Cheesy Four-Line Poem

Thro' edam'pest night with wind and brie's
Amber't a muensters' caravane on stilton
The goudamm feta'd stench displease --
Best rennet ye, an' sbrinz wi' yer kilt on!

NFL Zebras Not the Only Animals in Owners' Sights

Hey, d'ja see the Packers-Seahawks game last night?  Cool how it ended, huh?

The NFL replacement officials are in way over their heads - so far that the integrity of the entire league is in question.  Evidence of their incompetence arises in every quarter, if not in every set of downs.  But, it's time to refocus: it's their employer, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who planned the current lockout of the regular referees, in collaboration with certain activist owners; it's Goodell who hired the replacement refs, put them on the football field, gave them a whistle, and let them loose with insufficient training and experience; and it's Goodell and this handful of owners who are the only remaining parties to insist that nothing is wrong with the status quo.

There's obviously more to the NFL owners' posture in the current lockout of the regular referees than just the cost savings at stake, a relative pittance; else the league would have ended the lockout unilaterally after Week 1.  That they haven't suggests the following motivations:

(1) PRECEDENT: Not only does a hard-line posture toward the regular referees demonstrate the owners' resolve in the instant dispute; in their minds, it likely also sets a precedent for future contract negotiations with the Players' Association, a much bigger economic opportunity.  It also signals a strategic rigidity with respect to labor unions and salaried workforces in general, both in the owners' non-NFL businesses and in American society at-large.  The message: Negotiation itself is off the table.
 
(2) IDEOLOGY: The current generation of NFL owners came of age when President Ronald Reagan broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Organization (PATCO) by hiring and training replacements.  As Paul F. Campos wrote today at Salon.com, appropriating the contemptuous jargon of ownership-class lionizer Ayn Rand and referencing her avid adherent: "Paul Ryan's beloved Packers were robbed last night -- because the owners are putting the 'moochers' in their place."

(3) PEER PRESSURE: Rigidity in the face of common sense allows the owners to display their boss-class status to and gain the affirmative, personal approval of their fellow sports team owners and business peers, whom they run into at Board meetings, Chamber of Commerce meetings, and country clubs and are, in fact, the only constituencies who actually matter to them.

(4) COMBATIVENESS: The hardened, combative societal attitudes evidenced first in America's so-called culture wars, then in its "red state-blue state" political divide now pervade all walks of life, including the business of sports.  An entire generation has grown up with categorical attitudes that are uninformed by critical thinking.

(5) LOMBARDI-ISM: (I could get exiled from Wisconsin for this.)  Former Packers coach and NFL demigod Vince Lombardi's famous line,"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing [that matters]!" has been inflated to the status of received wisdom throughout American society.  It is, in fact, a sophomoric locker-room slogan, not an organizing principle for the modern world.

(6) VANITY: The owners continue, stubbornly and conceitedly, to deny a gross, strategic error that they have committed in public, as doing so would be an admission of their own fallibility; thereby compounding the problem.

(7) COLLUSION: The consistent pattern of the NFL, NBA, and NHL using nearly identical, hard-line labor tactics suggests that their executives are motivated by and doing the sector-wide bidding for the money-center banks, including Bank of America and Citibank, that serve the sports, media, and entertainment industries.  These financial players are often equity investors as well as the principal lenders to ownership groups.  Their influence in the sports world is an underreported story; whether they are also instigators in the recent spate of lockouts is a matter of speculation.

What troubles me most is that this infestation of hostile tactics toward players and officials could spread further.  In particular, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's vaunted two-decade stretch of labor peace with the Baseball Players' Association, with no strike or lockout since the World Series washout of 1994, is surely threatened unless he and his eventual successor can wrangle MLB owners into a collective posture that does not rely principally upon the threat of work stoppages to achieve economic ends.

  *  *  *

UPDATE: After a 31-hour negotiating session following the Green Bay-Seattle game, the NFL and the NFL Referees Association agreed on the terms of a new, eight-year contract.

