some statistics about who we are

curiously enough, there are no ready figures to estimate the percentage of americans who have ever been outside this country, or even how many of us hold passports at all. the state department has issued over 7 million passports a year since the year 2000, and adding up their figures for the past 10 years (passports are good for 10 years)suggests as many as 100 million of us might be holding one right now, or around 35% of our census--though deaths and re-issues and such would mean the actual figure must be somewhat lower.

so lets say 1 out of 3 americans has the proper document with which to consider stepping outside this country. (did you know that rumors have it that over 90% of german citizens have one?) first of all, one has to figure the lion's share of the recent increase in american issuances has been due to new requirements for travel to canada, and canada, as colorful as their money may be, is hardly foreign in the extreme sense of the word. i'm willing to go out on a limb and say you'd be lucky to find 1 out of 5 folks here who have gone overseas, and far fewer than that (1 in 10?) who have actually experienced a foreign culture, as opposed to having simply taken the tour.

so when we fail to properly pronounce place names, or even distinguish between the ethnicity and the religion of the people who live in those places, we're showing our profound ignorance, and we reinforce our culture of profound ignorance whenever we think pretentious anyone who might know better and dare to say so out loud with the proper inflections. one friend of mine from honduras (own-DU-ras) tells the story of being taken to task by his employer for answering an employment application question in the affirmative, that he was of native american descent. well, first of all, to my bigoted american eyes, he certainly appears to have indigenous, as opposed to european, features. but, secondly, and more importantly, and there being no better expert on his ancestry than himself, it would seem to be supremely presumptuous of anyone to label anyone else "hispanic", as opposed to "native american", as if the two were mutually exclusive and we could tell the difference, instead of recognizing that one is a label of language, and the other is a label of genetic heritage. i'd say he, like the rest of us, is certainly allowed to have both. trouble is, to most americans, he's hispanic, whatever that is, and nothing else, while, to himself, he's absolutely not. (think of someone insisting to designate all americans as englishmen and englishwomen, based solely on the coincidence of language and colonial founding over 200 years ago). in the case of honduras and elsewhere, the end result is far too often that we're getting it all wrong, and butchering the name of the country as if to advertise that fact. worse yet, we're prone to think pretentious anyone who would try to remind us how woefully ignorant we remain about it.

i once worked with a woman who was born in germany, and grew up in the us. in many ways, she was culturally both, and yet neither as well. but i always appreciated it when she made good sport of me for screwing up something cultural or linguistic. i WANTED to know that an ausfahrt was not an ausgang, and not to go looking for one when i hoped to find the other. (see, in german, to go out of a place is not as important linguistically as the means by which you exit, and, hence, an exit while driving--fahrt--is quite different from an exit while walking--gang--and eager travelers are best off to know the difference lest they try walking out a fahrt and meet a bus instead, which, at least, is the same in both languages so you could properly tell the medical personnel what it was that had hit you). from her i learned where to find schweinshaxe (at a schlachfest in the oldenwald, natch) and how to order exactly the kind of german beer i liked best. (dunkles, bitte). and i also learned that properly addressing mail to german business associates was an important part of having the contents of the mail considered seriously, which many americans still insist is pretentious of them, but i've come to see it as MY pretention to not respect their culture when i'm wanting to ask them for favors or to accept my ideas. for their part, they have to learn that i want to see the conclusion to their thesis FIRST, and the explanation second. (germans think it rude to try to pursuade someone of something before giving them the respect of your reasons why--go figure--while we tend to think it more rude to withhold the good stuff before boring us with details). the point is not that either of us are right or wrong, but that we need to understand before we can communicate.

own-DU-ras is just the tip of the iceberg.

more questions about who we are

i missed jen kearney and the lost onion's last show at the lizard lounge a couple weeks back so that i could attend an academic awards presentation at a nearby high school. (i also missed melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones earlier that same evening at toad, but at least i made that one up last week). neither of these i minded because it enabled me to exercise my pride for one of the award recipients, and that was very, very good.

the subject of that evening came up again in conversation over the weekend while i was attending the MTOC soccer tournament, and exercising my pride for one of the tournament participants, which was also very, very good. the observation offered by one of the members of the conversation was that americans seem far more comfortable in celebration of athletic achievement than they are academic. everyone agreed--there's no question about it.

so what does that say about us?

in japan, for example, (chosen because it's a favorite culture of both the afore-referenced progeny, and because they also presume to build automobiles there), if i am to believe what i'm told, the greatest celebrations of childhood and adolescence are reserved for excellence in academics. if current trends in academic achievement are to be compared, it would seem to make perfect sense as to why general motors, and not toyota, is crawling through the shame and surrender of bankruptcy these days. (yes, anecdotal, but it's a pretty sobering anecdote).

this all rang a bell with me earlier today while discussing proper pronunciation of foreign words, and whether or not being correct according to the people to whom the words originally belong was to be construed as pretentious. observing how little we celebrate our children's academic achievements, it makes perfect sense to me as to why americans so easily construe such accuracy as pretentious. after all, we're the ones who award far greater congratulations to those who kick small balls through rectangular frames than to those who might eventually be able to figure out how to build them. (and we're not even talking about phenomena like the little league world series here, just a little local soccer tournament).

i grew up in the land of dropped R's and broadly nasal vowels. i know exactly what a tonic is, and why it's as properly pronounced as "twawn-ic" as it is any other way. i also happen to go to the beach in "glosster", as opposed to "glosstah", but each of us here all know that there's no such place as "gloww-chester" either way, and that's a very simple truth. it's not pretentious--it's just where we live. but when we travel abroad, that's where it often starts to unravel.

first of all, i'm willing to bet that 95% of all glosster and glosstah beachgoers couldn't find honduras on an unlabeled map even if they were spotted the proper hemisphere. but it would seem to me to be very consistent with the attitude of most sports-eager and academics-bored american beachgoers, that anyone not pronouncing it as "hawn-dur-as", as they do, is somehow expressing some sort of pretention, and is as equally worthy of ridicule as those poor out-of-towners still asking directions to glowwchester. (not like us? then YOU must be wrong...)

barack obama ("bah-ROCK", not "BEAR-ick") chose to show respect to the honduran people by choosing "own-DU-ras" the other day. i guess i'm in the minority here, but that seemed pretty fair to me, and i was proud that he spoke of it as he did. (not necessarily proud of the policies, mind you, but i'm just sayin'). as far as i'm concerned, it's a big step up from having to endure my chief executive butchering fairly straightforward american english terms like "nuclear". (yeah, it's pretentious of me, but i'm a big fan of "new-clee-ar" as opposed to "newk-yoo-ler" when discussing the topic with other world leaders).

which is all to admit that lots of people are going to regard this entire rant as my being pretentious, and, i suppose, in relative terms, they're not necessarily wrong.

are we a society of laws or aren't we???

there's a law in massachusetts that restricts deliberative bodies (e.g. the lowell city council) from making personnel decisions in a "city manager" form of government. if the case of the recent elimination of funding for the assistant to the city manager position isn't a black and white flaunting of that statute, then i have no idea what else might qualify.

so here we have an illegal act committed by our elected representatives that is confirmed in recorded public comments by at least one of the guilty pols. (it's not like the act isn't its own prima facie case, but to brag about it in the public square??? that's just beyond the pale). so, is this being covered as such in the paper? has anyone filed suit? (no, and no).

this situation is so offensive to me that i have, for the first time in my life, made political contributions and resolved to get active in supporting better candidates for the city council in our next election. oh, i've signed nomination petitions before, but this situation requires of us so much more than that.

one school committee member is up on criminal charges, and the majority of our city council are ignoring state law in corrupt pursuit of bad city government. this isn't good stuff.

hey--here's another city tag line i've heard a few times:

low. lower. lowell.

brazil brazil

all the good luck in the world sometimes isn't enough, and the brazilians were up to the second half challenge, essentially scoring 4 times (though only getting credit for 3) against the overmatched US team, and earning the confederations cup without ever losing a match.

like i said before, it's a great thing to see the breaks finally being distributed fairly when the US is on the field, and if the 2002 US squad had that kind of level playing field, they may very well have appeared in that world cup final themselves. but this year's version isn't that team, and isn't by a long shot. we've got the best goaltender in the world, and, FINALLY, some guys who can play up front (how bout that josie altidore), and some rockin' tacklers at the back, (GOOCH!), so now it's time to figure out how to improve the quality across the field to where we can compete again at the top of the game. 12 months to figure it out!

u s a u s a

the soccer gods are a funny lot. (and, in case you're wondering, yes, i'm still put out by frings' should-have-been-red-card-and-penalty-shot hand ball against berhalter's bid while on germany's goal line back in '02 that was denied to the americans as much for our being americans as any sort of reasonable reason, not that the confederations cup final is even worth talking about in the same conversation as a world cup, but i'm just sayin'...)

