One Thousand Words, Part 2

Boy was I a moody kid! There I am in the back. My mom wanted to take a picture of me and my friend in front of our house. I wanted no part of the picture. The friend’s name was Perry. At the time, he was my best friend. But that year a house was being built across the street on the only piece of vacant land on the block and the youngest kid in that house would quickly supplant Perry as friend number one. I never knew how Perry felt about that.

Perry was a transitional best friend. My first best friend, Johnny, moved when I was five. We had been inseparable from the time I was two and his mom – a devout German Catholic – had been amused that Johnny picked up Yiddish from spending so much time at our house. He had staged a mini-war in his own house by insisting that everyone call underwear gatchkehs. Johnny’s father had committed suicide when we were three or so. Johnny’s mom – who was tall and striking - ended up marrying a Michigan man. When they moved I cried and was inconsolable for a good month.

Perry lived next door. My father built both houses. Actually, he built four in a row on this block in the late 1950s. These were “custom built.” What that meant was that you got the same brick, three bedroom one and a half bath box, but you picked things like the color of the cabinets, appliances, counter-tops, bathroom tiles and wall paint. I’m sure the houses all still stand. The neighborhood started to go downhill in the 1980s.

Perry’s house was a mirror image of ours and our bedrooms were across from each other, separated by about 10 feet of grass. We ran strings and tin cans across the space to talk at night. It worked but was fuzzy. I think that experiment lasted for about two weeks.

Perry’s father was huge. His wife would always try to keep his weight down. But I’d watch Perry’s dad from my window at night – I was an insomniac as a kid – make these enormous sandwiches in his kitchen at about one AM. I never told anyone about it but it was obvious that those sandwiches were his little secret.

Perry was always a sweet guy. He didn’t have an ounce of meanness in him. No angst either, unlike me. The lack of meanness and his lack of coordination meant that he was an awful athlete. In my neighborhood, being non-athletic was a death sentence in terms of popularity. Still, he was one of us. And he was so nice that we accepted him.

He’d play every sport badly. It was sad, really. He’d rarely play football because his mom was afraid he’d get hurt. That really put a crimp in his playing with us. The Packers were our idols and football was king in our neighborhood. We’d play that just about every day – either on the street or in a park a block away – from September to May. There were no play dates. There was no camp. The kids ran out of the house in the summer at about eight, came in for a bite to eat at twelve, ran out again until dinner, and then went back out until dusk.

The kids on the block were mostly male and they grouped by age into the “bigs” and “littles,” the groups being about four years apart in age. We’d play together despite the age difference because we needed each other to make full teams. Perry and I were part of the “littles.” I think the idea of Perry playing tackle football with the “bigs” scared the hell out his mother.

One day in the fall of 1962 we decided we’d make Perry a hero on the football field. I don’t remember who thought of this idea. I think it was one of the “bigs,” but I was enthusiastic about it. The idea was to put Perry in the backfield. We never did that. Ever. But this day we were going to let Perry have his time in the sun.

I went to Perry and asked him to play. He was just so-so on the idea. I pleaded with him. He finally agreed, but then his mom said no. I begged his mom and promised her Perry wouldn’t get hurt. It seemed like hours of negotiations to me at the time. It probably actually took fifteen minutes.

We picked teams one by one like we usually did. Perry was picked first by one of the captains. He was so surprised. Then we played the game and the quarterback kept giving Perry the ball. I was on the other side. Tackling was my forte. I was mean and fierce and despite my small size was almost always the first “little” picked. But that day, I gleefully missed tackle after tackle when Perry ran with the ball. So did everyone else on my team. The fix was on. It was Perry’s day. He scored five touchdowns.

I remember Perry walking home so happy. I never told him just why he’d done so well. Two weeks later though, someone spoiled his little dream day. I was so angry about that. I went to Perry right away and said the guy who told him that the game was fixed was just a jealous liar. I think he believed me. But he never did play football much after.

In addition to playing, my role in sports was as the de facto referee. It started when I was six years old playing in a football game. One of the bigs placed the ball about two feet further than it should have been place after he was tackled. “That’s not right!” I shouted out. “We need to put it back!” Everyone was surprised by my vehemence. The guy was on my team. I was disadvantaging myself by wanting to set the ball back. One of the bigs said, “So where should it go, Mr. Exact?” I set the ball back two feet. After that, I was always referred to as “Mr. Exact.” It was a half funny, half serious declaration. Whenever there was a dispute on the field, even though I was one of the littles, I was the final arbiter. People would bicker and then finally the words, "what does Mr. Exact say" would come out.

The bigs and littles dynamic was kind of twisted at times. The bigs would occasionally put together wrestling matches with the littles being the wrestlers. It was kind of like having dog or cock fights, except the participants were little kids not animals.

The bigs would get all excited watching us fight. The idea was that we would really go at each other brutally, but even at the age of six I knew this was kind of sick stuff. They would force me to participate, but I always only pretended to fight. I wasn’t going to let the bigs get their jollies watching me draw blood from a friend. I remember hearing the bigs shouting out their disappointment that I didn’t have any fight in me. I had to hold back grins of satisfaction.

The neighborhood broke down into Jewish kids eventually headed for college and Christian kids eventually headed for reform school. That’s not an exaggeration. We had a lot of j.d.’s on our block. These perfectly decent kids would magically sour when they hit puberty and within a year or two they’d be at the state reform school (I’ve forgotten the name of the school.).

When I was five, I was walking home in broad daylight through the back alley and one of the j.d.s decided to use me for target practice. He was blasting bullets from his dad’s shotgun from a window out of the basement of his house. I literally felt a bullet whiz by my shoulder and then dove to hide behind some garbage cans until he was done shooting. He shouted if I ever told anyone, he’d kill me. I believed him. No wonder I was so moody!

There was an exception to the Christians go to reform school rule, though. My dad had a fishing buddy on the block – the guy taught my dad how to fish; my dad taught him how to invest in real estate - and both of his sons turned out fine. One of them had amazing skills as a sculptor and carver. Nowadays he’s in charge of exhibit design at LA's natural history museum.

