Barratry

Next in the series... and I don't even know what it means. Is ambulance chasing a crime? Well lookiethere... wikipedia says it's a misdemeanor in a few states (including Washington... note to self), and a felony in Texas! (what isn't a felony in Texas?) It's the "act or practice of bringing repeated legal actions solely to harass." And in maritime law it's an "act of gross misconduct committed by a master or crew of a vessel which damages the vessel or its cargo." Roger that.

But speaking of shifty lawyers, I'm off tonight to DC for the Osborne oral argument. Recap next week.

Boom

I wasn't the only one struck by Bobby Jindal's little dig on "volcano monitoring" last night. The blogosphere worked itself into a bit of a lather, but that's nothing new. More interesting is that basically the entire state of Alaska -- a red state if there ever was one -- uttered a collective "what the hell?" Both US senators -- one Democrat, one Republican -- showed support for spending on volcano research. Sarah Palin wisely didn't offer a comment, but her office did: "Of course Alaskans want to know if a volcano is going to blow."

The best reaction comes from Stephen Colbert: "Monitoring volcanoes totally ruins the surpise. Republicans know all we need to control volcanoes is to sacrifice a virgin. That is why they support abstinence education."

So, anyway, yeah, bad example.

I'm #1!

On Google Images for the search term "Phatty McGee's" -- and I could not be more proud. Props to future ABC Bachelor Foley for snapping this beauty.

Speeches!

It's been a full month since our last big Obama speech. That's unacceptable. I demand huge speeches every two weeks.

I also demand that the speeches happen after 7pm AK time. This 5pm start just won't do.

Because I missed most of the speeches tonight. I can only conclude that Barack Obama doesn't care about Alaskan people. There is no other explanation.

I surmise that Obama's speech was fine -- pretty much what you'd expect. I was curious about the Bobby Jindal rebuttal, since he is perceived to be a rising star in the Republican party. So I was surprised to see the Fox News panel panning his performance. And then the comparisons to Kenneth on 30 Rock -- okay, I get the point. Not the greatest speech.

I scanned the text of the speech, and two things stuck out. First, you're going to bring up Katrina as an example of how people don't need government? To me, Katrina represents how a government's failure to act can lead directly to disasterous results. Government brings bureaucracy, sure, but it also brings people, boats, sandbags, food, water, cots, and police. Fair trade.

Second, why are you picking on volcano monitoring? I have a rumbling volcano 100 miles from here, threatening to blow at any moment. Every day as I leave work I am told to cover my computer in a plastic bag so ash doesn't get in there and mess stuff up. I'd like to know more specifically when that sucker's gonna go. Surely there are other examples of unnecessary spending you can think of. Leave my volcanoes alone.

Oh it's almost over

Another Bachelor "episode" tonight. It's maybe the worst experience of my life.

This isn't a normal episode -- it's some sort of recap/discussion show. There's an interminable recap of all the crap that's happened before. Then we're told that this was maybe the "best" and "most intense" seasons ever. The mind boggles: it gets worse than this? The host says this is the 17th season... there are sixteen seasons more nauseating than this? Sixteen seasons worth of crazy desperation?

Mind you, that's nothing against Jason, who through it all has seemed like a normal dude who succeeds in positioning himself in the calmer eye of the crazy hurricane... away from the true crazy. He's done Lake Washington High School proud, I think.

But the show itself is just so boring and uninspired. Unless you know somebody on the show, I don't know why anyone would care about these people. (I'm pretty sure everyone reading this right now is saying: well, duh.)

Anyway, on with the show. We had an extended conversation amongst the rejected women about who was nice and who wasn't and so on -- lots of talking over each other and generally enough to make me want to stick forks in my ears. Then Jason comes out and everyone coos and the most recently rejected women "confront" him lamely. He comes off as cool and likable, as always. And then we've got extended recaps of the two remaining bachelorettes and previews of next week. Have I mentioned each segment is "extended"? That's because this frigging show has the nerve to last two hours.

The only way I watch this show again is if my friend Foley is the Bachelor. I think I'll go nominate him on abc.com now.

Next week: "Jason is in love with two women." Well, that's a problem, dude.

Accessory

Next in the series. Accessory to what?

A couple sports things

1. Every other Mariner fan I know is absolutely thrilled that Griffey is coming back. I don't know why I'm such an outlier on this one -- maybe it's because my image of Junior is shaped by my days working in the Mariners locker room. But it's just weird that everyone seems to agree that he's not very good any more, but they're still so happy. This is how bad it is for Seattle sports now... that the signing of a below-average player is the best thing to happen in years.

