But...but...She Weighed the Same as a Duck!

I give my home state a lot of grief around here, so in the interest of balance I started writing a post about something bizarre that just happened in my current home commonwealth (that one’s for Flop. If I had called Virginia a state, he would have had to post a transatlantic comment to correct me).

But, in the end, I’m now officially scared out of my wits.

Anyway, it turns out that my governor, Tim Kaine, pardoned a witch on Monday. Yes, this past Monday, July 10, 2006. Pardoned a witch.

Wait, I have to be able to find a better witch picture than this...

Apparently, 300 years ago, a woman named Grace Sherwood from Pungo, just south of Virginia Beach, was the only person in Virginia history who was ever convicted via a “witch ducking trial.” And what is a witch ducking trial? I’m glad you asked. In a witch ducking trial, the accused’s thumbs are tied to her feet (and for good measure, a 13-pound bible is tied around her neck), and she is tossed into a river. If she floats, she’s a witch. If she does not, she’s innocent, although, obviously, she has other problems at that point. Well, Grace apparently wriggled out of the ropes underwater and swam back to the surface, at which point she was sent to prison. She was eventually released, but remained a convicted witch until she was pardoned on Monday, in a nice little proclamation by Governor Kaine.

"With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice," Kaine wrote.

Well, yeah, but remember, the Bush Administration is still in charge. We may be back to this stuff sooner than you think. In fact, aren’t they already doing it at Gitmo?

Now that's more like it...

But, this brings me to why I’m so scared. This, also from the article about the pardon:

Sherwood beat back most of the accusations -- she was hauled into court at least 12 times -- but what finally did her in was the discovery of two moles on her upper ody. "This was evidence that she was in league with the devil," Nash said. "So she agreed to be tried by water."

As it happens, I also have two moles on my upper body. Even worse, I have two moles on my face. That, coupled with a government in the throes of religious hysteria, not exactly tolerant of those who dissent, and generally predisposed to show trials (speaking of which, excellent work, Supreme Court) and inhumane punishments has me more that a little scared.

At the very least, I won’t be taking a vacation to Virginia Beach.

Flop checks in from the road

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (CSB) _ I think my final verdict on Prague won't come until I'm on the train leaving it, and I think I'm going to like it, even though I think the best way to see it is as a 22-year-old backpacker. Prague is almost everything I thought it would be (but smaller and more walkable) and a lot of things I didn't expect. For one, it's HOT here. Temperatures have been in the high 80s, and probably hit 90 my first day in town. I assumed it was just the heat on the tarmac (yes, I got to fly a random state airline, and yes, I got miles for it.) The communist-built Metro is like Washington's but prettier and colder. (And mercifully uncarpeted).

Most everything else in this town dates from the 12th century onward. It's utterly fascinating, as long as the German or American tourists don't run you over. I admit, I was pretty shocked by the crowds. My experience with European capitals has been limited to London and Paris. In both cities I speak the language, blend in to some degree and always get asked for directions. That hasn't happened here. For one thing, everyone's reading maps in the middle of the street. For another, I'm wearing the one pair of shorts I brought with me _ purchased at a surf shop in Hilton Head. They're khaki in color and cargo in nature. I'm a tourist. But it's OK, I think. A friend who was also traveling here (she was in Europe to cover the World Cup, in a happy coincidence) explained to me that Florence was even more crowded in the summer. I really like Prague, but I think I'll try Italy in the low season.

Then there's the lanugage barrier. I refuse to march up to someone in his or her hometown and address them in a foreign language. Even (and especially) if said language is rapidly becoming the world's lingua franca. Unfortunately, my standard "dobry den" usually gets a flurry of Czech in reply. At which point I have to sheepishly ask if they speak English. Of course, most Czechs do, and well, and sometimes I wonder why I bothered.

