1999

There's something to that whole deal about being home for Christmas.  I scribbled through the last of my exams yesterday and found myself somewhat disappointed to go Home (actually, I've lost track of whether my family's home or my dorm deserves the capital "H"), a journey of four blocks to the house I lived in for nine years before going to college.  It's too, well, un-college-y.  But the Christmas tree, and the smells that ferry a distinct holiday mood around the house are as welcoming as an embrace, and achieve what the packaged, artificial existence of college dormitories just can't match.  We'll see if I'm singing this tune in a couple weeks, but for now it's good to be on break. 

Saturday, December 11
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting, in one sentence, why I am not a Republican, which in Grand Rapids makes me a salmon squirming against a current of lemmings.  Ready?  According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, two thirds of George W. Bush's tax cut proposal will be for the richest 10 percent of the country. 

Give me a break.

Ever since the disastrous Reagan Administration the wealthiest 10 percent of America has gone from hogging 68 percent of the nation's wealth to hoarding nearly 80 percent.  The Republicans, under the guise of being benevolent jolly old tax cutters, are no less than systemizing social injustice.

By the way, in order to take me seriously you need to know that I am not a Democrat.  I think belonging to a political party is a grevious act of compromise of one's own beliefs.  My political science professor insists the partisan system is how politics gets done, rather than having a din of hundreds of different viewpoints.  Well, hasn't Congress been churning out the legislation lately?  It's a self-defeating system, is what it is.

Look at the presidential race.  Too many Republicans, without disturbing their brains by thinking about it, signed up under Bush the minute they thought he could win.  Not because they thought he would be a good leader for the country. Because he could beat those filthy Dems. 

Truth is, both Bush and Al Gore are calculating, poll-suffocated, stuffed suits whose election would be inconsequential and useless.  Bill Bradley and John McCain are two of the very few high profile politicians who have managed to remain actual human beings.  They each have actual visions for leadership -- not pseudo-visions mapped out by a pollster -- and would actually bring something to the Oval Office.  This is my first year to vote, and in both lies my hope that voting will be a meaningful act.

Amusing tidbit from Scott Ostler's consistently amusing column in the San Fransisco Chronicle, relating the answer of a 104-year-old woman to a young man's question of what the nicest thing about being 104 was:  "No peer pressure," she said.

Friday, November 15
Finally gave in and watched “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” last night. I had avoided it like a ill-tasting medication simply because it hoisted all the red flags about being the latest hyped-drowned senseless money orgy. I have little fear I was wrong. Talk about a pseudo-event. Regis Philbin portentously presides over the show as though it were the war room of a major nation on the brink of nuclear war. I love the spooky thumping music they play in the background while the contestant is pondering the answer. The soundtracks of “Millionaire” and “The X-Files” are indistinguishable. When they finally utter a humble peep, Philbin piles on the cheese – “Are you confident,” he inquires, in the tone one reserves for asking about major surgery. “Final answer?” My gosh, by now you’d think a wrong answer cues the implosion of the Earth. 

What’s sillier is that the first few questions are about as challenging as a kindergarten sandbox exercise. The difficulty obviously increases as the reward grows, but Philbin maintains the reverence for all levels. It’s a one hundred dollar question that asks “What color is grass? A) green B) pink C) The Spice Girls or D) Adlai Stevenson,” and Philbin bears down on the poor soul as threatening as a detective jabbing his finger at an interrogation suspect bathed in a hot lamp. 

What I like about the show is the substance of the questions – beyond the hundred dollar levels, of course (if knowing that the Road Runner’s sound is “Beep! Beep!” is worth a hundred dollars, than I need a raise.) It’s nice to have curiosity aroused about the world and nature, and the questions hit a wonderful variety of subjects. But I won’t tune in again soon, simply because the cheese is too thick, the pseudo-suspense too contrived, the money lust too flagrant. Turning it off is an escape. 

One topic worth trivia treatment is the pulsar -- the stage in a star’s life cycle when its insides have burst and begin swirling until they recompress into a bloated ball of gas (insert favorite Mexican food joke here.) These things are amazing – they are as large as cities and make complete rotations several times a SECOND. They emit a pulsating sound regularly -- with each full spin -- due to some electromagnetic phenomenon I wasn’t blessed with the capability of grasping. Hearing a steady stream of these pulses, which you can do at this British astronomy Web site, and trying to imagine a full spin of a city-sized mass of material with each one, is overwhelming. Tell me again that part about the universe having no purpose or divine designer – these pulsars are the giant sculptures of God. 

