Categories
aside

Bracketological madness, volume 2 — Bracket edition

You might have noticed that I wrote a bas­ket­ball-relat­ed post last week, but I'm actu­al­ly try­ing to sep­a­rate my obsess­ing about sports from … well, real stuff. So I post­ed this year's brack­et at Tur­ri­ble, which is intend­ed to be my online man cave. Of sorts. Any­way, don't assume that I post­ed it else­where because, like, I'm ashamed of how bad it is. My ter­ri­ble pre­dic­tions had noth­ing to do with my deci­sion to post it on a blog that no one reads. Noth­ing. Zero. Am I angry that I'm in last place in my brack­et pool? Maybe a lit­tle. But my only regret is that my picks were not more bold. Except, if they had been more bold, I wouldn't be in last place. I mean, how could I have missed St. Mary's over Vil­lano­va? You'll notice in my brack­et notes that I even talk about how bad Vil­lano­va is play­ing; the words "Bad moon ris­ing" were cut off in the scan­ning process under Villanova's first round game. And yet I had them advanc­ing into the Sweet Six­teen. I will ask the now-annu­al, post-sec­ond-round ques­tion: What was I think­ing?

Categories
flickr lit photo

A peek into Obama's speech-writing process

Obama speech - Jon Favreau - FlickrPho­to: Pete Souza

I real­ly geek out out on glimpses of the marked-up copy of oth­er writ­ers, so I was pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ed to see a page of a Pres­i­den­tial speech-in-progress. If you click through to the zoomed-in page, you'll see that all of Obama's notes are all copy-edits; there are no devel­op­men­tal "what I'm try­ing to say here"-style edits. Not sure what that means, but I thought it was inter­est­ing. The Flickr cap­tion indi­cates that the pho­to was tak­en "in the Oval Office, Sept. 9, 2009, in prepa­ra­tion for the president's address to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress." Cool.

Categories
basketball kansas basketball

Bracketological breakdown, 2010 edition, volume 1!

It's March, and the mad­ness of the sea­son has over­tak­en me. Thus, I won't be offend­ed if you are about to click back to Twit­ter, or your RSS reader.I'll start by not wast­ing anyone's time com­plain­ing about this year's tour­na­ment pair­ings. That path is well-trav­eled.1 And well it should be! The pair­ings are out­ra­geous! Kansas was pun­ished! Ken­tucky, Duke, and Syra­cuse — they've all got gold­en tick­ets to Indi­anapo­lis. Right? Right?

For starters, I'm glad I'm not Kentucky

For so many rea­sons. Let's look at the round two match-ups. Texas and Wake For­est have been ter­ri­ble — hor­ri­ble — over the past cou­ple of months. But, they're tal­ent­ed, and each could gel for just long enough to beat any­one in the coun­try, includ­ing Ken­tucky. Is this unlike­ly? High­ly. Is it more like­ly that Cor­nell will grind their way past Tem­ple, Wis­con­sin and Ken­tucky? Per­haps. But indulge me: Texas actu­al­ly match­es up pret­ty well with Ken­tucky, size-wise and tal­ent-wise. I think that it's pos­si­ble that they could get moti­vat­ed (ever so briefly) to not be embar­rassed by them. Am I pick­ing Texas over Ken­tucky? Maybe not. Texas coach Rick Barnes is nev­er in dan­ger of out-game­plan­ning any­one. He's nev­er been accused of hav­ing his team ready to play, and his teams are always threat­en­ing to under­per­form. Let's not for­get this. Still, I wouldn't want to be a Ken­tucky fan, not in this tour­na­ment, or in any life­time. Because let me be frank: I don't think I could face a world with­out read­ing, with­out lit­er­a­cy. I just don't think I could do it.

Which reminds me, did you hear that Coach K was born in the year of the Ratfaced Bastard?

Eerie, right? Not sure what his astro­log­i­cal sign is, but I'm rel­a­tive­ly sure that all the major media fig­ures kiss its ass.

