Raiders 34 Titans 25

The Raiders were, at one time, up 17-0, then let the Titans back into it with some poor 3rd down defense and an inexcusable Collins interception that was returned for a late touchdown. Warren Sapp was really the player of the game. He sacked Steve McNair three times and a forced fumble that Jerrod Cooper recovered for a touchdown. The Raiders went up late in the game on a 44-yard TD pass from Collins to Jerry Porter. (Collins finally realized that Porter does, in fact, exist.) That was the ball game.

So the Raiders have managed to crawl their way to 3-4 with a game ahead at Arrowhead Stadium against the Chefs. Good for them. Here's hoping that Moss is healthier and the Raiders can once again appear on TV.

Oh, and if anyone out there knows, could someone tell me why, with few exceptions, only one of the two major networks gets to show a doubleheader on Sunday? I know all about the blackout rules when a home team is on TV, but today the Seahawks had a bye week. FOX showed two games, but CBS only showed the late game, flooding the early time slot with infomercials hawking fake cures for cancer. Is it the affiliate's option, or do they make that decision at network? Either way, what makes them think that opposing the other network with informericals instead of games makes financial sense? If the Raiders-Titans game, just as a for-instance, had been on TV, CBS might have drawn a lot of viewers away from a snoozer of a Giants-Indigenous Persons game. I have to figure there's some kind of NFL rule working here, but I can't figure out what it might be. Would someone who knows please explain?

Again, For Those Keeping Track

I managed to complete a first draft of the new novella. Soon the revising begins.

Brace Yourselves

With Harriet Miers out of the picture, will George W. Bush take the responsible course and nominate a proven professional with the capacity to judge fairly, or will he decide to use the nomination as a means to stick it to his political enemies? Need I ask?

Raiders 38, Bills 17

Jordan was dominant in today's game, running for over 100 yards and scoring three touchdowns. These were the Raiders we were promised at the beginning of the season. May it continue.

Behind the Scenes At the Factory

Those of you keeping track might be wondering why "Is the Library Burning?", Novella #3 of the long delayed Escape Velocities collection isn't done yet. I'd promised to wrap the thing up by the end of August, but, well, I'll explain...

In mid-September, I'd reached page 90 of the novella. My financial problems were a distraction, but I'd still been able to maintain a decent rhythm. Writing long fiction is more a question of dogged, grinding work than inspiration, and after three years writing The Ice Age, that's the pace I'm accustomed to. Anyway, I'd reached the 90th page, when I found myself pausing and procrastinating. My thumbs started to hurt from late night Madden football games. Each time I tried to get back to work, I'd stare at the screen, tap keys, and move to check my e-mail or read news that hadn't changed in the five minutes since I'd last read it.

For a couple of weeks I blamed the stress of finances, but after my hearing at court, I came to realize the truth. I'd written ninety frigging pages and had no idea how to end the fucking story. If I went ahead with the ideas I had, the novella wouldn't so much end as it would splat, like a tomato thrown off a skyscraper. I spent a few days wavering between total panic and abject depression. Tutoring sessions and my birthday trip kept me grounded, but I couldn't see a solution and saw visions of four months of wasted effort--me and Sisyphus working for the same temp agency.

But then Seattle's horrible traffic came to my aid. On a day when it took me forty minutes to travel six miles, I went over the story in my mind. "Is the Library Burning?" is about a woman named Theresa who, while recovering in Cairo from injuries she suffered in a bus bombing, wonders whether she wants to return to the United States or move to the E.U. and leave the what she sees as the fanaticism of the U.S. behind. Included in her deliberations--most of which are about the deaths of Hypatia of Alexandria and Cicero, who failed to extract themselves from societies descending into tyranny before the mob could catch up with them--is the question of abandoning her mother, who fears travel. I realized while groaning at the hideous standstill of I-5, that while I'd done a good job exploring Theresa's thoughts on history and the decline of the U.S., I'd given the problem of her mother nowhere to go. They got along too well at the beginning, and their one argument over whether to leave the U.S. lacked a personal element. It was entirely ideological. I'd lost an opportunity to explore the larger issue of abandonment. I'd already established that Theresa was divorced. If I could work more in that area, perhaps making the divorce a source of tension between mother and daughter, I might solve the problem of the ending. The stakes can rise from the relatively narrow question of leaving the U.S. to the larger issue of the role of abandonment and disillusionment in Theresa's life.

