10. The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby.” This is the classic ode that revealed loneliness to be a sociological rather than merely personal problem. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? In the 1950s and 60s, mass society theory stated that individuals had become atomized as we trudged along in our suburbs, offices, and highways, crowded together yet desperately alone. In mass society you have neither individuality nor community, but instead a throng of isolated people who frantically conform to authoritarian institutions and consumer fads because they’re terrified of being left behind. The Beatles probably didn’t need to look any further than to their own fans, to all those middle-class teenagers hysterically screaming, crying, and fainting in their presence, to spot the problem. All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
9. Wilco, “How to Fight Loneliness.” I didn’t give this song much thought until it was used in a key moment of the movie Girl, Interrupted. The song is just oozing with sarcasm as Jeff Tweedy answers the question of how to fight loneliness by repeatedly singing “just smile all the time.” Lots of people will sincerely advise you to do just that—you know, “fake it ‘til you make it.” They’re the same sort of people who will tell you that happiness is a “choice,” that you can simply “choose” to be happy no matter what the external circumstances are. Many well-intentioned people have said things like this to me, and I nod my head and thank for them for their help but what I’m really thinking is that they don’t know shit about loneliness or depression. I’m guessing that Jeff Tweedy agrees with me because he says things like “shine your teeth ‘til meaningless/sharpen them with lies,” and so the chorus “just smile all the time” sounds like the taunting affirmations of a psychologist armed with a thousand bullshit ideas about the power of positive thinking.
8. Bruce Springsteen, “Stolen Car.” Most of the songs on The River, a double-album that charts the demise of a relationship, could have made this list. So many of Springsteen’s songs are about cars, and one of the things I love is the multiple meanings he assigns to the automobile culture in America: the desire for escape and the freedom of the open road; the ultimate male commodity fetish; the possibility of fatal accident; the Fordist path to the American dream; the decimating consequences of deindustrialization in factory towns. In the beginning of “Stolen Car” he’s recapping the events of his failed marriage: boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married, and settle down, they swear they’ll never part, they move to a house on the edge of town, and then slowly but surely they drift apart. She looks back at the old love letters he wrote to her, and it seems like they were written a hundred years ago. Next thing you know he’s totally fucked up and aimlessly racing down the highway in a stolen car, trying to comfort himself with the thought that it’s all gonna be alright. He’s just waiting to get caught but somehow he never does, so he just keeps driving. The guy’s so alone he can’t even get busted.
7. The Beach Boys, “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” There are also a lot of songs on Pet Sounds that could have made this list. There’s something doubly depressing about hearing this sort of stuff from the Beach Boys, whose surf music harmonizing makes everything sound so upbeat and carefree until you actually listen to what they’re singing and remember that Brian Wilson had a breakdown and didn’t leave his bedroom for like three years after this album was recorded. This song begins, “I keep looking for a place to fit/where I can speak my mind.” Oh how often I’ve shamelessly taken pity on myself because I think I’m not made for these times, that my talents for writing and teaching are being wasted in this illiterate culture of video games and instant messaging (“they say I got brains/but they ain’t doing me no good/I wish they could”), that I should have grown up in the 1960s or the 1930s, that I am so unlucky to have been born into the most non-revolutionary time in modern history. Brian Wilson felt my pain, even in 1966: “Every time I get the inspiration/ to go change things around/ no one wants to help me look for places/ where new things might be found.”
6. Don Gibson with Chet Atkins, “Oh, Lonesome Me.” This song takes the melodrama of self-pity to absurdly low levels. It’s been covered by a number of musicians, but I mainly know it because of Neil Young’s version on After the Gold Rush, which is particularly great because Neil’s voice gives it that wounded animal sound he perfected in the early 1970s. This song captures the resentments that accrue when you’re alone at night and you imagine that everyone else is out having a blast: “everybody’s going out and having fun/I’m a fool for staying home and having none.” And it’s at least twice as bad when you’re missing a girl and you get these flashes of her out with other guys: “I bet she’s not like me/she’s out and fancy free/flirting with all the boys with all her charms.” Misery loves company, so I wish you people would just stay home and cry yourself to sleep at night.
5. Jimi Hendrix, “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.” You just don’t expect this kind of shit from Hendrix. You expect to hear the badass acid-drenched guitar monster talking about standing up next to a mountain and chopping it down with the edge of his hand. But I guess the dude got as lonely as the rest of us. Although “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” features Jimi’s typically intricate and assertive wah-wah guitar work, it begins with the thought that “The morning is dead and the day is too.” Hmmm…sounds like one of those rough nights where you wake up choking on your own vomit (or maybe someone else’s vomit, like one of the drummers for Spinal Tap). “All the loneliness I have felt today/It’s a little more than enough to make a man throw himself away.” You know, I never thought Hendrix wrote very good lyrics, but I like this one: “Now the smiling portrait of you/Is still hanging on my frowning wall.” “Loneliness,” Jimi begins to say, momentarily slowing down the music in anticipation of some profound thoughts, “is such a … drag.” ‘Nuff said.
4. The White Stripes “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet).” This one’s kind of funny. It’s the last song on what I think is the White Stripes’ best and certainly most underrated album, Get Behind Me Satan. I love Jack White’s guitar playing, but on this album I also began to take notice of what a great songwriter he is because many of the songs, including “I’m Lonely,” are primarily played on the piano. It’s an absolutely beautiful song in which Jack first sings about missing his mother and his sister before getting to the part that makes me chuckle, where thinks about this girl he knows he can always have but decides he just hasn’t gotten that desperate yet: “I roll over in bed/Looking for someone to touch/There’s a girl that I know of/But don’t ask for much/She’s homely, and she’s cranky/And her hair’s in a net/And I’m lonely, but I ain’t that lonely yet.” In short, sometimes loneliness isn’t the worst thing in the world. At the end of the song he goes to commit suicide by drowning in a river but then stops himself at the last minute, “before my lungs could get wet.” He reiterates that he misses his sister, and that sometimes he gets jealous of all her little pets.
3. Woody Guthrie, “At My Window Sad and Lonely.” The archetypical ode to a lost lover who’s moved away, gorgeously sung by Wilco on the first Mermaid Avenue album. Leave it Woody Guthrie to capture the universal feelings of heartbreak with such poetic simplicity: “At my window sad and lonely/Oft times do I think of thee/Sad and lonely and I wonder/Do you still think of me?” So complete and self-explanatory, in fact, that I’m not going to say anything more about it.
2. Led Zeppelin, “Tea for One.” The best song on the worst Zeppelin album, “Tea for One” doesn’t offer much lyrically, but it does feature nine and a half minutes of Jimmy Page’s most intense blues guitar riffs. Page’s guitar sounds like someone in a prolonged fit of crying, first slow and moaning, then hysterical, manic, and uncontrollable, then slow and moaning once again. While the song stretches on and on and on, Robert Plant keeps repeating the same question, “How come twenty four hours sometimes seem to slip into days? One minute seems like a lifetime, baby, when I feel this way.”
1. Wilco, “The Lonely 1.” Well I guess Jeff Tweedy must know something about loneliness, because Wilco is the only band to make this list twice, and that doesn’t count the Woody Guthrie song they’ve also covered. In fact, as a song about the loneliness of a rock star as seen by one of his devoted fans, this one could be about Tweedy himself. A lovely song with a haunting steel guitar and violin, “The Lonely 1” paints the picture of a musician in the spotlight he’s always dreamed of inhabiting, arms outstretched for his autograph as he heads backstage after the show. In an image that I think it says it all, he stands “alone in the halo’s haze.” Oh the great numbers of people who have spent their lives chasing fame to heal the hole in their hearts, and the much smaller numbers who have achieved that fame only to find standing alone in the spotlight and the haze of a smoke machine. The fan is alone too—he or she comes home, finds no messages on the phone (ah the good old days when you had to go home to check your phone messages), and then plays the ones from yesterday just to hear something from someone, I suppose. The fan turns on the stereo and there’s the rock star whining about the fact that they’re lonely, even though every one wants an autograph or a picture with them. Kind of makes rock stars seem like assholes, doesn’t it? I mean the fan would do anything for the rock star and defends everything he does: “when the critics pan, I write in your defense.” But then maybe the fan has the luxury of being able to live vicariously through someone else, while the rock star who’s made it to the top realizes there’s no one except him standing up there, alone and now totally distant from us ordinary folk.
Honorable mention: Three Dog Night, “One.” Come on, you know you know it, so sing along with me now: “One is loneliest number that you’ll ever do. One is the loneliest…”
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Fantasy Baseball Wrap-Up, 2009
I wake up on the morning of Sunday, October 4 tied for first. It’s the final day of the 2009 Major League Baseball season. Kish and I have been involved in an epic battle for most of the year, the tightest race for first place in the 19 year history of the Northern California Malt Liquor League. And so it all comes down to one final day in which statistics will be counted toward our tooth-and-nail fight for rotisserie baseball supremacy. I’ve won an unprecedented 3 consecutive NCMLL championships, and so 2009 was my campaign of “Moore for Four,” but Kish has a great team and he’s been ahead for most of the year. On final day of the season, however, I’ve pulled even with him at 85 points apiece, and I’m certain he’s having nightmarish flashbacks to the previous year, when he was winning until I surged ahead on the strength of a huge September to pull off a decisive victory.
