Book Look: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges: The seminal collection of short stories from one of the founding fathers of modern Latin American literature. I have previous discussed the opening story, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (second entry), which is the best of this collection and one of the finest short stories ever written. The remainder of the stories vary in quality from stunning to passable.
Borges stands out for his unmatched imagination. A list of the topics covered by some of the stories here (besides Tlon, above) will give you a good idea:
"The Babylon Lottery" -- imagines a civilization where all facets of life are left to the chance of lottery drawings. The history of the lottery is described wherein it becomes more and more prevalent and more and more secretive until it takes on the aspect of God.
"The Library of Babel" -- an unimaginably large library of hexagonal rooms filled with books of an identical length. The books contain every possible combination of 25 characters (22 letters, space, period, comma). As such, although the vast majority of them are total gibberish, they also they must contain every concept that it is possible to express and every bit of knowledge that can be known.
"The Garden of Forking Paths" -- A Chinese spy in England in the employ of the Kaiser in WWI is the descendant of a man who wrote strange book with no apparent logical structure -- characters die only to reappear later, events show little causal continuance. The spy happens to cross paths with a man who has determined that his ancestor was writing a single story but following the different ways it could have played out. Each decision made by a character opened a new thread of reality. Interestingly, this corresponds to, but predates and presages, the many-worlds theories of quantum mechanics by a decade. (Don't dig into it without clearing your schedule.)
"Funes the Memorious" -- the story of a young man who remembers everything in exact detail. He passes the time by reconstructing a full day's memory, an act which takes him a full day.
You get the picture. Borges existed at the intersection of speculative fiction, metaphysical epistemology, and literature. He was well ahead of his time in that respect, but to the modern reader some of this can seem unimpressive simply because imitators have done it to death over the ensuing years. Borges prose can be very dense and, to my eye, it is oddly parsed but that may be the result of translation more than anything else. If your taste is of an imaginative turn, Ficciones is a good book to keep handy. The stories are short and it's good to dive in at any point as a kick-starter for your neurons.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Know Your (Planck) Limitations
Know Your (Planck) Limitations: Many, many years ago, when I was a college freshman, I got into a moronic metaphysical conversation with a few other people in my dorm hall. The topic was not moronic, the people discussing it were (which is redundant to point out since I already said we were college freshman). Naturally the topic of discussion was nothing less than the nature of the universe, which we were going to determine, and being a lifelong, knee-jerk contrarian I argued that the universe was discrete, that space-time was not infinitely divisible. This was met with sarcastic missives about all of us walking around like images on film, moving in chunks at a time, or living as drawings on a deck of cards being flipped through. Patently absurd, right? (Actually I think this conversation started as a discussion about Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise.)
In all honesty I had no actual reason for making the argument other than it was not disprovable, and because then as now, I love to be the outlier, and because then and hopefully not as now, I was something an ass. (Did I mention I was college freshman?) But current research indicates I may have been right.
We all know about the universal speed limit, right? Nothing can go faster than the speed of light (~186,000 miles per second). Not even relatively. If you were in a car going 50 MPH and another car was going the opposite direction at 50 MPH and you hit it with a radar gun, the gun would tell you the other car's speed in 100 MPH. Makes sense. If both cars were going 186,000 miles per second, the radar gun would not measure the other car at 372,000 miles per second, but 186,000 miles per second. Makes no sense whatsoever.
The reason it doesn't make sense to us is because of evolution. The human animal has never seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched a world with conceptual limitations. However fast anything was, there was always something that could go faster. However far away something was, there was always something a bit farther. You can divide things into smaller and smaller pieces, but you can always divide it again. Our minds accommodate infinity. That our brains evolved with the understanding of a limitless existence was probably a tremendous gift. It is almost certainly the basis of the species continued struggle to see beyond current boundaries and thus make constant improvements throughout the millennia.
It took a particularly highly evolved brain (Einstein) to discover that we were wrong; that when you reach magnitudes well beyond our current purview, there is a limit. No matter what you do, or how hard you strive, you will never exceed the speed of light. Perhaps one day, our brains will evolve such that that is as intuitive as limitlessness is now.
But how weird is that? Here we have this time-space continuum that is essentially limitless except for velocity. Other than velocity, there are no limits that we know of, right? Why just the one? Well, there is not just the one after all; the speed of light is just the most famous one. The other limits grow out the work of another highly evolved brain named Max Planck, who was one of the founders of quantum theory. Quantum theory states that energy is not infinitely divisible. In other words, a particle might have energy equivalent to 1 unit, and it might have energy equivalent to 2 units, but it cannot have energy equivalent to 1.5 units. Again, this is entirely illogical to our evolutionary ingrained sense of limitlessness.
From this understanding of energy only taking discrete values (quanta) Planck came up with something called Planck Length -- the shortest possible distance there can be; Planck Time -- the shortest possible time interval (which intuitively corresponds to how long it would take something at the speed of light to cover Planck Length); and a slew of others. I'll be damned if the universe is not discrete after all. The structure of the universe, to the best of our knowledge, is a thing we can calculate and imagine but not naturally comprehend.
Actually, that only goes as far as our current knowledge level. There is a phenomenon called Quantum Entanglement that makes even less sense that a limited universe. Two particles can be linked in such a way that no matter the distance between them, one reacts simultaneously to a change in the other. Think of it this way: two spinning tops both rotating clockwise are sent off in opposite directions. Eventually one suddenly begins spinning counterclockwise. The other does also, at the exact same instant. How does the other one know the first one changed? It couldn't be from having seen it or received any signal from it because we know the speed of light is finite, there would have to be a time lag before the second one changed, however small. But there isn't. No matter how far separate the two tops, they are perfectly in sync at all times. This is so bizarre that physicists have referred to it as "spooky action". It may indeed open the door to limitlessness again at some point in the future once we better understand it. Or it may be something even weirder.
I have no reason to delve into all this other than stumbling across an article in New Scientist about the world being a giant hologram that took me back to that conversation from freshman year. I guess the lesson is that no matter how obnoxious some little twerp can be he still might have a good idea. Doesn't mean he shouldn't be smacked-down on principle, though, just for being an ass.
In all honesty I had no actual reason for making the argument other than it was not disprovable, and because then as now, I love to be the outlier, and because then and hopefully not as now, I was something an ass. (Did I mention I was college freshman?) But current research indicates I may have been right.
We all know about the universal speed limit, right? Nothing can go faster than the speed of light (~186,000 miles per second). Not even relatively. If you were in a car going 50 MPH and another car was going the opposite direction at 50 MPH and you hit it with a radar gun, the gun would tell you the other car's speed in 100 MPH. Makes sense. If both cars were going 186,000 miles per second, the radar gun would not measure the other car at 372,000 miles per second, but 186,000 miles per second. Makes no sense whatsoever.
The reason it doesn't make sense to us is because of evolution. The human animal has never seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched a world with conceptual limitations. However fast anything was, there was always something that could go faster. However far away something was, there was always something a bit farther. You can divide things into smaller and smaller pieces, but you can always divide it again. Our minds accommodate infinity. That our brains evolved with the understanding of a limitless existence was probably a tremendous gift. It is almost certainly the basis of the species continued struggle to see beyond current boundaries and thus make constant improvements throughout the millennia.
It took a particularly highly evolved brain (Einstein) to discover that we were wrong; that when you reach magnitudes well beyond our current purview, there is a limit. No matter what you do, or how hard you strive, you will never exceed the speed of light. Perhaps one day, our brains will evolve such that that is as intuitive as limitlessness is now.
But how weird is that? Here we have this time-space continuum that is essentially limitless except for velocity. Other than velocity, there are no limits that we know of, right? Why just the one? Well, there is not just the one after all; the speed of light is just the most famous one. The other limits grow out the work of another highly evolved brain named Max Planck, who was one of the founders of quantum theory. Quantum theory states that energy is not infinitely divisible. In other words, a particle might have energy equivalent to 1 unit, and it might have energy equivalent to 2 units, but it cannot have energy equivalent to 1.5 units. Again, this is entirely illogical to our evolutionary ingrained sense of limitlessness.
From this understanding of energy only taking discrete values (quanta) Planck came up with something called Planck Length -- the shortest possible distance there can be; Planck Time -- the shortest possible time interval (which intuitively corresponds to how long it would take something at the speed of light to cover Planck Length); and a slew of others. I'll be damned if the universe is not discrete after all. The structure of the universe, to the best of our knowledge, is a thing we can calculate and imagine but not naturally comprehend.
Actually, that only goes as far as our current knowledge level. There is a phenomenon called Quantum Entanglement that makes even less sense that a limited universe. Two particles can be linked in such a way that no matter the distance between them, one reacts simultaneously to a change in the other. Think of it this way: two spinning tops both rotating clockwise are sent off in opposite directions. Eventually one suddenly begins spinning counterclockwise. The other does also, at the exact same instant. How does the other one know the first one changed? It couldn't be from having seen it or received any signal from it because we know the speed of light is finite, there would have to be a time lag before the second one changed, however small. But there isn't. No matter how far separate the two tops, they are perfectly in sync at all times. This is so bizarre that physicists have referred to it as "spooky action". It may indeed open the door to limitlessness again at some point in the future once we better understand it. Or it may be something even weirder.
I have no reason to delve into all this other than stumbling across an article in New Scientist about the world being a giant hologram that took me back to that conversation from freshman year. I guess the lesson is that no matter how obnoxious some little twerp can be he still might have a good idea. Doesn't mean he shouldn't be smacked-down on principle, though, just for being an ass.
Broken Record on Detroit
Broken Record on Detroit: The powers du jure of the City of Detroit have been repeating endless mantras about rebirth for the last 50 years. The Lions have been talking about "restoring the roar" for the last 50 years. And I have been hammering Detroit mercilessly on this site for the last 3 or 4 years. It's all a broken record and you are probably getting sick of it. There's nothing I can do about the Lions or the City, but I should probably lay off for a couple of months in the interest of not boring you to death. But permit me one more rant...
My problem is that I want to scream when I read some of the profoundly delusional opinions on Detroit -- the same things that have been said in various ways for the last half-century to no effect whatsoever, yet people keep repeating them. The latest overarching case-in-point comes from Detroit's favorite celebrity writer and hometown hero Mitch Albom via Sports Illustrated. I'm afraid I'm going to have to rip into it:
"There's a little too much glee in the Detroit jokes these days. A little too much flip in the wrist that tosses dirt on our coffins. We hear a Tennessee player tell the media that the Thanksgiving win didn't mean much because "it was just Detroit." We hear Jay Leno rip our scandalous former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, by saying, "The bad news is, he could be forced out of office. The good news is, any time you get a chance to get out of Detroit, take it."
We hear Congress tongue-lash our auto executives for not matching the cheaper wages of foreign car companies. We hear South Carolina senator Jim DeMint tell NPR that "the barnacles of unionism" must be destroyed at GM, Ford and Chrysler. Barnacles? Barnacles are parasites without a conscience. Sounds more like politicians to us.
Enough, we want to say. The Lions stink. We know they stink. You don't have to tell us. Enough. The car business is in trouble. We know it's in trouble. We drive past the deserted parking lots of empty auto plants every day.
Enough. We don't need more lofty national newspaper laments on the decay of a Rust Belt city. Or the obligatory network news piece, "Can Detroit Be Saved?" For too long we have been the Place to Go to Chronicle the Ugly. Example: For years, we had a rash of fires the night before Halloween -- Devil's Night. And like clockwork, you could count on TV crews to fly in from out of town in hopes of catching Detroit burning. Whoomf. There we were in flames, on network TV. But when we got the problem under control, when city-sponsored neighborhood programs helped douse it, you never heard about that. The TV crews just shrugged and left."
Unbelievable. What an enormous load of tripe. And the fact is, sentiment like that has been a rallying point for Detroiters for decades. Read through the entire article. It all comes down to "It's not fair" and "People are picking on us" and "Nobody talks about the good stuff". Then we get to the punch line:
"Do you think if your main industry sails away to foreign countries, if the tax base of your city dries up, you won't have crumbling houses and men sleeping on church floors too? Do you think if we become a country that makes nothing, that builds nothing, that only services and outsources, that we will hold our place on the economic totem pole?"
So let me see if I have this straight: Everyone is mistaken, Detroit is really a fine place with lots of good stuff; and even if it's not you shouldn't talk about it; and even if you do talk about it you should realize that Detroit is just a victim of circumstance, and you could be too one day if your city is ineptly governed as Detroit has been for decades on end. Unbelievable.
Mitch Albom is a paradigmatic sentimentalist. He sells billions of books with maudlin storylines that really tug at the heartstrings. I say that in admiration, by the way: all successful writing in any venue or genre takes talent, and Mitch's talent for goosing your emotions is second to none. But -- and this is the key thing I am trying to get across -- sentiment don't feed the bulldog. Detroit has fought the world using sentiment as its primary weapon for fifty years and look at the results. People who live in Detroit, who experience the reality of it -- not just the view from afar or the words in the press -- have been fleeing like Cubans in a boat lift.
Mitch thinks he is doing good by bucking up the fine folks of Detroit but we have long passed the point where bucking up is damaging. I do not know how to fix Detroit. In fact, I suspect it cannot be fixed, that it must simply die. That is mere supposition, of course. There may be people out there with the ideas and energy to save the City. I will guarantee you that if there are, the decisions and the actions they will have to take are draconian, cold-hearted, and hard-headed. How can anyone pedaling such a painful strategy compete with the uplifting prose of hope from Mitch Albom.
For a clearer, more honest picture read Matt Labash's stunning elegy from the Weekly Standard:
"Its recently resigned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, he of the Kangol hats and five-button suits, now wears jailhouse orange as he's currently serving a four-month sentence as part of a plea agreement for perjuring himself regarding an extramarital affair with his chief of staff, which yielded soupy love-daddy text messages that would make Barry White yak in his grave. Those in Detroit who are neither recipients of sweetheart contracts nor Kilpatrick family members on the city payroll at inflated salaries think he got off easy. Because what led to the perjury was concealing an $8.4 million payout from city coffers to settle a whistleblower suit brought by cops who'd been fired for investigating, among other things, the murder of a stripper named Strawberry who, prior to her death, was allegedly beat up by Kilpatrick's wife when she caught her entertaining her husband.
In a city often known as the nation's murder capital, with over 10,000 unsolved murders dating back to 1960, the police are in shambles through cutbacks and corruption trials. (They have a profitable sideline, though, as one of the nation's largest gun dealers, having sold 14 tons of used weapons out-of-state.) Their response times are legendarily slow. Their crime lab is so inept that it has been closed. One Detroit man found police so unresponsive when trying to turn himself in for murder that he hopped a bus to Toledo and confessed there instead.
Detroit schools haven't ordered new textbooks in 19 years. Students have reported having to bring their own toilet paper. Teachers have reported bringing hammers to class for protection. Declining enrollment has forced 67 school closures since 2005 (more than a quarter of the city's schools). The graduation rate is 24.9 percent, the lowest of any large school district in the country. Not for nothing did one frustrated activist start pelting school board members with grapes during a meeting. She probably should've reached for something heavier.
An internal audit, which was 14 months late, estimates next year's city deficit to be as high as $200 million (helped along by $335,000 embezzled from the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion). With a dwindling tax base--even the city's three once-profitable casinos are seeing a downturn in revenues (the Greektown Casino is in bankruptcy)--the city has kicked around every money-making scheme from selling off ownership rights to the tunnel it shares with neighboring Windsor, Canada, to a fast food tax. It's perhaps unsurprising that Detroit now has the most speed traps in the nation.
It also has one of the highest property tax rates in Michigan, yet has over 60,000 vacant dwellings (a guesstimate--nobody keeps official count), meaning real estate values are in the toilet. Over the summer, the Detroit News sent a headline around the world, about a Detroit house that was for sale for $1. But it's not even that uncommon. As of this writing, there are at least five $1 homes for sale in Detroit."
And that is quite literally the least of it. Read the whole thing. It's mind-blowing. And if you can stomach anymore, the very best ongoing documentation of the death of Detroit is done over at detroitblog.org. Try this entry for example, which starts off: "Throughout Detroit there are still little libraries full of books that half the residents can't even read", and goes downhill from there.
Thanks for pat on the back, Mitch, but the bulldog is still starving.
My problem is that I want to scream when I read some of the profoundly delusional opinions on Detroit -- the same things that have been said in various ways for the last half-century to no effect whatsoever, yet people keep repeating them. The latest overarching case-in-point comes from Detroit's favorite celebrity writer and hometown hero Mitch Albom via Sports Illustrated. I'm afraid I'm going to have to rip into it:
"There's a little too much glee in the Detroit jokes these days. A little too much flip in the wrist that tosses dirt on our coffins. We hear a Tennessee player tell the media that the Thanksgiving win didn't mean much because "it was just Detroit." We hear Jay Leno rip our scandalous former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, by saying, "The bad news is, he could be forced out of office. The good news is, any time you get a chance to get out of Detroit, take it."
We hear Congress tongue-lash our auto executives for not matching the cheaper wages of foreign car companies. We hear South Carolina senator Jim DeMint tell NPR that "the barnacles of unionism" must be destroyed at GM, Ford and Chrysler. Barnacles? Barnacles are parasites without a conscience. Sounds more like politicians to us.
Enough, we want to say. The Lions stink. We know they stink. You don't have to tell us. Enough. The car business is in trouble. We know it's in trouble. We drive past the deserted parking lots of empty auto plants every day.
