In Order of Importance

Wrong About All the King's Men

2012-02-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

I've been wrong before about classic works of literature (like the Odyssey), but in my defense, this is what it says on the back of the book:

Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men is generally considered the finest novel ever written on American politics. Set in the 1903s, this beloved book traces the rice and fall of Willie Start, who resembles the real-life Huey “Kingfish” Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealist man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success.”

Let's start at the end of this summary. At the end of the book, Willie Stark's ultimate goal is to build a state-of-the-art hospital who's care would be free to all residents of Louisiana. He's willing to twist arms, use his influence, bribe, and blackmail whoever gets in his way to get it done. Previously, he's used questionable techniques to raise taxes on the owners of coal miners and land owners. Regardless of how he accomplished his goals, every single won of his goals was populist at the very least and quite often altruistic.

One might then argue that the corruption of the summary is evident in his methods, but he never once believed in the primacy of morally pure techniques in achieving goals. He is introduced into Louisiana state politics when he is asked to run in the Democrat gubernatorial primary, not because the askers actually wanted him to win, but in order to draw rural votes away from a different candidate. From then on he knows, as he later explains, “you've got to make the good out of the bad.”

But that makes it seem as though All the King's Men is about Willie Stark. Willie Stark is a dynamic force of action in the story of Jack Burden. The vast majority of the actual words that make up the novel are the observations, philosophies, emotions, memories, and thoughts of the narrator himself, Jack Burden. It is a story about becoming the person you are meant to be, finding yourself in relation the world and people around you, and confronting the questions posed by both the problems you face and how you face them. Big questions. Small moments. What could be considered the most tortured love story in American literature. And it's all told in a style not that far from Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson.

Early on, I was reminded of The Great Gatsby, and there is certainly some similarities between the relationships of Nick Caraway and Jay Gatsby and Jack Burden and Willie Stark. However, Caraway does his best to vanish into the story, projecting all of the tough questions onto Gatsby. But Burden confronts everything. Stark shows up, makes some things happen, and Burden processes all of the implications of the action. If this is a title to be proud of, Jack Burden might be American literature's greatest and most prolific brooder.

There are lots of different possible sources for an entire culture being completely wrong about a book it values. In this case, I think it comes back to America's obsession with action. Willie Stark is a character Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler would write. He bangs on desks. He gives speeches. He does things. He is filmable. For more reasons than can be explored in a blog post, we've come to identify ourselves as doers. So even though the book has very little to do with, well, doing, we latch onto the doer and convince ourselves he is the hero.

Which is too bad, because Jack Burden is one of the most interesting and compelling characters in American literature. He doesn't always understand the people around him, but it's not for lack of trying. Furthermore, he has a commitment to thought, to understanding, that we rarely see in our pop culture. He left his career as a historian because he realized he could not understand the man whose story he was trying to tell. And without that understanding, every word he put down would have been a lie.

Near the climax of the book, Jack learns something that shakes him to the very core of his being. And in response he drives from Louisiana to California, stays in California for a few days and then drives back with a clearer mind. In doing so, he is aware of recreating the escaping American's journey, for since the colonizing of the land by Europeans, those of its citizens who have found themselves with no options in or understanding of their home have moved West. Over the course of those couple of weeks, Jack confronts things about himself and about the world around him that are beyond specific terminology. They are the experiences and feelings you cannot share with the rest of the world because the act of sharing them alters them so radically as to be rendered meaningless. If knowing thyself can be heroic, Jack Burden is a hero of it.

Of course, this whole business might come down to something even simpler. And what implications this has I shudder to draw. But the reason we might all be so wrong about All the King's Men is because it is called All the King's Men. We assume it's about Willie Stark, because is the king in the title. And though taken as a whole, the title tells you Willie Stark is the character this book is most likely to be least about, it's hard not to latch on to that key word. And though Jack Burden is many important things, he is not a king.

If Every Game Were the All-Star Game

2012-02-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

The NHL is approaching a crisis point. The more we learn about concussions, and the more mysterious concussions remain despite our increased knowledge, the more pressure is put on the NHL to find ways to keep players safe. And, since the Marc Savard hit, the NHL has been doing a respectable job at changing itself; adding new rules, fining and suspending players who break those rules, and, in general, raising the awareness of hits to the head. For what it's worth, the NHL, from the commissioner to the coaches, to the players have bought in to the idea of changing the NHL.

Still the NHL is approaching a crisis point. Sidney Crosby is out again. So is Nathan Horton, on a late blind-side hit to the head that somehow didn't get called in the game. There is a chance, as was argued in this Grantland article, that the tweaks and changes aren't going to be enough to keep players safe, that hockey, as it is played now, with the speed and strength of the players now, is just too dangerous.

At the moment, I believe there is still room for tweaks. I think changes to the equipment, not just helmets, but elbow pads and shoulder pads, can help. I also think there's more room to wiggle in how the penalties are called and punishments applied. Furthermore, I think there has been a change in the game. Players are now letting up on their hits. There are still big hits, but fewer of them behind the play, and, it seems, at least to me, that players are making an effort to ensure that the primary point of contact is not the head. Also, I do believe the players enter into a contract that, at least on some level, accepts the risks to their health for playing. There are others who might stretch that idea further than it should go, finding permission for all kinds of things because “players knew the risk,” but I think there is an element of truth to it that needs to be considered as a solution is sought.

The fundamental problem for the NHL is this; how long are they willing to risk another Marc Savard (or worse) while it tweaks the game? At the moment, the NHL is comfortable with that risk, but what if another career is ended before the league gets it perfect?

Which leads to the title of this post. What if every game were like the All-Star game? Because that is what the NHL will look like if it needs to fundamentally change the nature of the game in order to keep its players safe. What if the NHL formalized the gentlemen's agreement that keeps hitting out of the All-Star game? How bad would that actually be?

First of all, how many highlight reel hits actually happen in a game? One? Two? Three? I think I've seen a couple of games over the years where there were four or five, but never more than that. (Pretty sure those were Bruins vs Flyers games.) Because of how hockey is reported, the role of big hits in the game is radically amplified. Most of those hits are only possible when a player makes a mistake, and at the NHL level, players don't make many mistakes. A lot of people talk about preserving the culture of the game and protecting a key element of it, and though big hits are a part of the game and a big part what is entertaining about the game, they really only make up a tiny fraction of how the game is actually played.

Secondly, even with big hits removed, games aren't going to all be 12-9 shoot outs because they won't all be played by all-stars. Defensemen and goalies will get the chance to practice their craft because they won't always have Malkin and Datsuk, on the ice at the same time, or any of the forward combinations that skated in the game. Furthermore, it wasn't just the big hits that were cut out of the All-Star. It was the intensity of all the checks, of, well, everything but goal scoring. Grinding it out in the corners. Hip checks along the boards. Fighting for position in front of the net. Pretty much everything that makes hockey such a gritty, tough, entertaining game, would still be there.

Finally, would a change from 3-2 to 6-5 be that bad? Hockey fans on principle consider the All-Star game a boring cardboard cut out of the game, and they have a point, but I find it hard to believe none of them found at least some of the skating, shooting, and scoring entertaining. I didn't watch the whole thing (I work on Sundays and didn't realize NBC Sports was replaying it that night until far too late) but seeing Sequin skate unhindered was pretty exciting. In some ways, a dramatic rule change could make the game even faster, as players could blast through the neutral zone knowing no one is going to clean them out from the blind side. The best players in the league would still be the best players in the league; even the best defensemen because they make their mark more on positioning than hitting. Tough teams would still be tough teams. Ultimately, the game wouldn't look that different.

At the heart of this problem is entertainment. Hockey players would play hockey no matter what; but they can play it professionally, and be paid a lot to do so, because other people are entertained by watching the players play. If fans stayed away because of fighting, the NHL would get rid of fighting. For all the concerns people raise about the safety of the game, economically speaking, the NHL can't take actions that will drive fans away, because that would destroy itself. This isn't an apology or an excuse for the NHL to construct a dangerous game, so much as it is a challenge to fans of the NHL. If you only tune in for the one or two big hits in a game or only to see the fights, then you are missing the best parts of the game.

And, it is your responsibility to learn how to see more in the game. How do you learn to see the whole game? If you watch the Bruins, watch Patrice Bergeron. He might be the most complete player on the planet. Live in a different market; Pavel Datsuk is the next best thing. I'm a big fan of the St. Louis, Lecavilier, Stamkos line in Tampa as well, though they haven't been having a great year. Dustin Byfuglien's 200ft game is pretty good too. One last aspect of this point, before I start sounding too preachy; I'm not sure hits-and-fights-only fans really exist, at least not in enough numbers that their loss would end the NHL. Unfortunately, there might be only way one to know for sure.

(One more thing before you go, NHL Overtime Live is pretty damn close to the worst sports show on television. God, I turn it on every now and again to, you know, see what's been going on in the NHL, but Jeremy Roenick is a talking aneurism. And the other guy spends most of the show paraphrasing Jeremy Roenick. I mean, there must be somebody else out there. Steal someone from the CBC for godsake. Though, this is the network that tapped Mike Milbury, so...)

Review of The Green River Killer

2012-02-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

In some ways, the graphic novel is the perfect genre for crime writing. The artwork allows writers to highlight the atmosphere that is such a key part to crime writing and the visual presentation allows writers to cede the mechanical logistics of getting guns in hands and dames in cars—which tend to reveal weak writing skills—to the visual artists. The best comic crime writers, Ed Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke, Frank Miller (though this bastard doesn't get a link), are able to merge the best parts of each genre to create a totally unique and compelling product. Furthermore, comics allow crime writing to stretch its boundaries, as in Steven Niles Criminal Macabre series and John Layman's and Rob Guillory's Chew series. And, of course, one of our most important and powerful cultural creations is really graphic crime writing; Batman.

However, I'm not sure the advantages translate as directly for true crime writing as it does for crime fiction. There is a lurid kind of voyeurism to true crime writing, one that can be mitigated with a legitimate sense of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Most read to see the blood and guts, and all are comforted that, regardless of the thrill, we could learn something about ourselves and the world from those blood and guts. But written descriptions of a corpse mutilated by a serial killer are very different from illustrations of a corpse mutilated by a serial killer. One of the reasons Art Spiegelman, decided to tell his father's story with mice and cats, was because the illustrations would have been too gruesome if they had been illustrated people.

The Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen doesn't seem to have figured out exactly what it wants to be. It opens with a brutal, but not gruesome, scene, one that we don't feel is over the top only because it is true, but all of the other brutality inherent in the story Jensen tells is muted. It feels more like an homage to his father, the detective who put, by far, the most hours into solving the string of murders in the Seattle area, and there is now doubt Detective Tom Jensen deserves the honor. But most of Jensens' work was data compilation; the absolutely indispensable police work at the core of all successful investigations, that always gets left out of crime fiction because it is so boring to watch.

Over 40 women, mostly prostitutes, were murdered and their bodies found near Green River in the Seattle area. For decades Jensen pursued hundreds of different leads for thousands of different suspects, pioneering the use of computers in detection. For most of it, they couldn't be sure whether it was all the work of one killer or whether there were copy cats. Eventually forensic technology caught up with their needs and they were able to get a DNA identification of one of their early suspects, a man named Gary Ridgeway. Eventually, Gary confessed to being the Green River Killer in order to plea bargain a life sentence from a death sentence.

Most of the story is of the interviews conducted with Ridgeway as he gave evidence of his murders. Flashbacks filled in details of the investigation and showed some of the effects of the work on Detective Jensen. Though the book has little to say about the greater questions of justice and law of life and of murder, it's clear why his son wanted to write an homage for him. Detective Jensen is one of those heroes whose unshakeable persistence and unquestionable decency is almost guaranteed to go unnoticed.

I'm sure there is a book in Detective Jensen's story, but it's not this one. In this world of data-overload, a book about how Detective Jensen pioneered and mastered computers in detecting might be the most important, and, if the writing is successful, the most entertaining version of his story. Someone interested in the Green River Killer story would likely appreciate the straight forward presentation of one of the major plot lines in those horrific events and connoisseurs of true crime might want it on their shelves. But for everyone else, it might be better to stick with Brubaker and Batman, and hope someone else taps the potential for the true crime graphic novel.

Contemporary American Politics Explained in Two Campaign Ads

2012-02-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone expected attack ads against Elizabeth Warren when she became the de facto Democrat nominee for the Senate race this fall. Given how she came to national attention by actually working to actually regulate banks, credit cards, and other financial products and industries (you know, the people who caused the 2008 economic collapse), and given how vocal and intense she was in the struggle to create a bureau that would effectively regulate those aspects of the economy, no one was surprised by this ad, paid for by Karl Rove's PAC.

The Warren campaign was expecting this. They were prepared for this. And when the ad first aired they probably all said to themselves something along the lines of, “OK, this is the fight we're going to have.” Sure it distorts the Occupy movement, and yes, it greatly exaggerates (but does accurately identify) Warren's association with the Occupy movement, and sure, it is fear mongering, and yes, it is trying to appeal to those of us still fighting the Cold War with the Soviet Union, but Warren is an actual liberal and that's how you attack liberals these days. It's histrionic, but its histrionics have been industry standard since Daisy counted down the bomb.

But then the exact same organization, Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, like a month later, ran this ad (Warning: Watching these two ads consecutively may result in acute Brain-Splody syndrome):

A month ago Elizabeth Warren was the “Matriarch of Mayhem,” the philosophical godmother of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The next month she was too cozy and too supportive of Wall Street. And no, they're not ads against two different Democrat candidates for Senate that just both happen to be named “Elizabeth Warren,” they're attack ads against the same person. These are two mutually exclusive ideas and yet Crossroads GPS managed to hold them at the same time. (By the way, that's one of the definitions of insanity, but you didn't need me to tell you American politics is insane.) So what was different between the times when the first ad and second ad were run. This just fucking kills me. The Occupy Wall Street movement had succeeded in changing the national discourse to focus (if however briefly) on the crimes of Wall Street against the middle class.

And there you have contemporary American politics. Karl Rove wants Elizabeth Warren to lose. When he ran the first ad, the Occupy Wall Street wasn't polling well, so he exaggerated an association between Occupy Wall Street and Elizabeth Warren. When he ran the second ad, Occupy Wall Street was polling really well and the banks were not, so he just made shit up. It didn't matter that a month earlier he presented a mutually exclusive argument. It didn't matter that it was about the most ridiculous accusation you could level against Elizabeth Warren. (“Blood and teeth on the floor” doesn't sound too cozy to me.) It didn't matter that he completely and totally made shit up, as Warren was constantly fighting for more oversight of the banks AND, it didn't matter that in the course of 32 seconds the ad argued that there needed to be much more oversight over the bailout process and that we need a smaller government presence in the economy. (Your ears might also bleed. Probably should have added that to the warning. Maybe your eyes.)

The only thing that mattered is that, at the time, Crossroads GPS calculated that this particular representation of Elizabeth Warren would hurt her chances of winning the election regardless of what representation they decided on last month. If they do some polling in a couple of months that shows voters are particularly concerned about the well-being of polar bears, you'll see a Crossroads GPS ad that attacks Warren's lax attitude towards helping polar bears. If those poll numbers flip for some reason the next month, I'm sure we'll learn that polar bears have never had a better friend than Elizabeth Warren.

How do these two ads explain contemporary American politics; because they show politicians just don't give a shit; not just about facts, politicians have always had a, oh, let's say “complex” relationship with facts, but also about making a shred of fucking sense. Whole swaths of American politicians, pundits, and campaigners don't give a shit about anything...but winning.

And that pretty much explains everything that has gone on over the last four years or so. Hell, Mitch McConnell came right out and said it after Obama won the election that the Republican goal was not leading the country, but winning the Presidency in 2012. Right now, the only standard that politicians hold their statements to is whether they think those statements will help them win. Nothing else matters. If John Bolton thinks it will help a Republican win in 2012 he will say Obama's decision to lead from behind in Libya would result in a long drawn out civil war and then a month later when the rebels overthrow Gaddafi, he will say Obama should have slowed down the Libyan revolution in order to ensure a more stable transition, and he will say it, even though we have him on video him saying the exact opposite thing, and without even mentioning that he is arguing against himself. And the media will still interview him for his opinions even though his opinions are clearly shit.

But. There is something that could be called a sliver of hope. And that something is...Mitt Romney.

Or rather, it is Mitt Romney's inability to sow up the Republican nomination. The reason Republican voters are sampling all the other candidates and the reason Romney can't seem to grab a full majority of Republicans is simple. He will say whatever it takes to win the nomination and everybody knows it. And just about everybody is disgusted by it. This is why, despite being the only candidate even remotely capable of running this country, and despite the obviousness of that fact, he can't seal this deal. Who knows what will happen over the next few years and in the presidential campaign, but Romney's struggles are an indication that the public is approaching its bullshit limit. There is only so much say-anything-to-win the public will accept. Of course, that means that political strategists will just develop techniques so their candidates SEEM like they're not just saying anything to win, but there's a chance, a slim one, that some strategist will discover that the easiest and most efficient way to SEEM like a capable leader, is to actually be one.

Review of Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt

2012-01-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

My first thought when seeing that A.S. Byatt had written a novel exploring the Norse mythology of Ragnarok, was “weird.” My second thought was, “In a way, Byatt has only written about the end times.” Ragnarok however isn't so much a retelling of the Norse end times, as it is the story of a young girl trying to understand the madness of the world around her, which included the chaos of WWII, through the Norse myths. Evacuated to the countryside while her father flew in the RAF, the book Asgard and the Fall of the Gods became the structure that allowed the young girl to organize her life in war times.

However, this use of the myths in the novel is both overt and indirect. Most of the novel is almost a translation or transliteration or retelling of the Norse myths with the brief passages of the skinny young girl providing real world context. Because of this Byatt adds very little to the general understanding of how mythology works in human consciousness in general or in our modern incarnation in particular. The classics by Joseph Campbell and Lewis Hyde, other works in the Cannogate Myths series, particularly Victor Pelevin's cyber-minotaur novel, and the works Byatt sites in her afterword, all dig deeper into those ideas. But for Byatt, I don't think this is as much about understanding myths in general, as it is about exploring the role of these particular myths in her particular life. One could describe Ragnarok as a love poem to a way of explaining the world.

Fans of Byatt will enjoy and appreciate her impeccable prose style, whether she is frolicking in the names of things or shuffling through the politics and agonies of gods and monsters. Furthermore, she takes an infectious delight in the names of those gods and monsters. And, as she says, “The thin child was quite a bit older when she understood the beauty of words, Nether Edge, as opposed to just saying them quickly and thinking of the place where the butcher had his shop.” (p158) In the same way this could be a love poem, it could also be an incantation, a spell to raise and old monsters from their oblivion.

However, the most compelling part of the novel might be the “Thoughts on Myth” afterword. It is an insightful introduction to thinking about myths and a great starting point for anyone looking to explore more deeply how we relate to myths, and how that differs from our relationship with fairy tales and novels. And she says this, “We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.” Whatever else Byatt accomplishes, or doesn't in this book, that insight alone is worth the price of admission.

Ultimately, Ragnarok is a good introduction to the Norse myths even if it doesn't go very far, at least in my opinion, in exploring those myths and the relevance or lack there of in today's society. If you're unfamiliar with them, Byatt is as good a guide as any. Furthermore, though not a “translation” or even a “compilation” Ragnarok achieves some aspects of both. Finally, Byatt's prose is as good here as in her other work. For many of her fans, that will be enough, even if they're not particularly interested in the subject. Byatt's love of words is shown to be even stronger than her love of the gods and ultimately, all we ever read are words.

How To Leave

2012-01-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

There was a time when professional athletes didn't leave their teams. Sure, there was a sense of loyalty, of identify, of place, but that had far less to do with the stability of players than the fact that players couldn't leave their teams. The early American professional sports contracts were like, well, pretty much all early labor contracts; feudal. The owners controlled everything and that was that. Then, just like in all labor contracts, the workers eventually got sick of it and fought for a better one. They eventually won the right to have some control over who they play for and how much they are paid for doing so.

The next couple of decades were a nice mix. Players could move and many did, but many others chose to not move. As the free agent system matured, the economics of sports changed, and the sports agent became powerful, the “home town discount” has almost vanished into the world of general stores with rocking chairs on their porches; nice to think about, but you never actually see one. For better or for worse, and again oddly mirroring the working world in general, it is now much more common for a player to play for several teams than just one. It is now a part of the milieu; a player will leave.

As with all things, there are good ways to leave and bad ways to leave, and both the players and the teams can really make a mess of things. In the last few years though, I've seen two examples of what I consider the right way to leave, from both the player's and the team's perspectives, that I think illuminate some of the ways to not trample on the hearts of fans. They both come from Boston teams, because they're the teams I know about, not because I think Boston teams are paragons of virtue. They've made their mistakes and I'm sure other teams of done it right. It's just, nobody's paying me to do this (would anybody like to pay me to do this?) and there's only so much time in the day, so the scope of my knowledge is somewhat limited. Caveat, caveated. On with the point.

If you were at Fenway, you wanted it to be a close game going into to the ninth, because Shipping Up to Boston would start playing and Jonathan Papelbon would make his rock star entrance. Whatever you thought about Papelbon, this was one of the coolest sports experiences available and I am bummed that I'll never get to see it again. But it's important to remember that Papelbon's association with the Dropkick Murphy's cover of a Woodie Guthrie fragment has nothing to do with some deep spiritual connection between Pap and the city of Boston. It was blasting over the loud speaker, the Sox were celebrating, and Papelbon threw down an ersatz jig. Major League moment born.

Papelbon's true relationship with the Boston Red Sox was made clear in an interview he gave after the first contract negotiations after he had established himself as a premier closer. The Sox made an offer. Papelbon shot it down without a moment of thought and openly (I believe using the term “ixnay,”) admitted the swiftness and completeness of his rejection. I think we can safely assume the first offer included a “home town discount.” Though Pap always pitched his guts out when he was on the mound, though he was always an intense presence in the Red Sox organization, though he was passionate to the point of psychosis on the field, Papelbon made it clear that it was baseball and not Boston fueling his furnace.

I was bummed to see him go to the Phillies this off season because he's a great closer and a lot of fun to watch. But the important thing about his leaving is that Papelbon never pretended he was going to stay. He never acted as though Boston were unique to him. He never assured us that he was pitching for a retired number. He stayed because we paid him enough the first time and left because he wasn't going to get a long enough contract from us this time. And that was it. I, personally, am not a fan of the whole “business is business” philosophy of professional sports, but I am even less a fan of players and owners telling us one thing and doing another.

There are a few phenomena in the NHL that one could truly describe as “weapons” and Michael Ryder's snap shot is one of them. His release is one of the quickest out there, the puck comes off the stick faster than most, and he can let it go from just about anywhere. We also know he's got a pretty good glove hand in case he needs to see time in net. But when the Bruins assessed their team after the Stanley Cup, and given the NHL salary cap, it was hard to see how Ryder fit in the long term. Sure, it would be great to have that weapon, but with Tyler Sequin, Jordan Caron, Zach Hamil, all waiting in the wings and the younger stars already there, it was hard to justify Ryder's salary.

There were a lot of ways the Bruins could've handled this. They could have thrown him a “home town discount” offer, they could have tried to bid him up and make him take up more cap room on another team, they could have tried to finagle a contract that made cap sense (like Mark Savard's) and tied him up in a long negotiation, but they didn't. They told Ryder to see what was out there. If he found something he liked, then good luck to him. If he didn't, they'd try to work something out. Dallas was out there and Ryder liked it.

In a lot of ways, leaving well isn't that different from acting well in other emotional relationships. We're not burning Paplebon jerseys because he never promised to stay and never promised to never be a Philly (Hi, Johnny Damon.). Where he played was always business to him and we can't be mad at him for making a business decision. We all hate Lebron James because he played mind games with his fans. It would have been a different story if at the end of the season he said something to the effect of, “Though I've loved playing here, I think it's clear that we are not capable of bringing a championship to Cleveland. This has been my home for years, but now it is time for me to move on and the organization to try a different strategy.” He still could've had his disgusting ego session deciding who he would play for, even after being clear who he wouldn't. (And I personally have no doubt he was done with Cleveland.) And he probably would've had a Crawford-like ad in the local paper.

That openness is key to how a team moves a player as well, unlike how the Red Sox handled Jason Varitek this off-season, despite a decade of being one of the most important factors in their success. He had to find out second-hand they signed another catcher. Could the Red Sox have worked out a productive contract with Varitek? I guess we'll never know because the Red Sox never tried. (Was the clock ticking on Shoppach? And they clearly didn't take my advice about carrying three catchers.)

There is a lot we can learn from the way players leave and our reactions to it (perhaps mostly that we should tone it down a bit, but, would sport still be fun if we did?) but this is what sticks with me; being a good professional athlete or team, isn't all that different from being a good person.

The Golden Age of American Beer

2012-01-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

I decided to check out a new-at-the-time bar and meet Riss after work. I went early, got a seat at the massive horseshoe bar and had a few beers while I was reading Under the Volcano. (Yeah, that guy.) In the quiet couple of hours between about 3 and about 5 it was a pretty nice experience. Not much to distinguish it, but the beer was good, the bar had enough light to read by, and it had the quiet atmosphere of people grabbing a couple of early beers.

As soon as 5 o'clock hit, it was like the Army Corps of Engineers ignored the disrepair the levies had suffered and Hurricane Yuppie washed my peaceful city away. All bars have multiple personalities, so that shouldn't speak too much one way or the other for the bar in question, but ultimately, I ended up not being too fond of this particular bar. But that's not the point of this post, the point is that I found myself assessing the bar in question, thus, “It just seems like they have the same hundred beers as everybody else.” That's right. We have reached a level of beer in this country, and in the Boston area that having 100 plus artisan, craft beers on tap, does not necessarily distinguish a public house. To me, that sounds like a golden age.

The roots of the Golden Age of American Beer lie several decades in the past when a President of this great land, in an act of governmental restraint and deregulation, freed brewing beer from the tyranny of Federal oversight. And that president was Jimmy Carter. (In direct contrast to Reagan, who raised taxes, and spent shmillions on a complete science fiction of a defense system, while negotiating with terrorists, which I guess is how you get an airport named after you.)

Home brewing eventually lead to a cottage industry, that lead to the early successful small brewers like Sam Adams, Magic Hat, and Sierra Nevada. Add in some politics of sustainability, the growth in the importance of local products and production, and the fact that many Americans now have a decade or more between graduation from college and having children, and you've got the Golden Age of Beer. Though we can never be certain, the argument could be made that America is the greatest beer nation on earth right now. But rather than making some kind of big argument about beer in America and the world, or playing out the idea of a “Golden Age,” (why gold and not platinum and how really gets to decided?) I'm going to highlight some of my favorite things happening in beer right now.

Harpoon Hundred Barrel Series. Not unlike a movie studio that churns out a rom-com every six months in order to fund its art films, many bigger brewers do special series along with their more popular beers. Harpoon now brews 100 barrels of some different, experimental, interesting beer every few months or so. I've tried just about every one and they have all been fantastic. Sometimes they're takes on less common styles of beer. Other times, they add an atypical flavor. Sometimes it's a twist on something traditional. Whatever the stated goal, they've all been interesting, delicious, creative express of beer.

Pretty Things. If you're into beer in the metro-Cambridge area, you've heard of Pretty Things. You've probably heard a lot about Pretty Things. You might even be sick of hearing about Pretty Things. But every one of their beers is good. Some of their beers are fantastic. And their English India Porter “December 6, 1855 EIP,” a historical beer not unlike the kind of stuff that made Dogfish Head famous, was the best beer I've ever had. But more importantly, I like the fact that they are tenant brewers, renting spaces in other brewers to make their beer. It means there is a system in place, in brewing, for people with great ideas and great recipes, to start a business without necessarily needing a ton of capital.

Mayflower. My favorite even newer brewery, their seasonal Summer Rye Ale, might be the most convincing proof that American beer is in a special place right now, because it is a high quality porch beer. You know what generally passes for porch beer and though I have a special place in my heart for High Life and PBR, the Summer Rye Ale, hits all the taste expectations you have for cracking a cold one on the porch, but at, like 11, without being “at 11.” All their other beers are great too and if the only “craft” beer you've tried in your life is Sam Adams, Mayflower would be a great next step.

Bombers. $5-$14, 16-24oz bottles give you the chance to try a lot of different beers without filling up your fridge with six-packs of stuff you might not end up liking. Some of them might seem a little pricey but so are high quality steaks, or wines, or bourbons, or, well, really anything that people put a lot of work into. In fact, the bomber itself might be a driving force in the Golden Age of American beer, because it gives small brewers an economically sustainable, marketable product.

You Probably Have a Friend Who Makes Beer. In a lot of ways, the renewed quality of American beer, has lead to a re-resurgence of the home brewing that started this age in the first place. As with well, everything, from baking bread to making clothes, there's a kind of extra flavor with home made beer. Sure, sometimes you or your friend mess it up, but it's still yours and that means something. Furthermore, whatever is produced, is something no one else will have ever had. Which I think is really cool.

This is Senator Ben Nelson's Fault

2011-12-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

(I started writing this post before Nelson announced he is planning on retiring. As you can guess, I'm not sad to see him go.)

In terms of electoral politics, Barak Obama's 2008 platform was among one of the most popular in recent memory. Not only did he secure 54% of the vote, but the Democrats gained seats in both the House and the Senate, and, until the special election of Scott Brown, had a near super majority in the Senate. And yet almost none of that platform was enacted, and, somehow, so many Americans were convinced they didn't actually want what they voted for the first time around, that the Democrats lost the House entirely and many seats in the Senate. I've talked about the madness of this whole process before (I mean, Republicans held health care benefits for 9/11 first responders or “heroes” as they are occasionally called, hostage to extending the Bush tax cuts on the top 1% of Americans) but I think it is important to place blame where it really belongs. On Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson.

By the time the debate over health care reform started, the Obama administration had already stabilized the economy (not in the way I would have, but we didn't have a second Great Depression so I guess that's something) and saved the American auto industry. Rightly concluding that any recovery and subsequent economic growth would be hampered by the cost of health care on Americans and small businesses, they decided to pursue health care reform. Not wanting to repeat the mistake of Bill Clinton's attempt to reform health care, for better or for worse, Obama left the work of crafting the policy in the hands of the legislature. (It being their job and all.) Really, who could blame him given the make up of Congress at the time. And, honestly, the results weren't that bad, even after all of the compromises. If the rolling reforms are allowed to happen, we'll have taken a few steps towards a humane health care system. They weren't what I wanted, but they were reasonable given the state of American mainstream politics, and, when asked about specific aspects of the legislation, most Americans support most of the reforms.

Enter Ben Nelson, Democrat Senator from Nebraska. I think of Nelson as a Regional Democrat, meaning his party affiliation has a lot more to do with where he lives than what he believes. He's only a Democrat because Nebraska Republicans are so conservative. It's the same with Scott Brown and old Mitt Romney. The only reason they run on the Republican ticket is because Massachusetts Democrats are more liberal. Brown in Nebraska is a Blue Dog Democrat. Nelson in Massachusetts is a moderate Republican.

However, this isn't Nelson's fault because he disagreed with the content of the health care reform bill. It is legislators' responsibility to vote with their conscience, no matter what the party whip says. This wouldn't be his fault if he had argued against the bill on the floor of the Senate, if he had sought to change the legislation in committee or through other influence, and it wouldn't be his fault if, even after changes made to deal with his concerns, he still voted against the legislation. It's his fault because he joined the Republican filibuster.

By joining the filibuster, Nelson single-handedly turned what should have been a three month process into a ten month process, one in which all sorts of absolute insanity was spewed by opponents. At one point, in an effort to do anything to get the bill through, Reid tried to tack on what became known as the Cornhusker-Kickback, but that vote-purchasing was too overt even for Washington.

