Coffee Talk

The other day I went to my local Starbucks and I settled myself into a comfortable chair with my Triple Dulci Clementi Macchiato with just a hint of cream made from the free range cows who have the benefit, if they wish to, of speaking with a therapist about the various things a cow thinks about; things like how the grass on the other side of the fence looks a little greener; how it would be nice if farmer brown warmed up his hands before he squeezes their teats in the morning, and why does it have to be every morning, can't we have a break once in a while?; how every fall they worry about being mistaken for a giant deer and being plucked, most unfairly, from life when it still has so much to offer, and where is God in that, etc. etc.

At any rate, as a I settled in I asked the woman sitting across from me what the name of the local wifi network was.  It struck me that while this is a perfectly normal thing to ask someone today, its a pretty strange thing to ask of someone in a coffee shop by historical standards.  I found myself wondering how I would have addressed a woman in the coffee shops of yesteryear...

1792:  "I still can't believe that we lost to them, madam.  Still can't believe it.  I mean, who would have imagined in 1000 years that you could sit behind rocks and trees and actually shoot a weapon at someone with the intent to kill them, and then run away, melting into the woods, rather than standing there like a man and shooting a weapon in the general direction of the enemy with the hopes that maybe you would hit something?  Its a diabolical development, damn unsporting, and downright un-British!  But that's the way the world is going, I suppose.  Now, pray forgive me if I am too forward, but I find the night is quickly slipping away and, as it is rare for none other but the most unconventional of women to frequent an establishment where the patrons are almost exclusively male, I simply must ask a question:  Are you a prostitute, and if so how much money will it cost me to see your ankles?"

1888:  "No madam!  I beg your pardon, but I couldn't help but overhear.  I should hope that wisdom should prevail upon you not to throw your money away on a painting that is of nothing more than a bunch of sunflowers.  They are beautiful, but I doubt the painting will be worth much 100 yeas hence.  Indeed, it is doubtful its creator will even be remembered at all.  Oh devil take it my cigar has gone out.  Pray, do you have a light?"

1931:  "Look here, see?  I'd like some coffee, see?  The bar's are still closed so I gotta drink coffee, see?  You gotta light?  Mah!"

1953:  "Couldn't help but notice you were enjoying the jazz.  I really liked the part where the trumpeter went 'skiddly bap bap do bap di dap dap dibbledy dibbledy doowhap POW POW POW BWAAA!  Yeah man, those cats sure can jive.  You gotta smoke?"

1968:  "Some of those long hair fellows on their way to the rock and roll festival gave me some brownies.  Awful nice of them.  Oh, and it just so happens that my brother Thurgood sent us some marijuana from Afghanistan.  You gotta light?"

1977:  "Have you seen it yet?  You know, I really don't understand why those guys have to skim that trench for the entire circumference of the....hey, come back!"

1985:  "You know, about 10 years ago I would have asked you for a light, and then after I blew a puff of smoke seductively into your face I would have said I like the way your put together, and, well, wink wink nudge nudge say no more, yes?  But quite frankly those shoulder pads are downright imposing.  You frighten me.  You look like you are on your way to conquer something and I am sure you are going to win.  I will just sit here and pray for the man who's balls you are about to step on with those dauntingly expensive looking high heels."

1996:  "It's obvious that the show is about the disenfranchisement of the American male.  Dropping a V8 into your vacuum, strapping a jet engine to the lawn mower, and affecting stupidity on all other domestic matters is the last bastion of American manhood.  I mean, look at me.  Here you are, drinking a cinnamon dulce macchiato, which is way better than my black cup of joe.  But I drink it anyway, because drinking black coffee helps me feel like a man.  And this cigar?  It tastes like shit.  It is extremely unpleasant.  But, I feel compelled to smoke it, because this disgusting habit makes up for the fact that my Banana bread is nearly perfected, and that fact gives me great joy.  Speaking of which, you got a match?  This horrible token of my shifting role in society has gone out."

2003:  "I just got to say, it looks like that hurts.  A lot.  I mean, your earlobe has a hole in it that I could drive my wife's Hummer through (that's right, USA! USA! USA!).  That had to be incredibly painful to receive."

2009:  "I can't smoke in here? Not even outside?  Damn.  Oh well.  I'll have a cinnamon macchiato, soy, no whip, with just a kiss of caramel.  Just a kiss."

