Panic in Detroit

On the way home tonight, I caught part of On Point, a decent news talk show out of WBUR in Boston. One of the guests on tonight's show was GM's vice chairman product development, Bob Lutz. I don't follow the auto industry as closely as a I used to, so while I am familiar with Lutz's name, I don't really know anything about him. He started off talking about the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid that GM is hoping will finally be the car that will best the competition in style, quality, and efficiency. He's not a very good speaker and his voice leaves a lot to be desired, but I can't really hold that against him. Once he switched out of sales pitch mode and starting fielding questions from the host and the callers, he came completely unhinged. He sounded more like an anonymous commenter on a third-rate conservative blog than an executive of a fortune 5 company. He literally responded to a caller's question about the possibility of improving the efficiency of gasoline engines by challenging the caller to come up with some new ideas. I could practically hear the spittle hit the microphone when he started talking about "professor" Tom Friedman's ideas about the US automotive industry. I don't know if he was confusing Friedman, who to my knowledge is not and has never been a college professor, with his colleague Paul Krugman, who is a professor. Either way, it made him sound like a complete fool. If this is what Detroit, or at least GM, has to offer, the US auto industry is in even worse shape than I had previously imagined.

If it looks like a duck...

As I noted last year, the Detroit Red Wings were eliminated from the playoffs by the eventual Stanley Cup runner-up for three consecutive years. This year, the were eliminated by the eventual Stanley Cup champion. I don't know if that's an improvement or not.

Word of the Day

Yesterday, I learned via Deadspin about a list of 100 words that Houghton Mifflin believes all high school graduates should know. Conspicuous by their absence were some of my favorite words, such as the, is, and like. In all seriousness, I love words, especially ones like these that no one ever uses in conversation, and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I don't know every word on the list. It seems like every time I learn a new word or a new historical fact, I come across a reference to this new piece of knowledge the very next day. This has happened to me so many times that I'm sure that it's not a coincidence and it must happen to other people as well. Sure enough, on my way to work this morning, I was listening to Frank Deford's weekly sports rant on NPR. He ended his missive about the twin spectator death marches that are the NBA and NHL playoffs with the top 100 word jejune. This phenomenon makes me wonder how often I encounter words or facts that I'm not familiar with and just ignore without even noticing it.

Sunset

May 26 | 8:10 pm | Bristol, RI

Outplayed

This year's NHL Western Conference final has to be one of the strangest playoff series I've ever seen. The Red Wings are on the brink of elimination after amassing a 2-1 lead, and yet I still feel like they are going to win. The obvious parallel to this series is the 2002 Western Conference finals, where the Wings and the Avalanche alternated wins in the first four games before Colorado won game 5 on the road in overtime after it looked like the Wings had it in the bag. The Wings, of course, managed to win games six and seven en route to the Stanley Cup. After that game five loss, however, I didn't think they had much of a chance.

I haven't lost my confidence in the Wings, but I'm not exactly buying into the story that they outplayed Anaheim in games four and five. They certainly outshot the Ducks and spent more time in control of the puck. They may have even outhit the Ducks in yesterday's game, but I don't know if they really outplayed them. Anaheim generated just as many quality scoring chances as the Wings, they just did it with fewer shots. Because Detroit's offense is built around puck control and taking a lot of shots, they often look like they are dominating even when they aren't. When Anaheim was able to gain the zone, they were able to control the puck in a way that Detroit was rarely able to do in the Anaheim zone. They connected on more of their passes, they were able to control the puck behind the goal and in front of it, and their defenders were constantly pinching in and preventing the Wings from making the easy clear.

I couldn't believe how biased the analysts were in favor of Detroit (and I'm a Red Wings fan). Anaheim's fans are a bit upset as well (all eight of them). In the studio between the third period and the start of overtime, they practically declared Detroit the winner and signed off for the afternoon. Even if I'm wrong and Detroit really outplayed the Ducks for 60 minutes, all of that goes out the window in overtime. One mistake or bad bounce and the game is over. I don't think there is any doubt that the Wings got outplayed in OT. In her write-up of the game, Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press seemed to attribute both of Anaheim's goals to luck, "a lucky bounce" and "the gift of a turnover". There was certainly an element of luck in Niedermayer's equalizer, but Selanne's game winner was all about skill and effort. It started when Lilja attempted a dangerous cross ice pass from the right side of the goal crease. He fanned on the pass and got muscled off the puck by an Anaheim player, who fed it to Selanne who then promptly deposited it in the back of the net. Luck had nothing to do with that sequence of events.

So why am I still confident that the Wings can win? Because tomorrow night, for the first time since game four, all of the pressure is going to be on the Ducks. The reason the Ducks have been successful despite the unimpressive numbers they have been putting up is because they have been more aggressive than the Wings. It doesn't hurt having J.S. Gigure between the pipes, and perhaps their confidence in their goaltender is what allows them to go on the attack, but come Tuesday night, the Wings will have no more excuses for playing tentative hockey. If guys like Draper and Maltby and especially Holmstrom can start out strong and make a statement early, I like Detroit's chances. If games three and four are any indication, there will be at least as many die hard Red Wings fans as die hard Ducks fans in attendance, so I don't see a big home ice advantage for Anaheim. If the Wings can force a game seven, it's anyone's series to take.

Pear Tree

May 5 | 6:21 pm | My Backyard

Friendship is a One Way Street

May 5 | 1:27 pm | Providence, RI

An Appeal

I received an appeal from a former co-worker regarding her father, Dr. Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir. Dr. Alamgir is a prominent Bangladeshi intellectual, civil servant, and pro-democracy activist who has often clashed with the powers that be in his country. He has been imprisoned and tortured by prior regimes and earlier this year, he was rounded up by the current administration and imprisoned without charge. His children have launched a campaign to raise awareness of his plight and to solicit help and support. A similar campaign in 2002 helped to secure Dr. Alamgir's release from a previous wrongful incarceration. Please do what you can and pass this information on to anyone else who can help.

Independence Day

I wasn't aware of this until I moved here, but Rhode Island actually declared its independence from the British on May 4, 1776, two months ahead of the rest of the colonies.

Seven Up

Rhode Island Philharmonic
Veterans Memorial Arts and Cultural Center - Providence, RI
Wednesday, May 2nd

The headliner at this concert was Itzhak Perlman, who played Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major. It's a coup for any orchestra to bring in a soloist of Perlman's caliber, and as one would expect, there were few empty seats in the house. One of the reasons I don't listen to much classical music anymore is because I find it hard to appreciate something that I am hearing for the first time. Classical music is so circumscribed that conductors and musicians can only make minor tweaks to phrasing and tempos to add their personal touch to a composition. Therefore, it's hard to listen to a single performance in isolation, you need a library of comparable performances of the same piece in you head to tell if you're listening to something truly exceptional.

Beethoven is probably my favorite classical composer, so the all Ludwig van program boded well for me. As I discovered after Perlman began playing, I'm somewhat familiar with the Violin Concerto in D, however, not familiar enough to grade Perlman's performance. Overall, the piece didn't do a whole lot for me. Like most classical performances that I've been to recently, it really didn't hold my attention.

The second half of the concert featured Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. At best, it's his fifth most famous symphony (after the 9th, 5th, 3rd, and 6th), but it's always been one of my favorites. I was cautiously optimistic going into the second half of the concert that I might enjoy what I was about to hear. As it turned out, I was completely blown away by the performance. The thing that I love about the seventh is how boisterous it is. It's constantly bursting with energy and always about to explode but manages to keep everything under control somehow. This point was emphasized by the orchestra, who cranked up the tempo slightly while playing with an almost extreme level of precision. The result was the first time in a long time that I was completely mesmerized by an orchestra.

In some ways, it feels bad to rave about how well a minor-league orchestra played Beethoven's Seventh after hearing one of the most famous soloists in the world play. On the other hand, had Perlman not been the soloist, I probably wouldn't have gone to the concert. In the end, the music matters more than the musician.

Hey Stoopid

Longtime readers of this blog may remember a post I once wrote about madcap rocker Alice Cooper's syndicated radio show Nights with Alice Cooper. So far, that post has received two comments, both from people who mistook me for Alice himself. The most recent comment was left in the wee hours of this morning (8:21 pm HADT yesterday). This commenter left his phone number and mailing address, which is pretty weird, but here's where it gets really strange - he claims to live in the Lahaina Shores Beach Resort on Maui, which is where Michelle and I stayed on our honeymoon. If only he could have found my blog a year and half ago, I could have told him in person thanks but Alice wouldn't be requiring his services for his upcoming tour of South America. Still, I shouldn't complain. At least the people who are mistaking me for Alice are fans of his show.

