The Last Word on Derek Jeter

I guess as a devout and crazed Yankee fan since 1960, I should comment on the Derek Jeter extravaganza of 2014. And what surprises me about him. Actually, what doesn't surprise me about him. 

First of all, I hate when fans of various ball clubs assert that they are the most knowledgeable baseball fans in the world. Yankee fans cling to that illusion, which is nothing but pure Narcissism--Yankee fans are no smarter or dumber than Red Sox, Mets, Cardinals, Astros, or Pirate fans.

However, this I will say to the credit of Yankee fans. No player has been more adored than Derek Jeter, but he isn't even close to being the best Yankee player ever (although he was their best all-around shortstop). A less than complete list of superior Yankees would include Mantle, DiMaggio, ARod (sorry, yes!), Berra, Ruth, Gehrig, Winfield, Dickey, Munson, Jackson, Mattingly, Collins--not to mention all the great pitchers such as Ford, Guidry, Clemens, Rivera, Gomez among others. 

Jeter's value, of course, was the total package of his talent, leadership, presence, enthusiasm, and respect. No other Yankee embodied all those qualities in their entirety the way Jeter did. For that I credit Yankee fans for seeing beyond the stat sheet and endowing Jeter with the halo of immortality.

But then, it was easy to see during Jeter's retirement tour this season that the Jeter aura and appreciation extended to the fans and players in the ball parks where he competed. So it wasn't just about being knowledgeable Yankee fans, it was about being knowledgeable baseball fans. 

Professional Writing Advice

There is nothing more difficult than writing short.  So much of what’s written is fluff.  So much is a clearing of a throat when it comes to writing.  It’s the most urgent flaw that those who make a living writing constantly battle.

While I by no means consider myself an excellent writer, I do verge on decent at times.  But then I’m reminded of my inadequacies whenever a good editor takes his or her pen to my stuff (and it’s usually a “her” because for some reason women tend to be better editors and proofreaders and, on the whole, smarter than men).

More than any other form, sales copy must aspire to the greatest economy of phrasing.  And just when I’ve achieved the final cut, my boss or some other decent editor cuts a line or two and trims words and suddenly the copy sings even stronger. 

Professional writing means returning time and again and cutting, cutting, cutting.  Seldom are muscle and bone sacrificed, it’s always fat.  So the next time you have to write something and you think it’s finished, see if there’s some way to reduce it by at least a third.

Few of us are paid by the word.  So spend the extra time to write less.  Cutting is an extreme mental exercise that substitutes for chess and jigsaw puzzles in my case. After all, isn’t it better to complain that the book or movie was too short, rather than it was too long?

Compression is a game anyone can play.  Using fewer words will attract greater attention than using more.  I hope your job doesn’t depend on it like mine does—-and I still do not consider myself good at it.

People Are Right--And Wrong--About MEDICUS

In case you were wondering, I am starting to get a trickle of reviews in from my latest novel, MEDICUS, and all and all, they have been pretty positive. While I have written several novels, through the miracle of digital self-publishing, this is the first time I've ever made my work available to the general public--as long as the general public owns a Kindle, Nook, or other electronic reading device or tablet.

In a world where everything is critiqued and rated on the Web, I do need to get used to people commenting on my stuff and develop a thick skin when it comes to criticism. And the few areas of criticism I've received so far are a bit puzzling to me--maybe a little upsetting--but shouldn't be because I think the substance of those comments are wrong or irrelevant to the story.

But that's not the point, you have to be careful when it comes to reacting to public reaction. We all have a point of view and point of views almost always conflict one another. Some people don't like the names I've chosen for my characters, some think they're great. Some people think my main character is evil, others love her and root for her. 

So it's like anything else you see on the Web, whether you're choosing a restaurant or searching for a hotel, any reading of the comments section is only going to overwhelm you with conflicting opinions, so we end up trusting in our sixth sense anyway.

Even though MEDICUS is pulling in some high marks, take that with a grain of salt. Download the book and decide for yourself! 