Of course, there were Blue Dog Democrats in the House who railed against the bill, some of whom even going so far as to essentially campaign on their opposition to it. (Just a side note; many of these “Blue Dogs” were elected on Obama's coattails and to thank him for creating a political climate in which they get jobs in Congress, they shat all over his most ambitious legislative goal. Thanks guys.) However, there was really nothing they could do about it, because there isn't a filibuster procedure in the House that allows for the minority party to dictate legislation.

The perpetual filibuster over health care reform sucked all of the policy momentum out of the Obama administration, making it almost impossible to take any additional steps in fixing the economy. Furthermore, by joining the filibuster, Ben Nelson changed the narrative of governance from “The Obama Administration Doing Stuff” to “Congressional Republicans Making Sure Stuff Doesn't Get Done.” Our national political discussion was as much about what the Republicans were preventing as it was about what the Obama administration was doing. (For example, how many people are talking about the Obama administration's foreign policy successes in the last four years; ending the war in Iraq, assassinating Osama bin Laden, leading from behind in Libya, while navigating two inherited wars, radical changes in an already unstable Middle East...) And, along with all the stuff in the committees and the anonymous holds on legislation and nominations, the filibuster became the primary technique of Congressional Republicans until they took back the house.

And that brings us to now. Obviously, a lot of other factors went into that mysterious process in which “then” inexorably becomes “now,” but I believe a lot of those wouldn't have been possible without Ben Nelson's filibuster. The radical optimist in me assumes he truly believed that the policy was so bad for this country that he stood in the way of a vast majority of legislators to prevent it from being adopted, but I'm pretty sure he just assumed his constituents wouldn't vote for him if someone accused him of supporting something somewhat somehow connected to socialism.

With his retirement, most pundits believe the seat will be filled by a Republican, and frankly that's fine with me. The Democrats might be begging Nelson to say, but from my perspective, it should be the other way around. It's the Republicans who should be begging him to stay, because he was one of the most successful Republican legislators of the last four years.

Bruins Udpate: I Told You So Edition

2011-12-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I only really told you about half of what happened. I told you not to worry about the Bruins, but I didn't say they wouldn't lose in regulation again until December 6th. So why are the Bruins currently the best team on the planet? Well, I'm glad I pretended you asked.

A Legitimate Fourth Line: The Bruins play the best third period in the league, a plus 33 last time I heard. They're like a baseball team with a lights out closer. Right now, if you don't have a lead by the second period against the Bruins, the game is essentially over. On most teams, even in the NHL, the fourth line doesn't see a lot of minutes. On the Bruins, they do. Furthermore, their job is to exhaust the opposing defensemen. And Julien sticks with them even when they're on the ice for goals because he trusts the system as much as he asks his players. Which means that all of the Bruins generally have more energy in the third period than all of their opponents.

Depth and Difference: Along with just the numerical depth, each of the four lines presents different challenges to their opponents. The top line has one of the game's best passers flanked by top tier power forwards. The second line combines the best three-zone player in the game (I'm going to keep saying it) with two explosive skaters. The third line combines Kelly's speed and intelligence (The new Reichi?) with Perverley's dangerous skating and stick-handling, while Benoit Poulliot now skates his brains out when he's on the ice. And the fourth line are plenty capable of forechecking the heck out of defensemen and grinding out the occasional goal. And Paille is usually about the fastest guy on the ice when he's out. Very few teams present match up challenges on every single line.

Tim Thomas: It seems like every now and again you have to remind the world Tim Thomas is still the best goalie in the NHL. That helps. And, since we're talking about goalies, I might as well add that Rask might be one of the top 20 goalies in the league. (He just threw down a 41 save shut-out.) That might not sound like anything special, but he's the back up. That's pretty special.

The Julien System: It's about time to start talking about Claude Julien in the same terms as we talk about Bill Belichick. The games are different, so the moment by moment strategy doesn't really compare, but Claude Julien's system has lead to a Stanley Cup Championship, a President's Trophy, four straight playoff appearances, and an .616 winning percentage. Here's an example of why the system works so well. If an opponent is able to skate the puck out of his zone, and the Bruins center is in position, one defenseman backs up, while the other attacks. This makes it almost impossible for a player to skate through the neutral zone, which almost always leads to a harmless dump in. It's subtle but effective and, at least in my mind, proves the depth and success of Julien's coaching.

The Bruins won the Stanley Cup last year and returned just about everybody on that team. And though they haven't found that defenseman that Kaberle was supposed to be, and Corvo, might be, they've add players with a real hunger to succeed. And Tyler Sequin is better. All told this shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The only question is whether or not the Bruins can maintain these advantages through another playoff run. And with that in mind...

My Radical Suggestion for this Post (seriously, I'm totally like that guy from Moneyball): Start resting players now. I know we're a long way from the playoffs, and nothing is certain in sports (or, well, I guess anything), but I think there is real value to resting players as the season goes along. After the President's Trophy winning Bruins were ousted from the playoffs by Carolina, the extent of the team's injuries slowly made their way public. The Bruins were riddled, not with anything catastrophic, but with the wear and tear of playing a hockey season in the NHL. For some reason, that wear and tear hits every team differently, team to team, season to season. I'm not saying the Bruins should send out the JV team every now and again, just give one or two players one or two nights off as a way to mitigate that wear and tear. (In this sense, a mild injury here and there during the regular season, a la Chara's current leg injury could be beneficial.) Furthermore, the Bruins have two talented young players in Steven Kampfer and Jordan Caron who would benefit from a little extra NHL time. Zack Hamill is also beginning to show his NHL worth. Rotate through the line up and with 2-3 weeks before the playoffs go back to all the starters starting. So the Bruins might lose a few games they otherwise wouldn't have; if it leads to postseason victories it is well worth it.

Review of Pacific Crucible

2011-12-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

History books are about meaning; they're not so much records of what happened (we have records for that) as they are attempts to figure out what all that stuff that happened means, both to us now and to the people who went through them. History books are about emotions, feelings, interpretations, and consequences. Pacific Crucible by Ian Toll is about the war in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway, and if I were on a committee (would anybody like me to be on their committee) it would win a Pulitzer Prize.

The first triumph of the book is how well Toll weaves the different perspectives on the events together into a cohesive narrative. He shows us the admirals deciding strategies and on the next page or the next paragraph he quotes from a sailor or pilot involved in carrying out those strategies. We see the grand abstractions of global strategies hashed out by Churchill, Roosevelt and the other upper echelon leaders, and the fire balls, oil slicks, and carnage of actual battle. We see the pride and fear of the Americans. We see the pride and fear of the Japanese. An event can never be recreated, and even the best approximations are simply mosaics of the event, pictures compiled by little bits of information and opinion. Toll does an amazing job of bringing clarity and depth to the mosaic of these events.

I drew two conclusions about the war in the Pacific from Toll's book. The first is that this movement was almost the WWI of WWII. Much of the horrifying slaughter of WWI was caused by new technologies being applied by people who didn't know how to use them. So you had cavalry charges into machine guns. The air craft carrier was a brand new technology and, in the beginning, neither the Japanese nor the Americans really knew how to use it. Furthermore, they presented a method of warfare entirely foreign to the dominant naval strategic ideologies held by both sides. Part of why the U.S. won the Battle of Midway so convincingly is that they figured out how to use air craft carriers first; strike first, with enough force to prevent a counter attack, get away.

The second was the power of arrogance. In the first few months of the war, the Japanese swept across the Pacific, easily conquering territory after territory, primarily because the European nations simply couldn't believe people who weren't white actually knew how to build and fly planes. The completely unprepared, undermanned, and undertrained outposts were easily annihilated by a Japanese military that included, what was most likely the most advanced and highly trained air force in the world at the time.

But the Japanese were not immune to arrogance. Despite being an island nation with very limited natural resources, they attacked a nation that had, essentially, a limitless capacity to produce the materials of war. Many Japanese believed that the decadent and materialistic Americans simply lacked fighting spirit. It didn't matter how many planes America built if it didn't have enough pilots brave enough to fly those planes into battle.

From this perspective, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was almost a blessing for the Americans, because it humbled them. It gave them a respect for their enemy. It showed them the limitations of their own defenses. It proved they were not invincible. That knowledge girded them for the long war ahead, made it easier to accept early defeat in service the subsequent victory, and drove them to constantly improve their tactics, techniques, and technologies.

I'm an idea guy. I read history books for those big perspectives, those abstract conclusions that help shape my understanding of the world, but Toll is a storyteller as much as he is a thinker and theoretician. There are characters and conflicts, story arcs and grand images, boardroom tension and battlefield carnage. The beauty is that it all comes together. Very few history writers achieve this kind of complex coherent synergy of event and action. There's Barbara Tuchman, of course. And now there's also Ian Toll.

Waiting for the Children of the Cold War to Die

2011-12-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

Did your parents explain the complex political forces involved in the first Gulf War while it was happening? Did they talk about how Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait with weapons we had given him? As an 8 or 9 year old, did you see the now infamous picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Hussein's hand? What did they teach you about taxes? How about the Junk Bonds scandal, or the Savings and Loan scandal? Even as teenagers, what did you learn about the stock market from the dot com bubble?

Of course, none of that came up. We were kids and our parents were busy. We grew up with a simplified version of the events and many of our core beliefs were developed based on whatever simplifications we received. I bring this up, because I'm trying to understand one of the most baffling phenomenon of today's politics.

We already know how to fix our economic problems. We got out of a Depression once before and it wasn't through tax breaks for the wealthy and government deregulation. To summarize: government funded infrastructure projects kept society from falling apart whilst (and at the same time) developing resources for future economic growth (like the electrification of rural America) until WWII provided the motivation for an even greater federal spending spree that finally jump-started the economy and lead, with the aid of several farseeing plans (like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan), to the most prosperous three decades any nation has ever seen. We can do that again. We know how.

Furthermore, pretty much all of the forty or so countries that outrank us in just about every quality of life standard, use the same strategy. To summarize: the national government administers those aspects of society which private markets have proven unable to effectively manage, like health care, education, and a material safety net, paid for by a tax structure that recognizes the reality of modern wealth, while regulating destructive behaviors that would not be automatically corrected by the market, like food safety and environmental concerns, and leaving everything else (which is still quite a lot) to the private markets until they prove themselves unable to handle some specific responsibility.

There. Done. Problems solved. Furthermore, given the vast monetary and material wealth of the United States, there is every reason to assume that if these solutions were implemented, we'd get another one of those big stretches of national prosperity and return to that whole being number one thing so many people spend a lot of time shouting about.

But nobody is doing these things. Even a whisper of a fragrance of a hint of the possibility that maybe we should think about perhaps having a federally administered non-profit health insurance option was a non-starter. So why, if these strategies worked to get us out of the Great Depression, and all these other nations are doing better than us in a lot of meaningful ways, can't we do this stuff?

Dan Bern has a song called Children of the Cold War. In it the speaker asks Moses why the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years. Here is Moses' response: "We waited that the ones who knew firsthand of slavery could die out,/ Be left behind, buried in the ground./ So that no one but the innocent could reach the Promised Land./ We waited for the children of slavery to die." Essentially, those who grew up in slavery had their core beliefs shaped by that experience and nothing was going to undo that shaping, and so, in order to build a society free of slavery, they had to wait for those who grew up with slavery to die.

In the same way that people in my generation were developing our worldviews in the context of a simplified understanding of, well, everything, including the Gulf War, et al, our parents generation developed their worldview in the context of a simplified understanding of everything including the Cold War. In the simplified Cold War, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the enemy of the United States of America, and everything about them is evil. They called themselves “socialist,” and so anything “socialist” is therefor evil. In the same way that we didn't learn all the intricacies of the first Gulf War, like for example, how the US installed government in Iran completely altered the political landscape of the Middle East, our parents' generation didn't learn about the difference between socialism and communism and the particularly brutal brand of fascism practiced by Stalin and his descendents.

Throw in a school of economic thought, a few selfish bastards leveraging a set of ideas for their own personal profit, and an information and education system not too good at complexity and nuance, and you have a political situation in which one entire political party works tirelessly to cut taxes for the wealthy and deregulate the economy regardless of all the historical evidence their policies are absolutely destructive, while outright rejecting any policy that leverages the government spending and regulating power to benefit society.

Dan Bern's point in the song is the same as Moses'; in order for society to progress those whose core beliefs were developed during the Cold War need to, well, step aside. Death might be a bit much, but the problems of the 21st century are not going to solved by a mid-20th century mindset.

The Triumph of Detective Alan Grant

2011-11-17T18:51:00.000-08:00

The Daughter of TimeThe Daughter of Time is the second greatest detective novel ever written. (It's on the internet, it's true now!) Scotland Yard Detective Alan Grant is convalescing in a hospital after breaking his leg by falling through a trap door in a theater, in pursuit of a criminal. In order to help combat the prickles of boredom, Marta, his actress friend, brings him a collection of portrait postcards to examine. Ultimately, it is a portrait of Richard III that draws his attention because, from the face in the picture, Grant expected him to be a judge.

What follows is the story of Grant's investigation of Richard III, aided by an American scholar at the British Museum. Ultimately, Grant concludes that it was much more likely that Henry VI, not Richard III, murdered the princes in the tower. Serious scholars will recognize that Tey is novelizing several major scholarly rehabilitations of Richard III, but that rehabilitation is not really the point of the story.

The Daughter of Time is about how we come to hold beliefs and what we do in the face of information that contradicts them. One of the most revealing discoveries Grant makes is actually in an elementary school text book. On one page, the authors condemn Richard III as England's greatest monster for murdering two children, and on the next they list Henry VII's ruthless elimination of an entire family as though it were all part of normal government bureaucracy. Grant and Carradine (the scholar) also come up with the idea of Tonypandy; a totally fabricated or completely distorted historical event, like the strike in Wales in Tonypandy, the martyrdom of Covenanters in Scotland, and the Boston Massacre, that persist in the cultural memory despite irrefutable contrary proof. Though he never states it this way, Grant discovers that we often prefer the story to the history.

Through it all, Grant demonstrates the clarity of thought, skills in deduction, and adherence to facts that define detective fiction, but that is not his triumph. His greatest moment happens on page 194. Carradine enters completely deflated. “He looked young, and shocked, and bereaved.”

Here's the complete next two paragraphs.
“Grant watched him in dismay as he crossed the room with his listless uncoordinated walk. There was no bundle of paper sticking out of his mail-sack of a pocket today.
“Oh, well, thought Grant philosophically; it had been fun while it lasted. There was bound to be a snag somewhere. One couldn't do serious research in that light-hearted manner way and hope to prove anything by it. One wouldn't expect an amateur to walk into the Yard and solve a case that had defeated the pros; so why should he have thought himself smarter than the historians. He had wanted to prove himself that he was right in his face-reading of the portrait; he had wanted to blot out the shame of having put a criminal on the bench instead of in the dock. But he would have to accept his mistake, and like it. Perhaps he had asked for it. Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, he had been growing a little pleased with himself about his eye for faces.”

Emphasis is so totally mine. It's plenty easy to argue about the mechanisms of false belief when you are examining someone else's belief. But the second that lens is turned around all those mechanisms kick in and you have facts, not hearsay, you have certainty, where there is doubt, and your beliefs are grounded in fact and rationale and not in narrative and emotions. In short, the things that make everyone else believe in ridiculous things, make you do it to.

But not Alan Grant. He hasn't even heard the potential argument yet and he is ready to let go of his belief in the face of fact. To make it even more admirable, Grant further admits the limitations of his efforts, saying essentially that you can't just dick around in history and expect to be know more than everybody else. I don't know if there's a more repeated mistake in human consciousness than not seeing the flaws in your own beliefs, and Detective Alan Grant does not make it. And that makes him a hero.

Why I Wasn't (and Still Aren't) Worried About the Bruins

2011-11-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

Things were looking a little grim for the Bruins. 3-7 and in last place in the Eastern Conference. Yes, that is technically worse than the Islanders. But I wasn't worried. Here's why.

The Quality of the Teams They Beat: Those first three teams were the Tampa Bay Lightning, now with a record of 8-5-2 and still sporting one of the most complete forward lines in the game with LeCavalier, Stamkos, and St. Louis. Then it was the Chicago Blackhawks who are now first in their division with a record of 8-4-3 and had such a successful and intelligent off-season that some analysts (Barry Melrose at least) are thinking about them as Stanley Cup favorites. Then, of course they beat Toronto who had won their first five games and still lead the division. The Bruins went on to beat Toronto again, dealing them their first home loss of the season, and stopped Ottawa's 6 game winning streak before beating up on the Islanders. It wasn't like the Bruins collected wins against the dregs of the league.

They Were in Every Game They Played: With a couple of exceptions the Bruins played even or better against everybody. The “frustration” that everyone was talking about last week came from not winning games they deserved to. Whether it was goalies standing on their heads, fluky goals for their opponents, bad bounces, or a few key mistakes, the Bruins seemed to end up losing no matter how well they played. (OK, I was worried very briefly, after Ottawa, despite being beaten in ever aspect of the game, were ahead 2-1 at the end of the first period.) And to all you new Bruins fans, get used to this. For whatever reason, the Bruins under Claude Julien lose a lot of games they deserve to win. They make up for it, you know, winning the Stanley Cup and all, but in the moment it is face-radiatingly frustrating.

The Only Thing that Matters is Making the Playoffs. It has not been a good couple of years for the number one team in the Eastern Conference. It's been better in the West, but the top seeds have had their share of scares. Yes, home ice advantage is nice, and yes, you'd prefer to play a lesser team in the first round of the playoffs, but there hasn't been that much of a difference in terms of overall quality between 1 and 8, especially when some teams, no matter their overall quality, match-up well against other teams. (Bonjour.) The Bruins don't need to win the President's Cup to have a good shot at the Stanley Cup, they just need to get in.

Three More Reasons: Tim Thomas is still the best goalie on the planet. Zdeno Chara is still the shut down defenseman in the NHL and his puck skills have actually improved over the last three years. Patrice Bergeron is still the best all around, three zone, 200ft x 85ft, hockey player on the planet.

The Big Question the Bruins Need to Answer: What is the difference between Toronto and Montreal? The conventional wisdom is that Montreal's small fast forwards are the primary reason why the Habs have beaten the Bruins consistently over the last few years (but not when it mattered!) and there's a lot of truth to that. They're fast enough to out-skate the defensive structure and they seem to slip under and around Chara, Boychuk, and McQuaid. The only thing is Toronto has a couple of those small, fast forwards too. In fact, they might have the fastest of them all. Phil Kessel is the NHL's top goal scorer and he calls it a good game against the Bruins if he gets more than a shot or two on goal. So why do the Bruins lose to the Habs but beat (badly) the Leafs? My best guess: PK Suban and Carey Price. For some reason Carey Price plays really well against the Bruins. And, despite his reputation for wilting late in the season (wonder what percentage of Montreal games he's played over the last few years) he is a really good goalie, something the Leafs still don't have. And the Leafs don't have a defenseman who can skate the puck like Suban.

One Final Point: Holy crap Tyler Seguin! It's still early yet, but the improvement of his play off the puck is really encouraging. If he keeps improving, he could be the natural goal-creator the Bruins need to win a lot of those games that have slipped out of their grasp in recent years. And that line of Bergeron, Marchand, and Sequin could become one of the most dangerous in the league.

It's the Earnings

2011-11-04T08:50:00.001-07:00

Despite what some might say, the reason for the whole Occupy movement, the 2008 crash in the first place, and the persistence of the recession, all boil down to one simple factor with a lot of complex causes. For the last thirty years, American wages have stagnated. Couple stagnation with inflation, rising health care costs and college tuition, and general increases in the cost of living, and the meaningful earnings of American workers has been going steadily down for thirty years.

Simply put, most Americans have a lot less truly discretionary money than they used to. It's easy to connect that to the financial collapse of 2008. That collapse was caused by a financial market based in the trading of financial products based in sub-prime mortages, i.e. mortgages that, because of the borrowers credit rating, income, or other factors, had a high risk of not being paid off. If wages had kept pace with profits, productivity, cost of living, or even just inflation, more Americans would have had enough money to actually afford homes, and thus, not be sub-prime borrowers in the first place. This inability to afford homes, was, of course compounded by the amount of credit debt most Americans carried and carry. If wages hadn't stagnated, fewer Americans would have had to go into credit card debt in order to make ends meet. That debt, also contributes a great deal to the persistence of the recession, as paying down credit card debt, or really any debt, does not create any new economic activity because it is not new spending. And no matter what the other factors are, people can't really spend money they don't have at a rate needed to jump start a sluggish economy no matter how easy credit might be.

To put it in an almost tautological sound byte, America is in a recession because Americans don't have enough money.

It would be one thing if wage stagnation were part of a long downturn in the American economy. But over that same time period, both productivity and corporate profits went up. It would also be another thing if Americans, for whatever reason, started working less, but Americans now work more than anybody else in the world. We work more than Japan. Remember when it was kind of a joke how hard the Japanese worked?

There are a lot of different factors that caused the wage stagnation including; weakening influence of unions, globalization of labor, transition to a service economy, stagnant minimum wage, and a change in executive culture. Recent executives seem to have developed a radical short-sightedness that focuses only on this quarter's dividends and this year's executive bonus. This is in contrast to the radical, liberal, socialist, east-coast, VW driving, hippie, elitist, Henry Ford, who paid his workers fairly well, under the radical belief that if you want to sell something, people need to have enough money to buy it. The easiest way to ensure that at least some people had enough money to buy his cars was to pay his workers enough money to buy his cars.

And that speaks a little to a possible solution to the problem. This wouldn't need to be a government solution if executives paid their workers well, reflecting the growth of profitability and productivity, the increase of cost of living, or even just inflation. (And corporations now have more cash in hand than perhaps any other time in history, so the money is there for this.) Consumer spending would go up, Americans could get a handle on their debt, whether its mortgage, credit card, student loans or all three, and that would be it for the recession. Obviously not every company is in the position to do this, but those that could and do would stimulate spending in other parts of the economy, contributing to its overall health. But as we learned the last time we went through this, if a behavior is making money right now for the right people, no matter how bad that behavior might be in the long term for everybody, even the companies and shareholders in question, the private market will not correct this behavior. You'd think you wouldn't have to pass a law to tell companies that filling out their “medicine” with rat poison is bad for society and their industry but you do. You'd think you wouldn't have to tell investment brokers that it is a terrible idea to build an entire financial structure on loans that are, by definition, most likely to be defaulted on, but apparently you do. And you'd think you wouldn't have to re-teach American executives the lessons of Henry Ford, but you do.

And this is why responsibility for the 2008 crash rests not only with the investment banks. It is shared by every American corporation that depressed earnings by shipping jobs to countries with less just labor laws or only hiring people part time employees to avoid having to pay benefits or slowly reducing the benefits that help reduce cost of living or laying off workers to maximize short-term profits. The banks just provided one final I-can't-believe-anybody-would-build-a-financial-market-out-of-mortgages-likely-to-be-defaulted-on straw on the camel's back. And this is one of the reasons why the Occupy Wall Street movement is diverse and diffuse and should remain so. Wall Street is a convenient organizing metaphor, but the problem is spread throughout our entire economy.

This means it has to fall back on the government, and I still think the best way to accomplish, productively putting more money in more Americans' pockets is a big old infrastructure project. It injects capital into the consumer economy while improving our economy's ability to transact business. And it doesn't just have to be roads and bridges. Does your company use the Internet? Then it benefits from a government investment in technology and infrastructure in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Federal investment now in the technological infrastructure, like say, a modernized electrical grid to maximize the impact of subsequent renewable energy technology, will stabilize the economy in the short term and lead to economic growth in the future.

And if we have to raise taxes on the top 1% to do it, well; as I said earlier, American wages stagnated while American profits rose, this means there had to be a surplus, and I'm pretty sure we know where it went. A modest increase in tax burden seems like a pretty reasonable thing to ask after the top 1% have spent the last thirty years hoarding the largess of everyone else's hard work.

Rugby World Cup 2011

2011-10-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

I asked for, and did receive from my partner, a subscription to the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which has just finished up. Over the last month and a half I've watched a whole lot of rugby, and a whole lot of it was some of the best sport I've ever seen. It's almost more surprising the sport hasn't caught on in the states. You have big hits, displays of dexterity, creativity of play, and feats of endurance, quite often all performed by the same guy. It's like every player on the pitch is a Troy Paulamalu, except he can also pass and kick. And he's not wearing any pads. It's a sport where both a slick passing, smooth running, underwear model like Sonny Bill Williams (pretty sure he's an android,) and an oafish, heavy metal haired, troll like Castrogiovanni can dominate a game. (No really. Castrogiovanni pretty much single-handedly demolished the U.S. He would have eaten their hearts to gain their strength, but he had already ground their will to live into a fine powder, so didn't really see the point.) Hopefully there will be enough of a TV and internet viewership in the states that NBC (or someone, Versus maybe, seems right up their alley) will start to carry more of it. But enough grandstanding.

The United States Eagles played themselves proud. It was clear that in the parts of the game that demand the most intuitive skill--the skill that is developed over such a long period of time that it becomes part of a player's intuition--they were severely lacking, especially in the scrum. To have a successful scrum at the international level, you need to have forwards who have been scrummaging their whole lives, and the U.S. just doesn't have that yet. The same thing goes for the kicking game, though this gap between the U.S and the first tier nations is not so stark. Until we start developing rugby players at a much younger age, we'll be on the outside looking in. (More on this later.)

But, and I can say this because I watched damn near every single game in the tournament, the United States was the best tackling team in the tournament. Their match against Ireland was awe-inspiring. They didn't have the skill or the strategy to beat Ireland, but they tackled so well, they hit guys so hard, that if not for two huge mistakes they might would have made it a very close game. Every time an Irish player touched the ball, he was immediately decked. Their efforts earned the rightful admiration of the announcers. They played their guts out in their other three games as well, beating Russia, running their second-stringers against Australia, and then doing alright against Italy until the game went to the scrum.

I don't particularly want the U.S. to win the World Cup. I can enjoy the sport and root for them, even when they're not #1. (Man, were Bruins tickets easy to get five years ago.) And frankly, I find it annoying and arrogant that we seem to focus only on being the super best at everything in the whole world of the Universe. (Anybody remember the “2010” plan where the best high school soccer players were drafted directly into the MLS in the hopes of fielding a team that could win the soccer world cup by 2010. Yeah, me neither.) However, I think it would be pretty cool for American rugby if opponents made sure to bring extra ice to every match against the Eagles. We might never be good enough to win a cup, but if we continue to hit like this, we'll leave our mark on every tournament we're in.

One for the coaches. Ending a 24 year drought, the favored New Zealand All-Blacks won the tournament. Though they were the most talented, player for player, team in the tournament—and this will make all the youth anything coaches happy—they won the tournament through discipline. Against teams that just didn't have the man-power to play with them, the All-Blacks scored a lot of tries and showed a lot of flash, but against the more talented teams like Australia and France, the All-Blacks won simply by giving up far fewer penalty kick chances than their opponents. They took chances in their offensive end trying to win the ball back, but once they got into reasonable kicking range (you kick penalty kicks from where the penalty occurs) they played it safe. The result of this strategy is they slowly but surely pulled away from their opponents. And when they got the chance to show their flare they did.

I watched a lot of rugby in the last month and pretty much every game offered something spectacular, even for the second tier teams. There was the five minutes when Namibia had the greatest kicker in the world, the Argentina winger who became un-tacklable for ten seconds and broke Scotland, the Tonga defeat of France in the biggest upset of the tournament, the All-Blacks winning it at home, and of course, that first hit the US laid on the Irish, that told Ireland they were in for a game.

(Finally, American commentators are, by and large, an abomination of the spoken word, compared to the commentary offered for the rugby world cup. I don't know where the difference comes from, but it is downright embarrassing.)

Cooking for Gamers: Stock

2011-10-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

Making stock might be the perfect cooking activity for gamers, or really for anyone who has some hobby or enjoys some activity that keeps them in the house for hours at a time. It's easy in terms of technique, it's almost impossible to screw up, and, if you're in to the whole sustainability thing, it extracts the absolute maximum amount of food value from your vegetables and meat. And if you happen to not be the primary cook in your household, this is a great way to contribute to the overall health and quality of your food, because not only does homemade stock taste better than store bought, in liquid, powder, or cube form, there is so much less sodium in it that it actually lowers someone else's risk of heart disease while you eat it.

The first ingredient: a bag in the freezer. If you eat a lot of fresh vegetables keep the scraps. Stalks from greens like kale and chard, carrot tops (though we find the carrot greens give a swampy flavor to our stock), parsnip peels, onion skins, parsley stems, mushroom stems, etc. Nearly all vegetables that can be boiled, don't have really strong flavors of their own like peppers, or flavors you don't personally like, aren't so starchy they'll turn the stock into a sludge, like potatoes, and are not somewhat gassy like the various permutations of cabbage (I know, which is like half the vegetable world, but still) can be part of a stock. Just collect them all in a bag and stick it in the freezer. If you eat meat, keep the bones/carcass in a bag in the freezer as well. You can also just buy carrots, celery, and onions, or chicken wings, if you don't generate the raw materials on your own. When you can no longer fit Red Baron's Pizzas in the freezer, it's time to make stock.

Second ingredient: The biggest pot you have. Dump your bags in aforementioned pot with water, some fresh carrots, onions, and celery (everyone knows the French for that, right? Good.) a bay leaf or two and some garlic. Because we usually pressure can our stock in quarts and we've got a big old pot, we'll usually measure out six or seven quarts of water, but there's nothing wrong with just filling the thing up.

Then put the spurs to it and get your game started, but don't go on any quests yet. If you've got a big session planned, this would be the time to lay in supplies at the computer/gaming console, get connected to your teammates or search for any tips or cheats you might want to use. (Well, you might not want to use any, but I'm not very good at video games, so I usually keep a walk through handy.)

Once the stock has reached a boil, set it to simmer and go do something else for a couple of hours. No really. As long as you don't leave it unattended for so long that all of the water evaporates and you start burning the mass of disintegrating vegetation, you really can't screw this part up. Sure you can boil the stuff long enough that it breaks down more than you might want it do, but that just means you're straining will need to be more meticulous. When is it done? I don't know. When you reach a good save point. When you have to go to the bathroom. When you lose your internet connection. But seriously, folks, if the fresh carrots you put in are mushy, they have, in the words Saint Alton Brown (Hallowed be thy multitasker) “given it their all.” We'll often do two or three rounds of stuff in one pot, just to make the stock more flavorful and free up more space in the freezer.

Once the stock is done, fish out all the clumps of stuff and strain out all the bits of stuff. You'll need to cool it down before the next step. In a perfect world you'll be able to get the stock out of the “danger zone” (40-140 F) as quickly as possible. You can put it in a cooler with ice and then transfer it to your fridge. In my world, we have to leave it out overnight and then put it in the fridge to finish cooling. If you're making veggie stock, you'll need to do this in order to season it properly. If you've got meat in it, you'll need this so you can take the fat out. The fat will congeal in the top and you should just be able to pull it out with your hands. (And don't throw that out. It's useful. And healthier than margarine.) For the game, now you can really get into something involved and totally play all night. I guess everybody else can catch up on their reading, or Dr. Who, or sleep, or whatever it is the kids do these days.

Since our stock has been in the danger zone for, like ten hours, we bring it to a rolling boil for at least ten minutes before we do anything else to it. Then we season it. Salt (a lot more than you would think but still way less than store brought). Pepper. Herbiage, like rosemary, thyme, oregano, or really anything that isn't basil, sage, cilantro, or something with its own strong distinct flavor. (Probably would avoid mint, while we're avoiding things). Taste and adjust seasoning. Package how you see fit. You can can it, freeze it, or use it. I'd advise leaving the last 1/8-1/4 an inch in the pot, because there's probably a lot of detritus in it, that even the finest strainer or cheese cloth will have missed.

And there you have it. Your rice pilaf will be so much better. As will all your soups, or hot pots, or really anything that uses stock. And most of the time you were playing video games.

My Occupy Wall Street FAQ

2011-10-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Pretty much every mainstream article or other coverage of the Occupy Wall Street actions asks the same few questions. Here are my answers the those questions. And they're just my answers. Others who support the actions like I do, including those actually occupying, might give different answers.

