A Day for Redemption

A note to readers:  If the quality of this post suffers, its because I am watching the Newcastle-Chelsea game.  It has been an incredibly awesome game, and I don't even know why I am trying to write while its on.  But, there you go. 

Well, on October 1, I wrote this little doosey of a sports prediction:

"So, the final analysis:  I think, as the line suggests, it will be a very close, very exciting encounter.  But I think the intangibles will carry the Hokies, 24-14.  A strong defense, and an electric atmosphere, carry the day".

The result, you may remember, was embarrassing.  So embarrassing that, as my 10 normal readers may have noticed, I haven't talked about it since. 

But things have changed.  Clemson seemed to reach their zenith against the Hokies, started going a little wobbly, and finally lost....a number of games.   3 of their last 4?  Something like that.  And that, friends, is the kind of crack sports analysis you have come to expect from this Communist rag of a blog.  I know its why you keep coming back for more. 

Meanwhile, the Hokies have been resurgent, which seems par for the course.  It is Frank Beamer's best coaching season ever (again), as he has taken a side that was all but eviscerated at home by the Tigers and guided the team with loving and benevolent hands to a 11-1 record, a chance to be ACC champions again, and a real shot at getting that second BCS bowl win that would finally make Frank Beamer eligible that free Sub at Sub Station II which he has been after for so long.

I think Frank Beamer should have been made ACC coach of the year.  I mean, think of it...there the Hokie Nation was, stained by the most inglorious defeat suffered on home soil in a very, very long time.  We just looked at each other and said, in hushed voices, that maybe it was time to withdrawal all of our money from the bank, send the children to Aunt Anne's house to get them out of the City, pack up the smoked turkey legs and beer, and head for the hills.  We hadn't expected to be in the national title hunt, but our undefeated start had once again inflated our expectations; expectations that had been utterly shattered.

But while the rest of us were running around with wheelbarrels full of Deutschmarks and rushing to the Kroger for milk, bread, and eggs?  There stands Frank Beamer, like a stone wall, Churchillian in stature, refusing to give up.  He looked at us with love, but he spared us no pity.  He gathered his broken team together while the very fabric of life was crumbling about him and he said:

"Lads, that is not good enough!  We must score two touchdowns to their one.  You want to see our fans dressed in shirts and ties at our matches?"

"NO!"

"Do you want to call that raggedy ass wine swilling woman hating Thomas Jefferson your King?!"

"NO!"

"Do you want your Children to sing 'The Good ole Song'?!"

"NO!"

"Well then let's get out there and fight!!"

"GAAAARRR!!"

And wouldn't you know it?  The Hokies win seven straight, and actually do end up having an outside chance of getting into that national title game (which, of course, they would have freaking won).   Things may have certainly not panned out for them there (Auburn had to beat Alabama, QPR had to crush Eastern Middbleburrytown, and Sarah Palin had to wake up one morning and say "You know what?  I think raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans may not be such a bad idea after all", and some other stuff had to happen as well). But something more important has happened here.  Frank....he just.....he gave us the freedom to dream again. 

We were like jaded children who don't believe in Christmas anymore, and Frank is the reclusive old man who teaches us that miracles are still possible. 

So.  Go Hokies.  Gobble.  Gobble.  A-Gobble-gobble-gobble. 

Okay.  Now that is done.  I can watch the second half of the Chelsea Newcastle game in peace. 

Credits:  The "dialogue" with Frank and his team is a ripoff from Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World, which is one of my favorite films.  I don't remember a similar dialogue in the books though....

And the part where I say "We were like jaded children who don't believe in Christmas anymore, and Frank is the reclusive old man who teaches us that miracles are still possible" is taken almost straight out of Tina Fey's book Bossypants.  It was something she used to describe her ever changing relationship with Lorne Michaels, and it was so funny I laughed out loud (I LOLed, for those of you born after 1995) at my desk during lunch and everyone wondered what crazy fucked up thing I was am eating this time.  I could have never have come up with that, and that is why Torres just hasn't panned out as a striker for Chelsea.   

Disperse, ye Rebels, or Santa shall leave Taxes in your Christmas Stockings! Boo! Taxes! Hiss!

Yes, yes, I know this is a blog post that is a couple of weeks late.  The Empire has struck back, the protesters have been evicted from their spiritual home of Zuccoti Park, and the media has turned its focus to more serious matters like the latest round of unrest in Egypt and whether or not Kensington Palace is cursed.  Beware, Kate Middleton....there be ghosts.

I haven't commented about the recent protesters because my feelings on them are rather conflicted.  Half of me can't help but agree with those cold hearted folks who are just calling them a bunch of bums who would be best served by going home, getting a shower, getting a haircut, and getting a job.  Oh?  You can't get a job because you spent 6 years at Bernard studying Malaysian poetry?  Sorry.  Perhaps you should have majored in finance.  How are your burger flipping skills?

But on the other hand I can see (and share in) the frustration.  The failed debt deal this past week is a case in point.  The Republicans may have their reasons for being so inflexible on tax increases, they may be perfectly good and they may indeed go further than a simple piece of paper someone shoved in front of them.  But when the debt deal failed in part because the Republicans were unwilling to raise revenues in anyway, it certainly looked like they were going to the mat for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and regarding the remaining 99% with a cold shrug of the shoulders.  How can you not feel disenfranchised by this?  Taking to the streets and voicing outrage would seem to me a perfectly legitimate response. 

We have a government that seems to have lost the ability to steer our nation on any kind of course.

The thing that makes this so frustrating to me is that what the Republicans are setting bayonets for doesn't seem to be worth such a desperate fight to save.  The Democrats want some of the Bush Tax Cuts to expire (I would rather they all expire, personally).  I had hoped to find a source out there that said if we just let the tax cuts expire, our fiscal woes would be solved, but that turned out not to be the case as a  2010 Congressional Research Report argues.  Page 11 shows that under 2010 projections the overall debt to GDP ratio would only be a few percentage points less if all the tax cuts expire, and that the overall ratio would continue to increase (though I do not know how they are projecting GDP....) on a rather unsustainable path. 

You may use this to argue that if it makes so little difference there is no point in letting the tax cuts expire.  But I would argue that a sensible Republican Senator or Representative might say if there is no real difference, he or she would use that as a bargaining chip to gain some of the cuts to government programs that actually would make a difference over time.  Yes, there may be some people ranging from the pretty well off to the totally stinking rich who will grumble over the fact that their income taxes have gone up a few percentage points, but I doubt the increase will be exceedingly painful for them.  My take on it is that a rise on taxes on the wealthy, while painful, does not stand up against the pain others will suffer if vital social programs which might be protected by an increase in revenues are cut.

But I think its good politics as well.  I'm sorry if you make Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh angry (though I really wouldn't be that sorry), but the rest of us would be happy to see a little justice, and shared sacrifice, even if it isn't really.  Just the sense that we are being governed again (even if we really aren't being governed very well) I think would ease our troubled minds and maybe give us the confidence boost we need to go out and finally get that tattoo, motorcycle, or boob job we have thinking about getting for so long now.  You only live once, afterall.

All kidding aside, my point is this:  The Oath of Office should take precedent over any piece of paper that a lobbyist told someone to sign, or any promise that was made on the campaign trail.  The faithful and sober governance of this nation should be more important than party politics and making Obama a one term president, especially in these difficult days where we are looking at a rapidly changing world and staring down the barrel of our own impending fiscal crisis. It is not up to the Republicans to decide on Obama's next term, it is up to the American People when they go to vote next November. Getting a president out of office should not be the platform of the opposing party.  The platform should be to govern.

Now, you may feel that I am being hard on Republicans.  I apologize for this (though I do feel that finding a sensible Republican in Congress is about as elusive as a 1963 Joe Schlabotnik baseball card), but it's quite obvious to me that they are driving the bus and setting the agenda, which is about as damning an indictment of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party that I can give.  I give Obama pretty good marks on foreign policy (though I give them with some unease), but I think he's proven to be a pretty poor leader in general.  But like the old saying goes: good salesmen rarely make good generals, even if you give him a shiny hat and new boots.

And like the other old saying goes:  Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like attending a rally of the Bah Humbug! Glorification Society.  Last year I won the look Ebeneezer Scrooge look alike contest and talent show, and I must defend my crown.  GGMM, where did I leave that dang blasted top hat?

2012 Election Special!

So the other day I went to get a tattoo.  It is something I wanted to do for a very, very long time but I just could never decide on what image I wanted to have permanently and painfully etched into my skin, nor could I decide where I wanted this as yet undefined image to be placed. Naturally, I figured I should have something positive placed in a region of my body where I could easily gaze upon it.  Maybe an uplifting Bible verse on my forearm, or the name and birth date of my daughter on my shoulder. 

