It's uneventful news to you, but a source of great relief to me, that I've completed the first draft of my next book. It is awful, as first drafts uniformly are, but from now on it's all a matter of revision. It's a big step on to a lower grade of climb. I am pleased.
All TV this month. Not that all I did was watch TV, but there were three significant finales this month. I did tons of chores, many frustrating, some rather icky. I'll spare you the discussion of those. You're welcome.
[TV] Endgame of Thrones
[TV] The Last Big Bang
[TV] Deadwood Epilogue
Friday, June 07, 2019
[TV] Endgame of Thrones
Folks are generally critical on the final season, and the finale in particular, and so am I, but perhaps not as much as others. Although the narrative fearlessness slacked and fan service grew after they ran out of book material to work from, at least they never lost sight of the timeless thread. Dani overcomes adversity and wages war for good and justice, which turns out to be a not so clean and noble an activity. She does damage, causes harm, imposes her will -- it can't be helped. She gets used to power, grows enthralled with herself. Then when push comes to shove, the principles become an excuse for power as opposed to the reverse. She becomes what every well-intentioned crusader becomes given enough time -- a tyrant.
The lesson: the only ones who are worthy to lead are those who don't want to. It's an old story. It is central to the myth of America's founding, but not uniquely by any means. It is what's forgotten by every socialist dreamer an starry-eyed revolutionary. It is a curse on civilization. Kudos for keeping that theme front and center, when I'm sure there were enormous temptations to build simple and easy good guys and bad guys and construct a fair and just comeuppance for all. That, as opposed to anything else, is the thing, along with the top notch cinematography and effects, that makes the show a cut above.
But the complaints are many and valid. Some of the story arcs took rather abrupt turns in the final two episodes -- Jaime suddenly deciding he was hateful after all; the Hound deciding his only reason for living was to kill his hated brother -- all despite years of character development. Honestly it felt like the War with the Night King could have been a six episode season in itself, as could the war for the Iron Throne. Maybe absent George R.R. Martin the writer's room went from pursuing the characters and their individual cruelties to barrelling into a defined ending and simply closing off the main threads, plot holes be damned. I'm all in favor of efficient narratives, especially if you've run out of creative ideas, but wedging each war into a single episode seemed like a bit of a shortchanging. Then of course there were the famous beverage scandals: the Starbucks cup and the bottle of water. Maybe they had all just had enough and wanted it over with.
(This may be the only time I have ever suggested a work of fiction should have been longer than it was.)
In any case, it falls well short of the TV pantheon. I doubt I will rewatch it, but it is now seared into our culture and that is no small achievement.
The lesson: the only ones who are worthy to lead are those who don't want to. It's an old story. It is central to the myth of America's founding, but not uniquely by any means. It is what's forgotten by every socialist dreamer an starry-eyed revolutionary. It is a curse on civilization. Kudos for keeping that theme front and center, when I'm sure there were enormous temptations to build simple and easy good guys and bad guys and construct a fair and just comeuppance for all. That, as opposed to anything else, is the thing, along with the top notch cinematography and effects, that makes the show a cut above.
But the complaints are many and valid. Some of the story arcs took rather abrupt turns in the final two episodes -- Jaime suddenly deciding he was hateful after all; the Hound deciding his only reason for living was to kill his hated brother -- all despite years of character development. Honestly it felt like the War with the Night King could have been a six episode season in itself, as could the war for the Iron Throne. Maybe absent George R.R. Martin the writer's room went from pursuing the characters and their individual cruelties to barrelling into a defined ending and simply closing off the main threads, plot holes be damned. I'm all in favor of efficient narratives, especially if you've run out of creative ideas, but wedging each war into a single episode seemed like a bit of a shortchanging. Then of course there were the famous beverage scandals: the Starbucks cup and the bottle of water. Maybe they had all just had enough and wanted it over with.
(This may be the only time I have ever suggested a work of fiction should have been longer than it was.)
In any case, it falls well short of the TV pantheon. I doubt I will rewatch it, but it is now seared into our culture and that is no small achievement.
[TV] The Last Big Bang
Contra Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory went out with barely a whisper, although I think it is no less ingrained into our culture. The end was a simple farewell. No great revelations or changes, the very last image was the group eating dinner in the same spot along the couch as they always had.
BBT started out as a nerd culture darling, and lived long enough to become unfashionable. It succeeded over the years for two reasons -- first: exceptionally sensitive and professional writing. They never talked down to the audience. And they did not delude themselves that it could be the story of four nerds forever. They evolved very skillfully into what became a Friends clone. This was widely derided but, as someone on another sitcom once pointed out, you gotta have somewhere for the characters to go. Especially if you are going to crank out 20-ish episodes a year for 12 years. What I'm saying is, this was a master class in TV writing professionalism, compromises and all.
The second thing it had was the unparalleled comedic capabilities of the regular ensemble. Even when the writers fell short, these folks could provide a delivery that killed. Some of that is natural, but some of it is also hard work and diligent effort. I suspect they all spent a lot of time in front of the mirror with their scripts, or possibly drove their loved ones crazy with requests to read lines. Notice how many characters were introduced over the years only to be discarded after a few episodes. These are the ones who looked promising in casting, but when the heat was on, they couldn't keep up with the regulars.
It is unfashionable to say so, but I think BBT's reputation will grow in the upcoming years. I know of at least four instances of people who came to it late, stumbling on a rerun, then devoted themselves to catching up on all the seasons they missed. (One of those is me.) You can do that, because TBS reruns about four episodes every night during prime time. And the fact that they continue to do that after many years suggests that those four people aren't the only ones late to the party.
Well done all around.
BBT started out as a nerd culture darling, and lived long enough to become unfashionable. It succeeded over the years for two reasons -- first: exceptionally sensitive and professional writing. They never talked down to the audience. And they did not delude themselves that it could be the story of four nerds forever. They evolved very skillfully into what became a Friends clone. This was widely derided but, as someone on another sitcom once pointed out, you gotta have somewhere for the characters to go. Especially if you are going to crank out 20-ish episodes a year for 12 years. What I'm saying is, this was a master class in TV writing professionalism, compromises and all.
The second thing it had was the unparalleled comedic capabilities of the regular ensemble. Even when the writers fell short, these folks could provide a delivery that killed. Some of that is natural, but some of it is also hard work and diligent effort. I suspect they all spent a lot of time in front of the mirror with their scripts, or possibly drove their loved ones crazy with requests to read lines. Notice how many characters were introduced over the years only to be discarded after a few episodes. These are the ones who looked promising in casting, but when the heat was on, they couldn't keep up with the regulars.
It is unfashionable to say so, but I think BBT's reputation will grow in the upcoming years. I know of at least four instances of people who came to it late, stumbling on a rerun, then devoted themselves to catching up on all the seasons they missed. (One of those is me.) You can do that, because TBS reruns about four episodes every night during prime time. And the fact that they continue to do that after many years suggests that those four people aren't the only ones late to the party.
Well done all around.
[TV] Deadwood Epilogue
I am not disappointed. But in truth, it is not the Deadwood I remember. How could it be given only a couple of hours to work with thanks to HBO's feckless programming? Regarding high concepts, the Deadwood movie is negligible, essentially a repeat of season 3 where the death of an admired local at the hands of George Hearst coalesces the townsfolk into heroic defiance. One of the things that raised Deadwood (the series) to the level of great art was the magnificent original theme of how civilization emerges from barbarism, how cultural institutions grow out of brutal anarchy. That theme is not touched in any meaningful way. It's been done. Deadwood is no longer anarchy (although still the wild west) and they are already unified against Hearst when he reappears on the eve of statehood for South Dakota, this time as a Senator, seeking, as always, more treasure.
So, no, the big theme shining a light on humanity is not on display, instead we get the beautiful character arcs, elegantly completed under horrible constraints of time. The time allowed for a single movie. The time before David Milch succumbs to dementia.
Seth Bullock, now a U.S. Marshall, is still keeping law and order. He has settled into a comfortable domestic life with his wife and three children. He is a civilized man now, but that state will be tested once again by Hearst. The Hearst victim is Charlie Utter this time. And it kicks off a spiral of Bullock sinking back into the savage ways of old. Vengeful, violent, and doubly upended by the sudden reappearance of Alma, the body count rises. In the end, when given the choice to defend Hearst against a mob or let vigilante justice reign, he is tempted to let the mob have its way, only siding with law after the sight of his wife and kids looking on with horror. Bullock is tempted to savagery and saved by the institution of family.
Timothy Olyphant is also given the most moving scene. When talking with the terrified, possibly mortally injured, man who was witness to Charlie Utter's murder, he finds out that Charlie likely died a happy man and quotes Scripture about how despite our flaws, we are all God's Witnesses. In the face of this information, Seth Bullock comes to tears. And here, in many ways, we see the brilliance of Milch. There is no direct explanation of why, after a lifetime of churning events, Bullock is finally touched. Is it sorrow for Charlie and all the others who've been lost? Is it for his inability to have protected the innocent? Is it gratitude for his life and his turn as one of God's Witnesses? We don't know why, perhaps we'll pick a reason that appeals to us, but we know his tears ring so very true.
Trixie gets a redemption arc. She's still with Sol and is now pregnant, resisting getting married because (paraphrasing) it's enough of a miracle that a whore of her vintage is pregnant. In other words, she is still of a mind that she is not worthy of good things. She is also deeply haunted by her continued existence as it is dependent entirely on an innocent being murdered in her place. Trixie being Trixie (as Al would say, a loopy f*ckin' c*nt) this guilt and fear is expressed as foul-mouthed rage and she let's Hearst have it in public loud and clear and filthy, effectively revealing herself as the one who shot him years ago, and thereby giving Hearst yet more leverage. In combination with the birth of her son and the looming threat of Hearst's revenge, she breaks down about her guilt to Al, who is in no condition to help, and in this act finds a way to turn her guilt and anger to a constructive end. She decides if she is going out, she is going out honest to herself. The marriage of her and Sol is for her an act of defiance. She even offers a truce to Hearst when he interrupts her wedding. And although not entirely clear, it looks like she is going to end up running the Gem and probably cleaning it up.
Jane, though on a secondary arc has a similar journey, her self-doubt and it's accompanying alcoholism has kept her moving all these years. Now she's back to get closure with Joanie and meet her end where Wild Bill is laid to rest. She finds that Joanie went on a parallel track of escape through different means. She gets involved in the battle against Hearst in memory of her old friend Charlie Utter, and in fact, gets to be the one who saves the day through heroic action. She passes off her heroism as the spirit of Wild Bill acting through her, but Joanie is there to tell her that is was her -- that she is the hero, and in that act they are both redeemed.
Lastly, we have Al. Al is lost to us, and himself. He aided the town's move towards civilization, then civilization outran him to Statehood. He has only a small role to play in the dramatic action of the movie, whereas he used to be a prime mover. All he can muster in the face of Hearst the Senator are some poetic insults. His liver is shot and his memory is dicey. He, like Trixie, is haunted by the memory of the murder that saved Deadwood, but for him that is probably just one of many such acts. No, what haunts Al the most is the realization that after all the years and abuse and betrayal, he has feelings for Trixie -- fatherly feelings. Whatever sort of monster he was in his life, he ended up human and gained at least a small measure of forgiveness. (At this point the viewer must be on guard against a misguided, Sopranos-esque sympathy for a familiar evil.)
Al faces death by hoping not to delay the inevitable "I'd not prolong the chewing up, nor the spittin out," and so defies Doc Cochrane's orders to quit drinking. He does what he can to help against Hearst, but he can't do much, it's up to civilization to police itself. He has to be happy to make the most of what little capability he has left, including the proper disposal of his assets upon his death. In the end he finishes the first stanza of the Lord's Prayer -- "Our Father, which art in Heaven" -- with "Let Him f*cking stay there." Is that Al or Milch talking?
Deadwood the series ended at the right time for the wrong reason. It is, I think, going to be remembered as one of the profound and enduring works of art from our time. Deadwood the movie does not achieve that height nor does it seek to; it is a warm and gratifying epilogue. We end with Hearst in jail, Trixie and Saul married, Jane coupled with Joanie, and Bullock a happy family man. We know this happiness is fragile as glass. We know Hearst will find release and do God knows what in revenge. But we also no there will be no stopping civilization. Deadwood the movie cements Milch's optimistic vision of justice with compromise. May his ending be as happy.
So, no, the big theme shining a light on humanity is not on display, instead we get the beautiful character arcs, elegantly completed under horrible constraints of time. The time allowed for a single movie. The time before David Milch succumbs to dementia.
Seth Bullock, now a U.S. Marshall, is still keeping law and order. He has settled into a comfortable domestic life with his wife and three children. He is a civilized man now, but that state will be tested once again by Hearst. The Hearst victim is Charlie Utter this time. And it kicks off a spiral of Bullock sinking back into the savage ways of old. Vengeful, violent, and doubly upended by the sudden reappearance of Alma, the body count rises. In the end, when given the choice to defend Hearst against a mob or let vigilante justice reign, he is tempted to let the mob have its way, only siding with law after the sight of his wife and kids looking on with horror. Bullock is tempted to savagery and saved by the institution of family.
Timothy Olyphant is also given the most moving scene. When talking with the terrified, possibly mortally injured, man who was witness to Charlie Utter's murder, he finds out that Charlie likely died a happy man and quotes Scripture about how despite our flaws, we are all God's Witnesses. In the face of this information, Seth Bullock comes to tears. And here, in many ways, we see the brilliance of Milch. There is no direct explanation of why, after a lifetime of churning events, Bullock is finally touched. Is it sorrow for Charlie and all the others who've been lost? Is it for his inability to have protected the innocent? Is it gratitude for his life and his turn as one of God's Witnesses? We don't know why, perhaps we'll pick a reason that appeals to us, but we know his tears ring so very true.
Trixie gets a redemption arc. She's still with Sol and is now pregnant, resisting getting married because (paraphrasing) it's enough of a miracle that a whore of her vintage is pregnant. In other words, she is still of a mind that she is not worthy of good things. She is also deeply haunted by her continued existence as it is dependent entirely on an innocent being murdered in her place. Trixie being Trixie (as Al would say, a loopy f*ckin' c*nt) this guilt and fear is expressed as foul-mouthed rage and she let's Hearst have it in public loud and clear and filthy, effectively revealing herself as the one who shot him years ago, and thereby giving Hearst yet more leverage. In combination with the birth of her son and the looming threat of Hearst's revenge, she breaks down about her guilt to Al, who is in no condition to help, and in this act finds a way to turn her guilt and anger to a constructive end. She decides if she is going out, she is going out honest to herself. The marriage of her and Sol is for her an act of defiance. She even offers a truce to Hearst when he interrupts her wedding. And although not entirely clear, it looks like she is going to end up running the Gem and probably cleaning it up.
Jane, though on a secondary arc has a similar journey, her self-doubt and it's accompanying alcoholism has kept her moving all these years. Now she's back to get closure with Joanie and meet her end where Wild Bill is laid to rest. She finds that Joanie went on a parallel track of escape through different means. She gets involved in the battle against Hearst in memory of her old friend Charlie Utter, and in fact, gets to be the one who saves the day through heroic action. She passes off her heroism as the spirit of Wild Bill acting through her, but Joanie is there to tell her that is was her -- that she is the hero, and in that act they are both redeemed.
Lastly, we have Al. Al is lost to us, and himself. He aided the town's move towards civilization, then civilization outran him to Statehood. He has only a small role to play in the dramatic action of the movie, whereas he used to be a prime mover. All he can muster in the face of Hearst the Senator are some poetic insults. His liver is shot and his memory is dicey. He, like Trixie, is haunted by the memory of the murder that saved Deadwood, but for him that is probably just one of many such acts. No, what haunts Al the most is the realization that after all the years and abuse and betrayal, he has feelings for Trixie -- fatherly feelings. Whatever sort of monster he was in his life, he ended up human and gained at least a small measure of forgiveness. (At this point the viewer must be on guard against a misguided, Sopranos-esque sympathy for a familiar evil.)
Al faces death by hoping not to delay the inevitable "I'd not prolong the chewing up, nor the spittin out," and so defies Doc Cochrane's orders to quit drinking. He does what he can to help against Hearst, but he can't do much, it's up to civilization to police itself. He has to be happy to make the most of what little capability he has left, including the proper disposal of his assets upon his death. In the end he finishes the first stanza of the Lord's Prayer -- "Our Father, which art in Heaven" -- with "Let Him f*cking stay there." Is that Al or Milch talking?
