Yom Kippur Rock Action

As my siddur eloquently explained last Wednesday, "Avinu Malkeinu," one of the centerpiece prayers of Yom Kippur, captures the duality of Judaism as well as any. Translated to the English, it means, "Our Father, Our King," referring to God -- the intimacy of family, the distance of royalty; the biased and supportive father, the unaffected judge; the nearness of faith, the fleetingness of faith; God is close and here, God is distant and everywhere.

Funny enough, Mogwai covers "Avinu Malkeinu." It traditionally closes their ear-splitting shows and they released it as a 20-minute, one-song, all-instrumental EP in 2001, under the slightly incorrect title "My Father, My King." The prayer's familiar melody, one of the best on Yom Kippur, which already has some excellent melodies, doesn't appear until minute nine, after several minutes of weaving picked guitars that build into crescendo number one. By the 10th minute, Mogwai has draped fuzz pedals across it and come the 14th minute, the prayer is totally unrecognizable, morphed into distortion and faintly recognizable instruments that head down a long decrescendo of loops and sputtering noise. Rock, classical music; faith, irreverence; quiet, majesty; solitude, sound; melody, noise; beautiful and ugly. Mogwai does an excellent job of capturing the prayer's symbolism musically.

Above is the first half of the song performed live.

Wait, Which Percentage Am I A Part Of Again?

This time last year, when America's social divisions neatly cleaved along the lines of the 99 percent and 1 percent, it was easy to know where one stood. Were you a captain of industry, heavy-hitting financier, or someone else? The answer to this easy question put you in one of the two categories. Leave it to Mitt Romney, who's run a very muddled presidential campaign, to confuse matters. In his now-infamous comments at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., he split the country into 53 percent and 47 percent of its population. The latter, according to Romney, doesn't pay income taxes, is supported by government aid and would never vote for him because they want to stay tethered to their subsidies, rather than advance in the world. The former category is everyone else.

But that 47 percent, something of a favorite number of conservative think tanks, is more complicated than Romney suggests. Does it include the working poor who pay federal and state (and in some instances, local) payroll taxes but not income taxes because of the earned income tax credit, a policy that has been supported and expanded by Republican administrations dating to President Ford's, as a way to encourage work? And does it include elderly households who paid income taxes throughout their working lives but don't any longer now that the majority of their small income comes via Social Security? The important shades of this classification have been extensively explained by many pundits ever since Romney's comments were divulged last week. Unfortunately for Romney, the world isn't split into black and white, as George W. Bush also liked to think, to his detriment. Not only was Romney's comment wrong, but it also drastically misunderstood who his supporters are. Plenty of them are in this category too.

More profoundly, that 53 percent of income taxpayers is tied to government largesse too. There are the wildly popular tax deductions for mortgage interest payments and health care premiums, the first of which particularly favors the wealthy because they own larger, more expensive homes with larger mortgages; the U.S. defense budget that supports a very large industry; local property tax breaks that are given to businesses so they can expand their buildings; and so on, without even getting into policy matters such as the lower tax rate on capital gains, which favors the most wealthy because they're much more likely to earn income via investments than salaries. For a candidate who claims to love discussing the outsized role of government in contemporary American lives, Romney seems quite bashful about addressing how all levels of government are also quite interested in supporting that 53 percent. In fact, I might be one of the 53 percent who's least reliant on the federal government -- I'm young, I don't have kids, I rent. But then, I work in affordable housing, so my job relies on federal tax credits and subsidized housing loans. Never mind.

Minor League Baseball Urbanism

Asheville also has a great baseball stadium for its minor league baseball team, the Tourists, a Class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. The ballpark seats a few thousand people, looking out on the woods, with a number of the city's microbreweries on tap. It feels very much like a product of the city's culture, with an emphasis on local pride and a friendly community. In my road trip this summer to Asheville, Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., I found this to be true of all the parks -- they have a ambience distinctly tied to their place. In Charleston, my wife and I ate boiled peanuts (apparently a product of the Civil War) in a sharp-looking park that has the South Carolina marsh as its backdrop. The experience felt very much like the New South, as did our three days there.

