A Cup, Please. No Ice

That's one of my most frequent lines on aircraft--I tend not to talk much except when spoken to. 

Unlike my partner, who always has the most interesting conversations.  

Certainly the quality of person on planes is good, in general. 

...as applied to the FIFA World Cup 

The draw for the World Cup was an exciting event, I hear.  Not so much the draw itself, but the ambience. This does bode well; our oppressive environment is not being extended to the international invasion--at least, not so far.  Trump is not threatening the FIFA head, who has made buddy-buddy with him. 

Seriously, we cannot have ICE raids on locales for World Cup soccer games.  There are going to be many foreigners, and many of them will not have the right papers. I think the immigration authorities will be smart enough to realize that, and the dangers of provocation in such public areas, and keep their distance.  

This is a very feel-good kind of draw this time around, as they expand the tournament to 48 nations instead of 32.  Instead of eight groups of four, there will now be 12 of them.  To make things really lax, though, 32 of the 48 will go through to the knockout rounds, of which there will now be one full round more, with 16 more games. So, the early rounds are easy, but if you want to win or reach the heights, say, of the semifinals, you have to win one more knockout round than before. 

 Each of the top  9 ranked countries have their own group where they may rule, the three other groups topped by the home teams, the USA, Mexico, and Canada.. Finishing first means a team would face a second or third-place team of its group, while finishing second means facing a team finishing first or second.  Don't think of the odds for a team finishing third, while one finishing fourth goes home.  

To illustrate, we could look at the US, ranked 14th in the world, and its first round opponents. A very successful outcome would be to reach the quarterfinals (round of 8) of the tournament; to do that, they need to get through the first round and then win two matches in the knockout rounds. Their first game is against Paraguay, their second against Australia, and their third and final game will be against a team that wins a four-team play-in group, most likely Turkiye.   The US will be heavily favored in the first two games (though Paraguay may be tough to break down), then the third game would likely be to determine first and second place.  

If they win the group, the US would face a third-place team from another group, and if they win that, their round-of-16 match would likely be against Belgium (the team that knocked them out in 2014), whereas if the US finishes second, they would play a second-place team, then, if they win, likely run up against Argentina.  That's a big difference, as Argentina is the defending champion, dominated the highly-competitive South American qualification, and is one of the consensus favorites for the tournament (along with Spain, France, and England). At a minimum, then, the US should qualify; furthermore, it should finish first or second in its group. After that, it's a bit of a crap shoot, though deterministic in its way.  . 

There won't be a lot of first-round games between two highly-rated teams with a lot to play for:  two I see are France vs. Norway (June 26), which features two of the top scorers in the world (Kylian Mbappe for France and Erling Haaland for Norway)  and a great opener for England against always-dangerous Croatia on June 17.  After that first round, though, the tension and quality of matches will rise. 

I'll be watching from abroad and will be interested to see if the US makes a mess of its hospitality with an excess of America First-type jingoism. The recent Ryder Cup (golf) did not show us on our best behavior. 

The NBA Cup

 The pro basketball league fashioned an ingenious in-season tournament last year to pump up some interest in the early season (this time of year), when football dominates.  The clever part is that all the games in this tournament, except the final one, are fitted into the regular season schedule and count in the standings for it. 

The qualification games are now completed and eight teams advanced to the single-elimination knockout rounds.  With qualification based on just a few games, some of the top teams did not advance.  The question for this year's cup is whether any team can stop the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league's defending champion, which comes into the tournament with a 23-1 record.  The Phoenix Suns had their chance yesterday and were defeated by 49 points; the San Antonio Spurs will be next (with Wemby, maybe?-- their star, Victor Wembanyama), and then there will be a team from the Eastern Conference (the Orlando Magic or the New York Knicks).  I'll be very surprised if the Thunder don't capture the Cup (the Milwaukee Bucks won last year but did not reach the next round this time).  The final does not count in the standings, but I think Oklahoma City's team will be motivated to continue their dominance on the terms offered.  

The big problem with the Cup is that it is only on Prime Video (Amazon's).   

The Vince Lombardi Trophy and the College Football Playoff Championship Trophy

 I would humbly suggest to the directorates of the college and pro football leagues that they consider changing the name of their grand prize, or just get a cup (also, no ICE, please!) You would think the football jocks would get it.  The NFL trophy honors Lombardi, head coach of the Packers when they won the first two Super Bowls, but today the man represents a style of coaching--motivating by bullying and fear--which should be long gone.  The Super Bowl, of course, is a monumental event (not a great game, usually) which deserves a new, gorgeous cup named after a worthy, deceased predecessor. I'll let them figure it out. 

The NFL is going into the last weeks of this season with more spots not yet determined in the (now, 14-team) playoffs than usual.  In some divisions multiple teams are winning at better than 2-1, and in others no team is more than a game over .500.  So, there will be more meaningful games in the last weeks.  Top spot in each conference is the regular-season prize for the teams that have already assured their playoff spots, as it gets them a first-round bye.   

As for the college playoffs, every year since 2014, when the NCAA invented that poorly-named trophy and replaced the chaotic Bowl game-based method of identifying a top team, there has been a new experiment in a football playoff, each year with new public relations disaster and new learnings. 

 In 2024, the playoff was expanded from four teams all the way to 12, using existing bowl locations and dates for some of the games--a major improvement. With 12 teams, four teams get a first-round bye, but last year two of the four were conference champions not worthy of the honor and promptly eliminated by at-large teams in the quarterfinals.  

This year, they improved that by simply giving the four top-seeded teams the first-round byes.  Two of them, Indiana and Ohio State, are from the same conference. The odious championship games for the various conferences did not seem to have extra weight, though of course in most cases they paired up the highest-performing teams in the conference in a game you could consider "regular-season".  

Not all, though.  The ACC (formerly known as the Atlantic Coast Conference, now thoroughly bastardized with national participation of universities seeking good basketball) ended up with a Virginia-Duke game, when the best two teams with ACC affiliation were Miami and Notre Dame.  More on the Irish later.  Duke, outrageously far from being ranked in the top 25, came up with an upset in overtime, which effectively killed Virginia's Cinderella-ish hopes.  Neither got a bid, but Miami did, without the championship invite.  

The last two at-large bids came down to Miami, Notre Dame, and Alabama. Miami defeated Notre Dame early in the season, but both finished 10-2 and played no conference championship, while Alabama's decisive loss to Georgia in the SEC championship game was their third. Miami and Alabama got the bids and Notre Dame was left out, screaming foul.  

