not to throw stones

Mayor Nagin of New Orleans has ordered the evacuation of New Orleans by noon tomorrow - one side of the city by 8am and the other side by noon. Buses will be running through midnight tonight to get folks out and will then resume at 6am tomorrow. Why can't they run all night? Planes? Military airlift? Anything? Jesus Christ, could somebody please roll the military in and get everyone out without a six-hour gap? I'm f&*^ing amazed. I'm sure President Bush has some kind words from his front porch down in Crawford or wherever he might be. Bush is a jackass.

pick me! pick me!

I’m not going to bore you with the exact details of this statistical thing dubbed something like value over next selection – I don’t hardly understand it. Apparently, this is a theory that the numbers folk fully understand but knuckleheads like me never considered. The reason I’m throwing it out is because I used to for a fantasy football draft last night and the results were pretty stunning in relation to how good my team ended up being. What you need to understand are two things: first, all I’m doing when my pick comes up during the draft is run this mathematical chart and take the position player who gives me the greatest advantage over the next same position player who will be available when I next pick. Second, fantasy football players have a grand vision of themselves that shows us as somehow knowing something that others don’t: it’s a stupid, guy thing. What this ego tends to do is get in the way of facts and sludge up just about any event which a man is involved and supposedly using his mind to sort. The results of the draft, using this theory, when projected for each team gives my squad an advantage of 8% to 18% over every other team. Right…so now you have that in mind, let’s get to the rub.

During every draft (they are almost always done on-line with little chat windows available) there are invariably at least a dozen chat entries sent that say “good pick”; normally they come from the highest of the highest self-appointed fantasy stud. What became so funny to me last night in the situation I was in, using a straight forward mathematical model, was that there was no such thing as a “good pick” – there’s only one pick – the right one. What does “good pick” really mean? It’s one yahoo validating another yahoo’s choice by confirming that, indeed, we are two mental giants playing in the same league. It’s so completely random that ‘Hank’ might have picked the player that ‘Jeff’ was considering a “good pick” that it reminds of when someone honks at you because you’re driving the same car. You know what they’re thinking, “Hey, that guy in the Reliant K car is awesome, just like me. No one else gets it.” If the recipient of the “good pick” pat-on-the-back has gone completely bonkers and made a choice that doesn’t match at all with the numbers I’m using then it’s simply a bad pick. When the math is right in front of you it’s fairly clear the correct answer. I can just imagine some college kid turning to another kid in his algebra class and saying “good answer” when he correctly solves the problem. Really? There’s a good answer and a bad answer? No, but there is a right answer and a wrong answer where math crosses our lives - nothing more, nothing less. When professors dole out the treasured partial credit on long math problems it’s because the process was correct and you simply came up with the wrong answer. Professor Mathenstine never writes on the paper that your process was wrong but you get partial credit for a “good answer”. In truth, I didn’t trust the process until I looked at the final results this morning. There we so many players that I would have chosen using my seat-of-the-pants technique that I passed on simply because I stayed true to the experiment.

Of course, it’s just fantasy football and most of the determining factors are luck and avoiding injuries. Men are strange.

The Cubs have won seven straight games, ten consecutive series’, and the future is very bright indeed.

t

tickets please

Not only did the mail bring me my National Opera season tickets today, it also delivered my Washington Capitals season ticket. I know they don’t quite align to my liberal life; what’s more amazing is the first event for both is on the same night. Granted, it’s the Caps first pre-season home game and it’s real opera, but I think you get the point.

It rained here this morning like it can only rain here when it cuts loose – I never knew just how hard it comes down when you live within 50 miles of the coast, in the mid-Atlantic, and near (or on) what is basically a swamp.

The long weekend is near, my baby’s coming home, things are lovely.

t

and the dressing on the side

I remember scanning newspaper ads and looking for jobs back in the early 1980s – I was most interested in working as a waiter. What you find out pretty quickly in the waiter otherworld is that every single ad – or posted sign – includes “experience required”. I never ended up being a waiter, crushed dreams and all, because I could never get either myself or the employer beyond the “experience required” roadblock. I’ve been a host, a busboy, and short-order cook but never a waiter. The reason this comes up is because I find the political idea of “experience” to be almost comical; I’ll get to it in a minute. Wouldn’t it be nice to own a restaurant and have the World’s most experienced and successful waiter walk in my door one day? No doubt. The flip side of that equation is that you hired an “experienced” waiter he turns out to be a fool, experience or not. In fact, aren’t you simply eliminating a massive pool of possibly very good workers – maybe even the future ‘greatest’ – by demanding completely pointless qualifications? Based on my dining out history, I’d say that about 30% of waiters are completely useless, 60% manage to not be useless, and about 10% are very good. If you accept my math, and you should, then what we have in our required hiring pool is that 90% of the bad and mediocre ‘experienced’ waiters running around applying for jobs that only they can possibly manage. You won’t often get a shot at the great 10% because they probably write their own tickets. I don’t want everyone to get all hot-and-bothered if you’ve been, or are, a waiter: it’s grueling work, the pay is for shit, and I don’t know if I would have been any good at it. I understand that…I’m making an analogy. I also know some pretty put together people who failed miserably at the job. If I’m the boss and I’m hiring waiters then I’m going to give just about everyone a good look. You’re always best to remember that everyone started somewhere – even the experienced waiters.