But then one day I was in the local Barnes and Noble, browsing for nothing in particular when I came across Jergen Van Bergenshlabotnik's second Christmas Book:  The Christmas Sweater My Great Grandmother Knitted for Me with Yarn Spun From My Late Great Grandfather's Santa Suit That He Wore While Giving Out Candy To Poor Kids During the Great Depression While Working Two Shifts at the Scrapple Farm During The Year We Almost Didn't Have A Christmas But My Mom Also Bought Me A Puppy From Saving The Dollar Bills Wealthy Oil Men Stuffed Into Her G-String While Dancing at the Crazy Horse III That She Should Have Used To Pay Her Way Through College But Of Course They Always Say That About Dancers So You Don't Feel So Bad About Being At the Club But It Turns Out To Be Rarely True:  A Sentimental Christmas Journey. 

Now, there is something you must understand about Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik:  He and I are sworn enemies.  It all stems from the fact that in the 7th grade he made first chair bass clarinet, which made me angry because the only reason I chose bass clarinet in the first place was that no one wanted to play the damn thing.  I already had my eyes set on Harvard, and I figured being a first chair bass clarinetist would look really great on my application.  They would never have to know that I was first chair in a section of one.  But then there is Jurgen, this new kid from Lower Krakosia, and he's fucking up all of my carefully laid plans. 

To make matters worse, he was really, really good.  His father,  Miroslav Van Bergenshlabotnik, was like the Yo-Yo-Ma of bass clarinet players.  Naturally he pushed his son very hard in that lazy sort of Eastern European way to follow in his footsteps.

I went into damage control mode.  I first cast about for something else I could do really, really well, but I was too slow for sports, too rigid for art, and my baking skills needed serious work.  My only choice was to buckle down, learn my scales, and challenge Jurgen for the first chair spot.  I worked hard at it for three months.  At last I felt I was ready, but was was undecided about what day I should set the challenge for.  Then I remembered that in history class we had just learned that before the battle of Trenton Jesus had appeared before George Washington during his morning quiet time and reminded George that the godless Hessian soldiers loved alcohol and Christmas, and dropped a hint that if he was going to hit 'em the day after Christmas may be apropos. 

I felt that I did not have the help of our Lord and Savior because I lusted dreadfully for Mary McTitavic, who had confusingly blossomed over the summer, but I did take the history lesson to heart, and chose Saint Krispin's Day for my challenge.  Despite the fact that the Bergenshlabotniks were well on their way to American citizenship, they were still very much Lower Krakosian, and a brief survey of the culture noted that on the the day before Saint Krispin's Day the festival of Shlivovitz is celebrated.  During the festival friends and family gather to light candles, exchange gifts, throw plum brandy at the ceiling, and sing the patriotic hymns of the Lower Krakosian Eastern Orthodox Church for a period of 24 hours in the hopes that the family, flock, and wheat will be protected from the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte.  Therefore, on Saint Krispin's Day Jurgen would be tired, his throat would be shot, and his embouchure would be critically weakened.

My calculations proved correct, but even so I barely took the first chair.  Jurgen immediately set up a counter challenge for two weeks later, and that kicked off a running set of epic Bass Clarinet duels that lasted all the way through senior year of high school.

They became major events by the time we were in high school.  On challenge days the shops would close early, the citizens of Blacksburg would pack the bars tight, get drunk, and parade to the Blacksburg High School auditorium under the banner of either me or Jurgen, their chosen Champion (and everyone in Blacksburg had to make a choice).  The auditorium would be overflowing with people, waiting with electric anticipation for the duel to start, and then we would both take the stage to thunderous applause and try to outdo each other in a two hour competition in which the man with the most virtuosity, boldness, and dexterity would win the day.

At the end of senior year I was just on the cusp of realizing my dream of getting into Harvard and studying late 18th century French Literature, but the admissions officers were predictably nervous about the fact that for about half of my time in high school I had been a second chair bass clarinet player.  They agreed to attend the final duel, in which both Jurgen and I would play bass clarinet concertos of equal length that we had written and rehearsed with the Brussels Chamber Orchestra.  Jurgen was first chair at the time, I was the challenger, and he had the right to either go first or defer and go second.  That crafty bastard chose to defy convention and go first (indeed, the knowledgeable crowd gasped when he announced he would go first, rather than second in symbolic defense of his position), because he knew something I did not. 

A romance had developed between the Jurgen and Konstantina Von Brugge, the brilliant 20 year old principal violinist in the Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and at long last the night before the challenge the romance was consummated in a daring tryst on top of the desk of the Commandant of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets.  During the love making Konstantina had received a paper cut from some loose papers left on the desk to her middle finger on her left hand.  Konstantina may have lacked propriety and judgement, but was still an honorable person and explained her misgivings over the next days performance.  She said she could maybe struggle through one piece, but the quality on the second would suffer.

And indeed it did.  The end of my concerto was a lovely and poetic interlocking of melodies between my bass clarinet and the principle violin, but Konstantina's paper cut, aggravated by two 20 minute concertos, was finally getting in the way.  She tried to substitute different fingers to compensate on the final bars because she could simply not take the pain any longer, our timing got thrown off, and as I began to panic my bass clarinet let out a horrifying and ugly squeak, which had not happened for 5 years.  Bedlam broke loose in the auditorium as Jurgen was crowned the undisputed champion.

The aftermath was hard to bear.  Harvard decided I was obviously just Princeton material, and I was denied admission.  Because I was such a great Bass Clarinet player I did get a music scholarship to Berkley, but the fact that I never made it into Harvard always rankled me.  Often, as I toured around the world playing with the greatest orchestras and sleeping with the most beautiful and sophisticated of women, I wondered how my life would have played out differently if I had only gotten into Harvard.  To make matters worse, Jurgen not only dashed my dreams but appropriated them for himself.  Harvard decided Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik was indeed Harvard material, and while he was there he fell in love with late 18th Century French Literature, and became a writer of historical romances and, now, sentimental Christmas books.

It all just seemed a bad coincidence until I got a letter from Konstantina Van Brugge's lesbian lover many years later, who in a strange twist of fate turned out to be none other than Mary McTitavic.  She said one morning they were at a Waffle Haus eating their customary breakfast of waffles when suddenly Konstantina just broke down into tears.  She related to Mary the whole, awful story, about how she once fell in love with a young bass clarinet player, sustained her injury, and let it slip that she was concerned over her ability to get through the two concertos she would have to play the next day.  She felt that this information obviously led the principal bass clarinetist to make the unusual decision to play first in the challenge, and that she was responsible for the challenger losing in such spectacular fashion.

She had never told anyone, because she was so ashamed of her behavior and feared that a scandal would cost her her position in the orchestra, and she had carried the guilt with her for years.  To make matters worse for her, the paper cut had not healed cleanly but rather had scarred, making it a permanent reminder of her dishonor. She did not name names, but Mary McTitavic knew exactly what she was talking about because she was there, in the second row, and she remembered how watching Konstantina Van Brugge ploy her violin had stirred feelings in her that she had never felt before, especially for another woman.  Konstantina knew nothing about this, because Mary was a CIA agent who was undercover, trying to infiltrate a ring of hot European librarians with advanced martial arts skills who were assassins for hire.  To tell Konstantina that she had been at the epic final challenge would blow her cover.  Unfortunately, the librarians found Mary first.  The CIA disavows any knowledge of this, but I know the truth.

Mary did risk her cover, though, to tell me the shocking news, that Jurgen had cheated.  And since that day Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik is no longer my adversary, but my nemesis.  And when I saw his book in the Barnes and Noble I felt the hatred rise up in my throat.  But I had an epiphany.  Who says a tattoo has to be a positive thing? 

So I bought the book, and took it to the tattoo studio, and got the tattoo artist to tattoo the dust jacket photograph of Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik, who has his glasses off and is smiling bemusedly and intelligently for the camera, onto my stomach.  And now, as I get older and my skin there inevitably grows more distended and wrinkly with each passing year and each case of Coors, the face of my nemesis will become more and more distorted and disfigured.  And when I die and my body rots away, my hate will finally die with me. 

The tattoo artist thought it was an unusual choice, but after deciding I wasn't drunk went ahead with it.  As she was working she remarked "Hey, are you the writer of Miscellaneous Marickovich?"

I told her that I was, but asked her how she knew.  "Not to many Marickovich's in the world, are there?" she said, as she filled in Jurgen's inquisitively cocked eyebrow with black ink. 

"No, I suppose not." I replied.  "Hey, do you think you could add some devil horns to Jurgen's fat fucking face for me?"

