Def Leppard/Journey

This past Tuesday, I worked another gig at the Van Andel Arena, serving snacks'n'bevs to perhaps the weirdest, most random audience I've yet encountered there. I've had more raucous nights, and certainly been much busier when it comes to sheer volume and pressure to move the product under intense demand... but I'm not sure that I can point to any stranger behavior that I've witnessed from behind the counter.

The night was kind of conflicted from the very beginning, since the event was competing (to the surprise of everyone who had anything to do with booking the gig) with the Detroit Tigers, who were in St. Louis that night in the third game of the World Series. The Tigers were coming off of what turned out to be their only win of the series on Sunday and I imagine a lot of people in the crowd were seriously distracted at the thought of missing the game while their favorite bands were playing. Our stand has a TV mounted at one end so when a big sports event is on, the arena management concedes to the audience and puts the game on, and it inevitably draws a crowd. Last spring's Pistons' playoffs produced a similar phenomenon - we workers don't mind because it gives us a chance to keep up with the action and it probably helps boost sales at our stand.

As it turned out, the game was a big bummer for the local fans as the Tigers wound up getting shut out 5-0. And since baseball moves at a slower pace, the crowd didn't get quite as big throughout the evening as it did when the Pistons game was winding down. But I believe that the collective disappointment put a sinister, angsty vibe in the house - not so much that it overwhelmed peoples' ability to enjoy the concert, but it injected an edginess that wouldn't have been there if the Tigers had played better and created a feel-good, "we're winning" mild euphoria in the minds and hearts of those of us who Care About Baseball.

Which leads me to the main objects of attention, namely the bands Journey and Def Leppard, two stalwart carry-overs from the glory days of 80's power-ballad pop-metal arena rock. Billed as "co-headliners," Journey was still stuck in the second-fiddle role, ostensibly because they don't have the same lead singer as they did when they were cranking out hits, whereas Def Leppard is still actively releasing albums of new material rather than strictly relying on a back catalog of "classics" (of which they have plenty.) The new Def Lep album is titled "Yeah!" and it actually interests me more than anything else they've released since their "Hysteria" hey-day (and even then, I was never really a fan of theirs...) "Yeah!" is a collection of covers from some of their favorite early influences, like T. Rex, the Kinks, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, etc. and it should be a fun listen, given the band's undeniable ability to make big, vibrant rock sounds.

But anyway, Journey got things moving after an opening act played for about 20 minutes or so, some singer-songwriter guy that I won't bother to look up and mention here (sorry, dude.) The most remarkable thing about the band's performance was the note-perfect recreation of former singer Steve Perry's immediately-identifiable-but-often-annoying vocal stylings by their new singer (Steve Augeri - see, the name even rhymes!) I say "often annoying" while also recognizing that Perry's singing was a huge factor in transforming Journey from a modest regional band into a major radio-friendly headlining act. He established a template for sensitive-guy rock'n'roll lead men that held sway throughout the 80's but has now morphed into a parody of itself - I think of Steve Perry and his ilk whenever I hear one of those Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" radio ads - the dippy histrionic singer who belts out the cliches and slogans...

I will give Journey credit for serving up heaping helpings of what the crowd was hungry for. They kept the hits coming - pretty much everything from this CD found its way into the set list - finishing up with "Don't Stop Believing," an "anything is possible" youth anthem which was actually one of the biggest digital-downloads of this year, I was surprised to find out recently, and "Separate Ways," which accurately described the situation as the band retreated backstage and the audience was left to resume its ordinary life without them after the show was done. As I mentioned, the remarkable facility of the new singer at recreating all the little nuances and vocal flutterations that Steve Perry made into indelible hooks was the outstanding feature of the show, though I should also give guitarist Neil Schon his props, since he is pretty fluid on the axe - I enjoyed his pre-concert jam session. Still, Journey serves as an example of corporate rock's strengths and weaknesses - functional, efficient, steady, homogenized, built from interchangeable parts. All the spontaneity, freshness and surprise value of a Big Mac, but at least you know what you're getting if that's what your appetite calls for.

Def Leppard was similarly polished in its craftsmanship, and probably rank just a bit higher in my estimation because they are, after all, English and considerably less sappy than Journey. Their music still provides enough ingredients for a fine syrup, but they manage to keep a touch of rawness in the mix. Not all that much, really, but some. Fact is, I really don't have all that much I consider interesting to say about Def Leppard. I worked their show with Cheap Trick, almost exactly one year ago this week, and from what I can tell they did basically the same show... or at least, all the big songs were in the same place at the end, finishing up predictably enough with "Pour Some Sugar on Me." I was having computer problems at that time so I never reviewed the gig, but what's there to say... They came out, they harmonized, they rocked it... they're Def Leppard!

So what about this weird audience? Well, there was just a strange behavioral aspect, largely chemically-induced I imagine - alcohol and other substances - but I just had a lot of bizarre conversations and even confrontations with some of the customers. Some were very happy and funny and amusing, others were irritating and a few were confusing and kind of sad.

The funny amusing: a group of four women who were just exceedingly gregarious and flirty and uproarious, dancing and hooting and cavorting around as they bought their beers - really working hard to show everyone that they were having a fantastically great time at the concert.
At least they had wit and charm working in their favor - one of them in particular had a great ability to banter and I always enjoy that part of the job.

