Dreaming About Turducken

The turducken is a food that is based on older royal-feast main courses of de-boned nested animals roasted to perfection. In America the turducken was popularized by the television football analyst John Madden, and has since entered the American consciousness as an elite Thanksgiving dish, something that's reserved to be purchased whole from one of the few Louisiana sellers or purchased in pieces and put together ones-self.

The name "turducken" comes from TURkey-DUCK-chickEN. The dish is, if you're unaware, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken.

In 2003, when the dish was first being popularized, my roommate at the time Ryan, a person I've featured in my blog from time to time and close friend, decided that that year we'd do a turducken, found a butcher to de-bone the birds and got a hold of the fixings for three awesome dressings.

That's another one of the staples of the turducken. I'm trying to make it a staple anyway: if you're going all out with the turducken in the first place, you should make three separate stuffings.

That first year the stuffings were: andouille sausage based; oyster based; and corn-bread based. While Ryan was the leading force and financial backer, Corrie and I had the time and know-how to put it all together, and pretty much made the dish.

It's cooked slowly on low heat; if it gets too hot the fat from the duck will deep-fry the other two birds from the inside.

It was awesome.

This year Corrie's parents were on a California trip for a specific reason, and were able to swing down to Long Beach for Thanksgiving. Corrie's dad made a comment about the possibility of us doing a turducken for the meal, to which Corrie laughed off at first. Eventually she decided that doing a turducken would be the perfect cap to her folks' California trip, and the plan was afoot.

She gathered the things, I sharpened my knife, and we made it happen.

Here's a picture that's reminiscent of Christmas Day before the gifts get ripped into:



I set about carving the birds, de-boning them. I started with the chicken because it's the least important if you screw it up. I try to liken it as carving the raw bird in reverse. If you've ever carved up a whole raw chicken, with a sharp enough knife and enough patience, de-boning is possible. Think about it as removing the carcass from the bird instead of the meat from the carcass; carving in reverse order.

It worked well, and so I repeated the method with the duck. Some observations: the duck's wings are much larger and tougher than the chicken's, relative to the frame, while the duck's thigh/drumstick is smaller than the chicken's, relative to the frame.

I repeated the method again with the turkey, while leaving the bones in the thigh/drumstick and leaving the wings on, to make it look more like a real turkey. Here's a shot of the de-boning process wirth everything done and ready to rock. The chicken is on the left with the darker meat duck next to it separated from the turkey on the right by the bowl of bones in the middle (by the timing on these pictures I learned that it took me just under an hour to de-bone the trio):



Lacing it up is really the first time that takes two people to do. One person needs to hold while the other laces. The method we used was the no-needle sew job. You pierce opposing sides of the skin with a sharp-ended skinny rod at intervals, then lace around the rods like you would a shoe. Carefully tightening brings the skin together.



A labor of love is ready to be given a butter-and-thyme massage and roasted to perfection. (Had to bring out the big-guns for this day: black cap and apron.)



I was at work on the Turkey-day itself, but I heard the turducken was good (by Corrie's parents; Corrie felt she'd overdone the chicken). The three stuffings I used were: traditional bread with jack-o-lantern seeds and sage; buttered rice with exotic hot peppers; and corn bread.

This Thanksgiving wasn't all turducken. Corrie put together a grand menu, and pulled off everything. She made a roasted butternut squash soup with goat cheese fondue added for sexier flavor. She put together a very smart cheese plate with globe grapes, blueberries and crackers. She roasted beets for a chicory and beet salad. She made pumpkin pie with ginger snap crust and even made a ginger sorbet to top the pie.



That ginger sorbet is killer.

This was Corrie's Thanksgiving...I just carved some raw birds and made some stuffing.

"Movember" No More

I couldn't finish it out. I didn't have the fortitude.

I signed up for Movember, the movement to raise money and awareness for men's health issues in the month of November by growing a mustache.

I just couldn't take myself seriously whenever I saw my own reflection. I realized that since I wasn't going to ask for donations--as a writer I'd like to save up that friendly capital for solicitations about purchasing a book--that simply raising awareness isn't enough for me to keep fighting myself with the 'stache.

In a different time I could probably look like a non-porn-star with a mustache. I did find a happy medium, where it almost looked okay and natural, but it wasn't me.

Interesting News from the ILC

The ILC I'm referring to is the International Longevity Center.

I've heard a report that by mid-century, around 2050, the number of centurions worldwide will number three- to five-million.

A centurion, while not necessarily some kind of superhero or Titan, is a person that has reached one-hundred years of age.

It's not just a Western phenomena either, as some of the hot-spots for the ultra-elders are the Indian subcontinent and parts of rural China.

Some reasons for the extra longevity has been the access to clean water, basic sanitation, and dental hygiene.

They also said that by the end of the century and around the turning of the next, the number of centurions should be in the fifteen- to seventeen-million range.

Holy cow. Seventeen-million hundred-year-olds...

Thor Memory: Stringer Bell Sighting

I forgot to mention the sighting of Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) in Thor. I'm not sure what his character's name is, but he's the black guy who controls the interstellar transporter.

I remember wanting to see him brawl with the icy giants or Loki anytime he was onscreen. It reminded me of The Tick live-action television show. Patrick Warburton, an actor first getting attention as Putty in Seinfeld, played the Tick, and the suit he wore was so constricting that we audience members only saw him mugging slowly, instead of action fighting scenes.

You get that same feeling watching Idris in his metallic looking suit.

Thor? A Space Warrior?

So, I just recently saw the Marvel Comics film Thor. I can definitely say that I had no idea of the Marvel back story for Thor. I wasn't an Avengers comic fan, and my only knowledge of Thor is relegated to my little understanding of Norse mythology and the brief scene in Adventures in Babysitting.

Thor, in mythology is the god of thunder, and by different pronunciations, we get different days of the week in different languages. Historically Thor was written as Thor, Thur, Thonar, Donar, Donnar...some of these variations come from the letter of the alphabet that was used to write the first letter of this god's name. The letter was the Old Germanic form of the Greek theta, the letter for the 'th'sound. In the Old Germanic alphabet, it looks remarkably like a Latin alphabet 'd'. Maybe it's a coincidence. Our day is Thursday, 'Thor's-day'. In German the same day of the week is Donnerstag, 'Donners-tag', 'Donner's-day'. In German, 'donner' is also the word for thunder, so here Thor's name has been used for their word for thunder, and I imagine that in English there's also an etymological connection between the two.

