That photo of Lance and Beloki I snapped on La Plagne at this year's Tour got posted on Lance's website.
So here are a few of my recent gripes:
Aaaaah. I feel a little better already. Thanks for listening.
Vargas, the young, powerful up-and-comer, taunting the veteran De La Hoya for years, trash-talking, calling De La Hoya out. Vargas potrayed himself as the fighter who stayed true to his Mexican roots, representing his people against De La Hoya, who Vargas demonized as the rich, pampered pretty boy, corrupted by his wealth and the comforts of America, drained of ambition by his beautiful wife. De La Hoya, who many regarded as a finesse fighter with the quick hands, against Vargas and his pure punching power. Even their faces seem to conform to the story lines: De La Hoya with the softer features and handsome, boyish face, while Vargas had the fierce scowl and sharp, defined features of someone who survived the mean streets, the tough neighborhood fights.
Vargas goaded and prodded and shouted for years, and finally De La Hoya could take no more. Vargas had called him out, and they'd settle things in the ring. Nothing like a fight between two men who deeply hate each other. De La Hoya was the one with the most to lose. He had the greater reputation, and if he lost after being called out by Vargas, his reputation and legacy in boxing would be tarnished, perhaps irreparably. That De La Hoya put everything on the line after not having fought for 14 months is gutsy.
That's what I love about boxing. You put on a pair of gloves and settle everything in the ring. Talk isn't just cheap in the ring, it's free.
The first few rounds, Vargas came out in a fury, bloodying De La Hoya in rounds 1, 3, and 5, and the crowd was in a frenzy, chanting "Vargas! Vargas! Vargas!" De La Hoya had to be wondering what he'd gotten himself into. Or that's what I thought, looking at the blood dripping from his face. But De La Hoya continued to box, stayed calm, fought back his fear, and somewhere in round 6 or 7, Vargas began tiring, and De La Hoya knew it. Then he began to just box Vargas to death, left jabs and hooks peppering Vargas' face in rapid flurries.
In round 10, De La Hoya staggered Vargas with a left hook, and as De La Hoya moved in for the kill, the bell rang. In round 11, De La Hoya saw the opening. He waited and waited, and then Vargas threw the jab, and De La Hoya cracked Vargas in the head with a left hook. Down went Vargas, and he popped up just as quickly, but De La Hoya smelled blood. He moved Vargas into the ropes and then unleashed a non-stop rampage of left-right-left-right punches to Vargas' head--we're talking about Agent Smith with the body shots on Neo in Matrix--until Jose Cortes, the referee, rushed in to save Vargas who was just holding his fists to his face helplessly.
The interview was fascinating. De La Hoya is a good interview, extremely well-spoken and honest. He admitted Vargas was a strong puncher, and he admitted to accepting the fight because Vargas had finally gotten under his skin. When asked what he thought when he saw Vargas bleeding, he confessed, "I know it sounds brutal, but when I see blood, I want more."
There aren't many sports which have the confrontational drama of boxing. In basketball, stars routinely avoid guarding each other. In football, offensive players from each team don't play against each other, they play against the other team's offense. Mono y mono keeps everything pure and clean. Sure, you have your ringside support, but it's a bit ridiculous sometimes. You've just had your head knocked around by your opponent for 3 minutes, you're bleeding from your nose and both eyes, sweat is burning your eyes out, and your coach is slapping your face and shouting at you, "C'mon, man! Whatchoo doin? Get out there and whoop his ass! Move your feet! Don't let him hit you!" I can't wait for the day when some boxer gets up, throws his stool out of the ring, and shouts back at his coach, "Why don't you get your ass out there in the ring? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now shut up, give me some water, and let me rest!"
De La Hoya and Vargas. Great fight. And I didn't pay for it, unlike the Tyson Lewis fight, which cost $55 and was barely a contest.
