Miles's blog

So, have you been watching the Olympics? Of course you have.  How can you not?  We all love the Olympics.  They only come around once every four years and the absolute orgy of sports overwhelms all of us.  Even those who don’t regularly watch sports, like my daughter, get caught up in the Olympics.

I admit, I engage in the jingoistic cheering for the Americans in whatever events are taking place.  I am happy when some American skeet shooter takes gold, or an American sailer crosses the finish line first.  And while I am dubious of whether those “sports” belong in the world’s greatest athletic competition, as long as they are in there I am red, white, and blue when watching.

The Olympics are special because they happen only ever four years.  I mean, do you really care who won the world championship in the 400 meter individual medley last year?  But we all thrilled to watch Ryan Lochte of Florida beat the world for the gold medal.  We remember Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals, but can anyone tell me how many world championships he won?  Who cares?

The Olympics form bookmarks in our memories.  There are so many Olympic memories, the greatest, of course, the 1980 hockey gold medal.  But who can forget Kerri Strug vaulting America to a gold medal in 1996?  Or perhaps you smile when you think about Joan Benoit winning the first women’s marathon.   Or Boulder resident Frank Shorter winning the marathon in 1976.  Who can forget the 1992 Dream Team in basketball, or Eric Heiden winning the gold in every speedskating event in the 1980 Olympics.

The Olympics often create memories of events other than those on the field of play.  The 1972 Munich Games are as much about the murder of the Israeli athletes as Mark Spitz’a seven golds.  (Ironically, Spitz was a Jewish athlete, whose greatest triumph is forever tied to the Olympics’ worst disaster.)

I recall vividly the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City and watching as Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists during the playing of our national anthem.  I was outraged then, and even now I have mixed feelings about their protest.  That was the first Olympics I remember well—how I laughed at the Fosbury Flop, never realizing that high jumping was changing forever before our eyes; and seeing poor Jim Ryan fail once again to win the gold medal although he was heavily favored. (Until I just now looked it up I did not realize that Ryun went on to serve ten years in the United States Congress.  I guess I can stop feeling sorry for him now.)

Ryun’s disappointment is only one of many I will not forget.  Mary Decker’s fall, the 1972 loss in basketball, and those sprinters missing their starting time. 

I plant myself in front of the tv for 17 days and get absorbed in beach and indoor volleyball (and no, not just because they women play in bikinis), rowing, cycling, and water polo.  This morning I even watched equestrian.  Tomorrow I might try to catch some team handball.  Who would ever watch this stuff without the significance of the Olympics?  (I draw the line at soccer, though, unless I am in need of a nap from trying to stay up until midnight to catch the end of the primetime broadcast.) 

So I may not blog much for the next couple of weeks.  (You are probably thinking I have not blogged much for the past couple of weeks.) I will be perusing the tv listings (seven channels!) to see what obscure competition (I hesitate to call everything a sport) is available for viewing.  Maybe an American is working on a table tennis match, or perhaps one of our guys is flipping some Russian in the judo arena.  I hope to see Misty May-Treanor compete for the gold.  She is the only athlete whose spouse I have seen in person.  (He is a catcher for the Dodgers.)  Maybe Missy Franklin from the Denver area will win a bunch of golds or perhaps someone none of us have ever heard of will pull off an upset of biblical proportions creating another memory.

On so many levels, the horrific murder perpetrated in Aurora last week is disturbing.  The idea that an activity so mundane and benign as going to a movie (albeit a violent one at midnight) could result in a mass murder shakes all of us to our very cores.  Those of us with children want to hold them a little closer.  The long criminal justice process has only just begun and we will live with this crime every day for a long time.

One of the more disturbing aspects of this tragedy is the startling, but perhaps not completely unexpected, response of people in America—gun purchases and concealed weapons permit applications have increaseddramatically.  Apparently, in the minds of many people, the answer to gun violence is more guns.  And while I understand the initial, visceral, reaction, this trend causes me great consternation.  Guns, I fear, more often bring tragedy than protection.

It is important to note, I think, that more guns in the movie theater would have not increased safety one iota.  The shooter was dressed from head to toe in body armor, perhaps anticipating the presence of concealed weapons on Colorado moviegoers.  (There appear to have been none.)  Had anyone pulled out a handgun, the best result would have been no more than somewhat of a distraction to the murderer.  More likely is that innocent victims would have suffered gunshot injuries.  And how effective could the handguns most people want to carry be against the fully automatic weapon used in this crime?  The killer carried 100-bullet magazine clips and fired dozens of rounds per second.   Even a skilled marksman with a handgun would have been helpless.