Back to the recent movie. Apparently Asgard is a city on a cloudy asteroid in space, and some kind of spinning transporter shoots people through space to one of the different 'Nine Realms'. There's also a rainbow road, Anthony Hopkins with an eye plucked out, and Natalie Portman playing all gaga with the hulking Thor. I couldn't help but crack up anytime she and him were on screen together. She barely looks like she can remember her lines.

Thor's weapon of choice is Mjlnor, a war hammer. I did some research and learned that actual war hammers would never be as large or as bulky as Mjlnor, and that war hammers developed when armor got better; it was easier to bash a foe when you couldn't pierce his suit.

In the Marvel universe, Thor's hammer is the only object that can dent or otherwise damage Wolverine's adamantium-covered skeleton.

In the movie, it seems like the hammer is a capacitor for energy; it collects it, stores it, and releases it upon demand of the holder of Mjlnor, who it turns out has to be Thor.

This post isn't intended to be a trashing of Thor, because I liked it. I thought the silly space warrior back story was fun, as long as a person takes my brother's advice and leaves their science hat at home.

I was explaining to Corrie while we watched the opening minutes: when you see two kids, one blond and one dark-haired, they're brothers, and the blond kid has the same name as the title of the movie, you know automatically that the dark-haired kid will be the main bad-guy when everyone's an adult.

That's just how American movies work.

A Few Days After Turkey Day

I've been busy with work and house guests, but I'll be presenting pictures from my turducken execution in a few days. Work has been presenting its own problems.

I do love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite of this "season" (the 10/31-1/1 holiday season).

Go Galaxy!

Whooooaaaa!!!! We won!!

I guess, if you love soccer that much, you might sound like that.

Like the NFL, the championship game in Major League Soccer is on a rotating location set up, and this year the Home Depot Center in Carson, a ten minute drive up the 405 from here in Long Beach, played host to the MLS Cup championship game. (Next year the insanity ends, and the team in the final with the better record gets home field advantage.)

Our very own LA Galaxy played the Houston Dynamo, and were victorious, winning 1-0. For the third time in my life, a champion has won their sport's ring while I was living in the city of their home. Giants, Yankees, and Galaxy, baby!

So, that's about all I have for soccer, mainly because I don't feel like going into the Beckham will he stay or go nonsense, or about how awesome the Irishman Robbie Keane is or about how awesome the final MVP and most famous US player, Landon Donovan, is.

In other LA sports news, Clayton Kershaw won the National League Cy Young Award, signifying him as the best pitcher in the NL, which was a good choice. Matt Kemp came in second to the Brewers' Ryan Braun for NL Most Valuable Player, which was lame if not controversial. I guess if the Dodgers had the best pitcher and best player, maybe they shouldn't have been so mediocre. Maybe those two players kept them mediocre instead of awful.

In any case, there has been some squawking about Justin Verlander winning both the AL Cy Young Award and the AL MVP. Pitchers occasionally win both, but only in years when they were particularly dominant and their wasn't an obvious position player who should have won. For Verlander this year: check and check.

I typically don't have a problem with pitchers winning the MVP, at least constitutionally as some of these guys I hear on the radio on the way to and from work do.

My question to those who are upset about a pitcher winning the MVP (that's what the Cy Young is for, they say) is, this year, which position player meant more to their team than Verlander meant to the Tigers? The only three guys who are even close are Curtis Granderson, of my Yankees, and Jacoby Ellsbury, of the Red Sox, and Jose Bautista, of the Toronto Blue Jays. I wouldn't have even suggested Ellsbury before seeing the final tally, in which he took second place.

To me Ellsbury shouldn't win because he wasn't dominating like a Babe Ruth or a Willie Mays on a horrible team; he was good on a team that choked like crazy over the last month of the season. Not leading a team to the playoffs isn't an MVP dealbreaker, but being part of a choking team is more glaring for me. Jose Bautista was a journeyman chump who, suddenly in 2010, learned how to hit homers like McGuire and Sosa, and we're cynical enough now to have reservations about sudden power surges. His value on a mediocre team is tied to his home runs, which shouldn't be enough to make someone an MVP.

Curtis Granderson was the best player on a playoff team and led the league in homers and RBIs while playing a premium defensive position, center field. He would've been my bet for MVP, but there were a few factors going against him: anti-Yankee bias in the MVP voting circles; and a plethora of talent around him protecting his position in the lineup--Robinson Cano, Teixeira, A-Rod, Jeter.

Should Verlander have won the MVP? It's not the worst choice. He was totally dominant after his no-hitter in June on, carrying the Tigers from distant second place at the time all the way to the divisional crown handily a few short months later. His attitude--big game dominant force--helped define the Tigers down the stretch, and if that doesn't make him the most valuable player on his team, and as an extension, the league, then I don't know how that award works.

New Post

I didn't like the construction of the first sentence of the previous post, so I decided I needed a new post. I'm drinking a beer after a long night of work. For someone who loves beer as much as I do I'm surprised to admit that this is my first beer since Seattle, which was two weeks ago.

Has it been that long, tasty pal? I'm working on a Double Take Brewing Co. Amber Ale; brewed in Rochester the label tells me. It hits the spot for certain.

I had a strange thought the other day: crude oil, for all the odors and flammability, is a natural product. If leaves, having turned all sorts of beautiful fiery colors, fall into a pond, do we consider that an ecological disaster? One in which the polluted pond now has aquatic life choking away into death because of the decomposing leaves eating up the oxygen?

I guess leaves burn too.

I had another strange thought the other day: I'm one of the three types of asshole that makes it extra dangerous to swim in the ocean in the immediate wake of rain.

The first type is the uses-pesticides-on-his-lawn-and-home-garden guy. Whenever the first rain comes, all that runoff comes swooshing down the storm drains into the concrete riverbeds and washes out to sea.

The second type are me and my compadres, the too-poor-or-too-cheap-to-buy-a-new-car-so-we-drive-our-old-POS-and-drip-oil-everywhere folks. I joke that I don't need to get an oil change because I put oil in every few days, which is like changing it, right? It's always fresh and new. Then the rain comes, and people like me, with our old polluting cars (too bad it doesn't smell like old leaves) contribute directly to the level of petroleum in the ocean.

Luckily for everyone (in the world) the ocean is generally big enough to filter out and render the levels of runoff pollutants rather inert over a big enough time frame.

