The Boys Of Summer: A History Of Me And The Cleveland Indians

Sigh. Autumn is here once again. The days are noticeably shorter and beginning to cool, the acorn thingys are starting to rain down on the front walk from the giant tree in front of the condo ... and for the first time since 2001 there will be October baseball in Cleveland. Wooo!

A skimming of recent posts here (when there have been some) will reveal pretty quickly that this has been a baseball summer around these parts, whether it was Sarah and I attending games at The Jake (which is fast becoming our home away from home), catching the odd minor league game (whether the Lake County Captains or the Akron Aeros), watching games on Sports Time Ohio, listening in on late-innings on the way home from work or on a lazy Sunday afternoon on WTAM, or monitoring the game on the job via Yahoo!'s maddeningly freeze-prone web interface.

While I've been harboring a fascination with baseball for over a decade now if for nothing else than the sheer beauty of watching it being played, this past summer (particularly the last few weeks) has been something special as the Cleveland Indians have emerged from their post-Break torpor and edged ever so slowly into the national spotlight as the hottest team in baseball. Just this past week, the knife was finally plunged into the Detroit Tigers' season once and for all in decisive, sweeping fashion (Sarah and I were at the Monday game, which was easily the biggest game we've seen this year), and the Tribe is now looking to clinch the American League Central Division title for the first time in six years. Beyond that lurks the month of October: Baseball's Promised Land, which is fraught with high-stakes games on a whole different level from even this past nervewracking summer. Despite the ups and downs that come with any baseball season and what felt like a forty year wandering through the midsummer desert when the team couldn't string hits together to save its life, this has been the most fun I've had with the Tribe this decade, and watching this team at work brings back memories of the dream-like 1995 and 1997 postseasons, the former of which was what finally ingrained the game into my soul ... and the latter of which hurt so bad that it took years for me to surrender myself to the grind once again.

Most of my memories of the Cleveland Indians as a teenager were of a ball club that seemed to exist only to fill Cleveland Municipal Stadium between football seasons and rock concerts. Anyone who has seen Major League pretty much knows the way it went here for four decades and change: the Indians were generally hapless, occasionally promising, and always coming up short (usually by miles) in the end. I remember my younger brother watching games on a portable black & white TV on warm summer nights back then and being able to hear nearly every heckle and drunken insult hurled by those who bothered to attend the games played in that old bat cave. By the time I finally took in a major-league game during the summer of 1990, I'd been to the stadium three times to see rock concerts and seeing a ball game played in that huge expanse was more of a novelty than something to wrap my heart around. In those days, I was more of a recovering Cleveland Browns fan who had started to drift away from football following the Cardiac Kids' flirtations with playoff glory in the mid-late 1980s, and I didn't let baseball get a hold of me for a few years afterward (I probably found it counterproductive to take an interest in a baseball team that had lost 105 games in 1991). But even when the Tribe had reached its absolute nadir, plans were already well underway to move the rebuilding team into a brand new location while bringing the club to a level of competitiveness not witnessed since the early 1950s.

In the spring of 1994, the Indians were ready to play their first games at the newly-completed Jacobs Field. As winter ever so slowly gave way to spring that year, I was doing some wiring jobs on a site nearby (this was while I was briefly trying my hand at working in the field of computers), and I still remember the first time I saw The Jake up close as my co-worker and I drove down Ontario Street on the way to a Middle Eastern bakery that was in need of some networking solutions. While the old Muni Stadium looked and felt like a hulking pre-war relic, The Jake was a striking, sparkling structure that fit seamlessly into the landscape of downtown Cleveland, especially with all of that exposed superstructure and those unique lighting fixtures turned inwards over the field like matching sets of 200 foot tall steel toothbrushes.

Despite the undeniable allure of that new park, I still hadn't caught the baseball bug just yet, but the rest of Cleveland sure had. As if in response to all the refocused attention, the 1994 Indians played the game like no team of ours had in a couple of generations, and they were looking more than ready to rip open the postseason again at long last when a players strike completely shut major league baseball down on August 12. Once again, Northeast Ohio was left in the lurch ... and fans could only imagine what might have been.

That strike wiped out the first 18 games of the 1995 season as well, and at the time had crippled attendance and audience faith in the game to a degree possibly unmatched in the long, storied history of our National Pastime. Well, apparently everywhere except Cleveland, that is: the revitalized Indians had unfinished business to take care of from the year before, and they took to it with a vengeance and utterly dominated the American League: finishing the season a whopping 30 games ahead of their nearest competitor, sporting no less than 8 hitters in the starting lineup with a .300 batting average, and were the most feared team in all of baseball. It was towards the end of that glorious season, one perfect September afternoon, that a Den co-worker decided to take me along to watch Albert Belle (the biggest badass in a frightening lineup) knock in his fiftieth home run of that year. Even though we were seated well up in the rear decks (nearly three stories above the field), I'd started to catch The Fever, and within weeks, I was shuttling down to Akron every night after work to watch the playoffs (and, eventually, World Series games) at my best friend's apartment.

Getting past the Boston Red Sox and then the Seattle Mariners to wind up in the World Series was an absolute joy to behold, but The Tribe came up short in six games, overwhelmed by the dominating pitching rotation of the Atlanta Braves. Still, the good will engendered by the previous year's run ensured that Cleveland started the 1996 season totally locked in on their team, and we watched our Indians take on all comers, advancing inexorably towards a second postseason appearance in a row. This time, however, there would be no Series victory: the Tribe swaggered into October of 1996 having won a league-best 99 games, but were shown the door by the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game ALDS. While Cleveland was too happy to be in the postseason at all (not to mention the World Series) for the first time in four decades to care if we won or lost in '95, there was a palpable frustration in the air around the North Coast after the '96 season ended on such an anticlimactic note.

I had drifted away from the team a bit over the summer of 1997, my life becoming too pre-occupied with emerging writing opportunities and hanging out with friends to worry much about baseball. By the time I'd started to pay attention, the Indians were sneaking into the postseason for a third year straight, but the lineup I watched that fall was very different from the one I'd seen playing over the previous couple of years. Sure, many of the bigger names were still the same (Manny Ramirez, Sandy Alomar Jr., Jim Thome, Jose Mesa, Omar Vizquel, Charles Nagy, Orel Hershiser), but a lot of the players were unfamiliar to me (Bip Roberts, Jaret Wright, Chad Ogea, Tony Fernandez) and it took a while to get adjusted to this new, scrappier lineup that didn't rely on overpowering might so much as just getting in opponents' hair as much as possible by clogging up basepaths with runners.