Politics. Are we so completely lost that we’ll just sit on the couch and pick-and-choose our representatives based on something called experience? At what? Being a Governor with no foreign-policy background? Being a Senator for some number of years? An actor and Governor? Experience at being President? What exactly is the issue, and why are we suddenly so selective? Somebody said on the talking radio box the other day that they didn’t need a President with experience they needed a President to lead. Lead. Simple concept, isn’t it? Let me carry over some math from the previous word problem: 30% of experience politicians are completely useless, 60% avoided being useless, 10% are pretty damn good. I feel that the further someone moves into the political otherworld the worse they get. I’d certainly love for one of those 10% to walk into my living room and tell me he wants to work for me. Even if they don’t walk through the door, I’m certainly going to give everyone a good, long look and I’m not adding something stupid like “experience required” to my ballot.

It’s a ramble, it’s probably not worth much, but it woke me up last night.

t

call of the track

There was a time, let’s say it was between about 1998 and 2004, when the Ferrari F1 team had impeccable performance. Those were the days of Schumacher, Bryne, Todt, and Brawn. What so amazed me during a decade of success was the reliability of the Ferrari cars throughout the season; there must have been an almost two season stretch when Michael Schumacher didn’t suffer a single failure. Even during the 1998 and 1999 seasons when Mika Hakkinen won titles for McLaren, the Ferrari was the more reliable on the grid. Every season during those Ferrari – McLaren battles played out the same: the Newey-designed McLaren was faster to start the season and the Bryne-designed Ferrari was bulletproof from day one. What this ended up producing was early results for Ferrari that often buoyed their campaign through the middle of the season as the McLaren team finally got their cars to stop blowing up every weekend. It seemed that every circuit produced at least one fast, on fire, and smoking McLaren. There were at least a few Schumacher titles (he won five straight 2000-2004) that were built on those early season successes and reliability of the beautiful, red prancing horses. I don’t know how many times I was reminded of the saying "one hundred percent of short putts don’t drop" when watching a race. For McLaren in those days, if didn’t matter how fast their cars were because they often didn’t make it to the finish line. The reason I bring this up, and I know you’re dying to find out, is that Ferrari over the last few years has seen a significant increase in car failures – two in the last two races. Last year they were able to overcome those problems as Kimi Raikkonen won the title, in equal parts, based on his driving ability and the McLaren drivers’ shortcomings in pressure situations. Even though the Ferraris are quick this year, the most important statistic - getting to the finish line - may well be their downfall.

Consider yourselves informed.

no idea what's on in denver

I noticed that the 9:30 Club in D.C. is selling tickets to “An evening with the Black Crowes” on October 23rd…and 24th…and 25th. Just saying. I saw the Black Crowes back in about 19 and 93(?) on the Southern Harmony and whatever tour. They were damn good back then: I wonder what it’s like to do one-and-a-half great albums and then wander the dust for the next 15 years? I’ve nothing against them…that stuff was great. If you might be too young to remember the two years prior to mediocrity…here you go.



I just brought up the Convention on CNN online and it appears to contain a ton of crazy delegates sort of dancing to some rock n’ roll. Actually, it’s a bit embarrassing. Funny how Caroline Kennedy is referenced as a "niece of Senator Ted Kennedy" - I'm going to go with daughter of President John F. Kennedy.

You might want to just go back and watch the Crowes again. Apparently they had the Democratic Convention in Denver in 1908. That must have been a scream.

Oh, the Cubs are rolling…

t

vote and get a free gift

(photo: Sunday (London) Times)

Based on what I can ascertain from the “schedule” for tonight’s opening of the Convention in Denver, Michelle Obama will be on sometime between 7pm and 9pm MDT. Assuming things run a little long – and not assuming that I live on the East Coast – I’m guessing I’ll need a nap if I’m to watch her around 10:30pm local. I feel old. I’ve got to believe that this will be the moment she either convinces the America that hates her; I don’t see another chance. I’m not fully sure why the wife of a candidate is so important – didn’t the public just loath First Lady Clinton? – but, it’s become vastly more important over the last 20 years. I haven’t heard a potential, or serving, First Lady give any kind of speech that mattered but I think that may change tonight. Love her or hate her, I think you should watch.

On the way to work this morning I noticed a big green banner hanging over the top story of a small bank near Dunn Loring. It offered up “completely free checking…and a free gift”. Back in the late 1970s there was a sort independent Omaha-area bank, Southwest, that offered free gifts. At the time, their free gift cache and marketing campaign was “Thumbody loves you!” Apparently, the bank LOVED me! I only has some little passport savings account with about ten bucks in it but I got lots of stickers, bags, posters, and assorted crap with a stupid thumb print on it. I wonder if this little local bank has the remaining Thumbody stash from Omaha. Even without that, what is a bank giving away as a free gift these days? Since banks suck on all accounts (no pun intended), they better be giving me a brand new G3 iPhone and one year’s paid service. Free gift, right?