I haven't decided which bit of town is my favorite so far, but Prague Castle, the tower at the Old Town Hall and the Charles Bridge, especially when viewed from a riverbank cafe, with a cold Pilsener Urquell in front of me) all are up there. I searched high and low for a portable version of one of the castle windows, so Crimenotes and I can re-enact my favorite bit of Habsburg history at the bar, but no soap so far. Incidentally, that aforementioned beer was the most expensive I've had in town _ it ran my 55 Kc. Which in 'merican dollars is about ... two. Usually beers are about $1.25 here, as they were at the beer hall which is the home of the original Budweiser. You'd pay four times that in New York and get something about 40 times less good.

Speaking of beer, I think it's about time I stop using my CSB expense account on internet access and start spending it on more of that golden nectar whch can actually be cheaper than water here.

I want to headbutt you

I would watch this sport.

It disturbs me that the only interesting moment in the World Cup is the subject of controversy.

Some Frenchman did a headbutt and you'd think the world is coming to an end.

Boo-fuckin'-hoo.

Who among us does not love to headbutt?

It's one of my favorite ways to annoy my friends via head. It's more intrusive than petting their hair but puts you at less risk of disease than trying to lick them. It's hygenic, intrusive and never fails to get a reaction.

What's not to love?

In football and hockey, fuckers get concussions. They slam to the ground and bang heads all the time.

I grew up liking headbutts. I've enjoyed them ever since I was a professional wrestling fan in third grade. I no longer like pro wrestling. But you know what I do like? Headbutts.

Legalize them, and maybe I'll like soccer, too.

I read too much

This summer I've been binge-reading at least as much as I've been binge-drinking. When I'm off work there's usually a beer in my hand, a book in my hand, or both.

What follows is a stupid exercise. You can't summarize great books in a few sentences, but I've come to recognize that multi-part reviews aren't very sexy. You get this instead.

Necessary

Play it As it Lays, by Joan Didion. Superlatives get tired, so when a book is called a classic you figure that's bullshit. This book deserves to be classic. Didion appropriates the allusiveness of Hemingway and predates Carver, she makes Southern California seem more sinister than Short Cuts and Chandler, she writes a brutal and bestial and scorching book about the wreckage of a minor actress who destroys everything she touches. Sometimes saying too much ruins a book. This is a book best appreciated with bourbon on the rocks, a warning, and no advance information.

Recommended

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell. I wanted to buy his Cloud Atlas, but I didn't see it in my repeated trips to The Strand, so I picked up his new one instead. It's the story of a thirteen-year-old living in an English village. He has literary aspirations, his parents' marriage is in disarray, he is bewildered and rattled by everything. Mitchell is Britain's hot new writer, but the book doesn't amount to anything very special. He persuasively establishes his narrator without finding any bigger truths. Sometimes that's good enough, and if the book doesn't break new ground, it's enjoyable anyway.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky. Here's one of the great might-have-beens: Nemirovsky wrote two novella-length sections of a planned five-part novel about France under Nazi occupation. The first section focuses on elite Parisians fleeing to the countryside at the onset of German occupation, and the second is about French villagers coping with Germans who occupy their town and are boarded in their homes. Nemirovsky wrote amid the occupation, and before she finished the book, she was seized by the Nazis and sent to her death in Auschwitz. Already, she was a major literary figure in France, and her fate adds poignancy to the book's skepticism of elites' acquiescence to the German invaders. The book succeeds in its own terms, but you glimpse the way she planned to mingle her characters and plots, and it's hard not to think that had she lived, she would have written a masterpiece.

The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Dumb to describe one of the 20th Century's great novels in a paragraph, but you'll either read this book or you won't, and my opinion shouldn't mean shit. During the first half, I thought I was reading one of the great books of my life -- a parable about French colonialism in Algeria and the inhumanity it bred. The Plague is one of my favorite books, and if I were in a more ambitious mood, I'd write a post about Camus and Iraq. But I'm not in an ambitious mood.

