Blog

Ouch. Gregg Easterbrook — whose essays I enjoy and whose Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns on ESPN Page 2 are always a hoot — just got canned from the latter gig. I meant to write about his blog on The New Republic’s site last week, because he wrote an entry that I found pretty incomprehensible. Since the blog doesn’t use internal bookmark hyperlinks, you’ll have to go to here or over the Easterbrook link on the left side of this page, and scroll down to the 10.13.03 entry about Kill Bill and Quentin Tarantino’s fatuousness.

I don’t agree with his stance on the complete uselessness of Tarantino’s work, and I think Ron Rosenbaum makes a very neat case for Oliver Stone and Tarantino serving as stand-ins for Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but it was the closing paragraph that I found troubling and incomprehensible. And it’s why he’s been fired from his ESPN gig (and, in Soviet fashion, throw in the memory hole of the Page 2 site).

If you’re too lazy to go to the page itself, shame on you. But here’s the paragraph in question:

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can’t possibly miss the message–now Disney’s message–that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

I’ve read a bunch of Easterbrook’s work. I know that he’s a devout Christian, but not, as near as I could tell, an anti-semite. So the notion that Eisner and Weinstein, as Jews, “worship money above all else,” was disturbing. There’s been an uproar (I hate when people use the term ‘furor’ for this sorta thing, for obvious reasons) about the blog, and Easterbrook’s editor, a Jew, spoke out to defend him and criticize blogs (somewhat predictably).

Anyway, one of the reasons I didn’t write about this entry at the time was because I simply didn’t understand where he was coming from. The criticism of Jews came so out of left field that I actually thought the blog had been hacked that morning. It hadn’t. On Thursday, Easterbrook wrote an apology. Unfortunately, it didn’t make his argument that much clearer, and it seemed to imply that all Jews, as Jews, should think in certain ways. If you read it differently, please drop me an e-mail so we can discuss it.

PS: I won’t buy a Volkswagen. My father drives a Mercedes-Benz. We differ on a lot of subjects, and we’re just two Jews.

I’m on the road at present, touring pharma and genomics facilities in Phoenix (Wed.-Fri.) and visiting my best friend and his True Love in San Diego (Fri.-Sun.). It’s a little tiring, not least because I’ll be flying off to Salt Lake City next week for the AAPS conference, and off to Atlanta 10 days after that for the PDA annual meeting. But, as John Mellencamp once sang, “This is my life; it’s what I’ve chosen to do.”

The genomics initiative was pretty interesting, and I met up with some editors from other magazines, who sorta boggled over the amount of hats I wear in my role as editor of Contract Pharma. But when you’re a micro-managing control freak, you do what you have to.

During the flight Wednesday, the pilot gave us updates on the score of the Red Sox-Yankees game 6 and the Marlins-Cubs game 7. Chicago, demoralized by its epically fucked-up loss on Tuesday, were beaten by Florida. The Yankees also lost, unable to hold a 7th inning lead, leading to a deciding game 7 on Thursday.

Now, I warned the PR firm that was organizing the trip. I said to the liaison, “You have to understand: if the Yanks are playing the Sox in a game 7, I may disappear in the middle of the big dinner on Thursday night. I wouldn’t do this on just any night, but this would be the final game of a Yankees-Red Sox series. It could be epic.”

The liaison laughed, nervously.

Game 7 impended. Roger Clemens, whom I’ve never truly adopted as a Yankee, was throwing against Pedro Martinez, formerly the best pitcher in baseball, now a really good pitcher who has a tendency to throw at players when he struggles.

We listened to the first three innings on the radio in the van that took us from ASU’s new BioDesign Institute to the Westin, which was hosting a biotech venture capital event. I said to myself, “If Clemens wins this one like he did game 3, and I’ll accept that he really is a Yankee.”