Monday, November 1
It is incongruously mild; spring has sprung suddenly on fall like a boisterous opera singer that beat her cue by two acts. The breeze strolling through my window is an anachronistic forbidden pleasure. As James Lileks says, of balmy weather this late in the Midwest:

"In this part of the world,
such a day is a boon, a bushel crop, a free
refill, an extra frame at the bowling alley, a third
trip to the buffet, one more day in Tahiti
because the plane wasn’t ready."

May the delay linger. Just so winter doesn't try to make up for it later on.

Went to Chicago over the weekend. No occasion, just a persistent daydream that for once came to fruition. Crystal clear and jacket-less day - made for some beautiful pictures, as you'll see in the gallery, which has been duly updated. My macro-daydream is to work in Chicago, or, more urgently, to intern there for a semester my senior year. The visit fueled my infatuation with big cities; for all the streets plugged with cars, the haze of smog, and the highly-concentrated dirt and noise, I can't escape the allure of being where so many things are happening and so many people are making them happen. Perhaps I'd tire of it quickly, but for the time being a good part of my heart - a left ventricle or so - is back in Chicago.

Friday, October 15
Is it possible for ads to get much stupider? Today I spotted one for one of those cuddly computer software companies. It was a soccer game, actually; the gimmick was that one of the players had a computer monitor for a head, his pixel-pocked pseudo-visage flashing charts and numbers. The player is a drone for this company, and the narrator proudly declares, smug as a soccer mom conducting a trophy count, that “our workers never stop thinking about your problems.” 

First of all, anyone who thinks about work while playing soccer is in need of industrial-strength infusion of a life. I don’t want them touching my computers. I don’t want them touching my lawn ornaments. 

But the most confusing part of the ad is at the end. When the screen-faced worker reaches an epiphany, yelling “I got it!”and metamorphoses back into someone with a cerebrum just in time to make a save in the goal, did anybody notice that the congratulatory players surrounding him are from the other team?! What gives? Do they have pals betting their team won’t cover the spread? Panning for the camera just to make sure they get in the ad? Is it a humanitarian gesture – showing they’re just glad to see the guy’s got his noggin back? 

Memo to ad makers: using sports so brainlessly to try to affix enthusiasm to something like savings bonds is a greater insult to us than it is a selling point. 

Spent some time hunting down info on the Phantom movie – no, not the hype-drowned Star Wars snooze, but the Hollywood rape of “Phantom of the Opera,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s thunderous show that grabbed me when I saw it in Toronto in June. Webber shamefully sold the rights to Warner Bros. back in 1991, but the company’s been dragging its feet for a while. Now the project seems to be picking up steam as Antonio Banderas apparently has been christened by Webber himself to play the Phantom. This rightly sickens Phantom “Phans” who realize Banderas has none of the versatility, musical ability, and subtlety of the Broadway original, Michael Crawford. Nor does the previous suitor for the role, John Travolta. Some even made a website to campaign against a Hollywood rape at http://phantom.simplenet.com/savephantom/ with the slogan “Save Erik [the Phantom] from Hollywood.” 

There’s also a site campaigning for Crawford to play the role at www.phantommovie.com. Another controversial way Webber might wreck his own masterpiece is a sequel, discussed at http://phantom.simplenet.com/sequel. 

I applaud the protests of both the “No Movie” and “No Sequel” campaigns. Hollywood with its hands on “Phantom” is like a lumberjack with his hands on a rare redwood. Their own odious agendas trample the treasure. The Phantom is one of the most elusive, subtle, and complex characters ever to take any stage. Hollywood doesn’t have time or patience for elusive. It would so cheapen Erik that the mystery, and thus the magic, would be gone. Likewise for the sequel. Somebody tell Webber that sequels stink. It’s a law of nature. And “Phantom” is particularly sequel-resistant. 

The small consolation is that the movie couldn’t possibly turn out as bad as the commercial with the computer software soccer players. 

