“The Scarlet Ruse” by
John D. MacDonald
This
one is about a stamp collector who gets entangled with the mob. I am in the
middle of the information-gathering phase where Travis McGee stumbles around
like an idiot, bothering people who no sane man would bother and pontificating
about society’s downfall while being distracted by a woman with some kind of complicated
hang-up designed to make bedding her seem more impressive to the reader.
The
details of these things are never as important as the tone, and this one so far
is fairly bright, although one person has already died and everybody who’s
likely involved on the business end of the actual thing McGee should be
focusing his attention on is the worst kind of human. This is how these books
usually work. It’s fun and games through the exposition and then something bad
happens and it’s a lightning quick run to the end. These books are mindless and
fun. They make me think nothing more substantial than a sex idea or two.
I’m
enjoying all the stuff about the stamps. It’s making me feel better about my
record collection, which is swollen and useless, but according to McGee’s
economist friend Meyer, probably a sound investment.
Foreign Press “Downpour”
7”
This
is why I need a little encouragement about my record collection. Because I buy
things like this. This record sucks. It sucks in that way that only something with non-suck potential that doesn't quite all the way suck can suck. It's a disappointment suck. I bought it because it’s rare and because
a while ago I decided that one of my little areas of expertise and interest would
be all things from 1979.
I
was born that year. I think the initial idea was I’d play all of my 1979
records on my birthday and everybody would think I was so cool. I’ve only
actually done this once, and it was whatever a disaster is except when it’s
boring instead of a disaster. Now I’ve come too far not to keep going. So when
this dumb fucker hit a favorable price point, I pulled the trigger. The
transaction was as mechanical as that.
Buying
a bunch of records from 1979 just because that’s when they’re from illustrates several
problems with the “good/bad year for music” myth. Quality-wise, every year is
about the same. All years have some classics, some overrated luck-out hits
which were a big deal at the time but which age as well as Subway bread, some
absolute garbage, some very well-hidden gems, and a groundswell of mediocre
bands all imitating each other.
In
some years the groundswell of mediocrity sounds better than in other years, and
therefore offers more fodder for potential very well-hidden gems, and I guess
that’s what people mean about when they say something is a good year for music.
They just mean that a shitty band in 1966 had a better chance of accidentally doing
something good than a shitty band in 1984.
1979
is a “good year for music,” but not really. Really it was the year when all of
the mediocre bands morphed irretrievably from mediocre punk bands into mediocre
new wave bands under the banner of “trying new things.” So you get a lot of
stuff where a weird funny synth sound comes in from nowhere, and a lot of stuff
that doesn’t have the balls to rock and the rhythm section doesn’t have the
chops to bring a groove to life and the lyrics are overtly political and hyper-serious in a way
that screams “tiresome overtry.” You get a lot of sodden stuff like this
Foreign Press 7”, which accomplishes nothing more effectively than clearing a
dance floor and making a night of all 1979 records seem exactly as boring and pointless
as it is.
But
hey, if Meyer is right, it’ll be a good investment. Nobody’s ever going to
repress it, and people seem to be willing to pay more than I did for it. But as
far as a night at home goes, I’m going to play this once and then put it the “F”s
and then sit and think instead of listening to more music. This is the best
case scenario for something I don’t actually like, though. Maybe I’d prefer a
record that sucks and makes me think to a record that merely doesn’t suck and
doesn’t make me think anything at all. If so, that’s an odd bias, and probably
means I need to get out more and get laid and live life and all of that.
The NCAA Men’s Basketball
Championship Game, Louisville vs. Michigan
I
wasn’t expecting much here because it’s been a damn long while since one of
these college basketball championship games was even mildly watchable. But
these are two teams talented enough to play real life beautiful basketball
without a superfluity of irritating gimmicks designed to slow the game down and
level off an athletic disadvantage. I like upsets as much as the next guy, but
they often come as a result of horrifying unwatchable meatgrinder basketball
games, and I’d rather watch some Division I quality fleet gentlemen run and
soar and be visibly exceptional.
This
game was entertaining enough for me to put the book all the way down by
halftime and not feel any strange absentee parent object personification guilt
about not wanting to listen to anything after Foreign (de)Press. Michigan
advanced slowly and lugubriously through Louisville’s press, then either drove
to the rim or jacked a long three that improbably went in more often than not.
Louisville would initiate some cute half court set off a high screen designed
to get a ball handler some space to drive, dish, or shoot, and if drive or dish
they’d rely on their more athletic big men to clear the lane and/or clear up
the slop on the offensive glass, and if shoot they’d have better spacing for
the long rebound if they missed, which they didn’t too often.
Both
teams would break, gazelle-like, in a heartbeat if presented with the ball and any
semblance of numbers. The Louisville plan was more sound, the Michigan
execution more ferocious, and the resulting game was 80% of an old time contest
of street ball one-upsmanship between evenly matched teams until the minutes
waned, the game plans tightened, and the refs stepped in and ruined everything.
Much
will be made of the refereeing in this game, but once you assume that all basketball
referees are going to be awful, these refs in this game were at least not the
deciding factor. Bad calls tended to come with a matching bad makeup call, and
nobody fouled out, which was absolutely the strategy for Michigan late in the
game. They sent their college Player of the Year, the relatively diminutive Trey
Burke, to the rim to be hacked to pieces time and time again, but Louisville
rotated fouls well enough with help from the refs for nobody important to ride
pine down the stretch. What I saw happening was Louisville operating as a team
and Michigan as an alternating series of gallant individuals.
This
is not an indictment of anything Michigan did wrong, per se. It was out of
necessity and based on personnel. Nobody on that team has the passing instinct.
They want to put the ball on the floor and either blow by you or cross over, pull
up, and put one right in your mouth. But coach Rick Pitino and the Louisville
squad played dummy beautifully, allowing Michigan to think they had a chance in
a wide open track meet before clamping down in the final minutes. That’s the
thing about beautiful, wild, open-range free flowing basketball: both teams
have to agree on it, and they rarely do because it’s very rarely the best way
for BOTH teams to win.
This game had me wishing, as I usually do when I think about how anything should be, that people could drop the primacy winning in favor of either winning or losing so artfully that the greatness of the pursuit resounds through the ages. In the last seconds I was yelling "come on" at my television, not out of any rooting interest other than my own greed for witnessing one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Pitino wasn't having it. The refs weren't having it. Winning and losing is the point of the whole thing, not the artfulness, because we live in a world made of too many people and not enough things, and winning and losing is how grown-ups inhabit it. Sadly.
The good news is that even losers can make for a decent story, so that's your consolation if you're a Foreign Press or a Michigan or a John D. MacDonald. Which you probably are, along with all the rest of us thingless people. And as another bonus, sometimes we all get to watch a big game in a Georgia Dome atmosphere that is as surreally gigantic and preternaturally
intense as any of the better Oliver Stone movies, and be at least invigorated
to see two teams not be so swallowed by the immensity of the moment that all
they could do was brick their shots and cry into their towels about unfair foul
trouble.
@itisbenjo
@itisbenjo
