First Responder

2009-04-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

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On Timing in Political Strategy

"Never allow a crisis to go to waste" said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to the reporters, as so said many an administration official in constructing a theme to frame their policy initiatives. These Democrats are choosing to spin their actions as emergency responses to crisis situations, and grand crises demand grand responses; they are firemen, doing whatever it takes to put out the fire.

This is the language used to convince the skeptical. And who would object to bold action, in these turbulent days? Who denies the house is burning?

But the administration is surely not alone in recognizing the unique openings in the current political landscape. What must the country's social activists be thinking right about now?

With unemployment high, retirement funds failing, whole sectors of industry lurching, wars ongoing, with so many urgent situations demanding people's attention, when has there been a better time to push hot-button "culture war" issues? When have the old labels and morality debates seemed as feckless? Beyond just a personal feeling, the numbers are beginning to support this idea.

Among its many polls, Gallup tracks the open-ended question "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?"

In the April 6th-9th 2009 tracking, of all the classic American social issues only the vaguely general "Ethics/Moral/Religious/Family Decline; Dishonesty" response registered much at all, with 4%. "Drugs" came in at 1%, while "Abortion", "Judicial System/Courts/Law", "Guns/Gun Control", and yes, "Gay Rights Issues" all came in at less than 0.5%.

(http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/Most-Important-Problem.aspx)

If I'm a proponent of gay marriage, or medical marijuana, or universally legal abortion, or the reinstatement of the assault rifle ban, or gays in the military, I'm looking at those numbers and thinking "Now's my time."

There is more political cover to pursue cultural issues right now than at any other moment in my lifetime. Opposition will always exist, but it's currently as distracted as it's ever likely to be. Who cares if gays in Vermont want to marry while I'm getting laid off in Louisiana?

As always, there are obstacles: the political will to start such culture-war fights will be extremely low. Any politician championing these causes risks being caricatured by conservative spin as "fiddling while Rome burns" by loosing concentration on economic priorities, or as finally displaying a long-secret liberal agenda.

Still, this country is in cultural shell-shock. There has been a severe undermining of faith in the infallibility of the elites, a heightened sense of camaraderie amongst the working class, and a swelling disorientation about our own conceptions of the social fabric.

If that doesn't describe a window of opportunity for changing attitudes and challenging prejudices, then I don't know what does.

2009-03-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

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On Conventional Wisdoms...

A few words on a political canard of recent vintage that has proved irritatingly resilient.

During the George W Bush years, it became something of a conventional wisdom to say that, at its core, This is a Conservative Nation. Republicans, it was pointed out, had enjoyed a "strangle hold" on the White House for forty years, interrupted only by two moderate southern governors, Carter and Clinton. Nationwide membership in the two major parties had been trending Republican, and more Americans were comfortable describing themselves with the label "conservative" rather than "liberal". In fact, "liberal" had become a dirty word, avoided even by Democrats.

After the Democrats enjoyed sweeping victories in the 2006 congressional elections, pundits cautioned us to remember that, still, This is a Conservative Nation, and Democrats needed to be careful of overreach.

That this carefully cultivated myth still endures even in some mainstream corners of the media demands a quick reality check.

First, that matter about the White House.

Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama. At first glance, that list does seem a bit Republican heavy. Upon some consideration, however, one realizes that Ford never won an election, and thus doesn't really count. And upon further consideration still, one realizes that the 2000 election, strictly in terms of measuring the relative political makeup of the country, counts as a win for the Democrats. After all, more Americans did vote for Al Gore than George W Bush.

So over the last 10 presidential elections, we then call 1972, '80, '84, '88, and '04 for red, and 1976, '92, '96, '00, and '08 for blue. By my count that's 5 to 5 - with 4 of the last 5 going Democrat. Not exactly a "strangle hold".

What about Congress, then?

This current congress is in place until 2011, so we'll use that date as our starting point. Over the 80 years prior, going back to 1931, the Senate has been majority Democrat for 55.5 years, to the Republicans' 22.5. And the House of Representatives? The House may be the more accurate indicator of our nationwide political makeup, offering as it does a more localized, fleshed-out detail of the political landscape, district by district. The House's numbers are even more dramatic, going to the Democrats for a staggering 64 of the past 80 years.

But 80 years, perhaps that's going back too far; after all, it is a bit unfair to Republicans to include the Great Depression, a time when capitalism itself hung in the balance. We'll limit our examination to rosier, easier times. Let's just consider the Republican's strongest period in a century, the last 25 years.

So, over the past quarter century - a period stretching from the height of the Reagan '80s, spanning two Presidents Bush, and including the Gingrich revolution in the House of Representatives - the Senate went majority Democrat 13.5 years to the Republican's 11.5, while the House split 13 years to 12 in favor of the Democrats.

For a Conservative Nation, we sure do vote Democrat a lot.

2008-07-29T16:40:00.001-07:00

the sky line

The Philip Burton Federal Building, San Francisco

San Francisco may not place in the highest rank of architecturally significant cities, but neither does it lack for built icons. This city's skyline profiles have graced more than their share of postcards. And yet one of our most communicative buildings, one of the most impactful in its bearing, is one not breezily identified with the city's image. Understandable, since it is, in itself, not much more than ordinary. What does make the Philip Burton Federal Building noteworthy is the illustrative example it offers of context in urban design, and of the pressures and influences that built structure can exude onto the surrounding environment.

The walk up to the front of the building will not grip the casual stroller. This building has obvious, undeniable design failings. It is not the most aesthetically engaging structure one is likely to find. It is simple and streamlined to a fault, a big, gleaming, steel and glass box built during an era of skyscraper chic when gleaming boxes, if not quite in the west coast ascendant, were in their prime. Even on these terms, though, its appeal has lost traction with the years. Set against the sleek and slender towers that now dot the city's skyline, it seems squat, big-boned, perhaps a touch frumpy.

Still, its composition on the whole is not entirely unsuccessful. The grays and blacks in the external framework blend with the reflected glare of the glass, capturing geometries of light and shading that articulate a sense of architectural order somehow more nuanced, more expressive than the typical office block. There is no pomp or even much personality to be found here, but there is a restrained stateliness of sorts. This is, after all, the seat of the US District Court for northern California, and the building's form and function are inescapably tied to signs of authority.

The plaza site spread across the front entrance and blending into Golden Gate Avenue is handled adequately. The perpetual challenge of designing public space for federal property is that of meeting the absolute necessities of safety and security while hopefully still maintaining some semblance of openness. How to design for safety without creating a fortress mentality; how to design for accessibility without opening security vulnerabilities? The slanting, concrete grass-capped knoll offers an acceptable solution that does not offend too much. This is not the most attractive or rich public square in the city, but neither is it the most attractive or rich site with which to work. But the plaza isn't what's interesting here.

Step back a bit and take a walk all the way around the block. Start on the south side, at UN Plaza where the BART station pokes its head up, and walk up the pedestrianized stretch of Fulton Street toward City Hall. The Federal Courthouse is visible to the north as you walk, full and weighty, sitting at the back of the cluster of public buildings set around San Francisco's city-beautiful civic center.

Here it sits comfortably, framing the central plaza, reinforcing and sealing off the axes directing flow toward City Hall, the focal point of the center. Its colors are darker, its materials contrast with those of its neighbors, yet its size, shape, and bearing reinforce the space it's set in. Its height completes a smooth, progressive step-up from the floor of the central plaza. Its design lines flow in parallel with surrounding architectural lines. It adds perhaps a more modern-era themed note to the neoclassical facades around it, stoically humming in the background like a Kubrick-ian monolith, while its mass anchors the entire set-piece. These buildings bow and nod to each other, as gentleman assembled in an austere settting.

Keep walking, past City Hall, around to the Courthouse's side, and head north, along Polk Street.

Now the stroller is presented with a singular object isolated within a clear blue field, wide and neutral. All the ceremony has drained off. Stripped of context, there isn't much of any impression left to take. Without its companion pieces, the building's sense of identity becomes loosed of its moorings, and drifts.

Keep going, past the Courthouse, north up to Eddy Street.

Again, the feeling changes. The first thing the stroller now feels is a sudden palpable sheerness. The rear wall is essentially identical to the front, but the context has been utterly upended. Gone is the sense of gradual gradation in height, of conference between structures; this building lords over its neighbors. From this vantage, the building is out of scale, a looming presence that takes on a quality of foreboding.

Now cross back along Eddy Street for a block, stroller, and turn up Larkin Street, heading north. Soon you'll find yourself moving deeper into those gray spaces between the Polk Gulch nightlife strip and the Tenderloin, home to the city's underbelly, a steamy mixture of drug abuse, homelessness, and the grittiest hipsters; a contemporary skid row at the vanguard of gentrification. In this setting, the symbolic freight of the courthouse is maximized, and inescapable. It becomes a territorial demarcation of civil society itself, a wall to keep the barbarians outside the kingdom.

Experienced on a human scale, from different points along the radius of a casual stroll, the courthouse reveals distinct and contradictory faces that change with the social landscape. Like people, buildings sometimes change their behavior with the company they're in.

2008-07-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

the sporting life

Bosox Barry?

Call me crazy, but is this not the very scenario imagined as the one possible path for Barry Bonds back into baseball?

An American League contender, preferably a big-market team with big-market money, loses a big power hitter to injury and is forced to seriously consider taking on all the many headaches for Bonds' still formidable talents. And so, right on cue, down goes David Ortiz and his big bat (and left handed bat, at that!), for at least a month and maybe for the rest of the season, and the Red Sox have to come up with a Plan B.

All in all, it's the perfect scenario: It's Boston, with no limits on spending and a win-at-all-costs mentality. And it's their DH who's injured, so the disruption would be minimal. Bonds could just slip right into Ortiz's slot without disturbing any other player's place on the field or in the lineup. Barry couldn't have written it up any better.

But what about steroids? Sure, Boston hated Bonds as much as the next city, but that was then and this is now. A lot has changed since last we've seen Bonds: namely, the Mitchell Report. The heat's come way off Bonds as the rest of the country has been forced to face that the Steroids Era was exactly that, an era, and not one man. Boston, especially, has been pressed into a broader perspective, what with Roger Clemens, one of the Red Sox franchise players of the past twenty five years, taking over Bonds' mantle of steroids Whipping Boy. How could they reject Bonds without calling huge chunks of their own history into question?

I attended a Giants - Red Sox game at Fenway in June 2007. The media were all over him for days leading up to the series, the fans let him have it every time he came to the plate...until he homered, and then the park filled with oohs and aahs, because that's what everybody had come to see. The great Barry Bonds, crushing one deep, and you sensed that there would have been disappointment if the game's Home Run King had gone his whole career without homering at majestic Fenway, perhaps baseball's most mythologized showcase theater. Boston knows baseball, they're not blind to its history. They would accept Bonds.

