The Wild Card Zone in Major League Baseball Games

Many years ago, a Major League Baseball team would feel pretty confident if it had a good starting pitching rotation and a consistently effective closing relief pitcher.  And having one or two really dependable middle-relief pitchers would just be icing on the cake.  But nowadays, with the pressure to limit the number of pitches that starters can throw in a game...even to the point where a manager will sometimes pull a starter who is pitching a no-hitter (it happened with the Marlins earlier this season)...there has arisen a substantial portion of the game when the "big-money" starting pitchers have been yanked and that lineup of middle-relief pitchers comes into play...and this happens in the vast majority of games.  These pitchers usually don't exactly have the best records at keeping batters from reaching base...which is why they're middle relief, after all!  Yet they collectively play a crucial role in determining the outcome of games.  A starter is usually approaching the magic number of 100 pitches, unless of course he's having a career game, by around the sixth or seventh inning.  And even if the pitch count is lower, the manager is very sensitive to observe any signs of fatigue, reflected in pitch speed and accuracy...and of course whether or not the bases are being kept empty.  I've seen many games in which the starter was doing well and then ran into a little trouble in the 5th, 6th, or 7th innings and the manager, rather than see if he could get himself out of the inning, instead called upon a middle-relief pitcher with less of a reputation for effectiveness.  And too many times in these situations, the reliever would give up runs, with them often charged to the starter.  I've been suffering in recent seasons with my Florida teams Tampa Bay and Miami as I've seen leads disappear and losses ensue on a number of occasions when effective starters are replaced with less-capable relievers...

I've recently heard that pitchers throw warm-up pitches before each inning (up to 8 are allowed per inning)...and if there is any kind of delay, they're allowed more.  I wonder, though, how necessary these practice throws are and if they don't contribute to the starter's fatigue in later innings.  I heard the same viewpoint expressed by someone recently on a sports talk radio station, and then read an article echoing his viewpoint online...I wonder if it was the same person.  After all, the later you can keep your best pitchers in the game, while keeping the number of innings with middle-relievers to a minimum, your chances of winning should be greatly enhanced.  But I don't foresee any drastic changes concerning warm-up pitches anytime soon.  Instead, those middle-to-late innings will continue to be the "wild card zone" in games, when just about anything might happen...

Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane

British fantasy/science fiction writer Neil Gaiman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors.  Currently I'm reading through one of his "juniors" series titled InterWorld...maybe that one is a tad too juvenile...but I just finished reading a more adult novel: his 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane...

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a man in his late forties returns to where he lived as a seven-year-old boy forty year earlier, in a rural Sussex area (in England, of course).   While walking down the lane connecting his former home (now long demolished) and its end, where the Hempstocks lived, he begins to gradually remember his past.  Finally, looking out on the Hempstock's pond, he recalls that little Lettie Hempstock, a girl four years his senior, referred to the pond as an "ocean"...and the past memories flood in, launching this tale of childhood adventures, fears, and regrets...

It's always a bit difficult to know how much to tell in a book review and how much to leave out.  Maybe it's just better to give some general impressions of mine and leave the story's outcome to you, the prospective reader.  One sense I got from reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane is that it initially feels as if it belongs in the "young adult" genre of fiction...like Divergent, Twilight, or Hunger Games...but the themes embedded within are much more adult in nature, once you get past all of the magic, fantasy, and adventure.   I also picked up that Gaiman was writing about the helpless feeling that children often get when they have to interact with grown-ups, who often wield so much power over them and insist on always being "right".  Whoa...that one struck a strong chord with me as I recall, over the course of my own childhood, how much I deeply distrusted...and even feared...adults.  There is a sinister housekeeper reminiscent of the wicked nanny who takes over the household in the movie The Omen, and later in the story appear monstrous flying entities who "clean things up" and are remarkably similar to those in Stephen King's The Langoliers...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was published in 2013 and won numerous awards for Neil Gaiman.  It is a disturbing novel in that, while it seems like a child's fantasy tale on the surface, there is some pretty deep stuff underlying it all.  Why not try it out and see for yourself?

NBA Playoffs Down to "Final Four"

Although I'm disappointed that "my" San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat didn't quite make it to their respective conference finals, I still enjoy watching the National Basketball Association playoffs...but I'm glad I was at work last night and didn't witness the horrendous 31-point blowout that Cleveland put over Toronto in their opening round game for the Eastern Conference championship.  Still, it's "best of seven" and I recall, just recently, when San Antonio did something similar to Oklahoma City in their first game...only to see the Thunder win the next four out of five and the series.  Still, I have trouble comparing the Raptors, an admittedly talented team, with Oklahoma City and its superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook along with the crucial supporting cast of players Serge Ibaka, Steven Adams, and Enes Kanter.  The latter two shut down the Spurs offense in the "paint" during the previous series and have to be given a great amount of credit for the team's playoff surge so far.  Also, I'm starting to hear kudos deservedly being given to Thunder first-year head coach Billy Donovan.  And if upsetting favored San Antonio wasn't enough, Oklahoma City then shocked everyone by coming from behind in the second half to beat the heavily favored Golden State Warriors in the first game of the Western Conference finals, 108-102...

I don't think that a team like Golden State, headlined by its two-time MVP guard Stephen Curry, will buckle under to the Thunder.  Still, by beating them on their home court, Oklahoma City has definitely earned their attention and respect.  Who knows what will happen in the next game, which will begin tonight at nine (on TNT).  As it stands now, my favorite team of the remaining four is Oklahoma City, followed in order of preference by Golden State and Toronto, the latter of which I'm afraid is a lost cause against the mighty Lebron James-led Cavaliers.  I happen to like Lebron and the way he unselfishly works with his teammates.  What I don't like about Cleveland is the way that this city acts as if it has some kind of proprietary claim on him, just because he grew up in the area and played for the Cavaliers during his early NBA years.  I don't see people in other American cities acting this way toward NBA players from their area who are on teams in other towns.  If the Cavaliers were playing in a different city, I'd probably be rooting for them instead of against them...

Currently Reading Some of Neil Gaiman's Works

Neil Gaiman is a contemporary English writer, very popular for his graphic novels, comics, and fantasy/science fiction books.  His output has been prolific, to say the least...I'm just getting started with his works, although I'm not interested in the graphic novels and comic books.  I've previously read Neverwhere, as well as Gaiman's collaboration with Terry Pratchett titled Good Omens.  And now I've just finished reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a 2013 fantasy novel.  I'll probably write about it in a couple of days or so...

I have just begun reading Gaiman's three-part fantasy series InterWorld, targeted at the young adult reading audience...a group to which I occasionally pretend to belong.  And further along, I plan to read his novels American Gods and Stardust.  He is an excellent writer who can spin a yarn as well as anyone and who knows how to present realistic and sympathetic characters.  I'm probably going to end up reading just about all of his works... except for those graphic novels/comics, that is...

Ran Yesterday's 5K May Day Glow Run in Tioga

Having missed out on running a race in April, in spite of all the opportunities available, I was eager last week to see whether any local events were being offered this month.  I was happy to discover that a 5K race was to be held the coming Saturday, and at a familiar site...

Two months ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I ran the 10K Run for Haven race held annually in Tioga, a few miles west of Gainesville off Newberry Road.  Yesterday, a different race took place at the same location: the May Day Glow Run 5K, organized by Newberry Christian Community School.  It is called "Glow Run" because it starts in the evening at 8:30, and the participants are offered plastic sticks containing luminescent coloring that they can twist into necklaces and bracelets for themselves while running.  The course is identical to the 5K version of the Run for Haven course, which includes the portion of their 10K run that is residential and excludes the 10K's three-mile diversion through the woods...that's good since there's no way any of us could have seen anything out there, "glowsticks" or not...

For the most part, I was impressed with the way this race was organized and presented.  For example, they didn't fool around with the asinine meal/beer tickets that the Haven organizers offered...and which I didn't use because of the ridiculously long lines of people waiting to redeem them.  Instead, it was a race, pure and simple...well, maybe not all that simple: at its start, they set off fireworks that were close to the near-stampeding runners and sounded like bombs going off: not one of their better ideas! And it was a near-stampede at the beginning, as is just about any 5K event with a lot of runners.  So, as usual, I found myself slowing down just to avoid running into others...or trying to get out of others' ways.  Also, although we were running down residential streets with streetlights, they still seemed too dark...and the occasional slow-bumps in the road were hard to make out, with the sudden changes in slope being rather disconcerting.  Still, I was happy to not have to contend with a glaring sun and the heat of the afternoon: just a short time earlier it was in the upper eighties...by race time it had gone down ten degrees while the humidity was still low and pleasant...