The cover story of this month's Atlantic Monthly is about the growth of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere of the world, from Asia to Africa to Latin America. This is your father's Christianity, in a way. In the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in America's Protestant and Catholic community, a liberal uprising is increasingly critical of some of the Church's most traditional doctrines, including "mandatory celibacy among the clergy, intolerance of homosexuality, and the prohibition of women from the priesthood, not to mention a more generalized fear of sexuality." the story is much different below the equator. As author Philip Jenkins writes:
"The most successful Southern churches preach a deep personal faith, communal orthodoxy, mysticism, and puritanism, all founded on obedience to spiritual authority.... Whereas Americans imagine a Church freed from hierarchy, superstition, and dogma, Southerners look back to one filled with spiritual power and able to exorcise the demonic forces that cause sickness and poverty."
Jenkins argues that in all the recent fervor over the influence of radical Islam, we in the West are blind to this tectonic shift in the world's religious makeup. By 2050, at current growth rates, four out of five Christians will be Latino. Pentecostal Christians could number a billion, dwarfing the world's Buddhists and matching the number of Hindus in the world. Recent polls have detected this shift, even while focusing their attention on the size of the Islamic community. The Southern church is far, far more conservative than the Northern church. The progressive secular movement seizing the imagination of Americans is completely alien to most of the rest of the world.
I wasn't raised with any religion. I didn't have to attend Sunday school, and the few times I attended church was as a guest of another family or friends. So my knowledge of and intuitive understanding of the influence of religion and religious history is limited to what I've learned from more religious friends or relatives or from books or movies (some would argue the only things I've ever learned are from books and movies...no comment). But this movement could add to the growing divide between America and the rest of the world.
What I do know is that the conflict between the haves and the have-nots is one of the most explosive social reactions in human history, and to me it lies behind 9/11 as much as any reason offered to date. Still, a growing religious rift between a liberal Northern church and a more populous, fervent Southern church is worrisome. Even I know enough about history to know that differences in religion can lead to just as bloody a confrontation as a battle over land or oil. Jenkins notes that the primary difference between Northern Christians and Southern Christians is that those in the South are poor. That means they relate much more to healing and exorcism elements of the Bible. There's a whole interview with Jenkins posted here--fascinating reading.
By the way, among popular magazines in the U.S., The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and Harper's form a three-headed monster of American culture. I recommend them all, though the biggest problem in doing so is how to keep up with all that reading. I have a pile of back issues about a foot high, and it's starting to lean.
I'm a fairly agreeable guy, so I generally don't have to engage in many confrontations or arguments, and I rarely stir people up. That was kind of fun, though. I think I'll have to write a more opinionated weblog in the months ahead.
On a side note, The New Yorker heard me. David Denby reviews My Big Fat Greek Wedding in this week's issue. Maybe I'll read it to find out what the fuss is all about.
On the bookshelf, a similar wave of new hardcovers:
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Summerland by Michael Chabon
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
new unnamed novel by David Eggers
Lullaby by Chuck Pahlaniuk
The thing is, I can't bring myself to purchase any of them. So many people love to declare with price that they're reading the latest novel by [insert popular author] as a medal of courage, but I must confess that most long fiction bores and/or disappoints me. What's worse, hardcovers are expensive, heavy, and they take lots of space in your room and lots of time from your life.. So if any of you have read any of the above and have any recommendations, please leave a comment or send me a line. Or if there's another new work of fiction I've missed, send those my way as well. I find you can't really trust newspaper reviews; every new novel can find some glowing reviews for the dustjacket. Glowing reviews by other authors whose works I enjoy (if Tobias Wolff or Jonathan Franzen or someone like that recommends something, I'll usually pick it up) are a much better gauge of readability, if not quality.
My latest recommendation? 12:30am reruns of Sports Night on The Comedy Channel. Can't go wrong with some rapid fire dialogue courtesy of Sorkin after a long and brutal day at the office. This is The West Wing without the gravity--a failed experiment in which you can see all the familiar ingredients and the promise Sorkin realized with The West Wing. And if you purchase one of these kits highlighted in today's Slashdot and soup up your Tivo, you could have an entire season of this show taped in about a month, with the equivalent of 1190 hours of free disk space left.
The real story behind Idol is the return of Paula Abdul and the rise to fame of Simon Cowell. Which of us couldn't benefit from having Paula on one shoulder to boost us up ("I've got two words for you Eugene...phe...nomenal") and Simon on the other ("Umm, look, let's be honest...there are about 3 people in this room smarter and better looking than you are, and if America does its job, you'll be out of one soon").