2. Stanford hoops is done. They've quit. I hoped for better in the first year of Dawkins. I blame Duke.

3. Even though the NBA is dead to me, every now and then I hear about what's going on in the league. And it kills me to hear how good Kevin Durant has become. The better he gets, the more I loathe David Stern and the rest of the NBA for what they did to the Sonics.

I just reread these three items... I sound really bitter, don't I? Hmm. Maybe kittens will cheer me up.

Mayhem

Next in the series of Hutchins Hall stained glass. Throw a flag.

Catching up

I take a few days off, and stuff happens.

• Let's get this out of the way first -- Cal fans can celebrate Stanford's choke job on Saturday. Stanford up 23 in the first half, Monty makes a couple adjustments, and Cal storms back. The shift was obvious, but Johnny Dawkins did nothing to counter the adjustments. And yet, the Cardinal was up 6 with four minutes to go, and still blew the game. The inability to close games has been a problem all year, and had already doomed the season. Johnny gets a C- for his performance so far this year, we'll need to see some improvement next year.
• As for Cal... if I don't have anything nice to say, I won't say anything at all.
• Griffey to the Braves. Thank you thank you thank you. Kudos to Jack Z for not bowing to nostalgic Mariners fans and overpaying for a washed up curmudgeon. Excellent work.
• The Bachelor was on again last night, but don't worry, it's almost over. Only a couple episodes left. I don't have noncontextual notes for you this week, but just know that the women are still big-hearted, the dates were amazing, and Jason cried. Next!
• My poor mom is now being heckled after I mentioned that she had been pulled into my inane Bachelor experiment. I guess not everyone appreciates the many-splendored thing of made-for-TV creepy elimination-style love.
• On a completely different note, Valentine's Day was a lovely time here in the AK, and she-who-prefers-not-to-be-named-on-the-Internet came to visit. After 15 restaurants told me I could not have a dinner reservation, it turned out that a home-cooked meal was in order. Which worked well: crab ceviche, bacon-wrapped scallops, and rack of lamb. Yum.
• Are you watching Lost? Are you watching BSG? So good.
  

Okay, that's it.

Just say no

To Ken Griffey, Jr.

He's not worth it.

Maybe Mariners fans don't remember how he forced his way out of Seattle 10 years ago, intentionally hamstringing the team's chances of getting equal value in a trade, but I do.

I also remember what he was like in the clubhouse. I worked for a Seattle TV station the summer of '97 -- his MVP season -- and I was in the locker room after almost every home game. No one was more prickly with media, and no one was more joyless about the daily grind of the game. The only time I saw him laugh was when he-who-shall-not-be-named was cursing out a young intern.

Manslaughter

Next in the series, one of the more hilariously creepy windows in Hutchins Hall.

Outrage! Glorious irrational outrage!

The Alex Rodriguez story presents another opportunity to howl about the selfish! cheating! disrespectful! practice of steroid use in baseball. The volume of outrage never quite adds up to me, though, as none of the arguments against steroids seems to be entirely consistent. The major arguments:

1. Cheating! Taking steroids is against the rules!
True... now. But they weren't forbidden until earlier this decade, after A-Rod and Bonds were using. How is it cheating if it isn't against the rules? But more importantly, baseball has a long tradition of tolerating, if not celebrating, cheating. Everyone knows Gaylord Perry threw a spitball, but he's in the Hall of Fame. Mike Scott was known to have an emory board with him on the mound, and he won the Cy Young. Groundskeepers change the playing field to help the home team. Ty Cobb was as dirty as it gets, and he's in the Hall of Fame. And I think Pete Rose would be in the Hall of Fame now, despite admitting he gambled on baseball, if he hadn't agreed to accept a lifetime ban from the game. So it's not just that taking steroids is cheating. Cheating is forgiven.

2. Numbers! The statistics in baseball mean so much!
Agreed. And the records set by players who take steroids are not as legitimate as those who aren't doping. Nobody wants to say Barry Bonds is a better home run hitter than Hank Aaron. But it is already impossible to compare statistics from one baseball era to another, when the game has changed so much. The game has had live-ball eras, dead-ball eras, and juiced-ball eras, but one home run is still one home run. There are no arithmetic means to harmonize one era with another. And the steroid era is just that: an era. Weird numbers will come out of it, but no set of numbers should ever convince us that Bret Boone was better than Joe Morgan.