But Duke didn't get an easy road, either

I know, most peo­ple say that Duke has the eas­i­est path: a #4 seed in free-fall after its star blew out his knee (Pur­due), and a #2 seed that lost six of its last ten (Vil­lano­va). I say: Thank you for notic­ing, world, but look at the #3 seed: Bay­lor. This team got pun­ished for play­ing cup­cakes ear­ly — Hardin Sim­mons? Texas Arling­ton? South­ern? Hart­ford? Coach Scott Drew, c'mon. You asked for your crud­dy seed. But then Bay­lor played a tough con­fer­ence sched­ule, didn't lose a game by more than 7 points, and they absolute­ly light it up (119 points per 100 pos­ses­sions — 5th in the coun­try). Enough about Bay­lor; Duke may not even get there. Louisville will give Duke every­thing they can han­dle in round 2; per­haps more. Rick Piti­no v Coach K, in the sec­ond round? Fans' brains might explode. Which coach do I hate more? Minds will boggle.

Back to the Wildcats

Kansas State. Are they good enough to reach the Final Four. Yes. Can they beat Syra­cuse? Quite pos­si­bly. How do you beat Syra­cuse? You pun­ish the zone. And K‑State has two guys who can do this — Pullen and Clemente. What about the glass? Two more guys: Wal­ly Judge and Cur­tis Kel­ly. They can hold their own under­neath. Ken­Pom has K‑State ranked 5th in the coun­try in offen­sive rebound­ing per­cent­age at 40%. They gath­er 40% of the rebounds on their offen­sive glass. That's huge. And they play great defense. Did I men­tion I wouldn't want to be Syra­cuse? I wouldn't. Espe­cial­ly because a big guy might be hurt. Or, he might not be. March mad­ness, baybee!

The team that will break my heart: Cornell

Every year I pick a team like this. They're good. They play under con­trol. They've got a sys­tem. All the ingre­di­ents are there for sur­prise. Sub­text: They played very well against Kansas. Okay, let's face it, they out-played Kansas for 20–25 min­utes in the hal­lowed hall of Lawrence, and they came up short (bare­ly). Texas A&M, Bay­lor, Col­orado, Kansas State and Mem­phis also played very well against the Hawks, and lost. Sub­text: I also have these teams doing well in the tour­na­ment. Caveat! Any­way, every year, I pick a team like this to get out of the first round, and they lay an egg. I'm look­ing at you, But­ler team of 2008. This year's heart­break­er is espe­cial­ly obvi­ous to avoid because Tem­ple is a good team who could eas­i­ly … force the afore­men­tioned egg? To emerge? Any­way, Tem­ple is a great defen­sive team, though you wouldn't have been able to see any evi­dence of that against … Kansas! Yes, they lost to the Jay­hawks at home. By 32 points.Did I men­tion that this brack­et break­down was from the point of view who has watched 34 Kansas games, and rough­ly 20 total oth­er games. Caveat!1 I will offer one sug­ges­tion: Why not just fac­tor their media desir­abil­i­ty into the RPI? Your team's win­ning per­cent­age x their opponent's win­ning per­cent­age x their oppo­nents' oppo­nents' win­ning per­cent­age x the like­li­hood that your team will draw a large, rich audi­ence to the Final Four week­end equals their seed. It's obvi­ous­ly a fac­tor in every year's brack­et. Last year, North Car­oli­na was invit­ed to do the Ten­nessee Waltz all the way to Detroit. In oth­er words, they had it easy. In oth­er news, the nation loves them some Tar Heels. It's worth men­tion­ing that adver­tis­ers tend to pay more when the Heels are play­ing. And of course CBS is for-prof­it enter­prise. You get the point. We all do. It's time to be up-front about it.Okay, wait. One more thing. I will post some­thing about the absurd lop­sid­ed­ness of the pairings:

You want to make mar­gin­al No. 1 Duke's road that easy? Seed­ing the brack­et is tough, but come on. The South reeks of a com­mit­tee that lost the for­est for the trees, and Ken­tucky, Syra­cuse and Kansas — espe­cial­ly Kansas — will suf­fer. So much for being the over­all No. 1. If we can't reward Kansas for its excel­lence with some­thing bet­ter than this, then the anti-expan­sion folks' main point is offi­cial­ly moot. The reg­u­lar sea­son doesn't matter.

More here.

