Author: Gil

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Breakfast of Regular Season Champions

I’m a man of routines. Once I hit upon a good way to do things, I stick with it. When I was on Atkins, it was no problem for me to consume 3 scrambled eggs, a spicy Thai chicken sausage, a banana, water and black coffee, every single morning. Every single goddamn morning. This practice worked out just fine, until my cholesterol started to blow up.

So I changed things up. Now it’s a bowl of Wheaties with some chopped dates, 1% organic milk, and the aforementioned banana, water and black coffee. It works, and I stick with it almost without fail.

But now there’s a problem. See, when you buy a box of Wheaties, you’re not just buying cereal; you’re buying The Breakfast of Champions. And sometimes General Mills’ idea of champion isn’t the same as mine.

After the Yankees got wrecked in the first round of the playoffs, Amy & I decided that we just couldn’t buy Wheaties with Alex “reigning AL MVP” Rodriguez on the box. It was too insulting, to see that grim demeanor and that looping swing, knowing that he’d been shown up on baseball’s biggest stage as a punk-ass bitch.

For a while, we were able to make do with leftover Shaq & Wade NBA championship boxes. When they ran out, we even started getting the smaller-sized box (Steve Nash), but my persistent case of cheap Jew stereotypism keeps me from buying the less economical size.

The situation is growing dire. The cereal aisle is filled with box upon box of home-run-swinging A-Rod, mocking us with his failure to deliver a timely hit in a big game. Will a new MVP never be crowned?

I fear that if I have to resort to that cereal, I will become like him. Perhaps I’ll write many pages of great editorial in the lesser issues of my magazine, but come October’s AAPS special, or come the July/August Top Companies issue, I’ll wilt.

The risk is too great. Maybe I can get by with BooBerry or the Cap’n.

Will there never be another Olympics?

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 17, 2006

What we see at Ground Zero and what we will see:

When the towers first fell and, in practically the same moment, so many turned to imagining their replacement, I was appalled. Later, when I started to write about the site, I avoided proposing designs of my own, both because they were banal and impracticable — I thought it would be cool to flood the bathtub — and because I felt such activities were beyond the scope of a responsible critic. I would often say, however — as I think I wrote or at least implied here once — two things: that the ultimate form of the reconstruction was unimportant as long as the process to achieve it, from the first planning session through the ribbon-cutting, was conducted with dignity; and second, that New York should be left to be New York.

t was as obvious then as now that those two ideas were in absolute conflict — that the city could in no way be the one we love and also comport itself with a special reserve — so I concocted a third idea, one that has proved remarkably durable, by way of resolution.

* * *

Last week in this space, I mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld is more than just The Guy Who Blew the Iraq War. He also tried to revolutionize/transform the U.S. military. This profile on him in the New Yorker is more charitable than I expected, or at least more willing to see the grays than to place him in a Manichean context.

And he blew the Iraq war.

* * *

Look, kids! An interview with writer, critic and Official VM Buddy Paul Di Filippo!

What do you use for note-taking, capturing ideas and tracking submissions? Are you a proponent of pencil and notebook; do you favour proprietary software; or is it open source everything for you, even though your initials are PDF?

I am old-fashioned enough to still stick with pen and paper for my note-taking. I have a pocket notebook brand that I love, Oxford Memo Books, because it’s sewn together instead of employing a metal spiral, and so when you sit on it, it doesn’t imprint your butt like something out of a Re/Search tribal scarification volume.

* * *

From science fiction to science disappointment: the 25 worst tech products of all time.

8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

Full of features, easy to use, and a virtual engraved invitation to hackers and other digital delinquents, Internet Explorer 6.x might be the least secure software on the planet. How insecure? In June 2004, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) took the unusual step of urging PC users to use a browser — any browser — other than IE. Their reason: IE users who visited the wrong Web site could end up infected with the Scob or Download.Ject keylogger, which could be used to steal their passwords and other personal information. Microsoft patched that hole, and the next one, and the one after that, and so on, ad infinitum.

* * *

If you’re a professional basketball fan, and you like getting some idea of what goes on behind the scenes in player negotiations, you really need to read this long and candid interview with the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Glen Taylor.

