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Month: October 2004

Sultans of swat

October 21, 2004
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You get a shiver in the dark
It’s been raining in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything.

So here’s what I said last year at this time. Kinda sucks to use up all the best words early; but I burn with a fierce bright joy in this moment, realizing that I was right, so very right, simply off by a year in the one small detail that matters most of all.

I think they will win tomorrow. I think Pedro will find the hard core of anger at his center that he uses to pitch his very best games. I think Roger will falter in the final game of his career, as perverse payback for 1986. I think the heart of the Red Sox batting order — a heart which is, make no mistake, nine men large — has remembered how to bat. I think we’ll see a classic, and I think that when the dust clears the Red Sox will stand in the midst of the enemy, victorious.

But if the worst happens, I know that I will still be telling stories of this season decades from now. The year I came back to Boston, the Red Sox wrote a story to remember. I thank them.

What arrogance! To assume the story would only last a year. We were young then, and callow.

And a crowd of young boys they’re fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles

It’s odd. Somehow it seems as though the Yankees and the Red Sox should meet next year in the World Series. It feels wrong that this is impossible. The next few days, this coming week? I find myself incapable of understanding it. Eighteen years ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in London watching the BBC recap show. They’d go an hour, showing only the most important clips from the game. It was game six. There were twenty minutes left in the hour. I kept telling myself that the last ten minutes would be the celebration after the victory.

And Harry doesn’t mind if he doesn’t make the scene
He’s got a daytime job, he’s doing alright
He can play honky tonk just like anything
Saving it up for Friday night

I don’t know how to react to seeing the Red Sox in the World Series. I have no earthly idea. But I know how to celebrate what they’ve just done.

And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last just as the time bell rings
“Thank you, good night, now it’s time to go home,”
And he makes it fast with one more thing
“We are the Sultans —
“We are the Sultans of Swing.”

Dirty water

October 21, 2004
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I’m gonna tell you a story
I’m gonna tell you about my town
I’m gonna tell you a big bad story, baby
Aww, it’s all about my town

Yeah, down by the river
Down by the banks of the river Charles (aw, that’s what’s happenin’ baby)
That’s where you’ll find me
Along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves (aw, but they’re cool people)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you’re my home (oh, you’re the Number One place)
Frustrated women (I mean they’re frustrated)
Have to be in by twelve o’clock (oh, that’s a shame)
But I’m wishin’ and a-hopin, oh
That just once those doors weren’t locked (I like to save time for my baby to walk around)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you’re my home (oh, yeah)

Because I love that dirty water
Oh, oh, Boston, you’re my home (oh, yeah)

Well, I love that dirty water (I love it, baby)
I love that dirty water (I love Baw-stun)
I love that dirty water (Have you heard about the Strangler?)
I love that dirty water (I’m the man, I’m the man)
I love that dirty water (Owww!)
I love that dirty water (Come on, come on) [fade]

Killing blow

October 18, 2004
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Eric Raymond flips allll the way over into the cult of tradition with a resounding thud:

“A deadly genius is a talent so impressive that he can break and remake all the rules of the form, and seduce others into trying to emulate his disruptive brilliance — even when those followers lack the raw ability or grounding to make art in the new idiom the the genius has defined.”

He then goes on to explain that Picasso, Coltrane, Joyce, Schoenberg, and Brancusi killed their respective fields by being so brilliant. For bonus points, he posits that the problem was caused by the death of the patronage system. You see, once artists were permitted to do whatever they liked, some of them produced deadly work.

The former sentence is not an exaggeration. The exact quote: “Geniuses were not permitted to become deadly.” I.e., geniuses were not allowed to break and remake all the rules of the form. And, in Eric Raymond’s eyes, this was a good thing.

This obsession with safety over risk is really getting out of hand.

