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March 27, 2006
Blog Stew: Bad Mood Risin' Edition
Fair warning: I'm in one hell of a sour mood tonight. It's been a hell of a lousy day, with lots of buzzkill moments to bring me down off of my California happy place. I'm guessing that I'm not really going to see a major uptick in my mood any time in the next few days, least of all tonight. So you're stuck with one growly Curmudgeon for the moment. Sorry.
Frankly, I don't feel like writing tonight. It's one of those sit and stew evenings and I doubt it's in my power right now to come up with anything worth reading. However, I've been away for a week, and if you abuse your audience by not giving them anything, they tend to stop showing up. So because I love y'all, here's a few random things bouncing in my mind. (I decided not to do the Cali update while angry at the world. The trip was too cool to recap while ticked.)
1. When in Rome... I'm leaving for Rome on Sunday; while I'll be working my tail off during the week, I did take a three-day weekend for myself post-conference to enjoy the city and explore. Anyone who's been or who has recommendations for things/places I should see while there, I'd love some suggestions. (Hint: I am a non-touristy tourist; I don't want to see the things everybody goes to see, unless they're really that worth it. I'll go to the Trevi and the Coliseum, obviously, and we have a tour of the Vatican/Sistine slated... but what I really enjoy is going places many tourists don't go, where I can really get a feeling for what a city or place is really like. For example, you can't get a sense of the real New York from the Empire State Building -- you'll run into more tourists than Noo Yawkiz. To feel NYC, you gotta get away from where the tourists go. That's what I'm looking for in Rome. Don't get me wrong -- if there's a tourist site worth seeing, I'll play tourist -- you know, the kind of place where if you skip, people will say "you went to Rome and didn't see ----?" I should see those places, I guess. But anyone with advice on how to experience the real Rome... I'm all ears.
Anyone wanting for me to bring something back for them, let me know. Anyone wishing to come with me should submit a short essay as to why she should be selected.
2. Hasidic Reggae? Okay, I know I am the last one to the table on this one, but I am digging on that Matisyahu single "King Without A Crown." I shouldn't. I don't even like reggae all that much. (Sacrilege, I know, but I have never "gotten" Bob Marley.) And yet, here I am thinking that this song is pretty cool. Next thing you know, I'm gonna start getting into Amish death metal.
3. Top ten rejected greeting cards No, this isn't one of those net e-mail pranks. It's really a list o rejected greeting cards from Shoebox -- that tiny little division of Hallmark. My favorite is the Christmas one.
Sorry. One of my weaker efforts, I know.
Posted by Christopher at 10:24 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBackSexy Results
No, I am not talking about the song by Death From Above 1979. At the end of every March, FHM magazine comes out with its yearly "Sexiest Women In The World" issue. Usually, I am left shaking my head at how few of the top 10 are on my top ten list. (It's my opinion that FHM's readers are generally 14 year olds who wouldn't know a sexy woman if she bit them... too many boobs on the list. And some of them even have large breasts.) Anyway, this year's list is out, and the #1 choice was something of a surprise... not Angelina Jolie (yuck!!!!) or Jennifer Lopez (give trash money, she's still trash), but instead, Scarlett Johansson. And for the first time in a while, I actually find FHM's #1 sexiest woman to actually be sexy. Nicely done, FHM.
The rest of the top ten: Angelina Jolie (no, says Mudge emphatically), followed by Jessica Alba (yes), Jessica Simpson (decidedly no, has a man's face and a protazoan brain), Keira Knightley (yes), Halle Berry (yes), Jenny McCarthy (not even with a ten foot... um, pole), Maria Sharapova (yes - gotta love athletic women), Carmen Electra (no! Rodman's been there, which automatically disqualifies her from being lusted after) and Teri Hatcher (yeah sorta, but I haven't forgiven her for her Radio Shack commercials).
Here's my take on their full list, broken into five categories: Group 1 are those I'd go all William Hurt in Body Heat over, and start tossing chairs through plate glass windows to get to. Group 2 are those I do find attractive, if not as intensely. Group 3 are the "eh" ones. Group 4 are the ones I didn't even know. And Group 5 are the ones I just do not see the attraction at all -- find them unattractive for whatever reason. (Yes, I needed more to do tonight.) Angelina Jolie, for example, is in Group 5. I must be the only man in the world for whom she does absolutely nothing. (And yes, I realize that categorizing women based on physical appearance is not really respectful. But FHM made the list, not me... and as a human male, I look. Deal with it.)
There are only 15 inductees into Group 1, out of an alleged 100 sexiest... just confirms for me that the mainstream's taste is not nearly as refined or sophisticated as my own (how's that for spin?). There were 17 I had never even heard of, thus confirming that I am really, really old. There were also 18 in Group 5 -- those who are simply not attractive to me at all -- thus confirming for a second time that my tastes are more sophisticated than the majority's. (A couple of these were DQ'd for being X-Gamers, while others are DQ'd because of the famous men whom they've been with.) There were 21 in Group 2 -- attractive, but not so incredibly so that they force their way into a top 100 list for me. That left 29 in the middle -- those generating no reaction one way or the other. When it's all said and done, I found just 36 of FHM's "100 Sexiest" to be attractive. One third. That's not an indication that my standards are impossibly high; rather it just means, I guess, that I find the standards by which society seems to judge a woman sexy to be unrealistic and somewhat silly.
My personal top ten from this list? In no particular order, they'd be: #99, #98, #77, #61, #43, #42, #34, #15, #8, and #1 -- with #43, #99, and #15 close to the top. Anyway, women... fell free to do your own lists of the 100 sexiest males to counter. Whatever works for ya!
Posted by Christopher at 09:36 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBackMarch 26, 2006
All Aboard The Bandwagon
Hope they inflated the tires up real good, because the George Mason bandwagon is gonna pick up about another 25 million riders this week. I'll happily be among them. My NCAA pool hopes died with Duke (lesson learned: never again side with the devil, even when you think it can win you money), so I am more than happy to start cheering for the greatest underdog story in 20 years in college basketball.
There have been underdogs before; in fact, every year, a few of them make it into the Sweet 16. But very rarely do underdogs reach this level, the Final Four. As the entire world will point out with nauseating frequency this week, the most direct comparisons are North Carolina State in 1983, Villnova in 1985, and Kansas in 1988. Maybe LSU in 1986 belongs in the conversation, the last 11 seed to get to the Final Fout. Yes, Kansas won it all in 1988, as did 'Nova in '85 and Jimmy Valvano's NC State in '83. But every single program on that list was from a major conference where even surviving to the NCAA tournament level means having gone at least .500 in one of the premier competitive environments college basketball offers. George Mason is the first mid-major to make the Final Four since the NCAA tournament became the "March Madness" mass marketing machine that it is today.
And Mason did it the hard way -- as Dick Vitale and others have noted this afternoon, their road to Indianapolis ran through three of the last six national champions, half of last year's Final Four, and three Hall of Fame coaches. This isn't just some fluke, friends. These are some kids playing out of their heads and hitting an incredible streak, yes. But they're playing damn good basketball. Better than Michigan State. Better than North Carolina. And better than UConn. If they can play better than Florida next Saturday, they will have taken their Disney movie in the making all the way to the national championship game. And you'll be able to hear me rooting for them all the way from Italy.
Move over, Rudy. Take a seat, Hoosiers. Grab some bench, The Rookie. The next okay-for-men-to-cry-at-the-end sports movie is being scripted right now, only in real life. Because if George Mason wins two more games... Cinderella's gonna look like a trailer park floozy in comparison.
