You probably already knew that times were rough in Camden, New Jersey, but this photo essay really drives home the sad reality. In a part of the nation chock full of towns that have seen much better days, the former home of RCA Victor has become the poster child for all that can go wrong when an industrial base evaporates.
Yet the ordinary ebb and flow of economic activity isn’t wholly to blame for Camden’s demise. Local politicians deserve a share of the blame, as this story makes clear:
The state invested $175 million in Camden, but most of the money went to a few big projects — like expanding a hospital and an aquarium, and building a law school — that were backed by leaders of the Democratic political machine that runs South Jersey. Much less went into neighborhood improvements like removing abandoned houses that shelter drug users and rats.
The aquarium project is a particularly sore point in Camden, as it was botched in truly ludicrous fashion. The original managers, under pressure from politicians to show Garden State pride in exchange for public funding, elected to have the aquarium highlight species that are native to New Jersey—a rather ugly lot, to be sure. (Over 90 percent of the tank space was reserved for native fish.) That decision spelled doom for hopes that the New Jersey State Aquarium might revive the troubled city:
For years the accepted wisdom about the mad public love for fish under glass meant that anybody could build an aquarium, and people would turn out in the millions. Then the New Jersey State Aquarium tampered with the formula by specializing in local fish.
There are a lot of brown fish in New Jersey waters. Brown flounder. Brown cod. Even much of the water is dun. The aquarium almost single-handedly brought down the national statistics for aquarium attendance and worse, it failed to prove the engine of redevelopment envisioned for this impoverished city across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.
“I mean, fish in New Jersey are not very interesting, they are kind of drab looking,” Wanda M. Bullion, a librarian in the Camden schools, said. “The Nintendo generation wants color, excitement — you have to get their attention.”
The aquarium did shift gears, but it never fulfilled its early promise. No longer a state property, it is now on its second private-sector owner, the same Georgia-based company that operates Dollywood. That means the state never came close to enjoying a decent return on its $52 million initial investment, not to mention the tens of millions more it dumped into renovations upon realizing that visitors didn’t want to see flukes and flounders. And, of course, the aquarium never did become the anchor for a planned $500 million waterfront improvement project that the optimists in Trenton once envisioned.
There’s no telling whether that $52 million-plus outlay might have helped reverse Camden’s fortunes if it had been spent more wisely. But I’m sure the city’s citizens wish they could find out.
Americans are not the only ones who question soccer’s emergence as the world’s favorite athletic pastime. The sport has also occasionally come under fire from anti-colonialists, who would prefer that their nations opt for the games that were popular before the Europeans came a-knocking with their guns and smallpox. The Tunisian historian Borhane Errais is one such opponent, having characterized the flowering of soccer as a “cultural genocide.” If he had his druthers—not to mention any small shred of political power—Errais would like for his fellow Tunisians to compete like their forefathers did:
In Ethnography of physical exercise in pre-colonial Tunisia, Errais mentions El Koura (a game like football in which two teams try to kick a ball into a goal), El Egfa (a game like hockey using wooden sticks, however the aim is not a goal but one’s coat), and La Rekla (a game in which competitors kick each other, resembling the French game Savate) in regard to the people’s exercise culture in pre-colonial Tunisia during the Ottoman rule.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any images or video of these traditional Tunisian sports, which perhaps hints at the fact that the country’s public doesn’t want to run around depriving each other of coats simply because an academic considers it patriotic. The best I could come up with was the vintage clip above, showing a savate match from France. Granted, there may be some prejudice at work in the film—the British do love nothing more than to highlight the wussiness of their Gallic neighbors to the south. But if “Pretty Pierre” was, indeed, a respected savate master in his time, I can understand why such a sport hasn’t flourished in modern Tunisia.
I’m churning out the third draft of a major project this morning, so just some music to get you through the a.m. I saw the guy above, Eric Lewis, play last night in the basement of the Red Rooster. The bloke who introduced him said that he was essentially a cross between Prince and Thelonious Monk, a description that made me chortle. But the dude won me over with his four-song set, which he played while standing up. This Nirvana cover was his last number, and he crushed it. He also managed the neat trick of snapping a piano string on the low end of the keyboard, which is a testament to the ferocity with which he plays. Worth checking out live if he ever swings by your town, though I can also understand why you might prefer less aggressive versions of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
It’s no secret that the world of thoroughbred racing now mimics the very worst aspects of professional cycling, with so many contests determined by pharmaceutical aids. Less well-known is the impact that performance-enhancing drugs have had on other animal-centric sports, where doping has become commonplace despite the relatively meager financial rewards on offer. Pigeon racing, for example, has experienced scandals in which trainers have used illicit drugs in order to encourage either molting or rapid weight loss. And in the ultra-competitive world of Chinese cricket fighting, officials must now go to pre-bout extremes to ensure that the combatants haven’t been doctored with dope:
The public house is designed to counter some of the more underhand tactics said to be popular among cricket trainers. The most sensational of these is doping, especially with ecstasy. Although a tripped-out cricket is likely to be a winning cricket, the drug’s real target is the opposition: crickets are acutely sensitive to stimulants. They rapidly detect when their adversary is chemically enhanced and they respond by turning tail, so forfeiting the contest.
Every cricket slated for Boss Xun’s casino spends at least five days undergoing detox in his public house. Part maximum security zone, part clinic, it was a four-room apartment stripped and retooled. Three rooms had multiply-padlocked steel gates, the fourth was a social space equipped with couch, chairs, TV and PlayStation, its whitewashed walls
decorated with colour close-ups—glamour shots—of crickets. Nobody drank or smoked. Two of the gated rooms were bolted storage areas lined with shelves on which I made out stacks of cricket pots. The third was unlocked and, like the casino, brightly lit. Boss Xun led us inside and I saw a long table and a row of men—owners and trainers there to care for their insects—each tending to a pot. Two assistants, men I recognized from the casino, were stationed across the table. One of them fetched the labelled pots from a cabinet behind him while the other closely observed the visitors. But what made the scene momentarily disorienting was that the men lined up at the table, silently intent on their crickets, were dressed identically in white surgical gowns and matching white masks.
Much more on the science of fighting crickets here. I, for one, cannot wait for the forthcoming publication of “The role of body size and fighting experience in predicting contest behaviour in the black field cricket, Teleogryllus commodus.”
The great pleasure in the clip above is not necessarily the music, but rather the bewildered faces of the German kids in the audience. Take a close look—most seem deeply unsure of how to react, yet still fully aware that they’re bearing witness to an early flicker of greatness. I wish I could dig something up regarding Kraftwerk’s view on blowing so many young Teutonic minds, but they’re pretty much the opposite of loquacious. Seriously, you ever read an interview with a member of Kraftwerk? Those man-machines are only slightly less reticent than J.D. Salinger.
Staying on the near-death experience theme from yesterday, I went and dug up one of my all-time favorite papers on the topic: Dorothy Counts‘ 1983 study of NDEs in New Guinea. Of particular note were the visions described by the Kaliai, a people who inhabit West New Britain. When they hallucinate about the Great Beyond in the midst of physical trauma, they tend to see a place that you and I might not consider so blissful:
In Andrew’s near-death experience, Jakob’s vision, and Wallace’s dream, the land of the dead is perceived as a happy place. It is, however, not the pleasant garden reported by modern Westerners who return from death. Instead it is a land which is described as having factories and wage employment. It has an appearance which reminds me of the view approaching Los Angeles from the air. This view of the land of the dead is consistent with the belief complex known as cargo belief. Briefly, cargo belief involves the assumption that whites may not be fully human but may be, instead, spirit people or returned ancestors. Their possible non-human status derives from their appearance, for spirit people are thought to be pale or white, and from their technological superiority. Many Melanesian people, including the Kaliai, seem to assume that humans do not create their culture. Instead, language, knowledge, and technology are given to humans by the spirits and/or the ancestors. This is true for whites as well as for Melanesians; therefore, the goods that whites possess must be created by the spirits/ancestors/or God (depending on the content of the particular belief system) in the land of the dead which is rich with divinely given technology. The rituals which develop from cargo belief are intended to persuade the spirits or God to give villagers the same goods and technological knowledge that they have already given whites. The Kaliai land of the dead, is a place of factories, automobiles, highways, airplanes, European houses and buildings in great numbers, and manufactured goods.
This notion of cultural overlay on NDEs deserves further study. I’d be curious, for example, how the visions of the religious contrast with those of non-believers. And do people who’ve rejected their families still see their parents and siblings beckoning them down the long tunnel of light?
Re-reading the Counts paper actually got me thinking about my own version of heaven, and how it would certainly sharply differ from that described in, say, Dante’s Paradiso. I’d like to go to a place where all of my gluttonous impulses can be satisfied with no consequence—Founders Dirty Bastard on tap and bowls the size of volcanoes stuffed with Planter’s Cheez Balls. Of course, the fact that this is what I’d expect is probably a good indication that I deserve no such reward.
Readers who’ve been checking this space for a while may remember that I have a longstanding fascination with near-death experiences and the ways in which they can alter lives. And so I was struck by this line from a recent Wall Street Journal piece about researchers’ continuing attempts to determine why, exactly, folks on the verge of death tend to have awe-inspiring visions of a culturally appropriate Great Beyond:
At least 15 million American adults say they have had a near-death experience, according to a 1997 survey—and the number is thought to be rising with increasingly sophisticated resuscitation techniques.
That’s an aspect of medical progress that I’d never before considered: As more and more people survive trauma, we’re going to have a lot more folks walking the streets who have been fundamentally changed by the hallucinations that often precede death. (For the record, I believe that these visions are the product of a neural mechanism that seeks to maximize a person’s odds of survival by limiting their pain and panic. But I could be totally wrong.) That means millions more people are going to take radically different directions in life upon recovering from their injuries. And that could really be a net positive for the nation, as those who’ve undergone near-death experiences are often predisposed to take risks that can lead to greatness. My favorite case in point: James Michener:
During World War II, at age 40, he was assigned to the South Pacific as a naval historian to investigate problems on various islands and write reports. Observing the interaction of two different cultures and inspired by the beautiful setting of the South Pacific, he began to make notes with no specific goal in mind. A near fatal landing at dusk, on the Tontouta Air Base in French New Caledonia, changed his life. He recalls in his autobiography, “As the stars came out and I could see the low mountains I had escaped, I swore: ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man.’ And despite the terrible braggadocio of those words, I understood precisely what I meant.”
I remain convinced that medical science will eventually figure out a way to simulate the effects of near-death experiences, in order to provide psychological therapy to people suffering from depression and malaise. But at present, as the WSJ notes, the only way we can do this is by either applying great gobs of pressure to the brain, or administering Special K. Tough to foresee the FDA approving either one of those methods.
Major projects and chores all piled up today, so please sustain yourself on one of the few songs in music history to explore the sexual tension that existed between James Bond and M’s secretary. Saucy.
Many moons ago, I found myself at a basement party where a band named after a Dungeons & Dragons creature provided the entertainment. The star of the show was a diminutive man with a bushy beard and a strange contraption draped across his chest. It looked to me like a badly wrought piece of armor, but that assumption was revealed to be flawed once he started rubbing two metal sticks across the garment’s surface. Oh, what beautiful noise that musician created simple by scratching himself vigorously. And ever since, I’ve counted myself a tremendous fan of the rubboard.
Adding to the instrument’s allure is its DIY backstory. Though obviously inspired by the freestanding washboard, a longtime fixture of so-called hot music, the draped-over-the-torso rubboard is of more recent vintage. Its alleged creator was none other than the legendary accordionist Clifton Chenier, whose brother Cleveland would go on to become the Paganini of the corrugated instrument. The story of Chenier’s prototyping process is told here:
Because [Cleveland Chenier] was employed at Port Arthur’s Gulf Oil plant, he easily located a metalworker who could bring that concept into being. As Clifton relates in a videotaped interview with Chris Strachwitz:
They used to tie a string around it, you know, and play it around the neck. So I went to a white fellow down there at the Gulf Refinery. I told him, I said, “You got some tin?”
He say, “Yeah.” So I got down on the ground, in the sad, and I drawed that rubboard.
And I said, “Can you make one like that? You know, with a collar plate?”
He say, “Sure, I can make one like that.” And he made one.”
Fabricated from a single piece of metal by a Cajun welder named Willie Landry (the “white man” of the preceding anecdote), it featured two smooth tabs designed to curve over each shoulder—what Chenier calls the “collar plate.” Supported in this fashion, the large corrugated rectangle that formed the main playing surface could hang freely over the entire front of the torso. Such an innovation offered a wider and longer board on which the percussionist could improvise his rhythmic strokes. It also liberated him from having to use one hand to grip the washboard or to steady it as it hung awkwardly from a string. Therefore, he could fully engage himself, using both his hands to scrape the board while he dance and weaved with the music.
I like this tale not only because I love me some rubboard, but also because it offers a intriguing model of innovation—one in which there is no schism between inventor and end user. This seems to be common practice in the world of music, perhaps because there’s a lot of overlap in the mental skills employed by musicians and engineers. I have no doubt, for example, that Les Paul could’ve built some mighty fine bridges if he hadn’t devoted his energies to making solid-body electric guitars instead. But it’s a rarer feat in other creative realms—I don’t believe that Henry Mill, for example, had any intention of using the first typerwriter to bang out the Great English Novel.
The wider availability of squirrel species has not been enough to buoy squirrel hunting participation. According to the Game Commission’s annual game-take survey, the number of Pennsylvania squirrel hunters dropped from 615,000 in 1983 to 150,000 in 2009. Hunters’ take of squirrels plummeted from 2.2 million to 635,000 over the same span.
“It’s not because of a shortage of squirrels,” Edwards said. “And from a public land standpoint, there is lots of room to hunt them. There is opportunity, but we’re not promoting it. It’s a great way to start kids.”
For those squirrels that do have violent run-ins with hunters, however, there is hope for rehabilitation should they survive the experience. The wounded critter must hope that they end up in the care of Maria Strouse, a North Carolina woman who operates a rehab organization for squirrels. Though she spends thousands of dollars each year nursing her tiny patients back to health, she strongly recommends against keeping squirrels as pets. It seems the rodents don’t always make their appreciation known:
“I have no squirrel pets,” Strouse says. “And by the end of squirrel season I can’t wait until they are gone. They scratch, and when they go into the release cage they bite, don’t want anything to do with me. When they reach sexual maturity, they can get very aggressive. My hands are always sore from hand-feeding these guys. They tear you up. They jump on my head, they climb down my face, and I have to wear goggles all the time.”
The self-proclaimed “Agent Squirrel” certainly gets points for stoicism. After a few days of getting our flesh torn up by ungrateful squirrels, we’d definitely be looking to turn our charges into stroganoff.
If you haven’t already, be sure to hit your local polls before the day is through. I’ll be taking Microkhan Jr. into the voting booth this afternoon, and I’ll let him pull the lever at the end (though he won’t actually get to make any ballot selections).
For the umpteenth time since I turned 18, I will once again be voting in a state and district where there’s not a single close contest. New York’s gubernatorial race was decided long ago, and the odds of my 20-term congressman getting ousted are between nil and zero. As a result, I’m seriously considering casting a couple of protest votes this time, opting for third-party candidates whose entire campaigns are basically just exercises in futility. But I keep on asking myself, What’s the logic in protest voting? I have no expectation that any third-party candidates will garner enough votes to nudge the victors’ behavior. And I fear that most of these candidates have ulterior motives for running—namely to heighten public awareness of their personal brands, with an eye toward cashing in once the election season is over.
I’d be curious to hear from the Horde: Have you ever cast a protest vote? If so, why? And if not, do you believe that protest voting is deeply illogical, and a waste of one’s democratic rights?
Much is made of the way in which the Soviets scored themselves some really nice artworks in the waning days of World War II, scooping up the priceless paintings and statues that the Germans had looted on their doomed march toward Moscow. But our side had some sticky fingers, too, to the great consternation of Hungary. Less than a week before V-E Day, American soldiers stumbled across a Bavarian train that was carrying The Crown of St. Stephen, the symbol of royal Hungarian authority since the early 11th century. Aware that the Iron Curtain was about to descend on the traditional Land of the Magyars, we spirited the crown back to these shores and locked it up in Fort Knox—not because our government had any designs on selling the artifact, but rather because we knew that it would eventually come in handy as a bargaining chip. Even in May 1945, the realities of Cold War politics were well-known in the halls of power.
The theft stung Hungary not only because of the crown’s sentimental value, but also because the object actually had legal status. A 1965 piece on the controversy explains:
The crown was always far more than a piece of jewelry, as most crowns in the kingdom were. It had what was called a “legal personality,” manifested, among other things, in such traditions as the courts of justice pronouncing verdicts “in the name of the holy crown,” rather than in the name of the king.
We did eventually return the crown while Hungary was still under Communist rule, in exchange for little more some warm feelings. That seems like a pretty weak haul, given that we initially refused to exchange the crown for an actual human life.
I also wonder whether the Hungarians ever went so far as to plan a rescue operation. Perhaps they could have succeeded where Auric Goldfinger failed.
Though my gambling amounts to little more than the occasional hand of $5 blackjack while in Vegas, I’m fascinated by the work of oddsmaking. It takes a special kind of genius to create a system in which the house will always win in the long run, though by just enough to preserve the game’s entertainment value. Adding to the challenge is that constant interference of players who constantly probe these systems for weaknesses—if you’re not careful enough when writing the house rules, a bunch of math whizzes from Miami are bound to take you to the cleaners.
But there needn’t be a wizard behind the curtain in order to develop “perfect” betting systems. This has happened organically for centuries, presumably through years’ worth of trial and error. That’s the lesson I took away from reading Clifford Geertz’s Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, a true classic of anthropology. In attempting to describe how this bloody “sport” reinforces Bali’s strict social hierarchy, Geertz describes the various types of wagers that are placed on cockfights. These basically break down into two categories: “center” bets, which are between the bird owners and are governed by official rules, and side bets between spectators, which are completely unregulated. Geertz found that despite this wagering chaos, the center and side bets worked in tandem to create the sort of system that Vegas casinos consider ideal:
The higher the center bet, the more likely the match will in actual fact be an even one. In a large-bet fight the pressure to make the match a genuinely fifty-fifty proposition is enormous, and is consciously felt as such. For medium fights the pressure is somewhat less, and for small ones less yet, though there is always an effort to make things at least approximately equal, for even at fifteen ringgits (five days work) no one wants to make an even money bet in a clearly unfavorable situation. And, again, what statistics I have tend to bear this out. In my fifty-seven matches, the favorite won thirty-three times over-all, the underdog twenty-four, a 1.4 to 1 ratio. But if one splits the figures at sixty ringgits center bets, the ratios turn out to be 1.1 to 1 (twelve favorites, eleven underdogs) for those above this line, and 1.6 to 1 (twenty-one and thirteen) for those below it. Or, if you take the extremes, for very large fights, those with center bets over a hundred ringgits the ratio is 1 to 1 (seven and seven); for very small fights, those under forty ringgits, it is 1.9 to 1 (nineteen and ten).
The paradox of fair coin in the middle, biased coin on the outside is thus a merely apparent one. The two betting systems, though formally incongruent, are not really contradictory to one another, but part of a single larger system in which the center bet is, so to speak, the “center of gravity,” drawing, the larger it is the more so, the outside bets toward the short-odds end of the scale. The center bet thus “makes the game,” or perhaps better, defines it.
Somewhere up there, Charles K. McNeil is smiling at the genius of Balinese bookmakers. Though maybe not if he was into animal rights.
It felt weird leaving an abysmal Sidney Sheldon mini-series atop the blog for the weekend, so let me instead outro with a brief poem from the latest issue of Granta—one of the publication’s best in recent memory. It is by the Peshawar-based writer Hasina Gul, and translated from Pashto:
We grow up
but do not comprehend life.
We think life is just the passing of time.
The fact is,
life is one thing,
and time something else.
Words to chew over this weekend, as we temporarily assume whole new identities. (I’m gonna be Darth Vader; Microkhan Jr. is gonna be Spider-Man.)
This week’s Bad Movie Friday entrant bends the rules a bit: it’s actually a network mini-series, a once glorious TV genre that has sadly fallen out of favor in the modern era. Rage of Angels: The Story Continues was one of many Sidney Sheldon potboilers to appear on the small screen during the 1980s, and it possesses the same overcooked quality as the cafeteria carrots of yore. As you can see in the clip above, the writing is big on emphatic declarations uttered by gun-wielding members of the global elite. This vintage New York takedown cites some other howlers:
I will forever treasure one snide line: “I’d kill you, Margot, if you hadn’t already died of face-lift poison.” But it won’t make up for “I gave you a son, I can’t give you a home.” Or “I cry for Catherine, my tiny, wounded Madonna.” Or “It’s strange, Adam—the places we remember best are the ones we never see.” Or “I’ve been unfaithful to my life. I’ve used our love as a substitute for living.” Or “What’s left after tears, Jeremy?” Followed by “I don’t know. Dignity, maybe.”
And then:
You will think that the first fifteen minutes of Rage of Angels: The Story Continues flaunts the worst acting you’ve ever seen on prime-time television, but that’s because you haven’t watched the next three hours and 45 minutes.
Terrible acting and writing, perhaps, but you can’t argue with the film’s morals, as articulated in our chosen clip: It is, indeed, not right to kill the vice-president.
In the course of researching the controversial career of Filipino basketball star Asi Taulava, I decided to look into the hoops scene in his native Tonga. That line of inquiry led me to this account of the sport that Tongans describe as “basketball,” but really resembles something else entirely:
Basketball in Tonga is not like American basketball. It is more similar to netball which I don’t really know anything about. Tongan Basketball is played on a field, there is no dribbling and the hoops do not have backboards…The field is divided in three sections with two goal areas around the hoops. The players are assigned to a section and they can only play in that section. Once a shooter has indicated that they will shoot and are in the goal area, the defense must let them shoot with no interference…It is only played by girls and fakaleiti’s (semi-flamboyant to flamboyant gay guys).
That last part intrigued me, as Tongan culture has always struck me as deeply conservative—not to mention very macho. Yet that line suggests that gay men have a defined role in Tongan society, one that gives them an identity similar to that of the hjiras of South Asia.
Yet that identity has not come easily, as evidenced by the evolution of Tonga’s annual Miss Galaxy pageant. This fakaleiti competition has become an international phenomenon in recent years, to the consternation of some Tongans who remember when such pageants were a cruel form of entertainment. From a great academic study of Miss Galaxy (sadly paywalled):
Fakaleiti pageants appear to have emerged in the 1970s. The early pageants probably resembled the lesser pageants of today in size and level of organization. They gradually gained notoriety, until 1991, when the first Miss Galaxy pageant was held in the capital’s only international hotel. Along with increasing popularity and visibility came the greater respectability and assertiveness—an evolution that some Tongans bemoan. Finding that fakaleiti today “take themselves too seriously,” some Tongans long for prior incarnations of hte pageant when “it was all a good laugh” at the expense of the fakaleiti.
I recently bought a bevy of vinyl off a guy in my building. He just showed up at my door with a crate full of records, which I purchased for a relative song after giving the contents only a cursory glance. Turns out there was a lot of junk in there—I am now the not-so-proud owner of two Barbara Streisand albums—but also some unbelievable gems. Among them is Esther Phillips’ From a Whisper to a Scream, which I’ve been playing for Microkhan Jr. every chance I get. Just a classic slab of audio, and one that has led me to start exploring the underrated Phillips’ full catalog.
That exploration also led me to this rare 1973 interview, in which Phillips talks about something I’d never really thought about: the emotional difficulties of performing songs that hit too close to home:
“For the first time”, she says happily, “I’ve been able to select the songs myself. As a result, they are all things I really dig personally and many of them, like “Baby I’m for Real” and “To Lay Down Beside You” are things I’ve wanted to cut for years and never had the opportunity to. All the material relates to everyday life and people, and I can relate to it all myself, too.”
That probably accounts for the great feel that comes across on her Kudu work but on no other recording is that more evident than the more evident that the controversial “Home Is Where The Hatred Is” from the “Whisper” LP which proved a big seller in the States when it was issued as Esther’s first single for the label. Its stark lyrics are made that much more startling when one considers that the fight against drug addiction was one of the toughest problems that dogged Miss Phillips’ career until she finally beat it with a spell of intensive hospital treatment.
As she put it: “Creed Taylor (from Kudu) asked me to do the song but, naturally, I went through quite a lot of emotional changes before I agreed to do it. After all, although everyone knew about the problems I’d faced, singing the song was just like being interviewed in public about it all. Yeah, I really didn’t want to do it – fact is, I continually postponed recording it and it was the very last song we did for the album. I’ve now gotten used to the song after having sung it continually on stage, though.”
I have to wonder if other recovering musicians have had similar reactions to recording confessional songs about their misbehavior. Guess I should probably read that Anthony Kiedis memoir to find out whether he broke down while doing “Under the Bridge.”
I’ve been dealing with some mega writer’s block these past few days, which has got me wondering whether it’s possible for someone to spontaneously lose their most well-developed skills. That’s obviously true in the athletic realm, where the dreaded Steve Blass Disease has ended more than a few baseball careers. The problem with such vexed athletes is fairly obvious, and best summarized by a quote from Bull Durham: “Don’t think, Meat. Just throw.” An egghead description is here:
Motor learning may initially rely on more explicit and prefrontal areas, but after extended practice and expertise, shift to more dorsal areas, but thinking about the movement can shift activity back to the less skilled explicit areas. Although many explanations may be derived, one could argue that these athletes show that even when years of practice has given the implicit system an exquisitely fine tuned memory for a movement, the explicit system can interfere at the time of performance and erase all evidence of implicit memory.
But how does this apply to more intellectual pursuits, in which motor skills are subordinate to less tangible assets such as creativity, tonal sense, and the comprehension of logic? Is the key to overcoming mental blocks the ability to extinguish conscious thought about process? That doesn’t seem right, as creating something worthwhile—whether a piece of prose, a musical composition, or a really solid PowerPoint presentation—would seem to require lots and lots revision, and thus a degree of self-awareness that athletes (who only get one crack at each action) don’t really need. But I do understand how “overthinking” can interfere with intellectual output—it’s obviously detrimental to obsess over how each and every line, note, or slide will be received.
If anyone can offer advice on how to snap the brain back to its former state, those tips would be greatly appreciated. Just, please, no suggestions that I give up the Dragon Stout. Ain’t gonna happen.
I’ve previously examined the economics of Nigerian filmaking, a business that rewards both the prolific and the extremely cost-conscious. The industry’s margins are typically razor thin because producers begin with the assumption that 70 percent of each movie’s revenue will end up in the hands of pirates. The trick to longevity, then, is to create lots of films that enjoy massive initial demand—this isn’t an environment in which movies are permitted to build audiences over time. And so Nigerian fillmakers are always keen to develop stars, whose movies always open solidly due to their fans’ support.
Among those essential stars, few are more well-known than the comedic team of Paw Paw and Aki, two Little People actors who have become Nollywood’s public face throughout much of Africa. Several years ago, in fact, the duo accidentally caused a riot in Sierra Leone after they failed to show for a promised engagement; the promoter tried to sub in local talent, to ill effect. And when the Nigerian Export Promotion recently decided to put together a series of trade missions aimed at bolstering the country’s film industry, it naturally tapped Aki and Paw Paw to spread the word to Southern Africa.
Given how inseparable these two artists have been during their careers, it’s baffling to learn that Nigeria’s government recently decided to give Paw Paw the shaft. In doling out its version of the Kennedy Center Honors, the Lagos administration selected Aki while ignoring his equally famous partner. This is tantamount to giving a lifetime achievement Oscar to one Coen brother, but not the other. (I tried using an analogy that invoked the Paul brothers, but that seemed disrespectful to Aki and Paw Paw.)
Paw Paw can take some comfort, however, in the fact that the National Honour Awards appear to have rather bizarre criteria. Among those honored with Aki was Patricia Etteh, a disgraced politician best known for treating the Nigerian treasury like a personal piggy bank. A photograph of her holding her prize will someday be Nigeria’s equivalent of this.
The mere act of flicking on a light switch is something that can’t be taken for granted on the Navajo reservation, where tens of thousands of homes still lack electricity. Nowhere else in America do so many live in darkness, a fact driven home by this eye-popping stat:
More than 18,000 households on the reservation are waiting in the dark. According to the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, the largest utility provider on the reservation, that number accounts for 75 percent of all U.S. households without electricity.
So who’s to blame for this failure to provide basic infrastructure? Though New Mexico’s senior senator says that the federal government has yet to deliver on a promised $60 million for Navajo electrification, I have to think that the tribal government hasn’t exactly acted with alacrity. The Navajo Nation Council appears to be thoroughly corrupt, as evidenced by the fact that 75 percent of its sitting members have been charged with abusing discretionary funds.
Such official misbehavior is sadly nothing new in Navajo country: Between 1989 and 1999, for example, three Navajo Nation presidents were bounced from office due to ethics violations. Yet the culture of graft persists, in part because of Navajo resistance to the meddling of federal authorities—a posture that is partly understandable due to obvious historical tensions. Many Navajo leaders who’ve been called out for corruption have argued that their actions were defensible according to tribal customs, which permit the acceptance of ceremonial gifts and the appropriation of communal money when emergencies arise. David Eugene Wilkins, a leading expert on Indian politics, points out that Navajo tradition actually has some tolerance for arrangements that the American legal system considers corrupt:
Should Navajo politicians be held to the same ethical standards as state or federal officials? Is the corruption and scandal that brought down Arizona Governors Fife Symington and Evan Meacham comparable to that which toppled Peter MacDonald?
These are important questions, particularly if it is true, as tribal leaders ad their constituents often insist, that Indian nations adhere to different cultural values than their non-Indian neighbors. But it is true for another reason. Since the Navajo Nation receives much of its funding from the federal government, many Washington officials insist that Navajo politicians must adhere to American ethical standards whether or not they clash with traditional Diné cultural standards.
It’s always tough to modernize political systems when a society places a high value on tradition. That said, I’d be willing to bet that many of those 18,000 Navajos who exist without electricity wouldn’t mind a little more financial rigor among their elected officials. Slush funds tend to pay for expensive steaks and golf outings, rather than for turning on the lights.
Sorry about dropping the blogging ball this week. The quick trip to Florida made things rough, and I just remembered that the Grand Empress and I have a pressing appointment in Sunnyside today. When this post goes live, then, I’ll likely be on the 7 train, looking out at Five Pointz.
The few Uzbek filmmakers who remain manage to produce their art with what can charitably be descried as a modicum of resources:
Most of the Uzbek hits have been made for $30,000 to $50,000, and earned three to five times as much. The profits seem astounding for a country with an average monthly income of less than $50, where copyright piracy is ubiquitous, and most of the box-office revenues come from just a handful of cinemas in Tashkent.
It takes about two or three months to make a movie. Locations are few, and characters are easily recognizable. “The good guy must always be good, and the bad guy real bad,” said Ruslan Yarullin, a cinematographer and film editor. “Folks like love stories with twisty plots, discotheques, rapes and murders.”
Often a pop star or two, regardless of acting skills, play the leads – as they have money to invest, buzz to build and fans who will pay to see them on screen.
As you might imagine, I’m already thinking of ways to do post about the Uzbek pop-star scene.
I’m scrambling to catch up after the whirlwind Florida jaunt, so today’s polymathism shall consist of a mere reference back to an oldie-but-goodie: My 2003 Slate piece about the veracity of Eric Rudolph‘s nutritional claims. The serial bomber stated that he managed to live on the lam for five-plus years by dining on North Carolina’s cornucopia of lizards. But the calorie math just doesn’t add up:
The region’s most abundant species are classified as skinks and include the five-lined skink. These slender critters rarely grow longer than a man’s hand and can weigh as little as a tenth of an ounce. Lizard meat provides about 50 calories per ounce, putting it on par with chicken. Assuming that Rudolph needed to consume a bare minimum of 1,500 calories per day—a very generous assumption, since winter survival is particularly grueling—he’d need to dine on nearly two pounds’ worth of lizards each day. That’s somewhere between 100 and 300 skinks, which means he’d have to spend virtually every waking moment turning over rocks and peering into rotted logs.
Back soon with posts on coin counterfeiting, Tongan politics, and the world’s most dangerous airports.
Doing a quick trip down to Florida for some reporting, so either working or traveling for a short bit. Will try and use some downtime to read this 1831 tract, which bears one of the most irresistible titles in all of literature: A narrative of the wreck of the Minerva: whaler of Port Jackson, New South Wales, on Nicholson’s shoal, 24° S. 179° W..
Thanks for Microkhan Jr.’s increasing obsession with all things mechanical, I recently found myself trolling through the hundreds of transit-related videos on this YouTube channel. It is quite an amazing collection, the handiwork of a New York City metrophile who apparently spends the bulk of his leisure time filming buses and subways. And among his many clips is this gem from a 2008 Metropolitan Transit Authority “roadeo,” a contest in which bus drivers show off the skills they’ve developed while navigating Gotham’s perilous streets.
The clip piqued my interest in the culture of roadeos, which are far more competitive than you might imagine. The sport, in fact, has its own Hall of Fame, honoring such landmark figures as Robert “The Big Z” Zuzworsky and Brentt Mackie. Who is likely to someday join this legendary drivers in the roadeo pantheon ? My money is on Rex Schrock, an up-and-coming Teamster from Nevada, who has won his regional roadeo for four years straight. (Photographs from his latest triumph here.) Though he has yet to triumph at the national championship, it should only be a matter of time. I recommend that you get on the bandwagon now.
Yet there is one thing that bugs me about America roadeos, and that’s the fact that the customer-service aspect is not compulsory. Such is not the case in New Zealand, where roadeo champs must prove that they can be calm in the face of adversity:
Nimon & Son driver Barrie Gledhill travels to Dunedin today to represent Hawke’s Bay for the third time in the annual Tranzqual Bus Roadeo.
Nimon operations manager Ian Hughes is confident Mr Gledhill will do well for the Havelock North company. “Barrie was the winner of the Commercial Road Skills Award for Excellence in Customer Service,” he said.
Mr Gledhill is looking forward to defending his customer-service title. “Last year we role-played different situations,” he said. “There was a man who had lost his wallet, a dazed and confused passenger and a lady who was late and screaming at me.”
There is something rather Buddhist about this challenge, for the only way to shrug off such provocations is to free one’s self of ego. And that must surely be difficult for roadeo champs accustomed to widespread adulation.
There’s a great scene in Robert Altman’s The Player in which Tim Robbins’ slithery movie producer stops a writer who’s in the middle of pitching a script idea. The poor scribe, it seems, made the mistake of implying that his proposed film would feature a TV star in the main role. This notion makes Robbins scrunch his brow in puzzlement, thereby forcing the writer to backtrack and explain that the producer must have misheard him—his project would not cast a TV star, but rather have a movie star playing a TV star. This clarification greatly pleases Robbins.
That exchange elucidates the scant regard that Hollywood gives to stars of the small screen. Yet every once in a while, the industry tries to take a hot TV commodity and turn him or her into a bona fide cinematic artist. More often than not, the results are disastrous—a sad fact made abundantly clear in this week’s Bad Movie Friday entrant, the atrocious 1987 Scott Valentine vehicle My Demon Lover.
For those too young to remember the Reagan Years, Valentine was a late addition to the cast of Family Ties, playing Justine Bateman’s roughneck-cum-bohemian boyfriend. NBC tried to spin off his character, Nick, in a sitcom of its own, but that idea never got past the pilot stage. Still, Hollywood thought that Valentine’s Stallone-like good looks made him worth a gamble, and thus cast him in My Demon Lover as “a homeless street musician becomes a demon when sexually aroused.” Nothing good came of this decision, as explained here:
The best that can be said for ”My Demon Lover” is that the film makers have worked overtime shuffling characters, locations and wrinkled latex masks with horns. Mr. Valentine, who appears in the masks, plays a supposedly charming vagrant who has been mysteriously cursed and appears to borrow almost all of his screechy, importunate mannerisms from the comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, who handles them a lot better. At other times Mr. Valentine merely widens his eyes and pretends, none too convincingly, to be adorable.
[No one] pays heed to the larger implications of [Valentine]’s condition or worries unduly when he turns into a large, motherly woman whose head is full of yellow goo. The settings range from Greenwich Village, where the spunky Denny has her cluttered career-girl apartment, to Central Park, where the action moves to a huge, ominous hilltop castle. By the time the castle appears, it seems no less irritating or misplaced than anything else.
Valentine’s career took a nosedive from there, especially after the cancellation of Family Ties. Still, I’m sure he’s earned an extremely comfortable living in years hence, playing supporting roles in such C-grade fare as Black Scorpion. Unlike Microkhan, then, Valentine probably doesn’t stand around the supermarket wondering whether he should splurge on the can of beans that costs 30 cents more. So I guess he wins.
The current issue of Granta contains an enlightening Jane Perlez piece about Muhammad Ali Jinnah (right), Pakistan’s founding father. In making the argument that Jinnah’s vision for the nation has been grossly misinterpreted, Perlez notes that it’s easy enough to determine where a Pakistani official resides on the political spectrum. All you have to do is take a look at the portrait of Jinnah that hangs above his desk, as she did when visiting a friend at his Peshawar office:
Government offices are important symbols in Pakistan—size, furniture, scope of retinue. This one was handsome, a large room set off a broad veranda in the ersatz Moghul-era quadrangle of pink stucco. A white mantelpiece signaled the dignity of the office holder. Above it hung a portrait, more a sketch in dingy brown, of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The face was gaunt and elderly—an aquiline nose, sunken cheeks, unforgiving mouth. A peaked cap high off his forehead and a plain coat buttoned to the neck gave the aura of a religious man…
A few months later I returned to see my friend. Same signing of documents, same clerk, different portrait above the mantel. The new visage showed a serious young man with a full head of dark hair, an Edwardian white shirt, black jacket and tie, alert dark eyes. What happened? I asked.
“I would like to see Jinnah brimming with life,” my friend said. He did not want to be reminded of the clerical image that is now considered politically correct in many places throughout Pakistan.
This passage got me thinking about the ways in which visual representations of major political figures shape our perception of their intentions—often incorrectly, and by design of those in power. So much of a nation’s identity is bound up in how we understand its mission statement, as crafted by the people who brought the enterprise together in the first place. But those founders were inevitably human, and their motives and ideals were often murkier than we’d care to admit. As Perlez points out in her piece, Jinnah never quite hashed out how the Islamists would be incorporated into Pakistan; he used their lingo to gain support for the nation’s creation, but he didn’t give enough thought to how they would mesh with his vision for a tolerant society. And he was far too quick to bargain away vast swaths of territory, without giving much thought to how those missing chunks would poison Pakistani politics down the road.
But we do not want our national heroes to be flawed figures. And so we depict them as full of confidence and valor—and, most important, as embodiments of the values that we’ve come to embrace in the decades or centuries since their passing. This may seem harmless enough, but the sad case of Pakistan must give us pause. Artists have warped Jinnah’s visage to present us with a figure who bears little resemblance to the brilliant idealist who hoped that Pakistan might follow Turkey’s lead in blending modern and traditional values. Or as Perlez puts it:
The Jihadistan that looms on the horizon as a the future of Pakistan, a likely compromise between extremist groups and the army, would not have a place for Jinnah today.
Can anyone think of other major political figures whose artistic representations now give us a skewed sense of their beliefs?
Just one of those dour days here in Atlah, with the brain creaking along so slowly that the firing of each synapse sounds like the bursting of a soap bubble. Classic ZZ Top will have to see you through for the moment. And if you have a few spare moments over lunch, it’s worth checking out this primer on what to expect from Burma’s upcoming elections. One major fly in the junta’s repressive ointment? The long-running ethnic insurgencies that run shadow governments along Burma’s borders:
The major setback for the military regime in this process has been its inability to disarm the ethnic groups, transform them into border guards and make them contest as political parties. Despite repeatedly postponing the deadlines for this process, the regime has neither disbanded them legally nor resorted to military confrontation with these groups. It is widely believed that China had a role to play in mediating between the regime and the ethnic groups especially in the borders with China. The regime has put this issue in the cold storage with a view to revive it after the dust settles down after the elections. However the military regime has withheld the election in some townships of these troubled areas in the states of Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon and Shan (including four townships in the Wa self administered division) for the reason that “the election will not be held in several constituencies where free and fair elections could not be held”.
My heart goes out to contemporary jai-alai players who must constantly answer a rather irritating question from casual observers: “Isn’t your sport fixed?” The stars of the circuit have gone to great lengths to assure the public of jai-alai’s credibility, but it’s still tough to overcome some of the extreme shadiness that dogged the sport in the ’70s and ’80s.
Yet although many players have been nabbed for throwing games at the behest of organized crime, the greatest scandal ever to rock the world of jai-alai had little to do with the athletes themselves. Rather, it was all about a group of mathematical geniuses recognizing that the sport’s entire betting system was poorly constructed. In 1979, Sports Illustrated broke down exactly how an organization known as the Miami Syndicate used its considerable brainpower to outsmart the house:
In doubles (the same rules apply to singles, but doubles account for nine or 10 of the 12 games on an evening’s program), pair No. 1 plays pair No. 2 to begin each game. The winners of the opening point then play pair No. 3 and so on down the line to the No. 8 pair. In most games, after each of the eight pairs has had a turn on the court, a second round begins in which the winners get two points, instead of one, for each win. The first team to get seven points wins the game.
Analyses of trifecta combinations show certain numbers rarely win. For example, an $18 box bet on 678—which covers every possible combination of 6, 7 and 8—is a sucker bet; 678, 768 and 876 almost never come in, because those teams enter the game so late. The Miami Syndicate left sucker numbers out of its basic betting system in favor of combinations that mostly involved players on teams numbered 1 through 5.
The Courant‘s Driscoll has calculated that the Syndicate won about $1.12 for every $1 bet, a 12% profit. By comparison, an average bettor gets a return of only 82¢ for every $1 wagered’, an 18% loss…
Systems betting isn’t illegal, nor, incredibly enough, were the extraordinary privileges granted members of the Miami Syndicate by the Hartford fronton. They were given their own ticket puncher, their own cashier and access to computer printouts of the betting every 90 seconds while wagering was under way. Such printouts are not usually available to the public. Mark Wiesenfeld, the assistant mutuels manager, provided the printouts because, as he later testified, he thought they were “public documents.” When Hartford Jai Alai stopped Wiesenfeld from doing this, John DeWees, a ticket puncher, began providing the information.
Having the betting printouts gave the Miami Syndicate a huge advantage. With access to them, the Miami Syndicate immediately knew what other bettors were doing. The printouts, which showed how many bets had been placed on each of the 336 trifecta combinations, allowed Syndicate members to stay away from the heavily played numbers and to bet on those that were less popular. Moreover, as it turned out, the printouts permitted the Miami Syndicate to spot other systems bettors and drive them out of the game by wagering so heavily on their numbers that the payoff on them was minimal. The Miami Syndicate had such total control and such an acute sense of how to “tune” the odds that members were even able to bet just enough on a trifecta so that a win would pay less than 300 to 1. By keeping the payoff to less than 300 to 1, Syndicate members could pocket all their winnings, instead of having the IRS withhold 20%, as it automatically does on all winning tickets on payoffs of 300 to 1 or more.
The top members of the Syndicate earned roughly $7 million a year, which is nothing to sneeze at. But they’re probably kicking themselves now for not applying their math skills to even more lucrative endeavors that reward the ability to play the angles.
Of course, the defenders of jai-alai’s credibility are not without their own math nerds.
The Indonesian capital is still reeling in the wake of a deadly gang brawl outside a city courthouse. As in most cases of Jakartan gang violence, the young men involved belonged to rival ethnic groups, each with close ties to local politicians who rely on thuggery to manage their constituencies. In fact, it appears that these politicians may have instructed police to take no action when the gangs started amassing for the fight; as one Indonesian criminologist noted, the gangsters “would not dare appear in front of hundreds of police officers, flaunting sharp weapons and firearms, unless they are confident that nobody can touch them.”
The means by which these gangs control vast swaths of Jakarta with their patrons’ blessing is detailed in this essential 2007 paper, a close study of the deceptively named Batawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR):
The organizational backbone of the FBR is its gardu structure of small security posts, usually situated near intersections, markets or bus terminals. Currently the FBR has approximately 185 gardu spread throughout the greater Jakarta region, with the highest concentration being in Cakung. Emulating the territorial command structure of the Indonesian military as well as the pos siskamling neighborhood surveillance system setup by the New Order in the 1990’s, individual gardu are coordinated by a district commander who in turn reports directly to FBR’s central board. Gardu are led by a coordinator and an advisory council, who are given a mandate by the central leadership to seek funds and take action against drug traffickers, alcohol vendors and entertainment venues considered immoral.
One of the main roles of the FBR therefore, has been to establish itself as a quasi-state in the traditional Betawi homeland areas of East and Central Jakarta. “We work with the police, army and government as long as it doesn’t conflict with Sharia…We are ready to join together with the police and the army to eliminate preman”. This involves not just the policing of the area, but also the employment of state paraphernalia and symbolism- uniforms, sirens, motorcycle escorts.
The FBR is also notable for the rather polite extortion letters it sends to local businesses:
With this letter we request the assistance of your business in providing a routine monthly donation to help cover FBR’s operational costs. If you choose to disregard this request then we will assume that you do not care
about the aspirations or welfare of the Betawi people as the indigenous population of Jakarta. This being the case, we, the Betawi Brotherhood Forum will do something to your business that is not in accord with your
aspirations.
This is obviously yet another case of the state ceding governance to a militia, simply because this is easier than actually centralizing control. (Related on Microkhan: Jamaica.) The theory is that the armed groups will always recognize that they must remain subordinate to their political patrons, in exchange for free rein on the streets. But that unspoken contract tends to get broken as the militia leaders’ power swells. The streets and the statehouse and inextricably linked—a truly prosperous society cannot pretend otherwise.
Columbus Day brings to mind all the various explorers who are more deserving of modern recognition than the dour Genoan you either love or loathe. One such admirable icon is our namesake, St. Brendan, who allegedly sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in the sixth century A.D. True, there is zero physical evidence to prove that this voyage actually occurred, though it does seem feasible based on the maritime technology of the day. But even if it’s all a lie, you have to love the strange adventures that St. Brendan’s chroniclers cooked up—I am fairly certain that Christopher Columbus never mistakenly alighted upon a giant fish:
At last they went upon an island weening to them that they had been safe, and made thereon a fire for to dress their dinner, but S. Brandon abode still in the ship, and when the fire was right hot and the meat nigh sodden, then this island began to move, whereof the monks were afeard, and fled anon to ship and left the fire and meat behind them, and marvelled sore of the moving. And S. Brandon comforted them and said it was a great fish named Jasconius, which laboreth night and day to put his tail in his mouth, but for greatness he may not.
There are obviously elements here of Jonah and the whale, as well as the Ouroboros. I’d also like to think that the good folks behind The Empire Strikes Back had this anecdote in mind when they cooked up that setpiece about the Exogorth.
You probably already knew that times were rough in Camden, New Jersey, but this photo essay really drives home the sad reality. In a part of the nation chock full of towns that have seen much better days, the former home of RCA Victor has become the poster child for all that can go wrong when an industrial base evaporates.
I’ve been dealing with some mega writer’s block these past few days, which has got me wondering whether it’s possible for someone to spontaneously lose their most well-developed skills. That’s obviously true in the athletic realm, where the dreaded 
Thanks for Microkhan Jr.’s increasing obsession with all things mechanical, I recently found myself trolling through the hundreds of transit-related videos on 
The 
