Tracks
BY WESLEY P. HESTER
Mike Henry, who led Timothy M. Kaine’s successful bid for governor in 2005, will also lead his 2012 U.S. Senate campaign.
Henry also led U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., to victory in 2008. In 2009, he managed Terry McAuliffe’s unsuccessful bid for governor and most recently served as senior director for ONE, an advocacy and campaigning group.
“I’m proud to announce that Mike Henry will be joining our team as campaign manager. His expertise when it comes to Virginia is unmatched. I look forward to seeing the campaign benefit from Mike’s extraordinary leadership,” Kaine said Thursday, announcing a wave of new campaign appointments.
Other appointments:
Eli Kaplan, New Media Consultant - Kaplan is a leading new media strategists in Democratic politics. He has managed the new media operations of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns in various states, including Mark Warner’s 2008 US Senate race and Terry McAuliffe’s 2009 bid for Governor of Virginia.
Warren Thompson, Treasurer - In 1992, Thomspon started Thomspon Hospitality Corporation, the nation’s largest minority-owned food service company. In 1997, he formed a new division, Thompson Hospitality Services LLC. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Thompson, who grew up in Virginia and attended college and graduate school in the Commonwealth, currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Darden School of Business and Federal Realty Investment Trust.
Jody Wagner, Deputy Treasurer - Wagner is a member of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Virginia Small Business Authority. She served as Treasurer of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and was elected President of the National Association of State Treasurers during her tenure. In 2006, Kaine appointed Wagner as Virginia’s first female Secretary of Finance, a position she held until her resignation in 2008. Wagner was her party’s nominee for Lt. Governor in 2009.
Austin Ligon, Finance Chair - Ligon is the co-founder and former president and chief executive officer of CarMax, the nation’s largest used car retailer, which opened in Richmond, VA in 1993. In 2007, Kaine appointed Ligon to the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors.
“Drive-Thru” (official movie trailer)
It’s like “Drive”, except more delicious.
(dir. by Matthew Michaud, co-starring saraliz, edited by Terry Huynh)
I’d like to start by saying that these are solely my thoughts on the November issue of GQ and the controversy that has surrounded its release. I am not a representative of the three of us, the show, or Fox, only myself.
In the land of Madonna, Britney, Miley, Gossip Girl, other public figures and shows that have pushed the envelope and challenged the levels of comfort in their viewers and fans…we are not the first. Now, in perpetuating the type of images that evoke these kind of emotions, I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention. And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?
I was a very sheltered child, and was not aware of anything provocative or risque in the media while I was navigating through my formative years. When I was finally allowed to watch a movie like Grease, I did not even understand what on earth Rizzo was talking about!? I understand that in today’s world of advanced technology, the internet, our kids can be subject to very adult material at the click of a button. But there are parental locks, and ways to get around this. I am twenty-four years old. I have been a pretty tame and easy-going girl my whole life. Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am. I am also not the girl who rolls out of bed with flawless makeup and couture clothing. I am most comfortable with my hair thrown on top of my head, in sweats, laughing with my friends. Glee is a show that represents the underdogs, which is a feeling I have embraced much of my own life, and to those viewers, the photos in GQ don’t give them that same feeling. I understand completely.
For GQ, they asked us to play very heightened versions of our school characters. A ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ version. At the time, it wasn’t my favorite idea, but I did not walk away. I must say, I am trying to live my life with a sharpie marker approach. You can’t erase the strokes you’ve made, but each step is much bolder and more deliberate. I’m moving forward from this one, and after today, putting it to rest. I am only myself, I can only be me. These aren’t photos I am going to frame and put on my desk, but hey, nor are any of the photos I take for magazines. Those are all characters we’ve played for this crazy job, one that I love and am so fortunate to have, each and every day. If you asked me for my dream photo shoot, I’d be in a treehouse, in a wild costume, war-paint and I’d be playing with my pet dragon. Until then…..
…Do the Presbyterians think Rocks are animals?