I ran the race as a training run, sticking to a comfortable pace much slower than what I would have run had I been competing to beat others.  I finished the 3.1 mile distance at 28:51...that is a 9:21/mile pace, about the level I now prefer during my training runs.  The folks at the finish line were very positive, encouraging, and complimentary...I appreciate little gestures of kindness like that.  Upon finishing, there were liberal quantities of cold water and bananas available...nothing extravagant, but then again sometimes I think they go a little overboard with the amenities for these races.  I was also impressed by the portable restrooms provided: lit up, flushable, and with a sink and hand soap.  Now that I did not expect...

Here are the race results, posted on the Internet.  Turns out they gave me a better finishing time, at 28:36...apparently, it took me 15 seconds to reach the starting line in this mass of around 700 entrants.  I finished 112th overall, and 8th in my gender/age group (out of 18).  All things considered, I enjoyed the May Day Glow Run and would like to try it out again next year...

Just Finished Reading 2nd Chance by James Patterson

During the past few months I've begun to explore the fiction of popular American writer James Patterson.  So far, I've read his first-ever two novels as well as the first books in his Alex Cross and Maximum Ride series.  I also recently read 1st to Die, the first volume in his ongoing Women's Murder Club mystery series with increasing numbers with each successive title...I believe he's gotten to book #15 by now.  And the other day I just finished reading 2nd Chance...

So far, it's no contest: the Women's Murder Club series is Patterson's most compelling fiction, and 2nd Chance only bolstered my opinion in that regard.  The stories are based in San Francisco and feature homicide investigator Lindsay Boxer as the main protagonist.  She has three close women friends: an investigative report (Cindy), a medical examiner (Claire), and an assistant district attorney (Jill).  The four meet often and discuss their personal problems and relationships...and more importantly...the developing mystery in the ongoing story.  In this book, someone is apparently committing hate crimes by selecting African-American targets for their serial murders.  Lindsay, thanks in large part to her friends in the "club", discovers a connection between the victims and the police...leading her to investigate who might have a grievance from the past with San Francisco law enforcement.  She also keeps seeing a strange recurring image, while investigating the crimes, of a two-headed beast with a snake's tale: a "chimera".  What does the chimera have to do with hate groups and the murders?  Guess you'll have to read 2nd Chance to find out!

In 1st to Die, Lindsay has her own personal crisis, a rare blood disease, to deal with.  In 2nd Chance, another personal issue comes to the forefront when her father, a former SF cop who abandoned her and her now long-diseased mother twenty years earlier, resurfaces and tries to mend their relationship.  Patterson skillfully managed to weave this subplot into the story's main theme of the murder mystery...

I heartily recommend 2nd Chance and plan to read this series through to the end, just as I have been doing with Sue Grafton's "alphabet mystery" series featuring California private eye Kinsey Millhone.  Both series have very sympathetic protagonists...and you're never quite sure the mystery is completely solved until the very end, when most likely a surprise finish awaits you...

There was a brief television series titled Women's Murder Club, comprising only 13 episodes and featuring the same characters as the books.  It aired from the fall of 2007 to the spring of 2008.  I'll not be making any attempt to watch it, as I am already greatly disappointed in other recent books-to-TV adaptations, most notably The Magicians and Game of Thrones...

My Favorites Having Trouble Advancing in NBA Playoffs

A few days ago, when I previewed this year's National Basketball Association championship playoffs, I acknowledged that Cleveland and Golden State were the most likely teams to face off (again), as conference champions, in the league title series.  But I also held out hope that my favorites in each conference, namely Miami in the East and San Antonio in the West, could at least give the Cavaliers and Warriors a run for their money, if not actually upset them.  Sadly, the Spurs couldn't even get to the conference championship round to play Golden State: Oklahoma City blew past them in six games.  The consolation here is that Thunder head coach Billy Donovan, still very popular here in Gainesville for bringing two NCAA championships to the University of Florida, is going to rise in esteem as an NBA coach...although I have yet to hear anyone on the sports talk shows give him any credit for his team's phenomenal playoff success so far.  In the East, the Heat are behind Toronto three games to two and face elimination if they can't pull off a home victory in tonight's game (8:00 on ESPN).  Even if Miami does win this one, they'll still have to go back to Canada to play the seventh game on the road. At this point I'm not holding out much hope, but the Heat, with Dwyane Wade and supporting cast, do have the playoff experience, over the course of many years, to come back and win this series.  But then again, I could have said the same about San Antonio...

Just Finished Reading Lev Grossman's Magicians Trilogy (for 3rd Time)

I remember, a few years ago while browsing in my Gainesville Borders bookstore (which has sadly gone out of business) and looking for an interesting book to buy, coming across a display of The Magicians, a fantasy novel by fiction critic Lev Grossman...to be the first in a series. It turned out to be a great book, a fantasy story that managed to span both an imaginary world and our own "real" world while paying tribute to great authors of the genre...most notably C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling.  Each time a new book came out...it eventually broke that Grossman would be producing a trilogy...I eagerly read it.  And then a period of time passed, and I reread the series.  What prompted me to just recently pick it up a third time and read it was the Syfy Channel's adaptation of The Magicians to a TV series.  When I saw how much it was diverging from the author's original story, I gave up watching it...and instead began reading the books a third time...

When it comes to the genre of fantasy literature, the norm seems to be for the author to expand the story line into a series of books.  Sometimes the effort results in a compact, limited series with a small number of main characters and the subplots kept to a disciplined minimum.  I prefer these series and their authors, the most notable being the aforementioned Magicians by Lev Grossman, The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.  Unfortunately, some other fantasy writers, upon seeing the "cash cow" inherent in prolonging their series, went down a different path and dramatically expanded the scope of their stories while introducing many new characters and subplots...making keeping up with the increasingly complex and confusing story more and more difficult.  The classic example has been Robert Jordan with his Wheel of Time series...he was so bogged down with trying to finish this eventual 14-volume saga that he died while writing the final book, which had ballooned to 2000 pages.  Brandon Sanderson then stepped in and, while incorporating Jordan's ideas for the ending, smartly wrote the last volumes and presented a complete work that managed to tie up many loose threads and produce a satisfactory conclusion.  In our time, we have another fantasy writer with pretty much the same problem that Jordan had: George R.R. Martin with his A Song of Fire and Ice series...more commonly known by its first book, A Game of Thrones.  Martin has already taken many years to produce his first five volumes, but in recent times has been further distracted by the HBO TV adaptation and has continually been delaying the publication of the sixth book.  Instead, the TV show (which incidentally also greatly diverges from the written story) has actually surpassed the book series' timeline and has introduced plot changes that would have been revealed in the sixth book...had Martin ever gotten around to writing it.  In this series, as was the case with Robert Jordan's, there are way too many new characters continually being added along with new sub-stories.  I have just about given up on George R.R. Martin: he can take his oh-so important series and stuff it...

Obama May Campaign for Successor on Unprecedented Scale

In the upcoming campaign for president in the general election for 2016 President Obama has promised to be fully engaged in the discussions.   To openly participate in the campaign for one's successor, which one might expect to be the norm for an incumbent president planning to leave office, is actually...at least in recent years...a relatively rare phenomenon.  Of course, this scenario doesn't exist in every presidential year: in my lifetime (I was born in 1956) it has only happened in 1960, 1968, 1988, 2000, 2008...and this year.  In 1960, incumbent President Eisenhower was reportedly kept from campaigning for Richard Nixon through the intervention of his wife Mamie, who was concerned about her husband's wealth...he did, though, step out at the end to speak on behalf of Nixon.  In 1968, Lyndon Johnson was very unpopular nationally and as such was considered a liability by Hubert Humphrey.  In 1988, Ronald Reagan broke the pattern by campaigning for George ("the first") Bush, but again in 2000, Al Gore rejected the offered help of incumbent President Clinton...a decision that many felt cost him this extremely close election.  In 2008, George W. Bush was very unpopular and was also considered a liability by his nominated successor, this time Senator John McCain.  But Barack Obama, while currently only at about 50/50 in the national popularity polls, still is seen as a powerful voice to mobilize his party.  During the coming months leading to the election, we may well see the sitting president intervening in the campaign on a scale unprecedented in modern memory...

My Running Starting to Pick Back Up Again

After a relentless upper respiratory illness forced me into a period of inactivity, I have recently begun to run again, picking up the distance from day to day.  My goal is to daily run a 3.3-mile loop through my neighborhood and the adjacent subdivision.  Also, should the opportunities arise over the next few months, I may participate in a local 5K race.  It just so happens that there is one coming up this Saturday, an evening race in back of the Tioga Town Center off Newberry Road, just a few miles west of Gainesville.  Whether or not I run it depends largely on the level of progress I feel I've attained by then.  Oh, and if the weather is bad Saturday, they can just forget about me being there...