Enough. We don't need more lofty national newspaper laments on the decay of a Rust Belt city. Or the obligatory network news piece, "Can Detroit Be Saved?" For too long we have been the Place to Go to Chronicle the Ugly. Example: For years, we had a rash of fires the night before Halloween -- Devil's Night. And like clockwork, you could count on TV crews to fly in from out of town in hopes of catching Detroit burning. Whoomf. There we were in flames, on network TV. But when we got the problem under control, when city-sponsored neighborhood programs helped douse it, you never heard about that. The TV crews just shrugged and left."
Unbelievable. What an enormous load of tripe. And the fact is, sentiment like that has been a rallying point for Detroiters for decades. Read through the entire article. It all comes down to "It's not fair" and "People are picking on us" and "Nobody talks about the good stuff". Then we get to the punch line:
"Do you think if your main industry sails away to foreign countries, if the tax base of your city dries up, you won't have crumbling houses and men sleeping on church floors too? Do you think if we become a country that makes nothing, that builds nothing, that only services and outsources, that we will hold our place on the economic totem pole?"
So let me see if I have this straight: Everyone is mistaken, Detroit is really a fine place with lots of good stuff; and even if it's not you shouldn't talk about it; and even if you do talk about it you should realize that Detroit is just a victim of circumstance, and you could be too one day if your city is ineptly governed as Detroit has been for decades on end. Unbelievable.
Mitch Albom is a paradigmatic sentimentalist. He sells billions of books with maudlin storylines that really tug at the heartstrings. I say that in admiration, by the way: all successful writing in any venue or genre takes talent, and Mitch's talent for goosing your emotions is second to none. But -- and this is the key thing I am trying to get across -- sentiment don't feed the bulldog. Detroit has fought the world using sentiment as its primary weapon for fifty years and look at the results. People who live in Detroit, who experience the reality of it -- not just the view from afar or the words in the press -- have been fleeing like Cubans in a boat lift.
Mitch thinks he is doing good by bucking up the fine folks of Detroit but we have long passed the point where bucking up is damaging. I do not know how to fix Detroit. In fact, I suspect it cannot be fixed, that it must simply die. That is mere supposition, of course. There may be people out there with the ideas and energy to save the City. I will guarantee you that if there are, the decisions and the actions they will have to take are draconian, cold-hearted, and hard-headed. How can anyone pedaling such a painful strategy compete with the uplifting prose of hope from Mitch Albom.
For a clearer, more honest picture read Matt Labash's stunning elegy from the Weekly Standard:
"Its recently resigned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, he of the Kangol hats and five-button suits, now wears jailhouse orange as he's currently serving a four-month sentence as part of a plea agreement for perjuring himself regarding an extramarital affair with his chief of staff, which yielded soupy love-daddy text messages that would make Barry White yak in his grave. Those in Detroit who are neither recipients of sweetheart contracts nor Kilpatrick family members on the city payroll at inflated salaries think he got off easy. Because what led to the perjury was concealing an $8.4 million payout from city coffers to settle a whistleblower suit brought by cops who'd been fired for investigating, among other things, the murder of a stripper named Strawberry who, prior to her death, was allegedly beat up by Kilpatrick's wife when she caught her entertaining her husband.
In a city often known as the nation's murder capital, with over 10,000 unsolved murders dating back to 1960, the police are in shambles through cutbacks and corruption trials. (They have a profitable sideline, though, as one of the nation's largest gun dealers, having sold 14 tons of used weapons out-of-state.) Their response times are legendarily slow. Their crime lab is so inept that it has been closed. One Detroit man found police so unresponsive when trying to turn himself in for murder that he hopped a bus to Toledo and confessed there instead.
Detroit schools haven't ordered new textbooks in 19 years. Students have reported having to bring their own toilet paper. Teachers have reported bringing hammers to class for protection. Declining enrollment has forced 67 school closures since 2005 (more than a quarter of the city's schools). The graduation rate is 24.9 percent, the lowest of any large school district in the country. Not for nothing did one frustrated activist start pelting school board members with grapes during a meeting. She probably should've reached for something heavier.
An internal audit, which was 14 months late, estimates next year's city deficit to be as high as $200 million (helped along by $335,000 embezzled from the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion). With a dwindling tax base--even the city's three once-profitable casinos are seeing a downturn in revenues (the Greektown Casino is in bankruptcy)--the city has kicked around every money-making scheme from selling off ownership rights to the tunnel it shares with neighboring Windsor, Canada, to a fast food tax. It's perhaps unsurprising that Detroit now has the most speed traps in the nation.
It also has one of the highest property tax rates in Michigan, yet has over 60,000 vacant dwellings (a guesstimate--nobody keeps official count), meaning real estate values are in the toilet. Over the summer, the Detroit News sent a headline around the world, about a Detroit house that was for sale for $1. But it's not even that uncommon. As of this writing, there are at least five $1 homes for sale in Detroit."
And that is quite literally the least of it. Read the whole thing. It's mind-blowing. And if you can stomach anymore, the very best ongoing documentation of the death of Detroit is done over at detroitblog.org. Try this entry for example, which starts off: "Throughout Detroit there are still little libraries full of books that half the residents can't even read", and goes downhill from there.
Thanks for pat on the back, Mitch, but the bulldog is still starving.
Travel Rewind: Detroit and the North American Auto Show (1/25/03)
Travel Rewind: Detroit and the North American Auto Show (1/25/03): (In honor of the North American Auto Show's dutiful continuance in the face of the Carpocalypse, here is a re-run of my attendance from back in '03. The only thing I can say about this is that the comments about Detroit are as accurate today as they were then. Although I should have been less snarky, I claim validation.)
In the days before I attended the North American Auto Show, there was a minor dust-up going on about this article wherein some English journalist trashes Detroit.
"This is the biggest annual motoring festival in the United States but is held in the bleak and frozen inner-city wasteland that is Detroit. They advise you not to go out alone after dark in the centre, not that you can walk far in Motor City, where the pavement is a mere add-on to the wide roads and the cold freezes your breath on your lips."
The good people of Detroit loosened the thick woolen scarves from around their faces to shout in outrage. They fumed behind their triple locked doors. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who gives new meaning to the term Black Irish) dashed off an angry letter to the London Times in protest. Detroit may be a fiscal mess, but he has his priorities. How dare they?
Now, I'm generally delighted to lambaste some euro-weenie who takes the opportunity to dis' things over here. After all, what business does this clown have denigrating the weather? Does he miss the year-round sunshine and balmy North Sea breezes of England?
But sadly, I'm on his side with regards to Detroit. Many, many people, including some of my friends, bristle when someone complains about Detroit. It just the reputation, they say, in reality it's not that bad.
Well, I'm sorry, but it is that bad. Oh I know, you can have some fun -- Greektown is fine and there are casinos and new stadiums and so forth. But that all misses the point.
While much of the country has experienced significant drops in violent crime, Detroit has always been one of the most dangerous cities. It may not be the murder capital of the nation anymore, but I bet it has never slipped out of the top five.
It is dirty and run down everywhere you look. They may have built a glistening new stadium, Comerica Park, yet directly across the street is a building that has been abandoned for ten years, covered with boarded-up windows and graffiti.
The infrastructure is atrocious. The People Mover? Don't make me laugh. As transportation it is only slightly more effective than the horsey ride outside of Wal-Mart. Streets lead off in seemingly random directions and it's not like you have any signs you can follow. Basically, you should not drive in Detroit unless you already know how to drive in Detroit.
The civil servants rival those of Washington D.C. for discourteous deportment.
Example 1: Naturally, due to the Auto Show, traffic was a mess down there -- bumper to bumper. At one point someone to the left of me needed to cut across in front of me to the right lane so that he could make a right turn. I let him through, but before he could make the turn he found himself being berated by some traffic cop for cutting across lanes. Now, there was no danger here, no one was going more than half a mile-per-hour. The guy was probably from out of town, just struggling to find his way around. But if you are a Detroit traffic cop, why pass up the opportunity to get in someone's face?
Example 2: I'm in a throng of people, now about 27 minutes into a wait on the People Mover platform. We have all been shepherded back a safe distance from the tracks by a transit worker. One couple is trying to keep their little kids under control but, bored from standing around for almost a half-hour, one of them breaks free and crosses a couple of feet out beyond the safe distance. The transit worker shouts, "Now I'm not a babysitter! You are going to have to keep those kids under control!" Even as a veteran of many trips to Washington D.C., the capitol of dismissive rudeness, I was amazed at the manner of these people at a time when the city should have been on its best behavior.
When you point things like this out to Detroit defenders, they say "that's just one bad experience" or "all cities are like that" or the classic, "it's not that bad." The underlying assumption is that everyone is just reacting to an unfair reputation. Despite all the statistics and all the experiences that make people flee Detroit, the powers behind the city proclaim it's really just an erroneous perception. So the response is to use public money for enormous rebuilding projects and to run PR campaigns claiming that Detroit is on the road to Renaissance and everyone should lend a hand.
Detroit has been rebuilding for the entirety of my adult life. Businesses are regularly duped or guilted or bribed into locating downtown, only to find that no one wants to work down there. Yet you can always find someone to appear on the local news express indignation at any belittling of the city, invariably invoking the phrase, "it's not that bad."
Yes, it is that bad. You can build all the bright shiny monoliths tax money can buy and they will still be outnumbered by the boarded up edifices between them. You can put on sporting events and festivals and auto shows, but people are still treated rudely, and every visitor to Detroit has the crime rate in the back of his mind.
Pretty buildings and public relations do not make it better. Convincing a lot of people to say "it's not that bad" doesn't make it better. The only thing that will make it better is to actually make it better in reality, not just words and facades.
But I was going to talk about the Auto Show.
One thing I noticed was, in contrast to the outside world, the Auto Show was not dominated by enormous SUVs.
I dislike SUVs. They are gaudy and crass. They block your view at almost every turn. They cause you to have to back out of your parking space blind. What's worse, the only way to see beyond them is to buy an SUV yourself. They are like an automotive virus.
And yet, if I was still in the market for a new car I would consider buying one just to irritate people who feel that SUVs help terrorists. That has to be one of the silliest, most poorly reasoned opinions I have ever heard. The supposition that oil consumption "helps terrorists" is ludicrous. By that way of thinking, if we did away with all petroleum based products and lived in caves, we might impoverish the terrorists to the point where they had to live in caves. That's terribly inefficient. It is more efficient, and less troublesome, to pay for the A-10s and Special Forces to make the terrorists live in caves. And to do that we need to buy the A-10s and pay the Special Forces. And to do that we need to have a strong economy that generates enough tax money. And to have that we need to a lot of commerce, which requires the use of petroleum. I'd be willing to bet there's a strong correlation between oil-consumption and tax revenue.
So why pick on SUVs as if oil consumption for SUVs is evil, as opposed to other oil consumption? Simply, because they block your view and disrupt your parking and generally annoy you in many ways. But you can't really get on your soap box and build yourself a noble cause out of fighting something that is just annoying -- you have to fight something that is immoral. Thus, the effort to ally SUV drivers with terrorists.
That's why I would consider actually buying one; just out of righteous indignation towards the righteously indignant.
But I was going to talk about the Auto Show.
I attended the Auto Show as part of a marketing project put on by a company called Gongos Associates, who were quite obviously employed by GM. My mission was to spend time evaluating three exhibits and responding to survey questions about them. In return I would get free admission, $8 for parking, and $75 for my trouble. The Saturn, Pontiac and GM Advance Tech exhibit were assigned to me. I suppose there is relationship between me getting those exhibits and the fact that I recently bought a Toyota Camry, but I cannot fathom what it is.
The results of my evaluation: Saturn had a very cool setup. Terminals where you could build your own car (virtually, of course) and they had a rotating platform with seating -- about the only place in the entire show that had seats. But the cars remain some of the most plain vanilla vehicles ever produced. [Update: still true. - dam]
Judging from the Pontiac display, they are about to go the way of Oldsmobile. Nothing much to show, no razzle dazzle, and pretty dour looking employees. They had a couple of things that looked like video games, but I don't think they actually did anything except play a video when you sat in them. Weird. [update: Despite the short-lived G8, I still maintain there is no reason for Pontiac to exist. - dam]
The GM Advanced Tech exhibit had one interesting tech demonstration -- a Drive by Wire car. Drive by Wire basically means all inputs are computer controlled. For example, when you hit the gas, instead of a mechanical link to the carburetor or fuel injection system, a sensor measures the pressure you exert and transmits an electronic signal to tell the fuel system how hard to kick it up. Similarly, instead of a mechanical link between the front wheels and the steering wheel, desired changes in direction are transmitted electronically. The effect is that control is much more consistent and precise, and there are safeguards built in to stop you from doing something stupid, like causing a spin out. Think of it as anti-lock brakes in the extreme. Advanced military aircraft have had this for years. It's a much better use of modern technology than, say, voice recognition. Have you ever spoken to a machine? I don't know about you, but I'd feel like a complete tool sitting in traffic and talking to my car.
Other than that there was nothing special at the tech exhibit. There was a truck standing up on four hydraulic lifts being jostled around, and an engine being run under various stressful conditions. These were designed to demonstrate how committed GM is to testing and quality -- despite their reputation -- thanks mostly to Cadillac, which is always bringing up the rear in any quality surveys. [Caddy's doing better these days. -dam] Speaking of Cadillac, they had a sofa sized, 16 cylinder, 1000-HP engine on display. Terrorists praised Allah.
With my assigned duties completed I was able to spend time wandering the rest of the show. As I said, SUVs are on the way out. The new big things are station wagons, which were last seen as new big things in the '60s. These new-breed station wagons have a little SUV influence. They are a little taller and sit a little higher of the ground than normal cars, but they don't go anywhere near the extreme of SUVs with their truck pretensions.
I like these nouveau wagons. They are technically referred to as Crossovers, as in they cross-over the line between cars and SUVs. They come in all shapes and sizes, and offer a good deal of character. Despite the commonality of the station wagon, the designs vary considerably.
Getting a lot of attention was the BMW xActive, which had a number of interesting features, not including the cutesy high-tech name. Along the same lines is the Infiniti FX45. There's even the Maserati Kubang. These are meant to meld the look and vibe of quality sports cars with the practicality of the station wagons. They are quite fetching, and I would consider getting one, but I'm afraid I would have to become a player first -- you know, read GQ, buy art deco kitchen appliances, hit on women at Starbucks, and so forth.
Some crossovers are just funky cool -- the Dodge Kahuna for example, although I would never buy a Chrysler product for quality reasons (I know three people who have had Chrysler products spontaneously combust). Equally funky and fun is the Honda Element. Yeah it looks goofy, but it's my kind of goofy. Of all the cars I saw, this was the one I would have possibly purchased over my Camry, had it been available at the time. [Not a bad call - dam]
Of course there was plenty of extravagance out on display also. Daimler introduced the Maybach. At 330,000 simoleans, the target audience is those who find the top of the line Mercedes too downscale. The Maybach was placed in the middle of a large platform behind velvet ropes and under high security -- the peasants were allowed to view from afar, not touch. Problem: even from afar you could tell that the Maybach is just plain ugly.
Less expensive but equally ugly is the entire line of Cadillacs. Sorry, but that toothy grill and those chrome encircled headlights make me think of a dorky looking guy with thick glasses and braces. In their commercials, they always show these freaky things in contrast to beautiful tail-finned classic Caddies from the '50s. Talk about advertising your faults. [Not a good call - dam]
These cars are for people who are long on money and short on taste. They are the automotive equivalent of Anna Nicole.
Is the Auto Show a good time? Yeah, sort of. It could be. There are lots of shiny cars to see and sit in. There are big flashy displays. There are smiling spokesmodels. On the other hand, it's crowded all the time. You might think mid-afternoon on a weekday would be less popular, but no -- it is always filled with people.
It would be fun to casually walk through for about an hour or so, but that's it -- unless you had another purpose: you were actually in the market for a car or you were with some friends and planning on dinner and gambling afterwards at Greektown. Absent something like that, it really becomes just a big auto showroom that you must survive the squalorous insanity of Detroit to reach.
How to make it better? Have it in the summer -- outside (or at least open air), give it twice as much space and locate it somewhere you can actually get to without having to adopt an eat-or-be-eaten mindset to survive.
Until then, I'll pass on future Auto Shows, unless I get offered a lot more than $75.
Originally posted 1/25/2003
In the days before I attended the North American Auto Show, there was a minor dust-up going on about this article wherein some English journalist trashes Detroit.
"This is the biggest annual motoring festival in the United States but is held in the bleak and frozen inner-city wasteland that is Detroit. They advise you not to go out alone after dark in the centre, not that you can walk far in Motor City, where the pavement is a mere add-on to the wide roads and the cold freezes your breath on your lips."
The good people of Detroit loosened the thick woolen scarves from around their faces to shout in outrage. They fumed behind their triple locked doors. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who gives new meaning to the term Black Irish) dashed off an angry letter to the London Times in protest. Detroit may be a fiscal mess, but he has his priorities. How dare they?
Now, I'm generally delighted to lambaste some euro-weenie who takes the opportunity to dis' things over here. After all, what business does this clown have denigrating the weather? Does he miss the year-round sunshine and balmy North Sea breezes of England?
But sadly, I'm on his side with regards to Detroit. Many, many people, including some of my friends, bristle when someone complains about Detroit. It just the reputation, they say, in reality it's not that bad.