The irritating: a woman had asked for a pen, and the only ones we have at the stand have a little chain attached, like at the bank. So I lent her one from my pocket and she promised to bring it right back. But when she did, she insisted that I owe the woman working the register next to me something before I got my pen back. Journey was playing at this time so it was loud and I wasn't able to really understand her comments or get her point, and I never did, but she got rude to me as I tried to figure out what she was trying to communicate. She even held the pen out to me and pulled it back when I tried to take it from her! Eventually she told me that I needed to buy my colleague a bottle of Captain Morgan rum! I got stuck trying to make logical sense out of what she was saying and got to the point of just telling her flat out, "Give me my pen." Then she scolds me for my poor manners! She wound up giving the pen to the woman next to me, walked away and I was just stumped...

The confusing and sad: another woman came up to me toward the end of the night and asked my name. I told her, and she said something along these lines: "Dave... they didn't send me over here to talk to you, and I'm not saying it's your fault or anything... but they should have. I mean, we were supposed to have this... to be where you are... but they took it away and we didn't deserve it. I mean, we worked hard and what they did wasn't fair, and it has nothing to do with you, but... you know what I'm saying? My roommate and I are... I mean, umm, it's just not right. It's pretty f--ed up. But I'm not holding it against you or any of you..." Meanwhile, she's slouching on the counter in a very low cut spaghetti-strap top and I don't know if she's about to start crying, pass out or jump over the counter and grab me by the neck. I tried piecing clues together from her comments and wondered if she had been employed by the arena but let go when they recently brought in a new concessions-management company - but when I tried following that line of rational thinking, her comments veered off into another layer of her rapidly unravelling subconscious interpretation of reality. We were never able to connect on what it was that compelled her to initiate the conversation with me - and she didn't buy anything either. Words were exchanged, but no core of meaning was ever settled upon. I can't sufficiently recreate the succession of non sequiters that followed, but I'm relieved to say that she was able to walk away from the counter without any of the socially-awkward behavioral eruptions I feared might happen. Let me just say that I was using some of my best professional listening skills in helping her re-attach her mind to the plane that most of us exist on, in public settings anyway.

After she stepped away, one of my colleagues simply asked me, "What the hell was that?" and I just did my best to help him understand how I approach the task of addressing an unhinged mind. He said, "well, I'm just glad that the doctor is here to deal with that stuff." And my "Captain Morgan" cashier friend said to me, "You attract a lot of weird people!"

After the show was done, the crowd gathered in front of the TV to watch the tail end of the Tigers game. I stood watching as well as the corridor was jam-packed with people and without much warning, a fight broke out between two women - the whole hair-pulling, nail scratching and even biting thing going on. Then the men accompanying the women got into it and started punching each other in the face and upper body. With all the people standing around, it took security a couple minutes to intervene - it was very strange for me to watch this happen in front of me and not get involved - my physical management instincts were kicking in and I could envision myself initiating a PRT on one of the guys but of course I'm not authorized to do any such thing in that setting!

Well, within a short time, the fighters had been separated, the police showed up and the focus of attention was apparently on the women - the scuffle between the men appears to have remained "off the record." But the woman who got bit had a wound and wanted to press charges. Right about this time, the Tigers had lost their game. I was eager to just get out of there and go home - and shortly thereafter I did - not a minute too soon!

E-1 and it's done.

I've fallen off my blogging consistency this week and it's not for lack of things to say. I still have to capture my recollections of the Def Leppard/Journey concert I worked at on Tuesday, for one. I've just been busy at work with creative, time-consuming, keep-me-at-my-computer stuff, which doesn't exactly leave me itching to devote more PC time to blogging when I get home, and my evenings this week were pretty much locked up with watching the World Series that just came to an ignominious end for Tigers fans (and, I suspect, for aficionados of classic, suspenseful baseball.)

Even though the Tigers were just one swing away from tying or maybe even winning the game right down to the end of it all, I am actually relieved and fairly glad to have it over with. I just didn't find the Series to be nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. It's not just sour grapes either - I'll give the Cardinals credit, they were clearly the better team and did what they had to do to win the games. It just wasn't all that interesting. There were no epic home runs or classic batter-pitcher confrontations that are likely to stick in the memory. The star players on each side (Albert Pujols and Ivan Rodriguez) were both non-factors at the plate. The lasting image from WS2006 is likely to be that of Tigers pitchers throwing wildly to this base or that. And as much as David Eckstein deserves respect for his hustle and gritty play in all aspects of the game, his selection as World Series MVP underscores just how indistinct this particular championship round of major league baseball will be in years to come, outside of St. Louis and to a lesser extent Detroit, where I think ultimately the fans will feel grateful admiration for a team that really just came out of nowhere and took the city and state along for a ride that none of us dared dream about back in the springtime of '06. I think it was fair to hope and imagine that they could have taken it all the way after seeing what the Tigers did against the Yankees and A's (Magglio's series-clinching home run will live in the highlights forever!) but once we got a chance to see them on the field against a more seasoned, mature and resilient Cardinals lineup, it became apparent that this team had over-achieved to some extent.