What are you protesting against?

This question usually gets asked in the opening paragraph and what is kinda funny about this question is that the journalist almost always answers the question in the exact same opening paragraph. We're protesting a system of radical wealth concentration that hurts the vast majority of the population. That's it. All the chaos, the ambiguity, the “pet projects” the articles go on to list are just descriptions of particular manifestations of that damage. Recent college grads and college students will focus on coming out of school with crippling debt into an economy devoid of well-paying jobs despite years of increased productivity, substantial corporate profits, and massive (and growing) executive salaries. Unions will obviously focus on the erosion of their ability to ensure fair wages and safe working conditions for their workers. Whether it's teachers, nurses, small businesses owners, or people who don't think big campaign corporate campaign contributions and corporate lobbyists should have so much influence on policy, this system hurts, well, just about everybody, and so everyone describes the particular effect the system has on them. The more accurate conclusion to draw from the many different voices heard at the Occupy actions is not that the actions are disjointed and chaotic, but that our system is so destructive, people are lining to tell the world how it is screwing them.

Why aren't you focusing on the 2012 elections?

Didn't we try the whole election thing before? In 2008, on a somewhat liberal platform, promising to change the system we're occupying against, Barack Obama was elected with 54% of the popular vote, way more than George W. Bush received in either of his elections. More on theelection here. Democrats around the country rode in on Obama's coattails to the tune of a majority in the House and almost a super-majority in the Senate. Mitch McConnell, out loud and in public, said the Republicans' goal for the next four years was, not helping the economy out of the greatest recession since The Great Depression, but making sure Obama wouldn't get elected again. To that end, they used every procedural trick allowed by the Senate; anonymous holds on Obama's nominations, filibusters and threatened filibusters on every single meaningful piece of legislation offered by the Democrats, to delay, distort, and diffuse every attempt to put that extremely popular platform into action. Furthermore, as long as the same lobbyists are in Washington, it really doesn't matter that much who we elect to Congress. Furthermore, odds are that pretty much every campaign took donations, and thus are somewhat beholden to, the 1% at the heart of this whole problem. To use some businesseese, thus far, electoral politics hasn't provided much of a Return on Investment.

What do you hope to accomplish?

Maybe thousands of Americans will decide to move their money from too-big-to-fail banks to locally owned banks and credit unions. (I know I'm thinking about it.) Maybe people will start shopping with the 99%, the locally owned independent retailers who, despite being told over and over again by everyone in Congress that they are the backbone of the American economy, never seem to get tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts. Maybe the next time Walmart or Costco or Amazon or some other huge company comes to a city begging for tax breaks, direct subsidies, and low or no interest loans, the people of the city will stand up and prevent it. And there could be some policy results. Nancy Pelosi seems to like us, and the Buffet Rule is about as popular as a piece of hypothetical legislation can get. Or maybe some of the 1% will decide they want their children to inherit more than trust funds. Maybe they'll want to help pass on a just and sustainable world where the best succeed, most live in comfort, and everyone lives in dignity.

But perhaps there's something even more basic that can be accomplished. The American economy has been acting like an addict. Through every boom we think we're invincible and after every bust we promise it will never happen again. We tell ourselves that if just stop drinking during the week, we'll be able to get our lives together. And then we say, after the wedding that's it, we're done. But it never works out like that. We forget our mistakes. We mistake a quick high for a full recovery and go right back to buying, selling, and trading with abandon. The first step in any recovery is admitting the full depth of your problem. In that sense, Occupy Wall Street is not a movement or a protest, but an intervention.

Let's Get This Over With: 2011 Red Sox Edition

2011-10-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

Let's get this over with.

I wrote the bulk of this post last week, not too long after the most statistically unlikely occurrence that has ever occurred in human sport occurred, before Tito left and the pace of Epstein speculation picked up. It doesn't change much of the points I make, but I think greatly decreases the likelihood of some of what I'd like to see happening. Looking forward the 2012 Red Sox are still one of the most talented teams in the league and if their pitching can stay healthy, they should have a successful year. The impact of the 2011 season I think is really going to show in keeping that talent together and in the long term success of the team. They've locked up some important players, but not all of them. With Tito gone, and Epstein likely out, I wonder if they'll be able to keep Ellsbury once his contract is up, if they'll be able to keep Papelbon, or at least, get some kind of value for him in a trade. What about Bard, and some of the other younger players who don't have long term deals yet? And what about Tek and Wake? Will they bother to come back (more on this below)? Will a new GM, pick up their 1 year options? And speculating on other moves, if the clubhouse was as bad as is being implied, will Boston continue to be a team players want to play for.

So, below is what I wrote last week, tweaked a little bit to reflect the new developments.

I'm pretty conservative when it comes to sports. I'm willing to give players and coaches a chance to prove themselves, even when they've been struggling. I prefer stability in my lineups. I'm a real fan of the home town discount. I was one the people who argued in favor of keeping Claude Julien and Tim Thomas and I think Tito should manage the Sox for many years to come. (Goddamnit!) I think there is something ridiculous when armchair coaches give themselves pulsating aneurisms condemning a player after a bad week.

So the next paragraph is going to be a bit out of character. (Spleen!)

Carl Crawford has no place on the 2012 Boston Red Sox. There are a lot of things about his performance I'm willing to forgive. But something is wrong when a player with far less talent, making far less money, has more big at bats, in far fewer at bats than Carl Crawford did. Under no circumstances, where both players are healthy, should Darnell McDonald come through in the clutch more than Carl Crawford. Did I mention that the rookie Reddick had more big hits and he only came up on any permanent basis after J.D. Drew was injured? Hell, Ryan Lavarnway might have more clutch hits in his three games than Crawford had all season. A .240 batting average can mean a lot of different things, but it doesn't mean much if every time you come up with 2 outs and runners on, your fan base feels a sinking feeling.

But even with the lack of offense I wasn't ready to send Crawford packing until last week. Even though he didn't get an error for it, there is absolutely no reason why a professional left-fielder should have missed that catch. Of course, Crawford making that catch doesn't guarantee the Red Sox win that game, but it does guarantee that we don't go through the worst 64 sports-related seconds imaginable. And the throw to the plate was the kind you tell your therapist about. It was the single most important defensive play in his career and he absolutely wilted.

And he missed the exact same catch earlier in the week. A miss that cost the Red Sox two runs and the game. In case, there is any doubt the level of disdain I feel for Crawford's effort I will say this. Manny Ramirez would have made those catches. Manny Ramirez.

At the moment the Red Sox might be able to pitch a “not the right fit,” deal with someone to send Crawford elsewhere and, in doing so, might actually get a decent return on their investment. But, honestly, I'd be fine just clearing the books of his salary so the Sox could spend that money on somebody willing to, I don't know, throw his body into the center field wall in his attempt to make a difficult catch at the tail end of an MVP caliber season.

Enough of that. Looking forward. The first thing I would do is pick up Varitek's one year option. If there is one important lesson the Sox learned this year that can be applied in the future, is that resting your catchers leads to better offensive production. It makes sense. Catcher is such a grueling position on the defensive side, that very few catchers have the legs beneath them when they get to the plate to make any meaningful contributions. Between Tek and Salty the Red Sox got 27 Home Runs and 92 RBI. (If you throw Lavarnway in there, the numbers go up to 29 and 100.) Imagine what kind of salary that guy would get. (Hi Joe Mauer.) Frankly, I would sign Tek and bring up Lavarnway so the Red Sox carry and rotate three catchers.

The rotation would go 4-1, 3-2, with Salty being the 4, Lavarnway being the 1, and Salty being the 3, and Tek and Lavarnway splitting the 2. This would keep Salty fresh and give Lavarnway a chance to play the game with Varitek around. (Can you think of a better way to develop a young catcher?) And if they want to get Lavarnway a few more at bats, he can DH for a game here and there. And Tek goes right to bench coach in 2013. (Though now, who knows if he or future GM and M would want that.)

Besides the Crawford removal, I actually wouldn't do that much in the off-season at this point. I would still look around for a true starting short stop. I might also see if there are any developing pitchers available. But, we should remember there was a good reason why everyone picked them to win the AL east. Even with losing two of their five starting pitchers and a couple of other key starters, and the under performance of Crawford, it still took a convergence of events that Nate Silver calculated the odds of happening at 1 to 278 million, to keep them out of the playoffs. I would also pick up Wakefield's option, if only to give him the chance to announce his retirement mid-season and get the curtain call he deserves.

One more dire prediction. If the Red Sox start slow, the Fenway sell-out streak ends. For fun, let's just say it ends on June 23. Now to watch the Bruins game and banner raising that I recorded.

Review of Lightning Rods

2011-09-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

Lightning Bolts is a strange book. If I hadn't read a bunch of Cesar Aira and Tao Lin this year it would easily be the strangest book I've read, but, well, that's how I roll. It can also be an uncomfortable book for a couple of different reasons. The premise is simple; down on his luck salesman Joe, taps into his own sexual fantasy to create a service based on providing top-performing heterosexual men with perfectly anonymous sex as an outlet for drives that are usually expressed by actions now considered sexual harassment. After all the usual struggles of a start up business, Joe's endeavor ends up being extremely successful. He even uses it as a springboard for a tangential business providing height adjustable toilets. And from the beginning to the absolute end, Joe believes he has made the world a better place.

It's easy to see why some people would be uncomfortable by the very premise of the book. Even my partner was skeeved out and she's read The Story of the Eye, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and (AND!) Justine. (Look those up.) Even with all precautions that Joe takes to create a situation where sex is no different than any other bodily function, a lot of readers are going to be uncomfortable at the very idea.

The discomfort is compounded by the narrative style. The entire book; conversations, trains of thought, descriptions of events, is written in what I like to think of as “corporate calculated casual;” the fake friendly buddy buddy diction of negotiations, conference presentations, and working lunches. The diction is not informal because the participants have a relationship; it is informal because a consultant at some point realized that an informal tone is more successful in making sales. Talking like a buddy with someone drops their negotiation barriers, because they feel like they're talking with a buddy. Throughout the book, Joe convinces people of his protect by agreeing with every one of their objections and concerns until he has swung them all the way around to agreeing with him. Though DeWitt (author of The Last Samurai) never confronts the idea directly, the style of the book is a satiric and vicious condemnation of the nature of our business.

But Joe is not without his points. And one that he makes presents a major metaphysical challenge. I'll paraphrase it. Imagine a man who was born with a high level of testosterone. Imagine further that he was raised in a patriarchal household where no respect is shown to women whatsoever. His father is a blatant and loud chauvinist. Depending on where he lives, he might not encounter a different world view in high school, and depending on where he goes to college (and perhaps even what he majors in) he might not encounter a different world view until he gets to the workplace, where his attitude constitutes a substantial liability to his employer. If we are expected to accommodate disabilities, and a man ends up an asshole through genetics and upbringing, why should accommodations not be made for him?

What we have here is a very touchy example of a basic question of free will. The question it asks is: what about us are we responsible for? If the chauvinist is never taught a different way of viewing the world, at what point do we hold him responsible for his chauvinism? If there are some actions that an individual must always be responsible for, what are they and how do we decide what they are? And DeWitt, to her credit, doesn't give us any help in answering the question.

DeWitt has written a book that's hard to enjoy. Through the content and the style she has posed challenges and questions that are uncomfortable to confront. After awhile, that networking style, becomes just as impersonal and alienating as the Lightning Rod system itself. But that doesn't mean this isn't a good book. I think there is something to impactful books that aren't enjoyable to read. To put it simply, sometimes life isn't enjoyable and so sometimes the books we read shouldn't be enjoyable either. I certainly wouldn't make those books the majority of anyone's reading, but I would suggest at least trying Lightning Rods. It's a cruel satire of a cruel system of being and the challenges it poses are real opportunities to learn something about ourselves.

Reviews of Reamde and The Windup Girl

2011-09-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

I recently finished two excellent works of entertainment writing, both with the potential to contribute more than just a few hours of fun to the reader's consciousness. Here are reviews for Neal Stephenson's Reamde and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

I won't try to summarize Reamde. It's one of those works that the second you start telling someone else what has happened, it sounds preposterous, ridiculous, and absurd. But it all makes sense while you're reading it. Like all Stephenson's work, the writing is of such a high quality, the characters are so interesting, and the events are so thrilling, that he convinces you it's just a lot more fun if you go along with the coincidences than if you spend the whole book questioning their likelihood.

Instead of a summary, I'll give you some keywords to give you a sense of the story; Welsh Islamic Jihadist, MMORPG with shockingly realistic topography and tectonics, Chinese hackers, Eritrean refugee orphan adopted into a mid-west American family, lunatic Russian mobsters, MI6, and the American/Canadian border in the Pacific Northwest. Oh, and radical American isolationists with lots of guns. Oh, and a Boston born NSA agent stationed in Manilla. Did I mention everything that happens, happens because of a relatively benign virus called “REAMDE” that only affects serious players of T'Rain, the aforementioned MMORPG.

The perfect way to read this is probably to just take a week off from work and blast right through it. You always want to know what happens next, not because Stephenson plays cliff-hanger games, but because the characters are so interesting and whatever has just happened in the book was so thrilling and entertaining, you know you're going to enjoy whatever time you spend reading it.

Reamde is not without its more subtle themes. Otherness plays a huge part in the story, as the protagonist, Zula (the Eritrean orphan), is often saved by being a black woman in a situation where she is the only black woman, and the primary antagonist is a black Welsh Jihadist (Yep. Welsh). There's also the basic moral tension between crime and law, present in any good thrillers, as well as Stephenson's usual insightful speculations about technology, society, and economy.

In a perfect world, all bestsellers are of this quality, written with an attention to detail, respect for the reader's intelligence, and actual skill with sentences. I'm sure you've noticed its not a perfect world. Though it is filled with James Pattersons and Dan Browns, we can at least take some comfort in the fact that we have at least one Neal Stephenson.

Catastrophic climate change brought on by burning fossil fuels. A food system destroyed by genetic manipulation and unscrupulous mega-agr-business. Rapidly mutating plagues and viruses. The world of The Windup Girl, as in the best sci-fi, is on of the possible futures to our actual present. The story takes place in Thailand. By shutting themselves off from the rest of the world, destroying invasive species, and burning villages with hints of plague, Thailand was able to restore, to some degree, its indigenous agriculture and create a sustainable economy, based in carbon neutral energy and strict control over their seed stock.

The story picks up when all of that is at risk. Foreign businesses and ambitious members of the Thai government are working to erode those protections, and open the Thai markets to foreign investors and foreign genetically engineered foods. One of the major characters is Anderson Lake, a foreign businessman looking to do just that. Lake works for a major agribusiness based in Des Moines. Under the cover of a kink spring factory that is developing a major breakthrough in energy storage, his major goal is to gain access to the Thai seed bank. To do so, he's willing to put the factory workers at risk of plague and facilitate a military coup.

His opposite is Jaidee, a charismatic former Muay Thai boxer, who is the inspirational leader of the Environmental Ministry, the arm of government that created and enforces Thailand's isolation. Jaidee is brash, idealistic, and uncompromising and as a result comes into conflict with those forces, seeking to undo the influence of the Environmental Ministry. Because he is an uncompromising idealist, it isn't hard to figure out what happens to him.

For much of the book, Emiko, The Windup Girl herself, plays a small role. Windups are genetically engineered humans, generally made in Japan, and because they are genetically altered, they are illegal in Thailand; “mulched” if discovered. When we meet her, and for much of the book, she is working as a dancer and a prostitute.

Bacigalupi does a brilliant job building his world. Just like spending a lot of time living in a foreign country, you pick up the terms. Bacigalupi doesn't go out of his way to explain the terms or the rituals, they just come up naturally and you absorb their meaning, their meaning from the context. It's the best technique for building a complete world without writing a guidebook into your novel.

At its core, The Windup Girl is about societal forgetting, about how as past problems fade from prominence, many forget both their sources and their solutions. In The Windup Girl, Anderson and the Trade Ministry, forget that isolation from the radically globalized economy saved Thailand from the rampant manipulation of the world's networks of life by foreign companies. Certain actions caused the problems and since the problems have been contained, those certain, very profitable for some, actions are being taken again. Sound familiar? Today in the U.S. we've forgotten what lead us to the Great Depression and what got us out of it. The Windup Girl should be thought of with the other great warning novels including The Sheep Look Up and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Novak's Look

2011-09-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

On October 1, 1932 in the fifth inning in Game 3 of the World Series, Babe Ruth pointed out towards center field at Wrigley and hit the next pitch at least 440 feet. It is an absolutely iconic moment in sports. One could argue it is the most iconic moment in American sport. The outsized personality of Babe Ruth, the unabashed arrogance, the walking the walk of some of the biggest talk ever committed to film. People around the world, in wiffle ball games, video games, office contests, and other random situations, will now point vaguely in front of them to “call their shot.” Now imagine that instead of Charlie Root, throwing that pitch, it was Cy Young.

On Saturday September 10, 2011, Novak Djokavic had just gone down two match points to Roger Federer. It was the fifth set of the semi-finals of the US Open. Federer has won more majors than any other man in tennis history. He had gone up 2 sets to none and had won 182 of his previous 183 matches in which he had won the first two sets. Federer went up 40-15 on an ace, and is, arguably the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. The crowd was cheering for Federer because many still remembered Djokovic's antics at the US Open a few years ago, because Federer is a great tennis player, and because they might witnessing the resurgence of one of the word's great athletes. Then this happened:

After a series of “I got this” smirks and, “Alright, if that's going to be the way he's going to play it” nods and perhaps a quick “Fuck this guy, he does commercials for private jets,” Djokavic settles into the standard ready to return position and hits what has to be one of the single greatest returns in the history of the game of tennis. Going through Djokovic's mind had to be how he earned the No. 1 ranking in tennis, how he had beaten Federer before, how Federer had his time and now it was Novak's time. The audience is stunned into a rumbling silence, because they were ready to cheer the return of Federer to the top of the tennis world, and then it wasn't just that Djokavic hit it back, he flicked his wrist and returned a pretty good serve at a physics stretching angle, and it is only when Djokavic casually raises his arms in a gesture correctly described as “Hey, I can hit some pretty big shots too,” that the audience realizes their minds had just be blown. That's how blown their minds were. Djokavic's towel guy wasn't even around. And the return absolutely shatters Federer. And then what was a foregone conclusion becomes a foregone conclusion only inverted.

If you're still unsure about just how amazing that return was, listen to Federer press conference. Its like watching a particularly sensitive child come to grips with his dad running over the bike, that he just bought with his own chore money. In a very roundabout, almost Luongonian way, Federer says it was a lucky shot and mumbles away until its time for him to, I don't know, decide which private jet to take home.

It had already been an excellent match but that look made it iconic. Sport does the moment perhaps better than anything else in human society. Because of how it is compartmentalized and because of how it is recorded,we are able to find and preserve these moments. In some ways, the whole moment is a lot closer to Bobby Orr soaring through the air than Babe Ruth calling his shot, but however you ultimately categorize it, Novak smirked his way into the annals of sport.

The Muppets Take Ulysses

2011-09-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to get this idea out of my head since Riss came up with it last week. With every stray brain moment I have I seem to be expanding the concept, refining i, developing it, exploring it. And it's pretty close to the only thing we've been talking about in that time as well. Riss doesn't talk sports, we're reading different books, and it's a whole lot more satisfying than talking about the state of the world. The thing is, once you make that first initial breakthrough, once you see that first character equivalent, the whole idea seems so perfect that it makes you wonder if there were some underlying intentions. The idea: A Muppets version of Ulysses by James Joyce.

Stay with me. You like The Muppets right? So I'll start the post where Riss started the idea. I'm going to describe a fictional female character for you. She's a confident, voluptuous would be the term, vibrant woman, secure in her body and her sexuality, with an almost aggressive sense of life, who happens to make her living as a singer. This, of course, is Miss Piggy. But it is also Molly Bloom. I'm going to say this again just so I can watch myself type it, Miss Piggy and Molly Bloom are essentially the same character. Really the only difference between the two is that Miss Piggy's volume is set to “vaudeville” while Molly Bloom's is set to “novel.”

If you're familiar with both, you're probably seeing how it all falls together, like in that last scene in The Usual Suspects, but, well, most people aren't so I'll go on to describe another fictional character, this one male. He is kind, decent, industrious in his own way, committed to doing his best and making the world a better place even if he's not entirely sure how to do it, and can be a bit of a know-it-all mixed with an occasionally annoying dash of milquetoast. Said character could be none other than Kermit the Frog. And Leopold Bloom!

Also, the central conflict in the relationship between Miss Piggy and Kermit is that Miss Piggy is always looking for a formal consummation of the relationship, getting married, and, for reasons that are never made clear, despite his obvious love for Miss Piggy, Kermit is never ready to go all the way. The central conflict in the relationship between Leopold and Molly is that they haven't had sex, consummated their relationship if you catch my drift, in nine years, and not for lack of Molly's effort. In both cases, there is an Odysseus wandering far from his Penelope.

What's especially interesting to me about this (not just because it allows me to combine two of my favorite things ever) is that this idea renders an unfilmable novel, filmable. The problem with Ulysses as a movie is that it is a novel of the interior. Bloom's character is developed and demonstrated through presentations of his thoughts, dreams, and fantasies. We are shown what kind of person he is by sharing his thoughts. But long experimental presentations of thought don't translate well in film.

However, by having Kermit play Bloom, Bloom's character is established through Kermit's character. Kermit brings 40 years of character history to whatever work he is called upon to perform. You don't need to show his thoughts to show his character because his past does it automatically. Same thing with Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Sam the Eagle, Link Hogthrob and all the other Muppets. The unfilmable intellect doesn't need to be filmed when the character is assumed by the figure portraying it.

Furthermore, the more visually bizarre aspects of Ulysses like the Circe episode where characters change gender, the setting changes, flights of fantasy are indulged, and inanimate objects talk, are already part of the Muppet universe. The director doesn't have to do anything special to create a scene where a belt buckle talks, because in the Muppet universe nearly everything talks. This inherent accepted strangeness also makes it easier to deal with the wild style of an episode like Oxen in the Sun. The language in Oxen in the Sun progresses through all of the stages in English literature, which is awfully hard to film without looking silly; unless you show Kermit the Frog and the other characters in costumes from the various time periods, or have other Muppets costumed from different time periods milling in the background.

For some reason, Muppets in particular engender an imagination permission that allows us to completely accept the absolutely ridiculous. Furthermore, (yes, there's another furthermore) the Muppet archetypes also allow the filmmaker to communicate some of the complexity of Ulysses. For example, in one episode Bloom goes to a restaurant to get some lunch but is disgusted seeing all the men stuffing their faces with all manner of food. In a book you can describe the men and the food. You have time to build the impression of disgust. But movies don't offer that time and so you can never get to the essence of this moment. Unless, of course, you can show Kermit look into a restaurant filled with pigs eating out of troughs swilling steins of beer. You see! You see! And Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem playing in the bar in the Sirens episode. And think of the cameos!

If you do see, and I accept that many will not, you're already filling in the blanks. Stephen is played by Fozzie (more on that later in another forum), the Citizen is Sam the Eagle, Simon is Rolf, Mary Lou is Gerty, Gonzo is Bella/Bello (the role of a lifetime) and Wayne is Haines (and, it's an actual black panther of course).

So two things, since I like to try and find some kind of conclusion for the end of these posts. Yes, thinking about this is a ton of fun for me, but I legitimately believe The Muppets take Ulysses would be an excellent movie. And you'll be seeing more of this. I mean, if you want to you'll be seeing more of this, because Riss and I are going to pass some of our idle hours on a blog devoted to this. Drop me a comment if this is something you'd be interested in participating in. (Any storyboard artists out there? Brian Henson is that you.) So, introducing the, at least to Riss and me, the infinitely amusing new internet project The Muppets Take Ulysses.

Interview with Daniel Lawless of Plume

2011-09-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

Plume is a new online poetry magazine that is two issues old and already publishing some of the biggest and best contemporary poets; Rae Armantrout, Thomas Lux, Charles Bernstein, G.C. Waldrep and more. (Including, soon, me!) Plume is dedicated to publishing the very best of contemporary poetry, and I've to to say, so far so good. They are are highly selective, offering twelve poems per monthly issue; poems with a sense of the uncanny, foremost, and of the fineness of language, the huge absences to which it points and partakes of, and the urgency and permanence of its state of departure — the coattails forever –just now—disappearing around the corner. Or as one of the rotating quotes, this one from Jean-Michel Maulpox, “Poetry is completely divided between the desire for the country that does not exist and the need for common ground: between elsewhere and cliché; its two contradictory genies.'

Daniel Lawless is a poet and editor of Plume. He teaches at Saint Petersburg College. Below is an interview with Daniel conducted via email.

Why start an online poetry magazine?

For practical – monetary – reasons, of course, it’s easier than print; even print on demand requires one to sell – not my strong suit. Why, more general: a mixture of base and not so base motives: to duck school committee work; to allow my mother before she dies and some long-disappointed friends to believe I accomplished something (as if there was something to accomplish…another discussion); to pass the time; to put to some use a lifetime of reading and writing; as in writing a poem, simply to make a beautiful object.

As an editor, what do you look for in a poem? Do you imagine potential readers? Do you look for quality beyond your own personal taste? Or are you honestly subjective, publishing the poems that connect with you?

As our mission statement notes, I look for a sense of the uncanny, of the fineness of language, to be written by someone keener than I in some ways or many ways. Not so much a message: I do not wish to be instructed, unless beauty itself is instructive, and it is. The image that makes one want never to write again or to close the book or turn the page and pick up the pen, figuratively or literally. Potential readers, yes: mostly dead or soon to be so: Trakl, Cendars, Parra, Transtromer, Cassia, Ponge and Michaux, Follain, Canneti, Cioran, Bly, Li Po, etc. I would hope I look for quality beyond my own tastes, but I doubt I do. I publish what I like – why else – aside from the reasons given above, would I bother? And it is a bit of bother.

Is there anything a poem or poet can do or not do, that will guarantee rejection?

I’m not a huge fan of nature poetry: I see no greatness in knowing the names of things –plants, fish--though many do and can argue almost convincingly that such is an intrinsic, even a primary good. The poetry I loved first was Surrealism: Benedikt's great anthology. The translations were so flat – I liked how they contrasted with the extravagance of the imagery. When I learned to read French I was vastly disappointed by the musical quality of the work. So – I prefer a detached, observational style – Simic, Ponge, again – ipso facto, sentimental, didactic, pastoral, spiritual – likely not to be well-received. And formal approaches manhandled.

How do you think about “America Poetry?” Do you think about a coherent entity and compare it with entities from other eras? Do you think about individual poets who happen to be writing now? Is there a way to think about “American Poetry,” or should we only think about individual poems and poets?

If anything, I stayed away from American poetry when I was young; I think Sontag drew an entire
generation of poets and writers toward Western Europe. Part of this was inevitable rebellion against my mentor/teacher (and later my fellow grad students): a lover and crony of the Beats, pal of Thomas Merton. (Also the lure of the exotic, the obscure – which these were at the time, at least in my world of Louisville, Kentucky.) I thought of some books as coherent entities: Robbe-Grillet’s For a New Novel, the Artaud Anthology, the Contemporary European Poetry anthology with the white cover, Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life where I discovered Cendrars, Benedikt’s Prose Poem anthology, Leaping Poetry, Barthes’ Mythologies, magical realism, Borges, Tzara, Guillevic, Voznesensky, Mishima, Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Guy Davenport essays : these were nations to me. Compare? Only in the most superficial way in which one compares the music of one’s youth to that which comes later --and finds inferior despite one’s public rehearsal of its minutia and over-loud praise. Am I wrong to think non-US poets take more chances, generally? And fail more often and succeed more spectacularly?

What are the most exciting things happening in poetry today? The most frustrating?

The usual complaint, which can be made of all the arts, I suppose – so many bands, so many films, so many this or that: a surfeit. Not too long ago, it seemed, one could know all of the poets worth knowing, might have assembled them in a Holiday Inn Express conference room. No longer, of course. Whether that is exciting or frustrating, I’m not sure.

Who is the one poet you wish everyone was reading?

Not a poet, but “the last philosopher in Europe” as he has been called: Emil Cioran – an aphorist of the first order, a master of knee-slapping bleakness, to use a phrase from my first Editor’s note, one who had read everything worth reading, like Steiner, also one with a horrific, troubling past to say the
least (Grass comes to mind), but a gorgeous stylist; one can, in reading him, if one is a particular type of person, only nod one’s head in assent until one becomes faintly ridiculous, like one of those mechanical water-sipping bird toys.

What is the responsibility of the poet to the world? Do poetry editors have different responsibilities? If so what are those?

The poet is responsible to nothing (except to his craft? on second thought, no, not even that) and no one: society or humanity least of all. Editors have no responsibility either – it seems silly to use those words in the same sentences – though many, many do, I know, serious, talented writers and editors. I merely say that, for me, no. One tries one’s best, one tries to be fair, to be discerning, but in the end whether one does or not is not a matter of responsibility, but temperament.

In terms of a poet's responsibility. Does poetry make the world a better place? Is this even a useful question to ask and if not, in terms of understanding poetry, what is a useful question to ask?

I am tempted to say that which distracts us from the inevitability of our demise, and does no harm to others in the general sense, is never a bad thing. I am great believer in distraction: that most things are little more than that. As I say, I think I am rarely edified by poetry, but often am fascinated by it, as one tends to be in the face of beauty in all its manifestations. Which is not nothing.

Is there a particular poem or poet that first showed you the potential of poetry? What was that moment like for you?

Breton’s “Free Union” – the listing was hypnotic, the images have stayed with me for forty years. I first read it in, oh, 1976 or ’77, I think. Around the time I took a trip to San Francisco, where punk was crowning in certain neighborhoods: exhilarating. I came back to Louisville and found it, punk, was popping up at the art schools and such, too. The spirit of DIY was in the air, and I recall printing up poems and stapling them to telephone poles – virgin forest then – unsigned, only a little stamp my girlfriend at the time made up. I’d walk around days later, checking my route as it were. Many were still there, weathering, which was nice, many were gone. Best was when I’d go to a party and find one of them stuck to a wall or refrigerator door.

How do you read a poem? What do you listen for and think about while reading? How do you discover
or create meaning through reading a poem?

Good questions. Could you answer them for me? If nothing else – and there is very little else – I have read a fair amount in my life, so reading becomes allusion, an echo chamber: this calls to this, to that, the other thing, and in time a dozen other things. That is what happens when I read, I think – sometimes to the detriment of reading the poem actually in front of me. To the degree that I have a way of reading, or listening for, or thinking about, poems, it has to do with the whispers of past work, other poets, distant images, that maintain some ineffable connection to the words I am reading: “.. that rose which only words distant from roses can describe…” (Aragon).

What are you reading now?

Poetry: Plume’s submissions list is growing frightening. Also Dana Gioia’s early work, Interrogations at Noon, and Montale’s Motets. Luljeta Lleshanaku . I like the unjustly maligned Padgett Powell’s Interrogative Mood – again, lists. Ennemis publics – a dialogue between Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Levy. Pessoa’s Always Astonished. Larkin. Cavafy. Avital Ronell’s Stupidity.

The Persecution of Conservative Christians

2011-08-25T19:55:00.000-07:00

As it stands now, Americans pledge allegiance (when they do) “Under God.” According to our money “In God We Trust.” Public officials swear to uphold their duties on Bibles and witnesses swear to the tell the truth on Bibles. Nearly all public and private institutions have Christmas Day off, and many have a week or more off around Christmas. Almost as many institutions have the time around Easter off as well. Every single President has been, at the very least, nominally Christian. There will be a woman president before there is a Muslim president and there will probably be an openly gay president before there is an openly atheist president. By virtually every rubric, America is a Christian nation.

