Make room on the Portland Trail Blazers' bandwagon because here I come! They have one of the NBA's best scorers (Brandon Roy), a big man who hits the 16-foot jumper, runs, rebounds and posts up (LaMarcus Aldridge), two big men who are really big and use their size well (Greg Oden and Joel Pryzbilla, though neither is a distinguished player yet), a tall wingman who can shoot the three, drive and defend (Travis Outlaw), a crafty point guard (Steve Blake) two Spaniards who handle the ball so smoothly and shoot well (Rudy Fernandez and Sergio Rodriguez), and a roster where no one is older than 29. What?!
Watching them beat the Celtics, without Roy, last night at 1 a.m. was a true pleasure. The Celtics' dominance is mundane. Listen to a game, hear everyone exclaim about how tenacious, professional and superior they are. (Unsurprisingly, their TV broadcasters attributed last night's loss to the officials' botched call when the Blazers had six men on the court at the first half's end and scored two points. That was erased later in the game when Celtics forward Paul Pierce had an egregious travel of three steps and scored two points. Really, the Blazers killed the Celtics on the boards and in the paint. Every Boston sports fan whines incessantly.) It's a treat to watch a great team as it's born, full of raw energy, increasing intelligence and recognition of what they have and a little sloppiness that means they have to reach the top through pluckiness.
It's a shame it's so hard to watch the Blazers around here. Credit also due, again, to the Sports Guy's prescience in identifying the Blazers before the year began as the team all bloggers would fall in love with. He was quite correct.
It took an extra nine months, but I was finally able to see Beach House live. Their set was too brief and the MFA's seated venue is too conducive to unenthusiastic crowds, but it was still wonderful. (Reviews here and here.) Beach House has found a wonderful niche that few, if any, bands occupy right now and they execute perfectly within it. It's not incredibly original or transformational as rock records go, but, again, is executed so well. I love how the guitar often sounds like a second keyboard and the male vocalist provides the higher harmonies. The ambience has a surprising chameleon-like quality to it. It's wistful, sad and lonely, maybe even abandoned; it's ethereal, bleached and faded; it's a sunny, early October day on a New England beach; it's quite touching. Or, as my friend Allison observes, it's "like you hotboxed your car and took it for a drive under the ocean, and now you're lying on the sea floor watching the late afternoon sky turn gold through Snell's window and it's not alright, but right now it's all right." She's quite good at describing bands' sound.
(According to the Wikipedia entry, which I trust is reliable here, Snell's window "is a phenomenon by which an underwater viewer sees everything above the surface through a cone of light of width of about 96 degrees. This phenomenon is caused by of light entering water, and is governed by Snell's Law. The area outside Snell's window will either be completely dark or will show a reflection of under-water objects.")
How Pitchfork ranked this only number 46 in its "Top-5o Albums of 2008" puzzles me, but then, what's become of their criteria for "Best New Music" also puzzles me. They seem more interested in finding something that's esoteric and avant-garde than in finding something that sounds excellent, only so they can cement their place as the national indie scene's tastemakers. Then again, Beach House did receive "Best New Music" accolades as well. Either way, they should have been ranked higher.
Anyway, here are my other favorite records this year, in alphabetical order:
Fleet Foxes - "s/t": Pitchfork's number 1, so I'm not just hating on them. As everyone else has noted, Fleet Foxes' combination of Appalachia's backwoods and the West Coast's sun-filled beaches is so satisfying. Great production work on the vocals. They started the year opening for Blitzen Trapper and are now headlining much larger venues. Good for them. May Blitzen Trapper experience equal success.
The Sea and Cake - "Car Alarm": Curious to know what these guys' financial situation is. They've released and produced countless records for about 20 years -- as the Sea and Cake, as members of manyotherbands and on soloprojects -- nearly all of them on Thrill Jockey. None of them, I imagine, have sold more than 50,000 copies, except for the ones where they're the producers and you don't receive money from record sales there. And yet, they continue to be full-time musicians who, eight records into this band, still create great songs. The musicianship here is so high. You can tell the bass and guitar lines come to them like syrup out of Vermont trees in March. Can they live comfortably from this? They deserve to.
TV on the Radio - "Dear Science": More out of admiration for the career they've built than this particular record, which I think is their weakest. (In fact, the first EP is their best release and they've slid ever slightly downhill since. However, for them, it's all relative. On an absolute scale, "Dear Science" is far above average.) Their music is almost indescribable. It can't be broken into quantifiable, discrete elements such as bass, guitar and drums. There is too much warping, reconstituting and unusual melding to tell exactly what's happening. What I loved about their early records was when David Andrew Sitek, their multi-instrumentalist, programmer and producer, would be credited with "music" in the liner notes. Brilliant! How they can do all this, sell a decent number of records, play large venues and stay on a major awes me.
And as further proof I don't hate Pitchfork, High Places' "From Stardust to Sentience" is my favorite song of the year. It was number 57 (out of 100) for them.
Funny how this post reads so much like last year's equivalent.
Their mannerisms are perfectly reserved. Instead of incessantly complaining about daily working life, as so many do, they realize the inherent absurdities of office culture and decide, "Why not have fun with it?" I can't wait until they kiss. Each time Jim leans over Pam's desk to whisper gleefully about a prank or joke, it seems like he wants to explode across, grab her face and lock lips. When they actually do it, it will almost be like this this deep timbre of emotion, all trumpets and woodwinds and beautiful. Their love for each other on the show is so real it's hard to believe it's only a fictitious love and that off the set they don't feel the same.
Interesting story in the Times' sports section last week about the end of era for the Phoenix Suns, once the NBA's most fanciful and joyful team, but now, apparently nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the league's above-average defense-oriented ones. Most intriguing is some players' admission that they're unhappy about the change, a break from players typical fare where they strenuously adhere to saying nothing while talk all post-game long. (Sometimes I wonder if professional athletes spend more time practicing their interview patter than their game patter, but it might be that sports reporters don't practice at all.)
Star point guard Steve Nash, always a delight to watch, after the trade of two role players, point forward Boris Diaw and shooting guard Raja Bell: “It’s hard. I have a hard time committing to this as a business. I take this personally, and I take my career home with me. I care about my teammates. When you lose two of your best friends on the team suddenly, it’s hard.”
Diaw, a loose-limbed Frenchman who could never seem to put his whole game together, on the replacement of Coach Mike D'Antoni with Terry Porter, the main reason why one era has ended: “It definitely wasn’t as fun. It wasn’t as exciting for the fans...I’ll always remember Phoenix with Mike. We went from a winning team that was the most exciting team in the league to a half-winning team that wasn’t exciting at all.”
