2010

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Ruining The Classics: Franz Kafka’s The Trial

February 6, 2010 in Books, Humor | Permalink

Worst of all, the topping was anchovies.

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had not ordered a pizza but, one evening, a man delivering a pizza showed up at his door. Every day at eight in the evening he was brought his dinner by Mrs. Grubach’s cook–Mrs. Grubach was his landlady–but today she didn’t come. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and he grew both hungry and disconcerted.

There was a knock at the door and a man holding a pizza box stood there. Josef K. had never seen the man in this house before. He was slim but firmly built so that he could carry many pizzas, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for. But probably they had something to do with pizza delivery.

‘Who are you?’ asked K. The man, however, ignored the question as if his arrival simply had to be accepted. K. refused payment. He was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace, laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared to accost him in his home with a pizza? K., wrenching himself back from his daydreaming, said to the pizza guy, ‘I really don’t know what it is you want of me.’ The strange man in the doorway replied: ‘How about $11.50 plus tip, Dillweed?'”

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Featured Video: How To Live To Be 100+

February 6, 2010 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Only one out of 500,00 people in America live to age 100. Our bodies are programmed to make it to 90, but the average life expectancy in the U.S. is 78. Why is that? National Geographic writer Dan Buettner studied communities all over the world that have the highest density of centenarians to try to answer that question. In this 20-minute TED Talk, he discusses the habits and diets of golden oldies in, among other places, Sardinia, Okinawa and Loma Linda, California. You may never become a 97-year-old surgeon who performs 20 open-heart operations a month like one of the elders Buettner profiles, but it’s still a worthwhile video to watch.

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Wanted Poster: The Assassination Of Thomas D’Arcy McGee

February 5, 2010 in Misc., Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

McGee, one month before his assassination: "There is no danger of my being converted into a political martyr. If I were ever murdered, it would be by some wretch who would shoot me from behind."

United States history is sadly awash in the blood of political assassination, but only one Canadian elected official at the federal level has ever been murdered. That unlucky soul would be Thomas D’Arcy McGee, an Irish-Canadian member of the House of Commons who was gunned down on April 7, 1868.

McGee, a radical activist who campaigned for the separation by any means necessary of Ireland and England, took refuge from arrest warrants by emigrating first to the United States and then Canada. McGee renounced his violent nationalist views by the time he called Montreal home and was allegedly gunned down for being a traitor to the cause by a radical nationalist named Patrick J. Whelan. Whelan was tried, convicted and hanged, but his guilt has been disputed ever since. An excerpt from the poster’s plea:

“A member of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada was FOULLY ASSASSINATED in this city on the MORNING of the SEVENTH DAY of April, 1868, in accordance with a Resolution of the CORPORATION, I, Henry James Friel, Mayor of the City of Ottawa, do hereby offer a REWARD OF $2000, For the Apprehension and Prosecution to Conviction of the Assassin.”

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New DVD: No Impact Man: The Documentary

February 5, 2010 in Film, Urban Studies | Permalink

Beautiful Isabella checks out a ripe gourd with dad.

Stunt journalism didn’t always have a bad name, not when George Plimpton was trying to quarterback an NFL team or become an extra in a David Lean epic. But over the last decade it’s become an increasingly high-concept field concerned more with sales pitches than truly interesting experiences.

Manhattan writer Colin Beavan entered this dubious landscape when he decided to turn a year-long experiment in extreme eco-consciousness into a blog, a book and ultimately this movie (directed by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein). Beaven, wife Michelle Conlin (a Businessweek journalist) and their two-year-old daughter spent a year without TV, motorized transportation, electricity, air conditioning, elevators and many other modern conveniences that damage the environment. Beaven gets his book deal and plenty of attention (much of it negative), but at least in the film version the focus isn’t on being green but on the dynamics of his marriage.

Beavan is keenly aware what is happening when he tells his wife he thinks discussing their private lives on camera will turn the film into a reality-show spectacle. But spectacle is all they really have. As the initially reluctant Conlin begins to warm to the austerity of her passive-aggressive husband’s scheme, you have to wonder if it’s marital love driving her or the Stockholm syndrome.

Beavan and Conlin aren’t bad people who should be made sport of because they went without toilet paper for awhile. But it’s difficult to take much of this carefully calibrated publicity stunt very seriously.

