They Should've Done a Remake

Due to my boss and, well, about half the office being on vacation today I was able to get out at lunch and see Tron: Legacy in 3D at the IMAX at Navy Pier. My overall impression is that it was decent but not spectacular and I walked away feeling a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience. It was great to see the world of Tron fully realized now that they have the technology to do it but the story and the characters just don't measure up to the original. That left me to have to face the somewhat awkward conclusion (since I've gone on so many tirades) that they should have just remade the original Tron.

To be sure, second only to Avatar it's the both the best use of 3D and the best example of a fully rendered digital world ever created for "live action". I say live action in quotes because the line between it and animated films blurs more and more each day. But the problem is that I've grown pretty tired of the "special-effects extravaganza". To quote Idiocracy: "And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!" That sums it up pretty good. Action sequences can still be thrilling but only if you have some characters that you actually care about and whom you actually believe might be harmed. And that's just largely lacking here. I would agree that Flynn wasn't the most fully-formed character to begin with in the original film, but I would argue that's a good reason why you could have really used this movie to flesh him out. You had a character that was instantly recognizable to your fan base and yet was still largely a blank slate. What more could you ask for? But what we get instead, and I wish I were kidding here, is Kevin Flynn infused with the Dude. And I promise you that whatever you just imagined when you read that is infinitely more exciting than what shows up on screen. I'd say that the other big problem with the movie is the new character Quorra (played by Olivia Wilde). Acting-wise she does just fine and clearly she's largely there for eye-candy purposes (and in that she succeeds). But the subplot revolving around her is just not nearly interesting enough to justify the attention it takes away from the main story between Flynn and his son.

If you read Ebert's review, he closes by pretty much telling you straight out that you should see it stoned (at least as much as he can say it while still being printed in a major newspaper). I think I'd have to agree with him.

Bipartisanship: Let's Just Replace The Last Letter with a T

Thankfully, I now get to go back to one of my favorite pasttimes: bitching about politics!

This latest tax deal proves once again that the only thing worse than the two parties not working together is when they do. Allow me to set up the impasse. The Democrats (and Obama, at least until recently) were committed to letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for all those making $250,000 per year or more and extending them for everyone else, while the Republicans wanted them extended for everyone across the board. In other words, in the name of getting the deficit under control, the Democrats' solution was additional taxation and the Republicans' solution was to cut spending. That seems about right. So what compromise did they reach (they being Obama and the GOP)? Extend all the tax cuts and in return extend unemployment benefits and lower the social security payroll tax for next year. In other words, reduce taxes and increase spending.

If you're hearing a dull thud right now, that's the sound of me banging my head against the desk (or, if you're reading this after business hours, my palm slapping my forehead). What's perhaps even more dumbfounding than this is the fact that it's Congressional Democrats who are set to rebel at this. Aren't Republicans and those associated with the Tea Party supposed to be the ones all about fiscal responsibility? This is just a horribly irresponsible deal and the kind of thing Republicans always campaign against.

I'm sorry, but this is our government at its worst. This was financial shenanigans when Reagan did it in the 80s, it was shenanigans when Bush did it in the 00s, and it's shenanigans now. I've often been accused of being a fence-straddler when I say that I want a balanced budget and I don't really care if it comes via increased taxation or cutting spending. But this is why I say that! I can't afford to be picky with my ideology; I just want someone who can do math! You don't want to raise taxes? Fine, then you need to cut spending. Don't want to cut spending? Fine, then you have to raise taxes. It isn't quite, but it's damn close to a zero sum game. The cut to Social Security payroll tax is just the coup de grace. Hey look! We've got a program that's on pace to go bankrupt in 25 years. Let's cut the amount of money we pay into it! (THUD) (THUD) (THUD)

If you supported the Replublicans or the Tea Party last month, you should be furious right now. This is exactly the type of short-sightedness that let the deficit get to this point. But the truth is that the real agenda of the Republicans is simply low taxes at any cost, with lip service paid to the idea of a balanced budget via vague promises of budget cuts that never materialize. To be sure, the Democrats are no better but at least they haven't campaigned on it incessantly for the last 30 years.

Deja Vu

Well the last thing that I expected or wanted to do was post back to back posthumous tributes, but I can't let the great Ron Santo's passing go by without mention.

He retired in 1974, so obviously I'm too young to have seen him play and I've only seen the odd highlight film of his playing career. I remember knowing who he was when I was growing up a Cubs fan in the 80s but it wasn't till college that I really became a big Ron Santo fan.

The first couple years in college, the cable down in Champaign wasn't very good and as a result we only got the Cubs games that were on WGN. In addition to that, Christy was in school at Northern and that meant a lot of weekend road trips. So the end result was a lot of listening to Cubs games on the radio, and it was then that I really came to know the tandem of Pat Hughes and Ron Santo.

Now let's not mince words here. Ron, from a purely broadcasting standpoint, was terrible. He made absolutely no pretense at showing even the slightest hint of impartiality, he often forgot to either mute his mic when he was doing something noisy like clearing his throat or opening a bag of chips (yes, he ate while broadcasting), or would forget to unmute his mic on the few occasions when he remembered to mute it. And whenever anything exciting happened you'd have to wait a good 5 seconds to actually find out what happened because the first few seconds of air were always filled with Ron drowning out the play by play call with either a thunderous "Oh Yeah!" or an absolutely agonizing "Geez!" You always knew right away if something good or bad had happened, you just didn't know exactly what for a while.

But despite the fact that he certainly wasn't in line for any broadcasting awards, myself and most other Cubs fans loved listening to him. Because no matter how big of a Cub fan you were, no matter how much you lived and died with every pitch, Ron had you beat. Nobody was more excited when they won and nobody took it harder when they lost. So much so that it got to the point where whenever you listened to the Cubs blow another game in excruciating fashion, your own personal angst over the loss took a back seat to a desire to want to console Ron. You always knew that as hard as you could ever take a loss, he was taking it harder. And then you'd tune in the next day, and no matter if they were 20 games above or 20 games below .500 he'd be right back with as much optimism as he'd ever had and you almost had no choice but to get over yesterday's loss too. He wasn't Ron, the ultimate broadcaster, he was Ron, the ultimate Cub fan. And we loved him for it.

One of my favorite segments from the last couple years was the "daily pitching matchup breakdown with Ron Santo." Here's the hard-hitting analysis you could expect. No matter how bad a Cubs pitcher had performed recently, Ron had a feeling that today was the day he was gonna turn things around. And no matter how good the opposing pitcher was or how much he had dominated the Cubs in the past, Ron had a feeling that today was going to be the day that we were going to get to him. He wasn't Ron, the ultimate analyst, he was Ron, the ultimate optimist. And we loved him for it.

Honestly I don't know what he did during the off-season. I think he probably just sat around and simultaneously thrilled his fans and annoyed his family by relentlessly talking about what moves the Cubs had made or were going to make and how they were going to look next season. For Ron Santo, baseball wasn't his job, it was his life. And we loved him for it.

There's one story that does a great job of epitomizing him. Most people know part of it. It's the famous Brant Brown call. Late in September of 1998, with the Cubs tied for the wild card lead, they are playing the Brewers and it's the bottom of the ninth. The Cubs are leading by 2 runs with the bases loaded and 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. Geoff Jenkins hits a completely routine fly ball to Brant Brown in left field, and he inexplicably just drops it. 3 runs score and the Cubs lose. As per usual, Ronnie talks right over Pat's call and just screams "OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOO!" with such raw shock and anguish that you'd think someone had been murdered right before his eyes. Here's Pat Hughes describing the aftermath:

"After the inning ended I looked over and Ronnie had his forehead on the desk and wasn't moving. I thought he had died right there, so I poked him with my fingers to see if he was alive and he finally moved. After the game we were in the manager's office and I saw something that has never happened in American sports. The manager of the cubs, Jim Riggleman, put his arm around Ronnie and was trying to console him about the loss, Riggleman saying, don't worry, Ronnie, we're going to Houston and we're going to win and make the playoffs, and Ronnie just kept saying, 'how could he drop that ball?"

And what does Ron do next? He goes down to the clubhouse, gives Brant Brown a hug and tells him not to worry, that it's ok, and that he's made mistakes before and he knows how he feels. And the Cubs, despite getting swept in Houston, did end up making the playoffs that year, and no one was happier about it than Ron Santo (well, except maybe Brant Brown). We won't talk about what happened in the playoffs that year (or any year since 1908 for that matter).

I've always said that for whatever stupid reason, there was a group of miserable SOBs in the Hall that were going to make sure that he never got into the Hall of Fame while he was alive and that as soon as he passed away he'd get in for sure. I still think that's the case, and it makes me mad. Everyone that voted against him while he was alive and still does so now, that's fine. I disagree with them, but that's their right. But although I'm not a violent man, I'd like to go up to every guy who voted against him and changes their vote now and punch them in the face. His baseball numbers haven't changed in 36 years, so that means you weren't keeping him out because of what he did on the field. You were keeping him out because for whatever reason you disliked him and wanted to make sure that in his lifetime he never got to experience the one thing that would have meant the most to him. That is mean-spirited and despicable in a way that there's barely words for, and it makes you a horrible human being.

