WBC Preview
I've become terribly excited about the World Baseball Classic coming in March. The Cubans are on board, thanks to a concession to the U.S. State Department (and a politically astute one at that) that their proceeds from the tournament be donated to victims of Hurricane Katrina. I've been studying the roster of
potential players for 15 of the 16 teams (Cuba's list is unavailable) and they're fascinating in a number of ways. Let's break it down...
1) Australia will have a surprisingly good team. The country has not had the impact on MLB that it has had on Hollywood, but they won the silver medal in Athens, and 36-year-old former Brewer Dave Nilsson, despite not having played in the bigs for seven years, has turned international competition into a successful second career in the game. Where's Graeme Lloyd, though?
2) Canada, speaking of missing players, where is my main man-- "the British Columbia Bomber" (my nickname) Larry Walker? Sticking to his retirement plans, I guess. He has agreed to serve as a coach. A healthy Eric Gagne will be a force in the bullpen, and former Cards farmhands Cody McKay and Stubby "Not my nickname" Clapp should liven things up, provided they make the team. Jason Bay, Justin Morneau, and Ryan Dempster are other recognizable names.
3) China has no players with MLB experience, and my spidey-sense tells me they won't be enjoying their share of the tournament loot. Two questions-- one, why doesn't China's participation in the tourney cause the same uproar in Washington that Cuba's does? And two, is there really a Chinese professional club called the Sichuan Dragons? You Des Moinesians, isn't that also the name of the new carry-out place in Jordan Creek? The team's lucky numbers will be: 20, 18, 34, 7, 35, and 10.
4) Chinese Taipei should have a great rivalry with China in the Far East bracket. I expect both sides to engage in a little "Chen music." Thank you, be kind to the waiting staff.
5) The Cubans will be a hell of a lot of fun to have around. HuffingtonPost.com contributor Robert Schlesinger has this suggestion to liven up the Cuba/US rivalry: If the US wins, Castro has to step aside and hold free elections, if Cuba wins, Bush lifts the embargo. TV ratings in Miami would go through the roof.
6) The Dominicans are loaded for bear-- Pujols, Tejada, Guerrero, Manny, Aramis, and Ortiz in one line-up, plus Furcal and Soriano. Pedro Martinez and Bartolo Colon to pitch. In all seriousness, I hope they have the decency to put Sammy Sosa on the team. Moises Alou also needs to play, if only to represent his family.
7) The cool thing about the Italian team is the Italian-Americans who might take the opportunity to suit up. Mike Piazza knows more James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich than Andrea Bocelli, but even his godfather, uber-patriot Tommy Lasorda, is surely crying tears of joy into his pesto at the thought of Piazza representing the fatherland. I suggest that the team be managed by Tony Danza's character on "Who's the Boss?"
8) The Japanese will be a force in the tournament. It looks like though that, with the exception of Ichiro, the team will be made up of current Japanese League stars rather than the imported players in the states. So Taguchi, Hideo Nomo, where are you? The tournament is bad timing for Nomo. Ten years ago, he'd have been the premier attraction. Professional baseball's all-time home run champion Sadaharu Oh will manage the team.
9) It appears that Korea will have more recognizable players to Americans than will the Japanese. Their influence on the game has gone largely ignored.
Fun fact: Did you know that the TV show "M*A*S*H" took place in Korea? Though, it was actually filmed in California.
10) I love Mexico. It's one of my favorite places to visit, so they're a sentimental favorite. New Cardinal reliever Ricardo Rincon could qualify for the team and I'll be watching his pitch counts closely out of the bullpen. No more than one inning per game, por favor. How about a side bet there in which we return California if they beat us, and if we win, we return Texas.
11) The Netherlands team makes no sense at all. Oakland pitcher Dan Haren found himself on the team despite being half-Mexican and half-Irish. Mark Mulder was born in South Holland, Illinois so that's probably what qualified him, and Andruw Jones was dispatched from Curacao, a Carribbean island that is part of Netherlands Antilles. I assume Aruba's Sidney Ponson qualifies for similar reasons. Beyond that there are enough Saarlooses, Aardsmas, and Hillenbrands in the league to fill out an all-Dutch roster.
12) Former big-leaguer Roberto Kelly helms the Panama team. I always thought he was Irish. Mariano Rivera and Carlos Lee highlight this squad. Orioles' lefty Bruce Chen is a most interesting case. His grandparents were born in mainland China, but moved to Panama during the construction of the canal.
13) The Puerto Ricans are another sentimental favorite. How do you root against a country that can claim Yadier Molina behind the plate, Jose Oquendo at the helm, and Rosie Perez running around America in tight tops? I say if they win, we clean up the mess we left behind testing missiles on the island of Vieques. If we win, Carlos Delgado stands for the anthem.
14) I have no idea what to make of this South African team. I thought Gregg Jefferies was on the roster, but I looked again and it was
Gavin Jefferies. It will be interesting to see if they have more black players than we do.
15)
U-S-A! U-S-A! I'm not sure yet how I'll root for a team with Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Roger Clemens, and not a single St. Louis Cardinal. Probably, I won't. I will feel very patriotic, however, if Chad Moeller makes the team. What I'd like to see is a German team with Moeller and Jason Isringhausen, managed by Whitey Herzog.
