Some Things Don't Change

I mentioned in my last post about not using a car for everyday activities like "getting to work". I use a combination of the LA Metro and my bicycle. Some days, when I don't use my bike, I ride two separate trains and walk from the Vermont/Athens stop on the Green Line (look it up on Google Maps for an example of "in the 'hood").

But, yesterday as I was talking with Corrie, I realized that when I don't have a book to be reading, like:

(finished too quickly)

I find myself using a specific app on my smart phone: the New York Daily News Sports Page.

The News is one of the two trashy tabloids, along with the Rupert Murdock owned NY Post, that sell more in City than the revered Times. I enjoyed their sports writing...what can I say?

So, I find myself riding the train to work and reading the News' sports page.

Dispatch from Endor

I don't use a car for everyday life. "Anachronistic" isn't the correct word I'm thinking of, but that could be part of it. My personal circles of existence are small and, besides the cushy downtown neighborhood I roam around in on weekends, quite desolate and ugly.

South LA, while shedding the connotations that come with the "Central" part of the area's identity, retains a general malaise that floats in the air like the smell of dog fart and asphalt, a malaise that's still angry with police brutality and social injustice, but tired now and worn down and mostly devoid of hope. The threat of violence is mostly gone.

The work I'm doing makes up for the visceral day to day experience of biking or walking through the 'hood, but still...sometimes you need a break.

So that leads us to a few weekends ago, and a camping trip to an ancient grove nestled between two canyon walls, and old-school fern and redwood forest relatively close to us.

By "relatively close" I mean a hundred miles north...of San Luis Obispo.

Limekiln State Park is the name of the campground we went to, and it is unique in that it combines the rocky coast of Big Sur:

...With the fern and redwood forests of the forest moon of Endor:

And they're, like, maybe a thousand feet apart. Maybe less. A quick walk from the sand and boulders to our tent site. "Would you like the beach or the redwoods?" the lady at the camp's entrance asked about in which campsite region we'd like to be. We answered correctly, it turned out: redwoods.

The beaches sites were so windy and miserable at night that the cover the redwoods provided were well appreciated.

Since this is the late autumn, the day ends and the night begins, and you better be done with heavy lifting work of the evening by that time; no matter what time-pieces tell you the "time" is, your day is quickly coming to a close. You find yourself tired and ready for bed at quarter after seven.

So, as dusk approaches, we'd make dinner, get the fire going for warmth and desert s'mores and a connection to the most advanced technology from ten thousand years ago.

After dinner and liquid warmth, we'd head back over to the beach for sunset:

And be set for the next day's walk:

The reprieve from the everyday ugliness of my little circles was great, and I invite everyone to our little slice of Endor.

The even have giant kilns, like the name suggests:

Touching base...

I've been posting little things to many of my blogs today, and sometimes nothing but a sentence or picture. So, here, today, I'll be sharing a picture I captured from a video, and maybe I'll find a better one in the coming days as I do my analysis and reflection, but here's a taste.

(Triangles, Mr. Sherwood, & Malcolm X)

I'll be posting an explanation on some of my new nicknames or monikers in a bit, along with an idea about the kids and the neighborhood, but I've just been so crunched for time. It took a canceled grad class for me to get some time to throw some stuff up on these guys.

Dad, not that you're too concerned, but I have been scribbling out notes for my novel as they come to me while I'm in the school, so that project isn't being as adversely effected as the blogging by my time constraints.

"What Movie..." Trivia Post for a Lazy Sunday

All right, so we were watching a movie and in the background I saw train lines that had destinations of Long Beach and Santa Monica. I took a picture, and my question is (mostly for Dan): What movie is this?

By "Collapse" I mean ...

...that people will no longer go to it. It will be either too dangerous (like Facebook is now) for lack of security, or too boring, or too old hat. Its power to make carloads of money from advertising will be severely curtailed, simply because people will not use it any more. Or at least to the same extent.

Information will still be available of course, but it will be from new sources, maintained in a forum as yet unfamiliar to us, delivered maybe to our phones, or maybe to earbuds, or maybe to microprocessors we have implanted in our forearms that feed special goggles that look just like glasses. Don't have a clue.

Oh, I can imagine a future where there are still a few bedraggled internet porn sites for people who can't get it anywhere else, but that will almost be it. Your banking, scheduling, email, entertainment, and research needs will all be served by a paid-membership service, which will try to be all things to you, because it wants as much of your money as it can get. I honestly don't know what the next big thing is; I'm just stabbing in the dark. But it seems inevitable that that's where it's going. The success or failure of such enterprises will depend on how well they play with others. I think Yahoo is a microcosm of this: it had its heyday, and then fell behind the times, and is now struggling in an environment where others (Google, MSN, Apple) are simply minting money. And almighty Google had better be planning very, very carefully and skillfully if they want to stay up front in the locomotive. They ain't guaranteed shit.

What the internet specializes in right now is pandering to people's egos. People post pictures of themselves, which nobody will view as much as they do, and caption their photos with drivel only they find witty. How will future technologies encourage this ugly impulse? I don't know, but you can bet they will find a way.

So as the poachers and miscreants (corporate and otherwise) pollute the internet with their greed, there are planners - scientists and visionaries and just smart entrepreneurs - who will inject some combination of hardware, firmware, and software that will throw over the internet as we know it. It won't happen all at once, but to me, it's already under way. Just look at the amount of advertising you see everywhere there. People just don't want that, and are willing to pay a premium not to have to deal with it.

Dispatch from South Los Angeles

Gentleman,

Although we haven't been doing much on this site, I have been very excited by my recent connections with you fine gentleman: dad and the talks about Rieux and The Plague; and Dan, thanks for coming to lunch instead of going straight to the airport, and I'm sorry I ditched you for the guanciale.

Now my residency has started fully.

That's what I am, technically, a resident teacher. Like a doctor, right? You know, they're doctors, just in residency before being completely credentialed. (Have you met my knee?) That's how we're not really "student teaching", as a verb that dad's familiar with. I am paired with a mentor teacher, as well as a partner from the cohort, and the three of us ultimately figure out how to make it work, the lead taken, obviously, by the mentor.

The school that we as a cohort worked in over the summer differs from the school I've been placed in for the residency in three major ways: 1) level; 2) demographics; and 3) location. In the summer we worked with middle school students; my residency is at a high school. The students that attended the middle school were nearly completely Latino; this high school is probably 57% black to 39% Latino, with a smattering of Pacific Islanders and Nigerians. What's more is that even within the two majority groups there is an entire spectrum of variation, and they all coexist as a vibrant and sometimes uneasy collective.

As far as location goes, according to Google Maps the middle school, which lives in a town called Huntington Park, is a little over eight miles away from the high school, which resides in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County called Westmont. When I used to think of unincorporated land, my brain would head to tiny pockets of community in San Luis county, the largest being Los Osos, which is an actual town.

Westmont has more than twice as many people as Los Osos, but is mostly neighborhood carved out of other people's plans. South Los Angeles surrounds the area.

I'm also trying something novel, but not so new for me: being the crazy white guy.

I ride my bike through some areas that other people---people I work with at the school---would do everything they could to avoid breathing its air, let alone hanging about to do some shopping. Even if shopping was a goal, there'd be limited choices.

