Outside Counsel

2012-02-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

Contraceptives. I cannot believe that access to contraceptives is a hot button issue in 2012. How did this happen? Griswald v. Connecticut was decided in 1964. How far back do you imagine the American Right wants to roll constitutional jurisprudence? And just who do they think they are appealing to with this anti-contraceptive drivel? I suppose there are some American Catholics who believe that birth control is a sin, but most of them are men, and nearly all of those men are priests. (According to this study 98% of Catholic women who have had sex have used birth control. I know it is not in the nature of Catholic clergy to shut the hell up, but sex is a particularly stupid thing for Catholic bishops to be on about. They spent that particular credibility coin a while back, and ought not to be complaining about the motes in other people's eyes, you know?

2012-02-08T14:58:00.001-05:00

I was already impressed with Justice Sonia Sotomayor but her appearance on Sesame Street ices it: Best Supreme Court Justice Ever.

2012-02-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

Good account of yesterday's Mr. Ed's race from CLA.

2012-02-03T16:22:00.000-05:00

A big congratulations to CLA, who just learned that she's been accepted into the Nurse Midwife program at Johns Hopkins.

2012-02-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

Excellent 24 Hour Comic. (Via Boing Boing.)

2012-01-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to mention it for some time now: Can we please have a moratorium on the use of the word 'surge'? I was tired of it when it was an anti-insurgency strategy used in reference to the Iraq War; and 'surging Santorum'finished it for me. It is time for a new word.

2012-01-29T20:02:00.013-05:00

To Gregory Porter at the Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz series at the Albright-Knox. Porter is a charming and skillful singer who fronted a cooking trio. Porter's voice was clear, his demeanor was sincere and charming, and his chops were undeniable-- he moved gracefully across his entire range with a sure-footed sense of rhythm that was sensational without seeming show-off y.

2012-01-28T17:14:00.001-05:00

Baby steps. I started by taking EGA's Strat out of its case, just to get used to the look of the thing. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a small amp. Today I think I got it in tune, maybe. I bought some picks. After next week I'll only be teaching one night a week, and I can look into lessons.....

2012-01-26T14:51:00.000-05:00

Naturally Luc Sante has been a Patti Smith fan longer than I have. Luckily, he writes about it

2012-01-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

My friend Dorothea Braemer has decided that seven years as Executive Director of Squeaky Wheel is enough, and is going back to making art full time. She has been amazing since she came to town, growing Squeaky into something that we could have barely dreamed of, and at the same time becoming a prominent voice for the arts in general.

2012-01-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

The new Dylan tribute that Amnesty International has released looks tempting-- but on the other hand, Sting, usually a deal-breaker for me. The Voice runs the numbers, and since I'm likely to just load the thing onto my iPod, I suppose the wheat is greater than the chaff.

2012-01-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

Predictions. I like Newt in Fla-- I have a hunch it'll act more like a Southern state and less like a Bizzaro World New York this go-round.

I like the Giants. They are a better rounded team.

I'll be under 27 minutes at Mr. Ed's. CLA and everyone else I know there will beat me.

2012-01-21T20:24:00.001-05:00

I was a doubter. CLA said that chia seeds worked as a kind of eye balm, and I thought that was just hippie jive. I was wrong, though-- turns out that putting chia seeds in your eyes before bed is far more efficacious than anything else I've tried. Other hippie things that I'm still unconvinced about include carob and hemp clothing.

2012-01-20T10:26:00.001-05:00

Charley Pierce has a post up today about attending a Romney rally in South Carolina.

I noticed her before Mitt Romney mentioned her name. I couldn't help it. It wasn't that she was so pretty, although she was a fine-looking woman. It was that she was so... Mitt.

*********

She was wearing black. She had on black boots, black stockings, a black sweater, and a short black skirt. She was baubled and bejeweled. She wore enormous earrings, which were the same color as her skin, which was the same color as her hair — it was as she were made out of gold. And although she was surrounded by other establishment Republicans — although there were nothing but establishment Republicans on hand for the Mitt Romney "event" in the parking lot of the Mitt Romney for President Office here, and although they helped me remember that "establishment Republican" is just a synonym for "country-club Republican" — she stood out, because she stood in such gilded opposition to the image that Mitt Romney was trying to project....

This vision of gilded Republicanism turned out to be Cindy Costa, a Republican National Committee member. On her website she has a little poll:

What parts of Obama's agenda should we spend the most energy opposing?:
His judicial nominations
His tax and economic policies
His social policies
All of the above

Every four years-- every Presidential election cycle-- we go through the same rituals, and those rites are reported the same way, every time. The Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries are mused over by the likes of George Will as being an odd method for selecting a nominee because they are not states that are particularly representative of the United States as a whole. South Carolina then comes in for the same sort of critique. I'm not sure I even know what a "typical" American state is supposed to be. I know it isn't New York, which is too bad. I'm pretty sure that whatever that mythical state looks like, it's not a place I'd care to live in, and that is distressing. I suspect that the hypothetical typical state is full of people like Ms. Costa, whose resume lists her qualifications as being married, having children and grandchildren, and being a born-again Christian. Because I am an effete East Coast liberal snob I'd like to know a little about her employment history, her educational background, and some other qualifications, but the people who live in Real America know better than me. I wonder how many of those Real Americans picked an answer on her poll that wasn't "All of the above". I wonder, but I'd rather not know the answer.

2012-01-16T14:31:00.000-05:00

Outside Counsel has just learned that Dick Judelson-- Dr. Jazz-- has died. Although the larger world knew him as a brilliant pediatrician, it was as the host of BeBop and Beyond that I knew him. It may have been the longest running jazz program in radio, and it was always exactly what public radio jazz programing ought to be: informative, intelligent, fun. When someone was coming to town, Dick would feature the artist. When the fancy took him he'd play back to back versions of the same song by different artists then dissect the differences. He always told you who besides the leader was on the date, what the label was, the year it was recorded. He provided context, in other words. More than that, he was an enthusiast, and he recognized enthusiasm in others. Man, I miss him already.

2012-01-13T15:32:00.000-05:00

A reading list for a Law in Literature course. Professor Cowen teaches at George Mason University.

2012-01-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Mittens sez,

"You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a President encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 per cent versus one percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the one per cent—you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it."

Well, first of all, if what he is counting on is for the 1% to carry him to victory in November, okay. I suppose it is possible that the American capacity for wishful thinking to be engaged by this sort of talk. After all, we are all middle class, right? Ask anyone. I like Matthew Yglesias' take on this:

"You often hear that for one reason or another the United States "can't afford" this or that. We "can't afford" to pay people Social Security benefits. We "can't afford" to build high-speed trains. We "can't afford" to give everyone early childhood education. But why can't we afford this stuff? Are we a poor country? No, we're not. We're one of the richest countries that's ever existed. Are we a poorer country than we used to be? No, we're not. But a very large share of the gains we've made over the past three decades have gone to a relatively small number of people. If the gains has been broadly shared, then the burden of paying for that basic infrastructure and public services would have to be very broadly shared. But the gains have been very concentrated, and so if we're going to afford that stuff a large share of the revenue has to come from the people who've gotten the money.
That's not envy, that's math."

The Occupy movement deserves a lot of credit for injecting the concept of the 1% into our public discourse. It is hilarious that Mittens and his ilk are trying to turn it around and suggest that greater economic equity is somehow class warfare, when the reality is that the concentration of wealth is what is actually grinding the American economy into dust. It is unfortunate that (a) most people are too stupid to get this, and believe that having to buy health insurance is Red Communism; and (2) that Barrack Obama may not be able to explain the fallacy in this argument to the electorate. It should be easy enough to understand: if all of the dough is in one place, more of the dough will accumulate there. If more people have more of the dough, they will spend it, and start businesses, and hire people and spread the dough around.

You're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house...right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?...Now wait...now listen...now listen to me. I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets hold of this Building and Loan there'll never be another decent house built in this town. He's already got charge of the bank. He's got the bus line. He's got the department stores. And now he's after us. Why? Well, it's very simple. Because we're cutting in on his business, that's why. And because he wants to keep you living in his slums and paying the kind of rent he decides. Joe, you lived in one of his houses, didn't you? Well, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what he charged you for that broken-down shack? Here, Ed. You know, you remember last year when things weren't going so well, and you couldn't make your payments. You didn't lose your house, did you? Do you think Potter would have let you keep it? Can't you understand what's happening here? Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying! And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's picking up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other.

2012-01-11T08:09:00.002-05:00

Lorrie Moore reviews Suzzy Roche's new novel. I think I would have to be in a very specific mood to read it, but I expect I will at some point.

2012-01-10T12:58:00.001-05:00

A lot of people like to complain about the Bowl Championship Series but for the most part I think they are complaining about the wrong thing. A true "national championship tournament" would, to my way of thinking be even worse for the sport because it be worse for the students. Under the existing system schools play a fixed schedule which includes games agains traditional rivals and games with schools that are resume builders and/or revenue enhancers. Adding four or eight or whatever games in a playoff style system might allow an Oklahoma State or a Boise the opportunity to prove itself against another team with a similar record but a lower national profile, but so what? What is certain under a playoff system is that the students who are playing will be a greater risk for injury, and will be away from class and campus even more than they are already. Big time college sports are already a sham-- I don't see how heightening the contradictions helps anyone.

The real problem with the current system is that it diminishes interest in college football at the exact moment when college football should be the most entertaining. The games leading up to the New Years Day matchups used to be enticing appetizers, and the New Years Bowl games were a welcome respite from an otherwise dreary holiday. For a brief moment hockey stepped up to fill this void, but naturally the NHL found a way to screw that up. This year the annual outdoor hockey match dropped the puck at 7 PM. Thanks for nothing, NHL. Where were you at 3:00 in the afternoon when I could have used you?

