BillSaysThis

After today’s predictable 2-0 drilling of Moscow Spartak by FC Basel, the Reds cannot settle for a draw next Tuesday. If LFC do not win outright, they will be left in third in Group B and the Swiss side will advance instead. Suckage! The Anfielders are playing extremely strongly now, at least in English competition, but other than the Russian patsies have not done very good work in Europe, just one home draw in the first match against FC Basel and two losses to group leader Valencia.

Speaking of English competition, tomorrow is the first Worthington Cup match of the season. They’ll host Southampton, whom they beat 3-0 in the second game of the Premiership run on two goals from El Hadji Diouf. M. Houllier has said that both Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher will be rested but Markus Babbel will return for the first time since being diagnosed with Guillan-Barre syndrome at the start of this season, Chris Kirkland will get a chance to play goal for the the first team, and Diouf is seeking a return to play after finding his place mostly on the bench since Southampton’s visit. Saturday sees the Reds on the road for a tough matchup with Middlesboro; Owen and Carragher are set to return for that one.

Rob Schneider. Colleen Haskell (right, the Survivor chick). A goofy doctor who rescues Schneider after a horrendous car crash and rebuilds him using animal parts. John C. McGinley as a overamped, jealous cop. A director no one ever heard of. A writer who specializes in writing Schneider movies and TV shows.

The Animal. ‘Nuff said.

Okay, this is one strange thing for IBM to be auctioning off. Also, this was kind of an odd item. What does Mr. Rogers have to do with IBM or computers that would make this worth more than, say $25 over the asking price (about $1725 according to CNet) for this laptop?

Saw this on MetaFilter, so I assume many people saw it. I found the bid history for this ThinkPad T30 to be interesting, however, and quite confusing. For example, right in the middle jabbie118 and then ekjeffrey each made consecutive bids within seconds of their initial bid, raising the price substantially. Also, the last few bidders never got involved until the very end but although the price did not move much beyond their initial bids, not one came back for a second chance.

Liverpool won 2-0 to maintain their margin at the top of the English League, with Michael Owen scoring both goals. Heskey was back on the front line with Owen, no Baros or Diouf, Diao was the playmaker in midfield, and Gerrard got a valuable rest playing only the final 20 minutes after taking Valdimir Smicer’s place.

Notre Dame lost to unranked Boston College, woohoo! The absolute archrivals to my alma mater breakdown against a bunch of nobodies.

Florida saves their season by beating undefeated, fifth ranked Georgia in The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party 20-13. Neither team had a kicking game, punts or field goals, nor a third down offense worth mentioning.

Pitt beats undefeated, third ranked Virginia Tech 28-21 on the back of some great receiving from freshman Larry Fitzgerald.

North Carolina State, 9-0 and ranked number 10, lost to the Rambling Wreck of Georgia Tech.

All these undefeated teams losing surely helps the BCS (and therefore major bowl) chances of the Trojans! Coming into the weekend, USC was 11 in the BCS standings. NC State was 9 and we should move ahead of them. How far will Va Tech fall from #6 for losing to an unranked team? Going forward, keys will be how Washington State (BCS rank: 8 and a win in hand over us) plays out and our season-ending matchups against UCLA and Notre Dame.

And the best of the “bad” news: New York City gets U.S. nod for 2012 Summer Games. Since I was completely against San Francisco getting the bid, this is terrific.

Bonus non-sports link: The trailer for the next Pixar/Disney animation is now online and looks tempting for this coming Memorial Day weekend.

During the daily MetaFilter cruise, I ran into a discussion of the strange case of Scott Phelps. Mr. Phelps is a science teacher at Muir High School in Pasadena who was suspended about a week ago after he wrote a long email to the school’s other teachers claiming that most of the behavioral problems at the school are causded by the African-American students. Ding ding ding!

Of course his email got out to parents and the media and this apparently hardworking (“the hours of volunteer work we did on saturday mornings last year on test prep), conscientious (“As I said in the Pasadena Weekly”) white teacher was suspended. Now he’s being reinstated though there is no reason given for it. I, of course, think the suspension was ridiculous but the school district brass, who are excoriated in the memo, were probably responding to comments like those made by civil rights attorney Bert Voorhees: “There are few things short of molesting a child that should be taken as seriously as making racist comments in a school setting.” Excuse me, Mr. Vorhees (you moron), but how does molesting a child come close to writing a memo asking to make a change for the better for the very group of people you claim are being insulted?

