ThatKidInTheCorner

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March 31, 2005

Official Phillies Season Preview Edition

Guess which is my least favorite Philadelphia professional sports franchise?

"Mr. Wade [Philadelphia Phillies General Manager], would it be cool if we got a picture with you?"

I mean, it's not that I don't want the Phillies to win, it's more that I'm COMPLETELY FED UP WITH THE CURRENT OWNERS BECAUSE THEY (A) HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO WIN AND (B) HAVE RARELY SHOWN ANY INTEREST IN ACTUALLY WINNING. See: their comments about Philadelphia being a "small-market" club. At least the other teams are trying. Hell, even the Soul are trying.

This is why it's hard to convince little kids in Philly to like baseball. They want to like it. They just don't have a good reason to.

Posted by thatkid at 7:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2005

The Return Of Landycakes

It's not just that you're lazy; you're also pretty soft!

So it's unofficial: erstwhile US Soccer Golden Boy Landon Donovan has decided to cut short his stint with Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen and return to Major League Soccer. The official word will apparently come after the United States national team plays Guatemala on Wednesday night.

Inasmuch as there's ever any controversy in re: an American soccer player, Landon Donovan (aka Landycakes if you're not terribly fond of him) has certainly caused something of an uproar. It won't make Sportscenter, but if you follow US Soccer, you have an opinion about young Master Donovan. And, for the most part, the headlines have not been kind. "No longer the great U.S. hope" said ESPN. The boards at BigSoccer were positively en fuego with Donovan-bashing. And US coach Bruce Arena ominously weighed in as well, threatening to remove Donovan from the US lineup. I mean, shit, even I wrote about it last fall.

So why all the playa-hatin on Landon? Wasn't this guy a big reason that the US made it to the quarterfinals of the last World Cup? In a lot of ways, Landon Donovan is carrying the weight of a generation of US Soccer fans -- our chip is on his shoulder. Though Americans have succeeded as goalkeepers in some of the world's top leagues, there has yet to be a breakthrough star who plays on the field. After the 2002 World Cup, it looked like Landon Donovan was going to be that guy. Finally, we had someone with the physical gifts, technical ability and poise to make it in any league in the world. Think we don't know how to play football in the US? Well check out Landon Donovan -- he'll show you all!

Turns out that Landon wasn't so into that plan. He had played in Europe as a teenager, with disastrous results, and had since been loaned back to MLS. MLS treated him well: he won the MLS cup (twice), got paid pretty well (though not the sort of money you can make abroad) and got his picture in all the league promo materials. Landon was the star! He got to live in his home state of California and hang out with his actress girlfriend. Life was good. Germany was not.

The thing that seems to have the folks on BigSoccer baffled is why Landon Donovan doesn't seem interested in succeeding in Europe. How could this guy be turning tail after only three months in Europe? Though he wasn't named an instant starter, he was certainly given some chances (he started Leverkusen's second-leg Champions League match against Liverpool, though he played pretty poorly and was removed after 53 minutes) and, given Leverkusen's investment in the kid, you would think they were willing to wait for him to grow into a starting role. But no, Landycakes wasn't feeling it. He wanted to come home.

Here a friend's theory is very cogent: Landon Donovan just doesn't really want to face the challenge of becoming a world-class player (the one all the American soccer fans are so desperate for him to be). In my buddy's view, this is an understandable choice; I mean, it's not like any of us are pushing ourselves to be the best in the world at anything. This guy's life is pretty good -- is it really so wrong that he wants to live close to home and hang out with his girlfriend? Who says he has to be the best at anything? Are any of us the best at anything? Of course, not wanting to be the best does mean that "my country won't call upon me when they're looking for eleven top mathematical engineers."

I think this is a pretty dead-on analysis: it's a shame he doesn't want it, but it's his choice. Sure, most people (regardless of field) would say that 23 was a wee bit early to be changing jobs for lifestyle considerations (usually these things happen in one's mid-30s and kids are involved), but if that's what he wants, godspeed. But the other implication is that we shouldn't expect to see Landon contributing too much for the national team.

Still, I think there's more to Landon's return to MLS (and recent run of bad form) at work here. Sure, I think he prefers comfort and security to hard work and Germany, but I also think the kid isn't very tough. Over the weekend, in discussing the US-Mexico rivalry, he used his most grievous and offended tone to tell ESPN interviewers that a Mexican player had once said to him (in Spanish) that he was going to "find [his] mother and kill her."

Umm, okay. That's somewhat discourteous. Oddly, I've never heard Tom Brady complain about foul language from defensive tackles. In fact, I've definitely heard worse than that in my rinky-dink rec league. Hell, I'm pretty sure I've said worse than that myself. I mean, abusive language, Landon? Are you serious? And your comments after the Mexico match about wanting to "crush" Guatemala? Who are you trying to fool? These were empty threats and posturing. At best.

But I guess that's why they call him Landycakes. The thing is, he just doesn't want it, and doesn't look like he's going to want it more any time soon. Luckily for US Soccer fans, all is not lost in the quest for a breakthrough field player in Europe. DaMarcus Beasley is having a strong season for PSV. Benfica (and others) are interested in young US striker Eddie Johnson. Freddy Adu apparently spent the winter in the weight room getting stronger. Jonathan Spector has gotten spots of time with Man U. And people like Eddie Gaven are waiting in the wings at home. The American crossover star is coming, but it's not going to be Landycakes. It looks like Bruce Arena understands this -- let's just hope that he never again lets Landon Donovan wear the captain's armband for the United States. We can do better.

Posted by thatkid at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

It Has Been Made To Mean Something!