A few years ago, I was waiting in the grocery checkout and that week’s issue of the Enquirer uncharacteristically had the winning jack-o-lantern from a national contest on the cover. I picked it up and looked at who made the jack-o-lantern. It was my old neighbor, one of the bigs. I wasn’t at all surprised. He had won national carving contests when he was a kid, too. Once when he was a kid he entered a national soap-carving contest. Somehow the carving – of a goat – got damaged in the mail. One of the legs broke off. He was awarded second place anyway. The carving came back with a note that said despite the damage, the craftsmanship was clearly superb.

Perry’s father died in his fifties of a heart attack. There was a lot of that going around when I was a kid. Perry was the kid brother to two much older sisters. Last I heard – this was twenty years ago – he was involved in some kind of business in San Diego.

That's way more than 1000 words, I know.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, July 30th, 2009

Here's the AAA/Jazz list for this week. I think you have to like rock to like Wilco. That's not my thing. Elizabeth and the Catapult's album isn't particularly interesting; but they're just starting out and there are some hints of promise. And look, mysteries of mysteries Horowitz is on this list. I have no idea how that happened. Lizt isn't my thing either, but again that's personal taste.

1 Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch 2009
2 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
3 Jackie Ryan Doozy Open Arms 2009
4 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
5 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
6 Jon Mayer Nightscape Reservoir 2009
7 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
8 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
9 Gerald Clayton Two-Shade ArtistShare 2009
10 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
11 Moby Wait For Me Mute 2009
12 Levon Helm Electric Dirt Vanguard 2009
13 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
14 Bobby Broom Bobby Broom Plays For Monk Origin 2009
15 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
16 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
17 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
18 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
19 Vladimir Horowitz Vladimir Horowitz At Carnegie Hall-The Private Collection: Mussorgsky & Liszt Sony Classics 2009
20 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
21 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
22 Cory Weeds Everything's Coming Up Weeds Cellar Live 2009
23 Akiko Tsuruga Oriental Express 18th & Vine 2009
24 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
25 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
26 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue 2009
27 Elizabeth & The Catapult Taller Children Verve 2009
28 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Self-Released 2005
29 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
30 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
31 Passion Pit Manners Frenchkiss 2009
32 Sean Lyons Roar Of Lyons Posi-Tone 2009
33 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
34 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
35 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Glassnote 2009
36 David Gray Draw The Line Mercer Street / Downtown 2009
37 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
38 Lynne Arriale Nuance: The Bennett Studio Sessions Motema 2009
39 The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out Columbia 1959
40 The Avett Brothers I And Love And You American 2009

A President's Friends

Presidents, just like anyone else, can't pick their relatives. Every once in a while, a president's brother or kid will get in some kind of trouble, and the assumption seems to be that the president is guilty by association. The failings of these people somehow must relate to faults in the bloodline or the parenting skills of the president.

It's an odd sort of thing. In the 1970's, President Carter got all kinds of grief for the antics of his redneck brother, Billy. I didn't get it. Every family has its embarrassments. Billy Carter was a grown man. Jimmy Carter had nothing to do with his brother's failures and eccentricities. Similarly, George W. Bush suffered a bit in the press when his daughters were caught with fake i.d.'s. My oh my, a teen drinking underage. Heavens! If we were to eliminate all presidential candidates whose children have used fake i.d.'s we'd hardly have anyone running for president.

But a president does choose his friends. I was reminded of this the other day when Obama put his foot in his mouth about the Cambridge arrest kerfuffle. Skip Gates is a friend of mine, he said. I groaned. Couldn't you make a better choice in a friend than an egomaniacal, arrogant Harvard prof? Obama's off the cuff speech on the arrest went downhill from there in a hurry.

I'm sure Obama has some wonderful people who are his friends. But he has at least two loose canons on his list, Gates and a friend he had to drop in a hurry to save his candidacy, Jeremiah Wright. I hope he doesn't have many more.

One way to avoid toxic friend syndrome is to use the strategy of Bill Clinton. Dilute the concept of friendship entirely. To be an FOB, a "friend of Bill," was so common that it was meaningless. I'm probably an FOB and I don't even know it.

Another strategy is to immediately claim no friendship existed upon hearing the slightest bit of bad press about the friend in question. George W. Bush did that with Ken Lay when the Enron scandal broke. In my world, that's called being disloyal. Then again, I'm not a politician.

I think the best strategy, though, is to cultivate friends that are just so smart and nerdy that the press doesn't know what to do with them. Such was the case with Nixon's close buddy Robert Abplanalp, the inventor of aerosol spray. No one could pronounce his name. He was clearly smarter than any of the reporters covering him. He was a dull guy who made for a lousy story. So instead, the press focused on a more colorful Nixon friend with a more colorful name, Bebe Robozo.

There may be an even better strategy, though. Don't have any friends at all. Somehow though, the plus of avoiding some scandal is outweighed by other factors. Being president I'm sure is a very lonely job. It must be good to have someone to talk to now and then, even if they have funny names like Bebe Robozo.

No It Isn't About Race This Time Either

The news has been awash with the arrest of Skip Gates from Harvard. Gates has claimed the arrest was racially motivated. Our president put his foot in his mouth and talked about this incident, ratcheting up the drama; he has since smartly retracted his statement about the arresting officer behaving "stupidly."

Let's look at what seems to have happened. Someone notices two people trying to break into a house. She doesn't recognize that one of them is her neighbor. She calls the cops. A cop team comes to investigate. The owner of the house, who broke in because he doesn't have his key, flies off the handle. The cop, who gets angry as well (white or black this kind of thing happens), arrests Gates for flying off the handle.

The house owner, Gates, cries racial profiling. No. The only question I have is what kind of person can't recognize the face of a neighbor? Perhaps there is a little bit of "all blacks look alike" going on. Or maybe the woman who reported the break-in is a little daft. Or maybe she needs glasses. Who knows?

Yes, racial profiling goes on. But this doesn't seem to be one of those times.

I met Henry Louis Gates aka Skip Gates a couple of times informally during his last year at Duke. He'd come by occasionally to eat in the underused faculty lunchroom. He's a charming guy, which is atypical in academia. He's also arrogant, which is very typical in academia. At Duke, he was ostracized by his department.