But at least he was around last year as the Cubs honored him on the 50th anniversary of his major league debut. And at least he lived to see his number retired and sent up the left field flagpole to a well deserved standing ovation at Wrigley in 2003. The next time I'm at Wrigley I look forward to raising a glass towards that flag and drinking a toast to the man that was the face of Cubs baseball for the last 50 years.

And so for the 2nd time in a week I have to say goodbye to someone who brought a lot of joy to my life. Farewell Ronnie; wherever you are, I hope there's baseball there!

I Would Have Written This Sooner, But You Weren't Dead Then

As I'm sure everyone's aware by now, Leslie Nielson passed away last weekend. I remember first looking up his age when Mr. Magoo came out in 1997 and thinking "whoa; he's 71!" so it's certainly not a shock that 13 years later he's gone. But it's still sad nonetheless.

When little 9-year-old John went to the theatres to see The Naked Gun in 1998, he instantly became one of my favorite comedic actors. When I got introduced to Airplane a couple years later and then Police Squad a couple years after that, I was even more hooked. But as big of a fan as I was and am, he's also one of the actors that disappointed me the most.

If there's one word that best describes Leslie Nielsen, I think it would be charisma. That may sound strange, and I certainly don't mean it in Hollywood sex-symbol kind of way. But he just had this way about him that made him instantly likeable the minute he appeared on screen. Even when he was doing the most absurd things, he conveyed such an innocence that you viewed it almost like you were watching a puppy do it. The act might have been bad, but you couldn't really blame him.

In any case, I think it was that quality in him that led me to be so disappointed so often. Because Leslie Nielsen has been in a lot of baaaaaad movies. Some that are just run of the mill bad but most of which are utterly and irredeemably awful (Spy Hard, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 2001: A Space Travesty, Scary Movie 3 and 4). And because he was in them, I went into just about every one thinking, "Leslie Nielsen can save this movie." But of course he couldn't, because they were unsaveable. Besides The Naked Gun series (which get progressively worse but are all still enjoyable) and Airplane, I think the only other comedic film of his that I really enjoy (and I know I'm in the minority here) is Wrongfully Accused. But really, only Airplane and the first Naked Gun are worthy of being called great, and The Naked Gun was 22 years ago. Since then, in the back of my mind I've still been waiting for the next great Leslie Nielsen film, and even though the odds of that happening have gotten longer and longer with each passing year it's not till now that I've finally had to accept that it's now officially never going to happen.

But in a way, isn't that what every actor strives for? No matter how many laughs he gave me, he always left me wanting more. Farewell, Mr. Nielsen; thanks for all the laughs!

It has really bugged me that 90% of what I've read about him in news stories, celebrity tweets, etc are all fixated on the "Surely you can't be serious!" quote. While it's a great line, in my opinion he's got a lot that are at least as good if not better. So I'd like to invite any of my blog readers who are Leslie Nielsen fans to share some of their favorites. Here's a couple of mine (in addition to the one that inspired my blog post title):

Man: Who are you? And how did you get in here?

Frank Drebin: I'm a locksmith, and I'm a locksmith.

Frank Drebin: I'm single! I love being single! I haven't had this much sex since I was a Boy Scout Leader!

(Music stops; people stare)

Frank: I mean at the time I was dating a lot.

Finally, I was only recently introduced to the non-comedic acting of Leslie Nielsen in The Forbidden Planet. That movie is just lots of fun; everything a hokey, B sci-fi movie from the 50s is supposed to be. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys that kind of thing or has ever wondered what the hell they were talking about in "Science Fiction Double Feature" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

There Are Some Things For Which There Are No Explanations

Are you people punishing me with no comments or have I truly lost what extremely small readership I had? Am I just talking to my wife now? If that's the case, how's it going dear? What's for dinner tonight?

So god help me but I watched the Karate Kid remake this past Saturday. I woke up at 8 on Saturday morning and couldn't get back to sleep 'cause my back was hurting me so I went downstairs and put it on (baby had stayed overnight at Grandma's). I take some solace in the fact that the time I spent watching this film was just replacing time where I should have been unconcious. Makes it seem like less of a waste that way. Anyway, I really don't know how to review this movie other than to recommend that anyone who has ever seen the original shouldn't watch it. But if you've never seen the original, then I think it's probably a halfway decent film. Basically every place where the new one strays from the original, it was better in the original. And everytime the new one copies the original, it was waaaaaaaay better in the original. Probably the single biggest problem of the new one has to do with Jaden Smith. Notice that I say "has to do with" because it's not actually anything to do with his performance that's the problem - he actually does just fine. It's the fact that he's 11 (playing a 12-year-old). All the "teens" in the original were in their early to mid 20s playing 16-year-olds. Seeing a relationship between two 16-year-olds (who are really 23 and 21) is a lot more believable and relateable than one between two 12-year-olds (who are really 11). Second, the bullying of the enemy gang just doesn't carry the weight that it did in the original. What are a gang of unarmed 11-year-olds gonna do to you? Give you a cut lip? This leads to easily the most absurd scene in the movie. In the original, Daniel is literally getting the crap kicked out of him by a bunch of thugs in scary-looking skeleton makeup and Mr. Miagi comes and saves him. It works because 1) you feel like Daniel really might be in some legit danger, 2) Mr. Miagi looks like a frail old guy that you'd never expect this from and thus 3) you believe that he is actually putting himself in danger as well. The new one tries to recreate that scene but now you have Jackie Chan taking on a group of pre-teens. That's right; Jackie f'n Chan, martial arts god, taking on 6 11-year-olds. Feel the drama! That's like asking the audience to cheer for Bruce Lee as he beats up the Partridge Family (ok maybe I would have cheered for that).

I've gone off on tirades before about Hollywood running out of ideas and resorting to remakes and reboots, so I don't want to repeat myself too much. But I think what really gets me is when they decide to do so with blatant disregard as to why the original was a success. Or they do something equally absurd like the shot for shot remake of Psycho. Um, if I wanted to watch the script and shots that Alfred Hitchcock created, why I don't I just, you know, watch the film he already made? To me it just says that studio heads are wishing they could get away with just rereleasing the original films but they know they can't so they're just trying to repackage them and call them new. "Remember the Karate Kid? Big hit for us. But Pat Morita's dead and Ralph Machio's old, so do we have an old asian and a young actor that audiences will recognize? Great, go!"

Sometimes, remakes and reboots are a good idea: Batman Begins and the new Star Trek come to mind. Both of them took very popular icons that had run out of steam and tried to take elements of what made them a success in the past while putting a new spin on them. Even if you didn't like the results you can at least appreciate that there was some effort and imagination involved. Of course, you probably need look no further than the director to tell if a remake's going to be any good or not. Those two were directed by Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams, two of most imaginative directors out there. The new Karate Kid, on the other hand, was brought to us by the legend-in-his-own-mind Harald Zwart, director of such monumental testaments to cinema as The Pink Panther 2 and Agent Cody Banks as well as the epic films (I am not making these up) Long Flat Balls and Long Flat Balls 2.

Another Exciting Chapter of 18th Century Fights Waged in the 21st Century!

So hot on the heels of a big blowup about whether or not you have the right to build a church wherever you want (you do) and whether or not you can burn a book or not (you can) we now get the faux controversy of whether or not you should be able to sell a book that the vast majority of people find objectionable (you do).

I'm talking, of course, about this. I struggle with how much to write about this because (much like religion) to those that agree with me there's not really anything I can say that they haven't already thought of and those who don't agree with me will not be swayed by any type of logical argument.

So I'll try to take a slightly different tack on this. All but the most extreme individuals aren't saying that the author doesn't have the right to publish this book. It seems to more come down to whether or not Amazon should be selling it. Personally, I view stores (whether online or brick and mortar) as markets, and the consumer wins when the selection is as unlimited as possible. Even though it's not what often happens, I want supply and demand to be the only things dictating the price and availability of a product. For Amazon or any other business to spend time, money, and energy in deciding what is appropriate for the consumer to purchase just hinders my ability to get a commodity at the lowest price possible. When deciding whether or not to sell something like a digital book (which carries $0 procurement and production cost) the only relevant question for Amazon to ask is "is it legal?".

So now Amazon has removed the book from their website, and I don't really know why. Those leading the boycott charge are certainly not (and weren't going to be) satisfied with just this. A lot of them have lists of other books they also want to see removed, and this "success" just eggs them on further. So in the last 24 hours they've managed to outrage the religious and moral right-wingers by selling it and now they've pissed off the left-wingers by caving and taking it down. That's kind of impressive when you think about it. I guess they are counting on the American public having an extremely short attention span. And they couldn't be more wrong about . . . SQUIRREL!

Dem You! Dem You All to Hell!

Ah, nothing like a good Planet of the Apes reference on a Wednesday morning!

