The Month That Was - March 2007: Hey, look at me! Posting on time for a change. Aren't I a good boy? Can I have a bigger allowance?

Kafka on the Shore
More Worry About Vegas
Saying No to Michigan
Photo Slop
X-Treme Warrior

Life Could be a Dream: Every Haruki Murakami book I've read (that would be Wild Sheep Chase, Dance, Dance, Dance, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) is set in a universe that has the same disjointed, quasi-rationality of a dream. Things seem to be going along normally then an animal talks to you, or it rains seafood, or you have sex with a ghost. And just like in dream, there is no mystical narration to clue you in that you are not in the midst of reality; surreal events occur and are described with the same matter-of-fact observational voice that might describe a morning shave or a traffic jam. It has been said that one of Ernest Hemmingway's great talents was to use simple, direct narration to plumb the complexities of human emotions. Similarly, Murakami nails many forms of unreality, from fairy tale playfulness to the downright creepy and harrowing, with little more than very pedestrian language. Kafka on the Shore is more of this. An extended exploration of memory, regret, and how we are all driven to change by our past, the story fits well with Murakami's style.

All the characters in Kafka are haunted by their past. They are trying to progress in their lives and their pursuits of happiness while their past exerts its pull against them. That pull can be completely debilitating, alleviated only by death; it can be energizing through the compulsion to escape; it can just sit there hovering, forever influencing deeds and words.

There are two major plotlines. One involves a 15-year-old runaway boy trying to escape from his egomaniacal father who has cursed him with an Oedipal fate regarding his erstwhile mother and sister. He ends up living in what is essentially a haunted library eventually fulfilling that fate...in a certain way. The other involves a brain-impaired, illiterate septuagenarian who can speak with cats and has a certain holy, Zen master way about him -- kind of like Peter Sellers in Being There. The old man finds himself compelled to pursue a fate he is to feeble-minded to understand, he just knows it when it comes. These two characters are mystically linked in a specific violent action that propels them both towards their ultimate destiny. Events cascade to an inevitably disappointing ending. How do you end a dream without waking up and finding plain old reality there waiting for you?

Leaving aside the deeper end of things, the book is a joy to read just on cursory level. The scenes bristle with energy and Murakami creates throwaway characters that are more interesting than many a writer's protagonists. A school teacher who is disturbed by an X-files-worthy occurrence is merely ancillary character but utterly affecting. A simple, blue-collar truck driver has only a supporting role but his transforming epiphany of the beauty and potential of the world (when he is exposed to Beethoven's Archduke Trio) is brilliantly told.

Along with sorrow and violence, there is much good humor and a bit of outright absurdity. Johnnie Walker (yeah, the guy from the Scotch ads) makes an appearance as a mutilator of cats. Colonel Sanders turns out to be a pimp for a Hegel quoting hooker. Typical of Murakami, pop culture references are laced throughout.

To me, one of the most curious things about Murakami is that I like reading him so much. He does not really employ many of the stylistic features I tend to value -- clarity of narrative, respect for normalcy, descriptive brevity, a contrarian mindset -- but his mastery of impression, thematic (if not narrative) clarity, and characterization is a thing to behold.

The fact that he has a back catalogue that I haven't fully explored makes me quite happy.

What I Said About Vegas: Remember when I cited the deficient disaster that is McCarran Airport when posing the possibility that Las Vegas had peaked? Check out this youtube of a luggage carousel. Good grief.

That, however, pales in comparison to having a giant, laser-shooting Michael Jackson sculpture in the desert be the first thing you see as you fly in. Words fail me. Maybe life really is just a Murakami novel.

Saying No to Michigan: I have lived all but a couple of the distressingly numerous years of my life in Michigan. I was born in Detroit, grew up in Southfield, and have spent pretty much my entire adult life in the greater Ann Arbor area. Needless to say, I like it here. I like Michigan a lot. And it gets better each year as global warming turns the winters into minor inconveniences.

If you look beyond decaying Detroit and its utterly indistinct suburbs (and ignore the lesser lost cause of Flint), Michigan is a real gem. The west, central and northern areas of the State are loaded with lakes and forests and ski slopes and golf courses and perfect little towns with main streets that just beg to be walked down to the ice cream parlor at dusk on a warm summer evening. Really, there are probably a thousand reasons that your family summer vacation would be better spent in Michigan than Orlando.

Now it's beginning to look like tourism may soon be the only industry of consequence in the future. By any realistic measure, Michigan is falling apart economically. Unemployment is consistently well above the national average -- close to double at times. We are at the bottom in revenue growth -- effective mired in near recession while the rest of the country practically booms. Population is dropping -- figure we lose about 40,000 people a year. Businesses are flying out of the state at an alarming rate -- longtime residents and big employers Comerica and Pfizer recently decamped.

All this fiscal pathos most glaringly reflects in the housing market: you're lucky if your investment in your house has merely remained stagnant over the past few years. I have friends who have sat on two mortgages because they got caught with a new house before closing on the old one. At first they didn't worry, figuring they might have to cover both payments only for a month or two. Now it's more than a year later and they are worried and they are not at all confident in breaking even after the extended time doubled up on mortgage interest.

Probably the most depressing development is that the current government in Lansing is talking about having to raise taxes to cover budget shortfalls. That is the first step toward utter destruction. Practically every economy that goes in the toilet has started down this path: Commerce is horrible, tax revenues drop, budget shortfalls require tax increases, tax increases scare even more businesses away, population drops, so tax revenue doesn't come despite the increased rates, there are more budget shortfalls, so taxes are increased... It's easy to see Michigan marching steadily down this path. I don't know where it all ends. A crisis of some sort perhaps, like New York City in the '70s (can we hire Rudy Guiliani?), or just an agonizing endless degradation, like Detroit.

But bad times are also opportunities. Real estate is cheap. Cost of living probably won't rise too much, if at all. Getting restaurant reservations is easy. Of course, all that is only good if it is eventually going to turn around and I'm really not confident that it will any time soon. As much as I have ragged on New Orleans of late for mismanaging its future, I can't say things are run any better up here. Like I said with respect to New Orleans, voters always get what they ask for, whether they want it or not. We have no one to blame but ourselves. I just hope we are smart enough not to let the raises-taxes/budget-shortfall spiral get started, or I may end up having to live out the remainder of my hopefully numerous years somewhere else.

Photo Slop: Yes, I have used my new camera: just baby steps, slowly learning the ins and outs. To do so I did a bit of a wander around the greater Dexter, MI area to get into the swing of things. I was surprised at how rural this area still is. It kind of inspired me to go for a rural rustic starkness, but I never quite achieved it. For your perusal (most of these are around 400K):

• [pic] A cropped shot of a huge transformer complex just down the road. I like all the detail that was picked up with such clarity.


• [pic] A train came barreling toward me. If I was clever I would have a better idea how to get a sense of the movement.


• [pic] The same pic halftoned in Photoshop.


• [pic] A self-portrait (sort of) in the woods.


• [pic] Testing for close-up detail. This is just moss on a big rock, but it made me think of the impeding spring thaw.


• [pic 1][pic 2] This is a granary about halfway between Dexter and Chelsea (the first city to the west). I have driven past it several times and it always stands out as a striking site in the middle of farmland. I doubt I have done it justice.


• [pic] This is just the wooded area and stream abutting a municipal park about half a mile from my home. The browns and grays in this picture are the characteristic Midwest colors once winter takes hold. In a month or two, it'll be so green and thick you can't see through it.


• [pic] This is the Old Mill in downtown (so to speak) Dexter. Rustic.


• [pic] Same pic in black and white and aged somewhat by Photoshop. Not quite the early twentieth century feel I wanted to get.


• [pic] Lonely corn silos. Again not exactly the stark rural scene I had hoped for.


• [pic] A beat up old cart in someone's backyard.


• [pic] Same pic in sepia.


• [pic 1] [pic 2] Two shots of a big old tree backlit by the afternoon sun. My old point-and-shoot would have gacked on this.

More to come, I'm sure.

Going to X-Treme: For those of you in Michigan (I would call you my homies, but that's soooo MySpace) and California who have Comcast cable, keep a look out for a reality show entitled X-treme Warrior on Comcast Local (channel 8 in MI, I think). It's a reality style boot camp for women, kind of like Survivor minus no bug eating, that was held both north of the Detroit suburbs and at some locale in California.

Those of you who read my weekly football column were likely entertained by my favorite correspondent, Tinkerbell. Well, it seems Tinkerbell took some time off to participate in this madness. Her money quote: "It was hell."

Visit the site and watch the trailer: the one pointing the rifle at you in the beginning is Tinkerbell. During the course of the show she managed to break her nose in two places and spent a good long time wandering around with gauze wedged up her schnozzola. Should provide some comic relief.

The show premieres at April 11 6PM on Comcast Local in Michi and 7PM on Comcast SportsNet in Cali. Do check it out.

The Month That Was - February 2007: As usual I can't keep promises. I said that other than these blog entries, I was going to write nothing but fiction, and sure enough I failed. I made a spur of the moment trip down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, which you can read about here. Alas.

