Delenda Est Carthago

"Five years, that's all we got"

2009-10-18T16:27:00.004-07:00

So I've decided to stop blogging here. I figure five years is a good run. I've just been running out of things to say, I guess. Plus I have some things in the real world that are taking up my time, so I just can't devote as much time to this. I'll still be blogging about my daughters, and I'll still be blogging about comics, but I just don't feel like writing about myself and my thoughts anymore. I'm too busy trying to take over the world!

Thanks for reading, everyone (you know who you are!). I'd tell you to follow me on Facebook, but I hardly ever use it, or on Twitter, but that's even more inane than blogging, so I'll just say thanks. It's been fun.

Horrible self-indulgence, Year Five

2009-10-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the fifth anniversary of when I started this blog, and it's time once again to review the previous year. I hope you will indulge this trip down memory lane. Five years. Wow.

This insane world.

Man threatens to set his teacher on fire because she assigned "The Crucible."
Weird sex stuff. Totally safe for work, though!
The hardcore dude at the convenience store.
Horrible shoppers on Black Friday.
God is mean.
The people who named their kid Adolf Hitler.
Some odd news: Birmingham, England removes apostrophes from its street signs; Anna Nicole Smith's life is turned into an opera; a 13-year-old father; churches believe in evolution!
An Afghan law makes it legal for husbands to rape their wives.
Torture; Carrie Prejean; speed cameras.
No naked hiking in the Switzerland!
Are you looking for a sugar daddy?
The Pentagon no longer quotes the Bible; a man called 911 because his adult son's bedroom was messy.
Sex is fun!
A great photograph.

Sports.

The Phillies win the pennant!
The anniversary of the end of the 1993 World Series.
Did the media want Tampa Bay to win the World Series?
A phallic team logo?
Bad sports announcing round-up.
Sports photos of the year!
Sammy Baugh died.
Cool photo of Shaq.
Cute lumberjacks!
World Naked Bike Ride!
Pole dancing championships. It's totally a sport, man!
Rick Pitino needs to shut up.

Politics.

Sarah Palin is wacky. I suppose we already knew that.
Yay, gay marriage was banned in Arizona! Again, I might add.
Post-Election Day thoughts.
Even more Election Day thoughts!
Sadness over Dana Perino leaving the White House.
Why is there no love for the American system of government?
Fifty years of the Chinese in Tibet.
Legislation to make commercials quieter.
Moral relativism and torture.

Religious oddness.

Jews versus Mormons!

Link-blogging.

Best butts, scary Ronald McDonald.

My observations on life and my life in general.

The five stages of memorizing song lyrics.
Riding the rails in northern Arizona.
Classes you can take at Mesa Community College.
The quality of friendship.
I bite my lip.
I'm finding it hard to be a Luddite.
Thoughts about Disneyland and Los Angeles.
Pictures of me from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
My power went out!
The summer of 1979.
My long post about racism.
My twenty years of collecting comics.

Culture, popular or otherwise.

Sunny von Bulow died.
Betty Page died.
Ricardo Montalban died.
Estrada or Nada should have been a real show.
Zsa Zsa Gabor turns 92!
Hans Beck died.
Rihanna's birthday made me feel old.
Dr. Seuss's birthday reminded me of something.
Barbie turns 50.
Erik Estrada turns 60!
Stupid Americans!
Hollywood is conservative.
Movie review: District 9.
Sort-of movie review: Inglourious Basterds.
I don't get SpongeBob SquarePants.
How to celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day!

Books I read.

Carlisle vs. Army by Lars Anderson.
The Will by Reed Arvin.
Shadowplay by Clare Asquith.
War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres.
Dreamland by Kevin Baker.
Sacrament by Clive Barker.
Abarat by Clive Barker.
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes and The Somnabulist by Jonathan Barnes.
The Alps by Andrew Beattie.
The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor.
For the Thrill of It by Simon Baatz.
The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind.
Grant Morrison: The Early Years by Tim Callahan.

Great songs, according to me.

Part 39.

Into the back issue box.

The Magdalena vol. 2 #2.
Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy #6.
Wolverine #94.
Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre #22.
Case Files: Sam & Twitch #23.

Death and sex in comics.

Dark Horse's Conan #0-50.
John Byrne's Next Men.

Comic reviews.

Three comics by Dwight MacPherson: Kid Houdini and the Silver-Dollar Misfits; The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, volume 2; Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Aetheric Mechanics; Almighty; Dad!; Fishtown; The Martian Confederacy; Obsession; Slow Storm; Tiny Life: l)a.
B. P. M.; Swallow Me Whole; Jobnik!; La Muse; Septic Isle; Damnation.
Winter Men and its long publication history.
Fantastic Four Visionaries volume 0; Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights; Eddy Current; Chronicles of Some Made; American Elf volume 3; Sulk volumes 1 and 2; Waltz With Bashir; Never As Bad As You Think; Miss Don't Touch Me; In the Flesh.
My Playmobil comic from the 1970s.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910.
Strongman; The New Brighton Archeological Society; The Bun Field; Supermen!
Blinded; Ace-Face: The Mod with the Metal Arms; Blazing Combat; The Eternal Smile; Pherone; Walled In; Studs Terkel's Working; Britten and Brulightly; T-Minus: The Race to the Moon; Jan's Atomic Heart; Super Human Resources.
Black Hole; Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?; Far Arden; Imaginary Friends; Praetorian; Smuggling Spirits; Asterios Polyp; The Nobody; The Hunter.
The Ragbox.
The Field at the Edge of the Woods.
It Tolls for Thee.
Mercury.
The Imposter's Daughter.
You Have Killed Me.
The Big Kahn.
No Pasaran!
Frankenstein's Womb.
Gauze.
Some New Kind of Slaughter.
Awakening volume 1.
Dark Entries.
10 Beautiful Assassins.
The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse.
PS Comics.
The Colodin Project.
The Surrogates.
Stuffed!
The Storm in the Barn.
3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man.
Covered in Confusion.

Comics commentary.

My best comics of 2008.
DC comics in the 1940s.
Is Diamond Comics the devil?
The San Diego con, 2009!

My comic book shoppe.

Greg's Comics.
Ralph's Comic Corner.
Comic Zone.

Comics You Should Own.

Hellstorm #12-21 and Druid #1-4.
High Roads.
Hitman.
Human Target.
I Kill Giants.
The Incredible Hulk #331-346.
The Incredible Hulk #347-367.
The Incredible Hulk #368-401.
The Incredible Hulk #402-426.
The Incredible Hulk #454-467.

As always, I appreciate everyone who reads this blog, whether it's often or just every once in a while. Thanks, everyone! I know there are only about seven of you, but it's still cool that you're here!

Bye Week Blues

2009-10-05T19:30:00.002-07:00

I didn't learn anything about pro football this week other than what you can glean from the newspapers and ESPN. I barely watched any of the games because the Eagles weren't playing. I did learn that if Oregon beats one of the worst teams in Division 1-A (Washington State) at home while Penn State beats a not-very-good-but-miles-better-than-Wazzou Illinois team on the road, Oregon ought to jump Penn State in the polls, but polls are meaningless anyway, so that doesn't bother me too much.

Did anyone learn anything while I had the television turned off? Don't be shy!

Great songs, according to me (Part 39)

2009-10-04T11:50:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's time for another ten great songs! Man, it's been a while! And because I've finally gotten around to labeling my posts, I don't have to link to previous posts. You can just click on the label to find the previous ones. I know my eight readers will be happy about that!

381. Next Year (by Foo Fighters on the album There Is Nothing Left To Lose, 1999): Dave and the boys are surprisingly good at writing ballad-like pop songs, and this is one of them. I'd like to say it's off one of their better albums, but all FF albums are good, so it's hard to say where this one ranks. This song, however, is great, as the gentlemen do a wonderful job with soaring melodies and music that uplifts without being schmaltzy. It's a marvelously hopeful song that manages to be mature but not dull. Grohl's lyrics are nice, too: "Into the night we shine/Lighting the way we glide by/Catch me if I get too high/When I come down/I'll be coming home next year." Like a lot of Foo Fighters songs, the first time you hear this you feel like you've always known it. It's quite odd but wonderful how that happens.

382. New Jack Hustler (by Ice-T on the album O. G. Original Gangster, 1991): I'm not sure if I've ever written about this before, but a few of my college friends and I went to see New Jack City in the theater in State College when it was released. We enjoyed it, but that's not the story. This was when people were rioting during screenings of the movie, and although State College is a pleasant little college town, we didn't know what we were in for, going to see the movie. It was pretty interesting, because white people were definitely in the minority, but I didn't feel like anyone was going to beat me up because of it. It was just a weird episode in my life, because it's very rare that I find myself in the minority when it comes to skin color. I reckon that's probably true for most white people - we don't often end up someplace where most of the people aren't white. I don't know why white people wouldn't want to go see New Jack City, because it's a damned good movie. Okay, maybe not damned good, but pretty entertaining. It was also the first time I had ever heard Ice-T's music, in the form of this anthem that plays during a chase scene. Later, I heard the entire song (the movie version is truncated) and absolutely loved it. it has a great groove, which propels the song along, and Ice's lyrics, which cut to the core of why so many poverty-stricken people don't care about the system and just look to get paid, are devastatingly honest. It's certainly not an excuse for criminal behavior, but when someone from the street raps, "The end justifies the means, that's the system; I learned that in school then I dropped out," you can't help but listen. But Ice also understands the cost: "Every dollar I get, another brother drops." That makes the allure - "So many hos on my jock, think I'm a movie star/Nineteen - I got a fifty thousand dollar car" - more tragic. Ice often thinks that there's a conspiracy against black people, which borders on the silly, but otherwise, he gives us a fascinating look into what's going on in the minds of young African-Americans. That he can lay it over such a funky track makes it great.

383. New Way Home (by Foo Fighters on the album The Colour And The Shape, 1997): Hey, look! it's another Foo Fighters song! What do you know? This song ends the boys' best album (although the new one challenges it, I'll tell you that much), and like a lot of Fighters songs, it's melodic but rocking all at once and fills you with a strange kind of nostalgia. Eventually, of course, it builds into a primal scream of defiance, as Dave sings "I'm not scared" over and over, altenating it with the two lines, "I felt like this one my way home" and "I pass the boats and the Kingdome." Maybe evoking the old stadium is why we get that sense of nostalgia. I don't know - all I know is that it's a great song.

384. Nice To Know You (by Incubus on the album Morning View, 2001): I only own this one Incubus album, even though it's pretty good, but there are a few great songs. This song opens the album, and it's a weird little tune that sets the stage well for the rest. Lyrically, it's a bit odd, but musically it really shines, with a strange meandering vibe that ramps up into a heavy beat for the chorus. As a mood setter, it previews the album's swing between surfer sensibility and metal grinding. You can't help but bang your head, and then you lurch back to laid-back. It's a weird mix, but it works well.

385. Nicotine & Gravy (by Beck on the album Midnite Vultures, 1999): Beck's 1999 album is so funky and weird, and this song is one of its standouts. Beck lazily drawls through oddball lyrics like "Her left eye is lazy, she looks so Israeli," but the Seventies vibe carries it through, and it becomes a charming love song. If it's just weird, it probably wouldn't work, but as with a lot of Beck songs, the foundation is solid.

386. Nights Of Mystery (by the Georgia Satellites on the album Georgia Satellites, 1986): Krys mocks me for liking the first Georgia Satellites album, but I do. Most of it I like despite it not being all that good (the songs rock, but they're not that good), but "Nights of Mystery" is a nice country-fried rocker that begins quietly and cranks up nicely. It's a strangely sweet song, too, as we get nice lyrics like "I got this genius of a heart that shines wild and free ..." Every Georgia Satellites song has this kind of vibe to it, but this song manages to be deeper, and therefore better.

387. 1999 (by Prince and the Revolution on the album 1999, 1983): "I was dreamin' when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray ..." Sing along, people! Do I really need to write any more about this? Prince at perhaps his peak (although he has had a lot of peaks, but let's call this his first one), his band kicking ass, and a elegy about nuclear war. "But life is just a party and parties aren't meant to last ..." Get out your vinyl and fire it up!

388. Nitro Burning Funny Cars (by The Dead Milkmen on the album Bucky Fellini, 1987): A simple guitar hook and hilarious lyrics. That's all that's needed sometimes, and while a lot of the Dead Milkmen songs fall into this category, some are simply more hilarious than others, and those reach greatness. Like this one: "This world is full of people who think a lot about bowling balls" and "This world is full of people who look a lot like Gavin McCloud" are eerily true. What's up with that? Just a great, great song.

389. No Further Damage (by P. M. Dawn on the album Dearest Christian, I'm So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here. Love, Dad, 1998): As usual with P. M. Dawn songs, this features some beautiful lyrics about love and why it's important. It's a typically lush song, as well, and simply takes you along into that strange world that P. M. Dawn inhabits. I just don't have much else to say about it.

390. No Man's Land (by Billy Joel on the album River Of Dreams, 1993): Joel's "last" album gets off to a rollicking start with this anti-capitalism screed which stands as a companion piece to "Allentown" - where that was contemplative and sad, ten years later Joel is pissed off, and with good reason. Joel does a good job blending trenchant lyrics and throbbing music, and this song proves, for the last time, that he can rock out when he wants to. It sets the tone for the album, which is somewhat melancholy. It's not his best album, but it features some great songs, and this is one of them.

Well, that was fun. I've had this post sitting around for almost a year, and I finally got it finished. I don't know why it took me so long; that's just the way it is, I suppose. Anyway, that's ten more great songs for your iPod! You know you fill it based on my recommendations!

I don't get SpongeBob

2009-10-03T09:05:00.002-07:00

Norah recently discovered SpongeBob SquarePants, and she digs it a lot. Not to the point of obsession, but she still likes it. So I've been watching with her, mainly because I've been sitting in the same room. I know that a while back, SpongeBob was a bit hit with adults as well as kids (my brother-in-law, as far as I know, still likes it), but I just don't get it. SpongeBob is, in a word, annoying. In two words: REALLY ANNOYING. I mean, it's mildly amusing, but I can't imagine anyone over the age of 10 enjoying it for more than five minutes. After about five minutes I just get sick of it. It's not really that hilarious. I'd like to say that its popularity among older people is due to the fact that they watch while they're, you know, enjoying some natural consciousness-altering substances, but my brother-in-law certainly doesn't do that, so that can't be all of it. Can it?

Can someone explain it to me? I just don't get it. Frankly, Disney's Phineas and Ferb is much, MUCH better thant SpongeBob SquarePants, at least for adults. I think it's better for kids, too, but Norah digs the absorbant, yellow, and porous dude. There's just no accounting for taste!

And the 2016 Olympics will be in ...

2009-10-02T09:49:00.003-07:00

Rio de Janeiro!

Look at me, breaking the news! I just happened to have on ESPN when they made the announcement. I'm actually glad Chicago didn't get it. The Olympics have never been held in South America, and wouldn't you rather get "man-on-the-street" shots of impossibly attractive women walking along the beach than shots of fat guys drinking beer?

Pre-adolescent boys shall lead the way!

2009-09-30T09:31:00.003-07:00

I was watching The Daily Show last week (here it is!), and they had a piece about the "Values Voters Summit," which features conservative Christians talking about politics. They showed a video clip of Michael Swartz, the chief of staff of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) talking about homosexuals. Of course, it's on YouTube:

It's a long video, but Stewart's crew broke down the important stuff: Schwartz says it hasn't been that long since he was "closely associated" with "pre-adolescent boys" (which, come on, sounds really funny, even though I'm sure it was very innocent), and that he finds that boys of that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than "just about any other class of people." They speak badly about homosexuals because "they don't want to be that way." They don't want to "fall into it, and that's a good instinct." As Stewart points out, there's only one thing 10- to 12-year-old boys like less than homosexuals, and that's girls.

Schwartz went on to say that all pornography is homosexual pornography, because it tuens your sexual drives inward. He thinks we can use this to turn boys away from pornography, because if you tell them that if they look at Playboy they'll turn gay, they won't want to look at Playboy!

Oh dear. Good stuff. I know that liberals say really, really idiotic things quite often and do really, really idiotic things quite often, but I always love when conservatives say stuff like this. Liberals, at least, are less concerned with behavior and more with pseudo-science, so they come off as a bit goofily earnest. Conservatives are concerned with behavior, so it's always fun to hear them thunder about it.

Man, politicians are idiots.

What have we learned - Week 3

2009-09-27T18:53:00.008-07:00

Will there be cheesecake in this post? Don't be surprised if there is!

Eagles 34, Chiefs 14. Well, if you have a bad game, make sure you follow it up with a game against Kansas City! This was a shockingly easy game, as Kevin Kolb carved up the Chiefs, the defense stymied Matt Cassel and his crew, and the Eagles cruised. I was never sure why Kolb was getting bashed in the media after his poor performance against Baltimore last year and in the first game this year. After a week of practicing with the first team, he's put up 391- and 327-yard passing games consecutively. He looks very confident and he's standing in and taking the heat well. Plus, LeSean McCoy looked really good, and it makes the continuing drama over Brian Westbrook's health less traumatic. McCoy seems to hit the hole faster than Westbrook does, which is nice. All of this, of course, is mitigated by the fact that it was, after all, the Chiefs, but still - a nice win that they kind of needed. They get a bye, and then they get Tampa at home, Oakland on the road, and Washington on the road before they get the Giants and Cowboys at home. Those are all winnable games.

Lions 19, Washington 14. Surprisingly, the world didn't end at about ten minutes after four this afternoon, when the Detroit Lions won a football game. I actually watched quite a bit of this game, because it was fairly entertaining. A lot of people called this one, which only shows how very awful Washington is. And they looked terrible - for the second straight week, they struggled against what ought to be an inferior opponent, but maybe isn't. Matthew Stafford looked pretty good, and it's looking like Detroit made a good pick with him. I have a feeling Jim Zorn won't be long for this coaching world, as his owner is notoriously short-tempered when it comes to his coaches.

Packers 36, Rams 17. My friend who loves Marc Bulger was a bit grumpy about this game. First, Bulger gets hurt because God forbid the Rams provide him with any protection. Then, Kyle Boller comes in a chucks a couple of quick touchdowns, bringing the Rams back. Ultimately, they lost convincingly, but now the quarterback controversy begins, and my friend isn't happy about it, because Bulger is obviously much better than Boller is. The fact that Bulger toils for a horrible team is sad until you realize that he signed a long-term contract with St. Louis. But it's still kind of a shame that he could be doing much better if the Rams weren't such a dysfunctional organization. Meanwhile, Aaron Rogers continues to make Packer fans forget that other dude they had. Yes, he had a good day today, but long-term, Rogers is the man.

Vikings 27, 49ers 24. Speaking of R. C. Favre, the canonization continues, even though he had less to do with Minnesota's victory than you might think. First, Percy Harvin returned a kickoff for a touchdown, which was huge. Then, the final touchdown was much more Greg Lewis's effort than Favre's pass. San Francisco didn't get much pressure on him, so the fact that he "got away from it" isn't that big a deal (yes, he sidestepped a tackler, but 99% of quarterbacks who've ever played in the NFL could have done that). He had to throw it into the end zone, and he simply hurled it as far as he could. Lewis made a tremendous catch on a pass that just happened to come near him - it wasn't like R. C. found him as he broke open, because Lewis was blanketed. So let's hold off on re-anointing R. C., shall we? It's a good win for the Vikings, but for most of the game, they were winning despite their quarterback, not because of him. And remember that Frank Gore was injured early on, and San Francisco still should have won the game!

Patriots 26, Falcons 10. I watched very little of this game, so I don't know what we learned from it. Maybe we shouldn't count New England dead yet? Maybe we shouldn't proclaim Atlanta as a Super Bowl favorite? Beats me.

Jets 24, Titans 17. This was a pretty exciting game, with New York scoring early and late while Tennessee dominated the middle. It's always nice to see the old-school uniforms (especially the refs'), and on Lendale White's second-quarter touchdown run, the Jets grabbed him by the jersey and pulled, and as he was wearing a Houston Oilers shirt, it looked scarily like Earl Campbell breaking free. I started cheering, "Tear it!" even though they don't tear anymore. But it was pretty cool. The Jets sure look for real, I tell you that much.

Giants 24, Buccaneers 0. Here's another game I skipped completely, because there wasn't going to be much drama, and it turned out there wasn't much drama at all. New York, just like last year, looks like the class of the NFC, but we'll see how that plays out in January, won't we? New York was playing without a couple of their defensive lineman and Tampa still got five (5) first downs (!) and 86 (!) total yards. Yucky.

Ravens 34, Browns 3. Here's one reason why the Browns suck: Trailing 27-0 on the road, on the first play of the fourth quarter, Eric Mangini kicked a field goal. A FIELD GOAL! Why didn't he just pull his team off the field and forfeit? I mean, it's not likely you're going to 27 points in a quarter against Baltimore, but still. It was a 29-yard field goal, too, meaning the Browns had the ball at the 11 or so. Fortune favors the bold, Mangenius! Even if you don't score, that sets the tone for the rest of the season and shows your team that you expect them to step up. Mangini was playing for a tiny goal - not getting shut out. He should have realized the game was lost, and set up a bigger goal - suck it up, Browns players, and stick that damned ball in the end zone! But now you're 0-3, Cleveland, but worse, you have no hope. Good job. Oh, and Joe Flacco is getting scary good.

Jaguars 31, Texans 24. Hey, remember when Houston was a trendy playoff pick? They should stop losing to teams like Jacksonville at home. I probably should have watched more of this game, because Maurice Jones-Drew had another excellent game, but the only thing I saw was Chris Jones's fumble into the end zone with two minutes left, which Jacksonville recovered and which killed Houston's hopes. The Texans are one of those teams with a lot of talent that just hasn't figured out how to stomp on teams that aren't as good as they are yet. Unless they do, they won't go far this season. We'll see.

Bears 25, Seahawks 19. So Jim Mora, Jr. is chucking his kicker under the bus after Olindo Mare missed two (somewhat long) field goals on a beautiful day in Seattle. You stay classy, Mora. I could have sworn winning and losing in football was a team effort. Maybe you shouldn't have worn jerseys that made you look like you were wearing pinnies in high school:

I figured they won the coin toss and took "shirts." I'm surprised Da Bears weren't "skins." Gadzooks.

Saints 27, Bills 7. I watched a lot of this game, until the Saints scored to make it 17-7, at which time it became clear the Bills had no offense to come back (they scored their only points on a fake field goal). It was a nice defensive effort and showed, once again, that no quarterback, even Drew Brees, is unbeatable - the Bills put him under a lot of pressure and knocked him around quite a bit. Terrell Owens didn't catch a pass for the first time in 185 games, and I watched a couple of pass plays called for him. On one deep route, he barely looked back for the ball, and when he did finally see it, he didn't even make an effort for it. I've never liked Owens too much (even when he played for the Eagles), but at least he always made an effort. He's only on a one-year contract, so presumably he's trying to play into a contract with a better team next year. He's not going to get it this way.

Bengals 23, Steelers 20. I guess I should have watched more of the late games, but Mia wanted to watch the Wiggles, and she's quite insistent! I don't know how Carson Palmer and Cincinnati won this game, but good for them! The two Super Bowl teams from last year are both 1-2. I think we expected it from the Cardinals, but not from the Steelers.

Broncos 23, Raiders 3. Oh, Oakland. You're so bad. The good news: JaMarcus Russell completed over half his passes! The bad news: His 12 completions went for 61 yards. Blech. I was listening to the radio this morning, and Colin Cowherd and Trent Dilfer were pooh-poohing Denver's 3-0 record. Of course they got hate mail, but they have a point: They've beaten Cincinnati (on a miracle play), Cleveland (who's terrible), and Oakland (who's very terrible). It's nice that they're 3-0, but let's not start printing playoff tickets yet.

Chargers 23, Dolphins 13. Philip Rivers throws a nice deep ball, I'll tell you that much. His completions in the second half: 47 yards, 19 yards, 55 yards, 15 yards, 14 yards, and the two long passes were real purty. Of course, CBS kept showing scenes of San Diego, which made me think: If you lived in San Diego, why would you waste your afternoon attending a football game? Dang, that's a nice city. And Chad Pennington is out for the season. Miami's season last year is looking more and more like a mirage.

Colts 31, Cardinals 10. Some radio guys in town were predicting a Cardinals win on Friday, mainly because they thought Kurt Warner could keep up with Peyton Manning. They failed to realize that you don't beat the Colts by keeping up with Manning, you beat the Colts by not letting Manning on the field. Miami almost did it, but they didn't have the offensive firepower to finish the deal. Arizona needed long, sustained drives capped off by touchdowns, and then they turned the ball over twice inside the Colts' 10-yard line. They didn't need to get in a shootout with Manning, because Manning loves that. And the Cardinals gave up way too early on the run game, probably because they wanted to get in a shootout. Just a bad game plan all around. Oh well. I figured Arizona would fall back to Earth this season, and they are. Of course, it's not like they were that great last year - they could still go 8-8 this year and it wouldn't that big a dropoff. They're still far too undisciplined to be a consistent winner.

I'd write about college football, but nobody knows nothing, so what would I have to say? I thought Penn State was way overrated, but I also didn't think they'd stink up the joint so badly on offense. I kept wanting them to score just one more touchdown, because Iowa's offense wasn't doing anything. When Daryll Clark threw the interception on the first drive of the second half, I told Krys, "They're going to lose." After that, it was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There just aren't any great teams in the country - the top three, Florida, Texas, and Alabama are close, but they're still beatable. Cal isn't ready for prime time, Miami got their swagger back without learning that those old Hurricane teams had the swagger because they were better than everyone, and LSU barely beat Mississippi State, for crying out loud. At this rate, it will be Cincinnati versus Boise State in the National Championship Game, and I think I might have to root for that, because maybe then the college presidents will get a playoff together, because no one will watch that game (sorry, Woody!, but it's true). Who knows what craziness will ensue this week? Will the Lions lose at Illinois? Will Arizona go to Washington and knock off the Huskies? Will Cal beat USC now that the pressure is off? Will Michigan State get their heads out of their asses and beat Michigan? We'll see!

