How Palin’s Hawaiian Past Will Haunt Her in 2012 Presidential Election

Turns out it’s not just President Obama whose Hawaiian whereabouts are in question:

Why did the 18-year-old beauty queen chose to live in go-go Waikiki, instead of student housing? Why won’t she say how she supported herself? Allow media to verify her alleged registration at three different campuses in 7 months? What about the rumors that she was pregnant?

Then there’s the mother of all speculations: Did Palin, aka "Barracuda" for her basketball prowess, find herself covering "Barry-O" on Kapiolani’s fabled Fire Station courts -- and if so, did sparks fly? (And if they did–where did they hide their love child?)

It’s all in The Realm of Possibility (tm). Read on for our 100% factual speculation.

Dateline Honolulu Nov 18 2009 – As thousands of fans line up to buy Sarah Palin’s book, the spotlight has returned to a still-unexplained gap in her resume: the seven months she spent in Hawaii after high school graduation. All the candidates’ lives were exhaustively scrutinized during the 2008 election campaign, but Palin’s surprise selection as vice-presidential nominee left the mainstream media scrambling to catch up to her colorful Alaskan roots and complicated family dynamics. Although the Hawaiian aspects of candidate Barak Obama’s life were also "exhaustively scrutinized," Palin’s tropical interlude escaped the same treatment–leaving unexplored the provocative question of how she supported herself while living in Waikiki, what were her true reasons for visiting Hawaii, and even the speculation that she met, and even played basketball with, her future rival and possible foe in the 2012 Presidential elections.

Palin herself tells the story of how she changed from tomboy to beauty queen in her senior year of high school. Friends and family have recalled how they were surprised and even shocked at how the scrappy basketball star nicknamed "Barracuda" went from slouchy sweats and Carhartt jackets to wearing sequined satin-polyester and high heels. It was a textbook case of discovering her attractiveness as a woman. And, like so many a small town wallflower making up for lost time, 18-year-old Sarah set off for the nearest big city–in this case, Honolulu.

Traveling with a high school girlfriend, Palin arrived poor and unprepared for the exotic and seductive streets of Waikiki. Palin has said variously that she attended three different colleges during her seven month sojourn, although she has repeatedly refused media requests to allow confirmation of her claims by accessing her records, protected under federal privacy laws. Only one school, Hawaii Pacific University, has affirmed her attendance, for a single semester.

Unusually for someone who has spent a "gap year," Palin has offered no details of her time in Hawaii: nothing about jobs, housing, tourist or cultural adventures, romance under the stars. She may be the only 18-year-old who traveled to the Islands during the peak of the surfing boom and never tried the sport–this despite practically living on the beach at Waikiki, the most tourist-friendly surf environment in the world, home to a cadre of beach boys who specialize in initiating Mainland wahines into Island mores.

The lack of detail is particularly curious because of the Waikiki connection. Where Palin lived was definitely not a student housing, being expensive, seedy and unsafe, particularly for women. It is, however, Hawaii’s 24/7 party zone, comparable to New Orleans’ own Latin Quarter or the Strip in Las Vegas or New York’s old Times Square, all world-famous attractions for tourists drawn to drinking, dancing, drugging, promiscuity and prostitution.

Most of the housing in 1982 Waikiki was of the shabby, SRO (single-room occupancy) kind, often rented by the hour. Transients, surf bums, hookers, petty criminals and drug dealers mixed with homeless Native Hawaiians squeezed out of their birthright, making life there, so close to the bright tourist lights of Kalakaua Boulevard and the International Marketplace, a bittersweet proposition. When you consider that 1982 was the climax of the disco era, a final flowering of polyester bodysuits, cocaine spoons worn as jewelry and amyl nitrates popped on the dance floor and boudoir for stamina, Palin’s silence is all the more indicative. As Sherlock Holmes said to a Scotland Yard detective, it’s the dog that doesn’t bark in the night that calls attention to itself.

Is the bark that didn’t happen, the great unspoken in this case, the trap that awaits young country girls, aspiring beauty queens, and runaways on their own in the big city? Are we talking about the plot of countless novels and movies, The Perils of Pauline, Jenny: A Girl of the Streets, Pretty Woman? In morality tales and real life, the progression is always the same, starting with taking a job in an establishment that hires pretty young things. Soon enough it becomes apparent that the $1.71 an hour minimum wage for restaurant workers won’t come close to making the rent. Around the time of this realization, a suggestion is made on how to supplement one’s income by being nice to the customers. Tourists, especially the Japanese, are generous to those who give personal attention. They buy more drinks, bottles for the table, private dances...

This is 100% speculation, but I’ve known of at least three girls who found themselves in the exact situation. In each case, they ran out of cash and couldn’t buy a plane ticket home. One called home in tears and got pried loose from the goon who was holding her passport as collateral (the job was teaching scuba diving). The other two took jobs, ironically, in Alaska; they too were bait-and-switches. Both girls took the bait. One ended up dead.

Is it fair game to question Palin about how she made the rent? About her uncharacteristic discretion? Given the rough-and-tumble of recent political campaigns, and the ongoing anti-Obama "birther" movement, the obvious answer would seem to be Harry Truman’s: "If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." But time and again when her version of events is challenged, Palin has played the gender card, and can be expected to do so here. (She might even cite Truman’s use of the word "kitchen" as evidence of subliminal woman-bashing.)

A true feminist might celebrate the thought of a teen beauty queen, away from home for the first time, claiming possession of her sexuality in such an environment as Waikiki’s. A true conservative might find it relevant if the same young woman were today jockeying for the most powerful elected leadership position in the world. As for Palin’s coy disclaimer that she isn’t interested in being President at present, wasn’t that stalling tactic at the heart of the McCain’s choosing her at the last second? While the mainstream media begged for background handouts tailored by GOP flacks, Palin could dominate the convention and revive the campaign. By the end of October, with McCain looking his age and worse, Palin was, in effect, running for President.

Right now Sarah Palin would no doubt love nothing more than for the media to declare a time out on any but fawning reportage. Then, by popular acclaim, unscarred and money coffers full, Palin could launch the first Presidential campaign by a talk show host. It’s a plan no more audacious than that of the first-term senator from Illinois who currently holds the office.

To wrap on an even more surreal note, it’s equally within the realm of possibility that the "Barracuda" point guard went one-on-one with the slick-shooting power forward from Punahou. The public basketball courts most frequented by visiting athletes and even celebrities happen to be in across the park from Waikiki, next to the Fire Station. Like New York City’s West 4th Street cage, the hot asphalt is where it’s at, where both young Barry and older Barak liked to showcase his game.

This brings up the inevitable, ultimate what-if: the likelihood that Barak and Sarah met, playing basketball. It’s certainly within the realm of "birther" possibility, a standard of truthiness that makes it almost a certainty that they guarded each other, got sweaty and, well, noticed the other was "hot." It happens in movies all the time.

The rest we'll leave to your naughty imaginations. But given that Sarah by her own account hid her last pregnancy, even from her husband, until she was 7 months along--before deciding not to abort Trigg--and given that we can say without refutation that 7 months was the same amount of time she was absent from public and family view in Waikiki–it begins to appear that we have no choice but to assume, using the same logical progression, that there is a love child of Sarah Palin and Barak Obama alive and well today.

Perhaps s/he’s living under an assumed name (Brandy O'Palin?). Perhaps s/he’s locked away in Gitmo or enjoying full Secret Service "protection" in a dusty Kenyan village far from civilization. The point is, we don't know, and that's wrong. We have a right to know.

These are the sort of questions that go unanswered because unasked–except when you’ve decided to risk another visit to....

[spooky music]

The Realm of Possibility.

[theme song and Outro]

Obama Proposes "Literature for Clunkers" - TM

AP--Washington

President Barak Obama announced today a surprise stimulus package: "Literature for Clunkers." The details of the new program resemble those of the successful exchange of aging, pollution-spewing automobiles for newer, more gas-efficient models. "Here we are in the dawn of a new age," Obama said in a press conference in the Oval Office, "and people are dying for literature, actually perishing because of a paucity of the kind of news that stays new forever, as opposed to the meretricious kind that swamps our media outlets every single day." Raising up a hefty copy of the Dan Brown bestseller "Angels and Demons" in one hand, the President raised in his other hand a copy of little-known Andrei Platanov's "Fierce and Beautiful World." Dropping the Dan Brown novel on the dais with a resounding thud, he added, "All you have to do is bring in your used or unread schlock, and you will get a rebate from your bookseller on a work of lasting value, that never grows old, that will delight and succor your grandchildren as it did you." With an assist from daughters Malia and Sasha, the President then placed "Angels and Demons" in a shoebox. "See? Now we're going to take this one out to the Rose Garden and bury it so nature can work its magic."

Placing a spade on his shoulder and the shoebox under his arm, Obama exited the Oval Room with this quip: "Let me tell you, this kind of swap is a lot easier than those involving complicated derivatives. And it's a lot better for you, and the nation."

Advice for Writers in a Dark Time, or, Does Posterity Really Exist?

When Radar magazine folded, I said, "They didn't hire me anyway." When Florida Inside Out magazine folded, I shrugged because I didn't live in Florida. When Gourmet magazine folded, I said a prayer for my late friend Laurie Colwin, who wrote such common-sense wonderful columns that they became a book, Home Cooking. Then I wondered at the irony of Gourmet going down for the count the same time a Julia Child bio-pic was doing just fine.

In the first quarter of 2009, 279 magazines folded. As a magazine editor--still, even if without a current gig--I'm concerned. (Well, actually, I'm way past concerned.) Though people still keep starting magazines, the Golden Age is definitely over.

