It's Our Bloggerversary!

Dear Friends (and the occasional "Next Blog" clicker),

One year ago today, I posted a timid entry regarding the number of days remaining until the start of baseball spring training. Thus began a rapid disgorging, ceremonious and unceremonious, of every wee little intellectual twitch I had that I thought might look good in ASCII characters. I had two rules: I had to express a unique take or personal angle on each topic chosen; and...I forget the second rule. Whatever. Oh, right, that was the second rule: Whatever. My internalized Assignment Editor would be checked at the door, or preferably into the boards.

I only violated the spirit of these rules a few times, as with a rather generic recent review of the new Sherlock Holmes movie. That's the neat thing about having a blog, though: I can flout my own rules at will. In the immortal words of General Al Haig: I'm in charge here, yo ho ho!

Since My Two Innings was initiated, I and my Beloved Spousal Unit (take a bow, dear) have rescued ourselves from the brink of Denver employment and happily scurried back into the warm embrace of Milwaukee's economic malaise. This represented the closing leg of an epic, four-year tour of America's most benighted, yet reportedly above-average cities -- all of which seemed to involve driving large trucks through Nebraska to get there.

Meanwhile, through the secular magic of Blogger, I've indulged in numerous obscure references, ignored highly sensible educational requirements that one should meet before engaging in art criticism, and decried the downfall of third-rate sports teams that were never really as good as second-rate to begin with. Baseball, Hockey, Movies, and Music have all been featured prominently in these scribblings, naturally, but who knew at the outset that Bowling Alley Demolition, Equestrian Feats, and Male Hereditary Characteristics would also become tagged entries? Free Verse, even -- twice. Talk about indulgence.

I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's not been all Pulitzer Prizes and mid-six-figures book contracts. Distractions from a more dedicated commitment to the blog and to writing generally have included a foray into the lamentable, lazy man's world of Twitter; a randomly occurring, sudden spate of gainfulness carrying with it the strangely alluring appeal of a paycheck; and the predictable development that it took only two months in the beginning to use up all of my passably tolerable stories.

Even so, I've managed to prove once and for all, in this media-slogged millenium, that an amateur blogger's two best friends are an ergonomic keyboard and a low readership count.

So here we are again, only seven weeks until pitchers and catchers report. At the rate things are going, that's either three blog posts, two soul-crushing Pittsburgh Pirates salary dumps, or one exceptionally long drive through Nebraska. My money's on the Nuttings, as they haven't disappointed me yet. Good luck on your picks, and Happy New Year to you and yours!

Sherlock Holmes: Steampunk Pugilist?

The new Sherlock Holmes movie is rollicking, steampunkish, and artfully dark and bleak in its cinematographic depiction of Victorian London. The fast-moving plot calls to mind old-time, Saturday-at-the-movies serials. The gothic darkness reminds me of the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton.

This production goes over the top with its amount (rather than severity) of cartoonish fisticuffs and James Bond-like physical predicaments. Not the about-to-be-caught-with-Miss Moneypenny, sexy-fun kind of predicaments but the about-to-be-sawn-in-half, always-in-peril kind of predicaments. The Holmes-Watson relationship in the film has been much discussed, but it's really only suggested rather than explicit. The critics may have it otherwise, but this is no Brokeback Baker Street.

The dialogue is quick, mumbling, and often hard to hear with a loud, action-movie soundtrack behind it. For that reason alone, those with reduced hearing capability will find the movie's wit and subtleties -- and there are plenty of both -- difficult to follow.

Robert Downey Jr. chews the scenery, of course, and Jude Law's version of Dr. Watson shows deeper depth than some other Watson depictions. This Irene Adler is a fetching but shallow character, as is Watson's fiancee, Mary. The dark-caped villain Lord Blackwell, an antagonist of evil intent, calls to mind the dark Don Giovanni figure in Amadeus, or even Darth Vader. Have I mentioned that the movie is dark?

Appropriately, we saw Sherlock Holmes at a holiday week matinee. We enjoyed it but were glad for the early show discount. I hope these facts provide you with enough clues to deduce our summary rating.