There was bad blood between the Notre Dame athletic director and the ACC direction afterward, because it was claimed  Miami was improperly favored over Notre Dame in the final week's analysis.  Miami was moved past them, though neither team played.  I see the Irish--who are not in the ACC for football but are for other sports--making a move to the Big 10 (now with 18 teams, I think), now including many of those special historic rivals which kept Notre Dame independent for football. 

At least the controversy has moved from #4/5 to #9/10/11 of the seeded playoff picks, with a couple reserved for the winners in lesser conferences.  I back the proposal to move to 14 teams, with the only two first round byes going to the champions of the two most successful conferences (based on interconference play).  The extra two positions would help resolve some of these problems about promised slots and maybe move the controversy borderline out of the top 10. The one about going to 24 teams (eight to get guaranteed berths and byes through conferences?) I think could be made to work--there are a lot of crappy bowl games that could be replaced with elimination games in the early rounds.  My strongest advice for the next year's controversies is that they get a cup, no ice. 

 Bottom line is that Notre Dame is acting too entitled (for refusing to play any bowl game, out of spite) and college football is its own athletic industrial complex, and the conference commissions are the bad guys. The outstanding Indiana-Ohio St. game was probably the highlight of the season, including the final of the playoffs, whenever it finally comes.  (My pick would be Georgia.)   

Edit (12/21):  The ACC really blew it with its selection process for the championship.  The wise thing would have been to invite Notre Dame somehow, which would have made the school more willing to join definitively.  Now I think they will dislodge definitively, once they are free to do so.  The cravenness of both the conferences and the universities in their choice of association in recent years is distasteful. 

5X5: #4--Entertainment! for a Time of Sickness

The added free time can present some annoyance, if not properly filled.  There have been any number of posts and articles with ranked lists, offbeat suggestions, rumors of new (usually filmed at home) shows and performances.   I've been scanning through them and have a few of my own, mostly through experience of the otherwise dreck and re-runs .

'Contagion' (2011) as Intro Course for Dealing with The Real Thing
If you have not seen this Steven Soderbergh movie this year, you could've had a crash course in this year's pandemic in two hours.   (OK, one hour 46 minutes, according to imdb)  Early on in my confinement, I managed to find it for another viewing.

It's painful, but also a story of survival at the level of the human experience through the whole course of an emerging pandemic, with a superb cast and script.  Much will seem familiar, because it's what we're going through. It's a different virus, with a different trajectory, but so much of it could have prepared our society for it, if we'd watched it and taken it more to heart.

The basic parameters are an outbreak of a "chimeric" virus (bat/pig) spreading easily by respiratory means from an initial set of infections in China and carried on by international air travelers.The US breakout  (Minneapolis) is shown through the tribulations of the husband (Matt Damon) of Patient Zero (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his daugher (their young son succumbs early).   Then, she has a sudden, fatal seizure, and it goes from there. The infection begins to spread through casual contacts she made en route back home from her business trip to China.

(Some of the next bit may be spoilers...)

 Among aspects that the careful attention to science+ captured for the film is the rapid deciphering of the DNA of the virus, but the difficulty in developing a vaccine for a novel virus.  The CDC official on the scene of the breakout (tragically awesome Kate Winslet) opens a hospital triage location in the largest stadium in the city.  Her boss (Laurence Fishburne) is shattered and cuts some corners, but he ends up being heroic. There is a blogger (Jude Law) who peddles a false remedy, and various story permutations follow for him.  The film explains the "R-nought" concept, the number indicating the propensity of a disease to spread--it's actually just the average number of new cases per existing one.++

The movie posits panicked runs on supplies (in the film, on pharmacies), with those leading to some looting (including guns) and rioting. There are even armed security screens at state boundaries mobbed with cars.  So far, to Americans' credit, the social response in our reality has been more restrained, the recent Astroturfed protests in a few states notwithstanding, at least partially because the mortality rate of the virus in the film is several times higher than our (much-disputed) own.  Rather than anarchy, in the real world the poor seek healthcare.

The film also has an international element, addressing the problem of the worldwide distribution of the eventual game-changer, the vaccine.  A WHO official (Marion Cotillard) is kidnapped by provincial Chinese seeking to jump the queue.  One of my few criticisms of the film's resolution is that the global challenge is presented early in the cycle but not closed.  The lottery-type distribution of vaccine issuance by birthdate that the US decides upon (the hand of partisan politics is barely felt in Contagion) brings domestic peace, but what about....(insert names of many failed nations)?

Somewhat on this topic, I have found reference to a sci-fi novel about a breakout pandemic and authoritarian measures taken to contain it, written in 1997 with the prescient title 2020 (by Hamutal Shabtai).  From the interview with the author, who is somewhat apologetic about the length of the book (I haven't tackled trying to find it yet),  the story includes the aspect of China trying to suppress word of the burgeoning threat, the challenges of systematic testing and how it erodes free society, and then the potential brutality of policies separating those detected as infected from the vulnerable.


+Ref. podcast interview with the film's writers for Vanity Fair,  a pro screenwriter with a top epidemiologist.  Quality, Soderbergh style.  The podcast may have a paywall. 
++Here is a set of estimates of the "R-sub T", the infectiousness of Covid-19 over time by state, made a couple of weeks ago.

Saved by Infection?
Back on the topic of movies and invasive species, the other must-see for this period of time, if you have not seen it, is the film that may signal the eventual redemption of the Oscars, which seemed lately to have fallen into a permanent trap around Hollywood's immobile conventions and their lack of diverse creators, roles, and economic opportunity.  I was so appalled by the nominations this year I hadn't even written my usual Oscar preview here, and I watched most of the show with a resigned lack of enthusiasm.

That changed for me when they announced the winner of the Best Director award, and I gave a shout of joy when Parasite won Best Picture.  It showed me that the Academy's voting electorate, within the straitjacket of the nominations, had brought the right attitude.  One way to make Oscars more interesting is to feature more prominently the excellent films produced around the world, with the aim of making the show truly a world championship (since a competition, it seems, it must be) and not a high-priced back-pat.

I am totally committed to the experience of cinema, like theater both public and private, of the darkened room and the big screen, but Parasite, though plenty visual, will stream very well, or indeed work with any format.  What makes it special is its manic creative energy, astonishing characters, and intricately-woven plot.  The one downside for me (slight spoiler) is the Tarantinesque "cathartic" bloodbath near the end, but it is redeemed with a Hitchcockian post-climax twist.


TV Overview:  Delving into the Escapist Void
Enough education, though.  Let's talk about entertainment which takes us away from virus-related concerns.

My tv-watching habits (mostly sports, news, science/nature shows, talking-head public affairs) have taken a serious and sudden change.  No more live sports, and the news is always pretty much the same.  The talkshows haven't taken much of a hit, and nature photography is better than ever before.  (I particularly liked the PBS' Nature show for Easter, "Remarkable Rabbits".)   Under the circumstances, though, I've had to dig deeper.