It all started back on April 11 with the 12 of us NCMLL owners gathered together for our annual draft day, this time in a rental cabin in Lake Tahoe. Sometime shortly after the crack of dawn on that Saturday, coffee is brewed, doughnuts are scarfed, and there is a chorus of cracking beer bottles (though not by me, for this is my first sober draft day) in excited anticipation of a day that is a lot like Christmas morning for fantasy baseball geeks. I, for one, am hoping to find a shiny new Albert Pujols under my tree (Albert Pujols, if you don’t know, is quite the statistical action figure, like the Boba Fett of HRs, RBI, and BA). But before any of that happens, we must engage in the torturous and seemingly interminable process of crossing off the names of players who have already been taken from the draft sheets that Bob so meticulously prepares for us every year. Bob also needs to set up the projector and mount the screen that will allow us to examine the stats of the player currently being auctioned along with other key information, like how much money each owner has spent and how many positions they have left to fill. Inevitably there will be some sort of technological problem with the projector, and Gary, or Lance, or both Gary and Lance, will launch into some tirade about how that damn projector is the worst thing to happen in the entire history of the league and is leading to its immanent doom and demise. Meanwhile, laptops have been fired up around the rest of the room, though I maintain a John Henry-ish arrogance that I don’t need no stinking machine or even Bob’s sheets because I can compete—no, dominate, actually—based purely on what’s in my head. I am wondering if sobriety will give me any sort of competitive advantage or may actually present a disadvantage, because I typically draft my team while drunk as a skunk as well as hungover from the night before. The projector is finally working, and the draft begins with the drinking of ceremonial cups of Old English malt liquor, which I am happy to be missing out on for once. I am aggressive from the get-go and nab Albert Pujols for a cool $50. It’s gonna be a good year.
Fast forward to October 4. There are several categories that need to be continuously monitored today. I am 9 RBI and 3 SB behind Kish. If I can pass him in either category, it’s a 2 point swing, but even if I just tie him it’s a 1 point swing. However, this is unlikely as 9 RBI and 3 SB is a lot for just one day. On the other hand, Bob’s Boils have gone a homerun-hitting spree this week, and now he’s 1 HR behind me and 1 HR ahead of Kish, meaning that I will lose a half point if Bob hits 1 more HR than I do today and lose a full point if Bob hits 2 more HR, and conversely Kish will gain a half point if he hits 1 more HR than Bob and a full point if he hits 2 more HR, AND since he’s only 2 HR behind me Kish could easily tie or pass me, resulting in a multi-point swing. Trust me, it’s all very dramatic, BUT THERE’S EVEN MORE, because Brad’s team has only pitched 988 innings, and our league rule says that you must pass 1000 innings otherwise you are dropped to the bottom of the standings in ERA and WHIP, and right now Brad is ahead of me but not Kish in ERA, meaning that if he doesn’t get his 1000 innings than I get an extra point in ERA. Twelve innings is a sizable amount when you don’t have 1000 for the whole season, but on this day Brad will have Tim Hudson and Ryan Dempster taking the mound. If they get hit hard there’s a chance I could pass Brad in ERA anyway, because his is only slightly better than mine to begin with, but they’re both pretty good pitchers so this is unlikely to happen. In short, not only do I need to watch my team today, I’ll need to keep my eyes glued to Kish’s team to see how many homeruns he hits, bases he steals, and runs he drives in, Bob’s team to see how many homeruns he hits, and Brad’s team to see how many innings he pitches. Oh, and one more thing: Tim’s team is just 1 pitching win behind me, so even though he doesn’t have anyone starting today I’m going to need to monitor his bullpen to make sure none of them vultures a win.
One fact you need to keep in mind about “real” baseball is that while the fate of our league hangs in the balance, this is the single least important day of the regular baseball season. All the major league teams have either been eliminated from the division and wild-card races for some time or are gearing up for the playoffs in the following week. So as I frantically flip from game to game on the MLB network, all the players seem to be lounging the dugout, chewing tobacco, scratching their nuts, looking hungover, and probably talking about where they’re going to go hunting and fishing during the off-season. COME ON PEOPLE, DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE? However, in some respects this is working in my favor, as one of Kish’s best players and top homerun hitters, Troy Tulowitzki, will be rested today because the Colorado Rockies have already earned a place in the postseason. I can breathe a short sigh of relief because my third baseman, Edwin Encarnacion, has just launched a homerun in one of the early games being played on the east coast, thus providing me with a little more breathing room in that category. Unfortunately it looks like Tim Hudson and Ryan Dempster are going to pitch the standard 6 innings apiece, pushing Brad right up to the 1000 mark.
In the end, we finished just as we had started the day—tied. Riddled with anxiety, I waited until the last out, afraid that the likes of Martin Prado or Jody Gerut might pop an unexpected homerun or that Troy Tulowitzki would be summoned off the Rockies’ bench to pinch-hit like Robert Redford in a fantasy baseball version of “The Natural.” None of that came to pass, as Bob finished with 228 homeruns, Kish with 227. Although 85 points is quite a lot in our league, I can’t really say it was one of my better teams. Sure, Pujols had a monster year with a .328 BA, 47 HR, 135 RBI, and 16 SB. I almost feel guilty about the 16 SB, which is a lot more than most sluggers get. It’s kind of like having a really hot girlfriend who also happens to be bisexual and really into threesomes. No one should be that lucky. Ryan Braun also had a great year as the Robin to Pujols’ Batman, finishing at .320, 32 HR, 114 RBI, and 20 SB. This was my last year with Braun, who I drafted in the reserves when he was still a minor leaguer at the beginning of the 2007 season, and whom I had kept an eye on ever since he was drafted fourth overall out of the University of Miami. The total production of Braun’s 3 years with me: .308, 103 HR, 317 RBI, 49 SB. How much did I pay for that? A total of $18 including the reserve pick, or $1 less than what Gary paid for Christian Guzman this year.
The fact that I got 40 pitching points, on the other hand, is nothing short of miraculous. Somehow I led the league with 90 wins despite the fact that my ace Jake Peavy, who I shelled out $39 for, missed half the season due to injury, leaving me with Javier Vazquez and Colorado Rockies re-tread Jorge de la Rosa as my winningest pitchers. Jonathan Broxton had a solid year as the Dodgers’ closer, and Kevin Gregg’s whiteness ensured that Lou Piniella went to him rather than Carlos Marmol in the 9th inning for most of the year, despite a 4.72 ERA. Clayton Kershaw turned in a decent year, Johnny Cueto was good until the all-star break, and Franklin Morales saved some games down the stretch. Beyond that, there was nothing but filler: Bob Howry, Aaron Heilman, James McDonald, Yusmeiro Petit, Scott Eyre, Freddy Garcia, Bobby Parnell, Pedro Feliciano, Tim Stauffer….One of the season’s biggest disappointments was watching rookie Jordan Zimmermann go down with an injury that will keep him out for most of next year after he started out looking like a keeper.
As far as my hitting, when you look around the rest of the infield you see a lot of disappointments, busts, and sub-par performances. If any one of these guys had put up just a fraction of the numbers they posted in previous seasons, I would have won easily. Second baseman Rickie Weeks looked like he was finally on the way to fulfilling his enormous potential when he suffered a broken hand in May and missed the rest of the year. I forked out $31 for shortstop Rafael Furcal with the idea that he, along with Weeks, would be my primary base stealer, but he turned in a thoroughly mediocre season that included a measly 12 SB. His heroic homerun on the final day of the season notwithstanding, third baseman Edwin Encarnacion was on the disabled list for much of the year and sucked ass when he wasn’t. I get manage to get some solid production from my low-priced alternatives, however. I was shocked to get Nick Johnson for $1 and even more shocked when he was healthy for almost an entire year after suffering an assortment of leg, thumb, knee, wrist, hand, cheek (yes, cheek), and back injuries in previous seasons. Luis Castillo turned in a solid .303 BA and 20 SB for $1. I got Everth Cabrera in the reserves and he picked up 24 SB in half a season with the Padres despite having never played above A ball before this year. Chad Tracy, Jeff Keppinger, and Ryan Roberts…not really worth discussing. In the outfield, Andre Ethier turned in 31 HR and 106 RBI and I’m pleased to say he’ll be returning to my squad next year for $15. Early season concerns about Josh Willingham’s playing time allowed to him slip into the reserves, where I picked him up and he delivered 24 HR. I had my sights set on Dexter Fowler beginning in spring training, and after picking him up for $3 he delivered 27 SB and displayed a little pop that should increase as he matures while playing in the league’s best hitter’s park. As for the rest of my outfield, Brandon Moss was a disappointment, Brett Carroll isn’t worth mentioning, and Austin Kearns is officially dead to me. Behind the plate, big fat Bengie Molina turned in a solid season but I paid a hefty price of $17 for it. The more disturbing case is Chris Snyder. In 2008, he hit 16 HR and 64 RBI for me despite missing part of the year with. . . ahem, a “testicular fracture.” How do you even fracture a testicle, much less hit 16 HR after doing it, much less PLAY A POSITION THAT REQUIRES YOU TO SQUAT WITH EVERY PITCH after FRACTURING A TESTICLE? Coming into this season, for all I knew, this guy was MADE OF TESTICLES. Impressed beyond belief, I signed him to a 2 year contract at a price of $8. What happened this year? He missed almost the whole year with an injury. What type of injury, you ask? He hurt his lower back, and now he has to have back surgery that he will probably hamper him next year as well. Dude, you played with a testicular fracture but a bad back is gonna sideline you for like two years? Finally, I must mention J.R. Towles. He spent almost the whole year in the minors, and then in September the Astros recalled him and gave him some regular at-bats as their catcher. Since Synder was injured I had to put him in, and he was absolutely killing me with a sub-.200 BA. But somehow, miraculously, in the last week of the season, Wednesday, September 30 to be exact, with only 6 HITS to his name for THE ENTIRE SEASON, J.R. Towles stood up and popped not one but TWO HOMERUNS, including one off the legendary Pedro Martinez. Without those 2 HR I would have finished in second, so thank you J.R. Towles, hopefully I’ll remember to give you an extra tip if you bag my groceries, deliver my pizza, or change my oil someday.