But, dang, folks, it's not that bad; it's almost never as bad as the worst fears, and that's just about true everywhere outside of Syria or Iraq. Plus, the ride is not that far and has very little elevation change.

I ride from 103rd and Willowbrook Ave---the Metro Blue stop at Watts Tower, to basically 108th and Normandie, a not-quite five mile ride that takes about (read: exactly) twenty-five minutes. I do, though, use those twenty-five minutes to breach the seven o-clock hour. Any city traffic and attention at that time are far less than even two hours later, let alone the dusky hours of the evening.

I've been learning a good amount, and it's only been a week. Mostly right now the focus is on learning about myself. I'm trying to differentiate the three personalities that I'm harboring and shifting between daily. There's "Mr. Sherwood", the blue-eyed and golden-haired tie-wearing idealist who won't get the 'day-off' on Wednesday that the other members of the cohort get for our single day of all graduate classes (they're being held on this high school campus, and "Mr. Sherwood" doesn't turn off). There's also "Patrick", the overachieving and politically involved writer-chef that skips the party to stay late to help a comrade study for a major exam.

And then there's Pat. That's the guy that helps Dan install a ceiling fan while consuming numerous gin & tonics; or texts dad on how to pronounce a French name in his own head while he's reading. I've seen the response "Patrick" and "Mr. Sherwood" have been getting, and maybe Pat can get there someday. [[Dammit, I'm generally steadfast in my refusal to refer to myself in the third-person.]]

In a post a while back I mentioned the size of my physical world, and how, by and large, most people's physical world are pretty darn small. At that time, mine was the general vicinity of Long Beach south of the 405 and in between the 710 and the 605; the high speed corridor know as Interstate 405 that connects Long Beach to Costa Mesa; and a restaurant directly off the freeway, in the parking lot of a mall. That was it: a couple of square miles I bike around in and call home; a stretch of highway; and a restaurant in a mall's parking lot.

Using the bicycle opens up that daily experience and makes the commute more of an accomplishment unto itself. I get to harness the energy of the neighborhood, feel the undertones of anger and struggle, be present in their world, if only briefly. Also, I get to face a significant fear every single day, and I get to stare that bastard down. Also, I get to show the kids that extraordinary things are possible in this world.

Also, I'm back to being "a crazy white guy". As I was puffing along the other night on one of my final post-9 pm darkness-shrouded commutes, I found myself laughing out loud. A phrase had run its course in my skull, and it found its way out of my lips. To that dense Carson air that night I called out, "If your life isn't in constant jeopardy, can you even consider it 'living?'" I guess I was trying to justify to myself my own recklessness.

Jumping subjects, one pretty cool thing I think, at least at this early hour in my residency, is that my partner and I are stationed with a mentor that teaches the same subject all day, and that subject is geometry. The cool consequence of this is that we may be the only two members of the cohort that have freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors in every single one of our periods. We have a cross section of the entire spectrum for the entire day. It's as remarkable as it is fascinating.

And the kids are great. They exist in a world that's so different from mine...at least at home, I 'spose. But being able to not hold where they're from against them, to be able to understand their motivations their world, and then be able to reach them and respect them is the key, obviously. It's probably both possible and mandatory.

This is the first writing I've done that wasn't related to school or quick novel notes...wait, how is this not 'related to school'? I guess I meant that I spent all summer writing essays and papers (though one of which was a fever-dream of reflection and elaboration (my philosophy of education statement titled "The Three Moons and the Philosopher")), and this is the first real debriefing I've given myself.

I have so much more to tell, but will continue to be judicious with the details: privacy is something I'm obligated to recognize.



So...I guess that's what I've been up to...like always, more will always follow...

Don't Click Start... Type 'Load "*" , 8, 1

I am a fan of Star Wars.  I have been for a long time.  Well, I saw something today that cracked me up... and thought there was no better time to talk about it and get it all out.

As a fan of Star Wars I have to be mindful of some things... not everyone sees things the way I do.  And that goes for fellow fans of the movies I might add... for there are things that happen in the movies which is considered 'canon' and things that are assumed to have happened that are also 'canon.'  This canon we speak of is what George Lucas, the Universe Creator, says is true and an actual part of the story line as described in the feature films and officially licensed spin offs.

This is a GD double edged sword.  Why?  Well, for a few reasons... here is one:

Barring that one... we will continue.

While in New York about three weeks ago (maybe two) my esteemed brother and I had a conversation about the Star Wars movies and how we, as fans, would show them to someone who had not viewed them.  We came to the conclusion that some of the movies are not good enough to be watched even once... that some of the 'canon' created by Lucas is crap.

To bring this full circle (I mean, to bring in the title of this post...) I recently saw something.  It is 0230 on Saturday night, Sunday morning and I can't sleep.  I am up surfing the web when I come across a page on the very 'tongue in cheek titled' Wookiepedia.  Let me set this up... I was checking out a page that stated Billy Dee Williams' son was an actor who was in Return of the Jedi with his father, and who also stood in for his dad in a stunt scene...  Clicking the link for Williams Jr. takes me to the character site... which in turn made me look into another side character... who I have always thought was a pile of shit.  Again, the title of this post.  And, in the picture I am posting, please take care to notice the [SRC] for the Darth Vader quote for Boba Fett.

I took the screen capture while hovering over the source... I was a little interested to know when, and in what context, that line was ever uttered.  But not anymore.  To use that as the Source for any quote is awful, but it seems fitting for Boba Fett.

He is the absolute worst.  He dies in Return of the Jedi.  Arnold Schwarzenegger has more lines in Terminator than this character does in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  I am not sure who thinks he was cool enough to expand on... oh, wait.  Yeah I do.  The gentleman who was responsible for this:

Who would have ever expected C-3P0 to shoot,

So, after all is said and done, the 'canon' is not to be trusted.  Han shot first, Boba Fett should be dead, and why would the programming in a droid that was created by Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker compatible with droid programming that was from across the galaxy and mass produced?  That would be like saying a Commodore 64 would run on the touch screen enabled Windows 8.  Don't Click Start... Type 'Load "*" , 8, 1.

A few links for your approval.

Boba Fett Wookieepedia

More People Who Believe


Basically this is a post to ensure that people watch the video (second link) and laugh at the first one.


Wood Out

The Influence of My Influence

As a writer of fiction I once described my style as a unit-sphere around an axes of Thomas Pynchon-Haruki Murakami-Denis Johnson, with other influences being David Mitchell, Roberto Bolan(y)o, and maybe Mark Richard. (My main blogging and non-fiction influence has always been HST.) Today I think the Denis Johnson leg of that unit-sphere may have been taken over by Richard Flanagan, but my entire view of that scenario may have been fundamentally altered.

I still would cite those writers as influences on me: Pynchon, Murakami, Johnson, Flanagan, Mitchell. But the unit-sphere idea I speak about less with people. I think my material would fit in well with the direction of Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Mo Yan, and especially Tom Robbins, a kind of Pynchon-lite. But I have other influences--non-fiction writers who've helped with a kind of pacing and scope, guys like Carl Sagan and Frans de Waal.

But, that being said, this post is about the discovery and acquisition of some of the foundational sources of my influences.