This is not news anymore. What is news? Well, as the "news business" is dying, that's a loaded question. Let's say "news" is what people are reading on a timely basis. In the age of the Greeks, that might be four hours (the time of the runner who brought news of the victory at Marathon). In the age of Sail, it took six weeks for news of peace to arrive, so Andrew Jackson fought and won the battle of New Orleans in 1814 for nothing--although it did get him elected President later. In the golden age of Newspapers, you might get a morning edition, a mid-morning edition, a noon special, and two or three PM specials until the last night edition. Plus, you got the paper from a gap-toothed urchin wearing a newsboy cap who gave you such lip that you went home and repeated it to your family at the dining table.

If it's today, right now, maybe the news is what you Tweeted 30 seconds ago.

"LOL WHEV WTF 8 FISH TACOS???"

Yes, it's going to be a lovely Posterity, the way things are going.

About Posterity: The standard elitist approach to writing for future generations is to ask yourself: "How will this look to people living 100 years from now?" Which is, frankly, looking pretty toothless as a reproach these days. The death of "news" means, just maybe, the death of memory, of history.

Did I just hear somebody Tweet: "Come off it, Mr Grinch?" Okay, pipsqueak, I dare you to take the Twitter Challenge.

You say you Tweet? Often? Does anybody read it? Good. Will anybody read it a day from now? A month? A year? A hundred years? Oh, yeah, sure. Consider that if there are 3 million people on Twitter tweeting every hour or so, for 12 hours a day, what are the odds yours will be read by some imaginary archivist in the future? If there are 36 million individual Tweets a day (and this is surely a lowball estimate) how many future historians will be needed to excavate and decipher ("LOL"? hmmm) them, in order to construct/deconstruct these times in which we live? If you can do the math, then you know it's hopeless.

But, maybe, Posterity doesn't matter. Maybe it's all been part of the great shuck-and-jive, a way to sell pie in the sky to writers so they'll keep on writing for cheap or less. If you look at the unknowns who crack the literary canon, there does seem to be a rather large category for "unrecognized or unpublished in own lifetime"... which means publishers didn't have to pay them anything. Funny how that works.

So maybe we writers will all end up burying ourselves under a pile of 140-character Tweets, like one of those centuries-old Indian middens of discarded empty oyster shells--never a pearl to be found.

On the other hand, maybe art will come of it yet. After all, Emily Dickinson's short craggy lines do seem made for Twitter:

"Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me/The carriage held just ourselves/And immortality."

BTW: My wife's magazine, Plenty, is one of those that folded in 2009, still owing freelancers money, by the way, while its founder-editor accepts invitations to sit on media panels and "tell it like it is"--which, it would seem, boils down to walking over the employees who created your venture and boosted your reputation, while you go back to work for Daddy.

For solace, here is the advice offered to Willa Cather, when she was a very successful young magazine editor, from Sarah Orne Jewett:

"If you don’t keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago...

"Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet centre of life and write from that to the world that holds offices, all society, all Bohemia, the city, the country–in short, you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up... To work in silence and with all one’s heart, that is the writer’s lot; he is the only artist who must be solitary and yet needs the widest out look on the world."

Merce Cunningham, Frank McCourt: After the Meltdown, Part IV

Funny what you miss.

We felt many moments of pre-emptive nostalgia during our last months in New York City. It was an easy frame of thought to fall into: Here is our last night listening to world-class live jazz on a Monday night at the Standard, our last croissant from Bergamot, our last pizza Genovese at Don Giovanni (now being too grown up for Ray’s on Sixth and 11th), a last morning dance class at Merce Cunningham Studio for M, a final walk along the Hudson for me... But these were anticipatory losses, the real ones to come.

The real ones did come. After all these days on the road, we woke up one day a week ago and realized we hadn’t been alone together for 107 days–always in someone else’s house, or in a hotel, or in an airplane or car between the two. So put down privacy as the first thing we missed, in a real way (as opposed to a carefully curated "I Miss NY" way, calculated for maximum resonance among sentimentalists). In New York we had our place. And in NYC, there is a curious privacy amid the masses–nothing new here, the anonyminity of crowds a cliche, but now I know its truth personally.

The following day, as we hiked along a mountain trail at 5,300 feet; M suddenly cried out, "I miss broccoli!" And there you have it: under the pines and overhanging granite of the Ernie Maxwell Trail, the essence of our city life was boiled down to a vegetable and a state of mind.

With the conjunction of the closely spaced deaths of Frank McCourt and Merce Cunningham, in whose orbits we intersected, the one briefly, the other frequently, a third ineffable NY thing came to me today: possibility.

We moved into an illegal sublet in 1982; the building housed the Cunningham dance studios, and oneday M went upstairs to check it out. She came down a few hours later, sweaty, and said they’d let her dance. And so she kept on dropping in, dancing, and got to know the teachers and students, and even Merce at a distance, to the point of once being offered a scholarship–which she turned down, flattered, with great reluctance and rueful sense of "what might have been?"

Cunningham was all about possibility. His embrace of chance and non-narrative performance blended, for me, aspects of zen and sport with the hoity-toity-ness of fine art. In his way, Merce kept it real. (I remember him in an elevator, staring at how I blocked the door from closing by back-footing it–"memorizing the move to use in something," M said later.) As M kept trying to explain to me, Merce was all about those random moves and "bits" that were just done, un-patterned, freed from music’s beat, triggered by nothing, or else by chance and necessity.

Frank McCourt’s writing was the opposite, all about the story, the narrative, about his life as a narrator of stories about his life. We only met once, but it made an impression of a lifetime. He gave a reading at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, shortly after "Angela’s Ashes" was published and started soaring up the lists. He wasn’t that famous yet. But it was happening, like a strange potion ingested that hadn’t quite taken effect. He read in a bemused, offhand style–applauded frequently by what seemed like a hundred former students of his from his decades at Stuyvesant High School. For some reason one of his older ex-students, friends of ours, invited us to join him at dinner afterwards, and we sat there sharing his moment, a bit grateful not to be taking up too much space as he accepted hugs and toasts. Finally someone’s gush about "making it at last" seemed to strike a nerve and he spoke out in a tone rueful, honest, and knowing in a way that felt slightly bitter: "It’s all very nice, the attention, but it’s a bit late. I really could have used this 20 years ago, even 10."

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what he said. And it shushed the crowd, his students, those young faces; they who were so triumphant for him (and to be honest, triumphant for themselves at having known him when). Many of them suddenly realized, I believe, the embarrassing truth he had just committed, like a faux pas: that while recognition matters, and money and fame do certainly glitter, youth is still everything. Just as when they were juniors at Stuy High and he was Mr McCourt, the coolest teacher with the best stories, good for killing 50 minutes of a school day.

McCourt showed what a good teacher he must have been by that refusal to take on the role of Late-Life-Success-That-Makes-It-All-Worthwhile. He rejected an easy celebration, and risked being seen as a sore winner, a grump or a Grinch, to make a point about life–about the lives of his students, now young adults. If you want something, don’t wait for it to happen, make it happen. Start now.

And while I can’t speak for his students, I know I it made an impression on me–being older than our fellow guests and a bit more bruised by life, I got it.

Chance and necessity, possibility and privacy–and broccoli. Seize the day.

Asset Safari: After the Meltdown, Part III

It is now 107 days since we’ve had a home we can call a home.

Leaving NYC in a taxi on a gray day, we flew West and showed up in Palo Alto, hoping for a fellowship–no dice. Paused in SoCal to see me aging Mum and scope out the job market–no job market. After a week we hauled anchor for Hawaii, where a house awaited, collecting dust kitties and still stuffed with M’s late mother’s personal effects (including a fourth husband).

Now we are back in L.A.

In our last weeks in NYC, back when all this began, I had a flash about how to wrest control of this shapeless life of ours. My head was in an unusual place–having finished my novel Feb. 25, I’d gone straight that evening, without even a tot of celebratory whisky, into a frenzy of boxing and storing and throwing. For the next 45 days I had no time to read or write. Meanwhile, M was finishing her book, on double-drop-dead-line, since we had to vacate March 31 whether or not the mss. was finished on its April 1 due date.

All this left me plenty of time for one thing: thinking. And my thinking couldn’t be wool-gathering, either, or story-plotting. No, I had to assume the role of Captain Trips, master-planning our future moves even as our life morphed toward nebulosity, if not disaster.

The problem: How to turn a rout into victory? Since I’ve been reading a lot of military history for my novel, Dunkirk sprang to mind, but the analogy seemed risible; and as a rule one must be cautious about inviting comparison to Winston Churchill. Still, I conducted a staged withdrawal, trying to sublet the apartment, to sell our first editions of Eliot and Stevens and Cather and Bukowski, to find amid our possessions a liability to turn into an asset. And failed on each count.

To get myself through this initial period I decided to approach this entire episode–our "reset," as Obama might call it–as a four-star life detour, if the Guide Michelin reviewed lives like restaurants. I would drape it in flash econo-political symbolism, lard it with literary analogy, disguise the off bits with aggressive spices, like a cheap curry. Then call it an adventure. Turn suffering into material, the way a bistro chef takes offal and serves it up as tripes de Caen.

It wasn’t such a stretch. This is partly how it felt to be a magazine writer and editor, in the Latter Days of Journalism. Magazine people make sausage, almost without exception. I was good at it.

But I also was a fiction writer–which, in these times, is like saying "I whittle garden gnomes out of scrap lumber." Still, the fiction-writing habit seemed the only one still functioning after the meltdown. Freelancing a nonfiction story when staffers are being laid off by the hundreds is like a cow boarding a cattle car to the stockyards in expectation of reaching the next pasture.