Cut and parry

October 18, 2004
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My random book pickup for the weekend was Colours in the Steel by K. J. Parker. It’s an elegant little book, sort of like Swordspoint without the manners aspect and a dose of Glen Cook to liven things up a bit. Bardas Loredan is a fencer-at-law, which is essentially a formalized duellist, who has to save the city of Perimadeia. There is a more or less unexplained system of magic, which isn’t fully understood even by the practitioners. There are horse-riding fantasy tribes. Not really a lot of novel newness.

But I liked Parker’s dry wit and I liked the way he unabashedly used the novel as a way to talk about the construction of siege equipment, not to mention metallurgy, which are clearly subjects he enjoys. It’s a fun book. It’s the first in a trilogy, so that’s either a plus or a minus depending on how you feel about such things. Me, I’m happy to have two more chunks of comfortable reading ahead of me.

Sand through fingers

October 17, 2004
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I have achieved very little of the Boston Fantastic Film Festival, to my regret: two weeks of extended brutal workload at work is to blame. I was late to Infernal Affairs on Friday, late enough so that I decided to recover instead of seeing the movie — I was up late Thursday thanks to Saw. and since I didn’t leave work until 11:30 PM on Wednesday I had no reserves. I skipped Appleseed and The Bottled Fool on Saturday in hopes that I’d have some margin left today. I may have been wrong.

But Five Children and It was fun. It was twee and Victorian, as the BBC warned, but in a way I enjoyed — it’s a children’s story, after all. And the kids were very good, particularly Jonathan Bailey, who played Cyril. Full marks. Eddie Izzard’s voice work was solid, marred only by a pedestrian puppet which looked little like the Psammead I knew and loved as a child:

The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s.

I suspect that the eyes were moved for the sake of easier dollmaking. But I cannot be sure. The story was updated for the sake of tension, and if Horace wasn’t such a good character I’d be deeply resentful of the addition of a malevolent cousin to the mix. Really, most of the details are unrecognizable — the original novel begins with a note of joy as the children find themselves in a house with no rules, which is exactly the opposite of the rules-heavy abode of the movie’s Uncle Albert. Still, there’s a Psammead, and there are the five children, and I was content.

Been there saw that

October 15, 2004
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Saw was passable but not all that and a bag of chips. The setup is brilliant: Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell wake up in a dingy bathroom, chained at opposite sides of the room. They have no idea what they’re doing there. And they soon discover that one of them will need to kill the other, or horrible things will happen to his family.

It’s tense as hell. Really good. But then the movie gives up the claustrophobia and tension by going into extended flashbacks that take place outside the room. By the time Danny Glover has shown himself to be an incredibly inept cop, I’d more or less given up on the whole thing.

The last five minutes come pretty close to redeeming the whole thing, though; the final plot twist is beautifully planned and elegantly executed. Still… a lot of wasted potential. The core bit, two men chained in a puzzle room, that’s great. The consistent exploration of people who watch rather than act — that was good. But it wasn’t worth breaking the tension repeatedly by letting us think about something other than Elwes and Whannell.

I gave it a 3 on the rating card (out of five) — 1 point for setup, 1 point for being a movie, and 1 point for the conclusion.

Filling your head

October 15, 2004
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Air America has arrived in Boston (1200 AM and 1430 AM), so like the liberal sheep I am I’ve been listening to it for the last few days. Conclusions: it’s exactly the same as right-wing talk radio, except the bias leans differently. This is probably what the Democratic Party needs; it’s not really what I want, but c’est la vie.

When I say exactly, by the by, I mean exactly — down to the ads, which are the same mix of adverts for herbal nostrums, local merchants, and political paraphernalia you get on right-wing talk radio. I suspect Air America will prove to be completely financially viable.

Marking the days

October 13, 2004
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I still have a lot of respect for Pat Tillman, and I think that Jake Plummer ought to be able to honor him by wearing a patch on his helmet for as long as he wants. Off Wing Opinion has more.

(I think this is a general principle — if Tom Brady wants to wear a patch honoring his grandmother, he ought to be able to do so — but one crack in the wall at a time.)