Race or no race, I plan to focus on my daily running routine and maintain a good level of fitness.  Watching what I eat would also go a long way to that end...

Mexico's Liga MX Soccer Playoffs Set to Begin

Mexico's premier professional soccer league, commonly known as Liga MX, is set to begin its Liguilla championship playoff series for this Clausura split-season in the 2015-16 year.  In last fall's Apertura split-season, the UANL (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León) Tigres, based in suburban Monterrey, won the Liguilla, although they were only the fifth-seed out of the eight top-finishing teams.  This season, Tigres, which also is my favorite team in the league, barely qualified for the Liguilla as an eighth-seed after winning its final regular season contest.  No problem: a year ago in the Clausura playoffs, it was eighth-seed Santos Laguna that caught fire and stormed through to that championship.  UANL's opening-round match will be against Monterrey, winner of the Clausura regular season and the top-seeded team in the Liguilla.  Also, had the Liga MX run things as they do in Europe in the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, or Germany's Bundesliga...none of these leagues have a post-season championship playoff system nor do they break up the year into two split-seasons...Monterrey would have won the 2015-16 title as the team with the league's best cumulative regular season record...

This will mark the fourth Liguilla series I've been following as my second year of interest in Mexican soccer comes to an end.  I've noticed that the level of play in Liga MX, while not of the caliber of the English Premier League or Bundesliga, does seem a bit better than our North American MLS.  The Monterrey-Tigres round in this Liguilla should be a classic: not only is it a "derby" (a match between two same-city clubs), but the winner could well go on to win the title: it pits the regular season champs against the defending playoff champs.  The Liguilla, composed of four rounds with two matches per round (team with highest two-match score advances), will begin on May 11, with the final championship match to take place on the 30th...

Look In SE Sky Around Midnight to See Mars, Saturn, Scorpius

When I pull up in front of my house after my work shift, it's usually around 12:15 am.  Sometimes I'll look out of my car window at the sky...at least when it's clear...and see what the star patterns are.  Lately, I've been noticing, looking at that time just above the southeastern horizon, the Zodiac constellation Scorpius rising up into the sky.  It is marked by the three-star "claw" on its western end, with the first-magnitude red giant star Antares further down the line in the constellation.  Antares is so big, by the way, that if it were centered where our Sun is, then our Earth would be inside it!  I remember, back in the late spring of 1964, right after I had learned from my father about the constellations and their brightest stars, of waiting late into the night to see Scorpius rising.  And I'm experiencing it again 52 years later, but with a couple of notable exceptions: the presence of the planets Mars and Saturn...

Saturn, situated a little to the left of Antares as you're looking at it in the sky, is its usual brightness, which is nowhere as bright as Venus or Jupiter (the latter is also visible at night, situated in the constellation Leo), but still a standout in the night sky.  Mars, on the other hand, is now much, much brighter than it usually is: in astronomical terms, this is attributed to it currently being in "opposition".  Anyway, when I first saw it a few days ago in Scorpius, I was taken aback: the Red Planet clearly dominates this section of the sky...

If the sky is clear later tonight, why not step outside and look to the southeast?  I drew a map of the small section I'm writing about: you can see, on the right, Scorpius,with the prominent stars connected by broken lines to show the constellation's pattern.  The three stars of the "claws" are at the top as it rises, and Antares is below, closer to the horizon.  You'll also notice that Mars, Saturn, and Antares form the vertices of a right triangle: looks like one of those 3x4x5 triangles from my old junior high math days...

Melissa and I Enjoyed Our Brief Beach Trip

For the last couple of days, Melissa and I stayed at Ormond Beach, in a modest hotel we have been going to off and on for decades.  It was a good trip, although one might have thought that we wouldn't need to be wearing winter clothing during an early evening beach stroll!  But on Friday afternoon, the wind suddenly shifted direction and became a lot stronger and colder...not exactly what you would expect in early May...

Well, we're back in Gainesville again...just in time for the weekend!

Stage Now Set for Clinton vs. Trump General Election

Now that Senator Ted Cruz has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination following his big loss yesterday in the Indiana Primary, Donald Trump has little opposition left on his way to a delegate majority at the Cleveland convention this summer.  As for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton looks to achieve a majority of delegates in a few weeks...this despite Bernie Sanders claiming there will be a contested convention.  I don't blame him...I believe that the Vermont Senator, who still works in his Senate office under no party affiliation while at the same time running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, can't really at this late point be harboring delusions that he can mount a miraculous comeback at the end of the primary season.  Instead, I think, as do many others, that Sanders wants as many delegates as he can get into the Democratic Convention in order to influence the party's platform.  But he has to stay in the race with claims of possible victory in order to win some of the final state primaries. Sounds good to me, although at some point Sanders will need to work to bring the party together.  A Clinton/Sanders ticket makes sense to me...

As far as Donald Trump is concerned, I believe he would be a disaster as president...especially regarding his foreign policy stances (let Russia run rampant in Syria...be neutral between Israel and Palestine...let countries like South Korea and Japan develop their own nuclear weapons...threaten to leave NATO...never give assurance that the U.S. would refrain from dropping a nuclear bomb, etc.).  I despise his entire approach to the campaign, which is basically standing behind a podium with a microphone and cameras and then making a chain of off-the-cuff remarks full of vague promises and nasty personal insults when he isn't tweeting tasteless comments against his opponents.  But I don't despise Trump himself: he is simply doing what the polls and primary results say works for him.  Instead, I cringe at the masses of American voters who have taken to his message and methodology...and wonder (and fear) whether there will be enough of them in November to actually reward this person for his campaign shenanigans by electing him to the highest office in the land for the next four years.  I've stated before that I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton (I would have preferred ol' Joe Biden), but in this election she's the only rational choice...

Leicester City Beats 5000-1 Odds, Wins England's Premier League Title

Last night, when Chelsea, the defending English Premier League (in soccer) champion...disappointed at their status in the middle of the standings this year...nevertheless got to play the spoiler and fought to a 2-2 draw with second-place Tottenham, the result mathematically assured first-place Leicester City of the league's championship.  In England, as in most of the countries in Europe, there are no playoffs after the regular season: the top finisher IS the champion...

In 2013-14, Leicester City, nicknamed the "Foxes", weren't even in the Premier League: they then played in the second-level Football League Championship.  They won that league's title that year and were promoted into the Premier League the following season.  But as late as April, 2015, Leicester was mired deep in 20th and last place in the standings, almost certainly guaranteeing that they would be relegated back to the lower league the following year.  Instead, they suddenly got hot and won seven of their last nine games, moving considerably higher in the standings and able to remain in the top league.  For this 2015-16 season, an established coach was hired, Italian Claudio Ranieri, and he further enhanced the team's culture of winning.  From the start, the Foxes shot straight up to the top of the standings, spurred on largely with the goal-scoring performance of striker Jamie Vardy.  Eventually, the high-powered offense cooled off and it looked in mid-season as if Arsenal, a London team, would catch up and pass them.  But then Arsenal went into a small slump and Leicester City transformed itself into a strong defensive team, winning several low-scoring matches.  By season's end, it was only Tottenham, another London team, with a chance to catch them.  And yesterday's draw with Chelsea...a third London team (actually, there are currently five London teams in the Premier League)...handed the title to the Foxes...

Outside the United States, the Leicester City championship is a major, major news story.  Inside our borders, it's still a big sports story...at least to anyone with an interest in soccer.  To be deeply in last place just the year before, make an unexpected season-end turnaround, and then win it all the next year is incredible!  Congratulations, Leicester City!

Some Thoughts About the Presidential Campaign Season So Far

It looks to me as if the presidential campaign season is reaching a resolution, at least as far as the two major parties' nominees are concerned.  Although he likes to cite raw numbers for total primary votes and number of states he has won, Democratic contender Bernie Sanders is still behind Hillary Clinton in both of these categories...as well as in the number of pledged delegates.  The system of proportional assignment of delegates in primaries, according to current Democratic Party rules, will make it well-nigh impossible for Sanders to surpass Clinton in pledged delegates: this was the one scenario by which the Vermont senator could appeal to those super-delegates supporting Clinton to switch their allegiance to him.  Hillary is also making statements to the effect that Sanders should drop out of the race, but she has to be careful in order to avoid the "hypocrisy" accusation: in 2008 she fought Barack Obama from behind to the bitter end, even trying to gain an unfair advantage over the eventual nominee and president by trying to get extra delegates from the Florida primary, which Obama and John Edwards had avoided after the Party ruled that Florida had illegally scheduled its vote too early...

