Bill Moyers Runs My Game on Bill Maher's HBO Show

Eminent progressive journalist, thinker and public television personality Bill Moyers was a guest on Bill Maher's HBO show this weekend (clips here, here and here).

I learned of this reading Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com. Greenwald quotes Moyers at length; I'm going to quote only the portion that sparked the title of my post (emphasis mine):

Money in politics -- you’ve had in the last 30 years, money has flooded politics . .. the Supreme Court saying "money is free speech."  It goes back to the efforts in the 19th Century to give corporations the right of personhood -- so if you as a citizen have the right to donate to campaigns, then so do corporations.  Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that -- when the Republicans are in power -- financially support the Republicans.  

Yup. That's what I've been talking about.

(I haven't read the rest of Greenwald's post--I popped over here to make this post--so don't take me referencing Moyers' quote as an endorsement of any of the other stuff Greenwald quotes at length.  I'm not saying don't read it; I'm just saying I haven't yet.)


Ok. Take these thoughts about how thoroughly corporate influence is woven into our legal-political framework, combine them with the second half of Paul Krugman's latest NYT column, and you've got a rough picture of what it is I think we're up against.

No punchy send off. This shit scares me too much.
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Teen Wolf: The New Bacon

Everybody knows Bacon is dangerously overexposed. Everywhere you look there's another paparazzi photo of Bacon, sloppily infusing a vodka being guzzled down by the newest heartthrob on the CW. Bacon, no matter how tasty, so rich in savory-sweet goodness, barely on the pan or burnt to a crisp, uh, yeah, Bacon has jumped the shark.  It's only a matter of time before Bacon goes into rehab Farmer John and comes out Sizzlean. 

Fear not, for this is an opportunity!

Back when everybody knew how awesome Bacon was, but nobody had to be all show-off-y about it, it was a simple pleasure. On your burger. With your eggs, Headlining for the LT's (what do you suppose they're up to now that Bacon's left them behind?), eaten by the pound all by itself (or is that just me?)

Now crazy fools are making bacon shoes and bacon bras and stupid shit like that. All for a few hits on their FaceSpace page and some internet dollars. Sullying Bacon's good name for their own tawdry agendas. Feh!

No more!

Like the savvier members of our military, I, too, have learned the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq. You want to win, you've got to fight asymmetrically.

So, Teen Wolf. That's right, Teen Wolf.

Teen Wolf is The New Bacon.

Just like Bacon, people know how awesome it is. That's well-settled fact. Just like Bacon, you can watch Teen Wolf morning, noon or night.

Bacon has the bacon bra, Teen Wolf can give you bootleg t-shirts.  Bacon-infused vokda? It's no smash dance sensation--make that a hipster-certified smash dance sensation. Gourmet bacon chocolate? Surfing atop the Wolfmobile. Bacon has Kevin Bacon. Teen Wolf has Boof.

You get the idea. It's high time to launch some other greasy, high-calorie, goes-with-anything treat into the pop culture stratosphere to knock Bacon off its perch. The Time for Wolf is now.

And yea, though the Hindus speak of karma, I implore you: give Bacon a break. Let Teen Wolf into your life. Embrace it. Quote it liberally, so that others may quote it illiberally.  May Coach Bobby Finstock's Three Rules* spread like the internet wildfire that was Chuck Norris. May craven obsessives pervert its form while they wring riches from its downy pelt.

The sooner this day comes, the sooner "Bacon" can return to being "bacon" and regain the quiet, sizzling dignity it had in your youth. And in your mouth.


*"There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."
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Quick Hit: Inglorious Basterds

I loves me some Tarantino, no doubt. Saw Reservoir Dogs on VHS at a friend's house in the summer of 1993. Saw Pulp Fiction the night it opened, in a packed, old-timey theater in Berkeley. The crowd was primed, buzzing. A fired up Friday night full of lit up film geeks (before there was any cultural cachet to being called a film geek). Everybody started cheering as the opening credits rolled and the music started. I've never seen anything like it since and doubt I ever will.

Anticipated the hell out of Jackie Brown. Liked it in the theater, love watching it over and over on cable. Whenever I surf to it, I stay til it's over. So watchable. The film just looks warm and inviting, despite the hardcore shit that transpires. That's Los Angeles for ya! Robert Forster plays worn-at-the-heel, lion-in-winter bail bondsman, Max Cherry. A man you can count on. A man that thinks things over as he drives around listening to "Across 110th Street" on his Cadillac's tape deck. And Robert DeNiro taking a bonghit. You know what? This is Tarantino's Lebowski.

Kill Bills, 1 and 2 were fun as hell. I loved the mixed media in 1, as well as the one-for-the-ages fight at the teahouse. I loved David Carradine doing a Pulp Fiction-y Grasshopper kinda thing in 2. And Uma snatching out Daryl Hannah's eyeball in the greatest fight in a double-wide trailer you'll ever see. Two pieces of solid entertainment with legs, rewarding multiple viewings.

Deathproof had one of the great all-time car chases. Kirk Russell creeped everybody out as Stuntman Mike. Zoe Bell is fucking fearless. And some chicks said stuff that may or may not have been annoying. Did I mention the car chase?

Inglorious Basterds, the subject of today's quick review (I didn't say anything about the setup, did I, heh), was slow, boring and uninteresting. Kills me to say it. Stuns me, too. I went in with zero expectations, so this review has nothing to do with let-down. But I gotta say I didn't think Tarantino was capable of this--I don't know how else to say it--he failed. In a 2 and 1/2 hour movie, nothing interesting happened until the final 30 minutes. There were some fine performances, the finest delivered by Christopher Waltz, the Third Reich's "Jew Hunter". Mega-star Brad Pitt was entertaining enough, chewing the scenery and letting his charisma out on a leash. But his performance comes in and out of the movie, since it's not all that central to the movie. But then, everybody--and nobody--is central to the movie--which means the story is a failure. Sure, there are some engaging moments of dialogue, as you'd expect, but they stand out because they're not in service of anything you care about, and it isn't nearly enough to carry the day.

One never knows, but I strongly suspect this won't be one I watch again and again on cable. Here's hoping QT gets back on track with the next one.
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Top Shelf Entertainment, Tomorrow Morning on Fox Soccer Channel

Arsenal and Manchester United square off tomorrow in the first battle between any of the Premier League's "Big Four" (Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea; so named because they have finished in the top four spots without exception for the past several years).

There was a time when Arsenal and Man U players would butt heads in the tunnel on the way out onto the pitch, when some players (allegedly) threw pizza at the opposing manager, when an otherwise even-tempered veteran ran up to and screamed in the face of an opponent who just missed a penalty shot. Ah, good times.

The tenor is more subdued now, and the managers share more than a modicum of respect for each other. Nevertheless, both the teams are capable of playing fluid, exciting football. Arsenal especially are on fire right now, having scored 10 goals in their first 2 Premier League games.

The old adage is that the League isn't won or lost in August (or September, or October), but everybody knows that a decisive result will serve notice to the rest of the League that the winner is for real.

