Cold War Revisited

Historian Eric Arnesen strikes again!

Modern Love

The "Random Things" link at the right is actually a link to "Chapel Perilous," an octopus-obsessed, toe-sock-selling, loose group of dog fanciers, conspiracy buffs, and sci-fi weenies. And, for a period there, maybe from 2004-06, it was a damn fine site. Photos of hot chicks in striped toe socks...mmm, toe socks.

Not only that, but the site sifted the interwebs for fun and interesting things to see and do, and I appreciated that, because if it did then I didn't have to. Plus, added bonus! most of the contributors were open to, if not outright professors of, all manner of oddball theories about everything from human evolution to mind control and back again, looped upon itself, iterations innumerable. That shit is fun, light, and challenging when it's being discussed by smart folks who aren't embarrassed about broaching such lowbrow topics. In short, Chapel Perilous was for a short time a very nice place to visit, and a hint, I thought, of what fun the internet could have been.

Apparently, though, it's gone through the ringer lately. Archives have been lost, comments have been lost, contributors have fallen by the wayside. Now it's due to shut down and, maybe, re-launch as something else.

One of the nice things about blogging, that you don't really get with the political blogs or "real" discourse, is the sense that the person who made the posts was trying to put themself into each one. A blog, consequently, isn't a diary but it's not quite a memoir, either. As an art form, the blog involves the reader just enough to elicit attachment without establishing familiarity--or at least it did in this case--and that leaves the reader perpetually on the edge of his seat. When one loses the desire to titillate his unknown audience, it is time to retire. I think I am moving, inexorably, in that direction, too; maybe due to deficient attention-span, maybe because the form becomes exhausted.

Women's Sports and Working Brains

The male American sports watcher is of two minds regarding athletic performance: he enjoys the certainty that during each game, by rote, there will be a homerun, a flashy dunk or three (or twenty), or a kickoff-return for touchdown. But, he also celebrates innovation and craftiness, either in the form of some player or coach who shouldn't be able to survive at the level of competition but does, or in the form of unique systems and strategies for play. Thus, the American male sports fan holds simultaneous, contradictory opinions about what is most desirable in the genre. To be blunt, viewers seem to love LeBron James for his nightly impression of Michael Jordan--whose acrobatics were interesting 20 years ago and have now become commonplace in the NBA to the point that even benchwarmers can replicate them exactly--and yet also can wax rhapsodic about Dean Smith, whose last-ditch effort to make North Carolina competitive in college basketball entailed standing still and holding the ball until the other team literally got tired of guarding the basket and gave up an easy score. By the way, the game most associated with the Four Corners offense ended with a score of 21-20.

Most people will say that, while they admire Smith, they hate slow basketball. They like dunks. This is like saying, "rather than eating a steak, I'd like something fast and mundane, like Buddig pressed ham lunchmeat. Do we have any pressed ham lunchmeat?" There's no skill involved; you just tear open the package and eat the salty byproduct of indifferent production.

But those same people like Bill Belichick because he coaches a cerebral, planned football game. Many people will watch interminable chess matches (but only when men are playing), because they claim to enjoy the strategy, mind-cramping iterations of moves, and so forth. Fans will watch "slow" baseball pitchers and accept that when you throw a pitch is as important as what you throw. Sports enthusiasts will watch European, Asian, African, and South American "versions" of "American" sports and analyze different styles of play without automatically judging them inferior to the US norm. Look at golf, boxing, soccer, hockey, baseball for examples. Now, the fact that the United States has recently been beaten at "its own" games (our grabby sports culture has adopted all athletic pursuits as somehow reflective of us more than others) by people from other countries probably has a lot to do with this willingness to let variant styles of play live alongside the American "right way to play."

Which brings us to American women's sports. Everybody hates them. They aren't welcome on TV, radio, in print, or in public conversation. Women don't dunk. They run slow. The can't hit a baseball 450 feet or throw one 96 mph. Women are not entertaining or fun to watch, you won't learn anything by doing so, and they take up valuable brain cell power we could be using to watch the bajillionth homerun in the Yankees game. Case closed.

Except, if anybody ever actually sat down and watched women's sports, an interesting thing might happen. That other half of American sports consciousness, the part that is intrigued by cleverness, strategy, and creativity, might wake up and become cognizant of the fact that women's sports aren't like men's sports and that's a good thing. To put it plainly, men's sports in general just aren't that fun to watch. Most of the time, you see the same thing repeated over and over again; when everyone in the NBA can dunk, then perhaps nobody should dunk. 514 major league players out of 1200 hit HR in 2007. Most of those without a HR are relief pitchers. Is there anything less interesting than the longball at this point?