today, tim howard sold a "save" from fully inside the usa's goal on a bid from brazil to try to tie a match that they're losing 2-1. it's worth mentioning that this is the kind of benefit of doubt that has not before been our privilege to enjoy in a major international soccer match up to this point in history, and it's a nice thing to think that it might be a small sign, (yes, a very small sign), that the soccer gods aren't necessarily on our case anymore in quite the same way that they used to be.

still a lot of time left, but a very, very encouraging sign.

usa

i was just thinking, as they played the requisite national anthems before today's confederations cup final, that brazil is certainly one of those countries whose anthem makes ours sound good. which is not to say i don't love the star spangled banner as much as anybody, i'm just sayin'.

what a good looking city

the trailer for "the invention of lying", nee "this side of the truth", has hit the interwebs, and now everybody can get a good look at what a photogenic place this beautiful city really is. and in that last little bit, about "the world's going to end unless we have sex right now"? yep, that's my street. i haven't used that particular line on it yet, but as i live right across the street, if you were to hear it, i'm sure you'd know exactly where to suggest we go.

this is officially (in my book, anyway) becoming a problem

pap is always treading a very fine line in the bottom of the 9th, and mccan's drive of a poorly-placed papelbon fastball is exhibit A for that. however, the play that's got me going right now is nancy drew's (3 k's to start the day in the #2 spot in the batting order, btw) veteran's disrespect for a sophomore, and her ignoring of the centerfielder's call for the fly ball. forget that jacoby ran 30 yards into right field to get under it, and that it might have been reasonable for him to let nancy have it. the thing is, as the centerfielder, right or wrong, IT'S HIS CALL.

this is, to me, such an obvious consequence of tito's continued blatant disrespect for jacoby's season as expressed in each night's lineup card, that there's hardly any need for further explanation. simply put, while the franconaman continues to treat his players the way he does, his players are going to continue to treat the game the way they do, which, in the case of nancy drew, is to litter the box scores every night with bats left on shoulders for called third strikes, and flyouts that verge closer and closer to adventures in game-losing.

just because they're winning doesn't mean that certain s*** doesn't stink.

irony meter overload

lou pinella, of all people, went postal on milton bradley for, well, being milton bradley.

i wonder if any of the players near the dugout tunnel during the "discussion" were able to tell the difference.

how not to run a public transportation network

yes, the T is losing money, but anyone having ridden the rails or the buses these days isn't confused about why that's so. (if the mbta were a city, it's most appropriate tag line would be dirty. smelly. unreliable). so raising the parking rates at the terminus garages is just about the most insulting thing these malfeasers could possibly imagine, i'm sure, and so it's gotta be the one thing they insist upon doing to try to bring in a little extra cash to make up for the piles and piles of it they lose each and every day to nepotism, laziness and just plain poor management. it's the way of the massachusetts bay transportation authority world.

so, to save a few miles and a parking challenge in porter square, i opted for the red line two stops from alewife the other evening, and i wound up having to pay $7 for the privilege of patronizing the public transit over the course of little more than 2 1/2 hours, in addition to the almost $4 in subway fare.

so, do you figure i am more or less likely to ever consider doing that again?

i would say they're idjits, but it's clear they're better described as horses asses. i thought the object was to get more people to ride, not punish the few who continue to, but i sure learned differently this week. the object appears to be to reduce the amount of work the text messaging train folks have to do between text messages.

of course, if your experiences may differ, i say lucky you. observing the crowds of people NOT on the trains these days, i imagine there can't be that many of you.

sox thoughts

so dustin's sportin' the youk do, and still leading off... what's his average since he was moved up? not so good these days, i'm wagering. and jd's reverting back to his nancy ways... and somebody will need to explain it to me, because i just don't get it, how it is that jacoby of the scorching hot bat and NL-style base-stealing ways is the odd man out tonight. i like kotsay, don't get me wrong, but i think it's time we put our batting order back in order, tyvm.

i think tito gets so excited about the potential double-switch thing during these NL games that he forgets that it's still OK to just score a lot of runs the AL way. (nice dinger, papi!)

heart attacks on demerol

the rich are just like us, only more so, and michael jackson's expiration in the midst of his "great comeback" is as much proof of that to me this morning as anything.

of course, first of all, in the truest spirit of one of the plus ultimate attention whores of our time, it would seem he simply couldn't allow farrah her last little moment in the sun of public attention, so he wiped all her tabloid headlines clean in order to fill them one last time with our morbid fascination with the bizarre.

graham parker penned a brilliant little paean to pop star self indulgence, "carp fishing on valium", that says it all so much better than i could:

it's impossible to stay on top
life's a never ending climb
one day you're a winner
the next a flop
i'm so over it now i don't even mind

carp fishing on valium
that's where i really want to be
carp fishing on valium
with my line out in the water
and my mind floating free

whatever nonsense this life throws at you
you gotta grab it with both hands
whatever path i take whatever work i do
i can make it if i just stick to my plans

carp fishing on valium
that's where i really want to be
carp fishing on valium
with my line out in the water
and my mind floating free

if you love me you will understand
i gotta space out now and then
all this pressure to be superman
i can make it if i just stick to my plans

carp fishing on valium
that's where i really want to be
carp fishing on valium
with my line out in the water
and my mind floating free

so the pressure of personal training with lou ferrigno, and pretending that it would all just go away, if only that next moonwalk were the perfect one, got mj into bed with the helpful services of one of the wealthy's never-ending supply of dr feelgoods, and the injection of demerol took hold of him the way his freakshow of a personality seems to have ahold of us, and there was only the great beyond to go.

took him 50 years to accomplish what elvis did in 42.

i liked farrah better...

the sum of its parts

had a thoroughly enjoyable evening at the melvern taylor and (two thirds of) his fabulout meltones show last night at toad in cambridge. johnny was off mourning mj or something, (i won't repeat the explanation melvern gave for his absence, but it was pretty funny), so we got to hear "all of the hits", as melvern is fond to say, stripped down to just dave's guitar, bob's drums, and melvern's sublime little uke.

fascinating to hear the parts more clearly, and even johnny's, because once you know the songs so well, even when the bass isn't there, it is, at least inside your head. the quintessential example came towards the latter part of the show with "bettie lou", when the last held note of the bridge is to be so deliciously followed by johnny's delightful "de doo doo doo doo" resume/lead in back to the verse on the bass. melvern couldn't resist it, either, filling it in vocally the first time through, and then throwing it back to bob for the second, though dave, ever teller to to melvern's penn when it comes to the patter, (think steven wright in a guayabera), let it slide by so we could all do it ourselves.

great fun.

also great fun was the official debut of the "i got phil'd at toad" t-shirt slash collectors item. (if your girlfriend ain't got one, then you ain't NUTHIN!, and big props to maura for the inspired expression of what it means to be a part of the entire melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones experience). it was such a hit, and such a MUST HAVE, that so many women plied phil for his dances that it would appear that phil actually and literally injured himself selflessly sacrificing his body to the cause. (no word on whether or not the photographs are going to be used for extortion purposes, observing how phil's likely going to have a great time trying to explain it all to his wife when he gets home).

the parts that came most clearly out from behind johnny's absence were all of dave's deft guitar playing, (which was such a treat to hear so clearly last night), as well as how well he and bob supply the top end to the harmonies on the vocals. it really was a treat to be able to hear all the parts that way, at least for one time, as the overwhelming conclusion one is led to draw by the experience is that melvern taylor isn't melvern taylor without his fabulous meltones, and the whole is definitely greater than the sum of all its sublime, scintillating and sensational parts.

i liked farrah better...

but the rest of this just goes to prove our endless fascination with train wrecks.

the razor

occam's razor, as far as i'm concerned, is far bigger than e=mc2 in terms of the immutable laws of the universe.

to wit: monday, an hysterical dog worshipper reported her beloved yorkie, quinny, must have been heartlessly stolen, stolen i tell you, from her car while she was shopping for groceries in tewksbury. (sorry, it's not a lowell story this time, but sometimes close is good enough for me). getting back to the story, it was reported that nothing else in the car had been taken, or even disturbed, but obviously someone must have done the unforgiveable and STOLEN the little rag mop, because, well, he wasn't there when she came out!!! even more heartstring-pulling than the theft itself, it was wailed by the woman to reporters later, was that poor quinny had bad knees and a chronic bladder stone condition requiring constant medication. who would ever do such a cruel and heartless thing???

so for two days this devoted dog lover posted signs around the town offering a $100 reward for the safe return of poor quinny (i think that's the way the dog is registered with the town for his license--"poor quinny") and no effort was spared to talk it up in the press and everywhere else people might listen. dognappers, dognappers i tell you, are roaming wild on the streets of tewksbury!!!

oh, did i mention that poor quinny wasn't wearing any identification? (something about getting him a new harness or some such). yes, no limit to this woman's affection and care for her pooch...

