Game On!!!

YEAH!! Sorry I'm late. Boston v. Yankees coming up -- I'm pumped.

Currently 45 degrees and near zero humidity in Boston. Home Opener v. the Yankees is a little more than an hour away. Spirits high, and visibility at 10 miles, which is about what they'll need to clock the ball when David Ortiz hits the snot out of Phil Hugh's alleged starting pitching.


Even though we no longer have Curt Schilling, we still have Jesus on our side, because John Lackey kinda looks like Schilling. From a distance. Of more than 10 miles. (Uncoincidentally the distance to which the search teams also need must fan out, in order to recover the ball stuffings after an utterly nonplussed Adrian Gonzales fouls off 12 pitches only to casually swat the 13th out, like a fifth grader might disinterestedly pull the wings off a fly.)

I figure Jesus is watching the game from more than 10 miles away, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Not that the Red Sox have to fool Jesus in order to win a game in the 2011 season, but as any Red Sox fan--or true literary man, as famously observed by John Cheever--will tell you, we win games the old-fashioned way: any friggin' way possible.

The faith of Red Sox fans is unswerving and universal. Pretty sure Ganesha is a Red Sox fan, and I defy anyone to find a more Confucian ball club than the one populated by the honorable sons of Fenway. Even though he shaved his beard recently to throw folks off the trail, it's no coincidence that you won't catch Dustin Pedroia and the Greek demigod Pan in the same dugout. Brother Jacoby Ellsbury has the entire Native American pantheon at his back, and now that Boston's divested themselves of Adrian "I BBQ the ribs of my own Outfielders" Beltre, I'm liking the fleet-footed Oregonian's chances. Only divinely-powered guys run that fast. I may even start calling him Princess Jacoby Oregonia. So I pay no attention to the fact he's batting 34th against the Yankees today--in act, I embrace it, because I Believe. I believe Kevin Youkilis's beguiling stance will snake-charm his way past mentally weak middle relief. I believe Jason Varitek will hang up his cleats after this season and start a critically acclaimed career starring in Jack Ryan spy thrillers. I Believe that Tim Wakefield is not actually 44 years old, but is actually the biblically referenced Wandering Knuckleball Pitcher and is actually 4400 years old. And, I Believe in all that stuff Crash Davis says in "Bull Durham"

1:52 p.m. The screen at MLB TV says "warming up" so I imagine it's a pretty exciting atmosphere at Fenway. My MLB TV media player thingy is trying to talk to the 1933 inter-war-period mother board that "powers" my portable computing device, and so I'll grab a cup while a "link" is "established."

As promised, Comment Moderation has been disabled.

1:58 p.m. Well, there's a TV within spitting distance from me, but I can't watch it, so I'm waiting for MLB to get its act together. Coming back from grabbing a cuppa joe I saw four F-16's  buzzing Fenway and a bunch of proud Americans in the most beautiful ballpark in the land. Good Stuff. Opening pitch mere moments away. We got John Lackey. They got Some Other Guy

2:05 p.m. The definition of irony, perhaps. I spend a pile of money for MLB TV and I can't seem to get a video feed on the game I've been looking forward to since the end of last fall, and STRIKE ONE BY LACKEY!!!!!! 0-2 ALREADY!! I do have a radio feed, however, and that's.... a Good Thing. Unbe-freakin'-lievable. Perhaps Jesus, Ganesha, Confucius, Pan, and more than 275 North American Native gods were not amused.....

First Inning: Gardner gets one for free, Jeter pops-up the bunt, Mark TaxiDermiaria fizzles, Lackey nearly nails Gardner at First before he eventually steals, A-Rod gets on somehow, probably in an enhanced fashion, Cano hits one out past Ellsbury and one of the F-16s circles back to drop a JBU-38 JDAM on the Yankee team bus.

2:22  Carl Crawford, Ladies and Gentlemen. Feel the fury of his .174 batting average for 2011!!!

homerun Dustin Pedroia!! Guy plays so hard his shin guard falls off while he's running out a homer!

End of the First  Hughes can walk a guy, too. Of course it was Youk's cobra cunning. Go figure. Papi gets a good swing. Only a matter of time.

Top of Second Curtis Grandstanderson takes advantage of Crawford's green play on the Green Monster. Lackey and Salty are not that into each other.. Lackey's given up 3 doubles. That's six bases, the same number as the Red Sox losses thus far -- further Numerology evidence that all things are related and I have nothing to fear.

111th Home Opener, live-blog "coverage," from my blacked-out laptop in NYC (thanks, MLB.TV! As if Boston fans in New York didn't have it hard enough...)

Feel free, both of you who are reading this, to post a comment just to make sure the damn thing's working...

2:45 A-Rod's apparently angling his body in the direction of Second... ooh... I'm oddly aroused. BASES LOADED BOSTON, BABY!

2:47 Improbably Scutaro drives in JD Nancy Drew. Hughes not out of the woods yet.

PAN PEDROIA DRIVES IN THREE ALREADY!!!! 5-3 Sox

Here comes Big Papi. Hughes can't get the third out. Maybe he should look behind the couch.
PAPI SINGLES!
aaaaaaaaaaand they finally get the third out in a rundown but not before we go up 6-4. I told me so.

3:00 Top of the Third Mark Tissue-iaria strikes out, A-Rod gets plunked and Lackey gives up a customary double to Cano

3:08 -- Sorry, I got like five things happening at once and since the Red Sox seem to be pretty efficient at getting outs, it all happened quickly. Some guy got thrown out by Scutaro, but another guy scored. 6-4 Red Sox, and Hughes is GONE JOHNSON! The other guy strikes out JD Nancy Drew to start the bottom of he third...