So my perspective is that in the larger sense, it's not such a bad thing that the National League won a World Series after several years of being seen as the weaker circuit. And I'm OK with St. Louis fans getting to celebrate big time by having their team win in their home stadium. They are loyal, knowledgeable fans who have actually had to wait longer for a World Series champ than Tigers fans have (though they've gotten to watch a lot better quality of ball than we have over those years!) And the Cardinals lineup is full of players who have paid their dues with solid careers that brought them to this point - even if they did only manage to scrape out 83 wins over the course of the regular season (that's only two more than "break-even," folks! If it weren't for the divisional structure, this team might not have even made it into the post-season...)

And now it's on to the off-season, the post-season awards, all the trades and free agent signings to come, and yes, the cold weather that will prepare my heart and mind once more for another rebirth when the cycle brings us back to the first flutterings of spring training in the middle of next February. I'll be eager to watch some more baseball by then... but for now, I've had my fill and I'm glad that I won't have to worry about it any more the rest of this weekend. I got enough going on as it is!

Palm Sunday, or The Mystery of the Tiger's Paw, or Oh My God, They're Trying to Kill Kenny!

Sports radio here in Grand Rapids and I'm sure all across the state has been in an uproar all afternoon as speculation and recriminations continually fly across the airwaves over what exactly was going on at Comerica Park last night. Yeah, yeah, the Tigers won, beating their bad-old-days-burn-out ex-teammate Jeff Weaver, narrowly escaping another bases-loaded jam set up by tightrope-walking closer Todd Jones (so help me, if he winds up blowing the series...!) But now that the win is safely in the books, the main thing to be discussed is the kerfuffle triggered by Tim McCarver's on-air speculation that Kenny Rogers was dirty-dealing from the mound when camera operators caught a mysterious brown smear of "something" on the meaty part of pitcher's left thumb. I found myself laughing out loud throughout most of the drive-time heading home as one outraged Tiger loyalist after another got on the line to offer his or her explanations of what was behind the flap.

Of course, it hardly need be pointed out that McCarver is a former Cardinal catcher who I think overall does a decent job maintaining objectivity in his on-air analysis, but you know where he's really coming from when it gets right down to it, right? He wants to see the Redbirds hoist another trophy and he'll go to whatever lengths he can to help his buddies get there. And Joe Buck's St. Louis ties are sooooo obvious - his dad Jack Buck being a lifelong homer as a legendary game-caller for KMOX 1120 AM. So my quick take is that this was all a conspiracy. Somebody on the Cardinals gunked up a ball which found its way into Rogers' mitt, he inadvertently got the substance on his hands, was so intently focused on the game that he didn't realize it was there, the camera ops were tipped off, zoomed in, got the incriminating shot, piped it up to the infiltrators in the broadcast booth, who triggered the scandal and cast Kenny's sterling reputation into the gutter. Yeah, that's it. That's what they were trying to do! But we're on to 'em, see... the dirty rats! They thought they could throw our ace off his game - but look who's laughing now! Ha!

Meet me in St. Louis, Louis... Meet me at the fair! Tige's are gonna sweep the next three!

Philip Yancey

Julie and I went to go listen to a free talk by Christian writer Philip Yancey this past Thursday. He's on a book tour these days, promoting his latest release, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (I find the website remarkable for its candid presentation of the book as "product.")

Yancey's talk was pleasantly engaging, but I didn't walk away from it thinking I had learned anything new or especially profound on the topic. To his credit, he's done a lot more legwork and research on the topic than I know I ever will. He said he's spent the past couple of years interviewing hundreds of people, spent months reading what numerous Christians have said about prayer over the centuries, and compiled a lot of that information into his book. There are dozens of what are called "screens" in the publishing biz where he's entered quotes from different people offering their own perspective on how they see prayer affecting their lives. He did that because he didn't want to just paraphrase or blend their accounts into his own ruminations. I guess one of the things that most impressed me was his humility in acknowledging that even after all that investigation, he still considers himself a beginner when it comes to both practicing and understanding prayer.

Which is about as advanced of a status most of us will ever attain, and that's because I don't think prayer really fits into the standardized grid of rational progress and quantification that most other human practices are routinely plugged into in this era. The thought that sticks with me the most from Yancey's presentation is that prayer is mostly about our intent to consciously be with God for some portion of our day and to be honest about ourselves. His sharpest words of criticism were aimed at TV preachers and similar characters who more or less sell prayer as a technique or a method of getting what we want. I don't think he adequately grappled in the talk with how much of that thinking grows directly out of the biblical literalist mindset, where we read of many examples of people asking for specific outcomes and getting them in a way that seems indistinguishable from magic at times. But I did appreciate his clarity on that topic and I agree with him.

Still, when all was said and done, he came back to the same conclusion that most of us settle on: prayer is a mystery, which is a nice way of saying that we are pretty clueless as to what is actually transpiring in any concrete way of identifying the variables at play here. And that's because the God to whom we pray is such an enigma. As an evangelical Christian, he affirmed the importance of praying to the biblical God but he was also surprisingly honest in also acknowledging the statistical research that basically says "groups praying for sick people has a demonstrable positive effect on their recuperation, on the broad scale, regardless of what deity or religious tradition is being followed." In other words, generically praying for others seems to direct some kind of beneficial energy their way. His example of not praying for specific outcomes but rather just lifting up his loved ones to God and trusting God's will in the situation seemed to me to be practically indistinguishable from the Quaker practice of "holding a person in the Light."