As for the Republicans, Donald Trump is clearly on the path to a majority of delegates and the nomination.  Ted Cruz, who has made Indiana a crucial battleground state for himself, has recently displayed desperation, both in his meaningless "deal" with rival candidate John Kasich for each to focus on states they're stronger in, and in his selection of Carly Fiorina as his vice-presidential running mate...bringing back to mind Ronald Reagan's desperate ploy of picking a liberal GOP congressman as his running mate in 1976 to "balance" the ticket and gain an advantage over eventual nominee, President Gerald Ford.  Cruz is still talking as if he will win Indiana, although the latest poll has Trump expanding his lead over Cruz in that state to 15 percentage points.  Fiorina, predictably, reacted to that news by trashing the poll and the pollsters: even more desperation...

There are two notions coming out in this presidential race that I would like to puncture.  One is that candidates like Sanders and Cruz, who claim more ideological purity than their opponents, are because of that rigidity somehow more noble than the others.  I couldn't disagree more.  It's easy for these two to sit in the U.S. Senate and make a lot of fine-sounding speeches enunciating their respective doctrines...it's entirely another matter to work with people who have a different outlook on things in order to achieve results that work in the real world.  The other fallacious notion I see in the campaign this year (and have in past elections) is that many people at-large seem to think that the president is like a king (or queen) and as such, can simply decree their agenda into law...I think many people who voted for Obama the first time back in 2008 were disappointed in him because of this mistaken idea.  The truth is that, regardless who gets elected this year, it's going to take a lot of work and compromise to get anything done...nobody gets to wave a magic wand and automatically put all of their policies into effect...

Just Finished Reading Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire

I admit to never having heard of the writer Garth Risk Hallberg until I read a tweet of Stephen King a few weeks ago extolling his latest novel City on Fire, which King himself had just finished reading.  So, on his recommendation, I found myself a copy and have been struggling through this very lengthy and overly serious novel...which also happens to be Hallberg's very first...

When I say that City on Fire is overly serious, I mean by that that the author takes himself and his writing too seriously.  Also, the subject matter, which is how various New York City residents, divided or connected by class, family, race, sexual orientation, nationality, and culture, interact with each other amid the context of the 1976-77 Bicentenial/Blackout time, with the focus on that infamous blackout in July of '77 that was marked by such rioting and burning, leaves precious little room for any kind of levity...

Hallberg introduces in his ambitious work many "main" characters, and I often had trouble sorting through their relative significance in his story as it progressed.  I suppose the top protagonist, all things considered, is a disillusioned young artist named William Hamilton-Sweeney.  Much is made of his break with his wealthy family and their business empire, as well as his homosexuality and problematic heroin use.  And speaking of drugs, just about everyone in this book partakes of them liberally in one form or another: the implicit message here is that "normal" people snort cocaine, smoke pot, or shoot up heroin...a notion with which I completely disagree...

Aside from introducing a plethora of characters with whom I had difficulty relating, the author likes to jump around in time a lot, too: it might be in the early 2000's, or is it 1976 or 1961 or 1981 or 1977?  Each character seems to be in a perpetual state of brooding and self-examination, stuck in their pasts with all of their own personal traumas, grievances, and regrets:  a strategically-placed joke every now and then would have done wonders for this gloomy story...

Having unloaded my criticisms on this novel, however, I would like to compliment Hallberg on creating a sense as to what Manhattan was like back in the mid-to-late 1970s...an era very different from when I finally got around to visiting it in 2010, long after mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg cleaned it up.  But in 1977 there was more an atmosphere of violence, anarchy, and underground counterculture steeped in illicit drug use...especially in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side.  I have a feeling that City on Fire would carry a much deeper meaning for readers who had lived there back in that time...

A Good Website for Following Political Campaign Season

Over the years, I have come to appreciate the website RealClearPolitics as I tend to follow several races for higher office...not just for president, but also for senator, representative, and governor.  This website is very consistent and faithful in publishing public opinion polls for the various races as they are issued.  This year, I am not only interested in the presidential race, poll results for which are commonly available on the televised cable news channels, but also in various state contests. In Florida, we have an open senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio: how's that race going? In other states like Ohio, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin, there are important senate races as well.  You can go to RealClearPolitics and bypass the presidential polls to see the latest polls in these smaller races, as well as seeing what's going on in the gubernatorial campaigns taking place this year.  This site also features a balanced assortment of articles analyzing the current election season...

As the election season ramps up in intensity and the primary contests for each party reveal the final candidates for these various offices, you may want to occasionally partake of this website to see how things are going in the races you care about...

My April 2016 Running Report

April saw me with some health issues, especially toward the close of the month.  I missed running on the final eight days while trying to recover from a nasty, nagging upper-respiratory illness, while during the remainder of the days I was babying my right foot, which had been causing sporadic pain.  Not exactly my optimum running month!  I had numerous racing opportunities, but passed on all of them. For the entire month, I ran a total of 109 miles...

Above everything, I want to get my health back in order.  I did pass my annual cardiovascular medical tests this past Wednesday, so in that regard I have a green light to proceed with my running.  But I do want to change the setting and emphasis of my running to pleasant outdoor jogging over interesting courses instead of feeling that I have to crank out impressive numbers or participate in public races in order to justify myself.  So maybe I won't be running for very long distances in the near future as I make this change...

Four Types of Listeners

Seeing how I've lived as long as I have already and therefore feel somewhat confident that I can makes some comments about human nature, I've come up, from my own personal experiences with talking to others, with four different types of listeners.  Now, people can be any combination of these, and can also change from one type to another...but generally speaking, they usually display one of these types as their own particular personal way of listening...at least when it concerns listening to me.  The four types are, as I have coined them: sympathetic listeners, critical listeners, attention-deficit listeners, and narcissistic listeners.  Let's explore these, one-by-one...

The type of listener most valued by yours truly...as well as being the rarest of the four, is the sympathetic listener.  They will hear me out and try to discover and understand the full scope of what I am trying to impart to them...and then make a point of even remembering it!  This does not necessarily mean that they are emotionally attached to me or even like me...I see examples of sympathetic listeners on TV and radio...Larry King on his CNN interview show was of this type (at least with his guests...not the callers), as well as is late-night radio's George Noory.  If you want to people to open up to you, then you need to let them say what they want to say...and that involves giving them some time to express their thoughts while putting your judgments on at least temporary hold.  As I said, this is rare...

The critical listener is another type, one that I sadly run into far too often.  They will let me speak...at least that much is true...but then they act as if their greatest mission in life is to find holes in my rhetoric that they can expose, or that they are doing me a great favor by jumping in to offer counterarguments or worst-case scenarios.  Also, critical listeners may want to me to talk about topics other than the one I chose to discuss, and they have no problem interrupting me in mid-sentence to change the subject to the one they want to dissect.  There are too many of these types of TV and radio: three of the worst are MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace...

In spite of the fact that critical listeners annoy me to no end, at least I know they're paying attention to me...and as such I feel that, on at least some level they respect me as a fellow human being.  Besides, like it or not, it can be helpful for someone be pick apart your thoughts every now and then.  But regarding the attention-deficit listener, trying to communicate a connected thought with them that lasts more than a couple of sentences can be an exercise in futility.  And being the rather touchy, sensitive individual I have been for most of my life, I can recall many times when I renounced to myself friendship to others who had suddenly cut me off or just turned away while I was in the middle of trying to say something to them.  This type, as rude as they are, is oblivious to the disrespect they send out.  The idea with them seems to be that I am only being heard for their entertainment, and if what I'm saying doesn't immediately excite their attention, then it's time for them to immediately direct their thoughts elsewhere.  There is some similarity here with critical listeners, but whereas the former has a tendency to interrupt my train of thought, this attention-deficit type is the master of zoning out, and I have absolutely no use for them in my life.  They do worse then interrupt: they turn away...

The final type of listener is the narcissistic listener, and they are only slightly better the attention-deficit type.  Have you ever begun relating something about your own life to someone...or perhaps it was just an opinion you might have held about something, and the person you were talking to breaks in to relate how something similar to your topic tied into their personal life...and then took over the talking to make it all about themselves?  If you haven't had this experience, you are blessed, my friend...but sadly I cannot the same about myself.  I have known someone, no longer with us, with whom I spent much, much time in "conversation" over the years but realized that he never really valued anything I had to say about my own life, feelings, and thoughts...but rather that the world revolved around himself: his own vast life, with his own opinions and experiences automatically supplanting mine whenever I managed to bring up a subject on my own.  I realized after a while that my role was not to speak independently, but rather to just sit there and give the appropriate affirmation-sounds (like "uh-huh", "yes", and "you're right").  Over the span of decades, in countless conversations, I could not bring up any kind of subject without being interrupted and the talk shifting back his own monumentally important life and thoughts....implicitly relegating me to insignificance.  Sad. By the way, if you are looking for this type of listener in the media, just tune in on the radio to Michael Savage and see how often he interrupts a caller to go off on a tangent about his personal life and opinions...