The third type of asshole is the I-don't-pick-up-my-dog's-poop jerk. Whenever you hear about "bacteria levels are too high" at the beaches right after a rain, it's directly a result of these bastards not picking up their dog's shit. With the pesticides and petroleum, animal waste is washed into the storm drains and out to sea in a nasty brew, made cleaner only through time.

I know it's not the most pleasant or convenient thing ever--grabbing a steaming deuce with an inside out baggie and then finding a can to drop it in--but that's one of the costs of the love, loyalty, and companionship that a dog brings you, goddammit.

In Long Beach, at least in our neighborhood, it's a serious problem, and we're right next to the damn beach. In Brooklyn it was a problem too, but maybe less so.

I remember thinking, while we lived out there, that they should make the fine for not picking up your pet's droppings five-thousand dollars. Draconian? Yes, obviously, but how many people would just let it sit there if that was the cost? Imagine all the extra police you could afford, added to neighborhoods just to keep an eye out for irresponsible pet owners. Nobody would be able to pay the fine all at once, and it would have to be made part of their monthly bills. Rent, heat, phone, dogshit ticket, electricity.

If that was the case, you better damn well believe people would remember their duty to take care of their dog's doody.

That reminds me of a scene from a Futurama episode where Bender, enthralled with the way of life on a planet that's modeled after ancient Egypt, says in reference to a slave working on a giant statue of the current pharaoh, "If you spend your whole life carving a guy's toe, you're gonna remember him." It was all part of his neurosis about not being remembered.

My amber ale from Rochester is finished, and so shall this stream of consciousness post be as well.

Quick note for my Dad

My dad and I share many things: love of the Yankees, prominent noses, blue eyes, useful charm, and a love of literature among them. We've both grown very fond of Denis Johnson's prose. If you want a masterpiece of short fiction, check out Jesus' Son. If you're looking for what will turn into the seminal novel about Vietnam, read Tree of Smoke. If you want an early work from a genius about a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the Florida keys, look into Fiskadoro.

Denis Johnson, before he was publishing fiction, built a reputation on poetry. In a post about Seattle I put up a picture of two books. One was The Veil, a collection of poetry from Denis Johnson. I've had a very hard time finding his poetry anywhere, but he lived in Seatts for a while, and this is a first edition book, so it makes some kind of sense I suppose.

I just want to share a sentence from this collection, mainly for my dad, but also for my other readers, just so we can all bask in the glow of someone's art. Just one set of four lines that compose a sentence.

This is the opening for the poem "Man Walking to Work""

The dawn is a quality laid across
the freeway like the visible
memory of the ocean that kept all this
a secret for a hundred million years.





My dad and I also both love The Simpsons.

Local Sports Note: Go Beach!

Dan Monson, the basketball coach of the Long Beach State 49ers men's basketball team made a name for himself by turning Gonzaga into a college basketball powerhouse. A mid-major program as they're called, distinguishing them from the likes of UNC and Kansas among others, Gozaga became a regular member of the NCAA tournament in March. One tactic that helped bring that along was to schedule any and every big school that would play them.

Unlike Boise State's football program, which has a difficult time finding big schools willing to risk losing to them, college basketball is more forgiving, mainly because there are lots of games, and a handy tournament at the end of the season to decide the champion.

Monson has brought the same philosophy to his tenure at LBSU. The 'Niners have a brutal stretch in their schedule where they play the defending Mountain West champion San Diego State, currently ranked (8)Louisville, (12)Kansas, (1)UNC, and a trip to Hawai'i for a showdown with (13)Xavier.

They just played their second game of the year, travelling across country to play in the harsh environs of Pitt's famed home court. (9)Pitt is the reigning Big East champ and a perennial contender, and they rarely lose at home to teams in their own conference, let alone to non-conference foes.

Until Wednesday, that is.

Our 49ers beat the Panthers of Pittsburgh in their own dojo, becoming the first non-conference team to win in the arena since it opened in 2002, and doing it handily at that. Pitt is still a good team, but Long Beach State came to play. They out-hustled, out-rebounded, and as one Pitt player said, out-smarted the more famous Big East rep.

Here's to hoping for good things for Monson and our very own 'Niners.

Go Beach!

(It always strikes me as a peculiar cheer--"Go Beach!". They say it's because LBSU, or rather, CSULB, is the only major university that has the word beach in the name of the school in the entire country. Kinda cool...)

More from the Nerd Files

I was at work yesterday when I saw a magazine sitting in a spot where magazines should not be. "Oooohhh," I said as I picked it up and began to thumb through it. I started asking whose it was, and everybody played dumb. My demeanor wasn't angry or upset, more like a kid who's found something cool.

And to me I was a kid who'd found something cool. "Well, if anyone asks about it," I said as I took it back to the office to squirrel away until later, "tell them I have it." I would've relinquished it. I'm not an ogre.

The magazine was simply titled Archaeology. It's the publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, situated at Boston University.

This issue is very cool and action packed, with articles on ancient lost cities of Persia, the Peruvian adaptations to the victorious conquistadors, and the pre-auto industry two century history of Detroit. They even delve into the DNA of the Black Death and Australopithecus footprints scanned by a computer showing off the true shape of their foot.

Must be a nerd to be as excited as I am about snatching up this magazine. It helps stretch out my brain and get my creative and connection-making juices flowing.

"You must be Patrick."

For the first time in my adult life I walked into two different business establishments at different times on the same day and was greeted by people I'd never met with basically the same phrase, "You must be Patrick." It was pretty weird, and the second time is when I thought deeper about it. Seems like it has to be the first time.

My first stop was to Corrie's architectural firm. She and a team of her comrades have entered an appetizer competition for design firms, and as yesterday was an off day for me, I decided to stop by and consult with the ladies. I guess Corrie had mentioned to the receptionist that I'd be stopping by and provided a description I can only imagine went like, "Scruffy, likely tattered clothes, sandals, straw hat...basically not the kind of person you'd normally see walking through the door."

So when I got there, after entering through the large glass doors and before I could say anything, the young lady receptionist smiled at me said "You must be Patrick."

Later on during the day, actually in the evening/nighttime, when Corrie and I were hard at work prepping out her team's appetizer fixings, we decided to call out for pizza. We have the local Pizza Pi place around the corner which I enjoy, but don't get to eat that often because of our usual plans for my off evenings. I called in the order for pick up, because they are right around the corner.

I was quoted a waiting time of twenty-five minutes, but it took me a little longer to get over there. I'm sure it wasn't a great mystery who I was when I walked in...Monday night, only one two-top in the whole place, the young lady at the register shooting the breeze with the owner's brother. She spotted me the moment I came in.

