Month: September 2005

Over at Mental Multivitamin, there’s a wonderful post in which M-V lists ten books. Not ten books that are her favorites, or ten books that are the “greatest”, but ten books that tell us something about the reader. I was about to try and do the same thing, but then I remembered that I did the same thing a while back, here. But rather than force you all to go hopping around my archives, I figure I’ll just reproduce the list here. (As regular readers know, I tend to approach “List X Things” list-posts as “List X Things, plus whatever others leap to mind”.)

1. Cosmos, Carl Sagan. To this day, this is still the book that has influenced my overall worldview regarding the Universe and our place within it more than any other. I find so much more awe, so much more poetic beauty, so much more reverence in a Universe that is billions of years old and through physical processes eventually gave rise to life and consciousness than I do in the idea of a static Universe popped into being in just six days, six thousand years ago. The science of this book may be out of date, but I don’t care. As far as I am concerned, it is a towering achievement of twentieth century science writing.

2. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s pretty obvious why, I think.

3. Salem’s Lot, Stephen King. This is the first out-and-out horror book I read, once I was ready to really delve into the genre.

4. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King. This book provided the answers to questions I didn’t even know I had.

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke. I’m pretty sure I read some science fiction before this, but this one cemented my love of the genre for all time. And not only that, this book showed me what was possible in the genre besides Star Wars space opera and Star Trek “sociological” SF.

6. The Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander. (Yeah, it’s a five book set, actually. Deal with it.) My first encounter with epic fantasy, two years before Tolkien.

7. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s not my favorite GGK novel, but it’s the first that I read, and in the same way 2001 pushed me beyond my original idea of what SF was, Tigana broadened my horizons of what fantasy can do.

8. The Joy of Music and The Infinite Variety of Music, Leonard Bernstein. I group these together because the content of each — essays, teleplays from Bernstein’s TV programs, interviews — are so similar in style and tone. These two books shaped my love of music more than any others. I always adored Bernstein’s ability to adore and venerate a very wide range of music, and I have always tried to follow his example. (This is a man who would as soon conduct Mozart as he would David Diamond.)

9. Dungeon, Fire and Sword: The Knights Templar in the Crusades, John J. Robinson. A fascinating era of history, engagingly written by a writer who didn’t produce nearly enough books.

10. The Book of Marvels, Richard Halliburton. This man’s travel writings, all of which roughly correspond to the years between the two World Wars, are a clinic on how to convey “sense of wonder”. Track down a copy, and when you read it, try to ignore the obvious anachronisms (like the fairly obvious “white man’s superiority” stuff, which is par for the course for the book’s day).

And, you know, why not a couple of honorable mentions:

11. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud can teach you a great deal about storytelling, and not just about comics.

12. The follow-up, Reinventing Comics, is less about storytelling and more about the possibilities inherent in a digital age.

13. Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. These will also teach you a great deal about storytelling; and for me, they pretty much squashed any idea that I’d ever try to sell a film script. (Not that I could sell the ones I’ve already written, of course, because they’re Star Wars fan-fictions.)

14. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan. Essential reading, really, in this age of belief in UFOs and holeopathic medicine and various other nonsense items.

15. The House with a Clock in its Walls, John Bellairs. Just because Bellairs is a favorite author of mine, and this is the first of his that I read. Gothic fiction for kids. Great stuff.

16. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. Humor, warmth, darkness, cruelty, love, pain, redemption, and the perfect ending. All in one book.

Looking at this list, I see a disturbing number of titles I haven’t re-read lately. And winter, the best season for reading, is on its way!

I also note the presence of several titles from my youth — the Bellairs, Alexander, and Dahl books, among others that I didn’t list but still love — that were literally forced upon me by my mother, who had a method of punishment for me when I did something that warranted revoking television priveleges: she’d hand me a book she somehow just happened to have at hand and order me to watch no television until I read it. Of course, it was almost always Book One of a multi-volume series.