But will the Red Sox bite? Maybe not now, not while there's still hope of Ortiz returning, not while they're still hanging onto a playoff slot. But that playoff spot is looking tenuous, indeed; Boston woke up today 4 full games back of Tampa, just a single game ahead of the surging Twins for the wildcard, and with growing worries that Manny Ramirez's month long slump may be more serious than previously thought. If a month from now the Rays are still growing stronger rather than weaker, if Boston bats are anything less than booming, and if the devastating combination punch of Ortiz/Ramirez still looks as compromised as it does now, you can bet the Boston Barry Buzz will start to take on a life of its own.

2006-11-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

the sporting life

Baseball Notes

With the announcement of the postseason awards, we are pleased to report the 2006 baseball season officially over, and a pleasant ending it’s turned to be. We have, all of us, just narrowly avoided the reality of an MVP award for Derek Jeter, and so, this Thanksgiving time, as we all of us sit in reflection with our loved ones, lets all of us not fail to think of in gratitude whatever spirit or animal force that saved us from such a fate…

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A Word On Winning…

The Cardinals’ unexpected World Series win serves to underscore the vagaries of the postseason. As Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa put it, it’s not the best team that wins, it’s the team that plays the best. So St. Louis, perhaps the 6th “best” team of the 8 in the playoffs, was fortunate to be playing the best at the right time. Assigning too much blame or praise associated with postseason success or failure misses that point. Ripping the Yankees for not winning enough misses the point in exactly the same way ripping the A’s or the Braves does. Records over a whole season tell you how good a team is. Records over 7 games in October tell you how lucky.

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…Just to create a sense of how drastically the economic landscape in baseball has changed: the highest team payroll in 1991 was that of the small-market Oakland A’s…and the year before that it belonged to the Kansas City Royals…

…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but can we lay off A-Rod, please? Come on, a run of “soft” (huh?), somehow “un-clutch” hits, and the guy’s a bum? How many reigning MVP’s have gotten booed at home the next season? How many reigning MVP’s have batted 8th in a playoff game? None, never. Give the guy a friggin’ break. I mean, it’s not like he hasn’t produced for you. In three years with the Yankees, the guy’s hit 119 home runs, driven in 357, and won a league MVP. He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Have some patience, for chrissakes…

…and yeah, yeah, I know, New York has no patience, and loves it that way ! O, New York and her vaunted aspirations, her celebrated refusal to accept failure! O, how she prides herself on her soaring expectations of herself! Whatever, shut up. I’m so tired of hearing about the Yankees’ lack of championships since 2000, as if 6 years with only 6 division titles, three ALCS appearances, and two World Series represents some kind of drought. Winning 4 titles in 5 years, that was the anomaly. And considering the 15 years prior that without a sniff of the playoffs, even New Yorkers should be capable of some dim appreciativeness of their current success, which by no means must continue indefinitely, even with the deck perpetually stacked in their favor. After all, even for New York, it’s a fine line between steadfast and irrational.

…It’s time for me to belatedly tip my cap to Detroit Tigers future-Hall-of-Fame catcher Pudge Rodriguez. I ripped Pudge when he followed the money from the playoff-regular Texas Rangers to the atrocious Florida Marlins, and kept ripping him…right up until they won the World Series in 2003. I ripped him again when even more money led him to the even more atrocious Tigers…who then, just a couple years removed from some of the worst seasons any team’s put up in the last couple decades, stormed to this year’s World Series, and were unlucky to lose it. Two cynical free agent moves to two terrible teams, and two World Series. While wary of giving any one player too much credit for an entire team’s performance, you have to give Pudge his due for his not insignificant role in two remarkable turn-arounds. Steroid accusations notwithstanding, Pudge has carved himself out a comfortable place in baseball history…

In Memoriam: What a strange death for Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, plowing his private aircraft into a midtown Manhattan apartment tower, killing him and his flight instructor (um, how much was this guy charging you, Cory?), with many questions left unanswered. We remember him here in the Bay Area for his capable run as the A’s fourth starter for a time, and now, in light of this tragic circumstance, we may even be inclined to forgive him his disastrous playoff start against the Yankees in 2001. We will not forgive, however, his posthumous meddling in the league’s balance of power. Does it make me a cynic and perhaps a bit macabre if I point out that “mourners” in attendance at the California memorial service included Yankees Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, manager Joe Torre, general manager Brain Cashman, photo-op lap-dog Reggie Jackson…and A’s uber-free agent Barry Zito? Maybe it does. Even so, sounds like a pretty good recruiting party, doesn’t it? You can just see the 3 or 4 other GMs vying for Zito’s services sitting in front of their tvs (what, I don’t know, the Celebrity Funeral Network?) watching Torre and Giambi hugging the coveted southpaw starter, and screaming Hey, I would’ve signed Lidle if I knew he was gonna die!…

…wait, wait a minute here!…Celebrity Funeral Network….That’s a great idea! Go on, tell me you wouldn’t watch it!…

…Zito, by the way, is generally considered to be only interested in/affordable for the four teams in the two big markets, and the four possibilities have wildly differing consequences and appeal from an A’s fan’s perspective. Yankees or Angels? Totally Unacceptable. Dodgers or Mets? Fun and Intriguing! Picture Zito marching into Pac Bell with Dodger Blue on, with his NL-style old-school knee high socks roll, stuffing that swooping curveball of his down the Giant’s throats, a perfectly delicious East Bay scenario! Let’s get Zito into the NL as quickly as possible…

...As the ink lay drying on Frank Thomas’ contract with the Blue Jays, the wild speculation putting Barry Bonds on the A’s had already leaped into full swing. And for good reason; strictly as a pure baseball move, it makes a lot of sense. A’s GM Billy Beane called Thomas the “posterboy” for the A’s type of hitter, but Bonds does all the things valued in Thomas better than anyone. In short, he walks and he hits for power, like nobody else ever has. Stepping out ahead of the buzz, the A’s quickly got the word out that Bonds was not seriously under consideration, that the fans were solidly opposed, that all the baggage and disruption in hosting the Bonds Traveling Circus (not the least of which being the supreme test Barry “clubhouse cancer” Bonds would impose upon the A’s carefully crafted carefree clubhouse chemistry…say that five times quick…) was more than management wanted to take on. An unsurprising stance; what else could they say? But with the subtraction of Thomas’ heavy bat from an already light-hitting team that desperately needs to add, and not lose, significant offense, it’s hard to imagine Beane genuinely having no interest. If he can stay healthy for a full season (a huge “if”, but much more plausible in the American League as a Designated Hitter, with no fielding responsibilities), Bonds is likely capable of at least as much production as Thomas contributed last year, and quite probably more. How many of the available players out there can you say that of? Alfonso Soriano’s already signed, as is Aramis Ramirez, and now so is Moises Alou, a name that had been submitted as a possible Thomas replacement. If the A’s intend to add a bat through free agency this year, well, the pool is drying up fast. Bottom line: with Bonds, they’re as good as last year; without Bonds, their impoverished offense gets even worse. He may not be the only solution for the A’s, but if you’re going to pass on him, you better have a pretty convincing Plan B. Like it or not, the A’s need Bonds…

2006-11-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

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Midterm Elections Roundup

On the heels of the Democrats’ sweep back into power, the pr machines on both sides have immediately leaped into cycle after cycle of relentless spin, a task they were surely long prepared for, regardless of outcome. And so we’re all able to find our comfort-zone with the results, be it with Fox News, conservative columnists like Charles Krauthammer, or Karl Rove himself telling us there’s no larger meaning to glean; that uncontrollable (if foolishly exasperated) historical trends have merely masked, not derailed, America’s strident Conservative Turn; that we’re likely to see a broad return to power for the Republicans in 2008… or be it with The Dailey Show, liberal columnists like Paul Krugman, or Slate and The New Republic telling us that Rove’s politics of Party Base Extremism worked for a while but have now been thoroughly discredited; that the Republicans have completely alienated the political Center and now risk becoming a regional party, localized solely in the Deep South; that though it may not yet necessarily mark the emergence of a new political era, it certainly marks the end of one. And believe me, they all have plenty of numbers corroborating their version of the story. Is one right, or the other wrong?

One of the oldest term-paper tricks in the book is to cite sources presenting perspective X, then sources presenting competing perspective Y, and then declare shortcomings in both as you present your own more rational, dispassionate analysis concluding that “the reality is somewhere in-between”, something more like X/Y. Most academic texts will use some form of this in the literature review section for the simple reason that it’s always correct, or at least always defensible. So the self-styled “balanced” commentators are finding all sorts of variations of middle ground to stake out, picking parts of each side to agree with, and why not? The Center’s back in the ascendant; it’s cool to be moderate again.

Of course, there are no truisms in politics, nothing unequivocally correct. Still, I think it about right to suggest that as a country we’ll look back at these years as a unique period in our history, and frankly, one that carried us in rather predictable directions in the wake of September Eleventh. I remember my first thought upon taking the full measure of that day’s events was that an immediate counter-balancing wave of conservatism was inevitable, a common reaction to such national traumas, and that it could last a decade or more. It is, to a large degree, to the Republican’s discredit that they could not sustain the wave longer than they did. Karl Rove will undoubtedly be remembered a masterful wizard of electoral politics whose vision and instincts shredded a stack of conventional wisdoms, but his era created him as much as he created his era. To use the old phrase, if Karl Rove had not existed, he would have been invented. Given a social period of sudden insecurity, it should hardly be surprising that a practice of politics bent toward those insecurities should win a degree of purchase.

What should be equally unsurprising, then, is its passing. Even in its invincible, romping heyday, the proposition was never entirely convincing. The recent alliance between Western libertarians and Southern fundamentalists was always a marriage of convenience, held together with spit and string, its dissolution inevitable. This was never to be a “permanent majority” for the simple reason that it was a reflection of such singular times. Extremism is naturally unsustainable, only truly influential in extraordinary circumstance. Bush, hand-in-hand with Rove, was only made possible by his times. He was just plain lucky in 2000, with more Americans voting for Al Gore, and became President for no other reason than that Bill Clinton had opportunity to appoint two Supreme Court justices rather than three. Standing within the full artifice of the War On Terror, drums beating, he won in 2004, re-elected by the narrowest margin of any second-term President in US history. September Eleventh dramatically shaped the direction and force of Bush’s presidency. So why should it be surprising that as the period’s singular circumstance wanes, so should Bush’s influence?

I, myself, like the ballyhooed idea that the overreaching extremism of the collapsed September Eleventh Wave may now set the conditions for an emerging third party, the Centrist Party: economically responsible, environmentally realistic, traditional but pragmatic on social issues, which is all to say driven not at all by pre-set ideology, something all political corners are distancing themselves from. More contending parties would be healthy. Needless to say, that’s a far stretch from here.