Unless, of course, you ask a conservative Christian. Then, Christians are under attack from a coalition of radical college professors, Hollywood elitists, liberal media, and some vague collection of other leftists. Despite consistent policy victories all over the country, especially in our schools, where conservatives Christians have forced things like intelligent design and abstinence only sex education into our, legally, secular schools, and despite everything else I've mentioned, conservative Christians in the media consistently talk as though Christians were being thrown in jail. So, when parents take a school district to court because they don't want their tax dollars spent on the recitals of words sacred to a faith that is not their own, it is not a rational concern for the appropriate allocation of scarce resources, or the simple desire for teachers to teach rather than preach, or even the desire to have a little control over the belief structures taught to their kids, but an assault on Jesus Christ himself. (Quick aside. There's a technique I like to use that is pretty good at exposing when someone is being a self-righteous hypocrite. Simply take whatever situation their discussing and replace “Jesus” with “Allah,” and imagine what the reaction would be. Can you imagine what would happen if a Muslim teacher got a bunch of students down on the ground bowing towards Mecca?) Or when someone argues that they don't want their, constitutionally a-religious, judges displaying a system of governance that opens with “Don't you dare worship anybody else but me” and only gets to “Don't kill anybody” at commandment 6, that person is not ensuring that the agreed upon jurisprudence of the United States of America is the primary method of determining cases, but attacking all of the Christian faith and everyone who believes in it.

For an almost unnaturally rational person, like yours truly, this is absolutely baffling. Most Americans believe in angels, intelligent design, and identify as Christians. And a vast majority wouldn't trust an atheist as far as said atheist could be thrown. Why do conservative Christians believe they are being persecuted despite all the evidence to the contrary?

The idea behind childhood trauma is simple; traumatic events in a person's formative years can have lifelong effects. Things can happen to our brains when we are children that are almost impossible to change later in life. I think the primary source of this persecution complex is essentially the same thing; a series of traumas in the formative years of the culture.

Essentially, Christianity was formed when a man was tortured to death. It was Jesus's death by crucifixion, not his message, that redeemed humanity from original sin. The foundational moment of Christianity was not a man telling everyone to love one other, but a man getting nailed to a cross for doing so. For the next several hundred years, or to go with the metaphor, during the formative years of the culture, Christians were persecuted. They were harassed, tortured and killed, and the memory of this persecution stayed with the culture even after Christianity, in the form of the Catholic church, became one of, if not the, most powerful institution on Earth.

There's another layer for American Christians, as one of our founding myths is of the Puritans coming to America to escape persecution. (Forget for a second that they started persecuting people practically the instant they got the chance. Cycle of abuse, maybe, since we're going with a psychology metaphor.) From then on, many groups of people came to America to escape persecution. America was the escape hatch for minorities, both religious and ethnic, all over Europe. Furthermore, the nation was born through the trauma of the Revolutionary War, a series of events often depicted as throwing off the shackles of British oppression. In short, on top of the fundamental trauma of Christianity, American Christians, especially if they belong to one of the many Protestant sects, come from a long history of persecution.

Now, that persecution is engrained. Arguing that abstinence only education almost always leads to higher teenage pregnancy rates is an attack on Christian family values, so is the suggestion that intelligent design, not being a scientific theory and all, shouldn't be taught in science, that public school teachers should not lead their students in prayer (of course, nobody is stopping the students from praying by themselves if they want to, but, that's another essay), that all people have the right to form partnerships that provide access to a host of tax and legal benefits, or really anything that doesn't fit with their very particular socio-political philosophy.

Of course, the persecution complex is not without its practical uses; it is very politically convenient. It is one of the ways to defend an idea or policy against criticism, without actually arguing against the criticism. Instead of dealing with facts or rationale, many conservative Christians (or at least the pundits and politicians who purport to represent them) simply point out that the critique is part of a general persecution of the Christian and conservative belief systems and, thus, somehow, inherently illegitimate. (Of course, if an African American makes a similar argument about something, that person is using “the race card,” but well, one can only have so many aneurisms.) Simply put, the rhetorical technique removes the entire mechanism of argument. (And what is Democracy without argument?)

There are many layers to the depth of this problem, only one of which is the political convenience. For example, if you happen to belong to a “Christian” religion that believes the only just society is one in which fundamentalist Christian values rule all aspects of society; if for example you believe teachers should be required to lead their students in Christian prayer, than there are certainly groups, forces, and people working against the fruition of your vision. Like me. With something as important as religious faith, it's not hard to see how “conflict” is interpreted as “persecution.” Furthermore, these cultural beliefs are deeply and personally ingrained. If you've ever doubted how character traits based in religion become ingrained in an individual's personality, ask a Catholic about guilt. You'll learn all about it.

There are aspects of this problem that are simply beyond the forces of intentional social change. But it would be nice if American media spent a little more of their time checking the facts asserted by pundits or politicians. Or perhaps, providing some global perspective on the whole “persecution” issue by covering, I don't know, any of the situations in the world where people are actually being killed, (which, though this might be my liberal elitist upbringing, is different from being disagreed with) for who they are or what they believe. Women in Saudi Arabia, for example, or dissidents in North Korea. China threw Ai Weiwei in jail, and I gotta believe that being thrown in jail is a requirement for being persecuted.

As usual, my argument comes back to the media, to what journalists do and don't do, what they spend their limitless time on and what they don't. What we need is an hour of analysis and context for every hour of “news” instead of this constant assault of new event. Without pundits, opinions, and debates, journalists provide history, background information, and verifiable facts about the previously reported events. And then, with the context of the issue established and a grounding of verifiable fact, you have the pundits and politicians debate and interpret the news. Then, when a pundit or politician says something incorrect, the journalist can make the correction. Sure there will still be bias, still be spurious claims on persecution, but I have to believe, this format will make it easier for people to distinguish argument from evasion and true claims on persecution from political bluster and culturally formative traumas.

Jason Varitek and the Art of Calling the Game

2011-08-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

One of the gospels of the New Testament of the Boston Red Sox (Praise be to Tito) is that Jason Varitek is the greatest game caller in the history of the game. I'm a believer and I'll get to why later, but I think “calling a game” is one of those concepts baseball fans never bother to explain to anybody else. What, exactly, does a catcher do when he calls a game, and why is it important?

At its most basic level, a catcher “calls the game” by telling the pitcher what kind of pitch to throw. Simply put, it's really hard for a catcher to catch a pitch if he doesn't know what's being thrown at him. Depending on the catcher and the pitcher, this process can be dominated by one or the other, or be a fluid decision making process.

Catchers are sometimes also responsible for telling the pitcher when to try to pick off a runner, or when to throw a pitch far outside the strike zone to make it easier to throw out a runner they expect to steal. Occasionally, catchers will be responsible for arranging the infielders, but usually the short stop or the manager does that.

Calling a game is one of those things that is very easy to do adequately, but very difficult to do greatly. In any situation, there are lots of pitches and locations that will work, but as with all things, there is only one “best pitch in the best location.” And knowing what that one pitch is very complicated indeed. It involves all the statistical stuff that has now come to dominate baseball; the batter's average against particular pitches, in particular locations, in particular situations, cross-referenced with the pitcher's various statistics.

But it also involves a psychological contest with the batter who, at least the professional level, knows all those statistics as well and knows the catcher knows those stats; the dark arts of getting into an opponent's head. There is no better way to guarantee a strike, or at least guarantee that a hit won't happen, than for the catcher to call for a change-up, when the batter expects a fastball.

But along with all that, the catcher needs to constantly assess the ability of the pitcher; is he getting tired, is his curveball working, does he have enough energy for the high heat. And if there are any problems, the catcher is the first person responsible for figuring it out; is the pitcher tipping his pitchers, are his mechanics off somehow, like he's dropping his elbow or stepping too far towards 3^rd base or something like that. And, of course, a pitcher's problems can be caused by the pitcher's own emotions; is he frustrated with the umpire over a call or concentrating too much on one particular aspect of his motion or distracted by something else in the universe.

Of course, in most games, a catcher has to catch for different pitchers, often different pitchers with entirely different repertoires and personalities. Think about another common situation Jason Varitek would have to deal with. Let's say he's been catching soft-spoken, classy, professional, cancer survivor John Lester for a couple of hours and the Red Sox have a 4-2 lead going into the 9^th inning. It means he'll be hopping on the express train to crazy town because “My dog ate the World Series Ball,” “I don't care if anybody steals on me,” lazer-eyes, dancy pants, Jonathon Paplebon is coming in. (A little off topic, but imagine what it feels like for Saltalamacchia to spend a couple of hours knocking knuckleballs out of the air and then see Daniel Bard about to throw a 100mph fastball at him.)

To put this another way, a great game caller needs to be a statistician, a strategist, a pitching coach, and (sometimes) a therapist all at once. In some ways, this is one of those skills that is almost impossible to accurately assess. Because the physics of baseball ensure that batters get out the vast majority of the time, it's hard to tell the difference between adequate and excellent. But Jason Varitek was the best at it. Here's why.

The Red Sox pitching staff did not have much success at the beginning of the season. In fact, the beginning of '11 was historically bad. The transition from Jason Varitek as the primary catcher to Jarrod Saltalamacchia upset the entire pitching staff. The staff eventually settled down, though Josh Beckett still won't pitch to anybody but Varitek. This is an indicator, because teams change catchers all the time, without having such a drop-off in performance. For the Sox, this drop off was caused by going from the best game caller in the game to somebody else. It would have happened no matter who ended up doing the bulk of the catching; any of the Molina family, Joe Mauer, Jorge Posado, maybe even (Praise be) Carlton Fisk.

The most concrete statistic for this argument is that Jason Varitek has caught more no-hitters than any other catcher in history; four. Furthermore, he caught them for four different pitchers, unlike Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Lou Criger, and Johnny Edwards (all catchers who caught 3 no-nos), who caught multiple no-hitters with the same pitchers. Furthermore, they were four very different pitchers. Clay Bucholtz in his second professional start, Hideo Nomo with his unique wind-up, Derek Lowe the sinker ball pitcher, and John Lester, the fastball/curveball lefty. He has also been one out away two more times, once with Josh Beckett and again with Kurt Schilling. Had those happened he would have caught twice as many no-nos as anybody else. Red Sox fans of the last decade will know, that 'Tek has guided many pitchers hitless through six, seven, and eight innings.

But perhaps the best argument at how good Jason Varitek is at telling pitchers what to throw next is when his pitchers ignore him. The most famous moment has to be when Schilling shook off a call and gave up a hit, with two outs in the ninth inning, of what would have been his only no-hitter. But I think a lot of Papelbon's struggles last year came from him being convinced, despite what Varitek was telling him, that his fastball was totally gonna blow the batter away.

Finally, when was the last time you heard an announcer, coach, player, or sports writer talk about calling a game? It was probably in reference to Jason Varitek. And the first time? It was probably in reference to Jason Varitek. Essentially, he is the only catcher in recent memory who has been able to draw attention to calling games at all. Calling a baseball game is one of those invisible activities whose results are always debatable. Because there are so many factors, it is almost impossible to know whether the call was the important part of the strikeout. (Ooo look, a real world lesson.) But something congealed around Jason Varitek. Certain statistics implied something atypical. He earned only the third captaincy of the Boston Red Sox. And his place as the greatest game caller in baseball is now gospel.

The Alcoholic, The Marshal, and the Process of Morals

2011-08-11T21:30:00.000-07:00
One of the amazing things about books, is that different books can ask the exact same questions in radically different ways, bringing us a little closer, through each version, to answering, at least for ourselves, some of the intractable problems of human life. On some levels, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and Warlock by Oakley Hall couldn't be more different. Under the Volcano is a poetic meditation on self destruction, focusing its philosophical and emotional considerations on the ultimate deterioration of one man, Geoffrey Firmin, the alcoholic British Consul living in Mexico. Warlock is a gritty Western with rustlers, sheriffs, gamblers, and gunfights, exploring the nature of law, order, and chaos in a young society. One is about a person living with himself, the other about people living together. They're very different books, but they find their way to the same difficult question.

Geoffrey Firmin's alcoholism is debilitating. Occasionally, he drinks himself sober, but he can never sober himself sober. He starts suffering symptoms of a very dangerous withdrawal after only a few hours without a drink. At one point, his body is so incapable of control his brother needs to shave him. The novel takes place on the day when his wife, despite everything, comes back to him. Though her return would be where the Hallmark channel mini-series ends, it's just another day of spiraling in and out of coherence and brilliance for Firmin.

Though there are some hints at the kind of formative events talk therapy is supposed to reveal, the most coherent, or at least intentional explanation for Firmin's alcoholism is a willful self-destruction. Essentially, he argues that his self-destruction is not a consequence of his drinking, but the point of his drinking. He seeks a kind of self-determined salvation through the ultimate bottoming out, a wholly unique kind of heaven by conquering the depths of hell. (In a way, Under the Volcano shares themes with the work of Jean Genet, particularly Our Lady of the Flowers, but that's another essay.) To me, the important question is not, “Can one achieve salvation through degradation?” but, “How do we know if someone else succeeds in doing so?” Even if we accept that such a course to salvation is possible, as Firmin claims, and even if ultimately Firmin states he has reached this salvation, since it is such a personal, individual, self-centered cosmology, how could we verify his statement?

Warlock is a fictional mining city near the border of Mexico, about a day's ride from Bright's City, the county seat. A gang of rustlers lead by Abe McQuown is the primary, but far from only, source of conflict and lawlessness. For some reason, the authorities at Bright's City refuse to provide Warlock with a professional sheriff and so Warlock must make do with amateur deputies. Eventually, the trouble from McQuown's band is too much and the Citizens' Council (i.e. the property owners, wealthy, and other respectable folk) hire a famous gunman named Clay Blaisdale to be their marshal. A series of conflicts and confrontations lead to Blaisdale shooting and killing several members of McQuown's band, two of which he was not sure were guilty of the crimes he shot them for.

The events and conflicts of Warlock raise many questions about the nature of order in society. What is the minimum level of “law” needed for the law to actually work? What use is righteousness if it is impossible to maintain? What is the value of law when it must be enforced at gunpoint? How much law is there in Warlock? Changes every day, depending on who was paying attention. When it is right to shoot first? You only know after all the shots have been fired.

What joins the two books is the problem of moral assessment. If salvation is possible through self-destruction, what is the moral weight of the Consul's actions towards that end? Ultimately, the Consul inadvertently injures or kills Yvonne, but the Consul did everything he could to assure that he was the only one destroyed. If justice and law are so fluid and confusing, who is the most moral character in Warlock. Tom Morgan comes to be seen as the embodiment of evil in the town, but everything he did, he did to help his friend, Clay Blaisdale, marshal and hero of Warlock. Furthermore, throughout the book the Judge, a raging alcoholic asserts that to be righteous, one must always be right, and that every action after being wrong is tainted with moral compromise.

In both books, before we even get to deciding who is morally right and who is morally wrong, we have to figure out how how we are going to judge. Do we take Firmin at his word, believing that his self-destruction is truly intentional and if not, how do we determine what his true intentions are? And how do we assess his salvation if he achieves it? What is the value of order in a town like Warlock, and what risks are worth taking in pursuit of it? If people have to die to create that order, should it matter who kills them and why? What is the most important thing in these two situations?

Of course, these books are about questions not about answers, so you're not going to find real guidance in either of the books. In a way they almost act like case studies, testing our moral aptitude by presenting intractable challenges. They reveal our own moral processes to ourselves by forcing us to make difficult moral evaluations, so even if we don't ending up knowing for sure who is right and wrong, we still end up knowing more about the processes of morality, and I believe that is progress.

The Red Sox at the Trade Deadline

2011-07-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

The Sox are in an interesting position in terms of personnel moves as the trade deadline approaches. They're at the top of the AL East with the best offense in the bigs, with at least two contenders for AL MVP and one serious contender for AL Cy Young (anyone remember the last time Beckett gave up a run?). Right now, their best players are playing so well, that their weak links aren't really causing a problem. Of course, every team wishes they could have this problem, but that makes it quite a challenge to find the perfect missing piece that will lead to a World Series Title. Here's what I think they shouldn't, probably should do, and definitely should do in terms of personnel changes.

What They Shouldn't Do: Get a right fielder. I know a lot of people like to hate on J. D. Drew and it is absolutely true that he never lived up to his expectations or salary. But J.D. Drew makes very few errors and though he also doesn't make any great plays either, you don't need a superstar in right field at Fenway to contribute to the success of the Sox. What you need is a player who can judge how the ball is going to bounce around in the corner and Drew is pretty good at that. Furthermore, there is value to a batter near the bottom of the order who sees a lot of pitches. (Though, even this attribute has been waning a bit with Drew lately.) Obviously, you want .400 hitters top to bottom, but given that's impossible, it's useful to have someone 7-9 who makes the pitcher throw strikes. Drew is not ideal, but he is fine for right field and the Red Sox don't need another big bat. Furthermore, the Sox have outfield prospects, not only Reddick, who seems to have earned the starting job anyway, but also, Nava, and Kalish. Why spend money and resources for a big name player to solve a problem that isn't much of a problem, especially when the solution might already be here?

What They Probably Should Do: Make a bid for Jose Reyes. A month ago, I would have said there's no point in going for Reyes when Jed Lowrie is the shortstop of the future, but Lowrie can't seem to stay healthy. Scuttaro has done fine as a backup, but only as a backup. What the Red Sox really need at short stop is a player who can take away hits. Ellsbury and Crawford can do it in the outfield and Pedroia can do it at second, but Scuttaro can't and I'm not sure that a healthy Lowrie can either. Though it's not possible, the current Red Sox plus Astrubal Cabrera win the World Series. Reyes isn't as good in the field as Cabrera, but nobody else is either, and Reyes will add even more batting depth to the line up. Also, the Sox won't have to fight the Yankees for Reyes. The Mets won't give him up for nothing, but at least there's unlikely to be a bidding war. Of course, the Mets still might ask for more than the Sox are willing to part with, and Jed Lowrie might finally get healthy, and the Sox would still be World Series contenders if someone else got Reyes, but there would be a lot of second guessing if they didn't go for Reyes and also didn't win the World Series.

What They Absolutely Should Do: Pick up a couple veteran pitchers on the waiver wire. The Sox shouldn't need pitching. But Bucholzt's injury is nagging and mysterious and that is not good. Furthermore, after Lester and Beckett, the other pitchers have been good, but I can't say they've been World Series Championship good. There's always the chance Lackey could do something special in the post-season, and Wakefield gives you a chance to win pretty much 3 out of 5 starts, and, of course, Bucholtz could get healthy, but a couple of cheap options couldn't hurt. If they can find somebody who can start and come out of the pen even better. Ultimately, 15-30 good innings at the end of the season while key pitchers (including middle relief guys like Aceves and Wheeler) rest could be absolutely vital, especially against the elite pitching the Sox are likely to encounter on the way to a World Series.

Right now, the Red Sox don't have to really do anything at the trade deadline. Not only are they first in the A.L east, but they have perhaps the deepest offensive line up the game has seen in quite a few years. Furthermore, their every-fifth-game players like Varitek and McDonald are contributing about as much as you could expect from off the bench players. And given the market, there really isn't a player out there, the Yankees could get to completely turn the dynamic around. So, ultimately, the Sox might be best served by standing pat at the trade deadline and picking up some bargains on the waiver wire. As we learned from Dave Roberts' steal in 2004, sometimes a single, small contribution from a bit player can lead to a championship.

What Went Wrong in American Food?

2011-07-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

In some ways this essay is a little out of date. Over the past few years, American food culture (at least in some places) has slowly been drifting away from the steak, potatoes, and processed convenience food full of sodium, high fructose corn syrup, and chemistry sets of preservatives, that was contributing to our national epidemic of obesity, while having the added bonus of greatly contributing to climate change. CSAs and farm shares are becoming more accessible. Non-profit organizations are finding ways to bring fresh food to the poor, who too often have to eat the cheapest of the cheap. More restaurants are committing to seasonal sustainable menus. Foodieism has trickled down an increased focus on what and how we eat. But obesity is still on the rise, so, even though obesity has many sources, our food problems are far from solved.

And all of this is recovery from an unhealthy, unsustainable, practically joyless food culture that prized convenience over flavor, cost over quality, and predictability over passion. We became a nation of reheaters. My question has always been, what went wrong? We had the two fundamental sources of a great cooking culture; diversity and poverty, and though “America” is an extremely young culture, especially in terms of food, we had already developed some fantastic new foods, from barbeque to potato chips. But then, well, here's what I think happened.

Compulsory Education: For most human history, people (women usually) learned to cook by watching their mother cook, who learned by watching her mother cook. Recipes weren't passed down in books, but through apprenticeship. Techniques weren't taught, they were absorbed. But with the modern education system, mom cooked alone, because the kids were at school. Many recipes, techniques, and traditions were lost because there wasn't anybody in the kitchen to watch them enacted. So, when those children grew up, got houses, and found themselves in the kitchen, they didn't really know what to do. It's not hard to see the appeal of “heat and serve.”

Better Living Through Science: When the American dream included a car in every driveway, we didn't know our car culture would eventually wreck the environment. It is impossible to predict all the consequences of our actions. The convenience foods we eventually developed had the best of intentions; to give women a little spare time. And who could blame them for finally taking the opportunity to read every now and again. We didn't know then, the effects the amounts of sodium and high fructose corn syrup and other chemicals needed to make shelf-stable foods taste like something would come with such dire consequences for our nation's health.

The Great Depression (but not for why you think): A lot of people got out of the Great Depression determined to never eat poor people food again. Americans had the money to buy pretty much whatever cuts of meat they wanted and so they bought the best cuts. If they were going to eat chicken they were going to eat chicken breasts. If pork, chops or loins. If beef, steaks or roasts. The market responded and now we have chickens that are essentially engorged breasts on legs and cows pumped with more hormones than East German Olympic swimmers (speaking of out of date statements). As dire as the environmental consequences are from the shift to choice cuts, a lot of cooking was lost. The source of the world's great food traditions are disgusting looking potential foods made palatable through technique. Oxtail doesn't look too tasty when it's just sitting there, but for most of human history it was either eat what was there or don't eat anything at all. And now we have oxtail soup. Oh man. Oxtail soup. Because we stopped eating poor people food, a lot of great recipes and techniques fell out of general knowledge.

The Unequal Distribution of Domestic Duties: Social movements are funny things, especially when they succeed. Women joined the workforce, but, for the most part, men didn't really increase their domestic workload. One result of the womens movement is that many, many women got home from work and still had to make dinner, and when they did, they had much less time and much less energy to do so. Furthermore, no one was around to tend to the all day dishes or bake bread or make pasta, or do any of the other time or labor intensive cooking that used to define daily domestic life.

What might be most instructive about our transition to a convenience food culture is how little all of these changes had to do with food. For the most part, a more general structure of society changed, and how we made food changed in response. Furthermore, all of these societal changes were, at least in terms of their intentions, for the best. The plague of advertising and the corn-centric agricultural subsidies have done their part of course, but food scientists in the 50s didn't rub their hands together in malicious glee and declare “Ha, this will contribute to an epidemic of diabetes by the start of the next millennium.” Compulsory education wasn't a conspiracy of the burgeoning microwave industry, and the organizers and activists of the feminist movement didn't conclude their meetings by saying, “And just think of it, one day we'll have the fattest kids on the planet.” Our destructive food culture was a result of people trying to make the world a better place.

As I said at the beginning of the essay, our food culture is changing for the better, but unfortunately, the changes are almost all from the top down. It's people with enough money to dine at sustainable restaurants and shop for fresh, sustainable food, with the time to consistently make it. Unfortunately, truly changing our food culture for everyone, will require more general and more drastic socio-economic changes. However, I do think, there's one food based change we can make that would quickly and greatly improve our food culture. Teach cooking in school again.

An hour or so, every month, through middle and high school would provide students with many of the basic skills needed to cook healthy food for themselves. Maybe some schools could offer an elective as well for those students who might be interested in working in the food industry. It won't replace the lifetime apprenticeship we used to learn to cook through, but it will mean all American men and women will be able to cook for themselves. Furthermore, the kids would eat what they cooked, providing a stigma-free, free meal to many hungry students.

Our food culture is improving, but there are a lot of forces, spread out through our society supporting our sodium and syrup rich convenience food culture. The physical state of kitchens in low income housing. The corn-centric farm subsidy system. Massive agri-business. The advertising assault on our consciousness. There are big picture changes that can be made, like a redistribution of agricultural subsidies, but the most effective way to improve the country's food culture starts quite a bit closer to home. The problem is not the existence of heat and serve dinners and fast food restaurants, but how much we use them. There's nothing wrong with throwing something in the microwave when you've got tickets to a game and don't have time to make anything. There's nothing wrong with getting fast food while you're on the highway. But there is something wrong with always heating and serving and getting fast food once a week. All that is really needed to revolutionize our food culture is a rational relationship with convenience foods. And, for everyone to start making their own vegetable stock. But that's another essay.

The Baffling 2010 Elections

2011-07-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected with 52.9% of the popular vote, according to Wikipedia. It's not really a landslide, but when looking at some recent presidential elections; Bush had 50.7% in 2004 and 47.9% in 2000, Clinton had 49.2% in 1996 and 43% in 1992 (when Ross Perot was strong), and HW Bush had 53.4%, it is certainly one of the stronger presidential wins. Furthermore, Democrats gained 8 seats in the Senate and 21 seats in the House securing strong majorities in each. I don't think this constitutes a “mandate from the people,” but it is hard to argue against the idea that the American people in 2008 endorsed the Democrat platform as espoused by Barack Obama. If you believe the American people didn't do that, then you're asking some pretty tough questions about the fundamental assumptions of representative democracy, but more on that later.

Of course, that doesn't mean the Republicans should have just rubber stamped Democrat legislation and policy. They should oppose policies they disagree with, they should engender compromise, and they should stand up for their beliefs. All of that is part of the democratic process. And there were elements to all of those actions in Republican efforts. But they went further than offering opposition opinion; they used the procedural structure of the Senate to delay, obstruct, and shape legislation in such a way that it was almost impossible for the Democrats to act with any really meaning on the platform they had been elected to enact.

Primarily through anonymous holds and the new filibuster (which happens because current rules require 60 votes to end debate on a bill and thus be brought up for a general vote wherein it only needs 51 votes to pass (that's right, the pre-pass is harder than the pass)) or threat of the filibuster, Republicans held up hundreds of bills, hundreds of nominations, and dramatically altered the legislation that was passed. Again, they do have, not just a right, but a responsibility to influence policy, but there is a point where they need to respect that the American people created a Democratic House, Democratic Senate with a virtual super-majority (thanks Blue Dogs, you know what we call you in MA, we call you Republicans.), and a Democratic Presidency. In short, the American people made the 2008 Democrats the most powerful party in recent memory and the way the Republicans responded to Democrat legislation was an affront to the will of the people.

So with every media and procedural trick available they opposed an extremely popular platform. The baffling thing about this: it worked. It worked really, really well. In the media, they were able to shape policy debate around things like “death panels” (which didn't exist) as opposed to the cost to hospitals of treating uninsured patients and the tax burden on our courts of processing medical bankruptcies. They questioned Obama's citizenship and his faith without any grounds of proof and one of them shouted at him during a State of the Union (can you imagine if a Democrat had done that under President Bush. He or she would have been impeached.) They asked whether the BP oil spill was “Obama's Katrina” (don't try and wrap your head around what that implies about what they think about Bush's handling of Katrina) even though now they are fighting to preserve oil tax subsidies. They even blamed Obama for the state of the economy pretty much as soon as he took the oath, after one of the greatest market drops short of the Great Depression, while delaying, diluting, and sometimes preventing all of his attempts to actually do something about said economy.

And it worked. Really well. They gained six seats in the Senate and took control of the House gaining a record breaking 63 seats. To sum up: Republicans radically and dramatically opposed a, based on previous election results, very popular policy platform and took over control of the House of Representatives. Baffling, no? I've been thinking about this for awhile and here are the factors that I've come up with that at least scratch the surface of how this happened.

People Don't Vote for Policy: (Told you I was going to get to this.) If anyone ever wanted to argue against representative democracy, they'd start right here. I have to wonder how many people who voted for Obama and the Democrat in their district in 2008, but Republican in 2010 really understood the platforms they were endorsing. How many people were simply voting for Obama because McCain always looked about to tell you to get off his lawn, or because Bush was slinking around looking somewhat ashamed the last nine months of his term, or because they were terrified by the thought of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the presidency? If they didn't vote for his policy, then its not that weird to see how all the (completely irrational, but, that's the nature of the beast) emotions generated by Republicans and their supporters in the media, changed their vote in 2010.

The Short Media Unit: What caused the recession? Thirty years of societal and economic change influenced by dozens of different economic and social policies and legislation. There's the stagnation of middle class wealth, which had it roots in the erosion of the manufacturing economy, the weakening of unions, the globalization of production... There's the chaotic nature of high level financial speculation which is driven by the speed of information, the inability of regulators to keep up with new developments, and the (non-malicious, since I can't really say innocent) collusion of financial entities creating false strongs...Then there's the credit card economy. And the inherent boom and bust cycle of our stock market. Europe's economic struggles certainly didn't help. India's tech economy probably contributed. China's rise. In short, it is a complex issue with a lot of nuance, that would take a long time to fully describe. Contemporary media just don't do that anymore. Without an understanding of the complexity of the issue, if you hear a bunch people all saying “It's Obama's economy, now,” over and over again, it's not that strange to end up believing them.

Fox News: A lot of people watch them and they endlessly repeated (and/or generated) a lot of those statements that lead to the change in opinion. It feels a little scape-goatish to bring them up, but where would the birthers, deathers, and Tea Partiers be without them. (Ask the Green Party.)

The World is Changing in a Scary Way: I was walking through Davis Square and overhead someone say, “Hey, the United States has got a dictator. Obama...” I'm pretty sure if Obama were a dictator, we would have had a public option in the health care reform bill, the Bush Tax cuts would not have been extended last year, and the debt ceiling would have been raised in July. One of the engines of the 2010 elections was this palpable anger directed at President Obama. There are many Americans who have a very rigid personal identity based, in part, on their perception of America as the “greatest, best, good, country god gave this Earth,” and that perception is being shaken. With the recession, the rise of China and India, our Middle East wars, shifting demographics, climate change, and other factors, the United States is looking a lot less like Clark Kent from Smallville and Super Man from Krypton than it used to. I believe this change is shaking some people to the core of their being and many of them are lashing out in anger. Much of that anger, thanks to some of the other factors, congealed around President Obama. And I think you really see that anger manifesting in some of the radical conservative policies being adopted at the state level. The American economy is struggling so, with no real ideas for how to fix things, conservatives are attacking the standard conservative economic scapegoat: Unions. (You know, removing murals and stuff.) The social dynamic of the world is changing, and with no way to stop that change they're going after their standard social issues: abortion and equal rights for homosexuals.

Looking forward to 2012. Frankly, I'd rather not. Humans have always made decisions based on their emotions, they always will, and there will always be people exploiting that. Whatever party “wins” in 2012 it will be a victory of advertising and not of argument. Representative democracy will just muddle along being a better option than many other forms of government.

Andrei Codrescu Is Up to Something...