I like the chain of causality there: I would break some rule or exercise bad judgment, and get my worldview changed forever in return. Seems pretty fair at this point, no?

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High on my list of local stuff to do someday has been to catch the Celtic band Kilbrannan live — but it now looks like I won’t be able to do that, since Kilbrannan is breaking up. Dammit.

Anyway, the former members of Kilbrannan are forming two new groups: Penny Whiskey (featuring Kilbrannan’s lead singer, Kirk McWhorter) and Stone Row. Oh well; at least I’ll be able to someday hear those two acts.

Kilbrannan’s last performances are as follows:

Sep 9: Buffalo Irish Center 9pm-1am
Sep 10: South Buffalo Feis, Cazenovia Park, Buffalo 1:30pm-2:30pm

Last Performance:

Sep 24 Buffalo Irish Center 9pm-1am

Bummer, but best of luck to both bands.

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I’ve been a bit morose since Revenge of the Sith came out, because I kind of figured that it heralded a certain end to what’s been a remarkable period in which to be a Fantasy/SF/Horror geek. And then today I received a bit of unfortunate confirmation of this, in the form of a news article about the Marvel company’s impending transition of certain comics characters to film. Which characters, you ask? Read on:

Marvel Entertainment — previously Marvel Enterprises — is set to announce Tuesday its name change and completion of its loan package, and also will divulge that superheroes Captain America, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi will get the feature-film treatment.

Some of those sound promising…but Power Pack?! The Power Pack? This Power Pack??!!

AIEEE!

When I was reading comics back in the 1980s, I read the first dozen issues or so of Power Pack, wondering, “How bad could it be.” Well, it was pretty damn bad. As one MeFi commenter notes:

PowerPack? Seriously? They couldn’t even make it as a comic book, let alone an adaptation of a comic book into a movie. I mean, none of these are particularly good, but holy lord, Power Pack? The only Power Pack related item I ever had was an advertisement they did with Spider Man warning kids to report people who touch them inappropriately.

I suspect that the Marvel folks noted the success of The Incredibles and figured, “Hey, we got our own franchise with kids in the wings!” I wonder if any of those suits bothered to go back and read any of those old comics….

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Kind of frivolous, probably, given all the other events of actual import going on, but I’ve been watching this guy play football for nearly twenty years, and seeing his retirement makes me feel slightly wistful. Bon voyage, Jerry Rice.

(BTW, the other day, one of the Buffalo sports-talk radio shows was discussing whether or not Eric Moulds has had a Hall of Fame career. I don’t think so, quite yet — he’s had less than 600 receptions so far, but if he can haul in 80 catches or so over the next four years, he should wind up in the 900 catches range, which might be good enough for the Hall, especially if the Bills actually manage to get good in the meantime. As it stands, though, I think that Moulds has the misfortune of being the Bills’ Don Mattingly: the best player on the team during a very lackluster era. Moulds’s production has suffered from all of the QBs he’s played with: Jim Kelly didn’t throw to him much in his last two years before retiring, and Todd Collins was just bad. Doug Flutie made Moulds a star, but Rob Johnson was a big misfire. Alex Van Pelt never really had the arm for the NFL, and Moulds did well with Drew Bledsoe. Now he’s got another untested youngster in J.P. Losman. But even so, Moulds isn’t one of the elites yet.)

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OK, I’m resorting to an old, tried-and-true technique for coming up with a Burst of Weirdness, but at least I haven’t done this in a while: just linked funny stuff I found while Googling “Cthulhu”.

The Cthulhu Babies.

I can’t bring myself to type out the name of this one.

Worst Cthulhu pun ever!

Oh my God, I so want this cake at my birthday this year. (And what’s really cool is that this cake only came in second at a contest called “Demented Breakfast Cereal Treats”. What came in first? You won’t believe it. Go here. Yup, that’s pretty demented. I wish it had a video.)

