keith — Page 44

→ October 21, 2021
→ By keith

Arizona eats, 2021 edition.

Last week marked my first trip to Arizona in two years, since my last run through the Fall League, which also marks the longest I’d gone between visits to that state since my first trip there as an ESPN employee back in 2006. As such, I had some old favorites I had to visit – the Hillside Spot, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Crêpe Bar, Cartel Coffee (three times, including the airport location), Grimaldi’s (to taunt my daughter, who loves that place), and, for books, Changing Hands. That didn’t leave a ton of opportunity to try new places, but I did manage to work in four new spots.

Tacos Calafia has five locations in the Valley, two of which are close to ballparks – Peoria (on Thunderbird, one long block south of the stadium) and, most importantly, Surprise, a relative wasteland when it comes to non-chain food, with only Saigon Kitchen to really speak for the area. Tacos Calafia offers a very short menu of “Tijuana-style” tacos, with four or five meats, a small salsa bar, and a few other dishes like quesadillas, nachos, and vampiros that are based around the same meats. I tried the al pastor (pork) and pollo (chicken), and would agree with the assessment of my friend Bill Mitchell, who recommended the place, that the meats are plus, and the reason to go there. The toppings are nothing special – I’m really not into guacamole that is blended until completely smooth, but that’s personal preference – so you’ve got to go for the meats. Three tacos will run you $9-10, and I didn’t need anything more than that.

Speaking of Peoria, which isn’t all that much better for non-chain food than Surprise, on a whim I decided to see if there was a good Thai place nearby. Sala Thai had unusually positive reviews and comments online, and I think they’re well justified (based on one meal of one dish, so SSS applies). Pad see ew is my go-to dish at new Thai places because it’s usually not too sweet, like pad Thai can be, and there’s plenty of variety around the dish so a restaurant can make it their own, so to speak. Sala Thai’s was damn good, savory and barely sweet, with a lot of broccoli and some caramelization on the noodles themselves, which reminded me of the wok hei you get at Chinese restaurants. I actually wasn’t that hungry for this meal, but ate because I knew waiting till after the game was a bad idea, and yet I devoured this.

Over in downtown Mesa, Que Chevere is a food truck gone brick-and-mortar, serving Venezuelan staples – empanadas, arepas, cachapas, and more. Mindful of my inability to eat anything in the car without making a mess, I chose the empanadas con pollo, and my god am I glad I did. I love just about all empanadas; it’s a giant dumpling that’s baked or fried, so what’s not to love? Que Chevere’s empanada dough differs from those I’ve had before. It must have had cornmeal in it, because it tasted like a hush puppy (a fried ball of cornmeal-based dough) with shredded chicken in it. The chicken itself was a little dry, since it’s white meat, but the cilantro-lime dipping sauce took care of that (and I didn’t drip any on my shirt).

I went to Pa’ La’s original location maybe two years ago to try their vaunted grain bowls, a type of dish I don’t generally enjoy, and was kind of blown away by it. Claudio Urciuoli has now expanded to a new, larger location, helmed by one of his protégés, on Washington Street in downtown Phoenix. The new spot has a more complete menu that is mostly centered around small plates, heavy on the fish. The plates are small, but the seafood is superb, with incredibly delicate yellowtail in the special crudo dish I tried. A local review had raved about the shrimp, but I found them underseasoned and kind of tasteless, although they were certainly of high quality. The pickled white anchovies (boquerones) were briny, oily, garlicky, and bright, although they needed bread, not the fennel crackers that came with them and proved unable to soak up any of the deliciousness left on the plate. For dessert, I went with the frozen chocolate mousse with miso bananas, which hit the palate like ice cream with an umami boost from the miso. Their menu changes constantly, and I’d like to see what it looks like on another day – or to go with a crowd so I could try more things. But what they really need is more bread, as that’s Urciuoli’s specialty, and it was mostly absent from the menu.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, phoenix, tacos, tapas, thai cuisine, venezuelan cuisine

→ October 19, 2021
→ By keith

Fox in the Forest app.

