Further Stuff About Wal-Mart

A few weeks ago I posted a number of reasons why I don't like Wal-Mart, which had little to do with the chain's questionable labor and business practices and a lot to do with my generally less-than-pleasant experiences as a consumer at Wal-Mart.

Well, I'm not going to absolve Wal-Mart of running stores that, in my experience, aren't very enjoyable to shop in, but I will credit them for the fine store I was in yesterday. While gallavanting around the Southern Tier, we stopped in the Wal-Mart in our former town of residence (Allegany, NY, for those inordinately curious). This Wal-Mart was generally one of the nicer ones I've been in (although it was little better than a train wreck on Saturdays, when people flocked from the hills to do their weekly shopping), and since the last time I was in that store, several years ago, it has been extensively remodeled and redesigned so it's quite nice now indeed. The electronics section, for example, has been enlarged with several entrances added (every other Wal-Mart I've ever been in has one entrance to the electronics area, which makes for bottlenecks). The checkout area is devoid of cluttered merchandise, as are the main aisles, and the floors are as shiny as I've ever seen. It was all quite surprising, really. They do still have the "Carton cut open and put on the shelf" thing going on, as well as the "wooden pallet stacked with merchandise, just as it came in off the loading dock" thing going on in some of the aisles, but not nearly so bad as the Wal-Marts here in Buffalo. Oh, and big carts.

So, this one store was not dirty. Still evil, of course. But not dirty!

A Brief Observation on the matter of....Coffee.

[Being a transparent attempt to merely take up space on the blog with a post of dubious content]

I really do prefer the way coffee tastes when I grind the beans myself, immediately before brewing. It comes out stronger, fresher, with more "zip". (If wine people can talk about "bouquet" and "finish", I can talk about "zip".) But last week the grocery store had my brand of coffee on sale, plus I had coupons for additional savings on the ground coffee only, and not the whole bean. So I got the ground stuff...and while not as good in the cup, it is kind of nice to not have to drag down the grinder every morning.

Being a big believer in brewing freshly ground coffee, I would never get one of those coffee makers they have nowadays -- the ones with VCR-style timers so you can load the grounds the night before and set the machine to start brewing at eight hours later. That's eight hours the grounds are sitting in the basket, exposed to air which dries out the oils and thus dulls the flavor, and that's eight hours your water is sitting in the reservoir with no air in it. (Aerated water makes good coffee, which is why you should let the faucet run for ten seconds or so before filling the carafe to transfer the water to the reservoir, and start your brewing immediately.)

My mother used to have the extremely questionable practice of brewing a large pot of coffee in the morning, drinking her two cups, and then turning the thing off and then microwaving cold coffee back to hot later in the day. The mere thought of doing that makes my skin crawl. And when I was in Target the other day, I was surprised to see that they still make percolating machines! I thought those had gone the way of the dodo when everyone realized that percolated coffee tastes lousy.

Now that winter is coming, it will soon be time to dig out the espresso machine. I don't make very good espresso, I'm sorry to say -- never practiced much -- but I love a cup of hot chocolate dosed with a serving of espresso. As for coffee accessories I don't own, I've always wanted to try using a French press and a stove-top vacuum pot.

Oooooh, pot's done brewing! Gotta go.

They're probably Cubs fans, too.

Ooooooooh, lookie! More irate Star Wars fans over on AICN!

Here's the story: A few days ago, AICN put up a publicity notice for some screening of A New Hope that was to take place in Los Angeles. What was interesting is that the people screening the movie advertised it as the original version as released in 1977 (which George Lucas has removed from circulation) as opposed to the 1997 Special Edition.

So, the other night, this film festival (apparently some kind of retrospective on film history) announced that they were unable to get the original version, because - - consistent with his stated policy - - George Lucas would only allow them to screen the Special Edition, and that was that. Chaos, of course, ensued on the AICN TalkBack, in which we have more of George Lucas showing total contempt for the fans and for film history and raping everybody's childhood and selling out and blah blah blah blah blah.

But as I parse this timeline, I'm wondering: how the hell is this George Lucas's fault? This film festival went ahead and announced their screening of the original film before they knew if they had permission to screen it? And George Lucas is to blame?

Well, OK. Tomorrow night I will personally screen Return of the King in my home, and you're all welcome. But if I can't get a print and have to send you all home, remember the logic of the Idiot Star Wars Fan: It's Peter Jackson's fault.

Holy Orange Gourds, Batman!

Yesterday the family and I trekked into the hills and farmlands of New York's Southern Tier to visit a place called Pumpkinville, an annual event for us. Pumpkinville is pretty much just what it sounds like: a small roadside tourist attraction devoted to, well, pumpkins. Lots and lots and lots of pumpkins. Not only do they have thousands of them nicely lined up by size in one spot, but if the pre-chosen ones aren't to your liking, you can actually wander out into the pumpkin patch itself to grab one. And there are farm animals to pet and feed, pony rides, crafts, apples by the bushel, a shed in which maple products are sold (New York being the country's largest producer of maple syrup), pumpkin-flavored ice cream, and the obligatory hay rides (although the hay ride now involves no hay, the bales in the wagon behind the tractor having been replaced by wooden benches). A good time was had by all, especially since the autumnal turning of the leaves seems to be at peak in the Southern Tier.

Then we proceeded to the town of Ellicottville, which hosted its Fall Festival this weekend. This is your basic street festival, with food and crafts and all manner of other stuff going on. Ellicottville is Western New York's largest skiing town; it's home to several of the area's largest ski resorts and has a real upscale, Aspen-like air about it. Thousands of people converge on this little town each year -- on the way out, we sped past traffic literally backed up seven miles on US 219 -- for this Festival. Ellicottville itself caters to a very wide area; wealthy people from Canada even travel there during the winter weekends.

Here is what the hills and ski slopes in that part of New York look like:



This photo is a couple of years old; there was no snow yesterday. Here's an even better view, from up on one the ski slopes themselves:



Is it any wonder that October is my favorite month?

Howl! Howl!

I wrote a guest review of the film RAN for the Destroy All Monsters website. I'm not sure how insightful my review is, given my general lack of knowledge about Japanese cinema outside of Hayao Miyazaki's anime films, but check it out, anyway.

One of these days I'll get around to adding DAM to my links, because it's an excellent site about Asian popular culture. I learned about the site from Darth Swank.

Something I Never Thought I'd Say:

Thank God for offshore drilling?

How do you say "The Right Stuff" in Cantonese?

The Chinese government has confirmed that they are launching their first manned space mission next week. They're being pretty coy about actual details, but I certainly wish them success, as a person who thinks that manned spaceflight is still the best thing to happen in the twentieth century and an essential part of our future as a species. Here are a couple of interesting things from the article:

:: The people doing the flying will be called "Taikonauts", from a Chinese word for "space".

:: The launch is being scheduled to possibly coincide with a major conference of the Chinese Communist Party, so as to link spaceflight with politics. Sort of like 1957 again…I wonder if we'll have some prominent Senator announcing that we have no intention of going to bed by the light of a Communist moon?

:: According to reports, the ship will be additionally equipped with handguns, knives, and other weapons. This quote is offered: Astronauts will be able to deal with wild beasts, sharks and other dangerous animals or enemies. Kinda makes you wonder where they're planning on landing. The Afghan highlands? Iraq? (Actually, the article reports that Inner Mongolia will be the landing site.)

:: The article does not report on what the taikonauts will eat while in flight. I envision little squeeze-tubes of Kung Pao Chicken, but that's probably wrong. (Which reminds me of an exchange from MAD Magazine's parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I never tire of quoting:

DAVE BOWMAN: What's for dinner?

FRANK POOLE: A glass of steak, a glass of potatoes, and a glass of corn.

DAVE BOWMAN: Nothing to drink?

FRANK POOLE: Yeah, a piece of coffee.

Har har!)

Political Anger Here!

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Dear President Bush,

The other day, Governor-elect of California Arnold Schwarzenegger said this, in reference to the giant budget problems he's about to confront:

"I will make sure that I can meet with President Bush as quickly as possible, because I have a whole bunch of business, California business, to talk to him about and take care of. There's a lot of money we can get from the federal government."

I just want you to know, Mr. President, that if you ride to Mr. Schwarzenegger's and California's rescue now, after allowing that state and its former (Democratic) Governor to twist in the wind along with all us other budget-challenged states, merely because the new Governor there is a Republican and you're naturally hoping to put California's electoral votes in play, not only will I never vote Republican again in my natural lifetime (and I have done so, more frequently than you might immediately believe), even if my mother runs on the Republican ticket against a known cannibal with a taste for children and kittens on the Democratic ticket for county dog-catcher, but at such as I'm actually employed and pulling in money again I shall start donating to any Democrat I can find, for the first time in my life.

Thank you for your attention, Mr. President.

(Link via Billmon.)

O for a rake, that I might step on it....

Oy.

Didn't Ronald Reagan once have a personal law of campaigning that went something like "Never speak ill of another Republican?" I did read about that at one point, didn't I?

Come on, guys!

Mmmmm....steamed prawns....

Back when I was active on Usenet, one of the more colorful voices on rec.music.movies was a fellow named Dave Thomas (no, not the Wendy's guy, either), who would constantly claim to have the worst taste in movies EVER, and to back up his claims he'd rattle off long lists of movies that he likes that I'd never heard of, often Hong Kong action movies with titles like "Sucka Chop Suey Maidens From Hell" or some such. (I made that up. I hope that's not a real movie title.)