2011-07-07T21:12:00.000-07:00
But I'm not sure what it is. His last three books have all been very different, but they seem to be congealing into or contributing to some grander project. Whatever it is, Codrescu is writing from a completely unique space, mixing genres, styles, and voices like a DJ winning a bet about his/her eclectic vinyl collection. He's found a spot between fiction and non-fiction, between narrative and philosophy, between something you sort of recognize as having experienced in other books and something you're pretty sure you've never seen before. In The Post-Human Dada Guide, The Poetry Lesson, and Whatever Gets You Through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments, Codrescu is up to something. Yeah. Something.
Oddly enough, Post-Human Dada Guide is the most traditional of the three works. It is a work of philosophy or cultural studies that, are you ready for this, explores the idea of the “post-human” through the lens of Dada, the early 20th Century, though-it's-not-quite-right-is-quite-a-bit -easier-to-say, sort of Surrealist art, literature, philosophy, and life movement, while imagining a hypothetical chess game between Dada founder Tristan Tzara and, well, Lenin, THE Lenin. And it does what a work of philosophy does. It has endnotes in Codrescu's conversational style (not really the conversational style most use, but this guy's brilliant so, technically, it's probably how he converses), and a glossary, and if you've read any of the late 20th Century French philosophers, an acceptable prose style. The concepts are complex and the images imaginative, but it's a work of philosophy, and, even if philosophy isn't really your thing, you at least know how to interact with it.
But Whatever Gets You Through the Night, is different. It opens with a series of epigraphs, some of which seem like the kind of results that slip through Google filters and others are cited as coming from articles “published” in 2012. From there the book is a kind of mash-up of cultural studies and fiction. Codrescu retells the beginning of the 1001 Nights, footnoting the text to provide context as he goes along. However, quite often, the footnotes contain as much fantasy as the story itself, and many passages in the story veer into the style and content of criticism. Codrescu's style is like a cup of coffee in which milk has been stirred; you know the cup contains coffee and milk, but you can no longer see the boundary between them. Whatever Gets You Through the Night has both story telling and criticism, but they're woven together so tightly, it is often impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. One then has to ask, what's the difference?
And yet, The Poetry Lesson might be the strangest of the three works. At least you can call Whatever Gets You Through the Night a novel, and shelve it in fiction (given that few bookstores and libraries have shelves for Free Range Meditations on the Action and Purpose of Sheherezade). The Poetry Lesson though is written in the tone and style of a memoir, claiming to be an account of the first day of a poetry class given by Codrescu. However, it is clear that the students in the class are characters and though they might have some connection to actual students Codrescu has taught, they are almost entirely fiction.
Once you realize the students are “fiction” the walls between non-fiction and fiction start to crumble. What does that do to the events in the book? Is there a distinction between fictional characters that are amalgams of real people and fiction characters that aren't? What does it mean for the thoughts Codrescu has and the statements he makes in the books? But at the same time, it doesn't have the distance and images of fiction. You know its not a memoir, but it feels like one.
I wrote about The Poetry Lesson for The Millions and the best conclusion that I came up with for getting a handle on what the book is, is to simply believe the title. It is not a novel, an essay, a memoir, a work of criticism, a statement of aesthetic purpose, or an ars poetica; it is a poetry lesson. It just happens to have an unusual pedagogy.
Taken together, the three books seem to be leading somewhere. The blending of genres, the intellectual depth, the exploration of storytelling; Codrescu seems to be wrestling with some of the questions of form and style raised by modernism and experimented on through post-modernism, but in a tone that is neither ponderous with severity nor dismissive with irony. He seems to approach the questions of genre and category as either already answered by earlier border busting works, or not important enough to be bothered with. And this is before grappling with the actual ideas in the books.
Codrescu is up to something and it might be even simpler than it at first appears. There are a lot of different ways to understand the drive for creating fiction. In a sense though, it's about constructing ways to say interesting things. One of my favorite things about reading is encountering sentences and statements that would be absolutely ridiculous if said out loud in conversation, but are absolutely brilliant within the structure of the work. The characters and events of fiction allow the writer to say interesting things that can't be said in regular communication. It might just be that Codrescu had interesting things to say and these books were the structures he developed that allowed those interesting statements.

The Big Picture Economics of the $5 Admission Fee

2011-06-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

The recent New York Times article about independent bookstores charging admission fees for their readings has generated a lot of really interesting and productive debate about the nature of bookselling in the 21st century, but I think there are some big picture economic aspects of the issue that a lot of commenters and debaters have missed.

Over the last few decades, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders, and big box stores like Walmart and Costco, have changed customer expectations about the price of a book. Through a variety of techniques these companies are able to sell books at a price heavily discounted from the retail price suggested by the publisher, and have done so for so long that customers now assume the discounted price reflects the true cost of the book. (I’ve even heard of people talking about an indie store “mark-up” as if the price wasn’t printed on the cover.) But this really isn’t the case. Those companies are able to sell books so cheaply because they’re size allows them to sell at a such a volume that they can afford a very low profit margin on each individual book sold (all of them), they sell other stuff with a higher profit margin and so can afford to make very little or even lose money on book sales (Amazon and the big boxes) and/or they use their size to bully publishers into better discounts, lost millions of dollars over a decade in order to secure market share, and spend millions preserving a sales tax advantage (I’m sure you can guess who that is.). The result is that customers, in general, expect a new hardcover book to cost $10-15 regardless of what is printed on the cover.

But books are expensive. There are reasons why publishers print $25.95 on hardcovers and sell them to stores based on that price. A partial list of those reasons; authors, editors, secretaries, publicists, janitors, printers, IT guys to make sure the network stays up, graphic designers, technicians to convert files into the various ebook formats, accountants, delivery truck drivers, copy editors, did I mention authors...well you get the point. Simply put, if every hardcover copy of Freedom by Jonathon Franzen purchased at $28 had been purchased at the $12.99 ebook price instead, its publisher would probably have gone out of business. Quality books, written by authors who make a decent living from their work, that have been edited by editors committed to producing the best work possible, brought to the attention of readers by publicists who want a world filled with great reads, with covers that reflect the artistic sensibility of the work (or really any artistic sensibility) cannot be made for $10-15 retail a piece.

This is a major problem for publishing and small independent bookstores are its canaries in the mine shaft. For a long time, publishers were still able to get their money, even while their product was being radically devalued in the minds of consumers, and as long as they were still making ends meet, they did not act. (Of course, many of them did not make ends meet, but that’s a different post.) Because indie stores don’t have the same kind of price flexibility as other retailers, they simply could not match the artificially low price point now demanded by consumers. People stopped buying from them, and many went out of business. Furthermore, I believe many publishers are responding to the deep discount model by raising their suggested retail price. When Amazon gets a better discount, the publishers lose money, and the easiest way to recoup that loss is to raise the retail price the discount is applied to. If you haven't bought a hardcover book in a few years, check one out. But probably do it sitting down. In the last few years, the cover price of books have been rising at close to a dollar year. (I would not be surprised to see new hardcover fiction with $30 on the cover in the next 3 or 4 years.) In a way, this acts as a kind of subsidy. Those customers who shop indie, pay the much higher cover price, allowing publishers (who get more per book from indies) to stay viable while giving Amazon advantageous discounts. (Not all publishers do this, of course.) Amazon's model does result in cheap books, but it is partially supported by other customers willing to pay much more for their books. If nothing is done to change the system, one has to wonder what will happen to publishers if no one ends up willing to spend $28 for a new hardcover book. (And that's not even considering if Amazon one day decides to ask for discounts based on the $10-15 price point they've established, but that's just fearful speculation at this point.)

Because indie bookstores’ primary product has been so radically de-vauled, some are trying to monetize other services they provide, such as charging for admission for readings. Since books are not monetarily valued enough to run a sustainable business selling just books, some bookstores are considering “selling” readings as well to make ends meet. I'm not sure why this should be treated any differently than, say, Amazon selling server space or other e-commerce services. The nature of Amazon's business created secondary services and nobody blinks an eye when they monetize those secondary services. I don't really see why Amazon should have ethical permission to monetize its servers but indie bookstores don't have permission to monetize their readings. (Of course, publishers pay for aspects of readings, but, well, many of them give Amazon better discounts so...) Both business models sell books and have developed techniques and systems for selling those books and if those techniques and systems also have value to customers there shouldn't be any reason why only one of the business models is allowed to monetize them.

One of the major themes in the internet conversation about this issue is one of business models. Many commenters argued that Amazon has simply developed a better business model and as a result are winning in the open competition of the free market. Simply put, they argue that Amazon has found a way to offer books at a cheaper price than independent bookstores and so independent bookstores have nothing to complain about. However, in the same way that the artificially cheap food of the contemporary American agriculture system hasn't solved all of our food and hunger problems, while creating some new problems on its own, the artificially cheap books of the Amazon book market hasn't solved all of our reading problems, while creating some new one's on it's own. There are actually a lot of similarities between how we buy food and books.

The government uses taxpayer funds to subsidize certain crops, particularly corn, allowing farmers to sell those crops far below the cost of what they would actually need to charge to sustain their businesses. The good news is that Americans spend a far smaller percentage of their income on food than just about anyone else in the world. (Of course, it's still American money paying for the food, just indirectly through taxes but...) The bad news is that the market responded to the subsidized prices by using high fructose corn syrup as its primary sweetener in processed food which has contributed to a number of nationwide health problems, while forcing smaller farmers out of business, and greatly reducing the diversity of food produced in this country. I think you can see where I'm going with this analogy. In the same way that cheap food does not necessarily make for a well-fed society, cheap books do not necessarily make for a well-read society.

But there's another level to the “just a better business model” argument. A few years ago Publishers Group West went bankrupt. PGW was a distributor for hundreds of small independent presses on the West Coast, meaning it handled getting the books to the market for publishers that were too small to do it efficiently on there own. When it went bankrupt, it nearly took all of those publishers down with it. But PGW actually didn't go bankrupt. PGW was doing fine. In fact, McSweeney's, one of PGW's “bigger” publishers had just released a major hardcover bestseller in Dave Egger's What is the What. It was actually the PGW parent company Advanced Marketing Services that had gone bankrupt. As with so much in our contemporary economy PGW had been consolidated into a larger company and when that larger company failed, even though PGW was doing fine, PGW failed too. The consolidation of the market created a greater vulnerability to failure; it wasn't enough for PGW to be successful; a massive structure, completely unrelated to books had to be successful as well.

It is not unreasonable to imagine Amazon eventually having 60-80% of the American book market, especially with so many consumers choosing price over all other considerations. What happens if it goes out of business? Maybe the personal electronics market changes, or there's a new technology that renders Amazon's server and e-commerce services obsolete, or maybe Congress changes its anti-trust laws in a way that forces Amazon to break its divisions up preventing it from profit sharing across markets, or maybe they get hacked with some super-virus and their database is destroyed. Or perhaps they invest a ton of money in a new device (like the tablet they're developing for example) and it is an utter failure. There are a lot of ways for a company like Amazon to fail, and only one of them has to do with books at all. In short, if Amazon ends up the only game in town (and in a lot of places it already is) what happens if it goes out of business? How much will books cost then?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an Amazon. There are a lot of communities that just aren't big enough to support a bookstore. There is room for both nationwide online retailers and independent local retailers. But as we discuss the nature of the relationship and competition between the two, its important to keep the big picture in mind. Why should Amazon be allowed to diversify its money streams but not indie bookstores? Are authors better served by indie bookstores that promote the cultural value of the book and need to charge admission to readings to do so, or by Amazon and big box stores who treat books as just a category of units to be moved? What kind of book culture do we want and what kind of book culture are we willing to pay for? How much do cheap books really cost?

There is a twisted-bright side to these economics though. As I mentioned early, Amazon and the big box stores, are able to sell books close to or at a loss because they are able to sell other stuff. In fact, many of them use books as a loss-leader; meaning they sell books at a loss to get people into their stores to buy other stuff. For a decade, that was Amazon's primary technique. The supermarket next to my bookstore did just that with the last Harry Potter, selling it at a substantial loss to get people inside to buy bananas or whatever. Which means that books are a draw. Though bananas might not get somebody through the door, books will. And that means books are valuable. They are important to people. People will seek books out first, and then do some other shopping once they're in the store. The challenge is to convince people that they actually lose when paying those artificially lowered prices for books, and that, in the long run, everyone is better off if we actually pay for what books are worth.

Review of Noir

2011-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00
In Robert Coover's new novel Noir, the protagonist is a private dick named Philip M. Noir, hired by Widow, whose secretary is named Blanche, sultry lounge singer lover is named Flame, buddy on the force is named Snark, straight-laced cop antagonist Blue, living in a city run by Mr. Big. The names of the characters tell you most of what you need to know about Noir; it is a parody of detective fiction. But Robert Coover isn't an author hacking out a playful nose-tweaking of one of America's most successful genres of fiction; he's considered one of America's great post-modern (I hate that term more and more) fiction writers. Even though I think Coover is ultimately playing pick-up basketball in this work, his literary vision is sharp enough and his narrative imagination is broad enough, to produce an engaging and entertaining novel, that readers of noir and hard-boiled detective fiction will undoubtedly appreciate.
The first thing Coover does is write the novel in second person, so “you” are Philip M. Noir. To his credit, Coover doesn't do anything too clever with the technique, but it's use gets at the wish fulfillment at the heart of noir's popularity. If only temporarily, we all want to be that devil-may-care detective taking punishment and dealing it out in the name of dames and justice. Furthermore, Noir's ability to take and survive physical punishment hints at another shade of noir's wish fulfillment; immortality. There is a part of us that wants to live forever and that is expressed by characters who survive otherwise fatal situations.
Experts in noir will recognize scenes and scenarios that have been played out hundreds of times in novels, stories, movies, and TV shows. In some ways, Noir is a catalog of cliches and formulas, and in presenting so many of the tropes of noir, Coover shows just how formulaic the genre actually is. Even the greatest works are, to some extent, collages of forms. But Coover doesn't seem to pass judgment; even while presenting those formulas Noir doesn't seem to have an opinion about whether or not these formulas are positive or negative. In the process of his parody, Coover has almost created a user's guide to noir, with all of its major components collected into a compact story. Furthermore, real noir connoisseurs, a group that would not include me, will probably spot dozens of references, contributing to the catalog nature of the work.
But Noir is more than just a pastiche of noir. The narrative exists in a city where time and space are dark and fluid. Alleys lead to more alleys that lead to more alleys that lead to different parts of the city each time; alleys whose guardian is Mad Meg; an insane half-specter who lunges out of the dark spaces to stab unsuspecting victims. Docks, diners, malt shops, speakeasys, morgues; the space coils around itself. At one point, Noir (Philip, the character, not the novel or the genre) wanders through a smugglers' tunnel that brings him from Flame's nightclub, through a strange room filled with mannequins, and a one cell prison, to the docks and finally back into the world. The dark shifting geography reminded me of the sci-fi neo-noir movie Dark City and kept Noir from being just a checklist of cliches and formulas.
For all of the complexity of the book, at it's core Noir might be one long set up to one short punchline. There are points in the novel when it could be critiqued for delivering its lines with too much of a straight face; how serious could a work be when the villain is named “Mr. Big;” but once you get to the end, you learn the book is all wink. This is a risky way to structure a book and a lot of readers will be infuriated when they get to the end. But I still find myself chuckling about it weeks later, and, to me, that is proof of a successful joke.
More casual fans of mystery and detective fiction might be put off by the unconventional presentation of the conventions, and if they're not already invested in the genre, they're unlikely to work through Coover's challenges. Noir will probably most appeal to readers like me who generally read heavy literature and find a lot of entertainment and enjoyment in the noir and hard-boiled detective genres. Coover hits a middle ground, where the novel can be enjoyed whether you really think about it, or not. And noir aficionados will also find a lot to enjoy as, Coover plays with the form as only a writer with Coover's imagination can.

The 2011 Boston Bruins Post-Season

2011-06-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a series by series breakdown of the 2011 Boston Bruins post-season.

Montreal: Depth vs. Speed

As I said before the post-season began (and as many other people also argued) Montreal's team speed presented a major challenge to the Bruins. Even though the Bruins comfortably won their division, they had a losing record against Montreal. Early in the series it looked like that speed was in fact going to kill. But the Bruins won all three of the overtime games played, including game 7 and that difference allowed them to get past the speedy Habs. Ultimately, the Bruins dominance in OT came down to team depth. The Bruins could roll 6 defensemen and 3-4 forward lines, while PK Subban was on the ice pretty much non-stop and the Habs only really played 2-3 forward lines. So when it came time to put an extra 20 minutes on the clock, the Bruins had a lot more energy left than the Habs and that evened out the speed. In the end, the Habs just didn't have enough players to beat the Bruins in a 7 game series.

Looking Forward for Montreal: In some ways, I really want to like Montreal. When not whining and diving P. K. Subban is one of the most exciting players to watch. Subban is probably the best three-zone defenseman in the league after Dustin Byfuglien. I also think Carey Price is a great goalie. And when the defensive core comes back from injury, the Habs should be an early favorite to contend for the Northeast division or even the Eastern Conference. But the Montreal fans seem to boo Carey Price more than Boston fans, even when he helps a depleted team to a 7 game series against a much better opponent. Subban occasionally embarrasses himself invalidating all the nice things I want to say about him. And speaking of embarrassing themselves, Montreal's reaction to Chara's hit on Pacioretti was perhaps the most ridiculous arrangement of human emotions I've seen recently. Let's hope no one got hurt while the emergency phone lines were tied up. Then again, in the same way that Red Sox vs. Yankees is good for baseball, a vibrant Bruins vs. Canadiens is good for hockey, so maybe there is a good side to this antagonism.

Philadelphia: 54 Saves

Even though they finished higher than the Bruins in the standings, I was glad to face Philadelphia rather than Buffalo in the second round. Much like Montreal, Buffalo gave the Bruins problems all season with their good team speed, and, in the playoffs especially, I would rather the Bruins face Boucher than Ryan Miller. (Really anybody other than Ryan Miller.) Philly essentially spotted the Bruins the first game with a sluggish, totally uninspired performance. Very few teams get through an entire playoff run without a bad game or two and the Bruins were just lucky to get one of Philly's bad games.

But the Flyers came to play in Game 2 and dominated every Bruin except one: Tim Thomas. The Flyers hit harder, skated faster, passed better and won every aspect of the game except the one that counted. Thomas plays anything less than a miraculous game, the series is tied 1-1, and the entire nature of the playoffs could have changed. The Flyers never recovered. They played the next two games like a team that didn't think it could win, and, as a result, it didn't.

Looking Forward for Philadelphia: You can't win a Stanley Cup without quality goal tending. It is no coincidence that two-thirds of the Vezina Trophy finalists were in the Finals. A team doesn't need the best goalie in the league to win, but a team does need consistent quality play from the goalie. So even though Philly should make the playoffs next year, or even win the division again, Boucher hasn't shown himself to be good enough to lead his team to the cup.

Tampa Bay: The Save and the Perfect Hockey Game

I wish this series was the Stanley Cup Finals. The teams played hard, with respect for each other and the game. You know there is something good going for a team when their young superstar goal scorer shrugs off a slap-shot to the face. With the way Stamkos, Lecavalier, St. Louis and the rest of the team played, it's not hard to see why the St. Petersburg Times Forum is constantly packed. I'm not a fan of southern expansion teams in the NHL, but I became a fan of these Tampa Bay Lighting.

If Tim Thomas gets a statue outside the Garden, he posed for it in Game 5, and it would be oddly parallel to Orr's. The Bruins were holding on to a 1-goal lead, the Lightning were storming the net, and suddenly Steve Downie had the puck on his stick 2-feet from a wide open goal. Thomas dove across the net and, in a season where he made jaw-dropping save after mind-blowing save, made the greatest save of his career, getting his stick on the shot. In a lot of ways, the Bruins got to the finals on that save.

Game 7 might have been the best hockey game I have ever seen. Every other moment or so I found myself muttering some permutation of “Good play.” The game absolutely flew by, the way a really good party flies by. There were simply no mistakes. In playoff games and especially in game sevens, referees usually call fewer penalties, but their reluctance to make a call was not the reason no penalties were called in the game; there were no penalties called because there were no penalties committed. And the lone goal wasn't some lucky bounce. Roloson didn't give up a soft one, Tampa Bay didn't make a bad change, a defenseman didn't blow his assignment; it was just the one moment when the great offensive play was greater than the great defensive play. The handshakes at the end. Thomas and St. Louis meeting at center. Thomas's joyous interview at the end. Only the cup was missing from one of hockey's great moments.

Looking forward for Tampa Bay: Much like Philly, the biggest question for the Lightning will be in goal. Roloson had a good run but it was clear near the end that he was running out of gas. But with Lecavalier, St. Louis, and Stamkos, there's no reason to expect a Tampa Bay-less playoffs next year.

Vancouver: Get the Duck Boats Ready

So I've heard that if you can't say something nice about somebody, you shouldn't say anything at all, so I have something nice to say about Vancouver. Just later. Unfortunately, one of the legacies of this Stanley Cup Finals will be the on-ice and on-microphone conduct of the Canucks.

It started with Alex Burrows biting Patrice Bergeron and getting away with it, only to be followed by Maxim Lapierre taunting Bergeron the next game, after the league decided not to suspend Burrows. There's always a bit of gamesmanship in hockey, and had Lapierre stuck his fingers in say, Brad Marchand's face, it would have been one thing. But Patrice Bergeron is one of the classiest most professional players in the game. The Bruins eventually responded in kind in terms of taunting, so I don't suppose they end up completely on the high ground, but if I remember the playground correctly, despite what the teachers might say, it does matter who started it.

Then there was Aaron Rome's hit on Nathan Horton, a YouTube Video of which I will not post here, because it turns my stomach to watch. The easiest way to characterize the hit, might be through Alain Vigneault's statement—in that the hit was the opposite of what Vigneault said it was. Obviously, the coach of the Canucks isn't going to insult his own player, but the blame the victim assertion that Horton was “watching his pass” is both unprofessional and, well, factually incorrect. Right after he passed the puck Horton did glance up, and in seeing no one in front of him, put his stick on the ice, started to drive to the net, and looked back at Lucic who had the puck. Horton looked up, Rome was just too far away for him to maybe even see him, let alone expect a hit to come from him. Vigneault also called the hit “a little late.” In the NHL, a hit is late if it occurs a half-second after the player has passed or shot the puck. Rome's hit on Horton occurred almost a full-second after Horton passed the puck. “Almost twice as” is quite a bit different from “a little.” And even without that, it was still directed at the head, which is the kind of hit, I'm told the NHL is trying to eliminate. The Bruins responded with an 8-1 demolition of the Canucks.

And the Canucks started diving. It seemed like every goal mouth scuffle featured a Canuck throwing his head back as if he'd courageously taken a slapshot to the face or curling over like he'd been cut nape to par. Burrows's antics with Lucic on the faceoff.. Sedin's bending and flopping around Chara. The referees, however, were having none of it, and by game 5 or 6, the Bruins could pretty much do whatever they wanted to Canucks in these scuffles.

I don't think I need anything to add about Luongo's comments. They're going to follow him for the rest of his life.

And you'd think in Game 7, on their home ice, and with the hockey world beginning to doubt them, the Canucks would focus on playing the game, and many of them did. But twice, Canucks took blindside runs at Bruins defensemen, Higgins on Chara (and you really have to mean it to elbow Chara in the head) and Hanson on Ference. After all the work both teams put in to get where they got. It was just sad to see. (Can you imagine the tone I would have taken about this if the Bruins had lost?)

For the Bruins, the Stanley Cup Finals were about playing their game no matter what shenanigans the other team pulled. Solid team defense. Thomas making saves when that defense broke down. Shut down penalty killing (the Bruins ended up with more shorthanded goals (2) than the Canucks had power-play goals (1)). Toughness. Team depth. (How about that fourth-line in Game 7) Opportunistic goal scoring. It was about treating Mark Recchi to the perfect retirement, making sure Nathan Horton's and not Aaron Rome's name was on the Cup, and rewarding one of the greatest goalie seasons with a sip from the cup.

Looking forward for Vancouver: Vancouver has a lot of questions to answer, a lot of character questions. Even their fans, who might disagree with my interpretations of certain actions, will wonder where were the Sedin twins went, what happened to the power-play, and will Luongo recover from a very shaky performance? The only real character demonstrated in a Canucks jersey was done by the fans in the Rogers Arena who stayed through, stood during, and cheered for the awards ceremony. I'm not sure the Garden faithful would have done that if Game 6 had turned out differently. The Canucks have a very talented team, but in some ways, they embarrassed themselves in the finals.

Looking forward Boston: In the salary cap era, dynasties may be a thing of the past. But the Bruins core talent is young and under contract. Patrice Bergeron, (who I contend might be the most complete hockey player in the game right now) for example is only 27. And whenever Tim Thomas finally calls it quits, Tuukka Rask has already shown himself ready to be an everyday starter in the NHL. The Bruins will have some decisions to make in the off-season, but whatever happens, next year's team won't look that much different than the one that hoisted this year's cup. In some ways they could even be better; if Kampfer continues to develop he will contribute far more to the team than Kaberle did, for example. Repeating is no longer realistic, but if any team is poised to do it, it's this Boston Bruins team. Welcome to a new golden age.

Why Athletes Give Such Terrible Interviews

2011-06-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

I try not to force too many televised sporting events on my partner, but sometimes she can't come up with something better to do when I have a game on. And sometimes the events in the game are so exciting, so compelling, so violent, even she gets mildly interested. (“Oh man! What do they do when there's blood on the ice?” “Let it freeze and just scrape it up.” “That's it? Lame.”) And then someone goes and sticks a microphone in an athlete's face and starts asking questions. Then it's all, “We just want to play a good game, give it our all,” and “You know, it's all about playing smart, playing good defense,” and even sometimes you'll hear, “You know, it all comes down to who wants it more,” and other eye-tweaking banalities. And then whatever entertainment the event might have been building for my partner completely dissolves. All she can think about is the scene from Bedazzled, where Brendan Fraser is playing a less than intelligent basketball superstar. The character ends up churning through about half of the major sport cliches.

But why do athletes give such bad interviews? The easiest answer is that athletes aren't public speakers. They don't spend their time developing elocution. The time and effort it takes to become a professional athlete and maintain a career doesn't leave much for an extraneous skill. They're not paid to talk; they're paid to play so they spend their time getting better at that. Of course, that's part of it, but I think there's something else going on.

The language of sport is one of the most conservative in the world. There might be more taboos in sport language than just about any other contemporary language. Between strategy, psychology, and decorum, there is so much athletes can't say, that hackneyed cliches and banal platitudes are pretty much the only things left they can say.

Imagine you're a basketball player, and you, your coach, and your teammates have found an effective strategy for defending your opponent's superstar. Maybe you've figured out that a double-team works best if the second player comes from the left or maybe sliding under a screen is really effective or whatever. Halftime comes along and a correspondent says to you, “Derrick Rose only shot 17% from the floor in the first half. How were you able to keep him in check?” Obviously you're not going to tell the world, “He doesn't shoot well if the double-team comes from his left, so we double him from the left,” because that would be stupid. You don't tell your opponents how you're beating them, because they'll change their strategy so that doesn't work anymore. So instead of compromising your team's strategy by actually answering the question “How are you having success?” you say something like, “You know defense wins championships, and we really focus on defense, and defense is all about effort so, it's about knowing your assignments and working hard.”

There is a lot of psychology involved in sports. I don't think anyone has a clear sense of exactly how emotions, intellect, and instinct interact to affect an athlete's performance, but it is clear that what we think affects how we play. When the stakes are as high as they are in professional sports, you don't want to do anything that could potentially compromise your team's chances of winning. So you don't want to say anything that could distract a teammate by making him/her mad at you. So if an interviewer asks a quarterback why his team struggled on offense during a game, he's not going to say, "The left side of my line was like swiss cheese," even if it was. If your left tackle is thinking about how much of a jerk you are, he's not thinking about reading the defense. And there's the “bulletin-board quote." A “bulletin-board quote,” is anything an athlete or coach might say that his/her opponents would print out and put up on the bulletin-board in the locker room to use as motivation. Anything that might be considered an insult or express overconfidence or disrespect of any kind could potentially be a “bulletin-board quote.” So when a corespondent asks an athlete, “How are you preparing for you game against Team X,” that athlete can't say, “Well, Team X isn't very good, so we're not really doing anything special.” Instead they say, “You know we're just having some good practices, making sure everyone knows their responsibilities, really working hard as a team, and you know, just making sure we're ready for the game.”

Furthermore, a combination of decorum, culture, and sometimes even team policy, will put even more restrictions on what athletes can say. You can't say, “The referees were terrible today and their awful calls pretty much ruined our chance to win.” At most you'll get something like, “The calls didn't all go our way, but you have to play through that, it's just part of the game.” Nor can you say that you lost because of a stroke of bad luck, or you think your opponents were cheating, or that one of your teammates isn't working hard enough.

And this is before any personal superstitions are taken into account. So on top of everything else, some players and coaches will have statements they avoid because they think saying them will bring some form of bad luck. And there are also tons of athletes for whom English is a foreign language, but microphones still get shoved in their faces too.

So when asked an interview question, an athlete can't give away any team strategies, nor does s/he want to risk providing motivation for an opponent, nor does s/he want to compromise internal relations by saying something bad about a teammate, and it's considered bad form to complain about officials and bad luck. There really isn't much left of the English language, once all of that has been removed. I suppose if they were asked about world politics, movies, contemporary avant garde literature, the slow food movement, or pretty much anything else besides the most important part of their lives, some of them might actually turn out to be intelligent well spoken individuals. Maybe.

Which makes the real question not, why do athletes give such bad interviews, but why do media continue to interview them. Athletes have been telling journalists there is no I in team forever and journalists keep asking them “'What was the key to your win tonight?” as if one of them is going to say, “Oh, that's easy, John Smoltz was tipping his pitches.” And they still ask, “Can you put into words what you're feeling right now,” even though the athletes always say “No,” and then prove themselves right. There is some kind of compulsion that drives the way we cover sports. Perhaps these interviews persist because there is no punishment for them. Very few of the people watching the event on TV are going to stop watching because of a stupid athlete interview. Nor are people going to stop reading reports of sporting events because they include a few cliched quotes. And if there's not negative consequences, there really isn't a way to prevent them.

Well, this isn't really a victimless crime. Because every time I start to convince my partner there is some intellectual legitimacy to sport someone suggests they need to give it 110%. Her cackles at my expense ring in my ears for hours afterward.

Review of There Is No Year by Blake Bulter

2011-06-03T07:46:00.000-07:00
So what is Blake Butler's There Is No Year? The cover says it's a novel and as far as that term goes, I would have to agree. But it doesn't have what many would consider a plot. There are events but one event doesn't necessarily follow from another, and in terms of what happens there are only barely the beginning, middle, and end of basic storytelling. Nor are there really characters. There is Mother, Father and Son, and these entities are loci for events, thoughts, and emotions, but what surrounds them is so abstract and the traits of these entities so fluid, that we don't connect with them they way we connect with entities we consider characters. In some ways, it might be most productive to think about There Is No Year in terms of modern epic poetry as opposed to in terms of prose fiction. Whatever label the reader might use to get an initial grasp on the work, There Is No Year is brilliant.
The easiest comparison with a recent work is with Mark Z. Danielewski's masterpiece House of Leaves and, whether intended or not, the influence is positive and strong. Along with the use of text layout to contribute to the experience of reading (Not that House of Leaves has a monopoly on that narrative technique) the houses in the book, are fluid entities; trickster architecture, bending, warping, misleading, changing, not so much as entity possessed by a demon, but as the demon itself. Like House of Leaves, the relationship between the people and the space is radically different in There Is No Year, than it is in most other fiction. But our relationship with space has changed, and this isn't just another “The Internet Changed Everything” point. The internet is a part of it, but so is radio, TV, phones, cell phones, cars, trains, and airplanes. To “live in Boston” means something very different now than it did 100-200 years ago. We relate to the space that surrounds us differently than we used to and we are just now beginning to intellectually and emotionally explore that new relationship in literature.
Though a fluid relationship to space may be the most overtly interesting theme in the book, the lack of a traditional plot allows Butler to explore a wide range of themes and ideas, from death, to literature, to the body, movies, language, and family. At its best, the different chapters and passages of There Is No Year flow into one another like individual poems in a collection. One might not continue the events of that which directly preceded it, but intellectual explorations are sustained and intensified regardless of what is technically happening in the story.
A few moments highlight the quality of There Is No Year. The chapter called “The Son's Book” first hints at the quality of the novel. The footnoted list of the dead in a long chapter called “In a Daze the Son Remembers the Black Package He'd Up Till Now Ignored or Forgotten or Somehow Just Not Seen,” explores our fascination with the celebrity dead, while playing with the notion of encapsulating character in the moment of death. On page 277 Butler breaks up a bracketed phrase to brilliant effect toying with the conventional physics of reading. Finally, in a chapter called “Inside,” Butler uses punctuation marks, mostly commas, to represent dust in the light, footnoting the marks to en-language the dust, without disturbing its visual presence.
But the greatest storytelling success of There Is No Year is the emotional import he is able to imbue his un-characters with. Most of the time there is an emotional distance between readers and fictional entities like Father, Mother, and Son. As in Lydia Davis' work, rather than being characters, figures like that are usually vehicles for exploring human thought and behavior. It is just hard for us to feel something for characters without names. And yet, there is a tenderness to There Is No Year. We are concerned for Father, Mother, and Son when they are in painful situations. Even if the events aren't conducive to communicating a particular emotion, we feel as though we should feel something about them. And in a story that uses so few traditional narrative techniques, this is a storytelling triumph.
Perhaps the other work There Is No Year most closely resembles is the Cool Memories series by Jean Baudrillard. Cool Memories collects notes, phrases, images, and ideas from different parts of Baudrillard's life, presenting, in some sense, the detritus of his intellectual efforts. There are passages in Cool Memories that are as brilliant and beautiful as anything else Baudrillard wrote. In a strange way, the very disconnectedness of the passages allows for an accumulative yet fluid global writing experience. And though There Is No Year is more overtly cohesive than Cool Memories, it still manages to create those accumulative, fluid themes. In a sense, There Is No Year is more about the thoughts and emotions of the reader than anything that actually “happens” to the characters in the book.
Innovative or experimental literature (or something) is in a strange place. The names of the past two great avant gardes, modernism and post-modernism, have trapped contemporary practitioners of radical fiction in a nameless, movementless, nebula of action. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it hard for critics (at least me anyway) to talk about global patterns in literature. Something is happening in literature but what do we call it? What kind of literature is House of Leaves, The Way Through Doors, I Hotel, The Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney, and There Is No Year? A review of one work doesn't provide space for even scratching the surface of the question, but if There Is No Year is part something bigger in fiction, that something is exciting.