We decided not to buy the book, figuring that $22 for the autographed edition was a bit more than what our budget could afford at the moment. But we still appreciated the chance to hear him speak. Yancey was asked about his opinion on the emergent conversation at the end of the Q & A session, and he affirmed his appreciation of Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt and others. I consider Yancey a "pre-emergent" myself - his book What's So Amazing About Grace broke through some taboos years ago when he had some affirming words about then-President Clinton and spoke sensitively of his on-going friendship with Mel White, an evangelical leader who came out of the closet and has campaigned ever since for a more inclusive and affirming recognition of gay Christians from denominational authorities. I read the book in the late-90's and it was one of those influences that broke me out of the mold, showing me that one could be a Christian without embracing the whole right-wing agenda that was pretty much surrounding and suffocating me at the time. I've gone further to the left on many points since then than I think Yancey ever will, but I think he does his readers a service in keeping them from settling for the easy cliche' and the pat answer.

Tigers vs. Cardinals

MI vs. MO

Motor City vs. Gateway City

Jim Leyland vs. Tony LaRussa

Rematch of '68 and '34 World Series

Olde English D vs. Birds on the Bat

Kenny Rogers (not the singer) vs. Chris Carpenter (not the former Marlins pitcher)

Placido Polanco vs. Albert Pujols

Magglio Ordonez vs. Juan Encarnacion

Jeremy Bonderman vs. Jeff Weaver

Brandon Inge vs. Scott Spezio

Ford vs. Bud

Berry Gordy vs. Chuck Berry

Stevie Wonder vs. Ike Turner

Eminem vs. Nelly

Kid Rock vs. Chingy

Uncle Kracker vs. Gretchen Wilson

Detroit techno vs. St. Louis blues

OK... enough of that. For a couple of teams that were really struggling at the end of the regular season, they've put together pretty decent postseason runs. Unless the Tigers have really cooled off during their week of waiting to see who they'd play, I think that Detroit will prevail, and convincingly, in this series. The Cardinals don't have nearly as strong a pitching staff as the Tigers and I really didn't see any signs of "postseason magic" in their NLCS victory over the Mets - it was more like, one team or the other had to win, and the Cards got the big hit in Game 7 when they needed it. A big bummer of an ending for the Mets... I'm fine with Detroit vs. St. Louis, it's a fine clash of heartland baseball teams with deep traditions and loyal followings - but I was kind of looking forward to a meeting of what I consider the two best representatives of their leagues for the 2006 season. The Cardinals only won 83 games in the regular season and it will be an embarrassment if they wind up as the overall champions. The Mets are a more interesting collection of players to me. But at least the weather should be better in Missouri.

Tigers win in 5.

And here's your 2006 theme song, Tigers fans! It's totally hot!

The Dream, Punctured

Oops.

"The Fairer Sex?"

I had a chance to do something kind of unique today. My task at work during the lunch hour was to serve as a co-facilitator to a "Lunch 'n Learn" in-service sponsored by our agency's Diversity Committee. The idea is that we offer a nice catered lunch, show a short video, discuss an issue and give staff 90 minutes of training credit for participating.

The video we showed was a clip titled "The Fairer Sex?" from an old ABC "PrimeTime Live" broadcast from 1993 (introduced by Diane Sawyer and featuring Chris Wallace way before he moved over to Fox News) that showed some hidden camera videos of a man and woman of virtually identical background as they made their way across Cincinnatti OH, posing as new residents in the area. They shop for a car, look for jobs, sign up for golfing tee times, drop off their dry-cleaning, etc. and their interactions are recorded to compare and contrast the differences in how they're treated. It's a pretty amazing video as we see a woman whose "best deal" price on a car is $200 after negotiations than the opening offer that the same salesman gives to the man who comes in shortly after her on the same day. When they look for jobs, answering the same ad, she is directed into a filing/receptionist position while he is approached about going into some management training with much better prospects for income and advancement than she would everlikely see with that company. And so on.

So we had a good conversation, about 35-40 of us, reflecting not only on the situation in the larger society, but also within our organization, which is a private, non-profit Christian agency with its own share of hangups, traditions and taboos about the role of men and women in business and church life. Some of this discussion was driven by reports and concerns that have drawn the Diversity Committee's attention from women who feel like their ideas and opinions have not been seriously considered at times. Last month, I wrote an article on this topic for the Diversity Digest newsletter that I edit which served as a kind of prelude to today's event. I would say it went well - most of the credit going to our head chaplain, a woman, who I thought did an excellent job guiding the talk and giving plenty of people the chance to express themselves, asking good questions that opened up our thinking without steering us to pre-fabricated conclusions.

As a white guy myself, I have to continually reckon with just what degrees of privilege I have granted to me, what I take for granted, and how genuinely I am ready to give that up in the pursuit of genuine equity and justice. This is not one of those topics where we can say, "OK, we did something about it, now let's move on!" Though I suppose there are some who wouldn't mind hearing such a declaration. LeRae (the chaplain) and I will meet on Wednesday to discuss our impressions (we both had to leave shortly afterward), read the feedback sheets, and figure out where we want to go from here.

