Kentucky, Day 7 & 8: Louisville, then home

Though I awoke without a hangover (magically!), I stepped outside into 2025's first blast of humidity. Dark clouds cruised overhead scattering rain, then moved on as if uninterested. Sweat glued my shirt to my back even before my 10-mile city walk began.

Though one doesn't have to go too far from Main St to see that the city has seen better days, industrial facilities still appear to be functioning and employing:

Old buildings have been given new lives with new businesses...

...or not.

The brick side of the now-closed Barbarella club reminded me of the most intense Male Gaze ever applied to a film's opening sequence:

I walked past Dylan's Heaven's Door facility without stopping inside, because I understand his foray into whiskey even less than his Christian Evangelical period.

On my way back to Main Street, I stopped off at Las Margaritas in the Highlands for some very good chicken mole.

Once back among the crowds, I went to a AAA Louisville Bats baseball game, with a great view of the field:

But I struggled to enjoy the experience, and I don't remember the score, because several rows to my left sat a group of 70-somethings who......heckled isn't the right word......screamed at the players with every pitch, with the stadium's ushers seemingly encouraging them. That's 250-300 pitches. I've been in the bleachers at old Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field, but have never heard such a barrage of incoherent misplaced rage. White Boomers harassing Gen Z, mostly people of color, free from consequences for two-and-a-half hours? It was like watching a Maga hat masturbate.

I left Louisville the next day, but not without stopping at a Total Wine first, because I clearly hadn't weighed down my trunk with enough bottles already, then drove straight home......okay maybe I stopped off at Neeley Distillery for a bottle of absinthe.

It was a smooth sunny drive. Yes, now that my vacation had finished, the rain clouds had retired to the Atlantic Ocean. Upon returning home, I set out all my purchases in the hallway, feeling simultaneously angry and proud of myself. My cat, pissed off at me even though she had been spoiled by the cat sitter, parked herself between the bottles and me for the rest of the night, like the queen she is.

The next day was Saturday, a day of acting and dancing recitals from my amazing girls, and an evening with friends, from whom I received a pour of the dusty gem that will begin my return to whisky reviews next week.

The Barrel

This barrel wasn't supposed to be that relevant. I ordered this inscription two-and-a-half years ago, inspired by Woody Guthrie's guitar message, which he'd crafted after he wrote "Talking Hitler's Head Off Blues". Guthrie opposed all forms of fascism, and in my naïveté I had thought the majority of Americans did too, or at least had once done so. But perhaps we've only opposed other countries' fascism while accepting our own. Or maybe we thought things were okay as long as it wasn't present in our neighborhoods, but that it was necessary to impose anti-liberalism on other people's neighborhoods. I cannot follow that logic, as it seems antithetical to our constitution and any dream to fulfill the promise of a healthy republic. One would think this is something our country needs to figure out without further delay.

This barrel is not an "antifa" barrel. And if you regularly use the word "antifa", may I encourage you to add some variety to your news sources. In truth, the above description could have been "This Machine Kills Fascists, Communists, Nihilists and Know-Nothings" but there wasn't enough room on the barrel head.

Here's the reverse side:

On Wednesday, the experiment. On Friday, the tasting!

Meditations on Fatherhood and the Bruichladdich 12 year old Second Edition (2011)

As per the first sentence below, I did indeed write this post before Election Day. Sunday night to be precise. The intent was to post it on Wednesday, but when that day came I felt that a day of silence would be best. Though it may look as if I foresaw the election result, I did not. I was really just commenting on the general swamp of the long term American mood. Anyway, here's the post, on Thursday.

---

I write this post before Election Day, knowing it will be scheduled for The Day After Election Day. Perhaps it'll be my least read post ever because this is the last thing anyone's going to want to read this morning. Or maybe people will be flocking to non-election related news in order to take care of their own mental health. It's likely that the anxiety which preceded today will continue long past tomorrow.

Two floors above me, my two-year-old daughter sleeps quietly, or maybe with a little snore since she's under the weather. When she has a cold she requests hugs nonstop. My wife and I are happy to oblige, partly because my daughter is swooningly beautiful and partly because we know that once she's well again there will be fewer hug appeals. Watching her while she napped this afternoon, I thought about the world she'll grow up in. I knew that, between my parents' generation and my own, we'd leave her a garbage world. But I'd always thought it would be a broccoli-filled kitchen trash bag reality. Not a dumpster fire.