A Special Sunday at Miller Park

Whenever I go to Miller Park for a Brewers game, I glance around the tailgating crowd in the parking lot and the pre-game crowd milling around the concourses to see if I know anyone. I rarely do.

My Beloved Spousal Unit and I know most of the Brewers’ players on the field by sight, of course, as well as the manager, the coaches, maybe half of the opposition, one or two of the umpires. From our perch in the Terrace Level, we can see the radio booth and catch a glimpse of Bob Uecker or Cory Provus calling the game, and Bernie Brewer in his chalet, and the Racing Sausages, and the right field ballgirl with the terrific throwing arm. We take note when Faux Paul, my late brother-in-law’s doppelganger, is in his customary seat next to the Brewers’ dugout. We give a nod to the old-timers who man the stadium parking lots on the way in and the saxophone-torturing busker on the way out.

We also recognize a half-dozen regular Terrace Box denizens. Talk Your Ears Off and Son Of Talk Your Ears Off sit behind us and narrate loudly during every pitch and every interval between pitches in great, gory detail and imagine that this is a public service welcomed by their neighbors. There’s Zoom Lens Couple, who’ve never seen a live ballgame except through his-and-her rangefinders. Looks Like Billionaire County Executive sits on the other side of the Zoom Lenses and is a congenial chap, despite not being a billionaire. (We think.) Radio Headset Man, sitting over the portal, may look a bit stoned, but he’s managed to locate the stadium’s low-power FM frequency for the radio broadcast of the game, and that’s an accomplishment that’s eluded us.

In the communal sense, though, we hardly ever see a neighbor, or someone we work with, or someone else from around town that we know. Our encounters at the ballpark are largely transactional rather than social. Our relationship is with the whole scenario rather than the specific actors.

Today, however, was different. In a sense, we knew everyone at the game today: Brewers fans, Phillies fans, locals, sports tourists from afar. On this 10th anniversary of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, everyone in attendance was in reflective communion. We’ve all had a shared experience, one that exceeded our prior imagination, a nightmare that we can barely fathom to this day.

The sea of blue jerseys and t-shirts and caps that Brewers fans wear in common were merely a cover today; the real solidarity, the reason every pre-game step toward the sports cathedral seemed meaningful, the reason it felt almost tearfully good to see the green grass and diamond of dirt as we emerged from the portal into the sunlight, was that these steps shadowed the shell-shocked steps we took nearly ten years ago in this same venue, when we first resumed attending baseball games to try to chase the shock and numbness away.

The game itself was a festival of seriousness and silliness, both real and symbolic, full of inspiring plays and errors, two-base hits and strikeouts, patriotic songs and sausage races. Does it matter who won? Absolutely, it does! The Brewers are in a divisional race, and if divisional races matter in peacetime, they do so even more in times of peril and anxiety, when we need their distraction the most. So I’m happy to report that the Brew Crew salvaged the last game of the four-game set with Philadelphia, winning 3-2. Blue-clad fans breathed a sigh of relief when Corey Hart, Nyjer Morgan, and Ryan Braun finally delivered clutch hits, scarce commodities of late, in the late innings. Yovani Gallardo whiffed twelve batters while going seven strong, and closer John Axford allowed two batters to reach before completing yet another anxious, perilous save. The "magic number" for the Brewers to clinch the NL Central crown, their first divisional title in nearly three decades, is now ten, with a mere fourteen games to play.

Moreover, the chicken curry in fish sauce that my Beloved Spousal Unit conjured up for our pre-game picnic was delicious -– and our creative cuisine was the envy of the tailgating families to our left and right! All in all, a perfect Sunday afternoon in September, despite the somber occasion. Or perhaps, with deliberate intention, because of it.

My only regret about this memorable day, apart from our inability to tune into the radio broadcast and tune out the bozo behind us, is that we once again didn’t see anyone we know personally at the ballpark. Maybe next time I’ll bring a camera along and ask our Terrace Box neighbors for their expert advice on buying a zoom lens. It might be time for a new resolution.

