The Klaw 100

There’s a meme for personal blogs and online diaries: a list of movies or books or whathaveyou is passed around.  The blogger publishes the list on their blog, marking the books they’ve read or movies they’ve seen.  We haven’t done that ’round here because, for one, this isn’t really a personal blog, and, for two, we don’t really know anyone who keeps that kind of blog anymore, so no one passes them along (thank God).

Anyway, Keith Law–baseball writer, connoisseur and bookworm (he’s Mr Thursday, on HGH, if HGH did anything useful)–has decided to create a list of his favorite 100 books.  He estimates he’s read 400-500 books.  I don’t really know how many I’ve read–I’d guess it’s 30 or so per year, depending on the year.  Far more than that in high school and college, at least double that rate.  Anyway, we’re going to take his list here, and give you a few comments on the books he’s listed that we’ve read.  Or, if we have anything to say about the one’s we haven’t read, maybe we’ll comment on that.

He’s divided his list into 5 parts.  We’re just lumping everything together here, in one overlong post.

98.  The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, by GK Chesterton. The title of this blog is, in part, a reference to that book.  It’s a comic masterpiece dealing in the existence of God, in rebellion, in fear.  Chesterton’s prose is death-defyingly poetic, and, even more wonderfully, the book wraps up the whole ride in just a touch over 200 pages.  Brief, bright, and beautiful.

90.  The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is, generally, considered the best of the Sherlock Holmes novels, whether written by Doyle or others (in the others category, the excellent The Seven Per Cent Solution reigns supreme).  I haven’t read the book since high school, but I loved the book at the time, and, aside from the iconic Prof Moriarty, the book has everything one could want from the grand detective.

83.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I used to read in bed, for at least an hour, every night.  From the time I could read until I got a driver’s license, basically.  Huck Finn was one of the two Mark Twain books I read over and over again (along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Admittedly, I read these books, in part, because I was infatuated with their age–the copies my mother possessed, and allowed her grade school middle son to read, were nearly 100 years old.  If I recall correctly, the Huck Finn was a 1900 edition, and Tom Sawyer 1902.

In the end, I loved Huck Finn more than the excellent Tom Sawyer for it’s extraordinary brashness, the spectacular boldness of the story.  The book is vibrant with conmen and swindlers and children trying to escape the confines of “sivilized” life.  I can only imagine that when I, as a child, asked my mom what “nigger” means, she was both shocked at the question, and relieved that she asked at home, and not at school.

To this day, in my opinion, Twain has found no equal in his ability to capture the voice of the dialects of his characters.

77.  Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison. This is the only Morrison I’ve read, and to be honest, the only reason I haven’t read more of her is because Oprah and I have generally differed on our literary views, and because Morrison, to me, comes off obnoxiously in interviews.  The book is filled with details without being overwhelmed by them, and the imagery–from the nature of breastfeeding to Doctor Street–are haunting.  As always, whenever I think of this book, I really believe I need to get into more Morrison.

75.  Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. I read this book last summer for the only time–though I vow to re-read it sometime.  The book is the most violent I’ve read.  That violence is crouched in allegory and bizarre, and often confusing events.  I still don’t know quite what to make of the book (though, of course, I’ve still only read it once through), but I will repeat here what I’ve said elsewhere:  when this book is “good”, it’s spectacular.  It’s well worth the read, just to experience the Judge, if nothing else.

67.  Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Whenever this book is mentioned, I fail to understand whether it’s generally considered a triumph, or a disaster of a book.  Regardless of the opinions of others, I love BNW.  The book successfully anticipated a number of late-20th century political and social (and technological) developments, and maintained a compelling narrative for someone who read the book in 2000 for the first time.

65.  The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. Chandler, I suspect, is someone who a reader either adores, or cannot be bothered to read.  I fall into the former group.  My Chandler love began with Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and continued, triumphantly, into his detective stories.  The Big Sleep is the most famous, and, perhaps, the best of Chandler’s considerable work.  Phillip Marlow–the model for all grizzled private detectives–is following a case so twisted and hairy that, even without the red herrings, it can be damn hard to follow.  Even Chandler himself didn’t know who committed all the murders.  For the movie lovers out there, it doesn’t hurt to picture Humphrey Bogart as the leading man, as Bogey played Marlowe in the 1946 version of the book.