3:12 The other guy is Bartolo Colon who's dealing strikes like he was fencing a bunch of plasmas off the back of a truck.... at least Ellbury made some contact...

Top of the Fourth  Carl Crawford earns his keep with a sliding catch!

3:21 p.m. Researching meeting halls for inaugural meeting of the International Fraternal Order of "I Greatly Dislike Brett Gardner." Jeter drives in another one, but it's still 6-5 Red Sox.

3:27 p.m.  Lackey squeaks through the inning and heads to the dugout and asks Francona to send in relief so he can concentrate on weaving more human hairs into his Robinson Cano voodoo doll.

Bottom of the Fourth Colon retires the fourth and fifth guy in a row he's seen. If New York had just started him in the first place, they wouldn't be losing right. Typical Yankee Arrogance...

But here come's Pan Pedroia, a career .325 hitter at Fenway...... strikes out. S'ok. He's already contributed big time, not only to score, but also morale. Wonder who's gonna take the mound next for Boston.

AND... WHY IS IT JOHN LACKEY?! crap. Even I knew not to do that.... Homerun A-Scrod.  Tie game. Hm.

The Yankees' Third-String Catcher goes 0-2 before popping WAY up to Ellsbury. Colon due back.

3:43 Bottom of Fifth Yo Adrian clips one to Cano, and is thrown out. Youk snake-charms Colon for a walk. Ortiz is back, smelling blood with a reduced defensive shift...

PAPI CATCHES MARK TAXI-DERMIARIA SLEEPING! Youk to Third. JD Nancy Drew then pops up, like an anxious schoolgirl......

Salty KNOCKS ONE OFF THE GREEN MONSTER!!!!!! TRY THESE ON FOR SIZE, CONNIE CHUNG!!!!! 7-6, Red Sox. Swishy and Grandstanderson collide and nearly give up a two-run pop fly, but Curtis holds on, and we go to the Sixth.

3:55 Red Sox back on Defense. Lackey out, and Acheves-iss in relief. I have special respect for relief pitchers whose names I cannot spell. Alfredo I got, though. Almost like Alfred, the perfect gentleman butler for Bruce Wayne. So I'm calling this guy The Butler for the rest of the season.

4:00 Some guy named Russell Martin gets a base hit. Apparently he was very LA, hanging with celebs when he played on the Wrong Coast. The Butler is facing the Brett the Unpleasant. Goes to a full count. Walks. Martin leaves the bag at Second and calls in his publicist as a pinch runner.

4:07 Apparently every time Derek Jeter steps to the plate, we get to hear how many hits he has, again. Nauseating. He hits into a double-play. Muchos Better.

Bottom of the Sixth Carl Crawford strikes out. What I wouldn't give for Mikey Lowell right about now. Colon, who didn't pitch at all last year, retires the side. Again. With all this retirement, Dude's gonna start collecting a goddamn pension....Still 7-6 Red Sox

Top of Seventh With life, and all its responsibility calling, I'll need to sign off in order to take care of domestic issues. Hoping to make the 7th inning stretch before I head out the door. If there were anyone reading this, they might like the little surprise I've cooked up.....

New pitcher for the Sox --- Bobby Jenks BLOWS AWAY A-ROD AFTER PITCHING COACH VISITS THE MOUND. Yeah, Daddy.

Newsflash --- Manny Ramirez takes his ball and bat and goes home..... Apparently Manny needs to be Manny..... in a Barco-Lounger. Whatev. Guy deserves a nice stud retirement. Without so much Creatine.

Seventh Inning Stretch, and I Gots A Train To Catch --- Have a great baseball season! Thanks for reading, and remember: If you're reading, then I have a reader!!

Fooled by April (Or, the Rookie Strike Zone)

Somehow, the end of March fogged me up, with its renogade snow storms and relentless gray.

I missed chronicling high school basketball, I spaced out on Leonard Nimoy's 80th birthday (otherwise known as Blaiserblog's Second Blogiversary), and I completely missed sinking the calendrical boat with spinily barbed April Fool's witticisms. It's almost as if I've forgotten the basics...

I've been too distracted by the glorious return of baseball, possibly, and for my punishment, the hyperbolic Red Sox have gone 0-3 thus far in the 2011 season.

And so, I will make amends to the gods of ash and leather by attempting to live-blog the Sox Home Opener at Fenway Park versus.... Oh you know, Those Other Guys.

"Point" your browsers, your aluminum-foil-hat-antennae, and your birch water-dowsing sticks at this space on Friday, April 8. Coverage begins at 1:45 p.m. EDT. First pitch is rumored at 2:05, with the alleged John Lackey on the mound. (If it were me, I'd start Wakefield and call it a day.) I'll even be turning comment moderation off, so feel free to spout off, as one does.

In the meantime, rent yourself a VHS copy of "Bull Durham" and get hip to arguably the best result thusfar of this American Experiment we like to call home.* And go watch some spring ball in your neighborhood park diamond. They drafted me to umpire my kid's scrimmage the other day and I wound up calling six innings of balls and strikes to 5th and 6th graders. I loved it so much, I may foul-tip my way onto the Umpire Committe. Surprisingly, my son's still speaking to me, despite Saturday's elastic, rookie strike zone.

That's all any of us are doing, really--calling 'em as we see 'em. Life being what it is, hopefully we spray our mistakes in an even-handed manner.

Thanks for stopping by, and please remember that just because you can't buy my blog posts on the Home Shopping Network, it doesn't mean that the shrewd reader won't find an amazing deal on some deeply discounted prose. So poke around a bit.

* Undoubtedly among the most awful sentences I've ever written.