More body-painted young ladies here. It seems like a really uncomfortable way to show off your bod, but we appreciate the effort!

Why didn't I love Inglourious Basterds?

2009-09-24T13:50:00.012-07:00

I saw Quentin Tarantino's newest movie last week. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Really. But it was kind of like junk food, wasn't it?

I got in a bit of an argument with the guy at my comic book store about this. I told him that after we saw Inglourious Basterds, I couldn't figure out what the point was. He told me it didn't need a point. But I disagree! Yes, this is America! Disagreement is the spice of life!

Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed it. I just wrote it above, didn't I? Tarantino certainly knows how to put a movie together, and he's dynamite with actors. He often gets career-best performances out of actors. Brad Pitt is fantastic and funny, Mélanie Laurent is hard-ass and steely, Diane Kruger is wonderfully glamorous, and the Basterds themselves are excellent. Christoph Waltz is getting all the Oscar talk, and he's astonishing as Colonel Hans Landa, the "Jew Hunter." He's amazingly evil and refreshingly civil, except when, stunningly, he's not. The opening scene, when he shows up at a Frenchman's farm looking for a Jewish family, is one of the tensest scenes Tarantino has come up with in years. Waltz does a wonderful job with this utter opportunist, who does his job well but isn't above getting something for himself. Tarantino, naturally, comes up with some excellent action (a Mexican stand-off? in a Tarantino film? you don't say!) and sudden and shocking violence, and he reaches into his usual bag of tricks to twist the narrative around a bit - not as well as he's done in the past, but he's still a very good filmmaker. The grand finale is a wonderful orgy of violence and sly humor, and the final scene is a nice touch. Plus, Mike Myers is hilarious in his brief scene.

So what's my problem? Why can't I love this movie? Well, as I wrote, it's junk food. I couldn't quite figure out why Tarantino made this movie and what he's trying to say. My friend said it doesn't matter, that I should just enjoy it for the entertainment. However, I said that Tarantino has been making movies for almost 20 years, and he hasn't made one with something interesting to say since Jackie Brown, which came out in 1997 (granted, he's only directed two movies in between that one and this one, but still). We know he can make dazzling technical movies and that he can get excellent work out of his actors. Can he do anything else?

Getting back to Inglourious Basterds (and yes, I'm going to SPOIL it, so read no further if you really want to see it clean): What's Tarantino really trying to say? Ultimately, this is Death Wish with better financing and better acting. It's a revenge fantasy, and while I don't have an issue with revenge fantasies per se, Tarantino's last big movie, Kill Bill, was also a revenge fantasy. Revenge obviously plays a big role in all of his movies, to the degree that he's almost pathological about it, but does it need to be the driving force of this movie? We've heard the objections to the movie, about how it distorts history and is therefore disrespectful to Jews, because Tarantino's belief that killing Hitler somehow makes up for the millions slaughtered by the Nazis. I didn't get that - this is like a lot of old-time World War II movies, in which the Holocaust is virtually ignored because it gets in the way of a good action movie. Sure, Tarantino can make an action movie set in World War II in which he gleefully kills the Nazi High Command - I don't have a problem with that. I guess my objection is more with the tone of the movie. Tarantino seems to be far too gleeful about this movie, and it jars with the somewhat serious tone the movie has for a good deal of it. I wasn't particularly uncomfortable with Brad Pitt being a cheery psychopath, for instance - his attitude seems to be the one you need in a horrible war. It just seems like Tarantino, for all his gifts as a filmmaker, simply wants to revel in what he can do instead of trying for something more. If we look at someone like Scorsese, for instance, as an example of someone who has always resisted stereotyping. We might think of him as a director who makes bleak movies often starring Italian-American New York gangsters, but he's made a lot of different kinds of movies - he made The Age of Innocence, The Last Temptation of Christ, After Hours, The Last Waltz, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for crying out loud. Scorsese is a great director because he doesn't let himself get pigeonholed. Tarantino, it seems, pigeonholes himself.

I suppose I'm not explaining myself very well. Tarantino is a gifted filmmaker, but he's content to mine the movies he saw in his childhood for inspiration and simply update things with tongue in cheek. Inglourious Basterds is a "remake" of an old Italian movie, for instance. I assume that Tarantino has seen the great World War II movies of the 1960s and 1970s, because that's when he was growing up. But even those movies took the war seriously, even if they had some humor. Tarantino takes nothing seriously, apparently, and because he doesn't make straight comedies, he usually falls short of greatness because of this. At least that's what I think. Maybe I'm not getting it across very well. Sorry!

Anyway, Inglourious Basterds is a marvelous movie to watch. I just didn't get enough out of it. Oh well.

What have we learned - Week 2

2009-09-20T20:29:00.007-07:00

Blech. Stupid Eagles. Stupid broken rib of the quarterback. Blech.

Saints 48, Eagles 22. I'm not as bummed out by this game as you might think, even though the Eagles lost by four touchdowns. They played well for most of the first half and then had a horrible two minutes at the end of the half, giving up an easy touchdown with very little time left after tying the game at 10. They kicked a field goal to end the half, but then, in the first three minutes of the second half, they turned it over twice and gave up two quick touchdowns, and the game was pretty much over. So in about five minutes of game time, they gave up 21 points and scored 3, meaning if you take away those five minutes (I know we can't, but work with me!), they lose only 27-19 (plus, of course, the final touchdown was an interception return very late). With a guy making his first career start. Yes, the defense could have played much better, but if McNabb is playing, I think the Eagles win, because they would have been crisper on offense. That being said, Kolb played pretty well (his first interception was awful, but other than that, he didn't make too many mistakes), and next week they get Kansas City at home, and then the bye, and then Oakland at home (when McNabb should be back), so I'm not too worried about losing to a high-powered offensive team like the Saints. And damn, Drew Brees is good. I mean, I've known that for a few years (I'm not sure how, in the age of the Internet, any team can be a "secret," as the Aikman kept saying, and if N'Awlins is a secret, it's probably because the networks only talk about the Cowboys and their new monstrosity, but that's just my opinion, of course), but watching him work for a full game (or at least most of the game; I kept switching channels to better games) is pretty neat to see. Of course, like all good quarterbacks, it really helps if you have a good offensive line, and Brees does. Oh well.

Falcons 28, Panthers 20. This is one of the games I skipped, mainly because other games were better. So I don't have much to say about it. Matt Ryan is still doing well, I guess. Nice draft pick, Falcons!

Vikings 27, Lions 13. I was so jazzed that the Lions were winning this game, 10-0, and then, a little later, I noticed it was 27-10. Well, that sucks. But look! No shots at R. C. Favre!

Bengals 31, Packers 24. I watched a bit of this game, because it was going back and forth nicely. I was amused to see that Chad Johnson found possibly the only Bengals fans outside of Cincinnati in the front row at Lambeau Field so he could do a Lambeau Leap. What are the odds of Bengals fans being at a game in Cincinnati, much less Green Bay? And the ending was pretty exciting, as Cincy had to see last week's game flashing before their eyes again. The Pack made it to the 10-yard line before time ran out. I'd say it was a good job by Cincinnati's defense, but they should thank the clock!

Texans 34, Titans 31. I watched a lot of this game, because it was really exciting. And there were at least two fights between the teams, which was kind of neat. Houston got a lucky touchdown that should have been overturned (the Saints' first touchdown in the second half should have been overturned, as well - what's up with the replay officials?) and a good call on a punt return that was recovered by Tennessee but wasn't technically a fumble (and Titans' fans, who were booing the call, should realize it was the right call, even if they didn't like it). I doubt if most of the country got to see this game, but it was fun to watch, I tells ya. And Chris Johnson had a good day, didn't he?

Raiders 13, Chiefs 10. I doubt if there was enough money in the world to make me watch this game all the way through. How did Oakland win this game? Is JaMarcus Russell ever going to learn how to play quarterback? Will the Eagles please not look past the Chiefs, even though Philly ought to roll them? I don't have the answers to these questions.

Jets 16, Patriots 9. So now we have to listen to how fucking great the Jets are and how fucking Joe Namath-esque Mark Sanchez is and how fucking "good" it is for the NFL when the Jets are decent (why, exactly?). Now, I'm perfectly happy that they smacked around the Cheaters, but I'm going to get sick real quick of the slobbering of the national media just because the Jets are decent again. I'd be worried if I were the Grand Cheater, because except for a few minutes in the Monday night game, New England has looked really bad, and they'd be 0-2 if not for the gift from the Bills. I don't know if Brady is still scared of taking a hit, but New Jersey blitzed him a lot (something every team should have been doing for the past 6-7 years) and he couldn't handle it. Very interesting. We'll see how they recover from this.

Team That Will Soon, We Hope, Not Be Called What They Have Always Been Called 9, Rams 7. What a joke of a game. I watched a few minutes, and Washington kept going up and down the field but couldn't put the ball in the end zone. St. Louis, meanwhile, stinks on ice. I'm not sure why they ever punt the ball. Why not just go nuts and never punt? It's not like you're going to be any worse!

Cardinals 31, Jaguars 17. Kurt Warner had a good game, didn't he? 15 consecutive completions to start the game, a record-setting completion percentage (24 for 26), and a big win in the Eastern time zone, which flummoxed Arizona last year. It's always interesting to see on what plays games change. Arizona was leading 10-3 when the Jaguars lined up for a field goal. I'm not saying that if Jax makes the figgie, they go on to win, but they're still in the game. Instead, the Cardinals block it, Antrel Rolle recovers the block and takes it 83 yards the other way. Instead of 10-6, it's 17-3, and the rout is on. It's interesting also to see a play like that go the Cardinals' way. It seems like those things happen to good teams, whereas a bad team might block the kick, but it would go out of bounds or something. Is Arizona starting to get "good teams'" breaks? The mind boggles!

Bills 33, Buccaneers 20. I watched some of this game, and saw Terrell Owens drop a perfect bomb from Trent Edwards. After picking on his quarterback and kick returner a bit this week, it was nice to see Owens get a beautiful pass and simply drop it. The Bills ought to be 2-0, and they make the AFC East even more interesting.

49ers 23, Seahawks 10. Frank Gore went a bit nuts in this game, gaining 207 yards on only 16 carries, including two long touchdown runs. I watched some of this game, and was astonished that Seattle wasn't winning - they were moving the ball well and stopping San Francisco fairly easily. But then Hasselbeck got injured, and although Seneca Wallace can play a bit, it seemed the life went right out of the Seahawks. Of course, Gore accounted for 14 points with his two long runs, so it's not like the 49ers blew them out of the water. But they are 2-0, with two divisional wins, in a weak division, so maybe, just maybe, this is the year San Francisco returns to the top of the heap in the NFC West. Maybe. It's a long season.

Da Bears 17, Steelers 14. I actually didn't watch any of this game. I did find it humorous that after last week, everyone was saying the Steelers were going to pound Da Bears. Except for Colin "I Was A Teenaged Blowhard" Cowherd, who thought otherwise. His reasoning was sound: Pittsburgh has no running game, they got lucky against Tennessee, Cutler wouldn't be as lousy as he was against the Packers, and Chicago's defense is still pretty good even without Urlacher, plus they would be playing hard to prove it. So this wasn't too surprising. What happened to Pittsburgh's running game?

Broncos 27, Browns 6. Gadzooks, the Browns are lousy. Nice way for Denver to open the season - versus the Bengals and the Browns. And they still needed a miracle finish for their 2-0 start.

Ravens 31, Chargers 26. Everyone keeps talking about the tackle Ray Lewis made on Darren Sproles that basically won the game for Baltimore, but I haven't seen many people talking about the fact that Philip Rivers destroyed Baltimore's pass defense, and even though it's impressive that the Ravens won that game, shouldn't they be worried if Joe Flacco, of all people, doesn't have a great game? I mean, Lewis's single play was good, but I'd be worried about stopping people if I'm Baltimore's defense. And Norv Turner is a lousy coach. Just ... lousy.

Giants 33, Cowboys 31. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! I was rooting for Dallas in this game, actually, so I ought to be disappointed, but can we really be sad when a team rips the heart out of the Cowboys and their fans like that? The orgy of ego that was going on before the game (I didn't watch it, but I saw highlights) and then the awful quarterbacking during the game was just perfect. Jerry Jones cares more about his stadium than his team, and it showed. Tony Romo, as I mentioned last week, had three long throws and little else, and if he didn't get those, he would be ordinary. And he was! Dallas can run the ball a little bit, can't they? Why didn't they do that more?

Colts 27, Dolphins 23. I honestly can't believe Indianapolis won this game. They possessed the ball for less than a quarter!!!! Miami worked their game plan to near-perfection, with one fatal flaw: You must score touchdowns!!!! If they had scored a touchdown instead of a field goal on just one of their scoring drives, they would have won. Instead, they kicked field goals while the Colts, despite the tiny amount of time they had the ball, scored touchdowns, one on a 1-play drive and another on a 4-play drive. That's definitely the way you beat Peyton Manning - keep him off the field - but you have to finish with touchdowns. Still, a good game plan. Maybe other teams will follow it.

Penn State was boring and workmanlike once more, dispatching their third inferior opponent with little fuss. They haven't been tested, but they haven't played anyone either, and I'm a bit worried about Iowa this week, especially as the Hawkeyes beat them last year. But it's in Happy Valley this year, and the Lions should be a bit peeved about last year. USC pulled its typical bad game against an unranked opponent, but it seems like this year, they should be a bit more worried. Cal is quite good and they play the Trojans at home; Oregon also gets to play USC at home, and the Ducks proved they're not as crappy as they looked against Boise State; and Oregon State isn't lousy. Even Arizona State has a fairly good defense, and USC's offense isn't clicking. I really, really hope this is the year USC finally bites it, because I'm sick of Big Eleven teams playing the Rose Bowl in basically the Trojans' back yard. If Cal or Oregon has to travel to the game, maybe it might be fair. Meanwhile, I'm quickly falling in love with Lane Kiffin, the new coach of Tennessee. After Urban Meyer said his team had the flu and that he coached conservatively because Tennessee wasn't "playing to win," Kiffin said, in response to a question about whether he was worried about his players getting the flu, "I don't know. I guess we'll wait, and after we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick." Kiffin is awesome. The Big East got a big boost from Cincinnati going to Corvallis and beating Oregon State, while the "mid-majors" took a hit when BYU lost to Florida State (boo!) and Oregon beat Utah. It wasn't the greatest week in college football, but there are always exciting games around. And then there was that Notre Dame receiver, Golden Tate, who jumped into the Michigan State band and they simply let him fall to the ground. It was pretty awesome.

Sorry, no cheesecake this week. Maybe next week. Anyway, the biggest thing we've learned this week is that rushing the ball just isn't what it used to be. Miami and Dallas both put up well over 200 yards on the ground, and they both lost. Somewhere Woody Hayes is rolling in his grave.

What have we learned - Week 1

2009-09-14T10:04:00.011-07:00

Well, we learned that the Football Gods are fickle and cruel and are punishing the Eagles for signing Michael Vick. "You wanted Vick?" say the Football Gods. "Fine. We'll take away your other, better quarterback. Suck on it, Eagles fans!" Jesus.

Anyway, it's time for the NFL (college football, you may have noticed, started last week), and let's try to figure things out from one whole week of games. Jumping to conclusions is p-h-u-n! (One thing I don't say enough: Last week, while watching Penn State trounce Akron, I turned to my lovely wife and said, "Damn, I just love watching football!" I forget how much I love watching games when it goes away. Krys is certainly not a football widow; I turn games off all the time - next week I'm going to miss watching the Penn State game, for instance - but I really, really love watching football. Unless McNabb is gone for a long time. Watching Kevin Kolb run that offense was pretty painful.)

(And, to warn you, since these posts run pretty long with a lot of text, I've dropped in some random cheesecake pictures. Just a warning!)

Eagles 38, Panthers 10. When Carolina took the ball to begin the game and went 70 yards in 8 minutes to score a touchdown, I thought everyone's favorite team was in trouble. Luckily, the defense and special teams took some heat off the offense - in one 5-minute span in the second quarter, the Eagles scored 21 points and ran one (1) offensive play - and all went well ... until McNabb decided to score a touchdown in the third quarter and, while lying in the end zone, was hit by a late-entering defensive player and fractured a rib. The defender wasn't penalized, and I'm not sure he should have been, but he was late, and if McNabb misses significant time, I'll be really upset because it wasn't in the middle of a play. I certainly don't want players to pull up when they have a big lead, but it was 31-10 late in the third quarter, so couldn't McNabb have thrown it away and lived to play another day? Sheesh. (It was third down, so I get why he didn't, but a field goal works there, you know!) I wouldn't mind if they were playing a bad offensive team next week and could maybe survive with Kevin Kolb at QB, but they're playing the Saints, who just hung 45 points on Detroit (yes, it's Detroit, I know, but they're still good) and are firing on all cylinders. I hope the home crowd will inspire the defense and that Michael Vick can play in Week 3 and then the bye gives McNabb a chance to recover. As for Jake Delhomme - I've been saying for a few years that he's overrated, and boy howdy, is he proving me right. In his last game (the playoff loss to Arizona), he threw 5 interceptions and fumbled once. Today: 4 interceptions and 1 fumble. He's kind of like Brett Favre (God, I have to write about him for another freakin' year?) but less talented, and that gets him in deep trouble. Last year, it seemed Carolina didn't rely on him as much, and they were successful. Today, once the Eagles decided to play some run defense, they forced Delhomme to throw a lot, and we saw what happened. Seven turnovers (not all on Jake, of course, as he was benched) will cause you many, many problems.

Steelers 13, Titans 10. I know I should have watched this, because it featured "real-man" football, but I just couldn't be bothered. I will say that I don't understand the love for Ben Roethlisberger. Sure, he makes some plays, but usually there's a reason his team needs him to make a fourth-quarter comeback - because he's played lousy for three quarters and the team is either losing of playing down to the level of their competition. The defense saves that team way too much. Yes, I'm jealous that Big Ben has two Super Bowl rings. That doesn't change the fact that he's not that excellent. He's a top ten quarterback in the league, sure, but he's not top five.

Falcons 19, Dolphins 7. I watched exactly none of this game. Hey, Atlanta won! Good for them! The Dolphins will find out that last year's playoff run is a mirage, I think.

Broncos 12, Bengals 7. Woody! has to be dying inside after the events of this game. I turned it on at the perfect time - the last 30 seconds. Prior to that, it seemed like a snorefest, but a snorefest that it appeared Cincinnati had won when they scored a touchdown with 38 seconds left. Denver was backed up at its 13 and all hope seemed lost. Then Kyle Orton threw a pass to Brandon Marshall, who was covered by three defenders. If he catches it, he probably gets tackled in bounds and I don't think the Broncos could have gotten a few more plays off to get into field goal range. It's no guarantee that he would catch it, either. But one of the defenders in front of him leaps in the air and tips the ball. Unfortunately, he tips it straight up and in front of him a few feet, right into the arms of ... Brandon Stokely, receiver for the Broncos. As everyone appeared to be covering Marshall, there was no one between Stokely and the end zone, and he scored the winning touchdown with 11 seconds left. Man, what a way to lose. I don't think either of these teams has reason to be optimistic.

Vikings 34, Browns 20. Dear sweet Jebus, it's yet another year with Brett "Risen Christ" Favre on an NFL roster. I like how he said that his daughters told him that he should come back to get another Super Bowl ring. Yeah, right. His daughters are probably saying to him, "Hey, are you really my daddy? Because when you're gone for six months out of the year, Mommy hangs out with the landscaper a lot." The nice thing is that there seems to be a bit of backlash against R. C., mainly because of that crackback block he laid on that dude in the preseason game. I'm sure the media will quickly revert to worshipful form, but it was nice them get their heads out of their asses for a bit. Anyway, R. C. is supposed to lead this immensely talented Minnesota team to the Promised Land (that would be just like the Risen Christ, wouldn't it?), but the Vikings are classic underachievers (people claim the Eagles are underachievers, but at least they get to NFC Championship Games and the occasional Super Bowl) and there's no reason to think this year will be any different, especially once R. C. starts seething with jealousy over the attention paid to Adrian Peterson and begins to hurl the ball around like it was 1996. And he will. Peterson, meanwhile, put up typically monster numbers against a completely overmatched Cleveland team. Good job, Adrian - let's see you do that in the playoffs. Speaking of the Browns ... well, maybe we shouldn't. Thanks for playing, Cleveland - better luck next year!

Colts 14, Jaguars 12. I watched one play in this game. Nothing to say, really. It was closer than I would have expected, because I don't think Jacksonville is very good, but maybe the Colts aren't as good we think either. Who knows.

Saints 45, Lions 27. Man, whenever I looked up, Drew Brees had thrown another touchdown pass. Sure, it was against Detroit (I think they're at 18 losses in a row now), but that's still impressive. Next week they invade Philadelphia, and I fear for that game now that McNabb is (probably) out. Of course, any hope New Orleans has a postseason glory rested in their defense, and allowing Detroit 27 points (granted, one touchdown was a fumble recovery) isn't that great. Matthew Stafford got picked three times, but turnovers are largely luck, so I wouldn't hang my hat on that. Detroit was anemic offensively, but they did manage to move it a little bit (thanks to three Saints turnovers), so if the Saints play a team that can play a little defense (like the Eagles), they might be trouble. Still, New Orleans is fun to watch. And they'll probably be right there with Atlanta at the end of the year for the division, because Carolina and Tampa won't be.

Cowboys 34, Buccaneers 21. Right before Tony Romo unloaded an 80-yard touchdown pass that iced the game, the announcers said something to the effect that if you didn't look at the score, you'd think Tampa was winning the game, because they were outplaying the 'Boys. Not 30 seconds later, Romo chucked his backbreaker. I don't think Dallas is going to be very good this year, but they do have big-play capability, which can cover up a lot of flaws. They got three touchdown passes of 42, 66, and 80 yards, which accounted for 188 of Romo's 353 yards - or 53% of his total, in 3 completions. Tampa gained almost as much as Dallas, but couldn't get a play or two that gained big yards, so they couldn't keep up with the scoring. Of course, a team that doesn't give up big plays will pummel Dallas. I'm not a huge fan of Carnell Williams, but it was pretty cool to see him run well for Tampa after two years of recovering from injuries. Gruden ran him waaaaay too much in his rookie year - fans are probably hoping the new coach doesn't make the same mistake.

Ravens 38, Chiefs 24. I guess I should have watched some of this game, because it seems it was pretty entertaining. But I didn't. How impressive is Joe Flacco? Man, if Baltimore's offense plays like that all the time, they could be scary good.

Jets 24, Texans 7. Hey, remember the good old days of, say, Saturday, when all the "experts" had Houston as a sexy playoff pick? And how they were starting the season at home against a rookie quarterback, so it would be easy for them to go 1-0? Yeah, well, Mark Sanchez showed the experts, didn't he? He looked fairly impressive, I'd say. I'm not sure why a lot of people like the Texans. I've never been impressed with them, even when they win. Maybe they'll win someday, but not this year. And Sanchez will come back to earth, I think. Or maybe he's just that good.

Giants 23, Washington 17. New York is good. Washington is not. 'Nuff said.

49ers 20, Cardinals 16. Talk radio folk here in the Basin are living in a dream world, where Arizona didn't barely make the playoffs and just happened to get hot at the right time and instead went 14-2 for the fifth straight year and are shoe-ins to win the NFC West again. Last year they barely escaped one game against San Francisco, and this year they couldn't escape. They were the same old Cardinals - committing 12 (!) penalties and turning the ball over twice. Their defense played fairly well until it really mattered, and then San Francisco, with no help from Frank Gore, drove 80 yards in something like 7 minutes to score the game-winning touchdown. Good job, Cardinals! San Francisco isn't any good, either, but at least they're hungry. Arizona has acted all off-season like a 9-7 record gives them the division this year by default. Um, not quite. I will say that Adrian Wilson was penalized for hitting Vernon Davis under the new rules about not hitting "defenseless receivers." I didn't see the hit, but if the NFL continues "protecting" all the offensive players, why not just make it flag football? Apparently Wilson's hit was perfectly legal under the old rules, and he didn't lead with his helmet and he didn't hit Davis in the head. He hit him in the chest with his shoulder, but because Davis wasn't looking, he was "defenseless." Maybe if I see the hit I'll feel differently, but this is a bit ridiculous. Come on, NFL! Let them play!

Seahawks 28, Rams 0. Man, St. Louis is lousy. Really lousy. When your best offensive weapon is your punter, that ain't good. Seattle looks like they're back, as long as Hasselbeck doesn't get hurt. Of course, it's fairly easy to look good against the Rams.

Packers 21, Da Bears 15. Man, it sucks to be Brian Urlacher today - gone for the season. It seems like, from what I saw of the game, Da Bears played a lot better than the Pack, but of course, it comes down to turnovers, and Jay Cutler kept throwing interceptions. Cutler is just not a great quarterback - he's fool's gold, I tells ya! Chicago will probably still be pretty good, but they're not going far in the playoffs if they even make it. And it looks like it's Green Bay's division to lose. Now that R. C. Favre is gone, I no longer hate the Pack, so that's cool with me.

Over in college football, Penn State was on cruise control for the second straight week in dominating Syracuse. I'm not convinced they're the fifth-best team in the country, but they haven't played very well at all and they've still cruised. And they won't be tested next week against Temple, for crying out loud. The other "good" team in the Big Eleven, Ohio State, played amazingly conservatively at home against USC, which is never a good idea, and they lost late. Fortune favors the bold, Jim Tressel! Ohio State played better than the Trojans for 50 minutes, but couldn't put them away. I was rooting for Michigan against Notre Dame, because I don't hate Michigan as much as Notre Dame, and I always want the Big Eleven to win those high-profile games. I still don't think the Wolverines are all that great, but I think this game may have killed Charlie Weis. Houston beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater, but do we hear how lousy the Big XII is? UCLA beat Tennessee in Knoxville, but do we hear how lousy the SEC is? I just get tired of the Big Eleven bashing. Yes, Michigan State should have beat Central Michigan, but CMU is a pretty good team. It's just annoying that everyone bashes the Big Eleven, even if the conference often deserves it. The way parity has come into college football, there are very teams that are completely easy wins. And Florida schedules all of them!