The idea, though, that Rove has dug the Republicans into a deep well and has isolated the party in the Deep South overstates the tone of last Tuesday’s election. Rove’s wins are overstated, and so are his losses. Republicans will find power again, Democrats will lose power again, Republicans will win the middle states again, Democrats will elect presidents again, and on and on. Politics wear on the viewer much as sports do; there’s only so long you can watch the little ball go back and forth. So we’ve just had a change in the show we’re watching. Which is all I really wanted from these elections, because the last show had gotten almost unwatchable; terrible directing, terrible acting, with incoherent plotlines...

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…One has to wonder how Joe Lieberman’s feeling these days. After a humiliating defeat in his state’s primary election, thrown to the wolves by his home-state Connecticut Democrats as well as the party’s national planners, he ran as an independent and won a convincing victory. Now he returns to the Senate to work with all those colleagues who may or may not have had a hand in the palace coup attempt to unseat him. Lieberman promises to caucus with the Democrats, and most of his Senate party-mates probably had nothing to do with his trials. Still, when your razor-thin majority rests on the loyalty of someone you just stabbed in the back, it bears watching…

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…Legislation has direct effects on everyday life, but it waxes and wanes, one Congress frequently modifying or completely undoing what another has done. The Judiciary, however, casts a longer shadow. It’s extremely hard to reverse trends in the makeup of federal judges; in fact, there’s really only one way to do so: win elections, wait for old judges to retire, and appoint new judges. So there really is no undoing what past administrations have done, consequences all the more magnified at the exclusive top-rung, the US Supreme Court. When Bush replaced Rehnquist with Roberts it was merely a renewal (albeit a 40 year renewal) of a staunch conservative seat, and did not affect the Court’s balance. When Bush replaced O’Connor with Alito, it was a more significant realignment, trading the Court’s swing vote for a solid conservative. If Bush gets another shot, it may well be to replace John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest justice, and its most liberal.

Judges are cited every election as a vital reason to vote one way or the other, but it remains true that among the most important results for Democrats in retaking the Senate was the Supreme Court safety net that came with it. It’s the Senate, and not the House, that has authority to review Supreme Court nominations. Now, should there be another Bush nominee, it will necessarily be a compromise, which is to say, a moderate, with far less drastic repercussions for the fate of progressive law. With a Republican Senate, we may well have been looking at another Alito replacing Stevens, which would have obliterated the Court’s balance, and sent any number of would-be split-decision votes to clear conservative wins. Roe v Wade, among many other liberal lynchpin rulings, would almost certainly fall. All for 3,000 votes in Montana…

2006-10-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

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Run, Barack, Run

After a weekend featuring a David Brooks (moderate conservative) nytimes column under the above title, a full-hour appearance on Charlie Rose, and a soft proclamation on Meet The Press announcing his intention to, well, at least no longer deny his possible candidacy, the spectre of a 2008 presidential bid for first term Illinois Senator Barack Obama has suddenly become very real.

So far laying very low and far in the background, Obama's view of the landscape must have changed dramatically upon the unexpected and mysterious drop-out of former Virginia governor Mark Warner, widely viewed as the only viable Hillary-alternative in the party. All of the political space Warner had so meticulously marked out and wrested away from Clinton was suddenly thrown open, waiting to be occupied. Gore and Kerry (and Edwards?) notwithstanding, the path through the party primary suddenly became much clearer.

But is this country ready to elect a black president? Speaking entirely from the gut, I don't believe racism can any longer single-handedly sink a General Election campaign in the US. But the missed point is that it doesn't matter. Let's remember: Of Late, America doesn't elect presidents; Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida do. The South's going to vote Republican, whomever the respective major party nominees are. Independent swing voters in battleground states are the votes that matter, and I don't believe that group votes their prejudices.

But anyway, that's assuming we still must irresistibly face the same red/blue 51%/48% electoral map ad infinitum, a landscape picture that seems increasingly outdated everyday. Karl Rove's America is rapidly fading, and as I'm sure every two-bit political operative in Washington that gets within earshot is telling Obama, this is an historically singular electoral moment. Presidential races simply do not get this wide open. There is a wildly unpopular two-term president on the way out, creating broad opposition opportunity for any Democratic candidate; with the vice-president a non-factor, there is no name-brand incumbency to overcome; all other Democratic candidates are, to some degree, "old news". Mr. Obama, at 45 years old, with just two years in Washington and without foreign policy exposure, remains short on experience, his most glaring shortcoming and the grounds upon which his candidacy would surely be attacked. Despite all that, it's hard to imagine a more opportune array of political circumstance coming together than what's emerging right now.

There has been a veritable avalanche of press and momentum this week building toward a campaign, and to some degree the hype must always run ahead of the reality. This is all awfully quick for a man two years removed from the Illinois State Senate, maybe too quick. Perhaps the flames are indeed being fanned by Republicans confident they can easily beat an inexperienced Obama campaign with the hugely popular John McCain. Perhaps this is just positioning for a John Edwards type run for the Vice Presidency, on what would be an exciting Clinton/Obama ticket. Whatever the precise vector of these forces, their possible outcomes are fascinating to imagine.

Imagine going from George W Bush to Barack Obama. Imagine the instantaneous about-face in the international perception of the US. Imagine a mid-forties Kennedy-esque black man, daper and goodlooking, stepping off Airforce One and striding across the tarmacs of Europe as US president. Imagine the crowds of screaming fans that would everywhere greet him as a rock star. Imagine the spectacle of his first trip to Africa. Imagine a president that across the world creates an excited buzz of positive energy in his wake.

2006-10-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

the sporting life

Baseball Playoffs

Another Oakland ALDS Lead

So the A's are up 2-love in another ALDS, we've been here before, right? In any series, to win the first two games on the road is too much to hope for, an amazing gift, by definition more than enough. But even after the miracle of beating the searing Johan Santana at home in Game 1 (his first home loss all year), today's game 2 was more must-win for the A's than one might think.

Even after winning those first two in New York in 2001, it was still necessary to win Game 3. Because Game 4 had "A's Loss" written all over it before the series even began; Cory Lidle had himself a nice little season that year as a fourth starter, but facing a three-time defending championship lineup and going against the then still mysterious and powerful El Duque was obviously more than should have been handed to the cute little guy. The 9-2 blowout that ensued was glaringly predictable. And once a series has gone to a Game 5 in New York, it's hard to pick any but the home team.

And so this year; the spectre of Santana in Minneapolis in Game 5 looms over the entire series. This is a four game series for the A's, it's imperative they win it by then. Lose today, and you must win both in Oakland, and if any of the middle three games might favor the Twins, it's Friday's Game 3, and their veteran starter. Yes, Brad Radke has a broken shoulder and could melt down for an easy A's win, series over without a fuss. But if the former 20-win ace (in perhaps the final moments of his career) can pull it together, it's not hard to imagine him getting the best of Danny Haren. In which case, Game 4 suddenly becomes a life-or-death cage-match for the A's, riding on the health/stamina/gumption of young pseudo-ace Rich Harden.

Is he or isn't he? By all accounts boasting some of the best (cough) "stuff" in the league, we've been waiting for Harden to blossom into a dominating monster for a couple of seasons now, but this turned into yet another season he couldn't stay healthy for. Coulda-Woulda, Richie. So is he the team's future, or is he Mark Prior/Kerry Wood; super-talented, never healthy, never a factor? If Oakland loses on Friday, only an effective Harden can prevent yet another horrifying ALDS collapse, which is more tenuous a proposition than it really ought to be.

So after losing 9 straight games that could have put them into the ALCS, here come numbers 10-11-12, three more set points. And the longer it goes, the more problematic it gets.

2006-09-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

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My Keanu List

As I'm sure has been duly noted by any and all with active social calendars, the topic of Keanu Reeves has lately been burning hot the tips of the town's tongues... though Keanu never really does wander too far from any conversation on any given day, does he? This is the idea:

It's your own mini-festival; five screenings, run in order one after the other. Which five Keanu movies do you show?

With so many beautiful permutations possible, how can one go wrong? Or, how can one pick just five? One seizes up in a stupified paralysis even considering such an agonizing culling process! It's like trying to find a diamond in a diamond-stack! Any list produced can only be seen as a reflection of that particular moment's mood and emotional state, saying much more about you than it ever could about Keanu!

That said, here is one particular morning's humble submission:

1) Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Building up momentum, I prefer to get things started with an early accessory Keanu moment, the better to color our hindsight appreciation of the layered fullness of his career. Look at that babyface, so pristine, so naive, yet so ready, so willing. So, this: to showcase young Keanu; to savor the way his mere presence ineluctably affects even those films he appears in only briefly; to represent that most important of Keanu movie categories: Keanu Miscast, and awkwardly in a lavish period piece.

Keanu's signature moment: N/A

2) Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1991)

Timeless, seamless, without blemish, this, the movie that birthed before our mesmerized eyes the very idea of 'Keanu'. This is the Keanu the world fell in love with first: Keanu as Dude, perhaps inescapably to be judged as the quintessential Keanu. This is the unambiguously adorable Keanu, innocent and open to his core, hair flopping about, he may as well be a puppy. This Keanu can do no wrong, though he may need his nose rubbed in his innocent mistakes. There's no sex, no grit, no yearning, no "learning", only a radiating boyish charm, set at max; this is pure, uncut Keanu, to be consumed with great caution, and with your own limits well in hand.

Keanu's signature moment: "Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K"

3)The Matrix (1999)

If one seeks a truly representative list, Keanu as Action Hero must be somewhere included. Though 1994's Speed is essentially interchangeable in this slot, The Matrix gets the nod for its epochal ambition, setting its action amidst an unflinching postmodern existentialism, and giving us Keanu as Messiah with a completely straight face...alright, maybe with just a little smirk. Keanu saved the world before as Ted, but this Keanu does it as an omnipotent God, and looks good doing it. The directors famously forced him to read flamboyant French reality-philosopher Jean Baudrillard before being allowed to so much as see the script, and the ensuing creation of Keanu the Philosopher is reason alone to book this screening forever.

Keanu's signature moment: "I know Kung Fu."

4) Sweet November (2001)

The romance chick-flick has become a primary niche in Keanu's repertoire, Keanu as Object of Female Gaze, and none rise to greater heights than this gem. Nowhere else is Keanu paired with a wackiness quite like Charlize Theron's, whom we catch spastically dancing/kickboxing to music alone in her apartment because, hey, this is just how she is, by herself, everyday. Keanu, "learning" up a storm about himself, needs desperately to air out his high pressure ad-exec life, and so must embrace childish silliness and whim to rediscover personal meaning. So where and with whom would one go about doing that, the writers asked themselves? Why, on Potrero Hill, with a bunch of hippies and queers, of course! Must See TV!

Keanu's signature moment: "November's all I know."