When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro. His most recent book, Never Let Me Go, made me stay up late, fall down backwards, roll around, cry for awhile, swallow my tongue, do 100 push-ups, and paint my apartment black. When We Were Orphans didn't make me do those things, but it's still very good -- the story of a British kid who grows up in Shanghai when suddenly his parents go missing. As an adult he lives in London, where, Bruce Wayne-style, he becomes a socialite and crimefighter. Still obsessed with his parents' disappearance, he returns to Shanghai during its Japanese occupation, believing that he can rescue them. Like Never Let Me Go, it's a story about repression and regret, and an adult who remains obsessed with what happened when he was young.

The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst. A big gay Great Gatsby set in Margaret Thatcher's London, Nick Guest leaves Oxford and is taken in by the alluring family of a Conservative Member of Parliament. Nick likes dudes, so he humps a few in the book, but the real fireworks are in Hollinghurst's elaborate descriptions of what's left of London's elite society and the cruel stupidity of Thatcher's politics. Hollinghurst assembles convincing characters and lets them loose. Like Gatsby, it doesn't end pretty.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. The perfect book to give to your Presbyterian mother or grandmother. But who am I kidding? I don't know why I read it. It's about a Congregationalist minister in Kansas who's dying and writing out the story of his life for his seven-year-old son. Maybe I'm recommending it because it was a thoughtful, moral book, and reading it was like spending time with a really nice old man. If I wrote something unenthusiastic, I'd feel mean, and then guilty.

Not Recommended

Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre. Like The Line of Beauty, this won the Booker Prize, but it's a trainwreck. The author is some kind of Australian drifter who put together a book that reads like a stupid Natural Born Killers and a stupider Elephant. It's a black comedy about a school shooting in Texas. The title character was friends with the shooter. An unscrupulous journalist tries to make his reputation on the story, but then the protagonist flees to Mexico. Heavyhanded hilarity and lots of annoying clamor ensue. Some U.S. reviewers thought the book was anti-American, but I think the writer's slapdash caricatures and broad, clumsy comedy was the product of junk writing more than hatred.

Uncomfortable, then disgusting

For the last year or so, every Saturday and Sunday morning I go to a nearby coffehouse and read for a couple of hours. Right now I'm on Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky.

The place was unusually empty this morning. It draws its share of characters. It's the closest thing to an Ann Arbor coffeehouse that I've found in New York.

It also serves alcohol.

There were three other people there this morning when someone sat directly next to me. He looked about sixty. It was 10:30 a.m. He ordered a bottle of Budweiser and belched. I was in deep-read mode, and not psyched that he elected to sit a foot away from me in the middle of the empty establishment.

After twenty minutes, he turned to me and asked loudly, "Can you help me with this?"

I looked down and saw that he was holding a loose, gold-chain bracelet. He wanted me to hook it around his wrist.

Strange, but it was the second time in 12 hours that I was being asked to put a bracelet on another dude. The night before I went with a friend to see his brother's band. The band was pretty good. One of its gimmicks was to hand out neon snap-bracelets to friends and fans.

So, having helped Peter with a neon bracelet the night before, I similarly fumbled with this dude's bracelet, not able to work the hook. Laughing, he mocked me, and said, "Come on, a guy like you must have a girlfriend."

"I'm not into jewelry," I said.

"Wow man," he said, "you're cold."

After much confusion, I successfully helped him with the bracelet.

I turned back to my book.

Loudly, he ordered a vodka on the rocks.

Five minutes later, he turned back to me and said, "What are you reading?"

"It's a book," I said. Realizing that I should clarify before the next question, I said, "It's about World War II."

"Ah, history," he said. "Let me ask you something. Do you think they really killed six million Jews?"

"Yes."

"Really?" he asked. "Because you hear so much controversy about that."

"I don't think there's any controversy," I said, in my most deadly serious, clipped, even-toned, do-not-argue-with-me voice.

He got my message, but mumbled, "The controversy is everywhere."

"Yeah, I don't think so," I said.

