NFL, God, and Too Many Words

I was mostly successful at weaning myself from the NFL this season. I didn't renew the online viewing subscription, didn't do a fantasy league, and only watched a little bit on TV. I failed to divorce myself completely -- I did follow the coverage (albeit more casually), did a small bit of wagering at the end, and have kept an eye on the televised playoff games. The latter just reinforced the nagging thought that supporting professional American football is immoral.

Early in the New Orleans loss to San Francisco, Pierre Thomas took a hard helmet-to-helmet blow and, upon replay, was clearly knocked unconscious, the football falling out of his arms as his limp body fell to the ground, only to be buried by players scrambling for the loose ball. He got up and walked off the field, but didn't return, having been concussed. Yes, there are new rules for concussions and have been more player-protection rules. This has led to more passing, which in turn has led to commentators such as Bill Simmons to moronically decry this the era of "flag football". (Simmons is a talented writer who should know better. The frat-boy shtick and macho snideness is getting old for someone who is a father and ostensibly an adult now.) Watching guys doing long-term damage to their brains, and knowing this is a huge problem and starts at pretty early ages in the sport, makes it really hard to enjoy the game in any capacity. And there's no denying it's a brilliant game to watch on TV.

...despite the uniformly awful TV commentators. I can only conclude these blithering robots get paid by the word. They essentially spew a stream of unconsciousness so meaningless that viewers must just all spam-filter it by now. Here's a single trivial example, and know that any given game will have dozens of examples more egregious: in the New England v. Denver game, one of the announcers said, "This is New England's first third down situation." So let me ask, what does the word "situation" add to that sentence? Answer: nothing. It detracts. It muddles. It makes the dufus sound like a self-parody of someone attempting to come across as sophisticated. They should all be forced to read Strunk & White's Elements of Style, but that wouldn't help because they'd assume it irrelevant to speaking.

The brilliance of the NFL as spectator-sport on TV, in particular in HD (it really does look great, and the standards of camera work are consistently high), should also clue in the owners and commissioner of the league regarding the future of the in-stadium experience. Here's what they don't get yet and if they don't eventually get it it may be too late: the people who go to the games in person are the studio audience. This is true also for the NBA. (Not true for baseball, especially not true for afternoon games on a beautiful summer day at a ballpark in the middle of a real city, but still.) If having an enthusiastic studio audience for your live broadcast enhances the TV viewing experience, and if TV is by far your biggest and most important source of revenue, then treat your audience well, and figure out now how to attract and retain enthusiastic audiences. Steps 1-100 in this: make tickets free, or so close to free it doesn't matter. This will never happen (until, possibly, it's too late), but should.

Maybe it's just that god hates people who can't afford personal seat licenses. God seems to have a really keen interest in the NFL, at least according to the players, the most famous of which is now Tim Tebow. [Didn't Roger Zelanzy write a short story in which Death was a football fan?] Tebow has a cute little routine about praying to god whenever something especially good happens. Seems a bit inconsistent. If god is interfering, and everything that happens is god's will or part of a "plan", shouldn't Tebow stop and give thanks after god makes him throw an interception or get sacked?

This is a trite example of the incoherence of the belief that god is meddling with the world. If a plane crashes and, say, a single child survives, a chorus of credulous christian cretins will quickly claim the miraculous at work, the hand of the divine in action! Well, you can't get that without also indicting god as the murderer of everyone else on board. The only ways out of this are to decide god really does have a strict non-interference policy (yes, the Star Trek "prime directive"), or, more simply, that god doesn't exist.

But what am I saying, of course god not only exists but also interferes constantly AND loves the NFL. God clearly hates Pittsburgh but loves Boston, or is trying some tough love voodoo on Denver. Better luck next year, Broncos.

I Love Betfair

Heading into this weekend's NFL playoffs, I've locked in a little bit of [now] risk-free profit. Not quite enough to retire on.

Work Footwear

What is this a picture of?

It's (former) police. [from here]

Do you remember when police used to wear shoes?