ALL ROCKS GO TO HEAVEN
CONVERTING TO CATHOLICISM DOES NOT MAGICALLY GRANT YOUR DOG A SOUL.
WOW. EPIC CATHOLIC WIN.
I LOVE THIS.
“We have your family”
That was 23 hours ago.
22 hours since I stormed out the Polizia’s HQ.
15 hours since I capped a fucking snitch.
1 hour since I decided there was only one way this would end.
It might already be too late.
Found this burner shoved in my ticket pocket.
Ransom note wrapped round it.
Letters cut from back issues of Leon.
“Cooperate or we put them in RTW”
Those sick fucks.
Kidnapped.
by RL Stevenson Black Label.
Got my kin held down.
Got my fam tied up.
G’s trapped in triangles.
Fighting the Stockholm syndrome.
Hostages laced in H&M.
God forbid.
Less than an hour.
Running through Pitti.
On Dainites.
Protect these soles.
From my bloodshed.
A sea of red coral.
Great Barrier steelo.
Even at my most vulnerable.
My most desperate.
My most human.
Potential threats all around me.
I stay clowning.
Finding Timo Weiland.
So I can punch them the fuck out.
But I can’t get distracted.
Reading that note over.
And over.
At the cafe last night.
Searching for clues.
Inside my espresso.
It doesn’t make any sense.
“Call when you are at the drop off”
“Bring us 100 unmarked, untraceable #fashion tags.”
“Who is your tailor?”
“We want to feature you on our Tumblr.”
“How do you feel about street style?”
Two-bit steez traffickers.
If they only knew.
P is home.
And like Albert said.
There’s no such thing as half way crooks.
I left Yahoo over two years ago, but prior to that I spent three years running product for Delicious. Since then I’ve remained a loyal user and supporter. To this day I keep in touch with former Delicious colleagues and consider many to be friends. And though I’ve felt that Delicious has been frustratingly slow to evolve in recent years, I’ve always wished the best for the product and the remaining team members.
original photo: afagen on Flickr All of this has made last week’s news especially saddening and painful. First the Delicious team was hit by layoffs. Then it emerged that Yahoo is either shutting down Delicious or trying to sell it. As I write this it is still not entirely clear what the real story is, but regardless Delicious is in peril.
An online debate has already begun about various ways that Delicious might be “saved”. As someone who was on the inside for a while and who wants very much to see Delicious live on, I thought I’d chime in. For the record, what follows are opinions based on my own experiences. I have not spoken to anyone inside Yahoo about this and I do not have any special knowledge about the current situation.
Convincing Yahoo to keep investing in Delicious
This is unfortunately a non-starter. Last week much of the team was laid off and my guess is that the product is now at best staffed for “maintenance mode”. This sends a fairly clear message and it’s not something Yahoo can easily reverse because they have lost already-scarce expertise in both the product and the complicated technology stack that underpins it.
Selling Delicious to a third-party
This certainly seems like the best option for Delicious and its users, and I hope that Yahoo is able to pull it off. But it’s not a straightforward proposition. As mentioned above, most of the team is now gone. Last week’s leak (and the subsequent fallout) also did unfortunate damage to the Delicious brand, sending panicked users to competing products.
But ultimately the real challenge here will be the technology. During my time at Delicious we rebuilt the entire infrastructure to deeply leverage a number of internal Yahoo technologies. It’s all great stuff but not exactly easy to remove or replace. Yahoo may have to license some of this technology to the buyer. I’m not sure they’ve done that before.
Open sourcing Delicious
This is a seductive concept but doesn’t make much sense. As in the case of a sale, they would need to unwind a bunch of proprietary technologies before this could happen. And open sourcing a complex product isn’t as simple as switching your GitHub repository from private to public. It involves a lot of work to clean up and document the source. For Delicious this would add up to a huge effort that would be hard to justify purely on a financial basis. Even then, it’s not clear how an open source social bookmarking system would work, given that much of its value comes from being centralized.