U.S. Airways' Website From Hell
Worried About Vegas
I Got a Nikon Camera
Readings

U.S. Airways Demon Web Site: I am absolutely convinced that the designers of the U.S. Airways website are deeply disturbed individuals.

The U.S. Airways website is infuriating. For many years, when I was boycotting Northwest, I made U.S.Airways my first choice. Even back then, their website was a disaster. It would hang at random points when try to make a reservation. And even if it didn't hang, it would let you go through the multiple screen process to the very last step where you would click "complete reservation" and it would give you an error that the system was unable to make the reservation and unceremoniously place you back on the home page where you had to start the entire process over.

It got so bad that at one point I dashed off a witheringly sarcastic email to customer service that began, "After giving it careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that your website sucks!" I didn't get a reply.

Well, since I made my reservations through Expedia this time, I didn't have to worry about setting up the reservations, but I always make a habit of checking on-line the day before in an effort to get the prime seats. This I still had to do through USAirways.com.

The seat selection process seems to work fine. I was able to select exit seats (very cool) on the aisle -- always my first choice when flying coach. Except when I went to print the boarding passes, I found that I had not been assigned the seats I had chosen. They seemed to have assigned me random seats (including one in the last row directly across the aisle from the loo, thank you very much).

Huh? Wha? It turns out that U.S. Airways policy is that they will not assign exit seats on line. They will let you select them just like any other seat, but they'll assign you something random instead. Ha Ha! The joke's on you, stupid customer!

Fine. Well, I would prefer not to sit in the rear of the plane across from the loo, so I log back in to select the best non-exit row seats I can get. What an idiot! Did I really think it would be that easy? You see, once you have a seat assignment, you can't change it until you actually get to the airport and have it done by a gate agent. Gack!

WTF? I mean...WTF? What company in their right mind creates a system that encourages and entices their customers into spending a half hour to do something that, in reality, is just saving time for U.S. Airways, then pulls the chair out from beneath them thereby screwing themselves in the process. What a complete waste of time!

You know that old web meme Bastard Operator From Hell? Well U.S. Airways clearly employs the Bastard Web Site Designers From Hell. Seriously, I design software for a living and I have made every bone-headed mistake you can make, but I've never managed this level of inanity. This cannot be the result of incompetence -- it is malicious. It is the purest form of evil, done without excuse just for entertainment. There is a searing cauldron of boiling jalapeno sauce awaiting these clowns in the afterlife.

No wonder U.S. Airways is bankrupt.

Late Update: Since this little encounter, U.S. Airways appears to have been attempting to upgrade their reservation system. It looks like they mangled the proceedings again this time hammering the poor sods who try to get anything done at the airport kiosks. Surprise.

Ward, I'm Worried About the Vegas: Sshhh, don't tell anybody, but Vegas may have peaked. It is a fear I have. Tell me if I'm wrong.

The recent violence during the NBA All-Star game is really only one part of the concern. Oh it was bad. Shootings at strip clubs, a near riot at MGM, a brawl in a Wynn nightclub (Wynn, of all places!).

One of the key features of Vegas is that despite the Hieronymus Bosch-ian atmosphere, you feel safe there. You certainly can't go into a casino and cause trouble. It is not tolerated. Everything is monitored and security is everywhere. Yes, there is the occasional drunken idiot, but such situations are addressed swiftly and surely. Inside these casinos it is possible to indulge in just about any form of sin you want, provided to don't bother anybody else. Cross that line and you're out. It's really a remarkable thing, and worthy of an essay in and of itself.

Even outside on the Strip I have always felt pretty safe. I have walked the length of the Strip from Mandalay Bay to the Venetian at 3AM and not felt threatened at all. Safety is key to Vegas; it's what keeps average people coming back to sample the naughtiness. To be really successful, the naughtiness must be accessible to Mom and Pop, not just those who are bad-ass enough to survive. It is a perfect confluence of financial and moral priorities. That's why the shenanigans at the NBA All-Star game were so troubling. Bring that kind of thing to Houston or Atlanta and it's just another night. Not so in Vegas.

But that situation is easily remedied by simply not playing host to that event again. As long as things get back to normal I don't think the city will suffer. The long term trends that make me think Vegas has peaked are three-fold.

1. Infrastructure. McCarran Airport is completely out-gunned. Flying in on Northwest -- which lands at a midfield terminal requiring a shuttle ride to get to baggage claim -- I don't think I have ever waited less than 45 minutes to get my bags. A 45 minute wait for a cab into town is also a strong possibility. The security lines for flights back home are so long that where most airports suggest checking in 90 minutes early, at McCarran they recommend up to three hours. These huge delays essentially mean a dead day for travel on either end of trip. That's a big price to pay and there are no signs that it is being addressed.

Another thing that is very lacking in Vegas is mass transit. There is the monorail, which is inconvenient and limited. There are periodic threats to expand it all the way south to the airport and north to downtown, but don't hold your breath. I will admit they are doing a bit better here having implemented The Deuce, a well-run commuter bus service that runs up and down the Strip all the way to downtown.

But transportation needs to be a lot better. Getting visitors from their flights to their hotels and getting them around town should be top priority for the city. Orlando completely kicks Vegas' butt in this regard.

2. Macau. One thing that first timers to Vegas are often surprised by is the number of Asians gambling in Vegas. Not Asian-Americans, actual Asians from Asia. For a few years now, Vegas has benefited from a wave of Asian affluence that has translated to Asian high-rollers and Asian wannabe high-rollers flying across the Pacific and dropping piles of cash at Pai-Gow and such. Asian pop musicians regularly schedule shows in Vegas -- you'll see posters for them and say "Who?" It's been a huge inflow of cash for the city.

Now Macau (for the geographically challenged, that's in China, near Hong Kong) is billing itself as the new Vegas. In reality, it's not even close to that -- yet. But Wynn and MGM and others have properties opened there. More are sure to come. At some point it will necessarily eat into Vegas revenue. If you're an Asian gambler out for a few days of excitement, why fly all the way to Vegas when Macau is likely no more than a three or four hour flight? (Note to self: Time for a trip to Macau to check things out.)

3. Overbuilding The building boom in Vegas over the past decade has been like nothing the world has ever seen. And even now, there is no sign of it stopping. MGM is building something called City Center, which is an attempt to recreated Greenwich Village on the south Strip. It is an incredibly large project that will include hotels and clubs and shops. Not to be outdone, Harrah's/Caesar's has plans for something similar at mid-strip. Both companies have been buying up properties and scheduling renovations and re-workings in prep for an upcoming battle royale.

The two premier independent properties - The Venetian and Wynn - are building add-on properties to their existing enormous sites. The boom is steadily moving north, devouring what is left of the old rat pack properties and going full-on high-end all round.

It doesn't stop there. High-rise condo complexes are going up at an equally fast rate. And all this new building means construction jobs and service jobs, and all those new workers need to be housed and need grocery stores and car dealers and the various stuff of life to go with them. It has been a historic boom. You can check out Vegas Today and Tomorrow to get an overview.

But it is also possible that it has been a bubble. And if it is a bubble, the combination of loss of Asian business, insufficient infrastructure, and oversupply of building could bring about a very large pop. We don't know. I don't think there has ever been a test to see what the limits are of humanity's desire to sin in safety (which is the bottom line product of Vegas) but we may find out sooner rather than later.

And that's why I'm worried. It's also why, if you are one of the few who has never seen Vegas, you should go to see it soon, while it's at its (possible) peak. For the time being, it is something truly historic.

I should write up a newbie's guide to Vegas, shouldn't I? (No. No, I shouldn't. I should write fiction.)

I Got a Nikon Camera, I Love to Take a Photograph: After threatening to for ages, I finally stepped up. I upgraded from my ancient Kodak point-and-shoot. The Kodak served me well and I was able to take some good pics over the years, but its limitations got too, well, limiting. It fails miserably at night pics. It has a pretty narrow angle, so all my landscapes had to be made by stitching together multiple snaps in Photoshop which has its own pitfalls. It was a great starter camera and it served me well, but it was time to move on. I splurged on an SLR.

Actually, an SLR wasn't my first choice. My top pick was a Sony DSC-R1; a very SLR like camera but with a fixed lens. The main reason it was so attractive was the lens itself. It could go from a very, very wide angle to a 5x zoom. (I find zoom overrated and wide angle underrated for my needs.) A similar lens for an SLR would have cost more than the entire Sony camera.

The problem was that these models have been inexplicably discontinued by Sony, in favor of their own line of SLRs. The only place I was able to find these cameras was eBay and as usual, some sellers were fairly sketchy in the feedback department and digital cameras and supplies are a notorious playground for scam-meisters.

Instead, I began researching SLRs with the understanding that I wanted a kit lens that had a big range, since I really don't know where I'm going to go with this whole photography thing. I plan to spend some time learning the ways in which this camera lets me be creative, but there's the outside chance that a good deal of the time I'll just use it in automatic mode, meaning the lens that came with it had to be as versatile as possible.