Apparently disappointed that I wasn't up for playing ball, he turned away and looked out the window. I wasn't up for explaining that Nemirovsky was in the middle of writing the War and Peace of World War II when she was taken out of France by the Germans, shipped to Auschwitz, and killed within days. That what she left is an unfinished yet near-perfect novel, and that her book suddenly seemed too melancholy to put into words.

I made a swift and early exit before the conversation went further. There's no teaching an old, jewelry-loving, Holocaust-denying drunk at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

USA! USA! USA!

In my first post about the World Cup, I mentioned my favorite World Cup barstool argument, the “What would Team USA look like if our best athletes played soccer?” game. In honor of this weekend’s Cup finals (go…er…France, I suppose), I’ll close my soccer commentary for the next four years with my own answer to that question.

First, however, a couple of notes. This team is awfully NBA-player-heavy, but that’s because basketball skills tend to translate more to soccer, mostly the whole running-around-nonstop-for-a-long-time thing. That is contrasted with baseball, where the skills are incredibly different and most of those major league players whose sheer athleticism would have qualified them wouldn’t qualify to be on a team USA (I’m thinking here of guys like Vladimir Guerrero, Andruw Jones, etc.). Also, for our purposes, this team plays a 4-4-2 alignment.

Forwards

Allen Iverson and LeBron James: As I’ve said before, Allen Iverson, if he had been a soccer player, would have completely redefined the striker position as we know it. Nobody could match his quickness and speed. As for LeBron, I was inspired to put him here by watching the gangly, uncoordinated, 6-7 Peter Crouch play forward for England. If that guy is what a 6-8 forward looks like, then the dominance a 6-8 guy like LeBron would enjoy would almost be unfair to the rest of the world.


Which would you choose? I thought so.

Midfielders

Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Carl Crawford, and LaDainian Tomlinson: Even I will admit that Crawford here is really forced, so I can have at least one baseball player on the team. A point guard like Chris Paul or Kirk Hinrich would probably be better, but Crawford is the choice, and would be a fine central midfielder with Tomlinson (yeah, like some Czech dude is going to get the ball away from him). Wade and Bryant out on the wings sending crosses in to LeBron would be completely unstoppable. Kobe’s defensive tenacity would also disrupt the other team’s playmakers.

Defenders

Troy Polamalu, Roy Williams, Sean Taylor, and Ben Wallace: As Americans, we all hate the flopping. But we may have to learn to live with it, if Team USA starts Polamalu, Williams, Taylor, and Wallace, which I like to call the “We’ll give you something to cry about!” backline. Not to pick on the English, but if Wayne Rooney tried that nut-stomping on, say, Wallace, I think we all know that getting a red card would be the least of his problems. Also, USA would be partaking in the grand tradition of fantastic World Cup hair, between Polamalu and Wallace (since I’m the manager of this team, I’m mandating that Wallace go with the full-on, blown-out afro at all times).

Now THAT is what I'm talking about...

Goalie

Kevin Garnett: KG is 6 feet, 11 inches of arms, legs, and ridiculous intensity. I’ve been watching the World Cup, and when the games go to penalty kicks, sometimes even when the goalies guess the right direction, they can’t dive far enough to get to the ball. Let’s just say, that wouldn’t be a problem with Garnett.

A menacing keeper, don't you think?

Am I crazy, or would these guys have just destroyed, say, Italy?

Fact: I dress like an idiot, but it's by accident

Setting: Monday night on Brian's rooftop.


Question: [CrimeNotes], why are you always in jeans?

CrimeNotes: I bought all of my shorts when I was in college. They have holes in the pockets. The last time I wore a pair, my keys and wallet kept falling out.

Old short pants, with hole in pocket.

Question: Idiot, that was years ago. Why don't you buy new shorts?

CrimeNotes: Excellent question. I tried to buy a pair on Friday. I went to Century 21 after work. It's the only place I go to buy clothes because people aren't in your face asking if they can help and there isn't annoying music. It's like shopping in K-Mart. It's big and chaotic and everyone leaves you alone.