Of course, a franchise's owner reserves the right to change coaches and perhaps this one was right. Under D'Antoni, the Suns had several excellent teams that never quite made the NBA championship round and reached their ceiling. (The Sports Guy was prescient to chronicle this, particularly with a melancholic, wistful, angry recap last May.) Who knows? Maybe the Suns will turn it around this year; they're a respectable 16-11 at the time of writing. Maybe they're a better team in the long-run now. It's nearly impossible to catch Suns games in Boston.
But it will always be hard to shake the memory of those 2004-08 Suns teams. Nash was so thrilling to watch, always on the verge of discovering brilliance, much the way musicians improvise -- find a line you like and drive it home, it always works. (Will there ever be a cooler athlete? A friend once sat near him in a restaurant. He was with his lab mates and the only who know who Nash is. He told me he was ecstatic and had no one to share it with.) Forward Shawn Marion's jump shot seemed to originate under his jersey, if that makes any sense. Guard Leandro Barbosa had these slinky drives that could burrow in anywhere. And Amare Stoudemire had a wonderfully rare combination of deft touch and overpowering determination. In the 2005 playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs, before his knee injury, Stoudemire's strategy seemed to be: Catch the ball at the free throw line, shoot. If it didn't go in, he had an 85 percent chance of grabbing the offensive rebound and shooting again from a closer distance. It worked!
Oh, and here's a clip of Bell's clothesline takedown of Kobe Bryant, a player who embodies all the lifeless, soulless things the Suns thankfully weren't, in the 2006 playoffs. While perhaps no player deserves it, it's a joy to watch this:
More profoundly, Nash's and Diaw's comments remind me of the theme of "Jennie and the Ess-Dog": Remembering that time, those four seasons, back when things were good, when things felt right, when we were free (in this case, running the court with grace and joy, and winning), and how they're not like that any more. Are careers (lives?) only like that for athletes, artists and, like Jennie, fictional characters? Or are they like this for all of us? I worry about that these days.
How could I not read Dean Wareham's autobiography, "Black Postcards," in less than two weeks? There was a period of my life, probably circa 2001-2003, where I thought his life was the most enviable possible -- working occasionally and even then, it was never really working, but rather, making a record and playing shows, and making a career of it. Turns out it was quite unattractive, which is what makes his book so engrossing.
The book has some of what one would expect from a rock 'n' roll autobiography -- casual drug use makes lots of appearances, for example. But the rest of the book demystifies being in a band in a hard-hitting way. Much of it is about petty squabbles in the touring van and the recording studio, dirty hotel rooms, underwhelming audiences at shows, underwhelming affairs, (aside from the one with his band Luna'ssecond bassist, which led to his second marriage), underwhelming receptions from the label, labels that disappear from under you. As I described it to someone, the book, at its philosophical level, is about the choices people make, never quite breaking through and never quite being happy. The book's subtitle, "A Rock 'N' Roll Romance," must be a joke, because Wareham seems very (narcissitically?) bitter about his rock 'n' roll life.
Wareham is also quite talented at showing brief glimpses of important moments, enough to satisfy and then tantalize when he leaves it behind. (He often did the same equally well with lyrics, I always thought.) It's impressively literary, though. What would one expect from a Harvard graduate? Vargas Llosa would be proud.
Above all, the book has same very valuable lessons about being in a band, mainly from when he chronicles his days in Galaxie 500, his first band and the best band ever to come from Boston. (I used to stridently take Luna over Galaxie 500, but these days I realize they're even. My friend says Luna is Dean Wareham playing with B+ ideas. I disagree.) Here are some of the ones I jotted down before returning the book to the library:
1. "You can spend your time placing ads in the Village Voice and sifting through messages left on your answering machine by idiot musicians, or auditioning for other people's bands, but the best thing is to start a band with your friends. Your friends are tasteful and smart and like the same things you do. Who cares if one of you doesn't play an instrument? She can learn."
2. "It's hard to get your friends to go out of their way to see you at midnight on a Thursday. They'll do it once, but you can't really ask them to come back again two weeks later. People have stuff to do."
3. "The moment you make a record, you are in business. It's too bad that we never bothered to sit down with a manager or a lawyer who might have explained that lots of bands fight about this staff, and that there are common formulas for working out who contributed what...I think critical incidents like this arise for many bands, and that in those moments your friendship essentially disappears for good. You may still be able to laugh together and have fun, but at the heart of it all something has changed forever. Your friendship has been poisoned."
The first two quotes are essentially my band. Three of my friends were playing songs together for a couple of weeks, wanted me to be the bassist and asked me if I wanted to learn. I said "Yes" pretty shortly after. That was nearly three years ago. It's so great. We don't do much publicly either, mainly because we have other career ambitions, but related to that, we don't want to bother our friends to come to many shows (or bother to promote ourselves) so we play when we have a new set of polished songs. We've played two shows. Hopefully, we never reach the feelings that provoked the third quoted passage. I don't think we will.
This is a much better way to follow Wareham, I think. Play by his mantras, rather than write fake concert reviews of Luna at Southpaw in August 2003, back when I thought being a music critic would be a cool career (it wouldn't) or encourage making out to "Penthouse" in my college radio station's studio, which, regrettably, I wrote in my record review. And it's regrettably memorialized in black pen ink. We still can't get away from Wareham, though. "Who needs more than three slow chords with lots of reverb?"
It was always a pleasure, though, to see the band during one of its between-record monthly shows in the city. There was the time my friends shouted a request for "Bonnie and Clyde" in my honor. (Reading "Black Postcards" reveals Wareham probably hated that. The request devolved into lots of people shouting out other people's names.) Or the time when I was 16 and didn't know how to use the subway that well yet, especially when around Tribeca, and missed the last train home. (My parents picked us up.) Now, we play our instruments like Wareham does, generally motionless, though I think that's because we're too nervous to do much else, whereas he was purposefully detached.
It's hard to separate myself from Wareham's music. When I changed the approach of my Facebook profile from all-time favorite bands to what I'm listening to at the moment, thereby removing Luna temporarily from the list, a friend wrote, shocked, "Oh my god, you no longer like Luna?" (That's why I don't like Facebook's "news updates.")
Was searching YouTube for an old clip from the good days -- one of those monthly New York shows, but was unsuccessful. Instead, here's a professional video of them playing "Chinatown" in Belo Horizonte, Brazil:
Update: My newspaper's excellent editorial page editor has an annual end-of-year column where he asks the staff for their favorite book of the year. Predictably, I e-mailed a blurb about "Black Postcards." While I may have read better books earlier in the year, Dean Wareham's photo is now on the front page of last Sunday's "Opinion" section. Mission accomplished.