Never Buy from a Store Installment Number 2: Re-fried Beans

2011-05-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

Every now and again, circumstance provides a vague insight into the workings of your own brain. Something happens that demonstrates, at least in some way, the mechanisms that lead us to hold beliefs about things we don't actually know about. Take re-fried beans. I always assumed there was something complicated about them. It's that prefix “re.” Seeing that my logic just kind of takes over. Ok, “re” means to do again, so re-fried beans must be beans that have been fried twice. But, of course, that doesn't mean you just fry them in a pan, turn the heat off for a bit, and then fry them in the pan again. That would be stupid. So, logically, there must be some additional atypical process involved in re-fried beans for the name to make sense. Maybe several components of the dished are fried separately and then fried again together. Maybe there is a long pause in the process; a fry, a three-day rest in the refrigerator, and then a second fry. Or maybe it's not even just a rest, but a soak, or a marinade, or even a dry. Or maybe there's something really counter-intuitive in there, like you need to roast dry beans first or boil them in some kind of special liquid. For some reason the “re” set my logic to figuring before doing anything like research and I deduced a process tamale-like in it's complexity. I mean, why would they call them “re-fried beans” if they were really just mashed fried beans.

They're really just mashed fried beans. It's fucking maddening.

Here's a recipe Riss found for re-fried beans.

Half an onion, minced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons of ground cumin, depending on taste
either olive oil or lard for frying
salt and pepper to taste
1 can of whatever beans are in the cupboard (probably not garbanzo beans though)

In the pan heat up enough oil/lard to coat the bottom. (you might need to add more oil later)
Toss in the onions and cook until slightly translucent, toss in the garlic and cook on medium for another 2-3 minutes until onions are soft. Be careful not to burn the garlic.

Toss in the can of beans (drained and rinsed of course) and heat. Mash the warm beans in with the oil/lard and veggies. A potato masher works well. If the mashing is hard, add more oil/lard. Add cumin and some salt and pepper. Cook the beans on one side for a few minutes until they get a golden crust. Flip them in the pan to fry the other side. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
That's it. This has both way less sodium than canned re-fried beans and way more flavor. If you're watching your salt intake, don't add any at all. Cumin not your thing? Add pretty much anything else (coriander would probably be good) or leave out the additional spice. A little cilantro might be nice as well. Lard is traditional (and tasty and a lot healthier than you might think), but pretty much any fat or oil will do, except for maybe butter. If you're up against a deadline, you could probably even get away with skipping the aromatics, but you'll probably have to add more spices of some kind to compensate for the loss of flavor. Furthermore, since this is really just a technique, fry and mash, you can flavor it to match whatever else you might be having, making it a great way to add protein to a vegetarian dish. It can be served on the side or spread on something as part of a sandwich, taco, wrap, whatever. If you don't create the crust, you could even use it as a dip.

Have you bought a can of beans lately? This is also a really freaking cheap dish. And if you buy bulk dry beans, it's essentially free. (Dry beans note: They don't take any more work to prepare just a lot more time, since you have to soak them overnight, or boil them for a bunch before using them. Not a great impulse food, but if you plan ahead they are a really, really cheap meal.) Given how cheap this is, re-fried beans are a great starter food if you don't really cook for yourself. So you added way too much salt and pepper. Big deal. Your mistake cost you, like, ten minutes and a dollar.

At the heart of the whole assuming re-fried beans are a hassle thing, is the core assumption that cooking is a hassle (which I've talked about before and will talk about again), that the canned, prepped version, will always save you a significant amount of time. But, to me, anyway, the ten minute difference between canned and homemade re-fried beans is more than worth it for the increase in flavor and the dramatic decrease in risk for heart disease.

Convergence of Disparate Books

2011-05-19T21:36:00.000-07:00
I wasn't planning on writing about David Foster Wallace's posthumous unfinished novel The Pale King. I got an advanced copy of it in January or February, thus making me far and away the coolest kid on the block. Unfortunately, in order to get the copy I had to promise not to tell anyone I had it. I was contractually bound to not mention the book on any social media before it's official release date of April 15, 2011. So, I couldn't write about it then.
Then Amazon released the book on or around March 30, 2011, despite all of the months of publicity that went into the tax day release and all of the independent bookstores that had organized events, release parties, and readings. I thought about blogging my outrage at the publisher, through neglect I would guess, throwing another bone to Amazon, but I decided not to. Simply put, I didn't feel like going into all the issues around strict on sale dates.
And I didn't think I needed to add my particular take on the book to the massive amount already being written about it. I think my image of the book as a circus with all the act apparatuses set up and no one to do the tricks is a good description of the book's state, and when people ask me about it at the bookstore, I'll say that if he finished it, it would likely have been one of the greatest American novels of the 21st century, and my roommate Nick is right to describe it as a kind of contemporary retelling of The Grapes of Wrath (as we said, Steinbeck wrote about The Great Depression and Wallace wrote about The Great Depression), and when asked, (as I have been) how finished I think the book actually is, I think my point that it lacks a kind of meta-balance amongst the events and characters that Infinite Jest has is accurate, but the book is an Indie Bestseller and there are plenty of other brilliant things being said about it all over the place. You don't always have to tell the internet what you're thinking.
I'll get to why I'm writing about it, but first I need to tell you that one of the central themes of the book is boredom. Where frontier Americans struggled with starvation, we struggle with tedium. Our normal response to boredom is to entertain ourselves somehow. What is “blowing off steam” on the weekend but an overt and intense version of sneaking five minutes here and there to play Farmville at work? If Infinite Jest was partially about our addiction to entertainment, then The Pale King is partially about what drives us to need entertainment. I think DFW's goal might have been even loftier, going beyond simply exploring the ideas and experiences of boredom. (Which is pretty lofty in and of itself, considering how rarely boredom has been written about.) On p438 Wallace writes, “It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot do.” To put it another way, there is no limit to what you can accomplish in our contemporary society when you do not need to to pepper your day with boredom relieving bouts of Farmville, or whatever. Wallace's ultimate goal for The Pale King, may not have just been to understand boredom, but to give his readers a vaccine against boredom.
I've been fascinated with Ferran Adria, chef at elBulli, for a few years now. His book A Day at elBulli is one of the most interesting works of food/creative writing I've ever encountered, and he is rightly considered one of the most creative people working today. So I was really excited to get a review copy of The Sorcerer's Apprentices by Lisa Abend from the bookstore.
The Sorcerer's Apprentices is about the stagiaires, the cooks who volunteer for a season or so at the lowest rungs of the elBulli kitchen, working long, strenuous hours for free, all for a chance to experience elBulli and say they worked with Ferran Adria. Many of the world's other great chefs spent a season in Adria's kitchen. The book is a well-written and fascinating look at the highly organized, highly effective, creative food machine that Adria developed and a good read for anyone interested in the creative process as well as people already interested in food. In some ways, this is the best book on the writing process that's come out this year (maybe in the last few years.). But that's not why I bring it up.
This is:
Now switch the frame. You are standing shoulder to shoulder with thirteen other cooks, laying cold rose petals on a plate. You've been standing there, with only one thirty-minute break, for the past six hours. You are not allowed to talk to anyone else on the line, so any jokes or wisecracks are issued in whispers. You have been chastised before for not focusing, so for the most part you keep your eyes on the plate in front of you. But it's impossible to ignore the flash of bulbs as the cameras go off, one every few minutes for about an hour and a half, from in front of the pass. You steal looks at the clients, posing there with Ferran, dressed in their formal evening wear on their jeans and sandals. Even from a distance you can see that their faces fairly shine with anticipation. You wonder what their meal will be like. After all, you wouldn't know: neither you nor any of the other forty people you work with has actually eaten at elBulli. And thus you don't know that the servers will take the machta tea powder you set out when you're plating the shrimp and whisk it with the straw brush until it turns into a bright green broth whose slightly bitter herbaceousness will play lightly off the sweetness of the crustacean. You don't know what it's like for a server to pour the bowl of fois gras ribbons, frozen with liquid nitrogen, over the plate of lulos, so that smoke billows over the table in clouds and the tartness of the fruit is mellowed by the richness of the liver as it melts. You don't know what it's like to have a magic box of chocolates placed before you and open drawer after drawer to find only more. You only know what it's like to fill that box, piping one perfect mint leaf after another with melted chocolate for elBulli's take on an after-dinner mint.
This is the great paradox of elBulli: that the most exciting dining experience in the world depends on the most extreme absence of excitement. It depends on the rigor, the discipline, and, to be honest, the utter boredom of the men and women who are standing in those two straight lines, laying cold rose petals on plates. Like all great restaurants, elBulli's dazzle rests in large part on the willingness of its apprentices, in the name of education, to do the dreary work no one else wants to do—and to do it for free. It's just that here the equation—learning for drudgery, learning through drudgery—is different.
Two completely different books. One is fiction. One is non-fiction. A novel of towering ambition. A book committed to journalistic storytelling. Taxes. Food. And yet in both, the vital and potentially creative role of boredom. For a moment, a picture of the world clarifies. The thematic convergence of distant books is one of the great joys of reading.

Revenge Politics and the Fading of One American Way of Life

2011-05-05T18:17:00.000-07:00
When Republicans won elections all over the place int 2010, I expected them to try and do stuff with their new power. Why wouldn't they? And given how, at the Federal level, they united in the common goal of preventing any aspect of President Obama's agenda (an agenda he campaigned on and the American people voted for by a significant majority) from becoming policy through filibusters, anonymous holds, and other techniques, all while pretending it was the Democrats who were unwilling to compromise (oh, the public option, how practical and restrained you would have been) I expected them to be equally united and aggressive once gaining control of the House of Representatives (which, if we all remember from our high school civics classes can control the government's purse strings), and I was ready for state governments to do something similar.

What has actually happened, I did not expect. Imbuing state regulators and emergency financial managers with heretofore unseen executive power. The introduction of flat out misogynistic abortion legislation. The threatened defunding of NPR because of a heavily edited video, after NPR rolled some heads in response. The threatened defunding of Planned Parenthood. The Paul Ryan, or as I like to think of it “Mad Max,” budget that somehow manages to find more tax breaks for the rich while gutting the most popular social programs our country has ever come up with. The state by state crusade against unions that has gone so far in my home state of Maine, that the governor (on whose authority?) removed a mural depicting the history of the labor movement in Maine from the Maine Department of Labor. It would be stupid to assume that Republicans in power would not try to change policy to match their ideology, but the speed, vehemence, and dramatic nature of these policy changes is a surprise. So, I asked myself, why are they acting like this?

We've all seen this particular plot in movies, TV shows, and books. Someone kills the protagonist's brother and the protagonist responds by killing said killer's entire family. Revenge is an exponential emotion. To me, Republicans are acting like they are getting revenge. This doesn't mean I believe Republicans, in general, are saying to themselves “Oh, you see, we'll get all those Democrats and progressives for what they did to us since 2008, we'll get them good,” but the policies we're seeing being enacted and attempted have the passion and radicalness of a counter-attack.

But what was the attack? The Bush Top 2% spending program was extended (more commonly referred to as “the Bush Tax Cuts”). There were no new regulations on gun ownership and no changes in federal policy on stems cells or abortions. After the bank bailout money, the domestic stimulus spending was relatively restrained and no particularly rigorous regulations were imposed on the financial institutions at the source of the financial crisis. And Obamacare did almost nothing to change the day-to-day lives of most Americans because the public option was nixed early in the process and the most important remaining mechanism for lowering healthcare insurance costs, the state to state insurance exchanges that would allow customers to (gasp!) shop around for the best price, hasn't gone into effect.

Many people have a very specific picture of what the “American way of life is;” that utter illusion of the the 1950s two-car garage suburban living of landscaping, sitting up straight at the table, vacationing at lodges in national parks, etc, all in a strong America fighting around the world against the enemies of freedom. It was a stable picture built on how some Americans saw themselves at the height of American wealth and power in the world. And that way of life is crumbling. Terrorism is a very different enemy from the Soviet Union and “Communism.” Very few jobs actually pay enough for those houses, cars, garages, and vacations. Our car culture is destroying the environment. Our food is making us fat. The economic power of China and India continue to grow. More women are getting college degrees than men. Demographically, America is becoming less white. To someone whose identity is based on that image of the strong father in a strong America, this can feel like an attack.

And since you can't counter-attack the world, many of them congealed their emotional need to defend their way of life into an attack on “Obama,” an emotional response that was manipulated and exploited by politicians and interest groups to secure major conservative gains in the 2010 elections. But I think it's incorrect to completely separate the “public” from the “politicians.” Especially at the state level, many of politicians elected on this wave of misplaced revenge are people who truly believe this way of life is under attack from specific democrat policies.

I, personally, don't know why this counter-attack has taken the form of union-busting, wrong-headed attacks on public education, and misogynistic legislation. It could simply be that these are old standard topics for conservative politicians and, in the absence of tangible policy alternatives, they have fallen back on those standards. They believe abortions are wrong, and unable to identify the source of the attack on their way of life, they intensify their efforts to ban (rather than reduce, but that's another essay) abortion. They believe collective bargaining rights limit the economy's ability to grow, so, with no other apparent targets, they intensify their efforts to limit collective bargaining.

Emotions have always been a part of politics; have always been a part of human decisions. What's different now is the sophistication of techniques for manipulating emotions. Politicians and interest groups can draw on decades of advertising expertise (you know, the people who convinced us McDonald's serves food) and use mass media to project their manipulations to the public. Furthermore, the media moves through news items so quickly, that we rarely get the chance to rationally examine an event or policy after we've gotten over whatever emotions those events or policies generated. By the time you've calmed down enough to think about something, a new outrage is being paraded through the news.

The thing is, though, none of these backlash policies are going to stop the eroding of that particular way of life. The environment is changing. The global economy is changing. The power dynamics between the US and the rest of the world are changing. The structure of American society is changing. The problem is that every government policy designed to preserve this declining (if it ever really existed) way of life, renders us less able, as a society, to cope with new challenges. In trying to force America into a certain image, these conservative policies will create an America no one will recognize.

How I Stole Your Heart (And Ate It!)

2011-04-28T21:39:00.000-07:00
Ok, so maybe not your heart in particular, and no, I didn't steal it, but bought it from Jim, along with a freezer chest full of other locally organically raised meat. It was a calf's heart. Riss and I had eaten heart at a couple of fancy restaurants and really enjoyed it, and in our persistent quest to prove to the world that we're not sissies, we felt we couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some at home.
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of heart at home is there is no hiding what it is. Most of the time the meat we eat at home looks like, well, “meat”, solidified animal protein that could have come from just about anywhere on just about anything. It's a very abstract experience. In general, and with no personal interest in learning butchering, I have no problem with this, but if you're going to eat meat, you should be comfortable with meat's status as former animal. Every now and again, just to maintain a meaningful relationship with your food, you should look it in the eye. And if you can't, well, you should make friends with Deborah Madison and Didi Emmons (they'll be good to you). When we unwrapped the package, there was no hiding that we had a heart on the kitchen table.
Here's the video we watched to learn how to clean it.
Even though we were only going to cook half of it for the meal we cleaned the whole thing, but it was kind of a pain. The chef in the video makes it look fairly easy, but he's had practice, and what isn't easy with practice.
But that effort is part of the point of cooking anything challenging. It obviously relates to flavor, but not inherently; complexity does not equal tastiness. But complex meals or cuts of meat that take 40 minutes to clean help build a relationship with food too many of us lack.
Once cleaned, as with anything butchered, the heart looked like a really lean steak or perhaps venison. We used a basic recipe from Fergus Henderson's cook book “The Whole Beast.” Henderson is the head chef (and lead personality) of St. John's Bread and Wine, in London, the restaurant Riss and I were determined to eat at while we were in London. Here's the (abridged) recipe:
Cut heart into 1 inch cubes up to ¼ inch thick. Toss the pieces in a “healthy splash of balsamic vinegar,” salt, pepper, and fresh thyme. Marinate for 24 hours. Cook on a hot caste iron skillet for three minutes on a side.

The heart, ultimately tasted almost like really good steak tips, or perhaps a beefier version of venison. It wasn't as good as the dishes we'd had at these restaurants, but for our first try, I was pretty proud with the result. What was perhaps most interesting was that the heart managed to be both rich and lean. This is probably why you generally see heart served as an appetizer (at least that's how we've seen in restaurants) as you don't need to eat that much of it to feel satisfied.
With heart at home done, we have liver and tongue to try in terms of less than typical meats we've only thus far enjoyed in restaurants. Hopefully, I'll have come up with clever titles for each of those meals.

There's More Than One Way to Read

2011-04-22T09:56:00.000-07:00
In general, I read four books at a time (not counting books I'm reviewing for various websites or that I'm reading for research on a project); a serious fiction (meaning I'm taking notes and really thinking about the work), a serious non-fiction, another work of fiction (that I'm not putting significant effort into reading), and another work of non-fiction. I do this because I have different reading moods, I try to get as much as I can from the works that I read, and I also enjoy reading for relaxation and entertainment. It also allows me to be, at the very least, familiar with a lot of books in case I need to answer questions about them or feel they would fit what a customer is looking for at the bookstore. For the most part, this is a really satisfying to me. When I want to stretch my imagination through the interpretation of a challenging work, I've got my serious fiction; if I want to learn something that challenges or changes my understanding of the world, I've got my serious non-fiction; if I want to kick back with a good story or maybe give an advance reader copy a try, I've got my other fiction, and if I just want to absorb some true information, I've got my other non-fiction. It means I'm constantly cycling through books and notebooks, but those cycles match with whatever it is that puts me in the mood for a particular reading experience.
But not all books fit in this cycle, or rather, my standard reading cycle doesn't work for all books. Two of the books I haven't finished, I didn't finish because they demanded reading styles that didn't fit with mine at the time I tried to read them. The thing is, they're both good books (one of them might have been the best novel of the year it was released) and the problem was not with them, but with me. I applied the wrong reading technique and my struggles came from that.
Wtiz by Joshua Cohen is a big, challenging, brilliant, wonderful novel. It's the story of Ben Israelian who is the last remaining Jew after a mysterious plague wiped out all of the others. He is eventually taken by a shadow government cabal whose plans for him include marrying him off to the daughter of the current President of the United States. Cohen does a lot with this conceit, examining politics, celebrity, the tension between ethnic and religious identity and other big topics, but even with the plot, the real force of the novel is the language. Wild, vibrant, chaotic, (in the scientific sense) challenging, beautiful sentences. With a book like Witz, two reading styles really work; either you give your life to the work and completely inhabit the language, learning its idiosyncratic structures and rhythms the way you would memorize the lyrics of your favorite new album and immersing yourself in the world and the characters that inhabit it (and Witz is a world); or you wander in and out, pick it up, read a few pages, in chronological order or not, and then put it down again, keeping it always within reach, but never on your reading schedule. Witz should be read either as one moves to a new city or as one flaneurs through their neighborhood.
Of course, I was over halfway through and exhausted with it, through the application of my standard style before I figured out what I was doing wrong. I haven't given up on it though. It's within reach if not on my schedule and every now and again I move the bookmark a little further in the story.
Teju Cole's Open City is another book that is best read as one wanders around a city. You see, the protagonist is a Nigerian immigrant working as a psychiatrist in New York City, who finds himself coping with the challenges of his job by taking long walks. Essentially, we should read the book as it is written, like meandering wanderlustful walks. Pick it up, read it, and then take the ideas and images in the passage for a walk. Sometimes it's a quick stroll around the block and sometimes its an epic walk you need to call a cab to get home from. Regardless, it shouldn't be read with an eye towards “finishing” it. Luckily, I spotted the appropriate method before I'd invested too much ill-advised effort. Unluckily, it was a library book on a 7-day loan and there was no way I would be able to wander through the book in 7 days. (Incidentally, great book for an intelligent teenager. The English-as-second language diction means the prose is very accessible, but the thinking the narrator does is intelligent and compelling. It's perfect for a young intellectual still discovering how to use their intelligence.)
It's one of those statements once said, looks obvious; there are many different kinds of books, so there should be many different ways to read. But when we learn to read, that range of reading is drastically limited by the structure of our schooling. You can't really wander through a novel when you have a reader response due on Wednesday about chapters 1-5. Nor can you create an idiosyncratic order for your reading as, rather practically, the teacher needs everyone on the same page to teach. (Which makes Unfortunates, one the 20th Century's great works of English language fiction unteachable as it has no stable page numbers.) And some works are too long to fit into the semester or quarter schedule, especially given that nearly all literature courses demand the teaching of multiple works. And then there are the works that really need to be re-read to be appreciated, leaving teachers and professors scrambling to convince their students of a depth that is inherently invisible to them. ("Waterproof!") And as anyone who's gone to school knows, you can't give your intellect to a single work without really hurting your grades in other subjects.
Great works of literature find ways to tell readers how to read them. Whether it's a line about interacting with art, something even more direct like a character talking about reading, or an aspect of style, great authors find ways to suggest the best perspective from which to view their work. But sometimes its a process of discovery and sometimes that discovery comes later than others. But part of the joy of reading for yourself is the freedom to discover, not just new books, but new ways of reading. In that case, you're not just transported to a new world, you're transformed into a new person.

Why the Bruins Will (or Won't) Win the Stanley Cup This Year

2011-04-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

I'll start with reasons why the Bruins won't win the Stanley Cup this so I can end this post as positive a note as possible after a loss. So without further ado. (though, how often does one actually insert “ado.”)

Speed Kills: The Bruins defensive structure is based on ceding the perimeter of the ice in order to mount tighter defense in areas closer to the middle where goals are more likely to be scored, while keeping one forward high in the attacking zone to prevent odd man rushes coupled with aggressive backchecking by the other forwards. It's an extremely effective system; the Bruins gave up the second fewest goals this season. But really fast teams can beat this system, simply by out-skating the structure. They can get behind the defensemen, skate passed the high forward, and beat the backchecking forwards to the front of the net. In fact, teams with nothing going for them but speed, like the now-golfing Toronto Maple Leafs, can consistently beat the Bruins, even though much better, more well-rounded teams, like the Washington Capitals or the Vancouver Canucks, can't. This is a problem because they face Montreal in the first round and Montreal is fast. Consequently, Montreal was one of the few teams that consistently beat the Bruins this season. (Damnit Carey Price, going all Halak on us.)

Special Teams: If the Bruins had an average, a mediocre, an adequate power play there is a good chance they would have won the Eastern Conference outright. They could go weeks without scoring a power play goal. It really is a testament to how good they were 5-on-5 (far and away the best in the league) that they could go over a month without scoring a power play goal and still convincingly win their division. They even had a shot at being No. 2 in the East up until the last weekend. But defense tightens in the playoffs. Goals are harder to score. A team can't let more than ten minutes of power play time go without scoring and have a good chance of winning a best-of-seven series. Furthermore, the Bruins penalty kill has been inconsistent this season, especially against the aforementioned faster teams. They can go a month without giving up a power play goal and then give up several in the course of a few games. A rough spell on the penalty kill combined with a rough spell on the power play could easily lose a series for the Bruins.

Mistakes Cost the Bruins: No team or player every plays a perfect game. But since I've had the ability to watch a lot of Bruins games, one absolutely eye-explodingly frustrating fact has emerged; if the Bruins make five mistakes in a game, they lose 3 to 2. Last night's game is a good example. They made many good plays (no great plays), played a solid game from start to finish, dominated puck possession and attacking zone time and really only made four real mistakes. They lost 2-0. I wish I knew why Bruins' mistakes so often turn into goals, but I don't.

It has to Click: There have been moments when the Bruins were the best team in hockey. I specifically remember an early Washington Capitals game where the Bruins made the Capitals (the Washington Capitals!) look like the JV team. The first half of the last regular season game against the Canadians (before the Habs gave up for the night) also comes to mind. But the Bruins have rarely clicked this season. They have enough talent and structure to beat teams even when not everyone plays their best, but it takes more to win the Stanley Cup. Everything has to come together and that hasn't happened much this season.

Now, why they will win.

The Only Truly Effective Fourth-Line in the NHL: Most teams shorten their bench in the playoffs, rolling three or sometimes only two of their forward lines in the game. But the Bruins don't need to do that. Their fourth-line is more than just a 45-sec break for the rest of the team; they can hit, forecheck, maintain attacking zone time, fight (well, two of them can), and score. Obviously, this means the Bruins will have more energy as a team as they playoffs go on, but this will also wreak havoc on opposing coaches trying to get favorable match ups. I would not be too shocked if the fourth-line didn't score in the playoffs, but if they continue to play 6-10 effective minutes a game, as they have all season, the Bruins have a real good chance to hoist the cup.

Scoring Depth: The Bruins have four players with 20 or more goals this season, spread out over two lines, and thirteen players with 10 or more goals spread out over four lines and a couple of reserves. Furthermore in that between 10 and 20 range is a future Hall-of-Famer (Mark Recchi), the fastest slapshot on the planet (Zdeno Chara), one of the game's best playmakers (David Krejci), and perhaps the best snapshot in the game (Michael Ryder). Their opponents can't just put their shutdown pair of defensemen out against the Bruins top line and expect to limit their scoring. If you're playing the Capitals, you've got a pretty good idea who will score the overtime goal to win the game, but with the Bruins, who knows.

Goaltending: Tim Thomas set an NHL record for regular season save percentage, saving both the relatively harmless shots the Bruins' structure allows and virtually sure thing goals. Oh, and Tuukka Rask was a contender for the Vezina last year, and has played well this year too. In short, the Bruins have two absolute top of the line goaltenders, when often, just one is enough to get you deep in the playoffs. (Really, Montreal? Halak made, like, a thousand saves in the playoffs last year, letting you beat teams you had absolutely no business beating and you trade him? This is not to knock Carey Price, who is probably the game's most underrated player, but seriously.) Not only could Tim Thomas win a series for the B's, Tuukka Rask could step in and win a game in that series.

At writing, the Bruins are down 0-1 in their best-of-seven series with the Canadians. (Oh, if only I posted on Thursday morning.) It was a frustrating loss in which the Bruins dominated the game, but couldn't beat Price. But it doesn't change anything. Scoring on one of the Bruins' powerplays would have changed the complexion of the game. And the Habs teams speed allowed them to take advantage of the B's few mistakes. And though the B's played well, they didn't click. But one game is one game. And well, see the above points.

On Bad Games

2011-04-08T07:24:00.000-07:00
Last Saturday I was at a Boston Blazers game at the Garden. The Boston Blazers play professional indoor lacrosse, a strange game that mixes aspects of regular outdoor lacrosse, with professional hockey to create something that manages to look both familiar (I played lacrosse in high school) and foreign (but that lacrosse never involved brawls and boards). It's fun and the tickets are cheap (especially for the Boston area) and abundant so I usually get a couple of games as Christmas and/or birthday presents. Unfortunately, Saturday was a bad game.

They were playing the Rochester Knighthawks, whose jerseys would suggest a lineage that dates back to the 1993-4 teal invasion. The game got away from the Blazers pretty quickly. Their top offensive player and captain, “Dangerous” Dan Dawson, never got his game going. He missed a lot of shots and the ones that were on net were right into the goalie's chest. The offense in general was sluggish, while the defense was absolutely porous. The Blazers goalie, All-Star Anthony Cosmo, couldn't seem to get his game going either, and whatever plays the Knighthawks were running, the Blazers were either ill-prepared for or just athletically unable to keep up with them. Every time the Blazers looked like they might be able to claw themselves back into the game the Knighthawks would score a quick goal (or 3). It was, unequivocally, a bad game.

This made me wonder, can I over-intellectualize the “bad game?” Of course, I can. It's what I'm best at.

Everything gains complexity under scrutiny. Though I could sub-divide and hyper-categorize, at the moment, I'll only identify three different types of bad games; frustrating, humiliating, and “ah, screw it.”

Frustrating bad games happen when the team isn't playing badly, isn't really making any mistakes, isn't really doing anything out of the ordinary, but still ends up losing, sometimes by a lot. Of course, in these games, you never really do anything right either. You might not make any terrible plays but you don't make any great ones. My senior year high school hockey was a team that would “play to the level of their opponents,” which is not good when you're a favorite to win the championship, as we were. One team, Falmouth perhaps, beat Lewiston for the first time in school history that year. We didn't play badly that game, but, well. Fans of the Bruins will be familiar with this kind of bad loss as so many of their bad games are hair-losingly frustrating. In some ways, this is the hardest kind of bad game to recover from because it's so difficult to learn something from the loss. You can't correct mistakes that don't happen. (If I hear “get our legs going” or its equivalent one more time from the Claude Julien coaching staff, I'll, I don't know, whine about it on the Internet.)

In a humiliating bad game, the opposing team is better than yours in every possible aspect of the game. I'm pretty sure that's what we saw at the Blazers game. The most recent Bruins and Canadians game, with the Bruins winning 7-0, was certainly a humiliating bad game for the Canadians. The thing about humiliating games is they can sometimes be the easiest bad games to recover from. Whether it's your team's incompetence or the other team's excellence, there is something to coach from in these bad games. The thing about humiliating games is they can sometimes be the hardest bad games to recover from. Knowing you can be beat so badly, makes you wonder if you can ever really win, and if you play that team again, you come into it with a horrifying mix of thirst for revenge and debilitating fear. About the worst emotional state possible for making good decisions.

Then there's the “ah, screw it,” bad game In some games, for reasons no one will every surmise, everything goes the worst way possible. No matter what you do, it ends up being the worst thing to do at that moment. Games like this can be frustrating and humiliating, but there's a point at which they become, oddly, freeing. If the universe has decided there's no way on this green earth that you will win this game, it's hard to be upset about not winning the game. No matter what the final score is, this type of bad game is the easiest to recover from. You can displace the badness into the realm of mystery surrounding all sports. You can say things like, “We just didn't have it today,” or “Today is just one game,” or whatever, and actually mean it. Then, it's like the game never happened.

