Thursday, October 9, 2008

Coincidence?

Speaking of David Icke, a thought occurred to me while watching the Presidential debate the other night. In Icke's book, he makes several claims about the shape-shifting fourth-dimensional reptilians that have infiltrated our planed and control our government (no, really). But, in making all these claims, he never actually proves anything.

John McCain and Sarah Palin are using the same strategy in their campaign. Every time Palin responds to a policy-related question, she replies that McCain is a 'maverick' and that they will take on the Washington establishment. When McCain is asked what he would do as president about a given issue, he talks on and on about how he will 'work across the aisle.' Neither one of the ever says what they would actually do about anything.

I'm not sure what this means, but it can't be good.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Book Club: Exodus, by Vivien Goldman

I like reggae. I have a big collection of it in my Itunes library, and I might even be listening to some right now. This affinity means that I'm much more likely to read a book about reggae than I am to read a book about knitting, say, or goldfish.

By one line of thought, a (historical) nonfiction book is good to the extent that the reader is interested in the subject. The author's job is little more than getting out of the way of the story. By this metric, certainly, Vivien Goldman's Exodus: The Making & Meaning of Bob Marley & The Wailers' Album Of Century should be loved by any Bob Marley fan that picks it up. Goldman's time as a sort of beat reporter for the Wailers gives her plenty of inside perspective to share, and her interview subjects seem to trust and respect her. The book focuses on the time around the creation of the Wailers' album Exodus, starting a year or two ahead and winding down with the subsequent promotional tour (although the book does carry on through Marley's death from cancer in 1981).

The problem I have with this book is ultimately, I suspect, not with Vivien Goldman. Again, she's a fine enough writer, and she has plenty of great source material. The problem is that Bob Marley is too iconic a figure to have a decent book written about him. Without arguing the merits of the comparison, I think a biography of Jesus Christ (assuming, you know, that Jesus Christ were a contemporary figure and the lead singer of a internationally acclaimed band or something similar) would run into the same difficulties. People simply have too much invested in Marley, whichever side of the prophet vs. dreadlocked pot-head fence they come down on. Goldman, for what it's worth, is firmly on the prophet side.

It's not just that Goldman doesn't criticize Marley, it's that at times it feels as if she's doing everything short of anointing him with oil. I'm sure it's difficult to be neutral about something one believes strongly in, but I find it frustrating that the most cogent article I've seen on the Rasta faith is on Wikipedia.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Bob Marley, in spite of it's unconscious proselytizing. It's certainly not the most blatant bit of propaganda I've ever read.

(While I was reading Exodus, by the way, I found a ticket for Die Zauberflote - The Magic Flute - an opera I saw at the Met. In 2006. I'm not sure what this means, other that 1. Time flies and 2. I have wide-ranging interests.)

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Book Club: Franny & Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

Anyone who has survived a high school English class probably knows that J.D. Salinger doesn't think much of 'society.' His anger and alienation made the pages of Catcher in the Rye practically warm to the touch, and those same emotions that make the book so appealing to teenagers tend to distract readers who are more comfortable with their place in the world.
For most of its pages, Franny and Zooey strikes a similar chord. Franny Glass can't stand her Ivy League boyfriend, her mediocre classmates, or her pretentious professors. Her spiritual crisis mirrors Holden Caulfield's, but without the vitriol. Her struggle is of frustration and despair, rather than pure anger.
And if that was all there was to the book, it wouldn't be particularly interesting or worth reading. Although I suppose gender theorists could build careers on dissecting the differences between Holden and Franny. This time, though, we are saved from our crushing angst and alienation by the emergence of Franny's brother Zooey in the second chapter. (The book is divided into two eponymous chapters, each of which was originally published separately in The New Yorker.) Far too unreasonable to be called a voice of reason, Zooey rides an unique wave of knowledge and arrogance that changes the tenor of the book. He gradually leads Franny - and the reader along with her - to a satisfactory spiritual (as opposed to religious) answer to Franny's yearning, and in doing so fosters a sense of optimism I haven't previously seen in the reclusive Salinger.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Book Club: Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh

*Note: The author of this book, Sudhir Venkatesh, has a very long name. There are way too many letters in Venkatesh for me to type it over and over. In fact, my fingers are exhausted from the three times I've already typed it. Therefore, the author will be referred to as S.V. from here on out.*

One of the most popular chapters in Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's book Freakonomics centers on the economics of a Chicago street gang. So you can imagine people were excited when they got word of Gang Leader for a Day, written by the man responsible for the studies profiled in that chapter. The book is a chance for this self-styled 'rogue sociologist' to take us deeper into a world many know nothing about. (In fairness, the whole 'rogue sociologist' thing could be a marketing ploy - Freakonomics' subtitle refers to a 'rogue economist.' I, for one, am somewhat alarmed at the sudden rise in rogue -ists running around the streets of our nation. Someone should do something.)

And, as an expansion on that same Freakonomics chapter, I suppose S.V.'s book is OK. There are many more pages to work with here, so we get more time, more characters, and more anecdotes. But I had several problems with the book that kept me from enjoying it as a much as I wanted to.

Power. No matter how embedded he was or felt, S.V. was not black. He was not poor. He neither lived in nor grew up in the projects. And, unlike the residents of Robert Taylor Homes, he could leave whenever he wanted. Even when he didn't want to leave, the gang members would often shield him from especially brutal or sensitive events. Is any of this particularly S.V.'s fault? No. We're all stuck with our own perspective. Forgive the moment of solipsism, but no one can ever truly transcend the blessing/curse of subjectivity. S.V., though, is so far out of his element that it feels like anthropomorphizing when he attempts to talk about people's motives. He dehumanizes in his very attempt to humanize.

Numbers. Maybe I'm a geek. Maybe I would have been better off reading his dissertation. But Gang Leader for a Day seemed surprisingly low on data. This is a book of stories, not information.

Motive. On multiple occasions, S.V. wonders why he is studying this community, and what he hopes to get out of his research. Even with these doubts, we see him crossing lines to get what he needs. He indulges residents' delusions of grandeur by allowing them to believe he's writing about them individually, rather than the community as a whole. He betrays people's confidence when he thinks it will help his research. Eventually, he justifies his actions by deciding that, like many of the buildings residents, he's a hustler. To make matters worse, that isn't even his own conclusion, but something told to him by one of the residents, and he clings to the idea like a life saver.

As I said earlier, I really wanted to like this book. Maybe I went in with unrealistic expectations, but I left feeling hollow and disappointed, like I had just eaten a candy bar when what I really wanted was something salty. Don't get me wrong - S.V. did something fascinating in exploring the lives of a hidden segment of society. But Gang Leader doesn't do it any justice.

Personally, I might have liked the book better if he had gotten his ass kicked at least once for his impudence, his naivete and his condescension, a la the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in Hell's Angels.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Book Club: Coach, by Michael Lewis

At 91 double-spaced pages, Michael Lewis’ Coach is not much longer than an issue of Sports Illustrated. This little book overflows such tiny confines, though, as Lewis carefully interweaves a paean to Billy Fitzgerald with larger musings about the lessons we all (should) learn on the road to adulthood.