16) Finally, beware the Venezuelans. Their team is surprisingly loaded. Bobby Abreu will be batting third, Omar Vizquel and Cesar Izturis will be flashing the leather, and Johan Santana and Carlos Zambrano will be revving it up on the mound. However, unless Dusty Baker is enforcing the stringent pitch limits, Zambrano will probably only pitch 3 innings per start.
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I'm still having a terrible time figuring out which games, if any, will be televised. Why the big secret, I wonder? The games begin March 3rd. Don't wear yourself out watching the Olympics.
Fall in for Fallon
As the Washington Post
concedes, it's becoming increasingly impossible for the Democratic party to ignore its base activists and their progressive root principles. These impassioned citizen leaders-- now both the spiritual and financial lifeblood of the party, thanks to the internet, are not going to bend over any longer for the Clinton-style triangulators, cowards, and horse thieves that have been running the party into the ground in Washington for a generation.
Here in Iowa, we'll be on the front line of the battle for the party's future in 2006 as we begin welcoming the 2008 presidential candidates to our borders. They will come, both, because the state holds the first-in-the-nation caucus, and because Iowa looks to be a vital swing state yet again in the general election. This year, many of us will be attempting to elect a progressive governor to the open seat being vacated by the accommodationist, Republican-lite Tom Vilsack, who now heads the national Democratic Leadership Council, a right-leaning Washington beltway organization that has orchestrated countless electoral defeats on behalf of the party for more than a decade, and whose membership includes the candidate likely to become the party's most heavily-financed candidate in 2008, Hillary Clinton.
We can send invading right-wing appeasers like Clinton, Evan Bayh, Mark Warner, Joe Biden, and Joe Lieberman the first clear warning of defeat on June 6 by nominating state representative Ed Fallon of Des Moines to be the Democratic candidate for Governor. Ed has been a passionate and ethical advocate on behalf of Iowa's working class, its children, and the disadvantaged. He's earned the personal and professional respect of colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and above all for me, he's been a great neighbor in my home district-- so visible and responsive in the community that I'm tempted to use the expression "often underfoot" to describe my experience dealing with him.
Ed is operating at a severe disadvantage in fundraising because he refuses to accept PAC money, and he has limited individual campaign contributions to $2,400. Meanwhile, one of his primary opponents, the state's Agriculture Secretary, has accepted a $10,000 contribution from corporate farm polluter Peter DeCoster, and the incumbent Secretary of State, a Haircut, has raised more than a million dollars, having accepting personal contributions of up to $50,000 from out-of-staters who realize the stakes of this campaign at the national level, and who never met a wheel that couldn't be greased. (A $40,000 contributor from Texas was once fined a million dollars for insider trading.)
In 2004, Democrats surely learned how far a "flip-flopping" candidate will lead them. (Yes, that's exactly what he was.) Kerry's centrist posturing allowed him to be painted as feeble and unsure. Odd, it seems in retrospect, that a decorated war hero could be cast as so weak-kneed when just a generation ago, a pacifist like Martin Luther King Jr. was being described as anything but. The missing ingredient in '04 was not of policy or orchestrated rhetoric, but of conviction. All along, it hasn't been a battle between centrists and liberals at all, but rather between postulators and fighters.
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I'm including a
link to Ed's campaign website, with this proviso: If you click on "About Ed" and examine his background and accomplishments, he may seem too good to be true, but please trust that he is the real deal, as authentic and courageous a public servant as there is.
Posting #300: Even when I'm old and grey... the greatest live album of all time
Forty years ago this month, Frank Sinatra teamed with the Count Basie Orchestra for a series of shows in Las Vegas, the last week of which were recorded, edited, and packaged into the jumpingest, swingingest live album of all-time--
Sinatra At The Sands. As 32-year-old trumpeter-turned-arranger Quincy Jones conducted the band and luminaries like Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood leaned in from behind clinking drinking glasses, Sinatra bounced through 15 thrilling standards and
soon-to-be standards, three Basie interludes, and a pair of timely monologues. The two record set helped establish both Sinatra as Undisputed King of Entertainment and Vegas as America's Undisputed Playground. It won the Grammy for
Stan Cornyn's liner notes, which appear in part below...