So that's the week. Not a bad one in football world, in terms of entertainment. Your opinion may vary based on how your team did, but the games in which I had no stake were pretty entertaining. We'll just see if Kevin Kolb can actually play next week! Yay!

(I got the image from here, where they have 101 attractive and probably faux redheads. Just in case you were wondering.)

Dokken versus chicken

2009-09-09T12:56:00.001-07:00

This is a funny commercial. Even if you don't know who Dokken is. And if you don't know who Dokken is, you should be ashamed. Why don't you love America?

I've been meaning to write about racism, but I've been too scared

2009-09-07T12:15:00.006-07:00

I'm not racist. Not even a little bit. I reject Avenue Q's song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" completely (and, even though I haven't seen the show, I know that's satirical, but still). I'm not racist.

How can I, a middle-class white man, make that statement? I mean, I must be, as the song says, a little bit racist, right? I must harbor some resentment toward people who aren't white people, right? I'm deluding myself, right?

Well, I don't think so. I know that some people are racist, and I know I'm not perfect, but racism just isn't a part of my mental or emotional makeup. I'm not even trying to be "politically correct" and say that I'm careful never to offend people while I'm really masking my racism. I still use the term "black" more often than "African-American," and if that makes me racist, then I guess I am. But that seems silly. Everyone calls me white and not Polish-Lithuanian-German-Scotch/Irish American, and that's fine. Maybe that makes those people racist, too.

I don't know why I'm not racist. My parents don't act like racists, but they're more prejudicial than I am, and I call them on it all the time. They don't go around burning crosses, but they do make generalization based on race, and I always have to point out how silly they sound when they say it. My father is worse than my mother, but they both do it. I don't think of them as racist, but I suppose some people would. The point is: When I was growing up, they never made those statements around me (my parents, to their credit, understood that adults don't really need to discuss absolutely everything with their impressionable children, so I never knew much about my parents' political beliefs, for instance, until I was much older, because when I was 12, it wasn't any of my goddamned business), and they never did anything that was racist. It was never an issue for us. I didn't know many people of different races, because Bucks County in the 1980s was mostly white, but when I did encounter people of different races (mostly Asians, if I remember correctly), I didn't really think anything of it. They were just kids. Of course, some of the stereotypes applied, but not to the point where I could say "Man, all those Asian kids are good at math and science!" It just wasn't an issue.

It became less of an issue as I got older, because I met more and more people and learned more and more about people. I have worked with people of other races and taught people of other races, and if I was racist before (and I doubt it), I learned that you really can't generalize about people. Why this is a stunning insight I'll never know, but it seems some people still can't make it (including, occasionally, my parents). I say I'm not racist not only because I don't discriminate against people (I'm not in any position to do so, but it's not like I would anyway), but because I never make statements (or even think statements) like "Well, all black people like fried chicken." I think that's what people say when they claim that everyone is a "little bit" racist - doesn't everyone say or think something like that at some time or another? Well, I don't. I've said things like "When I taught, I noticed that many of the Hispanic kids came from single-parent households," but if that's racist, we might as well never discuss anything ever again. That's just a statement of fact based on the kids I talked to. It's certainly not generalizing, as in, "All Hispanic kids come from single-parent households." That would be untrue and racist.

I suppose it depends on your definition of racism. Have I told racist jokes before? I sure have, when I was a kid and didn't know any better. I've also told Polish jokes even though I'm Polish, so there's that. Yes, the jokes were racist, but I also had no idea that they were racist. Nobody told me, either, I just came to the realization that they were. I don't call people "Oriental" anymore, either, because those people who were offended by it said it was dismissive, and as I read exactly what "Oriental" meant, I came to realize that while I might not consider it offensive, it's defining a group of people by what they are not, i.e. European. "Oriental" is a term that Europeans used to define something exotic, and it's outdated. I don't think it's politically correct to call someone Asian (or, better yet, by their specific nationality), but if it is, so be it. Similarly, I don't think calling someone "black" is racist, mainly because I see far too many "African-Americans" calling themselves "black." Of course, many African-Americans call themselves the "n" word, too, but I never use that because, well, it's racist. It saddens me when black people call themselves the "n" word, as well.

Again, it gets back to your definition of racism. Is it racist to look at demographics and state facts that can be gleaned from them? Is it racist to point out that Pine Ridge, the reservation in South Dakota that is famous because of the Leonard Peltier case, is the poorest place in the United States? I suppose it's racist to draw conclusions about all Indians (whoops, can I not use that term, even though many Natives use it?) from the example of Pine Ridge, but some people say we can't even draw conclusions about the residents of Pine Ridge from the example of Pine Ridge. Again, how can we ever fix the problems of minorities in this country if anyone who addresses them is shouted down with charges of racism? I know my history, and I know that the problems faced by minorities are largely "not their fault." However, at some point, someone - black or white or yellow or red - has to talk about what can be done to alleviate those problems and what everyone - not just white people, not just black people - can do to move forward. It's too easy to shout "racism" and ignore anyone who doesn't agree with you.

I write this because of many factors, but Roger's Labor Day post helped spur me on. In that post, he links to a letter from the editor in GQ magazine (yeah, I know) in which the editor writes about having a discussion about race and how the president needs to start one. This ties into Roger's larger theme about how civil discourse has become decidedly less civil, to the point where people at a town hall health care meeting heckled a woman in a wheelchair who was worried about losing her coverage. Yes, a woman in a wheelchair. Later on in the video, two interesting things occurred: One man, who was interviewed about it, said he wasn't at the meeting to listen to anyone's opinions (what, pray tell, are the town hall meetings for, then?) and another person, commenting on the story, claimed that if you're a Republican, you're evil and racist and ugly and you don't like porn. Okay, maybe not that last part, but he basically stereotyped all Republicans as hateful people, which seemed to me as bad as heckling someone at a town hall meeting who doesn't agree with you. That's why we never have frank discussions about race - because it's far too easy to shout, and if we disagree on health insurance, can you imagine the bile that will be unleashed if President Obama started a national discussion about racism?

I'm certainly not condoning racism. I know it's still far too prevalent in this country. When my parents, who are extremely tolerant people, can say things like "Well, that's just the way Hispanics are," I know that plenty of people harbor far uglier thoughts. But it's never fun, no matter how ugly your beliefs are, to be yelled at about them. If we begin a discussion about race, minorities will have to get used to the fact that there are some really, really stupid people out there - and guess what? Some of them are minorities! Yelling at racists won't change their minds; it will simply entrench their opinions more. Some people think, "Well, it's fine that I yell, because I don't want to engage racists in meaningful conversation anyway," but that seems like a silly opinion to have, especially if you want to change minds. If you want to feel morally superior to people, yelling at them is fine. But to change someone's mind, you have to understand why they feel a certain way. Most people don't want to know why someone is racist, they just want them to stop being racist. Similarly, most racists don't want to talk about it, because they think they'll get yelled at. Most racists, I would guess, are "casual" racists, like my parents, who wouldn't dream of discriminating against someone based on their race but think nothing of making generalizations based on race. So they would be appalled that someone thinks they're racist and would immediately get defensive. There's room for leeway on both sides. And, of course, it's very difficult to bring it up with anyone, because even racists are aware of the ugly history of racism. If it's your family, you might be able to bring it up (as I do with my parents, even though I never say they're racists), but it's something you just don't bring up with people, even if they're close friends, unless it gets obvious. I certainly don't blame people for never speaking of it; nobody wants to admit they make racist statements, even if they aren't aggressive racists.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I have a feeling I know why I'm not racist. Part of it is because my family was never one to put pressure on the kids to conform. We had a strong family structure (and my grandparents were racist in the way that people born in the first two decades of the twentieth century were; i.e., they were raised with certain attitudes and never gave them much thought, but they didn't go around burning crosses and lynching people, either), but it was never a case of my grandfather or father sitting me down and explaining what the world was like and if I was a real Burgas I'd think that way too. It's no revelation to say that racism is learned, and I think a lot of it has to do with parents and grandparents making a concerted effort to "indoctrinate" their children. My parents never believed in that. They raised me by example, and generally, their example was a good one (as I wrote, they rarely discussed "adult" topics with me). I learned from their actions that we should treat people as individuals, so even if they thought all Pakistanis, for instance, were raving Muslims lunatics (they didn't), I'd never know, and the only Pakistani I ever met was a wonderful man who made us dinner one night, and damn! it was tasty. Many young people learn to parrot their parents' prejudices, and by the time they start thinking for themselves, it's too late. The other reason I'm not racist, of course, is where I grew up. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood and was exposed early on to a relatively liberal lifestyle (my parents voted for Ronald Reagan, I know, but it's not like they were hardcore Republicans - they just didn't like Carter). And I went to college, where any prejudices I might have had (and I don't recall having any) were blown up fairly quickly. I just never cared about someone's label. Again, maybe early on I wasn't exposed to large groups of a certain stereotype living up to that stereotype, so I didn't get a chance to "learn" that "all" of a certain minority was lazy or drunk or angry or dumb, and by the time I met members of those minorities I was smart enough to realize that one drunk person doesn't mean everyone of that group is drunk.

One thing that seems crucial for combatting racism is thinking about our attitudes toward the world, something I do maybe even too often. Whenever I ask my parents to "prove" what they're generalizing, they sputter a retraction and we all move on. If you ask racists where they get their information, they either retreat further into name-calling or they're forced to realize they don't have accurate information. At least then they're exposed and they might be forced to re-evaluate their thoughts. Many don't, of course, but instead of yelling at them, people should ask them why they believe what they do and try to get them to admit it's all anecdotal, based on one experience they had when they were 12 years old, or it's something "their Daddy always said." People don't think enough these days, and it's frustrating. One thing I appreciate about my father is that he does a lot of research before he makes up his mind. Once he makes up his mind, his opinion tends to calcify into hard certainty even if new evidence comes to light, but at least he does research beforehand. I know that education won't solve all our problems, but it's a start.

I don't mean to be so self-congratulatory in this post, because I'm well aware of my shortcomings. Racism just isn't one of them. And I don't think I'm alone in this. I've never heard my lovely wife express any sort of racist sentiment. Beyond that, I'd like to think most of the people I've met in my life aren't given to generalizing based on race, but, like I mentioned above, it's very difficult to tell. But I do reject the idea that "everyone's a little bit racist." You might think that would make it easier to discuss racism. I think it puts people on edge and less trusting. If I ever meet Roger (although then I'd have to go to Albany, and who wants that?), I'd like to think we could meet without either of us thinking to ourselves, "Well, this guy is white/black, so he has some attitudes about things that are common to his race." That seems awfully shallow.

Or maybe I am just deluding myself. Maybe I'm a raving racist and I just don't know it. That would be weird.

"Cool kids never have the time"

2009-09-04T14:03:00.004-07:00

As we reach Labor Day, I ought to post this, because it's about summertime, more specifically the summer of 1979. Thirty years ago, in May 1979, I moved from Liederbach, West Germany, to Warminster, Pennsylvania. My family had moved to Germany from Warminster in 1975 when my dad's company, Sperry Univac, asked him to take a job in Europe. My mother, always one to leap on a chance to travel, told him it was a great idea. Four years later we moved back. I spent one month in second grade (I turned eight in May 1979), then experienced my first summer (that I can remember) in Pennsylvania. Thirty years later, it's still the best summer I ever had.

We lived on a street (my house was here!) with a bunch of families with younger kids, so it was kind of a paradise. Behind me lived my best friends, Frank and Dave Alvaro, who are twins and are a few months younger than I am (and yes, it's the same Dave whose wedding I missed a few years ago; it became moot that I missed it last year, when he split up with his wife), but on my street we had a bunch of other kids. They were all about the same age, too - at eight, I was about in the middle of the bunch, age-wise. Down the street were the oldest kids around, and they might have been 11. Our next-door neighbors had a younger daughter who was probably six. We had about 15 kids living either on the street or on the street behind us, where Frank and Dave lived. It was kind of the perfect storm for fun, and we took advantage.

All summer we played with each other. This was, of course, in the era before hundreds of channels on television, and it was summer anyway, so nothing was on. It was also before video games went nuts, so nobody was playing those. We watched a few cartoons (I'm not sure if Star Blazers had hit the United States yet, because that was one for which Frank, David, and I stopped everything to watch), but nothing really distracted us too much from enjoying the outdoors. I had brought a giant ball back from Germany. It was about waist-high on us kids, and it was painted like a soccer ball. We decided we were going to play "Kick the Can" all day, every day. Of course, we didn't use a can. We used my giant ball.

I don't know if you've ever played "Kick the Can," but here it is: Someone is "It," and someone else kicks the ball as far as they can. We kicked it up the street, because our street was on a slight incline and kicking it down the street would have meant it would have rolled forever. Once the ball is kicked, everyone else ran and hid while the person who's "It" went and got the ball. Then the "It" person would place the ball at a set place (this was a lamp post on our front yard, because our house was centrally located) and start looking for the others. When the "It" person caught one person, he or she would escort that person back to "jail," which is where the ball is, usually. When they caught everyone, someone else would be "It." Yay!

Of course, there's a catch. At any time, a person who hasn't been caught yet can run to the ball and kick it, thereby freeing all the prisoners and making the "It" person start all over again. In our neighborhood, this was ridiculously easy, and therefore the "It" person could remain "It" for many, many hours. Why we kept playing remains a mystery. Perhaps it was the great many places to hide in our neighborhood.

We had a blast playing "Kick the Can." Back then, very few people had fences in their yards, so the kids could easily move through back yards to various hiding places (upon reflection, this may have been why some people started putting up fences, but we were kids - what did we care?). We had to make boundaries for where you could hide, too, because otherwise someone might end up on a different street altogether. For three months, we played "Kick the Can" almost every day. It really was a wonderful time, because all the kids were at an age when they still liked to play together. By the next summer, some of the kids were 12 and beginning to hang out with the older kids and didn't want to be seen with 9-year-olds. And, of course, as we got older, we didn't want to hang out with the kids who were a few years younger than we were (even though my next-door neighbor grew up to be a hottie - but that was a decade later). At night we would play "Flashlight Tag" or "Ghost in the Graveyard," two more hiding and seeking games. None of us were old enough for jobs, so we had no place to be and nothing to do except have fun. And we did.

It's very odd how this era came to an end, because it was almost poetic and something you might see in a sepia-toned movie about the loss of childhood innocence. We all went back to school in the autumn of 1979, me to third grade (where I was the first teacher who had a real positive influence on me in terms of making learning fun; before that I enjoyed school, but I didn't really think it was that important) and the others to their various grades. One day my soccer ball, which I left out at night, ended up in a neighbor's yard a few doors down, where their dog popped it somehow. I found it and wept (okay, not really, but I was kind of sad). It signaled the end of the summer, somehow, and the next summer, we didn't even try to recreate the magic from the year before. That's not to say I didn't have a wonderful time, but it wasn't the same. As I mentioned, some of the kids grew up just enough that they didn't want to hang out with us, and I also made some other friends from my school who lived near me, so Frank and Dave and I played with them. (I never stopped hanging out with Frank and Dave, who remain some of my best friends to this day. I mean, they lived behind me, for crying out loud, and were three months younger than I was. And they're awesome. What was I going to do, stop hanging out with them?) We played different games, watched more television than we should have (still not as much as some kids), and I started riding my bicycle a lot more to more distant places (not too far away, of course - I wasn't even a teenager yet) and I started reading more, going well on my way down the path to nerdiness. I had a wonderful childhood and adolescence (much better than a lot of people, I guess, as I've heard their stories over the years), but I always look back at that summer, 30 years ago, and wonder how I got so lucky to have such a golden time. I've spoken to other people who were there in the intervening years, and they agree with me, so it wasn't just me viewing it through rose-colored glasses.

I just find it strange that it was 30 years ago. The oddest thing about growing older is not the way you feel, because I still feel fairly young (and I am, I know, but I'm not as young as I used to be), but that you can remember things that happened decades ago. Not just years, whole ten-year bunches. I remember when I graduated from high school and thought about the ten years that had passed since I moved back to the U. S. and thought that was a long time. Ah, how foolish I was.

Anyway, I just thought it would be fun to share a nice memory with you. Take it as you will.

What I've been reading

2009-09-01T13:21:00.001-07:00

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. 1998, Simon and Schuster, 506 pages.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned before how much I like not only the thing, but how the thing is made, and therefore I love reading books about how, say, movies are made almost as much as the movie itself. So I was jazzed to read this book, which is about the seismic shift in Hollywood from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. In that decade, a slew of new directors changed the way movies were made and how they were perceived. Biskind's book is pretty fascinating, and it's amazing that it's so, mainly because I hated pretty much everyone in this book. Yes, hated!

It's not surprising to anyone that creative types in a highly competitive business are often evil, but it's strange that every creative type in this book, with one exception, comes off as a complete scumbag. That one exception is Steven Spielberg, and from what the people in the book say, that might be because he's not a true "artiste." But we'll get back to that! (I should point out that a lot of the women come off pretty well, but that might be because this time period was still notable for its sexism, despite the women's movement.)

Biskind begins in the mid-1960s, when Hollywood had become a bit staid and conservative and moviegoers were abandoning theaters in droves. Television had taken a huge chunk out of their audience, and the owners of the movie companies, all old men, some of whom from the earliest days of Hollywood, no longer had any idea how to connect to the younger audiences. Into this mess came a bunch of directors and producers (and, to a lesser extent, writers and actors) who had been influenced by French New Wave and even Americans like Orson Welles (who became, in the 1970s, a patron saint of these men, who loathed how he had been treated by Hollywood) and wanted to make movies in that vein for an American audience. Biskind begins with Bonnie and Clyde, which shattered the perceptions of what a gangster movie could be and made Warren Beatty one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He follows that up with Dennis Hopper's Easy Riders, which made a boatload of money and pointed the way to low-budget movies that connected with the hippie generation. By the end of the 1960s, the New Hollywood was off and running and ready for the 1970s, one of the most creative eras in moviemaking ever.

Biskind tells the story in a sprawling thematic fashion, focusing on certain movies and individual directors, jumping back and forth in time to cover what he sees as the major signpost movies along the way. He covers the ones you'd expect - The Godfathers, Apocalypse Now, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Five Easy Pieces, M*A*S*H - and some you might not expect, such as those of Lucas and Spielberg. The book is really about the directors, as the 1970s were their Golden Age, so he gives us good character sketches of Hopper, Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson, Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, Paul Schrader, Hal Ashby (whose death he sees as the symbolic end of the era), Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Spielberg. He gets into the directors' battles over creative control with the heads of the studios, who had never been challenged before. As their movies made money, the directors were able to gain more and reach higher, and Biskind's prose is thrilling as he discusses this. It's astonishing that he makes the dirty business of making movies (I mean, come on, they're only movies) sound so noble.

Of course, this is a "rise and fall" story, so the directors overreach, as many of them began to believe that they could write and produce, cutting everyone out of the process. As more than a few observers point out, very few of them were true "auteurs," so they couldn't write a good script or produce a good movie, and when they started alienating everyone who could, they turned out horrible movies. It's interesting that one of the few American "auteurs," Woody Allen, gets barely a mention in this book (and that to point out that he was, in fact, an auteur), perhaps because he was able to make the kinds of movies that these complicated directors wanted to make, and therefore wasn't as interesting. One of the weaknesses of the book is that Biskind tends to ignore a lot of movies that were important in the 1970s (A Clockwork Orange comes to mind), but if we recognize that he's not necessarily writing a history of the movies but a history of a group of directors who, to one degree or another, self-destructed like Icarus, it becomes less egregious. As the directors spiral out of control, Biskind does a good job getting all the dirt on them (he notes when people disagree on facts, but it happens surprisingly little) and showing how horrible they really were. Hopper is insane, Coppola is megalomaniacal, Scorsese is paranoid, Bogdanovich is vain, Friedkin is mean, and they're all doing copious amounts of drugs that don't help. It seems that very few of them made great movies after they became powerful, and only when they were brought low could they reinvent themselves. Some, like Bogdanovich (and, to a lesser extent, Coppola), never recovered. Some, like Scorsese, recovered almost in spite of themselves. Biskind writes this as a Greek tragedy, which is fine, but because there are almost no likable characters, it's hard to care all that much. Biskind, along with his subjects, seem to have an elevated idea of what movies mean, and although I love movies, I recognize that there might - just might - be more important things in the world. These directors, it seems, took far too long to figure that out.

Perhaps that's why Spielberg, and to a lesser extent Lucas, come off relatively well in the book. Lucas is, like every other director in the book, a control freak, but he takes it to a new level. Biskind seems to share the other directors' dismissive attitude toward Lucas, but he's the only one who created an independent entity that was able to be profitable and compete with the major studios. Of course, capturing the zeitgeist with Star Wars helped, but it was only with the success of The Empire Strikes Back was Lucas able to strike out totally on his own. But Lucas still comes off a bit like the emperor in the Star Wars saga - hiding out in the shadows, cloaked in mystery, slowly retreating more and more from the world. Spielberg, on the other hand, seems to be the only one who recognizes what movies are, and even though he cheat on Amy Irving, she's so mean to him you almost can't blame him. Spielberg is also held up to scorn by the subjects of the book, but he's also the only one who seemed to escape a major flop (1941) almost unscathed. There's a nice undertone of jealousy throughout the book whenever Lucas and Spielberg come up, both by the author and by the subjects. It makes the book a bit more interesting.

Ultimately, Biskind is a bit too in love with the decade, but at least he wears his heart on his sleeve. Yes, a lot of the movies of the Eighties were soulless corporate products, but perhaps that's because the directors of the Seventies screwed up so badly. They allowed their budgets to bloat so that their movies weren't profitable anymore, and so big-budget directors who could deliver as many dollars as possible came into vogue. The directors became so obsessed with power that they shut down producers, writers, and even actors occasionally, so the studio heads began to see less of those people too and began looking for the big explosion instead of the major star. Biskind never addresses that perhaps it wasn't only Spielberg's genius of reading the audience that changed the movies, but also the the egos of the directors. That's really the tragedy of this book - that talented people were allowed to run riot and destroyed a system without really replacing it with anything. After a decade of rule, the directors ate themselves and the studios just moved back in. Coppola wanted to create an alternative studio, Lucas sort of did, but nobody seemed to have a plan about what to do once they stormed the gates. They looked around, saw all the loot, and just started seizing it for themselves. Biskind's book is a fascinating portrait of this crazy time, and it's worth checking out for all the behind-the-scenes stuff about the movies and the lives of these men, who drank, smoked, and snorted anything they could get their hands on, blithely cheated on women who had supported them, and went a bit nuts when they got the keys to the kingdom. It's a gripping read, and I'd like to check out the other books that Biskind has written about the movie industry.

Rick Pitino needs to shut up

2009-08-26T21:44:00.004-07:00

I've avoided commenting on the Rick Pitino situation, because I just don't care. However, yesterday Pitino got a bit angry, and I think I need to tell him to just shut up. So: Shut up, Rick Pitino.

Pitino, in case you don't know, is the head basketball coach at the University of Louisville. A few weeks ago, it came out that he had fucked a woman in a restaurant six years ago and then paid her to have an abortion. The news came out because the woman, after six years, claimed rape and tried to extort money from him. The police brought no charges against Pitino and the woman is under investigation for the extortion charge. Despite committing adultery and paying for an abortion, the very Catholic Pitino kept his job. I mean, he knows how to coach, right?

I was disgusted by both parties involved in this sordid tale, as Karen Sypher, the woman whom Pitino nailed, seems like a bit of a nut case. However, yesterday Pitino responded to the release of her police interview, which he says is a "total fabrication."

Listen, Rick, you need to shut up. It's obvious this woman is unhinged, and nobody believes her when she says you raped her and all the other charges she's levying against you. But when you respond by holding a press conference and ranting like you do, everyone starts to wonder whether you're a bit unhinged, too. It began when Pitino inexplicably referenced 9/11 in his initial press conference (he wasn't comparing what he was going through to the victims of 9/11, so that's a plus, but he did bring it up for seemingly no reason), and now, Pitino wishes it would all go away because he's worried about the effect the news coverage is having on his family.

Um, yeah. Maybe you should have thought of the effect fucking a woman who wasn't your wife and then paying for her abortion would have on your family, Rick. This is a news story, mainly because you're a high-profile employee in a high-profile job and you did something that, according to the teachings you profess to follow, makes you a hypocrite. Pitino also goes a bit off-topic again, this time whining that people should focus on the economy (says the man who makes millions coaching basketball), bitching that it came out on the day Ted Kennedy died (another odd allusion), and saying that we need to get on with "crucial" things in life, "like basketball."

This last statement is why he really, really needs to shut up. Reminding people that you're a freakin' basketball coach (and yes, coaches often help shape the lives of young men who don't have father figures, I get it, but if Pitino really believes that, he should man up and resign, because men take responsibility for their indiscretions) might not be the best way to go. So please shut up, Rick Pitino. When Karen Sypher makes some idiotic statement, stop reminding people that it takes two scumbags to tango on a restaurant floor.

Someone is going to hell ...

2009-08-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Wandering the Internet, I found this:

I'd like to think Jesus wouldn't mind someone dressing like that. Of course, who knows what she did next. Oh, Jesus, avert your eyes!!!!

Hey! I can review first-run movies occasionally!

2009-08-17T20:45:00.009-07:00

This past Friday, Mia was at school, and Norah was at pre-school for the entire day. The entire day!!!!! We want to get her ready for kindergarten, so we're sending her to pre-school for the whole day once a week. That means I had most of the entire day to myself (about 10.30 a.m. to 2.45 p.m.) and nothing to do, so I went to the movies! Yay!

