fauxklore | Entries tagged with rants

Having now been to a game at each currently-used major league ballpark, I have opinions. Bear in mind that most of those opinions are based on a single visit. (I have been to games in Boston, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Washington several times and to San Francisco, Oakland, and Anaheim more than once but not often.) Note that my criteria are poorly defined, but include things like some sort of local character (i.e. I want it to be obvious what city I am in), fans who are there to watch a game and not spend the whole time texting to their friends about how cool it is that they are at the ball game (I'm talking to you, Arlington, Texas) and whether or not people sing along to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

There are some clear stand-outs, some clear losers, and a vast middle ground.

It will not surprise anybody for me to rate Fenway Park at the top. I admit my Red Sox bias, but I think the quirkiness of the ballpark, its history, and the way it is just infused with baseball atmosphere are valid criteria for its placement. And everybody sings along!

I debated between whether Camden Yards (Baltimore) or Whatever Phone Company It is Named After Today Park (San Francisco) is next. I decided San Francisco has a slight edge since: a) it has better transit access, b) it has better beer, and c) they don't play "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in Baltimore. (They play "Thank G-d I'm a Country Boy." This is just wrong.)

I wanted to like Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs) better, but I had a seat with so-so sight lines, the sound system sucks, and I hate that the fans throw back home run balls hit by the opposing team. I do like its quirkiness and history and fan energy. And they score high on singing along.

The next group includes PNC Park (Pittsburgh), Coors Field (Denver), Comerica Park (Detroit), Citfield (NY Mets), Nationals Park (Washington), Turner Field (Atlanta), and Progressive Field (which was Jacob Fields when I went to a game in Cleveland). They're all very nice places to watch a game, with enthusiastic fans, reasonable access, and at least some local character, without anything notably annoying. I hesitated most over Coors Field, due to mascot annoyingness, but they got a boost by being the one ballpark that actually tries to enforce people not moving in and out of their seats during play.

Since I live in this region, I should note that Nationals Park got credit partly for not being RFK (a truly awful place to watch a game) and partly for having particularly good local character in the concessions (Ben's Chili Bowl! Gifford's Ice Cream!). It would move up a notch if the fans were more engaged. Washingtonians have been seen singing along. They sang to Gershwin at a show Robert and I saw at Ford's Theatre. They sing along at Wolf Trap. So why can't they sing along to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" like all loyal and patriotic Americans should? I could also do without the presidents' race nonsense.

Yankee Stadium (aka the Heart of Darkness, as the Source of All Evil in the Universe is the home team) would rate in the previous group if the ticket prices were a lot lower. They've priced the average fan out. And nobody sings along.

There's a vast middle group of bland ballparks. They are perfectly pleasant places to watch a game, but lack local character or fan enthusiasm. Or they annoyed me by having multiple mascots (Cincinnati), unrecognizable alien mascots (Philadelphia), more than one ceremonial first pitch (Saint Louis), etc. I am also biased against teams named after states instead of cities, which may have influenced my ratings. That group consists of Chase Field (Arizona Diamondbacks), Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati), Minute Maid Park (Houston), Miller Park (Milwaukee), Citizen's Bank Ballpark (Philadelphia), Busch Stadium (Saint Louis), Petco Park (San Diego), Edison Field (Anaheim, not Los Angeles), U.S. Cellular Field (Chicago White Sox), Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City), Target Field (Minnesota Twins), Safeco Field (Seattle), Ameriquest Field (Texas Rangers), Sky Dome (Toronto). Again, there is nothing actually wrong with any of these ballparks. They just lack soul.

Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles) just misses out on that group because of how many hours of my life I've wasted searching for my car in its parking lots after games.

Finally, there are the awful places that need replacement. Dolphin Stadium (Florida Marlins) and Network Associates Coliseum (Oakland A's) are the last of the multi-use stadiums that were so popular in my childhood. We also thought TV dinners were a good idea back then.

Rock bottom is Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay). If I were given the ability to wipe one building off the planet, this would be my first choice, followed by the Iranian nuclear reactor and the apartment complex I once lived in in Berkeley where none of the walls met at right angles. Indoor ballparks are an abomination and there is a reason this is the last permanently domed stadium left. I may also have been biased by the horrific traffic to get there, with particularly surly traffic cops directing things. But there is no excuse for the clanging of cowbells. Learn to cheer like normal people and then we'll talk.

Back in August, the bank I have my credit card with (a card chosen for frequent flyer mile maximization and fee minimization) sent me a new card because (they said) their database had been compromised. There was no evidence of fraud but they were doing this out of an abundance of caution, a phrase that should strike terror into the heart of anybody being massively inconvenienced. So I updated numbers on things I pay automatically. Which is, fortunately, few as most of my autopayments are utilities I pay from my checking account.