Led by Alomar, who was having an absolutely monstrous season and seemed to be the man at the plate every single time the game needed a rally, the 1997 Indians may not have had a modern day Murderer's Row like the '95 team, but their approach to the game and their obvious chemistry stole your heart (much the same way the 2007 squad does, come to think of it). That easy affection blossomed into a full-on love affair once the Tribe pulled off the impossible and upset the hated New York Yankees in the ALDS. From the Yanks it was on to Baltimore, looking to settle the scores from October 1996 ... and oh, did they ever: the 1997 ALCS was another series upset, and also some of the greatest ball games I've ever seen, including an unforgettable Game 3 on October 11 where Hershiser and Orioles ace Mike Mussina locked horns and matched wits for three hours, racking up a staggering 22 strikeouts between them whilst doing so. As they had against the Yankees, the Indians managed to eke out wins from the most unlikely sources, with everyone getting the chance to be the hero night-to-night, and when they flew into Miami to start the 1997 World Series, there was a heady spirit of destiny-about-to-be-achieved in Cleveland that was absolutely magical. It really felt like this was going to be the Big Winner at last.

Of course, the other team in the Series that year (the Florida Marlins) also felt that destiny was on their side, and that always leads to complications ...

I'll avoid most of the excruciating details and cut right to the point: losing Game 7 of the 1997 World Series in bottom of the eleventh inning was probably the most crushing defeat in the history of Cleveland professional sports. To go from such giddy, raw emotional heights at the top of the ninth inning and slowly, inexorably gaze into the abyss over the following hour and change was kinda like having a stake slowly pounded through your heart. A dozen or so friends, co-workers and I took in the game at a completely mobbed BW-3's that cold Sunday night, and it was absolute pandemonium in there as Mesa walked to the mound to (theoretically) shut down the Marlins offense one last time. Champagne cups were passed around, people high-fived and hugged as every out was recorded ... and then with one strike to go before winning it all, the game was tied. An hour or so after that, the game was lost. BW-3's slowly emptied, hardly anyone speaking. The next day, life went on.

For a few years after that, I had to let baseball go: this hurt far too much to shake off that easily. Game 7 was exponentially worse than The Drive (the previous benchmark for sports heartbreak in my existence), Red Right 88, or The Fumble, or anything else the city had previously encountered. In stepping away from the game, I skipped some fairly good years (the Indians won the division again in 1998, 1999 and 2001), watched a few games here and there on a casual level, but never getting involved emotionally with the sport again. Even in 2005, when the Indians oh-so-nearly made it into October but wound up running out of gas just short of the doorway, I felt no sense of loss, but more of a feeling of "ah well ... tough luck, guys, huh?"

Last spring, out of the clear blue sky, Sarah and I attended a game one evening for something new to do. We had a lot of fun down there and decided to repeat the experience earlier this year. That time was enough of a blast that we went to another, and then another, and before long we both found ourselves falling into an obsession with this team. Most of the games we've gone down to see this summer have been at least memorable (win or lose), but a few were just awesome, such as the night of August 27 where a freakin' triple play was pulled off right before our eyes (I have probably watched this clip a couple dozen times now and it still hasn't grown old), or any game where we got to see another sensational pitching performance from C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, Rafael Betancourt, and Rafael Perez (not to mention a few nail-biters from Joe Borowski, the closer with a heart-stopping flair for the dramatic).

As I mentioned before, I watch this year's team and I think of the boyish camaraderie of the 1997 squad (only this time complemented by the first two guys to both win eighteen games for this club in the same year since 1956), and I feel that old, soaring sensation of hope once again. I look at our fantastic bullpen, our nearly evenly-spread offense, our excellent starting pitching, and the calm, steady leadership of a few core players and I feel tremendous pride for what they have accomplished after coming through such an endless period of offensive futility two months ago. This team may not be completely 100% right now -- if the Indians can ever get The Pronk going full tilt once again in front of Victor Martinez (the team's backbone), then their offense will become a steamroller that no one will want to face -- but then again, it's this club's heart and their belief in themselves that carries them just as much as their individual abilities now, and how can you not fall for a team like that when it comes along?

While living vicariously through a sports team is an inherently selfish exercise, I wish to add here before I conclude that while I may feel personally involved in chasing down a pennant or a title like any devoted fan would, I am ultimately rooting for the city of Cleveland itself. More than anything else, this city needs a winner, and we've waited more than long enough to experience one. As silly as it may sound, I want Cleveland to feel good about itself and to finally be able to shake off all of the ancient snide jokes (lol burning river lol) and declare "we are the champions" once again. No, we're not going to wake up the day after a theoretical World Series victory and suddenly see our troubled city transformed into Utopia On-The-Lake, but the spiritual lift a world championship can give this area is something I've wanted so badly to see for twenty years now (in any damned sport), and only just these past few days is the rest of Cleveland finally beginning to sense what might be at hand.

Get ready, Cleveland: this time, there will be no last minute "choke," and while there are some very daunting obstacles looming ahead after the next week is complete, I sense more resolve than fear from this team. The Cleveland Indians want to win it all as badly as we do, and they're coming after it with everything they've got. Sure, New York is likely going to wind up in our way once again and (let's face it) the Bronx Bombers have had our number all year long, so simply winning a game against them right now would almost feel like a Game 7 win. I think we can do it, and if the Indians can find a way to get around The Pinstriped Ones at last, then I think the World Series will be theirs for the taking, no matter who shows up to represent the National League.

OK. Gotta go: it's Tribe time now.

BONUS TRACKS

For some highlights of this year's team (and even the Rally Pie video shown at the Jake), check out my collection of Indians-related YouTube videos here.

That positively shit-tastic "Let's Go Tribe" song that WTAM uses in its game coverage can be listened to here.

A king's ransom of 2007 Tribe radio highlights, some post-game interviews and even some video footage from spring training can be grabbed or listened to here.

A link to the excellent Diatribe blog.

The Week Time Stood Still

We are in the midst of the true dog days of summer here.

Life has seemingly slowed to a lazy crawl as we've been in the usual July/August swoon at work with very little of interest happening on the new release front. The Indians have been stuck in the same offensive rut since the All-Star Break, and they seem to take the field and wind up playing the same offensively-bereft ballgame time and time again. Even the twin financial dramas here (me attempting to keep my new dental expenditures from eating me alive and Sarah looking for a new job outside of Case) seem to be playing out at the pace of a Wim Wenders movie.

All that said, I suppose the lack of urgency or panic in our lives these days is worth noting in the "pro" column (though Sarah is justifiably pretty worried about how things will pan out for her over the next few weeks), though the weather has most certainly been a "con" as of late. All of you who know me well are well aware that I'm a huge fan of warmer climes, but this week has been a real beast. Stepping outside of work on Tuesday when the sun briefly burned through the permanent overcast was kind of like taking a nature walk on the surface of Venus. Even at this late hour, the air outside is oppressively thick and so moist it feels like you needed gills to breathe. There is a thick cover of fog just off the ground and around the sodium vapor street lights almost every night. There is no breeze, no cool natural relief of any kind: the only time the air moves at all is when another torrential rainstorm plows through the area (we've been making up for a bone dry last couple of months here lately) and even that does little more than re-juice the atmosphere for the next one.

