The Toy Cannon

Karaoke: A Guide to Not Sucking

2010-12-10T13:07:00.001-08:00

Karaoke fucking rules, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. Unless they’re larger than me, in which case I’ll have to call up the members of my family who might be in the mob (I have one uncle for whom I’m almost positive this is the case, which is what happens when you’re an Italian kid in the Northeast). Where else can non-professionals belt out kickass songs in public and not have everyone else tell you to shut up, or throw things at you? Church, maybe, but at karaoke, you also get to drink.

That said, many people make some rookie mistakes when going out to their local karaoke place. I’m no expert on the matter –I’m just an exceptionally good-looking and charming young man with a great head of hair and a voice like a manly archangel—but I’ve gone to enough karaoke nights that I’ve come up with a few basic rules of karaoke. Follow these simple guidelines, and at bare minimum, very few people will hate you once you relinquish the microphone.

1. DO NOT SING THE FOLLOWING SONGS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

“Don’t Stop Believing”, by Journey: You are not Steve Perry. You are not the first one ever to sing this song at karaoke. You’re not even the first one to have the idea to sing it tonight. It’s really hard, long enough that everyone gets bored waiting for you to finish, and the DJ is probably sick of playing it. Be the bigger man and go with “Oh Sherrie” if you really want to rock out to some Journey.

“Baby Got Back”, by Sir Mix-a-Lot: I know you think it’s cute. If you’re a girl, singing this song is a sign that you’re fun-loving and approachable. Guys sing it because it makes them look goofy and accepting of women with a generous share of natural curvature. It’s instantly recognizable and engenders a lot of goodwill. You won’t even make it to “itty-bitty waist” without fucking it up. Sir Mix-a-Lot wasn’t a hack! He raps at a pretty fast pace in this song, and you are guaranteed not to be prepared for it. Rapping in general is hard, and if you don’t respect it, everyone will just be counting the seconds until you’re done.

“Brick”, by Ben Folds Five: This song is about abortion. Don’t sing songs about abortion at karaoke.

Any song with lengthy instrumental parts: “Knights of Cydonia”, by Muse, is a perfect example. Awesome song with a great beat, but the first minute and a half is instrumental, which means you’ll be stuck up there trying to find ways to fill that minute and a half before you even open your mouth. Unless you are a fucking champion at air guitar, this means that no one will be paying attention to you, and then how are you going to ever attract the requisite amount of attention from the opposite sex? Oh, don’t act like that’s not why you’re up there. That’s why we’re all up there.

Any showtune: Just don’t. I understand that “Sixteen, Going On Seventeen” from The Sound of Music has a great deal of significance to you, but to the rest of us, it’s a song we can’t dance to or sing along with. If you absolutely must sing a song from a musical, go with “America, Fuck Yeah” from Team America: World Police. The call-and response section there is just gorgeous.

“Somebody to Love”, by Queen: This song is great if you can pull it off, but you can’t. You need to ask Freddie Mercury’s permission to sing this song, and he’s dead, so you’re shit out of luck. Also, this is my song, and I will glare at you in a disapproving manner if you sing it before I do.

2. DON’T TALK SO DAMNED MUCH BEFORE YOU SING

Stand-up comedy is hard. The best stand-ups (your Patton Oswalts, Louis C.K.’s, Richard Pryorii) basically practice non-stop in order to develop things like timing and delivery, and they’re constantly refining and revising their material.

You haven’t done any of these things. Therefore, if you make a joke about the song you’re about to sing, or the song the previous guy sang, or you launch into a monologue about how much you like the song, it will definitely suck.

3. DON’T ASK ALL THE LADIES IN THE HOUSE TO GET UP AND DANCE UNLESS SUCH A LINE IS SPECIFICALLY IN THE SONG.

Remember the part from The Usual Suspects, where Kevin Spacey says that you can’t shoot the Devil in the head, because what if you miss? This is a similar situation, because if you ask the ladies in the house to get up and dance, or get up on stage, or what have you, and they don’t, then you look like the biggest douche in the universe. It’s also a similar situation because everyone who does this is secretly Keyser Soze. I’m not sorry if I ruined the movie for you. It’s like 15 years old. Goose dies in Top Gun. Bruce Willis is actually a ghost in The Sixth Sense. You had your chance to watch, and I’m not going to be held captive to your cultural ignorance.

4. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE LYRICS

I cannot stress this enough. You don’t have to be Mariah Carey up there, but you have to at least know the rhythm. The words are right up there for you, and there’s a little bouncing ball or scrolling highlighter so you know when to say them. If we have to hear you sing “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, then you can’t just do this:

“She’ll make you take your clothes off and go dancin’ in the rain!/She’ll make you – uh –live –wait her—take –uh –(silence until the chorus starts)/COME ON!/UPSIDE INSIDE OUT! SHE’S LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA!”

Ricky Martin could memorize it, and he’s barely a sentient life form. There’s no excuse.

5. NO COUNTRY

This is just a personal preference, because I’ve only ever karaoked in the Northeast, but seriously, most country is lengthy, dull, and repetitive. “Friends in Low Places” is like, eight minutes long. If you absolutely must sing country music, pick something off of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, by Ray Charles. Speaking of that, one more addendum:

5A. DON’T PRETEND LIKE YOU’RE BLIND IF YOU’RE SINGING ANY SONG BY RAY CHARLES OR STEVIE WONDER

This should go without saying, but I’ve seen it done. Don’t be that guy, man. Don’t be that guy.

NASA, Arsenic and Cthulhu

2010-12-04T15:01:00.001-08:00

NASA, we need to have a talk.

Listen, I know you’ve had a pretty good run so far. That whole Apollo program? That was great. It might be the coolest thing any government has ever done, when taken in full. I mean, you combined the following elements:

Rockets
Fighter pilots
Space suits
Good old American know-how
Sticking it to the communists
Parachutes
Atmospheric re-entry
Harmless jingoism

And you put them on the moon. Even Apollo 13 rocked, and it almost blew up not even halfway there. I’m not here to question your expertise at accomplishing cool shit.

But NASA. Guys. You really have to be better about how you announce your new discoveries.

Let’s take this one, previewed last month:

“Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old black hole provides a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from infancy.”

I’ve bolded the problem in that press release. Space is really, really big. You and I know that “cosmic neighborhood” could mean a lot of things. In this case, said black hole is 50 million light years away, which is far enough that it won’t, say, suck the Earth into its event horizon, thereby ending all life as we know it and bringing on the apocalypse. You and I know that.

Journalists don’t know that, guys! I know! I used to be one. When it comes to science, we can be selectively quite stupid. We see some loaded term like “black hole” and we have visions of screaming headlines in eighty-point font. Or … would have visions of screaming headlines in eighty-point font, if newspapers could afford to print something that big anymore. Which they can’t. A paper I worked for once had me write an “advertorial” for a used-car lot, which is several steps away from Woodward and Bernstein-type stuff. They’re hurting for money, is what I’m saying.

We can always put the headlines on the internet, though. You still have to worry about it.

So, when you put out another press release worded thusly:

“NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.”

Well, you can just imagine what comes to mind! Aliens, guys. Everyone thought it was aliens. For my own part, I figured it was either a single-celled organism on a moon of Jupiter, microbes in the ice caps of Mars, or the dark lord Cthulhu, come out of the void-pits of an elder galaxy to claim the Earth as his billion-year feast.

The first two would have been cool, if a bit underwhelming, while Cthulhu would have been cool, if a bit of an inducement to claw out your eyes. Either way: aliens!

Instead, it turned out that the discovery was of a type of microbe that uses arsenic instead of phosphorous as one of its fundamental building blocks – which is really cool news. It rearranges our understanding of the nature of life, will provoke a number of new research angles, and will allow us to expand our search for extraterrestrial life. That’s where the astrobiology angle comes in.

A discovery like this shouldn’t be a disappointment. It should be a celebration! The story seems like it was more about what wasn’t discovered rather than what was.

Next time, guys, leave astrobiology out of it. You don’t have to cater to the stupids, but you don’t have to get their hopes up …

…or MINE. Do you REALIZE how long I’ve been praying for Cthulhu to show up? Just last week, I sacrificed five … well, it’s not important to publish WHAT I sacrificed, but the point is, they weren’t easy to acquire, and the cleanup was just beastly. I saw your press release, and I figured my prayers were answered. No longer would I have to carve Cthulhu’s holy symbol on the small of my back, or perform daily rituals in a language that most humans can’t pronounce (the surgery on my tongue was absurdly expensive). Finally, my dark lord would arrive, and I’d be able to spend eternity in the glorious, maddening embrace of his ten million stomachs.

But no. Fucking arsenic microbes. Big Cthulhu-damned deal. I’m going to go spend some time alone in my secret Cthulhu shrine. The moon’s going to be dark tomorrow, and I need to summon some eldritch horrors. Thanks a whole lot, NASA.

Thanatos, Part III

2010-11-26T16:31:00.001-08:00

In yet another example of how our minds scatter the particulars of our memories, it turns out that my recollection of my grandmother raising her arms to the ceiling was inaccurate. It did happen, but it happened the day prior to her death. She was essentially unconscious, never again to wake, when my cousin Leila tried to talk to her. Whatever Leila said must have cut through the death haze in which my grandmother was lost, because that was when she lifted her arms. Perhaps she was trying to find a way out.

I’m tempted to pass this off as an attempt to solve a mystery that doesn’t exist, but that’s not quite accurate. It’s just less dramatic this way. There was no gesture to mark my grandmother’s passing – simply a failed attempt to breath, a ceasing of function, and an end. That’s just from the outside, however – my grandmother must have had a final thought or impulse. What form it took is the mystery.

Most aspects of our existence have, over the course of our history, been given human form in our minds. Egyptians looked into the eyes of their household cats and gave the perceptive intelligence they saw the name Bast. Norsemen heard the sky flash and erupt and called it Thor. Greeks tracked the motion of the sun across the sky and imagined it to be the wheel of Apollo’s chariot as he made his daily rounds. Death is no different, and may in fact be the only one that’s ubiquitous. The Grim Reaper. The fourth Horseman. An angel with outstretched black wings. Hades. Nergal. Orcus. Izanami. Anubis and Osiris. Hel.

Thanatos.

Indiscriminate and unrelenting. The only true certainty. Is it any wonder that nearly every human culture has anthropomorphized something so terrifying? It’s easier to rage against nonexistence if it has a face, or a name, or a personality. Something you can talk to. Hades can be bargained with. You can play chess with the Reaper. Thanatos can be tricked – although he’ll get you in the end.

He got my grandmother. He got her mother. He’ll get you, and me, and all of us, unless someone like Aubrey de Grey takes the aging process apart and reforms it into a pure, unbroken golden circle. The supply of oxygen to our brains will be cut off, either gradually or without warning, and we’ll evaporate. End of the line.

What comes after death is a mystery to us, but the inevitability of it, though shocking, is not surprising. We’ve spent our entire lives reminded of it, whether through the death of a loved one or the spectre of Thanatos flitting across our culture. I may not be prepared for death, but my subconscious has been training for it since Day One.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed to last for days? Our brains can play around with time in the proper context. I mentioned before that the brain does strange things in the instant before death. Maybe it’s working overtime to find a way to keep us from the looming terror. Maybe we live forever, in our heads, in that final moment.

That’s a pleasant thought. I tend to doubt it, however. What good does wishful thinking do except mire us in our delusions? When dealing with death, it’s best not to fantasize.

That won’t help with answering the question of what my grandmother saw, somewhere between raising her hands and turning off her mind. If you’ll allow me one more moment of pure speculation …

… maybe she saw whatever she wanted.

Thanatos, Part II

2010-10-29T14:53:00.001-07:00

Christopher Hitchens has cancer. His particular kind manifested itself in his esophagus, which is unsurprising given his near-legendary reputation as a smoker and drinker. He’s 61 and, should he survive another five years, says he will be surprised.

He’s taken to writing about his disease. Hitchens is a brutally eloquent writer, sparing very little time for sentiment and chronically incapable of pulling a punch. It’s a quality that makes him adept at eviscerating a cause he disagrees with or an argument he finds wanting.* For reference, he once wrote a pamphlet criticizing Mother Teresa as a charlatan and a fraud, which he titled The Missionary Position.

*Arguing with the man must be absolutely terrifying. He’s essentially memorized the entire Western philosophical canon and will deploy it like a howitzer at the slightest provocation. Generally erudite to a fault, he’s not above a bit of vulgarity –when discussing the death of Jerry Falwell in this clip, he gets a bit irritated at Sean Hannity’s attempt to talk over him, and delivers this gem:

“If you gave Falwell an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox.” Exceptional. Incidentally, this also demonstrates the best way to combat someone who tries to interrupt you or talk over you – keep talking. Don’t break your rhythm or even acknowledge that they’ve said anything; finish what you’ve said and it’ll throw them off almost every time.

You may have gathered from that clip that Hitchens is an atheist – perhaps the most famous one alive. He describes himself as more of an anti-theist. Much of the latter part of his life has been dedicated to opposing religion in all its forms. Needless to say, he doesn’t believe in an afterlife, and actually considers the idea of heaven as it’s described in Christian theology as something of a “celestial North Korea”, where all sing their praises to the leader every day for eternity. Hitchens has said, in fact, that heaven would be worse than North Korea, because in North Korea, you can die. You’re stuck in heaven forever.

In confronting his mortality, Hitchens has had to grapple with forever’s opposite – that is, nonexistence. Both seem equally horrifying. Forever means that your burdens will never be lain down. Far from arranging themselves as the catalogue of your life, your memories will pile in your brain like a heap of trash. You’ll run out of room before long, so important things like your first kiss or your first pet’s name will be ejected from your head like foam from an overflowing glass of beer. As people age, they succumb to a phenomenon where the years appear to pass by faster and faster – this is because each subsequent year represents a proportionally smaller portion of our lives. A 13-year-old wakes up every day to new information and new experiences. An 80-year-old has seen it all before. Could you imagine what kind of creature you’d be like at 500? A thousand? Some meaninglessly large number off in the distance? It barely seems like living.

But then, nonexistence. Your silver cord cut and your story ended. It’s less than a comforting thought. I’ve heard it suggested that the idea of death (apart from the process, which can range from somewhat pleasant to hellish) is not to be feared, because you’ve already experienced a near-infinity of nonexistence – where were you before you were born? Persuasive, perhaps, but before you were born, you were not. Death means the end of something you were. I’m rather enamored with living, you know? Hitchens is too. There was a catch in his voice when he discussed the concept of nonexistence during an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic a few months back. A shudder. The awful prelude to a death rattle.

The brain does all kinds of strange things in the last second, as it shuts down nonessential things like taste and hearing in a vain attempt to keep its body alive. Studies have shown that terminal patients, in the moments before they die, will experience a surge of brain activity all out of proportion to their state of mind beforehand. If the priests and prophets are right, and Christopher Hitchens is wrong, then death is to be followed by an eternal afterlife – whether it’s in the lake of fire, or through the Pearly Gates, or some other variant of forever. If Hitchens is right – and, to be frank, I suspect that he is – it’s followed by nothing.

There’s something there, though, on the cliff’s boundary. My grandmother’s brain surged, her arms raised, and there was something.

Next: The conclusion, in more ways than one.

Thanatos, Part I

2010-10-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

I promise this isn’t a personal story. Not entirely.

My grandmother died on a weekday morning in the summer of 2006, the victim of a cancer that began in the colon but (as cancers often do) quickly extended itself to whichever organ its idiot reach could embrace. She was diagnosed in November and died in July, which gave us a bare eight months to say goodbye. None of them were pretty – she withered quickly and drastically from various bouts of chemotherapy and other necessarily toxic remedies, although she curiously never lost her hair. By the end, she lacked the strength to lift herself from her bed, which was set up in the family room of the house she and my grandfather had inhabited since coming over from Italy after the Second World War.

My family was scattered in and around that house when I finally arrived, each mourning in their own way. My youngest aunt sat on some steps among the grapevines and apple trees in the backyard, her own personal retreat since childhood. My brother was outside on the path leading to the house, and as he embraced me I saw that he was crying. I hadn’t seen him cry since childhood; as we had aged it had become unthinkable for either of us to shed tears.

When I saw my grandfather, I knew what had caused my brother to lose his composure. It’s often been said that death is hardest on the living – the dead are beyond any earthly suffering, but those left behind are constantly confronted with their ghosts. Their loss lingers in the bare facts of their absence. You’ll smell them on their empty clothes when you open the closet, long after the scent has faded. You’ll wake up expecting to be next to someone and despair at the no-one who has taken her place. For my grandfather, this was the first time he had been without my grandmother in almost fifty years. He sat on a plastic chair outside the back door, seeing nothing. I’ve never asked him, but I don’t think he really remembers any of that morning. His life was on hold at the time.

My mother and another aunt were standing vigil over my grandmother’s body when I finally made it into the house. She’d spent much of the past few months confined to a hospital bed in her living room, and hadn’t truly moved from it in several weeks. I stopped a few feet short of where she lay. Her eyes were wide open. She almost looked surprised. As my mother told me it was OK for me to come closer, I flashed back to something she’d told me earlier that morning, when she woke me up to tell me about my grandmother’s death.

“She opened her eyes and raised her hands towards the ceiling,” my mother had said, sitting on the corner of my bed, her tears not quite spent. “Then she was gone.”

There it is, then. My grandmother, in the fading moments before lapsing into impermanence, saw something so compelling that she attempted to touch it. Whether she tried to embrace it or hold it off is lost to me forever – until, at least, years from now, it comes for me as well. This question, skirting about the corners of my consciousness, has haunted me ever since.

What did she see?

Next: Other peoples’ opinions.

Impact!

2010-01-18T14:42:00.001-08:00

Cameras are every damn where these days, a consequence of the long, slow march we’ve made toward eliminating the basic concept of privacy. Still, they’ve got their moments. Take this, for example:

That’s a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, so brilliant that it washes out the camera entirely. This particular one was probably no more than a foot or so across and wasn’t moving particularly fast, so it disintegrated without actually impacting anything. There’s another video out there where a cop stops his car short after seeing the meteor through his front windshield. You have to wonder what he thought as his patrol was interrupted by the heavens.

This, on the other hand, is a meteor that is decidedly more than a foot across. Its speed is unmentioned but, at this scale, irrelevant.

Wha-bam! Now, doesn’t that make you feel secure? This is a rather extreme example of a meteor impact – I’m fairly certain that evil-looking rock is moon-sized – and the fact that the Earth’s crust is peeled like a big blue apple is probably an exaggeration of the real thing, but the basic point is that meteors are bad news, kids.

How bad? Observe this handy chart:

Friends, that is the Torino Scale, a device for classifying space objects according to their danger to us. Essentially, the larger an object is, and the more likely it is to hit the Earth, the higher rating it gets. Therefore, a very small object with a high chance to hit the Earth gets the same rating as a very large object with very little chance to hit Earth*. In this case, that rating would be “1”; it’s not a big deal, we should probably keep monitoring it, but there’s not all that much to worry about.

*Why aren’t we entirely certain of an asteroid’s exact path? You try working out the calculations needed to predict where a 20-meter long space rock will be thirty years from now. Remember to include every possible gravitational effect it could experience in those thirty years. Math is hard.

Everything above that, however, gets progressively worse.

Certain collisions are rated in on the right-most part of the graph, in red. An object around twenty meters across would, upon impact with the Earth, release up to one megaton of energy. By comparison, the bomb released over Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons. As our theoretical space rock finally terminated its long orbit by smashing headlong into our planet, it would produce roughly the energy equivalent of 66.67* early nuclear bombs.

*Oooooh. Spooky! If only we didn’t round off repeating numbers, this would be biblical.

Bear in mind, that’s the low end of the scale.