so want to know what we learn today? shortly after this woman was discovering poor quinny stolen, stolen i tell you, a woman nearby was finding poor quinny wandering in a parking lot across the street. she even immediately called the dog officer in town, who maintains a record of all the registered dogs so that they might be quickly reunited with their owners in case of separation... oops, i forgot--poor quinny wasn't wearing his tags... and taking out classified ads in the lowell sun to the effect that "found: dog. rte 38 tewksbury on june 22nd". (i guess while the hysterical dog lover was talking to all those reporters, she didn't have time to look in any of their newspapers...)


so three days later, finally, the woman who had been babysitting poor quinny (getting poorer every minute, i'm sure, from missing his meds) for two days finally ran across one of the flyers and made a call that i hope began with "you can stop whining now, and come and take your dog back".

so what will the razor tell us, besides that keeping tags on your dog is a pretty good idea? i think it tells us that when we unhook our little precious's dog harness in the car, and then climb out without paying attention to whether or not the little darling is actually sitting put, we very often miss the fact that little dogs do, indeed and often, slip out of wherever it's intended that they remain put, and go for a wander.

and this is news???

i think some folks in the press have got to get a better handle on their street sense...

oh wait--i forgot mr. ensign

i'm embarrassed to say that my previous screed against sanctimonious hypocrisy joined at the thrusting pelvis and hip to clear moral turpitude failed to include reference to one of the better stories of recent weeks, the ensign affair. (badump-bump).

here we have a guy who is pursuing a political agenda based on a moral high horse complete with pithy quotes like "marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded". you're damn right i think it's the public's business when operators like this are paying off their adulterous concubines (slash wife of their $150K per year campaign staffer and golfing buddy) and doubling the concubine's salary in TWO separate paid political positions in the process. (oh, did i also mention that regulary bi-monthly $500 payments were also being sent via the national republican senatorial committee to the concubine and golfing buddy's son?)

the roll call of moral hypocrites involved in these public sex scandals is so long these days, and so rife with the republican R in correlation, that it simply cannot any longer be a case where the politics can be separated from the sin. seriously. the politics of the party were predicated on sanctimony to begin with, so you simply cannot have it both ways. it's not like the D's aren't doing it too, but, geez, they're not trying to deny constitutional fairness to large portions of the population based on sexuality at the same time.

you'll also hopefully note that my real outrage is actually always about the money. know what? i'm the LAST person who should be talking to other folks about their moral behavior. i know that. anybody reading this here nonsense knows that, too. but i also know that public trust is a specific bargain with the electorate that requires at least as much fidelity as marriage, if not moreso, owing to the greater number of people involved.

wasting $40M of MY MONEY on clinton's penis is a crime against ME. paying off adulterous liaison's with public money is a crime against ALL OF US. the fact that the adulterer in question is attempting to influence public policy on moral grounds at the same time is right off the charts.

mr. vitter? yes, you, he of the DC madam appointment calls being made DURING CONGRESSIONAL ROLE CALL VOTES? you're not going to get an iota of privacy from me while you're paying for prostitutes while on the public's time. that BS about deserving privacy so you and your family can "heal"? the moment you opined that bill clinton ought to have resigned over his particular private peccadillos, you gave up any right as far as i'm concerned to be free from questions as to why you're not following your own recommended course of action in the light of your own public sexual scandal. (and we're still waiting to hear your story as to why your name also came up in the "canal street madam" case from years before).

if only these idiots would have the ethical backbone to resign... though, observing their transgressions, it's easy to see why these are be the kinds of people who would never.

let's get sex OUT of politics. everybody sit down and shut up about yours, and keep your nose out of mine.

u s a u s a

i have to admit, i was one of those fair weather supporters who looked at the undisciplined collapse against the italians, and the wholly embarrassing rout at the hands of the brazilians, and figured that the us was absolutely road kill for this tournament with one final match against egypt to go. i mean, seriously. with brazil winning twice, and italy already sporting a victory against 'em, and egypt proudly enjoying theirs against the azzuri, it was going to take a mathematician's miracle to get through. and then, even worse, they'd have to face spain who hasn't lost a match in their last 35. t-h-i-r-t-y-f-i-v-e. know any other team that has ever managed a 35 game unbeaten streak in any sport? i didn't think so.

but lets go back to this past sunday morning: first of all, to have any hope of besting everyone in their group on tiebreakers, they could not advance without winning by a minimum of three goals against egypt, which non-soccer folks can translate as three touchdowns in an american football context, as in, not very likely, even if they had a better team, which as was shown by egypts managing three goals against brazil, it's arguable they don't have. second of all, to have any hope of catching the italians, they would also have to hope that the brazilians cared enough to win by at least three as well, when their ticket to the finals was already punched and they'd be playing reserve players just for the heck of it, which makes such a result even less likely than the first condition. which is all to say, any reasonable person with a passing knowledge of international soccer was already talking about whether or not spain or brazil was going to win by the most goals in the semis on their way to the obvious showdown between the two best teams in the world.

and then...

first things first, the americans managed their 3-0 miracle in rustenburg. amazing enough all by itself. second things second, the brazilians samba'd their way around and through the italians as if they weren't even on the pitch in pretoria, and pinned the exact same 3-0 millstone around their necks as had been planted a couple of days before against the americans. (amazing that the egyptians were able to score three against 'em, but they also let in four, so there you have that). the final tiebreaker, total goals, went to the americans, and wouldn't you know it but that first goal they put in against the italians was, in the end, the difference.

miracle.

so the cynical fair weather folks got their sunday miracle, and looked at spain and said "it was nice while it lasted". i know i did.

and then...

today, in south africa, the soccer world absolutely stopped. the team of the new century, that hadn't lost a match in the last 35 it played, against the best of the best of europe and elsewhere, somehow got wrong-footed on a sly ball into a dangerous area, and watched the most improbable of upstarts take an even more improbable lead. and so they came on, and played their game. they were relentless. the shot from distance. tim howard saved. they combined in close. tim howard saved. they put more quality chances on frame than any other team would be glad to have in a week of games, and the still looked up at the scoreboard and saw that big, fat zero for all their efforts.

and then, as their amazing display of mastery and superiority continued, somehow, as time was winding down, they once again were caught wrong-footed at the back, and a carelessly misplayed ball once again wound up in the back of their net. 2-0. the ultimate miracle.

i say ultimate, because, once again, i cannot bring myself to imagine that anything else will go their way in the final match. of course, south africa might produce an even bigger miracle, and get by brazil, and at least give them a human opponent for the final. but we all know that can't possibly happen, and the yanks are going to be facing the very same team that effortlessly clubbed them into a stupor of submission only a few days before.

enjoy it while it lasts, folks, but the u s of a is playing for all the marbles in sunny (but chilly--it's winter there after all) south africa. the very first major international championship they've ever made. ever.

miracle.

yup, he's a democrat

mark sanford has often been at odds with south carolina republicans, once going so far as to bring a drove of pigs into the republican-dominated legislative chamber to highlight his distaste for their profligate spending. at last, i'm sure to the south carolinian republican party's collective delight, it can be finally be confirmed that mark sanford isn't, in fact, a republican at all!

nope, while awol in argentina these past few days, instead of doing the republican thing and trolling for gay sex partners in airport rest rooms, it's finally been admitted that mark sanford went most of the way to the south pole in order to canoodle with an unnamed adult heterosexual woman. nope, the republican way is not for mr. sanford. there were no grammatically challenged sexual text messages to teenage boys from the congressional page program. (nods to mr. foley). no snorting crystal meth and cavorting with male prostitutes in denver, colorado. (nods to mr. haggard). no trying to slip an undercover cop a twenty for a BJ in a public park. (nods to mr. allen). no plying fellow young republicans with liquor and then reviving them in the middle of the night with a little surprise mouth-to-penis resuscitation. (nods to mr. murphy). no discoveries of child pornography on home computers (nods to mr. mckee) or collections of self-videotaped sex with male prostitutes (nods to mr. barclay) or sexual solicitations of 5 year old girls (nods to mr. atchison) nor even sexual abuse of his adopted children (nods to mr. bryan).

nope, mr. sanford cannot possibly be of the party that spent more on kenneth starr's investigation of bill clinton's wayward heterosexual penis than they did on the 9/11 attacks. now, don't get me wrong, i'm not forgetting things like barney frank's little shop of horrors with steven gobie--i'm just saying that between that and his felonious oversight (both senses of the word) of fannie and freddie to match the happy hall pass given to wall street bankers by the deregulatory mccainiacs, the man is OBVIOUSLY a republican.

ok, all seriousness here: sanctimonious partisanship on all sides of this aisle situation we have in our politics these days has officially jumped the shark and gone completely science fiction. argentina? are you serious??? our elected officials are run so far amok that it's not even possible to make sense of how outrageous their behavior has actually become. and it has NOTHING to do with whether or not they're sporting a D or an R after their names. (the R examples above are chosen specifically because the hypocrisy factor on the R side is way off the charts, and not because it isn't plenty easy to find D examples, though i will say, from a rough unscientific sampling, those republican guys sure do get around).

