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Thursday, February 04, 2010

Mister Answer Man:  Special Nawlins Edition!

Hello again sports fans!  It’s time for another visit from Mister Answer Man.  You’ve got questions, he’s got answers—that’s why he’s called ... oh, hell, you know the drill by now.  To the mailbag:

Dear Mister Answer Man: I would open this letter by flattering your prodigious prognosticating skills, but I expect that you’re tired of hearing that sort of thing by now.  After all, six straight correct Super Bowl picks, some of them uncannily accurate—it’s routine to you, I’m sure, but it remains totally awesome to us mortals.  So I won’t bore you by telling you how much I admire you and want to be you.  Instead, I’m going to ask whether you think that maybe, just this once, you could reconsider your position on the fleur-de-lis.  Five years ago, you famously wrote,

my research shows that the fleur-de-lis, in and of itself, is the single most enervating thing you can put on a jersey.  The New Orleans Saints have great colors, but they’re wearing a Frenchy flowery thing on their heads, so it’s really no mystery why they spend January watching the playoffs on TV.  If they could just keep the jerseys, lose the “Saints” motif, and maybe rename themselves the Devils, they’d give themselves half a shot.

Well, it’s February, Mr. Answer Man, and the Saints are not huddled around the TV.  They are in the mother-loving Super Bowl at last.  They have twelve or fifteen different receivers who can score, and their running game isn’t bad either.  Don’t they finally have a chance at winning it all? —B. Hebert, Cut Off, Louisiana

Mister Answer Man replies: No.

Dear Mister Answer Man: Seriously?  How can you be so brusque and dismissive?  Aren’t you aware that quarterback Drew Brees has a long history of playing in manly black-and-gold jerseys, all the way back to his time with the Boilermakers of Purdue?  Surely if anyone can offset the deadly fleur-de-lis with a sufficiently virile, masculine performance, Drew Brees can!  —J. Tiller, West Lafayette, Indiana

Mister Answer Man replies: You people just don’t get it, do you?  All right, I’m going to post that Québec Nordiques jersey again:

See?  See what I’m talking about?  Powder blue jerseys and rings of fleurs-de-lis.  And who’s wearing ‘em?  Adam Foote, Joe Sakic, and Peter Forsberg—three totally awesome players.  How many Cups did they win in Québec?  That’s right, none.  Indeed, the 1994-95 team also included Owen Nolan, Mike Ricci, Scott Young, Valeri Kamensky, and Wendel Clark.  That’s a scary good lineup.  And they didn’t make it past the first round of the playoffs.  And at least they made the playoffs for a change!  Just look at Sakic’s career: 

With deadly fleur-de-lis (1988-95): 234 goals, 392 assists, 626 points—and only 12 playoff games (two six-game losses).

Without deadly fleur-de-lis (1996-2009): 391 goals, 624 assists, 1015 points, two Stanley Cups, 160 playoff games.

Clearly, Sakic was the same hall-of-fame player in Québec City that he was with the Colorado Avalanche.  He even had much of the same lineup playing alongside him.  So what accounts for his postseason success in Denver and total epic fail in Québec?

How many times do I have to say it?

Dear Mister Answer Man: But, but, but ... it’s not as if the Indianapolis Colts have very manly jerseys either.  I mean, actually, they’re kind of boring, don’t you think? —F. de Saussure, Geneva, Switzerland

Mister Answer Man replies: See here, Monsieur de Saussure, if that is your real name, it’s not a question of whether a jersey is manly “in itself.” It’s a relational thing—though I don’t expect you to understand this.  See, in my system, there are no “positive terms.” It all depends on a system of “difference,” where each jersey takes its place in a larger signifying system.  Thus, as I pointed out last year, even the red-and-yellow-wearing Kansas City Chiefs were able to defeat the Minnesota Vikings in 1970 because the Vikings (as advanced uniform science research has shown) wore the most beatable Super Bowl jerseys ever—just masculine enough to get there, but not nearly masculine enough to play competitively once they got there.  And in response to the question of how the beaujolais-and-prosecco-wearing 49ers could have won five Super Bowls, I replied,

If you’re asking whether I’m forgetting a dynasty that defeated (1) a team with stripy orange “tiger” helmets, (2) a team wearing aquamarine and orange, (3) see (1), (4) a team wearing orange (55-10!), and (5) a powder-blue team pretending to be a midnight-blue scary-lightning team, no, no I’m not.  Now, I don’t mean to belittle your epoch-defining victories in the NFC playoffs throughout the 90s, in which you handily defeated more mightily-attired teams with your “West Coast offense” and your frosty champagne helmets.  But seriously, your Super Bowl opponents might as well have been wearing bathrobes.  And in Super Bowl XXIV, they basically were.