Will it work? I don't know yet. I had to go back and do a lot of revising in the early sections. I feel like I have an ending in mind, but it remains to be seen whether this one will be the right one, or even mean what I think it means. Still, I feel a lot better at this point in the month than I did at the beginning, and I guess we will see what we will see.

Bits of Light in the Gloom

Yes, we live in a fascist state, New Orleans and Iraq are wrecks, and the Raiders couldn't cross the goal line in a tank; but there are small reasons to live. The Rockford Files, after endless delays, will come out on DVD December 6th. I can't wait.

The Wish For Kings

In his "Notebook" column in this month's Harper's Lewis Lapham points to an Umberto Eco essay on the common ideological points of all species of fascism:

"The truth is revealed once and only once.
"Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
"Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
"Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
"The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
"Argument is tantamount to treason.
"Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
"Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."

This reads like a checklist of the reasons why the U.S. is in so much trouble now. For me, it's always gone beyond Bush. He's simply one of the nastier symptoms of the underlying disease. I'm afraid that a large percentage of Americans have simply lost the habits of mind necessary to sustain a democracy. They have lost faith in their ability to reason and to learn something new, and prefer the assurances of those who claim to hear the voices of gods. The government of capable but flawed human beings seems to them less attractive than rule by the decree of a leader whose heart is always pure (because he says it is) and whose guts are always right (because his wise counselors always praise them). Given the right ad campaign and a little more social conditioning, the House of Bush could probably have itself installed as an official dynasty, with James Dobson as their Archbishop and Dick Cheney as the Lord High Executioner.

According to Lapham's satirical riff, America won't change very much under fascism. Our overlords needn't burn books--only a few people read them, and they're easily caricatured by their choice of pricey caffienated beverage. Also, although a playwright could become president of the Czech republic and a poet might as recently as ten years ago become President of Russia, writers are so deeply in the margins of American society that, however rudely they might treat Laura Bush at a book fair, nobody outside a few coffeehouses has heard of most of them. Besides, most writers are so busy chasing after a spot in the Oprah Book Club that they have little time for planning assaults on the palaces of the mighty.*

Further, our overlords needn't destroy the radio stations. Their allies own most of them, and given the way they've written the rules, they should be able to buy the rest without any ugly resort to bloodshed. Most of our labor unions have already been broken up, and once Wal Mart gets into other lines of business, they should be able to clear out the rest. Besides, the corporations promise that if you work hard and ruthlessly and avoid the trap of friendship, you can rise high enough in the corporate structure to eventually become Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. (They'll probably rename it C.E.O. of the U.S. Treasury, to avoid unnecessary confusion in titles.) So there's no real reason to comb the middle classes for signs of incipient rebellion. (Making it possible to include promoting unrest as a reason to lower credit scores or raise health insurance rates out to take care of most troublemakers. Much more civilized than a concentration camp, you have to admit.)

Reading Lapham's essay helps me understand why I feel so little joy at Bush's 37% approval rating. We had to lose an entire city to get it down there, and under the circumstances 37% seems awfully high, doesn't it? If the President launched a nuclear missile at the San Andreas fault and sank the West Coast into the sea, we might get it down to 30%. (Though it might pop back up once Pat Robertson points out that Bush destroyed the unholy sewers of both Hollywood and the Castro District in one quick strike. I'm sure that Bush's handlers could work out the spin for that. They're clever people.) And even if we should rid ourselves of Bush, can we say we've cured ourselves of the affliction that brought him to us? Or will we just turn to another would be Duce and nod our heads at his crackpot notions of how the world works? What do we have to do to cure both the symptom of Bush and the underlying illness? No less than restore to Americans the idea that we are citizens, with a responsibility to continue learning and questioning not only our governments, but also our bosses and our clergymen. We have to drum it into our own heads that any problems that we have will need to be solved by other citizens who are both as intelligent and as ignorant as we are; and that no citizen should be able to claim sole possession of the unerrant truth without the rest of us laughing him out of the building.

That's a hard thing to fix, and I fear it's already too late to start. Sad. Sad. Sad.

*Just in case Oprah is reading this, I don't mean to imply that the Oprah Book Club is a bad thing. I'm glad you started picking living writers for it again, and even though your first choice, James Frey, seems like an uninspired one, I have every confidence that it'll get better and every hope that you'll (please-oh-please-oh-please) include my own work in it someday. Listen, it'll be great, Oprah! Me and you! Wait, where are you going? PLEASE! I'M SO BROKE!