2012-01-05T09:56:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to the inaugural class of the Big Pink Hall of Fame:

Walter R. Brooks
Julia Child
Bring Crosby
Bob Dylan
Jonathan Safren Foyer
Ira Glass
Darline Gullia
Madelene Jankowski
Norton Juster
Russell and Lillian Hoban
Scott Oakley
They Might Be Giants

Further information can be found at the Big Pink HOF website, along with periodic updates and discussions on future nominations and proposed rule changes.

2011-12-31T08:01:00.003-05:00

The Outside Counsel Best of for 2011, in chronological order:

Charles Lloyd Quartet
Emily and Josh;
The gradual road towards the reform of judicial selection;
Mr. Horsepower(Seriously, I get a couple of visits a day from people looking for that boyd.)
The NYSBA's CPLR Committee;
LCA's turn in South Pacific;
CEPA's Visions of Greater Buffalo;
CLA's Commencement
Fruits;
BOC
Boilermaker!
The 90 Miler (I'm leaning closer to participating next year with each passing day.);
The political demise of Chris Collins.

2011-12-29T11:50:00.001-05:00

I saw Sam Rivers years ago, and I am glad; I wish I could see him again but that opportunity is now gone. I hadn't realized he was from Oklahoma, and when I learned it yesterday from his obit it struck me that quite a few important jazz musicians have their roots in the red clay of the panhandle state: Oscar Pettiford, Don Byas, Cecil McBee, Don Cherry, Chet Baker, Jay McShann....

2011-12-23T08:09:00.002-05:00

All discussions of rock and roll have to start with Chuck Berry, and he belongs in almost all discussions about 20th Century America.

2011-12-22T08:48:00.037-05:00

I've been thinking about this field of candidates for the Republican nomination, trying to recall a time when there was such an undefined group. Mittens can't crack 25%, and the rest of the pack seems to rise and fall in two week cycles. Once a candidate crests they seem to pretty much fall back permanently, and although not a single vote has been cast, and although the dynamic will surely change once the voting starts, this state of affairs seems very unusual to me. As close as I've been able to come to a similar race is the Democratic Presidential primary season of 1988. Remember that one? Let me run it down for you, in order of finish:

Michael Dukakis
Jesse Jackson
Al Gore
Dick Gephardt
Paul M. Simon
Gary Hart
Bruce Babbitt

In addition, Lyndon LaRouche, David Duke, James Traficant, and Douglas Applegate were out there, and I suppose I shouldn't pretend that they were that much more marginal than Babbitt-- it's just that Babbitt was my early favorite. In hindsight the major candidates are an interesting list, aren't they? This was Gary Hart version 2.0, and he was the initial front-runner. After Babbitt dropped out I threw my support behind Jesse, thinking that an African-American President with a history of social activism would be the most likely to address the issues of social and economic injustice that I believed were the chief problems in American society. This, of course, proves that I have always been exactly the kind of rube that doubles down at three card monte, but I'm laying it out there in the spirit of full disclosure. I liked Paul Simon, too. This was the Illinois Paul Simon, the one with the big ears and the bow ties, not the guy who wrote "Feelin' Groovy". I wasn't a big Dick Gephardt fan-- his anti-trade posture impressed me as wrong-headed. This was Al Gore version 1.0-- Ed Koch endorsed him, but Gore was still evolving, and I found his stand on reproductive freedom unacceptable. Then and now that will always be a deal-breaker for me. I had problems with Tipper's anti-Rock and Roll beliefs as well.

The cat that ultimately rolled up the nomination was, of course, Dukakis, and he essentially did it by becoming everyone's second choice. Hart bailed early, Iowa went Gephardt, Simon, Dukakis, and New Hampshire went Dukakis, Gephardt, Simon. In the Super Tuesday races, Dukakis won six primaries, Gore five, Jackson five and Gephardt one, with Gore and Jackson splitting the southern states. The next week, Simon won Illinois. Essentially they followed form, with the southernerssplitting their support. That was basically it for Gephardt-- Jesse stayed in to the end, and so did Gore. Nobody ever used the words "Dukakis" and "juggernaut" in the same sentence: he was the beneficiary of timing, and maybe that's what will happen for Romney too. We aren't hearing much about New Hampshire, but that's Mittens' firewall, and he should be able to hang on past South Carolina. After than it becomes a question of who an acceptable second choice might be, and I am really not seeing one likely to emerge, although Newt might yet. I suppose the real difference between 1988 and 2012 is that Hart was sunk by a fling, and Newt will endure notwithstanding his ~~personal life~~ patriotism. The other difference is that all of the prospective Democrats were intelligent, serious people, and none of these Republicans can make that claim, but you run the campaign with the candidates you've got, not the candidates you wish you had.

Another possibility is that the front runner situation in 2011 is more volatile than it was in 1988, and that Mittens has been and will be everybody's second choice all along. This makes a certain kind of sense, and the Romney/Dukakis comparison is not inapt once we get past things like ideological consistency.

2011-12-20T21:59:00.003-05:00

The recent death of Russell Hoban, combined with our belated discovery of Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas is turning the Hobans from a dark horse into serious first ballot contenders.

2011-12-20T12:08:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about what I want to say about what to say about Vaclav Havel. How about this: we hear a lot of talk about American Exceptionalism, but it is hard to imagine the United States producing a man like Havel, let alone making him President. I'll know we are really special when that happens.

Not surprisingly, Pierce gets him right:

He was always the most interesting of them, those Eastern European patriots who helped change the world in the late 1980's. A poet, a playwright, a Washington in a leather jacket and jeans, he was under surveillance by the secret police for 20 goddamn years. Upon being elected president of a free Czechoslovakia, he defined what that meant by comparing it to the deadening regime that had been settled upon the country for the previous 45 years:
"We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another," he said. "We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other."
That applies to allegedly functioning old democracies as well as brand-new ones, by the way.
He resigned when it became plain that Czechoslovakia would become two nations, and then came back as president of the Czech Republic. He thought even old Communists had civil liberties, too. He loved the Beatles.
In his honor, may I say, as loudly as I can:

Ronald Reagan Did Not Win The Cold War."

2011-12-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

Usually Appellate Division decisions about inflammatory summations provide little illumination. They don't quote the arguments that were supposedly inflammatory as a rule, and therefore don't really stand for more than the proposition that you shouldn't say inflammatory things. Chappotin v. City of New York is different. Now we know that it is okay to say, "(1) "this is a man who has played the system going on 15 years"; and (2) "here’s someone who doesn’t have a concern about getting medical care … he doesn’t have a concern about working". Unfortunately the plaintiff didn't preserve his record properly, so we don't know if it's okay to say, "(3) "this is someone who understands how to make his way in the world... he has come here with a story about falling here"; or, (4) "I submit to you that the truth that you heard from the plaintiff stopped by the time he was picked up on the corner of 112th Street and Third Avenue"; or, (5) "everything from that time forward has been designed to create and advance a lawsuit"; or (6) "money is a huge motivator... now, Lord knows it’s true, that he is looking for my money... and I don’t want to give it... and you shouldn’t want to give it when you really evaluate how this case has come to you"; or, (6)"this is a classic case... you have been lied to by the plaintiff... there is no nice way to say this... you have been lied to by the plaintiff and his goal is to obtain money." Too bad. I would like to know if I could say those sort of things.

2011-12-14T16:15:00.002-05:00

In the US more often than not everything comes down to race. There are people who will disagree, and will say that it's all about economics one way or another, but I say that when you look at how we live and what has defined our history, our music, our literature, our cuisine-- you name it-- race is the underlying theme. From 1492 to 1619 and beyond; from the 3/5ths Rule to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and today.

The experience of racism looks different in Western Europe, and I suppose this comes down to the fact that what we think of as racial minorities in Europe were, until fairly recently, a much smaller percentage of the overall population, therefore more infrequently encountered; and, perhaps in part owning to the fact that racial minorities in Western Europe tended to be from the more affluent classes in the colonial outposts where they originated. For sure a lot of the history of Europe from the Crusades on is good evidence that local minority groups were treated every bit as brutally as our native population, or the persons of African extraction who were forced to come here. It is certain that I am over-simplifying as well. There's really never been a great time to be Romani, or a Serb, or Jewish or Pavee in Europe. Still, when you speak with Europeans one of the things that consistently strikes them about life in the US is the persistence of racial discrimination here, a phenomenon that they don't seem to see at home.

Here's the thing though-- it's there. I was aware of Zwarte Piet, Santa's assistant in Dutch tradition, but I hadn't realized that people get beaten and pepper-sprayed for objecting to this racial caricature. The Nederlands have an ugly recent history with this sort of thing which makes me sad. As imperialists go, I'd always thought the Dutch were a little better than that.

2011-12-09T17:07:00.002-05:00

If I'd won the Nobel Prize this year, I'd bring a suitcase full of butter to Oslo.

2011-12-07T12:04:00.001-05:00

What to make of this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees? Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, the Small Faces/Faces, Donovan and Laura Nyro; Freddie King as an Early Influence; Don Kirshner and producers Cosimo Matassa, Tom Dowd and Glyn Johns. It seems to me that G'n'R is out of its league, likewise the Peppers. I'll grant you the Beasties, and I see the argument for Donovan, although he wouldn't be on my ballot. It seems to me that the Small Faces and the Faces were sufficiently different outfits, in style and in substance, that they each deserve their own entry. I'm fine with Kirshner and the other producers, and although it seems to me that including Freddy King is sort of the equivalent of Mormon ancestor baptism, I'm okay with his induction too.