Posted by Christopher at 11:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackMarch 20, 2006
Going Back To Cali
Tuesday's episode will be called, "How To Vomit From Sheer Terror In Front of Your Boss." Anyone reading this blog for any length of time knows that my Kryptonite in life, the sole things that turn me into a cowering wimp, are heights and bridges. So tomorrow ought to be an interesting exercise. My boss's boss's boss and I are heading to another company about 100 miles away to do a consult, and because of the time constraints involved, we're taking the company vehicle. No, not the kind that travels on interstates. The kind that flies over them.
Yes, kids, I get to take a helicopter ride tomorrow... which will either be oddly exhilarating or will make me wet myself right through the ol' Hugo Boss pinstripes. After presenting for a couple hours, we get whisked back home on the same chopper, and when we land we go immediately to a private flight out to California. For the next five days (assuming I survive the heli-trauma in the morning), the Bay Area is my temporary home. So... Dave, if you're reading, you have my cell. As for the rest of you all... I'm going away again for a few days, I'll try to post Sunday night. There's a lot weighing on my tiny mind lately, and there's one of those seriously introspective posts building up (you know, the ones Illinois Mike always calls "navel gazing?").
Have a safe and happy week, all. Don't do anything I'd do. And if you do do something I'd do, I expect you to call me first next time!
Posted by Christopher at 11:30 PM | Comments (17)Microwave Blog Stew
I had a ton of things I wanted to write about this week -- all of which I probably could have done full on posts on in their own right. But, since the tour is on in full force right now, this is going to be my only night to post this week; I'm headed to San Francisco and the Bay Area for the week and will be back on Sunday. So we're gonna have to do the microwave version of Blog Stew tonight .... fast and somewhat cardboard tasting.
1. Alfonso Soriano is a punk. Aw, poor widdle baby! Didums doesn't wanna pway outfiewd? Soirano, you suck as a 2B anyway -- get your pathetic punk ass out in the field. You haven't won jack in your career, and you haven't earned the right to demand your right to play whatever position you want. A shredded ACL can't happen fast enough to your punk ass.
2. Halliburton poisons our troops. Gosh, aren't you glad that Shooter Cheney's company was handed a no-bid contract to service the war that was started specifically to benefit them, aren't you? Aren't we especially glad that there's no one in the administration willing to demand any kind of accountability from Halliburton? Isn't it neato that no matter how much fraud they commit, Halliburton keeps getting money from Bush's government? This is what you get when Dick Cheney is allowed to call the shots (heh huh heh), ladies and gentlemen: our troops potentially poisoned by a company that is grossly derelict of duty. Halliburton, the company given no-bid contracts by their former CEO, won't even purify the water they serve to our troops.
In the private sector, any contractor with a record of failure and fraud like Halliburton would have been fired long ago. Not in the George W. Bush adminstration, kids. In W & Cheney's world, Halliburton gets more money. Conservatives love to whine about supporting the troops. Apparently, in their world, supporting them means giving them fetid water to drink.
3. Larry The Cable Idiot has a movie out. I'm not gonna link to it, out of sheer disdain. But this is a surer sign of the impending apocolypse than Ozzy Osbourne getting an invite to a Republican White House function and NASCAR combined. If God were in the mood to convince me of His existence, he would send lightning storms, tornadoes, and an epidemic of fatal diarrhea into every showing of this moronic idiot's movie... don't just prevent people from seeing it, let's take a few of the Darwinian accidents that would pay to see it with him. Please, God. I ask for so little.
4. March Mudgeness. Oh, the dilemma! Cheering for Duke is like french-kissing your acne-covered little sister. They are the Yankees and Cowboys of college basketball. They are eeeeeeeevil (said in his best Dr. Evil impression). And Boston College are a bunch of pretty-boy spoiled rich kids who weren't smart enough to get into BU. And yet.... in a pool of 50 people, I am sitting in fifth right now and can win first place if Boston College makes it to the Final Four, and Duke wins it all. What would you choose -- winning $300 and selling your soul to Satan? Or staying pure of heart and yet losing money?
Posted by Christopher at 10:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBackEntropy Monday
en·tro·py n. pl. en·tro·pies
2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
5. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.
Obviously, I am aiming for the meaning in definition 2... although one could argue that the very existence of my blog is a symptom of #5. And there's something kind of statement-ish about the phrase "inert uniformity," it feels very observational about suburban America or something. So I'm going with it. Anyway, here's a random and disordered series of thoughts and observations.
1. BU back on top. The last time Boston University's hockey team won the Hockey East title, I was a first year grad student living just off campus in the party apartment (8 parties for 30 or more people in the first 11 weekends of school... not one time were the cops called to our house... I'm still damn proud of that). Nine years later, the Terriers are back on top. BU charged through the Hockey East tournament this weekend, easily dispatching some overrated bums from UNH 9-2, then disposing of our arch rivals Boston College in the finals, 2-1, to win the conference championship. The Icedogs' reward was a #3 seed in the NCAA tournament out of 16 teams. To win out, my grad school alma mater will have to beat my undergrad alma mater, Minnnesota, who are the #2 seed. Despite having attended both schools, I have no split loyalties; I am a Terrier, through and through. SO congratulations to Coach Parker and the team for returning us to our rightful place atop Hockey East, and good luck in the NCAA!
2. Cutting edge humor. Chicago is home to a great baseball stadium, a funny accent, and at least one very flipped out dude. Jakub Fik went on an enraged fit last week, and when confronted by police, he began throwing things at them. Knives, for example. And of course, he also threw his own severed penis at them.
Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage Wednesday morning. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers, police said. Officers stunned him with a Taser and took him into custody.
Wow. Talk about losing one's head. He really went off half-cocked. He was robbing Peter to pay Paul. (Okay, Austin Powers, let's go. Right.)
3. Sour grapes make for a bad whine. The forces behind Brokeback Mountain continue to make themselves look like the creative equivalent of a two year old throwing a tantrum in the aisle of a toy store. Their incessant whining about not winning Best Picture is making the Academy's choice seem wiser by the day. The latest whine comes from the author of the short story upon which the screenplay was based, Annie Proulx.
"If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices," Proulx advises.
Oh really, Annie? And that wouldn't just happen to be the award that your movie won, now would it?
She decries the "atmosphere of insufferable self-importance" inside the Kodak Theatre, the Oscars site, and describes the audience as a "somewhat dim LA crowd." The show, she writes, was "reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night."
Insufferable self-importance, huh? Well, I am certainly picking up a lot of insufferable self-importance out of this whole situation. However, to me it's all coming from the Brokeback Mountain crowd.
The "artistic vision" made with Brokeback Mountain is little different than Gibson's Passion of the Christ -- one part movie making, one part political statement. The statements may be on opposite sides of the spectrum, but making those statements was a primary driver behind making each film. And if I rejected statement-making as BS and self-important when Gibson did it, it would be hypocritical of me to accept it from people whose statements I support. The self-righteous "we wuz robbed" whining from backers of "Brokeback Mountain" smacks strongly of people who weren't just making a movie. And that's really too bad.
Posted by Christopher at 05:23 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBackMarch 19, 2006
On Any Given Payday...
The World Baseball Classic is coming to a dramatic and successful close, with Monday's final between Cuba and Japan at San Diego's Petco Park. If you're a baseball die-hard, it's been a fun tournament, with thrilling finishes and the Korean team's surprise run to the semi-finals. But casual fans -- at least in America -- aren't paying much attention; the United States was eliminated in the quarterfinal round.
