August 30, 2005
AAAAAUGGGHHH!!!
Charles Rogers Injury Watch
349 Days Since Our Last Accident
18 Days Back In Operation
Wow. The Lions? Suck. A lot. In every conceivable way. Yeah, the Rams are supposed to be pretty good and the AFC is pretty strong, but that was just . . . sad. It looked like last year's Lions. And the year before. They came out flat and got hustled off of everything. And it's not that Joey Harrington is a particularly bad quarterback, but I think he's be done in Detroit if he doesn't make something happen this season. Not because he's terrible, but because he can't get it done here and the fans have already moved on. Like they did to Rodney Peete, Eric Kramer, Scott Mitchell, and Charlie Batch. None of them could really bring it when they had to. Harrington's a much better athlete than any of them and it wouldn't surprise me if he either managed to drag the Lions up from the bottom of the heap or if he was traded and suddenly became a star, maybe for the Redskins. But people around here have expectations that haven't been met.
Time after time the offensive line let Harrington down last night. The defense was sloppy. Our special teams made some improvement. Dre Bly tried to pretend that hauling down Torry Holt 25 yards downfield from the line of scrimmage should be "incidental contact". The run game was only sporadically effective. It was all a disaster. At least Charles Rogers and his porcelain collarbones didn't break again.
August 29, 2005
Real Bad News
Charles Rogers Injury Watch
348 Days Since Our Last Accident
17 Days Back In Operation
Iraq's constitution is a disaster. New Orleans is underwater. MTV held another edition of the VMAs. Kind of a crappy way to start the week.
The draft constitution for Iraq was submitted to the parliament without the support of any of the Sunni delegates. That's like sending the original US constitution out of committee without the support of New England. The constitution fails to become law if any three provinces reject it by 2/3's majority. Sunnis may very well be able to block the constitution when the October 15 referendum rolls around, as they control three provinces. Juan Cole, as usual, has a thorough evisceration of what's happening, taking his Eeyore perspective. Not only are the Sunni delegates dissatisfied, Muqtada Al-Sadr is too. Their bizarre common ground: Rejection of "federalism". Not US-style federalism, but something looser. Both see it as a possible precursor to the dissolution of Iraq. Sunni delegates are also freaked by how Shiites are positioning Islam in the constitution, with personal religious status dictating which courts will hear a case and provisions in the constitution against any law that contradicts Islam.
The best possible outcome may be the failure of the draft constitution in the referendum. Parliament would have to be dissolved, followed by new elections and a new committee. With any luck, Sunnis would turn out in droves to vote it down, involving them in the political process in significant numbers for the first time. They'd then be more likely to vote in new parliamentary elections, resulting in a bigger voice in the drafting of the constitution. It would reinforce how important it truly is to have consensus on the new constitution. In a best-case scenario, all parties make the compromises they need to make. In a worst-case scenario, Sunnis stay away from the referendum, the constitution becomes law, and the nation falls into open civil war, dragging Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey into the mess. Worldwide oil production drops by 20%, crushing the world economy, especially the US and Japan. Jihadists stream in, all sides determined to evict the US occupation before turning on each other. Iraq becomes the new Afghanistan. A young, rich Saudi begins organizing his followers.
Katrina went from a Category 1 when it hit Florida to a Category 5 with 175 mph winds before weakening to a Category 4 when it hit the Louisiana coast. Reports put the storm surge in the neighborhood of 15 feet, breaching at least one levee. The center of the hurricane was perched 35 miles from New Orleans when it passed. The last hurricane to do significant damage to the city was Hurricane Betsy, back in 1965. Betsy was a Category 3 and left 75 people dead and something like 70,000 homeless. The Gulfport, MS fire chief was calling this "Camille II", in reference to the Category 5 that smacked into Mississippi in 1969 and killed 256 people.
MTV held the VMAs last night. I didn't watch. I took my sister out to dinner and it was on some of the TVs at the restaurant. We didn't pay much attention, except for the following exchange:
Me: Who is that with Jessica [Simpson]?
Her: Ashlee.
Me: Oh, she's blonde again.
Her: What is up with them?
Me: I think Jessica's drunk.
Her: No. Wait, no. Yes.
Me: It's the eyes. She's got the drunk eyes. It would explain a lot of this.
August 24, 2005
Tiger Town . . . is a movie I still haven't seen
Charles Rogers Injury Watch
343 Days Since Our Last Accident
12 Days Back In Operation
Somebody better test Carlos Peña for something. Because, wow. He's hitting everything in sight. Five home runs and 10 RBI since coming up from Toledo last Friday? Guess he wants to prove he belongs back in the Tigers' lineup. I hope the hot streak for the Tigers continues. They're back within a game of .500, a mark they haven't touched since July. I just want to see a winning season this decade.
I was thinking the other day about the one consolation of being a Tigers fan. Though the team may muddle through decades of less-than-mediocre play, you can be reasonably sure that they'll win two or three World Series in your lifetime. Think about it. My parents were born in 1952, so they've seen in the '68 and '84 Tigers win it all. My grandparents were all born before 1931, so they saw the Tigers get their share in '35, '45, '68, and '84. With the expanded league, it should be longer between titles these days, but you can count on the Tigers to pick themselves out of the cellar and make a run every once in a while. Followed by the inevitable slow decline.