The largest nuclear weapon ever developed is the “Tsar Bomba”. One of the more interesting relics of the Cold War, the Tsar Bomba has a theoretical yield of 100 megatons, dwarfing our 20 meter asteroid’s output significantly. Here’s a video of its first and only test, a 50-megaton blast.

I suspect that camera was rather far from the blast site. Consult the following map, stolen blatantly from Wikipedia and then hackishly edited by a man with no visual intelligence.

This fucking thing is kind of a circular argument against the continued justification of our existence. The only reason it was never introduced into active service is that the fireball alone was almost five miles wide and almost destroyed the plane that released it. We* made a weapon so powerful that it would kill whoever used it, which is all that a nuke is anyways, so the irony kind' of lines up.

*By “we”, I mean “humanity as a whole, considered as a single species with immense capability for self-destruction”. Not “America”.

Anyways, the Tsar Bomba is at the low end of the nine scale. A meteor 100 meters across could accomplish an equivalent level of devastation.

You can see, then, that even the smallest meteors, because of their velocity upon impacting the Earth, would cause substantial damage—wiping out a city, for starters. They’re why you should never be entirely comfortable looking up at the night sky, and why it’s important that we research both asteroid-detection and –deflection strategies*. Our entire existence might depend on it.

*I bet you think the only thing we can do is blow up an oncoming asteroid, eh? If so, thanks for reading The Toy Cannon, Michael Bay! There are actually several much more elegant solutions we could implement, not limited to the following: parking a satellite next to it so the extra gravitational force alters the asteroid’s path very slightly; attaching a solar sail to the asteroid; attaching a mining robot to the asteroid to eject material from it into space, propelling it in that manner, and so on. Given our general attitude as a species, however, we’ll probably just try to hammer the thing with as many nukes as possible.

The problem with that, however, is that as Carl Sagan pointed out, any method that can deflect an asteroid away from us can be used to deflect it toward us. We’re obviously a ways away from being able to do this with any degree of accuracy, but if you think your average government wouldn’t want such a destructive and unstoppable weapon, then you didn’t watch that Tsar Bomba video above. We are capable of great empathy and grace, but if you gave us a chance to go back to our caveman roots and once again throw rocks at our enemies, we’d do so in a half a second.

----------

Now.

One aspect of this that I haven’t brought up yet is how it proves that every science fiction movie you’ve ever watched has lied to you.

We’ve already seen that a small meteor can come down on the Earth like a hammer. Such asteroids are moving at a very high rate of speed – say, 20 kilometers per second. Anyone who’s ever played baseball from childhood can tell you that the same ball moving at 30 miles per hour hurts a lot more when it’s humming in there at 80 miles per hour.

Let’s take that same meteor and accelerate it to a slightly higher rate of speed. Say … 20 km/second to a little bit slower than 300,000 km/second (which is, not coincidentally, the speed of light). How big do you think it would have to be to do the same amount of damage as an asteroid at the small end of the Torino Scale?

About that big.

Nothing in the universe moves that fast, obviously (except for light itself), so we’re in the clear for now.

If we ever encounter another sentient species, however, we’d be in for a spot of bother. Most science-fiction universes begin with the concept that faster-than-light travel has been discovered and is commonplace. That stretches believability as-is, but the real question is this; why even bother to have a Death Star or anything of the sort? If you want to destroy a planet, all you really need to do is strap a big-enough engine to a big-enough asteroid, point it at where your target will be by the time your asteroid gets there, and turn it on. Boom! No more planet. Because the asteroid (by now known as a relativistic kill vehicle, or RKV) is ostensibly moving at or past the speed of light, it’ll actually be impossible to track; you won’t be able to see it until it hits you. Nothing we know of now or can even conceive of would be able to track or deflect such a monstrous device.

Given what we know of the history of first contact between two peoples of vastly different technological levels, I wouldn’t bet on our first meeting with an alien species being peaceful. Rather, it might come in the form of thousands of super-fast bullets, blasting the Earth to pieces before we even know what’s happened.

It might be best to put off meeting the neighbors for a while.

At least until we’ve got bigger rocks.

Babies; Geniuses

2009-11-17T14:44:00.001-08:00

Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski are standing by their car on the side of a desert road. The car is a beat-up Chevy right out of one of those movies in which two characters travel the USA in a similar beat-up Chevy. It is midday and hot. Werner examines the open hood, while Klaus paces angrily past the driver’s side.

Klaus: I hope the buzzards peck your eyes out.

Werner looks up from his work.

Werner: You know how I don’t like birds. I don’t appreciate your bringing them up. (He stares at the engine). There is no intelligence behind their eyes. They are soulless and monstrous and an unfair antagonist. Hitchcock knew this. (Pause) Do you know anything of carburetors?

Klaus: No.

Werner: You are the shit of the world.

(Klaus takes a drag on a cigarette)

Klaus: Anyway, we are not wet.

Werner: What is this?

Klaus: We are not wet. The last time you and I were in such intolerable proximity, you had dragged me to the rainforest for the second time, and it was wet. You told me we were making a movie, Werner, not that I was to fall victim to pneumonia.

(The camera cuts to a small hill overlooking the two artists. A bear observes them silently from the hill’s crest. Small bits of clothing dangle from the bear’s mouth, including what is very clearly a wristwatch).

Klaus: Why must you always attempt to kill me in the name of cinema, Werner?

Werner: Kinski. We are not making a movie now, and you are not nearly dead. And I try to kill you because more people will watch the movie if you actually expire. I plan to build a grotto off the profits.

(Klaus looks shocked)

Werner: No such thing, now. Everyone thinks I’m such a serious damn artist. Well, they are right, but I do not starve.

Klaus: You would kill me for money?

Werner: I would kill you for far less. Certain small trinkets. Birdshot. A woman’s promise.

Klaus: Women find you repellent.

Werner: I cast you in Nosferatu because you actually look like the undead, so let us not go comparing appeal.

Klaus: Vampires have great power over the opposite sex, but that is not the point. Every time you make a movie that is not one of your horrid documentaries, you cast me as the lead. Were I do die, what would you do for your next piece of tripe?

Werner: Very likely, find someone who does not act as if he were an underpaid prostitute trying to get off early.

(Klaus whirls around)

Klaus: What did you say to me?

Werner: I’m sorry, Klaus. I know how you hate being compared to your mother.

(Klaus storms toward Werner)

Werner: Or was it your father? I suppose after the war, jobs were hard to come by for amateur fascistii, so they took what they could get!

(Klaus is, by this point right in Werner’s face)

Klaus: Herzog.

Werner: Kinski.

(Klaus pushes him aside and starts to work on the car)

Klaus: You living shit. I have found this now. I will pack you in the back of this trunk and drive off with you to a dark place where the eyes of man do not reach, and I will consume you.

(Klaus is working with surprisingly alacrity at this point)

Klaus: I will do this because I am a hero of all humanity. You are too dangerous to live, Herzog, and too toxic to bury, so I will consume you. Before nature takes its course, I will build a pyre and throw myself atop it when the fire is at its height. I will be the hungry torch that removes the curse of Werner Herzog from this world, because I, Klaus Kinski, am the wrath of God, and you are the Anti-Christ.

(Klaus slams the hood down)

Klaus: AND MY PARENTS WERE NOT CATAMITES!

(Werner turns the key. The car turns over. He claps his hands in delight.)

Werner: You see! I have ever been able to inspire you to the heights of greatness. You are very talented when you’re angry.

Klaus: What?

(He shakes his head)

Klaus: What happened? I blacked out there for a moment.

Werner: Funny. That’s exactly what your mother said after I was done with her.

Klaus: Herzog!

Werner: Or was it your father?

(Klaus lunges at Werner, but is stopped short by a loud growl. The bear is now less than twenty feet away from them, standing on its hind legs. The wristwatch dangles from the beast’s jaws, and finally dislodges, shattering on the ground. The two men freeze)

Werner: This all seems so familiar.

Klaus: Suddenly my desire to see you dismembered has waned.

Werner: Nature is hostile to us. Why did we ever leave Los Angeles?

Klaus: No one is going to be interested in you and me if nice things happen to us, Werner.

(The bear roars again. Hillbilly music plays. Klaus and Werner dive for the steering wheel. The screen freezes.)

Teutoburg

2009-11-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

The forest is no fit place for a young Italian man to live.

I feel like I’m dancing around bear traps sometimes. Except for a pleasant four years in Chicago where I lived by a lake, every place I’ve called home has bordered on or been surrounded by a forest. My family’s property in Canton was, some years back, carved out of a copse of trees next to a cornfield. The trees were so congested that the few patches left are still sufficient to block out the sun at the right time of day. Wolves, languidly confident, sometimes venture out of the woods to stare. Huge deer munch on my father’s tomato plants despite the best efforts to fence them out. My father, my brother and I came across one mid-meal once, and fanned out in an attempt to capture the thing. What were we thinking, exactly? Even if one of us had something other than our bare hands, I’m certain that killing a deer in Massachusetts is illegal.

It bounded away at top speed before we got within fifty feet. Back into the forest.

That seems so long ago.

Quinctilius Varus took three legions from Rome to cement the Empire’s rule of Germania. This was two thousand years ago, give or take two months. Three legions is twenty five thousand men, all marching in red rectangles to civilize the barbarians.

Maybe a relative of mine marched with them. Unless I get a genetic test, I’ll never really know from where my family originated. As far back as I’ve cared to trace it, we’re Italian to the core, but my family turns out light as well as dark, unlike what you’d traditionally see. Back in college, my brother researched the history of Cassino, my family’s hometown, and found that it had been invaded by (conservatively) everybody. English, French, Germans, Moors, Vikings, and probably Carthaginians and the Aragonese for all I know. I never really got how people could be terribly proud of a cartoon version of their heritage (KISS ME, I’M ITALIAN) after I heard about that little revelation. Better to embrace your commonality with everyone, and make where your ancestors came from the least interesting thing about you.

If a distant DeMartino did make that march, it didn’t end well for him. Varus was betrayed. His men were slaughtered. This doesn’t happen all that much in modern times, because you have lines of communication and advanced forms of transportation, so people can get away, but odds are that every single one of Varus’ 25,000 legionaries died or were captured. Rome was devastated by the loss – the emperor Augustus (who found Rome in brick and left it in marble) was said to have gone temporarily mad, banging his head against the walls of his villa and crying, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

The battle took place in the forest of Teutoburg.

I live in a condominium surrounded by several miles of forest, deep enough so that the woods will come to me as I’m walking from my car. It’s not all bad. A family of foxes greeted me once as I pulled into my parking space. All of them fled except for one, the youngest. We stared one another down until its mother came back to fetch it.

Other times, the darkness seems to stretch and stretch. We used to hold bonfires in a sandpit (the origin of which we never discovered) in the middle of a forest near my friend Yaron’s house. Heading back from the campfire one night, many years ago, my flashlight went out just as I reached the edge of the woods. I kept walking, because I was sure that if I looked over my shoulder, I would have seen nothing at all.

I hope someday I’ll end up sipping wine on a hill, overlooking a lake. It’ll be a nice change from the constant sense of menace they exude. I don’t know that it has anything to do with Teutoburg, but almost exactly two millennia ago, someone whose chin or eyes or laugh may have resembled mine was in a forest too, his shield soaked and useless, the trees suddenly teeming with painted men who sacrificed their captives to a woods-god. For all I know, he may still be there.

Anyways, history hasn’t been kind to young Italian men in the forest.

Downtime

2009-11-10T16:29:00.001-08:00

Dragon Age: Origins is supposed to be the big role-playing game this year. You can tell because the trailers feature portentous music, big battle scenes, and a bunch of characters looking Very Serious about the Overwhelming Evil that is threatening the Vaguely Medieval* world they inhabit. Needless to say, I am playing the shit out of this game. I’m a sucker for all of that. Drop me in Faux-Europe, point me in the direction of whatever horrible monster needs a-choppin’, and I’m thrilled.

*What is it about medieval times that made them the default setting for any RPG? Why not Rome? Why can’t I be an Aztec or a Pharaoh? Or like…I dunno, an Aborigine? I bet you could have a lot of fun as an Aborigine.

There’s a lot to recommend it. The combat system is fluid and complex, and responds well to what you’re trying to accomplish with it. The graphics are lush. The voice acting is excellent (have you ever seen what bad voice acting can do to a game? I played the first Resident Evil at my aunt and uncle’s house in Italy, and even the people there who spoke no English were laughing at how bad the voice acting was in that game). BioWare makes the game, and I’ve liked roughly everything they’ve done. Something about the way they put the whole package together just appeals to me; their games feel right. I can usually tell within about five minutes whether or not a game will hold my interest just based on the tone it sets.

What really sold me on Dragon Age, however, was a very brief trailer regarding the party interaction system. Your character walks around a campfire, talking to each of his buddies in turn. They respond to you with various ways; one is reticent, another flirtatious, one is grateful for something you did in a previous interaction. Another begs for food*. It’s designed to showcase how much work they put into making the characters seem believable.

*This character is a dog.

None of that is what grabbed me. I’ve seen tons of games that do characters well. Heck, most of them were BioWare’s to begin with, so it’s not like this is something I didn’t expect. It’s like EA Sports making a reasonable approximation of what it would be like to coach a football game if you could ride the SkyCam, or the guys who made Myst making another shitty point-and-click adventure that doesn’t go any-damn-where.

What grabbed me is this: you’re sitting around a campfire, and that’s all you’re doing.

If this seems strange to you, you have to consider the one factor that is the center of nearly every popular non-sports, non-puzzle game of the past ten years:

Murder.

************

OK, murder is maybe too strong of a word. I apologize. Sometimes I use words to shock you and draw you in despite the fact that they may be less-than-accurate. I wanted to be a sportswriter once. It’s a bad habit.

Let’s rephrase. One series I’ve kept up with along the years is Halo; I’ve played it since its inception and through its various sequels. The most recent incarnation has an online application that tracks your various stats—medals won, hours played, and so on. I checked it recently and found that, in the campaign mode (in which you Save the World from an Alien Menace), I’d killed something along the lines of 7,000 enemies in three playthroughs.

This didn’t take me as long as you’d think. I’ll be conservative and estimate that each playthrough took 20 hours, maximum, so that’s a little more than a hundred baddies dead per hour.

A hundred per hour! In game-time, Halo 3’s campaign takes place over the course of maybe…three days? A week at the outmost if you’re being generous with estimating what you don’t see in between levels? The most deadly soldier in history, in terms of enemy lives personally ended, is a Finnish guy by the name of Simo Hayha*, who killed something along the lines of seven hundred Russian invaders during the Second World War. He did this in three months. That works out to eight per day.

*In case you’re wondering, his answer to how he pulled this particular feat off is “Practice”.

Now, Halo 3 is awfully well-paced, but you’re basically killing, killing, killing constantly. There’s no downtime.

Pretty much every other game does this. You’re either killing something, in transit to killing something, or spending a perfunctory amount of time recovering from killing something. From Mario to Master Chief, I’d say I’ve probably ended hundreds of thousands of virtual lives.

Let me be clear: the effect this has had on my fragile conception of right and wrong has been zero. If you’re a sociopath, you’re not more likely to kill someone because Call of Duty 4 somehow presented you with the idea that killing is good. About the only real-world skill that could possibly be carried over is the importance of leading one’s target. The first and only time I picked up a gun*, which was in a skeet-shooting activity on a cruise ship when I was twelve, I hit exactly half the moving targets I shot at, simply because I had the good sense to fire at where they would be rather than where they were. ‘

*Shotguns are really heavy. Also, my shoulder hurt for a day afterwards.

In the context of games, however, this has two effects. First off, why the hell are there no consequences from my character outdoing Rambo in half the time the movie took to get him to Vietnam? Video game writer Tim Rogers has written about this at length*, but if there’s a psychological consequence from killing one person in real life, why do video game characters (many of whom start the game as adventurers or scientists or some other relatively non-murderous profession) mow down hundreds without even a sniffle? Do they all go straight to the PTSD ward of their virtual Walter Reed after I hit the power switch?

*He writes about everything “at length”. If you think this is long, try slogging through 12,000 words about it.

Second, and this is where the crux of my argument lies, constant conflict is just not believable, because it’s actually kind of stressful. Even Simo Hayha had time to chat with his buds in Finnish before sending some poor Ukrainian conscript to an early grave. He wasn’t cooking off thousands of rounds in ten minutes. My favorite part of all of Gears of War 2 was a short segment where you’re on top of a mobile drilling rig, looking out at a vast and tree-covered valley, and nothing is trying to murder you. That lasts about a minute. Give me some time to hang out, guys. Let me chat with the other gruff space marines riding shotgun before you barrage me with stuff I need to aim at in order to progress to the next part where I (in a stunning and newfangled concept) find more stuff I need to aim at.

I can get plenty of non-stop bullet storms in the game’s online mode. This is single player. Let me relax.

**********

Back to Dragon Age.

Most of the games I mentioned above are not RPGs, so this argument is a little bit less applicable to them. RPGs do have downtime (you have to go to a town to purchase supplies or break into people’s houses or whatever), but they’re so rarely an actual break. You’re just replenishing the numbers that represent your life, or stamina, or killtasticity. What Dragon Age is selling is the promise that there’s something to do beyond all the head-cutting. Sometimes, you have to take a break, but that break can still serve the story. Maybe it’ll even be the best part of the game.

Aviatrix

2009-11-02T18:01:00.001-08:00

I had a discussion recently with my friend Ben where we speculated on a graphic novel series featuring Amelia Earhart as a central character. The comic would start at the point of her last known contact with humanity –- the transmission of “We are running on line north and south” picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, through either natural or supernatural means, would survive the storm and make lives for themselves as itinerant crime fighters or revolutionaries or adventurers.

Neither of us can draw.

I doubt it would get off the ground anyways. You remember Anastasia? The whole conceit was that the Russian princess had survived the murder of her family and had gone off to live as a street urchin or something. She ends up fighting against Zombie Rasputin*. Quite a charming animated tale that had the good fortune to be made before modern DNA analysis discovered that, yes, Anastasia’s charred and scattered bones were interred with the rest of her kin. Any sequel would be a non-starter.

*One would argue that “Zombie Rasputin” is redundant – the man was poisoned, shot four times, beaten, and thrown in an icy river in his almost-botched assassination attempt, and he only ended up dying from that last bit.

I don’t know that truth can entirely quash a legend. There will be, without a doubt, people claiming to be the Lindbergh baby, or his son/grandson/great-grandson for presumably as long as people actually remember the story. However, truth can pale a legend, can cause its evocative power to become reedy and indistinct.

So long as Amelia Earhart still lurked among the Pacific storm clouds, she would have remained a legend. We could have made her a female James Bond, or a rescue angel, or a Nazi-fighting air huntress. Who would have argued?

It seems they may have found her. As is customary, the truth is more striking than the legend. Experts from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery* believe Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on Nikumaroro Island, where they became castaways and quickly succumbed to injury, starvation, exposure, or the island’s extreme heat. Their bones were carried off by crabs.

*That is a remarkably specific group. How do you get into something like that? Do you have to stumble on Yamamoto’s transport? How many of these things can there be?

So we mourn, for two people who set out on an adventure and met a bleak end. We mourn for their legend, as something has been irretrievably lost. In a very real way, Amelia Earhart was alive all this time. The intrepid fellows who are closing in on her final resting place do so with a sort of murder in their hearts.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a legend is nice, but this is a mercy killing. Amelia and Fred have spent almost a century frozen at the moment of impact. They’ve been lost longer than they lived. The one thing we owe everyone who has gone before us is our attention. Take heart. We’ll do the best we can to find you.

Give Me Wings. No; Real, Actual Wings

2009-10-27T14:00:00.001-07:00

Gene therapy transforms eyesight of 12 born with rare defect

Pennsylvania researchers using gene therapy have made significant improvements in vision in 12 patients with a rare inherited visual defect, a finding that suggests it may be possible to produce similar improvements in a much larger number of patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration.