Donating Delicious to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian
Now we’re getting closer. While it is folly to assume either of these institutions could take over Delicious and keep it running as a viable service, it does seem like they would be interested in preserving the Delicious corpus and making it available for research.
I love Delicious for many reasons, but chief among them is that it is the Internet’s memory storage device. In the 7+ years of its existence it has recorded the collective online journeys of millions of users during a time when the Web was evolving dramatically. Those memories are irreplaceable and have enormous value both to their owners (the users) and to society.
And so this is where we end up: Delicious may or may not have a future as a service, but regardless we can still “save it” by extracting and preserving its collective memories. There are two ways to do this:
- Yahoo could proactively release the corpus of publicly-shared bookmarks and tags. This could take the form of a mass data dump into the public domain, or it could be via an agreement with an institutional partner (much like Twitter did earlier this year).
- The Delicious user community could organize to save the data themselves via a coordinated harvesting project.
The second approach could produce valuable results but would require no shortage of cleverness in order to avoid triggering rate limiters and other abuse mitigation mechanisms. Even then it’s not clear that the entire corpus is currently accessible in this manner. The first approach would be much more direct and complete, and would likely earn back for Yahoo some of the goodwill it has recently lost.
Separately from the public data, there is the issue of personal user data. While Delicious has long had a bookmark export tool, other pieces of personal or private data are not easily exportable, notably the user’s Inbox (links shared with them by other users) and their Network (links saved by users they follow, as well as the list of those contacts — it’s basically Twitter for bookmarks). The user community has already started working on this problem: former Delicious engineering lead Josh Whiting has written a Ruby script that exports your Inbox. Ideally Yahoo should provide official tools for exporting this data.
In conclusion, releasing the public corpus is the right thing to do for Delicious, for Yahoo, and for the Internet. If a sale proves difficult — or even if it succeeds — I hope Yahoo will take this path and I would strongly encourage them to do so.
**I wrote this last night but was shy about publishing it. But I feel good about it today. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors. I’m not the best editor. ** - Jen Kirkman
I was supposed to talk to the Larry Mantle show on NPR this week. They wanted to talk to me about the recent “scandal” with Eddie Brill – the comedian and booker for The Late Show with David Letterman. I ended up cancelling calling in to the talk radio show for schedule reasons – I was too busy and couldn’t get away from my duties that morning. (I work as a writer on Chelsea Lately.) In one way, I’m almost glad that it worked out that I did not do the interview because I tend to speak in shorthand and also hyperbole. I would be asked specific questions and would only have ten minutes to respond to what was asked and as a comedian, on the radio, I would probably want to be a little bit funny for all of the people listening who would be exposed to me for the first time. But I would like to get my thoughts out about this issue and I think in writing is the best way to do so.
Let me say this first. I know Eddie Brill even though I don’t think I’ve ever met him in person. He called me years ago to ask me to be part of a big comedy show at the Emerson Majestic Theatre – owned by Emerson College. We’re both alums. I was flown to Boston on Emerson’s dime and put up in a nice hotel and got to perform on a great show with Bill Burr, Dennis Leary and Anthony Clark. As it turned out, Eddie was stuck at work and couldn’t make his flight to Boston that night. But if it weren’t for him, I still would not have performed as a stand-up comic at my Alma matter – Emerson never asked me! Eddie has also asked me to submit a tape to try to get a spot on Letterman. Over the years, we’ve gone back and forth with my submissions and I haven’t booked the show but never once felt it was because I was a woman. I’ve been on Craig Ferguson and Conan and I know how long it takes to put a set together and work with the booker on the perfect five minutes to piece together. Most comedians whom you are not seeing on late night TV are probably loved and respected by the bookers of those shows but for some odd reason or another, it just hasn’t worked out that they’ve appeared on the show. Eddie has also published my jokes when he was editing a comedy section for Reader’s Digest. That’s all I know of Eddie. This is not a case of, “Well, he’s nice to me, so therefore he isn’t sexist!” I’m just stating that while Eddie has not booked me on Letterman, I don’t believe that he finds me to be unfunny because I’m a woman.