(This could be the subject of a pretty rambling entry, the question of who’s a Real Yankee, and who just wore the uniform for a few years and rode the coattails of the Real players. It isn’t a question of which players were “home grown” and which were traded in or signed as free agents. The greatest Yankee of the last 10 years, in my opinion, is Paul O’Neill, who was traded over from the Cincinnati Reds. O’Neill, introduced for his at-bats with Springsteen’s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” was a Yankee through and through, despite having won a World Series title with another squad. Paulie burned to win, and it inspired the rest of the team. Chuck Knoblauch, who came over in a trade and won a few championships, was never a Real Yankee. He contributed pretty well, until he had a mental breakdown and couldn’t complete a throw from second to first, but he was never One Of Us. Anyway, I’ll provide a breakdown of Real Yankees and Fake Yankees some other time.)

Clemens was gone by the beginning of the 4th inning, down 3-0. He is Dead To Me, Dead! now. Despite all the career achievements, he failed to show up in his biggest (and possibly final) game.

(One of the fun things about game 7s — and there are a bunch — is that managers are willing to go “all hands on board” for the win, since there’s no tomorrow. Thus, Joe Torre ended up having three of his starters throw in this game, along with a few relievers. The only pitcher he held out was Andy “Ring of Jesus Fire” Pettitte, who had gone the night before and would’ve been ineffective.)

It sounded as if Pedro was throwing a heck of a game, so I grew despondent. During the cocktail hour at the Westin, I sneaked out to the Starbucks and checked out the game on the internet. I instructed my dad to call if there were any changes in score. The Yankees fell behind 4-0, before Jason Giambi (whose status as a Real Yankee I’ve yet to determine) belted a couple of solo home runs to get the score to 4-2. I had hope: one base-runner, a homer off of Pedro, and we’d be all tied up.

That hope dissipated when I saw that David Wells had given up a solo homer in the top of the 8th, leaving the Yankees down 5-2. With six outs remaining to them, I was sure that they’d lose the game and series, and that my work-trips to Boston would become a major trial, for the rest of my days. It’s bad enough to be heckled by anyone, but it’s really tough when the heckler has an accent that makes him or her sound like a borderline retard. I began to drink a little more heavily at the dinner.

Eventually, William Haseltine was introduced, and he proceeded to deliver his lengthy and rambling self-hagiography, occasionally tying back to genomics and the Translational Genomics initiative that’s taking place in the greater Phoenix area. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I took a look and saw that it was my father calling. I figured he was telling me that the game was over, and the Yankees lost. I hit “ignore.”

Then the phone vibrated again, moments later. A friend of mine was calling. I answered it, sneaking out of the dining area. She said, “I can’t believe it!”

“What happened?” I asked.

“They came back! Bernie knocked in Jeter, and Posada just drove in Bernie and Matsui! It’s tied up, and Jorge’s on second base with 1 out!”

“Holy shit!” I hung up, and raced down to the sports bar. “Gimme a G&T!” I said to the bartender-ess, adding, “Come on Ruben! Get me a hit to right field and drive this bitch home!”

(One thing you have to understand is, I sound like a Tourette’s patient when I watch a sporting event. I have a near-constant line of banter going on with the TV, which can be entertaining if you don’t take me too seriously. I mean, it’s not like I REALLY wanted Clemens to throw at Nomar’s head in game 3. I did want him to drill Manny Ramirez in the wrist, but that’s completely justifiable.)

Pedro had been pulled from the game after the Posada hit, having run out of gas several batters earlier. The Yankees couldn’t get another run across in the 8th, so they went into the 9th inning tied up. They brought in their super-heroic closer, Mariano Rivera, to preserve the tie. He was virtually unhittable, and I knew it was only a matter of time till the Yankees finished Boston off. With every Yankee at-bat, I rapped the brass surface of the bar (bruising several of my knuckles pretty badly in the process).

In the top of the 10th, two of the other editors came down to the bar. One said, “You are SO busted.”

“Dude, I SO don’t give a shit. The Yankees came back. They’re going to win the fucking series and destroy the hearts of Boston fans for another generation! Now siddown and have a drink!”