The '84 Tigers are still heroes to my generation, and I was 3 when they won it all. I get screaming mad whenever an announcer says that Kirk Gibson is best known for his home run in Game 1 of that Dodgers World Series. Not around here. It's his series-clinching Game 5 shot that Detroit remembers. The '68 Tigers are legends. When we hear "Willie Horton" we think of the Tiger who tried to stop the '67 race riots on his own, not that guy from the Bush-41 attack ads. If I turn on a game in front of my parents these days, I won't go ten minutes without hearing "I miss Ernie Harwell. These new guys just aren't the same." I'm considering boycotting all non-sports FOX broadcasting because, at the All-Star Game, they CUT OFF Ernie just to show a MONTAGE. I mean, sweet mercy of Jesus. And at the ballpark we still do the "And a young fan from Oscoda/Kalamazoo/Westland will take that one home" routine whenever a foul ball is hit into the stands.
There isn't a team in town with a deeper connection to the city of Detroit. The Old-English D is a universally-recognized symbol of this town. When I was a Cub Scout, we took a trip to Tiger Stadium and we went out on the field with the Tigers before the game. I had pizza and one of those malt cups with the flat wooden spoon. I had my glove with me from Little League and it was the greatest day of my life, even though there weren't really any foul balls that came close. When I was a senior in high school, my friends and I went and sat in the first row of the upper deck, dizzyingly above the field, and split a big paper bag of peanuts three ways. I've taken to saying "I went down to the Tiger game" instead of "to Comerica Park" because half the time I end up saying Tiger Stadium instead. And I know I'm not alone in experiences like this.
The decade we've had since our last winning season has pulled a lot of people away from the team. I was in, let's see, seventh grade when we had our last winning season. But it's not as if they've transferred their allegiances to other teams, it's just that they've lost interest in baseball in general. If the Tigers were to start winning, they'd be back in an instant. This year they've already made a 40% jump in ticket sales, second in all of baseball to the Nationals. It's not that people demand a contender, they just want a team that doesn't suck. A team that's still in the wild card race at the beginning of August. How fast did everyone learn Jon Barry's name when the Pistons began winning?
August 23, 2005
Magic In Pop Culture
Charles Rogers Injury Watch
342 Days Since Our Last Accident
11 Days Back In Operation
A livejournal entry here pointed me over to here to this essay on magic and the suitability of Harry Potter for young Christian minds. Specifically, it compares and contrasts the Harry Potter books with works of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and examines whether or not it's inconsistent to permit Tolkien and Lewis and ban Rowling. In the end, Tolkien and Lewis stories are held up as eminently acceptable works which would never lead young Christian minds to the dangerous beliefs that magic a.) Exists in our (non-fictional) world or b.) Is suitable for humans to use, while Rowling's books don't remove their fictional realm quite as far from one recognizable as our own.
Within this discussion, the author also points to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Craft as "objectionable" or at least "problematic", even to adults. Having never seen The Craft, I cannot comment on whether or not it is antithetical to accepted Christian doctrines. On the other hand, I can discourse on Buffy to a reasonable degree (I mean, I did check out before Season 7, but still). It's a long essay, so I'll quote it here:
Moreover, even for less susceptible viewers — stable, mature viewers who could never “believe in” magic, who wouldn’t even bother with reading their horoscope, let alone dabbling in magic — exposure to the likes of “Buffy” and The Craft could still reinforce the idea of magic and the occult as harmless entertainment, frivolous to be sure, but not an activity that could warrant serious moral objections.
On “Buffy,” for example, while there’s a kind of vestigial Christian influence on the show’s mythology in the crosses and holy water that remain potent weapons against vampires and certain demons, witchcraft is practiced as openly and amorally as fornication (not to mention, for the last season or so, homosexuality). The show doesn’t so much reject or deny Christian morality on these matters as ignore it to the point of annihilation: It is simply neither here nor there.
Mature viewers, even if immune to the show’s explicit fantasy premise that magic is “real,” that it “works,” could still be influenced by the implicit moral premise that magic and witchcraft are not morally significant realities. To someone disposed to looking at things this way, a fully Christian response will inevitably strike a note of irrelevance, of incomprehensibility, making the fullness of the Christian message harder to accept.
On the first paragraph: Maybe it's because I belong to a reasonably tolerant group of Episcopalians, but I've never heard a condemnation from the pulpit against Miss Cleo. The central assumption here is that people who go see psychics and astrologers are committing heresy. This is only the case if you believe that these practitioners actually commune with the supernatural, which I'd say the vast majority of people don't. Tarot only "works" anywhere outside of Carnivale because people will work pretty hard to find analogues in their real life to what the cards dictate. Mentalists and magicians are known to possess no supernatural powers. The tone here is condescending and patrician and it really irks me. It assumes that people need to be guided at all times by an authority figure; preferably an elderly white male, from what I gather in the rest of the piece.
The second paragraph contains a lot more truth. Christianity's influence on the show is vestigial at most. It's never been explained to my satisfaction why a cross works on a vampire (other than being conveniently available around the neck of a character) or why holy water burns a vampire in a universe where Willow can learn to kill vampires through telekinesis and use witchcraft to perform locator spells over and over again. The pro forma conservative condemnations aside, the Whedonverse clearly isn't that conversant with many aspects of Christian dogma. If it had been, I would've expected more from Season 5. The Glory arc was competently executed, but it relied on the viewer to fill in the background in a lot of ways. Not until the finale did we see the true vision of what could come to pass, the monks' devotion was just left for the audience to accept, etc.