Writing fiction, for me, for years, has been all about finding form in content, patiently sifting material and memories and associations until a constellation of truths emerge that one can shape into a whole. This was what I must do with my life, and our lives. Find the truth, and let that truth dictate the shape.

Or so I thought. For our content we had our life, which was about to become defined by movement and search and return, like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath or the knight and squire in Don Quixote or Japhy Ryder in Kerouac’s On the Road–excepting iPods and laptops, of course. Having been away from our West Coast hometowns for over 20 years except for holidays and M’s odd magazine assignment and my football book, there was also a feeling of coming home from the wars. We were both like Odysseus, fumbling our way toward the past that was to be our future. (From the above it can be seen how quickly literary analogies lose their potency; in real life, as inspiration and motivation their return on investment is about the same, if not less.)

The magazine cliche came easily to hand: Road Trip! The skeletal excuse for filling any hole in the fashion/gear/travel section in any magazine is to scrounge up some skinny callow kids and take their pictures driving down Route 66 in a vintage convertible. (Hey, if it worked for Huck Finn, Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, Lewis & Clark, Hunter Thompson, David Lynch and so on unto "Thelma and Louise," don’t knock it.)

Besides, in addition to the Road Trip format we’d have the overlay of nostalgia that would come from retracing our footsteps. Indeed: twenty-six years ago, the voyage out ended up taking us from Palo Alto to New York City via a sojourn at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. That had been Captain Trips’ greatest achievement as a strategic planner to date. Now that I was being called upon to unravel the Penelopean tapestry of that move, to pull on a thread or two and see if it led us back to our origins, it was hard not to question the point of it all. Even if those 26 years amounted to the heart of our life.

Anyway, go we must. And as the clock ticked down, it became increasingly important, for me, to define the deal going down before it defined us. Crisis control for the middle class meltdown.

Speaking practically, calling ourselves homeless in a fabulous-ironic sense would certainly have gotten attention and, who knows, perhaps even an article assignment. But it seemed overwrought, as well as likely to provoke retaliation, given the plight of the "real" homeless–even though we really were homeless. Anyway, my second thought was to (figuratively) put on an old Hermes scarf and call it vagabondage. In Greenwich Village of old this would be an acceptable pose; but weren’t we headed out into the badlands where the wrong scarf can get you strung up? Also, vagabondage by definition lacks a strategy, especially in a society that doesn’t tolerate 50-something workers, let alone unemployed gypsies. No, we needed something to tell people who asked who we were, who asked where and how we lived. Anything but the truth, which is that we were jobless and homeless, dragging our possessions in a laundry cart across the Great American Consumer Desert.

That’s when my flash hit, an echo of a Depression-era snatch of dialog between Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, who, as is well known, when faced with the insurmountable cried out: "Hey, let’s put on a show!"

In our case, coming from California, and being surfers at heart, the phrase I heard sprang not from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley traditions but from our own teenage years on the sand: Cue the Beach Boys! Check out Jan & Dean and those girls in clam-diggers leaning against a cherry ‘57 Chevy–throw the boards into the back of the station wagon, along with some blankets and extra wax. And by the way? Tell our teachers we’re going on a surfing safari...

What a difference a name makes. Among those who surf, and we do, "going on safari" is still as cool and popular as ever, and doing so at poverty level is still considered a badge of retro distinction. I began mentally toting up where we could rest, for days, weeks and even months, all within decent distance from a beach- or reef-break: Huntington, Laguna, South Shore Oahu, Bay of Biscay...

It’s all in your mindset. All in a name. Tell the teachers we’re surfing. Asset-surfing, U.S.A.

Grocery Cart SUV: After the Meltdown, Part II

So there I was, back in February, in March--pushing all our possessions in a laundry cart. I tried to wait until nightfall to make a series of runs to our mini-storage unit 3 blocks away. Over the 45 days coming and going, emptying out the unit and re-filling it from our apartment, I think I must have made 200 trips. Maybe more--the frequency picked up as we neared our day of abandoning the apartment, New York and 26 years in Chelsea.

If this sounds tawdry or "unnecessary"--i.e., over-dramatic--you're not and have never been a New Yorker. To a certain kind of city dweller, the laundry cart, purchased on 14th Street from a Nigerian or Peruvian, is their SUV. It's not just for laundry, or even groceries. You can move a piano with one, if you have three others to balance the load, that is.

My embarrassment was local, not global. When I got to the corner, I crossed 10th Ave to avoid being seen by my pals at the Empire Diner. I didn't care about the yuppie scum (a phrase curated from the 70s Lower East Side) at the tapas joint or the stragglers from the art galleries. For all they knew, I could be performing an "art installation." Right on!

Once as I was pushing my load on down the road, a Van Morrison song came on my iPod: "It Once Was My Life." And I dug it, dug myself, in an R. Crumb kind of way: Mr Natural-style. Sure, I looked like a homeless person. And in a few weeks I would be, technically. But I had my iPod, my irony, my style...

Back then I hadn't read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"--his after-the-world-is-over novel about The Man and The Boy pushing a grocery cart filled with canned food and blankets down a blasted highway. I like McCarthy. His dynamic deadly landscapes are mine, or at least, the deserts and wastelands of my Western youth. But I figured "The Road" wouldn't be a great work. Too Mad Max. I also figured it would be too depressing given my circumstances.

Now that I have read it, in anxious repose here in Hawaii, the similarity between my laundry cart and The Man's grocery cart is enough to give me the willies. "The Road" takes place after a nuclear strike, never explained. Nuclear winter has long killed off all living things: except for a dog or two kept for self-defense, there are no cats, rats, coyotes, birds, not even a cockroach. (Which is one of the only "unrealistic" notes in a pretty great novel; according to urban myth the cockroach will survive a nuke-out.)

Obviously "The Road" is meant to be The Last Road Novel, a windup of the genre that has given literature such long legs: Exodus, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe and on up to Jack Kerouac and too many tired recent examples to mention. I believe "The Road" is also meant to expose to bitter ridicule the overriding American Male Fantasy--that we are a nation of Mr Goodwrench Survivalists who will overcome all setbacks and even thrive, become better family men, for having to live off canned food (while devising clever and economical ways to kill other survivalists who've gone bad or voted Obama).

Yeah, it's a lovely myth. As a boy, as a Boy Scout, a 12-year-old card-carrying member of the NRA hoping my Dad would anoint me with a .22 single-shot Remington for my birthday, I'd grasped the poetry of how Daniel Boone "barked" squirrels with a shot into the tree branch beside the victim's head, which a) didn't mess up the brains, high in protein and fats and b) allowed the lead bullet to be pried out with the tip of a Bowie knife after the kill. Talk about sustainability!

"The Road" is the dead-end of that fantasy. The caches of food are all ravaged, gone, except for a few that appear providentially--discovered under duress--just when our heroes are fainting of starvation. The successful survivalists are organized into tribes of cannibals and (favorite McCarthy turn of phrase) catamites--imagine if Mardis Gras and Gay Pride paraders suddenly sprouted vampire fangs and began dining a la "Night of the Living Dead". The NRA types, it is inferred, didn't last long; for their pains in surviving the meltdown, which they carefully prepared for with underground food caches and arms depots, they got buggered and eaten. Nice.

I have known a few survivalists in my time. As a boy scout, I encountered a charming doctor and a not so charming dentist who both produced bouquets of German handguns on different occasions: thus my only Luger, proferred with a "want to touch?" eagerness. Later, white racists handing out guns during the Watts Riots in 1965 looked on the verge of ecstacy. Black rioters bursting the doors at Poly High in 1969 looked just as over-the-top as they reduced civilization to a shambles.

Today, a couple of my friends mutter of their guns, and a couple actually do have arms caches, I'm told. They once were hippies. Shit happened, I guess. Glad I wasn't there for it. Hope I'm not around when it happens again.

Oh, wait a second. It did happen. Because... When I was pushing my laundry cart, back and forth, in the rain and sleet and covering darkness, so my pals at the Empire Diner wouldn't recognize me, wasn't I enacting the Cormac McCarthy scenario in its early, still-hopeful beginnings? Storing 45 boxes of writings and journals and taxes--for what? Maybe I should have been stashing tuna fish and ammunition for my .30-.30.

This meltdown, if it goes on, could easily reduce all of us to The Man. That's the fear, isn't it? And if we are indeed thrown upon our own resources, it won't be pretty. It won't be a cleansing rapture for the prepared and the devout, like those 7th Day Adventists who are required--yes, required--to keep a years' food and water in their houses.

No, as D.H. Lawrence said, "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, and a killer. It has never yet melted." As an aphorism, I've never bought it. As a prediction of life after breakdown, I can't get it out of my mind--like a cheap perfume or pop music hook. I know so many guys who secretly believe disaster would cause them to rise to the top, like some combination of Jason Bourne and Attila the Hun.

Make a nice reality show--unless we're already living it.

Roughing It: After the Meltdown, Part I

And so we were homeless.

Briefly. But time is not the yardstick here. If you ain't got a home, you're homeless.

A favorite old song on the radio when I was growing up (the Fifties, before music was totally segmented, when novelty songs and doo-wop and rock n roll and ballads all poured out of the fabric-covered Norelco Radio): The Boll Weevil Song. A sung-spoken dialog between a scratchy-voiced cotton farmer and his nemesis, in which every one of the farmer's increasingly anxious pleas is answered by a basso profundo chorus by Mr Weevil, who rumbles:

"But you gotta have a home, you gotta have a home."