I love Mathilda and want to do everything I can to help her grow into being a strong confident woman. The first two and a half years of childhood have been tough for her and her parents, and I've heard the next year will be a challenge as well. My missteps have outnumbered my successes, but I have more time to get things right. All I want to do in this life is to get things right. Today, when discussing what video she and I were going to watch or what music we should listen to, Mathilda held up her index finger and said, "One thing at a time."

I'm crumbling just typing that.

So clearly what is important right now is this review of the second edition of Bruichladdich 12 year old. Bottled in the wake of the retirement of the first ten year old by The Reynier-McEwan Era of Bruichladdich, this 12yo contained only whisky distilled by the previous ownership, Whyte & Mackay (who had purchased Invergordon Distillers).

Two things of note about this whisky. The ten year old which it replaced was made from a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, while this 12 was from only bourbon casks. I assume the ownership realized they could put those sherry casks into more expensive bottles. Secondly, the distillery was mothballed from 1995 to 2001, except for a few weeks of peated production (by the Jura folks!) in 1998. That means there's a very good chance there's a considerable amount 17+ year old whisky in this 2011 bottling of the "12" year old. Must be one of the reasons they retired it by the end of that year.

In any case, I had no idea of either of any of these facts when I conducted my tasting. I will say this is a very good whisky, old content or no. Thank you to Jordan of Chemistry of the Cocktail who recommended this whisky when we did a sample swap.

Distillery: Bruichladdich

Ownership that released the whisky: Bruichladdich Distillery Co. Ltd.
Whisky distilled by: Whyte & Mackay

Region: Islay

Type: Single Malt Whisky
Age: at least 12 years old

Maturation: refill and first fill ex-bourbon casks

Bottled: May 2011

Alcohol by Volume: 46%

The nose lifts off with some bright candy notes, think Skittles and gummi bears. After a minute of air, those notes fade out, replaced by caramel sauce, butter, some milk chocolate, and definitely something peaty. Less than Springbank- or Ardmore-peaty, but it's there. There's also rubber cement, strawberry candy, Concord Grape Manischewitz, and some really nice toasty oak. A few drops of water bring out ripe autumn apples, vanilla bean, and hint of the old 10's florals.

Vanilla fudge, fruity tobacco and baking spices start off the palate. The sweetness remains mellow even as the palate gets very berried. I'm thinking tart blackberries and raspberry jam. Then limes, brown sugar and a hint of green tea. With a few drops of water it gets naked-er. Sweet, fruity, slightly tart, some funky maltiness. Never mind, here's some oak. But it's like a vanilla cookie to go with the berries.

Vanilla bean, bitter chocolate and tart berries in the finish. Small notes of barley and green tea too. With a few drops of water it develops a balance of barley and vanilla. Mild sweetness meets mild tartness.

Damn it if I'm not a decade late on discovering this one. I'd love to have this as a regular drinker. The blenders (McEwan included?) really nailed it. The palate and its berries(?!) hit all the right spots, with the sweetness staying in control, then the tartness and bitterness roll in late to complete the experience. The whisky is one of those increasingly rare examples that oak and spirit can coexist in peace. And the end result is we all win. Or at least those who get a chance to drink it. :(

I know I'm reducing my chance of chasing down a dusty of this now by posting this review, but there's no need for me to hoard the goodies. I wanted to share it with those of us who stand in the wreckage of former democracies. Don't go crazy, shilling out $100+ for this bottle. It ain't A or A- whisky, but it's a high B, maybe just on the cusp of a B+. Yes, I'm aware of the ridiculousness of the previous sentence. But if I find it for $50-$60...

Availability - maybe collecting dust on shelves somewhere, and at auctions
Pricing - ???
Rating - 87

A Diageo boycott: The Motivation

Monday, I wrote about Diageo's brands.
Tuesday, I wrote about Diageo's whisky.
Today, it's about the B word, and why...