The show was always better when Buffy was struggling against evil rather than Evil, and I'm not just talking about the First (OK, I did see the final two episodes and read some Season 7 recaps). The Big Bad was always trying to unleash some form of massive destruction, but it usually just boiled down to an unusually accomplished demon. The goal was more power for the demon/god/politician, not merely the tormenting of humanity. And it was always personal. Buffy was the linchpin that had to be removed for the plan to succeed or the object of wrath. The show's biggest failings -- in my opinion, they were The Initiative and the First Evil -- were the cases where the struggle was against a massive entity where we couldn't see what the entity gained by taking the Slayer out. It's because the show lacked a sense of true, impersonal Evil; a lack of conviction that this was present in the real world. A Satanic joy in the corruption and destruction of mankind was lacking in most of the bad guys throughout the series.
Angel actually came the closest. The reaction to his near-humanity ricocheted him farther into a sadistic realm than any other character. Other enemies took a casual view of human life, but torture and anguish weren't central aspects. Angelus made this central to his being, and thus became more terrifying. It gave him a power that other villains didn't have (as well as a reasonable explanation as to why he didn't strike at once). Others were unrepentant and unconcerned by their methods, but they were in service of a goal other than torment. The Initiative was just a weak straw man for the military and intelligence communities. I could never take it seriously. The writers had an obvious contempt for them and made no effort to portray them as convincing. "Hey, that sounds totally military, dude. Put it in the script! The more robotic, the better. We're making a point!" I never understood what the First Evil got out of being evil, or why it was evil, or why it took four seasons to reappear, or why the Bringers were no longer necessary, or what it was really trying to accomplish (other than trying my patience).
I don't think I could've expected Joss Whedon and the rest of the writers to fully understand or incorporate Christian theology into his show, nor would I have wanted it. Buffy could have ended up as a Creed album in a minor key if that was the approach. But an understanding and grounding in it could have meant closer ties and parallels to the archetypes that run throughout it. The First Evil could have had a stronger sense of a general battle between light and darkness -- a truly Satanic presence -- rather than the one girl in all the world vs. the primordial elements of fear.
I appear to have strayed, somewhat, from my main thrust. Anyway.
I want to know more about this "implicit moral premise that magic and witchcraft are not morally significant realities." The author seems to believe that viewers of Buffy, while rejecting that the idea magic works in our world, may decide that, if magic DID work, it would be acceptable for Christians to try some conjuring. Or maybe they'd believe that those who dabble in Wicca aren't spiritually contravening Christian tenets. I really don't know what to make of this, but it's vaguely insulting.
In the end, I follow the author's main premise that Tolkien and Lewis erect safeguards against magic being used in a world clearly resembling ours, while Rowling's barriers are lower. But I don't know anyone who decided to go Wicca after watching Buffy or reading Harry Potter.
Music: American Music Club - Another Morning
Mood: Nerdly
August 22, 2005
Refreshingly Content-Free: Could there BE any more goose poop on my lawn?
To anyone who's been calling for Joey Harrington's replacement by Jeff Garcia: Look at the last game. Harrington still looked like a frightened armadillo in the red zone, but he didn't panic. Nor did he throw two interceptions in a quarter's work. We still haven't seen much of the running game, since they're still treating Kevin Jones like he's made of crystal. Not that I blame them, honestly. I think I'll start the Charles Rogers Injury Watch now.
Charles Rogers Injury Watch
341 Days Since Our Last Accident
10 Days Back In Operation
The Tigers are completely confounding and confusing me. They drop to nine games below .500 and then win seven of their next eight? Two against Kansas City, sure, but they win a series against Boston and then sweep the Blue Jays? To Whom they'd just lost three out of four? I find this confusing. Almost as confusing as following up a 3-2 13th inning win on a walk-off double with a 17-5 win spearheaded by a 9-0 first inning. And CARLOS PEÑA hits a home run on the first pitch he sees after coming back from exile in Toledo? I could not have foreseen this. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Seriously, Carlos. Keep it up. I suppose I'll have to eat my words from earlier. The Tigers still have a good shot at a .500 season.
My location is ticking me off now. My apartment complex is at the top of a hill, exactly opposite where I'd want to be when riding my bike. I really don't need the gravity assist when I'm heading out for my ride. Really, I'd appreciate it much more when I come back drenched in sweat an hour later. It's enough that I have to drag it up and down four flights of stairs. The other thing I'd like is a place to ride that isn't in the middle of a highway. In Ann Arbor, I always had the whole of campus to go through as well as a good selection of side streets. Since the streets of GP were built before the subdivision became the standard, they're mostly on a grid pattern. You've got your minor north-south thoroughfares where you don't have to worry about stop signs but the streets aren't big enough (or the speed limit high enough) for you to worry about traffic. I've got a ten-mile route back there that's nearly perfect. It's almost completely flat, except for the one big hill that I go up just because it's so much fun to go back down the other side, and I only have to wait for two or three stop lights. These days I only have a mile-long loop around the apartment complex, and even that forces me to choose between the short, intense climb and the long, trudging climb.
August 12, 2005
Scheduling
The Lions and Tigers actually have a nifty way of letting you get their schedules. You can download a file from their web sites and import them into an Outlook calendar. Inspired by that example, I went ahead and made these files for Michigan football, hockey, and basketball.
Download the Excel spreadsheets into a known folder on your PC (I have no idea how to do this for Macs). Open up Outlook to the calendar you want these to be imported into. Click the File drop-down menu and select "Import and Export..." and then select "Import from another program or file" and choose "Microsoft Excel" from the list. Browse to the file you want to import. I'll leave it to you whether or not you want to replace duplicate items. Select your calendar from the next list and hit Next. Check the box next to "Import 'MICHIGAN_(sport)' into folder:" and then hit "Map Custom Fields". Make sure that the values are being mapped into the rational field. Hit OK and then Finish. Michigan's schedule for that sport should then be imported into your Outlook calendar. Most football games haven't had a time set for them yet, so those will show up as all-day events. If between the time I write this and the time you read this a time has been set, just open up the Excel file to the appropriate column and fill in the starting time and a reasonable ending time. Really, it's just that easy.