If you know me, then you also know that I don't talk very much...I have let myself be wounded too many times by critical, attention-deficit, and narcissistic listeners.  Notice also that by writing my thoughts out and posting them, I can bypass these types...while anyone interested in actually knowing what I have to say can read them: ahh...finally, some communication!

One More Chance for a Race in April

As far as my running in races in April is concerned, it's been a complete washout so far, with me missing a 5K, 10K, and two half-marathons.  Not that I would have run in all of them, but I thought I would probably at least get around to one or another.  The three main reasons I missed them are my occasional right foot pain, stormy weather at racetime, and...this past weekend...me getting sick.  Well, before I completely write off this month, I checked out whether there were any Gainesville-area races coming up this Saturday, the 30th.  I was pleased to discover a 5K race being held at Boulware Springs Park in southeast Gainesville, most likely utilizing the Hawthorne Trail as a race course.  It is called the EHS STAR Autism Research 5K...the title's acronym is "Eastside High School Students Together for Autism Research".  I'm still recuperating from this viral attack, but should be sufficiently recovered and "back on track" by then to run in it.  Which I'm inclined to do, as long as I pass my annual medical tests this coming Wednesday, that is...

Thoughts About Prince After His Passing

I had just written and posted last Thursday morning a second blog article about David Bowie, who had passed away back in January, when the TV cable news channel I was tuned in to broke in to announce the passing of American pop/rock legend Prince.  It's still unclear what caused his death...the autopsy has already been performed but toxicology results may be much slower in coming.  Regardless, it is a tragedy that he died...and (at least for me) at such a young age: 57.  Over his career, Prince produced an phenomenal number of studio albums...39...but like many other artists he is best known for his earlier works: with him it was in the 1980s...

As was the case with Bowie after his death, I find myself relatively ignorant of Prince's music other than the singles he released that became such big hits.  I generally liked his songs, Raspberry Beret being my favorite of his with Let's Go Crazy and Kiss close behind.  Prince was a product of the newly burgeoning music video industry in the early eighties...I first saw his videos (Little Red Corvette and 1999) on the Turner Broadcasting System music video show that, in mid-1983, would go on for hours on the weekend.  So it's not surprising that this showy performer would make a semi-autobiographical film...Purple Rain...in 1984.  I've tried watching it lately and I'm sorry to say that it's just a little too difficult to digest.  But, hey, I'm happy for him for being so successful with it back then...

I'm hearing all of these accolades for Prince with people commonly referring to him as a musical genius.  It makes me want to do what I'm currently doing with Bowie's discography: investigating this artist's body of work over his career.  But 39 albums? Whew, that'll be some task if I decide to do it...

At one point in his career, Prince had a conflict with his recording label and changed his name to a symbol...the designation he would allow himself to be referred to was "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince".  When he decided to go back to "Prince", I would jokingly call him "The Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince".  Maybe that sounds disrespectful of him considering his passing, but it did strike me that he had a tremendous sense of humor and would have understood...

Maybe I'm just getting old and all of these "elders" in pop, rock, and country are just finally succumbing to the same afflictions when they age as the population at large, but it still feels as if there are way too many people dying recently.  What do you think? 

Just Finished Reading The Spider's War by Daniel Abraham

I have been reading Daniel Abraham's fantasy series titled The Dagger and the Coin during the previous few months, but had managed to catch up with the author's progress in writing this quality work and had to wait a while until he released the fifth and final volume, titled  The Spider's War...

In the fantasy world setting of The Dagger and the Coin, humanity owes its existence and its several vastly different forms to ancient, highly intelligent dragons, who ruled this world and regarded humans as their slaves.  After a war that all but destroyed these dragons, humanity was left to its own devices and, for thousands of years, formed nations, royalty and class distinctions, engaged in wars...you know, much like our own "real" world.  The series concerns itself in a sly manner about the question of which is ultimately more powerful: brute force (the "dagger") or the system of finance (the "coin").  Two of the main protagonists are a young woman named Cithrin, brought up in the world of banking, and her friend and partner Marcus, who only knew war and fighting as a means to victory and survival.  Together, along with other characters such as Clara, a widowed noblewoman and Kit, an apostate priest of a sinister order bent on dominating the world, the "heroes" struggle to regain the world from a perpetual war fomented by that order, which uses an unstable character named Geder as their political puppet...

As does Daniel Abraham's friend and colleague George R.R. Martin (who has lavished heavy praise on this series) in his "Game of Thrones" The Song of Ice and Fire series, each chapter in the books presents a part of the developing story from the viewpoint of various characters...I find this to be a very effective way of writing fiction.  As is the case with almost any fiction I read, I tend to judge works based on how deeply and compelling (and believable) the characters are.  And the author has done a masterful job here...

I liked how Daniel Abraham concluded The Spider's War, and consequently, the Dagger and the Coin series.  Also, he seems to have left an opening at the end that just might indicate that he is thinking about a follow-up series.  There are no television or movie adaptations that I know of in the works for The Dagger and the Coin...but after seeing how they are mangling Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy on the Sy Fy Channel, I'm not sure I'd want to see this series portrayed on the screen...

Gainesville and Vicinity Affected by U.S. House Redistricting

The court-ordered redistricting in Florida for the United States House of Representatives has, at least on the surface when looking at the new borders on a state map, drastically altered the representation in northern Florida.  In Gainesville, that part of the gerrymandered 5th District that Democrat Corrine Brown has represented underwent the most draconian change, having shifted from its generally north-south Jacksonville-east Gainesville-Orlando orientation to an east-west district stretching westward from Jacksonville (the only part of the earlier district remaining intact) along the Georgia-Florida border, cutting into Tallahassee, and ending on the other side in Gadsden County.  Brown is understandably upset with all this as most of her constituents are going to be in a different district and she would have to court a new population for reelection.  As for the rest of Gainesville, in which I reside, teabagger Republican Ted Yoho's 3rd District will remain, but has also drastically changed by now encompassing all of Alachua County and shifting eastward and southward to now include parts of Ocala and Palatka.  It will be a little more liberal than before, but if Yoho, not very well liked in his own party, can get past the primary stage, then he should still have little trouble being reelected.  The rest of Yoho's old district, that vast area west of Alachua County and including some friends of mine living in Levy, Gilchrist, and Dixie Counties, has been reassigned to District 2...which stretches westward all the way into the state's panhandle, even including Panama City and extending northward to the Alabama border.  It should continue to be very, very conservative politically...

Brown went to court to challenge the revision of the congressional map as it pertained to her own district, but just recently received an unfavorable ruling.  And it's still highly unlikely that I will be represented by a Democrat anytime soon, while my memories of the period from 1993 to 2003, when Karen Thurmond was my representative, recede even further into the past.  It should be interesting to see how the various incumbents handle the redrawing of our districts in the upcoming primary and general elections...

Discovering David Bowie's Vast Legacy of Music

In my January 11 article this year, I paid tribute to rock music legend David Bowie, who had passed away, at age 69, the previous day after suffering through cancer.  Everything in that article still stands, except for the statement I made that his song Changes, which I loved, said it all.  Turns out I was wrong about that, for Mr. Bowie has left a vast legacy of interesting music over the years, and has had quite a lot of things to say...

It was late one night a few weeks ago and I was channel surfing TV, my remote finally resting on Palladia, a fantastic channel oriented to music performances (in Gainesville it's on Cox Channel 1098).  A tribute show to David Bowie was ending, and at its conclusion they played his video to Blackstar, the title track to his final studio album...released just before his death.  Full of mysterious symbolism, the Blackstar video, along with the music and lyrics of the song itself, sparked my interest in further investigating Bowie's career as a recording artist.  By the way, Blackstar is currently by far my favorite song of 2016, but you might need to set aside a little time to hear this ten minute long masterpiece...I also suggest that you listen to the song without the video since its lyrics seem to carry an entirely different meaning from the visual presentation...

Beginning in 1967 with his eponymous debut album and concluding with 2016's Blackstar, David Bowie recorded 27 studio albums.  I have been listening to 13 of them and am trying to get hold of some of the remaining in order to get a better sense of this extraordinary artist.  Each album has its own characteristic personality, and as is the case with any other musical act, I like some songs while thinking a bit less of others.  But I have yet to listen to a David Bowie album that doesn't contain at least a few really good tracks.  So far I've been listening to the following: Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Lodger, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day, and Blackstar. If you know the chronology of these albums, you'll discover that I have most of his early works and the last four he recorded...but I still completely lack the albums he made in the eighties and nineties. So there's still a big gap as far as the span of Bowie's musical expression is concerned, although I know well his singles hits from the eighties...