5) A Scanner Darkly (2006)

People may rightly call me a hapless sucker for the "new stuff", whomever's it may be, but I firmly and unapologetically end my festival with Keanu's most recent offering. Director Richard Linklater's now signature wavy-line "rotoscoping" animation isn't for everybody, but the dream-state quality it lends to Keanu's already dreamy features gives us the gift of an immaculate Keanu, smooth and flowing, so similar to the way I picture him in my own dreams, everynight. Still, this is Keanu the Gritty, the down-in-it Keanu, adrift in one of life's sordid underbellies, which is a Keanu no retrospective is complete without. Hey; Keanu, Robert Downey, and Woody Harrelson sharing a house together, junkie roommates. Um, you need more?

Keanu's signature moment: watching Downey turn into a cockroach in front of him

2006-09-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

about town

Giants Wonderland

Natalie's father is part of a group of SF Giants season ticket holders down at (insert phone company here) Park. Some weeks ago, as newly renewed patrons, they received an invitation from the team to a special complimentary event to be held on an off-day when the team wasn't playing. Impossibly, fantastically, none of the group could make the date, and the tickets fell all the way down to Natalie and me.

Before we were more than a few steps into the park, the champagne girls were upon us. Not yet having given our tickets to anyone, I silently chuckled to myself Wow, looks like anybody could cruise in off the street and grab some free champagne! My amusement continued as we were handed shrimp skewers. It turned to incredulity as we turned into the passages in the underbelly of the stadium, then to astonishment as we found ourselves standing on the infield, the strains of the piano positioned on homeplate gently tickling our ears, without ever having been asked for tickets, ID, or anything at all! Next year, tickets or no, we're trying to crash this thing, we decided on the spot.

The event was unbelievable. We were given free reign over the entire field, and some farsighted people with gloves immediately began playing catch on the outfield grass, with everyone else watching them jeaously. People began exoduses to the walls, for photo-ops at Barry Bonds' position and the "Splash Hits" sign, with the amplified piano audilble everywhere. The dugouts were our luxury lounges, with open bars serving wine, beer and champagne, and baskets of peanuts set out along the padded bench. Novelty foods were floating around; tiny ballpark hotdogs and burgers, wrapped in tiny wrappers, were passing by on a constant stream of food trays.

Some celebrities were on hand, starting with current Giants pitchers Matt Cain and Brad Hennessey signing for the crowd. There was Giants television broadcaster Duane Kuiper milling around, and there was radio's "voice of the Giants" Jon Miller, personally my favorite broadcaster (as well as President Bush's) and known nationally for his ESPN broadcasts with Joe Morgan. Team mascot Lou Seal was hanging around, hamming it up. Willie McCovey was sitting and signing autographs in the Giants locker room, which was opened to us. As were the clubhouse batting cages.

The sun set and they kicked us out at 8:30pm. Indescribable.

2006-08-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

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Concert Review: Jeremy Enigk @ The Great American Music Hall

Wednesday 8/30/06

Even under ordinary circumstance, we would hardly need cajoling or exceptional motivation to make it out to see Jeremy Enigk, as eminent an elder alterna-statesmen from the grand old 90s as there is. His recordings with Sunny Day Real Estate, one of the 90's better bands, have matured well with age, sounding better in retrospect with each passing year. And his first solo album, the minstrel-fare Return of the Frog Queen (1996), was deservedly much beloved, if be that love from a rather particular, quiet, waifish little corner of rock fandom.

So when our friend and colleague Josh Meyers somehow developed a collaborative association with Enigk, coproducing his new album and acting as keyboard player on a whirlwind tour that included this San Francisco date (as well as Europe and Lollapalooza), it attracted for Josh a nice personal coterie of fans and admirers to the Great American. Robyn and Matt came, and Jared and Lauren came, and Derek and Lauren too, and Jon and Ali came, and I came, and gosh, some others I didn't know, they all came, etc. And, for their trouble, they got a fine show.

Enigk has one of those voices that's just impossible to believe is real, that's so textured you have to believe it's at least 25% studio buffing and shining, the kind of voice that's actually restrained by studio recording. Nothing is lost in his translation to a live venue, his voice following every quasi-falsetto twist and cranny with impressive clarity. This is the voice of a fully-credentialed rock star, and Enigk fits the part. Not in his on-stage banter, which is awkward in an almost cute way, but in his "eccentric visionary" persona in his lyrics, and certainly in his forceful stage presence.

The fragile songs from Return of the Frog Queen sounded surprisingly apt in a stage rock setting, strengthened rather than crushed by a full five piece band. And to their credit, they knew which songs to highlite; I hate it when bands seem clueless as to which are their own best songs. With the album's first two (and best two) tracks, Abegail Anne and the title track, played prominently together near the beginning of the set, the crowd was buzzing and open to the new material.

The new songs sound good in places, questionable in others. The game Enigk always must play is to keep his hyper-emotive singing style from becoming bloated and overblown. He nailed it on Frog Queen, largely due to the just-right humble quality infused in the songs, in the production, in the ethos of the project. This quality is a flighty hit-or-miss affair in his more recent band recordings (The Fire Theft, late Sunny Day Real Estate), but there is no reason to expect its absence in a solo project...and especially not with the guiding hand of our tasteful friend Josh. Still, it's impossible to predict exactly which direction Enigk will shoot in next.

And for Josh, he got his rock-star night in front of friends and family.

When it came time for Enigk to move to the piano at the side of the stage, Josh was briefly called upon to take up Enigk's guitar. And as the band's only back-up singer, Josh's duties in that regard had to continue wherever they could...so, with an "oh, look, here's a mike" body language, for one shining song Josh took up the center stage position, singing with his eyes closed, playing guitar, to the delight of his friends. During the mid-song "breakdown", the rhythm section dropped out and Josh was left suddenly alone in the mix, matching vocal lines with the great Enigk. And as the song finished, it gradually stripped down until all that was left was Josh's chords, with Enigk looking back from the piano bench, over his shoulder, smiling/laughing at/with Josh. Then he raised his arm and said "Ladies and Gentlemen, Josh Meyers".

Surely Enigk was aware this was a home-town Glorious Return show for our friend, with his parents rumored to be sitting upstairs in the balcony, surely he consciously wanted to give Josh his due on this night. Or perhaps he walks across stage and hugs Josh at the end of every performance, I don't know. In any event, by the end of the evening Josh had got his money's worth, to be sure.

And what a superb end to the evening it was. The encore finished off the show with two stark, halting moments, both just Enigk himself, unaccompanied. Singing over a gently picked acoustic guitar, Enigk gave to the excited crowd the surely anticipated Explain, Frog Queen's most lilting lullaby, a showcase for all of his best songwriting qualities. Then, as show-stopper, a beautiful and riveting piano rendition of the old Sunny Day Real Estate tune, How it Feels to be Something On. With his foot on the pedal nearly the whole song, the chords sustained ad infinitum, adding a wholly successful haunting undertone. It was all so successful, in fact, that one marvelled at how seamless an adaptation it was from the crashing guitars and cymbal swells of the original. Or maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising; at this point, the music didn't matter. Enigk's vocals carried both the last two songs entirely and without difficulty, stepping on the instrumentation as mere platform. Both brought the house down.

A fine show from an old favorite, with fabulous musical moments, and with a special personal flavor mixed in. What more? We await Josh's (by god!) forthcoming album with deep interest.

post-script
Afterward, Enigk aknowledged the crowd, saying he was "blown away" by the response, with an hilarious implied sentiment of "Really? You all actually love Return of the Frog Queen that much? Really?". That's what I love most about seeing these mid-sized venue shows in San Francisco. There are enough kids here with quirky, esoteric taste in creative media content to fill (or at least swell) almost any show with genuine, dedicated fans. Many a band I've seen blow through town takes special pause to mention and praise this fact, showering us with much flattery. And then they berate us for not dancing.

2006-08-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

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A Farewell to Pluto

Last Friday the International Astronomical Union, assembled in Prague, finally settled an ongoing dispute that had dragged on entirely too long. Pluto, always the odd duck in the solar system, was officially shown the scientific door and demoted to the somewhat embarrassing status of "dwarf planet". We once again live in a solar system with 8 planets, the first time since 1930. And what can I say, I don't feel a whit different.

Surprisingly, planets can come and go. In 1801 the asteroid Ceres was spotted between Jupiter and Mars and was considered a full fledged planet until the discovery of enough similar objects pushed it down to a lesser rank. And who complained back then, eh? Ceres obviously could never have enjoyed as dedicated a mob of devotees as fair Pluto does today!

What shrieking! What wailing! Quelle Horreur! I've never understood all the hubbub. It's a small, frozen rock, way out in the nether regions of the firmament, spinning around out there with all the other small, frozen rocks being discovered every day; even"dwarf planet" may be a bit flattering. Let's face it: Pluto's not a "planet" (whatever the hell that means), it never was, it obviously belongs to a different set of astronomical objects. What's the big deal? How people formed these emotional bonds, in some sort of "galactic underdog" context, is beyond me. Can we just move on?

So, to Pluto, I bid a warm adieu and a hearty thanks for 75 rock-solid years. Now get out.

2006-08-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

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Album Review: Sufjan Stevens The Avalanche

In any creative enterprise, it's a delicate balance between a personally themed style and rote repetition. Too much variance and you risk losing focus and identity; not enough and you risk monotony. The answers you provide to your creative problems must each contribute to a larger pattern without losing their overall coherence. Sufjan Stevens has arrived at all his answers, he's used them to posit a style, and with a headlong determination he's duly spun through the same creative solutions to each compositional dilemma he's posed himself with each successive recording.

2003's Michigan set out a legible agenda with its particular combination of acoustic intrumentation, art-math rhythmic elements, and indie-folk aesthetic, an agenda 2005's Illinois took and expanded upon considerably. Indeed, with the hindsight of Illinois, it becomes impossible not to hear Michigan as a collection of half-hatched ideas not quite fleshed out to completion. Almost spacious sounding by comparison, one can easily imagine an extra supporting piano part here...or an entire bank of horns there. The mid/up tempo tracks feel stuck in a lower gear. Where Illinois zips dizzyingly back and forth with ferocious clarity, Michigan mulls over each step too carefully. These albums, though, unmistakably share the same DNA, separated by a matter of degree, not of kind.

In fact, so much surface similarity exists between the opening of Michigan and Illinois that it required several listenings before they became distinct in my memory. Both albums begin with quiet piano accompanied only by vocals and minor supporting parts, followed by an up-tempo track jumpstarted by a signature piano riff in what can only be referred to as "the sufjan rhythm". They are full of the same instrumentation, the same structural devices, the same moods.

Yet these albums are anything but bogged down in repetition. Instead, layer after layer of instrument and vocal voicings offer wide and simultaneous variations; sameness is diffused through the brute force of numbers. If too often you roll your eyes at yet another trumpet line as feel change, that sufjan fatigue is quickly forgotten as the song adds new lines to distract. Here there's always another line, just around the corner.