Yesterday I chose not to watch most of the election night coverage. And no it wasn't sour grapes on my part (I'm actually fairly pleased about it, which I'll get to in a second). It's just that there really weren't a lot of surprises or excitement, and the few that there were (like Quinn potentially beating Brady) are still being decided now. So instead I made another attempt to get through the 4-plus hour Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. Now, I consider myself to be of at least reasonable intellect, I already know the story of Hamlet, one of my favorite films of all time is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is certainly not Hamlet but does feature a lot of dialogue from it), and I even read Hamlet in high school. Nevertheless I have to admit that watching it is akin to watching a foreign film without subtitles. More specifically, for me it's like watching the French dubbed version of a movie I've seen a couple times before. I took a couple years of French, so I can pick out a few words here and there, and since I've seen it before I know what's happening and is going to happen, but the vast majority of the actual conversations sail over my head. But perhaps the truly weird part about it is that I'm still enjoying it! I guess it is true what they say - that 90% of conversation is not what you say but how you say it and how you look when you do. In any case, I've been watching it in roughly 30-40 minute chunks and I'm 2 and a half hours in right now.

But back to politics. It looks like the Republicans are going to pick up about 65 seats in the House to take firm control of that chamber and cut the Democratic majority in the Senate to ~53 to 47 (pending a couple close races and counting the two Independents as Democrats). First of all I think it's important to put this in some historical context. Although this is certainly larger than most times, this is what happens in mid-term elections. Going back to 1934 (now encompasing 20 midterms), guess how many times the party of the sitting President has gained seats? 3 in the House, and 5 in the Senate. That's a record of 3-17 and 5-15 (respectively) so this is by no means shocking. And if Democrats are looking for some good news today, it's the fourth time that control of one or both houses of Congress has changed in the mid-term of a President's first term. All 3 previous times, the President has been re-elected (Truman, Eisenhower, and Clinton). And that's exactly what I see happening here. As of today, the Republicans still do not have a viable challenger for the White House in 2012. And they're also somewhat trapped in how to position themselves for that Congressional election: if things improve between now and then they can't take complete credit for it (since the Presidency and Senate are still under the control of the other party) and if things don't they can't continue to simply be the party of "no" since they now have a responsibility to join in the governing process.

Speaking of which, here's one person who is hopeful that the Republicans finally do actually believe in their own rhetoric of restoring financial responsibility. To this point, all we've gotten is vague promises of "across the board spending cuts", which never happen. In fact, I'd like to also point out to the Republican banner wavers out there, that the prospective new Speaker of the House John Boehner is the same guy who said in a position paper on 2001 that (and I'm paraphrashing here) "it turns out that the American people didn't care about balanced budgets, and it's unrealistic to think that we can actually shrink the size of the government. The best we can do is limit the rate of its increase." Mind you that this is the same guy who was part of the 1994 Republican sweep into power that promised, well, pretty much the same thing they are promising now. Hmm, the Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again" comes to mind. By the way, that quote appears in Alan Greenspan's book (and it is properly cited) and after reading it 4 years ago I was so surprised that I sought out the source document and found it. But upon looking for it again in 2009 I noticed that it now can no longer be found anywhere on the net. Literally. I can find as much trivial info about Blake's 7, an extremely obscure and low-budget British sci-fi show from the 70's, as I want but apparently a position paper written 9 years ago by a sitting U.S. Representative is now lost to us. I'm sure it's just coincidence though. I'm sure it wasn't intentionally removed or anything like that. In any case, I'll be the first one to cheer if the Republicans really do decide to concentrate on their fiscal responsibility crede rather than going on social crusades to please the religious right.

But now that I've blasted away at Republicans for a while let me blast away at Obama too. Yesterday he was out trying to get the disenfranchised and disillusioned out to vote. Fair enough. But he was quoted as saying that his "whole agenda was at risk" if Republicans swept into power. Excuse me, Mr. President, but I seem to recall that your message in 2008 was "Yes we can" but apparently that was just the truncated version. I guess the full version was "Yes we can, provided that once you bring me into power you also give me sweeping majorities in both houses of Congress and keep them there for my full first term". Guess I should have read the fine print on those yard signs.

Obama's Wars

Usually I am content to just post my star rating for the books I read and the movies I see, but I feel compelled to make some additional commentary on this one.

I think the rating I gave this book (3 Stars) is probably the lowest one I've given any book since I started posting ratings on here. While some (i.e. Weir) would argue that it means my rating system is too generous, I would argue that it's because I really try to limit myself to books that are really good (or at least ones that I'm really likely to enjoy). I don't mind occasionally throwing away 2 hours on a crappy movie, but giving 10-12 hours of your life to a book that sucks is not something I enjoy doing. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that this book sucked, it was extraordinarily disappointing.

This is the 5th Woodward book I've read, although 2 of them I haven't read all the way through (I'm still in the middle of The Agenda and I only read about half of All the President's Men while researching for a paper on Watergate in high school). Until now, I'd always enjoyed them thoroughly. But he took a big step backwards here. To me I think it seems obvious that he really wanted to put out the first "big" book about the Obama presidency and it seems really rushed as a result. It seems like he thought "hmm, I've still got lots of military contacts from writing the Bush books and it'll take me too long to get new ones in the Fed and with various economic advisors so I'm just going to completely ignore that aspect." That's fair enough, but the problem is that there's just not enough there to fill up a 400 page book. You get a very good first 50 pages where he discusses the transition from Bush to Obama and a very good last 50 pages when they kind of open things up and talk about how Obama reacted to various situations as they occurred (e.g. the underwear bomber, the McChrystal Rolling Stones interview). But in between you get 300 pages of what is essentially recaps of minutes from various strategy meetings where Obama, the cabinet, and the generals try to agree on whether or not to send more troops into Afghanistan. Was that an important decision that is worthy of being put into print? Of course; but it can easily be accomplished in 50 or (at most) 100 pages. To say that it's padded is the understatement of the year. The central question that everyone is deciding on is "are we doing a full counter-insurgency, just a pure counter-terrorism, or trying some combination?" That question, in some form, is asked and answered no less than 30 times in the book. Instead of just saying "W,X, Y, and Z believed this while A,B, C, and D believed this" he gets detailed quotes from all of them. So even though there's just 2 different answers he gives it to you 8 times. It just makes for some painful reading.

Which is not to say that there's not some good information in here. You definitely get a sense of the inner workings of the administration (semi-dysfunctional, not moreso than the past couple administrations but certainly no better) and you also realize how quickly a lot of the "official statements" that are realeased to the press are thrown together, often without a lot of consensus within the administation. And I think that overall Woodward is relatively unbiased in his reporting, which is extremely valuable. But the bottom line is that if you're looking for a good overview of the first 18 months inside the Obama Presidency, you need to look elsewhere.

Some Thoughts on Unemployment

I just finished reading This Time is Different, it's a great but very dry read about the history of financial crises. The authors put together what is probably the largest amount of data ever compiled on economic statistics over the last 1000 years in an attempt to perform some analytics and draw some conclusions about what economies look like in the run up to a crises (useful in helping to avoid them) and what kind of severity and duration can be expected after they occur.

I lack the time and, quite frankly, the ability to relate even a fraction of what the book has to say. I can, however, summarize quite nicely. The power of delusion is so nearly absolute that with almost no exception the general public will deny all the signs pointing to a crises and will be thoroughly convinced that "this time really is different" all the way up until the crises finally hits. At that point the leaders will then usually throw up their hands and remark how it was impossible to predict. Finally, the return to "normalcy" is a lot harder and takes a lot longer than anyone likes to admit, especially when a banking crises is involved.

But my point today is not to review or rehash the book. I just wanted to use one piece of it as a stepping off point for some comments about unemployment. In an analysis of post-1900 banking crises which have occurred (of which there are 14), the authors found that on average the unemployment rises (as measured from trough to peak) by 7 percent and takes an average of 4.8 years to do so. Interestingly enough, on average the unemployment rates in emerging economies tend to rise less and last shorter than those in developed country. It's speculated (though not proven) that this has a lot to do with far more wage flexibility in the emerging economies.

So I thought that I would use this to see how our current situation stacks up to these historical averages. Here's a graph of unemployment since 2000 (which comes directly from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics):


Unemployment basically started increasing around June of 2007 (when it jumped from 4.4 to 4.6%), although it was actually fairly flat until 2008. The peak to this point (and hopefully THE peak) occurred in October 2009 at 10.1%. So all in all, we've got an increase of 5.7% (about 20% less than the average) in ~29 months (almost exactly half the average).

There's a couple conclusions to draw from this. First, compared to historical average we've actually done quite well. Certainly a double-dip recession is possible, but we've now had a year of decreasing unemployment (albeit a painfully slow decrease) so I don't think I'm jumping the gun too much. Of course, the big question now is whether or not this is because of the stimulus or whether this was going to transpire anyway and the stimulus just represented futile paddling against the current.