Arsenal's Spanish superstar, Cesc Fabregas, is listed as 50/50 for whether he'll be fit enough to play. Obviously this is a big match, and you'd love to have your biggest playmaker, but the following week holds the prospect of international World Cup qualifiers. If Fabregas is fit enough for tomorrow, he's fit enough for Spain. And if not really, really fit, then maybe he might make his injury worse by playing tomorrow and next week. I hate to evaluate things so conservatively, but Arsenal's squad is a bit thin, esp. in central midfield. As (almost) always, the manager, Arsene Wenger, knows best.

I'd look for striker Robin van Persie to come up big tomorrow.  Of the 10 League goals, none have been scored by a striker.  Van Persie will want to get on the sheet sooner than later, and perhaps United will focus too much on Arsenal's midfielders.

I'm sure there are some pertinent things to be said about Man U, but fuck them. They lost the best player in world, the poncey gel-slicked Portugeezer Christiano Ronaldo, who fucked off to Real Madrid for bags of cash (literally--I think they're putting bags like this in his locker every two weeks. They also lost a talented Argentine, Carlos Tevez, who fucked off for similar bags of money--though not as far as Ronaldo, Tevez went to hated crosstown rivals Manchester United, much to the delight the Gallagher brothers (the Champagne Supernova chaps, not the feuding watermelon smashers. As for black Gallagher, I'm not sure how he feels about it.)

Tomorrow's match is on Fox Soccer Channel at 9 a.m. Eastern. The pub in Manhattan that draws all the footie watchers, Nevada Smith's, is showing it on tape delay at noon, after having already shown Chelsea at 7 and Liverpool at 10. I have visions of a drunken, crowded clusterfuck, so I think I'll stay home and bite my nails in silence and solitude, thank you very much. I'll save the pub for the inglorious mid-week matches against the likes of Wigan or Birmingham in the middle of the season.

Yes, it's 6 a.m. out West. That's what Tivo or lesser cable company dvr's are for!

And if, somehow, you miss it, the English Premier League Review Show airs on FSC on Sunday at 5 p.m., sometimes 6. It's an excellent way to keep abreast of the results and see the best plays of the week.

Cheers!

And say a prayer for poor Liverpool. Their fans are hanging their heads right now, fearing their season is over...even though it's still August. Buck up, chums! It can't get worse...can it?
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Quantum Mechanics In Pop Culture

Catching up on Nurse Jackie episodes last night (I'm referring to the episode from two weeks ago), Eddie, the hospital's pharmacist and Jackie's paramour-slash-opiate hookup, used a moment of post-coital bliss in the pill storage room to posit that--due to the tenets of quantum physics--he and Jackie might exist in a separate, parallel universe where they wouldn't have to hide their relationship.

Specifically, he used the ol' one-electron-can-be-in-two-places-at-the-same-time gambit. Eddie, you sly dog, you. You know the ladies can't resist such mind-bending pillow talk!

(Ignore the "Read more click-through)

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The More Things Change...

From Rick Perlstein of The Washington Post:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

Read the whole thing here.

[NOTE: I think it's also worth noting Perlstein points out the nature of these "protests" being both "grassroots" AND organized by powerful corporate interest. A desire to categorize something--anything--everything--as one or the other, this or that, A or B, is so prevalent in Western Thought that I must give kudos to anyone that takes time to point out that yes, two seemingly mutually exclusive things can in fact be complementary.]

(Ignore "Read more" click-through)
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Home Brewing Update

With the help of my brew guru, Alex, last night I bottled my first batch and brewed my second.

The first batch is a Grapefruit Honey Ale--grains, hops and yeast from Brooklyn Brew Shop, grapefruit from the market around the corner, and honey from Long Island. Turns out, through a combination of boiling off a bit too much water and spilling some while "re-washing the mash" I don't have much to show for my efforts, volume-wise. Five-plus bottles instead of 12 (although you only see 4 bottles, those Grolsch bottles hold 16 ounces). Oops.

But Alex and I tasted it before bottling it and Alex seemed rather encouraged--the grapefruitness is certainly present. That made me feel better--I'd rather have 5 drinkable beers than 12 shitty ones. So, three weeks of bottle conditioning and we'll get to taste the fruits of my labor.

Since Alex was around to help me bottle (his gear was a bit more easy to work with for the bottling stage than that provided by BBS) I wrangled him into helping me brew. Bottling took about a half hour--brewing more like 4 hours.

This time it was a maple porter, all ingredients from BBS. Like night and day, this porter and that ale, figuratively and literally. The mostly dark, sweet-smelling grain produced a deep brown-black brew, esp. considering my super-hot stove-top ended up boiling off a lot of water, again. This time, Alex made the simple and obvious correction--add water to replace what I'd lost. Duh. This time I've actually got a gallon of beer to look forward to!

Once we transferred the beer to the glass jug for fermentation, we added the yeast and shook vigorously. Now it's nature's turn.

Gotta say, I'm excited for this porter. Alex's porter and stout were what convinced me to try my hand at this. Professionally good. Can't wait to try mine.

As Alex was leaving, he looked at where I was storing the bottles and the jug during their fermentation, shook his head, grinned, and said "This is how it starts." Kim, his girlfriend, then looked around the apartment, nodded, and added--with a wee hint of exasperation, not to mention relief that somebody else was getting roped into this: "Yep, first it's there and then some over in that corner, and then over there..."

Oh and don't worry, Alex and Kim didn't go uncompensated: theygot to enjoy some hits from Jenn's stash of People's Popscicles. These bad boys have been making summer bearable.

Alright, the next Home Brew Update will be on the business end--taste test time, baby!

Cheers!
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I'm Here...

...to bring some joy to your day.

With some help from Van The Man.


Let's keep it goin':



And finally:



You're welcome.
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Difficulty Level: Hot and Fresh Out the Kitchen

I take a great deal of pleasure in cracking open the ol' blog and engaging in some keyboard-flow. Doing so forces me to think and it forces me to sharpen my thoughts. (It's also a never-ending opportunity for this.) But more and more I'm just frustrated and overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of topics I'd like to cover and points I'd like to make. More often than not I'm better served by simply pointing you to articles and opinions more trenchant and more eloquently stated than mine; other times I know there's a thread connecting it all that only I possess.

Sometimes I glimpse these thoughts in passing as I drift off to sleep, only to have them remain elusive when I try to revisit them. What's worse, just having these thoughts doesn't mean I'm in any position to communicate them. I know that when I really need to get something across I get better results with the written word than the spoken word. Right now, I can't get them onto the screen or the page, so these thoughts stay trapped in my head and have become a burden.

Until I can,

read as much as you can
ask questions
listen first, speak second--or not at all
spare a little time for quiet contemplation

Do this and I'll be proud of you.

And remember,

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

For my godless heathen readers, that's the very first line of the Bible, and though I care not a whit for religion, I am always aware that above all, language binds us--it invests us with the divine and allows us to know the divine in each other, for it is itself divine.

Word.

small note re: picture: I'm no fan of anthropomorphizing--or even morphizing--the Almighty, but I always like to find a picture for each post if I can, and I quite like this one. So there.
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I Just Don't Get It...Or Do I?

We all know Democrats pretty much got beat up for their lunch money every day for the 8 years of the Bush administration. Heck, even after they won back they House at mid-term in '06 they were so psychologically scarred they just gave it up to the bullies to spare the beating. They were able to roll this invigorating tide of momentum into a late-in-the-game, so-so victory over a surprisingly unaccomplished old coot and a daffy novice. Hope and Change incarnate, right?