I stayed through to the end of that Blazers game, long after it was clear they were not capable of a miracle comeback, long past the point where the game stopped being entertaining, long past the dramatic diminishing of the rest of the crowd. I'm a firm believer in staying till the very end of a game, no matter what the score is. Part of that is because I don't go to many games and want to get as much out of them as possible. Part of it is because I believe it's important to show a minimum level of respect to the athletes, by staying till the final horn and offering at least a modicum of applause for the their effort. But it's also because our lives are filled with their own equivalent of “bad games,” and how we deal with them will go along way in determining what we achieve (or don't). Frankly, I'd rather practice dealing with frustration in a situation where nobody's job is going to be threatened if I deal with it poorly. Often when sports are presented as methods for developing life skills, it is exclusively in the context of playing the sport, but I think there's an opportunity to everyone involved to gain from watching sport, whether your team wins, loses, or frustratingly, humiliatingly, ah-screw-itingly loses.

Leadership Lag in George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm

2011-04-01T11:11:00.000-07:00
One of the best non-fiction books I read last year was George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm by Miranda Carter. It is a history of the reigns of Tsar Nicholas in Russia, King George III in England, and Kaiser Wilhelm in Germany. As if there needed to be more evidence, Carter's book explores one of the fundamental flaw of monarchies of any variety; the entire society is threatened when the ruler isn't up to the task.
None of the three rulers in the book were equipped with the intellectual, emotional, or character resources needed to rule effectively, let alone to cope with the massive technological, economic, and social changes happening in the countries they tried to rule, and their inadequacies were a significant part of the road to WWI. One of the triumphs of this book is that Carter doesn't use their inadequacies to turn them into villains. Not even Wilhelm, who of the three acted most like the despot he was accused of being, is denied the complexities of human character. Even though they were powerful people, they were still people. To continue with Wilhelm, Carter showed how childhood emotional traumas shaped his worldview and how that worldview shaped his rule. For George, she suggests he might have been a very successful boarding school dean. Nicholas was just one of those people, we all know some, who just didn't have a mind for the details of well, paying utility bills on time or keeping track of intramural registration deadlines, let alone the details of statecraft.
Carter doesn't psycho-analyze them into innocence either. She strikes a remarkable balance, showing us the complexities involved in all their decisions, without absolving them of the responsibility for those decisions. But, of course, the grand consequence of all of these decisions, the ultimate result of all these flaws, the looming event in history is WWI.
WWI is the problem war in the Western world in the 20th century. WWII is, of course, defined as a conflict against radically destructive nations. Every other armed conflict until the first Gulf War occurred in the context of the Cold War, and none of them, or any of the other subsequent Western conflicts in the Middle East, were anywhere near as destructive as WWI.
Read along with Barbara Tuchman's brilliant Guns of August, (one of the great works of non-fiction) you get the sense that one of the prime causes of WWI was leadership lag. The world was changing rapidly, in terms of economy, technology, and social structures. New ideas were changing the way people thought of the composition of government and the value of monarchs. And yet, there was a persistent idea that if somehow Europe's monarchs could all get together, without parliaments, dumas, or weimars muddling about, they could work out spheres of influence in the Balkans and balance power between France and Germany, and use their familial connections to maintain peace in Europe.
The thing was, though all three were cousins, the importance of those familial connections in European politics was rapidly diminishing. Essentially, the world changed rapidly and the leaders lagged behind. Even though everything was different, Nicholas, Wilhelm, and George ruled as if nothing had changed. Of course, the three kings weren't the only leaders lagging behind the world they lead. One of the motifs of The Guns of August, was the conviction among world leaders and diplomats that a war between France and Germany was bound to happen. Simply put, they assumed there would be a war between France and Germany, and so they made decisions based on these assumptions, decisions that, (you can see where this is going) contributed to the start of WWI.
The argument against monarchy, or anything that concentrates power in the hands of a single individual, has always been simple; monarchs are humans, and very few humans have the ability to see the grand swaths of history and society while maintaining an effective knowledge of the details, with a sense of one's own limitations and the wherewithal to delegate responsibilities to competent others, to effectively lead nations. (An argument against nations? I think so, but that's another essay.) What Miranda Carter does is tell us the stories of three human beings born into unique situations, and she does it in a way that includes those aforementioned great swaths. It's hard to say whether a direct lesson can really be drawn from George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm, (unless you previously assumed “archies” are viable) but Miranda Carter has told a compelling story of a time in history and the people in power, who were passed by it.

My First Meal at Toro

2011-03-25T06:09:00.000-07:00
I now know the first time I went to Toro was an important event in my food life. It happened after we'd been watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations for a season or so, and long after I read his essays collected in A Cook's Tour (still my favorite collection of food and travel writing). It was about the time Riss and I were thinking about getting a farm share and also, about the time I was learning about the importance of buying local. Along with all of that, I was also cooking more, being more creative with my cooking, and being less afraid of messing up while cooking. In short, the first time I went to Toro coincided with the transition of food from fuel, to an aspect of my culture. It was also, about the time we finally discovered restaurant week.
Toro is a Spanish style tapas restaurant in Boston's Southish end that happens to sit about fifty yards from a rather stark gentrification border. (Guess which side it's on.) In general, it's far too expensive for us to eat there, but Boston (and many other cities) has a “Restaurant Week” (which is really two weeks, but I'm not going to complain) in which restaurants offer a prix fix menu at an alarmingly reasonable price, a little over $30 per person for dinner and a little over $20 per person for lunch. Riss and I chose Toro because we decided to be adventurous with our Restaurant Week meal and Toro offered the most adventurous menu in the city that year.
Looking back on it, this could have been a make or break meal for us, because everything else followed from it. For example, in London we ate at a famous snout to tail restaurant called St. John's Bread and Wine, where Riss and I shared appetizers of calf's heart and bone marrow, I had pan fried calf's liver, and Riss had tongue, all with a side salad that had the best dressing I've ever consumed. (One way to tell a good restaurant; try what they're not famous for. If that's still good, it means they're committed to a good meal, not just a signature dish.) I also had woodcock in London, which tasted a like a slightly leaner, but no less delicious, duck. I've eaten oysters, I've had pho (which might be the world's perfect breakfast) with tripe and cartilage (though, at least at Les, I prefer the standard issue pho with beef round), and squid. On a trip to Chinatown, Riss and I picked out, pretty much at random, a few pastries to try. (Did not go well, but you can't win them all.) At Craigie on Main, a snout to tail restaurant in Cambridge (which mixes some killer cocktails as well) Riss and I got a half a pig's head peking duck style. (One of the best arguments for an anthro-centric deity organizing existence on the earth is the pig. I mean, even it's face is delicious.) And in our freezer now, along with farm share veggies, chili, sauce, and the more traditional cuts of meat we have liver, heart, and tongue (all bought from Jim, I might add).
I have to wonder what my relationship to food would be if that first meal at Toro had been a bad one. Would I have had the conviction to be adventurous again? Would I have gotten something interesting or something safe at the next restaurant I went to? What would I have dared to try in a foreign country? One of the things I've learned since that time is that, if you want to eat interesting meals, you're going to have to bad meals sometimes. Almost by definition, an interesting meal is going to taste bad to somebody, and every now and again, you're that somebody. Even if I knew that then, would I have believed it, if my first adventurous meal was also a bad meal? Obviously, it was not a bad meal.
It was one of, if not the, best meal of my life.
We had tapas dishes featuring heart, tongue, bone marrow, and pork belly. When we finished ordering the waiter was pleased. He said we'd ordered all the good stuff. There is a strange thrill in impressing a server at a nice restaurant; it's like acing a quiz.
I'm going to be honest, I generally find descriptions of the actual taste of food inadequate. Most writers pile approximations on top of each other, hoping accuracy accumulates from equivalents and all writers assume that “buttery,” or “velvety,” or “savory,” or any other taste word means the same thing to everyone. We have an agreed upon linguistic definition for all of those things, but there really is no way to know whether the experiences we actually have are shared in any meaningful way. (A universal problem highlighted by food writing in particular.)
So I won't try to transfer the taste of the pork belly to you, but I will say that with the first bite I had, I thought, “I have to slow down. I have to make this last. This is the best bite of anything I've ever had.” I won't throw comparisons around about the bone marrow in the vain hope that a phrase like, “light smooth salty beef flavored butter” will have any accurate meaning for anyone else. I'll just toss out there that the heart felt like dissolving velvet on the tongue. Because really the particular tastes weren't the important part of the meal. The important part was that I chose to eat adventurously and was rewarded with my first ever food high.
I think the term food high is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll add the term “glowing euphoria” just to make it clear. I'd been a relatively picky eater when I was younger. For the most part, one bad experience could set me off a particular food for years. I don't think I ate hamburger for a decade because I once got something weird in a hamburger. I think by the time of that first meal at Toro, I had outgrown a fair amount of that pickiness. But still, I have to wonder if I would have been brave enough to rebound from a first bad adventurous meal. But I have the luxury of only wondering. Now, Riss and I got to Toro once a year.

A Radical Suggestion for the Boston Bruins Power-Play

2011-03-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Right now, the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League, are statistically the best 5-on-5 team in the league, and given that hockey is a 5-on-5 game, one would assume that the Bruins of Boston would be one of the best teams in the league. At 3^rd in the Eastern Conference, first in the Northeast Division, and almost a lock to make the playoffs, they're doing alright. But. They've had their struggles. Two, three, and four game losing streaks. Stretches where they only get the overtime point. And they can't seem to beat Montreal (one likely first round playoff opponent) or Buffalo (another likely first round playoff opponent.) As statistically the best team, for the most common situation in the sport, you would think they would be dominant. But even though they're good, they're not as good as they could be, and I for one, and not assuming a Stanley Cup this year.

So, if they're the best 5-on-5 team in professional hockey, why aren't they the best team in professional hockey? Basically, their power-play sucks. It's not the worst in the league, but it is plenty bad enough to bring their overall game down. They can go weeks it seems without scoring a goal when they have five players on the ice and the other team only has four. Their biggest trade this season was for defenseman Thomas Kaberle, primarily to improve their power-play. They've rotated many players through the power-play units and they've tried different strategies, but nothing's worked. They grabbed a 5-on-3 goal last week, (and that was a relief) but I can't remember the last power-play goal before that.

In watching their power-play, all season, what might be the most frustrating, (head-coach Claude Julien must be going out of his mind) is that, as a power-play unit, it doesn't look that bad. Passes are usually crisp. Shots are pretty good. Rebounds are produced. Their entrances into the attacking zone could be better, but they're not atrocious. But, if they want to win the hands-down best trophy in sports, they'll need at least an average power-play to do it. So, here's my radical suggestions to improve the Boston Bruins power-play.

Don't run a power-play. That's right. Instead of two power-play units, roll the same lines used during even strength. Don't run any 5-on-4 specific plays. Don't do anything different from even strength. Dump and chase with an aggressive forecheck. If a defender backs off the half-wall, don't try to set up a diagonal cross-ice path; attack the net as you would if it were 5-on-5. Instead of high-low passing to set up a shot from the point with men in front, set up the low zone forwards cycle.

The different plays power-plays run are designed to take advantage of the extra man. The team on the power-play can take more risks, they can hold the puck longer to look for passing lanes, and they almost always have more room on the periphery to make passes. Power-plays are designed to take advantage of these, well, advantages.

But right now, the Bruins aren't. But they score more and allow fewer goals than any other team when playing 5-on-5. It stands to reason that if they play the same way when they are on the power-play, they'll start scoring more goals. Even if they don't, there's still time before the playoffs to try something else. It could act almost like a reset button, completely wiping clean whatever their power-play is now so they can get something more effective ready for the playoffs, whatever it may look like.

In a somewhat related vein, Jack Edwards says a lot of ridiculous stuff on the air, but he's right when he points out the inadequacy of the power-play statistics. Power-play and penalty kill statistics are calculated as basic percentages, with the higher the better. The problem is all power-plays and penalty kills count the same in the statistic. Killing a two-minute penalty counts the same in the calculation as killing a five-minute or a 30-second penalty. It's not an entirely useless statistic, but it really only gives a sense of a team's quality one way or the other.

My thought for a more accurate statistic: Goals per ten minutes. It's pretty simple, the amount of time killing penalties is added up, the amount of goals scored during that time, and, then reduce the fraction. The more G/10s (or something, ask Bill James) the worse the penalty kill and the better the power-play. It's a simplification that would, I think, reflect more of the complexities of the events it attempts to describe, which is what the best stats do. There. Two problems solved. What's next? Concussions? No way. That's an entire other essay.

On Borders Bankruptcy

2011-03-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about the Borders Bankruptcy. Or rather, I have many negative feelings about the Borders Bankruptcy.

First of all, Borders was a major player in the devaluation of the book. By using the greater volume of sales possible for a national chain, Borders generally sold their books at a price below that which would sustain the book industry itself. (And, of course, how much does a life-changing epiphany really cost, but, that's another essay.) They were part of a movement, along with Barnes and Noble and Amazon that actively devalued what they sold. Most businesses spend a lot of money to convince customers their product is valuable. Take cheap, watery, disgusting beer. Millions and millions (billions maybe?) of dollars are spent every year by big beer companies to convince potential customers that they're flavorless alcohol delivery systems are worth buying. Borders, et al., however, told customers, “Our books are cheaper and that's the only thing that matters.”

Lots of businesses make mistakes. Lots of businesses choose poor business models and, as a result have to declare bankruptcy. Innovation is only possible in the presence of failure, so there's nothing weird about this. I can have sympathy for businesses that try something new and fail. The thing is, though, Borders brought hundreds of independent bookstores, who had sustainable business models, down with them. Borders sold books that really, truly cost $25.00 to make everything work, for $15.00 or less. You can make something like work for a while if you're a big enough business, but in the end, you can't make a lasting living selling something for less than what it's worth.

But I'm not happy about this either. If I believed there were independent (sustainably priced) bookstores to benefit (and hire people as a result of) from the hundreds of Borders locations that are closing, that would be one thing, but most of those independent bookstores went out of business years ago. Which means that in most of these locations Borders was the only bookstore in the area. Which means that the business most likely to benefit from these closings is Amazon, perhaps the most destructive force for a substantial (and important) portion of the book world.

But another increase for Amazon's market share (which they already use to bully publishers for better discounts) isn't the only negative (though, the way Amazon operates is a pretty big negative) side effect of the Borders bankruptcy. Right now, Borders owes millions of dollars to most major publishers, and though there is no indication there will be a cascade of bankruptcies from this, it will still most likely mean that publishers will lose millions of dollars. (Just a side note. What would the bookstore world look like if publishers extended that kind of credit to everyone? How many indie bookstores were just one holiday season or one strong quarter or even one “Help us we're struggling” sale from getting back on track? Would there be wide swaths of the country now without a single bookstore? We'll never know, but you gotta wonder about extending millions of dollars in credit to anybody selling anything.) In an industry that is struggling to prove its value to the world, these kinds of losses could have a significant effect on publishing. One of the reasons why great works of literature get to the public, is that publishers have the resources to take risks on a books with more quality then profitability. Now, many publishers will have less resources to take those risks than they once did.

So to sum up on a bit of a downer, Borders was bad for books and Borders bankruptcy is bad for books.

Hooray for the classic lose/lose. Now, on to some kind of action.

If you love books and your local Borders closed, the best thing to do is start shopping at a locally owned, sustainably priced, independent bookstore. There are a couple of ways to find one. You could go to this list or you could go to IndieBound.org and use their store finder. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the decades long decline of independent bookstores coupled with these Borders closings will leave whole swaths of the country without a bookstore within a reasonable driving distance. If you live in one of those places, instead of going to Amazon, go to Powell's or The Strand first. Both stores sell online and both have massive inventories, meaning you'll almost always find the book you're looking for at one or the other. They also both do used books, so you can find good deals if that is your thing.

Like pretty much everything else, the bankruptcy of Borders isn't just one thing; its recent changes in technology, long term shifts in American culture, and the particular decisions made by Borders. Prices at Amazon. Supermarkets selling Harry Potters at next to nothing. Erosion of book coverage in the media. Hopefully something positive will come from the Borders bankruptcy. Maybe publishers will become more assertive against Amazon. Maybe more book buyers will shop at indie bookstores. Maybe the book as objects sold in bookstores will continue to diminish and eventually be replaced by something else. It is far too early to tell, but as with all news making events, the Borders bankruptcy gives a chance to ask big questions. The question here: how important are books to society? And, since we're asking: what are you willing to pay to make sure there are books around for your grandchildren.

How to Watch Rugby

2011-03-04T07:13:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, NBC broadcast a sporting event from Las Vegas, and though one could easily imagine all the possible sporting events NBC would broadcast from Las Vegas, it is unlikely that you'll imagine the right one. (Unless you bothered to read the title of this post, which, well, kind of gives it away.) It was an event in the Sevens World Series. “Sevens” is a variant of rugby in which seven, rather than fifteen players play on a side at the same time, which means that NBC was broadcasting rugby. I almost called in to work, but, luckily we have the wonder of DVR.

It's always baffled me that rugby isn't more popular in this country. It has everything that's good about American football and everything that's good about soccer and none of the stupid stuff in either one of them. Grace and violence. Skill and strength. Knee socks and jerseys with collars. Practically perfect.

In a way it makes sense, though. It's actually fairly hard to learn how to watch a new sport. We don't really think of it, but most of us who watch sports learned to watch those sports in our childhoods. Whether we actively watched or not, we lived in families that had baseball, football, basketball, and/or hockey on all the time. These sports look natural and intuitive to us, because we grew up with them. We learned to watch baseball the same way we learned to speak English, and, in a lot of ways, watching a new sport is like learning a new language.

So, if you've never watched rugby before, here is a quick primer that can hopefully be applied to watching other sports foreign to you.

Focus on the Universals: Loving a sport is all about paying attention to the details, but when watching a new sport for the first time, focus on the universals. In rugby, players move a ball from one side of the field to the other, trying to get it across a line. (If that sounds familiar it is, as American football came from rugby.) Sure, there's tons of other stuff going on, but trying to figure out why that guy essentially just kicked the ball straight up in the air, will only frustrate you.

Focus on the athleticism: Part of the fun of watching sports is watching people do things that would give you a hernia or totally blow-out your knee and there's plenty of that in rugby. Sure there's a lot of strategy and sport specific skill, but there's also a whole lot of huge dudes running really fast and hitting each other really hard.

Listen to the announcer's volume: In contemporary sports coverage the announcers never shut up. For someone who's never watched rugby before, it's going to be a constant stream of, possibly British-accented, gibberish. But the volume of their voice will tell you when something exciting is happening. It doesn't particularly matter what, but it's important to know when you should be excited. If you can hear the crowd noise, they work as an indicator as well.

Root for the home team: Some emotional investment always makes sport more entertaining, and if you don't know anything about the teams, rooting for the home team will at least mean the crowd will help you know when to cheer and when to groan.

If you happen to be watching with someone who knows the sport wait until halftime to ask questions: I love helping people learn how to watch rugby. As a fan, I feel like an ambassador of the sport. And there is something fun about sharing something you know a lot about with somebody else. The problem though, is that there's always another level of background behind the answer to a question. For someone who doesn't have the basic assumptions of rugby, the question “Why did they just blow the whistle?” doesn't have a simple answer. You might have to know what a “ruck” is or what a “maul” is or how “off-sides” works on a kick. Just imagine you're watching American football with someone who's never seen the sport before and said individual asks you why the guy standing at the back of the line of the guys bending over just patted his helmet and started shouting. Sure you could start answering the question but by the time you've got the wide out checking down to a quick slant, five more plays have happened with all the questions they can generate. Waiting until halftime (which rugby has) means you have some time to go over the background. There's a break where nothing else is going on when you can follow a question through to a reasonable approximation of an answer, and follow tangents as they come up.

Every sport looks stupid when you don't know what's going on: Yes, in rugby there's a fair amount of shorts grabbing. Players have their ears taped. Every now and again, players line up and throw a teammate in the air. By his thighs. Without context it looks ridiculous. But just for a second, forget everything you know about baseball and watch a batter during an at-bat. Is that much adjustment necessary after every pitch? And what's that other guy doing that the batter looks at after every pitch? Again, it's like how foreign languages can sound silly when you don't know what the speakers are saying.

There's nothing wrong with loving one of (or all of) the four majors or remaining devoted to whatever sport you grew up with. But sport is one of the ways people, nations, and cultures express themselves, and watching foreign sports is one way to experience, at least a part of a foreign culture. And now with espn3.com, you can watch rugby. And soccer. And lacrosse. And even cricket (which is totally worth it, just do laundry or something during the breaks), squash, volleyball, and more. Hopefully, you can apply the How to Watch Rugby principles to all of them well.

Chili of the Americas

2011-02-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

There are tons of benefits to getting a farm share; your food based carbon footprint drops, you get to know the person who grows your food, you support the local economy, you get high food value for your dollar, the food is fresher and, thus, tastier, than anything you can buy in the supermarket...but there are challenges as well. Most of the time, people decide what they want to cook and then buy the ingredients. With a farm share, you get the ingredients and then have to figure out what to do with them. Sure, it means that every now and again I wanted to set a pile of lettuce on fire and order a pizza, but sometimes Riss and I developed recipes that have become some of our favorite meals. This one Riss did that she calls “Chili of the Americas” because it's a chili recipe that uses the “Three Sisters” of North American cooking; squash, corn, and beans. (Though, chili itself is a North American dish, so the title is a bit redundant, but, hey, it's got to be something other than just “Vegetarian Chili.”) This is adapted from a meatified chili recipe (Double Beef Chili by Living Cookbook) we got from a friend.

2 tsp vegetable oil
2 onions, diced
2 cups shredded pumpkin or hard squash (butternut works best, but most others would be fine)
1 cup pumpkin or hard squash cubed
1 cup corn (frozen is okay)
1 cup potatoes cubed
1 cup medium to mild peppers chopped (I’ve used cubanos, poblanos and/or banana peppers, but you can use green ones as well)
4 jalapeno peppers, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs cumin seed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp coriander seed
4 oz tomato paste
10 oz stock
1.5 Cups diced tomatoes
1 Cup Strong Coffee
1 Cup Dark Beer
38 oz kidney beans canned
38 oz mixed beans canned (black, pink, navy etc)
1/4 Cup brown sugar
1 Tbs cocoa powder

1 In a large pot heat oil over medium heat. Fry onions, all peppers, garlic, cumin, salt, cayenne, oregano and coriander until onions are softened, about 5 minutes.
2 Add shredded pumpkin, tomato paste, stock, tomatoes, coffee, beer, kidney beans, sugar, and cocoa. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally for 1 hour.
3 Add all the remaining vegetables, simmer for 30 minutes
4Add remaining beans; simmer 30 minutes.
5 Serve with corn bread and shredded cheese.

(also makes amazing chili fries)

As long as you use vegetarian stock (and I highly suggest making your own, but that's another post) this is vegetarian, and if you leave out the cheese (though I'd add a little extra salt when serving) it's vegan, and if you simply must have meat in your chili adding some ground beast or cubed beast, browned first, during the first hour of cooking won't be bad, but might stand out texture-wise at the end. (And I think you can go without meat for at least one meal, especially one this damn tasty and hearty.) You can adjust the heat by adding more or less jalapenos, or by removing more or less of the white ribs on the inside of the jalapenos when you clean them (for that is where the heat lives).

This recipe is also easy to upscale. Riss and I tend to make in “vats” and freeze portions of it, so we make it one afternoon and it eat periodically for months afterward. It's a few hours total of cooking and prep, and we end up with a bunch of microwavable meals. (Which we sometimes, as noted above, slather over fries and under shredded cheese. Often late at night.)

On Tom McCarthy and the Homogeneous Mainstream

2011-02-18T08:02:00.000-08:00
First of all, I didn't get through Remainder. Having read other works that deal with architecture as metaphor for consciousness and/or works that confront the problems of replication and simulation, I didn't find the central conceit particularly interesting. Great, the protagonist was trying to recapture something lost through the artificial recreation of a situation haunting his memory; I've read works that have done that. (OK, I'm being a little coy here, because the titles I could list would probably make me look like a pretentious jerk; OK, only, Tristram Shandy, In Search of Lost Time and Simulation and Simulacra do that, but well, they're really good at it...) Additionally, the protagonist is awarded a massive monetary settlement because he suffered a mysterious head injury he is forbidden from discussing by the terms of the settlement, which he spends almost entirely on this recreation project. I simply couldn't believe in a character so selfish that he didn't even consider some kind of donation to some kind of charitable cause. Even a nod to this generally inherent social drive would have satisfied me.
I don't need to like the protagonist to like the book. I don't need to respect the characters. If the language and style of writing is interesting enough, I don't need to believe in the characters or in the plot. However, Remainder was written in the shortish sentences of conventional literature in which artlessness masquerades as clarity.
But even though I didn't like Remainder, I could see there was an interesting mind attached to its creation. I thought it was a failed project, but that failure implied the potential for future success. Furthermore, I could appreciate that someone with a different reading history, who read Remainder at a different stage of their reading lives could appreciate and enjoy the conceit. So when his second novel, C, came out, I took an advanced reader copy and gave it a try.
And I enjoyed C. Very much in fact. I thought it was an excellent historical novel. C had a number of successes. First of all, McCarthy picked his time period, from fin de siecle to between the wars, when the pace of societal change had just started to pick up. Those of us who lived before the Internet, i.e. nearly all of us, are now relatively comfortable with a dramatic rate of societal change, but for most of human history you lived in the same world as your grandparents. The protagonist, Serge, lives through the development of wireless communication and air travel, at the cusp of major technology driven societal upheavals. He lives during a time in which a man can fly across the Atlantic and messages can be sent from one end of the world to the other and you can die from an infected cut. Furthermore, McCarthy does an excellent job of making all of that the setting. He doesn't force us to look at the new fangled aeroplanes, but we'd have to be asleep not to notice them.
The second major success of C is even more impressive. Through a number of different methods, McCarthy explores the tension between the spoken word and the written word. For example, he makes sure the reader is never entirely certain how to pronounce “Serge.” (See, you don't know.) It's hard to appreciate how difficult, in terms of composition it is to explore this tension, but think about it this way, no one is there to sound out the words for you, so McCarthy has to induce that sounding out in the readers brain through the written word. For aspiring writers, that one trick is worth the price of admission.
A writer writing a book I like and a book I don't isn't that distinctive, especially given that McCarthy wrote two very different books. The thing is, somehow McCarthy has become the standard bearer for contemporary English-language experimental fiction. McCarthy, so far, has proven to be a pretty good writer and if I have a chance to grab a review copy of his next work I certainly will, but I don't find his work experimental at all, let alone the pinnacle of contemporary experimental fiction.
This all started with Zadie Smith. In a well-written and well-argued (but totally incorrect) essay “Two Paths of the Novel” Smith identified McCarthy as the innovative side of the coin to Joseph O'Neil's and his Netherland's conventional side. I can't speak to Joseph O'Neil, but I can speak to a whole bunch of other work being written. In contemporary England, neither of McCarthy's novels are as innovative as Steven Hall's Raw Shark Texts. On this side of the pond, neither Remainder nor C break from convention the way Mark Z. Danielewski, Lydia Davis, Ben Marcus, Leanne Shapton, or Jesse Ball does, and that list of innovative authors leaves out really really below the wavelength works like The Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney by Christopher Higgs (released well after the essay was written, but my point remains). Historically, I didn't see much work done in McCarthy's novels that wasn't done (and much better) in the work of J. G. Ballard, let alone the work of England's last great innovative writer B. S. Johnson. On this side of the pond, McCarthy is far closer to successful conventional writers than he is to William Gaddis, Donald Barthelme, David Markson, Alexander Theroux, David Foster Wallace, Delillo, or Pychon.
(And this isn't even bringing Joyce into this in a non-parenthetical way, because that would be like saying McCarthy isn't good at basketball because he can't beat Michael Jordan one-on-one. But he should still try.)
So this essay is less an assessment of Tom McCarthy's work and more a question: What was Zadie Smith reading when she picked him as one of the two paths of the novel? And what is everybody else reading when they describe McCarthy as experimental? I know that all mainstream anything will be more homogeneous than the total spectrum of whatever that anything is (and have no problem with that), but has mainstream literary writing become so homogeneous that the minor differences in outlook, goal, and style between a Tom McCarthy novel and a Zadie Smith novel make Tom McCarthy experimental? Have lazy critics, timid readers, and MFA factories so demolished the influence of Joyce (and Stein, and Musil and Proust and Broch and Faulkner for Christ's sake...apologies, but I've got to throw O'Brien (Flan), Melville, Poe, Sterne, Rabelais, and Cervantes in here too) that someone who uses entirely typical sentence construction is considered the vanguard of experimental fiction writing? Were enough serious readers so offended by the challenges Joyce posed to them that sentences one had to think about to understand became automatic pretentious failures? And frankly, I don't care how many hunchbacks the protagonist has sex with (just for the record: 1) after Sade, how can intercourse presented in typical prose be considered atypical just because it's not between a physically attractive man and a physically attractive woman?
Some of this is Tom McCarthy's fault which is why I've refrained from absolving him of guilt, but not all of it. I don't have the time (or the energy) to analyze all the factors but somehow we have entered a golden age for boring fiction. At the moment, there are a lot of very well written, intelligently structured, emotionally compelling, works that have nothing to add whatsoever to the progress of human knowledge. Contemporary writers have perfected the packet of information wherein they write sentences just difficult enough to make readers feel good about reading them, but not hard enough to risk turning away those readers who don't want to break a sweat while engaging in one of the most important actions available to the human consciousness. (That last bit was a little dramatic, but, damnit, reading is important to me.)
In a different world, McCarthy is a gateway. He is a good transition between works that are mostly entertainment and works that are mostly literature. If one knows to look further, McCarthy should lead people to Hall and Wallace and Ballard and Johnson, (Frankly, a whole lot of Cormac McCarthy (National Book Award winning, bestselling, Cohen brothers source material author) is more stylistically daring than Tom McCarthy, but this essay will never end if I keep tacking on authors more innovative than Tom McCarthy.) (Malcom Lowry!) and other more innovative writers while broadening people's understanding of what it means to tell a relevant story.
This is not an essay against Tom McCarthy. This is an essay against timid reading. So many readers, read what they have habitually liked, that slight differences can make a conventional work seem avant garde (and if that work hits the sweet spot, between comfort and difference then it becomes the pinnacle of the contemporary avant garde). And there's nothing wrong with habit, comfort or entertainment, just try something different once in a while. So, read a weird book next. (Preferably one you've purchased after clicking a link to it from my blog. Ka-Ching!) If you like it, great, read more. If not, there are worse things in the world than reading a book you don't like. Read a few sure things and then try another weird book. At worst, we'll end up with a slightly richer mainstream, and at best, we'd have a truly heterogeneous mainstream, one that actually reflects the variety of human experience as lived right now. And in that world of literature, Tom McCarthy would be an unquestioned success.

Taxing the Rich Kills Jobs

2011-02-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

This is a popular mantra and has been for quite some time. Unfortunately, I've never heard anyone, when speaking in the mainstream media anyway, explain why this should be true. They just assert and assert and assert. “Taxes on the wealthy kill jobs.” Given that, I'm going to have guess at what the logic is behind this mantra, and if I guess wrong, I hope you astute readers will correct me. The argument seems go like this: high income tax on the rich encourages them to keep more of their profits as income for themselves, rather than hiring workers, because they know the government is going to take a bunch of it and that the money sent to the government as taxes represents a diminished spending capacity, spending that would then create jobs. Simplified; if the government takes it, the rich don't spend it, and jobs are lost and/or, because the government takes it, the rich keep more of it to compensate rather than hiring people.

A couple of things.

In order for job creation to be connected to income that income has to be a function of profits. Profits are the positive difference between revenue and overhead, and of course, overhead is composed of salaries for employees, among other things. For owners and some top level executives at some businesses, I'm sure their income is a function of profits, and what they decide to take home as income from those profits would have an impact on job creation. But what percentage of America's wealthy falls into this category? I don't see Kevin Youkilis doing a lot of hiring. The only people in the Red Sox organization whose income is connected to hiring are John Henry et al, and maybe some of the upper management. Tito's income is not affected by whether or not the Red Sox hire another usher, hot dog vendor, or security guard. The same goes for successful actors, lottery winners, portfolio managers...