57.  Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read this in, I don’t know, 5th or 6th grade, for a book report, and loved it.  I ought to read it again.  And, to recycle an old debate from around here, pirates do beat ninjas.

55.  The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. I haven’t read this, but the movie in outstanding (with more Bogart–who’s to complain?), and the book has a stellar reputation.  I love the detective genre–I’ll get around to this, sooner or later.

53.  1984 (George Orwell) and 52.  On the Road (Jack Kerouac). I must be one of the few Americans who had to read A Brave New World but not 1984 in high school.  OTR is a book I haven’t read, honestly, just to avoid assimilating into the hive mentality at college, which involved romanticizing everything, playing acoustic guitar in public places (especially under trees), and reading this book compulsively.  I’ll read them eventually, but I’m in no rush.

48.  I. Claudius, by Robert Graves. As an advanced level Latin student from 6th grade onward, I’ve both read the book, and seen the exhaustive and mostly excellent series based on it.  Incest, violence, fire, insanity, backstabbing, poisoning–it’s a ludicrous soap opera, set 2000 years ago.  Personally, I don’t have much sympathy for the character of Claudius, who, at times, comes across as both cowardly and clumsy, but the chaos that surrounds him is too fascinating to look away.

41.  Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien. Love the series, and The Hobbit, to boot.  Mrs Thursday loves Fellowship most, whereas I prefer Return. The books work as a sort of Dumas story with gravitas.  Certainly not for weak-eyed readers, as the print tends to be small on these books which clock in at well over 1,000 pages.  Worth the effort of going through at least once, though I imagine I’ve read the series more than any other books, as I tried to do the trilogy on a yearly basis from childhood until college.

38.  Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. Read it.  It’s a fun book, though it wanders a bit in the middle.  The circular nature of the language is downright astounding, and even more impressive, though subtly, is the circular nature of the storytelling.

34.  The Trial, by Franz Kafka. This is not my favorite Kafka, as I think his short stories tend to be stronger than his novels, and I’ve only read The Trial once, and The Castle I haven’t read at all.  The story is disconcerting, at the least, and the stark narration is terrifying.  Dark, dark stuff.

30.  Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. This book came recommended to me by a smart and enthusiastic reader.  Normally, I avoid Pulitzer Prize winners the way I avoid Oprah recommendations, but, hey, it was there.  The climax is startling, for certain, but the trouble of small people in a small town in Maine is discernible.  Excellent book, and probably the most recent on Law’s list, though I prefer other newer books to this one.

17.  The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald. To be honest, when I saw this book at this spot on the list, I was disappointed.  I utterly expected Gatsby to show his face in the top 3.  This book, for me, falls in that myriad list of  books I read in high school, and while I didn’t dislike it, I struggled to grasp the hype.  It deserves a re-read, I suspect.

14.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. Hey, Amazon just delivered this book to me, today!  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Honestly, would have guessed this to make the top 10.

13.  A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. Law mentions that Walker Percy was less than kind in his introduction to this book.  It’s been years since I’ve read the book, but I don’t remember him being particularly mean.  Of course, when I read the book, I was still enthralled with Percy after reading Lost in the Cosmos, which, at the time, I found outstanding.  CoD, is, of course, one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.  Ignatius is vile and lazy and utterly hysterical.  A despical Don Quixote, set in New Orleans.  Book doesn’t have a lot of drive, as it’s just about the meandering adventures of a fat guy, but it entertains enthusiastically.

4.  To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This has long been my pick for The Great American Novel.  Worth every ounce of praise it’s ever received and then some.  The story is effective for its ability to take a very personal and quirky story and turn it into something universal and culturally significant.  The reader ends up joining the peanut gallery in the courtroom.  I’ve written a bit of fiction in my day, and sometimes, I start to hate my stories for failing to achieve that feat.  Harper Lee is called a one-hit wonder, but to me the title is misplaced.  One-hit wonder implies a failed effort at a second hit.  Lee never attempted to publish another novel.  Which, of course, is an absolute shame.   Anything half as good as her opus is well worth the read.

