Category: No Politics Friday

Anyone who does a substantial amount of traveling in the continental US can tell you that there is a depressing sameness to the vast majority of this country. The background scenery changes, but 99% of the country is a collage of strip malls, gas stations, and chain restaurants that make it almost impossible to determine where you are. It would be fun to blindfold a few willing contestants, take them to some random small-to-medium city, and have them take their best guess at the location. How many people could actually tell Akron from Amarillo?

Since I travel either to see scenery or friends, this bothers me only on the existential level – the vague sense of unease that our culture is losing any sense of regional identity as it is replaced by the blandest kind of conformity.
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Most Americans have made uneasy peace with the fact that Indiana looks like Kansas looks like Alabama and frankly there's not a whole lot of local color. When we travel internationally, though, we definitely want to feel like we've traveled internationally. We want that shit to look foreign, son. That's why we feel so outraged when the internet reminds us, for example, that the Pyramids at Giza are within spitting distance of a KFC / Pizza Hut. We don't want to see air conditioned chain restaurants; we want our trip to Egypt to be a romantic adventure in the desert, perhaps involving us mounting a camel at some point and interacting with The Natives. Noble Savages or whatnot. Well, it turns out that the Natives in Cairo, a city of about 10 million, drive the same car you do to a job that probably pays better than yours and spend most of their time in public the same way Americans do, which is to say staring at their phones.

I don't think Americans are unique in this respect; I believe that people from all over the world travel with the expectation of seeing something "exotic" and appropriately foreign. When we visit Paris we want to see scenes that come straight from 1960s Hollywood Paris. We want Africa to be one endless safari dotted with nomadic spear-wielding hunters. In Rome or Venice (a city essentially preserved as a museum for foreign tourists) we expect romance and artistic splendor to fill the air (instead of, you know, pollution).

And everywhere we expect the local inhabitants to be charming and filled to the brim with quirks and character.

The most "foreign" place I've ever been is not terribly exciting – some of the less populated areas of Brazil. At first I have to admit that I was a bit surprised at how different-but-not-that-different from the US it was. It's hard to fly 6000 miles and encounter an Olive Garden without getting a bit of that "I didn't come here to see this shit" resentment. And the more I thought about it, I accepted the fact that there are KFCs all over Brazil for the same reason there are KFCs all over the USA: because people want to eat there.

As much as I hate seeing the absolute worst parts of mass produced American culture infecting the rest of the world, it's the worst kind of snobbery to get upset at Egyptians for liking Pizza Hut because it somehow diminishes the Exotic-ness of our travels. The world is not a movie set designed for our personal enrichment.
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It would be great if people in other countries told McDonald's to piss off because McDonald's is terrible, but not because it ruins my fantasy image of what Paris should look like.

So here's what is about to happen.
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I am going to read (for the first time) and live-blog my reaction to a Batman-themed fan fiction / slash porn piece that one of my friends sent me for the expressed purpose of horrifying me. It is entitled "Go Your Own Way" and included in the "Jim Gordon/Bruce Wayne" section of a part of the internet that I can only assume includes every conceivable combination of fictional characters fucking and sucking one another in ways that normal people would not think about sitting down to write about using 43,000 words. I'm serious, it's 43,000 words long. I may not make it but I'm going to try.

Among the tags on this piece are "Daddy Issues," "Jim Gordon," and, helpfully, "porn".

The abstract, if that is the correct term, explains the author's motivation and concludes with the harrowing declaration / warning: "Again, not a lot of plot."

Fuck.

11:04 PM: Half way through chapter 1. The preface was accurate. The set-up here appears to be limited to "Gordon and Wayne are in the same place for a contrived reason of no real importance. They flirt in the manner that an author who has never spoken to another person in a social situation would imagine flirting sounds like. Wayne has a semi; Gordon is intrigued. Soon they will plow each other." Even by the lowered standards of what I was expecting this is not very good, and honestly I kinda just want them to ram it in already because this dialogue is painfully boring to read.