But was Phelps’ memo racist, or just reflecting the facts? After all, the school is 48% African-American and the memo does state that there are well-behaved African-American students as well. Seems to me that Phelps’ intention was to open a dialog that can find ways to help these underperforming students, a dialog that his district superiors did not want to have. If a problem really is concentrated in a specific group, and the common factor is their race–but not gender, since the memo points to both boys and girls–how else do you begin change if you cannot identify the group because of political correctness?

Two months ago, Warren Zevon announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. “I’m okay with it, but it’ll be a drag if I don’t make it till the next James Bond movie comes out,” said Zevon at the time. Last night he appeared, probably for the final time, as the sole guest on Late Night with David Letterman. Those two have been close friends for years and Zevon has been the main substitute as bandleader when Paul Shaeffer was away.

I just finished watching and this was simple, terrific television. Letterman did his usual opening material, including an amusing Top 10 on “When You’re Too Old to Trick or Treat,” but the bulk of the show was devoted to conversation with Zevon and his performance of three songs. I don’t watch the Late Show much any more, I can only take so much of the host, but I did watch his first post-9/11 show last year and this one and Letterman, to me, is at his best when he’s truly emotionally involved with his guest. He barely restrained the tears last night and last year, sitting there with Dan Rather, he didn’t even try.

To look at him, you wouldn’t think that Warren Zevon will probably die before the year is out. There are no obvious physical cues and his mind and music were as sharp as ever. He still has the long, messy blonde hair and thick beard. And his conversation was witty, not a sign of self-pity, so much so that I was waiting for Letterman to let the tears out just as relief. The last part of the show was performance: “Mutineer”, Genius (the title track of his most recent greatest hits package), and, my favorite, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

The last song originally came out in 1978 on his third album, Excitable Boy. What an amazing album this was, so literate and emotional, so full of rock and roll. Out of nine songs, I can still sing five of them 24 years later. Besides Roland and the title track, there was Johnny Strikes Up the Band, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and, Zevon’s biggest hit, Werewolves of London. To me this was the sonic equivalent of a great caper novel, as if Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen had taken up rock and roll piano. Who else was writing rockers about European mercenaries fighting in the Congo?

So now Warren Zevon is dying. Not from drugs and alcohol, of which he admits to more than his share (though these probably contributed), or in a plane crash, but with time to say goodbye. As he said on Letterman, he really understands now just how important it is to appreciate and enjoy every sandwich. Zevon is taking as much time as he can to write and record new material and the sessions are being recorded by VH1 for a special. To no one’s surprise, he’s living his life until the last minute. The LA Times has a very good article that was done last month, at the time Zevon’s illness was announced.

Ironically, his last two releases were titled “Life’ll Kill Ya” and “My Ride’s Here.” WZ, you will be missed but your music will live on.

At the very genteel Chez TJ, the Sweet One and I had a terrific celebration of our first anniversary together. Expensive but oh so worth it to create a memory we’ll carry with us forever. The restaurant occupies an old house in downtown Mountain View, built in 1894 for a bank vice president, and will celebrate its own 20th anniversary late next month.

The food, prepared by chef de cuisine Kirk Bruderer and staff, was a taste delight. We started off with a little something extra, a salmon mousse served in a minature ice cream cone. Our first course was Roasted Bell Pepper Soup with Polenta Croutons and Basil Oil. The fish course was Pacific King Salmon with Sweet Potato Confit, Braised Red Cabbage and Chestnut Sauce. Next up was the meat dish, Spiced Glazed 1/2 Game Hen with Roasted Pumpkin Risotto adn Grain Mustard Sauce for Vivian and Slow Braised Lamb Shank with Bacon Chive Grit Cake and Pomegranate Sauce por moi. Simple and light were called for next and so we shared Petite Lettuce with Banyuls Vinaigrette and a selection of imported cheeses served with thin tart apple slices.

Last served, and surely the last we could have eaten, was dessert from pastry chef/wizard Pauline Lam. Vivian ordered the Chocolate Covered Banana: Caramelized Bananas surrounded by Decadent Dark Chocolate topped with Fresh Banana Ice Cream while I went for the Vahlrona Chocolate Bisque with Carmelized Brioche Croutons. Chocolate soup, in other words, an awesome treat after two months of no sugar at all on the Atkins plan!

Somehow (I don’t remember mentioning anything), the staff knew we were celebrating and so along with the two desserts they also brought out an extra plate with four extra small cookie treats, a sliced strawberry, a lit candle, and the words “Happy Anniversary” written in chocolate sauce. This kind of extra touch, combined with unintrusive but there when needed service, surely justify the hefty prix-fixe charge. We left on a cloud!