Live Free Or Die

April 21 | 3:09 pm | Tuckerman Ravine - Mt. Washington - NH

So Long, Andrew

I learned of the passing of one Andrew Hill, of my all time favorite jazz pianists, on my way home from work on Friday. I don't remember exactly how I discovered his music. I picked up Point of Departure about 10 years ago on a whim and I was immediately hooked. Hill's music was a unique synthesis of 20th century classical composition and free improvisation. Normally, I'm not all that impressed with attempts to fuse jazz and classical traditions together, but Hill was an exception. His large group recordings are masterpieces for the way he utilizes every voice in the band to its fullest potential and creates a sound that is even bigger than the already augmented group. With the exception of John Coltrane, Hill created more hauntingly beautiful music than any of his contemporaries. It's too bad that I never got a chance to hear him play live in concert, but I'm pleased that his genius was finally recognized before he passed away.

Hockey Night

As far as I'm concerned, the best thing about the NHL moving to Versus is the feed from CBC I'm watching right now. Versus has used the CBC feed for games three and four of the Detroit vs. Calgary series. I'm not sure why Versus didn't send their own crew out to Calgary. I did hear the announcers give a shout out to all of Versus viewers south of the 48th parallel during Tuesday night's game, so at the very least, we know that Versus is not stealing the feed off of CBC's satellite. Right now, the Premier of the Province of Alberta, who is in attendance at tonight's game, is being interviewed. You just don't get that kind of coverage from American hockey broadcast crews. Part of me enjoys the CBC coverage because it reminds me of home, but I mostly enjoy it because their broadcast crew is much better than Versus. I also recently discovered that CBC is streaming every Hockey Night in Canada playoff game online.

In other sporting news, the NBA playoffs are coming up and for the first time since the early/mid 1990s, the Golden State Warriors are in the postseason. I learned this on Deadspin this morning, and like Hockey Night in Canada, it brought back some memories. My brother was a big Warriors fan in the early 1990s. For reasons that escape me now, we nicknamed Billy Owens "Baby Back Ribs" back when he was playing with the Warriors. Not Billy "Baby Back Ribs" Owens or "Baby Back Ribs" Owens mind you, simply "Back Back Ribs". I don't really have anything else to say about this, it just popped into my head for the first time in about 15 years today when I read about Golden State and Billy Owens.

Here's to you, Mr. Robinson

Along with the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier has been a fair amount of hand-wringing about the declining numbers of black ballplayers in Major League Baseball today. From what I understand, MLB has largely vacated America's inner cities, where its baseball development programs had nurtured many future stars, for Latin America. Like many businesses, MLB took a look at the global market and decided that their player development dollars would go further in Latin America, where costs are lower and they can get young talent on the fast track at a younger age due to looser regulations. None of the articles I have read, including this one in today's ProJo have mentioned the globalization angle, but I think it's an important part of the story.

I also wonder how important this story really is. Black players are well represented in professional football, which is easily the most popular sport in America today. Black athletes have risen to the top in many sports that had little to no black representation a generation or two ago. Jackie Robinson's story is important and it's one that all kids should learn, but the most important part of his story is not the game that he played, it's the way he humbly blazed the trail for all black professional athletes in the face of constant and often vicious racism.

Remembering Kilgore Trout

As you have no doubt heard by now, Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. With the exception of his friend Issac Asimov, Vonnegut is the only novelist whose works I have read extensively. I got onto a pretty big Vonnegut kick about ten years ago. It has subsided in recent years, but I picked up Galapagos last year and it brought me right back to the excitement I felt as a younger man reading his unique voice for the first time. Here are some more interesting reflections on the man and his works.

Musician

I just found out that a documentary film about my favorite musician, Ken Vandermark, is about to be released. Here's a brief synopsis and here's a short clip.

Branch Davidians, Part Deux

A friend and I were recently talking about the Branch Davidians, and we wondered if any followers of that spiritual persuasion still exist. As luck would have it, someone else was thinking the same thing and wrote a newspaper story about the reorganized Branch Davidians, now called The Branch, The Lord Our Righteousness. The new church is led by a former Branch Davidian who was exiled from the church in the mid-1980s after challenging David Koresch. The new church currently has about a dozen members. Other than owing a lot of money to the IRS, the new leader doesn't appear to be in trouble with the law. I don't see this new church having much success building a cult on the ruins of the Branch Davidian compound, but I've been wrong about these things in the past. I've never felt the urge to join a cult, but if I ever do, I hope that I'll at least join one that has a sizable and/or growing membership. Indoor plumbing would also be a big plus, but maybe that's just me.

Bracket Coverage

I enter a modest college football betting pool every season, but I rarely fill out an NCAA bracket and when I do, I never have any money riding on it. I may want to reconsider this strategy, as I tend to fare rather poorly in my football pool but finish near the top in March. This year has been no exception, so far. I managed to get three of the final four correct. The only one I missed was Florida (I had Maryland) and the only reason I missed Florida was because I'm kind of sick of them. Were I playing with my head instead of my heart, perhaps I would have had the Gators in the final four. The last time I remember filling out a bracket, I managed to guess the entire final four correctly (2002). I attribute my success in the NCAA basketball tournament to my lack of knowledge about and interest in college basketball. I tend to put a lot of effort into my bowl picks because I've always watched a lot more college football than college basketball and feel like I know enough to make intelligent decisions. For what it's worth, I have Ohio State over UCLA in the final.

Hi Neighbor!

Today's ProJo had a neat article about Mark Hellendrung, the businessman behind the revival of Narragansett Beer. I picked up my first 'gansett shortly after moving to Rhode Island last year and I haven't been able to stop drinking the stuff ever since. Ok, so that's not exactly true, but I do think it tastes pretty good for a regional beer. My love of regional cuisine was the reason I picked up a Narragansett in the first place. I'm a sucker for regional food. Case in point, I don't particularly enjoy sweetened iced tea, but I always take my tea sweet when I'm visiting the south. Lucky for me, Narragansett is a regional taste that actually tastes good (otherwise, I'd be drinking a lot of nasty tasting beer in the name of authenticity). It's not quite up to the level of Shiner Bock, the champagne of regional beers, but it's a good, reasonably priced beer. If you've ever in Rhode Island or stumble upon some kind of weird Rhode Island-themed bar in your hometown, give one a try.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

March 4 | 2:55 pm | Brooklyn, NY

Fire Water

In an incredible act of American Indian synergy, I bought a 16 oz can of Narragansett with two Sacajawea dollars tonight.

Cliff Walk

February 18 | 3:18 pm | Newport, RI

Compass Shatters Magnet

The Vandermark 5
Johnny D's - Somerville, MA
Tuesday, February 13th

It's been almost four years since I last saw this band play live. They are still one of my favorite bands around and I hope that another four years doesn't elapse between now and the next time I hear them perform. Though I wasn't too excited about make the drive up to Boston for a Tuesday night show on the eve of the huge winter storm that turned out to be something of a dud, at least in southeast New England, it was fun to be back in my old neighborhood. I had only been to Johnny D's once before, for a Marc Ribot concert back in 2001. The crowd wasn't as large as the one at the Ribot show, but they were a lot more attentive, and with good reason.

The show got off to an unexpected start. I arrived around 8:45 (the show started at 8:30) and the band was already playing by the time I got there. I can't remember the last improvised music show I went to that started within 30 minutes of the published starting time. This was the first time I heard the band play live with their new cellist, Fred Lomberg-Holm. I was sad to hear trombonist Jeb Bishop was leaving the band. I thought his playing added a really interesting dimension to their sound and I had my doubts as to whether or not a cello could really replace that. I'm still not sure I feel about the addition of Lomberg-Holm. On the positive side, he can do some really interesting things with effect pedals. At times, it almost sounded like he was playing an electric guitar, which brought back some good memories of band prior to Acoustic Machine. Bishop's electric guitar was used sparingly in the days of the electric Vandermark 5, but I really liked the way it was used to give the music a harder edge On the negative side, the cello is not a trombone and it doesn't really bring the same kind of energy.