Also, I was unconcerned with megapixels. Unless you are going to print huge prints -- and I have never made a print, just posted to the web -- you really don't need more than 5 or 6 megapixels. At 6 megapixels you can create a 7x10 print at 300 dots per inch; that's an exceptional quality print. And you can even get a perfectly satisfactory looking (say 150 dpi) 11x14 if you want. Now, things like cropping come into play (I tend to be a cropper) as does original image quality, but on the bottom line, I would economize on megapixels.

Well, I ended up with a Nikon D70s. It has a pretty good range -- excellent wide angle, only so-so zoom (around 4x equivalent), but it was a little more versatile that other SLRs I looked at. I saved a bit of money by buying the D70 which has been superceded by the D80 which has 10 megapixels vs. the D70s 6, and a few other advantages that weren't worth the extra money for me. I ordered from beachcamera.com which had the cheapest price coupled with the most reliable rating at pricegrabber.com. Of course, I subsequently went out and bought a 2gig memory card and carrying case. (The spending never ends, does it?)

I've only started to learn how to use it, but you can expect to be inundated with photos over the coming months and years.

Readings: Last month I said I was going to talk about what I have been reading, but I really don't have much interesting to report.

I continue my multi-year quest to work my way through the entire 20 novel Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series (link: Patrick O'Brian at Amazon). I recently completed novel number 15, Nutmeg of Consolation. They continue to be entrancing, and I continue to believe they will, in time, be seen as one of the great literary achievements of the 20th century, although in tone and topic they are very much 19th century novels.

Do not take up reading them other than at the beginning and do not underestimate the days and weeks of your life you will spend plowing through them. However, if you are willing and able to put in the time and effort, you will be rewarded with wonderful stories centered on two of the most complete characters in the history of literature.

I have been using Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels as my staple distraction for airplanes and hotel rooms. They are uneven, but they are what you might call quality escapism. They don't require a lot of involvement, yet they aren't embarrassingly shallow like most genre fiction. At times they are a fascinating look into the mores of a bygone era and Fleming was a better than average stylist who knew how to structure a story. These books bear varying resemblances to their associated movies and of course have none of the campy irony, Bond having yet to become a cliche.

If you're interested, I would suggest starting at the beginning with Casino Royale, of which I wrote a review ages ago. Most of the remaining efforts are above average episodic action thrillers -- like I said, good travel reading. If you want to take a short cut, the exceptional selections from the series are what might be considered the "Blofeld trilogy": Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice. These might benefit from a back to back reading and will cover whatever humanity there is in Bond's character. (link: Ian Fleming at Amazon)

At the moment I have just dived a few chapters deep into Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I won't even begin to try to describe it yet, but I'm sure you will hear all about it once it is digested. You can read my now ancient review of a couple of other earlier Murakami books over at Slashdot (of all places). I sense that this one will along the same lines.

The Month That Was - January 2007: I know it's well into February, but my first post about new year: and so the worm turns. That's a strange aphorism and I have no idea where it came from. I"m sure Wikipedia could tell me but I don’t really care. Already things have changed for the better from 2006 in at least one area, but it’s a personal spot that I am not about to take public at the moment -- maybe in the future. Anyway, the trend is up.

The football column is officially over for another season and I have, for the time being, sworn off hotel reviews. Having revised Misspent Youth (I swear that book always seems about halfway finished no matter how much or how little time I spend on it), I am now copy editing the Business As Usual again for the umpteenth time in anticipation of a new publisher picking it up once I remove it from the evil dirtbags who call themselves publishers that have it now.

Without further ado, let's get it started.

Ice Storm
Chilly Down South
Living in the Past
Lousy is as Lousy Does

The Ice Storm: As I write this it is 4 degrees here in Dexter and everything is covered in a thin film of the dirty salt that was used to melt the ice on the roads that was left over from the recent ice storm.

And a particularly nasty ice storm it was. For those of you with no experience in the north, ice storms occur when the temperature is just cold enough to start the rain to freeze before it falls. Everything gets soaked by this water that is just a hair's width from turning to ice, then the temperature drops a bit more and it freezes solid wherever it's wet. If this continues for a couple of days, the ice builds up on all the wires and branches and the weight starts causing things to collapse. A huge tree branch collapsed over the road right in front of me -- had I been about fifteen seconds earlier it would have fallen atop my roof, or worse, smashed my windshield.

But generally, the people who suffer most are those whose power lines collapse. There were folks who were out of power for 3 or 4 days. All the area hotels were filled up. People were buying day passes to health club or the YMCA to take a hot shower. Others were looking like the GEICO Caveman. It was a mess of epic proportions.

Luckily, I only lost power long enough for the clocks to reset, but my company was powerless for a full day, and so I got a free day of hooky. If there is an upside to an ice storm, it’s that it makes the world look like it’s made of crystal. So naturally I used my hooky day to take some snaps.

Iced Tree
Weighted Branches
Winter Barn
Frozen Fruit
More Frozen Fruit
Need to Thaw the Paper

Chilly Down South: I made a relatively brief trip down to Sarasota for some family business, followed by a couple of all-too-quick nights in Savannah with Miss Kate and Her Royal Highness.

Sarasota was chilly (for Sarasota, it was balmy for single digit Michigan). I think it was in the low 60s and rainy one day. As I think back, this is probably the first time I've been down that way during high season; for whatever reason I usually end up down there in the middle of the summer heat. Sarasota disappointed me a bit this time, and not just the weather. One advantage of off-season visits is that the traffic is not at all bad, but in the heart of the winter when the old folks congregate -- wow. Get ready to sit and wait a bit before you head off down the road at a solid twenty mph under the speed limit.

The other thing I found disappointing was that they took down this enormous sculpture of the famous Life magazine cover that I mentioned back in May. It was only temporarily there to begin with, but there was a move afoot to make it permanent which would have been a great icon for the city. Naturally, the cranky old seniors griped enough about it that they let it go.

Did manage to have a nice long lunch overlooking the beautiful Sarasota Bay, which was probably the highlight. Also, stayed at the delightful Hibiscus Inn Suites. I got this via a recommendation at Trip Advisor and it sounded like something special. It is, in fact, a motel. That's right, Mr. Hotel Snob himself managed to reserve a room at a motel; pull you car up to the door and be careful crossing to the pool that is in parking lot just next to the main road. Uh-oh.

But Hibiscus Suites is a great place. The rooms are actual suites with separate bedrooms and kitchenettes. The place is well kept up. Free wireless throughout. Continental breakfast every morning. A full slate of HBO channels. Good location. Best of all, the service was great and the staff exceedingly friendly. It’s not cheap; it's roughly in line with an actual hotel of the same standards, but I highly recommend it. It would work especially well for an extended stay. I’d give it a full review but I am swearing off hotel reviews for the time being.

The other notable thing about Sarasota was the car I rented. I used National and planned to reserve a mid-sized sedan. I quickly discovered that luxury class cars were only a couple of dollars more, so I upgraded, expecting a Caddy or a Lincoln -- standard livery issues. Nope, I got an Infiniti G35, and a bright red one at that. Sweet ride. It's got push button starting, which is a bit of a gimmick, and a big LCD in the middle of the dash that operates as the radio, satellite nav, environmental control, missile defense system, etc. Strong engine, good handling, but I don’t think I would buy one. There was significant throttle lag, minimal headroom (and I am not a big guy), and frankly, I'm just a lot more comfortable with non-digital controls. Still, it impressed the hell out of everyone.

On the way back I made a quick detour to Savannah to meet up with the ladies. They didn't arrive until after midnight on Friday due to a late and delayed flight, and had to fly out before sunrise on Sunday, but we did get to take the tours on Saturday and wander the city a bit. Savannah remains exceedingly charming, even with temps in the 50s.

At dinner, Kate and I ordered a bottle of wine and the clueless greenhorn waiter proceeded to bring three glasses, including one for the fourteen-year-old Miss Anna. She was quite delighted to have a glass unquestioningly poured for her and we allowed her to have a sip or two and then quickly emptied her glass into our own. No doubt the story will be somewhat embellished when she tells it in school and will scandalize the soccer moms of Reston, VA for weeks to come.

It was a nice little break for me. But I'm still casting about for travel possibilities this year. The suggestion box remains open.

Living in the Past: I am amazed by how much my movie watching habits have changed over the years. Like every young adult, I used to get geared up to see the new releases. I'd follow what was coming out and when and often go to theatre to see it first run. Goodbye to all that.

First, I have very little use for new movies. There are so many fine films from years past that I could likely go the rest of my life fully entertained if the entire industry collapsed.

Second, like any artistic endeavor, 95% of all films suck. OK, maybe only 10% suck profoundly, but the overwhelming majority is just complete waste of time. And there is virtually no way to get a valid advanced read on them. You certainly can't get it from the trailers, which are perfectly honed to create the desired impression. You can't really even get it from criticism since, like the films themselves, most criticism is bad: some criticism is bought, and the remainder? Well, we know what opinions are like, don't we? (Actually criticism becomes much more valid after you have seen the movie, when it becomes a conversation about the film rather than a desperate evaluation of whether it is worth your time.) Theatrical film releases are dying because nobody wants to spend $10 for a 95% chance at wasting two or three hours of their lives, except maybe teenagers.