Of the albums I have listened to so far, my favorites are The Man Who Sold the World and Blackstar.  Unlike so many other musicians, be they solo or group projects, whose quality of output suffers over the decades, David Bowie maintained his high standards up to the very end.  I can't yet say at this point of time that he is up there with my all-time favorite acts (such as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Regina Spektor, or Radiohead), but I can say that his music over the years is very listenable and a lot of it is excellent...

Hero Worship Deserves No Place in American Politics

The above title pretty much says it all: hero worship deserves no place in American politics.  When I hear someone getting downright giddy at the sound of a candidate's name while demonizing his or her opponents for no other reason than for having the nerve to run against their idol, it frankly creeps me out.  I'm afraid that this was the case with President Obama's two successful elections in 2008 and 2012.  I supported him in both years, but I went into it all knowing that he was a fallible human being like the rest of us, not a savior or know-it-all guru as some seem to have concluded.  Of course, if you were against him, he just might have been the devil incarnate as far as you were concerned...that, in a way, is also a form of worship, but it's villain worship instead of hero worship.  This 2016 presidential campaign, which began in earnest a year ago (much, much too early), has its own "heroes" that voters have placed high on pedestals in their minds, in my opinion emotionally bonding with them to a level that I find ridiculous and a little bit frightening.  Each party has one of them: the Republicans with Donald Trump and the Democrats with Bernie Sanders.  It disturbs me to see at their campaign rallies masses of fanatics who seem to have thrown away their own capacity to critically think for themselves in favor of riding on every word that comes out of their hero's mouth.  Not that all Trump or Sanders supporters are like this...remember I supported Obama but was capable of viewing him critically...but I can see a trend, and these two candidates give me pause...

You see, in American politics after all the voting is finished and the elected politicians begin their job of governing, you just might discover that the Presidency isn't the only game in town. We have a national Congress with a 100-member Senate and a 435-member House of Representatives, as well as state governors with their cabinets along with state and local legislatures.  But if you're a hero worshiper who just sees your one candidate as the be-all and end-all of everything, then you might well ignore all of these other crucial offices while you're floating high in the clouds, enamored with your guy.  And that's a big problem when whoever does get elected as the president needs elected officials from his or her own party to support the needed policies.  Trump and Sanders say they'll fix this or that problem, but in reality...in this American representative democracy...it takes a lot more than electing a charismatic chatterbox to get things done.  And that means supporting whichever party, to whose philosophy you most strongly subscribe, in all of those other important elections, especially for senator, representative, governor, and the like.  And Trump and Sanders are doing little or nothing to help out their parties with this important facet of the upcoming election.  I suspect that, if one of them does get elected, than many of those who voted for him will sit out future off-year elections in which he is not directly involved (this sadly happened with the off-year elections during Obama's administration).  And if they likewise lose their nominations, in Trump's case most likely to Ted Cruz and in Sander's to Hillary Clinton, then many of their supporters will angrily "pick up their toys and go home"...helping to ensure the general election defeat of the very party that would have more strongly supported their views on the issues...

Governor Scott's Gainesville Starbucks Incident Revisited

I wrote a few days ago about a verbal altercation that recently took place in the downtown Gainesville Starbucks between Florida Governor Rick Scott, who was at the counter to order something, and a woman "customer" seated facing the counter.  They went back and forth arguing about a bill that Scott had signed into law prohibiting Medicaid funds for being used in women's health care that is provided by Planned Parenthood.  Finally, the woman, who turns out to be a self-avowed anarchist, called the governor something profane...eventually he and his accompanying group decided enough was enough and they left.  Later, after it was discovered that most of this exchange had been video recorded and had become viral on the Internet, Scott's office released his own video with the aim of refuting the woman's arguments and making her look pathetic...so why am I still talking about this?

The protester, whose name is Cara Jennings, like I said, is an anarchist by personal conviction who has done this "yelling" kind of disruption in the past.  She disclosed this in an interview published in The Gainesville Iguana, a left wing magazine.  It is obvious that Ms. Jennings has been enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame and has attracted supporters of her views and tactics.  Jordan MacKenzie, a columnist in the Independent Florida Alligator, is one of these and opined that shouting at Governor Scott in public is just about the only option left, since he seems to be unresponsive to petitions and the like.  I, on the other hand, maintain that Rick Scott is behaving as Florida's governor exactly as he said he would, and he has been elected twice to that office...the fact that I disagree with much of what he does won't change anything.  The correct way to handle this would have been to never have elected him in the first place, which would have been a probable outcome had thousands upon thousands of Floridians who had voted for Obama for president not sat out the gubernatorial election because they didn't feel motivated...after all, the "hero" they idolized wasn't on the ballot...

Finally, looking at that Starbucks video, I never did see any sign of a drink or evidence that Jennings was a paying customer...maybe I'm mistaken about that.  But it does bring to mind how many times I've walked into a Starbucks, intending to sit down somewhere with my coffee, only to walk right back out when I see no seats available.  And I've noticed that a small minority of people who use places like Starbucks as a study hall don't seem to ever buy anything...

2016 NBA Playoffs Begin Today

The sixteen teams that made the National Basketball Association championship playoffs this 2015-16 season begin their first rounds of play this weekend, with four games today and four tomorrow.  I've already seen the Eastern Conference's 7th-seed Indiana handle 2nd-seed Toronto on the road, on the strength of a strong second half performance from their star Paul George.  The other Eastern Conference game remaining today will start soon, and it should be fun to watch: 4th-seed Atlanta against 5th-seed Boston.  I just finished watching the opening game in the Western Conference series between top-seeded Golden State and 8th-seed Houston, with the Warriors winning easily.  But their MVP guard Steph Curry hurt his foot late in the second quarter...will he fully recover for the next game?  And later tonight will be the 3rd-seed Oklahoma City Thunder, coached by former Florida Gator legend Billy Donovan, against 6th-seed Dallas.  Tomorrow will feature, in the East, #1-seed Cleveland against 8th-seed Detroit and 3rd-seed Miami against 6th-seed Charlotte...while in the West, it'll be 2nd-seed San Antonio against 7th-seed Memphis and 4th-seed Los Angeles Clippers vs. 5th-seed Portland...

I pick Cleveland to eventually face Golden State in a rematch for the league championship, but that's not where my preferences lie.  In numerical order of those preferences, here are how much I like (or dislike) the teams in this year's playoffs:

1-San Antonio
2-Miami
3-Atlanta
4-Dallas
5-Memphis
6-Indiana
7-Boston
8-Oklahoma City
9-Clippers
10-Golden State
11-Toronto
12-Charlotte
13-Portland
14-Detroit
15-Houston
16-Cleveland

Of the above, I highly prefer the Spurs and Heat over everybody else...wouldn't it be great if they shocked the "experts" and won their respective conference titles instead of the Cavaliers and Warriors? Well, at this stage in the playoffs I can hope with reckless abandon...

Alachua County Friends of the Library Sale Begins Tomorrow

Every six months, in April and October, I (and, lately, my son) have been going to the Alachua County Friends of the Library book and media sale here in Gainesville, on the 400 block (west side) of North Main Street.  Tomorrow at 9 am, the doors will once again open and the book hoarders will rush in with their empty boxes, furnishing quite a sight inside this warehouse of used books, records, DVDs, CDs, and puzzles.  Being something of a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast from early childhood, I'm planning to pick up at least a couple of inexpensive puzzles...with the understanding that, being already used by someone else, there's a reasonable chance of there being some missing pieces in them.  As for browsing the enormous collection of books, it is nearly impossible to make one's way through the thick crowd of jostling customers in order to systematically search the tables...the books are separated by genre, but beyond that are displayed in no particular order.  Still, I usually come out of the distasteful experience (I think I'm allergic to crowds) with at least two or three cheap books...although I have yet to read some of the ones I've bought from past sales...

I'll have to ask Will if he wants to go to the sale again.  I dislike getting there when it opens at 9 because there is an extremely long line of prospective customers that goes down Main Street and hooks around the next avenue.  No, if I go tomorrow (and the sale lasts through Wednesday) I'll wait at least until 10 before performing this semiannual ritual...

Sports Story of the Year: Leicester City

How can I say that Leicester City is the sports story of the year, especially when tonight the National Basketball Association's Golden State Warriors can become the single-season winningest regular-season team, achieving a 73-9 record if they can defeat Memphis at home?  Well, first I might explain to you insulated Americans exactly what IS Leicester City and what has transpired in the last three years...

The Leicester City Foxes (Leicester is pronounced "lester") are a soccer team in England's Premier League, widely considered as one of the top three or four leagues in the world.  Each year the 20 teams in this league play each other twice to complete a 38-match regular season, starting in the late summer and concluding the following spring, at which point the team with the best record wins the championship outright, with no playoffs.  Also, the three worst-finishing teams each year are relegated (or demoted) to the next lower league, called the Football League Championship, for the following season while that league's top three finishers are then promoted to the Premier League.  Got all that?