The team last year reported success with three adult patients, an achievement that was hailed as a major accomplishment for gene therapy. They have now treated an additional nine patients, including five children, and find that the best results are achieved in the youngest patients, whose defective retinal cells have not had time to die off.

The youngest patient, 9-year-old Corey Haas, was considered legally blind before the treatment began. He was confined largely to his house and driveway when playing, had immense difficulties in navigating an obstacle course and required special enlarging equipment for books and help in the classroom.

Today, after a single injection of a gene-therapy product in one eye, he rides his bike around the neighborhood, needs no assistance in the classroom, navigates the obstacle course quickly and has even played his first game of softball.

What an unvarnished good this is! You were blind, said the doctors, but now you can see. Downright biblical. Jesus with a lab coat.

Obviously, this kind of thing is designed for those whose eyesight was thought to be irreparably damaged by various genetic forms of degradation. My own vision, clouded as it is by astigmatism and the like, is a much more manageable 20/400, which allows me to utilize contact lenses and glasses in an ultimately successful attempt to attain normal sight. It’s non-essential for those of us who are merely blind compared to Ted Williams, not blind in reality.

However, should gene therapy become available to the point where it’s feasible for my doctor to prescribe it, I want to make my stance on the matter as clear as possible:

I will mainline that shit DIRECTLY INTO MY AORTA if I need to.

Look, I’ve heard all sorts of things about flaws being an inherent part of one’s character, ultimately necessary in the full construction of a personality. I tend to subscribe to that point of view, except for the fact that physical flaws don’t count. A bad leg isn’t a character trait; it’s an impediment. Same with oily skin, or a bum ticker, or whatever. If there’s an option to improve one or all of the various maladies that beset me (as they do you all), I don’t see why we should stop for anything but tests to make sure this stuff doesn’t cause you to grow horns.*

*And who says that’s a bad thing? I can think of lots of uses…well, OK, I can think of one use (handy-dandy can-opener), but that’s one more use than you had before you grew horns.

This plays heavily into my view of the steroid problem in sports, which is as follows: the problem with steroids is that the steroids they use are not good enough. Use them all you want, Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire or Manny Alexander or whomever. I don’t have a problem with what you’re doing. It’s the chemists I have a problem with. Come on, guys! You’re telling me this stuff is still giving our poor baseball players bacne? Step your game up!

As is customary, the trap here is economic. To mangle a great philosopher, with great purchasing power comes the ability to turn yourself into Spider-man. I can make my eyesight 20/10 through your standard gene therapy cocktail, but what’s to stop my richer neighbors from adding telescoping vision, or the ability to view the heat spectrum, or elbow-mounted machine guns?*

*I consider the lack of elbow-mounted machine guns, heat-seeking toenails, and laser hair to be compelling evidence against Intelligent Design, as all are frankly unforgivable oversights that would have gotten a putative Designer fired a long time ago.

It’s a far greater disparity than the fact that he has a Porsche and I have a Toyota – the only real difference is speed, aesthetics, and the amount of speeding tickets he gets compared to me—because such enhancements will fundamentally change who you are. “All men are created equal” may not look so profound when some of us have grafted wings to our backs, while others muddy along on the ground, still wholly human. “All men”, perhaps, but we’ll leave that second word behind. Perhaps sooner than you think. Or want.

Bagging It

2009-07-31T17:41:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago, my friends and I were at our usual Wednesday night karaoke haunt, Sully’s Pub. Nice place, that Sully’s. I’d never thought I’d be a regular at a bar, but I like the atmosphere there—it borders on charming without pretending to it. The usual crowd is a mix of slumming hipsters, angel-voiced war vets, crooning ex-drama stars, and a Led Zeppelin-obsessed man named Jonathan, who looks like a meek investment banker but we think might be a serial killer. The clientele rotates on a regular basis, but you tend to see at least a few of the same faces crop up at some point each week.

When the douche walked in, therefore, it was easy to spot him.

Backwards hat? That’s the first sign, and not a good one. Reversed caps work on a precious few people. Actually, the only one I can think of is Ken Griffey Jr., and even then, it only works when he’s in the Home Run Derby, which he’s too old to participate in anyways, so the point is moot.

Pink shirt? OK, well, in certain situations, I can see one working. In fact, my friend Zach has made the pink shirt a key part of his wardrobe. Still, as we will see, it is often an indicator of true douchebaggery.

Purposely-ripped jeans? Unambiguously douche. We’re nearing critical d-bag level and honestly need only one thing to complete the image.

Sandals? At night? In a bar? Who are you kidding?

I do so hate to judge a person based on his appearance, but honestly, it’s disingenuous not to do so. Merely neglecting how a person presents himself in developing your assessment of him suggests powers of perception that you do not actually possess. Appearance can be by necessity or choice, but it is never insignificant.

In our own subject’s case, his appearance was obviously calculated to convey a sense of laid-back dudeness—to say, in a sense, that it would be perfectly OK and in fact preferred to call him “bro”. He had the typical lips-parted half-smile of the greater North East d-bag*, with dull eyes and just the barest hint of stubble.

*A short digression on the different types of d-bag. One would think they’re the same all over, and in truth there are certain commonalities that link douche to douche in the grand douche circle of life (if represented visually, such a circle would vaguely resemble a badly-drawn barbed-wire tattoo). In the interest of assembling as authoritative a compendium of the various types of douche as is possible in this space, I will briefly address their distinguishing characteristics:

North East D-Bag: Already addressed in some detail. Crucially, a NEDB will often pop his collar for reasons unknown (possibly in a pale and unwitting imitation of a peacock, though protection from Vampires has not been ruled out). The more advanced versions of this variant will wear several collared shirts, all with collars a-poppin’, tripling or even quadrupling the douche level like some kind of douche layer cake. NEDBs can often be found behind a friend’s house (the friend will usually be named Foley) for the express purposes of drinking a thirty-cube of Miller.

Guidouche: I’m subjecting myself to this once again this year, because I consider running the Guidouche Gauntlet to be some kind of rite of passage, like hunting down and killing an elephant or a lion (only both would be bright orange). Guidouches typically wear muscle shirts or tank tops, tan themselves to a fine burnt sienna hue, spike their hair in blowout fashion, and make kissy-faces. Guidouches are dormant for the entirety of the workweek, but come alive immediately upon exiting work on Friday. They retreat to clubs for the duration of the weekend, venturing out only to flex on the beach during the day. A Guidouche lives his life in a kind of tunnel—his vision too clouded by a haze of Axe body spray and pulsing strobe lights to ever see anything but the equally bronzed girl at the bar.

Lord Fauntleroy Douchington: “Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever BEEN on a yacht, but FATHER’s is just FANTASTIC! MUFFY and I spent nearly two weeks on it, and it was just the most MARVELOUS time (father’s terribly rich, so I haven’t had to work for AGES)! “ Lord Douchington, at one point in his life, watched one of those 1980s teen romantic comedies where the nerd moves to a new town and gets the girl, all while dealing with a cadre of spoiled rich kids led by the likes of Billy Zabka. Lord Douchington looked up to Zabka and has spent his entire life trying to tie a sweater around his neck in exactly the correct fashion.

Roidouche: When this variant goes to the supermarket, he has to ask for help in reaching for the muscle supplements on the top shelf. Swimming is a no-no—not only is it a slimming activity, the only stroke the Roidouche can manage is a dog paddle. Where the Guidouche spends his whole life in the club, the Roidouche holes up in the gym—though he usually confines himself to the bench press exclusively. His “guns” are of paramount importance, as the Roidouche can often be found gazing admiringly at them, kissing them, or in one terribly disturbing YouTube clip I won’t inflict on you, making out with them. Full tongue.

L.A. Douche: Has been on at least one reality show. This is not surprising, as he has been trying to Date a Cougar or Get a Celebrity Out of Here for most of his adult life. The L.A Douche splits his time between drinking by a pool and drinking by a beach. He retains the unique ability to monetize his doucheness, thereby making himself the most dangerous of all douches. Fortunately, he will generally waste his money on a grotto.

What makes a man aspire to douchedom? I pondered this as the douche sat down at the table next to us, in an open chair at the same table as a few attractive girls. Much of it is women, no doubt. The douche is like a mildly retarded peacock, running around with his tailfeathers out all the damn time. Eventually, they’ll just get covered in shit.

Which is appropriate, because he wasn’t exactly covering himself in glory. Though he acted overly familiar with the girls, they seemed to be having none of it. You know the expression a women gets when she’s simply not interested?* Eyes down and elsewhere, mouth in a thin line of disapproval that would seem appropriate on the face of some tyrannical nun. That’s what the douche created in the middle of a rollicking bar: a fucking convent.

*There’s a story, somewhat apocryphal, about the casting process for “The Graduate”. Apparently, Robert Redford auditioned for the lead role. His performance was good, but not quite what the producers were looking for. They took him aside and told him to act more wounded and less confident.

“You know how sometimes you’ll be hitting on a woman and she’ll reject you?” they asked.

Redford gave them a blank look, and without a hint of guile, said “Huh?”

The pattern repeated itself many times over the course of the evening—a cold approach, a sense of familiarity, a sudden but striking cooling of anything resembling ardor, disengagement, etc. Finally, the douche heard his name called by Don, the DJ karaoke at Sully’s. It was time for him to sing.

I’m ashamed to say that I can’t remember exactly what he decided on, but I’m going to pretend it was something from the douche catalogue that epitomizes douchiness. He sang Nickelback.

Nickelback is an aggressively awful band that makes aggressively awful songs, but a singer that has something of a clue can at least make their 4:00 ditties go by with very little aggravation. The douche was not one of those singers.

As I watched him hem and haw his way through the song, it dawned on me the essential problem with douches. Break them down into their component parts and you find a lot of qualities that aren’t necessarily bad. They’re confident, for sure, and somewhat social. They’re always down for a drink. Most of them keep in reasonably good shape. It’s also not a bad thing to dress a little ostentatiously.

What, then, is the problem? Why do they take so much from the table?

Substance. The douche, in one way or another, makes a promise with his outlandishness, and his overconfidence, and his willingness to engage. He says to you, I promise that I am an interesting person, the life of the party, a go-getter. I’m someone that can make things better for everyone in this bar.

He always breaks it. He can’t help it. There’s nothing backing him up.

On stage, the douche took advantage of a quiet moment in the song to raise his arms up

“I need some ladies up here now. Where are all the ladies at tonight?”

No one answered. Douche.

No Surprises

2009-05-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

We can't keep anything secret anymore.

Cambria and I have been watching Battlestar Galactica recently, and Wikipedia has been a huge problem. I'm an inveterate completionist when it comes to understanding and interpreting what I've just watched, so I'm in the habit of, at the end of an episode, searching out recaps online. This works best for movies--they're self-contained and have no plot details beyond what I've already seen.

But BATTLESTAR. The plot is overlaid and intricate--you have to pay attention lest you miss something important, so recaps help fill some of the gaps. For the first few episodes, Wikipedia was a big help, cataloguing (in its obsessive way) all the important details of each episode. That is, until it COMPLETELY TOOLS ON YOU.

Take this sample recap, exaggerated slightly for dramatic effect:

"This episode, the second season's finale, establishes the relationship between Character X and Character Y, which is important later on in the SERIES FINALE, when they both KILLL ONE ANOTHER, and also EVERYONE ELSE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIES. Would you like to know what ELSE HAPPENS in every episode you haven't seen yet?"

There will also be a picture of Character Y with one less eye or arm or whatever than you last saw him with. You get tooled on both visually and textually.

This is a bit of a change from previous years. My thirst for knowing all that happened was denied in the pre-Internet TV-watching age. It was tough to follow up on an episode you missed, and if the series changed its airtime, you might lose your place entirely. For the longest time, I didn't know when new seasons of Quantum Leap started, so I was stuck watching the occasional disconnected re-run. Did Dr. Sam Beckett ever make it home?* The hell if I knew.

*SPOILER ALERT (Highlight this to reveal all): Nope

If you're even remotely connected to pop culture, avoiding spoilers becomes a child's game of "La la la, I can't hear you!" Friends of mine who had caught up on the series early on posted gushing Facebook updates immediately following Battlestar's finale, so I had to avoid the news feed for a few days. I couldn't read interviews with the cast, lest they reveal an important plot point. The Onion posted a story entitled "Obama Distant, Depressed Following Battlestar Finale"*. Tuesday Morning Quarterback, a lengthy column by Gregg Easterbrook ostensibly about football, posted a lengthy dissertation on the show's end right in the middle of a draft column. All media seemed driven to drive every detail of the show's dramatic final season into my brain before I'd even decided to watch the show.

*DEPRESSED? WHY? WHAT HAPPENED? AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!

I've had to institute a strict regimen of avoidance--every time I even see the words Battlestar Galactica in a story, I stop reading by "-tica". It's an exercise in discipline that is somewhat straining. Who knew watching a show would be so much damned work?

That's not to say one can avoid spoilers completely. The list of movies that I've seen is much, much smaller than the list of movies I know the endings to. Look, there are some movies that I'm just not all that interested in wasting two hours watching. I just want to know how they end. The same goes for television shows--I'll probably never watch Twin Peaks or Six Feet Under, 'cause I don't have the time and all, but they're interesting enough and important enough that I feel the need to possess the knowledge.

I just don't get the experience. That's what I'm trying to preserve here, as Cambria and I finish out the last season of what's proven to be an exceptional TV series. It's the difference between reading about a meteor shower and seeing a space rock, flaming and doomed as it comes to pieces in the atmosphere.

Everybody Goes Home Happy

2009-04-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

I can’t say that I’ve ever found Andrew W.K. to be a genius. He certainly cracked open his own niche with his debut album, I Get Wet, which featured several blistering tracks devoted to some variation on the theme of partying (“It’s Time to Party, Party Hard, Party Till You Puke). The songs were the very essence of straightforward: joyous celebrations of the ethic of having a good time, and nothing else. You want a message, as W.C. Fields used to say? Try Western Union.*

*How many expressions like this will soon become meaningless to us, what with the passage of time and technology? Remember ‘you sound like a broken record’? Such a rich phrase, evoking something both auditory and visual, rendered nearly useless in a fifteen-year span. I’m all for the evolution of our discourse, but I feel that we are made poorer in our progress.

That being said, I think he’s hit upon something in his latest venture—that being a club called Santos Party House, located in Manhattan. Much like other clubs in the city, the place features dancing, drinking, and music (it is legally classified as a cabaret, meaning the dancing can continue until 4 AM), with one markedly different catch:

Anyone can get in.

"Along with his partners—the downtown artist Spencer Sweeney, the architect Ron Castellano, and nightlife veteran Larry Golden—Andrew began conceiving of Santos three years ago, long before the economy nose-dived. But their vision has proven to be almost presciently in line with recession-era New York. While Santos is a big, commercial, high-profile dance club, it has a decidedly democratic, unpretentious vibe. There are expensive drinks and a line out front, but the club isn’t defined by $900 bottles of Cristal and a bitchy door policy. Unlike Marquee and the countless other clubs that have metastasized in West Chelsea, Santos positions itself as a self-consciously friendly place, letting in anyone and everyone who believes that forgoing inhibitions is a more noble pursuit than flaunting wealth."

This is a beautiful thing and should be rightly celebrated. I’m not much of a club person, but I’d go to this club. So many clubs embody their name far too rigidly—you are restricted to dress codes, you can’t get in if you’re the wrong size or income level, you are at the mercy of a rigid quota system. You are made to feel lucky at having gotten in to the damn place at all. You’re part of the club. Aren’t you special?

At W.K.’s place, the emphasis is where it should be—on having a good time. Aside from the occasional solitudes that are good for one’s mental health, isn’t an experienced shared amongst us all one that is also enhanced?

Exclusivity has its places. You don’t want your pilots or presidents to be held to no standard at all. The idea of a club, or a clique, or a list is corrosive, however, as it creates divisions and enforces the idea that some are above the rest, not in talent or appeal or skill, but in worth. It’s where we get a rigidly defined idea of the “it” crowd or the cool kids, with the rest of us striving for acceptance or recognition that, once attainted (I hesitate to use the word “earned” for reasons that will soon become clear) is almost immediately obsolete.

What’s the point of a system like this? I can’t see what it accomplishes except to imbue a certain lucky few with a sense of belonging at the expense of the misery of the many. The operative word here is lucky, because who are you except the product of blind chance? You were born in this or that location, with this or that family, and this or that economic situation, with a billion other factors that you had no control over whatsoever—all of this combined to create YOU. Certainly, you had some input in the process that brought you up to whatever point you’ve currently reached, but that’s a product of luck as well. Have you ever considered that drive and motivation and talent are also products of these factors?

You shouldn’t be put on a hill merely because you hit a couple genetic trampolines on your way through life. You’re not so damned special.

So, good on you, Andrew W.K. We all have something to offer, and if everybody goes home happy, all of us benefit.

Right As Rickey

2009-01-20T15:36:00.001-08:00

Twenty-eight members of the BBWAA did not vote for Rickey Henderson in his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame.

Cosmically, this is irrelevant. Rickey (one of the few players afforded the singular honor of needing only his first name for identification) breezed into the Hall with 94.5% of the vote, one of the highest totals ever. Only 75% is required for induction, so some months hence, on a sunny day in the small town of Cooperstown, Rickey will make a heavily-anticipated* speech and take his place amongst baseball’s immortals. It’s no skin off his back.

*Rickey is what is commonly referred to as a “character”. He has a habit of referring to himself in the third person, and although this may be exaggerated, it’s become a defining part of his image. Before games, Rickey would stand in front of a full-length mirror, completely naked, and shout “Rickey’s the best! Rickey’s the best!” over and over again. He framed the first million-dollar check he ever received, without cashing it. Late in his career, searching for a team that would give him another shot, Rickey called up Padres GM Kevin Towers and left this message: “This is Rickey, calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play ball”.

Where it matters intellectually is as such: Rickey Henderson is, conservatively, one of the top 25 players in baseball history. He is so far above the standard of the Hall of Fame that it’s almost silly; you would do better to create a separate wing for players of Rickey’s caliber than to vote against him. To wit: Rickey has stolen 1406 bases in his career. The second-highest guy has 938. He’s first in runs scored, first in unintentional walks, won and excelled in two World Series, won an MVP award, broke a million and one smaller records, and (I’m convinced of this, and it may warrant a separate post), turned otherwise-unremarkable sluggers into mini-superstars. Rickey went beyond Great—he was Exceptional and Unique.

Twenty-eight writers looked at that sterling resume, scratched their heads, and thought “Naaaah—just don’t see it”

And that’s a problem.

Sure, it’s not a problem on the level of War or Famine or even Fall Out Boy, but it’s still a problem. So let’s look at the ballots.

According to several online sources, at least two writers did not submit any names on their ballots. This is due to a policy of not voting for any players who played during the so-called “Steroid Era”, roughly the mid-90s to mid-00s. So those guys probably thought Rickey was good enough to merit induction, but were making a political statement about baseball in general (Rickey is considered to be above steroid suspicion, as he never blew up like a balloon or developed severe backne).

One writer, Corky Simpson of the Green Valley News & Sun, simply left Rickey off his ballot without explanation. He explained his “no” votes on several choices, as well as his “yes” votes (for such a luminary as Matt Williams, for instance), but relegated Rickey to a “And Here Are Some Players Who May Yet Be Elected” list. Later, Simpson explained on the Columbia Journalism Review that:

“No one in the history of baseball has ever gotten into the Hall of Fame on a unanimous vote,” he notes. “I mean, we’re talking about Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson—nobody. And if anyone out there thinks that Rickey Henderson can carry one of those guys’ shoes, he’s crazy.”