Pynchon has always cited the Beat writers as one of his influences, and who am I to dispute that? The direction I feel like my fiction heads is a world where Pynchon was not influenced by the Beats as much as Chandler Brossard, someone living in New York a few years before the Beat authors and more influential in France and England than in the States. His material has a certain level of dread and excitement and trippy-ness that I find irresistible:

I jabber on  to anyone who'll listen about the importance of Brossard, and really, he's influenced more than anyone knows. Maybe "influence" is the wrong word. Maybe prefigured is better. Reading his stuff is almost as if Camus' Meresault was young and schizo.

Now, Haruki Murakami is an influence to anyone's imagination who reads his material, and I'm no different. Murakami himself cites Yukio Mishima as one of his influences, and that makes sense. Mishima is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, Japan's most celebrated author (on the international scene) before Murakami, a political activist who wrote prolifically and attempted a coup, only to fail. Using a kitana, he spilled his own guts in a ritualistic suicide, good old-fashioned seppuku.

His masterpiece is a tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, a set of four books that follows the believed reincarnations of the main character's close friend. I had been reading about the set on the Internet. Then, once again at the $1 Bookstore here in downtown Long Beach, I looked up at one specific shelf and saw:

Obviously I purchased it, but haven't started reading past page 3 yet. It is number three of the four Sea of Fertility books (Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), The Decay of the Angel (1971)), and covers Thailand and India as well as different parts of Japan. It being from the middle of the four makes me a little nervous, but at this point I don't care so much.

For me, Mishima and Brossard are the elders at the base of a inverted tent, a structure that stretches upwards with Pynchon and Murakami, Wallace and Flanagan and Robbins and Johnson and Mitchell, Bolan(y)o and Mo Yan and Lethem and Haddon. Why shouldn't Camus fit in somewhere? That existentialist absurdity helps color good stuff.

Returning to Video Games and "The Simpsons"

I still watch the animated show on Fox firmly lodged in the 8pm Sunday slot when I can, and while The Simpsons isn't anywhere as important as it once was, it seems to have morphed into an institution. Writing staff has moved on to "The Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report", and comedy staffs from the websites Funny or Die and Cracked may not be direct alums of "The Simpsons", they are certainly influenced by growing up with the Swartzwelderian et al humor.

When we re-upped our phone service contracts, we received free phone upgrades, and one of the things I downloaded was a game from Electronic Arts, "The Simpsons: Tapped Out". Tapped Out is a sims game in which you rebuild Springfield after Homer causes it to get destroyed.

A sims game, for those unfamiliar, is a game where the player simulates a deity, I guess you could say. There are two types: the first is a town building game, where the player puts up buildings and neighborhoods, collects money and taxes, and uses that money for other building deeds; and the second is newer and has a laser like focus on one house and controlling all the lives of the characters with whom you've populated that house.

This game is much close to the first example above.

I have to say that not only is this is the first sims game I've ever played, it's the first video game of any kind I've been involved with this deeply since "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" (sometimes considered the best video game ever), but, this is also the most involved with "The Simpsons" that I've been in many years.

A promotion just ended, and it was a Whacking Day promotion. A two-week-long Whacking Day promotion where your Springfield would get overrun with snakes and you'd have to whack them (with surprisingly satisfying gameplay)! That episode came out in early 1994 near the end of Season 4, when plenty of these players weren't even born yet. Other parts of the game are quests, and, like some other games, there are cut-scenes, only here they're little Simpsons cartoons.

One thing that's neat is a facet of sims games: there are no laws governing where to put buildings beyond space constraints, so each player's Springfield will be different. I made mine as close to Venice as possible--water everywhere and bridges galore. Because I'm a big nerd, here are some poor-quality pictures:

Jeeze, this embarrassing... In any case, above is a place I call Park Island, and since this picture was taken, the water has encroached on its territory, shrinking it. The houses at the bottom have been moved as well. There's a batman-like light on a tiny peninsula to the left: that was a free promotional tie in to the Burns as Fruit-bat Man episode this season.

Here's my Simpson residence. I have since disconnected the road between their place and the Flanders' and replaced it with water, while the large pooling in front of their place is mostly gone (to make way for Hibbert's clinic).

I sat down one night motivated to draw out a map of the area, since you never get to see the whole thing at once. What follows is the first map of my Tapped Out Springfield, and already it is outdated, but I'm planning on another version:

I'm a nerd...

I recommend it to anyone who loves "The Simpsons" and has the time to check their phone every few hours. Also, it's free. You can spend money to get premium items (like Hank Scorpio's Volcano Lair), but that's not necessary.

Trivia Question for Dad

My good friend Ryan sent along some trivia, dad, and I think here is a fine spot to pass along the question:

Who are the seven ball-players who received the MVP, batting title, and World Series championship ring in the same season?

Five make easy sense and it wouldn't be surprising to guess them, one is recent, and one I had to look up.

Also, I enjoyed the your last post about Ghostbusters and T2.

Original "Ghostbusters" and T2 - a connection?

There has been something in the back of my mind about these two time-worn movies and I think I may have finally put my finger on what it is. These two flicks share something, and I'm going to try my damnedest to put a name to it.

I want you to recall the scene where our ghost-wranglin' heroes have convinced the mayor to let them try to tame the spirits-gone-wild. Bill Murray leans out of the erstwhile Caddy ambulance and says, "Come on! Let's run some red lights!" It's a typical Murrayian moment, one of those lines you imagine he insisted he get to deliver. Also, think of the goofy car Dr. Ray Stantz has procured in spite of all the necessary repair work. Think of the conversation early in the movie, where the avaricious Peter Venkman licks his chops about revenue streams: "The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams." (Paraphrasing.)

Each of these things make an assumption about the audience: they acknowledge that we are a business-wise group of people. We're not above looking for a good business angle, just as we're not opposed to having fun on the job. These lines make a statement that a whole lot more people are their own bosses, and are sophisticated enough to know about assets, revenue, debt, and making the most of what we're given.

Jump ahead with me now, seven years, to 1991's Terminator 2. This is a helluva flick for a lot of reasons, but I think I admire it for a fairly unusual reason. Starting early on, the re-booted robot, played by the esteemed ex-Governor, steals a guy's clothes and his motorcycle, and injures him grievously in the process. He later joins forces with Sarah, commandeers some SUVs, a spavined camper that he wrecks seemingly without any effort, and briefly rides a crashing big rig.

 He's using what's available. The script takes advantage of its audience's familiarity with objects - motorcycles, guns, police vans, knives, computer chips - of which efficient use is made in the service of the human race. It's the same attitude as in Ghostbusters. The producers acknowledge and make use of us as late-20th century sophisticates, ready to appreciate novel uses of familiar objects. We aren't thought of as fools.

Well, perhaps you'll think of it as a tenuous thread, and maybe justifiably. It has stuck with me for quite a while and I wanted to try to get it out there in formal thought.

Um...What?

Ryan sent me the information on this. All I can say is...uh...Chewbacca jerseys?

Go Toledo Mud-Hens!

Here is a link to the article about Detroit's triple-A affiliate.

A Book for Dan

Hey Dan, remember this guy?