"You got it buddy."  She continued working for a bit, and then continued speaking in a soothing, sweet voice which you would not expect from someone who has tattoo sleeves of Satan covering both her arms.  "I really like the Blog, by the way.  Only, I wish you did more political commentary."

"Really?"

"Yeah.  I always thought you had some really interesting thoughts, and with the 2012 presidential election getting underway so soon, I know I would really be interested in hearing what you have to say about the candidates.  I imagine other people would be as well."

So, Kat, I have decided to take your advice, and I will now write about what I think of each of the Republican candidates, with a note on the chances I give Obama as well. 

Though you know, it took a really long time to set this post up.  I mean, I know I usually open with a few paragraphs of nonsense (I got that from the Simpson's, by the way), but this was a bit much.  My hands are kind of tired, and the tattoo on my stomach really hurts.  I think it might be infected.  So maybe I will save politics for another day. 

Sorry folks. 

Ouch.  This tattoo really, really hurts. 


 



        

Books You May Not Like --- The Brothers Karamazov

Phew. 

I finished Dostoevsky's masterwork The Brother's Karamazov on Sunday, 11/6/11, at 6:54 AM.  And while I do indeed feel more culturally enriched by the experience, I mostly feel relief. 

I'm not saying it was a bad book by any means, but it was a really tough read.  It was like watching a tightly wound, tense soccer match between two excellent teams: a tough slog with occasional flashes of sublime brilliance.  Some days I could barely put it down, but then there were times were I could only read 6 pages a week. 

For those of you who haven't read it, I'll set the scene:  This is a book basically about a double love triangle between Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and two of his four sons: Ivan and Dimitri (aka Mitya), where Dimitiri is sort of the hinge.  On the one hand, Fyodor (a moderately wealthy landowner) and Mitya are competing for the favors of the vivacious, cunning, and reputedly rather wicked Grushenka.  On the other hand, Dimitri is already engaged to a wealthy young woman, Katya Ivanovna, who Ivan secretly loves.  It's a mess.   

Karamazov has two other sons.  One is Alyosha, who is a very spiritual and religious young man who when the novel opens is about to enter an Orthodox monastery.  The other is the "lackey" Smerdyakov, who is reputedly the offspring of Fyodor and a wandering, homeless mystic, Stinking Lizaveta, who Fyodor essentially rapes on a bet between him and other wealthy gentlemen.  Smerdyakov serves as a cook to Fyodor, after being raised by his two servants.

As you can tell, Fyodor is not really a stand-up guy.  He is little more than a buffoon, given to drunkenness, debauchery, depravity.  He is good at making money, but that is not exactly commendable.  As to the others, Dimitri is a sensualist, a hedonist who knows no restraint, who nonetheless possesses a keen and absurd sense of honor.  Ivan is a rationalist, an atheist, and though we don't know it at the start of the novel also possess a Karamazovian lack of restraint for his passions as witnessed by his love for the engaged Katya.  

As we discover the love triangles, the plot unfolds.  At the beginning of the book all the brothers are in their hometown, and we witness the simmering tension between Dimitri and his father Fyodor which is only kept from boiling over by the presence of Ivan.  Alyosha is on the scene, but his family is a secondary concern (and perhaps to an extent an embarrassment) compared to his religious pursuits, especially as his mentor's health is ailing. 

The mentor Zosima does finally die (after a really, really, really long speech) and Alyosha suffers a crisis of faith when the corpse of Zosima, lying in state, is corrupted (i.e. it starts to stink.  I guess when a holy man dies he does not stink).  He goes with a friend to Grushenka, who has reportedly promised to whip his cassock off of him and, I can only assume (though its not explicitly said in the book...it was 1880, after all), fuck the bejeezus out of him.  But when he arrives she doesn't seem that interested, she and Alyosha have a conversation of a spiritual nature that I can't really remember, and he goes off, his faith intact but changed.  He no longer fears the world, he has mastered his Karamazovian appetites.  He leaves the monastery and goes out into the world, as his mentor instructed him to do.

At the same time, Ivan resolves to leave for Moscow in spite of the ongoing strife.  The next day, Fyodor is killed and three thousand roubles, which he had been using to entice Grushenka but Mitya always claimed was rightfully his, is stolen.  

Dimitri is the prime suspect, of course, and indeed he is captured the next morning in the next town over while having a drunken spree with Grushenka, funded with a sudden and suspicious influx of cash.

The rest of the book concerns the investigation and trial, and its really interesting, but I don't want to discuss it too much because that is when the book really picks up.  It's a shame that Fyodor isn't killed until over halfway through the 726 page book.

There are two things that make this book hard to read.  First, its kind of like Moby Dick in that the plot is quite interesting, but there are many asides and long speeches that are really more philosophical in nature.  Some of them are very interesting (notably the Grand Inquisitor, which I think I will examine in a different post later), but some of them are less so.

But the other thing that makes this book so hard to read is that people say its one of the great books, and that its about everything, and so you examine every sentence for meaning, looking for it in places where maybe it just isn't.  There are many things in the book that are probably more about Russia in the late 1800s than anything else, and not knowing much about that time they just don't seem to matter much one way or the other. 

But naturally, in a book with this kind of density and this kind of length, there is still a lot to take away, even if we set aside the Grand Inquisitor.  As I have already written so much, I will leave you only with a comment on Alyosha and his faith. 

At the beginning of the book, the narrator (who is sort of an omniscient citizen of the town in which all the action is set) states that Alyosha is the hero of the story, or at least that is certainly the sense that you get as we are introduced to him.  But at first blush Alyosha seems very unheroic.  While Ivan is desperately trying to keep his brother from killing his father Alyosha is at the monastery, and he really does nothing to help Ivan.  he is a nervous young man who is afraid of his passions, that they might overtake him, and he does his best to seclude himself from temptation and his family.  While his faith is admirable, he is something of a coward.

After his mentor dies he does realize that his faith has overcome his lustful, Karamazovian nature, and given him the power to live freely in the dangerous world, outside the monastery.  So he is no longer a coward, but rather now a very brave man, going out into the world that he once so feared. 

But even then, as things unfold, he doesn't really act the hero.  He can't set anything to rights.  All his belief in God and all of his prayers cannot keep the lives around him from unraveling.  And his family, while a grave matter, still seems like a secondary concern to other things.  Even after the murders, when his brother Ivan is ill and his brother Mitya is in jail, he seems to be more interested in saving the life of a young peasant boy who is obviously (in a heart wrenching Tiny Tim sort of way) beyond help.  Sure, he visits his brother in jail and touches base with those who need to speak with him, but he really puts much more effort into comforting this little boy, his family, and a small platoon of the little boy's friends (who once teased him).

So Alyosha is not a hero in that he can keep bad things from happening.  But I think there is something heroic about how he lives his life.  Everyone else has all these hang ups, have drunken deeply of the times in which they live.  Mitya embodies the sort of seedy underside of the 19th century and a belief in a ludicrous sense of honor that still hadn't faded from European life.  His appetites and sense of deep offense pave the way to his destruction.  Ivan embodies a sort of out of control rationalism in which anything can be justified through thought, even war and the non-existence of God.  It has a hand in leading him to madness.  There is one minor character that spouts nothing but what the liberal Russian press was writing at the time the book was written (or so it says in some of my edition's footnotes), and another minor character flits around from one idea to the next, from faith to atheism, from pastoralism to modernism.

But Alyosha?  As everyone else spins around him like a drunken top, as people are killed and sent to jail and go mad, as the town becomes a sensational scene for a sort of celebrity trial of the day, as lives are ruined, only Alyosha can maintain his course.  Only he is really....not calm, but steady...in the midst of all that goes around him.  He's not necessarily happy.  In no passage does he suddenly whip out a guitar and sing "I Can Only Imagine", but at the same time his faith allows him to move through a difficult time in a difficult and changing place without he himself being destroyed.  He loves others.  He alone has the ability to act positively, thoughtfully, and gracefully to the dark and troubling world he finds himself in. 

And if his prayers are wasted on the adults, the little boy's friends he has met through helping little Tiny Tim (I can't remember his name...Illyusha?  Something like that) seem to have undergone a positive change.  One of the more bombastic seems humbled.  One of the more shy ones seems more confident.  Alyosha has given them an onion that one day they might grasp onto in their own struggle for salvation; a bittersweet memory of a good and worthy deed, of providing comfort to one who so desperately needed it, that one day may save them all.

What does that stuff about the onion mean?  Well, my dear friends, you'll simply have to read the book.

In Which Our Hero Limits His Career Choices

There is a time in a young man's life, somewhere between wanting to be a cowboy and wanting to be a Playboy photographer, that he thinks "I'll bet it would be pretty cool to be President of the United States of America."