At its most basic level, Coach is a well-constructed tribute to the man who taught Michael Lewis to be more than just a ball player. Coach Fitz's story is not a unique one, and for that matter neither is Lewis'. And while I wouldn't go so far as to call Coach a vanity project, I'm not entirely convinced it would have been published had Lewis not found mainstream success with the publication of Moneyball in 2003. Nonetheless, Coach is eminently readable, and worthwhile not just for Lewis' nostalgia, but also for his thoughts on the over-protected atmosphere today's kids often grow up in. What struck me, though, was not the minutiae of Lewis’ personal experience, or his sky-is-falling concerns regarding modern youth. Coach, for me, was an unexpected reminder of how I got to be the person I am today.

In my sports-filled life, I have had too many coaches to count. As the years have passed, I find that I can clearly remember very few of them. Time has reduced some to mere names, and others are left with only faces. Many have been completely erased from my synapses. None of them, though, no matter how misremembered, had anywhere near as much impact on who I was then or who I am now as my own father. From watching M.A.S.H. on his knee as a small boy to our ongoing discussions about what is and isn't "important" in life or sports or family or whatever, I don't think any one person can claim a bigger role in the shaping of my personality.

My dad was a carpenter when I first arrived in this world, but a serious knee injury eventually left him without a job or much of a future. Ours wasn't a house for complaining, though, so while my mom waited tables at night to make ends meet, my dad set about reinventing himself. Before my young mind really knew what was happening or what was at stake, the man who never finished college was taking courses and soon found a job as an estimator for a structural steel company. He cooked dinner for my brother and me every night. He commandeered our 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and beat the holy hell out of the original Legend of Zelda before I even conquered the first boss. His hard work saved our family so completely that I was an adult before it even occurred to me we might have been in jeopardy. To the eight-year-old me, a new house wasn’t anything special. A new routine, some new friends and, hey, my own room, great. But to my father, it must have been…redemption.

Growing up, I never suspected that my parents were anything out of the ordinary. Surely every father got up before dawn on Saturdays to drive his sons to hockey practice along the dark corridors of highway 101 while they slept in the back seat? And what dad didn’t patiently instill the belief that anything was possible, even a cross-country pilgrimage to Woodstock, so long as it was planned and worked for? And didn’t all the neighborhood kids learn about patience, hard work and dedication by reassembling an old truck piece by piece alongside their old man?

I’m a little bit older now, and whether you consider it wisdom or a Michael-Lewis-in-Coach-style cynicism, I’m finally starting to realize that not everyone grew up like I did. And the more I learn about my father’s life, both before and after me, the more about me I realize he deserves credit for. My convictions and my stubbornness. My belief that I can do anything I want, so long as I get around to deciding just what that is. My loyalty to the people most important to me. The rocks glass full of M&Ms next to me as I write this, an eerie parallel of the cup next to my father’s armchair.

So whenever my mother calls to vent about his latest project or tic or obsession, I laugh, I sympathize, and I comfort. And when she finally runs out of steam, she lets out an exasperated sigh and says, “That’s your father.”

And I smile, and I think the myself, “You’re dammed right.”

Monday, April 28, 2008

Zito to the Bullpen

Last week I posted the Barry Zito Salary Calculator, and now the Giants are sending Zito and his 7.53 earned run average to the bullpen. I hope he loses his 0-6 record somewhere along the way.

The Giants didn't really have much of a choice. Not only are they paying Zito fourteen and a half million dollars this year, but a demotion to the minors would probably wreak havoc on the kid's (that's right, he's only 29) psyche. It was either send him to the 'pen or announce that he was "injured" and let him miss a few starts while he got his mind/arm/chakras right.

I can't sit here and pretend SF doesn't need their 156 million dollar man. Even if he was only 3-3 instead of 0-6, the Giants would be sitting at 14-12, in second place in the NL West. Maybe the change of scenery will do him some good.

Then again, if Francisco Liriano comes back from the minors throwing asprin tablets for Minnesota, we'll know the Giants made the wrong decision.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Happy Marshawn Lynch Day!

Marshawn Lynch updated his blog today, for the first time in way too long. I love the kid, I really do. And it's fun to cruise the comments for people who can't handle his Oakland accent.



NL West = Not Good

Here are the current standings in the NL West:

Arizona: 15-6
(Pretty good, right? That's a .714 win percentage!)
Colorado: 9-12
Los Angeles: 9-12
San Diego: 9-13
San Francisco: 9-13

Jesus. What a suck-fest. I don't even have a joke for how...mediocre this all is. So cheer yourself up by playing with the Barry Zito salary calculator. 4,815 orders of garlic fries? Yes, please!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Ummm...





Good lord. What sort of country is this?

Videos from With Leather and The Postmen.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Book Club: Young Avengers: Sidekicks

I wasn't into comic books as a kid. I had nothing against them - I read a substantial portion of the death of Superman storyline, among other things - but they were never really my "thing". As a result, my subsequent forays into the world of graphic novels have always been pleasant, surprising, and short-lived.

It was with delight, then, that I borrowed a copy of Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung's first installment of the Young Avengers series, Sidekicks. From my admittedly non-expert perspective, the artwork was great, the design tight, and the characters interesting. And, most importantly, I was left wanting to read more. Even though, just like one of the characters said, I hate time travel things. And this incarnation of the Young Avengers is, indeed, a time travel thing.

Reading the book got me wondering about graphic novel's low spot on the literary totem pole. It's an incredibly rich medium with a lot to offer that can't be readily accomplished in books or films, but society tends to view graphic novels with something between disdain and disinterest.

I, for one, don't really like reading graphic novels on subways, where I do a lot of my reading. It's not an issue of embarrassment, though: graphic novels just feel like two-handed affairs to me. I have difficulty slowing down to focus on each page when reading them on subways, the jostling of the people and the train shatter any hope I have of focusing on the details.

I often find myself at a loss when looking for a new graphic novel to read. Whatever system I use to find new books doesn't seem to work in this context. A lack of exposure and opportunity, I guess. The information must be out there, right? There are probably graphic novel (or at least literary) blogs existing side-by-side with the sports, news and politics sites I visit every day.

The general disregard of graphic novels seems to be slowly changing, though, from my still admittedly non-expert opinion. I see more of them in book stores, more being turned into mediocre Hollywood movies. So perhaps the day is not far away when we will suffer from too many graphic novels, where an illustrated equivalent of James Patterson or Nora Roberts will churn out what seems like a new book every week, to be purchased on the cheap at your local Wal-Mart.

God, what a nightmare.

Thanks to this fine gentleman for loaning me the book. Promise I'll give it back soon.

Follow Up: Skeletons in the Closet

After seeing the Max Kellerman rap video I posted recently, my good friend Firefly steered me over to the SI online archives, and a long, wonderful piece about Max's brother Sam, the other half of the music act.