Mechanics Appreciation Day

I think car mechanics are the most underpaid workers in society. They don’t make as much as plumbers, electricians, and computer geeks, yet their job requires skills in all those areas. To me it takes supreme intelligence to dope out the mysteries of engine malfunctions and, even with the advent of computer diagnostics, it’s easy to be led astray by the vague and often contradictory readouts from these systems.

Then, when the mechanic finally figures out what the problem may be, he or she must then have the manual dexterity to root about tight and filthy cavities and exert leverage where it’s impossible to find a purchase to extract, replace, and adjust the faulty parts. And they must be able to do this quickly and precisely in order to profit the business.

I gave up working on cars years ago. Usually I was clueless when it came to troubleshooting engine issues and I’m just not that great with tools. A brake job that would take an experienced mechanic two hours would take me two days. And the blood that I shed—I never considered a car job begun until the blood was flowing.

It takes the highest level of experience, judgment, specialized expertise in an endless number of car models, and physical strength to be a good mechanic. Be kind to your auto technician—he practices a difficult art and seldom gets the respect and monetary rewards he deserves.

Guitar Miseries

I have been trying to learn how to play the Beatles’ Michelle on the guitar for about three years now. It’s a classical arrangement and requires a strong ability to read music, which I have, and a decent knowledge of the entire fret board of the guitar, which comes and goes.

It’s damn hard, but I plug away at it almost every day. Classical guitar is similar to violin in that it takes highly coordinated, but very different, movements from each hand. Michelle, for example, involves a lot of moving up and down the fret board, a modicum of stretch between the index finger and pinky—and I have an annoyingly weak pinky—which is a major liability with my instrument. As for the right hand, there’s a lot of intricate plucking of interior strings throughout the piece and I am prone to hitting the wrong adjacent strings or stroking more than the requisite number of strings in certain passages.

And this has been going on for years. The first year was just figuring out the notes and where to play them and which fingers to use to stroke them. Now it’s a matter of playing cleanly, accurately, and with emotion—you know, the things that require endless practice.

Natural musicians can conquer such a piece over a period of a few weeks. But I am not a natural musician and I could go my entire lifetime with but a handful of passable Michelles to my credit.

But I love the challenge and embrace the frustration. At least during the times that I don’t have an overwhelming urge to shatter my beautiful Martin D-19 against the cinderblock walls of the basement!

How Did We Ignore People Before There Were Cell Phones?

I take the train to work and one of the funniest spectacles each morning is seeing everyone tapping away at their little smartphones on the platform as the train pulls in. And I do mean almost everyone. What are they doing? Are they texting, playing games, checking the weather? What is the attraction of those things? 

As you can guess, I'm still a flip-phone guy. It takes me 10 minutes to compose a text, which I tend to do once or twice a month. I cannot get the Internet on my phone and, although I believe it has a camera, I've never used it. It's not that I hate technology, it's that I'm indifferent to it. Sure, I have this blog and a Facebook page, but neither would exist if I didn't have my books to sell.

Yes, these little, or not so little, boxes have taken over social interaction. I find that people pull their smartphones out when they get into the elevator to avoid striking up conversations or dealing with awkward silences in enclosed spaces. Same thing walking down the street--they walk and gawk at their little screens. If they're stuck in a room with a lot of people, they whip out their phones and pretend to be busy to avoid awkward moments of non-occupation.

I guess smart phones are more than communication devices, cameras, and web-connectors. They also serve as security blankets to hide behind so that you can avoid interacting with actual people. To fill in for those blank uncomfortable moments.

Babies suck on pacifiers for the same reason.

Part II. When it Comes to ISIS, Stay Away!

Oh No! He Did It! 

For the life of me I don't understand why elected officials do not take my advice. President Obama went on the TV the other night and said the U.S. is going to war against ISIS. Apparently he didn't read my blog post of September 8. I like the president and I think he's done a lot of positive things during his administration despite constant resistance from a criminally negligent Republican party. 

