Miscellany

Having fried myself at the beach over the weekend (and I thought I was being so good about sunscreen too) I've spent all my non-working hours this week lying in bed trying not to move too much. So I've mostly been doing a lot of puttering around on the internet at night reading things.

Like Laura Miller's article on the growth of self-publishing and the fun of slush piles, which brought back cringe-worthy memories of reading for a literary agency:

People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is. Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven't seen the vast majority of what didn't get published -- and believe me, if you have, it's enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.

Everybody acknowledges that there have to be a few gems out in the slush pile -- one manuscript in 10,000, say -- buried under all the dreck. The problem lies in finding it. A diamond encased in a mountain of solid granite may be truly valuable, but at a certain point the cost of extracting it exceeds the value of the jewel.

I can't say reading through all those submissions is something I miss.

And today I also read the latest installment in Tobi Tobias's series of ballet diaries (all of which have been such a treat). In this case she's writing primarily about the retirement of two dancers--Philip Neal and Albert Evans--I have seen perform but not often enough to have formed any particularly strong impressions of them. Still, the best dance writing, much like great writing about the visual arts, seems to me to be an act of transformation--turning something that is visual into words on a page while still capturing something of its essence. Reading Tobias's post about the qualities of these particular dancers recalled to me the times I have seen them more clearly than would otherwise have been possible. Then again, perhaps that's a trick of the memory.

The most fun reading I've been doing, however, is ESPN's Off the Ball blog. Since I don't get to watch most of the games--although it appears that a large number of people at work are streaming the games at their desks so maybe I really can watch and just hadn't realized it until now--this is proving a nice supplement to live updates.

Miscellany

1. am New York and I are totally on the same page about the World Cup:I may not know who the favorites are. I'm pretty sure I don't understand all the rules. But I'll certainly be watching.

2. In order to make some extra money I've been working for the US Census--which, if it were a permanent job would drive me to alcoholism in no time flat--and that means that I now how to deal with the management office of the apartment complex where I live. Which is staffed by some of the most unpleasant people I have ever encountered in a professional capacity. So in preparation for having to get information from them tomorrow I am baking them some of the most fabulous cookies in the world. Not thanks to my baking skills--the recipe is just that good. I dislike the people in management so much that I'm having a tough time coming to grips with giving them cookies though, so this had better inspire them to be nice to me.

3. I'm moving in a couple months and while I'm only going to another area of the city, I'm trying to use it as an opportunity to get rid of things I don't want. It turns out that I'm quite good at getting rid of clothing and very bad at getting rid of books. Even books that I bought for 50 cents because I liked the covers and am never, ever going to read. I think that I'm going to need my sometime roommate to go through them with me and remind me that it really is a good idea to pass on books that I didn't even remember I owned in the first place.

Notes on the Olympics

1. My apartment has been about 82 degrees the past few days (with the windows open) which is making it a bit torturous to watch the Winter Olympics. All that snow! All that cool air!


2. These Alexandre Bilodeau features make me teary. Also, let me just say that having a disabled brother--mine has Down syndrome--never inspired me to any sort of greatness nor instilled within me any particular motivation. Oops.


3. Related: I love it when the entire crowd at an event sings O Canada. I also love O Canada.


4. Things I hate about NBC: Their refusal to show anything live. Their insistence that I love figure skating. The fact that they spoil the results of events they have yet to show right on their homepage so that when you go to look up their stupid broadcast schedule said results are spoiled for you. They're showing ice dancing on the main channel rather than the Canada-USA hockey game which means those of us without cable (see: me) can't watch the hockey game. Their sappy features that take away from time they could spend showing the sports that the Olympics are theoretically about.
   


5. Winter Olympics: Fewer black people than the Republican National Convention?


6. From Amy comes the news that the IOC wants to make Ryan Miller remove certain things from his mask. Things like the tribute to his dead cousin. I don't think that's a PR war the IOC wins.


7. A lot of winter sports look terrifying yet fun. Cross-country skiing just looks like it would make me throw up.


8. Despite all my complaining I love, love, love the Winter Olympics.
   

A Brief Hockey Moment . . .

Well fuck you, Bucky Gleason.  That out of the way, and only because I'm so annoyed that I feel the need to write about this all over the damn place, here's my problem with Bucky Gleason's latest. 

Here's the meat of what he had to say:

Twenty years ago, when the economy was weak but stronger than today, when the population had decreased but was higher than today, Buffalo fans were tougher and more judicious with their money.

Their voice was stronger. Their backbone was thicker. Their collars were bluer, and they demanded the same from their teams. They wouldn't have tolerated, let alone contributed to, what they're getting these days from their teams.  [. . .] 

The passion for the Bills and Sabres is no weaker, but the landscape has changed. Buffalo fans have lowered their standards and settled for mediocrity. [. . . ]

Marketing has played a huge role. The Bills haven't reached the playoffs since 1999, but they're masterful in selling the game experience. The Sabres' variable-pricing system is the best in the league, a terrific power play to be sure.