Brook Benton was the singer in the 1961 version, one of the earlier black singers to crack mainstream pop radio, I'd guess. The origins of the song go back to an Alan Lomax recording of Lead Belly in 1934. But it's older even than that.

Here's how it went for Missus Weevil and me. Jan 5, we lost the last job we had between us. By the end of the week, it was clear something had to give, and that something, I recognized, was our New York City apartment. We hoped to sublet and began the process of packing, stacking, sorting, clearing out existing mini-storage (the new American country home being the storage unit--unless it's your primary residence, as seemed to be case for a number of our fellow mini-members).

A showing of the apartment on Mar 14 drew one person who said, without recognizing the literary allusion: "What a dump." Thus was brought home the five-month tumble of values in Chelsea, NYC: an apartment that we were told would rent for $6K a month couldn't fetch half that (about what we paid, as stabilized tenants).

Now as the Boll Weevil said to the Farmer, "We gotta have a home..."

Our question was: where? And being incorrigible literary types, or typists, as they once were called, M and I immediately being looting our favorite books for examples, good or ill, of the kind of adventure we were about to set out on.

For the remainder of this blog, here are the books and films and media to be referenced as we wend our way from New York City to Palo Alto to Long Beach (Calif) to Honolulu and back to Palo Alto/ Long Beach and thence.... "Well, wherever there's a home, you gotta have a home."

Exodus. Robinson Crusoe. Typee and Omoo. The Mutiny on the Bounty. Huckleberry Finn. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Long Goodbye. Pitcairn Island. Tortilla Flats. The Grapes of Wrath. My Side of the Mountain. Eat the Document. Mad Max. The Road. In Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World. Castaway. And those merry pranksters, The Grateful Dead...

Let's see how long this plays out.

Letter to a Republican Friend on Nov 5, 2008

Hi John,

I read your take on this election with interest, as I do all your commentary--unless it's of the one or two-word variety! My take is of course going to be different, but before we get to that, I'd like to say that history offers us few moments or chances to grasp at change or greatness. This seems to be one of them. The consistent underestimation of Obama shown by the GOP and McCain should not blind you to this moment, if you really do want solutions to our imploding economy, health care system, national security, and prison and educational systems, which seem similarly and eerily related.

In other words: I hope you will suck it up and help, because, in the words of the Grateful Dead, "this train's got to run today."

Now to your take, with its attempts at spinning this election. To recap:

Despite your characterizations, the results are not a narrow electoral victory eked out by Boss Tweed types working urban precincts. The gap in popular voting is 7 million in favor of Obama. Gore, as you recall, won the popular vote in 2000. Bush won it in 2004 by 100,000 votes. This is a mandate.

The new voter reg and turnout wasn't just black and hispanic, but massive amounts of students, who finally voted instead of sitting in their dorms playing Nintendo and beer pong. The amount of student participation and their fervor is amazing, unheard of. They are the reason Indiana and North Carolina and former red states swung blue. Nor were they credulous airheads. They ran their own campaigns, they mastered the new technologies, they debated issues amongst themselves. They didn't need us. Indeed, they outstripped us at every turn. This is a new day, and one I am having trouble getting used to, but it is real.

Again regarding the urban precinct slur, I know dozens of middleaged white people who spent hours making calls on their own phones during the last weeks, and half a dozen who left their jobs and lives and went somewhere to canvass for votes on their own dime. They were dead serious individuals with houses, mortgages, kids in school, ruined 401Ks--far from woolly headed gay socialists sipping lattes.

Tactics and strategy of course played a major role. Obama and his team had the clarity of mind to devise and hold to a strategy that proved out despite every twist and turn. The only thing you can compare it to is Reagan's own 20 year honing of his less govt less tax message, which was, ironically, what they ended up running against, as it happened to implode in Sept.

The GOP had no strategy. The President was Republican. Congress had been Republican controlled for 6 years. McCain was a 26 year insider. So the GOP ran a tactics race, because they couldn't figure out how to sell McCain as an alternative to a failed government. The Wall Street Journal has reported on this several times; see today's article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122586043326400685.html

The tactics chosen were familiar. They'd worked against Gore and Kerry. For Obama, the game was to assume that most Americans are ignorant (Obama is a secret Muslim-marxist/socialist-
terrorist-antiChrist-with no birth certificate), racist (he's black, a coke dealer, porno star (yes that was out there)) and easy to fool: see all of the preceding plus this: a $5K health insurance credit to solve all your problems--amazingly out of touch; trickle down tax policy that will raise us all up--even though after 20 years of tax cuts the income gap has worsened faster and is now wider than at any point in our history; and the answer to everything is to privatize, esp Social Security--oops, what just happened to my 401K?.

The Obama campaign fought back with information, which thanks to the Internet moves a lot faster now. They used a weapon which is hard to blunt: the truth. They were the ones who put data and position papers online, and let people read them for themselves.

The GOP put out nothing but vague planks of their platform. The real message of the GOP would be in code, and it would be wink-wink, we know what we're talking about here...

Today we've seen how badly they miscalculated. And were outfought, outplanned, and outmanned. Most of all, Obama and the Dems won by the superiority of their convictions and ideas. Obama's vote effort ran on an army of volunteers, and a volunteer army beats the mercenaries, if given enough time to train and deploy--just like the American army in WWII up against the war-hardened Wermacht.

The GOP hierarchy lost the truth war by not ever competing. They also lost out on manners and human decency. Their words drip scorn and hatred; their hired assassins in the media made fun of hope, of idealism, of diversity--and intelligence. They offered sneers and insults. They blustered and threatened violence.

In the end, like any schoolyard bully, they crumpled and stand revealed as pathetic whiners, a party of the selfish and of lobbyists in tasseled loafers who pretend to be "real" authentic Americans while, in McCain's case, living in 7 houses, driving 13 cars, flying in a private jet and marrying into a fortune and a readymade political career.

John, your perspective is grudgingly gracious, as suits the day after a hard battle. But before you fire the first shot in the next GOP war on over 50% of the electorate, you might want to retreat to a quiet corner and ask yourself how the party you love became such a Grinch. Ask why they run on high octane hate and ridicule. Ask what they offer the young except undercutting and cynicism.

Finally, I'm going to lower my blood pressure by vowing to hug a Republican this Xmas. I suggest you try the same with a Democrat, if you can find one. If you can't bring yourself to it, think about that deep vein of anger the GOP accidentally and fatally tapped when through Fox, Palin, Limbaugh and other demagogues they accused Obama supporters of not being true Americans.

It turns out there are many more of us than they ever imagined. It turns out there are more of us than you.

Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas in Hawaiian)!

Don

Barak the Bodysurfer - The October Surprise

Who is Barak Obama? What else is there to know about him? Is there anything left to discover or italicize after 20 months of increasing scrutiny?

With just 10 days left in the election, the answer is a surprising “yes.” And it’s appropriate for discussion (unlike the increasingly sleazy rumors being floated by the ultra-conservative hate machine), given that candidate Obama has curtailed campaigning to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii.

Here’s my big reveal: Barry Obama is a bodysurfer. Not only that, as a highschooler in Hawaii he practiced his sport at Sandy Beach, the most dangerous beach in the world.

For confirmation of that stat, check out this 2002 Honolulu Advertiser clip: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2002/03/24/news/story3.html

As to Obama’s choice of sport, it’s here in my August 2008 blog, after his visit to Hawaii:

“Barak went local in a Friday statement, as reported by many sources, including Michael Falcone of the New York Times, in a time-honored way for a politician–by evoking food, the ur-indigenous reference point. “I might go to Zippy’s. I might go to Rainbow Drive-In. I might go get some shave ice,” the candidate said, adding, “I’m going to go body-surfing at an undisclosed location.”

Aside from the undisclosed beach, which every local bodysurfer could identify with a 90 percent degree of certainty–but will never tell Fox News--“5-0-Bama” was delivering a specific message. He was locating himself in a specific neighborhood, Kapahulu-Diamond Head, where my wife and her family grew up, and where the candidate’s half-sister lives. That he did it by his choice of drive-ins is most appropriate to Hawaii.”

I have it on good authority (my wife went to Obama’s high school, Punahou, and her brother John was a classmate of the Democratic candidate) that Barak was a Sandy Beach guy. In Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, that’s not surprising, but it is a sign of beach cred. (That’s what they call street cred in Hawaii.)

Bodysurfing Sandy Beach is a big indicator of your capacity for mastering fear and terror, for hanging out and getting down local-style, for being one of the guys and wahines--and servicemen who make Sandy Beach their number one stop for guts and glory-flavored R&R. (All of which is pretty darned Main Street, Madame Palin!)

Now, I know Hawaii and I know Sandy Beach. In fact, the only time I’ve been to the emergency room for a beach- or ocean-related accident was after nearly snapping my neck there. There is a horrible sound your neck makes after you’ve planted your face in sand where you thought there was water–that’s the sound of Sandy Beach.

So why do people go there? Because it is a wave machine. When the swells are pumping, they jack up so steeply, so suddenly, that they create ramps of water that resemble skateboard half-pipes. And, for bodysurfers who can handle the possibility of pain and paralysis, those watery ramps that exist only for a few seconds are the gateway to an amazing ride, a compression of skill, risk and speed into a single samurai action.

What rock climbers are doing on El Capitan, what backcountry skiers are doing jumping off ledges, what Laird Hamilton is doing on Jaws with his tow-in surfski, is what the boys and girls of Sandy Beach are getting a piece of every day they pile into the car after school and head out to the sun-baked Oahu strand.