Quick hits and corrections on the goings-on at my semi-esteemed graduate school

Since I'm sure at least 6 of the 11 people who visit ThatKidInTheCorner have been nervously awaiting an update on the school election, I figured I'd offer some quick updates (as well as some corrections):

Only Eleven Direct Reports: in my eagerness to ridicule the absurdity of the student government org chart posted in the school lobby, it seems I misspoke somewhat. Whereas I claimed that "15" faces were directly connected to the president, it turns out it is actually only 11 faces. Mea culpa. The remaining four report to other people on the org chart. Note that the entire concept of the org chart with reporting lines remains self-parodic and absurd.

He Made Something Mean Something Else!: guess who won the school election. Just guess. Captain Website carried the day! I guess the student body really wanted to make it mean something as well. Again, I'm sure this dude is a really nice guy with some great ideas for the school. I just wish he didn't shame us all with that URL.

Ongoing Poltroon Watch: so she still hasn't been on time. Not even once. Not even on the way back from a break in class. NOT ONCE. Today she rolled in at 10:21 am. Class begins at 10 am. Rarely is more than one other person late. The killer in the whole experience is her relative shamelessness about the whole thing. Her entrance today was accompanied by her backpack, coffee in one hand, juice with straw in the other as well as a paper bag containing a pastry. So it's clear that she obviously wasn't in a hurry to get there on time -- she budgeted plenty of time for a full breakfast. At 10:29, in the midst of her coffee, juice, and pastry, her computer started making (for lack of a better term) duck noises. Quacks. At this point the professor stopped speaking and asked her what that noise was. "I don't know. It just started doing that." Oh really? It just started doing that? Perhaps if you weren't IM-ing while eating your multi-plate breakfast it wouldn't make that noise. (I'll stop now.)

Viva La Business School!

Posted by thatkid at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

Chasing Shadows, Part 2

Finally, we learn why Peter Wiggin wasn't such a bad guy after all

On the off chance that you missed Part 1 of the ThatKidInTheCorner Ender Wiggin Spectacular, allow me to quickly summarize: in Part 1, I tried to go through the broader context of the Ender Wiggin books to date and applaud the coolness of the idea of future world wars in Asia. In this posting (Part 2), I want to think a bit more about the latest book (Shadow of the Giant): what worked, what didn't, what was cool, and how it fits in the grand scheme of things. I'll try to keep it as non-fanboy as possible (Buy Dragon Army schwag here! See the latest update -- from last week! -- on the Ender's Game movie here!), but I can't make too many promises. As they say, I'll try to try.

Shadow of the Giant is essentially "The Hegemon" part of the fictional The Hive Queen and the Hegemon book that Ender Wiggin writes to atone for his sins in the original Ender's Game. That is, after (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Ender killed all the Buggers in Ender's Game, he actually ended up feeling really badly about the whole thing. So he flew off into space, had a telepathic sit-down with the last remaining alien, called his older brother (now ruling the world) on the future phone and then wrote a two-part (fictional) book about how the aliens and his older brother weren't so bad after all. The (fictional) book was called The Hive Queen and The Hegemon and it was so popular that it became the foundation for a new humanistic religion. The first four (real) books (really the first two) in the Ender series gave us most of the details that went into The Hive Queen part of the fictional book, but we never got the whole (fictional) story about the Hegemon. Not until now. Check? Check.

Although Shadow of the Giant ostensibly finishes the story of Bean that began with Ender's Shadow, by this point (the fourth book), most of Bean's secrets have been revealed. His rival hath been slain (that was a book ago) and now he's just trying to find his missing kids and hang out with his wife before he vanishes forever. What Shadow of the Giant really tackles is Peter Wiggin, and how he managed to actually unite the world and made peace on Earth. The book is essentially a political thriller that details the back-room dealings that lead the great nations of Earth (meaning China, India, Islam, and Russia) to stop fighting and all get along. Sure, there are a couple battles, but very little text is devoted to the actual fights -- mostly we just get scores and highlights.

As I mentioned in the previous posting, I really like the future that Orson Scott Card has imagined, and the conflict he's created. That is, can we figure out a way for all of the world's great nations to get along without blowing each other up? For the most part, the political intrigue and diplomacy of Shadow of the Giant pass the relative plausibility test. Given the assumptions in place, it sort of makes sense that this could all happen the way he imagines it does: some people make smart moves, some people make foolish moves, but very few things seemed completely silly. I think he's a bit too unforgiving in his assessment of a unified Islamic state; he keeps calling Islam a "one-way" religion that has no room for tolerance of non-Muslims, and has hard-core Islamists as the backroom bad guys. You have to wonder how much this opinion is influenced by his own religion and politics (he's a devout Mormom). The madness of the Virlomi character (she's running India) was a little tough to swallow, but you know what? Sometimes charismatic leaders really are crazy and start believing their own press. (It happens in developed countries, and it happens in developing countries, and rarely does it end well.) And the machinations and strategies of Peter Wiggin actually work as well; that is, the book does a great job of delineating the difference between actual authority and influence, and demonstrates how the pushing and prodding of diplomacy can be just as effective as an army (since Peter has no real army -- just Bean and a limited assortment of toys).

Perhaps the only part of the story that I didn't completely buy was the ongoing presence and influence of Graff (to my disappointment, there was no mention of his taking over the NFL as promised in Ender's Game -- I always thought that was a nice flourish at the end of that story) and Mazer Rackham. These are rich characters whose puppetmaster presence has been a fun plot device for the author for a long time -- these are the folks who know ALL the secrets. But in this story, they exist almost exclusively as plot devices, and overly altruistic ones at that. Can I believe that these two folks could really pull all these strings exclusively because they have decided (rather autocratically) that the human race needs saving? I dunno. Still, on the whole, Shadow of the Giant definitely works a a political thriller. I bought it.

But I wouldn't have been so into the story if it had only been a political thriller. If anything, that was my main criticism of the previous two Bean books (though Orson Scott Card admits they should have just been released as one book): that is, they were mostly plot. Those two books were nothing but political intrigue and backroom dealings and battles, and didn't offer nearly enough juice on the characters we cared about (though, to be fair, we did get to learn all of Bean's secrets). They were perfectly fine, but they didn't grab me like this one did. And the reason that this one grabbed me was simple: I got tons of dirt on Peter Wiggin.