Deadwood the series ended at the right time for the wrong reason. It is, I think, going to be remembered as one of the profound and enduring works of art from our time. Deadwood the movie does not achieve that height nor does it seek to; it is a warm and gratifying epilogue. We end with Hearst in jail, Trixie and Saul married, Jane coupled with Joanie, and Bullock a happy family man. We know this happiness is fragile as glass. We know Hearst will find release and do God knows what in revenge. But we also no there will be no stopping civilization. Deadwood the movie cements Milch's optimistic vision of justice with compromise. May his ending be as happy.
Friday, May 03, 2019
The Month That Was - April 2019
Going into my 58th summer, I find my interests starting to change. Not to bore you by writing about running, but I have spent the last few years measuring the time by always having another race or such on my schedule. I even planned my vacations around interesting races I saw around the country. Now I find I am less enthusiastic about getting up at 6am on what would otherwise be a precious sleep in day and dropping $50 only to discover how much slower I am than in the past. I already have more race t-shirts and finishers medals than I know what to do with. I think I'm going to scale that back this year. As you age, you should spend more time weight training anyway.
Two book reviews this week, neither of which I recommend. (How's that for encouraging you to read on?) But it's good that I am reading again. Reading is another pastime that has waned as I have aged. Same with movies -- I have so very little interest in new movies I think for the same reason. As time goes by ever faster I find the cost of wasting a couple of hours on a bad movie or a couple of days on a bad book has risen. It is a disincentive to seeking new things.
Speaking of movies, Endgame came out. Although I likely won't see it until it hits Amazon, I may get desperate enough to see it in the theatre, but not until the crowds die off. Evidently having a good pee strategy is key. At that point I'm sure I'll give you another post about the symbolic significance of Marvel book-ending my adulthood (such as it is).
[Books] Book Look: Voyage to Arcturus
[Books] Book Look: The Courage to be Disliked
[Good Links] Link Soup
Two book reviews this week, neither of which I recommend. (How's that for encouraging you to read on?) But it's good that I am reading again. Reading is another pastime that has waned as I have aged. Same with movies -- I have so very little interest in new movies I think for the same reason. As time goes by ever faster I find the cost of wasting a couple of hours on a bad movie or a couple of days on a bad book has risen. It is a disincentive to seeking new things.
Speaking of movies, Endgame came out. Although I likely won't see it until it hits Amazon, I may get desperate enough to see it in the theatre, but not until the crowds die off. Evidently having a good pee strategy is key. At that point I'm sure I'll give you another post about the symbolic significance of Marvel book-ending my adulthood (such as it is).
[Books] Book Look: Voyage to Arcturus
[Books] Book Look: The Courage to be Disliked
[Good Links] Link Soup
[Books] Book Look: Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay
This can only appeal on a single dimension, really, and that is as a curiosity. There is no coherent plot, minimal characterization, and to call the style workmanlike is to go overboard with praise.
I chose to read this for a number of reasons. Harold Bloom of The Western Canon fame claimed a lifelong obsession with it. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both claimed to be influenced by it. Horror writer Clive Barker called it a "masterpiece". Yet, I had never even heard of it. Also, its copyright is expired so it was free on Gutenberg.
We start with a seance and are introduced to a number of standard Edwardian British characters. One of the guests has invited a pair of strangers to join in. Then weird things start to happen which eventually end up with the two strangers and the medium taking a spaceship to Tormance, a planet circling the star Arcturus.
One of the strangers, Maskull, starts encountering the denizens of Tormance, each new encounter places Maskull in a strange new moral system. He immediately adapts to each one, his body literally transforming, as he moves seamlessly from total pacifist to murdering people with his mind, and various convoluted situations in between. I couldn't really follow the causal links because there weren't any that I could see.
In the end, Maskull appears to have come to the realization that all human morality is arbitrary, or at least no one moral system is provably better than others -- maybe. I'm not sure, and I don't think I'm supposed to be. The final actions are outright cryptic.
Should you read Voyage to Arcturus? No. It yields no particular rewards unless you have an interest in writerly techniques. It eschews most traditional qualities of good writing but does demonstrate how a reader can be drawn to see existential or spiritual concepts when confronted with an oblique, ambiguous, fantasy narrative. The tone was influential to writers mentioned above, who put it to use in more gratifying ways. Despite their praise, on its own merits, it's just a curiosity.
I chose to read this for a number of reasons. Harold Bloom of The Western Canon fame claimed a lifelong obsession with it. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both claimed to be influenced by it. Horror writer Clive Barker called it a "masterpiece". Yet, I had never even heard of it. Also, its copyright is expired so it was free on Gutenberg.
We start with a seance and are introduced to a number of standard Edwardian British characters. One of the guests has invited a pair of strangers to join in. Then weird things start to happen which eventually end up with the two strangers and the medium taking a spaceship to Tormance, a planet circling the star Arcturus.
One of the strangers, Maskull, starts encountering the denizens of Tormance, each new encounter places Maskull in a strange new moral system. He immediately adapts to each one, his body literally transforming, as he moves seamlessly from total pacifist to murdering people with his mind, and various convoluted situations in between. I couldn't really follow the causal links because there weren't any that I could see.
In the end, Maskull appears to have come to the realization that all human morality is arbitrary, or at least no one moral system is provably better than others -- maybe. I'm not sure, and I don't think I'm supposed to be. The final actions are outright cryptic.
Should you read Voyage to Arcturus? No. It yields no particular rewards unless you have an interest in writerly techniques. It eschews most traditional qualities of good writing but does demonstrate how a reader can be drawn to see existential or spiritual concepts when confronted with an oblique, ambiguous, fantasy narrative. The tone was influential to writers mentioned above, who put it to use in more gratifying ways. Despite their praise, on its own merits, it's just a curiosity.
[Books] Book Look: The Courage to be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Somewhere in my digital wanderings, I stumbled across the description of this book as a "serious philosophical inquiry that is a best-seller in Japan." I found instead a somewhat ham-fisted attempt to advocate for Adlerian psychology in the form of a Socratic Dialogue. Which is not necessarily such a bad thing.
There is no subtlety in the formation of this Socratic Dialogue. The two characters speaking are simply named "Youth" and "Philosopher." So, points for directness. As a literary device the problem is that the Youth is naive and feckless, as are most youths, and the Philosopher is condescending and more than a little self-satisfied, as are most philosophers. It's all a bit on-the-nose. I understand the point is the exchange of ideas and not literary quality, but even if something is just pretending to be a work fiction, poor dramatics is distracting.
In any event, it seems the key difference between Adlerian and Freudian psychologies is in determining the cause of one's feelings. A Freudian might say something like, "Your dysfunctional behavior is caused by being abused as a child." An Adlerian might say, "You've chosen to behave dysfunctionally as a reaction to being abused as a child." The plain difference is that Adler says your behavior is your choice, Freud says it is thrust upon you.
In reality these are not as different as they seem. A Freudian would probably treat your dysfunction by invoking your ego (the thing that is not the id or the superego) to rationalize your way to functional behavior. Adler would say you need to find the courage to change your behavior. Either way the prescription is to decide not to be dysfunctional, roughly speaking.
There is a certain appeal to Adler in that he offers you no easy excuse for your behavior. With Adler, you have no opportunity to wallow in victimhood and self-pity. Lord knows that sort of positivism is needed in a world where being a victim, or rather being seen as a victim, is rewarded. Increasingly we are told we are helpless before the elite and privileged. Or perhaps science is explaining how our behavior is just an expression of our genes. Adler makes you responsible for you.
Setting aside how closely it matches reality or not, as an approach to living the one life you have been given, it's probably best to pursue a positive self-empowered course, and not to design lifestyle around dwelling on assuming you're powerless. Such assumptions can be self-fulfilling.
The core concepts that the world has taken from Adler are the fodder of the standard sermons you have heard from our endless self-help sources, from Dale Carnegie to the Serenity Prayer. And there is much wisdom in it, too: self-acceptance and self-value are intertwined with finding meaning in interpersonal relationships. It's good advice if a bit vague. I feel about it the way I feel about Jordan Peterson or any number of philosophers which is that if the bulk of people in the world were to try to live this lifestyle, the world would be measurably improved.
It is not scientific. None of the Austrian founders of psychology -- Freud, Yung, Adler -- were scientific in the sense of being verifiable via experiment. There was also no conception at the time of the dominant psychology model of today which is evo-psych. It would be fascinating to read a reconciliation of Adler and evo-psych. My own bias is that Adler's exhortations work for most everyone in the developed world, where we all run around trying find happiness and meaning. For edge case personalities and folks living hand-to-mouth the detachment from the negative experiences of life is probably not as feasible. I honestly can't say I buy the idea that everyone's unhappiness is due to a lack of courage to change. Maybe most people in most circumstances, but it's hard for me to imagine living an entire life and not having a unhappiness thrust upon you at some point. I have found that large stretches of life can amount to little more than doing crap I don't want to do. I have gotten out of those situations in time, which to Adler, means I found the courage to change. I'm not so sure I didn't just luck out.
Should you read The Courage to be Disliked? Probably not. If you are familiar with the self-help genre (and most people are) you will likely encounter little new information. It is interesting to follow the attempt to translate it into a more formal philosophy, but not especially rewarding. It may anger you because it can seem uncaring and cold-hearted, but that is likely because the vocabulary used for certain concepts, such as "courage" and "inferiority", is primed for misinterpretation. At worst it will be harmless, at best you may gain a nugget of wisdom. But considering the annoying format, you're better off looking elsewhere.
There is no subtlety in the formation of this Socratic Dialogue. The two characters speaking are simply named "Youth" and "Philosopher." So, points for directness. As a literary device the problem is that the Youth is naive and feckless, as are most youths, and the Philosopher is condescending and more than a little self-satisfied, as are most philosophers. It's all a bit on-the-nose. I understand the point is the exchange of ideas and not literary quality, but even if something is just pretending to be a work fiction, poor dramatics is distracting.
In any event, it seems the key difference between Adlerian and Freudian psychologies is in determining the cause of one's feelings. A Freudian might say something like, "Your dysfunctional behavior is caused by being abused as a child." An Adlerian might say, "You've chosen to behave dysfunctionally as a reaction to being abused as a child." The plain difference is that Adler says your behavior is your choice, Freud says it is thrust upon you.
In reality these are not as different as they seem. A Freudian would probably treat your dysfunction by invoking your ego (the thing that is not the id or the superego) to rationalize your way to functional behavior. Adler would say you need to find the courage to change your behavior. Either way the prescription is to decide not to be dysfunctional, roughly speaking.
There is a certain appeal to Adler in that he offers you no easy excuse for your behavior. With Adler, you have no opportunity to wallow in victimhood and self-pity. Lord knows that sort of positivism is needed in a world where being a victim, or rather being seen as a victim, is rewarded. Increasingly we are told we are helpless before the elite and privileged. Or perhaps science is explaining how our behavior is just an expression of our genes. Adler makes you responsible for you.
Setting aside how closely it matches reality or not, as an approach to living the one life you have been given, it's probably best to pursue a positive self-empowered course, and not to design lifestyle around dwelling on assuming you're powerless. Such assumptions can be self-fulfilling.
The core concepts that the world has taken from Adler are the fodder of the standard sermons you have heard from our endless self-help sources, from Dale Carnegie to the Serenity Prayer. And there is much wisdom in it, too: self-acceptance and self-value are intertwined with finding meaning in interpersonal relationships. It's good advice if a bit vague. I feel about it the way I feel about Jordan Peterson or any number of philosophers which is that if the bulk of people in the world were to try to live this lifestyle, the world would be measurably improved.
It is not scientific. None of the Austrian founders of psychology -- Freud, Yung, Adler -- were scientific in the sense of being verifiable via experiment. There was also no conception at the time of the dominant psychology model of today which is evo-psych. It would be fascinating to read a reconciliation of Adler and evo-psych. My own bias is that Adler's exhortations work for most everyone in the developed world, where we all run around trying find happiness and meaning. For edge case personalities and folks living hand-to-mouth the detachment from the negative experiences of life is probably not as feasible. I honestly can't say I buy the idea that everyone's unhappiness is due to a lack of courage to change. Maybe most people in most circumstances, but it's hard for me to imagine living an entire life and not having a unhappiness thrust upon you at some point. I have found that large stretches of life can amount to little more than doing crap I don't want to do. I have gotten out of those situations in time, which to Adler, means I found the courage to change. I'm not so sure I didn't just luck out.
Should you read The Courage to be Disliked? Probably not. If you are familiar with the self-help genre (and most people are) you will likely encounter little new information. It is interesting to follow the attempt to translate it into a more formal philosophy, but not especially rewarding. It may anger you because it can seem uncaring and cold-hearted, but that is likely because the vocabulary used for certain concepts, such as "courage" and "inferiority", is primed for misinterpretation. At worst it will be harmless, at best you may gain a nugget of wisdom. But considering the annoying format, you're better off looking elsewhere.
[Good Links] Link Soup
This is an amazing analysis of social media, from Eugene Wei. He looks into the heart of social media from an entrepreneurial perspective and comes to the understanding the success or failure in SM is dependent on how well it facilitates creation and distribution of status. Tom Wolfe would be proud.
The lost world of 20 years ago. When he got to discussing the glorious, decentralized blogosphere we used to have versus the twitter/facebook/instagram monoculture of today, it got misty in here.
Most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people. Sort of. But never ever mistake social media for reality. In fact, never ever mistake any media for reality.
If you are of a certain age (probably over 50) and have a bit of a twisted sense of humor, you'll appreciate Cris Shapan's satirical ads and book covers. More here. I can't find a central repository (which would be a great Cris Shapan book title).
Nathan Pyle's comic strip, Strange Planet, is utterly delightful.
The lost world of 20 years ago. When he got to discussing the glorious, decentralized blogosphere we used to have versus the twitter/facebook/instagram monoculture of today, it got misty in here.
Most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people. Sort of. But never ever mistake social media for reality. In fact, never ever mistake any media for reality.
If you are of a certain age (probably over 50) and have a bit of a twisted sense of humor, you'll appreciate Cris Shapan's satirical ads and book covers. More here. I can't find a central repository (which would be a great Cris Shapan book title).
Nathan Pyle's comic strip, Strange Planet, is utterly delightful.
Sunday, April 07, 2019
The Month That Was - March 2019
This month passed quickly and relatively painlessly. The signs of Spring arrived as expected - the opening of Dairy Queen, Opening Day, and small army of people I have to look after the lawn and landscaping contacting me to re-up for another year. Taxes got done.
I got a nice long trip to Florida in - highlights below. More importantly I believe I am in the home stretch of the first draft of my current project. It's been particularly tough. I don't know if that is because I am working in a genre for the first time, or because my focus and creativity are starting to degrade with age.
I'm not sure I want to know. Really, all I want to do is enjoy my upcoming summer.
[Travel] Wild and Civilized Florida
[Movies] Flick Check: Captain Marvel
[Books] Book Look: Killing Commendatore
I got a nice long trip to Florida in - highlights below. More importantly I believe I am in the home stretch of the first draft of my current project. It's been particularly tough. I don't know if that is because I am working in a genre for the first time, or because my focus and creativity are starting to degrade with age.
I'm not sure I want to know. Really, all I want to do is enjoy my upcoming summer.
[Travel] Wild and Civilized Florida
[Movies] Flick Check: Captain Marvel
[Books] Book Look: Killing Commendatore
[Travel] Wild and Civilized Florida
I still have no affinity for Disney World. I don't hate it and am certainly not offended by it. My knee-jerk response is to respect the hustle, but even that is too cynical. Actually, I tremendously admire the operational excellence. The service level is legendary and rightly so -- you can stop anyone in any theme park and ask them about something specific and they will tell you; nobody shrugs and says I don't know. Technological excellence is there too. You can buy a wristband which is then connected to your room or credit card and identifies you in the pictures that are taken at various places throughout the park which you can then purchase. Although you know you are spending money it doesn't feel like it. Brilliant. Lines are long but everything moves at a steady pace. So much is so well thought out, you can't help but be impressed, and disappointed at the level of effort put into every other service business you encounter in the outside world.
The closest thing to a theme park for an adult is Epcot which is a pretty cool place. Epcot has some interesting food and shops in the various "countries". China is a good one. There's a 360 theatre with an Intro to China which was visually stunning 20 years ago but is beginning to seem terribly out of date. There are often live bands. (Tony Orlando was featured this day, and it will take all my might not to snark.) Morocco is cool-looking. Canada, perhaps ironically, is also interesting.
If you are a grown-up Epcot's the spot to visit -- unless you want to count Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney, formerly Pleasure Island) which is really just a big shopping/restaurant area. It used to have The Adventurer's Club which was the closest thing Disney ever did to targeting adults, so it had to be killed.
(Aside: Remember the days when Disney was angling for more adults and Vegas was angling for more families? Those were not better days. Stay in your lane.)