Thank God Its Fifteen Minutes Are Nearly Up...

In a spasm of culture, tens of millions of people (this author included) have now viewed a synthesized Auto-Tuned sequence about a day of the week, masquerading as a pop song sung by a perky and unflappable Middle Schooler named Rebecca.

Hipster irony has long feasted on performance offerings that are so bad, they're good. That this sensibility has gone viral—a kind of smug rubber-necking, slowing our critical-thinking highways to a dismal, numbed crawl—is what's taken the actual video viral, and encouraged the attendant virtual stoning of its innocent-bystander star. As Meaghan Daum writes in the (where else?) Los Angeles Times, "Whereas it used to be that the forum for anonymous public opinion was the high school bathroom wall, now the whole world is essentially a bathroom wall."

And so, we are Pavlov's dogs reacting as if we were Zsa Zsa Gabor's dogs—we bite through that jewel-encusted leash and run to the food dish of fame and celebrity, gratefully lapping up the slop du jour. But we eat too fast and then we throw up.

In other words, the reaction to an item in question has become more important than the item itself. Or is it? Perhaps we're missing a profound message here by denigrating its messenger. Perhaps the message is as deceptively composed as, say, the perfectly rendered paintings of the Dutch Masters...

image courtesy of Anthony Falbo

Rather than debate who's to blame for the phenomenon of all our attention focused on a phenomenon, let's just look at The Thing itself and see what can be gleaned. I think the diabolically clever lyricists at Ark Music Factory know exactly what they're doing. And we all should be scared. Here's why:

To start with, the "record label" responsible for "Friday," Ark Music, contains an ancient Biblical reference in its title that could bely the organization's true motives: Gathering all the notes audible to humans, two by two, and cleverly storing them in plain sight, constructing songs like "Friday" as a hedge against an ongoing deluge/war against music, as evidenced by the work of John Cage ("4:33," the Silent Symphony for Piano and Lost Patience, for example, or an organ piece that began a performance in 2001 and will go on for 639 years.) See also, the music of any alleged atonal composer, or Hootie and the Blowfish, whose melody lines seldom reach beyond two or three tones anyway, and are therefor ideal for Ark-like storage. Note uncoincidental aquatic reference in this group's name, and its leader, Darius Rucker, named for the third "King of Kings" in the Achaemenid Empire, who lived from 550—486 BCE, generally agreed upon by Christian Fundamentalists as the exact timing of the Great Flood, or at the very least, sometime during the Old Testatment.

So, right off, we can easily understand that this is not simply a case of sleaze-bag talent-free college drop-outs in Southern California taking advantage of parents with shallow guilt and deep pockets, and their vapid, privileged children. That's simply what they WANT us to think while they wage a mystically informed, prophesy-driven, fanatical crusade against everything music, and by extension, everything Free Americans hold dear: BUT MOST OF ALL GUNS. That's right, THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS!! Here's further proof, if you can't see past your own bubble-gum blindness yet:

To the knowledgable, independent thinker, it's all there in the cynical, ironic title of the song: "Friday." But I'm way ahead of myself. Let's take this one step at a time:

The stage is set for this brilliant deception right from the first lines. Ms. Black sings:

Oo-ooh-ooh, hoo yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Thoughtful, right? And rightly so. These words are designed to be soothing—in REALITY, what they're distracting us from is a male voice superimposed over Ms. Black's, which ominously intones the foreshadowing code: Yeah, Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ark. Ending the line with "Ark," is an unmistakeable directive to the trained ear, that informs the listener who's in charge here (Ark Music Factory), who's delivering the REAL message and what's REALLY going to be revealed in subsequent stanzas.

But, of course, that's cleverly hidden also, for what we get instead, is a list of actions followed by a puzzle facing the singer, all of which can only be designed to confuse and obfuscate, for they bring up many more questions than they answer. I'll break it down for you:

Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein' everything, the time is goin'
Tickin' on and on, everybody's rushin'
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)

Forget the simple logistical problems presented by waking up and immediately attempting to "be fresh," before either going "downstairs" (a Dante-esque metaphor for Hell), or addressing the agrarian implications of the importance placed upon a "bowl," where one might sustain oneself with "cereal." Cereal is clearly meant to mean something else entirely, for in the video, there's a clear LACK of even a SPOON, much less even a TABLE. Obviously, it's because if the camera zoomed out, what we'd see would be the singer's "PARENTS," sitting at this TABLE drafting secret plans and/or legislation to TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS.

But forget that for now. The "song" continues to bob and weave with its intentions by presenting the listener with the following inconsistencies and unavoidable questions: WHY wouldn't the singer take the bus, which is to say WHAT's different about this day? WHO tipped off her friends so that they would pick her up? WHAT was dicussed about breakfast at THEIR houses, and most important, WHO is the driver, when in all liklihood all occupants are too young to have licenses? (kudos to the LA Times article for picking up on this first). The whole question is "conveniently" sidestepped—as is the whereabouts of the actual BUS—and instead we're presented with an unsolvable riddle:

Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

Which seat indeed? Reinforced by its hypnotizing backbeats and synthesized vocals, this question is obviously much larger and impossible to answer: it's the old immovable object and irresistible force all over again, simply stoping the progression of logic dead in its tracks. It's enough to make one download the song and listen over and over and over—just like I did—to garner the information necessary to clearly establish a direction in which one would have to go concerning this decision of which seat might better one's chances at an enjoyable commute to Middle School. I mean, seriously, I took the better part of today to grapple with all of this.