Gates cried race over his ostracization back then, too. No. What happened was that the chair of the English department, Stanley Fish, hired Gates at a very high salary without doing the groundwork of making sure that his faculty was on board. Stanley Fish has a different version of this story of course. You can find it in the New York Times in his blog. But the real story is that Fish tried to shove a hire down the throat of his faculty. In response his faculty revolted. It wasn't about race. It was about bad politics.

At Duke, Gates' colleagues didn't think much of his scholarship. That wasn't about race either. From the get-go, Gates has always aspired to be a major public intellectual. I happen to think that's a worthy goal. But in academia it's considered to be in poor taste and tacky to do the things Gates likes to do. From a scholarship standpoint, Gates basically wrote one very well received book in the 1980s based on his dissertation. His CV is dominated by the kind of writing that is loathed in academic circles. He was ostracized not because he was black. It was all about his intellectual interests.

Gates went onto Harvard, where his goals of being a public intellectual meshed well with the goals of the university.

Gates seems to have a hair trigger sensitivity to racism. I can relate. I have a hair trigger sensitivity to anti-Semitism. But in both cases, it has resulted in some embarrassing situations. In the case of Gates, the embarrassment is now on a national stage.

Yes, there is racism in America. I'm sure that Gates has felt its sting in the past. But with regard to his recent arrest, Gates is crying wolf. He behaved badly in the presence of a cop. The cop behaved badly as well.

Why has this event turned into such a media circus? I'm going to make a guess that it's not because people want to discuss racism. Rather it's that they'll do anything not to discuss something as mind numbing in its detail as proposed health care legislation. It provides a good distraction to real issues. In the battle for press coverage, a good cat fight seems to always win.

There. I've done it. I've participated in the 24 hour news cycle. I feel filthy and cheap. I'll never do it again I swear.

One Thousand Words, Part 1

I have I-don't-know-how-many family photographs in albums. I do know that with regard to the few that I have of my family before I was born, the pictures don't mean a whole lot. There is no context. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then they say, "blah, blah, yaddah, yaddah, um, um, well, well, etc." There are faces I don't know. The images are mostly high entropy. A picture without words is worthless.

Plus, I haven't gone through the trouble of digitizing any of my photos. So I thought it would be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone. Digitize a photo and write about it for 1000 words or so. Here goes.

This is one of my favorite photos from my childhood. It's late August I think, 1964. This would be the next to last year the Braves would be in Milwaukee. Once a year, they would have a photo day. You came about an hour before the game and they let you onto the field. A half dozen Braves players would be there and you'd line up and get your photo taken. Maybe a couple hundred kids were there mostly with their dads. It was a very low-key thing to do back then.

I think I had three pictures taken that year. One with Warren Spahn, one with Denny LeMaster, and this one with Rico Carty. He was very gracious and jovial. Look at those huge hands. Rico had a brother or two in the majors as well, but he was the one who could hit in his sleep, one of the most relaxed players at the plate I'd ever seen. He had one of his best years in 1964, batting .330 with 22 home runs.

My father took this picture with a Kodak Brownie. He never understood the rules of baseball, but he still took me to one or two games a year. He was a high strung and impatient man, but he truly loved his sons. I know these games were torture for him. He'd sit in his seat while I watched intently and mumble under his breath, "mishugeh Amerikanisher shport". I didn't mind. I was always grateful that he took the time to do this even though he didn't want to be there. Today was his birthday according to his citizenship papers. He'd be 90 years old if he were alive.

I'd go to some day games alone, taking the bus to the stadium. Sometimes I'd go with friends, but even back then I liked to spend hours thinking by myself. It might have been that year when I decided that I'd been spending too much time with friends and I pulled a Greta Garbo, declaring I needed to be alone that summer. My mom thought that was crazy. In September I relented because it was football season and that was the game I excelled at. My friends welcomed me back as if nothing happened; they accepted that I was moody by nature.

I'm wearing a zippered wool cardigan sweater, cream white with a turquoise, scarlet and black pattern in the middle. I loved that thing. There was a shopping center - one of the earliest malls in Milwaukee - walking distance from our house, Capitol Court. It may still be there. Adjoining it was an amusement park and a Kohls grocery store (a chain now nationwide which started out as a single grocery store in the old Jewish neighborhood of Milwaukee). In that mall was a local store, The Squire Shop, which was slightly upscale. My dad wasn't doing that well financially, but my mom had this thing about quality.

I remember picking out that sweater at The Squire Shop. It cost a lot of money at the time, seven bucks. My mom, felt the wool between her fingers. "It's good," she pronounced. "But it's expensive. You promise to wear it a lot?" I nodded my head up and down. "You sure?" She was hesitant, but gave in. I did wear that sweater as much as I could until I grew out of it.

Sometime around the time of this photo, the Braves announced they would move to Atlanta in 1966. I remember being profoundly disappointed. When you're a kid, you tend to view everything you see as permanent. The Braves to my mind were a fixture in Milwaukee. Now they were leaving for the lure of Coca Cola advertising dollars. All because of that single event, I developed a distrust of big business that never left me. That's odd, but true.

Milwaukee County Stadium was a hitter's paradise. It was, if I remember correctly, 315 feet down each line. The Braves hit a ton of home runs and their offense propelled them to a respectable, but not spectacular season. There was another team at the time that won with great pitching and just enough offense to get by, the Dodgers. The Dodgers had one of the greatest pitchers ever, Sandy Koufax, and won a couple of World Series. We had one of the greatest hitters ever, Hank Aaron, and never went to the World Series when I was a kid. I noticed even back then that home runs are fun to watch, but great pitching wins ball games.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, July 23rd, 2009

There's a lot of new stuff on the chart this week that I need to peruse.

