Moeller TV Fest episode schedule
Those of you who plan to attend Moeller Television Festival IX have until the end of the day (and month) Sunday to forward your Open Remote episode submissions to Aaron and/or me. We have collected three so far. Here's the screening schedule for this year's event, which will be Saturday, November 13th. As always, and for legal reasons, the event at my home is free.
"The Adhesive Duck Deficiency" The Big Bang Theory #48 11/16/09
"Aboard the Orient Express" Get Smart #13 12/11/65
"A Beer Can Named Desire" King of the Hill #66 11/14/99
Open Remote
"Family Feud 6th All-Star Special" Family Feud unknown 1979
"The Schumakers Go To Hollywood" It's Gary Shandling's Show #20 11/20/87
"We Gather Together" Roseanne #32 11/21/89
"Atomic Shakespeare" Moonlighting #31 11/25/86
"The Gang Wrestles For the Troops" It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia #52 10/29/09
"Peace" Da Ali G Show #9 8/1/04
"Investigative Journalism" Community #13 1/14/10
The World Series begins: A reader
George Vecsey wrote
a feature in the NY Times today comparing Josh Hamilton's demons of addiction to those that Mickey Mantle had to contend with more than a century ago. Probably not surprising to you, this passage stood out to me:
Perhaps Josh Hamilton knows why he took to crack while he was one of baseball’s most promising players. But at least he has been handed the ammunition to stave off the desires. Mickey Mantle, that great charismatic hero, carried the stigma of coming from a poor, uneducated corner of industrial America. His drinkin’ buddy Billy Martin (with friends like this) compared Merlyn Mantle to the discarded mineral waste of Oklahoma, known as chat. Martin was the epitome of bad company but Mantle knew he had himself to blame.
In that age, nobody could help him. Casey Stengel, who drank a bit himself, despaired of getting Mantle to learn from him. Suppose Mantle had signed with his boyhood favorites, the Cardinals, and played for a fatherly manager like Eddie Dyer or Johnny Keane, alongside his temperate hero, Stan Musial, instead of being scolded by Stengel and ignored by Joe DiMaggio and indulged by the open city of New York? We will never know. ---
An ESPN headline I enjoyed:
"Source: Sandberg not on Quade's staff". Was this ever an option for the Cubs? This would be the same as if 18 years ago, David Letterman had agreed to be Jay Leno's Ed McMahon.
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National League-loyal, I'm pulling for the Giants, but the five dollars I have riding on them with a friend at work was placed in limbo with a dose of healthy skepticism about their chances. It will be cool to see the Giants' Hall of Famers-- Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Monte Irvin, and Gaylord Perry-- in S.F. tonight to throw out the ceremonial first pitch(es). Win or lose, it will be a fun series to watch. I enjoy any World Series that doesn't involve the Yankees, Red Sox, or in theory, the Cubs.
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One of my favorite players, Albert Pujols, and one of my brother's, Pete Rose, were separately name-dropped on the same episode of "30 Rock" last Thursday:
Jack (Alec Baldwin) to Liz (Tina Fey), on why he would agree to keep his hot streak of solving problems (he was "Reaganing") alive by agreeing to help her with her's:
When you're pitching a perfect game, you don't walk Albert Pujols. And you are the Albert Pujols of having problems.Later, Liz begins to tell Jack the story of the source of her sexual problem:
I was nine years old. I was roller-skating in the house, which was absolutely forbidden. I was skating down the hallway on top of the world, with my new skates and my new haircut, which everybody thought was a Dorothy Hamill, but was actually a Pete Rose...The visual is required to fully appreciate the second line.
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Today is the 4th anniversary of the Cardinals clinching their 10th World Championship and a Game 5 victory over the Detroit Tigers in the '06 World Series, but it's also the 25th anniversary of the Cardinals' 11-0 Game 7 loss to the Kansas City Royals in the '85 Series, and which game do you think they've re-run
twice today on ESPN Classic?
Addendum 6:59pm: Never mind the part about the Giants' Hall of Famers in the pregame ceremony. I forgot FOX doesn't bother with that shit.
The troubling saga of the Quaids
A rather sad Hollywood story is that of actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi. The two are seeking asylum in Canada after being arrested in Vancouver for immigration violations. The story began in earnest in 2008 when Quaid was banned for life from the Actors' Equity Association after all 26 colleagues in a stage performance accused him of physical and verbal abuse. Evi responded to those charges by hiring a private detective to investigate his cast mates.