Ah, if I had the free time and gas budget (and a less irritating car stereo speaker problem), this would be an ideal time for a late-night drive ... but the responsibilities of work (and trying to finish the terribly tedious endeavor of transferring data from 500 CD-Rs to a 500 gig My Book external hard drive) must take precedence this evening. Maybe this weekend, assuming it dries up a bit.

I did say "assuming."

Oral Complications

Headaches, ahoy!

Well, we're not at the edge of the abyss, but certainly in a tight spot as the beautiful summer of 2007 has curdled slightly over the last few weeks on many fronts (heralded by the sudden transition of the Cleveland Indians from a strong playoff contender to a scuffling, sub-.500 snooze). Let's just say that life has become "interesting" again.

Interesting how? Well, Sarah made a move to a new job last month, and said new employment has turned into an utter disaster in pretty much every way possible. Currently, she is frantically finding someplace, anyplace else to work as quickly as possible. On a rational level, I'm not very worried much about her ability to do so as she's been doing lab work a long time and certainly has the smarts to impress a potential boss, but she is pretty emotionally stressed about it and that, combined with some financial worries that have cropped up on my side, have me a tad on edge as well.

While this latest onset of looming financial drama appears nowhere near as catastrophic as the last two summers (what is it with summer and minor crises around here, anyway?), it's enough to put me in a tight spot for the first time since the aftermath of Chuck's visit late last spring. While I don't have visions of the rest of the year being a miserable, snail-pace slog out of abject poverty, this is not a place I want to stay for an extended, undefined period of time. With a little bit of luck, perhaps, that will not be the case.

There is something different about this current mini-crisis than before in that I was far better-prepared to deal with a sudden financial issue than I was last time, and that sense of security is probably what has kept me from completely freaking out on one hand while also causing some consternation and irritation on the other. Sure, I'm relieved that I was able to start dealing with these new expenses right from the start, but I am also a bit annoyed that my "emergency funds" have been wiped out so dizzyingly quickly thanks to a confluence of unforeseen events (and a billing miscalculation). Most of this new money drama, though, comes from being forced to deal with some chickens coming home to roost a few months before I'd intended to do so. I'll explain ...

As I've written before, I have trust issues with dentists dating back to my childhood that I've never worked through. As a result of this, the only times I have visited these places over the last decade have been due to emergency situations dealing with my impacted wisdom teeth. While having these troublesome teeth extracted, I would nod politely and agree to set up regular appointments afterward and then never follow through, this despite dealing with a very competent, patient and personable practitioner who has always done a fine job of settling me down and putting me at ease while he poked around my oral cavity with pointy metal objects.

While I'd tried to keep up as best as I could over the years, I knew that I was eventually going to need a really deep cleaning (and possibly a few new fillings) as my teeth and gums have never really recovered from sixteen years of smoking and inadequate cleansing. As money saved from buying Marlboros every day started to accumulate into my "emergency funds" over the spring and I managed to duck a giant car repair bill come E-Check time, I'd finally started feeling flush enough to consider dental/medical insurance and getting potential problems taken care of before they became worse.

First, though, I took the car in for $300 of preventative maintenance in order to get ahead of any unwanted surprises in that department. Then along came a $600 hit in the form of a medical bill for Chuck's New Year's Eve visit that was separate from the charges that Hillcrest Hospital had settled with this past spring and had been languishing unpaid since they apparently had messed up my home address in the billing department. Luckily, they had my work number and managed to contact me before I wound up headed to a collection agency. I was pretty surprised when the call came, but also determined to stay ahead of debt, so I opted to pay the $600 amount off in one lump sum over the phone.

Thus, in two days that week, I'd blazed through nearly half of my emergency fund, which I wasn't especially happy about but two possible future issues had been dealt with in succession and that's what that money was there for, after all. Writing this entry tonight, of course, I heartily wish that I'd taken a payment plan option instead ...

It was almost 2 weeks ago now that I was eating a slice of pizza at work and I heard something make a sharp, splintery "crunch" that was definitely not pizza crust: it actually sounded like I had just masticated a piece of glass. This sound was coupled a second later by a very surprising and intense bolt of not-quite-pain-but-definitely-discomfort from my rear right lower molar. Ruh roh. A careful probing of the area a moment later confirmed what I'd immediately suspected: a piece of my tooth had somehow broken off. Oh, wonderful ...

Thankfully, there was no residual pain from the break: just a sensitivity to cold drinks and a sharp reminder if I chewed something the right way at the right time (needless to say, I've been keeping food away from the area, just to be on the safe side). Regardless, I placed a call to my dentist right then and there and spent some slow time later that night reviewing possibilities online, none of which looked particularly cost-friendly. By the time of the appointment, I'd guessed I would have two choices in this matter: a crown or another extraction. The latter was half as much as the former (which would wipe me completely clean at a shot), but I am out of wisdom teeth to pull and, after that last extraction, I was ready to take my chances with a crown instead, cost be damned. With that, I knew the rest of my emergency funds were effectively toast.

Ah, but the plot thickened a bit more at the office: my dentist confirmed that I would indeed be needing a crown, but also threw in a curve ball of needing a root canal first since the tooth was decayed at the back end where it had broke. Ugh. I was also referred to a handful of other dentists to have this done procedure done as apparently mine doesn't do this kind of thing. So, I am now in the process of setting this appointment up ... the trick is not only lining up my schedule with the specialists, but getting this done in a fashion that allows me to get these operations paid for and over with before things start to quite literally hurt. Realizing I might quickly be in over my head if I didn't do so, I signed up for the Ameriplan discount card program to try and knock these expenses down by at least a quarter, hopefully as much as half (of course, none of the contacts I was given deals with Ameriplan, so am I on my own setting up a time to see someone that is).

Lastly, my dentist used this opportunity to finally get me serious about getting myself back on the horse and getting my mouth back into shape once and for all. Phase 1 of that ongoing project was last Friday morning when I had root planing done to all of my upper teeth. For those of you who have never had this done, this is a pretty unpleasant procedure, and an absolutely terrific incentive to visit your dentist every six months. Root planing is also done with no anesthetic, a fact which initially had me in a near-panic when I realized the hygienist was actually getting started with the process and not just poking around.

As it happened, the anesthetic wasn't necessary: while this was definitely no picnic, the level of actual pain involved was far less than I'd imagined it would be (though I was tensed up throughout and the back of my shirt was soaked through at the end of the hour-long process). But again, this whole operation is not something you'd want to try without a safe word: it is a very unnerving sensation to feel the roots of your teeth being scraped at under the gum line (and you feel this ungodly sensation for hours afterward), and I was spitting a truly distressing amount of blood into the spit sink during breaks in the action. Thankfully, considering the amount of time since my last actual cleaning, Part 1 of this project went better than expected. While I am currently dreading Part 2 (the bottom deck gets done in early September), at least I have an idea what to expect this time, though I'm thinking about sneaking a Hydrocodone or two beforehand just to deal with the worst of it.

And, just maybe, I'll be back out of the hole right around the same time.