1 Kyle Eastwood Metropolitan Candid / Rendezvous 2009
2 Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch 2009
3 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
4 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
5 Jackie Ryan Doozy Open Arms 2009
6 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
7 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
8 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
9 Levon Helm Electric Dirt Vanguard 2009
10 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
11 Jon Mayer Nightscape Reservoir 2009
12 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
13 Akiko Tsuruga Oriental Express 18th & Vine 2009
14 Bobby Broom Bobby Broom Plays For Monk Origin 2009
15 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Glassnote 2009
16 Ted Nash The Mancini Project Palmetto 2008
17 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
18 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
19 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
20 Moby Wait For Me Mute 2009
21 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
22 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
23 Maia Sharp Echo Crooked Crown 2009
24 Jerry Begonzi Simply Put Savant 2009
25 Cory Weeds Everything's Coming Up Weeds Cellar Live 2009
26 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
27 Greta Matassa I Wanna Be Loved Resonance 2009
28 CeU Vagarosa Six Degrees 2009
29 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
30 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
31 Gerald Clayton Two-Shade ArtistShare 2009
32 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
33 Passion Pit Manners Frenchkiss 2009
34 Todd Snider The Excitement Plan Yep Roc 2009
35 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
36 Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King RCA 2009
37 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
38 Frank Potenza Old, New, Borrowed, & Blue Capri 2009
39 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
40 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009

Old Age Weekend

This past weekend I had my birthday. My daughter says I’m forbidden to grow older than 38. If she can manage to grow no older than 10, I’ll hold up my end of the bargain. The reality though is that I’m well past 38. That’s fine with me. There’s nothing out of the ordinary to report. Most of my hair is still there on top of my head (with a few ear hairs thrown in). My body does everything I ask it to do, albeit a little more slowly.

I’ve made some concessions to age. I’m done with motorcycle riding; you need real reflexes for that. I now have to use a calculator some of the time; my savant thing of being able to visualize numbers six figures long in my head and crunch them is getting very fuzzy. I did a gig in front of about 300 people the other day with my band and I brought along a music stand so I could look at the charts and lyrics occasionally as we went along. It’s all small stuff.

It was a funny weekend in that the world of sports was also filled with tales of aging. A 59-year-old golfer, Tom Watson, almost managed to defy father time and defeat over 100 whippersnappers in the British Open. Golf is something I can’t watch, though. Actually, I do in the sense that I’ve been turning it on some Sunday afternoons. But I don’t watch. I just wait to hear two words, Tiger Woods. Those two words can magically put me to sleep faster than anything else and I’ve enjoyed my Sunday afternoon naps ever since Tiger Woods rose to prominence on the golf circuit.

I do watch the Tour de France, however. Watch actually isn’t the right word since it’s never been on broadcast American TV. But I started paying attention to that race about 40 years ago when I became an avid bicycler. Back then the news consisted of occasional two sentence reports in the newspaper. Now you can find it on the web and watch a funny animation of the cyclists as status reports are typed on a blog every five minutes or so.

This year, Lance Armstrong at the age of 37 tried to defy father time just like Tom Watson. I thought it was a nice gesture that the Tour de France officials organized the race so that the key leg would be held on my birthday, a route that ended with a long climb up a mountain. Lance Armstrong’s much younger competitor, Contador, was simply too strong during that climb. Once again, youth will be served, at least in sports.

After I watched the drama of the Tour de France unfold, my sweetie and I drove in my motorcycle replacement – a convertible – to have a delightful brunch at the Top of the Mark (see photo above). Then we went to see the A’s play. I planned this as my last A’s game of the year; the team they’ve put together this year is simply too dreadful to watch. We had great seats (see photo below), the weather was fabulous, and the A’s did lose, but didn’t play as badly as they have in most of the other games I’ve seen this year.

During the game, I watched Jason Giambi, a once wonderful if steroid filled first baseman, struggle at the age of thirty-six to hit pitches he once clobbered. The pitcher didn’t even show him any respect, throwing fastball after fastball, knowing Giambi wasn’t going to connect. Giambi’s batting average has stayed below .200 for almost the entire year. He has said that the only way he’ll leave baseball is if someone tears the jersey off his back. Now is the time for the A’s GM to do just that.

No you can’t win in golf, cycling, and baseball once you pass a certain age. That fact doesn’t bother me at all. I could never compete in any sport. As an athlete, I think I peaked when I was thirteen. Yesterday, my sweetie and I hiked along the coastal mountains for five and a half miles at a pace about twenty minutes slower than our pace back in the day. But the fact is that my feet still do what I ask them to do. If I’m lucky, they’ll continue to do so for another twenty years.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, July 16th, 2009

Here's the AAA/Jazz chart for the week. I did see Kurt Elling play some tunes off his current CD with a wonderful trio. We were maybe 10 feet away from Ernie Watts and sat next to his wife while he played. Ernie made his money playing on I don't know how many thousands of pop albums and TV/film scores in LA for a couple of decades. Now he can do what he wants, which is play some fine music.

1 Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch 2009
2 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
3 Roy Rogers Split Decision Blind Pig 2009
4 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
5 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
6 Aaron Parks Invisible Cinema Blue Note 2008
7 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
8 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
9 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
10 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
11 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
12 The Greyboy Allstars What Happened To TV? Knowledge Room / SCI Fidelity 2007
13 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
14 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
15 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
16 Levon Helm Electric Dirt Vanguard 2009
17 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
18 Bobby Broom Bobby Broom Plays For Monk Origin 2009
19 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
20 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
21 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
22 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
23 Greta Matassa I Wanna Be Loved Resonance 2009
24 Fanfarlo Reservoir Self-Released 2009
25 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
26 Cory Weeds Everything's Coming Up Weeds Cellar Live 2009
27 Charlie Hunter Mistico Fantasy 2007
28 Hot Club Of Detroit Night Town Mack Avenue 2008
29 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
30 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
31 Akiko Tsuruga Oriental Express 18th & Vine 2009
32 Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca Domino 2009
33 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
34 Moby Wait For Me Mute 2009
35 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
36 Regina Spektor Far Sire 2009
37 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
38 Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career 4AD 2009
39 Cynthia Scott Dream For One Bright World Ttocs 2009
40 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
40 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
40 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
40 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
40 Spoon Got Nuffin [EP] Merge 2009

American Numerology

It's a strange cultural thing in the US, but we love numbers and rankings. Our math skills, on average, aren't particularly good, but my oh my we seem to adore those who can compute and get easily snowed by their results. I've benefited from this country's crazy number love. My work on grade inflation wouldn't be getting the attention it does if it didn't focus on the upward march of a lot of numbers, the average GPA of schools, over time.

