2008 Book List

Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates - Outstanding writing. Captures suburuban dementia like no other.
Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk - Crazy book, curious how they get all these themes into a movie.
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis - It's been nearly 20 years since I read this, and I had forgotten how great of a book it is. The gore gets all the attention, but the rest of the book is such a piercing statement on the culture and a must read.
Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis - 3rd time I have ready this one
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk - Can see the Bret Easton Ellis influence when Tender gets famous. Worth reading another of his books.
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk - Great writing, wish i did not know the ending from the movie, would have been better
Cell - Stephen King. Pretty sub standard knock off of the stand and dark tower.
Into the Wild - John Krakauer
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess. Pretty crazy book with all the Nadsat language. You pick up on what most of the words mean and there's always the good ol internet. Watched the movie right after, pretty faithful to the book, other than the "controversial" 21st chapter.
Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis - 2nd time I have read, 20 years later. Still really good. funny how uncool the 80s is now, even for us refugees from that era.
The Delivery Man - Joe McGinnis Jr
KnockemStiff - Donald Ray Pollock http://www.donaldraypollock.com/index.htm
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - really good book. the movie follows the story very closely. so sad how vibrant afghanistan once was and what religious tyranny has reduced it to.
I am Legend - Robert Neville
Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party - David Limbaugh
Hooking Up - Tom Wolfe
The Blind Side - Michael Lewis
Sacred Hoops - Phil Jackson - Life changer
Teacher Man - Frank McCourt
On Writing - Stephen King
The Natural - Bernard Malamud

why things are...

"On the verge of tears - because I was dealing with the fact that we lived in a world where beauty was considered an accomplishment..." - Victor Ward, Glamorama

Wha' happened?

Well, last night's results definitely did not go the way i wanted on a local or national level. Colorado is a full fledged blue state at this point, with Obama and Udall winning decisively here.

But when I woke up this morning and looked at the initiative results, I came to a different conclusion. Prop 46, which bans discrimination and preferential treatment is 50/50 with 87% of the precincts reporting. The 2 major statewide tax increase requests were crushed. And prop 59, trying to get around tabor was beaten back by 55% of the electorate. So what gives?

How do people vote for the 2 dems at 52 and 53% clips who most definitely will raise taxes more severely than these proposals and who are definitely for affirmative action and then turn around and vote against proposals that are pillars of what Obama and Udall stand for?

60% of the nation put the economy as their first issue. It is the repubs fault for not squarely putting the blame for the financial collapse on Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama for creating, prolonging and worsening the problem. The dems created an environment that was based not on free market principals but their social engineering, racial justice, bs - forced banks to make a lot of bad loans and then a lot of other people took advantage of the real estate market and easy money. When the artificial housing price bubble inevitably burst, you had dual issues - all the poor people, idiots who were in way too much house (both qualifying for more than they could afford), and house flippers found out that the free market always corrects itself and they were left holding the bag. But thanks to cradle to grave government, the bailout occurs.

But the spineless repubs let the media and pelosi put the blame on, of course, George Bush. So people voted purely against the republican brand. But, when people had the opportunity to vote on actual policies, they voted conservative. When the Obama/Pelosi/Reed clan inevitably overreaches, the conservative majority will throw the bums out.

blackout

celebre

"I would demand to wear Ray-Ban sunglasses. Expensive Ray-Bans," I say carefully. "In fact I would demand that everyone wear Ray-Ban sunglasses." - Patrick Bateman, American Psycho on his wedding requirements...

capitulation

ok, since i posted the manny effect, the dodgers offense has reverted to what I have been subjected to the last 20 years, singles hitting misery. you win, i lose. great.

"I Thessalonians, Chapter Five, Verse Twenty: "Despise not prophesyings."" - Tender Branson, Survivor

Trade for Manny

the website where i get my daily dose of baseball analysis is baseballprospectus.com, love the writing and the analysis is top notch even if i don't agree with it all of the time. my latest disagreement is on the trades the dodgers made to obtain manny ramirez and casey blake. i think there is a very important factor that is being missed. disclaimer alert, i am a dodgers fan, most definitely to a point where they are going to get the benefit of the doubt.

at first, i mostly agreed that players like laroche and santana were too valuable to part with for a couple of 2 month rentals. since manny played in the al his entire career, and my rotisserie league is a life long nl league (causing me to watch about 90% nl games), i knew knew he was one of the best hitters in the game but i never really watched the red sox play many games in a row because i hate them more than any other team on the planet. so, i had never seen a motivated manny ramirez over a sustained amount of time. i now have, and it is fairly impressive. dude finds meat of the bat in almost any area of the strike zone and he does not swing at many outside of it. so the question is, how can 2 months be worth a couple of pretty solid prospects?

i think the area of the trade unexplored by bp.com is the absolutely enormous financial impact on the dodgers if they were to win a playoff series, a feat not achieved by the boys in blue in 2 decades now. the immediate impact of manny is a large boost in ticket sales and alot of number 99 jerseys in LA. but that is a very short term financial benefit that if they do not win is not sustainable.

right now, the nationwide interest in the dodgers is rising, but not to a fevered pitch. if the dodgers win a playoff series, all that changes. only out of town baseball jerseys that are prevalent these days are the yankees, red sox and more and more the cubs (if they win, the same raging bile duct reaction i had to the red sox winning will surely repeat itself). but that all changes if the dodgers win a playoff series or make the WS. there are as many if not more dodgers fans out there just waiting to taste some serious success. and if dodger fan makes a serious reappearance and spends his jack on dodgers gear and games, then the dodgers can easily run with the sox and yankees dollar wise. so the bet mccourt is making on manny is pretty damn big in the long term scheme of things.