Isn’t there some unwritten rule about not giving a woman an appliance for her birthday, Christmas, anniversary, and/or Valentine’s Day?

hey to all...

kick in the teeth

There’s a great sport commentary in the Sunday Times (London) today. As I was reading I realized that what was before me was a slap down at every sport supporter whose favorite team doesn’t do well. Endless hope. This commentary dealt specifically with the England national team and just how horrid they’ve become. Believe me, I can substitute my team into the article – with parallel players and coaches – and come to the same point as the writer. As an example, the England nation football team didn’t even qualify for this summer’s European Championship. For a nation that wholly believes that their team is one of the elite footballing nations, it’s a sad situation. England won the World Cup in way back in 1966 while serving as the host country and nothing since WWII is more ingrained in the consciousness of the English than that great moment. It’s the sole time that nation lifted the Cup and it’s carried through generations of English fans. Since then, four other countries have won at least two World Cups (Brazil has won three) yet England still consider themselves to be part of that elite group of national teams. England has never even reached the final of the European Championship yet there's a often a feeling of divine right and success. You know, I don’t want to get a bunch of e-mail cursing my name from England fans around across the globe, I lived in England for ten years and I suffered through tough times cheering for the team, so just bear in mind that I’m a Cubs fan I can match every excuse and poor choice that’s ever been made by a team.

Rubbish. That says it all about fans as much as it does about teams.

t

'splosion

For some unknown reason I was up about 7:30am on a Saturday and out the door to the Eastern Market in SE. I don’t know about where you live, but the end of August and beginning of September is obscene at the D.C. area farmers markets (farmer’s markets? farmers’ markets?). The entire Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Delaware grower’s region has gone over-the top. The peaches, strawberries, cantaloupe, greens, herbs, tomatoes (the damn tomatoes!), melons, raspberries/blueberries, flowers, and cheese (granted, not particularly seasonal) are in full force. Just walking down the stalls is absolutely overwhelming. I have a peach tart I want to make but no one here to eat it; what are the odds? You could score with a hot chick if you had a good peach tart. What I have done is started a tomato sauce with five lbs. of the most incredible heirlooms tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, and onions. The selection of heirlooms was both impressive and yet somehow almost too scientific for me. I sense I’ll need a good sit down with the love when she gets home – no doubt she has some heirloom ideas. It probably goes hand-in-hand with her lesson on how sourdough starter was carried through generations and across the great trails of young America. A good starter is apparently worth its weight in gold. Who knew? I leave the baking to the lady folk.

For some unknown reason I spoke on the phone with all of the Vermont family children today...yet none were anywhere nearby. I only mention that as an oddity. Kt came over for dinner because she was foraging, X is still on vacation….la dee da, and the young one is cursing sun and palm trees in his new locale. I support the overall hatred of sun more than two days a week.

Not only is the market superior, the weather here in the swampland is stunning for late August. No heat or humidity to speak of, brilliant skies, lovely days, sleepy nights. Just in case you were wondering.

In order to flex my manliness, I’ll say these things: the Cubs are still rolling, my fantasy football team is solid, the Cornhuskers will surprise everyone as they roll out from the plains, and I have some really nice shoes.

That’s all.

t

spinning vinyl

I’m old. I do my best. I go to shows. I love music. I love those that can do it, because I can’t, I have no talent; I only have ears…

In order to fight the old bit, I’ve gone to faceBook after an invite from one of my most admirable old supervisors. Come to find that tons of us jumping on in order to keep in touch with others we deployed and suffered with for all those years. It’s cool to see where everyone’s at and how their lives have developed. It was a much more interesting and demanding time than high school.

Today I got a ‘wall’ post from a kid named Jason Eady. We worked in the same office for a bit and eventually headed off our separate ways: he left the AF and I moved to the States. He went to a Steve Earle and the Del McCoury band show in London with me when I had an extra ticket and I found out that he played music and used to sit in on various late-night and festival jam sessions back in Mississippi. Now he’s living in Austin, Texas and has two CDs out – the music is amazing. I feel like I had a brush with greatness. His Web sites are here and here. Give it a go, I think you’ll like it. I’m glad I got to know him at all.

I had a bunch of Robbie Williams videos lined up for you to watch but when I got to him doing Suspicious Minds I realized you only need this: a two-minute song and a four-minute shake...stick with it.



I'm going to shave and get my 'chops in order.

t

submission

Here’s the market for you, scars and all. There’s not much more to say than that I don’t fell you can argue with northern Nevada market and numbers. As I said about a year ago, I still think its real estate gauntlet is running almost two years ahead of the rest of the country. I’m sticking with summer 2010 as the overall bottom of the crash. Granted, the extremes in the size of the bubble and the burst will no doubt be greater in Nevada but the effects will be felt everywhere. In June 2005 I put my home in Fernley, NV on the market at $299,000 – I was about a quarter late in listing it or it probably would have sold for something close to asking price. After a year of absolutely no activity or offers I had brought the price down to $250,000 in May of 2006. I finally found a buyer – by dumb luck I’d gotten the name of a California company buying Fernley property from a property manager and we spoke on the phone about my house. It sold and closed the last week in May 2006 as I was packing up to move to the D.C. area. So,, I was wondering this morning how the Reno and Fernley markets were doing, and I do, and I went to the realtor that built and sold me the house, and who resold it three years later for me, and lo and behold my old house is back on the market two years after I sold it for $250,000. Feel free to take a look at some pictures of the place (click here and page over two pages...look for the listing at 1017 Pepper Lane) and ponder just what’s happened. It’s now listed for sale at $134,900. I knew back in ’06 how lucky I was to find a buyer and get out when I did – I just didn’t know how my life would have been hammered (even more) if I had two more years to serve before trying to sell and move on.