Tuesday, October 12
Autumn is my favorite season, though I maintain love-hate relationship with it. It is the only season I characterize as a femme fatale: It seduces me with its soothing embrace, only to thrust the blade of winter into my abdomen. 

Well, today, color me seduced. “Color” being the operative word. The rigor mortis of fall – the dull brown that sweeps through the trees before they’re whitewashed – hasn’t set in yet, and so the trees are vibrant. James Lileks, one of my favorite writers, says autumn is when trees get sudden artistic inspiration – hey, who says we all have to be GREEN?!? 

Could be. Or trees might be aware all along of how vivid they can be, but, like me, spend the summer dragging their feet, lazing around. Green, they shrug, eh, good enough. Like me when I plod the roughly two mile morning trek from bed to bedroom door, pulling on a wrinkled pair of shorts in the meantime. Yes, I wore them yesterday and the day before that, and yes, they provide visual evidence of being present at a meal or two, but whaddya gonna do? Maybe trees are the same way. Indifferent photosynthesis – was that ever covered in biology? Then come October they feel it getting cooler and panic – whoa, we’ve got a show to put on. And at the eleventh hour, before winter ossifies us all, they turn in a masterpiece. 

If only the same principle applied to my term papers. 

I find it fitting that Merriam-Webster – the dictionary folks who have an outstanding website at www.m-w.com – chose “Luddite” as the word of the day. Have you heard of this word before? It means someone with a disdain for technology, and there’s a great story behind it. In 1811 in Nottingham, England, a band of textile mill workers broke into the mill and starting destroying newly installed equipment that had begun to make them obsolete. They called their leader “King Ludd” after the fictional character Ned Ludd who carried out a similar protest in a weaver’s shop in the eighteenth century. The name “Luddite” took root as industrialization reared its ugly head. The Unabomber, label-defying as he was, seems to fit under this umbrella. But with downsizing the way of business today, the label quickly becomes more inclusive. Heck, I need little motivation to start walloping my Windows-plagued computer. 

And here ’ll conveniently ignore the fact that I came upon this word online, and now you are too. 

I say it’s fitting because this is also the 507th anniversary of Columbus landing at the Bahamas. Sure, it’s one of the most overrated and misunderstood events in history, but the symbolism is unmistakable – the first European boots to sink into the mud of North America, blazing a path for imperialism and an unprecedented trampling of the natural world that is too seldom mourned even in our tolerance-drunk culture. 

The ironies pile up on each October 12th. It’s the annversary of other key indicators of progress: the opening of the first women’s medical school in 1850, the first iron lung in 1918, the first woman ambassador in 1949. But the 12th simultaneously gives reminders that change is not always cuddly: today is the anniversary of the one millionth Model T, an icon of empty industrialization; of the 3rd presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which helped change campaigns into one long TV show; the Supreme Court’s 1977 first case alleging reverse discrimination in affirmative action; and of the death of Robert E. Lee, who knew that there’s only so much change a nation can take. All intriguing footnotes to Columbus’ global geography goof. 

Then again, it was this day in 1960 Nikita Khrushchev unleashed his shoe on the table at the United Nations, and it’s the birthday of Nancy Kerrigan (who probably wishes she had a shoe to whack with), both good reminders that, as with Columbus, life will invariably keep throwing you a few curves. 

Tuesday, September 14, 1999
You’ve heard of a diamond in the rough. Well, the communal lavatory in my dorm is about as rough as it gets. It’s designated dormwide for the considerably uglier aspect of human digestion, and is duly ugly to various senses. 

The journal that the rests on the floor at the foot of the stool, collecting the cogitations of those assuming the Thinking Man’s pose -- chin in hand and elbow on knee – usually is little more than a graffiti snatcher. But a dialogue started by an occupant a few, er, occupancies ago, sparkled with a refreshing glint. 

The discussion was about the nature of true love and the deceit of the ephemeral thrill-seeking cemented in our culture. It was carried on by a few men who belied their college freshman and sophomore status with thoughtful paragraphs on what it means to be in love. Refreshingly bereft (mostly) of the laconic, pelvic-driven grunts innate to adolescent males, the musings even included a useful and close-to-home metaphor of dorm food: attractive but shallow women, the writer said, are like a dorm dish that looks delicious until picked at with a fork. True love is more like a fruit salad, which is visually pleasing (if not stunning) and wholly satisfying. 