During the wailing of the Basie band, those jammed, perched, squoze to the sides of the room can see an anxious figure peering out at the band from the stage wings. Catching the mood of the crowd, Frank Sinatra. Looking not unlike a young man calculating his audience for his first talent night appearance. The suave is dropped. The performer is getting himself up for one swinging night's sing. Again the amplified voice lets them all know. "And now... a Man and His Music!"The band ups to the occasion. And he walks on. Doesn't gallop on, doesn't wave or jump or hoopla. Just he walks on. His pocket handkerchief folded in there nice. A bit of a vest peeking out from under his tux coat. He pulls the hand mike out of the stand, glances up at the light booth where a thousand pounds of spotlight bear down on him. His shoulders hunch once, like they're absorbing the beat of Basie. He turns back to Quincy, Count & Co., smiling, extending the vamp. Go. Sonny Payne whacks his drums to stir up more groove.Then Sinatra turns back and sings. It looks effortless, the way he lazily loops the mike cable through his relaxed hands. But his face shows he's singing. Eyes closed, head tilted, lips carefully phrasing and elocuting. And Sinatra runs through his best. The songs are Sinatra's, like "Come Fly" and "Crush" and "Fly Me to the Moon." Hip, up-tempo, wailing things.And then he'll change the pace on the audience. While his excitement-sated audience of people who've been everywhere are just happy to be there, while everyone is forgetting who's sitting in the next chair, or that down front there's a row of celebrities running from Roz Russell to Yul Brynner, from Mike Romanoff to Judy Garland, while all this is being gone and forgot because the man on stage is more than will fill one's attention, while all of these sounds and sights and impressions are piling up against the pounding beat of Basie, Sinatra switches.Count Basie walks off stage. A thin, grey-haired man, who looks as if he hides under mushrooms to avoid the sun's rays, walks to the piano. This is Bill Miller, Sinatra's piano player. Sinatra turns to the audience and tells them he's going to sing a saloon song. And silently you can almost hear the perfumed ladies think "Yeah" and the waiters stop in the doorways and think "Yeah." And with just a piano behind him, Sinatra turns actor. The man whose broad's left him with some other guy and all of the loot. And he sings-- and acts-- his "Angel Eyes" and his "One for My Baby." And there is silence all about, for this audience is watching a man become that last lucked-out guy at the bar, the last one, with nowhere to go except sympathy city.Then more Sinatra-Basie, songs ranging from the subtle ("Very Good Year") to the sizzle ("My Kind of Town.") And all the while, Quincy's at one side, setting the beat, Count's on the other making the beat, and Sinatra's center, demonstrating how wide and high the heart of a singing man can range.And after an almost dozen songs, Sinatra pauses. He pulls forward a stool and a music stand. He takes his tea. Cup and saucer in hand, he says his words. Ten, fifteen minutes worth of greeting. His status report on The Arts and The Sands. Commentary ranging from the autobiographical to world affairs, all delivered with the same casual emphasis that marks his singing style. The audience is shifting in its chairs, knowing it has only 90 minutes maybe with Sinatra, loving him talking to them, hoping he won't stop, and hoping he's going to sing all night that night.Then, with a napkin tap at the corners of his mouth, he retires the props. He's getting no younger, says he, and he'd best sing. And he does. More of the better: "Don't Worry 'Bout Me," "Where or When," the audience increasingly with it, knowing they've never heard anything better, amazed at the number of songs Sinatra's really associated with. Finally, "My Kind of Town," starting deceptively with some talk about a nice city, then building choruses of mounting, modulating, upwards excitement.And then he leaves. Walks right off that stage, just like he was finished. But does the crowd want that? They say no. They yell no and more, one more, ten more, hell a lifetime more, they've got nowhere to go, dammit they want more of him. Mr. Sinatra comes back and bows, not too low, but appreciatively. He makes "the dullest speech you'll ever have to listen to," thanking them, not for this one hour, but for a lifetime of applause. He reprises "My Kind of Town." He does it all with authority. Nobody follows that kind of finish, not even Frank Sinatra.The waiters know it, and start hurriedly distributing saucers with the tabs. The houselights force back up. It's like dawn, and you don't turn the sun back. Still, they keep applauding till the feeling gets hopeless. By now, Sinatra's probably got a towel around his neck and his toes curled up on his dressing table.So, the audience files slowly out into the smoke-choked casino, meeting once more the hardluck din of reality around the half-empty crap tables. Those huddled masses outside look into the faces of the excited crowds, looking for signs that it was really sumpin'.And what they see is mostly blinking eyes; women adjusting their coats to the onrushing night air, to the silent walk down the concrete paths to an enchanted evening's leftovers; men sitting down at the blackjack tables, where the waxen dealers take time during a deal to look up at their faces and ask, "You see the show?"And the men answer, "Yeah. That Sinatra... he really puts on a show."Which may not be the best sum up in the world, but then you can't expect much more from someone who's just been through 90 minutes with the best singing man in town."
The Sporting News
Someone from some
thing called Hispanics Across America has a slick idea for Major League Baseball-- retire Roberto Clemente's No. 21. But I'm not buying it, and neither is Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon. Her father's number was retired by MLB nine years ago, and it was the last good idea Bud Selig has had. "If you do it for him (Clemente,) where do you go?" she asks, "Where do you stop? Then you neglect someone and create some big controversy."
Clemente is still indisputably an enormous inspiration to Hispanic athletes, and I'll add also that he was a better player than Robinson. But he wasn't first. An infielder named Luis Castro is credited today as the first Latino in the big leagues, playing 42 games with the Philadelphia A's in 1902. A number of Cubans arrived in the decade that followed, and pitcher Adolfo Luque and catcher Mike Gonzalez were bona-fide stars. (Gonzalez even managed two short stints with the Cardinals in '38 and '40.) By the time Clemente arrived in Pittsburgh in 1955, Minnie Minoso and Chico Carrasquel were perennial All-Stars, and Bobby Avila was the reigning American League batting champion. When Clemente was still securing full-time position in the Pirates outfield, Sandy Amoros was securing the '55 World Sereies for the Dodgers with a great running catch behind third base in Game 7. In '56, Luis Aparicio would become the first ever Hispanic to be crowned Rookie of the Year.
Clemente was a talented, transcendent player, one worthy of unique honor by the league, but Jackie Robinson's contribution to the game-- and to the world-- deserves to stand alone.
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Let's return to the Cardinals. It's been a while. St. Louis P-D baseball writer Derrick Gould has an interesting take on the team's trending in the free agent market...