Anyway, Dave was always an entertaining soul to have around until he listened to his better angels and ditched the newsgroup. The other day I discovered that he's been running a review site devoted exclusively to B-movies, called Steamed Prawn Buns. Check him out; his reviews are a hoot and…well, you gotta admire anyone who has willingly seen some of the movies that he's seen. I didn't see it mentioned on his site, but Dave is the only person I have ever encountered who is willing to admit to liking Howard the Duck.

(Of course, the damn title of his site is making me hungry for dim sum, which you can't find in Buffalo. Have I ever said that before? Yeah, probably….)

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Composite photo of the Toronto skyline.

What's cool about this is that this photo is composited from four photos that were part of a time-lapse photography project. Someone actually set up their camera to take a new shot of the view outside their balcony every twenty seconds for fourteen hours, and then they actually put together a Quicktime timelapse of all the photos, so you can see dusk fall on Toronto and a weather front pass by. Very cool.

(Via The Modulator.)

Haunting

If you like personal essays of the haunting variety, check out this one by Mike Finley. It's about his reunion with his grade school bully...and much, much more.

A Brief Writing Observation

Every so often I'll get stuck at a certain point, unsure of how to continue with the novel in question. It's not a total blockage, since I still know my destination; it's more of a moment of indecisiveness, the kind I imagine Bugs Bunny experiencing when he pops up in Albuquerque and ruminates as to whether he should take the left turn or not. I end up trying one thing, deleting it (or crossing it out, if I'm going longhand) and trying something else, and then sooner or later I realize what needs to be done.

The observation is this: invariably, when I figure out what needs to happen at a spot like this, my immediate second thought is of my Muse grumbling thusly: "This is obvious, dummy! It took you three days to realize it? You imbecile! Why did I waste this story idea on you, anyway?"

Online Comics Discovery

Warren Ellis points out a comics creator named Patrick Farley who produces his work exclusively online. Some of Farley's content is free, and some of it is "gated" behind a micropayment system. I, being poor, have checked out some of the free stuff and found it intriguing. I also love the site's design, so check it out. And if you have money, give some to this guy. (Or to me. Or to PBS. But preferably me.)

And the award for Spewed Invective goes to....

Bara apparently has to endure a person of, shall we say, questionable value in one of her college classes. Here is what she thinks of him:

The filthy, disgusting, chauvinist idiot creep! That detestable, nauseating lump of mentally incompetent phlegm, whose shit-smelling toxic presence smears my theoretical class, is poisoning my very being with that vomitous stream of asinine prattle that relentlessly pours out.

And apparently, it got even worse the next time she saw him, when he apparently made a pass at her, and occasioned her to speculate on what she'd do if she ever occasioned to spend an evening in his presence. (It's in her follow-up comments; drop down to the sixth comment.)

What's that bright yellow thing in the sky?!

We're enjoying a nice spell of Indian Summer right now in Buffalo -- temps in the high 60s or low 70s, sun, no rain, et cetera. Lovely.

My point? I got none. Move along.

Sad Classical Music

Lynn Sislo posts about sad classical music. (Apparently she gets search engine hits on that phrase, so I'm going to repeat it: sad classical music. Music that is classical, and sad. Sad music that is also classical. Classical things that are sad and that are music. Yep, that oughta do it!)

Anyway, I've never found any sad classical music, in the sense of "music that makes me feel sad". Classical music can meditate on sadness, but somehow there's something I always find uplifting in such music, exalting if you will, that works against the actual creation of sadness. There's music that is wistful (Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, music that is melancholy (any number of Chopin piano pieces), music that is meditative (Rachmaninov's Vespers), music that is heartbreakingly beautiful (Rachmaninov's entire Second Symphony), but actually sad? I just can't think of any.

Well, that's not quite true. Berg's Violin Concerto is probably sad. Portions of Mozart's Requiem are sad, but other parts are fiery, some angry, some just plain fiery. Mahler's Ninth Symphony is sad, I think. But the list of genuinely sad classical works is, to me, very short. What many might consider "sad music" often ends up to me being something of a meditation on sadness, which isn't quite the same as being sad.

(I haven't said anything about lieder and the vast amount of art songs, because that's the part of classical music that I know the least about, to a spectacular degree. When you factor in words, music can become very sad indeed. From the rock and country music worlds, I can probably fill this blog with sad songs, by virtue of the lyrics. I'm sure that Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert wrote some genuinely sad songs.)

Fire the joke writers!

Shouldn't this Tom Burka joke include something about IKEA?

And did anyone else notice that both David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel last night featured a video of Jay Leno, attending Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory speech, clapping lackadaisically and checking his watch?

And did anyone catch George Carlin on Leno? I love Carlin, but he always seems "neutered" when he appears on a network show. It's so obvious that he's had to comb through his material for jokes that don't involve any of the "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV".

And at my next birthday party, I want Letterman's "Spark Lady". Just watch; you'll learn what I'm talking about, if you don't know already.

Lookin' at the Teevee

OK, I've just watched Law and Order, and for the life of me, no matter how many times I watch this show I cannot understand the following it inspires. But hey, at least next week's episode is apparently going to be "ripped from the headlines".

As for the other Wednesday night shows:

Ed seems to be doing a good job at moving past the oft-cited Moonlighting factor -- i.e., the way a show deflates when the two romantic leads finally "do the dirty", as Ed Stevens and Carol Vessey did. (Full disclosure: I hated Moonlighting both before and after they "did the dirty".) The keys here are a strong supporting cast around whom interesting stories can be told, and the fact that Ed was always best when Ed-and-Carol was a subplot, and that's what they are now.

And then there's The West Wing. Three episodes are probably not enough to judge, but I'm gonna anyway, because it's my blog. Anyhow: with the exception of Abby Bartlet's fury at her husband (obviously they're setting up some manner of blow-up later on), I think the show is doing just fine without Aaron Sorkin. Part of that is the fact that the cast and crew well knows what they are doing at this point, and part of it is good writing. Some of the political nuts-and-bolts stuff that marked the show's first two seasons is back, and the dialogue is, dare I say it, sharp. No, it doesn't sound like Sorkin's dialogue, but the characters still sound like themselves. To draw an overwrought analogy, Hemingway's not a lesser writer just because he doesn't sound like Dickens.

Send 'em Bob Vila!

Andrew Cory has a list of things we need to get done before we should consider leaving Iraq.

The idea that we should be mostly out of there within a year is absurd (presumably this is so there aren't any pesky headlines like "Two More US Soldiers Killed" within, oh, two months of the election). It takes a lot of time to build a nation - - hell, I could make a case that the bit of nation building that started in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 still isn't done.

Anyhow, I like Andrew's list. It covers the basics of what the Iraqis will need to get their economy and their democracy and economy going again. I assume that when Andrew says that, say, 85% of the country needs to have potable water, he's talking about 85% of the people, not the geography. It is, of course, far from clear that all this can work in a country of Iraq's complexity - - what of the Kurds, to name just one concern - - but it would be nice to have a clear idea of just where we're going with all this, a clear idea which doesn't seem forthcoming when the Administration apparently can't figure out just who's going to be in charge of all this nation-building in the first place.

Have you seen John Connor?

Just a shout-out to two bloggers, Sean and Jason, who seem to be lacking for either inspiration or opportunity to blog.

Opiate of the Masses

As long as I'm responding to The Fiendish One, I also take note of this post in which he recommends a couple of books by Karen Armstrong, one on the history of monotheistic religion (which I own, but have not yet read) and one on the rise of fundamentalism (which I neither own nor have read). Matt suggests that Jessica Stern (the author of the book on terrorism I'm reading, see below) needs to read Armstong's book The Battle for God (the one on fundamentalism); I've just found that very volume cited in her endnotes, so I can only assume she has in fact read it.

Of course, I don't think Matt meant that in a "snarky" way, so I should note that understanding why fundamentalism comes to exists does not quite explain why terrorism comes to exist. There are a lot more fundamentalists in this world than there are terrorists, and while some religious aspect inspires many terrorists, I don't think that the religious element is sufficient to do so. What Stern seems to be investigating is what leads the strongly religious to become militantly religious. (I say "seems to be" because, as noted below, I'm only a short way into the book.)

Money, the root of all decision making....

My unindicted co-conspirator wants to know why Major League Baseball has scheduled both of today's Championship Series playoff games at the same time.

The answer, as is becoming depressingly common, is that the television people want it this way. FOX Sports, which owns all broadcast rights to the MLB playoffs, thinks it can make more money by ensuring that every game is in prime time, except for Saturday (when nothing else is really going on, sportswise, except for college football. What surprises me is that whatever game is broadcast on the cable-only channel FX will apparently have better ratings in prime time than a regular FOX broadcast during the afternoon hours. FOX is also hedging its bets, because the playoff schedule shows that they're willing to have an afternoon, weekday playoff game if they have to, next week. But today's games are guaranteed to happen (barring rain), whereas Game Six of the ALCS and Game Seven of the NLCS, both scheduled for next Wednesday, are "if necessary" affairs. Presumably, if the ALCS goes to Game Six but the NLCS is already over by next Wednesday, then that game -- currently scheduled for 4:18 pm ET -- would be moved to prime time.

