Word.
While I generally detest Scoop's writing, this one time I have to give him credit. Got a nice one in for KG.

Enjoy your moment, KG. You deserved it. Its nice to know good guys sometimes get their due.

I've always wondered why sports fans in certain places are so much more passionate than others, why sports, and particularly following sports, weighs more heavily on some people's minds than others. After all culturally, Americans are relatively (to European and Asian cultures) homogeneous; and yet there are geographical differences in their behavioral patterns. I don't have the background to do a psychological or sociological analysis, and my observations are somewhat un-scientific, but I think sports obsession can essentially be correlated with the local climate.

Having lived in the United States for the majority of my life, having traveled the country's length and breadth, and having followed the history of sports in the US fairly closely, I feel comfortable in speculating where the most passionate, obsessive sports fans live. In my experience, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and other nearby big cities are the homes of teams considered to have the most impassioned sports fans. Through thick and thin, winning seasons and losing seasons alike, the fans in these cities are considered to stick by their teams and players. I've spent extensive time in about half on those, and I can speculate that this is probably true. You could probably through Seattle into that mix.

Conversely, the cities where fans are considered to be fair-weather and fickle, are places like Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and towns in those locales. Dallas fans are rather famous in this regard. Similarly, Los Angeles, the country's largest media market, couldn't sustain enough interest to keep an NFL team in town, despite that league's rise to the most popular in the country. In fact, LA lost both its football teams, both of which have been fairly successful since departing town.

So what's the constant theme here? The weather, of course. Where the temperature is colder, where the winters are harsher, and where people are more often confined to their homes due to inclement weather conditions, the fans tend to be more obsessive (i.e. true sports fans). I don't blame them. After all, when your favorite teams are losing, and you're stuck at home, I can envision scenarios where the gloom and doom weighs you down more. Consequently, I think the successes of their sports teams weigh more heavily on their minds. These folks don't have a lot of distractions.

On the other hand, in cities with warmer weather, where folks can get out more, the fans tend to have more perspective. After all, with all the distractions, what incentive would fans have to follow a poor sports team? If the Lakers didn't have Kobe Bryant and constantly finished in the bottom half of the standings, would fans fight traffic to get to the Staples Center and watch games? Or would they rather take the trouble to go to LA's numerous beaches and enjoy the sea and sun? That's what I thought. I think people in these towns are also able to deal with sports disappointments better, because of all the distractions. On the other hand, when the teams do well, attending games becomes a hip, trendy thing to do, a place to be seen, and that's usually what games in LA or Dallas are like when the teams are winning. On top of that, I think there is a greater percentage of transplants out west, and they feel less loyalty to the local sports teams and would tend not to go unless, again, there was some social impact or quality experience to be had by attending.

So where the weather is fairer, the fans tend to be more fair-weather (I wonder if that is the origin of that phrase), but is that such a bad thing? And which would you rather be, and where would you rather live? Of course, you're welcome to poke holes in these arguments.

So let me jump into the hot-topic-posting bandwagon and take this space to talk about a
current hot topic - underwater basket weaving.

I keed, I keed. Celtics won their 17th championship yesterday. Personally, ever since I moved to Boston, I have witnessed 2 Patriots championships, 1 Celtics championship and of all things, 2 Red Sox championships. So life in my sports world, is great to say the least (ok, not entirely, India crashed and burned in WC cricket as usual, but I digress).

But what I'd like to write about is the general apathy which people have here in Boston for all teams not called Red Sox. Don't get me wrong, fans here are great and are exceptionally loyal (say compared to the fickle Dallas fans; I will let tracer Bullit comment on that). But even while watching Celtics crushing the Lakers (or Pats crushing everyone else), you will hear the common refrain - " Yankees suck!!".

I mean cmon people. I realize most of you are sozzled but show some respect will you? What do the bloody yankees have to do with the lakers except both of them suck? or ARod has to do with Manning except both of them are losers and are pansies?

Give some credit where it is due. Congrats to the Celtics and to KG.
And ya, yankees do suck.

Continuing on our theme of trying to answer the question: "Why the hell is Europe so affluent?",

This article did not surprise me one bit. Why? The ugly truth is that Indians by and large are racist. It is well known we are fascinated by fair skin, and I cannot add to all that has been said in this regard.
When I was young we had people from African countries who would come to Delhi to get a
college education. I would see these guys while playing football (soccer for all you amrikans).
And I can attest that there were racial slurs being passed around.

Casteism, along with this, and the prevalent sexism all leads to the unfortunate conclusion - India is the most racist place on the planet.

Went to a concert by The Cure recently. It was bloody awesome, they played my favorite songs - Pictures of you, In between days, Just like heaven, Boys don't cry and Disintegration.
They played for 3 hours and Robert Smith's voice was terrific, as was the crowd.

But the proverbial fly in the ointment, the caterpillar in the salad as they say, was the fact that they did not play their biggest hit - 'Friday I'm in Love', which upset many a fan, obviously. While I love the song as much as anyone else, my reaction is - who cares? they played great songs anyway. Besides its a good opportunity to showcase all the other lesser known gems they have.

Someone I'm close to says - no way. This is a way of displaying the general pretentiousness and assholery, by deliberately not playing their biggest hit, when they know most of the audience paid good money to listen to that one song. Its even more inexcusable if the band played for over 3 hours.

I know Radiohead has a bad rep for this, for deliberately avoiding playing 'creep'. Even Nirvana apparently did not play "smells like.." all that often.

I guess it all boils down to the following - should one consider musicians as entertainers , in which case they should cater to their audience, or should one accord special status to them like one would to artists, and give them license to do whatever.

Zakir Hussain + this article (who would have thought Denton of all places will evolve into Cools-ville USA? Tracer Bullit is from Denton! Enuff said.. ) gives me some food for thought.

If you want to protest. atleast do your research first.
Greeks apparently not too happy about DT buying their national telecom carrier.
That's fine, everyone has the right to complain and protest.

But at least burn the right flags! Instead of burning Belgian flags!
Goes to show woeful knowledge of geography is not limited to the US alone..

Went to a concert by the indescribable Zakir Hussain yesterday. First the show was fantastic, 

Living with Europeans, one gets involved in the going-ons of different countries.

So an uncle of mine forwarded this article, knowing of my impending shift to Europe.
While the article does not reveal anything new to me (since I live and hang out with Europeans ),
there are some facets which intrigue me to no end and I have not been able to figure these out:

a) The proletariat are generally paid low wages relatively and inflation is high. For instance in Athens you would spend close to 8 euros for a coffee. So how can people continue living the high life? Everywhere I went in Europe a couple of years ago, and even recently in Barcelona - people are living it up! 8 Euros per coffee? No problem! A semi decent dinner for 20 euros? de nada!
Extensive traveling, eating out and generally indulging in good debauchery all this takes money (for the most part), and where are the plebs getting this money? From credit cards? In which
case, there will soon be a large credit crisis I would not want to be a part of.

b) Rental rates - why are rents so bloody high in most cities in Europe? One can't rely on tourists alone.

c) And yet one hears of indiscriminate spending on research etc. , which of course is good for me, but surely something is wrong. Is a revolution around the corner? Who'll be the first against the wall in that case?