I know I posted on my other site about dinosaurs a while back and watching shows on dinosaurs on Netflix. On the first show that we saw (that wasn't a BBC production) I saw this old guy. The beard, the dusty looking cowboy hat, the faint New England accent, I totally recognized him. I sat up and told Corrie that both you, Dan, and I used to watch dinosaur shows as kids, and this guy was one of our favorites. Well, one of my favorites anyway, I couldn't really speak for you...

But then I started to look up information on the guy. Named Dr. Robert T. Bakker, he was born in Massachusetts, went to Yale and then Harvard, was a hippie radical, and had some outsane ideas about dinosaur orthodoxy. He even wrote one of the most important books during the revolution in thought process about dinosaurs, The Dinosaur Heresies:

I looked all this information up on my phone during the episode (modern technology, baby!), and, being fueled by some fine gin and tonic, I found the book for sale on eBay for a very modest price, and ordered it.

Bakker was one of both Michael Crighton's and later Steven Spielberg's sources during their respective Jurassic Park projects.

I've almost finished the book, and it's pretty excellent. Check out the cool drawings that Bakker himself does:

The sketches are on nearly half the pages, and they're all very cool. This one in particular shows the differences in the caloric intake needs for active, warm-blooded dinosaurs and the far more ancient, cold-blooded fin-back lizards that were the protomammals.

One thing is odd when reading this book, though. The current view of dinosaurs--their habits, their habitats, their food sources and activity levels--are all a result of this book, or at least reflect the point of view of this book. The heresy of the title was the fact that the book battled an incorrect orthodoxy that had dinosaurs as cold-blooded, lethargic, swamp living dumbasses. Now the view has dinosaurs as active hunters and actively defensive prey, running around the Mesozoic landscape with abandon.

This book makes the case emphatically, so much so that it's hard to fathom a time when the evidence Bakker presents was as ignored as it had been leading up to this revolution of sorts. The book's still easy to get and worth some time.

A Book for Dad

That last post about candy was mostly a silly joke. But this is different.

I know, dad, we trade book suggestions on occasion, and I know I try to diligently look up information on the suggestions you make, and then act on them as I see fit. Gould's Book of Fish? Yeah, that was the best book I read in all of 2012.

But here I have a suggestion I wouldn't have found on my own. Uncle Dan got the following book for me for my just-occurred birthday:

As They See 'Em by Bruce Webber is a briskly paced book with article-like prose about Webber's own trip to attend baseball umpire school; interviewing umpires; and even umpiring some games. You get an extraordinarily close look at the game, at the intricacies of the art of umping, and at one of the last professions--or activities even--where regularly dealing with hate-speech is just part of the daily routine.

I gained a profound new insight into the game and how difficult the art or science of being a major league ump is, not to mention how horrible the life in the minors turns out to be.

Also in my book collection is another book by this same Bruce Webber:

Webber is a sports writer for the New York Times, which explains the journalistic prose of the book. If you'd like to read an intricate look at baseball from a different angle that reads like a Times article, definitely check it out.

The Answer!

I finally discovered a very important thing about myself.

With Reese's Pieces and Sour Patch Kids coming in a very close tie for second place, my very favorite cinema house candy:

I know this is nearly heretical for our family. Food? At the movies?

Dickensian Names and Athletes

Dad, you mentioned in your last post Peter Dinklage, and how cool and "Dickensian" his name was, and it reminded me about an idea I had that I posted about a while ago, likely when I was laid up on the couch with the busted leg.

There were some athletes from different sports that had what I felt were "classic" names, but Dickensian is a better term for these players. I'll list them here, again, so maybe we can add to the list as we go forward with our lives.

I was reminded that I wanted to do this just a second ago upon hearing that the 49ers just traded for Colt McCoy.

Colt McCoy was the QB of the UT Longhorns before being drafted by the Browns, not playing like a pro-bowler, then getting rocked, and now being slated to compete for a backup job behind Kaepernick. But, "Colt McCoy" is about as quintessential a Texan QB name anyone could fabricate, let alone believe was real.

Usain Bolt. If you wanted to make up a name for the fastest man on Earth, who is also Jamaican, could you come up with something better than freaking Usain Bolt?

Hope Solo. How about a foxy goalie, all alone, trying to stop the attacking enemy?

I also kinda like Mark Trumbo, as a thumping old-school baseball player. Maybe?

Outside of sports, besides Dinklage, maybe Wolf Blitzer?

Bird Watching

I seem to remember that you, dad, have as a hobby bird-watching. I've always thought that that was pretty cool, mostly because it's a demonstration of an overall understanding of many of the variables in the animal kingdom happening around you at that given point in time.

Where we live now is maybe devoid of the major exotic species of birds, but in our local immediacy we do have gulls and pigeons and crows and sparrows and, my favorite to watch, brown pelicans.

I've written a few times before about the Modern Dinosaurs of Long Beach, about watching their interactions and hierarchy (crows vs gulls; sparrows vs pigeons; the huge pelicans ruling the sky and roost), and I may have spoken about the sublime pleasure of watching the pelicans dive-bombing the sea for fish.

Diving pelicans is as cool to see as it is as regular to witness. On any given day, there will either be no pelicans at all, or there will be pelicans diving. If there's none, that just means you missed feeding time, or are too early for it. If the pelicans are something you want to see and record with a camera, it'll only take a few trips to get images you'll like.

I was over at the sand the other day, and I had my camera, but I didn't go to snap shots of the pelicans. It just kinda worked out that way.

I saw one diving, and raced to take a picture. After scanning the image in that brief moment where it shows on my Canon's screen, it looked like all I got was a picture of beach. But, upon closer inspection, visible left of center at the top is the splash of the bird:

Next picture I'm putting here was a Rossian happy-accident, as my finger slipped as a pelican was turning in mid-air. If you can close up on the guy or gal you'll be able to see some cool details:

Here's a diving specimen. Notice the ships in the distance beyond the breaker heading to one of the two adjacent ports:

The brown pelican, while the largest of our local aviary critters, is actually the smallest specie of pelican. The Dalmatian pelican, if I remember correctly, is usually considered, along with the trumpeter swan, one of the two largest flying animals alive today, as the record goes back and forth as to average weight (not wingspan, which is the albatross).

I put this post up because I've been busy and haven't been posting anything anywhere, really, and thought that afternoon getaway stroll yielded some cool pictures.

Maybe Take a Look at This, Too...

I found a movie on streaming Netflix that featured David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga, Ty Burrell, Keri Russell, that douchy brother-in-law from "Weeds", Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the star is a young man named Graham Phillips.

The name of the film is Goats, and when I saw the poster on Netflix, I had a feeling I knew a little something about it, but I'll get to that later.

The movie is about Ellis (Phillips), a 15 year old kid living with his mom (Farmiga) on a big spread in Tuscon in the Sonoran Desert, and his being shipped out to a private boarding school in Pennsylvania. His father (Burrell), went to the same school, and at many turns Ellis is reminded how much he looks like his father, and since he's so big for his age, will he be joining the track team just like his dad? We don't meet Burrell's character until somewhere in act 2, when Ellis visits for Thanksgiving and meets his new pregnant step-mom (Russell).