They've certainly kept that train rolling, bending over backward with a quickness to make sure they fuck up their one shot to make lasting, positive change in one fell swoop on our economy and our standard of living--for currently insured and uninsured alike. But no, they stand there wide-eyed while their opponents weave their special brand of mendacious hypnotism and send it out over the airwaves (I call it "special brand of mendacious hypnotism", they call it "talking points"; they call it "talking points", I call it "man it must be hard not to laugh when you're lying so goddamned hard". Ah, semantics!).

I'm embarrassed to be a Democrat. Hell, I'm embarrassed to admit any party affiliation. As much I want to distance myself from any partisan identification, I just can't. The best part of my brain and spirit know that this creaking, cobbled-together, compromise-ridden, pork-laden, corruption-encouraging, thyroid-damaged-overgrown-colossus of an abomination of a federal government deserves nothing but my scorn.

But my scorn doesn't have the opportunity to provide health insurance to the 40+ million people who need it. My scorn doesn't have the power to put the screws to private insurers whose sole reason to exist is to make money first and provide health care second. I want to avert my gaze and tell myself this administration's bungling and capitulation shouldn't surprise me because it is their nature to bungle and capitulate. The Democrats are the frog and the Republicans the scorpion. The scorpion will fucking sting you in the middle of the fucking river so you both fucking drown. Every. Single. Time.

(While googling that link I saw that some Huffington Post blogger had a post from August 7 entitled "Frog and Scorpion Healthcare". Please note that my use of this fable 1) came to me without seeing that 2) speaks to the current relationship b/w Democrats and Republicans generally, but this health care battle specifically, and 3) makes sense and isn't stupid unlike that guy's.)

I hate to sound like some frazzled anarcho-hippie (not because I'm not--make no mistake, I am--I just try my best not to sound like one). But...

The creation and subsequent protection of--via common law--the concept of a corporation is the single most troubling occurrence in the history of mankind. When I say troubling, I don't mean bad, evil, or what have you. It's trickier than that. [NOTE: I'm well aware I've slid off the page from talking about simple two-party politics and the very current affair that is the push for better health care to cover more Americans...but the dots, man, the dots are connected. Don't you see?!? [slap!] ["shut up, hippie! focus!"] [slap!slap!] [deep breath]

It's tricky because it created the form, the type of entity, which enabled the most massive transformation of the planet we may ever see--and by that I mean almost every single positive and negative transformation of the past 200 years (and you could probably take it all the way back to the East India Trading Company). Yes, the corporation. The piece of paper (or papers) that gives legal power and protection to a mere collection of capital--a pile of money--collected for the sole purpose of engaging in any and all endeavors which further the amassing of yet more capital for its shareholders. That sounds dastardly but it really isn't, unless you're some crusty old Marxist (do those even exist anymore?). But it does have some real limitations. Such as what kind of expectations we should have regarding how a corporation will act.

So, these piles of money have protection under the law similar to those of an actual living, breathing human being. Now, on the plus side, that allowed all sorts of innovation and continent-spanning and globe-spanning derring-do (yes, it's derring, not daring...go ahead, look it up, fuzzball) which has embiggened the lives of billions of perfectly cromulent people. Basically, the legal existence of the corporate form allowed the modern world to take shape, and that shape includes all the awesome stuff you can think of.

But what about the minus side? (Didja ever notice people always say "on the plus side" but nobody ever says "on the minus side"? Didja ever notice nobody under the age of 60 gets [or makes] an Andy Rooney reference?) Well, on the minus side, corporations aren't human. They aren't endowed with an inherent morality, they don't have feelings, are more likely to marshal armies of lawyers to look for tax loopholes and to litigate do-gooders into the ground, they...they aren't fucking human, dig? But they are governed by laws that basically (trust me on this--I am/was/are? a lawyer) treat them as citizens.

Now that might be legally convenient and workable, and may have unleashed untold human potential, but it ignores the fact that a corporation's only concern, it's raison d'etre if I may, is to increase the amount of money it can make for its shareholders. No matter if it was created to build widgets that kill people or widgets that save people, it was first and foremost created to make money.

So you see my point, right? You've connected the dots? Followed the breadcrumbs o' logic?

Our health care "system"--except for the old, the poor, and those who have fought in our armed forces--is in the hands of corporations. For making TVs and cars and shit corporations are awesome--just ask the late, unlamented Soviet Union. For the welfare of fucking human beings, what do you think?

Oh, so you say without them we wouldn't have the latest MRI-nuclear-whatsit? Maybe. But we also wouldn't have 40+ million of our fellow citizens without any health coverage at all. We wouldn't have a system that pays doctors per procedure, the more procedures the merrier. We wouldn't have a system that denies coverage to a person with an ailment because doing so fucks up the bottom line. We wouldn't have a system that employs people to find any possible to way to deny coverage to a person after they do get sick or injured.

Think about it--we've already chosen to not foist this bullshit on the well-being of the old (they've got Medicare), the truly poor (they've got Medicaid) and the valorous (they've got the Veterans Administration). What's stopping us from freeing everybody else's well-being from the grips of something that exists solely to make money?

An extremely large, extremely powerful pile of money that likes things just the way they are and thinks that any degree of change will hurt its legally-granted right to make as much money as possible.

I'm not sure the Democrats have a shot up against something like that. But who knows? Maybe appearing to have no spine and no integrity is just the kind of reverse-psychology, counter-intuitive strategy that will work.



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Will I Go To The Grave Wondering?

Why do people so frequently write a lower case "i" when they are otherwise writing in all capital letters?

If you've never noticed this before...sorry! You will now.

[ignore "Read More" click-through]
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Promising

Well done, cousins. It sure ain't just any ol' protest that gets me thinking about Mario Savio's famous speech.

For those too lazy to google it here's the relevant portion:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Damn if that doesn't give me chills every time I read it. I recommend going to Youtube and watching a clip of it. Ah fuck it, I know you're lazy. Just watch it here:



Word.

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Primer: English Premier League (More Cool Stuff)