Sure, there are stories occasionally of liquor store owners foiling robbery attempts by pulling a shotgun out from behind the counter, or homeowners shooting the random burglar.  But there are many more stories of drunk and angry husbands shooting wives, and curious children accidentally shooting themselves or someone else. 

Gun advocates contend guns make us safer.   Law-abiding gun owners, the argument goes, serve as a deterrent, because would-be carjackers hesitate to act, knowing every driver is a potential crack shot.   Perhaps there is something to this, although I am dubious.  I am far more convinced that guns appear in the hands of people in the worst of circumstances—when under the influence of alcohol, while suffering from emotional trauma, or in what military people call “the fog of war.”  Guns provide a sense of bravado which allows people (mostly men) to take a stand when perhaps discretion is the better part of valor. 

The idea that untrained, or marginally trained, gun owners would be able to make responsible shoot/don’t shoot decision and then to fire accurately is, to me, a myth.  Police officers go through extensive and intensive training on firearms usage, including quarterly qualification.  Even then, they sometimes make bad decisions or suffer from poor shooting.  They are sober, experienced, and, hopefully, unemotional about the situation.  Contrast that with the random Coloradoan who packs his Glock inside his shorts or has a .22 strapped to his ankle. 

Every year police officers are shot with their own weapon.  I assume many others are also.  More guns running around the streets allow for more opportunities for this sort of thing to take place.  More guns in people’s home are more guns for burglars to steal.

I realize that the Second Amendment, the way it has been interpreted, severely limits the government’s ability to control gun possession, but I fail to see how a machine gun is necessary for self-protection.  There obviously have to be some limits on weapon possession, despite the words of the amendment.  Otherwise, people could own an atomic bomb (although arguably, I suppose, a nuclear weapon is not “arms” that people could bear). 

I will be moving back to Colorado soon.  Many people around me will be carrying weapons, I suppose.  I hope they are sober, responsible, and cautious.  But I fear they won’t be.

I finally made it to Florida. I am officially out of Stamford for good.  My landlord was extremely nice to allow me out of my lease without penalty.  I am now in St. Augustine, Florida.  Susan and I drove down here last week.  We saw Meg dance, which was wonderful.  It is so cool that Meg is a member of a major modern dance company (Trisha Brown Dance Company).   They danced at the Park Avenue Armory in New York and received numerous reviews.  Because Trisha Brown is so famous most of the reviews centered on the choreography and the set, which was designed by Robert Rauschenberg.  The dancing itself was almost an afterthought, but was often described with words like “wonderful,” which it was. (This review has a picture of Meg with her last name spelled almost correctly.)

Sometimes I have to remind myself that the terrific dancer I see onstage is my little girl.  Of course, I can see it is Meg, but still, to watch her dance so well with so many other great dancers is a true joy.  Meg invited me to watch one of their rehearsals, which was open to the public.  It was interesting to see professionals at work.  They go about their jobs so, for lack of a better word, professionally.  They work quickly, each one well aware of what the others are doing.  I am really happy that Meg is able to dance at the highest levels.  It means all of her hard work was worth it.  As for me, every parent drives their kids around, waits for hours, and suffers through watching a bunch of other people’s kids just for an opportunity to see their own.  I have watched some truly painful dancing waiting to see Meg perform.  Her success is very gratifying, but I can’t say it made all that driving and waiting “worth it” because I would have happily done it whether or not Meg became a professional dancer.  I am gratified that Meg can pursue the career she desires.

I am hoping to go to Los Angeles next spring to see Meg dance. I think they will be there for a while.

Susan and I made a mini-vacation of our drive from Stamford to St. Augustine.  We lucked out on the weather.  Although it was hot (around 95-100 degrees most of the time), we missed some pretty big storms.  We first went to Baltimore, a city neither of us had been to before.  The hotel was really nice. I think our suite (they upgraded us due to some sort of conflict) was bigger than my Stamford apartment.  It got great reviews on TripAdvisor and for good reason.  Baltimore seemed to have some very interesting sights.  I wish it was cooler. We would have gone to Ft. McHenry and walked around the Inner Harbor area more.  We were only blocks from Camden Yards but without sufficient time to take a tour.  Maybe next time.  The hotel turned us on to a wonderful restaurant.  We started with some exceptional Oysters Rockefeller and Susan ate a really good lobster roll.  My dinner was good, too. 