That being said, let’s look at Eddie’s quote because he DID say it. He has Freedom of Speech and so do I – so I will respond to the only thing I know about Eddie and his opinion of women in comedy – which is what he said to the New York Times. “There are a lot less female comics who are authentic,” Mr. Brill said. “I see a lot of female comics who to please an audience will act like men.”
It actually made me laugh, like I was reading something that an old uncle of mine would say. I don’t know one “female” comedian who “acts like a man” in order to please the audience. Mostly because I don’t know many comedians who get past the open mic level who are still trying to “please an audience.” Secondly, what does “act like a man” mean? Perhaps this comment would have made more sense in 1960-something when women really didn’t do certain ‘masculine’ things in public, let alone on TV, like swear, or wear jeans and a tee-shirt, yell, take command of a group of people, etc.
Let me first address the words “female comedian.” Nobody says, “I saw the funniest male comedian last night.” It’s implied, I guess, that a comedian is male and that that’s the norm and that we need to modify comedian with “female” when a woman performs. But “female” unlike “prop”, “story-telling”, “physical” is NOT A TYPE OF COMEDY. I’m wildly different in my style than so many of my peers who happen to be women. Not once have I done a show with other girls and had to worry that we were all the same. I’ve always thought that I have a similar style of stand-up comedy to Richard Lewis. I improvise heavily on stage. I’m insecure and self-conscious yet am grandiose. I’m so desperate for the audiences to not only laugh but for them to understand me. I think I’m also similar to Joan Rivers in that I raise my voice on stage, I like to engage with the audience and I have some anger. But I don’t feel that I relate to Joan in ways that have to do with being a “woman.” In the world, I feel like I identify as a ‘comedian’ more than I do a ‘woman.’ I never feel out of place in a room full of men but I do feel out of place in a room full of people who are talking about how funny Two and a Half Men was last night. That’s a comedian. We can be snobs who have no sense of humor off stage except with each other. That’s a huge personality trait (flaw?) and it knows no gender.
Back to Eddie: honestly I have no fucking idea what he means when he says that female comedians are “less authentic.” Who? Who is talking about? What is his idea of authenticity? It’s totally subjective. I don’t know if he’s been seeing “female comedians” every night of the week or this is based on one time – seeing a few women whom he didn’t understand. I don’t know. It seems like a generic statement that is unfortunate. He’s stating it as fact and the average person reading this article could just let that slip into their brain and start to parrot at cocktail parties that “women aren’t authentic comedians.” He could have at least said, “in my opinion….” (which is still a dumb opinion).
So, that’s where I stand on Eddie which is to say, I was bummed to see someone I liked (because they liked me) say stuff that seemed just….out-dated, untrue and lame. Do I believe that Eddie Brill thinks women aren’t funny or have some genetic pre-disposition to not be funny a la Christopher Hitchens? No. I honestly don’t.
I’d also like to discuss what it means to “act like a man”. This is a larger issue of gender identity. I’ve always felt pretty masculine in a lot of ways. I’m really girl-y. I get manicures and love make-up and I wear dresses sometimes and love fashion but I also like to look androgynous sometimes. I like menswear. I’m loud. I take up space. I’m ambitious. I pay my own way in life. If I like a guy, I tell him. I don’t think of men as people who will ‘take care of me’ or anything like that. I have guy friends who are effeminate but straight. I have gay guy friends who look like lumberjacks. I have female friends who dress like boys. I have female friends who dress like drag queens. I think that someone who is younger than Eddie Brill kind of understands this. Sometimes younger women, maybe some of these “female comedians” he observed, were raised in a post- Women’s Movement world and it doesn’t dawn on us that we were ‘acting like men.’
Just like anything in life there is always a gray area. There are some fucking unfunny, inauthentic women. Whoo boy. I’ve had to sit through them. I’ve also sat through some unfunny, inauthentic men too. It’s called COMEDY. Comedy is hard and you have to do it a LONG time before you either #1 get funny or #2 realize you’re not ever going to be funny and give up.