Ellis' mom still refers to his dad as "Fucker Frank", and Ellis was raised to resent him. Ellis refers to his mom as "Wendy", and although his dad had been out of the picture, we see from the very opening of the movie that the Tuscon property's caretaker, a botanist known as Goatman (Duchovny), has been the boy's only father figure for the formative years after Frank left.

While keeping track of the property, Goatman grows copious amounts of pot (he and Ellis have been getting stoned for years by the time Ellis heads off to prep school), and he is an experienced goat trekker. The dynamic of Ellis off at school, Goatman trying to deal with Wendy's mooching asshole of a new boyfriend (the guy from "Weeds"), Ellis feeling abandoned and having to deal with issues probably beyond his ability all give the movie a precarious authenticity. It's also authentic, I feel, in the cavalier attitude to drinking and drugs that rich-kids exhibit.

The movie is written is by Mark Poirier, who also authored the novel that serves as the basis of the film, and I know the author must have knowledge of Jim Corbett. Jim Corbett was a writer, philosopher, naturalist, and was a co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement. During the American funded civil wars in El Slavador and Guatemala the US wasn't granting refugee status to people fleeing the fighting, and Corbett smuggled refugees across the desert from Mexico into Arizona using goat trekking as the method.

Jim Corbett---Wyoming ranch kid, Harvard philosophy master, Quaker convert---describes how to survive in the Sonoran Desert with nothing but goats, and that's the framework for his highly original, highly cerebral, spiritual, political and philosophical book Goatwalking:

This is an important book, and sometimes is hard to get a hold of (took me a while on Amazon, it seems to go through cycles of availability).

The movie Goats, and the book before it, takes part of the Jim Corbett character and makes him a pot growing, struggling father figure, and in the case of the movie, gives the material to David Duchovny, who's underused (but I don't watch "Californication", so what do I know about it...).

The last scene of the movie felt right, felt like it fit with the film's ethos properly, and showed that Goatman was the one person there for Ellis the most often.

Overall it was pretty good and worth the viewing. Also, check out Goatwalking if you're into that kind of thing. (Chris Farley, I'm thinking of you...)

Ol' Pops Says, Check it out.

If you gentlemen have been catching HBO's Game of Thrones, you've been treated to the very cool and memorable work of Peter Dinklage. He plays one of the princes of one of the royal families, but they don't like to acknowledge him. His father is ashamed of him because of his achondroplasia - he suffers from dwarfism. He's amazingly good, though; his acting on the premium series earned him every inch of his Best Supporting Emmy.

Anyway, The Station Agent (2003) came on Starz the other morning, and Cin tuned it in because she saw Dinklage in it. (Your Uncle Tom and I discussed him is passing last June. He very wittily observed that he has a Dickensian name, where the person's name indicates or suggests a feature of his character: Mr. Skimpole of Bleak House, Ebenezer Scrooge, etc.) This is a story about this guy, played by Dinklage, who inherits an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey when his only friend dies.

He wants nothing more than to lead his solitary life, but cannot escape entanglement from pushy neighbors, particularly a young and garrulous snack truck operator played by Bobby Cannavale. They meet a woman trying to sort out her life in the wake of personal strife (Patricia Clarkson). No special effects, unless you count Dinklage's awesomeness - what an expressive face! He's just superb. The script and direction, both by Thomas McCarthy, are just what the doctor ordered. It's just an exceptional, quiet picture, with no cloying tie-up at the end, no smarmy moments. The scenes shot outside had to have been done on location, and they are so beautiful, especially at the lakeside home of the Patricia Clarkson character.

 This movie opened to raves, and won potfuls of awards when it premiered at film festivals all over the place. Check it out and see some really, really excellent acting, and a script to savor.

Ugh...How Bad Will 2013 be for the Yanks?

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. Watching that Bernie homer from '96 got me waxing nostalgic for the opening of a dynastic stretch for our team, dad. It came to an end, in one regard, in the first week of November in the aftermath of 9/11, in 2001, when Mo turned out to be (almost) human, and blew game 7's save opportunity. Soriano was homegrown, but whiffing badly, and the team felt different, but that was Paul O'Neil's last run, and Brosius, and Tino...

Perennially in the playoffs (except for 2008), making it back to the top of the heap in 2009 with a fresh crop of big budget free-agents, the Yankees just seemed to be getting older and producing less talent from the inside. Granted, to trade for the big-game players they were forced to plunder their farm system, but that system did produce Robinson Cano, one of the Yankees two current actual superstars (the other is CC Sabathia). Also, though, catcher Jesus Montero (now with Seattle, traded for pitcher Michael Pineda, who should be good if he's recovered from the injury that kept him out of the entire season last year); pitcher Tyler Clippard (closer for the Nationals...eh, he was given up on by the Yanks a few years back); and outfield sensation A-Jax, Austin Jackson (the jewel that Detroit got in the Curtis Granderson trade, a trade that also netted Arizona former Yankee phenom pitcher Ian Kennedy, a guy who couldn't get it done in the Bronx but came in second to Clayton Kershaw in the Cy Young voting in 2011).

(Sigh) I haven't even got to what I wanted to write about. This off-season has been an odd one for me, one where I've sat here and watched the AL East go from the two North-Atlantic teams and their foil in St. Petersburg to one in which everyone but the Yankees improved.

The Red Sox got out from under the Beckett/Gonzales/Crawford mess last season (thanks Dodgers!), still have to rely on John Lackey (that had the stink of a bad Yankees deal on it from the get-go), but did upgrade to Mike Napoli at catcher. If they get back to what they do well, or at least what they did well when Theo was running the show, they'll compete.

There's bound to be some regression with the historic winning percentage in one-run victories for the Orioles, but Manny Machado is maybe 20, and he's a star, and they've got some young arms that can take them places. Maybe the playoffs again, maybe not, but the point is this is an exciting time for Baltimore.

The Rays keep losing star players to free agency, and keep coming back with stars from their farm system. I like to think of them as the Twins of Florida, or, maybe more accurately, the "New Twins", seeing as how they're run on a shoestring and have a knack for drafting and developing players well. Their ten best starting pitchers could start on any team in the majors, and three or four could start this year in the minors.

The Blue Jays! They finally made some shrewd moves and decided to take advantage of a possible BoSox/Yankee transition period and went all-in. How exciting for the cleanest city in North America. In any other division in baseball, the past few Jays teams could have maybe been playoff teams, but with the Yanks/Sox/Rays hogging everything, and the Orioles last year snaking a playoff spot, there have been few happy times in Toronto's baseball world.

And then there're our boys. The spendthrift Bombers of the Bronx? Money conscious? Now I know that the drunken-sailor style of spending is mostly unsuccessful, if you gauge success by World Series victories (welcome to an ugly truth Angels and Dodgers), but when it does work out (ahem, '09 Yankees), it's due mostly to pitching. But this past off-season we had Jeter getting his 38 year old ankle rebuilt and A-RoidRod going under the knife and out until maybe July, maybe August. His hulking body is slowly breaking down, like Canseco and Sosa before him.

No longer in pinstripes this season: Andruw Jones, maybe old and fat but not a bad OF platoon and good for maybe 10-15 homers in 200 PA, which is decent power; Russel Martin, starting catcher; Raul Ibanez, aging outfielder and DH who showed late-career power (hmm?); Nick Swisher, charismatic RF who added a goofy element to their '09 run to the Ring; Eric Chavez, former A's 3B and last year's backup who got plenty of playing time and who still has some ball left in his tank...