Healthcare Reform: It's All About the Benjamins

My continuing objection to the U.S. healthcare model, with or without the currently proposed reform legislation, is that it relies upon an obsolete, anti-growth employment model that includes four invalid, or soon-to-be invalid, assumptions:

(1) Employment is continuous, or at least sequential, and each job has a duration on the order of several months or more;

(2) Employment compensation consists of only traditional salary or wages that correspond to time served rather than value added;

(3) Employment occurs, and healthcare benefits therefore accrue, within a single political jurisdiction;

(4) Ability to pay healthcare costs and insurance premiums depends upon one's salary or wages rather than one's accumulated wealth (as does the income tax, for that matter).

In a truly innovative, venture-based economy, creative contributors might work several hours for one client, work a month and a half for another, and have an intermittent gig with a third -- and that's only in one's main line of business. There might also be a side project or two, perhaps some online sales, investment income, capital gains, etc. Or perhaps a high-mobility worker travels from jobsite to jobsite, his or her geographic flexibility across state and national boundaries, going to where the work is, representing a crucial contribution to an efficiently operating global economic system.

Having healthcare benefits associated with traditional, full-time employment makes little sense in the current economy in which traditional employment describes the circumstances of fewer and fewer citizens. The high-volatility economy simply doesn't square with the traditional workplace assumptions underlying the healthcare debate. To reconcile healthcare reform efforts with modern workplace realities, a historical perspective may, ironically, provide the most illumination.

Consider that, similar to today's venture-driven economy, many of the nation's founders, including Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, pursued multiple lines of entrepreneurial business, often simultaneously. This suggests a conceptual litmus test for evaluating today's healthcare reform proposals: would any proposed system under discussion that is still based on salary and wage income have covered Washington's leeches, Franklin's syphilis treatments, and Jefferson's extended family?

The McCarver Rule, On Ice

When it comes to making observations, baseball analyst and ex-catcher Tim McCarver has a unique gift of foresight. His prediction of Luis Gonzales's winning base hit in the classic 2001 World Series -- McCarver called not only the winning hit but how and where the ball would likely be hit, and why, based on the game situation -- should be in the broadcast archives of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

McCarver's observations extend beyond unique scenarios to universal laws. He proclaims with confidence that in the history of baseball, no conversation between a batter who has reached first base and the first baseman has ever meant anything. Then, there is the now-famous McCarver Rule: every time you watch a baseball game, you're likely to see something, or a combination of things, that you've never seen before. Perhaps a triple play; or a double play where an outfielder applies the final tag; or a pitch over everyone's head that the batter swings at anyway. Something.

What I didn't realize until today is that the McCarver Rule extends to realms beyond baseball. Less than a minute into tonight's Minnesota-Michigan college hockey game, Minnesota was penalized two minutes when the refs and linesmen threw two overly aggressive players in a row out of the same faceoff. I've been watching college hockey for more than four decades -- including a short stint as the World's Worst College Hockey Announcer -- and I'd never seen that rule applied before. Frankly, I didn't even know it existed.

Was this startling occurrence in fact the McCarver Rule in operation? If so, is it now to be understood as a universal law of all sports? Kenneth, what is the frequency? Crucial research questions all that now fall to Your Humble Correspondent to investigate.

Shocked, Shocked About Steroids

Retired pitcher Curt Schilling once wrote an emphatic opinion piece on his 38 Pitches blog about the steroids era in baseball. According to Schilling, it's naive to think that any major league team was completely clean during that era, which he says encompassed his entire career.

It's deflating to realize that such awesome spectacles as the McGwire vs. Sosa home run race of 1998, the tape measure home runs of Bonds and A-Rod, the clutch hitting of Manny Ramierez, and the power pitching of Roger Clemens into his greybeard years have reflected the willingness of players to cheat and owners, executives, and managers to look the other way -- perhaps even encourage the practice.