But attendance also remains strong because enabling fans feed the beast. There was no real urgency to keep Jason Peters last week. Why would the Bills spend $10 million a year on a left tackle when they've proven they don't need him to fill the stadium? Why make any real changes to the Sabres when it's obvious that fans will keep coming? [all emphasis mine]

I think this idea that Buffalo fans are somehow unique in tolerating mediocrity seems endemic to the Buffalo News. For example, see this Top Shelf interview with Harrington where he claims that Buffalo fans are just different than fans in other cities. That annoys me, but it's far less offensive than Gleason's condescension toward the fans because it doesn't carry the same implication that we fans are somehow complicit in the crappiness of our sports teams and doing the wrong thing if we support them. I'm sorry but it's not the job or duty of the fans to somehow hold ownership or management accountable for the quality of the team they put on the ice (or the football field). We're fans because it gives us pleasure, not out of some kind of obligation and it's insulting to claim that we're somehow responsible for mediocre teams. 

If fans decide to let their season tickets lapse or buy fewer tickets because they're not happy with the product on the ice they're not bad fans. They're just choosing not to spend their money on a product they no longer enjoy. And if they keep their season tickets or keeping buying tickets to games because they still have fun going to the games, they're not necessarily stupid idiots who buy the management's excuses. They're not ignorant, or weak, or willful enablers. They're just fans who still enjoy going to see live hockey (or football) even when the team isn't good. Bucky Gleason doesn't get it. That's his problem, not the fans' problem. 

On Books and Other Miscellany

With all the eulogizing of Updike this week I've been forced to think about the fact that I've only read half of one of his books (Rabbit, Run, assigned reading for a 20th century American lit course) and, quite frankly, decided that was more than enough. How convenient then, that there's a recent post on The Millions about glaring gaps in the reading of the contributors. The most interesting part of that post to me--and, seemingly, to a number of critical commentors--is this:

When it comes to playing readerly "I Never," there are rather a lot of burly man-authors, chiefly twentieth-century man-authors, whose work I've never read. Hemingway (other than the 4 page story "Hills Like White Elephants"), Kerouac (a bit of his poetry; enough of On the Road), Roth, Updike, Kesey, Heller, Burroughs, Cormac McCarthy, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Moody, and Foster Wallace all fall into the category of authors I haven't read. Many of them fall also into the category of authors I have no interest in reading. Perhaps it is that I intuit (or imagine - not having read them, it is hard to say) a masculinist, vaguely misogynist aura that has put me off; Or, as in the cases of Pynchon and Foster Wallace, a virtuousic formal complexity or grandiose heft, that I also associate with the masculine artistic mind. [ . . . ] Well-founded, my prejudices certainly are not, but I do not apologize for them or intend to renounce them.

Well, I've read at least a bit of a bunch of those writers over the years--Roth (The Plot Against America), Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions), Pynchon (Crying of Lot 49 aka the short one), Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Heller (first 70 or so pages of Catch-22), Kerouac (On the Road)--and I can't say grouping them together makes a whole lot of sense to me. But despite that, I tend to think, good for her. If reading something doesn't give you pleasure on some level, why bother? If the idea of reading a book doesn't particularly interest you why pick it up when there are so many other good books that do interest you? 

Personally, I tend to at least try to read everything and then just give up part way through if I'm disinterested. Which is usually pretty quickly. I never even made it to the crime in Crime and Punishment. And I recently told my cousin I would read A Confederacy of Dunces but I've stalled out a couple chapters in and really might as well return it to the library. It might actually serve me better to just skip these books I don't have much interest in reading in the first place and am only looking at because of some misguided idea that I should read them. Food for thought. 

Various notes:

According to the New York Times there's going to be a new advertising campaign aimed at getting locals to go to more Broadway shows. My suggestion? Find a way to lower the ticket prices. Significantly. I don't know how they should do it--hey, it's not my job to get people to the theater--but they should find a way. Because the prices are just too high. 

I broke a mirror last night. I'm not superstitious, but I was put out since it's my roommate's mirror.  I've never liked it much at all, but I still feel guilty. I've been such a klutz lately. In the last month I've broken two glasses and now this.

Somehow I ended up with plans to go to my grandparents house this evening to watch the Super Bowl with family. I've watched approximately 0 minutes of football this year, but I read Margee's Girls Guide to Choosing Your Super Bowl Team (Part I, Part II) over at SportSquee, so I figure I'm set. Right? 

The Olympics, Beach Volleyball, and The New Yorker

There are a couple pieces on the Olympics in Beijing in the latest issue of The New Yorker. And I think we've established at this point that I'm a bit obsessed when it comes to the Olympics so it shouldn't be surprising that I feel the need to write about them.