I checked out District 9 because why not? It's a pretty good movie, and now I'll tell you why! Here's the story: In 1982, an alien spaceship appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. The humans went inside and found that the aliens were more like refugees, with no leaders and no organization. So the humans created a refugee camp for them (called District 9) and stuck them there, partitioning them off from the rest of the world. Now it's 2010, and the humans have had enough - the aliens are scheduled to be sent to a new camp, 200 kilometers away from Johannesburg. Into this mess comes Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a bureaucrat of MNU, the corporation in charge of the shantytown where the aliens - derisively called "prawns" because they look like seafood - live. Wikus is tasked with getting the prawns to sign a waiver agreeing to the move - this section of the movie is weirdly humorous, as it's such a bureaucratic thing to do, even when you're dealing with aliens who don't sign their names (luckily, Wikus understands their language). As he moves through District 9, he comes across a hut where there's a strange vial that squirts out some strange black liquid. Before you know it, Wikus is becoming a prawn himself, and MNU wants to experiment on him, and he's ostracized from society in the same way the prawns are. Oh, the irony!

The movie quickly goes from social allegory/satire to action movie, which presents some problems, but not enough to ruin the movie, unless you're really into seeing a social allegory. Obviously, the director, Neill Blomkamp (a South African himself, hence the setting of the movie), is going for the apartheid parallel, but he doesn't go far enough with it. First of all, he never mentions that this situation existed in South Africa in the first place, leading me to believe this is some parallel reality world where it didn't exist (in 1982, of course, apartheid was still in full effect, so somebody might have mentioned it). He also gives us stereotypical Nigerians as villains in the movie, which made me a bit uncomfortable. The white villains are evil, sure, but they're just regular people. The Nigerians, with their witchcraft and cult of personality around their leader, seem as or more subhuman than the prawns themselves, which is odd. It's a weird choice for Blomkamp to make and somewhat undermines his idea of tolerance that underlies the movie. Of course, he doesn't want to push the apartheid parallel all that much because he's making an action movie, but it's still a strange thing to put in the movie and then ignore. Perhaps it would have been better to set it somewhere else other than South Africa so that the parallel wouldn't have been so obvious.

The "mockumentary" style Blomkamp employs for some of the movie works against him, too. He starts the movie this way, but quickly abandons it for long stretches before intermittently using it again. It's the same thing as the apartheid subtext - embrace it completely or ditch it. It doesn't seem possible to tell this story in a "mockumentary" style, and so when he breaks with that, it heightens the "movie-ness" of it even more, drawing us out of the story. I get what he was trying to do with the "mockumentary" style, as it adds a immediacy and also a claustrophobia as Wikus's life unravels, but it feels affected because he doesn't use it throughout. Again, I doubt if he could use it throughout, so it probably should have been abandoned.

Of course, I still enjoyed the movie. It's not great science fiction, mainly because Blomkamp is too concerned with making an action movie, but it's a good action movie, with far more on its mind than most. He gets a great performance from Copley, who begins as a weasel and really doesn't do too much to redeem himself. Even as he begins to change, he doesn't sympathize with the prawns all that much, convincing himself that if he change back, his wife will take him back (she won't) and all will forgiven (it won't). When he's confronted with a moral choice about helping the aliens or helping himself, he helps himself. It's a nice character arc, actually, because we probably wouldn't believe that Wikus would change so quickly. When he finally comes down on the "right" side (and of course he does), it's not necessarily because he completely sees the light, but because he decides it's the only thing he can do. Copley is very good in the role, which is interesting given it's his first movie (indeed, his first acting job).

District 9 is R-rated, and it earns it. The language, according to the rating, is "pervasive," which is as good a description as any. It's also very violent, as Blomkamp, when he decides to make this a complete action movie, shows that he can really do action well. The violence is sudden and devastating and extremely graphic, just as a warning. It's also very quick, as Blomkamp doesn't linger on the horror, in case you're wondering. Despite the fact that the turn toward action is a bit disappointing, at least Blomkamp does it very well!

I wanted District 9 to be a masterpiece, but I'm not surprised it wasn't, as it was made by a bunch of people with very little movie experience. What it is, however, is a fine action movie disguised as a science fiction movie with a conscience, and it certainly makes you think more than other summer action movies do. It's very gripping and tense, keeping you on the edge of your seat throughout ("We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!!!!!!) and featuring some very fine performances. If there's any justice in the world, it portends big things for its star and its director. And it's a fine way to spend two hours during the dog days of summer!

And if you don't believe me, Nik has reviewed it too! You can trust Nik!

Michael Vick on the Eagles?

2009-08-13T19:26:00.002-07:00

Yes, it's true. Michael Vick has been signed to a two-year contract by my beloved Philadelphia Eagles. Hmmm.

I'm not really sure what to think about this. If Vick hadn't served two years in prison for killing dogs, I'd be extremely angry about it, but he did. He might be a scumbag, but he has paid a lot more than a lot of supremely talented scumbags have. I can't imagine he'll do anything heinous in his time as an Eagle, because he can't be that stupid, can he?

The Eagles seem like a decent fit for him, structure-wise. They, like the Patriots, don't tolerate idiots, so Vick going to Philly makes more sense for him than signing with some outlaw organization like the Raiders. I think everyone on the team will help keep him in line, but I could be just hopeful more than anything.

I don't know how much protesting there will be of the Eagles. I don't feel any sympathy for Vick, but he did spend a good amount of time in prison and he's apparently deep in debt, so what else do you want? Maybe he shouldn't get another chance to play in the NFL and he should go earn an honest living somewhere, but that's for Roger Goodell to decide. If he says Vick's eligible, that's that.

Go Eagles!

Conservatives who say Hollywood is liberal crack me up

2009-08-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

We've been watching the burn-off episodes of Dirty Sexy Money this summer, and we just watched Saturday's episode on Sunday (long live DVR!). At the beginning of the episode, Karen (played by Natalie Zea) is upset because at the end of the previous episode, she found she was pregnant and the father was her ex-fiancée, Simon Elder (Blair Underwood), who ditched her at the altar when he was offered what he really wanted, which was half of Karen's father's company. So Karen is a bit upset. She and her mother (Jill Clayburgh) head off to a clinic, where Karen, naturally, has second thoughts about terminating the pregnancy. Simon finds out she's pregnant by following her to the clinic, and he tells her later that he's going to be very involved with the kid even though she now hates him. Got all that?

The reason I bring this up is because Karen and her mother never mention the word "abortion." I mean, it's not surprising that Karen doesn't have an abortion, because no one on television is allowed to have one. She later says that having Simon involved is going to be horrible but that she has no choice. Well, yes she does. She gets around this by saying it might be her only chance, but Karen is, presumably, about as old as the actress playing her, and Ms. Zea is 34. There has never been any mention on the show that she has trouble conceiving, nor were she and Simon trying to have a baby, so this "just happened." There's no reason to believe that Karen can't have another kid.

The funny thing about this is Sarah Palin's recent farewell speech, in which she blamed Hollywood for going against American values. This is a frequent rant from conservatives, but rarely in television shows do you see something as odd as, say, the Republican governor of South Carolina lying about hiking on the Appalachian Trail while he was in Argentina boning his mistress. But that's neither here nor there. On Dirty Sexy Money, which is a soap opera that aired at 10 o'clock at night and featured the usual number of murderers, cheaters, candidates for political office who cheated on their wives with transsexuals, and all the sexual transgressions we expect from a prime-time soap opera. Yet a show that has already been cancelled, is airing its burn-off episodes on Saturday night in the summertime, and in the same episode features a gay Congressman and his wife propositioning a Senator because they have an "arrangement" in their marriage, can't utter the word "abortion," much less let one of their selfish, spoiled characters have one. Television, I'm sorry to say to those moralist Republicans, is extremely conservative, because all television executives care about is money, which means they can't piss off any portion of their audience. So not only is a perfectly legal medical procedure forbidden to any television character, even mentioning the word is like Dick Cheney saying the n-word at the Apollo Theater.

So shut up, conservatives. You've neutered Hollywood. Congratulations!

Power out(r)age!

2009-08-03T21:29:00.002-07:00

There I was, typing a new post for this here blog at approximately 1.45 this afternoon, when the power went out. Sigh. The two darling children were very puzzled by the fact that The Emperor's New Groove suddenly disappeared from the television screen, and I wondered if it was just our house or the whole neighborhood. I waited a few minutes to see if it would come back on, then called SRP (Salt River Project), our electricity providers.

The nice lady who answered the phone told me to check my circuit breaker. As I was outside doing so, one of the people who lives across the street (we're still not sure on the living arrangements in that house) told me her power was out too. I relayed this information to the SRP representative, and I also told her flipping the main breaker did nothing to fix my problem. She told me she'd get right on it.

I put Mia in her bed (she doesn't nap anymore, but she also gets bored easily, and with no television, there wasn't much to do, so I figured she could relax a bit) and hung out with Norah for the afternoon. I thought about going in the pool, but decided against it in case Mia had a seizure or otherwise got upset for some reason. The house didn't get too, too hot right away, so it wasn't really that awful. We rarely get power outages in these parts, but when we get them in the summer, it's really, really horrible, as you can imagine.

At 3.15 I called SRP back and asked what was going on. The woman was very vague, as she couldn't really tell me if they had alerted anyone about my problem or if they had alerted someone and those people weren't fixing anything yet. By this time I had found out that the people two doors down had also lost power, another nugget I relayed to the SRP rep. She said they would get right on it.

About 20 minutes later our next-door neighbors knocked on the door and asked if our power was out. I told them yes and that I had called twice to let SRP know what was happening. The woman told me she had just gotten off the phone with "them" (I assume SRP, because they're a bit of a monopoly 'round these parts, but she never expressively said the company's name) and that they told her no one had called in. I said she was lying. Which she was. Or she was just ignorant. I don't know which is worse.

At 4.15 I called back. They had finally dispatched a team to, and I quote, "an underground mine" where the problem was. I really didn't feel like getting the entire story about what the hell she was talking about, so I just asked if they had a ballpark figure for when the power was coming back on. Yes, she said, eight p.m. I almost, but not quite, lost it. "Eight o'clock?" I said, not angrily, but more aghast. "So I'll be without power for six hours?" Yes, she said, but it was only an estimate. I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be reassuring, because in my world, when a company estimates a timeframe, you can usually automatically add at least an hour if not two to it. I told the lady such. I still wasn't angry, just exasperated (it wasn't, after all, her fault). I told her I had called in at 1.45, so I hoped they just weren't figuring this out right now, as that meant they wasted a good two hours in which they could have been working. Oh well - at least now I had an idea of when the power would be back on.

Mia's OT showed up, then Krys came home. We had already decided that we were going out to dinner, so we headed off to the mall and the Cheesecake Factory, where neither Norah nor Mia ate. Good times! We got back around 7.45, and the power still wasn't on. We put Mia to bed in the dark (well, by candlelight, but we don't have many candles). We read to Norah by flashlight (I've just about finished reading Wuthering Heights to her - man, that Heathcliff is a scumbag!). We put Norah to bed and then I called SRP back, as it was about 8.15. The estimated fix time had been amended to 10. I tried not to feel smug.

We jumped in the pool (aaaaaahhhhhhh!) and hung out for a while, and while we were in there, the power came back on. Yay! Surprisingly, our refrigerator and freezer lost very little coldness, so none of our food was ruined from the seven hour-outage. And I could post this. Man, I hate summers in Arizona. But you already knew that.

It's a good day!

2009-07-30T20:35:00.003-07:00

Sorry I've been away. We went to San Diego last week to have a bit of a vacation, and I went to the Comic-Con (read about it here!), so I had no access to yonder Internet for a few days, and since I've been back, I've been busy. I'll try to be better now, though!

Anyway, it's a good day because today is the anniversary of our wedding. It's been 15 years! Crystal is the "gift" for 15 years, but Krys and I never get anything for each other except cute cards, so she got no crystal! I'm very proud that we've lasted for 15 years, mainly because I've seen some people I know have marriages that don't last and also because most of my friends waited until they were older, so I'm fairly proud that I was so young and knew who I wanted to spend my life with.

It's still very cool being married, and it's a wonderful feeling to know that Krys and I will always be there for each other. I just thought I'd mention what a good day it is. And promise I'll post something substantial very soon!

What I've been reading

2009-07-21T13:40:00.005-07:00

The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett. 1997, Simon & Schuster, 333 pages.

This novel is strange. It's not strange in a Joycean way, because it's very straightforward, but it's strange because it doesn't seem that Bennett knows what he wants to do with it. It is a story of a cynical novelist who travels to the Belgian Congo in 1959, just on the cusp of independence, to be with the woman he loves, a fiery, idealistic journalist. Anyone who knows the slightest bit about the transfer of power in the Congo from the Belgians to the Congolese knows that Patrice Lumumba, who was the first prime minister, was deposed in a coup ten weeks after taking power and a few months later killed (probably with the Americans' blessing). Lumumba has become a mythic figure in the history of anti-colonialism and African independence, and he haunts this book as well, although he's not in it that much.

Bennett gives us an interesting pair in James Gillespie and Inès Sabiani, the book's star-crossed lovers. James is older (by thirteen years) and much more jaded than Inès, who believes in completely biased journalism (she's a communist) while James tries to see all sides of a story. James finds his relationship threatened by the volatile situation in the Congo, which is bad and getting worse, but which offers Inès a chance to get involved in the way she loves and the way James hates. The book is really about how their affair disintegrates as James realizes that a simple love affair will never be as important to Inès as grand ideas on the world stage. She leaves him, but he can never stop loving her. That, of course, becomes a problem.

The difficulty with this book is that we know exactly where it's going, and while that's not always the point, as a thriller, it doesn't deliver, and as a love story, it's a bit lacking (for different reasons). The reviews compare it to, most commonly, a Graham Greene novel, but the crucial difference is that it's written with almost 40 years' hindsight, so while Greene's novels have a sense of not knowing exactly who's who and who's the bad guy, this novel can examine the legacy of the early independence movement and buy into the Lumumba fantasy more than a contemporary novel might (or might not, of course). We know how the Congo spiraled out of control fairly quickly (and this book was written in 1997, prior to the latest round of violence in the eastern part of the country), so Bennett can subtly indicate that the involvement of the United States (personified by Mark Stipe, a CIA agent who befriends Gillespie) was part of what caused the country to fall apart. It makes this slightly more a propaganda piece than a true thriller, because Bennett is guiding us toward an anti-Belgian, anti-American viewpoint based on the future history of the country, which a contemporary author might not do. (I'm not, I should stress, saying that Bennett believes this viewpoint or, if he does, that it's a bad viewpoint to have. It's apparently fairly clear that the CIA was, if not complicit, at least aware that Lumumba's enemies were going to slaughter him, so it's not as if writing with an anti-American tone is that offensive. I'm just pointing out that it's fairly obvious, and it's mostly because Bennett "knows how it all turns out.")

As a love story, it falls apart even more quickly, because the affair is falling apart at the beginning of the book, and Bennett never quite convinces us that James and Inès had the affair of the century, so its dissolution isn't as powerful (although Bennett's writing when describing the fractured affair is very good; the best in the book). Bennett doesn't quite earn the tragedy of James and Inès, because we don't really believe that James could be so beguiled in the first place, so why is he so addicted to Inès? It's crucial that we believe it, because it's the hinge on which Gillespie's final actions rotate. James becomes much more pathetic as the book continues, because despite Inès telling him early in their relationship that she loved him, it's hard to believe from her actions. So when she breaks his heart, it feels like he should have gotten over it. Come on, Gillespie!

In the end, his love clashes with his lack of belief in, well, anything. If you've ever seen Casablanca or The Third Man, you know that the cynic grows a conscience and helps the person who needs his help. What's interesting is that Bennett makes it clear that James does this (yes, he can't escape the conscience!) not for noble reasons, like Rick Blaine, but because of his love for Inès - he's convinced that she'll come back to him if he doesn't cave to the authorities. The problem with this goes back to the unconvincing way Bennett gives us the affair. James is conflicted because he's unsure if Inès will come back to him or not, but we as the reader are sure she won't, because she's never given any reasons that James is anything else but a momentary stop on her way between one revolution and the next. Therefore, his sacrifice is meaningless, and his loss of cynicism, even for a moment, rings false. It's frustrating.

Bennett writes very well, and he really does a fine job creating these characters - perhaps too well, because then he can't fit these two people together. The politics of the book, in fact, are quite well done, as we get a good sense of what it was like in the Congo in 1959-60. I'm fascinated by the independence movement in Africa, and while Bennett changes the time frame so that it's not a very good historical document, he does a good job showing us the effect the independence movement had on both the whites and the natives, as for many Europeans, they considered Africa their home and couldn't imagine the violence that accompanied many independence movements. Bennett does a good job with that, and when that takes center stage, the book is often gripping.

The Catastrophist is a difficult book to recommend, because while there's a lot of good writing and some good ideas in the book, the central relationship is poorly done and therefore affects much of the rest of it. It's an easy book to read and it's an interesting look at a volatile period of history, but it also falls short in a lot of places. But it also shows why Krys and I call some incidents "Lumumba moments!"

People are awesome

2009-07-16T14:13:00.003-07:00

This photograph was on the front page of the Valley & State section of the 15 July edition of the Arizona Republic. According to the caption, this SUV was stolen by a dude who was drunk. So now they're going to charge him with theft and DUI. That has to suck. I just love this picture. It sucks for the homeowner, but it's freakin' hilarious.

Sex is fun!

2009-07-14T14:05:00.003-07:00

So says Britain's National Health Service!

The NHS (can we call it that?) has released a pamphlet for teens emphasizing that sex can be pleasurable. This, of course, has put some people into a bit of a dither, because won't someone think of the children!!!!! I sympathize with those people, being a parent of daughters (because boys can have sex anytime they want and not worry about the consequences, right?), but I still think the parents are the ones who really have the most influence with whether their kids have sex or not. I know I'll have to deal with this sooner or later, but I'd like to think that Norah will be smart about it - whatever "smart" means in this case.

Who knew sex is fun? Alert the media!

What I've been reading

2009-07-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago by Simon Baatz. 2008, Harper Perennial, 541 pages.

Most of us, I would presume, have heard of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, at least in conjunction with the films made of their exploits, from Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (with Jimmy Stewart) to Richard Fleischer's Compulsion (with Orson Welles and E. G. Marshall and, weirdly enough, Gavin McLeod) or even to Tom Kalin's Swoon, which is the only movie of the three I've seen (although I'd like to see the others). The story of Leopold and Loeb is so very weird that it fascinates us, even 85 years later. It's one of those crimes that continues to defy explanation, which is probably why it remains interesting to study.

Baatz writes in his book that no one prior to this has written a book on the case, which seems odd. But here this one is, and in the best tradition of popular history, it's a well researched and erudite yet gripping read, mainly because of the subject matter. Baatz gets a bit turgid when dealing with the courtroom scenes, but when he writes about Leopold and Loeb's relationship and the days leading up to and following the murder, the book races along in an almost fictional style. Similarly, once Leopold and Loeb actually go to jail, Baatz does a good job writing about their lives (in Loeb's case, a short one). The trial section isn't bad, but it does drag a bit due to all the back-and-forth legal maneuverings of the two sides.

Leopold and Loeb are a fascinating pair, of course, because it's doubtful either one of them would have pulled off such a horrible crime (murdering a 15-year-old boy for no motive) without the other. Leopold was a shy, extremely intelligent young man who fell in love with Loeb and had an active fantasy life wherein he was the slave of a great king who came to depend on the slave and always offered him his freedom, which the slave refused. Loeb, meanwhile, who was more outgoing and less intelligent than Leopold, dreamed of being the perfect criminal. The two boys complemented each other, as Loeb kept Leopold on the hook by promising sex if he (Leopold) would help in his (Loeb's) crimes - the two worked their way up to murder over the course of a few years - while Leopold allowed Loeb to call the shots while making himself indispensable to Loeb, in much the same way his fantasy slave becomes indispensable to the king. Both boys were from rich families, and both boys had odd relationships with their nannies when they were young - Leopold's seduced him when he was twelve, while Loeb's pushed him to graduate early from high school and enter college before he was ready - it becomes obvious early on that both boys were cauldrons of psychoses that came bubbling out when they met each other and enabled each other's desires.

Baatz goes over the crime in great detail (most of which was provided by Loeb and Leopold themselves) and the trial in even greater detail. Clarence Darrow was the lead attorney (technically he was Loeb's lawyer), which of course sensationalized the case even more, and Robert Crowe, the DA, had his eye on future political office and a reputation as someone who always got the death penalty, even in cases where the defendant pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. The actual trial wasn't even really a trial - Darrow pleaded guilty to avoid a jury trial, but then persuaded the judge to hear arguments by both sides on the degree of mental illness suffered by the boys - not insanity, Darrow argued, but a different kind of mental illness. This allowed him to avoid the jury and essentially place the burden on the judge to determine the sentence, and if he found that Leopold and Loeb suffered from any kind of mental illness, they wouldn't receive the death penalty. Crowe thought the defense was a perversion of justice, but the judge allowed it, and that's what the trial became. By "winning," Darrow got the boys life sentences. Loeb was killed in prison, but Leopold was eventually paroled.

Baatz also does a good job placing the crime in the context of 1920s America. It's interesting reading the contrasting attitudes displayed by the police and members of the press about, say, the boys' sex acts. On the one hand, there's the expected talk about "perversion" and mental deficiencies, but there's also a kind of casual understanding that these things go on and that's just the way life is. Baatz subtly makes the point that, this being the Twenties, boys just experimented with these sorts of things. We also get the usual denunciations of the decadent lifestyles of the young from pulpits across the country, as preachers raged against the anti-religious attitude sweeping the nation (it never ends, does it?). Baatz points out how at least one minister preached a sermon explaining how the death penalty is completely congruent with Christian values. There's a lot of this kind of social context in the book, as the case captured the imagination of the entire country.

For the Thrill of It is an interesting book about a dazzling time in American history and its dark underbelly. Leopold and Loeb were, it seemed, paragons of what American youth could be - they were both intelligent, good-looking, rich, and had bright futures. They didn't have great family lives, it became clear, but neither were they from broken homes. Underneath it all, of course, were dark currents just waiting to be released, and the most interesting part of the book is, as I mentioned, that neither could have done this without the other. The one place the book fails is at conclusively stating why Leopold and Loeb killed a boy. This failure isn't Baatz's, though. Leopold and Loeb themselves could never really provide a conclusive answer to that question. No wonder the crime continues to vex us even today!

Yes, the sky is really this blue

2009-07-06T18:19:00.007-07:00

When I was back in Pennsylvania, the weather was very nice - the two-month rain storm had abated, the temperatures were in the low- to mid-80s, with nice cloud cover (not too much!), not-too-awful humidity (not like July and August!), cool breezes, and nice cool nights. I mentioned to someone at my picnic reunion how ridiculously hot Arizona is, to the point where you really can't understand the heat unless you've experienced it. An old friend who has lived here backed me up on this. I mentioned that there's never any cloud cover, and someone scoffed at that. No, really, I explained to her, there's hardly ever any cloud cover, and this is for probably a good 250-300 days a year (other days, usually in the winter, are sunny, but there's a few clouds). In case anyone doubts me, I took a picture!

Seriously - that's the sky around here for most of the year. In case you think I'm just showing you a Blue Screen of Death and that's not really the sky, here's some context:

Yes, it can be achingly beautiful. But dang, it gets boring after a while. And, you know, really freakin' hot. Give me scudding clouds punctuated by bursts of sun and the occasional horrible downpour any day!

It Came From the Eighties!!!!! (With a Special Celebrity Cameo!)

2009-06-30T16:59:00.034-07:00

I visited Pennsylvania this past weekend for our second annual high school reunion picnic, which this year was a bit more significant as I actually graduated 20 years ago. I went stag, as I needed some time away from the kids and it's far more expensive to buy four plane tickets than one (imagine that!). I flew out on Wednesday night and spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday in my old stomping grounds - namely, Bucks County, PA. This year I won't write about my experiences, as I did last year, mainly because the kids weren't around, so my visit mainly concerned sitting around with friends drinking (not too much, as I just can't deal with a lot of alcohol anymore, plus I was driving most places), which no one wants to hear about. At the actual picnic, I had a grand time catching up with people, some of whom I hadn't seen in 20 years and others who I see every time I go home, but they all make me feel inadequate (off the top of my head, we had a psychiatrist, at least one doctor, a woman who works for the Peace Corps in Niger, a lawyer, and a person who's working on a vaccine for staph infections at the picnic, and I'm sure I'm missing several other impressive occupations, making my day of watching television and blogging seem trivial by comparison - even if I LOVE IT!) so I'll just say to any of them who might be reading, It was great to see you, and I hope I can do it again next year.

However, while I was home, my mom told me that she had dug out some old photo albums, so of course I had to go through them. These are pictures from no later than May of 1993, when I graduated from college, and going back to probably 1986 (the only dated photograph is from July 1987, but a few look older than that). So sit back and return with me to a time when I was actually skinny. I know, it's hard to believe, but I have photographic proof! These photos star my sister, my parents, my bride-to-be, and perhaps the greatest celebrity cameo in history. I kid you not!

That's my sister, by the way.

Check out that skinny dude! That's my dad, back when he had (some) hair.

Man, I look like a total nerd. What's up with the hair and glasses? Dang. That's my aunt and uncle and my two young cousins.

This is my sister and I waiting at the airport in the summer of 1988 before our trip to Barbados. My parents took us cool places, because they're awesome.

This is when we arrived in Barbados. I have no idea where I'm going with such intensity, but I love that picture.

All right, ladies, avert your eyes before you're overcome with desire! Stud Alert!!!!

Look at those abs! Is it any wonder I was beating them off with a stick?

This is my senior prom in May 1989. That's my girlfriend, Holly. She was a pretty cool chick. We grew apart once we went off to school, but I had a nice little romance with her.

High school graduation. Look at how uncynical I am! So very, very foolish of me!

Check out those glasses! And yes, that is my Billy and the Boingers T-shirt. That's just how I rolled, man!

A dude should never match his mother. But check out those shorts! The '80s ruled.

My sister and I again.

This is July of 1987 at Ricketts Glen, Pennsylvania. The girl on the right was an exchange student who lived with us for a time. Check out my tan! And that's a Little Shop of Horrors T-shirt I'm wearing.

That's my dad in a rare moment of levity. Well, I guess it wasn't all that rare, but this is still not too common from him.

I don't know when this was taken, but it was in the Poconos, I know that much. Check out the shades!