The WBC flop follows similar disappointments for the United States in other sports. The US men's basketball team laid an egg in Athens at the 2004 Summer Olympics, settling for a bronze medal. (This came after the humiliating debacle at the 2002 World Championships, in which the US lost three of its last four games and finished sixth.) More recently, the US Olympic Men's Hockey team went to Torino as medal favorites, and promptly defecated in the sleeping area and was bounced from the tournament without looking like a remote threat for even the bronze.
What gives? The United States is home to the major sporting leagues of the world, the most developed college athletics system anywhere on the globe, and has a wealth of resources to throw at sports. How come all of a sudden we can't win in international team competition? Actually, we don't just "not win;" we tend to crash and burn like the Six Million Dollar Man's spaceship. What the heck's the problem?
In a word, it's money.
Sports in the United States have become carictature. Be it baseball, basketball, hockey, football, soccer, or any other sport, sport has strayed far from the spirit of team competition and become business -- a simple chase of money. Be it in the nominally "professional" leagues (whose players rarely behave "professionally"), or in the college ranks where we still keep up the ridiculous facade that the players are "amateurs," sport in the United States is all about the Benjamins. Fans, owners, and especially players care not for the game, but for themselves -- if we love home run chases, who cares if the players are cheating? If butts are in the seats of the stadiums our owners have built, who cares if the players cheat to deliver? And players... they live in a me-me-me world more suited to two year olds in day care than alleged professionals.
Want a couple of prime examples? The baseball season starts in two weeks. New York Yankee Gary Sheffield is already giving interviews from spring training complaining about the pressure he feels before the season begins. Is the pressure because the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000, and he as one of the team's leaders is expected to return the trophy to his team and city? Nah. Sheffield feels pressure because he "only" has one more year remaining on his contract, and despite making $13 million this year and being a 39 year old player with durability questions, he's unhappy that the Yankees haven't yet signed him to a longer contract.
“I'm still not comfortable. The thing is, I'm not allowed to be comfortable," he said before the Yankees played the Florida Marlins in a spring training game. "And that's the reality of my situation. I always have to play with my back against the wall."
Here's another. After the US hockey team whimpered out or Torino, you'd think that team "leader" Mike Modano would have been most upset about the fact that his heaviliy favored team lost badly, playing uninspired hockey. Instead, he complained loudly about his travel accomodations.
"You'd think USA Hockey would be a well-oiled machine, but it's not," he said. "Basically we were on our own for hotels, tickets, flights, stuff like that. Normally we wouldn't have to worry about stuff like that."
Hey, Mike, guess what? The fans who buy tickets to see you play -- whether in Torino or Dallas or anywhere else -- are on their own for hotels, tickets, flights, and stuff like that. They manage to do their jobs every day.
Frankly, sports in the United States today can't be bothered with something if it doesn't involve major amounts of money directly to the players and owners. The World Baseball Classic? It's an exhibition; it distracts from the business of spring training. The Olympics? The NHL grumbles its way through a two week break in the season every four years to begrudgingly accomodate them. The biggest question about the US basketball teams most often is whether Nike or Reebok will sponsor the team and get their logo on the uniforms.
Believe it or not, as much as I may sound like it, I am not writing this post to complain about the state of sports today and how it was purer when I was a kid. Nor am I trying to place blame on Mike Modano for US hockey's flop or Gary Sheffield for the US performance in the WBC. Sports as a business and not a game has given us thrilling wild card races and rotisserie leagues in baseball (the FLAKS league draft is now less than two weeks away, and my binders and magazines full of notations sit in the Do Not Lose This Place of Honor on my desk, so I fully admit to enjoying the fruits of the system here). The current set up has given us March Madness, the spectacle that is the Super Bowl, and has ingrained ESPN so deeply in our culture that having a cable system without it is literally unthinkable for 96% of American males. I watch Sports Center from the treadmill on those mornings I actually make it to the treadmill. I'm not pretending to be above it all... I'm a part of it.
I am, however, trying to explain why a US sports team has not won a major international competition since 1999 (and even then it was the Women's World Cup soccer team -- a team from an environment not yet driven by and obsessed with money).
American sports fans must wake up to the fact that our system -- our athletes, our organizing committees, even ourselves as fans -- simply is not about winning any longer; it is about money. Where winning abets the bottom line, so much the better, but our system does not value winning for winning's sake. International competitions like the World Baseball Classic or the Olympics, for as much money is behind them, are still about competing, and about winning. If you don't think so, observe the passion and excitement that players -- not just fans, but players -- on the teams from the Dominican Republic or Korea have shown for winning games in this tournament. Even though many of the Latin players in particular also play in Major League Baseball, they're still from a culture not as dominated by money and individual payout. Winning, even without a massive payday to serve as motivation, still matters to them, for its own sake. And so they've won. And so the US has lost. And as long as the system remains as it is, it's hard for me to imagine the US not losing. The days of the US dominating international competition are over. We simply don't care enough. Winning for its own sake is no longer what American sports are about, unless there's a big check involved. Without the money, we just don't care. And without change, it's going to be a long time before the US wins another major sport international competition.
The United States has more resources to throw into athletics than any other nation, resources designed to build supertrained, highly tuned athletes and the very best programs on earth. It's ironic that it is the very abundance of those resources that keeps us from doing the very thing that sports were supposed to be about all this time: winning.
Posted by Christopher at 11:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBackMarch 17, 2006
They're Always After Me Lucky Charms
I'm not Irish. I've never been Irish, actually. While my bloodstream contains scads of the variants of chocolate in my peanut butter/peanut butter in my chocolate that tend to happen here in America (I am a true mutt in the finest sense of the word), the Irish are not among the nationalities whose natives, in some (likely alcohol-assisted) sordid coupling at one point or another, contributed a gene or two to my eventual DNA.
However, I did attend grad school in Boston. And that makes me as Irish as one needs to be on a day like today. The fact that St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday makes me truly fearful for the city of Boston -- the gateway to a legendarily debauched weekend has been thrown open. I wish I were there.
So I wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day, and offer you this blessing (which may or may not actually be Irish in origin, but I found it on an Irish blessings web site so just work with me here, people!):
"Here's to lying, stealing, and cheating!
May you lie to save a friend;
May you steal the heart of the one you love;
and may you cheat death."
Oh yeah... and for my female readers: Kiss me. I'm Irish.
Posted by Christopher at 07:39 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBackMarch 16, 2006
Mudge Madness
Basketball thoughts of the day:
This is why I hate basketball. And by the way, "Starbury," you and your selfish, useless little punk ass can go lay down in rush hour traffic any second now. If you're so damn good, being the "best point guard in the league" and all, then how come the team your bitch-ass punk self leads is the worst team in basketball, at 18-45? If you were really any good, wouldn't you have led your team to even an 8 seed by now, instead of missing the playoffs for years on end? I realize -- and Corey will be the first to tell me -- that I don't see any NBA players close up, and that most are good men whose attitudes aren't reflected by disgraces like Stephon Marbury, Allen "Practice" Iverson, Latrell "Feed My Family" Spreewell, or Sam "Whine" Cassell. Fine. What I do see/read about all the time are selfish, me-first, immature jerk players like Stephon Marbury. And it's not a media conspiracy that puts words in Marbury's mouth (or AI's, or Spree's, or Cassell's); these guys are only too happy to share their selfish thoughts. And so I despise the NBA on character issues.