And although we had agreed not to exchange presents, she couldn’t resist getting me a little one, Elvis Presley’s 30 #1 Hits. This album has a great selection of Elvis hits and includes the super catchy Elvis vs. JXL remix of A Little Less Conversation. This new version of an old movie tune came to all our attention back in June when Nike used it to power their Secret Tournament commercials throughout the World Cup.

All my love, Ms. Sweetilicious!

Wired News reports in Cancer’s Enema No. 1? Make That 2 that a respected researcher, who’s investigating a new treatment regime for extremely deadly pancreatic cancer, cannot sign up enough patients for his trial to get a valid result. After three years, only 25 patients (90 reqired) have signed up even though his earlier trial showed that participants’ life expectancy improved from 5 1/2 months to nearly 18.

So why the hesitation on the part of oncologists to refer patients? Because part of the treatment seems outrageous. It doesn’t fit the big medicine paradigm of expensive drugs. So other researchers tarred it with the epithet of alternative. What does Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez propose? Coffee enemas! Twice a day. Okay, also 150 specially formulated nutrional supplements and an organic, vegetarian diet. Not necessarily easy to conform to but those who do seem to find it worth the effort.

Talk about making me happy. Never had anyone like the Sweet One before in my life. The way she treats me, a great listener, always taking care of me, just finding little ways to make me happy. Given the other major ongoing situation in my life just now, being unable to find a job for 15 months, her love is an amazing contrast and allows me to be happy when otherwise I would not be. Especially the hot breakfasts every Saturday and Sunday and the foot massages.

Thanks Vivian, this Bill’s for you!

Woody Allen’s 1999 release, Sweet and Lowdown is the portrait of a man to whom everything comes so easy that he is unable to appreciate any of it until reality turns him smack around. Makes one wonder if, or how closely, Allen identifies with this character.

Sean Penn, who takes roles I can’t appreciate all too often, plays this man, adrift in the 1930s, a virtuoso guitarist who keeps reminding people he is probably the second greatest player in the world, only that gypsy Django Reinhardt ahead of him. Instead of putting his head down and seeing where his talent might take him, Penn’s Emmet Ray fritters away his time on schemes, alcohol, and emotions he is unwilling to understand or develop. Samantha Morton is also superb, playing his mute lover, going the whole movie without a word of dialog other than what she can convey with body language.

No doubt that the movie has a great soundtrack. Dick Hyman assembled an all-star line-up to make fresh takes on the sound of the small group swing era featuring guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli as the lead instrumentalist. Much of the music comes naturally in the structure of the film as being played by Ray’s combo, rather than just being background to other scenes.

Allen is, to my mind, one of the top five American moviemakers in my lifetime. In Sweet and Lowdown, he gets away from his obsession with young women to return to a time he adores and writes a complex, meaningful character. In many interviews he has expressed a certain level of dissatisfaction with his work; even this month when he was honored with a major European lifetime achievement award he called himself a mediocre artist. So there is some truth to my thought that Emmet Ray is a commentary targeted at himself, though I believe in the last 10 or so years Allen has learned to be satisfied with who he is and what he’s done (so perhaps all his years of therapy did pay off).

I was a little disappointed in the ending, it was not as conclusive as I would prefer. But Allen’s own life, his career, has not yet ended so perhaps he isn’t ready to write that scene.

Recommended

More about my life, as if you need the extra thrills:

When he was young, a pretty typical teenager in New Jersey in the late ’70s, he did take up the vile and noxious habit. He followed both his parents, his younger sister, and several close friends into the addiction. This was at age 17, about 14 years after the Surgeon General came out with his landmark report explicitly stating that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. But Bill had been around the smoke all his life and never really thought of it as so bad.

His first experiment in smoking was at age 13. A few months past a terrific Bar Mitzvah (and into his manhood), one sunny afternoon he was standing in the kitchen with Mom. Who was smoking at the table. Bill looked at the window and then asked her for one to try. She laughed, but he was insistent and she gave one over, even lit it. After two puffs, standing over the sink turned out to be a good location because he began coughing and choking and dropped the burning stick. Mom had a really good laugh then and figured that was one lesson learned. If only.