When I got to the register the young lady smiled at me and said, "You must be Patrick."

It was while walking home and thinking about my day that I found it all pretty surreal.

I must be Patrick.

Long-Forgotten Post Unearthed

The following post languished as a draft from February 24th of 2010 until last week, when I found it while perusing the list of old posts. See, this weblog host has the list of posts in a specific database look, and one spot has a light orange "draft" next to it. It caught my eye and I remembered the post, specifically a letter to someone as a Facebook message. The contents of which relate my early observations of the transition from Brooklyn to Austin.

I've done some slight editing. I've also done some commenting, [[which will be surrounded by brackets like this]].

"
Enjoy this essay--I guess that's what you'd call it--whenever you get around to it. [[I'm always nervous sending such large letters.]]

Living in Texas: That's always one of everyone's questions, "How the hell is Texas?", those types of questions...

You want the truth? (I don't mean "you" specifically, just the royal, collective "YOU" that seems very interested in the answer to that question...the same type of question was asked about NYC at the time...)

Well, it's pretty much the same as anywhere else in America...doesn't have the density of NYC, but nowhere in the States do. Are there rednecks? Of course...but, both of us know from experience that there are plenty of rednecks in California, and I can attest from experience that there are plenty of rednecks in upstate New York. New York City, for all the buildings and liberal mindset, still had plenty of rich-ass Geroge Dubya lovers, plenty of greedy ignorant bastards who're separated from rednecks only by W-2s and zip-codes...

In New York, people say that California is laid back...being from California makes that kind of comment seem strange since that's all we know about life, and we'd say that the east coast is THE rat-race Americans are afraid to join--stupidly fast-paced, always rushing, never having enough and never being happy...it's a sad, wasted life...

But we're laid back, okay...well, so is Texas. At least Austin is definitley laid back. Austin calls itself the "Live Music Capital of the World" and the official motto is "Keep Austin Weird." Some musical acts that came from here are Willie Nelson and Janis Joplin. There are definitely more hippies than rednecks in Austin. It tends to be the liberal, blue section of a big red blot come election time, but hell, one of the most powerful Democratic Presidents ever was governor of Texas, and they still love him around here, Mr. LBJ.

Both "Dazed and Confused" and "Slackers" were filmed here in Austin.

I've heard from people that Californians are guilty of the "sin" of pride, but after a while I could see what they meant. I think it's not so much the pride as it is the air of superiority that Californians carry with them. But I've heard that same sentiment coming from Texans...and I thought what? Californians too proud? Coming from a Texan?

These people are easily the proudest of any state-livers in the States. Californians take for granted how people from other states view California, and still somehow get the idea right that everybody wants to be there...see, we think we're just so cool, and we're accidently right about most people wanting to move to Cali. What I've noticed having lived outside of the state is that not too many of us ever fully come to grips with the romantic longing and need for a heavenly place, a Valhalla of sorts, that clouldn't ever exist in reality but somehow does, just west of Nevada and north of Mexico, what it means to have a piece of supernatural hope to look towards...that's what California is to many non-Californian Americans. [[I'd forgotten how much this realization had affected my understanding of America.]]

But not Texans. Where Californians are blase, Texans are bombastic. This was it's own country, goddammit! The US was lucky we decided to join her! I mentioned once that Texas needed the American troops to push out the Mexican army, and that's why she joined the union...wanna guess how that went over? It must be a testament to my good-aura personality that no fights were started. But that's another thing: pride pushing folks into fights. Find any Californian outside the state and tell them, "California sucks! Fuck California!" and they'll say, "Whatever...you wish you were there right now." Go to most bars in the Golden State and talk trash about California and I'd guess that most people would either ridicule or ignore. Try either of those things to a Texan? Or in Texas?

Texas is big, takes a long time to cross, doesn't have such varied weather like what exists in California. She does have many many towns though. California has more people, but it also has two large population triangles that hold 90% of the population (SF-SJose-Sac)(LA-SD-SBernadino). Texas has thousands of towns all over. Texas' beaches are warmer that California's, but much uglier and muddier (the Gulf of Mexico is gross). [[Before the catastrophic oil spill evem.]]

I think my geyser of data has stopped flowing...pretty lame way to stop this correspondence, though...

I guess this might conclude Part 1 of some lame-ish essay about Texas. Sorry it's so long...maybe I'll put some of it up on my blog.
"

I love how I treat this blog as the catch all. Really, though, with my first serious post back in 2009 (about voting in the black neighborhood) having started as a correspondence, I generally always have thoughts that things like this--the observations contained in the letter--should be on my blog.

I also realized how much I cursed in this letter, and I did edit it a little, though leaving a few of the f-bombs. The sentiments, though, are honest.

By the Cover

One incident that happened a few times while we were visiting Seattle, and occasionally here in Long Beach (far less often, though) was a random person asking me for a cigarette.

It happened more often in Seattle than here I imagine because of the prevalence of smokers and smoking up there, which hasn't been hit with the dual waves of image-consciousness and health-consciousness. Smoking seems to embarrass people here, while militant anti-smokers actively shame those who partake. It is dangerous and disgusting, which are some of the reasons I quit.

There were many smokers in New York, so it didn't seem so uncouth while we lived there. In Texas, smoking was something you chose to do, or not to, but that was the point. Texans just let each other do whatever without comment, or public comment at least.

We quit while we lived there, not for angry onlookers, but for ourselves, as has to be the point for successful quit.

In Seattle, I talked with Corrie and we agreed that I have the appearance of a smoker. Something about the way I walk or dress, or smile, or something. "I am wearing a whiskey hat," I remembered out loud on one of our mornings when we covered the topic, referring to my green knit beanie with the logo of the familial name of John Jameson and Son Irish Whiskey, a brand I'm fond of. "On a Monday morning," Corrie laughed, responding to my statement, which was factually accurate.

I was wearing a cap with the insignia of a brand of whiskey at 7:30 in the morning on a Monday. Wearing a booze hat probably adds to whatever instant judgments people make about me that lead them to assume I smoke tobacco.

But the bigger issue for me was that I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable wearing the Jameson hat. I felt out of place; specifically I felt too old. I may like to celebrate Irish whiskey, I may enjoy Irish whiskey from time to time, but I'm not sure I want to advertise it anymore.