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Science/Tech: Garry Kasparov Tackles Computers Once Again

February 5, 2010 in Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

In 1997, Garry Kasparov didn't believe Deep Blue had defeated him fairly. See the documentary "Game Over" to learn more.

I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest chess fan, but I’m fascinated by Garry Kasparov’s article “The Chess Master and His Computer” in the New York Review of Books. The legendary champion, who famously lost a match to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, looks at the intersection of chess and AI from just about every angle possible–and does so brilliantly. An excerpt about the ramifications of the availability of top-flight chess software:

“There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it’s no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top-level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn’t care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.”

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Listeria: Top 10 Archaic Medical Cures

February 4, 2010 in Science/Tech | Permalink

We'll apply a mustard sheet and he'll be up and around in no time.

I brought you archaic medical terms for diseases recently, and now I bring you the names of some antiquated medical cures. Click on the links to learn more about each bygone treatment. I compiled the list with the aid of Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms and the memories of my elder relatives. But don’t get too arrogant about how much smarter we are about medicine now. Some of these methods are still used and some people out there are treating their migraines with HeadOn.

Read other lists.

Excerpted: Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater (1821)

February 4, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Of course, I look like crap. Do you know how much opium I've taken?

The Manchester-born author and intellectual Thomas De Quincey is most famous for his 1821 drug tell-all, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Like all people with a drug addiction, his life was not a happy one. The odd and depressive De Quincey had begun using opium at age 19 while he was in college. He was persuaded to later write about his lifelong addiction and the resulting book was a great success. But the writer was bad with money and remained half a step out of the debtor’s prison for a good part of his adult life. He died in 1859. An excerpt from the book from the section “The Pains of Opium”:

“It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly: it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But could not have I reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that way would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense suffering.”

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New DVD: You, The Living

February 4, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Bjorn Englund makes sad music in You, the Living.

Swedish writer-director Roy Andersson’s You, the Living, with a title inspired by a Goethe poem, isn’t on the same level as his 2000 visionary breakthrough, Songs from the Second Floor, even though it has many of the same hallmarks.

Andersson isn’t interested in being a storyteller in any traditional sense, eschewing plot in favor of wide-angle shots of exaggerated scenes human despair and existential angst, which are funny for their relentless frankness. In You, the Living, some of these scenes involve a tuba player, a prostitute, an angry barber and a variety of other sad sacks. These characters often speak directly to the camera and are forthright about their uncomfortable struggles with the bleak absurdity of life. And that absurdity is above the surface not below it in the filmmaker’s work.

Andersson, who spent 25 years directing TV commercials, is driven to precision in each shot like someone used to trying to express his ideas in thirty-second spots. His elaborate sets, his aggressively working-class wardrobes, his offbeat casting and his unique sense of cinematography create a style that’s all his own. Even when everything doesn’t completely congeal as in this film, any Andersson work is still worth watching for the sad and strange beauty of many of the scenes.

Read other film posts.

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Old Print Ad “Ghastly Murder in The East-End” (1888)

February 3, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

The alleged letter from the killer identifying himself as "Jack the Ripper" was likely a hoax.

The infamous murderer of prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London eventually came to be known as “Jack the Ripper,” but in this sensational 1888 tabloid piece the killer is called “Leather Apron.” It’s a lot subtler name but just as chilling, I think. Whenever I hear about a violent crime–past or present–my first thought is always that all of the people involved, perpetrator and victims, were once sitting at desks in a second-grade classroom learning basic math and reading. I guess it’s just a way to suppress the horror.

The newspaper article is visually plain but makes up for its lack of eye-grabbing graphics with prose dripping with tawdry detail (some of which exaggerated the facts). An excerpt:

“Another murder of a character even more diabolical than that perpetrated Back’s Row, on Friday week, was discovered in the same neighborhood, on Saturday morning. At around six o’clock a woman was lying in a back yard at the foot of a passage leading to a lodging house in Old Brown’s Lane, Spitalfields. The house is occupied by a Mrs. Richardson, who lets it out to lodgers, and the door which admits to this passage, at the foot of which lies the yard where the body was found, is always open for the convenience of lodgers. A lodger named Davis was going down to work at the time mentioned and found the woman lying on her back close to the flight of steps leading into the yard. Her throat was cut in a fearful manner. The woman’s body had been completely ripped open and the heart and the other organs laying about the place, and portions of the entrails around the victim’s neck.”