Well, I'm sorry, but it is that bad. Oh I know, you can have some fun -- Greektown is fine and there are casinos and new stadiums and so forth. But that all misses the point.
While much of the country has experienced significant drops in violent crime, Detroit has always been one of the most dangerous cities. It may not be the murder capital of the nation anymore, but I bet it has never slipped out of the top five.
It is dirty and run down everywhere you look. They may have built a glistening new stadium, Comerica Park, yet directly across the street is a building that has been abandoned for ten years, covered with boarded-up windows and graffiti.
The infrastructure is atrocious. The People Mover? Don't make me laugh. As transportation it is only slightly more effective than the horsey ride outside of Wal-Mart. Streets lead off in seemingly random directions and it's not like you have any signs you can follow. Basically, you should not drive in Detroit unless you already know how to drive in Detroit.
The civil servants rival those of Washington D.C. for discourteous deportment.
Example 1: Naturally, due to the Auto Show, traffic was a mess down there -- bumper to bumper. At one point someone to the left of me needed to cut across in front of me to the right lane so that he could make a right turn. I let him through, but before he could make the turn he found himself being berated by some traffic cop for cutting across lanes. Now, there was no danger here, no one was going more than half a mile-per-hour. The guy was probably from out of town, just struggling to find his way around. But if you are a Detroit traffic cop, why pass up the opportunity to get in someone's face?
Example 2: I'm in a throng of people, now about 27 minutes into a wait on the People Mover platform. We have all been shepherded back a safe distance from the tracks by a transit worker. One couple is trying to keep their little kids under control but, bored from standing around for almost a half-hour, one of them breaks free and crosses a couple of feet out beyond the safe distance. The transit worker shouts, "Now I'm not a babysitter! You are going to have to keep those kids under control!" Even as a veteran of many trips to Washington D.C., the capitol of dismissive rudeness, I was amazed at the manner of these people at a time when the city should have been on its best behavior.
When you point things like this out to Detroit defenders, they say "that's just one bad experience" or "all cities are like that" or the classic, "it's not that bad." The underlying assumption is that everyone is just reacting to an unfair reputation. Despite all the statistics and all the experiences that make people flee Detroit, the powers behind the city proclaim it's really just an erroneous perception. So the response is to use public money for enormous rebuilding projects and to run PR campaigns claiming that Detroit is on the road to Renaissance and everyone should lend a hand.
Detroit has been rebuilding for the entirety of my adult life. Businesses are regularly duped or guilted or bribed into locating downtown, only to find that no one wants to work down there. Yet you can always find someone to appear on the local news express indignation at any belittling of the city, invariably invoking the phrase, "it's not that bad."
Yes, it is that bad. You can build all the bright shiny monoliths tax money can buy and they will still be outnumbered by the boarded up edifices between them. You can put on sporting events and festivals and auto shows, but people are still treated rudely, and every visitor to Detroit has the crime rate in the back of his mind.
Pretty buildings and public relations do not make it better. Convincing a lot of people to say "it's not that bad" doesn't make it better. The only thing that will make it better is to actually make it better in reality, not just words and facades.
But I was going to talk about the Auto Show.
One thing I noticed was, in contrast to the outside world, the Auto Show was not dominated by enormous SUVs.
I dislike SUVs. They are gaudy and crass. They block your view at almost every turn. They cause you to have to back out of your parking space blind. What's worse, the only way to see beyond them is to buy an SUV yourself. They are like an automotive virus.
And yet, if I was still in the market for a new car I would consider buying one just to irritate people who feel that SUVs help terrorists. That has to be one of the silliest, most poorly reasoned opinions I have ever heard. The supposition that oil consumption "helps terrorists" is ludicrous. By that way of thinking, if we did away with all petroleum based products and lived in caves, we might impoverish the terrorists to the point where they had to live in caves. That's terribly inefficient. It is more efficient, and less troublesome, to pay for the A-10s and Special Forces to make the terrorists live in caves. And to do that we need to buy the A-10s and pay the Special Forces. And to do that we need to have a strong economy that generates enough tax money. And to have that we need to a lot of commerce, which requires the use of petroleum. I'd be willing to bet there's a strong correlation between oil-consumption and tax revenue.
So why pick on SUVs as if oil consumption for SUVs is evil, as opposed to other oil consumption? Simply, because they block your view and disrupt your parking and generally annoy you in many ways. But you can't really get on your soap box and build yourself a noble cause out of fighting something that is just annoying -- you have to fight something that is immoral. Thus, the effort to ally SUV drivers with terrorists.
That's why I would consider actually buying one; just out of righteous indignation towards the righteously indignant.
But I was going to talk about the Auto Show.
I attended the Auto Show as part of a marketing project put on by a company called Gongos Associates, who were quite obviously employed by GM. My mission was to spend time evaluating three exhibits and responding to survey questions about them. In return I would get free admission, $8 for parking, and $75 for my trouble. The Saturn, Pontiac and GM Advance Tech exhibit were assigned to me. I suppose there is relationship between me getting those exhibits and the fact that I recently bought a Toyota Camry, but I cannot fathom what it is.
The results of my evaluation: Saturn had a very cool setup. Terminals where you could build your own car (virtually, of course) and they had a rotating platform with seating -- about the only place in the entire show that had seats. But the cars remain some of the most plain vanilla vehicles ever produced. [Update: still true. - dam]
Judging from the Pontiac display, they are about to go the way of Oldsmobile. Nothing much to show, no razzle dazzle, and pretty dour looking employees. They had a couple of things that looked like video games, but I don't think they actually did anything except play a video when you sat in them. Weird. [update: Despite the short-lived G8, I still maintain there is no reason for Pontiac to exist. - dam]
The GM Advanced Tech exhibit had one interesting tech demonstration -- a Drive by Wire car. Drive by Wire basically means all inputs are computer controlled. For example, when you hit the gas, instead of a mechanical link to the carburetor or fuel injection system, a sensor measures the pressure you exert and transmits an electronic signal to tell the fuel system how hard to kick it up. Similarly, instead of a mechanical link between the front wheels and the steering wheel, desired changes in direction are transmitted electronically. The effect is that control is much more consistent and precise, and there are safeguards built in to stop you from doing something stupid, like causing a spin out. Think of it as anti-lock brakes in the extreme. Advanced military aircraft have had this for years. It's a much better use of modern technology than, say, voice recognition. Have you ever spoken to a machine? I don't know about you, but I'd feel like a complete tool sitting in traffic and talking to my car.
Other than that there was nothing special at the tech exhibit. There was a truck standing up on four hydraulic lifts being jostled around, and an engine being run under various stressful conditions. These were designed to demonstrate how committed GM is to testing and quality -- despite their reputation -- thanks mostly to Cadillac, which is always bringing up the rear in any quality surveys. [Caddy's doing better these days. -dam] Speaking of Cadillac, they had a sofa sized, 16 cylinder, 1000-HP engine on display. Terrorists praised Allah.
With my assigned duties completed I was able to spend time wandering the rest of the show. As I said, SUVs are on the way out. The new big things are station wagons, which were last seen as new big things in the '60s. These new-breed station wagons have a little SUV influence. They are a little taller and sit a little higher of the ground than normal cars, but they don't go anywhere near the extreme of SUVs with their truck pretensions.
I like these nouveau wagons. They are technically referred to as Crossovers, as in they cross-over the line between cars and SUVs. They come in all shapes and sizes, and offer a good deal of character. Despite the commonality of the station wagon, the designs vary considerably.
Getting a lot of attention was the BMW xActive, which had a number of interesting features, not including the cutesy high-tech name. Along the same lines is the Infiniti FX45. There's even the Maserati Kubang. These are meant to meld the look and vibe of quality sports cars with the practicality of the station wagons. They are quite fetching, and I would consider getting one, but I'm afraid I would have to become a player first -- you know, read GQ, buy art deco kitchen appliances, hit on women at Starbucks, and so forth.
Some crossovers are just funky cool -- the Dodge Kahuna for example, although I would never buy a Chrysler product for quality reasons (I know three people who have had Chrysler products spontaneously combust). Equally funky and fun is the Honda Element. Yeah it looks goofy, but it's my kind of goofy. Of all the cars I saw, this was the one I would have possibly purchased over my Camry, had it been available at the time. [Not a bad call - dam]
Of course there was plenty of extravagance out on display also. Daimler introduced the Maybach. At 330,000 simoleans, the target audience is those who find the top of the line Mercedes too downscale. The Maybach was placed in the middle of a large platform behind velvet ropes and under high security -- the peasants were allowed to view from afar, not touch. Problem: even from afar you could tell that the Maybach is just plain ugly.
Less expensive but equally ugly is the entire line of Cadillacs. Sorry, but that toothy grill and those chrome encircled headlights make me think of a dorky looking guy with thick glasses and braces. In their commercials, they always show these freaky things in contrast to beautiful tail-finned classic Caddies from the '50s. Talk about advertising your faults. [Not a good call - dam]
These cars are for people who are long on money and short on taste. They are the automotive equivalent of Anna Nicole.
Is the Auto Show a good time? Yeah, sort of. It could be. There are lots of shiny cars to see and sit in. There are big flashy displays. There are smiling spokesmodels. On the other hand, it's crowded all the time. You might think mid-afternoon on a weekday would be less popular, but no -- it is always filled with people.
It would be fun to casually walk through for about an hour or so, but that's it -- unless you had another purpose: you were actually in the market for a car or you were with some friends and planning on dinner and gambling afterwards at Greektown. Absent something like that, it really becomes just a big auto showroom that you must survive the squalorous insanity of Detroit to reach.
How to make it better? Have it in the summer -- outside (or at least open air), give it twice as much space and locate it somewhere you can actually get to without having to adopt an eat-or-be-eaten mindset to survive.
Until then, I'll pass on future Auto Shows, unless I get offered a lot more than $75.
Originally posted 1/25/2003
Thursday, January 01, 2009
The Month That Was - December 2008
The Month That Was - December 2008: Kiss another year goodbye, so I'm starting to think about projects for next year. I need to start getting this place (this site) organized and sorted out. First, all the media I review are now going to get their own posts rather than doing "flick notes" and "reading roundups". This will make it easier for folks to zero in on things when they do web searches. Second, I want to get all the travel reports that are linked to the left worked into the actual blog, so I will likely be editing and reposting them as "travel rewinds" or something like that, and getting all the pictures up on SmugMug; the goal is to get all the content in the blog or on SmugMug, again for the sake of searching and linking.
My writing projects are to either finish Misspent Youth and/or my top secret other project, and to get Apple Pie and Business as Usual formatted for the Kindle. Figure I'll finish about half of everyting I want done.
Right now Michigan is swirl of dead tree brown and salt road grey. The only remedy, of course, is travel planning. But that'll wait until the new year.
The End of Vegas?
Book Look: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Book Look: Europe's Last Summer
Book Look: Last Night at the Lobster
The Decline and Fall of HBO
Christmas in New York
Football (With Regrets)
My writing projects are to either finish Misspent Youth and/or my top secret other project, and to get Apple Pie and Business as Usual formatted for the Kindle. Figure I'll finish about half of everyting I want done.
Right now Michigan is swirl of dead tree brown and salt road grey. The only remedy, of course, is travel planning. But that'll wait until the new year.
The End of Vegas?
Book Look: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Book Look: Europe's Last Summer
Book Look: Last Night at the Lobster
The Decline and Fall of HBO
Christmas in New York
Football (With Regrets)
The End of Vegas?
The End of Vegas?: For I don't know how many years now I have spent my Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. (Photos on SmugMug.)I don't know whether it's me or the city, but I simply don't feel the excitement I used to feel going there. Bill Simmons once wrote that there are three places in the U.S. where just being there makes you feel like you're in a movie: Manhattan, Bourbon Street, and the Vegas Strip. But familiarity takes all that away. I don't get those feelings anymore after multiple visits, especially in Vegas.
I used to get geeked up for blackjack sessions, but once I mastered basic strategy it became rote (plus they started getting all namby-pamby on the rules like shortening the payouts for a blackjack). I tried the other table games, mostly just to have had the experience, but again, once I had done it I didn't feel compelled to continue. Poker was good for a while, and it can be a stimulating challenge; on the other hand, I don't ever recall being at a poker table that was fun (like a good blackjack table). The only gambling left for me is NFL betting.
Likewise, I've experienced the other aspects of Vegas life now. I was never truly interested in clubbing, other than as an observer of humanity. They are generally horrible places where if you want to sit you have to buy $400 table service otherwise you get to stand and order $15 drinks provided you can elbow your way to the bar. No conversation can be had over the music. The shows can be fun, but how many Cirque du Soliels can you see before they start to run together in a colorful blur? Gentlemen's clubs? Even the best come off as seamy.
So now I tend to haunt the sports books and visit my favorite restaurants -- Vegas has not let me down food-wise. It's hard to imagine more great food concentrated in walking distance than you get on the Strip. The big new development since I was last on the Strip is the Palazzo, which is an addition to the Venetian. It has its own upscale shopping mall and its own canals and some truly top notch restaurants, the best of which was Carnevino, Mario Batali's Italian Steakhouse. I forwent steak and had the Ravioli Di Stracotto, a duck liver ravioli in a balsamic sauce. It may have been the single most tasty thing I have ever eaten in my life. Also at Palazzo is Cut, Wolfgang Puck's steakhouse where I snacked on some tasty steak tartare, and Woo, a nouveau Asian spot with an awesome ginger chicken dumpling appetizer (I did a lot of snacking around, rather than big meals). I indulged in sushi and sake for the first time in ages; it was a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
Generally with respect to the Strip I know where I want to go and what I want to eat and who I want to bet on. As a result, two nights on the strip was just about right. Friday morning, when the masses were flowing into the city for the long weekend I was on my way out, headed toward San Diego.
There are two paths to San Diego from Las Vegas. One is to head westward towards L.A. and then swing south just before you get into the meat of Los Angeles. That's the fast way -- maybe 5 hours. The other option is to head south out of Vegas, through the desert. Once outside the city, the landscape goes barren fast. In Michigan we often find ourselves dodging squirrels and chipmunks as they dart through traffic in pursuit of God knows what. South of Vegas, you see a little critter making its way across the road and by the time you get up to it, you realize it's a tarantula. Three times I sped past these hairy beasts, all eight legs working to get them across the tarmac. Ick.
These long straight roads take you through the Mojave Desert and skirt Joshua Tree National Park. Apart from the tarantulas, all that exists are a few dusty little towns and a few outdoorsy resorts geared toward four-wheeling (which looks like an awful lot of fun). Then, after a few hours, civilization suddenly reappears in all its glory. Resort communities spring up fully-formed and golf course-green: Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Desert Hot Springs, etc. The whole area exists as a way for west coasters to get away from urban life and escape to "The Desert". (We have a similar habit here in Michigan we call "Going Up North".) The streets are all lined with symmetric rows of palm trees while BMWs and Lexuses weave in and out of the gated communities and country clubs. These folks have more money than God, and play more golf than Him, too.
I only had time to stop for a late lunch in Palm Desert, but I was thinking it would surely be nice to hang there. I took a brief walk up El Paseo, which looks to be the Main Street of Palm Desert -- shops, restaurants, etc. -- and had a nice al fresco lunch at City Grill, then it was off to meet Chevy Chase and Ted Knight on the first tee at Bushwood. Actually, it was back on the road to San Diego.
And this is where taking the road less travelled paid off. Exiting Palm Desert you find yourself on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail for a brief period, which entails snaking through hairpin turns up through astounding photo-worthy mountain passes. It turns out that locked between the shiny worlds of Las Vegas and L.A. are some strikingly scenic high desert vistas. From there on it's a dash down from the peaks to the coast and into San Diego, or more specifically, Del Mar.
I have never "gotten" Los Angeles. I know it is supposed to be paradigmatic of Southern California and its praises are raised in story and song, but I don't see the attraction, relatively speaking. If you are not in the film industry, or angling to get in, I see absolutely no reason anyone would prefer L.A. to San Diego. I find San Diego to be about the most beautiful large city I have ever seen. It is a city of easy charm versus the teeth gritted smile of Los Angeles.
North of San Diego sits the famed suburb of La Jolla, and just beyond that sits Del Mar -- possibly a bit downscale from La Jolla, but equally beautiful if not more so. The first time I was in San Diego, several years ago on business, on my one free day I rented a car and asked the desk jockey where he would go if he had one day at the beach. He said would go to Del Mar which, in his opinion, had the most beautiful beach in Southern California. I took his advice back then, and this time I went back. I have to admit that I have kind of fallen in love with Del Mar.
Del Mar seems nothing more than a little surfside town with a main shopping and dining area and a couple of state parks along the shoreline. There is a famous racetrack there, and Torrey Pines Park, which constitute its main public attractions, but my impression is the vibe is still that of a small, beach community. I snagged a decent room at the Best Western Stratford Inn, which is a five minute walk to the bluff overlooking the beach. You walk down a very pretty little side street and come to a set of railroad tracks over the shore along which runs Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner service, from San Diego all the way up past L.A. to San Luis Obispo (gotta try that sometime). You can walk north along the bluff looking down on the beach (or climbing down to hit the surf), eventually the bluff slopes down and merges with the beach proper at Powerhouse Park, where everyone gathers for the sunset. Me, I could have hung out shooting pictures all day and fantasizing about learning to surf.