And indeed, it would seem that it would be.  You get to live in a big house, you get to fly around in your own plane.  You get to meet All-Americans and, if you play your cards right, the Chancellor of Germany will let you give her a shoulder rub (though it is still polite to ask first.  Don't just go for it!  I'm looking at you, President Bush, you sly dog).  You want Blink 182 to play a few tunes after the state dinner with India?  Done.  Inadvisable, but it can certainly be done.  Ask them to stick to the older stuff. 

But I really don't think the perks outweigh the peril.  I mean, gosh, you have to throw out the first pitch of the major league baseball season.  I can't imagine the pressure.  All those eyes watching you, all those millions of viewers at home, all those pundits from the other side of the aisle hoping you throw like a girl (though if you were a female president, what would happen if you threw like a man?  Would that be expected?  If you pitched softball in college, and you threw the baseball underhanded, would the catcher be ready?  Are the American people ready for that?).  I am sure that my palms would be sweaty.  What if the ball slipped out and sailed 15 feet over home plate?  Embarrassment!  And then I have to do it next year and there will be even more pressure to get it right the second time and I know that I will screw it up again.  The next year it will be even worse and the next year...I mean, by the end you are hiring a pitching coach as your chief of staff and popping Rolaids like they are this year's leftover Halloween candy.

So no, I don't think I would really want to be the POTUS.

Of course, I still have a chance.  A small chance, but certainly a chance.  I mean, what if this Saturday I get down to the bottom of a bottle of scotch, sit down at the computer, and just magically shit out a staggering work of literary genius?  And what if, while I am getting the author's photograph done for the dust jacket the photographer says "I don't mean to be forward or anything, but I think...I just think....by Mercury's wing-ed feet, Sir, you have a beautiful body.  You should consider modeling."

So I do consider it.  And I hit it big with a Calvin Klein  underwear add, spin that into movie career, and after aimlessly wandering in a cocaine fueled wilderness wake up years later as a US Senator pounding his desk day after day screaming about family values.  From there, I'm just a short hop skip and jump away from being the most powerful man in the world.

But again, the baseball thing.  I really don't want it to happen.  So rather than live my life with this presidential sword of Damocles hanging over my head, I have decided that, for once and all, its time to close up that avenue of life and make sure that there is no chance I will ever be an eligible contender for the Presidency.

I don't know what my entire agenda would be as the President, but I do have a couple planks of my platform that I can share with you, a few things I feel strongly about.  It should be damning enough to do the damage required to permanently hobble any latent political ambitions I may have. 

1.  As Your President, I Will Strive for a Single Payer, Government Run Health Care System

S'truth!  Below is my argument for this.  I know its a long winded one, but its better than a 30 second sound clip saying "I am going to do it!  We can do it!"

Look, capitalism is the thing, and there is no question about it.  But there are severe social consequences to the American brand of capitalism, and we're seeing that now.  Good people who did nothing wrong (certainly at least nothing as wrong as the guys on Wall Street) are out of work, and can't get jobs.  Many of those same good people have lost their homes.  Young people are looking at lives where they must go into incredible debt to get a piece of paper so they can maybe get a job that might yield to more prosperity than their parents had, though there is beginning to be a decent chance that their standard of living will be lower than their parent's was. 

You may say, "Well, good people.  Well young people.  If you are angry with the system, might I suggest that you run for office so that you can effect change?"  The problem with that is that many people see an establishment in which they cannot change anything.  They feel disenfranchised, left out of a system of government that is supposed to be by them and for them.  So they take to the streets.

One of the jobs Government must do is protect us from threats.  Seeing all the protesting makes me think:  Should the government do more to protect its citizens from the excesses and consequences of capitalism?

If the answer is yes, than how do we do that?  I think the best thing you could do is to make sure that everyone has universal health care coverage. 

Why that is...I don't really know.  I mean, when I think about losing my own job, the thing that keeps me up at night is losing health insurance and being forced to pay high health costs out of pocket (with money that I now no longer have) or by my own insurance at high cost (again, with money I don't have).  It seems sad to me that in this nation good health care coverage is often tied to employment or marriage, and if you lose that job or if your spouse that has that job takes off with her yoga instructor (though let's be honest, even you have to admit that Brad is pretty awesome), well guess what?  You've lost your health care coverage too.  Good luck getting it back while you work part time in a stop gap job (if you can even find that).  Don't get sick.

I just don't think it should be that way.  I don't know if I am going to say that health care is a human right, but even if it isn't I think the way we do it is unfair. 

As to political considerations, we'd have to figure out how to abortion would be handled in such a scheme, and that might mean finally deciding, once and for all (or at least until public opinion radically changes one way or the other) what we as a nation are going to do about it.  And since the rich still must have their toys, elective plastic surgery will still be the purview of private clinics.  Not on Uncle Sam's dime sir!  No Sir!  Good Day Sir!

I said Good Day, SIR! 

2.  As Your President, I Will Raise Everyone's Taxes

How will I pay for all this?  By raising taxes of course.

My argument is a personal one.  If someone from the government, with his bow tie and clipboard, came up to me and said "If I could guarantee you quality health care, would you be willing to pay higher taxes?"  I would say yes.  Freedom from the fear of losing health insurance (and the financial headaches that would cause) seem to me better than the unfettered liberty of always worrying about it. 

So I am naturally going to use the broad brush of politics and assume that everyone will agree with me. 

Of course, the rich will see the highest tax increases.  I will repeal the Bush tax cuts and impose additional tax increases upon the wealthiest Americans. How much?  I don't know.  We'll try to keep it less than a tax rate of 35%.

But I will also tax everyone else as well.  The Bush Tax Cuts will expire for everyone. Many people in this nation do not pay any taxes at all, and that will have to change.  Everyone is going to have to chip in something, even if its $5.  Some of that money you are going to save because you are no longer paying health insurance premiums?  Uncle Sam is going to need it. 

And of course, some sales taxes will be applied to unhealthy items.  My intent is not to change habits, so the taxes will be light.  If you are willing to pay $8.99 for a number 3 combo meal at Hardee's, I think you should also be willing to pay a nickel towards any future medical procedures such habits will eventually induce. 

The big horse trade to get this done?  I am willing to completely phase out social security.  Completely.  We should consider relief programs for the poorest of the elderly, but I think all Americans should take some responsibility for their future retirement.  The Government will provide the health care, but you better provide the rest.  That's the deal.  Unfortunately, I don't have a nice pizza ad like political jingle to make that sound cool.  I'll throw in 2 liters of coke for every American at Christmas time....which is strangely at odds with my policy of securing the nation's health.  But hey, it's Christmas.

3.  Speaking Of Christmas, I Will Work to Officially Rename it "National Winter Holiday Super Fun Time"

4.  No, Actually, check that.  As Your President, I Shall Decree that Christmas is Cancelled.

Sorry to go all Oliver Cromwell on you.   You may say its bad for the economy, but I plan to do it right after Halloween, and someone is going to have to burn all the Christmas Cards, round up all Christmas Lights for destruction, sit down with Neil Diamond to break the news that he cannot cut another Christmas Album, and ship all those Little Debbie Christmas cakes to Africa.  Heck, let's just send all that Christmas stuff we are not using to Africa this Christmas Time.  This year, they will know.  By God they will know. 

Besides which, this has historical, and dare I say American, precedent.  The first Americans, who braved the stormy seas so that they could worship their God as they wished in 100% grade A Liberty (neglecting of course those other first Americans who had sailed to Virginia seeking to make a profit or escape the gallows in Britain...and then of course those other first Americans who just happened to be here because this was their home) were Puritans, much as Oliver Cromwell was.  And they did not celebrate Christmas, outlawed it in fact, because they were ashamed of the drunken fuck-fest it had become back at home in jolly old England.  If the evidence from the 2009 Friends of the Montvale County Public Library Christmas Dinner Dance and Silent Auction is any indication, Christmas has taken on a similar character in our great land.     

I think that's right.  The thing about the Puritans, I mean, not the Friends of the Library Christmas Dinner Dance etc. etc..  I know that happened.  Though I honestly don't remember much of it, accept that I had a really great time and the assistant librarian has this incredible tattoo in a most amazing and surprising place.  Fun times.  They had really great eggnog too, I remember that.  Too bad Christmas is going to be cancelled after I am elected President. 

Anyway, if the thing about the Puritans is wrong, I am sure my crack political team will deny, dodge, deflect, disparage and dodge (the 5 d's of campaigning).  I'm still cancelling Christmas.  


...There.  That ought to about do it. I don't think any more has to be said.  I am officially politically ruined.  But just in case I am not yet quite there:  I love soccer.  And I hate football. 












 

Do Turkey's eat Tigers?

