Penn State, The Clergy, Wall Street and political ruling class

I know, I know. A rather long-winded title to a rather dry essay. But hang in there and I'll make it worth your while. This week the media is buzzing with outrage over the Penn State child abuse scandal as well it should be. I ran into a guy on the street two days ago that feels strongly that the people involved should be taken out and shot. It goes without saying that child rape doesn't go down well in these quarters. The entire football program at Penn State is now in danger due to the inaction of Joe Paterno and the enabling mindset that allowed it all to happen. It has been said that you don't "mess" with college football, that it is an institution that is above criticism, oversight and perhaps above the law. That remains to be seen but my main thrust (no pun intended) is that this scandal, this story, doesn't exist in a vacuum but is rather part of a greater American pathology. It is our tendency to give institutions and the people who occupy them a free pass when it comes to accountability.
The Catholic Church is only now being brought to account for it's enabling of pedophile priests. An accounting that many say is too little, too late. And there are those that even now defend the Church as if they're beyond mortal criticism. Once again, we have a problem holding an institution responsible when caught wrongdoing.
It has been over three years since the financial meltdown of late 2008. We know how the banks did it and many news organizations have given us a road map of how it all went down. Yet not one Wall Street banker has been arrested or brought up on charges in one of the worst financial collapses in history. We just can't do it. Maybe it's because they all look so respectable in their Armani suits. It's so much easier to pepper spray or arrest the Occupy Wall Street protesters and sweep it all under the rug than arrest a sharply dressed investment banker. Just the term "investment banker" sends us into rapture with it's overtones of respectability and success. How does one slap someone like that into the slammer?
Some eight years ago the advisors to George Bush engaged in a whispering campaign to "out" a CIA operative who was married to a man that openly criticized the Bush administration's reasoning (excuses) to invade Iraq. Only one was held accountable while the others are still walking around as free men. The man that actually leaked the story to a journalist openly admitted his error as if it was something trivial, as if it merely a family secret. Oops, sorry. Nothing of a legal nature was ever pursued against this man. Once again we have failed.
These events are not separate things. There is linkage between all of them. They all have one thing in common... our complete inability to hold powerful people and entrenched institutions accountable to the law. Whether they are politicians, the clergy or celebrities we are totally unwilling to punish people of wealth and power. Until we have the nerve to do so the inequality that those OWS protesters are talking about will escalate. We dare not even ask or leaders tough questions. The news media fawns over the politicians and can't even ask an unscripted question anymore without the pol in question whining about how unfairly they were treated. At least Joe Paterno and his people haven't complained about being asked what newspapers they read. But the day is young.

A Death in the Family

There are no words to describe the pain of losing a son or daughter. It's unnatural. The kids are the ones to live long and happy lives. Parents aren't supposed to bury their children, quite the opposite. But somehow my cousin Joe has lost his darling daughter who was all of twenty-one years of age. Her name is Allyson and she's beautiful, happy and full of life. Or was. She is gone now. Usually I have no trouble with finding the right words but right now I'm just flummoxed. I'm so sorry Joe. That's all.

Searching for Pop II

This will probably be one of the oddest essays I've ever written due to the disparate elements I'm trying to bring together. Bear with me, it'll be worth it. Promise. If you're a fan of my stories you'll remember how I attempted to find my father on the Intrepid on a sojourn to New York in early 2009. Being halfway sane I certainly wasn't looking for him in the literal sense. After all, he'd been dead for seven years. Rather, I was looking for whispers. Ephemera. A hint of who he was or at least something that might strike an emotional chord. For the better part I think I succeeded but since that pilgrimage I haven't thought about it much. Now don't get me wrong, I think about him all the time but not like that day I spent on the Intrepid.
Now, not to change the subject or anything but... I'm now a gamer. Yes, a gamer. Video games. The kind that pimply-faced geeks play while well into their thirties living in their parent's basement. Not in a million years would I have dreamed that I would be gaming online. Really. If you'd told me five years ago I would one day own a Sony Playstation 3 and that I'd be staying up into the wee hours playing Call Of Duty, World At War I would have told you that you were completely daft. I would have said that I'm not the type to be playing a first-person shooter game, that I'm much more inclined to play computer games like Myst and Riven which were popular back in the 1990's. I loved those games. So realistic, so surreal, and the game was one of exploration and discovery which would culminate in figuring out an immense mystery. This suited my mentality and since I'm a bit of a culture snob I honestly couldn't see myself playing shoot-em-ups with teenagers. I spent days trying to figure out the puzzles and mysteries of Myst and Riven. One day I showed Pop what Myst was all about. Mind you, back in 1997 I was using a 13 inch Toshiba laptop but even still the images were brilliantly realistic and breathtaking. We walked around in the virtual environments and I mentioned to Pop how cool this would look on a bigger computer screen. He immediately shot back "Imagine this taking up the whole wall!" How prescient he was back in 1997. I'm now playing games on a 50 inch high definition screen that comes very close to Pop's prediction way back in the 1990's.
Call Of Duty, World At War is a first-person shooter game set among the ruins of Europe and the South Pacific during WWII. A player can take the guise of either a German, Russian, Japanese or American soldier depending on the theater of combat. One scenario is called Downfall and is set in the massive town square of East Berlin. Another is called Breach and takes place in the shadow of The Brandenburg Gate. One of the Pacific scenarios takes place on Makin Atoll and another, the subject of this essay unfolds on a small island fortified as a military base. It's simply called Battery and I may have caught a glimpse of Pop in this strangely surrealistic place. The "battery" in question is beat to hell. It has been attacked and nearly destroyed by the American fleet. Gun turrets are twisted and askew while Japanese cruisers lie halfway sunken and burning nearby. This particular environment was an add-on so after I purchased this "map" I ventured in by myself to explore. I felt that this was the prudent thing to do rather than get thrown in during the heat of battle as a favor to my eventual team mates who would join me in a rousing game of Team Death Match. On the American side of this base is a platform which looks out to sea. "Pop, is that you?" It had never crossed my mind to look for him here in this virtual environment. To my right sits a Japanese cruiser and it's heavily damaged and sinking. I look out to sea and swear I can see the Intrepid surging deeper into the Sea Of Japan. She'd made quick work of this little outpost and had places to go. But I'm sure he was here too. I'd just missed him.