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Would that Blogistan could see such eloquence and fine writing all the time, without the impetus of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina to bring it out. Witness this post by Jennifer, which is the kind of thing I’d normally reserve for Sentential Links but which I don’t want to wait six days to link.

Where has the time gone? How do I feel so much closer to 16, than my *not 30* something status of nearly 32?

Tell me about it. For my own reasons, I’m both older and feel younger than Jennifer. Good post. Go read it.

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Granted, my knowledge of FOX News is limited to what I watch from the cafe at The Store, but it seems to me that they only cover three stories, ever: President Bush saying something, Air Force One landing somewhere (yeah, it’s the President’s plane and all, but do we need live coverage of a friggin’ jet landing every time he goes anyplace?), and that missing girl in Aruba. And that’s down from four rotating stories, from when Terri Schiavo was alive.

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One of my main duties at The Store is cleaning the bathrooms. This doesn’t bother me, really; the frequency of nasty messes in there is a lot lower than you might expect, and, well, somebody’s gotta do it. Many an Important Company Person throughout America has started out as the person who cleaned the bathrooms, so why not me?

But anyway, I’ve seen some strange stuff in there — like the time I had to literally fish a baseball out of the toilet. Not a piece of feces the size and shape of a baseball, but an actual baseball. Why that baseball was in there, I don’t know. And there’s the unknown person who will, on occasion, grab a Mike’s Hard Lemonade from our cooler, take it in the bathroom, drink no more than two-thirds of it, and leave the bottle nicely on the floor beside the toilet.

But today was one that really flummoxed me. Upon entering the men’s room, I recognized the unmistakable smell that results when someone has been smoking in a bathroom. (You know the smell I mean: cigarette smoke has a very distinct aroma in a bathroom that it has nowhere else.) And sure enough, there floating in the toilet was a cigarette from which I estimate that no more than three drags had been taken.

I’ve actually seen that before, though. What was weird was that a full pack of cigarettes, minus the one in the toilet, was left on the toilet paper dispenser, and the receipt from the purchase of said pack was on the floor by the wall. This person spent more than seven bucks for a pack of cigarettes, took three drags off one of ’em, and then left the whole kit-and-kaboodle behind for me to dispose.

I don’t know if some former smoker fell off the wagon for a minute and a half, or if some non-smoker decided to give it a whirl and realized how nasty the habit was, or what. The whole thing was pretty surreal.

Anyway….

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College and high school football have already begun, but the Real Deal will make its debut this Thursday night: it’s the NFL regular season again! Huzzah! And thus, it’s time to begin my annual bout of Monday football postings, starting with my predictions and thoughts as to the state of the NFL in general and the NFL’s most important franchise, the Buffalo Bills, in particular.

(Now, first, a bit of warning for those who haven’t read along as I ranted my way through a football season before: this will be the fourth time I’ve done this, and my general approach is simple. Basically put, what I write in the football posts should be imagined as coming from the mouth of a guy sitting on a barstool on a Monday night, ranting away about the game while he watches a Monday Night Football game between two teams he doesn’t care about and drinks beer and wolfs down Beer Nuts and cheese-covered French fries and potato skins. OK? So, if you’re a fan of the reigning Super Bowl champions, don’t get offended when I post at length about how much I hate your stupid team and your goofy-grinned quarterback and your evil, sweatshirt-wearing, scowling head coach. Got it? Good!)

And thus we begin, first discussing the Buffalo Bills.

:: Last year, I predicted an 8-8 finish for the Bills. This record looked unattainable, though, as soon as Week Four, as the Bills opened up 0-4 and were as bad as 1-5 two weeks later. Noting the bad play of the offensive line and the mobility of now-former quarterback Drew Bledsoe that had the guy resembling a stone sculpture by Rodin, I redubbed the Bills the “Buffalo Shitty Bills”, or “ShiBills” for short, saying that the name would remain in use here until they won at least four games in a row.