NP: Tangerine Dream The Bootmoon Series: Preston 1980

A Perfect Day

So sayeth Weather Underground this evening:

Independence Day
A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning...then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 80s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.

Wednesday Night
Showers and thunderstorms likely. Lows in the mid 60s. West winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.

Normally, this plus the fact that I have to put in an afternoon shift might put a damper on my July 4, but I am kind of in the afterglow of that rarest of rarities: the Perfect Day, which seems to make pretty much anything in the days immediately afterward A-OK. At least so far.

Yesterday was probably the best day of the year: a culmination of every factor being just about "right" from the moment I awoke to the time I went to bed.

It was a gorgeous day out: cloudless, breezy and warm. I spent some extra time in the morning puttering around the condo in no particular hurry with the windows and front door open, and the upstairs curtains fluttering strongly in the breeze, psyching myself up for the one thing that had to be done that day: this year's E-check.

I'd been dreading this day for a little while now, especially after the last time I had this procedure done and went through a little mini-carnival of Hell just trying to get the freaking thing looked at (for those that don't remember, you can read all about it here and here), much less getting a "pass" certificate. At a little bit after noon, I'd finally enough of delaying the inevitable and took the long drive out to Painesville Township to face the demon once again ... and win.

You see, on this perfect day, there were no unpleasant surprises whatsoever: after I got to the facility and let the car cool down for a few minutes while I read a bit in the sunshine, I managed to pass inspection the first time through. Yesss!! This was a particularly sweet victory as I do have a current issue with my exhaust system in the form of a small (but audible) leak just in front of the catalytic converter. Wunderbar, eh?

Unlike 2005, however, I was only going to dealing with a repair shop I trusted (Cal's Marathon in Mentor On-The-Lake) instead of the jokers at Conrad's. Once he located the problem, Cal advised to test the car first as the repair would be pretty expensive by nature of where it was. I admit that I wasn't extremely wild about this idea since having to do the same things over and over again is a royal pet peeve of mine, but Cal was right: the problem did not impact the test at all and I saved a ton of money that I was fully prepared to spend. Yee-ha!

Climbing back into the car and easing down Route 20 afterward felt very sweet indeed, and I had a nice leisurely drive home through miles of rolling hills and sunlit green fields: a drive which reminded me very powerfully of the summers of 1988 and 1989, when such relaxing, aimless cruises in these surroundings were commonplace for me as I was either on the way to my friend Rob's house in Concord or simply tooling around the countryside with the music blaring and nothing better to do. A time when time itself was not an enemy, but a luxury. (note to self: bring some music next time)

Then there was a splendid night at the Jake as Sarah and I took in the last Indians home game for the next 2 weeks. In my elated mood and in the midst of this heavenly weather, going to the ballpark seemed like the perfect way to cap it all off, and it was. This time out, we sat high up in the "upper boxes" a couple of stories above the field, gazing down upon the action from section 559. I even took a walk around the sixth inning in search of something to keep me warm as the setting sun cooled the breeze, taking a few moments to enjoy a few looks around the Cleveland skyline and tranquil Lake Erie glittering in the distance.

As for the game itself, pretty much everything you could ask for was on display: Rafael Perez put on one of the best defensive pitching performances with the bases loaded and no one out that I have ever seen, there was plenty of hitting, some nice defensive work, and even a towering grand slam to top off the experience. There was even a damn impressive "Rock N Blast" fireworks display afterwards that lit up the skies and sent us home with satisfied smiles on our faces (though quite frankly, the less said about "Cleveland's Favorite Son" Michael Stanley having to show up and very obviously lip-sync through "My Town," the better).

So, again: an absolutely perfect day. End to end. Wall to wall. Ceiling to floor. Lemme tell you, I'm beginning to really enjoy these Mondays off ...

Experts Predict Man Who Plays Once Every Five Days Probably Won't Save Team

While we're in a humorous mood, here's a goodie from the Onion...

Experts Predict Man Who Plays Once Every Five Days Probably Won't Save Team

May 24, 2006 Onion Sports

NEW YORK—Several leading baseball experts sent shockwaves throughout the sport Monday, making the bold—and some say outlandish—prediction that Roger Clemens, a 44-year-old man who will appear in a maximum of 130 of the 1,100 innings remaining in the Yankees' season, may not in fact be able to single-handedly vault his sub-.500 team into first place. "I am going to go out on a limb and say that this player who will perform in approximately 20 games for the rest of the year will, at the absolute most, have a positive impact on roughly 20 games," said ESPN's Rob Neyer, turning the sports world on its head. "Of course, there is always the possibility that several other Yankee pitchers and position players may begin improving in a manner coinciding with Roger Clemens' return, allowing the team to perform at a higher caliber on a daily basis and give the illusion that a man who plays once a week has saved the team. This would simply be happenstance." Some experts, however, disagree with Neyer's analysis, as New York Post columnist Joel Sherman recently claimed that Clemens will "win 30 games, mold [rookie starter] Tyler Clippard into a young Roger Clemens within a week, bat over .300 with 20-plus home runs, and make everything all better."

Cosmos

I'm still not sure if it was fortuitous or ruinous to my life that I missed the original run of Cosmos in 1980 when it ran on PBS. Considering how wrapped up in the subject matter of the show I was at the time, I do wonder how and why I missed it (if the answer was as simple as "it was on at the same time as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," then I deserve to be dragged before a tribunal). One thing is for certain, though: I get the feeling from seeing it now that if I had made the time to watch it then, I might have ventured down a completely different career path and wound up in a very different place than I am now for better or worse.

Like anyone else, I went through a lot of "interest phases" in childhood: times when I was utterly locked in fascination over one subject or another for an indeterminate period before wandering across another field of study (by accident or design) to focus upon for another few months and so on. Amongst these countless flirtations over those years, the two biggest (read: longest-lasting) escapes for my imagination during those years were the fields of paleontology and astronomy.

Oh, I wish I had a way to reacquire some of those Eisenhower-era reference tomes that I would check out continually from the Southfield Public Library during that stretch, if only to compare just how much previously-accepted knowledge has changed (if not completely upended as is almost certainly the case with the old dinosaur books I'd pore over for hours) from the time they were written! To illustrate, I grew up in a time when all of the available books on paleontology envisioned dinosaurs as sluggish, thuggish, cold-blooded reptiles, some of which were so enormous that they were forced to spend most of their lives in the shallows of lakes and rivers to keep from crushing themselves under their own mass. With regards to astronomy, this was also the time when there was no Hubble Space Telescope, Pluto had no moon (and was itself still considered a planet), Saturn was the only planet with rings, and we had never seen close-up pictures of any planets beyond the "inner solar system" (Mercury, Venus, Mars and our own). The last few decades have added much to our knowledge since then, and in quite a few cases old theories have been rewritten, revised, or just thrown out the window based on what we've learned and seen.