2011-12-01T09:43:00.001-05:00

And speaking of baseball, from a 2006 interview conducted by Jonathan Lethem, Bob Dylan answers the question that's been on everybody's minds: So what’s Bob Dylan’s favorite baseball team, anyway? "The problem with baseball teams is all the players get traded, and what your favorite team used to be-- a couple of guys you really liked on the team, they’re not on the team now-- and you can’t possibly make that team your favorite team. It’s like your favorite uniform. I mean...yeah ..I like Detroit. Though I like Ozzie [Guillen] as a manager. And I don’t know how anybody can’t like Derek [Jeter]. I’d rather have him on my team than anybody."

2011-11-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

This year's Baseball HOF nominees, new guys in bold: Jeff Bagwell, Jeromy Burnitz, Vinny Castilla, Juan Gonzalez, Brian Jordan, Barry Larkin, Javy Lopez, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Bill Mueller, Terry Mulholland, Dale Murphy, Phil Nevin, Rafael Palmeiro, Brad Radke, Tim Raines, Tim Salmon, Ruben Sierra, Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Bernie Williams, Tony Womack, Eric Young.

Wow. Javy Lopez. Haven't heard that name in a while.

2011-11-28T20:20:00.001-05:00

When CLA was a senior in high school I realized that my opportunities to watch her play soccer-- which was a lovely thing to behold-- were drawing to an end. I felt a bit like that this weekend, the first of four times that we'll take LCA back to school after Thanksgiving. So while I am considering the things that I am thankful for I want to be sure to remember to be thankful for realizing that I want to be aware of these moments.

2011-11-23T09:21:00.000-05:00

Moogy Klingman,and Paul Motian Rest in Peace.

2011-11-21T08:10:00.007-05:00

New York Magazine is running a point/counterpoint set of articles about the Republican and Democratic parties. The Republican piece is called "When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?" and it seemed to me that this is a worthwhile question which deserves a serious answer. Before I clicked on it I wrote my answer down on a scrap of paper so that nobody could accuse me of cheating: "Shortly after the 1960 Presidential election." Then I clicked. You can imagine my disappointment when I saw the byline on the piece: David Frum? Seriously? Mr. Frum tells us, "When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions --crime, inflation, the Cold War --right," and there we have the nub of it. In fact, in the late seventies and early eighties the Republican Party embarked upon a disastrous series of policies on all of those things. It took eight years of Bill Clinton to start fixing the mess that Reagan and Bush left behind, and it was only the fact that the United States had then and has today resources unequaled by any other nation in either history or the world that made it possible to emerge from those dark days. First chance they got the Republican party plunged us back into the disaster that Reagan's puppeteers had engineered, and now David Frum has been kind enough to take a moment away from cocktail hour with his friend the giant rabbit to tell us about what our national priorities should look like. Here's a tip for you David: don't smoke whatever that is in bed.

2011-11-17T10:51:00.002-05:00

I've just learned that William J. Edgar, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Geneseo has died. Professor Edgar's classes were among the highlights of my time at Geneseo, and during her time there CLA was admitted into the Honors Program that he created. (She also took Logic with his wife.) When she was admitted I wrote to him to tell him what an influence he'd been for me, and how pleased I was that the connection had endured for a second generation. The fashion at Geneseo during my time was to have these advanced monstrous seminars, taught by two or more faculty members. The idea was that you'd read a ton, and write a short paper every week, with a longer, more comprehensive paper two or three or four times over the semester. I took one like that with Ken Deutsch, (PoliSci) Bill Edgar (Philosopy) and Bill Martin (Economics) that amounted to a survey of 20th Century political philosophy and was one of the peak intellectual experiences of my life.

2011-11-17T08:09:00.007-05:00

Although it appears that the mayors of a number of cities got together and decided that it was time to evict the Occupy protesters, in Buffalo our Mayor has decided (for now, anyway) to let them sit tight. He may be thinking that the winter weather will do the job for him, but meanwhile, next Thursday 13,200 Turkey Trot runners are going to go past Niagara Square and the McKinley Monument where our Occupy people are encamped. It will be interesting to see....

2011-11-16T08:10:00.026-05:00

One of the things that frustrates me about the pending sale of WBFO to WNED is that I believe that both current and prospective WBFO management underestimate the extent to which an audience exists for FM radio music programing. To be sure, I mostly listen to satellite radio in the car at this point, but that's mere anecdote. The EVP of Katz Media Group, a Clear Channel company, thinks different:

There is no direct competition to AM/FM radio for share of consumer media usage (nothing else has the ability to broadcast in geographically-specific areas with primarily locally-geared content and primarily live personalities, and, based on industry studies and Arbitron (ARB) ratings, nothing has had much, if any, impact on that usage).

To be sure, Clear Channel is part of the problem with land-based radio, but they know what they are talking about. She continues: "With radio, as with any medium, it has always been and always will be about content. We are entertainers. Our content is local, personal and perishable – nearly all its usage is live, in real time." And that is the nub of it. At the WNED meeting held last month I raised Mark Scott's remarkable performance during the 2000 Thanksgiving week blizzard as evidence of the importance of WBFO remaining fully staffed; I believe the same argument applies to WBFO's cultural programing. When asked what land-based radio has done wrong in the last ten years Ms. Garber was blunt: "Consolidated hundreds of stations, went public and bowed to investor pressure by cutting spending on live personalities and local programming, thinking it would generate more profit. Reacted to PPM ratings by making DJs talk less (and thereby relate less to listeners). Not figure out how to make advertisers perceive radio as being as sexy as anything new that is on the internet." We are about to see public radio in Buffalo repeat those mistakes.

2011-11-15T12:37:00.002-05:00

Turkey Trot registration closed.

2011-11-15T09:35:00.001-05:00

I am pretty much indifferent to the NBA, but the lockout story is interesting. The players have moved to decertify the union, and will be bringing an antitrust action (I'm guessing in the Southern District of New York). I'm even less of an antitrust lawyer than I am an NBA fan, but it seems to me that the other sports leagues out there might want to get with the NBA owners and persuade them to find a way to compromise this. With the possible exception of baseball, which has the advantage of a Supreme Court decision directly on point, pretty much all sports leagues are vulnerable to antitrust claims. Hell, the NFL lost when the USFL sued, resulting in a $1 verdict that was automatically trebled. This is not a path the NBA should want to tread, and the NFL and the NHL should be screaming.

2011-11-12T12:42:00.001-05:00

Some thoughts on Penn State and Joe Paterno. First of all, I hope that if I witnessed a sexual assault in progress that I'd do something to stop it, and call the cops. Mike McQueary apparently did neither of these things, and instead told his father what he'd seen and asked for advice. I guarantee that had I been in his position my father would have asked, "What did you do to stop it?" and "Are the police on the way?" He would not have told me to tell Joe Paterno about it.

Second, people seem to be confused about what this story is actually about. It is only tangentially a story about college sports-- what it really is about is the way that colleges handle incidences of sexual assault. Notwithstanding the fact that sexual assault is a criminal matter the default response on campus is to handle these things internally. The Penn State situation is unusual only in that the victims were not members of the campus community, but were instead brought onto campus by the assailant. Given the culture-- and the actual sexual assault policies of every school we've sued over the years-- it is hardly surprising that everyone who was made aware of the situation passed the matter up the administrative chain.

Third, there appears to be some backlash suggesting that Paterno is being scapegoated. In view of the fact that he made the wrong choice at each step of this genuine crisis, I can't agree. If he didn't want to be fired the classy thing to have done would have been to have resigned. Months ago. It is incredible to me that someone nearly universally regarded as a moral avatar could have been so morally tone deaf, particularly with the example of the crisis in his own religion before him as an example.

2011-11-08T10:21:00.001-05:00

Per Charley Pierce: "By any conventional measure, and entirely through their own fault, the Republicans have produced a field of candidates so utterly comical, so completely devoid of conventional political merit, that the field itself is a strong evidence for the elimination of the Republican party."

When Obama was elected four years ago it seemed to me that the Republican party was on the verge of irrelevance, a regional force with declining influence. Of course I was wrong: I'd failed to reckon with the power of anger, and the generally fearful nature of the American electorate, and its plain old stupidity as well. The Republican Party isn't going away. Too bad. Fortunately, its continued existence provides Peirce with an opportunity to fulminate exquisitely about things that matter. Is he the best writer on politics working today? Well, there is Matt Taibbi to consider.

2011-11-08T08:44:00.001-05:00

Number 66 at my polling place at 8:30. Not a big crowd.

2011-11-07T11:46:00.001-05:00

To Lucinda Williams at the Town Ballroom last night, the first time we've seen her live. That's somewhat surprising when I think about it-- my brother introduced me to her work long ago. I suppose part of it may be that for a while the only way to see her was in larger venues, which I tend to disfavor, but this was perfect. She was backed by a crackerjack trio, which sweetened even her more lachrymose material. My, my, as beautiful as I find her work, I think A captured it well when she turned to me at about mid-set and said, "Now for some sad songs." You can't be a Lucinda Williams follower without following her personal life-- it is all right there, right out in front. Some bad boyfriends died, she was mad and brokenhearted about some others, and even people that she liked but didn't date seem to come to unfortunate ends. At one point she announced that she was going to do a Dylan number, and I thought, "This will be excellent." It was, but seriously, is there a more lugubrious Dylan song than "Trying to Get to Heaven"? ("Knocking on Heaven's Door", maybe?) It is a strange thing to watch her adoring audience mouthing the words to these raw songs about painful heartbreak, even moreso because we all are given to understand that she is in a good place right now, happily married to her manager, a fellow named Tom Overby. Unless I am mistaken Mr. Overby was very much in evidence at this performance, a tall, thin man in a suit and tie who helped her with changing guitars, and brought out cups of water, and turned the pages on her music stand. His solicitude was touching-- when you listen to Lucinda Williams you always want the best for her; and in a way it made her seem even more vulnerable. She's a tougher looking chick in person than I'd have guessed-- she kinda looked like she'd kick your ass if you looked at her funny in a bar, in jeans, a leather vest, and a belt with a Harley buckle. On the other hand she seemed to be moving stiffly, leading A to guess that she might have been having back problems. In any event, she turned in a terrific and endearing set, good as I'd expected.