Minor league baseball is a valuable entry point to exploring places. Our road trip began as an attempt to satisfy a craving I've had since I was 13 years old, when a colleague of my father's gave me, as a Bar Mitzvah present, a Fodor's guidebook for minor league baseball-themed vacations. The baseball, even if it's sometimes overshadowed by the between-innings entertainment, is good enough, the action is close, and the evenings, at least in the South in August, are wonderful. After flipping through that Fodor's guide many times, wondering if I ever could replicate a trip, I did it and might do it again sometime later.

But the trip quickly became an excuse to visit three places with excellent examples of urban planning, urban design and architecture. Minor league teams are often situated in secondary cities, if not tertiary ones and below, where major league teams are rare, so the lower circuits become a point of pride in town. And they're often in places that have quite a bit to offer over the course of a few days. In fact, the point might be that they're not on the Acela corridor: They have a surprising amount of vibrancy even if they're smaller, a defined sense of place, and interesting layers to uncover. Then again, I'm romanticizing small cities, as I often do. Tulsa, Okla., also has a baseball team.

Above are photos of each team's mascot: Ted E. and Mr. Moon, from the Tourists; Charlie, from the Charleston River Dogs; and Nate, from the Savannah Sand Gnats. Unfortunately, Nate was by far the most underwhelming mascot, though as a sand gnat, he isn't starting with a good baseline of material. The Sand Gnats are an affiliate of the Mets, whose Mr. Met is at the pinnacle of mascots. You'd think that the franchise's spring training would be a bit more rigorous.

Keep It Weird Urbanism

Why live in Burlington, Vt., when one can live in Asheville, N.C.? Both are small cities situated in the mountains, surrounded by plenty of natural beauty yet surprisingly cosmopolitan, where one can go for a tiring hike just as easily as eating a great meal. Yet Burlington's average high temperature in January is 27 degrees and Asheville's is 47. That about clinches the argument for me, though I suppose there are plenty of people who like to ski. (I'm not one of them.)

There are a surprising number of cities like Burlington and Asheville, where in addition to the natural splendor and high-quality food, there are also strong downtowns, a busy public realm, politics that are very liberal and a little hippie, and a huge pride in patronizing everything local, from food to art to businesses and so on. These are the cities where you often see bumper stickers pledging to "Keep [Insert City Name] Weird." Locals are vigilantly on guard to make sure homogenizing forces aren't on the march -- no J. Crew, Panera or waves of bank branches. Other examples that quickly come to mind are Boulder, Colo., and as more urban examples, Austin, San Francisco, and my neighborhood, Jamaica Plain, where the outdoor activities aren't quite so close within reach but all of the other characteristics are in abundance.

I find these cities are often thought of as niche markets -- great places to visit but not to live, saddled with a reputation for outdated '60s idealism, where it's a bit confusing to the outside world about how it all sticks together and works. But now that the general consensus of neighborhood development focuses on streets, public spaces, local businesses, and equal access, weren't these places about 20 years ahead of their time? Keeping it weird probably now means, "Keep It Distinct," which is the goal of practically every meaningful American city in the early 21st century. Weird is no longer on the countercultural fringe, but rather now a synonym for creating place, which means it's a blueprint to follow and an aspiration to pursue.


Above are photos of Asheville's art museum and a public bike-repair station that I took on my recent visit there.

Farewell, Andy Roddick

Andy Roddick's decision to retire at this fortnight's U.S. Open was an appropriate one. Roddick is brash, foul-mouthed, passionate, talented, and married to a beautiful woman, like most New Yorkers. His racing pulse was much like that of the tournament -- tennis' coarsest and most vivacious. He also did a good job of balancing humor and emotion at the press conference where he announced his retirement and in his interview after the last match. It made me a bit emotional too, even if Roddick was never one of my favorites.

It's a shame that Roddick couldn't execute a deep, magical run like Pete Sampras did in 2002, winning his final tournament, though Roddick was never quite as good as Sampras at their respective peaks or at their respective ends. But something makes me think that if Roddick's fourth-round match against Juan Martin del Potro had happened at night, instead of being delayed by rain to the next afternoon, Roddick would've hung around for at least another round. Strange things happen on the Flushing courts at night, where tennis is played into the tiny hours, just like how New York is lived, and the atmosphere is electric. Roddick always fed off it.