What all those layers add up to is an army of possible subjects to focus on, and to remember. The albums with staying power, that do enough to inspire repeated listenings, they all enjoy that initial blissful period where each listening still brings surprise, before you've memorized each song in order; every good album has a "honeymoon". Sufjan Steven's songs are elaborate, byzantine, rife with digressions and curious addendums that may hold to an established form a bit too often, but that nontheless maintain their impact over many listenings. All Sufjan Stevens' albums have long honeymoons.

The Avalanche is no exception to any of this. Flutes are everywhere fluttering, Banjos are everywhere plucking, and late trumpet lines in verse-chorus-verse songs eagerly substitute for genuine part changes. Even though this is an "in-between" collection of B-sides and outtakes, there are superior tracks. Adlai Stevenson is Stevens at his Ren-Fair best, active and concise, with melodies approaching hook status. No Man's Land hops meticuously to and fro across its logically derived lines. And the three different versions of Illinois' dance hit Chicago offer surprisingly satisfying (even preferable) alternatives. As a compilation and not a proper album, there are naturally different standards to apply. Taken at face value, The Avalanche delivers every bit as much as asked.

Still, Stevens now approaches a tipping point. Influential bands arc through three phases: first, they reveal a style; second, they establish that style; third, they maximize that style and are then faced with the crisis of artistic obsolescence. At that point some risk reinventing themselves, never easy, more often yielding dissapointment (Smashing Pumpkins' Adore) than relative sucess (U2's Achtung Baby). Some choose an Al Gore-esque "journey through the desert" retreat followed by sporadic returns (Neil Young). Some just shrug their shoulders and never look back (The Rolling Stones).

With Illinois and The Avalanche, Stevens has sailed through and beyond the "establishment" period and now has one further release to stretch and hone his frantic flutes and math-folk rhythms to their breaking point. Then, as elegant a pop-musical proof as he has offered, his answers may finally have begun to lose their logic.

2006-08-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

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Coffee Considerations

There's no such thing as too much or too fast. Keeping safely short of obviously self-destructive behavior, moderation is relative. There are no empirical limits, only personal choices and preferences weighted against the accepted set of society's choices and preferences. What are sense and sensibility but vapid reflections of a given time and place? They call sense "common" for a reason. Propriety is colloquial, even jingoist. Excess is a state of mind.

And so with coffee. I've now grown tired of too often, from too many different people, being met with surprise at the speed with which I finish my cup. It's ludicrous; people, it's coffee. Here are four reasons coffee must be consumed quickly:

1) It's hot, mmmkay? You drink it hot. And like other hot substances, with the passage of time it will inescapably become less and less so. Some people like cold, stale coffee. I'm not one of them.

2) It's, what, 12 ounces of liquid? How long does it take to drink a can of soda?

3) This isn't 1885, we aren't in Vienna. We're not taking a leisurely drink and strudel while absently picking through Der Spiegel, glowering through an anguished, put-upon look. Coffee is fast food. Places like Starbucks and Peets are built around the premise of speed. This isn't a food for savoring; coffee is about taking care of business and getting it done.

4) And anyway, I don't drink coffee, almost never do. I get mochas or cappuccinos, which are a little bit of foam and a little bit of espresso added to a cup of hot milk. How long does, or should, it take to drink a glass of milk?

Likewise, how many is too many, who's to say? It's fair to say I drink at least one a day. Most days it's two, and the days with three are becoming more common. But what of it, what if I had six coffees today, eh? What are you going to do about it? What would the objection be based on?

Can it be objected to on financial grounds, as an ostentatious and indulgent luxury too far, a waste of money? But that makes it okay for the rich, then?

What, over-caffeination as a medical issue? So that makes it okay for the fit? As a moral issue? Do we then excuse the pious?

Leave me to guzzle my eighteen daily coffees in peace, I will hear no more of these things.

2006-07-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

about town

San Francisco Holiday

City Tour 7/22/06

My cousin Jesse strode into town last month, an entrance timed to coincide with my Flag Day birthday dinner, here for a family visit on her meandering way on down to Los Angeles...which for some farfetched reason she's decided is a desirable destination. With the arrival of out-of-state relatives, naturally, comes the attending set of hosting/entertaining obligations. Chief among them, in these parts, being the quintessential San Francisco Presentation, and the execution of this duty and privilege was charged to me. Not that one ever really needs exceptional excuse or occasion to spend a day across the bridge in the World's Most Beautiful City, of course (fuck off, Paris; look around, see all that? They're called views, you wouldn't understand).

Like any thoughtful native-born, I have my own specific ideas about the strengths and highlights of my home town, and what order in which to connect them. And so, on a fateful Saturday, my cousin Jesse, my mother Sharon, my girlfriend Natalie, & myself set out on a day's worth of Grand Touring. Here then, Gentle Reader, is my favored route, my primary-school beginner's introduction to the city of San Francisco!

Thrill! to our unexpected twists and daring escapades!
Laugh! at our heartwarming shenanigans!
Cry! as we're overcharged for everything!

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The Presidio & Fort Point

I like to begin my tours of the city at Fort Point, an old military outpost defending the mouth of the bay, directly underneath Golden Gate Bridge at the city's northern most point. If you get there early enough, before the morning fog has burned off, you're treated to the incomparable sight of the bridge dramatically emerging out of the mists. But even if you're arriving at late morning, as we were, there's no better place to get those requisite can't-leave-town-without images of you at San Francisco's defining icon. Ollie, our old German friend who crashed on our couch at the Grant Street Berkeley house for a few months while awaiting deportation, told us seeing the bridge was on a par with the Eiffel Tower. To much of the world, the Golden Gate is San Francisco.

Golden Gate Bridge emerges out of the top of a beautiful piece of parkland known as The Presidio, a long- time military base occupying a huge chunk of San Francisco's most desirable real estate. With the military in a "downsizing" mode, a monumental fight is underway over control of its property development direction. The first blow for commerce over commons was struck by local Golden Boy director George Lucas, who successfully campaigned to have the defunct Letterman Hospital torn down and the Lucas Campus put in its place. Undoubtedly a great business vision, the scuplted manicured campus locates all wings of his media empire together, putting LucasFilm under the same roof with the people making the games derived from their movies and with the ILM special effects guys, creating something of a film/effects geek mecca on heavenly parkland.

Having been granted a pristine slice of the Public Way upon which to create his own little paradise, perhaps George felt a feeling he had never known before, perhaps he felt an unpayable debt weighing on his soul. Because in a profound gesture of benevolance and gratitude toward the masses, Lucas has given the world the sublime, the fantastic, the impossible, the outright sacred Yoda Fountain. Reader, Behold!

Instantly enshrined as an irrefutable more-than-mandatory stop on any tour, San Francisco has been given a trans-dimensional romantic rendez-vous to rival any. Be sure to throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, because if you do, and the locals swear it's true, Yoda will grant you balance, harmony, and a peaceful life. And the ability to move things with your mind.

Did you know Following the foundation of the United Nations in San Francisco, 1946, many Asian nations wanted it located on the Pacific, meaning San Francisco...meaning The Presidio. European interests ultimately won out, of course, and the UN was placed in an unnamed Atlantic city. Still, our fair military park came close to being the seat of international congress.

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Golden Gate Park

After driving west along the northern edge of the city to its northwestern tip, turn south at The Cliff House to get an extended view of Ocean Beach and the Pacific Ocean. Come on a weekend night and you'll see the beach lit up for miles with, on a good night, better than twenty bon fires. Driving down from the cliffs, you'll come naturally to the western end of Golden Gate Park. One of the great urban parks anywhere, it commands a long rectangle of 1017 acres, 174 more than New York's Central Park. Beginning with its initial conception in the 1860s, it took long decades to stabilize what was mostly "unpromising sand and shore dunes known as the Outside Lands." Now the park is the vibrant centerpiece of the city's extra-curricular activities, hosting myriad events and institutions beyond the usual park fare.

Coming up quickly on the west side, an entertaining first stop to make is at the Bison Paddock. Always surprising and ever the crowd-pleaser, suddenly presenting your guests with live "tatonka" is a fun way in which to draw together the country's rich natural history and its proud tradition of genocides.

Did you know Bison are quite filthy looking animals, with unkempt patches along their shoulders and manes. Fairly repulsive, really.

There are many attractive activities in the park, and one could easily burn an entire weekend pursuing them all; the spectacular newly restored DeYoung Museum, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Acadamy of Sciences, Flasher's Garden, etc. Given the time frame we were working within, as well as Natalie's consuming floral preoccupation as a professional arranger, we opted for a visit to The Conservatory of Flowers.

Purportedly the oldest public conservatory in the Western hemisphere, it claims to feature some of the best floral and horticultural exhibits in the world. A spectacular living museum of rare and beautiful tropical plants amid the greenery of the park, strolling through the Victorian-era greenhouse offers a visual display of palms, orchids, tropical flowers and carnivorous plants.

Fun Game grab your computer with both hands and spin the monitor, clockwise. Begin with your eyes firm on the center of the flower, then, as you violently accelerate spinning your computer, slowly let them slide out to the edge of the flower's petals. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with what happens!

You are looking at a trellis there are a number of assorted vines and flowering plants growing in and around the trellis. At the base of the left of the entrance is a turtle shaped stump, named accordingly. Live butterflies are loose in the next room. Butterflies aren't as obvious as you imagine. They actually mostly keep to the plants and flowers. There never really was a "butterfly cloud" like one might expect. I thought I'd be fighting to breath, fighting to keep them out of my mouth and throat. It's not like that.

As we approached the conservatory before we entered, a suddenly surging sound of jazz became audible. After realizing that it must be live, we found a full six-piece band of drums, electric guitar and bass, and three horns. They were nestled into a sheltered spot on a flight of stairs at the end of pedestrian tunnel running under the street, connecting the conservatory's lawn displays to the park's central pathways.
Their placement was perfect; as you walked into the tunnel the sound took on immense depth, the bass reverberating through your body. They were no amateurs, either. They were sharp throughout the three or so songs we heard, obviously a professional gigging band.

An enjoyable surprise, even if San Francisco is generally pretty generous with its randomly dispersed public musicians. Still, we gave them a dollar. Hey; you show up with six-pieces, two of them plugged-in, and you go off, that'll typically get some of my money. Now you know.

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North Beach/Chinatown/Union Square

The centerpiece of the day's tour would be a pleasure stroll through three of the city's most lively and high-profile districts, demonstrating graphically the most compelling characteristics of the city: vibrant, highly differentiated neighborhoods tightly compacted against each other. Park your car near Columbus @ Lombard, and you'll set up the cherry-on-top cable car ride back, which no tour can truly be complete without.

After meandering by Washington Square Park, the heart of North Beach (and listed as a "Great Public Space" by the Project for Public Spaces), we took the opportunity to have an Italian lunch before fixing on Grant Street. Straight and true, Grant Street will take you from the pulsing center of North Beach on a straight tack through the entirety of Chinatown until you reach the Grant Street Gate. Serving as something of a formal neighborhood entrance, the dramatic if overblown gate marks the border between Chinatown and the glitzy high-end shopping district surrounding Union Square.

