A-Rod Clutch?

Did anyone notice that it was A-Rod's 8th inning homerun that sparked the Yankee's comeback against the Rangers propelling them to a lead in the wild card race last night? It is silly to write off someone of his talents. I know that Yankee fans take some sort of silly pride in having high expectations, but talk to Toronto Maple Leaf's fans about where high expectations get you. I don't think that it is somehow preordained that this team will keep winning titles under Steinbrenner's ownership. The core of those championship teams actually came up through the Yankee organization, or had spent a number of years together. But more recently the Boss has taken to buying up high priced talent and throwing it together. It has been successful but not championship caliber. They are now left with an aging pitching staff that really isn't very good, and a bunch of pieces that have never really gelled. The public can see it. Ever since Jeter's comment after their famous collapse in 2004, where he said that this wasn't the same Yankee team, the perception has been that the Yankees were lacking that edge that made them invincible during their 4 title run. I think that the fans feel that A-Rod is somehow to blame for the lack of team chemistry that was so evident in those earlier Yankee teams, but lately seems lacking. Back in the good old days the Yankees never seemed to fold under a big lead. They never gave games away as they have a few times this year. But quietly the Yankees have begun to put it together lately, and if A-Rod gets hot look out. Matsui and Sheffield come back soon, and if this team is able to really come together they could be very dangerous with that offensive line up. But I am still skeptical. There is no player on that teams that leads by more than example. Torre has been great at getting the most out of his teams, but in the past there were strong presences in their clubhouse that taught the Yankee way. With so many new faces the Yankees appear to have lost their edge, they no longer play with the ghost of Ruth on their shoulder, and that old sense of inevitable Yankee triumph is lost. They seem mortal now, and have ever since Mariano Rivera threw the ball away past second base in the 9th inning of game 7 of the 2001 world series. Will they ever get back their Yankee ways?

Where is the voice of the moderate?

I am a pretty levelhaeded guy. For example, one time I was riding shotgun in my friend's car and my girlfriend was in the back seat. He pulled out of a parking lot, making a right into the left lane of a two lane road, but did not immediately realise what he has done, even though there was a car comming right at us, only a few seconds away. My girlfriend was so terrified that she couldn't speak, but I immediately just say "dude" in a very calm voice, and he realises what is going on and switches lanes. In certain situations it pays to be calm. Another good example of such a situation would be the war that Hezbollah and Israel are waging against one another right now. Neither side has used much calm/restraint in the past couple of weeks, and it has lead to a confluict that has the potential to blow up into a full scale, multi-nation war. Obviously Hezbollah began the whole thing, and Israel has every right to protect itself, but this whole thing has gotten out of hand. The problem is that one can not use diplomacy to resolve disputes with terrorists, at least not the kind of diplomacy where both sides sit down at a table and talk out their differences. This is the ultimate quandry in the Middle East. Iran famously lost it's diplomatic relations with the U.S. when it held it's deplomats hostage for over a year following the fall of the Shaw. Even after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. and Japan still negotiated to have each other's diplomatic teams returned unharmed. That is how "civilized" coutries do business, and unless the radicals in the mid-east are willing to try diplomacy with Israel, instead of guns, and bombs, the past two weeeks will be an ever recurring nightmare. Why is it so hard to just talk? Where does all the hate come from? I will likely never be able to understand, and for that I am thankful. I don't really want to take too hard a look into the the mind of the mid-east because I am far more comfortable living in the more levelheaded realm. One might argue that to be able to slove the problems of the mid-east you must first become more knowlegeable about where they all are comming from. but i disagre. I think that people in the mid-east know too much about their problems, and they need to step outside them any chance they get. It makes no rational sense to want to blow yourself up, or to kill a peacemaker like Rabin because you are mad that he gave too much to your "enemy". Who is the enemy in the middle east? Ultimately, everyone. The extremists keep the fires of hate burning hot, which helps to drive the conflict, and the moderates are so ineffectual and lacking in numbers that they can never end the conflict for good. I am so sick and tired of caring about this part of the world. Why will it never end? why aren't there peacemakers on both sides? Lebanon was doing great. It had been a punchline as the only place more dangerous than downtown Detroit, but recently it had become something of a tourist center, a place people wanted to go and spend money, but that now they can't run from fast enough. What is Hezbollah's interest? Is getting rid of Israel such a priority that they would risk the destruction of their country for the second time in 25 years just to see all of the Israelis dead? It makes no damn sense, but many people in Lebanaon are still pro Hezbollah because it is Hezbollah that takes care of them during the conflict because the Lebanese government is not very strong. Profirio Diaz, a former dictator of Mexico once said, "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States." Well, one could say of Lebanon, "Poor Lebanon, so far from God, and right smack dab in the middle of the middle east." The voice of the moderate is all that can save it and Israel from further destruction.