In addition to steroids, consider: growth hormones (both human and equine); blood-doping (both human and equine); surgical enhancement (Tommy John surgery, LASIK); podiatrics (athletic shoe design); textile science (swimsuit fabrics); applied aerodynamics (curveballs, spitballs, knuckleballs); and statistical evaluation ("Moneyball"). And oh, those lovely East German swimmers! Success and failure accrue not just to athletes but also the technological prowess of the society that sends them forth into the arena.

Given the importance of sports in understanding the capabilities and limits of the human body, and the importance of sports science in developing those capabilities further, is there really a clear, ethical line between physical enhancements that represent cheating and those that are legitimate technological advances? Who makes that determination?

Consider the classical origins of athletics: as a means of inspiring, motivating and testing physical fitness, coordination, teamwork, and strategy -- in preparation for military battle. Somewhere right now, some American kids on combat patrol are probably taking various performance-enhancing drugs in a belief (true or mistaken) that doing so will aid in their muscle recovery or alertness and help keep them alive. Some American captains or sergeants might be encouraging this practice.

Somehow I doubt that the public would react to such "cheating" with the same scorn that it heaps upon juiced ballplayers who, for reasons both laudable and selfish, have given their bodies over to the R&D labs.

Yankees Win, Blah Blah Blah

Speaking of Philadelphia, weren't they just in a World Series? It's been only two weeks since the end of the baseball season, but the victory by the Yankees over the Phillies has already receded from front-of-brain consciousness.

For me, the iconic play of the postseason came in Game 4: Johnny Damon's alert steal of third base when nobody was covering the bag. That play showed verve and spirit. Other than that, not much comes to mind. Hideki Matsui hit a bunch of homers and doubles in the final game, and Mariano Rivera pitched more than one inning a few times. Andy Pettitte pitched with his usual Pete Sampras-like countenance. Derek Jeter got on base some, I'm pretty sure. Must have. A-Rod had a big game at some point, didn't he?

Ever the fair-weather fan, I tried to get excited about the Yankees win, which (unacceptably to some) was nine long years in coming. I'd grown up in Upstate New York during the losing Yankee seasons of the late 1960's and early 1970's, post-Mickey Mantle, pre-Thurman Munson and pre-Reggie Jackson. After pitching ace Mel Stottlemyre, graceful outfielder Roy White, and the late Bobby Murcer, the talent level on those teams fell off sharply. Recalling those lean years, I hold that a championship is never to be taken for granted -- even by a pinstriped franchise with a payroll large enough to fund NASA.

In that spirit, I caught some of the 2009 post-parade ceremony at City Hall. Honestly, I've never seen a more subdued, workmanlike celebration. With few exceptions, the players sauntered out when their names were called, most looking for all the world like they'd rather be somewhere else, or wanted a fee for their appearance. (In fairness, serious hangovers could have been involved.) Keys to the city were presented by Mayor Bloomberg to each Yankee player, including minor-league call-ups, as well as every last team employee down to the shoeshine kid. A few short speeches were made; a few onlookers cheered.

Most of the speakers credited Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, now in failing health, and his sons for their massive spending on star players that has driven and disrupted the economics of baseball for three decades. To finance astronomical salaries, ticket prices have risen over the years, and have now reached the level of the absurd in the new Yankee Stadium. It's no longer New York's barbers and cabdrivers who can afford to attend the games, especially in the seats closest to home plate, but bankers, lawyers and celebrity politicians. Perhaps this explains the curiously underwhelming response when the final out of Game 5 was recorded. "The-e-e Yankees win!" said the team's broadcaster. The fans cheered; the players put on special caps and t-shirts; the loudspeakers played We Are The Champions. All according to plan.

(Is noone aware that Queen's vainglorious winner's anthem was meant to be ironic?)

Excellence through expectation and execution is admirable in business and sports alike, but only in the corporate world is it enough. Sports requires passion as well as achievement to hold fan interest and build loyalty. As the Yankees report to spring training in 2010 and prepare to defend their 27th championship -- will Manager Joe Girardi change his number from 27 to 28? -- the best they can hope for if they succeed is not ecstasy but relief at meeting the annual plan.