The Fox in the Forest is a great trick-taking game for two players in a small box, working primarily with just a small deck of 33 cards, numbered 1 to 11 in three suits. Odd-numbered cards have special powers that can upend the traditional trick-taking rules – you must follow suit, and if you can’t, one of the suits is the trump and you can win the trick by playing that suit instead – such as by letting you swap a card from your hand for the card that determines the current trump suit, or letting you start the next trick even if you lose. You also have to try not to win too many tricks or you’ll be “greedy” and get zero points for the round; your opponent has to win at least four of the tricks for you to score anything. Play continues, with points awarded in each round, until one player amasses 21 points for the victory.

We now have a beautiful new app version ($4.99 for iTunes, Android, and Steam.) of the game from Dire Wolf Digital, the studio that has created a whole string of outstanding adaptations of tabletop games, including Root, Sagrada, and Lanterns. As you might expect, the graphics and animations here are superb, and there’s a small challenge mode for solo play. The AI player is a little disappointing, however, as even on its hardest setting it still misses some easy strategies like deliberately losing all remaining tricks to make you Greedy and thus leave you with zero points.

The app’s setup is clean and easy to see even on the small screen of a phone. Your cards are laid out at the bottom of the screen, and you can drag and drop one to your play area on the left when it’s your turn. You can see a card’s effects with a simple tap and hold on the card, although the text may still be a little small for some players (I didn’t need my glasses, but I at least thought about it). The animations and sound effects were similar to those in Lanterns – they don’t specifically add to game play, but they’re fun and short enough that they enhance it without slowing anything down.

The AI player isn’t great – I’ve had no trouble beating it on hard mode, usually by a fair margin, as the focus seems to be on winning the next trick more than a holistic strategy that considers all of the ways to win in Fox in the Forest. The challenges are also a mixed bag – some are great, like the one that adds a fourth suit or another that requires you to win the treasure points you get when you win a trick with a 7 in it, while some are silly, like the one that randomizes all of your card values after each trick.

Online play wasn’t available until release day (October 18^th), so I haven’t been able to test those out, but the local version doesn’t include a pass-and-play option, which I think would be a huge addition for a two-player game like this – it’s perfect for passing the phone back and forth on a plane or in the car (preferably while neither of you is driving). Dire Wolf says that feature is under consideration for the future, and I’d put that at the top of my wish list. In the meantime, it’s a fun distraction for solo play, and I hope an improved AI is coming as well – Dire Wolf did tighten the AI in their Raiders of the North Sea app after release – to give the app more replay value.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: apps, board games, card games, two-player games

→ October 16, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/16/21.

My first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League is up now for subscribers to the Athletic. I’ll have probably one more post, a longer one that covers everything else I saw.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Riftforce, a great new two-player game that sort of combines Battle Line and Magic: the Gathering, if you can imagine that. It has a very high replay value as well, which is key in a two-player game.

With some more content out, I’ll get on my email newsletter as soon as I’m back from Arizona. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links, with a shorter list this week as I’ve been reading less while on the road…

Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones explains why Adam Schefter was completely in the wrong to allow the subject of an article to see and approve that article before publication. Of course Darren Rovell defended it.
One of you sent this along: Writing in Reason, Matt Welch explained how the government helped MLB wreck the minors, and how they can also help undo some of the damage. I tweeted this earlier in the week: If you care about minor league players, call your Representative and Senators and ask them to repeal the Save America’s Pastime Act. It’ll take you 5-10 minutes.
Netflix has really fumbled its response to criticism from its own employees of the transphobic material in Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special.
A prominent Australian anti-vaccine influencer put yellow stars of David on herself and her family last week, later deleting several of her social media accounts after people pointed out what an incredibly shitty, anti-Semitic move that was.
Hold your surprise, but anti-vaxxers are misrepresenting a study on breakthrough cases in Vietnam.
Police officers in Dayton, Ohio, dragged a paraplegic Black man from his car by his hair. The victim, Clifford Owensby, was charged with – wait for it – having tinted windows, and failing to have his son in a car seat. The officers in question have not been identified and you know damn well that means they haven’t been sanctioned, suspended, or fired.
Via Craig Calcaterra: The Ohio Board of Education voted to rescind a resolution condemning racism. That’s right, kids: In Midwest Florida, racism isn’t bad any more!
The University of Delaware tried to hush up a horrible sexual assault committed by one student against another, but had to acknowledge it when activists made the story go viral on TikTok. The school claimed it was a “domestic violence” incident that didn’t require that they notify the campus community.
Also from a reader: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered that a state health department database revealed social security numbers and other private information of some Missourians, so they notified the government, gave them time to fix the error, and then published a story. The Governor’s response: threaten to sue the paper for ‘hacking.’
Podcaster and writer Michael Hobbes followed up on last week’s “bad art friend” longread by pointing out that it’s easy to see who the bad art friend is: Both of them.
Nik Sharma, author of Seasons and The Flavor Equation, offered some tips to avoid ‘crying’ when dicing onions.
A sort-of-reporter for an Ole Miss fan site published quotes from a player despite never talking to that player to get those quotes. The reporter has been fired and the site itself was rebranded without two of its former leaders.
Board game news, starting with some Kickstarters of note: the train-and-stock game Union Station, the beautiful seed-planting game Gartenbau (Horticulture), and the set collection game Birdwatcher, which has a theme that seems a bit familiar to me.
Upper Deck is running a contest with the top prize a free trip to Gen Con 2022. You have to submit a short video or a brief statement explaining why you are the ultimate ‘legendary gamer’ (meaning you love games a lot).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board game news, Cooking, journalism, links, missouri, ohio, police, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ October 11, 2021
→ By keith