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Listeria: Top 12 Archaic Medical Terms

February 3, 2010 in Science/Tech | Permalink

I probably shouldn't have given this guy a placebo.

With the help of Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms and several textbooks I have lying around for god knows what reason, I compiled this collection of the best antiquated names for maladies. Click on the links to read the modern names of the ailments.

Urban Studies: The Filthiest City In The World? Baku, Azerbaijan

February 3, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

An oil platform in Baku pumps out the black gold.

The excellent Marginal Revolution pointed me to a Forbes story that lists the 25 dirtiest cities in the world. Never swear by a science-related article in Forbes or any other consumer magazine, but it wouldn’t be completely stunning if Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is truly the dirtiest city in the world. (Actually, poor Port-au-Prince, which ranked fourth dirtiest, would likely easily top the list if it had been compiled post-earthquake.)

Baku is awarded a total of 27.6 on the Health and Sanitation Index, which is slightly worse than the 131.7 scored by Calgary, which the magazine identifies as the cleanest urban area. What makes Baku so dirty is, unsurprisingly, its heavy reliance on a booming oil industry, particularly over the last two decades.

As Forbes explains, the city “suffers from life-threatening levels of air pollution emitted from oil drilling and shipping.” I guess it’s not bumming out the locals too much. Last year Lonely Planet voted Baku as one of the world’s top ten party cities. “The cash injection from energy projects, enhanced by the presence of thousands of international oil workers and wealthy consultants, has turned Baku into an oasis of excess,” boasts the travel guide. Party till you drop, indeed.

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Excerpted: “Classic Boom–Minerva’s Temple In Guatemala Is Blown Up For Baseball Fans,” Life, (1953)

February 2, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Minerva: Totally into wisdom and check out that great rack. Not too shabby.

Came across this strange article in a 1953 issue of Life magazine. “Classic Boom: Minerva’s Temple in Guatemala is Blown Up for Baseball Fans” chronicles a Central American temple being exploded to extend the stands of a baseball stadium. Minerva was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, so she was quite the A-list deity. Baseball is still played in Guatemala City today at the Enrique “Trapo” Torrebiarte Stadium–same site?–but I don’t believe there are any current MLB players from Guatemala. The opening of the article:

“Fierce Don Manuel Estrada Cabrera, dictator of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920, was a man of many quirks. To get elected president he used to draft all males into the army on election day, decorate them with campaign buttons and march them into the polls to vote for him. To encourage education he built temples to Minerva, Goddess of Learning, and called out the citizenry to hold fiestas around the shrines. In due time Don Manuel was forced out of office by an angry electorate which had come into possession of a few cannons. But his monuments remained. A baseball park grew up near the one in Guatemala City and as the game grew more popular more room was needed for grandstands. So one day last month Minerva’s temple came tumbling down, victim of ‘beisbol’ and large charges of dynamite.”

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Featured Video: Home Movies Of The 1939 World’s Fair

February 2, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The sun dial at 1939 World's Fair in New York says it's time to watch a featured video.

Some of the things you’ll see in this soundless 10-minute video mash-up of home movies of New York’s 1939 World’s Fair: Fair Corporation President Grover Aloysius Whalen, the League of Nations building, the Baby Incubators building (though not any actual babies in incubators), Laff Land, a scary looking parachute ride, Admiral Byrd’s Penguin Island, the building housing Olga the Headless Girl (though not Olga or her neck stump), a daredevil being “frozen alive,” automobile stunts, dancing girls sunbathing topless (yup!), Penelope Shoo: The Scarecrow of Tomorrow, glass blowers, waterfalls, fireworks and many, many strips of Kraft Premium Bacon. Watch the video.

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Great Photography: The Big Picture’s “At Work” Series

February 1, 2010 in Photography | Permalink

Also check out the site's amazing work on Haiti and the Dakar Rally 2010.

The Big Picture on Boston.com is the single best photojournalism site on the web. From current events to wry topics, it presents the most amazing shots you can imagine. Think of the photos of Life magazine during it’s glory years and that’s the level we’re talking. One of their current series, “At Work,” spans the globe to show workers in a variety of labors–a brick factory in Pakistan, a chocolate factory in Beijing, a Taiwanese funeral home–in some jaw-dropping images. I don’t have permission to post any of the photos, but go to the site and have a look. You won’t be sorry.