If you ask a man, he'd say yes: women's sports.

I've seen a lot of women's basketball in the last year or so and the thing about it is that everyone's right that it is vastly worse than the men's game--you know, if the measuring stick you're using is a men's game. If you're going to use your brain, though, you'll notice that women's basketball is nothing at all like men's. For one thing, it's played as a game. There are plans of attack, defensive gambits to test the opponent, evolving strategies over the course of the contest. It isn't a highlight reel. It isn't about finding the same open shot each time, or having one dominant inside player. The disparity between top women's teams and lower-tier teams is so great that for a lesser team to compete it has to think its way through the game. When have you ever seen a men's game that wasn't either an evenly-matched war of attrition or a mismatch where each team only played one way throughout?

What you'll realize, if you care to take a chance on women's sports, is that it's a completely different game where the very laws of motion are changed and the game develops over a longer time frame. For a nation of self-styled "intelligent" sports fans, who will sit through a postgame show where morons attempt to dress up the act of tackling to make it look like a fine art, it's a goddamn shame men won't think about women's sports as parallel universes or variations on a theme.

Of course, I guess this could all be misogyny, plain and simple. Silly me?

Healthcare Nowhere

We're all going to die. If Michelle Malkin, who thinks all attempts to help working families get healthcare are "socialism!" (!!) (and "!!!!", for effect), can't afford coverage, then everybody's fucked (not least of all, Michelle Malkin, who has been sucking the GOP dick for so long that she's lost the fact that she's busted and desperate).

Naw. Actually, I'm so happy I can't sit down (because of the raging boner) because of the S-CHIP brouhaha. It's a fight the Republicans can't win, because we have reached a tipping point where too many Americans in the middle class, not just us poor 'tards alone anymore, can't afford healthcare and so the "debate" really isn't. There WILL be state-run medicine in the Unites States sooner rather than later, and this ain't some abstract pontification about fuzzy sums and unknown persons. We all know what's wrong with our healthcare "system".

Keep up the good-bad work, Mr. Bush. Your legacy will be as the catalyst for socialism in this country. Way to go!

Putting the "White" in "Weissbier"

Coors and Miller to Combine.

Now, Miller, I stayed with you when you got bought by that South African outfit. And, I didn't run away when you started selling beer in plastic bottles (a true "what the fuck" moment if ever there was one). I haven't written any angry letters to your advertising department in response to your consistently idiotic and annoying commercials. I have allowed myself to believe that because your cans say "Union Made Beer" on them, you are a good employer despite reports to the contrary. I don't mind that you are based in Milwaukee, the butthole of Lake Michigan. Though your storage tanks looked more than a little bit rusty last time I drove through town, I didn't let it bother me. Sometimes, Miller High Life tastes like soap, but I drink it anyway. This is just a partial list of the things I've done for you.

But joining up with Crazy Pete Coors is the last straw. He's a racist and a bigot and he funds his far-right political activities with the money he gets from selling watery beer to cash-strapped frat boys. Molson bought into Crazy Pete a few years ago (or was it the other way around?) and has gotten nowhere by it and now you want to get a piece of that action? I'll say to you what I said the last time I had some of Pete's beer: barf.

May I suggest, by way of a parting gift, some new beers to launch your partnership? How about taking Leinenkugel's back to its ethnic roots with "Lein Kampf," a tall, blonde, pure brew in a blue bottle? Coors can chip in with a pale beer honoring your South African connections, "Apart-ale"--sold separately in clear and brown bottles. How about a draft-only selection reflecting Pete's anti-immigration views, to be poured not from "taps" or "spigots," but rather from labeled "Spic-ets"?

Adios, Miller. It's back to redneck beer from St. Louis for me!

Out with the Old, in with the Andruw

Ugh. That hurt even me. Anyway, the Cubs are shedding dead weight this off season and need to improve tremendously next year to compete (in the playoffs; they should be able to waltz to the division title without even trying, but that's like saying you won the NFC North or the NHL's Western Conference Central--there's only one competent team in either division).

The Chubs desperately need pitching and one more power hitter. They already have some dependable guys, namely (and in this order) Derrek Lee at first and hitting (ideally) third, Aramis Ramirez at third/hitting fourth, Jacque Jones in right/hitting wherever (could the team possibly waste him any more?), and Alfonso Soriano in left/hitting second. Though, for reasons unknown, Soriano-the-strikeout-machine has been the Cubs' leadoff hitter since he arrived. He has power, but he hit 13 leadoff homeruns this year and those are the least useful homeruns you can hit. He doesn't get on base all that well, so at least put him at the plate with the chance there'll be someone on ahead of him that can score on a hit.