I managed to see the fireworks from Grand Floridian which is the flagship Disney resort and worthy of the name. In truth, there's a lot to recommend in Disney and I can see how adults might want to visit, even without kids. It has what could be called "dependable quality". If you want a really nice trip where you can enjoy the good life and minimize the possibility of a snafu. Disney is your place.
But still, it's not for me. What's for me is the Gulf Coast.
For the second time in my life I swam with Manatees. I can't recommend this highly enough. This is not swimming in a pool with captive Manatees. This is swimming with them out in the wild in their natural habitat. And when I call it swimming, I mean more like floating. You are given a wetsuit and snorkel gear, and a big foam noodle because they really don't want you actually swimming, the splashing and noise bothers the creatures. Your guide locates them from the boat, then everyone gently, quietly enters the water from 20 yards away or so and slowly makes their way to the manatees location.
A Manatee is actually the closest thing to a living Disney movie creature. They have no natural enemies and they only eat sea grass, so they are pretty much totally chilled out about everything. They are huge, friendly, and peaceful. They just sort of slowly lumber about in the shallows eating and chilling. If they surface near you for air, you are permitted to gently stroke them -- they have a kind of slimy feel -- before they re-submerge. The adults take no notice of you. At one point I had swam far from the boat and on my way back actually collided directly with a big adult that was surfacing. It took literally had no reaction; I was nothing more than a fly spec to it. The calves, on the other hand, will occasionally roll about on the surface and play.
Crystal River is Manatee Central, mainly because it is a spring fed river where the year round water temperature is between 72-74 degrees. So in the winter, the Manatees migrate in to get out of the colder Gulf. I have been told that the ideal time to see them is December and January when they will be most numerous. However even when it gets warm the cows stay with their young calves that are not ready to migrate back into the Gulf. That makes it a year-round activity because it is the calves that are the most playful.
To see the manatees you sign up for a tour. There are a number companies that run tours on pontoon style boats. My only suggestion is you get one that's going out earliest in the day; it gives you a slight edge in finding and claiming manatees. There is a certain honor among the tour companies -- it seems if you have found a manatee the other tours stay away until your tour group moves on.
The downside to this is Crystal River is pretty far from anything. It is located on what is called Florida's "Nature Coast", which is the more lightly-developed area starting about an hour north of Tampa and extending to the panhandle. This area is an interesting mix of early gentrification and rednecky old Florida. I like it. It's not so terribly high priced as the rest of the Gulf, suggesting I may settle here in senescence. Crystal River itself is about an hour and a half from Tampa and about 2 hours from Orlando. So if you want get on a 6:00am boat, you probably want to overnight it.
After Crystal River I spent the usual couple of days in Sarasota. I got to take a brief boat tour of Sarasota Bay something I haven't done in decades, and take in a Spring Training game. I wanted to see the Tigers but the schedule didn't work out. Not to worry though, in South Florida, you're never far from a Grapefruit League game. The Pirates play in the next city north, Bradenton, so I was able to catch a game before I flew out. As a bonus, right near the stadium there is an old-time barbershop -- two chairs, old guys sitting around telling dirty jokes -- so I figured what-the-hell.
I hopped in the chair and the fellow just asked. "Do you want a regular haircut?" I was unsure how to respond, I mean, at Great Clips they have all my haircutting records and history digitized. So I said "Sure." What followed was a five minutes cut with comb and clippers, he never touched the scissors. It was short but pretty darn good. The charge: $7. I gave him a $10 and told him to keep the change. After all then time I've spent in this area, it can still offer a new experience.
One thing that continues to fascinate me is how the veneer of civilized Florida is so thinly spread over the swamps and bayous. Trolling on a boat around Sarasota Bay you think nothing of seeing a stray manatee surface or a pair of dolphins hurdling the waves or a pelican plunging deep and coming up with a full beak. Everywhere you go the little geckos dart away at the sound of your footsteps. A State park full of gators and snapping turtles is usually within easy reach. Idiots buy exotic pets and abandon them to die in the wild, but they just thrive. Even in the middle of Disney World kids got to witness some real nature as a crane had landed in small garden and snapped up a gecko, swallowing it alive right in view of the children. Take that Animal Kingdom.
Despite centuries of development and what is perhaps the most virulent consumer culture known to man, Florida is still a tropical wilderness. If that's something you appreciate, you may be a Florida Man.
The closest thing to a theme park for an adult is Epcot which is a pretty cool place. Epcot has some interesting food and shops in the various "countries". China is a good one. There's a 360 theatre with an Intro to China which was visually stunning 20 years ago but is beginning to seem terribly out of date. There are often live bands. (Tony Orlando was featured this day, and it will take all my might not to snark.) Morocco is cool-looking. Canada, perhaps ironically, is also interesting.
If you are a grown-up Epcot's the spot to visit -- unless you want to count Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney, formerly Pleasure Island) which is really just a big shopping/restaurant area. It used to have The Adventurer's Club which was the closest thing Disney ever did to targeting adults, so it had to be killed.
(Aside: Remember the days when Disney was angling for more adults and Vegas was angling for more families? Those were not better days. Stay in your lane.)
I managed to see the fireworks from Grand Floridian which is the flagship Disney resort and worthy of the name. In truth, there's a lot to recommend in Disney and I can see how adults might want to visit, even without kids. It has what could be called "dependable quality". If you want a really nice trip where you can enjoy the good life and minimize the possibility of a snafu. Disney is your place.
But still, it's not for me. What's for me is the Gulf Coast.
For the second time in my life I swam with Manatees. I can't recommend this highly enough. This is not swimming in a pool with captive Manatees. This is swimming with them out in the wild in their natural habitat. And when I call it swimming, I mean more like floating. You are given a wetsuit and snorkel gear, and a big foam noodle because they really don't want you actually swimming, the splashing and noise bothers the creatures. Your guide locates them from the boat, then everyone gently, quietly enters the water from 20 yards away or so and slowly makes their way to the manatees location.
A Manatee is actually the closest thing to a living Disney movie creature. They have no natural enemies and they only eat sea grass, so they are pretty much totally chilled out about everything. They are huge, friendly, and peaceful. They just sort of slowly lumber about in the shallows eating and chilling. If they surface near you for air, you are permitted to gently stroke them -- they have a kind of slimy feel -- before they re-submerge. The adults take no notice of you. At one point I had swam far from the boat and on my way back actually collided directly with a big adult that was surfacing. It took literally had no reaction; I was nothing more than a fly spec to it. The calves, on the other hand, will occasionally roll about on the surface and play.
Crystal River is Manatee Central, mainly because it is a spring fed river where the year round water temperature is between 72-74 degrees. So in the winter, the Manatees migrate in to get out of the colder Gulf. I have been told that the ideal time to see them is December and January when they will be most numerous. However even when it gets warm the cows stay with their young calves that are not ready to migrate back into the Gulf. That makes it a year-round activity because it is the calves that are the most playful.
To see the manatees you sign up for a tour. There are a number companies that run tours on pontoon style boats. My only suggestion is you get one that's going out earliest in the day; it gives you a slight edge in finding and claiming manatees. There is a certain honor among the tour companies -- it seems if you have found a manatee the other tours stay away until your tour group moves on.
The downside to this is Crystal River is pretty far from anything. It is located on what is called Florida's "Nature Coast", which is the more lightly-developed area starting about an hour north of Tampa and extending to the panhandle. This area is an interesting mix of early gentrification and rednecky old Florida. I like it. It's not so terribly high priced as the rest of the Gulf, suggesting I may settle here in senescence. Crystal River itself is about an hour and a half from Tampa and about 2 hours from Orlando. So if you want get on a 6:00am boat, you probably want to overnight it.
After Crystal River I spent the usual couple of days in Sarasota. I got to take a brief boat tour of Sarasota Bay something I haven't done in decades, and take in a Spring Training game. I wanted to see the Tigers but the schedule didn't work out. Not to worry though, in South Florida, you're never far from a Grapefruit League game. The Pirates play in the next city north, Bradenton, so I was able to catch a game before I flew out. As a bonus, right near the stadium there is an old-time barbershop -- two chairs, old guys sitting around telling dirty jokes -- so I figured what-the-hell.
I hopped in the chair and the fellow just asked. "Do you want a regular haircut?" I was unsure how to respond, I mean, at Great Clips they have all my haircutting records and history digitized. So I said "Sure." What followed was a five minutes cut with comb and clippers, he never touched the scissors. It was short but pretty darn good. The charge: $7. I gave him a $10 and told him to keep the change. After all then time I've spent in this area, it can still offer a new experience.
One thing that continues to fascinate me is how the veneer of civilized Florida is so thinly spread over the swamps and bayous. Trolling on a boat around Sarasota Bay you think nothing of seeing a stray manatee surface or a pair of dolphins hurdling the waves or a pelican plunging deep and coming up with a full beak. Everywhere you go the little geckos dart away at the sound of your footsteps. A State park full of gators and snapping turtles is usually within easy reach. Idiots buy exotic pets and abandon them to die in the wild, but they just thrive. Even in the middle of Disney World kids got to witness some real nature as a crane had landed in small garden and snapped up a gecko, swallowing it alive right in view of the children. Take that Animal Kingdom.
Despite centuries of development and what is perhaps the most virulent consumer culture known to man, Florida is still a tropical wilderness. If that's something you appreciate, you may be a Florida Man.
[Movies] Flick Check: Captain Marvel
The ultimate verdict on this is that it is a fair-to-middling entry in the Marvel canon, which by default makes it a better than average action film. It has baggage, though. It has the undertone of a female empowerment message. All well and good, but we know what that means -- some significant minority will interpret it as a political statement and voice displeasure. In response another group will call them racists because that's what we call people we disagree with. So a small corner of the world with outsized visibility will be sniping at each other on Twitter and Reddit.
I blame Marvel for this. If the movie was good enough dramatically you wouldn't need to hype any sociological underpinnings. My guess is the folks at Marvel probably sensed that it wasn't up to their standards (I emphasize their) and providing a theme of female empowerment is a cheap way to cover up shortcomings. Resorting to current events and societal trends for good play is what a filmmaker does when he runs out of human ideas.
As a result the movie will not be able to be judged on its merits, but I'm going to try anyway. The plot is pretty much a standard origin story formula: Normal human experiences a freak occurrence which makes her super, overcomes many adversaries, obstacles, and reversals of fortune on the path to finding her heroic purpose. Marvel's characteristic ironic humor is on display, although no one in this film has the comic chops to carry it off like the Avengers. The action scenes are solid and the CGI -- especially with respect to Nick Fury -- is frankly amazing. No characters here, though, are particularly engaging and the villain is unmemorable.
So all-in-all, I would call it an average-to-slightly-below-average film for Marvel (again for Marvel). Still, I have concerns...
Captain Marvel is theoretically going to be a lynchpin in the next generation (the post-Avengers era, Phase 4 is it?) of Marvel films. It is not an auspicious start.
More importantly, Captain Marvel is being touted as the secret weapon that allows the Avengers to defeat Thanos. If that turns out to be the case, it will be enormously disappointing. We have spent ten years with the Avengers, gone through hell with them, shared their personal (personal -- not sociological, not political) conflicts and growth. To bring someone else in at the last minute to save the day would be a disaster, dramatically speaking. I still hold out hope that Fiege is smarter than that and doesn't believe setting up the next generation of films is worth spoiling the original story.
In any event, if you haven't seen Captain Marvel, it's likely you can safely pass on it. Other than her existence and her being very powerful, there is little in the movie that will have direct bearing on Endgame.
I blame Marvel for this. If the movie was good enough dramatically you wouldn't need to hype any sociological underpinnings. My guess is the folks at Marvel probably sensed that it wasn't up to their standards (I emphasize their) and providing a theme of female empowerment is a cheap way to cover up shortcomings. Resorting to current events and societal trends for good play is what a filmmaker does when he runs out of human ideas.
As a result the movie will not be able to be judged on its merits, but I'm going to try anyway. The plot is pretty much a standard origin story formula: Normal human experiences a freak occurrence which makes her super, overcomes many adversaries, obstacles, and reversals of fortune on the path to finding her heroic purpose. Marvel's characteristic ironic humor is on display, although no one in this film has the comic chops to carry it off like the Avengers. The action scenes are solid and the CGI -- especially with respect to Nick Fury -- is frankly amazing. No characters here, though, are particularly engaging and the villain is unmemorable.
So all-in-all, I would call it an average-to-slightly-below-average film for Marvel (again for Marvel). Still, I have concerns...
Captain Marvel is theoretically going to be a lynchpin in the next generation (the post-Avengers era, Phase 4 is it?) of Marvel films. It is not an auspicious start.
More importantly, Captain Marvel is being touted as the secret weapon that allows the Avengers to defeat Thanos. If that turns out to be the case, it will be enormously disappointing. We have spent ten years with the Avengers, gone through hell with them, shared their personal (personal -- not sociological, not political) conflicts and growth. To bring someone else in at the last minute to save the day would be a disaster, dramatically speaking. I still hold out hope that Fiege is smarter than that and doesn't believe setting up the next generation of films is worth spoiling the original story.
In any event, if you haven't seen Captain Marvel, it's likely you can safely pass on it. Other than her existence and her being very powerful, there is little in the movie that will have direct bearing on Endgame.
[Books] Book Look: Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
This one is both sprawling and intimate. It is Haruki as we know him: telling human stories through magic realism; the typical mix of spiritual conflict, eerie fantasy, and pop culture references.
Our protagonist is an artist, a painter who has made the compromise of spending his time painting portraits to support himself, suffers a fairly traumatic divorce. Lost in a fugue state, he spends an extended period driving about northern Japan with no destination in mind. In time he settles into a home belonging to a legendary elder painter who is no longer resident, being in the throes of dementia at the end of his life.
That's when the real weirdness begins. We encounter an cursed hidden pit, a rich and noble, but suspicious, neighbor, an undiscovered masterpiece, a mystery from the time of Anschluss, a precocious little girl, a two-foot tall manifestation of an idea, and more, not in that order.
Killing Commendatore is about believing in the face of unknowing. All the characters conflicts stem from not having a full understanding of things and, for that matter, the impossibility of having a full understanding of things. In the end, our protagonist comes to the conclusion that belief in the face of uncertainty is the blessing that gets you through. If you can't ever know the objective truth, belief it the thing that saves you.
Whatever twists and turns along the way -- and they are often entertaining -- Haruki is very good at directing his characters to the conclusion. It's also interesting to note that Haruki is nearly 70 years old, so it is a theme very fitting a man who has spent a life considering the nature of the world.
In reading, it is a mixed bag. Haruki is strong on visual description which makes the story quite vivid, but along with that is a nearly Russian level of scene description which can get tiring. The characters are given to self-exposition which can seem awkward, however the key ideas are well dramatised. The structure is odd in that important characters don't get mentioned or make an appearance until midway or later, but it is not jarring.
And, as I have mentioned, the humanity is there, which is really the most important thing. Should you read Killing Commendatore? If you enjoy Haruki then yes. It is another fine entry in a long and Noble-worthy career; you'll feel right at home. It is probably not as good for your first Haruki as its length and detail are a bit intimidating -- for that I would go all the way back to something like Norwegian Wood for something less fanciful (interestingly, it also features a protagonist who wandered about in a daze for an extended time) and move into the more fantastic stuff from there.
Our protagonist is an artist, a painter who has made the compromise of spending his time painting portraits to support himself, suffers a fairly traumatic divorce. Lost in a fugue state, he spends an extended period driving about northern Japan with no destination in mind. In time he settles into a home belonging to a legendary elder painter who is no longer resident, being in the throes of dementia at the end of his life.
That's when the real weirdness begins. We encounter an cursed hidden pit, a rich and noble, but suspicious, neighbor, an undiscovered masterpiece, a mystery from the time of Anschluss, a precocious little girl, a two-foot tall manifestation of an idea, and more, not in that order.
Killing Commendatore is about believing in the face of unknowing. All the characters conflicts stem from not having a full understanding of things and, for that matter, the impossibility of having a full understanding of things. In the end, our protagonist comes to the conclusion that belief in the face of uncertainty is the blessing that gets you through. If you can't ever know the objective truth, belief it the thing that saves you.
Whatever twists and turns along the way -- and they are often entertaining -- Haruki is very good at directing his characters to the conclusion. It's also interesting to note that Haruki is nearly 70 years old, so it is a theme very fitting a man who has spent a life considering the nature of the world.
In reading, it is a mixed bag. Haruki is strong on visual description which makes the story quite vivid, but along with that is a nearly Russian level of scene description which can get tiring. The characters are given to self-exposition which can seem awkward, however the key ideas are well dramatised. The structure is odd in that important characters don't get mentioned or make an appearance until midway or later, but it is not jarring.