Come with me as I grope back into my memories of freshman year in college, where between studying for exams and doing homework I managed to cram in the time to read Tolstoy's epic War and Peace. Now, in retrospect, that time might have been better spent chasing girls and searching for beer, but I wasn't about that back then and I don't regret reading the book, which I consider the best book I have ever read.

Anyways, I remember that it is not only about Napoleon's invasion of Russia, but it also contains some philosphy on what history is.  The history of a battle, for Tolstoy, is not about commanders making decisions, but rather an event that is not as controllable as we'd like to think.  In a series of random events, it is the spirit of the men, often such an intangible, that matters.

He may not have said that.  But I think he did.  If he did not, forgive me.  It has been a long time since I have  read War and Peace.  I think I might read it again, even though I am strangely at a time in my life where I may be better served once again by chasing women and searching for beer (now much easier to come by).  Though maybe not. 

Anyways, the point is that intangibles matter.  And that, my friend, is how I like to do my crackpot sports analysis.  Often, when I consider a game or a match between two teams, my factors of thought are the overall qualitiy of the teams, their recent run of form, and the intangibles.

It is rare that an individual really enters into my thinking.  Wellington used to say that Napoleon's prescense was worth 40,000 men on the battlefied.  There are some players like that in team sports.  Michael Jordan was one.  Peyton Manning certainly is or was one, if the Colts recent games are any testament.  The Hokies all know that Andrew Luck is probably one of those guys, from bitter experience.  In the world of soccer the analogy breaks down a bit, I think, but Lionel Messi is certainly a little Napoleon.  A good goalkeeper can make a big, big difference, but its not quite the same....if a defense breaks down the in the right way the best goalkeeper in the world cannot save you.  You just have to pray that the striker will miss.  If that striker is Fernando Torres, the chances are pretty good...though even that may be changing. 

Anyway, today's football game.  No Napoleons will take the field today when the Hokies play against Clemson.  I don't think Clemon's Tajh Boyd is one of those of guys who can win a game for you; Logan Thomas probably doesn't have the experience yet to be that guy, though I don't know enough about him to really comment on his future prospects.

Recent run of form is no help either in picking a winner in this case, though in general it is not as much help in football as it is in soccer.  In soccer the best teams often hit a rough patch a couple times through a long season where they will find it hard to win for 5 games or so, and its something to be considered.  That doesn't work quite so well in football, where a good team will lose a game and come back even stronger next week, becuase they have something to prove.

In a game were Clemson and Tech are both 4-0, recent run of form is no help at all. Clemson has arguably faced better opponents, but Auburn is not the Auburn of last year (they are missing Cam Newton, obviously a Napoleonic figure, at least in college football) .  The win against Florida State was a quality win that should not be discounted.  The Hokies have not looked particularly impressive against a slate of weak opponents, but aside from the game against ECU they have won comfortably if not overwhelmingly.  I actually give Tech a lot of credit for surviving at ECU.  It was the first road game for a young team, and beating ECU has not been easy for Tech in recent times.

So it comes down to the intangibles.  Those intangibles favor the Hokies.  Clemson has not played away from home yet this year...all 4 games have been in Death Valley, which is a very hard place to play.  Clemson must now go into their own Death Valley, Lane Stadium, the Hokie's House.  The 6:00 pm kickoff means that the fans will be well liqoured and in full voice as the sun starts to set.  Most of the game will be played under the lights, which will only feed into the atmosphere.  Provided Clemson doesn't take the fans out of the game by scoring a lot at the outset, they will find it tough going. 

So, the final analysis:  I think, as the line suggests, it will be a very close, very excitiing encounter.  But I think the intangibles will carry the Hokies, 24-14.  A strong defense, and an electric atmosphere, carry the day.

On The 10th Anniversary of September 11th

I wrote this a week ago, just before the 10th anniversary of September 11.  I  didn't publish at the time just becuase...I don't know.  Lots of people in the media were being critical of how our nation has handled the past 10 years, and I don't think anything I have said will really raise eyebrows.  But to be somewhat critical of our nation on a day where our unity in the face of tragedy was emphasized seemed wrong. 

It's been a week.  The memories of the commerations and the day itself have faded a bit for most of us.  So it seems appropriate (if untimely) to join the choir now. 

It would not be fitting to say nothing on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. 

It is impossible to forget the day.  I remember exactly where I was, as I am sure all of you do as well. I was at Virginia Tech, sitting in a class room, and my professor walked in and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  He didn't know what kind of plane, no one understood the magnitude of what had just happened, so we all just contiuned with class as normal and I assumed it was a little, private aviator's plane.  A small tragedy on an otherwise promising tuesday. 

I got out of class and headed to Owens Hall for lunch, and there on the TV screens was tragedy writ large.

Now it is 10 years later.  All week the media has been revisiting the pain of that day, remembering those who died, and commentating on the legacy those attacks have left behind.  On Sunday there will be fittengly solemn commemerations throughout the country, especially in New York City where they will have their annual ceremony, reading aloud the names of those who died.  

As for myself, I will certainly say a prayer for those who lost their lives.  I will certainly remember the fire fighters and EMTs who rushed towards death and destruction that they might save others.  I will certainly keep in my thoughts men and women like Lt. Todd Weaver, killed in Afghanistan one year ago last Friday, who left behind a wife and a daughter who is about the same age as my own daughter.

It is all appropriate.  But I wonder if perhaps, over the past 10 years, it would have been better if we could have shaken off the ghosts of September 11th to a greater extent?  I wonder if September 11th has come to define our nation in a way that maybe it shouldn't? 

It may be too soon to ask those questions.  It may take ages for us to heal from such a traumatic event.  But history and our own lives tell us it is dangerous to fixate on moments of defeat and pain.  It may not be the best parallel, but the Serbian fixation on the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, where Serbian armies were decimated in what is probably best considered a tactical draw but a strategic defeat, was used to breed feelings of nationalism and hatred that fueled the barbarity of the Bosnian Wars 600 years later.  More familiar may be the way that Hitler and the Nazis used the bitterness of German defeat in WWI (and the terms of their surrender) to turn their nation in to a machine of war and death.

Or maybe witness simply the broken man, who lets a tragedy in own his life define him, who becomes bitter, irritable, and hate filled?

Invoking historical boogeymen to defend a point is in vogue these days, and I am not suggesting that the United States is on a path to become a new Serbia or the Fouth Reich.  But rest assured as well I don't use these examples lightly, as they are extreme examples that point to the cancer that can grip a nation if it lets painful moments in its history define it.  We should be wary of allowing the events of the past 10 years to do so.

We have more in common, probably, with the broken man.  The past 10 years have been traumatic.  We were attacked, we responded in ways both good and bad, and that response has forced us to question ourselves as as nation.  Other events not related to September 11th have also forced us to question some of our basic assumptions about the World and our place in it. 

We don't seem to be dealing wth it well.  Instead of positively responding to the challenges before us, we sit at the bar and lash out anyone who tries to console us.  We react with bitterness, divisiveness, pettyness and immaturity.  I dare say that many of our public officials and self-righteous media demagogues, who are always so quick to thank those who serve or venerate our first responders, have not even begun to live up to the example that our nation's heroes have given us. 

What will the 20th anniverasy of September 11th be like?  What will the 30th?  I hope we will commemorate those days.  It would be a shame if September 11th really did become like Pearl Harbor Day, which aside from a note on the calender and maybe a documentary on the History Channel (maybe) is often forgotten.  But I hope on the 30th Anniversary of September 11th we will be able to look back on the pervious 20 years and see that we have responded more positively to an ever changing world.  I hope our politics will be less divisive.  I hope that we come to have some measure of peace with ourselves as a nation.    

Have your September 11th, and keep it well.  Light your candles, say your prayers, recite the names and ring your bells.  Remember.  But then let the bells fall silent.  Put out the candles and let the smoke curl peacefully to the Heavens.  Tomorrow is another day, and its going to be beautiful. 

Football? Meet Football.

Do you feel that?  No, its not a late aftershock from that earthquake a few weeks ago.  No my friends, there is a bit of a shake up happening in the world of sports.

Certainly no shake ups this past weekend in Blacksburg, where the Hokies decimated the App State mountaineers.  Frank Beamer, always the gentleman, called off the dogs once the Hokies were up 50 something to nothing.  The Hokies won.  By a lot.  And that's really all I have to say about that, becuase I didn't get to watch the game.

No, the really big thing is that I heard on Rich Eisen's NFL podcast that the Fox network is going to be airing some English Premier League soccer matches this year on Sundays, between the early afternoon and evening NFL games.  The first three will be tape delays (Manchester United v. Chelsea on Sep. 18th, Tottenham Hotspur v. Arsenal on Oct. 2nd and Chelsea v. Liverpool on November 20th).