The thing I’m probably most disappointed about from this year, however, is my choice of names. As part of my annual attempt to put a satirical slant on some current event, I went with The Fonzi Scheme in light of this year’s financial scandals. Unfortunately it’s just not in the same class as my previous teams like Spitzer Swallows, The Urge to Surge, The War on Christmas, The Caminiti Crackwhores, Condi's Cunthairs, and The Vatican Sodomizers. I vow to try harder next year.
Let’s take a look at the other teams and how they fared:
Kish (I Want Some Troubled Average Rejected Players [TARP]): Well-balanced and outstanding. Phenomenal years from Hanley Ramirez and Troy Tulowitzki along with solid contributions from Adam Dunn, Shane Victorino, and Jorge Cantu. The fucker outbid me for Justin Upton on draft day and he had breakout season, while I turned around and spent my money on the dreaded Austin Kearns. And who the hell knew Martin Prado could hit? The only true disappointment was one of my longtime prospects, Chris B. Young. Kish also put together one of the best pitching staffs in recent memory, headed up by Tim Lincecum, who he picked up in the reserves the same year I got Ryan Braun, and excellent years from Jair Jurrjens, Wandy Rodriguez, and even Ross Ohlendorf. Brian Wilson quit the Beach Boys, got a terrible haircut, found Jesus, and turned into a solid closer for the Giants. I hear Kish had the chance to trade his prized prospect Tommy Hanson for a solid closer in Francisco Cordero, and if he had pulled the trigger he would have won, but Hanson had a solid rookie season and looks like a great keeper for two years, so who’s to say?
Tim (Kumar’s Suicide Trip to the White House): Kudos to the Lum Drum for working his way into a solid third place finish this year. Monster years from Prince Fielder and Mark Reynolds, the latter of which was a steal at $14. Miguel Tejada, Clint Barmes, and Ryan Theriot also made big contributions. If it hadn’t been for a major injury to Carlos Beltran he certainly would have topped 70 points. In terms of pitching, the Lum Drum has come a long way from 2006, when he set an unbreakable record for fewest saves with 0. This year he was tied with me for the most number of pitching points with 40 thanks to Chris Carpenter, Ted Lilly, and an early season trade for Joe Blanton. Trevor Hoffman just keeps getting people out and saving games despite the fact that he couldn’t throw his fastball through a plate of glass at his advanced age. Worst pick: $24 for the psychotic Milton Bradley.
Matt (The Fancy Pageant Pseudo Authors, which was changed several times over the course of the season in keeping with Sarah Palin’s various exploits): Two years into our league, Matt has finished in fourth place both years, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. His offense was just mediocre, but with Andrew McCutcheon, Garrett Jones, and Jonny Gomes it’s looking like he’s got some solid low-budget keepers for next year. He also took an effective gamble by drafting Cliff Lee in the hopes that he’d be traded to the National League, which he was, and now in all likelihood he’s got him cheap for the next two years. J.A. Happ and Randy Wells also look like good keepers. I look for big things from Matt next year. Worst pick: re-signing Geovany Soto for $20.
Brad (He Quit Me, formerly known as He Stimulate Me until Brad decided to quit, I guess): Good power numbers on offense led by Chase Utley and Derek Lee, but speed kills as Gary likes to say, and Brad finished in last place in stolen bases. Led the league in saves with a rejuvenated Rafael Soriano leading the way (it’s only fair that he FINALLY got something out of that two-year, $21 contract). But as the problems getting to 1000 innings attest, there just wasn’t nearly enough starting pitching there. In fact, Brad finished with a paltry 45 wins, 15 wins below the second-to-last place finisher. Worst pick: Fred Lewis for $19. Giant fan probably thought he was the second coming of Willie “E.T.” McGee. Paying $35 for Rich Harden to get worked on in the training room probably wasn’t a good idea either.
Steve (Tent City Terrorists): One of these years Steve has got to make it back into the money so he can stop talking about his glory year of 1993, when Gregg Jeffries and a rookie named Mike Piazza powered him to his one and only championship. To be fair, this year’s team was decimated with injuries: $54 ended being wasted on Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano didn’t even earn half of his $46 salary, Johan Santana won 4 games after he traded for him and then was shut down for the rest of the season, Carlos Zambrano pitched more like Victor Zambrano, and then there was that whole thing where Man-Ram got suspended for 50 games and wasn’t the same afterwards. On the plus side, there is reason for hope next year. Roto stud Matt Kemp has one more year left on his $9 contract, as does Chad Billingsley for $7, and as long as Matt Holiday is still in the NL Steve can keep him for $6. Worst pick: you can’t really blame him for all the injuries to those other players, but Carlos Zambrano is just not a $37 pitcher.
Raj (Somali Concussions, originally Somali Pirates): It seems like every year Raj makes some late season trades to rebuild for the following season, and then he finishes right around where he did this year, tied for 6th. His team was consistently below average in all respects this season. Jayson Werth had a great year, but David Wright must have gone off steroids or something because his power was totally M.I.A. I have nothing to say about his pitching. Once again, he’s looking good for next year, with Werth and Ryan Ludwick signed to low-cost contracts and the potential to go long-term on Ryan Franklin. Look for him to have 6th place all to himself next year. Worst pick: $21 for Jason Motte. He sure looked good in spring training.
Lance (I can’t remember what his team was originally called, by the end of the year he was just listed as LP): It wasn’t pretty, but he still finished ahead of Bob and Gary. For some reason it seems appropriate that Lance wound up with Kung Fu Panda Pablo Sandoval. He also got an incredible 61 steals from Michael Bourn, and he assembled a decent pitching rotation with a strong year from Dan Haren and surprising contributions from Joel Pineiro and Jason Marquis. Unfortunately, things don’t look good coming into next year, as he will be saddled with one more year of ill-conceived long-term contracts with Redneck Aaron Rowand and Khalil “Friend of God” Greene. Worst pick: Brandon Webb got hurt in his first start of the season but Lance still shelled out $40 to get him, only to find the letters DL permanently attached to his name for the rest of the year. Paying $40 for Carlos Delgado’s 4 homeruns didn’t work out too well either.
Bob (Bob’s Boils, of course): Even the statistical odds would suggest that Bob will get lucky and at least finish in the money one of these years. We’re still waiting for that to happen. Let’s skip what went right and go straight to what went wrong. Fourteen and a half pitching points, that’s went wrong. To accomplish that sort of thing you’re going to need 155 terrible innings from Chris Volstad to go with sub-par performances from Derek Lowe and Roy Oswalt. The Boils were actually an offensive force to be reckoned with thanks to Ryan Zimmerman, Joey Votto, and Dan Uggla. How’s it look for next year? Votto and Josh Johnson are a good foundation. Worst picks: $24 for a horrible year from Garrett Atkins, followed by $27 for a mediocre year from Corey Hart.
Brian (Oops, I Lost Again): Not much went right with the exception of the prophetic team name. As you would expect, Ryan Howard turned in huge power numbers. Nyjer Morgan also became a big-time base thief, and Ubaldo Jimenez established himself as a solid starter. Unfortunately Brian didn’t have the roster depth to compensate for his many injuries to key players like Aramis Ramirez, Conor Jackson, and John Maine or sub-par performances from Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge. Worst pick: $25 for Conor Jackson wasn’t bad on draft day, but what happened to this guy? He contracted something called “Valley Fever”? Is that some sort of STD you get from a Valley Girl? Seriously, what the hell is that, and why did it keep him on the DL for the whole damn year?