August 11, 2005
With the Lions' season about to get under way again, I thought we should go over some of the many ways the Lions have lost games. In no particular order, here we go.
I'm wagering that this year's addition to the list will be a safety in overtime. Sure, it's rare, and sure, it happened to someone else last year, but the Lions are always due for idiocy.
August 10, 2005, 11:30 PM Addendum
Welcome Idiot Desk Manufacturers
Dear Desk Manufacturer,
If you're going to assert that two pieces of the desktop hutch I'm assembling are identical and can be incorporated into either end of the desk, you also have to make them symmetrical about an axis. That way I don't end up with one cabinet bottom hanging half an inch out into space. It makes it hard to close the door.
Spite and Vengefulness,
Me
August 10, 2005
Tiger Club . . . oh! there's a wasp in here!
The Tigers probably won't finish out this season as a .500 ball club. After last night's loss to the Blue Jays, we're 53-59. We've lost 10 of our last 15, and we've got 6 against the Red Sox, 3 against the A's, and 8 games against the White Sox left on the board. Not to mention series against the Twins and Angels. The Tigers will have to work awfully hard to lose 100 games, but they're 6 games below .500 with some tough competition coming up. The pitching rotation is young and volatile. Bonderman looks like a real up and comer and he almost always puts together a good outing, but you never know when the rest of the staff will hit the wall . . . hard. The One Big Inning always, always seems to get us when we lose. Mike "I hope I don't lose 20 games again" Maroth is pretty much a lock to run into trouble when the top of the order starts seeing him for the third time, and it's anybody's guess as to whether he can make it through six innings of work on a given night. A guy who throws in the low 80's isn't going to keep major league hitters off balance for long if he has problems locating. Douglass still looks like a good acquisition, but when he goes, he goes fast , as demonstrated by last night's loss. He gave up an RBI and then a three-run homer to the Jays in the bottom of the sixth. Nate Robertson isn't that bad, but he isn't that good either, and I didn't even remember that Jason Johnson was the other regular starter until I looked it up. Our middle relief and closing are kind of a mess. I feel queasy whenever I see Jamie Walker warming up, and Chris Spurling isn't much better. These new guys, Dingman and Darensbourg, look like they have decent stuff. With Fernando Rodney and Franklyn German, you never know what you're going to get out of them. Never. They could come out and shut everyone down or they could get blown out of the water. This is not a desirable situation for your closing tag-team, now that we've traded away Farnsworth to the Braves for Roman Colón and some magic beans (With the Tigers' luck, we will soon find out that magic beans are a banned substance in Major League Baseball). Percival is probably gone for good, along with our millions of dollars.
The Tigers' offense is at least looking better than it has in years. Ordoñez is finally in the lineup and he's smacking the ball around pretty well. He had a 20-game hitting streak going for a while. There's no one left in the line-up (except for maybe Brandon Inge when he's slumping) that sends me fleeing in terror when he steps up to the plate. It's no longer, "AAAAAUUUGGGGHHH!!! Bobby Higginson AGAIN?!! No, no, no, don't let Alex Sanchez hit! That's not an improvement! Even if he gets on he's just going to get caught stealing! See?! I told you so! And how in the hell is Randall Simon our power hitter?!" Omar Infante is probably the worst hitter to regularly appear in the line-up, and that isn't half bad. At least you get to hear his Latin speed-jazz theme music whenever he comes up at Comerica Park. Everybody can put the ball in play and make some good hits. Craig Monroe, especially, has pulled up his hitting game. A couple of years ago, he wasn't a threat to anybody. This year he led the team in RBI for the first half of the season.
What we have to worry about is defense. The Tigers not only make a lot of errors, but they also just miss a lot of plays. The sort of plays that take away doubles and singles. Monroe out and out dropped a fly ball last week. In and out of his glove. With two outs and the bases loaded. By the time he picked it up, three runs had scored. Rondell White is injured, so he hasn't been able to play in the outfield, so Dmitri Young has taken over in left. Dmitri and I have about the same range out there and I'm an asthmatic who hasn't run for more than about a mile at a time in more than eight years. Pudge Rodriguez, Placido Polanco, and Nook Logan are the defensive anchors of the team. Obviously, Pudge is a Hall of Fame caliber defender as a catcher. Polanco doesn't have huge range at second, but he's a smart fielder, and that counts for a lot. Nook Logan, on the other hand, has huge range in center field. He's got tons of speed, so he can get to a lot of balls. He's still learning the game at this level, but he's got enormous potential.
In the end, there's no reason that the team we have can't be a .500 ball club. And if we improve the pitching staff and work on defense we should be a wild-card contender well into August. We'll get a lot of cash to work with once Higginson is off the payroll, so we could go after some free agents. It'll take some serious improvements to put us in the postseason now that the Twins, White Sox, and Indians are all for real, but it could happen. Maybe next year.