This is why, despite hating basketball, I do truly enjoy March Madness every year. I had Winthrop picked on one of my boards, and there were a bunch of us with adrenalin rushes this afternoon watching the last few seconds of this game. For the record, I thought that Lofton travelled. (In case you haven't figured out by now, if a call goes against a team when I am cheering for them, it is a bad call no matter how the rules might suggest it should be called; similarly, if a non-call might have been called, if the team I am rooting for would have benefitted, then the ref is blind. That's just the way it is. Deal.)
If I win the pool I am in... well, let's just say that I would be able to enjoy one very extravagant evening out at dinner or in post-dinner socializing. So you might want to be cheering for me, just in case I decide to have a "Help Mudge Spend His Pool Winnings" reader contest.
Posted by Christopher at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 15, 2006
The Trip of Stuff You Don't See Every Day
A random collection of useless thoughts from my scattered head in the last few days, from a trip full of "things you don't see every day."
-- I arrived in Phoenix -- the desert, mind you -- on the heels of the worst snowstorm they'd seen since 1968. I went to the desert for the first time, and I got snow. Lots of it. The temperature Sunday when I arrived in mid-afternoon was 46. Meanwhile, when I'd left New York at 7:30 am, it was 62 out. I leave New York in March go to the damn desert, and it's colder when I land than when I left. Yeah, you don't see that every day.
-- Upon settling in at my hotel and getting some work done, the conference's organizer and I went to dinner with another of the next day's speakers. (I was hoping for some authentic southwestern or Mexican fare; instead, my dining companions chose a place I later learned was a chain out west. Uninmpressive food, and less impressive service. We sat down, ordered beers, and as the host lifted his pint glass to take a sip, the bottom fell out of the glass. Yep, out of the glass. Like a soggy dixie cup, the thing just gave way and crashed to the table. It was a clean cut, too -- looked like someone lasered it and just took the bottom right off. The end result was that our host wore most of his beer in the lap of his khakis, and his beer-drinking hand suffered a cut on his finger -- not a stitches-level gash, but still not a pretty cut.
Our waiter, our bus boy and the hostess all seemed far more intrigued by the remnants of the neatly cut glass than they were with our host's not so neatly cut finger. It took two requests to get a bandaid -- and when one came, it was one of those two inch baby bandaids. Needless to say, it wasn't sufficient. When the manager finally came over to check on the situation, he seemed to honestly believe he was doing our party a favor. "We'll replace that beer, free of charge... what do you think about that?" (Exact words.) He really seemed to think himself magnanimous for the gesture. You'd be right if you guessed that no one got a tip that evening. The bottom dropped right out of a pint glass with no discernable previous damage to it... something you don't see every day.
-- After the conference, I stayed at the hotel hanging out with a couple of new friends I'd met during the day. I had a red-eye scheduled, and there was no sense in sitting at Sky Harbor for six hours (had already done that at O'Hare on Thursday!). We drove back from the conference site to the hotel together... when I got to Hertz to drop off my rental car at 9 pm, I realized that in the back of the SUV was someone's travel bag and computer. Ever try to convince airline and airport personnel since 9/11 that you'd just like to drop off this bag that doesn't belong to you, and that someone you just met today will be in tomorrow morning to pick it up? I might as well have asked them where I could buy some C-4 or something. So the only solution we could think of (by now I was on the cell with the bag's owner) was to have me hail a taxi and send it back to the hotel with the bag, to be reuinited with its owner who would be waiting at the front of the hotel.
So I hailed a cab, gave the driver $20 and sent him off... and then realized what stupidity had taken over my thinking in my rush to get onto my own plane. I put $20 and a travel bag that included a laptop in a strange taxi, without getting the taxi's license number, without the bag's owner having any way to reach the driver... I figured that bag (not to mention my $20) was gone, never to be seen again. But lo and behold. 15 minutes later my phone rang... the bag's very happy owner had just taken possession of it once again. I put a laptop in a stranger's car with no way to track them down and no way to prove I'd ever seen him... and the laptop got where it was supposed to go. Yeah, you don't see that every day either. (If we'd have pulled something that stupid in New York, my friend would have spent Tuesday filing lost asset reports at the office.) Honest cabbies in Phoenix... made me feel better about the city.
-- Finally, the last thing I'd never witnessed before was a medical emergency on a plane. Our red-eye had just taken off and was in the air for all of 15 minutes when an older man (late 50s?) started wobbling back toward the back restrooms. He just didn't look right; his eyes were kind of glazed over and I honestly thought he might have had too much at the ol' tequila bar before getting airborne. I let him wobble by and turned back to try and get some sleep.
Suddenly, from behind me, I heard two loud thumps... followed by a woman calling out "help!" with increasingl insistence. I turned... and there was our wobbly passenger laying face down in the aisle. I pressed my call button, and the flight attendents came rushing back to assist him. They got him up on his hands and knees, and then I heard the sound that no one who's ever heard it can mistake... that miserable wretching noise we all make when dinner's about to make another appearance. And yes, there on his hands and knees in the aisle just in front of the airplane restroom, dude let loose. (The attendants managed to get him an airsick bag for his second bout, but I couldn't help but wonder how they didn't anticipate his first session, since his noises kind of telegraphed that it was coming.) Suddenly, there's leftovers on the floor. In the plane. In the closed, recycled air enviroment of an aircraft cabin. You can imagine the air quality issues that suddenly hit. I expected to see a repeat of the scene from "Stand By Me" when the whole town starts puking after seeing the fat kid in the pie-eating contest hurl on someone...
I figured the man was just drunk, but then the attendants got on the intercom and asked for medical personnel aboard the plane. Because I was seated near the back, I could hear the conversation between the attendants. I know I heard "divert" once, and lots of discussion of what could be done about the air quality problem in the plane.I kind of skipped past whatever else was said, and was focused on "divert"ing flights from JFK and wondered in which unplanned city I was going to spend the night. I kept stepping over both sides of the line; on the one hand, I was mighty annoyed at the guy for potentially delaying my return and for providing us all with such a wonderful aroma, while on the other I couldn't help but think in the back of my mind, "If there's something really wrong with that guy and he dies of a heart attack or something, you're chasing some seriously bad karma." Despite this understanding, I opted for the bad karma. I pulled my coat up over my face in a desperate attempt to block out the light and the smell, and started grumbling under my breath at the guy. Only occasionally did it occur to me that I'd had food poisoning before and that someone suffering from it desperately needs sympathy.
But whether it was the result of tequila or salmonella, the guy seemed to rally a little -- long enough to return to his seat anyway. We ended up not diverting, and the rest of the red-eye passed by agonizingly slowly but without incident. But... a guy laying face down in the aisle of your airplane and then gorking out an intestine into the cabin for everyone's perusal?
Now that's something you don't see every day.
Posted by Christopher at 10:55 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBackMarch 11, 2006
Go West, Young Man
By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising... She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door... She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'... 'Cause I've left that girl so many times before.
Any guesses as to where I'm off to tomorrow morning at 0-dark 30?
A few totally random thoughts for the weekend:
-- "The Negotiator" is an underrated film that features a compelling story and really strong performances by two great actors (Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson). Watched it on TBS this afternoon, and was reminded of how good a movie it is. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.
-- I think the last time a plane actually took off on time from Chicago O'Hare was during the Eisenhower administration. Six hours in O'Hare and a 3:00 am arrival at LaGuardia have convinced me of this. Although it did afford me time to talk to the blonde, extremely chatty event planner from Morgan Stanley who was waiting for the same flight.