Boycott is an act of abstaining from buying or using.  The definition sounds simple, but it's a word that holds significant connotations.  We shape much of our lives around the things we buy and consume.  I like to buy and consume whisky.  Diageo owns a hell of a lot of whisky.  To say "no more Diageo products for me" means there will be a lot less whisky out there for me to purchase.  But when I buy something, that money goes to support a person or a series of actions and policies which constitute a business.  Thus my money = me.  Do I want to support the actions and policies that are Diageo?

The only reason for me to say "yes" is whisky.

Here are some personal motivations for me to say "no":

1.  Let's start with the Special Releases' pricing that I mentioned on Monday.  Diageo has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled prices on these annual releases over the past few years.  And this isn't just on closed distilleries, but also open ones, so they cannot use the "closed distillery" reasoning for the boosts.  Consider that while they are priced higher than similar single casks on the market, these Special Releases are not single casks.  Instead, ten to twenty casks are utilized for each release thus there are many more bottles for sale.  So this action isn't just there to silence the secondary market, but also to manipulate the primary market via pushing prices up and creating increased scarcity for their future "Special Releases".  For more information and a better take on this, please see Oliver Klimek's "Whisky for Fools" post.

2.  Next, the termination of Johnnie Walker Green Label.  There are now two posts about this (here and here) so I won't belabor this point much more.  Green Label was one of my favorite Diageo products and possibly their highest quality blend.  So there's a personal gripe built into this, in addition the BS PR involved.

But one additional note that I did not include yesterday... For the folks who claim that blended malt sales fell dramatically in 2011 -- triggering the Green Label axe -- it's hard to know how blended malt sales could do well when there was a 55% drop in exported blended malt in 2011.  If you give us less, we'll buy less.  Otherwise, it looks like companies like Diageo wanted to keep their malt for higher profit-margin lower-malt whiskies.  Don't slap us and say we deserved it when we didn't.

3.  Talisker.

Talisker?  Talisker.  Talisker might produce my favorite malt.  Or, at least I think it might but I really have no options to explore it further since Diageo hasn't let any casks slip to other bottlers in almost 25 years.  But that's a company-wide issue I'll leave for #5.

This year, Diageo raised the price on Talisker 18 year old by 40% without explanation or without limiting the supply, leaving many of us fans to go WTF?  It is now priced up there with similarly aged products by a "luxury" brand (Macallan), a "friggin' quackers pricing" brand (Dalmore), and a hand-run small business (Springbank).  I can only assume they were trying to pull a Dalmore (whom they now own) by declaring, "This is luxury because the price is high."  Anyway, one of my favorite whiskies is now out of my price range.  Cheers.

Then there is Talisker Storm.  I've already snarked about this one.  I'll put sarcasm aside for a moment.  I don't mind distilleries releasing young non-age-statement (NAS) whisky onto the market.  A lot of folks are doing it now and pricing it at the bottom of the range.  Instead, Storm is priced about $20 higher than its classic age-listed older brother, the 10-year-old.  So, Diageo, what you're saying is that in order for me to try a younger NAS Talisker full of oak manipulation, I'm supposed to pay more?

In the end, I'm only left with Talisker 10, the first of the 10-year-old single malts to reach the $60 price range.

4.  Poor presentation of a high quality product.

First, they strip whisky out of their whisky in order to make it look pretty in cold climes.  By chill-filtering the hell out of the malt, they strain out oils that contribute texture as well as taste and smell compounds.  Then they add a significant amount of E150a.  And by "significant" I mean my last Oban 14 was brown.  I don't mean dark amber or rich gold, I mean brown.  That is not the color of watered-down filtered whisky that spent fourteen years in refill bourbon oak.

As consenting adults, we know that the alcohol we drink isn't great for our livers.  But with proper hydration we can help remove the alcohol from our bloodstream.  I don't know how long lab-created caramel colorant takes to exit my body, but I'd rather not introduce it when I'm already socking my liver with delicious whisky.  One poison at a time please.  I'll choose malt w/o E150a.

5.  No indie casks.

And by that I mean at some point around 1998 Diageo decided to end any further distribution of their casks to independent bottlers.  There wasn't a whole lot going out to the indies at that point anyway, but the faucet was shut off.