2011-11-04T11:54:00.000-04:00

I find that I have not been particularly critical of Erie County Executive Chris Collins in these pages, (although I was probably critical enough, in some sense). Please allow me to rectify this omission: Chris Collins has been exactly the sort of small-minded creep he promised to be when he ran for the job, and now that he has had four years to prove it only two sorts of people should consider voting for him. Those would be people who are, like Collins, so rich that they are completely disconnected from reality; or people, like Collins, who are narrow-minded bullies who believe that narrow-minded bullying is a valid philosophy of government.

Here are some highlights: Collins fought an expensive lawsuit against the Department of Justice over conditions in the Holding Center, then caved. This meant that outside counsel-- coincidentally, a firm that had paid big into his campaign-- got paid nicely, and that the resources of the County Attorney's office were expended in a pointless direction, all in a losing cause. Nobody wins a lawsuit like that, but Collins thought that defending the deplorable conditions in the jail was a better use of taxpayer money than fixing those conditions. Collins wants to close libraries, and defied the County Legislature on arts funding after dismantling a non-partisan arts funding mechanism which had worked effectively for years. The arts organizations he has deigned to fund are arts organizations that affluent white people like. I like the Albright-Knox and the Philharmonic too, but concentrating support for the arts in organizations like that is a pretty plain signal. He rode into office promising that Six Sigma principles would make county government more efficient and cost effective. Please let me know if you have notices any difference, because I have not. He has politicized everything he touches, and although I suppose that's pretty much par for the course it is strange to see it in action. It bears mentioning that when he makes an appointment he typically asks the legislature to pay his appointees more than the designated pay grade called for by county law. He has done this on the grounds that those appointees could be making more in the private sector, and that because of their expertise they are the persons best suited to run their agencies, notwithstanding the fact that these are among the people who advised him on, inter alia, the Holding Center lawsuit. He may not be as crude and sexist as Carl Paladino, but he is certainly crude and sexist. He has managed to run a surplus, but he has done this by closing clinics and day care centers, and other services. He favors cutting even more, but in a way that will push the costs of those services down to the towns and cities-- that's not cutting taxes, that's moving the tiles on the board, and doing so in a way that disproportionately favors affluent communities.

He's a bad guy, is what I'm saying. This Tuesday we have a chance to stand up to a bully, and I am looking forward to it, but not just because it is a chance to vote against someone so despicable. In his time as Comptroller Mark Poloncarz has demonstrated time and again that he is an honest, hard working guy who appears to be, in almost every respect, the anti-Collins. It will be a pleasure to vote for him.

2011-11-01T12:21:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of the holiday we watched a vampire movie last night, Tomas Alfredson's 2008 Let the Right One In. Vampires are pretty much always in vogue, and there's lots more vampire scholarship out there than I'd ever care to wade through, but this movie impressed me as rather unusual. The link between sex and death is central to the vampire myth, as is the contrast between innocence and experience, but in this movie we come to understand the "victim" in a more complicated way than I think I've seen in this genre.

2011-11-01T08:03:00.003-04:00

The last Cardinals manager before Tony La Russa was Joe Torre.

2011-10-31T09:14:00.000-04:00

To Houston Person yesterday at Bruce Eaton's Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz series at the Albright-Knox, an indisputably authentic afternoon of straight-ahead tenor work. Person had been through town last summer at the Pine Grill Reunion but we were out of town and missed him. Looking around the room I'd say that the audiences for the two performances were probably pretty distinct. It would be interesting to compare set lists: Person has a substantial book of standards that probably come as easy to him as breathing, but yesterday's was marred for me, a bit, by two numbers. I never need to hear "The Way We Were" or "Sunny", but I will concede that both were salvaged by some nice piano work. Funny to realize that Person, who is indeed a venerable artist, cut his first side as a leader in 1966. What that tells us, of course, is that 1966 is longer ago than we think of it, but also that traditions in jazz follow their own tributaries. You could listen to Houston Person and think that Sonny Rollins never happened. It's not a knock-- he is just working a different branch of the jazz stream. It's cool to look around that auditorium and realize that everyone there is nodding and tapping in time, and it is even cooler when you see that the artist realizes that he is getting through that way.

2011-10-28T15:51:00.000-04:00

Best Statistics question ever.

2011-10-25T13:17:00.000-04:00

The final nominees:

Betty Smith
Dodie Smith
They Might Be Giants
Sarah Vowell
Joss Whedon

Further discussion will take place at the Big Pink HOF site.

2011-10-24T11:56:00.000-04:00

The excitement mounts as I take the podium to announce today's nominees to the Big Pink HOF:

Russell and Lillian Hoban
Madelene Jankowski
Norton Juster
C.S. Lewis
Scott Oakley
Keith Richards
Ruth Reichel

2011-10-23T11:17:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to today's seven nominees to the Big Pink HOF:

Carol Christ
Bob Dylan
Ella Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jonathan Safran Foer
Ira Glass
Darlene Gullia
Dashiell Hammett

2011-10-22T13:33:00.001-04:00

Nominations for what is provisionally being called the Big Pink Hall of Fame have all been received and are now closed. In order to heighten the excitement we will release seven names a day, here and at the **NEW** Big Pink HOF website.

As sharp-eyed readers will surmise, there was nomination overlap, which is why each elector submitted seven names. The first seven are:

L. Frank Baum
Joel Becktell
The Beatles
Chuck Berry
Walter R. Brooks
Julia Child
Bing Crosby
Miles Davis

2011-10-21T11:41:00.001-04:00

Over dinner last night (spaghetti squash with apples and sausage, very nice) we decided to put the notion of a family Hall of Fame into action, and devised some rules. For the first class each member of the Big Pink household has been invited to submit up to five names. Nominations are anonymous. In the event of duplicate submissions the electors will be invited to each submit two additional candidates, for a total of seven each. All nominees are to be real people-- no fictional characters. The nominees may be public figures, or they may be private people who are known to us and are deemed sufficiently influential to merit inclusion. Collective candidates are permitted-- if a nominee collaborated with others, as with, for example, a band or, or a sports team, or an author/illustrator team, that collective will be counted as a single nomination.

The names submitted will be assembled on a single, alphabetized ballot. The formal vote shall take place over dinner on Boxing Day. Australian Rules shall apply to voting. Candidates who do not receive at least 2 votes shall be ineligible for future consideration; Candidates must receive at least 75% of the votes cast to be inducted. Electors may vote for all, none, or as many candidates that appear on the ballot as they so choose.

I'll post the names of the nominees when they are all in. Debate, horse trading and cajolery are encouraged, either in the Comments here, or by email.

2011-10-20T08:09:00.001-04:00

I'm mad at baseball, which is forcing me to choose between St. Louis and Texas. After due deliberation I'm going with the Cards but I'm not happy about it.

2011-10-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Chuck Berry's birthday, and I allowed it to pass without comment. Happy 85th Chuck! There are times when I question whether America has been worth it all, but then I remember cats like you. (There must be something about mid-October-- two days ago marked the 50th anniversaty of first meeting of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.)

Last night, returning home from David Sedaris we were talking about who might be considered for our family's private Hall of Fame. Sedaris would be included, as would Bob Dylan, Wes Anderson, Norton Juster, Edward Eager, and Ira Glass. Chuck is on the list, of course. Miles, Monk. We got off track when it got to religious figures. I don't want any popes, but CLA says JPII goes on the list. I don't want any clerics at all, but A. wants this incarnation of the Dalai Lama. (If you have one Dalai Lama, don't you have to have them all?)

Outside Counsel has long maintained a list of Patron Saints, but although there is overlap the two are not co-extensive. Justice Holmes, Ambrose Bierce, and Robert Christgau are unlikely to make the larger family list. Neither will Murray Kempton or, sadly, Norman Mailer.

2011-10-19T08:07:00.000-04:00

I love this part of the NFL season. Every week is a series of questions, and the questions get more interesting as the data accumulates. Right now the question for everyone amounts to, "Are we moving towards the mean?" The Bills were a surprise, but now everybody is 4-2, and we are left to wonder, did they get to 4-2 by being good, or by beating up on lousy teams?

Oakland looks legit-- they are 4-2 also, with wins against the Jets, Denver, Houston and Cleveland. You can't really say that any of those are high octane opponents, and one of their losses was to New England.

Kansas City is 3-2. The two wins came against the Vikings and the Colts. The Chiefs have lost to two legit teams, the Lions and the Bolts. This is the sort of team good teams are supposed to beat, even though we didn't realize it on opening day.

I thought that was the kind of team the Bengals were, but they are 4-2 as well. I'd say the win against the Bills is their most impressive credential to date.

The New England win speaks for itself.

The Eagles win was nice, but not unexpected. They were winless coming in, they are 2-4 now, and they look like they are in complete disarray.

The Giants are 4-2. They are an ugly 4-2, having beaten the Rams, the Eagles and Arizona in addition to the Bills.

