A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
War of Drugs
Derek Lowe puts paid to the myth that the Pharma business just takes research from the NIH to develop new drugs. Tangentially deriving my salary from the Pharma/Biopharma industry, I’ve had to try to justify its business practices to friends and family for a few years now. Derek’s a lot better at it than I am. That’s why I got him to write for my magazine.
The Kavern Klub
If I hadn’t just read Foucault’s Pendulum, I probably wouldn’t give this story a second thought. Of course, the creepier connotation is Ted Roszak’s novel Flicker, but I don’t think too many of you have read that one.
Early and Often
I know Illinois is fabled for electoral corruption, but I sincerely doubt that Jesus Christ is registered to vote there in November.
Riding Suzuki
Ichiro Suzuki, the right fielder for the Seattle Mariners, is chasing the record for most hits in a season for a major league player (257, by George Sisler, in a 154-game season in 1920).
Yesterday, Ichiro somehow went five-for-five at the plate, raising his average to .379.
I saw Ichiro play in his rookie season in America (he’d previously played eight seasons with the Orix BlueWave in Japan). I had great seats for a Mariners-Indians game at Safeco field. In a late-inning, close game, Ichiro was up to bat. The M’s had a runner on third, and the Indians decided to bring the infield in to try to stop the run from scoring on a grounder.
Ichiro was incredulous. He stepped back from the plate for a moment, lowering his bat and not-quite-giving a cocker spaniel tilt. He hit the first pitch perfectly over the head of Cleveland’s shortstop (the wonderful-fielding but not very tall Omar Vizquel), dropping it right on the edge of the grass: run scores, Ichiro safely aboard. That moment at the plate was artistry.
(By the way: It was pretty funny seeing him stand next to Indians’ first baseman Jim Thome, who is built much like Thor. Ichiro looked like his son.)
In his short time in the league, Ichiro’s accomplished plenty with his bat, his incredible speed, and his monster throwing-arm, but I really didn’t think he had a chance at catching Sisler when I read about his numbers a month ago. When I saw the box score this morning, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
Ichiro’s got 27 games left this season. He projects out to 119 more at-bats (he barely ever takes a walk). To get the 34 hits necessary to tie the record, he needs to hit .285 for the remainder of the season. He’s currently at .379, as I mentioned.
So that got me wondering: Just how many hits would Ichiro need to get his average up to the holy land of .400?
If the at-bats project out (in other words, if pitchers don’t start walking him intentionally), Ichirio would need 60 more hits to get up to .400. With 119 at-bats left. Meaning he’d need to hit over .500 in the last 27 games to get there.
If it were any other player, I’d say that’s impossible.
Russia and Terrorism
Neither side fucks around. Scenes like this one are only going to occur more frequently:
(AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)
Observations
I’ve now spent a minimum of several days in three European capitols in the past 5 weeks. Here are two things I’ve noticed:
Europeans only have two kinds of Coca-Cola: Coke and Coke Light (Diet Coke). A couple of places had Vanilla Coke, but it was rare. This contrasts with the U.S., where there are a bazillion different varieties of Coke, including my greatest ally/deadliest nemesis, Cherry Coke.
Europeans do not modify their cars to install those rims that keep on spinning after the wheels have stopped.
I’ll post more of these as warrants. I’ll be in London, Brussels and Amsterdam by the end of the year, so that oughtta provide me with plenty of fodder.
For those of you who care about what I’ve been reading, I finished that Irvine Welsh book and Flaubert’s Parrot, and read the first 70 pages of the biography of Stan Lee, which was co-written by my pal Tom Spurgeon (with Jordan Raphael). The book just came out in paperback, and I’m finding it pretty engaging. You should buy a copy.
During the flight, my entertainment screen kept zotzing out, so I turned on the PowerBook and watched my Chinatown DVD, reaffirming my belief that it’s one of the best movies in American cinema, and probably the closest our art has come to Greek tragedy.
Lame and obtuse
Romeo Dallaire is pissed at the international (lack of) response to the genocide in Darfur:
“I am just disgusted with the lame and obtuse responses coming from Canada and the Western world.”
Why should you care what he thinks? Because Romeo Dallaire was the commander of UNAMIR during the Rwanda genocide, and he’s seen what happens when the international community twiddles its thumbs during atrocities in Africa. I’m midway through L. Gen. Dallaire’s memoirs, Shake Hands With the Devil. You need to read this book if you care about the canard called “mutlilateralism.” I bought it through Amazon, but it seems that it was a Canadian edition. It looks like a U.S. one is coming out soon, with an introduction by Samantha Power, who’s also unhappy with international response to Darfur. She wrote an impressive and scathing article in last week’s New Yorker (which doesn’t put past articles online, it seems).