I've also been on the wrong side of this love affair. In hydrology, I tried for a few years to show that numerical modeling of groundwater contamination, while interesting academically, had no real practical value; indeed simple back of the envelope calculations did as well (not very well at all) as big computer models. The papers I wrote with students were conclusive. Still, they were ignored by and large. People love those fancy computer models. If it's quantitative, the assumption is that it must be good. If it's very quantitative, it must be better.

Similarly, I (and quite a few others) have tried to point out just how meaningless and bogus US News' college rankings are. These efforts don't seem to have much of an effect. People like numbers. It doesn't matter if the numbers are bogus. They want to know which school is number one, number two, etc.

The NY Times gets buffaloed by numbers as well. Every once in a while, they'll publish an op-ed written by some brainy professor types that will talk about some amazing counterintuitive results from a computer analysis. Those results are often "counterintuitive" because they are simply wrong. I wrote about this issue a while back with regard to a NY Times op-ed piece on Joe Dimaggio's hitting streak.

Lately, I've been reading a bit in the news about the on again, off again potential baseball movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis' book about the Oakland A's. Brad Pitt wants to star, and evidently that's almost enough to make a studio want to pony up a lot of money to make this movie. Almost. But not quite. There's apparently a problem with the script.

What never gets mentioned in these articles is that the theme of the entire book is bogus. Lewis claims that what made the A's successful in the late 1990s to early 2000s was their quantitative and statistical approach to player assessment. They had a magic method. If only it were so.

Lewis' invoking of quantitative magic and brilliance made Moneyball a bestseller. But what really happened was that before the A's got quantitative they got lucky and made three great draft picks and also developed a 16 year old Latin player who turned out to be a blue chip shortstop. Those four became All Stars. Then a new GM came along who made two more great draft picks in the first round that, quantitative analysis or not, were obvious excellent prospects. They now had six All Stars. As a result, they won a lot of games.

In fact, the A's statistical methods just might have hindered them more than they helped. It could just be bad luck, but the A's haven't drafted anyone of All Star caliber in about a decade. In the book Moneyball, there are extensive details on the 2002 draft, when the A's received 7 out of the first 40 or so picks. Most of those picks have turned out to be duds. None of the picks has become a stellar player. In fact, one player the A's passed on in 2002 and ridiculed another team for picking, Prince Fielder, has gone on to quickly become a franchise caliber player for the Milwaukee Brewers.

No, quantitative analysis hasn't done much for the A's. It hasn't allowed them to find diamonds in the rough as the book Moneyball claims. The A's aren't exploiting inefficiencies in the marketplace of players through the use of statistics. No. They were just lucky for a few years. Now they aren't.

That's how baseball works more or less. A GM gets lucky making some draft picks and trades. The team wins. Everyone calls him a genius. The luck wears out. The team loses. Everyone calls him a bum.

Unfortunately, the good luck/bad luck scenario doesn't make much of a story so Lewis decided to embellish. He picked a winning way to embellish as well, creating a story about how little guys can win when they have the secret formula for identifying talent. Lewis embellished two other books that I've read, one about Wall Street, Liar's Poker, and one about the Silicon Valley, The New New Thing. He's a very entertaining writer. I wish he would be a more truthful one.

Now about the Moneyball movie script. I know Sony Pictures is having problems with getting that script right. I read the second draft. My lord, what a snooze. I heard they just hired a script doctor, some guy who wrote for a TV show I never saw, West Wing. Does he know beans about the A's? No. Does he know beans about quantitative analysis? No. Can he possibly write a good script? No way. And who does know about such things? Me of course. It seems like they should have a real doctor and A's expert be their script doctor. But of course that's just my opinion. ;)

What would I do with this movie? I'd start it out with Spring Training, 1996. A little man keeps showing up at the A's ballpark with a laptop in hand, always right behind the dugout. The players joke about this little balding guy typing in numbers. After every game, the man tries to see the A's GM, polite but insistent in his little blue suit and tie. Finally the GM gives in, irritated. The man hands the GM a sheet of paper on how well the A's will do this year and how every team will do in the AL. On a separate sheet, he predicts the stats of every rookie who has made the A's team for the forthcoming year.

The A's GM takes the sheets of paper and gives the guy a phony, this man is crazy so I better humor him smile. He walks into his office to throw the papers into the trash, but hesitates. I'll put this up on the board for laughs he tells his secretary. Some hanky panky ensues on the desk (with appropriate hanky panky music in the background!).

The GM forgets about the sheets on the board. Another disappointing season unfolds. Then he returns to Spring Training the next year. In an idle moment, he looks up at the sheets still posted on the messy board. Those numbers. They're spot on. Every one of them. Oh my god. Now he has to find this guy pronto.

OK, so this story is ridiculous and bears no relation to reality. But neither does the story in the book Moneyball. And we're talking Hollywood here, land of make believe! Lights, camera, action! I think we have a winner!

Oh, Those Cranky Old Men

Next to my local library, there are two houses that have been painstakingly restored. I was walking down the block and an impeccably dressed older lady, not a hair out of place, walked out the door of one of them with the aid of a cane. I know she owns that house, maybe a couple more on the block, and an empty lot that is probably worth almost a million dollars where she grows tomatoes and whatnot. Her husband used to grow them until he died. Now she either hires someone to take care of the vegetable garden or maybe there's a relative or two who does it. I think it's marvelous that this piece of land is still used for gardening even though I'm sure year after year she gets unsolicited offers for it.

Anyhow, she shuffled to the middle of her walkway and then stopped. She'd clearly forgotten something that she wanted to bring along. And this older lady, so elegantly dressed, on the surface so refined, yelled out "sh*t" as she tapped her cane in disgust. Then she turned around and shuffled back to her home.

I laughed. Appearances can be deceiving. There was no discrepancy between appearance and behavior with her late husband, however. That guy dressed like a car mechanic who had been in grease all day long. Stop and linger in front of his garden to admire the vegetables and he immediately assumed you were there to steal a tomato or two. He'd shout out from the house next door, "Get the h*ll away!"

Crotchety old men seem to be more common than crotchety old women, although both exist in abundance. I don't know why these things break down by sex, but they do. And cranky middle age men seem to far, far outnumber cranky middle age women.