Simon. Cheeky fellow. But he speaks the truth. He speaks the truth.
Addendum to my Fall TV recommendations. Purchase a TIVO, open it up, and stick in a humongous hard drive. Not hard to find instructions and kits for sale on the web. Or pay someone else to do it for you. Never miss another television show in your life. I have several full seasons of TV shows on my TIVO, and no idea when I'll ever watch any of it. But it feels good, like a chipmunk hoarding walnuts months before winter hits. The only thing the TIVO needs is the ability to tape AC-3 signals off of a satellite feed, or a DVD. Besides that, I can't complain.
I could configure Outlook to pull my personal e-mail into a separate account at work, but I like to keep my two worlds separate. You get home, thinking you'll get an hour to eat dinner, read the day's mail, and then sit on my sofa and drool for an hour before passing out. Then you open your e-mail and find, much to your dismay, ten work e-mail messages, some with the dreaded red exclamation point! Worlds are colliding!
Every now and then one of them gets a night off from their other half, so they look you up for something, and you spend the whole time listening to them discuss their fairly uninteresting relationship.
I give up on asking anyone in a relationship to do anything other than bring their mate out to other events with other couples. It's a lousy investment of time--they rarely come through. It's like giving the ball to Chris Webber with the clock running down and your team down by one. He'll either call a timeout or toss the ball to someone else. Sorry, too many sports references. Mmm, how about: it's like asking Winona Ryder not to date malnourished male lead singers.
I need an editor.
I'm offending many readers, and I'll receive a few well-written pleas of innocence, but the rest of you know who you are. This is one of those generalizations that you laugh off with your friends in the early twenties, and then suddenly you realize you're the last one laughing and everyone else is sitting there stone silent or looking off sheepishly (a scene which only happens in TV sitcoms, yes, but you get the point). Then they look at their watch, mutter something under their breath, and slink off to look at carpet or see My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
P.S.: Yes, some single people are dull, too, but that's because they're dull to begin with. The tragedy of the 1+1=0 couple is that usually they were actually charismatic before they hooked up. We need a name for this syndrome, and it should be the name of some dull couple.
P.P.S: Sorry, I take it all back, I love all my friends who are in relationships, or married, or have kids. It must be the long hours at the office talking. Sometimes I read some of my old entries and think, "What a santimonious ass." I need a mood indicator on my website, and right now it would be red--cantankerous and sarcastic.
Please please tell me about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I haven't seen it yet.
In addition to an editor, I think I need a therapist. A Dr. Melfi. It's like a high school counselor for wealthy people. I can't afford one. Sometimes in conversation I just feel like throwing in, "My therapist thinks I should..." It's just a great line to insert in conversation.
Yesterday, Sunday, was grey out. Today, as I left the office and walked out into the night, the rain was pouring down. Saturday may have been the last day of the summer. I think I'm sad about that. I'm not sure. I don't feel anything.
If they're blaming him for the deflation of their stock, I think they're pinning too much on the donkey. Anyone outside the company could see that the value being assigned to the so-called synergy between old and new media (yeah, we'll just take all these assets we have, like movies, magazines, and music, and just pump them through high-bandwidth pipes and make lots of money somehow) was inflated to absurd proportions.
I'd love to sit in on some of the senior management meetings at AOL/Time Warner. Steve Case, Ted Turner, Richard Parsons, Frank Caufield, John Malone, James Barksdale--big egos, big agendas, and big personalities.
Fall is my favorite season. I have happy childhood memories of the dry golden leaves dancing in the crisp air, giving off a rustling noise like cymbals to compliment the whistling of the wind. Memories of playing touch football with friends until the sun went down. Friday night high school football games and all the crazy emotions they stirred up. When I think Fall, I think of a cool, grey day outside, golden light inside the house with relatives visiting, pro football on TV, the smell of some meal always being prepared in the kitchen.
It's also the time when all my favorite TV shows return. This Fall promises a strong lineup. Here's what I'm going to be watching:
That would be must see TV.
The trailer for Comedian cracks me up. I love that guy who does the voice-overs for movie trailers. I wish I had his voice--it's kind of Robert Stack. I'd be such a hit at every party.