'Tis a Love of Beauty That Hath Slain Them!

It was July 4, 2007, and as Joey Chestnut crammed a record 66 hot dogs down his gullet to defeat a humbled and perhaps injured Takeru Kobayashi, ushering in golden era of American dominance in the annual event that has yet to see its final mashed up hot dog bun, an ESPN commentator told us that we were witnessing the greatest sporting event in the history of mankind.

And I'd have to agree with him, until tonight.  

Nothing quite offers a study in contrasting philosophies like watching Chelsea play Barcelona.  Barcelona play a beautiful game with one of the greatest players ever to grace the pitch acting as the catalyst, picking apart defenses with brisk passing and constant movement.  

Chelsea do not play that way, talented thought they are.  They are a tougher, more defensive team, who have a hard time stringing passes together in the final third and tend to hope they can strike on the counter.   

Or at least, that's what they had to play against Barcelona.  In the first leg of the Champions League semi-final at home in London, Chelsea had the perfect answer on how you play against the perfect team.  Compact defense, a goal on a single quick counter attack, a shit-ton of luck.  Mix it all together, and you have a rather improbable 1-0 victory.  The question was, can Chelsea do it again in Barcelona?  Can Chelsea hold them to a single goal, maybe pick up a goal themselves, and get through to the final?

Another perfect game?  Impossible.  

And indeed, it wasn't a perfect game by any stretch of even the most liberal imagination.  In the 35th minute Barca carves up the Chelsea defense and Busquets gets a goal.  Two minutes later John Terry gets a red card for being an idiot.  That leaves Chelsea with a man down and, since Gary Cahill has already had an injury, without any central defenders (note that David Luiz is injured, but even if he was healthy he can't seem to stay in position and probably wouldn't have been much good in this situation anyway).  In the 43rd minute Iniesta scores and it all looks over for the Blues.  Barca are rolling, they are winning the game 2-0 giving them a 2-1 aggregate lead, and it looks like Chelsea are going to fall apart in the 2nd half.  

But then? a miracle happens.  Just as I have given up on sending a text reading "John Terry is a fucking idiot" to my boss, which in retrospect I have no real right to say (why I gave up on it I don't know), I look up and Ramires has just been threaded through the Barcelona defense and he chips the keeper.  For those of you keeping score at home, that makes it 2-1.  Chelsea are still losing BUT its 2-2 on aggregate, AND the tie breaker is away goals.  Chelsea have 1 away goal now to Barcelona's none, so if everything stays the same then Chelsea are through.  

But it couldn't possibly, right?  Not with a whole half to play against the mighty Barcelona in front of thousands of hostile fans?

Wrong.  In one of the greatest defensive performances I have ever seen, 10 man Chelsea kept Barcelona at bay, forcing them to pass it around the box endlessly, looking for an opening that almost never came.  The few times that it did Petr Chec saved brilliantly.  

Of course, they couldn't have done it without a shit-ton of luck.  That came early in the second half when Fabregas was awarded a penalty (I don't think Drogba ever touched him, but what goes around comes around), and Lionel Messi seemed sure to give Barcelona the lead and what would have undoubdetly been a win.  He tries to send it over Chec's head instead of slotting it into the corner and it hits the woodwork.  In another instance, Chec just got a finger on a strike from Messi that sent the shot off the post.  

The icing on the cake?  Torres finally scores the goal after fielding a clearance with 50 yards to run, just the keeper to beat, and he manages for once to put the ball in the back of the net.  That seals the game up well into stoppage time 3-2 on aggregate.  Its the most expensive Champions League goal in history, but I don't care.

All of that being said, the most glaring critique of Barcelona is that they don't have a plan B.  No matter what, they stick to their guns and play the football they want to play.  This love of beauty, this great inflexibility, proved to be their downfall.  While this sort of inflexibility seems to be admirable in politics, it doesn't work well when you are out of ideas and Chelsea are playing their balls off. 

This is why soccer is such a great sport.  The only thing I can compare Chelsea's performance to is a goal line stand in football (and by that I mean American football).  You know the other team is going to ram it down your throats, or maybe on one down try for the play action pass, but you man up, get organized, and you keep that little brown ball from crossing the line.  