I can tell you that Chauncey [Billups] left not because of Kevin [McHale, the team’s GM] but because of Flip [Saunders, the Wolves’ coach]. Now, have we said that? We didn’t want to say that about Flip because he was here at the time. But I think since then it’s been stated that Kevin asked me if I would pay for Chauncey. I said I would. Kevin said he would, went to Chauncey, Chauncey said he would stay, because we were going to offer him the same [money] as Detroit. But then Chauncey went to Flip and said, would you play me, and Flip — I’m not saying that Flip said the wrong answer, but he said, “I’m not sure that I think that you’re our starting guard.” Chauncey then went back to Kevin, and Kevin says, basically, we’re going to be truthful. Kevin could have said to Chauncey, “Oh, we’re gonna start you.” And I know some GMs do that stuff. Then they get the player but they have an unhappy player. But Kevin doesn’t do that.

Unfortunately, it looks like questions about the remarkably stupid tampering arrangement with Joe Smith were off limits. This is a pity, because you can pretty easily make the case that the T-Wolves would’ve been in much better shape if they had draft picks over the years. But losing those picks and having a salary cap-buster like Garnett on the team meant they had to be the most creative team in the NBA. And with Kevin McHale running the show, that made it a recipe for disaster.

* * *

Amy sent me this great post by Dan Jardine on the varieties of cinematic inexperience:

I am not of the Pauline Kael School of film criticism that argues that your initial impression of a film is the only one that matters, and to revisit and reevaluate a film is a fool’s errand fraught with the potential for emotional and intellectual dishonesty. Indeed, I can think of plenty of legitimate reasons to take stock of a film anew. What if there were mitigating environmental factors — such as problems with the projector or the sound, or even with the audience itself — that hampered your ability to enjoy the film? What of format issues? I mean, what if, like me, your first experience with Lawrence of Arabia was on television, in full screen format and interrupted by commercials? Or what if you were in the wrong head space after a fight with your partner or a bad day at work and weren’t able to give the film the attention and scrutiny it deserved?

* * *

Witold Rybzcsinski on the decline of architecture magazines:

A reduction in intellectual content in the glossies was largely the result of an increased reliance on photography, especially color photography. There’s something about a color photograph that glamorizes its subject, and architectural writers soon adopted the slightly breathless tones of fashion reporters. You are more likely to find tough architectural criticism in the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and The New Yorker than in any of the major architecture magazines.

* * *

Victor Davis Hanson sings “I left my appendix in Tripoli”:

Libyans seem to talk nonstop. It’s as if they have been jolted from a long sleep and are belatedly discovering, thanks to their newfound Internet, satellite television, and cell phones — many carry two to ensure that they are never out of service from competing companies — that there is indeed a wide world outside of dreary Tripoli and beyond the monotonous harangues of government socialists on the state-owned TV and radio stations.

They talked about their new gadgetry, and much else, with infectious optimism. As one hopeful Libyan travel entrepreneur with friends in the government explained, there might be some irony after all to Libya’s long, self-imposed insularity. Yes, he conceded, foreign investment declined. Oilmen left. Petroleum production nose-dived from more than 3 million barrels to never more than 2 million. But there was a silver lining: Did all that not have the effect of saving Libya’s precious resource to await the return of the present sky-high prices? Yes, Libya had banked a sort of strategic oil reserve that now was to be tapped at its most opportune moment. Yes, it was Libya’s grand strategy to deny Westerners its petroleum treasure for years, until they finally came around to pay what it was really worth

* * *

At Slate, Daniel Gross discusses the trend of foreign companies to buy U.S. brands that are on the wane:

[T]o these foreign owners, the U.S. market represents the holy grail. American consumer-oriented firms that have saturated the U.S. market, such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Nike, look to developing markets for their growth. But these foreign buyers see a different kind of opportunity here — an unmatched combination of wealth and growth that doesn’t exist in Germany, or China, or Denmark. The U.S. domestic market, 300 million people strong, is composed of wealthy consumers who routinely spend more than they make.
But iconic American brands only tend to come up for sale when they’re damaged.

It’s funny to me is that, for more than a century, China has been the holy grail for U.S. & European companies, along the lines of, “If we just get [x]% of them to go for our brand, we’ll be rolling in dough!”

* * *

Dare to dream and all that, but I still don’t believe Rem Koolhaas’ Chinese Television Authority building is going to stand up.