I was told that one of the topics I was going to be asked to discuss during the NPR radio interview – was the question of have I ever been through any sexism in comedy? How have I dealt with it?
When I first started out in comedy, I was treated like shit by a lot of club owners. I was told that I wasn’t funny and I should stop. I remember thinking it was sexism but looking back it was because I wasn’t funny yet. I was just starting out and mainstream comedy clubs weren’t the best place to find acceptance.
Now that I’m able to perform at a mainstream club, I’ve had bookers say to me, “We can’t have two women go on stage back to back.” Yes. That is sexist. How I deal with it is that I go on stage and I’m fucking as funny as I can be. And I just focus on what my job is instead of how upset that comment made me. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come off stage to an apology from either the club owner or just the person running the show. But yes, strangers come up to me after shows and say, “I don’t normally like female comics but you’re funny.” I’ve walked into clubs where I know the person running the show isn’t familiar with me and I can feel in my gut, I’m not getting a fair first impression in his mind because I’m a woman. I can’t explain it. And this is why I hate talking about sexism in comedy. Because it’s hard to put your finger on it when it’s happening. All I can tell you is that it sets off something in your gut. You feel suddenly like you have no right feeling comfortable in a club. You feel suddenly like no matter what you do, you’re being judged differently. It’s just a feeling. It’s why I related to Dave Chapelle when he “freaked out” and walked away from his Comedy Central show because he just “felt” that someone in the room was laughing at his jokes not in the right way. He’s not saying that anyone in the room was racist but he’s saying there are still issues of race and when you’re someone who wants to be funny for a living it’s a bummer when huge “isms” suddenly are on your head to deal with. I didn’t sign up for that.
I’ve had more blatant sexist experiences where I hear from networks like Comedy Central that I can’t get a half hour special because I don’t appeal to men ages 18-34. Sure, I’m NOT a man age 18-34 but I don’t see why they wouldn’t like what I do. In fact, I know a lot of them do because they let me know on Twitter, Facebook, and at my shows. I’ve gone on auditions where the call was put out for “funny women” and then you read the script and not one funny thing was written and then a model gets the role anyway. Sure. There is sexism. People say stupid shit like, “I don’t know how to write for a woman.”
The areas in which I fight sexism are with my activism and spare money to causes, publications, organizations that are doing work for the equality of women all over the world; things that keep our right to choose safe, provide help for women who are fighting for their right to drive or show skin in other countries and I’m on board with anything that helps get that fucking ERA passed.
But how do I “deal” with sexism in comedy? I don’t. I don’t deal with it. I just go, “FUCK. ARRRRGH.” And then I try to be funny in my work. No one has stopped me from making a living and I’m so grateful that I get to write and appear on a TV show, go on the road as a headliner and I’m writing a book that’s coming out in 2013. There are women and men out there who will hire women and I surround myself with those people. One of my favorite moments as a comedian was backstage at a gig in Las Vegas about 7 years ago – for some shit show on the Starz Network. Some (male) comic whom I didn’t know checked me out and complimented my ass backstage. Greg Fitzsimmons, a funny comic and a casual friend of mine said to the guy, “Hey. She’s here to be a comedian. You want to look at a woman’s ass and tell her about it – you can go to a strip club later.” My friend and writing partner at Chelsea Lately, fellow comedian, Chris Franjola said to me that he was recently on the road in Cleveland and asked the club booker, “How come a woman hasn’t been booked here in months? It’s dudes every weekend?” I’m lucky to be friends with dozens and dozens of funny guys and not one of them is sexist.
But I AM SO SICK of talking about sexism. And even the articles that are rebuttals to the question “are women funny?” are tiresome. And I feel like women are asked to take small chunks of time here and there to seriously address the issue of people who keep saying or implying that “women aren’t funny.” I’m tired. Can guys take over for a little bit?