The Colts’ uniform, which you consider boring, is what famed head coach and former cornerback Roland Barthes once called “jersey degree zero”: two colors, two shoulder stripes, no piping, no embellishments.  It is a jersey that emphasizes playmaking precision and error-free football.  The Saints’ jersey, by contrast, is out to have a good time: it’s exciting, dynamic, and bold ... and will induce two New Orleans fumbles all by itself.

Still, even those fumbles will not doom the Saints, because their color scheme is just so kickin’.  They will, in fact, have the lead at halftime, just as the Jets did; and in the second half, the hidden weaknesses of their secondary will gradually be revealed to them, just as the Jets’ were.  And then, painfully, in the fourth quarter the fleur-de-lis will work its baleful magic, and the Saints will wind up on the wrong end of a 34-23 score. 

Dear Mister Answer Man: I can’t believe you’re rooting for a Wonder Bread noncity like Indianapolis against the long-suffering French-and-funkified capital of the Black Atlantic.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Though I suppose that if I got to ask, I ain’t never gonna know. —L. Armstrong, Corona, Queens

Mister Answer Man replies: Mr. Armstrong, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good; oh Moloch, please don’t let me be misunderstood.  When kickoff time comes, I’m going to be sitting with a crawfish po’ boy and a frosty mug of Blackened Voodoo, screaming for the Aints to avenge 42 years of profound suckitude and all-around futility and bring a championship home to the ancient town of Marie Laveau, Professor Longhair, and Peyton Manning.  But you don’t mess around with wearing a fleur-de-lis in a contact sport.  You just don’t.

I wish I were Mister Hope-Against-Hope Man or Mister Cheerful-Delusion Man.  But I’m not. I am Mister Answer Man. And the Answer to this Super Bowl question is, I’m afraid, clear and unambiguous.  Enjoy anyway, everyone!

Posted by Michael on 02/04 at 05:20 AM
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Employee of the day

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor annoying helicopter father with digital camera stays this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Posted by Michael on 02/03 at 06:52 AM
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Monday, February 01, 2010

Life writing

My review of Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas appeared in yesterday’s NYT Book Review, and offers solid proof that the 650-word review is not my strongest genre.  Because of my unfortunate habit of summarizing and even quoting from the books I review (as Jerry Graff asked me, “how come you do that instead of just offering your own account of American higher education and then mentioning the author’s name in your review’s final sentence”?), I had to devote 642 of my words to Menand’s argument, leaving only eight for myself.  See if you can figure out which eight!  Hint:  they’re not consecutive.

Shorter me: what’s a shorter?

So I may have a bit more to say about Menand’s book here or at CT (or at both places!) in the next few days—specifically, about his proposals to shorten the average time-to-degree in the humanities.  Yes, I know he’s been shopping these around for a while, and I know that Marc Bousquet remains (almost) as skeptical as ever.  But I’ve changed my mind on the subject over the past 15 years, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll try to explain why.

In the meantime, more Jamie news!  He began his second stint at the LifeLink apartment yesterday, and he’s staying for a full week.  This time he has two roommates (as well as the apartment coach), friends from Special Olympics basketball and golf.  (However, moving in on Sunday afternoon and doing the meal planning and shopping for the week on Sunday evening, Jamie had to miss his 6-7:30 Special Olympics swimming practice.) And we have a very empty house.  I think I’ll stop by his place of work tomorrow and check in on him.

The other day, I was going through his school backpack and came upon his Health folder.  For the most part it’s the standard high school fare, stuff about making healthy choices and having self-esteem, and so on.  But one page caught my attention: under the heading “Autobiography,” students were asked what they would write about themselves and how they would title their work.  Here’s Jamie’s response:

Lifes We Know It

My parents say that all the time.  I am a child in my lifelyhood.  I am to be going up kid.  I like to play Uno.  And I also like animals a lot in my life.  And I like my cd rum game a lot of times.  I am be adult.