1.  The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I’m intrigued by stories that take a long time to write.  James Joyce famously took more than 13 years to write Finnegans Wake, which is a fascinating book if you’re patient but is an absolute bitch to read.  Virgil famously (among Latin scholars) spent the final 10 years of his life on The Aeneid, which he (probably) failed to complete.  Bulgakov spent (with some interruption) the final dozen years of his life, and the book was completed by his wife.  While Joyce’s Wake is enormously long and riddled with inscrutable, multi-level and multi-language punwork, and Virgil’s masterwork is enormously long (for a poem), and riddled with complex and astonishing wordplay, Bulgakov’s finest is relatively short and straightforward.

The book as all the more incredible for that.  It’s a novel of perfect economy, with no wasted words or sections.  Every phrase advances the plot, and every step the plot takes forward transforms either the characters themselves, or our understanding of them.  There are a number of memorable scenes–the broom-ride, the ball, the conversation between Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate, and, perhaps, no scene more wondrous than the opener, which is much like that of The Man Who Was Thursday, except that the devil gets involved.  While Blood Meridian’s Judge as Satan is all horror and vile, black, evil, Woland is a tempter, dignified and polite and cunning.  His works are more subtle, but just as damning.  I don’t think I’d call it my favorite book, but Klaw certainly didn’t make a bad choice here.

The Klaw 100: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Watching the Game, Under Elvis Presley’s Glass-Encased Longjohns

It’s official.  This site has, for the time being, become the Shysterball Wide-Eyed Little Brother blog.  That is, we’ve got another post that comes from a topic brought here by Shysterball, so we’re kinda following the guy around, even though he’s all, “back off, I’m trying to make out with Lady Shyster”, but we’re still, “But Shy-STER, we want to play!”

It’s kind of awesome.

Anyway, Shyster informs us:

New Yankee Stadium is sounding increasingly awful:

A Hard Rock Cafe will open in the new Yankee Stadium.

[…]

You know, if you’re going to install a crappy, kitsch-filled barfatorium like Hard Rock, you should probably at least install a couple of windows so people can watch a ballgame while they eat their $17 Clapton-Burgers.

The comments generally display the kind of disdain for both Hard Rock and the Yankees that you’d expect.  We even lead things off in that department, but as always, got distracted talking about the Phillies and streakers.  People get focused after that, and everyone gives the big Thumb Down to the parties involved.

Honestly, I don’t think the issue here is really that a Hard Rock is going in, though the big name does put the situation into sharp relief.  Many, if not all, of the new ballparks are putting this kind of trashy, money-grabbing crudpub into their stadiums.  In this sense, it’s only appropriate that the Yankees would jump on what is easily the most famous of the available options.

To me, at least, the larger issue is that this isn’t something the Yankees need to be doing.  The Hard Rock will attract upwards of zero people to Yankee stadium, ESPECIALLY during baseball season, when the area will already be crazy crowded.  The Yankees, as others have noted, like to tout their history whenever possible.  Or, at the very least, they enjoy a certain level of esteem as other people tout said history.  More appropriate, I think, would be something with an inherent sense of history and class of its own, that might attract non-ballfans on its own.

My proposal?  Put a jazz club in there.  Open the place up to the stadium with a porch.  Put all those black-and-whites of Babe and DiMaggio and Yogi and the grainy color shots of Guidry and Reggie and, hell, even Jetes, and put a little stage in there for cats both local and famous to bop all night.  Give the bands explicit orders to “lively” stuff.  If you wanna go really crazy with it, look into the local jazz scenes of your opponents, and see if you can book bands from the city the Yanks are playing.  The Reds are coming to Yankee stadium this weekend.  How cool would it be to hang out on a porch at the game, eat a burger, and listen to Petra Van Nuis instead of Cotton-Eyed Joe?  Personally, if the Phillies got rid of McFaddens and allowed us to combine this with this, we might force Mrs Thursday to bury us under the stadium.  Just sayin.