I almost want to buy the house back, fix up the lawn, pull up the carpets and put down some wood, and hold it as a vacation home. I can probably get it for $125,000 and everyone can use it when they want. Looks like with nothing down we could swing taxes and insurance for about $1,000 – who’s in with the good credit. I’ll pitch in $500 a month for the mortgage payment and go hike at Tahoe and spend the Holidays in the high desert.

t

come together as one

I have issues with roads, lines, merging, and the overall ideals of the roadway. Today I’m feeling a little…irritated. I honestly believe that merging from a ramp or entrance lane should be the easiest thing in the World. Maybe it’s my race driving training (Brands Hatch, 2002), my vast experience (driving since February 1981), or my lack of impression with my road mates (always). The Eleven has covered this on numerous occasions, we aren’t generally yell drivers, and it always raises its ugly head when people either coming from or going onto a ramp don’t declare and maintain: declare and maintain. We aren't talking about the “construction ahead, left lane ending, merge right” high school debate; that’s a different issue for a different time. This is simply your everyday, driving to work, and merging often scenario. The example used today envelops a two-lane main road – very busy – that receives two merging veins (arteries? I guess it depends if you’re coming to or going from the heart) entering from the right in a short-ish distance. What you have to make yourself aware of, and you should be getting some aware in your diet if you’re driving, is that the first merge from my right actually becomes a third lane. (See the google map below…zoom in, zoom out, enjoy. I’m driving from SE to NW on the blue line. The big road we’re crossing is the Beltway.) The first merging jokesters are entering from the Beltway (and probably not getting back on the Beltway) but they’ll immediately slow down to a near standstill while the gears work in their little brains. Unfortunately for me, I’m actually trying to slot myself into their lane because I need to be over there in a few blocks. They never declare and maintain – if they’d just keep up the speed and acceleration I’d slide right over. If I know that a missile is moving at x speed then I can adjust. If you stop, start, stop, start, worry, have a sandwich, stop, start, we’ll get nowhere. Once we’re over the Beltway there’s little to concerned anyone's mind aside from the cloverleaf exit back onto the Beltway which is pretty simple and affects no one. But, just after passing under the small road you get another batch of mergers coming in from the (inner) Beltway. Say your damn prayers here. That wee ramp scoots in on my right and adds the fourth lane to the road – people who are going nowhere but straight on: you don’t even have to merge…the lane never ends! Ah, too simple. You see, I now need to get over into that new lane because I’m turning just after the big hotel complex. This second merge is the worst; since no one is actually in dire need of getting over (left) immediately they should be smart enough to just keep pace, the lane never ends: please, let me solve the merge and your issues...move!.

I wondered this morning if there was a standard for merging. I hit the internets and came up with a few nuggets on merging from the DMV.org – here a few of the greatest hits:

Still, the procedure requires extreme awareness because the last thing you want to do is have the driver in the vehicle that you are merging in front of end up in your passenger seat. Nor do you want to go into a panic and wander off from the acceleration pedal and land onto the shoulder. Here are some tips to help you become a major league merger.

Merging is designed to permit vehicles to enter and exit a highway without causing disruption in the flow of traffic. Highways are equipped with on-ramps and off-ramps, which generally connect to acceleration and deceleration lanes.

The idea behind this is when you pull onto the entrance ramp, you slowly begin building velocity. At the point where you can make eye contact with the highway, you need to immediately start assessing the gaps and the speed of existing traffic. From here, you should turn on your signal to reflect your intent to other drivers to merge onto the roadway.

Then use the acceleration lane to match the speed flow, and ease your vehicle into an appropriate gap before the acceleration lane ends. Some highways give you slabs of asphalt that are long enough for a jet to take off; others, especially on the East Coast, are so short you will need to make quick decisions or yield. A successful merge entails you entering the highway almost at or at the speed limit, while causing no disturbance in the speeds of the vehicles behind you.

And in rush hour, just in case you're about to pull out that ticket,

Sometimes [the bottleneck] is simply due to the sheer number of vehicles trying to enter or leave the road on a single stretch of asphalt utilized both as a deceleration and acceleration lane. But, you can also bet there is some improper merging going on, causing the entire system to break down into the proverbial bottleneck.

Maybe I’m not crazy.


