What Indians learn on ESPN

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!

john (floored w/ laughter) m



>Ouch! Screech, crash!
>
>As I type this, I am not wearing any shirt at all,,, On the wall above my
>Macintosh, next to a tattered mall-art poster and a plaque bearing my
>genius certification from the The Jim Beam and Cathode Ray Tube
>MacArthy-Era Preservation Foundation, hangs a twisted loop of black
>plastic.  It is a child's Hot Wheels racing set given to me by a 40-year
>old man, an Inuit.  I was covering the Iditerod for ESPN.  We'd torn across
>the permafrost in our Chevy Suburban when we got bogged down near a small
>village.  We found the Inuit hunkered down in his Igloo playing with the
>racing track, brought in by capitalists, imperialists, careless children of
>tourists, who knows.  We set up our cameras and rolled tape of the car
>racing action, broadcast in place of the dog race, since we'd lost track of
>that anyway.  As we left he took my hand and insisted I take a delicate
>whalebone sculpture as a souvenir, but I demanded the toy set.  He made
>quite a fuss, stomping about and pretending to cry, but I eventually forced
>it out of his hands.  Here was a meeting of might, in the world of the
>flesh, of winners and losers, and I had won.  Not padding about in some
>unseasonably cold office/garage, on a Saturday morning, muttering to myself
>and to no one in particular, convinced I could never improve myself because
>I am already great.  As it is said in the Bantu proverb, "Poison should be
>tried out on a frog."
>
>
>Chris
>