In the 2013-14 season, Leicester City was in that lower-tier Championship league and ran away with the title, looking forward to playing in the Premier League the following year.  But in 2014-15 they got off to a horrendous start and were mired deeply in last (20th) place in April 2015, with just a few games left and little or no hope of escaping relegation back to their previous, lower league.  Then suddenly, out of the blue they caught fire at the end of the season, winning seven games and moving up enough in the standings to be able to stay in the Premier League.  Before this year, many thought that they would continue to improve to the point where they might be good enough to finish in the middle of the standings.  However...

From the start of the 2015-16 Premier League season Leicester City, listed by oddsmakers as a 5000-1 longshot to win the title, shot to the top of the league.  Initially they had a high-powered offense led by the prolific scoring of their striker, forward Jamie Vardy.  But as the season wore on and the offense would sputter from time to time, this team's defense rose to the occasion and have, of late, been impossible to score on...they've won 5 straight matches, all of them shutouts.  Leicester City is currently 7 points ahead of second-place Tottenham (also a surprisingly overachieving team), with only 5 matches left.  Now a team will accrue 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss.  So Tottenham still has a chance to catch up and take the title from the Foxes, which would be a major story in itself.  But should Leicester City hold on to the league's number one spot all the way to the end, it would dwarf in scope what the Mets in baseball did in 1969 when they won the World Series or the Jets winning football's Super Bowl earlier that year...

The Starbucks Encounter Between Governor Scott and the Protester

Last week our Florida governor, Republican Rick Scott, paid a visit with his entourage to the downtown Gainesville Starbucks.  While he was at the counter to place his order, a young woman who was seated facing the counter began to yell at him, complaining that a policy of his had cut needed funding in some area with which she was concerned.  After seeing that this person would not give the governor any peace in this situation, he and his group quietly turned around and left the store.  As it turned out, someone made a video of the incident with their smartphone and it became viral on the Internet.  Facebook even featured it.  Then, a few days later, the governor's office released its own video on YouTube, belittling the protester's position while depicting her as someone with a problem (with negative connotations) and boasting that almost anyone who wanted a job in Gainesville was successful and everybody should be happy...

Well, when I first heard the story on the radio last week, I wondered which Starbucks it was...was it the one at Magnolia Parke I frequent the most?  No, alas, it was the one where it's so doggone difficult to find a parking place...unless you're the governor, of course.  I personally don't care for Rick Scott and dislike his ideologically-based method of governing.  That having been said, he is our (twice) duly-elected governor and, as such, deserves to be treated with respect if for nothing more than for the office he holds.  Were I there at that Starbucks, I would have probably greeted him and been polite...or just minded my own business.  Look, folks, I know many of you despise Scott...but how many of you actually went to the polls to vote for his worthy opponents, Alex Sink and Charlie Crist,  in 2010 and 2014 respectively?  I ask that because of the discrepancy in Florida voter turnout between presidential and off-year elections (Florida elects its governors between presidential elections).  In 2008, when Obama won Florida, the voter turnout was 64%.  Two years later,when Scott won over Sink for his first term, it had diminished to 48% and he won by only 1%.  Then, in 2012 Obama once again won Florida with 64% turnout.  Guess what happened two years later...Scott beat Crist for his second term again by only 1%...and the voter turnout had gone down to 42%...

I have a big problem with the folks in this year's presidential campaign who feel they have to follow a "hero" in order to feel motivated to get off their butts and vote in an election. I'm especially thinking about candidates like Trump and Sanders who have their own fanatical followers.  Obama was like this to an extent as well.  But many of these voters, if their guy isn't on the ballot, won't go and vote in elections that are nearly as important to them as the one which features their idol.  And that's just plain stupid... 

As for Scott's retaliatory video criticizing the protester and playing up his own accomplishments, I would find it difficult to understand the motive for making it with the governor almost midway through his second and final term in office...unless, of course, he was campaigning to be put on Donald Trump's ticket as running mate in the general presidential election.   And putting down women is obviously something that he feels will ingratiate himself with the Donald...

Went Boating With Friends Yesterday

Yesterday our friends Richard and Kelly invited Melissa and me to join them on their boat, going up the St. John's River (which is actually southward).  Their marina, the launch and return point of our excursion, is on the river's east bank in Satsuma, a small community in eastern Putnam County.  We went a few miles up river, with thick forests on its west side and numerous homes, apartments, and docks on the east.  Along the way we encountered several osprey nests, rising high above water in the center of the river, built at the top of man-made markers.  The parent ospreys were very protective of their nests, which at this time of year were full of their young offspring...our passing by didn't exactly please them as they hovered about and threatened to buzz us.  Eventually we made our way to where the Ocklawaha River empties into the St. John's and veered to the right.  At this point we encountered numerous manatees, who seemed naturally curious about our boat and its occupants.  One of them got very close to Melissa as she was leaning over the edge, and it gave her a friendly snort with its muzzle sticking out of the water as it looked at her.  Richard piloted the boat very carefully and skillfully around these gentle and noble beasts...unfortunately, we saw several other crafts that whizzed by without any apparent regard for the wildlife around them.  After hanging around the mouth of the Ocklawaha for a while among the manatees, we made our way up that river, whose flow has been greatly stemmed since the construction of the Rodman Dam in 1971 that created a reservoir behind it.  Going up the Ocklawaha River for a few miles was marked by many sharp meanderings, and we were surrounded by wilderness...much different from our St. John's River experience and probably a lot different from the Ocklawaha on the other side of that dam...

After we made our way back to the marina, we all went to a seafood restaurant, called "Shrimp R Us and More", which is in the small town of Welaka...incidentally, also situated on the St. John's River just opposite of where the Oklawaha empties into it (and where we encountered the manatees).  The food and service there was top-notch, with generous portions of shrimp for the price...and I was happy to be able to order cheesy grits, one of my favorites, as a side dish...

As you can see from the photos, the weather couldn't have been better for our trip...I only regret that during our close encounter with that manatee I got lost in the moment and forgot to take a picture, although in another I've posted you can see a couple of them breaking the water's surface in the distance.  Richard and Kelly were wonderful and thoughtful, and we deeply appreciate having been able to spend some very enjoyable hours with them yesterday...

My Blog Nine Years Old Today

Two thousand eight hundred eighteen posts later, this blog of mine today celebrates nine years of existence.  In it over the years I've discussed items of interest to me, with the topics differing from day to day.  Music, politics, philosophy, language, society, news, sports, weather, running, holidays/anniversaries, history, astronomy, idle speculation, education, health, memories, books I've read, television, movies...these are the general areas I've explored.  But mostly, this blog has served me as a kind of personal discipline to write consistently and make it available for public inspection.  For the first few years of my blog, personal blogs were very popular on the Internet...but then Facebook entered the scene and I noticed that folks were using that application more or less to replace blogging.  In 2013, although I had already been on Facebook without actually participating in it, I finally decided to put links to my blog articles on my Facebook page.  This brought about an increase in my readership, but something was lacking: the random reader, whoever he or she may be and wherever in the world they may happen to live, who might come across an article I wrote by means of a topic-based web search.  That happened often in the early years of this blog, but only rarely after Facebook essentially took over social media...

Twitter is another popular outlet for writing in social media, but it seems to be more useful for me as a tool for following the news and the news-makers than for others to access me and my blog as followers.  Maybe I should conjure up some strategies for getting more Twitter followers...

Musing on Anger After Watching Baseball Game

During Sunday's season-opening game between baseball's Tampa Bay and Toronto, Rays first baseman Logan Morrison was up at bat against Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman.  Morrison hit himself out, and was running back to his team's dugout when he heard Stroman yelling some not very kind words.  Thinking that the Toronto pitcher was aiming his epithets at him, Morrison became very angry and began to yell back.  Then Stroman, realizing what had happened, walked off the mound in Morrison's direction with his arms held wide in an expression of innocence.  You see, Marcus Stroman, who by all accounts is a pretty decent guy...including being a good friend of Tampa Bay ace pitcher Chris Archer (against whom he was pitching Sunday), nevertheless has this habit of angrily and loudly talking to himself when on the pitcher's mound.  Evidently he was unhappy with the pitch he had delivered to Morrison, even though it eventually resulted in a putout.  That having been said...

It is human, very human, to get angry...and with that anger often comes an unpleasant public expression thereof.  The problem with this is twofold: one, as in the case with Stroman and Morrison, the focus of that anger can be misinterpreted, leading to unintended consequences.  Two, experiencing another's anger, even when one intellectually knows that it isn't directed at them, can cause unconscious internal turmoil and reactions.  I experienced this recently during a meeting where the speaker went on and on angrily railing and cursing at a group of people.  Although I was not one of the "targets" of his wrath, I came away from that meeting feeling resentful at that speaker anyway, as if he had been speaking directly to me...