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is in my opinion the greatest movie ever made. It is one of the films that Steven Spielberg always watches before he starts directing a new movie. But that has nothing to do with why I love it; I merely find that fact interesting. It is the desert that makes Lawrence great.
The beauty of the desert, in its profound and all consuming glory streches accross David Lean's 70mm canvass, and so dominates the screen that even though the pace of the film is often slow, one can never look away. Every charcter in the movie must struggle through its clean, hot nothingness. In so doing they are often able to achieve some sort of fulfillment. For Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn) there is the promise of "something honorable," i.e. some form of material wealth that appeals to his sense of what a tribal chief should have. For Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), Lawrence's closest friend, there is the chance to learn more from his teacher, and to help lead his people to something better. For the British (Claude Raines plays the charming, two-faced, cunning politician Mr. Dryden perfectly) there is victory, wealth, land, and influence to be won by the Arab's success under Lawrence. (The British had allied themselves with the Arabs in World War I against the Turks, who controlled much of the Arab's territory at that point. But with the signing of the Sykes-Pico Agreement with France, Britain agreed to share the old Turkish empire with the French. Basically the Arabs were throwing off the bonds of one master, the Turks, by fighting under Lawrence, only to fall under the control of another foriegn master.) Lawrence himself seems to be looking to be the savior of the Arabs. He promises throughout the film that he is going to give the Arabs their own homeland with their own government. He attemps to be a messiah: crossing the Sinai like Moses, pretending to walk on water like Jesus. But in the end fails because of forces well beyond his control. He likes the desert "because it is clean," but finds in it all the smalless and hatred that exist in the rest of the world. But Lawrence did attempt to challenge the limits of possible, to do what everyone else thought couldn't be done, and in so doing he became known throughout the ages. That is the message of the film, as large a message as could ever be laid on canvass.
But that is still not why I love it. I love it because when I am done watching it I feel like I have been meditating for the past three hours, and am left utterly at peace. There is something about this film, more than anyother, that makes me feel as though I have been staring at the beauty of life while watching it. When Anthony Quinn (Auda) says, "But I am poor, because I am a river to my people!" and his entire tribe erupts with a torrent of affirmation, a shiver runs down my spine every time. There is so much energy in that statement that it seems to radiate off the screne. I have seen so many films and nothing comes close to giving me that sort of visceral experience. There are others that I love, but none that I enjoy more.

A-Rod...Why boo him?

Yankee fans have got to be the most spoiled fans in all of sports. Here you have a guy who is the best player in baseball and you are booing him even though he is still having a very good year by any reasonable standard (ba .284, 20 hr, 68 rbi). The Yankees are only a game and a half out of first in the east as of today, and yet that is still not good enough. I understand that he is the most highly paid baseball player, and that to whom much is given much is expected, but the guy is trying hard, he isn't blaming anyone for his defensive problems, and he is helping the team win. You can't ask anymore than that. I don't have any problem with booing per se; the fans buy tickets and therefore have a right to boo. But in this case it makes no sense. If A-Rod were really having a Chuck Knoblauch type year it might make sense, but he isn't, and furthermore the Yankees are winning. Every other team in baseball would love to have his services, but the Yankees are the exception to every rule. To be a true Yankee you have to do something great in the post season. Of course by that logic Bucky Dent and Jim Leyritz are "true Yankees" even though both were mediocre players not even one tenth as good as A-Rod. Ah, such is the silly definition of success in pro sports. Forever will the non champions in pro sports be down graded simply because their team was unable to win the title. Dan Marino was the greatest quarterback in NFL history and yet many hold Joe Montana up as the better player because of all his success. The idea is that if you are such a great player you should be able to make the other players around you better, but that implies that every great player must be a leader and that simply is not the case. A-Rod is a great talent but that does not mean that it is his responsibility to act as the leader of the team. His job is to play well and that is what he does. Last year he won the MVP, and this year he is again for the 10th consecutive year putting up All-Star caliber numbers. There is no one in the history of baseball that has had as much success as A-Rod has this early in a career. He is only thirty and yet is just 51 home runs away from 500. That is something to be celebrated, not booed and if Yankee fans had any real respect or knowledge of the game they would understand that. Instead they live in a fantasy camp of success that has blinded them to the point that they think A-Rod is somehow the cause of their problems. Their only real problem is that they do not know how to accept failure gracefully, or to acknowledge that their players are trying their hardest. Winning isn't everything, it really isn't. Playing the game hard and beautifully, with class and dignity is what sports are all about. That is how A-Rod plays, but Yankee fans are so spoiled by their success, and so greedy for more that they loose sight of all that. That is why winning isn't everything. In an attempt to win often the beauty of the game, the dignity of the game, good sportsmanship and class are lost. Look at the steroids scandal; that is the perfect example of the cult of success corrupting the game to the point where it is often disgusting to look at. The way Yankee fans have behaved toward A-Rod is equally disgusting, but so is life as a Yankee.