“Only at Calvin,” I’m tempted to say, but then that has been uttered mournfully so many times... 

I simply wrote that the entrants who scoffed at the substance and questioned the writer’s sexual orientation made me so disgusted with the sexual saturation of our civilization that I am in full support of lunar colonization. But I applauded the writers who went deeper. 

Love is as deep and calm as a contented sigh; our culture is bent on hyperventilation. It was uplifting to hear classmates breathing deeply. 

Is it too awkward a transition here to say I took a starlit walk with several women tonight? Does it help to say this was for astronomy class and I offered for my girlfriend to go along (though she denied)? 

The vast quietude transports you into another dimension at night – that is, should you walk, as we did, to the middle of a baseball field, keeping the orange mudpuddle of floodlights at arm’s length for once. I tried to ignore the irony of observing the square of Pegasus from the outfield – on its end, as it appears in the northeastern sky this time of year, the diamond is the logical place for a game of cosmic stickball to break out, with home plate just above the horizon and three other stars evenly stretched above it. Baseball is a game of super stars, after all. 

From the now-defunct "Two Cents":
Letter to Time Magazine after "Eyes Wide Shut" cover (7/1/99)
Boy, that sure was a veiled attempt to get rid of a few more mags with a little more skin. It was so subtle, at first I was duped into thinking you were STILL about reporting the news -- AND reflecting its importance. Only now do I surmise this was actually a case of getting our lust for flesh to match your lust for that good ol' bottom line, while good sense is the big loser all the way around. Hey, did it ever occur to you that People et al. will ALWAYS be sleazier no matter how hard you try, and that while you humiliate yourself to draw in a few gawking readers, you patronize and insult the rest of us core subscribers who pay you for legitimate news? Kindly give your faithful readers a break. 

The way it should be in the NBA (6/20/99)
The NBA season ended the way it was supposed to – with the Spurs on top – in contrast to the rest of the season in which everything else went wrong. The year that was truncated by the insulting lockout and deflated by Michael Jordan’s retirement progressed to be one big crusade against insomnia and decency, with sagging offense and sickening stars. The Finals featured both. Last night’s final score was 78-77, a good 3rd quarter score if you ask me, and no sooner had the Spurs won than NBC found it necessary to interview Latrell Sprewell, who has been awarded redemption by many despite his repeated lawsuits and commercials that erode any pretense of remorse. So here’s congrats to the Spurs, the welcome throwbacks who go against the post-MJ flow, and to Tim Duncan, who proves you don’t need to be controversial to be a dominating star. The San Antonio Spurs deserve to bear the name champion. 

The way it should be at the Open (6/20/99)
The U.S. Open has been one of the few major sports events in recent years to be consistently exciting (when I say Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Wimbledon, you get what I mean). But even by Open standards this year’s version was as good as it gets. What’s more, the Open actually went the way it was supposed to. Don’t read that sentence too quickly. Recent champions have included Lee Janzen, Steve Jones, and Corey Pavin - worthy victors all but not the best of the best. The arduous Open brings about results as random as the Kentucky Derby, where too many competitors doing too tough a task try to decide the best but too often decide the luckiest. Not so this year: Tiger, Duval, Mickelson, Singh - all top five. And Payne Stewart, a man who, after losing by one stroke last year, made some sense as a pre-Open pick, ended up on top. Turns out it wasn’t the U.S. Entropy after all. It was a delicious and glittering landmark for this so far sorry year in sports. 

Hallucinating at the wheel (again)(6/19/99)
I thought Juan Antonio Samaranch had run out of different types of hallucinogens to sample, but I should know the delusional despot better than that by now. Did you hear what he said yesterday, that the IOC debacle is a US problem, born in Salt Lake City? The ashes of Nagano corruption records, the haze clouding Sydney's bid, the fact that Salt Lake lost before resorting to bribery and won when it did, and the patterns of dozens of IOC manic materialists that pass for governors of sport all render Samaranch a blabbering fool. The man is a disease to organized sport. Asking him to diagnose the IOC scandal is like asking Jimmy Hoffa to clean up the mob. 