family values??? puh-leeeeeeeze.

the D guy, tim mahoney, who took R guy mark foley's house seat, wound up paying off his ex-mistress slash campaign staffer to the tune of six figures just last fall. to his credit, the sex was heterosexual and between consenting adults, but, honestly, is this our new standard of public conduct??? it's all officially ri-DONK-ulous.

state of the city

i originally tagged a little pot shot at the lowell city council at the bottom of the previous (following, if you're reading) blog post, but i quickly realized there needed to be more said, so here i am to say it:

i marvel at one city councillor's line-standing patience, that she can so often be in the queue at city hall in order to overhear all the opinions upon which all her political votes need to be based. forget that we thought we were there to find things to cut out of our unbalanced city budget, please, by all means, lets hear more of one person's views on how to conduct onesself as a city employee. (is it just me, or is it fabulously ironic that the faux pas in question actually involved reducing city expenditures, as opposed to something which would appear to be, apparently, beyond the scope of this councillor's repertoire, judging by all those hours in the meeting that produced only the firing of this one reputedly ill-mannered city employee as the single solitary item that could possibly be found?)

the quote of the week was, of course, not hers, but, rather, another councillor's, who remarked upon voting to eliminate the assistant to the city manager position that he never really understood what the assistant to the city manager actually did anyway. great way to beef up the confidence among the electorate that the city's elected officials are all right up on top of the things on which they're supposed to be voting. There are, of course, many quotes since to try to explain the intent of the utterance, and how we're interpreting it incorrectly, but I'm stuck on the clear implications of being collectively unable to find a single solitary scrap of any other wasteful spending in the entire city budget. am i crazy, or wouldn't that suggest that the city manager, and his extravagance of an assistant, are doing a pretty damn fine job???

oh, the ironies are rich.

state of the union

i just have to say that frank capra is one heck of a cynic. oh, sure, lots of people get confused about the happy/sappy endings to all his pictures, like when zuzu gets her petals, and clarence gets his wings, but if you ever were to subtract the last 30 seconds from any one of his pictures, even if only in your imagination, you'd have a much better picture, and a much better picture of what the man was on and all about. take this soliloquy from spencer tracy as grant matthews in "state of the union":

"you politicians, instead of trying to pull the country together are helping pull it apart just to get votes. to labor you promise higher wages and lower prices, to business, higher prices and lower wages. to the rich you say lets cut taxes, to the poor, soak the rich. to the veterans, cheaper housing, to the builders uncontrolled prices". of course, the real cynicism doesn't occur until later in the picture, when you realize that no honest man can ever successfully navigate the demands of our process, but, conveniently, tracy and hepburn remain together, while the rest of us remain royally screwed, and we all can enjoy being distracted by the myth of the "happy ending".

just thought i'd reminisce a little while scratching my head about why it is that we're still mired in such pointless and polarized political pandering a good sixty years later, when we really ought to know better. (i guess shaw had it right that democracy was having the government we deserve).

an open letter to brian lindsay, vice president of business operations, lowell spinners

hi brian,

i finally made it to my first game last night, (i was away over the weekend), and i have to say the park looks great, and it's great to have baseball back again in downtown lowell.

however, i was extremely (EXTREMELY) disappointed to discover that your beer concessions have been rolled over to the miller and coors people, and there isn't a decent option left anywhere in the park. i walked from one end of lelacheur to the other looking for anything (ANYTHING) with any flavor, and like the ancient mariner says, "water, water everywhere, nor even a drop to drink. (you can spare me any excuses starting with the word "sam", as their lager, summer ale, white ale, and the whole rest of their catalog seems to me to be a pure fiction of advertising, and a complete failure of flavor, at least as far as I'm concerned. nobody sipping a red hook longhammer IPA is going to be confused about the difference, anyway).

so is it possible to start a letter-writing campaign and beg for you to consider putting something worthwhile back into your concession menu? doesn't matter if it's only a single tap, and I've got to walk all the way across the park to get it. red hook? harpoon? ipswich? anything???

it would really be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance for your consideration.

looking at the box scores...

tito's theory about jd drew being better able to draw walks against lefties than jacoby ellsbury got put into practice again last night. sure enough, in the top of the first inning, in the second spot in the batting order, our boy stood stoic at the plate and found himself at first base courtesy of the unintentional pass. of course, like clockwork, during his next two at-bats, nancy also kept the lumber on his shoulder, only these times he was called out on strikes. (when he tried to actually put bat on the ball during his next at-bat, he promptly struck out swinging to hit, so to speak, the nancy tri-fecta).

so how did our boy jacoby do down in spot number seven? infield single. rbi triple. single and stolen base. walk. rbi triple again.

0-fer-three with three strikeouts, two walks and a run scored?

or fo-fo-fo (as moses malone used to like to say) with three rbi, a run and a stolen base?

tell me, terry, which one is your fourteen million dollar veteran, and who is batting where in your batting order??

spinnah's!

finally got my opening to head down to lelacheur for the first of many summer evenings at the park. granted, the drizzly weather wasn't optimum for my own personal opening day, but the grass was green and the stadium kids were in fine voice, cheering along with the dog man while i munched on my $5 sausage with peppers and onions. snagged me a stedler division champion t-shirt for $10, too, making my grand total expenditure for the evening a nice round $20. ($4 for the seat, and an extra buck to the sausage girls for the service).

attentive readers will note the absence of beer among my total, which is hardly standard operating procedure, and there's a story to that. apparently the budweiser folks did not win this year's concession contract, and thus neither did their distribution relationship with red hook, and longhammer ipa is no longer stocked among the taps behind section 117. drew weber, if you're listening--this is a serious problem.

i hate to be a stickler about this, i really do, because there's nothing i like like a good beer at the game, but there's nothing about a sam seasonal (the only weak attempt at anything pretending to have taste in the entire ballpark, though it still doesn't have any) that even makes a charade about it. coors light? are you kidding??? sam's lager? puh-leeze. the corona cabana, or whatever that ridiculous nonsense was over there behind first base, featuring heineken, the world's skunkiest excuse for beer? at least on a hot day i'd be able to manage a corona...

like the ancient mariner knows it, "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink". i am seriously at a loss about what to do. clearly, i'm not going to be having much for beer at the ballpark this season, which undoubtedly means i'll be far less frequently motivated to make the trip, especially with the beer works right there near the destination to twist that knife one last time, and tutto bene keeping my fridge well stocked to discourage even setting out. either way, the spinners overall take will be way down where i'm concerned, and all i can say is that the penny wise pound foolish beer illiterati would have only themselves to blame, if they could ever figure it out.

philistines.

but the baseball is great.

the downtown mafia id badge

i took a swing by mambo grill a few moments ago, and snagged myself an official downtown mafia ID badge, otherwise known as a franky descoteaux campaign button. lots of time for the wags to wax on her candidacy, but her #1 qualification as far as i'm concerned this afternoon is that she was not part of that CF last week that fired a city employee for whom at least one councillor admitted he didn't know the job description, and at least five others admitted similar ignorance by voting that firing as the single solitary thing they could find to do about our looming budget deficit. i even made a campaign contribution just because it made me feel better. (made me feel so good, i very well may have to do it again).

can't wait to exercise my pique at the voting booth.

tutto bene

the marketing rounds downtown are getting longer, and it's a wonderful thing. today, in addition to shaw farm (whole, of course) milk at c'est, and jessica's (large, of course) tuscan pane at market street market, i added calamata olives and belfast bay lobster ale from the newest downtown addition, tutto bene.

i'll defer to the experts to discuss their extensive selection of wines, but i'll offer as a self-styled fan (i won't say expert) a quick assessment of their beer selection, and it's top-notch. a guy could get used to having a purveyor like that in his neighborhood. very quickly.

the other remarkable thing about dick rourke's new venture is that he GETS the whole canalway vibe, and he's selected his space (which is remarkable all in and of itself, by the way, with granite and brick and the full lowell mill ambience) so that it faces the middlesex community college peninsula and the very picturesque hamilton canal lower locks. he's even got a gig scheduled during the folk festival weekend to show off the evirons. smart guy.

he also pointed out that there's jazz thursday through saturday over at ricardo's on gorham street and an equally delectable selection of beer on tap, which sounds mighty fine to me.

see you there

politics

while i was out putting the hurt on north atlantic shellfish stocks, it would seem that some enterprising lowell city councilors were meeting in an attempt to do the same thing to our projected 2010 city budget deficit. with literally hundreds of millions of budgeted expenditures under their purview, it stood to reason that the magnificent nine could find *something* worthwhile to work on. so, i left the country confident my home town was in good hands...

well, i'm back, and while the north atlantic shellfish stocks will likely recover, it's pretty clear that the over three hundred million in spend spend spend that are our city books were never in any real danger. to wit, the sole and solitary position of "assistant to the city manager" and his $82,000 salary have been hand selected as the single solitary thing that could possibly be cut after hours (literally--hours) of deliberation.