In this depressing Drumpfist era,  I had already found it easier to glom onto iconic popular culture events that have no basis in reality.  I accept that it's a miserable excuse, and that effective activism would be a far more potent and honorable response, but these have been miserable times, and, while activism was certainly possible, its effectiveness has been blunted.

(This was due to the fog created by Chief Twit Dimwit's lies and provocations, McTurtle's slow walk to 2020, and endless blather from those seeking some kind of lawful justice that Robert Mueller and his report,  House committee subpoenas, and Senatorial Profiles in Cowardice can never provide.  Seeking satisfaction was self-delusion, a sort of escapism. *)

And so I chose to attend the two singular popular culture events of 2019:  The Avengers: Endgame and the final season of Game of Thrones.   The first got much greater praise than it deserves, while the second has been criticized more than it deserved.

Serial moviewatching is a venerable tradition, and comic-book hero movies are similarly well-established. I have not gone so far as to immerse myself in their multiverse, though.   I read comic books sometimes way back when, but I didn't really care if they were DC or Marvel, even then.  Save for a few SH movies I've seen over the years--I was somewhat impressed when the Christopher Reeve Superman series combined the commercial potential of the '60's Batman series with somewhat less cheese, and I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s rehab work as IronMan, and Alfred Molina any old time (Doc Ock!)--little stands out  (OK, I'll admit that Guardians of the Galaxy was funny.)

Because of this limited emotional commitment, my appreciation of the biggest movie box office film of all time was stunted, particularly so as I have never seen Part I of the Avengers megahit two-parter.  It made for a fairly objective viewing of what I came to see as a standard-issue time-travel script.  Star Trek did it at least as well, from the point of creative storytelling. Doctor Who does it with more humor and better aliens.  Obviously, the production values of the Marvel series are world-class, but that is just table stakes for action megahits:  we want more!**

As for GoT, one has to credit the patience and depth with which this fictional world was developed.  I will admit it was a lot more data than I was willing to take on.  I had seen an episode or two, casually, over the first years of its run, so I knew the stars of the story and some of the place names and story themes.  I watched all of the penultimate season, binge-watched seasons 1 and 2 in the marathons prior to the release of the final season (but then stopped due to some travel), and then the ultimate one.  So, I saw the half I wanted, retained some significant holes in my understanding of past events, but had no problem following the fast-moving final season.

I was not one of those sorely disappointed by the outcome.  The key aspects of the two-part wrap (the war with the Walkers, and the siege of Kings Landing) did no more than bring things to ends prefigured (as possible outcomes) earlier, through the track of the main characters' destinies. The political denouement of the new king, etc. was anticlimactic, which is the norm for the end of great TV series.

Two things, related, that I really loved about it:  1)  the importance of that limitation of time and linear space which constrained everything in a pre-vehicular era, and then how dragons were the equivalent of nukes that dissolved those limits; and 2) the opening credits!  The effortlessly shifting camera angles and focus on the regional map (see below:  the big picture looks suspiciously like Greece, the Aegean,, and Asia Minor) served effectively to transport us into the fictional world.  I already see evidence that the excellent notion of that sequence has been picked up by other series.


*I barely escaped from that depression, only to fall into the crater of our disappointing Presidential primary and its excruciating, ugly process. Waste can be defined as the Cost of Bad Quality.  As the subject here is another, and we have somewhat crawled out of our crater, I will say no more.
**By "we", I mean "I".  Seems like the rest of the world had little problem with it. 

It's a Reality Show World

"This ain't really life, ain't really life, ain't nothing but a movie."--Gil-Scott Heron,  B-Movie

This was in 1981, just after we were all shocked as the reality sunk in that Americans had elected an actor, Ronald Reagan, to be their President.  You could extrapolate to the present, and then it would not be so surprising to consider our reality becoming virtual, a video game of some sort.  But, no--much more disappointing. 

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" - Gil-Scott Heron, again.  

Ten years ago, that quote was not viewed as being proved false--social media was enabling movement faster than the cameras could arrive.  Now, we know:  television (video) is too much a player to be revolutionary, and is an important tool in the hands of Reaction's surveillance. 

I won't say I never watch so-called Reality Shows:  As a family, we enjoyed The Amazing Race (travel being a big thing for us), and some Fear Factor (spectacularly gross, but limited variety).  I have tried to avoid any others.   Though imitation of reality is at the core of storytelling, and even documentaries generally are edited, these shows that purport to be real but are artificially created offend my sensibilities.  Amazing Race was a good example. It never broke the fourth wall, but in every one of those taxi cabs or jitneys, or airplane cabins or customs lines there was, somehow, a camera capturing all their squabbling and confusion. Come on. 

So, I have to admit that I have watched a lot of The Voice, and not just this year, because it's one of my wife's favorites.  I am continuously impressed by the quality of the performing contestants they bring to the show, and the sophisticated arrangements and staging are impressive.  I hate the show's formats for the (exaggeratedly slow) series of cuts to the contestant pool, though, and the amount of fluff that is padding the (excellent) performances is excessive.  

While there is too much emphasis on the coaches' phony "win" percentages, I also tend to feel that the real performers are somewhat exploited--though I admit, willingly so.  They are not amateurs, but semi-pros; most have honed their performing craft in a variety of live settings, but they need that big break (which I am far from convinced comes through the route of these shows--current Voice coach Kelly Clarkson is the only true star who has emerged this way, to my knowledge).   The winner should be guaranteed ample cash money plus a recording contract, and all the finale performers paid generously.  Are they?  Generally these shows would say so if it were the case.  Instead, the coaches get the big payouts, making this the Nike of game shows.  In normal times, I'd say it's good for local employment (in LA). 

With the dearth of live entertainment for The Voice to continue the final rounds of the current season, our TV has picked up a show, Songland, which followed it on the same channel in recent weeks. I have seen a couple episodes, but no more.  It is sort of the obverse of The Voice. The idea is that semi-pro songwriters come in with a potential pop song which they pitch--through performing it--to a team of songwriting coaches and a performing artist who has promised to record it (and give royalties for it to the episode's winning songwriter, and presumably, their coach).  The three finalists (out of four) for the episode then re-work the song with the coach's assistance, to fit the performers' preferences, and the performing artist chooses the winner at the end.   I believe it's the show's second season. 