Speaking of the stimulus, it was pretty comically inept for Obama and his advisers to ever make the statement that with the stimulus they hoped unemployment would peak at 8%. It's usually not politically smart to ever tie yourself to any one number but if you're going to do it the 8% number was an incredibly bad one to use. Of course, by the same token it's also just as ridiculous to say that the stimulus was a failure because it didn't keep unemployment under 8%. Now the argument about whether or not the stimulus worked is for another time. I'm just saying you can't criticize a car because it can't take you to the moon, even if the car salesman told you it could.

As to where we go from here, prognosticator John says that we'll finally get unemployment down below 9% by mid-2011, hopefully below 8% by end of 2011, and below 7% by mid-2012 right when the election starts really ramping up. And I really think that 7% is the key number. If it gets below that, I think Obama is reelected easily. If it doesn't, he's got big problems.

John'sApologeticBlog.Blogspot.Com

I'm contemplating changing this blog's name to the above because I feel like every post in the last 3 months has been me apologizing for not blogging more. And the reason, more than anything, is that I usually prefer to talk about weightier things and shy away from the more frivolous (or at least achieve a 60-40 mix) and I haven't found myself with a whole lot to say about some of the weightier stuff lately.

Actually, to be more precise I haven't really found anything new to say. I still have the same problems with both the Republican and Democratic parties and I just haven't felt compelled to rehash my feelings when the Democrats continue to do next to nothing with the largest majority in decades while the Republicans continue to act like they've basically erased capitalism completely. As a result, I've actually returned to being somewhat apolitical. To be sure, I still keep myself informed and will definitely be voting next month. I just no longer devour my weekly Economist and I tend to skip the podcasts of the Sunday morning political shows in favor of This American Life and Zencast.

I guess this is the so-called "enthusiasm gap", which Obama talked about in a recent Rolling Stone interview. He said it was "inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines" and while I agree with him in the strictest sense that choosing not to vote is a terrible option (as it always is) I don't agree with the larger sentiment. In a way it reminds me of the Windows commercials from a few years ago. Vista had gotten such horrible reviews that they decided to take groups of people and demo for them a supposedly new Windows operating system. At the end of each session they asked for feedback and apparently the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Of course, it wasn't a new operating system, it was Vista. So essentially their marketing campaign consisted of saying "You know this thing you have that you've all told us you don't like? You actually like it." Not surprisingly, Windows Vista has now given way to Windows 7. So, in a similar vein, Obama is now telling all of his 2008 supporters "You know those things we've done in the last 2 years that you're not excited about? You should be." When a candidate, or a company, or anyoneelse trying to market something fails to generate excitement it is their failure, not the failure of the populace.

Of course, I'm not exactly shocked by this outcome. I have a standing bet with my friend Joe (made in mid-2008) that if Obama was elected he would be a 1 term President. Not because I didn't think he would do a good job but because the expectations that were being set (and that he was feeding into) were so high that he couldn't possibly live up to them. While I think I was dead-on with that assessment, to this point I still think I'm probably going to lose that bet. We're only a year away from the full-blown kickoff of primary season and I just don't see any Republican out there who's going to beat him. Republicans like to say that this year will be 1994 all over again. I say be careful what you wish for, because after that it's also just as likely to be 1996 all over again too. Ironically, I think the Republican's best path to the White House in 2012 is for the Democrats to retain both houses, because Congress is almost always extremely unpopular and the Republicans will benefit more from 2 more years of voter angst at a Democratic Congress rather than if it's split between the parties. I don't think that's likely though. The Republicans are almost certainly going to take control of the House, and the Senate is likely to wind up close to split (+ or - 2 seats).

In a slight topic change, the one issue I am fairly decisive about as it relates to the state elections is the proposed amendment to the IL State Constitution which would allow for a vote to recall the governor if enough people sign a petition. First I cannot imagine how anyone could have looked at the California recall election circus and thought "boy I wish we could have that here!" And second, I cannot think of a more hideous outcome for governance than to have a governor that is forever in campaign mode. I urge my fellow Illinoisans to vote no on the Governor Recall Amendment.

An End of an Era . . .

Or at least a pause in one. This week I officially resigned my membership with the Chicago Curling Club. I didn't want to but the dues were getting pretty pricey (they work on a graduated scale and for my 3rd year it was going to be $500), we now live a whole lot farther away from Northbrook, and we only have one car. I did the math and figured that I'd probably be able to play in about 10-15 games and I just don't think it's worth $35 - $50 per game. As weird a sport as most people consider it, I will miss it because it was something different to do and I felt like I was just starting to "get it". Hopefully I'll be able to go back to it in a few years when time and money become more plentiful but it has been my experience these last 10 years that free time gets ever more, not less, scarce.

I'd also like to make a comment on the "controversial" call in the Bears game last weekend, so I apologize to you readers that couldn't care less about football. OK, well obviously I'm a Bears fan so there's no way that I can disprove that I have a bias here. However, a lot of random fans and commentators have commented that they had never heard of this rule before. Well I have. In fact, this exact rule has screwed me over on at least half a dozen bets over the last couple years. But usually you don't see it in the end zone. Usually it's on the sidelines; a receiver catches the ball, gets both feet in bounds, then lands 5 feet out of bounds and drops the ball in the process. That's ruled an incomplete pass; and if that one is then so was Johnson's. It's the same rule. It is, however, the most ridiculous manifestation of that rule. Before last Sunday that would have been one of those hypothetical situations someone would have brought up and everyone would have said "pssh, that'll never happen". And I might add that the rule is basically the same as it is in baseball. If a fielder dives for the ball, clearly has it in his mitt, and then in the course of landing the ball comes out it's not a catch. In fact it's not a catch until he takes his other hand and reaches for the ball in his mitt (then it's considered lost in transfer). So imagine a third baseman catches a pop-up bunt with his bare hand, tumbles to the ground, and the ball squirts out as he taps it on the ground. In my opinion, that wouldn't even be controversial that it was called a non-catch. What trips a lot of people up is that on end-zone plays sometimes a player will fumble the ball but it will still be ruled a touchdown because he broke the plane before he fumbled it. In other words, as soon as a player has possession and breaks the plane the play is over. The difference is the word "possession"; in that situation there is no question of possession because it's already been established well before the player reaches the goal line; in the Johnson catch "possession" is not achieved until he completes the catch by maintaining control all the way to the ground.

Did You Hear the One About the Imam, the Pastor, and the Burning Books?

I don't even really know where to start with this whole thing. So I'll just start by saying that Pastor Terry Jones is a lunatic. Seriously, I can make some coherent and logical arguments here but all you really need to do is look at him:

I mean, if you're not a major league closer or a 40-year-old softball player, you have no business having that 'stache. Seriously, you're an insult to the ghost of Rod Beck.

And you're an even bigger insult to one of my heroes who has the misfortune to share the same name as you:


But of course besides those two individuals, there's also the minor matter of the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims you've managed to insult in the last week. And that fact alone would actually be mightily impressive if it wasn't for something so despicable. I mean, I'm lucky if I get around to insulting 9 or 10 people per month.

So if you happen to be one of the few people who haven't yet made up your mind about whether or not this guy's crazy, you can read an interview with him here. Here's one of my favorite passages, which does a good job of summing things up. He was asked about the comparison between him and the Nazis, who were also quite fond of books as an alternative energy source:

"Well I think it is very easy to see a difference. We have tried to make it very clear that even though this is a very radical message, a radical way of doing something we are not against Muslims. We do not hate them. And plus the Nazis, what the Nazis did was the Nazis gathered up all the books that were against their ideology and burned them. That's not what we are doing. We are not by any means promoting the burning of books."

So let's play a quick game of "Spot the Hypocrisy"; it's like "Where's Waldo" only waaaaaay easier. OK you're not against Muslims, you just want to burn their sacred text. You're not like the Nazis because they burned books that were against their ideology whereas you are just, um, burning a book because it doesn't agree with your ideology. And finally, you are certainly not by means promoting the burning of books, you're just hosting "International Burn a Koran Day."

This is my 2nd favorite passage:

"But we have also made it very clear that here in the United States we have a constitution, we have freedom of religion they are more than welcome to be here and worship and build mosques."

This one is particularly good because now he has apparently decided to call off the burning because he's supposedly gotten an agreement that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (which is neither a mosque or at ground zero) will be moved. Prior to calling it off, he had never made any connection whatsoever that his burning had anything to do with the GZM.

One of my favorite expressions (which to my knowledge I made up) is "don't act surprised when crazy people say or do crazy things." That would appear to be obvious but apparently it isn't. When Ahmadinejad, or Dick Cheney, or Sarah Palin, or Glen Beck, or Carl Everett, or Pat Robertson say offensive and inflammatory things it shouldn't be news. They're crazy, and that's what crazy people do (quick aside, for the sake of this discussion I am not differentiating between actual insanity and politically calculated insanity). So really I'm arguing (yet again) that this should not be being covered to the extent that it is. If some group of wackos wants to burn a Koran, it's pretty clear that in this country they are within their rights to do so. So let them, and don't give them the thing that they desperately want: attention. And at this point, from a damage standpoint he might as well go ahead and do it. The Muslim world is already pissed off enough about it that most of them are not going to bother following up to see if he actually did it or not.