The first set was a lot more jazzy than I was expecting. Most of the numbers they played were upbeat and swinging, which is something that this band hasn't been doing as much of over the past few years. Vandermark picked up the clarinet for at least one piece in first set and parts of two more pieces in the second, which was a lot more clarinet than I am used to hearing from him. His clarinet playing is always very expressive, more so than any of his other alternate horns, so it was nice to hear more of it. Unfortunately, he didn't bring his tenor sax with him for this show. I asked him why he wasn't playing any tenor between sets and he explained that the band was getting ready for a European tour and carry-on luggage restrictions preclude him from brining his tenor and baritone saxophones as well as his clarinet and bass clarinet. The perils of being a multi-instrumentalist, I suppose. Dave Rempis split his time between alto and tenor sax so it's not like there was no tenor representation, but it would have been nice to hear Ken play a few licks on his most powerful horn.

The music in the second set was a lot sparser and tended to highlight individual group members instead of featuring full-bore group improvisation. The one exception was the last piece prior to the encore, a new song entitled "Compass Shatters Magnet". It started out with a Tim Daisy mallet solo on his drum kit which led into a hard-driving group improvisation with Kent Kessler laying down some particularly vicious bass lines which served to both keep the group anchored and help push them over the edge at the same time. It was an incredible piece and I hope it makes it onto their next album. The Vandermark 5 is a working group in the purest sense of the term. I've probably seen them play at least a dozen times over the past nine years and I can't recall ever hearing them play anything that predates their current album. This concert was pretty typical in that regard, about half of the music was from their latest release, A Discontinuous Line, and the rest were new songs.

Overall, it was a great show. It was also great to see the Boston Phoenix publish a review of the show. I found their coverage to of the local improvised music scene to be spotty at best when I lived in Boston a few years ago, it's nice to see that they are paying more attention to it.

Beating a Dead Horse

Not to keep writing about Parade Magazine, but Michelle pointed this out to me today and I just had to mention it. This week's issue (the annual worst dictators in the world issue) featured a question in Walter Scott's Personality Parade regarding the status of Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro. The reply stated that Barbaro has recovered from his January 13th surgery and is in stable condition. Unless you have been living under a rock without access to Deadspin for the past couple of weeks, you certainly have heard that Barbaro is now in horsey heaven.

The online version of Parade includes a retraction and explains that Barbaro was euthananized after the current issue went to press. Barbaro was put down on January 29th and the current issue of Parade came out on February 11th, so it appears that Parade goes to press at least two weeks before it is published. I was somewhat surprised to learn this. Of course, it's not like Parade contains any timely information, so I guess it doesn't really matter when it goes to press.

I Dream of Geni

I came across a new website today. It's called Geni and it appears to be a Web 2.0 social networking approach to genealogy. It's an interesting concept, but I don't know how useful a socially networked family tree can be. It seems to me that only people from huge and/or fragmented families would need a website to figure out who all of their living, Internet-savvy relatives are. Perhaps they are working on software to mine historical records for birth, death, and marriage information so they can link you to your pre-Internet descendants. That would be a really cool feature.

Dictator of the Year

If Parade Magazine's annual Worst Dictators in the World issue isn't enough to get me out of the blogging doldrums, I don't know what is.

This year's list began with a disclaimer noting that previously ranked dictators Fidel Castro of Cuba and Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan were excluded from this year's list. Castro was excluded for handing over the reigns (at least in name) to his brother in July and Niyazov was excluded because he died in December. I don't agree with either of these choices because this list has always been a survey of the worst dictators over the past year. Both men were in power for most of last year, and both had personality cults so immense that their presence will be felt in their countries for decades to come, so I don't think they should have been excluded.

Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir and North Korea's Kim Jong Il finished 1-2 for the second year in a row. Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei shot up six places into third place this year. I'm not going to defend Khamenei, but I think it's pretty obvious that his rise from 18th to 9th to 3rd place over the past three years has more to do with the increasingly defiant and bellicose rhetoric that has been coming out of Tehran with regards to nuclear weapons, Israel, Iraq, etc. While Iran has become a more repressive place over the past few years, it's hard to justify Khamenei's jump from the outskirts of the "best of the rest" two years ago to the top three today based solely on his lousy human right record.

The top 10 welcomed two new members this year, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi (who placed 11 last year) and Syria's Bashar Al-Assad, who moved up from 16th. I'm not sure why Qaddafi moved up, since if anything, he's been cleaning up his act as of late.

China's Hu Jintao jumped up two places to reclaim the number 4 spot this year. I continue to be puzzled by his high ranking in this survey. The Chinese government is no champion of human rights, but at least they have given their population some measure of economic freedom. Furthermore, China appears to be on a positive trajectory. The Chinese people as a whole live freer and more prosperous lives than they did ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, which is more than the people who live in most of the countries under the control of the top 10 dictators can say. The people of Myanmar have been stuck living under the control of a brutal military junta over the past 15 years and have seen their economy collapse and their country branded an international pariah and yet their leader, Than Shwe, comes in two places below Hu this year.

The 10 worst dictators list needs to decide if it wants to rank the world's dictators solely based on their dictatorial bona fides or if it wants to weigh each regime's human rights record against it geopolitical importance. The reason China always places so high (I assume) is because it's a country that wields a lot of power on the international stage. This year's list begins with an eye towards geopolitical significance (Sudan, North Korea, Iran, China) but it then switches to a more of a pure dictatorial quotient, placing Zimbabwe in the number 7 spot and four leaders of relatively obscure African countries in places 11-20 (Equatorial Guinea: 11, Swaziland: 12, Eritria: 13, Cameroon: 19). I'm really curious as to how Cameroon's Paul Biya managed to move from unranked to number 19 this year. I feel like I pay fairly close attention to international news and I fancy myself a bit of an Africa watcher and I've never ever heard of this guy. I don't recall reading any news about Cameroon in the past year good or bad (other than the Cameroon Crazies).

Bowling for Dollars

Here are my bowl picks for this season, in descending order of confidence. I got off to a good start tonight with TCU's decisive victory over Northern Illinois tonight. Upset picks are denoted by boldface type.

Game	Matchup	Pick
Hawaii Bowl	Arizona State vs. Hawai'i	Hawai'i
Sugar Bowl	Notre Dame vs. LSU	LSU
Fiesta Bowl	Boise State vs. Oklahoma	Oklahoma
Texas Bowl	Rutgers vs. Kansas State	Rutgers
Gator Bowl	West Virginia vs. Georgia Tech	West Virginia
Poinsettia Bowl	TCU vs. Northern Illinois	TCU
Alamo Bowl	Texas vs. Iowa	Texas
Outback Bowl	Tennessee vs. Penn State	Tennessee
BCS Championship	Florida vs. Ohio State	Ohio State
Emerald Bowl	Florida State vs. UCLA	UCLA
Sun Bowl	Oregon State vs. Missouri	Oregon State
Holiday Bowl	California vs. Texas A&M	California
Independenc Bowl	Oklahoma State vs. Alabama	Oklahoma State
Orange Bowl	Louisville vs. Wake Forest	Louisvile
Motor City Bowl	Middle Tennessee State vs. Central Michigan	Central Michigan
Liberty Bowl	Houston vs. South Carolina	South Carolina
Insight Bowl	Texas Tech vs. Minnesota	Texas Tech
Papajohns.com Bowl	South Florida vs. East Carolina	South Florida
Chick-fil-A Bowl	Georgia vs. Virginia Tech	Virginia Tech
New Orleans Bowl	Rice vs. Troy	Rice
International Bowl	Cincinnati vs. Western Michigan	Cincinnati
Capital One Bowl	Arkansas vs. Wisconsin	Wisconsin
Rose Bowl	USC vs. Michigan	Michigan
Meineke Car Care Bowl	Navy vs. Boston College	Boston College
Armed Forces Bowl	Tulsa vs. Utah	Utah
New Mexico Bowl	New Mexico vs. San Jose State	San Jose State
MPC Computers Bowl	Miami vs. Nevada	Nevada
Music City Bowl	Clemson vs. Kentucky	Kentucky
Las Vegas Bowl	BYU vs. Oregon	BYU
GMAC Bowl	Ohio vs. Southern Mississippi	Southern Mississippi
Champs Sports Bowl	Purdue vs. Maryland	Purdue

Fast Food Nation

The McDonald's and Taco Bell franchises that are closest to my house are located on opposite corners of the same intersection. For reasons that I will probably never know, both restaurants were demolished within a few weeks of each other earlier this fall and are now in the process of being rebuilt from the ground up. Having never dined at either of these restaurants, I can't say what was so wrong with them that they had to be completely torn down and rebuilt.

