I’ve upgraded to Movable Type 2.51. This will result in no visible changes. Huzzah!
Population: One
I have been appropriately punished for my hubris.
I’m thinking perhaps it was just a matter of getting the Boston Sports Guy out of town. He has nobly sacrificed himself to break all the jinxes. The aforementioned Billy Beane move is close to done.
And how about that Patriots game? Football is the cruellest sport. Each game has such mythic weight. It’s easy to watch the successes, like the Patriots of last year, and forget how brutal losing games can be. This afternoon’s game was a must-win; the Patriots could not expect to make the playoffs if they’d lost. Chicago’s playing for nothing but pride. It would hurt to see the Patriots kicked out of the playoffs by Oakland next week, but it would be so much worse if it’d come at the hands of the feeble Bears.
Almost happened. That’s cruel. Brady went a little further towards creating a legend. That’s glorious. Gotta love football.
The Celtics beat the Lakers, then won their fourth in a row. The Bruins are hot. The Red Sox are about to have a really good GM. Not a bad weekend.
Saturday morning, I went to the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown with my brother. Not bad, cool atmosphere. The bacon was a touch cold, always a minus. I wasn’t blown away by my omelette. Ben’s pancakes were great — I think it’s more of a sweet breakfast spot, and I’m kind of a savory guy. Good coffee.
This morning I hit the S&S Diner on the advice of many. Didn’t have to wait for a seat, yay! I had an excellent salmon hash and a solid cinnamon roll. Which came with butter. That’s decadence. I dunno if I’d make it a regular thing but the food was damned fine.
As I mentioned earlier, Billy Beane (Oakland’s GM) really made the case for using sabermetrics to better manage a baseball team. Oakland’s been very reluctant to let anyone else talk to him; as a low budget team, Beane’s their single best asset. Obviously, he’s exactly the kind of manager you’d want running a team that had Bill James as a consultant.
Oakland’s letting Boston talk to Beane. The news just gets better and better. (Thanks to off-wing opinion for the link.)
The UN Security Council unanimously approved the US-scribed resolution on Iraq. Yay; the UN works. “Only because we made ‘em!” Yes. Sometimes diplomacy requires convincing other countries to agree with you; expecting abject obedience is the attitude of a bully.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
The d20 Modern System Reference Document is live and online as of — now. That’s concurrent with the official release date. Nice speedy work on WotC’s part.
Summerland rules.
It absolutely, completely sings. I could sling around quotes all day, but suffice it to say that Chabon’s prose is elegantly clear, without unnecessary flourish or artifice. He’s got the knack of writing about the mythic without seeming pretentious or overwrought. People sound like people, even when they’re saying important things. “A baseball game is nothing but a great contraption to get you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer afternoon.” Yeah. I love the way he takes the sting out of the eloquence by deliberately dropping back into the vernacular with “get you to pay attention.” A lesser writer would have said “to force you to pay attention,” or used some other more grammatical construction.
On top of that, the structure of the book is beautiful. He’s said he was trying to do Susan Cooper for America, and I think he’s come pretty close. Baseball is the central metaphor, but it is not a book about baseball; I fell into the assumption that I was reading a book that would follow the usual sports tropes and was thus pleasantly flabbergasted at the climax.
I must also give Chabon credit for writing about the real American gods. Sorry, Neil. Gaiman’s characters claim that “This is a bad land for Gods,” but Chabon defuses such criticism and writes of The Tall Man with the Knife in His Boot and reminds us that yes. We do have our own myths. It is not necessary to paper the walls of America with faded gods of other lands.
Even his Coyote is pretty solid. He occupies the most malevolent corner of the Trickster continuum, but that’s OK. It’s good to be reminded that Coyote isn’t a benevolent god, just a god who mostly has good intentions.
I was probably fated to love this book from the moment Chabon casually mentioned a Hellboy T-shirt, catching the attention of my geek side, but everything else about Summerland was perfect too.
While it is probably true that France opposes war with Iraq due to oil, it is also true that the US has a financial motivation for invading Iraq. If the fact that France profits from the current situation leads us to speculate that such profit is their primary motivation, we ought to take equal note of the equivalent situation over on the US side.
Particularly if the division of wealth is already taking place.
Politicans can be so gutless.
“If we try to make defense, foreign policy the overriding issue we will lose, because the country is with the president on this issue,” [Representative Martin] Frost said. I’m gonna go out on a limb here: perhaps you should not be making policy decisions based on what will win elections, but rather on what you believe? Or what you said when you ran for office?