And, as I have mentioned, the humanity is there, which is really the most important thing. Should you read Killing Commendatore? If you enjoy Haruki then yes. It is another fine entry in a long and Noble-worthy career; you'll feel right at home. It is probably not as good for your first Haruki as its length and detail are a bit intimidating -- for that I would go all the way back to something like Norwegian Wood for something less fanciful (interestingly, it also features a protagonist who wandered about in a daze for an extended time) and move into the more fantastic stuff from there.
Wednesday, March 06, 2019
The Month That Was - February 2019
It's time for cabin fever. This is the point where everyone who says they love the change of seasons starts wishing the next change would hurry up.
I fought a lot with tires this month. I developed a slow leak in one and a had a major blowout in another (in the middle of a blizzard). Annoyances. They were repaired relatively quickly, but I am grateful that I can change a tire (which I am told is no longer a assumed skill), and grateful that my car has at least a temporary spare as opposed to a patch kit that is now all too common.
It's also tax time. Ugh. The cold, the annoyance, the drudgery. Escape opportunities are minimal. It all adds up to making me restless. But the tax refund should help fund a nice trip.
[Tech, Rant] The World Observes What Follows On
[TV] True Detective, True Again
[House and Home] Under Vacuum
I fought a lot with tires this month. I developed a slow leak in one and a had a major blowout in another (in the middle of a blizzard). Annoyances. They were repaired relatively quickly, but I am grateful that I can change a tire (which I am told is no longer a assumed skill), and grateful that my car has at least a temporary spare as opposed to a patch kit that is now all too common.
It's also tax time. Ugh. The cold, the annoyance, the drudgery. Escape opportunities are minimal. It all adds up to making me restless. But the tax refund should help fund a nice trip.
[Tech, Rant] The World Observes What Follows On
[TV] True Detective, True Again
[House and Home] Under Vacuum
[Tech, Rant] The World Observes What Follows On
An old dog trying to learn new tricks. That's my life these days. This is especially true in technology. I see it all the time in my day job where I manage teams of software developers. I haven't written a line of code in decades but at least I understand what goes on conceptually in programming and other technology. It is orders of magnitude more complicated than it used to be for a number of reasons, including security, interoperability, and just outright scale. Because of the complexity there is much more specialization today -- no more sitting in your home office and creating a word processor from scratch. You can be back-end (database), you can be front-end (web, generally), you can be a security specialist, etc. It's dizzying the number of processes and concepts that must affect your work, but I maintain the not so unreasonable delusion that were I deep in the details of a given specialty everyday, I could keep up just fine. And if something is explained conceptually to me, I can grasp it.
But there are hints and allegations that I may have reached a limit. Lately I have been trying to understand blockchain and not doing very well. I have a decent understanding of bitcoin, the crypto-currency for which blockchain was invented (I think). I understand public and private keys, I understand what bitcoin mining is, I kind of understand how validation works, I even sort of understand how a blockchain is built out of a complete history of transactions that cannot be altered. What I don't understand is what value it offers in any sort of activity that isn't completely digital. I also don't understand the value it provides over current systems of enforcing contracts beyond decentralization which, it seems to me, is of questionable value in legit circles.
Now: anyone who happens to stumble across this who is well-versed in blockchain is probably either laughing or gritting their teeth, and I don't doubt that had I a good understanding of things the answers to these concerns might be clear. Despite all my investigation so far, I haven't found the knowledge I'm looking for.
Explainers tend to fall into two camps. One, they are superficial and get all hand-wavy about things like they are talking to grandma about the tubes of the internet. Or two, they delve into the topic but throw vocabulary and concepts at you without explanation. I remain convinced that if I just found a well written source I would have no trouble with this. I would be able to get it.
Ah, but there's the rub. Would I, or have I hit the limit? Is the problem with the literature or with my old dog brain finally rubbing up against something it cannot grasp? For those of you wondering what it is like as you reach the upper limits of middle age -- this is what it's like. At every point of confusion the question of whether the world has finally moved beyond you is like a low-level hum in the background.
I think the situation is that I have a vague mechanical understanding of blockchain and I haven't yet made the intuitive leap to how it can be broadly applied in such a way that it allows functionality that our current systems don't (or that is very expensive in our current systems). And I think if I keep looking into it, I'll stumble into something that crystallizes it for me. So, no, I do not think I have hit my limit.
But then, who does? A crotchety old dude who can't remember his address and goes around bitching about how Bill Clinton is ruining the country still believes he is sharp as a tack. The blue hair in the cataract glasses with the glacial reaction time is convinced she's a safe driver. I delude myself that I still have a 34-inch waist and I could run 5k under 25 minutes. I have an image of myself as alert, fit, and competent, but everyone around me could be thinking, "Poor guy, he's losing it."
Still, what else is there to do? Writing yourself off from possibilities and growth is just the self-fulfillment of failure. It's the final reconciliation with the inevitable, there-by encouraging it. I may not live forever, but I must behave as if I will. It's my only hope.
Addendum: On the other hand, in the last year there has been considerable progress in developing a vaccine for Alzheimer's and an outright cure for cancer. Maybe I will live forever after all. This has to be terrible news for Millennials who may end up with Boomers like me leaching Social Security from their paychecks and telling them how they ruined music for decades to come.
More addendum: Speaking of not keeping up... There is an app called TikTok using which you can record video of yourself lip synching to songs and share them with friends. It has been downloaded 1 billion times. I had never heard of it. Sigh.
But there are hints and allegations that I may have reached a limit. Lately I have been trying to understand blockchain and not doing very well. I have a decent understanding of bitcoin, the crypto-currency for which blockchain was invented (I think). I understand public and private keys, I understand what bitcoin mining is, I kind of understand how validation works, I even sort of understand how a blockchain is built out of a complete history of transactions that cannot be altered. What I don't understand is what value it offers in any sort of activity that isn't completely digital. I also don't understand the value it provides over current systems of enforcing contracts beyond decentralization which, it seems to me, is of questionable value in legit circles.
Now: anyone who happens to stumble across this who is well-versed in blockchain is probably either laughing or gritting their teeth, and I don't doubt that had I a good understanding of things the answers to these concerns might be clear. Despite all my investigation so far, I haven't found the knowledge I'm looking for.
Explainers tend to fall into two camps. One, they are superficial and get all hand-wavy about things like they are talking to grandma about the tubes of the internet. Or two, they delve into the topic but throw vocabulary and concepts at you without explanation. I remain convinced that if I just found a well written source I would have no trouble with this. I would be able to get it.
Ah, but there's the rub. Would I, or have I hit the limit? Is the problem with the literature or with my old dog brain finally rubbing up against something it cannot grasp? For those of you wondering what it is like as you reach the upper limits of middle age -- this is what it's like. At every point of confusion the question of whether the world has finally moved beyond you is like a low-level hum in the background.
I think the situation is that I have a vague mechanical understanding of blockchain and I haven't yet made the intuitive leap to how it can be broadly applied in such a way that it allows functionality that our current systems don't (or that is very expensive in our current systems). And I think if I keep looking into it, I'll stumble into something that crystallizes it for me. So, no, I do not think I have hit my limit.
But then, who does? A crotchety old dude who can't remember his address and goes around bitching about how Bill Clinton is ruining the country still believes he is sharp as a tack. The blue hair in the cataract glasses with the glacial reaction time is convinced she's a safe driver. I delude myself that I still have a 34-inch waist and I could run 5k under 25 minutes. I have an image of myself as alert, fit, and competent, but everyone around me could be thinking, "Poor guy, he's losing it."
Still, what else is there to do? Writing yourself off from possibilities and growth is just the self-fulfillment of failure. It's the final reconciliation with the inevitable, there-by encouraging it. I may not live forever, but I must behave as if I will. It's my only hope.
Addendum: On the other hand, in the last year there has been considerable progress in developing a vaccine for Alzheimer's and an outright cure for cancer. Maybe I will live forever after all. This has to be terrible news for Millennials who may end up with Boomers like me leaching Social Security from their paychecks and telling them how they ruined music for decades to come.
More addendum: Speaking of not keeping up... There is an app called TikTok using which you can record video of yourself lip synching to songs and share them with friends. It has been downloaded 1 billion times. I had never heard of it. Sigh.
[TV] True Detective, True Again
I guess the light is still winning. The third season of True Detective was a winner, putting the lingering disappointment of season two behind it. At the outset it looked like it may just be a rehash of season one: Two hard and jaded cops driving around trying to solve a case of crimes against children, told via copious flashbacks, with a metaphysical angle lurking around every corner.
If anything, this season was cleaner and better scripted than even the ground-breaking first. In the first season the case played into the Detective Rust Cohle's personal demons, this season the case disrupted Detective Wayne "Purple" Hays' relationships, especially with his family, which brought an added dimension. And instead of Rust Cohle pontificating about metaphysics to Woody Harrelson's chagrin, this time the metaphysical aspect is dramatized mostly through the device of centering on Wayne Hays towards the end of his life and in the early stages of dementia; beating forward into the past, but unsure of the reality of that past. Dramatization over exposition for the win.
The conflicts build not just among the characters but among the point of view of the characters at the three points in their lives we are tracking. The detectives worked hard, caused great pain and suffering in the course of their investigation, and truly believed it had to be done, but was it their own incompetence that caused their failure? They feel they caved to bureaucratic pressure or personal pressure, but was it their own weakness that stopped them?
Cleverly the case provides the direct connection between Detective Hays and his wife, since she is writing a true crime book about it. It is the thing that brought them together and the thing the separates them. It is so interwoven with their lives that when they need to let it go, they risk letting their marriage go. Their interplay slows things down at times, but it is essential.
As one often does, one has to overlook the shortcuts in character and minor implausibilities -- that's just a fact of TV drama. But there are really very few weaknesses.
The finale is a stunner. Even within the span of the final hour, as the aged detectives saddle up one last time in a bid for closure, the layers of the onion are still deep. At first it appears that the case resolved in tragedy, but at least, at the end, there was some form of justice for the final living perpetrator. But wait! A last second clue emerges and Detective Hays is on the case again. It seems there was a happy ending after all and the Detective comes so very close to seeing it and finding some peace, but so much lifetime has passed ("Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn") that dementia intervenes before he sees it. So in the end we know the ending was happy, but must cry for the detectives, who will continue to suffer. Is that also justice for their committed sins?
And then, yet again, we are offered a tiny glimmer of hope the the happy ending may yet be discovered. As a fact of metaphysics, there is no close to the story -- the end is not the point. At the last, we are flashbacked once more to Detective Hays, attempting to reconcile with his eventual wife who offers him a do-over. A do-over is still what he needs. Maybe he'll get it. After all, time is flat circle.
If anything, this season was cleaner and better scripted than even the ground-breaking first. In the first season the case played into the Detective Rust Cohle's personal demons, this season the case disrupted Detective Wayne "Purple" Hays' relationships, especially with his family, which brought an added dimension. And instead of Rust Cohle pontificating about metaphysics to Woody Harrelson's chagrin, this time the metaphysical aspect is dramatized mostly through the device of centering on Wayne Hays towards the end of his life and in the early stages of dementia; beating forward into the past, but unsure of the reality of that past. Dramatization over exposition for the win.
The conflicts build not just among the characters but among the point of view of the characters at the three points in their lives we are tracking. The detectives worked hard, caused great pain and suffering in the course of their investigation, and truly believed it had to be done, but was it their own incompetence that caused their failure? They feel they caved to bureaucratic pressure or personal pressure, but was it their own weakness that stopped them?
Cleverly the case provides the direct connection between Detective Hays and his wife, since she is writing a true crime book about it. It is the thing that brought them together and the thing the separates them. It is so interwoven with their lives that when they need to let it go, they risk letting their marriage go. Their interplay slows things down at times, but it is essential.
As one often does, one has to overlook the shortcuts in character and minor implausibilities -- that's just a fact of TV drama. But there are really very few weaknesses.
The finale is a stunner. Even within the span of the final hour, as the aged detectives saddle up one last time in a bid for closure, the layers of the onion are still deep. At first it appears that the case resolved in tragedy, but at least, at the end, there was some form of justice for the final living perpetrator. But wait! A last second clue emerges and Detective Hays is on the case again. It seems there was a happy ending after all and the Detective comes so very close to seeing it and finding some peace, but so much lifetime has passed ("Time is the school in which we learn; Time is the fire in which we burn") that dementia intervenes before he sees it. So in the end we know the ending was happy, but must cry for the detectives, who will continue to suffer. Is that also justice for their committed sins?
And then, yet again, we are offered a tiny glimmer of hope the the happy ending may yet be discovered. As a fact of metaphysics, there is no close to the story -- the end is not the point. At the last, we are flashbacked once more to Detective Hays, attempting to reconcile with his eventual wife who offers him a do-over. A do-over is still what he needs. Maybe he'll get it. After all, time is flat circle.
[House and Home] Under Vacuum
I've taken to cooking Sous Vide. I sprung for a rather nifty device from Anova that attached to the side of a deep pot and circulates water at a a set temperature. What this allows is to place food, usually meats, in a plastic freezer bag, seal the bag watertight (a ziploc is fine), then immerse it into the circulating water. There water gently raises the temperature to the desired level and keeps it there, without the risk of overcooking. For example, if you want to cook a steak medium rare, set the temp to 135, bag your steak and drop it in. Leave it an hour. Leave it an hour and a half. Doesn't matter: it won't go past medium rare. When you're ready to eat, pull it out and drop it in a hot skillet for a minute-ish on each side to brown it. Boom! A perfect steak. You can use similar procedures for burgers, sausages, pork, and chicken. Vegetables work less well on the whole, although denser ones such as carrots or potatoes can work.
For a kitchen idiot like me it's been a revelation. I can cook all kinds of stuff -- healthy stuff. My fave is a skinless, boneless chicken breast -- leave it for an hour in a mixture of honey and saltwater brine, sous vide for an hour, and you'll have the juiciest, tastiest chicken you've ever eaten -- no need for even a sear. Add in some frozen veggies from the microwave and it beats a Subway or Taco Bell any day.
I know serious chefs are laughing right now because I gather they think sous vide doesn't count as proper cooking, but I'm actually regularly buying food and cooking which used to be a once-in-a-blue-moon activity for me. I may make an adult of me yet.
For a kitchen idiot like me it's been a revelation. I can cook all kinds of stuff -- healthy stuff. My fave is a skinless, boneless chicken breast -- leave it for an hour in a mixture of honey and saltwater brine, sous vide for an hour, and you'll have the juiciest, tastiest chicken you've ever eaten -- no need for even a sear. Add in some frozen veggies from the microwave and it beats a Subway or Taco Bell any day.
I know serious chefs are laughing right now because I gather they think sous vide doesn't count as proper cooking, but I'm actually regularly buying food and cooking which used to be a once-in-a-blue-moon activity for me. I may make an adult of me yet.
Wednesday, February 06, 2019
The Month That Was - January 2019
Once again, I have no New Year's resolutions to break, just my ongoing strategic goals:
[Books] Book Look: Paris in the Present Tense
[Travel] Down on the Bayou
[Rant] Nothing New
- Enhance the lives of the people I care about whenever possible.
- Fight sloth (the Deadly Sin, not the adorable forest creature).
[Books] Book Look: Paris in the Present Tense
[Travel] Down on the Bayou
[Rant] Nothing New
[Books] Book Look: Paris in the Present Tense, by Mark Helprin
At the risk of giving away the conclusion, I was disappointed with this book. Helprin is an author I admire greatly, he can form a sentence like few others and his skill at allegory and parable are second to none, but this one left me feeling unsatisfied.
This is the story of an old man, a 70-something French Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust as a child, who has devoted his life to art, specifically composing music. He has many regrets, not the least of which is that by pursuing his artistic dreams he has sacrificed any sort of financial well-being -- a thing that would be useful now that his grandchild has been given a cancer diagnosis. What follows is a string of deeply implausible incidents, including a 70-something man defeating three armed and violent young men in a street fight, killing two of them with his bare hands.
In the course of trying to set things right at the end our hero encounters lots of cliches. Eccentric egomaniacal corporate leaders and their stooges, pusillanimous and conniving intellectuals, ethnically appropriate buddy cops, a bullied and hapless loser, and assorted others of two-dimensions.
As a picture of old age, it only partially succeeds. To our aging hero, the underlying terror of old age is the world moving away from him. Technological advances coarsen the world (in his view), his job in academia is withering on the vine as he is slowly being phased out, worst of all the anti-semitism that so informed his childhood is resurging.