Taco Bell is an interesting restaurant. I don't think I've eaten there since I was in college and I have no desire to ever eat there again, but I do really enjoy their commercials. I can't think of any other product or service whose advertisements I enjoy as much relative to the product or service being sold.

Light Show

Here's a picture of the first annual Christmas light display at our house. It's not exactly Clark Griswold quality, but it's a start.

Sikh and You Shall Find

Due to the limitations of the form and the drudgery of churning out one strip after another each day in perpetuity, comic strip artists will occasionally (some more occasionally than other) craft a comic strip whose joke requires such an obvious set-up that any humor that may have been there is sucked completely out of the page. Today's installment of Curtis, a comic that is rarely funny even when such shenanigans are not being used, demonstrates a textbook application of this technique.



Ray Billingsley achieves a rare two-fer in this strip, he constructs a joke that requires knowledge of eastern religions and underground artists (knowledge that as far as I know has never been required to understand Curtis) and links it together in such a contrived fashion that it is painfully unfunny.

This is Our Country?

The Football Outsiders know a lot about football, but they probably know even more about the annoying things that people who enjoy football have put up with in order to watch football. I was browsing through the notes in this week's installment of Audibles at the Line when the following comment about Chevy's latest ad campaign, running in heavy rotation during all televised American sporting events, caught my eye:

“Not only does that ad not make me want to buy a Chevy, it makes me want to join Al Qaeda.”

I couldn't agree more. The old "Like a Rock" campaign was insufferable, of course, but at least it didn't feature John Cougar Mellencamp and his cornpone paeans to folk wisdom and knee-jerk patriotism. I loathe John Cougar and his entire songbook. I even refuse to refer to him by his nom de plume John Mellencamp. You can't just add the word 'Cougar' to your name and then remove it once you become a commercial success. As you can see, my distaste for him is deep-seeded and highly irrational.

Setting aside my reservations about the music and the musician, the commercial itself is borderline insulting. It's full of stock footage celebrating at worst the banality of life in America and at worst, some of the darkest days in our history. Ok, so there are a couple of perfunctory clips of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, who are certainly spinning in their graves over being included in this travesty. After that, it's all downhill. There is some footage of kids at the sock hop, followed by the Vietnam War, anti-Vietnam War protests, probably a clip from Woodstock for good measure, Nixon resigning, some other crappy moments in American history, and New Orleans under six feet of water. What are future installments (and you know there are going to be future installments) of this series of commercials going to show? Lee Harvey Oswald? The Manson Family? Jimmy Carter? Have Americans gotten so stupid that they feel nostalgia for any even that happened more then 30 years ago, regardless of whether or not it was good?

If this campaign runs as long as their "Like a Rock" campaign, I'm going to have to seriously consider whether or not I want to remain a sports fan.

Beauty is a Rare Thing

NPR did a piece on free jazz legend Ornette Coleman this morning. It's always nice to see someone in the free jazz community get some coverage in the mainstream media. I'm not a huge Ornette fan. In fact, I don't own a single Ornette Coleman recording. I guess that's somewhat shameful for someone who considers himself a free jazz afficianado, but my recording collection is very sparse by jazz collector standards anyway. I'm familliar with some of his work from the 1960s and I like almost all of it. I haven't been too impressed with any of his recent stuff, but I've only heard a small sample.

I've never seen Coleman play live, and I probably never will. From what I understand, he rarely plays live shows anymore. I heard that he played a free show on the Boston Common sometime back in the 1980s. Nowadays, you're probably lucky to hear him play a show in his hometown (New York?), let alone a free show in the middle of a city park. I'm not knocking Coleman by any means, his impact on the world of creative improvised music has been profound. I'm just saying that I can't really consider someone who is not out there making music on a regular basis part of the vanguard of the free jazz movement. Still, it was a nice piece and he is a much more deserving of an in-depth profile than most of the musicians that I hear about on NPR.

Forklift Safety Dance

Michelle has to go into the plant sometimes for her job, so she has to take all kinds of safety training classes. Today's class featured a forklift safety video (in German). Whatever the video may have lacked in educational value it more than made up for in humor. After she told me about the video, I was laughing so hard that we decided that we had to find it on the Internet. Fortunately, we weren't the only people who found it hilarious. Check out the video for yourself. You probably wouldn't learn anything about forklift safety, but you should enjoy it. This video, by the way, does nothing to dispel the reputation that Germans have for being really weird.

Election Day

I spent more time studying in college than most people, but I never pulled an "all-nighter". Unlike many of my classmates, I never spent the final minutes before an exam looking over notes, trying to memorize that last piece of information that would help me pass the test. My approach to politics, however, has always been to spend the night before the election cramming, trying to figure out which candidates and proposals I support. I usually make up my mind on the big-name candidates before the election, but I never pay attention to the local races and the more obscure offices until the last minute. It would actually make more sense to figure out the smaller races first, since the only media coverage that those races tend to get happens a month or two before the election. I always pledge to pay more attention to local races after each election, but I never manage to make good on that pledge. I'll do things differently in 2008, I'm sure.

In my defense, I had to vote on no fewer than 22 separate ballot questions in this election (9 statewide and 13 citywide). I'm not a big fan of ballot questions. With ballot questions, the most important thing seems to be the wording. I don't know if there is any ballot proposition that could not be passed given the right amount of creative wordsmithing. I only thought a couple of the questions on this year's ballot were somewhat misleading. My main complaint was the overall inanity of some of them. There was a statewide question to approve $4M in bonds to rehabilitate a state park. Perhaps I shouldn't be complaining about fiscal transparency in a state as legendary for corruption as Rhode Island, but isn't this something that could have been taken care of by the legislature without having to solicit the opinion of every registered voter?

Dodelik Wapen 2

I caught part of Lethal Weapon 2 on TV last week. It was the first time I had ever seen the movie, which came out in 1989. For those of have forgotten or never saw the movie, the bad guys in this installment are a group of South Africans doing some shady business in LA. A lot of people would probably write this movie off as a mindless action flick. They are probably right, but I found it interesting to see how much the movie used the political situation in apartheid South Africa to advance the plot of the movie. It featured, among other things, an anti-apartheid protest outside of a bank that was doing business with the South Africans and Mel Gibson's character being called a kaffir lover by one of the South African diplomats. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that even movies that appear to be made simply for mindless entertainment provide an insight into the world as it was when the film was made. As for the title of this post, it's my attempt at translating "Lethal Weapon 2" into Afrikaans.

Wicked Smaht

Morgan Quitno Press came out with their rankings of the smartest states in the US. Vermont came in first, but the big winner was New England, taking the top three spots and six of the top 14. Rhode Island came in 14th, which makes us the the dumbest state in New England. That doesn't really matter, since we can totally kick the rest of New England's asses.

In all seriousness, I don't really put too much stock in any rankings like these, especially when they come from someone I've never heard of, like Morgan Quitno Press. I'm not surprised to see that the New England states scored so well, however. They are veritable magnets for bookish intellectual types. What do you think I'm doing here?

Barbershop Quartet

I got my hair cut this morning at my local barber shop. It would be more accurate to say that I got my hair cut at one of my local barber shops. There are at least three or four barber shops near by house. The Park Senate Barber Shop where I get my hair cut may not be the closest barber shop to my house, but it's only about three blocks away and it's the first one I found. Though I've only gone there three times, I can already say it's one of the best barber shops I've ever been to. I've gotten a great hair cut each time I've gone. My hair style is simple enough that it's nearly impossible for anyone with a license to cut hair to give me a bad haircut, but that doesn't mean I always leave the barber shop looking exactly the way I want to look. Each time George (I believe that's my barber's name) has cut my hair, it's come out exactly the way I wanted it.