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Money gets Flushed Away

I was reading the Wall Street Journal this morning and saw a piece on how DreamWorks Animation will be writing down its costs on Flushed Away in the 4Q because of its poor box office. ($ only, so no link for you)

The film, which chronicles the adventures of a pampered rat who is flushed into a world of tough sewer rats, cost DreamWorks $142.9 million and has so far taken in $40 million at the box office, the company said.

It doesn’t make any mention of the marketing costs (independent of production costs), but a good deal of that tends to get offset by co-promotion with fast food & toys.

So . . . $143 MILLION?

For a computer-animated film by the Wallace & Gromit people? WTF did they spend all the money on? Gold throat lozenges for Hugh Jackman & Kate Winslet?

(I need a ruling here: both Bill Nighy and Jean Reno are in this one, but since it’s only voice-work, does that mean it’ll still automatically be a good movie?)

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Mourning light

I started Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier this week. It’s about his explorations into that mourning prayer following the death of his father. My brother gave it to me a few years ago.

I’m only starting out — about 70 pages into its 574, but much of it is sorta epigrammatic, so it’s not a long slog — and it’s helping me formulate questions about faith, prayer and language. It also yielded this wonderful paragraph during this morning’s reading:

I have read of people whose lives are transfigured in an instant. I do not believe that such a transformation can happen to me. For what changed those people was not only the instant, but also their subsequent fidelity to the instant. This is the paradox of revelation. It disrupts the order of things and then depends upon it.

Without tradition, a revelation is merely an epiphany. It can inspire nothing more than art.

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More weekend rambling

The rest of the weekend after the reunion? Quiet, generally. I drove home and realized that I needed water and sugar, which the Coca-Cola Corporation was only too ready to provide. Once home, I realized how tired I was, and how tired I was going to stay until Sunday.

So I chilled out with Amy, partook of the hair of the dog, and finished reading Epileptic, a really fine comic by a French cartoonist about living with a brother who has severe epilepsy. It’s an awfully challenging book (about 350 pages, by the way), because David B. doesn’t actually represent anyone in a sympathetic light, except perhaps his little sister. In general, his parents pursue any half-baked cure they can find for his brother, including magnetism, macrobiotics, spiritualism, and other mystic forms. David B.’s “character” (it’s portrayed as autobiographical) concludes at one point that his brother ‘chooses’ epilepsy, and that he uses his disease as a way to avoid life.

Challenging, like I say, because it’s clear the brother’s not in control of his disease at all, but that he’s also not simply a victim of it. Simultaneously, ‘David B.’ plunges deeply into cartooning and storytelling in an attempt to translate his life and his reactions to his brother’s disease. It’s quite compelling, astonishingly drawn, and has a narrative flow that I found absolutely confounding. If you can read comics — and I know plenty of people who simply can’t read them, instead focusing only on the words — you should read this one.

Sunday was going to be a football day, but we kept bailing on games. We left the Jets/Patriots so we could hit a Linens & Things to pick up a new shower rod/curtain setup; we gave up on the Saints/Steelers (Amy knew better about the Saints than I did); and we were too tired to stick with the Bears/Giants. So it was a bits-and-pieces day, but at least we succeeded in dismantling the sliding-panel shower door and replacing it with the curtain.

We’re planning to redo the bathroom once I get a couple of other things squared away (dangerous trees in the yard are getting cut down this week, and I’m getting a plumber in to assess everything that’s wrong with the pipes in this place) and the holiday bonuses are sorted out. In fact, I got all outdoors-ish on Sunday morning, taking down some dead branches, bringing the summer-stuff inside, and wielding that electric chainsaw of mine willy-nilly. Except for the willy-nilly part, which has bad connotations when associated with a chainsaw.

Anyway, the upshot was that I got some of the yard cleared, got rid of the impossible-to-keep-clean shower door, and finished reading a good comic, while also trying to write up the reunion during my free minutes. And that was the weekend.

Monday: now that was a different story. We had an off-site editorial meeting to discuss internet strategy for our magazines. It was at the same location as the sales meeting I attended back in September, but people weren’t, um, “resting their eyes” during this meeting.

Actually, the meeting helped me understand an important difference between editorial and sales personnel. When the online sales meeting wrapped up, the salesmen all headed to the building’s scary bar, where they got a little shikker. When Monday’s meeting finished, the editors were happy enough to get a free lunch out of the deal, and everyone just headed back to the office.