Perfect example: Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong. It got a ton of hype, had a killer trailer, and garnered generally good reviews. Here's the thing: it's lousy. It's three hours long, the entire first hour and fifteen minutes or so are character establishment, and the characters aren't all that interesting. Then it turns into a big budget action flick with amazing computer-generated effects, but the action is really no better than any of the ten other big budget action flicks with amazing computer-generated effects that come out any given season.

It came on HBO last Saturday and I was feeling a bit burnt out and lethargic so I decided to watch it instead of be productive. It certainly functioned as something that required no productive effort. Not even thought. I completely validated my policy of not watching new movies, though.

In contrast, one of the gazillion channels on Comcast Digital recently re-ran the old '70s classic Midnight Cowboy. It is showing it’s age, but it is still a remarkable film (not for the kids -- I believe it actually got an "X" rating back in the day; it’s a nasty "R" these days). It is still a very affecting human story, not just based on the eventual sentimentality the viewer feels for the characters, but for the way it captured the humanity of the lowlifes at the center. It's extremely unlikely that anyone involved with the production was ever a dirtbag, penny-ante con man, or a cowboy gigolo wannabe, yet both characters seem genuine and fully formed. That's talent. Even though I had seen this movie before (but not for many years), it is an aspect of it I had not considered.

Anyway, the point is not that Midnight Cowboy is better than King Kong. It's that newness means nothing to me. I don't care that Midnight Cowboy is from a bygone era and I really don't care that much that I have seen it a couple of times in the past; it was the better way to spend time. Are there new films that are as good as Midnight Cowboy? Probably, but it's not worth the effort it would take to sort through all the crap to find them. Better to let time sort that out. I suspect that is going to be the general circumstance for me, forever. I am sure I will stumble on new films to enjoy once they've aged a bit and show up on-demand, but I don't need any more new movies. They are plenty I haven’t seen yet, and plenty to revisit and find newness in.

This is another way of saying I'm getting old and I don't cotton with all this new-fangled noise. Actually, the problem is that there is very little new. Facts are rearranged, but little is different. When you're young everything is new and all the humanistic insights of the arts are fresh. When you're old(er), something really and truly new only comes along once in a while. Meanwhile, you understand that pretty much all the insights have been out there for all the ages. So living in the past is just as good, only cheaper and less annoying.

More Lousy New Stuff: TV stinks to high heaven at the moment.

• House has gotten so ludicrous that Hugh Laurie can’t even save it.
• HBO's Rome has stared its second season and it is dreadful and dire. It needs to be cancelled before it turns into Oz or worse. They have even ruined Pullo and Vorenus.
• I gave in to the hype and watched the season premiere of 24 which was unspeakably bad. Really, one of the worst pieces of drama I have ever seen.
• I almost got sucked into Ricky Gervais' Extras which is good for a guffaw or two. It adheres to the current fashion in comedy -- the Humor of Awkward Discomfort (you can include Curb Your Enthusiasm and Borat in that too), which I find trying after a couple of episodes. I may continue to tune in for the celebrity cameos, which are a stitch.
• No more NFL. (When do two-a-days start?)

So now what? Well, let's see, The Sopranos last eight episodes come April. Not much until then. Lucky I have all those movie channels otherwise I might have to do something worthwhile with my time until then.

Next month, I promise to cut down on the film and video and maybe offer a couple of comments on what I have been reading.

The Month That Was - December 2006: Good bye to 2006. Don't let the door hit ya.

It's a Wrap
Mouse House
Plane Stupidity
Pod People
Where To?

It's a Wrap: Good riddance 2006, mostly due to events on a personal level that I keep private, but even on a public level I feel like it was a wasted year. I shouldn't feel that way, but strangely, I do.

I did a good bit of traveling. Had a great trip to Tahoe. Turks and Caicos was disappointing. Was sick for practically the duration of my desert spa visit. And there were the various weekends from Chicago to DC to Orlando (see below), and of course, Vegas.

I was not able to restart writing fiction in any meaningful way, which is a huge disappointment. But I did get a ton of hotel reviews out, and of course, the football column. So it's not like I did nothing but stare at a blank Word document either.

But now with the football column over (except for the Superbowl Special edition coming at the end of January), I am once again vowed to get back to fiction. There will be no more criticism or journalism. Apart from my monthly updates here, I MUST get focused on Misspent Youth. (I also have to get Business as Usual away from its current publisher, who are dirtbags, and try to get Apple Pie's publisher to take it on. It's a long story; I may share it once it's resolved.)

There are other goals, which might be called resolutions if I possessed anything approaching resolve. I need to get my investments in order, take some losses, re-work some winners. I need to re-decorate my home office. Last year I did my bedroom -- got the room painted, some new furnishing, had some minor misadventures in getting a custom brass bed delivered -- this year it's the office, which is currently full of all sorts of crap; it looks like a big storage closet. Oh, and I need to redesign all my web sites. Just the usual kind of stuff. I will likely get about 50-60% of it done.

I suppose I should be grateful that I don't have anything truly daunting to do like, oh, "survive cancer" or "file for divorce." I don't even have the usual things like "get in shape" or "find a new job." And yet, I have no sense of satisfaction in that.

I have, however, learned the importance of not giving in to negativity, especially unwarranted negativity. Despair is a sin. 2007 here I come.

Mouse House: I had to hit Orlando for the day job so I added in an extra day to troll around a bit in the mouse house. I like Disney, so you won't get any commercialism-is-the-death-of-all-that-is-good-and-worthy rants from me.

Obviously, the place is almost exclusively designed for families, rugrats in particular, so there wasn't all that much for me to do on my own, but I was situated right across from Downtown Disney, which contains Pleasure Island which is the closest thing to a place for adults. (Despite the tawdry name it is fine for kids, just geared towards adults.) There are some 18+ dance clubs, but I can't really recommend them.

One spot I can recommend is the Adventurers Club. It's themed after an a sort of African or East Indian explorers club from the heyday of the British Empire, sort of like where you'd expect to stumble across Alan Quartermain sipping a gin and tonic and hiring coolies for his next expedition. The staff is all in costume and in character. They put on little skits and engage in banter with the crowd. Good drinks. It's just bawdy enough to be interesting for adults without any possible offense to any children within earshot. Recommended.

The only theme park that is remotely suited for adults is Epcot. I caught the shuttle over and spent a longish afternoon wandering through the cultural exhibits. There's some good food to be had and there are genuinely interesting little performances that go on throughout the day. Mexico has one of the coolest looking restaurants set up like a deep dark jungle with a volcano in the background. There was a great film on China -- shown in a round theatre with 360 degree screens. The Canadian section had a rock band that featured a bagpiper. Not exactly sure how Canadian that was, but they weren't bad.

All this is set around a sizeable lake; and of course, it's Florida so the winter weather is perfect -- especially to someone from Michigan.

So it turns out a grown up can do OK in the mouse house for a couple of days. But it's still Disney, which means it is still way too expensive. These pics are free:

Epcot Lake (~265k)
Fake Morrocco (~420k)
Fake Pyramids (~265k)
Epcot Garden (~420k)

Plane Stupidity: There is a particularly annoying "puzzle" floating around the web, making appearances in various blogs. I would like to answer it for you ahead of time.

The question is posed: If there was a treadmill large enough that could hold a jet plane, would the plane be able to take off?

If you are lucky enough to stumble across this on a fairly active blog that allows comments, you will be privy to all sorts of moronic "explanations" as to why the plane would take off. They are wrong, it wouldn't.

Most people get this wrong because they assume that the jet engines are what cause the plane to take off. That is false. The engines provide thrust, but a plane flys because of lift, which comes about because the plane's wings are designed so that the pressure from the air under them is much higher than the pressure of the air above them. I believe this is also called the coriolis effect. To generate that air pressure you need speed; you need to be moving forward very fast. If you believe you are moving forward on a treadmill, you need to get to the gym more often. On a treadmill the thrust from the engines does not result in any air pressure on the wings; the plane will not leave the ground.

This explanation will not mollify the idiots you encounter in these blogs. They will continue to believe in their own theories, however asswitted they may be. That can be frustrating at first, but then you realize that it gives you an excuse to mercilessly flame their profound lack of intellect and their suspect genetic heritage. Which is nice.

Pod People: Well I am now a pod person. I have been threatening to buy an MP3 player for a while now, and if you are of the Mac persuasion (which I am these days) it makes little sense to buy anything but an iPod to go along with iTunes. My first instinct was to get something a little out of the ordinary -- one of the funky color combos they offer at Colorware so that everyone would be buggin' over my stylin' gansta' ways.

Then I realized that I really have no idea if I will end up making use of this thing, or it will sit on my kitchen counter for a couple of years until I get around to selling it for ten cents on the dollar. So I decided to go low end. Not quite as low as the Shuffle; I really had difficulty with the idea of no display or arbitrary song and playlist specification. I ended up going the next step up to the silver Nano, with a whopping 2 gig.