At the very least, it couldn’t be worse than the fucking Hard Rock.

Oh, and thanks to Osmodious for the title.

Maybe if we keep this nonsense up, Shyster will as us to do weekends over there, so we don’t keep ripping him off during the week.  Probably not.

Shysterball: Yankees… Hard Rock… Why, God, Why?

Cleveland and Philadelphia: Bosom Buddies

So, yesterday, I linked to a post on ShysterBall, which featured the deranged rantings of yours truly.  Shyster had written a post earlier in the day about championship futility.  I wanted to chime in with my two cents, but, in typical Curious Mechanism fashion, my two cents turned into 8.95, and I had to email the comments to Craig (that is, Shyster hisself), who later posted them.

Well, in the comments on the post, there can be found this comment:

Peter said…

Dear Philadelphia,

Call me in 2024, when you’ve gone 44 years without a championship in a major sport.

Sincerely,
Cleveland

So, Peter, this post is for you, mostly.
They say that misery loves company, and thus, I ask, why must you belittle my misery?  I don’t know you, but I know I can understand your pain, as no Philadelphia teams have won a championship in my lifetime.  Let us commiserate together.

Obviously, there’s a high degree of subjectivity in talking about the “most futile” franchises.  Cleveland has seen (I think) 137 seasons pass since its last championship, between the Tribe, the Browns, and the Cavaliers.  That hurts.  Philadelphia, between the Sixers, Phils, Eagles, and Flyers have suffered 100 losing seasons.  I don’t think any other cities are particularly close to us.

I wouldn’t want to argue which town’s sporting life is more worthy of mourning and pity.  That kind of thing seems to me more life a cry for attention–we’re not arguing over the respective glories of a team.  We’re arguing who’s had the rougher fan-life.  Any victory would be, undoubtedly, Pyrrhic.  I don’t knock the suffering of Cleveland or Boston or any other fans in my email.  The closest I come to it is a bit of a knock on Dan Shaughnessy, but I don’t mean that to say that Red Sox fans weren’t suffering.  I’m sure they did.  I meant to belittle the idea of a “curse”.

To me, the idea of a curse is to glorify a lousy team, or many years of lousy teams.  It’s a device to make fans feel better about their lot by throwing undue attention about the pale basement dwelling team to which they’ve given their time, money, lungs, and spirit.  While Boston might have been gloriously cursed (by Babe Ruth, no less), and the Cubs have long been the Lovable Losers, the Phillies, and by extension, their fans, have mostly lived in either anonymity, or in the enmity of other fans.

From where I sit, Cleveland’s had plenty to be upset about, even aside from the number of years and seasons of losing.  I can only imagine what it’s like to hear the ESPN talking heads pontificate on how native son LeBron James will someday soon leave his hometown team for the Big Money, Big Market, Big Fame.  It must sound like a reminder that Cleveland Just Isn’t Good Enough.

The Tribe is a team that has seen more than its fair share of awful squads, and if you go back in history, you can’t help but notice the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who sported, I believe, the lowest winning percentage in baseball history (an unnecessarily brutal .130 mark).  Over the past decade, things have more or less been looking up, teamwise, though the amount of flak the team takes for Chief Wahoo seems to be gradually increasing.  I can only guess at what it’s like to reminded that you’re rooting for a team whose founding racism is so front and center at all times.

The Browns…  Okay, I’ll be honest.  I don’t follow the NFL very much, and I especially don’t really follow the AFC, so I can’t speak much to the mind-numbing experience of rooting for the Browns.  But, from my distant perch, the Browns have always seemed to me to be football’s Cubs–that is, the Lovable Losers.  You’ve got the Dawg Pound, right?  And the teams have had a few outstanding players since 1964, but not enough good ones around them to do much.  Of course, there are those legendary losses, and I imagine that “John Elway” tastes sour on your lips.