San Diego proper is only a few minutes away and my only full day free was dominated by a visit to Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. I had picked the perfect day, it was sunny and not too hot. I managed to be one of the first into the zoo and got to enjoy it before it got too crowded. The SD Zoo is an exceptionally well-designed place. Most all the critters are easily viewable, the exception being the pandas, for which the viewing line was ludicrously long from the opening of the gates. They have foot-saving busses that run throughout the park and an aerial tram that takes you from the far end back to the entrance.
Outside the Zoo are the other attractions of Balboa Park which is, effectively, a museum campus -- Art, Photography, Air & Space, History (both natural and manmade), Cultural this and that -- all with a certain local angle to them. The grounds are nicely landscaped. It is a place where San Diegans go to promenade on a sunny afternoon. I snagged a bite to eat from one of the cart vendors and found a comfy spot on the lawn to watch the world go by for an hour or so in the late afternoon. I do awfully like San Diego. And in my visits (maybe 4 of them over the years) I have just scratched the surface.
After a sunset photo shoot and a quick dinner back in Del Mar, I was up the next morning and headed back towards Vegas. In an effort to save time I took the road more traveled back. Ugly gray freeway all the way; hideous truck stop towns outside L.A.; a bizarre place called Primm just inside the Nevada border that looked like a parody of commercialism: a huge flashy casino and outlet mall in the middle of a barren desert. And for the hundreds of miles from L.A. to just outside Vegas the traffic was stop and go in the other direction as the folks I passed on the way out Friday were returning to the West Coast from their long holiday weekends. What a living hell for them: After a grueling Thanksgiving with the annoying relatives, you crawl through traffic, turkey-nauseated, to the Vegas strip, spend the weekend overpaying for your room, overeating in buffets, and losing your shirt in blackjack or on the slots, then you claw your way back to L.A. at a snail's pace. Thank you, God, for making me a contrarian.
I closed out my trip on the outskirts of Vegas at the Red Rock Resort. I chose Red Rock for three reasons: 1) I could easily make the run into the strip to collect on my NFL bets (I broke roughly even), 2) it is about the nearest place to Red Rock Canyon State Park, and 3) it was supposed to be beautiful. All three were true. Red Rock Resort has a sweet pool area and would probably be a killer spot to hang in the summer when pool time is an option. The rooms are big and awesome with high-def flat screens and gigantic marble bathrooms. There are a ton of restaurants on the property; you could have a decent trip if you never left the resort. But that would be silly because Red Rock Canyon is only 7 miles away.
Red Rock Canyon is called that because it is dominated by a canyon of reddish rock, go figure. But there really is a good deal of geological diversity in relatively small area (it's barely a blip on the map relative to major national parks). Technically it is not a National Park, but a National Conservation Area, which I believe differs from a park in that there are minimal facilities and maintenance. Basically it's just a chunk of land that no one is allowed to develop. There is a 13-mile one way road through the place with a visitor's center at the start. There are a handful of parking areas and overlooks, each with a primitive restroom and a trash can. From many of the stops there are hiking trails through various regions, generally starting from the road and heading into the canyonland.
I took off for a quick hike through an area called the Calico Tanks, and promptly found myself off the trail, with no idea where I had lost it. This is par for the course considering my hiking habits and usually I pass it off to my congenital trailblindness, but this time I cut myself some slack in that these are some very poorly marked trails over and around boulders; I think it would be tough for even experienced hikers to keep on these trails.
The good news is that I was able to make my way fairly deep into the crevices and recesses of the canyon. Surrounded by towering walls of red boulders, it was eerily dark and astoundingly quiet. The only sounds came from within the strewn-about thickets where birds engaged in periodic screeching matches. I am not particularly aware of what might be termed the "spiritual essence" of a place, but some combination of isolation, security, silence, and the cool desert air inside that canyon made me feel as though I was in some sort of secret hiding place.
Apparently a fit chap with some time on his hands could make his way all the way to the top of the ridge, scrambling up large boulders the whole way, no special rock climbing skills needed. I debated finding my way back to the car to drop off my Nikon then doing just that, but decided against it. I wanted to see the rest of the park. As it was, I still got to do a good deal of rock-hopping, followed by crab-walking down the steeper parts just finding my way back to the trail. Good fun; definitely lined up for a return visit. The remainder of the road loop is lovely and offers some decent desert hiking, just not the drama of the red rocks proper.
So that's how I spent my Thanksgiving. Despite my misgivings above, I'll likely go back next year. Even if the Strip is fading in esteem, Vegas offers all the opportunity I need to Southwest exploration. I still have never been to the Grand Canyon or Hoover Dam (damn contrarian). Besides, by next year Wynn's Encore and MGM's City Center will be open, and I have to see those. There's plenty of opportunity left for giving thanks in Sin City.
Photos on SmugMug.
I used to get geeked up for blackjack sessions, but once I mastered basic strategy it became rote (plus they started getting all namby-pamby on the rules like shortening the payouts for a blackjack). I tried the other table games, mostly just to have had the experience, but again, once I had done it I didn't feel compelled to continue. Poker was good for a while, and it can be a stimulating challenge; on the other hand, I don't ever recall being at a poker table that was fun (like a good blackjack table). The only gambling left for me is NFL betting.
Likewise, I've experienced the other aspects of Vegas life now. I was never truly interested in clubbing, other than as an observer of humanity. They are generally horrible places where if you want to sit you have to buy $400 table service otherwise you get to stand and order $15 drinks provided you can elbow your way to the bar. No conversation can be had over the music. The shows can be fun, but how many Cirque du Soliels can you see before they start to run together in a colorful blur? Gentlemen's clubs? Even the best come off as seamy.
So now I tend to haunt the sports books and visit my favorite restaurants -- Vegas has not let me down food-wise. It's hard to imagine more great food concentrated in walking distance than you get on the Strip. The big new development since I was last on the Strip is the Palazzo, which is an addition to the Venetian. It has its own upscale shopping mall and its own canals and some truly top notch restaurants, the best of which was Carnevino, Mario Batali's Italian Steakhouse. I forwent steak and had the Ravioli Di Stracotto, a duck liver ravioli in a balsamic sauce. It may have been the single most tasty thing I have ever eaten in my life. Also at Palazzo is Cut, Wolfgang Puck's steakhouse where I snacked on some tasty steak tartare, and Woo, a nouveau Asian spot with an awesome ginger chicken dumpling appetizer (I did a lot of snacking around, rather than big meals). I indulged in sushi and sake for the first time in ages; it was a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
Generally with respect to the Strip I know where I want to go and what I want to eat and who I want to bet on. As a result, two nights on the strip was just about right. Friday morning, when the masses were flowing into the city for the long weekend I was on my way out, headed toward San Diego.
There are two paths to San Diego from Las Vegas. One is to head westward towards L.A. and then swing south just before you get into the meat of Los Angeles. That's the fast way -- maybe 5 hours. The other option is to head south out of Vegas, through the desert. Once outside the city, the landscape goes barren fast. In Michigan we often find ourselves dodging squirrels and chipmunks as they dart through traffic in pursuit of God knows what. South of Vegas, you see a little critter making its way across the road and by the time you get up to it, you realize it's a tarantula. Three times I sped past these hairy beasts, all eight legs working to get them across the tarmac. Ick.
These long straight roads take you through the Mojave Desert and skirt Joshua Tree National Park. Apart from the tarantulas, all that exists are a few dusty little towns and a few outdoorsy resorts geared toward four-wheeling (which looks like an awful lot of fun). Then, after a few hours, civilization suddenly reappears in all its glory. Resort communities spring up fully-formed and golf course-green: Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Desert Hot Springs, etc. The whole area exists as a way for west coasters to get away from urban life and escape to "The Desert". (We have a similar habit here in Michigan we call "Going Up North".) The streets are all lined with symmetric rows of palm trees while BMWs and Lexuses weave in and out of the gated communities and country clubs. These folks have more money than God, and play more golf than Him, too.
I only had time to stop for a late lunch in Palm Desert, but I was thinking it would surely be nice to hang there. I took a brief walk up El Paseo, which looks to be the Main Street of Palm Desert -- shops, restaurants, etc. -- and had a nice al fresco lunch at City Grill, then it was off to meet Chevy Chase and Ted Knight on the first tee at Bushwood. Actually, it was back on the road to San Diego.
And this is where taking the road less travelled paid off. Exiting Palm Desert you find yourself on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail for a brief period, which entails snaking through hairpin turns up through astounding photo-worthy mountain passes. It turns out that locked between the shiny worlds of Las Vegas and L.A. are some strikingly scenic high desert vistas. From there on it's a dash down from the peaks to the coast and into San Diego, or more specifically, Del Mar.
I have never "gotten" Los Angeles. I know it is supposed to be paradigmatic of Southern California and its praises are raised in story and song, but I don't see the attraction, relatively speaking. If you are not in the film industry, or angling to get in, I see absolutely no reason anyone would prefer L.A. to San Diego. I find San Diego to be about the most beautiful large city I have ever seen. It is a city of easy charm versus the teeth gritted smile of Los Angeles.
North of San Diego sits the famed suburb of La Jolla, and just beyond that sits Del Mar -- possibly a bit downscale from La Jolla, but equally beautiful if not more so. The first time I was in San Diego, several years ago on business, on my one free day I rented a car and asked the desk jockey where he would go if he had one day at the beach. He said would go to Del Mar which, in his opinion, had the most beautiful beach in Southern California. I took his advice back then, and this time I went back. I have to admit that I have kind of fallen in love with Del Mar.
Del Mar seems nothing more than a little surfside town with a main shopping and dining area and a couple of state parks along the shoreline. There is a famous racetrack there, and Torrey Pines Park, which constitute its main public attractions, but my impression is the vibe is still that of a small, beach community. I snagged a decent room at the Best Western Stratford Inn, which is a five minute walk to the bluff overlooking the beach. You walk down a very pretty little side street and come to a set of railroad tracks over the shore along which runs Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner service, from San Diego all the way up past L.A. to San Luis Obispo (gotta try that sometime). You can walk north along the bluff looking down on the beach (or climbing down to hit the surf), eventually the bluff slopes down and merges with the beach proper at Powerhouse Park, where everyone gathers for the sunset. Me, I could have hung out shooting pictures all day and fantasizing about learning to surf.
San Diego proper is only a few minutes away and my only full day free was dominated by a visit to Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. I had picked the perfect day, it was sunny and not too hot. I managed to be one of the first into the zoo and got to enjoy it before it got too crowded. The SD Zoo is an exceptionally well-designed place. Most all the critters are easily viewable, the exception being the pandas, for which the viewing line was ludicrously long from the opening of the gates. They have foot-saving busses that run throughout the park and an aerial tram that takes you from the far end back to the entrance.
Outside the Zoo are the other attractions of Balboa Park which is, effectively, a museum campus -- Art, Photography, Air & Space, History (both natural and manmade), Cultural this and that -- all with a certain local angle to them. The grounds are nicely landscaped. It is a place where San Diegans go to promenade on a sunny afternoon. I snagged a bite to eat from one of the cart vendors and found a comfy spot on the lawn to watch the world go by for an hour or so in the late afternoon. I do awfully like San Diego. And in my visits (maybe 4 of them over the years) I have just scratched the surface.
After a sunset photo shoot and a quick dinner back in Del Mar, I was up the next morning and headed back towards Vegas. In an effort to save time I took the road more traveled back. Ugly gray freeway all the way; hideous truck stop towns outside L.A.; a bizarre place called Primm just inside the Nevada border that looked like a parody of commercialism: a huge flashy casino and outlet mall in the middle of a barren desert. And for the hundreds of miles from L.A. to just outside Vegas the traffic was stop and go in the other direction as the folks I passed on the way out Friday were returning to the West Coast from their long holiday weekends. What a living hell for them: After a grueling Thanksgiving with the annoying relatives, you crawl through traffic, turkey-nauseated, to the Vegas strip, spend the weekend overpaying for your room, overeating in buffets, and losing your shirt in blackjack or on the slots, then you claw your way back to L.A. at a snail's pace. Thank you, God, for making me a contrarian.
I closed out my trip on the outskirts of Vegas at the Red Rock Resort. I chose Red Rock for three reasons: 1) I could easily make the run into the strip to collect on my NFL bets (I broke roughly even), 2) it is about the nearest place to Red Rock Canyon State Park, and 3) it was supposed to be beautiful. All three were true. Red Rock Resort has a sweet pool area and would probably be a killer spot to hang in the summer when pool time is an option. The rooms are big and awesome with high-def flat screens and gigantic marble bathrooms. There are a ton of restaurants on the property; you could have a decent trip if you never left the resort. But that would be silly because Red Rock Canyon is only 7 miles away.
Red Rock Canyon is called that because it is dominated by a canyon of reddish rock, go figure. But there really is a good deal of geological diversity in relatively small area (it's barely a blip on the map relative to major national parks). Technically it is not a National Park, but a National Conservation Area, which I believe differs from a park in that there are minimal facilities and maintenance. Basically it's just a chunk of land that no one is allowed to develop. There is a 13-mile one way road through the place with a visitor's center at the start. There are a handful of parking areas and overlooks, each with a primitive restroom and a trash can. From many of the stops there are hiking trails through various regions, generally starting from the road and heading into the canyonland.
I took off for a quick hike through an area called the Calico Tanks, and promptly found myself off the trail, with no idea where I had lost it. This is par for the course considering my hiking habits and usually I pass it off to my congenital trailblindness, but this time I cut myself some slack in that these are some very poorly marked trails over and around boulders; I think it would be tough for even experienced hikers to keep on these trails.
The good news is that I was able to make my way fairly deep into the crevices and recesses of the canyon. Surrounded by towering walls of red boulders, it was eerily dark and astoundingly quiet. The only sounds came from within the strewn-about thickets where birds engaged in periodic screeching matches. I am not particularly aware of what might be termed the "spiritual essence" of a place, but some combination of isolation, security, silence, and the cool desert air inside that canyon made me feel as though I was in some sort of secret hiding place.
Apparently a fit chap with some time on his hands could make his way all the way to the top of the ridge, scrambling up large boulders the whole way, no special rock climbing skills needed. I debated finding my way back to the car to drop off my Nikon then doing just that, but decided against it. I wanted to see the rest of the park. As it was, I still got to do a good deal of rock-hopping, followed by crab-walking down the steeper parts just finding my way back to the trail. Good fun; definitely lined up for a return visit. The remainder of the road loop is lovely and offers some decent desert hiking, just not the drama of the red rocks proper.
So that's how I spent my Thanksgiving. Despite my misgivings above, I'll likely go back next year. Even if the Strip is fading in esteem, Vegas offers all the opportunity I need to Southwest exploration. I still have never been to the Grand Canyon or Hoover Dam (damn contrarian). Besides, by next year Wynn's Encore and MGM's City Center will be open, and I have to see those. There's plenty of opportunity left for giving thanks in Sin City.
Photos on SmugMug.
Book Look: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Book Look: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami: I've written about Murakami's fiction before. I'm a big fan. I confess I didn't know he was such a dedicated runner. And this book is a short, quick reading, deceptively simple memoir about his avocation. He talks about how he runs, where he runs, when he runs, and most interestingly, what he thinks about why he runs. There is nothing special about this book beyond the fact that it is exceptionally personal -- a rare thing for the somewhat withdrawn Murakami. Over the years, he had just recorded his thoughts about running and has followed them to a deeper understanding of himself and the world, and organized them into this book. It is not profound in any way, but there is a sort of elegiac quality to the resigned acceptance of things. If you run, you will almost certainly identify with some of the sentiments. If you don't, you probably will too.
Book Look: Europe's Last Summer
Book Look: Europe's Last Summer by David Fromkin: I have always had an odd fascination for WW1, specifically the events surrounding its outset. The romantic view of WW1 is that, apart from being a horrific from a military standpoint, it was a clean demarcation of modernity. Although the old order had been crumbling from within for decades, the Great War was the nail in the coffin. It ushered in the world we know and love by kicking off the bloodiest century in human history.
That's cynical comment, but not inaccurate. Modernity has brought us in the West very good lives for the most part, but there is also much we have lost, as Fromkin reminds us early on when he notes that in the summer before the war it was possible to travel anywhere without a passport, take up residence anywhere with no documentation, and generally live wherever and however you wanted with little or no interaction with any governmental authority whatsoever. Although there has been undeniable scientific and industrial progress, and there has arguably been a good deal of social progress in some quarters, those simple freedoms are gone from us now and likely never to return. How did this happen? Or put another way, who or what really started WW1?
Fromkin does a bang up job of incorporating relatively recent scholarship into his analysis. This is the sort of stuff that wasn't really known when I was memorizing WW1 facts in junior high school. (And now that it is known, the topic is likely no longer in public school curricula.) As revisionism goes, this is very mild. It's more of a clarification -- a well-reasoned expansion of context. In the end Fromkin concludes that the culpability rests primarily with the German General Staff. However, he also notes a striking bit of irony. As events tumbled toward finality, the only ones who could have and would have likely stopped them were two paragons of the old order, living parodies of obnoxious monarchs, Archduke Franz Ferdinand (by then assassinated) and Kaiser Wilhelm II (effectively neutered by the German political establishment). Modernity was born of blood not from the death throes of the old order, but from self-inflicted wounds.
That's cynical comment, but not inaccurate. Modernity has brought us in the West very good lives for the most part, but there is also much we have lost, as Fromkin reminds us early on when he notes that in the summer before the war it was possible to travel anywhere without a passport, take up residence anywhere with no documentation, and generally live wherever and however you wanted with little or no interaction with any governmental authority whatsoever. Although there has been undeniable scientific and industrial progress, and there has arguably been a good deal of social progress in some quarters, those simple freedoms are gone from us now and likely never to return. How did this happen? Or put another way, who or what really started WW1?