That’s twenty-five ballots left unaccounted for. I have a feeling most of them fall into the Corky Simpson line of thinking, which is where the problem’s crux lies.

The first Baseball Hall of Fame class was named in 1936—Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson, and Walter Johnson. None were elected unanimously—Cobb came closest, with 98.2 percent of the vote. According to Simpson and, ostensibly, most of the naysayers on Rickey, this is a sign that no player should ever be elected unanimously. After all, if the Baseball Writers of 1936 didn’t believe that Babe Ruth—the greatest player of all time, a name synonymous with “baseball”—wasn’t worthy of unanimous induction, then no one should be given said honor. Therefore, a set of “guardians” will simply leave players off their ballot if they are up for their first year of eligibility. There’s no thought process to it—they just don’t check the box next to said player’s name.

The problem is that this doesn’t jive with history. Baseball-Reference.com (probably the greatest pure website ever invented by man) has statistics going back to—wait for it—1871. Players in this day and age are eligible five years after they’ve retired, and can stay on the ballot a maximum of 15 years—hence, you never have any player who retired more than twenty years ago on the ballot.

Voters in the first election were working off a SIXTY-FIVE YEAR backlog of players. A special veteran’s committee was set up to vote exclusively for pre-1900 players, but the rules were unclear, and several players appeared on both ballots. Twenty-three players appeared on the 2009 ballot. There was no such list of eligible players on the 1936 ballot, but FORTY-SEVEN received at least one vote apiece.

Do you see the issue here? A voter might have felt that the stars of yesteryear were being forgotten, and tilted his ballot away from the obvious stars in order to give the Edd Roushes of the world a better chance. The more options you give people, the better chance they’ll lack unanimity on the obvious choice.

These writers are holding up a standard which doesn’t exist.

So, you might say, why not simply educate them on their mistake? Perhaps a little enlightenment will shock them into some sense.

I have a feeling that’s not what would happen. The writer—as well as the pundit, or the politician, or some combination of the breed—isn’t interested in being right. He’s interested in being weighty. Rickey Henderson is not a Hall of Famer because of his statistics, or his accomplishments, or his sheer brilliance on the field of play.

Rickey Henderson is a Hall of Famer because I say so.

And I don’t say so.

And that’s the problem.

The Off Year

2008-12-13T15:41:00.000-08:00

Bessie Braddock: Sir, you are drunk.

Churchill: And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober.

When I was three, I broke my right leg. Not in a cool way either. For reasons which I can't recall, I had a toy garbage truck among my various playthings. I have no earthly conception as to what I did with it--threw out my spare Legos, I suppose. Anyways, while running around in my grandparents' house, I got my right foot stuck in the back of said truck. My foot stayed put, but the rest of my body kept going forward, and I received a very early lesson in torque and the laws of physics when my right leg snapped. Spiral break. Not very good.

I'm relying on secondhand memories here--there's no real trauma resulting from this accident. I got a half-body cast and was doped up on morphine half the time, so I can't give you the true specifics. I had a talking Teddy Ruxpin doll at the time, and the morphine convinced me he was real. There's that.

I guess the only thing you could say was that, from then on in, I walked a little slower, a little more cautiously. My leg was wrapped in a cast, and when it came off, it took from me a sense of abandon. I was constantly prepared for a fall.

Over the past year, I've made a conscious and largely successful effort to improve my mind. I don't mean this in the sense of actually making myself smarter, but I've been trying to do more with what I've got. It's worked! I think it's worked. Friends of mine have commented on how much I've "improved". It's my own mini-redemption story, right? There's nothing America loves more than something that used to be tarnished. My confidence and sense of clarity--the idea that I have some kind of purpose--have never been higher.

It's not enough.

I've always been fascinated by the idea of physicality. We have bodies, and I think this is very strange to us. More than once, while staring into a mirror after washing my face or brushing my teeth, I've been struck by a sense of dissociation. The basic act of moving my hand, or the sensation of heat or cold becomes alien. Athleticism is a way to reconcile this--we can conquer the world around us through speed, strength, and endurance. We can become masters of our surroundings by making them surmountable.

Or, at least, some of us can. For my entire life, I've grown up with the belief there is such a thing as a "born" athlete, someone who effortlessly glides through life's pickup basketball games and backyard football contests due to an inherent advantage. Whether it's great size, fleetfootedness, or merely an advanced coherence of movement, it's not something that I think could ever be taught, or learned. It's merely inherent. You are, or you aren't.

But I know that I can remake my mind--strengthen the connection between concepts, beliefs, and expressions to form a greater whole. Why not my body?

I still believe that some athletes are simply born that way. You can tell by the way they move--I met Rangers' center fielder Josh Hamilton once, and he practically bounced down the hall, moving with a certain economy on the balls of his feet. It's something you have to accept if you want to do what I want to do.

I want to make myself into an athlete.

We've already gone over why the grand path of my life hasn't been leading in this direction. But this path is mutable. Perhaps for the majority of us, our surroundings dictate our future. You could have two kids with an equal amount of natural athletic talent, but one of them has an expansive backyard, a lot of free time, and dozens of other kids in the neighborhood with which to play team sports. The other broke his leg when he was three and spent the rest of his life watching his step. Which one would you pick first for a team?

I think this realization is an advantage. I may be far behind, but all I need to do is commit--to treat the base and the summit as one. I could be in for a fall, it's true, or a disappointment, but defiance at the precipice is a virtue. Can you make yourself something you're not? I plan on finding out now. In the morning, I'll be sober.

The Myth of Nomar

2008-11-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

I have been so terribly irritable over the past weeks, and I think it's Al Reyes' fault.

There are other factors at work. While the wide framework of my life is solid, I've been beset by a series of petty failures--the worst kind, to be honest. Ideally, in the event of a life-altering reversal of fortune, you have some kind of support system--friends and family rally around you if you're fired, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Fail at something stupid, though, and you will receive no pity.

The core of it is this: I haven't been able to write for the past month. This happens sometimes, and though the reasons vary, it always comes down to procrastination. I spent hours today avoiding the whole writing process--having to actually translate the clear threads of my imagination into something muddled and lacking.

To that end, I tried (and failed) to do the following things:

Get the new version of AIM to work on my computer.
Get through even a quarter of Samurai Shodown II (one of those classic fighting games that requires one to have methamphetamine reflexes to even dream of defeating the computer. So far, the pattern seems to be as such: start match, spend twenty seconds having every attack blocked with a dismissive effortlessness by the computer, lose match, consider throwing controller, and, ultimately, sink back into chair with a certain amount of despair and embarrassment.)
Respond to e-mails sent by loved ones.
Go to the gym.

God, I suck. The only thing I'm good at, in times like these, is writing. It's the cure-all. But up until fifteen minutes ago, I couldn't do it. It's somewhat liberating to be actually doing this, and someday I may write about the process, as it applies to me.

That, kids, is why the basic idea of Al Reyes has put me in a dark mood.

**********
At twenty-three years of age, Nomar Garciaparra hit .306 with 30 home runs for the Boston Red Sox.

At twenty-four, Nomar hit .323 with 35 home runs.

At twenty-five, Nomar hit .357 with 27 home runs.

I've always liked baseball, but I didn't really love it until Anthony Nomar Garciaparra (his famous middle name, which defined him to the world, became one of those words, which leapt above their original meanings and came to stand for so much more) became the starting shortstop for the Red Sox. Here he was, in the full flower of youth, so audaciously talented that, to a 13-year-old with glasses and acne, he didn't quite seem real. Nomar, along with the hated Derek Jeter and the distant Alex Rodriguez, heralded a new age of shortstoppery in baseball.

Shortstops had been, for a long period of time, smaller and scrappier, defense-first types, broken only by outliers like Cal Ripken Jr. Nomar was a sinewy howitzer, both on the field and at-bat. Two images stand out to me, when thinking of Nomar: his uncanny ability to rove into the hole between second and third base, spear a sharp grounder, then (all in one motion), turning, jumping, and firing the ball to first; and his power-laden swing, which (preceded by a series of ritualistic toe taps and glove adjustments that became iconic) seemed to produce naught but frightening line drives, at every angle. He was otherwordly. There was no effort to his ability.

We will never know his true talent level, because of Al Reyes. Near the end of his age twenty-five season, Reyes hit Nomar in the left wrist with a fastball.

Life is rarely cinematic. There was no hushed silence, no frozen movie frame--Nomar was hit, but he seemed fine., and he had an entire offseason to rest it up. In his age twenty-six season, Nomar hit .372, which to this day doesn't seem like an actual number. He wasn't even in his prime yet.

In his age twenty-seven season, the wrist began to act up. He missed a hundred and forty-two games.

In his age twenty-eight and twenty-nine seasons, he hit a combined .305. He could still mash. But it seemed to us, at the time, that Nomar was struggling, at least a bit. He was always aggressive, but his walks fell, as pitchers felt they could challenge him more often. More and more of those line drives turned into weak popups. He was falling off a mountain in slow motion.

In his age thirty season, Nomar Garciaparra played in only thirty-eight games for Boston, before being traded to the Cubs. The Red Sox won the World Series that year. Al Reyes' fastball had finally found its mark.

I've reached a point in my life where some things I once found essential are falling by the wayside. I can't remember my sixth-grade history teacher's name, or the names of the next-door neighbors at our old house. They're lost in the haze. I wonder if Nomar remembers what it felt like to truly turn on a pitch, the way only an elite hitter can. For the past two years, he's been far below adequate. Once the toast of Boston, a future Hall of Famer, news of Nomar's potential retirement due to "constant physical ailments" is buried deep in an article about something else entirely.

Don't pity him. Nomar is a millionaire several times over, married to a beautiful and talented woman--his life has been better, on balance, than billions and billions of others.

But the man used to be able to do something, and he no longer can. That alone is a kind of death.

Loud Desperation

2008-10-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

I play catcher on my company's beer league softball team*. We hold our games in an athletic complex set a ways into a forested area of Farmington, hidden just far enough in the dark forests that characterize this area of the country so that the entire area is plunged into a frankly primal blackness when the last of the field lights are turned off. It's a fun diversion and a nice way to build camraderie--I would suggest that everyone, at some point during the year, get involved in some form of competitive sport (according to your relative athleticism, of course--I stay away from pickup football because it inevitably forces me into covering someone. Let me be the first to own up to this--I am an appallingly bad cornerback, safety, or linebacker. Inevitably, the game takes on a deja vu-esque aspect, as the man I'm covering is thrown to, again and again, with little to no interference from me).

*We've gone over this before, but this tells you all you need to know about my relative athleticism.

We're all on the younger side for this league. Your typical beer league softball player emerges from a stable of previous few varieties--the middle-aged former high school baseball stud, the fat guy who can hit home runs, and the old guy who can place hits wherever he wants. This is a universal thing. To that extent, we've been struggling this season--our skillsets, which include daring baserunning and good outfield defense--are rendered moot by the onslaught of beer-bellied sluggers who can place the ball just out of our reach.

Maturity is another thing we have on them.

You wouldn't think so, but it's true. We had a double-header Wednesday night, and the leadoff hitter (and shortstop) for the other team complained about the cosmic injustice of every close call pretty much as soon as the game started. He was a lanky white guy, late 30s, with a shaved head and a knee brace--the kind of man whose jittery intensity was apparent from every flared nostril and wide-eyed gesticulation. He would make hard, risky throws when he had no chance of getting a runner out, which is a rather boorish thing to do in a league without batting helmets.

Early in the second game, I popped out in foul territory to the third baseman. My roommate Phil (who has, and I would be remiss if I did not mention this, a really excellent arm) was coaching third base, and evidently was a bit too slow in moving out of the way of the third baseman's path. The catch was made, and before running off the field, the third baseman threw the ball at Phil.

"WATCH where you're going. You have to get out of the WAY!" said the third baseman.

"I was out of the way," said Phil, who used to coach high school baseball, so he's somewhat familiar with the rules.

"NO you WEREN'T," said the shortstop, now choosing to join in. "Why aren't you PAYING ATTENTION!?"

I mean, what do you think this is? A game?

***********

Despite my promise to ignore news related to the election, I've found myself drawn to a bizarre phenomenon which I promise I'm going to tie to that asshole shortstop at some point. I'm voting for Obama, just to get that out of the way, for reasons as complex as his views on the economy, and as simple as the fact that, if you fuck up running a country for eight straight years, you don't get another crack at it.

I'm open to disagreements from the other side. There is a perfectly legitimate case to be made for voting for John McCain--I just don't think it's as convincing as the counter-argument. All I really require is a set of logical arguments for your guy, and we're cool.

That's not what's been happening, however. Take this article on CNN.com, titled "Rage rising on the McCain campaign trail":

At a rally in Minnesota on Friday, a woman told McCain: "I don't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab."
McCain shook his head and said, "No ma'am, no ma'am. He's a decent family man...[a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about."
One man at the rally said he was "scared of an Obama presidency." McCain later told the man he should not fear Obama.
"I want to be president of the United States, and I don't want Obama to be," he said. "But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States."
McCain's response was met with boos from the crowd.

And:

One member of the Palin audience in Jacksonville, Florida, Tuesday shouted out "treason." And at another rally in the state Monday, Palin's mention of the Obama-Ayers tie caused one member to yell out: "kill him" -- though it was unclear if it was targeted at Obama or Ayers.
At several recent rallies, Palin has stirred up crowds by mentioning the "liberal media." Routinely, there are boos at every mention of The New York Times and the "mainstream media," both of which are staples of Palin's stump speech.
Some audience members are openly hostile to members of the traveling press covering Palin; one crowd member hurled a racial epithet at an African-American member of the press in Clearwater, Florida, on Monday.
And at a McCain rally in New Mexico on Monday, one supporter yelled out "terrorist" when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain didn't respond.

Here's what we're dealing with:

Bewilderment
Obviously, these people are scared and confused. On some level, I think, this is a natural reaction to being put in a losing position--they've identified with a party and a candidate who are down significantly in the polls, and this upsets them emotionally. That being said, how can you "not figure out how this is happening?" I'm not a huge fan of campaign coverage in general (check out this essay by David Foster Wallace and this one by Matt Taibbi [both in Rolling Stone, unfortunately] to find out why. Basically, it's like a bunch of eighth graders reporting on drama in the cafeteria), but there are thousands of articles out there to tell you why things are happening as they are.

Tantrums
There's a man in a flannel shirt and glasses featured in that article. He looks to be in his late 50s--an avuncular type, someone you'd expect to see reclining on a couch, watching college football with his nieces and nephews. He is SO ANGRY. It's really a sight to see. He's mad--he says it twice, in a half-furious, half-pleading tone. He practically stomps his feet.

Fantasizing
The man who shouted out "Kill him!" at the Palin rally may or may not actually want to kill Barack Obama. What he really wants is an easy solution to his problems. He figures that a loss by John McCain would remove something essential from his life--whether it's security, or financial solvency, or some kind of vague sense that an old and familiar something has been taken from him. And he sees no way to stop this--no way to deal with his problems--other than for Obama to just go away. This kind of adult wishing isn't anything new--it's why books like this:

And books like this:

are actually the exact same book. They're just addressing different fantasies.

Different escapes. These people don't want to deal with reality. They want an escape.

That Really Annoying Way of Arguing, Where You Make a Point that SOUNDS Good, but Doesn't Actually MEAN ANYTHING, and Then You Say "OHHH, I GUESS THAT ARGUMENT'S OVER, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO THAT".
There's a lot of that shit going on too.

************

One of the newer members of our team is from the area. He told us that the bald shortstop with the knee brace used to coach youth league baseball, but was fired. He couldn't control his temper. He'd yell at the kids.

What that really means is that he was probably bewildered, and frustrated, and angry, and hoping that somehow, these qualities would lead to a miraculous solution, whereas his kids would, I dunno, win the Little League World Series.

He was fired because he was no older than his kids, emotionally. Maybe even a bit younger.

An adult deals with his or her problems. The trials of the world are difficult, and sometimes life can be overwhelming, but everything can be fixed (if not totally) with a sober assessment of the problem, followed by action. Stomp your feet, get red in the face, hope for a miracle solution, and you will be trampled into dust by the red hooves of history.

"He's an Arab!"

"He's a socialist!"

"He's a terrorist!"

"Kill him!"

That's what they're saying. But it's not what they mean.

They are children.

The Jersey Shore, or the Death of the American Dream, Part II: The First Night

2008-08-17T16:30:00.001-07:00

I.

"Make sure you wrap everything up, alright?"

Glenn, our landlord for the weekend, smirked. A muscley dude with spiky hair and a tan, he showed no sign of having spent his life at anywhere besides the beach and the clubs. It's not a bad life, necessarily, but it's one that can really only exist in towns such as this one--tourist traps geared around tits and bronzer, just waiting to be washed away by a class-5 hurricane that Pat Robertson can blame on the wrath of an angry God.

After Glenn's warning regarding the level of venereal disease present among the female populace of Seaside Heights (here, I imagined a tiny particle of syphilis, its flagellum spiked and blown out, meandering its way from guido to guido, techno-dancing all the way), we surveyed our surroundings. The place we had rented teetered unsteadily on the border of livable and shithole--two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Furnishings included a pull-out couch, a tiny refrigerator, and an eight-inch TV. We were going to have to rough it to survive.

The first order of business was exploring the boardwalk.

II

Actually, the first order of business was getting ready, which is unremarkable save for a story which I'm honor-bound to relate.

The weekend was hot as balls, and our air conditioner was barely worthy of the name, so we each relied on different methods of staying cool and dry. I had just finished applying an extra layer of deodorant, when Phil offered a fascinating alternative method, which I hadn't yet considered.

"Do you need some GoldBond powder?" he asked.

Now, I'm an arrogant bastard. Out of everyone who had made that trip, I was the consensus choice for "most likely to get us all killed by mouthing off to the wrong guy". I don't like to admit that I'm wrong. But, in certain situations, I will reveal the limits of my weakness and allow that, yes, perhaps I don't know everything. Case in point: I had never in my life heard of GoldBond powder.

I suppose, at some point, I was familiar with the concept of deodorant powder, but I had neither used nor seen it used. I pointed this out to Phil, who had a quizzical look on his face.

"You know, you put it on you, keeps you dry," he said.

The rest of the crew chimed in with their assent. Apparently everyone had heard of this shit except for me. I felt out of place. What was this strange world, where blowouts ruled the day, where the smell of bronzer permeated the air like the stench of death on a battlefield, where...where...where...

"You use it to GoldBond your nuts."

A beat of time. No one said anything. Everyone looked at Phil.

"Right?" he said.

Pandemonium. Chances are, if you see Phil walking down the street, he'll be fully protected from the evils of genital flop-sweat. He's a better man for it.

III.

The boardwalk was half-continual bar and half-carnival, though clearly catered toward a more adult sensibility than your average sideshow. Our trip up and down the boardwalk was unremarkable, save for a rather ill-advised idea to consume at least one Long Island Iced Tea (aren't we FUCKING HARDCORE, eh?) at each place we stopped. I estimate we each lost something on the order of eighty dollars attempting to win various carnival prizes.

One game in particular enchanted us--a giant roulette wheel which promised an authentic MLB jersey as a prize. AP won a Mike Schmidt Phillies jersey on his first try. Juan countered with a bright orange Cal Ripken Jr. jersey. Struggling only a bit more than our first two winners, Phil took home a Derek Jeter All-Star game uniform.

Ron and I were left with nothing. The vendor, a hefty and good-natured woman with a tattoo spanning her ample chest, implored us to continue, but fortunately for our wallets, it was about time to start hitting the clubs.