There are a few things I don't mind advertising, brands or concepts if you will, that add to the instant judgments that people make. Glasses, which I don't currently need thanks to Lasik, but will eventually return to, are something I don't mind advertising. The Yankees, the Giants, Packers, Uruguay national team, Pumas, Chivas...most sports teams I hold dear I don't mind rocking. I have Cal Poly and LBSU gear as it is, and wear both. Political beliefs I'm not afraid of wearing on my sleeve, or chest, as it were. Hell, if there was a Strong Bad hat that was absurd enough I would consider it.

For some reason I feel I need to move on from the vice ad. Maybe I am just getting older.

I'm not getting any less lazy, though, and since I don't have any other hat, I'll continue wearing it. It doesn't seem to be cold enough around here, almost making the point moot.

11/11/11

Another weird mathematical day, at least by our usual convention of date abbreviation.

November 11th is Veterans Day. Does anybody remember why? I know some people do, but let me expose: the Allied forces that had soundly beaten the German/Austro-Hungarian side in what was then known as the Great War let the fighting continue for a few days. The war was over and the victors known, but the combatants were allowed to keep fighting for a handful of days just so the was could be declared over at "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month".

November 11th was the day the cease-fire and peace accord was signed, ending what's been retconned as World War I.

They picked such a poetic image, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, to have the added effect that nobody would ever forget. Judging by segments from nighttime talkshows where guys like Jay Leno or Jimmy Fallon go out to the street with cameras and ask questions of regular folks about 9/11, something barely ten years old has already been muddied and mixed up, leaving little confidence that people will remember in a generation, let alone almost a century.

The images of the burning towers will be forever understood as a tragic day for America, but give it a few more decades and the details will be lost on the masses.

Call it the American Amnesia Phenomena.

When I learned that our Veterans Day is the same day as Europe's Armistice Day it was not fully in learning about the poetic nature of the end of the hostilities on the western front. Rather, my professor was relating an anecdote about the moment her soldier grandfather lost his faith in his government. Specifically, he learned that they had postponed the end of the war by a few days to make the 11th of November the day they'd call it over.

I remember it not because of the poetry, but because of the desire for governments to make propaganda out of the poetry, historic propaganda.

But, the plight of veterans has been real and tough for years, especially nowadays, with the job outlook on the home front the way it is, it won't be getting any easier for vets.

Pulling for you, for sure.

Seattle Coda

It'll probably take lots of time for this trip's true ramification to fully develop in my imagination and view of the world. If that doesn't make sense, I'll be expounding on that either later today or in later days.

Seattle, by way of rain (they say), is one of the West's cleanest cities. It retains a blue collar identity despite the hipsters and hi-tech industries. The strong labor identity is born out of the long logging and maritime history, which together sprouted the port and grew it to one of the west coast's largest. It, like our own here in Long Beach, celebrated it's centennial this year. How crazy is that?

Strangely, despite the large amounts of bicyclists and other water-based activities/excursions, there is a very high proportion of tobacco smokers in Seattle. I thought there were a lot of smokers in New York; Seattle might have a higher proportion

The city has nice energy. The region has many feelings: it feels like California transplanted in Canada; it feels like it identifies more with Alaska than more liberal minded cities similar to itself like San Francisco and New York. It feels unmistakably like Western America.

You get the sense they're alienated from the greater idea of America, like a west coast hybrid of Canadian politeness and Californian pride and Alaskan ruggedness that is totally distinct from America and yet can only be the product of American history and ideals; America at it's most logical base definition: taking bits from different cultures and making them defining, a creolization if you will. That's an American thing; turning a pidgin into a definition, a creole. And Seattle's that, for certain.

I'm sorry that we didn't really get to see any of the aboriginal mystic-ness, or felt the true power of the woods from the point of view of the native cultures, but we could really only do so much without a car and using buses for our adventure's transportation.

It was truly a wonderful seventy hours in Washington State.

Postscript notes:

Their state highway shields have a silhouette of George Washington...cute and campy at the same time. Also, King County, which houses Seattle, has appropriated Martin Luther King Jr as it's mascot, which is great for MLK, but seems like an homage and not a genuine show of history. Oh well, the history of the region's black population is varied and rich, and is celebrated.

Pikes Place Market

Damn. How many pictures have I posted with a visible Space Needle? I guess it is an icon. Just as Pikes Place Market is, although a less visually famous icon:



The fish mongers get set up early at Pikes Place, and are mostly done by the time the vegetable folks are getting ready. We got there early, since we were leaving later and had to see what we could and then use the light-rail to get to the airport. Public transportation and making flights makes even the biggest of laggers (me and Corrie) cautious.

We saw some crab and shellfish being set up:



We saw a deal I wanted to share with Norm and my cousin Mike (five giant dungeness crabs for $195!):



They had some nice romesco (AKA broccoliflower):



I haven't seen any romesco since leaving the east coast.

Eating a quick breakfast at a diner looking over the water I caught the sight of a ferry returning (the left side) and one venturing off (on the right), two peas in one company's pod:



Here's an anarchist bookstore, Leftbank Books that was recommended by my cousin Liz, but it was closed for us:



Corrie's pictures from the market are superior to mine, but that's true about all of her pictures, but she has a much nicer camera and is an actual photographer, as compared with my picture-taker status.

Volunteer Park: A Green Oasis Among Many

In trying to stay generally with the literal time span of our trip, we took a trip to Capitol Hill neighborhood before leaving for Ballard and football with the guys. Our destination there: Volunteer Park. This park was designed by Olmstead, the designer of New York's Central Park and the Chicago's World's Fair in 1893 among other projects.

I've heard that there is a municipal decree in Seattle that states that all neighborhoods must have a park, or that every house needs to be within a minimum distance to a park...or something. In any case, there are a great many parks available to the resident and casual visitor alike.

Volunteer Park has a cool water tower that provides great views of the surrounding areas. But before we could get up into the water tower, we had to take the bus to the park. We passed the site for the Occupy Seattle demonstration:



At the park I thought it was cool how the receding shadows shows the melting pattern for the morning's frost:



There's a sculpture up that frames the Space Needle:



Here's the water tower, which doesn't resemble normal water towers. The brick surrounds a metal cylinder almost as wide as the facade:



Of the many views from the tower one is the Needle:



And, last but certainly not least, looming in the distance, our first sight of this sucker, constantly threatening the metropolitan area, the volcano Mt. Ranier:



I was excited to see Ranier for the first time. Me and volcanoes go way back.

Things to See in the Northwest's Biggest Downtown

This post will have a series of pictures consisting of neat things we saw in Seattle's downtown, and will, like the preceding posts, be void of critical commentary. I think I've decided to make these photo posts heavy on imagery and light on discussion, saving that for later.