The Cardinals do rifle players, icily swapping parts without regard for connection or previous compliments. No better example than second base, right? Tony Womack, here for a career year and gone. Mark Grudzielanek, here for a career-reestablishing career and gone. Both cashed in on their Cardinal experience for richer contracts. Womack said he wasn’t approached by the Cardinals because “they were too busy with Edgar”. Grudzielanek was, but was presented with the Cardinals “slotting” approach to second base (among other positions). There is a successful and business savvy to the emotionless approach, but it’s hard for fans – and media, to be sure — to buy the in-season love display when winter brings the frost. The agent I spoke with said the approach may have a chilling effect on the Cardinals. Free agents see how a good season there isn’t rewarded there and may opt to go elsewhere. It also makes the Cardinal reliant on the recovery of a player – a player who fits the “slot” because of an off season, an injury, a wish to reclaim a career, et cetera, et cetera – and some day that may falter. It just hasn’t. Which brings us to Junior Spivey, et. al. This ’06 roster is rich with guys looking for career traction and willing to take a short-term deal and a pay cut to get it with the obliging Cardinals. Word travels among free agents. There are obvious pluses to coming to the Cardinals. Just don’t fall in love. ---
When was the last time college basketball had a player worth watching?
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We're still 10 days away from the Super Bowl so let me get ahead of the hype. This year is case in point as to why neutral sites lack the drama required of great sporting matchups. As an AP writer pointed out, imagine the road warrior Steelers against the Seahawks in their rowdy northwest environs. Expect a nice, tight game, nevertheless. I'll pick the Steelers, but I'd take the Seahawks and the points if I were a betting man.
A reason to sleep well Sunday night...
...Democrats like columnist
Molly Ivins.
Movies even your President would love
There have been a barrel of year-end Top 10 movie lists.
This is one of the most thought-provoking: The 10 Best Conservative Movies...
Good stuff. A few rebuttals, though-- 1) A liberal list could be virtually identical, depending on one's own unique definition of "honesty, loyalty, courage, and patriotism... faith, family, and freedom." What's different is not the traits about which one side or the other feels proud, but rather, which they have chosen to incorporate as political buzzwords. 2) If conservative values were truly embodied by "romantic love," those who identified themselves as possessing them would universally support committed, homosexual relationships. And 3) I've got to see "Memoirs of a Geisha." A movie about a girl sold into subservience who then "embrace(s) her destiny," but that "only hints at sex," has to be seen to be believed.
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The only upside of "Arrested Development"s short season is the cheaper price when the DVD arrives.
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Tom Snyder left the late-night airwaves seven years ago this winter. What has become of the "smokers, jokers, thinkers, and drinkers" who comprised the audience, first, for Snyder's old "Tomorrow Show" on NBC and, later, the first incarnation of "The Late Late Show" on CBS?
We've moved on, of course, spanning out across the multi-channel universe. The hopelessly square, like myself, still derive our comfort from the network colortinis of a Conan or a Craig, or Charlie Rose on PBS, rather than from the niche programs dotted along the vast cable spectrum, each with their specific and lonely audience. Most of us have simply passed out by the time the witching hour arrives.
Now Tom is returning, thanks to a new 8 episode DVD collection of "The Tomorrow Show," featuring Tom's conversations with punk musicians. May
this collection be the first of many in release.
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Funny blog.
A wild and crazy guy
There has
never been a truer axiom-- Steve Martin is to "Saturday Night Live" as Ben Franklin is to the Founding Fathers.
The Legend returns to the show February 4th, along with musical guest, Prince. Do
not be late.
Ted Stevens' hard-on
My employer chose a good day to schedule me off. I've been engrossed in the circus of hypocrisy that is the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on indecency in broadcasting and cable. A CBS vice president is testifying, along with the president of the Screen Actors Guild, and a rep from a national organization of psychologists. Strangely, the only person asked to testify by committee chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, as a public citizen is not an advocate for First Amendment rights or consumer freedom, but Brent Bozell, leader of a "family-focused" political lobbying group so far out of the cultural mainstream that its list of recommended TV programs has virtually no overlap with the impartial Nielson Company's weekly record of America's most popular shows, and whose
agenda seems far more focused on advancing a political point of view than it does protecting children against indecency.
Shame on Stevens. He's desperately groping to mobilize radical right-wing voters against artistic freedom and an industry that already polices itself with a visible and effective ratings system. In one especially futile moment today, Stevens attempted to grill CBS's rep over TV Guide's negligence in not listing the age-appropriate ratings. Why not ask Rupert Murdoch, I wonder? He owns the magazine. It's all laughable. Americans like sex. It's time to deal with that fact. This afternoon's proceedings promise to get even better when an attorney for the adult entertainment addresses the committee's questions about on-line pornography.
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Speaking of Brent Bozell, his website chastises Matt Lauer for using the term "ultra-conservative" on the air to describe Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito. Why exactly would such a description damage Bozell's political cause? I thought "liberal" was Washington's dirty label.
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It makes sense to me to simply ban all gifts to our Congressional representatives, but Senator Trent Lott
is worried that new lobbying restrictions would force him to eat at McDonalds.
Here's a summary of a lobbying study done by the Center for Public Integrity last year. Take a minute. In one of the all-time great examples of Washington greed and deceit, 2005 also saw
the installation of former Rep. Billy Tauzin as the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry just months after he and his colleagues allowed industry reps to literally write the new prescription drug benefit bill, and that Tauzin then steered through Congress.