Alright, so that's settled. I promised you more cool stuff. Here it is (this is going to be more of a throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks type than the others, so hang in there). Personalities This is a key for any sport. In soccer, it's easy to see the expressions on the players' faces. Which is important, because--as you'll soon get sick of hearing--there is nothing more important than passion. You'll see players who are "hard men" (har har) who are physically intimidating and have no problem kicking the shit out of you, elbowing, grabbing, etc. There are players who will fall down at the slightest breeze clutching their faces as if Tyson just struck them. There are players who thrive under pressure and those who will literally disappear at such times--the camera tends to follow the ball and you'll notice there are times when you won't see a player or hear the announcer mention him for most of a game. You've got guys--just like in other sports--who are only in it for the money and don't give a shit who they play for, and guys who will stick around with a club far longer than you'd think out of loyalty. Then you've got the special brand of cocksucker who will play well, say the right things, kiss the badge on his jersey after scoring...then lose interest and hope for another team to swoop in and pay him even more. Yes, Emmanuel Adebayor, I'm looking at you. I don't give a shit if you scored for you new team this weekend. Arsenal scored 6 with none coming from a striker. Have fun watching the Champions League on tv, bitch! And Man city fans, he'll be saying the same shit about you guys when he moves on--not to AC Milan or Barcalona like he so desperately wishes, but to some other unglamorous, cold-as-shit English city. Let me go back to the guys who fall down so easily. They are indeed a scourge on the game. Many English fans like to think it's just the greasy foreigners that perpetrate such shenanigans. That's not true by a longshot--the English have their own special brand of fucked up xenophobia. Now, this problem could be easily remedied with instant replay--either at the time it happens (which might slow the game down, yes) or by retroactively punishing the perpetrator. Lots of ink has been spilled about this but it probably won't ever change. Which is sad, because to American eyes, it's pretty fucking disgusting. Think about how much you hate to see a flopper in the NBA. In soccer it's a million times worse. But you'll get used it, don't worry. Sometimes it will fuck your team over, and vice versa. Anyway, personalities. These different types of players are distributed over a ton of different nationalities. the Premier League makes the NBA look like a Republican town hall meeting. If a country has a national football team, they probably have a player at a club in England. Here are some well-worn stereotypes: You've got spicy Latin players from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France with their flashy technical skill. Stoic, physically tough Germans and Nordic players. Equally tough but smaller and full of fiery spirit are the English, Irish and Scottish. Americans are goalkeeper because they grow up playing sports with their hands. Brazilians and Argentines are of course the best but their best players avoid the Premier League because it's too physically demanding, too far from home, and the food sucks (this applies to a slightly lesser extent to Italians, Spanish, Portugese but not French--they're down with the Premier League because of this gentleman). Who knew you didn't have to save up nationalistic vitriol just for the Olympics every four years, right? It's on display all season long! Finally, with regard to personalities, are the coaches. Well, we call them coaches here, but in football it's the manager, aka the boss, or gaffer. The major difference is this--almost without exception, teams follow the Bill Parcells/Pat Riley/Mike Holmgren model, i.e. they select the players and they are in charge of what happens on the field. Thus, they all have huge egos just like the three aforementioned coaches. This makes for a ton of entertainment. Mindgames, bullshitting the press, the refs, talking to players on other teams who are still under contract, complaining that the owners haven't given them the money to succeed. I'm probably not doing a good enough job of communicating this, so just take my word--the managers are far more integral to enjoying soccer than they ever are in the Big 3 sports. I and everybody else are still mourning the departure to Italy of former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho. That suave, cocky bastard was unlike anything you've ever seen. He got banned from a huge game so he sat in the hotel, watched on tv, and talked in his assistant's ear through bluetooth covered by a wool cap. He made baseless accusations and unparalleled boasts. In his very first press conference he dubbed himself The Special One. He accused another manager that was concerned with Chelsea's dealing of being a voyeur who stares through people's windows. Ah, Jose, please come back! We hate you/miss you so much!. Pressure on these guys is high and they get fired all the time. Some you get attached to you, and some you are glad to see get canned and wind up in the lower leagues, hoping that they make their way back up so they can get fired again. I'm looking at you, Mick McMarthy of the newly promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers (who, I believe, are Robert Plant's favorite team). Aha. I've set myself up for a good segue. As an American, who to root for and how that works over there When I say "favorite team" I don't mean it in the American way where you are free to root for whoever strikes your fancy (which has become even more true after decades of free agency...unless of course you're within 10 feet of Michael Winston Brown, in which case, well, he needs his own blog to let loose on this topic). I've been able to discern this much. You are a supporter of the team in the town in which you grew up. That's simple, right? Unless for some reason, before age 8 or 10, you fancied some other team for some other reason. As long as you stick with them for the rest of your life, you're cool (this is the Nick Hornby/Fever Pitch rule). But what if you live in a city like Manchester, with Manchester United and Manchester City, or Liverpool with Liverpool and Everton? Well, that's pretty much going to be determined by who your father, brother, uncle, etc. roots for you. Anybody that grows up a contrarian and decided to root for their family's rival will have a tough row to hoe. I suspect that my wife would have been a Liverpool fan if she'd grown up in a Everton household, for example. That doesn't mean anything to you, as an American, does it? Well, sort of. You're gonna be considered a "plastic" fan no matter what, just like somebody that started rooting for Chelsea after a Russian billionaire swooped and bought himself a competitive team. Or some Japanese girl who likes Manchester United because she had a crush on David Beckham. Or--god-forbid--somebody who supports Manchester United but hails from and lives in London and rarely attends matches at Old Trafford. You can mitigate this, or course. Pick a team, stick with them, learn a bit about their history and you'll be fine. You're American so they'll all be laughing at you anyway. Which is ok, because in the '80s they'd have beaten you senseless. All of this, of course, leads us to the inevitable $64,000 question: which team will you support? A question so important I will tackle it in another post. Until next time, sportsfans.
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Primer: English Premier League (Nuts & Bolts Part 2)

[This is part 2 of the third part of a 4-part series]

Well, the season's just under way, so it's time me to finish up this guide (see parts 1 and 2 here and here).

I've told you about the basic structure of the Premier League; now I need to fill in some of the blank spaces.

In part 1 I told you (in an aside I made during a self-aggrandizing digression) that a team gets 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw. There are no points for losing. For the most part this determines in which places teams finish. Should two (or more) teams finish with the same amount of points, the tie is broken by looking at the teams' goal differential: # of goals scored minus # of goals allowed.

Another important piece of information that shapes the campaigns of the teams among the League's elite is the UEFA Champions League. UEFA is the Union of European Football Associations. They oversee a hybrid league/tournament that runs from August through May, just like domestic leagues in each of the major countries across Europe.

The Champions League consists of the best teams across Europe, who qualify based on the domestic position the previous season. This is where the big money is. The television revenue earned by teams that are consistently in the Champions League--and consistently advance from the starting group of 32 teams to the final 16--separates the giants from everyone else, e.g. the teams you've likely heard of: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan. More money and more glory means you're more likely to attract the best players (which means you'll sell the most jersey in Asia...and the rich get richer.

Playing in the Champions League shapes the domestic campaigns of the teams involved because it means playing they'll be playing lots more games, which means:
more fatigue by simply playing more
more fatigue by playing games closer together after traveling around Europe
more injuries
focus pulled away from less glamorous domestic games
more games means rotating more players through the line-up which can make "chemistry" tricky

Taken together, this means that a team still involved in chasing the Premier League title, the Champions League and the FA Cup will really have their hands full. Depending on the relative strength of some teams, their fans (and coaches and players) may consider that being knocked out or dropping out of contention may be a blessing in disguise for pursuing more likely trophies.

How does a team qualify for the Champions League? An arcane calculation determines the strength of the leagues; the top 4 teams from the top 3 leagues (Spain, Italy, England) qualify, the top 3 from leagues 4 through 6, and so on. There are a few more wrinkles here that I'm going to skip. If you do catch the bug, you'll eventually pick this stuff up on your own.

Is the Champions League the only European tournament? Of course not! That would be too simple. There is a second, lesser hybrid league/tournament, called (after a name change last year) the Europa League. In England, generally clubs 5 through 7 qualify for this tournament.

[NOTE: In the olden days--which pretty much means before the 1990s when we're talking about European football--the Champions League was called the European Cup and only consisted of the champions from each league; the Europa League was called the Cup Winners' Cup and consisted of teams that won their league's domestic cup competition.]

