The Moment

The Moment
Originally uploaded by brianmc94

We're back. It was a wonderful, fun and exhausting week, and it's good to be back in the real world. I'll post more later, but I'll leave you with a picture for now. Click on it to see more.

Red in the Face

Last night marked the return of softball.

I may not be the most athletic person in the world, nor am I the most coordinated. I'm slow as a turtle in the outfield and have no arm to speak of; however, I can do one thing well, and that's hit the ball.

So needless to say, as I swung and missed at the second pitch I faced, I wasn't remotely concerned. Even though I started thinking about it. The sight of my bat hitting empty air mere inches away from the ball as it floated back to earth on the downward side of its gentle arc must have rattled me more than I thought.

Because I did the same damn thing next swing. I struck out. At slow pitch recreational softball.

Slow.

Pitch.

Softball.

Egad.

I'm not sure what was worse - the desire to go beat myself over the head with my bat, or listen to the snickering from my own bench . . . and believe me, I deserved it. That pitch had a wicked - and I mean wicked - twelve-foot arc. From the time the pitcher released it to it reaching the plate, I could have walked over to the drinking fountain, sipped some water and returned.

Fortunately, I'm not a professional . . . because, let's face it, if I was, I'd starve.

The beauty of recreational league sports is that all is forgotten - usually by the next inning. The problem is that I won't forget. Maybe they have batting cages in Jamaica . . . I'll have to check into that . . .

Little Girl Lost

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are private detectives living in Boston. In Gone Baby Gone, they're hired by a desperate aunt and uncle to locate their missing niece. Hindering them is a strangely disinterested mother, a resentful police force and the nagging question of whether Amanda MacReady is really better off with her own mother in the first place?

I read this book before I saw the movie, and found both to be well worth the time. Dennis Lehanne clearly loves the view of Boston from the bottom, and like all successful series (Gone Baby Gone is the fourth in a series of five novels) he creates a memorable cast of characters to populate his version of the city.

If you're a fan of The Wire (which Lehanne wrote several episodes) or crime noir stories, or even the movie, you won't be disappointed by the book.

Unfocused

The first chapter of David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter is completely compelling and totally absorbing. Unfortunately, the other 620 pages fail to live up to the promise of the first few.

The Coldest Winter purports to be a history of the Korean War, a story ranging from the lowly privates who fought the battles to the heads of state who sent their young men to fight for a country that no one was particularly interested in.

After spending time with the soldiers who initially fought the Chinese at Unsan, Halberstam goes on to describe the various players involved in this drama - Kim Il Sung, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Chang Kai Shek, Douglas MacArthur, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman. The combined miscalculations, fears and egos of these men lead to five years of war in a country that none of the principal fighters really wanted to fight over.

China wanted to strike at the United States in defiance of its support for Taiwan. Douglas MacArthur wanted to leave the world stage as a great general, Joseph Stalin wanted China and the United States at each other's throats, and Harry Truman had a powerful China lobby and resurging Republican minority at home to contend with.

Needless to say, that's a hell of a lot to cram into a book, and Halberstam does it, but I don't think he did it particularly well. He goes into great details outlining the causes of the war and its early days, but he completely glosses over the last two years of the war. He goes into some detail on some of the battles and completely glosses over others - I would have liked to read how the First Marine Division held off six Chinese divisions while escaping the Chosin Reservoir, but all we get is "it was a magnificent battle." I'll bet it was.

Overall, I would say if you're looking to learn more about Korea, this is a good place to start. I plan to spend a little more time reading about it in the near future, but hopefully, I'll find something with a little more focus.

TEMBLOR!

Some would take earthquakes the morning you were leaving for your bachelor party as an omen. I didn't, mainly because I slept right through the first one. The first indication that something was amiss was when Darcy asked me if I felt the quake in the middle of the night.

I flipped on the TV to see what was up, and I was instantly sorry.