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Kudos to Google for refusing to comply with the Bush Administration's subpoena for the records of the search engine's users, and promising to fight "vigorously" on behalf of its users' privacy rights. The Justice Department contends that it needs the data in its effort to revive an internet "child protection" law that has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I presume, naturally, that the President's team is not interested in documenting the private on-line searches of red-blooded American citizens, only those of smut-loving Islamo-terrorists living in our ranks.
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If the Justice Department wants to subpoena someone, they should make it the cast and crew of "The Sopranos," who all continue to be extremely tight-lipped about the juicy plotlines of the upcoming season. TV columnist
Dave Walker, though, did his best this week to pry.
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David Letterman, last night:
"Earlier tonight on TV, 'Skating with Celebrities.' Did you see this? It was a very exciting show. At the end of the episode, Tonya Harding was shot by Robert Blake."
ML King Day
You don't have to be black to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Turning Dr. King's words inward-- I can't be free to become who I want to be until he's free to become what he can be. His dream was greater than just a wish for peace between blacks and whites, it was about tolerance and about securing Constitutional guarantees for all. I often wonder how Dr. King could come down on the issue of gay marriage. Sadly, many of his surviving contemporaries from the pulpits of the 1960s have been cool to the idea of homosexual rights, or to equating them with their own struggle. Many, it seems, have also lost sight of the need to welcome people from outside our borders. I believe Dr. King's legacy is felt as much today in the battle for gay rights and for open borders as it is in the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans.
On King's birthday, I offer the words of a white guy who gets it-- Willie Nelson...
Livin' in the promised landOur dreams are made of steelThe prayer of every manIs to know how freedom feelsThere is a winding roadAcross the shifting sandAnd room for everyoneLivin' in the promised land
Sunday features
This is a Moeller family clip-n-save: The new owners of the Cincinnati Reds arrive this week with
inspired credentials. It's
hard to be a winning team.
The Democrats' moral-values issue?: It's
the living wage.
From red chips to blue: New Mets closer Billy Wagner has been a big leaguer for many years, but his success story has never been widely told.
This profile hit the Big Apple this morning.
Who DJ'ed the event?: Eminem re-married his ex-wife yesterday.
This is how Marshall and Kim's hometown paper covered the nuptuals.
This is a closeup?: Keep your Disney cartoons. They never interested me. Back when their gangster pictures were king, and long before their corporate descendents were butchering TV DVDs with
compilation releases,
Warner Brothers designed an industry sketch pad for animation that has stood until the present day. Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" series spotlights animator Chuck Jones this morning, along with
three classic shorts from the 1950s. Personally, I've always felt driven by my inner-Foghorn.
Closing the banana stand
Tonight's exercise: Imagine the worst thing the FOX TV network could do to its brilliant series "Arrested Development" as a final indignity before cancellation. Then, I'll share the real thing, and you tell me which is worse.
Do you have it?
OK, then. The network plans to burn off the final four episodes of the show as a two-hour block on a Friday night, February 10th. Over on NBC that same evening is scheduled the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics.
Now, unless you guessed that the final episodes would not air at all, I think I win.
The final four "Arrested" installments will feature guest stars Justine Bateman and Judge Reinhold. GOB travels to Iraq with a Christian magic show, Buster fakes a coma to avoid testifying in court, and Maebe and George Michael take part in a mock wedding. The season's final scenes will take place at a yacht party, such as the one that started the series.
It repeats, how it yells in my ear
It was 50 years ago this week that Frank Sinatra recorded his greatest album, the breezy and exuberant 15-song masterpiece
"Songs For Swingin' Lovers." It was the fourth collaboration between Sinatra and his first arranger on Capitol Records, Nelson Riddle, and, on it, the two concocted the perfect mix of vocalist and ensemble. Sinatra's mood throughout the record was euphoric, and he was backed by both a bouncing swing band and a soft string orchestra-- 30 live musicians in total, who never once stepped over the lyric. By combining the finished product with the new 16-inch LP technology, swaying paramours could stay on the dance floor for up to 25 minutes before anyone would have to flip the disc.
"Sinatra's singing on the album," says critic John Rockwell, "has a verve and conviction that make his records from the Forties sound bland. He has learned to tease and twist a vocal line without violating its integrity... The album as a whole breathes with a delightful blend of Riddle's naughty sweetness and Sinatra's witty bravado."
For
Lovers, Sinatra recorded in swingtime such epic tracks as "You Make Me Feel So Young," "Pennies From Heaven," "I Thought About You," and on January 12, 1956, the song voted by Sinatra fans as the best he ever recorded, "I've Got You Under My Skin."
The track contains a long orchestra crescendo in the middle. "I remembered a Stan Kenton record, and that trombone back-and-forth thing," Riddle remembered in Will Friedwald's book
Sinatra! The Song is You, "I was always fascinated by it. I tried to find an equivalent to use behind singers, and that was my version."
Studio player Milt Bernhart got the call to command the interlude, and wailed away on his horn for at least a dozen takes before Sinatra and Riddle settled on the final take. "And yet as passionate as Bernhart gets in his twelve bars or so," notes Friedwald, "he pales beside Sinatra, who returns to ram the lyric home with nothing short of orgiastic fury."
"Songs For Swingin' Lovers" was the most important work of the 20th Century's greatest entertainer, the epoch of Sinatra's remarkable ascension into the musical stratosphere. It remains a detailed record of collaborative genius and great fortune, a handbook of timeless cool, and a damn fine excuse to hit the dance floor.
Herzog's Hammer heads to Hall
Congratulations to Howard Bruce Sutter on his forthcoming induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, announced today! It is well deserved, my good man.