However, this is why I think that a fellow who said we should stop doing stupid things is doing a stupid thing by escalating our involvement in the Iraq and Syria: 

• It's what the enemy wants. When our bombs hit Muslim civilians, ISIS' highly sophisticated media machine will pump out images and commentary showing how the Great Satan USA is killing poor innocent Islamic people
• ISIS is not an imminent threat to the USA, despite what the paranoid warmongers say
• Our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan prove that this is not a part of the world where our military can make a difference
• Whenever we take sides in that part of the world, the side we take inevitably comes back to bit us in the rear!
• Our bombs will only fuel further hatred of the USA
• It'll lock us into an open-ended war that will cost the Treasury billions, if not trillions of dollars over time
• We desperately need investment in THIS country--not in some Middle East wasteland
• If we are going to war again--then let's pay for it. Make Congress vote for the funding of this adventure. That's one way to nip this ill-conceived strategy in the bud! Imagine, actually funding a war--what a concept!
• If ISIS is truly a world threat, why can't the president convince places like China, Russia, Japan, Europe and other first-world countries to provide troops and treasure. They're geographically closer to the so-called threat than we are.
• The Middle East is a snarling hot bed of conflicting creeds, tribes, and various other interests that the U.S. could not untangle in a million years. This is a situation that they must sort out on their own. We're in over our depth.
• This is not an isolationist stance. The U.S. is rightfully invested in parts of the world where we have interests, such as Europe, Asia, South America and parts of Africa. We are an international presence. If we take two steps back from the out-of-control Middle East, that would not be isolationist policy, it would be prudent foreign policy.

I'll add more reasons when I think of them. But I repeat from my last blog on this topic, when it comes to ISIS, stay away. Stay Far Away!

Remember 9/11

As you can see from the dateline, this is another one of those anniversaries. The sad, soulful music on the morning newscasts, the tear-streaked eyes of survivors intoning the names of the dead at the old World Trade Center site. The respectful braying of bagpipes and organs.

I’ve noticed, however, that the media has shied away from actually showing the burning and crumbling towers since the event, except today while I was cross-training on the elliptical machine in my gym I found a station playing back its tape in real time. 

I actually saw the second plane hit the tower and seeing it again eight years later I was able to place myself in the context of my office watching the TV as events played out.

I again felt the visceral response of numb disbelief and curiosity watching the towers burn and the surrealistic site of a plane veering in and disappearing behind the first tower and the explosion of flames and debris that emerged as a giant fireball and it was all captured on live TV.

Most interesting are the cameras trained on the towering burning building and the intellectual connection one had to make to appreciate the fact that there were people in those buildings, even if no people were present in the image. It wasn’t until later, when the connection was actually made, that the enormity of the tragedy registered on me.

Just looked like a couple of burning buildings to me, one in which I had a job interview at that exact hour about three weeks before. All the numb, stunned emotion came back to me on the elliptical machine. I finished up my exercise and made a hasty exit before the buildings collapsed.

Was in no mood to see that.

Why Do Gays Want to Marry?

The subject of gay marriage does not interest me—-I just find it curious. I have very shallow and practical views regarding marriage in general. Marriage is an industry, as I found out from my formerly engaged daughter who resided in Bridezilla World a few years ago. 

There are specialists in all things attached to the wedding biz, from planners, photographers, cake-makers, banquet halls, to car drivers, honeymoon planners, and so forth and it seems like prices for everything begin at four and five figures. 

In other words, marriage is an industry and a meat grinder for the daddy of the bride’s wallet. And, as a man, I’m not a big fan of blowing in five hours what will take three or four years to pay off. Most men feel this way, but all fathers love their daughters (and their wives, who are enchanted by the weddings of their daughters and care not about the costs). 

But enough about weddings, which have little to do with marriage, outside of sentimentalizing its eternal implications. Marriage is hard and probably unnatural, given how many of them fail and the preponderance of spouses who cheat on each other. 