I’m 24 years old.  I was a fetus when the Sixers won Philadelphia’s last championship.  I don’t know if my sporting experience would be more infuriating and depressing and relentlessly addicting in Cleveland than in Philly.  Honestly, I don’t.  My best guess is that it wouldn’t be harder or easier, just different.

I’ve long felt a kinship to the sports fans in Cleveland.  No other city, I think, understands the drowning feeling of rooting for losing teams year round.  Boston had the Patriots, and before them, the Celtics to keep things happy while the Red Sox lost.  Chicago had the Bulls.  But Philly and The Cleve, Peter, they only have each other.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Shyster says nice things about us, and then we go and spoil the mood by saying nasty things about, well, you know who.

Like a Robot Made of Nails

Paul DePodesta, former LA Dodgers GM, and current Padres front office mensch, has a blog.  It’s notable, more or less, because it’s the first time a front office type has started a public blog, and DePodesta is a smart guy, and Padres fans are going to have the chance to have a fascinating insight into the way their club works, thanks to DePodesta.

Now, Depodesta is just getting started, so it’s possible he’ll play hard to get and his blog will never give fans the kind of insights into decisions they wish for, but even if the blog is a failure in that sense, it will succeed on other levels as long as DePo finds things like this to share:

DePodesta: It Might Be Dangerous…

The Problem With the Debate

Last night, Bob Costas hosted a live (or partially live) episode of his HBO show, Costas Now, to address the changing sports media landscape.  The press release:

Segment Two: The Internet and Impact of Bloggers. Video package interviews: deadspin.com editor Will Leitch, TV writer and media critic Michael Schur and Washington Post columnist and PTI host Michael Wilbon. Live panel: Pulitzer Prize winning author Buzz Bissinger, Will Leitch and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards.

So, there was a taped roundtable with Will Leitch of Deadspin, Michael Schur of FireJoeMorgan, and Michael Wilbon of ESPN and the Washington Post, which was followed by a live discussion with Leitch, Buzz Bissinger, and, bizarrely, Braylon Edwards.  I haven’t seen the show, but I assume Costas was involved in every segment as well.

The seemingly uniform reaction, at least from blogs (I haven’t found any mainstream opinions on the episode yet), is that Bissinger, simply put, lost his mind.  From MDS at the AOL Fanhouse (who had the first reaction I could find):

Bissinger launched into a profane rant against Leitch, Deadspin, blogs in general and “Big Daddy Balls,” the latter being the name that Bissinger incorrectly used for the blogger who goes by the pen name Big Daddy Drew. Bissinger was completely unhinged. Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who for some odd reason was on the panel as well, looked frightened.

“This guy, whether we like it or not, is the future,” Bissinger said, jabbing his finger in Leitch’s direction. “The future in the hands of guys like you is really going to dumb us down to a degree that I don’t think we can recover from.”

Of course, Bissinger couldn’t be bothered to cite even one example of anything “dumb” Leitch has ever written. And neither Bissinger nor Costas seemed to know the difference between a blog post and a blog comment.

Summing up: Costas holds a live panel featuring old-head sportswriter Buzz Bissinger, and new-guy Will Leitch.  Buzz bashes blogging in the person of Will so fervently that Leitch doesn’t even has a chance to defend himself.  Not that he needs to, as the fervor of the attack is absurd enough to sink itself.

Again, I haven’t seen the segment (though I hope someone will post it shortly), so the following comments are based on the idea that the essential uniform reaction from the various commenting members of Blogfrica weren’t, ya know, lying or exaggerating or whatever.  Given the tone (somber) and the (unsettling) lack of swearing and snark, I can only assume that we’re all taking this pretty seriously.

Leitch himself checked in this morning with a couple of salient thoughts, most notably, this leading remark:

Here’s the important thing to remember about Buzz Bissinger, and whatever the heck happened on “Costas Now” about two hours ago: Buzz is not alone. Sure, he might be metaphorically alone, raining spittle on the imaginary demons that clearly haunt him. But if you don’t think that almost every single person — with obvious, clear exceptions — who was on all those panels last night didn’t come up to him afterwards and give him a fist pound and a “yeah, we really struck back tonight!” well, you weren’t there. This really is what many of them think. Though most are a little calmer about it.