"Engine #42," as broadcaster Mike Shannon called him, has ridden his '300 saves fire truck' into Cooperstown; and like fellow 1982 World Champion Ozzie Smith before him (back in 2002,) will have the spotlight all to himself when he's inducted this summer. It's fitting, also, because
Bruuuuuuce! stood
by himself on the Busch Stadium mound for the final six outs of '82's World Series Game 7, finally blowing away Gorman Thomas and the Brewers.
Bruce was one of my earliest Cardinals favorites-- one of
the White Rat's key club contributors and the bearded warrior of the team bullpen when I was but seven years of age, and my only dream in life was to be a bearded professional baseball player. I saw my first game in St. Louis in '83, and to this day, the lower level seats we occupied down the rightfield line were the best I've ever experienced. They awarded a primo view of Mr. Sutter when he made his way out to the bullpen in the eighth inning. (In those days, Busch's bullpens were located in foul territory.)
The adolescent memories have to qualify now as "fuzzy," but I recall that Bruce was arriving late to the ballpark that night due to the death of his father, and the team was trailing in the ballgame, so it was unlikely that the Cards' closer would ever appear on the field. With jacket in hand, he sauntered down-- not the
red carpet, but-- the
green carpet of Busch Stadium's Astroturf, en route to the home team pen, just to get a little work in. In retrospect now, it's clear that he made the journey that humid night 23 years ago,
not to stretch his arm peeling off a handful of nasty splitters, but to an end that I would one day be able to recollect for you less fortunate souls, my brush with greatness.
His will be done.Let us pray that the Omniscient will shine her light upon the Cooperstown money-changers this winter and the coming spring, and grant them the wisdom to allow her child, Bruce, to enter her most precious Hall of Fame, not as a Chicago Cub, his first team, but as one of thy holy church's St. Louis Cardinals, the team for which Bruce forever earned the right to call himself a Champion. And may she, one day,
also call his fair-haired skipper home to her hallowed shrine.
Bloodied but unbowed
Tonight's reading assignment is long so I cede the balance of my time immediately to the socialist Monthly Review and Charles McCollester's
celebration of working-class Pittsburgh and its football team.
Save the Movie Stars
My first reaction when Jon Stewart was named this year's Oscars host was that producers obviously wanted an edgy host all along, they just wanted a white one. After all, they had the best man for the job last year in the fearless Chris Rock.
Now I'm rooting for the overpraised Stewart, however, after having read
this laughable prognostication from one of Hollywood's finest. Tom O'Neil, whoever he is, longs for the "affectionate," establishment-friendly poking of a Bob Hope or Johnny Carson of years past. Stewart, he believes, is just "another cocky New Yorker" like Rock or David Letterman, who didn't hold "a sense of awe for the augustness of the occasion"-- in other words, they didn't pay the proper respect to the LA film elite that keep the world affixed to its axis.
This hyper-linked article could not be more explicit in its demonstration of Hollywood's alienation from its movie-mad public, and the reason why, in 2006, we, the moviegoers, have abandoned in droves corporate Hollywood and its unending chain of sequels and remakes, in favor of inspired independent features. O'Neil believes that Academy outsiders provide catastrophe potential of "Cecil B. DeMille-sized epic proportions" to the proceedings, when actually it's today's Cecil B. DeMille-sized film budgets and phony pageantry that is wreaking havoc on the business to "Cecil B. DeMille-sized epic proportions."
As O'Neil attests, Chris Rock lit a fuse when he chided Jude Law in last year's monologue, but only in Hollywood, and within O'Neil's world of privileged access and shameless promotion, does anyone think Rock came off worse than Law's public crusader, Sean Penn. And only from the inside of the industry looking out would anyone argue that the Oscars' primary audience is seated in the auditorium, and not in living rooms across America.
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Now, about those limousine liberals on the
East coast, i.e. our politicians and media elite...
Blogger Steve Gilliard gets it right in his summary of the NYC transit strike:
What Bloomberg and many white New Yorkers forget is that the heart of the city's revival is not the Eurotrash and hipsters of Billyburg, but the working class and middle class union workers of the city's minorities. It is the TWU members and Con Ed (natural gas company)
and Verizon workers who not only keep this city running, but who also invest in the city's neighborhoods, demand better schools and send their kids to the city's colleges. They make New York work, where so many other cities failed. Unlike Washington DC, they didn't flee to the suburbs, leaving behind only the poor. Even the city's housing projects have large numbers of working people.A truer description of the principles of living and breathing progressive government has never been articulated. You don't have to live in New York City to recognize the factors at work in the city's renaissance.
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Finally, staying on the topic of urban preservation, my bro tipped me to
this feature (site pass required) about the status of Bruce Springsteen's hometown along the New Jersey coastline. Wealthy Manhattanites are moving on the resort town, but it's blue-collar artists, musicians, and idealists who would ultimately maintain the area's uniqueness and enable it to thrive. As journalist Robert Santelli points out, "No music community is going to spring up with condos and BMWs in the driveway."
All Things In Time
We lost one of the great vocalists of all-time this week in Lou Rawls, who died at 72 years of age early Friday morning in Los Angeles after battling lung and brain cancer.