The two were then arrested last year for failure to pay a $10,000 hotel bill, for fraud, burglary, and conspiracy, and they failed to show in court to answer these charges on five different occasions. Evi, meanwhile, sent naked pictures of herself to a Seattle newspaper with a note that read "This is my German stuff," and the pair moved to Marfa, Texas, where they attempted to open a Randy Quaid Museum.
Back in California last month, the couple was arrested for burglary after squatting in their former house and causing $5,000 worth of damage. Warrants were issued following their failure to appear before the burglary charge, and Friday, they were arrested in Vancouver.
On a piece of paper they gave to their lawyer, the Quaids allege that they are targets of an assassination squad, or "Hollywood star whackers," as it was phrased. They claim that Heath Ledger and David Carradine are among eight Quaid associates that have been rubbed out in recent years by this shadowy group. "We feel our lives are in danger," Evi said, "Randy has known eight close friends murdered in odd, strange manners.. We feel that we're next."
In a joint written statement, Randy and Evi went on to say that they find the behavior of Clarence Thomas' wife Ginny to be "a little strange."
Torture is our business and business is good
WikiLeaks' Document Dump Day #2 has come and gone, and another 400,000 classified military documents have been
made public, revealing several horrible truths about the policies and actions of the United States military. Among other items yet to be revealed through extended research, the latest batch of documents makes public that a U.S. Army helicopter fired a series of rounds at surrendering Iraqi insurgents in February, 2007, killing them all, that Abu Ghraib was more like the beginning of our organized torture efforts against Iraqis, not the end (widespread torture has continued at least through the first year of the Obama presidency), and of course, that none of these offenses clearly categorized as war crimes, and which also include murders at military checkpoints and the suppression of reports of civilian casualties, were reported publicly, investigated, or prosecuted despite meticulous documentation.
The myths of the righteousness of the United States military are finally fading, even among the "love it or leave it" crowd here in the U.S. Recruiters trolling through shopping centers are now able to enlist only the children with the most desperate futures. What remains is a sorry conglomeration of predominantly the most undereducated and uninformed of our young citizens ripe for exploitation. Our wars have nothing to do with our national defense or security. They're orchestrated for the conquest of resources by the national forces of capital and for the benefit of stock prices on the global exchange for private, borderless companies. Our enemies don't "hate us for our freedoms." They hate us for our violent aggressions, our occupations, our institutional support for tyrants-- theirs and ours, and of course, for our many hypocrisies.
Veterans of the war on Iraq, themselves also heinous victims of their government,
have been making many of these individual claims publicly, and those claims have gone ignored by news divisions and politicians. The soldiers are powerless against a traditional news media and a political culture that favors the institutional position on all matters military.
No one disputes the accuracy of these documents being released. None of the previously-released documents numbering in the hundreds of thousands have been found to be inaccurate. The only criticisms being leveled have been the ones designed to slander the lead whistleblower at WikiLeaks or, like the one from the Pentagon spokesman, noting that the documents "expose secret information that make our troops even more vulnerable to attack in the future." But is it the exposure of these war crimes by Wikileaks that's to blame for such dangers or is it the actions themselves by a conscienceless world superpower that values domination over mutual respect? The continued classified cover of these despotic abuses made
the planet even more vulnerable to attack by the United States in the future.
Who is Ted L. Nancy?
For years I've stored a charming little book on my shelf called "Letters from a Nut." I pick it up and re-read it every year or so. It's a collection of bizarre letters written to various organizations and businesses by a gentleman named Ted L. Nancy and the mostly-sincere responses Nancy received in return. (I don't know how he picks his targets-- The University of Texas at San Antonio, The Woodmark Hotel in Kirkland, Washington, Vice President Al Gore-- it seems quite random.) Nancy's comments, complaints, and requests in his correspondence always rest firmly within the theater of the absurd. My favorite entry each time I read through the book is his letter to the Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Here's an excerpt from that one if you don't already know what Ted L. Nancy is all about...