Leitch doesn’t indicate who those exceptions might be (though I assume “obvious” and “clear” would work nicely for those who saw the program), but it seems that the segment was designed to publicly hang the appointed representative of Blog.  If, indeed, many of the other panel member congratulated Bissinger on his rantings, the only reasonable conclusion is that the program was less a discussion of the changing face of sport media, and more a reminder of who’s in charge around here, who’s sitting pretty in the press box, and who’s watching athletes from their mom’s basements.  People who share Bissinger’s view possess a mentality of Writers vs Bloggers, Us vs Them.

And there lies the first issue.  There is no “them”, or rather, changing perspectives, there is no “us”.  Sports bloggers have only a few connecting points.  Generally, they all like or love sports.  They have personal interest in the topic about which they write.  Beyond that, though, I’m unsure what there is.  I’m not certain if Orland Kurtenblog and Free Darko have much in common, in terms of content.  Kurtenblog (The KB, to you), consists of enthusiastic fandom for hockey as a sport, which is coupled with frequent, short posts to dissect the news of the game while maintaining the lighthearted spirit that helps make the sport, itself, so wonderful.  Free Darko is more nebulous, interpreting basketball as something poetic and revolutionary, composing posts as manifestos as though the Atlanta Hawks represent something greater, more significant, than one of the better teams in the NBA.  They’re both wonderful blogs, but for totally separate reasons. Any criticism you can apply to Free Darko almost certainly does not apply to the KB, and vice versa.

Criticizing blogs for being inaccurate or inelegant or vulgar on the basis of a few selected posts is like criticizing magazines because of Hustler, or bashing newspapers because of the Weekly World News.  I used to work for an environmental company, and was asked to represent the company at a national meeting for a student’s environmental action group.  Unbeknownst to me, the group had opinions and did work in non-enviromental areas.  One of these areas was (and I assume still is) GLBTQ relations.  They argued against discrimination against queers (their umbrella term) by saying that “everyone is queer”.  They accomplished this feat–of making everyone queer–by defining “straight sex” as “a man having sex with his wife, in bed, man on top, for the purpose of procreation”.  I cannot recall if the procreating has to be successful or not.  Anything else, is, at least a little bit, queer.  This, of course, is a silly tactic, defining your opponent by using incredible narrow terms.

Of course, this is what Bissinger is doing.  He’s trying to reduce the thousands and thousands of blogs out there to some kind of narrow definition of the term, imagining a sports blogger as a Rick Reilly ripoff crossed with cheap tabloid journalism, David Mamet’s vocabulary (but not his plotting), and just a bit of Larry Flint, for flourish.  And while many blogs contain one or more of those elements, hardly any contain all of them.  And far more blogs focus on elements not included in Bissinger’s narrow view.  Blogs, simply put, are far too diverse for any sort of singular criticism to be reasonably applied across most of the board.

Here’s the other problem I have with the apparent nature of the program last night.  There is no discussion from the mainstream media about the changing nature of sports writing.  Rather, there is only a recognition of something different, blogs, and an immense crush against what these blogs fail to do.  For that matter, many blogs, in their criticism of the mainstream media, either ignore or downplay what newspapers do well, and focus instead on what they do poorly, or do not do at all.  What needs to occur that hasn’t, I think, is a thoughtful recognition of the successes and failures of both media formats: blogs and newspapers (including online newspapers).

Bissinger isn’t the man to have that conversation, and, even if it ever takes place in a meaningful way, it seems unlikely that Buzz would care for it.  If it ever happens, I’m not even sure if Leitch is the guy to represent the vast and vaguely associated legions of sports bloggers out there.  He might be, but I’m not sure.  But there are significant differences between journalism and blogging, and it would be nice if the mainstream media could come around and think of blogs as something different, instead of something inferior and dangerous.