The next day was a brutal drive in wilting heat to Fayetteville, North Carolina.  There was nothing in Fayetteville, except a place to sleep for the night.  I had stopped there on my previous drive to Florida and I am glad we stopped there again.  Traffic congestion and road construction made this day a brutally long drive.  But we felt lucky.  Although we went slow, we never encountered a major traffic jam.  The opposite direction of the highway had a monumental jam which would have strained the engine’s cooling ability, my stress control skills, and certainly Susan’s patience with me. 

We stopped for two days in Charleston, South Carolina.  I had never been there, and it is a lovely echo of the antebellum South.  Many pre-Civil War homes still stand and quite a few are open to the public.  We did not tour any this trip, but we did take a bus tour of the city. 

Charleston has a historic open market area.  It has been there for hundreds of years.  Every day dozens of vendors display their wares, from jewelry to comic books to clothing to artwork to souvenirs in an open-air market.  The markets sits in the middle of Market Street, which is lined with restaurants, and food emporiums.  There are so many wonderful sweet shops I have no idea why the entire population of Charleston doesn’t weigh 300 pounds.  I could not resist some mouth-watering fudge.  Once they gave me a taste it was all over.  I tried to control my cravings, even leaving the store (called “The Fudgery”) entirely, before succumbing to my sweet tooth.

Susan and I also took a boat to Ft. Sumter.  For those of you historically-challenged, Ft. Sumter is where the Civil War started in April 1861.  South Carolina was the first state to secede, and they fired the first shots.  They took control of Ft. Sumter, and never lost Charleston during the entire war, until near the end.  The Park Service gives a nice tour.  Like many older facilities, Ft. Sumter is notable for how incredibly small it is.  I never cease to be amazed at the privations people tolerated in the past.  A hotel room without cable tv is difficult for me to endure.  Trying to imagine how men fought wars in cramped quarters with no creature comforts at all is mind-blowing. 

Our hotel in Charleston was very nice.  Every morning they served a continental breakfast in the lobby and each evening there was wine and cheese.  Yes, we helped ourselves to all of it.  After all, is there better food than free food?

I will be in Florida for a month or so before returning to Colorado. 

I don’t want instant replay in baseball.  I have actually been to two games where they had to stop everything so the umpires could retire to some tiny room under the stands and stare at a tv screen to decide whether or not what their eyes told them was, in fact, accurate.  On both occasions the umps confirmed their original call, but even if they hadn’t I can live with their mistakes.  It truly is part of the game.

Much was made this week during the all-star game in Kansas City about the missed call at first base which cost the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals a world championship.  Forgetting about the fact that the Royals won the game by taking advantage of the call, and that they found a way to win three other games, a missed call has been part of the game ever since they invented the game.  In fact missed calls, mistakes in whatever form, are part of human endeavor.  That is why we have courts of appeal (giving people like Brian Boatright and Bob Russel something to do).  That is why we have sayings like “To err is human, to forgive divine.”  That is why baseball scores hit, runs, and errors.  People make mistakes. 

This kind of mistake gives the game flavor.  Umpires miss things; they think they see things they don’t see, players will fool them.  In short, the game is played between two teams but it has a context.  Stadiums are different, groundskeepers can alter the field—intentionally or otherwise, weather changes, fans interfere, birds fly into flyballs, and squirrels inspire world champions.  I would not change any of that.  (Which is one reason I hate domed stadiums.)

The human factor of the umpires is as much a part of the contest as the human factor of the players.  Sure, everyone is frustrated when one of the boys in blue inexplicably calls a guy safe to ruin a perfect game, or says a fair ball is foul, or gives someone a home run when it should have been a double.  We swear, throw things at the television, rain down a chorus of boos at the stadium.  All of this is what creates the drama of the sport.

But what about “getting it right” you will say.  This is the universal cry.  Athletes, media, executives, even the umpires themselves wring their hands about mistakes and claim they will do anything to “get it right.”  Bah humbug.  They fail to perceive that getting it right is irrelevant.  Making the call and moving the game along, that is important.  Bad calls are just as much part of the game as good calls, because the game itself exists only within its own context.  In other words, getting it right or wrong matters only to that individual game (and somewhat in a larger context to the sport).  It has no meaning outside of the sport. 

Some things for sure we need to make sure we get right:  surgery, tolerances for airplane construction, presidential elections.  The consequences for getting those things wrong are monumental.  When the built the Chunnel under the English Channel teams began at each end.  They had to get right where they dug so that they didn’t miss their point of meeting.  Extraordinary means were necessary to accomplish this feat. 