Actually it is "whopping." I have ripped maybe 12 CDs at the highest mp3 quality setting in iTunes and have a little over half the iPod full. It'll do me for a while.

A nano is a wee thing, though, and you cannot help but fear, rationally or otherwise, that you will inadvertently snap it. So the first thing you have to do is go out and buy a case for it. (I found a good one at Circuit City for twenty simoleans). Sadly, that doesn't allay my other fear: that I will wash it. 'Til then, I be jammin'.

Interestingly, Apple has just released two new devices. One is called iTV, which allows you to play videos purchased through iTunes on your TV. Once all TV shows and movies, including extensive libraries of titles long gone, were available for purchase, I would have to re-evaluate my cable TV subscription, but for the time being I can't see using this.

The other is the long anticipated iPhone, which combines an iPod, a Blackberry, a PDA, and a (poor quality) camera into a single Apple-branded device. Like everything else from Apple it is hip, stylish, and cute. But it has problems. A) It is too big -- primarily, one supposes, because it needs a keyboard. B) It is too expensive. $499/$599 with the purchase of a Cingular plan. Yow. Unlock it'll probably be pushing a grand. C) It tries to do too bloody much, as do all such multi-function devices. I cannot imagine wanting to run my phone, iPod and Camera all off the same battery, never mind a blackberry if I had one. I can go days without recharging my individual devices, could I say the same with this thing?

I do like the lovely Apple touch-screen interface of the thing. Is it too much to ask for a simple, inexpensive phone that has the sweet interface? Probably. But I'm sure some clever Korean company will make a decent knockoff in time.

Of course, I probably griped about the iPod a few years ago and look at me now. My littlest iPod along with my littlest iBook are hanging in there, but by 2010 I'll probably have drunk the Kool-aid bought into more Apple gadgetry. Maybe I should buy some Apple stock in the hopes of making enough to cover future purchases.

Where To?: So where should I go this year? What should I visit? Any thoughts?

I am once again tempted to hit the Caribbean simply because it is close, yet tropical. Still, with the exception of a single day on St. Barts many years ago, I have never been to a spot there that I felt the need see again. It's possible I have not found the right place. I have had the notion of a more off-the-beaten path trip; maybe Saba or Montserrat or Dominica or all three.

I have never been to Europe and strangely, don't feel any particular compulsion to go. I probably should -- how can you consider yourself a traveler if you have never been to Europe, right? But I would hate to waste precious travel time going somewhere just from peer pressure.

A closer hole in my travel resume is Mexico. I would like to see Cancun and the Maya Riviera, simply because I have an affection for man-made monuments to commerciality and Cancun certainly qualifies. More recently the town of Zihuatenajo on the Pacific coast looks nice.

I always have major journeys in my fantasies, such as the South Pacific (Oceania, Australia, or Southeast Asia), or even somewhere in the Indian Ocean (The Maldives -- yum). But the expense is huge and the travel is arduous. I would want to plan for three weeks at least in any of those places and do a multi-locale tour. Feasibility issues, to say the least.

Likewise with adventure holidays like, say, the Galapagos or the Masai Mara. Those would be cool, but the generally require formal tours and that means double occupancy and frankly, I know few people who can free up the time and I gave up on strangers as roommates after college.

It may end up being a year of re-visits, which would be fine. Hawaii could stand another visit, this time including the Big Island. Tahoe is all worth more time. A spa trip will be in order should I drift into unhealthy behavior at any point. The Northwest and the Northeast are both somewhat unexplored by me. I could throw in weekends to Chicago and Manhattan. I still haven't gotten back to New Orleans. Closer to home, I have been threatening to get to the Stratford Festival in Ontario for quite some time. So whatever my time and money circumstances, I do not want for things to do.

However it falls out, I'm sure you'll hear about all of them.

The Month That Was - November 2006: Sorry to be so late this month, but the football column has once again taken over my life and probably will own me through the end of the year. At least that's my excuse.

The end of the year. As I write this there is less than a month left in 2006. As you know, unlike many who blog, I scrupulously avoid delving into anything deeply personal (otherwise it wouldn't be personal -- see how that works?). If I did, however, you would probably understand why I will not miss 2006.

As you get older, years become a scarce commodity and that means the cost of a bad one is higher. Frankly, I think it's grotesquely unfair that years like 2006 count against the total. I call do-over.

Cruel Vegas
Au Revoir The Wire
That Book That Shall Not Be Named

Cruel, Cruel Vegas: Vegas was brutal this time around.

It started out when the cabbie felt so sorry for me being single, that he told me he would marry me if he was a girl. He had spent most to the trip to the hotel giving me stock investment advice. I congratulated him for being such a genius as to make some good investments in the middle of a bull market. He then asked me if I was married and next thing I know he was making the proposal. (I'm sure he thought he was complimenting me. They guy sounded like a relatively recent immigrant from Eastern Europe, which explains the malapropism.)

Thing is, I didn’t find it humorous. It just annoyed me. And it shouldn’t have. It was one of those comical things that always happens to me on the way to Vegas, but apparently I was not in the most positive frame of mind, which is weird for me going to Vegas. Maybe I had an inkling of what was to come.

I checked into “the T.I.” That is what they are calling Treasure Island now that it has been re-positioned for hip grown-ups. The T.I. is fine -- good quality, good location, good price. A prime spot for a winter weekend on a budget, but would not be my first choice if pool time was possible.

Spent the first day scouring the casinos for the best lines on the football games and made a few bets. In the intervening time until Sunday I hit the tables. Or rather, the tables hit me.

I have never had such a bad run of luck. I happened into Barbary Coast where I played Three Card Poker for the first time, and lost something like 12 hands in a row. It was not my playing. Three Card Poker has a dead simply optimum strategy and I knew it and played it. I just got reamed by the cards. So I switched back to blackjack where I proceeded to lose my stake in record time. Not good. That was enough for that day. I needed to back off. Things had to change tomorrow.

I took a walk on the Strip. The weather was actually pretty good; in the 70s for the most part. Not swimming weather, but I could at least walk around in my shirtsleeves. I had a couple of excellent meals. Dinner at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill -- always tasty and creative. Lunch the next day at my old stand-by, Olives -- as good as ever.

Satruday afternoon I caught the Deuce to the south end of the Strip. The Deuce is a double-decker bus service that trolls the Strip up to downtown and back. Not a bad foot saver. Less expensive than the somewhat inconvenient monorail. Anyway, I ended up at Tropicana playing at an infinitesimally low stakes blackjack table trying to recapture my mojo. I failed. The stakes were low so I was able to play a while, but it was still a steady stream of losers. Enough of that, then.

Over to the Luxor where I dove into an el-cheapo Hold ‘Em session and didn’t do too bad, but still came out behind. Just to give you some idea of how the weekend was going, I caught a flush on the Turn in one hand and not one but two of my opponents filled a full house on the River. Good grief. At least I got to play for few hours.

The next day was football day. I had bet on eight games. I lost five, including two at the last minute. It was like slow torture. At least I was smart enough to be spending the day in the brand new spa at Caesar’s, Qua, where I was snacking on healthy food and juice (instead of deep-fried grease rolls and lukewarm Bud Light) and drowning my sorrows in the whirlpool and cold plunge.

Fun story: Also visitng Qua was King Faruk, as I had come to call one nebbishy fellow who was fixed in a comfy arm chair in the tea room. He was making the most of having spa servants. In the span of about fifteen minutes he had pestered the spa staff to get him a new bathrobe because the one he had was wet; had about three different flavors of tea delivered to him until he found one he liked -- bear in mind the tea was on a counter not more than five feet away from him, but he was not going to move from his comfy chair; sent the attendant off to peel an orange for him; complained about noise coming from the showers (all that water splashing...); asked one of the attendants to turn the channel from football to basketball, quickly adding "at half-time" when I gave him the evil eye. Just hilarious. I kept waiting for him to ask for a cup to pee in so he didn't have to get up. The attendents took it all in stride -- I would've clocked the guy. There are people who remain children their whole lives; this guy remained an infant.

Anyway, like I was saying, I lost everything I tried, even in the non-serious stuff. Drop a twenty into the slots -- gone. Slap a ten on a roulette spin -- gone. There was nothing I could do to win. Brutal is the precise word.

My only luck came in getting out alive. I may write up the T.I. and Qua for Hotel Chatter, but at this point, I don’t even want to think about it.

Au Revoir, The Wire: Slate interviewed David Simon, the man behind The Wire, one of the two best pieces of drama created in my lifetime. He comes off as something of an angry crank and, like most artistic types, he is confused about politics and economics. He makes common mistakes of assuming his world is everybody's world (if I lived in Baltimore I might be an angry crank, too), and that everybody is blind to what is really going on, and blames "capitalism," and uses all the well-worn cliches of the class-struggle pessimist.