Ghost Racers of the Ninja Apocalypse

That distinctive screaming, whirring, movie-sound-effects noise filling the air this weekend emanates from the Milwaukee Mile at State Fair Park, where the Milwaukee 225 IndyCar Series race is being run. It's kind of cool, actually, and so is the knowledge that it will go away later today.

Running errands yesterday in The Silver Zloty -- there was an old radio ad in which a happy-go-lucky doofus said, "We were just looking for some throw pillows for the loveseat in the breezeway," and my noble quest was about that important -- I meandered up National Avenue in West Allis, within livestock-sniffing distance of the State Fairgrounds, and found myself in sudden peril, chased by a pack of black-hooded ninjas on black racing bikes holding small, laser-guided handweapons, their black helmets of the latest curved design concealing their eyes as they bore down on me with extreme intent, as if in the opening sequence of a Japanese action comic. No? Well, that's what it sounded like yesterday in the vicinity of the Milwaukee Mile.

The funny part is, I was listening to golf on the car radio while being chased by the invisible ninjas. Sportscaster Sean McDonough hosted ESPN Radio's coverage of the U.S. Open from Congressional Country Club, at which young Jedi knight Rory McIlroy seeks to redeem himself in the eyes of the August Master. At the time, it seemed like a better listening option than weekend infomercials for living trusts.

Now, I've been known to give the radio medium its due. Baseball on the radio is a continuing joy. I've listened to Matt LePay's countless calls of "Touchdown, Wisconsin!" on Saturday afternoons (probably while shopping for curtain rods). I've listened to the Indy 500 on the radio in fascinated amazement at the tight broadcast production. I've even been involved in offbeat radio sports in a small way myself; back in the day, for example, I wore a highly attractive orange life preserver in a small powerboat as the remote engineer for college radio broadcasts of crew races, hanging on for dear life. (Pro tip: position yourself and your puffy vest as a noise baffle between the guy with the microphone and the outboard motor. Pro tip 2: if he falls overboard, immediately yell, "Let go of the mike!")

But, it's hard to do golf on the radio. Exactly how fascinating can the basic arithmetic of the leaderboard possibly be? How many times can McDonough & Co. describe Phil Mickelson's booming, errant drives into the next zip code and his wedge shots to 18 inches from 85 feet, and sound surprised? How critical is it whether McIlroy's proficient game stacks up to that of Tiger Woods, whose absence looms over this tournament like a ghostly apparition? Why do golf announcers whisper during the putts when they're probably sitting in a studio in Bristol, watching on the big screen like everyone else?

Yet on this day, the broadcast team provided an informative, workmanlike depiction of the sights and action from Congressional, never letting the audience wonder for a moment what Mickelson or McIlroy or their caddies might be thinking -- it seems that, according to all golf announcers throughout history, all pro golfers have "the courage of champions" -- as I sped through West Allis intersections and took hard corners trying to shake the racing ninjas in hot pursuit.

It suddenly occurred to me that I could slow down; I was not in mortal peril. The ninjas meant me no harm. It was merely Tiger and his entourage, trying to get close enough to The Silver Zloty to hear the latest updates on the leaderboard.

"Ooooh, Sticks!"

Some people like to take casual strolls in Milwaukee's lovely parks and along its waterways. Others go for a jog near Bradford Beach at the Lake Michigan shoreline. Civic-minded volunteers pick up trash and litter in public areas, working together toward the laudable goal of urban beautification.

My Beloved Spousal Unit and I pick up sticks.

Not just any sticks; dead sticks. Burnable sticks. Burnable-in-the-fireplace sticks. Burnable-so-that-even-a-former-Boy-Scout-who-never-made-Second-Class-can-start-a-fire-with-two-matches sticks.

Last winter was our first season as domestic fireplace operators. Our large firewood supply held out fine, but we ran out of sticks. They sell firewood by the face cord; who sells sticks? So, we fetch sticks.