Of Dice and Men.

When I interviewed Conor Murphy of Foxing on my podcast a few weeks ago, he recommended a book called Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It, by David Ewalt, that gives a light history of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a fun read even if you’re just a casual player, one where the author leans into his self-vowed nerdiness, mixing the history of the game (and tabletop role-playing games in general) with his own experiences playing as a kid and again as an adult.

It may surprise some of you who know of my love for tabletop board games – or just think I’m a big nerd myself, which is probably accurate – that I have never been much of a PnP (pen and paper) D&D player. I did try it in middle school, and also played a little bit of the post-apocalyptic game Gamma World, which came from the same publisher, but never played either very much or for very long. I had some friends who really tried to get me into it, but I found the in-person experience kind of slow and often disorganized. My knowledge of D&D derives far more from playing computer games based on it, notably The Pool of Radiance (the first “gold box” game) and the Baldur’s Gate trilogy, than from the paper version. I liked Pool of Radiance, which I played up until I faced Tyranthraxus, the big foozle at the end of the game, whom I could never defeat, but I loved the Baldur’s Gate games for their incredible story, strong writing, and rich production values, and played the whole thing through multiple times. I can still quote lines from the audio track, and have given up on several similar games I’ve tried since then because they either couldn’t offer the same kind of thoughtful, immersive environment (Temple of Elemental Evil), or because I’d face a poorly designed, difficult battle early in the game, and just bailed (Icewind Dale).

Ewalt’s book is about the pen and paper game, and starts back in the 1950s, well before the game we know now as D&D was even a gleam in the eyes of Gary Gygax and David Arneson. D&D was novel in several ways, especially its open-ended nature and the legacy aspect of one play session affecting the next, but it has its roots in multiple games that came well before it. War games predate role-playing games by a few decades, and several, including the 1960s title Braunstein, directly influenced Arneson (who used it as inspiration for his own fantasy campaign setting Blackmoor, which later became an official D&D campaign setting). Ewalt gives a brief history of gaming, going back to ancient Egypt, then fast-forwards to the 19^th and 20^th centuries, getting to wargaming and the advent of D&D in short order.

The history of Dungeons and Dragons could probably fill a longer book, although it might bog down in stories of internecine warfare, as Gygax especially seemed to have a habit of alienating colleagues, running Arneson out of the company and trying to erase the latter’s contributions entirely (spurring multiple lawsuits Gygax and his company, TSR, would lose). Gygax’s personality, including what Ewalt depicts as a belief that TSR was his own personal fiefdom, led to his ouster from the firm after a few years of financial mismanagement. Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, as the company was approaching insolvency, and Hasbro later bought Wizards of the Coast, so D&D now resides in the portfolio of the largest board game publisher in the world.