This is kind of murky, but it still cracks me the fuck up. This is when I got all four of my wisdom teeth out and I had to have ice on both sides of my mouth for a few days. It was no fun.

This was probably junior year, but I'm not sure. This was my first girlfriend Krista. I wonder what happened to her.

I live to be goofy.

Look at that idiot. He thinks the world is his oyster. What a kook!

This would be my lovely future bride. We were in Nanticoke, PA, where my grandparents lived. This was my grandfather's funeral in the winter of 1993. It was the first time Krys met my parents. Fun!

Here I am sitting around at my grandfather's funeral. That's some stylin' hair on that dude!

This is my graduation from Penn State, meaning it's May of 1993.

That's my maternal grandmother. She was 82 at the time. She was pretty awesome.

My sister again. You might be wondering, does she ever smile?

Hell yeah she does! Barb and my mom were flying to New Orleans once and yes, Richard Simmons was on the flight with them. So they got their picture taken with him. Don't they all look happy? Richard Simmons is awesome, man.

So those are my mother's olde-tyme daguerreotypes. I hope you dug 'em!

Plugging the other blog!

2009-06-23T18:57:00.002-07:00

If you're at all interested, I have two long posts about my vacation in Disneyland up at the other blog. Go read Part One, then have a butcher's at Part Two.

Unless, of course, you have better things to do. You don't, do you? Of course you don't!

What I've been reading

2009-06-21T16:32:00.004-07:00

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor. 1982/2006, Penguin Books, 526 pages.

It took me a long time to read this book, not because it was bad, but because I had just zipped through a bunch of shorter and, frankly, less challenging books and I needed to get back into full-on historical reading mode. Plus, we went to Disneyland for a week, so I didn't do much reading. But I finally got through it, and while I didn't love it, Beevor does a nice job sorting through the morass that was the Spanish Civil War.

Most of us, I would surmise, don't know much about the war. We know about the bad guys (the fascists, who should be more correctly called the nationalists), the good guys (the republicans), the fact that the Nazis used is as a training ground for their weapons, that Pablo Picasso painted a masterpiece depicting the destruction of Guernica, and that many literary luminaries, such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, fought or worked for the republican side. That is, if we even know that. I knew all that but not much else, so I figured it was time to learn more!

Beevor is certainly exhaustive in his research. This book was originally published in 1982, but years later, Beevor went back, looked at newly available archives, and reworked the book. It's an extremely thorough examination of the war, which is nice to see. Beevor doesn't focus on one side over the other, as he does a fine job getting inside both the nationalist and republican governments. He goes back to the nineteenth century to explain the context of the sides, especially the Carlists, who traced their origins back to the 1830s. He spends as much time with the society and culture of the opposing sides as he does with the actual war, which helps us understand why the nationalists were able to triumph beyond just the fact that they were militarily superior to the republicans. The nationalists probably would have won the war anyway, but Beevor does a good job showing that the republican government didn't do their fighting forces any favors.

Beevor's sympathy lies with the republicans, but what's nice about the book is that he never shies from showing the dark side of the Spanish democracy. It's easy to believe the atrocities committed by the nationalists - we're conditioned to believe that about fascists, after all, and General Franco was allied with Hitler, after all - but Beevor does a good job delving into the terror perpetuated by the republican side. The republicans were an odd melange of communists, anarchists, Marxists, and Basque and Catalan separatists, which were occasionally right-wing and therefore had more in common with the nationalists politically but didn't buy into their vision of a united Spain. The nationalists, of course, were a mix of monarchists (those who followed the traditional line of Alphonso XIII, and the Carlists, who wanted the cadet branch of the Bourbons to take over) and fascists (the Falangists), but they had the advantage of Franco, a powerful personality who could bend them to his will, for instance in 1937, when he merged the Carlists and Falangists. Beevor makes it clear that the republicans were ill-equipped to deal with the war, mainly because they had no one like Franco who could take over. As the war progressed, they committed several atrocities against nationalists caught in the republican zone, while the communists gradually took over and purged the government of anyone who disagreed with their ideology. Despite his sympathy with the republican side, Beevor still manages to be even-handed when he discusses their crimes.

This may be because the republican side, as it became more and more communist, also became the obvious puppet of the Soviet Union. Throughout the book, it's clear that the biggest crime of the war was the way the Western powers ignored the plight of the republican side because of the irrational fear of the Soviets. Many of the high-ranking officials in France and Britain were even pro-Franco, despite fearing Hitler's Germany. Hitler, of course, sent in the Condor Legion to test various weaponry (it was the Condor Legion, mainly, that carpet-bombed Guernica), and although he wasn't particularly subtle about it, the British and French governments looked the other way. This was at the height of appeasement, of course, and the republicans happened to be involved in a war at precisely the wrong time. Franco was desperate to win the war before the greater European war erupted, not only because he'd lose the support of Hitler and Mussolini, who'd be pre-occupied elsewhere, but because he would be lumped in with the Axis powers and be a target of the Allies. As it turned out, he won the war with about six months to spare (although the outcome was known for about a year before it actually ended) and then, even after declaring neutrality in World War II, still assisted Hitler and drew no ire of the Allies. This legerdemain was one reason Franco managed to stay in power until 1975.

This is a difficult book to get through because of the large cast of characters and even political parties. It's fascinating, though, because of what a mess Spain was during these years. Beevor points out that communists foolishly engaged the nationalists in pitched battles simply for propaganda reasons, which weakened the republican government even more and hastened its demise. He also shows that Franco may have been a dictator, but that democracy in Spain was weak even under the republican coalition of the early 1930s, so who knows if it would have survived. Beevor wonders if Spain would have gone the way of Stalinist Russia had the republicans won, and he feels that Stalin's interest elsewhere during the 1940s might have mitigated that influence somewhat. The book shows that the Spanish Civil War, which seems simple on the surface, is much more about the common folk who suffered during it than the warring sides, neither of which were particularly good for the country. War always takes it toll on the non-participants. In the case of the Spanish Civil War, that seems more pertinent than in others. That's the tragedy of it - even if the "good guys" had won, the common people would have lost.

Just how stupid are Americans?

2009-06-15T19:51:00.003-07:00

That was the question I had to ask myself two weeks ago, when I first went into a lavatory at Disneyland and saw this on the wall, next to the faucets:

Yes, it's an instruction manual on washing hands. Now, given the fact that most Americans, I'm sure, don't wash their hands after using the toilet, it's perhaps not surprising that they've forgotten how to do it, but really? REALLY????

I'm moving to Andorra, damn it.

Saturday night YouTubery!

2009-06-13T21:04:00.003-07:00

It's Saturday night, and why don't we look at some videos I found on someone else's blog! Namely, Nik's. Because why come up with content when displaced Americans living in New Zealand can do it for you?

First: Bollywood action movie scene. If any Hollywood movie had anything close to this cool, they'd make a shitload more money, I tells ya.

And like Nik, I would totally watch this show:

Enjoy! Thanks, Nik!

Random thoughts about Disneyland in particular and the Los Angeles area in general

2009-06-09T12:51:00.005-07:00

I'll delve into our holiday to SoCal over at my daughters' blog, mainly because it was a kid-oriented vacation, but I thought I'd write about some things that struck me about our week-long journey to the wilds of Cali.

1. Driving for seven hours anywhere is a chore. Driving seven hours with two small children is pretty much suicidal. Even if they're pretty good kids, as ours are. If we want to get information out of terrorists, we should put them in a mini-van with about six kids and make them drive cross-country without a portable DVD player.

2. Speaking of portable DVD players, Krys bought one before our trip even though I didn't really think it was that great an idea. We did use it, but not until late in the trip when they were really being punchy. I think that's a happy medium. I asked my mom about driving all over Europe when I was their age, and she said we were generally good. So why can't modern kids shut it?

3. It was really pleasant to drive through an urban area that had to be molded around hills and valleys and natural impediments instead of simply thrown out in grid patterns. I didn't like LA all that much, but at least it had some character, unlike this boring-ass place where I live.

4. As much as I didn't really like Los Angeles, I can see why so many people live there. Every day was overcast, but it rained only very briefly, and the temperature hovered in the 70s all the time. You could actually go out and do things, and at night, it was ridiculously pleasant.

5. Whoever came up with FastPass is a freakin' genius. For those of you who don't know, FastPass is a ticket you can get at the rides in Disneyland and California Adventure that allows you to come back at a certain time and not stand in line. It's a beautiful thing. You do have to wait until that certain time (usually between an hour and three from the time you get the ticket) to ride, but you can go do other things while you wait. I love FastPass.

6. Of course, neither park was all that crowded. The weather may have factored into this, and the fact that we were there during the week. I don't know. However, the longest wait time for a ride (the wait times are extremely mutable, but not too far off) was 60 minutes, and I only saw that twice (at Splash Mountain and Space Mountain). Usually the wait times were between 25-40 minutes, which isn't that bad. Of course, we used FastPass a lot, so it didn't matter!

7. I hate to admit this, but one of the extremely few benefits of having a person in a wheelchair in your party is that you very often get on the rides much sooner, as in immediately (they allow you to go through the exit). In fact, that and handicapped parking might be the only benefits to having a child in a wheelchair. Yeah, it doesn't make up for everything else.

8. Newport Beach is nice.

9. Man, food is expensive in Disneyland. I know that's stating the obvious, but man!

10. The worst job for a "cast member" (which is what they call those who work at the parks) besides, you know, cleaning the toilets, has to be herding the folk every night just before the fireworks display. Krys and I went back to the park on Friday night after the kids were asleep just to get away from them for a while, and we came off a ride in Tomorrowland minutes before the fireworks. We were herded around the center cul-de-sac that ends at the castle and which was packed with people toward Adventureland and Frontierland and back down Main Street, because the brick walkways were, as the cast members patiently explained, not a viewing area. We managed to duck under a rope separating us from the real viewing area and therefore had a decent view of the fireworks, but anyone trying to stop on the walkway was chided by the cast members. Apparently sometimes they actually have to get physical because people are not listening. Nothing like that happened on Friday night, but it still has to be the suckiest part of their day.

11. California Adventure closes on most nights at 9 p.m. That is, as the kids say, lame.

12. There are a lot of fat, ugly, slovenly people in this world. I know, I'm one of them, but come on! Well, I'm at least not slovenly. But when we hear about the obesity problem in the United States, it's probably because the researchers went to someplace like Disneyland. Man. I don't like to call people fat and ugly (I don't mind calling someone "slovenly," because it's not that hard to look decent), but it's true - there are a lot of them at Disneyland. And not a lot of hot chicks. What was I supposed to do with my time? Pay attention to the children?

Check the other blog for longer posts about our vacation. There will be photographs!

Yeah, so I should probably explain where I've been

2009-06-03T20:08:00.002-07:00

My five readers want to know!

I'm a bit off the grid this week. Obviously, I have Internet access, as I'm posting this, but the family and I went off to beautiful Anaheim, California, to visit Disneyland with my parents. So we've been a bit busy, and by the time I get home at night, I'm really too tired to write anything. I wanted to post an odd picture every day that we were here, but I forgot the cord that attaches the digital camera to the computer (it's my father's PC), and the chip doesn't fit, so I can't even do that. I do have some fun pictures, however, so I'll post those when I get back.

I know I might lose even my five readers now, but I'll be back on Sunday. Have a nice (rest of the) week.

Moral relativism and torture

2009-05-25T13:38:00.001-07:00

I read an interesting opinion piece in the newspaper this week about torture. It was written by Grumpy Old Man Charles Krauthammer (and yes, that's his official title, hence the capital letters), who I often (almost always) disagree with, but who's still interesting to read.

Krauthammer begins by explaining that he wrote a column about the two exceptions to the no-torture rule. The first is the ticking-time-bomb scenario, the second is a less extreme variant, "in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives." He then writes that the column elicited spirited protestations. One response that he calls "stupid" came from a writer who claimed the "ticking-time-bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians." Krauthammer, of course, has a real-life example to counter this, and follows up with:

One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks.

Of course, that's the crux of it. Krauthammer goes on to point out the "contemptible" hypocrisy of Nancy Pelosi. His critics, he says, reply that "her behavior does not change the truth about torture." "But it does," Krauthammer claims:

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable man would do under urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and senior and expert members of Congress represented colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable-person verdict.

And what did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to [then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter] Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Krauthammer points out that the "circle of approval" was wider than even Congress. Even liberals believed torture was warranted in the aftermath of September 11th. He writes:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at that time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected [52% of the vote is "strongly"? Krauthammer is engaging in some revisionist history, methinks] the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered from a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken.

It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions - our blindness to al-Qaida's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that interrogation would extract intelligence that President Barack Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" - and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

They were right.

Krauthammer concludes:

[Y]ou can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

On the one hand, Krauthammer raises some interesting points. The idea of torture, in whatever form, is repellent to civilized human beings (or ought to be) until it becomes the only way to save someone you love. There's also the question of what constitutes torture. According to some reports, three people were waterboarded, and very few were psychologically traumatized by the various methods we used. I have no idea about the absolute numbers, but it doesn't really matter. The question remains: What is moral, and is torture ever okay?

Krauthammer obviously thinks it's okay sometimes, and he claims that the American people think so too, because they re-elected the man who sanctioned it. Well, I would argue that most people in 2004 still didn't know what we were doing, and if people like Nancy Pelosi knew and didn't object, I blame her as well for not making more of a big deal about it. We heard rumors, of course, but when the president of the United States stands in front of the press and says emphatically that we do not torture, we tend to believe him. So Krauthammer's argument there is dumb, but the question of whether or not torture might be okay in some circumstances is a difficult one. We would like to say that it's never okay, but what if my daughter is kidnapped and she's going to be raped or killed soon and the only way to find her is by torturing a suspect? That's the moral conundrum Krauthammer brings up, and it's a tough one. Of course I would say, "Torture away!" Then it comes back to - how could I ever teach her to have moral principles if I betray my own? But I'm sure she would say that I couldn't teach her anything if she was dead. That's why we don't like to be put in those situations.

I have argued this point with Mia's PT, who's quite a bit more conservative than I am. He accuses Barack Obama of wanting to be "nice," meaning speaking to regimes like Iran rather than pre-emptively striking them, and he disagrees with this. He's also a Christian, and this is where the moral question becomes sticky. I have no idea if Charles Krauthammer claims to be a Christian, but considering something like 90% of Americans consider themselves to be, I'll go out on a limb and say Krauthammer does as well. Even if he's not, plenty of "good Christians" are on board with torture. I've written about how hard it is to be a "real Christian" - as in strictly following the words of Jesus as represented in the Bible - because it's practically impossible in today's world, but it would seem to me that a Christian wouldn't condone torture no matter what the circumstances, even to save a loved one. After all, if you're a true Christian, this world means nothing - you're focused on the next one. I'm not about to accuse Mia's PT of being a bad Christian, because he's a wonderful therapist and a very nice man, but unfortunately, I don't feel like I'm a close enough friend to him to ask him how he reconciles these two somewhat opposing viewpoints. I can't imagine someone being a Christian and condoning anyone who tortures. But maybe I'm just being naïve.

If we continue in this vein, I like how some self-professed Christians have come out in favor of torture "in extreme circumstances," meaning morality is relative to the situation. Yet these same people (usually) consider something like gay marriage the death knell of all civilization and claim that there's no gray area when it comes to homosexual unions or, say, abortion. Moral absolutism rules there, it seems, but when it comes to defending the fatherland (yes, I'm using that word very deliberately), nothing is too horrible. This is why I try to avoid using moral absolutist terms, because it will always come back to bite you in the ass. And yes, that includes torture.

I'm certainly against the concept of torture, but again, how would I feel if it was necessary to rescue someone I loved? The biggest problem I have with the Bush Administration using torture is that they always took the moral high ground and claimed that we didn't do it and that the United States remains a shining beacon of how things ought to be done. It's bullshit, but it's fancy-sounding bullshit, and Americans love to believe that we're better than everyone else. I honestly think that "torture" might have been more effective if Bush and his cronies had come out and said they were doing it. If Bush had come out and told the terrorists that they had forfeited any rights to be treated as humans and therefore we were going to do anything to extract information, not only would the American people have been on board (especially right after 11 September) and therefore these days we wouldn't have all this moral hand-wringing, but maybe potential terrorists might have thought twice about attacking us. Even if that didn't happen, at least we the people would have known where we stood. Another columnist I read today claims that we're already complicit, as we could have figured things out in 2004. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 - I was repulsed by what he was doing, and that included locking people up for no reason other than they looked funny. Had Bush been more forthright, he might have had to deal with a brief shitstorm, but according to him, he never cared what people thought of him, so why would he have cared then?

The fact that we tortured people, even if it was just three people, depresses me. Not because we did it, but because this is what the world has come to. However, it always makes me laugh a bit bitterly when the same people who refuse to compromise to allow two men or two women to get married twist themselves into knots to justify torture. The irony, I would imagine, is lost on them.

It's hard to be a Luddite these days

2009-05-19T13:29:00.004-07:00

Today is a rather important day in the history of the universe, and my lovely wife bought me an iPod Nano with the funky adapter that allows you to listen to it in your car. Yes, I've never had an iPod before today, nor have I ever been interested in one. I bought one for Krys a few years ago, and she really digs it. One of the reasons I never wanted one is because I prefer listening to albums the way they were recorded, in the order the artist wanted. Of course, the convenience of the iPod means when I fly to Pennsylvania in June I won't have to take a bunch of CDs with me, I can just take my iPod. So there's that. But now I have to figure out how to use the furshlugginer thing.

I felt the same way about my digital camera. I never saw the need for one. Of course, now I love it, but I still think of it as cheating, because you should live with the photographs you take, man! I got over that, however, and I'm much more jazzed about the iPod, even though I still consider it cheating to listen to random songs instead of where they're supposed to be on the album. The good thing about it is finding songs on iTunes that you like but are on albums you wouldn't necessarily like. That's going to be coolio.

I still resist getting a Blackberry or any other portable Internet/phone device, mainly because I can't imagine ever being comfortable with a screen or keys that small. I'm old, man! That's probably why I will never Twitter. Twitter seems like the kind of thing people do when they're out walking around with their portable Internet, and I will never have that. I can barely tolerate my cell phone! When I'm on the computer, I'm sitting in my chair at home, and there's almost nothing to Twitter about (of course, most people have nothing to Twitter about, but at least they're out in the world interacting with others when they have their banal thoughts). That's another reason why I don't like webcomics, which seems to be the trend in comic-bookery: I like to read in bed, and I'm not lugging my laptop in there just to read something on the screen (that and I'm cantankerous and covetous of actual printed material). So I will resist getting a portable Internet device with all my might.

Now I have to start putting songs on my iPod. That should be groovy!

(And yes, this is a roundabout way of saying that today's my birthday. But you already knew that, right? Isn't it marked on your calendars in bright red pen????)

Yeah, okay, I'm a slacker

2009-05-18T20:04:00.002-07:00

Yes, it's been over a week. And what do I do? Link to two odd news stories!

Pentagon reports no longer quote Bible.

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

...

The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms - "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him ... To deliver their soul from death" - and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand," read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U. S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.

Sheesh. Good to know we have separation of Church and State. Especially when we're talking about a supposedly Christian president sending people to kill and die.

Here's something a bit more fun:

Man calls 911 over 28-year-old son's messy bedroom.

An Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom said he overreacted when he called 911. Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son - who's a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford - threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.

The son, also named Andrew, lives in a room in his parents' basement.

The father declined to press charges and told police he doesn't want to ruin his son's political career.

The son, who also works as a political consultant, said he's lucky to be living in the house rent free. He also promises to keep his room clean.

So ... many ... jokes ... to ... mention ...

Maybe the father should tell his TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SON to move the fuck out!!!!!

Maybe the son's political career will be ruined when his future opponents bring up that he was living in his parents' basement when he was twenty-eight years old! That might work.

Better content soon, I promise!

Want cheap gasoline? Move to Arizona!

2009-05-09T10:03:00.003-07:00

Yes, for the briefest of moments (AAA of Arizona expects it to change soon), Arizona has the cheapest petrol (on average) in the country. On Thursday, the average price of gas was $1.93, while nationwide, it was at $2.14. Arizona's gas prices had only increased a penny over the past 30 days, while the country, on average, had increased a dime.

Of course, it's summer (here especially, as we've already had several days in a row over 100), so that means more driving and higher prices (how does that work?), so experts are sure the prices will go up. But still - we can't educate our children, but we can sell you some cheap gas!

What I've been reading

2009-05-05T13:28:00.003-07:00

The Alps: A Cultural History by Andrew Beattie. 2006, Oxford University Press, 246 pages.

As a European history enthusiast, you might expect I'd be fascinated by the mountain range that separates the northern, Germanic section of the continent from the southern, Mediterranean section, and you'd be right. The Alps are a crucial component in the history of Europe, from Hannibal crossing them with elephants to Henry IV doing penance in the snow to conquerors descending from the north to plunder Italy. My family also vacationed several times in the Alps, and it's where I learned to ski. The very readable if not terribly deep book is a nice guide to the range.

Beattie divides the book into four sections. The geological section, which comes first, is the shortest, which is fine. Once the origins of the Alps are dealt with, the geological jargon would probably overwhelm the narrative, so Beattie simply skims the surface of how the mountains were formed. The historical section, which is second, is obviously longer, as Beattie zips through pre-historical and Roman times to get to the Middle Ages and the modern day, where he gets a bit more detailed. The history of the mountains is fairly confused, unfortunately, so he can't devote too much time to it. After Charlemagne, the political structure broke down, mainly because successive conquerors found it difficult to cross the mountains. Therefore, the lowlands were subjugated while higher up, people lived on without worrying about who was in charge. The biggest development in the Alpine region was perhaps the Protestant revolution, led by Huldrych Zwingli in Zürich and Jean Calvin in Geneva. Even this didn't touch the highlands, which remained Catholic (well, a patina of Catholicism over older, pagan beliefs). The religious strife helped fracture the political structure even more, so even though Switzerland existed by this time (Beattie goes over the William Tell myth quite well), it was made up of competing cantons, and while the Holy Roman Empire technically ruled much of the Alps, small city-states led by Prince-Bishops and Margraves and Dukes really controlled the area.

The most interesting section of the book is when Beattie examines the Alps in the imagination, beginning with Ludwig II and his fanciful creation, Neuschwanstein. The fairy-tale castle is the most obnoxious expression of the Alpine mindset from the 18th century onward, which began to see the mountains as an enchanted place, but not one to be feared (as had been the case for centuries before), but one to be embraced. Everyone who writes about Newschwanstein seems to think it's tacky. I've been there, and although I was only 6-7 years old (I can't quite remember), I still thought it was an impressive achievement. I can understand why people think it's tacky, but it's still a sight. Beattie springboards from Ludwig's madness to how the Alps have been perceived throughout the ages, from a place where dragons lurked and the weather was alive and malevolent to something to be sought for solace and quietude. He brings in the familiar people who helped popularize the Alps as a destination - the Romantic poets Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley most notably - and ends up with the Nazis, who believed that the mountains promoted a true Aryan lifestyle. Finally, in the final section he looks at the Alps as a tourist destination. This is not the most compelling section of the book, but Beattie does a decent job with it. He ties it in with the previous section, in that it took a perception shift by the populace to convince people to tour the mountains. As someone who has visited the Alps several times, it's far more fun to actually visit than to read about visiting. But maybe that goes without saying.

As I mentioned above, it's not a terribly deep book, but Beattie has a nice engaging style and he keeps things moving along. He has a good eye for anecdotes and debunking myths, which is always appreciated, especially as this is a "cultural" history and not a hard core historical survey. The biggest disappointment in the book is a lack of maps. Beattie writes about many, many places that are not necessarily famous (I suppose everyone should know where Geneva, Zürich, Bern, and maybe Innsbruck are, but maybe not), so I had to read the book with my atlas next to me, and even then, some places were too small for it. I love maps, of course, so maybe I feel the need for more of them than would be necessary, but even a large general one at the beginning would have been appreciated. Oh well.

The Alps is a quick way to get a crash course on a place everyone should visit at least once. The United States has the Rockies, but even those mountains aren't quite as impressive as the Alps, mainly because of the layers of history that go along with the scenery in the European range. So you can read this book, then book your next vacation, and learn to ski at St. Moritz! It's all coming together!

The Internet is awesome

2009-05-01T16:52:00.004-07:00

I was reading a weekly news magazine I receive, and in the back they always have a two-page story about something interesting that doesn't necessarily qualify as "hard news." Recently they ran an excerpt of a story from The New York Times Magazine about the web site SeekingArrangement.com. What's so special about this web site, which is one of many dating sites? It's specifically for sugar daddies (or mommies) and the young women (or men) who want to hook up with them. The article mentioned that several men go on it specifically to find mistresses, as many are married. The writer of the piece interviewed some of the young ladies, many of whom use the site to pay their way through college. Go browse the site. It's a tad bit creepy, but that's why we love the Internet!

Is this a great world or what? Who knew that a rich dude would have so much trouble finding a sweet young thing?

My wife thinks I'm odd

2009-04-28T19:33:00.003-07:00

Now, this isn't news, of course, but it's why she said that I'm odd recently. Over the past few months I've been biting the inside of my lip. It's kind of a compulsion. This happens to me every once in a while - the inside of my lip becomes dryer and, well, biteable. I don't know why it happens; it doesn't seem to coincide with any kind of temperature, but it happens occasionally. When it does, I feel the need to bite my lip. I don't like to do it, but like I said, it's kind of a compulsion. It doesn't hurt at all, and it doesn't seem to cause any long-term damage to the inside of my lip. Then, last week, something happened and the inside of my lip is no longer that dry and therefore no longer biteable. In fact, I doubt if I could bite it without doing some damage. Again, I have no idea why this happens. Does my body chemistry change? Is it because of the weather? The temperature rose last week to triple digits, but then it went back down. It's still hot, but not the ridiculous heat we'll get later in the summer. Anyway, I'm not biting the inside of my lip anymore. Any ideas what happened?

This isn't a big physiological problem, but I find it interesting. I made the mistake of mentioning it to my lovely wife, who called me "odd." This is why my wife and I never speak to each other. It's best if we don't know what's going on in each others' minds.