Gary (Deserving the Crappy Place in the Standings, can’t remember the original team name): First off all Gary gets a big demerit for being yet another owner to change his team name in the middle of the season. I am completely opposed to this new trend. The name is appropriate, however, insofar as Gary can’t really blame his poor finish on injuries in the same way that Steve or Brian can. His team was abysmal in every category except saves. Gary made a great number of trades and claims to be rebuilding for next year, so let’s see what he’s got. Offensively, Cody Ross will return for a cheap $9 after a very good season, and Carlos Gonzalez has turned into a nice player who can be kept for $6. I think it would be mistake to keep either Colby Rasmus or Cameron Maybin for $12, so hopefully their major league teams will start them in the minors, where they belong, so Gary can’t give in to his temptation to re-sign them. Pitching-wise, Carlos Marmol and Leo Nunez aren’t great but they’ll be worth resigning if they begin the year as closers. Due to a stunning inability to learn from his past mistakes, it’s a safe bet that if Gary resigned John Lannan for $6 this year, it probably means he’ll sign Zach Duke for $7 next year. And I’m certain that Homer Bailey and Mat Latos have already been guaranteed a place as long as they win spots in their rotations of their respective teams. In short, he’ll probably keep a lot of players, but things don’t look good. Worst pick: Russell Martin at $23 narrowly edges out the aforementioned Christian Guzman.
Shawn (1000 Innings or Bust): By the time I finish writing this paragraph I will have given more thought to Shawn’s team than Shawn did all season. Lest you be fooled by the team name, Shawn was the only owner not to reach 1000 innings this year—again. What is likely to have been a Cy Young performance from Adam Wainwright has therefore gone to waste. Offensively, his team wasn’t bad, with Carlos Lee, Jimmy Rollins, Raul Ibanez, Lance Berkman, and even some surprising contributions from Juan Uribe and Seth Smith. With pitching, there was no full-time closer but he did corner the market on 40-something left-handers with the not-so-dynamic duo of Randy Johnson and Jaime Moyer. Worst pick: Garrett Anderson for $20? Kaz Matsui for $17? Dave Bush for $14? So many to choose from.
Well, that’s that for 2009. Hope this helps you survive those cold, stat-less winter nights.
It all started back on April 11 with the 12 of us NCMLL owners gathered together for our annual draft day, this time in a rental cabin in Lake Tahoe. Sometime shortly after the crack of dawn on that Saturday, coffee is brewed, doughnuts are scarfed, and there is a chorus of cracking beer bottles (though not by me, for this is my first sober draft day) in excited anticipation of a day that is a lot like Christmas morning for fantasy baseball geeks. I, for one, am hoping to find a shiny new Albert Pujols under my tree (Albert Pujols, if you don’t know, is quite the statistical action figure, like the Boba Fett of HRs, RBI, and BA). But before any of that happens, we must engage in the torturous and seemingly interminable process of crossing off the names of players who have already been taken from the draft sheets that Bob so meticulously prepares for us every year. Bob also needs to set up the projector and mount the screen that will allow us to examine the stats of the player currently being auctioned along with other key information, like how much money each owner has spent and how many positions they have left to fill. Inevitably there will be some sort of technological problem with the projector, and Gary, or Lance, or both Gary and Lance, will launch into some tirade about how that damn projector is the worst thing to happen in the entire history of the league and is leading to its immanent doom and demise. Meanwhile, laptops have been fired up around the rest of the room, though I maintain a John Henry-ish arrogance that I don’t need no stinking machine or even Bob’s sheets because I can compete—no, dominate, actually—based purely on what’s in my head. I am wondering if sobriety will give me any sort of competitive advantage or may actually present a disadvantage, because I typically draft my team while drunk as a skunk as well as hungover from the night before. The projector is finally working, and the draft begins with the drinking of ceremonial cups of Old English malt liquor, which I am happy to be missing out on for once. I am aggressive from the get-go and nab Albert Pujols for a cool $50. It’s gonna be a good year.
Fast forward to October 4. There are several categories that need to be continuously monitored today. I am 9 RBI and 3 SB behind Kish. If I can pass him in either category, it’s a 2 point swing, but even if I just tie him it’s a 1 point swing. However, this is unlikely as 9 RBI and 3 SB is a lot for just one day. On the other hand, Bob’s Boils have gone a homerun-hitting spree this week, and now he’s 1 HR behind me and 1 HR ahead of Kish, meaning that I will lose a half point if Bob hits 1 more HR than I do today and lose a full point if Bob hits 2 more HR, and conversely Kish will gain a half point if he hits 1 more HR than Bob and a full point if he hits 2 more HR, AND since he’s only 2 HR behind me Kish could easily tie or pass me, resulting in a multi-point swing. Trust me, it’s all very dramatic, BUT THERE’S EVEN MORE, because Brad’s team has only pitched 988 innings, and our league rule says that you must pass 1000 innings otherwise you are dropped to the bottom of the standings in ERA and WHIP, and right now Brad is ahead of me but not Kish in ERA, meaning that if he doesn’t get his 1000 innings than I get an extra point in ERA. Twelve innings is a sizable amount when you don’t have 1000 for the whole season, but on this day Brad will have Tim Hudson and Ryan Dempster taking the mound. If they get hit hard there’s a chance I could pass Brad in ERA anyway, because his is only slightly better than mine to begin with, but they’re both pretty good pitchers so this is unlikely to happen. In short, not only do I need to watch my team today, I’ll need to keep my eyes glued to Kish’s team to see how many homeruns he hits, bases he steals, and runs he drives in, Bob’s team to see how many homeruns he hits, and Brad’s team to see how many innings he pitches. Oh, and one more thing: Tim’s team is just 1 pitching win behind me, so even though he doesn’t have anyone starting today I’m going to need to monitor his bullpen to make sure none of them vultures a win.
One fact you need to keep in mind about “real” baseball is that while the fate of our league hangs in the balance, this is the single least important day of the regular baseball season. All the major league teams have either been eliminated from the division and wild-card races for some time or are gearing up for the playoffs in the following week. So as I frantically flip from game to game on the MLB network, all the players seem to be lounging the dugout, chewing tobacco, scratching their nuts, looking hungover, and probably talking about where they’re going to go hunting and fishing during the off-season. COME ON PEOPLE, DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE? However, in some respects this is working in my favor, as one of Kish’s best players and top homerun hitters, Troy Tulowitzki, will be rested today because the Colorado Rockies have already earned a place in the postseason. I can breathe a short sigh of relief because my third baseman, Edwin Encarnacion, has just launched a homerun in one of the early games being played on the east coast, thus providing me with a little more breathing room in that category. Unfortunately it looks like Tim Hudson and Ryan Dempster are going to pitch the standard 6 innings apiece, pushing Brad right up to the 1000 mark.
In the end, we finished just as we had started the day—tied. Riddled with anxiety, I waited until the last out, afraid that the likes of Martin Prado or Jody Gerut might pop an unexpected homerun or that Troy Tulowitzki would be summoned off the Rockies’ bench to pinch-hit like Robert Redford in a fantasy baseball version of “The Natural.” None of that came to pass, as Bob finished with 228 homeruns, Kish with 227. Although 85 points is quite a lot in our league, I can’t really say it was one of my better teams. Sure, Pujols had a monster year with a .328 BA, 47 HR, 135 RBI, and 16 SB. I almost feel guilty about the 16 SB, which is a lot more than most sluggers get. It’s kind of like having a really hot girlfriend who also happens to be bisexual and really into threesomes. No one should be that lucky. Ryan Braun also had a great year as the Robin to Pujols’ Batman, finishing at .320, 32 HR, 114 RBI, and 20 SB. This was my last year with Braun, who I drafted in the reserves when he was still a minor leaguer at the beginning of the 2007 season, and whom I had kept an eye on ever since he was drafted fourth overall out of the University of Miami. The total production of Braun’s 3 years with me: .308, 103 HR, 317 RBI, 49 SB. How much did I pay for that? A total of $18 including the reserve pick, or $1 less than what Gary paid for Christian Guzman this year.
The fact that I got 40 pitching points, on the other hand, is nothing short of miraculous. Somehow I led the league with 90 wins despite the fact that my ace Jake Peavy, who I shelled out $39 for, missed half the season due to injury, leaving me with Javier Vazquez and Colorado Rockies re-tread Jorge de la Rosa as my winningest pitchers. Jonathan Broxton had a solid year as the Dodgers’ closer, and Kevin Gregg’s whiteness ensured that Lou Piniella went to him rather than Carlos Marmol in the 9th inning for most of the year, despite a 4.72 ERA. Clayton Kershaw turned in a decent year, Johnny Cueto was good until the all-star break, and Franklin Morales saved some games down the stretch. Beyond that, there was nothing but filler: Bob Howry, Aaron Heilman, James McDonald, Yusmeiro Petit, Scott Eyre, Freddy Garcia, Bobby Parnell, Pedro Feliciano, Tim Stauffer….One of the season’s biggest disappointments was watching rookie Jordan Zimmermann go down with an injury that will keep him out for most of next year after he started out looking like a keeper.