When he's in his element, though, which is the deep understanding drama, he has no peer. The other best piece of drama from my lifetime is Deadwood, which I have gone about at length in past. Here is Simon on the comparison between the two:

...the portrayals in Deadwood are in the Shakespearean model. On The Sopranos, there's an awful lot of Hamlet and Macbeth in Tony. But the guys we were stealing from in The Wire are the Greeks. In our heads we're writing a Greek tragedy, but instead of the gods being petulant and jealous Olympians hurling lightning bolts down at our protagonists, it's the Postmodern institutions that are the gods. And they are gods. And no one is bigger.

By the way: If at any point any character on the show ever talks as I'm talking right now, it would suck. It's crucial that the characters can't lecture us.

Great stuff. He should give lessons in how to shut off the didactic impulse. I am so looking forward to season five, but it's hard to imagine it will be more affecting and human that the season that just finished. I am hoping that more character focus goes back on the Major Crimes Unit. I found them to be more interesting characters than the politicos and bureaucrats. I also hope we will follow the set of four kids who were the fulcrum of this year’s story. They were absolutely real to me.

Actually, the character I most hope they cover is Lester Freamon. The guy is a total Sherlock Holmes but we know next to nothing about him except that he likes to carve miniature furniture. Maybe that's intentional. We know that the characters sometimes are designed to represent concepts rather than be specific individuals. Omar represents the man uncorrupted by institutions. The Greek represents capitalism in its purest form (as imagined by Simon). Maybe Freamon is intended to represent pure reason, or maybe the narrow, task-focused view of Everyman. Hmmm.

Lucky for me, capitalism has provided for me to keep subscribing to HBO, because I can’t get enough of this.

That Book With the Unspeakable Title: A while back, I started reading a book with a title that is pronounced Low Lee Ta. I’m describing it that way so as not to set off any hypersensitive content filters. This month I returned to it and am nearly though it.

It is certainly one of the most discussed and debated books ever written. And as someone who read any number of critical appraisals, I can happily say it is not what I expected. It is both worse and better. Better in that the writing is amazing. Every sentence is a complex structure loaded with meaning. Wordplay abounds. There are times when Nabokov seems a little too in love with this elaboration but the majority of it is gorgeous from a stylist's standpoint. However, because of that, it is best reserved for an experienced and patient reader. This is not an airplane or beach book; it is probably best to break it up into short, closely focused reading sessions.

Worse in that it does not spare you one iota of the creepiness of the protagonist Humbert Humbert. And yet it doesn’t entirely spare the title character either. It is a truly savage appraisal of the ways in which victim and victimizer manipulate each other. But unlike most such stories, it is not really morally ambivalent. Humbert is the adult, his manipulations are evil. The girl is 12, and she manipulates like any 12-year old, except the context of it is sexual depredation. It’s just a very disturbing thing to read, more so because most of the emotions and motivations are similar to what any human being experiences, but the context makes them appalling.

There are about a million angles one could take on the story, and I may try to pass along a few in the future. If you're interested in giving it a shot, I offer a qualified recommendation. You need to be ready to deal with the fairly complicated prose. You need to suspend your expectations of what a story about a lecherous pedophile is supposed to be. But you do not need to suspend your sense of right and wrong -- that alone puts it above most modern works.

The Month That Was - October 2006: Not a lot of content here. I've been working steadily on the football column, the site is linked up to your left. Also, my Reno Round-up appeared over on Hotel Chatter (parts 1, 2, 3, 4) a couple of weeks ago. Same info as what was in the Reno/Tahoe trip report which I am going to replace with links.

Other than that it was a pretty slow month, taken up with decidedly uninteresting stuff like ordering a new bed, getting sofa cushions re-foamed, and refinancing my condo. Ain't I a regular Suzy Homemaker? Would you like to hear the details? Didn't think so.

TSA burn
DC Dash
Rods and Sods
Idiots
Short-time TV

TSA Burn: OK, the terrorists have finally succeeded in annoying me. I had a two-nighter in Washington DC for work and it's really the first time I have gotten aggravated over airport security.

Longtime readers know that in general I have had little problem with the post-911 security measures. Apart from the first few months after the attacks, when the wait time crested 60 minutes, I have been able to sail through with relative ease. Part of this is because TSA got more efficient; part of it is because I knew the rules and was able to speed everything up.

Then came the whole liquid explosive fiasco. For a while, pretty much all bags were getting checked, even for a short over nighter. If you were bringing any toiletries -- shaving cream, toothpaste, etc. -- you had to check the bag they were in. Well, if you are going to check one bag, you may as well check them all, right? So for a couple of months, the overhead bins were empty and bag-less folks were sailing through security screening to the point where I was comfortable getting to the airport as near as a half-hour to boarding.

Then TSA decided to lighten up and allow toiletries less than three ounces to be carried on, making carry-on only travel feasible again. What I didn't know was that you can just have them in your kit inside your carryon. In Detroit you are required to at least pull your kit out and open it up as you send it through the x-ray. Naturally I just sent everything though like I normally would have, so I got the pleasure of a bag check and some condescending words from a TSA agent.

With this in mind, on the way back from DC, I dutifully pulled out my kit and opened it up to send through the machine, only to be told that it was unacceptable. At Reagan National they want you to pull specific items out and place them in clear plastic bags. In fact they are so keen on this that they won't even send your items through until you do so. Luckily I happened to have a see through plastic baggie; I have no idea what they would have made me do if I didn't.

So here I am with my laptop case and a little carryon bag and I am sending the laptop case, the laptop (must be separate), my carry on, my baggie full of toiletries, my jacket and my shoes through. That is really obnoxious. I mean really, really obnoxious.

OK, if I was prepped for it maybe it wouldn't have been so bad, so I suppose it is partially my own fault for not being on top of the TSA rules. The problem is that, as usual, the rules and the level of enforcement are slightly different from airport to airport. This is typical of TSA, and all bureaucracies for that matter. They issue policies that are unclear, so everyone ends up interpreting it however they want.

But another issue is that they seem to have no conception that when they change the rules they need to change the system to allow people to adhere to them. I don't know how many lines have been held up because everybody is waiting until the very last minute to strip off their jackets and pull out their laptops because there is only the only little folding table in front of the screener. And how often have you had to grope around for a plastic tray. Is there a reason they can't expand these areas so you can use the time you normally spend just standing in line, to prep at a more leisurely pace?

I know most people believe that TSA does little to nothing to enhance security. I sometimes feel that way too, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as long as things don't get too silly. Also, I accept that security is as much about perception as reality. But instead of just issue new policies, they need to give a lot more thought to facilitating adherence.

Whether they do good or ill, TSA continues to exist because they haven't pissed enough people to make them into a burning issue. But every new person they piss off pushes them closer and closer to the brink. And frankly, if you've pissed me off -- someone who is about as reasonable minded about TSA as is humanly possible -- you're taking a big step in the wrong direction.

DC Dash: But the misadventures on my tiny little trip to DC didn't stop with TSA.

Trying to get out of Detroit we sat at the gate for an hour because the co-pilot for the flight could not be located. The pilot was rather straightforward about this, telling us that that everything was ready to go but we were sitting there because the co-pilot was missing and no one knew where to find him. I was careful not to suggest they look for a trail of empty bottles of Scotch, lest TSA violate my personal body space. A replacement co-pilot showed up after about an hour.

I stayed at the L'Enfant Plaza hotel just off the Mall. I have stayed there before, back when it was under the control of corporate hotel giant Loews. It has not fared well over the years, whether this is because of the loss of Loews sponsorship I cannot say. The furnishings and paint are worn down, the amenities are the bare minimum (were talking a 21-inch TV set from the 1981), and the plumbing is a mess -- I had a toilet that barely flushed and a tub faucet that wouldn't shut off. The wi-fi is costly and doesn't work in the meeting rooms (although it works fine in the accommodations). It has a great location with a metro stop in the basement and a short walk to the Mall, but I can't think of any other reason to recommend it.

Of course, not all the screw-ups were the fault of the travel industry. I managed to forget a number of key documents I was supposed to bring. I also forgot the power cord to my iBook so I spent the days with only parsimonious access to my laptop.

I did manage to arrange for meet up with Misses Kate and Anna for one night to treat Kate to a birthday dinner. Even that was marred by incident. Cruising along the Georgetown Pike, Kate's Saab snapped its serpentine belt. We had a two hour wait for a tow truck. Serendipitously, we found ourselves stopped in a local wooded area comically named Difficult Run Park. It's a really nice little spot with a picturesque stream and hiking trials through the woods. If you are ever stranded with car trouble and have a two hour wait for a tow truck in Northern Virginia, I highly recommend it. When all was said and done, we did get to have a nice dinner and I got to catch up with them, which made the trip worthwhile.

At the moment I am writing this, I am sitting at the gate waiting for my flight home. The flight has just been delayed by a half-hour.

At the moment I am writing this, we have been sitting on the tarmac in Detroit for 20 minutes because another plane is in our gate.

Rods and Sods: I lost interest in Rod Stewart after Altantic Crossing (yes, I'm that old). He's been selling tons of records lately by recording Great American Songbook renditions which, from what I've heard, prove that vocal ability in one genre does not transfer to another. But it now seems he may have hit rock bottom.