Tempting Faith - David Kuo - "J-Walking" blog

I'm going to take the night off of blogging as far as talking about myself is concerned. Today was just a work day, full of worthwhile activity but nothing I feel like expounding on here. Instead, I'll link you to the blog kept by David Kuo, whose new book Tempting Faith raised some hackles due to its portrayal of people like Karl Rove and others who have reportedly been exploiting the votes and sympathies of conservative Christian voters while only paying a mocking lip service to their real concerns and priorities when it gets down to the substantive legislative nitty-gritty. Keith Olbermann ran with the book last week and its just now hitting the market. The blog features daily entries and tells a more interesting story than you might expect if you are just expecting the stereotypical disgruntled whistleblower tell-all that comes out of Washington DC so frequently.

Library Book Sale Day!

I took in a haul of treasures yesterday morning when my local public library had one of its twice-yearly-or-so clearance sales. The main focus of my browsing today was a table full of discarded VHS tapes. I was able to snag a bunch of great films, mainly foreign and art house stuff, that would cost me a fortune to get on DVD. There were a lot of other more mainstream Hollywood entertainment features to choose from but I was mainly interested in films that deserve repeat viewing and are unlikely to be found in the cheap DVD racks in the near future. So I think I won't be renting movies for quite awhile.

Here are some of the titles that I brought home:

Ponette
Jean de Florette
Manon of the Spring
Solyaris
Short Cuts
Fawlty Towers (3 tapes, 9 episodes in all)
The Avengers '67 (3 tapes, 6 episodes)
L'Aventurra
Zero de Conduite
Wilson
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Yol
Baran
Go
The Anniversary Party
200 Cigarettes
Melodie en Sous-Sol

... and a collection of old Saturday Night Live skits featuring the original Ackroyd/Belushi/Chase cast.

Plus some CDs by Ben Harper, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey and Zwan, and some cool old vinyl from Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Marty Robbins (which will be fun to have whenever I get around to purchasing a turntable system...)

All for only $3 for everything I could fit into one grocery bag!

A great column about the Tigers

Of course you know that the Detroit Tigers won the American League Championship tonight, and did so in dramatic fashion on an instant-classic three-run walk-off home run by Magglio Ordonez. I am still shaking my head in amazement when I think about what this team has accomplished. And there is still some great excitement to come.

But it's late so I won't elaborate my thoughts all that much. Instead, let me link you to a very fine essay written by a columnist for CBS Sportsline that I think captures quite nicely the particular significance of the Tigers success for people who live in Michigan. I wrote Scott Miller an email to thank him for his work, something I've almost never bothered to do with mass-media columnists. He's a Michigan native living on the West Coast, I just found out, so he knows what he's talking about. As sports columns go, it's worth your time if you want to get a sense of what makes this team unique and meaningful to us.

How About Those Tigers?

I've posted about the Detroit Tigers baseball team a few times here, but for the most part, you would not know from reading this blog just how much of my attention has been focused in their direction lately. At least, I don't think that the amount of writing I've dedicated to them corresponds proportionately to my interest in the postseason run they're putting together. After all, this is not a sports blog and I don't want to assume that people who read this can't get the baseball info they might be interested in from other sources more compatible with their interests. Perhaps there are some A's or Yankee fans who don't exactly feel like reading rah-rah material on the Tigers at this time... I don't want to push those folks away.

However, I can contain myself no longer!

This afternoon, I saw (on TV) the Tigers take a 3-0 series lead in the American League Championship Series by winning 3-0 over the Oakland Athletics. The fans at Comerica Park had to endure some biting cold winds (but no snow) in order to enjoy the game, but I am pretty sure that they all had a great time. This game featured another gutsy performance from Kenny Rogers, who shut down the Yankees last Friday, setting the stage for the clincher that Detroit won the next day. The Tigers are likewise one win away from sealing their first trip to the World Series and I'm quite confident that they'll do it tomorrow. The A's are a fine team but they look thoroughly whipped - and the Tigers are not presenting any obvious vulnerabilities that opponents can exploit. Even though they have a few injured players whose availability is questionable, and many others on their roster who have never played at this level of competition before, anyone watching their performance has to get the impression that they are a confident bunch who are very comfortable playing their game their way. Without any bonafide "monster superstar" players on their roster, they take a solid team approach to the sport, executing the basic plays just the way that they are supposed to. This has lent an almost scary sense of efficiency and methodicalness to watching them play over this past week. Even on the rare occasions when they've fallen behind after losing Game One to the Yankees, it seems like they hardly break a sweat in doing the things that need be done in order to regain the lead. And when it comes to playing from a position of advantage, they simply take care of business, sealing up the game in the late innings that has to be so discouraging for fans unfortunate enough to be stuck rooting for their opponents.

I've been in that position before. I vividly remember seething with resentment watching the Oakland A's of 1989 dismantle my beloved San Francisco Giants in the 1989 World Series, the "Earthquake Series" as it's commonly called due to the major catastrophe that struck just as Game 3 was about to get started at the old Candlestick Park. The Athletics of that year were merciless and wasted no time beating up on the Giants, winning in four straight after my favorites (led by the fiesty competitive first baseman Will "The Thrill" Clark) won a thrilling playoff series against the Chicago Cubs. What had promised to be a wonderful, epic Battle By The Bay turned into a forgettable washout for me. The Giants never got a lead from what I recall in a single game, and I never bothered to watch the videotapes that I faithfully recorded of each game.