Ewalt intersperses stories from the main campaign he’s playing as an adult at the time he was writing this book, which I found less interesting than the actual D&D history he provides, and that probably won’t make much sense if you’ve never played the game yourself. However, that narrative allows Ewalt to go into some of the specifics of D&D for the non-gamer – the basic framework of characters and parties, different mechanics, the changes in rules over the course of D&D’s history, even more arcane stuff like why there are clerics and bards and monks in the game. I was willing to hang with the details of his own campaign – which I found a bit ridiculous, as a non-PnP guy who’s pretty much stuck to CRPGs in fantasy settings – because it served that broader purpose.

If you’re not a DnD player at all, but would enjoy learning the superficial history of the game, you might enjoy Of Dice and Men anyway, since it’s very light and well-written, with some self-deprecating humor that helps Ewalt from sounding too pretentious. If you’ve played the game anywhere, in any form, you’ll probably enjoy the trip down memory lane.

Next up: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: games, non-fiction, rpgs

→ October 10, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/10/21.

My only content for subscribers to The Athletic this week was my contribution to our playoff predictions, where I pointed out that the evidence says playoff predictions by humans are probably no better those by than a dart-throwing monkey. I only got one of the wild-card winners right, and at the moment one of my four LDS picks is down 0 games to 2. Anyway, I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the semi-cooperative horror-themed board game Deranged, which I found too derivative of games like Arkham Horror without offering enough new ideas or mechanics.

On my podcast, I spoke with Jeremy Booth, founder of Program 15 and the Future Stars Series, talking about the 2022 draft’s deep high school class, player development in the majors, and more. You can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I will not have a new episode this week due to travel, but will return on the 18^th.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, although I held off sending one this week with nothing immediate to promote. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The best thing I read this week was this Guardian longread on how the Booker Prize works – how judges are chosen, and how in turn they choose the shortlist and the ultimate winner. The UK’s rough equivalent to our Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Booker confers financial success on nearly all of its winners, often changing the courses of their careers.
Ed Yong writes that we are unprepared for the next pandemic as we refuse to learn lessons from our mishandling of this one.
A “dead” oil tanker that has been moored at a Yemeni port for 45 years is in danger of falling apart, sinking, or blowing up, all of which would lead to a massive humanitarian and environmental disaster, with minimal plans to prevent this catastrophe and no help from the Houthi forces that control western Yemen and its Red Sea ports.
Students who were victims of sexual assault at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical Christian college, found themselves blamed and punished while their abusers often escaped consequences. The same school fired a professor who helped students file a Title IX complaint a few years ago. Just like Jesus told his followers to do!
You read about the bad art friend, right? You should read about the bad art friend.
Kellogg workers are on strike, after months of being forced to work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, and now threats to outsource their jobs. You may choose to join me in avoiding buying their products while their workers are fighting for basic rights.
Case reports continue to show the risk of death and severe illness in children who contract COVID-19, such as the 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who died of cerebral edemas due to COVID infections.
Yet another ivermectin/COVID-19 study that claimed to show a benefit has serious problems with its data.
Writing in The Cancer Letter, the newsletter of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who has written several books on the policies of Nazi Germany called out the non-virologist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s recent comparison of COVID-19 mitigation measures to fascism, calling them “fundamentally racist.”
Moderna is prioritizing profits over public health, keeping prices for its COVID-19 vaccines out of reach of many poorer countries. Is the global benefit of curtailing the pandemic enough that wealthy nations should subsidize vaccinations in poorer ones?
“Pro-life” Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) declined to stay the execution of a man with the mental capacity of a small child, because nothing says you believe in the sanctity of life like signing off on a state-sponsored murder.
The vice-chair at the Fed shifted his portfolio towards stock ahead of a big announcement last year, as did two other Fed officials, which should make you ask why people in those positions are allowed to trade in equities at all.
The “Evolved Apes” NFTs turned out to be a scam. Color me shocked that a new, unregulated market is rife with fraud and con artists.
The Biden Administration says they want science advisers, but they haven’t been listening to them when it comes to policy choices.
I know very, very little about this topic, but thought this piece from Matt Yglesias on the “mobilization delusion” of progressives was well argued.
Literary Hub has a piece on how Rush’s lyricist/drummer Neil Peart helped lure young listeners over to the “dark side” of Ayn Rand, the terrible novelist.
Board game news: Asmodee imprint Space Cowboys announced a new edition of the out-of-print game Jamaica, a popular family game
The Kickstarter for Mythwind, a cooperative, asymmetrical game, is over $666,000 as I type this, and keeps going up, with 21 days to go.
Board & Dice announced Tabannusi: Builders of Ur, a heavy worker placement game co-designed by Daniele Tascini (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan).
The Kickstarter for North Star Games’ new Alice in Wonderland-themed game Paint the Roses will open up on October 12^th.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coronavirus, environment, links, longreads, man booker prize, missouri, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ October 7, 2021
→ By keith

Klawchat 10/7/21.