As far as my hitting, when you look around the rest of the infield you see a lot of disappointments, busts, and sub-par performances. If any one of these guys had put up just a fraction of the numbers they posted in previous seasons, I would have won easily. Second baseman Rickie Weeks looked like he was finally on the way to fulfilling his enormous potential when he suffered a broken hand in May and missed the rest of the year. I forked out $31 for shortstop Rafael Furcal with the idea that he, along with Weeks, would be my primary base stealer, but he turned in a thoroughly mediocre season that included a measly 12 SB. His heroic homerun on the final day of the season notwithstanding, third baseman Edwin Encarnacion was on the disabled list for much of the year and sucked ass when he wasn’t. I get manage to get some solid production from my low-priced alternatives, however. I was shocked to get Nick Johnson for $1 and even more shocked when he was healthy for almost an entire year after suffering an assortment of leg, thumb, knee, wrist, hand, cheek (yes, cheek), and back injuries in previous seasons. Luis Castillo turned in a solid .303 BA and 20 SB for $1. I got Everth Cabrera in the reserves and he picked up 24 SB in half a season with the Padres despite having never played above A ball before this year. Chad Tracy, Jeff Keppinger, and Ryan Roberts…not really worth discussing. In the outfield, Andre Ethier turned in 31 HR and 106 RBI and I’m pleased to say he’ll be returning to my squad next year for $15. Early season concerns about Josh Willingham’s playing time allowed to him slip into the reserves, where I picked him up and he delivered 24 HR. I had my sights set on Dexter Fowler beginning in spring training, and after picking him up for $3 he delivered 27 SB and displayed a little pop that should increase as he matures while playing in the league’s best hitter’s park. As for the rest of my outfield, Brandon Moss was a disappointment, Brett Carroll isn’t worth mentioning, and Austin Kearns is officially dead to me. Behind the plate, big fat Bengie Molina turned in a solid season but I paid a hefty price of $17 for it. The more disturbing case is Chris Snyder. In 2008, he hit 16 HR and 64 RBI for me despite missing part of the year with. . . ahem, a “testicular fracture.” How do you even fracture a testicle, much less hit 16 HR after doing it, much less PLAY A POSITION THAT REQUIRES YOU TO SQUAT WITH EVERY PITCH after FRACTURING A TESTICLE? Coming into this season, for all I knew, this guy was MADE OF TESTICLES. Impressed beyond belief, I signed him to a 2 year contract at a price of $8. What happened this year? He missed almost the whole year with an injury. What type of injury, you ask? He hurt his lower back, and now he has to have back surgery that he will probably hamper him next year as well. Dude, you played with a testicular fracture but a bad back is gonna sideline you for like two years? Finally, I must mention J.R. Towles. He spent almost the whole year in the minors, and then in September the Astros recalled him and gave him some regular at-bats as their catcher. Since Synder was injured I had to put him in, and he was absolutely killing me with a sub-.200 BA. But somehow, miraculously, in the last week of the season, Wednesday, September 30 to be exact, with only 6 HITS to his name for THE ENTIRE SEASON, J.R. Towles stood up and popped not one but TWO HOMERUNS, including one off the legendary Pedro Martinez. Without those 2 HR I would have finished in second, so thank you J.R. Towles, hopefully I’ll remember to give you an extra tip if you bag my groceries, deliver my pizza, or change my oil someday.
The thing I’m probably most disappointed about from this year, however, is my choice of names. As part of my annual attempt to put a satirical slant on some current event, I went with The Fonzi Scheme in light of this year’s financial scandals. Unfortunately it’s just not in the same class as my previous teams like Spitzer Swallows, The Urge to Surge, The War on Christmas, The Caminiti Crackwhores, Condi's Cunthairs, and The Vatican Sodomizers. I vow to try harder next year.
Let’s take a look at the other teams and how they fared:
Kish (I Want Some Troubled Average Rejected Players [TARP]): Well-balanced and outstanding. Phenomenal years from Hanley Ramirez and Troy Tulowitzki along with solid contributions from Adam Dunn, Shane Victorino, and Jorge Cantu. The fucker outbid me for Justin Upton on draft day and he had breakout season, while I turned around and spent my money on the dreaded Austin Kearns. And who the hell knew Martin Prado could hit? The only true disappointment was one of my longtime prospects, Chris B. Young. Kish also put together one of the best pitching staffs in recent memory, headed up by Tim Lincecum, who he picked up in the reserves the same year I got Ryan Braun, and excellent years from Jair Jurrjens, Wandy Rodriguez, and even Ross Ohlendorf. Brian Wilson quit the Beach Boys, got a terrible haircut, found Jesus, and turned into a solid closer for the Giants. I hear Kish had the chance to trade his prized prospect Tommy Hanson for a solid closer in Francisco Cordero, and if he had pulled the trigger he would have won, but Hanson had a solid rookie season and looks like a great keeper for two years, so who’s to say?
Tim (Kumar’s Suicide Trip to the White House): Kudos to the Lum Drum for working his way into a solid third place finish this year. Monster years from Prince Fielder and Mark Reynolds, the latter of which was a steal at $14. Miguel Tejada, Clint Barmes, and Ryan Theriot also made big contributions. If it hadn’t been for a major injury to Carlos Beltran he certainly would have topped 70 points. In terms of pitching, the Lum Drum has come a long way from 2006, when he set an unbreakable record for fewest saves with 0. This year he was tied with me for the most number of pitching points with 40 thanks to Chris Carpenter, Ted Lilly, and an early season trade for Joe Blanton. Trevor Hoffman just keeps getting people out and saving games despite the fact that he couldn’t throw his fastball through a plate of glass at his advanced age. Worst pick: $24 for the psychotic Milton Bradley.
Matt (The Fancy Pageant Pseudo Authors, which was changed several times over the course of the season in keeping with Sarah Palin’s various exploits): Two years into our league, Matt has finished in fourth place both years, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. His offense was just mediocre, but with Andrew McCutcheon, Garrett Jones, and Jonny Gomes it’s looking like he’s got some solid low-budget keepers for next year. He also took an effective gamble by drafting Cliff Lee in the hopes that he’d be traded to the National League, which he was, and now in all likelihood he’s got him cheap for the next two years. J.A. Happ and Randy Wells also look like good keepers. I look for big things from Matt next year. Worst pick: re-signing Geovany Soto for $20.
Brad (He Quit Me, formerly known as He Stimulate Me until Brad decided to quit, I guess): Good power numbers on offense led by Chase Utley and Derek Lee, but speed kills as Gary likes to say, and Brad finished in last place in stolen bases. Led the league in saves with a rejuvenated Rafael Soriano leading the way (it’s only fair that he FINALLY got something out of that two-year, $21 contract). But as the problems getting to 1000 innings attest, there just wasn’t nearly enough starting pitching there. In fact, Brad finished with a paltry 45 wins, 15 wins below the second-to-last place finisher. Worst pick: Fred Lewis for $19. Giant fan probably thought he was the second coming of Willie “E.T.” McGee. Paying $35 for Rich Harden to get worked on in the training room probably wasn’t a good idea either.
Steve (Tent City Terrorists): One of these years Steve has got to make it back into the money so he can stop talking about his glory year of 1993, when Gregg Jeffries and a rookie named Mike Piazza powered him to his one and only championship. To be fair, this year’s team was decimated with injuries: $54 ended being wasted on Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano didn’t even earn half of his $46 salary, Johan Santana won 4 games after he traded for him and then was shut down for the rest of the season, Carlos Zambrano pitched more like Victor Zambrano, and then there was that whole thing where Man-Ram got suspended for 50 games and wasn’t the same afterwards. On the plus side, there is reason for hope next year. Roto stud Matt Kemp has one more year left on his $9 contract, as does Chad Billingsley for $7, and as long as Matt Holiday is still in the NL Steve can keep him for $6. Worst pick: you can’t really blame him for all the injuries to those other players, but Carlos Zambrano is just not a $37 pitcher.
Raj (Somali Concussions, originally Somali Pirates): It seems like every year Raj makes some late season trades to rebuild for the following season, and then he finishes right around where he did this year, tied for 6th. His team was consistently below average in all respects this season. Jayson Werth had a great year, but David Wright must have gone off steroids or something because his power was totally M.I.A. I have nothing to say about his pitching. Once again, he’s looking good for next year, with Werth and Ryan Ludwick signed to low-cost contracts and the potential to go long-term on Ryan Franklin. Look for him to have 6th place all to himself next year. Worst pick: $21 for Jason Motte. He sure looked good in spring training.
Lance (I can’t remember what his team was originally called, by the end of the year he was just listed as LP): It wasn’t pretty, but he still finished ahead of Bob and Gary. For some reason it seems appropriate that Lance wound up with Kung Fu Panda Pablo Sandoval. He also got an incredible 61 steals from Michael Bourn, and he assembled a decent pitching rotation with a strong year from Dan Haren and surprising contributions from Joel Pineiro and Jason Marquis. Unfortunately, things don’t look good coming into next year, as he will be saddled with one more year of ill-conceived long-term contracts with Redneck Aaron Rowand and Khalil “Friend of God” Greene. Worst pick: Brandon Webb got hurt in his first start of the season but Lance still shelled out $40 to get him, only to find the letters DL permanently attached to his name for the rest of the year. Paying $40 for Carlos Delgado’s 4 homeruns didn’t work out too well either.
Bob (Bob’s Boils, of course): Even the statistical odds would suggest that Bob will get lucky and at least finish in the money one of these years. We’re still waiting for that to happen. Let’s skip what went right and go straight to what went wrong. Fourteen and a half pitching points, that’s went wrong. To accomplish that sort of thing you’re going to need 155 terrible innings from Chris Volstad to go with sub-par performances from Derek Lowe and Roy Oswalt. The Boils were actually an offensive force to be reckoned with thanks to Ryan Zimmerman, Joey Votto, and Dan Uggla. How’s it look for next year? Votto and Josh Johnson are a good foundation. Worst picks: $24 for a horrible year from Garrett Atkins, followed by $27 for a mediocre year from Corey Hart.