Meanwhile, baseball enthusiasts everywhere else will hope that their team can stoke up, catch lightning, and take down the mighty Yanks. Explosive exuberance awaits the franchise and its fans whose players can, just once, overachieve wildly, steal a pennant and a championship, and reach the very pinnacle of their professional existence.

          Irrational, yes; impossible, no --
          We're in first place! Go, Brewers, Go!

"The Hammer"

The Philadelphia Flyers retired Dave "The Hammer" Schultz's No. 8 last night at The Spectrum. This tribute to the NHL's Super Goon of the 1970's portends either (a) the fall of Western Civilization or (b) the resurrection of Philadelphia hockey. Or both. Quick litmus test, for those on the fence: Do you like gladiator movies?

Schultz was a fighter and a game changer, the defining member of Philly's Broad Street Bullies championship teams of 1973-74 and 1974-75. Bobby Clarke scored the goals and Bernie Parent stood on his head in goal, but it was Schultz's clownish, brawling fisticuffs that set other teams off-balance. His antics not only inspired his own team but set the tone for a generation of brutality-as-comedy vehicles in the popular culture, from Paul Newman's minor league hockey movie Slapshot to Warren Zevon's hockey anthem, Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song):

          Brains over brawn -- that might work for you,
          But what's a Canadian farm boy to do?

The Hammer's 472 penalty minutes in 1974-75 -- only hockey celebrates its most flagrant lawbreakers -- are still an NHL single-season record. So iconic were Schultz's hockey fights that several exemplary, brutal specimens of his art are posted on his own web site.

Philadelphia built a statue to Rocky, Sylvester Stallone's fictional prizefighter, but it was a real fighter that clutched and punched his way into the city's heart and reaffirmed its combative, working class soul. If the Flyers of Broad Street contend for this year's Stanley Cup, as seems likely, they will do so with two championship banners from four decades ago and Dave Schultz's No. 8 as their visible inspirations from above.

          Hit somebody!

One. Tera. Byte.

Always the futurist, I bought a Leading Edge Model D Personal Computer in 1986 for $1,500. With its amber-colored monochrome monitor, proprietary word processing and database software, and choice of either two floppy drives or one floppy and one hard drive, this Korean-made entry into the nascent, IBM-compatible personal computer market was considered at the time to be a value-oriented bargain.

I opted for the hardware version with two 360-kilobyte floppy drives. Why would a home user, even a writer wannabe, ever need a hard drive, a $100 option? Who could possibly fill even a fraction of ten megabytes -- that's more than a million English words! Twenty novels! Whereas my likely storage requirement was for a half-dozen unpublished articles, a dozen letters home, and a couple of text adventure games.

With word processing software disk in one floppy drive and data disk in the other, I was good to go. No more tiptoeing around allowable-use policies on the mainframes and time-sharing systems at school and work. No more jostling for access to shared PC equipment and dedicated word processors. No more flipping sign-up sheets. More disk space than I thought I would ever need, totally at my disposal, totally my own. So modern; so ahead of the curve. You bet!

I just looked at the electronics ads in this morning's Sunday edition of the New York Times. For a mere $200 -- discounted online to about $100 -- you can now buy an external hard drive from a computer accessories vendor that has one terabyte of data storage space.

One terabyte for $100. With apologies to binary computing purists, that's 1000 gigabytes, each of which is 1000 megabytes, each of which is 1000 kilobytes, each of which is 1000 bytes. 100 billion English words. Two million novels.

I'd better start writing!

How Life Imitates a Thomas Boswell Column

For decades, sportswriter and columnist Thomas Boswell of The Washington Post has penned beautiful, trenchant commentary. His baseball writing, in particular, captures the hard truths and romantic spirit of the game, mostly without succumbing to the wistful dreaminess so typical in the trade (except in his book titles: How Life Imitates the World Series, Why Time Begins on Opening Day, etc.).