Our local Fox station had completely given in to their worst impulses, so I opened my morning watching the anchors interview a producer who was at the station during the quake. The anchors were trying to get her to talk about the fear, the panic, the sheer terror of standing around as the earth rocked itself apart. Apparently, all they did was stood around looking at each other. The only fear came in when they saw the light fixtures were shaking a lot. So they moved.

Fortunately, they were able to cut away to the scene of a house fire in North St. Louis. The reporter opened by saying the fire started, ironically right around the time of the earthquake. Now, I'm no expert, but I don't think there was anything ironic about that - coincidental, perhaps, but ironic, not so much.

The reporter moved on to talk about how seated behind her was the woman who risked her own life to save her seven children trapped in the house. Now that's heroic, and I'm pretty sure it's also news; however, we never got to hear from her, because the reporter was talking to a firefighter. Here's the gist of the exchange:

Reporter: "Was the fire caused by a gas line that ruptured in the earthquake?"

Firefighter: "No. We think it was faulty wiring in the basement."

Reporter: "Could the quake have caused the wires to break open and start the fire."

Firefighter: "No. That's very unlikely. It would be impossible to prove."

Reporter: "Are you sure the earthquake didn't cause the fire?"

Firefighter: "Yes."

At this point, rather than recover what was left of her dignity and professional pride and either leave or talk to the woman who saved her family, the reporter went on to a charming story of how they heard meowing as they arrived and after looking around, they found THIS - as the camera swung up to show a cat lounging in a window.

Having seen enough, I changed the channel. I could see that the local CBS affiliate meant business - Larry Conners was in studio sans tie - and with his top two buttons undone. He must have breathlessly raced into the studio to make it for the broadcast, and he was waxing poetic about earthquakes in history. Why bother with a geologist when you can find a professional news anchor?

I moved on to breakfast.

After running a few errands, I was goofing off in the sunroom addition to my house. That's when the aftershock hit. At first, I thought it was wind. Then I realized that it was another quake. Then I realized that the sunroom on the back of my house has the structural integrity of a box of kleenex, and perhaps I should get out.

So yes, I survived Quake 2008 and moved on to more important things, like a bachelor party weekend in Chicago.

Statistical Madness

It's that magical time of year when young men's thoughts turn to baseball. Yes, the season's only two weeks old and I've probably watched about 30 hours of it. Over the years, I've developed something of a routine for the season --- follow it fanatically for about three weeks, let it fade into the background until July, then pick it up again for the playoffs.

You would think that given my love for the game, I would also be a fantasy baseball fanatic. But I'm not. About six years ago, I joined my last fantasy league. I spent hours poring over scouting reports and publications, I tinkered with budgeting scenarios left and right, and spent every morning studying box scores with talmudic intensity.

Needless to say, I had my ass handed to me.

But I noticed something else - while willing my players to succeed, I'd manage to completely lose any joy I took out of the game. After that season, I hung up my box scores and scouting publications.

This is the central lesson of Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe. Sam Walker, baseball columnist for the Wall Street Journal, entered Tout Wars, the nation's premier fantasy league in 2004. He thought his insider's knowledge of the teams, players and managers, combined with some statistical analysis, he'd blow away the sabremeticians and (big-time) rotogeeks in the competition.

What followed was a descent into madness. Walker ended up spending close to $50,000, lost track of friends and family, had severe stress-induced back spasms, and finished close to the bottom of the pack. And he chronicles every step of the journey.

If you've ever fanatically followed a sport (or are a fantasy geek), this book is a must-read. Take, for example, Walker's and his statistician, Sig's, statistical breakdowns on the personal lives of players:

The results, unscientific as they may be, are nonetheless fascinating. Marriage has no impact on performance. Players who double their salaries play only slightly better the following season. Those who are arrested for drugs, guns, or lewd conduct show no appreciable change, but anyone who commits assault sees a performance dip. Having a first or second child isn't significant, but 80 percent of the players who had a third child saw their statistics decline more than a player of similar age. As for the impact of religion, Sig's analysis yielded a troubling conclusion: "Turning to God," he says, "costs you 2.5 runs a season."