I had been vaguely aware that Sam was dead, but the article was a real eye-opener not just about the circumstances surrounding his death, but about the details of his life. It is absolutely worth reading for anyone that has a brother, and anyone who has ever lost anyone they care about.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Gameday

Matt Cain takes the hill against the Cardinals today. No analysis right now, I just hope the Giants don't blow it for him again.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Ghost Ride the Volvo

This video is old, but since I just discovered it, I figured I'd post it in honor of the A's fans in my life.



Man, between this and two dollar Wednesdays, I'm *almost* ready to convert.

Credit to the omnipresent Fanhouse.

A Little Off the Top 04/17/2008

I've been neglecting my link dump lately, so let's get right to it:

Slate has an interesting look at game theory as it applies to dinner party guests. It turns out, ladies, that I'm getting more desirable with age. Better get me while you still can...

UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law has declined to fire John Yoo, best known for authoring a Justice Department memo justifying the US military's use of torture in Iraq. Though this isn't the place I'dve chosen to make a stand, in some ways it's nice to see the alma mater standing up to the left for once. When I was on campus, events featuring even marginally conservative speakers were often shut down due to protest and general liberal outrage.

Apparently Charlie Hustle wasn't a very good gambler. The Sports Economist provides a link to a break down of Pete Rose's bets.

Last but not least, California Golden Blogs has a mini-breakdown of some of the differences in academic standards between Cal and UCLA.

That should keep y'all busy for a while. A quick shout out to the Golden Bears Men's Baseball team, currently 23-9, and ranked 8th in this weeks Baseball America poll.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

2008 NFL Schedule Released

Replace every instance of 'Seahawks' with '49ers', and I pretty much agree with Ufford's intro to the 2008 season. San Francisco will be terrible, no doubt, but hopefully not as crippled by the weight of every one's expectations as last year. I look forward to another season of not being able to watch them because I don't have Direct TV.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Skeletons in the Closet

This popped up on the interwebs sometime last week, and I figured I'd re-post it, if for no other reason than I listen to the Max Kellerman show at work every day:



Kellerman mentioned the video on his show this morning, and actually handled it pretty gracefully, I thought. Lord knows there's pictures of me out there that I'd rather not be in mass circulation.

I believe I first saw this on FanIQ, via Deadspin.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Giants Waste Cain's Effort

I didn't get to watch it because Fox decided that Red Sox v. Yankees Part 3,412 was more interesting, but Matt Cain pitched a doozy at AT&T Park today. Dude threw six-plus no-hit innings, and even hit a home run to help his own cause out, but still the Giants lost 7-8.

I believe that's two straight defeats for the West Coast G-Men. At least it was a nice day. Frisbee in Prospect Park heals a lot of wounds...as does rum.

The Giants in the News

The Onion sort of nails it. An unlikely series of events, indeed.

On the plus side, the A's have won four in a row. Now if the Dodgers will just keep losing, I might survive another NYC summer...

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Timmy Lincecum, Hero

Absolutely awesome post over at Bay City Ball quantifying Tim Lincecum's bad-assedness. Print it out and read it again later bad-ass.

Full disclosure: I have the sweet smelling munchkin (seriously, dude is smaller than me) on both my fantasy teams, and he is putting in work. However, I was hanging out on Raising (Matt) Cain last night, and posted a comment about how well my boy was pitching. Needless to say, the baseball gods were not impressed.

Lincecum actually pitched really well in the game, but was denied the win. The Giants ended up winning thanks to the heroics of Benjie Molina, who hit not one, but two home runs in the game, including a walk-off in the 11th. That's right, the very same Benjie Molina I trashed in yesterday's post. So, for what it's worth Benjie, I'm sorry I suggested replacing you with a soccer playing Brazilian midget. Keep up the good work, and I promise to find good things to say about you soon.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Oh, the agony

Anyone who's been reading this site (is anyone?) knows that the San Francisco Giants are terrible this year. Even Matt Cain got lit up yesterday. Four runs is a pretty decent offensive day for this crew, but it doesn't do any good when they give up thirteen.

One of my coworkers, a Yankee fan, accurately pointed out that no team with Benjie Molina batting cleanup can even pretend to be decent. Grant over at McCovey Chronicles went so far as to list all the players (believe me, there's a lot of them) on the other National League teams more qualified to fill the four spot at AT&T Park (that is what they're calling it these days, right?). Every other team has at least four players who could bat cleanup on this team.

Honestly, we might be better off with someone from this Giants team, in Brazil.

Update: The Giants have gone up 1-0 on the Padres while I've been hammering out this whine-fest. Prepare yourself for more live Giants-bashing in future games in a sort of elaborate reverse-jinx effort. God I hope they win more than 60 games this year.

Memphis has left the building

I hate to say I told ya so, Memphis, but I told ya so.

They got a whole lot farther than I thought, obviously, but when all the chips were on the table (pointless poker metaphor alert!), the Tigers simply couldn't shoot free throws. With Leather summed it up nicely, and, no, I didn't win the pool (I had Kansas overall, but way too many underdogs that got knocked out early - I'm looking at you, Drake). You can probably find in-depth game summaries over at Deadspin or Storming the Floor, if you didn't watch the game for some reason.

It's a shame, Tiger fans. Y'all could have been kings.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Pig Hunting Corn Haters

After about six months of off and on reading, I finally finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. In it, UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan traces the origins and processes behind several different food chains: industrial, industrial/big organic, local, and self-obtained. It becomes obvious pretty early on that he has serious reservations about the ludicrous ways American industrial agriculture sets about dealing with the annual surplus of corn, but how practical is it really to expect us all to hunt pigs in the Northern California foothills or gather our own mushrooms in the streets of Berkeley?

Pollan raises more questions than he answers in this peek behind the curtain and, unintentionally or otherwise, it starts to feel like a ploy to get us to buy his latest book, an unofficial sequel titled In Defense of Food. I haven't gotten around to reading this one yet, at least in part because I think its tag line sums up his answer pretty well: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Are pesticides bad for you? Of course. Is fast food healthy? Certainly not in the quantities a lot of people eat it. A lot of it just comes down to common sense, though. If you eat a lot of fatty, processed foods, you're not going to be healthy. If all you eat is spinach, you're not going to be healthy. Moderation and logic will take you a long way...

So, did The Omnivore's Dilemma change my life? I suppose. I'm more cognizant of what goes into some of the processed foods I love (although it's nothing I didn't already know from reading Fast Food Nation or watching Super Size Me). I value local food more than I did before (although like the New Yorker article I linked to a while ago, if the local food isn't season it's probably just as bad if not worse than food that's been trucked across the country).

Oh, and apparently since I live east of Columbus, I'm environmentally better off drinking wine from France than from the Northern California vineyards I grew up near. So there you have it.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Welcome Mike Montgomery!

Word on the street is that Cal has an agreement in place to hire Mike Montgomery to revive their struggling basketball program. Goodbye, ninth place; hello, top of the league!