August 8, 2005
My Family and Boats: A Troubled Legacy
I went up north on Wednesday night to Glen Arbor, MI, joining my mom's side of the family in our annual pilgrimage to Lake Michigan. Like just about every year, renting a pontoon boat was suggested. Like 33% of the time, someone actually did it. However, instead of our usual voyage around Glen Lake, we tried out Lake Leelanau. The trip was handled very casually right from the beginning -- nobody's morning plans were going to be curtailed, despite the noon start to the voyage, so obviously we all started heading to the marina at a ridiculously late time. I headed out for the marina on my own, armed only with directions to the unnamed place. The first two steps went well. I followed M-22 up to M-204 and went east to the town of Lake Leelanau, where I was supposed to turn left on St. Mary's Street. Problem: Of the perhaps 6 streets that cross M-204 in or around Lake Leelanau, none of them are called St. Mary's. I found this out by passing through the town no less than four times. One street was called St. Joseph, so I turned down there thinking that maybe they'd given me the wrong Christ-parent. No good. There was a sign pointing to St. Mary's Catholic Church, but that wasn't the right way either. Having zero bars on the cell phone didn't help my mood. I had to drive a mile out of town, closer to Sutton's Bay, to get reception. Having wasted no less than half an hour driving back and forth through a two-mule town, I got them to relay better directions to me, including the all-important line, "Turn just before the bridge".
When I made it to the marina (pretty much just a bait / ice cream shop with a gas dock and a couple boats to rent), the boat had already sailed. I was assured that they were coming back for me in a few minutes, so I read my book. The marina was located on the narrows of Lake Leelanau, where the lake turns into a river, barely ten yards wide, between its northern and southern halves. Soon enough, the pontoon boat came chugging down the channel, from my left to right, with my aunt at the helm.
Bypassing the solid, open, easy in/out gas dock, she executed a Y-turn in the middle of the channel and then reversed the motor and crept backwards down the channel past me. I was standing on the grass behind a pair of slips guarded by rickety-looking docks. Next to the docks was a boat ramp. Some poor soul had chosen that moment to try to put his boat in the water. He at least had enough sense to wait us out.
My aunt put the motor back into forward, coming back up the channel toward me, and it looked like she was trying to thread the needle and put the boat into the right-hand slip, the one whose dock wasn't just rickety but also partially sunken. The boat didn't quite perform as intended and the left pontoon struck the submerged portion of the dock. She reversed the engine again.
My uncle (her older brother), urged me to come up the sunken dock so that they could bring the boat alongside its end. I wanted this farcical ballet to come to an end, so, against my better judgment, I walked up the dock. In my hands I held three towels, a book, and a bag of things other people hadn't brought. Now, boarding a boat that isn't moored is hazardous under the best of circumstances. Encumbered like I was, I expected someone (either my uncle or my grandparents) to take my stuff before I made my leap. Of course, no one moved. As the boat came up to the dock, I realized I had to do it all myself. So I slipped on the seaweed/algae growing on the decaying wood of the submerged dock and fell flat on my back. My book fell in the lake, but it bobbed to the surface and I snatched it out of the water. I'd managed to preserve everything else. I got up, and flung my parcels at my uncle (who'd FINALLY come to the bow after I fell) as the boat passed. I warned my grandmother that I was coming aboard by her and hopped over the rail at the stern. I went to the bow, yanked off my soaking shoes and socks and plopped down in a plastic chair as we headed back out to the lake. My grandfather tells me he hadn't seen me that mad since I was ten years old.
This is, by no means, the first instance of nautical incompetence I have witnessed in this family. In the late '70's, my grandparents decided to buy a sailboat, and not just some rinky-dink Butterfly or Laser. They bought an eighteen-footer with a keel. They had no sailing experience, no real boating experience, and lived half an hour from the nearest lake of any size. Obviously, a wise purchase. Especially when you consider that the previous owner threw in one whole lesson for free. I'm told that I actually sailed on this boat once. When I was quite young, they put the boat in Lake St. Clair and I went for a sail. Recollections differ as to whether I enjoyed this. What is certain is that my grandparents remember the boat as great fun and my dad remembers it as a white elephant that never failed to make his blood boil.
My grandparents attended classes to learn how to sail, but the real crew was composed of my two aunts. They tell me that they really got the hang of it eventually and, when in peak form, could make the boat do exactly what they wanted. However, this does not explain the Vacation of '79 debacle.
For the first and only time, my grandparents brought the boat with them to Glen Arbor. My dad recites this tale with unending annoyance and horror, while my grandparents remember it as the best time they ever had up north (See also: The Time We Came Up Here In The Winter, ca. 1977, sometimes also called The Weekend When I Found Out What I Was Really Getting Myself Into by my dad). I have no idea what happened out on Lake Michigan, but getting the boat in and out of the Crystal River, where it was berthed, was quite the challenge. People fled as they came tearing in from the lake. Once, they got stuck. My dad jumped off one side onto the sandbar, landing waist-deep in the water. My aunt jumped off the other side and plunged to the bottom of the channel. At some point she also managed to get hit in the head with "the mast" (I think it was actually the boom, but I can't be sure).
The sailboat was sold many years ago, but not before it waited out a few summers in my grandparents' driveway. My brother and I thought this was great fun, climbing all over it whenever we were allowed. It immediately became either a pirate ship or a battleship, depending on our mood. Things were perfect until wasps started building a nest in the cabin. It took some of the fun out of it. Before I was ten, the boat was sold, having spent more time out of the water than in it.