Brian (Oops, I Lost Again): Not much went right with the exception of the prophetic team name. As you would expect, Ryan Howard turned in huge power numbers. Nyjer Morgan also became a big-time base thief, and Ubaldo Jimenez established himself as a solid starter. Unfortunately Brian didn’t have the roster depth to compensate for his many injuries to key players like Aramis Ramirez, Conor Jackson, and John Maine or sub-par performances from Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge. Worst pick: $25 for Conor Jackson wasn’t bad on draft day, but what happened to this guy? He contracted something called “Valley Fever”? Is that some sort of STD you get from a Valley Girl? Seriously, what the hell is that, and why did it keep him on the DL for the whole damn year?
Gary (Deserving the Crappy Place in the Standings, can’t remember the original team name): First off all Gary gets a big demerit for being yet another owner to change his team name in the middle of the season. I am completely opposed to this new trend. The name is appropriate, however, insofar as Gary can’t really blame his poor finish on injuries in the same way that Steve or Brian can. His team was abysmal in every category except saves. Gary made a great number of trades and claims to be rebuilding for next year, so let’s see what he’s got. Offensively, Cody Ross will return for a cheap $9 after a very good season, and Carlos Gonzalez has turned into a nice player who can be kept for $6. I think it would be mistake to keep either Colby Rasmus or Cameron Maybin for $12, so hopefully their major league teams will start them in the minors, where they belong, so Gary can’t give in to his temptation to re-sign them. Pitching-wise, Carlos Marmol and Leo Nunez aren’t great but they’ll be worth resigning if they begin the year as closers. Due to a stunning inability to learn from his past mistakes, it’s a safe bet that if Gary resigned John Lannan for $6 this year, it probably means he’ll sign Zach Duke for $7 next year. And I’m certain that Homer Bailey and Mat Latos have already been guaranteed a place as long as they win spots in their rotations of their respective teams. In short, he’ll probably keep a lot of players, but things don’t look good. Worst pick: Russell Martin at $23 narrowly edges out the aforementioned Christian Guzman.
Shawn (1000 Innings or Bust): By the time I finish writing this paragraph I will have given more thought to Shawn’s team than Shawn did all season. Lest you be fooled by the team name, Shawn was the only owner not to reach 1000 innings this year—again. What is likely to have been a Cy Young performance from Adam Wainwright has therefore gone to waste. Offensively, his team wasn’t bad, with Carlos Lee, Jimmy Rollins, Raul Ibanez, Lance Berkman, and even some surprising contributions from Juan Uribe and Seth Smith. With pitching, there was no full-time closer but he did corner the market on 40-something left-handers with the not-so-dynamic duo of Randy Johnson and Jaime Moyer. Worst pick: Garrett Anderson for $20? Kaz Matsui for $17? Dave Bush for $14? So many to choose from.
Well, that’s that for 2009. Hope this helps you survive those cold, stat-less winter nights.
25 Weird Facts About Me
1. I can't ride a bike.
2. I've never drunk a cup of coffee.
3. I am a master of fantasy baseball. I have won our league 6 times, including each of the last 3 years. One year I drafted 2 teams and finished in first and second.
4. I hate the Smiths, the Cure, and Joy Division, and I think the Who, U2, and R.E.M. are totally overrated.
5. I own over 1,000 books but only 3 spoons and 1 glass.
6. I bought my car for $500 4 years ago. It has at least 238,243 miles on it (I say at least because the odometer no longer works). It has no A/C, the CD player is broken, all the hubcaps are gone, the right front and right rear taillights are broken, and the driver's side seat belt has to be manually unrolled.
7. I enjoyed living in Kansas far more than living in either New York or Florida.
8. I have taught approximately 2,500 college students.
9. I vomit often, and violently.
10. My first concert was Kiss and W.A.S.P. at the LA Forum in 1986.
11. I am often accused of being a liberal but I'm really more of a communist and I wish people would get it straight.
12. When I first moved to Kansas someone spraypainted "Ryan Moore is a Hotty" on the side of a train. My friends Brian and Natalie Donovan saw it and took a picture. I have no idea who did it or if it was even about me.
13. I once dressed as "The Dude" for a showing of The Big Lebowski at Colgate.
14. I have only been in one fight. In the 7th grade I punched Nick Rollins in the face because he was taunting me in front of a bunch of other kids. I ran away and then started crying when I was called into the principal's office.
15. My favorite Marxists, in this order, are: Erich Fromm, Henri Lefebvre, Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Guy Debord would make the list if I included the other Situationists along with him.
16. I ran a marathon in June 2008.
17. The names of my fantasy baseball teams over the past 8 years: Spitzer Swallows, The Urge to Surge, The War on Christmas, The Caminiti Crackwhores, Condi's Cunthairs, Great White Pyrotechnics, The Vatican Sodomizers, The Santee Slaughter. In 2004 I wanted to name my team The Feeding Tubes in honor of Terry Shiavo, but Lance beat me to it with Feed Me Bush.
18. One of my dogs is named after 60s radical Abbie Hoffman.
19. After my punk book is published later this year my goal is to write 2 books called "The Zenarchist Manifesto" and "Marx in Vegas."
20. I took guitar lessons for 6 months but still cannot play a single song, and I haven't picked up my guitar once since I stopped taking lessons.
21. I despise Robin Williams and all things Monty Python.
22. I never get ice-cream headaches.
23. Jim Morrison died on my first birthday.
24. I went to kindergarden at an international school in Hong Kong, and some of my first memories are of being evacuated in response to bomb threats during the fall of Saigon.
25. I once got multiple rounds of free drinks at a bar because the bartender thought I was Dave Grohl. I proceeded to get drunk and play air drums to Nirvana songs on the jukebox.
2. I've never drunk a cup of coffee.
3. I am a master of fantasy baseball. I have won our league 6 times, including each of the last 3 years. One year I drafted 2 teams and finished in first and second.
4. I hate the Smiths, the Cure, and Joy Division, and I think the Who, U2, and R.E.M. are totally overrated.
5. I own over 1,000 books but only 3 spoons and 1 glass.
6. I bought my car for $500 4 years ago. It has at least 238,243 miles on it (I say at least because the odometer no longer works). It has no A/C, the CD player is broken, all the hubcaps are gone, the right front and right rear taillights are broken, and the driver's side seat belt has to be manually unrolled.
7. I enjoyed living in Kansas far more than living in either New York or Florida.
8. I have taught approximately 2,500 college students.
9. I vomit often, and violently.
10. My first concert was Kiss and W.A.S.P. at the LA Forum in 1986.
11. I am often accused of being a liberal but I'm really more of a communist and I wish people would get it straight.
12. When I first moved to Kansas someone spraypainted "Ryan Moore is a Hotty" on the side of a train. My friends Brian and Natalie Donovan saw it and took a picture. I have no idea who did it or if it was even about me.
13. I once dressed as "The Dude" for a showing of The Big Lebowski at Colgate.
14. I have only been in one fight. In the 7th grade I punched Nick Rollins in the face because he was taunting me in front of a bunch of other kids. I ran away and then started crying when I was called into the principal's office.
15. My favorite Marxists, in this order, are: Erich Fromm, Henri Lefebvre, Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Guy Debord would make the list if I included the other Situationists along with him.
16. I ran a marathon in June 2008.
17. The names of my fantasy baseball teams over the past 8 years: Spitzer Swallows, The Urge to Surge, The War on Christmas, The Caminiti Crackwhores, Condi's Cunthairs, Great White Pyrotechnics, The Vatican Sodomizers, The Santee Slaughter. In 2004 I wanted to name my team The Feeding Tubes in honor of Terry Shiavo, but Lance beat me to it with Feed Me Bush.
18. One of my dogs is named after 60s radical Abbie Hoffman.
19. After my punk book is published later this year my goal is to write 2 books called "The Zenarchist Manifesto" and "Marx in Vegas."
20. I took guitar lessons for 6 months but still cannot play a single song, and I haven't picked up my guitar once since I stopped taking lessons.
21. I despise Robin Williams and all things Monty Python.
22. I never get ice-cream headaches.
23. Jim Morrison died on my first birthday.
24. I went to kindergarden at an international school in Hong Kong, and some of my first memories are of being evacuated in response to bomb threats during the fall of Saigon.
25. I once got multiple rounds of free drinks at a bar because the bartender thought I was Dave Grohl. I proceeded to get drunk and play air drums to Nirvana songs on the jukebox.
Zombies! Organize!!
Whereas my last adventure in live music took me to the depths of North Miami’s ghettos for the International Noise Convention, this weekend found me in the upscale consumer’s paradise of West Palm Beach for the politically radical 80s kitsch techo/rap of Zombies! Organize!! and Freeze Pop. Full disclosure: one of the members of Zombies! Organize!! is my student Laura, who was one of my undergraduates and has since enrolled in our Master’s program and taken two graduate seminars with me. I had no idea that Laura was even in a band until a few months ago, but I’ve since discovered that they have quite the following among hipster kids in South Florida.