One Saturday night four years later, while staying the weekend at a friend’s house out on Long Island, he was left alone in the car for a few minutes. Just Bill and a red and white pack of Marlboros. When the friends came back to the car, he was sitting there trying to choke down a few puffs. No way were a few coughs going to deter him from entering that cool world. So he kept at it. The next day he bought his first pack.

At home, standard practice was for dinner to be eaten but before clearing the dishes both adults would have a cigarette while we finished the conversations. Being 17, Bill though of himself as pretty manly so when his folks took out their’s, he reached into his pants pockets and did the same. Even asked his Dad for a light. Of course there was quite a reaction but what could they do? The next night his younger sister, who’d been smoking for about two years already, lit up as well. Amusingly, Sis thought the folks didn’t know about her surrepticiously smoking but of course they did.

Anyway, Bill smoked for several years before kicking the habit. Kicking it for awhile, at least, but in the 24 and a half years since that probably means about half on and half off. He is glad to report that he took his last pull over 16 months ago, on June 12, 2001, and is fairly confident that this time it’s for good.

Most people now regret giving in to the glamour and rebellion. The huge quantities of advertising, the celebrity endorsements, the movies with James Dean looking so cool with a pack rolled up in his sleeve, all made it so hard to resist. Bill’s father, who started smoking at age 12, in 1940 and quit about ten years ago, even now says “Actually, I wish I’d never started. But who knew? It was glamorized so in those days.”

This nostalgia all was inspired by the latest medical news: Nicotine ‘Cooks’ Proteins in the Body. So swell, as if potentially giving ourselves lung cancer wasn’t enough… Another reason to be glad we’ve quit! You have, right? Karl, this question is pointed at you.

As Karl says, I used be from there. My parents still live there, outside Princeton. I gave trying to explain why there is no such thing as an honest politician in the state long ago, though I don’t know how different any other state is in this regard; probably fairly similar. Still today’s headlines hit home: the County Executive of Essex County, where I grew up, was indicted today on some serious corruption charges. Of course, Treffinger came to office in 1995 as a corruption-busting Republican, after his Democrat predecessor, Thomas D’Alessio, was convicted on federal corruption charges.

According to the New York Times, “In the last two years, the United States attorney’s office in Newark has obtained convictions of more than 20 public officials. Most of the investigations began independently but have come to intertwine, officials say.” Just shocking, eh?

The Sweet One and I have a Sunday ritual. After a tasty breakfast lovingly she prepares, today low carb pancakes amd coffee from Hawaii, we head over to the award-winning Mountain View Farmer’s Market. Not only do we get a variety of lettuces for our lunches, we also usually buy hardy green veggies like bok choy, kale, and broccoli. And since tomorrow is a pot luck lunch at the office, she put together some fresh-picked ingredients for a salad. Here she is getting the cherry tomatoes

One of my favorite vendors at the market is the mushroom man. Unlike some of the stands I never noticed a name sign for this one, so I have my own pet name. Here he’s seen waiting for a woman to hand over the money, presiding over luscious piles of fungus, of which I’ve bought a bagful already. There’s always some live, generally acoustic, music at the market, this morning provided by a very eccentric looking woman, or, on second thought, a woman dressed as a green witch for Halloween.

There would have been more photos but someone’s digital camera ran out of battery power.

Do you take advantage of your local farmer’s market?

Some photos from the week in Asbury Park, back in July when he was on Today, courtesy of Belmar Beach Cam:

 

Phew! Too much time has passed since we saw a movie in the theater (The Tuxedo four weeks ago) rather than on the home screen. Just hasn’t been anything compeling enough to get us to come across with $6 or more. The price is too high for my pocketbook unless I really think it’s going to be good. Except for CinemaSave over in Milpitas, of course.

We both wanted to see The Transporter since seeing the trailer. This looked like a good European take on the Hollywood martial arts action flick. Luc Besson, who co-wrote and produced, is the man behind La Femme Nikita and The Professional, two terrific films. Cory Yuen is one of the top Hong Kong directors and this is his English language debut. Jason Statham, the star, looked very impressive in the trailer. And Ric Young is always good as a sleazy bad guy.

For the most part, the movie delivered. Faltered a bit with the plot resolution but that’s probably the most difficult element to pull off, and plot isn’t the reason for seeing an action film, is it? My big question was why the bad guys had two 18 wheelers when one would have been better for the plot. Statham, though, is a more refined version of Vin Diesel, the year’s other big new action star. Even though Transporter isn’t doing the box office of xXx, it is a launching pad for the Englishman and you should expect to see him again and again starting next year in caper flick The Italian Job with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and Edward Norton.