In a tribute to Tony Bennett at last month's Kennedy Center Honors, Quincy Jones said he learned long ago that if he didn't know who was singing within the first 20 seconds of listening to a song, he'd never hear about that person again. Like Bennett, Lou Rawls possessed one of those voices that you recognized immediately. The voice is being alternately remembered in obituaries as "smooth and silky" and "rough and tumble." It was inarguably warm and sophisticated. Over the years, it thrilled us with fresh interpretations of the Great Standards, including the definitive recording of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." It introduced original R&B classics like "Lady Love" and "You'll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine.)"
Samples here. It was lent to the animated series "Garfield," "Hey Arnold," and "The Rugrats." We knew it immediately when it tried to comfort "Sera" from the front seat of a taxi cab in 1995's "Leaving Las Vegas." Sinatra called Rawls' four-octave baritone "the smoothest chops in the singing game."
A legend's passing is always bittersweet. The tragedy of departure is somewhat tempered by the renewed opportunity to examine the person's life and career. Imagine my surprise yesterday to discover that Mr. Rawls was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, where he performed doo-wop on the corner of 38th and State with future stars like Sam Cooke, Johnny Taylor, and Pervis Staples of the Staples Singers. I've been telling people for 20 years that Rawls was from St. Louis. Such was the impact of his life that he was claimed by the Gateway City despite never having lived there. He appeared seven times for the St. Louis Variety Club at their annual telethon. He worked as a radio and TV pitchman for Anheuser Busch for 18 years, beginning in 1976, when he was hired to sing the jingle, "When you say Budweiser, you've said it all." (I still remember his performance of the national anthem at one of the World Series games in 1987.) He appeared on behalf of the brewery and the regional chapter of the United Negro College Fund a dozen times with his national telethon "Lou Rawls' Parade of Stars." By accounts of everyone associated, his laid-back demeanor and stage persona lent itself ideally to marathon broadcasts, and that series of television specials has raised more than $200 million for the UNCF since 1979. The most recent gala (now under the name "Evening of Stars,") a tribute to Stevie Wonder, is being broadcast locally tonight in St. Louis in honor of Rawls, and across the country throughout the weekend on BET and Chicago's national Superstation WGN-TV.
Rawls is one of just a few African-American performers to come to mind that never struggled to connect simultaneously to both black and white audiences. This was largely due to his wide-ranging style that covered everything from pop, blues, jazz, gospel, and a disco-infused, urban genre of the 1970s known as "Philadelphia soul." "There are no limits to music," he said, "So why should I limit myself?"
Fellow singer Della Reese said Friday that she visited Rawls during this past week, and that "he was in a wonderful place for the condition he was in. He was the man I always knew."
He's survived by his wife of two years, an infant son, and three grown children.
The 2006 Hall of Fame class
I voted tonight
on-line for the 2006 Baseball Hall-of-Fame induction. It's an exercise in futility as a fan of course. Only the voting of the Baseball Writers Association of America will matter this Tuesday when this year's inductees, if any, will be announced. Below is a partial list of the candidates, my choices (thumb up or down) and my justifications.
Albert Belle (down) - Slugger didn't have longevity (only 12 yrs), one-dimensional player, anti-social and caught corking his bat but those factors don't weigh on my decision. (I thought you should know.)
Bert Blyleven (down) - Get this guy off the ballot already, no ERA titles, only one 20 win season (and he lost 17 that same year,) even his longevity didn't produce the magical 300 wins.
Andre Dawson (down) - No magic numbers (3000 hits, 500 HRs, etc,) never hit higher than .310 in a season, career on-base percentage of .327, no World Series experience.
Steve Garvey (up) - Best player at his position for a decade, NL All-Star 1B 8 straight yrs, averaged 201 hits from 1974 thru 1980, reg. season ('74) and NLCS ('78) MVP.
Dwight Gooden (down) - Tragic.
"Goose" Gossage (down) - Gets in after Bruce Sutter does, see below.
Ozzie Guillen (down) - Little or no qualifications for induction and zero chance, but the timing of his first year of eligibility is exquisite.
Don Mattingly (down) - Couldn't even win with the Yankees.
Willie McGee (up) - Two batting titles ('85, '90,) 1985 MVP, sentiment.
Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Jim Rice (down) - 3.90 career ERA, only "great" for four year stretch, only "great" for three year stretch, product of Fenway park.
Lee Smith (down) - Lots of saves, few meaningful.
Bruce Sutter (up) - Five time saves leader, while five times 100+ IP, 2.83 career ERA, Cy Young Award ('79,) set single-season saves record ('84,) pioneered split-finger fastball and position.
Alan Trammell (down) - Mediocre defensively at defensive position (SS).
Hi, I'm Joaquin Phoenix
Actor Joaquin Phoenix, who portrays Johnny Cash in this year's "Walk the Line,"
performed some of Cash's songs for inmates at California's Folsom state prison on Tuesday. Cash recorded a concert at Folsom in 1968, and that performance served as the defining moment of Cash's redemption from drug and alcohol addiction, as it was portrayed in the film. Phoenix's visit, and the resurgence of national interest in Cash's life and art, could be an unlikely catalyst for the media to refocus its attention on the underreported tragedy of our dehumanizing criminal justice system. Every little bit helps.
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Did you know? Richard Pryor Jr., son of the late, great comic, works at Qwest in Des Moines, same as yours truly.
Now you know what I know.
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Native St. Louisan and former heavyweight champ Leon Spinks has landed in Columbus, NE.
His has been a rather rough ride.
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I have no interest in tonight's college football championship. The BCS lucked out with a pair of unbeaten teams this year, but I'll tune in when they have an eight team playoff.
