proho goes international

great thing to be known around the world for.

well, at least it should keep the kiwi population down.

Wow, that's bad writing.

is it possible to become a yankee fan "within seconds" ... ? :roll: :shock:

i say nay ... however, a mets fan, that is entirely a different story ...

Carnivore wrote: Hipster!

eh, he's kind of cute in that "i have the absolutely worst haircut on the face of the planet and i just don't care" kind of way ...

FLUTE wrote: is it possible to become a yankee fan "within seconds" ... ? :roll: :shock:

i say nay ... however, a mets fan, that is entirely a different story ...

Soory, but when the Yankees were winning, it was really easy for any person who had never been to a baseball game and had lived in NYC for a millisecond to jump on the Yankees bandwagon.

The Yankees have bought everything, they can buy a fan "within seconds", no doubt!

hey, we can be a bit more gentle. he's an accountant ferchrissakes. compared to say a corporate financial audit, this is practically joycean. ok, so some sentences don't have verbs. and he's not 100 percent with the facts (the kid was not a convicted murderer, nor do convicted murderers get bail).

but tripe like "i well and truly earned my stripes," although phony to our ears, actually has kind of quaint, old-school charm, when spoken in a kiwi accent. and he gets points for being self-deprecating, admitting oafishness, for instance (perhaps the worst example of which was when he says he decided "to further extend my boyfriend greatness," a feat which might have been better appreciated when he was safely back home with dear, deserving girlfriend jess).

but best of all, was that no matter what personal danger he might have encountered, he could only think of getting back to dear jess, who was undoubtedly pacing the walls with worry. there's really nothing like a little enounter with the dark side to remind you how basically decent and chivalrous you are.

finally, no matter how rattled he was, how like a kiwi out of water, he did have the good sense to only think his johnny cash joke to himself. had he actually said it, probably he should have been shot.

all i'm saying is this guy's our guest here in this country, he's been through hell, he got leaves in his bag ferchrissakes! and you people are insensitive enough to criticize his prose. give the guy a fucking break!

ultimately he did us all a huge favor. through his sacrifice, that little shit javaughn higgins is probably going to be locked away, probably for a good couple of months this time. i certainly feel better knowing that.

for that, glen, and i think i speak for many of us here, we thank you. god save the queen.

Actually, after having served on jury duty a few times and even comparing notes with others who I grew up with who knew people who were either victims or somehow involved in crimes, his story is--in all honesty--quite pedestrian.

He's not the only person who has ever been mugged or robbed in this city. And considering he was not shot or physically beaten, it's really not anything I would write home about if it did not happen in this neighborhood. And let's face it. It's dramatic because the robbery victim was white, and had an iPod and was a foreigner in Brooklyn. While I'm sure he's shaken up--who wouldn't be--the article also reads as if the guy is simply smug and quite proud in a way to have been mugged. It seems as if he see's it as a quintessential NYC experience.

Yes, I admit I sound cantanerous and jaded, but while I think Javaughn Higgins is a thug and shocked he was out on the street to begin with, the blotter in local newspapers report similar--if not worse--crimes all the time.

And if you ever truly want to be compelled, I would encourage anyone to head over to the courts on Adams Street and sit in on some of the trials.

Case in point, the last jury I was on involved a kid who lived as a squater in a house in East Flatbush with his mom who--during the weekend of the West Indian Day Parade--decided to (1) car jack someone at gunpoint with a real gun (2) attempt kidnapping and firing a gun to scare the woman and her friends (3) succeeded in kidnapping a woman (4) forcing her to have oral sex in his car and then finally (5) raping her in the shit strewn basement of the house he was squatting in with his mother and brother upstairs.

Now that's what I personally call drama after spending two weeks hearing every detail of that case. Can't tell you how I started looking at the world after spending nearly 80 hours of my life listening to this true drama.

And she was a neighbor. And her friends were all Brooklynites as well. And they were all black. Victims and perps. And why don't they have first person stories published about their ordeals?

And when all is said and done, only two minor stories in local papers were writen about the inicident. And if I had not served on the jury I would not have read about them because the stories were buried.

The point being that while I'm happy Javaughn Higgins was caught and defend the police's use of force, I do not feel that Glen Waterhouse's incident is so mind-blowing it deserved a 2,000 word first-person essay in a New Zealand paper. It's simply overkill to say the least.

And if he has the space in a major publication to ramble endlessly about his own incident, I seriously would implore other U.S. publications--like the Daily News, N.Y. Post and N.Y. Times--to offer similar first-person essays from other victims of crimes city-wide.

Genuinely feel empathy towards any victim of crime. But he's simply not the only victim of violent crime in this city. And let's face it. If he was not white, he would not have the opportunity to write his story--and a badly written one at best--in a national publication.