As the season wears on, Walker's team falls further out of contention. He debates whether he should trade David Ortiz for Jose Guillen. After deciding to pull the trigger on the trade, Ortiz goes on a rampage (this was 2004, the year the Red Sox humiliated the Cards in the World Series) and Guillen gets benched for the last week of the season after throwing a temper tantrum against manager Mike Scioscia. Walker's (and his teammates') reaction shows just how far they'd fallen.

In the end, Walker returns to society, and he still continues to play Tout Wars today, just not with the same religious zeal. If you enjoy learning about a slightly lunatic fringe of the baseball world, this book is well worth your time.

Out of Registration

"Where are you going with that?" Darcy's voice rang out behind me as I slinked away from the dinnerware set aisle carrying the registry scanner. We were registering for wedding gifts one fine Saturday not long ago.

"I just wanted to check something out," I said, smiling (I hoped) convincingly.

"Towards the snack aisle!"

Damn. I'd been made. Time to retreat. I returned the scanner to the cart, foiled again.

You see, I had a plan. All I wanted to do was inject a little life, a little levity into the whole gift registration process. Anyone could register for plates, cookware or tablecloths. After working at Target for years, and seeing couples register for the same things every time, I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be different.

I thought registering for 200 bags of Doritos would do the trick.

Unfortunately, I might have let this plan slip out at a less opportune moment, and by that I mean when Darcy was around. She didn't seem to find it nearly as entertaining as I did.

"If you do that, your friends will buy 200 bags of Doritos," she said.

"True," I said, thinking of salty, nacho cheesy goodness.

"Are you going to be able to return 200 bags of Doritos? Do you want to explain it to the store?"

Granted, it may be a hassle, but think of all the fun the store will have taking them back. Well, most of them -- It would be a shame to not open one, two, or ten bags.

Unfortunately, in the end, my genius was appreciated more by my male friends than the female ones, and I relented and agreed to no Doritos. Or dart guns. Or plasma televisions.

I said nothing about Fritos though. Time to hit the registry . . .

Paging Mr. P.

Dear Mr. Paul P.,
I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking good care of your old home phone number, and over the last few years I've put it to good use. However, I would appreciate it if you could, perhaps, start paying your bills and not giving your old phone number to your creditors.

Apparently, there are something like 850,000 collection agencies scattered around the world, and they're all trying to reach you.

Thanks,

Brian

Hoodwinked

A little aside here - I read this about a month ago, and I had to return it to the library; however, I also lost my notes, so this isn't one of my finer reviews . . . it's coming straight from (my somewhat poor) memory. With work and the wedding plans coming along, I've fallen behind in this little project - I have three more books to write about in addition to this one.

I'm not an economist; hell, I can barely figure out that whole checkbook thing. However, it's always seemed to me that something was off with how our government spends our money, and how the party of fiscal responsibility was acting like anything but.

Enter Jonathan Chait's The Big Con: How Washington got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics.

Chait tells a rather eye-opening tale, of how of the three big supply-side economics proponents, only one had a background in economics - and he was run out of the Nixon administration on a rail after grossly overestimating the GDP, to his boss's chagrin. However suspect their economic theories may have been, members of the Republican party began to see this as a nice way to start picking up votes.

A book like this could easily become a liberal rant against the modern conservative movement, but Chait doesn't really fall in this trap; he's well-read and well-researched, and he writes the book with a nice bit of bemused exasperation throughout.

Chait could have also filled this book with endless tables and charts, but it doesn't drag down into an Economics 101 lesson; it's more a long look at recent history and how we got where we are today. I enjoyed reading this, although I found myself rolling my eyes at the leaps of logic the supply-siders take to justify their theory with a near-religious fervor.

You Can Take the Guy Out of the 80s . . .

In truth, I should probably be embarrassed about this . . .