In these pages this time last year, I wrote warmly about Sam Zell's debt-laden purchase of the Tribune Co. Turns out his initial public comments about rebuilding the company's papers were only comments -- all ofthe centralones have cut lots of jobs and redesigned their papers so there are fewer stories over less space. Then, last week the Tribune Co. declared bankruptcy, which may be the equivalent of Chrysler doing so (though I don't think Tribune or any newspaper company [or any car company?] deserves a Congressional bailout).
Also, worth noting again is how Zell, one of the country's wealthiest men via real estate, structured the deal. He put up $315 million of a $8.2 billion deal, while employees became the owners through an ESOP. That means they're at the back of the bankruptcy line. Severance deals for the recently laid-off employees are also in jeopardy. (Remember: Debt before equity. Of course, though, the Cubbies and Wrigley Field, really the only valuable assets left in the company, are not part of the filing.)
As if the week couldn't get any worse for the Tribune, the next day's arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich revealed he leaned on Zell to fire the editorial page staff who was calling for his resignation from office. (No one was fired.) Fortunately, Blagojevich did the work for himself. Ugh.
Some of the reasons I very much liked my week in Spain:
* The tapas bar in Sevilla that keeps one's tab running in chalk on the bar. How unbelievably and effortlessly cool is that? (See above photo.)
* One of the main department stores is named "(Sfera)," actually within parentheses, like Smog once was. How unbelievably cool is that? Obviously, this one is not effortless -- likely painstaking full of focus groups -- but Macy's, or something, equivalent would never try it. Also, none of the departmentstores in Madrid occupy massive buildings. Instead, they have smaller parcels, so it's common to see three stores of the same company within two blocks of each other, each devoted to different items. For some reason, I find something amusing about wandering around different countries' department stores. We probably spent an hour doing that one day, in search of an alarm clock and shirts. Overall, as further proof I probably should've lived in a previous era, I think department stores are wonderful. They sell clothes of a higher quality than their prices suggest -- and there are often saleswoman hoping to give you an extra discount (or did that only happen to my bubby?) -- and the designs are simple, nice colors that aren't marred by tattered bleach stains and annoying, over-sized fonts spelling out companies' name. (cough cough American EagleAbercrombie Fitch cough). It's a shame they've been reduced so much by hyper-niche markets.
* Even around the largertourist destinations, the restaurants and souvenir stores aren't gratingly aggressive about trying to lure you into their shops. (And, yeah, those tourist destinations are wonderful.)
* President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has this great voice that's so much lower than his boyish face would suggest and is a little froggy. Here's a video from the good times, in his acceptance speech after winning re-election, before his popularity rating started to fall because of the global financial crisis:
Traveling to this city for the coming week, so I thought I'd notify all my devoted readers there'll be no blogging during that time (though I've certainly let a week pass between blog posts before, without any good reason), unless, of course, Applebee's and TGI Friday's merge or Belle and Sebastian writes another song that uses the melody of "A Centry of Elvis"/"A Century of Fakers."
Is teen drinking ever not a problem? Can it ever be done in moderation or a controlled setting? To sound like your mother:
There's been a story winding its way through the Boston papers the past five weeks about a suburban teenager who tragically died while leaving a keg party in the woods one weekend night. She said she'd be fine leaving alone, apparently got lost and a few days later, her body was found in a swampy part of the woods. Unsurprisingly, local police departments became tougher on teenage parties, busting a few of them since then, including one this weekend that, disturbingly, was populated by high-schoolers drinking beer and smoking pot all while wearing the commemorative bracelets created to honor the girl who died. One of the cars in the driveway had a memorial to the girl drawn in its back window, said one of the local police sergeants!
Now, I'm not a Puritan. I occasionally drank in high school and went to a few keg parties in the woods (though thankfully my sister's Bat Mitzvah coincided with the one the cops disrupted, because, knowing my inability to be crafty, I surely would've been arrested). I also spent part of my slow day at work trying to think if anything similar happened while in high school and remembered a classmate was seriously injured in a car accident where a friend was speeding and, yes, I probably sat in a speeding car after this happened. (Though, I'm too timid of a person to drive recklessly.) Nonetheless, what these teenagers are doing is disappointing at best, genuinely disturbing and upsetting to me. Your friend/classmate dies because of unsupervised, underage drinking when 85 percent of the people in the room/forest don't know how to be moderate around alcohol and you continue drinking at parties little more than a month later?! Don't you think there would at least be a six-month period where everyone would be too scared to drink?
Most reports have mentioned the girl's mother, out of disgust, made the teenagers wearing the commemorative bracelets remove them after their arraignment. Good for her. To end on the petty (and apologies to my friends who wear such bracelets): It's funny how the profound gets reduced to these symbolic rubber bracelets that signify (accessorize?) rather than really mean. Why are these bracelets even necessary? Do you really need to wear them to prove you're a devoted supporter of X cause? Why not know internally you're one and live your life accordingly. We're not what we wear.
Alma Guillermoprieto, one of the few practicing reporters today who deserves to be elevated to "journalist," returned to the New Yorker for the first time in a long time a couple of weeks ago. (According to the online archives, she hasn't published a full story there for five years.) In familiarly excellent fashion, she starts her chronicle of the Mexican drug trade at an art show and ends on a side street in Mexico City, near a subway stop, at a ceremony for the cult of death worshiped by drug dealers, and the whole piece encapsulates the crisis better than any other I've read.
What makes Guillermoprieto's reporting so absorbing and lasting is she tells stories of international importance from the perspective of the lower and middle classes, or, as a famous countryman famously coined, "Los de abajo" -- you know, those "regular people" so many reporters search for and claim to represent but never really find. When her articles address official events, background and/or sources, they're addressed in prose so fluid it's as if she were explaining it to you around a kitchen table. In an era where reporters, me included, want to run after any "official" or "celebrity" they can, tape recorder and video camera in hand, she is a refreshing antidote and a reminder that journalism is about living as we all live, being comfortable around people we should be comfortable around, and giving a voice to the voiceless. Plain and never simple. Equally important, she seems to have networks of friends in every major Latin American city, or, at least makes them very easily.
Her twocollections of reportage for the New Yorker are always worth a read, first time or 11th. Even their cover photographs (obviously, not taken by her) are two of the most potent I've seen.
Update: Writing this reminds me that senior year of college, I nominated her for an honorary degree. Some guy named Franzen won out. I know a friend's dad loved the speech.