The way TV dominates sports is nothing new, but it can still be an annoying factor. Case in point: I was listening to a Buffalo sports-talk radio show this afternoon, and I learned that the Bills' game against the Washington Redskins, to be played on the 19th (a week from this Sunday) has been moved from 1:00 to 4:15, probably because FOX Sports -- which carries NFL games in which an NFC team visits an AFC team -- thinks it's a better looking matchup now, based on both teams' early success this season. Not that big a deal, really, except that the Bills draw on a very wide area for their ticket holders, and for people coming from more than 100 miles away to attend the game, a sudden shift of game time less than two weeks prior to the event is no small thing.

Yet More Creepiness

Lord, make it stop! A blogger writes this:

I have looked evil in the face. I've been in the same room with it. I don't know how else to describe my feelings now except to say that I feel unclean, and I'm having to fight being afraid.

Wow. He must have been in the same room as Osama Bin Laden, or maybe he had a secret meeting with Saddam Hussein. Or perhaps he was entertained by that Phelps guy I mention below.

Or maybe he attended a book signing by...economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

My God, this Luskin fellow is deranged.

Creepy Quote of the Day

Lord, it's almost a theme for today: Stuff That Creeps Me Out.

I'm reading a book right now called Terror In the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, by Jessica Stern (who is apparently a noted terrorism expert -- I'd not heard of her before I checked the book out of the library). Stern's goal in the book is to interview the actual terrorists: not experts, not law enforcement and government officials, but the terrorists themselves. I'm barely one-fifth into the book, so I can't report yet on if it's a good book or if I agree with Stern's conclusions, because I haven't reached any. But I've just reached a place where Stern interviews one of the leaders of Hamas.

While I've long understood that terrorists view their activities as exercises of war and not murder, I suppose that I also believed that, on some level, the terrorists still knew that the innocents they attack are actually innocents, the act of attacking whom is part of some strategy, if a monstrously evil one. It turns out that I was wrong in that belief, because this is what the Hamas leader says:

"There are no civilians in Israel, because every citizen is required to serve in the Army. We are war with Israel."

They don't attack innocents because they think that doing so will help them achieve their military goal. Attacking civilians IS their military goal.

Of Drains and the Circling of them....

I mentioned in a post below my occasional belief that the human species is circling the drain. Then, an hour or so later, I learn that some guy named Fred Phelps wants to build this in a park in Casper, Wyoming.

I can't even begin to fathom the brain that entertains thoughts like these.

"A stage-managed monkey show"

That's what John Scalzi thinks of the California recall. The part of me that's still political and wants to fight to good fight agrees totally with this; it's the best bit of left-wing anger I've read in months.

Of course, then there's the other part of me: not a conservative side, but the nihilistic side: the part of me that thinks the whole "politics" thing is just a shell game that matters not one whit, and that it's all just theater to give us something to watch and keep us from noticing that we're slowly circling the drain. A big reason why I don't write more about politics here is my dueling interests: part of me wants to roll up my sleeves and take back the White House, while the other part wants to pop some popcorn and watch the fireworks. Maybe it's a personality flaw that I seem to usually go for the popcorn. I don't know.

What a gift!

Buffalo has always been a great arts town, and its reputation as such has always focused squarely on modern and contemporary art. That reputation got a big boost with the news today of what might be the largest gift to the Albright Knox Art Gallery ever. I've been remiss in not visiting the Albright Knox in far too long; I think I'll wait until the collection is re-installed after Thanksgiving.

Alllll rright, let me hearrr ya....

I know that I'm not a Cubs fan, and I'm not rooting for them to win, mainly because I think Cubs fans are weirdos. (The ones outside Chicago or the Midwest, that is.) But I saw something, in the postgame celebration of their Game Five win over the Braves the other night, that I've been looking for a picture of and can't find anywhere. So if anyone can help me out, I'd be grateful.

You know how sports fans at stadiums make clever signs on bedsheets to display? There was one that the fans had decorated with longtime Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray's face, with the logo "Holy cow!" next to it. Caray was one of those "one of a kind" things in baseball, with his leading of the fans in singing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" in the seventh-inning stretch, his undying love for his team, and the rather charming way he'd get drunk and be nearly incomprehensible in the late innings (and God help you if the game went to extra frames). I thought it incredibly classy that some Cubs fans thought to put his picture on one of those banners, and I'd love to have a picture of it.

Hey! NERDS!!!

Wouldn't you know it. I just got done (sort-of) making fun of the marching band kids, and now I spot some choir kids. GET 'EM!!!

(No, I was never into any sports in school, although I've always regretted not trying out for the swim team.)

Holy Blogtivity, Batman!

OK, is it just me, or did every known blogger in the universe eat a big bowl of Wheaties this morning? Just about everyone I read has posted today! And good stuff, too.

(BTW, even though this is gross, I gotta link it because with my iron stomach and non-squeamish nature I found it hysterical: when the desires to prank one's next-door neighbor and to see what happens when one leaves a plate of meat outside for three weeks intersect. Link filched from Igor to my Dr. Frankenstein.)

That Sneaky Yglesias Fellow!

Matthew Yglesias has been posting to his own blog sparsely during the week in recent months, since he started his job at The American Prospect. He's been saving stuff for his own blog for the weekends, since TAP doesn't operate on weekends, which is actually kind of nice because it keeps something new in Blogistan when everyone else (myself included) is taking a breather. But yesterday and today, he's on a posting tear. What a devil.

Anyway, he links to an interesting article about Howard Dean and gun control, which is frankly an issue that I really don't care too much about. I don't like guns, and I wouldn't shed a tear if they all went away, but I am about as likely to put my own energy into advocating such a policy as I am to open a diner along I-90 in South Dakota. It just doesn't seem that big a deal to me, so I didn't know that Howard Dean was significantly to the right of many Democrats on guns. And it just goes to show what a dysfunctional house we Democrats can be: we'll cheerfully attack our own people from the left and from the right. Yeesh.

He also discusses the idea of splitting California into two states, a suggestion that comes up because of problems that pretty much exist everywhere. Sometimes I think that New York City, Yonkers and Long Island should be spun off into their own state, but that's mainly when I'm feeling snarky. There's no real, compelling reason to do so, even if as a Buffalonian living in an old steel town on the shores of one of the Great Lakes I feel more kinship with cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland than I do with New York City. (I remember working in my telesales job on 9-11-01, having to place my daily allotment of calls, and a few customers expressed sympathy because the victims were my fellow New Yorkers, and in truth, I hadn't thought of it that way. My personal feelings of allegiance are more local than that, and also wider than that -- I consider myself an American and a Buffalonian more than I consider myself a New Yorker.)

Moving on, Matthew also debunks the idea that disapproval of Schwarzenegger's treatment of women is hypocritical if you opposed the Clinton impeachment. Matthew's take -- that opposing the removal of an already elected and serving officeholder is not the same as opposing the election of a mere candidate for office, when both have done similar things -- is right on. I remember once commenting to a friend of mine, during the impeachment affair, that this was why I didn't like term limits: I no longer had the option of not voting for the guy. (Personally, I don't much care about the accusations about Schwarzenegger. First, he's not going to be my governor, so any interest I'd have would merely be a sporting one; second, he's already demonstrated to me that he's not worthy by virtue of his refusal to discuss in any way what he plans to do with the office once he has it. My suspicion is that he will push for some token cuts in programs, they'll get blocked by the overwhelmingly Democratic California legislature; he'll blame them for the gridlock, and wait for the business cycle to swing around into "boom" mode so the resultant increase of government revenues will erase the current deficits.)

Finally, Matthew points to an article about the fraying allegiance between libertarians and conservative Republicans. I'm reminded of a quote from Patrick Nielsen Hayden's sidebar: "Just because you are on their side doesn't mean that they are on your side."

To the flames....

Lynn Sislo has an interesting post about a phenomenon I don't know much about: classical composers intentionally destroying their own works, usually for artistic reasons.

Lord knows there are certain early writings of mine that I would just as soon never again see the light of day (but which I know Nefarious Neddie will expose once I became famous published -- aieee!!!), but it's often hard to make that distinction in later years, once one has been practicing for some time. In the case of Paul Dukas, the composer Lynn uses to illustrate this, it's interesting to think of what might be thought of his work had he allowed more of it to survive.

Two other composers I have discovered more recently are notable with regard to fire (both of whom, incidentally, were introduced to me by a friend I've lost touch with -- Robert, if you're out there, drop me a line.). First is an English composer named Gerald Finzi. Finzi wrote a lot of meditative and intimate music for chamber ensembles and for voice. Everything of Finzi's that I have heard is deeply beautiful, but he purposely allowed little of his music to see light. (I don't know if he purposely destroyed it, or if it simply sits in some lockbox somewhere.)

The other composer is the Norwegian master Geirr Tveitt. In many ways the Ralph Vaughan Williams of Norwegian classical music, Tveitt's work focuses very strongly on Norwegian folk material and even Norway's ethnic musical instruments, such as the Hardanger fiddle (a stringed instrument which can be heard very prominently in the score to The Two Towers -- it's the fiddle that plays the Rohan theme in a number of scenes in and around Edoras). Tveitt was a highly prolific composer -- his output was once likened to a waterfall -- but in one of music history's more tragic accidents, Tveitt's house burned to the ground in the early 1970s, destroying nearly eighty percent of his life's work. Tveitt's sound world is remarkable, and to reflect on what was lost in that fire is disheartening. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, it's a little bit as if we only knew Shakespeare by As You Like It and Coriolanus, had Hamlet or King Lear been consumed in flame.