In fact, I hate the word “cheat” as used in this context-— fidelity is hardly a game with winners and losers. Fornication is not cheating, really; it often involves capitulating to an overwhelming impulse with the potential to damage terribly or terminate long-term relationships. 

That’s not a game in my book. A competitive sport it is not. I’m not sure I believe in marriage, even though I happen to enjoy a long and happy one with my life mate. But I’ve always regarded our marriage as an exception to the many broken and unhappy ones in the world.

Why do gays want a piece of that action? Why take on the risk, the imperfection of the institution? Sure, in a free society, it’s downright criminal to deny them the right to wed. I just question their good sense in acting upon it.

Stay Away from ISIS. Stay Far Away!!

Yes, I fit into that category of war-weary Americans. I've never fought in a war, never want to fight in a war, and actually see no sense of going to war to begin with. 

Before we get into ISIS, let's look at our experience in the Middle East. In essence, it sucks. The U.S. has spent trillions in treasure in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Israel, and Eqypt and all it's gotten the good 'ol U.S. was intensified hatred and counter-productive outcomes. And let's not even get into the terrible toll its taken on combatants and civilians on all sides. 

Iraq and Afghanistan are ongoing fiascos that won't be resolved in my lifetime. Actually, the only beneficiaries of these skirmishes are the munitions and various other vendors who are enriched by the waging of war. It's clear that we in the U.S. do not understand these people--I do not understand these people. It would be easy to dismiss them as bloodthirsty savages who sate their blood lust under the banner of religious or tribal fanaticism. 

But that would be to objectify an inscrutable enemy. The bottom line for me is WE DON'T BELONG THERE. We have no idea how to separate the good guys from the bad guys. Generally what happens is we take sides and the side we take inevitably comes back to bite us on the butt. We have no friends in that part of the world. When we intervene, we become the target and end up losing, just like we did in Vietnam and Somalia. 

Look, we don't fight other countries' wars in Africa--and it doesn't appear that we're hated there!

The sweet part is we can--and should--withdraw. We don't need them--we don't need their oil or their alliances. They're so busy killing each other, they probably couldn't be bothered springing another terror trap on the U.S. homeland. 

It's been 13 years since 9/11--how can we consider domestic terrorism an imminent threat? The crazies have plenty of their own to kill locally without having to cross a couple of oceans to blow up some token Americans.

Believe me, the treasonous intransigence of the Republican party, climate change, crumbling infrastructure, un- and underemployment, and loose gun laws present much greater threats to our domestic well-being than attacks in the U.S. by crazed Islamists.

So back to ISIS. Let the Iraqis, the Turks, the Syrians, the Saudis, and the Iranians figure it out. They don't need our bombs or the blood of our GIs.

THEY DON'T NEED US!!

Great People Have Their Doubts, Too

It doesn’t help a writer to succumb to a myopia that abets lazy observation. This is a grandiose way of saying it does no good to make lazy assumptions and then to be made miserable by them. 

For example, I will observe in a facile manner the untamed arrogance and confidence of Donald Trump, the sheer mastery of the bat by Miguel Cabrera, the flawless technique of Carlos Santana, the swagger of corporate titan Jack Welch, the aura of control and eloquence, and, well, you get the idea. 

And I figure, they have no doubts, no hesitation or fear that they can and will continue to excel and be brilliant. But I do. There are times, often, when I feel inadequate, incompetent, unworthy and never fully confident of anything. 

But that is a simple myopia, because aspects of human nature are universal and feelings like mine are shared regardless of an individual’s specialized prowess. In fact, many of the finest minds and talents were constantly racked by spasms of self-doubt and depression—much worse than mine and probably yours, because gifted individuals are unique and tend to experience in greater intensity than us mediocrities. 

No, the people I envy are truly special and seem to accomplish more in their lives than I could in multiple lives. Dave Eggers, who writes brilliant nonfiction and fiction prose while running a publishing company, a writing and tutoring lab for underprivileged kids, a daily humor website, a program in which he assembles books comprising oral histories of oppressed people to publicize human rights abuses around the world, not to mention his role as a husband and father. People like Dave Eggers strikes awe and envy in my soul. 