So then I took the question deeper. One the one hand, the back seat is traditionally where the "cool" kids hang out. It's an attractive place to be, and God knows what's ACTUALLY going on back there, because other passengers have to turn around and USE THEIR EYES, when thousands of years of genetically refined instincts—handed down from Biblical Times, just like the Second Amendment—are telling us to keep our eyes FORWARD, where we might not only avoid danger in the form of, say, predatory Upper Classmen, but also so that we are better situated to acquire items to help us survive, like a bowl of cereal. Remember, we never saw the bowl of cereal consumed, DID WE? That's because it's NOT ABOUT THE CEREAL AT ALL! Sadly, at this point, this game of symbology chess has already been won, and the fiendish, freedom-hating tyrants of Ark Music Factory have you right where they want you. And where is that? WITHOUT YOUR GUNS!!! You can be sure of THAT!

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend
7:45, we're drivin' on the highway
Cruisin' so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right, ay
I got this, you got this
Now you know it

Incredibly, these three stanzas are calculated throw-aways that you've heard a thousand times before and that mean exactly what they ACTUALLY say: Nothing. It's been done by every group from The Beatles to Loverboy to the Backstreet Boys to Nirvana to Insane Clown Posse—discussing the weekend, partaking in enjoyable activities and concurring with one's friends regarding an equitable distribution of labor, all set against the backdrop of journey in a convertible. If you STRETCH your imagination a LITTLE, it ALMOST sounds just like a pop song.

And that would be a MISTAKE, because we've almost made it to the business end of this "song." BUT NOT YET!!. Not ones to take any chances, the heartless bastards at Ark Music have thrown in a reprise of the Scylla-and-Charybdis-like dilemma of the convertible's seating arrangement, followed by the dazzling repetition of the words "weekend" (three times); "partying" (four times"; and the eponymous "Friday" (six times), just to ensure the listener's synapses are thoroughly stewed into a simmering gourd of Quaker five-minute oats:

Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?


It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend


Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

It's all so diabolical, and presages the arrival of the real message, the crucial sequence—the one that the song was constructed to mask, and the one that CANNOT be mistaken for anything else: PLEASE pay attention here, if you've taken nothing else from this analysis. As the section begins, we notice something's "up" when the video breaks from live action to animation—a CLEAR comment on a MYSTICAL, OTHERWORLDLY, kind of mystical world, that's other: AND it begins with 2:06 elapsed. If I have to eplain the significance of THOSE numbers to you, you may as well just get hopped up on Nyquil, watch The DaVinci Code and march up to your nearest jack-booted governement agency and HAND-DELIVER those Second-Amendment-protected, beared arms.... Don't get me started....

Anyway -- here's the crux of the whole cheese enchilada:

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin')

It begins innocently enough, with a rational accounting of the present and the past, two things that cannot be changed, and the one-word endorsement of the supremacy of the present, or Friday: (Partyin').

However:

We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

It's so plain, they didn't even bother to hide their exuberance: Of COURSE "we so excited." We so excited 'cause we about to subconsciously HAMMER the FREE WORLD with BRAINWASHING—it's both the coup de grâce and the Coupe de Ville, the alpha and the omega, the smoking gun and the Grassy Knoll, the Dick York and the Dick Sargent.

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after ... wards
I don't want this weekend to end

Do you see what I mean? It's all so elegant and simple and clearly obvious: It was never Friday. It was ALWAYS Saturday and Sunday. Those are the days whose outcomes we can influence, and those are the days in which the message of Ark Music Factory is embedded. It's as if our Best Days are meant to be before us. Days in which THEY'LL COME TO YOUR DOOR AND DEMAND YOUR GUNS!! But more on that, later.

Having delivered its rhetorical, precision-guided prophesy, the song continues with its only Red Herring, the spoken-word section, a juxtaposition within a double-entendre rapped up by (DUH) the same ominous intoner of "ark" in the Very Beginning: It all comes full circle, except it doesn't:

R-B, Rebecca Black
So chillin' in the front seat (In the front seat)
In the back seat (In the back seat)
I'm drivin', cruisin' (Yeah, yeah)
Fast lanes, switchin' lanes
Wit' a car up on my side (Woo!)
(C'mon) Passin' by is a school bus in front of me
Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream
Check my time, it's Friday, it's a weekend
We gonna have fun, c'mon, c'mon, y'all

This guy's just thowing us off the trail left, right and center. I mean, he's in the back seat, he's in the front seat, he's having it both ways. AND HE DOES ALL THIS WITHOUT CEREAL!!! IT MAKES NO SENSE WHATEVER!

But finally, a coded denoument in which "Friday," gets its closest yet to an ACTUAL pop song, with the singer performing in front a mass of wriggling, dancing peers, a recapitulation of themes (fun, weekend, partying, yeah) to a quick, merciful ending, for its secret seed has already been expertly planted.

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend


It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

And, by 3:48, it's all over. And with it, so are your chances to KEEP YOUR GUNS AND LIBERTY SAFE from the forces of LIBERALS, Jay Leno, the ghost of John Lennon, and RACHEL MADDOW!

Tune in next week when we will ILLUMINATE the significance of Saturday and Sunday, as hidden for centuries (IN PLAIN SIGHT) within the texts of William Shakespeare's plays. One of those days of the week appears ELEVEN times in FIVE plays. The other ONLY appears in the comedies As You Like It and Loves Labours Lost, but NO ONE'S LAUGHING!!! For therein begins the REAL message that makes "Friday," so subversive and dangerous. Please read the texts of all SEVEN plays before reading ANYTHING ELSE, or watching ANYTHING on You Tube!!

In future symposia, we'll disuss troubling questions like:

• HOW the Left stirred up riots at the Democratic Convention in '68, by promoting the song "Build Me Up, Buttercup."