I first heard about this on ESPN 1050 this morning, but screw them. Here's a link to Ragnarok over at California Golden Blogs.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Just a Little Off the Top 04/03/2008

Don't have much to say today, so a few links for your entertainment:

The inimitable Big Daddy Drew made me laugh today, with his metaphorical take on Davidson's recent March Madness adventures.

Slate has an entertaining story about the all-consuming nature of fantasy baseball. I still haven't told the girlfriend I'm actually in two leagues this year instead of one. Shh!

Speaking of, Sam Walker's Fantasyland is a fun fantasy baseball read (talk about phrases you never thought you'd hear). I mean, it's no Moneyball, but Amazon is selling the hardcover for seven bucks for some reason, so you can't go wrong.

I think that just about catches us up. I'm trying to arrange another guest post, and might have lined up a full time contributor to the site, so there's a pretty decent chance y'all will get a break from my frequent complaining about the Giants misadventures in the N.L. West.

Until I have something interesting to say...

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Monday, March 31, 2008

Heartache begins anew

Even though it's still March, today is Opening Day (3.0). We had a couple of games in Japan, and the made-for-TV opening of the Nationals new stadium last night, but today, the season began in earnest.

And the Giants are already getting killed. They're currently down 0-4 in the bottom of the third inning, and have stranded multiple runners on base. At least they're getting on base, I suppose.

Expect more posts like this throughout the year.

#1 Seeds Un-busted

In perhaps the biggest upset of all - and for the first time in history - all four #1 seeds have advanced to the Final Four. Davidson (and the unreal Stephen Curry) were the only underdog to put up much of a fight over the weekend, but, alas, the dream died with their 57-59 defeat at the hands of Kansas. The remaining story lines, as far as I can tell:

Can Bill Self not beat himself for once?
Will the refs ever call a foul on UCLA again?
Do members of the MSM have pictures of Tyler Hansbrough tacked above their beds, or do they just write love letters to him in their secret personal diaries?
Was Memphis merely pretending to not be able to shoot free throws?

Personally, I just hope that having what are supposed to be the four best teams in the country going head to head means we'll get to see plenty of good basketball this weekend. It will help make up for not getting to see the chap-tastic Texas cheerleaders anymore.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Bell Tolls for Thee, Ben Braun

After a second-round NIT loss to the Ohio State University, Cal finally dropped the axe on Ben Braun. Reactions are varied, from respectful to torn to jubilant, but I'll admit I don't know how I feel about the move. On the one hand, 219-154 seems like a pretty good record over the past 12 years (of course, I'm no mathematician). On the other hand, this is my most enduring memory of Cal basketball:

March 2002 was a pretty glorious time in my life. I was living about twenty minutes outside of Amsterdam, and making the most of it. My friends and I were planning a massive St. Patrick's Day bash, as if we suddenly needed a reason to get intoxicated. As a Cal fan, still stinging from a 1-10 football season (the only victory a 9/11-rescheduled cupcake game against Rutgers), I was elated to my Golden Bears reach the second round of the tournament. It really wasn't a difficult decision: I'd head into Amsterdam ahead of my friends to watch my sixth-seeded Bears take on the third-seeded Pitt Steelers Panthers.

Perhaps I should have been concerned when I couldn't round up any of my friends to go with me (None of them Cal students, hardly any Americans, but still). I definitely should have been worried when I realized the game was in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, I went happily into the city, with a pair of shamrock-shaped sunglasses, ready to celebrate Ireland and Cal's inevitable advancement to the Sweet Sixteen. The game started off pretty well. I befriended a few other Americans in the bar. The waitress was cute and, I thought, flirting with me with that Dutch-accented English I enjoyed so much. The halftime score: 25-26, bad guys. An upset was brewing, I could feel it. This was going to be the best St. Patrick's Day.

Three minutes into the second half, Cal's up 32-28. I'm sending drunken, random text messages across an ocean and a continent to my friends back in Berkeley, celebrating the Bears and arguing about the best way to pick up a waitress. (Full disclosure: I am a jerk.) My new friends in the bar are planning to come out drinking in the Dutch suburbs with me. Right about then, the wheels fall off:

The next time our waitress comes by, I get the 'are you sure you want another beer?' treatment. I do, and she is not impressed. And then:

Pittsburgh held California without a point for 9½ minutes during a decisive 16-0 run, which began with Cal leading 32-28 with 16:40 remaining and ended with Pitt up 44-32 with 7:08 left. The Golden Bears went more than 11 minutes without scoring a basket, and 15-plus minutes with only one basket.

(Thanks, ESPN.com archives, for ripping my heart out anew.)

Pitt went on to blow the Bears out of the water. Final score 63-50. My new friends offered feeble condolences; the waitress couldn't have ignored me more if I didn't exist. (By then, I was wishing I didn't exist.) I paid my tab in then-cheap Euros, and ventured out into the cold, Dutch night. I got lost on the way to the train station, and a walk that should have taken 15 minutes took 30. When I finally reached Amsterdam Centraal, only two of the 15 or so people were there, the rest having begged off for one reason or another.

After as much sympathy as an English girl and her disinterested American boyfriend could offer, we set off for an Irish bar, hoping to drown my sorrows in Guinness. We had all been to this bar before on several occasions, but tonight, for some reason, none of us could find it. After much wandering around, and not a few stops into other bars and coffee shops in the area, we were ultimately reduced to walking up and down the streets, vainly searching for an Irish pub that seemed to no longer exist. I walked up to an indescribable cast of skeevy hash dealers and generally crazy people, asking directions in the sort of horrendous faux-Irish accent that only a drunken, pissed off American can manage. Oh, and I was still wearing my giant shamrock sunglasses, courtesy of the good folks who make Killian's Irish Red. Needless to say, these people I was talking to were not anxious to help me.

We never did find the bar, and I'm pretty sure that's the night I lost my hat.

All of which begs the question: If this is what comes to mind when I think of Cal Basketball (Well, that and watching Tony Gonzalez push opponents around and saying to myself 'Hm, he should probably play football.'), can I possibly consider the departure of Ben Braun to be a bad thing?

OK, one last link: Goldenblogs has some thoughts of the future of Cal Basketball that are worth keeping in mind as this search goes forward.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Woe...

It's going to keep getting worse, 49er fans. At least Eddie DeBartolo cheated in a way that made the team better...

Words fail me. I'm going to attempt to take solace in my fantasy baseball drafts and hopefully not remember this come April.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

What is, what was, what might be

I recently found out that Jesse Ball won the 2008 Plimpton Prize for Fiction (Thanks, Firefly!), which seemed like as good excuse as any to reread Ball's novel Samedi the Deafness. Ball's novel is virtually impossible to categorize. A philistine might call it a mystery, someone with more pretension than me could venture the phrase 'prose-poem' that I hear way too much of lately.