While all these things are true, they are superficial (except of course the anti-semitism). The real terror of aging is the irreversible decay of you body and skills and underlying fear of dementia or otherwise becoming totally dependent. No such fears affect our fit-as-a-30-year-old aging hero.
While our hero is nicely drawn and coherent. His need to fix things, to make things right, in view of what he sees as the costly decisions he may have made early in life is sharp and believable. The fact that his feelings and behavior toward women didn't change over the course of his life -- the child being father of the man -- also rings true. But it's not enough to overcome the dominant sense of implausibility.
Should you read Paris in the Present Tense? Nah. You could do worse, but you could also do better, including most of Helprin's other writings.
This is the story of an old man, a 70-something French Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust as a child, who has devoted his life to art, specifically composing music. He has many regrets, not the least of which is that by pursuing his artistic dreams he has sacrificed any sort of financial well-being -- a thing that would be useful now that his grandchild has been given a cancer diagnosis. What follows is a string of deeply implausible incidents, including a 70-something man defeating three armed and violent young men in a street fight, killing two of them with his bare hands.
In the course of trying to set things right at the end our hero encounters lots of cliches. Eccentric egomaniacal corporate leaders and their stooges, pusillanimous and conniving intellectuals, ethnically appropriate buddy cops, a bullied and hapless loser, and assorted others of two-dimensions.
As a picture of old age, it only partially succeeds. To our aging hero, the underlying terror of old age is the world moving away from him. Technological advances coarsen the world (in his view), his job in academia is withering on the vine as he is slowly being phased out, worst of all the anti-semitism that so informed his childhood is resurging.
While all these things are true, they are superficial (except of course the anti-semitism). The real terror of aging is the irreversible decay of you body and skills and underlying fear of dementia or otherwise becoming totally dependent. No such fears affect our fit-as-a-30-year-old aging hero.
While our hero is nicely drawn and coherent. His need to fix things, to make things right, in view of what he sees as the costly decisions he may have made early in life is sharp and believable. The fact that his feelings and behavior toward women didn't change over the course of his life -- the child being father of the man -- also rings true. But it's not enough to overcome the dominant sense of implausibility.
Should you read Paris in the Present Tense? Nah. You could do worse, but you could also do better, including most of Helprin's other writings.
[Travel] Down on the Bayou
An all too short trip -- a couple of days barreling around the bayou area of western Louisiana, along I-10 between Lake Charles and Baton Rouge. It's an area of fascinating contrasts. Like everywhere else it is gentrifying, albeit perhaps a bit more slowly than most, but the old school bayou is still on display everywhere. I-10 itself straight-lines through some picturesque, even eerie, swamp scenes. The little towns along the way still look like support villages for agriculture or fishing or perhaps settlements of refinery workers.
And refineries -- the area primary industry -- are in evidence everywhere. Huge, complexes of gnarled metal and worn buildings and billowing smoke. Looking like a environmentalist's dystopian trope made real. They make a stark contrast to the lush greenery from which they spring.
Around the larger cities -- Lake Charles, Lafayette, or Baton Rouge -- is where you find the gentrification and homogeneity. Also, to no small extent, some solid tourist infrastructure. Although "tourist" in this case mostly means servicing folks from Houston. I-10 is the route between Houston and New Orleans. Since this area isn't a major national destination, the bulk of the tourists are daytrippers or weekenders from Houston. Folks from the booming Houston-Austin-San Antonio triangle have disposable income to spare.
So folks come by to fish the lakes and rivers, view wildlife, and gamble. Especially gamble. Lake Charles has multiple casinos the nicest of which is the Golden Nugget, which would not be out of place in Vegas. Neither would the table minimums. Weekend nights you won't find a minimum less than $25 which is comparable to the Vegas Strip. I'm sure the less glitzy casinos in the area are cheaper.
The Nugget also has the best restaurant selection in the area, although they are all upscale regional chains, nothing unique. They are still very good; I can recommend Vic and Anthony's Steakhouse and the Grotto for traditional Italian. I would not have known they were chains had I not been told since they don't exist in Michigan.
Another thing folks come down here for is genuine Cajun food. The area is peppered with the sort of dumpy food shacks that appeal to the contemporary lust for authenticity. You can tell from the warm swamp-friendly drawls of the denizens that, gentrified or not, it's still bayou. Outside you are likely to see a pack of road-worn pickups parked next the shiny Jaguar of an upper-middle-class foodie.
Sadly there was little luck to be had in that area, what with travelling on a holiday weekend. In the boonies, there is still respect for the sabbath to some extent. An attempt to get a po' boy at a highly recommended shack failed when it turned out they only serve pre-packaged BBQ on Sunday. On Monday (the Holiday) there was another scramble to find a traditional po' boy that ended with another false start and an unfortunate experience with service. (The names of these places are withheld to protect the innocent from the wrath of my multitude of fervent followers.) I would not mind giving a food adventure here another try though.
The single act of sightseeing involved a visit to Avery Island, the home of Tabasco Sauce. It's sounds silly, but it's actually a pretty cool place. You can do a brief self-tour of the Tabasco factory and learn the history of Tabasco (it's actually kinda interesting), but the real treat is the Jungle Gardens, 170-acre wildlife sanctuary.
Even in the middle of winter (it was in the fifties) it was quite lovely. It's easy to imagine how lush it would be in Spring. I assume the place would be full of cranes and various water-borne life. Huge flocks of hawks were gathering in the trees -- I had never seen hawks flock like starlings; I always assumed they were solitary or paired, but this was a hawk jamboree. There are thickly wooded pathways, a bamboo jungle, picturesque stone bridges, and, somewhat unexpectedly, a shrine to the Buddha. Very cool place; wish I had brought my DSLR instead of just my phone. In a distant way it reminds me of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, or even San Simeon: a very wealthy man, or in this case family -- the McIlhennys, founders of Tabasco -- has a great financial success and devotes a good portion of their wealth to creating a space of great beauty, then sharing with the world. Were I ever to be worth a bajillion dollars I would hope to do the same.
I like the Bayou. Despite facing same sorts of upheavals the rest of the country is facing, it still has unique character, and that's not something many places can say in the face of the era of homogenization. Even in the middle of the flashy Golden Nugget, you would never mistake the natives for hipsters. That said, I'm not sure I would go out of my way to go back. It was cool and fun, but so are many places and travel time is dear. On the other hand, if I lived in Houston or even as far as Austin or San Antonio, I probably be weekending here three or four times a year at least.
They had better hope Texas never legalizes gambling. The blow to the bayou would be ruinous.
And refineries -- the area primary industry -- are in evidence everywhere. Huge, complexes of gnarled metal and worn buildings and billowing smoke. Looking like a environmentalist's dystopian trope made real. They make a stark contrast to the lush greenery from which they spring.
Around the larger cities -- Lake Charles, Lafayette, or Baton Rouge -- is where you find the gentrification and homogeneity. Also, to no small extent, some solid tourist infrastructure. Although "tourist" in this case mostly means servicing folks from Houston. I-10 is the route between Houston and New Orleans. Since this area isn't a major national destination, the bulk of the tourists are daytrippers or weekenders from Houston. Folks from the booming Houston-Austin-San Antonio triangle have disposable income to spare.
So folks come by to fish the lakes and rivers, view wildlife, and gamble. Especially gamble. Lake Charles has multiple casinos the nicest of which is the Golden Nugget, which would not be out of place in Vegas. Neither would the table minimums. Weekend nights you won't find a minimum less than $25 which is comparable to the Vegas Strip. I'm sure the less glitzy casinos in the area are cheaper.
The Nugget also has the best restaurant selection in the area, although they are all upscale regional chains, nothing unique. They are still very good; I can recommend Vic and Anthony's Steakhouse and the Grotto for traditional Italian. I would not have known they were chains had I not been told since they don't exist in Michigan.
Another thing folks come down here for is genuine Cajun food. The area is peppered with the sort of dumpy food shacks that appeal to the contemporary lust for authenticity. You can tell from the warm swamp-friendly drawls of the denizens that, gentrified or not, it's still bayou. Outside you are likely to see a pack of road-worn pickups parked next the shiny Jaguar of an upper-middle-class foodie.
Sadly there was little luck to be had in that area, what with travelling on a holiday weekend. In the boonies, there is still respect for the sabbath to some extent. An attempt to get a po' boy at a highly recommended shack failed when it turned out they only serve pre-packaged BBQ on Sunday. On Monday (the Holiday) there was another scramble to find a traditional po' boy that ended with another false start and an unfortunate experience with service. (The names of these places are withheld to protect the innocent from the wrath of my multitude of fervent followers.) I would not mind giving a food adventure here another try though.
The single act of sightseeing involved a visit to Avery Island, the home of Tabasco Sauce. It's sounds silly, but it's actually a pretty cool place. You can do a brief self-tour of the Tabasco factory and learn the history of Tabasco (it's actually kinda interesting), but the real treat is the Jungle Gardens, 170-acre wildlife sanctuary.
Even in the middle of winter (it was in the fifties) it was quite lovely. It's easy to imagine how lush it would be in Spring. I assume the place would be full of cranes and various water-borne life. Huge flocks of hawks were gathering in the trees -- I had never seen hawks flock like starlings; I always assumed they were solitary or paired, but this was a hawk jamboree. There are thickly wooded pathways, a bamboo jungle, picturesque stone bridges, and, somewhat unexpectedly, a shrine to the Buddha. Very cool place; wish I had brought my DSLR instead of just my phone. In a distant way it reminds me of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, or even San Simeon: a very wealthy man, or in this case family -- the McIlhennys, founders of Tabasco -- has a great financial success and devotes a good portion of their wealth to creating a space of great beauty, then sharing with the world. Were I ever to be worth a bajillion dollars I would hope to do the same.
I like the Bayou. Despite facing same sorts of upheavals the rest of the country is facing, it still has unique character, and that's not something many places can say in the face of the era of homogenization. Even in the middle of the flashy Golden Nugget, you would never mistake the natives for hipsters. That said, I'm not sure I would go out of my way to go back. It was cool and fun, but so are many places and travel time is dear. On the other hand, if I lived in Houston or even as far as Austin or San Antonio, I probably be weekending here three or four times a year at least.
They had better hope Texas never legalizes gambling. The blow to the bayou would be ruinous.
[Rant] Nothing New
Media navel-gazing has been ratcheted up in the past couple of weeks, what with facebook violating privacy and scamming kids, and social media in general screwing up your head. It's sleazy cousin, clickbait, turns out to be equally distasteful, but it's the only way media companies can stay in business, unless of course you're the biggest clickbait producer in the world, in which case you are desperately dumping payroll. Whee.
All this reminds me of how old I am because I can't see it as anything new or worth getting exorcised about. The effect of media ubiquity on our lives was foreseen many years ago, it's just amplified. Here is Marshall McLuhan from The Media is the Message in 1967:
Want some more? This is Stefan Zweig from The World of Yesterday in 1938:
So maybe take ten- to twenty-percent off over there Squirrely Dan. (Apologies for the Letterkenny quote, ya pheasants.) All that stuff you see that's going to destroy the world, isn't. Trust me. It's nothing new. Nothing is new.
All this reminds me of how old I am because I can't see it as anything new or worth getting exorcised about. The effect of media ubiquity on our lives was foreseen many years ago, it's just amplified. Here is Marshall McLuhan from The Media is the Message in 1967:
In the past, the effects of media were experienced more gradually, allowing the individual and society to cushion their impact to some degree. Today, in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I believe that our survival, and at very least our comfort and happiness,is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values, and attitudes. This upheaval generates great pain and identity loss, which can be ameliorated only through a conscious awareness of its dynamics. If...we continue in our subliminal trance, we will be their slaves.That's 1967 kiddies. We had three TV channels, FM radio (just barely), and dialing a phone meant dialing.
Want some more? This is Stefan Zweig from The World of Yesterday in 1938:
But travelling, even as far as to other worlds under other stars did not allow me to escape Europe and my anxieties. It seems almost like Nature's fierce revenge on mankind that the achievements of technology through which we have taken her mysterious forces into our own hands simultaneously destroy the soul. The greatest curse brought down on us by technology is that it prevents us from escaping the present even for a brief time. Previous generations could retreat into solitude and seclusion when disaster struck; it was our fate to be aware of everything catastrophic happening anywhere in the world at the hour and second when it happened.1938. For 80 years this transformation has been going on. Did it accelerate with the Internet? OK maybe, but media ubiquity has been going to destroy our souls for almost a century now. Multiple generations have lived and died with their souls destroyed by the media. Yet here we are, doing pretty well, making progress in the crazy, haphazard, 10-steps-forward-9-steps-back way of humanity.
So maybe take ten- to twenty-percent off over there Squirrely Dan. (Apologies for the Letterkenny quote, ya pheasants.) All that stuff you see that's going to destroy the world, isn't. Trust me. It's nothing new. Nothing is new.
Monday, January 07, 2019
The Month That Was - December 2018
It was another year. Suppose I should reflect on what I did and didn't do, but I'm not going to. The year was like most other years. I wrote a bit, but not enough to feel like I accomplished much. I traveled a bit, but nowhere new and not enough to feel like I accomplished much. I did my usual fitness activities to fend off aging, but made no achievements that make me feel like I accomplished much.
Yet, I did OK. I caused no real harm that I can see. I was as good a friend as I can be to the people I care about. I put a good amount of thought and effort into most everything I did both professionally and personally. And while I feel light on actual accomplishments, the value of any stretch of a human life really needs a few years of retrospection to evaluate.
So, yes, there have been 58 years in my life. 2018 was one of them. There will be more.
[Science] Blinded Science
[TV] Letterkenny, eh?
[Movies] Flick Check: The Death of Stalin
[Tech, Rant] Criminal Mind, Digital Edition
Yet, I did OK. I caused no real harm that I can see. I was as good a friend as I can be to the people I care about. I put a good amount of thought and effort into most everything I did both professionally and personally. And while I feel light on actual accomplishments, the value of any stretch of a human life really needs a few years of retrospection to evaluate.
So, yes, there have been 58 years in my life. 2018 was one of them. There will be more.
[Science] Blinded Science
[TV] Letterkenny, eh?
[Movies] Flick Check: The Death of Stalin
[Tech, Rant] Criminal Mind, Digital Edition
[Science] Blinded Science
Science, or more specifically, the Scientific Method, is probably the major contribution of Western culture to civilization. Many cultures have beautiful art and architecture. Many cultures have profound philosophies, both moral and metaphysical. But it was in the West that the scientific method was founded and flourished. To me that makes it sad that the public face of science has fallen into such ill repute. In short, science is a mess right now.
By now you have probably heard of the "replication crisis". Thousands of previously accepted scientific papers have been shown to be simply wrong. Many were just badly designed experiments that just didn't show what they purported to show. As far as I know, no one has done a study investigating whether these papers happened to come to conclusions that supported the opinions of the scientists involved, but it's a fair bet they did. Some have erroneously become conventional wisdom, and since they are almost entirely in the realm of social science, policies with consequences have been adopted under those mistaken beliefs. All this has given fuel to the critics who claim the soft sciences (social sciences) aren't really sciences at all. Whether they are or not, they are certainly not acting like it.
The hardest of the soft sciences -- psychology and economics -- are doing a bit better. There is fascinating work being done in the realm of evolutionary psychology although not much of it seems very rigorous so far. At least it's promising. Economics is struggling to come to terms with its limitations -- party due to all the work the evo-psych people are doing to undermine the assumptions of broad-based rationality in humans. Econometrics can't come to any agreed upon conclusions. You can find a legitimate quantitative studies that end in opposite results. So anything can be good or bad, depending on what you just read.
As we move along the "scientific hardness" spectrum we come to environmental science next, which is wholly dominated by global warming. (Tangent: Scott Alexander considers some of the environmental hot buttons from the past and what happened to them.) Without commenting on my opinion of it, the way high-profile advocates for global warming behave is shameful. They sell their theories like snake oil salesmen, appealing to fear and ignorance while using public ridicule to silence anyone who might question them, then claim scientific righteousness. I have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the people advocating for global warming don't really want to convince anyone of it. They want to raise their own status via demonstrating their superior intellect and rationality and, frankly, if everybody agreed with them, they couldn't do that.
The next step along the way is the biological sciences where, specifically with respect to genetics and microbiology, there are tremendous successes in research. Practical applications get bogged down in ethical issues and political bureaucracy, but at least the science is clipping along. One bright spot.
The harder the science, the less susceptible it is to these machinations of the human ego. Physics of course, is almost immune to twisting facts for a dopamine hit, but it's not immune to human flaws and limitations. Physics is in the doldrums. We can't reconcile the Quantum Mechanics with Relativity after nearly a century; the large and the small don't seem to agree on the nature of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider provided proof of the Higgs Boson, but nothing else interesting. It has been thus for nearly a century now and there seems to be little hope of a systematic breakthrough (there always remains the possibility of an random epiphany). Even the more recent discoveries (in my lifetime) of dark matter and dark energy are really just plugs to solve an equation. We have no clue of what they truly are.