This Rudy not worth rooting for (6/15/99)
As much as I would not be interested in Hilary Clinton becoming the next senator from New York were I voting there, the last thing I would want to see is the puerile, pretentious, worthless Rudy Guliani in an office as important as city councilman. Did you hear Guliani's delusional comments about a recent police brutality case? Sneering at reporters, he said, "Sure erases the myth about the Blue Wall of Silence, doesn't it?" Exactly which hallucinogen was this guy on at the time? The officers that testified against their bestial colleague who shoved a broom stick up his victim's rectum did so shamefully belatedly and reluctantly. Only fear of their own hides that finally exceeded their fierce loyalty finally prodded them up to the stand. Sorry, Rudy, but The Wall is erect and sturdy. For a public official of Guliani's magnitude to deceive his constituents is irresponsible and trust-eroding. But it is nothing new to those who know the narcissistic politician who is a sickness in the system. If I were Hilary Clinton, I'd be thanking fate for smiling on me for once and pairing me with a shmuck even more self-defeating than my husband. 

All not well with Latrell (6/14/99)
Now that Latrell Sprewell's purported "redemption" (as Time put it, see 6/1) is complete -- what, you mean you don't see how playoff victories compensate for attempted decapitation? -- everyone is tripping over themselves to say how it's time to forgive and forget. Sean Salisbury had us believing he wanted to do a freaking telethon with Latrell, saying on ESPN Radio this weekend, "You can't hold grudges forever; you're only hurting yourself." Cue "Full House" soundtrack. How disgusting. Look, if the guy truly "snapped" in an isolated incident, I'd understand the sentiment behind the new geyser of altruism. (I'd disagree, but I'd still understand.) The fact is, this guy choked his coach, then, after a 20 minute cooling down period, tried to attack him again, then apologized to everyone but his victim, then sued his team for suspending him, then sued the league for suspending him, the appealed when the judge tossed it out, then whined about playing time on the team that gave him a second chance. This is not a time for us to cluck our tongues and then let bygones be bygones. This is a sustained pattern of recklessness and irresponsibility in which confidence in Sprewell should dwindle, not swell. Sorry, but Sprewell is still a menace to the league, and, contrary to his sickening ads, he truly is a nightmare. 

Disney at church (6/13/99)
By now we're well removed from the days of Puritanical church that somehow seeped into this century before being pulverized by the sixties. Yesterday in the local paper religion editor Charles Honey reflected on the perils of growing up in a church that was stupefyingly stuffy and boring. He and a pastor he interviewed, accompanied by a few hearty chuckles, shook their heads as they peered back into their past and recalled how they dreaded the dullness of church and the obsessive strictness of their parents and church leaders. They had to sit as though competing in an idleness contest with boulders and not interrupt the sanctimonious silence. After a few groans of reminiscence Honey -- a fine writer and Christian -- concluded that the stupor was beneficial; it instilled a sense of awe for the house of God. This surely holds water when propped up next to the Disney-ization of church today, where Willow Creek's user-friendly, Ed Sullivan brand of church dilludes any sense that church is a unique place to worship and congregate, not just be entertained in yet another way. But I do not share Honey's blithe shrugging off of a style of church that stunted rather than fostered growth. Church is not primarily to entertain, but it is not to instill dread, either. This is why I feel at home in the Reformed faith, which achieves the best balance between the medieval, ritualized self-righteousness of old-style worship and the Broadway-ized contemporary movement. Church is to be dynamic, but not cheapened; malleable, but not unrecognizable. This balance went -- tragically, I think -- unseen for centuries, but now is too often equally disregarded. 

No account for taste (6/10/99)
Ironically, it was David Stern himself who, when asked to explain why pro wrestling gets better TV ratings than the NBA, wisely said, "There is no account for taste." The same seems to hold true for the gap between hockey's television numbers and the relative copious ratings for pro hoops -- despite Michael Jordan's retirement, a condescendingly insulting lockout, and the overall decadence of a sport that used to be played in a halfway interesting way. As basketball's Eastern conference finals alternate nights with the the Stanley Cup Finals this week and soundly outdraw hockey in viewers, maybe it is indeed due to lack of taste, or due to the feebleness of the laughable Nielsen ratings system, which is about as scientific as alchemy, but you can't tell me that the NBA, especially the particularly somnolent brand of ball the Pacers and Knicks play, is better television than hockey. Hockey is faster and more constant, minus standstill offense and action-ossifying foul shots. Hockey has fierce checking, graceful passing, and fluid action. Sure, it's lower scoring, but are 20 points from Latrell Sprewell thanks to isolation sets really more exciting than any number of near misses the spectacular Dominik Hasek records? That's why, like much of the nation, I'll be tuning in every other night this week for great sports entertainment, only I'll be watching the Stanley Cup Finals. 