One thing that's clear to me now is that it was the unimaginable scale of these subjects that had seized my imagination. Pretty much everything that had to do with the study of paleontology is centered on time and deduction: how we could dig up fossilized skeletal remains of beings separated from our modern world by vast, unimaginable oceans of ages and infer (correctly or not) what kind of beasts these were or what kind of world they inhabited. If that was too much to handle, few kids could deny the romance of envisioning the beasts themselves: I've spent many an afternoon imagining what it must have been like to come across a titanic Brachiosaurus feasting on greens from its swampy home, or perhaps watching a huge horse-like Indricotherium wandering the forests of the Miocene epoch, lunching idly on the leaves of trees.

With astronomy, everything got exponentially bigger and time was doubled up with physical distances so great that they left your mind spinning wheels helplessly in an attempt to grasp just how huge everything is. The sheer unimaginable scale of the universe is something that still stirs me deeply on the rare occasions when I am somewhere that allows you to actually see it: I remember very clearly looking up at the skies, nearly breathless with wonder as I lay on my back in a windswept campground clearing on the shores of Lake Superior and looked straight up at the glowing Milky Way stretching all the way across a night sky totally unspoiled by city lights. What I was seeing in that sky looked limitless (the light I was seeing from the center of the Milky Way had taken 30,000 years to travel to my little spot on the road), but even that endless sprawl of suns, gas and time was only a literal drop in a bucket, a single grid of reference in itself in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

I'd always had a pretty healthy respect for Carl Sagan, dating back to when I was given a copy of the hardcover edition of Cosmos one Christmas probably just after the series had aired. I have to admit that I didn't make a huge effort to read the book cover to cover as my head was in the fantastical clouds as far as literature was concerned (at that time, I had moved beyond science into science fiction, where those pesky laws of physics that wouldn't let you go anywhere beyond this solar system didn't apply), but I'd derived much enjoyment from the pictures and paintings of exotic alien worlds and beautiful galaxies lying randomly about the great expanse. It wasn't until I'd read his novel Contact (not to mention a truly transformative experience reading The Cold And The Dark around tenth grade or so), that Sagan had begin to reach a position of some prominence with me, though by early 1986, music had consumed my interest so completely that there was probably very little that the good Doctor could do to pry me away from the more seductive charms of Eurowave at that point (save for getting me a ride on the next space shuttle, perhaps). Thus, on the days when Mr. Thompson would play back part of an episode during Astronomy class, I was almost certainly tuned out to whatever was on my Walkman that morning instead of bothering to listen to the guy in the red turtleneck shirt and tweed jacket on the TV screen halfway across the planetarium from me. My loss.

Watching Cosmos now, however, has been nothing short of a revelation: what an incredibly entertaining, enlightening and ultimately moving presentation this is. We then are shown the entire history of the universe in the framework of a twelve month calendar; we visit the great lost Library of Alexandria, and experience what it would be like to travel near the speed of light on a bicycle path in Italy. We also visit the planets of Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Mars up close, discuss the likelihood of God, the possibility of our own self-destruction in our "technological adolescence" and travel to the farthest imaginable reaches of space and time in our "Spaceship of the Imagination." While only occasionally showing its age through its live-action production values (or the aforementioned clothing style then preferred by its host), Cosmos holds up remarkably well nearly three decades from its first airing. What few gaps or revisions that are necessary to the show are supplied afterward as a few moments are taken after nearly every episode that update us on new innovations or discoveries in the episodes subject matter current to the mid-1990s.

As the sole host and narrator of Cosmos, Sagan is a faultless guide through this thirteen hour tour of discovery and curiosity that takes us from the picturesque shores of modern Earth back to the time of the "Big Bang" itself. Engaging, enthusiastic, playfully sardonic, and completely unafraid to wax poetic while illustrating his obvious affection for the subject, Sagan's personality is as infectious as the flu and powers the entire presentation. Perhaps most valuably, he possesses the ability to make the audience understand the often mind-boggling ideas and concepts that drive the modern study of the universe. Thus, Cosmos serves as a wonderfully fitting and lasting tribute to the man and drives home just how great our loss was when he died in 1996.

Wow, Life Is Good Again...

About the only blemish on my existence these days is work (though in my field this should hardly be a surprise anymore). There is no use kidding ourselves: we are looking at a flat 2007 at best if the next, say, six to ten weeks can at least stop the bleeding we've been experiencing over the last four-and-a-half months. We're not quite far enough off of last year's pace to guarantee our first down year since 2001 just yet, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that we're in danger of reaching a Point Of No Return if things don't start to stabilize soon.

On the brighter side of this, while our figures are off a noticeable percentage from last year's pace, we are still far above the truly dismal state of industry sales as a whole. I can't compare the current climate to the post-disco crash that leveled the industry in 1979 since I wasn't around to see it firsthand, but sales of physical product are disappearing faster than Itunes and their ilk is growing, and costs are being cut (and people let go) at a disturbing pace that makes me wonder sometimes if we're about to see a repeat of the artificially-accelerated demise of the vinyl LP. Yes, this sounds paranoid and I tell myself that this idea is suicidal nonsense, but then again I've been witnessing seventeen consecutive years of Really Bad Ideas from a ringside seat and nothing is out of the question anymore.

Perhaps what affects me the most in this situation is the fact that salespeople we have known for years and were in this business because they truly loved it as we do are being dropped like hot potatoes while the lawyers and bean counters who helped turn this industry into the soulless, litigious, facile factory of mediocrity that it is are still sitting pretty behind the wheel. Most of our old intermediaries are now gone, two of our more important contacts in the last two months alone: our Universal sales rep was let go in April, and nearly the entire Midwestern sales staff of WEA (including our longtime rep, with no replacement for us to deal with save for a 1-800 number) got the axe just last week. These are the times that try men's souls ...

Getting away from that funk, pretty much everything else is coming up roses these days. Health wise, all is copacetic (read: the kidneys are well-behaved and comfy), and I'm still being a good boy: as I write this, it has now been almost five months since I quit the cigs. Huzzah! This pretty much beats my old record to a pulp, and while abstaining hasn't always been a breeze (the warmer weather in the evenings lately seems to give me The Jones from time to time for whatever reason), and I've had my "short and terse" days, we're still steady-as-she goes.

With the on-again, off-again spring weather that seems to show up every week or so around here lately, I've been dragging the bike out of the garage nightly in an attempt to burn off some of the spare tire I grew over the wintertime (much of it due to kicking the cigs, I'd imagine). It's been interesting getting my wind back slowly but surely and trying to increase my endurance by alternating 4 minute "cruises" with 30 second "sprints" on the streets around our complex. As of right now, I'm still in a regimen of four sprints per night: the first two are a breeze, the third one is pretty draining, the fourth is damn near torture. By the time I return to the condo after a few minutes of coasting and cooling down, I am misted over in sweat and burning from the waist down, but it's not an unpleasant feeling at all ... at least until I climb the stairs, heh heh.