As a format, it's good: much better than The Voice's one, concise, straightforward, and honest. Though the royalties for the song will likely be rather trivial in the end, there's a chance for a big payout, and at least it will give some honest credits for the resume.  The songs themselves are not really my problem, as they are all designed to provide an immediate hook, and a catchy hummable chorus.  The better ones have clever wordplay in their required rhymes.  So, we all know what is what, about this kind of song, but the making of the sausage itself is what disgusts me, even if this is like the real-life pop music "sessions"  For me, the show is simply too damn formulaic--the romance is nowhere evident. 

A couple more Small-Screen World comments for this special time of unquestioned TV cultural dominance:  This situation reminds me of the time in the early '80's when music videos suddenly became a very big deal (they already existed in limited number and quality prior to that).  The choices you as video producer had were somewhat few:  you could show the band performing the song, or pretending to perform it while doing something, or show the story the song was trying to evoke, or something completely unrelated (which was rarely greenlighted for production).  The chops for performing in a studio environment, which musical performers have have developed and perfected over the years, serve them especially well in this environment, whether they play to the camera or ignore it.   

Still, whatever your content, you can either present yourself in your office--there may at least be the shelves of books you may have read behind your shoulder for the viewers to enjoy--or in your garden or backyard, or present a series of other people doing the same.  I guess a couple have tried for a more intimate setting, though I have seen only one on a roof, and none in a basement.  But that's limiting, for sure.  Here are a couple ideas if this continues to drag out: 

A quick-hit musical variety show with topical content, like Laugh-In; 
A holographic (instead of Zoom) meeting of a small group of participants; 
Performances in concert halls with minimal attendees (5% capacity?), full special effects, and added sound-absorption. 

The Quality of Merch is in Its Strains
Top five of the current season--I will attest to having consumed each in the jurisdiction in which it is produced, as prescribed by law:

Blue Dream (H-NM) - 18.0%
Armagnac (S-CO) - 19.6%
Blueberry Headband (I-NM) - 20.6%, (I-CO)- Unk.
Pineapple Trainwreck (H-CO) - 24.6%; Train Wreck (H-NM) - 19.5%/
Blue Dream (H-CO) 23.6%/Blue Maui (H-NV)-Unk.

Contrary to what this might indicate, though, I'd prefer sativa if more were available commercially.  I agree with Bill Maher that they should cut down on packaging, or at least reycle their cylinders and tubes.  And, as may seem obvious, my favorite color is blue.

The Best Thing I've Seen on Facebook lately (I have no idea of the credits):  Our Current Location within a Dystopia-based Venn Diagram

From reddit/MapPorn:

Past Present and Future

The Near Future:  2016
Elections, they say, are about the future, especially US Presidential elections.  The way it should be, candidates put forward something resembling their visions of the future, and voters choose the person they want to be the midwife of the next four years' events--technically, how they would direct the course of Federal execution of the laws. Unfortunately, we are too easily fooled; candidates always promise outcomes they can not deliver, and the vision is obscured by the talking points and attack angles.

One of the favorite angles that candidates are trying to play this year (not unlike some other election years) is to convince us that their election will make the difference, that, with them in charge of our government, our children's future will be bright and our country will be greater than it has ever been before. It's true of all of them (that they will try to do this attempt at convincing us), and it's true of none of them (that they can make the country greater than ever).  Still, I would suggest that we evaluate the prospective Chief Executive/Commander-in-Chiefs by which of the following three future outcomes they would tend to lead us:

1) The US draws back from the dangerous and unaccepting world around us, and we try to achieve greatness within our own borders;
2) The US leans forward and acts to change the world and make it more the way we want it to be; or
3) The US presents an example before the world, acting within it in accordance with our values, but accepting that our contributions will ultimately be incorporated in the emerging global society.   

Each of these visions has its merits and defects, and our President's responses to various challenges will not fall exclusively in one category or another, as they often depend more on the specific circumtances, but there are differences in the attitudes of the various candidates with regard to this essential question, and our choice among them is the critical issue for the year.

The Distant Past:  "Memoirs of Hadrian" 
As they sometimes say, history rhymes, and the stanza that resonates to me with our geopolitical status and stage in our society's lifecycle is Rome, early-to-mid-Empire, roughly 50-200 A.D.  Not a perfect analogy, of course, but the basic idea works well:  Europe is to us as Greece was to Rome, in our emergence we had our kings (the colonial period), our phase as a popular republic, and what we have now.  And that is an oligarchy, in which the critical role of our military/foreign policy has made the Commander-in-Chief (that is what "emperor" means in its Latin root) the predominant figure. Remember that Imperial Rome had the original Senate (it means "old men") but its role during the Imperial period was about like our Electoral College, confirming the election of the foremost but hardly a check on executive power.

Anyway, this period of Roman history had both a string of awful Emperors--the remnants of the Caesars' dynastic line, descendants of Julius and Augustus (Octavian)--and then, after a period of intense chaos and power struggle,  a series of rulers we now know as the "Good Emperors", including five in a row who ruled for over 80 years, dying of natural causes (as opposed to the many who were killed in military coups).  Their careful succession planning helped preserve some stability, and during this period, citizenship was opened up more broadly, the Empire thrived and maintained its extensive reach, and gained enough vitality for it to retain its coherence and regional dominance through a couple hundred more years of often chaotic power struggles.  

Hadrian was the second of those long-ruling Good Emperors (Nerva, who founded the line, could be counted but ruled only two years), succeeding Trajan, and, like Trajan. was born to prominent Roman citizens who lived in what is now Spain.   As such, one of the key characteristics emerging during the period was the expansion of fully-fledged Roman civilization beyond the Italian peninsula.

His rule was the stuff of Roman legend, as was his mourning of Antinous, his lover who died as a young man. The French author Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Memoirs of Hadrian in the 1950's, a work of fiction based on her extensive historical research into his life. She tried to incorporate all that we know of his life, his administration, his philosophy, and his times.

In terms of his lessons for us, Hadrian gave up the effort of his predecessors to try to conquer the Asian subcontinent, but instead promoted trade with it and exploration in other directions and developed the capability for the military to hold the territory it had won (most will associate his name with Hadrian's Wall, which he had built across middle-north Britain to keep out those crazy Caledonians in the north).  He toured his empire constantly, planned for great cities to be built, and planned his succession through adoption of a few in whom he found to have the greatest potential (among them the famed philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who followed in his footsteps).

There is much that we can learn from Yourcenar's attempt to re-create his thoughts, memories, and philosophy of life--the book is written as an extended letter from dying Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius--though we also see the ways our society is different from that one; one important aspect is the relative unimportance (!) of religion to Romans, in this period when worship of the pagan gods was little more than ritual, but Christianity had not yet taken hold.  Of course, Yourcenar has the benefit of knowing what followed Hadrian, and she gives him a level of foresight which would be unusual for anyone, in any time.