But what I think is probably most striking is that we need to step back and ask the question of why exactly is this happening now. Why specifically the 9th anniversary of 9/11/01? Why didn't this happen a year ago, or five? And I'll just cut through the suspense and say, yes, I'm going to blame the Republicans for this one (technically the Republicans and Tea Partiers if you consider them different). George W, for all his numerous faults, always made it very clear that we were not at war with Islam and that it was paramount to respect peaceful Muslims of all nations. And when a Republican leader says that, the right doesn't jump on him for it and the left certainly doesn't (of course they generally don't give him credit for it either). But let a Democratic leader say the same thing and now the right not only doesn't agree with him - they accuse him of being a Muslim! And of course it doesn't do any good to make that accusation unless you whip up an anti-Muslim frenzy. The "Ground Zero Mosque" and this latest incidents are perfect manifestations of that. In the last few decades Republicans have been the "freedom of religion" banner-carriers. I think it's now been exposed once and for all as only a "freedom of Christianity" banner.

Fear not my fellow loyal blog readers . . .what? I don't have any of those? OK, well then fear not my fellow occasional drop-by-when-you're-really-bored-and-there's-nothing-left-to-view-on-youtube readers. I have not abandoned you! I have, however, vacationed from you. And for that I apologize. I promise to do better.

Well my poker streak finally ended, but not before I cashed out $1400. Of course, I've since lost the remaining $200 I had in my account and have dumped another $50 in, but I'm currently up to $108 so maybe it's the start of a new streak! See how the mind of a degenerate gambler works?

I also finally got around to updating the movies and books I've seen and read recently, so there's that. Definitely was a big fan of Inception, although I could tell as I was watching it that it was the kind of movie that some people would praise for being absolutely genius and other people would claim was completely incoherent drivel. I'm somewhere in the middle, although more towards the side of genius.

If you're bored (and I assume you are since you came here) I'd highly advise you to read this article on the MARS turbine. It's an awesome prototype of a wind generator that floats in the atmosphere rather than being anchored to the ground. Once they get the price down (like way, way down) it might be possible someday soon for consumers to own their own wind generators.

OK, that's it for the moment but I promise that I'll be back in less than 3 weeks with things that are more interesting and or stimulating.

Poker? I Don't Even Know Her . . .

Would you believe that I stared blankly at the title bar for 10 minutes trying to think of a way to NOT use that as the title of this poker-themed entry?

In any event, before I go into this story I want to make one thing very clear: I lose money at poker (as I do at all my gambling). Not a ton (that's relative of course) and I don't have the detailed records for it but I am quite confident in the fact that in my gambling life, which stretches back more than 20 years now, I am in the red overall. Non-gamblers hear that and think "oh, so you're admitting that it's stupid" and nothing could be further from the truth. I view it as entertainment and view it in the similar vein of spending money to see a movie, or buy a video game, or having a night out. The key difference is that when I pay money to see a movie I know exactly what I'm purchasing (roughly 2 hours of entertainment) but when I put money in my poker account I don't know how much I'm getting. I might be gone in the first hand or I might be able to play for 30 hours over the next month. But in the end, my expectation for both is the same. When I put down money, I'm not expecting to get it back. That doesn't mean that I'm not trying to win or don't get upset when I lose, it just means that I'm a realist about it.

I use all this as a preface so you will understand why I choose to play the types of games that I do. Since I expect to lose most of the time, I want the few times that I win to be memorable. As such, I tend to play in really large tournaments where the odds of cashing are small but the payouts are large. I also like to play in "Satelite" tournaments - these are tournaments where the buy-in is pretty low and the "prize" is an entry into a much bigger tournament with a much bigger payout.

Every week at Full-Tilt (I swear I'm not doing a commercial for them) they have a $220 buy-in tournament that has a total of $750,000 in prize money. The winner gets $130k. Not bad. Well I don't exactly often have a spare $220 lying around, so every once in a while I like to play in $22 Satelite tournaments where the top finishers get entry into the big tournament. Over the last year or so I've managed to get into it 5 or 6 times but until a couple weeks ago had never cashed. Well I finally ended that streak early last month, finishing in 180th place (out of 3600) and cashing $375. I cashed $250 out and then lost the rest over the next week(naturally).

Since that time I've put back in roughly another $125 and lost it (again, naturally). But every time you play in one of those tournaments you earn "Full Tilt Points" which (like carnival tickets) you can use to buy useless crap or to play in special tournaments. So on Tuesday night, not wanting to put anymore money into my account, I used all of my poker points to play in a tournament where the top 5 got entry into a big $22 tournament on Sunday and I finished in the top-5. This one only has a $200,000 total prize pool but it's still cool. I'll let you all know how I do in that one. In any case, that proved to be unsatisfying because even though I'd "won" I didn't have any money to show for it and now I didn't have any more poker points so I'd have to wait till Sunday to play again. So I put in $15 and played in a tournament where the top-20 finishers earn a token to play in any $75 tournament. Again, I finished in the top-20 and "won". So I went to bed on Tuesday night having "won" two tournaments but with a total cashflow of -$15.

So last night I used my $75 token to play in a 45-person game and ended up winning it. Actually, when it got down to two of us we just decided to split it. Total payout: $984! Although in practical terms I really won $750 because that's the amount I cashed out and I have no doubt that I will flitter the rest away in the next couple of days.

Now what's particularly crazy about the whole thing is that at one point in the $15 Satelite I thought that I had been eliminated. I got beaten but it turned out that I had 25 chips more than the guy that beat me so I was still alive. At that point the blinds were 200/400 with a 50 chip ante: I didn't even have enough to cover the ante! I was literally down to "a chip and a chair." But I won the next hand to get to 225 (still below the big blind) and then I won the next hand to get to over 1000 and then I had a tiny bit of breathing room and got a good run of cards after that to climb back into it and eventually get the $75 token which ultimately led to winning almost $1000. That means that if, at the pivotal moment early on, I had just 25 less chips or if that guy had had 25 more, I'd be $1000 poorer right now.

Furthermore, in the $75 tournament only 6 people get paid. I had been doing well for most of it but had hit a bad run of cards and by the time it was down to 12 players I was in last place. Needing to make a move, I pushed all-in with pocket 4s pretty much hoping that no one would call me and I could steal the blinds. Unfortunately, the player behind me had pocket Queens and called me instantly. For those of you not totally into poker (who for some reason are still reading this) that makes me about a 4.5 to 1 underdog, definitely not where you want to be with your tournament life on the line. But lo and behold I hit a 4 on the flop for three of a kind and go on to win the hand and I'm still alive! A little while later we're down to 7 people and since the top-6 get paid the next person eliminated will be the final person who doesn't cash (the aptly-named "bubble boy"). I'm not involved in the hand but for the two people who are all-in it's pocket Kings versus pocket Aces. Again, the lower pair hits for trips as a King comes on the flop and the Aces are eliminated. I can't think of a more agonizing way to have your bubble burst.

One final little tale from the tourney. When we got to heads-up (i.e. the last two people) I had the chip lead and was an eyelash away from winning it outright. I got dealt pocket Jacks and he went all-in with what turned out to be Ace-5. No Ace comes out but 5 spades do and, since neither of us has a spade, we both have flushes and split the pot. A couple hands later we had roughly equal stacks so I offered to split and he took it.

I take from all of this 2 things:

1. No matter how good or bad you are, luck is always going to play a role and you're always going to need to get insanely lucky at least once to win a big tournament;

2) The next time you're on the small blind with crap cards and think "it's only another 25 to call, why not?" realize that you might be making a bigger decision than you think.

Blog? What Blog?

I happened upon this picture and found it both interesting and slightly disturbing:


It's a Zedonk (a donkey and zebra hybrid). This brings up a couple questions. First, who came up with that name? It sounds like something Phil Hellmuth would call somebody at the poker table ("That frickin' Zedonk called me with nothing but an inside straight draw and hit it!"). I guess Donkbra isn't any better (sounds like a retarded cobra), but how about Zebkey? Second, why is it only the legs that are striped? I know that it's different because we're dealing with two different species here, but can you imagine if this is what happened when people of different races had kids?

In another amusing but equally trivial matter, I was browsing on Amazon the other day and thinking of picking up the DVD of the Hawks season that just came out. I was scrolling down to look at reviews of it and noticed the section where Amazon lists what people who viewed this page ultimately buy. This is what it said:

"Hmm, I want to see dudes in suits fighting but I'm not sure if I feel like watching it on ice or not". Or maybe this is person who is both a huge Hawks and Robert Downey Jr. fan but is on a very limited budget. This is kind of like shopping for a new car and having it narrowed down to a Honda Fit or a Nissan Murano.