i don't know andy sheehan. i don't know if he's $82,000 of dead weight, or god's gift to city administration and a bargain at any price.

i do know that "alive. unique. inspiring." and the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent to come up with it is a crock of shit.

i do know that funding shortfalls in the tens of millions cannot be meaningfully improved by paring five-figure salaries one at a time at city council budget meetings.

i do know that something about this stinks so profoundly of hypocrisy and personal politics that the whole lot of 'em would seem to need to be taken out behind the tsongas arena (remind me again how much we lost on that last year?) and tossed in the merrimack to start to get the stench off our fair city.

one position??? really???

i took a pretty hard stance on the city school budget, knowing that to make this whole dog and pony show work we were going to have to do a lot of belt-tightening across the board, and whining about having to do ones fair share was completely off the track. i'm actually pretty impressed with the way the schools are making progress toward their share of the number, by the way, in case you are interested. but this nonsense with the city council is such an insult to the city unions making concessions, and the city schoolkids bearing at yet another hit against their educational life chances, that it just has to be called out and held up to the light for what it is.

again, i don't know andy sheehan or the first thing about his relative worth to the city of lowell. i do know that a city councillor who says something to the effect that until the meeting that he voted to cut the position he didn't even know what the assistant to the city manager did has pleaded sufficient facts to being a lazy city councilman, if not an outright incompetent one.

and i do know that i'm going to be an active campaigner for new faces on the council in this next election, and a vociferous critic of the idiocy that we're enduring these days. this isn't a conservative thing or a liberal thing or a republicrat thing or a demican thing--it's a clean government thing, and though i lack the sort of evidence that the DA seems to have on rita faticanti for her upcoming trial regarding alleged threats against our school superintendant, i am certain i have all the evidence needed to conclude that the majority of our sitting city council are putting personal politics above the best interest of our city in this case, and it's up to me as a member of the electorate to call bullshit on that.

bullshit, lowell city council. i call bullshit.

explain to me how i'm wrong.

the pride of north preston, nova scotia

to check it out, just click the link:

the link

go ahead. really. i know i always suggest you to, and you always think about it, but, really, you can go ahead. then click on "sights". or sounds. or just listen to the intro.

i checked out north preston on google maps, and i've got to guess that there isn't a further way to be both nowhere, and still within commuting distance of somewhere. gotta wonder about the way the roads just END... you have to know growing up in one of those "black townships" that occupy all the loose ends of the world scattered about the maritimes, that it might have been touch and go for a good long time, but i'm impressed to say that carson and murray downey and marlowe smith have something going on for sure.

we caught carson burning it up at bearly's down in halifax, amidst all the white folks who can't dance, and it didn't stop 'em for a second. (neither carson, murray and marlowe, nor the white folks). here's a block that even lowell would be proud to sport: henry house, (seafood chowder and granite brewery beer, baby), hamachi sushi, (perennial best in one of the best places on earth for the fresh fruits of the sea, and i'm still pissed i didn't have time to spend an afternoon there), and bearly's house of blues. in fact, with the exception of the exceptional job that etsogo does with our sushi here, i'd say halifax has us and the rest of the world dead to rights on the seafood chowder and beer, and most places on a good room to see a good show. (the music helps). i have no idea what the locals subsist upon the rest of the time carson is back in north preston, but friday and saturday night down in halifax the joint was jumpin' and everybody was having a good time.

they even had the maritime equivalent of dancin' kurt there.

collecting experiences and tag-lining all of them

my traveling companion kept the official list, but, among many other things, i've now been to the eastern-most place in the united states, (that is, if you don't count the portion of alaska that extends across the international date line), a couple of places that like to brag they're exactly halfway between the equator and the north pole, (one in maine, and one in nova scotia), and both the "hub of nova scotia", as well as the "heart of the maritimes". (both also in nova scotia, natch). my personal favorite of all had to be bedford, nova scotia's, right there on the highway signs next to the next tim horton's donuts, which bragged of itself that it was a "traditional stopping place". i mean, can a slogan get any better and more useful than that?

of course from reading this blog you know that has to be a rhetorical question, since, as we all know, "alive. unique. inspiring." is the world's most and best self-ridiculing tag-line, bar none, (and i'd defy you to find one better/worse), but in any global running, i'd have to believe bedford, nova scotia would be right up there in the top 10 even so. we even passed the home of the world's largest axe, (no word as to whether or not paul bunyan was an international traveler), and a whole passel of other superlatives, but bedford's slogan stuck out in memory the most, which is, after all, the true test of a good tag-line. and, i bet none of them spent over a hundred grand (US, not canadian) in coming up with theirs.

yes, i've seen blueberry capitals, and traditional stopping places, but it's always home to lowell my heart does run. out of my catch-up reading in the recent lowell sun issues, the guy who left his ID on the counter of the liquor store he just robbed is my nomination for today's alive, unique and inspiring lowellian. how about you?

road trip recap!

first of all, for those of you keeping score, i'm not sure how to figure the over/under on the recent road trip. there were the lobsters consumed in toto, of course, for which a good half dozen made the supreme sacrifice. but then there were also those who wound up as comely comestible via piecework: thursday lunch's lobster stew. (milk, butter and nothing but the red-shelled beast, with pepper added to taste--mmmm). friday dinner's seafood chowder. (remarkably well-balanced with scallops, mussels, shrimp, haddock, and even some potatoes and carrots, lest anyone fear i did not get any vegetables on my trip, and so thick you could literally eat it with a fork, though a spoon was better at getting every last element from the sides of the bowl). saturday lunch's lobster dip. (with cheese, more cheese, and i'm not sure what all else besides a little extra cheese). saturday's six course dinner's every other course. (and if you're going to want me to remember exactly, you're going to have to put me under a little medicinal hypnosis, take me there, and then serve it to me again, please).

my only regret is not having had more time to add time for the hamachi sushi house next door to our halifax hotel, and about a week's worth of additional meals at the family fisheries restaurant in wilson's cove on campobello, where the market price for lobster SERVED TO YOUR TABLE IN THE RESTAURANT is $7.50 a pound. canadian. as in, less than $10 US for a whole live lobster steamed to order and plopped on a plate with fresh butter and a smile. (repeat after me: "i'll have two").

for all intents and purposes i did not sightsee, i ate my way across the maine seacost and atlantic canada, and i'm very glad i did. i still have a wad of canadian bills, too, which provide the perfect excuse to do it all over again. (i bet you and i could be in wilson's cove by dinner if we left here by noon on any given day of the week, and that's with the top down and taking the scenic route).

road trip!

it's been a long time since i've gone on a proper one that didn't involved children and staying with relatives. don't get me wrong--i'm not dissin' the concepts of children and staying with relatives, but there's something about the deltas piling into kent dorfman's brother's lincoln that doesn't quite translate with jingle bells, and "over the river and through the woods".

there's also a beautiful economy enforced by the new car's lack of trunk space that's supremely liberating. One pair of shorts. One pair of jeans. One pair of pants that'll get a person into the top-shelf seafood place on Morris Street. The small cooler. (But don't worry, it easily fits a couple of six-packs even so). No golf clubs, extraneous outfits, or pretension. (Though you know I wouldn't pack golf clubs even if I had my own tour bus). Yup, just roll into the Super 8, pull out the gym bag and toss it on the floor, and hit the hay. (Ok, the place in downtown Halifax is a bit more up the scale than Super 8, but the concept remains the same). meals (other than the afore-referenced five star seafood ecstasy on Saturday night) are planned, if you can use that word, to be taken at roadside lobster shacks up the coast, and wherever they serve a decent (imperial-sized, not US) pint. (henry house for sure). maybe a person might get to the citadel for some sightseeing, and maybe a person will get way-laid somewhere on argyle street on the way up the hill, and have to make do with a picture postcard instead.

mostly it's about not having anything or anybody to push oneself out of bed in the morning, or to put oneself into it the night before. maybe there'll be speeding tickets, (lets hope not), or maybe there won't. what there won't be for sure is anybody telling anyone else which way to go, or what pace to go to get there. i'm sad for anyone not free to take off on such an adventure with me, but you know you'd be welcome just the same.

all good things

i really never expected it to end. he'd been spinning since the late 70's, so what would have been another thirty years between friends? but, as they say in the stock market, the past is no indication of the future, and jc and his golden oldies will (apparently) not be making cappy's cappy's anymore.

rumor has it as a falling out between the talent and the ownership, but any way you look at it, a light has gone out. my first fantasy is that they redeem that wasted space above the blue shamrock with jcahgo's 2, (cmon, the decor and the artist would be a PERFECT match), but you know what they say about wishin' not making it so...

so who is going to step up?

jd, my man!

i have no idea what to make of his recent renaissance, but, trust me, i'm all for giving credit where credit is due. jd is swinging a ballplayer's bat these days, and it sure looks good on him. i guess third and sixth in the order don't agree with him the same way that second does.