Let's put this all in the context of what's so entertaining about following the Premier League in comparison and contrast with the Big 3 American sports: with regard to the structure of the League (or leagues, as we've seen), the answer is, in a word, depth.

There are multiple goals at stake at multiple places throughout the league table against different kinds of competition in different formats.

Stated differently, there's a lot of shit going on. I've found that appeals to me. Perhaps it will to you as well.

Ok, that's the Nuts & Bolts.

On to the other cool stuff that makes the Premier League interesting, in part 4 of this 3-part series.
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Primer: English Premier League (Nuts & Bolts Part 1)

[This is part 2 of a 3?-part series]

Alright, with that out of the way, let me lay out everything you'll want to know (and then some).

How the League is structured

Though it might seem mundane and merely fundamental, the Premier League's structure (which is basically the same across the top leagues in Europe) provides a great deal of its appeal and marks it as foreign and exotic compared to the Big 3 American sports (sorry, hockey, you remain a niche sport--which I think you'll admit suits you better).

There are 20 teams. But it's not always the same 20, you see. At the end of each season, the three teams at the bottom of the table are dropped into the division below. The term for going down is relegation. In one sense, this is like getting sent to the minors. But in another sense, it's nothing like that, because the divisions below aren't merely farm teams. They represent cities and towns all across England and these teams all have varying degrees of ambition. Some of these teams are even former greats that have fallen on hard times.

Think about that. The Premier League could never have a perennial punching bag with an owner that didn't care, like the Clippers. It gets new punching bags every season, to be sure, but these teams are full of piss and vinegar because they've clawed their way to the top of the heap, or, rather, clawed their way to a new heap. And that heap is a potentially huge pile of money.

Think about this. Toward the end of the season, teams that have no shot at the title may still be involved in some drama and some meaningful games. Think about all the meaningless games played in American sports once playoff spots have been determined. Of course, there are still teams in the middle whose games mean little, but the higher you finish, the bigger your share of the dough.

So what's the format for how these teams play each other? The answer provides yet another contrast from American sports and, in some ways, is a better alternative. I think so, and my wife--herself a huge sports fan--also thinks so.

Each team plays ever other team twice, once at home and once away. Perfectly equitable, no doubt. Less obvious but more important, the number of games--38--seems to me to be quite the sweet spot. Part of the appeal of gridiron (American) football, both professional and collegiate, is that each game really matters because there are so few. But if you like the sport, that means there are so few games to watch and the season isn't all that long. The club soccer season is just like the school year: middle of August through end of May, taking the summer off. There's just something awesome about that, right?

At 38, each game is still meaningful but not quite so make-or-break like college football. And because each club plays every other club, there's no schedule disparity like in pro football where some teams have creampuffs in their division they get to play twice, and games outside the division for one team may be against teams far weaker than those for another team. Here, the playing field is much more even (at least schedule-wise. As we'll see, there are several factors that keep the playing field tilted).

When it comes to basketball and baseball, nobody can deny there are too many wasted games. Ask any player what he'd do if he were commissioner and invariably they'll tell you "shorten the schedule."

But there's also another reason many games are meaningless, which brings me to another fundamental difference between the League and the Big 3--one that freaks out a lot of Americans as being very foreign: there are no playoffs. That's right, no playoffs. The team that finishes on top after playing everybody home and away is the champ who takes home the big trophy and the bragging rights. Crazy, right? The team that has the best season wins, simple as that. The appeal of that may not seem clear in print, or even in your head, but the more you follow the game the more it will begin to appeal to you.

But , you say, there's something about a scrappy upstart peaking at the right time and knocking of a big dog. The answer addresses your concern but again, it will seem quite foreign to you. During the 38 game season, which constitutes the whole of the Barclays Premier League (Barclays being the bank whose sponsorship is so large it extends to getting its name into the League's name), there is another, separate competition. It is called the FA Cup. FA being the Football Association, the governing body which rules all football in England--both the national team and the club teams. This competition is old--over 100 years old. Unlike the Premier League, it is not a season but a tournament. A tournament that lasts the length of the season!

It is strictly a knock-out competition--there is no best of 7 series. There are fourteen rounds; the first six are for the smaller teams to qualify. And when I say small, I'm talking semi-pro. Guys with real jobs. Fields (or pitches, as they're known to our cousins) are often of sub-high school quality with only the barest of bare-bones bleachers for the supporters. And yes, some of these "minnows" can rise up and knock off a Goliath. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the Big 3 American sports can compare to that. As the tournament advances and the minnows fall by the wayside, there still remain large professional clubs that ply their trade far below the ranks of the rich and famous and they, too, get a chance to knock off big teams and even advance to the semi-finals and final, which take place in England's biggest stadium. The day of the FA Cup final was long considered England's "Super Bowl".

Sadly, in the recent era of big, BIG money (you may have heard that Manchester United sold a player to Real Madrid for $130 million) it has become nigh on impossible for an also-ran to make it that far. But the structure is still in place to allow it to happen, even if the culture isn't.

So, let's summarize:

The 3 worst teams at the end of the season get dropped down to a lower league.

There are 20 teams who play 38 games--2 games against each team, once at home and once away.

The champion is the team who finishes on top at the end of the season--there are no playoffs.

There is, however, a knock out competition that runs concurrently with the "regular" season.

Ok sportsfans, I think this is a good place to stop. Be assured, part 2 of Nuts & Bolts will be up later tonight.

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Primer: English Premier League (Self-Serving Intro)

[This is Part 1 in a 3?-part series]

Nobody's asked for it but I've been promising it, so here it is, sportsfans, just in time for the start of the season this weekend. Before I dive into a detailed explanation of the ins and outs, the whos and wheres and whys, I've got to address why you'd even want to care. As with most everything I discuss on this blog, you should care because I do.

Also, of course, because following the Premier League is, ultimately, more rewarding than following baseball, basketball, or (gridiron) football--professional or collegiate. You heard that right. I grew up worshiping the big three sports--and I still follow my teams in each of them--but I really don't care about the other teams, players, coaches or stories that make up the drama of a season.

I'd wager it's a combination of fatigue, a desire for something novel and new, increasingly crappy television coverage, and the superiority of soccer generally and the Premier League specifically. (NOTE: I'll be using soccer and football interchangeably. For the record, the origin of the term soccer is English and dates back to the very origin of the sport, so when Brits or Euros make fun of our use of the term as somehow provincial, they can fuck right off. I know the day will come when I'll have one too many in a pub, make this point, follow it up with "You can fuck right off" and get my ass kicked. It would be worth it.)

I'll admit right up front I'm a pretty big Anglophile. I'm well aware that had a lot to do with how quickly I took to their league. But it really has nothing to do with how quickly I took to the sport. Sure, I, like millions of American boys and girls, played organized soccer growing up--before moving on to focus on one sport, or other more mainstream sports like rockclimbing and throwing the hammer or javelin. So for many years I never gave the thought much sport.

But soccer began creeping into my consciousness in 1994 as the World Cup came to America and FIFA Soccer came to the Sega Genesis. Lots of videogame sparring plus attending games--U.S. v. Brazil on July 4 at Stanford and Costa Rica v. Romania (or was it the U.S.?) at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Fun to watch, fun to play in a videogame, and after witnessing the Brazilian fans mobbing the intersections, banging drums and climbing up on streetlights after beating the U.S., fun to experience.