A Barren Source of Amusement

San Diego 27; Oakland 14

Randy Moss suffered an injury early in the game. LaMont Jordan ran for two touchdowns and gained 100 combined yards, but the Raiders sink to 1-4. I stopped listening to the game toward the end of the 1st half, when San Diego took a 24-7 lead, choosing instead to watch Misery. Kerry Collins still can't find the end zone without a map, in spite of two weeks of practice. The offense can't find rhythm or consistency when it counts, and Collins's streak of pass attempts without an interception came to an end.

The New Bond

It's Daniel Craig. (I won't bother linking to anything. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a story about it.) He looks like he'll be all right in the role, though I'd rather they retained Pierce for a last film. It would be nice if someone would dig down to the truth about Brosnan's dismissal, but that won't happen as long as film journalism remains with the likes of US Weekly.

I'm less sanguine about the producers turning Casino Royale into an origin story. It wasn't one initially; Bond was already a "00" agent at the beginning of the book, and though the novel establishes several characters, there's a sense that Bond already knows most of them--either through work or by reputation. We have a sense that we're entering a universe that was already running when we got here, which is an underrated sensation. Honestly, I can't think of anything duller than finding out how Bond got his number--a story Fleming told only in summary because it was, really, kind of dull and grim--or how he got his Aston Martin. (I already know, actually. We saw it in Goldfinger. Q-Branch retired Bond's Bentley and assigned him the Aston Martin DB-5, which Bond proceeded to ruin by crashing it into a wall at Goldfinger's plant.) Over the years, the films have given us hints of backstory--the deaths of Bond's parents in a climbing accident (Goldeneye) or his failure to graduate from Cambridge (The Spy Who Loved Me), but nothing too specific.

I prefer it that way, really. It's possible to write about Bond as a man in the grip of his own past, riven by deep-seated interior conflict, etcetera, etcetera; but was that ever what made his movies fun in the first place? It's a mistake to confuse Bond with Batman. Batman's internal struggles are interesting mainly because there has to be some explanation for why a good-looking grown man with a life to lead would choose to assume the identity of a flying predator and battle criminals in the Gotham night. But Bond doesn't assume other identities. He's always 007. He likes drinks, hot women, sports, fast cars, and good suits. He also has a keen interest in the natural sciences and speaks an astonishing array of languages. He seems to be supremely at home with himself, never interrupting the action to contemplate his inner demons (which, if he has them, he has the good British decency to keep well-hidden while in company). The last thing I want to see is a Bond who dwells, and what is an origin story but a place where we give the hero things to dwell over?

For an example of what I mean, think of Bond's clubland literary ancestor, "The Saint". The TV series (and the books) never got into Simon Templar's origins, but the 1995 movie did (he was supposedly an orphan in Hong Kong who chose his name after one of the brutal warders beat him). Which would you rather watch--Roger Moore in a pair of the TV episodes, or Val Kilmer in the movie? If you answer the latter, you are beyond pleasure, beyond pity, and beyond hope.

Dispatches

The meeting with the Jack Straw people was productive. The demon voices in my hair have stopped, and I'm going to stick with the literature project for now. My other labors stand where they've stood. In a way, it hardly seems worth blogging about, but it was my long day and I'm beat.

Before I go, however, I will mention that I saw Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie last night. The novel on which it was based was a brilliant twist on the inspriational teacher formula of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and the movie picks it up brilliantly. I can't imagine anyone but Maggie Smith in the role of the fascistic Jean Brodie, and the cast of young actresses who played her students was excellent. See it. Live it. Love it. Be it.

Two Cheers For Ron Sims

Hip! Hip! Uh--What took you so long, Ron? Our county executive finally rejected Southwest Airlines' plans to move from SeaTac airport to Boeing Field. I saw no reason to give Southwest Airlines the right to force millions of dollars worth of road upgrades on us, as well as all the air traffic and noise difficulties that would have arisen from having another major airport five miles away from SeaTac. Sims should have rejected the idea out of hand, but at least we won't have to speak any more about it.

Southwest has threatened to move their operations to Everett or out of the area altogether. If that's what they want to do, let them. After that 11-hour flight I took to Chicago, they can go as far away as they like. They'd open their gates up to another airline--one that may actually believe in getting their passengers where they're going in less time than it would take to walk. Let's face it, even if Southwest moved from Seattle to Everett, they'd probably take ten years and go through Renton, Bellevue, North Bend, Woodinville, Marysville, and Bellingham first.