Tveitt's case is accidental, but as Lynn notes, many cases of an artist censoring his or her own work are not. There is a real ethical tension here: to what extent does the artist's work belong to the artist, and to what extent does it belong to the world? It's a tough question, and it's not one that's going away. Witness all the anger directed at George Lucas for his decision to permanently retire the original versions of the first three Star Wars films. The films are unquestionably his, and the decision is unquestionably his to make, but there is a real case to be made that he shouldn't be doing it.

(And you thought there was no way I could twist that discussion around to Star Wars! Heh!)

Recall Madness!!

Yep, today's the wonderful recall in California. This whole thing has certainly been entertaining to watch. I have never in my life seen a candidate campaign on less substance that Arnold Schwarzenegger has, and yet be so close to winning. Of course, there's all the business about sleaze being brought up against him, but I find it hard to feel sorry for him since he's pretty much refused to discuss anything regarding policy, leaving nothing but the "sleaze factor". And in general, I think the whole idea of a recall is stupid: you voted this person into office, so as far as I am concerned, you should be stuck with him. Timothy Noah once described the recall as "democracy on steroids", which seems pretty apt...with the added fact that if the voters had been doing their damned job in the first place, it wouldn't even be necessary.

You name it, someone will blog about it!

I'm glad to see that Blogistan is developing beyond the political stuff and the daily diary, "I got up this morning with a headache and ate Cap'n Crunch with too much milk"-type stuff. Not a week goes by that I don't find a new blog and say, "Hmmm, that's not something I'd have thought to blog about." Case in point: a blog devoted to marching bands in Kentucky.

Not that anyone cares, but while I think marching bands are entertaining to watch, especially the drum-and-bugle corps that operate in the summer time, as a compulsory part of being in band, while in high school, I detested marching. As a musical education device I found it completely worthless; the positives often cited by the marching proponents (discipline, endurance, precision) are musical elements that can equally well be achieved in a concert band setting, with actual attention to musical concerns added in, to boot. I always found that it basically boiled down to "We're expected to have a band at the football games and the town's summer parade".

Pretty much every time I voiced this opinion in the music department in college, the collective gasps around me were similar to that you'd hear if you stepped up to the mike at a Democratic National Convention and claimed that JFK was a bad president. But I have never heard a convincing argument for the idea that marching is an essential part of a musical education. String players and vocalists seem to develop their musical chops just fine without marching in funky formations at football games; how the wind players and percussionists singularly benefit from marching has never really been made clear to me.

Fat Fantasy

Morat takes a break from politics to list some Fat Fantasy books he likes. I've only read a couple of the series that he recommends, but I'm very glad that he doesn't attempt to recommend Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks! The term "Fat Fantasy" refers to that subset of Fantasy books which most people, being either lit-snobs or just plain doofuses, think comprises all fantasy: series, once usually trilogies but now commonly more than three books, consisting of nice, thick books, hence the "Fat" appellation.

I've written here before about George R. R. Martin's series, A Song of Ice and Fire, the fourth book of which is now criminally overdue. (Harumph.) This series, as Morat notes, sets up expectations that experienced readers of fantasy will peg almost immediately -- and then he trashes them by killing off characters unexpectedly, taking his plots in different directions, setting up unforeseen alliances, and generally ratchetting up the "unpredictability" to levels which, by the time of A Storm of Swords, are simply amazing. This series isn't for the squeamish, with many scenes that are the literary equivalent of the battle scenes in Braveheart, but if you like characters who are so three-dimensional that you can't even really be certain just who the good guys are, then this series is for you. (Morat only cites the first book in the series, so he hasn't even come to what I consider to be Martin's greatest achievement, when he conditions the reader to hate a certain character and then has us feeling sympathetic toward that character by the third book.

The other of Morat's series that I've read is the Tad Williams trilogy, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. This is also a good one, although it really is quite bloated, with hundreds of pages of subplots that occasionally seem to go nowhere. Much of it does end up going somewhere, but the going gets really tough because Williams tends to withhold his payoffs until as late a moment as humanly possible. I bounced off the first volume, The Dragonbone Chair, because it starts off with about 150 pages in which nothing happens while Williams lays in his backstory. Once things finally get moving, though, it's a decent read, even if it does take too long to get where Williams wants to go.

Morat also solicits some recommendations along this line. I'm an admirer of Stephen R. Donaldson's work, both the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (both trilogies, although the second isn't as good as the first) and the duology Mordant's Need. The Covenant books famously involve an "antihero": Thomas Covenant is not a sympathetic protagonist, and early on he commits an act that may have the reader toss the book against the wall. In my experience, the Covenant books are "love them or hate them" affairs.

And of course, there is Guy Gavriel Kay, who in my literary universe is second only to Tolkien. If traditional fantasy is your thing, GGK's trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry is wondrous (although, being GGK's first published work, a little hard to get into -- give it a couple of hundred pages). After that trilogy, GGK tracked away from traditional fantasy for stand-alone books (except for his most recent work, a duology called The Sarantine Mosaic) that blend fantasy with historical fiction, with the magical elements becoming more muted with each successive work.

I also view T.H. White's The Once and Future King as required reading for any lover of fantasy. Also excellent in the Arthurian vein is Stephen Lawhead's trilogy consisting of Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur (although, to be honest, the ending of this series is one of the most disappointing endings I've ever read). Even better is Mary Stewart's Arthurian trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment) to which a fourth volume, The Wicked Day, was later added. Gillian Bradshaw wrote an Arthurian trilogy years ago, that I am certain is out of print and hard to find, but it's very well written and very emotional. I believe the first volume is Hawk of May, but I don't recall the other titles.

Feel free to toss some titles my way, and Morat's as well!

Why are there four guys with horses hanging around outside my window?

I'm not much for "apocalyptic" thinking -- I haven't even read any of those Left Behind books -- but with war in the Middle East and with the Cubs and Red Sox closing in on pennants in the same year, well, call me slightly concerned.

Anyway, last night was a hell of a sports night. You had the Sox advancing in heart-stopping fashion (I didn't care who won, really, since I rather like both the A's and the Sox), loading the bases before finally notching that last out. And apparently you had the A's getting mad at the Sox' closer for some obscene gesture he made in their direction, although quite frankly I didn't see it -- it just looked like garden-variety fist pumping to me, nothing worse than Dennis Eckersley used to do when celebrating a final out in a big game. I will say that those constant cut-aways Fox did to some bar in Boston got a little annoying. Not that it matters, but my predictions are Yankees and Cubs, both in six, and then the Yankees again in five.

(And if you're not reading Mike's Baseball Rants, you're missing out on Blogistan's best baseball commentary. Not only does he know his subject well -- he'll collate stats like any fine baseball fanatic should -- but his pop-culture knowledge is so good that he can actually remember not just that there was a movie called The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, but he can remember the characters well enough to draw parallels to the 2003 Braves squad! So go read that blog, now that the LCS's are about to start.)

(Grammatical question: What's the possessive of "Sox"? Above, should I refer to the "Sox's closer", or the "Sox' closer"? Or should I avoid the entire thing by saying "Boston's closer"?)

After the baseball game ended, I watched a bit of Letterman -- a bit of an off night for Dave, but he's still worth catching for the current nightly regimen of George W. Bush speech tics -- and then a bit of Leno, whose "Headlines" bit still tends to crack me up. (Last night's gem was a story about two would-be bank robbers who thought that if they rubbed their faces with lemon juice, the security cameras' pictures of them would be blurry. Oh, and the headline about Congress's pasing of legislation for the "Do Not Kill List". As Jay said, "You might want to get on that list.") Then, I just flipped over to watch the last three minutes or so of the Buccaneers' thrashing of the Indianapolis Colts, who had been down 28-7 last time I had checked. They were still down, 35-21. Then they were down 35-28. Then they tied the thing. I didn't stay up for overtime, but I saw this morning that the Colts eventually prevailed, apparently as a result of a weird rule that I've never heard of.

Two observations from that game:

1. On the Colt's second-to-last touchdown, how on Earth could the Bucs' cornerback let the Colts' receiver just race by him like that, right from the line of scrimmage? Don't they play bump-and-run anymore?

2. In a weird bit of symmetry, the Colts' first and last touchdowns in the fourth quarter were identical: one yard runs, right up the middle, with both plays being marked by the Bucs being off-sides. The second time, I thought I was watching a replay of the first one. Very odd.

I'm kind of wondering, now, if Tampa Bay's defense might be slightly overrated. Yeah, it was a one-game aberration, but still -- they coughed up 35 points at home, and they only managed one sack against a team that had to rely on the passing game because they were missing their starting running back. And I'm starting to like the combination of Al Michaels and John Madden, especially since Madden seems to have lost his fascination with that horrible "Coach's Clicker" thing. (I'm the only person I know who can stand Madden's voice, for some reason.) Their best exchange came when the Colts' comeback was well in progress. Madden pointed out that Bucs' coach Jon Gruden is one of those coaches who gets up incredibly early and gets almost no sleep during the football season; he said "Gruden's been up since 3:30 this morning," and Michaels quipped, "And after watching this one, he'll be up until 3:30 Wednesday morning."