But I got some good ideas for things we can do on the magazine’s website, and also had some thoughts about the redesign for this blog, and the overall site, which still needs to be constructed. If I can get far enough ahead on the 400-page issue of the magazine I’m working on, I’ll take some time off during Thanksgiving week and try to put together the new look-and-feel for this site.

Because that’s supposed to be my idea of fun.

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High School Booze-ical

The weekend high school mini-reunion plans changed quickly, so I took a half-day at work Friday and headed down to Pennsylvania for an evening of shooting the breeze over dinner & drinks.

I took the long way down from northern NJ (287, 206, 95), so as to avoid the Garden State Parkway and get a chance to stop in Princeton. I’ve always enjoyed Princeton, though I don’t think I’ve been to the campus more than once (my brother was looking for some Greek texts). This time, I hit Micawber Books and its used section, thought about the piles of books on the floor of my library downstairs, and didn’t buy anything. That was followed by a visit to Princeton Record Exchange, where I picked up a couple of used records (Madonna and Delerium), and got a present for the family who were putting me up on Friday night.

From there, it was off to the races. I got into Media/Swarthmore around 5:30, after the sun was down. I mention this because, due to traffic, I had to drive in from a different direction, and I got utterly lost in the dark. I ended up getting my bearings only when I realized I was about to turn onto the street where my mom lived from 1988 to 2000.

She & I moved down to the area in 1988, just before my senior year of high school. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve managed to stay in touch with many more friends from that single year than I have from the 17 years I grew here in NJ. Before going out to dinner, I talked for a while with my hosts, the parents of my buddy John. They’d always extended kindness my way, including this weekend, when they put me up on little notice.

John’s parents marveled over the impromptu weekend reunion. They said they were amazed at how well this group of friends stayed in touch over the years. I pointed out that it was a lot easier to do so thanks to e-mail, but they felt that I wasn’t giving us all enough credit. After all, plenty of people have managed to lose touch even in the age of e-mail. I conceded, and it got me wondering about what keeps this group of friends together, even when so many of us have moved away, are starting families, have busy jobs, and all the other excuses most people have.

The night’s festivities were in walking/stumbling distance of the house. We had John’s mom drop us off at the restaurant, so we could just amble home at the end of the night. She said, “Now, if you need a ride home at any time, just call me.”

I said, “Don’t worry; we’re not going to steal a car and drive drunk back to the house. John’s a got a one-year-old kid, and if I get one more conviction, it’s my ass.”

She laughed.

About half the crowd was waiting when John & I walked into the Iron Hill Brewery. There was one “outsider” present, but only because one of our guys was trying to cram a ton of friend & family visits into this weekend, so we didn’t give him any guff. For my part, I was hoping to see some Philadelphia friends during this trip, but I wasn’t too optimistic of the prospects for that. After all, I’d been traveling the two previous weekends, and it was awfully important to me to get home Saturday and spend time with my wife.

And that married / single dynamic was evident in strange ways during the night. Once the full crowd for Friday night was assembled, it consisted of six guys who are married — four of whom have kids — and two guys who are single (and, to the best of my knowledge, don’t have kids). The conversation didn’t mysteriously break along those lines, but I realized that the talk among married guys (at least in our set) is a little different than we have with the singletons. It wasn’t “the old ball and chain” sorta thing, just a sense that our crazier stories were behind us.

Similarly, the guys with kids were talking about things that Jim & I weren’t able to relate to. But it was no post-tower Babel; it’s just different frames of reference.

So we had dinner, and we drank (except for one of the guys who doesn’t go much for drinking nowadays, since he got it out of his system at Penn State), and we talked about where we are and what our families are doing, and we goofed on one another in the merciless loving way these guys have, and we looked at baby pictures.

The best aspect of the evening was the ease with which we could all fall into conversation. I don’t tend to be the guy with “news,” but it was nice being congratulated on my marriage by each newcomer during the evening, and asked about the wedding, the honeymoon, “adjusting to married life,” etc.

We traded notes on absent friends, both members of this group who couldn’t make the trip, and the other people we’re still in touch with from school. It got me thinking about some from there whom I have lost touch with, and whether I should look them up.

Speaking of which, the guys were surprised by the story about how my girlfriend from that high school era (1988-89) recently got in touch with me. That was mainly in the “Holy crap! I haven’t thought of her in years! How’s she doing?” vibe. There was also a little of the “How freaked out were YOU?!” line of questioning.