Fromkin does a bang up job of incorporating relatively recent scholarship into his analysis. This is the sort of stuff that wasn't really known when I was memorizing WW1 facts in junior high school. (And now that it is known, the topic is likely no longer in public school curricula.) As revisionism goes, this is very mild. It's more of a clarification -- a well-reasoned expansion of context. In the end Fromkin concludes that the culpability rests primarily with the German General Staff. However, he also notes a striking bit of irony. As events tumbled toward finality, the only ones who could have and would have likely stopped them were two paragons of the old order, living parodies of obnoxious monarchs, Archduke Franz Ferdinand (by then assassinated) and Kaiser Wilhelm II (effectively neutered by the German political establishment). Modernity was born of blood not from the death throes of the old order, but from self-inflicted wounds.
Book Look: Last Night at the Lobster
Book Look: Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan: What a perfect slice of life. Manny is the manager of a Red Lobster on its last day of business. The outlet is closing and Manny is being transferred to a nearby Olive Garden (and taking a corresponding demotion to Assistant Manager). Things are complicated by the fact that a massive snowstorm is upon them so the place is empty, and that he can select five employees to bring with him to Olive Garden, then rest get to pound the pavement for a new job. Things are further complicated because Manny is still hopelessly infatuated with one of the waitresses to the point of having elevated their erstwhile affair into heavenly bliss.
Among its many virtues, Lobster gets the whole day in the life of a franchise restaurant dead on perfect. An old chain restaurant employee (such as myself) cannot stop nodding in recognition at virtually every setting and all the little actions and attitudes that fill the day. Although I worry those details may make things seem a bit slow going for folks not familiar with that life.
The bigger achievement is the portrayal of Manny. An underachieving, aging, everyman with an excess of belly that disturbs him and a longing to recapture the one passionate time in his life. Manny is a true believer. It's the last day the restaurant will be open, but he is going through the processes and following the guidelines as best he can, all the while understanding and honoring of the disinterest of other employees. He soldiers on trying to do the right and responsible thing when it doesn't count a whit if the place is open or closed or clean or filthy. He hopes by hanging on to paychecks he can keep enough staff from deserting so he can stay open, but whatever chance there was for a solid final performance is lost in the debilitating snowstorm. He's down to a skeleton crew of folks who are really just hanging out to help him through the end.
The final insult comes when a bus load of seniors show up and he's convinced they can do one last heroic act to get them served and satisfied, except all they want is to make use of the bathroom and get back on the road. Manny laments his lost chance to do something special, mirroring his lament for his lost lover. Only for the briefest moment does he sense that the fact that some staff actually stuck it out to closing, despite already having their checks, despite being terminated the next day, despite simply not caring about their jobs, for no reason other than to support him, counts as a special achievement. It's an act of gratitude that he has earned over the years for his basic honorability despite the negativity and disappointment of his staff.
There are millions of people like Manny out there. They have lost any pretense of their own special value, without anything hope for passion or greatness, yet they press on, working hard and being responsible because it is the right thing to do and because they know no other way. They are the finest of the faithful. All they can hope for is some marginal form of justice in the end; meanwhile dirtbags, deviants, and sore thumbs get their stories told and wallow in their own infamy.
Well done Stewart O'Nan! More people should write books like this.
Among its many virtues, Lobster gets the whole day in the life of a franchise restaurant dead on perfect. An old chain restaurant employee (such as myself) cannot stop nodding in recognition at virtually every setting and all the little actions and attitudes that fill the day. Although I worry those details may make things seem a bit slow going for folks not familiar with that life.
The bigger achievement is the portrayal of Manny. An underachieving, aging, everyman with an excess of belly that disturbs him and a longing to recapture the one passionate time in his life. Manny is a true believer. It's the last day the restaurant will be open, but he is going through the processes and following the guidelines as best he can, all the while understanding and honoring of the disinterest of other employees. He soldiers on trying to do the right and responsible thing when it doesn't count a whit if the place is open or closed or clean or filthy. He hopes by hanging on to paychecks he can keep enough staff from deserting so he can stay open, but whatever chance there was for a solid final performance is lost in the debilitating snowstorm. He's down to a skeleton crew of folks who are really just hanging out to help him through the end.
The final insult comes when a bus load of seniors show up and he's convinced they can do one last heroic act to get them served and satisfied, except all they want is to make use of the bathroom and get back on the road. Manny laments his lost chance to do something special, mirroring his lament for his lost lover. Only for the briefest moment does he sense that the fact that some staff actually stuck it out to closing, despite already having their checks, despite being terminated the next day, despite simply not caring about their jobs, for no reason other than to support him, counts as a special achievement. It's an act of gratitude that he has earned over the years for his basic honorability despite the negativity and disappointment of his staff.
There are millions of people like Manny out there. They have lost any pretense of their own special value, without anything hope for passion or greatness, yet they press on, working hard and being responsible because it is the right thing to do and because they know no other way. They are the finest of the faithful. All they can hope for is some marginal form of justice in the end; meanwhile dirtbags, deviants, and sore thumbs get their stories told and wallow in their own infamy.
Well done Stewart O'Nan! More people should write books like this.
The Decline and Fall of HBO
The Decline and Fall of HBO: I suppose True Blood was OK. That is to say, it's not worth watching other than as a mild distraction. The concept of vampires as an oppressed minority with religious and quasi-right wing human supremacist forces out to get them is about as heavy-handed and conceptually confused as anything I have seen. It also appears to have no actual point. Beyond that, True Blood is a generic combo of soap opera and murder mystery, just add vampires. Attempts at humor are not particularly funny. Attempts at suspense are not particularly arresting. Attempts at romance descend into dull pseudo-porn. Producer Alan Ball's reputation now rests on American Beauty, an overwrought movie which gets exponentially worse with age; Six Feet Under, which had one great season, and one good one, and also has no staying power; and the shrug-inducing True Blood.
(By the way: I am already sick to death of frickin' vampires. Let's declare a moratorium on any more vampire crap. Let the undead rest in peace for a while, wouldja?)
A better pointless time waster is Entourage because it doesn't profess to be anything more than tissue-thin and therefore doesn't require the effort to be disappointed, and you only end up wasting 30 minutes instead of an hour. Plus, there is always The Piven to liven things up.
Upcoming for HBO is a sitcom called Hung and I refuse to describe the premise, but you can probably guess. I'll just say that if you are one of those people who believes TV is a lurid cesspool, you're about to get a reload of ammo, as if you needed it. All this is made more poignant because they have just re-run the final season of the finest TV show ever made, Deadwood.
I know some people claim The Wire to be best, but they are wrong. That show's source of brilliance was the treatment of the series as a contemporary Greek Tragedy, but it was marred by the very contemporary setting it so valued. In the end outside forces like David Simon's axe grinding weighed heavily on it, and I grew to sense an uncomfortable voyeurism, as if it a certain class of elitist progressives were gawking at the portrayal of some horrible primitives, while congratulating themselves on their broad-minded evaluations. The ambition for social relevance inevitably makes the living reaction to the show part of the experience; "contemporary" is a double-edged sword. I rank The Wire at #3.
The Sopranos also bears mentioning, but to be honest, it was 6+ seasons when it should have been about 4. There were stretches that were carried almost entirely by James Gandolfini. However, it benefitted supremely from Matt Weiner's subtle and honest insights into humanity (now obvious thanks to Mad Men). The characters were as deep and the relationships as complex as any ever created. The Sopranos comes in at #2.
Deadwood rises above the others simply by the scope of its ambition. The Wire was about impotence in the face of a cold-hearted, dehumanizing system. The Sopranos was about the lies we tell ourselves and how we work to preserve them. Excellent and timeless themes, no doubt; well-plumbed throughout the history of the arts. But Deadwood was about how civilization emerges from barbarism. Go find examples of that anywhere else in the arts or humanities. Forgive me if I don't wait. If it wasn't totally original, it was pretty rare. And I'll wager anything you do find in a similar vein is mawkishly simple in comparison. More likely you'll find high-minded expositions about how we are no different from savages.
But more than that is the language. As far as I know Deadwood is the only TV show, and one of the few recent works of drama in any form, to use the English language in something other than a utilitarian, realistic way. The dialogue had a rhythm and tone all its own -- it approached having a meter. People spoke in complete sentences and paragraphs. There were regularly soliloquies. All of this was intermixed with some of the most poetic profanity imaginable. I know the gangsters and gangstas in the other two shows had the lingo right for their idioms, but that was for the sake of genuineness. The dialogue in Deadwood wasn't aiming to be genuine; it was aiming to be beautiful. And it was. Just an amazing work of art.
Deadwood never got a chance to end, because it was more important to have time slots for something like Hung. Where once HBO had the balls to greenlight epic drama, they now only have the balls to greenlight epic genitals.
(By the way: I am already sick to death of frickin' vampires. Let's declare a moratorium on any more vampire crap. Let the undead rest in peace for a while, wouldja?)
A better pointless time waster is Entourage because it doesn't profess to be anything more than tissue-thin and therefore doesn't require the effort to be disappointed, and you only end up wasting 30 minutes instead of an hour. Plus, there is always The Piven to liven things up.
Upcoming for HBO is a sitcom called Hung and I refuse to describe the premise, but you can probably guess. I'll just say that if you are one of those people who believes TV is a lurid cesspool, you're about to get a reload of ammo, as if you needed it. All this is made more poignant because they have just re-run the final season of the finest TV show ever made, Deadwood.
I know some people claim The Wire to be best, but they are wrong. That show's source of brilliance was the treatment of the series as a contemporary Greek Tragedy, but it was marred by the very contemporary setting it so valued. In the end outside forces like David Simon's axe grinding weighed heavily on it, and I grew to sense an uncomfortable voyeurism, as if it a certain class of elitist progressives were gawking at the portrayal of some horrible primitives, while congratulating themselves on their broad-minded evaluations. The ambition for social relevance inevitably makes the living reaction to the show part of the experience; "contemporary" is a double-edged sword. I rank The Wire at #3.
The Sopranos also bears mentioning, but to be honest, it was 6+ seasons when it should have been about 4. There were stretches that were carried almost entirely by James Gandolfini. However, it benefitted supremely from Matt Weiner's subtle and honest insights into humanity (now obvious thanks to Mad Men). The characters were as deep and the relationships as complex as any ever created. The Sopranos comes in at #2.
Deadwood rises above the others simply by the scope of its ambition. The Wire was about impotence in the face of a cold-hearted, dehumanizing system. The Sopranos was about the lies we tell ourselves and how we work to preserve them. Excellent and timeless themes, no doubt; well-plumbed throughout the history of the arts. But Deadwood was about how civilization emerges from barbarism. Go find examples of that anywhere else in the arts or humanities. Forgive me if I don't wait. If it wasn't totally original, it was pretty rare. And I'll wager anything you do find in a similar vein is mawkishly simple in comparison. More likely you'll find high-minded expositions about how we are no different from savages.
But more than that is the language. As far as I know Deadwood is the only TV show, and one of the few recent works of drama in any form, to use the English language in something other than a utilitarian, realistic way. The dialogue had a rhythm and tone all its own -- it approached having a meter. People spoke in complete sentences and paragraphs. There were regularly soliloquies. All of this was intermixed with some of the most poetic profanity imaginable. I know the gangsters and gangstas in the other two shows had the lingo right for their idioms, but that was for the sake of genuineness. The dialogue in Deadwood wasn't aiming to be genuine; it was aiming to be beautiful. And it was. Just an amazing work of art.
Deadwood never got a chance to end, because it was more important to have time slots for something like Hung. Where once HBO had the balls to greenlight epic drama, they now only have the balls to greenlight epic genitals.
Christmas in New York
Christmas in New York: I flew into DC to meet Miss Kate and we took the Amtrak up to NYC for Christmas Day. We quickly came to the realization that the traditional Christmas, where a family stays in huddled around the tree, is long gone. The streets were packed. Rockefeller Center was packed stem to stern with cops directing the foot traffic. It was simply astounding how many people were scurrying about. We walked up toward Central Park and tried to get into the Oak Room in the Plaza for a drink -- no go. We finally found some respite from the crowds in Central Park itself which was quite lovely even in bare-treed winter, although that too took a little bit of seeking out the path less travelled. There was even a line for the horse and carriage rides.
With sundown approaching we made our way to the Lobby Bar in the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle for a pre-dinner drink. Stylish and expensive, don't bother unless you have some green. Drinks are twenty bucks each. Next we made it to BLT Market in the Ritz-Carlton for a very tasty, if somewhat overpriced dinner; eight dollars for a cup of tea and they add in a 20% gratuity on a table of 2 -- shameful, but that's the Big Apple. Then it was time for the train ride back to DC. A short but enjoyable adventure that was appropriately festive and certainly beat the hell out of sitting home watching old movies.
The next day we hit the newly renovated Smithsonian Museum of American History and it was filled to the brim; folks lined up outside just about every exhibit. Sheesh. So we made our way over to the Freer/Sackler museum of Asian Art, a real hidden gem and deceptively large. I like Asian art and one nice thing about the Freer/Sackler Museum is that it is never crowded. Currently there is a big exhibit on Indian art that was fascinating in many ways, but with all the wandering of the previous day, my feet were throbbing. After a last beer in Crystal City, Kate dropped me at Reagan National and I was winging my way home.
Travelling on holidays can be good, but it works best if you are heading away from standard tourist destinations. My ultimate lesson for the holiday season: It pays to be a contrarian.
Photos on SmugMug.
With sundown approaching we made our way to the Lobby Bar in the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle for a pre-dinner drink. Stylish and expensive, don't bother unless you have some green. Drinks are twenty bucks each. Next we made it to BLT Market in the Ritz-Carlton for a very tasty, if somewhat overpriced dinner; eight dollars for a cup of tea and they add in a 20% gratuity on a table of 2 -- shameful, but that's the Big Apple. Then it was time for the train ride back to DC. A short but enjoyable adventure that was appropriately festive and certainly beat the hell out of sitting home watching old movies.
The next day we hit the newly renovated Smithsonian Museum of American History and it was filled to the brim; folks lined up outside just about every exhibit. Sheesh. So we made our way over to the Freer/Sackler museum of Asian Art, a real hidden gem and deceptively large. I like Asian art and one nice thing about the Freer/Sackler Museum is that it is never crowded. Currently there is a big exhibit on Indian art that was fascinating in many ways, but with all the wandering of the previous day, my feet were throbbing. After a last beer in Crystal City, Kate dropped me at Reagan National and I was winging my way home.
Travelling on holidays can be good, but it works best if you are heading away from standard tourist destinations. My ultimate lesson for the holiday season: It pays to be a contrarian.
Photos on SmugMug.
Football (With Regrets)
Football (With Regrets): I can't do it. I can't make it through the whole year without writing about football. Sorry, but the Dolphins won their division (by a tie-breaker, but still) and in the process slammed the door on that insufferable diva, Brett Favre. That cannot go unnoted.
I knew I was going to have withdrawal over giving up my NFL column, but you can't imagine the self-control it took not to go off on novel-length savaging of Lord Favre when he was doing his little golly-I-changed-my-mind-about-retiring-why-are-you-being-so-mean-to-me episode at the outset of the season. Favre has always been overrated and manipulative, but he finally reached Terrell Owens level selfishness.
In case you don't remember, the Packers, having already named Aaron Rodgers as the starting QB before the King decided to Return, did the honorable thing and kept their promise to a guy who patiently waited in the wings all those years while The Diva was padding his consecutive start streak. They offered Brett the back-up job, even though he would be a locker room cancer at that point. Playing second fiddle was, as you can guess, intolerable to Ms. Hilton...er, I mean Brett Favre.
So after all the wheedling and whinnying, His Lordship ended up on traded to the Jets. Having landed His Royal Brettness, the Jets summarily shipped their previous starting QB, Chad Pennington, to lowly 1-15 Miami, where this supposed mediocrity would mingle with existing mediocrities and offer no sort of threat to the Jets, even though they are in the same division. Favre must have been in hog heaven at that point. Not only did he have all the attention he could ever want, but he had the reputations of two other QBs (Rodgers and Pennington) hinging on his performance. Imagine the boundless self-validation of wielding such influence.
In the beginning of the season, things were going exactly as planned. The Jets were winning and sports journalists were trumpeting the glory of Lord Favre across the land. The Jets were brilliant and Favre was a true-life superhero. Still, even with Brett at his high point, there were flaws that were apparent to anyone who follows closely. You have no idea how many times I came close to punching out a column at that point, but I would have needed to new keyboard for every paragraph from hitting the keys so hard.
Readers who kept up with my erstwhile football column will remember that there are rules for having a winning football team. The first rule is: The Offensive Line is the Most Important Part of Your Team. That rule doesn't really have much bearing since the Jets O-line was marginally better than average. The second rule is: A Reliable, Consistent and Accurate Quarterback is better that a Star that Makes Big Plays. That does apply.
Another thing readers of my football column will recall is that I that place a lot of faith the cold, heartless statistical analysis that comes from Football Outsiders. That analysis indicated for most of the year, that Favre was putting up a less than middle-of the-road year at best. He was benefitting from a ridiculously easy schedule more than anything (as was all the AFC East). Meanwhile, down in Miami, where mediocrity was supposed to rule the day, the Fins were hanging in there with Jets and the Pats for the division lead, and Chad Pennington was putting together an outstanding season, albeit with roughly the same easy schedule benefit.