But where a goal line stand lasts for 4 downs at best (which amounts to probably a mere 30 seconds of real action), watching Chelsea defend against Barcelona was like watching a goal line stand for over 45 minutes. You just can't get anything like it anywhere else.  Not even at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Championship.  

Will Chelsea win the final against either Bayern Munich or Real Madrid?  Probably not.  They've had so many players suspended for the next match due to the accumulation of yellow cards that its going to be wonder if they can field a team at all.  The odds have to be against them, and at some point the luck has to run out, but maybe the football gods (or just God in general) will be with them for one more match...

Oh, and when Messi hit the woodwork?  I got up out of my chair and yelled (incorrectly, I might add) "He hit the post!".  I can't remember the last time I was moved to actually get out of my chair and yell incoherently at the TV. Probably when John Kerry came out onto the stage during the Democratic National Convention and, saluting the crowd, said "I'm John Kerry, reporting for duty!"  And as the crowd cheered I stood up and raved at him like a crazy cat lady, because I knew in that moment the election was lost.  

A Most Un-Excellent Portrait of my Character.

The elevator is out at my building in the crackerjack factory, and after going down to the shop floor to check on some stuff I was on my way back and trudging up the stairs.

Now, you have to understand that these are no ordinary stairs.  My building was built in 1953, when men were men, coke had sugar in it, and we built things uncomfortably on purpose so that we could remain strong in the face of communist invasion and/or insurrection.  Asbestos:  Cures what ails ya!

About halfway up I came across a man who could have obviously used the elevator.  He was an older fellow, carrying a toolbag, and, again, he was really struggling.  Rather than do one of the several things a decent person would do, like offer to take his tool bag from him or even just ask him if he's all right, I blew by him and headed up to the stop of the stairs.  I was going to at least wait for him so I could hold the door, but he was taking a break on the landing and I could see it was going to be a while before he was ready to continue.  Satisfied that he was probably not going to die, I went into the building.

Bad enough, yes?  Surely.  But what was even worse was the dark thought that flickered through my brain, the thought that if you can't walk up the steps, you probably shouldn't be working here in the first place.

That's not goose-stepping through Berlin awful or sack of Badajoz awful, but I'm not exactly listening to the better angels of my nature here either.  Why bring it up here, on this blog, which if nothing else should be a vehicle for my own self-promotion?  I bring it up because we live in a culture where everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs and we tend to equate the most trifling, everyday infractions of human decency with the most outrageous atrocities.  But I think maybe we can learn a lot by taking a look at this one small episode.

The thing that bothers me about this is that 10 years ago I probably would have done the decent thing and at least offered to help in some way.  I was certainly more compassionate back then.  This may be because, as a freshly minted Eagle Scout, I may have had the scout motto "Do a good turn daily" (or is that the scout slogan?  Hmmm.....its been a while) ringing a little more loudly in my ears with a little more force.  Or it might have been that my Christian faith, which has become harder and harder to maintain, was felt more deeply, and I was more likely to be moved to at least offer some assistance.

What's happened in the last 10 years?  I graduated from college, I got a job, I got a family, I bought a house.  I spend most of my time in an office, overseeing crackerjack production, to make sure that I have enough money to continue to support the lifestyle I want to have.  I worry about having enough to send my daughter to college, about having enough to one day retire on, and I am confronted with the fact that I will have to toil for many, many years to make it all work out.

Such an outlook on life can only turn one's focus inward.  Plus, while family is great and all, its not the rosiest of outlooks.  No wonder the heart is hardened.

If we turn away from the self for a second and think about society as a whole, what does this mean?  I am, after all, one of the responsible ones, one of the people working hard to make money to spend money and keep our nation afloat (and well supplied with crackerjack).  Would it be different if I could hand over some of the responsibility to the government?  Would I care more for my fellow man if less of my money went to me and more of it went to a man in a bow tie and a clipboard to, ostensibly, help others who need it most?

Probably not.  I would probably just get the sense that someone else is taking care of people in need, and the heart remains hardened.  Living in a society where "we are all in this together" probably won't change my outlook too much.