I know this seems out of left field but in the 1990’s when Nirvana broke – they kicked the dick off of the type of rock star that had been prevalent. Kurt Cobain was not married to a model but a fucking insane loudmouth rock star in her own right. He was short and he was skinnier than Kate Moss. He wore dresses, eyeliner and nail polish on network television and kissed his band mate Krist on Saturday Night Live. Kurt appeared on the cover of The Advocate. He wasn’t gay or a drag queen nor was he just trying to shock people or pull some gimmick. He was trying to assert with all of his being that being a man had nothing to do with asserting power over women or gay people or looking or behaving a certain way. I wonder if an Eddie Brill type would have seen Kurt and thought, “This guy is not authentic. He’s trying to be too much like a woman.”
I saw Nirvana perform and The Breeders opened for them. Kurt came out and apologized that they were not the Breeders. He said he wished he could be as bad-ass as Kim Deal. A guy said that on stage about a woman at the height of his fame. He was hanging around with Riot Grrrl Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill who spray painted, “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on a wall, which is where he got the name for that song. He was quoted as saying, “The future of rock belongs to women.” Nirvana often had the girl group Shonen Knife open for them. At first, audiences got angry and violent – as the ‘jocks’ in the audience didn’t want to see chicks in a band. Kurt helped change the culture because he walked it like he talked it. He brought women in front of his audience. He wrote things on his album liner notes (“what are those?” you ask – shut up) that said, “If you’re sexist and hate women, don’t come to our shows.”
(Now listen, I know he was also an addict who was with another manipulative addict and I’m sure on more than one occasion Courtney cried “sexism” when someone didn’t want to deal with her when the truth probably was – people just didn’t want to deal with her. And Kurt was the eternal victim – anything to have an excuse to go back and hide and do drugs. I get that.)
But that doesn’t take away from what he accomplished for chicks in the music world. The biggest rock group in the world brought girl bands to open for them. (And Bob Goldthwait sometimes.)
I bring that up to say – I know some people are NEVER going to stop saying that “women aren’t funny” and I know that some people are NEVER going to stop wanting to write pro-women articles in response to the people who say that “women aren’t funny.” But I am one “female comic” who is fucking tired of talking about it. It’s the first question people ask me when I do press. “What’s it like being a female comedian?” I don’t know. I can tell you what it’s like being a comedian though.
So, I’m asking you journalist and radio show hosts – talk to THE DUDES about women in comedy. Let’s change the conversation. The articles have already been written anyway and they’re all fucking boring. I’m asking you dudes in comedy, my friends, to please be like Nirvana and don’t just silently agree with us but keep bringing us girlfriends of yours on the road with you, keep casting us in things – not just as a romantic interest. Keep helping CHANGE the culture – don’t just make us women comment on it constantly. I want to hear the male comics talk about how funny women are – or just talk about how funny certain comedians are and I pray they have a healthy heaping of girls on that list. Let’s NORMALIZE women in comedy so we can stop talking about it . I’m done talking about it. I need the men to start challenging this shit too – I need them to Cobain Up because the future of comedy belongs to men AND women.
Jeff Griesch and Matt Coatney (left) watch Lindsey Moore against Indiana.
Follow Randy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RandyYorkNsider
By Randy York
They’re a year apart, but always together. They know what each other is thinking and laugh at punch lines before they’re even delivered. They’re roommates, teammates, best friends and push each other hard to improve on a daily basis. Lindsey Moore has no official designation as an assistant coach, but everyone around Nebraska’s No. 19-ranked women’s basketball program knows the junior point guard plays a big role in the rapid rise and development of sophomore forward Jordan Hooper, the Big Ten Conference’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer. Moore pushes every button in Hooper’s head. She’s a confidant that spurs confidence. Moore is the city slicker from suburban Seattle, and Hooper is the country girl whose home base of Alliance, Neb., is 36 miles from the ranch she grew up on in Sheridan County.