All along the book on Peter Wiggin had been that he was smart enough to get into Battle School but that he had been "too aggressive" to make the cut. (He tortured squirrels and bullied his younger siblings as a child.) Well, apparently (wink wink) THAT WASN'T THE WHOLE STORY. (You don't say.) I don't want to give too much away, but it will suffice to say that there are still some secrets about Peter that actually make sense. Beyond secrets, you really do begin to understand Peter's motivations and his flaws. Whereas he was once a manipulative and power-hungry monster, it turns out that the kid actually has some talent -- and some decent values. As a reader, you even (gasp!) begin to feel for him. You understand why he did what did, what his ambitions are, and that he might actually be a decent dude.

Essentially, you end up feeling the same way about Peter Wiggin as the fictional readers of the fictional The Hive Queen and The Hegemon allegedly felt. And that's when you realize (in the most delightfully meta sort of way) that you've actually just read The Hegemon! Whoa. Pretty cool. (It is now appropriate to don your safety goggles and helmets, cause I'm gonna geek out something fierce.) And don't think this is lost on Orson Scott Card, because he dares to give us The Conversation. That is, similar to the first Bean book, he returns to an event he's already described and retells it from a different perspective. In this case, it's the spaceship-to-Earth phone call between an aged Peter Wiggin and his (relativistically maintained) messianic younger brother, Ender. (My notes at this point read: Ohmygod! Ender Wiggin, BACK FROM THE GRAVE!) In the original novel, it's a crucial moment for Ender. At that point in Ender's life, Peter is a creature of his nightmares, the embodiment of all that is evil inside Ender. Ender has just committed a "xenocide," and he's not feeling so good about himself; he's haunted by the worry that he is actually an evil and cruel monster like his older brother. Thus for Ender to actually speak to his brother at all was a courageous thing: Peter was the final obstacle that Ender had to conquer before he could disappear into the sunset.

It's a testament to Orson Scott Card's virtuosity as a storyteller that he is able to so gracefully reverse the pathos in the conversation. The original scene is all about Ender, and Peter exists as a scary ghost from Ender's past. This time around, it's the exact opposite. Ender is now the ghost, neutered in the reader's mind by the milquetoast books that would follow Ender's Game and more a concept than an actual character. Peter, on the other hand, is now sympathetic -- we know what he's been through, what he's done, and he actually seems like a decent guy after all. That is, I read the conversation and realized I already knew what Ender learned in the original: that Peter was human after all. I had just read The Hegemon.

*****

One final fanboy indulgence: I'm going to take it upon myself to rank the eight Ender Wiggin books. Here's what I've got:

(1) Ender's Game: it's the best one, with the richest array of characters, the most imagination, and the best twist at the end (and this is a series that has a knack for twists). It's also the only one that's remotely quotable; remember that THE ENEMY'S GATE IS DOWN.

(2) Speaker for the Dead: this earns the number-two spot simply by virtue of being the only book not about war that actually works. To take the Ender story and grow it up so quickly and successfully (this is essentially a family drama about anthropology) is pretty impressive. This is only book where the adult Ender isn't awful. Also, it has a cool twist at the end.

(3) Ender's Shadow: it was pretty daring to go and retell the Battle School story from Ender's Game. It doesn't just work -- it sings. The Bean backstory is phenomenal at the same time that the plot intertwines gracefully and appropriately with the original story. Amazing that he pulled this off.

(4) Shadow of the Giant: simply by virtue of being the closest we were going to get to The Hegemon, this almost nudged its way into the Top Three. Still, it was a little too plot-heavy (especially in the first half of the story) to edge past Ender's Shadow. Also, it was difficult to pretend to care about Bean's mutant children when there was all that good Peter stuff going on. Still, it's close.

(5) Shadow of the Hegemon: yeah, I tore though this one is about three hours. All plot, with familiar characters, and little juice. The secrets weren't that exciting (or shocking), and it's really only the first half of a story. Achilles is pretty cool, though. That's what gets it to five.

(6) Shadow Puppets: Man, how many times can you get "shadow" into the title? This is essentially the second half of Shadow of the Hegemon, and is a little more action-packed than the first. At the same time, it's pretty obvious and is mostly about bad guys getting their respective comeuppances. Still, there's a BIG gap between number 6 and number 7.

(7) Children of the Mind: I imagine that Orson Scott Card wants this one back. Fake Peter and Valentine running around? A computer program who wants to be human? And the lamest Ender ever? The absurdity of this story is the only thing that keeps it out of last place. Seriously. Certain characters should have just been named "Plot Device."

(8) Xenocide: Dear Xenocide, you are in last place because you were the single most disappointing book I have ever read -- even worse than The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. In retrospect, it wasn't all your fault. It was really tough to measure up to the first two Ender books. I feel for you. And at least you had the courage to take the story in another direction. The only problem was that said direction wasn't so sweet. Obsessive-compulsive children counting grains of wood in the floor? For pages and pages and pages? I remember reading you at a furious pace waiting for you to stop sucking. You never did. That's why you're in last place.

(And if you thought this was geeky, just you wait until The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie comes out at the end of April. Oh my. I'm already ashamed of what I'll write about that one.)

Posted by thatkid at 6:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

Chasing Shadows, Part 1

In which I geek out in re: Orson Scott Card's four-volume addendum to the Ender Wiggin saga

From a character development perspective, it's quite a challenge to top Ender Wiggin. In four volumes (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind), Orson Scott Card took the Ender character from a shy child who becomes the leader of all the world's armies into a quasi-Messiah who unites all intelligent life in the universe. Then, in an additional four volumes, he returned to the same fictional world and retold the same story (at least the first part), only from the perspective of the Bean character, an important (but certainly not central) character from Ender's Game. Certainly an ambitious project, and one which -- mercifully -- can confidently be labeled a success.