By the top of the 11th, the rest of my group had come down to harass us at the bar. I said, “If we were out east, and it was midnight already, I’d be back at the hotel already. But it’s only 9pm, fer chrissakes! Cut me some slack!” Traveling west rocks, mainly because of the early starting time for sports. If I ever move out west, that’ll be the main reason.

Eventually, I relented and we sent for the van. One of the valets listened to the game on our radio for a few moments. I said, “There’s nothing to listen to. The Yanks are gonna win this one. Boone’s going to belt one out in the 11th, and we’re going to the World Series, baby!”

And he did. First at-bat in the 11th, Aaron Boone — largely unproductive since his mid-season trade to NY, not even starting in this game — had the biggest hit of his career, pasting a left-field home run to end the game and drive a 32-oz. stake into the hearts of Red Sox fans everywhere (particularly Boston).

I unleashed a Ric Flair “Woooo!” in the van, scaring the other editors, who thought they’d seen the limits of my demented behavior. Some of them seemed to think my drunkenness promoted this exuberance, not realizing that, if anything, alcohol actually tones me down during sporting events. I get much more worked up when I watch a big game sober.

One of the editors, a Torontoan, said, “The worst thing is, you fucking called the home run.” Yes, I did.

I was actually kinda thankful not to have watched the home run on TV back in the bar, because I would likely have:

a) embarrassed everyone by doing the “riding a pony” dance across the room, and

b) bought a round for the place in celebration, stipulating that the drinks could only go to those who pledged eternal fealty to the Yankees.

So, all things considered, I feel pretty good that I got through the evening with only a few bruised knuckles.

National Book Award nominees for 2003 were just announced. As is my too-busy wont, I haven’t read any of the books. I HAVE, however, been present when one of the authors read from his book. I wrote up that experience in February (go here to understand just how bullshit a writer I think Boyle is, and why nominations like this exist seemingly to reinforce my hatred of art that makes middlebrows feel like they’re smart. Grr.)

Nominees:
T.C. Boyle, Drop City
Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Scott Spencer, A Ship Made of Paper
Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen

Several of my friends have written me this morning about the Cubs’ insane collapse last night. I avoided mentioning the fan who tried to catch a foul ball and ended up interfering with Moises Alou’s catch. Had Alou caught the ball, there would’ve been two outs on the Marlins. That’s no guarantee that Chicago would have been able to get that third out before the floodgates opened, but it would’ve made it tougher for Florida to come back. The commentators suggested that the fan deserved to be torn to shreds by Maenads, but never got around to mentioning that the Marlins still would’ve had 4 outs remaining in the game, and no one on the Cubs’ pitching staff was capable of getting an out.

If anything, the error on a grounder to the shortstop was more damaging than the fan’s interference. But it’s easier for commentators to sneer at the irrationality and enthusiasm of a guy in the stands (and the others near him who tried catching the ball) than to criticize a player who completely failed to handle a routine play. It sorta reminds me of a New Yorker article a few years ago on the psychology of the choke-job (by Mal Gladwell, I seem to recall, and focusing on Jana Novotna’s epic and heartbreaking collapse at Wimbledon, where she ended up crying on the shoulder of the Duchess of Windsor). Anyway, on to the morning’s missives:

Tom writes:

“I called Florida [to win the series] when the Cubs went up 3 games to 1, by the way. It’s inevitable. Florida’s too solid of a team top to bottom — a little power, a little fielding, a little pitching, a little speed — so they’re not going to beat themselves and the Cubs weren’t going to maintain their ungodly hitting and relief pitching for more than a few games. The Cubs just aren’t any good, and it’s amazing they got this close.

“But the best part is the fan interference. The Cubs is the ultimate wannabe know-nothing fan’s team, so having a fan act that incredibly stupidly is totally, totally perfect. If that had been the White Sox, even, they would have cleared out. Hysterical.”

(While you’re here, why don’t you buy Tom’s new book?)

My buddy Adam Taxin writes:

“Supposedly, according to the spin of Harold Reynolds, etc., any fan would do the same thing, to get a souvenir. As if Wrigley Field did not invent the phenomenon of throwing the balls with which the opposing team hits home runs back onto the field!”