I am sitting in Barnes and Noble, trying to get my next football column done and they are playing his latest record, which consists of retreads of "rock classics." Except they are not rock classics. They are among the most horrendous pseudo-ballads ever to come be played on FM radio. I don't know if he picked these out, but if he did he needs to be tested for brain damage. They are the most leaden, soulless songs every put on vinyl. The kind of stuff they might play in the waiting room at the geriatric ward, or possibly pump out the speakers in front of a suburban 7-11 to keep the skater boys away.

Here's the song list:
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
Fooled Around and Fell In Love
I'll Stand By You
Still The Same
It's A Heartache
Day After Day
Missing You
Father & Son
The Best Of My Love
If Not For You
Love Hurts
Everything I Own
Crazy Love

Apart from the Dylan throwaway, it is pure tripe.

Rod has become my generation's equivalent of Perry Como. They guy the old people have on in the background while they play canasta. Like Perry, he has a recognizable voice and sings the most inoffensive songs imaginable. Also like Perry he clearly has some talent, but dude, coming across on the Easy FM station in Buick Lucerne is no way to finish up a career for the guy who sang 'Stone Cold Sober' and 'Pool Hall Richard'. If Rod's taste now runs to these types of songs, it's easy to see how he got here.

Say what you want about Jagger, at least he's not crooning drivel to the early-bird buffet crowd. This as depressing as anything I've heard.

I need an iPod and some thick headphones.

Things That Make You Go Arrrgh!: Two species of idiots:

Phonies
I have been trying to re-finance my condo. This has been among the most tedious processes I have ever been through. I'm not talking about the paper work; I'm talking about how there doesn't seem to be a single mortgage rep who is capable of using email. I understand that there are phone people and email people, but frankly, if you want my business you need to able to at least follow through on some basic communications via email. They seem to be able to fill my spam folder with offers.

The net result is that I end up play phone tag with all these people, and then when I finally do get a hold of them I end up hearing the same damn spiel about rates and points and have to politely listen as they try to personalize their service. Look, I don't want to be your friend, I want a quote from you. That's all. When did mortgage reps become the new car salesmen?

There is no reason for this. Why cannot I send a single email or web form and then get back a quote. I do not need anything more than that and they make me go through hours of nonsense for this. How stupid is it to spend half our day trying to catch up with people on the phone when a 5 minute email will provide certain communication? Idiots.

Politicians
The mere idea that those inane political ads work is enough to turn someone into a misanthrope. I know nothing about the current issues of the day, but I can tell just from the tone and the wording that they are utterly manipulative and contain little more than fractional truths. How can anyone with an IQ greater than 4 take them at face value? Why not just vote based on bumper stickers? Or better yet, flip a coin.

And is there a reason I need to get thirty flyers in the mail every day, none of which has any purpose that I can see other than to encourage people to vote based on name recognition. If they didn't have to pay to level entire forests to send these out they could probably lower our taxes.

If it's this bad now, God help us in two years. Idiots.

Short But Happy Lives: Occasionally I am reminded of how much I hate TV. Actually I don't hate TV, I like TV, but I hate the decision makers behind TV. I have just stumbled on another of the endless litany of decent TV shows that got cancelled after a brief run because a time slot was needed for some miserable knockoff of a tawdry reality show or asinine action fantasy that was a hit on another channel.

This time it is Wonderfalls. I happened to stumble on this series while channel surfing and found it delightful. It's the story of a slacker girl who works in a Niagara Falls gift shop; she suddenly finds that animals are talking to her. Not real animals, fake ones: little figurines, stuffed toys, pink lawn flamingos, etc.

The show is loaded down with lighthearted ironies and affecting characters. Nice balance of comedy and weirdness, fateful action and random chance. Nothing dramatic or bombastic, just small clever stories filled with wit and served with a wink and a smile. To give you a sense for what is was like, two of the people behind it went on (separately) to do Malcolm in the Middle and Dead Like Me.

It is currently being rerun on Logo, the gay channel. Except half the time when I try to TIVO it I only end up with some silly gay show instead because apparently Logo can't manage to set a straight schedule. (Get it? A "straight" schedule? The gay channel can't keep a "straight" schedule. That's a joke, son.)

I could easily buy the series DVD but I don't want to. They only made 13 episodes before it was replaced, probably by some dire and dreary variation of Law and Order, and I would prefer to have the discovery last a while.

Networks should rerun these unjustly-treated short-time shows more often. Is there a reason Encore Western has to rerun tedious melodramas like Gunsmoke when they could fly through The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. in a couple of weeks? And why can't the Sci-fi Channel take a break from the 24/7 Star Trek inundation to show Eerie, Indiana.

But I'm now officially rambling. Your (correct) comment at this point is, "Quit yer whining and go out and buy the DVD. Now where's the next football column?" Touche.

The Month That Was - September 2006: I guess we can consider this to pretty much demark the end of Summer. I managed a couple of trips, the main one being to Reno and Lake Tahoe. You can read the full write-up; beware, it's a long one.

That'll probably be it for my travel articles this year (well, maybe one more if I do any interesting holiday travel), now I have to get settled into the football column habit, which should start end of October and take me into 2007. Once that is done, like so many times before, I will attempt to get some fiction writing momentum going.

I'm really not looking forward to this winter; warmth and travel will be minimal and I am another year older. The world better do a good job of entertaining me over the next few months.

Opening the Golden Door
Rambin' and Gamblin'
Shallow Views of The Wire
Crescent City Blues

Opening the Golden Door: My minor trip this month came about because I got an email alert from one of my travel lists regarding the Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa in Carefree, Arizona (slightly north of Phoenix). They had a dirt cheap post-Labor Day special so a snagged three nights.

The idea was to get in a little detox. Healthy food; outdoor exercise; writing and reading around the pool. No fast food. No days spent staring mindlessly at my computer, followed evenings spent mindlessly at my computer. No fretting over writing, but just doing some light reading instead. No alarm clock. No donuts for breakfast. Of course, in rebellion against this utterly healthy lifestyle, my first night there I caught a savage head/chest cold that I still haven't fully defeated. Just brutal.

The Golden Door Spa is top notch -- steam, sauna, whirlpool -- I worked in a couple of massages, including a service called Watsu, where the therapist whips you around and bends and twists you in a small pool with body temperature water. The supposed effect of being the water is weightlessness, allowing your body to be contorted in ways it normally couldn't. (My therapist happened to be from South Bend, Indiana; this just after the Wolverines trounced Notre Dame. I was lucky not to have been drowned in vengeance.)

I don't recommend Watsu for the massage novice. It requires a certain, um, openmindedness, but I will admit that I did not think it was possible for my body to twist and turn like that. You'll want to have a positive view of popping joints and crckling vertebrae before attempting this.

I can assure you that if you're going to have a head cold, Golden Door is a good place to be. You can spend the days baking in the desert sun (it was in the mid-90s each day I was there) and the evenings hydrating your poor sinuses in the steam room.

I won't trouble you with another extended spa exposition except to say Boulders/Golden Door is an exceptional spa. It's not up with Canyon Ranch or Mirival, but it's no disappoint in any way. Even including the head cold, it's a better experience than 99.999% of the people in the world will ever have.

Ramblin' and Gamblin': In the course of my various wanderings to the sacred land of Nevada I managed to place some sports bets. Every year I make futures bets and every year I regret it, but I just can't seem to stop myself. And this year is no exception.

First, you will note how the Tigers were dominating the baseball world for most of the year. Just completely trouncing everybody. Now, I almost never make homer bets. I might be rooting for the home team, but when it comes to laying down money, if I think it's smart to go against my sentimental favorite then I will go against them. Normally I am totally ruthless in that respect. Yet, here I was plopping down cash on the Tigers to win the Series, an event that I was not remotely confident in but, for whatever reason, I suddenly decided to make a homer bet.

Sure enough, starting at the precise second I handed my money to the nice man in the sports book at the Mirage the Tigers went on a potentially historic slide and managed to finally lose the division lead on the last day of the season, thus causing them to face the fearsome Yankees in the first playoff series.

Now, the book is not closed on this yet, but note two things: 1) they had to get swept in their final series against the horrendous Kansas City Royals to complete their crash, and they managed to do it, and 2) the 9th hitter in the Yankees lineup has a higher batting average than anyone on the Tigers. Let's just say I would have been better off buying lottery tickets. It's conceivable they can turn things around somehow, but if they don't, my apologies to Tiger fans everywhere who have been waiting so long for a post-season chance. I hammered the poor Cats with my foul juju.

Next, I kept minding the line of the Miami-Pittsburgh NFL season opener. It started with the Steelers -3.5, before Ben's appendix exploded. By the time I had arrived in Tahoe, Harrah's had it at even money. The Montbleu (where I was staying) had the Steelers -1.5. That a pretty big difference, which suggested to me that there was an opportunity there.