Baseball, on the other hand, has no significance except to itself.  Wars are not fought over baseball (although individuals certainly have been hurt; I doubt instant replay would change that).  No one is elected president, loses a limb, or suffers grievous injury based upon the result of a baseball game.  Certainly the 1985 Cardinals players would have had much more enjoyable careers had they won the World Series, but aside from that, whether Kansas City or St. Louis took home the trophy is irrelevant in a greater context.  Of course, I care about baseball results, and obviously I want all calls to be correct, but the story of the missed call in the ’85 Series is part of baseball lore.  Had some faceless tv watcher in the press box reversed the call we would have no history to be talking about.

Baseball has a rhythm.  Games progress too slowly as it is.  Watching a delay for a replay on tv is merely a chance for a bathroom break or a run to the fridge, but sitting in the stands while the players scratch in the dirt and the pitcher takes some half-hearted tosses to keep loss is an exercise in dullness.  Play the game.  When the call was made actions took place.  Replacing runners or determining if the hitter would have reached second will be guesswork leading to the same amount of frustration as missed calls do now.

The hue and cry about “getting it right” flows from football, which has exalted instant replay to a status comparable to the invention of the forward pass.  And while football has no more meaning outside the game than any other sport, one thing has driven the mania to “get it right.”  Gambling.  People now wager so much money on football that America risked civil unrest if no method was instituted to make sure every call is unassailably correct.  Most of America plays fantasy football or fills out football pools or sits half-crocked at sports bars screaming their lungs out while wagering on their favorite teams.  They risk a week’s pay on the results of the Super Bowl and millions are wagered on the college national championship game.  Replay under these circumstances was a national imperative.

Baseball, unfortunately, is starting to suffer from the same problem.  Attendance has increased dramatically, while appreciation of the game itself has diminished.  Fantasy aficionados can recite the statistics of every player in the league, but they have no grasp of what the game itself is actually about.  For them, “getting it right” is important.  After all, a blown call might mean their pitcher’s whip slips a notch.

No, no no, I declaim.  I am a purist.  Baseball should be one sport to remain somewhat pure (well, of course, the advent of the designated hitter, wild card teams, and world series games lasting into the next day have corrupted it, but you know what I mean).  Every call will not be the right one.  Get over it.  

I don’t care about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes getting a divorce.

I don’t care about Comic-Con.

I don’t care about what Kate Middleton or her sister is wearing to what event. I care so little I have no idea what Kate’s new title is or why it is relevant to me.  Frankly, I don’t care what the royal family does.  I am somewhat curious why they still have a royal family.

I do care about the Higgs Boson. I wish I understood what it means, but I care that they found the thing so that a few thousand people in the world can understand how the universe works.

I don’t care about whether Tiger Woods wins a golf tournament, LeBron James wins a championship or if Eli Manning is better or worse than Tony Romo.  I don’t care about fantasy football, the NHL draft, or the NBA draft, although Mike and Mike seem to care a great deal about all of those things.  I do care about Bryce Harper being be an all-star, if Mike Trout is the MVP, and whether or not the White Sox can hold on to the Central Division lead, although Mike and Mike seem to care not at all. 

I don’t care about movies made by Judd Aaptow, Wes Anderson, or Quentin Tarantino.  I do care about any movie starring Jennifer Aniston, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer, or featuring a superhero.

I don’t care who the Republican vice-presidential nominee is because I can’t possibly see any way in hell I would vote for a stick figure like Mitt Romney for president no matter who his running mate is.  After all they nominated Sarah Palin the last time so this one has to be an improvement. (If not, it will be proof positive that the Founding Fathers made a mistake.)

I don’t care about Google’s new tablet, the Kindle Fire, or Microsoft’s entry into the field.  I love my iPad.

 

I do care about excessive heat waves, severe storms, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and rising ocean levels.  Congress doesn’t seem to care much.  I care about their not caring.  If Romney gets elected I will care a lot more.

I have stopped caring about the continued viability of the death penalty in Colorado because I think for all practical purposes there is none.  I do care about the future of prosecuting violent criminals, juvenile offenders, and non-violent repeat offenders.

I don’t care about any Kardashian, Jenner, Olson twin, Jersey Shore cast member, Bristol Palin and her kid, Kate and her eight kids, or any real housewife.  I don’t care who survives Survivor, Big Brother, or Glass House, who the Bachelorette picks, who is or isn’t an Iron Chef, Project Runways contestants, or whether Britney Spears judges American Idol.  I would care about who wins The Glee Project if I still cared about Glee.