edited to add:

nicky g! where and when did you learn to play shortstop? WTG!

not for nothing, but...

not for nothing, but voter turnout in the current iranian presidential election is running over 80%. who, i wonder, between todays iranians and todays americans, really understands and values democracy? i hope no one has mistaken my anti-us-major-party screeds for any sort of excuse not to get active in politics and VOTE. (just think for yourself while you're doing it, k?)

is heather unruh jewish?

i have to admit, i never saw this one coming. buried beneath the recent bikini BS is a curious inquiry that bespeaks of one unique individual's desire to understand our fave news anchor's racial/religious background/affiliation. let me first point out that i have no idea whether or not heather unruh is jewish, and i have not the slightest idea what difference it could possibly make to me if she were, or if she weren't. to me, heather's a female news jockey who sometimes wears glasses. but, apparently, to at least one other person, this sort of trivia has at least the significance necessary for them to type the word "jewish" into a google search box, and i really wonder why this should be so.

i know this wonderment is directly related to the recent fatal violence at the us holocaust museum, and trying to figure out what could possibly possess a person to perceive conspiracy behind crooked geo-politics being crooked geo-politics, and be deluded about it to such an extreme degree to be driven to random and heinous cold-blooded murder. see, from where i sit, jewish politicians have always been crooked, though not because they're jewish, but because they're politicians. same way that i know that jewish financiers are all thieves, not because they're jewish, but because they're financiers. you can insert any religious/ethnic designation of your preference into the previous sentences, and i'll agree with them, too. christian politicians have always been crooked. (boss tweed, etc). christian financiers are all thieves, too. (ken lay and jeff skilling were good christian boys from southern methodist university, etc). you can raise me a bernie madoff, and i'll call you with a benedict arnold, and sooner or later we'll always get around to naming hitler, and so what have any of us proved?

for one thing, we'll have proved that as soon as there appears to be no more compelling argument, or worse example, unreasonable opposition will require that we deny the basic facts that are being used to otherwise rhetorically corner us. "why, hitler wasn't so bad--the six million dead people that you've documented must have all been made up". or so might opine ahmadinejad or von brunn.

fitzgerald suggested that the test of a first-rate intelligence is an ability to hold two opposing viewpoints in mind at the same time and still maintain the ability to function. if, by function, one means pulling a trigger, then i submit the guy who could murder a man in a church in front of his family over a difference of opinion regarding the sanctity of life is our new einstein. not being nearly so smart, i can only scratch my head and wonder why it is that jewishness has remained our world's greatest lightning rod for specious reasoning. regardless of the reason, however, i can sincerely recommend to anyone who hates jewishness to that extreme degree that the most effective way to ensure it never ends is to exert every effort to oppose it.

drug dealers owe the dea the same way that pepsi owes coke. (the real irony is how the dea owes drug dealers to the point that one can constructively ask if they really want to stop the traffic, observing that it would mean the elimination of their jobs and their budgets). avis thanks hertz the same way republicans will be thanking democrats in the next election, and you know that obama could never have been elected if it weren't for dubya, and that's about as ironic as it gets. osama bin laden's brand has never been more valuable, and just about the only folks i can think of who have achieved selfless success at the expense of their own livelihoods are dentists. (when was the last time you had a cavity?).

funny to me to think to myself that the "classic" dentist caricature is jewish...

murphy palin

if there's anything more ridiculous than entrenched party politicians mouthing platitudes about ethics reform, it's watching "moral" crusaders crusading against tv entertainers. let's all be clear here: both the outraged and their supposed outragers are in no other business than the attraction of attention, no more, and no less, and the only possible loser of this pointless argument is going to be someone named conan.

yep, just as the public continues to play the dupe in propping up the crooked monetary side of party politics, so we also continue to click on the she-said-he-said links about what was, lets face it, a pretty lame joke that would have been properly and quickly forgotten if only any of us had a working sense of non-humor. and so we're all continuing to get exactly what we deserve.

the right answer, IMHO, is to turn off the set, or at least change the channel to something both more entertaining and more worthwhile. i bet the technique would work for lame late night shows, too. ;-)

american roulette

anyone else having a good laugh watching how stridently each of the profoundly corrupt major american political parties swears that ITS the one pushing hardest for meaningful ethics reform? the republicrats are touting the caught-in-the-earmark-jar antics of murtha, visclosky and moran, while the demicans are scrambling for targets now that ney and cunningham are locked away in federal prison and the reptile who is mr. tom delay seems to have a evolved a useful knack for dodging a fixed trial date. the scariest part is how folks aren't supposed to notice whichever bunch carries the same political designation as they do, and, inexplicably, they don't.

i have come to conclude that the american political public must be profoundly stupid, first of all, and then psychotic to boot, observing that one of the accepted clinical indications of psychosis is repeating a failed behavior while expecting outcomes to be different. honestly, if i were running the rewrite project for dsm-v, i'd simplify it all and simply tag anyone maintaining a major party affiliation as dangerously psychotic and be done with it. then, because i believe in our federal racketeering statutes, i'd haul each and every one of 'em up on charges for aiding and abetting. seriously. if you're a member, and vote a party line, (we won't even talk about the inexcusable crime of contributing to any of these guys and gals), you're the heart and soul of our problem here. yeah, yeah, you're doing it because of how bad it would be if the OTHER folks were left in charge.

well, guess what--your folks ARE the "other folks". AND their folks are too. "folks" are the two of them put together, because, and pay careful attention here, neither of them could possibly stay in power on their own merits without whipping their adherents into a frenzy opposing the "others". well, spin the chamber, taxpaying friends, because as long as this continues, it will never matter whether it turns up D or R. we're always going to be the ones with the holes in our heads, and footing the bill.

the big game

brad penny going six scoreless was HUGE.

papi once again jacking one was SWEET.

jd oming through with the 8th inning rbi was CLUTCH.

rocco's diving grab was pretty good, too.

but the play of the game so far for me was petey's monster at-bat against sabathia that ended in the walk that pushed nicky green to second, and gave jd the chance to plate the first run of the rally.

what a gamer.

what a nice comeback.

edited to add a little love for nick green. a great leadoff hit to start the rally, and then a GREAT play at short to start the top of the ninth right. sure is nice to get some good glove at short for a change.

and now for the swimsuit competition...

first of all, let's up front agree and admit that our american culture is a crazy f***'ed up mess by any rational standard. disagree? donald trump just fired carrie prejean (nee miss california) for being incompetent as a beauty queen. yep, a job whose entrance qualifications are substantially based on how a woman looks in a bathing suit, has standards.

what has this to do with current events, you ask?

well, for one thing, "heather unruh bikini" once again turned up atop the keyword rankings for my blog. and, for another thing, 1984 miss alaska contenstant sarah palin, nee heath, began her pursuit of a public career walking around in a bathing suit, (video footage here, in case you're not fully researched on your political punditry), and now she's outraged, outraged i tell you, that she and her family have yet again become the butt (no pun intended) of late night talk show jokesters.

my first reaction to david letterman's characterization of her style as that of a "slutty flight attendant" was shame, uneasiness and disquiet. i like to think that was as it should be. then, to my further shame, uneasiness and disquiet, i took a moment to muse on the whole concept of flight attendants as envisioned almost eighty years ago in this fine upstanding country of ours. from the moment ellen church parlayed a nursing certification into a job offer from boeing air transport, aka united airlines, we all happily spent the next forty years requiring as condition of employment, among many other things, that such women be single and, at least in male air traveler fantasy and to a possible connotation of sluttiness, available. think i'm coloring it wrong? think about it--the nursing requirement was quickly dropped, and boeing summarily fired the first married stewardess--their word, not mine--and bragged about it in their 25th anniversary speeches on the subject, and you can read all about the whole thing here on their web site). so, if you think about it, letterman's joke would have been reasonably considered a redundancy as recently as in my early lifetime.

so, yes, david found it fair game to characterize both an entire profession, as well as a particular national politician, as given to sluttiness. as we've observed, given that the profession itself has its roots in implying a coterie of airborne geishas, and that the politician in question once thought it quite reasonable to pursue a career based primarily on her looks in a bathing suit, this is neither so hard to imagine, nor to joke about. myself, i'm ashamed that we live in a culture where such things are jokeworthy, since i'm naturally and immediately appalled that we might ever hire and parade women as worth little more than their appearance and impressions of "hospitality". but we do it, and i say we're all hypocrites (me included) to feel this sense of outrage about it without resolving to actually do something more to stop it.

so, with that in mind, rather than shoot the messenger, (mr. letterman), perhaps we might be reserving some of the vitriol for folks like mr. trump and others who build businesses based on the exploitation of women. (for starters, we could resolve not to patronize their businesses...)