But you know, I bet Dave Eggers doesn’t always feel like a master of the universe, a splendid achiever, a genius even though he had the gall to allude to himself as such in the title of his memoir and then goes ahead and proves it! I bet there are days when Dave Eggers feels unworthy, untalented, and unmoored. 
        
I sure the hell hope so. 

In the News: Naked Photos of Hollywood Celebrities

Today’s biggest story, outside of war in Ukraine, war in Gaza, war in Syria, war in Sudan, and beheadings of American journalists by religious maniacs, is the recent internet posting of naked photos of Hollywood celebrities stolen off their Apple iPhones.

I have nothing intelligent to say about the manic bloodlust breaking out in so many parts of the world outside of banal snorts of disgust, but I do have something to add about the illicit posting of taboo images of household names.

First, there is some faint irony regarding the outrage generated by the exposure of private parts of known personalities, since many of those private parts have already been viewable by permission for public consumption through these celebrities’ various print, film, website, video, or publicity activities.

However, in fairness, the unsanctioned publishing of their cell phone images does seem to be a blatant invasion of privacy and must not be condoned from an ethical standpoint. Still, this is not what I care to add to the conversation.

This is what needs to be said to all those who dabble in the electronic arts: STOP BEING STUPID!

Here are some rules of the road:

Don’t spit in the wind. Don’t pump gas while smoking a cigarette. Don’t blow-dry your hair while taking a bath. Don’t text and drive at the same time. Don’t eat mushrooms you find in the forest. Don’t add a pellet of lithium to a glass of water.

AND DON’T TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR NAKED SELF WITH YOUR IPHONE!

How can people be so stupid? One must assume that anything digitally recorded could end up in the rapacious maw called the Worldwide Web, especially when it involves those who regularly appear in public like the victims in today’s scandal.

If you don’t want the world to see it, hear it, or read it—don’t photograph it, record it, or blog it. The power of the internet is infinite and whatever is on your phone, hard drive, or cloud files is ripe for pillaging and distribution. We all know and associate with evil people: assume it will happen!

Don’t expect people to respect your privacy—make sure they don’t have an opportunity to do otherwise. Whenever you get the urge to take a selfie of yourself in the altogether to send to your boy/girlfriend, take a walk down the median of a crowded highway instead. It’s much less dangerous!

Am I blaming the victim here? Shouldn’t famous people be allowed to have a private life that may include sending immodest images to special friends? Yes and yes. But please, modern life has its risks and prudence (not prudery) is often the best course of action.

I mourn that the modesty of my heroine, Katniss Everdeen, was violated. But please, Jen, stop being stupid!

Old Writers Writing--Amazing!

I’ve been writing all day and am quite tired. I get sloppy when I’m tired, the quality filter gets clogged and discarded. I have always felt it takes a great deal of stamina to write. Big brains consume a great deal of energy. 

It’s my understanding that humans evolved big brains because they invented the concept of cooked food, which enabled them/us to consume many more calories with a lot less chewing, resulting in a net nutritional gain that spared plenty of calories to grow big smart brains and survive in the wild using wiles instead of speed, strength, and really sharp claws. 

Writers tend to be smart, because what is writing but typing out the impulses of our brains? It’s pure brain. Stupid people can write, too, but I’m not talking about them. But brains get tired, like mine is today and my sentences meander and so forth. 

But the theme here is how some great writers can write into very old age. Where do they find the stamina? Some pretty frail and sickly authors write robust works well into their 80s. How do they keep their focus, their creativity, their drive? 

Sure, it’s really cool that Jamie Moyer could pitch at the major league level at the age of 46. But Will Durant writing major historical tracts into his late 80’s? Updike writing fiction, poetry, criticism, letters to various buddies, into his late 70s. The waifish Joyce Carol Oates speed-writing thunderous prose at 72. To be endowed with such everlasting brains. 

I’ll be dribbling into a cup at those ages. Between naps.