That was probably unnecessary, as anyone reading will figure it out.

So...

They hang cool things from the corners of their buildings. Here's a killer whale:



And a facsimile of the Space Needle:



They also have some weird and dynamic buildings. Here's a picture of Rem Koolhaas' public library:



Here's some weird building that I don't even know what it is. I took a lot of pictures of it, though:



They have their own stenciled drain warnings, something I seem to be interested in:



This last picture I took during probably the worst-idea episode I brought on myself during our stay. We'd gone to bed so early on our last night, Sunday, to be able to get up early enough on Monday morning to get to Pikes Place as well as another neighborhood we didn't make it to. But, I'm so used to short sleeping stints, that I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. After an hour and a half of tossing and turning, I got dressed and decided to go on a late night walk over to the Space Needle.

I got a few blocks and decided that this had been a good old-fashioned Bad Idea. The only picture that I took during the walk that really came out was this one, looking back towards the our hotel area (Hotel Max not visible):



After the walk I was able to get to sleep for a quick time, and felt good and refreshed before we took off for Pikes Place Market.

Fremont: Gasworks and Street Berries

Gasworks Park is a park on a peninsula facing downtown Seattle within walking distance of Fremont. We walked over to the park after leaving the Troll. The trees were very cool, and full of colors that we haven't seen since leaving the east coast:



An abandoned oil refinery, the land around the Works has been allowed to grass over, and while the industrial machinery out in the open is blocked off, the park is still a destination:



Here's a view of the skyline from the peninsula:



If anyone's seen Twin Peaks, they might remember how much pie is loved in the show, becoming a recurring theme throughout the series' run. That show took place up here, the Pacific Northwest, and while I didn't really notice a pie craze, I did notice the vast abundance of wild blackberries and bramble berries growing almost everywhere. The thicket of vegetation at the base of the Gasworks in the above picture? Blackberry.

At one point we noticed berries right on the side of the road. If you know me or have read a post that specifically talks about this topic, you can guess how I proceeded:



One more random sculpture picture. There was a collection of life sized people standing at a street corner, looking mostly like another funky group of public artifacts for the masses of Fremont, until you notice the dog:



How bizarre and...Seatts, I guess.

Fremont: Seattle's Williamsburg

This is the first of two Fremont posts. It seemed best to break up the Fremont posts because of the pictures (there were too many for one post)(I'm trying not to repeat the Chicago River Tour post from 2009 and it's dozen pictures).

This first post will have a few of the major attractions that people check out, and some that my cousin Liz told us about.

The first is the Fuselage, and old rocket put up on a coffee shop and music venue:



A few blocks away is the largest statue of Vladimir Lenin in the United States, standing at 16 feet:



It was made by a Czechoslovakian sculptor who bucked the Soviet edict of how to depict Lenin in statue form. By Soviet decree, Lenin was to be shown as a philosopher or teacher, bringing the light of socialism and communism to the masses and enlightening them. That's why most statues of Lenin are of the standing and solemnly dressed nature. This sculptor chose a working class motif, representing Vladdi as a laborer, bringing the revolution itself to the people through action.

A few more blocks away, under the Hwy 99 bridge, is a large sculpture (seen in a few films) known colloquially as the Fremont Troll. I'm posed with the Troll for a semblance of scale:



Underneath the hand on which I'm standing is an actual VW Beetle, part of the sculpture.

Here's a quick view looking up the street away from the Fremont Bridge and into the heart of the commercial section of the neighborhood. I like the fiery reds of the turning autumn trees:



We found a bookstore open after dinner and located a pair of rare books:



Amory Lovins is one of the leading luminaries on sustainability, and this book is hard to find. Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers, and I've never seen any of his poetry books anywhere. It was cool, supporting a local independent bookstore and finding rare books to cherish.

Morning in Seattle

This is a post that will have just three pictures, but all three are taken from basically the same angle but at different times during our stay. Like from any hotel in the movies in Paris, the Eiffel Tower is visible, so it was with our hotel, the Space Needle was visible from our room.

This first picture is from our first "morning", taken a handful of minutes before 1 pm on Saturday, after our initial late night and late arousal the next day:



This next picture is of a more respectable 8:35 from Sunday, when we had plans to get out to Ballard and see Joe, Nick and Kirsten, and John, friends of ours from San Luis Obispo (Joe and Nick are brothers from Marc's hometown who moved with him from upstate New York out to California for their band) (that's where we watched some football).



This last picture is from our last morning, Monday, and was taken at an early 6:30ish. We needed to get to some things (Pikes Place) before checking out of the hotel and making it to the airport by 9:30.



Just so all is clear, there is a building in front of the Space Needle, making it look like it's sprouting out from an glass and concrete rectangle.

Hipster Hotel in the Northwest

We stayed at the Hotel Max:



It's in the heart of downtown, on 6th and Stewart, if that means anything to anyone, about a half to three-quarters mile to the Space Needle. When we were checking in, they told us our room was on the tenth floor. Swanky, we thought. Then we saw the elevator:



Swanky indeed, since you needed your room key-card to get the whole contraption to work.

While uncommonly small, the elevator actually reflected the sizes of the rooms themselves which were New York City sized, or what I'd imagine a budget hotel in Manhattan to resemble size-wise (see me in the big mirror behind the bed):



The downstairs lobby was very posh and hip, the desk covered in a thick clear laminate over a bright red color. The color scheme inside was red and black, and the circled "M" was smartly branded on things. There was artwork on the walls of the lobby and the rooms, and each room's door had a different black and white pop-vintage photo print. Our room was the "Marilyn Monroe" room, as Corrie dubbed it, due to the image. One picture in the lobby is a painting of a woman, a woman I recognized, and eventually remembered who I think she is:



Pretty sure that's based on the actress who played Dixie Cousins on The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr..

This was a well located spot I'd be down to stay in again, or recommend to anyone perusing downtown hotels.

Here's a parting artistic image from the tenth floor. If you spend enough time, like I did, you too can figure out what it says:

Seattle Series Introduction

As I brew coffee to help me through this presentation of photos and anecdotes of our seventy hours in Seatts, I'm reminded just how much of the brown hot bean-water is around up there (lots).

As of my early counts, there will be six posts. I've decided to just put up a bunch of tiny posts with the pictures necessary to those specific anecdotes.