I'm going to have my birthday next week. And I know that as my time on the planet increases so does my tendency for crankiness. I'm actually pretty happy and satisfied most days. Be that as it may, there is a natural evolution at work. First you start out as a wise guy, knowitall in school. The wise guy doesn't show up until about the fifth grade. Before that you're the invincible flash card king, raising your hand so fast when the multiplication cards are shown that your teacher, after about three days of seeing your invincibility at work and noticing that it's scaring the hell out of your fellow students, politely tells you not to participate anymore.

Same thing happens with the spelling bee. It's not fair to the other students. So you sit politely or not so politely during these math and spelling events. Maybe you start to get smug seeing people blow what you think are obvious math and spelling errors. That goes on for another year or so. Now you're officially a wise guy.

People laugh at your jokes, which only encourages you. This goes on for years, maybe all the way through college. Or maybe, if you're lucky, this attitude of yours wanes when you find the love of your life. Mister knowitall, wise guy, cynic, curmudgeon is put away for awhile. Love tends to do that.

But Mr. Wise Guy is going to resurface. He really is. It can't be helped. Who knows why? Everything in your life could be going as smooth as silk. You could be as happy and content as anything. You could continue to be thoroughly in love with your college sweetheart. But still.

Sometime when you're 40, Mr. Wise Guy comes back. Except he's changed a bit. He's a little less funny and a little more biting. Mr. Wise Guy is now Mr. Cranky Middle Age Man. If he doesn't like something, he lets you know in a hurry. And there are quite a few things that he doesn't like!

Let's go down the list:
Decaffeinated coffee. What's the point! (OK, at least I wrote a funny song about this).
Congress. Those guys are worthless, long ago bought by special interests! (I probably should write a funny song about this too.)
Cole Haan shoes. They used to be good stuff that lasted forever. Then they got bought by Nike who drove the brand to hell!
Hollywood movies. No I do not want to see another coming of age story about dueling robots with ear piercing special effects mixed with an exposed boob or two!
Afghanistan. As if we haven't spent enough and lost enough lives in Iraq. Talk to the Russians about what a bottomless pit Afghanistan is!
Jazz radio stations. No I do not want to hear another person boringly re-enact some album from 1959!
AAA radio stations. No I do not want to hear a 25 year old clone of Donovan/Nick Drake or a 19 year old clone of Joni Mitchell/Carole King!
Prairie Home Companion. Mr. Keillor, there are songs out there with more than three chords. There really are. And no you cannot sing worth a damn. And your taste in poetry is dull, too. And if I hear you mispronounce or misuse one more Yiddish word I'm going to throw the radio against the wall!

OK, so some of this stuff I made up for comic effect. Maybe. But you get the picture. And it isn't pretty. I can see my future very clearly. I'll knock down the house next door to me in a few years. I'll plant row after row of tomatoes. And if anybody stops to look admiringly at those beautiful red vegetables hanging from their vines, I'll crank open the window and shout out, "Get the h*ll away!"

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, July 9th, 2009

Here's the AAA/Jazz chart for the week.

1 Moby Wait For Me Mute 2009
2 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
3 Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch 2009
4 Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada Coconut Rock ESL 2009
5 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
6 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
7 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
8 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
9 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
10 Sara Watkins Sara Watkins Nonesuch 2009
11 Pat Metheny & Brad Mehldau Quartet Nonesuch 2007
12 Levon Helm Electric Dirt Vanguard Reoprds 2009
13 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
14 Georgie James Places Saddle Creek 2007
15 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
16 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Glassnote 2009
17 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
18 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
19 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
20 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
21 Miike Snow Miike Snow Downtown 2009
22 Elizabeth & The Catapult Taller Children Verve 2009
23 The Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie Darwin Self-Released 2008
24 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
25 Three Dog Night It Ain't Easy Dunhill 1970
26 Cory Weeds Everything's Coming Up Weeds Cellar Live 2009
27 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
28 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
29 Michael Jackson Off The Wall Epic 1979
30 Melody Gardot My One And Only Thrill VMG 2009
31 Rick Germanson Off The Cuff Owl Studios 2009
32 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
33 Regina Spektor Far Sire 2009
34 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
35 Louis Hayes The Time Keeper 18th & Vine 2009
36 Sonic Youth The Eternal Matador 2009
37 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
38 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
39 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
40 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009

The Heart Is Sometimes a Lousy Hunter

In my department at Duke, there was one Southern gentleman professor. Most departments had one or two people like this, who had started back when Duke was a regional school. I liked most of these older Southern men; they were, in comparison to most of the younger academic set, human.

The gentleman in my department wasn't very talkative or particularly articulate, but every once in a while he'd come up with a zinger that would truly linger. On the topic of an affair between two faculty members that had somehow become the subject of a lawsuit (in North Carolina a cuckolded husband can legally sue his philandering wife for cash), he said, "Man, if you're going to engage in that kind of foolishness, do it on the other side of town."

Once I was doing a riff on why there are too many states in our Union. North Dakota and South Dakota, for instance. Do we really need two Dakotas? Nebraska and Kansas are the same place. And then I mentioned North Carolina and South Carolina.

"You don't understand," the gentleman professor said. "North Carolina is a state. South Carolina is an insane asylum." If I remember correctly, he received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Clearly, he knew something I didn't know.

When news broke about Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinean connection, those two quotes instantly came to mind.

The South is a different kind of place and South Carolina is indeed weird as anything. One time I was in South Carolina doing contract work for the federal government near Aiken. The guy I was working for took me to a place in the middle of nowhere that had barb-q-que they served out of a double-wide trailer Wednesdays through Saturdays only. We drove for about 45 minutes to get there; he was so excited.

In the double wide, were two rows of picnic tables covered in red and white gingham. You went through a cafeteria style line to get your bar-b-que, sides, and tea so full of sugar that your straw stood up.

The food was dreadful. Just awful glop. It was the kind of stuff designed to instantly harden your arteries, so bad for you that even statins couldn't overcome the instant cholesterol flood. As I glumly ate in that crowded place, a man stood up and just started to testify. Not about Jesus. About bar-b-que. "My name is Cletus Johnson," he said. "I come from Williston and I am so happy to be home. For 10 years, I've lived around Chicago. You would not believe what they call bar-b-que up there."