A century hence, I can't imagine looking at this era as anything except a dry spell in scientific progress. If it continues, perhaps even a Dark Age. Or maybe it's forever. Maybe the low hanging fruit of the universe has been found and we are now in a time where it's centuries between breakthroughs instead of decades. Of course, that pessimism has been expressed before and has been uniformly mistaken. Still it has to happen eventually, and as we increasingly encounter situations where we can predict outcomes and measure results with great accuracy but can't describe what is going on, that does suggest we might be approaching a barrier which the evolutionary development of our brains hasn't prepared us to cross.
That's not to say any of this is holding up progress. Here is one list of interesting scientific discoveries just this year. With our technology we can measure things more accurately than ever. With our models we can predict the behavior of the world far better than ever, perhaps better than we would ever need to. There is enough science around to keep technological development going indefinitely so there is no need to be pessimistic about the quality of life. Still, it's very unsatisfying if the best we can do is treat existence as a black box.
Perhaps we should focus on how to evolve faster. That may solve the replication problem, too.
By now you have probably heard of the "replication crisis". Thousands of previously accepted scientific papers have been shown to be simply wrong. Many were just badly designed experiments that just didn't show what they purported to show. As far as I know, no one has done a study investigating whether these papers happened to come to conclusions that supported the opinions of the scientists involved, but it's a fair bet they did. Some have erroneously become conventional wisdom, and since they are almost entirely in the realm of social science, policies with consequences have been adopted under those mistaken beliefs. All this has given fuel to the critics who claim the soft sciences (social sciences) aren't really sciences at all. Whether they are or not, they are certainly not acting like it.
The hardest of the soft sciences -- psychology and economics -- are doing a bit better. There is fascinating work being done in the realm of evolutionary psychology although not much of it seems very rigorous so far. At least it's promising. Economics is struggling to come to terms with its limitations -- party due to all the work the evo-psych people are doing to undermine the assumptions of broad-based rationality in humans. Econometrics can't come to any agreed upon conclusions. You can find a legitimate quantitative studies that end in opposite results. So anything can be good or bad, depending on what you just read.
As we move along the "scientific hardness" spectrum we come to environmental science next, which is wholly dominated by global warming. (Tangent: Scott Alexander considers some of the environmental hot buttons from the past and what happened to them.) Without commenting on my opinion of it, the way high-profile advocates for global warming behave is shameful. They sell their theories like snake oil salesmen, appealing to fear and ignorance while using public ridicule to silence anyone who might question them, then claim scientific righteousness. I have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the people advocating for global warming don't really want to convince anyone of it. They want to raise their own status via demonstrating their superior intellect and rationality and, frankly, if everybody agreed with them, they couldn't do that.
The next step along the way is the biological sciences where, specifically with respect to genetics and microbiology, there are tremendous successes in research. Practical applications get bogged down in ethical issues and political bureaucracy, but at least the science is clipping along. One bright spot.
The harder the science, the less susceptible it is to these machinations of the human ego. Physics of course, is almost immune to twisting facts for a dopamine hit, but it's not immune to human flaws and limitations. Physics is in the doldrums. We can't reconcile the Quantum Mechanics with Relativity after nearly a century; the large and the small don't seem to agree on the nature of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider provided proof of the Higgs Boson, but nothing else interesting. It has been thus for nearly a century now and there seems to be little hope of a systematic breakthrough (there always remains the possibility of an random epiphany). Even the more recent discoveries (in my lifetime) of dark matter and dark energy are really just plugs to solve an equation. We have no clue of what they truly are.
A century hence, I can't imagine looking at this era as anything except a dry spell in scientific progress. If it continues, perhaps even a Dark Age. Or maybe it's forever. Maybe the low hanging fruit of the universe has been found and we are now in a time where it's centuries between breakthroughs instead of decades. Of course, that pessimism has been expressed before and has been uniformly mistaken. Still it has to happen eventually, and as we increasingly encounter situations where we can predict outcomes and measure results with great accuracy but can't describe what is going on, that does suggest we might be approaching a barrier which the evolutionary development of our brains hasn't prepared us to cross.
That's not to say any of this is holding up progress. Here is one list of interesting scientific discoveries just this year. With our technology we can measure things more accurately than ever. With our models we can predict the behavior of the world far better than ever, perhaps better than we would ever need to. There is enough science around to keep technological development going indefinitely so there is no need to be pessimistic about the quality of life. Still, it's very unsatisfying if the best we can do is treat existence as a black box.
Perhaps we should focus on how to evolve faster. That may solve the replication problem, too.
[TV] Letterkenny, eh?
I'll file this one under shows that I'm ashamed I laugh at. The adventures of assorted eccentrics in a rural community in Ontario, or as the opening cue card states: "There are 5,000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems." It is coarse, crude, and moves at a breakneck pace. Filled with quotables, as you can tell from a Letterkenny memes search or better yet, hit YouTube for some highlights.
It is also quintessentially Canadian. So much so that you can't get the bulk of the series here down south. They seem to randomly release a 6 episode season along with some holiday specials. I believe they are on season 5 but the best we have, legally, in the U.S. is season 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu.
This pisses me off to no end because the highlights to the later seasons on YouTube have split my sides. It's very hard for me to not break my long standing policy of not pirating stuff. Come on Hulu. Pitter patter.
It is also quintessentially Canadian. So much so that you can't get the bulk of the series here down south. They seem to randomly release a 6 episode season along with some holiday specials. I believe they are on season 5 but the best we have, legally, in the U.S. is season 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu.
This pisses me off to no end because the highlights to the later seasons on YouTube have split my sides. It's very hard for me to not break my long standing policy of not pirating stuff. Come on Hulu. Pitter patter.
[Movies] Flick Check: The Death of Stalin
A terrific movie. It is the blackest of comedies -- set in the midst of one of the two most horrific events in history, Stalin's purges. (The other would be the Cultural Revolution of Mao). The story revolves around a highly fictionalized account of Stalin's death and the maneuverings among the politburo that eventually led to Khrushchev's taking power.
At this point I have lost anyone under 40, possibly anyone under 50. That's OK, I understand it's ancient history to them. But these were household names way back when -- the leaders of the Soviet Union and some of the most monstrous people that ever lived (Stalin and Beria could put Hitler to shame).
Without taxing my memory too greatly, I think I can safely says this movie has the most skilfully developed "tone" I have ever seen. I would venture that "tone" may be the most difficult aspects of movie making, simply because so many movies fail in that department. Contrasting comedy/tragedy, light/dark, or love/hate and such gives a movie a sense of reality since that's how the world operates. Problems of tone occur when an incident sticks out and makes you go "huh?" When a character does something completely out of character or events take a turn that doesn't really flow from the previous events it can either bring an entirely new dimension to the movie, or it can stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know enough about filmmaking to know what will make or break "tone" -- I suspect acting skill, or at least casting skill, has a lot to do with it -- but I know if it fails or succeeds when I see it.
The Death of Stalin mixes horrific tragedy and broad farce so perfectly that for nearly the full running time, those two dramatic tenses are running simultaneously. It's really astonishing. And it fits because that is exactly what life was like for the players in the politburo. They had to behave like cartoon dictators while simultaneously fearing for their lives at every move. Imagine having to manufacture farcical rationale to defend comically ludicrous policies that both killed people by the thousands and potentially positioned you for mortal payback. This is the feeling the movie captures.
There is no shortage of stunning acting on display. Steve Buscemi dips into the well that served him in playing the lead on Boardwalk Empire so well. Simon Beale and Andrea Riseborough also stand out, but the entire cast nails it.
In the very end, the farce perfectly drains away and we are left with the horror. Absolutely one of the best movies I've seen in a while and better than pretty much every nominee for every best of 2018 award.
At this point I have lost anyone under 40, possibly anyone under 50. That's OK, I understand it's ancient history to them. But these were household names way back when -- the leaders of the Soviet Union and some of the most monstrous people that ever lived (Stalin and Beria could put Hitler to shame).
Without taxing my memory too greatly, I think I can safely says this movie has the most skilfully developed "tone" I have ever seen. I would venture that "tone" may be the most difficult aspects of movie making, simply because so many movies fail in that department. Contrasting comedy/tragedy, light/dark, or love/hate and such gives a movie a sense of reality since that's how the world operates. Problems of tone occur when an incident sticks out and makes you go "huh?" When a character does something completely out of character or events take a turn that doesn't really flow from the previous events it can either bring an entirely new dimension to the movie, or it can stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know enough about filmmaking to know what will make or break "tone" -- I suspect acting skill, or at least casting skill, has a lot to do with it -- but I know if it fails or succeeds when I see it.
The Death of Stalin mixes horrific tragedy and broad farce so perfectly that for nearly the full running time, those two dramatic tenses are running simultaneously. It's really astonishing. And it fits because that is exactly what life was like for the players in the politburo. They had to behave like cartoon dictators while simultaneously fearing for their lives at every move. Imagine having to manufacture farcical rationale to defend comically ludicrous policies that both killed people by the thousands and potentially positioned you for mortal payback. This is the feeling the movie captures.
There is no shortage of stunning acting on display. Steve Buscemi dips into the well that served him in playing the lead on Boardwalk Empire so well. Simon Beale and Andrea Riseborough also stand out, but the entire cast nails it.
In the very end, the farce perfectly drains away and we are left with the horror. Absolutely one of the best movies I've seen in a while and better than pretty much every nominee for every best of 2018 award.
[Tech, Rant] Criminal Mind, Digital Edition
Trouble always comes around. When money is involved folks will always find a way to work the system criminally. To wit:
This story from Wired follows the adventure of someone who took it upon himself to track and expose a scammer on the Dark Web, who was offering an assassination service. People who wanted someone dead (or just beaten up) would contact this guy, send him some bitcoin, and he'd promise to arrange a hit man to do your dirty work. Of course, it's all a scam. He pockets the bitcoins, the strings you along as far as he can, then he just stops responding. Face it, you have no recourse -- "Your Honor, this man promised to kill someone for me and failed to fulfill his contract..."
What follows is a cat and mouse game between the scammer and would-be exposer. The most interesting aspect is how, in the end, it's really unclear whether there is a well defined good-guy and bad-guy. We start out rooting for the crusader trying to shut down the scammer, but in time we begin to wonder... The scammer is taking money, time, and energy away from people who are actively trying to be murderers. He is certainly motivated to enrich himself, but are the consequences of that really all that bad?
An observation I'd make is that if this scammer devoted the same level of effort and creativity to non-criminal enterprise, he might be even richer.
Closer to home is this story about Amazon review shenanigans. Not people posting fake reviews to bolster their product, but people posting obviously fake reviews to competitors products to trick Amazon into shutting them down. This can work because Amazon reacts savagely to any reviews that are deemed to be fake. Once you have been suspended for having fake reviews, regaining access to Amazon is an infuriating and expensive proposition. Retailers are so dependent on Amazon that being suspended can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The process to petition for reinstatement is so complex and shrouded in bureaucracy that there is a cottage industry of consultants/lawyers to get the falsely accused reinstated.
This is unsurprising to me. If you have ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, you can imagine the frustration involved. The truth is, if a robot can't handle it, it may not be possible for Amazon to do. In fact, one of the consultant's strategies for getting someone reinstated is simply having them confess and apologize. That is something the system can handle. What the system can't handle is determining that it has made a mistake. Robots aren't so good at self-critique.
So picture this: you are shoestring retailer of widgets. Some Chinese widget firm suddenly starts posting some obviously fake 5-star reviews to your product. You, being a good and honest person, report it to Amazon to get the reviews removed. Amazon responds by suspending your product for having fake reviews. You begin bleeding money. You can't get Amazon's attention to explain what's going on so you contact a consultant. The consultant tells you to admit guilt, even though you are not guilty because it's the quickest, and possibly only, way to get back in business. I can think of few things that would be more demoralizing than that. I have to imagine that, at some point, someone is going to kick off a class action suit against Amazon over this kind of thing.
It's tempting to say this is the result of Amazon's monopoly in the retailer space. That's only partially true. If you can post fake reviews to one site, you can post to many. It probably wouldn't stop it from happening. But with more viable online retailers than Amazon, maybe one of them would at least have a reasonable way to protest mistreatment.
The really interesting concept here is that, because of their scope, Amazon has set up what amounts to a private legal system, and is facing all the complexities and inefficiencies and injustices that the public legal system is facing. Maybe Amazon is planning on making a legal system their next product. Perfect it in house then offer it for purchase. That is how they operate, after all. (I was kidding when I wrote that, but the more I think about it...) In reality this is the sort of behavior that attracts the attention of the government and Jeff Bezos might find himself up in front of a congressional panel of indignant demagogues.
But once again, I am struck by how much effort and creativity the bad guys devote to scams and fraud, when the same sort of energy would pay off more were they to take up legitimate entrepreneurship. Why? Do they think it's easier? Is it the thrill of escaping punishment? Do they just miss-estimate the risk?
I guess crooks just gotta be crooked.
P.S. For $2.99 you can get a Kindle Book telling you how to reach Amazon Customer Service. Satire is dead.
This story from Wired follows the adventure of someone who took it upon himself to track and expose a scammer on the Dark Web, who was offering an assassination service. People who wanted someone dead (or just beaten up) would contact this guy, send him some bitcoin, and he'd promise to arrange a hit man to do your dirty work. Of course, it's all a scam. He pockets the bitcoins, the strings you along as far as he can, then he just stops responding. Face it, you have no recourse -- "Your Honor, this man promised to kill someone for me and failed to fulfill his contract..."
What follows is a cat and mouse game between the scammer and would-be exposer. The most interesting aspect is how, in the end, it's really unclear whether there is a well defined good-guy and bad-guy. We start out rooting for the crusader trying to shut down the scammer, but in time we begin to wonder... The scammer is taking money, time, and energy away from people who are actively trying to be murderers. He is certainly motivated to enrich himself, but are the consequences of that really all that bad?
An observation I'd make is that if this scammer devoted the same level of effort and creativity to non-criminal enterprise, he might be even richer.
Closer to home is this story about Amazon review shenanigans. Not people posting fake reviews to bolster their product, but people posting obviously fake reviews to competitors products to trick Amazon into shutting them down. This can work because Amazon reacts savagely to any reviews that are deemed to be fake. Once you have been suspended for having fake reviews, regaining access to Amazon is an infuriating and expensive proposition. Retailers are so dependent on Amazon that being suspended can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The process to petition for reinstatement is so complex and shrouded in bureaucracy that there is a cottage industry of consultants/lawyers to get the falsely accused reinstated.
This is unsurprising to me. If you have ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, you can imagine the frustration involved. The truth is, if a robot can't handle it, it may not be possible for Amazon to do. In fact, one of the consultant's strategies for getting someone reinstated is simply having them confess and apologize. That is something the system can handle. What the system can't handle is determining that it has made a mistake. Robots aren't so good at self-critique.
So picture this: you are shoestring retailer of widgets. Some Chinese widget firm suddenly starts posting some obviously fake 5-star reviews to your product. You, being a good and honest person, report it to Amazon to get the reviews removed. Amazon responds by suspending your product for having fake reviews. You begin bleeding money. You can't get Amazon's attention to explain what's going on so you contact a consultant. The consultant tells you to admit guilt, even though you are not guilty because it's the quickest, and possibly only, way to get back in business. I can think of few things that would be more demoralizing than that. I have to imagine that, at some point, someone is going to kick off a class action suit against Amazon over this kind of thing.
It's tempting to say this is the result of Amazon's monopoly in the retailer space. That's only partially true. If you can post fake reviews to one site, you can post to many. It probably wouldn't stop it from happening. But with more viable online retailers than Amazon, maybe one of them would at least have a reasonable way to protest mistreatment.
The really interesting concept here is that, because of their scope, Amazon has set up what amounts to a private legal system, and is facing all the complexities and inefficiencies and injustices that the public legal system is facing. Maybe Amazon is planning on making a legal system their next product. Perfect it in house then offer it for purchase. That is how they operate, after all. (I was kidding when I wrote that, but the more I think about it...) In reality this is the sort of behavior that attracts the attention of the government and Jeff Bezos might find himself up in front of a congressional panel of indignant demagogues.
But once again, I am struck by how much effort and creativity the bad guys devote to scams and fraud, when the same sort of energy would pay off more were they to take up legitimate entrepreneurship. Why? Do they think it's easier? Is it the thrill of escaping punishment? Do they just miss-estimate the risk?