Going just on who's beaten who I'd have to say that the Bills are a better 4-2 than most, but they need to start winning on the road, and they need to learn how to close. The bye comes at a good time, and Washington comes after that, followed by a trip to visit the Jets. Good teams beat the 'Skins and the Jets. Teams that have plans for the post season load up for games like that. Who are the Bills? For the first time in a long time it's an interesting question.

2011-10-18T08:09:00.001-04:00

A word to the wise: mail-in registration for the Turkey Trot closes October 31, on-line registration closes on November 19th, and the race is capped at 12,500. CLA and I are signed up. You should be too.

2011-10-17T08:09:00.004-04:00

For some reason I've been watching John Carpenter movies lately. I was never interested in his work before, and as a general rule avoid the horror genre-- it, uh, lacks subtlety as a rule, and seems like a sort of Grand Guignol gross-out spectacle to make rather obvious social points. Carpenter, however, is better than that, or at least truer to the tradition, and is also a remarkably solid technical filmmaker. Over the weekend, while A and CLA were out at a polka party I watched "They Live" and found myself marveling over how well it fits into our Occupy Wall Street moment. Check out Jonathan Lethem's thoughts on it, or better yet watch it. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, rocking the most amazing mullet I have ever seen, discovers that LA has been taken over by a race of aliens who have numbed the human population into a state of passivity through the use of subliminal images. The gimmick-- the MacGuffin, if you will, is that the true appearance of the aliens and the world is revealed when Piper puts on a pair of special sunglasses. The shades, called "Hoffman lenses" turn the world into a black-and-white tableaux, where billboards advertising Caribbean vacations are revealed to actually say "OBEY", and currency bears the words, "THIS IS YOUR GOD". Piper is an unemployed worker who has come to town seeking work; he finds refuge in a tent city that looks like the tent cities OWS protesters are setting up all over the country. I love the idea of BW revealing the truth-- it is sort of the cinematic version of blank verse vs. prose. Magic spectacles also have an esteemed place in genre fiction-- the green-tinted glasses that the Wizard requires everyone entering Oz to wear, Mrs. Who's glasses in "A Wrinkle in Time"....

One of the things that is notable about the movie is that it keeps setting up cliched moments that turn out differently than we expect them to. Surprise is a horror staple, but Carpenter goes it one better-- the movie is frightening, not startling. It keeps us off balance by avoiding genre cliches. Carpenter doesn't avoid cliche altogether-- there is a long fight scene (apparently he claims it is the longest in movie history) which seems to be there as much to take advantage of Piper's principle calling as anything else.

It is an effective piece of work, a Reagan-era bit of social commentary disguised as pop culture, and actually more effective as commentary today than it ever was.

2011-10-12T12:46:00.000-04:00

Per Joe Posnanski:

[A]fter every victory, the Chicago Cubs raise a W flag to commemorate the win. This tradition began so that people passing by on the El train would know that the Cubbies had won.

What you may not know -- what I didn't know, sadly, until Cubs announcer Len Kasper filled me in -- is that the Cubs actually raise an L flag to commemorate losses. Every loss. They do this for the same sensible reason, to let people on the trains know the Cubs lost.

I think that is just terrific.

2011-10-11T10:34:00.002-04:00

If The Avengers is as good as this trailer it'll be pretty great.

2011-10-08T08:01:00.007-04:00

Jonathan Lethem on Norman Mailer.

"Challenged once by a friend to name a single immortal literary character from postwar fiction — someone to rival Sherlock Holmes or Madame Bovary in terms of bleed-through to popular consciousness — I blurted out “Norman Mailer!” I was halfway serious. Mailer, running hard against his limits at inventing a new form of novel as large as his ambition or claims, invented, by means of Advertisements for Myself and the third-person narrator of his journalistic books, by his television appearances, wife-stabbing, and so forth, the character of the public Mailer instead — and triumphed."

Indeed.

2011-10-07T11:07:00.000-04:00

Vegas odds are like Vegas point spreads-- neither has much to do with the actual strengths and weaknesses of a team, they just track where the money is going. I suppose there is some validity to the notion of the wisdom of crowds in this, but by the same token we are talking about people who are betting against the house on sporting events. The technical term for such folk is "chumps", or sometimes "marks". Even so, heading into this weekend's exciting NFL action it is interesting to note that the Vegas lines on who will win the Super Bowl have shifted substantially since the season opened. For example, the Bills opened at 200-1 and are currently 40-1. (The longest odds paid out on Super Bowl winners were the 1999 St. Louis Rams, who were 300-1 to open the season, and the 2001 New England Patriots, who were 450-1 entering Week 5 with a 1-3 record.) The Philadelphia Eagles opened at 6-1 and are currently 35-1. What does this mean? Probably nothing. Still, Sunday's game is an interesting matter to contemplate. The Eagles have under-achieved, and are at the point where a win could salvage the season. The Bills have over-achieved like crazy, and a win would validate them as serious contenders. It has been quite some time since I've gone into a weekend planing to devote a slice of my Sunday to watching a Bills game, but that's my intention this week.

2011-10-06T09:08:00.000-04:00

Steve Jobs dead, Tomas Tranströmer wins the Nobel Prize. What next?

2011-10-06T08:10:00.000-04:00

Watching The Verdict with my class last night I learned that most of them have never played pinball, and none of them knew what a Polaroid SX-70 camera was. "The picture comes out of it?" one said, impressed by the retro-cool of what was once the cutting edge technology for the plaintiff's bar.

2011-10-05T12:37:00.001-04:00

WNED had a public meeting last night to allow the public to comment on future programming on the its stations-- WNED-FM, WNED-AM, and WBFO. On the podium were Don Boswell, the CEO of WNED, the present station manager from WBFO, Mark Vogelzang, the present station manager from WBFO, and ~~a representive from UB whose name presently escapes me~~. Joseph A. Brennan, UB’s associate vice president for communications. Turnout was not overwhelming, and although there were people there with different things to say, the overwhelming sentiment seemed to be that the Blues programing on WBFO is something that the people present want to see retained.

I doubt that it will be. In fact, although Mr. Boswell stopped short of saying it in so many words, what is likely to happen is that WBFO will become the FM outlet for the programing that is presently being carried by WNED-AM. WNED-FM is retaining its format-- Boswell was clear on that. The whole thing is a pity, as I have said before. WBFO is an important part of the history and tradition of public radio, and public radio has its roots in educational broadcasting, particularly the liberal arts. By abandoning the station the University at Buffalo is abandoning a significant and important part of its role in the community. Say what you will about Bill Greiner's time as president of the university, Greiner understood radio, and believed that part of the University's mission was to serve an educational role to the community at large. When Jennifer Roth left WBFO the GM seat was filled by a caretaker, then Greiner stepped down and was replaced by a guy with his eye on the bottom line who didn't have the same ties to the community. President Simpson flew home to LA every week, and it is no surprise that under his leadership UB asked,"what are we doing with a radio station?" instead of, "how can we use this great tool better?".

I get that times are tight. I understand why UB feels like it should be focusing more on other things-- but I disagree strongly with this move, and I believe that Western New York will suffer culturally with this move. Instead of jazz and blues we are going to be getting more Car Talk, because that's how Don Boswell thinks programing decisions get made-- with a view to what is the least expensive, with the greatest return. In part this is because Don Boswell is a Public Television guy. Whenever public television and public radio sit down at the table you can count on it being a bacon and eggs breakfast.

2011-10-04T16:29:00.001-04:00

Favorites for the Nobel Lit prize, according to Ladbrokes: Adonis, the Syrian poet, at 4/1, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer at 7/1 and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at 8/1. There has been a surge in punters wanting some Bob Dylan action: the Bard of Hibbing is currently 10/1. I'd be down with Murakami, but I think every year that passes without recognition for Philip Roth is another year where the Academy gets it wrong.

UPDATE: in the time it took to write this Dylan has gone to 8/1. If I were smarter than I am I'd be looking for an economist and playing an exacta.

2011-10-01T13:45:00.001-04:00

I still think of them as an American League team, but the Brewers are my NL guys for as long as they last.

2011-09-30T10:09:00.000-04:00

Charley Pierce has been doing great work for approximately ever, but now that he has shifted his focus to mostly politics instead of mostly sports he is proving to be the heir to Murray Kempton that a lot of us have been waiting for. He is a daily must-read.

2011-09-29T08:01:00.002-04:00

Nice article about Ambrose Bierce, a patron saint of Outside Counsel.

2011-09-27T13:14:00.001-04:00

This year's nominees for the Rock and Roll HOF:

Beastie Boys
The Cure
Donovan
Eric B. & Rakim
Guns 'N Roses
Heart
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts
Freddie King
Laura Nyro
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rufus with Chaka Khan
The Small Faces/The Faces
The Spinners
Donna Summer
War

The Small Faces/Faces leap out-- in either incarnation they should be in, and I am puzzled as to why they are lumped together like that. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and A Nod Is As Good As A Wink...To A Blind Horse are pretty clearly the work of different bands, personnel overlap notwithstanding. The Spinners and Donna Summer belong in, as does Laura Nyro. Likewise Freddy King, but after that I think we are talking about artists that belong in the Hall of the Pretty Good.

UPDATE: Apparently this is the first year of eligibility for They Might Be Giants. The fact that they weren't even nominated is a travesty of world-historical proportions. (Well, maybe not that big a travesty, but still.)

2011-09-26T12:29:00.000-04:00

Two nice comments on the Bills from an article about the Jets:

[T]he Bills just put up 34 points (and could have put up more) on a Bill Belichick defense yesterday.