But then, on Super Bowl Sunday:  Live soccer in the morning.  On Fox.  Chelsea v. Manchester United.

It will be, apparently, the first live broadcast of an EPL match on network television.  And the fact that is happening on Super Bowl Sunday, that most Holy of Holies? 

Wow.  That means that the people on Fox are going to have to stop talking about the Super Bowl for two hours ON SUPER BOWL SUNDAY so that they can show a soccer game.  A SOCCER GAME.  And its not like they are going to have to stop talking at 7AM or 8AM.  No, this game will probably be at 11AM, just about the time many of you will be thinking about getting your drink on.That's a big deal America, and it should leave the nation shaken to its core.

I'll let Glenn Beck and Jim Rome worry about that.  Me?  Couldn't be happier.  For the past several years they have shown the Champions League final on the network, and now they are taking another step towards putting soccer more into the mainstream.  This is a comforting sign that the game is gathering more traction in this country, and that I will be able to watch soccer (possibly on more channels) for a very, very long time.  Soccer will probably never be on par with football or baseball or even basketball, but more and more it's here to stay.  That's good enough to me.  

The matches they picked are based on name recognition of the squads, but they should be good games.  Most people, even the un-initiated, have heard of Manchester United.  They are looking extremely good after the first three matches of the season.  Fox will show them against Chelsea twice (in the EPL, you play every team in the league twice).  A word of warning:  traditionally, these two teams are vying for first and second in the league and becuase you get points in the standings for a draw sometimes they have ended up as tentative (and dull) affairs.  It's hard to say what will happen this time, becuase Chelsea probably will not be competing with Manchester United for the title this year; more likely Man U will be competing against Manchester CITY for the top spot. 
Arsenal and Tottenham could be a good match; both are clubs that have had rocky starts to the season, so they should be evenly matched and desperate for victory.  Chelsea v. Liverpool could also be a good game.  Liverpool is resurgent so far after a couple of tough seasons (though we'll see if that lasts).  Liverpool may be shooting for fourth place if their form holds up, and they have Suarez who is a very exciting player.  Chelsea's Torres is less so...

What's more, these are all classic clashes, so the atmosphere in the stadiums should be electric.  United and Chelsea are long time rivals, Tottenham and Arsenal are cross London antagonists, and there is even some bad blood between Chelsea and Liverpool that has developed in recent years (or maybe its always been there, and I have only noticed it recently).  Those of you who watch will not fail to note, I am sure, that a soccer crowd, well lubricated with bitters and singing in full voice, puts the comparatively sedated NFL fan to shame.  There is just nothing like it.

One last note for non-soccer people:  Take a chance on watching these games, and do so with an open mind.  The EPL presents some of the finest football in the world (arguably better than even the World Cup, which many Americans watch).  Don't be afraid if you enjoy it.  These are different times with different social mores:  it's okay if you like soccer.  I won't think any less of you.

Also, pray for an early goal.  In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby noted that for the spectator a soccer game hasn't really started until the first goal is scored, and it's a maxim I take to heart (and I take very few maxims to heart).  If it's scored, early, that will force the other team to respond by chasing the game, taking risks with its players which will open things up and make things more interesting.

I just hope they don't get Terry Bradshaw to do match commentary or something stupid like that.... 

Hey! The Hokies Have a Game This Weekend!

Oh my gosh!

I do believe, good people, that the Virginia Polytechnic and State University Fighting Gobblers are going to be in action against the Appalachian State Mountaineers this very weekend! 

Can the Mountaineers overcome the long bus ride to Blacksburg and poor catering service to defeat the mighty Hokies? 

Will I be able to partake in the televisional feast that will commence at kickoff? 

Will Sarah Palin parachute out of a C-130 onto the 50 yard line with the 38th Royal Parachute Regiment (the Duke of Gloucester's finest) during the 3rd quarter to renounce her American citizenship and declare her undying loyalty to the Queen?  

All intriguing questions.  I will tackle them in reverse order.

No, I seriously doubt Sarah Palin will do any such thing.  However, before she rules it out entirely, it would be good to remind her that the royalists who stood staunchly with King and Country were America's first conservatives.  Just something to think about, Mrs. Palin, as you continue to try and burnish your credentials for....whatever it is you are preparing to do.   

I don't know.  I will, indeed, be able to partake in the televisional feast, one way or another.  The real question is, do I want to?  My Netflix que is getting awfully overloaded.

It's a tough one.  I've been comparing the Hokie's uniforms with the Mountaineers', and I got to tell ya; not much between them.  I am afraid it's going to have to come to a coin toss. 

Here we go....

Phew.  Don't worry everyone.  It looks a win for the Hokies.  But it will not be easy. 

You see, the coin, once flipped, struck my Pippa Middleton poster, and I fumbled the catch off the ricochet because I was momentarily distracted by....Pippa.  Rules is rules, and so I had to play the coin as it lied.  Luckily it was heads, so the Hokies are still going to win.  But expect a rocky first half. 

Go Hokies!

On Sports: Predicitions for the Seasons

Hey!  So the straw poll is today, and you may think that because of this I would dive this morning right into politics and maybe, if I was feeling lucky, make a prediction as to who would win. 

No, for two reasons:

1.  The election is already over for me.  When asked on Thursday during the debate if they would not approve a deficit reduction plan that had $1 of tax increase for every $10 in cuts, they all raised their hands, which I took to be a unanimous salute to their inflexibility.  Whether you agree with tax increases or not, I would argue that such stubbornness in our elected officials is not what this country needs in its leadership.  My vote is already reluctantly cast for Obama in 2012, and any Republican would need to show a large shift to the center -- and dramatic increase in common sense -- to change my mind.  John Huntsman may have the best chance of doing so, but based on the fact that he seemed to be the most pragmatic of all the candidates on display I don't give him much of a chance of getting to far.  People just aren't "excited" and "fired up" about him, as if that is really the main criteria in selecting the person who leads what is still the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. 

2.  Football, and football, and football season is about to start, and while it may be more important to talk about politics it is much, much less fun.

I have my predictions for the football seasons lined up.  So let's go.

Most importantly, the English Premier League starts up today!  Sadly, I've got the nearly perennial favorites, Manchester United, to win the league this year.  They have the strongest team, and more importantly their management is consistent, with one Sir Alex Ferguson at the helm.  Wellington often said that Napoleon's presence on a battlefield was worth 30,000 men; Ferguson is the same way.  Down the stretch in the spring, when points are tight and results are needed, he is the extra factor that will carry the day.  Plus, I mean, he's a fucking Knight.  No other team in the league, if in the world, has a Knight leading them onto the pitch.  How can he lose?

As for my own favorite team, Chelsea....well, its too hard to tell.  They have a new manager who did well at Porto, but he's no Knight.  It will be interesting to see if they can get Torres scoring goals again...I don't think he plays well with Drogba and needs someone more creative working with him up front, probably some kind of attacking midfielder.  The midfield and some of the defenders are getting a little old for professional footballers, but I have confidence in the defence and in keeper Petr Chech.  I think they will be second or third, battling it out again with Manchester City. 

Arsenal I've got finishing fourth, but I'll go out on a limb and say that finally, FINALLY, Arsene Wenger is going to win a trophy after a very long drought.  It may be fourth place in the greater London area Football Managers of French Nationality beauty contest (what a nose that man has, what a nose!), but he'll pick up something.

Shortly after that,   the Virginia Tech Hokies will take the field against...someone.  I haven't got the schedule in front of me.  Even so, it is my understanding that the schedule this year favors the Hokies.  They finally got it through their heads that playing a difficult game at the beginning of the season doesn't really suit them, and they will get all the national exposure they can handle if they run the table, get to the BCS championship, and win.  Win!  The Hokies could be favorites in every game they play this year, which I believe is a first. 

Unfortunately for the Hokies, I just don't see it happeneing.  At some point in the season they are going to go unstable and drop a game, just because they always do and winning every game in a 12 game season, even when you are favored in every one of them, is just very hard.  The question is, will the let down of disappointing themselves and all those fans again cause them to slip and lose more than one game?  I say not this year.  They go 11-1, win the ACC championship (again), get to a BCS bowl game (again), and get their asses handed to them by a superior team that has faced down sterner challenges (again).  Sorry, Frank.  I'd love for you to prove me wrong.  You are a great coach, but you are not a Knight.  Yet.

Finally, after that, is the start of the NFL. What do I predict this year?  I predict that the teams with most touchdowns will usually win games.  I predict there will be bone crunching trench warfare the likes of which has not been seen since the Somme.  I predict the opening weeks will be very sloppy because of the lack of practice due to the lockout.  I predict that shots of big breasted cheerleaders will challenge our sense of propriety and good conduct amongst our friends, making the more enlightened of us go silent in our own turgid reflections and the less noble exclaim what their intentions would be in a parallel, non-existent universe.