11:09 PM: "I didn't mean to pry," Wayne said. He had, but Gordon didn't bother disputing him. "You might as well come in, since you're here."

I hope I die soon.

11:10: "The bedroom, with its single bed, because that was all he needed, and the chest of drawers that was one half of what had been a set. "Cozy," Wayne said, looking at the bed.
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"

Oh, I get it. Foreshadowing. Because they're gonna bone.

11:14: They've barely gotten into it and they're already calling one another "good boy" and "bad boy." This is gonna be rough. (Double entendre).

11:15: Yeah they're doing it now. Lots of cop allusions and talk about restraints and cuffs and everything else you might expect your average Batman / Fanfic / Chronic Masturbation enthusiast to include in a story like this. Just for reference there was about 8 seconds of foreplay. Maybe 10. It is basically "They kissed, and then grabbed each other's dicks.
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"

11:18: The sex was over in like 11 seconds. This author may have a highly unsatisfying sex life. Also, when Bruce Wayne was blowing Gordon, Gordon was thinking about Batman. That's some deep shit right there.

11:20: 90 seconds of banal conversation, then Wayne blurts out "Ready for another fuck?" I…

11:21: "Wayne's jeans were still open. He'd never fastened them, and with one hand he was somehow able to open the lube, spread it on his hand, and finger himself, all while still kissing Gordon." Spoken like a man who has never had sex before, and possibly has never had hands.

11:23: Oh good, Gordon just called him "son." While banging him. Jackpot!

11:25: "Even the fact he'd thought of Batman when Wayne was sucking him off last night didn't bother Gordon. After all, it hadn't been Batman's pointy hat or swirly cape or man of mystery appeal, or even his bravery and all he stood for."

11:26: Wayne and Gordon are having a conversation about Pasta Roni, which is a code word for fucking each other. See, Gordon wants to go out to a "cheap, quick, and dirty" Italian place, "just like (Bruce) likes". Wayne would rather go straight to Gordon's apartment for what I assume will be another thrilling 18 seconds of old man sex.

11:29: 'Gordon's hand tightened. "Ask it nice."'

11:30: Gordon has an emotionally charged moment and reminisces about his ex-wife whilst kneeling on his kitchen floor. The trigger for this was the smell of Batman's ballsack. Rich people have the most fragrant nuts.

I mean, you know how it goes. One minute you're inhaling balls-aura and the next you're like, man, remember that time I was married to a woman?

11:32: Bruce Wayne is rock hard again approximately 30 seconds after completion of a sex act with Mr. Gordon. Bruce Wayne has some special powers indeed.

11:34: Gordon and Wayne exchange several lines of dialogue marveling at the snugness of the former's asshole. This is approximately as erotic as reading the phone book, albeit less interesting.

11:41: OK the fifth chapter makes it apparent that this has settled into a very mundane formula. Gordon is working and Wayne appears. They have lunch. They fuck. Gordon pretends he is Bruce's dad. Lube is sparingly applied and occasionally forgotten by the author.
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Phrases like "But he did see Wayne the next night. They had sex. They didn't have Pasta Roni." are used.

I'm done. I don't have seven more chapters of this in me. I suspected that I might be gripped by a range of feelings and emotions while reading this but I did not expect that overwhelming boredom would be one of them. For christ's sake, he at least could have worn the Batman costume or they could have double-teamed Bane or something. Maybe picked up some drifter. Broken out the toys. Anything, really. Anything other than having lunch, talking about noodles, and then pushing each other around like a wheelbarrow.

If anything happens in chapters six through twelve, let me know.

PS. You'll be pleased to know that Commissioner Gordon is a stickler for condoms.

Despite being a huge and nearly exclusive fan of guitar-based music, I've always hated guitar solos.

They strike me as cliched theatricality at best and pointless filler at worst. There is nothing that interests me less than how many notes some Steve Vai worshiping d-bag can play in 30 seconds. A guitar solo is what you shoehorn into a song when you can't write a decent bridge.