Cletus sat down. A few people nodded their heads. Then everybody went back to happily eating their glop.

My name is Stuart Rojstaczer. I come from Milwaukee and I'm so happy to be living in California. For 11 years, I lived in the Carolinas. You would not believe what they call bar-b-que down there. Sexual habits, though, are about the same as everywhere else. People do stray.

Mark Sanford followed my old colleague's rule to an extreme. He didn't just go to the other side of town to engage in foolishness. He went to the other hemisphere.

Personally, I have no concern about people cheating on their wives and husbands although of course I'm speaking in general terms here, not about my marriage. We have this ideal of monogamy for life. That ideal works for somewhere around half to two-thirds of males and females. For the other one third to one half, it doesn't. Those people just don't have the makeup to follow the sexual rules laid down by our culture. They may try. But it just isn't going to happen. The heart is sometimes a lousy hunter. And it's sometimes fickle about its prey.

I don't buy the arguments that all humans have the will to behave responsibly in all matters. I feel sad that those that cannot be responsible in their marriages hurt so many. When it comes to most moral codes, I'm actually very unforgiving. But in matters of desire and the heart, I've just seen too many examples of people who are emotionally unable to follow through on their commitments for a lifetime.

There's a certain "tell" people give when they meet someone they've been to bed with. I don't think that tell can be hidden. I'm sure it's noticed by more than me. There's a look. There's the body language. My sweetie doesn't care to make it her business to look for that body language in others. But when she informs me that so and so is getting divorced, sometimes I can recollect seeing that tell from the wife or husband. In academic settings, I saw that tell so many times between faculty members that I wondered, given the marriages, children and sexual trysts, how anyone got any work done.

Governor Sanford obviously - despite what is likely significant effort - just can't succeed keeping to the straight and narrow. The rules of politics say that if you don't keep your zipper up and do get caught, you will likely see your political career crash (at least temporarily). Strangely or not so strangely, it looks like Mark Sanford tried to get caught. That's not South Carolina insanity at work, though. That's just plain old self-destructive behavior.

It is South Carolina insanity, however, to compare yourself and your behavior to a biblical king, David, as Sanford has done. David's transgressions were far more major. Plus he was a great writer of poetry. In contrast, Sanford seems to be able to write soft porn fairly well.

The press has taken to calling Sanford a nut and an idiot. OK, he is a Southern eccentric. But he isn't an idiot, just another guy ill-suited for long-term marriage. Now what is he going to do? I have some suggestions of course.

In his time as South Carolina's governor, Sanford seems to have proven himself to be a capable leader and politician. He has international experience, intimate international experience plus some travels apparently not related to hanky panky. Although his career in American politics is over, I don't see why he should give up politics altogether.

So my modest and unsolicited advice for Mr. Sanford is as follows. Follow your heart, lousy hunter though it may be. You are obviously a Latin lover trapped in a Southern baptist white bread body.

It's time to express who you really are. Marry your Argentinean true love. Get citizenship. Become a future Argentinean prime minister. Argentina will benefit from having an experienced politician in charge. South Carolina can retreat to its previous ordinary lunacy and no longer have to deal with being under the glare of the national press. Undoubtedly, you'll be a happy man for ten years or so having your true love in your arms. It's win-win-win. Don't thank me, Governor Sanford. I just like making people happy.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 61

Cheating Death

My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January 1998. I was there when she got her prognosis. Three months, the doctor said. My mother didn't cry. She was, instead, defiant. "No," she shook her head. "I'm not going to die. Not yet. I have too many things to do."

It's one thing to declare that you're going to cheat death. It's quite another to actually do so. But she did. My mother lived another 21 months. She didn't just hang on, either. She finished a home she was building, met friends socially (albeit ignoring those young Gentile women who loved her so), sold lots, did some remodeling of the apartments, and showed me the ropes of the business. "You've been around this all your life. It won't be hard."

I was about to give a talk at the University of Nebraska when I got a call on my cell phone. It was exactly one week before Rosh Hashonah. "I'm going to die today," she said. "Come home." I canceled my talk. Six hours later I was walking up to my mom at her bedside in her house. It was just she and I alone in that room. Her voice was faint. "I love you," she said. She kissed me on my lips. Then she lost consciousness.

How did my mother manage to stay alive several more hours and wait for me to get to her house? Strength of will defined my mother.

It's been ten years since my mother and twenty years since my father died. I still miss both of them terribly. But it's also true that a hardly a day goes by when I don't wake up and feel thankful for what I have in my life. I feel so fortunate in so many ways. High up on that list is that I was blessed with two parents who loved me dearly, and inculcated in me the idea that like them I possessed the strength of will and brains to accomplish anything.

Once, when my mom and I were in her doctor's office waiting for an appointment, I looked up and saw two women screaming on a talk show. One of them threw a chair at the other one. The host of the show seemed to be encouraging their awful behavior. I'm ignorant when it comes to much of popular culture. "What's that?" I asked my mom.

"Jerry Springer. Can you believe they show garbage like this on TV?"

"Well, it's TV," I said. But even I was amazed, really.

"His parents were survivors. It's a good thing they passed. They don't have to see their son do this dreck."

My mother had an issue about children of survivors. They had to be better than other American children, most of whom she considered to be stupid and lazy. She said it to me more than once that I carried a responsibility not just to honor her and my father through my actions, but to honor all of the lives lost in my family during the War. She was perfectly serious about this.

The War never left my parents consciousness even for a day. It scarred them, certainly. It shaped them. I believe it gave them their relentless ambition. They weren't trying to achieve simply for personal satisfaction. They were showing everyone just what a Jew - even without education and a good understanding of American culture or even its language - could do.

How does one honor parents like this? How does one honor the lives of their lost relatives?

I started out writing these posts at the request of my daughter. It's been like a weekly letter with a few missed weeks along the way (and I usually received reminders when the posts were late). But in the back of my mind, I knew I wasn't just writing these posts out of love for her. I wanted to write something that my parents would like and appreciate. They were my audience too. I wanted to honor them in these writings.

I thought that these posts would go on for a month or two. My sweetie laughed when I told her that at most I'd write six to eight posts and be done. "You'll be at this for months," she said. Even she was off. It's been over a year.

