Pushing through the inquiries posed on Ask Me Anything! 2010. These are all from Roger, who always asks the most (and usually best) questions.

OK. How the heck could you dislike the entire ouevre of The Beatles for so long? I can see if one doesn’t like the more avant garde stuff, or thought the early material wasn’t as as good as the later tunes. But to reject the whole eclectic eight years? And how did you finally become enlightened?

The flip answer is, “Tastes change”.

The more serious answer is…”Tastes change.”

The thing with the Beatles is that I’ve always liked a lot of their songs, even loved a small number of them, but with one proviso: I liked or loved them done by other artists. My main problem was that I just never cared for the Beatles’ sound as a band.

I’m not sure it was an “epiphany”, really, but the movie Across the Universe made me love the songs I already loved even more and gave me a greater appreciation of other songs I didn’t know so well, so I decided to investigate the Beatles themselves, to hear what songs I didn’t know that well. And that was when I noticed — or realized, or recognized, whatever you want to call it — that the Beatles don’t have just one sound. Their sound not only changes from album to album, but from song to song. And in general, I found myself liking, for once, even their singing voices, the slightly nasal quality of which I had never much liked before.

Mostly, yeah: my tastes changed. I’d put my liking of the Beatles in the same general category as my coming to like eating squash. (My newfound Fab Four fandom isn’t all-inclusive, though: I’m still not that fond of the song “Yesterday”.)

Why isn’t there a punter in the Football Hall of Fame? Should there be, and if so, who would you choose?

Because nobody likes punting. Seriously. Punting sucks. It’s openly admitting, “We didn’t get the job now so we’re gonna give you the ball.” The punter’s job is basically to attempt to allow the team punting to save a little face. I think that’s a big part of it. Football tends to be a game of narrative, and punters just don’t fit into the narrative well. They’re the period at the end of the sentence.

Now, people who really know the game know that punting, while ending one offensive series, can be a strong factor in winning what’s called the “Field Position battle”. If your punts leave the other team starting drives from their own ten yard line, then that’s better than just turning the ball over on downs at mid-field. Or so the theory goes. Going for it on fourth down is getting more and more popular.

Should a punter be in the Hall of Fame? Sure. I’d probably start with finding out what punter had the best statistics — punting average, average opponent drive start, percentage punts not returned, that sort of thing. Now, stats aren’t everything, and it’s called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Stats; but as I note above, there’s never been a punter who was a strong figure in the narrative of the game. Punters are a major part of the game, like it or not, and if the Hall is going to reflect the entire game, then there should be punters there.

Should any of the following be in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmiero. Why or why not?

I think so. All of them, probably. The whole steroid era is problematic, but ultimately, I just don’t find the case for ignoring an entire era of baseball all that compelling. If we’re going to say that the Hall of Fame shouldn’t reflect the steroid, how far should we take that? Should the standings from those years be set aside? Should pennants and World Series titles be revoked?

To me, the most glaring fact about the steroid era is that baseball had no policy about it. I don’t see how, given that fact, we can retroactively decide to hold these players responsible for the sullying of an entire era. And besides, why is the steroid era generally considered “soiled”, while other eras weren’t? Matthew Yglesias addressed this point the other day:

There was no time “before” people tried to get an edge by ingesting useful substances (I drink a lot of coffee while writing blog posts in a rush in the morning) and there never will be. Sports have rules for a reason, and rules that aim to restrict consumption of potentially dangerous drugs seem like a good idea to me. And players shouldn’t break the rules. But the idea that some vast moral transformation occurred circa 1995 to which the great ones of yore were immune is silly.

Ultimately, though, for me, the steroid thing is one more instance of something ugly in the history of baseball, which for all the beauty of the game, has an awful lot of ugliness within it.

(Now, if we want to put asterisks on the players from the Steroid Era, and supplement the Hall with plaques explaining what happened and why, then that might be fine. But I’m not even sure about that.)

More answers to come!

(And gee whiz, I still haven’t shut off comments on the original post soliciting questions. You’d think I was enjoying this or something!)