So, after stumbling a bit to a 3-6 record, the Bills lit it up. They won six in a row, and would have made the playoffs had they not played poorly in their regular season finale and lost to the backups of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Still, they ended up 9-7, one game better than I had predicted; their defense ranked second in the league; over their winning streak, they scored more points in that stretch than at any other stretch in the franchise’s history (and that includes the high-octane offense of the 1990-1993 Super Bowl teams). So surely the Bills have nowhere to go but up, right?

Well, uh…nope.

In short: Bledsoe’s gone, and the offensive line, never all that much of a strength for the team, may have regressed.

The Bills released Bledsoe, in favor of quarterback-of-the-future J.P. Losman, whom they drafted in 2004. As for the O-line, about which I have not felt any large degree of confidence since the end of the Super Bowl run, it probably got worse. Experienced guard Jonas Jennings left via free agency, and was replaced by a guy who didn’t even play the entirety of last year with the Bears.

Of course, it’s Losman who’s under the microscope this year. The points in Losman’s favor are that he has demonstrated an amazing work ethic since he was anointed the starter (the guy was at the stadium studying game film for something like nineteen hours a day starting the day after the Super Bowl), and he’s embraced the Buffalo community, both sports fans and not, in a way we really haven’t seen since Jim Kelly set up camp here. (Contrast this with the way Rob Johnson badmouthed the area after his injury-plagued tenure here ended.) Losman has, in my eyes, really approached his job the way you’d want a talented rookie to approach it: he’s working hard to learn the ropes, and he seems to really love where he is. There’s none of that “OK, I’ll play there because they drafted me, but in four years, I’m a free agent” stuff.

The downside? Well, Losman’s a virtual rookie. True, he was with the team last year, but he broke his leg in training camp a year ago and thus wasn’t even able to take snaps in practice until halfway through the season. He’ll be seeing his first extended NFL action this year, and he’s going to look like it. Bills fans who note last year’s stunning emergence of Ben Roethlissbuerguerre (I’m pretty sure I spelled that wrong) and think that there is thus precedent for Losman to also enjoy stunning success in his first turn as starter are probably indulging in wishful thinking. Losman’s going to struggle, and early on, he’ll struggle a lot. I’m serious: I expect him to look downright bad in his first few games. What will be telling are two things: if the coaching staff shows the patience and fortitude to leave him in there after he looks bad for a few games, and if he starts to show improvement as the season grinds on. If those two things happen, then look out — for the Bills in 2006.

But the 2005 Bills? I expect no better than 6-10. That’ll be frustrating to a degree, mainly because the Bills have a really good defense and because the Bills haven’t been to the playoffs since the 1999 season, when Bruce Smith still anchored the defense and Andre Reed still caught passes and Thurman Thomas still carried the ball. It’s annoying, especially when the recent history of the NFL demonstrates that rebuilding can happen really fast, and a franchise can go from doormat to Super Bowl Champion in half the number of seasons it’s taken for the Bills to get to where they are right now.

But if J.P. Losman is the real deal, then watch out, Bills fans. Just one more year, and then maybe we can start thinking about the Promised Land again. Just one more losing, third-place season.

Six and ten. You heard it here first.

(Of course, this also presupposes that the Bills actually try to substantially upgrade their offensive line one of these offseasons. Since 1994, they have expended just two first-round picks on the offensive line. You can’t get an Orlando Pace every year, but come on, guys.)

(Oh, and by the way, in the three preceding years, I’ve offered two pessimistic forecasts for the Bills that lowballed their eventual result and one optimistic forecast that proved wildly optimistic. Since I’m pessimistic this year…well, you know….)

OK, enough on the Bills. What about the rest of the League?

:: Well, the burning question is pretty obvious: Will the New England Stupid Patriots become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls?

No.

OK, why not?