PLEASE show it again, in super slo-mo. Lots of times.

Man, oh man. In all the fun of watching sports, we often forget that there is inherent danger in the games we play.

I watched quite a bit of football this weekend, and I just watched some of the Monday Night Football game between Tampa Bay and Indianapolis, a game which features two of the more physical defenses in the NFL....and the biggest, ugliest hit I saw in all the sports I've watched in the last couple of days just happened in the Red Sox/A's game. Two Boston players, Johnny Damon and Damian Jackson, went for the same deep fly and collided in such a way that the back of Jackson's skull smashed, with some force, into the front of Damon's. The two guys literally bounced off one another and ended up prone on the grass. Jackson got up and returned to the dugout, but Damon was just driven off the field in an ambulance.

Baseball is stereotyped sometimes as the least physical of the major sports -- after all, it's sufficiently unphysical that they play 162 games a year -- but let it not be forgotten that these guys are athletes, the game is physical, and they do it wearing a minimum of contact gear.

(And I just had a football-related thought. "Former" Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett is suing the NFL because he wants to enter the NFL draft, but he's too young by NFL rules. The NFL's position is that the age requirement is necessary because the game is so physical that they have to make sure that their players are of sufficient physical maturity to play it; a 19-year old football player, no matter how gifted, simply isn't physically able to match up with the athletes in the NFL. Well, I remember hearing a year ago, on one of the Syracuse radio stations, some guy opine that it was only a matter of time until some player actually dies from an NFL injury. I kind-of scoffed at that, but if we see 19-year olds entering the NFL, I think it may just happen.)

Cool Filmscore News

Sometime this month, Sony Classical is supposed to be releasing an expanded edition of John Barry's score to Dances With Wolves, for which he won an Oscar back in 1991. Hopefully we will finally have the actual music of the buffalo hunt. Dances is one of my favorite film scores. (It's a good movie, too, another film whose backlash I never joined. I don't think that Goodfellas was robbed.)

SDB on Libertarianism

Here.

I've sometimes wondered, while reading SDB, exactly why he eschews the "Libertarian" label when he strikes me as having a fairly-strong libertarian impulse. The other day, he explained it: while he places a high premium on freedom (liberty), he does not believe that government intervention in the market and issues pertaining to "property rights" is axiomatically bad. That makes sense.

I'm quite a bit to the left of SDB, which I'm sure everyone knows. Not only do I not think that "the free market" is ideally disposed to solve all problems, I do not think that "the free market" is something so important that it must be protected at the expense of leaving unsolved those problems which it cannot solve. That's why I consider libertarianism to be a valuable impulse, but seriously faulty as an ideology.

Spoilers Galore!

If you happen to watch one of the nine television series tracked by this site, well -- all the spoilers you could possibly want are there!

(By the way, in visiting this site I learned of an event to happen a few episodes from now on ER that may induce me to abandon the show. Be warned.)

Another October Ritual Done!

Another October, another early exit from the baseball playoffs by the Atlanta Braves. Somehow, the fact that the Braves were denied a world championship for the eighth consecutive year, and the eleventh time in twelve years, by the Chicago Cubs -- baseball's goofiest franchise -- is all the sweeter.

Of course, Cubs fans are in a state of delirium, convinced that at last their ship has come in, that this is the year, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Somehow, I doubt it, but I've been wrong before. But they need to win eight more games to win it all, and I'm not sure they match up well against any of the three teams still alive in the American League, which is to say nothing of the fact that the Marlins -- whom the Cubbies will play in the NLCS -- are no chumps either.

In truth, the Cubs are one of those teams whose national following has always mystified me. Maybe it's their "lovable loser" image, maybe it's the fact that WGN is on most cable systems in the country, so the Cubs are really visible. I don't know. They're rather like Notre Dame and the Dallas Cowboys in the way they inspire the imagination of sports fans who have never been within a hundred miles of Wrigley Field or South Bend or Irving, Texas. There's something of a mystique about the Cubs, though, that's quite real. But I wonder: if they do win it all, what happens to all that mystique when ninety-five years of "Maybe next year" suddenly dissipates?

NFL Week Five: Doormats no more?!

The Buffalo Bills defeated the Cincinnati Bengals yesterday, which is the good news. What's the bad news? They needed overtime to do it, at home.

I'm not sure what to feel after this game. There's a certain sense of "Geez, if they gotta work that hard to beat the Bengals, they can't be that good at all!" But then, the Bengals really aren't as bad this year as they have been, and they may actually be making the first step up from perennial doormat of the NFL. A lot of times, when an awful franchise finally starts rebuilding successfully, they first go from being the bad team that everybody wants to play to being the bad team that nobody wants to play. The Bengals played a tough, physical game yesterday, and they showed enormous compusure in doing so.

(Incidentally, in yesterday's Buffalo News, the amazing -- meaning "stupid" -- sports writer Jerry Sullivan complained about the fact that the Bills had spoken in pretty positive terms last week about the Bengals as an opponent. "They're still the crappy Bengals!" whined Sullivan as he scoffed at the idea that the Bengals are a team on the rise. Sullivan apparently can't grasp the idea that maybe the Bengals are improving, maybe the Bills know it, and maybe even if they do still suck, the Bills simply didn't want to go on record in the media as saying something like "These guys suck and we're going to kill them." You know, part of that whole "sportsmanship" thing. Hmmmm....Jerry, Andrew....maybe it's a "Sullivan" thing. [Apologies to any readers who may be named Sullivan.])

So anyway, what to make of yesterday's victory? Well, I'm the kind of football fan who looks for stuff to be optimistic about. Maybe, just maybe, head coach Gregg Williams and offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride have finally realized that just because you don't gain fifteen yards the very first time you rush the ball in the first quarter does not necessarily mean that your running game is stuffed. In the second half, when they finally decided to go back to basics and just put bodies on bodies and simply run the thing, good results happened. And their re-commitment to the run also allowed Eric Moulds to get open on a couple of very key plays, most notably a fourth-down that, had it failed, would have cost the Bills the game.

I'm starting to wonder if Gregg Williams was recently the victim of some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion that compels him to do idiotic things on special-teams plays. This time it cropped up when the Bills had a 13-7 lead in the fourth, and the defense had forced the Bengals to punt. Fairly simple idea, right? You take the punt, and then put in your power running game to eat up as much clock as possible. Even if you go three-and-out, you still take two minutes off the clock and put the Bengals into a desperation mode. But what does Williams do? He OKs an attempt to block the punt, which results in a roughing-the-kicker penalty that keeps the Bengals' drive going. Cincinnati scored the tying touchdown on that drive. It seems that Williams insists on doing something amazingly dumb once in each game.

The Bills' defense has been receiving criticism lately, unfairly in my eyes. They are allowing more rushing yardage than I would like, but opposing teams are requiring a lot of carries to do it. I'd still like to see more pass rush; they only had one sack yesterday. But they are still allowing less than fifteen points per game, and they haven't had the luxury lately of playing with a lead. The defense has kept the Bills in the game each week, which is fine by me. If your team's offense is incapable of putting up more than fourteen points per game, which is what the Bills have averaged in the last three games, then you'd better have the equivalent of the 1985 Bears' or the 2000 Ravens' defenses if you expect the D to win for you.

I should also note the almost complete disappearance of second-year receiver Josh Reed. The guy simply isn't producing right now, and it seems to me that it might have been unreasonable for the Bills to expect him to seamlessly replace Peerless Price in just his second year. Receivers tend to take several years to really blossom in the NFL, and I think fans tend to forget that even with Price's amazing year last year, it took him until his fourth year to put up those numbers; fans also tend to forget that Eric Moulds didn't come of age until his third season, so much so that prior to that third year, the local paper actually labeled Moulds a "bust". Josh Reed is still on pace to have a better year this year than either of Eric Moulds's first two seasons. Thus, I think the Bills should move Bobby Shaw into the number two spot, and allow Reed to continue to develop and regain his confidence.

One last thought about yesterday's game: the TV play-by-play guy, Dan Criqui, was awful. He couldn't go two sentences without reminding the home viewers of how the wind was a factor yesterday (and it was; the winds at Ralph Wilson Stadium can be treacherous), and when the Bengals scored to take the lead, he actually announced that they were going to win. Not "The Bengals have put themselves in position to win", not "The Bengals might win", but "The Bengals are going to win today!" Oy.

Anyway, that's that. Next week the Bills go on the road to pay a visit to their winless division rivals, the New York Jets.

:: Until yesterday, I had never seen the "Get the field goal, recover the onside kick, get the touchdown" strategy actually work in the last two minutes of a game. The Redskins almost pulled it off, but the two-point conversion failed. Bummer. (Not that I was rooting for the Redskins, but it was such a cool comeback that I wanted it to succeed and then have the Eagles win it in OT.) It figures that Donovan McNabb would have a pretty unimpressive game the day after I insist that he's not overrated, but hey, that tends to happen. Last year I vehemently defended Drew Bledsoe in a post, and he promptly went out the very next game and went something like 10-for-60, fifty yards, and nine interceptions. Or something like that.

