Spring vacation
No blogging this week: I'm off to New Orleans for the Jazz Festival and
bon temps therein. I'd appreciate it if one of you would let the dog out a couple times, and if somebody could record "Dancing with the Stars," that would be terrific.
While I'm gone, enjoy this video footage (several hundred times) of Cardinals great
Stan Musial on "What's My Line?" March 8, 1964.
The latest "shock"
In Naomi Klein's vital 2007 book "The Shock Doctrine," the author describes her subject ideology as the radical privatization of industry by government through war, torture, and disaster. Following the mid-century teachings of the influential economist Milton Friedman and his collection of academic acolytes at the Chicago School of Business, the leaders of nations create or take advantage of economic crises, wars, and natural disasters by pushing through radical, authoritarian, anti-democratic, and then, by necessity,
bloody privatization reforms in their wake. To the neoliberals (or neoconservatives, as they're known in the U.S.), there's no role for democratic government on the globe except in its obligation to enforce the corporate contracts that allow crony capitalists to loot national treasuries.
The economic "shock doctrine" has taken root now all over the world. It's responsible for the rise to power of the terrorist, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in Chile during the 1970s, the Falklands War in the early '80s, the financial collapse of the Asian markets during the 1990s, the starving and destruction of the democratic social reform movement in Russia and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union (a kind of anti-Marshall Plan for Moscow), the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the subsequent transformation of the authoritarian Chinese Communist government into an authoritarian
Corporatist government, the United States' illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and on a local scale, the move to cleanse New Orleans of its public education and public housing systems following the disintegration of the city's levee system.
The western media continues to be, by and large, complicit in promoting Friedman's distorted ideology, even when the economist is three years cold in the ground and even after Klein has exposed and so thoroughly catalogued the ideology's vast failures when put into practice. Just this morning,
the New York Times editorial page endorsed a radical shock therapy for Afghanistan in the form of handing over the country's economic redevelopment to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank. Translation: To give the West total autonomy in raping Afghanistan of its natural resources.
This is how the model was set up to work and you can walk into any legitimate bookstore in America and find Klein's book on the shelf-- install a dictator (in this case, Hamid Karsai), pilfer first the relief funds, then its natural resources, make the region safe for corporate expansion, and then enslave the nation in crippling debt to the West. Chile. Argentina. Bolivia. South Africa. Poland. Russia. Iraq. Afghanistan.
Arthur returns
One of the first great movies I ever saw as a kid was the comedic release "Arthur" in 1981. It starred Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, and John Gielgud, and featured one of the funniest screenplays of all-time from a writer of the shooting star variety, the late
Steve Gordon. Now, the movie is about to be remade by the distinctive British comedian Russell Brand, and there's word today that
Helen Mirren has been cast in... wait for it... the Gielgud role. This is one to watch.
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The terrorists have chalked up another win. The cable channel Comedy Central
has edited a recently-completed episode of the program "South Park" in order to excise a speech about intimidation after a radical Muslim group threatened the show's producers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The group was angry over the show's presentation of their prophet Muhammad dressed in a bear costume.
Jesus, are we going to live with courage in this country or aren't we?
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Happy Earth Day. Remember: Think globally. Act locally.
Thanks Marvin
Former big leaguers and the MLB Players Association have launched
a website honoring the former head of that organization, Marvin Miller, and his candidacy for baseball's Hall of Fame.
Among the site's attributes are a television clip of Miller and Bob Costas appearing on
Charlie Rose about a decade ago, and comments from players who say they owe their livelihoods, in large part, to Miller.
In the Charlie Rose clip, note Miller's superior skills of prophecy 10 years ago as he dismisses Costas' refrain about competitive imbalance and the business' disputed profitability. The first decade of the new millennium would deliver 14 different clubs (out of 30) into the World Series, and featured exploding attendance numbers and franchise financial values.