Qi Shu is the love interest here and this is her first big Hollywood role but she’s another Asian cinema star attempting to make it in our market. She’s pretty, sexy, of course, but also funny and a good actor; younger than Michelle Yeoh and older than Ziyi Zhang. Her character is the reason Statham’s Frank Marks gets into trouble, Shu has found out that her underworld father is trying to bring 400 Chinese to France as more or less slaves and wants to stop him.

Yuen and Besson open the film by showing the transporter doing his job: he picks up a gang that have robbed a bank and by way of some vicious driving, very well staged, gets them out of Nice. That’s the only major scene to show off driving skills but then we get to see some very creative martial arts fights. Plot is not ignored here, not in a Besson movie. Frank Marks has a life priot to the film, he once was a very good man whose innocence dissolved in bureaucratic politics; the events not only give him love but restore his true nature. This film brings what baseball calls the high, hard one, with energy to spare.

Recommended

Karl asks some questions about Wal-Mart and it’s impact on jobs, especially in his little commonwealth. Specifically Karl was looking at the loss of traditional industry jobs in Pennsylvania and the rise in jobs at the retailing behemoth. I have a few words for him:

Technology has replaced manufacturing jobs, even though the specific positions may not be with companies that sell tech products. Wal-Mart is probably one of the best examples: aside from possibly Amazon, it is the most tech-obsessed company in retailing and most others are doing their best to copy everything Wal-Mart has done. This has been true for at least a decade. Every store’s computer systems were linked via satellite and private network to headquarters long before the rise of the Internet; all the data was processed nightly to maximize inventory turn and better the purchasing department’s understanding of what sells best where–very early adopters of data mining, essentially.

Most successful companies today, regardless of industry, are essentially the same. They’re sophisticated information processing systems focused on one particular market, or set of markets. I realized this while working at a commercial insurance firm in the early ’90s–I doubt this observation is original to me and I make no such claim. These days, for most industries, competitive advantage lies not in designing a better good, since most innovations are easily reproduced. The advantage must be made in the overall system, being faster to develop new products, understanding how to stay closer to customers, hiring the best people. This is a major reason why new innovations in computing can sweep through the economy with such massive impact.

Okay, Kevin Garnett is a good basketball player, a very good one. And he has led the Minnesota Timberwolves to better results each of the past few years. So his current contract, signed four years ago and paying an average of $21 million a year (with two years left), is not necessarily out of line given that he was the only All-Star on the team when negotiated.

Now the two sides are talking extension, hoping to get a deal done before the NBA season starts in a week, and this is where I just lose it, and the whole deal loses touch with reality. Garnett is eligible for an extension worth $139 million for four years; given basketball norms, the whole deal is probably guaranteed, bad performance, injury, whatever. That’s $32.25 million per year, friends, and more than Kobe or Shaq ($19,2M/year, going up to $22M in an extension that kicks in next year) or Iverson makes. By a lot.

Of course, being eligible for that amount and getting it are two different things; The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports the T-Wolves’ initially offered a four-year extension worth “only” around $75 million. Also factoring in are the need to resign fellow All Star Wally Szczerbiak and point guard Terrell Brandon’s big money deal. Since the team and Garnett’s agent are still negoatiating, one has to believe the final number will come in well over $75M.

i used to believe “is a collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children.” Visitors are encouraged to add personal memories to the collection. A cute idea. [via garret]

My contribution:

When I was about five, and already a bit of a science fiction fan, my uncle told me that Jews were really Martians and that our family’s space ship was in a cave underneath his garage. His house was on a hill, so the explanation seemed perfectly reasonable.

He promised that once I passed my Bar Mitzvah, he could show me the ship and teach me to fly it. Sadly, he passed away when I was about seven and so I never got to see his spaceship.

Now, our family is Jewish, so my uncle was putting me on in a good natured way, he was a total kidder, and this is in no way meant to be anti-Semitic.

As mentioned here last Saturday, I wrote a very cranky Letter to the Editor regarding a silly article the newspaper put on their front page that day. But give them credit, they printed my letter today, directly above a similarly criticial letter from Gov. Davis’s press secretary Steven Maviglio.

Or, as one friend put it, the editors are seriously cynical and realize that printing such letters keeps people reading. And buying the newspaper. So they purposely write articles that will attract emotional responses because the sell more product. I believe this is what they mean by sensationalism and tabloid journalism. The Merc isn’t that low. Yet.