After Lee, Ramirez, and Soriano, it appears that a rookie, Geovany Soto, will be the starting catcher next year, which is great because Soto was the Pacific Coast League's MVP this past season, hitting over .350 with 20-some HR. The PCL is a notorious hitters' league, but if Soto can hit .270 with 15 HR that will be awesome. He still should hit eighth.

And...that's about it for the hitters. Mark DeRosa signed a 3-year contract last season to play 2B, although he would be better in left and Soriano would play the hell out of second in a perfect--read: logical--Cubs world. DeRosa is a fine player, but he's a step slow for the infield and it showed in the playoffs last week when he failed to turn a double play and couldn't chase down hits up the middle. Soriano is a perfectly terrible outfielder who never wanted to play there in the first place and makes it look like no fun at all. Also, he misplays the ball. A lot. Elsewhere in the field, we have ninety-year-old Cliff Floyd sometimes playing the outfield and generally underperforming, but, hey, everybody knows you have to have another left-handed hitter. Because...well just because, OK? Shut up! Then there's the Two You Love to Boo, from LSU, Mike Fontenot (2B/SS; 8 errors in 65 games this year), and Ryan Theriot (SS/2B) who hit a fat .266 with 3 (!) HR in 2007. That's your everyday shortstop, Cubs fans. But, because he "hustles" and his last name can be read as "The Riot," he's our favorite person all of a sudden. At least he's cheap...

The rest of the dead weight consists of Jason Kendall, whose contract, thankfully, is up; Ronny Cedeno, who is a shitty fielder AND somehow also a terrible hitter and baserunner and yet is persistently on the roster; Henry Blanco, who was signed as Greg Maddux's personal catcher but is still here even though ol' Greg has been in San Diego for 2 years; and Matt Murton, who was once a promising left fielder but is now just a bench warmer and lousy hitter.

Jason Kendall made $13,429,523 in 2007. Now he's a free agent. Ditto Wade Miller, who never pitched for the club and still made $1,500,000 last year. Also, Scott Eyre, who has an option (which the Cubs damn sure better not pick up) and made $4 million last year. So, there's at least $19 million or so to throw at some free agents! Woohoo!

Priorities, gentlemen. Hitting = #1. Starting pitching = #2. Who should the Cubs go after? For starters, Andruw Jones. Chicago needs a great centerfielder and he's it. Also, he can crush the living fuck out of the old horsehide and he's still relatively young. Added bonus: he had a miserable year in 2007 at the plate: career lows in every statistical category except RBI. As a 12-year veteran, that is what's known as a "fluke," and while it's ridiculously out of whack with his average numbers, 2007 means that Andruw will command significantly less money as a free agent than he would have if he'd had his usual .265/35 HR/90 R/100 RBI season. He made $14 million last year--or about the same as Jason Fucking "I Suck Balls" Hasn't-hit-a-HR-in-3-years Kendall. A hitting lineup of Soriano-Lee-Ramirez-J. Jones (because he's left-handed!)-A. Jones is a wet dream compared to what the Cubs have now. And defensively, he's worth his (considerable) weight in gold (I mean to imply both that he is a great fielder and also that he's fat--but never have I seen a fat man run so well!). As someone who watched the miserable highwire act/farce that was the Cubs' centerfield carousel this season, Jones alone is worth 5 wins. At least.

There's a lot of talk about signing A-Rod and letting him play SS again, and to that I say: go for it! That would be the all-time, can't stop jizzing my Dockers, calloused palms and bloody glans dream. But, since this is the Cubs we're talking about here, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Andruw Jones would be a genius acquisition and I don't even think that's likely; A-Rod would be Nobel Prize-level thinking, and this is the organization that actually thought Soriano would make a good centerfielder without seeing him play a single game there. These are the people who brought you George Bell and Hector Villanueva in the outfield. This is the team that let Andre Dawson go so it could get Mr. Bell. The Cubs passed on Kenny Lofton, lo those few years ago, so it could give every farmhand in the system a shot at looking lost in center field and at the plate. In short: if you give the Cubs the benefit of the doubt (nevermind believing in them), they'll remind you of the definition of "foolish."

On the pitching front, the Cubs obviously need at least 1 more starter. The bullpen is mediocre-to-good, but it'll take care of itself. Relievers, individually, just don't get enough chances to change games to worry about signing the best ones out there. Unfortunately, there are no good starting options out there this year. Maybe Tom Glavine? He doesn't want to return to the Mets and he's still better than most younger players, but he makes about $7 million a year. Livan Hernandez is an innings-eater, but he's in the playoffs with Arizona and will probably look to cash in one more time before retiring. Signing him would be a mistake.