A few days ago, I went, for work, to a Veterans Day luncheon, which is common for local papers to do. Little else is happening on Veterans Day and veterans rightly deserve to have a few days per year reserved for their veneration. The generally eloquent keynote speaker, a brigadier general in the National Guard, said something particularly interesting. While talking about the Iraq War and why he thinks the Iraqi public would ultimately broadly support it, he nearly -- and, I assume, unintentionally -- quoted the last line in the liner notes to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 2000 record, "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!": "What does anyone want but to feel a little more free?"
This thought has stayed with me long after I stopped listening to the record, which was a few years ago. It's so poignantly elemental and so true. Really, What does anyone want but to feel a little more free? The great irony of it, I always thought, is it actually sounds like something that could've come from President Bush 43's lips when justifying the war. On one side, a socialist anarchist, all-instrumental collective from Montreal that prefers to perform in the shadows and to avoid all interviews (and, apparently, dissolved); on the other, possibly the U.S.'s most conservative president ever who prefers to avoid all complicated (intelligent?) thought. And yet, there is no way they wouldn't agree with that idea. I suppose it's funny, with a tinge of sadness, how in life, in politics, we share the most elemental ends -- who doesn't want good schools? safe streets? the ability to vote for your political leaders?-- but have this unbridgeable chasm in the means that always pushes us apart.
After such a heady post, here's something to cool us down. The more I listen to Do Make Say Think, the more I think they are the best band making music today. This song is from their most recent record, "You, You're a History in Rust," which is beyond brilliant:
Of all the wonderful and sorrowful stories to come from Tuesday's election, buried in the rubble are Republicans in New England. Here in Massachusetts, the governor is a Democrat, the whole Congressional delegation the same and of 200 members in the Legislature's twohouses, only 21 are Republican. While this is an exaggerated version of the rest of New England, it's quite bleak elsewhere.
On WBUR's election coverage, one of their analysts (half-jokingly) suggested the Mass. GOP should secede from the national party. Actually, that's a great idea. The national Republican Party, under the Bush administration's direction, has become so wedded to intolerant culture wars apparently beloved by much of the South and Midwest (they have to be beloved somewhere, right?) and a crude approach to populism -- "Anyone with a thought is an idiot" -- that barely anyone wants to admit to being Republican around here these days. Rightfully so.
This, obviously, hurts the local Republican Party, as they can't elect any new candidate, even a likable, articulate and persuasive one like this guy, which then discourages compelling candidates from bothering to run, and re-electing one of their party's stars against a relatively impressive first-time candidate who no one had known before she entered the race becomes a bright spot. But it's also bad for Democrats. Note that many of the Republicans who lost Tuesday -- Sens. Coleman, Smith and Sununu and Rep. Shays, for example -- are party moderates representing majority Democratic areas or states where, because of what the national Republican Party has done the past 20-but-most-especially-eight years, no one wants to vote for anyone with an "R" next to his name. That means the Republican Congressional caucus increasingly consists of conservative politicians representing places that prefer this extreme version of "thought." That means we have a Republican Party increasingly unwilling to compromise on policy proposed by President-elect Obama, as close to the center as they might be (and I think we need to acknowledge that things like cap-and-trade, fuel efficiency standards and letting the Bush tax cuts for $250,000-plus are barely left of center), and solving the general morass in which the country finds itself is increasingly difficult. That's a major problem.
So, to return to the question in the post's title: You don't. The Mass. GOP should secede and change its name. After thinking about it a few days, I propose: The Responsibility Party. It still begins with "Re" to subconsciously help people find it on the ballot, without having the stink of "publican." More importantly, it crystallizes all the Mass. GOP's talking points for what's wrong with state government here in one word. It implies fiscal and ethical accountability, both of which state Democratic politicians sorely lack and the citizens here sorely need, and which should be at the center of the party's platform. It has a whiff of opposing gay marriage, which will make hard-liners happy, because it suggests "family responsibility," even though we all know families with two dads, two moms, and one mom and one dad have an equal probability of being responsible. Really, the Responsibility Party should at least never publicly raise the marriage issue and maybe even quietly support it because one of the foundations of New England conservatism is getting out of the bedroom. Romney only brought it there because he was laying the foundations of his unprincipled presidential run. The new name also suggests post-partisanship, which, thanks to Obama, the country thankfully loves right now, and starts to solidify the incomplete argument that Republicans need to be elected to the Massachusetts Legislature because it needs both parties' voices.
Republican candidates have been right to make this argument because government works better when opposing viewpoints are present, heard and sometimes compromised for the greater good, but they've been making it without having a broadly appealing viewpoint. Some thoughts: Keep the fiscal and ethical accountability. The public will eventually come around on that. Drop the strident, accusatory tone (and press releases). Keep advocating for a business-friendly corporate tax structure, but advocate for a higher minimum wage that is tied to inflation or something appropriate so it doesn't only increase in fits every 12 years. "The federal government no longer realizes how much you have to earn to be able to live comfortably in Massachusetts," they should argue. Eliminate the Pike tolls, but put up new ones on the state border at each major highway. "If you're from out of state and don't pay any taxes, there has to be some fee for using our roads." Eliminate the Turnpike Authority, roll the T back into state government. "Enough of convoluted 'quasi-public' entities that can't borrow to pay their daily operations." Consider implementing congestion pricing in downtown Boston, tie the proceeds to public infrastructure improvements, mainly transportation. Think ambitiously on how to create more affordable housing. "Density is a great thing." Develop a plan that could eliminate public pensions within 75 years. All of these establish you as the party that cares about a responsible, pragmatic government while also caring about everyone who lives here and caring about making sure everyone can afford to live here.
Peter, if you still have your job in a couple months, you can use these ideas free of charge.
Update: As expected, the Peter mentioned above, former Congressman Torkildsen, said this week he won't seek re-appointment as the state GOP's chairman.
Further Update: It should be noted I'm not the only one to propose the same recently. David Bernstein of the Phoenix has a very funny take here.
As governor's councilor, Ms. Timilty only has one job, and, fortunately, it's a part-time one: confirm the Massachusetts governor's judicial appointments. I often have an internal debate about this elected body: Another example of all the antiquated vestiges of the state's bloated government or actually a good idea because there should be a check on a governor's power to control the judicial bench? Fortunately, Ms. Timilty puts both of her thumbs on the scale for the former. Not only is her attendance record for her part-time job embarrassing (unfortunately Mass. Lawyers Weekly's story about this is hidden behind a pay-for-content wall; they're an industry publication, so I understand), but when facing a challenger in this past summer's primary, she forged Gov. Deval Patrick's endorsement. That's right: In her final campaign mailing, a few days before the Sept. 16 vote, there was a picture of her and Patrick, with Patrick's forged signature and a fabricated comment attributed to him, urging everyone to return to Timilty to office! It even had typos in it! (Gov. Patrick's campaign committee first said it would consider its legal options against Timilty, but then decided to drop the matter.)