Those aren't five players who were lucky to be getting coffee in the show, they played significant time with the Yankees last year. Swish and Russel were starters, as was Chavez for most of the year, and Ibanez got plenty of starts at DH.

Well, they're gone. A-Rod's out until either late July or early August (maybe earlier is his "conditioning" allows it, right?). Curtis Granderson, the slugging starting CF, was hit in the forearm during his first at-bat in Spirng Training and broke something, and he's out until May. Mark Teixeria typically sucks until the end of May or early June, when he finally finds his stroke, but he just came up lame, and will be out until May just like Grandy.

Derek Jeter's back; Big Mo's back; even Brett Gardner is back. Ichiro's still here. And Cano remains an MVP caliber player.

One issue with a team filled with superstars (and their contracts) is that depth is sacrificed--the backups tend to be of less value than great backups because there's too much invested in the star starter playing.

Of course, like always it's about pitching, and CC is still good, and Hiroki isn't washed up yet, and Phil Hughes is serviceable, and Pineda may be healthy yet. Pettitte's not too old, right? These guys may hold the fort until everyone gets well enough to carry the team.

This may well prove to be my most pessimistic off-season. It just seems like it could be a collapse year. Jeter's old and returning from a broken ankle (like ma); A-Rod's body's breaking down, maybe for good, and he's out until after the All-Star break; Grandy's arm is broken; Teixeria's out lame; Swish and Chavez and Ibanez and Martin and Jones are all gone; and I'm supposed to be excited that Brett Gardner's back?

I like Gardner, sure, but while we lived in NY the battle for him was always, "Sure, his speed is great, but can he hit enough to lead off?" So far he's killing the ball this spring, which is great. Maybe I am excited, but he's a .270 hitter with great speed...and Grandy's a .250 hitter who pops 40+ homers...

(Sigh)(#2)

Excuse me for my rambling misgivings on this upcoming baseball season.

One more thing: I'm a fan of the WBC, the World Baseball Classic, but there are two things I would change. The first is the name. The NAME! Holy cow, what a stupid name. At least call it the Baseball World Cup, or something, jeeze. The second is the timing. If they want it to become a thing players want desperately to participate in, if they want it to organically become a quadrennial showcase event, they have to put it in the middle of the playing season, in the middle of the summer. During BWC seasons players would get maybe two weeks off during the All-Star break, except players who participate. Something like that, anyway...

Baseball Opens its Vault!

Major League Baseball has been holding onto its clips like a hoarder on one of those hoarding television shows (I'm guessing, since I couldn't even tell you which channel they're on). But they've finally opened the vault and let a tsunami of clips burst forth.

So I'm posting two clips that have some meaning for me.

The first is from 1996. I was on the phone with Dave Imai, Game 1 of the ALCS went into extra innings, Baltimore in the Bronx, when Bernie stepped to the plate:



I lost track of the conversation at that point and told Dave I'd call him back as I pumped my fist. This was my favorite baseball moment up until that point. Charlie Hayes catching that last out in Game 6 of the World Series that same year passed it, but, for sheer excitement, this one was it.

The next clip is from ten years later. I was at Marc's apartment in the East Village watching Game 7 of the NLCS between the Mets and Cardinals. The game was tied with a runner on first. Ollie Perez sent a pitch to Scott Rolen, who hit the shit out of it:



When it came off the bat, my brain said, "Just gave up that tie..." And then Endy Chavez ran it down and made the best catch I've ever seen live. Ever. Still. He snow-coned that sumbitch and looked as surprised as everyone in the else in the stadium. The runner on first was halfway to third when he realized Endy had caught it, and was easily doubled off to end the inning.

Sad to say that may have been the last time the Mets and their fans had legitimate World Series hopes and aspirations. They went on to lose that game, then choked the 2007 season away at the very end, and have been middling since.

So...CLIPS! Be careful so that you don't waste too much time at the archive site...

Maybe Inappropriate?

Okay, so Dan, I asked you to send me the Grimms' auf Deutsch book, and I may have left a rambling message that didn't really explain what I needed it for besides saying I'll explain later.

That's the book for those who don't know what's going on. This is a German language copy of the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales, a copy of a book I salvaged years ago from high school. I was hoping it had survived various moves and, it turns out, it had.

The reason I was asking after it was because of the Art Exchange's Marathon Project. The Art Exchange is a non-profit organization here in Long Beach that does different shows and projects and is involved in our Second Saturday activities. The Second Saturday happens each month and consists of a street fair with arts and crafts and performances. This Marathon Project was a 9 AM to 9 PM reading of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, similar to an activity the husband of the husband and wife directing team of the Art X used to do while he was the head of the English department at Texas Tech in Lubbock.

I heard about it one day walking by, since the Art X in literally down the street from us. I mentioned that I or my brother had a copy of der Bruder Grimm auf Deutsch, and if we could get our hands on it, would they like someone to read a story in the original German? They thought that would be super cool, and asked me to get back to them if we could find the book.

You can kinda see it posted up on the table below:

The day I got it in the mail, I walked it over to the Art X and they put it on display in the window. I thought it was pretty cool.

The way this "marathon" reading worked was local merchants signed up for blocks of time, read their tales, then had the kids present do some kind of activity. The young lady in the red dress above is an illustrator and taught the kids how to make a tiny book out of an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. It's actually pretty cool.

Below is a local librarian after reading a pair of frog prince stories:

Outside I was almost surprised to see my own name and icon for Robot Crickets, since I hadn't yet given them the digital image:

So, then it was my turn. I picked probably the shortest piece I could find so as to, as I put it, "not assault their ears with German for too long."

I had translated it with the help of Google translate and my own memories, and it turned out to be one of the craziest tiny stories, and it highlights how sensibilities change, but stay the same, across centuries and oceans. I was going to transcribe the whole thing here in German, and then put the loose translation along with it. Instead, here it is in English:

*

The Stubborn Child

There was once a stubborn child who didn't do what his mother wanted. This angered God, who let him get sick, so sick a doctor couldn't help, and soon they laid him down onto his deathbed. It was so that he was sunk into a grave and dirt thrown over it, but then his arms started to reach out of the dirt, so they threw more dirt on top, but it didn't help, and his arms kept trying to climb out. Then his mother had to come herself to the grave and beat his arms back with a metal rod, but he grabbed the rod and took her down into the grave with him, and finally he was able to find rest underground.

*

Mostly Grimms' Tales, in the original German or not smoothed over, are not really appropriate for little kids. Well, I guess that depends on how you feel about violence in today's America. Grimms' Tales though have violence and death and maiming but also lessons, ultimately, like "The Stubborn Child" here. It has what we consider zombie imagery mixed with the lesson of "do what your mom says or God will punish you" mixed with maybe how some parents of unruly kids may feel (being dragged into the grave). 

I didn't give my audience the translation beyond 'a stubborn kid doesn't do what his mother wants and get's punished', because I felt it may not be appropriate. I guess if any of the kids in the audience watch any television, they've probably been exposed to far more violent images that are in the story, but that realization came to me later.