IV

I've referenced the concept of a "blowout" several times here without truly describing it. A blowout is a haircut that has found somewhat of a habitat on the skull of your average Jersey guido. Perhaps you want one of your own. Here is a quick guide on how to style your hair in the form of a blowout:

Get the bangin-est, most hardcore, industrial strength hair gel you can possibly find. You may have to order it from shady arms dealers, because in some countries, you can make certain low-grade chemical weapons from this stuff.
Stand in front of a concussion grenade. Wait for it to go off.
When it goes off, use the gel to keep your hair in the exact same place said grenade has left it.

We had decided at the outset of the trip that we would try to blend in as much as possible with the locals, so Ron had brought an impressive array of gel with him. Unfortunately, I was the only one with hair long enough (and silky enough, and beautiful enough, and manly enough) to fashion into blowout shape. Ron handed me a bottle.

"This is probably the second-strongest stuff I have," he said. I shuddered. The strongest stuff was probably toxic.

"I had better have all my fucking hair in the morning," I said, as I went to work.

Andrew is ron to joe: “he’s defining the hairline right now.” 12:35am

I was still getting that shit out of my head three days later.

V

At the beginning of the trip, we had half a notion to institute a rule that would increase the sociability of everyone involved. The rule was as such; were you caught eying a girl, and someone noticed, you had to go talk to her. Phil and I thought this rule was a great idea.

We stood watch on the balcony of Bamboo, apparently the best nightclub in the area, and we observed with a mounting horror just how irrelevant our rule was.

Bright orange neon bamboo trees bathed the place in a hellish light, and techno music blared from three or four separate sources (I was vaguely reminded of sleep-deprivation torture at Guantanamo Bay). The assorted humanity either writhed on the dance floor or chatted at tables.

I looked at one group of girls. Teased-out hair. Deep, bronze-aided tans. Screeching giggles.

I shifted focus to another group. Teased-out hair. Deep, bronze-aided tans. Screeching giggles.

Now disoriented, I spied another group. Teased-out hair. Deep, bronze-aided...wait, was this the same group as before?

Phil shook his head. Behind him, I took a picture of a man with terrible cornrows, and another guy with a graphic t-shirt featuring what looked like an imperial Eagle (used by the Romans, but also by a group of clean-cut German fellows from the 1930s).

"They look the same," he said. "They all look the same."

We left. But we'd be back. The rest of the night is a haze, your typical extended bar-hop, consuming drink after drink at each location until the alcohol has backed up to your eyeballs, until the bare thought of drinking more is getting you more drunk, but you couldn't be, man, there's no way--there's no WAY--you could be more drunk than you are right now, so you feel a sudden need for food and--bless it, bless it--Steaks Unlimited is still open, and the steak sandwiches and cheeseballs taste better than anything you've ever had before in your life, save maybe for the last time you ate something while hammered, and you're all laughing to the blue neon heavens about everything and anything as you all stumble into the apartment, but now AP has decided he needs must swim in the motel pool across the way, so you're cheering him on as he hops the fence and dives in, but now he's trying to get out and he trips and the motel is booing him, which just makes you laugh louder and longer, and you settle back on the floor feeling like ten billion dollars, because this place may be hellish, but it is hilarious, and you've got a whole day-and-a-half left, and

wait

A day-and-a-half?

Suddenly, I began to feel sick.

The Jersey Shore, or, the Death of the American Dream: The Drive

2008-08-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

I

I can't say the Jersey Shore is the worst place in the world, because I've never been to Turkmenistan.

Before I committed to the idea of a trip to Seaside Heights, New Jersey, my friend Juan, being of a generally honest comportment, made sure I knew what I was getting into.

"We're going to the Jersey Shore," Juan said. "Watch these videos. These are the people we'll be dealing with."

"These are the clubs we'll be attending."

"This is the food we'll be eating."

"Do you still want to come?"

Well, fuck it. At least the cheeseballs will be tasty.

II

So we went, shooting down the east coast like a blood comet, a portent of doom for all to see. Would it be our doom, or the Shore's? We rolled five deep: our planner and driver, the aforementioned Juan; our minister of hair gel and graphic tee-shirts, Ron (also the one who, in a pinch, could pass as a native); AP, champion drinker and latter-day ninja; Phil, my roommate and the man in charge of music; and finally, myself, purveyor of refreshments and widely acclaimed as the one most cynical about our prospects of having a good time.

Immediately, the mood turned ugly. It centered around the snacks.

"You brought baby carrots?" AP said, more of a deflated statement than an actual question.

Heads swiveled. I found myself on the defensive.

"I don't see the problem," I said. "They're nutritious, easily snackable, tasty, and they'll improve your eyesight. Plus, I didn't just bring baby carrots. I brought apples, and pears, and grapes."

Glares all around. AP warily took a carrot. We ended up polishing those carrots off, but at the cost of this conclusion, preserved through the magic of mobile phone updates to Facebook:

Andrew is eating baby carrots on the way to the shore. that’s the last time we put joey d in charge of the food. 5:51pm

I swear, guys. Three years ago I would have totally gone for M&Ms and such. I eat healthier these days. That didn't stop them from expressing abject horror at the mere prospect of eating baby carrots for the entirety of our four hour-ish trip.

Consider this my apology. Next time I'll bring macadamia nuts or something.

III

Have you ever heard of the story of Nate the Snake? It's a Shaggy Dog story, which is a tale that begins with great promise, descends into redundancy, and concludes with infuriating ambiguity. The intent is to stretch it out as long as possible. While stuck in traffic, I took advantage of a captive audience and regaled them with the story for a half an hour.

I won't reproduce it in full. I do want you to finish reading this.

There's this guy, Jake, who gets stuck in a desert, and he's about to die. Just before he does, he happens upon the Garden of Eden, here represented by a lever stuck in the ground, guarded by a talking snake. The snake, named Nate, promises him eternal health and wisdom if he promises to oversee the lever in time of need. The lever will end the world if pushed by the guardian, so he is being given a great responsibility. If, at any time, he judges the world to be past saving, he is to travel to the garden and push the lever.

Jake says yes, and spends his next few years attaining wealth and fame. He visits Nate and the lever now and again, and one day Nate reveals that he has a son, named Sammy. Nate says that it's past time he retired, and wants Jake to train Sammy to be Nate's replacement, after which he wants Jake to kill him in a highly ritualistic manner.

Jake and Sammy travel the world, and when it's finally time, Jake purchases a samurai sword and, with Sammy, travels back to Nate and the lever. He crests a hill, and to his horror, realizes that his brakes have failed. He's pointed straight at the lever that will end the world.

Jake struggles with the steering wheel. He sees Nate next to the lever. He realizes that the only way he can avoid striking the lever and ending the world is if he runs over Nate. So he turns to Sammy, tears streaming down his face, and screams:

"BETTER NATE THAN LEVER!!!

Groans. Facebook updates send the highly abridged version to the world at large.

Keith Jackson is is amazed that they made it to the Jersey Shore without killing Joe D. 9:36pm

IV

The traffic soon abated, and we hit the home stretch. The GPS system in the car showed us on a long strip of land, surrounded by the bright blue of the Shore. We'd made it.

The character of the land is quickly revealed in the stores on the side of the road. We wound our way through an endless strip mall, which seemed to consist only of tanning salons. Tanning salons and Italian places. Five spires, brightly colored garish neon, soon rose in the distance. The GPS led us to them, as if we were wise men following a perverse Star of Bethlehem, inexorably drawn to the birthplace of some wretched Anti-Christ, just waiting to devour us in its birth throes.

But we ended up being a thirty-second walk from the cheeseball place. So it all evened out.

Our minds weary, our legs numb, and our nostrils foully assailed by Juan's unfortunate gastric tendencies, we spilled out of the SUV and surveyed our surroundings. A motel next to our apartment shrieked with the cries of high schoolers on a prom bender. The boardwalk of Seaside Heights lounged not two minutes away from us, uncoiling like a great Wyrm, grown fat on hair gel and silicone. Bike-mounted cops rode past us, giving us and legions of tattooed, muscled guidos the evil eye.

This was truly the raging hemorrhoid of America.

We had arrived.

It was going to be a great time.

NEXT: The First Night, or what parts of it I can recall.

A Metal Primer: Blacker than the Blackest Black, Times Infinity

2008-07-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

What's the most embarrassing album you own?

For most of you, I'd bet on some early pop crap you bought on a lark as a kid. Backstreet Boys, LFO, something of that nature. If you asked that question to my parents, it'd have to be Jermaine Jackson's Jermaine, which I found while flipping through their joint record collection once. Both of them deny ever purchasing it, but it's there, which meant that, at one point in their lives, my parents thought that buying the third- or fourth-most talented (depending on your opinion of LaToya) Jackson kid would somehow enrich their lives, musically. I've never let them live that down.

My most embarrassing album trumps all of yours by a wide margin. I am the longtime owner of Blind Guardian's Nightfall in Middle Earth. This is a concept album about J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. Only it's not about the coherent, somewhat familiar story we all watched on the big screen a few years back. This album is based around the Silmarillion, which is Tolkein's attempt to create a detailed backstory for his fictional universe.

Nightfall in Middle Earth is based on a HISTORY TEXTBOOK for a FICTIONAL UNIVERSE. I own this album. I've never read the book. I bet that copy of Pop by N'Sync doesn't look so bad now, does it?

Welcome to the Lovecraftian horror that is my taste in music. What can I say? I loves me some metal.

Metal is, out of all the major genres, perhaps the most misunderstood. Now, I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I am a pretentious know-it-all who can bullshit with the best of them. To that end, I've decided to provide all of you with a quick primer on metal music.

Like all good musical genres, metal is as much about the music's subject matter as it is the actual sound. Metal covers a wide variety of topics, but it's very important to understand what is and is not metal.

Death is very metal. Many metal songs revolve around the concept of death, or someone dying, or how life is pointless and we all should die--this is basically a very tiresome concept in the realm of metal. Go to a Metallica concert and request, say "Kill 'Em All", and they'll probably play it, but with kind of a jaundiced ennui. Death is old hat to the experienced metalhead.

To this end, Murder, Suicide, and occasionally Arson are all metal. Burglary, Kidnapping, Tax Evasion, and Treason are not metal. Murder and suicide are prickly topics in the metal community, primarily as a result of one Norweigian black metal band called Mayhem.

Now, Mayhem is not a band I listen do. Doesn't do it for me, and besides, their story is really all you need to know. At one point in the band's history, they employed guitarist Oystein Aarseth (known as Euronymous) and vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin (known as Dead). Bear with me on the names.

According to the rest of the band (keep in mind that this is a group of people who gave themselves names like "Necrobutcher" and "Hellhammer"), Dead was a bit of a weird guy. He would bury his clothes in the ground prior to concerts, and dig them up so they'd have the "smell of the grave" still on them. Upon finding a dead bird by the road one day, he put it in a jar and would smell the jar onstage, so he could "sing with the smell of death in his nostrils".

You can see how he got his name.

Did I mention that I don't listen to this band? Just wanted to reiterate it.

Dead was melancholic, humorless, and depressed, so it should come as very little surprise that, in a woodland cabin that the band shared, he committed suicide with a shotgun. This would be about 1991 or so. He was discovered by his friend and bandmate, Euronymous.

What would you do in this situation, after freaking out? I'd like to think you'd call the police or something of that nature. I don't know whether or not Euronymous freaked out, but he did not call the police. He went to a local shop, purchased a disposable camera, arranged certain items around Dead's...well, dead body, and took several photographs of it. One of these photographs was later used for the cover of the Mayhem album Dawn of the Black Hearts.

Rumors surfaced that the band had made a stew out of Dead's brain, and had constructed necklaces out of of his skull fragments. The band vehemently denied the first accusation. Brain stew! Ridiculous and offensive. Brain stew? What kind of freaks do you think you're dealing with here?

The second part was entirely true.

Euronymous, incidentally, was later stabbed to death by fellow band member Varg Vikernes, otherwise known as "Count Grishnack". Vikernes claimed that most of the 26 stab wounds in Euronymous' body were not his fault. The stab wound right in the middle of Euronymous' forehead was entirely his fault, however, and Vikernes remains in jail to this day.

So yes. Murder, Suicide, Depression, Darkness, etc., etc.---all metal.

War is also very metal, perhaps because it combines all those things you've read about above. What's interesting is that the further in the past the war is, the more metal it is. For example:

The Iraq War is not metal at all, but The War of the Roses is.

The Vietnam War is only a little bit metal, while The Punic Wars are incredibly metal.

The cutoff point, I think, is World War I, which is very metal. World War II is not metal. Perhaps that's because World War II contained Genocide, which is surprisingly not metal, whereas World War I involved Trench Warfare--very, very metal.

You could probably say that The Past is, in general, metal, while The Present is variable. The Future is almost never metal, unless it involves Post-Apocalyptic Situations or Historical Anachronisms. Take Star Wars, which is not metal in and of itself. If Luke Skywalker was a Viking and had used a Battleaxe, Star Wars would probably be the most metal movie in existence. This would be despite Luke riding in Spaceships (not metal).

Vikings are probably the epitome of metal. There is nothing that is not metal about Vikings. Think about it: you have essentially nihilistic medieval warriors, raiding and fighting for the hell of it, dressed in wolf/bearskin, covered in blood, and wielding all kinds of nasty pain instruments. That's metal as fuck.

My brother (who is in a metal band of his own, The Arkham White) loaned me a CD once by Amon Amarth, called With Oden On Our Side. The first song was a rocking tune that described a viking raid on a village. Awesome stuff. Great for pumping yourself up before sports.

The second song was about a viking raid on a village. OK. Maybe it's part of a triptych?

Once I got to the fifth song, which dealt with the heretofore-unexplored territory of a village, raided by vikings, I kind of realized that the whole album was going in one very basic direction. But at least none of the members have murdered one another.

Makeup is not metal. By extension, Hair Metal is not metal. Wearing Paint that Makes You Look Like a Corpse is very metal, just keep the spray out of your hair, wuss.

Faeries are not metal. Elves are actually very metal, as are Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, Wizards, and most assorted fantasy concepts that don't seem too feminine.

Religion in and of itself is not metal. Aspects of religion are totally metal. Jesus is not metal, but Crucifixtion is incredibly metal. God is not metal, but Satan has his own branch of metal.
Concept albums are very metal, but the concept needs to be Obscure, Socially Awkward, and Repellent to Women. Kamelot's Epica is a concept album about Faust. We've already mentioned Nightfall in Middle Earth. Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime "tells a story of a young man, Nikki, awoken from a coma suddenly remembering work done as a political assassin, then falling in love with a nun, mixing around with heroin, seeking help, then being ordered to assassinate his love", and oh God, just kill me now.

Nu-metal is not metal, and it's just embarrassing.

This is metal, though it is equally as embarrassing:

Running through the forest behind your parent's house whilst wearing a wizard hat and carrying a torch in broad fucking daylight is, unfortunately, metal.

Really, it's just a lot easier these days for me to listen to funk. Funk is not metal, but Sex, Dancing, Getting Up, Getting Down, and Booty Shaking are all funky.

James Brown is both metal and funky. Let's end this with a little bit of the Godfather of Soul, in his prime, to make you forget about vikings and Dead and whatever.

Worst Party Ever

2008-06-29T22:28:00.000-07:00

The last place I expected my views on theology to change was at a party.

Like all good young Catholic boys, I had some semblance of belief drummed into me as I grew up. I took to it for a bit, even indulging the briefest of notions that I would one day become a priest. The years faded that belief, and I left college fully agnostic, leaning toward atheist.

For this particular party, I had been invited by someone with whom I had a passing acquaintance. There's always a risk in going to parties blind to the identity of the participants--you run the risk of experiencing a nightmare scenario. Bondage freaks. Nazi sympathizers. Nudists. Furries. My brother and I were trapped at a gathering once where the following things happened, in no particular order.

The hostess claimed she wrote editorials for the New York Times, and got testy when I asked her pertinent questions, like what she wrote about, when she published it, and how exactly she had managed to convince the Old Gray Lady to bump William Safire off the page for a week.
Her boyfriend made a loud and extended farting noise with his hands. He did this in a restaurant. Angry that I didn't find it funny, he decided a second-go-round was in order.
Fancying herself the arbiter of musical quality, the hostess dismissed my brother's band as one of "those" bands after hearing nothing but the band's name.

We left quickly and said nothing about it until noon the following day, when both of us turned to one another simultaneously and said something along the lines of "What the HELL!"

This recent party, fortunately, had only the vice of being dull. I suppose it just was, like a million parties before it. People mingled. Music was played. I didn't know anyone there, and I wasn't really feeling the crowd, so I parked myself in front of an NBA playoff game and started drinking. And you know, it wasn't that bad. I had just finished calling Sam Cassell a "worthless sci-fi reject" when the host brought out a microphone and speaker.

"OK, everyone," he said. "It's time for the PIE-EATING contest!"

There are phrases in life whose mere utterance causes fear and anxiety. "We need to have a talk," is one. "I think the condom broke," is another. "Remember how your house USED TO have three stories?" is one I bet you don't hear all that often. "I just injected you with a fast-acting poison, Mr. Bond," is just patently ridiculous. But none of these compares to the sheer terror I experienced at the mere mention of a pie-eating contest.

These things have their place, you see. Were I at, say,, a county fair, or a sock hop*, I doubt I'd have given a pie-eating concept a second thought. There are PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE venues for the rapid and competitive consumption of circular arrangements of fruit and crust.

*What is a sock hop, exactly? Am I using this term correctly?

But we are young, you see. We are young and we live in the state of Connecticut, where one must strangle as much fun as possible out of every night, 'cause the state itself isn't helping one bit. It seemed to me like taking time out of preparing for nuclear Armageddon by...well, having a pie-eating contest.

My horror at spending one of my limited allotted Saturday nights watching a pie-eating contest was compounded rapidly. Two contestants were plucked from the crowd. One was nondescript, someone I had no connection to. The other was a guy whom I had encountered briefly at yet ANOTHER party. He took it upon himself to narrate a Dodgers game in the style of noted announcer Vin Scully. He did this for five minutes. No one was paying attention to him.

But he had the stage now, and he took advantage of it. Have you ever watched a professional wrestling show? Much of it isn't really wrestling--it's buildup, posturing, speechifying, storytelling. The kid must have had a bloody library of that stuff in his head, 'cause he launched into a lengthy diatribe regarding the world of pain his opponent was about to travel. My head started to throb.

The host brought out a belt. Not a real belt. A cardboard facsimile of one of those over-sized championship belts for boxers. A trophy. This had been done before, I realized. The whole point of this party was to provide a venue for pie eating. I sank heavily into a chair, the full Lovecraftian horror of the whole happening attacking the corners of my diminishing sanity. The curtain had been thrown back on the whole charade. But it was far too late.

The two contestants dug in. I felt the sky tremble. A great white light appeared, and out of it stepped God himself. I was dimly ware of the kid I disliked beginning to pull away, his face covered in a purple jam. I stood, gaping in awe--whether of the spectacle, or Yahweh, I cannot say to this day.

God approached me. What do you say in a situation like this? A million questions flew to my mind, but were dismissed, one by one, like so many imperfections. I had only one thing to ask.

"God, why am I, a young man in the prime of my youth, spending my Saturday night watching two people eat pie?"

And He placed His hand on my shoulder, and He smiled. Behind Him, the Vin Scully-wannabe roared in triumph, his entire face a purple mask of victory.

"BECAUSE, MY SON," God said. "BECAUSE, I HATE YOU."

Needless to say, I left immediately afterwards. Pie and the Almighty. Too much excitement for one night.

Will No One Help the Widow's Son?**

2008-06-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

Eight years after the widely-accepted Future Demarcation Line, the past still has power.

West Hartford center has undergone a transformative binge of construction in the past few months, cutting into the last vestiges of pastoralism surrounding Hartford proper. It's added a small but modern theater, plus a Cheesecake Factory and a White House, Black Market. The place is good for a walk now, and has brought out the younger element in the area.