The source from which the name of this blog sprang

Dada, for those who did not know, was an art movement that began in Zuerich (the "ue" is not a misspelling, it signifies the German umlaut or u with two dots over it) Switzerland in response to the horrible nature of conflict during World War I. One example of this type of art can be seen in the picture above, Kurt Schwitter's Merz 29A. Schwitter used collage made of found objects to create a new aesthetic that displays the irrational, the abursd and illogical side of human thought. Another better known example of Dada type expression can be found in the novel Slaughterhouse 5, in which the main character Billy Pilgrim upon seeing the horrible destruction of Dresden during World War II can only express what he sees with the nonsensical utterance "pooteeweet." There are no words within his vocabulary that can capture the moment. The fact that "powteeweet" is nonsense is then partly a commentary on the action of firebombing a city itself, and also a way to allow the reader to grasp just how unbelievable a sight the firebombing of Dresden was.
Dada is a rejection of the conventional in favor of the absurd, the nihilistic, and the nonsensical because those forms made more sense to the dadaists in light of what they saw in the war than did the previous conventions of art which favored romanticism. War is another world entirely unlike what one sees at home. The German soldier marching off to war in the summer of 1914 must have felt for all the world that he was a patriot fighting the noble fight for the Vaterland. But after the Schliefenplan failed to bring a quick end to the fighting, 19th Century warfare with its romantic cavalry charges was officially over, and the wondrous new technology of the 20th Century propelled the devevolution of the conflict into what was likely the worst form of warfare ever devised. Thousands of soldiers sat for hours in holes in the ground while artillery pounded their positions with bombs and mustard gas. They would be asked occasionally to come out of their holes to charge at the enemy in the futile hope of pushing their foe back a few miles as if that would somehow make some strategic difference. When exiting the holes the soldiers stepped into the barren wasteland of "No-Mans-Land" and charged at the enemy who sat bellow ground and picked off the chargers with their rifles and machine guns. It was all utterly stupid. Every battle was essentially pointless, and victory a myth. Consider the battle of the Somme. One million total casualties, and no clear winner. The Brits gained 5 miles of German territory in 5 months. That's not a very good ratio. The Dadaists had awakened to a new sense of what war was: bloody, awful, ruled by chance, without meaning, rationale, or truth. That is how I see war today. Look at the Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel war. Two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah and now Israel has killed over two hundred Lebanese in response, a number of them young children and civilians with no ties to Hezbollah. In response to that Hezbollah shoots of hundreds of rockets which land in entirely random locations, even killing some Arabs. On a purely rational basis, the lives of two men for the lives of hundreds does not compute. It never does in war. World War I began with the death of two people and by the end millions were dead. The peacemakers, the moderates, the compromisers are never there until the end. In the meantime only absurdism can express what happens in war. s9idfhdu9shaier9gj