You can see my playoff picks and a one-paragraph explanation here (for subscribers to the Athletic).

Keith Law: Klawchat. Because you have to make this life livable.

addoeh: I see Dayton Moore’s son is projected to be a draftee in 2022. From the outside, there could be a conflict of interest if he knows where other teams view his son and where they may draft and offer him. This probably isn’t the first time this has happened, but do you see a potential issue?
Keith Law: Happens every year. IMO, the best move would be for the Royals’ owner to say you can’t draft your own kid, and move on. The information imbalance you mention is, I think, unavoidable.

Noah: I’ve written to you about this before, but it still gets under my skin when I see Sandy Alderson make a move (like letting Rojas go). While I know the next GM or President will pick their own guy, I just would rather the Mets hire that next FO guy than have to read about Sandy Alderson doing anything other than retiring after his involvement in turning a blind eye to sexual harassment in previous hires. Why won’t the Mets announce Alderson’s firing or retirement? It’s a stain on an already stained organization. Thanks for doing these, Keith!
Keith Law: I have no idea. Whatever you think of Alderson’s legacy, his tenure with the Mets has been disastrous, and he shouldn’t involved in this hiring process. You didn’t mention the conflict of interest he faces with his son in the FO as well. Will he hire someone who has no real plans to use his son or retain him beyond the contract they just gave him in July (which was itself suspect, as that’s a decision the new GM should be allowed to make, not HIS OWN FATHER).

Matt: Can you please explain to all the Yankee fans out there that it does no good to fire Aaron Boone unless there is a plan to replace him. It’s why the Yankees ended up with Aaron Boone in the 1st place.
Brian: Hey Klaw, thanks for hosting this chat. Highlight of my week. Inevitable Yanks question from an impatient fan – how do they move forward? Fire the coaching staff? The GM? Nobody? How do they get over the hump?
Keith Law: These both seem like the same sort of question. I don’t think Boone is the problem here. The team just had a great season with a rotation that was often cobbled together, and they lost the WC game primarily because their ace has been dealing with a hamstring injury the last few weeks and wasn’t able to give them a quality start. That doesn’t call for wholesale changes. Go sign Correa and a starter.

Dark Knight: Who do you think is better offensively: Wander Franco or Bo Bichette? Big debate from a circle of loyal followers. Thanks Keith!!
Keith Law: This is a debate?

Barry: It seems like there are lots of Kickstartes for board games, even when the games are published by for profit game manufactures. Is there a reason why?
Keith Law: Aha! I know the answer to this. One is marketing – Kickstarters build a big buzz for upcoming titles. And the bigger reason is that it guarantees a sales figure for the first printing – you aren’t printing 10,000 copies and hoping you sell them but with no idea if you’ll sell out or only move 2500. It’s not the original purpose of crowdsourcing, but I think it ensures the financial health of publishers because they aren’t putting big piles of cash at risk and sometimes ending up with a warehouse full of unsold games.

Mo: Do the Cardinals need to look into the SS market this off-season given DeJong’s been pretty rough for 2+ years now?
Keith Law: I like Sosa. I think I’ve always kept him reasonably high on my Cards rankings and he finally justified that this year. Would like to see him get a full shot at the job.

Daniel: Keith, outside of Stearns/Beane… would you mind giving us a few names that you think would be good hires as president of baseball operations by the Mets? Who are you high on to run a franchise? Thanks in advance.
Keith Law: So I heard last week secondhand that those guys and Theo had already turned the Mets down … then the report of a Theo conversation that happened this week came out, so maybe what I heard was wrong, but also, I can’t imagine either guy taking that job. It would be great if the Mets didn’t just recycle the same names all over again.
Keith Law: I know several people within MLB who are rooting for Bobby Heck to get the GM job there, and he’d make a lot of sense as a respected exec who comes from one of the best-run orgs (Tampa Bay) and can bring that knowledge as well as his experience managing a staff (he was scouting director for Houston when they took George Springer).