That's the difference, I suppose, between scaring kids straight and desensitizing them. 

Latest lame-o movie post

Last night Cindy and I sat down to Arthur Christmas, watching it in February, fourteen months after its holiday release in 2011. I recall reviewers greeting it rather favorably at the time, and that's why I snagged it for the Netflix DVD queue. It even has a 7.1 rating on IMDB, which could perhaps be traced to enthusiastic families who have gathered for Christmas and soaked up a bunch of candy, liquor, or both. It isn't that good.

Here's what it does well: it shows the Christmas gift-delivery operation as a modern, hi-tech logistics wonder. Santa Claus relies very heavily on his son, a Bluetooth-connected executive named Steve, to make it all happen. Steve commands an army of tens of millions of elves at the North Pole in a massive underground ice palace, each gazing intently at their computer monitor: the Apollo 13 control room, times ten thousand, meets Polar Express. A major part of the magic is the S-1, a dazzling starship crewed by an elite group of elves, that disguises itself as the night sky. The  techie touches of this sequence are pretty cool. However ...

the reigning Santa Claus, Steve's Dad, and his other son, Arthur, are portrayed as ineffective boobs. Santa is lazy and out of touch, and relies on Steve to literally deliver the goods. And Arthur, while not lazy, is a clumsy, wild-eyed naïf. The movie makes an attempt to sustain some suspense about getting a bike to a little girl in Cornwall, missed originally because of an oversight. Every last person in the audience knows how the thing will turn out, and all the tricks, dead ends, bad navigation, and flea-bitten, has-been reindeer in the world can't change that. There are some cool effects here, but this thing is destined for the scrap heap. I wouldn't give it more than five stars on a 10-star scale. 

Older Brother Characterizations

Corrie and I recently watched two different movies from streaming Netflix that, strangely, had the main character's name as the first word of each film's titles, and each of those characters were the younger siblings of a pair of boys. It seems like in America's contemporary story-telling landscape (for hacks), the "older brother" is at first a villainous bully.

In the first movie I'm talking about, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Jason Segel plays Jeff, a 30-year-old stoner living in his mom's basement. She's played by Susan Sarandon, while Jeff's older brother is played by Ed Helms, an asshole who repulses his wife, demeans his brother, and bickers with his mom. Guess what his name is...

It's Pat.

The movie follows Jeff and his bong-addled brain interpreting "clues" that lead him to some kind of action. Part of the day's activities consist of Jeff helping Pat interrupt his wife's act of infidelity, and we're led to believe that the journey was about Jeff helping Pat. Of course its bigger than that. Susan Sarandon has her own B-story, and the ending is an odd coincidence in a mostly enjoyable if unbalanced effort from the brotherly writer/director team of Jay and Mark Duplass.

The second movie is Lars and the Real Girl. Ryan Gosling plays Lars, the younger brother to Paul Schneider's Gus. Their mother died during Lars' childbirth, and their father died many years later, having lived a quiet life of disappointment. Gus and his pregnant wife Karin have moved back into the boys' childhood home, causing Lars to voluntarily move out to the garage.

The premise of the movie is that Lars, socially awkward and with a distaste for human contact, orders a highly realistic and anatomically correct doll, and introduces "Bianca" to people as his girlfriend. At first Gus, the older brother, is reluctant to play along, and gets a little hysterical in the privacy of his and Karin's bedroom. But Gus gets introspective and ends up supportive before it ends.

Eventually the whole rural upstate Wisconsin town, out of their feelings for Lars, go along with him and his delusion, and everyone finds themselves affected by their various relationships with Bianca. Never once is the story played for lurid jokes, making it a very gentle study of sadness and responsibility.

Gus is much more nuanced that Pat, but both start out gruff wankers. Pat is an ass, but Gus is only frustrated. Pat's transformation seems a little more forced and unlikely, but that's because he's more of a caricature.

That's the easy characterization I'm talking about: making a character likable by making them an underdog is a natural thing, and making someone an underdog naturally by giving them an older sibling to berate them is a lazy way to staff a movie. That's an opinion, of course.

Jeff and Lars are the star characters of those respective movies, as are Jason Segel and Ryan Gosling. The more touching story all around involves less caricature in general, but that's not specific to the older-brother dynamic.

I thought that it was interesting to have the range in the characterizations of those two older brothers, Pat and Gus, while having them starting out very similar, as the stereotype older brother. That stereotype: asshole.

As the older brother of only two boys, am I keenly aware of what stereotype into which I'm to fall?

Rising Indeed

I always thought Batman was cooler than Superman inasmuch as Bruce Wayne is an Earthling and comes by his powers through intelligence and hard work. Well, that, and loads and loads of money, too. But, he manages to strike fear into the miscreants and malcontents of Gotham City by dint of his high intellect and his dedication.

And The Dark Knight Rises manages to add quite a bit to the mythos of Batman. It reinforces his virtues while managing to kick his ass through a very solid portion of the movie. And lo and behold, there's a plot twist at the end - I don't mean the autopilot scam, I mean the one where we find out that Bane's not the one who "flew" out of that prison in the desert. They handled the origins of Catwoman and Robin superbly, too. And at this point I'm remembering the original Christopher Reeve Superman, where the "Red 'S'" conundrum was handled - maybe a little heavy-handedly, but handled nonetheless. Since the first in the spate of comicbook hero movies, they have spent a lot of thought and resources on the "origin" part of each character's story. Dark Knight raises this to an art form, with its pacing and its seemingly effortless weaving-in of heroic satellite characters. These are nuanced characters, too, as far from cardboard cutouts as you can get.

As with all impressive works, it's hard to tell how they're going to make a better one next time out. I tried to imagine what they would do after the first Pirates of the Caribbean, and it looks like they had as hard a time imagining a successful sequel as I did.  Obviously they have established the foundation where Batman comes back to surprise the next world-class jerk who threatens Gotham, and I look forward to that.

Christian Bale looks like he might be able to avoid the stigma that attached itself to Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt! He's a revelation in this. I may have seen him is something since Third Rock from the Sun, but I don't remember it. What a great choice. And it looks as though Bruce picked him out for a partner. Like I said, the thing is set up very deftly.

Not long ago I saw The Avengers, and I liked it quite a bit. While Knight is a deeper movie, with its gravity coming from the main character's psyche, Avengers is not totally lacking in depth itself. I especially liked their treatment of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. The revelation that Dr. Banner can turn into the "other guy" whenever he wants was pretty cool. After the Black Widow says, "Hadn't you better get pissed off?" as they're about to face a powerful enemy, he turns to her and says, "Hey, that's my secret. I'm always pissed off!"

I liked The Avengers for the complete mayhem perpetrated by its heroes. It's totally fuckin' loaded with ass-kicking, which is frankly what superhero movies should be about. I'm not faulting Dark Knight with that statement. Both movies are outstanding. Thanks, Dan, for suggesting I push that to the top of my queue.

Silent Movie

I use my own laptop to do my posts on my various blogs, but I used to use Corrie's Mac for posting. The transition to using my own lappy happened while we were living in Texas, and one reason was because of the changing home of our digital photograph storage.