What the book is, in my opinion, is a beautifully written exploration of Truth, and of how we know things that we think we Know. The reader and the protagonist, James Sim, are both kept on extremely shaky ground from the moment Sim encounters a wounded man in a public park. Things get progressively weirder throughout the book, until it is impossible to know who and what to believe.

The ending is a bit ambiguous, I suppose, but all stories have to end somewhere. And I'm pretty certain I know what was going to happen next, so my only disappointment was that I had to put the book down and move on to something else.

C-ro, my friend and erstwhile programming adviser, compared the underlying plot of Samedi to the classic graphic novel The Watchmen. So now I want to reread that and also The Things They Carried, another exploration of the nature of truth by Tim O'Brien. So add those to rereads to all the new books I'm working on

I'm still getting the hang of reviewing books without spoiling them. Feel free to let me have it in the comments.

Bracket Quick Hits

I'm far from an expert as far as college basketball goes, but let's take a quick tour through the brackets anyway, before you finalize your picks. Indulge me...

Congratulations, Mount St. Mary's, on winning the right to be pummelled by UNC and the gritty-white Tyler Hansbrough. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think it would have been a travesty to have a twenty-loss team in the tournament.

Beware repeat sleepers. Just because George Mason had a great run in 2006 doesn't mean they're the same team. Only two starters are left from their stint as cinderella. And Notre Dame is good...

Kansas is good. I know that's obvious, and I know it's lame to pick a number one seed to win it all, but they impressed me in the Big 12 championship game against Texas. I'm just saying.

Siena over Vanderbilt. I don't know why, I just feel it. The favorites can't win every time.

Gonzaga no longer qualifies as a sleeper, folks. Can we please move on?

I don't like Georgetown. Don't think they'll survive the first weekend (I have them beating UMBC and losing to Davidson).

I've already explained why Memphis isn't going anywhere. Out to a phyisical Mississippi State team. Thanks, Texas-Arlington, but no thanks.

Speaking of Miss St, Oregon is soft. So at least one 8-seed should make it to day two. Keep that in mind when you're flipping coins for the 8/9 games.

I'm not impressed with any of the Big-10 schools. You'd better have a really good reason for putting any school other than Wisconsin in the Sweet 16. Some ugly basketball in the Big-10.

Texas is really talented and athletic. When I watched the Kansas game, though, they fell apart as soon as their shooters went cold. It's a skill offesnse, not a system. If they're not hitting their shots, they're done.

UCLA is good. They impressed me by playing strong against Stanford in the Pac-10 final with what seemed like maybe 50% of Kevin Love. I technically have them out in the Elite Eight, but I just can't stand having too much chalk on my board. And I hate the Bruins.

I think San Diego's run ends against UConn. They had a nice run, but still.

It's not Duke's year. Again, just a feeling.

Anyway, that's my completely uninformed, completely arbitrary jaunt through the bracket. No offense if I didn't talk about your team - I probably couldn't think of a random stance to take on them. Good luck in your brackets - even though MidMajority.com says you shouldn't be filling them out.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Bill James Gets Around

Apparently, running the Boston Red Sox isn't enough of a challenge for Bill James (there's some baseless invective straight out of my mother's Albuquerque basement for you). Here in Slate, he's figured out when a basketball game is actually over. Since, you know, I guess it's not over when the clock says 00:00. Or something.

The formula:

Number of points team is ahead
- 3
+ .5 points if leading team has the ball or - .5 if trailing team has the ball (negative numbers become zero)
Square the result

If the resulting number is greater than the number of seconds left in the game, the lead is safe.

Ah, screw it - there's a widget embedded in the Slate article.

Don't mind me - I'm having a hard time caring about basketball after Cal's sorry excuse for a season (funny, I feel like I said something very similar during the bowl games). Besides, this will come in handy when I start placing my foolish, under-informed wagers on the games. And not to mention my brackets. Oh, Lord, my brackets.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Don't call it a guest post: Selection Sunday

Ed. note: In honor of Selection Sunday, I’m handing the reins over to a dear friend of We Have Hair, for what is hopefully the first of many contributions to this site. Not only is she one of the smarter people I know, but she also knows a whole lot more than I do about college sports. Take it away, Firefly:

I recently read Mystic River (I know, I know, an Oscar-winning motion picture from years ago—I'm behind the times). While the book itself was stunning in many ways, there was one specific passage that stuck with me. At the start of chapter four, Lehane uses a baseball game to bring us into the mind of one of his main characters:

"Dave found himself paying more attention to the lights and the fans an Anaheim Stadium itself than to the actual game.

He watched the faces in the bleachers most-the disgust and defeated fatigue, the fans looking like they were taking the loss more personally than the guys in the dugout. And maybe they were. For some of them, Dave figured, this was the only game they'd attend this year. They'd brought the kids, the wife, walked out of their homes into the early California evening with coolers for the tailgate party and five thirty dollar tickets so they could sit in the cheap seats and put twenty-five dollar caps on their kids heads, eat six-dollar rat burgers and $4.50 hot dogs and watered-down Pepsi and sticky ice cream bars that melted into the hair of their wrists. They came to be elated and uplifted, Dave knew, raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. That's why arenas and ballparks felt like cathedrals--buzzing with light and murmured prayers and forty thousand hearts all beating the drum of the same collective hope.

Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back to out otherwise winless lives.

Win for me. Win. Win. Win.

But when your team lost, that collective hope crumbled into shards and any illusion of unity you'd felt with your fellow parishioners went with it. Your team had failed you and only served to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. And you sat there in the debris of the cellophane wrappers and popcorn and soft, soggy drink cups dumped back into the numb wreckage of your life, facing a long dark walk back through a long dark parking lot with hordes of drunk, angry strangers, a silent wife tallying up your latest failure, and three cranky kids. All so you could get into your car and drive back to your home, the very place from which this cathedral had promised to transport you."

I have seen many debates on what it means to be a sports "fan" these days, and they all make me feel guilty for not having a "team" and a closet full of jerseys. As if I'm somehow less of fan because I love sports for the game itself rather than who’s playing in it. I'm just as excited to watch Amherst play Williams as I am to watch Michigan State take on Michigan. (During the fall I've been known to watch nothing but college football from Thursday night until the wee hours of Sunday morning.) When I tell people I don’t have an allegiance to any one team, they always seem surprised. They’ll ask where I grew up (Chicago, and I can remember the 1985 Super Bowl-shuffling Bears, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls teams of the 1990s) or went to school—as if an allegiance should have arisen somewhere in there if I was truly a sports fan.

For me, my passion for sports comes from a deep-seated love of the process of the games. The hope of winning for any given team on any given day, rather than who in particular is playing, is what makes sports so compelling. If there is a chance for a surprising team to pull out a win, I'm all eyes and ears, even if it’s in a sport I don’t normally follow like NASCAR, lacrosse, or curling. And that is what Lehane nailed about sports that makes me a fan: it’s the immeasurable hope found in the playing of the game.