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baby baby baby

I’d say I have no idea how this started but I’d be fibbing. I saw a link to a Japanese game-show version of mocked-up people doing We Are The World – it was awful and there’s no way I’d get through it. What it did was lead me down the youtube path that immediately got completely out-of-hand. I had no idea that this damn song was over seven minutes long; I could have done with more Bruce and Cyndi Lauper. What can you do? Take a little trip back to 1985 with me and a little get together managed by Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones after that year’s Grammys. My hair is mouss-ing up as you click:



Of course, this led me immediately to the Band Aid anthem, Do They Know It’s Christmas, written and run by Bob Geldof. I was only kidding about the hair in the first video – this is hair….all hair. They were all so young.



Oh, look! I’ve found a 20th anniversary recreation of Band Aid with new artists. Bingo! I can’t name but a few of them and it’s good to see Bono back. More importantly, Robbie Williams. Anything Robbie Williams does is wickedly cool.



Back to the long songs that came up earlier: I immediately thought of the longest #1 song in history, the first song I ever learned the lyrics to (I was 7 and living in Minneapolis), and still my all-time favorite diddy. This is a live version from back in ’72. Go ahead, you want to sing along.



And since you asked, here’s the first song I air-guitared to in the same downstairs bedroom in Edina, Minnesota in the first grade…with a ukulele. Damn, I was good. I wanted to be Neil Diamond. I couldn’t find a quality version with a kicking bass player and back-up singers…



I’ll let you go. I am what I am….

Hugs to all.

t

.....oh i love my rosie child....

my ad

One more little entry on Mad Men.

As I wrap up the first season on DVD – I know, I’m behind the times – I think it’s imperative that my feelings are known. The main character, Donald Draper, is very good. I wasn’t around in 1960, but I’ll guess a bit, and say there were a lot of Drapers around (“I think he’s a bit too dashing”). Sorting out the rest of the excellent cast is more difficult…yet, I can’t help but believe there are two that stand out above the rest. The first is Joan Halloway, (Christina Hendricks) who is not only perfectly cast as the siren of the early ‘60s but fully lives up to the role. I wonder how long they had to look to find the perfect Playboy-like actress to step in and take the role of the leader of the visiting team: in turf wars, you may or may not like her but she’s solid. The second is Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) who inhabits the role of the worst kind of co-worker. You’d have to go a long way down a dreary road to find anyone as good a Kartheiser. I would punch Pete Campbell in the face if I saw him…seriously. I want to compare the character to Al Swearengen in Deadwood but I’d at least want to have a drink with Al before the knife fight; Campbell is an absolute loser. At the beginning of the show I wondered if I was to feel sympathy or hatred for him – some kind of flawed character? He’s not flawed, he’s a jackass. If Kartheiser gets through a second season without winning an Emmy, I’d be horribly surprised.

Now you know.

t

so are you

I’ve got the Rick Warren sessions to fully explore this week, I’ve only seen a bit of Obama’s session, so I shouldn’t be too hard on William Kristol. The main thrust of his opinion this morning comes to this – and ‘this’ is the main problem with the lack of understanding many have of Obama’s position:

Warren asked whether evil exists and if it does, “do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?”

Obama and McCain agreed evil exists and couldn’t be ignored. But then their answers diverged.

Obama said that “we see evil all the time” — in Darfur, on the streets of our cities, in child abusers. Such evils, he continued, need to be “confronted squarely.” And while we can’t “erase evil from the world,” we can be “soldiers” in the task of confronting it when we see it.

But, Obama added, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all, “just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.”

It’s nice to see a liberal aware of the limits of good intentions — indeed, that the road to hell is paved with them. But here as elsewhere, Obama stayed at a high level of abstraction. It would have been interesting if Warren had asked a follow-up question: Where in particular has the United States in recent years — at home or especially abroad — perpetrated evil in the name of confronting evil? Hasn’t the overwhelming problem been, rather, a reluctance to effectively confront evil — in Darfur, or Rwanda, or pre-9/11 Afghanistan?

John McCain appears to think so. Unlike Obama, he took the question about evil to be in the first instance about 9/11. McCain asserted that “of course evil must be defeated,” and he put “radical Islamic extremism,” Al Qaeda in particular, at the top of his to-defeat list. In this context, McCain discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concluded by mentioning “the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform.”

So it appears to me, using Kristol’s chosen extracts, that Obama believes very strongly that our determination of evil is almost always seen through American optics. Those optics are oftentimes right but just as often wrong or misguided. Instead of assuming we’re reading the tea leaves correctly at every fork in the road we might want to measure our actions against a larger canvass of World events. In response to Kristol’s desired follow-up question, I’d say this: Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay. As for his bit on our reluctance to confront evil as the greatest problem, wasn’t Sen. McCain present in Senate leadership throughout the Rwanda, Darfur and pre-9/11 Afghanistan? Is Kristol actually using that statement to posit the evils that Sen. McCain didn’t deal with over the last 15 years is somehow a measure of his abilities?