The last two World Series undoubtedly stirred similar sentiments for fans of the Cardinals and Astros, each of which saw their teams get swept out unceremoniously in four games by the Red Sox and White Sox, respectively. It would be getting way ahead of myself to predict a Tigers sweep of either of this year's National League finalists, the Mets or the Cardinals who are currently tied 6-6 in the 8th inning as I type this. But the buzz is definitely in the air that this year's Tigers are en route to doing something that is utterly amazing: rebounding from a disgraceful 119-loss season in 2003 quickly enough to take their place as an elite team in 2006. I would dare say that major league sports have never seen anything like it. But if you go down the Detroit lineup, player by player, and consider the way they have been playing lately, at each position, there is no reason to think that they don't belong in that upper echelon. And what's even more exciting is that the franchise's talent pool is young and more prospects are on the way. The West Michigan Whitecaps, an A-level minor league affiliate of the Tigers, won the Midwest League championship back in September, and some of those players (especially Cameron Maybin) will be roaming the field at Comerica Park in seasons to come. What a great time to be a Tiger fan, after so many years of futility! I hope the San Francisco Giants can turn it around so quickly!

This is, I repeat, not a sports blog... but you can expect that baseball will make a return to this space in the near future!

Snow

It snowed today. The earliest recorded snowfall ever in Grand Rapids. It's October 12, for crying out loud! And the snow stuck to the ground - it was even blizzardy off and on throughout the day!

Simply ridiculous. Julie picked all the green tomatoes still on the vine this evening. Our flowers were speckled with snowflakes this morning.

Sensory Integration and Other Curiosities

My workday this morning began at Forest View Hospital, a mostly psychiatric facility, listening to a presentation on Sensory Integration. I was not familiar with the meaning of the term, but I've heard it mentioned from time to time in my professional work with children in residential treatment. One of our staff requested that I look into getting someone who could offer training to our agency, and when I saw that Forest View was sponsoring a free "Breakfast 'N Learn" event, I signed up right away.

The "breakfast" part was more like "coffee cake" as far as eats were concerned, but the talk was pretty interesting. It was offered by an Occupational Therapist who works at the Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital here in Grand Rapids. Basically, Sensory Integration is a set of practices aimed at helping people (primarily children) who have to deal with sensory processing dysfunctions. This link will give you the FAQs on SI if you want to learn more from someone much more knowledgeable about it than I am! But I was intrigued by their approach, which relies a lot on creating various sensory experiences that are aimed at changing brain responses to stimuli that the child typically has a hard time managing. An example of this is what's commonly referred to as "brushing" (even though the presenter said they are trying to discourage the use of that word, prefering the "Wilbarger Protocol" as its originator calls it) which involves pressing a specially-made hard-bristle brush into the skin on the arms and back. Another method discussed is the "Sensory Diet" which sounds interesting as an intervention that could be used with some of our clients, though we'd need to get a consulting Occupational Therapist to advise and evaluate. Which also leads me to point out that Sensory Integration is still a controversial and disputed treatment approach, especially by insurance companies and the mainstream medical and pharmaceutical industries. But I did make contact with a couple of people who could potentially offer some training on the subject, if our administrators, nurses and other clinicians think it's worth pursuing.

The rest of my day was spent tending to more mundane work matters - tracking staff training hours, finalizing the goals on my annual performance evaluation, revising our standard listening skills orientation class to cut it down from four hours to three hours with more emphasis on practical skill building, and considering some other upgrades to our physical management training and the CPR/First Aid certification classes that I will now serve as the primary coordinator and trainer for.

All of which leaves me little time or creative energy for less practical amusements such as emailing, theologizing or that kind of stuff. But it's all good. I did have a bit of time to make a mix CD of songs released this year for a co-worker. The bands featured on it are some I've mentioned here, like Pearl Jam, Yo La Tengo and Beck, as well as some other good stuff from performers like Gomez, Stereolab, Beth Orton, the Flaming Lips, Morningwood, Zero 7, Elvis Costello, David Gilmour and several others that I can't remember at the moment. It's a good enough mix CD that I'll probably make a copy for myself!

David Blakeslee Resigns from NARTH in Protest

I didn't know what I was going to write in my blog entry tonight, but I found something while doing a crawl through some headlines. On the RawStory.com website, I saw an item that read "Gay 'curer': Africans 'better off' as slaves." Curious as to what that was about, I clicked the link and found this article on the Southern Poverty Law Center website, which describes controversial statements made in an article (which I think has since been pulled) on the website of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH.) The material you'll find on that link is pretty remarkable but I'm not going to take the time to critique it here. (I will in the comments section if anyone wants to get into this subject with me.) What caught my attention was paragraph on page 2 of the SPLC article that reads as follows:

For now, Schoenewolf remains a member of NARTH's Science Advisory Committee. This committee has "the authority of opinion and the authority of their recommendations," over what is published by NARTH, according to former committee member David Blakeslee, who resigned in protest over the Schoenewolf essay Sept. 29.

"Whenever a scientific organization speaks inaccurately about science and conflates it with politics, the general public can be significantly misled and harmed," he wrote in his letter of resigation.

Interviewed by the Report, Blakeslee added: "Schoenewolf's article was so over the line that it justifiably outraged a number of people."

My only comment here is that I am glad that my namesake did the right thing and maintained the family honor. Way to go, Cousin Dave! I appreciate that he didn't do something that might have inadvertently caused my reputation to suffer through a case of mistaken identity, though I do wonder what he was doing on that committee in the first place...