:: Does Rams owner Georgia Frontiere wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats as the realization that forcing Dick Vermiel out as her head coach maybe wasn't the best idea? I'm just wondering.

:: OK, which of these teams is the least likely to be "for real": Dallas, Seattle, or Carolina? Yeesh!

:: It's funny how every year in the NFL there is one division that can possibly be taken by an 8-8 team. All hail the AFC North!

Wow!

If you're not a regular viewer of NASA's Astonomy Picture of the Day, well, you're just not cool. Anyway, here's a recent one that caught my eye (they all catch my eye, really, but this one's particularly beautiful): the Eagle nebula.

Warning: STAR WARS babbling ahead. Commence primary ignition.

I watched Attack of the Clones the other night, and no, I have not come round to the prevailing opinion that it's a giant suckfest. In fact, I am more resolute than ever in my belief that I'm right, that it's a good movie, and that the rest of the world is a giant....well, I think I've covered that in the past.

Anyway, I noticed something in the visuals of the film that I had also noticed before, but hadn't really given much thought. When The Phantom Menace came out, some of the more astute commenters out there complained that in that film the Star Wars universe looked too clean. One of the charms about A New Hope was the way the technology looked used: no sterile 2001-style interiors, but ships and vehicles with dents and dirt and scuffed floors that looked like people used them. By contrast, TPM is a lot cleaner (with the exception of the Tatooine scenes, which makes sense given that world's backwater status).

Which brings me to AOTC: the dirt is starting to show up in this film, and not just on Tatooine but elsewhere. In the nightclub scene, just after the big Coruscant chase, Obi Wan and Anakin apprehend their assassin ("Jedi business, go back to your drinks" is one of my favorite moments in Star Wars -- Hayden Christensen channeling Detective Sipowicz there) and drag her into the alley...where we can see garbage and dirt accumulating in the corners. I'm interested to see if this trend continues in Episode III: The Last Shoe Drops.

(EDIT: Upon re-reading of this post, I discovered a mind-numbingly bad sentence that I had written. That sentence has been recast.)

Mostly Mozart...Tchiefly Tchaikovsky...Basically Bach...but, Rarely Rachmaninov

Yar asked me, in comments, to provide some "essentials" or pointers for people who want to get into classical music but don't really know where to start. That's a pretty big task, and I'm still considering my thoughts there. But I do plan to get to that, maybe later this week. Or early this week. Or tomorrow. Or something.

I do want to point out a couple of classical music purchasing strategies, though. I've mentioned the Naxos label before, and for the classical music lover, Naxos is a godsend. First, it's a budget-price label, with their CDs generally going for eight bucks. The real worth, though, is that Naxos combines low price with adventurous repertoire. It's a lot easier to be adventurous in exploring composers whom one has never before heard when it's eight bucks a pop, as opposed to full-price. Naxos records its share of "the warhorses" of the repertoire, but it's also virtually the only place you'll find a lot of lesser-known composers whose works really don't deserve to languish unknown.

(I should note that classical music tends to fall into a three-tier pricing system: full price, which is $18 or so these days; mid-price, around $10; and budget, generally $7.99.)

Naxos isn't the only way to get good music cheaply, though. The bigger labels are doing a lot of repackaging older recordings, frequently of the "warhorse" repertoire, on midprice or budget imprints. A lot of times, in stores, all these imprints will be gathered in the same place, which is immensely convenient. Even better, the labels have been issuing two-disc sets containing connected works: shorter operas, for example, can be found complete on such sets (many operas are too long to appear on just two discs, but many do actually fit); likewise, one can find things like the complete Scriabin symphonies on a two-disc set from London/Decca, or the complete Mozart violin concertos, and so on. Generally these sets retail for the price of one full-price disc, which is a huge bargain when you consider how quickly one can put a nice classical library together by doing this.

Store organization is also something to consider. Here in Buffalo, the best classical sections are at Borders and Barnes&Noble. First there is the largest section, where things are arranged alphabetically by composer. This is where you will find all of the full-price recordings, as well as many of the mid-price ones. Generally, all of the budget-price labels, including Naxos, will be kept separately, where each label will be shelved separately, and then alphabetized by composer within each label. (In other words, all of the Naxos CDs will generally be in one place, followed by all of the London/Decca budget CDs, and then all the Philips ones, and then the DG ones, et cetera.)

Then, after all of the "single composer" discs, one finds the compilations. Compilations are, almost always, CDs which feature works by a bunch of different composers, the purpose of which is to showcase either a specific performer or ensemble. Thus, a CD of Richard Stolzman playing pieces for clarinet will be found in the compilations section. These tend to fall into a number of different categories, and thus the way they are shelved differs from store to store. But generally, compilations will generally be grouped in logical fashion: vocal compilations will be together, probably grouped by performer; likewise with instrumental compilations. So in these cases, you'll need to know specifically what performer you're looking for. But not always, though: if you want a CD of Yo Yo Ma playing cello works, there will certainly be a section of his CDs; but if you specifically want Yo Yo Ma playing the Saint-Saens cello concerto, you'll probably have to look under Saint-Saens in the composer section. After a while, you'll learn where to look first.

One last note about compilations: frequently if you want to find a specific piece of music that's fairly short, you're more likely to find it in the Compilations than under the specific composer. A good example is Schumann's lovely piano piece "Traumerei", which runs about four minutes. You can probably find a disc or two of Schumann piano music in the Schumann section that contains "Traumerei", but then again, you may not. The next recourse would be to go over to the compilations, and then find all the compilations of solo pianists, which will all be together, and look through the individual CDs for the piece. This can make shopping for a specific piece take a lot longer at first, but this is another case where experience pays off: as you get more accustomed to the rhyme-and-reason of the classical section, you'll know where to look.

So there's your road-map to the classical music section. Sometime soon I'll get into actual destinations on that map.

Crow and Tom Servo could not be reached for comment.

Aaron points out a place where you can make your own space-based telescope. Turns out, though, that it's just a little model; it's not really a space-based telescope. Sigh.

For no reason, I'm suddenly reminded of a TV show that lasted for one season, back when I was a kid, called something like Salvage One. The story was that a guy who owns a junkyard, played by Andy Griffith (in between Mayberry and Matlock), decides to use all of the scrap in his yard to build a rocket to the moon. I seem to recall the capsule was built from the mixer on a cement truck.

And oh wow, looks like I'm not the only one who remembers that show - - it's got its own tribute site! And apparently you can make a model of the show's rocketship, too!

(If I have not just conclusively established my geek credentials for all time, I give up.)

A Moment for the Ages (the Dumb Ages, sadly)

Oh, holy crap. I mean, HOLY CRAP!

(Link filched from Mickey).

Chickens in the Mist

(What the heck is this?!)

RACHEL LUCAS.

:: Here's a picture of my dog chasing a chicken across the road! Isn't he cute? I love when he does that!

:: Open letter to Barbra Streisand:

Dear Babs,

I know you're upset about the war and all, and I know you're upset because Dubya is the devil and everything, and I know you're upset because all those poor little liberals now have to work for a living. But please don't go on national TV again to cry about the plight of the poor chickens on the California roads, OK? It just makes you look like an asshat. Now, I know, that's because you really are am asshat, but you probably don't want to let that secret out. Besides, it's not like you see any chickens on your Malibu estate. So just shut up and entertain me, and we'll be fine, OK?

Love,
Rachel

:: Oh. My. God. Michael Moore is going to make his next movie about the decline of chickens on the roads in Flint! Of course it will be full of lies. I. Cannot. Wait. To. Ridicule. It.

:: After writing that last post, the period on my keyboard broke! So! I'll! Be! Using! Exclamation! Points! But! Right! Now! I! Have! To! Go! Stop! That! Chicken! From! Kicking! My! Dog's! Ass!

Next, Woody Harrelson plays the Chump.

Here we have an op-ed genius who thinks that Rush Limbaugh was right, and that Donovan McNabb actually is overrated.

Basically, the writer - - a guy named Allen Barra - - digs out some stats to demonstrate that McNabb's production hasn't been all that great, and that the Eagles' success in recent years has been mainly due to defense. Now, Barra is correct that the Eagles have hung their hats in the last couple of years on their defensive prowess, which is in turn no surprise to anybody who pays attention to the NFL. "Defense wins championships" is an adage that has been proven so many times, especially in the last few Super Bowls, that it still amazes me that so many teams still even try to overload their offenses with talent.

The problem I have with Barra's article is that he wants to hang just about all of the blame for the Eagles' lack of offensive production on McNabb's neck, which is unfair for a number of reasons.

Barra asks us to compare McNabb with the quarterback who won last year's Super Bowl, Brad Johnson. Johnson's lifetime passer rating, we're told, is higher than McNabb's , by about seven points. The correct response to this, of course, is "So what?" Johnson is in his tenth year, I believe, and he has had the luxury in his career of throwing to such receivers as Cris Carter, in his first years with the Vikings, and Keyshawn Johnson in Tampa Bay. McNabb, however, has yet to have that kind of receiving talent around him.