Nancy Franklin's piece on the TV coverage of the games is kind of a waste of space. I like critics to provide some sort of insight that I can't come up with on my own while sitting on the couch drinking cocktails in my underwear, thank you. For the most part I even agree with her comments, but the fact that NBC's coverage is obnoxious? I'd kind of figured that out and so have a lot of other people. My annoyance really began though, when I got to this part:

In the four years since I was last forced to watch beach volleyball, I somehow have not found the maturity and wisdom to take it seriously as an Olympic sport, and, frankly, I doubt that NBC takes it seriously, either, except as a ratings grabber. Every time I turned on the TV, there was May-Treanor (the short one) and Walsh (the tall one), in those silly little Victoria’s Ill-Kept Secret outfits.

If I never hear anything else about the beach volleyball bikinis it will be too soon. It's just an easy shot to take. Beyond that though, I have a couple of thoughts on this. First, I think it's sad to not take the sport seriously, particularly when it seems to be because of the outfits. As unexciting as I've found the competition this year I think that the athleticism, skill, and hard work that go into the game are evident and itty-bitty clothing shouldn't distract from that. Second, I really don't have any problem with said bikinis. Do they lead many viewers to objectify the players? I'm sure it does. But let's be honest for just a moment here and acknowledge that desire in various forms and objectification are a big part of sports viewership. And I don't really have a problem with that. Beach volleyball makes those aspects of viewership more explicit than most sports, true, but it's hardly creating something that didn't already exist. (I've also been spending enough time staring at incredibly fit male athletes that it would be completely hypocritical of me to judge someone for watching beach volleyball in order to see women running around in little pieces of fabric.)

There are all kinds of problems in the way some of the commentators, and NBC in general, cover the female athletes. Franklin does point some of those out in the article. I just wish people--not just Franklin--didn't seem to lump the clothing in with those issues. Yes, it's skimpy, yes it attracts viewers, no it's not that different from what most women where on the beach. Whatever. NBC showed a race today in which one of the women was covered from wrist to foot and wearing a head covering, as her religion demands. It's a hell of a lot more troubling then women in bikinis but I bet I read far fewer people complaining about it.

Anthony Lane's commentary on the first week of the Olympics, while not great, was far more interesting. He tells us things that we don't actually see on TV--half-time entertainment at a water polo match for example or the security measures attendees deal with--and sums up the failure of the NBC coverage eloquently.

Most people will stay home and watch the events on TV, having no other option, but be warned: what NBC chooses to broadcast is not the Olympic Games. They offer selected clips of selected American athletes, largely in major sports, sometimes hours after the event, whereas, if the bruised Olympic ideal still means anything, it means loosing yourself, for a couple of weeks, from the bonds of your immediate loyalties and tastes. It means watching live sports you didn’t know you were interested in, played by countries you’ve never been to, at three o’clock in the morning—not just watching them, either, but getting into them, deluding yourself that you grasp the rules, offering the fruits of your instant expertise to anyone who will listen (“I think you’ll find the second waza-ari counts as ippon”), and, most bewildering of all, losing your heart.

NBC hasn't given us any options. They haven't allowed us to lose our hearts but instead have tried to convince us that we should fall in love with people like Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers. Well I'm sorry, but I simply don't love them. They're arrogant overdogs and I refuse to care about them. But NBC doesn't seem to want to show me people I could fall in love with--even if I did enjoy Yang Wei pretending the pommel horse was an actual horse at the gymnastics gala--and that's a shame.

Synchronized Swimming

Synchronized swimming is so bizarre. Crazy hard I'm sure. One of the girls on my high school swim team was also a synchronized swimmer and she could hold her breath for a hell of a long time. Shocking, I know.

I also once had a swim practice where we shared the pool with a synchro team. (Just to make the Olympics all about me here.) It was pretty bizarre to be doing our laps and have music playing under the water. Much nicer than the time we shared the pool with a scuba diving class though. That sucked.

Sports Stuff

Those Opening Ceremonies were something else. Beautiful but also rather frightening in their precision. Definitely the most interesting opening I can remember watching. The Tai Chi demonstration with the thousands of people, many of them running opposite directions in perfect concentric circles was just unreal.

I love the Olympics. My family has always watched them religiously. Having only NBC to watch feels weird though since I'm used to being able to switch over to CBC whenever I feel like it. I can't say I buy into the whole "Olympic spirit" thing. But if you like watching sports--particularly the kind of sports they don't show on tv regularly--it doesn't get much better. I love the swimming and the volleyball (beach and regular) and the diving and a host of other sports. Track and field? That I don't love so much. So the first half of the games is more fun for me as a viewer.

In other news I am absolutely delighted that Teppo Numminen has been re-signed by the Sabres. I don't know how much better the team will be in the upcoming season but I've really been pretty happy with their offseason.