(Adam doesn’t have a book out. But if he did, I bet it’d be a fun read.)

Over the years, my more intellectual friends have wondered why I watch sports. I’m a pretty devoted NBA fan, despite the low quality of play nowadays. On the first day of the playoffs last spring, the Phoenix Suns pulled off a mind-blowing upset of a win against the San Antonio Spurs (who would triumph in the series and go on to win the NBA championship). I thought, “It’s stuff like this that makes me tune in again and again.”

Now, here’s something else you should know about me: I will watch a playoff-game 7 in ANY sport. Even hockey, in which I have no interest whatsoever. There’s something about the double-elimination game that’s absolutely compelling. You might just get what happened to the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2000 NBA playoffs. Winning by SEVENTEEN points with less than 15 minutes to go, Portland put on one of the greatest exhibitions of choke-artistry ever witnessed. You could argue that the team never recovered from that loss.

And then there’s what happened to the Cubs tonight, in game 6 of their National League Championship Series. They were 5 outs away from reaching the World Series for the first time since 1945, with one of the best pitchers in baseball throwing lights-out all evening, riding a 3-0 lead. The crowd was in a state of rapture, ready to watch their team finally return to the Big Dance.

And in the span of 5 minutes, the roof caved in. The Florida Marlins dropped an astonishing EIGHT runs on the Cubs in the inning, and went on to win the game, forcing a game 7. It was a meltdown of monumental proportions. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it. There’ve been implosions before (most notably game 6 of the 1986 World Series), but this one carried the weight of all that Cubbie futility.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow night. I’d still like to see the Cubs get through to the Series. That way, after my Yankees dash the dreams of Red Sox fans tomorrow afternoon, they can thrash Chicago around and incur the enmity of all those fans for generations to come.

(And, as much as I love game 7s, I’m REALLY hoping the Yankees finish off Boston in 6…)

From the October issue of my magazine:

The Monkeys (Don’t) Pause

The last two October From the Editor pages have been dominated by my 9.11 musings. I spent this year’s anniversary at home rather than the city, basically meditating and tending to my yard (puts me in mind of Candide, a little). While I believe it’s important that we hold onto the memory of that day, and try to keep snapshots of each of our worlds as they existed before and after, I understand that there’s also a strong impulse to move on to normalcy. That’s why I’d like to use this month’s column to write about another subject that’s important to me: monkeys on speed.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently had to retract the results of their hastily published experiments involving the effects of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, a.k.a. ecstasy) on monkeys and baboons. The researchers found evidence of massive dopamine-linked neuron damage, leading to death or Parkinson’s syndrome-like symptoms in many of the subjects. Making a big splash in the War On Drugs, the lab published its results in Science magazine. Many teeth were gnashed as the media latched onto the story of how ecstasy use was going to leave our youth brain damaged, shaking with Parkinsonian tremors.

After all, the experiment–intended to measure the results of three “modest” doses of the drug–led to two of the 10 monkeys dying shortly after their second or third dose of the drug, and two others growing too sick to take the third dose. Six weeks later, dopamine levels in the surviving animals were still down 65%. The subjects, in short, were wrecked.

Faced with such chilling results, ecstasy advocates and some scientists pondered how the results could possibly mesh with real-world experience, given that we’ve yet to see an epidemic of this syndrome among hardcore ravers, casual users, or at my alma mater (see my Jan/Feb 2002 From the Editor column).

And that’s when the scientific method came into play. It turns out the researchers were unable to replicate their results in two subsequent experiments (oral dosage and IV), throwing their findings into question. An investigation revealed that the MDMA sample was mislabeled. Rather than injecting the monkeys with ecstasy, the scientists injected them with methamphetamine (a.k.a. speed). “Oops,” is right. The dosages employed, coupled with intravenous delivery, made the results a lot more explicable.