And who will win it all?  That, dear reader, is between me and God.            

She Chopin Broccoli! And other Musical Adventures.

It's a rare thing that I listen to "This American Life", for a two reasons. 

First, it's on at wierd times during the day here, and so I am never near the radio to listen to it.  I used to download on it my I-pod but found I got so interested in the stories that it really became a distraction.  Not as much of a distraction as Katie Morgan's "Having Sex with Katie Morgan", but a distraction nevertheless.

Second, David Sedaris sometimes features on "This American Life", and with all due respect to the man I really don't like his work.  The reason I don't like his work is that, honestly, with some practice and the proper training, I always feel I could do just as well.  Maybe not in the audio piece department, but certainly from a literary standpoint.  The fact that he is out there and I am in here just kind of grates on my nerves.  "This American Life" remindes me of this, and so I usually don't tune in. 

But one time I was actually listening to "This American Life", probably in the car, and I heard an absolutly brillaint piece by Starlee Kine on break-up songs and why they make us feel better (mostly becuase they make us feel worse), and after examining the different break-up songs realizes that the only way to really deal with her own pain after a failed relationship was to write a break-up song herself.  To do this, she contacts who she takes to be the undisputed king of the genre:  Phil Collins.  Really!  And if you doubt the claim, Google (should that be capitalized??) the lyrics to "Against all Odds" (you know, "take a look at me now?").  If you have suffered a recent romantic misadventure, well, grab the tissues before you click the link.  I dare you not to use them.

As for me, Phill Collins doesn't really cut it, becuase it (and other songs like it) are just a little too cheesy.  Now, Kine says we must embrace the cheesiness, give in to the cheesiness, be one with the cheesiness.  But it seems that the death of a relationship requires something a little more fitting. I mean, on Christmas Eve, do you want to listen to the guy in the first video, or the second?

 Nothing really wrong with the first, I suppose, but as a matter of personal taste, I'll pick Andrea over Andrew while I plan my Christmas party, thank you very much.

So if I was to select a break-up song that seems to fit the occasion, it would have to be Chopin's Nocturne in E flat (Opus 9 No. 2).  Muse fans may recognize it as the piano piece playing in the second half of "Eurasia / Collatoral Damage".

And I'll let you in on a little secret:  Yes, I seem like a snobbish culturued prig, with open disdain for David Sedaris, Phil Collins, and whoever wrote that first awful, AWFUL Christmas song.  But truth be told, I had never heard Chopin's famous Nocturne until I heard it on Muse's album "The Resistance", and I thought it had been written by Muse.  I was so entranced by it, I was going to see if I could buy sheet music from the album so that I could learn how to play it myself.  After several months of not knowing otherwise, I heard the actual piece on my local classical radio station and slapped myself in the head.  Chopin!  Of course.  I cursed my stupidity, but rejoiced in the fact that I already had the music in a compilation of piano works I own.  All this time, and it was already in the piano bench!  However, shortly thereafter I was dismayed to find that it is well beyond my technical abilities as a pianist. It would take me...oh...probably 5 years to learn.  After all, it took me three years to learn just the second movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, (just the second movement!), and I still haven't got it down. 

So anyway.  The Nocture, well, is just fantastic.  It just has that perfect bittersweet balance of melancholy and beauty.  It encapsulates so many different emotions, being at times incredibly fragile and delicate, at other times healthy, hopeful, robust.  It's depressing, yet redeeming.   Like the best works of art, the interpretation is open, the piece becoming a blank canvass which becomes awash in pain, longing, or the anticipation of a brighter day. 

But sometimes there is no room for hope.  If you are more into sitting around and watching your world burn around you, then might I suggest Barber's Adagio for Strings, arrnaged for a Choir? 

Try really, really hard to disassociate it from the movie "Platoon".  I know it's hard, but try.  This music is heavenly, ghostly, disconcerting, and at times when I listen to it, even if I am in a good mood, I just feel the bottom drop out of my heart.  And yet even then, there is something about the piece that says even in the midst of crisis there is something that can redeem us. 

Need more ideas?  Go back into the world of pop.  For pure pain, I find nothing answers like Nirvana.  I own a large chunk of Nirvana's catalog:  all three major albums, the unplugged album, their live album, their recently released box set, even one of the b-side albums.  I can't say the same of anyother band that I have ever listened to.  I would have bought the DVD of their show at Reading, but the whole thing is pretty much already on You Tube, so why waste the money?  Were Kurt Cobain alive today, I think he would approve.  Of course, that's not how his story ended. 

I won't toe the line for Nirvana and say they are the greatest rock band ever, but I do think that Kurt Cobain was probably one of the great musical artists of our time, painting painful abstractions with his songs, supported admirably with Novoselic's poppy bass lines and Dave Grohls fucking fantastic (sorry, no other words will do) drumming.  Nirvana is without a doubt the band I have listened to more than any other since I was 14.  That sentence probably says more about me than any other single sentence I have ever written. 

Still need more?  Why my dear reader than you must try the Ramones.  And it can't just be any old Ramones album (their studio albums, I find, suck royally).  No.  It must be the concert in London on New Year's Eve, 1977.  I find it answers for any mood, any situation, provided you are not about to get it on.

Christ, that was a long one.  This essay definetly lost its focus, which orginally was supposed to be mostly on Chopin and why I think he is superior to Phil Collins for the brokenhearted.  The answer, by the by, is that at least with Chopin (and even with Barber) there is something about the music that won't let you entirely drown in misery.  Be it the beauty of the pieces or the way they modulate emotion from despair to hope and back, there is something in them that won't let you go all the way down; they at least provide something, muscically, worth placing your bets on.  Far better than wallowing in the cheesiness.  The second two?  Nirvana is pure angst, but there is something defiant in their music, and "Against All Odds" is to defiance what France is to NASCAR: it ain't.  Even more defiant are the Ramones, who are a helluva lot more fun than Phil Collins.

So there is a conclusion for you.  We got here, even if it took a long time and a couple of line changes to do so, and we did not end up at the Met but rather piss-ass drunk in a smokey club on Bowery and Bleeker.  Maybe that's why I am not on "This American Life".  Ah, but at least I have in a roundabout way brought us back to the beginning again, at the death. 

I just may become a David Sedaris yet.


 

What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?

Well, we are halfway out of this default crisis that WE (yes, we with a capital W and E) have placed ourselves in.  If the Senate passes the "deal", which in my own inexpert opinion looks more like a capitulation of the President and a nearly unprecedented cock-up of our constitutional system (how can the minority party, with a hold on only 1 house of government, hold the entire nation hostage?  Is that the way it is supposed to work?  Then again, George Washington himself was kind of sort of hoping we'd have no parties at all....), we will avoid default. 

About the only good thing to come out of this is that Gabrielle Giffords has returned, miraculously, to the House and cast her fist vote since surviving a horrific attack. 

I will say one thing; we have seen hard headed idealism at its finest.  Never mind the fact that the founding fathers were certainly idealistic enough to embark on an Independence movement to secure their rights, but not idealistic enough to end Slavery.  Never mind that the constitution itself, which some people think must have been written by God himself, is really a hodge-podge of compromises hammered out between excellent, though fallible, men.  Nope, the entire nation has been held hostage to prove a point.  And that point seems to be the Government is awful, and taxes are the Devil himself. 

Point taken, Republicans.  I've learned a valuable lesson here, and I agree with you; taxes are awful.  So I'm going to stop paying mine. 

However, it only seems fair that if I am not going to be paying taxes, then I should no longer be using government services.  After all, I am not a freeloader (Benjamin Franklin on the other hand...sheesh). 

So I guess that means I will stop using our nation's highways and roadways.  But that's okay, because I like walking.  And if someone comes up to me and demands my money or my life, I'll shoot him in the knee caps and hang him myself.  Vigilante justice was good enough for Dodge City, and its good enough here too. 

I will try to put out the fire with water from the water hose...but that's right, I can't use the town's water services anymore because I refuse to help maintain them.  Guess my house will just have to burn to the ground now. Education?  I believe in the self-made man.  I got an Encyclopedia Britannica in the garage...which has just burned down now.  Shit.  Guess I'll have to buy a new one.  Hope the bookstore takes gold ingots as currency.  If not, than maybe silver will do?

Look, I think you get my drift.  I don't disagree that budgets need to be cut, and I for one am wholeheartedly in favor of some kind of entitlement reform.  Programs set up in the 1930s just don't work very well in 2011. We should change them.  Then again, ideas that worked in the 1780s also sometimes don't work very well in 2011, and while history is great I think maybe we need to cling less to aged ideals with sometimes debatable merit and look for solutions that make more sense today. 