I've been a big fan of old school barber shops for a while now. As a kid, however, I always hated getting my hair cut. My Dad went bald in his 20s and he got his biannual hair cut at the barber shop in his office, so my Mom was the one who usually took me to get my hair cut. She took me to a number of different places, none of which I liked very much. The worst, by far, was the hair salon at our local Meijer's (The Golden Knight Salon, I believe it was called). I absolutely loathed that place. Finally, when I was probably 11 or 12, I got my first taste of an old school barber shop, Mel's Golden Razor. I immediately took a liking to Mel's. The decor at Mel's was a random collection of Detroit Tigers and University of Michigan sports memorabilia. There was no muzak being piped into the shop, the barbers didn't ask me stupid questions like what grade I was in, if the TV was on, it was tuned to either sports, the news, or an old black-and-white movie. Like all great barber shops, it was a place where you could just go and be a guy. If you wanted to talk, you could. If you wanted to sit silently in your chair while you got you hair trimmed, you could and no one would care.

I don't know how much longer these kinds of barber shops are going to be with us. Whenever I get a haircut, I'm usually the youngest patron in the place, unless someone else has brought their children or grandchildren with them. There doesn't appear to be a new generation of barbers coming up through the ranks. The youngest barber I've come across at any of the old school shops I've been to over the past five years looked to be at least 45.

I've always had good luck with Italian barbers. I've been going to Italian-American and Italian barbers for so long now that I don't remember exactly how I decided that they are better at cutting hair than people from other ethnic backgrounds. It probably has something to do with all of the moving around I've done. It's a lot easier to choose a new barber shop from a list of places you've never heard of if you have some simple rules of thumb, like last name must end with a vowel.

I'll close by posting my barber shop recommendations. If you're ever in any of these areas and need a haircut, check one of them out.

Mel's Golden Razor
595 Forest Ave
Plymouth, MI
The original. I hear that one of the barbers who used to work at Mel's (Larry) has opened up his own place across the street from Mel's. I'm not sure what his place is called, but it's worth checking out as well.

Tony's Barber Shop
7601 Madison St # A,
Forest Park, IL
This place is run by two brothers from the old country who spend most of the time making bad jokes and then laughing hysterically at them.

Alibrandi's Barber Shop
194 Holland St
Somerville, MA
Lots of sports memorabilia on the walls here too.

Ottavio's Barber Shop
472 W Broadway # A
South Boston, MA
Ottavio is from the old country and does a great job.

Salvatore's Barber Shop
6288 Thompson Rd
East Syracuse, NY
Every square inch of wall space is covered in postcards from around the world. Sal and Frank (the barbers) spend as much time busting on each other as they do cutting your hair.

Park Senate Barber Shop
46 Rolfe Sq
Cranston, RI
A great barber shop in a neighborhood full of clip joints.

Mountain Jam

We headed up to New Hampshire this past weekend for some hiking and foliage. We hiked up to the peak of North Moat Mountain (3196'). I took a couple of panoramic photos that actually came out well for a change. The first one was taken somewhere around the halfway point and the second one was taken from the peak.





I've done a little hiking the White Mountains before, but this was the first time I've ever climbed one of the peaks. It was probably the most difficult hike I've ever done, but it was well worth it.

Damn Yankees

After writing that I didn't think the Tigers had a chance against the Yankees on Wednesday, they went on to win the next three games and take the series. Perhaps Jim Leyland found my blog post on the Internet and posted a copy of it in the Tigers' clubhouse to inspire the team. Perhaps I should go on record saying I don't think the Tigers have a chance against Oakland right now for good luck.

In retrospect, it seems that Detroit sports fans should have been able to predict the Yankees' early exit from the postseason. The Yankees are similar to the pre-lockout Red Wings in a lot of ways. They both had streaks in the mid-late 1990s when they were the dominant teams in their respective sports. They then used their deep pockets and championship pedigree to bring in hired guns each season in order to keep the dynasty rolling. In both cases, a fat payroll full of all-stars failed to pay the kind of dividends that management and fans had hoped for. You may be able to buy your way to a championship in professional sports, but you have to build a dynasty. I don't think the Yankees are going to start playing moneyball anytime soon, however. Being able to outspend all other teams is a huge advantage and chances are that it will eventually pay off again sometime in the near future.

Whenever a big-name free agent signs with the Yankees, I tend to see it as almost a sign of failure on the part of the signee. For the most part, the guys they have picked up over the past few years have been great players who were never able to win with their previous team. Baseball is a team sport, but all great players are judged by whether or not they were able to win the big game. In a way, when a guy with great stats but no postseason heroics signs with the Yankees, he's saying that he's not good enough to lead a franchise to glory and is therefore casting his lot with the team that, statistically speaking, has the best chance of winning it all. I can't really begrudge someone like Johnny Damon for wanting to get out of Kansas City (plus his path to the Bronx went through Oakland and Boston), but guys like A-Rod and Giambi were part of some pretty good teams in Seattle and Oakland and Randy Johnson won a World Series with his previous club. A-Rod's move to the Yankees looked even more desperate, since he was even willing to give up the most glamorous infield position for a chance to play in New York. Perhaps that's part of the reason he's so reviled right now.

Beta Max

I switched over to Blogger beta yesterday. There aren't a lot of changes or new features, but it is an improvement. They finally brought the spell checker up to the level of the GMail spell checker. Hopefully, this means they also improved its dictionary. The other big improvement to the publishing tool is allowing you to type the time and date of your posts instead of having to select the month, date, year, hour, and minute from select lists. The best new feature is the ability to automatically add labels or tags to each post. I started doing this by hand using Technorati tags earlier this year, but I got sick of it because it was kind of a pain to do manually.

Keeping with the beta theme, as MDS pointed out, I failed to mention Acres of Books in my post yesterday. Acres of Books, for those who aren't aware, is a huge used book store in Long Beach, CA. I would have to say that it's the best used book store I've ever seen. My first (and so far, only) visit to the store was about four years ago. I overheard a conversation between two customers while I was there that can really only be overheard at a used book store. I don't remember exactly what they were talking about, but it was basically a discussion about the virtues of Betamax. From what I heard, it sounded like these two people regularly watched movies on their Betamax machines at home. Keep in mind that this was in 2002. They either loved watching the same movies over and over or they were members of some secret underground network that is copying new movies over Betamax. Either way, they are exactly the kind of people who shop at used book stores.

Get Used

I'm not a big fan of shopping, and I'm even less interested in recreational shopping, but given the choice of spending an afternoon browsing around a great library or a great used book store, there's a good chance I'd pick the book store. Michelle and I took Tuesday off in honor of my birthday, and spent some time at Cellar Stories, Rhode Island's largest used book store. I've been to the store a couple times now, and it's definitely a top-shelf used book store.

I've spent a lot of time in used book stores across our great nation, and I've come up with a list of things to look for and to watch out for when shopping for used books. First, the things to look for:

• Clutter: A used book store should be cluttered. There should be more books than shelf space. Boxes of uncategorized books lying around are always a plus. Books and Memories in Syracuse is probably the most cluttered used book store I've ever seen. I have no problem with that, but I wouldn't complain if they decided to tidy up a little bit.


• Oddity: There should be a good selection of odds and ends of dubious historical and/or literary value. Appliance repair manuals from the 1950s, books predicting the extinction of all mammals by 1987, etc.


• Pulp: All great used book stores should have a prominent collection of pulp novels. Here's a good example. Note: I've never read this book, but I did stumble upon it at a used book store in Oak Park, IL and the title has stuck with me.
  

Things to watch out for:

• Customers: Used book stores should be empty. Frankly, I have no idea how any of them stay in business. If there are a lot of customers in a used book store, it's probably because it's maintaining an acceptable level of neatness and/or refusing to shelve books that no sane person would ever want to read or purchase.


• Decor: The less effort put into the aesthetics of a used book store, the better. Be wary of any store smelling of fresh paint. Ideally, all vertical surfaces in the store should be covered in shelves that reach from the floor to as close to the ceiling as possible. If the store has any furniture, it should be uncomfortable, used, and at least 30 years old.


• New Books: It's very hard to run a new & used book store that preserves the used book store look and feel. Powells Books does a good job of it, but most stores can't pull this one off and probably shouldn't try (unless they want to make money, or something).

I'll end on a PSA in case this post has actually inspired someone to visit a used book store for the first time. The sale price for a used book is always written in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the book. Any book store that fails to observe this convention is not a used book store, regardless of the ownership history of the books they are selling.