I am interested in staying at your hotel for one week starting February 21, 1996... I have a dilemma. I look exactly like Abraham Lincoln. How can I be safeguarded so that others don't come up to me and pester me for autographs and pictures with them?... I have tried to alter my appearance- I've had the mole removed- but it is still a nuisance. I have dyed my hair and beard red but no avail. I have even taken the hat off. I still am bothered. People love Lincoln! One guy tried to give me his Lincoln car once, that's how impressed he was. I did not take it, of course. But I have been in the tunnel. The hotel's chief of operations writes back to say that there should be no problems as the resort is well-accustomed to celebrity guests, then he lists such luminaries as Rip Taylor, June Allyson, Ann Miller, and Donald O'Connor. But in one of his occasional follow-up letters, Ted Nancy expresses disdain for Lincoln ("I am the 16th president of the United States") having been compared to Rip Taylor, though he postures that Taylor "is a terrific entertainer, and (he) has even been sprinkled by his confetti."
Sometimes Ted L. Nancy is wildly misinformed. He writes to boxing promoter Bob Arum:
I was just appalled at the recent news that a planned Schmeling-Holmes fight is in the works. What is going on here? I deplore you, Mr. Arum, do not let this happen. Max Schmeling has to be 85 years old. Has everyone gone insane?... I beg you, Sir, do not allow this fight. Max Schmeling should lead a dignified life as a Coca-Cola executive in Germany. Not a heavyweight contender. Do you think Coca cola should still advertise? Don't you think everyone has heard of this product?
Arum's written response, on "Top Rank Inc." stationary, is priceless.
Jerry Seinfeld wrote the introduction to "Letters from a Nut," explaining that he first came upon a collection of the actual letters on a coffee table at a dinner party. He subsequently came to believe that "Jack L. Nancy," a man otherwise unknown, was at that same party, the only person not laughing him or herself silly and also donning a look of "detached pride," according to Seinfeld's description.
The first book was published in 1997, and three others followed-- "More Letters from a Nut" in '98, "Extra Nutty! Even More Letters from a Nut" in 2000, and now, "All New Letters from a Nut: Includes Lunatic Email Exchanges" from just last month. Through the years, many have believed Seinfeld himself to be the author of these comedic gems, but the truth was revealed by the comedian on "Larry King Live" September 23rd. The writer, Seinfeld says, is actually Barry Marder, who, according to IMDb, is one of the voices on Seinfeld's animated film "Bee Movie" and also appeared as "Man at Bar" during the memorable "Seinfeld" episode "The Invitations." Consult your DVD collection. Yet another comic, Bruce Baum, claims he co-wrote the letters in the first three books with Marder, and Seinfeld, having come to the book only at the time of publishing, is mistaken. As I read more about this online, it seems that the mystery hasn't really been solved at all.
Research it for yourself, and thank you in advance. I remain...
Ted L. Nancy
I am Juan Williams
National Public Radio and Fox News commentator Juan Williams has been fired by NPR for uttering a politically-charged personal admission on television Monday night.
First, the comments Juan Williams made Monday on Bill O'Reilly:
"I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts."
NPR's response:
"Tonight we gave Juan Williams notice that we are terminating his contract as a Senior News Analyst for NPR News. Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret. However, his remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a News Analyst with NPR. We regret these circumstances and thank Juan Williams for his many years of service to NPR and public radio."
Now normally this type of media firing doesn't bug me. Like Don Imus, Juan Williams has had a long career as a high-profile public commentator; like Imus, he's been well-compensated; and like Imus, the allotment of airtime already afforded him on national television and radio at the moment of his infraction far exceeds what his professional credentials have warranted. He's an insider, and he's been inside for a long time, so I'm not staying up late tonight worried about what's next for him in his career. But this firestorm is ridiculous.
Part of what Williams said was indeed a fact. Faisal Shahzad pled guilty to the Times Square plot recently, and in so doing, announced to the court, "Brace yourself, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me." Like all other religions, Islam has proven itself to be a remarkably violent one. A less-civilized blogger might even argue that it has proven itself of late to be one of the more violent of its company.
Both Christianity, the dominant religion of our country, and Islam have among its practitioners people who see the central conflict of our planet now as a holy battle between Christians and Muslims. I don't know how Juan Williams categorizes himself on religion and reason, but the rest of us are certainly
justified, I would argue, to view anybody who chooses to align themselves, first and foremost, with such violent cults as at least slightly unsteady. We are talking about belief systems, after all, that loudly advertise the fallen state of humanity and a belief in a grand and greater deathly reward. Fundamentally, our concern then, I think-- if I can speak for all of the heathens and infidels-- is that the belief systems have been established as ones of carrots and sticks, and the promises in death are great.