In the players' comments section, note that the list of players offering up their profuse praise of Miller is comprised mostly of the middling and unspectacular baseball talents. It's a reminder that baseball will always accommodate many more Bob Lockers, Kurt Bevacquas, and Billy Samples than it will Reggie Jacksons and Pete Roses. The MLBPA's first executive director was always preoccupied with securing the best deal possible for the ordinary, rank-and-file, dues-paying members of the union, and their adoration for him is testament to Miller's merit as a man of labor.
Marvin Miller celebrated his 93rd birthday on the 14th.
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Fans who tuned in to watch the FOX Game of the Week Saturday afternoon between the Cardinals and the Mets saw a game that lasted 20 innings and nearly seven hours. The first run scored by either team was tallied in the top of the 19th inning...
During the game, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, who caught all 19 innings and then a full 9-inning game on Sunday, led off an inning as a hitter seven times, partly the result of Matt Holliday, the man batting ahead of him in the lineup, being replaced early in a double-switch by his manager, substituting the pitcher into Holliday's spot in the batting order.
The Mets tallied one hit through the first 12 innings.
I left for dinner with friends at the beginning of the 8th inning, went for ice cream afterward, and returned home at beginning of the 13th inning. I didn't realize when I left that I would be absent only for the very middle of the game.
In Atlanta, a game that started during the 9th inning of the game in St. Louis, ended with the first no-hitter in Colorado Rockies history. When it concluded, the Cards/Mets game was still in the 17th inning.
Cardinals starting pitcher Kyle Lohse entered the game in the 18th inning..
in left field.
Cardinals infielder Felipe Lopez
pitched a scoreless 18th inning, his first pitching experience since he was a teenager, and in doing so, faced (batting, this is confusing) a Mets relief pitcher that he touched for a game-winning grand slam the previous night. The reliever singled against him, but was thrown out attempting to reach second on an overthrow.
A former All-Star infielder, Luis Castillo, came to the plate against Cardinals outfielder-- and first-time pitcher-- Joe Mather in the 19th inning with a man on first, and Castillo laid down a bunt.
Now that's sacrifice!Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa had his first position-player-pitcher, Lopez, on a 25-pitch count. I guess this is so he would be available to pitch again Sunday.
LaRussa twice sent relief pitchers up to bat in extra innings with runners in scoring position and two out while his backup catcher, Bryan Anderson, was still available on the bench.
LaRussa ordered Mather, who couldn't throw a strike to save himself in his first-ever pitching experience, to give
two intentional walks during the 19th inning. Unbelievable.
LaRussa said Sunday that he would have used star-crossed, pitcher-turned outfielder Rick Ankiel to pitch Saturday night if Ankiel had still been on the team.
The Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski said it best in a "Tweet" Saturday night: "If Tony LaRussa is one of baseball's great overmanaging artists, this is his Mona Lisa."
Mark Twain's boombox is too loud
Now for
the funniest news article I've read... maybe ever.
This year marks the 175th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, the 125th anniversary of the publication of his literary masterpiece, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and the 100th anniversary of his death, but officials in Twain's hometown, Hannibal, Missouri, have been vexed in recent years-- and still are-- over the fact that the most natural-looking Twain-impersonator in residence doesn't bother to concern himself with historical accuracy.
Seventy-year-old George Scott, you see, looks and dresses the part of Twain and spends his days hobnobbing with tourists down along the Mississippi River in downtown Hannibal. The problem is he doesn't
sound the part. Instead of quoting the endlessly-quotable Twain, Scott prefers to engage out-of-towners with original quips about modern subject matter...
"When I last left Hannibal in 1902, I said don't change a thing," Scott said in his best Twain voice as he left the YMCA. "And, well, they didn't."
But Twain never said that. Scott made it up, which perfectly illustrates how Scott approaches Twain.
Scott's routine involves Twain, time travel and the flux capacitor from the "Back to the Future" movies, punctuated with references to Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone's vault. Sometimes he mentions Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh.
In his opening act, he wears white sunglasses. "I'm cool Twain," he says. "But don't confuse me with Soul Twain." Pause. "And that's what makes me the Soul Man of Hannibal." A boombox plays the Sam & Dave song "Soul Man." Twain begins to dance. His Twain can even pull off a cartwheel.I drive through Hannibal often. This I've gotta see.
Enough already with the Tea Party bullshit
You've heard of the Iowa Family Policy Center, right? In "news from around the state"-type wire reports, Chuck Hurley has frequently gathered his collection of supporters at the state capitol to protest either-- and alternately-- government overreach and the government's tolerance of freedom in the bedroom. Yeah, I don't get it either. Well, it turns out that the staunchly-conservative Family Policy Center collected
more than $3 million in taxpayer grants between 2004 and 2009. The group has been pouring much of its money (yours) into the gubernatorial campaign of Bob Vander Plaats, through their Political Action Committee, even while the candidate himself is down at the statehouse
"tea partying" it up with the anti-government, "Obama is a Nazi and/or Communist" crowd."
I've struggled for weeks to come up with anything distinctive or interesting to offer about the national "Tea Party" movement. While feelings of cynicism and political alienation are entirely understandable in the populace, even justified... ok,
healthy, the hypocrisy and tactics of leadership in this particular movement has infected it from its start, with the Tea Partiers then not unlike Sayid or Claire on that enigmatic, fictional island of "Lost"--
Once you've allowed Glenn Beck to speak to you, as it were
, it's already too late. They may all pretend that they're acting in a non-partisan fashion, but that's the lie agreed upon by Tea Party organizers that permits the "unbiased" media outlets to cover the protests as something other than what they actually are-- an attempt at rebranding the same, discredited Republican Party in the aftermath of George W. Bush. Yes, as we all still easily recall, even with new guys now in charge, the Bush/Cheney presidency was to clusterfucks what "Avatar" was to Hollywood box office-- the all-time, undisputed champ.
We should all be soaked in our own tears over the fact that there's this seemingly-inexhaustible attention span by the media for what could be-- or have been-- a potentially-important citizens' movement against government waste, corruption, and overreach. But alas, there has been no statement at all within this movement, despite the bevy of microphones pressed against it, over the fact that we're fighting a pair of bloody, immoral, and budget-annihilating wars overseas, each with no conceivable purpose separate from corporate expansion.
The movement, instead, delivers its charges of government overspending and tyranny in the form of subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) racial bigotry, while assigning blame for the nation's ills to our economic underclass, which ironically and sorrowfully makes up a substantial percentage of the movement's unregistered and unofficial membership. An "anti-government" movement that has the Pork Barrel Princess
Sarah Palin at its forefront, and the likes of the hysterical and hypocritical members of the Iowa Family Policy Center as its contributors, is far from righteous in its purpose. It's not even intellectually-serious.
Regarding Tina
Salon's Rebecca Traister
declares the Tina Fey backlash underway, and that may be an accurate assessment. We build our celebrities up and then we tear them down.
Traister defends...
Tina Fey is a professional comedian. She is not a professional feminist... In the eagerness to embrace a star who seemed to think briskly and amusingly about gender, who was not afraid of showing off her smarts or her ambition, who reminded some young professional women of ourselves, some of us may have briefly forgotten that she is not, nor was she ever, us. It is a testament to the paucity of role models available on the pop culture landscape that many young feminists – including me! – cleaved so quickly and so closely to a woman who made some pretty smart jokes about women. But Fey was not elected Celebrity thanks to the support of EMILY's List; I am not confident that she has ever read, much less written or commented on, a feminist blog. She has been far less voluble about her personal feminism than her compatriot Amy Poehler, who has done a lot more talking than Fey about her feminist beliefs. While it might be fair to argue that Fey has profited from a feminist embrace, she did not ever pretend to be a standard bearer for contemporary feminism. We're the ones who made her that, who overidentified with her, or with Liz Lemon, or with the Weekend Update host who declared that bitch was the new black, and attached to her a passel of our highest expectations and ideals.Fey is such a tremendous cultural force, she deserves a critical look, and in this case, an impassioned defense. If she's frequently "pious" in her comedic outlook towards sex, and judgmental towards women that participate in America's "raunch-culture," as the recent criticism suggests, it's worth noting that no individual is more frequently the target of that humor than herself. On "30 Rock," the funniest show on television, Fey's character, Liz Lemon, is the same insecure, untidy, and imperfect person that her male counterparts are on the show. (Sample dialogue: Liz: We [my date and I] made a deal. I gave him top front. Jack Donaghy: Top front? Good lord, Lemon, that's your worst quadrant.)
The recurring mean spiritedness in Fey's character was addressed directly in the third season episode "Reunion"
(clip), in which Lemon begrudgingly attends her high school reunion, discovering there that her lack of popularity in school had more to do with her cutting and defensive remarks than with either her physical appearance or sociability.
She had been the bully.
Comedy's value is in its honesty, and no subject or ideology can be out of bounds.
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Congratulations to Conan O'Brien on
his new late night talk show on TBS. The Fox or ABC networks would have delivered more viewers, but the largest audience of all would have been in the post-Jay Leno slot staying at NBC. That wasn't Conan's priority.
It's going to be a killer show. We can know this today because Conan's a funny guy and, for the first time in his career, he's going to own his show. As a rule in late-night, going back even to Johnny and his independent Carson Productions, network-owned shows blow.
The finest in adult entertainment
Superblogger Ken Levine published
a review of the 2010 AVN Awards yesterday. The Oscars of Porn were presented earlier this year at a gala event inside the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, and televised on pay-per-view.
Most of us love porn, and all of us love porn-film titles. The wordplay on popular mainstream movie titles is particularly fun, like
the fictional ones provided on a recent episode of "30 Rock"-- "Hind Side," "Sherlock Homos," "Ass-atar," "The Pert Knockers," "Tits Complicated," "The Lovely Boners," "Up in Her Hair," and the truly-inspired "Fresh Ass, Based on the novel "Tush" by Assfire."
I believe the best titles to be had, though, are the unintentionally-brilliant, like "My First Porn #7."
King Obama
President Obama has taken George Bush's program of eliminating habeas corpus rights for both American citizens and foreigners by order of the Executive Branch, and he's
expanded it now to include the ordering of assassinations. The linked article has to be read to be believed-- the President reserves the "right" to murder U.S. citizens, a death penalty imposed without due process, charges, trials, or even evidence of guilt, as the article's author Greenwald succinctly put it.
We've got another sick fucking administration on our hands. Anybody that has harbored doubts over the last decade that the systematic erosion of our civil liberties would sink us to such a low-- and this quickly-- has some serious egg plastered on their face this week. It started with eavesdropping. What will be next?
The myth of the overpaid ballplayer
Tom Cruise hasn't made a film that I've enjoyed since "Magnolia" in 1999. Yet when I go to the movie theater and suffer through one of the handsomely-compensated actor's glossy, empty features, I don't boo the screen. True, Cruise wouldn't be there to hear me even if I did, but if I watched him perform on larger price scale on the stage or encountered him at one of my weekly Scientology gatherings, I would still remain respectfully silent. Nobody I know would do something like this.
No entertainers in America take on the resentment for their financial success like Major League Baseball players. Even in football and basketball, where booing and jeering is commonplace within hostile environs, the negative vibes rarely seem to be tied to the performers' salaries. Furthermore, the sports media does not obsess itself to any comparable degree with what gridders or cagers are earning for their sweat and effort. What is it then that makes baseball so different?
It probably has to do with the fact that baseball's club owners are always pleading poverty, and that's where my exaggerated eye roll (you'll have to take my word for it) comes in.
Forbes Magazine's annual estimate of the financial worth of each of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises
was unveiled today. Not surprisingly, the New York Yankees were judged to have the highest club value: $1.6 billion, followed by the Boston Red Sox at $870 million. In last place, the Pittsburgh Pirates (that favorite Cardinals' NL Central Division doormat) at $289 million. (Disclosure: MLB clubs always dispute
Forbes' findings, but which of the two sources do you trust?)
Even more instructive is the percentage increases of the franchise values over just one year: 7% for the Yankees, 4% for the Red Sox, top increases of 15% for the Florida Marlins and 14% for the Minnesota Twins-- two clubs with new taxpayer-funded stadiums opening or under construction. Meanwhile,
a report from Opening Day on Monday found that players' salaries, as a whole, had increased a modest 1% in during the same year.
The "overpaid ballplayer" has become an American character storied in print and broadcast (though not yet in song), thanks to a fraternity of sport journalists predisposed to adopting management's view on... well, hell, everything. Courtesy of a gentleman named Matt Yglesias, this is
a chart indexing workers' compensation as a share of national GDP (Gross National Product) for the entire U.S. Between 1960 and 2006, the national figure hovers consistently around 56 to 59%. As you can see in Yglesias' report, NBA players are paid at roughly 57%. Now let's
look at baseball. They're at only 52 percent, as of the 2008 season. In '08, the same year of comparison, NHL players were at 56.7%, the NBA at 57%, and the NFL at 59%-- all on track with or exceeding the national business average.
Only baseball, in this sphere of industry, falls under.
Major League Baseball, it turns out, does have a problem with player salaries. They're too low. Be mindful of this in a year when baseball owners are again pleading poverty and are attempting to implement a salary cap during collective bargaining.
The sports beat
What a fun opening day to the baseball season. It was an auspicious one indeed for new Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts. The
Sun-Times published
a story this morning with the headline "Signs pointing to lasting changes in Cubs culture." The afternoon ended in Atlanta with Ricketts watching his club
give up 16 runs to the Braves.
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Day 1, Mark McGwire as Cardinals hitting coach:
12 hits, 11 runs, 4 home runs, 4 walks, 5 strikeouts
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Fans react to Joe Mauer's new $184 million deal with the Twins last week.
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If you're like me, you've been wondering for a while about whatever became of fictional hoopster Jimmy Chitwood. Well,
wonder no more.
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Despite dissimilarly successful team histories, Duke and Butler were thought to be very evenly matched for tonight's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. The school
names haven't been this lopsided, though, since Nobleman took on Pool Boy.
A modern classic
"Don't you just take the past and put it in a room in the basement and lock the door and never go in there."
We all have favorite movies to which we keep returning during our lives, ones that seem to us to get better with age. One of mine is "The Talented Mr. Ripley," a 1999 creep-fest from Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, based on the 1955 novel by Patricia Highsmith. With "Ripley," the late Minghella builds on the film tradition of Hitchcock in the same way that Polanski enriched the
noir films of Howard Hawks and John Huston with "Chinatown."
The film stars Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett, who became the stars of their generation in the decade that has followed. All but Law have now won Oscars, and he certainly deserved one for his role as the magnetic force of "Ripley." In the first half of the picture, they're beautiful people living la dolce vita in the stunningly-beautiful locales of Italy. The second half features Damon's title character cleverly improvising his way through the cover-up of his crime(s), inspiring sympathy for the devil as a murderer who was either in love with his victim or who simply wanted to assume the man's identity so that he might love himself.
Check out again, or for the first time.
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The baseball season opens tonight with a game in Boston between the Red Sox and Yankees. I've spent much of the day watching memorable World Series games of the past on ESPN Classic, reminding me again how simple and magnificent the summer game is. But Jesus, this network television obsession with the New York/Boston rivalry gets so tedious.
The real season begins tomorrow, as it traditionally has, with the Reds' home opener in Cincinnati. This year, the home team has to cope with Chris Carpenter and the Cardinals.
David/Seinfeld
A website I've never heard of is asking the question: Are Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the comedy world?
Interesting idea. I'm not sure who those other guys are, but Larry and Jerry are certainly as the article describes them-- "the light and the dark, the yin and the yang," one a "happy, buzzing life-force," the other "squirm(ing) in the shadows."
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My 35th birthday arrives tomorrow. It's disheartening to be moving out of that 18-35 age demographic that has made me Madison Avenue's most valued pursuit, but the sadness is slightly offset by the fact that next year I'll be able to add
"It Was a Very Good Year" to my karaoke repertoire.
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Uniforms from the Chicago Cubs last World Series Championship have recently gone
on display.