Categories
cinema new york reviews

El Super

El Super - Blizzard of 1977

New York's bliz­zard of 1977 makes a riv­et­ing cameo appear­ance in "El Super," an indie (before the term was for­mal­ized) film about the hard adjust­ments that immi­grants make in com­ing to New York. The movie is great for many rea­sons, but the bliz­zard steals a few scenes as the main char­ac­ter — a Cuban super — walks around town. Snow is massed on cars, piled high in the streets, and pedes­tri­ans stum­ble through snow-walled side­walk canyons. Quite a scene, espe­cial­ly in the 70s, when New York looked crumbly and decrepit.Amidst the bliz­zard, the film is a melan­choly doc­u­ment of the lives of Cuban and Puer­to Rican immi­grants as they reck­on with the immen­si­ty of New York City and their dis­mal prospects for work in the bad old days of New York. The dia­logue is great, often fun­ny, just as often poignant. Good stuff. I had to resort to extreme mea­sures to find it, but you can buy it on VHS from Ama­zon. Or you can let me know, and I'll hook you up.Speaking of the bliz­zard, you may have won­dered whether Bar­ney Miller ever dealt with the bliz­zard. Of course he did. Worth watch­ing just to hear the theme song again.

Categories
ixd lit

Fur flyin over The Atlantic's redesign

There's a lot of ani­mat­ed chat­ter among some of my favorite jour­nal­ists over the redesign of their publication's site. Last week, the Atlantic Month­ly rolled out what appears to the casu­al read­er as a slight update of the IA, along with some major changes to the way that blogs are inte­grat­ed. Read­er reac­tion was any­thing but casu­al; anger and sus­pi­cion seemed to be the most com­mon read­er emo­tions, shared, at least in part, by the writ­ers. The Wash­ing­ton Post's Ezra Klein nails the goal of the redesign, "Seems like a bet to re-cen­ter the Web site around the Atlantic as an insti­tu­tion rather than leav­ing it as a web host­ing ser­vice for a cou­ple of blog­gers." Which seems smart, actually.

The Atlantic online redesignThis clus­ter­cuss is the redesign. (I can't find a pic­ture of the "before," but it wasn't real­ly too dif­fer­ent, to the casu­al observer).

The real prob­lem: The redesign isn't rad­i­cal enough.It sim­ply shift­ed con­tent around — a sure-fire bet to piss off reg­u­lar read­ers. The redesign doesn't address big­ger prob­lems around find­abil­i­ty, read­abil­i­ty, nav­i­ga­bil­i­ty, what­ev­er you want to call a lin­ger­ing sense of not being able to get around eas­i­ly. It also breaks from a com­mon blog con­ven­tion: home­pages that includes lengthy con­tent for each post (UPDATE: they've changed this). The biggest change is that they've moved away from indi­vid­ual blogs as lin­ear, ever-expand­ing solo nar­ra­tives, which I think is inter­est­ing. What they're mov­ing toward is less clear.According to spir­it­ed com­men­tary by the Atlantic writ­ers, the redesign was dri­ven by the arcane cal­cu­lus of adver­tis­ing. I won't pre­tend to know how online ad place­ment works in a place like The Atlantic, but what I do know is that some­one told them to spread their fresh con­tent around, and it's kin­da half-spread.I am a big Atlantic read­er. I sub­scribe to the print edi­tion, and I reg­u­lar­ly read three of its blog­gers — Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Fal­lows and Andrew Sul­li­van. I sub­scribe to their feeds, so I don't go to theatlantic.com unless I want to com­ment on Coates' blog, or read com­ments, which means I'll head there a cou­ple of times a week, but when I get there I'll be deeply immersed in a thread.To me, the true oppor­tu­ni­ty was to lever­age the sprawl­ing, smart con­ver­sa­tions that these writ­ers con­tin­u­al­ly cre­ate — to cre­ate a sort of salon among the read­ers and writ­ers. To Klein's point above, you'd think a vir­tu­al salon would be exact­ly the kind of thing that would "re-cen­ter" the brand. Break­ing out of the con­ven­tion­al blog mod­el is a rea­son­able first step. Blogs are long threads, and main­tain­ing indi­vid­ual threads need­less­ly inhibits wider-scale con­ver­sa­tion. So they've tak­en that half-step away from threads (which are a help­ful orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple for read­ers), but the salon is nowhere in sight. And this is a problem.

Categories
music visual

Uhhhhh-hot pants! That's where it's at.