The Present Moment--in Live Popular Music
This seems to be a special instant for live performance of popular music on TV.  There is a long, and generally somewhat ugly, history of televised rock concerts--low production values, playing to the cameras, bad sound.  Techniques have improved, though, and the importance of the concert tour to the economics of popular music has never been higher.  Of course the quantity of video concert footage that is available is growing exponentially.

Three events I want to mention:  first, the postponed performance from Paris by U2 which was televeised this past week on HBO.  It was to be televised on November 14 but was cancelled after the terrorism which struck the city the day before.  The event went off on the new date without incident; the performance was mostly the same as the U2 tour which this event completed:  a stage running the length of the floor of the stadium with an equally large projection screen overhead; the songs were about 60% from the latest album, which featured a great deal of memories of their early lives in Dublin, and also of the terror in the Irish island in those days.  You will (probably) never get a better chance to see The Edge and how he plays those guitar lines at which we have marveled for decades; Bono's voice was a bit bit thin, understandably so at the end of a long tour, but he was up for the occasion.  Then there were the Eagles of Death Metal, the American band that was playing at the Bataclan theatre that was the site of the worst terrorist massacre--U2 invited them onstage to perform at the end of the concert. They played Patti Smith's song "People Have the Power" with U2 and then one of their own songs.  I will say only that it was not what I thought it, or the band, would be--if you have not seen the concert, you should take a look:  HBO is usually very good about rebroadcasting their content, almost endlessly, in fact.

Second, Adele will be on national network TV with a performance from Carnegie Hall on Monday night.  Her album's sales are through the roof, and we don't get many chances to see her perform live. Third, there will be a special televised event that was celebrating the 75th birthday of John Lennon, on AMC on December 19, with a host of well-known performers, and I guess Lennon's songs will be featured throughout.

On the subject of covers, I would like to close this section with a discussion of "The Voice", a
"reality" TV series. part taped and part live, that presents singing talent performing hit songs. The format is a drawn-out elimination contest, in which the performers need to appear a dozen or more times, getting tutelage from established star performers who each have their own "team", with voting by Twitter, by download song purchase, and sometimes by judging from the four stars.

There are a couple of things I like about the series, which I have gradually been sucked into by my wife and daughter's interest:  the singers genuinely are talented, the stars seem genuinely interested in the teaching (this season, they are Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Pharrell Williams, country star Blake Shelton, and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, the latter two of which have developed a surprising public romance during the season), and the backup band is excellent.  I hate the format, which draws the tension out excessively in each episode, and over weeks, and I hate the way the popular voting is done and how it is utilized. At the end of the day, I feel the performers are being exploited for the commercial benefit of the network (the stars/teachers, too? Their motivations/pay are not very transparent): all this exposure doesn't seem to translate into hitmaking careers for the talent, who are tested heavily and repeatedly.  There's something very "Hunger Games" about it all, except nobody's getting killed.

Present:  Trump/Rubio/Cruz/???
(Political Drama--Act II, Scene 1)
Still more than 50 days from the first real results of the 2016 Republican nomination contest, the online market in which I participate has already narrowed the field to three contenders--in order of support, Rubio (currently trading at 38 cents on 100), Cruz (30), and Trump (25)--three more rated with dark horse chances (Bush at 11, Christie at 6, and Kasich at 2)--and a long list of longshots at 100-1 odds.  This list includes former monthly flavors Ben Carson, who has dropped precipitously during a two-week tour of the world to learn what foreign policy is, and Carly Fiorina, as well as a variety of moribund active candidacies (Paul, Graham, Huckabee, Santorum, Pataki) and some not-even- candidates like Mitt Romney, Susana Martinez, and my own longshot favorite, Paul Ryan (the scenario for him is the deadlocked party turns to a draft-Ryan movement at some late stage, out of pure desperation, and as he did with the House Speaker role, he "reluctantly" steps forward).

Looking at predictit.org's individual primary/caucus markets (which have been set up through Super Tuesday, March 1), we currently just see variations in the order of the top three. Trump leads in New Hampshire and only a couple more, Rubio in the Eastern states and Cruz in the Southern ones.  The one that is viewed as the tightest three-way race, at this point, is the fourth in the series of early primary/caucuses, Nevada.

The only market where this pattern varies at all is New Hampshire.  Christie edges out Cruz for third place in the betting to win the state (which seems unlikely to me), and there is a more wide-open race (and a special market) for the coveted second-place finish there: there is significant support for Bush, Kasich and Christie; however, second-place in Iowa shows the same three as usual (Carson has faded to a distant fourth at 4 cents), the betting now rather strongly favoring Cruz to win and Trump to finish second.  Is there room for someone other than Tea Party wingers Rubio and Cruz, and flaky outsiders Trump and Carson, to make a run?  Yes, but that person has yet to show they can garner a significant share of potential Republican voters in the polls.

The newest market to draw big interest is whether Donald Trump will declare a run as an independent or third-party candidate in 2016. This market is currently valued at over 30 cents on the dollar.  We explore this concept in a brief fictional scenario below.

Possible Near Future:  The No Trump Bid
Offstage, we hear rumors--shots, screams, explosions--of tragic incidents in Paris, in Colorado Springs, in San Bernardino, in Mali, and elsewhere.  Our villain, the modern-day Alcibiades, the short-fingered vulgarian (an old description coming from Spy Magazine), the Man of Wherever, takes center stage. 
Donald Trump smiles to hear of the latest atrocities and proclaims his newest outrage to our senses of propriety, fairness, justice, and due process.  The mob howls its pleasure. Meanwhile, in a dark corner of the same stage, a group of momeymen and political strategists plots their desperate counter-strategy. 

Megadonor1:  We have a pot of money ready to use, but for whom?  Trump laughs at us when our people meet with him. I can't see backing him in the general election.
Strategist1:  Keep your powder dry, Charles.  We'll come up with something.
MD1:  I'm tired of this, Bill--you've been wrong at every turn this cycle.
Megadonor2:  Just tell me who we are going to go with--I have wasted tens of millions on Jeb already.
Strategist2:  Sorry, Boone, but you know you did that on your own.
Megadonor3:  OK, so who do we rally behind?  Anybody but Trump, as long as he's strong on Israel.
Strategist2:  Truth is, Sheldon, the Presidency is already lost--it doesn't matter who we pick.  If we nominate Rubio, or Bush, or Christie, we will get the organization behind him, and if Trump runs as an independent, his voters will show up.  That way, we can keep control of Congress.  I'd say, we go for whoever wins Florida, or whoever finishes second there, if Trump can win it.
All:  Done!

