One of our nightly rituals is that Christina and I take it in turns to lie on the bed with Hallam for a couple of minutes before he goes to sleep.  Last night it was my turn.  As we lay there I apologized to him for being in a bad mood that day.  ’That’s OK, dad,” he told me kindly.  ”I know England lost to Germany this morning.”

cursed.

I wish I didn’t care as much as I do about eleven men running around a field, chasing a ball, but I do.  During the regular Premiership season I watch almost every minute of every game that Arsenal play.  I suffer through their triumphs and miseries just as much as I did when I turned up at Highbury every week.  Christina watches my histrionics and kindly says nothing, but I know that my obsession with this stuff baffles her.  It baffles me, too, but there’s nothing I can do about it.  I have often envied my wife her complete indifference (this is putting it mildly) to sports.  Why should my happiness depend on what happens on a rectangle of grass thousands of miles away?  Why should my children have to creep up and anxiously check the score to see what sort of mood Daddy will be in for the rest of the day?  On many occasions – yesterday just being the latest – I have found myself wishing that I just didn’t care.

But I do.  And while it perplexes me, I’m not going to apologize for it.  Almost as soon as the final whistle went yesterday morning there was an eruption of mean-spirited cyberspace guffawing as people began to mock the English supporters for their delusional hopes of victory.  Well, yeah.  How easy it is to stand back and be coolly ironic.  While I appreciate there may be more sensible things to care about than the fate of a team of over-paid professional athletes, give me passion over bored cynicism any day.

]]> http://www.alexgeorgebooks.com/who-would-be-a-fan/feed/ 0 http://www.alexgeorgebooks.com/interesting-contribution-to-the-health-care-debate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=interesting-contribution-to-the-health-care-debate http://www.alexgeorgebooks.com/interesting-contribution-to-the-health-care-debate/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:56:22 +0000 Alex George http://ahgeorge.com/?p=1400 Sign seen on the back of a car in downtown Columbia on Wednesday night:

JESUS WOULD HAVE VOTED FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.

JUST SAYIN’.

The rabid, frothing pundits of Fox News and AM talk radio hate President Obama so much that the failure of anything he’s associated with – like, you know, the whole country – is now something worthy of celebration.  They don’t care if it’s bad news for America, too.  Call it, um, collateral damage.

The GOP has long branded itself “more patriotic” than the Democrats, but it revealed its true colors on Friday.  This gleeful talk of a “slap in the face” for the President is deranged, a dismal example of how unhinged the right has become.  They’ve become so blinded by their loathing of this Administration that any semblance of rational thought has been obliterated by this psychotic partisanship.  I’m starting to wonder exactly how much ill they would wish on this country, if it gave them something to attack the President with.

And so tell me, how patriotic is that?

Josh Jackson, who hosts the uniformly excellent podcast the Checkout, has been teased for being over the hill when it comes to this sort of stuff, which was quite amusing until I realized that he is younger than I am.  So far in this post I have typed the word “young” four times, which gives you a flavor of where all this is coming from.  Recognizing, then, that at five months shy of my fortieth birthday I have no business talking about this, here’s my proverbial two cents’ worth.

Many people who have answered Jarenwattananon’s call seem to have assumed that young people are not going to respond to any sort of “traditional” jazz.  Hence much name-checking of artists who meld their music with newer forms such as hip-hop, etc., and employ unconventional line-ups and instrumentation, and so forth.  I love many of these artists, but I also sense a presumption in this approach which seems a trifle patronizing: why suppose that simply brilliant playing of “old fashioned” jazz won’t be enough to win newbies over?  Of all the gigs that I went to last year (which included the Bad Plus, Miguel Zenon, Charlie Hunter, and the like), the most enjoyable was 86 year-old Frank Wess swinging his ass off.  (Which was no mean feat, since he was sitting down all the way through the gig.)

Of course, the fact that I take this deeply unfashionable view is all the evidence you need that I’m past it.  I get that.  Indeed, I’ve probably missed the point of this exercise entirely.  So, with that understanding in mind, here’s my grumpy-old-man list of five recent recordings I’d suggest.  They are in no particular order.