Can't say I paid too much attention to the World Cup in 1998--at that point really the only opportunity for an American to watch world-class football. I had continued to sporadically play soccer videogames, and Fox Sports had begun showing some English club games (NOTE: the World Cup involves national teams, like in the Olympics; countries also have professional leagues, wherein teams are referred to as clubs. Because it sounds more sophisticated than team, I don't know.) Anyway, I don't really know why I paid so little attention then.

But come 2002, I watched a whole lot of World Cup. And I began following the English League when the season began later that year. A year later, on my honeymoon in Thailand, I stayed up until 3am one night to catch an English League game involving Arsenal, the team I had chosen to root for (or support, as they say over there. They have supporters, not fans--but make no mistake, they're every bit as fanatical).

Not long after that I and a partner in crime who was there at the beginning in 1994 and had begun to follow soccer as well, got the crazy notion to start a recreational team. Had he and I played soccer since we were boys? No. Well, actually I had played goalkeeper in intramurals in college, but since our team largely consisted of guys who had played high-level soccer through high school, I didn't have to do much. Did the fact that we didn't play soccer, or know a bunch of soccer players stop us. Fuck no!

Somehow we managed to round up about 20 men: some who had played soccer through high school, some who were great athletes who picked it up quickly, and some who had played in college. Friends-of-friends, co-workers, distant relatives, a dude who rode by on a bike and asked if we needed more players--we were a rag-tag bunch. We started during the summer in the San Fernando Valley when temperatures hovered around 100 degrees. Early on we had a hard time fielding enough guys to have substitutes--I recall guys puking from over-exertion (but not me, I was playing goalie again. I had planned to get in shape and play out in the field, but our goalie pulled out at the last second. As I stare at my fat belly 5 years later I still rue that turn of events).

Over the course of a few seasons we clawed our way up and eventually went undefeated and won the championship in our division. A culmination of teamwork, persistence and hardwork (wrangling at least 11 guys out of 20 to show up every week was a tough goddamned grind).

While theses seasons passed, I was mainlining English soccer. Watching whatever games were on the Fox Soccer Channel. Waking up early to go to a pub to watch Arsenal when their games weren't televised. Picking up info and insight from the passionate knuclehead English ex-pats on FSC's Fox Football Friday. I was in deep.

And I'll be damned if that didn't payoff in actual physical ways. At the end of a game, with mere seconds to go, our team was down by one goal and we needed to draw to have a shot at the playoffs (NOTE: you get 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw. Traditionally in football there are no playoffs, but hey, this was a rec league in America.)

So I, as the keeper, run the length of the field to join the rest of my team in a corner kick which was likely to be the last play of the game. (NOTE: for a corner kick, play stops, a player places the ball at the corner of the field while everybody else gangs up in front of the goal awaiting the incoming kick). There I am, trying to sneak into the fray unnoticed--wearing bright yellow, all 6'1", 250lbs of me--and nobody on the other team really tries to defend me. Here comes the kick, curling in perfectly, heading directly for...me? no way? Yes. At this point, time slows for me. It's heading for my head? Yes. I'm really gonna have to head this? I haven't headed a ball since I was 11. It's getting closer. I better not fuck this up. BAM!

I strike it square, textbook perfect. Right past their keeper. Holy Shit! Pandemonium. Game over. The other team loses their shit, screaming at the ref, screaming at us. They think I punched it with my hand, such is their disbelief. Nope, no hand of god here. Of course, for the rest of the life of our team, if anybody wants to get my goat they straightfacedly claim--to new members I forced to listen to my tale--that I punched it in.

Never thought I'd top that--and for sheer drama, I didn't. But a year later, on a full-sized field in

Santa Monica, I did what I'd been claiming to do for a few seasons and I put on a regular jersey in the second half of a game in which we were blowing out our opponents. I figured I'd play in defense, run around a bit, have a little fun. Soon after I'm out there, our defense takes the ball away, passes it up to the midfield. I'm in the defense out on the left. I haul ass up the field and figure this is all the energy I've got so here goes nothing. We keep moving the ball up the field on the other side. The other team's defense disregards me--whether they were just tired or in disbelief at the freight train of crazy heading toward them I'll never know. Our midfielder with the ball sees me and sends a long, arcing pass my way across the field.

Again, this one's heading for my head, and time once again slows down. I consider heading it since that's my signature move, right? But I realize I'm a bit too far from goal to pull that off (I swear, I'm having these thoughts in splits of seconds). So I receive the ball with my chest, bouncing it up and forward. Perfectly. Enough time in the air to take my measure, see where the goalie is, and--before the ball bounces--connect perfectly and hammer it into the far side of the net. A meaningless goal, a meaningless game, but THAT is the greatest moment of my life. And I was capable of doing that solely because of how much fucking football I'd been watching (well, that and the fact I've got incredible hand-eye coordination and control of my body. But still!)

So what was my point? Soccer is awesome and so am I. Together soccer and I produced something greater than I thought possible. Who knows what you might accomplish if you read the rest of this primer and dive in head-first?

Part 2 to follow shortly.


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Shame: Have You None?

Good Lord. How dare he, this cocksucker waving his finger in Mr. Specter's face?

By all accounts, Mr. Specter is a humble public servant of several decades--one cannot deny this regardless of one's party affiliation or ideological stripe.

This cocksucker had the temerity to bellow "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill -- and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." (Thanks to eagle-eyed reader Michael Schafler for pointing out that I had allowed "deserts" to be spelled "desserts". Though I cut-and-pasted the quote, a true grammarian doesn't duck responsibility. In this context, "desert" means deserved reward or punishment.)

Who are you, sir, to suggest that Mr. Specter's life and political service won't stand up to the Almighty's judgment? Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's oh-so-rich to watch such god-fearing people claim to know how God will judge an individual. By the way, wouldn't Mr. Specter be standing before God, not the other way around?

Another citizen wailed "I am very, very scared. I think healthcare reform ... is a vehicle to take us down a path of socialism." Of course she got a standing O.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether health care reform should take the form(s) currently being proposed by Congress, but for fuck's sake, incoherent rage is...pathetic and obfuscatory, among other things.

Oh, poor dear, you're scared?

Because a black man you voted against is president? Because Beck, Limbaugh, Gingrich and Palin tell you you should be as they lie to your face about "death panels"? Because our President is trying to reform health care, something presidents as far back as Truman have failed to do? Because reforming health care runs counter to the interests of the organizers of these town hall disruptions?

Oh, poor dear, you don't want to live under socialism?

You bleating moron, you wouldn't know socialism if it jumped out of your Social Security check and bit you on the ass. I guess it is too much to ask that such people understand that our nation is not, and has not been for many, many, many prosperous decades, an unfettered and unchecked hothouse of ideologically pure free-market capitalism.

So many things that so many people count on, especially the old and easily scared, are government-controlled forms of assistance, like Social Security, Medicaid, workmen's comp, the continued existence of unions, the enormous amount of government spending that pays the salaries and wages of untold numbers of workers who pave roads, put up buildings, build awesome unmanned drones that fire missiles controlled by soldiers sipping Diet Coke in air-conditioned trailers thousands of miles away...and on and on.