Boswell always writes with a purpose to a cathartic conclusion. One professor of my acquaintance assigns his carefully crafted columns to her writing classes for basic training in rhetoric. Until his World Series preview column this morning, however, I hadn't sent a link to one of his WashPost pieces to a friend or relative for a couple of years, maybe more. Reading Boswell used to be a twice-weekly routine for me, a necessary act of recreation. Why no longer?


One answer: the rise of rapid-fire highlight and debate shows on cable. A high volume of quick, pithy takes on topical issues -- often at high volume -- has superseded the well-thought-out exploration of a single theme. In sports, Tony Kornheiser's and Mike Wilbon's Pardon the Interruption, a preeminent, high-quality example of this format, even employs a time bell to keep the discussion lively.

Another: On the Internet, vehement opinion-mongering in response to any mental stimulus has supplanted the omniscient, thoughtful, writerly voice of yore. Whether in politics, sports, or celebrity gossip, the role of today's columnists, talk-show hosts, and bloggers is to kick off an inflammatory debate that will maximize the number of page hits by rabid partisans. The inmates are in charge of the asylum. The tabloids have always been with us, to be sure, but careful consideration of topical issues by an informed commentator now seems as quaint as a Labor Day doubleheader.

But I think the primary reason is that Boswell's talent is largely wasted on covering the Washington Nationals, a quasi-replacement franchise for the team of his youth, the twice-departed Washington Senators. Brilliant writing about the nearby Baltimore Orioles in the Cal Ripken/Eddie Murray era could not assuage his grief and anger at Major League Baseball officials over not having a team in the Nation's Capital. Boswell's columns became a sweet, sad song of yearning for a new franchise to replace the loss and end the grieving. Along the way, he excoriated baseball leadership -- from the Commissioner-for-Life, to the Players Association's obstinate boss, to the Orioles' incompetent owner -- for debasing the game that he cherishes, and that his readers have come to cherish through his writings, week by week.


At long last, Boswell's prayers and entreaties were answered: Major League Baseball delivered a franchise to Washington. The Nationals, nee the Montreal Expos, arrived to play for D.C.-area baseball fans -- and were quickly confirmed as a flop, the new taxpayer-funded stadium sparsely filled, the new team's flaws ruthlessly exposed by baseball's unforgiving 162-game season. Even the best writer in the business can lose his edge when his lifelong dream is fulfilled, and it turns out to be a letdown.

But now comes the World Series, and life, like sportswriting, returns to the present tense. Boswell's beat shifts back from the local losers to the exalted winners. In his World Series preview column this morning, he sets up this year's classic match-up between the Phillies and Yankees -- brilliantly, concisely, and from several levels: analytical, critical, cultural, economic, inspirational. What he says about the World Series is...well, click here and enjoy the read. He says it better than I ever can.

Once again, Tom Boswell has made me care about this trivial, irrelevant, thoroughly wonderful game, infused with as much meaning as everything that's most important in my life. I sent the link to my friends.

Former Math Major, Reclining

She: Did you have any dreams?
Me: No, I had axioms.

Fox TV Pulls a "Reverse Heidi"

No, it's not a college football play, a call option trading strategy, nor even a subchapter heading in the Swiss translation of the Kama Sutra.

(Yes, I know Swiss is not a language. Work with me here.)

On November 17, 1968, the AFL's Oakland Raiders came back from a 3-point deficit with 65 seconds to play, scoring 14 points to beat the New York Jets. A thrilling finish to a critical game that would have been forgotten, ultimately -- except for the paradoxical fact that nobody saw it.

Nobody saw it, because NBC executives saw fit to cut away from the end of the football game to begin the previously scheduled, two-hour broadcast of Heidi, a dramatization of the beloved children's novel.

Outraged football fans lit up NBC's switchboard in protest of the network's boneheaded decision. NBC Nightly News anchor David Brinkley, on behalf of the besieged network, apologized to viewers on his Monday evening newscast, concluding in his trademark sardonic tones, "Next time, the little girl from the mountains will have to wait."