Lastly John Delaney, Financial Advisor to the Stars, is recommending that if you are just interested in making money (and don't really have a lot of moral qualms about it) you should buy BP stock. As of this morning it's trading at just under $38/share. It's not quite as good of a deal as it was last month when it was trading at its low of $26, but back then there were serious questions about whether or not it would even be able to survive. But now that the leak has stopped (presumably) and the relief well is nearing completion, combined with the fact that BP is very profitable in just about every other aspect of their business it makes them a good buy. I think within 6 months they'll be trading at least at $45/share and within 2 years they'll be up at $60 (where Exxon is right now). That's about a 25% annual return, not including any dividends that get paid in the interim. The world is certainly not going to need any less oil between now and then, and even if the U.S. market is able to hold a grudge for that long (which I doubt) our market is no longer the giant it once was in the global oil market.

And one final point, which I'll just touch on briefly. The thing that has bothered me the most about this spill is the fact that it has only resulted in finger-pointing and just general BP, Halliburton, and Federal Government bashing. I hoped that this event would become a catalyst for the U.S. to finally take the development of a comprehensive energy policy seriously. We put a moratorium on off-shore drilling but don't even pay lip-service to the fact that we still need the same amount (actually, an increasing amount) of oil, so where are we going to get it from? All the foreign sources that we supposedly want to get away from relying on. Somewhere along the way we need to have an honest discussion about this where we lay out exactly what our energy needs are projected to be for the next 25 years and where we plan to get the resources for it. But the left is too busy with their own fights on immigration and financial reform and the right is trying to distance themselves from "drill baby drill" and want to concentrate instead on the incompetence of the Federal Government. So instead of a good debate we get silence, which (apart from individual politicians giving blustery speeches) has pretty much been our official energy policy for the last 50 years.

It's been a fairly exhausting couple of weeks and (as perhaps evidenced by my last post) I've gone a bit nutty. I now start every morning with a 1.25 mile walk to the Naperville train station and then have another 1.25 mile walk to work once I get into Chicago. Then I get to do it all in reverse at 5:00. I like that I now have some level of forced exercise but my body is not yet used to walking 5 miles a day. Also doesn't make it any easier that it's been 90 the last couple days. There are some bus options both in Naperville and (obviously) in the Loop, but I'm going to try and save those for when it's -20 with a foot of snow on the ground.

So the move happened and everything went pretty well, all things considered. We got the place in pretty decent shape fairly quickly and now Christy is busy doing all the little decorating touches to make it feel like home again. Already there are things I really like and things I really miss. I miss our automatic ice maker, our garbage disposal, and the fact that our garage is not attached. But I love having a yard, all the extra space, and (most importantly) I love how when we aren't making noise - it's actually quiet! No clomp clomp clomp from the upstairs neighbors' high heels or giggling and/or thumping bass music at 2:00 A.M. from the girls downstairs. I'd actually like to know if there is something chemical that happens in your brain as you get older that just makes you completely intolerant of ambient noise. 5 years ago hearing my neighbors wouldn't (and didn't) bother me at all, but the last 2 years or so it became intolerable. It's really scary that I can already see myself in 10 years going up to Anabelle's room and telling her to "turn down that racket!" You know, I don't think it's the actually growing older that is disturbing; it's the acting older (and in particular, acting more like your parents).

In any case, Anabelle seems to be enjoying the new place. That's important because if baby isn't happy then nobody's happy. I am constantly amazed at the level of energy she has, but then again she sleeps 16 hours a day. If I did that maybe I'd have a lot of energy the other 8 hours too (probably not). She can really cruise now with the crawling, but she's at the point where she really really wants to walk. She can pull herself up on things but she doesn't really like doing that; she just keeps trying to stand up in the middle of the room but still doesn't have the balance for it and if you try and help her she gets mad. On Saturday she'll officially be 10 months old and I'm predicting that she'll take her first steps on her own sometime in the next 4-6 weeks and be toddling around pretty good by her first birthday.

Think that's all I got for now. I'll try to get back to some weightier subjects now that the moving chaos is done and my vacation has come and gone.

Screw you Dippin' Dots!

I saw my first Dippin' Dots stand in a mall in 1994 and was somewhat intrigued by "The Ice Cream of the Future" slogan (although not enough to try it). According to their website, they've been around since 1988. I just saw a Dippin' Dots stand at Ribfest last night and they are still advertising themselves at "The Ice Cream of the Future". You can't advertise the exact same product as being "of the Future" for 22 straight years. That's bullshit.

Don't ever let it be said of me that I'm afraid to tackle the tough issues.

Lots of Celebrating

So since my last post I've aged a year. Actually, I guess technically I've only aged by 12 days but my year count has increased by 1. You know how you know you're getting old? When people hear it's your birthday and don't instantly ask how old you are for fear of possibly offending you.

So my birthday was last Thursday and 2 hours before I officially turned 31 I got undoubtedly the best birthday present I could have ever asked for when the Hawks won the Cup! Of course, with all the celebrating that went on that night it made me feel . . . less than optimal on my actual birthday. That's in fact the 2nd time I've done that to myself, where I've partied so much on my birthday eve (and, naturally, when it became my birthday at midnight) that I've had to somewhat suffer through my actual birthday. The other one was my 20th, so it's good to see I'm progressing. Take that maturity!

This weekend was pretty action-packed. Went to the Cubs/Sox game on Friday, which was weird because of what a complete after-thought it was in light of the Hawks parade and rally. Usually the whole city gets baseball fever for the Crosstown Classic (regardless of the teams' records) but this year it was much more of a "baseball? they're still playing that?" kind of feel. Still was a lot of fun even though the Cubs were roundly trounced. Right after the game I hitched a ride (being in no driving shape myself) out to Davis, IL for my friend Chicken's bachelor party. Having been drinking for the better part of 9 hours by the time I arrived, my memory is a bit on the hazy side (to put it mildly) but what I remember was a good time. It is funny how full circle things come. You party and drink with all your friends in college and for a really long time it's just an unbelievable amount of fun. But inevitably you get into your mid-to-late 20s and you're still doing the same thing. And it's still fun, but it's just no longer the unbelievably awesome time it once was (particularly because the hangovers start getting way worse). Then you get older still and you and your friends don't get together nearly that often anymore, and so now when you do you start to appreciate how rare it is. And in that way this thing that was really fun and then kinda old becomes really fun again.

Anyway, Saturday was my brother's college graduation (Congrats Zac!) and then that night we went up to Ravinia to see Steve Martin play some bluegrass. That was a ton of fun and Ravinia is definitely the best type of environment to see that in. He's a great banjo player and of course was quite entertaining between songs too. I remember listening to Steve Martin records as a kid (I know that makes me sound like I'm 50 but it's true) and always wanting to see him live so to finally get a chance was really something special. And the fact that he wasn't doing stand-up actually makes it better in a way. While I still love those records (now, of course, updated to MP3s) that comedy is definitely a product of its time and to see him up there now doing the "wild and crazy guy" routine would have just seemed really stale and dated. So I'm glad I got to see him doing something that you can tell he loves and is still challenged by. The one real piece of nostalgia he allowed himself (and his audience) was closing with a bluegrass version of King Tut, and that was awesome!

This weekend I am running in this. Climbing up cargo nets, scrambling over cars, leaping through fire, and crawling in mud under barbed wire! Woo hoo! Gonna be 85 degrees too! At least it's only a 5k. Too bad I've run a total of 3 times in the last month. Happy first father's day to me!

Getting excited for the move, yet dreading all the packing that still needs to be done between now and next Friday. And with a wedding to go to this Friday, a Cubs game and Patton Oswalt show on Saturday, and then the race Sunday this weekend doesn't appear to offer much in the way of free time either. I foresee a lot of frantic packing next week and a very late night next Thursday. We hope to have everybody over for a housewarming/poker/grilling/karaoke party sometime this summer if we can ever find a free weekend to do it.

Back again after a long hiatus. I'll spare you the excuses.

First of all (and sorry for those not interested in sports) I have to weigh in on the perfect game that was but wasn't. I definitely think the call should have been overturned. I've read a lot of arguments online about why it shouldn't be reversed and it all basically boils down to the fact that blown calls happen all the time and you can't just cherry-pick one time to reverse it no matter how big the moment was. In other words, outs 1-26 should be treated the same as out #27. And I couldn't disagree more. Out #27 is different because it ends the game. If you blow a call at any other point in the game, it changes the circumstances from that point forward so you can't reverse it later because there's no way to know conclusively what would have happened. But that's not the case here. At the moment that Galarraga had the ball in his mitt and his foot on the bag the game was over. End of story.

All Bud Selig would have been doing by reversing the call is acknowledging that fact. And a fact is exactly what it is; this is not the Music City Miracle here, which some people still dispute. There is not one person in the world (including the umpire who made the call) that is making the argument that the guy was actually safe. So all this nonsense about it being a slippery slope and opening Pandora's Box to reverse this call is just that - nonsense. Every week scorekeepers retroactively change hits to errors and vice versa, and in 1991 an MLB panel got together and retroactively decided to throw out over 50 no-hitters for various reasons. So it's just completely preposterous to say we can't change something "once it's in the books". I don't understand how you can make the argument that what's best for the game and the right thing to do is to have the official record acknowledge something that everyone on the planet is in complete agreement on as being incorrect.