But it was still all about Favre -- he may throw an interception for every touchdown, but he's a game changer. You're never out of the game if Brett is your QB. Just knowing he's behind center raises the play of the entire team. God how I hate that nonsense. You can imagine how frustrating it was for me to watch that crap. And for a while it looked like injustice would be served as the Jets had the postseason in sight.
Sometimes, however, even in this chaotic world of chance and happenstance, things work out the way they are should. It seems that all the praise and puffery couldn't mask the truth forever. The Jets began to crumble. True to his history, the King of Intangibles started winging the ball to the guys in the wrong jerseys. In week 13 Favre could only manage 17 points against the Broncos, who were sporting the second worst defense in the NFL since 1995 (again, per Football Outsiders -- the 2008 Broncos are second only to the 2008 Lions). In week 16, against the craptastic Seattle Seahawks who had nothing to play for, he couldn't even manage a touchdown.
Down south, the Dolphins were still plugging away with Pennington doing what he always does (when he's not injured) -- being accurate, sticking to the plan, following his progressions, not wasting passes, and never drawing attention to himself. The Fins won four straight going into week 17, including 3 on the road. AS a result, they were in the driver's seat for the final week showdown with the Jets, a match heightened by Pennington's returning to the place he was cast out of for "someone better".
When truth, justice and beauty all coincide, it's a rare and wonderful thing to behold. The Fins played smart and steady. Chad completed 73% of his passes with 2 TDs and no interceptions. Brett completed only 50% with a single TD and 3 big ol' gunslinger interceptions. His final desperate pass of the game, and possibly his career, was an illegal forward lateral. In the immortal words of Nelson: Ha Ha.
So the Fins deservedly get the playoff berth and The Diva gets to go home and contemplate his next dramatic episode. Back in Green Bay Aaron Rodgers had a fine year, finishing as a top ten QB (per Football Outsiders), but the Pack simply didn't have anything go their way. Their play-by-play performance suggested they should have ended up with nine-ish wins -- instead they got six. Look for a big rebound next year as the statistical flukery reverts to the mean. That'll cook the Legend of Gunslinger for good.
In the fallout, the Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum, having discarded a better QB for a worse one and costing themselves a postseason berth, needed a fall guy. One of the only-hinted-at issues of the Jets season was a simmering conflict between the coach, Eric Mangini, who is a system guy, and The Diva, who didn't like to be told what to do or how to play. Mangini would sometimes question The Diva on his improvised decision-making. This is Something You Do Not Do To His Brettness and Tannenbaum had to side with Brett or admit he messed up by making the trade in the first place. Mangini was fired after the game. You live by The Brett, you die by The Brett.
The whole story is just 900 kinds of awesome. I wish I had written about it now, so I could look back at all the doubters and say "Neener, neener, neener"!
I knew I was going to have withdrawal over giving up my NFL column, but you can't imagine the self-control it took not to go off on novel-length savaging of Lord Favre when he was doing his little golly-I-changed-my-mind-about-retiring-why-are-you-being-so-mean-to-me episode at the outset of the season. Favre has always been overrated and manipulative, but he finally reached Terrell Owens level selfishness.
In case you don't remember, the Packers, having already named Aaron Rodgers as the starting QB before the King decided to Return, did the honorable thing and kept their promise to a guy who patiently waited in the wings all those years while The Diva was padding his consecutive start streak. They offered Brett the back-up job, even though he would be a locker room cancer at that point. Playing second fiddle was, as you can guess, intolerable to Ms. Hilton...er, I mean Brett Favre.
So after all the wheedling and whinnying, His Lordship ended up on traded to the Jets. Having landed His Royal Brettness, the Jets summarily shipped their previous starting QB, Chad Pennington, to lowly 1-15 Miami, where this supposed mediocrity would mingle with existing mediocrities and offer no sort of threat to the Jets, even though they are in the same division. Favre must have been in hog heaven at that point. Not only did he have all the attention he could ever want, but he had the reputations of two other QBs (Rodgers and Pennington) hinging on his performance. Imagine the boundless self-validation of wielding such influence.
In the beginning of the season, things were going exactly as planned. The Jets were winning and sports journalists were trumpeting the glory of Lord Favre across the land. The Jets were brilliant and Favre was a true-life superhero. Still, even with Brett at his high point, there were flaws that were apparent to anyone who follows closely. You have no idea how many times I came close to punching out a column at that point, but I would have needed to new keyboard for every paragraph from hitting the keys so hard.
Readers who kept up with my erstwhile football column will remember that there are rules for having a winning football team. The first rule is: The Offensive Line is the Most Important Part of Your Team. That rule doesn't really have much bearing since the Jets O-line was marginally better than average. The second rule is: A Reliable, Consistent and Accurate Quarterback is better that a Star that Makes Big Plays. That does apply.
Another thing readers of my football column will recall is that I that place a lot of faith the cold, heartless statistical analysis that comes from Football Outsiders. That analysis indicated for most of the year, that Favre was putting up a less than middle-of the-road year at best. He was benefitting from a ridiculously easy schedule more than anything (as was all the AFC East). Meanwhile, down in Miami, where mediocrity was supposed to rule the day, the Fins were hanging in there with Jets and the Pats for the division lead, and Chad Pennington was putting together an outstanding season, albeit with roughly the same easy schedule benefit.
But it was still all about Favre -- he may throw an interception for every touchdown, but he's a game changer. You're never out of the game if Brett is your QB. Just knowing he's behind center raises the play of the entire team. God how I hate that nonsense. You can imagine how frustrating it was for me to watch that crap. And for a while it looked like injustice would be served as the Jets had the postseason in sight.
Sometimes, however, even in this chaotic world of chance and happenstance, things work out the way they are should. It seems that all the praise and puffery couldn't mask the truth forever. The Jets began to crumble. True to his history, the King of Intangibles started winging the ball to the guys in the wrong jerseys. In week 13 Favre could only manage 17 points against the Broncos, who were sporting the second worst defense in the NFL since 1995 (again, per Football Outsiders -- the 2008 Broncos are second only to the 2008 Lions). In week 16, against the craptastic Seattle Seahawks who had nothing to play for, he couldn't even manage a touchdown.
Down south, the Dolphins were still plugging away with Pennington doing what he always does (when he's not injured) -- being accurate, sticking to the plan, following his progressions, not wasting passes, and never drawing attention to himself. The Fins won four straight going into week 17, including 3 on the road. AS a result, they were in the driver's seat for the final week showdown with the Jets, a match heightened by Pennington's returning to the place he was cast out of for "someone better".
When truth, justice and beauty all coincide, it's a rare and wonderful thing to behold. The Fins played smart and steady. Chad completed 73% of his passes with 2 TDs and no interceptions. Brett completed only 50% with a single TD and 3 big ol' gunslinger interceptions. His final desperate pass of the game, and possibly his career, was an illegal forward lateral. In the immortal words of Nelson: Ha Ha.
So the Fins deservedly get the playoff berth and The Diva gets to go home and contemplate his next dramatic episode. Back in Green Bay Aaron Rodgers had a fine year, finishing as a top ten QB (per Football Outsiders), but the Pack simply didn't have anything go their way. Their play-by-play performance suggested they should have ended up with nine-ish wins -- instead they got six. Look for a big rebound next year as the statistical flukery reverts to the mean. That'll cook the Legend of Gunslinger for good.
In the fallout, the Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum, having discarded a better QB for a worse one and costing themselves a postseason berth, needed a fall guy. One of the only-hinted-at issues of the Jets season was a simmering conflict between the coach, Eric Mangini, who is a system guy, and The Diva, who didn't like to be told what to do or how to play. Mangini would sometimes question The Diva on his improvised decision-making. This is Something You Do Not Do To His Brettness and Tannenbaum had to side with Brett or admit he messed up by making the trade in the first place. Mangini was fired after the game. You live by The Brett, you die by The Brett.
The whole story is just 900 kinds of awesome. I wish I had written about it now, so I could look back at all the doubters and say "Neener, neener, neener"!
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Month That Was - November 2008
The Month That Was - November 2008: Little to say except that I continue to cross days off the calendar with no obvious end in sight. This droning on gets worse when the weather gets cold, and frankly, I think we are in for a blistering cold winter this year. I've seriously considered taking up cross-country skiing this year, if we get enough snow -- just to get out and stay fit.
All this is compounded by the fact that each year for the past three my company has reduced the amount of vacation time you can carry over from year to year. This year we are down to carrying a single week -- 40 hours -- which means that if I decide to make a January or February run for the sun I will have to be extra judicious in my plans for the remainder of the year. Long gone are the days when I would have five or six weeks banked and be able to head off into the wild as the feeling moved me.
Not that it will stop me. I will weasel whatever I need to get out of town -- leverage floating holidays, get "sick" at the right time, and so forth. But the travel time security blanket is gone.
I should mention that as I write this I am winging my way towards Vegas and points west for my traditional Thanksgiving trip. That write up will have to wait until next month. This month you get my Florida trip report, including pictures posted on my new Smugmug account (hooray!), which is like Flickr only classier. I'll work on getting some of my old stuff up there too. It's much easier to look at the galleries than clicking links through individually. Plus it gives me chance to tag them and for complete strangers to find them and point and laugh.
Remembering the Forgotten Coast
Inside the Glove
Pale Fire
Flick Notes
All Things Must Pass
All this is compounded by the fact that each year for the past three my company has reduced the amount of vacation time you can carry over from year to year. This year we are down to carrying a single week -- 40 hours -- which means that if I decide to make a January or February run for the sun I will have to be extra judicious in my plans for the remainder of the year. Long gone are the days when I would have five or six weeks banked and be able to head off into the wild as the feeling moved me.
Not that it will stop me. I will weasel whatever I need to get out of town -- leverage floating holidays, get "sick" at the right time, and so forth. But the travel time security blanket is gone.
I should mention that as I write this I am winging my way towards Vegas and points west for my traditional Thanksgiving trip. That write up will have to wait until next month. This month you get my Florida trip report, including pictures posted on my new Smugmug account (hooray!), which is like Flickr only classier. I'll work on getting some of my old stuff up there too. It's much easier to look at the galleries than clicking links through individually. Plus it gives me chance to tag them and for complete strangers to find them and point and laugh.
Remembering the Forgotten Coast
Inside the Glove
Pale Fire
Flick Notes
All Things Must Pass
Remembering the Forgotten Coast
Remembering the Forgotten Coast: An extra, extra long weekend gave me the opportunity to head down to Sarasota again, for a quick visit with family, then off to explore more of Florida. I should have the State just about covered by the time I die. This trip I was to head up into the Panhandle -- commonly known as the Redneck Riviera. Photos are on Smugmug.
An el cheapo flight from AirTran got me into Tampa (apropos of nothing, it was one of the final domestic flights that did not charge for checked baggage, which is a rant I have already howled), and to the Hertz check in desk where they didn't have the car I requested. I wanted a mid-sized car with Sirius since I was going to be on the road for a good bit of time. As expected they offered me an upgrade, but not to a full sized car. They offered me a Mustang GT, which counts as an upgrade even though it is stiflingly cramped because, presumably, it is really fast and tasteless bimbos will think you are a player. I really had no interest but the next grade up was a Ford Edge, which would have been fine, but they wouldn't give me that upgrade for free. So if I wanted Sirius, I had to take the cherry red Ford Mustang GT or pay more than I had intended. I took the Mustang and put Hertz on my ever growing list of bastards.
I will say this for the Mustang, it steers very precisely and it is exceedingly quick. The power would have been lost on me but the first time I pulled out on a two lane road to pass a semi and hit the accelerator -- whoa Nellie! You could get whiplash on that downshift.
Anyway, Sarasota remains Sarasota. It is a strikingly beautiful city. And the sun is always shining. And the trip across the bridge to the Longboat Key is worth the price of the trip. The other thing about Sarasota is that there is a ton of stuff to do there. I've spent a huge amount of time there over the years and I still find new experiences. This time it was Mote Aquarium. A great place to spend a couple of hours with the embalmed giant squid, the shark tank, the pool where you can pet the rays, the hands-on crustacean exhibit, educational movies, boat tours into the bay, even the old-time ice cream parlor on the premises. Manned by a volunteer staff (mostly retirees), it's the sort of place Sarasota specializes in: low-key but top quality attractions that don't claim to be anything more than they are.
Family visit over, I aimed the Mustang toward the Forgotten Coast. Generally when one thinks of the Florida Panhandle, one thinks of the spring break madness at Panama City and the massive condo and resort development over into Destin and Pensacola. But the coast between Tampa and Panama City, which is essentially the hard left turn where you shift from peninsular Florida in to the Panhandle proper, remains largely underdeveloped. Traffic arteries move north from Tampa inland to Tallahassee and west towards Gainesville then down into Panama City, bypassing the easternmost panhandle for the most part. As a result the coastal towns in that area have taken to referring to themselves as the Forgotten Coast, which from east to west, includes the towns of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, Port St. Joe, and Mexico City Beach.
Two quick observations about this being the Redneck Riviera: A) It is. B) But it's not what you think.
There are a decreasing number of uniform places in this country. Despite a political class that likes to paint counties and even entire states in red or blue, I doubt you find a state that is more the 55% or so one way or the other. That means if you took a random sample of ten people from the most partisan state you could find you would still only likely get six people who conformed. At the county level maybe you'd get seven once in while. Which is to say you rarely go anywhere in the country and get overwhelmed with the prevailing socio-political sentiment. This being a couple of days before elections, it was pretty clear that the place was majorly McCainiacs, but there were still a healthy number of O-bots to balance them.
The other thing is that these places, like everywhere else you go, are gentrifying. Apalachicola was my first stop, and the social changes of the last decade or so are written all over it. From time immemorial, it had been a fishing village populated with back-slapping bubbas, now suddenly there is a stylish Cuban restaurant on main street and a Starbucks knock off -- which by the way happened to have the very best breakfast sandwich ever; unbelievably fresh and flaky croissants -- where the bubbas now backslap over $4 lattes. Those picture perfect old houses in the historic district are now trophy homes for wealthy northerners with fishing boats. But they all seem to be doing OK with it, from what I could tell. Everyone I happened to make eye contact with was delighted to start up a conversation about anything and everything, usually ending up with a suggestion about what a good place it was to live. Smarmy, small-minded northerners would probably freak-out at the good ol' boy drawl and neighborly familiarity and sneer at the simple rubes, but I sure saw nothing but a lot of decent, freindly folks living lives that urban elites fanaticize about -- which is why they are down here overpaying for all those historic fixer-uppers and opening upscale coffee bars and boutiques.
The big to-do in Apalachicola was the Florida Seafood Festival, a celebration of, well, seafood. Thousands come in to the little town from far and wide. A carnival is set up. Oysters are shucked and beers are poured on every corner. The day starts off at sunrise with the Red Fish Run, a friendly foot race of 5k through the historic district with a whopping 60 or 70 participants, including Yours Truly. What comes next is a lengthy, joyous parade featuring all the usual suspects -- community groups, high school bands and beauty queens, car dealers and politicians, Shriners in their little cars and pirates on their boat floats, all flinging candy to children along the way. When the sun warms up, the gates are open on the festival proper where any local restaurant worth its salt has a food booth set up; there are carnival rides, crab races, oyster eating contests, and live entertainment featuring both Country and Western music. It's generally well done, and everybody seems to have a good time. But I must say this: The folks in the panhandle no doubt are expert fishermen, but they have no clue how to cook what they catch. It is all battered and sauced and spiced beyond recognition. It's as if they took some beautiful fresh catch and made very attempt to make it taste like chicken fried steak.
My big discovery of the Seafood Festival was the music of Jim Morris -- basically a Jimmy Buffett disciple who plays around Florida. He wasn't actually there, there were just playing a collection of his called, appropriately, Seafood Platter over the loudspeakers. It's now on my Amazon wish list.
I wasn't actually staying in Apalachicola, though. The hotels were all booked up for the festival. I was staying further west in Port St. Joe, home of the renown St. Joseph State Park, which the renown Dr. Beach named best beach in the U.S., back in 2002. If you peruse that site a bit, you'll note that the good Dr. has a predilection for Gulf beaches -- not that I disagree, the beach further south in Naples is my benchmark, but I can attest to the total serene beauty of the beach at St. Joseph State Park. Although you would be unlikely to find it as deserted as I did, the fact that it is in a State park, that facilities are sparse and basic, that there is nothing commercial (especially beach bars or t-shirt huts) for miles, and that lodging is limited to campgrounds and rustic cabins, generally means you won't find you big beach partiers here. I think crossed paths with exactly one couple, and everyone else I saw was pretty much a speck in the distance. Nor will you find any discarded cans or bottles or Big Mac wrappers and such. Which is good because anything that would mar the quality of this beach, with its talcum power sand and wholly organic feel, would be criminal.
My final evening I made the hour drive to Panama City Beach just to see what all the fuss was. Panama City is where all the Deep South types go on spring break, so naturally the beach road was lined with bars and crap shops and liquor stores and tacky motels. I pulled into a monster sports bar to catch some of the Sunday games, and actually got a decent muffaletta, but at half-time I decided to duck out and head back to a dockside restaurant at the Port St. Joe Marina because I really wanted to spend my last evening in the open air rather than inhaling the moldy beer smell endemic to virtually every sports bar in existence.