Last night, after a 40-year wait, sports fans everywhere exacted their revenge on the pesky little milkmaid. Only it wasn't football but baseball that did her in; and it wasn't NBC but Fox Television; and it wasn't even Heidi but the Hugh Laurie medical drama House that got kicked in the milk bucket.

You see, Major League Baseball playoff games are notoriously slow-paced. Managers bring in parades of new pitchers from the bullpen in the middle and late innings, and each new pitcher needs warm-up time. Pitchers, catchers, managers, and coaches don't want to make a strategy mistake, resulting in endless conferences on the mound. Batters adjust their helmet and batting gloves between pitches and call timeout if the pitcher is taking too long. Closely competitive games often go into extra innings.

Last night's Dodgers-Phillies game, which aired on the Fox Television Network, actually ended in regulation innings, with a Jimmy Rollins double in the ninth giving the Phils the walk-off win. But by the time the parade of 10 pitchers ended and the bullpen catcher spat tobacco juice in the dirt for the last time, a mere 3 hours and 44 minutes later -- reasonable, actually, by post-season standards -- Fox's prime time programs had been delayed, starting with House.

Fox aired House in its entirety immediately after the ballgame. In today's TIVO-driven, DVR-equipped era of time-shifted viewing, however, many fans missed it. Those who had pre-set their DVRs to record House at its scheduled time found that their 60-minute recording consisted of 45 minutes of baseball and only the first 15 minutes of the medical mystery -- minus commercial time. Hardly enough time to warm up the MRI machine; barely enough time for Dr. House to insult two patients and three colleagues.

House fans were livid. On Internet message boards, they posted in protest. On Twitter, they tweeted in hash-tagged agony. A few Luddites (those with DVR capability, anyway) probably even phoned the Fox switchboard. But it was all in vain. None of them realized that it was Fortuna, Karma, and the Universal Studio in the Sky all rolled into one, messing with their viewing obsession and evening up the score. Heidi climbed the Alps; the Fates, represented by Fox, tripped her up (using House's cane) and pushed her back down the mountain, 40 years later. And then they stole her goats.

Nowadays, Dear Reader, if you happen to see a forlorn, 50-year old woman wandering around Canton Bern, tending no goats, her long, blonde braids streaked with gray, her empty milk buckets in crooked hands, take pity. Listen for a while to her wistful, bittersweet stories of when she skipped along mountaintops. Maybe give her a hug and toss a Euro or two into her rickety buckets. Above all, Dear Reader, please don't ever say the words "Baseball", "Fox", or "McCarver" in her presence; that would be the cruelest cut of all. For now you know what turned Heidi 'ho'.

In Which We List Ten Life-Long Favorites for Which I Must Remember to Thank My Parents, Who Introduced Me To Them

1. A. A. Milne
2. Dr. Seuss
3. The Wizard of Oz
4. Chocolate Jumbles
5. Macoun Apples
6. RPI Hockey
7. Beethoven
8. Scrabble
9. Tom Lehrer
10. Monty Python

Cheese Toast (n.)

When Seattle Mariners shortstop Jack Wilson was still playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he gave a television interview in which he displayed two of his old baseball gloves at his locker. "This one here is toast," he said, showing the reporter a well-worn piece of leather, "and this other one is cheese toast."

Wilson's gastronomical idiom has proven far from idiotic; no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary says so. The OED New Edition's update of 10 September 2009 introduced cheese toast (n.) as a new subordinate entry under the main entry cheese (n.).

Somehow, I doubt that Wilson's use of the term as a metaphor for fully depreciated athletic equipment is what the word-wonks at the OED had in mind. Still, it's fun to think that a guy who can turn a meaningful double-play can also spin a new double-meaning.

Jack Wilson is now gone from Pittsburgh, along with Freddie Sanchez, Nate McLouth, Adam LaRoche, Xavier Nady, Jason Bay, and many others. Without this crew, the Pirates were 9-21 in September and October, and they finished the 2009 season with 99 losses.

May all your favorite teams avoid becoming cheese toast!