Well, they…hey, look behind you! (Runs away while the reader is looking behind him/her)

Seriously, the StuPats won’t threepeat because I stand by my contention that they’re not as good as many of the dynasties preceding them that have failed to threepeat. I believe that winning three Super Bowls in a row just may be the most difficult task in all of team sports, which is why nobody has done it. Nobody did it in the pre-salary cap days when it was easier to keep a nucleus together, and I don’t think the situation favors the StuPats now.

Consider how the previous teams which entered an NFL season with a chance to threepeat ended up:

In 1968, the two-time defending champion Packers posted a losing record and finished third in their division, out of the playoffs.

In 1974, the two-time defending champion Dolphins reached the playoffs but lost in the divisional round.

In 1976, the two-time defending champion Steelers reached the playoffs but lost the AFC Championship Game.

In 1980, the two-time defending champion Steelers finished third in their division, out of the playoffs.

In 1990, the two-time defending champion 49ers reached the playoffs but lost the NFC Championship Game.

In 1994, the two-time defending champion Cowboys reached the playoffs but lost the NFC Championship Game.

In 1999, the two-time defending champion Broncos posted a losing record and finished last in their division, out of the playoffs.

So: there have been seven instances of a repeat champion in the NFL gunning for a threepeat. None of those teams even reached their third consecutive Super Bowl, much less won it. The extremes would be the teams that lost their Conference Championship games and those that didn’t even make the playoffs. I think the StuPats are a lock to not only make the playoffs but win their division, but after that it gets dicey. But I just don’t think that they were ever that far ahead of the rest of the NFL, and they can’t stay ahead forever, especially with the departure of talent from both their roster and their coaching ranks.

(BTW, I should note that as much as I hate Tedy Bruschi on the field, I would never have rooted for his career to either be truncated or threatened by a serious health problem like a stroke. I hope he recovers. And that’s the last nice thing I’m going to say about any member of the StuPats this year.)

I just don’t think that the StuPats can maintain their recent history of somehow always winning, but never dominating, forever; and I think that the clock is likely to run out this year. They can’t keep finding the exact right player to plug into any situation forever, and surely the loss of their two coordinators from last year isn’t going to help. (Jim Kelly, for example, was never the same quarterback after his mentor, Ted Marchibroda, left the Bills to become head coach in Indianapolis after the 1991 season.)

(However, I do think that of all the teams that have looked for a threepeat, the StuPats are in the best position to do it. It will all hinge on home field advantage, I think: I don’t think they can win another AFC Championship by going outside Gilette Stadium, unless of course they get to play that AFC title game in Pittsburgh. If they do reach the Super Bowl, they’ll win it. The NFC just doesn’t have a team that can compete with them, in my opinion.)

OK, smart guy: if the StuPats aren’t going to threepeat, who’s going to replace them?

Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Time to lay out the predictions, then:

AFC East: New England Stupid Patriots
AFC North: Cincinnati Bengals
AFC South: Indianapolis Colts
AFC West: San Diego Chargers
AFC Wildcards: New York Jets, Pittsburgh Steelers

NFC East: Philadelphia Eagles
NFC North: Minnesota Vikings
NFC South: Atlanta Falcons
NFC West: Arizona Cardinals
NFC Wildcards: Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers

Last year, I picked four of the eight divisions correctly, and I had six of the twelve playoff teams correct. What makes me nervous about this set of predictions is that I have six of eight divisions seeing repeat champions, and without doing to research I have a feeling the usual repeat rate is less then 75 percent. So we’ll see. That NFC West pick sure looks weird, but I just can’t bring myself yet to believe that Kurt Warner is completely done and that there’s no magic left in that arm of his. Plus, his new coach, Dennis Green, seemed to take an old has-been QB out of mothballs every year in Minnesota and reach the playoffs with them, so that’s why I’m picking them. I’m also picking the Bengals because I have this feeling that Ben Roethlyssbergoerr (I’m pretty sure I spelled that wrong) is going to struggle a bit in his second year, and that the Steelers’ running game is going to falter a bit.