And this is what
I'm saying. Not Williams. Juan Williams didn't come anywhere close to saying something like this. He was just confessing to what goes through his mind in certain public scenarios. In fact, his comments are virtually identical in spirit to ones Jesse Jackson made years ago in regards to race and public safety, except that Jackson said it about his own demographic group. Those comments of both Williams and Jackson are admissions of internalized prejudice, not an endorsement of bigotry. Williams proceeded to argue too that Muslims did
not attack us on 9/11, and that it was "extremists" instead, but somebody at NPR must have cut the tape. Radio editing is hard. I know.
I guess one could argue that
my statements take that next step towards prejudice, but to paraphrase Bill Maher, they can't be because I'm not "prejudging." The tenants of these faiths are extensively documented and widely publicized, and I find them wildly inconsistent with science and reason. This makes me at least a little scared of anybody who shuns reason for superstition.
The biblical concept of stone throwing applies here. I'd love to be able to watch how individual NPR executives deal with similar real-life situations. So there are never any extra hands over the wallet in any public situation, or clenched purses, or extended glances at individuals at the airport based on appearance? Williams
admits he experiences these moments, and he doesn't excuse himself. But maybe it's just him.
The written statement from NPR requires more explanation. That's why I tracked down the full public statement for print. There's an awful lot missing there. What are the specific "editorial standards and practices" of NPR with which Williams' comments are inconsistent? How exactly did he "undermine.. his credibility" as an "analyst"? Are we to take from the news release that NPR has now judged Williams to be a bigot? I'm picking up a little of that. The CEO of NPR, Vivian Schiller, said after Monday that Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." She's already apologized publicly to Williams for that insulting statement, but he's still fired, only one of the two of them has 'fessed publicly to his all-too-human prejudices, and NPR, for the moment, looks exactly like what its conservative critics accuse it of being-- ideologically imbalanced and intolerant of dissent.
Should Juan Williams chill out more in airports? Yes. Should he have lost his job over this? Absolutely not. This is what happens when actual human expressions get muffled by political theater.
"Okay, have a good day" and other unrelated musings
Clarence Thomas' wife is behaving like a
certified nutjob. Passive-aggressive much, Ginny?
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Classic Obama triangulation/ineptness/cowardice:
'Don't ask, don't tell' "will end on my watch," says the president, even as his Justice Department prepares its
appeal of the judge's ruling that has, for the time at least, ended the ban on gays serving openly in the military. Notice he says the policy "will end on my watch," not "I will end it." The repeal will likely happen, but it will be no thanks to our Commander in Chief, who has possessed the authority all along to simply issue an executive order ending DADT. Seventy percent of Americans now support the repeal, yet that's still not enough for our intrepid leader to act upon what he claims to believe. In related news,
Harry Truman still lies motionless and without Constitutional authority on the other side of the grass.
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Christina Hendricks is the only actress that has to make
a public denial that she's losing weight.
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Tony LaRussa has signed a new one-year deal to return to the Cardinals so the "Ryne Sandberg for manager" campaign will have to end.
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Josh Hamilton homered twice more during another Rangers victory tonight. The slugging outfielder has been an awesome
baseball story this October-- especially if you hate the Yankees. The Yankees have one more chance in the ALCS Wednesday afternoon to play a game at Yankee Stadium in which their fans didn't make a stampede for the exits during the top of the ninth inning. Oh, you can't beat fun at the ole' ballpark.
Maybe we'll also be done with the four-hour games after the Yankees have been eliminated.
Mensa day
Mensa International is the largest high-IQ organization in the world. To be a member, the individual must score at or above the 98th percentile on a standardized or otherwise approved intelligence test. Most of the 110,000+ members worldwide live in the United States or Britain.
National Mensa Testing Day arrives today-- the Moeller TV Festival has been scheduled for November 13th to avoid conflicts-- but many of the society's local groups are offering the admission tests throughout the month. For
Central Iowans, there's a test offered in Clear Lake this afternoon, another in Ames on the 23rd, and one in Spencer on the 30th.