Listeria: Top 8 “Barf” Products From Iran

February 1, 2010 in Urban Studies | Permalink

Because Diarrhea just won't get your laundry clean enough.

In Persian. the word “barf” means “snow.” In English, the word “barf” means “barf.” Thus we have a cultural disconnect. The Barf line of soap products is produced in Iran by a company called Paxan, which gulfbusiness.com refers to as “a leader in detergent, hygienic and intermediate chemical products and among the 100 superior companies in Iran.” Paxan makes many other brands that are not named “Barf,” but I find myself uninterested in them. It could be because I’m a complete fucking idiot.

Iran is one of the places that most fascinates me. Every person of Iranian descent I’ve ever met in the U.S. has been super smart and nice. Hopefully, the world will be different someday and visiting that country will be a possibility. Until then, they’ll be lots of jokes about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad washing his clothes in Barf. Here is a list of the top eight Barf products.

  • Barf Automatic Detergent Powder
  • Barf Bleaching Liquid
  • Barf Detergent Bar
  • Barf Detergent Powder
  • Barf Dishwashing Liquid
  • Barf Fabric Softener
  • Barf Scouring Powder
  • Barf Sourcing Powder

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Excerpted: “Karate: New Tough-Guy Cult,” Life, 1968

January 31, 2010 in Books, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

You can kick me in the head if you like, but please stop looking at me with your death-ray eyes.

I always thought martial arts became popular in the U.S. in the 1970s because of the TV series Kung Fu. But according to an article I found in a 1968 Life magazine, a different martial art became popular the previous decade. “Karate: New Tough-Guy Cult” examines the sport’s nascent popularity in America. An excerpt from the article’s opening:

“The worried looking would-be strongman, the one who looks like Woody Allen–that crack in the gut is only a sample of the trouble he’s on for. The oddly dressed platoon on its knees in the rain, they are there because rain, like an occasional thrashing with a bamboo pole, builds character. These particular character-builders are members of Brooklyn’s School of Scientific Karate and part of a growing army of U.S. devotees of the muscular cult. Inspired by the manly mayhem of film heroes–the Sinatra who split a table in The Manchurian Candidate, the Spencer Tracy who splintered a bad guy in Bad Day at Black Rock. Americans have made karate a national sport in less than a decade. The School of Scientific Karate (250 students) is only one of 750 karate schools scattered around the country. A dozen years ago there were none.

Developed in China and systemized in Japan, karate (which means “empty hand” in Japanese) is designed to kill or maim. But karateists like these Brooklynites are not aggressors. They practice a year to smash the edge of a hand into a brick, not a solar plexus. In practice they learn to pull their punches. Much of their practice is in pulling punches. And ultimately, according to practitioners, they get from karate the confidence–and the placid equanimity–that less determined souls find in religion.”

Panama Takes Time From Expanding Canal To Join Afflictor Nation!

January 31, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

Panama: Doubling the size of a canal is so easy that we have time to waste on Afflictor.com.

I have a question for you, Panama, with you tropical climate and your historical reliance on commerce: Which one of your approximately 3,360,474 citizens visited Afflictor.com yesterday? It was on Saturday–a Saturday we’ll never forget at the Afflictor.com offices in Brooklyn–that the data revealed to us that you took precious time from your busy schedule of expanding the Panama Canal to waste valuable moments on our idiotic website. The Canal expansion is scheduled to be completed some time in 2014 or 2015, so you best not tarry. Welcome to Afflictor Nation, Panama! You may have broken with Spain in 1821 and Colombia in 1903, but let us never part.

Meet other Afflictor Nations.

The Final Frontier: California To Preserve Space Urinals

January 30, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Cherish my space pee, California!

An interesting article by Jesse McKinley in the New York Times examines the fate of several tons of garbage left behind by the Apollo 11 mission. Seven states, including California, seek to stake a claim to this trash and protect it from potential moon landings by other countries and the development of a space tourist industry. An excerpt from the article:

“In one small step for preservation and one giant leap of logic, the official historical commission of California voted Friday to protect two small urine collection devices, four space-sickness bags and dozens of other pieces of detritus, all currently residing nearly a quarter of a million miles from the state…

Milford Wayne Donaldson, the state historic preservation officer, said the reasoning behind the first-of-its-kind designation was simple: Scores of California companies worked on the Apollo mission, and much of their handiwork remains of major historical value to the state, regardless of where it is now or what it was for used for then.