I plowed through the latest (and possibly last?) installment of the Ender Wiggin saga last week; that is, I read the fourth book of the second set (the ones about Bean), called Shadow of the Giant. I knew I'd be writing about this book before I read it (and even tipped my hand a bit in the Hunter S. Thompson posting from a few weeks ago). What I didn't realize was that an intellectually honest treatment thereof (and I almost wrote that with a straight face!) would require more than a single posting. So. Here's how we're going to do this. Part 1 (NB: you are HERE) is going to try to get its head around the context and ambitions of the Ender series. Part 2 will go into the specifics of the latest book and give you some juice on where it fits in re: the other seven Ender books.

Check.

Assuming the (ahem) not everyone has read these books, let's catch up with the story of the film so far. Ender's Game was originally published as a short story in 1977, before being fleshed out to a full-length novel in 1985. The book was a huge hit with the sci-fi community (it won the two big sci-fi awards) and soon began to enjoy some crossover success with kids. I mean, for the sort of kid who's predisposed to like sci-fi in the first place, Ender's Game is a total layup: smart kid who gets picked on at school gets whisked away to a space to attend "Battle School" where he plays high-tech video games so well that he is chosen to save the world from scary aliens. It's like Harry Potter, only darker and more interesting (imagine if all the other kids hated Harry; also if Harry murdered classmates with his bare hands). Three more Ender books followed, but were dramatically different in tone and theme from the first: they detailed Ender Wiggin's adult exploits as a quasi-religious shaman, and his redemption for the sin of saving the world in the first book. (SPOILER ALERT!!! It turns out that in the course of "saving the world" he managed to murder all the aliens, who apparently weren't so bad after all.) Also, a computer program falls in love with him.

By the fourth book, the general story had wandered pretty far from Ender's Game (instead of cool zero-g games of laser tag, Ender was having imaginary conversations with trees and insect larvae -- no, I'm not kidding) and the series felt pretty dead. Ender wasn't so cool anymore (a real wet blanket, you know) and I was feeling borderline stung by the repeated disappointments of Xenocide and Children of the Mind. (The obsessive-compulsive-disorder planet? Seriously. Not that sweet.) Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, well, we won't be fooled again. But no -- in a moment of narrative (and marketing) genius, Orson Scott Card decided to start over. That is, he took the story back to Battle School and told the story of Ender's Game from another character's perspective. Thus, we get the tale of Bean, the one kid in Battle School who most reminded Ender of himself. And if the Ender character had been neutered by books 2, 3, and 4, the first Bean book, Ender's Shadow completely mummified him. In the retelling, it turns out that Ender actually wasn't that cool after all. In fact, there were all sorts of complex machinations going on behind the scenes at Battle School as Ender -- oblivious to it all -- quietly goes about his business of saving the world.

From a narrative perspective, this could have been a complete debacle: you're messing with your most popular character ever, AND you're recycling a story. Although we didn't know all the details in re: the travails of Bean, we generally knew where the story was going. And yet, he pulls it off -- Ender's Shadow completely works, mostly because Orson Scott Card came up with a great backstory for Bean. And from there, he took the story in a completely different direction. At the end of Ender's Game, we get a couple paragraphs telling us that after Ender saved the world and flew off into the sunset, his older brother (evil bully Peter Wiggin) united the world under one government. The next three Bean books explain how all that (in re: those paragraphs and the uniting the world thing) went down. And it's quite a story.

Essentially, choosing to tell the Bean and Peter Wiggin story allows Orson Scott Card to imagine the next 100 years of geopolitics. Here he seems to have done his homework. In this imagined not-too-distant future, the US has gone isolationist, Europe has lost whatever influence it now maintains, and the main struggle for power takes place in Asia between China, India and a large politically unified Muslim state. (Eerily enough, his assumptions seem very much in line with this CIA report.) This all seems a pretty safe bet, though he glosses over some bigger issues which will likely impact geopolitics, namely the economics of it all and also the effects of global climate change. But I'm quibbling over details -- for the most part, it's a pretty persuasive view of the future.

In fact, what's most remarkable is that there isn't a glut of entertainment products (books, movies, games) about this scenario already. Where is the Red Storm Rising for the 21st century? Sure, all the indicators suggest that conventional wars (with tanks, plans, soldiers, etc) between nations are a little passe, but that view is probably a little too US-focused. That is, I do think it's safe to assume that the United States won't be fighting very many tank and naval battles in the coming years -- you'd have to be completely bonkers to start a war with the US. But what about China fighting Russia? India fighting Pakistan? A unified Muslim state tussling with China's western frontier? There should be TONS of books/ movies/ games about this. TONS.

What makes these stories of world wars yet to come really hum (and offers Orson Scott Card an extremely valuable narrative device) is that he can tell the story of warring nations through the interactions of a roster of familiar characters. That is, all the kids who helped Ender against the Buggers are now leading the armies of the world's great powers. Thus, Orson Scott Card gets to distill the mind-bending complexity of a global war into a few highly visible characters, and it actually makes sense. I mean, if these kids DID save the world from aliens, then they would end up leading armies on Earth. Instead of China versus the Muslim State versus Russia, it's Hot Soup versus Alai versus Vlad, with Bean, Petra and others in the mix. And with that structure, the whole story just cruises along.

At the same time that I can't help but gush over the ambitions of the story Orson Scott Card has chosen to tell, I don't think his vision is perfect. I think he's a bit too down on Islam (that is, he imagines that Islam intrinsically dooms Islamist states to be ugly, oppressive aggressors) and doesn't do enough to fill in some of the gaps in the world he's created (that is, he doesn't ever really engage in a discussion of what the future world's economy looks like). All that said, given where the Ender books stood following Children of the Mind, the Bean books are a HUGE second-half comeback. Huge. And, if anything, I want to consume more stories about the future of geopolitics: there's a lot of juicy scenarios that should make GREAT fodder for imaginative people. (Just think: you can write and digitally animate wars between China and India -- holy crap!)