Mountain Food, Continued

While I definitely love skiing in the Canadian Rockies, one of the aspects the Alps win hands-down on is the quality of on-mountain food. My last post on Mountain Food had an Austrian bent, but on the past couple of trips I've been sustained by wonderful Savoyarde cuisine.

My favorite here is tartiflette. After a day in the cold and snow this is as hearty and warming a dish as you could hope for. Chunks of potato, with bacon, cooked in butter and cream and lots of reblochon, golden brown and crispy on top, served bubbling in a ceramic dish.

Predictably, the French do burgers better than the Austrians. To get properly Alpine, melt some raclette cheese onto that bacon burger.

[Not] Purchasing Checked Luggage

It must be me. On a SWISS return flight to LCY from GVA with my 13 yr old, we had 4 bags to check -- 2 normal pieces of luggage, a ski bag, and a small, soft-sided bag we chucked our helmets into since we didn't want to overstuff the other bags. On the way out, not only was there no problem checking in all four bags, the agent didn't even mention that it might be problematic or that anything special was happening. It simply wasn't an issue.

At checkin at GVA, though, I was informed that the policy only allowed for one checked bag, plus one ski bag, each, and thus the final bag would cost extra. Well, ok, how much extra? She checked... 90 CHF! Ninety swiss for a single bag that weighed nothing! Remember this was a bag with 2 ski helmets in it. So if we'd taken the contents out and put them into a 6-foot long ski bag, they would have happily checked it in for free as well. Since that wasn't an option, I asked if I could just carry it on, along with our other carryons (one small bag apiece). Sure! It's small enough and light enough. No problem, no charge. So, yeah, we carried it on, to no one's gain.

What a shame. If the fee had been nominal, I would've paid it. Clearly a bit of judgment had been exercised by the check-in agent at LCY on the way out, which I retrospectively appreciate.

Purchasing Lift Tickets

Thursday afternoon, attempting to buy lift tickets for 4 days, fri-mon, inclusive:

"You can't buy for tomorrow, it's too early. Come back in 30 minutes."
Ok. [30 Minutes later...]

"You can't buy for four days, only 2 days at a time."
That's fine. I'd like 2-day passes, please.
"I can sell you a 2-day pass, but there's a special price for Saturday, so it's cheaper to buy Friday and Saturday separately than to use the 2-day rate."
Ok, can I do that?
"No. It's too early to buy a pass for Saturday."
So, uh....
"So you can buy just a Friday pass now for tomorrow, then, tomorrow night, come back."
Ok, that's fine, I'd like to--
"But when you come back tomorrow night, don't buy a Saturday pass, buy a discounted Saturday-Sunday pass, because that's cheaper."
Um.... can I please just give you some money now?

I blame technology.

If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Was Way Too Upbeat For You

I feel remiss that I hadn't discovered it before, but I am loving The Last Psychiatrist blog.

Some sample posts to check out
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/penelope_trunk_abuser.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/06/louis_ck_on_being_a_dad--_the.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/07/jezebel_proves_scott_adams_is.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/marc_marons_mid-life_crisis.html
even a short story:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/the_plan_will_always_fail_cata.html

Middle Class Rebellion

London's Victoria Park has been undergoing some fairly substantial renovations the past year. This includes redoing the playground in the northeast corner of the west half of the park. Progress on this seemed slow, but it looked like it should have been in a position to open by June or July. Yet it didn't open. It sat there with new equipment, fenced off, all summer long. And into the fall. Shockingly poor planning. They were continuing other work in the park and couldn't be arsed to segregate the playground well enough to allow it to be opened for the summer. Finally by November the good citizenry had had enough and stormed the barricades. It was a wonderful moment of civil disobedience -- a pleasant autumn weekend with kids cavorting around the new playground, playing on the nice new bridges and swings and generally having a good time. Power to the playground!

Scotland!

I'd been to Edinburgh before (recommended!) but had never been to the Highlands before until a couple months ago. Loved it. Really pleasant countryside. A brilliant and incredibly civilized thing about Scotland is the "right to roam" -- a very long-held freedom to wander pretty much anywhere that was codified into law in 2003. Basically, you can walk across any land, whether public or private, as long as you're not an asshole about it (i.e. don't bother the lifestock, etc.). See something interesting in the distance? Go ahead and walk there. The land is open for you. And what a gorgeous land it is.