While we're on this health kick, I was also hit by a Great News Bombshell this past week that I'd never dared to hope for: Hillcrest settled on my bill. I nearly fell out of my chair when I called the Billing department to follow up on my application for financial assistance and was told that everything had been taken care of and my account balance was zero. After thanking the operator for the news, I hung up and nearly danced down the street with joy. At the very best, I'd been preparing for a resolution similar to LakeWest's offer from last summer (I paid half the bill amount in one shot and we called it even), and instead I now have a nice little safety cushion in the bank for dealing with future car repairs, or putting towards a desperately-needed new vacuum cleaner, or any host of future possibilities. Kick ass.

To help with new biking regimen (and as a celebration for the great news from the hospital), I finally made the Great Leap Backwards in audio entertainment quality and picked up a cute little mp3 player while out and about with Sarah. Since I would only be using it for exercise (be it biking or walking), I didn't feel the need to buy a 60-gig iPod and instead opted for a 2 gig Creative Audio Zen V Plus. The sound quality is about what I expected: even with the little EQ interface set up to my liking and "bass boost" pumping up the signal into the little ear buds, the music still sounds only marginally better than a transistor radio broadcast. Then again, high fidelity wasn't really the point of getting this thing as much as having a way to listen to music while timing my bike exercises. For that alone, I'm pretty happy with my new little toy, and here's hoping it pays back by helping me take a few strategic inches off my waist.

I have to admit, these little players are nifty little gadgets that almost make me consider getting a similarly-outfitted cell phone, much as I despise the things on all other counts. Really, this Zen V is a sexier looking USB drive with a headphone jack and a video screen when you get down to the heart of the matter. I loaded a couple dozen four-minute songs onto it and a few video clips for the hell of it (you never know when I might have to kill 25 minutes waiting for something or someone, so why not spend the time watching Pink Floyd's Live8 set), and then ordered an elastic arm band and a little protective case in order to stabilize the thing and thus keep myself from constantly worrying that it's going to fall out of my pocket while I'm cycling.

And now a bit of "Modern Movie Time," if you will: Sarah and I checked out Spider-Man 3 last Sunday. The critics were right: there was far too much going on here to be resolved in a satisfactory fashion, and you wonder why Sam Raimi didn't just settle with a story about Venom while leaving Sandman (and the always-irritating "Goblin Jr." for that matter) for another time and movie. Instead of having a memorable villain who makes a lasting impression on us like Dr. Octopus, the three baddies here have to make the most of their limited screen time, and we barely get to know them at all, thus there is no sense of victory when the inevitable Big Rumble is all said and done (this is especially true of Venom, who is not only never referred to by name but us is effectively given little more than a cameo appearance before being handed his ass on plate by our troubled hero). This is not to say that I was ever bored with Spider-Man 3: I was certainly entertained by it all as it was happening, but it was also nowhere near as good as 2, which I consider the best of the series (and one of the best superhero films I've seen, period).

Lastly, Brian came up the other night and the three of us took in another summer sequel: 28 Weeks Later. Thinking back on it now, I guess this movie offered about as much entertainment as Spider-Man 3, though "entertaining" seems the wrong word to use here: perhaps "being punched repeatedly in the face at odd times" is a better way to describe the experience.

As the title indicates, 28 Weeks Later takes place a beyond the events of the first film and really has nothing at all to do with it outside of the country it's set in and the disease ravaging it. There is a "Green Zone" (subtle!) maintained and patrolled by U.S.-led N.A.T.O. forces on the Isle Of Dogs where the residents of ol' Blighty are being flown back in as the first step to the reclamation and reconstruction of the country. Happily, there aren't any more infected people racing about: the last of them died of starvation months before), but there is an absolutely massive and horrendous cleanup job to be done, and it is in the middle of this commotion that that a typically twitchy Robert Carlyle (who survived an attack of infected folks by deserting his wife) is reunited at last with his two children Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots (I am not making these names up), who were out of the country and thus missed all the mayhem.

I'll leave the rest of the plot for y'all to find out on your own: though I greatly doubt that you'll be surprised to hear that the proverbial shit soon hits the fan, and the second half of 28 Weeks Later becomes as strongly reminiscent of Aliens as the first one was of Day Of The Dead. A couple of military characters (most notably a bored sniper played by Jeremy Renner) figure prominently once all Hell breaks loose and try to lead a band of survivors to safety before the brass decides to wipe the board clean and start over again.

Now comes the rub: while the way the Rage virus rears its ugly head once again is a pretty basic and believable idea, exactly how we reach this point demands a satisfactory explanation that we are never given. Worse, the sequence of events that follows strains even "zombie movie" credulity to the snapping point (and I won't even get into a certain character's inexplicable habit of crashing enough scenes afterward that you start to wonder if the survivors are being menaced by a Rage-infected zombie or Evil Otto from Berzerk).

Even for those who can perform the mental calisthenics to keep them from hurling their popcorn box at the screen in exasperation once the Rage virus gets out in the wild again may still have issues with discerning what happens afterward as near-stroboscopic editing work takes over from that point onwards. If parts of 28 Days Later made you feel prone to seizures, be warned that 28 Weeks Later is sheer visual chaos at several points, and your ability to suss out exactly what in the flying Hell is going on (and to whom it's happening) is severely compromised to progressively irritating effect. In fact, during two key points in the second half of this movie where a main character is in mortal danger of infection or death, it is absolutely impossible to tell if they lived or died until you move on to the next scene.

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that unlike its predecessor, there is a much different, almost viciously nihilist tone to 28 Weeks Later that occasionally makes for some supremely unpleasant viewing: scenes of mass immolation, mass murder, and a whole bunch of infected folks being instantly converted to cold cuts are par for the course here. All of that, however, pales next to a pivotal scene where an infected character spends a couple of minutes pounding a screaming, helpless medical patient into raw hamburger before deciding to engage in some festive eye-gouging for a lark. Plenty of agonized and screams and bodily fluids flying about willy-nilly for all. Yeee-ha.

Spider-Man 3 rating: 3/5

28 Weeks Later rating: 3/5

The Great, The Lame, And The Ugly

In an effort to get caught up with the massive backlog of DVDs and DVD-Rs stacking up in a silently mocking fashion in the office and on the shelves downstairs, I am attempting to start watching one movie a night for as long as is feasible and writing about the ones I feel are worth passing along. Perhaps this way I'll keep myself writing and hopefully lose this nagging feeling that I am unwittingly turning this condo into a museum full of pretty silver discs. I'll also try to keep the spoilers to a minimum. Promise.

This isn't going to be pretty: some of the titles being discussed here rank among the most hysterically lame movies ever conceived, so I'd better start with the good stuff and we'll head down to the basement from there.

There aren't many movies that knocked my socks off the way Baraka did when I first saw it sometime in the middle of 1996 (if memory serves). I'm not even sure how I first became aware of this movie, though I suspect it might have had something to do with the opening portion of the Dead Can Dance concert movie Toward The Within (which, as it happened, was the work of Baraka producer Mark Magidson). The beginning of Toward The Within was basically a striking and hypnotic music video for the song "Yulunga" and was comprised entirely of clips from Baraka, after which the film switched over to its advertised live concert setting.