When I saw the
USA Today story linked above, I couldn't help but think about the episode of "The Bob Newhart Show" that lit up Moeller TV Fest VII two Novembers ago. It was entitled "Mr. Emily Hartley," it aired first in 1973, and it was about how Bob coped with finding out his wife had a higher measurable IQ than he did. During the episode, the Hartleys attended a Mensa-like open house and Bob didn't really take to it.
Script by Charlotte Brown (excerpt):
Man at party: Olleh, Mi Divad Snibor. Dalg ot teem uoy.
Bob: I'm sorry we don't speak Swedish.
Man: Oh, neither do I. That was English. I said 'Hello, I'm David Robins. Glad to meet you' backwards. See, it's this gift or 'tfig' I have. I see all words 'sdrawkcab'-- backwards.
Emily: Oh, I see. So 'olleh' is 'hello.' Is that right? I mean 'thgir'?
Man: 'Thgir!' You catch on very 'tsaf.'
Emily: Oh, 'tsaf. Oh Bob, this is fun. You should try it.
Bob: Maybe later.
Emily: Oh, I'm so sorry. There we were talking, and I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Emily Hartley.
Man: Emily Hartley. Ylime Yeltrah. Very nice. And you're?
Bob: Bob.
To manage or not to manage
The Cardinals were expecting to know by the first part of this week whether Tony LaRussa would agree to return as manager in 2011, but the man just
needs a little more time to make up his mind. It's the Cardinals that should be wavering. If Tony is not sure the fire is still in his belly then it probably isn't.
The baseball manager's contribution to his team (or in the case of "The Simpsons" last Sunday,
her team--
enjoy this) is usually overstated, but not in instances like this one where the manager's personality, for good or bad, dominates the clubhouse. Tony was more prickly with the media this year than ever before, his feud with Colby Rasmus has forced the team to consider off-season trade offers for the talented young center fielder, and
at least one observer suggested that the Cardinals players quit on their manager with about two weeks of games left on the schedule.
One has to wonder if the Cardinals would only be indulging LaRussa's personal pursuit of John McGraw on the all-time managerial win list (he's about two seasons away from passing McGraw for second place) if they brought him back, and heaven knows that LaRussa himself would
never tolerate such intrusive human sentiment to invade one of his clubhouses otherwise.
P-D columnist Bill McClellan had
some fun with LaRussa's indecisiveness (a perennial drama) in a column last week. McClellan is a noted Cubs fan and sometimes his newspaper presentations are designed to simply rankle the locals, but he nailed this one.
Moeller TV Fest 9
Moeller Television Festival IX is coming to Des Moines in exactly one month-- November 13th. Details to come...
The status quo revolution
I've been re-reading Thomas Frank's 2004 book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" this week, and Frank did a fantastic job of outlining the division within the Republican Party that is now manifesting itself nationally as the so-called Tea Party revolution. This rift between more socially-liberal "country club" moderates and social conservatives has been playing itself out in the Sunflower State for some time already, really since the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue came to the public's attention in the late 1980s, and moderate GOP lawmakers such as Nancy Kassebaum started getting replaced by reactionaries like Sam Brownback.
The split is signified somewhat by church affiliation and by an urban/rural divide (Sarah Palin, anyone?), but the major demographic determinant of where a Republican falls is the one that everyone in the party refuses to acknowledge exists-- the socioeconomic one. Establishment Republicans have money, and the Tea Party-identifiers, for the most part, don't. And this is what slays liberals like me. The social conservatives without money have been played like a fiddle in voting against their own economic self-interest. They almost uniformly backed George W. Bush along with an entire generation of socially-conservative Republican candidates, yet we're no closer to having abortion outlawed in America today than we were 25 years ago, and the restrictions that have been achieved relate only to poor people's ability to have abortions. Gay rights are gaining a strong foothold of acceptance in America in a very short amount of time, and wealthy Republicans, by and large, know more openly-gay people than do poor ones, most of them serving in the structural apparatus of the national Republican party.
The establishment Republicans, living comfortably behind their remote-controlled security gates, have succeeded in getting business deregulated and the corporate tax rate cut by two-thirds, while the poor reactionaries blame "liberal-elites" for ruining their lives. "Hard times" have been good politics and good private business for Republicans going back to the Depression. That's when Kansans, for example and according to Frank, "learned a healthy fear of the Almighty." During
those "end days," it was never the absence of things like agricultural price supports or soil conservation programs that were doing them in. It was God's spite for the sins of a socially-permissive nation. The reactionary poor are still in the streets today: "Repeal taxes." "Dismantle public programs." And the wealthy Republicans are winning even when they lose.