Another thing. Because we have an exchange economy, jobs are only created when wealth is spent. In a way, all spending of any kind is connected to creating jobs (including government spending, but somehow that doesn't count) and it's a lot easier for a million people to spend a million dollars than it is for one person to spend a million dollars. There just isn't enough time in the day for the super-wealthy to spend a significant portion of their wealth. So it sits in savings accounts, in funds, in investment portfolios, not being spent, and not creating jobs. Furthermore, the reach of individual spending, even when a ton of money is being spent is limited. How many jobs does the purchase of a Picasso really create? Or a limited edition Lamborghini? Sure, the Lamborghini creates jobs, but wouldn't ten people buying ten Fords create more?

Simply put, not enough rich people are connected to hiring for taxes on their income to affect hiring and there just isn't enough time in the day for the wealthy to spend enough of their money to really create a lot of jobs. As conservative critics joyfully point out (without ever, of course, confronting how the processes of lawmaking allows individual legislators to funnel money into their electoral districts) the Federal government is very good at spending money. If spending money creates jobs, then maybe we should let the Federal government do what its best at and create a bunch of jobs with revenue raised from a rational income tax.

Critics of the New Deal like to say that it wasn't Roosevelt's massive social spending programs that pulled the country out of the Depression; it was World War II. And those critics are both right and eye-gougingly stupid at the same time. World War II was a Federal spending project the size of which had never been seen in our Nation's history. And if you tack on another couple of farsighted bills (perhaps the high points of legislation in this country) the G. I. Bill and the Marshall Plan, that bill gets even higher.

Would higher taxes on the rich coupled with Federal spending projects solve the unemployment problem we're facing right now? A part of it, probably. But our economy is a complex system responding to many different factors and the Federal income tax rate is only one of them. Even if a truly progressive Federal income tax were instituted there are still lots of ways for wealthy Americans to make sure they keep way more money than they deserve.

And that's my biggest problem with the income taxes on the rich kill jobs argument. It completely ignores the complexity of the American economy. Federal taxes do play a role, but so do labor regulations in the Philippines and employer subsidized health insurance. The industry's new technology. The skills of the American workforce. The wants of the consumer. There's more to jobs than just tax rates. This will probably come up again, but my real problem with this argument is that it really isn't an argument at all in that it doesn't confront any of the complexity of the real world. It's not a point, it's like trying to get your buddy to do something by saying, “Come on....Come on...Come on,” or busting out a classic, “Because I said so,” to get your kids off the monkey bars. Given how our economy has changed and how our tax code has accumulated provisions, exceptions, and loopholes, I do agree that a revamping of our tax rates is in order, but if we want to do it well, the debate we have has to confront the complexity of the American economy. If we don't, we'll pass laws and enact policies without any real understanding of their consequences.

Young Love: Extreme Literature Edition feature Mark Z. Danielewski and Tao Lin

2011-02-04T09:36:00.000-08:00
OK, so maybe in the modern world of marketing hyperbole, calling anything “extreme” is at the very least inherently ironic (and, man, what a world we live in when words are inherently ironic) and more often disingenuous or utterly meaningless, but if any literature, excluding literature as contraband in oppressive societies, being written today could be thought of as extreme it would be the work of Mark Z. Danielewski and Tao Lin. At first glance, only their radicalism unites them; Danielewski's explosive and cinematic novel design and Lin's nihilistic minimalism, but their two most recent works both dealt with young love.
I've described Only Revolutions by Danielewski a couple of different ways, and I think the most accurate I've come up with (if not the most likely to result in a sale at the bookstore) is that Only Revolutions is a response to Whitman's Song of Myself; a two-part epic poem, about and only about being alive and being in love. Sam and Hailey are archetypes more than characters, vessels for the energy we all feel when we first truly connect with another person. They are foolish, naïve, and immature, but they are also brave, vibrant, and energetic. They are an endless “go,” two characters in a perpetual verb, a persistent (but not endless) be-ing across time and space. They represent the propulsive force of synergy, that sense of having one mind despite two bodies that makes one feel invincible.
The story is told in two parts, one that starts in mid-1800s with Sam and one that starts in the 1990s with Hailey. They are constantly divided by time and space, as well as by other forces of the world, some of them embodied in a character named the Creep. But there is an inherent unity to Sam and Hailey, stronger than the forces of time and space and society, stronger even than death, for the end of Sam's story shares a page with the beginning of Hailey's and the end of Hailey's with the beginning of Sam's.
But no relationship is every purely synergistic. On the other end of the spectrum live Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning (not the actress) of Tao Lin's newest book Richard Yates . Haley Joel Osment is a graduate of NYU and a writer, living in New York who primarily supports himself by shoplifting, and Dakota Fanning is a teenager living with her single mother in New Jersey, suffering from, at least, bulimia, and probably a host of other contemporary mental illnesses. Along with the obvious differences between their lives, they also have different outlooks on life, and are constantly in conflict with one another. Haley Joel Osment is an adolescent artist still finding himself as a writer and a published author, while Dakota Fanning is an adolescent, in general, still trying to find herself as a person. Haley Joel Osment, believes Dakota Fanning is a compulsive liar, and constantly tries to enforce honesty on her, while monitoring how and what she eats. Haley Joel Osment becomes an unofficial therapist for Dakota Fanning as well as a boyfriend. (Always a recipe for success) They both often say and do hurtful things to each other. Despite their best efforts, they both often act selfishly.
And yet, it cannot be denied that they are in love. In today's America, there is one dominant consideration when choosing an action or making a purchase; convenience. All arguments in favor of one action or item seem to just disintegrate once that action or item has been accused of “inconvenience.” If you want to know how important something is to someone, simply establish how inconvenient it is to do or have that something and you'll know. Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning's relationship is very inconvenient. They have to sneak around. Take trains back and forth from the city to New Jersey. They have to lie to Dakota Fanning's mother. They have to coordinate work, school, and other schedules in order to spend time together. Richard Yates is a love story proven by how inconvenient the story is to the lovers.
In a way, there is something propulsive to their dissonance. The challenges add meaning to their relationship. Being with each other is a struggle and every time they have a good time together it is a triumph over the circumstances of the world. There relationship is not defined by joy, but by accomplishment. It is an achievement and generates the same kind of pride that any achievement generates.
However, one could ask whether extreme literature is all that relevant. If the style of these works are so radically different from what we (or at least we assume) experience, what can they reveal about our lives? By pushing ideas to their extremes, aspects of them normally too subtle to notice become visible. With Richard Yates, our obsession with convenience is exposed and explored by Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning's willingness to put up with inconvenience. Tao Lin's radical statementism (that one's mine) strips away the romanticism and sentimentalism that usually adorns love stories, highlighting the practical, logistical, and tangible aspects of relationships.
In Only Revolutions, the layout of one story upside down across the bottom of another story, (among other things) shows the complex relationship young love has with death. Young love is defined by a sense of invincibility, by a denial of death, but at the same, young love can only be “young” in relation to an awareness of “old.” Furthermore, young love is ephemeral, it is fragile, temporary, passing; it gets its vibrancy from its nearness to its own demise. Only Revolutions reveals this complex relationship by placing the birth and the death of the relationship on the same pages.
Young love is one of those ideas that makes a ton of terrible movies. It shows up in novels and stories and TV shows and daydreams. And let's be honest, most of the time, it is a major component of a work of sentimental crap. But Danielewski and Lin have done something different with it. Their radicalism has rescued it from romantic teen comedies and made something, at the very least, interesting out of young love. Perhaps, their extremeness has even made the idea important.

Never Buy in a Store, Part 1

2011-01-28T07:59:00.000-08:00
There are plenty of foodstuffs I would never consider making from scratch. Philo dough pops immediately to mind. The techniques required are too complex, the ingredients are too hard to find, and/or it would take just too damn long. However, for the past thirty years or so, advertizing has turned all cooking into an unholy inconvenience, making all food that requires preparation beyond “peel skin off banana” not worth your time. Like so much in this world, the problem is not that there is processed food, but that processed food dominates the market, even when the those foods don't actually save that much time. Simply put, there are some foods whose from-scratch preparation is so quick and easy, they might as well be “Open and serve.” One should never, as far as never goes, buy these from the store. Food number one in this category: guacamole.
The hardest and most time consuming aspect of making guacamole is extracting the avocado flesh. If you've never done it before, it can be intimidating, but that's what the internet is for.

At most, extracting the flesh of a couple avocados will take you five minutes or so, but it will take less time each time you do it. Then you mash up the avocado with some salt and lemon juice. Then you dip your chips in it. That's it. Watching your salt intake? Add less salt. Like a little heat in your dips? Add some cayenne pepper. By making it yourself you have complete control over the product. Furthermore, guacamole in the “wild” doesn't have much of a shelf life. I mean, if you delay in adding the lemon juice, the guacamole will go brown on your quickly (still edible just doesn't look as good). This means that something must be done to it, in order for it travel from wherever it was manufactured to the grocery store and then sit there long enough for someone to buy it. I'm not saying that anything dangerous is done or that you are automatically going to get cancer or autism or whatever from the preservatives, but I will say that none of those techniques and preservatives have flavor in mind. Your guacamole will absolutely taste better than anything bought at the store.
Some food takes a long time to prepare and buying processed versions of them can make sense. Furthermore, there are plenty of “processed foods” whose process is fairly mild. But with guacamole, and the other foods I'll mention in this ongoing essay series, at most, you save five minutes. And the better you get at dispatching the avocado, the less time store bought will save you. As I've cooked more, I've found more and more foods that aren't much harder to make at home than to buy from the store, and the homemade stuff is almost always cheaper and tastier.
At some point in our nation's history cooking turned into an inherent inconvenience. It's not that certain techniques are challenging, or certain dishes require specialized hardware, or certain foods demand lengthy efforts, but that all cooking is a hassle. (Don't worry, there's a big essay about how we got to this place in the works, or maybe, worry, there's a big essay about how we got to this place in the works.) Our ability to differentiate between “inconvenient” and “requires some effort” has been advertized out of us. The problem, then, is not picking up some guacamole on your way to the party because you forget to make some at home, but our attitude towards cooking in general.
We have a long way to go to free ourselves of this fetish for convenience. The real goal is not to always make everything from scratch all the time, but to get to a point where the convenience of a store bought food is a real value and not just a way to avoid the inconvenience of cooking at home. It's so that you feel positive when you throw something in the microwave and not a sense of obligation. We have a long way to go to reach that world, but it could certainly start with your homemade guacamole.

America's System of Wealth Redistribution

2011-01-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

Most of the time when you hear someone use the term “the redistribution of wealth” that person is a conservative arguing against a social spending policy or tax increase on the wealthy. It has become a less than subtle euphemism for “this is kinda socialist;” another way to argue against a policy without actually arguing against the policy. Let's forget for a second that an economy is inherently based on the redistribution of wealth, on the movement of money from one entity to another in a process of exchange, and let's also forget for a second that any change in government spending and taxation is a redistribution of wealth; taking wealth from those whose programs were cut or who had their taxes raised and redistributing it to those whose programs were added or taxes were cut. In fact, any changes in government regulations that effect the making and spending of money are redistributions of wealth. It could be argued that no administration redistributed wealth more than the Reagan administration, but, even if you forget all that there is still a major aspect of the American economy that operates as a redistribution of wealth.

Some people have a level of wealth based on their health. Because of good lifestyle choices, a lucky draw in the genetic lottery, and a benevolent array of circumstance in the wider world, some people rarely have to pay health care bills. I'm one of them. I don't have any congenital diseases, or allergies, I eat alright, I exercise a bit, and I've never been injured enough to require serious medical care. I get check ups, I wear reading glasses, and I have to get some small fillings in my teeth, but on the spectrum of health I'm doing alright. Thus, I have a health based wealth. But I still pay healthcare premiums.

My health insurance company redistributes my wealth to those who have a health based poverty; people who because of poor health decisions, an unlucky drawn in the genetic lottery, and an malicious array of circumstance in the wider world have to pay a lot of health care bills. Being a radical lefty, I don't have any problems with the idea of mechanisms that redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor...if they work.

The thing about the redistribution of wealth as done by the mechanism of health insurance (and all other insurance really) is how inefficient it is. How inefficient is it? Well, it's fairly easy to get at least a sense of this. First look at the profits taken in. One study stated that the five largest for-profit insurers “closed 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.” This means that, at an absolute minimum, health insurance companies redistributed to those with health based poverty, $12.2 billion less than what they took in from those with health based wealth. And this doesn't count the overhead; printing those extremely complex descriptions of benefits books, paying customer service representatives to answer questions about those extremely complex benefits, billing, mechanisms for denying benefits, lawyers if they are sued for denying benefits, janitors to keep their offices clean, executive and management salaries, office supplies, utilities...

Despite what some might say, our health care system is already a system of wealth redistribution. Through the mechanism of private health insurance, the health based wealth of some is distributed to the health based poverty of others. Some might argue, with an eye towards critiquing the recent health care reform, that an individual could opt out of this redistribution by not carrying health insurance, and though there is some truth to this, those individuals (assuming they are able to pay out of pocket the costs they incur if they get hit by a car or diagnosed with cancer) wouldn't avoid redistribution all together. Since doctors and hospitals, by law, are required to treat people in need of care, whether they can pay for the care or not, doctors and hospitals must roll the cost of treating those who cannot pay into the fees charged to those who can. In the exact same way that the cost of all retail goods are slightly higher than they need to be to make up for lost inventory, the cost of treatment is slightly higher to compensate for treatment that is not paid for. In this case, the wealth is redistributed from those who have money to those who don't through a pricing mechanism.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a system of wealth redistribution. All economic activity, at it's core, is wealth redistribution. The problem with health care insurance as a system of wealth redistribution is its inefficiency; not nearly enough of the wealth actually gets to those who need it. Too often, people who carry insurance still can't pay their health care bills, even with the benefits from their insurance policy. Even if those massive profits (all those companies had enough to pay lobbyists, don't forget) were cut to nothing, the private insurance system would still be fairly inefficient as someone would have to administer it.

Soon, House Republicans are going to waste our time and tax payer money by bringing a bill to repeal the recent health care reform to the floor even though there is no chance such a bill could pass the Senate, and even if by some miracle it did, it would certainly be vetoed and Republicans do not have a big enough majority to overturn a Presidential veto. To me, this is more proof that they have no concrete policy solutions to the problems of the American health care system, and, frankly, only seem interested in the issue as a way to discredit, in general, the efforts of the administration. Regardless, as anyone with a lot of prescriptions or an impending surgery knows, the recent health care bill has not solved the problem of inefficient wealth redistribution.

The Greatest Sports Statistic

2011-01-07T07:36:00.000-08:00
Statistics serve a lot of different purposes in sports, but for most spectators they serve as something to argue about over nachos. They are fodder for definitive statements and though, like all statistics, they can be made to prove just about anything and a stat can be found for just about any statement, there is some primal joy we get out of arguing about sports by throwing numbers at each other. (The source of that joy, though, is another essay.)
With the birth of fantasy leagues and the easy access to data provided by the internet (especially now that the internet can be easily accessed in bars) the world of sports statistics has grown even larger, whether the casual spectator actually gains any addition insight into the sport of their choice or not. (Hi Bill James. That's a nice new car you've got. Anyway, catch you later.)
Not all statistics are created equal though, and what distinguishes the insightful spectator from the rest is knowing which statistics actually communicate useful information in evaluating or enjoying whatever you're watching. For all our hyper-specificity (my personal favorite is from baseball: batting average with runners in scoring position in the 7th inning or later with the difference in score 2 or fewer runs. Hi, David Ortiz. Glad to see you're hanging out with Shawn Thorton. He's good people.) it's hard to argue that anything tells you more about a batter in baseball than batting average, or about a running back in football than yards per carry, or a basketball player than field goal percentage. There's a reason why those show up on standard players displays on TV. However, one statistic rises above the rest. Its uniqueness in sport, its rarity in occurrence, and its communication of the character of the player make it far and away the greatest sport statistic.

The Gordie Howe hat-trick occurs when a player, in a single game of hockey, records a fight, a goal, and an assist. There isn't another statistic like it. No other major sport has institutionalized fighting like hockey does, and though I supposed one could argue that pitchers in baseball hitting batters is a form of enforcement, I don't think there is a statistical way to differentiate plunking a guy in the back in response to a cleats-up slide from a curve ball that slips out of the hand. In other words, no other sport has a clear enforcer statistic, so no other sport has a statistic that keeps track of when enforcers score or when scorers enforce.
As in all sports, hockey players have roles and specializations within the game. Since offense and defense flow into each other, hockey isn't as specialized as American football or baseball, but it still has its roles. To put it bluntly, fighters don't usually score and scorers don't usually fight. Most of the time a Gordie Howe hat trick is evidence of someone doing something they don't normally do, and most of the time, it's the fighter doing the scoring. In this case, the Gordie Howe hat trick is a reward for spending most of one's time willingly getting punched in the face.
Perhaps what makes the Gordie Howe hat-trick so special is how it encapsulates the entire spirit of the game of hockey all in one stat. In all other sports, the relevant statistics describe particular aspects of the sport, and you can build a picture of the sport through the accumulation of statistics; but hockey is a sport that mixes moments of profound violence fluidly with moments of profound dexterity. To earn a Gordie Howe hat trick a player needs to individually demonstrate that fluidity. And this fluidity is at the core of what is entertaining about hockey. That not only can grace and violence can exist in the same space of sport, but they flow back and forth into each other as the game moves.
And to make it even better, it's not an official statistic. Though one could crunch the numbers and figure it out, no one will be inducted into the Hall of Fame because they have the most Gordie Howe hat tricks. The stat is a pure expression of what fans find exciting about hockey. And there's something interesting about the term “Gordie Howe hat trick.” The stat is named after Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey, one of the game's first superstars and ambassadors to the world. He scored goals. He recorded assists. He hit people. He got in fights. He was tough and fast and skilled. He was the embodiment of hockey, so naturally, a stat that embodies hockey would be named after him. The interesting thing, is that Gordie Howe did not record that many Gordie Howe hat tricks. Despite his lengthy career, he only recorded two.
In a way, one of sports most important roles is conversation fodder. Being social animals and being verbal social animals, we are often in situations, with strangers, co-workers, friends, and family, where we are compelled or even obligated to converse whether there is something to talk about or not. Sport is often perfect fodder for those moments. In fact, a worldly and astute individual could simply offer a “Did you catch the game?” and then figure out what the game is from the context of the conversation. And if someone then mentions a Gordie Howe hat trick, not only do you know the game was a hockey game, you will also know that the game included one of hockey's perfect expressions.

Wrong About the Odyssey

2010-12-17T08:45:00.000-08:00
I recently read the Iliad and the Odyssey, back to back, in their entirety. I'd encountered bits and pieces of them in high school and college, reading excerpts necessary for understanding subsequent works (damn near all of Western literature if you're to trust some sources, but that's a different essay), and I've read Joyce's Ulysses which uses the structure of the Odyssey to tell the story of hapless and heroic Leopold Bloom. There is a lot to say about both epic poems, especially when re-imagining and re-interpreting the events and images in terms of contemporary society, but one thing above all else stood out for me; how wrong I was about the Odyssey.
Being an object of culture, referenced in all media and all different levels of artistic expression, just about everyone knows something about the Odyssey. We have a cultural familiarity whether we've read the Odyssey, read excerpts of it in school, or just encountered it in references in movies and comic books. We all have an idea of what the Odyssey is about and what happens in it. Well, we're wrong.
The Odyssey is a story of the strife endured by Odysseus as he struggled against the gods to return home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. However, of the ten years it takes him to get back to Ithaca from Troy, seven are spent in the strife and struggle of being the lover of the nymph Calypso, where she fed him ambrosia, had sex with him every night (and not just regular sex, but nymph sex), kept him from aging, and promised to make him immortal if only he stayed with her. (Did I mention it was nymph sex?) That's 70% of his time abroad. May all of your struggles and strife be 70% nymph sex.
While we're on the topic of what Odysseus actually spent his time doing during his trip, he spent a whole lot of narrative time with the Phaenicians, who were not cannibals, or opium addicts, or man-eating monsters. No sea beasts. No deceitful women. No angry gods raining petty vengeance upon a powerless mortal. Rather, they are a wealthy and generous sea merchants who treat Odysseus to a massive feast, imply that he could marry the daughter of the king, and shower him with more gifts than he won in all of his plunder of Troy (which of course, went down with his ship) before returning him to Ithaca on a ship so fast and so smooth that he sleeps through the entire journey.
Furthermore, a full third of the poem takes place after Odysseus has returned to Ithaca and involves his plot to deal with the suitors, a goal “nudged” along by Athena. To recap; 70% of the journey was spent as the boy toy of a nymph, another big chunk of the story takes place on Ithaca, another substantial percent is taken up with the Phaenicians, and there's a whole bunch of stuff about Telemachus that doesn't even involve Odysseus at all. The big events from the Odyssey that we all know about even if we haven't read it; the Cyclops, the Sirens, the Lotus Eaters, Odysseus in Hades, Circe and the whole turning the crew into pigs thing, are a very small part of the actual story as it is told.
Cultural memory is a process of extrusion; as an artifact whether it's an epic poem, story, person, or idea is transferred around a culture its complexity is shaved off and members of the culture are aware of a simplified version of the entity. What a cultural artifact becomes when most in the culture do not have direct contact with it, is important, not just in understanding Homer or Shakespeare, but in more general issues of society. How many of our political decisions are based on the cultural artifacts of the American Revolution? How many of our politicians appeal to concepts of “freedom” and “liberty” without any examination of the documents and events that built those concepts? The most direct example of this is the constant claim that the United States is a “Christian Nation,” a claim that can be made when the distinction between, “a spirituality based in Christian mythology,” (which is what most of the Founders actually had) and “Christianity” is lost or ignored.
I haven't met anybody with the time to read every major readable cultural artifact and the point is not that everyone should feel obligated to read everything (there's a lot of Shakespeare out there, and frankly the Federalist Papers get a little dry after a while), but that we realize that what we know of all of these artifacts are simplified versions. This is fine when enjoying art or entertainment that references these entities, but this is not fine when, say, making a policy decision or establishing a personal belief structure. In terms of important decisions, it seems reasonable to ask people to do a little research.
Oh, and the Trojan Horse thing; doesn't happen in either of them. A bard mentions it in a song about the Trojan War (a song Odysseus requested). Nor does Achilles die his famous death. The Illiad actually ends with the funeral for Hector, the only honest to god decent human being in the entire story (No, seriously, Agammemon is an arrogant jerk, Achilles sulks in his tent while his friends die because he didn't get the slave girl he wanted, and well, Odysseus himself sacked an innocent city on his way home from the war and executed servant girls who were born after he left for Troy for sleeping with suitors.) who valiantly fought hordes of invaders and spent his last night before he knew he was going to die with his wife and infant son. And what does he get for his bravery and general decency; he gets his dead body dragged back and forth in front of the gates of Troy behind a chariot. In the extruded versions of these epic poems it's Achilles and Odysseus who are thought of as the heroes, but after actually reading them, Hector is the one worthy of respect.

The Story of Big Government

2010-12-10T08:07:00.000-08:00
The first major expansion of federal power in our nation's history came early in, well, our nation's history, when the Constitution was ratified, replacing the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation barely constituted a national government as it had virtually none of the power we associate with, well, national government. In the context of history, this was by far the biggest expansion of federal power over society, at least in this country, in that federal power as we know it was incorporated. There was one other major expansion but I'll get to that later.
Almost from the word go, the government experienced a still unabated piecemeal expansion. In order to solidify a truly national economy, especially in the face of Revolutionary War debt, the Bank of the United States (which was eventually followed by a Second Bank of the United States and a period of open banking before a panic in 1907 lead to the establishment of the Federal Reserve) was established. Thomas Jefferson wasn't sure if the president had the power to purchase land, but he couldn't turn down France's offer and thus expanded federal power with the Louisiana Purchase. The state of Alaska (from which a certain “small government” proponent supposedly is kept visually aware of Russo-American relations) might not have existed otherwise.
The second of the two major expansions of federal power happened in the Civil War, when the fundamental right of States to leave the United States of America was eradicated. The Civil Rights amendments were a coda that expanded the federal government's power over how states interacted with their residents, but, as we learned from the Jim Crow era, this expansion wasn't enough to ensure legal dignity for all Americans. Despite what some might say, with the debatable exception of the establishment of income tax, which required a constitutional amendment, no expansion of federal power since has matched this one because it ceded to the federal government the power to determine whether or not states were subject to its power.
The industrial revolution, the urbanization of society, the massive amount of immigration, the development of the stock market, and other societal changes created an entirely new economy with entirely new problems that society, as it was, did not have the ability to solve. In response to this new economy, government expanded again through a series of regulations and then, in order to hold society together after that economy collapsed, through massive infrastructure projects and other spending initiatives. The ultimate result of the Depression (which was ended by an even larger government spending program commonly referred to as “World War II”) was a system of regulations on finance and production and a material safety net in order to ensure the Depression never happened again, including the third rails of politics, Social Security and Medicare.
There were expansions of federal power in response the Cold War such as the Committee on Unamerican Activities. The tragedy of Jim Crow was resolved by another expansion of Federal power most dramatically demonstrated by the National Guard forcibly integrating Central High School in Little Rock, and culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Along the way, the government continued to accumulate regulatory agencies such as the EPA and OSHA. The EPA, of course, was established by everyone's favorite tax and spend liberal, Richard Nixon. Of course, not all of these expansions of government were institutionalized. There certainly isn't anything in the Constitution or in legislation about selling weapons in exchange for hostages, for example. There have been more contemporary expansions of government as well, the biggest of which was not the recent Health Care Reform, but the original Patriot Act, which gave the government far more power to observe and detain American citizens than it has had since the Alien and Sedition Acts. And this doesn't even include the size and effect on our society of the ever expanding American military or the actions taken by the CIA (See Legacy of Ashes for that story).
Another way to tell this story is as a story of economic crisis. The private market could not free the slaves. It couldn't prevent factory machines from pulling the arms off of children or stop factory owners from locking their workers in. It couldn't keep human fingers out of our sausages and rat poison out of our medicine. It couldn't stop companies from lying to consumers. For some reason it couldn't teach investors that it was a bad idea to buy stock with the projected dividends of other stocks. Since we're on the topic, the private economy also couldn't stop companies from dumping poison into our water and spewing toxins into our air. Regardless of whether the administration in power was Federalist, Bull Moose, Republican, or Democratic, they almost always responded to these crises through expansions of government power and influence.
This means that the story of “big government” then is not one of liberal or Democrat power grabs, but the accumulation of responses to economic and societal crises. Whenever a Republican or conservative accuses a Democrat or liberal of something about “big government” they are completely ignoring the history of the development of the United States Federal Government. What we have today is the result of two hundred plus years of people responding to problems.
I have no problem with arguing about the costs and benefits of particular government policies, but the “big government” label doesn't do that. The debate between big government and small government was settled over a hundred years ago with the Civil War. My problem with the Republican technique of the “big government” card is that they use it to argue against a proposed Democrat policy without actually arguing against the policy itself. Rather than helping to determine whether a particular proposed regulation will actually stabilize investment banking for example, they simply argue that “big government” as an abstract concept is inherently negative. This argument itself is bad for governance. It's not that I want Republicans to rubber stamp Democrat legislation, but the proposed policies cannot be improved if the opposition led critique doesn't actually engage the policies themselves.
This is a particular example of a more general problem with our political discourse. The sound-byte has no room for nuance and debates have become ballets of sound-bytes, and somehow, despite the presence of three 24-hour news networks, no one seems to have the time to establish the historic context of a given issue. I don't have a solution for this general problem. So much goes into our inability to have productive political debates and so many forces benefit from that inability that a solution will be long in coming. But hopefully, the next time you hear someone try to end an argument by arguing against “big government,” I hope you'll remember this story.

How Sport Lasts

2010-12-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

I was at a bar over Thanksgiving weekend with my friends from home, (Lewiston, ME for those keeping track) as Thanksgiving weekend, for whatever reason, has always been a big homecoming for my set of Lewiston friends. The day after Thanksgiving we play (or enact a reasonable approximation of) a game of touch football at the field at the middle school and many of us go to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League game that same night and head out to the bars to catch up afterward. There is a way this essay could go that really focuses on that touch football game, exploring how little the game itself, or at least, how “a game of football” is usually understood, matters to the event, but that's not what I'm going to talk about, though, in a way, (sorry for all the commas,,,,) that's all I'm going to talk about.

After the football game, after the hockey game, and for me and a few others anyway, at the second bar of the night, I ran into a couple of people I hadn't seen in years, perhaps in over a decade. They were cousins to each other, were both married, and had children. One was living in Hinesburg, VT near Burlington so we were able to chat about that for awhile, and one was living not too far from where he grew up, in Bowdoin, ME. There was a new beard involved. We all had jobs. Wives were introduced. The conversation broke up when I had to get a beer. One of them left before I made my way back (which took awhile, given the other people I ran into) and one of them I was able to properly wish good-night and good luck when I was on my way out. The story here isn't in how the night as a whole went, how my conversation went with these two friends, or how the night ended. The story here is how I was greeted, how we greeted each other.

There was a moment of recognition, an offered handshake that turned into a hug and then I was embraced by both of them and we were jumping up and down in the bar and they were shouting “Cook! Cook! Cook!” Despite the askance looks of a couple of wives and a few of the other patrons within earshot, and despite the obviously ridiculous visual the whole event produced, I knew exactly why what was happening was happening.

It made sense because, the three of us played youth hockey together. In Lewiston, youth hockey used to be organized by the various parishes in the city and even when the league became it's own entity, it preserved certain aspects of the old parish system; the team you played on was determined by where you lived, which meant that most kids played with the same kids year after year. So Johnny, JP and I played for Holy Family, mascot the Bears, from when we were about 6 or 7 until when were about 12 or 13. This means that we haven't been teammates for almost eighteen years and yet, whatever connection we had was still strong enough to produce a jumping, chanting, public display of man-love. The question, of course, is why did the emotion of that very old connection stay that strong?

I'm sure there's a developmental psychology answer about formative years and early social tribes, but, frankly, I don't find that answer particularly interesting. Here's my answer; we played hockey together when we still believed we could play in the NHL.

Looking back now, I know there was no time in my life, when I had a chance to play professional hockey. I never had even a fraction of the raw talent necessary. But what do you know at 10 and 11? We were getting up at ungodly hours in the morning on weekends to go to practices at an outdoor rink where we needed to wear nylons under our pads and put tape over the ear holes in our helmets to fend off frostbite. Our parents were paying ridiculous fees, buying expensive equipment, and driving us all over the state. We were playing in tournaments, winning them, losing them, getting trophies, having end of the season parties, getting injured, crying over losses, and dreaming of a life where we got to play hockey forever.

Of course, there are ways to undercut the general conclusion I'm coming to; Johnny and JP are cousins who have always been as much friends as relatives; Johnny was always the top goalie on our team and I was always the top defenseman; we won the Lion's Tournament together, which was the Lewiston league's championship; we won a youth state title together; but I still think the universal in this situation outweighs the particular.

We were participants in each others' dreams as children. When we didn't know anything about the world, when all we knew of hockey was what happened when we played and the fantasy we created by interpreting what we watched on TV, when we were without the scale of worldiness, when we hadn't learned that not everything was possible, we were teammates.

Of course none of us ended up in the NHL. I was good enough to make a pretty good high school hockey team and Johnny was good enough to give Juniors at least a try. I managed to scrape together a few pond hockey games here and there and now live near a roller hockey rink where I occasionally shoot around by myself. JP found some guys to play with in Vermont and Johnny left before I could see if he still strapped the pads on every now and again.

At one point Johnny suggested a reunion game with the old Holy Family guys we played with. I live in Somerville, JP in Vermont, Johnny in Maine and who knows where all those others guys are. The logistics would be challenging even if we all didn't have the rest of our lives to manage (did I mention that both of them are fathers) even in the world of Facebook. I'd be shocked and overjoyed if something like that were ever organized. At the same time, I know exactly what Johnny said when he said that, and even though I can't explain the real meaning behind the statement, I completely agree with it.