Taming Tigermania (6/7/99)
Remember Tiger Woods? The golf-transcending superstar who spends his days trying to live up to his already unreachable legend and rediscover the magic that swept him to a '97 Augusta masterpiece? Tiger's win at the Memorial, a quasi-major, yesterday fanned the flickering flame of Tigermania that had subsided after his stampede slowed to a walk soon after April 97. Now, after the Memorial, guess who is the sudden favorite to win the U.S. Open in North Carolina a week from Sunday? There's two problems with this: First, Tiger was shaky at key points yesterday, relying on the spectacular to survive and lucky that runner-up Vijay Singh was having just as many woes. And since when do favorites win the U.S. Open, anyway? Was Lee Janzen the favorite last year? Was Steve Jones the year before? Or Corey Pavin before, and so on? The Open is a grueling survival test in which someone somehow is left standing, bruises and all. This is not the time for more hollow Tiger hype to go recklessly barreling away again.

Ringing in the old (6/6/99)
And your French Open champion is: Rip Van Winkle. Recent history was re-awakened this past weekend as the trophies were handed out. First Steffi Graf, in the twilight of an illustrious career, completed a comeback from injury to claim her sixth title. Then Andre Agassi re-emerged from mediocrity to complete a career Grand Slam. The contrast between the encore of early-nineties champions and the empty flash of late-decade stars was most evident in the women's final. Martina Hingis, the whitecap of the new wave of women's stars, whined and self-destructed, coming within one warning of ejection after throwing her racket and crossing the net to argue a call. She managed to hand Graf the title anyway, imploding after winning the first set. It was enough to make us appreciate the class and dignity of a champion like Graf, who announced her retirement from clay competition with her sixth title, and remind us that while the future may be bright for women's tennis, it is considerably dimmed by impudent displays like those of Martina Hingis. 

Less becomes more (6/2/99)
It was the Vietnamese town of Ben Tre of which an American general famously said, "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." We see a similar phenomenon with the New York Knicks this year. They spent the season rending themselves assunder by means of controversy and mediocrity. Now they've collected themselves and stormed to where no eight seed has gone before -- to the NBA conference finals, where they're giving the Pacers all they can handle. How fitting that an NBA season that was just one long sickness culminates with Latrell Sprewell at the helm of a Knicks playoff run. In the end one wonders just how great being "saved" is after being "destroyed." 

Letter to Time Magazine: Halo doesn't quite fit (6/1/99)
Your cherubic portrait of Latrell Sprewell in "Notebook" is disgusting. What a noble message you send by calling an unlikely run in the playoffs "redemption" for monstrously attacking his coach -- twice -- and then suing the league for kicking him out. Are we next to believe that veritable redemption for Slobodan Milosevic could be scored by tidy treaty with NATO? 

"Not" is the operative syllable (5/29/99)
Why all the hype about "Notting Hill"? Reviewers have been tripping over themselves to gush about the movie's "charm" and how "delightful" a romantic comedy it is. I sat through all two hours of it and all I saw was a glacially-paced, disjointed, and implausible first draft of a script in which several themes auditioned but none seemed to make the cut. We're in trouble if this is the summer's best alternative to the hype-drenched "Star Wars"! 

About Two Cents
Here is how I introduced Two Cents, the forerunner of  "Notebook":
An age of instant communication forgives the participant less than the archaic time and space of quill and scroll allowed the ancient author to indulge himself. Today you have to be quick and you have to be right, all while maintaining an audience's transient interest and leaving an imprint that endures the stampede of The Communication Age. I describe this further in Timeline Today's Insights page and Olbermann page, but in keeping with the theme, no further ado.