When one of my friends challenged me recently to resist writing off all guitar soloing, I spent a long car ride with my mp3 player trying to find out if I like some without realizing it. Apparently I do. If a guitar part actually sounds like it's a part of the song rather than some noodling crap layered on top of it because the band couldn't think of anything else to do or because (as in a lot of kinds of metal) every goddamn song needs three solos in it just because, a guitar solo can be not-the-most irritating part of an otherwise good song. In no particular order (and obviously limited by my less than all-encompassing taste in music, tending toward the noisy and loud) here are four pretty excellent guitar performances.

Feel free to add yours in the comments and let's just go ahead and not waste time trying to prove who has the better taste in music. OK? OK.

1. Bob Stinson, "Customer" (off The Replacements, Sorry Ma Forgot To Take Out the Trash). The magic happens from 0:45 to about 1:10. The liner notes say "Bob's lead is hotter than a urinary tract infection" and who are we to argue. He was the Drunken Master of the music world in the 80s. It's slop, but the best kind of slop.

Stinson drank himself to death, which is a pretty predictable ending when you get kicked out of The Replacements for drinking too much. Think about that for a second.

2. Tom Morello, "Know Your Enemy" (off RATM self-titled debut). Solo from 3:15 to about 3:45. This old RATM stuff sounds really dated and more than a little juvenile (although if teenagers are going to listen to juvenile music, they might as well get something other than right-wing talking points out of it). There are about 50 Tom Morello solos you could put in a pile and throw darts at.

The guy just makes more sounds out of a guitar and cheap stompboxes than anyone, period.

This was one of the first ones he got a lot of attention for, and it has all of the things we came to associate with his sound over the next 20 years.

3. Tim Sköld, "Putting Holes in Happiness" (off Marilyn Manson, Eat Me Drink Me). Solo from 2:30 to about 3:30. OK you're just going to have to trust me on this one. It's a really good solo. The off-key parts jump out of the speakers.

Not a great album, but I think a lot of "music people" would be shocked to give it a listen and hear how good of a guitarist Sköld is. I don't even play guitar and it was a real "Damn this guy can play" moment. Not a lot of people can be interesting soloing for a full minute in a musical environment as restrictive as this kind of sluggish blob of goth.

4. Kurt Cobain, "Sappy" (not "Verse Chorus Verse", which it's usually and inaccurately called – the "hidden track" on that 99 cent bin legend, the No Alternative compilation). Solo from 1:40 to 2:10. Here is a guy who had more technical skill than anyone gave him credit for, yet he rarely showed it off.

This is a perfect example of a solo that actually fits perfectly into the song. It makes the song better. Nobody cares that the average Guitar Center employee or bar band member could play this with ease.

Side note: it's funny how a throwaway Nirvana song sounds about a thousand times better than the best the bands on the radio today can pull off. Turns out that it's more interesting to listen to people playing instruments than sounds manipulated to death by a producer armed with every post-effect known to man.

Fun trivia: the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria were originally awarded to Denver. Colorado voters turned it down because they thought it would cost too much and the predictions of the revenue that would be generated were overly optimistic. It foreshadowed the modern issue of the inversion of the IOC selection process from cities fighting over the right to host in favor of the IOC struggling to find suitable candidates willing to take it in the financial neck to host games that routinely are monuments to cost overruns and optimism biases. Increasingly the only countries willing to host things like the Olympics and the World Cup are ones with quasi-autocratic national governments that can decide to do things that make no financial sense, or Brazil types that see the huge losses as a marketing fee to show the world that They are Way Cool.

The other major issue with hosting is what to do with the copious (expensive) infrastructure after the games are over.

The internet is littered with photo galleries of dilapidated Olympic sites – the ruins of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics are particularly poignant in light of what happened to that city in the following decade. What is amazing is how rapidly these flashy, expensive, modern sites turn into decrepit ruins.
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China's $40 billion investment in the Beijing games yielded a number of architecturally significant stadiums that are now white elephants; the only revenue generated by the "Bird's Nest" today comes from itinerant tourists who pay $20 to ride Segways around the Olympic track.