But the problem is that everything there is basically on remainder and they didn't have many short pants.

[Here, I was mocked for using the phrase "short pants." People said that they hadn't heard that phrase and that it made me sound like a little boy. I said fine, but I associate the word "shorts" with boxers, and that they'll always be short pants to me.]

After looking around I found some. It was a pair in size 31 and I congratulated myself on achieving a goal. They looked kind of baggy, but not bad. I thought they were normal short pants.

New short pants.

Then I took them home and tried them on. They go below my knees. They're basically like capri pants for men.

So now I have this pair of short pants [more mockery of my word choice] that's brand new, but I'll never wear it because it looks so stupid.

The conversation briefly shifted to how a friend sports male capri pants and their popularity in Europe. It then circles back to why I'm an idiot.

This wasn't an isolated incident, I explain. I hate shopping for clothes. It's my most hated thing. When I'm shopping, I find the first thing that looks roughly acceptable, grab it off the shelf, and run to the register.

But I don't always pay attention to what I'm buying. Like, I've got all of these French cuff shirts sitting around that I'll never wear. I don't even own cuff links. I thought I was just buying normal button-down shirts, then I take them home, go to put them on a hanger, and realize, "Fuck, I've done it again."

Unworn French cuff shirt.

Blog Perv Danielle, Her Majesty the the Queen of 2006 (BPDHMQ2K6): Just get cufflinks and wear them.

CrimeNotes: No way. They're for industrialists and oligarchs. I feel ridiculous enough without wearing them.

BPDHMQ2K6 pointed out that her boyfriend likes French cuff shirts. I immediately offer him several, but despite our similar heights, his shirt size is different. Hence, these shirts will be unused in perpetuity.

CrimeNotes: But wait, it gets worse. One time I thought I was buying a normal dress shirt. When I was at the register the guy gave me this weird look, and it wasn't until I got home that I realized why. It wasn't a dress shirt, it was some weird fucking thing with no buttons.

I've tried to describe this shirt many times, but the only way to do it is through this badly lit photo I just took:

Note the absence of buttons.

It's the dumbest thing I've ever owned, I said. Once I realized my mistake I figured out why the guy at the register looked at me like I was a moron.

Question: Why don't you return all of this stuff?

CrimeNotes: It's too embarrassing. Plus, I keep telling myself that if I'm wasting money like this, I'll start to be careful. Not returning these clothes is my punishment for being stupid.

Question: So you've learned your lesson, right?

CrimeNotes: I think so, but I think that every time. And every time it happens again. It happens whenever I have to buy clothes. I can't help it.

I'm better with work clothes, but even then I buy something and wear it until it's literally fraying at the cuffs and has coffee stains all over.

BPDHMQ2K6's Boyfriend: Basically, you buy clothes every five years.

CrimeNotes: Nah, more often than that. But it's only once every five years that I'll buy something I wear.

The male capri pants and the buttonless shirt.

Much As Crunkmas Is In January, Not April

Out of respect for the CSB tradition of letting the 10 Greatest Americans hold down the fort over the Fourth of July, I held this one back until now.

July 4 is not “America’s birthday.”

I know, the date is right there at the top, in big letters, “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” But does July 4 really deserve as much resonance as we give it? For example, was July 4, 1776 really a more important date in American history than April 19, 1775, when the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought? Those, after all, were the “shot heard ‘round the world”…

But that’s irrelevant, because America’s birthday should be September 17, to commemorate the ratification of the Constitution on September 17, 1787.

There are several reasons why, but they all boil down to one thing: The Constitution is far more important to both American history and the American experience than the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, great as it is, only put 13 wayward British colonies on the path to freedom. The Constitution, on the other hand, marks the nation having arrived as something recognizable, to those of us living today, as the United States.