I'm not immune from displaying anger at times...maybe you're better at holding it in than me.  But I also believe that occasional anger can be a symptom of a greater virtue: caring, and such anger is a natural reaction to the times when the people (including myself) or things about which I care disappoint me.  The trick is in anger's expression: it should either remain unheard and unseen by others or appropriately worded and intoned toward the intended party.  Easier said than done, though...

Rereading Lev Grossman's Magician Trilogy

When I discovered a few weeks ago that the television adaptation of Lev Grossman's Magician trilogy would be airing on the Syfy Channel (Cox Gainesville channel 51), I was very interested in seeing, not only how the book's characters and imagery would appear on the screen, but also how faithful the story was to Grossman's writing.  After watching the first three episodes, I couldn't bear it any longer and abandoned the TV series: it diverged so much from the books that I eventually couldn't recognize my all-time favorite written fantasy series.  Along with my rejection of the television version of Magicians, I decided to read, for the third time, this excellent series.  And after just getting through the first book, simply titled The Magicians, my suspicions about the Syfy Channel production were completely confirmed.  If you're watching it and liking it, then that's great...but don't walk away from your boob tube experience thinking that it is the same as the original books...it isn't...

Just Finished Reading The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham

The British fiction writer W. Somerset Maugham, reportedly very popular in his time of the early twentieth century, is probably best known for his novels Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge.  He wrote many other stories, and I just finished reading one of them: The Magician, from 1908...

The Magician is the tale of an engaged couple, Arthur Burdon and Margaret Dauncey, who meet a sinister character by the name of Oliver Haddo.  Haddo is reputedly a magician by profession, but our interpretation of that designation most likely diverges greatly from his.  Haddo would more appropriately be called a combination occultist and mad scientist.  He antagonizes both Arthur and Margaret, and after the former punches him out for cruelly kicking their friend's pet dog, the villain plots his revenge, working through the world of the occult to take over Margaret's mind and steal her away from her fiancé.  Haddo,  however, has a much more evil intent with his actions...I did mention, didn't I, that he is also a mad scientist...

The Magician, while starting off harmlessly enough, evolves into a gothic horror story, reminiscent of those later written by H.P. Lovecraft...and one of the scenes reads eerily like one in Stephen King's recent novel Revival.  It isn't terribly long, so even if you don't like it you haven't wasted much of your time.  I didn't especially like any of the characters in this story, and that can be a big problem...at least for me as a reader of fiction.  It wasn't one of my favorite books, but I'm not going to condemn the author...instead I think I'll look into some of his other, more popular works...

Major League Baseball Regular Season Starts Today

The 2016 edition of Major League Baseball begins in earnest today with three opening-day games: St. Louis @ Pittsburgh, Toronto @ Tampa Bay, and New York Mets @ Kansas City (a World Series rematch). The three games are all in the afternoon and will be broadcast on either ESPN or ESPN2.  Interestingly enough, the regular season "day one" overlaps the conclusion of spring training, as the Chicago Cubs will be playing the Los Angeles Angels in an exhibition game today...

It always amazes me how different my two favorite televised sports, soccer and baseball, are from each other.  With soccer, the action is more or less continuous: even with the occasional interruption in play, the game clock continues to run.  If I walk away from the game for even just a few seconds, I carry the risk of missing a crucial play, as I have learned a few times already.  With baseball, on the other hand, it seems that, oh, about 99% of the time, nothing at all is happening...its just the pitcher standing there fidgeting around on the mound while glaring at the hitter and catcher. Ultimately, when the pitch is finally thrown... for maybe a couple of seconds...there is actually some action.  And if the batter then manages to make contact with the ball, we're treated with a few seconds more of play before the inactivity settles back into dominance.  And I'm not even talking about the breaks between innings or the interminable managerial walks to the mound that extend the non-playing time even further.  Yes, with baseball it's very easy for one to go about one's own business without missing very much.  Maybe that's one reason why I like having it on...

As for the teams I follow in Major League Baseball, I predictably support the Florida teams: Miami in the National League and Tampa Bay in the American.  Secondarily, I've also traditionally rooted for the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, and San Francisco Giants.  Other than that, though, I'm quite content simply sitting back and watching a game, even if I don't particularly care about the outcome...

I am at a loss to predict which teams will do well this year and which ones will tank.  I do believe that both Florida teams, especially those Marlins down south, have the potential to possibly make the postseason playoffs if they can manage to avoid debilitating injuries to key players.   But win or lose, it's going to be fun following baseball this season...

My March 2016 Running Report

This past month I ran a total of 133 miles, with my longest single run being for the 6.2 miles I ran on March 12 in the Run for Haven 10K held in Tioga, a short distance west of Gainesville.  I felt good in that race, although I deliberately kept the pace slow.  Unfortunately, my right foot has been giving me trouble this month and I had to lay off the running for the following five days.  Since then I've gradually built my running back up...I ended up running on a total of 25 days in March.  As for that Run for Haven event, I had an issue with the timers there and had sent an e-mail to them...getting a prompt acknowledgement of my request and a return request for my patience with its processing.  Since then I've heard nothing from them...I sometimes wonder, with these not-for-profit events that emphasize the altruistic motivations behind them, whether the organizers truly feel accountable toward those, like me, who paid the entry fee and expect a certain standard of quality from them.  I am not at all satisfied with the attitude I'm getting here.  Needless to say, as of this writing I have no intention of ever participating in any future Run for Haven race...

In April there will be numerous opportunities for me to run in local races should I decide to do so.  April 2 has a 5K run in a wooded park off Waldo Road.  On April 9 there is a 5K/10K event that is supposed to help Syrian refugees.  And on the 16th and 24th there will be half-marathons held in the general area.  Whether or not I run in any or all of them depends largely on how well I feel I've recovered from my foot pain...

My New Rule for Hired Political Spin Doctors on TV

General Electric, or G.E., as it is commonly known, has recently been showing a series of interesting and compelling TV commercials.  In them a young man, recently graduated from college, gets himself hired by the company and tries to explain what he'll be doing there to family and friends...with hilarious results.  You see, everyone has an old-fashioned view of G.E. as a twentieth-century manufacturer, but nowadays it is heavily into software and the digital age.  Our new recruit has a fulfilling job with his computer skills, and the latest commercial has him and his colleagues confronted, in their office, with two people rushing in promoting others wanting to work there.  These hired "spin doctors", while reciting their poetic-sounding lines, are costumed and made-up, one as an ogre and the other as an elf or leprechaun.  The message is clear: working at G.E. is now so attractive that people are resorting to all kinds of tactics to get in...including employing others to put on an entertaining show. Which gave me pause...

I don't know about you, but I am tired of watching these cable news channels with their endless political discussions during this 2016 presidential campaign season.  Tired because, whether you're talking CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, the tendency is to get professional spin doctors supporting the various candidates to appear on the air...and then you get the same old packaged nonsense with people talking past each other and continually interrupting.  My proposal is for a "new rule": go ahead and air all of those "spinners" like usual, but with a new provision: they all have to be elaborately dressed up like fantasy characters!  Because, like that G.E. commercial, these people don't provide anything "real" or substantial to the discussion...let their appearance underscore that obvious fact...

Final Four Set in NCAA Men's Basketball

This weekend the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament finally whittled the field down from the initial 68 teams to the Final Four.  The four games from Saturday and Sunday varied widely in their results, with #1 seed North Carolina pulling away from their fellow ACC opponent (at least in basketball) Notre Dame and #10 seed Syracuse coming back late in their game from way behind to defeat Virginia, also seeded #1 in their respective region.  Some in the sports media had criticized the NCAA tournament selection committee for snubbing other schools in favor of including Syracuse, but it turns out that the Orangemen were a good pick in spite of their relatively mediocre regular season.  In the other regional finals, it was #2 beating #1 in both games: Oklahoma over Oregon and Villanova over Kansas.  So the setup for the Final Four, the semifinals for which will be on Saturday, April 2 and broadcast on TBS,  pairs Oklahoma against Villanova (6 pm start) and North Carolina against Syracuse (40 minutes after the conclusion of the first game).  Game site for the Final Four, which will conclude the following Monday with the championship game, is Houston, Texas...

As for the teams I'm rooting for (or against), here is the order of my preference:

1 North Carolina
2 Villanova
3 Syracuse
4 Oklahoma

I traditionally support the Tarheels, so it's been a treat to see them advance this far...and by all accounts, with Kansas and Virginia eliminated, they should be the strong favorite to win it all...