There is no better example of how this hope fills my soul and makes my life more bearable than the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It arrives just as spring is trying with all its might to break through the clouds, rain, and lashing winds. It arrives when teasing, 50-degree afternoons are weighted down by the last dregs of winter, and there isn't a three-day weekend in sight until Memorial Day. March is the long, fallow patch when I struggle hard, treading water corporate office-style, to keep my head above ground while waiting for the sun to stay out past 7pm.

And in these final spasms of chilliness, a field of 65 will battle it out, hope versus hope, first-timers and surprise winners against storied programs and national powerhouses. Over 2-hour periods, buzzer-beaters will abound, as will amazing plays by people whose names I'll forget as quickly as I learned them. Their battles on the court provide enough distraction from the mundane tasks of the day-to-day, so that when I look back outside there will be leaves on the trees and a new season will have begun.

So I say welcome to Cal State Fullerton, Cornell and Portland State, go get ‘em to Drake, Butler, and Davidson and hello again to the Longhorns, Bruins and Tar Heels alike. And a special thank you to the Georgia Bulldogs, for bringing their own hopes to this weekend with the moxie they’ve shown making it to the SEC conference championship game. And now, I’ll wait anxiously to see which one of them will don that glass slipper and let my hope spring eternal once again.

Ed.: That's a wrap of the inaugral edition of Don't Call it a Guest Post. For further discussion on the state of fandom, check out Leitch's book or this post by Dan Shanoff.


Saturday, March 15, 2008

Saying Goodbye

There's a nice farewell to Justin Forsett over at Bears Necessity. I agree with his evaluation (although I don't really see what Forsett's faith has to do with anything, apart from explaining his taking a knee after touchdowns), and share his hopes for Forsett's future. Probably not a top tier back, but he'd be great as the speedy half of a Thunder & Lightning backfield. Dallas comes to mind, but I think they just signed someone to pair with Marion Barber III. (Or maybe not. ESPN.com has Barber as the only RB on the team. OK, then, Forsett would be a good fit for the Cowboys.)

Between Marshawn Lynch and Justin Forsett, Cal has benefited from a strong running game over the past few years. (I remember J.J. Arrington and Adimchinobi "Joe" Echemandu both having strong Berkeley careers as well, in spite of their relative lack of professional success.) It will be interesting to see if the Bears are as strong on the ground in 2008. We all know they didn't want Kevin Hart's help. Jahvid Best looked strong last year as a compliment to Lynch, but he's coming off a hip injury. Hopefully he's back up to speed. A strong running game will go a long way in helping Cal reestablish their place near the top of the Pac 10.

It's baaaaaack

According to Jalopnik, the long lost Chevy El Camino is coming back as...a Pontiac? My family had an early 80s L-Cam when I was a kid, and I loved it. Light blue, not quite car, not quite truck. What could be better?

I'm not wild about the Pontiac-ization of the design, but it's nice to see the ghost of a classic rise back up.

Just a Little Off the Top 03/15/08

Fabulous doesn't even do it justice.




Isn't WithLeather great?

Friday, March 14, 2008

A Little Off the Top 03/14/2008

The Play in CA calls for Ben Braun's job. It's embarassing debacles like last night's game against UCLA that makes me glad I don't have cable. Although I'm sure I'll fold by football season.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Thanks, Mom & Dad

Just when I was about ready to take responsibility for my own misery, Edinburgh University researchers have determined that happiness is in our genes. Take it away, Dr Alexander Weiss:
Although happiness is subject to a wide range of external influences, we have found that there is a heritable component of happiness.
So not only can we not determine the legitimacy of other people's brain states, apparently now we're only somewhat responsible for our own general dispositions. Studying 1000 sets of twins, the researchers were able to determine that basic happiness is about fifty percent genetic, with the rest being accounted for by external factors such as health, wealth, and relationships (and, presumably, big-screen HDTVs).

Then again, what do the Scots know? They deep fry pizza:




(Link to the study found on the always interesting Freakonomics blog.)


PS. Just kidding, mom & dad. Y'all are the best.

Pac 10 Tournament

Cal beat Washington yesterday. After such a mediocre season, they'll have to do more damage in the tournament to sneak into one of the conference's six seeds. Tip off against UCLA is in about 3 minutes. Hopefully they found competent officials this time.

Fingers crossed...

UPDATE: Not so much. Almost makes me glad I was in class...

Monday, March 10, 2008

Sacksophilia

I finally finished Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, and *yawn*, thank god for that. It's not a bad book, don't get me wrong, but there is no steak to go with the four hundred pages of sizzle. Sacks has a lot of great anecdotes, and a Bostoner (Bostonite?) would probably say he was 'wicked awesome' to talk to at a party:

(My video embedding skill are failing me again.)


Still, I can't honestly say I'm a better or even more informed person for having read this book. You could easily skip around from chapter to chapter as stories grab your interest. And I'm sure plenty of people will enjoy it. I was hoping for more content, though.

For another take on the book, check this previous post.

Sleeper Watch

I was watching Gonzaga v San Diego at the gym tonight (They have bigger TVs. Sue me.), and Gonzaga doesn't look very good at all. Their entire offense, if you can call it that, seems to consist of Jeremy Pargo running around making crazy plays.

I don't know that Gonzaga really counts as a sleeper these days. They are ranked 22 in the nation, after all. But if tonight bears any resemblance to how they play in the tournament, they won't last long. You've been warned, bracketeers.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Mikey B., we hardly knew ye...

This is getting dangerously close to being old news (and perhaps it already is), but Michael Bloomberg officially withdrew from the race he was never officially in. Count me among the nine people who are sorry to see him go. Not that America was ready to elect a short, Jewish billionaire as president of the United States. But still...

I don't pay much attention to NYC politics. As long as the subways are on time and relatively clean, I don't particularly care (although I do sometimes wonder exactly they're doing with all the city taxes I pay). But Bloomberg always struck me as a great mayor for the city, a confident technocrat who wasn't afraid to call in competent help when confronted with an issue he didn't know much about.

He has a great populist touch, giving out free hot chocolate and sleds to kids during our recent snow storm.

And, most importantly for me, Bloomberg isn't bogged down in partisanship like so many of our politicians. Hell, the man only chose the Republican party because he saw a clearer route to the mayoral nomination. He's not afraid to cross the aisle, to transcend petty Democratic/Republican squabbles, to do what is best for the city.

Now that the wheat has separated from the chaff, we're left with three very competent, very qualified candidates, none of whom I'm particularly excited about. Was I excited about a President Bloomberg? That's probably pushing it. But I do think he possesses the combination of experience, independence and transcendence that we need in our next executive-in-chief. It felt like much less of a compromise, whereas now I'll spend the next eight months trying to distinguish between three ok choices.

Makes me wonder what might have been...

Earth shattering, mind blowing news!

Everyone put down your beverages. Find a comfy chair. This is important:

Marshawn Lynch has a blog.