Frank summarized it best in his book, with a glance towards his home state, and tell me if you don't think about the Tea Partiers when you read this passage-- even though there was no "Tea Party" yet in 2004--
"This situation may be paradoxical, but it is also universal. For decades Americans have experienced a populist uprising that only benefits the people it is supposed to be targeting. In Kansas, we merely see an extreme version of this mysterious situation. The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistibly against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege. They are laughing at the dainty affectations of the Leawood toffs. They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills, hoisting the black flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands. 'We are here,' they scream, 'to cut your taxes.'"
My new corporate neighbor
The $190 million Wellmark building, which has just been erected over the course of about two years about three blocks from my home, is nearly completed and inhabitable for operation by the Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance company corporate headquarters and its roughly 1,600 Des Moines employees.
According to
The Register's business reporter
David Elbert, this building will be among the most "green" and efficient in Des Moines, but I'm calling "shenanigans" on that. The writer is quoting Wellmark's CEO in regards to such pronouncements, and by god, if we can't trust the company CEO about what constitutes a "green" building, I don't know who we can trust. The opinion of a true environmentalist would have been a nice edition to this story, but then this one falls on the front of the paper's Sunday "Business" section so it's not really intended to be anything other than positive corporate publicity.
The building may have received the first "Platinum" rating in the state of Iowa from the U.S. Green Building Council, but that's an entity that also heaped praise on the Sprint World Headquarters Campus in Overland Park, Kansas, and we know that's preposterous. It's sad but true that it doesn't really matter how many reusable building materials you're using or how you're redeploying rain water if you're constructing the building away from where people live. The Sprint corporate campus is simply not "green" if it's located at the corner of "119th street" and anything, and has parking lots and garages labeled A thru P. The Sprint campus was highly praised by so-called "green" builders a decade ago, but now that the company is laying off employees left and right, it's
forced to sublease its empty space, and the already-sprawling Kansas City area has been stuck with yet another central business "hub."
At least Wellmark built downtown. I'll give them that. Urban in-fill development is vital for true "green" development, but one has to wonder if there's even a net gain here. If you saw the trucks hauling dirt out of the repackaged area, truck after truck, day after day, month after month, over the last two years, and then the massive construction, you were reminded of how much industrial energy is expended and how many fossil fuels are seemingly depleted to undertake such an elaborate building project, regardless of any supposed "environmental" merit. It would conceivably take decades for Wellmark to gain that back in energy efficiency. Wellmark was already living a "green" existence over in the Ruan Center, by nature of the building's greater "high-rise" verticality. Now Wellmark's operation is spread out over two long city blocks, instead of only a part of one, and the Ruan Center will sit at least partially vacant. The employees and their boss may be more physically spread out and comfortable, and that is what it is, but it's not necessarily more "efficient," or more "green." Don't call it that. They're often "opposite" attributes, in fact.
CEO John Forsyth claims the Ruan Center, because of its height, discouraged employees from walking, but walking has to be mandated for it to get done, not simply encouraged. He can boast fitness rooms and gymnasiums on-site, as other Des Moines businesses also can, but the city is not designed to encourage the use of such facilities. Most downtown workers don't live downtown. They're still slaves to their automobiles, and busy work and play schedules will keep the fitness rooms in the new Wellmark building as generally empty as the fitness rooms in other downtown buildings that already exist. Free bus passes, bicycle promotion, and special parking spaces for hybrid vehicles all sound swell too, but it's lipstick on a pig. We're not thinking big enough. As your average Wellmark employee, I might be considering buying a hybrid vehicle. A lot of people have them or are considering them. But if I do, it's going to be because of personal conviction, not because it means I can park on the first floor at work instead of on the fourth. Employees could already presumably bicycle to work when Wellmark was located in the Ruan Center just a few blocks away, and the downtown bus route is already free to all residents of Des Moines.
No, if Forsyth and his board of directors were really serious about this, they would provide incentives to their employees to make their homes downtown. That's the only "green" planning that legitimately makes a difference. Employee "wellness" would then actually improve, too, along with the air we all breath, because people get their walking in by walking to work, instead of driving there and then trying to shoehorn a "workout" into a day already made busy by having to go to work.