I’m flying home tomorrow morning.
Today, I had time to go over some maps and figure out some landmarks, before setting out. I love to just go walking in cities. I must make sure to thank my publisher for turning me on to Rockport DresSports, which are the comfiest dress shoes I’ve ever owned.
Anyway, I looked at the tourist maps over breakfast, and re-traced some of yesterday’s steps. At some points, it felt like the old days of the internet, when you’d download an image and it’d show up rough at first, then increase in resolution as more data came through. Yesterday was a rough sketch of this part of the city. It turned out I’d passed a lot of things that I simply wouldn’t have found without this map (like the Jewish Museum, below).
The weather was also beautiful, which improved my mood a little. And I had a conversation with a clerk at that museum, which helped me talk out some of my impressions of the city, and how it differs from other places I’ve been. Conversation (and it really is two-sided, despite what you readers who’ve actually spoken to me might think) is important to me. “Talkin’: it fixes things,” as Tony Soprano once said.
Here are a ton of pix:
Rosenborg castle, where they keep the crown jewels.
The Danish National Gallery. Unfortunately, the Turner exhibition doesn’t open till tomorrow. Grr.
I love the color of these houses. Dunno what it is. I might paint my guest room in those shades this fall. Turns out that there are rows upon rows of houses like this. They’re so darn old, it’s tough to imagine them being right in the middle of the city. I’m not sure if the scale is conveyed through the two pictures, but there’s no way on earth I could walk through any of the doors without seriously slouching, and I’m 6’1″. So it sorta made me wonder about the ability to keep a city’s history firmly in place, and how difficult it makes modernization. And it made me wonder if modernization is necessary for everyone. And that would be me on vacation, thanks.
Saint Paul’s church. I just liked the color against the sky. It’s really a beautiful day: mid-60s, nice breeze, lots of sun. I’m pretty happy.
The entry to a military garrison called Kastelet (might be a generic name for garrisons). It’s an island base, still functioning.
A monument to the Danish soldiers who died in World War II.
Just a picture near the entrance to the base. I liked the stillness of the water, and the reflection of the grass hill above it. I was hoping it’d mirror well, but the breeze nixed that plan. I still think it’s a nice photo.
Evidently, the little mermaid was not invented by Disney.
Amalienborg, the winter home of the royal family. It consists of four palaces surrounding a square. Here’s another pic of it. It’s got some history.
Frederick’s church, as seen from Amalienborg, and closer up.
The fountain at the Royal Library (Bibliotek, okay?). I like the way the drops are caught in the light. Same shit, different angle.
The doorway to the Jewish Museum. The museum is designed by Daniel Liebeskind, the architect whose plan will be (mostly) followed for the new building on Ground Zero in NYC. It’s a neat museum, explaining the history of Jews in Denmark. I remember hearing years ago that they helped their Jewish population out during the war, but I didn’t know how extensive it was.
Evidently, more than 7,000 Jews got to safety in Sweden after the Germans decided to implement their Final Solution in Denmark, and less than 500 were sent to camps (85% of whom survived to return to Denmark). There’s a little theater where they show short movies about the history of the Jews here, the museum, and Liebeskind’s design. One explained the history of the immigration and acceptance of Jews in Danish culture. By the 19th century, they were pretty well assimilated into Denmark.
But then the Russian pogroms came, and thousands of Jews fled Russia. Well, a lot of them settled in Copenhagen, and were pretty resented. According to the video, the assimilated Jews were taken aback by a collection of refugees who were socialists, Zionists, or hyper-orthdox. And I have to admit, it struck me as sorta comic. I mean, here are these people whose families have spent 200+ years working out their relationship with a country, finding freedoms they really didn’t have in many other European countries. So they’ve assimilated. I’m not sure how observant these Jews were, but they seemed pretty comfortable in the culture.
Then you’ve got this wave of immigrants showing up, spouting any one of three very discordant things (the aforementioned socialism, Zionism or orthodoxy), throwing the status of “normal” Jews into question. As one of the figures quoted in the video said, “Before you got here, we were Danes with a Mosaic faith. Now we’re Jews.”
Oy.
After the museum, I started walking home. I passed over Holmen’s canal, and really liked the composition of colors.
This shot is from the bridge that you see in the last pic, and the archway leads to the Parliament building.