But now it's done. I'll still conjure up my parents in writing fiction, but this is probably the only time I'll write about them with some effort to keep grounded in the real world. I consider these posts to be my parent's unauthorized biography.

The audience for this material is small, I know. Who beyond some relatives and other children of survivors would want to read this stuff? I can't imagine many would. Since the person who requested these stories is also a professional editor, I'll spend some time over the next month or two rewriting these posts with her help before I print a dozen copies of this material in book form. If you are someone who has been reading these posts whom I don't know (and there seem to be a small but surprising number of people who fit that category) and would like a copy, let me know. I'll print a dozen plus one.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, July 2nd, 2009

There's a lot of twangy/rootsy stuff on the AAA/Jazz chart this week. I've written and performed stuff like that and I can listen to it in small samplings. But "three chords and the truth" often means three chords and simple minded dyspeptic philosophizing. A little goes a long way. That said, there is something amazing about taking music and words that are soooo simple and somehow turning them into a memorable and heart wrenching song. Blues songs can be like that as well; for me they do it better than twang. Not on the charts, but a group that I think that just might blow up in the world of roots, are the Dixie Bee-Liners, which kind of does blue-state, self-aware, self-possessed bluegrass. It's what happens when you take a girl from Kentucky and put her in Manhattan for a few years, I'm guessing.

Michael Jackson is of course on this list this week - another musician sadly gone young - and as I was listening on the radio to his tunes over the last few days I've really noticed the wonderful work of Quincy Jones in making the bed for those tracks. That is just outstanding pop production.

1 Patterson Hood Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs) Ruth St. 2009
2 Wilco Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch 2009
3 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
4 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
5 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
6 Levon Helm Electric Dirt Vanguard Reoprds 2009
7 Bobby Broom Bobby Broom Plays For Monk Origin 2009
8 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
9 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
10 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
11 Fareed Haque & The Flat Earth Ensemble Flat Planet Owl Studios 2009
12 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
13 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
14 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
15 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
16 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
17 Michael Jackson Thriller Epic 1982
18 Pete Yorn Back And Forth Columbia 2009
19 M. Ward Hold Time Merge 2009
20 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
21 Frank Potenza Old, New, Borrowed, & Blue Capri 2009
22 Elizabeth & The Catapult Taller Children Verve 2009
23 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
24 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
25 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
26 Louis Hayes The Time Keeper 18th & Vine 2009
27 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
28 Moby Wait For Me Mute 2009
29 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Glassnote 2009
30 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
31 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
32 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
33 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
34 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
35 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
36 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
37 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
38 Akiko Tsuruga Oriental Express 18th & Vine 2009
39 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
40 Michael Jackson Bad Epic 1987

How Bad Science Journalism Gets Written

Earth science rarely makes front page news. But every once in a while I'm surprised. Such was the case the other day when the NY Times ran an article on a geothermal pilot plant at The Geysers in California, "Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears." Reading this article one is left with the impression that rogue engineers are going to cause new damaging earthquakes in a populous region in their efforts to extract geothermal energy.

But the fact is that earthquakes of magnitude 2 or greater are already being induced by existing geothermal energy extraction in The Geysers, the area isn't populous, and no seismologist interviewed by the author says that a significant new hazard is being created by the pilot plant. The best that the author can come up with are quotes from laymen of an impending apocalypse.

This article is bad science journalism, plain and simple. How does it get written?

I wanted to know. So I emailed a seismologist interviewed for this article. He told me that it was clear from the interview that the NY Times author wanted to write his message of impending doom, facts be damned. He called the interview experience "eye opening."

Here's what happened as far as I can tell. The author, James Glanz, was in Basel at the time of a magnitude 3.4 earthquake induced by geothermal exploration. He felt it. If you're someone not used to experiencing the ground shake, it can be a very scary thing to feel even a modest earthquake. A couple of years later, Glanz heard about a new pilot plant at The Geysers and found out that the proposal for the work ignored the prospect of induced earthquakes. He now had a story: bad guys ignore danger.

There was one big hole in this story though. No seismologist was willing to claim that there was significant danger. Now we add an unusual wrinkle to this tale of journalism gone bad. James Glanz is not only a journalist; he also has a Ph.D. in astrophysics. Apparently in the absence of experts willing to connect the dots in the story, he decided to connect the dots himself. Throughout the article, he's not only writing as a journalist but expressing his expert opinion. Too bad he isn't an expert on seismology.

James Glanz is a big name journalist and a big wig at the NY Times. If you don't know anything about geothermal energy or seismology or The Geysers, and you're an editor you might say, "My big name guy with a Princeton Ph.D. has written a captivating story. I'm going to put it on the front page." That's what apparently was done. The NY Times is on a 24 hour news cycle. They make mistakes all the time. They are only human. This was a mistake I noticed because I know more than a bit about the topic discussed. There are undoubtedly many mistakes every day in "The Paper of Record" that I don't notice.

The NY Times and other eastern newspapers (whose numbers are dwindling) occasionally write off the wall sensationalistic articles on earthquakes and volcanoes like the one noted above. Their job is to titillate not inform. The geologist Jake Lowenstern, who has been interviewed by quite a few journalists, noted a similar phenomenon in contrasting local journalists' coverage of geologic hazards with those from the UK (Geotimes, June 2005):

"When confronted with a litany of potential eruption scenarios, local reporters covering Mount St. Helens thoroughly educated themselves about the volcano, its history and the techniques used to monitor volcanic activity. They did not want to overstate the danger once they understood that a relatively nonhazardous effusive eruption was underway.

Similarly, at Yellowstone, local reporters were typically careful, whereas those sitting at a greater distance from the park often viewed the story as ripe for “titillation.” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so much of the hyperbolic press on the Yellowstone volcano comes from the United Kingdom. In reading many of the U.K. news articles, I cannot but sense an unstated glee as the author recounts the future doom headed for their brethren 'across the pond.'"

I would argue that often science is used by newspapers like sports. It's candy. It's designed to entertain. When you're writing candy, the facts aren't so important. My guess (and hope) is that journalists do better with their coverage of politics and the economy, but I don't know that for sure.