Heretic's Guide to Eternity: Chapter One

Picking up where I left off on my review and comments on this book... (I am going to try to be more frequent in covering this book and not drag it out too long.)

Chapter One is titled "Jesus Beyond Christianity," tipping Burke's hand that he intends to spend little time defending the kind of institutionalized systems and practices that typically come to mind when "religion" is mentioned. He starts by invoking Dietrich Bonhoeffer's famous letter on "Religionless Christianity" and his questioning of the commonly understood limitations that the church has often put on people who try to relate to or understand God independent of clerical mediation.

I'm not a Bonhoeffer scholar but I do wonder sometimes what he would think of all the various ways that his thoughts and queries have been applied to ideas put forth by people who rightly or wrongly believe that "Christianity" needs to be transcended or even "left behind" to some extent.

Burke sees a "clash of monotheisms" rather than a more general "clash of civilizations" that is driving many of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, as well as both populist conceptions of the "war on terror" and jihadist campaigns initiated by Islamist zealots. Like him, I lament the loss of our great religious traditions as a motivating resource that we can safely point seekers toward if they want to obtain a better understanding of either the inner or outer world. Too often, it seems, the most prominent religious voices are those who seek to create defensiveness and animosity, sowing mistrust and escalating tensions as a way of binding adherents more tightly to the way of life or ideology that they are trying to propogate. These efforts are lumped together by Burke as "fundamentalisms" and I think that he is right to point out that these movements speak more authoritatively and claim an exclusivity on behalf of broader and older traditions than is their right.

I also appreciate his candor in this chapter. He is not afraid to expose some of the cliches that Christians often hear from the pulpit and elsewhere, such as, " it's about relationship, not religion," and he even has the nerve to challenge the sacred cow of narrow Christian exclusivism vis a vis other religions. He's comfortable with a pluralistic culture and I don't detect any overt pressures for him to claim a distinctively Christian "upper hand" that many emergent and almost all evangelical Christian writers would find practically obligatory to include in handling such questions. His approach is pretty refreshing, to me at least, as he honestly recognizes the limited perspectives of many Christian "founders" (including biblical sources) as well as the biases found in other religious traditions and that we ourselves are inevitably subject to as we do our own theological reflecting.

Burke points out that the world's religions aren't willing to engage in meaningful dialogue with each other (words written before Pope Benedict's recent attempt to initiate that process stirred up so much ire among his Muslim critics, and others.) He notes that universalism is still not officially or openly accepted by most of those "in charge" in official capacities within the larger organized religions. Despite being encumbered by its own irresolvable complexities and mind-benders, universalist ideas attract some who are dismayed by the animosity and harsh rivalries that seem to drive the most popular expressions of monotheism.

After dropping names like Bonhoeffer, Origen and Hans Kung, he cites figures more familiar to many of his readers: Bono and Moby. He also weaves in a little snip of James Fowler's "Stages of Faith" model and the familiar stories of Copernicus and Galileo, all part of his grand strategy of re-branding the label "heretic" as something not so bad after all. Fowler's ultimate stage of faith is "Universalizing," i.e. beyond morality or literalistic piety. He lays out the idea that the next phase of faith is to move beyond religion and basically points to Jesus as a primary role model, in that he did not tell his followers to start a religion, but rather issued a call to a journey.

So if religion is to be transcended, what is the purpose of theology? Burke is among those who see theology more as a construct, a means to communicate the gospel in a way that can be understood by contemporary audiences. And by gospel, I think Burke means something more like "the message that Jesus and his followers delivered" rather than a more doctrinal explanation of "how to get saved" or "God's plan for man."

Burke more or less sees a lot of problems stemming from the familiar common-sense understanding that church-based religion offers that which will most readily satisfy our spiritual needs. He, and many others, know that is not the case - indeed, it is often our negative experiences in church, with the clergy or with other formalized expressions of religion, that create enormous crises and relational difficulties for many of us. Whether or not Burke's book offers the best way out of this dilemma (we shall see about that as we proceed), I give him credit for raising the questions more or less unflinchingly.

Michigan Peace Network

My friend Julie is talking politics from her own unique perspective over on her blog, so I'm gonna give her a plug here so you can connect with her thoughts first.

The other thing I'm going to mention in this short post is kind of on the political side as well. It's a link to the Michigan Peace Network, a very new website that has been developed to bring various social action groups into better contact with each other. I'm just now getting into the site, which I log into primarily to maintain the IGE presence in this network, but which I look forward to exploring more as time goes on.

Now I'm off to work another marching band comptetition. This one is hosted by our school, and the weather is great, unlike the past couple of weekends. Last week, the band took first place (out of five schools) in its class, so we had some pretty nice hardware to bring home. Since we're hosting, we won't be getting any trophies today - we'll be giving them out instead. It'll be a long day (going from 1 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. or so) but a fun time. Of course, I'll have to find a way to tune in to the Tigers game, on radio at least, if we can't hook up a TV!

Talking Politics

Short entry for today, since I'm eager to get back to the Tigers-Yankees game, which Detroit currently leads 3-0! Awesome!! Wish I was at Comerica Park!!!

Anyway, we taped another episode of IGE Talks last night, the topic being the upcoming elections. Our guests featured several candidates for positions from the county to the national level (including the U.S. Congress.) We had Greens (Rodger Gurk), Libertarians (Bill Gelineau) and Democrats (Steve Kauffman, Melissa Casalina), most of whom face serious uphill challenges to beat the Republicans who mainly prevail around here (except for the one inner city district that will likely elect Robert Dean, who was among the people who gathered at IGE last night.)

The discussion was wide-ranging and pretty lively, and I think we will get a pretty good hour of public-access TV out of the 90 minutes or so that we recorded. We discussed the Michigan ballot initiatives, the gubernatorial race between Dick DeVos and Jennifer Granholm, and all manner of flaws and shortcomings that encumber our supposedly representative democracy. I would go into more detail about what we discussed, but I am really eager to get back to the game, so I will elaborate further if requested in the comment section, otherwise, just take my word for it - we had a great time and we just might put another talk together for early in November to cover some of the territory that time prevented us from exploring last night.

It's all coming back to me now...

Alright. I'm ready to get back into my writing groove again. Still feeling booked and busy, but the mental fog has cleared a bit and I feel like I have something a little more lucid to offer in this little dedicated space of mine.

I bought the new Beck album "The Information" the other day. He's now on my select list of automatic purchases when a new CD is released. I bought "Guero" last year right before I went on a trip to New York City and it was a crucial part of my soundtrack for the long bus ride that got me there. His music has a familiar sound to it that makes it almost automatically pleasing and satisfying, but he packs enough creativity and quirkiness into each song to hold up to closer scrutiny, especially if one enjoys unusual rhymes, wordplay and sonic blips and beeps that pop up in strange and amusing places.

Another bit of fun that I imagine was designed to serve as a counterweight to the tendency of today's audience to download their music is found in the packaging. The CD artwork is minimal - basically, a folded sheet of plain graph paper. But there's an insert sheet of shiny colorful stickers that can be used by the owner of the CD to create his or her own unique album cover. And actually, the sticker sheets themselves are collectible - there are four variants out there on the mass market, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out eventually that even more alternatives are out there somewhere... Kind of reminds me of the 7o's when LP packaging gimmicks reached a high point that I don't think they've ever attained since. This is when you had projects like Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" shrink-wrapped in blue plastic with artsy Hipgnosis-designed postcards inside, Led Zeppelin's "In Through The Out Door" album issued in a plain brown wrapper with one of four different album jackets concealed underneath, and an LP sleeve with paint-dots that would add tints to the artwork if water was applied to the surface.

And who can forget the Kiss "Love Gun" insert, one of those little "air popper" guns made out of cardboard that read "Bang!" when you whipped it quickly with a downward motion. (Kind of hard to describe, but this picture should help you get what I'm saying.)

I have not yet taken the time to create my one-of-a-kind Beck CD cover. In fact, I may preserve the sticker sheet as is and do my own thing on that invitingly blank sheet of graph paper.

More to come later, but first I'm going to go see if the Tigers are able to hold on to that 4-3 7th inning lead and beat the Yankees!

Give me another day... or two.

After a busy weekend and two 12-hour days at work in a row, I am simply not feeling much like doing the kind of in-depth analytical thinking and writing that it would take for me to do blogging justice to the topics I have in mind, so I'm going to beg your patience for another day, "anyone who happens to read this anticipating what I might have to say about any number of interesting things going on in our world." I have to work an early morning on Wednesday, but then I'll be out in mid-afternoon and my work-week will be just about done due to all the hours I put in this past weekend.

That will be nice!

Weekend in the E.R.

Before I cause anyone any worry from that headline, let me assure you that I'm in perfectly fine health and that my trips to the hospital emergency room were work-related, not due to any circumstances affecting me or my family.

Now that I've allayed your fears, I'll explain very briefly because it's quarter after three o'clock in the morning and I need to get to bed.

I didn't have much time for blogging this weekend. Primarily this was due to three things. 1) Marching band boostering activities. 2) I voluntarily carried the Crisis Team pager for work and got called in to help out on three different occasions. 3) I was caught up waiting in vain for the Detroit Tigers to win the American League Central Division. All that simply distracted me from doing much writing of any sort on the computer.

In between all that, I did visit a house that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, read some more Chomsky and Burke (Spencer, that is), watched a documentary about Henry Kissinger's Vietnam-era career as well as his debate this morning with Zbigniew Brzezinski about the Iraq War and the new Bob Woodward book, each of which will be covered in more depth later, and other stuff which will go unmentioned and probably ultimately forgotten...

My emergency room visits went until the wee hours on both Sunday and Monday mornings. One girl was having shortness-of-breath issues that our on-call nurse thought might be symptomatic of internal injuries suffered during a game of basketball (where she was elbowed in the mid-section a couple of times) and tonight, a different girl from a different program was having complications related to diabetes and needed to have some work done to get her blood sugar to a healthier level. Both nights visits began well after the sun went down and featured long hours of sitting there waiting and making feeble attempts at mumbly chit-chat with girls who were pretty bored, not really excited to be there and wondering if they really ought to have made the fuss that got them in that situation of waiting for "emergency" medical treatment to begin with.

All that to say that I'm pretty worn out and ready for bed, but first I had to burn off a little excess energy so I thought I'd do that by explaining why there's no blog entry since Friday night.
I hope my explanation is sufficient to satisfy your curiosity.