The other day I voted in the Primaries. On my half-mile walk to the polling place, I saw an eight-foot fallen branch, an inch-and-a-half or so in diameter, the late mother-limb of several baby limbs of useful dimension, sitting at the side of the road; an obvious casualty of the prior evening's thunderstorms. A veritable treasure-trove of sticks -- for free! -- merely three blocks up from our place.

The calculations began: If I pass it by, walk the three remaining blocks to vote, and walk back, will the branch still be there? Should I haul the branch home first, and then restart my trek -- a gambit which might tempt this proud but lazy citizen to say the hell with voting? Or do I claim the branch, drag it to the polling station, leave it outside with the slogan-sign mules and pamphleteers -- they'll surely know better than to mess with a branch-wielding loony, won't they? -- and then drag it all the way back home? This is how the branch-addict thinks.

I'm not sure who was more thrilled: I, when I saw that my branch was still waiting for me on the way back, or my Beloved Spousal Unit, when she saw that I'd actually performed a useful act of hunting and gathering.

          When a poor man came in sight,
          Gath'ring winter fue-ue-el!

I asked a timber-owning friend, The Tin Woodsman of Upstate N.Y., whether my wonderful branch and its many sublime sub-limbs would air-dry in time to use in our fireplace this season. Taking pity, he provided remedial education: "Some species such as oak take more time to dry because of their grain (xylem cell) structure, beech is fairly fast drying, and maple is sort-of average." He further advised me, in a kind voice -- or would have, had he not been responding via email -- that my splendid prize, which I'd spent a highly inefficient 45 minutes dismembering and cutting to length with a dull pruning saw, "may not amount to much volume."

Hmmph, I thought. The Tin Woodsman may know his xylem and phloem, but I say he knows nada about sticks.

Today, the autumn wind is howling. Returning from errands, my Beloved Spousal Unit and I stepped out of the Silver Zloty in front of our home. Instantly, our eyes fell upon a cornucopia of future kindling on the street and sidewalk. "Ooooh, sticks!" said the two highly-educated professionals, in unison. We can hardly wait for the first ice storm of the season.

The General Election is a month-and-a-half away. In six weeks, I'll walk six blocks to vote for the candidate who promises us the most sticks.

Corner Kick

It's 1967; I'm eight years old. My dad takes me with him to RPI, the college where he teaches, to see a home football game. The well-kept athletic field is nestled on campus amongst the classrooms, labs, and dorms. Admission is free, or perhaps a buck or two, and we find seats in the bleachers. The play moves up and down the field. Assorted parents, kids, students, and football fans cheer on the home team. Down two rows from us, a student holds forth loudly, holding the tallest can of beer I've ever seen. A penalty flag is thrown, and the drums of the student pep band beat a military tattoo. I hear certain words I've never heard before. Dad buys me a hot dog or a hot chocolate, or both. It's the sunniest of sunny autumn days.

It's 2009; I'm fifty years old. By now, I've heard all the words. I drive over to the UW-Milwaukee campus on the East Side for a Friday afternoon soccer double-header, part of an early-season weekend tournament. The well-kept athletic field is nestled on campus amongst the classrooms, labs, and dorms. Admission is five dollars, and I find a seat in the bleachers. The play moves up and down the field. Assorted parents, kids, students, and soccer fans cheer on the two Wisconsin-based teams. Down two rows from me, the public address announcer reads an ad for the local sandwich franchise. "It's a Pepsi Panther corner kick!" he exclaims, followed by a Panther roar -- the same cheesy sound effect from the last UWM game that I'd watched, four years earlier. Several members of the nationally-ranked team from that era, now part of a local club team that won a championship, are introduced to the appreciative crowd at halftime. I munch on a bratwurst. It's a warm autumn evening under the lights.

This week, we heard of the passing of NCAA President Myles Brand. An RPI philosophy major and former President of Indiana University, Dr. Brand was most well-known in the sports world for firing Indiana's revered hoops coach Bobby Knight, who had clashed once too often with the concept of civilized behavior. My dad once served on a committee with Dr. Brand and verifies that his overriding mission was to promote the importance of academics in the lives of college athletes.