All this development stands in marked contrast to an old church, the First Church of Christ, West Hartford, which looms over Main Street like a great brick elephant. You have seen a million of these churches if you've ever lived in New England. They seek to impose the terror and majesty of their religion through sheer height. Once, they were the tallest buildings for miles around, marking God's country to all who could see. This is no longer the case in the city, but places like West Hartford never had a need for skyscrapers, so the great white spire of a church is still king.

I never gave these churches, and indeed this particular church, a second look, up until a few weeks ago. On my way to pick up some groceries, a hawks' cry caused me to look in the direction of the church. I took it in as a full entity for the first time, and for one bare second, it was if my vision had blurred and contorted.

I had seen this church before.

There is a graphic novel out there called From Hell. It's written by the great Alan Moore, master of subtext and structure, a storyteller without peer. The book concerns one particular theory about the 1888 murder of five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London--all killed in brutal and horrifying fashion by a madman who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper*.

*Every once in a while, history will surprise you by injecting a little bit of modernity into events which seem remote and ancient. In this case, you may not know that the police actually took photographs of all of Jack the Ripper's victims. I will now provide you with a link to that of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth victim. Don't look at it. I apologize for saying this, because now you will.

The novel postulates that Jack the Ripper was one Dr. William Gull, Royal Physician to the Queen of England, and that the murders were actually part of an elaborate and arcane ritual. Gull was a Freemason, part of a fraternal brotherhood of powerful and influential men. Freemasonry figures heavily in a number of conspiracy theories, most concerning things like shadow governments, the Illuminati--tinfoil hat stuff. Anyway, Gull remarks on several occasions on a church in Whitechapel that holds particular significance to Masonry and Masons--Christchurch, Spitalfields. It's full of pagan symbolism, most notably the fact that the steeple is essentially an obelisk. Here's what it looks like:

Incidentally, Christchurch is supposed to be unsettling in person. The architect, one Nicholas Hawksmoor, designed it so that it it appears as if it's going to fall on you. It won't. But still.

This is what the First Church of Christ in West Hartford looks like:

They aren't carbon copies of one another, obviously (actually, after I took a closer look, there are big differences in certain structural aspects), but the key elements are all there. Most notably, the obelisk on top stands out, a weirdly pagan symbol atop a Christian building.

There is, I think, a bit more at work here than mere coincidence. I do not believe in conspiracy theories (how would you keep half these things secret, for instance). But I have to admit, a small thrill ran up my spine when I realized that the church is right across the street from a Masonic temple.

Later, driving to a party, I found myself flying past churches, all topped with a history's cold stone dagger. I will never not notice it now.

The past looms over us all.

**The title of this piece comes from what is rumored to be a Masonic distress call. Bend your elbows, hold both your palms up in a gesture of acceptance, and say it, and a Mason is obliged to help you. Or so the story goes. I did it for kicks in front of the temple on Main Street. Nothing yet.

It's Osgood's Fault

2008-06-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

I can't remember the last time I actually sat down and read a newspaper. I'm sure I've glanced at the occasional article, but actually picking up the latest issue and reading it is practically unthinkable at this point. This is very bad for the newspaper industry, because I am a journalism major.*

*Actual sequence of events during my academic career at Northwestern:

1. Promises are made regarding Medill's 100 percent job placement rate after graduation.

2. NU raises $1.5 BILLION dollars in a huge effort.

3. Professors inform us that the news media industry, in addition to being a frightening and horrid place where terrible people excel and truth is a habitual consequence, is losing money and lots of it. So it's a frightening and horrid place etc. that will not be hiring us.

4. NU raises tuition.

Don't major in journalism, kids.

I used to read all types of papers, among them being the New York Times. That's over now, 'cause I get my news from the internet*, but the Times is technically part of the internet, so it still makes up a small part of my daily news gathering. There's been this really distressing trend I've been noticing recently that I've never picked up on before, and it centers on the Old Grey Lady.

*When did it become OK not to capitalize the word "internet"?

It's become cliche to call an institution like the Times "out of touch", but MAN, they've been doing this...thing that drives me up the wall. Take this story regarding the recent Mixed Martial Arts fight last Saturday:

“Way to go ‘Dirty Dan’ Miragliotta!” read one post on mmajunkie.com. “What were your instructions? If Kimbo doesn’t get knocked out, make sure he wins the fight?”

Fine, right? Only whoever runs mmajunkie.com didn't write that. A commenter on the post wrote it.

POSTS are written by a blog's author. COMMENTS are written by people COMMENTING on a POST. This seems like a basic issue, one not worth getting worked up over, but it's similar to saying, "A story in the New York Times said recently that 'The New York Times sucks! I've read better writing out of Pravda!'--Jim Bob Jaworski, Bangor, Maine". It's merely commentary!

They get this wrong OVER and OVER again. It's misleading, and lazy, and weird.

There was a similar issue that happened today. If you haven't watched Barack Obama's victory speech on Wednesday, here's a screen cap from right before it, showing Michelle Obama congratulating her husband:
That's a fist pound. Or fist bump. One of those two things. You can really use either expression. Simple. Pound, or bump.

The Times referred to it, in this story, as a "closed-fisted high five".

What the hell.

There aren't any people at that paper who've ever engaged in a fist bump? Not a one? Impossible!

There's only one explanation.

Somewhere in the Times' copy desk, there is a man. He is old, likely over 70, clearly past retirement age, but no one will fire him because he has been at the paper for almost his entire life. I can picture his desk: full of pictures of him with the movers and shakers of the past fifty years, old Sinatra tapes, perhaps some quirky memorabilia he's acquired in his decades reviewing all the news that's fit to print.

His name is Osgood.

He's an institution at the paper. He is stubborn as the lid on a pickle jar. He does not understand anything after 1990 or so, when his mind started to go.

For some inexplicable reason, the Times sends every piece of technology or modern culture-related news his way to be edited.

I can see him now, in the fading half-light of his corner of the floor, peering over the story referencing that picture. He squints at the picture, then at the phrase "fist bump", that the reporter used to describe it. Osgood can feel the world closing in on him. What is this new means of expression? He can't fathom it.

Osgood snorts, and changes the phrase to "closed-fisted high five".

If he can't understand it, he'll be goddamned if anyone else can.

From the Archives: Exclusively Regarding Bobby Abreu's Approach to Hitting

2008-06-02T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry, non-sports fans, we're taking a left turn back into the ballpark for a bit. This is something I wrote that plays off of my enduring fascination with hidden greatness, those people without whom the world would fall apart. In this case, we deal with the curious case of New York Yankees right fielder Bobby Abreu, the greatest player no one can stand.

Bobby Abreu looms over the plate. He is exactly six feet tall but has mastered the cobra's trick of making himself look larger than he is. Abreu holds his hands high and tilts his stocky body forward, giving the impression that he is a frightening power hitter, but this is fiction. Bobby Abreu averages 22 home runs per season, which is respectable but not exceptional. What he has done, in totality, is eschewed exceptional power and turned himself into baseball's version of a meat grinder--a relentless, terrifyingly effective destroyer of pitching.

He's so good at it that nobody wants to watch him. You'll eat hamburgers, but you don't want to watch them get made.

At some point in his life, I imagine Bobby Abreu read Ted Williams' book, titled "The Science of Hitting". His philosophy (Ted Williams is second only to Babe Ruth, who played in an era without integration or the slider, in most important rate categories, so his philosophy on baseball is more "absolutely right" than a true philosophy) was quite simple. Ted Williams wanted young hitter to get a pitch to hit, and when that pitch came, to hit it.

Simple.

Hard to follow, though. Ted's philosophy required an extreme degree of discipline. If a pitch was an inch off the plate, you were not to swing*. If it was an inch too high, you were not to swing. If it was a strike, and your particular collection of skills and swing mechanics would not allow you to put the ball in play for a hit or foul it off safely, you were not to swing. Anything else was giving in to the pitcher's plan to get you out.

*Some players, through a collection of unique skill and confidence, can ignore this rule, but that list is vanishingly small. Vladimir Guerrero of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (this translates to "The Angels Angels of Anaheim, but whatever) swings at more pitches that are not close to the strike zone than anyone else, by a humongous margin--something like three times as often as the next closest guy. But he can get away with it because he has near bizarre strength and hand-eye coordination. I saw him hit an opposite-field line-drive home run on a pitch outside and eyeball-high off of Brad Penny in an All-Star game, and I swear to God I've seen him clock a double off a pitch that bounced in the dirt. Vlad the Impaler. A marvel in a pine tar-stained red helmet. You may never see his like again.

You could not alter the plan under any circumstances. It didn't matter whether that inch-high pitch came in a spring training game or the seventh game of the World Series. You were not to swing. Trust Ted. It would work itself out. You'd come out ahead more often than not. If you swung at the bad pitch, you would make an out. If not, you could get a pitch to hit. Or walk. Either way, you win.

Not swinging is what Bobby Abreu does best. He looms over the plate, looking ten feet tall and coiled like a viper, and he doesn't swing. Bobby Abreu has broken down the batter-pitcher matchup into its component parts. 106 times a year, the umpire calls ball four and Bobby Abreu walks to first. 128 times a year, the umpire calls strike three and Bobby Abreu walks to the dugout. Approximately a third of the time he comes to bat, Bobby Abreu does not put the ball in play.

This infuriated fans in Philadelphia, where he played for eight and a half years. Why, asked the Phillies faithful, would Bobby Abreu refuse to swing (as an aside; he has 1800 or so career hits, so he is clearly capable of doing so)? With a man on second, Bobby Abreu would prefer to walk, to put another man on base without necessarily affecting the score?

Was he selfish? Foolish? Ignorant?

It was certainly a possibility to the fans in Philadelphia. Their franchise is approaching 10,000 losses, the first professional team ever to do so. They could not afford to wait. Bobby Abreu could. So they blame Bobby Abreu, the best player on their team, for their sorrows.

To wit: Bobby Abreu's career batting average is .300. Nothing to write home about. Lots of people have done that.

His career on-base percentage, which is a measure of the number of times he gets on base without making an out, is .407.

On-base percentage is the statistic most closely correlated with scoring runs, which is one of the two ways you win baseball games (the other is preventing runs, which he's also pretty good at, but we are talking about hitting here). This ranks 32nd on the all-time list.

He's ahead of Jackie Robinson. He's ahead of Rickey Henderson. He's ahead of Joe DiMaggio. He's ahead of Mark McGwire. He's ahead of Willie Mays. He's ahead of Arky Vaughn, Hank Greenberg, Honus Wagner, Ralph Kiner, Johnny Mize, Hack Wilson, and Cap Anson (you don't know who these people are, but they're all Hall of Famers).

Furthermore, when he does hit the ball, he hits it hard. His refusal to swing at bad pitches means that a higher percentage of his swings come against good pitches, which are easier to drive on a straight line, hurtling past the infield and coming to rest far away from any outfielder. Bobby Abreu doesn't hit an overwhelming number of home runs, but he smacks 41 doubles a year, bringing his slugging percentage (total bases/at-bats, essentially a measure of overall power) to an even .500. This puts him in the top 100 all-time, ahead of people like Reggie Jackson, George Brett, and Yogi Berra.*

*Admittedly, some of this is due to the fact that he's a corner outfielder, where it's easier for a hard-hitter to thrive. And more of it is due to his era, and his ballpark, and plain dumb luck, and the fact that he hasn't entered a true decline phase. Still, I think it's clear the man is an elite-level hitter.

A team composed entirely of Bobby Abreus would score a thousand runs. They would eat pitchers alive, destroying the coherence of pitching staffs and causing a new outbreak of horrific arm injuries. Heck, they'd even play decent defense and run the bases well.

They would win a hundred and twenty games per year.

But their games would take five hours. They'd almost never swing. Nothing you could do would change them.

This is the curse of Bobby Abreu's approach to hitting. It's like a meat grinder. It gets the job done in the most efficient and effective way possible.

And no one wants to watch.

Must He Be Like Putin?

2008-05-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

I think there's something terribly wrong in Russia.

Not like that's a particularly bold statement. You could make the argument that the huge and disparate entity known as "Russia" has never really been "right--it's just been in various stages of barely-holding-shit-togetherness. This is a place where winter wins wars, where the country practically exists in all four hemispheres at once. It's a freaky place, which I suppose is inevitable when you live right next to the Mongols*.

*Just a note on what the Russians were up against in the Mongol Golden Horde. The Mongols under Genghis Khan were the first truly modern army, in that they were organized, professional, and hierarchical. The bulk of the army consisted of horse-mounted archers, a concept which really is quite ingenious. It's built on a the very simple principle of me being able to shoot at you without you being able to catch me. The Mongols utilized one technique known as the "Parthian Shot" (named after the Parthians, a steppe people who used it to bitch-slap the Romans a thousand years before). They'd ride like bastards up to the enemy, firing all the way, fight for a second or two, then pretend to panic, wheeling around to retreat. When the enemy gave chase, they'd fire while running away ("parting shot"--get it?), and when the enemy was dispersed, tired, and scared, they'd turn around and massacre them. To get an idea of how well this worked, bear in mind that "Mongolia" used to mean "Southeast Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and Poland".

Now, a lot of this explains why the place is so weird, but I think it's recently entered a special level of screwed-up. After a brief period of being one of two big dogs on the world stage, Russia's been on a really noticeable tailspin for the past twenty years or so. Think of it this way: Russia had a really hot girlfriend, lost her, and is now showing up to parties in an old and sauce-stained sweatshirt, drooling all over himself, refusing to take a shower or pay his soldiers. He's knocking back vodka like it's water, creepily hitting on all the hot chicks there, and failing to keep track of his nuclear stockpile, so there's about a ten percent chance the entire place is going to go up in a blinding flash of nuclear light. It's just awkward for everyone involved.

But then, along comes Putin.

Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin is a former KGB agent and the current Prime Minister of Russia. All you really know about him is that he used to be Russia's President, but he seemingly got bored of that, so he nominated some crony to be President, and took the PM spot for himself. But no one talks to the new President, because Putin basically switched up the role of President and Prime Minister. He's at the point where he does whatever the deuce he wants and gets away with it.

And they love him for it.

Don't get me wrong: the election was probably a bit rigged. First, he got 71 percent of the vote, a wee bit too high unless you're Reagan or something, and second, this is Russia we're talking about here. It's not like there's a longstanding democratic tradition in place.

But for a guy who really hasn't brought Russia out of the doldrums (the economy is better, but the country still isn't going anywhere), it's astonishing how much the country loves him. They have Vlad Putin fan clubs, Vlad Putin youth groups, Vlad Putin posters. I recently came upon a Vlad Putin music video, presented here for your consideration:

Just so we're clear on this, you just watched two appallingly hot pop stars sing about how they want to jump a president's bones. Again, just so we're clear.

So, why does Russia love Putin? I think it has pretty much everything to do with image.

Every shot I've seen of Putin has a certain quality to it:

Namely, it makes him look badass. I don't think he purposefully had that particular lighting done just for that picture, but it seems to happen to him an awful lot. He probably just naturally creates ominous lighting.

If you're a country, down and despised, spitting up all over itself at a party, wouldn't you want someone out there who at least gives off a good impression? The impression of "don't mess with me?"

Or, "do what I say, before I smack you?"

Or "I MUST BREAK YOU!"

A lot of the guy's pictures show him shirtless. I think it has something to do with virility.

There's a lot wrong with this whole situation. Putin is practically a dictator. He has opposition leaders jailed, kills journalists who disagree, and likely steals a great deal of money from the country. The love he gets is part fear, but I have the sinking feeling that at least some of it is genuine.

But that's not what bugs me. At least not truly.

I don't think Putin is a real person. I think he's escaped from some lost Ian Fleming novel, one that he wrote but never finished. It lies, forgotten, in a safe deposit box somewhere, and the pages are blank, because the idea inside was too powerful to be contained, and made itself flesh. My problem isn't that Putin is a dictator. He wouldn't be the first.

But when have we had to deal with a real-life, honest-to-goodness supervillain?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am not looking forward to dealing with the nuclear bomb drills heading toward the Earth's core. A man can only do so much in a day.

Fear Itself

2008-05-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

"Diplomacy, like seduction, only improves with practice."
Ben Franklin

When I took swimming lessons at the pool up the street, I never "got" the concept of diving off the side of the pool. The first time I tried it, the girl diving before me dove straight down and scraped her face against the side of the pool. She came up crying, bleeding, and scared.

In the process of analyzing and remaking myself, I've come to determine that *why* I fear is more important than *what* I fear. I don't think anything is really scary, in and of itself. Nothing is immortal or implacable. You can charm that stunner at the bar, if you have the right words. You can kill the robber in your house, if you shoot first and straight. You can move the world with a big enough lever, at least according to Archimedes.

To dive, all I need to do is fall forward and down. To let myself go.

If I had gone before the nameless girl who reddened the pool at Blue Hills Regional High School, I probably would have been fine. I wouldn't have had to think about it.

This will come as a surprise if you know me at all, but I am a consummate planner and obsessive worrier. I try to reduce the disparate tendrils of my life into a bound and catalogued series of steps, all laid out like a grand table map in my head. It's how I keep myself company when I'm bored or lonely, or if I can't sleep, or simply when the mood strikes me.

In approximately five billion years, our sun* will have finished converting all its available hydrogen into helium, and will expand to a monstrous size, engulfing all the inner planets, including ours. I used to worry about this. About something so far into the future that the actual number is practically meaningless. It kept me up nights, worrying while my brother (who's always been much more laid-back) slumbered in the next bed over. How would we survive? What would my future descendants do about the slow, inevitable destructive kicks of a dying star?

*The Sun technically has a name other than "The Sun"--it's actually called "Sol". Which means "The Sun". Kind of like the Earth is "Terra", which means "The Earth" and the moon is "Luna" which means "the moon". This is part of a weird syndrome which, I think, maybe be peculiar to America--we'll call something what it is, but we'll need another language to do so.

Eventually, I consoled myself by rationalizing that any future version of humans would have left Earth long before the Sun went boom. That didn't solve more pressing issues, of course. What would I do about a vampire attacking me in the middle of the night? (solution: grab bible and rosary, wake up brother, force vampires out door while chanting "The Power of Christ Compels You!", arm rest of family with facsimiles of wooden stakes)

Well, that's fine, but say there's a bully at school, and he tries to punch me from behind? What then? (Duck punch if possible, kick backwards with heel of my foot, hopefully impacting the shin, spinning elbow to the nose, run away if bully is not incapacitated).

Like I said, I did this for pretty much everything. I tried to do the same for diving.

Go to one knee at the edge of the pool.

Put your hands over your head so that they form a point.

Lean forward, hands first.

Follow your hands into the water.

And, like almost everything else I had planned out step-by-step, it never worked. I always belly-flopped.

I can fall into conversation with a pretty girl with no problem, but ask me to cold approach one and I'll get flustered. I am unimpressed by famous people, but when I interned at a local newspaper, I would stammer when asking people on the street their opinion of the weather. I can catch screaming line drives right at me, but every high popup is an adventure.

This isn't to say that planning is a bad thing. It diffuses and makes ordinary the concept of the lion in the tall grass, or the monster outside your window. But I've come to realize that , while step-by-step instructions are fine for working out and assembling furniture, they'll only trip you up in the end. You replace one fear with a more insidious one: that of unexpected situations. Better to form your plans on the fly, around the pursuit of concrete goals. Get that girl's number. Get a quote from Joe Public. Pluck that popup out of the sky.

Sometime this summer, when the Get Jacked plan is in full swing and producing truly tangible results, I'll find a pool. I'll kneel at the edge, imagine the blood in the water, and dive. Then I'll do it again, and again, and again, until the blood disappears and the blue welcomes me.