Sen. McCain’s response, again selected by Kristol, is like a checklist of what’s so wrong with those who blindly campaign and spew the three pillars of fear. I’ll break down McCain’s response…let me know if I miss anything in the paraphrase:

1. Defeat evil
2. Radical Islamic extremism
3. Men and women in uniform

If that is considered a nuanced response to what was a very good question, and if that is an answer that Kristol and his ilk find winning or in-depth, then there’s little hope in reaching into the conservative movement or McCain supporters come November.

t

a boot in the behind

We all know that we don’t have actual TV running on the Hilltop; we’ve got a big 36” Sony and the DVD player for entertainment. I’ve got nothing much to say about TV in general but I do have something for NBC: you suck. NBC has kommissar rights to the Olympics and allegedly have a Web presence where one could, if NBC’s online site was worth a shit, watch a few select events from Beijing: some swimming, cycling, track events, etc. I’ll get to scheduling in a sec, but first - to the NBC Webmaster: I think you must be part-time myspace or facebook high school sophomore. The layout and navigating is horrid, the system requirements don’t seem to matter, and content is for junk. I’ve checked all of my system components and they meet ‘requirements’ yet I endlessly get nothing but a ‘system requirements for operation’ message that gives me no actual input. I’ve ended up watching what I can on X’s old Vaio which plays the videos just fine. Back to NBC in general: they are kidding, right? I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on time zones, and whatnot, but this video broadcast selection is miserable. They’ve got a miserly plan that appears to ensure no video of available on-line videos until the event has been broadcast on terrestrial TV – including the junior high commentary and studio management presented by Jim Lampley and Bob Costas. My sports writing in the Valley View Junior High School paper in 1979 was purely Roger Angell-like compared to this hack production. I think I used to like the up close and personal pieces and sap-o-meter crammed down my throat when I was eight; I hate it now. A good example of immature commentary was Lampley summarizing the British team’s stunning success at the velodrome where they’ve won 4 gold, 2 silver, and 2 bronze so far: “Now if the Olympics only had snooker, cricket, and darts!” Ha ha ha…that IS hilarious. The British program has really put a ton of effort into cycling and his comment was completely bush league. (I’m watching TV today while working the USO so I can finally cringe while watching. Hey Jim Lampley, wouldn’t it be great if you actually had any other sports job during the normal calendar and weren’t merely the overnight janitor on NBC’s broadcast?) What is NBC thinking? If I watch online, where they can format my screen and make me watch ads, why would they make me wait 12-18 hours, sometimes longer, to see anything that happens at midnight stateside? Why can’t I watch Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps either live or on video immediately after the event? If I had TV, I’d boycott NBC for the next year – total incompetence. Their Web skills are a sorry reminder of just how far afield the music industry was when trying to deal with technology – they must have signed some old Arista music executives.

I’ll lighten up a bit and turn to my very little fashionista leanings. Here’s another great Johnston & Murphy ad featuring a shoe I need. The last time they got me this fired up about a shoe was a Johnston & Murphy ad that featured Lyle Lovett a few years ago.


The Cubs hung 8 runs on the Marlins in the seventh inning today – looks like the streak is up to seven series without a loss and six straight won. Fingers are crossed for the rest of the season.

smoke 'em if you got 'em

I just got through the first disc from the first season of Mad Men. My Mom recommended it to me when we were down over Christmas – I think it was as much her working history, in the early 1960s, as anything – so I gave it a go. I used to think that my all-time favorite band, Slobberbone, were smoking fools; apparently in about 1960 the rest of America would blaze them under the table. I mean, I’ve watched Jess Barr smoke an entire pack during each set – while playing guitar. Nothing’s quite as cool as smoking and playing guitar. Nothing except washing dishes with gloves…and smoking. Being pregnant…and smoking. Working…and smoking. Talking…and smoking. Was it really like that?

Give me a whiskey in my office while I smoke and work.

By the way...great show.

Awesome.

i'll play along

I’ve discovered the staff photo from my first summer as a junior counselor in 1981 (here's the link to the photo. It's larger and you can zoom). It was a gloriously long season at YMCA Camp Foster on East Okoboji during the heyday of smoking cool haircuts and great AM music. I was but a 16 year-old and vividly remember earning a whopping $200 for the 11-week overnight camp: we got paid $67 every three weeks. I’d been a camper for two years prior to my decision to spend my summer managing, wrangling, and corralling 8-16 year-old overnight campers (if you must know 8 and 16 year-olds were the easiest...10 year-old the worst). I also spent the summer of 1982 at the camp and was grateful for the $50 raise I got as a returning counselor. This was the summer before my sophomore year in high school and I vaguely remember somehow sneaking onto the staff even though I was actually a year too young to be a junior counselor. My older sister was also working on staff as a (real) counselor and she earned a massive $600 for the summer – you know, older, wiser, soon-to-be college student. In fact, she'd been there in 1980 and put in a good word for me. What amazes me is that I can remember most of the names and ‘personalities’ of just about every single person in the photo: eleven weeks of living together will do that to you. I can link up every ‘couple’ that hooked up over the summer – sometimes with more than one other staff member…it’s a long summer – and all the messy break-ups that seemed to rear their ugly heads on our only off nights: Saturdays spent in Arnolds Park and Spirit Lake. I don’t want to worry my mother too much but every Saturday consisted primarily of heading into town to do a week’s worth of laundry, eat dinner, and generally drinking beer and play Cardinal Puff. Hey, the drinking age back then was only 18…wait, never mind. Occasionally we’d slip over into the Park for the rollercoaster or Fun House but often didn’t have enough time or the money to spend on fees. Sometimes we’d crash at the house of another staffer who lived in the area - I don't remember where we slept the when that didn't happen. On rare occasions we’d catch a band (Three Dog Night, 1982) at the legendary Roof Garden at the Park. The Okoboji area of the 1980s was something to see – straight out of a movie about a small town and the summer tourists that completely overrun it. I was thinking that my night would ruined while I searched the dusty files trying to think of the two bars we always hung out at, but it won’t happen this evening: the one in Spirit Lake for Cardinal Puff (and hanging in around while our laundry rolled about in the laundr-o-mat was Sportsman’s Pub…It's still there;


and the Regal Beagle was the dance place in Arnolds Park. Just think about all the great 1981 hits you could dance to at the Beagle:

Top Ten of 1981

1. Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes
2. Endless Love, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie
3. Lady, Kenny Rogers
4. (Just Like) Starting Over, John Lennon
5. Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield
6. Celebration, Kool and The Gang
7. Kiss on My List, Daryl Hall and John Oates
8. I Love a Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbitt
9. 9 To 5, Dolly Parton
10. Keep On Loving You, REO Speedwagon

I’m getting a little teary-eyed thinking about the whole thing.

I guess I should also point out, not using actual names since I’ve been caught out by Google on that before, I met my first girlfriend that summer of 1981. If you know me, you’ll find me. If you knew her, you’ll find her.

I’m going to listen to some Rick Springfield and rip on my air guitar tonight.

t

kick and kick and kick

I heard the expected scientific / oceanography story about Michael Phelps on NPR last night. I get it – he’s like a dolphin. Whenever there’s someone who dominates an event, and I’m considering the swimming competition as a single even, there’s normally some or many genetic contributors that clarify a good bit of the puzzle. Phelps has shorter legs (less drag), big feet (propulsion), a longer torso and arms (better reach), and very little body fat. The dolphin kick that’s used on starts and turns has been very good to him; the undulating body and whip of the feet that he can manage for all 15 meters of allowable distance. According to Rowdy Gaines, most world-class swimmers can manage the kick but not for as long as Phelps. Just to pop a cherry on his sundae, Phelps also has fantastic lung capacity. He also probably trains as hard as anyone else in the pool. What he’s done – 6 golds, 2 bronze at the 2004 Olympics; 5 golds and a silver at the 2005 World Championships; 7 golds at the 2007 World Championships; and 5 golds so far in Beijing, is mind-boggling. Based on what I can manage, he’s won 22 of the 24 events he’s entered since the 2005 World Championships including the last 17 in a row. The four-year run from Athens to Beijing is unlike anything swimming has ever seen and Phelps is clearly the greatest swimmer of all time. We can hold off on the “Greatest Olympian” debate that NBC seems so intent on bestowing upon him. I’ll reconsider when he wins eight gold medals at this Olympiad. Also, he says he’ll swim in London in 2012 but not on this scale (eight events) anymore. Maybe he’ll do a couple of relays and two individual events – we could write in maybe three more golds to get his total to 17 over three Olympics (the all-time record was nine before this onslaught). Then I’d definitely say he was the Olympics’ greatest American athlete. I don’t think he’ll ever overcome Jesse Owens in 1936 simply because the man and times were so much greater than what we experience today.

The Brewers are on another 8-game winning streak, their second in two months, but have made up little on the rolling Cubs. Since the All-Star break the Brewers are 18-8 and the Cubs are 16-9 – they’re holding there own so far with five consecutive series wins and six straight series without losing one. I think there are nine games coming up that they need to dominate against weaker opponents before the schedule closes with a tough 20 or so game run. I’d love to see a six-game lead.

The weather here has been stunning since my return: high 70s to low 80s, down into the 60s at night, blue and partly cloudy skies. Ah….D.C. in the early autumn.

Base on my phone call with X this morning, I think we’re both planning on scrubbing houses and working on gardens and yards today. Funny thing how that happens.