I guess crooks just gotta be crooked.
P.S. For $2.99 you can get a Kindle Book telling you how to reach Amazon Customer Service. Satire is dead.
Thursday, December 06, 2018
The Month That Was - November 2018
A lot of activity this month. I traveled twice, once to Chicago for weekend and a showing of Hamilton, once to Florida where I also saw a play, The Music Man. Both are reviewed below. But travel is over for the year, mostly because I have no vacation time left.
Every year for the last, oh, 10 or so I have run a half-marathon. It takes me the bulk of the year to work up to being in shape for it so it's been a kind a benchmark for me. As long as I get a half in at some point during the year I'm not backsliding or going easy on myself. This year, events conspired to prevent me from doing anything organized but I still did it -- just unofficially, on my own: I ran circles in a local park until my GPS watch read 13.1 miles. Hopefully I get something more interesting done in that vein next year. I have one race left -- my local 5k right here in Dexter -- then running is over for the year.
Writing is never over. I did make some progress. I'm barreling to the end of the first draft of my next novel, which I will not discuss as a matter of policy, except to tell you the working title is The Hawk Sahib, which means nothing to you but when future historians search for the earliest mention of this book, they'll land right here.
[Dexter, Ann Arbor] Oh Deer
[Arts] Musical Wordplay
[Books] Book Look: The Third Policeman
[Movies] Flick Check: A Star is Born
Every year for the last, oh, 10 or so I have run a half-marathon. It takes me the bulk of the year to work up to being in shape for it so it's been a kind a benchmark for me. As long as I get a half in at some point during the year I'm not backsliding or going easy on myself. This year, events conspired to prevent me from doing anything organized but I still did it -- just unofficially, on my own: I ran circles in a local park until my GPS watch read 13.1 miles. Hopefully I get something more interesting done in that vein next year. I have one race left -- my local 5k right here in Dexter -- then running is over for the year.
Writing is never over. I did make some progress. I'm barreling to the end of the first draft of my next novel, which I will not discuss as a matter of policy, except to tell you the working title is The Hawk Sahib, which means nothing to you but when future historians search for the earliest mention of this book, they'll land right here.
[Dexter, Ann Arbor] Oh Deer
[Arts] Musical Wordplay
[Books] Book Look: The Third Policeman
[Movies] Flick Check: A Star is Born
[Dexter, Ann Arbor] Oh Deer
So here's what happened. A couple miles from where I live in Dexter, a deer got hit by a car. It was injured but not killed. In its traumatized state it managed to make its way to a local school where a school bus driver, seeing the state it was in, ran his bus over it to put it out of its misery. Worse, this happened in view of some of the kids.
Deer are a serious problem in these parts and not just as traffic hazards. They eat everything you plant, whether it's my tulip bulbs or a farmer's corn crops. They have no serious predators left around here; there are a scattering of hunting grounds, but for the most part I live in an exurban world , which means old farmhouses, some with actual farms,Arts & Craft-style McMansions with multi-acre lawns, and huge open wetlands and wilderness areas. It's really deer heaven around here. Naturally their population has exploded. It is almost certain that there are more deer in Michigan than there ever were in all of history or pre-history. The food supply is endless and predators are rare.
Next door in Ann Arbor, one of the most liberal, environmentalist populations in the country, it was so bad they instituted a cull. That is to say, they hired hunters to come in and kill a bunch of deer. This process was, of course, subject to much debate and very tightly controlled as to time, place, and count. The venison was donated to the Food Gatherers charity. Still, there was a good deal of outcry about this, as you would expect from that particular demographic but, even in the name of Gaia, they couldn't deny the reality of the situation. To minimize the need for culls another group has arranged to trap and sterilize deer. This has no effect on the current population obviously but it is unclear how much it will affect the future population. However you approach it, no one denies there are too many deer.
In Dexter, the relationship with deer is equally complex. In years past (although not in long while) Dexter had a prominent buck pole right in the village commercial center. A buck pole is a well, tall pole, say 10 feet or so, with a cross-member. After a successful hunt, one would hang his buck (male deer, you can only hunt doe in special circumstances) carcass on the pole for display. Among deer hunters this was a social activity, you could swap stories and back-slap -- like fisherman in the bar at the end of the day. The business that erected the pole each season folded or moved a few years ago, but a recent post on a local facebook group reminiscing about good times around the buck pole prompted strongly contrasting opinions some calling it a horror and disgusting, others offering to educate them as to the source of their hamburgers, as so forth. (I am so glad I was an early deinzen of internet forums and so learned sooner than others to never argue on the internet.)
But back to the bus driver incident. Naturally this got picked up by news outlets in places where they can't imaging deer are anything but friendly bambis that eat out of your hand. Inquiries were called for, position statements were issued, moral self-identification opportunities were taken. But here in town, apart from a couple of hand-wringers, pretty much everybody supported the regrettably necessary actions of the bus driver. A wounded deer is a dangerous and unpredictable thing. It's a shame that the kids saw that, but it would be a different story if one of them took a hoof to the temple. Then the outrage would have been about why NOBODY DID ANYTHING, followed by calls to arm bus drivers. (I kid. Maybe.) In the moment, it really was the right thing to do. As gruesome as it seems, it did end the deer's suffering and it protected the kids.
Unlike some citified newsroom flunkie, we know this. We know from deer 'round here.
Deer are a serious problem in these parts and not just as traffic hazards. They eat everything you plant, whether it's my tulip bulbs or a farmer's corn crops. They have no serious predators left around here; there are a scattering of hunting grounds, but for the most part I live in an exurban world , which means old farmhouses, some with actual farms,Arts & Craft-style McMansions with multi-acre lawns, and huge open wetlands and wilderness areas. It's really deer heaven around here. Naturally their population has exploded. It is almost certain that there are more deer in Michigan than there ever were in all of history or pre-history. The food supply is endless and predators are rare.
Next door in Ann Arbor, one of the most liberal, environmentalist populations in the country, it was so bad they instituted a cull. That is to say, they hired hunters to come in and kill a bunch of deer. This process was, of course, subject to much debate and very tightly controlled as to time, place, and count. The venison was donated to the Food Gatherers charity. Still, there was a good deal of outcry about this, as you would expect from that particular demographic but, even in the name of Gaia, they couldn't deny the reality of the situation. To minimize the need for culls another group has arranged to trap and sterilize deer. This has no effect on the current population obviously but it is unclear how much it will affect the future population. However you approach it, no one denies there are too many deer.
In Dexter, the relationship with deer is equally complex. In years past (although not in long while) Dexter had a prominent buck pole right in the village commercial center. A buck pole is a well, tall pole, say 10 feet or so, with a cross-member. After a successful hunt, one would hang his buck (male deer, you can only hunt doe in special circumstances) carcass on the pole for display. Among deer hunters this was a social activity, you could swap stories and back-slap -- like fisherman in the bar at the end of the day. The business that erected the pole each season folded or moved a few years ago, but a recent post on a local facebook group reminiscing about good times around the buck pole prompted strongly contrasting opinions some calling it a horror and disgusting, others offering to educate them as to the source of their hamburgers, as so forth. (I am so glad I was an early deinzen of internet forums and so learned sooner than others to never argue on the internet.)
But back to the bus driver incident. Naturally this got picked up by news outlets in places where they can't imaging deer are anything but friendly bambis that eat out of your hand. Inquiries were called for, position statements were issued, moral self-identification opportunities were taken. But here in town, apart from a couple of hand-wringers, pretty much everybody supported the regrettably necessary actions of the bus driver. A wounded deer is a dangerous and unpredictable thing. It's a shame that the kids saw that, but it would be a different story if one of them took a hoof to the temple. Then the outrage would have been about why NOBODY DID ANYTHING, followed by calls to arm bus drivers. (I kid. Maybe.) In the moment, it really was the right thing to do. As gruesome as it seems, it did end the deer's suffering and it protected the kids.
Unlike some citified newsroom flunkie, we know this. We know from deer 'round here.
[Arts] Musical Wordplay
I saw Hamilton in Chicago. I liked it. It was excellent. Unless you have been living in a cave you probably know of it, if you haven't already seen it, but short shrift is that it is a hip-hop/rap musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, his rise, his fall in what we would today call a sex scandal, and his death in a duel with Aaron Burr. It is a wonderfully told story and is very nearly an opera. There are very few spoken passages, but perhaps because much of the "signing" is rap it doesn't strike one as operatic.
To get this out of the way, virtually all the music is in the style of rap and hip-hop, with a ballad or two mixed in, and 95% of the cast, include all the Founding Fathers, are portrayed by black actors. In truth, nobody much cares about that beyond noting the fact as an observation, but the limited vocabulary and cognitive facilities of our current culture means this must be a "controversy" and require positioning in our hierarchy of virtue. Whatever. I'll just say that Hamilton was not an exercise in political correctness and everyone in the cast was a spot-on match for their role from an acting perspective. (Although I would have wished Hamilton was a little taller.)
Only a few years old, it's hard to say if Hamilton will be one of those eternal classics, but it wouldn't surprise me. Although the setting was in political, the drama is essentially personal, not social, so it should hold up well over the years. The music was enjoyable. The songs didn't stick with me, but that's probably me. I am too attached to the age of melody-based music; the rhythm-based songs of the current style leave me cold. If you get a chance you should see Hamilton, no doubt about it. I would gamble it becomes an American classic. Although, as I think about it, that might depend on the quality of the inevitable movie. You'll spend hundreds to see it on stage so the movie will likely be the first impression for most people. A lousy film could stop it in its tracks. Glad I got to see it on stage first so I don't run the risk of forming a bad opinion.
Later in the month I saw a revival of The Music Man at the Asolo theatre in Sarasota. The Music Man is already an American classic (first performed in 1957). Of course, we all know the movie -- one of those rare cases where the movie enhanced the reputation of a play. It is old-timey, from the era of the middlebrow, with cultural references that will likely me nothing to anyone under fifty -- "I hope, I pray, for a Hester to win just one more 'A'"; "Like to see some stuck-up jockey boy sittin' on Dan Patch?" -- you don't know what those mean, do you? The choreography is both traditional, much of it tap, and clever. The acting is perfectly exaggerated, as it should be for the material. All in all, it was delightful. Also, high marks for the Asolo Theatre. Music Man is a must-do if you find yourself snowbirding on the Gulf.
You would think the two plays would have nothing in common, but they both feature passages of rhythmically spoken words -- what we now call rap and what used to be called a song's verse, as opposed to refrain. The "rapped" passages often blend seamlessly into, or are interspersed within, proper songs. You can see it when Harold Hill is counting out 6 pockets in a pool table, and when the Hamilton company is counting out the Ten Dueling Commandments. Everything old is new again.
To get this out of the way, virtually all the music is in the style of rap and hip-hop, with a ballad or two mixed in, and 95% of the cast, include all the Founding Fathers, are portrayed by black actors. In truth, nobody much cares about that beyond noting the fact as an observation, but the limited vocabulary and cognitive facilities of our current culture means this must be a "controversy" and require positioning in our hierarchy of virtue. Whatever. I'll just say that Hamilton was not an exercise in political correctness and everyone in the cast was a spot-on match for their role from an acting perspective. (Although I would have wished Hamilton was a little taller.)
Only a few years old, it's hard to say if Hamilton will be one of those eternal classics, but it wouldn't surprise me. Although the setting was in political, the drama is essentially personal, not social, so it should hold up well over the years. The music was enjoyable. The songs didn't stick with me, but that's probably me. I am too attached to the age of melody-based music; the rhythm-based songs of the current style leave me cold. If you get a chance you should see Hamilton, no doubt about it. I would gamble it becomes an American classic. Although, as I think about it, that might depend on the quality of the inevitable movie. You'll spend hundreds to see it on stage so the movie will likely be the first impression for most people. A lousy film could stop it in its tracks. Glad I got to see it on stage first so I don't run the risk of forming a bad opinion.
Later in the month I saw a revival of The Music Man at the Asolo theatre in Sarasota. The Music Man is already an American classic (first performed in 1957). Of course, we all know the movie -- one of those rare cases where the movie enhanced the reputation of a play. It is old-timey, from the era of the middlebrow, with cultural references that will likely me nothing to anyone under fifty -- "I hope, I pray, for a Hester to win just one more 'A'"; "Like to see some stuck-up jockey boy sittin' on Dan Patch?" -- you don't know what those mean, do you? The choreography is both traditional, much of it tap, and clever. The acting is perfectly exaggerated, as it should be for the material. All in all, it was delightful. Also, high marks for the Asolo Theatre. Music Man is a must-do if you find yourself snowbirding on the Gulf.
You would think the two plays would have nothing in common, but they both feature passages of rhythmically spoken words -- what we now call rap and what used to be called a song's verse, as opposed to refrain. The "rapped" passages often blend seamlessly into, or are interspersed within, proper songs. You can see it when Harold Hill is counting out 6 pockets in a pool table, and when the Hamilton company is counting out the Ten Dueling Commandments. Everything old is new again.
[Books] Book Look: The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien
I don't remember why I chose to read The Third Policeman. It has been on my reading list (which I keep in an amazon wish list) for a long while. I suspect I stumbled on recommendations from one or two trusted sources during my random internet ramblings. While it had points of interest, for me, it didn't pay off.
It is difficult to describe. Set in Ireland, the unnamed narrator is a naive man -- an amateur scholar of a fictional philosopher/academic named deSelby. He has written what he believes to be a authoritative account of deSelby's life and works (we are deluged with footnotes on deSelby throughout the book) but does not have the money to publish it. The narrator maintains a codependent relationship with a liar/con-man/thug named Divney who runs his failing farm for him. At Divney's suggestion, they plot to rob a local man who is thought to have a horde of cash. The robbery goes bad and the victim is murdered.
Then things get weird. The narrator encounters the ghost of the murdered man, crosses paths with a one-legged stranger, his conscience becomes an entity in itself who he calls Joe, he stumbles into a police station where they concern themselves of little else except bicycles: the theft of them, the nature of conscious connect with their owners, their variations and value. The cops also seem to have abilities to create paradoxical objects and events. In time, the narrator is sentenced to death by hanging, but is rescued. It is not too much of a spoiler to say that the hope that he gains after his rescue is dashed when it is revealed that he is actually in Hell and will be re-living the strange and terrible events of the book for eternity.
From a stylistic perspective a lot of the writing here is quite interesting. The early stretches of the book are written in as almost a recitation of facts of his early life. After that the prose in more engaging. There are some good humorous passages. The use of the fictional deSelby is almost Nabokovian. But overall the best way to describe this is that it is like the TV show Twin Peaks; it can grab your attention by challenging your expectations, but in the end you walk away only thinking "Well, that was different." Like the David Lynch creation, you won't get any real clarity of purpose. You will get flashes of brilliance, but mostly confusion, often of the sort where you get the sense that there may be more conventional meaning there and you are just missing it.
You're not. The point of these sorts of works is the experience of the work and not that you should get anything concrete out it. Should you read The Third Policeman? Probably not. It is thoroughly post-modern, mostly cryptic, and occasionally avant-garde. It is best for the dedicated reader looking for something out of the ordinary. Most folks are lucky to read four or five books a year and so don't have the time for something so far out on the edge of reason.
It is difficult to describe. Set in Ireland, the unnamed narrator is a naive man -- an amateur scholar of a fictional philosopher/academic named deSelby. He has written what he believes to be a authoritative account of deSelby's life and works (we are deluged with footnotes on deSelby throughout the book) but does not have the money to publish it. The narrator maintains a codependent relationship with a liar/con-man/thug named Divney who runs his failing farm for him. At Divney's suggestion, they plot to rob a local man who is thought to have a horde of cash. The robbery goes bad and the victim is murdered.
Then things get weird. The narrator encounters the ghost of the murdered man, crosses paths with a one-legged stranger, his conscience becomes an entity in itself who he calls Joe, he stumbles into a police station where they concern themselves of little else except bicycles: the theft of them, the nature of conscious connect with their owners, their variations and value. The cops also seem to have abilities to create paradoxical objects and events. In time, the narrator is sentenced to death by hanging, but is rescued. It is not too much of a spoiler to say that the hope that he gains after his rescue is dashed when it is revealed that he is actually in Hell and will be re-living the strange and terrible events of the book for eternity.
From a stylistic perspective a lot of the writing here is quite interesting. The early stretches of the book are written in as almost a recitation of facts of his early life. After that the prose in more engaging. There are some good humorous passages. The use of the fictional deSelby is almost Nabokovian. But overall the best way to describe this is that it is like the TV show Twin Peaks; it can grab your attention by challenging your expectations, but in the end you walk away only thinking "Well, that was different." Like the David Lynch creation, you won't get any real clarity of purpose. You will get flashes of brilliance, but mostly confusion, often of the sort where you get the sense that there may be more conventional meaning there and you are just missing it.