No naked hiking in Switzerland? It's an outrage!

2009-04-26T12:48:00.003-07:00

Yes, a tiny canton in Switzerland has banned nude hiking, which has become popular among German nudists roaming the land. I don't really have a problem with banning it, but of course I don't really have a problem with people hiking naked either. I just wonder - wouldn't it hurt? I mean, you're out their on the trail, and even though you have hiking boots on, there are branches and bushes and whatnot all over the place. That can't be fun!

The citizens objected to coming across naked hikers unawares. I'd object to coming across Europeans who don't use deodorant and European women who don't shave their armpits. But I'm shallow that way!

So, if you were planning a naked hiking trip to the Swiss Alps ... DENIED! It appears the French don't yet have a problem with it, though, so hike away!

Damned revisionist history!

2009-04-25T17:01:00.003-07:00

Here's an interesting article about the Boston Tea Party and how it was different from what the modern-day Tea Party people (who were called "Teabaggers" by several newspeople who are apparently blissfully ignorant of what teabagging is) think it was. This is why conservatives bitching about "revisionist" history bugs me. I don't know if you subscribe to this dude's interpretation, but the fact is that he has a document that sheds new light on the protest, so people who think we know everything about the Boston Tea Party (to use just one example) are idiots. That's why we have "revisionist" history - it's ALL revisionist!

Anyway, that's a soapbox for another day. Go read the article. It's pretty keen.

Why I ignore the news

2009-04-24T12:33:00.011-07:00

I've been trying to keep my anger about certain things off the blog, because once I've gone over what makes me angry and what makes me happy, it's kind of pointless to keep bringing it up, right? Plus, it's not like I ignore the news, I just wish I could sometime. This week, unfortunately, has been kind of annoying.

1. Why are so many people more bent out of shape by the administration releasing memos acknowledging that we tortured than by the torture itself? I was arguing with Mia's PT this week about this (he's relatively conservative). He made the very good point that if Obama wants to release all the information that says we tortured, then he should be willing to release all the information that indicates what information we actually extracted from those we tortured. It's ironic that Chaney and Rove, the Masters of Misinformation, are calling for exactly that, probably so they can cover their asses by claiming that at least we thwarted some plots. That's perfectly reasonable. It still doesn't explain why conservatives, who claim to be for "freedom" and not necessarily "equality," don't think it's reprehensible that we did this. As I pointed out to Mia's PT, the hard core Al Qaida types have goals that are so beyond the realm of reality (like remaking the entire planet as a backward-looking Caliphate) that they don't really care if they get tortured. All it does, ultimately, is make our so-called ideals look foolish. Mia's PT pointed out that we had Founders who believed in the freedom of individuals, which is a good thing, because most people today would trade freedom for security in a heartbeat. At least we could have the guts to admit it.

2. Why was there such a kerfuffle over Miss California's answer to the question about gay marriage? The last time I checked, we had something in this country called freedom of speech, so why are people jumping all over her for answering something truthfully? From what I've read about it, Ms. Prejean didn't say she wanted to slaughter all homosexuals or that they are an abomination or they should be rounded up and kept in camps, she simply said that she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. The pageant people foolishly let out that it was the reason she didn't win, which is idiotic, as it's a beauty pageant. You can think Ms. Prejean was misguided all you want, but she doesn't make policy, so who cares what she thinks? Why is no one bagging on Perez Hilton, who asked a person who attends San Diego Christian College such a loaded question?

Ms. Prejean, by the way, is a wholesome young lady who happens to like posing in bikinis:

Let's not hold that against her!

3. Recently in Arizona there's been a huge debate over speed cameras, which snap photographs of speeding cars. People have reacted antagonistically, leading to several people (including me) to think, "Maybe you shouldn't speed." Mia's PT, ironically (or perhaps not) enough, believes the speed cameras are a violation of the law because the tickets are not given by a lawfully appointed officer, but that's neither here nor there. Obviously they're in place to collect money for the state, and with the state in the financial difficulties it's in, I don't have a big problem with what is essentially a tax on people who speed. Some people have taken axes to the cameras and placed Post-It notes over the aperture in protest, but earlier this week, some dude pulled up next to an officer who was checking the cameras and shot him three times, killing him. As horrible as that is, people on the Arizona Republic's web site defended the killing, wondering why they should feel bad for some fascist. These are, presumably, the same people who want to round up every swarthy person and ship them to Guatemala when one illegal immigrant kills a cop, but they were defending some guy murdering someone in cold blood just because they might have to pay $200 for going 77 mph in a 65 mph-zone. I know the Internet is all about the freedom of anonymity, but that still disgusts me. It's one of the reasons why I am so open about everything on the Internet. I will never register for a web site under a pseudonym. You know who I am! The murder saddens me, but the reaction of some disgusts me.

4. Not really newsworthy, but we had our first 100-degree (Fahrenheit) day here on Tuesday. GOOD FUCKING TIMES!!!! Of course, the only thing that makes summer bearable, the pool, isn't quite warm enough to swim in. But it's getting there! So for now, I'm trapped in the house until the temperature falls (which it's supposed to do this weekend). 102 degrees in April. People wonder why I hate it here.

What I've been reading

2009-04-18T17:33:00.006-07:00

There's a perfectly good reason I haven't been blogging recently - I've been reading! Yes, I've been caught up in some very good and very readable novels, and now I'm going to write about those novels! The two I've read in the past week are both set in the same time period and place (the first decade of the twentieth century, mostly in London), so I decided to review them together!

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. 2005, Alfred A. Knopf, 388 pages.

Julian Barnes is a favorite writer of mine, so I tore into Arthur & George eagerly when I reached it in my queue. Barnes does a very good job creating interesting characters and excellent dialogue, and this book is no exception. The fact that he uses real characters doesn't mean he stops doing that!

Yes, Arthur and George in the book are real people. What's interesting about the book is that Barnes simply begins writing what appears to be two discrete biographies, one of Arthur, the other of George. He rarely uses dates early on the book, but we understand that both men are living in Victorian England, even if the dates don't match up perfectly. Early on, we start to realize that there's something off about George. His father, the vicar in Great Wyrley, teaches him strict Anglican morality, and George becomes a shy but respectful and intelligent young man. The first sign that things are not well with his family is when George discovers a small crime and is suspected of it by the police. Then the family begins to receive threatening letters, and the police believe George himself is writing them. We learn why this is so when a policeman makes George tell him his last name, even though he already knows it. George answers "Edalji," which is a Parsi name. George's father immigrated to England from Bombay and married a Scottish woman, making George a "half-caste." From that point in the book, it becomes obvious that the cops are targeting George because they're racist. It's fascinating how Barnes builds up to this moment, mainly because George considered himself an Englishman and never believed he was being discriminated against because of his race. The threatening letters stop, and George becomes a solicitor, because his belief in English law is so strong that he thinks it will overcome ugly prejudice. Years later, someone begins slashing horses, usually bleeding them out, and George falls under suspicion. Despite his innocence, he is convicted and spends three years in prison (1903-06). He's released early, but only through the efforts of the other character in the book is his sentence overturned.

The other character, Arthur, is slowly revealed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his story is also interesting, although different in many ways from George's. Obviously, Arthur becomes famous for his fictional detective, but Barnes does a nice job showing how trapped he became by Holmes, which leads to him "killing him off" in the 1890s. Of course, he could never escape the detective, so he brought him back, but Barnes makes sure we understand that Arthur is bound by his creation, just as he's bound by his marriage, which becomes a burden to him as his wife slowly - very slowly - dies of consumption and Arthur falls in love but never allows the affair to progress out of respect for his wife. The love story between Arthur and Jean Leckie is famous because of Conan Doyle's fame, and Barnes does a good job showing that Arthur is as trapped, in many ways, as George is. The joint biography begins to blend as Arthur learns about George's case and becomes incensed that English justice was so badly mishandled, and the similarities between the two men become more evident. It also allows Barnes to show their differences as well - Arthur is convinced that racism lies at the heart of the case, while George refuses to admit it; Arthur's new interest in spiritualism (which would influence the rest of his life) clashes first with George's Anglicanism and then his atheism (he loses faith over the years); Arthur is, despite his protestations, a true English gentleman, in that he believes in a muscular "Christianity" (he's not a Christian, but his spiritualism takes its place), while George remains introverted. The two men don't exactly become bosom buddies, but the relationship is an interesting one, with respect on both sides.

Barnes does a fine job with the detective work, as Arthur takes up George's case after he's released but not exonerated. This gives Barnes a chance to contrast the two men even more, as Arthur believes he can find all the answers to the case, because that's the English way! As he investigates, he comes up with answers, enough to get George's conviction overturned, but not enough to get the Home Office to compensate him for wrongful conviction. However, he believes he has found all the answers, but George understands that the world is not as cut and dried as Arthur, or his fictional detective, thinks it is. It's nicely done - Arthur always looks for scientific proof for everything (including the existence of spirits who communicate with the living), while George has come to understand that some parts of life remain unexplained. It's a nice contrast.

The Edalji case led to the establishment of a Court of Appeals in England, so it has a great deal of importance in English jurisprudence. Barnes ends his book with Arthur's death in 1930 (George died in 1953), which gives him a perfect opportunity to contrast the two men one more time. It's a fine novel, full of wonderful insight into how people live and why they believe the things they do, as well as a good yarn about a miscarriage of justice. It's a perfect example of why Barnes is such a good writer. He never goes bombastic on us, but the themes he explores speak to the heart of what it means to be human. That's pretty handy!

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. 2007, HarperCollins, 353 pages.

The other book I finished last week takes place during the same time as Arthur & George, but it's much more fantastical. The Somnambulist begins with a bizarre murder, as a man is lured into an anachronistic tower in one of London's slum neighborhoods and then falls out of a window at the top when a strange creature approaches him. When another man dies in the same way, the police call on Edward Moon, a illusionist of some fame in the past who now has a smaller following and a more cynical view of life. He is accompanied in his show by the title character, a mute giant whose big part in the act is taking swords through his body without bleeding. A police inspector wants Moon to take the case, but Moon resists for some time, until he realizes something very strange is going on, and only he can puzzle it out. He and the Somnambulist begin to investigate.

The story takes a while to get going, as it reads early on like a litany of odd supernatural clichés that the author finds cool. There's a weird brothel with unusual prostitutes, there's a group of gypsies, among whom hides a key to the mystery, and there's Moon and the Somnambulist themselves, conjurers who also solve crimes. Barnes eventually gets on the right track and the mystery itself takes off, but he takes a while to find his footing. If you haven't become inured to such clichés, the early parts of the book might work for you. As a comic book reader, however, the first 100 pages or so, while quite gripping, also had a "been-there-done-that" feel to them. But the book gets more interesting as it goes along.

Moon uncovers an insidious plot to, well, destroy London. I really can't go into it too much, because the plot is rather interesting and comes from an odd set of ideas which are fun to read about. Moon gets recruited by a shadowy government organization (aren't they all?), while he tries to get his semi-estranged sister to snoop around and find out what she can. As the plot thickens, new players show up, each more bizarre than the rest. Harker and Boon, for instance, are wonderfully depraved characters who show up late but have an important role to play. Moon meets Thomas Cribb, who lives backward through time and can never leave the city limits. Cribb tries to warn him of the impending disaster (he's not allowed to come right out and tell him what it is), but Moon often ignores him. Finally, the cataclysm arrives, and Barnes does a nice job with the resolution of the story, bringing together several plot threads rather logically.

The biggest problem with the book is that Barnes leaves several ancillary things unanswered. One could argue that such is the nature of life, where we pass by odd things but receive no answers because we have more important things to worry about. That's certainly true, but The Somnambulist bears little resemblance to real life. It's a penny dreadful, and while it's entertaining, Barnes manipulates the events so that they are completely unrealistic. So why does he leave us with so many unanswered questions? The title character, for instance, never sleepwalks, so why does he have the name? There's a hint of a different world that the Somnambulist inhabits, and it's actually an interesting idea, but it comes very late in the book and is developed not at all, so it seems pointless. Moon's career as a detective came to halt, people inform us, after an incident at Clapham. Barnes, however, never tells us what that incident was. Thomas Cribb speaks of "rules" about his presence, but he remains a secondary character, and we never understand why he's living backward or who set up the rules. Nor do we ever learn the significance of the bust of Lud, the first king of London, which is dug up by archaeologists at one point in the narrative. I get that this is a book with very little time or interest in character development, but Barnes breaks Chekhov's rule about showing a gun in the first act so often it becomes a bit annoying. One skein unexamined I could live with, but Barnes does it quite often, and it's vexing. I haven't read Barnes' latest novel, The Domino Men, but I hope he's sorted that writing tic out, because the main story of The Somnambulist is quite entertaining.

All right, I'll try to stop reading so much and blog more. But isn't reading fundamental?

A night out in Cardiff, Wales

2009-04-12T20:59:00.003-07:00

This is a nifty little photo set. Yes, it's often vulgar, with plenty of people mooning the camera, but it has a seedy charm to it. Check it out!

What I've been reading

2009-04-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

Abarat by Clive Barker. 2002, 419 pages, Joanna Cotler Books.

There's one thing that's really annoying about Abarat: Barker has planned it as a series of FIVE books, only the first two of which have actually appeared. I'm not a big fan of long series (trilogies are about all I can deal with), unless the author is concentrating solely on the books (like J. K. Rowling did). Barker isn't, so who knows when this will ever be continued.

That's too bad, because this is a fine fantasy novel, although I'm not sure that it's too appropriate for children (it's published by HarperCollins' children's imprint). For the most part, it's fine, but there are some really disturbing parts. Teenagers will be fine with this, but I'm not sure how much younger kids should be when they read this. But it's a good book nevertheless, as Barker gives us a standard set-up, a Minnesota girl who is out of place in the world, so she runs away and finds another one. Candy Quackenbush feels trapped in Chickentown, and one day she finds out that the town has a stranger history than she thought. Because everyone in town is focused on chickens (the town's claim to fame), they aren't interested in the secret history, so Candy runs away. Out on the prairie, she meets John Mischief and his brothers (who are heads on his antlers), who are on the run from a man called Mendelson Shape. Mischief implores Candy to activate an ancient lighthouse (which, incongruously, was built in the middle of the waterless plain), and when she does, an ocean appears. Candy and John Mischief jump into the water, and Candy is swept away to the Abarat.

The Abarat is an archipelago of 25 main islands, 24 of which are a different hour of the day (and always that hour). The 25th is a mysterious place that no one ever visits. Candy becomes embroiled in an adventure that sees her visit different islands while trying to escape Shape, who is working for Christopher Carrion, the Lord of Midnight. As she meets the odd characters who inhabit the Abarat, it becomes clear that she's far more important than she realized. Eventually, she makes her way to the 25th Hour, where she learns some important facts about her predicament. Of course, this comes near the end of the book, and the implications of what she learns will be felt throughout the rest of the series.

Barker takes a rather simplistic framework and populates it with wonderful characters, from the John brothers (each of the heads is also named John), Shape, and Carrion to Samuel Klepp, who produces an "almenak," Kaspar Wolfswinkel, who lives in a dome surrounded by intelligent cat-like creatures, Malingo, who lives in Wolfswinkel's house, and Jimothi, the leader of the tarrie-cats. There's also Rojo Pixler, the ultimate entrepreneur of the Abarat. These characters are vibrant and alive, and Barker does a fantastic job making their weirdness a strength, as Candy quickly realizes that she's the outsider despite being the most "normal." In stories like this, that's often the most difficult thing - making the outsider seem truly like an outsider, because as the human, we identify with her. The bizarre creatures that live in the Abarat become the "normal" ones, and we feel as off-kilter as Candy.

The basic premise of the book is simply to introduce Candy and the reader to the Abarat, even though Barker does give us the beginnings of more than one complex plot. The underlying theme seems to be a critique of rampant capitalism, which would disappoint me, given that it's a time-worn theme and Barker, after all, publishes books for a major publishing house. He does a nice job contrasting the two main villains in the book, however (Carrion, obviously, is one, but there's another one, too). He sets up a situation where Carrion may or may not be the biggest threat to Candy, and it's an intriguing idea. Of course, we'll have to wait for the rest of the series to find out where he's going with this.

I wish I could recommend Abarat unequivocally. It's a nice book, filled with odd paintings (by Barker himself) that bring the weird world to life. It's a frustrating reading experience, however, because of the fact that it's incomplete. I can recommend it if you don't mind waiting for years until Barker finishes the series, however. If that's your thing. I'll probably go get the second book just to see if the quality has kept up. It would be nice to see this finish before too long. That's not too much to ask, right?

Legislation I can't get behind!

2009-04-04T15:14:00.001-07:00

It's not American legislation, thankfully. It still turns my stomach.

A new Afghan law makes it legal for me to rape their wives. Yes, you read that right.

The law - which some lawmakers say was never debated in parliament - is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shiite community, which makes up about 20 percent of this country of 30 million people. The law does not affect Afghan Sunnis.

Well, that's nice. I guess Sunnis have no desire to rape their wives. Or maybe it's already legal for them to do so!

One of the most controversial articles stipulates the wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires."

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," Article 132 of the law says. "Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband."

That seems fair, right?

Sayed Hossain Alemi Balkhi, a Shiite lawmaker involved in drafting it, defended the legislation saying it gives more rights to women than even Britain or the United States does. He said the law makes women safer and ensures the husband is obliged to provide for her.

Really?

Egads, this is just sad. I know that there are cultures like this, but it just upsets me whenever I think about it. I know that the U. S. can't necessarily throw stones too much, but legislating rape is just disgusting. And even the lawmaker who was involved in drafting it just doesn't get it. He sounds like the kind of guy who, in this country 150 years ago, would have said that the slave laws "ensure the owner is obliged to protect his property."

I very much doubt if any of this will change in my lifetime. But we can hope, right?

Legislation I can get behind!

2009-03-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Here's something fun:

California state Rep. Anna G. Eshoo ... introduced H.R. 6209, otherwise known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act. The bill would require the Federal Communications Commission to "prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program they accompany."

In doing so, she has tapped into an issue that often rankles TV viewers: Why do TV ads seem to shout like a ringmaster at the top of his lungs, when the TV shows they interrupt often speak in modulated tones?

This woman is my new hero. Or heroine, I suppose.

Ms. Eshoo's bill, however, has sparked reaction among the people who count on TV commercials to help generate sales and purchases. Marketers themselves would prefer to devise a solution on their own rather than getting a government mandate on how loud Billy Mays can talk about OxiClean. What's more, major media companies such as CBS Corp. and NBC Universal have been working to address the issue.

Billy Mays does crack me up. Especially those ESPN commercials he does. They're awesome.

Some concern exists whether such a volume-moderation law could be enforced. The typical TV-ad buy often doesn't include information on the level of sound or the plotline of the program in which a commercial will air. "From the advertiser point of view, obviously they don't want to violate a law, but they may not have control over where the ad shows up," said Dan Jaffe, exec VP-government relations, Association of National Advertisers.

Ms. Eshoo doesn't seem to buy that line of thinking. "They haven't chosen to do a darn thing about it all of these years, and I believe it remains the top complaint to the FCC," she said.

I have one message for advertisers: Fuck 'em.

[S]ome ads are just loud because they're designed that way. Rock music has become a more common element in some TV commercials. Likewise, some commercials of the direct-response variety employ pitchmen who speak in booming fashion. Other loudness might simply be due to a viewer's perception [Yeah, right]. Ads often play at the higher end of broadcast volume, but the TV shows they support typically have noisy moments and quiet ones.

Once again: Fuck 'em.

There's more at the link. I miss most commercials, as I DVR most of the television I watch and can therefore fast-forward through the ads, but man! they're really loud. Occasionally I won't hit the FF button soon enough or I won't time it right and catch the very end of the block of ads and I can't believe how loud they are. A lot of television shows are doing what movies do these days - having really, really quiet dialogue and louder action scenes, which is annoying enough, but then, when the commercials come on, the volume is even louder. It's extremely annoying.

Yes, I know we have more important things to worry about. But this is still awesome legislation. Good for Ms. Eshoo!

What I've been reading

2009-03-24T12:29:00.005-07:00

Sacrament by Clive Barker. 1996, 447 pages, HarperCollins.

I just learned that this book is out of print. The link at the title takes you to Powell's, where they have one copy. You know, in a world where a lot of shit stays in print forever, it's kind of weird that this is no longer in print. At least I think it's weird.

Anyway, prior to this, I had only read two Clive Barker books: Imajica, which I loved, and a collection of short stories, which weren't bad. What I like about a lot of Barker creations is that he's good at pure horror, but I'm not a huge fan of horror, so the fact that he's good at blending horror into more fantastical and even real-life scenarios is neat. Sacrament is more a fantasy book than a horror book, but Barker does bring in some elements of horror, even though they're more disturbing than truly horrific. It's a pretty good mix.

The book centers on Will Rabjohns, a nature photographer whose specialty is capturing endangered animals on film. At the beginning of the novel, he visits a strange recluse in Canada (on his way to photographing polar bears) who once knew two people Will knew, Jacob Steep and Rosa McGee. We get a sense that Steep and McGee are somehow very strange, but before we learn anything more, Will is attacked by a wounded bear and lapses into a deep coma. While he's out, he revisits a time thirty years earlier in Yorkshire, where he grew up, and his first and only meeting with Steep and McGee. They are obviously mystical beings in some way, and Steep, especially, leaves a lasting impression on Will. His centuries-old mission is to kill the last of any species, and he tries to indoctrinate Will into this quest. Before he can, though, many horrible things occur, and Will is left alone without Steep. He spends the next three decades looking for him.

The theme of extinction is present throughout the book. Will is gay, and Barker takes him to San Francisco, where he experiences the AIDS epidemic first hand. He's haunted by the plague and by Steep's desire to slaughter species, and when he has to return to England, it all comes back to him. Steep is drawn to him just as he is drawn to Steep, and as he learns more about Steep and McGee's true nature, he has to enter a magnificent and dangerous place, the Domus Mundi, to understand everything. Barker does a nice job, for the most part, with these themes: Will's anxiety about his friends becoming "extinct," the reason Steep feels driven to do what he does, and why Steep and McGee are so tied to each other but can't really stand each other. It's a disturbing book in many ways, mostly because Barker shows how wonderful yet painful raw emotions can be. Steep and McGee's relationship is bad for both of them, but they can't get away from each other. Will has similar - if less intense - relationships, and one in particular puts him beyond even a marginalized culture like that of the homosexuals among whom he lives.

Will's quest to find Steep and find out why the man has such a hold over him is intense reading. When he and another victim of Steep and McGee's violence find the Domus Mundi, the book becomes even more fantastical, but Barker does a nice job keeping the story grounded. However, the ending is a bit weak. Barker wants to have it both ways with regard to Will's fate, and it somewhat cheapens his experience. I won't give it away, but Barker explicitly sets up some ground rules and then breaks them. It makes a strangely unsatisfying ending, especially because he did the same thing with regard to Will's relationship with Steep, introducing an element late in the book that seemed to be important, but isn't really, in the final analysis. It's disappointing because Barker has done such a good job building to the climax. Even though what actually happens at the end of the book is fine in terms of exciting reading, the fact that Barker appears to cop out is vaguely annoying.

Despite this, Sacrament is an impressive book about extinction, emotion, obsession, and what it means to worship. If the ending falters, much of what Barker brings up before that is powerful and devastatingly honest. It's not quite as good as a novel like Imajica, but it's still quite a good book. If, you know, you can find a copy.

The first day of ... spring?

2009-03-21T15:32:00.002-07:00

I think we need to rename the seasons in the Basin of Hell here. It's been in the 90s all week, and who knows when (or if) the heat will break. So here's what I propose:

Today (21 March) begins First Summer.
21 June begins Really Super-Hot Oh My God What Kind Of Crap Is This Summer.
21 September begins Second Summer.
21 December begins Fall/Spring. "Falling"? "Sprautumn"?

That works.

You know, I lord it over people during December, January, and February, because the weather here is so darned nice compared to the rest of the country. Well, now the tables are turned! You may tell me about the cooling rain you get where you are, and the chilly sunny days with a hint of storm behind them, or those blustery partly sunny/partly cloudy days where the clouds just pile up and it seems like all the forces of nature are arrayed against the puny humans. God, I love those days.

Seriously. In the 90s. All week.

A "sporting" event we can all enjoy!

2009-03-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

The US Pole Dancing Championship was held this past weekend. Yes, you read that right.

I'm fairly sure I've mentioned that pole dancing has become a "sport" and that in some countries (Australia, for instance, but as that was founded by deviants, I don't know if it counts) you can sign your children up for pole dancing lessons. Well, in "sports," you have to have a championship, right? Oh, wait a minute - don't read that line, Division 1 college football.

Wherever there's a "sport," Sports Illustrated is there! Here's their report.

While most sports fans eagerly awaited the NCAA Tournament bracket on Sunday, I headed over to the Bleeker Street Theatre in New York City for a very different sort of Selection Sunday.

The US Pole Dance Federation, better known to acronym lovers as the USPDF, was hosting the first annual US Pole Dance Championship. Twelve female contestants, chosen from more than 50 applicants, would be competing for the honor of representing the United States at Miss Pole Dance Australia 2009 [See? Deviants.] and for a spot on the cover of next month's Pole2Pole Magazine.

Pole2Pole Magazine? That can't exist, can it? Oh, wait, of course it can.

The dress code from the USPDF rulebook states, "No nudity, no G-strings or thongs. Violation of this requirement leads to immediate disqualification."

And yet it's still popular??????

As contestant Denise Brown a happily married mother of two from Tennessee said, "We are not strippers and it is not a stripper pole unless someone is taking off their clothes. Sure, a form of pole dancing is exotic, but that's not all there is to it. Pole dancing is really about fitness, athleticism and artistic design."

Yep, that's what it's about.

"It is certainly a great workout," said Carmit Bachar, one of the three judges and an original member of The Pussycat Dolls. "But there is a performance aspect to pole dancing as well and that involves sexy."

You know you're a legitimate "sport" when an original member of the Pussycat Dolls is judging you! No knock-offs for this competition!