And, of course, Timilty won soundly. While her competitor seemed qualified and competent, she didn't appear to campaign much beyond the forged endorsement and gave the worst speech that I've ever seen any politician give "on the trail." It was so bad someone suggested to me she was drunk while giving it, and I actually spent an afternoon pursuing this to see if it could be proved or was true. (It couldn't and I don't think it was.) But she won because she has the last name Timilty, which, even in the post-machine politics of 2008, is enough for the governor's council because all one needs to win are a few thousand votes that are easy to round up when you're part of the old Boston politician families who know a lot of people who know a lot of people, most of them in unions, which, for all their faults, still head to the polls reliably, for which they must be recognized.
Her apology for it all, issued a few days after the election and a few days after it came from the lips of one of Boston's top P.R. guys, who all the "elite" hire temporarily when they're in trouble and need someone to rhetorically massage the press: "I was with him at a couple of events, and I guess I just assumed it was OK. I can't blame anybody but myself."
This incident has irritated me for the past six weeks, so, on Election Day eve, when Massachusetts state politics are again engulfed in scandal, I suppose the point of this rant is, We get the government for which we vote. Vote for intelligence and inspiration tomorrow.
Proving that one good sex scandal at an international finance institution deserves another, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, formerly France's minister of the economy and now the International Monetary Fund's managing director, reportedly gave a padded severance package to his mistress working at the IMF. Mildly ironically enough, Mr. Wolfowitz gave his World Bank mistress a higher-paying job and promotions, which may be some comment on French and American approaches to capitalism: on one side, greater safety net during unemployment; on the other, conniving upward mobility. Also worth noting, while the Times was all over Wolfowitz, one of the architects and champions of the failed Iraq war, the main reason why he was eventually forced out of the World Bank -- the rest of the international community gleefully wanted his (deserved) comeuppance -- it's coverage has been quite passive of Strauss-Kahn, even using AP briefs. And the Wall Street Journal has been breaking the Strauss-Kahn story -- that freedom-hating Frenchie. Editorial policy never influences coverage.
Though an internal investigation has cleared Strauss-Kahn, I remain skeptical, as gladly does the WSJ's editorial page. As the generally vitriolic posters to my newspaper's comment boards often say, Throw them all out. Maybe they're right sometimes.
In case you needed another reason to love the Times: the priceless, ridiculous, daily descriptions of fall foliage in the bottom right-hand corner of the weather page. From today's paper: "The brilliant blazes of vermillion, maize and orange have spread south to the southern New England Coast, upper Ohio Valley and souther Great Lakes. Color is also nearing peak in the southern Appalachians. Leaf loss is high over the interior Northeast, where a myriad of diluted colors carpets the ground."
Could Frost or Thoreau have phrased it any better? Who composes this for the Times? Do they employ someone only for autumn to write it? Or maybe they can still afford to send 20 correspondents driving around the Northeast for six weeks to relay dispatches about leaf loss.
Not looking forward to the required raking of imminent post-peak....
Weezer's new single, "Troublemaker," is abominable. It's about one notch above nursery school rhyme on the songwriting scale, with a ridiculously simple guitar riff that circles over and over and asinine lyrics whose first couplet rhymes "school" with "fool" in exactly the way you'd expect. (You can listen to it via the previous link at the band's home page or at my gym, where the preferred radio station, which I've complimented in these "pages" before, seems to play it each time I'm there.) Now, yes, one of the defining characteristics of rock 'n' roll is its simplicity and structure: three chords may be all you need and unlike classical music, the main theme returns every 45 seconds, not 25 minutes, and there's rarely a complicated interlocking of parts. But this song extrapolates it to an offensive degree.
The case of Rivers Cuomo, the band's lead singer and songwriter and longtime wearer of black, thick-framed glasses, will always be a curious one. His career arc: refreshing, poppy, excellent record for a debut; emotive, widely praised but commercially shunned follow-up; prolonged reclusion; increasingly meaningless records that still sell well; and amid it all, hundreds of unreleased songs, mercurial relationships with his label, and a persona that after what I believe is acknowledged depression is almost uncomfortable and straitjacketed.
Most people my age take "Pinkerton" over the "Blue Album," but I choose differently. The latter is much more fun to listen to without being vapid. In short, it delivers. I read somewhere that current rock critics are so hard on Cuomo because they were all between 12 and 20 when those two records were released (myself included), and since those were so resonant for that stage of life, they expect even greater as time moves forward, which is unsurprising and generally unfair to Cuomo. But maybe Cuomo's songwriting skills are just stunted and he only knows how to write songs for teenagers. (Also a possibility considering the conventional storyline says he started suppressing emotion in his music after "Pinkerton" imploded.) While no one my age can find anything profound in "Troublemaker," maybe its lyrics about leaving school behind for insolent, guitar-playing trouble-making are perfect for that restless 15-year-old spirit, which was once mine and is part of so many boys right now.
Black, thick-framed glasses, like the musical genre they're most commonly associated with -- emo, which hasn't produced a good record since "Something to Write Home About" in 1999 -- have probably been reduced to caricature by now. Over-intellectualism, introspection, introversion, bad lyrics, etc. That's why it's so nice to see them on the face of Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays manager Joe Maddon every game.
Managers, by nature, have to be even-keeled and reasonable -- they oversee an office of egomaniacs for at least 162 games per year -- but usually they seem like the aged jocks they are, somewhat kind but also somewhat gruff, without too much, oh, well, introspection. (Not that I have much against jocks.) But Joe Maddon not only looks intellectual thanks to those frames, hearing him explain his managing philosophy on TBS a few nights ago, he sounds compassionate, genuine and thoughtful. While someone needs to tell the Rays that the ironic mohawk is so fall 2002 (you remember, when the Yeah Yeah Yeahs became thrilling and were poised to do something big), giving himself one and inspiring all the players to do the same is about as cool a thing as a manager can do to lighten his team's spirit. He almost makes me want to root for the Rays, even though they play in a city that probably doesn't deserve a professional franchise.