What's more, the steroid era is hardly the most notorious of baseball eras. Until Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947, no black people played Major League Baseball, and, obviously, not because they weren't good enough. But no one questions the legitimacy of Babe Ruth's records, or Ty Cobb's records, or Cy Young's records, even though the league was openly discriminating against a large group of people. But somehow only steroids violate the sanctity of the game. Right.

And what's more, there have been countless other technological advancements over the past decades that make it easier for players to succeed. Specially-made ash and maple bats. Protective body armor. Advil. What's the difference between steroids and a legal supplement, like creatine? Creatine helps you gain muscle mass, but I'm pretty sure Mickey Mantle wasn't mixing it in his whisky. One difference is that steroids are illegal, but then we're getting back into the "cheating" argument again. The other difference is that steroids are bad for you, but do we really care if these professional athletes gamble with their health? I don't think so. But we do worry about...

3. The Children! We're teaching them bad habits! Athletes are role models!
Yeah, I find this the most compelling reason why steroids should cause outrage. But then I look around at other sports. I see Shawne Merriman get suspended for taking steroids in the NFL, and he makes the Pro Bowl the same season. Steroids have been, and still are, rampant in the NFL, but nothing is really done about it, and no one really cares. Kids are also the only dependable demographic that watches professional wrestling, where virtually every athlete is juiced. But nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is done about it.

But baseball, that's different. Kids who watch baseball are apparently more susceptible to the influence of steroids than kids who watch football or pro wrestling. Don't ask me why. They just are.

The arguments about baseball and steroids just aren't consistent. But I guess that's okay -- not everything needs to be completely rational. It's clear that baseball has a unique place in our culture where we demand something from the game -- something approaching purity. Maybe that's why I like baseball -- it gets dragged into the modern world kicking and screaming, always recalling the halcyon days that perhaps weren't actually quite as good as we like to remember them. And maybe that's what's causing all the outrage surrounding A-Rod -- it's another reminder that baseball purity is a myth that never quite lives up to our expectations.

Barack is okay with secrets

My hunch has been that, after a long campaign where Barack Obama heard critics say over and over how he was going to be a national security liability, his inclination was going to be to err on the side of being like Bush, maybe even moreso than John McCain would have been. So while civil libertarians are excited for Barack to reverse course on a number of issues, I'm not going to hold my breath.

The first sign that Barack isn't too eager to break from Bush national security policies came today in San Francisco, when an adminstration lawyer indicated they would stick with the Bush administrations "state-secrets" argument in a case involving extraordinary rendition and torture. There's more of the same to come, I think.

ADDED: I am cautioned not to read too much into this. For at least one good reason: "If you decide today precipitously to waive this privilege, you can't get it back," an administration official said. "If you decide to assert it, you can always retract it in the future." Alright, then. I'll simmer.

Believe me, I'd rather not do this either

But I'm pot-committed at this point. I have to keep watching The Bachelor. I've already dragged my mom along for the ride, who in turn forces my dad to watch (or, more accurately, to be in the room while it's on), who in turn takes his frustrations out by making snarky remarks about the Stanford Cardinal. It's a tragic cycle that will only end when Jason Mesnick is happily married. So let's just get it over with already.

So here again, 100% context-free impressions of tonight's episode.

Long recaps of everything that has happened. It makes my stomach crawl a little.
Summary: all the girls are amazing. All are special with big hearts. They all love him. The dates have been unbelievable. Etc., etc.
Time to meet the families.
Kelowna, BC looks nice. The Canadian Okanagan. The Washington side of the Okanagan is awesome too.
Jason is a smooth dude with the parents.
Jason is deemed better than a random Ukrainian
Next family - golfers in Michigan. Jason is again good at playing along with forced weirdness.
Everyone thinks he's perfect!
Commercials. I'm sorry but I'll never buy that stupid double-heart-shaped necklace thing that Dr. Quinn is selling.
Another family. They killed a dove. It's all crazy, but this craziness is more endearing than the desperate craziness that normally fills the hour.
"Sorry dead bird."
Good handling of both the bible quiz and the afterlife quiz, Mesnick.
Next parents refuse to be on the show. Finally, a lack of crazy. But maybe they just don't get along with their daughter
Jason needs to stop being surprised that the weird rose ceremonies are difficult. That's the point, from what I can tell.
So weird that all the girls are friends with each other. But they are so big-hearted, so it makes sense.
This show is more realistic than 24, at least.

Ski day

It was one of those days at Alyeska where the fog sits halfway up the mountain.