Insulated

2008-05-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I was at work when I saw my friend Jamar drinking some kind of flavored grape drink. It wasn't Gatorade, it was more like a knockoff energy drink that's like Gatorade, only packaged to look slick and modern.

"That's disgusting," I said. "I bet you like grape soda too."

"I love grape soda," said Jamar.

Now, grape soda--really, anything grape-flavored except actual grapes--and I have a simple understanding, namely I hate that shit and won't let it touch my lips. I think we've been able to replicate pretty much every flavor with varying degrees of success*, but science has simply failed to make artificial grape. It's TERRIBLE. It just tastes like purple--widely acknowledged to be the least tasty of any color. Blue is the best, in case you were wondering.

*We can replicate popcorn in jellybean form, for chrissakes.

Jamar is the first person* I've met IN MY LIFE who will admit to liking grape soda. I see it on supermarket shelves all the time, so someone has to be buying it. You'd think I know more of them.

*It has come to my attention that Adam Small and Marc Puleo both enjoy grape soda. Whatever. Point still stands.

Occasionally, I see advertisements for Christian music on television, and they fascinate me utterly. Apparently there are armies of people who go to these concerts and know every lyric, who close their eyes and do that thing where they lift their arms up in affirmation. That freaks me out a bit. I guess it allows you to commune with your fellow man in the spirit of group worship, but what if, like, someone steals your wallet? I guess theres a lot of trust at these things.

I don't know how popular said music is, but I gather it's got a pretty extensive fan base. I've met two people in my life who listen to it. Ever.

Preference and taste are important things. I may not be my khakis* or the music I listen to, but they define parts of me.

*Do I even own khakis anymore? I should check.

Could I be missing some key element in that whole process? Could all of us?

More than ever, it's appallingly easy to edit one's cultural experience. I don't listen to the radio anymore, so it's not necessary for me to hear music I hate in order to get to music I like. I can know everything about every movie that's out there right now--from plot, to cinematography, to character background--months before opening day. I read sports blogs by writers friendly to sabermetrics and the Red Sox. Ever get mad at something Bill O'Reily or Rush Limbaugh has said? I used to, but not anymore, cause they literally do not exist in my world. I don't know anyone who watches them.

Just now, my friend Yaron is editing movies of trips he's taken. His Mexico trip movie is on Facebook. Maybe fifteen years ago, this would have been a VHS tape. Thirty years ago, a slideshow. He couldn't just put it out there. He'd have to have people watch it, face-to-face.

They wouldn't be forced to, per se, but it'd be awfully rude not to. But now, it's buried somewhere in my mini-news feed on Facebook (made up only of people that I want to know), as an option. Only if I feel like it.

I've only tasted grape soda once in my life. How do I know I still don't like it?

My Ancestors are Horse Thieves

2008-04-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Selected excerpts from A Tragic Legacy: DeMartinos Throughout History, my upcoming magnum opus tracking the genetic history of my family. Described by Newsweek as "like Roots, but terrible." Presented in capsule format.

Pierluigi DeMartino (1821-1895)

Often described as "the Poindexter of Italian Unification", Pierluigi was a boon companion to the great Giuseppe Garibaldi, the flamboyant and charismatic leader of men who was instrumental to making Italy what it is today. Pierluigi's main duties included serving as a human stepladder for Garibaldi, massaging Garibaldi's pet parakeets, and hiding during battles. Pierluigi is most remembered for the manner of his death, as described in a contemporary history:

"Announcing his intention to be the first man to fly, DeMartino clambered to the top of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Strapped to his back was a most marvelous contraption, consisting of complex wooden wings, a makeshift tail festooned with the feathers of a goose, and a barrel in the shape of a reverse-cannon, filled with saltpetre and gunpowder. With a brave cry, Pierluigi lit the gunpowder with a nearby brazier, propelling him up and above the golden dome of the basilica. All watching were amazed, as the flying Florentine made several circumlocutions of the plaza, finally coming to rest safely approximately six hundred meters away from his takeoff point.

Whereupon he was pecked to death by a flock of angry parakeets. This situation was reported to have brought much merriment to the Pope.

Lord Fauntleroy D'Martin, Second Earl of Shropfordshire-upon-Weezington (1550-1631)
Primarily responsible for kickstarting the period of scientific advancement, philosophical debate, and artistic explosion known as the Rennaissance, Lord D'Martin was famous for simply making crap up. Among the examples:

He wasn't British
He was a commoner and not a member of the nobility
"Fauntleroy" wasn't even a real name at the time
Shropfordshire-upon-Weezington has no Earl, because it doesn't exist. When asked where his lands were, D'Martin would reply, "Oh, somewhere between Scuzzyville, Fauxtown, and Wales."
Wales also did not exist until D'Martin came up with the concept. Scuzzyville and Fauxtown did not catch on.

Whenever D'Martin was presented with evidence of his deceptions, he would evidently laugh them off, saying something along the lines of "Forsooth, get thee a loade of HIM!" This was seemingly enough to charm even the most stringent of critics, until he made the mistake of saying it to Pope Urban VIII, regarding the pontiff's objections to D'Martin's claims of "totally being an angel". This remark and consequent defiance were overheard by several important thinkers of the time, and the Enlightenment soon followed.

Reportedly charmed by D'Martin's insouciance, the Pope nevertheless had him burned at the stake. D'Martin's last words were "Better a Hot Stake than a Cold Chop!", followed by screaming.

Ragnar Bloodaxe (972-1011)
Likely responsible for the strain of light-colored eyes in the otherwise quintessentially Italian countenance of the DeMartino clan, Ragnar raided up and down the coast of the Mediterranean for many years. His last name is actually a slight mistranslation of a nickname bestowed upon him by his war-leader, Eric the Fuschia--"Blood Ass".

The reasons for this should be fairly clear upon examining Eric's newly-discovered journal entries, in which he recounts several raids in which Ragnar took part:

April 10, 990 Took the crew on a raid today. Totally rad! We captured several oxen (which we ate), many chickens (which we ate), and approximately fourteen Spainiards--men, women, and children--which of course, we ate. Only one casualty--young Ragnar, on his first raid, was shot in his left behind with an arrow.

September 22, 993
Another successful raid! This time, we messed around with some French peasants. Boy, do I love French food! Lost Hrothgar and Buliwyf, unfortunately. Ragnar was stabbed in the right behind. This is becoming kind of a concern as he is having difficulty sitting down in prime rowing position.

June 4, 998
Guess what? Blood Ass got hit AGAIN! He'd never gotten hit with a shuriken there before, but this Far East trip has offered all of us new experiences. I don't even think it matters at this point--it's basically all scar tissue back there.

January 1, 1011
Italy this time. Yet another raid. Captured the Pope. You know, it occurs to me that no one has ever really taught Ragnar how to defend his flank. Which may explain all the ass wounds. I'm going to work with him on that. Anyhow, the Pope thought it was funny. We ate him.

Analysis of Ragnar's corpse indicates that he did eventually learn to successfully defend the rear portions of his anatomy. Unfortunately, that left the front portions rather open to attack--Ragnar Bloodaxe was killed on the raid just following this final entry, victim of approximately forty-seven assorted arrows to the chest, stomach, and head. His ass was unharmed.

Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC)
You can't prove otherwise.

Pharaoh Jodmaru XII (3672 BC-3640 BC)
An outside-the-tomb thinker, Jodmaru XII decided the traditional pyramid structure was yesterday's news. He summoned the greatest architects from across his great and mighty empire in order to create the greatest of tombs. The soon-to-be God told the assembled experts that he wanted a thousand-foot tall tomb that would dwarf any currently built or expected to be built. He wanted a pyramid, alright, but there was a twist.

He wanted it point-first. Upside-down.

His greatest architects told him he was an idiot. Being a kind and enlightened despot, Jodmaru killed them and hired his less competent cousin, who owned a chariot dealership down by the Nile, to construct his tomb. Jodmaru fully expected his upside-down pyramid to be the toast of North Africa.

Unfortunately, while observing construction of the pyramid (which had reached a great height of 15 feet), Jodmaru was crushed to death when the thing toppled over, ironically burying him under a correctly-constructed pyramid, right-side up. This caused the high priest of Anubis much merriment. The location of this totally embarrassing tomb has been mercifully lost to history.

Mar (40,000 BC.--39,970 B.C.)
A common ancestor to ten percent of humanity, not much is known about Mar. He was discovered, perfectly preserved, in a bog in northern Italy. On his person was a makeshift spear, assorted religious trinkets, and one of the earliest instances of a journal. Mar seemed to be attempting to make a list of his ancestors. The language is indecipherable, but Mar was able to make one illustration of his most recent ancestor, getting pecked to death by a gigantic prehistoric bird, while a fellow caveman (wearing something eerily resembly a papal mitre) points and laughs at him. We can learn much from studying this fascinating individual.

From the Archives: Hate Theater

2008-04-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Back in 2006, my friend Phil Wiese and I were working together on a photojournalism project, in which we were instructed to take pictures of an outsider group. We ended up choosing, as our subject, the Westboro Baptist Church, an anti-...well, pretty much anti-everything hate group. This is an edited account of the trip, written on the way back to Evanston.

Phil and I cut through Chicago and smoggy Gary, Indiana to end up in Ann Arbor. A local theater group had decided to put on a production of The Laramie Project, which dramatizes the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man. The Laramie Project has advanced beyond the realm of mere storytelling and become one of those things that sends people into a frenzy.

Fred Phelps is a preacher and lawyer, formerly a practicing attorney in civil rights cases around the middle of the century. He’s a wiry man with big teeth, a former Golden Gloves boxer fond of wearing a humongous cowboy hat. His flock is the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Counts vary as to their numbers, but a young man I talked to from the church says there are at least seventy. Most of them are related to Phelps. He has 13 children and 54 grandchildren. Eleven of his children are lawyers. Four no longer speak to him.

“What is happening now, is that this country is in the midst of a Jonah situation,” said Sam Phelps-Roper, 27, one of Phelps’ grandchildren, who quite clearly still speaks to the old man. It’s early evening and the Mendelsohn Theater is host to two productions tonight. Sam is in front of the theater with ten other members of the church. Two are children. Fred's not here tonight, but he doesn't need to be. They have their own area on the sidewalk, surrounded by yellow police tape. About five hundred Ann Arborites, University of Michigan students, and others have essentially surrounded the church members. Those closest to the church are yelling, and the church members have responded in kind. Sam has taken some time out to talk to me about the purpose of his group.

He carries a sign that says “God Hates Fags”. It’s neon green with a little bit of orange. The other side says “Thank God For AIDS”. Are they, I had asked, attempting to save souls, or merely warning them of their damnation?

“Do you know who Jonah is?” Sam asks me. I do, at least to some extent. Swallowed by a whale, right? Converted to Christianity afterwards?

Sam looks at me like I insulted his mother. Lack of scriptural knowledge is a big no-no amongst Phelps’ flock. “He didn’t convert to Christianity. He already was a Christian. Afterwards, he preached to the city of Nineveh that God was displeased with them. They repented and were saved, but he did not tell them to repent.”

So you’re trying to tell them they’re going to hell?

“Everyone here who does not accept the word of God will go to hell. He is not a forgiving God. The spiritual man judges everything.”

The Westboro Baptist Church, in one form or another, attends approximately 2500 of these protests per year. Their message is simple; America is a godless nation and is therefore condemned to be cast into hell.

Their main complaint with America is its tolerance of homosexuality; as one sign puts it, God not only hates Fags but also Fag Enablers, who are equally condemned. God hates those who do not follow his scripture to the letter. Women who cut their hair are condemned. Those who drink and party are condemned. I would imagine those who eat shellfish are also condemned, as Leviticus puts it, but I didn’t see any “God Hates Cephalopods” signs.

Recent events give the church all the proof it needs of God's wrath. Hurricane Katrina was sent to punish Godless New Orleans. 9/11 was sent to punish Godless New York. Even roadside bombs in Iraq are evidence of condemnation; how else, Sam asks, could a soldier from the most powerful army in the world be killed by a simple explosive? “Thank God for IEDs” is a more recent, popular sign, and the church uses it when they demonstrate at the funerals of U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq.

Not ten feet away from us, Charles Hockenbarger is arguing with Lee Chrisman. Hockenbarger is a bull-faced man with earmuffs and the sign informing Fag Enablers that they will etc. etc. Chrisman is a freshman, majoring in acting. Their conversation is set on a loop.

“You can’t even quote for me the correct verse! You don’t know anything about the Bible,” Hockenbarger yells. His voice is very strong and can be heard easily in a crowd. “How can you argue with me, you moron? You hate God. You hate him.”

Chrisman is a Roman Catholic, a group for which the church saves special disdain. “I don’t hate God! I love God, and I love you too! You have to realize what you’re doing is wrong! God does not hate! God loves everybody.”

Again, says Hockenbarger, Chrisman is ignorant of scripture. “Haven’t you ever read Psalm 5:5?” he screams. “It says that God hates Esau! God does not love everybody. And how can you say you love me when everybody here has been threatening us? Why do we need these cops here?”

In internet-speak, a troll is someone who posts on a message board with the specific purpose of riling up its inhabitants. Skilled trolls will take an outlandish position, present it as nonchalant fact, and watch as the board blows up in aggrieved response. The Westboro Baptist Church is both the best and worst kind of real-life troll. Their positions are outlandish, but sincerely believed. They have message discipline; no one strays off the basic God Hates X theme. They are deliberately provocative, as children as young as eight stand, bundled against the cold, holding these signs.

They've set it up so they're in a no-lose situation. You can't argue with them as the Bible disproves you. You can't judge them as your sin is infinitely worse. You can't even join them. That's what makes the group unique among fundamentalists--no converts are necessary or wanted. The church just wants to taunt. To provoke. To infuriate

Their law degrees come in handy whenever they provoke a bit too much. A middle-aged woman records the proceedings on a handheld DiviCam, focusing on any particularly intense arguments. If a fight breaks out, they will use the footage as evidence in a court of law. Likely they’ll win; they never start physical confrontations, but they know how to profit from them.

This nearly comes to a head as the church members pack up their signs and leave. Phil and I had been allowed complete access behind the yellow line up until this point. The police officers asked us and anyone else not carrying a sign to back up, so we did, despite protests. Hockenbarger and Phelps-Roper called everyone together into a tight clump, where they deposited their signs into a small green bag. As they begin to leave, a few young guys wearing Michigan sweatshirts begin to run toward them. The crowd starts to cheer, although the perceptive ones realize that this is exactly what the church members want, and yell at the others to stop. They do, but only because the cops have formed a protective wall in front of the church members.

Everyone disperses. The play outside is over, and the one inside is just beginning. There is nothing here for anyone. The church hasn't convinced anyone, but they never wanted to. The protesters didn't prevent the church from coming, but they never wanted to either. Our pictures will later reveal that, aside from a few heated arguments, most people in the throng surrounding the church members were smiling, or ignoring them.

A good time was had by all.

Get Out of My Head

2008-04-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head?

These are the first words I've written about one Juro Patton in about six years. I created him as part of a collabrative storytelling effort for a now-defunct fan website for a series of books, games, and online short stories*. I was perhaps 14 when I started frequenting the site's message boards, fleshing out the universe in which our characters would inhabit, discussing minutiae that seemed important at the time but escape me all these years later. We had a structure to the whole thing, but there was freedom to develop our own characters, stories, and niches.

*I won't be linking you to the site for a few reasons. First, it only semi-exists anymore. The front page doesn't have any links on it, and you'd have to fiddle around to get anywhere. Second, I'm not gonna lie--this whole enterprise was more than a bit nerdy. I started this whole blog thing to impress women, after all, so we'll be avoiding any temptation to comb through my unfortunately well-preserved post history. Sorry. You can probably still find it if you're a good internet detective.

Central to the whole process was the creation of a character that you'd use in writing said collaborative stories. It was part amateur sci-fi, part game. You'd write part of a story from your character's point of view, leave off at a dramatically appropriate point, then let the next person take over from their character's point of view, and so on. The point wasn't really to win, per se. Just to tell an interesting tale.

I came up with the idea for Juro Patton out of a need for a strong central character in one particular area. Juro, embarrassingly enough, started off as a bit of a Mary Sue, and for a short while was named Joseph Patton, which combined the names of my favorite general with, uh, my name.

Give me a break. I was 14.

The process of creating him was convoluted, so I'll spare you most of the nerdy details. You had to come up with the obvious physical traits, habits, hobbies, and so on. The real meat of the process was in a character's Virtues and Flaws, heroic traits and failings that could come up at any point in a story. This was important to the whole system because another player, while not allowed to take direct control over your character ("Biff Manly* shot a rocket at Juro Patton, blowing him into little piles of barely-recognizable gore"), could utilize his Virtues and Flaws in an appropriate way ("Biff Manly insulted Juro Patton, noticing that his words had a visible effect on the quick-to-anger soldier").

*I once created a fake player named Biff Manly in a baseball video game. He was seven feet tall and weighed four hundred pounds. I think he hit a hundred home runs in the one season I had him play.

The whole process actually helped me get better as a writer. It's useful to realize that your characters need to have realistic flaws and can't be super-awesome badasses a hundred percent of the time. Juro Patton eventually took form as a charismatic but deeply flawed tragic hero, an intensely loyal leader of men whose temper was quick, blinding, and almost crippling. He was mischievous but lacked tact. He leapt at danger but constantly overestimated his own capabilities. He was, without a doubt, the best character I'd ever created.

I should have stopped there. But I kept refining him.

The best movies, stories, characters, and plots are ambiguous and uncertain. The scariest and most memorable image from Jaws isn't the shots of the shark rising up out of the water--it's his fin, inexorably moving beneath the waves toward his prey. I should have left Juro Patton as a strongly defined collection of traits, bound together by a loose physical description, background, and anecdotes.

The end result was that I only ever wrote ABOUT him. Every time I thought he was ready, some perceived flaw would crop up--was kind of music did he like? Where did he get that scar on his cheek? What color were his parents' eyes? Was he a sportsman? A conservationist? What were his political positions?

Juro Patton became a Koch Snowflake.

It's a mathematical fractal, made by adding triangle after triangle to the primary shape. Here's an example of the first four iterations:

The length of a Koch snowflake is infinite, as it keeps on getting more and more complex. Its area is finite. You could draw a circle around it and it would never touch the boundary, even after increasing its area a billion-fold. By constantly redefining my character, I limited him.

I never wrote a story featuring him. Not one. He exists only in my head.

Worse, he's stuck there. If one puts that much effort into defining a character, it's tough to get rid of him. Juro Patton is six feet five inches tall, two hundred and thirty pounds, with blue eyes, shoulder-length black hair, a scar (from a teenage gang-fight) on his right cheek, extending from his ear to his lip, fond of jaunty uniforms and history, a harmonica player who loves the outdoors. I'll probably remember that for years.

You ever have a song stuck in your head? Try an entire person.

Honest Wagner

2008-04-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

This is a re-post of a previously written piece I've posted in various pieces. I figure it's good to get it in a central place. So, for your consideration...

Which is the real man?

Meet John Peter Wagner, a squarely-built shortstop of the late-19th and early-20th century, known to the writ of history as, alternately; the Flying Dutchman, Hans, Johannes, or simply and most memorably, Honus. He spent the vast majority of his21-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who were a dominant franchise back then, far removed from the bottom-dwellers they are today. He led the league in slugging six times, stole over seven hundred bases, slapped over three thousand hits, knocked over six hundred doubles, and legged out over two hundred and fifty triples.

He may have been the best defensive player of his day. Playing in the inky, primordial days of baseball’s past, before gloves came into widespread usage, he was perhaps the most adept at scooping up hot grounders and spearing line drives with thick, meaty hands that never went wrong.