The thing I have found to be strange about Republicans is that while they want to stay out of people's financial lives so that they are more responsible for themselves some of them seem to take great interest in who you are sleeping with, what influences we are exposing ourselves to, and what God we pray to, if any.  I think this is because it seems to me that a society living with complete Liberty functions best when its people are decent and compassionate.  The only force that can instill those kind of feelings in us is something greater than ourselves, and I think that is why faith is often so important to conservatives.  I think my callousness proves their point.

I find myself thinking that if my faith was stronger I would be a better person.  And yet, at the same time, it seems that reduces God to nothing more than a self-help book.  I wonder if such a faith can be truly authentic.  At that point, are you just projecting onto God those things that you would like to believe in, rather than the truth?
 
Well, I think I have over thought this into oblivion.  It might just be a simple matter of the fact that maybe I am not the nicest person in the world, and I have to remind myself to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (i.e. don't be a dick) a little more often.

Or, as two great philosophers will say in the future, if they can get Eddie van Halen to play guitar for them,  "Be Excellent to Each Other".

Though you know, its been over 20 years and the Wild Stallions super-band still hasn't gotten off the ground.  But I guess its kind of hard to keep it together when your rhytmn guitarist disappears into the Matrix...

Movies You May Not Like -- Ben Hur

So a while ago it occurred to my boss at the crackerjack factory (look, someone has to make those sweet kernels of deliciousness...you may say that is a waste of an extremely expensive college degree.  Well guess what?  I like working at the crackerjack factory.  So get bent, eat my shorts, go jump in a lake, fuck off, etc. etc. etc.) that while I am reasonably well read and well versed in music I have seen very little of the iconic films of the past.  This is the kind of things we talk about the crackerjack factory because, let's face it, people are starting to wise up to the fact that these things are actually not really very good for you.  

So, my boss made me a list of films, and told me that next year's merit raise depended on me watching each one and delivering a full report.  The list is 30 films long, and from "Ben Hur" to "The Goonies" to "One Crazy Summer", they are classics all.  Some of them I have already seen ("Jaws", "A Christmas Story", "The Godfather", among others), so I actually only have 26 to go.

I decided to start with Ben-Hur, because it seemed in keeping with Easter Season.  The plot (SPOILER ALERT...not that it matters, because apparently everyone on the planet has seen this movie except for me) is basically that this Roman General becomes the head honcho of Judea where he runs into his boyhood friend, Judah Ben-Hur, who is a well respected Jew (played by Charleston Heston).  The General, Messala, wants Ben Hur to betray some of the Jews who stand against Rome, but Ben-Hur refuses.  When Ben-Hur's sister accidentally knocks out the new Roman Governor of Judea, Messala uses this as a pretext for taking Ben-Hur down.  His family is imprisoned and he is sent to the galley's.  On the way out to the galley's he is marched through Nazareth, where Jesus (who has not yet begun his ministry) meets him and gives the thirsty Ben-Hur some water.  

From there, Ben-Hur (let's just call him Ben) becomes the best damn galley slave this side of Corinth, and he manages to win the respect of a Roman naval officer.  He becomes a charioteer, and finally returns home to settle old scores.  He beats Massala in a chariot race (the famous Ben Hur chariot race), and as a result of injuries sustained during the crash Massala dies, but not before informing Ben that his mother and sister(?) are in a leper colony. This seems like a victory to him, and he dies a proud and happy man. 

The rest of the film is basically about Ben trying to get in touch with his family, and about his desire for further revenge.  But now Jesus's ministry is in full swing, and Ben's love interest, Esther, is speaking to Ben about forgiveness.  At last he takes his mother and sister to Jerusalem because Esther thinks they can be healed by Christ.  But by now he is being tried, and the movie ends with the cruxifiction.  But in a very southern baptist touch the blood of Jesus, washed from the cross, comes into contact with Ben's mom and sis and they are healed.  'Tis a miracle!

The movie is very, very long, some 3 hours and 20 minutes.  It took several sittings to get through, and I must admit I found it a little slow.  It has a nice message, and a happy ending, and I would even say that by the standards of 1959 the acting itself isn't bad.  I have immense appreciation for the scale of the effort in terms of building sets and staging extras.  There was, after all, no CGI when Ben-Hur was made, and who ever owns the rights to it has been wise not to put in CGI effects into the film after the fact in some sort of crazy George Lucas kind of way.  

Even so, I'm happy at this point to just cross it off the list and move on to the next one.