Now believe me, if we were talking about matters from a legal standpoint I would have completely the opposite opinion. In fact, that's the position I do have now when people want to retroactively change the law to make BP pay more than what they're legally required to for the spill. But this is not a criminal proceeding. I'm just about the biggest sports fan in the world, but it's just sports. Bud should have done the right thing. It's the right thing for Galarraga, it's the right thing for the Tigers, it's the right thing for the fans, it's the right thing for the game, and (possibly most importantly) it's the right thing for the umpire. All Bud's done is prove himself to be completely gutless. I have always, well, if not quite defended him then at least held the opinion that he wasn't deserving of the disdain that most fans have for him. But this was it. I will gladly sign any "fire Bud Selig" petition that comes my way.

One final note on this. A man in Ohio with the same name as the umpire has had to shut off his phone service because he's being harassed. God, people are idiots.

Speaking of BP, I do find it hilarious that starting this year the Cubs/Sox series is now for the right to hoist - the BP Cup. Who the hell wants to win that? I hope that whoever wins the season series this year refuses to take it.

Finally, and again on the oil spill, I do think that Obama has screwed this up pretty bad. Not in any specific action that he's taken with regards to the cleanup, but in his other actions. Bush was (rightfully) criticized for waiting too long to visit Louisiana after Katrina and going on vacation before the situation was resolved. Obama, to starkly contrast himself with the actions of his predecessor, decided to wait a while before visiting Louisiana after the spill and to go on vacation before the situation was resolved. And I'd also suggest that in the middle of two wars, the worst oil spill in US history, and a potentially explosive situation in the Koreas, that now is not the ideal time to give an interview to Marv Albert and talk about Lebron James and the Bulls. Two days after the spill, the right-wingers were already screaming about it being "Obama's Katrina" - which was totally ridiculous at the time. But it should have served as a strict warning that they needed to do everything in their power to not even appear anything like Bush with regards to this incident. In that they failed miserably. With all that being said, however, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that a huge difference in the situations is that the cleanup of New Orleans was always the domain of the federal government once it was declared a federal disaster area, while the spill was caused by corporations and they are the ones responsible for the cleanup. All Obama can do is hold their feet to the fire.

What's wrong with Rand Paul?

(Another guest blog from our buddy Joe Mays)

So I find myself in the unusual position of defending a Republican, as I'm going to give what some may consider a defense of Rand Paul's controversial stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As many of you may know, I'm a long-time supporter of most social legislation promoting racial equality in both the public and private sectors. I think that such legislation is necessary in order to counteract the long-standing institutionalized racism that exists in our country.

For those of you that don't know, Dr. Paul is under fire because he has questioned the legitimacy of legislation forcing *private* institutions to provide equal service to all citizens, which includes parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It should be noted that Dr. Paul has consistently supported legislation enforcing equal rights in the *public* sector, and has stated that he would never give personal support to businesses that discriminate in any way.

I think Dr. Paul has a right to his beliefs about the role of government in business, and he has demonstrated a willingness to logically discuss the subject. The center-left owes him a civil debate. While I do not agree with Dr. Paul's conclusions, it is unfair to paint him as a racist - which I firmly believe he is not. The case for equality - even with government intervention in the private sector - is sufficiently strong to stand on its own. The country is tired of political bullshit. Let's listen to Dr. Paul and discuss the issue on its merits, please.

Some Oddities in the World

Well, as injustices in the world go this one is pretty near the bottom of the list but while randomly surfing the net the other day I discovered that Gene Wilder does not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. George Lopez has a star, but not Gene Wilder. Winona Ryder has a star, but not Gene Wilder. Ricky Martin, Kenny Loggins, Erik Estrada, and Ryan f'n Seacrest all have stars, but not Gene Wilder! Even the fictional characters Godzilla and Pee-Wee Herman have stars! Yes, that's right; Paul Reubens' fictional creation that was popular for about 4 years in the late 80s and hasn't been heard from since is enshrined for all posterity in the Walk of Fame. There's about 100 reasons why Wilder deserves one, but I think I only need to list 4: Willy Wonka, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. End of discussion. Well, Mel Brooks just got his 3 weeks ago, so maybe now some people will think "yeah, I remember all those funny movies Mel Brooks did. Who was that one guy that was in most of them that made them so good?"

So this morning while on my way to work I was offered a sample box of Oatmeal Squares by a sales rep on the corner of Michigan and Randolph. As she handed it to me and others she cheerfully informed us that it was "a healthy and crunchy way to start your day." Hmmm; yes there have been some days where I've woken up and thought "I want to start the day healthy; I think I'll go for a run." But I can't recall a day where I've thought "Gee, I'd sure love to start my day in a crunchy way!" In fact, the only times I can remember where I DID start my day in a crunchy way was back in college when I hadn't done laundry in about 3 weeks and had to put on well-used socks. Speaking of unusual places for descriptions, it reminds me of walking around the farmer's market in Madison and seeing cheese curds advertised as "Guaranteed to squeak!" Now usually when something is advertised as "guaranteed" it's something that is undeniably good, but up until that moment it had never occurred to me to judge food, in any form, by squeakiness. But of course once you see it advertised in that way a couple times, it quickly becomes "well hell yeah my curds better squeak! In fact I am gonna search this whole market till I find the squeakiest damn curds here!" Ah, the power of advertising. And for the uninitiated, yes good cheese curds really do squeak when you eat them and yes you do actually want that.

Something that makes me feel old: I just saw a headline that Survivor has now been on the air for 10 years. I'd still been thinking of it as "one of those new, annoying reality shows."

Something that makes me feel young: Jamie Moyer, who broke in with the Cubs in 1986 and who I remember watching pitch while growing up, is still pitching today. And actually pitching pretty well (he just pitched a complete game shutout two weeks ago). Seeing so many of the players I watched as a kid now become coaches and announcers, it's nice to know that there's still at least one out there who's still doing the same thing he's done for pretty much my whole life.

Something that I'm not sure if it makes me feel old or young: Vin Scully has been the announcer for the Dodgers since 1950. That's 60 years. In other words, he's been doing the same job since not only before I was born but before my parents were born.

And Back to Trivial Matters . . .

So as some of you may know, Anabelle was originally going to be "Isabella". Back in about 2004, before we were even married we (i.e. Christy) started thinking about names for our eventual kids. And we happened upon "Isabella" pretty quickly. It was kind of amazing. I don't remember exactly who said it first but once we came up with it we both were like "yep, that's a really good girl's name." And had we been ready for our little bundle of joy back then we would have been ahead of the curve. But slowly as time passed we were getting birth announcements from various friends and families and, although I know it wasn't, it seemed like every girl was being named "Isabella". I think that the final straw was 2 years ago when Christy had 3 Isabellas in her pre-school class at the same time. It was like "hmm; not so original anymore." So we kept a variation of the "Bella" and added an "Ana" and, presto chango, we have Anabelle.

I bring this up because today I saw a real good reason why it seemed like every girl was being named Isabella: every girl was! Well not really, but it did overtake "Emma" as the most popular name for girls in 2009. While I'm not one of those people that needs to have their child have a name that no one in the history of the world has ever had (e.g. Apple, Pilot Inspektor), I'm glad that she will not have to go through school with likely 5 or 6 other people in her grade having the same name. FYI, Anabelle is the 46th most popular girl's name while its components (Ana and Bella) are respectively 44th and 18th. Although it certainly seems to be the case that "Bella" has shot up in popularity due to the Twilight series, it's going to annoy me to no end if 10 years from now people just assume that she got the "Belle" part from that.

The big news of the week is that it is now 95% certain that 7 weeks from today we will be full-fledged suburbanites again! I liked to fool myself into believing that we were still quasi-urban up in Evanston, but now there will be nothing ambiguous about it at all anymore as we are moving into a house in Naperville. It's not without more than a little bit of irony seeing as how Christy and I have been quoted on many occasions as saying "well, we might move back out into the suburbs again at some point, but we are NEVER moving to Naperville." But we basically had a checklist of 8 things (house, 3-bedrooms, AC, dishwasher, yard, garage, within a mile of the Metra, and less than $1600/month) and this one met them all so it seemed pretty stupid to turn it down just because we didn't like the idea of "being Napervillians" (actually I think I might start referring to myself as a Napervillain, that sounds way cooler).

And just so I comment on something with a little bit of weight, today saw another bad news is good headline as the unemployment rate went up. Why is this good news? Because in April the private sector added the most jobs (231,000) in any one month since March 2006. However, as a result of the labor market looking better people who had previously given up on looking for jobs have now crowded back into the job search and as a result the unemployment levels have gone up. Seems like there should be a better statistic given to track the unemployment rate so that you wouldn't have two (those unemployed and actively seeking work and those just unemployed) and you wouldn't have counterintuitive effects like these. It's important because this weekend a Republican can go out and say "the economy is horrible; the labor numbers came out on Friday and unemployment is up again" while a Democrat can say "the economy is much improved; the labor numbers came out on Friday and in April we added the most jobs in any one month in 4 years" and both statements would be absolutely correct.