• WHY the secret of Sonny Bono's whereabouts on November 22, 1963, died with him in a "mysterious" ski accident.

• WHO stands to gain the most control over your lives (and sidearms!) from a re-release of Musical Youth's seminal early-80s single "Pass the Dutchie"? (Hint: WHICH side do they pass it to? I'll give you ONE GUESS!!!)

Thanks for reading, and remember to ALWAYS keep your powder dry, while you keep REACHING FOR THE STARS!

Reaching Out and Returning...

Rocketry has fascinated me, and I have always felt a neonatal connection--having emerged into the world as Neil, Buzz and Michael were on their way back from the Moon in Apollo 11's Command Module, Columbia--to astronauts and the space program. These formerly nonplussed test pilots splashed down in the Pacific--my second day of life--and were reborn as living legends, whisked off to quarantine, like alien infants headed to a NASA incubator for a few weeks.

As a kid, my friends grooved on Evel Kenieval toy motorcycles and cars, but my favorite toy was a Steve Austin rocket that opened up into an operating table, where one Could Rebuild Him--just like Oscar Goldman intoned in the most iconic opening sequences in 70s television. Now that I think about it, that life-saving, $6 million-dollar-man-creating operation, which grafted bionics into Steve's arm, his eye, his legs, was the fictional reincarnation--and a more perfect outcome--of Apollo I's Gus, Roger and Ed, who died in the flames of a pre-flight test in which the engineers hadn't surmised one might need to open a space hatch quickly.

Despite the Bionic Man's great fortune, there are no actual fender-benders when launchpads are involved. In my 17th year, when my classmates and I had returned from lunch for the second half of English, our notoriously irreverent and subversive teacher delivered the somber news that Challenger had exploded shortly after liftoff--my generation's Kennedy moment, in which we'll never forget our whereabouts when we heard. They traced the loss of those seven souls to a number of factors, the most significant of which were temperature-sensitive 37-foot rubber O-rings, miniatures of which were worn on the wrists of million American teenagers, in the style of Madonna. This writer was one of them. In that tragedy, we lost seven: Ellison, Michael, Dick, Gregory, Ron, Judith, and of course Christa, a teacher-astronaut from Concord, New Hampshire, who beat out hundred of applicants to represent the non-space faring public.

Over time, the news of Shuttle launches--and astro-scientists populating a chunky, burgeoning space station--once again became part of our cultural white noise, as they had before Challenger's demise. We had other things to distract us: the Internet, a youthful Kennedy-esque president, Ivy-League graduates making a killing on tech start-ups that did nothing but hemmorage their backers' millions...

So by the one-hundred-and-seventh Shuttle launch, on a cold January morning of 2003, I imagine no one other than die-hard NASA enthusiasts and the crew's loved ones followed Columbia's mission with much interest. Columbia was the oldest of the fleet, and the first to launch into low-earth orbit, during STS-1 on April 12, 1981. She had 27 safe launch-and-landings under her fuselage. Sadly--and like the Challenger, involving a seemingly innocuous part of Shuttle design--a chunk of insulating spray foam broke from the external fuel tank as Columbia rocketed past the "Throttle up" sequence, about 81 seconds into its flight, blowing a hole in the orbiter's left wing.

Fifteen days later, mission goals met, as Columbia streaked homeward, the hellish temperatures generated by re-entry seeped into that wing and ate up the orbiter, only 16 minutes from a safe landing at the Kennedy Space Center. She broke up over the Southwestern United States, killing the crew and destroying their craft. Again, seven souls were lost, including Rick, Michael, Willie, Dave, Kalparia, Laurel and Ilan.

Since then, an additional 22 shuttle missions have safely launched and returned, and NASA has wound down the program, amassing trillions of mothballs in big-ass closets, for our surviving three snub-nosed rocketplanes.

Which brings us to today, and the now: STS-133, the final mission of the shuttle Discovey, is in its final minutes. As I type this, the orbiter is about to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a zippy 17,000 miles per hour. They're 400,000 feet up perking the shuttle's nose, in anticipation of shunting off 3,000 degrees of atmospheric friction. The crew on this mission includes Steve L., Eric, Alvin, Mike, Steve B. and Nicole.

What makes this mission special for myself is that my son and my mother and I were lucky enough to travel to Titusville, Fla. on February 24th, and watch them blast off from Cape Canaveral. It was stunning, even from a few miles away. Discovery, a white tube with a flaming dragon's tail, flew an ever-swifter arc over the Atlantic. The roar of the solid rocket boosters enveloped all of us, gathered in Sand Point Park, spectator/picnic-goers. Red, white and blue on a green lawn. Sunhats. Lawnchairs.

About a minute into the launch, my stomach tightened, for this was the time we lost Challenger, but Discovery smoothly powered its way up and up. As it became a tiny dot, I was pretty sure I saw the separation of the two solid rocket boosters. A perfect launch, executed apparently with only seconds to spare due to a last-second hold from one of the launch-control teams.

Just a few minutes later, the smoky residue began to dissipate, turning memory into cloud. Even humankind's most powerful machines are but fleeting against the wind.

I told myself I'd monitor this mission more than any other--and I've checked in on the Internet, watching video of their two space walks. Mission Specialists Al and Steve B. suited up twice. Here's a shot of one guy using a drillgun to fasten something to the hull of the International Space Station. A drillgun! More or less just like a DeWalt or Makita I would use backstage in a theatre, except, you know, in space!

Know what else? The guy was a last-second replacement when another guy wrecked his bike. Life works like that, even for astronauts. They are like us, except that they are more perfect versions of us. Or perhaps more apt, they have demonstrated an elastic tenacity and believed in themselves and their goals. Their talents--and great fortune--have delivered them to this moment--returning to the present--as they are now 19 minutes from touchdown, slowed to a more sedate 14,000 mph, rolling Discovery's wings slowly from right to left, waving at the stars, the clouds, the commuters locked on the LIE.