Now, I'm on the record as being a huge fan of the former Golden Bear / current Buffalo Bills running back, but this is cooler than a faux hawk. Consider:



I can't wait to draft the kid on my fantasy football team again. (OK, I only had him on one team out of three. But still) As a bonus, if he ever gets hurt, he can drive himself off the field:



Marshawn isn't posting very often these days, but hopefully things will pick up when we get closer to football season. Oakland in da house, y'all.

Solid. Solid.

(Thanks to the fine folks at 64MillerLites, where I first discovered this bundle of goodness, and to my buddy C-Ro, for an impromptu lesson on embedding video. I might not understand it, but I have some code I can copy and paste...)

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

A Little Off the Top 02/26/2008

There's a good article in the New Yorker about the complexities of solving global warming. Turns out it's not just a matter of switching to CFL bulbs or joining the food co-op...

The New Yorker and the New York Times both have pieces on a new book by Dan Ariely, called Predictably Irrational. I've only read the articles and not the actual book, but it sounds like he's done some really interesting work on behavioral economics and our inability to choose what's best for us. Check it out if you're interested.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Counting the Colors till Friday

I've been reading Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia lately and, while I still intend to write about it when I finally finish it, his chapter on synesthesia stopped me in my tracks.

To a composer named Michael Torke, each musical key has it's own discrete, unique color. D Major is blue. G Minor is ochre or gamboge, whatever that means. (Apparently it's yellow.) D Minor is flint or graphite. F Minor is an earthy, ashy color.

Another unnamed musician actually experiences tastes corresponding to musical intervals.
  • Minor second = sour
  • Major second = bitter
  • Minor third = salty
  • Major third = sweet
  • Fourth = mown grass
  • Tritone = disgust
  • Fifth = pure water
  • Minor sixth = cream
  • Major sixth = low-fat cream
  • Minor seventh = bitter
  • Major seventh = sour
  • Octave = no taste
Not only does she taste these things whenever she hears an interval, that tastes actually occur even when she's not sure what she heard, and help her to identify sounds.

Now, I've thought that we can never really know what is going on inside another person's head at least since I was sitting in John Searle's Philosophy of Mind lectures back at Berkeley. And the reason I say I can't know what's in anyone else's head is the simple fact that I have no direct access to their brain states. You can tell me what you are thinking/feeling, and I can compare that to my own experiences, but that's it. It's understanding through analogy.

Without direct access, though, I can never know for certain that another mind actually exists. This is where we get to the wonderful idea of a philosophical zombie. (That's right. You probably thought we philosophers just sat around, staring at our hands and trying to define happiness. Nope. We have zombies.) Rather than eating brains and walking funny, though, a p-zombie acts exactly like a normal person, except there is no corresponding brain state behind their actions. Hit your p-zombie boyfriend with your car and he will say 'ouch.' Show a p-zombie the new study proving Derek Jeter is a terrible shortstop, and he'll seem outraged. (Our p-zombie is a Yankee fan. Let's call him Vinnie.) But there is no consciousness underlying either reaction. And, as an outside observer, I would be unable to tell the difference between Vinnie the p-zombie and a normal human being (although the Yankees thing might give it away).

I spent a lot of time in college defending this position. It's tough to convince people you're having a conversation with that you are under no obligation to concede the ontological status of their very consciousness. I admit it's philosophically ugly, and that it seems like the sort of thing you'd only come up with after a few too many bong loads. But now you're going to tell me that E Flat has a color? That a tritone tastes like disgust? (How great is it that something can taste like disgust? I say very.) With such phenomenal differences in our perception of the supposedly material world (I think we can all agree that this is great. Rawr.), how can I possibly pretend to know what any one else is thinking? For that matter, how can I know that anyone else actually is thinking?

I'm not saying other minds don't exist. (Although some people do.) In fact, I'd prefer it if the people around me are not p-zombies or figments of my imagination. I think it's an ultimately unanswerable question, though, whether or not there are other minds out there. I'll never have direct access to another person's consciousness, so I'll never be able to say for sure that such a consciousness exists. But I suppose I should act as if it does, just in case.

BRRRAAAAAAIIIINNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

Just a Little off the Top 02/25/2008

I'm going to try and start adding a link dump feature around here on a fairly regular basis, so y'all can see what I'm looking at. It's a pretty lame month for sports, though, so for now I just want to point you to a piece on firejoemorgan.com:

I Just Made A Man Invent The Derogatory Term "VORPies."


Man I can't wait for my copy of Baseball Prospectus to arrive...

That's all for now. Real post coming soon, promise.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Some Overdue Love for the Golden Bears

I've harped on Cal's men's basketball team a few times (5-7 in the Pac-10, 14-9 overall, with a losing record against ranked teams), so I'd like to take a second to give some much deserved love:

The women's team is #9 in the country, at 13-1 in conference and 22-3 overall.

I'll be honest: I never went to a women's basketball game while I was at Berkeley. I'm not even sure they played Haas Pavilion. But they'd better now.

Well done, ladies. This is bear territory.

One Quick Thing about College Basketball

The Memphis Tigers are currently #1 in both the coaches' and AP polls, 10-0 in conference and 24-0 overall.

They will not reach the Final Four. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't even reach the Elite Eight. When you're filling out your bracket, Memphis has to be the first number 1 seed you eliminate.

What sort of crazy, Bill Jamesean statistical analysis did I use to reach this conclusion? You might want to sit down. You might even want to take notes. It's that complicated:

The Memphis Tigers can not shoot free throws.

And I don't mean they're just mediocre; they're terrible. I wouldn't bet 5 dollars on them making any given one.

The team is shooting 58.4% from the charity stripe. Fifty eight. The number one free throw shooting team, the mighty Gauchos of UC Santa Barbara, are shooting 78.4%. There are a few schools tied for 100th in free throw shooting - powerhouses like Coppin State, Akron and a few others. Memphis' 58.4% is good for 338th place in Division 1 basketball. That is not a typo.

I'm not going to harp on this. I don't even follow much college basketball until the tournament starts in March. But my god. Don't say you haven't been warned. The Memphis Tigers are going to shoot themselves right out of the Final Four. The 1976 Hoosiers can rest easy, and join with the '72 Dolphins in their feelings of superiorty to us defeated mortals.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Cormac McCarthy: Mash Up Artist

Fair warning: There are some spoilers here, but all the books have been out for a while, so deal.

One night, Cormac McCarthy was sitting in his dorm room at the University of Great American Novelists, working his way through a bottle of whisky. He stared at the computer screen, swore at the endlessly blinking cursor. Smoke from a mostly forgotten cigarette curled up past his face, and he waved it idly away.

This is ridiculous, he thought. Or maybe he muttered it. The pressure was definitely starting to get to him.

I wrote All the Pretty Horses. No Country for Old Men. I won the National Book Award! But he couldn't get any words on to the page, and hadn't in weeks. The whisky was beginning to take hold.

What I should do, he muttered or thought, is redo On the Road as if it were written by Ernest Hemingway. A new perspective. Toughen that beatnik drivel up. People will appreciate how originally I've combined two previously existing, seemingly unrelated things.