Which means that there are a ton of pictures and what-not over on Corrie's compy. We've tried setting a network up or getting a storage device that will hold all the pictures, but there have been complications due to the age of Corrie's Mac (it predates the Intel Core-Duo processor, so mass external drives seem to be able to format for it or mine, but not both)(stupid technology).

In any case, I sometimes go through the pictures when I visit that work station in the apartment, and today I found something I wanted to post:

A silent video.

I know it sure sounds exciting.

It's grainy and small and you can hardly tell the details, but it's also kinda cool.

I took the film with my Old-Reliable, my first digital camera and the one we took to Europe and have taken maybe fifteen thousand pictures with over the years.

But it's footage from August 13th 14th, 2006, which was a Sunday Monday according to my notes. It was our first Yankee game at the old Stadium, and see if you can see what's going on:

I caught Jeter hitting a homer to center.

I'd been shooting the occasional pitch-and-swing for no real reason besides data-collection, which is silly when I write it like that. But this time, Jeter hit a home-run.

Pretty cool first game in the Bronx.

(UPDATE: My notebook confirmed my suspicion that the game was not a Sunday night game:

Glued ticket stub evidence. I love it when my copious pack-rat-like notes prove helpful.)

The edge? Removed, thanks

I rode the airport escalator up from the main terminal floor to the departure level. Denver International has a very large terminal building, and the upper level is really only a balcony, albeit a rather high balcony, above the main space. As I stood languidly, the only person on the stairs, I watched the activity around me, and felt a glow; I hadn't a care in the world.

There's something about airline travel that makes me and everybody else in the entire world feel like Dan's graphic post below. So, yeah. So week before last, while waiting at the Kansas City airport for my flight home, I decided I'd indulge myself. I wasn't going to have just one Scotch on the plane, but a double. I wanted two.

Southwest must have made a change to their in-air service policies. It's painfully slow, but you know, I had my inner Buddha going: patience R us. Across the aisle and a couple of rows ahead, a young guy had something of an issue with the (male) cabin attendant. As I watched, it was evident that he wanted his little bottle of rum to go with his can of Coke. The steward did have an evident attitude, but I didn't think it would affect me and my intent to imbibe. He finally came and asked me for my order - I'd seen that they had Dewar's White Label Scotch, which is actually my preference among the blends. (The non-blended Scotches would be the Single Malts, which are almost always preferable to any blend.)

Anyway, I got it across that I wanted two, and was certainly willing to pay double, which was $10. I wasn't totally surprised that when my drink came, it had already been poured over ice in a tumbler-size cup. No two bottles, no control over the situation. One sip proved it was indeed a double, and I drank it, without waiting for any meltage. The flight isn't a long one, and service being what it was, I drank it rather quickly. I wanted the edge removed. And just in time for my happy little ride on the underground shuttle and my highly relaxed saunter outside to meet Cin, I was indeed at one with the world. I hadn't had anything other than a beer since before Christmas, and only a couple of those over the weeks. So it was quite welcome.

Okay, just one more, then I'll leave it

P & D, I'm going to lay this out so each of you can react to this in your own way. Dan, you already think I'm a nerd, and this isn't going to change that. So, Pat, the tables in my previous post are in an Excel file, and I did actually one further calculation on each. For the position players, I calculated their WAR per 500 plate appearances, to arrive at a rate of efficiency at which they accomplished their WAR:

WAR Rank Player WAR  PA WAR/500 PA 1 Babe Ruth 138.2 9,198 7.51 2 Lou Gehrig 108.5 9,663 5.61 24 Rickey Henderson 30.3 2,735 5.54 3 Mickey Mantle 105.5 9,907 5.32 4 Joe DiMaggio 75.1 7,673 4.89 9 Alex Rodriguez 49.8 5,476 4.55 17 Charlie Keller 39.4 4,466 4.41 21 Joe Gordon 35.1 4,216 4.16 7 Bill Dickey 52.4 7,064 3.71 12 Thurman Munson 43.3 5,905 3.67 19 Gil McDougald 38.6 5,398 3.58 8 Willie Randolph 51.7 7,464 3.46 22 Robinson Cano 34.8 5,110 3.41 6 Yogi Berra 56.2 8,350 3.37 14 Graig Nettles 41.0 6,248 3.28 11 Tony Lazzeri 44.7 7,068 3.16 23 Tommy Henrich 33.6 5,410 3.11 15 Earle Combs 40.0 6,513 3.07 5 Derek Jeter 69.3 11,895 2.91 20 Phil Rizzuto 38.1 6,718 2.84 25 Roger Peckinpaugh 29.5 5,267 2.80 13 Roy White 43.0 7,735 2.78 18 Jorge Posada 39.0 7,150 2.73 16 Don Mattingly 39.8 7,722 2.58 10 Bernie Williams 45.9 9,053 2.54

I raised an eyebrow over Rickey Henderson, I'll tell you. But one thing his ranking tells you is that unless you have a good cast around you, you're not going to win any rings. Plus: a 2-WAR player is considered well above average, and these are Yankee career averages. I did some similar exercises for the pitchers, and maybe I should split it into starters and relievers. Never mind. Consider this: a high WAR per 200 innings means a lot of success in high-leverage situations. A high WAR per 50 games pitched means a lot of deep games, and a lot of durability: Player WAR   IP Per200IP GP Per50G Mariano Rivera 52.7 1,219.67 8.64 1051 2.51 Whitey Ford 50.6 3,170.33 3.19 498 5.08 Andy Pettitte 45.8 2,611.00 3.51 417 5.49 Ron Guidry 45.4 2,392.00 3.80 368 6.17 Red Ruffing 41.7 3,168.67 2.63 426 4.89 Lefty Gomez 39.5 2,497.33 3.16 367 5.38 Bob Shawkey 39.0 2,490.00 3.13 415 4.70 Mel Stottlemyre 37.5 2,661.33 2.82 360 5.21 Mike Mussina 33.1 1,553.00 4.26 249 6.65 Waite Hoyt 32.0 2,273.33 2.82 365 4.38 Herb Pennock 29.9 2,202.67 2.71 346 4.32 Ray Caldwell 27.1 1,718.33 3.15 248 5.46 Jack Chesbro 26.6 1,952.00 2.73 269 4.94 Russ Ford 24.3 1,112.67 4.37 143 8.50 Dave Righetti 21.8 1,136.67 3.84 522 2.09 CC Sabathia 20.6 905.00 4.55 129 7.98 Spud Chandler 20.6 1,485.00 2.77 211 4.88 Roger Clemens 19.9 1,103.00 3.61 175 5.69 David Cone 19.1 922.00 4.14 145 6.59 Rich Gossage 18.4 533.00 6.90 319 2.88 Tommy John 18.4 1,367.00 2.69 214 4.30 Allie Reynolds 18.2 1,700.00 2.14 295 3.08 Orlando Hernandez 17.9 876.33 4.09 139 6.44 Ray Fisher 17.4 1,380.33 2.52 219 3.97 Fritz Peterson 17.2 1,857.33 1.85 288 2.99

One last thing, check out the modern-day starters with over 4 WAR per 200 innings: Mike Mussina, David Cone, CC Sabathia, Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez. No Guidry, no Whitey Ford, no Clemens.