-- Window seats in coach are a particularly cruel form of torture. Not only do I have to be next to the window and thus able to see how high up we are, but it's in that wedged-in section where you can't even stretch out.
-- Since I cited "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" in my lead-in, might as well acknowledge Jimmy Webb, the song's writer, for being one of the best of his era. It's even more amazing that his peak as a songwriter -- he had five songs he'd penned hit the top ten in just twenty months between 1967 and 1969 -- came when he was between 19 and 21 years old. In fact, no less hip a source than Blender magazine named Webb's "Wichita Lineman" as the best song ever written in an October 2001 issue. Anyway, three of Webb's songs that were recorded by Glen Campbell from '67 to '69 -- "Galveston," "Wichita Lineman," and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" -- are among my favorite country/pop songs ever recorded.
-- Tylenol's "Simply Sleep" works faster than I realized. Which means this blog is about to come to a sudden
(Good night and good luck, everyone.)
Posted by Christopher at 10:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackMarch 08, 2006
Playin' In A Travelin' Band
I won't be able to post as frequently for a while, kids. I've alluded to it before, but I am entering a stretch for work that will be among the most hectic and jam-packed I expect to ever have in my career. Between now and the end of June, I will be on the road as often as I will be home... and since I don't blog from my work computer, when I am on the road I'll have no way to post new things here. So instead of 5 or so days a week, I may be doing 2 or 3 for a while. Or one. I don't know.
Tour stops in the coming weeks include San Francisco, Rome, Santa Fe, London, and another month in Europe a few weeks down the line. It starts today with an event in Manhattan that I have to leave in the middle of to fly to Chicago to speak on a panel tomorrow. And pretty much, I'll be running from now until the end of June. (Boy, won't that be the big test as to whether I can stick to training for the Philadelphia 8K?! If I can stick to training during three months of running around, I'll be a lock to do the race.)
So bear with me. I'll post when I can, and I'll still read and comment on many of your blogs as often as I can. Thanks for reading, and bear with me for the next few months.
Posted by Christopher at 06:33 AM | Comments (5)Bonds' Stock Drops
Regarding Barry Bonds, I damn told ya. Over and over again. Barry, get your 'roided up, bigoted ass out of the game. My game. You've been a disgrace to it for years, but at this point I agree with this guy: your contibued presence in the game is no longer just an embarrassment, but now represents a challenge to the game's ongoing integrity; every day that you keep playing is a day that MLB is less credible and less honorable. Get. The. Hell. Out.
Oh - and I also agree with this guy: you were tainted before, but now your "records" are completely useless and meaningless. You're a fraud. You're not a Hall of Famer, Barry. You don't count. Screw the asterisks, what baseball needs for you is an eraser. If Pete Rose's transgressions keep him out of the Hall (in my opinion, they should), then yours not only keep you out of the Hall, but ought to keep the Giants from retiring your number, and ought to get everything you did after 1998 out of the books. Strip the MVPs, invalidate the HRs and RBIs and walks... get you completely out of the record books. Remember in the old Soviet Union, when someone ran afoul of Stalin how all of a sudden all mentions of that person not only ceased, but the person was completely erased from photos as well, as if to deny that the person had ever even existed? That's what baseball ought to be doing with you. You're not even in team photos as a bat boy now, punk.
Oh... and if any of you reading are still actually so naive as to think that Barry's an innocent victim of yet another witch hunt by an angry and jealous media, I present to you Exhibit A, courtesy of Sports Illustrated. Men fill out from age 20 into their late 30s. I know this. I am a prime example. But no one "fills out" like Bonds has from 1998-2005. It defies physical nature. As someone on ESPN said, Barry is the Un-Natural. And if you look at these 12 photos and don't see clear and incontrovertible evidence of steroid use, then I own this really great bridge in New York that my wife Jessica Alba and I would love to sell you.
The biggest tragedy of all is that Bonds is mentioned in the same breath as a great man like Henry Aaron. Aaron overcame tremendous racism; Bonds is a racist. He started juicing up because he was angry that Mark McGwire was "allowed" to use andro "because he was white," and remains on his quest to surpass Babe Ruth because Ruth was white. (He's noted Ruth's race many times.) How sad it is that Aaron -- who overcame racism and hatred at its ugliest and did so with a quiet dignity that still serves as an example of how to be a man, during his pursuit of the record -- has to be in the same sentence as a man whose attitudes toward race are apparently not much different than those who hated Aaron.
(Imagine a white running back in the NFL 'roiding up and saying that he's staying in the game to beat Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith's records because they were black. Think that David Duke cracker would be allowed to stay in th game for long? But somehow, we're supposed to accept garbage like that from Bonds.)
Hnery Aaron was and remains a giant of a man, not only a great baseball player but a role model for the kind of man that we should all aspire to be. (Well, the makes among us anyway.) Barry Bonds is a liar, a cheat, a racist, and a punk. And nothing he will ever do could put him in the same class, in the same league, on the same planet as Henry Aaron. Maybe if integrity came in a syringe or a pill, Bonds would have some.
Bye bye, Barry. Don't let the door hit the syringe in your ass on the way out.
Posted by Christopher at 05:58 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBackMarch 06, 2006
Goodbye, Kirby
How does a man who is only 5'8" become larger than life?
I wanted to be two baseball players when I was growing up. One was Carlton Fisk; the other was Kirby Puckett. Kirby made the Twins' major league team the year I turned 16, and he was everything I wanted to be as a ballplayer. His fire hydrant body looked like it belonged on the Vikings and not the Twins, but the man was a baseball player. He was born to it. He collected four hits in his first major league game, and never looked back. He was a great player who loved to play -- and never seemed to lose sight of how lucky he was. He was living every little boy's dream, and he knew it... so he was going to share a little bit with us each day of what it felt like. And we loved him for it. I loved him for it. I named my dog after him. She was a girl dog. It didn't matter; she was going to be Kirbie no matter what anyone said.
Those who weren't there, who didn't see him play every day, who didn't feel what he meant to the Upper Midwest.... they didn't get it. Some argue that his numbers didn't make him a Hall of Famer. They weren't there. They didn't know. We did.
I remember Game 6 of the 1991 World Series as if it were yesterday. How loud it got in the Metrodome. It's not an exaggeration to say that every one of us knew -- not hoped, but knew that when Kirby came up in the bottom of the 11th, he was going to win the game. Hell, he'd done everything else that night. We just knew. And when he swung and we heard that sound and saw the ball arc high into the night, we grabbed each other and screamed and shouted -- both with the joy of winning, and celebrating the fact that we'd all known all along that it would be Puck. "I toldja he'd do it! DIdn't I tell ya? Atta way to go, Kirby!" He pumped his arm rounding second base and shouted his glee and still looked like a fire hydrant. And we loved him.
I keep hearing Jack Buck in my head, proclaiming "And we'll see you tomorrow night!" I can't help but think that maybe last night, Jack was saying it to Kirby again.
He wasn't perfect. We learned that for sure after he retired. But he had meant so much that it was hard to let him go. Maybe we wouldn't idolize him anymore, but we couldn't dislike him either. He became that family member who was always getting in trouble; you weren't happy about the things he did, but he was still family and you still loved him no matter how screwed up he got.
I met the man once. His career had been brought to a premature end by glaucoma. I was working in DC at the time, and he was on the Hill to promote glaucoma awareness. Free eye checks were set up in the lobby of the Rayburn building. My meeting was over by early afternoon, but I kept walking around the building for 45 minutes, walking past the foyer over and over again in hopes that I might see Kirby. And then he was there, coming out from the alcove to the main area to meet and greet. I stood in the line that quickly formed around him, and I realized I was nervous.