Think you now know everything about Obama and bodysurfing? Hang on a moment longer, because I’m still not convinced you get this thing called bodysurfing. It’s not surfing. Meaning it’s not Gidget, not Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, not even Sean Penn as Spicoli the Surfer in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Not the Beach Boys, not the bushy-bushy blond dudes running down to the water carrying sharp-tipped plastic boards (that actually kind of resemble Masai shields, when you let your mind drift in a certain, Obama-esque direction)

Bodysurfing is also not the current icon of cool in car ads that board surfing has become–all those Abercrombie models posing with their plastic planks and six-pack abs. That’s because it’s a purist sport, first of all. Nobody sells clothes, sunglasses, cars, etc, using bodysurfers.

It’s also a sport virtually without equipment–your board is your body. That’s really interesting, if you ask me (and I am a bodysurfer, obviously). Imagine skiing without skiis, snowboarding without a snowboard, and you begin to see what it’s all about.

Now, living in New York City as I do, I know the East Coast has a type of bodysurfing all its own. No offense, folks, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Like 99% of the ocean swimming population, you think bodysurfing is when a swimmer goes straight ahead and either glides forward on the foam of a breaking wave, or flips ass-over-teakettle.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun either way. I’ve done it at Jones Beach along with the millions of gawking bathers on a 100-degree July 4th weekend.

But Hawaiian-style bodysurfing is something else. (I call it Hawaiian out of deference to the people who gave us surfing as a cultural activity, but like surfing itself, it is a global phenomenon, albeit one practiced largely in Hawaii and Southern California.) In this version, the swimmer kicks hard into the wave, but instead of going straight launches sideways. That’s right, the swimmer moves in a lateral direction.

Let’s put you into the bodysurfing frame of mind. A wave lurches into view on the horizon; you scan it quickly, looking for the critical point where it will break first, and swim right up to that looming avalanche of water. Then, letting it lift you up as it passes, you flutter-kick and stroke hard for an instant, launching yourself sideways off the cliff.

On a large wave, such as those Obama must have faced and taken at Sandy Beach, we’re talking about a 10 to 25-foot drop. Face-first. With a powerful fist of water hanging over your head and back and spinal column, about to pound you into the shallow sand below.

So what do you do? You have fun with the free-fall. And you turn your body into a planing surface, like a ship that uses hydrofoils. Your body becomes the board.

In a split-second, while falling forward and down at a high rate of speed, the swimmer gains control by planing on the wave-face’s wall, doing this by riding on the flat of an outstretched hand and arm. That arm and hand are like the tobaggon that the bodysurfer is riding.

Next, shooting along just ahead of the breaking wave (in the manner you’ve seen in countless video clips of board surfers and boogieboarders), the swimmer maneuvers, spins, loops, ducks under the wave’s falling lip...

Imagine for a moment that you can fly, speeding like Superman, or at least Clark Kent in a Speedo. That’s bodysurfing.

And that’s a pretty good description of Barak Obama handling all the ups and downs and amazing twists and gut-clenching insults of this Presidential campaign.

Some shots from the Sandy Beach 2007 Classic competition:

http://groups.msn.com/Pipeline2001Classic/2007sandys.msnw

For the Dodgers, A Baseball Poem

Note: I grew up in Long Beach, just a mile from the McDonnell Douglas aircraft plant where the world's greatest all-purpose aircraft, the DC3, was built by men who were also baseball fans. In fact, across Carson Blvd from the factory gates was a hotdog stand run by a former Dodger star...


coming in
just after the noon whistle
the men shuffling out of the aircraft plant, lunch pails in hand
sandwiches already eaten at the 10 am break
this one is for hotdogs at Ron Fairley's Dugout
and suds, suds, suds
until it's time
to put the rivets onto another
DC3
(godswilling)

To a Neighbor, Obama’s Hawaiian Drive-In Choices Explain a Lot

During his week of vacation in Hawaii, Barak “5-0" Obama has kept a low profile and added to his reputation for being in the right place at the right time–in this case, given the John Edwards affair, out of the headlines. Always a great place to vacation, Hawaii has an extra advantage for a politician, because of the six-hour time difference between Honolulu and New York City. Unless it’s a pack of Zeros coming in over the Wai’anae Mountains at 7:00 a.m. on December 7th, it’s hard to make media waves, something the candidate and his handlers probably counted on.

But that doesn’t mean Obama didn’t leave analysts something to chew on. You just had to know where to look–and be able to think “local.” This humble word, so popular now in organic food circles, is the key signifier in Hawaii, a land of many visitors, many migrants and immigrants, and many ethic groups--and thus in need of one way of denoting who is from “here” and who is from “there.” In Hawaii this week Barak gave clear proof that he is indeed a local, despite the Chicago community activism, despite the sharp silhouette he cuts in a suit, despite looking, yes, different from all those other presidents.

Barak went local in a Friday statement, as reported by many sources, including Michael Falcone of the New York Times, in a time-honored way for a politician–by evoking food, the ur-indigenous reference point. “I might go to Zippy’s. I might go to Rainbow Drive-In. I might go get some shave ice,” the candidate said, adding, “I’m going to go body-surfing at an undisclosed location.”

Aside from the undisclosed beach, which every local bodysurfer could identify with a 90 percent degree of certainty–but will never tell Fox News--“5-0-Bama” was delivering a specific message. He was locating himself in a specific neighborhood, Kapahulu-Diamond Head, where my wife and her family grew up, and where the candidate’s half-sister lives. That he did it by his choice of drive-ins is most appropriate to Hawaii.

Hawaii has a glorious tradition of drive-ins, sadly diminished over time by development and mainland franchises, but Zippy’s and Rainbow, both located a few blocks apart on Kapahulu Avenue, are two of the great remnants. Up until the early Reagan years Honolulu seemed like a place where clocks had stopped in 1956, and you could get a teriyaki burger and a frosted mug of root beer delivered to your Chevy’s window by a carhop.

A local franchise, Zippy’s is the more upscale by far of the two Obama mentioned, offering indoor seating and a diabetic coma-inducing dessert menu to go with its saimin noodles, Portuguese sausage and egg-over-rice breakfasts, and the Island standby, chili rice. Rainbow is the funky spot, with a tricky parking lot and a lunch crowd of construction and state workers who order massive cholesterol-laden plate lunches that typically include double scoops of macaroni salad and rice to go with the entree: teriyaki or katsu chicken or beef, hamburger patties in gravy--and, of course, more chili rice.

Thus the brief quote by “5-O-B” is, when you parse it further, a masterpiece of nuance and concision. By coupling Zippy’s and Rainbow, he went high-low, and earned the candidate points from all income, ethnic and cultural levels. Mentioning shave ice, the favored local dessert of flavored syrups poured over a mound of snowy shavings, connected to the kid in everyone.

Furthermore, by specifiying that he “might go for a Zip Min,” Zippy’s saimin noodle bowl loaded to the max, he dismissed an issue that has plagued his campaign: that he is someone who lacks a serious appetite. The steaming noodles in the Zip Min come topped with crispy shrimp, fish cake, egg and wun tun (or as they call them on the Mainland, won ton dumplings). The Zip Min is a Hawaiian Whopper, the kind of meal that mandates an appetite such as might be raised by a morning bodysurfing run to Sandy Beach. Since this is exactly what Barak Obama says he’s going to do on his vacation, his street credibility here goes off the scale:

I just know the dude has been there, like me, standing in line at Rainbow’s, no shirt, wearing flip-flops, with sand in his ears, jellyfish stings in his baggys, and sea-snot running out his nose from going over the falls and getting thrashed in Sandy Beach shorebreak. After that, only chili rice and a root beer float will do.

While it’s just one quote, it’s a masterpiece of local cool, the equivalent of Abe Lincoln’s pose as the “rail-splitter from Illinois.” It’s an affirmation that, far from being an elitist carpetbagger who cares only for his waistline, Obama is a real guy. Thanks to the above, I now feel, beyond a doubt, that I know who Barak Obama is–a bodysurfer in more ways than one, capable of riding this wave all the way to the biggest bowl of saimin of them all.

How to Murder Someone and Get Away With It

Thought that would get your attention! First, FBI and local authorities, rest assured there is no evil intent here--more in the nature of a warning for first responders at sea. In particular, the Coast Guard and local marine police.

Second, consider the way the Western world has ritualized and merchandised murder: not just Murder Inc (the mob) and Murder Ink (the bookstore), but all the Law & Orders, CSIs, Homicides, alphabetical-titled serial killer novels and their ilk. It's really the one industry America can't out-source.

We're murder-mad. The writing is a form of scripture. The meager plot is always the same: serial killer, maverick cop, pissy superiors... What we like is the drapery hung over the bones of the deceased.

Ian Rankin is a writer I'm very fond of, but I admit I'm a sucker for his serial killer plots because a), they take place in a grunge universe called Scotland, which suits my mood; and b) he drapes the bones of his plots in great songs and lyrics drawn from the dour 60-ish English-Scots-Irish-American-depressed-drinkers songbook. Oh, and c) nobody on the police side in his books carries a gun until it's too late.

Would've saved Sean Bell, that last.

Not a total digression, and no, I haven't forgotten the promise of the title: How to Murder Someone and Get Away With It. In my last post, I wrote of the stupidity of landlubber criminals who think that stealing a boat (and murdering the owners) is a ticket to paradise. See: John Fitzgerald Kennedy (the murderer in Long Beach, CA not the dead President). See: Palmyra Atoll Murders (a story I worked to get in print, unsuccessfully, years before Vincent Bugliosi's very good book).

Well, I was partly wrong in thinking only meth addicts and the spawn of those raised on reality television would call this boat-stealing business a plan. It turns out that it is very hard to successfully prosecute those who commit murder at sea so long as a) they dispose of the body so that it cannot be found; b) do the deed outside the 12-mile limit; and c) call in a Mayday so that the Coast Guard or other responder muddies up the crime scene before they know it is a crime scene.