As for the details of the actual story, what worked, what didn't, and my thoughts on where it fits in the overall rankings of all the Ender books, I'm squirreling that all away for Part 2. Stay tuned.

Posted by thatkid at 2:53 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2005

Making Something Mean Something

In which there are ample opportunities for a semiotic discussion of the relative merits of the descriptors "self-parodic" and "caricature of itself"

Business school has been very good to me. I've learned a ton, met some great people, and feel good about my investment in the degree. At the same time, I've had more than a few shake-my-head moments at b-school, the moments when I feel really out of place, in a very I-don't-belong-here-please-tell-me-I-don't-act-like-these-people sort of way. (See also: why most people don't like people with MBAs.) On balance, I'm pretty simpatico about the whole thing -- b-school is great and I recommend it to anyone who asks, warts and all. However, there are certain things that just don't work for me. And by "just don't work for me" I mean "drive me to the verge of apoplectic seizure." Student government elections are one of said things.

In lieu of spending time probing the motivations that drive my b-school classmates to seek out positions in the student government (an exercise which surely will embarrass me more than them), I'll offer some general observations about b-school culture as a means of establishing the degree of self-parody in which the student government elections operate:

(1) It is important to understand that business school, as a general rule, is chock full of people who have never for a fleeting moment imagined that they take themselves too seriously. That is, one goes to business school with visions of a swift ascent to corporate chiefdom -- the basis of which is a conviction that you are special, chosen, and different. It's part entitlement, and part naivete, and it leads many students to believe that the rules of normal adult behavior are suspended for those of us lucky enough to make it to b-school. Mostly it means people don't realize how full of shit their imagined expertise and rinky-dink conflicts actually sound in a room full of grown-ups.

(2) It is expected that you will paper your resume with an awe-inspiring list of achievements and accomplishments (especially those that establish your always-effusive "leadership potential") in the interest of impressing potential employers. Thus, there are dozens of different clubs at the business school, each with an exhaustive roster of "officers" which in some cases outnumber the actual membership of the club. (And we wonder why American corporations seem so top-heavy!) In any case, it's tough to find people who aren't an officer in some sort of club; you sort of have to go out of your way not to be one.

With that in mind, I will offer two pieces of evidence to support the claim that there is no club or activity at my business school that is a greater caricature of itself (and really the whole b-school experience) than the student government elections. If you are looking for self-parody, you have come to the right place. Here we go:

(1) In the lobby of the business school's main building, there is a large poster (behind glass) with the photos of all the current members of the student government. It's a pretty lengthy roster, with about 15 faces and associated titles listed. Fair enough -- lots of clubs have bulletin boards (though none in the lobby) and many of said bulletin boards feature photos of the club's officers. Ah, but what those other club bulletin boards don't feature are reporting lines. That's right. Reporting lines, like in a real corporate org chart! I did a double take the first time I saw them. No, I thought. The person who put this together surely wasn't so insecure and eager to announce their power and success that they managed to actually craft an elaborate graphical cue as to precisely who is in charge of this whole Mickey-Mouse enterprise. I mean, wouldn't just listing "president" be enough? But no. There are lines. The best part (from an opportunity-to-snicker perspective) is that ALL THE LINES LEAD TO ONE PERSON. In fact, there are SO many people reporting to that one person that they don't all fit on the width of the paper (in fairness, it's portrait and not landscape view), such that a second row needed to be added and then connected to the first row before being connected to the top. But, make no mistake about it, the second row does not report to the first row -- THEY ALL REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT! (!!!) I'll admit that I haven't read the organization's charter, and so I don't understand the exact details of their duties, but I can't help but wonder in what situations it would be necessary for someone to report to someone else in the school government. To authorize additional kegs for Happy Hour? To okay the battle plan for the frontal assault on Wharton? Honestly, if you wrote the parody of business school, you couldn't come up with something that rich. Reporting lines. It's perfect.

(2) The current election cycle (for which I've received countless pleas from students and administrators alike to PLEASE VOTE, as if, I don't know, the future of the country depended on it) has produced a healthy field of candidates. I don't know any of them. I've read some of their e-mails (shockingly, I skipped the speeches) and they seem like a good-natured bunch. Some have even gone so far as to put together handy campaign web sites to explain their position on various issues (and I use that term VERY loosely -- we're talking about things like long lines in the cafeteria and whatnot). Right. This is all making sense to me: I like the web, and I like to use it to share information. Check. This all makes sense. Where I got lost was the url of one of the campaign sites. That's right. W-W-W-dot-makeitmeansomething-dot-com. Oh. My. God. I. Am. Having. A. Seizure. Make it Mean Something? Make what mean something? And what's this something it's supposed to mean? Not even the most somber and serious of causes (and here we could be in childhood-burn-victim territory) would use something so tawdry and heavy-handed. Make it mean something! Like this election is important! REALLY IMPORTANT! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? THE WINNER WILL HAVE ALL THE LINES LEADING TO THEM!!! THIS IS SERIOUS!!! I struggle to decide who should be held responsible for this. Is it his marketing professor? His friends? Register.com for selling him the domain?

Ugh. So there it is: my argument for why the student government elections are the most acutely self-parodic moment of the entire b-school experience. I dunno. Maybe it isn't like this at other schools. I want to hope so. But somehow I doubt it. At this point, I would vote for the first candidate who promised to remove the reporting lines in the poster. I really would. In the meantime, the important thing, in re: the brand value of this degree I've struggled to secure, IS THAT NO ONE ON THE OUTSIDE ACTUALLY KNOWS THIS SORT OF THING GOES ON. Then we'd really be hosed.