I'd met presidents, worked for Senators and Congressmen and worked their campaigns, had been in the White House on business and not as a tourist; none of it fazed me. And yet here was this baseball player, and I was reduced to an 8 year old in his presence, nervous about meeting him and giddy as a kid at recess. I thanked him for '87 and '91, and told him he'd been my hero when I was a kid. He thanked me and asked me if I'd had my eyes checked yet. Dutifully, I walked over to the doctors that were there, and I did it. I had to; Kirby had asked me.
There are the people you look up to as a kid, and then there are the people you idolize. Kirby was my hero. Even after he retired, he was still larger than life. As a kid, you think your heroes will be around forever. As an adult, you know they won't, but you take comfort as they age more gently and more gracefully than you do. They are permanent reminders of your youth and innocence, of a time when it was still okay to believe in heroes. That's how it's supposed to be, anyway.
It's not supposed to be this way. It's not supposed to end like this. We all eventually have to say goodbye to our childhood heroes. It's just not supposed to happen when they're only 45.
Goodbye, Kirby. Maybe you weren't a hero; maybe you were just Kirby. But I loved you for who I thought you were. I loved you for who you let us believe you were, for the role you were willing to play. I think I always will.
Hang In There, Kirby
Growing up in Minnesota and being a ballplayer and baseball nut, Kirby Puckett was one of my heroes. HIs infectious enthusiasm and seemingly constant good mood, not to mention his skills on the field and leadership qualities, made him not just everybody's favorite Twin, but one of the state's most popular figures. Even after some post-retirement revelations showed that our hero had human flaws just like everybody else, it was still hard not to feel a sense of residual heroism in the man. His election to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot came less for his total numbers (cut short with his career by glaucoma) than for his status as an ambassador for the game. It was an acknowledgement by Baseball that Puck had meant even more off the field than he did on it (where he led the Twins to two World Series championships in five years). And not even feet of clay revelations about his personal life could take that away.
Kirby Puckett suffered a stroke yesterday, and remains in critical condition in an Arizona hospital. He's only 44, and it's much too soon. Hang in there, Kirby. We're thinking of you.
Posted by Christopher at 05:40 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBackMarch 05, 2006
Blog Stew: Gentialia Edition
A few quick items for a soon-to-be-spring weekend:
1. Natalie Portman, Original G. I knew there was a reason I liked this chick. From Saturday Night LIve this weekend, here's Natalie playing like she's got a bad-ass side. "Whatchu need, Natalie? To (bleep) all night!... P is for Portman... and P is for (bleep)!" Aw, hell yeah. Sure, it's derivative of "Lazy Sunday," but 1) who can blame them for going back to the well? and 2) Natalie Portman can do whatever she wants.
2. The return of the Bizarre Penis Stories. One to make you laugh, and one to make you cry. First is the painful story... this headline caught my eye, and when I checked the story it made me double over and cringe.
"A 29-year-old man heard a snap during sexual intercourse followed by immediate detumescence and a swelling of the penile basis and scrotum, due to a penile fracture."
OMFG. I have tears in my eyes just reading that. If you're a guy, upon reading this you just lost the ability to sleep tonight.
Meanwhile, here's a penis story that is a bit less excruciating to read. "A man and woman were cited Friday in connection with a bizarre incident that resulted in a fake penis being microwaved at a convenience store last week... Bostic had filled a fake penis with his urine that Creighton, a friend, planned to use to pass a drug test she was taking to get a job, Police Chief Joseph Pero said. Creighton asked a store clerk to microwave the device so the urine inside would be body-temperature and fool those giving the drug test, Pero said.
Police still aren't sure why Creighton chose to use a device that mimics the male sex organ to pass her drug test."
Ah, Darwinism... keeping stupid people from working since 10,000 BC.
Posted by Christopher at 02:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackThe Failure of Our Citizens
It's almost too easy to do an anti-George W. Bush post. The rest of the country has finally started catching on to what we on the coasts have been screaming at you for years: the man verges between utter incompetence and dangerous totalitarian tendencies. His poll numbers are at an all-time low, as the majority of Americans now understand that the Bush presidency has been a resounding failure. But that post would be too easy. The folks who really deserve the excoriation are Bush's remaining supporters. They are hypocrites of the highest order, and I'm calling them out.
A few years ago, President Bill Clinton got oral sex from an intern. He got caught when Republican fishing expedition investigations into the White House travel office, Whitewater, Vince Foster, and myriad other things came up empty. The Republicans were desperate to undo what they could not change at the ballot -- not to mention needing desperately to having something to show for having spent millions of taxpayer dollars playing "gotcha" -- so when a married man's personal failings were revealed, they seized upon it. The United States of America went through only the second impeachment in our nation's history -- something not Watergate, not Vietnam, not Teapot Dome, not Credit Mobilier, not Pearl Harbor nor the sinking of the Maine was deemed serious enough to warrant -- over a hummer.
We heard Republicans throughout Congress and across the country gnashing their teeth in self-righteous indignation over what a failure of leadership it was to have a liar in the White House. We heard that any man who'd equivocate over the meaning of "Is" could not be trusted with the reins of leadership. We heard how a lie to the people what an egregious sin against the oath a president swears to when he enters office. No one died, mind you; outside of Monica Lewinsky's reputation and Hillary's feelings, nothing was hurt by it. It was just a married man's pecadillos -- the kind that happen every day, wrong or not, in virtually every single place of employment in America, be it a corporate boardroom, the teachers' lounge, the station house, or the sales meeting -- writ large and turned into a Constitutional crisis.
And yet when it comes to George W. Bush -- not only about his disasterous failures of leadership, but over his repeated and documented pattern of lying to the American people -- these same people give the man complete and total flyers on the crimes he's committed against us all. In just the latest outrage, we have videotaped proof that Bush was lying to the American people -- AGAIN -- about whether his administration was warned about potential levee breaches in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina. He was warned, but he couldn't be bothered to even ask a single question. He lied, people. He lied. Again. This isn't equivocation over the meaning of the word "is," or stains on a dress. This is the annihalation of one of America's major cities, and the death of more than 1500 American citizens. The degree of seriousness between a lie about an affair versus the deaths of thousands of Americans is staggering.
And yet, conservatives across the country still support him. He's got an army of die-hards and born agains who will support him at every turn, no matter what he does or how egregious his transgressions become. George W. Bush could rape a goat in front of a Boy Scout troop on the White House lawn, and these sheep will continue to bleat their adoration of the man and support for his policies. And it's a joke, because most of these same yokels were the same ones screaming about how Bill Clinton had abused the nation's trust and needed to be removed from office over his lie. And I want one of them to come here and explain themselves, dammit.
Ever heard a Republican or conservative scream and wail about their cold dead hands when it comes to their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment? They go purple in the face over it. Try suggesting that if they don't intend to violate the law, gun control poses no threat to them whatsoever, and they start bursting blood vessels over it. Yet these same people are willing to support warrantless spying by the NSA, saying that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from these direct violations of the Constitution. Seems more than a little... well, hyporcitical.
What I want to know is, how does anyone who still supports this criminal sleep at night? How can anyone look in the mirror after arguing that -- while lying over a BJ is an impeachable offense -- lying about the existence of WMD to make a case for war, lying about how much the government knew about the threats al Qaida presented to the US, lying about the very nature of his budget... somehow is not? How is it that anyone can consider themselves to be a good American while still supporting a man who is so detatched from the actions occuring in his administration that he doesn't even know when control of American ports is being sold off to companies based in nations with ties to terrorism against the US? Or who is so out of his own loop that his Vice President doesn't even feel he needs to inform him after shooting a man in the face?