Sincerly,
Jamie Berube

My first thought upon reading this was, “that’s so sweet—he opens by talking about the fact that there already is a book about him, written when he was a child (in his lifelyhood).” My second thought was a memory of when he first started taking French in seventh grade, and his teacher, who had never had a student with Down syndrome, informed us that he probably shouldn’t be taking the class, since he wasn’t capable of producing proper sentences in French.  “He isn’t capable of producing proper sentences in English, either,” we replied.  “But he understands far more than he can say.” (Or, in developmentese, his receptive language skills are much stronger than his expressive language skills.) Seventh grade didn’t go so well, partly because Jamie’s para that year was kind of depressed and didn’t like helping him with French, but his high school teacher and his para have been amazing.  He still has trouble writing sentences in French, but his grasp of tenses is getting stronger, and his vocabulary is expanding steadily: I can tell him, “tu dois ranger ta chambre avant de sortir,” and he gets it (not that he proceeds to clean his room right away—he is a teenager, after all), and the other day I couldn’t remember the French for coat, and Jamie said, “manteau.”

Anyway, as you can tell, Jamie has a habit of dropping words from his written sentences, so that “I am going to be an adult” becomes “I am be adult.” The first three sentences, as I read them, are about Life As We Know It: “my parents say that all the time” means that he is well acquainted with the fact that there is a book about him and that many people have “met” him through the book, and the next two sentences are Jamie’s version of my explanation, “the book is about when you were a kid just growing up.” As for Uno: that’s a weird one!  Of all the things he could have mentioned ... well, he did play some Uno in the LifeLink apartment last month, and more recently he hung out with one of his afterschool companions playing Uno in a local coffeehouse/bookstore.  So I suppose it’s fresh in memory, even if it isn’t really one of the salient features of his life.  His love for animals and his facility with Harry Potter CD-ROM games, sure, but Uno?  Go figure.

When I asked him about his autobiography, Jamie seemed pleased with his work but (of course) did not want to discuss it in front of Janet, so I simply asked him if he could write things like this to help me with the yet-to-be-written book about how he grew up and became an adult.  I’ve asked him this question a couple of times in recent years, and Jamie says he’s ready and willing.  But we’re going to wait until after he graduates from high school, at least.  “You know what will happen when you graduate,” I say.  “What?” Jamie always asks.  “I will cry,” I say.  “Michael,” he replies, with mild-to-moderate exasperation.

I hope Jamie has a great week.

Posted by Michael on 02/01 at 10:45 AM
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Thursday, January 28, 2010

And so this is SOTU

For a moment, I actually forgot Chris Matthews was white.

And I’m looking forward to the new musical adaptation of Avatar, opening at the Kennedy Center next month!  With Barack Obama as Jake Sully and Sally Quinn as Neytiri.  Also featuring Michelle Obama as Dr. Grace Augustine, Fred Hiatt as Tsu’tey, Peggy Noonan as Moat and David Broder as Eytukan.  That should settle the question of whether the narrative is “racist” once and for all.

Posted by Michael on 01/28 at 01:52 PM
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Equilateral triangulation

I’m glad to see that President Obama has taken this blog’s advice, and will use tonight’s State of the Union address to begin walking back his controversial and polarizing arranged-gay-marriage, full-employment, single-payer, DOJ-stacking, Cheney-prosecuting, war-ending, cramdown-enforcing, bank-nationalizing, gun-confiscating agenda.  But I don’t see why liberal bloggers are flipping out about this.

Look, people, the proposed “budget freeze” is not a “freeze.” It’s more of a “chilly wind” or a simple “breeze,” like a “fudget breeze.” It’s not as if Obama gave us all a pony, and then there came a killing frost.  The “fudget breeze” will not affect most of your favorite federal programs, such as defense, Medicare, foreign aid, Homeland Security, weapons development, Medicaid, the Pentagon, fruitbat subsidies, Social Security, stuff having to do with veterans’ services, and the Department of Blowing Shit Up.  Furthermore, there’s no real chance that Obama will be able to clamp down on agribusiness supports, and the White House is saying that education won’t take much of a hit either.  So let’s not worry too much about reallocations within the remaining 2.8 percent of the federal budget, OK?  It may turn out that the only thing affected by the fudget breeze is that infamous $3 million overhead projector, originally earmarked for one of Obama’s cronies on the South Side of Chicago.

Instead, let’s try to come up with some constructive criticism.  To that end, I have three suggestions for tonight’s STFU SOTU that will, I think, (a) enhance Obama’s savvy political appeal to Cokie Roberts, Congressional Republicans, and David Broder, (b) piss off liberals, and (c) not do any real damage anyway, except perhaps insofar as they adopt conservative talking points and further delegitimate the project of social democracy:

School Uniforms.  School uniforms are not only an important device for preserving civility and order in our schools; they also saved Bill Clinton’s presidency and elevated Dick Morris to the ranks of the Most Brilliant Presidential Advisors Ever.  By promoting school uniforms in his very first State of the Union address, President Obama can convey a sense of urgency and gravitas on one of the issues voters care most about; but by secretly promoting school uniforms that are actually tear-aways, he can simultaneously let progressives know that he remains committed to our agenda of letting unruly adolescents do whatever the hell they want.