The independent bottlers are very small businesses that in no way compete with a $80B market-cap slug like Diageo.  Instead, with their limited resources they bottle unfiltered uncolored (and often cask strength) whiskies that provide anoraks with the opportunity to experience a malt from an alternate angle.  They expand the whisky experience.

Diageo puts several hundred thousand casks into bonded warehouses each year.  Couldn't they let a handful out every once in a while?  Apparently not.

6.  Did I mention that Diageo rigged an independent beer competition?  Who does that, really?

7.  Back in the 1820s, a grocer......what was his name?.......um......oh, John Walker, began blending whiskies to sell to his customers in Kilmarnock, Ayreshire, Scotland.  Business eventually picked up a bit, you may have heard.  Almost two hundred years later, ignoring protests by tens of thousands of locals (you know, actual Scottish people) and efforts by the Scottish government, Diageo closed the Johnnie Walker bottling plant in the home of Walker's Kilmarnock Whisky, delivering a pounding to the local economy.

8.  Let's add into this mix the fifteen distilleries proto-Diageo closed and demolished during the last whisky drought.  Does Scotland trust a company -- a non-Scottish company with stakes and ownership around the world, paying tens of millions of pounds to its executives and board and more to large stockholders -- to have this much control over its most famous export?  What will Diageo choose to do the next time the market lags?  Meanwhile, their human distillery jobs were decided to be redundant and their tax receipts go to the UK at large.  With Diageo buying their barley from around the world, how Scottish is their Scotch?

9.  To throw a little seasoning in there, Distillers Company Limited (DCL, proto-Diageo) distributed Thalidomide, the pharmaceutical drug that caused horrific birth defects in over 10,000 newborn babies around the world.  It took over forty years for Diageo to set aside substantial compensation for the surviving mutilated victims.

10.  Is that a little too long ago?  How about the '80s?  As far as corporate ethics goes, there's the share-trading fraud that tripled Guinness's share price, allowing them to takeover DCL, which is pretty neat.  Some of the wealthy fraudsters claimed anti-semitism was behind their eventual punishment -- as a Jew, very little disgusts me more than knowingly guilty parties claiming anti-semitism when they are caught (that includes you, Ryan Braun).  Former Guinness CEO Ernest Saunders was able to stay out of prison by claiming he had Alzheimer's Disease.  A few years later he magically became the only person in history to have been cured of Alzheimer's Disease.  A few years after that, with its massive holdings in tow, Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, forming Diageo.  So there's no Diageo without billions of dollars of fraud.

I'll stop at ten today.  Tomorrow, I'll wrap this all up and try to define my next steps...

Good things Thursday

The work week has been horrid up to this point and I can no longer enjoy a quick internet break since all media stories (sports, politics, culture, arts, etc.) have drowned in oceans of knee-jerk hyperbole.  The message is not instant.  We've all been forced, in the name of selling a story, to forget that so we're all missing the evolution of our collective lives.

But I've been thinking about the good things since I awoke this morning.

Strange swirls of cloud rolled in at daybreak.  They brought with them sunshowers.  For now the heat has been broken.  Thank you, skies.

***

Dear reader, if you have a Trader Joes nearby, you may want to consider trying their White Cheddar with Carmelized Onions.  Holy moley.  It is good on everything.  EVERYTHING.  I'm going to buy it again next week and try it with Sriracha.  Also, regarding Sriracha: This.

***

Jordan at Chemistry of the Cocktail has a great two-part piece on Non-Age-Statement whiskies that I recommend to all you anoraks.

***

Finally, for whisky geeks,  THIS.  David Driscoll of K&L Wines has restarted his excellent podcast.  This week, he interviewed Rachel Barrie, one of the great Master Blenders.  Her background may be science, but she speaks of whisky like an artist, full of metaphysics, memories, and emotions.  Because she helped bring Ardbeg Uigeadail and Corryvreckan in the world, she'd already won my whisky heart.  But I could listen to her talk all day and night.  For now, the podcast is the closest I'll get to that.  Just put it on repeat while sitting in traffic.....  Anyway, she recently moved over to Morrison-Bowmore where she'll be weaving miracles with Bowmore, Glen Garioch, and Auchentoshan.  Thank you to David and Rachel!