ATR: Do you anticipate Torkelson and Greene to be in Detroit’s opening day lineup? Thanks!
Keith Law: No, just because of service time stuff. So few teams do that.

Jason: is it unfair that a team can withstand the loss of Bauer and Kershaw and still be a WS favorite? Seems unfair to me. Any other team this wouldve been a death blow. Thats what like 70 million bucks in pitching?
Keith Law: Define “unfair.”
Keith Law: I mean, should they sign Harrison Bergeron instead?

Chris: Is there any optimism for Rockies fans with Bill Schmidt?
Keith Law: Derek and I discussed this on the pod we just recorded for tomorrow (The Athletic Baseball Show), and the answer is … maybe. It really depends on what he does next, and especially who he hires.

A Salty Scientist: So has Logan Webb really leveled up on command and the change to become a legit #2? Nothing in the expected stats screams fluke to me, but curious if you’ve seen anything notable.
Keith Law: I think this is his peak, in the sense that he executed his pitching plan about as well as he possibly could this year. I don’t want to say it’s luck, because that seems to discredit him, but more that everything went right for him. If he’s a 60% groundball guy who can really limit hard contact like he did this year, he can be an above-average starter for a while. But I would bet the under on 2022 because of the above – everything seems to have hit at the 90th percentile.

Anthony: I know minors stats shouldn’t always be used for prospect evaluation but I’ve read stuff on Julio Rodriguez’s hit tool being closer to a 50 than a 60 based on his long swing. Given his career minors BA is well over .300 why isn’t his hit tool given more praise?
Keith Law: Because batting average is really not a great measure of hit tool, especially not when you’re facing a lot of bad pitching in the minors (and some good, too, he’s not only able to hit the bad ones).

Seth: MLB is missing a golden opportunity with the Giants Dodgers series starting so late on the east coast. This is the series all baseball fans have wanted to see this year for so many reasons. If this was Yankees Red Sox it would be in prime time on the east coast without question. Seems like there has to be a way to get these games on earlier so they dont end at 1:30am EST.
Keith Law: If you start the games earlier then the west coast fans – which, I would assume, includes most of the Giants’ and Dodgers’ current fan bases – miss the beginnings of the games, and that’s worse.

Philly Phantasmic: How much playing time will the Royals give Melendez and at what positions?
Keith Law: He’s a catcher. They have to use him as a catcher, and yes, I’m aware of the catcher they already have, but that guy isn’t going to hit 48 homers again, and catchers, especially ones who’ve caught as much as he has, are not great bets to age well into their 30s.
Keith Law: OTOH if the Royals just want to keep Salvy as the everyday guy, I imagine they could get a king’s ransom for MJM.

Jason: Did everyone who worked in the Trump White House just keep saying to themselves “Think of the book deal, think of the book deal…”
Keith Law: Well, they were clearly just thinking about themselves, so this fits.

AES: Aside from a long history of normalizing racism, why hasn’t there been a bigger outcry about Mcdonough’s comment about Zaidi?
Keith Law: It was showing up on Twitter’s “trending” sidebar for me all night, but there should be some kind of reaction from his employers. It was inappropriate.

Mcf1417: Michael Harris had a rough end to the year. What’s your thought on him going forward?
Keith Law: Harris in the Atlanta system? He didn’t have a rough end to the year at all. You can see my notes on him from when they came through Wilmington.

Chris Mitchell: Should the playoff format be changed to reseed the teams after the WC games without regard to division winners? If this were done in the NL, it would be Giants-Braves and Dodgers-Brewers in the NLDS with a possible matchup of baseball’s best teams in the NLCS. A playoff format that results in the teams with the two best records in the sport meeting in round 1 needs changing.
Keith Law: No. No format will be ‘perfect’ and trying to tinker with it to achieve a desired result in year N will probably yield an undesirable result in year N+1, and then we’ll hear a bunch of ideas to tweak it further.