These pea-brained sheep will never realize that while our economy may be capitalist (but don't tell that to our agri-businessmen, er, farmers), our government is so very, very socialist already.

But I won't let this anger me (the cursing and the insults is just a time-honored release valve). What I really feel is pity for fellow citizens underserved by their leaders--be they religious, civic, political or cultural. This rot runs deep and is not confined to one side of the aisle or the other.

Sigh........I mean, what can you do but laugh when someone's holding a sign that says "Obahmadinejad".

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The Tyde: Awesome Summer Music

I know summer's hitting the home stretch, but I just threw these guys on the ol' sterereo and they made me wish I was driving with me head out of the window on the coast.

For my friends in Los Angeles, they are playing at Spaceland on September 10.

If you dig psychedelic, feel-good pop with a beachy, surf-type vibe, check them out.





In an alternate universe, they'd be famous.

Of course, in that same alternate universe, I'd be able to drive my Ferrari without people thinking I had a small cock.
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Eliot Spitzer: Good Insight From A Guy With Poor Judgment

Say what you will about former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer, he has a great deal of economic knowledge, especially with regard to Wall Street (and yes, not especially with regard to paying hookers while busting up prostitution rings).


As a regular reader of Slate.com, I've looked forward to his columns for that publication since he debuted in December of last year. You can find an index of the columns here.

Even if the Slate isn't your type of site or even if you find it too left-leaning, Mr. Spitzer's columns seem--to me, anyway--apolitical. More important, he writes plainly and clearly, quickly zeroing in on the heart of an issue. I really couldn't recommend his columns more highly.

It has been difficult--and remains so--to know where to focus one's outrage and disbelief with regard to the economic crisis (or whatever you want to call it). Mr. Spitzer's columns do a great service by helping his readers find that focus. What we do with it, of course, is up to us.

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DIY: Homebrewing With Brooklyn Brew Shop's Help

It seems I've landed in beertopia here in Brooklyn*. Lots of bars with lots of beers, and lots of people who take beer quite seriously. The Whole Foods in the Lower East Side in Manhattan has a monstrously large selection that can put specialty stores to shame.

So, with beer on the brain, I've taken the next step.

Making my own! A few weeks ago I went to a barbecue at a friend's apartment, and as I placed my six pack of Weihenstephaner in the cooler, I noticed several unlabeled bottles. And in his apartment I spotted several one-gallon glass jugs containing sludgy brown liquid.

Normally I'm skeptical of homemade items, especially when it comes to ingesting them. And I had arrived with one of my most favorite beers in hand, so really, I was set. But in the spirit of adventure and, wanting to make a good impression on Alex, my host and new friend, I acquiesced and tried one.

And another one. And then another one. And so on. Damn if Alex wasn't coming correct. A porter, a stout and a red ale that were uniformly excellent. Not excellent for homebrewed beer, but excellent beer, period.

Back home, I said to myself, "Self--you're pretty handy, good at following directions, you like to experiment like a mad scientist--perhaps we should try our hand at this." And Self replied, "You're right, and I remember that summer in Berkeley where we had a different do-it-yourself operation up in the attic that produced legendary results, so we've got aptitude--let's get cracking!"

Now, I was going to have to rely on Alex for know-how, because I wanted to shorten the learning curve as much as possible. But then I stumbled upon Erica & Stephen of the Brooklyn Brew Shop while reading Time Out New York. They're so new to the game they operate out of their apartment and the Brooklyn and DUMBO flea markets on the weekends--but it seems they're the only game in town so I had to check them out.

I eventually made it to the Brooklyn flea two weekends ago. People were gathered around their booth asking questions, chatting excitedly, exchanging beer preferences. I liked the vibe immediately. Erica helped us, and answered important questions from me like "Can any idiot do this?" She assured me that yes, if you can make oatmeal, you can make beer.

So, my wife and I purchased a one-gallon kit, which came with a one-gallon glass jug (which is thick-walled and strong--I know because I managed to knock one off the table onto the asphalt and it didn't break!), Brooklyn Brew Shop's own grain blend for making a grapefruit honey ale, the required hops and yeast, a thermometer, a rubber stopper plastic tubing and accompanying doodads--all for the low, low price of 30 bucks. We also picked up the grain/hops/yeast package for their maple oatmeal porter for 10 bucks. They do sell a five gallon kit, but I reckon I'm a long way away from needing that.

Erica had informed us that she was a second-generation brewer, as she had learned the ropes from her dad. This made me feel assured--not that I thought she and Stephen were a fly-by-night operation that had brewed a few gallons and decided to fleece people during this Brooklyn Beer Boom-- not at all, but I felt good knowing that two generations of brewing will have yielded a great deal of experience, nuance, and--most important--an ability to pass on beer making knowledge.

Which brings me to last night. I decided to go for it, starting with the grapefruit and honey ale, since Alex had advised me that making an ale is simpler than making a porter.

While it wasn't rocket science, it was a bit more complicated than mere oatmeal making. Then again, Erica was probably referring to making actual oatmeal, not Quaker Oats instant oatmeal, which is what my lazy ass immediately thought of.

I won't bore you by recounting all the steps, but after some spilling, some burned digits, some heavenly aromas and a lot of sanitizing to make sure I didn't murder the yeast with dangerous, ever-present germs, I've got (most of) a gallon of brown sludge fermenting away, waiting to be bottled and further fermented in a couple weeks.

I encourage all potential homebrewers to check out their site, even if you're not in Brooklyn, for I'm pretty sure they can ship their stuff to you.

Now for the hard part--emptying some bottles so I have something to put it in!

*Some might call the Pacific Northwest beertopia, but that region's hyper-hoppy brews just really aren't my preference anymore.

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Yes, It Is Broken: Part 1

It keeps me up at night. It's a low-level fog in my mind that has made me uneasy in a way that's difficult to pinpoint. It makes me so angry I think about killing, about making changes with my bare hands around the throats of those who stand in the way, grinning. It makes me sad my anger has yet to find a productive outlet. I have difficulty expressing how I feel about it to those that know me, so I say nothing. Its scope is so large I can barely summon the effort required to search its contours and see it as a whole, but I refuse to stop.

What is it?

America. It's broken. How're we going to fix it?

We remain the "City upon a Hill", and make no mistake, the eyes of the world remain upon us.

Figuratively speaking, what John Winthrop and JFK spoke of runs through us, and has done so for nearly 400 years, whether we recognize it or not, whether we want it to or not, whether we believe it should or not.

Simply put, the United States of America can be, has been and will remain the world's best and most likely repository for hopeful human progress. As ever, this can only happen by example. At the moment, my heart has begun to break as I absorb the ways in which the very best of American exceptionalism evaporates before my very eyes.

My heart breaks just making this admission. For some time I've tried to tell myself things aren't as bad as they seem, that the filters through which I receive information skew things toward a sky-is-falling, "look what else is wrong with us" world view. In the face of that I've remained ever-optimistic, for I believe strongly--perhaps too strongly--in the strength of American institutions and American character--expressed both through its actions as a nation and in the character of its people.

At the moment, my optimism remains unbowed, but my faith in the strength of American institutions and character weakens daily. Where is the rot? What causes it? How can we renew ourselves and our nation?

I have a penchant for wearing bold colors, but damn if I don't feel like Johnny Cash right now:

I’d love to wear a rainbow everyday,
and tell the world that everything’s okay
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back
Till things are brighter, I’m the man in black.