***

Alright, time to take on the day.  Deep breaths, y'all.

Are you independent?

Seriously, are you?

And not in a capital-I political Independent sort of way.  A lot of people register as Independent when the political parties don't tilt far enough to the Left or Right for their desires.

But are your thoughts independent from political parties?  Are your choices independent from the one-dimensional shorthand labels of the extremes of the political spectrum: Left and Right?

Are your consumer choices free from brand slavery?  Do you buy only one company's computing products?  Do you go grocery shopping at the same store every time?  Are you buying the same bread every week?  Do you depend on consumerism to illuminate your life?

Do you fully understand the religious or scientific method by which you determine your existence?  If not, then why remain dependent on that structure?  Or why not dig further?

Are you dependent on family?  On your locality's power grid?  Are your decisions limited by a dependence on income?  Are you independent from monogamy?  From the opinions of others?

Are you dependent on sugar?  On caffeine?  On alcohol?  On television?  To what level and why?

Are you dependent on a strict structure to your day?  Do you depend on your morning run?  Are you independent from your cell phone?  Are you dependent on your online life?

Are you independent from your glasses?


*steps back from mirror*


*can't see a damn thing, puts glasses back on*


*realizes there's an audience*


Oh sh*t.  I mean, hello!  Happy Independence Day, Yanks!

More than two centuries ago, a group of folks made the decision to sever their ties with a system they had been dependent on.  While many of those same folks suffered or died from those choices, the group result was an earned independence and the creation of a new way of life.

On all Jewish holidays, we of that faith are asked to consider the bold actions of a small group of people from many centuries or millennia ago.  We examine how those past choices reflect on our present lives.  Are there things we could be doing differently?  Could our lives, as well as lives of others, be bettered through similar (parallel, no matter how small) commitments?  Then a little action is encouraged.

This part of my background has me pondering similar things on this American Independence Day.

Are there things you rely on to get up in the morning, get through your day, and sleep soundly at night?  Can you remove your dependence on one more of those things and still feel your heartbeat?  Or are there certain levels of servitude or reliance in which we choose to enlist because they paint us in a good light when we look in the mirror?  Are there certain things we submit to because they make us better souls?

Or has "independence" become an abstract noun?  And if so, how do we celebrate it today?

While we have our traditions -- barbecue, baseball, beer, and big fireworks (needed that 'B') -- maybe we should take a moment to consider which of our dependencies make us better people and which ones we should shed.

And then write a blog post.

The Honey-Do List for the Holidays

Happy Holidays, folks!  I hope that everyone's vacations begin soon.  The Industry began its holidays on Friday; as a result much of the machine has slowed down.  But there's no rest for the creatives, though maybe a brief break from development emails.

I just returned from Arizona and am now prepping to leave for New York and Ohio.  I have some entries lined up, so as long as I have the interwebs I strive for blog diligence.

Whiskies - I have a tremendous Taste Off lined up while I'm in New York.  A lot of the classics will be involved.  If I live to tell about it, then you'll see it posted here.  I also have a very exciting whisky situation that may present itself in Ohio.  I dare not say anymore about it.

Once I finish some further research, I'd like to continue posting some Whiskey 101 posts.  You know, some (borrowed) wit and (stolen) wisdom about the sauce.

I happily found a bottle of Black & White, an old-school dirt-under-the-fingernails whisky blend.  Why so happy?  Well, this is the stuff I cut my whisky teeth on when I wandered the British Isles nine years ago.  When one's a broke backpacker, one drinks the whisky one gets.  Black & White is what I gots.  Seeing the (liter!) bottle on the shelf at Pasadena's Mission Liquor was genuinely surreal.  I'm waiting to open it in 2012, after which you may see me do an about-face on highballs and whisky & ice.

Movies & Music - In doing all of these whisky posts, I haven't had a chance to finish Chapter 5 of the George Herman Hitchcock Project.  Regrettably, my general film flow (terrible word choice) has been at a trickle for months.