What Do Lena Dunham and Ryan Adams Have In Common?

They're both hopeless romantics who wear their hearts on their sleeves. Most of the chatter around Dunham's show, "Girls," focused on the sex and forthrightness of 20-something girls, but she really seems to have a soft spot for love. She's an unabashed Nora Ephron fan, but younger and tailored to the early 21st century, where everyone lives in Brooklyn's up-and-coming outposts and your (boy)friend's mother comments on your Facebook photos. In the bits of "Girls" that I've seen, Dunham seems to be most concerned about romance, the quirks of longstanding friendship, and the difficulty of being honest, not merely sex, fashion or pop culture. Her recent essay in the New Yorker about her college boyfriend was appealingly sweet in a way that I wasn't expecting: "All my explanations for this behavior are purely conjecture at this point, because, four years later, it's so hard for me to tap into the well of desperate emotion the relationship unleashed in me. I'd spent my entire life getting my kicks from various esoteric hobbies (fashion illustration! Shrinky Dinks!) and quality time with my nuclear family, but here he was. My only pleasure. I told him I hoped we would die at the same time in the mouth of a lion."

I've only seen one full episode of "Girls," which I thought was pretty lame -- the one where all the characters go to a warehouse party in Brooklyn. The party almost seemed like the depiction of one in Brooklyn that would have been on a CBS sitcom. There's a rave! An indie-rock band plays! Someone does crack! There's a fight between punk-rockers and a dad! All these signifiers of young urban cool are here, in one place, at the same time! I'm pretty lame too, but I'm pretty sure parties don't unfold like this Nonetheless, I agree with Dunham when she jokes in the show that she might be "a voice for a generation" (after her attempt at describing herself as "the voice for her generation" falls flat). She portrays better than anyone else what it means to be 20-something post-Lehman Brothers, capturing an era of deep uncertainty that's only magnified by living through the most amorphous, unclear part of your life.

Above is the trailer for "Girls."

Ben, From Kenmore Square, You're On The Air

That the Mets went from a wild-card contender in late June to 20 games out of first place in mid-August wasn't all that surprising -- aside from David Wright, there wasn't any position player who had much of a record of success, and the pitching staff looked very thin. Everyone played over his head for three months, cobbling together wins. Now only R.A. Dickey is still doing that, maybe en route to the Cy Young Award, and the main hope is that come 2015, the team will have a few prospects establish themselves and its finances will be steady enough to sign some effective players. So it goes when rooting for a bumbling team.

That the Red Sox imploded this year is incredibly more unexpected. Heading into the season, I thought the management was wise to keep the team together (even if they did so because they couldn't afford to acquire new players): For 85 percent of 2011, the Sox were the best team in the majors, and then they had a historic collapse during September. That final month was a gigantic statistical oddity, so why not keep everyone together and hire a new manager whose fiery personality would keep everyone focused, when the previous manager's calm demeanor had apparently grown stale? Well, the team blew a nine-run lead to the Yankees in the three innings in April, Dustin Pedroia called out that new manager, Bobby Valentine, for being too fiery, essentially rendering him powerless, and the beat writers have been writing much more about melodrama than baseball since early June. They'll very likely finish below .500 for the first time I can remember, maybe even well below .500.

Kudos to Ben Cherington, the Sox's general manager, for pulling off the most audacious trade I can ever remember. The closest comparison is probably Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez for Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar, but as my dad said, that was a like-for-like deal instead of a house-cleaning. Adrian Gonzalez is still a great player, but Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford are at best injured ones, and the Dodgers now shoulder $250 million more in contracts, which I can't understand. If the Sox had to lose Gonzalez to lose the other two, I understand. It all sounds like one of those crazy trade proposals from a caller to WEEI: "How about Gonzalez, Beckett and Crawford to the Dodgers, for a bunch of prospects?" But it actually made lots of sense, which may have led to the scariest development of the 2012 baseball season: Those callers to WEEI might just know what they're talking about.