Share This Post

Knocking off two more questions on Ask Me Anything! 2010.

LC Scotty asks, easily enough: What is lemon curd? It sounds like something I should be eating.

Actually, I’m not sure if it’s something Scotty should be eating, if he’s asking from a health standpoint. Not that it’s necessarily bad for you, either, but it’s definitely something that you should be eating if you like things that taste good and if you file lemon under your personal label of “Things That Taste Good”.

But what is lemon curd? It’s a lemon-flavored spread that is made with eggs, sugar, and flavorings whipped together. The lemon flavor is pleasantly intense, but with enough sweetness to offset the lemon just enough. I spread mine on toast and English muffins. The flavor is strong enough that one doesn’t need a giant amount on the bread to make it taste good. It’s a very pleasant change of pace from jelly or jam. (I can’t get behind marmalade. Never liked the stuff.)

Here’s a recipe, but I’ll buying the stuff in a jar just the same. I’ve read that fruit curds don’t have to be lemon, but lemon’s what I see all the time.

Kerry asks: Why has no one ever discovered a Bigfoot (or a carcass thereof), when the creature has been written about and spoken of in native American culture for thousands of years??

Probably for the same reasons that no one’s ever found a mermaid at sea or discovered the Loch Ness Monster, and probably for the same reason that no one has ever captured or photographed one of the “Hidden Folk” or Iceland…the legends behind these beasts almost surely have roots in something real from way back when, but what it was? No one now knows, and it was also almost surely something not akin to what legendary creature would later accrue around it.

In the case of mermaids, the prevailing theory is that what was originally taken to be a mermaid was actually a manatee. In the case of Sasquatch, I suspect something similar. Maybe a particularly enormous bear, seen rearing onto its back legs. But thinking about it more, the notion of a giant human lurking somewhere “out there” is not limited to the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest; virtually every human culture on Earth has at one time had some kind of similar legend. (The Yeti of the Himalayas is a good example.) They are among the most enduring of all legends.

Paul has a lengthy query about my favorite book, Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan. Part one: You mentioned the historical underpinnings of Kay’s novel The Lions of Al Rassan. Were you familiar with the historical facts before you read Lions the first time, or did you research that after? How did that knowledge affect your understanding and enjoyment of the novel?

The first time I read the book, I knew quite little about the period. Upon later re-reads…I don’t know a whole lot more about the period, aside from the broad strokes of the era. I certainly am not in any kind of position to evaluate GGK’s fidelity to the historical record, but as he is writing fantasy, to make such an evaluation would surely miss the point entirely.

I do know that history has rarely been driven by “larger than life” events and “larger than life” people as GGK depicts, but he has always admitted that he is not writing history after all. I find that GGK’s historical works tend to affect my understanding and enjoyment of the real history, rather than the other way around.

Back to Paul:

My biggest beef with Lions (I’m sure you’ve heard me say this before) is that I felt manipulated by the author at two specific points in the narrative. Kay sets us up to believe one thing has occurred, and then, much later, reveals that something entirely different actually happened. His protestations that he did it consciously and intentionally to provoke a specific reaction in the reader notwithstanding, I found it disturbing to my willing suspension of disbelief. It distracted me from the narrative, and made the author very apparent to me. A cardinal sin in writing we are told. What was your reaction to the events in the book I am talking about? how did it affect you differently from me?

Hmmmm. Firstly, I’m honestly not sure of what events in the book Paul is referencing, although I suspect he’s referring in part to the final duel of the novel? Without spoiling things, the conflicts come, in the end, to a single duel between the two principal men of the book. Which one wins? I won’t tell…but GGK writes the duel in such a way that we don’t even know which man is doing what in the fighting. I find it fascinating.

“Being aware of the author” isn’t something that’s ever much bothered me; in nearly every book I’ve ever read, I’ve been aware of the author at some point or other. Complete immersion in a story is something that rarely happens to me, and I almost always find myself aware of the author to one extent or another.

Not much of an answer, but without knowing specifically which events we’re discussing, I can’t go much farther into it.

Share This Post