Even though the sad sight of abandoned Olympic infrastructure is by now a familiar one, it is stunning to see the speed with which the Potemkin village build by Putin's Russia in Sochi has fallen into disrepair. Sochi was a disaster from the get-go – like the 1976 Montreal debacle, very little of the construction was actually finished when the games began. What was finished was held up to worldwide ridicule for the shoddy construction and downright bizarre design. And now, even though the Games seem like they just ended a few weeks ago the "city" already looks like Pripyat minus the background radiation count.

With most industrialized nations starting to see hosting the Games for what it is – a classic boondoggle – it's going to be interesting to see where the IOC and similar organizations like FIFA go in the future.
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My guess is that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is the beginning of a trend of events being hosted in Flashy Oil Money countries run by gaudy sheikhs.

When they get tired of competing to see who can own the most Rolls Royces, they'll turn to building stadiums that will someday be about as useful as an asshole on their collective elbow.

Here's a gallery of former Olympic sites if you feel like your Friday needs to be a little bleaker.

While I'm not a big fan of "classic TV" in general – anachronistic shows like Leave it to Beaver are a genuine chore to watch in my opinion – I do have a pretty serious Twilight Zone obsession. In the "suspense" genre there aren't many shows or movies made since 1960 that don't owe it some kind of debt (or, in some cases, ripped off TZ plotlines lock, stock, and barrel). It would be possible and probably enjoyable for a small number of us to spend a year on nothing but daily posts about different TZ episodes and we'd cover just about everything Hollywood knows or ever has known about writing plots that twists and making things that are scary-unsettling rather than scary-"loud noises and fake blood." One thing that it isn't known for, with good cause, is comedy. Ask people to name funny or even pleasant TV shows and Twilight Zone is not going to top anyone's list.

While it is hard to disagree with that characterization, I submit for your consideration Season 3 Episode 13, "Once Upon a Time." Starring Buster Keaton. Not a lot of people would be able to pick Buster Keaton out of a lineup today but prior to World War II he was one of the most famous and popular celebrities on the planet (the end of the silent film era combined with his descent into twenty years of raging alcoholism did him in). In his later life – circa 1950-1960 – he overcame his addiction and the creative world started to recognize his greatness, giving him a lifetime achievement Oscar and a too-brief second act for his career. He would die in 1966 at the age of 70, five years after filming the Twilight Zone episode you see here.

As TZ episodes go the plot here is pretty dull – man travels through time, finds that he is out of place, and gains a new appreciation for the life he lives – but I defy anyone to watch this and not be happy at the end. There are certainly no other TZ episodes, and perhaps no episodes period, that please me as much as this one. The production team absolutely nails the silent film feel, from the jerky film speed to the dialogue cards to the ragtime-y piano. And holy crap, this might be Keaton's masterpiece. He is absolutely flawless here; 65 year old post-alcoholism Keaton somehow gave us one last look at his complete mastery of silent film acting. The physical comedy is impeccable, his deadpan rubbery face conveys more than most actors can in speaking roles, and he is endearing in every possible way.

You may not think much of silent films (although you should give Keaton's The General a shot regardless) but this is the undisputed master of the medium in all his glory, showing everyone that even in his dotage he could be totally dominant. If you watch a bunch of TZ episodes in a row on Netflix or on DVD, this one always comes as a surprise. It's just so different than everything before or after it in the series. While there are some episodes with comedic elements (the clown in "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" comes to mind) there are no other straight-up comedy efforts like this. I've often wondered if perhaps Rod Serling was a huge Keaton fan and simply decided that he was going to give the Old Man one last chance to remind everyone of his greatness even if it made zero sense in the context of Twilight Zone as a series.

I'm glad he did. 24 minutes. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Last weekend I journeyed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY to see the induction ceremony for three first ballot players including my favorite player as a kid, Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas. Though Cooperstown is convenient to nothing – the trip involved phrases like "only 80 minutes from Binghamton" – this really is a baseball fan's version of the Hajj. Cooperstown is a surprisingly tiny town, though, and when jammed with 50,000+ visitors it can be quite chaotic. So the practical part of my brain recommends visiting sometime other than induction weekend if you dislike huge crowds.