While we were there we saw so many people with coffee. It was almost a joke by the end of the trip. Maybe it's because of the unpleasant weather (it was rather beautiful while we were there); the warm coffee keeps the hands warm.

I drastically reduced the amount of coffee I drank while living in Texas, mostly through happenstance and humidity. Between the two jobs, there really wasn't any time to drink coffee. My love of the drink is well known and documented, but still I rarely make it at home for myself, so when I do, I try to savor it.

Corrie once joked "Are you cheating on me with coffee?" to which I responded, "No, I'm cheating on coffee with you."

About Face: Old Pictures

I'm planning on putting the Seattle posts up here in the morning, but didn't want to lead the day (for my few regular readers) with discussions the nature of which concerns the previous piece.

I found a few old pictures from the Fourth of July in 2009. I think they look kinda cool. In the first you can see how I appeared at that time and place in the world. We were living in Brooklyn, my hair newly short, and I still smoked. In the picture I'm outside our west-side Manhattan bar, Lansdowne Road, watching the fireworks go off over the Hudson River between the buildings, which is the next picture. The ladies behind me are also looking at something off in the distance:



The way the fireblooms looked between the buildings was too tempting to pass up trying to photograph, but even the most minor jostle makes the streaking pyrotechnics look feathery and soft:



Murphy's was our east-side Manhattan bar, while O'Keefe's was our downtown Brooklyn bar. Out of a gigantic city with fifteen-thousand bars, that we had three separate places that knew us is either a testament to our drinking, or to the way in which the pub acts as the place where public life happens in a place as crowded as it is.

I'll have a touch more on that subject--pubs and bars--in a bit.

Enough in Central Penn

Technically yesterday I put up a post about the atrocities that allegedly took place in the small community of State College, Pennsylvania, a small town with a weird name, about how a sexual predator inhabited such a rarified air that he was able to continue his deeds for many years with little repercussions. It reminds me of a line from Season 5 of The Wire: "The bigger the lie, the more they believe."

I mentioned a line about "who knew what when" in the earlier post pertaining to coach Joe Paterno, the "last Good Guy in college football", and how the only thing of importance in that question had really only to do with how long Coach Paterno would retain his job.

Not very long, as it were. He promised to retire after the end of the season.

The school said thanks, but no thanks, and fired him. After 46 years, fired over the phone. Maybe over the phone was callous, but we're not talking about recruiting violations here. We're talking about the most heinous and viscerally repulsive violations, and the lack of an appropriate response by people we put too much faith into.

It's safe to say, and weird when you think about it, that every person alive today who ever played football for Penn State has only had Coach Paterno as their coach.

They've also removed the university's president who was in charge during the bulk of the time that Sandusky was active on campus, in an attempt to rid themselves of the lightning rods for people's anger.

I'm tired of this topic.

Moving on...

Posted without Comment

College Football, Identity, Power, and Tragedy

The university I attended was not a big football school. It has a football team but seems to be perpetually locked in a battle to rise above Div I-AA status, something difficult without a minimum-seating stadium that's larger than what we have. A large wide receiver on the New York Giants, Ramses Barden, played for my alma mater. He caught a pass and had a good run in a key situation against the Patriots last Sunday, eliciting a hearty cheer from the cadre of Mustang alums at our friend's house in Seattle.

I guess I'm just trying to get to the point that I don't have an emotional connection to a college football team. The emotional ties to college teams tend to be more idealized as "pure" when compared to the binding emotional ties to professional teams. It most likely has to do with the nostalgia-colored lenses of memory about how much hope exists during time in college, the associations of the formative years of the relationship with the team and connection itself being categorized differently.

Big sports universities, and here I guess I really mean big football universities, since football originated as a college-only sport and today is the biggest moneymaker in college sports, do everything they can to foster that emotional tie and connection with their non-athlete student population. This ensures a steady flow of season-ticket purchasers, logo-ed gear owners, and future donors. Nowadays the real money is in television and merchandising rights, but the old business model is still in use.

Classic games come to define whole generation's core beliefs about their love of their school/team, and can create a large well of good will. One case in point is the 1986 Fiesta Bowl, a game in which the national champion was crowned. In this game the flamboyant villain, Miami, was bested by the unadorned hero, Penn State. The defensive schemes that led Penn State over Miami were designed by their defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

For those of my readers unfamiliar with Penn State's football team, their head coach is a guy named Joe Paterno. Joe has worked in the football program for six decades, having spent the last 46 years as head coach. He is generally seen as the last Good Guy in college football, having an old-school air about how he treats his players--emphasizing academics--and his staff that it makes sense that the school has never had a recruiting violation or ever had any problems with the NCAA rules about boosters or improper payments to student-athletes. It was truly the last university where the program was what fans thought of as "pure". Paterno's name is not on a sports facility on Penn State's campus, rather, its library.

Jerry Sandusky's defensive schemes and overall coaching genius led him to be tapped as the heir-apparent to Joe Paterno, whenever Joe felt like stepping down or moving aside. Sandusky coached in the system for almost thirty years.

He abruptly stepped down in 1999, surprising both players and fans with knowledge of the team and coaching situation. He was given an office on campus, access to the workout facility, an emeritus professorship, and the use of other resources to smoothly run his charitable foundation, The Second Mile.

Apparently, in 2002, he was quietly barred from the workout facility. Following an incident. That was never really mentioned.

Then...then as we're landing in Long Beach from our trip to Seatts I'm watching silently the JetBlue television screen in the seat in front of me, watching some ESPN highlights, and catch the bottom news scroll saying something like "Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State defensive coordinator, has been indicted on 40 counts of child sexual abuse with at least 8 victims over the course of 15 years..."

Uhhh--what?

A Grand Jury had been convened to delve into the matter. Indictments followed for two school officials for perjury and obstruction of justice, and they appear headed to jail for at least a little time. I've read over the sickening transcript of the Grand Jury findings. Some pertinent dates:

Apparently in 1998 Sandusky forced a boy to shower with him, then that boy's mother asked why his hair was wet and why he seemed so weird. She confronted Sandusky who apologized for what he characterized as a misunderstanding. In 1999 he resigned from the coaching staff. Who knew what when? The only importance of that question is about how long Paterno keeps his job.

The 2002 "incident", the incident that was hushed up and ignored besides having Sandusky barred from the facility, also took place in the shower. A graduate assistant to the team was surprised to see the showers on and as he approached heard rhythmic movement. He came around the corner to see Sandusky actually in the midst of raping a child who looked to be ten years old.