Making a prediction for the rest of this series is hard: The Rays were so thoroughly dominant for two and two-thirds games, it seems impossible they could collapse. But then, their loss last night was so flabbergasting that it proves as cursed as the Sawx were for 86 years, they're certainly making up for it these days, and could ride the momentum for the next two games. Either way, the Sawx have cemented themselves as the team of the oughts. And, as much as their management perpetuates the myth that they're the scrappy underdogs compared to the corporate behemoth of the Yankees, the Sawx have ascended to the top for the same reason the Yankees did the previous decade: a core of homegrown talent in the lineup and pitching staff, complemented by shrewd trades and free-agent signings.
Greater point in this series, though: Even though they lost last night, the Rays still scored seven runs, and the Sawx pitchers don't seem to know to control them. Rays in seven.
With each passing year, I eat less ice cream. Flavors such as chocolate chip cookie dough and mint chocolate chip are nice, but familiar. I'm no longer that excited about eating ice cream, which is perhaps heretical in a city that has lots and lots of ice cream shoppes. Jeni's Ice Creams'cider and five spice sorbet changes that. It faithfully tastes like cider, but in a subtle, not saccharine, way that's like nothing frozen I've had before. I've taken spoon to pint over and over in a way I haven't in years with ice cream. The sweet corn and blackberry and raspberry sorbet are also very good.
So thanks to Jeni's -- of Columbus, a vastly underrated city -- and if it ever needs an "average customer as a spokesman," I'm more than willing. And thanks to the two people who got the six pints (!) of it for my birthday, though, thankfully, they don't read this blog.
Perhaps even farther up the "sadly amusing" ladder are Herb and Marion Sandler, owners of Golden West when they sold it to Wachovia. Fierce Democratic donors, their lending practices are a (sub)prime example of why the country's economy is swooning -- just because expanding home ownership is a just cause doesn't mean everyone in the world should qualify for a mortgage, which, hopefully, they've now learned. (Thanks to Seeking Alpha for being more prescient than nearly all.) With all their wealth, the Sandlers have used part to found ProPublica, a nonprofit organization of investigative journalism that thankfully fills the gap when the newspaper industry does nothing but implode. Maybe their first assignment can be exposing themselves?
Oh, and for those looking for more heaps of morbid amusement, join the FDIC's press release list. Every time you open your Inbox: "Whose gone under now?"
Update (12/26/08): The Times beat ProPublica to the punch, publishing an excellent, unflattering article on the Sandlers' and Golden West's business model. The company popularized loans with "pick what you pay" monthly installments, meaning it was very possible, if not likely, that a borrower paid less than the interest rate so the mortgage's size actually grows with time. Mr. Sandler defends the lending vehicle as an excellent one, except when housing prices decline by 40 percent, as they have in many places in California, where the company had its largest market, which shifts poor decision-making to nebulous, overriding market forces. No one is culpable, everything is a vast mix of factors beyond our control. The 21st century in a nutshell. Doesn't lending to unqualified people in enormous quantities through such vehicles such as option ARMs also (in)directly inflate the housing bubble? In Mr. Sandler's defense, Michael Moss and Geraldine Fabrikant, the story's authors, don't let him do much more defending, perhaps because there isn't much left or because they've written a slightly slanted (but still-deserved) story. Furthermore, borrowers need to understand the terms on which they're borrowing. A contract is a contract is a contract. They need their own story in "The Reckoning" series.
Arguments that we need an experienced, venerated mayor in times of financial crisis -- no matter how much of a financial genius Mr. Bloomberg is -- despite what city law says are those used by autocrats, not the best mayor in the world (and the city council). That Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir and patron of term limits, supports this is odd, especially because it lends an air of politics as oligarchy. That the Times endorses it is odder because, if I remember correctly, it didn't support Rudy Giuliani's arguments for an extension of his second term when his mayoralty was expiring just as Sept. 11 struck, though maybe that was just my mom, who rightfully hates Guiliani. (Giuliani, who's had a contentious relationship with Bloomberg, seems to support his successor's idea here. For the sake of clarification, I agree that term limits are "arbitrary," but if enough voters were motivated enough to enact them, then it's the voters who should remove them, not the council.)
Mayor Bloomberg, you can run for governor of New York and not even have down time between your last day in office in the city and your first day on the campaign trail. You'd surely win and run the most important state in the world. You also certainly had your chance to be a VP candidate (and, if Obama chose you, the coolest VP ever, and perhaps eventually, the coolest president ever). Now, you're on the verge of subverting democracy. Here's part of the presser yesterday:
Update: Clyde Haberman's column in today's Times is a good, succinct, acerbic explanation for why Bloomberg's push for a third term blemishes his record.
History repeats itself, so this blog repeats itself. To quote from the April 14 entry: "It's hard living in a city where your favorite team isn't the hometown one." Over the past few weeks, I found myself urgently leaning into the car stereo, trying to parse each Mets game on WFAN amid the crackle of a station broadcasting from more than 200 miles away. (Who cares about a team with as luxurious a record the past decade as the Sawx?) When Carlos Beltran hit the game-tying, two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth Sunday, I shouted so loudly in the car that the drivers around me and the people walking down Mass. Ave. on the other side of the road thought I was screaming in maddening anger. It felt so wonderful to hear such good news. "Let go, Mets," I said several times. (Again, I'm not sure what that means.)
To continue quoting from the April 14 entry: "After the truly excellent core of Jose Reyes, David Wright and Carlos Beltran, the line-up is mediocre and aging fast. The starting rotation is far above average, especially if Pedro can pitch injury-free and dashingly for the second half of the season (will there be a better pitcher in my lifetime?), but the bullpen again appears to suck." Well, Carlos Delgado, while aged, joined that excellent core, but, ironically enough, that line-up became surprisingly young at times and bewildering -- when did the Mets sign Ramon Martinez let alone make him the starting second baseman on the weekend's final year? Pedro wasn't up to the task, but the starting rotation was quite good. And the bullpen sucked dead frogs like they were lollipops. It was beyond tragi-comedy how manager Jerry Manuel could only average two-thirds of an inning per pitcher once the starter left. The Mets imploded as expected: The bullpen yielded the season-ending runs.
Better the suffering end sooner rather than later, I suppose. What to do now? Jump on the Sawx bandwagon, as hard as it is to run at the front, thought little compares to watching in Spirit last year Manny's game-winning home run against the Indians -- an electrifying, incomparable adrenaline climax to an otherwise soporific game.
Joshua Robinson also had a nice piece in today's Times about yesterday's defeat also being Shea Stadium's last game. The description and photo of Mike Piazza and Tom Seaver, the two best Mets ever, were poignant, though it's hard to romanticize a ballpark that didn't have much to romanticize, unless you're a fan of auto-body repair shops and landing and departing planes, of which there were many beyond the centerfield wall and overhead, respectively. I went to my last game there in August -- ironically enough a superbly pitched game by Oliver Perez against the Florida Marlins. It was perfect.