1.     Grant Stewart.  Young at Heart.  Not a gimmick in sight, just good old-fashioned, big-hearted tenor playing by this young player who channels generations of saxophonists into his horn and comes up with something fresh and invigorating.  Cool, swinging, brilliant.  It helps that he’s got some of the best players in the world in his quartet, too.

2.     Avishai Cohen.  After the Big Rain.  Well, well.  After all that huffing and puffing, here’s something maybe just a little bit edgy, after all.  Cohen has produced something quite spectacular here – an intoxicating fusion (dangerous word in jazz circles) of jazz, world music, and lord knows what else.  Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke makes a massive contribution, adding other worldly textures in addition to his beautiful, mournful singing.  Cohen often plays his horn through a wah-wah pedal, but this is no throw-back to 70s Miles.  His trumpet is lyrical, ethereal.  This is one of the most beautiful CDs I’ve heard for ages and it stands as a compelling example of some of the interesting directions in which this music might go.

3.     Maria Schneider.  Sky Blue.  This record won a bagful of plaudits when it was released, and rightly so.  I’ve included it not only because the music is breathtakingly beautiful, but also because it stands in illuminating contradistinction to what I suspect many people think of when they think of big band jazz.  This is not a collection of wheezing geriatrics kerplunking through ancient charts of “Tuxedo Junction”.  The music doesn’t swing that much, but it casts spells.  Schneider is a master at creating textures, and she writes wonderful tunes, to boot.  Her musicians are some of the best anywhere – especially in the horn section.  The pieces repay repeated listening, throwing up fresh gems on each revisit.  Simply blissful.

4.     Tom Harrell.  Light On.  A wonderful surprise.  Harrell has been round the block a few times and has had to contend with a few demons along the way, but he can still delight with stellar improvisations and inspired compositions.  This is a pretty straight-ahead outing by the veteran trumpeter’s standards, and he’s backed by a cracking band featuring Wayne Escoffery, a terrific, assured tenor player whom I enjoy a lot (and not just because he was born in England.)  The music on this CD is tough but lyrical, and although I suspect the charts are much harder to play than they sound, it’s an accessible and rewarding listen.  The mood is mysterious and compelling.  Nothing ground-breaking here, perhaps, just a perfect band playing great tunes – really, really well.

5.     Hank Jones and Joe Lovano.  Kids.  Duet albums, when done well (as this one is) illuminate much of what is special about jazz.  The improvisational dynamics between just two musicians are particularly compelling – especially, as here, in a live context.  Any jazz musician will tell you that you don’t just need good chops to play well, you need good ears.  Listening is everything.  Lovano is one of my favorite musicians and Jones is a legend, still going strong at 90.  Together they create glittering mosaics of beautiful sound, full of love and respect and humor.  You hear history in every note they play.

It looks as if people are allowed a few honorary mentions to go along with their top five, so here goes:

• Steve Kuhn – Live at Birdland.
• Esperanza Spalding – Esperanza
• Mathias Eick – The Door
• Renee Marie – Vertigo
• Vanguard Jazz Orchestra – Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard

So there it is, gimmick-free and gorgeous.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’m sorry, but I really don’t give a damn about Kanye West.  And while I’m always sorry to hear of someone who dies too soon from cancer, I’m not going to grieve for Patrick Swayze, either, just because he had nice hair in a few crappy movies more than twenty years ago.

All of which means that I am going to have to boycott facebook for a couple of days while everyone gets it out of their system.

One of the unexpected pleasures of this summer has been our garden.  For the first time we tried to grow some stuff, and, rather to my surprise, it worked.  We have more chillis than we can ever use.  We harvest our little plant every couple of days and still they just keep comin’.  Here’s the evidence:

What to do with all this good stuff?  Well, we’ve been giving the little critters away by the handful, for starters.  And I’ve decided to make pots of sweet chilli sauce.  Here’s the recipe I intend to use, courtesy of the excellent Bill’s Food, by Bill Granger.