Fall Preview - Pt. 1 (The Arts)

The weather this week has convinced me:  Fall is here.  For some reason, most of the significant efforts in this country's art scenes on the large scale occur in the next three months.  So, let's take a very opinionated view of what's coming down the pike.

First among all, I mention "Bleeding Edge", the new novel from Thomas Pynchon, which just became available this week. ( I got my copy yesterday.)  I'm planning to savor it, not devour it, and at 500 pages, it should be a good part-time read for the fall.  A second successive detective novel, this one features a female New Yorker fraud investigator operating in the period between the burst of the dotcom bubble and 9/11.  To me it screams "Crying of Lot 49", more than "Inherent Vice".

Television
Next we move to "the tube", though of course there's no tubes involved anymore.  For me, television is programming transmitted over a specific channel at a specific time--the other stuff is "video", which is a form of entertainment but, because there is no shared simultaneous experience, not the same thing from the point of view of impact on popular culture.

The critics seem all convinced that this is a (Second?) Golden Age of Television, that it has surpassed the movies, not only in social importance or entertainment value, but in artistic quality.  This is an opinion to which I do not subscribe at all--there is more good TV out there than there used to be, but it is a function of quantity:  the number of channels has multiplied exponentially, and so have most forms of programming.  A few categories have multiplied disproportionately--I would name college football games both major and minor, programs in which people cook and other people rave convincingly about the delicious flavors (too far ahead of the inevitable development of "Smellovision Channel"), programs about obscure groups with unusual behavior patterns and other exhibitionists (e.g., "Duck Dynasty", "Wife Swap", "America's Got Talent", etc.), and programs about violent crime and the justice system.  Particularly the latter--I am so sick of programs about cops, about forensic crime research, prison drama, courtroom drama, criminal capers, legal hijinks, that I can no longer stand to watch even the better ones ("The Wire"?--I couldn't take it).

Anyway, to focus on the good side of TV, I guess a good place to start is with the Emmy awards tonight (Sunday, Sept. 22).  The Emmys do not have the same cachet or dramatic intensity of the Oscars, there are a whole lot of awards for things that are not very interesting, and they have had a historic tendency to give the same award to the same show or performer year after year (John Larroquette won how many times for "Night Court"?), but I think the profile of the awards has begun to rise.  I will be rooting for Tina Fey and "30 Rock" in their final Emmy appearances, and for her SNL compadre Amy Poehler of "Parks and Recreation", though "Modern Family" and its cast will be the huge favorites to repeat in the comedic categories.  (Fey and Poehler's performance in the combined TV/Movie Golden Globes, itself nominated for an Emmy is an example of what the Emmy program should strive to achieve.).  In terms of drama, I guess it's "Breaking Bad"--gritty meth crime isn't overdone so much yet-- over "Mad Men", "Downton Abbey", and "Homeland" (counterterrorism surely is), though I would've loved to see "Boss" (also outgoing) or "Newsroom" (based on its last episode, also halfway out the door).

In terms of the fall season, it's going to come fast and furious after this weekend.  I think it's Monday that we will finally meet Ya Mutha, as in "How I Met Your Mother", after years of tease. Most of the major networks' regular weekly series will begin this week.  In terms of new programs, I will give a look to 'The Goldbergs" (NBC,  Tuesday) and an eponymous Michael J. Fox show (Thursday).  The most successful program in TV history, "The Simpsons", returns next Sunday for what I believe is its 25th full season, and the second-most successful, "Saturday Night Live", will begin its new season next Saturday with Tina Fey as host, a bunch of replacement cast members, and SNL fave Arcade Fire as musical guest--will it be another slack period, and can it survive another? Tune in next spring.

What else?  I'm going to try to watch "Scandal" more; "Mad Men" should be interesting as it heads to its final episodes, "Dr. Who" is supposed to debut a new Doctor (so my daughter tells me; she's only OK with the selected new hero of time and space), and the BBC series of "Sherlock", starring the ubiquitous and ludicrously-named Benedict Cumberbatch (note: in the future I will refer to him as simply BdCb), is supposed to return for a few teasing episodes sometime around the holidays.

Mostly, though, I watch news programs and sports--the first can have no preview, and the latter will be considered in a separate post, as I still believe it qualifies as something other than just TV.

Music
The big, built-up album of this fall is the two-disc follow-up to "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire.  One song, "Reflektor" (also the title of the album), has been released so far:  it sounds like the band, but disco.  I certainly sympathize with the challenges of maintaining the momentum from a superior release and sudden, massive fame, but "going disco" is not the correct response--not in this century, or any other one for that matter.  We will see if the song is the exception or the rule.

Two major artists who have promised to go back to their roots in their new releases are Paul McCartney, with "New", and Elton John,  with "The Diving Board".  Meanwhile, Elvis Costello literally has gone to The Roots for his, joining the band from Jimmy Fallon's late-night show for a funky new one, "Wise Up Ghost". I've heard one song, and it sounds like something good, not the lounge lizard act I heard on Elvis' last two albums.

Anything else?  I'm hopeful about Katy Perry and her maturation process--she has an album coming out called "Prism" (slightly different light-bending effect than Arcade Fire's), which suggests she is trying to turn the excessive light constantly upon her into something colorful and beautiful.  Good idea, if you can pull it off. And U2 is working on a new album, though it's unclear whether it will make it into the market before the end of the year.

Film
The best trailer of the summer--the one that piqued my curiosity, not that showed off the best effects or jokes--was for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's "Don Jon".  The memorable line--repeated for effect--is that he just cares about a few things in his life:  "his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, and...his porn." Gordon-Levitt is a young talent; he's taking it to a new level as a first-time director.  The story of Don Juan, the mind of the seducer and his undoing with the right woman, is a worthy challenge that has drawn the talents of many of the greatest over the centuries, including Byron, Mozart, Kierkegaard, and Shaw.  He's got Scarlett Johansson as his foil, that foxy mix of naivete and worldly that she can do so well. It starts next weekend, and I think  this combination of old and new values, sex play both subliminal and overtly indiscreet, just might find the right moment in the key movie-going demographic, teens and young adults.

As always, there is a flood of the best movies this time of year.  The timing seems slightly different this year, as some of them are already out there in the film festivals, so the season will not be such a tease, with the real film powerhouses only hitting your neighborhood multiplex next year. This is a definite improvement--I may be missing something, but none of these have phony openings in the last week of the year.

I think the glum political outlook, which is likely to turn soon into bad economic feeling, will translate into movie viewers looking for solace, escape, and ways to express their suppressed anger. I've ordered the major studio releases for the fall based roughly in my level of skepticism about the projects' artistic and commercial success, from "Highly Doubtful" to "Little Doubt", but what do I really know about them at this point?