As for the big prediction, the Super Bowl: in three years of doing this, I failed to pick even one of the Super Bowl participants in 2002 and 2003, but last year, I nailed it, picking the StuPats to defeat the Eagles. What does that mean? I dunno. But I think that the AFC Champion will almost certainly defeat the NFC Champion, and that the Super Bowl will feature two teams whose windows of opportunity are closing fairly quickly. I also think that the Super Bowl will see one quarterback who’s long suffered the “can’t win the big one” stigma defeat another who’s suffered the same stigma.

Super Bowl XL will be played indoors, at Detroit’s Ford Field. The indoor setting will feel like home to the AFC Champion, and thus the Indianapolis Colts will hand the Philadelphia Eagles their second consecutive Super Bowl defeat. Payton Manning will get his ring, and Donovan McNabb will join Jim Kelly, John Elway and Fran Tarkenton as the only QBs to lose consecutive Super Bowls.

Let’s line ’em up!

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It’s strange about summer: unless you’re a teacher (and maybe not even then), summer kind of loses its romantic allure once you’re out of school. I work all summer long, and have since I entered the workforce after college — scratch that, in fact, since I had to hold jobs during the summer while I was in college. And given that my high school summers were usually full of marching band and jazz band gigs, I haven’t really felt that old, romanticized feeling of summer for quite a few years — twenty years, even. Wow. Is that a sign of encroaching middle age? When it becomes meaningful to say that you haven’t done X in twenty years?

Anyway, today is Labor Day, which is pretty much the “unofficial” end of summer. Summer’s just another season, to me — a time of year when the stuff I do to fill the time I’m not doing the normal stuff like working and washing clothes and cooking and such is markedly different from the stuff I do to fill the downtime in winter and other times. I definitely tend to read less during the summertime, and my thought processes become lazier. Well, maybe “lazier” isn’t the right word, but “more scattershot”. I’m more like to jump from one train of thought to another during summertime, looking for the goofy connections and whatnot between one thing and another. My fiction writing has always suffered in summertime, even when I was a kid.

So now it’s September, which I view as a “gateway month”: it’s the gateway to my favorite time of the year. The onset of fall always excites me; it’s the time when I feel most alive. I can go outside without sweating; I can start wearing long-sleeve shirts and overalls again; I can eat the local apples to my heart’s content. I can cook on the grill and stand a bit closer to it because it’s actually cool outside. I can go for an evening walk and not wear sunglasses. And I can talk about football in the present tense, and I think about the stories again.

Of course, we’re not quite there yet. It’s still Summer, really, as defined by the motion of the Sun between the two Tropics. The first three weeks or so of September are still kind of warm, but comfortably so, when the A/C is shut off for the year, but also not really cool yet to the point where we close the windows in the morning when we get up to an apartment that’s too cool and cup our hands around that first cup of coffee because we’re not really warm yet.

I’m always a bit impatient during the first part of September. Part of that is probably a holdover from my childhood; there’s always anticipation leading up to your birthday when you’re a kid, and mine’s at the end of September. But it’s also the period when I’m eagerly checking the ten-day weather forecast, looking for days when the highs are to be, say, 68 and the lows 42. In a way, this is Summer’s loss, since the last month or so of Summer here in Buffalo is the very best the season has to offer, but by this time, after suffering through our usual over-hot July and comfortable but still warmer than I like it August, I don’t really want to muck around with mid-70s and low humidity. I want to get right to the mid-60s, with the guy on TV using words like “crisp” when describing the next day’s weather and with that one tree that always turns two weeks before all the others (you know the tree I mean) going red and with the promise of our wonderful Buffalo snow to come.

There’s a saying in showbiz and writing that goes, “Always leave ’em wanting more.” Summer here always tries, but for me, it’s never quite enough. If July was like early September, maybe I’d view its annual departure with a little more of that feeling of wistful nostalgia that summer is supposed to be about. As it is, though, Summer is doing its grand finale and Autumn is waiting in the wings.

I’m ready.

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