Memories of Adriano Panatta

It was the Year Of Magic. It was 1976 and it would be the year of Adriano Panatta. It would be the year that he would win the Italian and French Opens back to back and spearhead Italy's historic win in Davis Cup competition. Panatta was probably the most fluid and graceful player to play the game and although he was primarily a clay court player his serve and volley game was among the best. We don't see such a blend of artistry and grace anymore and it's because of the racquets. Back then we played (Panatta and myself) with the Dunlop Maxply Fort, one of the best wood racquets around. It was great on groundstrokes and had fantastic feel for volleys and the finesse game. But the modern day racquets resemble a cannon rather than a tennis racquet with speeds on the serve approaching 150 miles per hour. The kind of style and grace that Panatta brought to the game will never be seen again. The game has become a clinic for offensive firepower and we're all the poorer for it.









Look at the way that Panatta leans into his sliced backhand using his left arm as a counterbalance in much the same way as a fencer. Also notice the he's playing with a Dunlop Maxply Fort in his early years on the tour. Later he would use the WIP Racquets which were basically an Italian version of the Dunlop Maxply. They looked identical and had the same laminations. I always wondered if the racquet was different enough to adversely affect his game. Only Panatta knows the answer to this question.


Panatta's exploits on the tour were chronicled in a May 1976 article in Playboy Magazine called Tennis Con Amore. The piece was somewhat controversial at the time as it painted an unflattering picture of some of the players. Panatta and his doubles partner, Paulo Bertulucci, were the jovial playboys just looking for a laugh. Arthur Ashe and Ilie Nastase came off looking good as well but some were not so fortunate. One player was characterized as a humorless drudge who resembled "an aging cart horse". Ouch. The article was hilarious and one couldn't help being a huge fan of Panatta after reading it.

But back to the game! It changed for the worse when the racquets became these huge cannons. The USTA should have made standards for size long ago. Because technology has influenced the game so much and because of the offensive firepower of the modern day tennis racquet we can't even begin to compare players of different eras. I long for the way the game used to be played. With style, grace and finesse. I've saved my Dunlops for posterity. Like me, they're relics of a bygone age. And like the game, there will never be anything like them again.




Panatta was the only player to ever beat Bjorn Borg at Roland Garros. Here's some of that quarterfinal match. Here's to the grace and style of Adriano Panatta, one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Shaken, not stirred

I wasn't sure what to expect. I inserted a large enough sample of my writing so as not to skew the analysis. But what was I expecting? Hemingway? Dickens? Certainly not Shakespeare because I refuse to write using iambic pentameter. Anyway, the results are in. But first, an explanation.

A new website called I Write Like was launched recently and became a smash hit. You simply paste in a sample of your writing and it tells you what famous writer your style most resembles. I pasted in my essay and eagerly waited for the results...

I write like
Ian Fleming

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Ian Fleming! Yes! Hey, it's not Hemingway but who cares? Ian Fleming is way cool so I can live with that. Can you picture me doing cartwheels? Yeah baby! Not soon after my matriculation into the hall of great writers I stumbled upon this. It turns out that Kim Kardashian writes like James Joyce. OK. OK. So it's not worth a shit. Kill me now.

It's time to dispense with astrology

I understand the attraction. I really do. I get it. It's religious in nature and is almost irresistable. It's the need for an answer, a key to the universe that will open a door to understanding life's big mysteries. An easy way out, a magic bullet that will make some sense out of all this chaos, randomness and uncertainty.



As Carl Sagan pointed out in his landmark series Cosmos thirty years ago, every major newspaper has a column for astrology yet none have one for astronomy. And if you're keeping score it's astronomy that's the real science, not astrology. Yet we stampede towards the superstitious and away from rational thought. The second video with Richard Dawkins is especially devastating to anyone who believes in astrology. Isn't it past time that we woke up and discarded belief systems that were debunked long ago? Can we survive as a civilization while armed with high tech weaponry while at the same time holding onto the world view of a medieval peasant?

President Obama vists my neighborhood

I knew there had to be a reason I couldn't get to the I-71N onramp. President Obama was delivering a speech at a major intersection not three blocks from my house. If only I'd known he was going to be here I would have dressed nice or baked some cookies. Anything. But no. There I was in a baseball cap, jeans, a white T-shirt and stinky armpits. Next time Mr. President give me some warning and I'll get spiffed up. I might even floss.