"Fifth Estate" - Looks like a whitewash of Julian Assange's story (with BdCb).  Data doesn't want to be free, it lies there waiting to be manipulated. Are moviegoers any different?  This one says "yes".
"Winnie Mandela" - see "The Fifth Estate".  Taking advantage of Nelson Mandela's name, when he will be too weak to say anything to the contrary.
"Great Expectations" - I never even liked the book, and the story seems ripe for political posturing:  the poor just need rich patrons and all will be fine.
"Enough Said" - I think it will be creepy to see the late James Gandolfini in a hopeful love story.  Enough said, indeed.
"Prisoners" - Teen-age abduction drama, with Hugh Jackman in the Liam Neeson "Taken" role as the Angry Dad.  Looks ugly, feels unnecessary.
"Carrie" - Didn't like it the first time; don't need it again.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" - The Scorsese/DiCaprio combo is fine by me, but I think I've seen too many of these Wall Street dramas where the big jerk gets his comeuppance at the end.
"August: Osage County" - All-star cast (including BdCb), Broadway stage play, but it looks too stagey for the big screen.  I'm sure it's no fun, but will it provide the uplift we want?
"Diana" - Naomi Watts looks dead-on as the martyred Princess, but it's either a phony conspiracy play or boring.
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" - There are a couple of items I'm looking forward to seeing (Smaug's dwarf-built cavern, the Wood-elves, BdCb as the Voice of Smaug), but mostly I think a relatively short novel is being dragged out into four full-length parts for bad reasons.
"Rush" - I would never underestimate Ron Howard's ability to produce a popular spectacle, but I think the heyday of Formula One auto racing is over for most people.
"Catching Fire" - Will people connect the dots between this dystopian society and ours, or is it just a good flick with Jennifer Lawrence?  Either way, it should be reasonably successful.
"All Is Lost" - Just Robert Redford and a sinking boat.  Somehow I think it will be OK.
"All is Bright" - Looks like a holiday charmer with Pauls Rudd and Giamatti.
"Gravity" - Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, directed by Alfonso Cuaron.  Space travel drama is the best possible genre for 3-D (slight edge over aviation), and Cuaron makes powerful film.  It could be awful, but I'm thinking 70% probability of magic.
"12 Years a Slave" - This story of a freed black man captured back into slavery could break hearts, if it manages to tell its story in a way that's not too familiar.
"Nebraska" - Alexander Payne has the strong track record of drawing great performances, not overplaying his hand.
"Captain Phillips" - Not a sure thing, and we do know how this Somali pirates vs. US merchant ship drama will turn out, but Tom Hanks will deliver the goods, as always.
"The Counselor" -  Very little substantial information available, but it looks like it could be a powerhouse (Ridley Scott directing, Cormac McCarthy story, with Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz).
"Ender's Game" - The sci-fi special of the season, a genre classic finally adapted for the big screen, with a teenage boy hero.  Should be a commercial success, even if not Oscar material.
"Inside Llewyn Davis" - The Coen Bros. are a sure thing, as far as I'm concerned.  Their popular success correlates negatively with my appreciation, but the latter is never too low.  I like this one, so it may be only a moderate public success.

My summary is a lot of ambitious, expensive failures, a few small-scale successes, few if any certain winners.  Maybe they are right about TV?--I hope not.

Sports Update

Today (Sunday, June 8, 2013) is a big day in sports.  A lot of the day's events have already been completed as of this time (8:30 p.m. Central), so I'll trade forecasting for some recap and commentary.

Return of the King (and Queen)
The French Open women's final was held this morning, with Serena Williams firmly establishing her dominance in the field, defeating the defending champion and #2 seed Maria Sharapova.  Serena's return to a level of play as good as she has ever shown is a great accomplishment that has taken years, since a critical injury followed by a blood clot in her lung three years ago threatened her very life.  Her sister Venus' difficulties, due at least in part to an auto-immune condition, make the moment somewhat bittersweet for the Williams clan, but Serena's win of the Grand Slam event on clay (her least favorite surface) for the first time in a decade sets her up for a superb 2013, as she looks to be a huge favorite in both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open should she stay healthy.

The Men's final is tomorrow, but one would suppose that Rafael Nadal's win and eighth French title is all but assured.  His finals opponent, fellow Spaniard David Ferrer, is a good friend of Nadal (at least I think so) but that doesn't prevent him from beating him consistently.  Ferrer is persistent, so it takes a lot of work to beat him, but Nadal has the better game, and, I think, the psychological edge as well.  I will say that Ferrer has never played better, with more dominant results, than he has in this tournament:  I don't think he's lost a set, while Nadal lost a couple in the early rounds before he really got into world-beating form.

He needed that for his epic semifinal showdown with world #1 Novak Djokovic.  Djokovic took him to five sets and had winning chances, but Nadal got key breaks and won the last set, 9-7 (in the French, the last set does not go to a tiebreaker).   Djokovic is still #1 in the world, and should be, but Nadal has reclaimed his position as King of Clay, especially the clay in Paris.

More Royal Intrigue
As a native-born Kentuckian, I have great regard for the Derby.  It's the Democratization of the Big Break for horses, a cavalry charge of 20 3-year-olds, many of them relatively unproven, and the results are generally unpredictable.  The atmosphere is intoxicating, a mix of purebred horsey folks and the unwashed masses, lubricated with mint juleps.

Still, from the point of view of pure horse racing excitement, I like the Belmont Stakes best.  The field has been winnowed down a bit (or a lot), the racing challenge is extreme, there's that endless homestretch run.  Today's edition was a great one--it pretty much always is.  The winners of the Derby and the Preakness, Orb and Oxbow, were there at the top of the stretch, along with a third horse, Palace Malice, that had matched strides with the front-running Oxbow through most of the race.  The big surprise was that Palace Malice was the one that outlasted the other two champions--a good payoff for the bettors who picked up on the notion that removing the blinders (a eye-sized screen to prevent horses from looking around) would let loose P.M.'s full capability.

They Say This Be "Hawkeytown"
The term reflects just a little too much leeway for the headline writer, but the hockey Blackhawks do have sports fans' attention here in Chicago now.  The Rose-less Bulls fell out bravely but early, neither major league baseball team has done anything to deserve attention so far this year, and the Chicago Fire--despite a good team name--plays soccer.  The Blackhawks are a serious threat to win the Stanley Cup this year, and their performance in the shortened regular season (40% of it lost to lockout) was spectacularly good.  Expectations are very high; nothing less than winning the Cup will satisfy the local fans.