Finally, anybody else see the fun little roller-coaster the Dow decided to do yesterday (plunging 1000 points before getting about 2/3 of it back by day's end). Apparently the culprit is that some specific set of circumstances hit which triggered a massive selloff by computerized programs. I swear, computers are going to destroy the world but it's not going to be in some cool "Skynet launching nukes" or "machines turning us into batteries" way. No, I think that one day a computer network is going to decide to sell all the world's assets to a dead guy in Iceland for $1.95 and everybody's going to be wiped out in one fell swoop.

Define Free Speech

I think that the time has come where we need to establish a clear and unambiguous line on what constitutes protected free speech. And yes I'm sure that it exists in some legal jargon already but we need something that every layperson can easily understand.

I've been thinking a lot about this because it seems like just about every week someone is getting into trouble or being warned that they will get in trouble for something they've said. Whether it's the infamous Imus "nappy-headed hoes" comment on the air or an Oregon football player losing his scholarship due to comments on Facebook or Ozzie Guillen's son "resigning" in the wake of a Twitter controversy.

Here's my question, is the only pre-requisite for considering something to be free speech that you don't get thrown in jail for it? It seems to me that if you're losing (or being threatened with) your job and/or other tangible things of value as a direct result of something you've said, then your speech is not "free".

Now of course there are some exceptions that I agree with. Obviously you're not (and shouldn't be) allowed free reign to make slanderous and libelous claims against a person or a company. And you shouldn't be permitted to use company time and resources to put out a personal message that's not in the company's interests (that's what your free time is for) and you're also not allowed to say something that can be interpreted as you speaking for a company or organization when you aren't authorized to do so.

But (setting aside the Imus example) what we're talking about here are people using their own personal accounts (whether Twitter, Facebook, or blog) to express something that's clearly just their opinion and being disciplined for it. How is that permitted?

In this age, people have almost unlimited outlets for expressing themselves and a lot of people are choosing to do just that. Things that used to be said to your close friends and/or behind closed doors are now available to a much wider audience. But why should the rules be any different? If you have the right to say something verbally to someone, you should have the right to express it in any medium you wish.

I think this is only going to become a bigger and bigger issue as this happens to more and more people. And I think the only reason it's not huge already is that you have a perfect storm of both organizations and media having their interests aligned. An organization wants to control what gets said about it, so they're not happy with any member being able to spout out to the world. And the media doesn't like the idea that people no longer need to go through them to get the word out. It's hard to get the scoop on a story when it breaks on Twitter.

So, first, can we get a list of the words that no one is allowed to say on the public air? And, most importantly, it has to be the same list for everyone. Either everyone can use "nappy-headed hoes" or no one can. Then, I want it defined when and where I can issue my opinion on any subject. Can I use this post to blast Blue Cross for doing something I don't agree with it? Can I not do it right now because I'm on my work computer? Is it ok if I do it from home on my own time? Or can I never do it as long as I'm an employee?

Now if you'll excuse me, I've just been informed that I have a meeting with HR in 10 minutes . . .

Lying Down on the Job Again

Yeah, so 3 weeks have gone by. It's easier to do than you might think. And what's worse is that I still don't have a heck of a lot to write about.

Finally got around to watching Precious last night. Definitely the feel-good, laugh-out-loud, uproarious comedy of 2009! I can't believe that was Tyler Perry playing Precious! Seriously though, you can put that one squarely in the category of "really good movie that I never want to watch again." Still to this day I don't know when a good time to watch a movie like that is. You don't wanna watch it when you're in a great mood 'cause it'll certainly put a stop to that and I'm not sure you wanna watch it if you're already feeling crappy 'cause then you'll really feel awful. Still, probably better off with the latter as opposed to the former. Then again, if you're a big fan of schadenfreude, then this is definetely the movie for you! In any case, very good performances all around and I believe this marks the first appearance of Mariah Carey in a non-terrible movie. Funny side story; her role was originally to be played by Halle Berry, but she had to cancel at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. I would have loved to have sat in on that casting session:

"Guys, bad news. Halle Berry's out."
"Great; who are we gonna get to replace an Oscar-winning actress on short notice?"
"I've got it: Mariah Carey!"
"Perfect!"

In other news, if you've got even a tinge of sci-fi nerdish tendencies I recommend that you head over to http://www.redlettermedia.com/ and check out the 70-minute Phantom Menace or 90-minute Attack of the Clones reviews. Both are pretty hilarious and are easily more watchable (and rewatchable) than the films themselves. I can't really explain them in any way that actually will mean anything to the uninitiated; it's one of those things that has to be experienced. Most people watch the first one (they're divided into 10-minute chunks on Youtube) and are like "huh?!?" but you develop this weird compulsion to keep going. By the end of about the 3rd or 4th, though, you'll "get it" and be able to decide if it's your cup of tea or not. He's also done some Star Trek reviews too, and they're really good too but since I'm not as big of a Trekkie I like the Star Wars ones better.

That's it for now. I'll try not to make it another 3 weeks again.

In Celebration of Pedestrian Accomplishments

So on Tuesday I broke my previous record for beating the original Legend of Zelda on the NES: the new record is 54 minutes. I was on the el when I did it and yelled out in celebration. Somehow the other passengers weren't quite as enthused as me and edged slowly away from me. Oh well; more seat room for me. I had initially set a goal of beating it in 45 minutes, but now I don't think it very likely. This new time was only 3 minutes faster than my old best and I don't really see a whole lot of places where I can get that much faster. Probably time to turn my attention to another pointless activity.

Anyone else sick to death of hearing about Tiger Woods? Am I missing something that makes this a big story that needs to be reported on daily? And I would have no problem if it was just the tabloid shows, late night TV, and E! talking about it - that's what they're for. But I have a real problem when CNN starts reporting this as actual news. Let me recap the story from my perspective: it turns out that an extremely wealthy and successful athlete was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife, who was not at all pleased with him when she found out and assaulted him, and as a result he took 4 months off of golf. Which part of this even qualifies as mildly surprising? I know that not all athletes cheat on their wives but the perception is that most do so, again, it shouldn't be very surprising. Exempting Tiger Woods from this was as foolish as exempting Michael Jordan from it.

Of course, I guess I'm the one who shouldn't be surprised. I've never agreed with the media's obsession with Tiger. I have no problem when they focus on him when he's atop the leaderboard, but I can't tell you the number of times I've seen the highlight recap or a golf tournament where all they do is show shots of Tiger and then say something like "Tiger finished in 6th, 5 shots behind the winner." And then maybe they show one 2-second shot of the winner getting his trophy and then move on. That's disrespectful to the winner and to the game.

All that being said, Augusta is easily the most beautiful course in the country and looks fantastic in HD, so I'll definitely be adding golf into the hockey-and-Cubs sports repertoire this weekend.

I'm Back!

You may have noticed a slightly new look to the blog. I got a few complaints that the white font on black background was such a stark contrast to the rest of the web's black-on-white that it was hard on the eyes so I decided to change it. After having a few days to get used to it I think I like it better, even if it now looks more like almost every other blog on the net.

So after a week of R&R down in Houston I'm back and . . . well, pretty damn tired actually. But no matter. Today is Opening Day so all is right with the world! It will also hopefully be the day that we get to witness Duke go down in humiliating fashion to big underdog Butler. And if we can add in a Cubs victory the day will be complete! I'll try to put together a Cubs preview (which I skipped last year) sometime this week but overall I'm actually a lot more optimistic than most Cubs fans are. I'm predicting 89 wins and a wild-card berth.

Didn't do a whole lot down in Houston, which is exactly how we planned it. Got out to play golf once and grandma and grandpa were nice enough to babysit one night so Christy and I could go out to dinner and see Hot Tub Time Machine. The movie was meh but it was very nice to be able to get out and have a date night. Other than that we just did a lot of visiting with family and chilling out as best we could and as baby would allow. There are some flight horror stories but I think I'll let my wife handle those tales over on her blog. Overall Anabelle was a real trooper and was happy to just go along with whatever we were doing on any particular day. We're very lucky that we've got such an easygoing baby. Hopefully she doesn't realize that she's going easy on us and decide to ramp it up.

We got back in yesterday and I had a package from Amazon waiting for me. It was the new blu-ray of Toy Story that just came out last week. So I popped it in last night and Wow! That is definitely a showcase disc for a blu-ray player and HDTV. And that's pretty amazing considering that the movie is almost 15 years old. Given the limitations of the projectors at the time I think it's quite probable that the movie has never looked as good as it does now. It's also the first time I've watched the movie in about 6 or 7 years and it's every bit as good as I remembered it. It's probably the quintessential example of a film with a story so simple that even 2 and 3-year-olds can understand it but with a ton of extra layers packed in for older kids and adults too. Highly recommended addition to your blu-ray collection. It's also made me excited to see Toy Story 3 this summer; although I think Anabelle will still be too young for it. That one may end up being a rental.