But I've been listening to tons of new (though, actually old) music.  Back in this blog's youth, there were music posts every week.  I would like to do at least a couple per month.

The Condo - January will bring some new projects.  I will provide before-and-after pics when it's all good.

Politics - Just saw the Kim Jong Il news.  2011 continues to be The Year It Sucks to Be A Dictator.  And for that I am thankful.

I'll be back on Wednesday!

Distractions and Abstractions

My apologies for the delay. I admit that I have fallen down the snake hole that is the press coverage of this election. I broke my own rule from the previous post and let them snag me. The only thing I regret is how much energy it saps. What I don't regret is living during this insanity. It's actually kind of fun to watch journalists and media companies lose their minds. In the upcoming days, they will be feeding their hypnotised audience up to 20 state polls and 7 national polls per day! And you know what, they're all meaningless. Each poll is so flawed and the margin of error is so great that none of the pontificating is based on anything real. And I'd say this no matter who's "winning" in the polls. Actually no one's winning in the polls right now except the polling companies. But I promised I'd lay off of politics in this blog, thus ends this paragraph.

It's interesting to have witnessed the Yankees go from perennial world champ to perennial playoff team to second-rate team in four years. This is a good thing because the system is breaking down, to paraphrase G Carlin. Some things need to shatter and burn, melt away and vaporize, before something new can be born. I'd say 2011 will be the next year they can compete.

On Monday I forced myself to watch Tarkovsky's Mirror. One of my goals in this first year of my 30s was to go back to my difficult films. I wanted to re-view those movies that bother me or effect me oddly on a level that I do not understand. Mirror was the first one that came to mind.

I really like everything that I've seen of Andrei Tarkovsky's. I never recommend his films because that would be mean, or maybe I want people to take any of my future recommendations seriously. One could call his style deliberate......or one could point out that he makes 3-hour glacial meditations complete with long takes of muddy water and overgrown weeds. Mirror (only 108 minutes) is his one film that I've never made it through. In fact, I have fallen into a troubled dark sleep every time I've given it a spin. Four tries. Never made it past the 5 minute mark. So it was time to do it. And after 3 breaks for food and chores, I was successful.

It's strange how one minute the film looks very familiar then the next minute it's as if I'm watching for the first time. In my past tries, I must have watched some sequences in a half-sleep. One thing that was pleasantly welcomed was the intense erotic charge that Margarita Terekhova brings every time she's on screen. After all of the failed attempts to watch this movie and the heavy but jagged sleep that followed, my brain registers Terekhova as a goddess of the unconscious (Somnia, perhaps?). With her appearance comes a change in perception and the negation of lucidity. And that is really hot.

So what's the movie about? It's a series of dreams, memories, and meditations all woven together quietly to illustrate the mind of a man contemplating his life, his family, and women. But this is not the territory of the conscious, so the camera movements and the mise-en-scene is all dream-like. And I don't mean the usual cinematic depiction of dreams. Rather it's as if Tarkovsky got his 35mm camera into his brain and filmed through Hypnos's eye. There are repeated images of fire, water, and wind -- yes, wind. He made me believe I could see the wind. There are drapes and cloth hanging ghostlike, here and there, in both the memories and dreams. It's shot in B&W as well as color, along with old newsreel clips. Danger lurks in the background, but not fear. And all the while Terekhova holds the gaze, playing both the mother and the ex-wife.

While all of these images swirl and drift, the unseen man reads poetry written by another Tarkovsky (maybe Andrei's father?) and the end cinematic result is stream-of-the-unconscious. Here's my favorite piece:

Sometimes something happens,

and I stop dreaming

of the house and the pines

by the house of my childhood.

Then I grieve

and wait for the dream...

that will make me

a child again...

and I'll be happy again, knowing...

that all still lies ahead...

and nothing is impossible.

Good night.

Blowing smoke

"A house is not news. A house on fire, now that's news." -- an old journalism wisdom shared by one of my writing mentors in college.

Unfortunately that gem has recently been rendered ridiculous. Trying to follow the Dem's Convention has become an act of futility as nothingness get spun and spun and spun until it seems like conflict!, gossip!, something! Though I hope all of the media provides equal crazy time coverage of the Rep's convention, I have switched off this product.

Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, we no longer receive news. Turn on all of the media information networks (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), there's no news. There's speculation, commentary, commentary on the speculation, and occasionally some speculation on commentary. These businesses need to distract you long enough so that you forget that you're watching 24 hours of advertising. It's tough to put something on screen all day, it takes a lot of work from a lot of individuals, and it becomes more difficult when other journalism portals are racing to say something first or louder.

The house is not on fire. But it's up to these companies to make us keep checking to see if things are ablaze. If we stop watching, ad revenue goes down, stock prices go down, and these shops start folding up.

Some of you know that I haven't had any television channels in my home for the last 7 years. This abandonment of the box wasn't due to reality programming, bread-and-circus distractions, or terrible writing.

Seven years ago, a day came when the sky fell. The house really was on fire. I, like most of the nation, couldn't stop watching the reporting. For weeks. Once I came out of the somnambulism induced by falling buildings and death counts, I realized that every station kept saying, The House Is on Fire. Experts were coming in re-explaining the events and speculating on every moment of the fire. Though a little exploration of why the house was burning would have gone a long way, the actual commentary was repetitive. The voices and images kept saying the same thing. Why? Because there was nothing left to report. The house was no longer on fire. Fear had turned us into the perfect captive audience. And that realization spelled the end of television in my home.

One of the media networks, who had up to that point been poorly constructed and been limited to awkward lurching amateurish programming, caught full hold of that fear and hasn't let go since. And it has been the best thing to ever happen to them. Besides holding a consistent political bent to their product, they still wage in that same fear which has now spread to every part of society. They keep saying every day, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE. And their consistent viewers have to believe it if they receive all of their information from this source.

That network's blossoming has since caused the rest of the companies to rush to keep up. Instead they don't always say the house is ablaze when it's not. Chris Matthews talks to experts about potential sources of conflagration. Wolf Blitzer showcases people who have lived in burning houses. There are graphics of what would happen if the fire starts. And all of this proves very addictive viewing. But it doesn't mean that anything is actually happening. It is the definition of pornography -- an artificial manipulation of real feelings in order to create a temporary false emotion.

Now, I'm the first one to say that everything is not right in this country. The wiring is all messed up, the appliances were never strong to begin with, there are cracks in our foundation, and we apparently have no basement. But, well, let me tell you a quick personal story:

In 1995, during my family's first full year in Santa Barbara, we were enjoying another in a series of 200+ consecutive beautiful late mornings. I was on the can, thumbing through a Baseball Digest and Sporting News, when I heard my dad's running thumping footsteps passing by the door. He was shouting, "THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE. Get out of the house!" He'd seen dark smoke coming from the vent in his room. My idyll was interrupted and as we all scurried out through the garage, my heart raced with adrenaline. I believe the SBFD was called in (need to fact check through Jason), but one thing was for certain. The house was not on fire. A towel in my parents' bathroom had gotten a little close to a light bulb and started smoking. I'm not saying that wasn't important. The smoking towel needed to be addressed. But the house was not on fire.

As for the republic of Georgia, their house is on fire. The U.S. has the potential, and that potential must be explored, but to scream and frighten in the disguise of News is a lie. We need to focus on and fix the faulty things, the open flames, the smoldering towels, the blocked fire exits. But current reporting (journalism?) is an illusion, a trumped up distraction to keep you watching and the ad sales coffers filling. What will happen when this current programming process is no longer of interest? Will some of these media companies begin starting fires in order provide a product? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm sure they will do their best to slow the fire department from putting it out.

I am not interested in debating the difference between Truth and Fact here, but I am calling a lie a lie, a cheat a cheat, and emotional abuse a reality. Networks! Save the Fear for the unpopular politicians. Bring news back. And let us know how people are planning on fixing the plumbing, opening up their windows to the outdoors again, and what's being done to lower the electric bill.

In the meantime, please expand your coverage of Megan Fox's latest nipple-slip. Thank you.

Dear Mr. President,

As you finish your final months in office, you must have many important duties to fulfill. There are people you have to pardon, post-term speaking engagements to settle, long-term contracting deals to sign, and maybe some final political scores to settle.

