A bad influence on Mickey Mantle?

"This One's A Born Liar..."

"And This One's Convicted."

20. GUILLERMO VILAS

Racketman

Rocked the Fila Old School Style

19. THOMAS "HOLLYWOOD" HENDERSON

Cowboys Linebacker and Grammar Coach

Notoriously claimed before Super Bowl XII that Steelers QB Terry Bradshaw "was so dumb he couldn't spell "cat" if you spotted him the "c" and the "t" "

-- And Don't Even Ask Me If He Can Spell "Dog"

18. DARRYL DAWKINS

Planetary Explorer

First NBA player to come from another planet -- Lovetron. First NBA player to name his dunks, and still holds title for best dunk name of all time: "The Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam-I-Am Jam")

"Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Walking On Broken Glass"

This One He Named The "Dunk You Very Much"

The Pride of Lovetron

17. CAPTAIN IVAN DRAGO

Cold Warrior

They Come In Peace

"I Must Break You"

16. PAT RILEY

Choreographer of Showtime
and
Foil to Phil Jackson

Indeed.

15. CRISTIANO RONALDO
Striker

The Baddest Boy
In The Biggest Game

In The NFL This Is Knows As "Excessive Celebration"

A Scoring Machine

O Jogo Bonito

14. RACER X
Cartoon Nemesis

Speed Kills

13. HOWIE LONG
Hitman

First and Only Rock Star Defensive Lineman

Straight man to Terry Bradshaw on
"Fox NFL Sunday"

They Call This "The Howie"

"I Miss J.B., too."

12. VIDA BLUE
Fireballer

When offered $100,000 by promotions-mad
Oakland A's owner Charles O. Finley
to legally change his name to "True Blue,"
replied "Sure, if you change yours to
"True O. Finley"

Bringing The Heat

11. USN Lt. Thomas Kazansky aka "Iceman"
Beach Volleyball Player

"Silly Little Tom Cruise Thought He
Was The Star of Top Gun"

Ice, Ice, Baby....

10. ALBERTO JUANTORENA
Track and Field Phenomenon

The USA and USSR had no answer

Catch Me If You Can

9. GEORGE BEST
Footballer

Pop-star looks caused him to be dubbed
"The Football Beatle." Regarded as one of the best football ball-handling magicians ever (see video clip below). Found sprawled in his Monaco hotel room with $100,000 cash in casino winnings, two magnums of Dom Perignon, and two Miss Worlds (the current and the former), was asked by the room-service waiter "George, where did it all go wrong?"