This assistant was so shaken that he notified--not the police--but his boss, Joe Paterno, who in turn notified his bosses (since, heck, Jerry wasn't actually on his staff anymore), who in turn didn't even attempt to learn who the boy was, they just barred Jerry, ensuring that at least the next act of abuse would happen off-campus. The two officials who Paterno told are the ones who allegedly perjured themselves.

If you walk in on a scene like the grad assistant did wouldn't you want to call the cops? Must be easier said than done.

Sickening. The only two people who know who that boy in the shower was are Jerry and the boy himself. That's a sign of corrupted power if anything is.

Now, other things have a scary ring to them when you learn them: Jerry Sandusky and his wife couldn't have kids, so they adopted. Any guesses about The Second Mile foundation, Sandusky's charity? If you said "works with at-risk kids", you're correct, and a cynic who could see where this is going.

Sandusky's fighting these charges even as a ninth victim has come forward. Wow, what a crazy conspiracy. It must have been hard to get all those boys to come up with the exact same descriptions of how they were treated by this adult, to all have the same memories independently of each other. Probably harder than framing OJ.

Past Sunday for Football

This is a minor note about having an enjoyable day watching football last Sunday.

While we were in Seattle this most recent Sunday (a series of posts are coming), which would make any day enjoyable, we spent a few hours watching some games with old friends from Upstate New York who are die-hard Jets fans. While I may not be a die-hard fan, I was partially converted to Jets fandom, so I follow them and root for them as well.

They won an division game against the Buffalo Bills. Then my "true" team, the Giants, went on to beat the Patriots (which helps the Jets). One of my adopted teams, the Packers, stayed undefeated in beating the Chargers, and probably my newest adopted team, the Ravens, went ahead and beat the Steelers, which is a double-whammy for me. The Ravens won and the Steelers lost (something I began rooting for when I realized how little I care for their QB, Rothelisberger).

Then, not on Sunday but rather on Monday, the Bears beat the Eagles, which is good for the Giants and anyone who particularly hates the Eagles (I like seeing them lose and not play well, but I don't have a hate for them like I do with the Cowboys). Now, if the Cowboys had lost, it would have been a spectacular football weekend.

That, and if there had never been any news coming out of Central Pennsylvania...

Post 300 of 2011

How did this happen? I got all the way to three-hundred posts in this calendar year alone. Very neat.

I've been pretty adamant with myself about keeping at it this year, trying to prepare myself for the time when I tackle my novel projects in the coming days.

So, thanks for keeping up, if you have been. If not, thanks for checking in.

I'm playing with the idea of self-publishing a few small collections of posts, or maybe just one, to go along with my Wednesday in Los Angeles series of essays I want to self publish.

Ah well...I was thinking of calling the other collection "Is This a Revolution?" as a nod to the main sentiment of my "Occupy Wall Street Notes", and then hand them out at the rallies in Oakland, or sneak them in, or something like that.

Here's a picture:



Blogger attempts to step lightly on Bavarian village of Fussen.

Getting Tough with Greece: Nevermind

It's Kearns you idiot!

No it's not.

Disregard.

So, disregard the last post. I wrote the post about the Greek PM putting the financial recovery plan up for a vote yesterday only to hear on NPR on the way to work that he'd retracted that plan.

Sometimes the news travels faster than I do on the 405.

Getting Tough with Greece

You work so, so hard to get a deal done that can stabilize your skittish currency market, living through the beginnings of a recession, but at least not imploding the entire thing. Then...then the leader of the country that has agreed to the structure of the debt-eating and artificially economic propping of their entire country comes out and says that he's going to let his country's voters vote on ratification of the deal the other countries fought amongst themselves to give them.

Voters? The stability of the Eurozone is being left to the voters of Greece?

Merkel and Sarkozy, the respective leaders of Germany and France, are taking a tough stance with Greece at this time. Whether it's talk or has teeth might bear out if their hand must be shown if the Greek voters turn down the deal. They've reported that Greece will be bounced from the Eurozone if they turn down this deal.

While that might help the immediacy of the situation, Ireland and Portugal would be next in possibly getting the boot (or booting themselves), and then it gets worse. Spain and Italy most likely would be far too gone to simply leave the Eurozone, they'd most likely crash.

Not to pick on Greek voters...I don't think the complexity of the financial system, while unfair and set up by people who don't want anyone to know how it works, should ever be left to the masses for a vote.

Dodgers News

A brief baseball note this morning.

Now that Bud Selig and MLB has worked out a deal with the courts to get the Dodgers away from Frank McCourt and sold, we can turn a page on a dark chapter in one of the flagship teams in baseball. A chapter so dark that it produced back-to-back NLCS appearances, the presence of Joe Torre, and the emergence of legitimate superstars in Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.

Maybe it wasn't that dark...but it's over now.

The real question is can we, or rather, true Dodger fans (of which I'm probably not counted (I do like the Dodgers, but my ultimate emotional connection lies elsewhere)) trust Bud Selig to find a suitable ownership group? He rubberstamped the sale from Fox to the McCourts back in 2004, as well as the less-than-productive sale from the O'Malleys to NewsCorp.

People in Los Angeles are excited to hear that Peter O'Malley is interested again in leading the team, reportedly confident that he can put investor's together to make the purchase.

Before O'Malley reappearing the leading candidates--at least to the public--were a group headlined by former players Steve Garvey and Orel Hersheiser, and a group headed by Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban.

Fans want Mark Cuban, but have no real problem with either O'Malley or the Garvey/Hersheiser group. Cuban comes off as passionate, hungry for championships, and willing to spend. Who wouldn't want him as the owner of their team?

Well, the other twenty-nine owners in baseball who have a say and don't want him around will prove the sticking point for Cuban. He's a rushing river to the staid, quiet pond of the baseball owner fraternity.

He's got about as much a chance as the next group I'm writing about: you. And me. And my neighbor and coworker and the cashier at the Vons I went to this morning.

There's a push going on right now to collect voices and people, people willing to spend $500 for a share of the Dodgers, a push to make the team public like the Green Bay Packers. Unlike in the NFL, baseball doesn't have any specific rule against public ownership. The Packers' success, even early on, forced football--an organization run by wealthy men--to end the possibility of ever being ousted as owners by members of the community.

I've signed up. I'd spend $500 to own a piece of the Dodgers. I also think there's not a chance in hell it can work out, which usually means there's probably some chance. Just a bid by a public entity taken seriously would be victory of sorts.

If you're interested in signing up (no cash changing hands yet), here's the site: Own the Dodgers.