Consequences of Cars

Americans love cars; there are now more cars then there are people with drivers licenses, which is yet another example of America's exceptional wealth in comparison with the rest of the world. Those cars allow Americans to travel wherever and whenever they please thanks to the vision of President Eisenhower, who fifty years ago began construction of the interstate highway system. Many people have praised his vision for they believe that this network of roads has helped to make America into the rich successful nation that it is today by helping to increase the pace of domestic commerce. They are likely right on this account, but that is by no means the whole story. Having a system of transportation that relies on the car comes with its problems. In their present incarnation cars burn fossil fuels thereby creating pollution that is causing the earth to warm, but ultimately may lead to global climate change that could turn England into Siberia and make New York City disappear. Already many are arguing that the warming of the Earth's oceans is producing "super-storms", Katrina being an example, the storms that flooded Pennsylvania and D.C. another, that have the potential to cause billions of dollars in damage and kill thousands. No one is of course quite sure what the total effect of this warming of the earth's oceans is of course, but there can be no argumnet that the earth is warming given all the scientific data. It is warm waters that bread hurricanes and generally the warmer the waters the bigger and more powerful the hurricane. The extraction and transportation of oil is also hazardous to the environment, Exxon-Valdez being only the most extreme example. Leaks and spills are common, though mostly in smaller amounts, and the drilling process itself also routinely leads to the destruction of an environment because it is so invasive and requires so much heavy equipment that needs space to operate. The environment is an afterthought in the oil extraction, processing and transportation businesses. Right now there is no more profitable kind of business than oil, and the goal of profit attainment drives many nations, including America, to make it as easy as possible for oil companies to extract oil, the environmental consequences notwithstanding. In fact few questions are asked when there is oil to be had. Does it matter that Saudia Arabia has a horribly repressive regime that is the birth place of Osama Bin Laden and many of the 9/11 terrorists when the U.S. is discussing oil deals with the Saudis? Of course not. This has been the American attitude to the whole oil rich Middle East for a long time now. America does not care what you do behind your borders so long as you get us the oil. Now we are reliant on a horribly unstable region whose governments have for some thirty years now turned a blind eye toward a vast international terror movement that has developed inside their borders. Terror has driven up the price on gas, as has the decline in readily avaliable reserves, which means that profit margins are decreasing and American households are squeezed to the point where they save virtually nothing. Certainly the American economy remains strong, yet the threat of economic collapse is by no means remote thanks to the height of America's trade deficit and the possibility of energy becomming unavaliable thanks to the destabilization of the middle east. The trade deficit results largely from America's need to import so much oil. If it grows because of an increase in oil prices then it might cut the legs out from under the American economy. Even if it does not come to all that, energy prices are not going down, and so a reevaluation of a system built on cheap gas might be in order. Beyond energy and environmental concerns, cars also destroy cities. Super highways have been built right through the center of many cities cutting a huge swath of land out of them, dividing once vibrant neighborhoods. People like being around other people; it's a pretty simple concept. The most popular cities in America to visit are places like New York, Boston, D.C., New Orleans and San Francisco because those are places where you can walk and see other people. European cities achieve their cache among world travelers for much the same reason. Developers have realsed this in their attempt to revitalize downtowns by building walker friendly malls. But America is still a long way from where it was 50 years ago when many big cities had nearly twice the population of today. In the intervening decades people have moved to the suburbs for security and more space largely beacuse the car allowed them to commute further. Security and space are all well and good, but the suburbs are boring. Instead of the constant communal carnival of the old urban neighborhood, life in the suburbs happens largely in doors. Sitting on the stoop is considdered odd suburban behavior, but for someone who grew up in an urban environment sitting on the stoop makes a lot of sense because there is always something going on on the street, something to see. Sitting on the stoop is much the same thing as watching T.V. Perhaps that is why reality T.V. has become so popular. There is so little real drama for people to see in their ordinary lives in the suburbs, that they must watch T.V. to get their dose. This is pure speculation of course, but there have been studies indicating that Americans are lonlier now than ever before, and considering the highly dispersed and closed off way in which many of us live it is little suprise. The car has been one of the most important forces of change in American society since the turn of the century, and it has helped to make America one of the wealthiest and most successful nations on earth, but it's costs have created an America that polutes more than any other nation on earth, that is more dependant on foreign oil than any other. America, with Canada, Australia, and to a degree, South Africa, is a higly suburban nation. The suburbs are perhaps to often criticiazed for being devoid and boring, but go to time square and then go to weschester county and tell me which place is more interesting.