Tiger Town

I started following major league baseball sometime in the middle of the 1983 season, so the 1984 campaign was the first one that I followed from start to finish. While I became interested in baseball in 1983, I became a true fan in 1984. It was pretty hard not to be a fan in the Detroit area that year, with the Tigers starting off the season 35-5 and cruising to the world championship. When the Tigers won the American League East again three years later, I began to get the feeling that the Tigers were going to be making fairly regular appearances in the playoffs. I don't remember much about the 1987 ALCS between the Tigers and the Twins. Had I known that the Tigers wouldn't reach the playoffs again for another 19 years, I probably would have tried to savor those games a little more.

I doubt that last night's 8-4 loss against the Yankees provided much comfort for the long suffering fans of Detroit. I don't really include myself in that group anymore. The Tigers are still my favorite baseball team, but I abandoned them and the game of baseball for a long time before slowing creeping back over the past few years. No sports team will ever be as important to me as the Tiger teams of my youth. My 10 year-old self would have truly believed that the Tigers could recover from their end-of-season train wreck and last night's beatdown to win the series. Since I can't muster that kind of devotion anymore, I don't know if I can call myself a true fan. I'm still going to watch them play and root them on, since I know that when it comes to the Tigers, playing in October is not something that can be taken for granted.

Die Wiedervereinigung

There are two great national events that I've always felt a special connection to even though I didn't really get to experience them firsthand. The events are the American Bicentennial and German Reunification, and the reason I feel connected to both of them is largely due to my birthday. I was born in 1976 and I have always kind of taken pride in that, even though most of the bicentennial celebrations were probably over by the time I was born and even if they hadn't been, I was too young to know what was going on. The German Reunification, which happened 16 years ago today, coincided with my 14th birthday. I had just begun my study of the German language about a month earlier. The whole sequence of events that led up to the reunification of Germany was probably the most historically significant thing that had happened in my life up to that point, so the reunification seemed a lot more important to me then it probably would today.

As far as I know, no formerly divided nations reunited today and America did not pull out all of the stops for a year-long nationwide celebration of our 230th year of independence. The second digit of my odometer did turn over for the third time, however. I've been feigning horror over the prospect of leaving my 20's behind for the past few weeks, but my heart really hasn't been in it. I have neither dreaded turning 30 nor have I felt the need to take stock of what I have and have not managed to accomplish up to this point. Age is not as important as it used to be, anyway. While visiting reunified Germany a couple of years ago, I was kind of bummed that I never did the whole backpack through Europe thing when I was in college. Checking in for our flight back to the US, I saw a couple who looked to be in their 40s or 50s standing in line with their packs. More and more, youth is no longer wasted on the young. I didn't manage to experience everything that I wanted to experience in my 20s, but I think I did most of the things that I felt were really important.

Danger

I read this post yesterday and it reminded me of an hilarious disclaimer that we had to sign last year when we went hiking in a private nature preserve on Maui. Though you may not have guessed from the tone of this disclaimer, the trail was nice and at no point on the hike did we fear for our lives.

Nature is unpredictable and dangerous. Mountains are dangerous. Many books have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the books.

The Waihee Valley swinging Bridges Trail is covered in steep terrain with loose, slippery and unstable footing. The weather can make matters worse. Sheer drops are everywhere. You may fall, be injured or die. There are hidden holes. You could break your leg. There are wild animals, which may be vicious or carriers of dread (sic) diseases. Plants can be poisonous as well. We don't do anything to protect you from any of this. We do not inspect, supervise or maintain the grounds, rocks, cliffs or other features, natural or otherwise.

Real dangers are present even on trails. Trails are not sidewalks. They can be, and are, steep, slippery and dangerous. Trail features made or enhanced by humans, such as steps, suspension bridges, walls and railings (if any) can break, collapse, or otherwise fail catastrophically at any time. We don't promise to inspect, supervise or maintain them in any way. They may be negligently constructed or repaired. They are unsafe, period. Live with it or stay away.

Stay on the trails whenever possible. The terrain, in addition to being dangerous, is surprisingly complex. You may get lost. Carry food, water and first aid supplies and a cell phone at all times.

Rocks and other objects can fall from the cliffs. They can tumble down slopes. This can happen naturally, or be caused by other hikers above you. Rocks of all sizes, including huge boulders, can shift, move or fall with no warning. A whole rock formation might collapse and squash you like a bug. Don't think it can't happen.

Weather can be dangerous, regardless of the forecast. Be prepared with extra clothing, including rain gear. Hypothermia, heat stroke, lightning, etc. can kill you. Rain can cause swelling of the steam (sic), including flash floods and turn easy terrain into a deathtrap.

If you scramble in high places (scrambling is moving over terrain steep enough to use your hands) without proper experience, training, or equipment, or allow children to do so, you are making a terrible mistake. Even if you know what you've doing, lots of things can go wrong and you be injured or die. It happens all the time.

The landowner does not provide rangers or security personnel. The other people on the trail, including other visitors, our employees, agents, and guests, and anyone else who might sneak in, may be stupid, reckless, or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminally insane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly weapons and ready to use them. We aren't necessarily going to do anything about it. We refuse to take responsibility.

If you hike, you may die or be seriously injured. This is true whether you are experienced or not, trained or not, equipped or not, though training and equipment may help. It's a fact, hiking is extremely dangerous. If you don't like it, stay at home. You really shouldn't be doing it anyway. We don't provide supervision or instruction. We are not responsible for, and do not inspect or maintain the trails. As far as we know, any of them can and will fail and send you plunging to your death. There are countless tons of loose rock ready to be dislodged and fall on you or someone else. There is any number of extremely and unusually dangerous conditions existing on and around the trail, and elsewhere on the property. We may or may not know about any specific hazard, but even if we do, don't expect us to try to warn you. You're on your own.

Rescue services are not provided by the landowner, and may not be available quickly or at all. Local rescue squads may not be equipped for or trained in mountain rescue. If you are lucky enough to have somebody try to rescue you or treat your injuries, they may be incompetent or worse. This includes doctors and hospitals. We assume no responsibility. Also, if you decide to participate in a rescue of some other unfortunate person, that's your choice. Don't do it unless you are willing to assume all risks.

By entering the Waihee Valley Swinging Bridges Trail, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care of any other duty. We promise you nothing. We do not and will not even try to keep the premises safe for any purpose. The premises are not safe for any purpose. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about dangerous or hazardous condition (sic), whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about something else. If we do make an effort to fix an unsafe condition, we may not try to correct any others, and we may make matters worse! We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may give you bad advice. Don't listen to us. In short, ENTER AND USE THE PRESERVE AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!

Management

Primary Colors

I voted for the first time in Rhode Island yesterday. It was pretty exciting to be casting a ballot in the most important primary in the country. It was also pretty exciting to vote in a health club for the first time. I've voted in schools, churches, and fire departments, but never in a private business and certainly never in a gym. According to a study cited in Marginal Revolution, voters were more likely to vote in favor of measures to increase school funding when casting their ballots at a school and more likely to vote against stem cell research when casting their ballots at a church. So I suppose that voting at a health club would make people more like to vote for former athletes.

I also voted defensively for the first time. I pulled the lever for Steve Laffey in the Republican Senate primary for no reason other than I felt like he had the best chance of losing in the general election. I used to find defensive voting somewhat unsavory. It seemed like a perversion of the democratic process to me. That position seems somewhat naive to me now. I guess in an ideal world, elections would be reasoned debates about important issues. Since this is not the case, defensive voting is a tactic that one must resort to from time to time.

The incumbent, Lincoln Chafee, managed to pull though with 54.2% of the vote, so in the end, my defensive vote really didn't make a difference. This doesn't guarantee him victory in the general election, but it he will be a much more formidable challenger to former state attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse. How's that for surname determinism: he hasn't even been elected to the Senate yet and he's already got the White House in his sights.

I have to admit that beyond their electability, I really haven't paid very much attention to the candidates. I know where they stand on all of the hot button issues, but that's about it. I've definitely become more of an independent voter over the past few years, but at the same time, I can't in good conscience cast a vote against divided government this November, so I'm going to be voting for Whitehouse unless he gets pulled over with a dead hooker in the trunk of the car.