I should have stayed. I snagged a seat at the bar at the marina only to find that they had such a completely basic cable TV package that they didn't even get the broadcast channels, so I couldn't see the Fins game. Then I ordered a beer and it turns out that the city of Port St. Joe is dry on Sunday. Great. So I got a game I didn't want to see and a Diet Coke. Whatever the case, I still got the sunset as the pictures attest.
Drive back was ugly -- I held to the secondary coast roads instead of the freeway. After the turn south into the pneninnsula things go full-on suburban fast and don't stop; an endless row of Home Depots, WalMarts, Targets, Best Buys, Publix, Applebees, Chilis -- for over a hundred miles (literally) (no literally literally). At Clearwater you can turn off down the bay road, but even there the shore is hidden by huge resorts. St. Pete/Clearwater has some very nice aspects and the beaches are stellar, but the bits and pieces of beauty seem rather swamped by concrete. It seems a million miles from sweet Apalachicola.
Here's hoping the Forgotten Coast stays that way.
An el cheapo flight from AirTran got me into Tampa (apropos of nothing, it was one of the final domestic flights that did not charge for checked baggage, which is a rant I have already howled), and to the Hertz check in desk where they didn't have the car I requested. I wanted a mid-sized car with Sirius since I was going to be on the road for a good bit of time. As expected they offered me an upgrade, but not to a full sized car. They offered me a Mustang GT, which counts as an upgrade even though it is stiflingly cramped because, presumably, it is really fast and tasteless bimbos will think you are a player. I really had no interest but the next grade up was a Ford Edge, which would have been fine, but they wouldn't give me that upgrade for free. So if I wanted Sirius, I had to take the cherry red Ford Mustang GT or pay more than I had intended. I took the Mustang and put Hertz on my ever growing list of bastards.
I will say this for the Mustang, it steers very precisely and it is exceedingly quick. The power would have been lost on me but the first time I pulled out on a two lane road to pass a semi and hit the accelerator -- whoa Nellie! You could get whiplash on that downshift.
Anyway, Sarasota remains Sarasota. It is a strikingly beautiful city. And the sun is always shining. And the trip across the bridge to the Longboat Key is worth the price of the trip. The other thing about Sarasota is that there is a ton of stuff to do there. I've spent a huge amount of time there over the years and I still find new experiences. This time it was Mote Aquarium. A great place to spend a couple of hours with the embalmed giant squid, the shark tank, the pool where you can pet the rays, the hands-on crustacean exhibit, educational movies, boat tours into the bay, even the old-time ice cream parlor on the premises. Manned by a volunteer staff (mostly retirees), it's the sort of place Sarasota specializes in: low-key but top quality attractions that don't claim to be anything more than they are.
Family visit over, I aimed the Mustang toward the Forgotten Coast. Generally when one thinks of the Florida Panhandle, one thinks of the spring break madness at Panama City and the massive condo and resort development over into Destin and Pensacola. But the coast between Tampa and Panama City, which is essentially the hard left turn where you shift from peninsular Florida in to the Panhandle proper, remains largely underdeveloped. Traffic arteries move north from Tampa inland to Tallahassee and west towards Gainesville then down into Panama City, bypassing the easternmost panhandle for the most part. As a result the coastal towns in that area have taken to referring to themselves as the Forgotten Coast, which from east to west, includes the towns of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, Port St. Joe, and Mexico City Beach.
Two quick observations about this being the Redneck Riviera: A) It is. B) But it's not what you think.
There are a decreasing number of uniform places in this country. Despite a political class that likes to paint counties and even entire states in red or blue, I doubt you find a state that is more the 55% or so one way or the other. That means if you took a random sample of ten people from the most partisan state you could find you would still only likely get six people who conformed. At the county level maybe you'd get seven once in while. Which is to say you rarely go anywhere in the country and get overwhelmed with the prevailing socio-political sentiment. This being a couple of days before elections, it was pretty clear that the place was majorly McCainiacs, but there were still a healthy number of O-bots to balance them.
The other thing is that these places, like everywhere else you go, are gentrifying. Apalachicola was my first stop, and the social changes of the last decade or so are written all over it. From time immemorial, it had been a fishing village populated with back-slapping bubbas, now suddenly there is a stylish Cuban restaurant on main street and a Starbucks knock off -- which by the way happened to have the very best breakfast sandwich ever; unbelievably fresh and flaky croissants -- where the bubbas now backslap over $4 lattes. Those picture perfect old houses in the historic district are now trophy homes for wealthy northerners with fishing boats. But they all seem to be doing OK with it, from what I could tell. Everyone I happened to make eye contact with was delighted to start up a conversation about anything and everything, usually ending up with a suggestion about what a good place it was to live. Smarmy, small-minded northerners would probably freak-out at the good ol' boy drawl and neighborly familiarity and sneer at the simple rubes, but I sure saw nothing but a lot of decent, freindly folks living lives that urban elites fanaticize about -- which is why they are down here overpaying for all those historic fixer-uppers and opening upscale coffee bars and boutiques.
The big to-do in Apalachicola was the Florida Seafood Festival, a celebration of, well, seafood. Thousands come in to the little town from far and wide. A carnival is set up. Oysters are shucked and beers are poured on every corner. The day starts off at sunrise with the Red Fish Run, a friendly foot race of 5k through the historic district with a whopping 60 or 70 participants, including Yours Truly. What comes next is a lengthy, joyous parade featuring all the usual suspects -- community groups, high school bands and beauty queens, car dealers and politicians, Shriners in their little cars and pirates on their boat floats, all flinging candy to children along the way. When the sun warms up, the gates are open on the festival proper where any local restaurant worth its salt has a food booth set up; there are carnival rides, crab races, oyster eating contests, and live entertainment featuring both Country and Western music. It's generally well done, and everybody seems to have a good time. But I must say this: The folks in the panhandle no doubt are expert fishermen, but they have no clue how to cook what they catch. It is all battered and sauced and spiced beyond recognition. It's as if they took some beautiful fresh catch and made very attempt to make it taste like chicken fried steak.
My big discovery of the Seafood Festival was the music of Jim Morris -- basically a Jimmy Buffett disciple who plays around Florida. He wasn't actually there, there were just playing a collection of his called, appropriately, Seafood Platter over the loudspeakers. It's now on my Amazon wish list.
I wasn't actually staying in Apalachicola, though. The hotels were all booked up for the festival. I was staying further west in Port St. Joe, home of the renown St. Joseph State Park, which the renown Dr. Beach named best beach in the U.S., back in 2002. If you peruse that site a bit, you'll note that the good Dr. has a predilection for Gulf beaches -- not that I disagree, the beach further south in Naples is my benchmark, but I can attest to the total serene beauty of the beach at St. Joseph State Park. Although you would be unlikely to find it as deserted as I did, the fact that it is in a State park, that facilities are sparse and basic, that there is nothing commercial (especially beach bars or t-shirt huts) for miles, and that lodging is limited to campgrounds and rustic cabins, generally means you won't find you big beach partiers here. I think crossed paths with exactly one couple, and everyone else I saw was pretty much a speck in the distance. Nor will you find any discarded cans or bottles or Big Mac wrappers and such. Which is good because anything that would mar the quality of this beach, with its talcum power sand and wholly organic feel, would be criminal.
My final evening I made the hour drive to Panama City Beach just to see what all the fuss was. Panama City is where all the Deep South types go on spring break, so naturally the beach road was lined with bars and crap shops and liquor stores and tacky motels. I pulled into a monster sports bar to catch some of the Sunday games, and actually got a decent muffaletta, but at half-time I decided to duck out and head back to a dockside restaurant at the Port St. Joe Marina because I really wanted to spend my last evening in the open air rather than inhaling the moldy beer smell endemic to virtually every sports bar in existence.
I should have stayed. I snagged a seat at the bar at the marina only to find that they had such a completely basic cable TV package that they didn't even get the broadcast channels, so I couldn't see the Fins game. Then I ordered a beer and it turns out that the city of Port St. Joe is dry on Sunday. Great. So I got a game I didn't want to see and a Diet Coke. Whatever the case, I still got the sunset as the pictures attest.
Drive back was ugly -- I held to the secondary coast roads instead of the freeway. After the turn south into the pneninnsula things go full-on suburban fast and don't stop; an endless row of Home Depots, WalMarts, Targets, Best Buys, Publix, Applebees, Chilis -- for over a hundred miles (literally) (no literally literally). At Clearwater you can turn off down the bay road, but even there the shore is hidden by huge resorts. St. Pete/Clearwater has some very nice aspects and the beaches are stellar, but the bits and pieces of beauty seem rather swamped by concrete. It seems a million miles from sweet Apalachicola.
Here's hoping the Forgotten Coast stays that way.
Inside the Glove
Inside the Glove: Things are getting dicey here in The Mitten. Actually, things have been dicey for quite a while. Now they are looking apocalyptic. Michigan, wracked with a contracting economy for years, now gets to feel the full force of the national recession as transmitted through the auto industry. An enormous number of jobs in Michigan are linked to cars and the ramifications of GM/Chrysler/Ford going belly up are huge. For the City of Detroit proper, it might be the end of the world.
That's not necessarily an argument for a bailout, though. If I were a narrow-minded political animal I would argue there is no option whatsoever and the loss of the U.S. auto industry would be dire for the nation. The fact that I have many, many friends facing real income consequences from this, and the ancillary affect it will have on everyone in these parts, means that I should feel that way. And I do, superficially. But, sadly, I have inflicted upon myself the habit of trying to see the big picture.
The number being tossed around is $34,000,000,000.00. Lots of zeros, there. Now let's say you're sitting in Ft. Lauderdale or Tucson or Eugene or Burlington. If the car oligopoly destructs, you're not going to see your friends trickle away in search of employment or see local strip malls abandoned. You probably drive a Toyota anyway. Why should you give those clowns shivering away in the Michigan winter any of your money, even if they call it a "loan" or a "bailout"? Didn't they get themselves in this predicament to begin with? Well, if that's how you feel, then were screwed (perhaps justly).
But suppose you do want to help out, the question then becomes what is the smartest way to spend your 34 billion. The auto industry wants you to give it to them, but what are you actually trying to achieve? Is the goal to keep the auto industry alive, or is it to assist the desperate people associated with it. Those are two very different things. What is magical about the auto industry that having it around means more than having that much more of some other industry? In other words, why is it better to prop up the auto industry rather than use the money to expand a different sector (or sectors) of the economy as a way to employ the ex-auto people?
This is why there is all the hemming and hawing about the future plans of the big-but-diminishing three. There is no point in providing 34 billion to the auto companies if it is going to go down the toilet for the UAW monopoly and the incompetent corporate bureaucracy, just so we can keep uncompetitive businesses going so folks don't have to adapt. That's not a loan or a bailout. That's welfare. If you give us the 34 big ones and we squander it trying to avoid adaptation, then the joke's on you.
On the other hand, if you give out the 34 billion to get us resituated in industries that are healthy and growing, thereby providing us security an avoiding us coming to you with our hands out again, you can declare victory. Yes, that massive proportion of the labor force all looking for employment would be traumatic, but 34 billion could sure help that along, couldn't it? Nobody wants their life turned upside down in relocation and have to assimilate in a new working environment, but I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.
The point is, it's not a simple binary choice: give the Big Three the money or the let everyone fend for themselves. There are options. There are outside the box strategies that may be better and may or may not include letting GM/Chrysler/Ford live on as they were.
Then there's the question of whether it is really good for Michigan to get the bailout at all. If the auto meltdown brings the reality of Detroit to the broader state, are we really better off getting 34 billion? What are the chances that we would be asking for another few billion in debt forgiveness every few years -- not competing in the market anymore but at the public trough, just so we can hang on a little while longer? Meanwhile, our taxes would shoot through the roof because fixing the roads and paying for the lousy school system would fall on a smaller and smaller number of people. The raise-taxes/lose-population death spiral would speed up (this death spiral has been present in Detroit for years). What, exactly, is the endgame and how do we get there so we can start over? I don't know. Perhaps it would never happen. Perhaps we would become wards of the federal government, like the District of Columbia. Perhaps we would end up burning the abandoned homes for heat and eating roadkill venison all winter. It's nice to think we are going to find a way to turn things around, but as much as I love Michigan, I see no evidence that there is that kind of foresight and ambition among the political leaders or the electorate. Whatever the endgame is, we will have to reach it before anything really changes.
Why am I so negative? Because I know what a lost cause looks like. I have seen Detroit "rebuilding" for the last half-century with less than nothing to show for it. Imagine the millions or billions of dollars that have been poured into that city over the past fifty years, all wasted in the name of trying to save the unsavable. Are the folks who appear in the pages of Detroit Blog really better off for having been caught the endlessly-fraying safety net for decades, rather than having bitten the bullet and started a new life in, say, Raleigh NC, 20 years ago?
Of course, I live in a sort of bubble. Ann Arbor has the insulation of University as its tax base, and I work as a software development manager for a company that serves the private financial and regulatory sector, so I have a very safe job. The only debt I have is on my condo and considering I would probably pay more in rent than I do in monthly mortgage and property taxes, I am in no trouble. Even the latest investment meltdown didn't alter my lifestyle. Now, I have had hard financial times in my past and I know very well what it's like to be out of work, but maybe I am far enough removed from such pain that I don't have sympathy anymore.
Yet, I do hope the money comes here. For me, personally, yes, I want the 34 billion. I don't want my friends to feel pain or move away. I'd rather have the option of shopping at Whole Foods and Macy's instead of Kroger's and Wal*Mart. I don't want my property takes to double because sales tax revenue has disappeared. Give me the money, keep stringing me along. In twenty years or so, I'll just slide off to Sarasota, hike my polyester pants up under my armpits, and spend my time bitching about everything over my senior coffee at McDonald's.
But looking at the big picture, 34 billion might be less of a loan or even a gift, and more of a curse.
Postscript: The death spiral begins with things like instructing traffic cops to write more tickets as a source of revenue and leads to cops writing thousands of tickets for personal gain. This is the on-ramp for the road to ruin, and there are no exits in sight.
That's not necessarily an argument for a bailout, though. If I were a narrow-minded political animal I would argue there is no option whatsoever and the loss of the U.S. auto industry would be dire for the nation. The fact that I have many, many friends facing real income consequences from this, and the ancillary affect it will have on everyone in these parts, means that I should feel that way. And I do, superficially. But, sadly, I have inflicted upon myself the habit of trying to see the big picture.
The number being tossed around is $34,000,000,000.00. Lots of zeros, there. Now let's say you're sitting in Ft. Lauderdale or Tucson or Eugene or Burlington. If the car oligopoly destructs, you're not going to see your friends trickle away in search of employment or see local strip malls abandoned. You probably drive a Toyota anyway. Why should you give those clowns shivering away in the Michigan winter any of your money, even if they call it a "loan" or a "bailout"? Didn't they get themselves in this predicament to begin with? Well, if that's how you feel, then were screwed (perhaps justly).
But suppose you do want to help out, the question then becomes what is the smartest way to spend your 34 billion. The auto industry wants you to give it to them, but what are you actually trying to achieve? Is the goal to keep the auto industry alive, or is it to assist the desperate people associated with it. Those are two very different things. What is magical about the auto industry that having it around means more than having that much more of some other industry? In other words, why is it better to prop up the auto industry rather than use the money to expand a different sector (or sectors) of the economy as a way to employ the ex-auto people?
This is why there is all the hemming and hawing about the future plans of the big-but-diminishing three. There is no point in providing 34 billion to the auto companies if it is going to go down the toilet for the UAW monopoly and the incompetent corporate bureaucracy, just so we can keep uncompetitive businesses going so folks don't have to adapt. That's not a loan or a bailout. That's welfare. If you give us the 34 big ones and we squander it trying to avoid adaptation, then the joke's on you.
On the other hand, if you give out the 34 billion to get us resituated in industries that are healthy and growing, thereby providing us security an avoiding us coming to you with our hands out again, you can declare victory. Yes, that massive proportion of the labor force all looking for employment would be traumatic, but 34 billion could sure help that along, couldn't it? Nobody wants their life turned upside down in relocation and have to assimilate in a new working environment, but I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.
The point is, it's not a simple binary choice: give the Big Three the money or the let everyone fend for themselves. There are options. There are outside the box strategies that may be better and may or may not include letting GM/Chrysler/Ford live on as they were.
Then there's the question of whether it is really good for Michigan to get the bailout at all. If the auto meltdown brings the reality of Detroit to the broader state, are we really better off getting 34 billion? What are the chances that we would be asking for another few billion in debt forgiveness every few years -- not competing in the market anymore but at the public trough, just so we can hang on a little while longer? Meanwhile, our taxes would shoot through the roof because fixing the roads and paying for the lousy school system would fall on a smaller and smaller number of people. The raise-taxes/lose-population death spiral would speed up (this death spiral has been present in Detroit for years). What, exactly, is the endgame and how do we get there so we can start over? I don't know. Perhaps it would never happen. Perhaps we would become wards of the federal government, like the District of Columbia. Perhaps we would end up burning the abandoned homes for heat and eating roadkill venison all winter. It's nice to think we are going to find a way to turn things around, but as much as I love Michigan, I see no evidence that there is that kind of foresight and ambition among the political leaders or the electorate. Whatever the endgame is, we will have to reach it before anything really changes.
Why am I so negative? Because I know what a lost cause looks like. I have seen Detroit "rebuilding" for the last half-century with less than nothing to show for it. Imagine the millions or billions of dollars that have been poured into that city over the past fifty years, all wasted in the name of trying to save the unsavable. Are the folks who appear in the pages of Detroit Blog really better off for having been caught the endlessly-fraying safety net for decades, rather than having bitten the bullet and started a new life in, say, Raleigh NC, 20 years ago?