I was Righteous!
I scored 95% on the

Take the 80s quizby SheGoddess: Quick Weight Loss

H/T Five Dollar Radio

Human Tornado

The house looked as if a tornado swept through it - especially the kitchen. Plates, glasses - mostly intact - covered nearly every counter, and the floor looked as if it hadn't seen a broom in many months (which it had the night before, I'm just not sure I actually swept anything up).

We held a small dinner party for some friends, and for some reason, Chris and I decided that splitting nearly an entire bottle of vodka between us would be a good idea. Keeping up with the good decision motif of the evening, after they left, I figured I would straighten the kitchen a little, resulting in pieces of martini glass flying everywhere.

Fortunately, I had my trusted broom, but after I swept maybe one piece of glass into the dustpan and missed the trash can, it was decided that the mess could wait until tomorrow.

And wait it did.

I continued my home improvement run at the top of the stairs when I missed the light switch and neatly caught the picture of Darcy's grandmother that I bumped right off the wall. I followed that up by spilling the contents of a water glass all over the nightstand.

All in all, an impressive run for the evening.

Surprisingly, I don't feel too bad today, but the afternoon is young. And the cleaning was significantly easier this morning - I didn't create nearly as much shattered glass.

Taking Things Too Far

After hearing many proclamations of The Kite Runner's greatness, I thought I would give it a chance, and while I wasn't disappointed, I also can't help but wonder who runs the hype machine and how they decide what gets pumped out of it.

The basic story is that Amir, the main character, must return to Afghanistan 20 years after he and his father fled the violence engulfing the country in the wake of the Soviet invasion. Amir's best friend (and servant), Hasaan desperately needs his assistance, and Amir needs to forgive himself for his betrayal of Hasaan years before he fled to America.

Hosseini paints a vivid picture of Afghanistan - from the idyllic days preceding the end of the monarchy to the nightmare of the Taliban; it's clear that he dearly loves his home, and suffers for the excesses of the Taliban. He creates an almost too-perfect character in Hasaan, who sacrifices and pays a heavy price for his loving heart and nobility (it was like he took the character of Jim from Huckleberry Finn and tried to REALLY make him suffer). The characters are engaging and it's hard to put this book down, but it seems like Hosseini became so wrapped up in suffering and redemption that he couldn't resist adding just one more twist to the entire story.

Having said that, I did enjoy reading this far more than other products of the hype machine (I'm looking at you, DaVinci Code). The Kite Runner, while in my opinion, a little flawed, alternates between gripping, horrifying and heart-wearming, which is a great trick. I'll definitely pick up Hosseini's next novel sometime soon.

International Man of Mystery

What do we really know of William Shakespeare? He (probably) wrote several plays that are widely heralded as classics. He borrowed ideas liberally from many sources. While he was reasonably well-off, he was never as famous as one would think, given the amount of accolades and attention sent his way.

Bill Bryson tries to answer these questions in Shakespeare - The World as Stage, a brief look at the life (and times) of William Shakespeare.

This is a short book, which is appropriate, considering the rather large number of primary historical sources available to today's historians. Considering the place Shakespeare's work holds in modern literature, one could find this rather surprising; however, the years and shoddy record keeping of the time have made Shakespeare more a mystery than the world's most famous playwright.

I'm a big fan of Bryson's work - he has a humorous, light writing style, and his research is always first rate. It's the little facts and the side characters that bring Bryson's works to life. For example, there are only six examples of Shakespeare's signature remaining in the world today . . . and none of them are spelled the same way. Charles and Hulda Wallace, a Nebraska couple, found many examples of Shakespeare in the public record early in the 20th century; they probably would have found more, except that Charles became increasingly paranoid and was let go by the University of Nebraska, where he was a professor. Don't feel bad for Wallace though - his follow-up career was looking at land and determining if it contained oil. He sunk most of his remaining money in 160 acres in Texas - that happened to be one of the richest oil finds in history. Wallace, among others are some of the major players in Shakespeare scholarship.