When I look at the Eagles' leaders by year (.pdf file), I see a number of interesting things. First, since 1998, a different receiver has led the Eagles in receiving each year, and twice that player has been a running back. (It doesn't speak very highly of a team's wideouts when a running back is catching the most passes on the team.) No Eagle receiver has hauled in more than seventy passes since Irving Fryar had 86 in 1997, and this in an era when receivers catching at least ninety passes is a regular feature of the NFL. (By comparison, last season the Buffalo Bills had two receivers over the 90-mark, Eric Moulds and Peerless Price, with Moulds actually pulling in 100 passes.)

Eagles running backs have been better than their receivers, but there too, they haven't been as prolific as one would expect from an elite offense. Duce Staley has been the team's starter, and he has certainly been a good back, but his yardage is lower than one would hope from a team with a great back - - his best years have been around 1200 yards, as compared with, say, last year's NFL rushing leader, the Dolphins' Ricky Williams, who piled up over 1800 yards.

I find it hard to believe that a player who has been to two NFC title games and who, in 2000, finished second in the league's MVP voting, and who that same year accounted for just under seventy-five percent of his team's total yards can be said to be "underrated", especially since he's only in his fourth year as the Eagles' opening-day starting quarterback.

To return to Brad Johnson, Barra says this: "I don’t know anyone who would call Brad Johnson, on the evidence of his 10-year NFL career, much more than mediocre." Well, I doubt he's a Hall-of-Famer, but I'd consider him more than mediocre. I'd rate Johnson pretty well, especially in the elusive category of "toughness". So I'm not entirely sure what benchmark Barra is using to determine mediocrity. Barra seems also to think that last year's NFC title game, in which Johnson's Buccaneers beat McNabb's Eagles, proves conclusively that Johnson is superior, which seems odd to me. First, the Bucs last year had one of the best defenses ever, and second, McNabb was ineffective largely because he was coming back from a broken ankle early in the season (the decision to play him is one of the more questionable I've seen, but I'd probably have done it, too).

Further, to cite Johnson's Super Bowl ring as an example of why he's the superior quarterback is simply idiotic. By this metric, Johnson is therefore better than not only McNabb, but he's also superior to Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts, and (ouch) Jim Kelly. Now, that's probably not quite what Barra is getting at here, but there is something worth considering here. The fact is, the club of Super Bowl-winning QBs is a small one, and in general it takes QBs a long time to get into that club. To imply that McNabb should have won a Super Bowl by now, in his fifth year in the NFL, is ridiculous, although we might be tempted to forget this after seeing Kurt Warner and Tom Brady do it so soon in their careers, in the last four years. But consider how long all the other winners have had to wait: Brett Favre took six years, John Elway took something like thirteen, Trent Dilfer took seven, and so on. Winning the Super Bowl is a crowning achievement, but it's not really a defining achievement. As a Bills fan, I wouldn't exchange Jim Kelly's entire career for Mark Rypien's Super Bowl ring.

Donovan McNabb has not been mediocre, not by any logical estimation. He has shown, at least to this point, a lot of potential as one of the league's top playmakers. He has improved each year. He still needs to really grow into the role of team leader, but what's funny is that this whole ugly business will probably end up helping him in that regard. Setting aside all of the racial nonsense, just the football evidence suggests that he's not overrated at all.

Bad things that can happen when you switch from 9-Lives to Whiskas.

Gods, sometimes a news item comes along to which the only possible reaction is, "Wow, it took that long for this to happen?"

I hope that Roy recovers, but I also hope that the tiger who attacked him is not killed. I'm only mildly an animal-rights believer, but I've always been uncomfortable with the fact that any animal that ever attacks a human is killed.

Quite continental....

The Hope Diamond has been removed from its necklace setting for the first time in twenty years for scientific tests. It was later returned to its setting, though; none of the tests involved having Gloria Stuart toss the gem into the North Atlantic.

Tonight on a very special "Blossom"....

OK, if any of my readers are also regular viewers of ER, did any of you like last night's episode? I thought it was terrible, overwrought crap. More African-pseudo-military stuff, complete with summary executions and soul-searching for characters whose souls really ought to be all searched-out by now. Yeesh. End complaint.

So you wanna write a novel....

I haven't participated in National Novel Writing Month in years past, and I probably won't this time out either (since I'm already writing one), but there it is, for anyone interested. It really is true that the Big Secret to writing successfully is that one actually has to sit down and write. The problem, though, is that this also happens to be the Big Secret to writing unsuccessfully. But editors can't buy books that aren't in front of them, so all you zombies who fancy yourselves as nursing a novel within you, put it on paper. It is the only way...it is your destiny...I am your father...I need to watch Star Wars...

The SF President? Sign me up!

Via Paul Riddell, I see that General Wesley Clark is appealing to the SF geek set. It sure would be nice to have a President well-versed in science, for once. Of course, that's likely to play next to no role whatseoever in determining Clark's electibility, unless it goes in the reverse direction, since for reasons passing understanding Americans tend to vote against the smart-looking guy.

The Future is coming...but isn't it always?

Michael Lopez has some thoughts on the future of the music industry. Basically, Michael thinks that the RIAA's legal wranglings right now are actually the beginnings of death-spasms, and that performance is going to replace recording as music's coin-of-the-realm. I'm not sure how much I agree with him.

Forecasting the future is always incredibly tricky business. (Remember, if my predictions had come about, Jim Kelly's hand would be sporting three Super Bowl rings right now.) I do think that performance will see something of a comeback, but I'm not at all convinced it's going to replace recording as the musicians' main source of income. I take it as pretty much of a given in human nature that, given a new thing X, someone will figure out a way to make money on X. And since recorded music isn't going anywhere -- what's being hashed out right now is the how of recorded music, not its existence -- eventually we're going to end up paying for it, somehow. Recorded music will not be free, because nothing that has ever been free has ever stayed free, and I see little reason to expect music to buck that trend.

And if it's not free, I can't imagine the musicians sitting idly by while others make money on their work.

Critical Thoughts

I occasionally enjoy Norman Lebrecht's columns, as posted and archived at the Naxos website. (Naxos, you really ought to know, is in my opinion the greatest thing to hit classical music since the trumpet.) Many times, I have no idea at all what Lebrecht is talking about; he frequently writes about specific goings-on in the British classical music scene, of which I have no knowledge at all. Other times, I disagree with him vehemently (he wrote a dismissive article about John Williams some months ago that had me fuming). But he's usually interesting. Right now, he's discussing what makes a great critic.

First of all, I'm not really sure there actually is such a thing as a "great critic"; not many critics seem to last in the general public estimation a while beyond their deaths, really. We can rattle off lists of great composers, great painters, great writers, et cetera; but the list of great critics seems painfully short: Pauline Kael (although I wouldn't name her, to be honest); and...well, are there any others? Does anyone still study the music criticism of Virgil Thomson, outside of music critics themselves? I rather suspect that "great critics" are actually "great writers", who made criticism their subject and stock-in-trade. The problem there, though, is that by the very nature of their subject matter, critics are pretty much doomed to being forgotten. There's not really a great deal that lasts in the critic's output, and it seems to me that critics' writings are more likely to become historical curiosities than anything else. A graduate student in film might dig into Pauline Kael's or John Simon's writings on 1970s American cinema, but I can't really imagine anyone else doing so.

Lebrecht's column also saddened me because it was here that I learned of Harold Schonberg's recent death. I never read Schonberg's music criticism, since when I came to music he was already five years into his retirement. But I did read a number of the general interest books Schonberg wrote about music: The Great Pianists is a fine volume, as is The Great Conductors (although when I reread that last one, a year or two ago, I was surprised at the occasional sexism that I had not noticed in my first reading as a teenager). He wrote a book about some of the greatest virtuosos in music history, and his most successful book, The Lives of the Great Composers (which I reviewed for GMR) is still in print. I enjoyed Schonberg's writings, and I'm saddened by his passing. (In a side note, Schonberg was also keenly interested in chess and wrote a book called Grandmasters of Chess, which I may have read in college although I don't recall if I actually did.)

(I would be remiss in citing Lebrecht's article if I didn't also cite one sentence from it, because I am sorry to say that this is the worst sentence I've read in months. Lebrecht notes that Leonard Bernstein overcame Schonberg's apprently-often negative comments about him to become a central figure in American music, and then Lebrecht writes this: "But the sparks struck by his flinty reviews fire the glow that endures as Bernstein's halo.". Gahhhh, make it stop!)

Up with this I will not put.

As a former brass player -- the trumpet, specifically -- I find this news story, linked by Lynn Sislo, offensive in the extreme.

(All kidding aside, the oboe is my favorite of the woodwind instruments. So many of Berlioz's most achingly-beautiful moments involve the oboe, and the third movement of the Symphonie Fantastique, with its duet for English Horn and offstage oboe, is sublime. Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is also laden with wonderful stuff for the oboe.)

When Titles Go Bad!

Check out Nefarious Neddie on the subject of bad movie titles. Personally, I would submit Reality Bites as a bad title. Go and suggest others, if you so desire.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Traditional Basque sword dance, Bilbao, Spain

I find that travel writing is a big source of story ideas -- if I don't find direct suggestions for plots, I at least learn of all manner of wonderful cultures and customs that I can incorporate into my fiction. This image is from a slideshow for a recent Slate series of travel articles about the Basque country (roughly, the parts of Spain and France near the southern shores of the Bay of Biscay). The most interesting article, and set of pictures, were from the fourth day of the trip to Basque country, but they're rather gruesome because they focus on the bullfight. Linguistic-minded readers will be interested in the Day Two report, which focuses on Euskara, the Basque language that seems totally out of place in Europe, with its lack of basis in the Romance or the Teutonic languages.