How can someone believe themselves to somehow be a "patriot" when supporting a man whose administration is defined by secrecy, lies, exaggerations, and a marked inability to protect this country from anything more dangerous than Janet Jackson's breast? How can one argue that Clinton's conduct was impeachable, but Bush's transgressions -- far more egrgeious, objectively assessed, and with far greater consequences -- not only don't warrant impeachment, but make the man still worthy of continued support? Seriously, I want to know. I want a conservative to come here and tell me how they can with a straight face argue that Clinton deserved impeachment but Bush does not.
It is possible, I believe, to be a patriotic American and be a conservative. Unlike conservatives, I do not believe that singularity of thought defines Americanism, nor that dissent equals treason, nor that enforced adherence to one train of political thought is necessary for patriotism. Yes, you can be conservative and still be a patriotic American. It seems increasingly clear, however, that it is no longer possible to be considered patriotic and "American" and still support George W. Bush. Support for that man is tantamount to support for lies and deception, of willful violation of the Constitution, of abject failure. None of these things are what America is supposed to be about. Neither is anyone who still supports George W. Bush.
Posted by Christopher at 12:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackOscar Grouching
The Oscars are tonight... not that I much care. I just haven't been able to make myself pay much attention this year. Maybe it's because the media has already anointed the big winner. Maybe it's because I don't like having agendas shoved at me -- even when I agree with the perspectives or points of view, I can recognize agenda nominations when I see them. Or maybe it's just because, between disgust for the movie theater experience these days (overpriced snacks, rude patrons who think it's acceptable to shout at the screen and talk to the characters, etc.) and the fact that 95% of what Hollywood produces these days is unoriginal, uninspired, derivative, brainless crap, I have gone to all of about three movies in a theater in the last 18 months. But since knowing next to nothing about my subject matter has never stopped me before, I figured I'd give Oscar predictions, at least on the major categories. And away we go...
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz: Amy Adams isn't well known enough, and no one saw "Junebug." Frances McDormand has already won once before for doing a Minnesota accent. Catherine Keener is talented but isn't one of the glamour nominees in this category. That leaves us with Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz. Despite Hollywood's desire to coronate "Brokeback Mountain" as a very real nose thumbing at the red states, Michelle Williams once was in "Dawson's Creek," which automatically disqualifies her since no former cast member of that show can ever win an acting award without ripping a hole in the space-time continuum. That leaves us with Rachel Weisz -- which is fine with me, for two reasons: one, the critics seem to agree that she gave the best performance, and two, because she's hot. (Oh, shut up. Yes, I am shallow. Lighten up.)
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti William Hurt's on screen for all of 15 minutes; he might be good, but there are too many glamour roles in this category this year, so he's out. Matt Dillon played a racist, and when was the last time the Academy recognized an ugly character instead of the ones you cheer for? That leaves Gyllenhaal, Giamatti and Clooney. Gyllenhaal, as good as he's been in things I have seen (The Good Girl, Moonlight Mile), was allegedly overshadowed by Heath Ledger if the critics are right, and it's rare to win when you're not even the best actor in your own film. So it comes down to Clooney and Giamatti.
I like Clooney as an actor, and he's my one brush with fame outside of politics (ran into him in a DC bar in 1995, and his publicist thought my buddy was hot, so he took one for the team and drank with me while his girl hit on my friend), so I'd like to see him win; Hollywood likes him for attacking paparazzi and for his political agenda, so it won't surprise me to see him win. But Giamatti should have been nominated for both Sideways and American Splendor, and the academy has a way of correcting past mistakes with awards in later years. Watch for Clooney to win the Affleck-Damon Memorial We Want To Recognize You But You Don't Get An Acting Award So Here's One For Screenplay Award, and Giamatti's incredible body of work in the last half decade is finally rewarded here.
(more)
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon. Dame Judi Dench, thank you for playing, but you got your career achievement award for Shaekspeare In Love. Keira Knightley? Thank you soooo much for taking your clothes off for Vanity Fair, but you're a babe in these woods and you have 40 more years to win your Oscar; plus you were in a Jane Austen story, and as I have slept through everything connected to that woman for the last 30 years, you're out. Charlize Theron just won a couple of years ago for a better movie; North Country was a Lifetime Movie of the Week. Felicity Huffman played the kind of physically and emotionally stretching and challenging role that the academy loves, so she could theoretically sneak in here. But the officially coronated darling this year is Reese Witherspoon. Not only was she really, really good in Walk The Line (one of the few movies I've actually gone to see this year), but she has been doing solid work for a long time (Election), and she's gorgeous -- which the academy also likes. She's the closest thing to a lock there is this year.
Best Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Terence Howard, thank you for playing. Here are your parting gifts. David Straithairn I would actually love to see win; Edward R. Murrow's brave stand against cowardly fearmongering and abuses of power by the government is a story that needs to be told over and over again in George W. Bush's Amerika. But there's too much glamour elsewhere in this category, and Straithairn doesn't have a big enough name yet to win. Joaquin Phoenix delivered an amazing performance as Johnny Cash, and in any other year he might well have been the winner. But there are two huge performances ahead of him in the pecking order this year.
Heath Ledger starred in Hollywood's chosen film, in a role that Hollywood would desperately like to reward. And from everything I have read, he's pretty good in it. But long after Brokeback Mountain has faded into memory as little more than a 2000s version of Love Story, a sappy love story remarkable only for the fact that its lead characters are gay rather than for the story or film, Hoffman's Capote will likely stand as an inconic character study, in the same league as DeNiro's Jake LaMotta, Ben Kingsley's Gandhi, or Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles. He should win, and I think he will.
Best Director: Ang Lee. Spielberg won't win, considering that Munich didn't even rate a Best Picture nomination. Paul Haggis was rewarded with a nomination, but there are no gay people in Crash, so it's not his year. This leaves us with Clooney, Lee, and Bennett Miller. The fact that you had to ask "who?" when I said Bennett Miller tells you why he's not going to win. Clooney would have a shot because the academy likes to acknowledge TV people who break out of the small screen to the big one (Helen Hunt, Jamie Foxx)... except that the anointed picture is Brokeback Mountain, that Ang Lee did take a risk in working it, and that he got royally screwed in 2000 when a cheap Charlton Heston knock-off (Gladiator) won Best Picture over Lee's far superior Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee wins.
Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain. I'll admit it: I don't want it to win. Me, the lefty-liberal supporter of all rights gay, does not want to see a movie win Best Picture simply because it deals with a gay storyline. And that's what this is, in the end... Hollywood reacting to the Bush/red states faux moralism and mantra of Hollywood being out of touch. "Oh yeah? Well if you think we're outside your values before, wait'll you get a load of this, you blue-nosed prigs!" I like the sentiment, but that's not enough to win a Best Picture Oscar. And for all those running around saying, "Oh, but it's a beautiful story, you forget that you're even watching two men," I ask you this: if you weren't watching two men, would you even give a rat's ass about that story? Or would it be just another Movie of the Week running on some second rate cable network on Sunday afternoons? Right. I thought as much.