In addition to the eccentric side characters, Bryson spends time acknowledging the debt we owe Shakespeare today:

"Among the first words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). Where would we be without them? He was particularly prolific, as David Crystal points out, when it came to attaching un- prefixes to existing words to make new words that no one had though of before - unmask, unhand, unlock, untie, unveil and no fewer than309 others in a similar vein. Consider how helplessly prolix the alternatives to any of these terms are and you appreciate how much punch Shakespeare gave English."

Suffice to say, I enjoyed this book a lot. It's a nice, simple introduction to the life of a man who helped shape literature and language today.

Paperweight

I sat down last week to do some serious goofing off in front of the computer screen. I had the itch to get my nerd on. I sat down and proceeded to log in, only to discover that as I typed, nothing happened.

I rebooted. Same result. Concerned, I looked up the controls and found the keyboard driver had been corrupted. This was another sign.

It started with the mysterious internet activity as I was doing something online. Then there were the vague messages from my virus software saying it was trying to shut down but couldn't. I began to suspect that this was no longer the computer I had brought home last year.

It was corrupt. Unclean. Virus-laden.

I tried reinstalling the drivers, but I couldn't locate them; nor could I bring them up via the internet, since I couldn't type addresses. Basically, I had a paperweight that hummed softly. Not very useful.

So I did what I always do when I have a computer problem - hit up my brother for help. For the cost of lunch, he confirmed my suspicions: a virus was running amok through my hard drive.

Now I have a newly-rebuilt hard drive, and I've spent the last week reinstalling software and jumping through the hoops of getting my computer back to where it was before the crash.

It's annoying that we live in a world where computers nearly think for themselves and we communicate instantaneously, and some horse's ass gets his jollies by fucking with other people's stuff.

I've taken steps to insure that my computer is more secure, and all my work stuff is on my Mac, which isn't under much virus threat. So it really was a case of no harm, no foul. I still want to kick the little twerp who wrote the virus in the ass though.

Gangs of Chicago

On a fall day in 1989, Sudhir Venkatesh, a Master's sociology student at the University of Chicago, wandered into nearby housing projects, something he was explicitly warned against. Venkatesh was armed only with his wits and an old sociology survey, asking questions such as "What does it feel like to be black and poor?"

Fortunately, Venkatesh is nearly fearless and he's equally curious, because he came away from that night having met JT, a leader of the Black Kings, one of the biggest gangs in Chicago. He chronicled this story in Gang Leader for a Day, in which he described the five years he spent with JT and others in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago.

This was an amazing book; Venkatesh, in addition to being fearless, curious and somewhat naive, is also one hell of a writer, and the final product is easy to read and well worth the time.

As he spent more time in the housing projects learning more about the inner workings of the gang, he also learned how the people living there deal with the presence of poverty and the crack-dealing gangs. He never glorified there life; in fact, Venkatesh was frequently uncomfortable around JT when he enforced his rules through violence or when he discussed aspects of the drug trade, and as he gained the trust of the residents, he lost the trust of the police assigned to the projects.

In the end, Gang Leader for A Day is a fascinating look at inner-city poverty, and how the residents, gangs, and others live and work together in a fragile, somewhat uneasy alliance.

Looking Back

A few weeks ago, someone asked me just how much I read. I couldn't answer. I probably read 25-30 books last year, but I honestly can't say for certain. So my plan is to write a paragraph or two about everything I read this year and see just how far I get. I already posted one review, and here's the second.

I'm shamefully ignorant of Missouri and St. Louis history. I know quite a bit about US and world history, but Missouri & St. Louis? Little, if any. This is not something I'm proud of. St. Louis has a long and distinguished history as French and Spanish traders settled a small outpost just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

Which led me to A History of Missouri: 1673 to 1820 by William E. Parrish. It's the first in a series regarding the region's history. I found this to be fairly interesting, especially in the early settlement period, where names such as the Chouteau, Christy, and Rosati frequently came up.