In September, they declined a charge while I was buying a plane ticket (admittedly, in a foreign country) and froze my account. A phone call straightened that out easily enough, though I was still annoyed. Given that most of my credit card usage is travel related, one wouldn't think that buying a plane ticket for roughly $120 would be "unusual activity."

In October, I got a call and email from their fraud alert system, which did turn out to be actual fraud. (Note that this is with the new card, the one that replaced the card in the compromised database). In December, I had another attempted fraud. Both of those charges had been declined, which suggests that they can get some things right as far as "unusual activity." The second time, they again replaced my card.

Anyway, this led me to decide that I really should have a second credit card in case they froze my card due to attempted fraud when I was unreachable while traveling. Since American Airlines counts all activity, not just butt in seat miles, towards lifetime status, I applied for their card. And got declined due to "insufficient positive reports."

So I requested my credit report. And I saw that both of those replacement cards were listed as "lost or stolen card." Now, that may not be why I was declined, but my guess is that it's a red flag. Since when is either of those reasons for replacement a "lost or stolen card"? I'll write a letter attempting to get this corrected, but it is a major hassle.

Maybe I should ignore the miles and just get a card from one of the banks I have an account with.

First, Chappy Chanukah! Some day I will sit down and rant about the various spellings of Chanukah and why I have a particular hatred of the form "Hanukkah," which, alas, seems to have become the most popular in the U.S., making it well nigh impossible to buy commercial greeting cards for the holiday.

I also have a rant (which I may or may not write) that has to do with Robert and his dealings with time and why our different attitudes towards planning end up with my feeling that he doesn't have any respect for mine. There was going to be a greatly unfair generalization about men involved in that, but I can't really blame my brother for getting stuck in traffic and being late last night. (He used Robert's theatre ticket. We saw the 42nd Street Moon production of Cole Porter's "Jubilee." I will write about that when I'm home, too.)

So I am making lemonade and adding to the list of things to write about. Yay me.

I pretty much collapsed early Friday evening, which meant it was not too hard to get up early Saturday morning to drive up to Wilmington, Delaware for the Lower Brandywine Storytelling Festival. I still managed to get out of the house about a half hour later than I'd intended to, which meant I missed the very beginning of Willy Claflin's workshop on fracturing fairy tales. I heard enough to get the gist of his approach, which amounts to keeping the plot and substituting the characters.

But I was in plenty of time for the performances. There were two morning olios - one with Ed Stivender and Willy Claflin and one with Bil Lepp and Kim Weitkamp. I thought Bil was in particularly fine form with his piece about James Fenimore Cooper and inflatable Easter bunnies. The other olio was right after lunch and featured Bill Harley and Andy Offutt Irwin. Andy was the one teller on the program I had never heard before. His style was a bit frenetic and somewhat hard for me to follow, frankly.

Each of the tellers then had a one hour featured performance. I was pleased that Ed debuted a new story, but 2 p.m. is a low energy time of day and I admit to having dozed in the middle of it. I thought Kim did an excellent job, especially with a very sweet story about her mother. Andy lost me again, probably because he is from Georgia and I admit to needing subtitles when I get south of about Richmond.

Eight year old Olivia Merryman told three cute little stories. Then came the open mike, which I led off. This festival is fairly focused on personal stories, so I told "Thank You, Miss Tammy," which went over well. There were a fair number of people who told, only one of whom (a high school boy) seemed uncomfortable. My theory is that if you're going to make a fool of yourself, you should at least do so confidently.

The evening session started off with Willy telling a long complicated story sort of about goats. He then did an intergalactic version of Lady Ragnell (which fit in nicely with his morning workshop) and a couple of little Maynard Moose stories. (He'd done "Pegamoose" in the afternoon. The evening had "The Wolf Who Cried Sheep" and "The Grasshopper and the Ants." I may have strained my laugh muscles.) Then came Bill Harley with a tale about Motown, which made me go around singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" for a few hours. Bil Lepp has really grown on me, but I admit I liked the digressions in his story about a scout camp and what happened to a supply of canned tuna there better than the main thread of the story.

All in all, it was an awesome line-up and well worth driving up to Delaware. Especially since the festival is free.

I stayed up that way last night and drove home early this morning. In the afternoon, I went over to Jammin' Java to see Bill Harley do his family show. He did do a couple of the songs he'd done at Lower Brandywine and a lot of other material. I was particularly entertained by a story about a girl who really did have a monster living under her bed. By the way, I had a minor epiphany during his show. See, there were some parents participating just fine. But there were others who were talking with their friends and not trying to get their kids to sing along or even to pay attention. I realized that those very same children will grow up some day. And when they grow up, they will go to baseball games and they will sit during the seventh inning stretch instead of getting up and singing along to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" as is right and proper. If only children were taught properly to sing along at a young age, we could halt this decline of social capital. Robert Putnam was wrong. The problem is not that we aren't joining bowling leagues. It's that we aren't singing along.