Indeed. That was no accident-- the Bills flat-out beat one of the three or four best teams in the league. Also,

But with the [Jets'] crazy schedule coming up — a schedule that looks even harder with the emergence of the Bills — the Jets need every win they can corral.

.
We are only three games into the season, and the schedule is still enough to make me flinch, but the sun always seems warmer, and the mood of the city lighter when the Bills win, and there seems to be reason to believe that there will be more Mondays when I'll feel this good this season. If nothing else it is nice to hear sportswriters and broadcasters showing some respect. Listening to the game on the drive back from Pittsburgh was a particular pleasure. We got the Pats' feed on the satellite, a not-especially-adept team of homer chatterers who started to sound panic-y when the the score was 21-10.

2011-09-26T10:08:00.000-04:00

Tangled Up in Law: The Jurisprudence of Bob Dylan. (Via Expecting Rain.)

2011-09-23T12:17:00.000-04:00

In the course of a piece about cheap vodka Serious Eats correspondent Will Gordon makes this observation:

"I went to one of those midlevel private colleges that exist only in the Northeast. In the rest of the country they're rational enough to send the geniuses to elite schools and everyone else to whatever perfectly good school their state happens to underfund, but up here we've created several barely distinct layers of private college to accommodate Long Island's endless supply of average students with above-average means."

I have long wondered at the fact that people from the South and the West mostly seem to have attended their states' flagship university. There are exceptions, I guess, but these seem to exist mostly to foster sports rivalries. This accounts for places like Auburn, and USC. Duke and Vanderbilt are Long Island adjunct institutions, and the Midwest is a subject for further study.

2011-09-22T11:18:00.000-04:00

Paul William Beltz has died. He changed the shape of New York law more than once-- he was one of those post-WWII giants. Off the top of my head I can tell you that surveillance material is discoverable in New York because of him. He established the calculation that is used under New York's future damages statute. I would be hard-pressed to think of any other one guy who had a greater effect on the law of products liability. He was close to being a force of nature around here, lighting up juries like pinball machines.

2011-09-21T08:30:00.006-04:00

I grew up on DC comics. Sure, I read Marvel too, but Superman and Batman were my entry point. I'm not sure when I walked away from comics-- it seems to me that it was sometime around when Jack Kirby took over Jimmy Olsen, which was 1970. I'd have been in eighth grade, so that sounds about right. I got back into the form in the mid-80s, I guess, reading Chris Claremont's X-Men and the like on the subway. I stopped again around the time we moved to Buffalo, basically because there weren't any handy newstands, but from time to time I'd dip in, just to see what was happening. Last year I started following what was going on with the Doom Patrol, because I'd always liked them, and because the Metal Men, who I'd come to like, were the back-of-the-book second feature.

During my mid-80s delving into comics I read a lot of independent books, and I liked those best of all. Scott McCloud's Zot!, Mark Evanier's DNAgents and Crossfire, Max Allan Collins' and Terry Beatty's Ms. Tree,
a series called The Elementals.... and here's the thing: I never had a complete run, and I really never got in on the first issue of any of these. In fact, I think the same is true for most people who've read comics. If Superman depended the people who bought Action Comics # 1 for readership then possibly the most iconic character in American belles-lettres would be unknown.

The late 70's and early 80's were, it turns out, an unusual boom time for comics, and one of the things that marked that period was the introduction of an unusual number of new series-- and new publishers. The business model was moving out of the 1940's and into a world of cross-marketing that they couldn't have imagined. Like most, if not all commercial ventures associated with art forms there had been a great deal of exploitation of the creative people, and they were pushing back. Subsequent technological changes-- particularly in terms of distribution-- have worked quite a lot like the way those same changes have affected popular music (and movies, for that matter). Everybody is scrambling to get ahead of it, and one of the ways that DC Comics has decided to deal with the situation has been to re-boot its entire line. Their stated reason is that it is to make their line-up more accessible to new readers, who may be put off by the fact that there are years and years of unfamiliar continuity associated with each of their characters, and with the entire "universe" which all of them occupy. This is, of course, not an altogether new notion: from time to time both Marvel and DC have performed similar re-boots to straighten out continuity issues and boost sales. I guess Jim Shooter's Secret Wars was the first; DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths followed hard on its heels. I gather there have been others since. The problem with all of this, however, is that even if you accept the notion that readers bounce off of comics when they are unfamiliar with the continuity, the issue re-occurs at regular intervals. If you want to have reoccurring characters with a history then you are confronted with only two options: regular re-boots, or complex back stories. (There is no rule that says these narratives have to take place in a continuum, by the way: Donald Duck doesn't. You never see Stan Lee style footnotes in Archie comics explaining that Mr. Weatherbee and Mrs. Grundy went on a date in issue 231.)

It seems to me that DC has gotten it wrong here. I like complex back stories, and I always have. In fact, when I go to a super hero movie I hate it when they waste my time with explication. If you don't know that Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, or that Superman was sent to Earth when his home planet blew up it doesn't affect your ability to watch the Wallcrawler websling, or the Son of Krypton bend steel with his bare hands. Wasn't Wolverine more interesting when his past was mysterious? One of the pleasures of comics is that they have such extremely complex (and goofy) back stories that it is fun to puzzle them out. (It isn't all that hard, either. Let's face it, we're not talking Henry James here.) Although the internet has changed the means of distribution, it has also made being a fan- and catching up on back stories- easier than it ever was.

There isn't a new Doom Patrol book at the moment, so I don't really have a dog in this fight. Comics publishers can do what they like, but this experiment impresses me as wrong-headed.

2011-09-20T17:21:00.002-04:00

A few notes on some movies we have seen recently.

My Uncle Fred was in town over the weekend, which means that there was an opportunity to watch stuff that people otherwise might not sit still for. He didn't bring anything, which is unusual, so we watched Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye one night, and The Sugarland Express the next.

I love the Altman Goodbye, which deviates from the plot of Chandler's novel, but is completely true to its spirit. There is always something new to see in an Altman movie: I'd never noticed how Marlowe was depicted as a complete anachronism before: his car, his manner of dress, and even the fact that throughout the movie he is the only one who smokes. (He smokes constantly, and lighting matches is a bit of schtick throughout.) I also hadn't noticed that Arnold Schwarzenegger has a bit as one of the henchmen. It isn't credited, but there he is. (Also uncredited is Morris the Cat.)

Steven Spielberg's Sugarland Express was his first theatrical release. My first thought as we watched it was to compare it with George Lukas' American Graffiti, released a year earlier, I guess because for a period back in the 70's and early 80's it was natural to think of the two classmates and friends together, and because they are both road movies. It is still fun to compare the two, but Sugarland looks more like a Spielberg movie than Graffiti resembles subsequent Lukas work. It is a remarkably well composed work, particularly for a first film, and Goldie Hawn in particular made me glad to have kept the disk on top of the teevee for the last month or so while we waited for everyone to be in the mood for it.

Last night I was in the mood for junk, and as it happened the last Netflix disk in the pile was Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.This may be the greatest scene in cinema history, and the giant octopus is pretty good too. The weirdest part of all, for me, is that Debbie Gibson plays the female lead. She looks good, too, and absolutely plays younger than 40.

2011-09-16T10:02:00.000-04:00

Foreign Policy magazine has started a series called "Decline Watch", in which they score news stories on a five point scale:

1: We're totally screwed. Start learning Mandarin.
2. Being a superpower was nice while it lasted.
3. Stay calm and carry on.
4. Decline, schmecline. We're gonna be just fine.
5. USA! USA!

Outside Counsel will be following this with interest.

2011-09-13T18:35:00.001-04:00

195 at my polling place at 6:30.

2011-09-13T14:39:00.000-04:00

Over on the left is a list of web comics that I follow, and a link called "The Funnies". The Houston Chronicle used to have a feature that allowed one to assemble a customized page of newspaper comics, and I'd used that to read the comics that the Buffalo News doesn't run, but that I regard as essential. The Chron dropped that functionality, but it appears that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer still has it, so the link is back. This time I am focusing on the soaps: Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Rex Morgan MD, and Apartment 3G are much funnier than everything else that's out there, and now you can read them all in on convenient location. You're welcome.

2011-09-12T14:50:00.005-04:00

To The Adirondack Classic: The 90 Miler as the Pit Crew for Wendy and CLA over the weekend. A description of the event, some thoughts, and some notes on what we'd recommend to anyone interested in participating:

The event starts Friday morning at Old Forge. A. and I weren't there for the put-in, but caught up around lunchtime. The paddlers go through the Fulton Chain of Lakes (First Lake through Eighth Lake), and then continue on to Raquette Lake, the Marion River and the Eckford Chain of Lakes ending in Blue Mountain Lake. It's a long day: 35 miles, including three and a half miles of portage. We got to the bridge at Racquette Lake at about the beginning of the end of the middle of the pack. This is a good spot for pit crew/paddler interaction-- people toss their paddlers water bottles and other stuff, including beer and Nalgene gin-and-tonics, and the atmosphere was pretty festive. We missed our team, who'd struggled in the early going and on the carries. There are two cut-off points, and if the paddlers don't reach those points by a designated time they are pulled out of the water. Paddlers that don't make the cut-off can start the second and third days, but the course is closed after the last cut-off time is passed. This is a pretty carefully thought out system: the number of boats are limited to 250 because this is as many as the race organizers reckon they can safely oversee, and the cut-off times are intended to get the paddlers and the support boats to the take-out point in ample daylight.