I’ve never had any reason to visit West Palm Beach’s downtown shopping district, so I don’t know my way around. I find myself stuck in the Saturday night traffic of something called CityPlace, which in truth is neither a city nor a place (discuss!), but instead an expanse of lame high-end boutiques and shitty mid-priced restaurants. Then again, while crawling through the Manhattan-paced traffic I watch some cops maliciously eyeing a handful of black teenagers who are aimlessly loitering in front of one of these stores, and I think to myself that maybe that this is a city after all.
The cover charge tonight is 15 bucks, and I’ve driven over 50 miles to get here, so this better be a good fucking show. I chat for a while with Laura, who is outfitted in a black tank top and a pink tutu, and she introduces me to the other band members, who as it turns out are her sister and her sister’s husband. Yes, this is a family band.
Zombies! Organize!! take the stage and all the hipsters rush in from the bar to start dancing. Their sound is composed of rudimentary keyboard beats and deadpan white-kid raps of the sort I haven’t heard since Lambda Lambda Lambda’s triumphant performance at the end of the first Revenge of the Nerds movie. I am filled with a teacher’s pride when I listen closely to the lyrics that sound like snippets of Marxist theory and Situationist sloganeering being rhymed at a high school pep rally. It’s like Judith Butler became a member of Devo. No wait, it’s like Le Tigre schooling Grandmaster Flash in queer theory. I mean how could you not love a band that uses “hegemonic masculinity” in a chorus or rhymes “Spartacus” with “lick my robot clitoris”? Adorable!!! Now I got it: It’s as if the little girls who once comprised the Shaggs had been abducted and forced to bear children for the benefit of a techno-socialist cult led by the members of Kraftwerk, and then said cult decided it was now time for their children to form a band that could de-program the exploited and pacified masses of late capitalism and its culture of the simulacrum with hypnotic retro hip hop beats and mallrat accents.
Freeze Pop are the main draw tonight, but it’s a tough act for them to follow. They are a more grown-up band featuring a sexy female singer and two guys who are masters of the key-tar (you know, a keyboard that is slung over the shoulder and played like a guitar with an extraordinary amount of ironic posturing). It’s a good show finished off with some totally bitchin’ covers of “The Final Countdown” and “Don’t Stop Believin.’” I stick around for a while longer because I am inexplicably struck by the urge to keep dancing with some friends I have run into at the show. It’s almost 2 AM now and time to go home. On the way back to I-95 CityPlace is deserted with the exception of security guards and police officers. I indulge the fantasy that they are there to restore order after all the consumers have had their brains eaten, or better yet, decided to go get organized.
The International Noise Festival
In Noise: The Political Economy of Music, the French theorist Jacques Attali wrote that “What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new.” It’s Friday night and I’m driving with two film professors and one of their girlfriends through one of the deepest and darkest ghettos I’ve ever been to in North Miami. The nearest exit ramp has been closed so we’re driving through the neighborhood known as Little Haiti, where there are no street lamps and few street lights, long stretches of warehouses and storefronts protected with wrought iron, and the occasional cluster of gangsters lurking ominously on street corners. We arrive at our destination, a punk rock club called Churchill’s, and suddenly there are nothing but white hipsters with chopped hair and tight pants who look like they’ve stepped out of a Hot Topic catalog.
We are here for the International Noise Convention, an annual event at Churchill’s which I have heard much about but never attended. The club is small, dank, and filled with the familiar scent of sweat, spilled beer, and stale cigarette smoke. About 50 kids are standing in a semi-circle around a young woman who’s on a slightly elevated stage and looks to be plugging various chords in and out of some kind of machine while popping cassette tapes in and out of a tape recorder. It’s a surreal, post-apocalyptic scene like something out of Blade Runner or Mad Max, with all these kids attired in tribalist and retro styles hypnotically bobbing their heads to sounds that can’t really be called “music” but are undeniably entrancing. I close my eyes and allow myself to be overwhelmed by the noise, which I can only try to describe as the rhythm of an old dot matrix printer periodically interrupted by the chirping of birds.
She finishes, and almost immediately a band starts playing in the center of the club on a stage that isn’t elevated at all. Churchill’s is so small that I don’t even need to move, I just turn my body to the right and find myself uncomfortably close to the band. A guitar player produces a few solid minutes of feedback, and then the drummer begins pounding out some beats and the place erupts into a mosh pit with bodies flailing and pushing in every direction, including right back into the drumset and amplifiers. It’s one big mess of piercing sounds and pierced bodies, and I’m totally digging it. Some kid next to me is smoking a joint and later in the night he walks by and whispers that he’s selling doses. I shake my head no and then spend the rest of the night debating whether this would be the best or the worst of all possible places to drop acid. Since I wasn’t fortunate enough to be at the Masque in 1978 or Cabaret Voltaire in 1918, this is probably as close as I’m going to get to seeing the decline of western civilization in all its glory.
Some of the performances were unspeakably terrible, like the wannabe Jesus guy who kept chanting and moaning into the microphone or the dorky kids with all the good equipment who thought they were New Order or the drummer who stuck his fingers and his drumstick down his throat to induce vomiting on his cymbal. But on the whole it was so refreshing to see the spirit of anarchy alive and well as a succession of unknown kids took the “stage” with the confidence that the rules don’t matter anymore because any piece of technology can be a musical instrument because any noise can be considered music. Jacques Attali was writing about this sort of noise more than 25 years ago: “Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible.” And so on that note we stepped out of the club and back into America’s Third World, a warzone of disorganization in the moment of our global economic meltdown, and I prayed not to get lost on the way back to Interstate 95 (we did get lost for a little while, but obviously did get back safely enough for me to tell you this story).
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Straight Outta Immokalee: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Last spring we organized a trip out to Immokalee, a patch of swampland in the center of southern Florida where great numbers of tomatoes are picked by immigrant workers who toil under the most horrifying conditions of exploitation. Our tour would be guided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (www.ciw-online.org), a community-based worker organization that has been working since 1993 to increase wages, improve working conditions, and put an end to modern-day slavery (yes, slavery, see below) in Immokalee. In 2001 the CIW launched a national boycott of Taco Bell that called on the fast food giant to take responsibility for the human rights abuses that occur as tomatoes are being picked for its “restaurants” (a generous term for Taco Bell, I know). They were eventually victorious in their “Boot the Bell” campaign when students at 25 colleges and high schools—including Duke, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame, UCLA, and the University of Michigan—successfully pressured their administrations to kick Taco Bell off campus. In 2005 Taco Bell finally capitulated and agreed to meet all of the CIW’s demands to raise wages and improve working conditions. Since then the CIW has also won a two-year battle with McDonald’s and entered into comparable agreements with Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods.
Needless to say, I find the CIW’s example tremendously inspiring in this time of global capitalism when it seems like corporations have absolute power over both workers and consumers and we are always being told that organized labor is a thing of the past. On Saturday our group was joined by a number of students from the University of South Florida and Outward Bound, totaling about 50 in all, at the CIW community center. The CIW is planning to launch a new campaign that targets the food service corporations (Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass) which are awarded contracts to feed students on college and high school campuses across America. Toward this end they have created the Student/Farmworker Alliance (www.sfalliance.org) which seeks to educate students who can then pressure their administrations in the manner that was so successful in the “Boot the Bell” campaign. A similar movement arose in the late 1990s calling itself Students Against Sweatshops, where students exposed the brutal conditions typically involved in making the clothing and apparel that display their school’s logo. These movements have proven successful because students are such a coveted demographic of consumers, and today’s corporations and universities are especially sensitive about protecting their image and brand names.
After a short presentation the CIW organizers took us out on a tour of Immokalee. Of course everything had a Third World feel to it, but it was also a bit like stepping back into the 19th century. Immokalee isn’t a “community” so much as it is an old-fashioned labor camp. After a trip to the parking lot where masses of prospective workers come every morning before 5 AM hoping to be picked up for work in the fields, we are taken on a walking tour of the residential area where some 20,000 people live in a 9 block area of rusted mobile homes and dilapidated shacks. The great majority of workers do not own cars, so they must live close to the parking lots where the buses pick them up for work. Our guide points to one of these decrepit trailers and informs us that between 10 and 15 people are typically living in one at any particular time. Most only have 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom, so people usually just throw down a mattress wherever they can, and if you need to cook something or take a shit then you’ll probably need to get in line. They rent for about 400 dollars per month because all of the trailers are owned by two families who can take advantage of their monopoly to jack up the rents. It’s the same story at the grocery store, where price gouging is routine because people don’t have the option to shop around when they’re on foot or riding a bicycle. With this in mind the CIW has recently established a little cooperative store that sells staples like tortillas and corn oil at wholesale prices, thus forcing the grocery store to lower their prices a bit.
Relatively speaking, the people living in the trailers are probably the lucky ones in Immokalee. Over the past several years the CIW has exposed 7 cases of slavery involving about 1,000 workers. The most recent case decided in December 2008 involved a family who would lock their workers in shacks and box trucks at night and tie, chain, and beat them if they tried to leave. The members of this Navarette family were convicted and are due to be sentenced in federal court. The CIW says that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that slavery is in fact rampant. It’s not hard to see how it happens: workers can be taken miles away from civilization into the Everglades, without a phone or a car, and so if you do escape, where are you going to run? Most of the workers are immigrants from Guatemala, southern Mexico, or Haiti, they don’t know anything about what little rights they do possess, they don’t speak English and frequently can’t even communicate with each other because they speak regional dialects, and of course the fear of deportation can be used against them in almost any situation.