I don’t care if the TSA scans me for weapons and how invasive their scan is.  I mean, really, do I think some TSA employee wants to see me naked?  I don’t care about the government listening in on my phone calls, seeing what I type on my computer, or putting a tracker on my car.  I am not saying no one should care, but I don’t.  I don’t worry that some cop will engage in an illegal stop and frisk of me or search my house without a warrant.  I do worry that some psycho will burglarize, assault, or rob me or those whom I care about.  The ACLU apparently sees all these things the other way.

I was going to write that I don’t care if anyone reads my blog; that I write them for myself and whether people read them or not is irrelevant.  But that would be a lie.  I love that both of you read them.  And I really love comments.  Thanks.

I escaped to the library the other day in an effort to avoid having my air conditioner running constantly.  I was poking around the basement which has books about sports, arts, and movies (you didn’t think I would be in the history, science or philosophy section did you?).  The basement is also where they have the DVDs.  I wasn’t really looking for movies to watch as, all my loyal readers (both of you) know, I have promised myself to read more.  But I stumbled across DVDs of tv shows.  Curious, I went over to examine.

They have dozens of shows, from the sophisticated to the ridiculous.  They have Masterpiece Theater and I Love Lucy.  You can watch comedies like 30 Rock, or dramas like Dallas, or science programs from National Geographic.  For a tv junkie like me, this is a treasure trove of endless hours of not reading, not writing, not even breathing fresh air.

Not wanting to waste this opportunity, I quickly combed the shelves for attractive candidates.  After a good deal of perusing, reading the back of the cases, and general indecision, I finally settled on two very contrasting series.

The first was the HBO show Eastbound and Down about a former major league baseball player who falls on hard times.  The other was a British import, Danger UXB, a 1980s vintage production about life in wartime Britain.  I could not have picked two more different productions.

Eastbound and Down is a comedy. It was produced in part by Will Farrell, who appears in the show.  I think they are still making episodes, having completed season 3 this year.  I rented season 1.  I heard about this show a while ago and have always been intrigued with its premise.  What happens to major leaguers when their arms give out?  In this show they hit rock bottom.  The protagonist, played by Danny McBride, is a former star pitcher named Kenny Powers. Inspired by the racist, sexist, gay-bashing fireballer John Rocker, Powers is portrayed as perhaps the most unlikable character in the history of television.  He is crude, stupid, insensitive, condescending, arrogant, mean, selfish in the extreme, and possessed of a vocabulary that uses the “f” word as a prefix for basically every thought he wants to express.  Is it word a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, exclamation, or expression?  Yes.  I realize people sometimes talk this way (distressingly more often than ever and more publicly) but geez, do they have to use such profanity as the basis of every line in every script?  I know I sound like some sort of provincial prude, but when every single character, except for the stereotypical goody-goody principal of the school Powers teaches at, throws “f” bombs like candy canes at a Christmas parade, the effect is somewhat jarring.

I could excuse this lame misuse of the mother tongue if show was funny.  However, my tastes do not run to what I like to call “drunken frat boy humor.”  Alcoholic, drug-using boors are not my idea of heroes, anti or otherwise.  That is not to say that I never laughed while watching it, some things actually were kind of humorous, but all in all, I found Eastbound and Down a show best watched during fraternity initiations and in the background at a poker party.  (The amount of female pulchritude makes it attractive entertainment for situations where guys can be guys without the uncomfortable presence of women who might take offense at the way women are portrayed.)  I think I will pass on the rest of the episodes.  I guess I will miss seeing Powers’s old girlfriend, for reasons acceptable only to drunken, obnoxious frat boys, succumb to his well-hidden charms and engage in a liaison in the front seat of his pickup, because, of course educated, intelligent women will always want an uncomfortable romp with a Neanderthal at the risk of losing their smart, educated, caring fiancées.

To top it all off, on the rare times they have McBride actually try to throw a baseball he looks as much like a major league pitcher as John Goodman did as Babe Ruth, or basically not much.  If you are a fan of Eastbound and Down please do not post a comment telling me so because I want to still like you, and that might just make it impossible.

On a more intellectual note, I watched several episodes of Danger UXB.  It revolves around a young officer who is assigned to a unit of the British Army in World War II which was responsible for finding loose, unexploded ordinance dropped by the Germans on England and making sure it didn’t go off and kill people.  (The “UXB” in the title stands for “UneXploded Bomb.”)