Happy Birthday To Me

It's tomorrow actually, but because Monday's a business day for me, I celebrated over the weekend with bitterspice and my father. We had a great time. I made some of the Chicken with Herbs and Yogurt and my dad went out, bought some oysters, and fried them up for poor boy sandwiches. Good stuff all around.

This year I used my birthday money for a food processor and DVDs of The Incredibles, Psycho, and Misery. Now I'm turning my attention to the Jack Straw writing fellowship. I'd already planned to submit a story for the writer's portion, but the demon monkey who live in my head are telling me to submit a portion of Diary of A Superfluous Man to their artist's project fellowship to see if I can pick up 20 hours of free studio time and put together a radio version of the play. The only question I have is what I'd do with the fucker once I had it. Anybody who knows radio drama--Larry, I'm talking to you--give me a shout so that I can learn how that world works.

Speaking of Ads

A bit of political reform I'd like to see--no more bullshit names for political action committees. I'm tired of ads sponsored by Patients and Doctors for Responsible Reform (the insurance industry) or Voters and Entrepreneurs for Unfettered Street Commerce (pimps). Of course it's pretty easy to figure out that this or that ad is sponsored by Big [insert industry here] instead of a genuine grassroots organization; it's the dishonesty of the formulation that grates on me. They should make the ad producers put their corporate sponsors' logos in the ad, kind of like a race car sticks its sponsors' logos all over the chassis. I realize this might have a chilling effect on fake-grassroots advertising, but...hmm...where's the problem?

Me Again

Yeah, I've sold out. I put ads on the blog. Why? Because nothing makes me happier than forcing a giant corporation that could crush me like a bug to send me a check for $0.35 every month.

I'm Beat

Who knew that two minutes in Federal Court being interviewed by a woman who hasn't had a good laugh since Sputnik could be so enervating? All went well, though. It looks like the legal process will, for me, be much less Kafkaesque than I feared.

I need to unwind and rest, so that I can get up for thinking about the misery of life under Bush, Iraq, bird flu, my student loans, advancing decrepitude (my birthday is in six days), my career, the sorry state of the Oakland Raiders' red zone offense, the problems that have crept into my new novella, and assorted worries, cavils, and carps.

See y'all later.

George W. Bush is the most brilliant man I know

Now that I've said this, can I be on the Supreme Court too?

August Wilson Dead

It was something I knew was coming, but it's still crushing. He was a giant.

Cowboys 13; Raiders 19

At last. Lamont Jordan and Sebastian Janikowski are clearly the big heroes here. Yes, Moss had 125 yards against the Cowboys defense, but it was Jordan's running (126 yards) and SeaBass's foot (4 FGs, two from 40+ yards) that gave the game to Oakland. The Raiders have victory #1.

Some causes for concern.

1) Collins is still streakier than I'd like. He needs to develop more consistency.

2) The Raider defense was excellent until late in the 4th quarter, when they suddenly broke down and handed the Cowboys two long passes that put them in position to steal the game.

3) Jake Grove left the game with a knee injury. I don't remember hearing that he was back in the lineup. This bears watching, because he is a fine pass-blocker with remarkable skills for such a young player.

4) Adam Treu, the long snapper, gave both Lechler and Janikowski a few high snaps today, putting the kicking game in unnecessary peril. He's usually good about these things. Let's hope it's just a temporary problem.

5) As always, penalties. The Raiders should have won this game by a lot more than they did, but drive sustaining and drive killing penalties kept the Cowboys in it. Warren Sapp did something unusually stupid when, having already wrapped up Drew Bledsoe, he threw him down to the turf, forcing the referees to hand the Cowboys fifteen big yards on a 3rd and 8. The Cowboys ended up getting a field goal a few plays later. Yes, the refs have it in for the Raiders. We need to count on seven or eight penalties per game. Still, that's no reason to make things worse than they need to be.

Some reasons for optimism.

1) The Raiders found their running game, against a defense that hadn't given up 100 yards to a rusher since early last year. Over time, this should help the Raiders with play action and give Collins more chances to look down the field.

2) Randy Moss is still Randy Moss, and is consistently good for at least one spectacular play per game.

3) Kerry Collins still hasn't thrown an interception, though he came close a couple of times today.

4) The defense really seems to be coming together. They're still missing some pieces, and will break down from time to time, but we're seeing much greater solidity from them as a unit. As long as the defense sustains this level of play, the Raiders need only score more than 20 points per game to win consistently.