I'm going to publish this post now and watch a live video stream of the landing. I like their chances. Later, I'll adorn this post with some artwork -- photos of the launch, and the mission insignias. But for now, I'm thinking just of the crew and their fallen colleagues, memorialized with a simple monument in Titusville, with plaques for the 17 of them. They were, quite simply, the best of humans.

One last thought. As Discovery's crew made their fiery ascent into low orbit that Thursday afternoon, it occurred to me that a rocket launch is a metaphor for life: burning fast and quick against awful and yet beautiful possibilities. Our lives will all burn out eventually. We all can make the best of our fuel, our motivations, our loves and our dreams. It's all we have.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for Endeavour, which is scheduled for a final launch on April 19, and Atlantis, set for its swan song in late June.

Drinking From The Nile

I hope everyone pauses to drink from the watershed moments of today, last week, last month, last year, and when we were young.

Strangers are hugging each other in Tahrir Square. About four hours ago, young people toppled a modern pharoah, and jubilation has swept through the Egyptian night. As I type, I'm hearing a live feed from Cairo, and after each sentence, I click back to live pictures of the people dancing on the bridges.

Power changed hands via grenades and assault rifles in Egypt last time, in a brazen daytime attack that left a dozen people dead, including President Anwar el-Sadat, who had made peace with Israel and paid for it with his life. Reportedly, only one major Arab leader attended his funeral.

This time, however, it was an unarmed revolution of millions. The protesters not only multiplied in a response to a series of disingenous, smokescreen concessions, but also simply held their ground--peacefully--and settled for no less than their president's resignation. Defiant of the "father," the sons and daughters took care of their own, as neighborhood patrols sprung up around Cairo and Alexandria to provide ad hoc security when this police state found itself suddenly police-less.

Further upstream, in Sudan, a historic, nearly unanimous, transparent vote by the citizens of the South has carved a non-violent road through a new republic, the latest healing step of a region shredded by horrific civil war. Even the poorest, most downtrodden people can show an entire planet what dignity truly looks like. Holding their heads high, they now add to their list of daily chores the writing of a constitution and the choosing of a national anthem.

And this may not be the end, as the waters of protest slosh over the sides of the Middle East bathtub... Tunisia overthrew its oppressive regime just a few weeks ago, which contributed to the cresting unrest in Egypt. Citizens in Yemen, Algeria and Jordan have also recently stood up for themselves in demonstrations against autocratic regimes. One can only imagine what Mubarak's resignation will mean for disenfranchised people across the region.

One would also hope that Al Jazeera's reputation as an objective news source has been greatly solidified as a by-product of these events. The more legitimate its position in the Western mind---the more we see our brothers and sisters afar as fellow humans with the same wants and needs as ourselves--the less power will be available for siphoning by the nihilistic agendas of Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, who all owe more to Joseph Goebbels for their playbooks and their craven enrichment than to the institutions they claim to support.

These developments come at a human cost, of course, too. Hundreds of Egyptians have been killed or tortured, A renegade general in South Sudan launched attacks this week--since quelled--that shattered a tenous peace and left some 150 dead, many of them villagers caught in the crossfire. Day-to-day life in Tunisia is still volatile and a new government is long from sorted out. There is also the difficult subject of sacrifices made by people who have gone so far as set themselves on fire--first in Tunisia and then in duplicate in Egypt and Alergia--a shocking kind of reverse suicide bombing in which the taking of life as a political act is limited to their own. Unilaterally harming oneself in various ways has long been a form of protest. Gandhi himself participated in many hunger strikes during the British Raj, to great effect, although this writer would guess that the Mahatma was less than comfortable with the act of dousing oneself in gasoline and self-immolating... Admittedly, I am no scholar on the subject but found some interesting reading here

In the end, however, today is not a day for debate. It is clear that Freedom has been flowing upstream in the Middle East, and when water meets mountains, mountains eventually dissolve. We might all dance tonight with strangers. We might all plunge into the waters of celebration. We might all pause and hug our children, telling them that on the other side of the globe, a nation has shown the world a strength only achievable through peace. Gotta go.. our president is on the telly, quoting King.

One Month, Twelve Lives...

Aaaaaaaand... we're back. Sometimes so much happens in a short amount of time (see also, Genesis) that a meaningful response is elusive. It's as if one's senses are hung--like Windows '98--or that the act of carrying on from day to day freezes us out of the immediate, and into a State of Shock.

And thus it was with BlaiserBlog, its winter voice lost in an 18" snow drift. However, as we drew the weathered curtains on this first month of 2011, we seized upon that last bit of January light, and salvaged a raison d'être: paying tribute to some Great Americans who recently shuffled off to Buffalo their mortal coil.

Contrary to the grand tradition of awards shows (teary montages that invariably make one think, Oh that's right....I forgot he died this year... huh.....where'd that bowl of Doritos® go?) the crack team of researches here at BB present some dearly departed folks whose singular contribution to American life may have passed unnoticed on your radar, and about whom we will now sing. (For an aural companion, please press Play (below) for the thoughtful strains of legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré, and then read at your leisure: All Great Americans will be honored in order of disappearance.)