The carries on the first day are a bear. Although it is possible to hike into some of them we did not, and we also found that our presence on the course was essentially superfluous. The paddlers bring water (note: a Camelback or other hands-free hydration system is a must have.) and food, sports gel and whatnot, and there are points at the carries where the organizers provide granola bars and the like. As pit crew we found that the best thing we were able to contribute was to get our team to the start, then move on ahead to setup camp. When that is done it's cool to go back and watch what you can of the race. We didn't do this the first day-- we just went to the finish, where we connected with our team and then moved on to the site, on Long Lake.

I like pretty much everything about camping, I suppose, except for the camping part, but we were a good group. Wendy had invited two friends, Don and Chris, who were everything you could wish for in camping companions. There is supper provided for the paddlers (and crew members can pre-order) at the Adirondack Hotel. One of the reasons I would go quietly mad inside of three months if I lived in the Adirondacks would be restaurants like this. A. and I dined apart from the padders, and found the food Adirondack-y. A had some sort of chicken with cheese and olive tapinade. Olive tapenade should have tipped her off. I had trout, with some sort of curry seasoning, and that should have been my warning: the curry was there to compensate for the fact that the closest the trout had been to the water for quite a while was to have been resting in the walk-in at the hotel, across the street from the lake. I gather that the paddler's supper, which was turkey and trimmings, was substantial but uninspired, but there is an important culture of camaraderie in this event, so although A. and I would have done better to have broken bread with Chris and Don back at camp, our paddlers got something worthwhile from the meal.

The Day Two put-in was down the road from the campsite. The organizers transport the boats, so all the crew has to do is get the paddlers to the start. The put-in point is at a large meadow-- lots of parking. We saw a Bald Eagle while we were getting our bearings-- first I've ever seen in the wild. It was here that we began to understand what a remarkable experience this event is. As we were walking towards the boats someone ran up to A. and asked "Do you have an extra driver who can take our van to The Crusher?" This is exactly the sort of thing that A. is good at volunteering for, and we discovered that this is not at all uncommon. People need their vehicles moved from the start to the finish, and simply hand their keys over to total strangers. (As it happens this guy and his partner finished second in their category, so we Pit Crewed for a serious contender as well as for our own serious team.)

There is a breakfast for the padders at the Adirondack Hotel- our Pit Crew was able to score some coffee. Day Two starts on Long Lake, goes down Long Lake and into the Raquette River, where there is a carry around Raquette Falls. They continue on the Raquette River to the finish at the state boat launch on Routes 3 & 30 (about five miles east of the village of Tupper Lake), called "The Crusher". It's 30 miles with one carry, but that one is a beauty: up hill and down, 1.25 miles, over terrain that makes the wheels mostly useless. The padders start in waves every morning, based on seed times, and boat categories, basically. The slowest go first, and the guideboats and competitive racers and the four person, six person, eight person canoes and the kayaks follow. Again, the idea is to get everyone through the course. There are checkpoints all along the course and they keep careful tabs on where everyone is. After the start we drove down to the Long Lake bridge, and saw Wnedy and CLA pass, then had a cup of coffee. If you go, I recommend the coffee at the deli across the street from the hotel-- we were able to get a newspaper and a surprisingly respectable bagel.

We broke camp and proceeded to the next campsite, dropping the Ford Aerostar we'd picked up along the way at The Crusher. Because we'd done it right we got to the site in plenty of time to pick a great spot, smack dab on the lake. A. and I went back into Tupper Lake, thinking we'd maybe get a hot dog or something, but it is a depressed little town and the hot dog stand only had vanilla ice cream. (True story!) We went back to The Crusher, joined Dan and Chris and sat on a log drinking beer until Caroline and Wendy came in. This leg must have been pretty great: there are long stretches where just about the only way anyone could get in would be by boat, and even radio communication was limited. At the put-ins and take-outs there were ham radio stations, but they didn't really have any information about specific boats, so we waited hoping they were having a better day than they'd had on Day One. Turned out they did, although they also spilled the boat at one point. They'd pretty much figured out the boat at this point, and were feeling pretty good about things.

Here's a pro tip: CLA was pretty sunburnt after Day One. A cap is good, but I think a brimmed hat would be even better. Neck and ear protection mean a lot when you are on the water for an extend period.

The talk of the event was the attempt of an eight-man war canoe to set a course record by going the distance in under 12 hours. The conditions were probably as close to perfect as they could have been. The water was high (although on this side of the park the devastation of the recent flooding was not in evidence), and the weather was nearly ideal. We had the sort of postcard days you remember about the Adirondacks, and really only enough breeze to be cooling.

A and I joined Chis and Dan for dinner, and they did it right. It was the best meal of the weekend. The next day was the shortest leg of the race, and the put-in was about 100 yards from where we'd made camp. By this time our team felt pretty much the way one does at the 20th mile of a marathon: tired, but excited and confident about finishing. We broke camp and watched as the boats went by. When wendy did this last year she'd made friends with a guy who came by and asked us to take his pick-up to the finish, so I did that. We stopped on the way out and had coffee at the Trading Post, about 200 yards from the campground. Pro tip: don't procrastinate about buying gas. The electric was out from Tupper Lake to Lake Placid that morning, and the Volvo was on "E". Fortunately the Trading Post had a back-up generator. Dan and Chris went off to take a day hike before heading home, and A and I went to the finish, stopping at a bridge on the way to watch the race pass. When CLA and Wendy came through it was clear that they were crushing it.

Wendy had secured lunch tickets for us, and I recommend this meal: I had the best slice of tomato I've eaten all summer. Wendy and CLA had pulled in front of a number of boats, and finished strong.

Would I do it next year? Maybe. It is tough to get a slot: preference is given to people who have been in it before (one guy has done all 29; about a dozen or so have done 20). It is an interesting group: there are endurance athletes-- runners, triathletes, competitive paddlers-- and then there are the locals. A lot of the locals are in guideboats, which is cool. A lot of the people who are in it don't look particularly fit, but have the technique down. I'd say the way to train-- for me at least-- would be to do the weekday marathon training runs and swap in a long paddle on the weekends for the long run. Equipment matters: I'd want a canoe like the one Wendy and Caroline rented, and that would mean I'd be renting a boat for the summer. I'm thinking about it.

2011-09-09T09:01:00.001-04:00

Caroline and Wendy are shoving off for the first leg of the Adirondack Canoe Classic. Andrea and I are on the Thruway. We'll be pit crew for the next three days. As Bob Dylan says, "Things should start to get interesting right about now."

2011-09-09T08:57:00.001-04:00

Wendy and Caroline working on their technique out on Tonawanda Creek.

2011-09-08T10:41:00.001-04:00

"It's about George and Lenny working on a ranch and wishing they had their own farm". One of my students last night, on "To Kill A Mockingbird". He may have been kidding, but he was wearing a backwards baseball cap, so probably not.

2011-09-07T12:15:00.000-04:00

If you'd told me that three Mets have won home run titles I'd have guessed Darryl, and I'd have guessed Kingman, but I think I'd have been hung up on Howard Johnson. I shouldn't have been-- he was a good hitter, and I did know that he hit 30 and stole 30 bases, an unusual distinction that I think he shares with only Jose Canseco. Four Cy Young winners (three of whom are Tom Seaver). They have never had a batting champion.

The Mets have had distinguished batting averages in their history. The highest was John Olerud’s .354 in 1998. But the Colorado Rockies’ Larry Walker bested him by 9 points that season.
Then there was Cleon Jones, who hit .340 in 1969 as the Mets won a championship. But he was surpassed by Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, who hit .348, and Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who hit .345.
More recently, [David] Wright hit .325 in 2007, falling 15 points short of Matt Holiday’s winning mark for the Rockies.

Jose Reyes, who has been terrific to watch all season is hitting .334, leading the National League, just ahead of Ryan Braun of Milwaukee Brewers at .333. Let's Go Mets!

2011-09-06T10:26:00.002-04:00

I don't think I have mentioned that CLA is doing the Adirondack Canoe Classic, '90-Miler' with my Boilermaker pal Wendy. It's this weekend, and we are going with them as their pit crew. Wendy did it last year with her brother Jim, and had a fine-- if grueling-- time. A big take-away was that an equipment upgrade was in order, so this time they are renting a lightweight Kevlar canoe. Both Wendy and CLA are in excellent overall condition, and they have been refining their technique the past couple of weekends. It should be an interesting adventure. I'm particularly impressed by CLA, who started her summer with a 13.1, and is finishing it with this. She rises to a challenge nicely .

2011-09-03T08:09:00.003-04:00

I have tweaked my Lawyers in Movies list this semester:

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)*
Inherit the Wind (1960)*
The Verdict (1982)**
Counselor At Law (1933)*
Michael Clayton (2007)**
Class Action (1991)*
A Civil Action (1998)*
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)*
My Cousin Vinny (1992)**
…And Justice for All (1979)**
The Talk of the Town (1942)*
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)*
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)*

(* means DVD only. ** means streaming is available.)

Some of my stalwarts aren't available any more. So long, Witness for the Prosecution. Fairwell, Fortune Cookie. Some that I really like got the ax because my students kept bouncing off them. Adios, The Paper Chase. I'm swapping The Talk of the Town for Legally Blonde but it is a close call. It would be interesting to talk about Legally Blonde in the context of the current discussion about the value of legal education, but I am not sure I have the heart. Talk plays into my notion about who the heroes of American jurisprudence really are-- and who we are told they are. I'd like to do A Man For All Seasons, but I have no confidence that they'd stick with it long enough to get it. I keep thinking I'd like to do Philadelphia but I'm not sure there is really that much to say about it. Likewise Chicago. One of my students last term wrote about Find Me Guilty, and I may work that in at some future point. Judge Foschio suggested Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man, but I'm not so sure that fits with what I am trying to do.