It was a year or so later (most likely during the summer I was working part-time at Suncoast) that I came across a VHS copy of Baraka and decided to give it a whirl. Almost instantly, it became one of my all-time favorite movies, and it was one of the first films I upgraded to DVD after Sarah and I finally made the digital transition after Christmas, 2000.

Completely unencumbered of dialogue or any kind of plot (but putting forth an overall theme of man's relationship to the Earth), Baraka is nothing but wondrous, breathtaking imagery set to music ... a kind of feature-length video album, if you will. One thing that becomes immediately apparent while watching this film is that it was not shot on the cheap: using high-definition 70mm film and traveling the entirety of the civilized world for source material, Baraka continually astounds with sights from locales as diverse as the Galapagos islands, the (burning) oil fields of Kuwait, the city streets of Bangkok, and (in the movie's most chilling sequence), an abandoned "re-education center" in the backwaters of Cambodia.

While researching this post, I also made the joyous discovery that director Ron Fricke is presently working on a sequel to Baraka, titled Samsara, which is slated for release possibly this year. Count that as one film I'll definitely be sure to catch on the big screen.

At some point waaay back in the early days of our first family VCR, my parents rented out the 1978 cult classic Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. I clearly remember watching this with some other friends one evening not knowing what to expect and we wound up having a grand old time. Billed even back then as one of the worst movies ever, I can definitely assert a quarter century later that Attack... falls pretty short in that particular category. Seeing this film again recently, I am happy to report that many of its gleefully cheesy charms have remained intact over time: some of them almost certainly enhanced thanks to all of the period clothes and hair on display, not to mention some of the less-than-PC dialogue between the principals.

So, uh, what exactly happens in this movie? Do you even have to ask? Oh, very well ... for reasons unknown, humanity is at war with tomatoes. These little red fruits roll and leap about in a blindly murderous rage, while a crack team of undercover agents race against time to find some way to stop the menace once and for all. Intrigue, treachery and ham-fisted satire are served up in spades as our "heroes" run into a host of obstacles standing between them and the salvation of mankind.

From a movie that was born to be bad, we'll move along to films that aren't really intended to suck, but wind up doing so anyway. Under this category we'll find the entire oeuvre of Mr. Jean Claude Van Damme, and in particular his sci-fi masterpiece (cough) Timecop.

One thing about science-fiction films that are set in the future is that the events shown during many of these movies are by now in our past, which tends to make you consider just how wildly wrong-headed these visions of the 21st century really were (especially when hardly anyone predicted the rise of the World Wide Web in any form). In this category, Timecop packs a few very amusing futuristic "sights" indeed such as near-windowless cars that apparently drive themselves (and look like a cross between a station wagon and a battleship), people from the 21st century using MiniDiscs for music playback (gawd, they barely did this in the twentieth century, for crissakes) and a secret sect of police that patrol the space-time continuum looking for "ripples" that are caused by bad guys heading back in time and attempting to alter the future, usually by holding up gold shipments during the Civil War or buying up lots of stocks in 1929.

Don't even ask how these temporal "ripples" are detected by computers since theoretically any successful operation that alters the present would be utterly un-noticeable to anyone in the here and now (not to mention how it's possible that anyone aside from the police are able to travel back in time): Timecop is one of those movies that doesn't reward analytical thought. However, if you simply have the need to turn your brain off for an hour and a half while watching The Muscles From Brussels kicking ass and taking names, then step right up for some cheaply-composited CGI, typically soft-boiled action-movie dialogue and plotting, and a fair amount of hulking bad guys getting themselves beaten into hamburger. You can do a lot worse.

Finally, we arrive at 1979's Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, which launched one of the most howlingly bad post-Star Wars sci-fi TV shows to date. What can I say? I was young and didn't know any better: my beloved Battlestar Galactica was killed by ABC in only six months while this dated NBC romp ran for two years. I had to get my space fantasy fix from somewhere, damn it.

With a likable enough Gil Gerard doing his best Han Solo impersonation in the title role, the original theatrical release of Buck Rogers is basically a retelling of the hoary old Trojan Horse fable set on a desolate post-war Earth of the future where the recently-arrived Air Force Captain (and astronaut) has wound up after being frozen alive in his spacecraft in a freak accident way back in 1987. Found drifting in space by the evil Draconian Empire and their skanky princess Pamela Hensley, Rogers is released and sent home with a homing beacon hidden on his spacecraft that will reveal to the Draconians the secret route through the Earth's defense shield. Once back home (where he receives the shock of his life when he is informed of what happened while he was away), Rogers must then overcome the suspicions of the Directorate Of Earth, keep himself from being executed as a spy and also find out what happened to his family and to the old world he left centuries ago.

Admittedly, Buck Rogers... could have been pretty good in the right hands, but instead the presentation winds up aping the worst aspects of Roger Moore-era James Bond with comic assists from a midget in a robot suit voiced by a slumming Mel Blanc. That said, there are some positive aspects to this movie: while the Earth may very well indeed become an inhospitable radioactive desert by the year 2491 if current events keep up, we can at least look forward to the ladies of the 25th century to be walking around in skin-tight blue catsuits (bonjour, Erin Gray!) when not in similarly form-fitting alabaster white military uniforms. Of course, we'll also have those irritating little silver "drones" toddling about underfoot as well, carrying the leaders of our terrestrial government on their chest looking for all the world like flashing Lite-Brites on silver dinner plates.

Now, I do have the complete run of the subsequent TV series on DVD (hey, when the manufacturer drops the lost price to $24.98 for a 5 DVD set, how can I refuse?) in case I feel the weird urge to sit through them all someday. That said, if my memory is correct and the series went nowhere but downhill from this point onward, I'll be having some serious second thoughts with that idea.

Seacrest out.

Baraka rating 5/5

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes rating 3/5

Timecop rating 3/5

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century rating 2/5

Carol M. Walker 1944-2007

As we all know, this hasn't been a good week for news. While the events that took place in Virginia didn't affect me on a personal level, this sure did ...

From today's Lake County News-Herald:

Carol (Mowrey) Walker
04/22/2007

A memorial service for Carol (Mowrey) Walker, 62, of Mentor, will be 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Maplegrove Alliance Church, 36400 Maplegrove Road, Willoughby Hills.

Mrs. Walker died April 13, 2007, at Hospice House in Cleveland.

Born Nov. 23, 1944, in Cleveland, she had been a longtime Mentor resident.

A homemaker, Carol graduated from North High School and was an alumna of Baptist Bible Seminary and Cedarville College and also a graduate of Lakeland Community College. She was a very active member of Emmaus Bible Fellowship Church in Mentor. Carol was a lifelong learner and a perpetual student.

Survivors are her husband of 42 years, T. James "TJ" Walker; mother, Dorothy (Nimmo) Mowrey of Mentor; daughter, Laura L. (Nick) Marino of North Bloomfield; sons, Eric J. (Leah) Walker of Copperas Cove, Texas and Bryan J. (Jennifer) Walker of Painesville; and grandchildren, Joseph, Emily, Joshua, Zoe, Jonathan, Melody and Jacob.