Anyone seasoned moviegoer knows that the line "I will find _____" will forever be associated with Daniel Day Lewis who uttered the line in Last of the Mohicans. It's supposed to be a serious moment in the film, but somehow that line got so much play in the trailer that audiences everywhere OD'd on the gravitas. I don't know a single movie buff who doesn't crack himself up from rehearsing, "Just stay alive. I will find you!"
I think the show is losing steam. This season was dull. As Keith Olbermann said, "Too much city, not enough sex." Or something like that. The plot structure is a bit tired.
A stretch of two weeks with little sleep, lots of stress, and no time on the bike has left me ragged. I can tell when I'm red-lining by the quality of my sleep. I meant to sleep in this morning as it was a Saturday, but despite rolling around in bed until 3 in the morning, I got up at 8:00 feeling tired and sleepy but unable to achieve REM. I hate this inability to sleep in on Saturday mornings. There must be some sort of remedy--maybe I need to do a long ride on Friday night.
I passed out on the sofa at noon and had a nightmare in which a friend and I were under attack by the U.S. army. We were hiding out in some house across the street from a gas station, out in the middle of nowhere, and an entire legion of tanks, helicopters, and soldiers were putting us under heavy fire. Fortunately, there was a gigantic, mounted machine gun (the kind you see on battleships, with a cockpit) and I was sitting in it returning fire, blowing helicopters out of the sky, shredding soldiers with gunfire like they were cardboard targets. Then I threw about four grenades across the street at the gas station and my friend and I sprinted into the house as the whole world blew up behind us. In the garage, we located a gold Camry with keys in the ignition. I told my friend (can't remember who it was) to get the car started and rushed back into the house to pick up some weapons for the road. We were fugitives now.
Up the stairs and into the bedroom where I begin throwing weapons into a duffel bag. Voices behind me. The door shatters inwards and a whole bunch of soldiers in riot gear rush in, jump me, and begin beating me with their feet and rifle butts. I wake up with my heart going double time.
It's one of those dreams which I knew immediately was about work in a way that only the dreamer can interpret in a way that's more than intuition. It's that direct channel to the subconscious.
The few times I save an evening or a few hours for myself, it feels like I'm coming up for air after a long time underwater. Big heaving gulps, blinded by sunlight, look around to get bearings, and then down below again. Hard to keep much of a social calendar when all the desirable hours are blocked off. Cancel an appointment with someone and my next open spot is two weeks later. Since I'm not a restaurant, that's nothing to be proud of.
Maybe I need to fly to Europe next year and purchase a pair of these.
Speaking of design, is there any lower quality product than the plastic CD jewel case? Just about one out of two CDs I receive in the mail arrives in a cracked jewel case. You would think after decades of study in the field of plastics that they could design a CD case that wouldn't crack if dropped on the ground. Music labels probably contract out for the lowest grade plastic available to maximize their already ridiculous profit margins on each CD sold. In a day and age when most people with computers have CD burners and can buy blank CD-Rs in bulk for next to nothing, the continued existence of $14.99 price points on new CDs is an affront to consumer intelligence.
Wow, Sampras and Agassi in the U.S. Open final once again! What could be more American. Should be awesome. Glad to see them put the spanking on the two young punks, Roddick and Hewitt.
I enjoy watching Sampras' game a bit more (longer, more classic strokes than Agassi) and will probably root for him because it looks like Agassi's got more years left in him. Sampras had an easier semifinal, so he should be fresher, and he's playing as well as he's played in over a year. When they're both on their games, as they were in the semis, it's always a great show. The best groundstrokes and return game in tennis versus the most effective serve and volleyer in the game
Hewitt is like Michael Chang on steroids--taller, hits harder, runs just a bit faster.
John Mcenroe and Mary Carillo are great color commentators. Too bad CBS has Dick Enberg. CBS throws him on every sport, from golf to tennis to football, and he knows little about any of them, except for what he's read or heard from others. He's like the Ted Danson of sports commentary. Somewhere in his past he did something good and unfortunately they keep getting chances for more work because of it. Danson had Cheers--who knows what Enberg's great accomplishment was. Throw Cliff Drysdale in to do play-by-play instead with Mac and Carillo and you'd have the dream team of tennis commentary.