I found this out in the process of following and editing a story about the Joe Cool, a yacht that was hijacked off Miami (by quite a pair: a former Guantanamo prison guard and his now-gay former prisoner! jeez!). My writer on the piece, Vince Daniello, himself a boat captain, was appalled at what he discovered about the loopholes for crime at sea. He says he's going to be extra-careful checking out bona fides for any who want to charter the yachts he works on...

Check out Vince's story: Who Killed Joe Cool? (It was one of my last before Yachting cast me adrift in a skiff with a jug of water, a bowl o' haggis and a parrot who likes talking dirty...)

Anyway, this dirty little secret about crime at sea is apparently folklore in stir: reaching a lot of criminals and petty cons and grifters looking for a dream score. So they aren't so stupid after all. Depressing thought, but inescapable as this has been going on a good long while, and nobody on the right side of the law has made much of a fuss about it.

Indeed, that's why you had Miami Vice--the real version--filling the news in the 80s with so many crimes and smuggling exploits in the Caribbean. Nobody stayed in jail for long.

The new motto: What happens outside the 12-mile limit, stays outside the 12-mile limit.


P.S. Here's our 18th Century (or earlier) word of the day: Ilk.

As in "serial killer novels and their ilk." Well, turns out this is a Scottish clan name--like the Campbells and the MacDonalds--and, yes, there is a chap who calls himself Lord of the Ilk. It must be hard for his scribe not to sign off on all his proclamations with the linguistic equivalent of the 120 places of pi: "Lord of the Ilk and all their ilk and all their ilk and all THEIR ilk and all their ilk...."

Something in the sea that sings of murder

What is it about petty criminals that when they get desperate they always seem to dream up a plan that involves something about which they know absolutely nothing--so the plan inevitably goes wrong, and ends up in murder...?

Why does it always seem to involve a yacht and a girl--and an escape plan that depends wholly on an Automobile Club map of Mexico...?

That was the one in Los Angeles a couple of years ago--3 bored punks (one bizzarely named John Fitzgerald Kennedy) pretended to want to buy a boat from a nice couple. So they all went for a test drive and killed the retired pair without a thought. And for what? They didn't know enough about boats to even point it the right way...had to call the Coast Guard to be rescued!

Same kind of story just happened in Miami this year aboard the Joe Cool. It's always the amateurs who think all they have to do is go to sea and the world will reward them with coconuts and the policia will forget them. These guys killed a young couple and the captain, then, yup, had to call the Coast Guard when they ran out of gas near Cuba.

Something in our psyche makes us stupid around great waters... Or maybe makes the stupid lethal...

LB Poly takes Southern Calif title for 17th time

So Long Beach Poly won another title, which makes it sound easy. It wasn't. Ranked as high as fifth in the nation pre-season, the team lost its opening game, 20-7, and was thereafter unranked and underestimated. Though always feared.

Following from afar, distracted by more pressing matters, I still was gratified to check in on Sunday mornings by reading the LA Times and the Long Beach Independent Press Telegram for the score of the previous night's game. I saw Poly marching on. Getting stronger, playing defense more cohesively, relying on a ground game as is the Jackrabbit tradition.

Last week Poly took on Orange Lutheran, who'd they lost to last year by a missed extra point with seconds left. On a rain soaked field, Orange was forced to punt on its first possession. The snap went over the kicker's head, into the end zone, where the punter ran it out for a safety. 2-0 Poly, with two minutes gone.

Orange, averaging 30 points a game, never scored. Poly pulled off two goal-line stands, in the last seconds of the first half and at the end of the game. Final score, 2-0.

In the final game, last night, Poly defeated Crespi 13-3, in the rain. That's 3 points allowed in two championship games: congratulations to coach Raul Lara and defensive coordinator Jeff Turley. These were tense games (Poly led Crespi by 6-3 at half and through most of the third and fourth quarters). High school kids playing without a letdown in the biggest show of their lives.

Thanks to Poly for allowing me to wear my colors - green and gold - on a cold wet Sunday in New York, far from Long Beach, Calif. Below are some game stories:

Stars pass along winning tradition
Article Launched: 12/08/2007 11:41:42 PM PST


As impressive as Long Beach Poly High's championship football legacy may be, it's the continuity of the program that leaves one marveling.

One attends a cold, wet CIF Southern Section Pac-5 Division title game at Home Depot Center in 2007 and memories of past stars pop up in the course of Poly claiming its unprecedented 17th CIF title, 13-3 over Crespi before 14,898.

Vaughn Telemaque dives here for one interception, and dives there perfectly parallel to the ground for another, and then clinches the game with a leaping interception in the end zone on Crespi's last gasp drive.

He threw a virtual shutout of Crespi's Notre Dame-bound tight end Joseph Fauria, and it's almost impossible to not think of Mark Carrier, the former Poly and NFL standout. Or Marques Anderson, Chuckie Miller, Marquez pope, Omar Stoutmire and Darnell Bing, because Telemaque may be as good as any.

He certainly was the difference Saturday, on a defense that deserves credit for this title more than most. The Jackrabbits allowed just 106 points all season in a 13-1 season, and just 24 in four playoff games.

The lone touchdown Santa Margarita scored in the first playoff win came on a fumble return.

Newport Harbor scored a touchdown on a short drive set up by a turnover, and their last versus the second team. In the semis and finals, Poly allowed one field goal.

Then on the other side of the ball there was Melvin Richardson, a stout, quick 5-10, 195-pound junior running back who is reminiscent of former Georgia standout Herschel Walker in size and style, but for Poly fans will now join the same company as Herschel Dennis, Kirk Jones, Willie Brown and Dee Andrews as a classic difference-maker.

Richardson turned a run to the left into a 69-yard touchdown on Poly's first offensive series for a 6-0 lead, and then carried for gains of 7, 6, 19 and the scoring play of four yards in the fourth quarter to give Poly a 13-3 lead and the game.

That doesn't even include the 50-yard run that would have made it three touchdowns and a larger margin called back by a penalty. Richardson finished the night with 148 rushing yards.

Poly's 17th title is the third for Raul Lara since becoming Poly's head coach in 2001, adding to the titles he claimed in 2001 and 2004. He moves closer to the cr me of Poly lore, one behind Orian Landreth, who won four in 1929, 1930, 1934 and 1936, and one behind Jerry Jaso (1985, 1997, 1999, 2000), the first coming as co-coach with Thomas Whiting.

Dave Levy won back-to-back titles in 1958 and 1959. Ed Kienholz (1919), Art Schuettner (1923) and Jim Barnett (1980) also won titles, and Poly also claimed a lower weight CIF title in 1927.

Of course, nothing comes easy for Poly. As good as they are and as stout as the program may be, they always seem to take the rockier path to championships.

Only one of the titles since 1997 - they've won six in 11 years - came by a significant margin, the 21-6 win over Los Alamitos in 2004 that was also won in the final quarter like Saturday's. Poly beat Mater Dei by three in 1997, earned a co-title with a 1999 tie, and beat Loyola by three points in overtime in 2001.

The losses were close, too - a touchdown loss to Mater Dei in 1998, a one-point loss to the Monarchs in 2002, and a four-point loss to Loyola in 2003. Last year's semifinal loss to Orange Lutheran was by a point.

Poly couldn't have begun the game with more momentum. Richardson found a seam in the Crespi line and then split two defenders on the way to a 69-yard touchdown run just 64 seconds into the game.

But despite several opportunities and good field position, most of them coming courtesy of Telemaque, Poly was unable to build on that early score.

For starters, Jonathan Heinze's kick after Richardson's score hit the post so the lead was just 6-0.

Telemaque followed with two diving interceptions of Crespi quarterback Brian Bennett on the Celtics' first two possessions, the first setting Poly up at midfield, but the Jackrabbits went three-and-out.

Telemaque's second pick, a full out dive in front of Fauria, put Poly on the Crespi 30. Four runs later, Poly had a first-and-goal at the four, but Richardson lost the ball when hit at the two and Crespi recovered.

Poly drove into Crespi territory again on their next possession, and a 29-yard screen pass to fullback Iosefo Mikaele should have put the ball on the Crespi 15. But a holding penalty away from the play pushed Poly back to the 29, and another penalty put them further back, and Heinze's 50-yard field goal attempt was short.

Crespi went on their best drive of the night from there, converting six first downs to set Christian Nastos for a 32-yard field goal. The drive was aided by a third down holding penalty by Poly deep in Crespi territory.

Poly had the ball for only eight minutes in the first half but held a 6-3 lead.

But despite the squandered chances, Poly's defense never broke. After a bad punt snap set Crespi up at the Poly 34, the defense fought off the Celts and forced a field goal attempt. Romeo Robinson blocked a potentially game-tying field goal that wasn't ever going to reach orbit.

After Poly made it 13-3, Sheldon Armstrong and Telemaque broke up passes on Crespi's next drive. By the time Crespi got the ball again, there was just four minutes to go and it took almost all of the time for Crespi to get close - at which time Telemaque stepped up again with the game-clinching pick.

And 17th title, and more memories for the Poly vault.

**********

Players' future also a priority for Poly
By Bob Keisser, IPT

Walking through the Poly gym to the office of head coach Raul Lara provides the atmosphere of a blue-collar museum, every nook opening to a different location for the football team.

Film room. Meeting room. Locker room. Plastered on the walls are championship plaques and pictures of former Jackrabbits now performing in college or the NFL.