Within the last year your administration has begun to publicly acknowledge the economic downturn that the nation currently experiences. There are other negatives that have been reluctantly mentioned as well, such as failures in overseas diplomacy, military action, and the worldview of the United States. Maybe you haven't addressed these directly -- it may just be my optimistic imagination -- but even if you have, I am not entirely certain that you, your advisers, or cabinet members can see our nation's day-to-day collapse due to the blindfold of Wealth.

My girlfriend and I (yes, we live together and are not betrothed) recently moved to another apartment. No, we are not homeowners. Despite the fact that we both have jobs that pay well, we still cannot afford to purchase a home even amidst the current housing market disaster. Our new apartment, mere feet from luxurious Beverly Hills, surrounded by seven- and eight-figure houses, is not of the inexpensive sort, but not unreasonably priced either. The apartment and the building themselves are of quality and the nights are exceptionally quiet by Los Angeles standards. The problem with our place resides with the things within, objects and labor. American products and American work. To summarize:

• Uneven kitchen tiling of different heights that can cut bare feet. Tiling which was installed two weeks later than needed, thus keeping us out of our apartment for two days after we had already moved in.
• A dishwasher that sometimes washes dishes when not activated and does not dry them once it is activated. It is brand new.
• A freezer door that does not seal the same as the refrigerator below it, thus potentially causing high utility bills. It is brand new.
• An oven installed on a slight slant so that burning hot trays can slide out and hit passersby. An oven that may not reach the actual temperatures that it indicates. It is brand new.
• A stove top that is slippery, thus causing burning hot pans to slide off and hit passersby. It is brand new.
• A toilet that was installed under a shelf so that the toilet cannot fully open. Without going into graphic detail, I will just say that it presents a problem for both men and women. This was installed 20 to 30 years ago in every apartment in the building.
• A shoe rack, new in the box, with three broken pieces so that it cannot be assembled.
• A shoe rack, new in the box, with at least two missing pieces so that it cannot be assembled.
• A shower rack, or caddy, with metal so flimsy that it cannot serve its own purpose, bending out even without holding a single bar of soap. It has shelves that cannot stay straight due to flimsy rubber wedges, causing anything placed on the shelf to come sliding off, hitting naked surprised bathers. It is brand new.
• Screen doors that do not open. Screen doors that do not open are no longer doors, but walls for exhibitionists.
• Cabinet doors that either do not open or do not close.
• Closet bars that will collapse under the weight of the clothing hung upon them.
• Front door locks that do not lock.
• Kitchen shelves installed on a downslope causing dishware to, yes, slide off and hit passersby.

I will stop here, Mr. President, because to go further would likely seem to be nitpicking. What I hope is apparent is the shoddy nature of these American-made products, this work, this labor provided in America, this sliding away of the last shards of American quality. My girlfriend and I do not live in a $600 studio in South LA, these things are happening within the middle-class.

When I do my job, I do my best, focusing on the clients, vendors, and people who are affected by the results. If we Americans know that we cannot afford a house, cannot afford to get sick, cannot take any pride in our international standing, cannot assume that our jobs are stable, cannot afford to travel, cannot expect to get our Social Security back when we are old, cannot expect privacy laws to be upheld, and cannot assume that it is okay not to be afraid anymore, what are we supposed to do when we come home from work to an apartment full of broken things. Shoddy labor going into shoddy products. The complete lack of effort and pride.

You, sir, set the example.

Sincerely,
thekrav

Twilight

We can't expect the Titans of previous generations to live forever, but it's necessary to have them here with us to remind of better times. And it's inspirational to see them still working hard defending the human in public, making it known that it is our bodies that are broken in order to run the business of the state, so we deserve more in return than murder, insult, and paranoia.

In this dark night of ours there are so few stars left in the American sky. So, I am sad to see the news of Senator Edward Kennedy's ailment and I wish him peaceful time in the days that remain.

Within 24-hours of this announcement came John Lester's truly human accomplishment. In 2007, having survived a battle with lymphoma, Lester had returned to pitch in the majors. Less than a year later, on Monday, he pitched a no-hitter. I'll take inspiration from wherever it comes, even Boston.