Had the team over to watch Unzipped today. Great little documentary about a few months in the life of Isaac Mizrahi. We watched it on my old laserdisc version, and given that my laserdisc player is getting a bit creaky, I decided to check online to see if the movie was on DVD. I had checked a few months back and had only found a VHS copy. On Buena Vista's website they list an ISBN and UPC for a region 1 DVD for Unzipped, so I went to Amazon to check again.
In the DVD store, I punched in the string Unzipped, and up popped...this.
Oops.
Then I spent another half hour trying to track down the name of the song played at the start of the movie and at the beginning of the fashion show at the end of the movie. You'd think with the Internet it would be a cinch. Not so. The soundtrack isn't listed for sale anywhere. I guess there wasn't one. The one song that's listed as being a single from the film, Happy Sad by Pizzicato Five, isn't the song I was looking for. IMDb didn't have a soundtrack listing. Google didn't turn up anything.
So I actually had to stick the laserdisc back in the player, fast foward to the end credits, then pause when the song listings came up. I think I've found the song, but now I have to figure out who recorded it. The song is You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) but I can't tell if the version in the movie is the one by Sandra Bernhard (listed under singles on this discography) or this version by Byron Stingily available from Amazon.com. I've never heard anything by Byron Stingily, but I'm guessing it has to be that one since the product description describes him as having a "falsetto." No one would mistake Sandra Bernhard for having a falsetto, but then again, she's listed as the performer in the movie credits.
And Limewire doesn't list either version for download. Man, what's a brother supposed to do?
Mark Prior has been put on the DL for the rest of the year, and that's a good thing. It means his arm can get a rest early in his career, and Bruce Kimm won't do any more damage by leaving Prior out there for 120+ pitch outings.
Didn't realize that .bmp files, which most websites seem to use for their photos, don't show up in the Mac version of IE. I think I realized this once before, when browsing my own website from my Mac, but I always forget. Must be because sites don't want their pictures easily copied and used on other sites, but it's kind of a pain. When I save pictures on my Windows PC, many are in BMP format. If I don't bother converting them into JPGs then Mac browsers just see a bunch of empty spaces on my site.
What's more, my DVD player can take any video signal from my receiver and de-interlace it before feeding it to my TV as 480p. The TV has the ability to de-interlace as well, but my DVD player does a much better job of doing so. I could sit here and watch movies on it all day (which is pretty much what I've been doing most evenings this weekend).
Any day now I should get my receiver back with its upgraded DSP circuitry and support for higher resolution audio. Can't wait. It may be enough to warrant purchasing an SACD player. Some people buy a house and then decide what room they might use to put a home theater. If/when I start house-hunting, I'll be the first person to look for a house that will fit around my home theater, because the next major upgrade to my home theater is a perfectly symmetrical rectangular room with harder floors and walls with particular reflective qualities.
Yes, I know, I shouldn't derive so much pleasure from material goods, but the quest for audio/video perfection is no different for me than a runner's quest for the perfect race, or a photographer's yearning for that perfect shot. You're never done, and you're having fun the whole way through.
It's time to revive movie night. I have a schedule in mind already. And a format, adopted from Flicks at Stanford. Every movie night begins with a short, and then the main feature. And relevant food, if possible.
Tsai Ming Liang films also don't really have much action or even a soundtrack, which, along with the motionless camera shots, give the viewer a sense of quiet.
Two things catch my eye. The new disc brakes weigh only 557 grams in front. That's not much more than the XTR V-brakes at 484 grams. The new XTR disc brakes are reputed to be the best disc brakes on the market, with significantly more stopping power. This probably is the end of linear pull on MTB bikes. I'll need to upgrade!
Also, the shifters have taken a page from the road bike world and reduced shifting down to one lever. To move from one chainring to the other, you flick the brake lever up or down. Same for the rear derailleur. It's a pretty radical shift (pun intended) and will surely draw a lot of polarized opinion.
Other than that, there are the requisite weight savings almost across the board. Can't wait to test some of this stuff out.