Her father, Joseph Mowrey, is deceased.

There will be no calling hours at the funeral home. The Rev. Denny Hoynes of Emmaus Bible Fellowship Church will officiate at the service.

The family suggests contributions in Carol's name to Hospice of the Western Reserve, 300 E. 185th St., Cleveland, OH 44119.

Arrangements are being handled by Davis Funeral Home in Willoughby.

When my family moved back to Mentor in 1983, my entire life was uprooted. I was never a "popular" kid by any stretch of the imagination, but I had a lot of friends in Southfield which made the terrifying proposition of going from a school the size of Alice J. Birney middle school to a comparative monstrosity the size of Southfield-Lathrup Senior High School a little less fearsome than it was. Thus, the news that we were moving and that I was to start ninth grade not surrounded by friends but instead by total strangers absolutely gutted me. Worse, we moved to Mentor at the precise start of the school year, so there was no time to get acclimated to the neighborhood or meet new friends before classes started.

Shore Junior High didn't do much to improve my mental state upon arrival. It was a soul-crushing construct: drab, and prison-like, smelling of tile cleaner and populated by a sea of unfamiliar, hostile faces. Alright, it might not have been that bad, I suppose, but a sudden crushing shyness and insecurity had gripped me the minute we left Michigan and stayed with me nearly all the way through my high school years. Despite all of this, within days of starting at Shore, I had found myself a new friend.

I am a bit ashamed to admit that I can't remember anymore what class we had in common (or how we had met otherwise), but we shared a similar interest in strategy games and listening to Top 40 music on the radio, and that was all I needed to make a connection. That new friend was Bryan Walker, and we spent most of ninth grade at each other's houses watching movies, playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and/or Star Frontiers, and just talking for hours about whatever came to our 14-15 year old minds.

When hanging out with friends, it's inevitable that you'll get to know their parents as well, at least to some extent. In the case of Bryan's family, I never knew his father well, but I liked his mother, Carol, pretty much from the instant we were first introduced. She was rarely in a bad mood, always made me feel welcome, and struck me as one of the sweetest, kindest people I had ever met. In addition to sharing the same first name and middle initial as my own mother, there were times I almost felt like Carol was a kind of surrogate mom to me: perhaps sensing my insecurities and shyness, she always made a point to tell me it was good to see me, or that I was looking better or complimenting my speaking voice or what-have-you. At the time, I was usually embarrassed by all of this and would sheepishly blush or squirm and murmur a "thanks," but I realize now that she quietly helped me to reacquire some measure of my confidence and self-image over those first few years when all I wanted was to get the hell away from Mentor High School and run back to Southfield, where I at least felt like I belonged.

I've only talked to Bryan a handful of times over the last few years, and haven't been back to see his old house or his parents in upwards of two decades now. Despite this gap, hearing the news from Bryan yesterday (as well as how long this had been coming) left me just as crestfallen as if I'd seen Carol just last month. For someone so caring and kind to have suffered as long as she did feels terribly unfair, and I feel both relieved for her that it's over at last, and also profoundly sad for Bryan, his father and his siblings for what they have lost.

Spinning Into Oblivion

The following article was shamefully ripped off wholesale from the New York Times.

Op-Ed Contributors
Spinning Into Oblivion

By TONY SACHS and SAL NUNZIATO
Published: April 5, 2007

DESPITE the major record labels’ best efforts to kill it, the single, according to recent reports, is back. Sort of.

You’ll still have a hard time finding vinyl 45s or their modern counterpart, CD singles, in record stores. For that matter, you’ll have a tough time finding record stores. Today’s single is an individual track downloaded online from legal sites like iTunes or eMusic, or the multiple illegal sites that cater to less scrupulous music lovers. The album, or collection of songs — the de facto way to buy pop music for the last 40 years — is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And the record store itself is going the way of the shoehorn.

This is a far cry from the musical landscape that existed when we opened an independent CD shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1993. At the time, we figured that as far as business ventures went, ours was relatively safe. People would always go to stores to buy music. Right? Of course, back then there were also only two ringtones to choose from — “riiiiinnng” and “ring-ring.”

Our intention was to offer a haven for all kinds of music lovers and obsessives, a shop that catered not only to the casual record buyer (“Do you have the new Sarah McLachlan and ... uh ... is there a Beatles greatest hits CD?”) but to the fan and oft-maligned serious collector (“Can you get the Japanese pressing of Kinda Kinks? I believe they used the rare mono mixes”). Fourteen years later, it’s clear just how wrong our assumptions were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005.

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.

The recording industry association saw the threat that illegal downloads would pose to CD sales. But rather than working with Napster, it tried to sue the company out of existence — which was like thinking you’ve killed all the roaches in your apartment because you squashed the one you saw in the kitchen. More illegal download sites cropped up faster than the association’s lawyers could say “cease and desist.”

By 2002, it was clear that downloading was affecting music retail stores like ours. Our regulars weren’t coming in as often, and when they did, they weren’t buying as much. Our impulse-buy weekend customers were staying away altogether. And it wasn’t just the independent stores; even big chains like Tower and Musicland were struggling.

Something had to be done to save the record store, a place where hard-core music fans worked, shopped and kibitzed — and, not incidentally, kept the music business’s engine chugging in good times and in lean. Who but these loyalists was going to buy the umpteenth Elton John hits compilation that the major labels were foisting upon them?

But instead, those labels delivered the death blow to the record store as we know it by getting in bed with soulless chain stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. These “big boxes” were given exclusive tracks to put on new CDs and, to add insult to injury, they could sell them for less than our wholesale cost. They didn’t care if they didn’t make any money on CD sales. Because, ideally, the person who came in to get the new Eagles release with exclusive bonus material would also decide to pick up a high-speed blender that frappéed.

The jig was up. It didn’t matter that even a store as small as ours carried hundreds of titles you’d never see at Best Buy and was staffed by people who actually knew who Van Morrison was, or that Tower Records had the entire history of recorded music under one roof while Costco didn’t carry much more than the current hits. A year after our shop closed, Tower went out of business — something that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The customers who had grudgingly come to trust our opinions made the move to online shopping or lost interest in buying music altogether. Some of the most loyal fans had been soured into denying themselves the music they loved.

Meanwhile, the recording industry association continues to give the impression that it’s doing something by occasionally threatening to sue college students who share their record collections online. But apart from scaring the dickens out of a few dozen kids, that’s just an amusing sideshow. They’re not fighting a war any more than the folks who put on Civil War regalia and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg are.

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, “The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.”

It’s tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It’s a disaster they brought upon themselves.

We would be gloating, but for the fact that the occupation we planned on spending our working lives at is rapidly becoming obsolete. And that loss hits us hard — not just as music retailers, but as music fans.

Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato own an online music retail business.


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