The favorite entering Sunday's championship, at least according to the contestants, seemed to be Jenyne Butterfly, a petite blonde from Eastern Washington. Despite her diminutive stature, Butterfly had already won pole dance competitions across the nation, including the highly regarded Pole-a-palooza in Las Vegas, which she has won three years in a row.

If you aren't strippers, you should probably drop the stripper names. If Joe and Jane Butterfly are the proud parents, well, I apologize.

But a younger generation of pole dancers hoped to clip Butterfly's wings. Alethea Austin, a photographer from Los Angeles, and Sarah Cretul, a paranormal investigator who lives in Florida, each had the aerial skills and pole prowess to overtake Butterfly.

Pole dancing: For when paranormal investigating isn't fulfilling enough! (I looked her up at the official site, and she's only 21, so maybe she hasn't quite gotten the hang of ghost hunting yet.)

In the second round, the competition heated up. Cretul, the little-known newcomer, dazzled the crowed with a sequence of aerial moves while hanging five feet off the ground. Never one to be shown up, Austin then took the stage and, with Guns N' Roses blasting from the speakers, blew the crowd away with a passionate performance that utilized the entire pole and all 640 muscles in her body.

But catching a butterfly is a tricky task. The favorite took the stage as the night's second to last performance and showed why she truly is "The Pole Queen." Dressed in a white two-piece outfit and veil, Butterfly lived up to her name. She defied gravity. At times, one arm supported the entire weight of her outstretched body. Her moves were elegant, her transitions seamless. By the time Butterfly capped off her performance with her signature "flag move" -- think of her as the flag on a flagpole -- the capacity crowd was on its feet.

And while the judges took 10 minutes to give the appearance of a formal debate, everyone knew the winner had already been decided. Jenyne Butterfly was the 2009 US Pole Dance Champion.

Yay, Jenyne!

In case you're interested in more, you can always check out the US Pole Dance official web site. It might not be safe for work, although everyone keeps their clothing on.

You know, it's great that these ladies are doing something they like, keeping fit, and competing for something. I still think that this is playing into the hands of men, who like to watch women dance with hardly any clothing on and have convinced women that it's "empowering." But if the women like it, more power to them. The woman who won "Miss Sexy," Alethea Austin, teaches pole dancing at this gym, where you can watch some videos like this one (again, this might not be safe for work, although there's no nudity):

So all's right in the world - we have a new pole dancing champion, and life is good! I wonder if Krys would mind if I installed a stripper pole in our living room ...

Happy Birthday, Erik Estrada!

2009-03-16T19:01:00.004-07:00

Erik Estrada turns 60 today. In a perfect world, Estrada would be the host of Estrada Or Nada, the fictional game show that showed up on My Name Is Earl recently. But I guess we'll have to do with this:

What, Officer Poncherello? A strip search? Are you sure?

Naked bicycling!

2009-03-13T08:52:00.001-07:00

If you're in Australia this weekend (and why wouldn't you be?), why not join the Australian leg of the World Naked Bike Ride? I mean, you don't have anything better to do, right?

There's a lot of information out there about the World Naked Bike Ride. The best page is probably the FAQ page, which includes such important ones such as "Isn't riding naked uncomfortable," "Is it legal to be naked in public," "Won't it hurt my genitals," and the all-important "What if I'm not conventionally attractive?" Of course, most of the people riding in this aren't "conventionally attractive," as a quick glance at some of the photos at the site will attest. Brad Pitt and supermodels don't ride their bikes naked, people. You've been warned!

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are no naked rides near me (Arizona is fairly conservative). There's one in Eugene this weekend, however, so if you're in the Pacific Northwest, head there! Maybe there will be cute coeds! Probably not, though. I'm not sure why the only people who want to get naked in public probably shouldn't. This is known as "That Seinfeld episode on the train" phenomenon, when the fat dude stripped down on the way to Coney Island. Nobody wants to see that!

Lumberjack cuties!

2009-03-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, the few all-sports blogs I read all ran with this story:

Beauty pageant contestants are also members of the University of New Hampshire woodsmen team.

Christiann and Arielle Unger, 21 and 18 respectively, chop wood and compete in pageants. Christiann has actually won one. Of course, there's a picture:

That's Arielle on the left. I'm not sure which is more awesome: the fact that the sisters are beauty pageant contestants who also chop wood, or that the University of New Hampshire has a woodsmen team. That means they compete with other universities that also have woodsmen teams.

And, of course, you might not want to dump one of these ladies in a bad break-up. You just know they'll come after you with an ax!

Fifty years of Chinese rule in Tibet

2009-03-10T12:19:00.003-07:00

Technically, today is the 50th anniversary of China's invasion of Tibet that brought that country under Communist rule. Of course, for several years prior to that, Tibet had been dominated by the Chinese, and 10 March 1959 was just the beginning of active rule after the Tibetans got a bit peeved by the fact that the Chinese were encroaching on their affairs. The fact that the United States, which went to war in Korea and Vietnam to stop tiny Communist countries from expanding, ignored this breach of international boundaries is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like we "learned" our lesson in Korea - we went to war in Vietnam after this. The Americans believed that Tibet was Commie, too, although they didn't do much research into it, which is probably why they ignored the invasion. I don't mind realpolitik at all, because it's all that states really practice, but I do mind when it's dressed up as ideological concerns, which it usually is. The U. S. should have said, "Tibet is of absolutely no strategic use to us, so what do we care if the Chinese take it over?" At least that would have been honest.

It's Barbie's birthday!

2009-03-09T14:28:00.004-07:00

Yes, Barbie turns 50 today. You know how you can celebrate? By picking up a Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie. It's awesome:

This isn't the first time Barbie has gotten a tattoo, interestingly enough. She had one in 1999, and people freaked out, as it was permanent. These are temporary, and the doll comes with its own tattoo gun. That's even more awesome.

This is causing much consternation among parents, mainly because parents obviously have no control over their children and can't say, "Guess what? You're not getting one, because that's horrible." If you have a problem with it, don't buy it. Jeez, people, you control the purse strings, don't you?

The doll is selling like hot cakes, apparently, and Mattel has no plans to pull it. So somebody likes the damned things! And why do hot cakes sell so well, anyway?

Happy Birthday, Barbie!

The quality of friendship

2009-03-08T14:51:00.002-07:00

I'm not sure why I thought of this. A friend of mine just had a birthday, and two others' are coming up, so maybe that's it. Or maybe it's something else!

I don't hang out with friends very often. I moved away from Pennsylvania in 1993, leaving behind my childhood and/or college friends. I lived in Oregon for eight years, during which I made many friends, but then I moved away from there as well. Since I have lived in Arizona, I've made some more friends, but once you have children, it's far more difficult to hang out with anyone. But I still love my friends, even though I hardly ever see them. But then there's Facebook, which I don't really like but allows me to see what's up with some people I rarely see.

But what makes a friend? I have some friends with whom I have been close for decades. These are childhood friends and high school friends. Obviously, none of them live in Phoenix, so I don't see them that often. I would love to see them more often, but of course I'm probably not moving back to Pennsylvania anytime soon in this economy. Back in June, when I visited my parents, I saw some friends from high school who I hadn't seen since graduation. I loved seeing them, and I feel like we reconnected with them. Do they still count as friends? I consider them so, even if I've missed the past 20 years. Seeing them, however, made the years fall away, and it was like no time had passed. I'm sure that's not a unique sensation, but there it is. These are the people you can say absolutely anything to, because you've known them for so long and shared so much with them. I can send some of my friends an e-mail with the subject line "Have some!" and a body of "I sang with Aqueduct Pocket!" and they'll laugh and know exactly what I'm talking about. These are people that I did school projects with and made drunken videotapes with (well, I wasn't drunk, but someone may have been). They are people I will love forever.

Then, of course, there are the people I met once I left high school. Some are college friends, but I really didn't make a lot of friends in college. There's only three, actually, that I still keep in touch with, and I married one of those. I still correspond with one person I met in Australia, and I'm glad I still count her among my friends. When we moved to Portland, I met more people, and still consider many of them friends. Some of them were co-workers, but there were also people I met in conjunction with graduate school. I don't share the intimacy of a long-time friend with some of those friends, but I still think of them as dear friends. One, in particular, became friends with both Krys and I, and we miss her terribly (especially as she moved to England recently). Then, we moved to Arizona. I still have friends from when I worked, but it's been a while since I had a job, so I simply don't have as many people as I'm close to here. I consider Mia's home therapists friends, which again might sound odd, but they've been so intimately connected to our lives for so long that I don't think that's too much of a stretch. Perhaps they don't feel the same way, but that's okay.

In today's connected world, there are people on-line that, weirdly enough, I consider friends, even if we've never met. I know more about Roger, for instance, than many people I've met, because he updates his blog every day (man, I couldn't do that even when I first started blogging!) and shares a great deal about his life. I've actually met Tom and Tim and even eaten meals with both gentlemen, but I know them largely through their blogs. Are these people "friends"? Maybe they don't think so, but I think of them as such. Maybe that makes me strange. But I think of people I haven't seen in years and years as friends (the longest I've gone without seeing a friend, currently, is 17 years), so why not people I know only through the Internet?

My point is that friends appear very weirdly in life. Perhaps I consider more people friends than most and ought to think in terms of acquaintances (I have those, too). But I also love having friends. Krys has fewer than I do, and she has always said that she doesn't need as many as I do. I suppose that's true, but it's not like I need friends around me all the time, as I would think the fact that I live 2000 miles away from most of them proves. In today's world, it's even difficult to be friends with people even if you live close to them - so much takes precedent in life, and children really do take up a great deal of time. I don't know how often I'd see my friends if I lived near them - more than I do now, of course, but definitely not as often as I might expect. But that doesn't matter too much. What matters is that when I get the opportunities, I can reach out to a great many people and share my life, and they can share theirs without either of us worrying about embarrassment. I've gotten more sentimental in my dotage, but I've always been a bit that way when it comes to my friends. I love them all, and although I wish I could see them more often, I'm happy that we're still connected, even after all these years and across all these miles.

I'm not really sure what the point of this post was. Except that my friends should read my damned blog and leave comments. Sheesh, like they have lives or something!

Dr. Seuss's birthday reminds of something

2009-03-03T12:17:00.002-07:00

Theodor Geisel was born on 2 March 1904, so I missed it by a day. Mia's school is celebrating by decorating the halls with all sorts of Seussian propaganda. It's kind of neat. Anyway, Dr. Seuss's birthday reminded me of this, which I wrote on this blog three years ago. Man, remember when this blog didn't suck? Good times.

What I've been reading

2009-03-01T13:07:00.003-07:00

Dreamland by Kevin Baker. 1999, 519 pages, HarperCollins.

This sprawling book is magnificent, even though Baker doesn't quite pull it off as well as he could have. It's set in the early 20th century (1910, although Sigmund Freud's visit to New York, which is in the book, occurred in 1909), and tells the story of several people, both real and fictional, who cruised Manhattan and Coney Island that summer. Baker's eyes might be bigger than his stomach, but this is a marvelous ride, for the most part, and although it's a bloated book, it's never boring.

Baker wants to do several things in this book. He begins with Trick the Dwarf, a "freak" at Dreamland in Coney Island, telling a story. From there he delves into the past, and the framing device becomes the most problematic part of the book at the end. Trick tells a story about Esther and Kid Twist, the lovers at the heart of the book. Esther is a factory girl whose father, a rabbi, disapproves of women and who is bitter about much in life, including the fact that his congregation threw him out and he relies on his wife and daughter for income as well as the fact that his only son left to become a gangster. Kid Twist is a gangster, one who works, coincidentally, with Gyp the Blood, Esther's brother. Early on in the book Kid gets on Gyp's bad side and flees to Coney Island to hide out, which is where Trick comes to know him and where he spots Esther and falls in love with her.

Another story in the book deals with Tim Sullivan, a Tammany Hall politician, who attempts to navigate the halls of corruption at City Hall and the newly-empowered unions, which are trying to gain recognition. Meanwhile, Trick himself falls in love with a crazed woman who believes she is an empress, and he gets an entire city built to scale for her at Dreamland. Finally, Freud and Jung show up for Freud's only American visit. Baker weaves all of these plots together - Sullivan needs Gyp and Kid to take care of some dirty business for him; Esther's father begs his son to find out what Esther is up to, which dovetails with Gyp's search for Kid; Esther joins the union and spends some time in a horrid prison for daring to go out on strike. It's a seamless book, and it keeps you on your toes, pushing forward to somewhere tragic, you're sure, but you don't want to stop reading, such is the mastery Baker has with the prose itself.

The two main plotlines are Sullivan's and the love story of Esther and Kid. The others get resolved, of course, but those two are the focus. Sullivan wrestles with his conscience over a murder he and his boss want committed (the one that Gyp and Kid are supposed to effect), and when the union goes out and Sullivan is faced with the reality of the sweatshops and what it does to his innocent constituents, his mind starts to fracture. He begins to make amends, but as he does, we're wondering if it's too late. Meanwhile, the specter of Gyp the Blood hangs over Esther and Kid Twist, for different reasons. Esther fears her brother and finds out that her father is having her followed, while Kid Twist fears Gyp because of the rift between them. As they cling to summer at Coney Island, they realize that they can't live in suspended animation forever, and that sooner or later they'll be found. When they are, it doesn't turn into an action movie, but Baker does manage to build plenty of suspense as Gyp stalks them through Dreamland and everyone's dreams, including Trick's, come crashing down - in vastly different ways.

The ending is problematic for one reason, and that's the lack of a resolution. Trick narrates from a time in the future, and Baker uses the framing device to distance us from the principals, and it becomes more and more ambiguous as he speaks. This is frustrating on one level, because we've invested so much with these characters that we want to know how their stories end, but that's the point - we're hearing these stories through Trick, and therefore should realize that he's an unreliable narrator. Therefore, he allows us to create an ending, which ties back into the only somewhat superfluous part of the book - Freud's visit. Freud's dreams are ambiguous, subject only to his (and Jung's) interpretation, and nothing is resolved when they are brought out into the open. Baker doesn't need this section because the entire book is like that - dreams that the characters have cannot stand up to the scrutiny of reality, and therefore the ambiguous ending is Baker's way of forcing that brutal reality back into "dreamland," as it were, and therefore it becomes pregnant with possibilities once again and could morph into anything. While the ending might be frustrating, it's also hopeful, despite appearing bleak on the surface.

Dreamland is a marvelously dense novel, full of wonderful characters and fascinating plots. Baker evokes the time period beautifully, putting us right into the middle of New York, with all its glory and squalor. It's a gripping read, but a challenging one as well, and that's what we all want out of our fiction, isn't it?

What I've been reading

2009-02-22T16:09:00.003-07:00

War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres. 2005, 280 pages, Atlantic Monthly Press.

The entire premise of this book is right there in the title! Ayres, a London Times reporter, somehow gets sucked into the Iraq War and lives to tell about it. There's more to this book, of course, but the central premise remains - he's a coward reporting a war.

Ayres begins in Iraq but quickly shifts backward and tells us about his entry into journalism and how it led him to an embedded position with the United States Marine Corps. What makes the book so funny is that Ayres is extremely self-deprecating, but never to the extent that we think he's doing it to gain our sympathy. He really does seem as impotent and incompetent as he writes, and it adds a great deal of charm to his narrative. We follow him as he stumbles into a job with the Times, then ends up being one of the few reporters for that paper in New York on 11 September 2001. The Times' new foreign correspondent decided to take the Queen Elizabeth II in order to get to New York, so he was stuck on the ocean for a while, and Ayres became a default foreign correspondent on that horrible day. Ayres manages to keep a light tone but still treat the attack with gravitas, and he gives us an excellent account of what it was like on the ground that day. Then, he happens to be right at the flashpoint of the anthrax attacks of later that year, something that makes him rethink his position in New York. He heads to Los Angeles to become the Times' entertainment reporter, a position he still held when his boss called him one night and asked him if he'd like to be embedded with the troops. He says yes, much to his later despair. But at least we get a humorous book out of it.

The bulk of the book is actually preparing for the war, as Ayres takes a hilarious journey around sporting goods stores in LA to buy the junk the U. S. government insists he buys. Then he ends up in Kuwait with the other journalists, and he bemoans the fact that everyone seems so much calmer about heading into a war zone. When he does enter Iraq, he brings a nice, jaundiced eye to the proceedings - he's not for or against the war, at least not in this book, and he instead focuses on the actual Marines, but he is skeptical of anyone who is gung-ho about the whole thing. One of the strengths of the book is that he remains a coward - there's no last-second change of heart or act of bravery on his part. It's refreshing. When he gets a chance to get out of the war early, there's actually some tension about what he's going to do, not because he's brave, but because he respects the Marines and he also worries about what people will think of him. It makes this much more than a story about the war - it becomes a story about what makes people fight and whether it's worth it. Even as it remains humorous, Ayres makes some interesting points.

War Reporting for Cowards is a breezy read - I read it in one day (although I was sitting in a hospital room doing absolutely nothing, but the point is that it's never boring, so I didn't feel like putting it down) - but it's unlike other war books by reporters you might read, because of Ayres' complete unwillingness to make himself even remotely heroic. He even points out some other reporters who were embedded and their books, saying they probably give a better picture of the war because the writers were in more important positions and stayed longer than he did. But this is a fine book nevertheless. It tells a bigger story than just the Iraq war, it does it with fine humor, and it's deeper than you might expect. It certainly makes you respect the troops a lot!

I feel old

2009-02-20T21:04:00.003-07:00

Today on the radio I heard that it was Rihanna's 21st birthday. Rihanna, I'm sure you know, is the singer who has been in the news recently. She was allegedly beaten up by her boyfriend, by whom she is sticking, apparently. It's always nice to see a woman sticking by the guy who beats her up. She's the first native of Barbados to win a Grammy. That last bit was why I feel old. When Rihanna was about 5 months old, I was in Barbados. It was just before my senior year in high school. She was somewhere on that island, 5 months old, probably singing something! I don't know why that makes me feel old, but it does.

OMG!!!!!! The Messiah is coming!

2009-02-17T20:25:00.003-07:00

You may or may not have heard, but President Messiah is in town, and tomorrow, he's speaking at Dobson High School in beautiful Mesa. In fact, it's about half a mile from my house. Squeeeee!!!!!! It was a spur-of-the-moment thing for Our Beloved Leader, so he only decided to speak there on Friday, but it wasn't in the paper until yesterday. Tickets were free, but people had already starting lining up for them when they were given away yesterday, so I had no chance to get them. Oh well. Apparently they're going to continue classes while he's speaking (at 10.30 in the morning), which is odd. Wouldn't they let the kids in for free?

I may have to watch local news for the coverage. I never watch local news! But that's what I will do for coverage of the Messiah!

Let's skim through the news!

2009-02-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Items that have caught my eye recently:

The city of Birmingham (England) has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs.

Sigh. Just another assault on correct grammar, this time sanctioned by the government. Look, I'm a grammar and spelling enthusiast. I hate listening to people on the television and radio using poor grammar, because as much as I try not to judge, I always think they sound stupid. I'm also aware that grammar and spelling are largely fluid things, changing throughout the centuries. I get it. The reason this sucks, however, is that people are just giving up trying to learn things. Grammar and spelling aren't that difficult to learn, yet people just want to give up, and now it's gone up to the city council. It's part of the entire "dumbing-down" of life in general. Some choice quotes from the article:

Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city's transport scrutiny committee, said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether "Kings Heath," a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe.

"I had to make a final decision on this," he said Friday. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."

It's not a debate. It's a rule. Yes, there needs to be an apostrophe. End of debate.

Mullaney hopes to stop public campaigns to restore the apostrophe that would tell passers-by that "Kings Heath" was once owned by the monarchy.

"Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," he said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it."

See? Idiots rule. "Waaah, waaah, I don't know how to find things because I'm so stupid!"

Mullaney claimed apostrophes confuse GPS units, including those used by emergency services. But Jenny Hodge, a spokeswoman for satellite navigation equipment manufacturer TomTom, said most users of their systems navigate through Britain's sometime confusing streets by entering a postal code rather than a street address.

She said that if someone preferred to use a street name - with or without an apostrophe - punctuation wouldn't be an issue. By the time the first few letters of the street were entered, a list of matching choices would pop up and the user would choose the destination.

A test by The Associated Press backed this up. In a search for London street St. Mary's Road, the name popped up before the apostrophe had to be entered.

British grammarians have railed for decades against storekeepers' signs advertising the sale of "apple's and pear's," or pubs offering "chip's and pea's."

I always like how people who want to get rid of apostrophes use them incorrectly all the time. If you never use them, fine. But to use them incorrectly and then bitch when people want to use them correctly? Shut up.

Okay, let's move on, staying on that side of the pond!

Britain's Royal Opera plans a show based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith.

Oh dear. Of course, there's been an opera about Jerry Springer, so why not Anna Nicole Smith? She started as a stripper, posed for Playboy, was the Playmate of the Year, married an octogenarian oil tycoon for his money, got embroiled in a law suit when he died and his family contested her portion, had a screwed-up later life, endured her son's death, and then died of a drug overdose. It's classic opera stuff! And no, I'm not being sarcastic. Come on, just because some operas are 100-200 years old doesn't mean they're not pretty lurid. Good on you, Royal Opera!

Anna Nicole Smith: Too buxom to live!

More news from England: He's 13. He scarcely looks 10. And according to a British tabloid, he's a father. Baby-faced and only 4 feet tall, the boy, Alfie, was just 12 when he impregnated Chantelle, now 15, The Sun reported Friday.

Oh dear. Oh my dear Lord.

Asked what he would do to support the child financially, Alfie asks in a small, high-pitched voice, "What's financially?"

Oh Jesus.

The Sun did not say whether any tests were conducted to prove the boy's paternity. The paper did not offer any immediate comment when asked whether it had paid the family for the story.

Police and child services in Eastbourne, in southeast England, said in a statement that they were "aware of a 14-year-old girl that had become pregnant as the result of a relationship with a 12-year-old boy," adding that they were offering support to both young people.

"Support." With our tax dollars! Or, I guess, pounds.

Alfie's front page picture has sparked renewed debate about teen pregnancy in Britain. The country has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, and government figures show that about 39,000 girls under age 18 became pregnant in 2006. More than 7,000 of those girls were younger than 16.

That's sad. Not as bad as the U.S., though!

Britain had 27 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 between 2000 and 2005, according to a report published by Population Action International. Comparable figures are 10 per 1,000 for Spain, 8 in 1,000 for France, and 5 in 1,000 for The Netherlands.

Britain's teen pregnancy rate, however, is still far below that of the United States, which registers 44 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 and are more line with English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which respectively have 17 and 27 births per 1,000 women between 15 and 19, according to the report.

U! S! A!

In a move last year to tackle the high teen pregnancy rate, British education officials announced they would start introducing sex education earlier in English schools. Beginning next year, children as in grades as low as kindergarten will be given basic sex education.

Tony Kerridge, of the sexual health group Marie Stopes International, praised the move, but local lawmaker Nigel Waterson said the pregnancy raised "huge questions" about whether British children were being educated about sex - at the expense of learning about healthy relationships.

Like the one between a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old? Yeah, those kind.

Chantelle and Alfie have reportedly pledged to raise the child as best they can.

"We know we made a mistake but I wouldn't change it now," Chantelle was quoted by The Sun as saying.

Alfie's father, Dennis - who reportedly has nine children - said his son told him it was the first time he had sex. He was reportedly allowed to sleep over at the girl's house.

At least we can't blame the parents!

"I will talk to him again and it will be the birds and bees talk," he said. "Some may say it's too late but he needs to understand so there is not another baby."

Yeah, good luck with that, Pops.

All right, let's move on to the United States! Things do happen here, you know!

Churches are beginning to accept evolution.

After a lifetime in the church, the Rev. William L. Rhines Jr. lately has started to question one of the Bible's fundamental teachings, that God created man. It's an especially touchy topic in his Wilmington, Del., congregation, where generations of black worshippers have leaned on faith to endure the indignities of racism.

But as the world marks the 200th birthday of evolution theorist Charles Darwin on Thursday, Rhines figures its time for even the most conservative congregations to come to terms with science.

Welcome to the 21st century, everyone!

"We're becoming more middle class, upper middle class, so we have more free time ... to ponder these eternal issues," said Rhines, who will encourage a discussion at Ezion-Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church.

I like that the implication is that low-class people are too dim to concern themselves with philosophical problems!

Participants say they're not abandoning the Bible's story of Adam and Eve. Rather, they want to blend theories in a way that helps today's faithful reconcile their modern world with Biblical teachings.

"We have to give God a lot more credit than we give him now - we need to give him the benefit of the doubt that his word includes evolution," said Mike Ghouse, president of the World Muslim Congress, a Dallas-based union of 3,000 Muslims that hosted its first ever Evolution Weekend discussion Friday.

God sure does deserve some credit, right?

Zimmerman argues the faithful can accept parts of creationism - the notion that a higher being created man whole - and evolution.

"Faith is related to one's belief system ... science, on the other hand, is in a different domain," said the Rev. Gerald Kersey, who planned a Sunday school lesson and discussion of Darwin's theories at Avondale Estates First Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta.

He blamed religious intolerance for causing many faithful to feel they must choose between science and the Bible.

"I'm presenting the idea that science or evolution is compatible with faith," he said.

The religious are never intolerant, are they?

Still, many Americans believe that God created man. A 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life found 63 percent of Americans believed humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being.

That percentage is especially high among the nation's black churchgoers, who have been taught for generations to cope with everything from slavery to Jim Crow by using the Bible's teachings, Rhines said.

"We don't want to tamper with what grandma taught us - we've come this far by faith," Rhines said.

At one of the nation's oldest black churches, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., the Rev. Thurmond Tillman doesn't oppose evolution.

But he argued black Americans have other social issues to address, and the faithful should focus on uniting mankind - not dividing his origins.

Well, that's a relief!

So, what else in the news? Nothing too important, I'm sure.