Metaphor Police: Walled Gardens

It is fashionable amongst the technoliterate to use the metaphor of "Walled Gardens" for any "closed" or "controlled" system or environment they don't like. Crying out in anguish, "it's a walled garden!" is supposed be not only meaningful but also critical. This confuses the hell out of me, because walled gardens are great.

I'd wager most people who use the term have never seen an actual walled garden. They are lovely, functional, useful, productive. They help keep rabbits out (sometimes). They protect from the elements. They allow a really efficient use of space in a low-tech way. They are attractive and can produce more, longer, than an unwalled garden. If you had a country home that had one you would probably never want to go back to not having one.

So here's the odd thing: I've never heard anyone talk about actual walled gardens as if they were bad things. Yet when people talk about technology the metaphor is used as an unequivocal evil. As a counterexample, here's a simple metaphor that works great because its metaphorical use matches its literal use: "piece of shit". Generally, not always, but generally, a literal piece of shit is not a good thing. Likewise, if you describe your car as "a piece of shit", people get that you are making an unambiguous judgment. It works fine as a metaphor. With literal walled gardens, my experience of them is as a good thing. Every time I hear the metaphorical used in disgust, I think, "what's wrong with that?"

"But it's a walled garden!" Uh... great, more lettuce/broccoli/apples for us!

Ok, I get that we need a shorthand criticism for closed/controlled/no-user-serviceable-parts environments, so *some* metaphor would be handy. I think we can do much better than wrongly maligning poor walled gardens.

Goofing Off With The Camera (longer exposures)

As mentioned earlier this week, went out Christmas night with the camera. The photos weren't especially good, but the fun was in the taking. Here are a couple samples.

See the blue & white sign in the middle of the roundabout? That's where we later setup the camera for the shot below.

The shot from the sign in the roundabout.

State of the Village

Another fine year for South Hackney, aka Victoria Park Village. Family-friendly cafes are doing well, with several more opening in the past year. Elbows continues to be a favourite, but recent addition Amandine is nice as well, joining Loafing and the latest, Tipico. Plenty of coffee yet not a chain in sight. Good! The butcher (Ginger Pig) and fishmonger (Jonathan Norris) are doing well, and The Deli Downstairs is doing great business at its location on the roundabout. I still consider it the "new" location for the deli but I guess it's been there a while now. Bottle Apostle continues to win accolades and custom. I suspect it's drawing folks in from a broader area than the local Hackney and Tower Hamlets neighbourhoods, deservedly so. SpitJack's continues as a favourite of the restaurants. We keep going back. If anything, it's gotten better -- e.g. the hamburgers have been cooked just as requested recently (I nearly weep with joy when I find a restaurant that doesn't overcook hamburgers). The Fish House continues a strong run. The Empress of India has changed hands and has dropped "of India". I've not yet been in this incarnation but Timeout reviewed it favourably. Su Sazzagoni also looks to be going well, but Chilliz restaurant, in between the Empress and Su Sazzagoni but open for years prior to each, has gone out of business and its replacement, Chambers, has just opened. Standard Tandoori, across the street, is our go-to curry vendor, and will hopefully continue its long residence.

Pub-wise, Lauriston holds steady as a firm local favourite and the Royal Inn on the Park has revamped its garden a bit. A ways along the north side of the park, The Brittania to the east continues its apparent mission to be all things to everyone while to the west the pub on the corner of Skipworth Road has changed yet again. Must be a cursed spot. Looks nice but I've not yet stopped in. South through the middle of the park, good to see The Crown keeping pace (nice pub, good food, the people at Geronimo Inns seem to know what they're doing), after the site hosted a well-intentioned but poorly executed organic gastropub followed by a doomed tapas restaurant.

Sad news up on Well Street: Izzy bid farewell to the kebab business, leaving by choice at the end of summer. Sadly, Izzy's has been replaced by a "we buy gold" shop. We are still well-covered for kebabs on Well Street, though, panic averted.