Remember that some of the greatest things we've ever done as a nation, from the Battle of Yorktown to the Emancipation of slaves to the liberation of France and the Marshall Plan to the moon landings to the end of the Cold War, were done with massive amounts of tax payer dollars.  Some people say perhaps we shouldn't have done some of those things.  I'd say its all money well spent.

Enough is enough.  Next election cycle, I intend to look past the idealist and try to find more of a pragmatist.  I hope many of my fellow Americans will do the same. 



 



  

The World Burns

These are the days I wish that I did not have the New York Times on my Kindle. 

The news from Norway is hard to read.  The coldness, the meticulousness, the sheer evil that Mr. Breivik put on display in the bombings and shootings that he carried out is more horrifying than anything I can imagine.  My understanding is that Norway, under its current penal code, can only sentance him to a maximum of 21 years.  I certainly hope that  that they do something about that; I don't think this man deserves to see the light of day ever again. 

The rest of the headlines?  They speak of continued anxiety over the debt ceiling crisis.  They speak of war, of death, of hardship.  They speak of a civilization and a world that has seemingly lost its way...but then you wonder if we ever have indeed known our way.  Some say that western civilization is in decline.  I can't help but wonder at times if we ever had apex. 

But hey, you shrug it off, yeah?  Bad things, horrible things, happen all the time, have happened all the time, and will happen all the time.  But we all have things to do.  We must grieve, yes, certainly.  But then we must shrug it off, and quickly, and try to find what beauty in life that might still be left for us. 

Having read through the front page section I was getting ready to do just that.  Have another cup of coffee, head off to Church, and get on with life.  But then there was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I pressed the "next" button and saw that Amy Winehouse had died. 

I lost it.  I don't know why.  Ms. Winehouse's death was certainly not unexpected, it pales in comparison to the other items in the news, and I liked her music but I honestly wasn't a huge fan.  But I guess one can only take so much, and maybe becuase I've seen Amy Winehouse, at least on TV,  there was suddenly a sort of image for the sorrow I felt that surely was only partly due to her demise.  Much as Eastern Orthodox Christians use Icons as a conduit for their prayers to God, Amy Winehouse became a focal point for my own grief over the state of the world and so many other things.

When someone tries to get you to go to rehab, you say "yes".  A couple more days like this, and I imagine all of us could use a little rehab ourselves. 

 

World Cup! Oh, wait....

In my post on Caleb's Crossing I noted that in my absence there had been little to talk about.  Well that, my friends, is pure bullshit, because something major did happen.  And that is the US losing to Japan in the Women's World Cup Final. 

Now, I must admit that I did not watch a lot of the WWC, because my work and travel schedule did not really allow it.  I did end up watching two games (including the final) and very closely following the USA v. France semi-final on the Guardian's glorious minute by minute Internet commentary.  I must also admit that I was not particularly looking forward to the tournament, because in the past I have thought the women's game to be less exciting because the pace is slower. 

Well, ladies, I shall now eat my hat.  The games that I saw and followed  were fantastic, well  and beautifully played, and immensely entertaining.  If Women's soccer had not yet arrived for me, it certainly has now, at least at the very top level. 

As to the final?  Naturally, I am disappointed that the US lost.  It's a game that I think they let get away from them, as you notice the first Japan goal was scored after the US gave possession back to Japan in a very bad area and then a failed clearance in front of the goal: two mistakes, and the US were punished for it.  And yes, many of their chances could have been converted into goals.  Sometimes your best is just not good enough, I suppose.  But then credit must be given to Japan for simply not giving up, striking when the opportunities did finally come their way, and staying cool in the PK shootout. 

What I could not forgive was the on field interviews with Pia Sundhagge and Abby Wambach, when the interviewer had the gall to ask them, in such a horribly heartbreaking moment, how it all got away from them.  I did think that Sundhagge's answer to the question of how she might explain how the US fed to make their first three PKs was great, though.  She said you simply can't explain it. 

And that's probably part of the reason why I have stuck with soccer so long.  Its a game that mimics life I think perhaps better than any other.  In its fluidity, beauty, and chaos sometimes things go right, sometimes they go wrong, and at the end you can really only shake your head, philosophize briefly on your poor luck, and get back up and try again. 

Books You May Not Like: Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks

What what!  I was out of town and while I was gone my wife managed to commandeer my computer for her own purposes.  Now at last I am back, I have my wondrous dictation transcribing machine back in my possession, and I am ready to write. 

Or maybe not.  Nothing has really changed much since I made my last post.  We are still wrangling about raising the debt ceiling, there is still not quite football next year (though, as always, a deal seems likely), there is for now no basketball next year, and Palin keeps promising to deepen her relationship with the American people but just when you think she is going to invite upstairs for "coffee" she says "you know, I am not sure I am ready to declare my intentions yet, but we should really get together again soon".  So frustrating. 

So, since there is nothing much else to talk about, I figure I would tell you about Geraldine Brook's latest book, Caleb's Crossing, which I read while I was gone. 

It was awesome. 

It is a book that is based very, very loosely on the life of one of the first Native American students to attend Harvard, whose name was Caleb.  The book is written from the point of view of a young woman, Bethia Mayfield, who befriends Caleb on Martha's Vineyard in the later 1600's.  It is written in the form of diary entries she makes at various moments of crisis in her life, and all of them in some way involve Caleb.

This book is about so many things.  The question of whether Native Americans could be assimilated into European culture or if one culture would reign supreme over the other; The standing of women in Puritan New England; The simple joys and heartbreaking tragedies of colonial life; The triumph of dignity over prejudice; The Nature of God. 

The way in which Brooks chose to present this book made it incredibly personal and uncommon powerful, and I think it shows a return to form for her.  I enjoyed her first two books immensely, but thought People of the Book was not Brooks at her best (though even then it was still Excellent).  This book has only further cemented her status as one of my favorite authors.   

So yes, it was awesome.  Powerful, sometimes excruciatingly sad, sometimes wondrously joyful.  I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially if you are a lover of our Nation's early History.

Tom Hanks: A Profile.

Tom Hanks has had a long, amazing, though sometimes difficult life.   

Two lives, actually. 

Let me explain.  Tom Hanks was born on a small farm town in Pennsylvania to Mary Robert Hanks and Jefferson Simpson Hanks, on July 21, 1912.  He grew up strong and became a school teacher and coached little league before volunteering to fight in World War II.  As we all know, Tom Hanks died on a bridge in a small town in France while trying to save John Francis Patrick Ryan, who did actually go on to invent a better lightbulb.

As Tom's soul headed up to Heaven, God said "There is much much more for you to do, Mr. Hanks", and he sent him back to Earth, to a little town called Greenbow Alabama. 

There, Tom became a football star, and he went on to have the honor of serving our country AGAIN, this time in the jungles of Vietnam.  He became a ping pong ball champion, a shrimp boat captain, and he ran across the country several times over. 

What does one do after crossing the Mississippi river 12 times?  Why, go into space of course! And that is exactly what Tom Hanks did, flying on the ill-fated Apollo 13.  While it unfortunate that Tom never did get to set foot on the moon due to a horrible space accident, his cool leadership and a lot of help from some very nerdy and awesome people managed to bring him home again. 

Tom Hanks was an international hero, and he used his clout to live the good life.  He banged a mermaid and became a toy executive.  But what goes up must come down, and times got tough.  He stayed in public service, becoming a detective with his parter Hooch, but Hooch ate all his furniture and died young.  Tom managed to pick up the pieces and get a job with Fed Ex, but that didn't turn out too good either, becuase he got marooned on a desert island (during this time, he did become a volleyball enthusiast).  He was eventually rescued, but didn't do well and turned to a life of crime.  He had to leave the country to escpae from the fuzz, and so he headed to the small Eastern European nation of Krakosia. 

Krakosia was an awesome place, full of hard drinking and hard working Eastern Europeans, and he found work as a contractor.  But Krakosia lacked one thing:  Jazz music.  So he saved every Krakosai Krona and headed back to America to listen to some jazz.  But enroute Krakosia erupted into war and Tom Hanks had to live in an airport for a long time. 

He used this time to bone up on the classics, and when the war was over and he was allowed to leave the airport he did not return to Krakosia, but rather became a college professor who stuck his nose a little to far in the Catholic Church's business and he almost died from it.  You would think he learned his lesson, but he ended up doing it again, only this time with a different female lead by his side. For this, he recieved little financial compensation.

Finding himself at a crossroads, it looks like things are looking up for Tom Hanks.  He is about to go back to college, he's bought a sweet moped, and if he plays his cards right he just might have a chance to have sex with Julia Roberts.

I wish him all the best, and I hope things turn out well for Tom Hanks.