Posted by thatkid at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2005

Shouting at the TV, Continental Edition

In which I make friends at a sports bar in Europe

Buried somewhere deep in the hierarchy of the phylum known as "My Really Geeky Habits," within the family "Obsessive Sports Fandom" and the genus "Soccer," is my fondness for the UEFA Champions League. Without going much into the details, the Champions League is this competition where they round up all the best teams from all the different soccer leagues in all the different countries throughout Europe and have them play each other in a big (mostly knock-out) competition. The main portion of the competition starts in September and finishes the following May; at this point of the year, we're just finishing off the round of 16.

Tuesday night featured a couple great second-leg matches (I could explain what "second leg" meant in greater detail, but let's just assume it away as irrelevant) with a spot in the quarterfinals on the line. Specifically, Barcelona were playing at Chelsea in one of more hyped matches of the year (lots of extraneous press coverage and whatnot). Between the countries' respective sporting presses insulting the others' style of play, the accusations of cheating between the coaches, and the bold predictions of victory, the game was shaping up to be a dandy.

And, as luck would have it, I was in Europe at the same time! Amsterdam specifically, where an early scouting mission tipped me to the presence of a legitimate-looking SPORTS BAR where I would surely be able to catch the game (said SPORTS BAR had Sportscenter on big-screen TVs in the morning -- I imagine to the delight the grubby-looking Yank backpackers yearning for a little slice of home). That is, I would have a place where I would be able to shout at the television along with 85 complete strangers. Game on.

I arrived about 30 minutes before game time; probably should have gone earlier, but I was on the verge of finishing my book and it was really good. The bouncer asked me what game I wanted to watch.

"Bartha." That's right. I pronounced it with the "th."
"Upstairs."
"Will the other games be on up there?"
"All the games will be on, but they will have sound for Barcelona."

Well this was a good sign! The staff were well-versed in the vocabulary of sports bars! (That is, it was all about where I'd be able to hear the audio.) I rambled up the stairs and was pretty shocked by the scene: the place was packed; it looked like I would be lucky to get a seat. Just I was scoping the place, a pixieish waitress flitted by and motioned for me to follow her. She then grabbed an empty chair from a partially filled table and plopped it into a shaving of negative space, directly in front of the projection screen. Not bad.

"This okay?"
"Yeah, this is great."
"You want a drink?"
"Beer."
"Okay." And she was off!

Wow. This was getting even better. This miniature waitress person had not only carved out some space for me, but she had also managed to take my drink order without the tedium of listing/ selecting a specific flavor of beer (NB: this was a situation where said brand was going to be completely irrelevant). Well played indeed.

As I waited for the beer to be fetched, I checked the scene. Hmmm. Pretty "diverse." Meaning, I have absolutely no idea what language 60 percent of the people around me were speaking. From the hoots and hollering on that accompanied the shots of Barcelona on the big-screen TV, I gathered that most folks were in the Catalans' camp. Makes sense -- Bartha definitely has more of a well-established global appeal than the Londoners. Also, Barcelona has traditionally had an affinity for Dutch players (All-Time-Best-Ever-Dutch-Footballer Johann Cruyff played there) and their current coach, Frank Rijkaard is also Dutch.

The pregame shows were mostly inscrutable, save for the one television playing the replay of the previous evening's Old Dominion - VCU game on something called Orbit ESPN. Right. College hoops. In Amsterdam. Though, when the screen flashed a Rolling Rock-sponsored "Shooting the Rock" statistic, I couldn't help but smile. "Shooting the Rock"? What, maybe six people in this room understand what the hell that means? Seven? Not just the metaphor but the tenuous connection to a beer brand -- in college sports? And then I took a moment to reflect on just how much more fantastic (and delightfully ironic!) our sports productions are than the rest of the world -- they wouldn't figure out the EU version of "shooting the rock" for at least another five to ten years. (U-S-A! U-S-A!)

My beer arrived and the big screen flashed a Mastercard ad -- it's time for UEFA Champions League! The opening shot of the telecast? Chelsea's charismatic coach Jose Mourinho, looking smug. Excellent. (Jose Mourinho has taken "looking smug" to Rumsfeldian proportions.) Then we get the obligatory shots of the teams in the tunnel, followed by -- Is it true? Is it actually him? -- the most famous bald pate in sports: referee Pierluigi Collina!

The presence of Collina officially lent this match Big Game status. There'd been all sorts of griping about the officiating in the first leg, but the buck would stop with Collina! Having Collina referee your game is akin to John Madden doing an NFL telecast (and not just because both have been video-game coverboys) -- it lends the event a serious sense of occasion. This just kept getting better.

The game kicked off with gusto, and the first couple minutes had the bar crowd loud and rowdy. More folks kept sauntering in, and my fake row was now about 12 people across. They even had people sitting on white plastic stools. The audio appeared to be in Spanish. In Holland. Of course.

Chelsea's opening goal drew lots of shouts (what a ball from Lampard and then Kezman!). The second goal was a bit more subdued. Somewhere between Chelsea goals number two and three the audio switched over to English. In Holland. (You bandwagon-jumping TV audio!) The third goal, courtesy of a sublime Damien Duff finish, and my own subsequent exclamation of "Duffer!" alerted me to the fact that no one outside my apartment actually refers to the Irish winger as "The Duffer." Check.

At this point, eighteen minutes in, I actually had the thought that I might switch over to the Man U - Milan game on one of the smaller TVs. I actually thought that! File that as Reason #412 Why I Am An Idiot.