All Tomorrow's Parties

What happens if a bunch of humans are stripped of their rationality and critical thinking abilities, electrified beyond the point of recovery with high-voltage music (and non-music), and let loose en masse to collide into one another for several days in a village?

I think I just caught a glimpse of that unsettling scenario tonight at a Milwaukee Film Festival offering. All Tomorrow's Parties, a feature-length documentary, captures the annual U.K. rock festival of the same name, for which various leading bands "curate" each year's acts. Named for a Velvet Underground lyric, the ATP festival was conceived as a counterreaction to the creeping corporate control of youth culture and music -- so sayeth the painfully inarticulate kid interviewed in one clip -- and by the usual metaphoric extension, as a critique of all society, man.

Staging a festival without overbearing corporate sponsorship is laudable. When you do that, however, the best act you can get just might be Iggy and the Stooges. That's okay; the real action in ATP is in and around the decrepit resort dormitories, which look like the worst two-level, exterior-entrance motels that you've ever stayed in. Here, beyond the obligatory Intermittent Spontaneous Musical Occurrences, we're treated to clips of drunken post-partiers wandering around aimlessly, peering into other people's rooms, and falling through cheaply constructed second-floor balconies. Before you can attend tomorrow's parties, it would seem, you have to survive today's first.

Anarchic and chaotic as the music festival itself, the documentary cobbles together miscellaneous film clips gathered from numerous attendees and participants over the years. Like the festival, the film seems not so much curated as thrown together. The only concession to the left-brain that craves information and a semblance of order is the briefly displayed band names, with curator and festival year, for a number of leading acts. The director overuses a multiple-windows technique for concert footage; somebody must have thought it looked really cool back in film school.

I didn't like many of the bands, but so what; it's no longer my generation's turn. Choppy editing aside, All Tomorrow's Parties is a fair depiction of a significant youth music gathering, now sprouting offshoots around the globe. A cultural time capsule, I suggest it be suitably buried for posterity. Perhaps in velvet. Definitely underground.

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.

A Brief Theory of Executive Identification

If you see a person at work using scissors, he or she is not an executive.

A Brief Theory of Masculinity

As a public service, My Two Innings hereby presents a highly reliable differential indicator of masculinity:

1. Holding purse momentarily for wife/girlfriend/female relative: Chivalrous. Masculinity retained, provided purse is not held by the strap.

2. Walking more than one step with purse: Traveling Violation. Masculinity not retained.

3. Important Exception: Retrieving forgotten purse from mid-priced family restaurant on a Sunday is permitted, provided the bag is grabbed in the same way that Brett Favre holds a football while scrambling -- confidently yet haphazardly, with arm extended downward at full length for maximum distance between the purse and bearer's line of sight -- and is in no event carried by the strap. Bearer must glance around furtively and return to the vehicle at a hasty trot.

Recap: Holding bag, okay; walking with bag, not okay. Thus informed, you may now proceed with confidence.

My Constitutional Amendment

This retrograde flap about Barack Obama's citizenship and eligibility for the Presidency begs the real question: why shouldn't we welcome as a national leader an immigrant who has, or whose parents have, renounced other allegiances decades ago? Isn't America supposed to be about ideas rather than soil?

Here's what our Constitution says on the subject of Presidential eligibility, in Article II, Section 1:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Here's my simple tweak, er, proposed Constitutional Amendment:

"No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who shall not have been for the consecutive thirty five Years prior a Citizen of the United States, and fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Have at it, Ah-nold.

Of course, a 34 year, 6 month old pro-life advocate could someday claim citizenship since conception. This, at a minimum, would make for intriguing interrogations of the parents. Where's Ken Starr when we need him?

Merci Beaucoup, Milwaukee!

I don't know much French beyond "Guy LaFleur", "Milles Bornes", and "German people - rubbish!" (That last one technically isn't French, but it is a direct quote from a Parisian bartender in 1978.) This doesn't stop me from thoroughly appreciating Milwaukee's Bastille Days, a French-themed street fair and cultural celebration held annually in mid-July.