Walking through Immokalee was depressing, to say the least. Far removed from either coast, it had already gotten oppressively hot in March, and periodically a dry wind would sweep through and smack our faces with dust and dirt. I tried to imagine what it would be like working in the fields in this baking sun, getting paid 40 fucking cents for every 32 pound bucket of tomatoes I could gather, meaning that I would need to pick 125 buckets of tomatoes—that’s two and a half tons—just to make 50 bucks. But when we got back to the CIW community center I felt a renewed sense of energy and hope. I reminded myself that these people had taken on some of the most powerful corporations in the world and actually won a little something for themselves. The CIW had created a community radio station and a couple of little kids were running around and playing like they were on the air. The CIW told us about how they had started hosted meetings for women’s groups and how the center would be packed every Saturday night when they showed movies on their projector. In other words, this isn’t just a labor movement, it’s a culture in the making. They don’t have any illusions about what they’re up against, but the collective sense of courage and
Friday, July 30, 2010
The U.S. Social Forum and the Next Left
I was pretty sure I knew what I was going to get when I left for Detroit to attend the U.S. Social Forum. Yet I came away surprised, because even though I found the expected sources of frustration and some new ones as well, I discovered a greater number of reasons for hope and optimism about the resurgence of the Left in the U.S. For four days the city of Detroit was the hive for a swarm of non-governmental organizations with a largely youthful and substantially black and Latino constituency of some 15,000 community activists, cyber-anarchists, and radical pedagogues. It can be difficult to watch and listen to the growing pains of this movement of movements, but compared to other Leftist conventions, meetings, and events I’ve attended off and on over the past two decades, this current multitude certainly represents an advance in both theory and practice. The U.S. Social Forum makes capitalism the nucleus of its analyses in ways that the politically correct Left never approximated in the 1990s. Its several hundred workshops and panels consider the myriad ways in which that class and labor conflicts intersect with the inequalities of racism and sexism, thus generating a more dynamic analysis that transcends the previous divisions between identity politics and Marxism. But the even more significant developments are in the demography of the members, how people are getting organized and mobilized, and the communities they are trying to rebuild in participatory and sustainable directions. I’m used to national Left conventions being unholy meeting grounds where the militant misfits of graduate school join with postmodern primitives in dreadlocked drum circles, and while those two populations were still out in full force in Detroit, they were joined by a third contingent of young people of color whose presence has noticeably multiplied with community organizing around urban issues and the use of digital media to fight the power. This is starting to look more like a global movement, or at least one that reflects America’s increasingly global culture. It is only beginning to scratch the surface of its potential, and it can grow by more leaps and bounds if it sheds some of the Left’s old baggage and builds a new, more inclusive, and truly popular culture.
I flew to Detroit on Thursday morning, June 24. My trip was not off to a good beginning: I had made a late reservation and got stuck in a middle seat, and I booked a nonstop flight but this came with the Devil’s bargain that a foul fog of flatulence would accumulate over the course of my three-plus hour flight. The cabbie who picked me up at the airport was absorbed in the Slovakia vs. Italy match of the World Cup, insisting that I watch the final minutes of the game on his mobile phone while he drove me downtown. These were the only minutes of the World Cup I actually watched, and although it was a virtual shootout with a score of 3-2 and apparently entailed the upset and elimination of a major international contender, the white-bread American part of me was still entirely bored. I checked-in at the hotel and began walking to Detroit’s Cobo Exhibition Hall, where I was greeted by a huge bronze statue of the boxer Joe Louis and a moderate number of people milling about, occupied with their laptops and cell phones, or flipping through the program schedule for workshops to attend. A friend and I were firing off texts at one another about our present locations, leading me upstairs to the press briefing room in one of the media centers, a cavernous and chaotic room where perhaps a dozen people worked on desktops while a tangled mass of wires and backup devices lay in waiting on adjoining tables. Inside the press briefing room, a panel was being conducted in Spanish about neocolonial economics in Latin America, and my friend was one of perhaps ten people who were filming, with maybe twice that number in the audience. We split when the Q&A began and walked over to a local bar & grill to grab a bite to eat and make plans for the days ahead.
My buddy spent most of the next two days filming and uploading footage for the People’s Media Campaign. He begins trying to explain that they an offshoot of the official conference that follows a more de-centered encuentro model, and therefore were engaged in a conflict with the official media center where the press briefing had been, but at a certain point all the sectarian in-fighting must have made my eyes glass over. I would spend my time wandering around various parts of the conference hall and taking pictures, looking through the book exhibits, engaging in a few conversations, watching graffiti artists at work, and sitting in an amphitheater listening to rappers. The fusion of Leftist politics and hip hop culture—not just in music, but the revival of graffiti art and break-dancing as well—was one of the most striking features of the U.S. Social Forum. Over the past 20 years or so, hip hop has become a truly global form of popular music and culture that nearly everyone in the world can adopt to speak to their perspective and experience—the most memorable performance I witnessed was by a Lebanese feminist and peace activist local to Detroit. Hip hop has supplanted, in this regard, folk music and more recently rock, the latter of which seems to be in danger of being wholly converted into reactionary white people’s music if the Left cannot reclaim its place in previous social struggles. Whereas rock music was a central element in peace marches and fundraising around the abortion issue at least through the 1990s, guitar-oriented music was noticeably absent from the U.S. Social Forum.
I attended and participated in a few workshops, and tried to get in to a couple more that filled the convention room beyond capacity. My friend and I went with hundreds of others to hear the plenary speakers and watch them projected on large screen TVs in the main exhibition hall. But in my opinion the most significant event was on the final night of the conference, when the younger participants convened for a dance party at the so-called Leftist Lounge, a labyrinth of interconnected clubs fashioned out of industrial space in the motor city’s gutted downtown. It was in these remnants of warehouse and storage space that we danced the night away as a tribe of tribes and not only a movement of movements, the beats and rhythm uniting thousands of bodies in an atmosphere of collective effervescence, with the posters of revolutionaries and radical activists haunting the rafters and beams overhead. If it sounds disparaging to say that the best part of a radical political convention was its dance night, this is only half of my intent. From an intellectual perspective, the analyses of American society and global capitalism offered in the speeches and pamphlets at the U.S. Social Forum are disappointingly simplistic, don’t seem to seem to have advanced much in the past 20 years, and are lagging behind the rapidly changing realities and possibilities of our time. From an activist perspective, there is a promising amount of networking and a necessary degree of cheerleading, but in the digital age most of this no longer needs to be done in face-to-face settings. But from a cultural perspective, the dance party at the Leftist Lounge was inspiring because if the Left is going to take power in this day and age it must also build what Michael Denning has called a “cultural front,” and it is precisely in this crucial area of cultural struggle that the Left has been most deficient since the end of the 1960s.
At a time when commercial entertainment and media permeates seemingly every pore of social life, Stephen Duncombe has recently argued, the Right has learned to fit its politics within the culture of spectacle and fantasy, while the Left continues to focus its resources on the increasingly irrelevant tasks of presenting facts and exposing lies, making logically sound arguments, and trying to tell people the truth. Outside of the Leftist Lounge and the appropriations of hip hop, this shortage of cultural weaponry was quite noticeable at the U.S. Social Forum. For example, at a time when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have gained huge audiences of young people in large part by skewering the Right, it is disheartening not to see the Left nurturing our own cadre of political comedians, and this forum certainly could have benefited from a healthy dose of humor to balance the usual onslaught of movement moralizing. Likewise, digital technologies and software have radically democratized the ability for anyone to make short films that might bridge the experimental and the political, and yet there was nothing of this sort to be found here either. And of course the biggest elephant in the room—totally absent from the workshops and panels—is religion and spirituality, for the great absurdity of our time is that the Right has effectively hitched Jesus Christ to its agenda of greed and militarism, and that the Left has sat back and left them do it without recalling his teachings on equality, peace, and love. Hardcore activists are loathe to admit it, but there is no chance of building a powerful Left in American society if we cannot divorce compassionate spirituality from institutionalized religion while responding to people’s needs to find meaning in their lives through faith in a power greater than themselves.
Having been out until 3 AM, we slept late into Saturday morning, which only offered a truncated schedule of panels and workshops on the forum’s final day. We browsed the book and information tables one last time, talked with some anarchists from San Francisco, went to get something eat, people watched downtown, and finally just sat in the grass to read. One more expensive cab ride to the airport later, I was checking in for my Saturday night flight back home. Also on my flight was a large contingent of young black people who had also attended the U.S. Social Forum. In a clearly audible and irreverent tone, two of the young women declared that ours was now a “soul plane,” and with just enough joviality to assuage the other passengers, another group seated in the rear of the plane began a chant about taking back first class. At that time I giggled to myself with the feeling that despite all its frustrating shortcomings, the best days of this movement are yet to come.
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