December

Frank S. Emi (above, left), a grocer and one of over 100,00 Japanese-Americans herded into prison camps during the Second World War. Not one of our finer moments. This brother, however, left the comforts of his home and went quietly to Wyoming to the ironically named Heart Mountain facility, which defaulted into the largest "city" in the entire state during the war years. (School yourself here.) Mr. Emi would have patiently waited things out, had the government not decided to conscript the prisoners into fighting for Democratic ideals conveniently forgotten during their mass relocation. For his courageous stand and organizing efforts--one of six, out of the Heart Mountain population of 11,000 who stood up and said No--he was rewarded with a conviction on federal conspiracy charges. An appellate court restored sanity by overturnng the decision, but not before he spent 18 months in the Leavenworth Pen. President Truman pardoned some 300 of the internee resisters in a silent apology, but my research indicates Mr. Emi didn't make that list. Many years later, his patriotism was finally recognized by a group of Japanese-Americans veterans, shoring up a critical brick in the American foundation: There is more than one way to fight for American liberty. Although he lost his family business during "relocation," he became a postal worker and enjoyed a long life, dying at 94 with a family that included two daughters, one stepdaughter, nine grandchildren and four great-granchildren. May we all be so lucky.
 
November

Allan R. Sandage, 84, the scientific heir apparent to Edwin Hubble, who acheived susperstar status amongst, um, telescope guys. Most notably, he broke with the findings of his mentor, arriving at the hypothesis that the actual age of this universe is 15 billion years old, not 13 million. This can only be good, because I'm certain we're going to need the extra time to figure out a bunch of life's ineffable questions, the first of which is: Why are there so damn many spellings of Allan...?

October

Here's to you, Mr. We-evolved-from-space-alien-gods-who-hail-from-a-12th-planet-called-Nibiru-and-who-crossed-the-solar-system-in-B-movie-styled-rocketships-to-enslave-proto-hominids-and-mine-terrestrial-precious-metals. It's a long name, I know--you may choose to call him Zecharia Sitchin--but it's apt for a fellow with a long tale. You can debate whether his methods are sound science or insane fantasy, but you can't really argue with his book sales: His first treatise, The Twelfth Planet, is enjoying its 45th printing, and that's just here on Earth. Story goes, in the mid-Pleistocene Epoch, some really tall dudes on a 3600-year orbit swung by to plunder our gold and stayed for 447,450 years. In exchange, they created us. (Thanks, for that!) One can only imagine why they ran screaming from the place, around 550 BC, but it was probably man's unique talent to take the beautiful and simple, and twist it into the ridiculous and complicated. The births of both Confucious and the Buddha suspiciously coincide at this time, for example. And, it's not hard to imagine extraterrestrial exasperation getting the better of them after1500 years of the Babylonians counting their mutton in Base 60. ("We give you the gift of life through interstellar DNA and the best number system you can come up with is this shit?")

Mr. Sitchin rode the strength of his convictions to age 90, and delighted millions of readers along the way. On the subject of his life's work, a top Amazon reviewer gushes, "Ultra important...even if 50% of it is wrong..." May the same be said of all of us.

September



For 50 years, the brilliant Paul Conrad (1924–2010), dean of editorial cartooning, cracked up his colleagues, pissed off politicians, and shrugged off death threats in service of drawing our national conscience. He was Pulitzer-ed three times during a tenacious career, and singled out for top honors in the foreign press as well. In 2006,  PBS's critically acclaimed series, Independent Lens, documented his life. If you Netflix it, I'll warrant you'll not be disappointed.

Self-describing his work as "90% idea and 10% drawing," was a modest assessment. Indeed, he was an accomplished sculptor as well; bronze was his medium. I like bronze but I don't think I realized why until just now: it's the working man's precious metal--a substance of honesty and integrity. Gold (despite its attraction to space aliens) is soft. Silver is for show. You want to craft a no-nonsense truth that refuses to hide behind a glittery facade? Go with bronze.

Reagan Hood --- He steals from the poor.....

Thank you, Mr. Conrad, for helping to keep it Real, in often unreal circumstances.

August

Let's face it: most of us are horribly underread. So was this guy by all accounts--but in his case, it wasn't that he hadn't read a lot; rather not enough people have read him. My Lebanese–American brother Vance Bourjaily slipped on to the next life having made it to 87, leaving an enviable trail of literary breadcrumbs, and here I sit, a man of some letters (B through perhaps I?) and I learn of the guy posthumously. From Wikipedia.... one could weep.

Turns out, he was a bon vivant who did it all: rubbed shoulders with Mailer and moviestars; taught at the celebrated Iowa Writer's Workshop for 20 years and directed the first writing MFA program at Louisiana State;  wrote features in 'Frisco and threw the best literary parties in New York. And lots of other writing and editing, including reviews, essays, short stories. And don't forget the novels, too--seven of 'em. His Big Book was his first, apparently. It's The End of My Life, published in 1947. I'm budging it to the top of my Library queue (sorry Roger Angell... I'll get to you, I swear it)

July

Dan Schorr makes me think of my grandpa, who passed away in 1989. He was a journalist as well, and he was born the same year as this giant of American reporting. I knew Schorr's work primarily from NPR, but the gentleman from the Bronx had long ago dug the trenches from which other reporters made their bones.(And mixed their metaphors...) For starters, he interviewed Khrushchev before my mother was even out of middle school. He also gave President Nixon enough grief to make it on the infamous List of Enemies, which he discovered when he read the list on live television. That must have been one hell of a moment. On the radio, his voice--liquid and wavy like his elderly-gent face--carried the kind of measured gravitas that said "I'm telling you the way it is because I have nothing to lose and I've seen it all." And consider this: Any newsman who also sang Gershwin with Zappa and stared down Congress, refusing to name names, is a fella I'd want on my side. And I think he was. Dan Schorr was 93, and lived a great American life.