(Speaking of Man U, I've had enough of the Brit sports press calling their young Portugese winger "Ronaldo." There already is a Ronaldo. He's really famous. Calling someone else Ronaldo is cheap, fake, and disespectful to the actual Ronaldo brand. The Man U guy should be called "Cristiano Ronaldo" at all times. Though, if this is the US and he's subject to the Sportscenter blathermonkey treatment, the kid would have been "Cronaldo" (CROE-nall-doe) for years now. I'm just sayin.)

Of course, I'm an idiot because Bartha scored two goals in quick succession and suddenly were back in control of the tie. After just 38 minutes. My notes at that point read "Best 38 minutes ever." This was also when I started to make some friends. And all it took was "HOLY SHIT! All this in 38 minutes! We're in for a long night!" And suddenly I'm making chit-chat with two separate groups -- a Scottish guy and his girlfriend, and then a couple journalists, one of whom was a Barcelona native. (Note to self: be polite about potential results!)

Halftime was uneventful, save for my own sublime timing in getting to the bathroom JUST ahead of the rush. Nice.

The second half was tense from the get-go: Barca had the possession, but Chelsea were holding their shape and seemed up to the challenge. Both keepers made some clutch saves. It was tense. Far from over. I turned to the journo from Barcelona:

"Barca REALLY needs to score another goal to win this game."
"No, they will win if the score stays the same."
"No no, I get it, but I just think they need to score again to make sure they win."
"But because they have scored two goals [on the road -- meaning they had the away-goals tiebreaker], they will win."
"I get the away-goals thing, but I don't think this is over."

(This clearly wasn't going anywhere.)

More saves, more shouting. The bar was getting louder and louder. I met some dudes from Liverpool who were in Amsterdam for the evening on their way to the following day's Liverpool - Leverkusen match in Germany. Uh-huh. Gotcha. These guys looked like they'd been drinking for approximately 7.5 hours.

At some point in the second half, Barca defender Carlos Puyol made a notable play, prompting me to turn to the guy next to me (you know, the one from that part of the world) and try to explain how I thought Carlos Puyol was a sweet player. Only I put that statement in the context of "usually most Spanish players are cowards," and Puyol stands out by "not being a coward." Smooth. Maybe I should talk to the British guys again.

A few minutes after another aborted "Barca REALLY need to score again" conversation with no one in particular (prompting another aborted explanation of the away-goals rule), John Terry scored for Chelsea. And now they're ahead. And Barca really DID need to score again. I made a point of not looking at the dude next to me.

The last fifteen minutes were tense. Tight. Barca had some looks, but Chelsea managed to survive and win the game. Much hooting and hollering from the Peanut Gallery, though it hadn't sounded like there was so much Chelsea support at the bar during the game. I would guess it was mostly the Brits in the place looking for a reason to taunt the rest of the place. Not to point a finger or anything.

After a few exchanges of "Helluva game!" and "Good one! Good one!" I said my goodbyes and made my way back into the Amsterdam night. Needed to find some food and make my way back to my hotel. Of course, it wouldn't be Amsterdam if I hadn't run into two drunk-looking eighteen-year-old British kids (and eighteen is generous) who asked me if I knew the way to the Red Light District.

Oh man. I should have conducted an intervention. I really should have. I should have told them to go home, or played dumb, or something. But hey, if these kids wanted to film some scenes in their coming-of-age drama this evening, that's their story.

"That way." (Pointing in the direction they were already walking -- I really had no idea how to tell them to get there, but I figured it was roughly that way, where "that way" = "near the train station.")
"Thanks." And they stumbled off.

Remarkably, the away-goals rule didn't come up.

Posted by thatkid at 6:17 PM | Comments (0)

March 8, 2005

Eurotrip(!)

I had no idea how good German doughnuts would be

Hello from Amsterdam! I'm on Day Four of my improv Spring Break Eurotrip. Going to try to keep it quick, partly because (a) I'm at one of those Internet cafes where the meter is most definitely running and (b) the keyboard on the computer at said Internet has what looks to be the remains of a chocolate bar (dearGodIhopeit'sachocolatebar) jammed between the R, T and F keys and it's kind of nasty.

I wouldn't say I've been eating healthily: I mean, I knew German food was heavy. What I didn't know was that my diet there would mostly consist of coffee, pastries, and beer, in that order. Also I had schnitzel (there's no way that's spelled properly). Jaegerschnitzel, to be in exact. It means, "in the hunter's style" or "covered in heavy cream sauce."

Good luck storming the castle: true to form, when in Germany, check out a castle. And so we did. Drove to Heidelburg and walked up and down a TON of steps to check out this old-timey castle. True to dork form, I immediately needed to know if it was in any way connected to The Baroque Cycle. (It was.)

On the topic of books...: very literary little trip for me. All the Baroque Cycle stuff (both in Germany and in Holland -- I should go looking for Eliza's apartment) is good, but I also read the new Ender book yesterday, and it certainly resonates to be in Bean's home country as well (though sadly not in Rotterdam proper). By the way, the new Ender book is phenomenal. I'm planning to write a lengthy (and hopelessly geeky) treatise on it upon my return.

Despite my choice in luggage, I am not one of those people: wow, I must be getting old, as I have such minimal patience for the grubby-ass backpackers that have infested Amsterdam. I think the American ones actually bother me the most. Luckily, I'm staying way off the beaten path and out of the touristy zone. Which is nice.

Quite the grift!: this guy in my train car got completely scammed yesterday. These two dudes, working in tandem, stole his computer from him. The one guy got off the train at a stop, but pretended to forget his mobile phone. So he gestures at the mark from outside the train and asks him to bring the phone out. As soon as the mark left, the other dude grabbed the mark's stuff and was out of there. Apparently some dipshit German guy watched the whole thing (BUT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING?!?!?!?) and explained it to us all afterwards. Anyhoo, the guard was up after that.

Off to the Van Gogh museum -- send me an e-mail if you want tacky souvenirs!

Posted by thatkid at 5:28 PM | Comments (0)

March 4, 2005

I'd Like To Thank The ATM Machine, The Guy Who Works At Starbucks....