We traded stories about another guy’s high school girlfriend, who’s gone on to become a Lubavitcher Jew. One of the guys in our set couldn’t join us on Friday night because he seems to be going through the same transformation and doesn’t violate the Sabbath anymore. He planned to make up for it by putting together an extensive tailgating bash before the Eagles game on Sunday.

The evening moved from Iron Hill to a couple of nearby bars, with our group diminishing in number with each change of location. We ended up in a cheap-ass, wood-paneled bar that was filled with smoke. It was kinda shocking to me, since NYC and NJ both ban smoking in bars. I have civil liberties problems with this, but I have to admit it’s nice to get home from a night out and not stink of cigarette smoke.

Still, when in Rome and/or Media, PA . . .

The gin quality diminished with each change of venue, dropping from Hendricks to Bombay Sapphire to Tanqueray. You’d think that, by the 7th or 8th G&T, I wouldn’t notice the difference, but you’d be wrong; my gin-snobbery seems to know no bounds.

Fortunately, the conversation stayed entertaining, even as our numbers dropped. In the second bar, one of our guys explained to me the difference in quality of medical marijuana. In the last bar, another guy mentioned that his dad was a Skull & Bones member at Yale. He told us how he and his brother goofed on his dad when a S&B documentary was on TV, and kept grilling him to find out if Geronimo’s skull was really on display in their HQ.

My buddy John later told me how this guy’s dad was a really important figure to them when they were growing up. He was a respected scientist & professor and, besides being a go-to quote for many of their science reports, it also seems he was just really supportive of the kids, and demonstrated an intellectual curiosity that rubbed off on many of them.

Now, I’ve gone on pretty extensively about the way I’ve stayed friends with these guys, and how much their friendship has meant to me over the years. That said, they also have a million anecdotes from long before I got there, years of bonding from childhood on, that I’m just not privy to. And as John related this story about our friend’s dad, it made me wonder how I would’ve gotten along had I been around these guys from the beginning. Knowing me — and knowing what I was like as a youth — I’d likely have been the disaffected, bitter outsider who’d have managed to alienate myself from the whole squad. I was such a retard.

Following all this, John & I ambled back to his parents’ place around 2am. I settled into the twin-bed with the head- and foot-board (meaning I slept diagonally and curled), and woke up at 6:30am when the family dog came by to see who was in the room. Remarkably, I didn’t show much by way of ill effects from the night before, except for my Barry White voice, which is the inevitable result of my trying to be heard in loud bars.

Having gotten my share of gin the night before, I shifted over to my other two drinks of choice — water and black coffee — and got back into conversation with John’s parents. He remained asleep in his old bedroom, pending an 8:30 alarm clock. John’s dad wanted to talk about the election, and the political scene this decade, and it struck me as funny that, over the course of Friday night, that subject never came up once.

The next morning, five of us met up for breakfast at a cheap diner. When I say cheap, I’m talking $2.99 for 2 pancakes, 2 strips of bacon, 2 sausages, 2 eggs, and coffee. In fact, when the bill came, and everyone started trying to come up with change and small bills, I tossed a $20 on the table and said, “Oh, just throw in a tip, ferchrissakes.” Everyone handed me wads of singles instead. Go figure.

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 10, 2006

As you know, I’ve been interested in the development of the new Airbus A380 (the really big plane) and all the production problems Airbus has been having with it. The fact that I fly between 25,000 and 35,000 miles each year is a key contributor to this interest.

Barbara Peterson at Popular Mechanics takes care of my addiction with an article on the engineering issues Airbus is running into:

Will the A380 be the next Concorde — an engineering breakthrough with little chance of breaking even? Certainly, the problem the jetliner was supposed to help solve — airport gridlock — still exists. The world’s major hubs already operate at full capacity during peak hours, and traffic is expected to increase 4 percent annually, from 4.2 billion passengers in 2005 to 7 billion passengers in 2020. Building new airports or significantly expanding existing ones, though, is a practical and political nightmare.

The Airbus solution: Increase capacity with a plane that carries up to 900 passengers — nearly twice as many as the 747. “It is this big monster,” says Hans Weber, president of Tecop International, a San Diego-based aviation consulting firm. “And Airbus has struggled with the nightmare of making something this big economically efficient.”

Meanwhile, Boeing has gambled that the market is most interested in a fuel-efficient, midrange widebody that gives airlines flexibility. Its flagship project became the 250-passenger 787 Dreamliner, slated to go into service in 2008.