June

Bob Greene, Sr., the oldest Makah World War II veteran, passed on at the age of 92. Who are the Makah you may ask? Well, they're the Qwiqwidicciat, of course, a marine-loving people of the Olympic peninsula, and no, that's not the one in Greece... Bob Greene was, by all accounts, a great guy. Until they banned it, he'd sit in the gym stands of his grandkids' high school and whale away on a cowbell to whoop up the crowd. A logger by trade, he was also known as a boxing champion, a one-man aluminum-can recycling tour-de-force and the keeper of his tribe's oral traditions as the oldest speaker of the Makah tongue. Let us remember him and give consideration to his people.



May

Dustin Shuler liked to crack jokes

and frequently did, with his sculpture. His best-known work was Spindle (above), an installation in the parking lot of an Illinois strip mall. (The cars, in order of skewerage, are here.) You may remember this Midwest icon from the "Wayne's World" movie, or, if you happen to be a reader of the comic Zippy the Pinhead. Sadly, the pinheads in Berwyn finally decided to knock Spindle down, and that must have been a poor day for Mr. Shuler. Happily, much of his work survives, a legacy kept safe from the caprice of municipal bureaucracy. Good thing, too.

April

Carolyn Rodgers' work brought poetrics to the Black Power movement. She also helped found the Third World Press, perhaps the most important publisher of Black writing, and wrote poems rooted first, in angry liberation and later, evolving spirituality. And, she apparently had no problem holding a room: Fellow poet and publisher Haki Madhubuti said, "“When she read, people would sit up and take notice. Men gravitated toward her like she was a Corvette.” She taught in many universities, from her native Chicago to Indiana and Washington state and wrote widely on Black American life for many publications. Here's an early poem, written in response to (largely) male critics made skittish by her "unfeminine" voice:

they say,
that i should not use the word

muthafucka anymo
in my poetry or in any speech i give.
they say,
that i must and can only say it to myself
as the new Black Womanhood suggests
a softer self
a more reserved speaking self. they say,
that respect is hard won by a woman
who throws a word like muthafucka around
and so they say because we love you
throw that word away, Black Woman ...
i say,
that i only call muthafuckas, muthafuckas
so no one should be insulted.

Had Ms. Rodgers lived past 69, this self-described "little black slim ink pen" would have certainly continued her dance of mighty calligraphy across the pages of American literature.

March

From 1952 to 1986, Eugene Allen never missed a day on the job and worked his way up from a dish washer to Maitre D'. His employer? The U.S. federal government. His patrons? Eight administrations of presidents, their famililes, their thousands of guests at state dinners and official White House functions. Mr. Allen always put his work first, even respectfully turning down an invitation to JFK's funeral so that he could be on hand to feed the First Family upon their return home. In 34 years on the job, however, he only saw one black man granted passage through the highest peaks of the executive branch: Colin Powell, who was appointed National Security Advisor during the twilight of the Reagan presidency. More than 20 years after his retirement, his story became a national sensation on the heels of Barack Obama's ascendency to the Oval Office. Nonplussed at the media clamor at his front door, he said No to numerous offers, declining to cash in on the advent of a black president. The following January, he was a special guest of honor at the inauguration. I cannot fathom what that day meant to Mr. Allen, as a U.S. Marine escorted him to the VIP seating, but I do know it was one of the greatest days I've seen as an American. Also, that careers such as his, those of longevity, integrity and humility ought to be required study in our schools and universities. Eugene Allen was 90.

February

T-Bone Wolk, who lived and died on four strings, was not only a bassist's bassist but a bandmate's bandmate. If you listened to any radio at all in the 80s, you heard him making everyone around him better. If you were ever mesmerized by G. E. Smith's camera mugging, when SNL returned from commercial break, chances are T-Bone was backing him up. If you've listened to songs by Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Roseanne Cash, Elvis Costello, and especially Hall & Oates, you heard T-Bone. Allegedly referred to by his good friend Daryl as "the ampersand in Hall & Oates," T-Bone was universally loved and respected, and his death at 58 sent shockwaves through pop-music afficiandos of a certain age. In a joint statement released after his passing, Hall said, "T-Bone was one of the most sensitive and good human beings that I have ever known," while Oates added, "His musical sensibility was peerless..." and that Wolk had led other bandmembers by example, evolving organically into the group's musical director. T-Bone showed people how to play, and how to live, from late period Philly soul right up to his death, appearing regularly in the popular Web series, "Live From Daryl's House," shot monthly in Hall's home studio. They gave ol' T-Bone a memorial show, and you can check it out here.

January

This brother also played four-stringed soul in Philadelphia--on the cello--but started just a little earlier than T-Bone. In 1924, Orlando Cole walked through the doors of the Curtis Institute just as soon as they would swing open. Ten years later, his training finished, he toured the world with the Curtis String Quartet. Despite an artistic tiff between the Institute and the Quartet--birthing their own damn program, the New School of Music--Cole logged over 75 years of teaching at Curtis, and, given the chance, would have done it all over again. Don't know about you, readers, but for me, the cello is the human heart built in maple, gut, horsehair. Its origins date to the 1500s and the best players today are stewards of instruments over 300 years old. It doesn't matter how long Steve Jobs cracks the whip in California... there ain't never gonna be an iCello that stacks up against a Strad.

And so it's fitting at the end of this do-decal homage to Americans Past, that we offer the great "Landy" Cole, who died in his 102 year, listening to Schubert's Cello Quintet and surrounded by some of the many who loved him. Here's a lovely tribute, written by one of his hundreds of students. 

That's all, folks. Thanks for reading, and I hope this one was worth the wait. I had fun discovering these righteous humans, and bringing a little bit of their lives to you. See you in Feb. It's only got 28 days, I hear.