In her third year as a starting point guard, Moore was dealing the cards as a freshman to a veteran team that won 32 of 34 games and made the NCAA Sweet 16. A year later, she helped guide Hooper through an adventuresome but losing freshman season, and Nebraska Coach Connie Yori now gives Moore credit for helping mold Hooper into the toughest scoring/rebounding threat in the Big Ten Conference. “Lindsey had a very mature basketball IQ when she came here,” Yori said. “You talk about somebody that can pick things up. She’s one of those kids where you tell them once, and she does it right 10 straight times. That’s rare, and we’re really happy with the way she’s taken Jordan under her wing. She knew how much we needed Jordan to upgrade her game, and she’s done that over this past year. Here’s a kid from (suburban) Seattle and another from Alliance, and they’ve developed a good friendship, on and off the court. Lindsey even went out to Jordan’s ranch, and that’s a whole different world out there, compared to where she grew up. It’s neat when two kids love the game so much that they connect in other ways.”
Moore says her Nebraska ranch experience “was awesome. It was really cool to see how Hooper grew up,” she said. “She talks a lot about Alliance. She loves Alliance. That’s why it was so fun for me to get out there and see what it was like. It’s fun to see another environment and how people live and work. I’m not even close to anything like that. I had about a third as many people in my high school as Jordan does in her whole town. The great part about going to Alliance and the ranch, you can tell why she’s so excited and why she thinks that town is so awesome.”
Let the record show that this dynamic Husker duo – Moore the 5-foot-9 guard and Hooper the 6-foot-2 forward – played one game last Easter weekend on the slab of concrete on the Hooper ranch – a court that’s wider than it is longer and has the full range and circumference to accommodate 3-point shooting. The one-on-one battle went down to the wire. Final score: Country Girl 21, City Slicker 20. “Home-court advantage,” Hooper said. “We didn’t play another game. We were both too tired.” Moore said she came close to pulling off the upset using her ability to drive and shoot a variety of off-balance shots. “I love competing with Jordan,” she said.
“I love playing against Lindsey,” Hooper said. “She helps me every day, on the floor and off. We live together, so she never misses a chance to boost my confidence. At the beginning of this year, I didn’t have any confidence shooting the ball. I’d shoot it and not know if it was going in or out. I swear Lindsey’s told me every day all year long how much confidence she has in my shot. I remember one night when I told her I didn’t have any confidence. She sat me right down, looked me in the eye and said: ‘You need to have confidence in yourself because I have all the confidence in the world in you.’ Hearing her say that and mean that was a big help. It changed my mindset. She’s always been that way to me. She told me every time that ball leaves my hand to think it’s going in because that’s what she’s always thinking.”
A city slicker telling a country girl how to stay positive kind of goes against the grain of the way most Nebraskans think. But Moore is a persuasive leader, even convincing Hooper to take on the pressure of great expectations, so she could help the Huskers develop a championship mindset. “I never wanted to tell people that I felt so much pressure – from Alliance and everywhere else,” Hooper said. “Now I can say it. I wanted to impress people every game. I still carry some of that pressure with me, but Lindsey’s helped me take it on. She’s helped me grow.”
When a city slicker shares her vast basketball experiences with an equally self-driven country girl, they end up pushing each other, supporting each other and challenging each other. No wonder a 13-1 Nebraska team heads into Sunday’s 3 p.m. game at Iowa reaping all the benefits that come with that: Chemistry, character and confidence. The Huskers are hot, and you might consider doing what so many fans are already doing: Turning on the Big Ten Network, turning down the sound and tuning into Matt Coatney and Jeff Griesch as they spiritedly and accurately describe the action on the Husker Sports Network. The network includes flagships B107.3 FM in Lincoln, Twister 93.3 FM in Omaha and 880 AM-KRVN in Lexington. Free live audio, of course, is available on Huskers.com.
Send a comment to ryork@huskers.com (include residence)
Randy’s N-Sider Columns
My Other Commute Is In A TARDIS.
Doctor Who + BBC America ad on the train in New York.