That's a lie. I still won't.
Here are my NFL playoff picks for this weekend. Tampa, Carolina, Cincinnati, and my upset special-- Jacksonville over New England. Who are you going to believe? The guy who just won the $70 jackpot in his fantasy league, or everyone else?
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Only 43 days until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.
O'Reilly on Letterman
Here are some excerpts from last night's "Late Show."
Don't be stupid, be a "smarty." Come and join the Nazi party.
I wholeheartedly endorse "The Producers" on the big screen. It's
old-school entertainment at its finest-- loud and obnoxious, without a trace of nuance. It's got big tits, campy Queers, crazy Nazis, and nympho grannies. It's spectacular.
I've never seen Mel Brooks' wildly successful musical, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick (who appear here,) but I did see the original film starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder maybe a decade ago, before most of the songs were added. My recollections of it are vague. According to
Roger Ebert, our national film critic laureate, that makes me more qualified than even him to judge this film upon its actual merits.
Some of Susan Stroman's 2005 version was recognizable to me from the 1968 version. Writer Brooks was obligated to maintain the original sequence of Bialystock and Bloom's meeting, the sniveling accountant Bloom's (Broderick) attack of hysterics, and his classic line upon being splashed with water. "I'm hysterical... I'm hysterical." (Splash) "I'm wet... I'm wet... I'm hysterical and I'm wet."
The penultimate moment of the show-- the premiere of the "Springtime for Hitler" production, also remains intact, of course, but along the way, surprises abound. Bloom has been given an endearing musical number in which he trades his empty life on the accountants' assembly line for a career on Broadway. ("I'm not going into the toilet, Mr. Marks, I'm going into showbusiness!") There is a truly inspired number in which Bialystock courts his little old ladies/financiers, and they use their walkers as percussion instruments. Unlike Ebert, I found the original film to be too raw, but as a musical, Brooks' clever narrative has zest to spare. The songs, written by Brooks, are inspired and hilarious.
Will Ferrell channels too much of Kenneth Mars' original characterization of the neo-Nazi playwright, but like all of the other performers, he's holding nothing in reserve. Uma Thurman, as the buxom, singing and dancing Swede, Ulla, is a revelation... Well, not a revelation, really. We should all be aware by now of her status as the one true,
timeless actress of our time, as exotic and jawdroppingly beautiful as
any that have come before.
I watch Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" with some consistency, but its been a while since I've seen "Blazing Saddles," "Silent Movie," or his other gems. (Those actually might be the only gems.) I'm jolted with each viewing by just how crude they are-- and how liberating! One critic has suggested that "The Producers" would have more bite in 2005 and '06 if "Springtime for Hitler" was replaced by "Springtime for Terri Schiavo." It's true that the Nazis are an easier target now than they were in the 1960s when WWII was fresher in our memories. Still, I think there's some revisionism at play with that theory. We were already pretty safe from the Nazis by the late '60s. And I suspect that the 'over-the-top' gay characterizations of this film seem more jarring to audiences today than did those of the '68 version. (By the way, they're hysterical.) A woman once famously confronted Brooks after a screening of one of his films--. "Mr. Brooks, I found your film to be completely vulgar." "Madam," he replied, "My movie rises below vulgarity."
The nation's critics, as a whole, are almost universally split on "The Producers." It's earned a 51% fresh rating on that invaluable film site, Rottentomatoes.com. You can chalk up some of the prejudice against it to the fact that the film's director is a choreographer by trade. It's hard enough for a female director to gain notoriety or respect in Hollywood, let alone a first-timer and an outsider to the Guild. Many critics surely witnessed Lane and Broderick first as Bialystock and Bloom on Broadway, so they're seeing the act on celluloid from a different perspective than I am. Still, the other trends of their tastes and distastes are too apparent to accept the honesty of their verdicts. The dramatic story arc is not the "end all, be all" that Hollywood and half her critics consciously or unconsciously contend it to be. Musicals are not always exercises in frivolity, and comedy is no laughing matter.
Moeller TV Listings 1/3/06
PBS' "Frontline" series is re-airing its investigative piece "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?" tonight at 9 o'clock central.
Cheap stunts
Did you watch "Arrested Development" tonight? All hell's breaking loose in the O.C. ("Don't call it that") with only four episodes left to air on FOX and the show's future hanging in limbo.
The entire ninth episode of the season on Monday centered around the show's imminent cancellation. It featured an unexpected death, two scenes to be viewed through 3-D glasses, and some outright begging for viewers by series narrator Ron Howard. The family held a "Save our Bluths" fundraising dinner party at the model home to "keep the family going past the next few weeks," attended by ratings-friendly guest stars like John Larroquette, Zach Braff, and Judge Reinhold. GOB took a job as a waiter to help convince the family's public that he was "sympathetic and relatable." Likewise, Lindsay attempted to become "a more traditional mother" to Maebe as Tobias attempted to become "a more
non-traditional mother."
Would the Home Builders Organization attend the fundraiser? George Bluth asked his son, Michael.
"No, the HBO is not going to want us," Michael replied, "What do we do now?"
"I think it's Showtime... I think we have to put on a show during dinner."
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Movie fans, you'll find
this enlightening. Never underestimate the power of popcorn.
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Many of you are already attuned to
this: an utterly paranoid and fabricated internet tale about why Dave Chappelle abandoned his popular show on Comedy Central.