Then you get to the room adjacent to Lara's office, and sitting there is Lara's assistant, Monica, with all kinds of collegiate stuff on her desk, and a white grease board behind her with the name of every Poly player.

It doesn't list them by position. It has columns indicating what SAT or ACT test they've taken, written in code and different colors to indicate when the student passed the test or when he's due to take it. Then there's another column indicating what schools have made earnest contact with Poly players about a scholarship.

As the season comes to an end after tonight's CIF Southern Section Pac-5 title game against Crespi at the Home Depot Center, and perhaps a state title game next weekend, that board will begin to fill up with more numbers, codes and names as colleges come Jackrabbit hunting.

"It's been a great asset," said Lara, who was on the phone talking to a college coach about a player when I walked in his office Wednesday. "Having an aide who handles all of this is such a great resource for me and the kids."

A former Poly standout made it happen. Lara was attending an NFL Summit for high school coaches and heard Gene Washington, the former Poly, Stanford and NFL standout and now one of the NFL's top execs, talk about the league's Play It Smart program.

This is the program. The league helps set up schools with the essentials to run its own academic clearinghouse and help steer kids to college.

I can remember how Jerry Jaso always had a clipboard in his desk with a list of players and notations on test scores and what schools were interested. He would often get on the phone and start calling smaller schools looking to get some of his lesser-known or smaller players an opportunity.

This system makes it much easier for everyone. It also underscores that for all of our fascination for Poly athletics, the school's motto about "academics" is taken seriously in the gym and on the field.

************
Eric Sondheimer: LA Times

Poly beats Crespi for Pac-5 title

Defense again is the key for the Jackrabbits as Richardson's running and Telemaque's three interceptions lead the way.

December 9, 2007


On a rain-drenched field at the Home Depot Center, Encino Crespi and Long Beach Poly engaged in an all-out defensive struggle, each team daring the other to find a way to succeed.

Poly junior running back Melvin Richardson took on the challenge and delivered, scoring on touchdown runs of 69 and four yards to help the Jackrabbits defeat Crespi, 13-3, to win the Pac-5 Division title Saturday night.



It was the 17th Southern Section championship for Poly (13-1), which last week also used its defensive superiority to defeat Orange Lutheran, 2-0, in the semifinals. Richardson finished with 157 yards in 17 carries. Senior defensive back Vaughn Telemaque had three interceptions.

Now it's up to the 10 section commissioners from the California Interscholastic Federation, high school's governing body, to decide at a gathering today in Carson which six schools will be selected for the CIF state championship bowl games next Saturday at the Home Depot Center.

The toughest decision involves trying to choose the Division I representative from Southern California. It's a likely choice between City Section champion Lake Balboa Birmingham and Inland Division winner Corona Centennial.

Birmingham defeated Poly during the regular season, so the Patriots are hoping a victory over the newly crowned Pac-5 champion sways the voters. But Centennial owns a win over Crespi, a team Birmingham lost to.

*****
Eric Sondheimer: LA Times

Long Beach Poly: secondary to none

December 7, 2007


Long Beach Poly has produced more NFL players than any high school in California, and the position that college coaches count on for the Jackrabbits to deliver a top prospect every season is defensive back.

Former Poly defensive backs are scattered around the nation, from Donovan Warren at Michigan to Vincent Joseph at USC, from Rodney Van at UCLA to Byron Davenport at Washington.

In the past, there was Mark Carrier, Darnell Bing, Marquez Pope, Marques Anderson, Anthony Cobbs, Omar Stoutmire, Darrell Rideaux. . . .

"We can go on and on," Poly Coach Raul Lara said. "We can probably name 30 guys."

So it should come as no surprise that as Poly (12-1) prepares to take on Encino Crespi (11-2) in the Southern Section Pac-5 Division championship game Saturday night at the Home Depot Center, defense remains the Jackrabbits' specialty.

Their senior safeties, Vaughn Telemaque and Herman Davidson, form the best safety duo in the Southland. Telemaque has offers from USC, Michigan and Oregon. Davidson is being recruited by Michigan, North Carolina, Mississippi and San Diego State.

Telemaque could be a better safety prospect than Bing, who was a standout at USC. The senior is 6 feet 1, is fast and hits people with tremendous ferocity.

"The bigger he is, the harder he falls," Telemaque said of his upcoming assignment: stopping 6-8 Crespi tight end Joseph Fauria.

Both safeties have six interceptions. And Poly's two senior cornerbacks, Jeffrey Johnson and Sheldon Armstrong, can more than hold their own.

The Jackrabbits pulled off one of the most memorable goal-line stands in school history last week in the second quarter of their 2-0 semifinal victory over Orange Lutheran.

Four times the Lancers tried to score from the one-yard line on running plays. Four times they were stuffed inches short of the goal line.

"It's got to be right up there at the top of anything I've ever seen," Poly defensive coordinator Jeff Turley said.

Then, in the final 30 seconds, Poly came up with another goal-line stand from the one, recovering a fumble to preserve the victory.

There's so much pride Poly players have when they wear their green jerseys.

"That green is golden," Telemaque said. "It really means something when you put on the Poly uniform."

Then there's the tradition established by the all-star players of the past from a school that has won 16 Southern Section football championships.

"We want to live up to everybody," Telemaque said. "We love the tradition."

It's no secret why Poly's secondary is good on a yearly basis. Players show up with lots of athletic ability, and the coaches do the rest.

"We're fortunate to get great athletes at that position and they get college coaching," Lara said. "They're sound, technique-wise."

Of course, with so much talent come high expectations, and Poly is probably the only team in the Southland whose fans expect to win every game no matter the opponent.

"It's a lot of fun," Telemaque said. "At the same time, it's a challenge."

Long Beach Poly & De La Salle Footballers in NFL

The Magnificent Seven?

When Long Beach Poly played Concord De La Salle in 2001, it was billed as a mythical high school football national championship game. Today, seven players from that contest are in the NFL, which raises the question: Was Poly-DLS the most talent ever arrayed for a non-all-star game?


SEPT. 28, 2007 -- One Great Game (Atria, paperback 2005; hardback 2003) chronicled a modern high school football national championship game that took place in 2001, but the repercussions aren't over yet.

The long tail of a remarkable sporting event continues with the announcement by USA Football that the two schools involved, Long Beach Poly and Concord De La Salle, each have the most players in the NFL this season--six.

*Of the 12 players, 7 played with or against each other in that one "great game," which tested the marketability of televised high school football to a national audience. Today high school games are routinely screened coast-to-coast.

*The odds are this may have been the greatest number of potential pros on a high school field at one time for a non-all-star game. (In addition to the 7, at least one other player in the game has played an NFL season.)

*Two of the stars of the game have endured setbacks and hardships that scouts and fans could never have predicted.

The quarterback of the winning team, Matt Gutierrez, never lost a high school game during four years as a starter at De La Salle. He went to Michigan, where he never started a game or played a significant role. Yet this year he is a member of the New England Patriots, backing up all-pro Tom Brady--whose uncle was Gutierrez's high school principal.

The star of the Poly team, Hershel Dennis, was part of USC's shared national championship team but suffered two knee injuries in succeeding seasons. After the NCAA granted an almost unprecedented sixth year due to hardship, Dennis is a senior at USC and one of a half-dozen all-star tailbacks. This season he has carried 4 times for 15 yards.

*Long Beach Poly, also credited with having the most NFL players from any high school, was selected California's "School of the Century" in 2000 for overall excellence.

*De La Salle owns the record for most consecutive victories by any football team at any level: 151. It was broken by Bellevue High School on Sept. 4, 2004.

Contact: Don Wallace at donwallace212@hotmail.com

USA FOOTBALL release:

Two High Schools Share Lead for Most NFL Players; California Leads All States; Miami Tops Hometowns

USA Football Staff
Two California high schools –– De La Salle in Concord and Long Beach Polytechnic in Long Beach -- top the list of high schools with the most 2007 NFL players with six each.

The totals are based on the 1,693-man 2007 NFL Kickoff Weekend rosters (September 6, 9-10).

NFL players from Kickoff rosters hail from 1,384 high schools in 48 states and the District of Columbia, three foreign countries and one U.S. territory (American Samoa).

Two high schools –– DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville, Maryland and Dillard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida –– had five players apiece on Kickoff rosters.

De La Salle, Dillard and Long Beach Poly have traditionally been among the annual leaders in NFL alumni. This is the first time that DeMatha Catholic has had players in the top two positions since 1998, when NFL high school rosters were first computed.

The NFL players from the most productive schools have fond memories of their high school days, and respect for how the schools’’ football programs are run:

•• JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS QB QUINN GRAY (Dillard): ““The big thing about going to Dillard was the tradition. It started back when my dad was a coach there from 1979-90. He started a real tradition as far as winning football games and excellence in the classroom. It was a pleasure to go to the school and be a member of the football team at Dillard. You had guys like ISAAC BRUCE, CHRIS GAMBLE and people like that who played there. The tradition continues because you have guys coming out of there now going to college and then to the NFL. They will continue to do that.””

•• CLEVELAND BROWNS LB WILLIE MC GINEST (Long Beach Poly): ““Long Beach Poly means a lot to me. The school is a melting pot of ethnicity, and you not only got a great education, but you also learned about life. The coaches and administrators made sure you focused on your schoolwork. It is not a surprise to me that so many people who went to Poly have gone on to do great things. They prepare you for the next phase of your life.””

•• NEW YORK GIANTS WR AMANI TOOMER (De La Salle): ““The thing I learned from high school football was the focus it takes to be successful. We had a very successful run at De La Salle and what I remember most about it was that everybody was really focused about playing every week. It was just a good feeling that you knew the guy next to you was going to try his hardest to be the best and you could trust him. The other thing that was great was working with a coaching staff that consisted of really good people -- people who really wanted you to do well. It’’s just a good feeling to have their support and have people behind you who want to get the best out of you.””