Part of what makes Belle and Sebastian so appealing is its allegiance to the EP, already antiquated when the band started releasing them in pre-mp3 1996. For most bands, they're rarely standalone works -- released either to hype a forthcoming or album proper, expand on a single, or secrete more experimental material.
Not so for Belle and Sebastian. Theirs are complete entities, that sound much like Belle and Sebastian on all the other records (see "The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner"), but tweak the template just enough to pique your interest (see the psychedelia of [the song] "Legal Man," among others). And then there's the "A Century of Elvis"-"A Century of Fakers" combination, on two of the EPs in the "Lazy Line Painter Jane" boxed set: "Elvis" ends an EP, "Fakers" starts the next one, and they use the exact same music, but one is spoken word about cats and marriages in reverse, while the other is -- oh, I don't know what either is really about. Brilliant! I've told my girlfriend about this so many time it exasperates her each time I start anew, largely, I think, because I always act as though I've never told her before and am revealing some profound secret of music composition.
But the best song on all of them is "Winter Wooskie," from "Legal Man." It bounces along with a jaunty bass line and pleasantly staccato piano chords, and then in the second verse, Murdoch, in one of the few songs where he doesn't have lead vocals, comes in with delicately syncopated backup vocals. The lyrics are about longingly staring at a lovely girl from your window in the winter -- and that's exactly what it sounds like. I love it when that happens. (For a more recent vintage, see Beach House, which sounds like a echo-filled, empty beach house.)
Pitchfork reportsMatador is releasing this fall a collection of Belle and Sebastian's BBC appearances, though the dispatch also unfortunately says the band is on hiatus and has no plans to record new music anytime soon. Even if this could be a release to fulfill contractual obligations, guess who'll be spending $12.98 soon?
This is, by far, the best story in the past six weeks, if not years. "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..." could use this as fodder for a whole show. It's a real-life version of that mediocre movie "American Dreamz," where the president, a Bush 43 parody, appears on an "American Idol"-like show to boost his approval ratings. Why any sitting president would want to appear on a cooking show puzzles me, but why a constitution would ban receiving guest fees from it is also odd. Though, on second thought, allowing your president to receive a salary from another company/entity while she's in office certainly greases corruption's wheels, whether it's dicing at the cutting board or pushing for deregulation at the bank's board.
Reading farther into the Times' story, it turns out Mr. Sundaravej faces three separate charges of corruption and a two-year prison sentence for defamation. Um, maybe he shouldn't be allowed to be a guest judge. Oh, and he stands in for Thaksin Shinawatra, who's a billionaire, been ousted in a coup, fled to England to avoid corruption charges (his wife's already been convicted) and will soon be the former owner of Manchester City. Oh, and Sundaravej's party nominated him to replace himself as prime minister, which not only defies the Thai Constitution, but all logic. This is beautiful.
The name of that cooking show, "Tasting and Complaining," is also great. It reminds me of dinners at my family's house.
Post, like "Katie Lee," dedicated to Padma, that bewitching, drawling, stoned(?), puzzlingly unattractive host of my favorite TV show.
By now, it is abundantly clear we are living in a historically profound time. The abrupt collapses of some of America's mosthallowedfinancialinstitutions are not the only reasons, but they are certainly near the top of the list.
Listing everything would lead to a obscenely long post, so how about: Name an industry or even facet of American life that has not been dramatically reshaped in the past five years.
Unfortunately lost in the bloated politicalpageantry of the past two weeks' conventions was Daddy Yankee's endorsement of John McCain for president. "Who's Daddy Yankee?" my over-35 readers and everyone who'll be voting for McCain ask? Why he's the leading light of Reggateon, the Spanish-language, mainly Caribbean variation of hip-hop that would be soporific if it weren't so loud. His main hit, "Gasolina," from about three years ago, sparked lots of stories in the press about the genre's imminent mainstream breakthrough. (It never really happened.)
When I first heard this, I thought, Now wouldn't it be great if the McCain campaign actually tried to twist "Gasolina" into a paean for (the largely discredited) idea of expanding off-shore drilling, as McCain has come to embrace the past few weeks? As a further note for the over-35 or and all Republicans, "Gasolina" is not about gasoline, but vague slang for vulgar things that would make most moms, most especially Gov. Sarah Palin, blush. Unfortunately, McCain didn't take the opportunity; he's only courting the Hispanic vote. But, as ABC notes here, Mr. Yankee did on the campaign bus! That's actually kind of funny.
Other thoughts from the past couple weeks of politics:
* Watching Ted Kennedy's public death is fascinating. The last true embodiment of a Kennedy, his death will be the end of an era. He could retire, slyly engineer the election to replace him and cement his legacy as the most profound senator of the past 25 years. Instead, he gives the most stirring speech of the whole Democratic convention -- after having spent the previous night in a Denver hospital with kidney stones! (The story was obviously given to the press to amplify the heroics, but it really was the Willis Reed of speeches.) The Globe pretty much published his obituary the day his brain cancer was announced and devoted the top half of the front page to him. What will they do when he actually dies? Even the Herald venerates him these days. Here's the speech:
* Bristol Palin's pregnancy is news. First, if it weren't news why would the McCain-Palin campaign send a press release about it? Second, for a vice presidential pick who likely only believes in teaching abstinence and opposes educating about condoms and other forms of birth control given her conservative Christian positions, shouldn't her own teenage daughter's pregnancy suggest that maybe, um, abstinence doesn't work? As my cousin recently noted in his Gmail away message, the face of Bristol's new fiancee at the convention was priceless. He was meeting the in-laws at the convention. Beautiful. And even though his first name is Levi, he's not Jewish -- he has Bristol's name tattooed around his finger; huh?! -- though it would be amusing if a Jew were joining the Palin family considering she probably thinks we're all going to hell. Is it inappropriate to say here that the Palin daughters, but not the really young one, are kind of attractive in that "Real World" kind of way?
* By any standard Sarah Palin is woefully unqualified to be vice president. Six years ago she was the mayor of an 8,000-person town. She's governed Alaska for less than two years. Would you say the mayor of that small town near where you grew up is qualified? How about the mayor of Boston? No and No. That McCain's campaign points to both positions, including her time leading Alaska's National Guard, as examples of executive experience is offensive. Her boisterous talking points -- declining "The Bridge to Nowhere"; selling the state jet on eBay, among others -- have been debunked by the press, yet she obstinately soldiers on repeating them. She repeats the same speech on the stump, over and over, and won't talk to the press. Overall, the whole campaign is treating the press -- and, by extension, fact -- as useless. TNR, as always has some great blog posts, highlighting thelunacy ofit all. McCain-Palin's bump in the polls is tragically just another example of this country's general preference for someone who "seems real" (and likely isn't) over the truth.