James Brown - Hot Pants - Wordle

Wor­dle seems sort of per­fect for rep­re­sent­ing James Brown lyrics. I used Inter­net lyrics, which don't appear to be a true tran­scrip­tion of the ver­sion on In the Jun­gle Groove, which is 8+ min­utes of "huh!" and "hey!" and "Good God!" and "smokin!" Still, good enough. While you're con­sid­er­ing James Brown as a lyri­cist, you should check out Eddie Murphy's theme song for "James Brown's Celebri­ty Hot Tub Par­ty" — the video; and in Wor­dle, which is an inter­est­ing way of visu­al­iz­ing one ele­ment of the satire.

Categories
food ideas

Recipe for the rain / Escabeche

Escabeche

(Also known as those pick­led veg­eta­bles from the taco truck.) … Mara made some this week­end, and I've basi­cal­ly been liv­ing on it for the last three days. The recipe orig­i­nat­ed in The Essen­tial Cuisines of Mex­i­co, but we found a pre­vi­ous­ly adapt­ed ver­sion at Sim­ply Recipes. ¡Horale! ¡Vamos a do this!

Ingredients

1 lb jalapeno (ser­ra­no if you please) chile peppers1/3 cup olive oil2‑3 medi­um white or yel­low onions, thick­ly sliced2‑3 medi­um car­rots, peeled and thick­ly sliced­Flo­rets from half a small cau­li­flower (optional)1 head gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rat­ed but not peeled4 cups apple cider vinegar2 Tbsp Kosher salt or sea salt2 bay leaves1/2 tea­spoon dried oregano4 sprigs of fresh mar­jo­ram or 1/4 tea­spoon dried4 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1/4 tea­spoon dried1 Tbsp sugar

Method

  1. Wash the chiles, leav­ing the stems intact. Cut a cross in the tip end of each chile so that the vine­gar will be able to pen­e­trate the chile.
  2. Heat oil in a large, deep skil­let. Add the chiles, onions, car­rots, cau­li­flower if using, and gar­lic. Fry over medi­um heat for about 10 min­utes, turn­ing them over occasionally.
  3. Add the vine­gar, salt, herbs, and sug­ar and bring to a boil. Low­er the heat and sim­mer for 5 min­utes for ser­ra­nos or 10 min­utes for jalapeños. Make sure the chiles are entire­ly cooked through before canning.
  4. Pack 4 pint-sized ster­il­ized jars with the chiles and veg­eta­bles. Top with the vine­gar and seal. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Once opened, can keep for one to two months in the refrigerator.

Categories
california music san francisco

In a cloud

In A Cloud - New Sounds From San Francisco

Oh wow, our pal Greg Gard­ner put togeth­er a real­ly nice col­lec­tion of new music from local bands. It's called In A Cloud, which describes the recent win­ter weath­er and the album itself is a time cap­sule of San Fran­cis­co sounds in 2009-10. My favorite song is a sweet lit­tle thing called "Baby Held" by the elu­sive and pseu­do­ny­mous Jacques But­ters; you can lis­ten to it below. There's plen­ty more on the album — a love­ly track by Son­ny & the Sun­sets, a good one from the Sand­witch­es, a keep­er from Kel­ley Stoltz. You can buy it direct­ly from Greg's label, Secret Sev­en Records. Yay.

Categories
music visual

Aw, woo-ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah

Wor­dle + The First 100% Accu­rate Tran­scrip­tion of Led Zep­pelin II Lyrics =

Led Zeppelin 2 lyrics - wordle
 
Categories
aside

The correlation between familiarity and value

John Per­ry Bar­low, dis­cussing the Grate­ful Dead's meth­ods of engag­ing its audience:

What peo­ple today are begin­ning to real­ize is what became obvi­ous to us back then — the impor­tant cor­re­la­tion is the one between famil­iar­i­ty and val­ue, not scarci­ty and val­ue. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make some­thing, the more valu­able it becomes. In the phys­i­cal world, that works beau­ti­ful­ly. But we couldn't reg­u­late [tap­ing at Grate­ful Dead] shows, and you can't online. The Inter­net doesn't behave that way.

From Man­age­ment Secrets of the Grate­ful Dead, in the cur­rent Atlantic.