A great regular season means next to nothing in the S.C. playoffs--it's about getting on a hot streak, and particularly about the performance of your goalie.  The Blackhawks have gotten through two rounds, though, Corey Crawford has been consistently excellent anchoring a solid defense, and they are on the verge of winning the third round and making it to the finals, in which they would play the Boston Bruins.  They are currently up three games to one against the L.A. Kings, so one more win will put them through.  In tonight's game five, at home, Chicago had a 2-0 lead after the first of the three periods, but the Kings have recovered and tied it up.  An interesting overtime seems likely at this point, but even if the Hawks lose tonight, one would think they should be able to win out.  On the other hand, though, Chicago trailed 3-1 to Detroit in the last round and battled back to win.

Note:  While typing this last paragraph, Chicago scored a controversial goal which may end up winning the series.   While typing the next one, L.A. scored to tie it up again and force sudden-death overtime.

Pressure's on the Heat*
I didn't do such a great job predicting the NBA playoffs in my last sports post.  Memphis could have made it a good series vs. the Spurs, but blew big leads in both Games 2 and 3, losing them in overtime, and went down 4-0.  As for the Heat, it's basically been a one-man show for LeBron James, who has been enough to carry them through three rounds of the playoffs.  It was a tough 7-game series against the Indiana Pacers, though, in the Eastern Conference finals, and the pattern remained much the same in Game 1 of the Championships.  The difference is that the Spurs have shown the capability of keeping LBJ in check, and their 1-2 punch of Tony Parker and Tim Duncan has been very effective in the playoffs. 

Having won Game 1 in Miami, the Spurs have taken home-court advantage away; however, this is LeBron James, and Miami is far from cooked.  I expect the Heat to win Game 2, and then they would have three chances to win one in San Antonio and take back the advantage.  I hesitate to repeat my previous mistakes (the biggest one is to predict at all).  I see this as a very close series, and I'll go with Miami in 7.  With trepidation.  If Miami doesn't win, look for James to throw his teammates under the bus and look for a more sure thing.

Baseball:  5/13 of the Season Done
Just over one-third of the regular season has been played--that point was reached a few days ago.  Time for plenty of clear indications about this year, even time for some teams to make a shining move and flame out (see Cleveland). 

The big disappointments so far this year are the two Los Angeles teams, both of which spent freely and had high expectations for this season.  The Washington Nationals would be the other team falling far short of predicted levels, though they are young and their success last year was not fully convincing (to me). The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Red Sox are the teams I least expected to be among the leaders; though the Pirates are clearly improving, they are the ones I most expect to fade from the leaders in the final 8/13 of the season.  Two teams which have done better than most expectations are the Braves and Yankees, though really nobody should be surprised by that.  The Yankees have plenty of excuses for poor early-season performance--something like $100MM worth of 2013 salary was on the bench due to injuries through most of it--but they need none.

With the fade of the Angels and of the Nationals, the Texas Rangers in the AL West and the Braves in the NL East would seem to be the likely beneficiaries and division winners.  The Detroit Tigers, probably the most well-rounded team now that Jose Valverde appears to have solved their closer reliever problem, are clearly the favorites in the AL Central. 

The other three divisions should have interesting pennant races. In the NL West, we should look for the defending champion San Francisco Giants to overcome the surprise leading team, the Diamondbacks. The NL Central has a surprising claim to being the best division in the majors so far, as it has the team with the best performance of all (St. Louis) and two of the next best (the Pirates and Reds).  This weekend, the Reds host the Cards for yet another critical showdown in their rivalry, which is emerging as perhaps the hottest in the league (the Reds got a big win today!) Finally, the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays will be chasing the Bosox in the AL East; Boston's strong start has surprised many because they were so bad last year, and I don't  believe they can hold on to win the division, but they might be able to win one of the two wild-card spots.

From Bosox to Botox

The big news this week was the reporting that the Commissioner's office has convinced the sleazoid head of a Florida purveyor of performance-enhancing drugs to talk to investigators.   Somehow, the notebooks of this guy got released to reporters earlier in the year--probably related to some failed shakedown attempt against some of the major baseball stars who might become implicated--so we have some idea whom he might be able to rat upon. 

This is not to take the side of players who may have violated the rules and used performance-enhancing drugs--successfully so, as they have not failed any of the drug tests required.  The key angle is that--as apparently was the case with Barry Bonds a few years ago--this Biogenesis outfit seems to have developed some kind of body juicing which the tests can't detect.  And its capomafia seems willing to betray his clients if they don't continue to pay up.

The talk this week was of 100-game suspensions--coincidentally, or not, about the number of games remaining in the regular season--fifty for first drug offenses (almost all of the names mentioned would be first-time offenders) and fifty more for lying about it.  I don't believe this rumor; if true, it would be a lawsuit waiting to happen; however, if the allegations can be corroborated by something or someone other than the Biogenesis pusher, there will be consequences, with major performers like Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, and Melky Cabrera supposedly on the firing line.  I think this will take weeks, months, or even years to play out to its conclusion; until then, the players under threat, and the teams depending upon them, will be adversely affected.

*From the narrow viewpoint of blogging fun, I'm sort of hoping that Miami wins a couple of games so I could use as a subhead title the scientific fact "Heat Increases the Pressure".

The Democratization of the Big Break

I basically hate the stuff that passes for "Reality TV" and further deny the genre's claim to its name.  I will make an exception, though, and say that a few of the shows--here I'm thinking of "The Voice", "American Idol", "America's Got Talent", "So You Think You Can Dance"--serve a useful purpose.  They give a chance to those many wannabees out there who have some talent and want to make their bid for fame, fortune, and celebrity.  You can criticize the shows' entertainment value, or the sanity of the contestants' ambition, but you cannot deny the emotion is out there, among the wannabes, or among the public to see these amateurs put it all out there for us to see.

I call it the "Democratization of the Big Break", as it channels the ambition of those who, once upon a time, would hang around in drug stores in Hollywood waiting to be discovered.  Now, they are funneled into tryouts, into review by professionals (I would suggest Nicki Minaj is a pro, even if she never would have made it through this sort of gauntlet), and then into the public judgment by the masses:  do they get the break, or does some other worthy aspirant? 

The only one of them that I've really given any time to watching, just because my wife and daughter follow it, is "The Voice". I hate a lot of things about the format, and in particular the overweighting of people's willingness to choose by buying iTunes (free plug for Apple), but I have to admit that the "coaches" do a good job of selecting talented contestants.  As for the contestants themselves, though, the form of the competition is a cruel tease:  one winner, lots of high-quality losers, and uncertain rewards even for the winner.  Finally, though, I have to agree with Adam Levine's awkward aside: "I hate this country".  The voters--taken as a whole--are an ass, with a pronounced preference for corny hick music.  Take his comment any way you want--and he, of course, had to walk it back--he was right.