Last year, my youngest aunt thought it would be a great idea to rent kayaks on the lake. My brother and I would paddle the nearly mile-long route in a double kayak and my other aunt would take the single. My brother and I have long had a certain way with canoes, so we felt we were ready for this. We expected to take control of a light craft built for slicing through the waves. Instead we got on top of this plastic bobsled on pontoons built so that it would never tip over. Blowing straight into our teeth was a 15-knot wind as we forced the ungainly thing down the beach. The first twenty minutes were OK, if strenuous. We made a steady advance and avoided a rocky shoal. The next twenty minutes were much tougher. With our leaden arms, we had to take more frequent breaks with one man always paddling so as not to lose ground to the wind. Months later, my brother and I hauled the damned thing onto the shore. We despaired of ever seeing our aunt again, but she eventually showed up too, joining us in our collapse. We'd used up most of our time just getting the things down the beach. Other aunts and uncles were called in to give the kids a ride on the smaller kayak. Eventually, we had to make the trip back. Going with the wind, this one was much easier. The kayak had an annoying tendency to wildly deviate from its course, trying to head up into the wind, but I got the hang of it enough to put it in its place.
Before the kayaks, there was the Glen Lake Sailboat Incident. Glen Lake looks like a lopsided figure eight on its side, with The Narrows in the middle. Big Glen is the east side; it's a large, deep, round lake that's perfect for boating. Little Glen is somewhat smaller and much shallower; perfect for swimming. My youngest aunt thought it would be good to take a small sailboat out. I was game, and I thought it would just be us. But my grandparents really wanted to go out for a sail, so we took them along too. The wind was brisk at the marina on the narrows, plenty of power for a sail. They gave us control of a Phantom that was maybe twelve feet long, just big enough for four people to sail in comfortably, with a centerboard that could be raised in shallow water. We set out from there for the middle of the lake. Since Big Glen is surrounded by hills except for at the narrows, the wind swirled around the bowl, making the sail somewhat tricky. My aunt steered and I worked the sheet, making the best of my theoretical sailing knowledge gained from years of reading Patrick O'Brian books. Our path was impeded by my grandparents' lack of agility: We couldn't tack until they'd already moved from one side of the boat to the other, but we also didn't want to leave the boat unbalanced for too long in the gusty conditions. This will be important later. We continued to sail around Big Glen, looking at some of the amazing homes people had built on its shores. When our time started nearing its end, we started heading back to the narrows, where most of the wind was coming from. We had to tack more often as we approached, but we couldn't tack too frequently, and as we reached the final stretch we had to take up the centerboard. As soon as this happened, we started sagging horribly to leeward, directly away from the dock. We'd fill our sails, drop the centerboard and make our approach again, only to raise the centerboard and lumpishly float off to one side. We couldn't tack enough to make the ideal approach, and the ideal approach would be the only one that worked. After twenty minutes of this comic dance, the people at the marina figured out that we had no skills. They sent a whaler out to tow us in, a ride that cost us $20 extra and a lot of shame.
There are some people in the family I trust with a boat, but few of them are related by blood to my grandparents. My brother and I are good with canoes, decent with a power boat, and OK on a sail. My dad is a good canoeist and is good enough of a driver to be pretty good with a power boat. My uncle Joe, who married into our motley crew a few years ago, is the capable outdoorsman of the family. He's been handling boats since he was barely into his teens and it shows. We were visiting in Iowa City over the 4th of July weekend and he took us out on the Iowa River on his john-boat, about a dozen feet long and five feet wide with a single outboard on the back. It's a utilitarian vessel, a metal boat with dull olive paint that's seen a good amount of use. There aren't any real seats on it, just a platform in the front, a platform in the back by the motor, and a couple of plastic storage boxes.
We put the boat in at a weedy picnic ground and headed upriver. We passed a couple of highway bridges that were remarkably free of graffiti, saw the sand and gravel quarry, and made it up to the dam. Not Hoover- or Coulee-sized by any stretch of the imagination, it was still quite the mass of concrete, with a pretty good sea running at the end of the spillway tunnel. We turned and headed back down the river. There were a few creeks leading into the main river and we were wondering how far back they stretched. My uncle decided to investigate one of the larger ones. We crept up a muddy tributary. Charlie was close. I could feel him. My brother said to me, "It's like I'm in 'Nam". "Yeah, you'd have done well there," I replied. My uncle spotted a swimming rodent, either a muskrat or a beaver, as it slipped back into its hole on the bank.
The first snag we hit was the biggest. A thick tree had fallen over the river; I assumed this was the end of our riverine patrol, but my uncle wanted to see if we could make it. We slid the boat near the higher bank, taking advantage of our small draught, and tried to avoid the thick branches in the water. My brother and I lay down on the deck near the bow as the trunk passed just over us. My uncle was sitting on the deck, too, guiding the outboard with one hand. A squeak and a check in the boat's progress meant we'd stuck on something, but it wasn't what I'd expected. The trunk of the tree was so low that the top of the outboard had gotten caught on it. Piling into the back of the boat, we lowered it enough that the engine was freed. We didn't have any equipment to take a proper sounding, but we checked the depth periodically with a paddle, hoping that the depth didn't drop below a couple feet, and steering around stumps and logs in the creek.
We made it through a couple of additional snags; fallen trees blocked half the river, but we made it around them without too much trouble. Finally, we reached a point where overgrown spiny bushes blocked our way and we turned back. Maneuvering back through our original snag, we stuck briefly on a submerged log/branch, but I pushed us off using an overhanging branch. We all huddled in the back, so this time the outboard didn't get stuck. My brother then got the chance to drive the boat and check out another of these tributaries, but it was a more cursory investigation. We opened up the throttle when we got back on the river and flew back to the park.