t

man escapes peaceful tea café incident

On Friday afternoon – drizzle and all – the Eleven ducked into a tea café in Burlington for a pot of elixir. We’d successfully ditched the older folk and given the kids most of the cell phones before sending them scurrying about the promenade. The plan was to meet around 7pm for the annual feast at A Single Pebble. The tearoom was smallish with only about six tables and another area that housed a double set of remove-shoes-sit on cushions-ponder the universe-like tables. We missed out on one table as a philosopher of sorts slunk passed X as she waited for me to pop back in after sorting out adults and children via cell phone. Our slippery philosopher was wearing glasses indicative of either a deep love for Georg Anton Friedrich Ast, Christoph Gottfried Bardili, or afternoons spent debating the merger of Schlick's Vienna Circle with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle. Upon sitting at his stolen table, he opened his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of kosher vellum, a quill of raven, and a porcelain mosaic inkwell and began drafting either music staves or his life story spent on the cusps of Burlington, Vermont. Of course, just about everyone sitting in a Burlington tea café is by some account pondering the depths of life and/or the newest Radiohead CD. After another ten minutes or so a couple got up to leave and we worked our way over to the table as the “waitress” (what do you call a waitress in a tearoom?) was clearing the ceramic mess and took our seats. Unfortunately, the process of sitting at a table is no indication of past or future performance by our tea girl. Things were not going smoothly, or peacefully, by this time. I eventually got up and headed over to the tea laboratory area and ask her for a menu. Her response was to hand me a tattered tome and a small bell. Right. Which one can I smack her with? I know, it’s not very tea-like. What I began to wonder is this: do people in Asia ever just have tea to pass the time? Must the representation of the tea culture in America always be some monochromatic series of hippies, deep thinking, dreadlocks, and shitty service jammed down my throat? Just saying. We managed to order a pot of Russian Caravan that brought with it my desired dash of lapsang souchong black tea. (I just noticed on wikipedia that the smokiness of lapsan souchong is comapared to “…the smell of a campfire or of Latakia pipe tobacco”. See what I mean? Latakia pipe tobacoo?) The tea was perfect and everything began to simmer down a bit. Our Germanic philosopher didn’t seem so Germanic. Our server seemed to smile a bit more after getting a “hit” from “her friend” to remedy her “headache”, and we offered the other half of our table to a couple standing at the door. X‘s offer of the chairs and half table was met with a sarcastic “What? And interact with other people?” response as they settled in the chairs. We had a very nice get-to-know you conversation and found out that he designs energy-efficient buildings and she ran computer simulations on energy-system designs. Don’t get too carried away; both moved to Burlington from other places and settled into the scene years ago – massage therapy and whatnot – but the difference was that they were a perfectly lovely couple that greatly enhanced the experience and deadened the ‘deep thoughts’ vibe that tends to crush the life from these places. I’m pretty sure that just about any other set of people in the place would have had the personalities of a picture frame. That’s what too much worrying and thinking does to a person – turns you into furniture and furnishing accessories.

return fare

We had a great week in the ever-changing northern Vermont weather. Laurel and I ended up spending about five hours on the JFK tarmac yesterday trying to get back to D.C. but we finally made it home about 10:30pm last night and have moved her flight back to Omaha to this evening. If you’re going to be stuck on a plane, on the ground, for five hours then you’ll want to be on jetBlue – 60 channels of satellite TV. That little screen probably saved at least three or four people from certain death raining down from my perch in seat 23B.

Over the week we did a lot of eating; it happens that there’s not much that can be done to eliminate feasting during an entire week where the weather and events are fluid. Quite a bit was actually cooked at the house – primarily the breakfast and lunch bits – with a few nights spent eating out. The best dinner was a treat from the MagDad at Café Shelburne in Shelburne, Vermont.

There was, of course, the annual golf in miniature championship contested last Monday evening. As so often happens with these major events it ended up in a three-way tie with X, Phil, and I all carding -5 totals of 49. There was some complaining at the 16th tee box about a (ferocious) cat either preparing to pounce or laying on the fairway affecting someone’s tee shot. This mild protestation of cause-and-effect was shouted down, and mocked, by both progeny and progeny’s boyfriend.

We managed a few museums, horseback riding, swimming, a waterfall visit, children swimming endlessly, shopping, trips up to Burlington, bookstore visits, more than enough crossword puzzling, and a few games of Pitch Penny™.

Pitch Penny™ revealed a very interesting aspect of L’s personality. It appears that there’s quite a little competitive streak in the quiet reader. The game is a creation that tests one’s ability to scream forth answers that begin with a randomly chosen letter. The topics range from European rivers to fictional characters to Latin American geography. What L quickly sorted is that the eight million pages of books she’s read are suddenly worth something in this mythical world of “Goepps O’ the Woods”. In fact, she ended up being too good and was eventually forced into the adult group that couldn’t answer until the children had an allotted head start to each question. Now that I think about it, this little streak also raised its head when I had the kids at the pool and they played the “tons of loose change on the pool floor” event. The children are sat at the edge of the pool while I throw piles of change all about before they’re finally let loose to gather as much dough as possible. The only rules are no flippers, no goggles, and you can only pick up one coin at a time. That coin has to be returned to your pile on the edge before you can head back out for more. What I noticed was that the boys have a tendency to get a coin, come up for air, loudly declare the type of coin for the other submerged or recently surfaced brother to hear, and then swim back to their pile – sometimes spending a bit of time finding said pile. L. decided to simply dive/swim back and forth as quickly as possible with no talking, declaring, or sorting of her pile’s location. I don’t know what any of the means for her future but I’ve seen a new side.

Our three-inning Wiffle ball game was highlighted by X smashing a first-inning line drive into Maggie’s already wounded left knee and a second-inning heater into H’s left thigh. She also managed at third-inning short fly ball that tempted older folk into a headlong rush that could only end in tears and another out. I wouldn’t say it was new side of her – it simply reinforced the smiling assassin caricature.

I think Canada is working its way onto the books for next summer.

It’s nice to be back at the regular homestead.

t

early august means vacation

We're packing up and heading out tomorrow for a week of anything but work. It doesn't look like the weather is going to cooperate so we'll just have to mud our way through the woods - there are worse things in life. I've got some trashy books - read, fiction, and where we're going there's no Internet. And no, we aren't going to John McCain's place. I have my phone and it works just fine. See you in a week.