My big issue was that the Steelers were starting Charlie Batch at QB. Ex-Lion Charlie Batch. I couldn't get past that fact. Even though the Steelers were at home and even though they have a killer pass rush of the sort that Daunte Culpepper just can't comprehend, I couldn't get past Ex-Lion Charlie Batch. So I took the Fins +1.5 and from early on, even when they were seemed to be still in the game, they were as shaky as a refrigerated junky. But I didn't give up hope because I knew Ex-Lion Charlie Batch had the ability to hand the game over with a single throw. Sadly, so did Daunte Culpepper. And Nick Saban.

This was a painful one for me. Just a stupid gut level bet that I should have known better than to take. I never kick myself over a gambling loss when I made a good call based on the info available at the time. That happens to all gamblers as often as not. This wasn't one of those. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But wait, it gets worse.

During my last Vegas trip, I noticed that the line on the Lions opener was Seattle -3.5. Unbelievable. That the reigning NFC champs could not come into Detroit and take the Lions by more than a field goal was unthinkable. This was Found Money, I'm telling you. As close to a sure thing as anything I have seen. And I was right -- at first. By game time, the line a rose to 8 points, meaning the Seahawks were expected to win by more than a touchdown and here I was with them giving up only 3.5.

Even better: a couple of days before the game the Lions D-line coach got caught ordering drive-thru at a local Wendy's apparently under the mistaken impression that it was clothing optional. Had he been a player it would have wiped Ron Mexico and the Vikings Love Boat off the sports comedy map. As it was, imagine a Lions defensive lineman having to come to practice the next day and take instruction from this guy. It had to mess with their heads, didn't it? Tell me the D-line wasn't giggling to itself when it should have been keyed up to kill the QB. The Lions were toast. I was sitting pretty.

So what happens? The Seahawks did win, but by only 3 points. What the hell? What kind of lame-ass performance was that? How could they do that to me? Now I have to hate the Seahawks. I hope they finish the season 8-8 and miss the playoffs. I hope Hasselbeck has an allergic reaction to Rogaine. I hope Shaun Alexander's ACL turns out to be a garbage bag twist-tie. I hope come midseason, they are like some kind of South Pacific cargo cult praying for Steve Hutchinson to come back, possibly including a sacrificial offering of Mike Holmgren's still beating heart. That was my money, you bastards.

So that really leaves me only one bet and of course, the outlook is not positive. I have money on the Steelers to repeat as Super Bowl champs. I got long-ish odds on that one, so if it comes through, that makes up for the rest. As I write this, they haven't even come close to being the team they were last year. There's still time and, like the Tigers, they may pull it all together (they started slow last year too). But I can't help but remember that Roethlisberger had one of the worst performances for a Super Bowl QB ever, he got hammered his face into a car in the off season, his appendix went south, and he hasn't put up a decent performance yet this year.

Why do I do this? Why can't I just wait for the season and make my regular picks? You'd think by my age I would have found a more fruitful self-destructive behavior to adopt.

I'll get to the next post after I take a moment to punch myself in the head about fifteen times.

Shallow Views of The Wire: HBO has announced that The Wire will get a season 5 due solely to critical raves (ratings suck). Interesting because, even though The Wire is as good as it gets, it's not any better than Deadwood, although I will admit that its quality is probably more accessible than Deadwood's, and Deadwood was denied a final season. (And yes I'm still bitter.)

HBO has been putting out episodes of The Wire a few days ahead of general release through their on-demand and I have been chomping at the bit to see each one the minute it is available -- meaning after midnight on Sunday evening. It's that good.

It's so good that most critics (and to a qualified extent, series creator David Simon himself), while sensing its undeniable quality, don't even have a clue how to describe it. They fall back on it being and "indictment of urban neglect" or a "cautionary tale of inner-city despair" or other such triteness drivel. They say the low ratings reveal how nobody wants to be reminded of the underclass. Bollocks.

The low ratings are because it is deeply complicated and slow. You cannot watch it casually and get anything out of it. It demands attention and patience. Whatever the subject matter, ratings are going to suck for such a show. Just ask the folks who produced Deadwood. To deem otherwise is to sell the show short.

The Wire is not an indictment or a caution at all. It is simply a cold-eyed view of reality. It does not follow the pathetic clichÇ of innocent ghetto dwellers victimized by whoever the fashionable evil demographic happens to be. As often as not, these downtrodden types have made the choices that got them where they are, whether something could have been done to change those choices remains an open issue, but no one here is remotely innocent.

Simon has stated that this season is about institutions and how all institutions end up corrupting individuals. That's probably not true in the gross and common sense of the word "corruption"; however in the more subtle sense of individuals having to compromise with institutions to maintain mutually beneficial relationships it is almost certainly true. Still, without institutions there wouldn't be any civilized people to corrupt.

All this is not the stuff of ratings or pithy critical descriptions. It is absolutely the stuff of phenomenal drama.

By the way, if you decide to get into The Wire don't just start watching this Sunday. If you have HBO On-Demand, start working through all the seasons from the first. Only then should you move into season 4. If you don't have On-Demand, get the DVDs for season 1, 2, and 3 and watch them first. Don't rush. After that, wait for HBO to replay season 4 from the beginning or just wait for the season 4 DVD.

I'm not sure what options are available for you downloaders, but the point is: Watch the entire series and watch in order.

Crescent City Blues: Do I seem particularly cynical this month? Well, I probably am.

I'm even pretty much fed up with the city of New Orleans. For the longest time I have been angling to get a weekend set-up down in the Quarter just to see how things are going first hand and to drop some cash to do my part, but at the moment I don't want anything to do with it. I can't imagine anything more unseemly than the self-indulgent, woe-is-me wankfest over the Katrina anniversary. Good God, people.

All this reached a pinnacle with the reopening of the Superdome for a Monday Night Saints game. We were treated to hours -- literally hours -- of heartfelt testimony and special interest segments on how meaningful a moment this was, how it was so much more than just a football game to the demoralized New Orleans residents. The folks at ESPN just live for this sort of tripe. They yearn, day in and day out, to turn sports events into stories of Great Social Relevance. (They must have some kind of serious inferiority complex about being grown-ups overly concerned with silly games to go to the lengths they do.)

Of course, you can't have Great Social Relevance without celebrities, and we had a seeming endless progression of them, either shots of them as spectators, or doing interviews in the booth and the on the sidelines all night long. Lucky they got to watch the game in person while some poor schmuck from the 9th Ward couldn't afford a ticket 'cause they had been bid up to $1000 a seat.

And you know you've reached the pinnacle of Great Social Relevance when that insufferable assclown Bono shows up. Yes, in celebration, the game was kicked off by live performances from U2, the professionally processed punk band Green Day, and the Goo-Goo Dolls. (I was so surprised to see The Goo-Goo Dolls I almost dropped my Sega Saturn.) It had to be one of the top 5 most tawdry moments in television history.

But then, that's the way of things, right? Disasters breed victims; victims are immediately granted high moral standing and Great Social Relevance. What follows is that famous personalities, who know in their hearts how superficial their wealth and glory is, try to buy into the high moral standing of the victims as a misguided way to find a sense of importance.

Just a pathetic display from start to finish. And pretty close to meaningless, too, but we do love our symbolism don't we?

This is not to decry charity. When Reggie Bush goes into the devastated areas and hands out supplies or just tells some kid everything is going to be all right, that has meaning. That is personal. That is real. But every camera crew, politician, b-list actor or pompous rock star who hitches along for a ride cheapens the act.

The other side of the coin from Katrina was that New Orleans had something resembling a fresh start. Semi-lost in the discussion is the fact that, outside the tourist centers, pre-Katrina New Orleans was crime-ridden, destitute and downright dirty. Well here is your opportunity to redo things right. Now is the time to think big. Why not lay grand plans? Why not see New Orleans as the next Orlando or Las Vegas? Somebody call Moe Green. It could happen. Why not?

I'll tell you why not. Because nobody with any authority in the bayou has that sort of vision. Nobody can think beyond glad-handing and backslapping and protecting their own paltry standing. That fresh start for New Orleans was pissed away when they promptly re-elected the same sort of small-minded, corrupt, and outright stupid officials that they had prior to Katrina. In America, one way or another, voters usually get what they want. Unfortunately, getting what you want goes hand in hand with getting what you deserve. (Although no one really deserves Bono.)

If I were Mayor Nagin, these anniversary displays would alarm me. Symbolic or not, all this hand-wringing is bringing about a sense of closure, which means he might start to lose some of his victimhood mojo in the broader world. More importantly, if I were a resident of New Orleans, I would realize that my city is only fractionally recovered and I may be facing some difficult times with only Hizzoner and his cronies to count on. Scary, that.

At this point I don't have any more sympathy for New Orleans. The Katrina disaster was unspeakably awful, but money is pouring in and goodwill is, for the moment, blooming. So what are you going to do with it, New Orleans? Are you going to define yourselves forever as Katrina victims or are you going to build a great city? Frankly, from what I've seen so far, I don't think you've got that greatness in you.

So let me know how it turns out because I've ceased to pay attention. For now, I just need you to keep a path clear from the airport to the French Quarter for me.