I'm sorry, Jack, but you really do seem a bit jaded. You seem to have taken on a kind of "my crime is better than yours" mentality. You seem to think that just because the crime was, in your mind "pedestrian," it doesn't deserve to be made a topic of national (or any public) discussion. Certainly there are orders of magnitude when it comes to criminal behavior. But for the victim, I would argue an assault is an assault. It is a violation. It is an act contrary to common decency. His ordeal may not have been as seemingly frightening or as colorful or as grisly as the squatter / carjacking incident, but if he wants to write about it and has the opportunity, all the power too him. Grammar and useage nothwithstanding of course. (Was that man an English major?? Forthsooth, I think not !! Get him therefore to amazon.com for a Turabian manual !! Shower him with Strunk and Whites !! And do so with extreme haste !!)

Obviously The New Zealand Herald made a journalistic decision to give his story 2,000 words. It's their call. Maybe it was a slow news day. Maybe they felt their readers would indeed find the story compelling and warranting the space it got. Who knows. I think their main fault here is not having put an editor on the case right away. But I don't think it's up to us to pass judgement on what "deserved a 2,000 word, first-person essay."

I do think you have a point in that it may have had to do with it being perceived as "the quintessential New York experience." In their minds. And I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a bit of subtle racism going on as well. Surprise, surprise. Or was it just a nice opportunity to give old New York City a small kick in the bum.

Newspapers and magazines in New York and elsewhere provide opinion pages as well as letters to the editor as other means by which people can get their own story told.

I really don't mean this as an attack on you or your post, Jack; but it was a little disconcerting to read.

Edited to make the following note: all joking / teasing (i.e., previous posts) made by this poster re Yankee fandom and bad hair aside ...

Jack wrote: Sorry he--or anyone--was mugged. But this is some of the worst writing I have ever read. And the guy comes off like a smug ponce.

What a lame comment, however you accurately describe a lot of your own posts.

Subject: Bad righter

You guys are terribly harsh on someone you know nothing about. The Herald contacted him directly after seeing the account on his blog. They thought it was such a GOOD account and so WELL written, they asked if they could use that copy for the article. But he didn't write the blog with the intention of getting published, so cut the man some slack.

And ripping on his picture??? It doesn't even warrant a defense, but in the year since he's been here, Glen has pulled the most ridiculously hot women in the city (including Jess). So that just makes that comment even more absurd, but whatever - I'll go now and let you guys get back to cutting him down.

Here - I'll get it rolling again.

He's so stupid - he claims that he "instantly fell in love with what I truly believe to be the greatest city in the world." Duh? You can't "instantly" fall in love with the city?!?! What a liar!!!

Wow, very harsh. There was nothing wrong with that account; he pointed out much of the same stuff you guys were flipping out over on the original thread. It's not the next great american novel, but it never pretended to be.

Sheesh.

This happened to me on Union St. just off Grand Army Plaza...

http://www.eyeshot.net/friedman.html
The Night I Got Jumped...But Didn't

Anyone else?

bravo

Said it before and I'll say it again. Glen Waterhouse's story is not unique in any way. I'm sure he'll have bar stories to tell people for years, but for me the most compelling aspects of this incident was the fact the perp was 16, out on bail from a murder indictment and the fact the cops gave chase and shot at the kid to stop him.

That's really it. Theft of an iPod in NYC is nothing new. Glen got away shaken up but with virtually no physical harm. All-in-all, his story is a footnote in the larger story; although one would not have happened without the other.

But the two aspects of the story that made me feel like this guy is more excited about the event happening than anything else were these two statements.

"After the four months, I arranged another accounting job at the international firm BDO and have been working here since November 2004, becoming a loyal Yankees fan within seconds."

Loyal Yankees fan? Give me a break. It doesn't sound like he wants to say he loves New York but he wants to affect the concept he's a New Yorker. He wants the authenticity of being 'street'. I would never say I instantly became a 'loyal' Green Bay Packers fan after living in Wisconsin for 5 years. The guy has 'need for authenticity' issues. Which is further proven here...

"They say that you are not a true New Yorker until you have been mugged."

Good lord! Does he see this all as a game? Who is they? I know tons of people who have not been mugged and have lived here and are *GASP* Mets fans. Are they then non-New Yorkers in this New Zealander's eyes?

The hipster accusations make sense not in the sense of look/dress but in attitude. The whole article wreaks of him longing for some sense of authenticty from this experience. He's now a 'loyal' Yankees fan and now he's a 'real' New Yorker. Hooray for him. He's earned some 'real' New Yorker stripes from doing something only he qualifies as a 'real' New Yorker experience.

And had this all remained a blog entry on his personal blog you know what? No big deal. But the fact that it's reprinted verbatim--in all it's grammatically questionable glory--in a national New Zealand publication is really cringe-worthy and questionable.

Jack wrote: Said it before and I'll say it again. Glen Waterhouse's story is not unique in any way.

Really, how many iPod thefts end up in shootouts?

The comments about the yankees and not being a new yorker until mugged are tounge in cheek (ie. not to be taken so god damn seriously). Nor did the guy claim to be a writer who speaks for all us, it was his story.

what is wrong with you?