‘It has a significance that goes way further than whether it came from a quarter million miles away or not,’ Mr. Donaldson said. ‘They are all parts of the event.’”

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Listeria: Top 10 Synonyms For “Celebrity” in 1971

January 29, 2010 in Books | Permalink

A "bigwig" with hair extensions.

I previously brought you synonyms for the words “doctor,” “criminal” and “laborer” from my favorite reference book, 1971’s Webster’s New World Thesaurus. I go to the volume once again to look at how the synonyms for “celebrity” have changed between then and now. What most caught my attention is that the book lists the main antonym of “celebrity” as “disgrace.” Today, they’re more commonly synonyms, of course. Here are the top ten most interesting entries:

  • Ace
  • Big gun
  • Bigwig
  • Figure
  • Lion
  • Lioness
  • Maecenas
  • Magnate
  • Man of note
  • Worthy

Read other lists.

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Old Print Ad: Hotel Bellevue in Boston (1905)

January 29, 2010 in Uncategorized | Permalink

Those chorus girls in Mr. Kennedy's suite have an air of quiet dignity.

The building at 21 Beacon Street in Boston, Massachusetts, is a private residence today, but for decades it was an elite hotel. This 1905 ad promises elegant rooms at “$1.50 and up, excellent music and cuisine unexcelled.” The hotel had its brushes with fame through the years, including playing a role in John F. Kennedy’s 1946 congressional run, as he rented a two-room suite at the Bellevue to serve as his quarters during the election.

The prices had risen slightly a couple of decades after this ad, according to a 1920s Bellevue postcard I found on eBay. The inscription reads: “Hotel Bellevue. Aristocrat of Beacon Hill. Strategically situated opposite the State House and Overlooking the Common, the Bellevue has a restful atmosphere and an air of quiet dignity and charm not unlike that of a distinguished private residence or one of the better clubs. Single rooms with private bath from $3.00; for two people $4.50 and up.”

See other Old Print Ads.

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Featured Video: “The Incredible San Francisco Artists’ Soap Box Derby” (1975)

January 29, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Thanks to the fine folks at boing boing who pointed me in the direction of this video of a soap box derby like no other. Amanda Pope‘s 24-minute film documents a 1975 race that saw more than 100 Bay Area artists (including Fletcher Benton, Viola Frey, Richard Shaw, etc.) create eye-popping, mind-bending soapbox racers and trophies to raise funds for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The car designs are so great that I can’t choose a favorite. Maybe Benton’s Animal Crackers car or Shaw’s pencil car.

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New DVD: Big Man Japan

January 29, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Halt at once! For I am obese, slightly xenophobic and in possession of a stick.

A midnight movie that’s good any time of the day, comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto’s insanely surreal 2007 mockumentary, Big Man Japan, chronicles the sad middle-age years of the titular superhero, who has lost the love of a once-adoring nation. Most of the time the hero is known as Daisato (played by Matsumoto), a long-haired slacker who’s been dumped by his wife and has to care for his senile grandfather. But with the application of electrodes to his nipples, he inflates to elephantine proportions and battles monsters that look like mutant Ron Mueck sculptures come to life.

The problem is, the Japanese people are bored by his act and think he’s more trouble than he’s worth. In its own way, the movie is a paean to the larger-than-life myths and legends that have been diminished by the Information Age. But mostly it’s about a 200-foot sumo wrestler with a billy club battling the Strangler, the Stink Monster and the Evil Stare Monster, each a more wonderfully bizarre creation than the last. During the climactic battle, something amazingly strange and wholly disorienting occurs. It’s completely crazy and a fitting conclusion. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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The Sporting Life: Where Will All The New Teams Go?

January 29, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

Not Rosie O'Donnell.

The excellent Sports Economist pointed me to an article on Portfolio.com which examines the viability of the five major professional team sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer) in untapped North American markets. They used income levels and not actual fan interest and other factors, so it’s really more of a speculative experiment than a real-life investigation.

A few of Portfolio.com’s findings with my comments in parentheses:

•The Los Angeles area has the population and income base to support five NFL teams. (Los Angeles can handle a couple of NFL teams, and with a new L.A. football stadium set to open in 2011, there will definitely be a team or two relocating to this market. The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars are possibillities.)