The best part of the museum is listening to random strangers sharing their memories with anyone in earshot, since I think that is one of the primary reasons that people develop an attachment to the sport: "I was at that game with my dad in '72" or "My mom listened to Jack Buck on KMOX every game for thirty years" or "Our first date was at a Braves game and Eddie Mathews hit a home run in the 10th inning" or even more general comments like (actual quote) "Man, Willie McCovey hit the ball like it owed him money." You would not be too far off base (SWIDT?) to conclude that the experience isn't entirely about baseball for most of the visitors. Ask an American male to talk about his father and there's a good chance that stories about going to ballgames will be involved.

The worst part of the visit had nothing to do with the museum, but to our new obsession as a society with taking pictures of absolutely everything without pausing to ask why. The main attraction at the museum is the hall of plaques for each member of the Hall, which on the Saturday of induction weekend was mobbed with 1000+ people at any given moment. And almost all of them were crowded inches away from the plaques taking pictures with smartphones. This both puzzled and irritated me, since it made actually seeing anything (You know, having the experience of actually being there as opposed to taking pictures to put on Facebook) nearly impossible. Sure, everyone wants to take some pictures on vacation. But cameraphone close-ups of the plaques? Really? Two hundred of them? I don't get that at all. There are pictures of every single one on the Hall of Fame website. Or rather than crowding around Hank Aaron's plaque, for example, and making it impossible for anyone to see it or get near it, you could google image search "Hank Aaron plaque" and find dozens of pictures, some in high resolution, that are better than the crappy picture you take with your phone. I understand why people like taking pictures of themselves in famous places, but taking pictures of inanimate objects doesn't make a lot of sense. I see this constantly now at art museums too – do you think your phone is going to take a better picture of The Death of Marat than the hundreds available in books and online? Can't we just put the goddamn phones down and enjoy the experience of being there? Of actually seeing something rather than seeing a reproduction of it?

All that said, I did take this picture featuring my left hand:

When your plaque includes phrases like "excellent bunter" and "enthusiastic baserunner" you probably don't belong in the Hall of Fame. Being like the fifth-best player on your own team doesn't help either. Another one of the Veterans Committee's greatest hits.

I wouldn't describe myself as a lucky person. Don't misunderstand, I am extremely fortunate in the opportunities I have been given in life and things of that nature. But luck? Nope. I'm terrible at the random-events type of luck.

Never win anything in games of chance. Never have random encounters that lead to wacky adventures. Never shop on the day where everything happens to be 50% off. Never find $20 lying on the ground. So be it.

For more than a decade I have been trying to concoct a reason to travel to Cloquet, Minnesota. It's a town of 12,000 people halfway between Minneapolis and Duluth, not one of the more trafficked areas in this great land. Only a few of you will recognize the name for any reason other than living in the immediate area.
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Cloquet is the location of the R.W. Lindholm gas station, the only extant part of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City utopia (and, it goes almost without saying, his only gas station). I've driven unreasonable distances to see FLW structures in the past, but ten to twelve hours one-way to see a gas station seems a little excessive even for me.

Right now I'm in Erie, PA – Not because I lost a bet, which I assume is the most common reason someone goes to Erie, PA – on my way to Cooperstown to see White Sox legend Frank Thomas inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this weekend.

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On Friday I will drive right past Buffalo, NY. And by random luck, the Pierce-Arrow Museum (a defunct manufacturer of early 20th Century luxury cars) in Buffalo has opened a licensed (those of you who are fans know the Gestapo-like zeal of the FLW Foundation for preventing unauthorized adaptations of The Great Man's work) full-sized construction of Wright's service station design. It hasn't been on display for very long, and I found out about it last week completely by chance.

While the score remains lopsided, tally one for Ed in the battle against bad fortune.

Remember that post from a few months ago about how I don't know how to have fun? Well relax, everyone. I think you can see that I've got it all figured out.