davidkin hollywood

Chick Hearn died last night. I heard the bad news on the radio as I was preparing dinner. Of course, there are and will be for days to come eulogies aplenty for the crusty, vigorous voice of the Los Angeles Lakers who established the vernacular of professional basketball, but I figured I'd at least put my perspective on the whole thing.

Chick Hearn's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, covered in flowers, candles, notes, and Laker bric-a-brac.

For the past year and a half I've been living without a television. I'm not fanatically morally opposed to it; I just don't have one and it's not important for me to get one. On the other hand, I love the Lakers and love basketball. I grew up listening to Hearn call the games, and even if he wasn't on the telecast, we'd listen to the radio feed. So it was no big deal to continue to follow the Purple and Gold in the past two seasons with nothing but a radio tuned to AM 570. Hearn's descriptions, so vivid and familiar, fill the imagination with mental images that dunk and leap, pick and roll over, around, and through the course of the game. If you listen to Hearn long enough, his vocabulary and nuances are familiar to the point of rote, but fresh and exciting nonetheless. You trust his judgement and his opinion. He's a fan but a hard critic as well. Kobe cuts and fakes through the popcorn machine. Fisher pulls up for a three. Horry burys one at the buzzer. Fox from fifteen. The Shaw-Shaq Connection. It was impossible to miss a game as long as I was in receiving range of AM 570 and Chick Hearn.

When I was little I used to play basketball with my dad. Typical driveway/garage/backboard configuration. He played when he was in high school and had a few moves and a good shot. Every once in a while when we were playing, he'd goof up and, as he would say, "the mustard came off the hot dog." That's a Hearn term, but my dad's used it as long as I can remember. My dad has been listening to Hearn call the Lakers since he first began.

Little more from me need be said. This last season Hearn missed 56 games, and my friends and I drew collective sighs of relief when he returned for the playoffs. It just wasn't the same without him. And it never will be again.

Kevin Werbach posted his thoughts on Chick Hearn's passing as well.

Arianna Huffington rips George and Dick new ones in her Salon commentary today.

Let's start by looking at the problem of the vice president and Halliburton. During the No. 2's time as the company's No. 1, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries registered in tax-friendly locations ballooned from nine in 1995 to 44 in 1999. The result? A dramatic drop in Halliburton's federal taxes, which fell from $302 million in 1998 to less than zero -- to wit, an $85 million rebate -- in 1999.

At the same time they were hard at work stiffing U.S. taxpayers, Cheney and Halliburton were happily feasting at the public trough -- the company received $2.3 billion in government contracts and another $1.5 billion in government financing and loan guarantees.

During the vice presidential debate, Cheney scored points responding to a Joe Lieberman zinger about the millions Cheney had made during the Clinton-Gore years by boasting that "the government had absolutely nothing to do" with his burgeoning bank account. Only someone fully immersed in the corporate culture of our day could view $3.8 billion as "absolutely nothing."

Huffington continues to be one of my favorite political commentators.