September 17 is also almost universally a better day than July 4, even leaving aside the historical significance. For one thing, September 17 is a much much much more pleasant time of year to go to an outdoor fireworks display on America’s front yard than July 4. For another, it means that we can extend summer another 2 weeks. Labor Day currently marks the unofficial “end of summer,” but wouldn’t it be immeasurably better to have 2 more weeks of September (the best weather month of the year everywhere I’ve ever lived) count as summer? What better way to close out another fun summer than with a massive birthday celebration for the ol’ U.S.A.?

March 4 is another possibility for America’s birthday, since that was the date the Constitution went into effect, but I think that September 17 is better.

Look at it this way. If America were a person, April 19 would be the day its parents first got together, July 4 would be the day it was conceived, September 17 would be the day it was born, and March 4 would be, I dunno, the day it was baptized? Bar mitzvahed? Something like that?

If we join together we can start a movement to change the observance of America’s birthday to September 17. All we need is a catchy slogan…I’ve got it!

“America’s life did not begin at conception.”

Hmm…that seems unnecessarily politically charged, I think.

The internet, explained

Comments by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), attempting to describe the internet:

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what, you can order ten of them delivered to you, and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially

...

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

(As excerpted on Daily Kos.)

Serious advice for White Horse Tavern and other misguided bars

Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" should never be played to a crowd of wheezing drunks in a half-empty bar at 2 a.m.

The drunk id has bad taste in music. I have the iTunes purchases to prove it. (Hello, "Somebody Save Me" by Cinderella.)

Mp3 jukeboxes do nothing but empower this bad taste. My humble prediction -- mp3 jukeboxes will be the ruin of many good bars.

Just like a good bartender knows when to cut people off before they puke or start a fight, a good bar should know that drinkers from all walks of life shouldn't be given instant access to thousands of songs -- many of which suck, qualify as guilty pleasures, or are actively despised by all but two or three patrons.

The scene at a generally good, if inconsistent, West Village mainstay at 2 a.m. on Sunday:

• one member of my group is visibly passed out;
• one lectures me about the evils of A-Rod;
• a third plots his Journey selections for the jukebox;
• and "Isn't She Lovely" turns the bar into my own Abu Ghraib.

I made my exit before Journey came on, but not before two half-witted 22-year-old fucktards (I think they were interns at a Gap) got their grubby paws on the mp3 jukebox, selected Mr. Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely," an assortment of current dance-punk (or whatever you call that Bloc Party, Killers-style bullshit), "Hotel California" (some dance to remember, I'll dance to forget), and other audible assaults that no one needs to hear when it's one beer too many and several tequila shots too late.

In that situation, "Isn't She Lovely" should only be played to clear out customers so staff can go home.

I'll defend my musical tastes against anybody's, but like driving ability, it's impaired by alcohol. My mind turns back to college, and I'll want the likes of Skee-Lo, Chumbawumba or (forgive me, but yes) Hanson. Mildly amusing in an apartment with five friends. Not cool in a public drinking establishment that doesn't specialize in karaoke.

The bar should not give those choices. White Horse Tavern should know better than to make every last English-language song available to every moron with dollar bills, y'all. In this situation, we are all victims, and if given the opportunity, we will all be perpetrators. And the dirty bar that smells like piss will take on the ambience of a wedding reception.

We need our options limited to the bar staples: the Stones, Bowies, Velvet Undergrounds, and Johnny Cashes; some John Fogerty and some old U2. The only time Billy Joel ever sounds good is after midnight on a jukebox. If you're not a hardliner, you can get some Wilco. I'm no tyrant.

But at 2 a.m., you want to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

What's another alternative? That somebody's body is a wonderland. That John Mayer will come onto an mp3 jukebox, and by virtue of song choice, that body's wonderland will demand to be bruised and broken and brought to justice by an angry mob of drinkers.

[Note: Many thanks to Gawker for the link. Now that our site has been linked by Gawker, Thrasher's Wheat, and a Daily Kos diary, we've hit the trifecta and can die happy.]