To its credit, the research team published a retraction of its findings. Still, the swiftness with which they reported their initial results has triggered a mini-firestorm about the political implications of the study (and, of course, its government financing). Why the results of the experiments were published before they could be replicated is certainly something to ponder. In fact, it all feels like a postscript (or prescript, given the location in the magazine) to this month’s Issue by Issue column by contributing editor Wayne Koberstein (Pharma Science Feels Outside Forces, pp. 32-36). Were the researchers more interested in science or anti-drug propaganda? It’s an issue that I fear we’re going to face more frequently in the future.

Another contributing editor, Derek Lowe, wondered about the practical aspects of this drug study on his blog:

I’m really taken aback to learn that they hadn’t looked at the original monkeys for MDMA levels before now. Getting blood samples from monkeys is no easy task, but why wait until there’s a problem to do the post-mortem brain levels? Those numbers really would have helped to shore up the original results–and would have immediately shown that there was a problem, long before the paper was even published. I don’t like to sound this way, but it’s true: in the drug industry, we consider pharmacokinetic data like this to be essential when interpreting an animal study.

My own objections to the results may be more observationally based. Now, perhaps these researchers didn’t have too much experience around recreational drug users, but it would seem to me that you could tell pretty easily whether a creature that so closely parallels human behavior was on ecstasy or on speed. It would probably be as easy as seeing if the monkeys were all touchy-feely or if they were jabbering around a mile-a-minute about their theory on how to square the circle.

Gil Roth
Editor

This morning, I helped change the fuser kit on the color laser printer at the office. The new one emitted this terrible burnt-plastic smell.

“Wow!” I said. “It smells like an action figure just farted!”

That is all.

Had one of those last night; woke me up around 3:30am. They don’t happen often, but MAN do they mess my head up.

… about spending 24 hours on The Fall of the Towers: it meant I stopped trying to read The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which simply isn’t a good book, 150 pages in. If you’re not going to write in a high literary style, then you better be an awfully good storyteller. Carter Beats the Devil works just great in that field, and Gould’s Book of Fish sorta manages to string those two modes together (to name two recent books I’ve read). But Chabon’s book is just dully written, with a story that’s failed to capture my interest twice now. And given that it’s about escape artistry, eastern European Jewish history, and comics, it shouldn’t be THAT tough to come up with something I’d like to read.

I’m still kinda bummed out about that bad drinking story from Friday night. I was physically fine, but it really is the first time I let drinking mess up something like this. On Saturday, I went into NYC to pick up my wallet from the home of Samuel R. Delany, an author and friend. By Sunday night, I realized that you can love a person and hate him at the same time. Love him as a friend, hate him as a procrastinating, dyslexic author.

I’ve worked with Delany (known as Chip) on a movie and several books, including a chapbook that nearly destroyed my life. I once proofread galleys of his essay collection Shorter Views in four days. No easy task, but he’s one of “my” authors, and I help him out when I can. Also, in the five years that we’ve known each other, we’ve become pretty good friends (which, if I had more time this morning, would lead to a tangent about how Chip’s probably the first friend I have who’s utterly outside of my age range–about 30 years older than me–and how odd that fact struck me; next entry, I guess).

On Saturday, we shot the breeze for a little while after I got my wallet back (which, all of a sudden, makes me think of the second scene from my favorite movie, when Tom wakes up in a bar, hung over and missing his hat. He asks the bartender how he did at cards last night. The bartender replies: “What do you think? You are a millionaire, you are going to remember your friends?” Anyway), and Chip mentioned that he had still yet to read over the galleys for The Fall of the Towers.

“I finished this book [a series of three short novels] before I turned 22, Gil. I just can’t read it again…”

“When do they have to be back at Vintage?”

“Monday morning.”

“It’s not written like Dhalgren, right?”

“No. It’s very… simple prose.”

“How many pages?”

“450.”

“Hand it over, Chip. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

So Saturday night (7:30pm-11:30pm) and Sunday (10am-6:45pm) was spent reading 450 pages of science fiction written by a very intelligent 20-to-22-year-old. Chip phoned when I was five pages from the end.

I told him I’d be done in a few minutes, and he had the temerity to ask, “So, um, I was just wondering: Does the story work for you?”

You can love someone and hate him at the same time.