Just to prove that not every boating experience with my grandparents is a disaster, the three of us took them out on the john-boat later that day. We were heading back up the river to the dam when we saw a silver flash. Figuring it to be a can, we steered over to pick it up. Our bow wave knocked it out of my brother's reach, we could see it was a can of Coors Light. Soon after, we saw a pair of cans bobbing ahead of us. We picked those up and took them on board. Then we saw another one. And another. We started looking for whoever was responsible for this and came up behind a big pontoon boat steeped in the "aspiring fratboy" aesthetic. Maybe they were actual college students, but something said "high school seniors" to me. The guys seemed way too excitable and the girls had the "omigoshIcan'tbelievewe'redrinkingbeeronaboat!" thing going on. Although we didn't actually see them toss anything, I'm sure they were at fault. We passed them and didn't see any more cans. We showed my grandparents the dam and turned back. We passed the party boat again. Some lame young-Mark-Cuban-looking dude gave a big "WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" at us as he hoisted his coors. Sure enough, around the next bend we found another can. We were making quite the collection. In the end, we'd taken nine cans out of the river, one of them a still-sealed Miller Lite that had been in the river for a while. The rest were brand-new coors Light cans. We dumped them in the trash and headed back for dinner, wondering exactly how it's too much trouble to dump a few cans in a plastic bag. Actually, the thing that convinces me that they were high-schoolers and not college students is that they dumped the cans overboard. You don't throw away that nickel that could be used to purchase future beers unless you have some capital that isn't locked up in food, shelter, and textbooks.
Actually, everything went fine once we made it out onto Lake Leelanau with the pontoon boat. We made a call to the dune-climbing party, who'd made it back alive, and asked if they were going to come out for the boat. Instead of having them try to find the marina and us going back up the channel again, we decided to meet them at The Bluebird, a restaurant on the Carp River in Leland. The Carp (sometimes just called the Leland River) comes out of Lake Leelanau's northwestern shore, so we headed off across the lake. Our only problem is that nobody on board had an exact idea where it was. My grandmother, having eaten at The Bluebird for decades, somehow believed it to actually be on Lake Leelanau. Luckily, my road map of the county was also serving as my bookmark. Not too wet, it showed Lake Leelanau and a river going through Leland. As I pointed this out to my aunt, still at the conn, a jet-ski flew by us on the port side. Its wake rocked us back and forth pretty well on our lubbardly craft. This could have been another comic opera moment, but I kept my footing. My aunt was succumbing to the mom instinct to document every moment of every day, so I took over as she snapped pictures of my 8-year-old cousin and 83-year-old grandfather.
A small river isn't that easy to find on an unfamiliar lake with no compass, no binoculars, and a vague road map, but we figured it out and entered the no-wake zone. Three bends up the river, and after a tense moment between two kayaks and a speed boat, we found our spot. In a minor miracle, the pontoon boat in front of the parallel-parking zone at the dock chose this moment to depart. Barely maintaining steerage-way, I glided with the current into the dock, coming close enough to the speed boat behind me to worry its owner, but there was no danger. My brother and Uncle Joe were on the dock, helping me to muscle the boat into place. We loaded our six additional passengers and headed back up the river. In the middle of the lake, I cut the engine and raised the prop out of the water so that anyone who wanted to could go for a swim. After hoisting everyone aboard, I dropped the prop, started the engine, and booked it back to the marina. Uncle Joe finished the docking procedure, wisely choosing to moor at the gas dock, and everyone disembarked successfully. And that's why it won't be the last time I get on a boat with my family. I know what to do. You make sure the people who know what they're doing are involved. You trust your better judgment. You ignore the well-meaning-but-clueless, even if you do it politely. And you make sure they let you drive.
August 1, 2005
Rocking In The 10:00 Curfew World
"Yes, this is the one that lost the Oscar® to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey love song. Couldn't be more proud."
--Aimee Mann, playing the intro to "Save Me"
A lot has happened. I started a new job in Grand Rapids at the end of May, which meant moving all the way across the state and the loss of my broadband connection at home, thus no updates. Back home in Detroit, I bought a new car on Friday, my first adventure of that sort. Hooray for debt! On Saturday, I drove it to Chicago to go to an Aimee Mann concert and visit my friend Ryan.
When I left Detroit, I ran over to the Barnes & Noble to pick up a magazine, and I flipped the radio to the news station to get the traffic update. Naturally they started out with, "It's a rough day out on the roads today. I-94 East is shut down between the Lodge and I-96, I-94 West is shut down at the Lodge to M-39, I-96 has construction from Grand River to M-39, so if you're traveling the highways today you'll want to stay clear of those areas." Of course I-94 and I-96 West were my first and second choices, so I had to go to the second alternate, the construction-free I-696/-275/M-14 combination. That popped me out west of Ann Arbor with about an extra 15 miles tacked on, but a much lower blood pressure than if I'd attempted another route.
I'd test-driven the Grand Prix before I bought it, but I hadn't taken it out on the freeway. It was performing like a champ. When I hit the 250-mile mark on the trip odometer, the needle on the fuel gauge was pegged at half a tank. I knew this was too good to last, but it was immensely satisfying to see. The car glided along at 80 just as easily as if I'd been doing 50. I took the Skyway into Chicago, which saved me the immense frustration of the construction on the Frank Borman Highway. Honestly, when are they going to finish that? When I got back on the Dan Ryan, this idiot van wouldn't let me into the express lane. I ended up on the locals for the first stretch, so of course there was construction in those lanes.
Downtown was jammed solid when I got off at Ohio St. Trust Ohio to let me down AGAIN. I was about half an hour ahead of schedule when I got off the freeway and 15 minutes behind it when I parked. I didn't see the parking garage Ryan had told me about, so I just parked at the John Hancock Center. I figured I'd be able to find the second-tallest building in the city in a pinch, even as I blanched at the rates. I climbed eight stories of spiral and thoroughly disoriented myself before arriving at the parking deck.