Hans Beck has died

2009-02-10T12:38:00.003-07:00

You might not know who Hans Beck is, and neither did I until today, when I read that he died a week ago. Hans Beck invented Playmobil, perhaps the greatest toy line ever. I was stunned, reading that obituary, that he created them in 1974, because I remember playing with them when I lived in Germany in the middle 1970s, so they were brand new when I started playing with them (my parents were cutting-edge, don't you know). I loved playing with Playmobil toys, and I still own a comic book based on the toys (it's a Western, if you can believe it, and yes, it's AWESOME). If you have children, you need to buy some Playmobil!

Rest in peace, Herr Beck!

What I've been reading

2009-02-08T14:06:00.006-07:00

Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith. 2005, 348 pages, Public Affairs Books.

This fascinating book stems from a premise that, whether you accept it or not, will color your appreciation of it: William Shakespeare was a Catholic, and encoded Catholic political protests against the Elizabethan and Jacobin regimes into his plays. Asquith certainly makes her case well, but there's one problem: She never actually proves that Shakespeare was Catholic. She finds some evidence of it, but by failing to adequately convince the reader of that one fact, she calls into question the entire book. That's a shame, because it's a very readable, extremely interesting book, one that explains a lot about Shakespeare's more difficult plays and why he retired at the peak of his powers.

Asquith looks at the plays in chronological order and how they might have been informed by the politics of the day. She begins by pointing out that Elizabeth's England, far from being the Golden Age many historians painted it as, was actually a police state, with the dominant Protestants suppressing any and all dissent, including the Catholic resistance. There is plenty of evidence for this - the Northern Rebellion in 1569 was a Catholic one, while Guy Fawkes in 1605 shows the continual dissatisfaction once James took over. The fact that Sir Francis Walsingham and William Cecil rose so high in the Elizabethan government as spymasters also shows that Elizabeth had plenty of enemies (real or imagined). According to Asquith, Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, and this gives his plays a new layer of meaning that makes them easier to understand. She makes this conclusion by very inconclusive means, by pointing out Catholic activity in the area of Stratford when he was young, among other things. It's all circumstantial, and therefore not as compelling as one would hope. Asquith is stronger when she examines the literary culture of late sixteenth-century England, as she makes connections between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and Ben Jonson - all more obvious Catholics than the Bard. She also gets into the coding of all Elizabethan literature - again, she's on firmer ground here. Then she examines the plays. She claims that Shakespeare used easily identifiable markers for Catholics and Protestants - "light" and "dark," "high" and "low," for instance, which don't necessarily mean good and bad, as she points out - and dozens of other codes to show that he was speaking out, the only way he knew how, against the draconian measures of the Crown.

Where she shines is explaining the most problematic plays, such as Titus Andronicus, which has always been kind of a bizarre "horror movie" in the Shakespearean canon. Written in 1594, Titus has often puzzled critics - "How could Shakespeare have written such a terrible play?" Asquith writes is the usual reaction. She points out, though, that the play was written in the aftermath of the death of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, a Catholic hero. Even though his death is usually attributed to Jesuits (it's largely assumed he was poisoned), Asquith points out that the Cecil family benefited greatly from his death. Lord Strange was a great patron of the arts and was probably Shakespeare's early in his career. Asquith sees Titus Andronicus as an angry reaction to Strange's death, and she goes about proving it. As an allegory, Titus Andronicus is a history of Reformation England, with Titus standing in as the old Catholic order who loses control over his life when he foolishly gives up the throne (and power) to the wrong brother. According to Asquith, Shakespeare uses this allegory quite often - Lear is an example of the old Catholic order, for instance, as is Prospero, with the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand representing Shakespeare's hope that the old religion could be reconciled with the new - and uses characters to represent other stages of the transformation of England from a Catholic to a Protestant country. When viewed through the lens of Shakespeare's anger over the murder of Lord Strange, Titus Andronicus makes more sense. At least it does to Asquith.

She also explains Shakespeare's later plays, the ones that came after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 (a reaction to which she also sees in the plays Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus). Why, when Shakespeare was capable of writing great comedies and tragedies (1599-1606 saw the completion of Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth - among others) did he shift, in 1608, to writing "fairy-tales," as Asquith puts it (page 239). Her explanation is that after the Gunpowder Plot, James I began to move away from the brief mood of reconciliation with Catholics that accompanied his accession (if indeed he had ever been sympathetic to Catholics, he certainly wasn't after the conspirators tried to kill him), so Shakespeare and other writers stopped appealing to him. Instead, they turned their attention to the heir to the throne, Henry (1594-1612). As Henry was a 14-year-old, Shakespeare deliberately wrote "romances" that would appeal to the heir's sense of adventure while still subliminally influencing him to support the Catholic cause. Hence, in the years 1608-1612 (when the prince died of typhoid fever), Shakespeare wrote Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Asquith makes the point that these plays, although more simplistic (at least the first three) than his earlier plays, continue his propaganda campaign, just geared toward a different, younger audience.

Finally, Asquith explains why, in 1610, Shakespeare left London and returned to Stratford, basically retiring. He was only 45 years old and seemed to be at the height of his powers, but he completed only one more play (The Tempest) and simply appeared to give up on theater. She goes briefly over Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsman, his final two plays that were basically written by John Fletcher from amorphous Shakespeare plots, and shows how Henry VIII, especially, is blatant Protestant propaganda that doesn't fit at all into the rest of Shakespeare's output. Her explanation is that the assassination of Henry IV of France in 1610 by a deranged friar confirmed James's fears that Catholics couldn't be trusted. The English king therefore started cracking down harder on Catholics, and many prominent ones were forced deeper into hiding. Asquith points out that many other playwrights dropped out of society at this time, and the one who didn't, Ben Jonson, publicly repudiated Catholicism. She also claims that when Shakespeare's first folio was published, in 1623, there was a loosening of the restrictions on Catholics and many who had fled in 1610 came back. It was, of course, too late for Shakespeare, who died in 1616.

The reason these hidden messages in Shakespeare's work have remained so for 400 years, Asquith argues, is because historians were unwilling to tarnish the reputation of religious tolerance that has become a hallmark of Elizabeth's reign. Even after years of scholarship on Elizabeth's secret police and the somewhat shocking lengths Walsingham and Cecil would go to root out supposed conspiracies against the queen, many historians still wanted to believe this was a fringe element and that the majority of the populace embraced Protestantism. This is a silly fairy tale in its own right, but it also forms the bedrock of English character in many respects, so it's plausible that Asquith is onto something. Her argument is that many more people were Catholics into the seventeenth century but that has never been acknowledged, and we need to examine the time period with fresh eyes and understand what the culture was saying about the monarchy.

On the one hand, this is a very interesting book. It's always been a bit vexing, to me at least, that Shakespeare never seemed to be all that political in his writings, especially given what we know about other playwrights (Marlowe and Kyd, especially), who were very political. So this book is a fascinating look at someone who, according to Asquith, was very good at being political and very good at hiding it enough so he wouldn't get in trouble with the authorities. However, it often feels like she's reaching. As I pointed out above, the evidence that Shakespeare was Catholic is very circumstantial, and the fact that he wrote a terrible play - Titus Andronicus - might have had to do with an attempt to produce a "blockbuster" and appeal to the fascination with sex and violence that people of all times have. Christopher Marlowe, who died around the time Shakespeare began working on Titus, was more of a crowd-pleaser in those early days, as many of his plays fit into a Jerry Bruckheimer kind of mode - Tamburlaine (for which he even wrote a sequel!) and The Massacre at Paris, for instance. Maybe Shakespeare was just trying to "sell out" early in his career. Asquith's arguments, while compelling, often come across as determining a thesis and then looking for messages that fit the thesis while ignoring everything else. I'm no Shakespeare scholar, so I don't know if her thesis has made any inroads with them, but while it's a very interesting book, I'm not sure how reliable her conclusions are.

Still, if you've ever read and enjoyed Shakespeare, you might want to check this out. Asquith writes very well, and although she often beats us over the head with her interpretations (another allegory for the history of England? really?), she keeps things moving and does a nice job looking at the context for Shakespeare's plays, something most people ignore. It's definitely a cool book to read.

Happy Birthday to Zsa Zsa!

2009-02-06T20:52:00.004-07:00

Yes, it's Zsa Zsa Gabor's birthday. She's 92. NINETY-TWO! Holy cow. Good job, Zsa Zsa. She's on Marriage #9, by the way, and it's actually lasted since 1986. Good job, Zsa Zsa! She may have lost $10 million recently in that Madoff thing. Oh, bad move, Zsa Zsa! Still, let's raise our glass to everyone's favorite Hungarian.

Plan your future!

2009-02-01T10:46:00.004-07:00

We got this in the mail a few days ago, and Krys was flipping through it and found some fun classes you can take at Mesa Community College. Your future is assured if you join up with these classes! Trust me!

Razzle Dazzle Simple Bead Jewelry. You will learn to make a stunning necklace, bracelet and earrings using beautiful Swarovski crystal beads. All materials and supplies are included.

Tamales, Yes I Can!! [Two exclamation points are necessary, damn it!] Yes, you can! You will learn to make Red Chili Con Carne Burros and Chimichangas. These dishes are a Southwest tradition so join us for fun, laughter, and ethnic cooking together!

Conversations in New Thought. 'Conversations' is a discussion-based class that explores old and new ways of thinking about philosophy, religion, science and psychology.

Flirting 101. Flirting allows you to have fun no matter where you are and to interact with people you are interested in meeting. This class will cover the basics of body language: breaking the ice, small talk, how to get their number or how to terminate the interaction respectfully. You'll learn where to meet people, how to avoid common mistakes, make a good first impression and what signals you may be sending off that may be hurting you. This is for men and women who want to learn the basics of becoming comfortable in "the flirt."

Past Life Regression. This course will discuss how past lives play a major role in your current life path. Learn how to relax deeply and use you inner senses. Group regression will be performed.

Basic Belly Dancing. This class is designed for the beginner, focusing on the basic elements of Middle Eastern Dance: The elegant and graceful movements celebrate the strength and beauty of the female form, regardless of age and body shape. Body awareness, posture and the anatomy of hip work, with an introduction to the rhythm structure of the music are taught in this class, as well as putting basic steps together to create a simple dance routine. Costuming will be discussed with ideas on how to put together an inexpensive costume. Individual attention will be given to students when needed. Students should wear clothing that allows the body to move without restriction.

Italic Calligraphy. This course will introduce you to the beautiful Italic alphabet and techniques using the traditional pen. You will learn letter forms and gain detailed knowledge of the broad edge pen. Begin to use calligraphy for your personal and professional writing.

Stacks, Piles and Stash: It's Here Somewhere. Do you wonder why we keep everything? Have you tried to break this habit but need the support from a professional organizer? Then this is the class for you! This course works with emotional/mental as well as the physical reasons we have clutter in our lives and how to deal with it. Have you always wanted to learn how to set up your desk for better productivity? Come learn how to handle your mail and how to handle your paper more than once, but not a dozen times. Learn the self-talk messages when deciding to file or not to file. Second night of class will be hands-on working with our clutter.

How To Become a Mystery Shopper. Learn what a Mystery Shopper does and how to get started earning money while having fun. Typical assignments include evaluating restaurants, retail stores, banks, gas stations, and events. An optional working lunch is included. Owning or having access to a computer is highly recommended to be successful as a mystery shopper.

Look at all those great classes! Sign up now! Your future demands it!!!!!

Cool picture

2009-01-27T08:07:00.005-07:00

From here.

Why is there no love for the American system of government?

2009-01-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

As Barack Obama gets inaugurated and conservatives stew (I heard a complaint of a conservative this morning that it was the "tackiest" Inauguration ever because everyone was selling so much Obama crap - which I agree with, but I think it just shows how desperate people are to believe that their president isn't a scumbag), I wonder why our system of government isn't emulated more often around the world. A while back, I read in the book about Napoleon that the French, with "vivid memories of political pretensions by the old regime's high courts of parlements ruled out the American solution of vesting such authority in the Supreme Court." (page 28) This was part of a longer discussion of how the French were setting up their government, and although it's from 200 years ago, it still seems that countries setting up their democracies model them after the British form rather than the American. I'm not sure why that is.

The British have a parliamentary system of government, and many ex-British colonies follow this lead, but it seems like Iraq has set one up as well. I understand Canada, India, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries following the British model, but it seems weird that no other country follows the American model (at least none that I know of). In the British system, the prime minister is selected after the elections, when it's determined which party has the most members. The leader of that party becomes the prime minister. That's all well and good, but what's strange about the parliamentary system is that elections are held at any time. In Britain, they have to occur at least every five years, but there's no specific time for one. There's also no reason for a prime minister to ever give up his or her job. As long as his or her party wins the majority in the election, the prime minister could, conceivably, continue forever. I know this never happens, but there's no reason it couldn't. I wonder if this is a reason it's popular with nascent democracies - the prime minister can feel just like a dictator, and it's easier to shift from "prime minister for a long time" to "prime minister for life!"

I know there's a lot more to the British parliamentary system, but it seems a bit more unstable than ours. Not in Britain, of course, but they've been tinkering with it for 800 years. If the government can "fail" at any time and new elections be called, what's to stop despots from taking advantage of that? I know, a despot can take advantage of any system, but whenever you read about democracies falling apart, it starts with a prime minister getting a "no confidence" vote and the government needing a re-org. In the chaos, someone moves in and takes over. Yet countries keep trying it. I wonder why they don't look to the American model.

I admit that the American model isn't perfect. There's probably not enough direct democracy, although given the opinions of some people, that might be a good thing. But we always know when we have elections, and we usually know when there will be a new head of state. To all those people who bitched and moaned about what a wannabe dictator George Bush was, I would point out that we knew, with absolute certainty, that on 20 January 2009, we'd have a new president. It wasn't up for debate. Now, you can argue that the policies he put in place will be hard to undo (whether they should or not is something others can argue about), but the fact is, in 2006 or 2003 or whenever you started hating Bush, you knew that, at the latest, his last day in office would be 20 January 2009. There's no vote of no confidence in our system that destroys a government just because the opposition party is pissy about something. That may suck (I'm sure several Democrats would have liked to bring down the Bush government and install one of their own), but in the long run, it's fine. What did the Democrats do instead? They campaigned for Congress in 2006, when the elections were scheduled, won back the majority, and then got back the presidency in 2008, when elections were scheduled. And now, just like every four or eight years, we have a peaceful transfer of power. No fuss, no muss. If the Republicans don't like it, they have the 2010 and 2012 elections to gear up for. In the meantime, they can try to sway voters and even other members of Congress with more moderate policies. Or they can wait for Obama and the Democrats to screw up. It's not perfect.

It just seems to me that the American system is more stable than the British system. I get that the United States often doesn't have a stellar reputation overseas, but neither does Great Britain, so why is their system so much more attractive than ours? The United States, after all, has been the most stable government in the world for 226 years, and that's saying something. I'm not saying that countries shouldn't adopt the parliamentary system, because the Brits have made it work, but I often wonder why our republican system isn't more portable. Any ideas?

What have we learned - Championship Game Weekend

2009-01-19T08:16:00.002-07:00

I didn't watch a lot of football this weekend. The first half of the Eagles game disgusted me, so I really didn't feel like watching the second half. At halftime Krys needed to take Mia to the emergency room (thankfully, there was nothing seriously wrong with her, but with her, we need to be cautious), so I wasn't really in the mood to watch even if the Eagles had been winning. I still wasn't in the mood to watch the AFC game, and she wasn't back from the hospital yet and I was hanging out with Norah, so that was that. But we can still glean some nuggets of information from yesterday's games!

Arizona 32, Philadelphia 25. Before I rant about how crappy the Eagles were, let's consider why the NFL needs full-time referees. In the first half, with the score 14-3, the Eagles had 3rd-and-6 at the Arizona 15 or so. McNabb throws a pass to a wide receiver (Baskett, I think, but I'm not sure) who is clearly being held by the defender. No call, no first down, and the Eagles have to kick a field goal. With 2 minutes left, the Eagles have one last chance to win on 4th down, and a pass to Kevin Curtis is incomplete. Rod Hood not only knocked Curtis down, but as he was falling, grabbed Curtis' leg. No call, no first down, Arizona basically runs out the clock. Just before the Cardinals' third touchdown, Asante Samuel was called for pass interference on the goal line to give Arizona a first down. That was definitely pass interference, so I'm just wondering why neither of the other two penalties were called. If the Eagles score a touchdown after the first penalty, it's 29-24 late in the game instead of 25-24. Then, if Arizona scores, the Eagles need only a field goal to tie. With a first down late in the game, they probably score. Troy Aikman, imbecile that he is, said that neither play should have been called, even though they were both close. That's bullshit. Both were clear penalties. I don't have a problem with refs missing tough calls, but both of the plays were in space with no one but the two principals involved, and both were E-A-S-Y to make. Our hometown newspaper, even as it was glossing over the play (it wouldn't do to imply that the Cards didn't win completely fairly), wrote "Rod Hood was all over Kevin Curtis," which, 30 years ago, would have been fine. In today's NFL, like it or not, it's a penalty.

Of course, the Eagles shot themselves in the foot enough times as well that they can't blame the refs. For some reason, they decided to skip the game film of the Arizona-Carolina game and therefore missed the fact that you might want to cover Larry Fitzgerald! Seriously, Philly, what the hell? On the long touchdown pass that made it 14-3, there was no way J. J. Arrington was running with the ball. The instant he took the pitch, he ran backward away from the line of scrimmage, and not very fast. Either he's throwing the ball himself or he's going to chuck it back to Warner. Yet the Eagles bit, leaving Fitzgerald one-on-one with a guy who's not even their best cover guy. If Asante Samuel or Sheldon Brown or even Lito Sheppard had been covering Fitzgerald on the play, maybe I could have forgiven it. But they weren't, and that stupidity killed the Eagles. On the third touchdown, the guy covering Fitzgerald let him get a free release off the line of scrimmage. The ball is at the 1-yard line, and Fitzgerald is either going to run a slant or a fade. Either route depends a lot on timing, but the cover guy (Brown, I think), doesn't jam him. If Fitzgerald can't get off the line right away, the ball is overthrown. Lots of teams don't jam receivers enough, especially when they're playing a team that relies on timing routes, like the Cardinals do. What the hell?

And then there's Jim Johnson's defensive strategy. I love Jim Johnson, don't get me wrong. But sometimes he does inexplicable things. On Thanksgiving, the Eagles didn't blitz a lot. They made Warner hold onto the ball and look around, and Warner tends to get happy feet if he has to hold onto the ball a long time, and that leads to sacks and fumbles. So why change? The Eagles blitzed too much, and Warner loves that, because he's best when he takes short drops and zips the ball out of there. He's difficult to blitz because of that. I was surprised the Eagles didn't just play tight coverage and let their front four get pressure, because that's what worked the first time. Why didn't they? Beats me.

McNabb didn't have a great game, but he's not the reason they lost. Early on he threw some bad passes, but neither of his two turnovers led to scores and he (apparently) made some wonderful throws in the second half. I put this almost all on the defense - you can't let the best player beat you, and they simply didn't cover Fitzgerald well enough (granted, it's hard to cover him, but it didn't appear like they tried anything new after seeing him destroy the Panthers, which is just stupid). When the Eagles finally took a lead, Arizona went right down the field for the winning points. So although I'm sure lots of Philadelphia fans are baying for McNabb's blood right now, they should be wondering why the defense couldn't keep it together in the biggest game of the season. I've said this before and I'll say it again - McNabb should be the quarterback of the Eagles as long as he wants to be. If anyone has to go of the Reid-McNabb alliance, it should be the coach. His refusal to commit to the run game always bites the Eagles in the ass. I don't think he should go, either, but if one of them has to, it should be Andy.

Eagles fans who are bitching about the QB or coach should remember the Ray Rhodes Era. Or the Richie Kotite Era. Or the Marion Campbell Era. Or even the Buddy Ryan Era (good teams, never won a playoff game). Yes, the Eagles still don't have a Super Bowl win. But back in those days, you could stop paying attention to football in early November, if not sooner. It's January, and we're still watching the Eagles play football. So that's pretty nice, even if it doesn't lead to the promised land.

Oh, as for the Cardinals? The Steelers better figure out how to cover Larry Fitzgerald, or they just might become the "worst" team (by record) to win a Super Bowl.

DeSean Jackson update! 6 catches for 92 yards and 1 touchdown; 1 punt return for 13 yards.
Turnovers: Eagles 3, Cardinals 1. Turnovers = loss? Actually, no, but I'll go by the stats. One Philly turnover led to the Arizona one ... on the same play (interception by Arizona, fumble back to Philly); a fumble led to no points; the third turnover was on the last play of the game. So I'll give Arizona the "win," but it's odd that four turnovers were so inconsequential in a game of this magnitude. 1-0.

Pittsburgh 23, Baltimore 14. Apparently there was a game last night. I turned it on in time to see the Ravens score to make it 16-14, and then I happened to see Troy Polamalu return his interception for a touchdown. He's good.
Turnovers: Ravens 4, Steelers 1. Turnovers = loss? Probably. 2-0.

And so order is restored in the NFL, as the home teams both win the Championship Games. On the one hand, I'd like to see the Cardinals win the Super Bowl, and they have a slim chance. Pittsburgh also likes to blitz, and if they try it like the Eagles did, Fitzgerald or Boldin (let's not forget him, as he'll probably be completely healthy by them) will be able to get open for big plays. The Steelers don't have a great offense, so a few big plays might do them in - as long as Arizona doesn't turn the ball over. On the other hand, the Bidwills, who own the Cardinals, are scum of the earth, especially the old man, William. Bidwill is the guy who refuses to share the 1925 title with the Pottsville Maroons, even though his family retroactively claimed the crown when they had no right to. This is a guy who is quoted in today's newspaper whining about the Eagles' defeat of the Cardinals in the 1948 NFL Championship Game. He says, "We had beaten the five times in a row. Then the blizzard game came. It should have been move to Monday night, but the commissioner wouldn't change it." First, Bidwill, it was 60 years ago. Let it go! Second, the commissioner at the time asked both teams (which includes the Cardinals) whether they wanted to play or postpone it. Both teams wanted to play. It's a little late to be bitching about it when you had your chance back then, isn't it? (Bidwill didn't own the team back then, but he was involved with running it.) So I just want Bidwill to be thwarted once again in his quest, because if history is any indication, he's so cheap he won't play Kurt Warner (a free agent) to come back and he won't re-negotiate Anquan Boldin's contract, and next year the team will suck again.

It doesn't really matter, because I'm not going to watch the Super Bowl. Once the Eagles leave the scene, football has no interest for me. I'm not that grumpy, because after the Eagles lost to Baltimore and fell to 5-5-1, I didn't expect them to make the playoffs, so anything they did in the postseason was gravy. I hope they are a better team next year, and I hope Andy Reid gets a big back to pound the middle so he doesn't get his quarterback and his other running back killed. And would it kill them to throw more screen passes? Sheesh.

Regarding last night's episode of My Name Is Earl

2009-01-16T20:30:00.004-07:00

I don't want to live in a world in which a game show called Estrada Or Nada, in which guests challenge Erik Estrada to do things better than they can do (including playing the violin, chopping sushi, sewing, and chopping wood), exists only as a joke on My Name Is Earl. Someone has to make it happen for reals!

What I've been reading

2009-01-15T16:50:00.001-07:00

The Will by Reed Arvin. 2000, 325 pages, Scribner.

This is a legal thriller in the potboiling vein of John Grisham, with some very important differences: Grisham can barely string two simple sentences together in a coherent fashion (seriously, the man's prose is awful), while Arvin can actually, you know, write, and this book is much less a thriller than the Grisham books I've read. It stars a lawyer, Henry Mathews, who must go through the same kind of journey we see in several Grisham books (I've only read one, but I've seen the movies): from ambitious and greedy lawyer to conscience-ridden lawyer, but again, it's more nuanced than what you might expect. It's not a great book, by any means, but it's entertaining because Arvin keeps the book out of the courtroom, for the most part, and concentrates instead on the characters in the story.

Henry is a hot-shot Chicago lawyer who one night receives a phone call from a man whose father has died. Henry is the executor of the will, so he must head off to rural Kansas to execute the will. We learn that it's his home town, and his father, an idealistic but dirt poor lawyer, actually handled the will, but died before his client. The dead man was the richest man around, and when he leaves his fortune to the local kook instead of his ambitious and greedy son, the shit hits the fan. Henry gets pulled further and further into the reasons why the old man left his fortune to the crazy guy, and of course, this puts his future as an up-and-coming lawyer in jeopardy, not to mention his relationship with an up-and-coming financial expert.

Fret not, though, because Amanda Ashton, an idealistic government worker, shows up in Henry's life, poking around at the old man's oil reserves and getting in trouble with a state senator because of it. All of this is connected, of course, and Arvin does a nice job making sure it's not too outlandish and conspiratorial, which would be kind of goofy. It's grubby and messy, like a lot of local politics, and even though there's a bit of danger, the real problems lie with uncovering the past, something Henry wants to do when it concerns his client but not when it comes to himself. His secrets are a bit prosaic, but the development of his character, while predictable (will Henry become a crusader who sees more of the law than a way to make a lot of money - you be the judge!), is handled well.

Although not on par with great psychological drama, Arvin does a fine job peeling back the layers of secrecy surrounding these characters and making it feel like he's doing it naturally and in the course of the investigation. It's always interesting reading books in which people are hiding things and the truth has to come out. Henry has to make choices about whose lives he wants to destroy, and they don't always deserve it. This makes the book better than your standard legal thriller, because Arvin does a good job making the characters real, so when the truth comes out, it has a bit more bite to it.

The Will isn't a great book, but it's entertaining. It's not a bad way to spend a few days, which is more than you can say for a lot of novels.

Ricardo Montalban has died

2009-01-14T16:38:00.002-07:00

He was 88. He started in American movies in 1946, but didn't really become a household name, of course, until 1978, when he started playing Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island. What the hell was up with Roarke, anyway? Was he Satan? Montalban, a fine Catholic, probably wouldn't have dug that. But still. Of course, for nerds the world over, he'll always be Khaaan!

Let's hope he's resting in peace on "soft Corinthian leather."

Link:

Man, they don't make awesome commercials like that anymore, do they?