Of course, I live in a sort of bubble. Ann Arbor has the insulation of University as its tax base, and I work as a software development manager for a company that serves the private financial and regulatory sector, so I have a very safe job. The only debt I have is on my condo and considering I would probably pay more in rent than I do in monthly mortgage and property taxes, I am in no trouble. Even the latest investment meltdown didn't alter my lifestyle. Now, I have had hard financial times in my past and I know very well what it's like to be out of work, but maybe I am far enough removed from such pain that I don't have sympathy anymore.
Yet, I do hope the money comes here. For me, personally, yes, I want the 34 billion. I don't want my friends to feel pain or move away. I'd rather have the option of shopping at Whole Foods and Macy's instead of Kroger's and Wal*Mart. I don't want my property takes to double because sales tax revenue has disappeared. Give me the money, keep stringing me along. In twenty years or so, I'll just slide off to Sarasota, hike my polyester pants up under my armpits, and spend my time bitching about everything over my senior coffee at McDonald's.
But looking at the big picture, 34 billion might be less of a loan or even a gift, and more of a curse.
Postscript: The death spiral begins with things like instructing traffic cops to write more tickets as a source of revenue and leads to cops writing thousands of tickets for personal gain. This is the on-ramp for the road to ruin, and there are no exits in sight.
Pale Fire
Pale Fire: Wow. What kind of mind does it take to conceptualize such a work as Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov? And can I replace my current, run of the mill version with such a mind?
It goes something like this. In the introduction we meet the narrator, Charles Kinbote, a pompous, arrogant, academic ass who is in possession of the final work of a famous poet, John Shade, with whom the narrator maintained a friendship. This final poem was unfinished at the time of Shade's death, with 999 of 1000 lines being completed. Shade it seems was murdered in some manner that involves Kinbote.
The second section of the book consists of the poem itself; all 999 lines. It's a fine poem, autobiographical, that shows Shade to be an aged, introspective, soulful fellow. There are sections on mortality and loss, delivered through the heart-rending story of his daughter who was apparently born with some disfigurement and became a suicide, his love for his wife, and his struggles with the creative process. It is a quite a work in and of itself, outside the context of the novel, and I say this as someone who is not warm to poetry in general.
The third part of the book is where all the action occurs. We're back to Kinbote's voice in what is supposed to be a detailed analysis of the poem. Kinbote, who's friendship with Shade was strongest during the time Shade was writing the poem, was under the impression that Shade was writing about the storyline that he (Kinbote) was feeding him (Shade) -- specifically, the story of Kinbote's homeland of Zembla, a monarchy that had its royalty deposed by communists in a revolution. It was a story that was close to Kinbote's heart and his ego seems to have deluded him into thinking that the poet had an equal interest. The poet did not. So in his "analysis", Kinbote rarely actually discusses the poem and simply uses the verse as a platform from which to launch his own narrative describing the life of the King of Zembla, the crisis of the communist revolution the King's flight to safety, and the timeline of an assassin sent to find and kill the King.
Kinbote can be infuriating, as when he takes a heartfelt passage about the tragedy of Shade's daughter's suicide and simply goes off on his Zemblan story with casual cold-heartedness. On the other hand, the Zemblan story is itself fascinating and Kinbote, despite his unmitigated self-regard, is not entirely unsympathetic. In time one is left with the stories of two seemingly disparate characters who's desires for understanding life, loss, and longing are intertwined with their ultimate fates.
It's Nabokov, so you can expect florid, exquisitely constructed sentences. The structure of the book into the intro, poem and "analysis" is utterly flawless. A slow and thoughtful reading of is required. Although I am sure people who are steeped in the history of literature will find precedents, it strikes me a something totally original. So much so that my ultimate reaction is not so much to the book extant but what sort of brilliant imagination could bring it into being.
(By the way, if you are an X-files aficionado, knowing the genesis of the name Kinbote should bring a smile to your face.)
It goes something like this. In the introduction we meet the narrator, Charles Kinbote, a pompous, arrogant, academic ass who is in possession of the final work of a famous poet, John Shade, with whom the narrator maintained a friendship. This final poem was unfinished at the time of Shade's death, with 999 of 1000 lines being completed. Shade it seems was murdered in some manner that involves Kinbote.
The second section of the book consists of the poem itself; all 999 lines. It's a fine poem, autobiographical, that shows Shade to be an aged, introspective, soulful fellow. There are sections on mortality and loss, delivered through the heart-rending story of his daughter who was apparently born with some disfigurement and became a suicide, his love for his wife, and his struggles with the creative process. It is a quite a work in and of itself, outside the context of the novel, and I say this as someone who is not warm to poetry in general.
The third part of the book is where all the action occurs. We're back to Kinbote's voice in what is supposed to be a detailed analysis of the poem. Kinbote, who's friendship with Shade was strongest during the time Shade was writing the poem, was under the impression that Shade was writing about the storyline that he (Kinbote) was feeding him (Shade) -- specifically, the story of Kinbote's homeland of Zembla, a monarchy that had its royalty deposed by communists in a revolution. It was a story that was close to Kinbote's heart and his ego seems to have deluded him into thinking that the poet had an equal interest. The poet did not. So in his "analysis", Kinbote rarely actually discusses the poem and simply uses the verse as a platform from which to launch his own narrative describing the life of the King of Zembla, the crisis of the communist revolution the King's flight to safety, and the timeline of an assassin sent to find and kill the King.
Kinbote can be infuriating, as when he takes a heartfelt passage about the tragedy of Shade's daughter's suicide and simply goes off on his Zemblan story with casual cold-heartedness. On the other hand, the Zemblan story is itself fascinating and Kinbote, despite his unmitigated self-regard, is not entirely unsympathetic. In time one is left with the stories of two seemingly disparate characters who's desires for understanding life, loss, and longing are intertwined with their ultimate fates.
It's Nabokov, so you can expect florid, exquisitely constructed sentences. The structure of the book into the intro, poem and "analysis" is utterly flawless. A slow and thoughtful reading of is required. Although I am sure people who are steeped in the history of literature will find precedents, it strikes me a something totally original. So much so that my ultimate reaction is not so much to the book extant but what sort of brilliant imagination could bring it into being.
(By the way, if you are an X-files aficionado, knowing the genesis of the name Kinbote should bring a smile to your face.)
Flick Notes
Flick Notes: As usual, I see movies once they are well past their box office peak; often not until they hit cable. Here are some quickie reviews of what I've seen of recently.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - the story of the end of the James Gang and the murder of Jesse James, along with the story of what followed on for his killer Robert Ford. Kind of slow moving, it is standard, gritty western stuff but the sharp angle on Ford, and how he is compelled to kill James is interesting. More interesting still is what happens after. He starts out heralded as a heroic figure, and makes a decent income re-enacting the assassination on stage, but in time, popular opinion turns and he is labeled a coward and James is elevated as the hero. It gets so bad that he finds himself consistently shamed in public and is eventually gunned down himself, by a Jack Ruby-esque character. A good lesson for anyone who believes fickle public opinion and mawkish celebrity are contemporary developments. There is little new under the sun. Excellent acting all around, including Brad Pitt as James who is showing himself to be more and more of an exceptional actor. It's making me look forward to Benjamin Button.
I Am Legend - Will Smith is also a excellent actor with a terrific presence and the first half of the movie is fascinating as he makes his way through empty streets of Manhattan with only his dog for a companion, hunting deer and dodging zombies. When the plot moves from his survival to his rescue it descends into the sci-fi grist mill. Clever in parts, but ultimately forgettable.
Darjeeling Limited - Arch-typical Wes Anderson outing: three brothers, sullen, depressed, and eccentric, set out on a journey to sort out family issues. I admit to having a soft spot for his previous stuff - The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic. They are quirky and indirect. They are loaded down with people staring into space or blankly gazing at the camera -- intended to be especially poignant. Characters intone so as to express meaning through often very bland dialogue. Maybe it's just the presence of Bill Murray in some of them, but I find it endearing in a soft-serve sort of way. But Darjeeling just didn't do it for me. I never really cared what these people were struggling with. In fact I was never entirely clear on it. Maybe it was the noticeable lack of Bill Murray.
No Country For Old Men - I get the feeling I should have liked this. The whole idea of the existential force of brutal chance cutting through a world of people trying to make decisions as if they were really in control of their lives, seems like something that would appeal to me. But it just struck me as inhuman and, frankly, a little academic. Yes, perhaps we just have the illusion of control while merciless random forces effect all our lives, often thwarting us or killing us. No Country tells us that by clubbing us over the head with it, but we already knew it. Art is telling me something new about it, not just yelling it louder.
Ironman - This was fun. Well crafted superhero fare, moved along especially well by Robert Downey Jr.'s ironic mastery. Some of his exchanges with Jeff Daniels had to be heavily improvised because they were clearly having a good time with them. As good as you will while watching it.
The Dark Knight - You have to at least give this movie splitsies with the first Spiderman on the best superhero movie ever. To me this one gets the nod for having the more operatic ending, where only a few understand how much the hero has sacrificed or that he is a hero at all, for that matter. He doesn't get cheers. He doesn't get the girl. He gets the short end of the stick and has to be content with having done the right thing. Another example of the malleability, power, and necessity of myth, kind of like The Assassination of Jesse James above. The praise for Heath Ledger was well earned, not just sympathetic. I am semi-hoping they make no sequel and just leave it sit where it is. Not bloody likely.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - the story of the end of the James Gang and the murder of Jesse James, along with the story of what followed on for his killer Robert Ford. Kind of slow moving, it is standard, gritty western stuff but the sharp angle on Ford, and how he is compelled to kill James is interesting. More interesting still is what happens after. He starts out heralded as a heroic figure, and makes a decent income re-enacting the assassination on stage, but in time, popular opinion turns and he is labeled a coward and James is elevated as the hero. It gets so bad that he finds himself consistently shamed in public and is eventually gunned down himself, by a Jack Ruby-esque character. A good lesson for anyone who believes fickle public opinion and mawkish celebrity are contemporary developments. There is little new under the sun. Excellent acting all around, including Brad Pitt as James who is showing himself to be more and more of an exceptional actor. It's making me look forward to Benjamin Button.
I Am Legend - Will Smith is also a excellent actor with a terrific presence and the first half of the movie is fascinating as he makes his way through empty streets of Manhattan with only his dog for a companion, hunting deer and dodging zombies. When the plot moves from his survival to his rescue it descends into the sci-fi grist mill. Clever in parts, but ultimately forgettable.
Darjeeling Limited - Arch-typical Wes Anderson outing: three brothers, sullen, depressed, and eccentric, set out on a journey to sort out family issues. I admit to having a soft spot for his previous stuff - The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic. They are quirky and indirect. They are loaded down with people staring into space or blankly gazing at the camera -- intended to be especially poignant. Characters intone so as to express meaning through often very bland dialogue. Maybe it's just the presence of Bill Murray in some of them, but I find it endearing in a soft-serve sort of way. But Darjeeling just didn't do it for me. I never really cared what these people were struggling with. In fact I was never entirely clear on it. Maybe it was the noticeable lack of Bill Murray.
No Country For Old Men - I get the feeling I should have liked this. The whole idea of the existential force of brutal chance cutting through a world of people trying to make decisions as if they were really in control of their lives, seems like something that would appeal to me. But it just struck me as inhuman and, frankly, a little academic. Yes, perhaps we just have the illusion of control while merciless random forces effect all our lives, often thwarting us or killing us. No Country tells us that by clubbing us over the head with it, but we already knew it. Art is telling me something new about it, not just yelling it louder.
Ironman - This was fun. Well crafted superhero fare, moved along especially well by Robert Downey Jr.'s ironic mastery. Some of his exchanges with Jeff Daniels had to be heavily improvised because they were clearly having a good time with them. As good as you will while watching it.
The Dark Knight - You have to at least give this movie splitsies with the first Spiderman on the best superhero movie ever. To me this one gets the nod for having the more operatic ending, where only a few understand how much the hero has sacrificed or that he is a hero at all, for that matter. He doesn't get cheers. He doesn't get the girl. He gets the short end of the stick and has to be content with having done the right thing. Another example of the malleability, power, and necessity of myth, kind of like The Assassination of Jesse James above. The praise for Heath Ledger was well earned, not just sympathetic. I am semi-hoping they make no sequel and just leave it sit where it is. Not bloody likely.
All Things Must Pass
All Things Must Pass: This list of "timeline twins" from kottke.org identifies edgy cultural artifacts that you may have experience to when they first came out and finds comparable oldies to the current day. The one that got me: listening to Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols (1977) today would be the equivalent of having listened to some old Doris Day or Perry Como in back 1977. Whoa.
It is yet further evidence the time from, say, 1955 to 1980 was a time of accelerated change. The difference between Johnny Rotten and Doris Day is vastly greater than the difference between, say, Jack White and Johnny Rotten. (Although when it comes right down to it, the difference between Johnny Rotten and Doris Day is greater than the difference between Jack White and Doris Day.)
Meanwhile, a friend of mine made the observation that her three year old daughter will never know a world where you cannot stop TV whenever you want. We are raising a generation of children with no bladder control.
But if you really want an artifact from the past, remember Battle of the Network Stars? Arguably it was the predecessor to shows like Surreal Life and Biggest Celebrity Loser. Check out the video of Gabe Kaplan smoking Robert Conrad in a 100-yard race. I remember seeing this first run and being blown away that Mr. Kotter was actually faster the James West. How could that be? I don't know if this is proof that the world is getting better or worse. It is proof that I'm getting old. As if I needed it.
It is yet further evidence the time from, say, 1955 to 1980 was a time of accelerated change. The difference between Johnny Rotten and Doris Day is vastly greater than the difference between, say, Jack White and Johnny Rotten. (Although when it comes right down to it, the difference between Johnny Rotten and Doris Day is greater than the difference between Jack White and Doris Day.)
Meanwhile, a friend of mine made the observation that her three year old daughter will never know a world where you cannot stop TV whenever you want. We are raising a generation of children with no bladder control.
But if you really want an artifact from the past, remember Battle of the Network Stars? Arguably it was the predecessor to shows like Surreal Life and Biggest Celebrity Loser. Check out the video of Gabe Kaplan smoking Robert Conrad in a 100-yard race. I remember seeing this first run and being blown away that Mr. Kotter was actually faster the James West. How could that be? I don't know if this is proof that the world is getting better or worse. It is proof that I'm getting old. As if I needed it.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Month That Was - October 2008
The Month That Was - October 2008: As I write this I am in the brand new “North Terminal” at Detroit Metro Airport, on the way to a family visit in Florida, with a hopefully interesting side trip that I will hopefully write about next month. The other eventful occurrence this month was the death of my friend Kate’s mom (and Miss Anna’s grandmother). I was lucky enough to be able to help out in a small way and the family handled the whole situation with grace and good humor, which was exactly what anyone who knows them would expect. It did leave me with some interesting feelings about the assorted rituals we perform to honor our dead, but it’s too soon for that.
Michigan is turning that brownish gray color that will be with us all through the winter. There is a malevolent sickness going around that apparently starts with a hellacious sore throat, followed by nausea and lassitude. So the Primordial Evil that is wintertime begins. I have found that assiduously washing my hands and frequent gargling are the best way to stay healthy -- gosh, just like Mom would tell you when you were a kid. I went all last season without being sick and I hope to do it again -- pretty big accomplishment for me, who spends regular time in writ large petri dishes such as airplanes and gyms. Healthy or no, the only cure for that brownish gray color is travel.
Lastly, some site notes. First, I signed up as an Amazon affiliate, so I will begin adding direct Amazon links to the various stuff I talk about -- look to your immediate left. Click through and buy from those links and I get a tiny fraction the sale. (You’ll notice also that links my novels are now directed at Amazon, instead of those preview pages I used to have.) I also removed all the old criticism I still had over to the left. I haven’t written much purposeful criticism in a while as I've been thinking I should spend more time on creation, and what was there was getting old anyway.
Emotional About Baggage
Southwest Passage
Swinging Empress
Men Going Mad
Mapping Reality
Reduction in Ugly
Next month, in addition to my Florida trip I expect to have a big ol’ movie round up.
Michigan is turning that brownish gray color that will be with us all through the winter. There is a malevolent sickness going around that apparently starts with a hellacious sore throat, followed by nausea and lassitude. So the Primordial Evil that is wintertime begins. I have found that assiduously washing my hands and frequent gargling are the best way to stay healthy -- gosh, just like Mom would tell you when you were a kid. I went all last season without being sick and I hope to do it again -- pretty big accomplishment for me, who spends regular time in writ large petri dishes such as airplanes and gyms. Healthy or no, the only cure for that brownish gray color is travel.
Lastly, some site notes. First, I signed up as an Amazon affiliate, so I will begin adding direct Amazon links to the various stuff I talk about -- look to your immediate left. Click through and buy from those links and I get a tiny fraction the sale. (You’ll notice also that links my novels are now directed at Amazon, instead of those preview pages I used to have.) I also removed all the old criticism I still had over to the left. I haven’t written much purposeful criticism in a while as I've been thinking I should spend more time on creation, and what was there was getting old anyway.
Emotional About Baggage
Southwest Passage
Swinging Empress
Men Going Mad
Mapping Reality
Reduction in Ugly
Next month, in addition to my Florida trip I expect to have a big ol’ movie round up.
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