For some reason, and despite the attempt in writing this out to make myself feel better, renewed confidence has been elusive. At least, no matter what, the Cubs will be better than Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay next year.

Why He's Around

Josh Marshall gets it. This time. But does he know anybody else who acts this way?

Discarded Shills?

Has the rightwing teat dried up for our favorite waste of time collegiate magazine, the Rutgers Centurion? This is what you get when you go to its webpage.

Could it be that the Leadership Institute, the batshit crazy, anti-democracy, un-American clearinghouse for nefarious if childish conservative shenanigans has finally decided that the Centurion isn't even deserving of the meager support it received in the past? What will 18-to-22-year-old morons at Rutgers have to read now? Textbooks? Newspapers? Things not authored by white, rich, power-mad men? The horror!

It's On Like Bellerophon

Carolina Hurricanes vs. Montreal Canadiens (learn to spell, eh? Damn secessionists!), tonight at 7pm eastern. In the world of NHL fan-dom, truly I am an army of one.

See: Bellerophon

Running-dog Democrats?

How about "runny cunt Democrats"? Talking Points Memo (which is helpfully labeled as "Democratic Milquetoast" in the links at right) decided to weigh in, and give its readers a chance to comment on, congressional Democrats' proposed resolution to condemn Rush Limbaugh for saying that any member of the military who disagrees with the President is a "phony soldier."

Talking Points Memo, gathering place for blather and ambiguous declarations of interest, seems to feel that such a resolution is a terrible idea for two reasons. First, it would "look like a tit-for-tat reso" retaliating for the MoveOn.org condemnation. Well, duh, you fools. That's what it is. Second, TPM feels that it isn't Congress' job to regulate the speech of "private citizens."

Since when is Limbaugh a private citizen and not an employee and spokesperson for a major media outlet? He's using the public airwaves to broadcast his opinions and the federal government, as the licensing agent for the public, has every right and responsibility to monitor and regulate what is said by entertainers like Limbaugh. Unlike the Hustler Magazine-Jerry Falwell incident, Limbaugh was not trying to be satirical. He wasn't making a hypothetical conjecture. He slandered an entire class of Americans because they don't share the political beliefs of his paymasters, and he used a very powerful medium to do so without giving his targets any recourse or opportunity to defend themselves. In sum, Limbaugh used a privileged position granted him by the FCC to commit a crime. Since when is that not Congress' business?

MoveOn.org, on the other hand, took out a newspaper ad--which is, by all apparent and known laws, protected speech--and questioned the decisions of a US general. MoveOn is, to be clear, a stupid and ineffective organization, but what it did is not a crime and does not in any apparent way fall under the jurisdiction of the government.

But, Talking Points Memo (and apparently, many of its readers, the so-called Democratic intelligentsia) feels that the two things are synonymous and fears that any attempt to squash Limbaugh will look petty and rude. In other words, it is as I have said many times: some Democrats would rather lose political agency in this country than appear uncouth. "It's only the high road for us, thank you! See if you can win elections without your dignity, Republicans! (and especially you, Karl Rove, with your soiled conscience. We think not!) Advantage...us!"

When the other side has the better game, you play by its rules if you want to win. You can't keep trying to switch the game to something more civil. But some Democrats are insistent that when Republicans come after you with baseball bats, the proper course of action is to quietly, meekly ask them if they'd really rather share a laugh over a nice game of cards. The answer, received just before the lights go out, is no and hell no and you'd really think by now, wouldn't you, that we'd have figured this out.

Shovel Some Dirtz on Wirtz

Bill Wirtz, owner and wrecker of the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, is (finally) dead. At his funeral, someone actually had the gall to tell everybody that Billy Wirtz was "a giant among men." Considering that the person who said that is Don King, a giant among stupid men, it doesn't deserve more than passing comment. That comment being, of course, that if what you consider to be "greatness" is the ability to take one of the most famous sports franchises in one of the biggest cities in the world and single-handedly destroy it through cheapness, avarice, and ineptitude, then yes, Bill Wirtz was the greatest of them all.

For decades he extorted and cheated the city and its residents while ignoring the team's steep and ugly decline--in fact, denying it and insisting that the team was getting better all the time, despite what our eyes and the stat books told us. The sport is far better without this greedy little shit. Whether the Blackhawks can recover in our lifetimes is less certain.