I'm not going to call this a particularly engrossing book, however. Parrish's writing style is very dry and factual. There's not a lot of side stories or deep looks into the characters of the early settlers of the region, but that's not the purpose of the book or the series. As a survey of Missouri history, it was very informative and a quick 200 pages, which made it nice to read as I recovered from the flu last week.

I'll probably pick up the next book in the series sometime this spring, but I have plenty to occupy my time between now and then.

Life and Liberty

A while back I heard an interview with Andrew Napolitano, a judicial analyst with Fox News. His most recent book, A Nation of Sheep, discusses government excesses in a post-911 world. I poked around the library, but was unable to find that book. I wound up reading Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, his earlier book.

Napolitano's basic argument is that the US government willingly and happily breaks laws every day in order to enforce them. The book is full of examples ranging from simple criminal cases to post-911 abuses, including the questionable incarcerations of Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi. Napolitano's basic theme is that government is not your friend.

This book is an eye-opener, and it's disturbing to see just how bad thing could be even before September 11. Unfortunately, it seemed like Napolitano went out of his way to personally bash Bill Clinton and Janet Reno several times; no surprise given his background and current affiliations.

Still, partisan sniping aside, this is a worthwhile book to read, if for no other reason to see that our government, like any other man-made institution, is just as fallible as any other, and requires supervision and vigilance lest it run amok.

Downtime

I came home Friday with a song in my heart and the flu in my lungs, so I've spent a lot of time enjoying Saturday television and looking over the blog - between bouts of fever delirium (102 degrees! Let the good times roll!) . I have a few ideas on changes, but for now, you'll just have to enjoy the new header graphic.

Corporate Responsibility

I bought a new cell phone a few months ago. It's small, lets me check e-mail, and lets me talk to people who are far away. In short, I've been pretty happy with it.

One thing that attracted me to said phone was the price tag. It was fairly inexpensive, and with the rebate, I was getting 1/3 off the price; plus, all I had to do was sign a two-year contract. No problem; I'm generally happy with my carrier, so two years is fine by me.

So a few nights back, I checked the rebate's status and discovered it was declined.

Huh.

Following the instructions on the web page, I called the listed phone number, and was told to call a different number. Because apparently, the number listed was the customer service number; I didn't have a problem for them - it was the rebate they offered. Steam started leaking from my ears at this point.

I called the new number, and waited. And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All the while, I passed time by looking up rival phone companies' plans and phones, and figured I would save them a lot of trouble by simply dropping them and going with someone else. Meanwhile, every six seconds, a recording came on, telling me how they appreciated my business. Right.

Finally, a human voice spoke through the phone. She asked for account information, which I gave, and when I asked why the rebate was declined, she said it was because I didn't sign up for a two-year contract extension.

"Wrong," I interrupted her pre-programmed sales droning. "I signed one the night I bought the phone. Check your records, because I'll fax them to you tonight if you don't find them there."

"Hmm. Let me check." A minute or so passed. "I checked and you were right, sir. I don't know why this happened. I'm expediting your check."

I thanked her and hung up.

Now, I may not be the brightest soul on earth, but two years ago, I purchased two phones through this company, and they tried pulling a similar trick. Unfortunately for them, I keep pretty good records and was able to prove that they were full of crap. It seems awfully strange that the same damned thing would happen to me a few years later. I wonder why they're losing business in droves.

I've long thought the cell phone industry in this country was a joke; phones that are way overpriced so that the discounts can draw in new customers; service that's lackluster at best; oh, and a small honesty problem on top of that. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envision them declining all rebates automatically, gambling that a fairly small percentage of customers will call in and fight them.

I had already considered going to a new carrier when the contract was up; thanks to this little incident, I'm not considering anymore.

In Honor of Cloverfield

Forget this new-fangled johnny-come-lately I'm-gonna-eat-Manhattan wannabe. Here's a real monster facing his greatest foe: