Previewing the 2010 NLCS: Phillies vs Giants

Right away the greatest thing about this series (and perhaps of the entire playoffs) is the Game 1 pitching match-up between Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum.

Last week, in his first playoff game ever, Halladay threw a no-hitter (joining Don Larsen atop that seemingly unreachable mountain peak) and the next night Lincecum threw a game that somehow might have actually been better, striking out 14 and only allowing 2 hits in a complete game shutout.

Something's gotta give in this terrific match-up and, as the two supreme aces figuratively cancel each other out with their awesomeness, it's the batters that have to step up and outdo each other. While Lincecum might strike out 23 guys and Halladay, if he needed to, could efficiently cruise into the early east coast morning without allowing too many baserunners, one of the lineups has to eventually put up a run on the board in order to win.

I'll take the Phillies to do that. And, in a battle between two teams with excellent pitching staffs, the Phillies' superior lineup should prove to be the difference.

Let's take a look at each team's four best hitters, ranking them by a Baseball Prospectus stat called True Average (it looks like batting average but it's a combination of all their offensive production--power, walks, even steals--in one number).

Phillies: RF Jayson Werth (.322 TAv)
vs
Giants: 1B Aubrey Huff (.316 TAv)

Huff had the best year of his career at 33 and has really seemed to find his happy place in San Francisco, while Werth has been a major part of this new Phillies dynasty since he arrived in 2007, posting his best numbers this season in the last year of his contract. I love Werth's hitting ability, he's all-around awesome with plenty of doubles, homers, walks, and steals and (really going out on a limb here) I anticipate some sort of heroics and fireworks from him in this series as it could be his last go-around with the Philly band.

Phillies: 2B Chase Utley (.306 TAv)
vs
Giants: LF Pat Burrell (.304 TAv)

Utley didn't have his best year because of a thumb injury he had to have surgically repaired which probably effected his hitting, but even in a bit of an off year he still finished #3 among all second basemen in True Average (behind Robinson Cano--almost typed "Canoe"--and Dan Uggla). When at the top of his game, Utley is probably the best hitter in this entire series.

As for Burrell, the former #1-overall pick of the Phillies has enjoyed a renaissance in his twilight. After being dumped off into the trash bin by the Phils last year and then the Rays this year, the Giants scooped him up off the street and he's meshed well with the other early-30s cast offs, putting together his best season at the plate since 2002 by OPS+. Maybe he just didn't like the American League (or having to DH).

Phillies: Catcher Carlos Ruiz (.304 TAv)
vs
Giants: Catcher Buster Posey (.300 TAv)

Cool to see both catchers here. Between catching two no-hitters (and a great pitching staff) this season and also recording his best year with the bat (.400 OBP), Ruiz has been a major part of this Phillies steamroller. He's also becoming something of a postseason star for the Phils as he's put up a .904 OPS in 35 postseason games the last few years. His counterpart here is no slouch, in fact he's pretty awesome and I predict he'll be a local cult figure in San Francisco for years to come. Just like his experienced mitt-mate, Posey has been behind the plate catching for a very successful pitching staff and he's also thwacked. The kid is a line-drive machine, an extremely polished hitter for 22 years old, and he can hit both righties (.832 OPS) and lefties (.955). I'll be very interested to see what he does at the plate against Halladay.

Phillies: 1B Ryan Howard (.299 TAv)
vs
Giants: CF Andres Torres (.293 TAv)

For the Giants, Torres turned in a great season after finally being given a chance to play full-time (at the age of 32) but he's totally collapsed the last month or so. In September he needed an appendectomy and hasn't hit a lick since. Howard gets way too much attention as a "run producer" by the national media but I also think the stat community underrates him a bit. There are few hitters I like to watch more than this guy because there is no one in baseball who annihilates a pitch quite like Ryan Howard. He seems to concentrate his entire 6-4, 255 lb force into the sweet spot of the bat and when he strikes the ball it's as if he can hit it into the next state. Like Utley, he spent some time on the DL and didn't have his best season but I don't expect Howard to have much trouble with either of the Giants' aces (and their strongest weapons) Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. Admittedly a small sample size, he's still smashed 7 extra-base hits in 29 at bats against those two combined for his career. I think I see fireworks...

Can the Giants possibly knock off the Phils?
The way they've closed out the season (23-7 since September 1st), the Phillies look like a Harrier jet on autopilot cruising towards a reunion clash with the defending World Series champion Yankees. And so, really, the question going into this series is whether or not the Giants can win. As much as I love Tim Lincecum, I don't think he'll be able to carve through three encounters with this Philly lineup unscathed and neither will Matt Cain. San Francisco's duo of starting lefties, Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner, pose a threat to the chances of an easy sweep by the Phils and I think it will certainly be an exciting series to watch, but the Phils will take it in 5.

New (old) Books Scooped Up Recently

Went to my favorite used book store last night and picked up some gems. Got into an interesting exchange with the cashier too when he foolishly dissed Joyce, more on that in a minute.

A few years ago there was a period I went through when I was carrying around Emerson's Nature and Selected Essays in my back pocket just because every time I read any selection from it I always found it was such an enlightening and enjoyable read, like imbibing a refreshing drink. Looking at this biography about him called The Mind on Fire I couldn't help but get it when I saw reviews that said stuff like this:

[This is] one of those exciting books that flash bolts of lightning across an entire intellectual era and up and down modern history.

And then Jung's book on Mandala Symbolism is great and has a whole bunch of illustrations of mandalas from himself, patients of his, artists, and historic art from around the world. Great pick up. Check this out:

And then the top book on the pile is a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man featuring a whole bunch of critical texts and commentaries from sources like H.G. Wells, Ezra Pound, and more. Definitely will be using this to help construct my Dali-Joyce essay I'm brainstorming on right now.

The last thing I got is by far the coolest:

It's an amazing edition of Ulysses that's put together like The Bible or some other great holy book. The arabesques all over the cover are amazing and perfectly representative of the verbal arabesques that twirl throughout this entire epic. And this is the good edition of the text, not the butchered Hans Walter Gabler version. Here's some more pics, check out the gold-tipped pages.

It even has illustrations throughout the book from Kenneth Francis Dewey. This one is from the Lotus-Eaters episode.

It's a great book to have and read and such a perfect rendition of the monstrous, so thoroughly intricate novel. Before I knew this edition existed, I'd have hoped someone would make one like it.

Upon seeing the Joyce books, the cashier said "Well, these will be torture" to which I laughed thinking he was kidding. When it was clear he meant it I said "Nah man, I'm obsessed with this stuff" and he blatantly let out his foolishness with an emotional and insulting blurt of "He couldn't write a coherent sentence to save his life!" I was tempted to crack open to any page in Ulysses and teach him what a random line is saying but he then admitted (if it was indeed true) that he'd tried to read the book once and immediately gave up because it was like gibberish. My girlfriend later revealed that she was amazed at how calm I was when the guy seemed to flat out insult my favorite writer, but I explained that his reaction to Joyce is the same as most people who haven't really tried to read and understand it. It's the consensus, mainstream opinion that he's too difficult because nobody actually dares to dig in.

When I was in the cultural utopia of San Francisco last week I also scooped up a few great Joyce books, especially this one of super high-quality old photos, drawings and paintings called Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello with an introduction by my old buddy Anthony Burgess. The cover is a drawing of Joyce made up of signatures ("Signatures of all things I am here to read.") of the names of Joyce's characters all weaved together.

Also got a nice copy of Harry Levin's entertaining study of Joyce (a rare and out of print book) and a newer paperback version of Ulysses to replace my current tattered copy (this was of course before I had bore witness to the huge masterpiece above).

A San Francisco Treat

Lately I've felt overwhelmed by everything going on in my world(s), particularly in the areas this blog focuses on: Sports (the baseball playoffs have begun and they've been awesome), Music (the skies have been pouring out new music, good stuff that I want to listen to and write about), and Literature (still reading plenty of Joyce material and have lots to say about it). I have a whole bunch of ideas for posts, even a couple unfinished posts, and an outline for an essay that I will not only submit to the James Joyce Quarterly but also will send in for possible presentation at the North American James Joyce Conference next year. It's pretty much the opposite of the usual writer dilemma, writer's block, in that I've got plenty to write about but just haven't been able to find the time to write lately. And when I do get free time, I feel overwhelmed by all the things that are trying to burst out of my head onto the page.

Added to all that is the fact that my job is asking me to start doing work for them while I'm home but they won't pay me for it. So, of course, I won't do it and (of course) they're trying to bamboozle me into doing it. The economy is bad, the company is struggling, etc, etc. That's what they tell me.

Well, let's try to go through some of this stuff in a clear and organized manner. Hopefully that will help me take this Building Roam thing past these hovering clouds and up to the heights I'm hoping to lift it to over these next few months.

Let's start with San Francisco.

When my girlfriend told me she wanted to go to the World Vegetarian Festival Weekend in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I immediately said yes and we began planning a little weekend road trip up to the Bay Area. It would be my first real (longer than 3 hours) road trip since my migration out to San Diego from New York in 2008. I was hyped. Somehow I hadn't realized that the Padres, the team I've followed closely and rooted for all season, would be playing their final three games of the regular season facing the Giants in San Francisco that same weekend. When the Padres went on a losing streak and relinquished their tightly held division lead to the Giants, and with baseball's other postseason spots decided already, that final series in San Francisco would become the focus of the entire baseball world.

On Friday we began our journey a bit later than we should have, not getting on the road until about 3 PM. By the time we reached Los Angeles three hours later, we found ourselves in Friday afternoon rush hour gridlock that tortured us for hours. We still had many many miles to cover until our final destination but we were stuck in LA quicksand. My girlfriend and I began to bicker, we were drowning in an ocean of cars. Before the bickering exploded into something bigger that might jeopardize the precious road trip, we got off at the closest exit and went to a gas station. I went inside to pee and buy some snacks and stood behind a couple of guys waiting for the bathroom already. "Wish I could just take a number and then go buy some stuff," I joked to the gentleman waiting at the back of the line. He proceeded to engage me surprisingly quickly into a pretty one-sided conversation in which he told me how he and his partner (standing next to him nodding every few minutes) were professional drivers who transport 16-wheeler trucks all over the country, this was their first time in Southern California and they were already sick of it because of all the traffic. He carried on for a while and I listened with great interest (what can I say, it was interesting) as he told me all about the job and even mapped out the exact routes they were traveling which reminded me of Chris Farley's security guard character spilling the beans in Wayne's World.

Once we were back on the road and refreshed, we persevered for another 7 hours or so, zooming through the darkness of California's farmlands for what seemed like forever. We made it to the hotel after 3 AM, tired and ragged but very proud of our accomplishment.

The weekend was spectacular. Everything seemed to go perfectly. We spent most of Saturday at the Veg Festival which took place in the lush arboreal enchanted forest that is Golden Gate Park and then, once I gave up on trying to get tickets for the sold out season finale against the Padres, we spent Sunday touring the city, going across the Golden Gate Bridge, and checking out a great Dali exhibit at a cool art gallery in Fishermen's Warf. The exhibit featured rare and exclusive sets of Dali's work like The Alchemy of the Philosophers and his illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy.

It felt great to be up there in that beautiful, culturally opulent city. The air was crisp and gave me an enlivened feeling, unlike the humidity and unbearable heat we've had in San Diego lately. As we walked around the streets my head kept popping forth new ideas to write and I felt like the atmosphere was working to conduct a creative electricity in my body. (Unfortunately I didn't bring my laptop or any notebooks to write in so I didn't jot anything down.)

When the Giants defeated the Padres the city was vibrant. As much as I wanted the Padres to win, it was actually very cool being in the middle of a big city like that when their team clinched a playoff spot (for the first time in 7 years). Without knowing what happened, it would have been pretty easy for one to ascertain as plenty of Giants fans zoomed through the streets honking their horns and waving orange flags and lively, skipping orange-clad fans swarmed the sidewalks.

It wasn't until today that I realized the cool subjective coincidence or synchronicity. Before this past weekend I had only been to San Francisco once, in the summer of 2008 when I visited a potential graduate school (CIIS if you must know). That time, I stayed for just three days and was alone, not really prepared to tour the city and absorb its splendor. But I did go to a Giants game. They faced the Atlanta Braves in a pretty meaningless and crappy (and freezing) game as both teams were well out of the playoff race and on their way to a 4th place finish. Now, after the Giants fought off my very own Padres in the season's final game while I was back in San Francisco again, they are facing (who else?) those same Atlanta Braves in the postseason.

Tonight I watched and marveled over Tim Lincecum's absolutely superb start against Atlanta in which he struck out 14, walked one, and allowed only 2 hits. I've said before that he is perhaps the most entertaining player in baseball right now and he was truly a spectacle tonight. The 26-year-old Lincecum is very generously listed at 5'11" and 170 lbs but he looks more like 5'9" and maybe 150. That's about how big I am. I'm simply awestruck watching this kid baffle major league hitters the way he does. Watching the Braves flail over and over again, an old thought popped into my head, a thought that used to occur to me while watching baseball as a naive young child: "are they even trying to get a hit?"

With his funky, herky jerky wind up, shoulder-length hair, and all-around skateboarder punk aura (he was busted for pot possession in the offseason) he presents an image unlike anything I've ever seen in baseball. He's like a little punk kid who goes out on the mound and makes all the older bigger guys look like idiots. And unlike the squeaky celebrations of the phenom kid in Rookie of the Year or the ugly roaring gyrations of Joba Chamberlain, Lincecum carries himself with the utmost calmness and professionalism. When he struck out the final batter tonight for his 14th strikeout (shattering the Giants franchise mark for strikeouts in a playoff game in his first career playoff game) to complete a two-hit shut out, he simply made a fist, a sign of a job well done. Not the Tiger Woods kind of over-exuberant fist pump either, this was the gesture a geeky but confident kid would make after accomplishing a new high score in a video game at an empty arcade. "Yes, I did it."

Brief thoughts on the MLB Playoffs

Roy Halladay pitched a no-hitter in Game 1 of the NL Division Series against the Cincinnati Reds today. 'Twas the first postseason no-hitter since Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. In fact, Larsen and Halladay are the only pitchers to ever throw a postseason no-hitter in the entire history of baseball.

This is stunning. We've witnessed history. Though, sadly, I still haven't witnessed it yet because I'm currently watching a DVR recording of the game and I'm only in the 2nd inning.

After a long, fun, exciting and eventful weekend in San Francisco, I haven't had the chance to sit down and write an MLB postseason preview and now a couple of games have already been played. I'm unhappy with myself but, since I didn't get home until Monday night, I really haven't had a chance to analyze the postseason matchups as much as I'd like to. I haven't even been able to read any of my favorite writers' playoff previews.

But I feel the need to say something about it. After all, I've already written so much about baseball on this blog that I can't just neglect to offer some predictions on the final deciding games of the season.

So, here are some thoughts on the first round matchups. (Unfortunately, they're a bit tainted by the timing of this post.)

AL Division Series

Tampa Bay Rays vs Texas Rangers
An interesting matchup between two very different teams. The Rays work the count, the Rangers hack the ball all over the place. Cliff Lee's dominance today portends disaster for the Rays as they'll surely have to get through him in another start if they are to win this series. The Rays haven't gotten much from their #2 and 3 starters down the stretch and, while I picked Tampa Bay in the preseason to play against the Phillies in the World Series, I think the Rangers will knock them out in the first round with their extremely powerful and deep lineup.

New York Yankees vs Minnesota Twins
This is a very familiar first round matchup. Previously (in 2003, 2004, and last year) the Twins didn't put up much of a fight against a powerhouse Yankee squad but now the Twins have home field advantage throughout the series and they've also got a much stronger lineup than they had in those days. They'll face a mediocre Yankee pitching staff led by workhorse lefty C.C. Sabathia (134 ERA+) with the same old stalwart Mariano Rivera at the back end. I like this Twins team very much and I think they'll push through the Yanks on their way to their first World Series in 19 years.


NL Division Series

Philadelphia Phillies vs Cincinnati Reds
I cheated by watching Roy Halladay's no-no already but...I'll take the Phillies. With Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt (three guys who could each be the ace of any major league team), nobody will beat this team. Their lineup is deep, powerful, patient and rugged; they've all been through this before. The Reds have a talented ball club and one of the best hitters in baseball (Joey Votto) but this might even be a sweep for the Phils. Yeah, I'll go with a sweep.

San Francisco Giants vs Atlanta Braves
Sigh...poor Padres. It's amazing that, completely unrelated to their final weekend series to decide the NL West, I found myself in San Francisco for the weekend. A blessing, really, although I didn't get to go see any of the games since they were all completely sold out, standing-room included. It's nice that the Padres made the 162nd game an interesting one but (perhaps this reveals that I'm not a true Padres fan), I think the Giants will be a much more fun team to watch in the postseason. Tim Lincecum alone makes this team a fun one to watch. I rooted for the Padres all year (and went to more of their games than I've ever gone to see any team in my life) but this San Francisco squad belongs in the playoffs. Their pitching is just ridiculously good and their lineup is pretty solid. And the fans actually care, in fact the city was going wild after the Giants won on Sunday. People were driving around beeping their horns and waving flags, excited orange-clad college girls roamed the streets, and I caught a glimpse of a Spanish-language news channel covering the festivities. It's a big deal for the city. San Diego didn't seem to give a shit about the Padres, sadly.

I think this will be the real "wild card" of the postseason and fittingly it's the Wild Card-winning Braves who are involved. This looks like a great matchup to me and I look for an exciting, back-and-forth series that goes the full five games. Jason Heyward will probably do something awesome, we'll undoubtedly have some great pitcher's duels with guys like Tommy Hanson, Matt Cain, Lincecum, Tim Hudson, and even rookie Madison Bumgarner on the mound. It's really gonna be fun. In the end, I'll take the Braves to go to the NLCS for a division rival battle with the Phillies.

The Summer of Jazz: A Review of Installments 7 & 8 of the Madlib Medicine Show

For the summer months, the Madlib Medicine Show (a one-album-per-month series that the musical mastermind known as Madlib has blessed us with this year) shifted fully into jazz mode with Medicine Show #7: High Jazz in July and #8: Advanced Jazz in August. Although previously I've never been a fan of jazz or even given it much of a chance, Madlib's musical genius sucked me in and got me hooked. All through the summer, my ears were tuned to these new jazz releases and I even went out and purchased some of his previous jazz albums including the excellent debut Angles Without Edges by the one-man band calling himself/themselves Yesterdays New Quintet.

High Jazz is an original jazz album featuring new and unreleased tracks from some obscure and unreleased Madlib jazz projects under pseudonyms like Russell Jenkins Jazz Express, Jahari Massamba Unit,  The Kenny Cook Octet, Joe McDuphrey Experience, and The Big Black Foot Band. It's really a hodgepodge of random new and old tracks but yet it flows together seamlessly into a very nice little album. Overall the sound is very cosmic, almost shamanic sometimes but always (seemingly) done with jazz instruments.

My favorite track is the "live" rendition of "Broken Dreams" by Yesterdays New Quintet. The entire "live" performance, which is almost 15 minutes long, is excellent and has the slightly grainy and a-bit-off-key sound that a live jazz quintet would be expected to have. Except here it's one guy pretending to be five while pretending the five-man band is playing live. It's truly amazing both in thought and result. And, of the three tracks they play, "Broken Dreams" sounds the most wonderful to me with its slowly intoning heavy and deep guitar moan that actually conjures the dream music in the film Inception (how perfect that this album came out right around the same time the movie did). Over that guitar groan another melody chimes in through a piano, then an electric piano, multiple diverse drum sounds, and this all rhythmically carried along, a wagon of instruments rolling down the street producing beautiful song.

It's as though the dark moaning melody that always remains in the vibrating backdrop is the element of a dream. The whole song is a dream although it's musically depicting broken dreams. The dreams are introduced through the hopeful soft-key piano melody and then progressively we hear the sound of the "ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry," but it's all introduced and executed harmonically. (Note that the live rendition sounds different---better to me---than the original version.)

The harmonic balance of multiple different elements is one of the keys to what makes this music so gratifying and Madlib such a genius. Not only a range of different instruments and sounds but even two or three different melodic tempos are weaved together at the same time creating a musical atmosphere and a wide, spacious, mysteriously cosmic one. Using a different metaphor, Madlib's jazz music is a Jenga tower built from multiple layers of sound and tempo, swaying rhythmically in the wind.

"Reality or Dream" is another example of this. The song feels like the sounds of descending down a tube like Alice down the rabbit hole, grasping on to anything you can and dragging it down with you. There's probably over a dozen different sounds as you descend downwards here. The key recurring motif though is an eerie, Arabian flute that smoothly chimes before getting caught up in the mess of scattered objects, becoming bent and manipulated.

"Space & Time" is the smoothest track on the album, a melodically expanded jazz loop that doesn't venture as far out into experimental realms as some of the other tracks. It's closer to a hip hop beat than anything else here, even by its relatively short length (1:47) compared to the other much lengthier tracks around it. It's followed by the dusty guitar strings and soft melodic drums of "Conquistador," a track that plays like a spaghetti western space exploration flick. Music like this is truly an experience. Like a Disney ride or something. You're lifted and carried through multitudes of metamorphing scenes.

The thirteenth track, entitled "Tarzan's Theme," has stuck with me since my very first listen. It carves little holes through the conscious into the sub- or unconscious. It does this through (again) multiple melodies that are introduced and weaved together. Jangling drums (always a pleasing Madlib specialty) accompany throughout. The song is by "The Big Black Foot Band" and it naturally has that hypnotic and colorful shamanic ring to it. Even the strange and repeated chants of things like "starved killers migrate south"and "teeth, hair, teeth, teeth" seem to just go with it.

The only tracks I don't like are "Electronic Dimensions" (way too electric for me) and "High Jazz" (boring) but they really don't seem to hurt the overall feel of the album at all. They're right at the beginning and I can endure them knowing the gold that awaits over the horizon. It's impressive that, in the midst of a series of 12 albums, in a year that has seen the release of two other very good full-length jazz albums from the same guy (who's most famous for his hip hop production), we have here an album experience which promotes and rewards multiple listens. Most of the songs on here feel like they take you places. You can't really ask for more than that.

...But Madlib is the musician who keeps on giving. And so he followed up his own jazz joints with a mixtape of some of the very best jazz musicians ever. I can describe this latest Medicine Show offering no better than the cardboard tab that came affixed to it:

No. 8 - Advanced Jazz: Imagine an 80-minute music history course taking place in a dusty, hazy studio with wall-to-wall jazz vinyl---records from the past 40 years---jazz, fusion, obscure. This course will not be graded. There will be no lecture. Madlib's at the turntable. Class is now in session.

This "music history course" features audible classes on legends like Miles Davis, Ornette Colemen, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra as well as some of the others you see here crossing the Hudson:

There have been some terrific album covers in this Medicine Show series but this tops them all. Since receiving it, I've kept this CD standing up atop my desk, the small glass-cased image of Miles and his pals looking regally upon my writings.

The first thing you notice about this album is that it's LOUD. The sounds really seem to have been turned up and it works great as you can hear the depths of the live instruments and crackling, dusty old vinyl records. There are ten tracks of varying length, each named for a jazz legend and featuring a hand-picked and nicely-mixed collection of their songs. The opening is lovely: a gravelly voice speaking and settling the listener in for a comfortable musical excursion like a hypnotist preparing a patient ("are you there?") and then the pianos, horns, drums, everything, it all marches in so beautifully that I get the chills every time I hear it even though I must've listened to this opening 20 times by now. It then transitions into a jazz flute rendition that Ron Burgundy would describe as "a little Ham and Eggs."

Unlike the other great jazz(esque) mixtape in this series, Flight to Brazil, this isn't just a bunch of Madlib's favorites thrown together and played with very little interference. Instead, Madlib throws in plenty of his customary obscure skits and interludes while also weaving the songs together like a DJ, letting some play longer than others and maintaining a pretty consistent vibe while exploring the works of many different artists. The height (and hilarity) of Madlib's mixing skills here comes at the transition of tracks 2 and 3 when the former closes with a very serious-sounding man touting a film that he feels "is of great importance" and urging us "to undergo this uplifting cinematic experience" only to lead into the opening of track 3 with its hilarious mock blaxploitation trailer ("if you wanna get it together, and see the brother who predicted the weather, dress your mother up in leather, and see KING PIN").

The heart of this album, its thumping, beating, pulsating heart, is an amazing three-minute-plus drum orchestra performance in the middle of track 3 leading into the saxophone of Pharaoh Sanders. You can hear the end of it here in the promo video for the album but honestly, if you have even the slightest interest in jazz or just enjoy great music, I highly recommend picking this up this CD and hearing it in full. It'll really get your blood pumping.

Track 4, dedicated to Herbie Hancock, opens with words of wisdom that resonate and jump back and forth between each side of your headphones before taking you to new lands musically. This track features my favorite melody on the whole tape, a beautifully smooth piano over drums beginning at the 3:06 mark. It's one of those songs that sticks in one's head and pops up unbidden at random moments. Other highlights include: the entire Sun Ra track (Madlib pays proper homage to one of his oft-referenced favorites), the chilling big band track at the opening of Phil Ranelin's track, the exquisite soul track at the beginning of Deodato, and the closing horns/piano/drums from John Coltrane.

This mixtape is lively, bursting with instrumentation and energy, all delivered by Madlib from dusty old jazz records by some of the best musicians of the 20th century. It's a CD I'll probably go back and listen to 20 years from now and still enjoy. A spectacular collection of music, stitched together like an all-embracing quilt.

Note: We didn't get the expected Medicine Show #9 in September apparently because it wasn't finished on time but we may be getting two of them in October. We're at least assured of getting #10 which will be a collection of 60s and 70s soul and funk. Stay tuned for a full review of that one once I soak it in.

Earth as Subatomic Particle

Game Story: Padres vs Cubs

San Diego Padres' odds of making the playoffs as of August 26th: 96.7 %

San Diego Padres' odds of making the playoffs as of today September 29th: 21%


After seeing on Twitter that there was a special ticket promotion for last night's Padres game offering a buy-one-get-one-for-$1 deal, I immediately jumped on it and was downtown in my favorite section in Petco Park (Toyota Terrace close to home plate) within a couple hours. It was my first Padres game since an August Saturday afternoon loss to the Phillies when the first place Pads had just begun their long streak of losses.

Last night they were coming off a successful (2 out of 3) weekend series against the Reds but had lost 1-0 the previous night, Monday, to the Chicago Cubs. Fiery, young, and talented staff ace Mat Latos was on the mound facing Ryan Dempster, one of the Cubs' consistently strong rotation cogs for years now. This season, while the Cubs have been terrible and put a pretty weak lineup to the plate, Dempster has continued to be reliable on the mound, ranking in the top 10 in his league in strikeouts, innings pitched, and fewest walks allowed.

The first four innings of the game went very fast as both starters settled into a groove quickly. Dempster allowed only one hit through 4 even though Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Denorfia had both smoked line drives deep into the outfield that centerfielder Marlon Byrd snatched at a full sprint and Latos let up a hit and a couple walks. Then in the top half of the 5th, the 22-year-old Latos gave us another example of how he can pretty easily let his frustration and anger get the best of him while on the mound and have his composure and effectiveness rapidly snowball downward. Latos without a doubt has the ability to be one of the top pitchers in the major leagues (he had the most dominant month in San Diego Padres history back in May with a .160 average allowed) but he is his own worst enemy. He gets pissed when he screws up and he knows it. In the top of the 5th, he allowed the Cubs two runs on an error of his own while trying to barehand a groundball, and then 3 consecutive hits including a hard liner off his leg. After Latos had been struck by the ball, it seemed for a moment like the manager and team trainer weren't even going to come out and check if he was okay (even though you always see them come out just as a precaution, especially with a young pitcher) and I thought maybe they were afraid to come out and talk to him because he just appeared so visibly enraged and explosive due to the inning's proceedings.

He managed to make his way out of that 5th inning allowing only 2 runs but then quickly crumbled in the 6th right after his catcher had smacked a two-run homer to tie the game. A clean liner by Xavier Nady and then a bomb to centerfield by Alfonso Soriano knocked Latos out of the game with his team trailing 4-2.

That's where the game stood in the bottom of the 7th with the (surprisingly meager) crowd lively after their stretch and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"-singing, ready to scream like crazy for their team to tie the game. Matt Stairs did his part, opening the frame with a smashed ground rule double to centerfield. Chase Headley followed with a walk and the Padres had the tying runs on base and nobody out. As Ryan Dempster beared down and started throwing his slider almost exclusively, here's how the Padres responded:

Nick Hundley: struck out swinging, 1 out

Chris Denorfia: struck out swinging, 2 outs

Yorvit Torrealba: struck out swinging, 3 outs

I was monitoring Dempster very closely during those three at-bats and he really seemed to reach back for something extra in his adrenaline bucket and threw his awesome slider viciously. According to FanGraphs, Dempster's slider alone has been worth a wopping 20.1 runs saved above average this season and he effectively used it to strike out the side and escape a Padre rally in his final inning of the night.

That series of events totally deflated the entire stadium and I began deeply considering leaving the game early (something I absolutely never do) and officially giving up on this disappointing Padres playoff chase. When the long-limbed lanky (physically he is perfectly emblematic of the word "wiry") reliever Mike Adams allowed a home run to the long-limbed lanky (emblematically "wiry") Alfonso Soriano, I was done. I left at the end of the 8th after the Padres amounted absolutely no comeback.

I've loved watching this team play all year. I've been to more of their games this season than I've ever been to see one team in my life and I even once seriously considered them as a World Series threat. But I think the dreamy 2010 Padres Cinderella Story has slowly disintegrated and turned to dust. They won tonight and they need 4 more wins in their last 4 games to clinch the playoffs but from what I saw of them Tuesday night, they don't look like they can mount that last grunt towards the finish line that they need. They look tired and worn out and stressed from the beating they've taken over the last 30 days or so (the team is now 11-15 for the month of September after winning over 58% of their games for the first 5 months). I give them credit for knocking the Rockies off the postseason hill and it's certainly not inconceivable that they beat the Giants head-to-head this weekend but I just don't see these guys suddenly bursting back to life. I'll eat my words if they prove me wrong but to me they look like they're finished.

I'll still be watching and rooting for them, though, and interestingly enough I'll be up in San Francisco all weekend while they battle the Giants. The inevitable dream/fantasy/miracle scenario would feature me at the ballgame Sunday afternoon with a postseason berth on the line and a Padres victory but....we'll see.

As it stands right now the Padres are 2 games behind the Giants in the NL West and 1.5 behind the Braves in the Wild Card. Just going by run-differential, a pretty simple gauge of team skill and overall performance, the Padres (+84) are now lagging well behind both the Giants (+112) and Braves (+121) after being atop the National League for much of the season. There's no doubt these Padres have overachieved for the whole year and no matter what happens these next few days, their current 88 wins is a great season for them (I pegged them for 85 wins before the season and even that was wishcasting*). It's a bit sad that it has to end with them slowing down to a crawl but it shouldn't take away from how posterity views their overall performance.

*By the way, don't look back at those preseason projections...I picked the Giants to finish dead last.

The Century of the Self

I'd like to share with you a pretty amazing but fairly unknown documentary. It's called "The Century of the Self" and it tells the story of Sigmund Freud and his American nephew Edward Bernays who actually invented what we call "public relations" which, as he explains in the film, is just a nicer way of saying "propaganda". Very interesting, highly educational (who knew that it was once taboo for women to smoke cigarettes until Bernays flipped the script on the public?) film, it will really open your eyes to all the media material being thrown at you through television shows, advertisements, product placement (another Bernays invention), and especially government blabber. Bernays was hired by the US government to rally up to the country to support our entering World War I. After his success with that, most of the major corporations in this country hired him to promote their products and help transform the masses from the "American worker" into the "American consumer". But I've already said too much...

The film is split into 4 parts (I originally saw the first 2 parts at a nice little theater in Union Square years ago) and it is written and narrated by Adam Curtis.

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." - Adam Curtis

It is available in its entirety on YouTube:

Briefly examining Dali's Centaurs

Just read something extremely intellectually pleasing: a clear and lucid explanation of a part of Salvador Dali's painting Marsupial Centaurs. Came across it in my current research on the "paranoiac critical method" that Dali perfected and it's so good that I'd like to quote a huge chunk of it here.

Here's the painting we're talking about.

And now quoting from a post on a website cleverly named "brain-meat":

When asked why the centaurs in his painting, Marsupial Centaurs, were riddled with holes, he replied, “The holes are like parachutes, only safer.” This response is often used as an example of Dali being Dali, purposefully obscure, self-absorbed, and downright snotty. The reader might interpret this comment as a nose thumbing, coupled with an “If you don’t know why the holes are there, you Philistine, I will never tell you.” The fact is, however, that Dali is simply stating the reason for the holes, which upon examination, becomes unmistakable, true to its Paranoiac Critical ancestry.

It's this examination which I found so gratifying that I had to post it.

The need for the holes stems from Dali’s fixation on the “intrauterine paradise.” This notion was prevalent in many of his paintings, writings, sculptures, etc. He claimed to be able to recall colors and images from his career in the womb and drew, from that prenatal, but apparently not pre-artistic, period, his famous “eggs without pan” images...
A fundamental desire in Man, according to Dali, is to return to the womb, with its safety and utter lack of affectation. When bellybound, the fetus has no choice but to experience completely. The path that the fetus takes to enter the world, an ignoble and abrupt descent through the birth canal, is responsible for a mass of human discomfort and unhappiness. How can one be expected to function with complete ease in any environment with which one is unfamiliar, and into which one is simply ejected?

What's amazing is that this is essentially an artistic intuition for Dali but it's been scientifically confirmed in the works of Stanislav Grof and his perinatal matrices. But that's a topic for another day.

Man, seeking to regain the composure of the intrauterine paradise, endeavors to recreate the experiences therein in a number of ways. Those germane to this discussion mimic the actual descent into the maelstrom. The most common is sleep. When dreaming, one may operate relatively free of the stresses imposed by the actual environment. Sleep is, in this way, an analog of the womb. This notion is not new, of course. It is treated visually by Dali in his painting “Mask of Sleep.” The figure in the picture is a woefully distorted and distended human face, attached to a vanishingly small body. The dozing head is held aloft by a series of crutches, another of Dali’s fetish objects. We recognize then, that the comfort of sleep is imperfect, for the danger of the fall is still present, and perhaps unavoidable.
Some mimic the fall more literally. Dali considered the popularity of skydiving, particularly the fascination with W.W.I paratroopers, a result of the desire to address the nature of falling. By falling from a high place, one might not only examine the fall, but face the consequences impact, generally resulting in the big sleep. (This is also a womb analog, albeit a more permanent and gruesome one.) These activities, however dangerous and confusing, were a means by which the individual could learn to cope with the world into which he had been cast. In the best of all possible worlds, the womb would be a more gracious host, allowing entry and exit at will, such that the child might return in times of confusion or trouble, until complete acclimation had been attained. The child, completely capable of interacting seamlessly with this new terrain would be spared the stress of the abrupt birth. The holes in the centaurs are these open wombs. Through them the young centaurs are able to learn about the world without having to live there full-time, and without the threat of impact—like parachutes, only safer.

And that's why they are marsupial.

World Trade Center Memories

Yesterday I took part in my second (official) fantasy football draft in nine years. The first one had been back in September of 2001. I was 16 years old and my brother John had invited me to join a fantasy football league with his friends, the draft to take place at one of their apartments in lower Manhattan. On Saturday night, September 8th, we gathered in the living room of a relatively small but nice apartment and had our draft. I was by far the youngest person in the group. We put our names in a hat and chose randomly to determine the draft order. Somehow, I ended up with the #1 pick. I took Rams running back and all-around superstar Marshall Faulk. He would end up winning the league for me that year, bringing home a pot of almost a thousand dollars.

What I remember most about that evening was the drive home. As we curled around from the West Side Highway to the Battery Tunnel entrance, I stared upwards out the window at the enormous gold-lit glistening towers that hovered above.

*   *   *

My grandfather started his own business, a customs brokerage firm, at the old Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House back in 1968. The same building is now the National Museum of the American Indian. I remember it most for its role in Ghostbusters 2 where the ghostbusting crew defeated the terrible ghost Vigo the Carpathian. Vigo was a ghost from the 17th Century trapped inside of a menacing-looking painting. That movie came out when I was 4 years old and occupied a major role in my life for years to come. Every time I would pass by that old Custom House building I'd remember how my mom and my brother John used to tell me they'd seen the camera crews filming scenes there, especially the scene where they covered the entire building with pink slime---which was in reality one big plastic bag.

 *   *   *
When construction on the Twin Towers was completed in 1972, my grandfather moved his business into an office space on the 21st floor of the North Tower. The business remained there for the next twenty years. Both my mother and my brother John took jobs with his company and I have great memories, some of my earliest memories in fact, of spending time in that office, staring out the narrow windows in my mom's office at the people on the ground who looked like ants. I perfectly remember the lunch room which had chairs like movie director chairs. My grandfather's office was mostly dark green rug and leather seats. His desk was made of dark shiny wood and it was always covered with huge stacks of papers. And I'll always remember Phil. Phil Jackson. A smooth-talking, funny, tall lanky black man, Phil was the office messenger and he always wore a baseball hat and always entertained my siblings and me whenever my mom brought us to work.

*   *   *
When my grandfather died, he left the business to his greedy second wife and a rift split apart my family from the business. My mom and brother John (and a few other folks from the old company) started working with a new company located a bit further downtown, right on Battery Place, just a block or two away from the old U.S. Customs House building. With the new company, my mom (who held a pretty prominent managerial position) had maintained a working relationship with another business that was on the 89th floor of the North Tower. When I'd go in to work with her we would sometimes walk over to the World Trade Center and I'd get to see the amazing view from that 89th floor office. The guy in charge was Albert, a super nice man with a warm personality. Behind his desk was a large set of windows that overlooked the sprawl of Manhattan. It was absolutely stunning. Whenever I'd go up there and see that view I had chills and an experience of what I now realize was "sublime." Awe-inspiring. It was almost too much to behold. It felt as though you could reach out and touch the Empire State Building which was really about 3 miles north.

During the summer that I turned 14, my mom hired me for my first job ever: messenger. My old pal Phil Jackson, who was part of the crew that had moved to this new company, showed me the ropes for about a week. My job was to take documents from the office on Battery Place and walk around downtown Manhattan bringing the documents to their destinations. One of those destinations, a daily regular, was Albert's office on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center. You had to take two elevators to get up to the 89th floor and in between there was a sky lobby with a stunning view and I'd often stare out the window for a while. Since I'd usually bring their documents around lunch time, I would really milk the time (I was working for my mom after all) and explore, hang out, go to Borders bookstore, look for new Wu-Tang cds at the Sam Goody in the underground mall, and sometimes just roam amidst the buildings. I can remember days when I'd sit in that beautiful plaza in between the towers, I'd peoplewatch and write down stories in a marble notebook. I always ate pizza at Bari's Pizza on Greenwich Street, played chess in Zuccotti Park, bought comic books from the street vendors on Church Street. It was really a beautiful time in my life and I have great memories of it. Unfortunately (maybe because I was basically being paid to roam the streets everyday) I was never hired back after that summer.

But on my last day of work that summer (it was 1999), my dad came in to the city from Staten Island to meet my mom and me after work and we all went up to the observation deck atop the South Tower. Afterwards we ate pizza for dinner at Bari's.

*   *   *
My last job before moving to San Diego was an accounting position in Piscataway, New Jersey. The exit I got off at to go to work was the same as the one for Rutgers University. At the time, Rutgers had a superstar running back leading their football team back to respectability after over a decade of losing seasons. His name was Ray Rice and in April 2008, just two months before I would leave my Piscataway job, he was selected by the Ravens in the NFL Draft.

Now, Rice is one of the best running backs in the NFL and I was coveting him in my draft yesterday. I got him with my #1 pick.

Ten Straight

I spent this beautiful Sunday afternoon doing domestic chores (dishes and laundry) while watching the Padres play the visiting Colorado Rockies. In a game that felt like an intense pennant race battle, the Padres seemed to succumb to the pressure of their mounting winless streak which is now at 10 games. 

Battling a Colorado team that they've had many tight and exciting lateseason battles against over the last five years, they got beaten and swept at home. The Rockies have now won 10 out of 15 games against the Padres this season and 7 out of 9 at Petco Park. The Rox look like they're mounting another one of their customary late season surges as they've now climbed to within 4.5 games of the division-leading Padres. Outfielder Carlos Gonzalez (whom the Rockies acquired from Oakland for Matt Holliday in 2008) is catching fire, currently leading the league in both batting average and slugging percentage. He had 3 hits and a run in the game against the Pads today and seemed to be in the right place every time a Padre smacked a liner or a flyball in his direction, always catching the ball with a nonchalance reminiscent of Andruw Jones' glory days. "I hate him, he's just so smug."

*   *   *

I read the Associated Press' postgame write-up and they described the Padres as "reeling" which invokes in my mind the image of the baseball season as a six-month long race up a mountain's spiral road. The mountain would look like Dante's vision of Mt Purgatory (to the right) and it's as if each team is a race car trying to race up to the top of that mountain. The Padres have been absolutely zooming along their upward path for the entire season but have hit a tiny little pebble that made them start to wobble off track a bit and now they're skidding along the very edges of the mountain. That's what I envision by the word "reeling" as a description for these pennant race Padres. The Rockies have been known to go on these late season streaks (last year they started September winning 10 out of their first eleven) and now they're zooming up towards the tightly matched Padres and Giants and will probably make it a three team race to the NL West finish line.

*   *   *
There was one guy on the Padres who came out to play today like he wanted to single-handedly end this miserable losing streak: Miguel Tejada. The 36-year-old fading superstar was on-point and energetic. Bud Black had moved him down to 5th in the order, demoting him from the #2 spot he'd been occupying and Tejada responded by smoking a single in his first at bat (before successfully stealing 2nd base) and then absolutely crushing a towering two-run homerun in the 6th to tie the game and create the only 2 runs the Padres would score in the game.

In the 9th inning when the Padres were down to their last chance to try and avoid their losing streak growing into double-digits, Tejada led off with a perfectly executed bunt (I usually hate the bunt, especially for a good hitter without great speed, but he placed it absolutely perfectly) for an infield single. The crowd and the Padres finally seemed like they had some life, some energy, some of that late inning intensity and enthusiasm they've regularly had for the whole season (and the last two months of the '09 season). Here was their chance to finally come up big, erase a 9th inning deficit, punch back at the slugging Rockies and here's what they did:

- Chase Headley: struck out swinging (on a pitch that looked right down the middle)

- Matt Stairs: struck out looking

- Will Venable: struck out swinging (on a pitch that was right down the middle)

Game over.

I felt throughout the entire game like I did while I was watching the Mets' final three games of the year in 2007 when Florida knocked them out of the playoff picture. Or 2008 when the Mets absolutely collapsed and fell from first place like the burning Lucifer being flung from heaven. He fell with such force that he smashed through to the middle of the earth, pushing up a mountain at the bottom of the earth that became Mt Purgatory.