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Lest Anyone Forget

In 1997 Luc Besson stole George Lucas' lunch, ate it, and then laughed in his face--haughtily, as only a Frenchman can.



Besson and Digital Domain brought the kick-ass next-generation visual effects two full years before Lucas' 16 years-in-the-making wet diaper The Phantom Menace.

I remember sitting in theater for The Fifth Element thinking "Damn! Finally somebody moved the ball forward with the dope sci-fi shit." I also remember sitting in the theater for The Phantom Menace thinking "Pffft. I've already seen this shit."

So while it's oh-so-easy to shit on George Lucas for all the other failings of his second set of Star Wars movies, let's not forget to shit on him for getting beaten to punch on special effects by a dude who spends his time making actual movies that don't suck.

Green?



Supergreen.
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I Think Dave Chappelle Would Approve.

After all, he knows Nick Cannon is hilarious.



On a related note, does anybody still listen to Gil Scott-Heron?



This should be your next music purchase, even before Steely Dan.
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Imposition of Will: Now Hear This

Okay, people. I thought about it, long and hard, and have concluded that the best musical act people don't take seriously enough is Steely Dan. I'm not 100% sure why that is, but it likely has to do with the '70s (on which we can blame oh so many things, including my birth), the ubiquity of their best-known (but not necessarily best) songs on classic-rock stations, and the limiting and only-partially-descriptive term "jazz-rock" used to describe them.

As any major dude will tell you, there's way more to them than that. Them, specifically, refers to the duo Donald Fagen (on the left) and Walter Becker. I see them as a mind-melded single entity, like Jagger and Richards, McCartney and Lennon, Captain and Tenille. Steely Dan as a band-proper only lasted for a few years and a couple albums. After touring tore them down and the benefits of recording with L.A.'s best session musicians became too clear to ignore, the Dan became Fagen, Becker and an army of contributors.

When people call their music "jazz-rock" they're not wrong, but they leave out two extremely compelling components. First, they sling catchy pop hooks like a fat man in a greasy apron slings hash. Why have you heard songs like "Reelin' In The Years", "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Peg", "Black Cow" and "Hey Nineteen" on the radio for decades? Because they're fucking catchy, that's why. Before Steely Dan, Fagen and Becker worked in the Brill Building writing pop songs, that's how.

Second, a sophisticated love of language (just look at them--don't they just scream sophisticated?) They can turn a phrase and choose the right word for the right spot with the best of 'em. They can reveal thoughts to you that your own brain wasn't capable of forming on its own. They wield this talent to tell odd, dark slivers of stories that take place on the fringes and in the shadows even in the full light of day. More important, Fagen's voice is the most perfect delivery for all of the above. After all, it's the Dan's secret ingredient--lots of people can play music at the jazz/rock intersection, and lots of people can pen abstract, literate lyrics, but Fagen's voice takes all of that and, well...have a listen, won't you?



Steely Dan remain my favorite music for driving around the streets (not the freeway) in Los Angeles after lunch. They're just too misanthropic to listen to any earlier than that. On the freeway, they're wasted both on traffic jams and on wide-open speed.



See what I mean? How can you not want to "drive west on Sunset to the beach"?

To me, the Dan will always be so evocative of 1970s Southern California. And the more you listen, the easier it is to see why. But the perverse magic of it is that Fagen and Becker are dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers who moved to Los Angeles for professional reasons and they loved nothing more than casting their jaundiced eye upon its corrupting influences and surface beauty. But without Los Angeles, there'd be no Steely Dan. Of course, while there, they found out that living hard will take its toll.



After releasing Gaucho in 1980, they didn't record again til 2003, though they resumed touring in the mid-'90s. Why? Who are you to ask such an impertinent question? You put out that much awesome you can do whatever you want, ok? Them's the rules!

So, if you're going to dive in to their catalog, you can't go wrong with any of their albums from 1972's Can't Buy A Thrill to 1980's Gaucho. My personal favorite is 1976's The Royal Scam, which many idiots regard as their weakest. Their best album is probably 1977's Aja (if you ever meet a girl named Aja, now you know why.) They returned to the studio in 2003 with Two Against Nature, which won the best album Grammy, though that was really a lifetime achievement award. And I haven't heard the follow up, Everything Must Go, but I'm sure I will eventually. Regardless, stick to the '70s and you'll be fine.

But if you're just gonna go to iTunes and cherry-pick some songs, let me suggest the following:

Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Barrytown
Everyone's Gone to the Movies
Kid Charlemagne
Gaucho
My Old School
Pearl of the Quarter
Sign In Stranger

That said, I suggest buying the remastered albums, which contain liner notes written by Becker and Fagen. If you'd like to know from whom I've bitten my writing style, you should start there.

Extra Credit: Google "Steely Dan Owen Wilson" and also "Steely Dan Wes Anderson". Whether you do that before or after becoming familiar with their music is entirely up to you.

Extra Extra Credit: Fagen has recorded three solo albums; Becker two. Once you work your way through the Steely Dan oeuvre, this is where you'll turn for a fix. You won't be disappointed.

And remember, don't tell your mama, your daddy or mama, they'll never know where you've been.

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Taken Out Of The Ballgame

What's on my mind? The Big Blue Wrecking Crew. Their success this season--so far--has not been a source of joy for me, difficult as it may be for you to believe. Rather, it's salt in the very fresh wound that is my recent move from Los Angeles to New York. Having gone to so many games over the past 10+ years, having lived within ear-shot of The Happiest Place On Earth (see accompanying photo) for the past seven years, having bled Dodger Blue since I was listening to Vin Scully in my mother's womb, well...not being there now just stings.

Over the past few seasons I'd developed a thick skin and a well-earned skepticism regarding their prospects (prospects for doing well, not prospects like Ethier, Kemp, Kershaw, et al.--I've been been nothing but enthusiastic about our slew of youngsters). I expected the worst and never made much of any positive pre-season speculation or pennant-stretch heroics. Even Steve Finley's ridiculous grand slam couldn't light me up because I knew we were just playoff cannon fodder. And we were.

Clearly, this season is different. Their record reflects it, and from what I'm told everybody can feel it. Damn if I don't want to hear about it. Because my heart aches when I think about it. I'm talking about actual, not figurative, pain. I'm not able to watch them unless they play the Mets or are on ESPN. And when I do it's not especially pleasant. And yes, I could pony up for the MLB Extra Innings package or listen on the internet or Sirius, but that misses the point.

Why? Because I can't share the excitement. I can't listen to the sports radio blather. I can't sit in the Reserved Section with MWB, talking about life, love, and baseball, or just sitting there enjoying the National Pastime in silence. I can't eat Dodger Dogs--one with ketchup and yellow mustard, one with brown mustard, relish and onions.

Sigh.

If I've learned anything from losing a loved one, it's that the pain will fade, even if the extent to which the loss truly fucking sucks never will. So you eventually learn to get on with it.
Will that be when the pennant races heat up and the playoffs loom large? Maybe. Maybe it will be next season. I don't know. But I do know if you cut me open one hundred years from now I'll still bleed Dodger Blue.

And remember, no matter what happens this season, "...it's root, root, root for the Dodgers, if they don't win it's the SAME."

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