You could go on all day about his accomplishments, reciting line after line of numerically outstanding seasons, but there’s really only one way to sum him up. He was Honus Wagner, the greatest shortstop of all time.

Only that's not really him. Not quite

What you’re looking at is something Duchamp and the Dadaists would have had a field day with. The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card is the rarest and most expensive card ever made. Between 50 and 200 were produced, with only a fraction surviving. One version, at one point owned by no less a person than Wayne Gretzky, has been sold for progressively greater and greater amounts, over and over again. It last went for $2.8 million dollars.

I’m always fascinated by the way people are represented in art, especially a sodden and violently commercial medium like baseball cards. I have no doubt that, at one point, the artist commissioned by the American Tobacco Company to immortalize Honus Wagner on a baseball card may have seen a picture of his subject, or even met him in person. This makes his representative choices all the more…puzzling.

This is what Honus Wagner actually looked like, around the time this card was made:

Now, I’m not saying the card looks nothing like the man. They’ve got the same nose.

But other than that? Honus Wagner’s face is that of a man who has spent his life playing a rough sport in perhaps its roughest period. He is weary and taciturn, with lines criss-crossing his face, each one a reminder of every time a pitch came near his head, or some runner flashed into second base, spikes high. I’m almost entirely certain that this picture was taken right after he finished playing a game, as his uniform is rumpled and careworn, a mirror of his face.

You can’t see his eyes. They’re sunken into his face, blocked by the gathering shadows of late afternoon. No night games back then, you see.

Compare that to the youthful fellow in the T206, and we’ve got quite a conundrum. I can understand cleaning up the uniform and haircut a bit, but why the youthful countenance? The bright, clear eyes? T206 Honus Wagner has rosy cheeks.

Ceci n’est pas une Honus Wagner. Magritte would have been proud.

What is Honus thinking in that second picture? Does he know his course is set for him? He may have some kind of inkling that he was one of the greats of the game, but he couldn’t have known that he’d be one of the first ever members of the Hall of Fame. He couldn’t have known that, improbably, he would break out of a crippling shell of shyness to become beloved by an entire country (except for Ty Cobb, but he hated everybody).

He couldn’t have known that no one would remember him for that.

How will you be remembered once you’re gone? Assuming you are remembered, of course, by anyone outside your family and friends. Odds are, it’ll be for something stupid, or at least trivial. William Howard Taft was the only person to ever be President and a Supreme Court justice, but everyone remembers him most for being fat. Ty Cobb has the highest lifetime batting average out of anyone who has ever played baseball, but everyone remembers him for being an asshole.

Ted Williams—Teddy Ballgame!—was perhaps the greatest hitter ever, a legendary sportsman after he retired, and fought in two wars, shooting down enemy airplanes left and right, but I bet the first thing one thinks about when one hears his name is his head, frozen and cracked in a forgotten part of Alcor’s cryonics lab. Maybe the collective memory of our culture has room for only so many personality traits, and we weed out that which doesn’t interest us.

We strive so hard to make our mark, and it can all be undone by an accident of history. Honus Wagner mastered the game of baseball like few have before or after him. But he’s remembered as the subject of a card that some rich idiot buys every few years. He's practically incidental to the card's fame. It doesn’t even look like him.

Look at that second picture again. John Peter Wagner. The Flying Dutchman. The greatest shortstop who ever lived. A scarred wraith, rising from the dawn of history, struggling to keep his name. He is forever in the shadow of a piece of cardboard.

Look at that card.

This is not Honus Wagner.

But it is.

Big Time

2008-04-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

It's tough to get a sense of size beyond what we can directly observe. An elephant is big. Mount Everest is big. Shaq is big. You can stand next to any of these and marvel at them. Our brains aren't built to think past what we can reliably compare. It's why we use tropes like "the length of two football fields" or "the size of Rhode Island" to sum up things like aircraft carriers and asteroids.

You really can't use those types of measurements with VY Canis Majoris. It's a star in the Canis Major constellation, which represents a dog following Orion the Hunter. VY Canis Majoris needs a whole host of summations. You've got to conceive of it by pieces.

First, the Earth. 40,000 km around at the equator. It'd take you about three years to walk around the entire thing.

The Earth's star, Sol, is 109 times that circumference. A good way of looking at it is to imagine how many Earths could fit inside our sun were it hollow: about a million, give or take. It'd take you about 350 years to walk around the entire thing.

The Sun is a medium-sized star, pretty much smack-dab in the middle of the stellar range. VY Canis Majoris is the largest star we've ever observed, by an absurd magnitude.

Just to give you an idea of this monster, here's it compared to the Sun:

You can't even see it without that handy-dandy magnification.

It would take you SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS to walk around the entire thing. If you put VY Canis Majoris in the middle of our solar system, where the Sun is now, it would extend out past SATURN.

Light travels 186,000 miles per second, meaning that it could circle the earth eight times in one second. Light emitted from VY Canis Majoris takes EIGHT HOURS to circle the entire thing.

I'm fascinated by this absolutely beastly collection of superheated gas and matter, as all people are fascinated by the Biggest and Most and Greatest. It's 5,000 light years away from us, fortunately too far away to affect us when it goes...supernova? It's got to go more than that. Hypernova, maybe. A whole new category for the biggest Dog we know of.

Infinite space removes grandiosity's shackles. There is so much for us to discover.

Scouting Report: Joe DeMartino

2008-04-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

Player's personal comments in italics

Height: 5'10"

Weight: 170 lbs. (and dropping!)

Bats: Left

Throws: Right

Sings: Tenor

Eyes: Green

Hair: Brown, awesome

COMPLETE ATHLETIC RECORD

LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL (Ages 7-13)

Strengths: Good throwing arm, reliable glove, excellent plate discipline
Weaknesses: No power, no strike zone judgment, slow, afraid of balls thrown more than 60 mph.
Positions played well: Catcher, second base, third base
Positions played incompetently: Outfield (all), pitcher

HIGHLIGHTS: Once tagged two people out at home on the same play. Wore out pitchers with ridiculous refusal to swing at close pitches. Dove and caught a ball once in center field. Mashed the occasional double. Still holds record for killing mosquitoes in dugout at Kennedy Field (fifty in one night!)

LOWLIGHTS: Walked four people in a row during disastrous stint as pitcher. Almost threw ball at fat kid who mocked him for walking said people. Fat kid was walking down first base line at the time. Struck out with frequency and flair. Bad eyesight. Struck out on purpose against last pitcher ever faced, due to pitcher's first offering going an inch over his head at eighty miles per hour. Catcher's return throw to the pitcher once hit him in the head while he was in the batter's box. Struck out--looking!--on a full count with the bases loaded and two outs in the final inning of the local championship game*.

REASON FOR RETIREMENT: Couldn't hit a curveball.

PLAYER SUMMATION: Futility infielder.

*OK, while technically true, the circumstances were bullshit. We were down by five, so even if I hit a grand slam, we still had the autistic kid who hated baseball coming up after me. I read Ted Williams' "The Science of Hitting" (fat lot of good it did me), and its central tenet was that it's pointless to swing at a pitch you can't hit. So I didn't swing at that pitch. Wanna know why? IT WAS AT MY FRIGGING ANKLES! When the ump rang me up, I had to restrain myself from breaking his arm with my bat.

POP WARNER/HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL (ages 10-14)

Strengths: Ability to understand plays. Advanced sense of self-preservation.
Weaknesses: Average size. Slow. Lacks agility. Afraid of contact. Averse to pain. Glasses.
Positions played well: Left bench
Positions played incompetently: All

HIGHLIGHTS: Nicknamed "The Professor" by first Pop Warner coaches. Felt awesome sense of inclusion with every team played on. Great sideline motivator. Good snapper. Planned and led successful raid on defensive unit's cabin in freshman year training camp in Vermont. Successfully explained concept of a light-year to star nose tackle. Was the only person to quit freshman year football with honor and to the coach's face. Received no major injuries*.

LOWLIGHTS: Refused to go all-out in drills. Shied away from every tackle. Run over constantly at the line of scrimmage. Cried when formerly undefeated team lost a heartbreaker to North Attleboro. Lost a cleat in the mud of a Martha's Vineyard field. Fractured right pinky finger after catching it in opponent's facemask. Mocked by creepy drunken townie for sitting out with said injury.

REASON FOR RETIREMENT: Spent week-long training camp in hellish Vermont locale with two-a-day practices, shitty food, and no pillows/sheets/mattresses. Literally slept on wood.

PLAYER SUMMATION: Looks a bit lost out there.

*This one kid I knew, Derek Durkin, was a fleet and nimble running back. Really talented, just loved the game. We had this one drill where two players faced off, about twenty yards apart. The coach held a ball in the air between the players, and they had to run forward and either a) get the ball or b) tackle the guy with the ball. This was the dumbest fucking drill I'd ever been a part of. I always slowed up so I wouldn't get the ball and made a half-hearted dive at my opponent. My coaches were always pissed. One of them headbutted me while I was wearing a helmet. Derek Durkin, maybe eleven or twelve years old at the time, received THREE CONCUSSIONS from this and various other drills. So yeah, no thanks. I like my brain intact.

GOLF (age 14?)

Strengths: Hit the crap out of the ball
Weaknesses: Didn't know where the ball was going. Hated golf.
Positions played well: Not golfer.
Positions played incompetently: Golfer

HIGHLIGHTS: Found out he hated golf*.

LOWLIGHTS: Crazy kid who ended up being a townie nearly decapitated him with a five-iron after some gentle mocking of his swing.

REASON FOR RETIREMENT: Found out he hated golf.

PLAYER SUMMATION: Hated golf.

*"When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it."--Hall of Fame second baseman Rogers Hornsby. Hell yeah, Rajah.

FENCING (ages 14-present)

Strengths: Strong wrists. Totally awesome salute. Looked cool in a white kevlar bodysuit. Awesome hair looked cool when mask was taken off dramatically. Got to keep sweet purple warmup suit from Northwestern.
Weaknesses: Mediocre footwork. Tended to fall in love with parries and neglect offense. Usually faced off against D-I scholarship athletes who had been fencing their entire lives and occasionally were Olympians. Lost to girls*.
Positions played well: Pain-in-the-ass defensive specialist
Positions played incompetently: Attacker

HIGHLIGHTS: Once just absolutely destroyed this arrogant prick who gave him a "come and get it" hand signal after lunging. At least seven confirmed wins, including three in a row against another club team when the rest of his squad was unable to continue due to injury/fatigue. College coach had sweet Civil War-era mustache.

LOWLIGHTS: Unconfirmed number of losses, possibly in the thousands. Lost 15-0 in Ohio State Duals against some guy who he later found out was captain of "The Excalibur Squad", whatever that is. Tried and failed to cause crippling knee injuries to Ohio State fencers. Never went to supposedly mandatory workouts due to combination of 7 AM start time, two-mile walk, cold weather, and alcohol.

REASON FOR RETIREMENT: Combination of daily three hour practices, vastly increasing academic workload, and constant ass-kickings.

PLAYER SUMMATION: Looked cool, at least.

*To be absolutely fair, these girls were the cream of the crop. NU is one of those schools which is ranked anywhere between No. 1 and No. 5 in the country at any given point, so these kids had all kinds of family traditions, dating back like a hundred years. Not that you care, you jerks.

TRACK (age 15)

Strengths: None
Weaknesses: Slow.
Positions played well: Sitter.
Positions played incompetently: Runner

HIGHLIGHTS: Found out he hated track

LOWLIGHTS: Brought a book to the only practice he attended. Read it while coach was talking. Quit after first quarter-mile due to boredom.*

REASON FOR RETIREMENT: Slow, hated track.

PLAYER SUMMATION: Hated track.

*Neil Gupta, noted track stalwart, has never let me forget this. I still don't have the foggiest idea why I decided to try running, considering I hate running and have to listen to angry-man music to get through 15 minutes on a treadmill.

OVERALL PLAYER EVALUATION

Strong arm. Good hands. Slow feet. Hates pain. Loves competition. Used to wish he was Ted Williams. Will now settle for Joe Posnanski.

The Caveman

2008-04-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Some people just have an advanced sense of themselves.

About seven months ago, I broke up with my girlfriend of four and a half years. As you might imagine, this left me with just oodles of newly-formed questions about exactly who I am. This type of thing crops up with me every three years or so. I usually come out of it as a better person, or at least a different one.

For now, though, I'm in the middle of a grand re-imagining, trying to develop aspects of myself that I had previously cast aside. It's actually going pretty well. I'm solidifying. My goal is to become, in some way, a fully-formed Renaissance Man.

My goal is the Caveman.

I don't know the first thing about rugby. It bears a resemblance to football, so I can kind of follow what's going on. I gather you need to run into an end zone with an oddly-shaped ball and prevent other players from doing so by physical force. Regardless, it's tough to follow if you're not familiar with its quirks*.

*This exact same thing applies to cricket. I know it comes from the same family of games as baseball, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the one cricket game I've ever watched. The pitcher (bowler) wound up, hurled the ball at the batter, and the guy just crushed this freaking ball. Walloped it into the stratosphere. I don't think it's landed yet. All I know is that he hit what must be the American equivalent of a home run.

And NO ONE REACTED! The announcers barely made mention of it. Weird sport.

I don't know where I first heard Sebastien Chabal's name mentioned, but I do remember the first time I saw him in action. Ready for it?

A couple of things:

1. Sebastien Chabal plays rugby for the the French national rugby team, and also the Sale Sharks. He is 6'3" tall and weights 260 lbs.

2. He's the one with the beard who looks like a caveman.

3. I think he killed that first guy.

4. In fact, his nickname is "l'Homme des Cavernes"—the Caveman

5. His other nicknames are "The Seabass" and "The Anesthetist".

6. He might have killed that second guy too.

Have you ever met someone who is exactly what they should be? No wasted effort? No doubt? The sum totality of their lives has become plain on their faces, and you get the sense that their world will never fall apart. It's contained from within by a strong magnetic force, too well-maintained to ever fail, like a benevolent black hole.

Sebastien Chabal was put on this earth to hit other gentlemen very hard in the pursuit of athletic glory, while looking like a monster from the dawn of time. It's a simple thing, but here's the rub. He's accomplished what so many of us strive our entire lives to do: he has discovered his purpose and, in the discovering, has found he enjoys it. You can't break him. He is forever himself.

I take heart from this. At times, I feel alone and despised, but I take heart from this giant Frenchman, playing a strange sport in a distant land. My purpose awaits me, but I'm in no great hurry to find it. Sebastien Chabal was born as Sebastien Chabal, but it took him a while to become The Caveman.

Because "toycannon.blogspot.com" was not available...

2008-04-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

Adding a simple "The" solves that problem.

"The Toy Cannon", incidentally, is the nickname of 1960s-70s Houston Astros center fielder Jimmy Wynn. He got it by hitting moon-shot, tape-measure home runs despite being (charitably) 5'6" tall. The name itself has no relation to this blog save for two things.

First, we'll be talking about baseball. Not all the time or anything. But it'll come up.

Second, as nicknames go, that one is absolutely perfect. I mean, boy, is it ever perfect. We've entered a real down-time in terms of nicknames and I worry that it's a permanent thing. Look, the best player in baseball right now is Alex Rodriguez. Fifty years ago, he would have been called something like "Moonshine Al" or "The Impossible Machine". Something evocative, you know? The best we've come up with for him is "A-Rod", which tells you bloody well nothing. If you were looking at Jimmy Wynn up at bat and asked who he was, and I told you "Oh, that's Jimmy Wynn, the Toy Cannon", I suspect you'd have a good idea of what he was like as a player. Not so with Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez.

That's not his fault, incidentally, horrid Yankee though he be. The "X-Rod"* nicknaming convention is insidious. Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez had a great nickname (though stolen a bit from Carlton "Pudge" Fisk), but I've heard people refer to him as "I-Rod". For shame, people.

*This same problem extends to politics. Otto von Bismarck was "The Iron Chancellor", which is kickin' rad. George W. Bush is "Dubya". Christ. It's just his middle initial, mispronounced.

For my money, the top ten best nicknames in all of history are as follows:

1. Edward "The Black Prince"

Just an absolute stunner of a nickname. You have to marvel at how badass a man has to be to be nicknamed "The Black Prince". I can just imagine the conversation back in France:

French Soldier 1: So, I hear the English are coming. We can totally take them. Who's in command?

French Soldier 2: The Black Prince.

French Soldier 1: God damn it.

French Soldier 2: I know!

For what it's worth, Edward was never called "The Black Prince" in his lifetime, so the above conversation never really could have taken place. Still. "The Black Prince". Damn, son.

2. James "Cool Papa" Bell

This nickname is good enough that it's subsumed James Bell's actual name; I know an awful lot about baseball*, and I had to look it up. Cool Papa Bell was a Negro Leagues great, said to be so fast that he could flick a light switch and be in bed before the room went dark. The marvelous part about this legend is that it actually happened once, due to faulty wiring.

*God, I'm so smart.

3. Jimmy "The Toy Cannon" Wynn

Covered previously. Jimmy Wynn played in a cavernous pitcher's park in a low-offense era that killed his chances at the Hall of Fame. One year, he alone accounted for 37 of his team's 93 TOTAL home runs. His wife also stabbed him this one time. So there's that.

4. Walter "Sweetness" Payton

Most football nicknames run the super-macho gamut; Mean Joe Green, Jack "The Assassin" Tatum, Jerome "The Bus" Bettis. Just saying "Sweetness" actually makes me smile a little bit. It's completely non-conformist, rolls off the tongue, and tells you all you need to know about the man's running style.

5. Attila the Hun, "The Scourge of God"

Visigoth Soldier 1: So, I hear the Eng--uh, Huns are coming. We can totally take them. Who's in command?

Visigoth Soldier 2: The Scourge of God

Visigoth Soldier 1: God damn it.

Visigoth Soldier 2: Also, we're about to enter the Dark Ages.

Visigoth Soldier 1: *forgets how to read*

Fun fact: Typing "Scourge of God" into Wikipedia takes you directly to Attila's page. You know you've a great nickname when no one has dared to take it for 1600 years.

6. Illich Ramirez Sanchez, "Carlos the Jackal"

Leftist revolutionaries have a bunch of great nicknames (I'm not a huge fan of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, but you have to admit, that name has sticking power), but Illich Sanchez' is the best. Reduced slightly in power considering the guy is in prison and did not die in a hail of gunfire.

7. Martha "Calamity Jane" Cannary

Another nickname that has completely subsumed the subject's actual name. Whatever your opinion* of Calamity Jane, it will change dramatically once you watch HBO's "Deadwood".

*Unless your opinion of Calamity Jane is that she is a drunken mess of a person whose every other word is a profanity. Then your opinion probably won't change much.

8. Manfred von Richtofen, "The Red Baron"

English Pilot 1: So, I hear the Germans are coming. We can totally take them. Who's in command?

English Pilot 2: *dies of trench foot*

English Pilot 1: God damn it.

9. Erwin Rommel, "The Desert Fox"

Are there foxes in the desert? I think there are, but I'm too lazy to confirm that independently. I doubt they're really all that fierce. Anyways, I hate to give a great nickname award to a Nazi, but "The Desert Fox" is too good to pass up.

Is a movie made better by the inclusion of the Nazis as the main villain? I'm pretty certain that's true, based solely on the Indiana Jones movies. The first and third? Excellent. Lots of Nazi-punching/shooting/dissolving-due-to-the-terror-of-the-Almighty. The second one? Tribesmen. Not so good.

10. Bob "Death to Flying Things" Ferguson

19th-century infielder who apparently was very good at catching spherical white objects before they hit the ground. This nickname is really long and wordy, which is usually the worst thing a nickname can be, but it's just so goofy that it gets the nod. It's one of those things that only drunken men with bowler hats and handlebar mustaches could come up with.

That's a hell of a list.