More on Osborne

The Anchorage Daily News has a very good article today on the Osborne case. A few things stand out to me:

• The state's argument is entirely unpersuasive. If its best argument is that a DNA test will probably just reaffirm Osborne's guilt, I'm feeling good. I tend to think that the state's best argument is instead a procedural one -- i.e., that Section 1983 claims are not a proper avenue for discovery requests.
  
• Alaska is the only state to never have allowed a convicted defendant to access DNA testing. Bizarre. Alaska is also probably the only state where a senator will say, when asked if he supports the death penalty, "Hell yeah!"
  
• The underlying crime here is truly awful, and it might very well be that Osborne is guilty. But even William Osborne, who was paroled for this crime and is back in jail for another crime, knows that this case is not about him: "So on a certain level, I don't even care about the case anymore because it's just gotten to the point where it's basically something from my past," he says. It's about the next person, and the person after that.
  

My flight is booked; I'll be there for the March 2 argument. Looking forward to it.

The importance of Osborne

Another reason why it's important to win this case.

Laying down the law

They're getting serious in the Valley:

No more mowing down cottonwoods with automatic weapons, dumping refrigerators full of rancid meat or hauling in junked cars just to set them on fire.

Oh great. Now where am I going to find my supply of rancid meat? And what else am I going to do with my junked car? And honestly, those cottonwoods needed a trimming. [Grammar check: it's not clear whether people are dumping enough rancid meat to fill refrigerators, or dumping actual refrigerators full of rancid meat. I demand to know.] The Valley is just no fun anymore. I'm going to find a way to blame Sarah Palin.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I'm not sure this has been a democratic process:

Absent from this week's public hearing in the Butte: the people behind the mayhem.

"You can't expect the offenders to show up at these meetings and defend their ability to burn cars on state land," [Joe Joyner, regulations coordinator for the state's Division of Mining, Land and Water] said.

Why not? Who else will stand up for the meek, the voiceless, the automatic-weapon-carrying car-torchers? You, Barack Obama? Hmph. Hope indeed.

Nuisance

And next. I'm guessing the radio is blaring an Anchorage morning show. All of which are awful.

Back by unpopular demand

Yes, The Bachelor! Oh how you missed it. This time team crazypants is in Seattle. And this should be a deal-sealer -- I don't know anyone who can say no to Seattle.

Here again, my impressions of the show, but without all the messy context. More abbreviated, because I wasn't paying attention the whole time.

Jason and The Final Five. Maybe they're cylons. (Sorry, BSG reference)
Hooray it's Seattle. Did you know there's a Space Needle there? Let's show it a million times.
Ah, taking a slow boat around Lake Union -- straight from The Dave McGee Prom Night Handbook. And the Graduation Night Handbook. Are we still in high school?
Why not go to Kirkland, where you live? You don't live in Seattle. Or do you. I'm confused.
Rocking the Kenmore Air. I would think there are better Seattle dates than that
Climbing at a "sporting goods store"? You can't call it REI?
Jason is really good at appearing interested in what they're talking about
You don't live on a houseboat. With, like, candles and shit. No way.
Everyone is "huge-hearted"
His grammar skills are starting to annoy
Everybody's crying.
You have not paid attention to my moratorium on "amazing," have you
Next week you have to meet four sets of parents. Yikes.
Previews look like the families are awesomely crazy, actually. Dead dove eulogies, etc.

Sports roundup

A couple quick words about some sporting events.

First, a rough weekend for your Stanford Cardinal. Another 1-point road loss (the third of the year) at USC, and then the worst loss in 16 years at UCLA. The tournament seems like an unlikely outcome now, but it will be interesting to see how Johnny Dawkins responds. A tough year, to be sure, will those close losses.

On the bright side, at least when Cal fans talk smack, Cal is nice enough to go out and immediately lose its next game. Thanks Bears... you're making this tough season a little better.

Second, the Super Bowl. It was a great game and everything, but as a still-bitter Seahawks fan, I couldn't help but notice that the Steelers once again got the benefit of questionable officiating. It wasn't as bad as Super Bowl XL, but still. Examples: the Harrison interception was cool, but there was a blatant block in the back on the runback. Also, Santonio Holmes should have been flagged for excessive celebration after his awesome touchdown catch. And the last play should at least have been reviewed before the game ended. Again, great game, but a little too familiar of a story for my tastes.

Because the NBA is dead to me, the sports world is pretty barren right now. The good news: pitchers and catchers report in two weeks. The bad news: I'm a Mariners fan.

Conspiracy

Next in the series. It takes two.