I had seen this show years before on PBS, and once on VHS, but it is a rare pleasure to see it on DVD.  It is typically British.  The drama is paramount, but underplayed.  The characters are stressed, I mean after all their job is to find unexploded bombs in Blitz-era London and defuse them, but maintain a stiff upper lip.  Even when they suffer losses of friends and family, their grief is shown more by fadeout than exposition.  There are illicit affairs, but the star, Judy Geeson from To Sir with Love, is never shown taking off her layers of wool clothes in order to seduce her soldier paramour.  Mostly they talk in clipped sentences about how much they love each other and how unfortunate it is that she is married and that his life expectancy is not much greater than a fruit fly.  Even when these bomb defusers make a mistake leading to detonation, good reason for swearing, there are no “f” words.  Heck, they rarely even utter a “God damn.”  I doubt Kenny Powers would like it.

I do sometime wish there were subtitles, as the enlisted men’s cockney accents are challenging to discern with clarity, but all in all, the drama played out on the streets of war-torn London seems more intriguing to me than the comedy of drunken men chasing half-clad women in the South of today.  Maybe I am just old-fashioned.

Meg and I were walking around Barnes and Noble the other day and she said she had just finished the book she was reading and needed a new book.  I told her I had really enjoyed a novel called Replay written in the 1980s by a guy named Ken Grimwood.  I convinced her to read it.  That same night she sent me a text saying she had started it and really liked it.  I was somewhat surprised.  Meg and I don’t always agree on literature (and even less so on fine art).

A short time later Susan told me she, too, had finished her last book and needed a new book.  Again, I suggested Replay, and sure enough, Susan liked it too.  In all honesty I should disclose that Susan has read some of my books and expressed satisfaction with those, so she may not be a very discriminating reader.  Nevertheless, that all three of us like the same book must say something about the quality of the writing.

All of this got me thinking about books I have liked over the years.  I have blogged before about all my books, but I am not sure I have written a blog recommending books I have really liked.  Here are some of my favorite works of fiction (I actually read much more non-fiction, but since I recommended a novel to Meg I thought I would blog about fiction):

Let’s start with Replay.  Although this was written in 1987 I don’t recall hearing about it when it came out.  (That was the year Meg was born so I did not do a lot of reading with all the crying going on.)  It is about a man who dies, then wakes up as his 18-year old self with all his memories intact.  He goes on to live a very different life, then dies at exactly the same moment in time, again waking up as his 18-year old self. He makes different choices, but sure enough, dies again, this time waking up at a slightly later time in his original life.  This keeps happening.  Along the way he meets a woman to whom the same thing is happening.  Not only is the story engaging, but it makes you think about what you would do if this happened to you.

Shogun.   I could not put this one down.  I had the unfortunate luck of picking this up as I was studying for the bar exam.  So when I would get home late after bar review class I would stay up past midnight caught up in the adventure.  A British sailor aboard a Dutch ship in 1600 is shipwrecked in Japan.  He is taken prison by a local warlord and through a series of machinations and adventures ends up in the court of the big warlord or Shogun.  Author James Clavell tells a compelling story full of adventure in exotic ancient Japan.  On every page you think the hero will be killed (which he won’t since the book is 1000 pages long).

The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.  I read these back to back.  Herman Wouk’s epic saga (is that a cliché or what?) about the fate of several families, Jews and non-Jews in the time leading up to and during World War II.  The characters are well-drawn and their experiences turn a history on the war into personal experiences.  You already know the ending, the Germans lose the war, but what happens to each character along the way will drag you from page to page regardless of how much sleep you are missing.

Gone With the Wind.  I love the movie and hesitated to read the book.  The book is better.  Way better.  Much more detail, atmosphere, color, and what strikes me as a more realistic picture of the antebellum South.  Scarlett O’Hara is much more devious and unlikable in the book, I think, while her story plays out in a rich narrative.  The other characters are given much more development than in the movie and Rhett Butler becomes more of a man of flesh and blood than the screen idol played by Clark Gable.  Like most of the rest of these recommendations, the book is long, but you will still be sad it is ending when Rhett tells her he doesn’t give a damn.