You're not. The point of these sorts of works is the experience of the work and not that you should get anything concrete out it. Should you read The Third Policeman? Probably not. It is thoroughly post-modern, mostly cryptic, and occasionally avant-garde. It is best for the dedicated reader looking for something out of the ordinary. Most folks are lucky to read four or five books a year and so don't have the time for something so far out on the edge of reason.
[Movies] Flick Check: A Star is Born
It is not something I would do under normal circumstances. I will not go into details about how I ended up seeing A Star is Born in a movie theatre, but I did. Let's leave it at that.
This is the fourth version of this movie. The first was back in the '30s I think (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up and I don't really care anyway). All are the same plot: an over-the-hill music star takes a younger talent under his wing. She eventually outshines him and he dies in some heartbreaking manner.
Bradley Cooper is a talented guy. He did a good job of playing a genial, well-meaning alcoholic but the script eventually called for that alcoholic to go off the deep end and, given the way he played the role, it ended up seeming out of character for him to do so. More impressive is the work he must have put into his voice, since he actually does all his own singing. That is best thing I can say about this movie.
The worst thing is the music. Cooper was apparently supposed to be some sort of hard rock guitar player/country music idol. I have no idea what sound they were looking for out of the music his character is given. This movie was big on stereotypes so I guess they wanted the washed-up white guy to be a country singer, but they also needed him to have a groupies and snort coke like rocker so they just sort of mashed it up. It was some sore-thumb weirdness. Within the scope of the movie, the lyrics of his songs could be interpreted as poignant, but just about any song can be relevant to anything if it's generic enough.
The up and coming talent is played by Lady Gaga, who is a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer. What does it mean to be a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer? There are two common qualities: 1) Narcissism and 2) Volume.
So, yeah, Lady Gaga: not a fan. There is no accounting for the ebb and flow of musical fashions and the world is not obligated to be ordered in alignment with my tastes, but the state of commercially successful music is atrocious. I don't want to be one of those grouches who rants about how everything was better back in the day. Crappy music has always been with us and I should acknowledge that good and creative music is still being produced everyday. But you gotta look hard for it -- it's all niche and obscure. Alas.
Back to the movie.
Apart from the music the other horrible thing was the overall milieu. Every insipid aspect of popular culture was on display and exalted. The presentation of queer folks and self-styled rebels as inherently good, and common proles as dolts; the worship of celebrity and the elevation of their privilege and nobility; all the thoughtless stereotypes -- it was just...wearying. Every minute was another gut-punch of trite, pop cultural arrogance. In the end, the only emotion I was left with was exhaustion. And relief that it was over.
Aside: If you want a starting place to look for good music, you could do worse than Ted Gioia's best albums of the year. The cross all countries and genres, including some you didn't know existed (including things like "Three-Voice Appalachian Rural Polyphony" and "Hot New Bands from Serbia"). None of this will you hear on the radio or America's Next Pop Star. This is how you find good music nowadays. Pour over lists like this, investigate what sounds interesting, use AllMusic or something other source to see what is related. You would think in the age of Google there would be an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it.
This is the fourth version of this movie. The first was back in the '30s I think (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up and I don't really care anyway). All are the same plot: an over-the-hill music star takes a younger talent under his wing. She eventually outshines him and he dies in some heartbreaking manner.
Bradley Cooper is a talented guy. He did a good job of playing a genial, well-meaning alcoholic but the script eventually called for that alcoholic to go off the deep end and, given the way he played the role, it ended up seeming out of character for him to do so. More impressive is the work he must have put into his voice, since he actually does all his own singing. That is best thing I can say about this movie.
The worst thing is the music. Cooper was apparently supposed to be some sort of hard rock guitar player/country music idol. I have no idea what sound they were looking for out of the music his character is given. This movie was big on stereotypes so I guess they wanted the washed-up white guy to be a country singer, but they also needed him to have a groupies and snort coke like rocker so they just sort of mashed it up. It was some sore-thumb weirdness. Within the scope of the movie, the lyrics of his songs could be interpreted as poignant, but just about any song can be relevant to anything if it's generic enough.
The up and coming talent is played by Lady Gaga, who is a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer. What does it mean to be a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer? There are two common qualities: 1) Narcissism and 2) Volume.
- Your garden variety Contemporary Diva is enthralled with herself. Nearly all the songs are about her personal empowerment, how no hardship can stop her, how she won't let anyone stand in her way. The ultimate prizes are fame, validation, and personal status. She may occasionally sing about love, but only to the extent it demonstrates her fierce drive for self-fulfillment. She may occasionally sing about social justice, but only to demonstrate that it's OK for her to be self-absorbed because she is so good and woke.
- Whatever emotions your garden variety Contemporary Diva is trying to express, it is done with volume. Whether she needs to express heartache, anger, despair, joy, regret, glee, ennui -- you name it, it is done by increasing the volume, exaggerating the sustain, and wavering the tone haphazardly. This is understandable, I suppose, given the limited range of subject matter there just aren't that many emotions to convey. It is the sort of thing that causes the judges on those excruciating American Idol-type shows to gush.
So, yeah, Lady Gaga: not a fan. There is no accounting for the ebb and flow of musical fashions and the world is not obligated to be ordered in alignment with my tastes, but the state of commercially successful music is atrocious. I don't want to be one of those grouches who rants about how everything was better back in the day. Crappy music has always been with us and I should acknowledge that good and creative music is still being produced everyday. But you gotta look hard for it -- it's all niche and obscure. Alas.
Back to the movie.
Apart from the music the other horrible thing was the overall milieu. Every insipid aspect of popular culture was on display and exalted. The presentation of queer folks and self-styled rebels as inherently good, and common proles as dolts; the worship of celebrity and the elevation of their privilege and nobility; all the thoughtless stereotypes -- it was just...wearying. Every minute was another gut-punch of trite, pop cultural arrogance. In the end, the only emotion I was left with was exhaustion. And relief that it was over.
Aside: If you want a starting place to look for good music, you could do worse than Ted Gioia's best albums of the year. The cross all countries and genres, including some you didn't know existed (including things like "Three-Voice Appalachian Rural Polyphony" and "Hot New Bands from Serbia"). None of this will you hear on the radio or America's Next Pop Star. This is how you find good music nowadays. Pour over lists like this, investigate what sounds interesting, use AllMusic or something other source to see what is related. You would think in the age of Google there would be an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it.
Thursday, November 01, 2018
The Month That Was - October 2018
I guess we can kiss another summer good-bye. Theoretically, El Nino should bring us a milder than usual winter and perhaps keep the Arctic Vortex at bay. Whatever. October was a slog. I did no travel, and pretty much nothing out of the ordinary. Just lived day-to-day, trying not to completely surrender to sloth.
Surprise, surprise: I did get some writing done. I sense I'm coming into the home stretch of Draft 1.0 -- I am nearing the end of the beginning. I justifiably remind myself that rewriting is immensely easier than writing. But neither get done when you're binging TV shows.
[Baseball] The Tigers of '68
[Rant] Sears and Fears
[TV] Fallen Defenders
Surprise, surprise: I did get some writing done. I sense I'm coming into the home stretch of Draft 1.0 -- I am nearing the end of the beginning. I justifiably remind myself that rewriting is immensely easier than writing. But neither get done when you're binging TV shows.
[Baseball] The Tigers of '68
[Rant] Sears and Fears
[TV] Fallen Defenders
[Baseball] The Tigers of '68
Fifty years ago. Good lord, that's a long time. I had just turned 8. I didn't know nothin' 'bout baseball, but everyone was talking about it. My mom had to explain it to me (she was Red Sox fan). When I first played with the kids in the neighborhood, they positioned me at shortstop, a word I had never heard and thought was made up out of pity to give me, the smallest kid in the world, a place to play where I wouldn't cause problems.
Things were very different then. The old folks who always tell stories about how when they were kids they just went off alone all day, fending for themselves, parents not bothering to keep track of them. They (we) aren't lying. It really was like like that. Maybe around dusk your mom would start to wonder where you were and yell out the back door for you to come to dinner.
We played a lot of tag; wandered the woods across the street catching tadpoles and garter snakes. Occasionally we would get enough kids together for a sandlot game, but usually we played a game we just called "500". One kid would bat (by tossing the ball in the air himself and hitting it), the others would go out and field. A grounder was worth 10, and pop-up was worth 50, and liner or fly was worth a 100. Once one kid got to 500 he got to be the new batter.
Baseball was different too. There were no divisions, just a bunch of teams in the A.L. and N.L. They never played each other during the regular season (other than during the All-Star game) and after 162 games, the teams with the best record in each league played for the championship; no such thing as playoffs. The games all started at 1pm local time. Since the Tigers opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, played in central time, the 2pm Eastern start time meant I could run home at top speed from school (a little over half a mile) and catch the end of the game on TV. Otherwise, you were stuck sneaking updates from the transistor radio you snuck into school with you.
The game itself was closer to sandlot games too. Nobody worked the pitch count, you grabbed a bat so you could hit. When a pitcher got the ball back they threw another pitch, they didn't dilly-dally. Pitch counts were unnecessary. It was like being on the sandlot, you didn't analyze everything for a statistical advantage, you just played. Runners stole bases and were thrown out. You moved runners along with sacrifice bunts and flys. It was all very instinctive. Don't think, it hurts the ballclub. The players smoked in the dugout.
I won't recount the details of the '68 Series, but it was epic, with astonishing performances and unlikely occurrences. The fact of the Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit only heightened the experience, winning game 7 against the most frightening pitcher ever (Bob Gibson). It was like a living storybook to an eight-year-old.
I seem to be going down a path of wistful nostalgia, longing for the days of my youth, but I'm not. I would not want to go back to those times either in baseball or in life.
Being outside playing with the other kids was fine and all, but as often as not you found yourself maneuvering through a juvenile world that approached Lord of the Flies. Did it make us tough? Probably. Is it good that we needed to be made tough? Probably not. It may have been necessary, but it's not to be desired. As a small, overly-thoughtful, introverted kid, I can't imagine anything I wouldn't have traded back then for one day's worth of access to something like the Web.
Baseball is a vastly more interesting game now also, especially of late. It is slower, which is annoying, but the players are probably better overall and the strategies are much more varied and intricate (and, yes, statistically oriented). Longtime readers know I was on the sabermetrics train at an early stop. ESPN recently did a test telecast of an Amazon-supported project called Statcast. Instead of inane babbling about who "really wants a hit" and who is "not looking comfortable on the mound" we got primed with deep stats and graphic predictions and intelligent rational analysis in general. It was wonderful. And it was very well received. If MLB provided a cable package of games like that, I would pay for it. There are problems implementing it I'm sure since the skill set of announcers has got to be something more than "just keep the cliches coming" but I think that's a solvable problem. It bodes well for the future.
I watched little of this year's World Series since it was between two teams I don't like: the Dodgers from that execrable city Los Angeles and the pink-hatted Massholes of Boston. The highlight was game 3, a 7-hour 20-minute 18-inning affair that was the longest, and possibly most excruciating, game in Series history. Evidently instead of having to rush home from school to catch end of games, we now pull all-nighters.
Once again, I have droned on in a post without have a clear objective other than to note that since the '68 Tigers were my first exposure to baseball, have officially been a baseball fan for 50 years now. (Of course, it's also been decades since I swung a bat or wore a glove.) Baseball is where I first saw the battle of the objective versus the subjective and realized I am constitutionally predisposed toward the former, an aspect of my personality that has influenced me throughout my life, for better and worse. Although I only follow on the periphery these days, it still brings an image of verdant beauty. The last game I attended was a Tigers spring training game in Joker Marchant stadium in Lakeland, where there is a large green lawn where the left field bleachers would be most places. Sitting in the grass, casually watching the game in the perfect Florida spring weather was true detachment for me; one of those moments that sets itself deeply in your long-term memory.
On the other hand the best pitcher in the A.L. -- Justin Verlander -- and the best pitcher in the N.L.-- Max Scherzer -- both used to play for Detroit. Somehow, the Tigers managed to lose both of them in the course of their careers. Not unrelated, this year the Tigers barely avoided being 100 game losers. Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away. I should see if I can find an Al Kaline throwback jersey.
Things were very different then. The old folks who always tell stories about how when they were kids they just went off alone all day, fending for themselves, parents not bothering to keep track of them. They (we) aren't lying. It really was like like that. Maybe around dusk your mom would start to wonder where you were and yell out the back door for you to come to dinner.
We played a lot of tag; wandered the woods across the street catching tadpoles and garter snakes. Occasionally we would get enough kids together for a sandlot game, but usually we played a game we just called "500". One kid would bat (by tossing the ball in the air himself and hitting it), the others would go out and field. A grounder was worth 10, and pop-up was worth 50, and liner or fly was worth a 100. Once one kid got to 500 he got to be the new batter.
Baseball was different too. There were no divisions, just a bunch of teams in the A.L. and N.L. They never played each other during the regular season (other than during the All-Star game) and after 162 games, the teams with the best record in each league played for the championship; no such thing as playoffs. The games all started at 1pm local time. Since the Tigers opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, played in central time, the 2pm Eastern start time meant I could run home at top speed from school (a little over half a mile) and catch the end of the game on TV. Otherwise, you were stuck sneaking updates from the transistor radio you snuck into school with you.
The game itself was closer to sandlot games too. Nobody worked the pitch count, you grabbed a bat so you could hit. When a pitcher got the ball back they threw another pitch, they didn't dilly-dally. Pitch counts were unnecessary. It was like being on the sandlot, you didn't analyze everything for a statistical advantage, you just played. Runners stole bases and were thrown out. You moved runners along with sacrifice bunts and flys. It was all very instinctive. Don't think, it hurts the ballclub. The players smoked in the dugout.
I won't recount the details of the '68 Series, but it was epic, with astonishing performances and unlikely occurrences. The fact of the Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit only heightened the experience, winning game 7 against the most frightening pitcher ever (Bob Gibson). It was like a living storybook to an eight-year-old.
I seem to be going down a path of wistful nostalgia, longing for the days of my youth, but I'm not. I would not want to go back to those times either in baseball or in life.
Being outside playing with the other kids was fine and all, but as often as not you found yourself maneuvering through a juvenile world that approached Lord of the Flies. Did it make us tough? Probably. Is it good that we needed to be made tough? Probably not. It may have been necessary, but it's not to be desired. As a small, overly-thoughtful, introverted kid, I can't imagine anything I wouldn't have traded back then for one day's worth of access to something like the Web.
Baseball is a vastly more interesting game now also, especially of late. It is slower, which is annoying, but the players are probably better overall and the strategies are much more varied and intricate (and, yes, statistically oriented). Longtime readers know I was on the sabermetrics train at an early stop. ESPN recently did a test telecast of an Amazon-supported project called Statcast. Instead of inane babbling about who "really wants a hit" and who is "not looking comfortable on the mound" we got primed with deep stats and graphic predictions and intelligent rational analysis in general. It was wonderful. And it was very well received. If MLB provided a cable package of games like that, I would pay for it. There are problems implementing it I'm sure since the skill set of announcers has got to be something more than "just keep the cliches coming" but I think that's a solvable problem. It bodes well for the future.
I watched little of this year's World Series since it was between two teams I don't like: the Dodgers from that execrable city Los Angeles and the pink-hatted Massholes of Boston. The highlight was game 3, a 7-hour 20-minute 18-inning affair that was the longest, and possibly most excruciating, game in Series history. Evidently instead of having to rush home from school to catch end of games, we now pull all-nighters.
Once again, I have droned on in a post without have a clear objective other than to note that since the '68 Tigers were my first exposure to baseball, have officially been a baseball fan for 50 years now. (Of course, it's also been decades since I swung a bat or wore a glove.) Baseball is where I first saw the battle of the objective versus the subjective and realized I am constitutionally predisposed toward the former, an aspect of my personality that has influenced me throughout my life, for better and worse. Although I only follow on the periphery these days, it still brings an image of verdant beauty. The last game I attended was a Tigers spring training game in Joker Marchant stadium in Lakeland, where there is a large green lawn where the left field bleachers would be most places. Sitting in the grass, casually watching the game in the perfect Florida spring weather was true detachment for me; one of those moments that sets itself deeply in your long-term memory.
On the other hand the best pitcher in the A.L. -- Justin Verlander -- and the best pitcher in the N.L.-- Max Scherzer -- both used to play for Detroit. Somehow, the Tigers managed to lose both of them in the course of their careers. Not unrelated, this year the Tigers barely avoided being 100 game losers. Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away. I should see if I can find an Al Kaline throwback jersey.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)