Trying to figure out why twenty-year-old basketball players are more articulate and appropriate than Oscar-winning actors

I didn't catch much of the Oscars on Sunday night. Beyond some curiosity about what Chris Rock would say (because Chris Rock tends to be a pretty funny and insightful guy), the show didn't hold so much sway over me. I hadn't really seen very many of the nominated movies, and more generally find "awards programs" to be pretty boring as entertainments. Said programs tend to be good at "Letting you see lots of celebrities in the same place -- even the ones from slightly different parts of the entertainment business!" and not much else.

Still, the few minutes of the broadcast which I did see (the presentation of the awards to Hillary Swank and Charlie Kaufmann) brought up a question that's baffled me for years: how is it that entertainment people are SO MUCH more atrocious at commenting on their success than sports people? That is, why are the movie types so unwatchable when they're asked to say "Thank You"? With even a limited cache of Oscar memories available to me, I can very quickly point to Julia Roberts, James Cameron, and Halle Berry as three offenders who quickly leap to mind. Generally speaking, why do these otherwise talented people do such a poor job of being gracious and appropriate?

The buffoonery on the Oscar stage is all the more embarrassing when compared to the poise and politeness that come standard in even the most emotionally charged sports interview. Specifically, think about how articulate your standard college basketball player is in the moments after winning the NCAA tournament, as a microphone is thrust into his twenty-year-old mug. (We don't even have to go into the pros to make the argument.) The kid has just succeeded at the highest level of his life, in front of a huge audience -- both in the arena and on television. Typically he's covered in sweat, gasping for breath, and suddenly there's a microphone in his face, demanding to know how he feels. And you know what? Nine times out of ten, the kid nails it. He'll communicate enthusiasm, excitement, a respect for his opponent, and gratitude (to his coach, the rest of his team, and his parents, usually in that order). The most egregious sin of this moment is typically when he spots a teammate approaching and launches a high-five in the middle of the interview. Even the kids who talk exclusively about God come across as earnest.

So what is it about the Hollywood people that makes them so much lousier at gracefully (and efficiently) accepting congratulations than athletes? Some theories:

They're All Alone Up There: when you win the Oscar, you walk to a microphone and start talking. The smart ones try to prepare something, though "preparing" doesn't necessarily prevent "doing an awful job." Athletes at least have someone standing nearby feeding them lines, asking them questions, and otherwise structuring the presentation. That helps, and, to their credit, the Hollywood people usually are pretty good in one-on-one interviews (press junkets, the talk shows, etc.). All that said, even the prepared Hollywood people say silly things on those stages.

They're Not Used To Competing: whereas athletes compete every single day (in practice, in games, playing video games when they're not busy with the first two) and used to both "winning" and "losing" in contests where there is a clear result and ending (often under extremely large helpings of pressure), Hollywood people don't ever really publicly compete. For anything. They make movies, and then a bunch of their peers decide which one they like best. There are no explanations or listed criteria for the decisions -- just an announcement. Thus, when the Hollywood people win an award, they're thrust into the awkward situation of (a) being under pressure in public and (b) having to explain what it feels like to "win" something. And they're not prepared to do a good job of that.

They're Shallow and Fake: movie people make a living creating a simulacrum of reality. They pretend to be people they're not, and fabricate worlds that don't exist. Athletes compete for money and respect every day. The emotions you see on the field and the court are real. Very real. (In fact, the most popular ones tend to be among the most expressive.) Winning an Oscar offers a glimpse into the "real" Hollywood person -- the one who isn't just parroting press junket platitudes -- and it turns out that those people aren't actually always so interesting. Or at least not as emotionally sincere as athletes.

Their Fantasy World Is Even More Out Of Touch Than The Athletes: make no mistake, high-profile athletes are just as rich and coddled as Hollywood people. They all have agents, managers and other flacks catering to their every whim. But again, the athletes are out in public every day, playing games, interacting with fans, and engaging with the world. In fact, if they play a bad game, people boo and journalists write nasty things. If Ashton Kutcher makes a crappy movie, maybe some film critic will give him a hard time, but his agent will tell him he's a genius and get him another deal. That is, even though the athletes might feel entitled, at least they don't have a publicist on staff. (Much less mention said publicist upon winning a basketball game.)

They Rarely Get Negative Public Feedback: as mentioned above, although Hollywood people might get a bad review, said review doesn't actually mean they didn't succeed -- plenty of critically panned films make gobs of money. Athletes, however, get ample doses of public negative feedback ALL THE TIME. People boo, they jeer, they spit, they call you names. If you're a great player, you've likely been dealing with it since high school. Thus, you're going to be a little more in control of yourself than someone who gets flowers and congrats from your grandparents after the school play. Athletes are cooler under pressure because they have to be -- otherwise they wouldn't survive. Thus, offering a few words about how you feel after you win something is barely a challenge; try answering those questions after you've been injured in a loss!

Posted by thatkid at 5:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 2, 2005

That Last Paper of Record Stole My Thunder

Curses! That's one of the best parts of my "Why I Really Like New York" speech

Good for the New York Times for hitting it out of the park with their special section on food delivery in Manhattan. Guess what? I also think the scale of food delivery here is fantastic! Who would have thought? I mean, I only schlepped buffalo wings and chinese food for four years in college, and then later worked for an ill-fated online delivery service. Also, I order food all the time. Other than that, I couldn't care less.

The Times does a nice job with the coverage, but they failed to include my favorite quip in re: the food delivery in Manhattan, which I will present here, completely out of context and purely as an add-on to the excellent work of the real reporters. That is, you might pay a little more for real estate in Manhattan, but the room service is outstanding.

***

I actually do have something to say about the Oscars (not that it's remotely topical anymore), but it'll have to wait until later. Probably tonight.

Posted by thatkid at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)