•Baseball can only be supported in two new markets: Riverside-San Bernadino, California, and Montreal, which saw its franchise founder and move away just five years ago. (MLB would make more sense if it added two teams and shifted to four eight-team divisions. The article doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt to Portland, Oregon, which has often been named as a propective MLB city.)

•The study identifies Denver area as a seriously overextended city with teams in all of the five main leagues. Only the Broncos and Rockies seem like safe bets to continue drawing well. (The Rockies have probably been aided attendance-wise because the thin air at Coors Field makes for a lot of home runs, which help drive attendance.)

•Six other markets are very overextended: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Phoenix. (Cleveland and Pittsburgh have had serious population losses as their industrial bases declined. Phoenix is hurting because the economy has been especially terrible in states that rode the real estate boom. The Phoenix Coyotes have by far the worst attendance in the NHL this year. Of course, there was never a good reason to put an ice hockey team in the desert when there are so few teams in Canada. Commissioner Gary Bettman should be fired for that reason alone.)

•The league with the most opportunity to expand: Major League Soccer. The article contends that there are more than 40 North American markets that the 15-team league can move into. (Six MLS teams draw fewer than 15,000 fans per game. Perhaps that can cover small operating costs, but it’s difficult to fathom how MLS will ever attract great athletes if it has by far the lowest salaries. At the same time, it’s likely the only game in town if Akron or Allentown want their own “professional” franchise.)

“But Don’t You Find, Dr. Kissinger, That It’s Been A Useless War?”

January 28, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Misc., Politics | Permalink

The late journalist Oriana Fallaci had a dubious final chapter to her life when in the wake of 9/11, she lived in fear a Muslim planet. But in her younger days, she was one of the greatest interrogators in all of journalism. It’s not likely in this self-conscious age that many of today’s bigwigs would suffer her substance and style, but it’s not like too many interviewers are even trying.

In 1972, as the war in Vietnam raged, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sat down for an interview with Fallaci and regretted it almost immediately, ultimately dubbing it “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press.” The piece was published in the New Republic and anthologized in Interview with History. Here’s an excerpt:

Oriana Fallaci:

And what do you have to say about the war in Vietnam, Dr. Kissinger? You’ve never been against the war in Vietnam, it seems to me.

Henry Kissinger:

How could I have been? Not even before holding the position I have today…No, I’ve never been against the war in Vietnam.

Oriana Fallaci:

But don’t you find that [Arthur] Schlesinger is right when he says that the war in Vietnam has succeeded only in proving that a million Americans with all their technology have been incapable of defeating poorly armed men dressed in black pajamas?

Henry Kissinger:

That’s another question. If it is a question about whether the war in Vietnam was necessary, a just war, rather than…Judgments of that kind depend on the position that one takes when the country is already involved in the war and the only thing left is to conceive a way to get out of it. After all, my role, our role, has been to reduce more and more the degree to which America is involved in the war, so as then to end the war. In the final analysis, history will say who did more: those who operated by criticizing and nothing else, or we who tried to reduce the war and then ended it. Yes, the verdict is up to history. When a country is involved in a war, it’s not enough to say it most be ended. It must be ended in accordance with some principle. And this is quite different from saying that it was right to enter the war.

Oriana Fallaci: 

But don’t you find, Dr. Kissinger, that it’s been a useless war?

Henry Kissinger:

On this I can agree.•

Fallaci was among Dick Cavett’s guests on January 22, 1973 when news broke that former President Lyndon Johnson had died.

 

 

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New DVD: Soul Power

January 28, 2010 in Film | Permalink

I'm not a doctor, but I believe that man is breaking into a cold sweat.

A perfect complement to Leon Gast’s great boxing documentary, When We Were Kings, Soul Power chronicles the titanic 1974 fight’s companion music festival in Zaire, which coupled great African musicians with excellent African-American artists. Director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte tries to make some hay from the behind-the-scenes drama that occurs when the prizefight is delayed and the concert is briefly imperiled, but name me a huge music fest from that era that didn’t have logistical problems (Isle of Wight) or far worse (Altamont). The real story here is the performances (a pensive Bill Withers, an expansive Miriam Makeba, the ever-professional Spinners) and the racial pride that fueled the performances. The biggest stars of all, as expected, are Muhammad Ali on the microphone and James Brown on stage, both still in their primes. When Ali delivers his sermons on race in America and James Brown does his splits, Soul Power is powerful excitement.

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