so the question becomes, with manny and blake in the lineup everyday and andy larcohe (and the cast of suspects when laroche doesn't play) and juan pierre not in the lineup everyday - will they win a playoff series? laroche may become a great player, i hope he does - but in a tight race down the stretch and in a presumed playoff series, he has not yet proven with his results at the major league level so far that he is up to the task. blake in the 6-8 spot is more than adequate to make the dodgers a legit power lineup when before the trades they were one of the weakest in the majors.

but the enormous impact is obviously - manny in, juan and andruw out. now that ethier and kemp are more consistently putting together the production that has been only seen in spurts, the addition of manny has finally relieved dodger fans of daily doses of the jp and dru show, 2 guys making outs at 67 and 74% clips to a guy making them only 59% of the time. and when you add that manny is outslugging the duo by 246 and 310 points respectively, well now you are cooking with fire. the national talking heads (another despised squad of humans for the most part) are talking about whether there is a "manny effect" or are guys like jeff kent just getting hot. what a waste of time, it's clear kent's strike zone has shrunk back to bonds era kent size and he is hitting line drives. i don't think he will ever get the power back, but he can hit a fastball in the strike zone hard.

Zona has the better pitching, but LA now has the edge offensively and remainder of the year schedule wise. the problem is the winner of the west most likely matches up against the cubs, a team they are not better than either offensively or pitching wise (i do like that zambrano is springing a leak though here late in the season). have to hope for pumpkin treatment on the edmonds/johnson combo and that big blue can score runs off of dempster and lilly.

bottom line - winning now is so imperative to l.a. that they had to make a trade like this. but make no mistake, they are pretty damn close to all in - not making the playoffs or stumbling again in the first round would most defintely set them back substantially.

p.s. - for next year dodgers should offer manny 2 years, $45-50M. Any longer or more money would be a poor decision. unfortunately my faith is pretty low in ned colleti not giving old guys too much money and bogging down the franchise for too many years in the future.

Go Buffs!

What were his impressions of the Buffaloes?

"They have some big boys there," Roberts said. "They want to, just like every program, but I think they want it more, they want to win another national championship soon. They were working out hard. They are going to be on the up rise in the next couple years."

- Jeramie Roberts, CU recruiting target, Rivals.com

truth

"Mr. Ricardi only looked away. And Clay thought, not without wonder, This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change." Clay, Cell

weeds

"White folks get soda pop, niggaz get bullets" - Heylia James
"Let your freak flag fly" - Celia Hodes
"You made your bed, now fuck in it" - Nancy Botwin

"Here's your coffee partner" - Waiter at
"Oh, I fucking hate chains" - Doug

Flat out crazy shit!

so, i am taking my daughter to her first ever concert, and due to some changing schedules we decided on tickle me pink at the black sheep on July 14. i order the tickets at 1:41pm 7/1 and when i hit the send/receive button on my email i get 2 new messages. one is the order confirmation. the other is, as you can see (click on the picture to get a closer view), that the bassist in tickle me pink was found dead. this timing pretty much boggles the mind...

Hell Hath No Fury

as a preacher scorned...

"When the last movement had gone round for the second time with all the banging and creeching about Joy Joy Joy Joy, then these two youngs ptitsas were not acting the big lady sophisto no more, They were like waking up to what was being done to the malenky persons and saying they wanted to go home and like I was a wild beast. They looked like they had been in some big bitva, as indeed they had, and were all bruised and pouty. Well, if they would not go to school they must still have their education." - Alex, A Clockwork Orange

the HAWK

Awesome night - I was privileged enough to meet CU football coach Dan Hawkins, CU AD Mike Bohn and players George Hypolite and Ryan Miller (thanks Mick!). This is the 3rd time I have heard Hawk speak in person and he was just dynamite. The guy is simply an incredible human being. Both players were absolutely the best representation of student athletes there could possibly be. And Mike Bohn is the leader of the whole show and the undisputed in my mind best man for the job.

ohio grim

"he was just trying to latch on to something that would fill up his days so he didn't have to think about what a fucking mess he had made of everything. It's the same for most of us; forgetting our lives might be the best we'll ever do."
- Tom, Knockemstiff

"and I crave junk food like a baby craves the tit. Besides, I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it."

- Big Bernie, Knockemstiff

lunch date

I like comics like this that really hit the reader on multiple levels. I wonder what the author was thinking other than possibly where to get some more absinthe. Mommy is obviously fully dosed on the Xanax, and Junior, well Junior has only a couple more years til he’s a full blown Ritalin kid.

exerpt from soon to be released (2010) book by the midzman

...the florescent hue permeated my mind, not to the point of blinding my blurred vision - but still it provided enough penetrating invasion of my thoughts that coherence was difficult to maintain. how many undiagnosed maniacs are out there? i mean, psychiatric diagnosis is an extremely expensive proposition, and the majority of maniacs have difficulty with mundane chores such as showing up to work every day. in any case, how many of these particular breed of humans are walking around Wal Mart at 3am on a Weds morning? They either are tweekers, swing shift workers or people who shun human contact at all practical costs. and now i was subjected to extreme...