The concert was at Navy Pier, maybe a mile and a half away, and was just about to start as I left the garage, so I hurried down the street. After about a block, I realized that I was heading toward the setting sun, which meant that I was heading west, away from the lake. I headed back down Chestnut, detoured south to Chicago St, and did a double-take as I walked past The Archetypal Chicago Fire Station. it was constructed of the same stone as the Water Tower, had a big, red, open door in front and a fireman kicking back in his chair and reading the paper as kids darted around the playground next door. The lake was a long block away, but the masses were on Michigan Ave. I easily hurried over to Lakeshore Dr -- somehow I feel comfortable there -- and down the shore. I found the underground tunnel to Jane Addams Park and then followed the Ferris wheel to the Navy Pier entrance.
I was 15 minutes late for the concert, but I didn't really care since I wasn't there for The Honeydogs. I sensed trouble when I only saw one drum kit onstage. I bought my ticket on the premise that Kathleen Edwards would be opening for Aimee Mann, taking two of my must-sees off the list of people I'd never seen in concert. Honeydogs were pretty OK; the singer sounded weirdly like Bob Dylan in places. I guess it's fitting that they're from Minnesota. I felt more trepidation when they didn't mention that Kathleen would be up next, but did mention Aimee. And then the guitar tech came out with her big yellow guitar. It was 8:30 and the sun was fighting a losing battle with the twilight, so I couldn't see much once they cut the house lights. I did see a very thin woman with long, straight hair bound across the stage, and the stage lights came up to reveal Aimee and her band. As expected, they played extensively from her new album, The Forgotten Arm, but it was good stuff, so nobody minded. I can't cobble together the ordered set list, but I'll try to list everything they played. None of these are in order except the opener and the closer.
Dear John
Goodbye Caroline
Going Through The Motions
I Can't Get My Head Around It
She Really Wants You
Video
Little Bombs
I Can't Help You Anymore
Driving Sideways
Susan
Sugarcoated
Amateur
It's Not Safe
Humpty Dumpty
Save Me
Wise Up
Encore:
King of the Jailhouse
Take Me Out To The Ballgame
4th of July
Medley (1st verse + chorus of each):
You Could Make A Killing
Pavlov's Bell
It's Not
Ray
Voices Carry (!)
Invisible Ink (2nd verse on)
Aimee really has that hip-swivel thing going on. She dances more with her instrument than any rock musician I've seen besides Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. The new stuff is so good that I went out on Sunday and bought The Forgotten Arm; her commentary really informed the way I listened to it the first time. It's a concept album about how two people meet; a Vietnam vet with a drug problem and a small-town girl; and embark on a road-trip together to Mexico. Of course, it all falls apart. Before playing each song, she described where the people were in the narrative. I have to say, it helped a lot.
The encore was a lot of fun. Some girls were trying to shout a request for some song, but no one on stage could understand it because they were so screechy. Aimee said, "I guess you're just going to have to write it down on some paper and bring it to the stage while we play this song." Afterwards: "I'm impressed with the number of people who brought scrap paper to this show." During "King of the Jailhouse", maybe nine or ten people delivered their requests to the stage. The first one: "Bananas and Strawberries." Aimee Mann does not/has never play(ed)/written a song called/about/mentioning/alluding to bananas or strawberries. She sorted through the rest and discarded the ones that they couldn't play. One of the requests was for "Take Me Out To the Ballgame", so she told a story about a tone-deaf manager who sang TMOTtBg one note off every time, and demonstrated. As for the rest of the requests, she decided that, rather than choosing a couple, they'd just do "4th of July" the whole way through and make a medley of the rest, singing a verse and a chorus of each. Of course, the fireworks from the Venetian started up right then. So we got to listen to "4th of July" as fireworks went off, an oddly appropriate backdrop. The medley was pretty sweet; I wish I could remember all the songs that went into it. I do remember that the transition into "It's Not Safe" was amazingly smooth. And the end of it, when she went right into "Voices Carry", was great. It's been so long since the last time I heard that song, probably on Pop Up Video, that I wasn't sure of the tune at first. I never thought she'd play that one, but there you go. The music of 'Til Tuesday lives on. After assessing that they had four minutes left, they played an abbreviated version of "Invisible Ink", which was a terrific closer.
The rule that dictated that they had to be done by 10:00 is stupid, but whatever. Ryan and I went over to The Cheesecake Factory at the base of the John Hancock Tower to get some dessert and hang out, and generally caught up with each other. After that, I hit the road again. I was loaded up on caffeine and ready to go. Unfortunately, traffic was not. If it's possible, I think it was even worse than the inbound traffic at 7:00. The midnight traffic in downtown Chicago is like Ann Arbor following a football game. You're not going anywhere for some time, but when you get to the freeway you'll go 4,000,000 mph. At least until you hit another toll plaza or construction zone.
I took a rest in Indiana, I think it was in Burns Harbor, to refuel and reload with more caffeine. It was 2:45AM Eastern and my goal was to reach Benton Harbor, about an hour away. I put on Neko Case's Blacklisted and sped off down 94. I felt a little dull as I headed past New Buffalo, but perked up down the road. I reached Benton Harbor in good time and felt ready to take on I-196. 196 would help me stay awake, with all its curves and slopes, and it didn't have any construction on it. It was a pretty deserted place. After the first few miles, I only saw a few trucks and cars until hitting the outskirts of Grand Rapids. I slid back into my apartment complex at maybe 4:40 and immediately went to bed, hoping I'd wake up before 3:00.