Stranger in a Strange Land.   I used to love science fiction when I was a teenager, and Robert Heinlein was my favorite.  This is his best, I think.  It mixes elements of science, religion, politics and history into a difficult to categorize, but fascinating to read, story.  Heinlein wrote lots of fun space wars kinds of stories like Starship Troopers, but his later works were the best.  I also loved books written by Arthur C. Clarke (although not 2001: A Space Odyssey all that much) and Isaac Asimov, whose Foundation trilogy is must reading for anyone who likes science fiction.

Nero Wolfe books.  Rex Stout wrote a series of mysteries about private investigator Nero Wolfe.  Wolfe was a superfat (pushing 500 pounds) genius who rarely left his house, never carried a gun, and would rather spend time cultivating orchids than solving crimes.  His assistant Archie Goodwin is the narrator who acts as Wolfe’s eyes, ears, and knuckles in the outside world.  I never thought the mysteries were all that interesting, but I love the way Stout creates the atmosphere of New York City beginning in the 1930s through the late 1950s.  Agatha Christie’s mysteries were far more intriguing, but I never warmed up to her characters or their particularly English context.

The Great American Novel.  There are lots of good books about baseball.  The Natural is wonderful, for example.  But this little-known gem from Phillip Roth, better known for Portnoy’s Complaint, mixes love of baseball with a sense of humor.  Roth imagines a third major league in the 1940s.  Their New Jersey franchise leases out their ballpark to the Navy requiring the team to play all of its 1943 season on the road.  The collection of misfits proceeds to lose every game (save one).  If you read this and don’t find yourself laughing out loud something is wrong with you.

There are many, many others.  Perhaps I will blog about some of my nonfiction favorites soon.

I don’t read enough.  I read some, mostly at night before I fall asleep.  Usually that means a few pages before I doze off.  This is not enough.  I used to read more.  I used to read all the time.  I used to read all day.  

Of course, television has always been a distraction, but for most of my life it was not a major distraction because television primarily has been a purveyor of garbage.  Sure, it has sports, and the occasional show I fall in love with like Friends or Bay City Blues, but in general, reading has been a much more attractive an option than tv.

Cable tv did present more of a distraction, but with the advent of innumerable reality shows (I mean, really, do this many people care about what all these housewives are doing?) and the switch of the History Channel from shows about actual history to ones about  Swamp People, I still managed to get in a great deal of reading.

Recordings of movies cuts into my reading, too.  I love movies, and the idea that I can pop in Saving Private Ryan or Casablanca or Major League is often much more enticing than reading.  Reading, of course, is an active enterprise.  Watching a movie is much more passive, and therefore much more seductive when feeling ill, tired, lazy, or just plan blah.  I have now watched a lot of movies made from books which I should have read in the first place.  For a long time I never read Gone with the Wind because I love the movie so much, but as with most of them, the book is better.  I have never read a single Dickens book, but I know about Ebeneezer Scrooge and Oliver Twist.  I never read the Maltese Falcon, but I know that Sam Spade looks like Humphrey Bogart.  The Bible?  Why bother?  There are lots of movies from that book.

Now, of course, I have Netflix.  This means I don’t have to leave the comfort of my couch to watch movies and old tv shows.  In the past at least I used to have to drive to Blockbuster or the Redbox or someplace, enough of a disincentive that picking up the book on my nightstand constituted a better idea.  But now, with just some remote control work (something I truly am good at) I can be watching Star Trek, or maybe a classic film.  Reading has diminished.

However, the single biggest impediment to more reading is the internet.  There is so much interesting stuff on there.  Have you ever been to Ted.com?  Wow, I love those talks.  They are smart to keep them about 15 minutes or so, making them easily digestible.  I watch all kinds of talk about science, stuff I would never know about. 

I use Stumbleupon to find new stuff.  It leads me to a lot of junk, but also to a lot of gems.  There are website about astronomy and physics, many contain fascinating photographs of far off nebula.  They tell me about planets orbiting other suns and sub-atomic particles.  Maybe one of them will explain M theory in a way I can understand it someday.  I surf the net and find history, technology, entertainment news (apparently lots of people like to watch movies and read about the private lives of movie stars), inspirational quotes, etc.

Anyway, so I don’t read as much.  Of course, I keep a book next to my bed as I always have.  A real book.  Of course, I always have a book on my iPad, but there is something about crawling into bed and curling up with a good book that cannot be replicated by curling up with a good tabloid computer.  For one thing, my iPad also connects to the internet and has a Netflix app.  So there I am distracted again. 

This is why I have a storage locker in Lakewood filled with boxes of books.  I have even read some of them.