* How is McCain genuinely running an underdog, part-of-the-minority campaign? He (and now Palin) rail against Washington's bloated, liberal incompetence as though even though he's been one of the leaders of the party that's run Washington for most of the past 28 years. Huh? Those who try to counter with McCain's "maverick" sensibilities, please note his general apostasy on that the past four-plus years. Please read Rick Hertzberg's thoughts here to understand fully how idiotic this and Romney's pitiful RNC speech are.
* Should Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, be banished from the tribe for speaking at the RNC? No, not the Democratic tribe (as some high-ranking ones are thinking); the more spiritual one. That comment took my parents by surprise a couple nights ago, and, yes, there are lots of Jewish Republicans around. But Republicanism circa 2008, largely thanks to Bush, Rove et al -- and being prolongated by McCain -- is about bigotry, intolerance, a drumbeat approach to news that borders on propaganda, and a culture of disregarding the truth. We all know where that's brought us historically.
Three weeks have passed since WEEI held its annual Jimmy Fundtelethon and I still can't get over how absurd it is. WEEI should not be applauded for sponsoring this, least of all because all of its talk show hosts can't stop congratulating themselves for doing it.
For the 363 days of the year it isn't raising money for the Jimmy Fund, WEEI is at best boorish and domineering. Most of the time it's a mean-spirited, insensitive, derogatory, and homophobic and racist station (while the last two sentiments are always latent in its commentary, they were never more overt than when "Dennis and Callahan," the morning drive-time hosts, compared inner-city, black teenagers trying to improve their futures to gorillas; yes, this actually happened). Yet, because they spend 48 hours raising money for cancer, we should all praise them?
Their hosts adopt these odd personas during the telethon, too. While on all other days they belittle anyone who disagrees with them (callers and other sports reporters) and athletes or anyone who make mistakes (in Boston and elsewhere), they become well-behaved, kind, articulate, deferential hosts who endlessly admire cancer patients, particularly pediatric ones during the telethon. Now, of course, who wouldn't behave that way while next to those courageously battling a deadly disease? They deserve that and heaps and heaps more. But if WEEI's hosts can comport themselves like this on these two days, why can't they do it on all others? (I realize my language is starting to sound like the Four Questions' here.)
It seems the implicit message is: "Some people's jobs require them to be jerks. Ours is one of them. But we're really nice guys (and yes, we're all guys, who have such deep yearnings to kiss a man that we endlessly deride everyone who does). Really, we only pretend to be jerks because that's what sells. But today, because of the content, we'll be true to ourselves and be nice." If so, again: Why not be kind everyday? Respectfulness and good sports analysis are not mutually exclusive. Or maybe the message is: "Look, even we can be nice to people have cancer! Everyone can rally around it!" If so, why give them the honor of hosting this?
Now, one of those morning hosts, if he were ever to read this, would probably use this post as proof that I hate people with cancer -- as he somehow extrapolated in another way with a recently dispatched, wayward Boston sports celebrity (unfortunately, much of the link is hidden behind the Herald's ill-conceived archive wall) -- but I think it's just proof that he and all his WEEI colleagues just hate everyone but people with cancer, and that's unfortunate.
What do Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper and I have in common? We've all received subpoenas for our reporting! But while theirs dealt with affairs of state, mine concerned a dog -- a golden retriever, to be exact.
Without getting too specific (links will purposefully be omitted so as not to draw the judge's ire), I wrote a couple stories in March about a woman from Hawaii who sued her son and daughter-in-law to share the breeding rights of their stud golden retriever. When they went to execute the agreement -- essentially, her flying into town for one week for visitation rights to extract the retriever's semen -- the Hawaii woman never returned to the suburban Boston town where her children live and, instead, absconded with the dog to JFK Airport in a rental car, flight to Hawaii already booked. Local police were contacted; airport police were contacted. They convinced this woman that maybe returning to Hawaii with the dog wasn't the best idea. She drove back to Massachusetts and was arrested in her lawyer's office the next day on a count of larceny. Unbelievable.
Obviously, her flight violated the settlement. Not so obviously, the son and daughter-in-law's lawyer decided my testimony might be needed to prove this. The call I received from her office notifying me was peculiar. Paralegal to me: "Attorney X wants to let you know the case is going to trial next Friday." Thinking to myself as she talks: "This is great! I'd lost track of this side of the case. No lawyer has ever notified me ahead of time when a case will be resolved. She's so nice." Paralegal to me: "You should be receiving that trial subpoena in the mail later this week."
Huh? What? Subpoena? In my three years as a reporter, one lesson that resonates forcefully is, "Tell your boss the moment you hear this word. These are a drag. Do you still have your notebooks? Were the conversations on or off the record? We'll probably fight this." All of the above happened and proved true.
As humorous as it was -- I was subpoenaed over a dog, his sperm and implanting it in bitches -- it was a drag. I spent parts of the next week leading to the trial thinking about how I would talk on the stand, going over my notes fives times to make sure I remembered everything. No matter how much judicial formality and seriousness can be subverted by such magnificent folly, it's still mildly unnerving. (I hope my attempts to coat it all in a smile didn't irritate my bosses too much.) I spent a Friday morning sitting around, waiting to get a telephone call telling me to drive to the courthouse. (This was the arrangement I had with the lawyer.) It never came. At noon, my lawyer rang to say everything was over. The way he said it was like someone had just gone through surgery and "Don't worry, everything is over and it's fine."
As great a conversation piece as this has been, and as amusing it was to say "my lawyer" for the first time in my life, getting subpoenaed is not fun.
Alright, posting immediately after posting is very lame (or, maybe that's the point of blogging; who knows?), but it needs to be noted that Luis Ayala has inexplicably become the Mets' closer in Billy Wagner's absence. Huh? How did this happen? When am I due for my angina?
Please click on this link to see tonight's box score -- a 5-4 win over the Florida Marlins, thanks to Carlos Beltran's grand slam in the top of the ninth, and no thanks to Ayala's ninth inning of work, perhaps the ugliest line ever for a save: one inning pitched, four hits and two runs.
Being a Mets fan and being anxious go hand in hand. I guess that's why I love them so. How they make the playoffs with this bullpen is beyond me.
Those fall days in Boston when it gets a bit warmer and the leaves are a deep color but the sun hits at a lower angle and everyone is out walking and you need an extra layer at night. Corners and layers and reverb.