Milwaukee's ethnic festivals, most of which follow the renowned Summerfest music festival on successive summer weekends, are themselves famous. Unlike its better-known fréres like Irishfest and Indian Summer, held at the controlled-access festival grounds on the lakefront, however, Bastille Days draws people to the open streets of East Town, an upscale area near Cathedral Square and the Milwaukee School of Engineering. (Cathedral Square also hosts the Thursday night Jazz in the Park series.)


A miniature, yet imposing, two-story Eiffel Tower stands on Kilbourn Avenue, the hub of the festivities. The music, the street performers, the food -- the food! -- and the arts and crafts in vendor booths are all present in abundance, but the real draw is the people-watching. From the lunchtime businessmen and women enjoying a French Caribbean specialty off the grill to the Saturday night party-goers, everyone observes and participates in the promenade as the casual, often-stylish crowd circulates around the streets. A true exercise in your basic Liberté, not to mention your Egalité and your Fraternité.

Chanteuse Robin Pluer's Edith Piaf-inspired performance and the hilarious French Waiter/Waitress Race top off the Bastille Days experience. It's the most relaxed and cheerful festival of the year, lending its joie de vivre to your esprit de corps. The perfect antidote for a case of Parisian bartender malaise. Vive la fête!

Hockey Story, and a Beauty

Ken Baker is a former college hockey goalie who began as a prospect in the U.S. Olympic development program. His career reached a plateau at Colgate University, and he never fulfilled his potential. Having left the game at 21 somewhat bitterly, without understanding a hidden, physical source of his malaise, he was diagnosed a few years later with a brain tumor than had, during his college years, affected his pituitary function, altered his body chemistry, and robbed him of strength and energy. He is treated and recovers. Later, he experiences a sudden, sharp desire at 29 -- literally, a dream -- to play competitive hockey again. Rediscovering the passion and talent of his youth, he sets a goal of playing pro hockey at the minor league level as a late-career rookie in the 2001-02 season.

Ken Baker is also a writer whose post-collegiate career includes a journalism degree and stints at People and US Weekly. His first-person book about his hockey comeback attempt, They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven, documents the mundane details of his physical and attitudinal progress over two years as he rediscovers his love for the game and what it takes to compete at the professional level. He ultimately gains a benchwarmer's slot on the Bakersfield Condors, a minor league team. Will he finally get playing time in a pro game and validate his dream?

I wanted to like this book. I did like it, to a point. I'm a hockey fan and former rec league player; I can relate to Baker's depictions of the sights, sounds, and smells -- "Pee-yew!" says his fiancee, of his old goalie equipment -- of the rink-rat life. His tales of the camaraderie, competition, brutality, violence, and stomach-turning injuries in minor league hockey result in a worthy, textual companion to the classic hockey farce on film, Slapshot. There's a full airing of Baker's thoughts along the way as he pursues his dream.

It's just that there's nothing new here. The against-all-odds, aging-rookie scenario has been explored in sports movies from The Rookie to The Natural. Roger Kahn's Good Enough to Dream and the movie Bull Durham present the hardscrabble, bus-riding life in the minor leagues. Jim Bouton's Ball Four is still the standard-setter for a candid look at rude, crude clubhouse life. Canadian-American hockey culture is depicted seriously in Ken Dryden's Home Game, and comedically in the aforementioned Slapshot. George Plimpton's Open Net presents in even starker relief the enormous talent gap between pro hockey players and the average wannabe in the stands.

What's unique to the book, then? The dramatic element of Baker's athletic training starting from ground zero, in light of his recent medical recovery; the encouragement and temporary separation from his spouse in pursuit of his hockey dream; the combination of goaltender's cockiness and writer's vanity that allows him to begin an action sequence with the words "I expertly"; the colorful descriptions of the suitably archetypal characters and internal rivalries on his Bakersfield team; and 200 pages of "Will Kells put me in the game tonight?" When he finally gets in a game -- oh gosh, I spoiled it for you! -- there really aren't any surprises left.