Two years before the Gold Rush, in 1847, Jasper O'Farrell created a design for San Francisco, with Union Square as a public plaza. By the 1880s, it was a fashionable residential district, and in 1903, the towering monument was added, topped by the bronze goddess Victory, modeled after Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, known for her enormous influence in the San Francisco art community. Its name comes from a history no less obvious than local support of The Union during the US Civil War. These days, the rallies for Lincoln are few and far between, and what's left has become an upscale shopping extravaganza, second on the west coast only to Beverly Hills.

After a refreshing Italian soda break in the Square among the trophy wives and other sundry conspicuous consumers succumb'd to Niketown, Nordstrom, and Saks, you're just a couple blocks away from the Cable Car Turnaround at Powell and Market.

The lines for the cable cars at the Turnaround are imposing, weaving up and around the street. But they move quickly, the cars come frequently, and the entertainments at hand are formidable what with the homeless, the street performers doing "the robot" or human beat-box, and the menagerie of foreign visitors sharing your line. And of course there are the cars themselves.

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Cable Car Ron
So affecting, so personally meaningful. O, Wanton Memory! See that steely emotion, there, right there on the face, kind of running up my sideburn, over up off my nose? That's the Real Deal, folks. That's the kind of emotion that only comes from deep down, from a deep, deep place, straight outta childhood. I wish there were someone among you, my "friends", anyone, whom I could turn to, but whom among you can hope to grasp the profound meaning of a life so intertwined with the hills and cars, who else can imagine the sweet taste of commuting to elementary school by cable? Yes, it's in moments just like this one that I wish there were someone, anyone, who could appreciate a cable car ride on nearly the vast intellectual, emotional, even chemical levels I can, but there just isn't...maybe someday I'll meet that person...if they exist...which they don't.

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Two of the three running cable car lines start from Powell, and while both end up at Fisherman's Wharf, the Powell-Hyde line boasts the better views of the two as it skates its way up Russian Hill. The other great advantage of the Powell-Hyde route, for our purposes, is that it stops at the top of the famous curvy stretch of Lombard Street, so yielding the soo-overdone-it's-perfect Alcatraz shot. There goes the car we rode, over the hill, into Alcatraz...shaaaaZAMMM!

Once you're through with the tears of joy and congratulatory handshakes, it's time to turn to the right and descend San Francisco's signature hill street. As well as its celebrated northern perspective toward Alcatraz and the bay, Lombard offers compelling eastern views of Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower. The hills, though steep, aren't nearly as far apart as they seem, and a great day can be had enjoying North Beach while alternately climbing Russian and Telegraph Hills. The latter hill, in addition to Coit Tower, offers up the Filbert Street Stairs, probably the city's most charming staircase, home to the sublimely ludicrous Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

Originally just a few birds set loose by their owners in the 1970s (though unsubstantiated sightings go back to the 50s and 30s, all the way to 1911), over the years a healthy flock of bright green and red parrots has managed to establish itself. Natalie and I, one day while walking up to Coit Tower, suddenly heard a screeching unidentifiable animal sound. Then ten to fifteen skwaking parrots soared in overhead, landing in the trees and bushes around us. The birds have nesting and roosting spots in various parts of the city, but are most associated with Telegraph Hill. It's worth a walk up the hill just on the fleeting hope they'll be around that day, as it's one of the more uniquely San Francsico side-trips one can make.

Did you know
Also on Lombard, on the south side of the street one block below the curvy section, sits The Real World house from the MTV show's third season. If you close your eyes and are very quiet, and the locals swear it's true, you can still hear Puck's sweet voice on the wind.

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Alamo Square

As Full House rose to take its place among the pantheon of pathbreaking avant-garde television series set in San Francisco, and we're talking about classics such as Dharma & Greg, Sliders, Charmed, and That's so Raven to name just a few, its opening credits cemented in the mind of Touring America the image of Alamo Square, the off-Haight park with the downtown view framed by a row of beautiful Victorians known as The Painted Ladies. On the way from North Beach to Twin Peaks, it's a natural stop. Make no mistake: this is a dog park. Be prepared; it's frisky. On the left side of the lawn you see me and Natalie; I'm leaning on my elbows. Further off to the left you can just make out the white of the towel, upon which the soft-erotic neo-egyptian half-clothed photo shoot was taking place.

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Twin Peaks Digestive

For a little something called contemplative perspective, what more fitting end to the day than a drive up to Twin Peaks, the highest of San Francisco's hills, located squarely in the city's middle. Coming to the absurdly named Christmas Tree Point, there are soaring, unobstructed views of practically the entire city...or the part that matters, anyway. If you put your ear to the air, as the locals swear is true, you can still hear Huey Lewis' murdered voice on the wind...

2006-07-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

comment

re: An Urgent "Star Wars" Political Problem

to: Office of Sen. Joseph Lieberman

cc: Office of Sen. Dianne Fienstein; Office of Sen. Barbara Boxer; Democratic National Committee, Nationwide Policy Division; Business Administration Office, LucasFilm Ltd.; Association of Image Consultants International; First Trans-Dimensional Church of Yoda (Methodist)

Coalition For Star Wars Values
The Salacious B. Crumb Memorial Center
2819 London Road
Oakland CA 94602

To the Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman,

The Coalition For Star Wars Values is an interstellar-faith based group centered in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to the expression and promulgation of community values as represented through the use of The Force. Our organization has long appreciated Senator Lieberman’s principled leadership on issues of particular importance to the Star Wars Fan Community, such as Substance Abuse, Mental Health (including the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act), and of course Teen Pregnancy; we consider his long-term national career an important asset to American Jedi everywhere. As such, our analysts periodically monitor a continuing Star Wars-related problem we’re sure your office is aware of that has potentially far-reaching national ramifications for the Senator: his unsettling likeness to the Emperor Palpatine.

Our regional polling across the 6th , 8th, and 9th California Congressional Districts shows the Senator’s numbers at a three-year low and continuing to trend downward since the May 19th 2005 release of ‘Revenge of the Sith’. We show the Senator’s favorable/unfavorable rating at 41%, with positive “shares our values” responses dropping from 52% to 40% over the 12 month release period. When asked if he “has the moral characteristics to be President”, support for the Senator opens strong at 57%; however, that number drops to an alarming 38% when grouped with Palpatine-associative questions such as “Does Senator Lieberman’s Sith appearance affect your opinion of him?” and “Would you vote for a Sith Lord for President?”. We also show the Senator underperforming across the board when matched head-to-head against Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grand Moff Tarkin, or ‘any Wookie’. Though we lack the resources to fund a broader polling action, we fear these numbers may be indicative of a national trend and urge the Senator to conduct his own research.

The Coalition For Star Wars Values has recognized the Senator in our ‘Friends of The Force’ Ring of Honor since 1997 and intend to name him to our first Contributions List, to be drawn up as soon as a majority of our contributing membership have found employment. In the meantime, in lieu of financial assistance, our organization would like to offer strategic guidance on the Senator’s image management in what can be a sensitive demographic. Though we recognize that elective plastic surgery may be perceived as drastic or overreactive, we strongly urge the Senator to sever all ties, personal and financial, with any and all corporations or other organizations which may have at any time contributed financial or material support to ‘the Dark Side’, and ask that he publically denounce the Sith on the floor of the US Senate in the strongest possible terms.

We’re confident that with these simple gestures, Senator Lieberman will be able to reassure his national Star Wars base and reverse these troubling polling trends. We continue to applaud the Senator’s support of issues important to the Jedi community and to all Americans, and look forward to hearing from the Senator in the near future. May Yoda Bless the United States of America.

Bearing the Love and Concern of all Jedi,
Lord Master Tai-Jan Marzipan

(for informal communications please use my Padawan name)
Ron R Rossi

2006-07-15T12:05:00.000-07:00

on the road

Redding, California

I drove to Redding on Friday. It was hot, much hotter than the central Bay Area. The air-conditioning I had was good, too good, and I'd get shivering cold after awhile and have to turn it off. After a few minutes without it, the oppressive heat from outside would slowly collapse in. This would lead to five minutes of open window, before back to AC. This routine was how I structured my day. This is one way of imagining Redding:

This is more the reality:

This is why I'm an asshole:

This is the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay. It crosses the Sacramento River. It is, by a wide margin, the most interesting thing about Redding. So, given the mercifully rare circumstance of being nearby, did I go take a look at California's preeminent exemplar of structural engineering north of San Francisco? No. No, I didn't. I drove three hours, took a twenty five minute appointment, and drove back.

An abruptly sophisticated piece of urban architecture, the bridge was designed by international hot shot Santiago Calatrava. Putting an original Calatrava in Redding is like putting a Matisse in your garage. (No offense, Redding. But hey, come on; don't pretend you don't know what's up.) Because there probably isn't another bridge designer in the world with his pedigree and renown. When he goes on Charlie Rose, he gets the whole hour.

This is how you will know Calatrava:

This is his design for the World Trade Center redesign Transit Hub. Years from now, when you take the NYC subway from WTC plaza, it will be from this station.

This is what I listened to, in order:

the cars greatest hits
sufjan stevens the avalanche
U2 the unforgettable fire
charlie parker yardbird suite disc 1
radiohead amnesiac
the smiths strangeways, here we come
django reinhardt djangology 49
the verve urban hymns

As voted on by the fans, here's the lineup for the All-Star Road Mix:

U2 a sort of homecoming
sufjan stevens adlai stevenson
charlie parker chasin' the bird
the cars let's go
the smiths stop me if you think you've heard this one before
NPR 5pm evening news
django reinhardt djangology
sufjan stevens no man's land
the cars since you're gone
radiohead life in a glass house

No, nothing from Verve, what a terrible album that is! Was it worth it, Richard Ashcroft, deconstructing your seminal band's genuis guitar sound and building it back up into a tedious singer/songwriter format that highlights yourself more? Yes, "bittersweet", indeed.

2006-07-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

content provision

Film Roundup: Upcoming Movies

Previews are the best part of going to the movies. Any good theater experience will start with at least three; two's disappointing, four's thrilling. I get antsy about an hour before showtime, start worrying about traffic and parking. Because I hate getting to the theater late. Some people treat the trailers as a grace period made for buying popcorn, going to the restroom, or plain lollygagging. Me, I'd rather miss the finish than the start. To hell with the credits! And plot resolutions are sooo dreary, it's the rare movie that deserves my efforts to suffer through to the finale kiss. Ah, but trailers, on the other hand, the most genuinely unpredictable moment of the evening, packed with anticipation! What titilating new project will reveal itself tonight! Followed inescapably by that moment or two it takes to recall what silly flic you're actually there to see, and there's always a little disappointment in the remembering, innit? Most movies fall short of what they might be. Previews are pure imagination.