2011-09-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

I recommend starting every day with Something Positive, unless you are squeamish or easily offended.

2011-09-01T15:33:00.002-04:00

LCA is now ensconced at Baldwin House. Named for William H. Baldwin, one-time president of the Long Island Railroad, it is a great looking building, with an ornate staicase and a lot of beautiful woodwork throughout.

Check-in was a breeze. She was a good sport about letting us hang out, but she wasn't interested in going out to lunch or anything like that. She already knew people, and was busily meeting new people, and sent us on our way with a cheery wave.

She says she does not intend to blog, so whatever updates we get I will post here.

2011-08-31T11:16:00.002-04:00

I'm sure it is not an original thought but as I watched the Yanks-Red Sox game last night it occurred to me that a core component of the Yankee's long term strategy is to use the scouting departments of the rest of baseball to spot talent. In a funny way the rest of baseball even develops talent for them. It makes a kind of sense: that overhead cost is compensated for by being able to put a popular, winning team on the field year after year (after year, after year as Steve Goodman would say in an opposite context).

2011-08-25T08:03:00.019-04:00

Via Flutterby, an article about bike sharing programs and helmet laws. When we were in Boston a couple of weeks ago we noticed the bike sharing racks-- apparently it is a fairly new program there. I didn't think about the fact that naturally one would be riding without a helmet, even when we saw people riding the share-bikes, but I would have, I think, as soon as I got on one. Wearing a helmet has become as second nature to me as buckling my seatbelt when I get in a car. I'm a bit of a nut on the subject, and have harangued more than one friend into wearing a helmet. Head injuries are not a matter to be taken lightly, and even in the absence of helmet laws there are, I think, liability issues presented for the promoters of bike sharing programs that ought to compel them to find a way to make helmets available to users. I don't think the technical problems are so difficult, and I think that turning this into some sort of libertarian issue is messed up.

2011-08-24T09:31:00.000-04:00

I have no particular fondness for Crosby, Stills and Nash. The Sometimes Young stuff is what retains its interest these days. Stills looked like a contender for a while, but that Manassas stuff was the end of it. Crosby, it turns out, was just another hippie. My understanding is that Graham Nash was actually a decent guy (and probably still is) but his resume is the lightest of the lot. Even with these misgivings, however, I can still find myself caught up by some of their work. Part of it is that they were so ubiquitous-- Nash and Crosby (and frequently Rita Coolidge, g-d save the mark) seemed to sing back-up on everybody's albums, for example. Or consider who played on their 'solo' sides. Stills was probably the most accomplished musician from a technical standpoint, and on his first solo record he got Eric Clapton (back when we thought he was God) and Jimi Hendrix to sit in on a track each. This morning on the way in to work 'Military Madness', from Nash's "Songs For Beginners" came on. It is a slight piece of work, with hippie politics that cloy, but it is also a pretty good piece of songwriting. Towards the end there is a bit of funky guitar work, and I found myself wondering who it was. It might have been Stills-- there was a lot of wah-wha, an effect he was fond of, but the point of those solo records was to play with other guys, so I figured it wasn't. It could have been Jerry Garcia-- parts of it sounded like the kind of thing Jerry used to do. I ran through a couple of other players from the period as the song faded out, then looked it up just now. It was Dave Mason. Rita Coolidge was (naturally) singing back-up. (Wikipedia says "her leaving Stills for Nash has been cited as a contributing factor behind the initial 1970 breakup of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young." I did not know that.)

2011-08-23T12:05:00.002-04:00

When you consider the career of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller you realize that any one of their hits would have been enough to have placed them among the all-time greats. How would you like to have Hound Dog on your resume? Or On Broadway? Or Kansas City? Or Chapel of Love? Or Leader of the Pack? Damn. They wrote Stuck in the Middle with You-- think of that. A song that Quentin Tarantino repurposed to great cultural import, a song that gave Gerry Rafferty enough scratch for him to underwrite Richard Thompson when Thompson needed it....
Thank you, Jerry. Rest in Peace.

(Oh, and sorry Nick Ashford. You were great too, but when Jerry Lieber dies he gets the lede.)

2011-08-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

Paul Campos, who teaches law at the University of Colorado in Boulder and blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money has started a separate blog called Inside the Law School Scam. It is a subject that he has written about in the past, as have I, and I think the profession should be discussing it more than it has to this point.

2011-08-19T08:03:00.003-04:00

The Worst 50 States in America. I'd say they got it just about right so far.

2011-08-17T14:49:00.001-04:00

Was A-Rod's contract the most ill-advised in baseball history? The incredible part to me is that the Yankees essentially doubled down on the contract he signed with Texas, which was already crazy. It is hard to dispute that he's put up the numbers, but he's managed to do it while remaining unpopular. Remember when he was a free agent? His negotiations with the Mets broke down when his agent wanted special merchandizing rights. As I recall he wanted a tent with just his stuff. I can picture the centaur-themed merch, and the Madonna tie-ins. More importantly, he is under contract until 2017. He's 36 right now, and he is starting to sustain the sorts of injuries that older players get-- hip, calf, right now a gimpy knee. He is good enough to keep going until he's 42, but he'll be a DH for most of that time, and his power numbers are fading fast. Would the Yankees trade him at some point? Would there be a market? I'm inclined to think that the answer to the first question depends on the answer to the second, and I think the answer to the second is no. The Commissioner is looking into this poker thing, and that's not good-- gambling of any sort gets baseball all crazy, so the downside isn't just that he's getting older and losing power. There is a real possibility that a team that might be interested in an aging DH might shy away from a guy who could end his career in scandal. I don't think that there would be any team that he's already played for that would want him back. I can't see the Red Sox wanting him-- they'd be more inclined to take a pass just out of spite, to see the Yankees stuck with him.

2011-08-16T17:22:00.000-04:00

GJA posted an impressive 1:33:10 in the Sun Herald City to Surf, a 14k. I was blown away when I saw that this was a 6:39 pace until I realized that the Aussies express distance in Canadian. His American pace, while still quite respectable, was not as world-beating. This race sounds nuts-- 85,000 starters.

2011-08-16T09:29:00.000-04:00

I guess this is one for the e-discovery file: Facebook says it located the original contract between Mark Zuckerberg and Paul Ceglia on Ceglia's harddrive, and that it does not mention Facebook. Apparently the contract that Ceglia showed to the parade of lawyers who have represented him over the comparatively brief run of this lawsuit is a forgery. I'd like to see the brief filed arguing that the document was privileged. I'd also be curious about the timing of counsel's departure in this matter. Did people bail on this lawsuit as it became clear to them that the ground was shifting, or did they split because they weren't getting paid?

2011-08-15T08:01:00.000-04:00

DC characters don't seem to do as well at the movies as Marvel characters do-- Batman excepted, and maybe Superman too, I guess. I don't think this has to do with the lack of familiarity the general public has with the DC line-- people know Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern isn't all that obscure, is he? Maybe what they should try is to go with a somewhat more obscure comic. The Doom Patrol maybe, or the Legion of Super-Heros. What could go wrong with that? Apparently there is a Flash movie in the works, and I'll tell you right now what'll go wrong with that: the filmmaker will overlook the delightful weird stuff that made the Flash great, and will instead give us a movie about an angst-y fast guy. Nobody wants to see that. The Flash has a rogue's gallery that is perhaps only second to Batman's but there's no way we will get Grodd, the super-intelligent gorilla, (or the Gorilla City), or Mirror Master, or the Pied Piper, or Captain Cold, or Captain Boomerang. (Why are they always Captains? There is nothing particularly nautical about these guys.)

Cultural critics are fond of observing that Marvel changed the genre by publishing comics that addressed real-world concerns, and in the post-Marvel world the Dark Knight and Watchmen, among others, refined that sensibility further, but let's face it, comic books movies work best when they remember that they are supposed to be fun. The Flash could be like that, in ways that Green Lantern is never going to be.

2011-08-13T08:09:00.002-04:00

To As You Like It at Shakespeare in Delaware Park the other night, just in time because it closes Sunday. This has been the strongest season for this institution that I can recall. I didn't mention it at the time, but Saul Elkin's Merchant of Venice was excellent. There are times when I feel as though SiDP is a vehicle for Elkin's ego ("Hmm. Perhaps I shall play Lear this season") but his Shylock took some real risks and was a nuanced piece of acting. I really like As You Like It, but it is tough to do-- there are pacing challenges, and keeping the energy level up can be hard to do. This managed it nicely, and there were excellent performances by Anne Roalidi as Celia, Norman Sham as Touchstone and Arin Lee Dandes as Pheobe. Morgan Chard handled the gender-bending Rosalind nicely, with graceful physicality that reminded me of Lilly Tomlin's performance in All of Me. It's tricky, I think, to move like a woman thinks like a man moves, sort of like listening to an Englishman imitate an American accent. When it is done well it is hilarious, and Ms. Chard did it quite well. Of Tim Newell's Jacques there is only this to say: my summers would be poorer if Mr. Newell weren't a part of them. He is terrific at this sort of thing, and has possibly the best range of any of the Shakespeare in the Park regulars I've seen.

SiDP always does one show in more or less Shakespearean costume and one in the garb of some other period. This was kinda Victorian, I guess, or maybe Edwardian. I have long yearned for Star Trek costumes, and last night CLA proposed Sports Mascots. We could have Sabretooth, and Mr. Met, and Buster Bison.... In the alternative, how about a Romeo and Juliet with Yankees and Red Sox uniforms?

I was also struck by the size of the crowd and by the audience reaction at intermission when County defunding was mentioned.