the real sticky wicket arrives in the persona of ms willow palin. not satisfied with skewering her absolutely-asking-for-it-if-you-ask-me mom, (beauty pageant contestants turned national politicians who show up in public places like yankee stadium are going to hear it all, and i don't feel sorry for their hurt feelings one bit), mr. aging pervert david letterman was further compelled to read a joke (who knows who wrote it) that in an "awkward moment during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by alex rodriguez". on the one hand, recalling that sarah's older daughter was offered up to the national media circus resplendant in her fully knocked up state last fall, this is one of those things that you think holds that same kernel of truth required for all good humor. but then you realize (as i only did very belatedly today) that the daughter in attendance at the ball game was actually only 14 years old and never (to our knowledge) having been with child. the la times blogs had the headline right: "aging man, 62, jokes about girl, 14".

let's all be clear about this: 14 year olds and fornication are clearly defined in combination as rape in our culture, and in our legal system, no matter how you slice it. ("age of consent" is one of our favorite phrases, and 14 isn't it). not having the cojones to retract the statement, and apologize clearly about having stated it, are to mr. letterman's discredit. yup, if it had been bristol, we'd be having a different conversation. but it was willow, and it was absolutely a joke too far. fcc fines and even a suspension should be thoroughly discussed.

so what else do we do about it?

again, observing that the would-be-miss-alaska is playing the public appearance game, i have little sympathy for her or for her feelings. think of enduring such as a job requirement. just because it's a bit more rigorous a requirement than trotting around a stage in a bathing suit isn't any reason for us to cut this woman any slack. she's a caricature, as ronald reagan once was as an actor turned politician, and we can only hope she learns to be as gracious about it as ronny turned out to be. it is what it is. bathing suits should never be considered stepping-stones to public office. AND, because of this, they're going to make jokes all about it each and every time. deal with it.

and, puh-leeeze, spare me the "don't make jokes about my kids" part, too. if you don't want them in the public eye, KEEP THEM OUT OF IT. but taking them out to a public place like yankee stadium will never qualify as such. sure, we all might wish everyone could enjoy a ball game with their kids, but presidential hopefuls cannot, and it's a de facto requirement of the profession to expect the jokes will come. nope, not about 14 year olds and alex rodriguez, (i should think he might have a case against mr. letterman himself, come to think of it), but about each and everything else.

and will they get shorts?

four of the gitmo uighurs got invited to participate in the "guest worker" program in bermuda, so they won't need to be making the trans-world trip to palau with the other 13. through his lawyer, abdul nasser issued a statement that "growing up under communism we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one. today you have let freedom ring." but have we?

all i feel is shame that our xenophobic terror-terrorized country can't manage to muster a shadow of the same free ideals that bermuda and palau have shown by better example. emma lazarus' words, that we should welcome the world's huddled masses yearning to breathe free, are ringing hollow today.

who are we?

but will they get sunscreen?

"a humanitarian gesture that has nothing to do with the upcoming 'compact of free association' " (i.e. $200M samoleans in US aid).

either way, it's good news: palau has agreed to accept the immigration of 17 uighurs from guantanamo who were long ago realized to be no threat whatsoever to the united states. no word on whether the uighurs themselves think a whole lot of island living, (it's certainly in no way resembling their homeland), but at least it will be relative freedom, and a chance to sneak themselves back into whatever sovereign space they feel compelled to occupy. no word yet on the chinese response, (conveniently, palau diplomatically recognizes taiwan, and not the mainland), but hopefully everyone will settle down quickly and put their attentions back on the real miscreants in north korea.

myself, i think this continues to be one of the most embarrassing and shameful chapters in the previous administration's encyclopedia of embarrassments and shames, and it's encouraging that we've found some sort of a beginning to a solution. additionally, having heard so many folks whining about how journalists come to be treated when they stumble across international borders into the sovereign territory of the miscreants in north korea, i think it's a useful reminder to our supreme international arrogance that we've been throwing rocks from a decidedly glass house for a long time now, and we really need to continue to get a better grip on ourselves.

whither the weather

yes, i know it's barely 50 degrees out there, and pea soup to boot, but i'll be damned if i'm going to break the summer streak just for this. shorts. sandals. t-shirt. (ok, fleece pullover).

terry told me so

both big pop-up and nancy have come through in a big way (nancy even did it with 2 outs!!!) and are putting the screws to the yankees while josh strangles them at the plate. it's so easy to want to dream this can keep up for awhile, but even if it doesn't, you have to give it to the guys for coming through tonight. well done.

you too, mr. green.

echoes of love

when i'm elected king, in addition to supplying tivo with the codecs to its aac (.m4a) files, apple will be enjoined to update its onboard ipod software with a control that enables you to instantly delete whatever it is that you're being subjected to at the time. yes, yes, it's your own fault when the doobie brothers' "echoes of love" pops up in the shuffle play following rancid's "leicester square", but the least your tech provider can contribute is the means to protect yourself from yourself.

which has nothing to do with anything this morning, except to observe that we all have our own unique reverberations, and getting into the right harmonic vibration with someone isn't a trivial challenge, nor stymied by just their (the other's) perverse syncopations. retreating from a demoralizing beating at the hands of much younger and fitter men on sunday morning, i had occasion to share the ride home with a fellow veteran of the probate wars, and we agreed instantly on both the fault that universally abides within, as well as that which lurks to bite the best-intended on the ass whenever they're too quick to take an ill-advised decision. of course, on sunday morning, we were in a state of infallible grace, (our recent athletic performance notwithstanding), and all was as the sunny roadway in front of us for as far as the eye and the future can see.

i have an interesting perspective on perfection these days, and stirring it up about the sublimity of lowell is just one example. what if i lived in concord, where i spent yesterday's afternoon, and all manner of picturesque and historic beauty were to be mine each and every day? and i wonder to myself, "what sort of music would they be likely to have down at the inn if i were to go in search of a scratch to my itch on any particular evening?" and so it is that i enter into any number of conversations, about place, and personae, and i find myself defending the position i cannot fathom needs to be defended, but so it is, and here i am.

i drove home under cloudier skies, yet with an even sunnier disposition. i am where i choose to be, and with whom. no one can take these choices away from me, except, and here's the supreme irony, them and me. i can't make anyone stay, anymore than they can make me. that they fear the potential inherent in that observation is, i conclude, a measure of how important and precious it all becomes. (if there were no value, there would be no fear). it's actually reassuring that no one else would make these choices i make, as difficult as it sometimes can be to convince those who likewise see the sheer improbability and impracticality of it that the choices are, indeed, made.

i got some hard times
two punks up on the subway
it's a long way to go
to get to leicester square

a hard line
it's the one you gotta cross
the one you gotta cross
to get you anywhere

if it weren't for heather unruh...

i swear, if it wasn't for heather unruh, i don't think anybody at all would be reading this collection of chicken scratchings. a full 60% of the recent arrivals here have come based on various combinations of searches on heather, her glasses, and her birthday. (nothing recently from the bathing suit crowd, which is ironic now that the season has started, but the official start of summer isn't for a few days yet, so there's still time). for the record, i don't know her birthday, but i do know she still frequently treats the newswatching public to various ganders at her newsreading glasses, so there's that. myself, i'm not given to the fantasizing about the bathing suit thing, (i think she too-closely resembles my ex, so that would be kinda creepy, and i stay away from it just in case), but i'm not here to judge those folks who might, either. (now, heidi watney, well, that would be a completely different story, though she doesn't wear eyeglasses that i know of...)

so, what is it about the sight and the sound of a person that can captivate, even if only via electronic transmission? i know i'm susceptible, as the aforementioned appreciation of heidi w would indicate, but i guess i find it a little odd that there should be so much effort put into the pursuit of people who are just images of themselves, and never the real thing. will we ever expect to really know what the means of david carradine's autoerotic asphyxiation will mean about who he was as a person, and separate from the zen campy-ness of his various kung fu tv and movie performances? it's embarrassing to admit that we even care, though i'll admit that i just knew this second shoe was going to drop when i read the words "bangkok hotel room" associated with the original reports, and it compelled me to keep reading the stories as they were released.

on a related note, the admission by the brazilian navy / air force that the debris so-far retrieved from the atlantic is NOT associated with the recent air france airbus disappearance has thrilled a very good friend of mine, who is holding out for a return of the bermuda triangle, which i would agree has not been receiving the kind of tabloid love it used to enjoy back in the day.

in the highly-paraphrased words of the immortal mojo nixon, "elvis needs airplanes".

the city of lowell. self-conscious. self-flagellating. self-distorting.

ironically, the people who often seem to love lowell the least are the ones who have lived and/or worked here the longest.

first of all, i'm not saying that mrmillcity.com isn't funny, because it very much is. however, i can't help but observe that the most frequent basis for its humor betrays a not-so-subtly negative opinion of its home city, in addition to the pointed and on-target jabs at the people who are doing their best to run it while making complete caricatures of themselves in the process. (the series of take-offs of the "alive. unique. inspiring. cluster f*** are my current faves, but there's so much more to recommend it, so please go check it out yourself).