So in keeping with the spirit of pleasure in forecast, a particular batch of looming releases are right begging to be pre-game gossiped, prodded, bandied about. My four favorite active directors are all at once again working on crazy ideas that have the potential to turn out horribly, or worse, bland and mediocre, but will in any event provide broad spectacle in the attempt.

Reader, behold!:

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Sofia Coppola / Marie Antoinette

Asked to rise a second time in judgment of their most conspicuous of queens, the French have rendered much the same verdict. Derided by Screen International as "More Paris Hilton than Paris" and booed in the festival theater, Cannes apparently didn't "get" Coppola's teen-queen post-punk interpretation of the life and circumstance of that greatest of Imelda Marcos' idols.

The French, however, are not infallible. The abrasive Bjork vehicle Dancer in the Dark was famoulsy hissed and booed at its screening before promptly winning the Palm D'Or. Nevertheless, Marie will come to the states needing to convince it's more than just insubstantial bauble. Bring it On's Kirsten Dunst, just maybe, may not be ideally suited to this task. Still, inspiring wackiness surely to ensue.

Because I've yet to be disappointed by this director. If I was born a Coppola, I'm not sure filmmaking would be my pursuit of choice, but Sofia immediately set out for herself a distinct agenda and a lush, languid style. Lost in Translation (2003) may meander aimlessly at times, but always in service of the atmosphere it aspires to. And a featured soundtrack cut from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless? What more can one ask! Let me eat cake.

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Spike Jonze / Where the Wild Things Are

Are you kidding, can this be real? Spike Jonze, the freak who brought us Being John Malkovich and Adaptation after beginning public life with a string of legendary MTV videos like The Beastie Boys' Sabotage and Bjork's It's Oh So Quiet, is to direct a live action version of cherished children's storybook Where the Wild Things Are? With his own script co-writen with Bay Area lit uber-darling David Eggers? Heartbreaking & Staggering, indeed!

post script oh sorry, is that not enough? After these childish things are put away, Jonze is scheduled for another collaboration with Charlie Kaufman, the irrefutably insane author of Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's supposedly vaguely "scary". But not a horror movie. uh huh.

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Wes Anderson / The Fantastic Mr. Fox

1996's Bottle Rocket was one of those middling little works that attracts that wearisome sort of insider buzz, the kind of movie that's constantly coming and going. Wearisome, because it's only the fortunate few that, rather than becoming someone's modest career pinnacle, turn out to be the genuine inchoate beginnings of an accomplished creative arc. And it's fewer still followed-up by something the quality of Rushmore.

Such was Rushmore's seismic impact that it quickly had all Hollywood beating a path to Mr. Anderson, leaving him to hand-pick star-studded casts for later movies The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic.

It was in that last movie that Anderson began tinkering with stop-motion animation to add a sort of bizarre whimsy, recruiting the animators who created Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for help imagining Bill Murray's "white whale", the jaguar shark, along with numerous other small sea creatures, including a moment's peek at Sanchez the Seahorse. Graduating now to a full-length animation project, this same team will bring to the screen The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, the author best known for James and the Giant Peach.

Anderson co-writes the script with Noah Baumbach, his Life Aquatic bedfellow and writer/director of last year's the Squid and the Whale. The story looks at the life of a fox who finds himself and his family targeted for death by the three idiotic, plug-ugly farmers who tire of sharing their chickens with the critter.

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Jean-Pierre Jeunet / Life of Pi

I hold a special place in my film-hardened heart for monsieur Jeunet. Five trips to the theater were not enough to sate my fascination with 1995's mesmerizing The City of Lost Children, for which I will forever extend him the benefit of any doubt. Even his brief and misguided foray into Hollywood with (shudder) Alien Ressurection, his "reward" for his successes, did not diminish my expectations when I saw the trailer for Le Fableux Destin d'Amelie Poulin; in English, the much less lyrical Amelie. By any other name, it remains the best film of 2001 and who knows how many years before and after, wonderfully marrying heart and intelligence to virtuoso visuals. If this unreserved admiration was enough to let me enjoy 2004's A Very Long Engagement despite it being a sappier, paler, duller Amelie, unabashedly covering the same ground (and starring the same actress), then surely I have nothing to fear from Life of Pi.

internet summary for your consideration: "Based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, it's a magical adventure story centering on Pi Patel, the precocious son of a zookeeper. Dwellers in Pondicherry, India, the family decides to move to Canada, hitching a ride on a huge freighter. After a shipwreck, Pi is found adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a 26-foot lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all fighting for survival."

mitigating factors: As, shall we say, "problematic" as the plot sounds (on many levels), the book did win the 2002 Booker Prize, a British literary prize as prestigious as any in the world; past winners include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Arundhati Roy. And there's an interesting local angle: Jeunet married a San Mateo film editer and rented a house on Stinson Beach to write the adaptation of Pi. On the California setting: "It's the perfect place to work."

A "parable" shipwreck movie set on, essentially, a raft - with a sole teenage survivor spending the bulk of the movie dealing with jungle animals? Um....by Jean-Pierre Jeunet? How about thank you sir may I have another!

Bonus Track: Steven Soderberg's making a Che Guevara bio-pic...with Benicio Del Toro as Che...

2006-07-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

the sporting life

World Cup Wrap Up: Addendum

A World Cup mvp for Zidane?

In an unexpected twist, Zinedine Zidane was today awarded the "Golden Ball" as the World Cup's most valuable player. Italy's captain Fabio Cannavaro can be said to have been unlucky in the voting. He was the central defending leader of a typically impregnable Italian defense that didn't allow their opponents a single goal in the run of play their entire duration of the tournament, which of course speaks to the quality of goal keeper Gianluigi Buffon. And in light of Sunday's red card, both men seemed to be running ahead of Zidane. Passed over for the award in 1998 for Brazilian striker Ronaldo despite France's victory, what must be going through the Frenchman's mind on this day?

(...strangely, the Golden Ball has a history of avoiding the champions. Of the seven times the award has been given, only three have gone to players on the winning team, none in the last three Cups. This is unheard of in American sports...)

Today's announcement is sweet vindication, indeed. The voters squarely and correctly put the events of Sunday in keen perspective. With this salute, they ensured that Zidane's momentary lapse of reason, rash and shockingly violent as it was, shall be remembered as failing to overshadow his play even in this tournament, let alone that of his career. Let's all settle down, put to rest any notions of lasting stains to legacies, and put the booking in the past, an attitude toward the whole affair that now must be seen as substantially sanctioned. Some retirement gift, eh Zinedine?

2006-07-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

the sporting life

World Cup Wrap Up

Why Not Italy?

So the Italians to win, a fitting and logical end. Because much was lined up favorably for the azzurri: a supremely hot goalkeeper, a balanced roster relatively injury/suspension free, and an easy bracket presenting only Australia and Ukraine in their path to the semifinal. Which isn't to say they didn't deserve this final, as say, the Germans certainly didn't in 2002. Italy proved their mettle. Before the games even began, some of the hugest Italian League clubs, employers of 13 of 23 national team members, became roiled in a gargantuan scandal of unimaginable scale. Once underway, they handled a difficult group stage with surprising ease, they stared down the hosts in a pressure filled extra time match, and they did lose Alessandro Nesta, (a defender so revered that Pele named him as all Brazil needed to be assured of winning) in the middle of the tournament, the sort of injury that would have shaken many teams. Italy, though, never lacking for quality defenders, didn't miss a beat and kept rolling, despite FIFA's ludicrous rules forbidding any injury replacement to the roster once the Cup has begun. The Italians didn't back meekly into this championship, as other more defense-fetishized Italian teams might have.

Ah, but the Italians and their diving, the horrible, soul-wretching, ignoble fairy-fluffing that sends shocks of revulsion through every American viewer! Especially this time, with the refereeing already poised teetering on razor's edge, real advantage was gained through questionable penalty calls. And no team took hold of that advantage like Italy. But guess what:

It's not Italy's fault. It's FIFA's. It's soccer's. THOSE ARE THE RULES. As long as teams win games, countries win Cups with flopping, then of course it's how the game will be played, who's gonna tell them to stop? What glory, what honor in losing to prove some self-righteous point that the sport doesn't recognize as important? The card system encourages cheating, REWARDS cheating, and as long as that's the reality, then who's to blame the teams that play it the best? Until there're multiple refs to kill the need for calls made 40 yards from a play, until there's a sensible penalty box suspension-only-for-fighting policy, and bite my toungue, until there's (gasp) instant replay, I don't want to hear another word. Because until then, flopping IS soccer, and that's just how it is.

The Italian style may have its aesthetic critics, but there is a brutal beauty to it. And though the final was anything but decisive, their tournament-long play merited reward, and what's more, 2006 was just Their Turn.

Because sports flow to a cogent current, with discernible patterns and eddys. Balance is only achieved when rings and trophies are distributed in a logical order. I don't care who's playing best right this second, I'm usually dissapointed when the "hot" (read: "fluke") team wins. And who had Fair Claim to 2006?

Definitely not the Germans, for reasons I've laid out in a previous entry, but beyond the hosts many could make a case. Brazilian dominance has locked many countries out for long years, and I was initially hoping a new country would enter the circle of winners, like Portugal, the Czechs, or long overdue Holland. But previous winners Argentina and especially England would have both stirred the air with a fresh scent. Though this turned out to be a reaffirmation of Classical Football Order after the jarring upsets and chaos of 2002's "tournament of surprises", there is nothing stale about this result. Italy is one of soccer's great traditonal powers, but this is not a wearisome win. They have three Cups on the shelf already, yes, but two date from the Great Depression, and the last was more than 20 years ago. And hey; it doesn't say "Rossi" on the back of my shirt for nothing. Why not the Italians?

Players of the Tournament

Italy of course had many notable story lines. Gianluigi Buffon, alongside the Czech Republic's Petr Cech already considered the best keeper in the word, did nothing to alter that impression. In seven games he allowed only an unstoppable own-goal (I quite intentioanlly omit Zidane's score in the final; Look: penalty kicks do not count as goals, understood?) and leaves several unbelievable lights-out images, such as his extra time divine-intervention saves on Podolski against Germany and Zidane's laser-guided header in the final.

The strong play of midfielders Gattuso and Pirlo, teammates at Milan, drew deserved applause, and demonstrated the value of keeping together on the international stage players already familiar, with skills already honed to compliment each other. Pirlo, the fluid playmaker, and Gattuso, his strong tackling blue collar bodyguard, always seemed in the middle of Italy's crucial plays.

Francesco Totti, another creative instigator in the middle, aging and at the end of a fine career, brought to Germany the unique pressures of his jersey #10. There is no more prestigious number in soccer, Pele's number, Maradona's number, Ronaldinho's; it's the symbol of the leader of the attack, the distributer of the ball, the conducter of his team's symphony, and carries a grave weight. Totti, much like David Beckham, faced an uncertain legacy to a career sometimes great, sometimes just good, and the analysis of his Cup performance will go a far way toward settling his place in history. Totti cannot be said to have played that great a part in Italy's run, and was substituted out of the final after a quiet and ineffective game.