•• PHILADELPHIA EAGLES RB BRIAN WESTBROOK (DeMatha): ““My high school coach (WILLIAM MC GREGOR II, the 2004 NFL High School Coach of the Year) continues to be an inspiration and source of support for me.””


HIGH SCHOOLS WITH MOST NFL PLAYERS



High School, Town, State Number NFL Players
De La Salle, Concord, CA 6 Matt Gutierrez, NE; Maurice Jones-Drew, JAX; Derek Landri, JAX; Amani Toomer, NYG; Demetrius Williams, BLT; D.J. Williams, DEN
Long Beach Polytechnic, Long Beach, CA 6 Winston Justice, PHI; Marcedes Lewis, JAX; Willie McGinest, CLV; Samie Parker, KC; Pago Togafau, PHI; Manuel Wright, NYG


Two high schools have five players each:


High School, Town, State Number NFL Players
DeMatha Catholic, Hyattsville, MD 5 Jacob Bender, NYJ; Quinn Ojinnaka, ATL; John Owens, NO; Brian Westbrook, PHI; Josh Wilson, SEA
Dillard, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5 Isaac Bruce, SL; Chris Gamble, CAR; Quinn Gray, JAX; Jovan Haye, TB; Stanley McClover, CAR


Sixteen high schools have four players each in the NFL this year. Twenty-nine high schools boast three NFLers, while 185 schools have two players:




High School, Town, State Number
Angleton, Angelton, TX 4
Aplington-Parkersburg, Parkersburg, IA 4
Blanche Ely, Pompano Beach, FL 4
Crenshaw, Los Angeles, CA 4
Deep Creek, Chesapeake, VA 4
Glades Central, Belle Glade, FL 4
Glenville, Cleveland, OH 4
Hazelwood East, St. Louis, MO 4
Lower Richland, Hopkins, SC 4
Miami, Miami, FL 4
Miami Beach, Miami Beach, FL 4
Norland, Miami, FL 4
Provine, Jackson, MS 4
Ruston, Ruston, LA 4
Tustin, Tustin, CA 4
4


HOME STATES: California topped the list of states with most NFL players in 2007 (209), followed by Texas (184) and Florida (178):

State NFL Players State NFL Players
California 209 Virginia 53
Texas 184 Alabama 51
Florida 178 Michigan 49
Ohio 92 Pennsylvania 49
Georgia 77 Illinois 43
Louisiana 71 Mississippi 43
South Carolina 53 North Carolina 43


HOMETOWNS: Miami, Florida heads the list of hometowns with the most NFL players (37), followed by Houston (32), Detroit, Los Angeles and San Diego (13 each).

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Subject: Long Beach Poly boasts six former players in the NFL
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:30:49 -0700 (PDT)


--------------------
Long Beach Poly boasts six former players in the NFL
--------------------

School is tied with Concord De La Salle among high schools nationally with the most representatives in the pro league, according to a report by USA Football.

By Lauren Peterson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 28 2007

Perennial high school football powerhouses Long Beach Poly and Concord De La Salle are making an impact on the sport that reaches well beyond the prep level, according to figures released Thursday by USA Football, the sport's national governing body.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-preps28sep28,1,3872346.story?coll=la-headlines-sports

Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com

Nude Beach in Central California

The big question is, how do you tell these guys that this is a Family Beach and they're, like, you know, ruining it for those of us who don't have, like, perfectly carved washboard abs and buns of steel?

In the case of the Salty Blogger, all we could do was lift our shirt and give them a dose of their own medicine. Not pretty, but at some point you just have to draw a line in the sand--even at a nude beach.

We'll let you guess (if this photo ever returns to its previous state of living color) who won this little showdown.

Location: Central California north of Cambria. January 7, 2007.

Los Coyotes Diagonal at the Olive Pit

This is the Olive Pit, where our house band sets up and hosts musicians and sessions. It has been going since 1964! Most of the equipment you see here is of more recent vintage, but we still have a few tube amps, etc. Only now, instead of an 8-track reel to reel recorder, my brother Alex has a computerized mixing board and records digitally.

One of the many lineups to play here is Los Coyotes Diagonal, which is me, Alex, Carlos Cooper, Ana Ipanema and Sean "Rocketman" Wallace, our 16-year-old Swedish Death Metal speed guitarist (who, however, would let it be known is against any and all "mindless shredding"). As soon as I can figure out how to upload an audio clip, I will.

We will be releasing our own CD soon, whether or not the world is ready for such songs as "I Soiled Myself," "She Carries the Gene," and "Black Widows in the Mexican Room." All original, by the way.

I've been trying to write a Yachting Song that will come up to the standards of "My Captain" by Grand Funk Railroad but the rest of the band keeps laughing at me.

BEST YACHT SONG YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD (DUMB VERSION)

The notion before us: music and boats, yachts, the sea. (For your NFL draft junkies, I promise that there will be a football entry soon. The Poly 5--how they stack up in the draft--looks to be interesting. Very interesting...) But for now, the crew wants music. Let the categories begin...

BEST SONG YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD (DUMB VERSION)

From the office pool, the nominees are:

Brandy? ("You’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be...")

Ride, Captain Ride ("17 men set sail out of San Francisco Bay")

Arbitrary Judgment No. 1: No, those both have something of a story to them, and are suspiciously musical. This category is for a song both pretentious and dumb, and profoundly unmusical, but gifted with some kind of hook (probably rusty, probably a treble).

The envelope, please...omigod, it’s...

You’re My Captain by Grand Funk Railroad!

Heard this on the radio the other day. It is horribly unmemorable. (Really? Can't get it out of your head? So why does it win?) It triumphs, at least until something else comes along, because they keep playing it on Oldies, Classic, Countdown, "Jack" playlist radio.

It is a terrible song, hardly that. Just grating. Devoid. And it was popular, one of those "this is why the Sixties failed" kind of numbers, like Charlie Manson and the word "groovy."

The brilliant thing is that if you just repeat the title about a gazillion times in a sour, tuneless, squeaky wheel voice you are actually improving on the classic. You can reproduce the neat seagull effects by pinching a newborn kitten on its tender belly.

Up next: football. I promise.

Best Yachting/Boating Songs

It has been (ahem) a long time since writing here. When a blog falls in the forest, does anybody hear? In this case, we fell silent. Too much, too too much: work, family, cares, chores.

Now that we're back, one subject of this blog, as originally intended, was to touch on the sea now and then. I seem to have gotten sidetracked on that a bit. But let's try again... The subject of today's missive?

Best Yachting/Boating Songs

Now that we’ve entered the age of the customized songlist via iPods and other music players, the final step in the evolution of the yacht into a floating entertainment center may take place. This is not good news for lovers of solitude, peace, quiet, and the creak of the rigging–although noise-cancelling headphones can help and the new sound-beam technology holds promise for holding down noise pollution.

For lovers of yacht music, however, all the above caveats are moot–no, not mute–because the ability to rock the boat as never before also offers the potential for the ultimate yachting songlist, customized to fit conditions (Hendrix in a Force 10 gale? If only he'd sung about the sea!), and steeped in nautical lore, phrases, instrumentation as well as killer guitar hooks and bagpipe riffs.

Here are the first three that came to mind:

Row Row Row Your Boat
Rolling on the River
Ship of Fools

When others in the office were asked, impromptu, there was a suprising unity of opinion:

Brandy

You know: "She's a fine girl, what a good wife she would be..." I had to agree, it sticks in the mind like a yard of saltwater taffy. About as sickly sweet too, but that is no reason to hate it. There is something cynical and callous about how the lyrics progress: yeah, she's a fine girl, she's pining for her guy, but, let's face it, the sea is his mistress, gee, she's a fine girl, let's have another round...

Which makes me wonder if they aren't all singing about brandy the booze. Except sailors prefer rum, tis said. Neil Diamond wrote "Crackling Rosie" about cheap red wine beloved by winos--but at 14 I hadn't yet figured out levels of meaning and so missed that one.

Brandy? Probably a Top 10.

I don't think Row Row Row Your Boat will make the list. But we shall see.

To be continued...

New Paperback of One Great Game on sale now--9/9/05

Just got word that the paperback of my football book, ONE GREAT GAME, is available--with a new Afterword that details the end of football's longest-ever winning streak. Publisher is Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster.

Already some coverage in Boise, where the Poly High fieldgoal kicker in the game, Jeff Hastings, is playing. And Calif governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has just sent me a nice letter praising the book's lessons!

Several players profiled in the book have gone on to college and playing on Saturdays, including at USC, UCLA, Notre Dame and Arizona State. Two made Sports Illustrated's All America preseason team: safety Darnell Bing at USC and tight end Marcedes Lewis at UCLA, both former Poly teammates. Both Bing and Lewis, and UCLA's Maurice Drew, had big opening games. USC offensive tackle Winston Justice has reclaimed his starting spot, and Notre Dame nose tackle Derek Landri is again the heart of the defense for the Irish.

It's wonderful to see the kids I knew four years ago succeeding, some despite steep challenges and setbacks, but I also think of how many haven't gone on to NCAA glory. It's sobering, and a reminder that sports success shouldn't be the goal of high school. Also, future success often comes hand in hand with personal discipline and self-control--those who partied late and avoided class rarely make it, despite the stereotypes we read and see in the media.

I do wish the best to all the players who made up the season portrayed in One Great Game--I hope they can keep going at the same level of committment, whatever they are doing now.