Is it Wellmark's fault that Des Moines is, like most American cities, car-dependent and unwalkable? No, it isn't. Not beyond their general part-of-the-corporate-whole culpability anyway. But that just goes to show why our "green" city planning can never be left to the motivations of private industry. By its nature, it has to be a collective, civic effort-- done for the greater good, not for-- forgive the heresy-- the health of a stock price. And call me a cynic, but I wouldn't trust the Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurance company to lead the charge anyway. They already operate in the most inefficient industry America's got, and only a fool would buy the argument that the 5% they claim they'll now be saving on operating expenses in Des Moines will be passed directly on to you, the consumer.
The new building is just glitter.
Can I interest you in some more baseball talk?
I'm a tremendous baseball fan, but I don't harbor illusions that I would be fast pals with most of the guys who suit up for my favorite team. It also doesn't matter. What appeals about the sport is the escapism. Former pitcher Bill Lee shares my politics and my comic sensibility. Former Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith shares my musical taste and I like to eat at his restaurant. Some players, like Rick Ankiel, are endearing because of their personal stories. Anyway, they're few and far between. Many of what seem to be the average player's favorite topics of conversation-- deer hunting, trucks, church, and weightlifting bore me to tears. When I read player "profiles" anywhere, I'm endlessly disappointed at their choices for "favorite movie" or even "favorite athletes." (Really? Michael Jordan again?) Their musical selections when they come up to bat are almost always abysmal, and that gap in taste will only widen as I grow older and they stay the same age. Two players I grew up rooting against-- the Cubs' Mark Grace and Rick Sutcliffe-- seem to be, by their broadcasting styles, two of the cooler guys in the game. But they're Cubs. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, we're rooting for laundry.
In 1994, while living in St. Louis, I had the occasion to attend an old timers game... excuse me, "Heroes of Baseball" game. It was my one and only chance to see Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle in person. The Yankees great was just 62 years old, but he had less than a year to live, and he was physically unable to play in the exhibition because of the advanced liver cancer that had been brought on by his alcoholism. Still, the fans' reaction to him was quite moving, partially for that reason. He was a baseball hero and a role model during an era before Americans became fully aware of the difference, and his playing days overlapped a time in which we knew much less about the personal lives of the players. For fans in 1994, he was a man they got to know much better as he was dying than when he was playing.
We get in big trouble when we ask our baseball stars to be accomplished at anything other than baseball. They're not there to be role models. That's a disgusting turn of phrase anyway. The rush some people have to tear them to ribbons is just as frustrating to me as the rush to put them on a pedestal. We should be forgiving to all of them in the same way we should be forgiving of each other and ourselves. Some of these guys, like Mantle, are naturally fascinating as they combine those terrific physical gifts with poignant human frailty. Jane Leavy has written a book called "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood" that promises to be
an intriguing read despite the ridiculous title. It focuses more on Mantle's later years than previous biographies have, and unfortunately-- or perhaps, fortunately, for context and her own human development-- Leavy got a chance to know Mantle well enough in his last years to have her childhood illusions shattered. It would seem that in this book, as it's advertised, both author and subject escape with their humanity intact.
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My grandmother's favorite baseball player, at least during her septuagenarian years, was the Cubs' Dave Martinez. She would be excited, I think, to see that the former outfielder, now Tampa Bay bench coach, is considered
a candidate by some for the Cubs' open managerial position this offseason. I remember watching a game once with Grandma in which Martinez came up to bat with the bases loaded and struck out. "Oh well," she said, "There wasn't any room for him on base anyway." Grandma knew her baseball quite a bit better than that, of course, but she sometimes would recite musings like that she didn't think I had heard before. She got a letter once from my cousin Eric, another grandson, when I was at the house. Eric was playing high school water polo at the time in California. She told me, "Eric doesn't think I'm very smart. He told me, 'Grandma, I'm playing water polo, but don't worry, we don't use horses.'" I don't think he had actually written that. I was only about 10 years old. I hardly knew what actual polo was, but I already knew that was a take off of the joke probably as old as the sport itself-- "I tried water polo but my horse drowned."