Ronaldinho's fall will be even more precipitous. Coming off a brilliant Champions League win for his domestic club Barcelona and two consecutive FIFA "World Player of the Year" awards, a sort of mvp for planet earth, the media had announced the arrival of a new legend, universally anointing him the world's best player, the Brazilian press wondering aloud if it was time to begin speaking of him in the same breath as Pele and Maradona, considered the two greatest to ever play the game. With Brazil an overwhelming favorite, a World Cup mvp seemed an entirely realistic possibility, even a liklihood. But amid the hype, their Stunning Loss to France was really not so stunning. Even Ghana had outplayed them consistently, for long stretches. Brazil's hyper-talented individuals never found a group rhythm, responsibilty for which must inescapably fall within the purview of your Number 10, to some degree at least. Ronaldinho has a Cup already, from 2002, but this was the first that was totally his, Brazil's undisputed core. It was a disaster. His performance and Brazil's in South Africa in 2010 will be either redemption or compounded failure, much as it was for Totti and Beckham this time round.

...How can a player be all but unknown internationally yet have ten World Cup goals? Germany's Miroslav Klose has found a way to do it. Add that to a breakout 25 goals in 26 games for Werder Bremen and one imagines it might be time for him to join the rest of us in the outside world, maybe with a big English or Spanish side. Ah, but those Germans, soo hard to pry out of Germany...............what a mess you've made, Cristiano Ronaldo. It's been no secret in England that he's a petulant, emasculate whiner, flipping and flopping about, unsatisfied just to rely on his considerable skills; now the world knows. Placed upon the greatest, most visible of global stages, Ronaldo's play was electrifying and his conduct was contemptible. By the time the tournament had reached the Third Place game, the usually convivial German crowd was booing him every time he touched the ball. In a typically whiny, fingerpointing statement, he accused his Manchester United employers of failing to stand by him during l'affaire Rooney and declared his desire to immediately move to Real Madrid. Given his behavior during the red carding of Rooney, his Man U teammate, and the unpredictable reception he'd get upon returning to Manchester, everyone'd be better off if the deal goes through..........count Ukraine's Andriy Shevchenko among the tarnished stars, failing to live up to his $60 million pound transfer fee bringing him to Chelsea this fall..........and count Argentina's 19 year old Lionel Messi among the stars enhanced. The failure to bring him on as a late substitute against Germany stands as the Argentine regret with the greatest staying power..........

..........About that Italian Scandal: Match-fixing, front office and league officials conspiring to place referees to team preference, Board of Trustees resigning en masse in shame, imagine all that. Imagine the Yankees being in on it. Now imagine the Yankees (and maybe the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Blue Jays) being sent down to the minor leagues as punishment. Imagine all their players, huge stars and role journeymen alike, suddenly released from their contracts and set loose in a flood on the free-agent market, while their historic teams face a who-knows-how-long struggle back to the majors with rosters filled with unknowns. Players the caliber of goal keeper Buffon and Italy's captain, defender Fabio Cannavaro, are suddenly up for grabs. The Yankees need only imagine; for Juventus it's very real..............

..........With the German threat safely removed, I've had a change of heart and reconsidered my attitude toward them. They have a wonderful team, full of energy, they played as a team as well as any, and they were entertaining as hell to watch. And as catalysts of an upswell in constructive, communal German pride, they played a wonderful role in presenting a model of Teutonic nationalism beyond racism. Hey; I love and respect Germany...it just wasn't their "TURN", capiche?..........

Oh, Zidane, Zidane, Zidane....

What to say of Zidane? What an invigorating, star crossed, bizarre final appearance for one of soccer's immortals. He was dexterous and present during the game, if not determinant, his weaving signature maneuvers worthy of the moment. But as in the 1998 final against Brazil, our lasting impressions of Zidane were not to come from his feet, but his head. His scathing header late in extra time, on an exquisitely conceived path toward the top of Buffon's goal, was of such quality and ferocity it seemed a destined Cup winner; only an instantly immortal flailing save from the Italian keeper at his very best pushed it just over the bar, and Zidane's emotional yell in reaction is one of his great on-field portraits. Then, soon after, came the shocking head butt.

Not seeing him on the podium to receive his medal was surreal and heartbreaking, a shame. I don't know who's decision it was to keep him in the locker room, but even if it was his, it was the wrong one. These were the closing moments of a World Cup Final, the very end of Zidane's illustrious career, momentous and historic. Players get carded all the time, especially this tournament, and though his was a foul more shameful than most, his absence served to amplify the import of the card and to press it deeper into the lore of the game than it deserves to be. What, one must ask, was the plan had France won? Would we have been presented with the catastrophically tragic image of the victorious French gathered to hoist the Cup without a captain? Without their captain?

Zidane cannot be said to have cost France this match. True, he did quell the momentum of a team at the time much the more aggressive side, taking it to the exhausted Italians. But with ten minutes left in extra time and both teams running on fumes, penalties seemed to be unavoidable even before he was sent off. Much more damaging were the cramps to both Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, two players France could hardly do without during the run of play, let alone penalty kicks. I don't care if Henry is limping around like he just came back from quail hunting with Dick Cheney, he stays. Going into penalties without Henry, Vieira, and Zidane is unthinkable.

Yet it wasn't some out-of-his-element defender to blink for France in the shootout; it was a stone-cold deadly striker, David Trezeguet. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which Zidane's presence changes anything. For France's superstitious coach Raymond Domenech, who left all Scorpios off his roster, it just wasn't in the cards.

Zidane's 2006 Cup is hard to fathom. His resurgence was key to France's sudden and thoroughly unexpected revival. He had only one transcendent game, but against Brazil when it was needed most. He contributed goals, but through penalties. He had magnificent moments against Italy, and his infraction hardly sunk France. His card was only of manageable emotional and psychological detriment to France and without genuine consequence, yet it will irresistably leave a lasting scar on his memory...though I suspect that as time passes it will increasingly seem a strange footnote, and little more.

This wasn't the first time Zidane's brash physicality got the best of him. Before becoming the hero of the 1998 final in Paris and Ascending to Greatness, he had been suspended during the same Cup for stomping on a prostrate Saudi. And his career includes 14 ejections, a fairly robust total. Maybe then this was the perfect exit for him, the perfect little encapsulation of all the delicate skill, the inspiring command, all the bullish affront. We saw all of Zidane in Berlin on Sunday, and we are left to take of it what we choose.

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...Enough with the fawning descriptions of young talent in soccer and tennis, of 20 year old "wonders" winning tournaments and scoring breathtaking goals. Look: When you enter a sport at 16 and are through by 30, 20 isn't "precocious"; it's right on schedule......

...Yes, the World Cup rightly celebrates itself as the only "true" world's championship, in that everyone, everywhere competes and takes it seriously. But, competitively speaking, the reality is that international soccer means only (Western) Europe, plus Brazil and Argentina, and no one else matters. Each tournament seems to produce one or two Asian/African honorary "global" representatives making the Round of 16 or, given an easy bracket, maybe the quarterfinals, but then they're quickly dispatched, thanked for coming, and the European grown-ups begin the "real" World Cup. I love soccer for it being one of the few things the whole planet truly has in common. But the Cup, still in its first century after all, remains in an adolescent state. Only when there're real Asian and African superpower teams balancing out the Old World, regularly challenging for the title, with the opportunity to share in the joy and ecstasy Italy is feeling now will this be a fully-realized mature event, only then will it really be a "world" cup...

2006-07-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

about town

Restaurant Review: Tu Lan

There are many "new" things that come with a change in employment (bedtime, transit route, topical rashes, rationalizations for weeknight drunkenness) but none with as much the delighted anticipation of a virgin slate of neighborhood restaurants to be ferreted out and devoured. Finding myself these days at Civic Center at lunch, it's been a regular noontime Tenderloin Wonderland for me, flush with every bit the splendor that image suggests. Within a given radius from UN Plaza, though, there are a number of interesting eating options; thriving tacquerias north of Market in that tenderest part of the loin, diners and tourist hofbraus toward Union Square, and the occasional upscale haut-fusion joint with $9 lunch specials. There is also an abundance of intriguing hole-in-the-wall "spoons", and when exploring this niche it will not take you long to discover the off-Market vietnamese Tu Lan, such does its reputation precede it.

Julia Child ate there, as documented by Herb Caen, a fact made virtually inescapable by their online presence and by the reprint of his Chronicle column on the cover of their menu. A bit of eye-rolling advert, maybe, but effective; Julia's imprimatur was reason enough for me to seek them out.

Don't go to Tu Lan expecting comfort or ceremony, it embraces every imaginable stereotype. The space is beyond small, and "lunch counter" rather than "restaurant" is not an unfair description. Immediately behind the counter, balding, middle-aged Asian men cook dramatic stir-frys, flames shooting up along the back wall, as sweat visibly drips down their cheeks to the wet towels wrapped around their necks. The rice noodles come in dried cubes and are stacked along the wall like bails of hay, with the same golden brown color. The rhythm of the place caters to regulars, tersely tolerating the unfamiliar without seeming unfriendly. Brisk waiters seat you abruptly, without fanfare, at a table of strangers if that's where the open seat is. Before the tendons in your legs lowering your body into your seat have relaxed, the waiters are upon you for your order, a palpable pressure hanging while you look over the menu.

Then the food arrives, suddenly and unexpectedly soon. My first choice was Julia's, the Lemon Beef Salad ($4.95). Sliced cabbage and carrots mix with ginger, lemon zest, and wok-fried beef strips, capped with a pile of chopped peanuts and a cilantro garnish for a light, consistent, and flavorful combination. With water to drink, the bill totaled $5.37.

Today, my second visit, inspired to directly test exactly how great my culinary discovery, I decided to challenge the menu. I'm quite particular about restaurant chicken, intolerant of (and vaguely revolted by) any noticeable tendon or sinew, usually choosing to steer-clear of it altogether in Asian spoons. So today it was to be the Ginger Chicken ($5.95). Served in a dark brown sauce, the chicken slices met expectations. The ginger's presence was formidable, with stalk strips as well as root chunks, paired well with chopped white and green onion.

It's difficult to gauge which is more arresting about Tu Lan's entrees, the level of quality or the heroic portions. Heaping, in towering piles, and served with a bowl of rice approaching meal-sized in its own right, it's really two meals for the price of one; one does well to finish half and take the rest to-go.

I specifically take late lunches on my Tu Lan days, but the discouraging lines spilling out onto 6th Street move quickly, and are worth it at any rate. The food's cheaper than it should be, the ingredients are fresh and lively, and so is the mixed crowd of viet ipod kids, Nordstrom-chic shoppers too hip for Panda Express, and scraggly street people all packed in for some of the best dollar-for-dollar vietnamese food in the city.

Tu Lan
8 6th Street @ Market
11am - 9:30pm
monday to saturday