Victor Laszlo could not be reached for comment.

Michael Lopez links a news item about a high school band director who had to apologize when the halftime show he'd designed included the display of a Nazi flag and the playing of the Nazi anthem.

That, as Michael notes, does sound bad at first, but upon further examination it turns out that the band director was trying to do a historical show about World War II and the combatants thereof; from the description, it sounds as if the Nazi anthem was played as, well, Darth Vader's theme is employed in the Star Wars movies, simply as an indicator of who the enemy was. (Michael also rightly wonders why the Soviet Union's theme was left out, which gives me cause to cite Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony and its musical depiction of the Siege of Leningrad.)

It sounds to me that the band director's real error was in attempting something of this level of historical sophistication at a high school football game. To be frank, this isn't exactly the kind of crowd that's likely to appreciate nuance.

(By the way, if you're not reading Michael's blog, you're missing out on a lot of good stuff. Especially when he goes on a posting binge, which he appears to be doing right now.)

Agent Smith will see you now....

Nefarious Neddie has some thoughts about The Matrix and Agent Smith and God and such things. I have yet to see Reloaded, so I can't comment. But Agent Neddie's thoughts sound intriguing.

President Bartlet could not be reached for comment.

A few months ago I wrote about what I now refer to as Project Liberatopia, which is a movement afoot to gather up 20,000 Libertarians and move them all to a single state, so they can use their numbers to heavily influence their new local politics and enact as many planks of the Libertarian platform as possible (which seems to me to basically involve removing just about every plank of everybody else's platform).

Well, we have a winner: the small state which will become home to all those wayward Libertarians is....New Hampshire! Congratulations, I guess.

Of course, what gets me is their insistence that "We're not here to take over"...but what else would be the point of the exercise?

(By the way, the title of this post refers to the fact that, on The West Wing, President Bartlet's previous office was Governor of New Hampshire.)

Things I Didn't Need to See, #78594

NBC's Today Show has one of those street concerts of theirs on right now, this one featuring Sting (a guy I've always liked). He's performing "Every Breath You Take", and as he performs, NBC keeps cutting to shots of ordinary people and NBC workers dancing...one of whom was Willard Scott.

And I haven't had coffee yet; it's still brewing.

They also kept showing the techs and producers and behind-the-scenes people dancing, as well, which makes me wonder if someone in charge told them, "You might show up on camera, so you'd damned well better be dancing!"

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

There is nothing, in October, like a nice big pot of chili. I'd offer a recipe, but I don't really use a recipe - - I just kind of throw it together until it tastes right. But this time I did try one thing new: I put a pile of Fritos at the bottom of the bowl, and then spooned the chili on top of it. Simple, yet really tasty. (I think I got the idea from one of Emeril Lagasse's cookbooks. Don't laugh. I've made a lot of good stuff from his cookbooks, and I learned a lot about kitchen technique from watching his show. There's a lot more going on than "Bam!" and "Kick it up a notch!")

The Stop-Start-Stop City

Long-term readers of this space may remember that I've mentioned a large indoor amusement-park attraction that was proposed last spring for Buffalo's long-dormant waterfront. I was of mixed mind on this proposal: it struck me as the typical "silver bullet" project, just the latest in a long line of big-ticket projects that are put up on the drawing board, promised to create jobs and draw people to downtown, and yet never actually built. Nevertheless, I liked the actual idea, since it would entail an attraction for families to the Buffalo waterfront, whereas many other proposals are not exactly "family-friendly" (golf courses, casinos, etc).

Sadly, the proposal's developers faced a deadline yesterday to have their plans ready to go so they could move on to the next step, and they missed the deadline. So the project is dead, and now Buffalo's right where it started, with a miles-long swath of undeveloped waterfront land.

At the same time, Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello unveiled the latest installment of his repair of Buffalo's finances. We're talking "scorched earth" here, folks: job cuts totaling more than 700 positions in such departments as fire departments, police stations, and - - every politician's first choice for job cuts - - teachers. Oy. Gee, since Gray Davis seems likely to be out of a job in a week or so, maybe he'd like to come take the reins in Buffalo. He certainly can't do any worse.

(But at least half of those words are wrong)

Writing update: my word count is now over 50000 words on the novel-in-progress, and it's coming along nicely. The storyline is starting to come into focus in my head, and rather nicely too, if I do say so myself. I am writer, hear me roar.

(Of course, it's not nearly so impressive as some folks who kill three deadlines each week and toss off 8000 words each day on four different books…harumph!)

He's not heavy, he's our guest commentator!

Rush Limbaugh has resigned from ESPN, after the storm of controversy surrounding his incredibly goofy statements about Donovan McNabb and race in the NFL last Sunday. Of course, it's one of those "non-contrite" acts of contrition: "I'm sorry what I said was taken the way it was, because, you know, I didn't really mean it the way you took it. So I'm in trouble because you're a bunch of overly-sensitive fuddy-duddies."

And then, Limbaugh apparently went on his own radio show and gave this interpretation of events:

"All this has become the tempest that it is because I must have been right about something," Limbaugh said. "If I wasn't right, there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community."

Yup. Now one can determine the correctness of one's beliefs by the level of outrage they inspire. Jesse at Pandagon has a pretty good takedown of this line of "thinking".

Yesterday on the Jim Rome show, a caller asked of this whole affair: "Why are we surprised?" That's about right. What Limbaugh said about McNabb pretty much falls right in line with things he has said on his own program, for years. The only thing I wonder is how much of what he says he actually believes, and how much is said simply because he's one of those who likes to toe the line of controversy. Personally, I suspect it's both.

Wagner in DC

Ionarts has been running a six-part interview with Carol Berger, who is the founder of the Millennium Wagner Opera Project, which is in turn an extension of an organization dedicated to a multi-disciplinary approach to the works of Richard Wagner. Check it out, if you're interested in opera in general or Wagner in particular.

(Link is to Part Six of the interview, which in turn contains links to parts one through five.)

What if Deagol had kept the Ring?

This has been making the rounds of Left Blogistan in the last two days, and it's pretty funny, I guess, but I gotta admit that I'm growing tired of the current fad of translating the language of one's political opposites into Gollum-speak. I don't know, but it's starting to seem...yesterday, I guess. Actually, I think it lost its cachet when Ben Shapiro did it some months ago. Now there's a guy who could suck the coolness out of the Fonz.

This Just In!

Bill O'Reilly is nuts.

MY God, it's full of stars!

If you're in need of a bit of Flash-fun, may I present the greatest Flash thingie ever:

2001: A Space Odyssey explained. Sit back and feel your mind expand. And before watching it, you may wish to practice your best Keanu "Whoa".

(filched from I Love Everything)

The Cruel Baseball Gods, revisited

One of the hard things about being a sports fan is that occasionally the Powers Above will align the stars in such a way that two teams you don't like end up playing one another, so you're forced to root for a team that ordinarily you'd never root for. My all-time worst instance of this was in the early 90s, during the Bills' Super Bowl run, when one year the Miami Dolphins, who are the Bills' biggest rival in the division, traveled to play the Dallas Cowboys, who are the greatest force for Evil on the planet. (Well, in the non-lethal sense of "evil".) As a Bills fan, I was forced to root for the Cowboys -- who ended up beating the Bills in that year's Super Bowl. Ugh.

So now I have the Chicago Cubs in a playoff series against the most evil franchise in baseball, the Atlanta Braves. Now, I have no overriding reason to choose one team over the other, as I did in that Dolphins-Cowboys tilt, so I'm holding my nose and rooting for the Cubs, even though I think a Cubs championship would unravel the threads of time, as well as elevate the nation's millions of inexplicable Cubs fans to apocalyptic levels of annoyance. My long-standing policy is to root for whomever the Braves are matching up against.

And if you're wondering what sin the Braves could have committed at some hazy point in distant baseball memory, remember that I am a Pirates fan, and check out Number Six on this list. To this day, that night remains the only time a sporting event has left me nauseous. (Not even the missed-field-goal in Super Bowl XXV made me sick at my stomach. But Sid Bream beating the throw? That did it.)

Rush the Greek?

It's not surprising that I didn't hear about this story until yesterday, since this is Buffalo where sports coverage consists of "BILLS BILLS BILLS BILLS BILLS BILLS Sabres Sabres BILLS BILLS oh and there are 31 other teams in the NFL".

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh thinks that Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb has never been particularly good, and the only reason he's been in the starting lineup at all is because of the NFL's desperation to have a successful black quarterback. You know, like Warren Moon and that guy who threw five touchdowns in the second quarter of Super Bowl XXII for the Redskins.

Or, maybe he doesn't think that and is simply seeing just what he can get away with, which is what I suspect Limbaugh of doing a lot of the time. Of course, that doesn't imply anything better, because that's basically a choice between "racist twit" and "craven cynic". Maybe I'll flip a coin.

James Capozzola has a rundown of Philly op-ed writers on this.

(By the way, Limbaugh used to be a fairly vocal Steelers fan. I don't suppose anyone has ever heard him spouting a similar opinion of Kordell Stewart, who attained a much lower level of success than McNabb has?)