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The Reds were no-hit by Roy Halladay on Wednesday during their first playoff game in 15 years. You probably know that fact by now, but you probably aren't aware that the Reds' pitching staff allowed only one hit against the Phillies between the third inning of Game 1 and the fourth inning of Game 2-- a span of 8 2/3 innings. Maybe if there were an "ESPN Cincinnati", but alas, there isn't.
If you follow Bill James-developed sabermetrics in baseball-- and I know you do-- you'll be interested to know that Halladay's no-hitter warranted him a 94 "game score" for Game 1 of the Division Series, the same tally as Don Larsen's World Series perfect game in 1956. Impressive, for sure, but the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum actually earned
a more dominating 96 score for his two-hit, 14-strikeout performance against Atlanta on Thursday. This means that giving up two hits is actually better than giving up no hits. Cardinals fans, remember that the next you feel the urge to boo Kyle Lohse.
"Character assassination"
U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (Delaware)
doesn't approve of her treatment by the news media. Of course she doesn't. By and large they've been treating her like the baffoon with nutty ideas that she is.
What O'Donnell is decrying is an absence of the sort of media behavior that candidates usually receive that can be so easily manipulated by campaign operatives-- the kind that treats every election campaign as a side-by-side horse race between the candidates for the two dominant parties. Two sides of every debate are always treated with the same level of respect, regardless of their individual merit, and no additional sides other than the dominant two are ever considered. That's the kind of garbage that needs to come to an end.
O'Donnell has been a public person on television for better than 15 years. During that time, she has said a number of really foolish things, things she still seemingly believes. She's so clueless on matters of science and reason-- embodying perhaps a new low for American political figures-- that even now she thinks the biggest perception problem of her campaign is that people might believe she's a witch. (I guess maybe if you're pandering to fundamentalists.) If she were not a Republican or Democratic candidate, she would be treated even less seriously than she is, so she still has that going for her. She's so far in over her head that she's been having to avoid most public appearances and nearly all interviews, and she's now trailing dramatically in the polls. Maybe there's hope for our system yet.
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A county judge in Los Angeles ruled against Tila Tequila today during a case in which the model and TV personality was trying to block the release of a sex tape that was shot more than seven years ago. The judge dismissed the privacy argument, saying "Tila exploits her sexuality."
The
TMZ news report doesn't dive into the specifics of the legal arguments presented, but there better have been a more substantial argument against her than "Tila exploits her sexuality." So that means her right to privacy cannot be violated? Privacy claims can and have to be treated differently for celebrities, true, but that comment is sick.
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Postseason win after postseason win, these
recap stories of Andy Pettitte's diamond feats never reference the fact that the now-38-year-old pitcher (a year older than Barry Bonds when he hit 73 home runs) was named in a 2006 federal affidavit as a user of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and amphetamines (baseball's pharmaceutical holy trinity). The rules of reporting are different when you're a Yankee.
It's A Whole New Blog!
Not all fans become sold on their favorite sports teams because of popular players in uniform or because of the team's success on the field, court, or ice. Sometimes it's the team's advertising slogan.
Deadspin linked a website today that lists
dozens of these gems...
Some are adapted from alternate media sources ("Go Green." Philadelphia Eagles, 2007).
Some use clever wordplay ("Get Your Preak On." Preakness Stakes, 2010).
Some are innocuous and insipid ("We Come To Play." Detroit Tigers, 2003).
Some are truly uninspired ("Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Atlanta Braves, 2003).
Some are faintly desperate ("Keep the Faith." San Diego Padres, 2001).
Some would seem to have been over-developed by a paid consulting group ("This Is Your State. This Is Your Team. This Is Twins Territory." Minnesota Twins, 2008).
Some are downright cute ("Fear the Deer." Milwaukee Bucks, 2010 postseason).
Some are too imprecise ("Play like a Cardinal." St. Louis Cardinals, 2009).
Some seem oddly disingenuous because we have to be told ("We Want It As Bad As You." Boston Bruins, 2008-09).
Some are guilty of overstatement ("It All Happens Here." Kansas City Royals, 2010).
Some are
really guilty of overstatement ("Braves Baseball. It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This. Ever." Atlanta Braves).
Some suggest that they were coupled at the time with a theme song ("Come Together." San Antonio Spurs, 2008-09).
Some are crass and opportunistic ("Let's Roll." Florida State football, 2002).
And some translate poorly into English ("With our support, Ukraine cannot fail to win!" Ukraine, 2006 World Cup).