In another time, perhaps I could have supported Chafee. He claims to embrace most of the principles of the Republican party that I agree with and eschew the ones that I dislike. Still, I find it hard to get too excited about him. I was put off by a campaign ad that he aired a couple months ago where the first priority that he mentioned was restoring civility to government. Is this really an issue that anyone outside of the media cares about? I'd like my elected representatives to not be arrogant jerks, but politics being what it is, sometimes, you have to take the gloves off. Politics is a dirty game even when the stakes aren't high and I can't imagine anyone who would want their representatives to not be willing to play that game when the interests of their constituents are under attack. Of course, Whitehouse will get my vote even if he says the exact same thing, so it really doesn't matter, at least, not this year.

Talkin' Sports

I'm glad I wasn't the only person who wondered why SI picked the Dolphins to make it to the Superbowl. Jim Donaldson shared my sentiments in today's Projo. I also doubt that I was the only Lions fan who was secretly hoping that Daunte Culpepper would have to leave the game on Thursday to force a battle of the ex-Lions quarterbacks.

If you told me last year at this time that in one year's time, the Detroit Tigers would have the best record in the American League, I would've been pleasantly shocked. Given the way they had been playing up until about a month ago however, it'll be a crying shame if they fail to make it to the postseason. They're well on their way to a late season collapse of epic proportions right now. The pervese thing is that they're doing it with some great pitching. They have lost a countless number of close, low scoring games during their current losing stretch. If they can right the ship and play .500 ball from here on in, I think they'll be safe. I'm not sure if they can pull it off. The bad old Tigers tended to start of the season bad and finish even worse. The new and improved Tigers seem to be following the same general outline of the old script.

I missed the Notre Dame - Penn State game bloodbath yesterday, but it's looking more and more like Notre Dame is as good as advertiesed this year. Notre Dame is hyped up by the sports media every season, and like the proverbial stopped clock, the sports media seems to have gotten it right this time. Now that I've dealt with my issues with the New York Yankees, Notre Dame football is the only team for which I harbor an irrational resentment. Actually, I take that back, my hatred of Notre Dame is completely rational. Even though Michigan hasn't looked too strong so far and Notre Dame has already beaten two high-quality opponents, I think the Wolverines have a good chance. Sometimes, the best time to face a tough opponent is when said opponent is coming off of a lopsided victory. It's been a while since Michigan has come out strong in a big game, I hope they can do it next weekend against the Irish.

I'm happy to see Andy Roddick in the U.S. Open final. I hadn't watched tennis in years until I watched parts of Agassi's last two matches. I was surprised to see how well it held my interest. Tennis can be a very mesmerizing game to watch, especially when the players get a nice volley going. I've always liked Roddick. I try not to develop too much of a personal attachment to professional athletes. I feel like a lot of people project that qualities that they admire in people onto their favorite athletes and then get mad when the athletes don't live up to that image. Roddick has always seemed like a really down-to-earth kind of guy and someone who really enjoys the game. He just dropped the first set 6-2 and I don't think he really has much of a chance, but it's good to see him back in the finals nonetheless.

Smart Games

Not to throw more fuel on the fire that is the debate over whether or not Ultimate Frisbee is a real sport, but according to this study, the better a university's ultimate team is, the smarter its students are. Based on the information in this press release, I can't say that I'm convinced of the intellectual superiority of ultimate players (myself excluded, of course). The press release cites two measurements of academic performance, graduation rate and the number of Rhodes and Marshall scholarship recipients. I don't think graduation rate statistics say much about the quality of students at a particular school. A school with a very easy academic program could achieve a high graduation rate with a mediocre student body while a school with a very challenging program could have a lower graduation rate even with a very intelligent student body. The other dubious part of this study is that compares the academic performance of the entire student bodies at the schools, not just the ultimate players. For all we know, none of the ultimate players at the schools in the study graduated and/or earned a prestigious scholarship.

So why do schools with high rates of academic achievement tend to have good ultimate teams? Maybe it has something to do with ultimate being a sport popular with upper-middle class nerds, the same kind of people who tend to graduate from elite private universities and receive prestigious scholarships.

Hat tip: Deadspin

All That Glitters

It appears that the NFL has banned Gary Glitter's stadium anthem "Rock and Roll Part 2" from their stadiums this season. Loyal readers of Data Janitor will remember that Glitter was arrested in Vietnam last year for having sex with underage girls. Now that he's serving an 11 year sentence in a Vietnamese jail, the NFL appears to be in full damage control mode. After all, they wouldn't want to risk losing any revenue if one of those professional outrage manufacturing interest groups were to catch wind of this and organize some sort of a completely ineffective boycott. I wish the NFL didn't take such a reactionary approach to anything that could possibly offend a fan in the "heartland". I'm not going to be picketing in front of NFL stadiums demanding that they play "Rock and Roll Part 2" or anything, but I stand by my original statements. If a song is good, it's good regardless of whether or not the person who wrote it or performed it is a criminal sex offender and enjoying the song is in no way an endorsement of the singer's crimes.

Fighting the System

Zippy the Pinhead has never really tried to be a very accessible comic strip. I suppose it's lost some of its subversive underground comic edginess after being in syndication all these years, but it's certainly no Hi and Lois. The Comics Curmudgeon may have hit the nail on the head when he called Zippy "the Cathy of the surrealist/postmodern set". So while I'm sure that everyone who has ever read Zippy as scratched their heads at least once or twice trying to figure out what was going on, today's strip makes what I would consider a very obscure pop culture reference even by Zippy's already low standards.



I'm not entirely sure, but the sign pictured in the first and fourth panels looks an awful lot like the sign for a New York System in Providence that I've driven past a couple times. What is a New York System, you might ask? It's what a restaurant that serves New York style hot dogs is called in Rhode Island. Extra points to Zippy for calling them wieners instead of hot dogs, as is the custom in the Ocean State. Writing nationally syndicated comic strips that are only understood by people from Rhode Island is probably not the surest way to stardom, but at this point, I think Zippy can pretty much get away with anything.

Zippy's pandering to my new homestate notwithstanding, I've been a fan of the strip for a while. I enjoy the wordplay and if nothing else, it will make future historians even more baffled when they try and analyze old newspaper comics.

If It Looks Like a Duck...

I don't really expect Mallard Fillmore to be funny or insightful, but I do expect it to get its right-wing talking points correct. Sadly, today's strip doesn't even clear that admittedly low bar.



I think what he meant to say was: Don't suggest that an "intelligent designer" may have guided, not created evolution. This alternate statement is more in line with standard ID boilerplate, but it probably still would have offended Mallard's hard-core creationist fans, of which I'm sure there are plenty. By saying "created" instead of "guided", Mallard appears to be expressing the belief held by many religious people who have decided to reconcile their faith and modern science by looking at evolution as God's program for the development of life on earth. While Mallard has never been a complete wingnut, the idea of him appealing to religious liberals and moderates is risible, so I have to assume that this was a mistake.

Of course, even if you overlook the mistake, the strip still doesn't make any sense. No school district, to my knowledge, has taken any sort of action against a student who expressed a belief in intelligent design or creationism. There have been numerous cases where people have taken action against teachers and school officials who have made intelligent design and creationism part of their science curriculum, however.

Ultimate Fighting Championship

Ultimate frisbee seems to get its fair share of criticism. I must admit that I was quite skeptical of the game before I started playing it. Even though I will openly admit to enjoying the game, I do understand why it is so reviled. For one, most of the people who play the game are (or were at one time) nerds and/or hippies. No one is surprised when marching bands, chess clubs, and tree huggers get ripped on. In fact, it would be surprising if these people were not ridiculed. Ultimate players are even worse than the aforementioned misfits in some ways, since they are working against the stereotype that nerds and hippies are neither interested in nor capable of strenuous physical activity.

In addition to the oddball reputation of its players, the game of ultimate is a bit strange as well. For one, it's played with a frisbee, which is considered by most of the world to be little more than a child's toy. I also don't think that ultimate is much of a spectator sport. It's just not that much fun to watch, even if you understand what's going on and you're watching people competing at a high level. At least, that's my take on it. I seem to be developing a case of sports-related ADD that is preventing me from being able to pay attention to any sporting event for more than 30 seconds at a time, so it could be me.

Ultimate also has this idea called "spirit of the game". It's really just good sportsmanship, which is theoretically part of every sport, but in ultimate, it's really part of the mythology of the game. There is no other sport (that I know of) where you can seriously tell someone that they are dishonoring the game they are playing with their poor sportsmanship. If, for example, the NFL were to adopt a "spirit of the game" bylaw, I would probably stop being a football fan. People don't shell out hundreds of dollars to watch good sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is great, however, when you want to play a pick-up game after work for fun. Because of ultimate's insistence on sportsmanship and it's attractiveness to misfits, you don't run into a lot of jerks on playing field. Most of the athletes who enjoy turning a meaningless game into a street fight wouldn't even consider playing ultimate.

The key to the success of ultimate frisbee is its outsider status. Were it to become a more mainstream sport, the laid-back atmosphere and spirit of the game would probably disappear. At that point, most of the nerds and hippies would split and ultimate would have to compete with every other sport for athletes. In the end, all sports are made-up arbitrary games, but I don't see how chasing after a plastic disc could ever be considered as respectable as kicking a soccer ball, hitting a baseball, or catching a football.

Snakes on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

If you're having trouble getting tickets for Snakes on a Plane at your local cineplex, you may have more luck grabbing a copy of Snakes on a Train, it's direct-to-video rip-off, at your local video store.

Get on the Bus

Today's Providence Sunday Journal had a fairly interesting and in-depth article about regional transportation. Specifically, the way that the transit needs of businesses and employees are changing as more companies move away from dense urban areas and into less developed suburban and rural communities. A lot of articles about transit tend to take the position that the solution to every problem is for everyone to turn in their cars and move back into city centers. Thankfully, this article refrains from that dogma and takes a real look into the current state of suburban life and business and examines how RIPTA is trying to meet the needs of a more decentralized population. If public transit is ever going to become useful for people who have other options, it's going to have to start serving their needs better. I think that's going to mean more reliance on flexibility and technology. Unfortunately, since public transit is generally more concerned with political grandstanding and urban planning mythology than actually serving the transit needs of the public, I have my doubts about whether or not this transformation can occur. The article also doesn't fall back on the notion that if gas prices continue to rise, people will decide to turn in their cars and depopulate suburbia. The end of relatively cheap gas is going to bring changes, of course, but I'm far from convinced that it's going to lead to a mass extinction of suburban car culture.

Ultimate Warrior

Saturday marked the end of the summer ultimate frisbee season in these parts. Our team didn't do all that well, I think we either tied for dead last or came in second-to-last in the eleven team league. It seems like whenever I participate in team sports, the team I'm on doesn't do all that well. I've even been accused of being an inverse Michael Jordan, i.e. someone so bad that he makes the people who play with him even worse. I don't think that's he case, but I haven't ruled it out either.

Some people would argue that ultimate frisbee really isn't a sport. I don't enjoy getting into these kinds of debates, but I will say that I think a lot of people confuse "not a sport" with "a sport that I don't like". When I started playing ultimate a couple of years ago, I did it mainly as a way to get some exercise. It delivered plenty of exercise, but I didn't really enjoy it that much. I stopped playing for a while, then came back to it last fall with a different attitude. Instead of just looking at it was a way to get my heart pumping, I decided to make more of an effort to learn the game. I have enjoyed it a lot more ever since I started caring more about the game.

Here's a picture of me from last Saturday's tournament. Lest anyone think my hairline has receded drastically in the past year, I'm the nose, arms, and knee on the right side of the photo. Note that I am severely out of position on defense in this photo. I was getting burned by this guy all game long.

Circus Clown

Making fun of the Family Circus comic strip is certainly not new. I'm pretty sure that I was appreciating the Family Circus on a purely ironic level by the time I was 12 or 13. Pearls Before Swine, a comic strip that I'm admittedly not too familiar with, is mocking the Family Circus this week, with fairly hilarious results. The premise is that comic strip writers are no longer allowed to keep their characters in a state of suspended animation where they never age, so the kids in the Family Circus are now all grown up. Only instead of growing up into fine and upstanding members of the community like their parents, they are a bunch of lowlifes, as evidenced by today's strip.



I feel like this is probably a fairly accurate depiction of how the lives of Family Circus kids would turn out if they were allowed to grow up. After living such an idyllic childhood, I'm pretty sure that once they got out into the real world, they'd have trouble coping and wind up running a meth lab out of their Dad's tool shed or something like that. If desire a significantly more profane send-up of the Family Circus, be sure to check out the Dysfunctional Family Circus.

Victory Day

Today is Victory Day or V-J Day, the day that Japan officially surrendered to the allies in World War II. The only state that still observes this holiday is Rhode Island. My commute was noticeably faster today, which is probably due to the fact that the only "difficult" part of my relatively painless commute is the interchange in front of the Rhode Island state house. As far as I know, state employees are the only people in Rhode Island who don't have to come to work on Victory Day.

Apparently, Victory Day is somewhat controversial due to the events leading up to Japan's surrender. Why Rhode Island is the lone holdout amongst the states is somewhat confusing. According to the Wikipedia entry, one of the men purported to be the jubilant sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in the iconic Life Magazine photograph was from Newport, but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to keep observing the holiday. For the record, I don't really have an opinion about the holiday. Not observing the holiday because of the atomic bomb smacks of historical revisionism to me. At the same time, we don't commemorate the end of any of our other wars with a holiday. Armistice (Veterans) Day once commemorated the end of World War I, but it's scope has been expanded to honor veterans of all wars since then.

I wouldn't be surprised if Victory Day eventually gets dropped from Rhode Island's state holiday roster after all of the people who fought and lived through World War II are gone. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if people are still taking it off 100 years from now, completely unaware of the historical significance of the day.

Land of the Blind

We checked out the Rhode Island International Film Festival last night. I try to attend film festivals whenever I have a chance, more out of a sense of obligation than out of a love of cinema. I feel like I should take advantage of the chance to see some interesting films when I have the chance, but I find the whole thing somewhat tedious. Even a small-time festival screens at least a couple dozen films. Deciding which film(s) to attend is not exactly a logistical nightmare, but it's a lot more demanding than deciding between the 6:30 and 9:30 showing of Talladega Nights. Selecting films from this year's festival was a bit easier than the past couple of years at the Syracuse International Film and Video Festival. The RIIFF is a much bigger festival so a number of films featured actors and directors I had actually heard of before. I discovered last night that the thing I really like about film festivals are the short films. The movie we checked out last night was feature length, which was fine, but at that point, it's basically no different than going to the movies. The only difference is that there are no previews. Unlike most of the feature length movies in the festival, the one we saw last night didn't start out with a short film appetizer. The bulk of the shorts are being screened during the day, so I don't think I'm going to get a chance to see any of them. The other downside of seeing big name movies at a small festival is there is very little chance that the director or the actors will be on hand for a Q&A session after the screening.

The movie we checked out last night was called Land of the Blind. It was a political satire starring Ralph Fiennes as an idealistic and patriotic army officer and Donald Sutherland as an imprisoned revolutionary playwright. The movie took a cynical yet honest look at how revolutions that topple an oppressive government often wind up being as bad or worse than the previous regime once they take power. The president (for life) is a fairly amusing composite of tyrants throughout the ages. His preoccupation with film and exaggerated basketball skills are an homage to Kim Jong Il, I assume. He's got some Franco in him as well as some 18th century aristocracy, as evidenced by the powdered wigs. There are several none to subtle similarities between him and George W. Bush as well, in case you were wondering. The movie starts off a lot better than it ends. I tend to have trouble with the endings of a lot of art house films, and this was no exception. The story was told in a somewhat non-linear fashion, and unless I was totally missing something, the final scene chronologically occurred about two-thirds of the way through the movie. So I left the theater without a lot of closure, but I got the point. As Roger Daultry once said: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The movie had a very sparse score, but the music that was there was excellent. Another thing that I liked was how they mixed American and British-accented English. Most of the actors were British and it appeared to be filmed in Britain (the cars were all right-hand drive, for example), but the American actors didn't change their accents. I thought that this made the film more universal. By mixing accents from the US and Britain and symbolism from around the world, the place that they created was completely fictional but entirely realistic.

The film was screened at the Cable Car Cinema, a small art house theater in Providence. It was our first visit to the theater and we found it quite nice. It was the first time I ever watched a movie at a theater seated on a love seat. One side of the theater has regular fold-down movie seats while the other has rows of love seats. It's a nice touch and fortunately, they seem to keep the couches pretty clean, which is a welcome change from some art house cinemas.