The soccer players and small crowd of onlookers honor Dr. Brand with a moment of silence before Friday night's game. Then the whistle blows, and the two teams of scholar-athletes, none of whom will get rich from their playing abilities, compete fiercely for position and possession of the ball.

Black Roses and Red Tomatoes

Our ghost-like rehaunting of the Greater Milwaukee metro area continues as we seek out new worlds and new life forms in our erstwhile city. On a whim, we decided on Oakland Trattoria, one of our favorite roosting spots and eateries from back in the day, and found that the owner has recently subdivided more than half of its space into a new Irish pub, the Black Rose. The Gaelification of Milwaukee, host city of North America's largest Irish music and culture festival every August, continues unabated.

Never ones to pass up a new culinary experience involving corned beef, we seated ourselves on the newly painted, black-green side of the joint. I mourned the loss of the wall murals depicting brightly-colored garden tomatoes and potatoes -- duly captioned using Dan Quayle's spelling primer -- while wondering about the decision to create a faux-aged, cracked paint look on the Irish half. Surface prep is essential for avoiding that result, I had always been taught. There is also a hint of theme park artificiality due to the shared premises and close juxtaposition to the restaurant's Italian half. ("Dublin or Palermo tonight, folks? This way.") Nonetheless, the overall effect of the remodeling within its own context is mood-enhancing, and we enjoyed our hour-plus in one of the Black Rose's arch-top open booths.

The server offered us two menus apiece, useful for those considering a melting-pot meal. This could make for some interesting combinations: say, a light California Trio pizza with sun-dried tomatoes and a Guinness, or Wood-roasted Vegetable Lasagne and a Smithwicks. Beloved spousal unit was relieved that her favorite portabella mushroom soup was available on either side of the establishment. Truth be told, however, we made prosaic selections for lunch -- a Reuben and a burger -- in keeping with the basic, black decor. Essentials, like the compulsories in figure skating. We can now proceed to Level Two.

While it will be a challenge for the Black Rose's cuisine to match, say, the root soup at Milwaukee's County Clare -- even with the help of the Oakland Trattoria's portabella soup -- we look forward to testing this theory. You can never have too much Irish.

Confidential to "Boom Boom Von Doom"

The flat-track roller derby craze that began around 2002 is chronicled by reporter Paul Wachter in today's New York Times Magazine.

He wrote a pretty good article. Still, he didn't capture the full extent of gonzo exuberance that you and your fellow Mad Rollin' Dolls displayed at your "bout" in 2005, the first I'd ever seen. I hadn't laughed so hard in years -- and I daresay, neither had your grandmother, nor my beloved spousal unit, nor the rest of your traveling fan club.

Though you're now retired from the Quad Squad, no doubt collecting a hefty pension while waiting for that phone call from the Roller Derby Hall of Fame, I say thanks to you once again for being such a colorful crazy-person. You continue to entertain us all. "'Boom Boom' is in the room!"

Ten Things I Know

1. How to spell and pronounce "Schenectady", "Schaghticoke", and "Rensselaer". Extra credit for "Oconomowoc" and "Fond du Lac".

2. The suburban backyard in Upstate N.Y. where a Volkswagen is buried.

3. The famous frozen custard stand in Milwaukee where MLB Commissioner Bud Selig eats his lunch daily (two hot dogs with relish).

4. How to make a killer French Onion soup; and how to get kicked out of a bar in Paris using only a French-English pocket dictionary.

5. The precise moment during the chorus of Gladys Knight's "Midnight Train to Georgia" when the Pips chime in with "Whoo-whoooo". (Hint: It's a beat later than you think.)

6. The B-52's song that requires both a cowbell and a door buzzer.

7. The family recipe for chocolate jumbles -- and the crucial baking tip.

8. How to get a two-minute penalty in adult rec hockey for "Unnecessary Roughness: Board Checking". (Hint: It's easy if you can't stop all that well.)

9. Where in Wheeling, West Virginia to get the best blueberry muffins on Easter Sunday.

10. How to sing "Rubber Ducky" ("Quietsche Entchen") in German.