Virtually all experts agree that the A380 will eventually join the civilian fleet. (The plane’s maiden voyage — a planned Singapore Airlines flight to Sydney, Australia — was recently pushed back, again, and is now slated for late 2007.) But the problems facing the most expensive, ambitious nonmilitary aircraft project in history are mounting.

* * *

The AV Club interviewed Steven Wright this week. Turns out he and I share thoughts on travel:

AVC: What are the best and worst parts of touring?

SW: The best is definitely being in front of the audience, that rush in front of all those people. And then the other part is, “Oh my God, I’m in another hotel.” I say to my friends, if I won some contest, it would be like, “You have won five weeks in your own house!” Oh my God! I’d be jumping up and down hugging the host, hugging the other contestants.

AVC: So you’re not a fan of hotels?

SW: There’s just so many of them. It’s not that I don’t like hotels. This sounds kind of simple, but it’s true: The fact that you’re in a hotel means also that you’re not home. So as the time keeps going, and the experiences keep going, it’s like, “Man, I have not been home in this giant amount of time.”

I wonder if he was really enthusiastic and energetic in the interview.

* * *

Five teams of finalists have been named by the New Orleans Building Corp. for the project of rebuilding the city’s waterfront. Unfortunately, Frank Gehry’s on one of the finalist-squads.

The potential development zone includes a largely derelict 4.5-mile stretch of the north bank of the Mississippi River between Jackson Avenue and the Industrial Canal, which now includes mostly wharves and port facilities. It borders the Lower Garden district, the warehouse district, the French Quarter, Marigny, and Baywater.

The RFQ calls for new commercial, cultural, park, and transportation uses for the area, and for maintaining cruise and cargo operations. This, says Cummings, could include a continuous park with walking and bike paths, museums, a large performance venue, a culinary university campus, and modern cruise ship terminals. He stresses that the area will be oriented to public facilities, not ”condominiums and private property.”

* * *

In the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” category, Sheldon Silver helped shut down the West Side Stadium project, for which I’m quite thankful. As this City Journal article points out, Rep. Silver’s done a lot of stuff I don’t agree with:

Until last year, New York had an 80-year-old law that held auto-leasing companies ultimately responsible for accidents caused by drivers who leased or rented their cars. The law made about as much sense as, say, holding Chrysler responsible for accidents caused by the customers who buy and drive their vehicles. The law drove many auto-leasing companies out of New York, and it forced those that stayed to protect themselves by asking customers to jump through expensive legal hoops. The law had no constituency save the trial lawyers.

But the law stayed on the books thanks to Silver, who used his control of the assembly to block its repeal repeatedly. Silver said that he got in the way to protect victims of car accidents. But the more likely explanation for his obstructionism is that he himself is a trial lawyer and is beholden to the trial lawyer lobby. In fact, it took blanket federal legislation last year to nullify the auto-leasing law and similar if more limited laws in a few other states.

* * *

Rumsfeld et al. obviously mangled the postwar planning for Iraq, but I think he had some revolutionary ideas about how to execute a war-plan itself, sorta like being a good in-game basketball coach who has no ability to manage his players between games. The Iraqi army, one of the largest in the world, with months of preparation, was flat-out annihilated by a relatively light force of troops. That’s nothing to sneeze at, even with all the disastrous consequences. I think military theorists (and practitioners) will have plenty to learn from his mistakes and his successes.

Victor Davis Hanson goes a lot further in his praise for Rumsfeld.

* * *

Speaking of the election, Brandon Arnold at the Cato Institute contends that gerrymandering is still a major force in Congressional elections:

Consider that there were 435 races in the House and Senate with an incumbent trying to retain his or her seat. Only 26 — 6% — of challengers in these races have won. That’s pretty low for a “throw the bums out” election. Pending the outcome of three or four yet-to-be-determined races, this year’s 94% incumbent reelection rate appears to be slightly higher than the 90% rate of 1994.

* * *

Where’s the cup holder?

* * *

Pop music stars should not write children’s books. Only Ph.D.’s formerly at contract research organizaztions should write children’s books.

* * *

According to Theodore Dalyrmple, New Zealand once had excellent used bookstores but now has a crappy penal system.

* * *

And finally: “A chicken, with two asses!” (thanks, Tina!)