3 large fresh red chillis, finely chopped

1 cup rice vinegar

2 teaspoons of salt

3/4 cup of sugar

1 large garlic clove, chopped

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves.  Bring to the boil, then cook for 5 minutes or until the mixture thickens to a slightly syrupy consistency.  Remove from heat and allow to cool.

This all looks simple enough, but actually it’s quite a pain, especially when you’re doing it on the scale I’m going to be doing it.  That’s an awful lot of chopping.  And the smell is quite something, too, when you boil all that vinegar.  But I’m going to do it, and I’m looking forward to it.

Some economists, though, will tell you that none of this makes any sense, either in financial or convenience terms, when I can go to the supermarket and buy this for $2.39:

But this fails to take into account several factors:

1. I like cooking. It calms me and distracts me from whatever enervating stuff has been going on that day.  It’s not just about the food that arrives on the table at the end of the process.  It’s also about that process – the journey is as important as the destination.
2. I like eating. And things always taste better when you make them yourself.
3. On which subject: there are no preservatives or E-numbers in my stuff. Nuff said.
4. I will give it to my friends. Who I hope will enjoy it.  It’s a kinda cool gift.  But I’m not going to give them a bottle I bought at Schnucks, now, am I?
5. I did not have to drive to Schnucks to buy this.  Nobody had to drive to Schnucks to deliver it. Everyone wins.

I used the words “redemptive” and “noble” in my last post about the values of manual work.  I realize that this might be over-egging the rhetorical omelette in the context of making sweet chilli sauce (to mix culinary metaphors), but  the point remains: it’s good to make stuff.

So, hoity-toity economists, ya boo sucks to you.

If anyone wants some, let me know.

The First Amendment does not give an absolute right to say what you want.  Freedom of speech has its limits.   You may not exercise your freedom of speech to the detriment of other people’s freedoms by, for example, inciting racial hatred or encouraging others to commit crimes.  The question, of course, is where those limits should be.

We should all be grateful for the First Amendment.  Most people have probably seen this video of Barney Frank comparing a woman to a dining room table, but he made a far more telling point when he remarks that it is the First Amendment that gives his questioner the right to compare Obama’s health care reforms to the Holocaust.  Odious?  Yes.  (And Frank is Jewish.)  But thank heavens we live in a society where odious views may be expressed with impunity.  Here’s the clip:

So, First Amendment, yea, hooray for you.  But how far should these freedoms be taken?  Allow to me to get hyper-parochial on you.

I, and many others, have a problem with the comments section on the Columbia Daily Tribune’s website.  People may leave comments on the news stories of the day, and boy, do they.  Even the most innocuous stories seem to attract a deluge of vapid, mean-spirited, opinionated, poorly-punctuated vitriol which leaves one reeling and utterly dispirited.  I have read posts about people that I personally know full of sly insinuations and occasional downright falsehoods, libelous in the extreme.  There is bickering and abuse between commenters which wouldn’t dignify a middle school playground.

Now, some would say this exchange represents exactly what the First Amendment is all about… and in fact I wouldn’t disagree, but for one thing: people are allowed to post comments anonymously.  I have a real problem with this.  By all means exercise these freedoms we have been given, but at least have the guts to stand behind your views.  People should be forced to declare themselves for who they are if they want to use this forum to display their bigotry and ignorance to the world.

Here’s just one choice example from yesterday’s paper.  Scroll down – it really gets cookin’ further down the page.  Mandatory birth control for welfare recipients?  Now why wouldn’t someone want to put their real name behind that idea?  (This one is another doozy, especially towards the end.)

There’s a disclaimer at the top of the page that says, “Readers are solely responsible for the content of their comments,” but the Tribunecan’t wash its hands of the bile and lies that appear on its website with one blithe sentence if they’re going to allow people to hide their true identities.  I’m all for freedom of speech, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.  If people had to give their real names there would still be crackpots writing in, and there would doubtless still be bickering and name-calling.  Fair enough.  But the First Amendment’s freedoms come with responsibility.  If you’re not ashamed of your views, say who you are.

OK, rant over.  Tomorrow, an entertaining story about a farting duck.