but besides the fact that mrmillcity is usually good for a good laugh, i find its other best excuse for itself is its vast superiority to the petty and rarely worth reading self-centeredness at the lowell shallot, who is at least coming to realize and recognize the substantial difference. (but it says a lot that the afore-linked post can't even help itself from a pointlessly irrelevant and highly questionable "i may have done it first", as if nothing of value here can be created apart from the infallible mind of the shallot dude). can't help but think there's not a small amount of freudian homoerotic desire betrayed in photoshops like this one, or am i wrong?

so who, what or why could possibly have caused people to hate things here so much? when i walk around, i'm supremely happy with my home town, despite its blemishes, warts and cancers. (actually, more likely, because of them, but that's just me). anyone else have the misfortune to get caught in cambridge or somerville these days? i have to hold my nose whenever i'm forced to endure them, like i'm stepping in dog crap with every stride up mass ave, and if it wasn't for the sublime joy that is melvern taylor and the lost onion, or jen kearney and her fabulous meltones, or vice versa, who always seem to be playing down that way, i don't think i'd ever bother. (a friend's description of getting caught in harvard square during "class days" this past weekend is a classic, to which i will never be able to do justice in re-telling, so i'll just leave you with the observation that there likely has never been as many blue blazers in close proximity since the brooks brothers assembly line, and there's nothing quite like white males celebrating the socio-economic predominance of white males to remind oneself of how lucky one has it here in the land of 1000 colors and languages.

los lobos are opening up the summer concert series over at boardinghouse park in a couple weeks. the spinners play six in a row at home to start their season over at the jewel that is lelacheur park starting on the 19th. the noodles at viet thai are still the best you'll find anywhere around. where else in the world do you get all this within walking distance of each other?

best place on earth. you can tell 'em i told you so.

and a river runs through it

world-class cities generally sit on world-class rivers. sometimes, no prominence of water can seem to do much to redeem its settlments, (e.g. springfield and hartford hardly deserve their places along the mighty connecticut, though old lyme has a disease named after it, and barma forebears did enjoy a time up in scenic barnet, vt, so there's that), though other times, little tributarial trivialities can find themselves promoted to all sorts of reknown, even though they're little more than babbbling brooks for their most part. (e.g. the peripatetic and absolutely aimless charles, barely managing 80 miles from head to foot, or 26.2 miles as the crow flies and the marathoner runs, wouldn't be much of anything were it not for the accident of a colonial seat in boston back in the day, and some dude named lowell setting up shop alongside back in 1813).

well, francis cabot knew a hydraulic dead-end when he worked alongside one, and it was barely a decade before he became distracted and enamored with the majestic merrimack. i've always found it remarkable that the whole setup here in eponymous lowell, massachusetts, was engineered from what amounted to scratch, and not at all a creation of its original inhabitants. the folks in dedham dug the first canal in north america out of the flank of the quinobequin/massachusett/charles because it was there where they lived. but francis cabot lowell and his ambitious cronies saw the power of the merrimack, (no coincidence to me the south chose to nickname their CSS virginia after it), and put themselves here for no other reason than to create what was then one of the most dynamic and productive cities ever designed by the mind of man.

today, i think most people miss the fact that the merrimack is one of the most beautiful rivers you can dream. maybe it's because we're acculturated to expect beauty to equal wilderness, but it amazes me how few people choose to make it the center of their recreational lives, even while so many grow up and live a literal stones throw from it. maybe it's the fault of the national park service, who is always crowing about the significance of the original industry here, but upon the banks of the merrimack just a short distance away from the "mile of mills" are sited what may very well be the largest wine cellar and wine selection in new england, (at the stonehedge inn in tyngsboro), and one of the most historic and storied golf courses around. (the vesper, on tyngs island, site of the first massachusetts open golf championship, and home also to a champion cycling club and mutton farm back in the day).

today, plum island kayak, of newburyport and salem, is spreading the news about their third and newest location at the bellegarde boathouse on pawtucket boulevard in beautiful, scenic and pastoral lowell, massachusetts. all day, saturday, june 6th, they're offering FREE hourly kayak rentals on a 1st come 1st served basis, so there's no excuse not to head down and check them out. beats the heck out of the charles, as does the city of lowell the stuffing and starch out of every other small city in north america.

free association

religiously motivated "pro-lifers" gunning people down in churches has me a bit unsettled today. a few days ago it was the colossal waste of teenaged human time represented by hand-held gaming devices. yes, you'd think the two thoughts together might have proved too much for top-down philosophy, but i'm pleased to say that dappled sunlight on stone walls whizzing by at we-won't-say-how-many miles per hour has triumphed once again. (i often find there's little a sunny day backroads wind in a convertible can't improve).

today i have realized that the joy inherent in those hand-held devices is simply in finding the face of their author inside them. as i watch my children share strategies and tactics for besting the successive challenges, i can hear the same spirit among them as in the most rewarding and worthwhile of human endeavors. similar to building a bridge, or growing enough food to feed the world, or curing cancer and the dreaded swine flu, all of these offer a similar reward--that of unlocking a mystery, and becoming one with its resolution. in the case of a nintendo ds and pokemon diamond, the triumph is so minor as to become infinitesimally insignificant. the AHA moment in the convertible was to realize that the reason the triumph is so infinitesimally insignificant is that the author was simply human. the cancer and the swine flu? now we're talking to and about capital G-god, and some real potential for joy.

and so i know that the universe has a creator--if there was no intelligence behind the puzzle, there would be no joy at its solution.

which all brings me back to kansas, and a tragedy that holds no joy, and no solution to anything. if only those so righteously convinced of the divine inside their dark and all-too-human hearts would stop to look for the beneficence of the creator in the potential "solution" they might contemplate, or its absence, then maybe we would have fewer tragedies, and more compassion in this world for the precious treasure that is this life of ours.

or, we could all invest in convertibles. then we'd all see it's not the engineer that is the joy--it's the sunlight on the stone walls.

or we could close two and save twice as much...

dr. superintendant scott and the city of lowell school committee tossed the rogers middle school into the budget bonfire this past week, lamenting its passing but acknowledging the reported millions that will be saved by its closure. being an outsider to the calculations, i can only guess what might be saved, from heat to electricity to custodial services. fair enough. regretable, but fair enough.

so it is with surprise this morning that i read of the further money that is promised to be saved if the school department administrative offices are moved out of the bon marche building downtown, and combined with the family literacy center (from palmer street) and the lowell adult education center (from across from city hall) in that very same rogers middle school building, to have been recently vacated by the schoolkids.

forgive me if i'm lacking in imagination, but how does one save money by pretending to close a building that's not actually going to be closed?

in any case, it would seem that dr. superintendant scott and the city of lowell school committee have achieved one of their goals by capturing the attention of the city folks now panicked about what might become of the downtown once another 150 workers are vacated from its environs. i absolutely do not question that it's the right move for the school department budget to consolidate and shrink wherever possible, but, to me, this is just a fine example of why trying to settle a school budget in a vacuum isolated from all the other city budgets and considerations is only going to be a huge wasted exercise in moving deck chairs. we taxpayers are still going down with the collective ship.

see, the way i see it, the city will still be paying to keep the rogers middle school building open, and merely saving a few hundred grand by moving employees out of the downtown area and into a remote neighborhood that likely won't appreciate the extra traffic, nor be able to profit by the presence of so many additional workers. the domino effect of further neutron-bombing the already distressed downtown area can't possibly be good for anybody, either. (a large part of the savings of moving folks out of the bon marche building will be in parking expenses currently collected by the city of lowell, but not for much longer).

i sure wish we weren't in "every budget for itself" crisis mode right now. it's pretty clear from beyond the kvetching that the net result of all of this will be not a whole lot of savings, and not the city anybody would have chosen had we been free to think things through. basically, for a few dollars, our schools will have larger class sizes and fewer educational services, while our downtown will have smaller tax and parking revenues. the few business owners generous enough to be trying to keep the downtown struggling along will be taking the brunt of whatever "savings" are being discussed, and the city will still have an ugly spending crisis to face.

the real answer to all of this will take far longer than one budget cycle to fix, and it's in attracting business to the city which will employ our residents, and give us all the means by which to build the future we all prefer through both taxes and the income those employed residents will be able to spend in our local businesses. (which will themselves be paying more in taxes, too). an educated and motivated workforce is an important part of the equation, so our public schools and our local colleges should continue to be key investment priorities. which is to say, so when marty meehan says he wants to expand his operation towards our downtown, we should be falling all over ourselves to make it easier for him. (reasonably, though, so his swell head doesn't dream up too much nonsense for reality to support).

anything we can do to turn umass lowell into a destination school and not a safety net is part of the solution. so is working to ensure that the city of lowell public schools stay at the top of the list of urban systems in massachusetts. just don't pretend that moving desks between buildings here is going to have anything to do with our future success.