I have been watching with great interest the Olympic trials in swimming and track and field (not so much in gymnastics).  I love the Olympics and plan to watch pretty much non-stop once they start.  But I am troubled by the way they measure success in one way.  The amount of medals won is somewhat of an unfair measure.
 

Each race, for medal purposes, constitutes a single event.  So, for a sport like swimming, which has a couple of dozen races, athletes can take part in multiple events.  Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in a single Olympics.  Impressive, almost unbelievable, but how can we really measure that against other performances?


A decathlete has to perform 10 competitions over two days.  He can only compete in a single medal event.  So even though Bruce Jenner competed in 10 different competitions he walked away with only one gold medal.  Does that mean we should value his award less than Phelps’s eight?  I don’t think so, but it is hard to compare.

In the 1980 Winter Olympics Eric Heiden won five gold medals in speed skating.  That in and of itself incredible; but it is made all the more so when you consider that they only had five races.  Heiden won the sprints, and the endurance races.  Everything they had, he won.  For all Phelps accomplished, he did not approach anything like that. It would be as if he won the 50 meter freestyle sprint and the 1500 meter freestyle marathon.  No one has approached that kind of performance.  (Phelps, by the way, won three golds as part of relay teams.)  But Heiden can’t be proclaimed as America’s most prolific Olympic medalist.  (I doubt he really cares.  Following his skating career he became an esteemed physician who works closely with the American Olympic team.  How is it some people get both athletic talent and brains while the rest of us have trouble both tying our shoes and remembering what we read in the newspaper this morning?) 

At the same Olympics where Heiden achieved what I consider to be the greatest achievement in any single Olympics (Jim Thorpe  and Jesse Owens nothwithstanding), the American hockey team won their shocking  and thrilling gold medal (which will forever be memorialized in the Jeffco DA’s Office Intake Unit).  They had to play eight games over a span of two weeks.  For their victory each member of the team won a single gold medal.  This is true of every team sport at the Olympics, and of every sport which is contested by matches rather than races.  So Misty May and Kerri Walsh had to win seven matches for their golds, but again, they walked away with only one medal.  Michael Phelps’s suitcase qualified for excess weight charges while May and Walsh could carry their booty around their necks.  Is this fair?

I have a solution.  The size of the medal should reflect the amount of effort it required to win it.  The gold medal for, say, the 100 meter run, which takes about 10 seconds, would be the size of a postage stamp, which the gold for the marathon would be around the size of a basketball.  That is only fair since the marathon winner trains all year for a single event, while the winner of the 100 meters usually runs the 200 meters also and maybe a couple of relays.  Altogether he won’t race for even a full minute, while the marathoner toils in the hot sun for more than 2 hours.

Team sports would be made much bigger.  After all, water polo players have to be in the pool day after day with guys jumping on their heads and kneeing them in the groin, all the while worrying about drowning.  This is extraordinary effort.  Their gold should be perhaps the size of a movie poster.  Sailing, which unbelievably, is an Olympic sport, requires no more effort that sitting in an anachronistic vessel gliding over the ocean.  I don’t know how long those races last (I guess there are 11 separate events, can you believe it?) and I don’t care.  The effort expended to race a sailboat is so minimal, and their training so unathletic (I mean, really, they have to exert themselves every day for four years cranking a lever to trim a sail, big wow compared to marathon training), that if they should get a medal it deserves to be no bigger than a pierced earring stud or perhaps a straight pin.  I would be in favor of giving them a bigger medal, if not made of medal at all.  I could agree to a certificate about the size of an album cover. 

The way it is now, the top sailor gets the same gold as the swimmers who race for 10 kilometers in open water.  The fastest time in that event in 2008 was an hour and 51 minutes.  I know you are saying that is shorter than a marathon running race, and of course it is, but runners at least can look around and see scenery, and if they get tired they can just stop.  Swimmers who get tired in open water, while they are not only racing but dodging acquatic life, risk drowning.  So I think this medal should perhaps be the biggest of all.  Maybe about the size of a sports car. 

The only event perhaps less worthy of actual medals is equestrian dressage.  I understand that having horses do all those things is an unusual skill, and does take perhaps extensive training and knowledge, but I fail to see how it qualifies as a sport.  There is no more athleticism on behalf of equestrian competitors than professional eaters or Scrabble competitors.  These other competitions also require skills and take some level of training to accomplish, but they are not sports and for good reason are not part of the Olympics.  Equestrians should be considered the same.  Well, on second thought, I would give a gold medal about the size of an apple … to the horse.  Or maybe just the apple.