UPDATE: I just saw the segment in question (or, at least, most of it) on Awful Announcing.  Even hearing about it, so much this morning, I found the whole thing somewhat shocking.  While haranguing Leitch, Bissinger asks, about blogs, “What does it add?  What does it contribute?”  I’d love to redirect that question to Costas and Bissinger.  What did they add last night, other than bile and venom, to the landscape of sports media?  Bissinger’s hysteria seems, to me, akin to the cries of “Witch!  Witch!” in Salem, MA.  Bissinger didn’t seek to inform anyone about blogs–not even of their faults.  He merely evoked the authority of volume and pronounced blogs a retardant of society.  And I’m unsure why, exactly.

Other posts about this:

Every Day Should Be Saturday: A Brief Statement on Blogging

Awful Announcing: First Reactions to Bob Costas’ Foray Into Sports Media

Deadspin: Friday Night Blights

Fire Joe Morgan: A Few Words on “The Internet”.

Dan Shanoff: Buzz Bissinger vs Will Leitch: The Day After

Dodger Thoughts: The Rime of the Ancient Sportswriter

The Big Lead: “You’re Like Jimmy Olsen on Percocet” and Bob Costas’ Feeble Attempt to Destroy Blogs

Bloggers For Life

A few weeks back, the New York Times wrote a ludicrous article about bloggers dying from, ya know, blogging.  For a refresher, here’s a short quote from the piece:

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Well, finally, an official rebuttal, thanks to CNN.  Apparently, while 3 weeks ago, blogging could kill you, now, blogging can save your life:

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. “Arrested.”

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted that he was being held.

So, there ya go.  Blog at home, and die of a heart attack.  But, take that shit on the road, and it’s like a Get Out of Jail Free card.  Glad to know that the bloggers, at least, will be safe at the Olympics this year.  In all seriousness, we hope Buck’s translator, Mohammed Maree, is safe and sound, wherever he is.

CNN:  If One Word Posts Can Save a Life, What Am I Doing All This Typing For?

My Own Private Liquor Store

Lew Bryson wants to dismantle the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board:

The PLCB exists because at the time of Repeal, Pennsylvania had a governor, Gifford Pinchot, who still ardently believed in Prohibition, and a legislature that believed Repeal may well be temporary and that Prohibition was still a strong political force — to be fair, a belief that was prevalent in the day. Few people knew that Prohibition as a political force was deader than a doornail, in a state of complete collapse.

Working with what they knew, Pennsylvania’s legislators put together a “control” system that was actually fairly common among states. They would control all sales of wine and liquor (note that beer was not included) through state-run stores. The clerks would simply deliver the bottle; they would not make recommendations of any one brand over another, a policy rooted in a brute force approach to fairness that would unfortunately lead to a total lack of any kind of service mentality. “We got it, you want it: play by our rules or get lost” was the attitude that ruled in the State Stores, and largely still does, despite the recent development of a human face.

The PLCB justifies itself by the revenues it brings in, by the supposition that it ‘controls’ abusive and underage drinking better than privately-owned businesses would, and by the money it “infuses” into the state economy by paying landlords for leases on the stores and the wages it pays its employees. It is a system that works so well that Pennsylvania is surrounded by great liquor stores across its borders.

I say we take it down.

If nothing else, you have to love Lew’s enthusiasm.  He’s right, too.  PA possesses some of the more archaic liquor laws around, and just about everyone in the Philadelphia area (at least, the ones who are into wine and liquor, and even beer) have headed down to Delaware and Maryland, or just across the river to New Jersey, for the better selections and (often) better prices of private liquor merchants.

Naturally, Pennsylvania, being a government and all, is slow to change, especially in regards to making drinks with alcohol more available to its residents (after all, think of the children!).  So, even though Lew is getting plenty of support, this is going to take time.  There are a lot of surrounding issues for privatizing liquor sales (for instance, the state employs a lot of people in those stores), but we have no doubt that between now and the Rapture, Uncle Lew will cover most of them.

Of course, the next question, the next step can only be: who is going to go undercover in the enemy’s lair?

Lew Bryson: The Revolution Is Nigh, PLCB