Enterprise Zones. America’s inner cities are shackled by excessive regulation.  To unleash economic growth and create jobs, President Obama needs to expand tax breaks for businesses and cut back on pesky planning regulations while allowing America’s entrepreneurs to offer new employees a “training wage” that will be exempt from America’s notoriously burdensome “minimum wage” legislation.  On the sly, however, Michelle Obama will continue to serve free food to the urban poor owners of color televisions and cellular telephones, so don’t worry, it’s all good.

Compromise on Abortion.  To win back the critical William Saletan/ Amy Sullivan vote, President Obama needs to assure the American people that he thinks abortion is very, very icky.  Clinton’s famous mantra—that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”—remains a winning formula, although Obama may need to find a new way to frame the profound ickiness of abortion, and the even more profound ickiness of women who purchase health insurance that covers abortion, while secretly recommitting himself to the “have one, get one free” policy that has long been the cornerstone of the liberal social agenda.

It will be a delicate balancing act: Obama will need to accept the Beltway verdict on the recent election of Senate Majority Leader Brown and pander to some of conservatives’ social-agenda obsessions while his advisors use cryptic hand gestures to signal to liberals that he’s not really accepting the Beltway verdict on the recent election of Senate Majority Leader Brown and pandering to some of conservatives’ social-agenda obsessions.  Can he pull it off?  This sanguine blog has not yet given up hope:  yes he can.

Posted by Michael on 01/27 at 08:31 AM
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Sunday, January 24, 2010

The Jets At War

All right, am I crazy to think the Jets actually have a chance against the Monsters of the Midwest?  I mean, against their actual “starters” over “four quarters.” Because here’s what I saw last weekend: on Saturday, the Colts seemed to smoosh a hapless, punchless Ravens team 20-3.  But wait!  One of those Colts touchdowns was actually a gift from the officiating crew, who decided to call two phantom penalties on the Ravens secondary on the Colts’ final drive of the first half, and then decided to pretend that the Colts’ penultimate play of the half lasted only two seconds.  (And you thought that time-warpy thing could only happen in the Big House!) OK, so really we’re talking 13-3 or 16-3.  And then in the second half, there was the Ed Reed factor.  Merciful Moloch, that young man is talented.  Unfortunately, at some point this year someone told him that the NFL had converted to Australian Rules, and now he thinks that after he intercepts a pass he has to dribble the ball once every ten yards.  Anyway, the game could have been a nailbiter if a few breaks had gone the other way, is what I’m saying.  And the Colts appear to have zero running game, zero.  I hear their quarterback is well-regarded, but then again, the Jets’ pass defense does not suck.  So I’m gonna say Jets 16-7.  I don’t know why—it just sounds nice.

The NFC Championship poses a serious problem for my eventual Super Bowl pick, since neither team has a manly jersey.  The Vikings’ cute purple has only gotten more festive in recent years, and the Saints, of course, sport the deadly fleur-de-lis.  But who cares?  Here’s to a Saints-Jets Super Bowl, surely a sign of the Apocalypse and a harbinger of the incoming Palin Administration.

Oh, right, and here’s Frank Caliendo talking about Jet Favre.

In other news, The Left At War manages to get almost everything right in a way that’s almost totally wrong, and even picks up a brief discussion in Newsweek—in the context of a review of The Hurt Locker, of all things.  Actually I think I agree with Seth Colter Walls’ argument that the actual content of recent Iraq films has been stripped of any serious political, you know, content.  As for Paul Anderson’s review of the book, well, I suppose it’s nice to be mostly right in a largely wrong kind of way, but when someone says “he under-eggs the case for getting rid of Saddam which was—yes, really—a lot stronger than he claims,” I have to say that a parenthetical “yes, really” doesn’t really make the case.  If you think the prowar case was stronger than I let on, go ahead and make it!  I was kind of hoping to have that argument, after all.

So, to recap: Jets over Colts 16-7, Saints over Vikings ... um ... let’s say 59-28 to be safe.  And don’t forget to go out and buy a copy of The Left At War, because it’s selling like hotcakes lutefisk and it’s fun for the whole family.

Posted by Michael on 01/24 at 06:43 AM
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