Munich got no buzz once it was released, and I doubt it has a chance. Capote features a great performance, but biopics don't usually win Best Picture. That leaves Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, and the anointed movie. Crash has been getting the late buzz as a dark horse in this category... Good Night and Good Luck would be a more direct and relevant thumb in the red states' eye; Murrow's assertion that features strongly in the movie that "we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home" should be repeated at seven second intervals for the remainder of George W. Bush's presidency. It's a more important film with a more important message. However, Hollywood has its agenda, and so I don't think anything has a chance to get in its way. Brokeback Mountain takes its place alongside "Oliver!," "Ordinary People," "Out of Africa," "The Last Emperor," "Gladiator," "The English Patient," and "Driving MIss Daisy" as one of the least remarkable and least worthy BP winners in Oscar history.
There you have it; that's who's going to win. Yawn.
Posted by Christopher at 02:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBackMarch 02, 2006
SkiVo
Since arriving in New York after grad school, I've become part of a few rituals or traditions that make March and early April the best month of the year. The two best in particular are things I look forward to literally all year long, things that provide a carrot at the end of winter's stick and have me looking forward to next year's version even as this year's is coming to an end. The first is the auction draft for our Fantasy Baseball league (which is as of today only 30 days away!)... that's the single best day of the year -- screw Christmas or my birthday or the fourth of July.
The other tradition I've really come to love is our annual ski weekend at Killington. Every year in March, Tim and his wife, the Doc and Mrs. Doc, and about a dozen other good friends and I go in on a four day skiing and steam-blowing-off weekend in Vermont, renting out one of these houses and spending a Thursday through Sunday on the slopes, at the spa, in the hot tub, and out and about in Killington. (Okay, all you western US skiers, I know Vermont doesn't compare to Aspen or Tahoe or the Wasatch, but it's what we have on the east coast and it's a great time, so I don't want to hear it.)
This year's trip is this weekend. I'm not there.
I'm leading a new project at work that is right in the middle of crunch time right now, and there was no way that I was going to be able to skip out for two work days in the middle of the critical point. So while everyone else piled into SUVs and four wheel drives and headed up to the mountain this morning, I was working. (It just had to snow today and remind me of what I'm missing, didn't it?) And damn if I'm not really wistfully missing being there with my friends right now. So here's my replay from years past... my SkiVo, if you will.
Upon arrival this afternoon, everyone would first have gotten unpacked and settled in... by 6:00 or so, someone would have grill duty and be grilling up some burgers and dogs and veggies and chicken while half the party hung out in the 7 person hot tub and the other half gathered in front of the fireplace and watching the big screen. Tonight would be all about the hot tub and the partying; they'll all be up until at least 1 or 2, consuming many cases of beer and several bottles of wine among the 16 people in the house, and generally behaving like high schoolers whose parents are away for the weekend.
Tomorrow, most everyone will be up by 8:00 am, and they'll be on the mountain for some of the first runs of the morning. One or two always hang back and just enjoy the chance to read a book or not have four year olds calling from the bathroom and asking to be wiped, but most everyone's on the mountain for a good part of the morning. We have lunch at the Peak Lodge at the top of the mountain (food is mediocre, but you can't beat the view), go for a few more runs, and then usually everyone's back at the house by around 2:00 or 3:00. As many as can fit wedge into the hot tub, while the rest play pool downstairs or watch a DVD or play a game of some sort. Friday afternoon is usually the one night we'll head out on the town: dinner at the Grist Mill, then drinks and live music at The Pickle Barrel before coming back to the house (usually for more hot tub ugliness).
Saturday morning - up by 8 or 9 and back on the mountain again, although some of us have been known to come in early and head off to The Spa At The Woods. After an afternoon of pool and hot tub and usually college basketball on TV, we started a new tradition last year: Saturday night, it's the ladies' night off, and the boys cook dinner. Last year, we decided on seafood, and I dare say that between grilled salmon with dill, lobster claws, pan-seared scallops, and a few veggie and potato sides we whipped up, we boys did ourselves proud. I mean, we feasted that night. Would have been fun to see what we came up with this year. Sunday everyone gets in a few last runs on the mountain before having to vacate the house by noon, and then it's on the road again home to New York and points south.
All in all, these are four of the best days of the entire year. Great friends. Great food. Great times. Hot tubs. And this year, I'm not there. Because of work. But I'm not bitter or anything. At all.
In case they got Net access up in that house yet and any of you are reading this, Tim/Doc/respective missuses, I hope y'all are having a blast and living it up like Hasselhoff. Go to 595 for me, boys.
Posted by Christopher at 11:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBackYou Load Sixteen Gadgets, And Whaddaya Get?
I saw this article last week and I knew I'd write something about it at some point, because it just reinforces something I have believed for a very long time: we Americans work too damn much. And all those little toys and gadgets "they" tell us make our lives easier are in fact little more than trojan horses that allow The Man to get his hooks into us more deeply... owning increasingly larger percentages of our lives and returning the United States to the workstyle of a century ago, when 12 hour days were the norm.
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products. The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven’t been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University. “It just increases the expectations that people have for your production,” Downey said.
Ironic, ain't it? The kicker is that the whole system is beginning to have the opposite effect of what we were all told it would... personal productivity is heading down, as the relentless encroach of technology and communication means that we never have time to concentrate on getting any single task or thing done. Combine that with the increasingly ratcheted-up pressure for workers (funny, it never seems to be the C-level guys whose resources are cut... wonder!) to do more with less, and workers are feeling increasingly stressed and less productive. It's my opinion that if we don't take steps as a society to return some freaking sanity to the work environment -- and make work-life balance more than a platitude or cliche that receives lip service every now and then -- we are heading for a dire health crisis in this country, as stress-induced or exacerbated illnesses and conditions become a self-induced epidemic that could threaten the economic strength of our country.
This isn't a rant about my job, by the way, as much as it is an observation of the work culture we have set up in this country. My work pressures wouldn't be any different anywhere else. And, I like my job. Understand where I am coming from and why... this isn't about my personal situation, it's rather my observation of American culture.
I swear to you, once my grad school loans are paid off and I don't owe anyone anything anymore, I might well just quit the rat race, move to the Caribbean, open up a bar & grill and take tourists fishing on the side, and go all Jimmy Buffett on y'all and leave the whole sick pressure cooker behind. And the only rule in my bar or on my boat is that no damn Blackberries, cell phones or e-mail devices will be allowed.
Posted by Christopher at 09:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBackMarch 01, 2006
The Highest Praise
Today (ay... ay...) I consider myself (...elf... elf...) the luckiest man (an.. an...) on the face of the Earth (...rth... rth..).
Other bloggers win Koufax awards or Bloggies or whatever... fine. They can keep 'em. They've never received any kind of acknowledgement like I received last night at the PiggyHawk household. Courtesy of Eden, here is the verbatim transcript of a conversation between Eden and her husband Hawk last night. (I sanitized a teensy bit, sorry for the prudery, Eden!)
Eden: "What are you looking at?"
Hawk, in front of computer: "Um..."
Eden: "[Breasteses?]"
Hawk: "Of course"
Eden: "Do you ever look at anything online anymore other than Mudge and p0rn?"
Hawk: "Is there anything else?"
Indeed, ladies and gentlemen: is there anything else? I mean, really? There's me... and there's p0rn. In that order, you'll notice.
In the long history of compliments among hominids and their descendants, stretching back 10,000+ years, there has never been a more beautiful or touching compliment. I come before p0rn.
Wait a second. Strike that.
Hawk, I am proud to be the supplemental reading to your online viewing routine. As long as you promise not to get the two confused...
Posted by Christopher at 06:12 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