The pages flew by as McCarthy's whisky-wobbled fingers struck at the keys with a newfound sense of purpose. Carefree cross country jaunts in search of kicks in post war America became a perilous journey in a post Apocalyptic future to horrible to even contemplate, let alone survive.

The characters were easy to transition. Sal Paradise, Kerouac's stand-in/narrator, knows the only people he's interested in are The mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn burn burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. The only person who matters for this new, unnamed narrator is his son, God's own firedrake, tending to the fire whose sparks rushed upward and died in the starless dark. Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground. And we have no time for Roman candles, no sir. No time for metaphor, either.

Rather than discussing the limits of human potential and the wonders of existence on a mad-dash car ride along the eastern seaboard, repeatedly curse the futility and wretchedness of a world where the sky is full of ash and civilization has disintegrated. Think of the hopeless, stoic perseverance of The Old Man and the Sea, only if the ocean were poison and all the fish were dead.

And in the end, instead of having the protagonists simply drift apart and outgrow one another with the passage of time, let's kill off the narrator and leave the child to fend for himself amongst a band of unknown survivors who may or may not be carrying the fire themselves (Damnit, one metaphor slipped through. But that's the only one.). Robert Jordan (For Whom the Bell Tolls) would be proud.

And you know what, Cormac? So would the kids on collegehumor.com. Congratulations - you've successfully juxtaposed two completely different things, like this Bear Grylls mash-up, Man vs. Girls Gone Wild. (Note: You probably shouldn't watch this at work. Or if you have an IQ over 80.) I can't wait to see Veggietales characters dialouge spliced into the No Country trailer.

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

In all seriousness, The Road is a great book, and just incredibly written. McCarthy paints an intimate portrait of a father-son relationship, and describes about as beautiful an ash-strewn apocalyptic wasteland as could ever exist.

I preferred No Country for Old Men, mainly because I was more able to relate to the characters in it. I may still be stuck in the concrete jungle Bob Marley sings about, but the thing hasn't burnt down yet. I'm not contending with deranged, cannibalistic mobs (although some days on the subway it can feel like it). So there you go.

I'd recommend either book, though, and you can't go wrong either way. And if I ever find my way back to the library, I might just start in on the Border Trilogy as well...Not that I don't have enough to read already.

Enjoy.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Kevin Hart: Evil Genius?

As a (sometimes) proud Cal alum, I haven't decided yet how to feel about the whole Kevin Hart signing day fiasco. Those of you unfamiliar with the saga can find links to all the deadspin posts on the wonderful Mr. Ufford's With Leather. For fans of the Worldwide Leader, Gene Wojciechowski has a pretty thorough article as well.

Honestly, my first reaction was frustration with the Cal program. The team just finished an epic, embarrassing collapse of a season that makes the 2007 Mets look like strong finishers. A 5-0 start followed by a single win in 7 games when the wheels came suddenly, horribly off against Oregon State. A win in the Bell Helicopter Armed Services Bowl against an Air Force team that doesn't even run the triple option anymore. I don't know if it's as bad as the Tom Holmoe years, but it's close.

Cal has enjoyed a strong running game over the past few years, with players like Justin Forsett and the incredibly gangter Marshawn Lynch running rampant out of the backfield. So when a 6'4, 305 pound 2-star recruit, holds a press conference in his hometown and proudly declares his intention to enroll at Berkeley, instead of Pac-10 rival Oregon, why, oh why would Coach Jeff Teford turn down the opportunity to secure a strong addition to the offensive line?

Well, it turns out he's not very good. I guess two stars (out of 5) at rivals.com doesn't mean nearly as much as two stars (out of 3) from Michelin. This also happens to be when the story gets interesting. When it came out that Cal (and, for that matter, anyone) had no interest whatsoever him, Hart initially claimed to have fallen victim to a shady recruiter named Kevin Riley.

Now, I know there are 300 million people in this country, but surely a recruiter just happening to have that name is at least a little coincidental. Cal football fans will remember Kevin Riley virtually single-handedly ruining the Golden Bear's shot at a number 1 ranking in the aforementioned Oregon State game. Remember, the very same day that LSU lost in triple OT to Kentucky? Yeah, so do I. Anyway, that was when alarm bells started clanging in my head.

It turned out in the end that Hart made everything up, getting caught in an elaborate story that went back weeks, if not months. And you can understand his desire to play D-1 football. Heck, I thought of myself as a pretty decent hockey player at one point. But what exactly did he think was going to happen? Sure, if he was a 4 star prospect, Tedford might have said 'Hey, we didn't think we had a shot at this kid, but if he wants to come here so bad, let's try to work something out.' After all, Cal's recruiting class didn't exactly set the world on fire. No top 150 recruits, and only 2 teams in the conference ranked worse. Then again, if the kid was a 4 star recruit, Cal probably would have recruited him.

It's going to be a long offseason, Bear fans. And I haven't even started on the basketball team yet (A lousy 5-5 in conference so far)...

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

The real Super Bowl MVP: Sideburns!

02/05/2008

I was in Vermont a few weeks ago, over the recent three day weekend (Thanks, LBJ!). It was a great trip, full of maple-flavored foodstuffs, snowshoeing, beer, and more cheese than you can shake a stick at. If, you know, you're the sort of person who shakes sticks at inanimate foodstuffs. Anyway, it was such a good trip that I decided to do what any good Vermonter would: turn my too-lazy-to-shave stubble into an honest to god beard. It was thick. It was luxurious. It was red.

It was also terribly unlucky. The drive home took several hours than the drive there, even with (or maybe because of) the GPS. I couldn't land a new job, even after more interviews than I can remember. The beard got into an argument with a friend of mine. The Chargers stunk in the AFC title game. The missus had rug burn on her cheeks. I could go on. An ugly situation all around.

By Super Sunday, it was clear something had to be done. Drastic measures would be required. Boldly, I took my Mach 3 Super-duper Power Turbo Razor in hand. In a matter of minutes, the viking mane was transformed into gi-normous, California shaped sideburns (Ok, I'm homesick. Deal with it.). Thus reborn, I proudly put on my Repli-thentic (Whatever that means) 1990 red Joe Montana 49ers jersey and ventured out to watch the game somewhere in Morningside Heights, looking like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (at least the facial hair).

By now, you all know what happened. The Patriots played like they had somewhere to be. David Tyree defied the laws of physics. Eli played like his older brother, and for once, I don't mean Cooper. The Giants won the freaking Super Bowl.

And I went 7-2 on my props, only missing on a shot in the dark highest scoring quarter bet and a Patriots-biased double result hedge.

So, you can have your trophy, Eli. You can have all the glory. But just consider: would you really have played the game of your young career if I hadn't done my best General Ambrose Burnside impression that very morning?

Sure, some of the kinks still need to be worked out. I haven't found a new job yet. But I haven't lost my current one, either, which is nice. The sideburns are on good terms with my friends. And Joe Montana is still the greatest quarterback of all time (for now).

But, still: All hail sideburns!