Sing to halt the decline of Western civilization.

Since I did not have a remarkably productive or interesting day today, I figured I'd take on some nice safe topics like gay marriage and abortion.

Re: gay marriage, I really don't understand the opposition. I admit that my lack of interest in who wants to sleep with whom is remarkably low if I'm not one of the parties involved, but my puzzlement goes further. Nobody is going to force somebody to marry a member of the same sex. Nobody is going to force any particular person to officiate at any given wedding. I have heard proclaim that marriage exists entirely for procreation, but those same people don't object to people well past child bearing age (or sterile for other reasons) marrying.

Moreover, if we believe that it is good public policy to encourage people to form stable relationships, it makes no sense to tell a significant percentage of the population that they're not allowed to do so.

Re: abortion, I want to focus specifically on late term abortion because I think it highlights a problem in the way people think about the subject. The anti-abortion crowd tends to assume that abortions are performed on frivolous young women who suddenly decide they don't want to be pregnant. While there certainly are a handful of instances that might qualify for that category, late term abortions under those circumstances are extremely rare if not nonexistent. The real reasons for late term abortions are either grave danger to maternal health or severe birth defects which often can't be detected earlier. I'm also disturbed by reading assumptions about what constitutes such a birth defect. In general, we're talking about things like anencephaly (i.e. no brain - and no, zero, nada chance of survival), not things like having the IQ of certain extreme right wing politicians.

My point is that there is no actual need to restrict late term abortion because any sensible restrictions already make exceptions for the cases under which it happens today.

More generally, I stand in the large camp of people who want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. That means providing for effective contraception to be widely available, educating people on contraception (and not just abstention), and providing support services for women who do wish to carry pregnancies to term but may not have appropriate economic and social resources to do so.

Today's Washington Post's Sunday Source section's main feature is on "fashion at work." On the front page, they show a woman wearing a moderately boring pantsuit and suggest changes. As usual, the article mostly reveals that fashion reporters have no clue about what is appropriate at normal workplaces, particularly in conservative professions. (Which means 99.9999% of jobs in Washington.)

1) A camisole top with yellow rosettes is probably not appropriate anywhere and especially not in an office.

2) Likewise for a full skirt with yellow, purple, blue and grey polka dots. (I do, however, own a similar skirt in black and white, which is also not really office appropriate, though I've worn it to work when I haven't done laundry.)

3) Just because it buttons down the front, does not make it a shirtdress. Sleeveless is dubious to start with and putting ruffles at the armholes (and down the front of the bodice and at the hem) pushes it way over the edge.

4) You should probably not be wearing your blouse untucked to begin with. But, if you are, wearing a jacket that is shorter than the blouse just looks sloppy, not cool.

5) Those women on the metro wearing walking shoes are almost certainly going to change shoes at the office, so shut up about it already. Suggesting the purchase of grey and chartreuse high heels instead (at $525, or at least 4 - 5 times what anybody needs to pay for shoes) is only going to make us laugh at you.

1) If somebody gives me a confirmation number, it should actually be a number. Something which starts with, say, a "W" is actually a confirmation code.

2) Once again I made the effort to get a proposal in on time for a conference. (In this case, a working group proposal, but the same thing I am about to whine about happens with abstracts.) Once again, I submitted it on the deadline day. And, once again, the next day I got an email telling me the deadline was extended a week. Does the word "deadline" mean anything to anybody besides me? (And, yes, other folks tell me I shouldn't complain because I'm done and all, but it annoys me.)

3) Finding my money belt should not be as hard as it is proving to be. My fear is that it is somewhere in the second bedroom, which I have not yet found a good name for. It would be the study, but I have this little study nook (with built in computer desk) which claims that title. And library seems pretentious. Office is confusing, since I have two work offices. Den is inaccurate. This was going to be a rant about unpacking, not about room names, but I seem to have digressed.

By the way, celebrity death of the week is Ian Smith, ex-president of ex-Rhodesia. I've been thinking some about colonialism in general, having just read Graham Greene's The Quiet American (which, for some reason, I thought was set in Hoi An, but it's mostly in Saigon and never mentions Hoi An). The real problem with the "white man's burden" sort of colonial rule that Smith fostered is that it inevitably leads to strong man politics as its counter. Robert Mugabe is just the flip side of the same coin, but with a better scapegoat. I'm sure there are still whenwes mourning Smith with their refrain of "When we lived in Rhodesia..." but maybe most of them have emigrated from South Africa (probably to Australia) by now.