J. Brenner: Any surprising omissions from AFL rosters? Personally, I expected to see Corbin Carroll show up.
Keith Law: Not surprised after his surgery. I was hopeful, but not optimistic. That said I am so fucking happy to see how many good prospects will be there, and that they’re having the AFL at all, that I’ll take whatever i can get out of the trip. (By which I mean a trip to Changing Hands and very tough decisions on where to eat between games.)

Matt: Was a little surprised that Joey Wiemer didn’t get a mention in your prospects of the year column. Age? Position? Don’t believe in the swing? Something else?
Keith Law: Older guy in single A, and also, I can’t mention every single player who had a good year.

Famous Twitter User @Whitey_83: Any insight into how the Ozuna saga might play out in Atlanta? I would very much like to never see him again, but I have serious fears about the org either bringing him back (when/if it is allowed to do so) or crying poor because of his contract for the next three years.
Keith Law: I truly don’t know, although I share your wish and your fears. I could see Liberty demanding that he play as long as they’re paying him.

SD: I know it’s hard to evaluate managers because there is so much we can’t see. From what we could see I thought Tingler was pretty good. Do you have thoughts you could share?
Keith Law: From what we could see, I agree. There are a lot of reports of the players not wanting to play for him, and while you don’t necessarily want to let the lunatics run the asylum – or to blame the manager for their own play – if the manager has lost the clubhouse, that’s a reason to move on. I think Tingler will be a great manager if he’s given a second opportunity, a la AJ Hinch and Terry Francona.

John: Hey Klaw, how rare is it for 2 prospects in the same system to essentially come back from being almost written off like Pratto and MJ? Is what they are doing sustainable?
Keith Law: Both are for real. In their cases I believe there’s a common cause – the Royals changed how they were working with several of their hitters, and they had all of 2020 to do so with these guys. I don’t ever want to see another lost minor league season, but it turns out a few players might be substantially better off from a year of instruction without games, or just from the year of rest.

Dave: Do the Mariners seem ripe for regression? Seems like they could be better next year but have a worse record with how much they outperformed their pythag
Keith Law: Yes. Future is bright, 2022 may feel disappointing.

Ethan: Keith, what are your thoughts on this Padres season? What should be the priorities this offseason? And what should be their profile as they look for a new manager? Thanks as always for your good work!
Keith Law: Darvish and Snell both had 4+ ERAs, in that ballpark, and pitched a lot less than I would have expected. It all starts there, doesn’t it? If you knew going into the year that both of those guys would be average-at-best, would you pick them to make the playoffs? I wouldn’t have – I thought their rotation would be a major strength, bolstered in the second half by Gore (now going to the AFL!) and maybe the arrival of a more developed Weathers (who was pushed into making 18 starts that I’m sure were not part of the plan). Whose fault is that? The manager? The GM? Or just rotten luck?

Guest: Anything to read into Daniel Lynch’s struggles with command / control this season? Young guy figuring it out or does it dampen your enthusiasm?
Keith Law: Young guy figuring it out. They’re not all good right away. Some guys take a year or more.

Robert Axelrod: What due diligence did MLB pay to Cohen’s “dark money” past and its role in our political mess? Not to mention his grey dealings in the investment world.
Keith Law: The Kendricks are established MLB owners and their dark money habits are well known. MLB doesn’t care.

Tony: Do you think Mike Elias should spend some money this winter to not be embarrassingly bad again? And do you think he’ll do that?
Keith Law: I’d think ownership would want to do so. You have the game’s #1 prospect on the cusp of the majors. Do you want to field a 60-win team around him?

Ciscoskid: What is this Giants team in 2022 regardless of the this postseason results. A lot of cap flexibility but also a lot of holes to plug again.
Keith Law: I wouldn’t bet on a lineup with key players this old repeating the way they did, but I also think they’ll be more active this winter knowing that they are clear contenders going into the year.
Keith Law: That’s all assuming the CBA stuff gets settled. who knows what happens there.

Henry: Dave Roberts did an excellent job managing the Scherzer/bullpen yesterday, and Mike Shildt managed it like a regular season game. He’s lucky Wainwright wasn’t worse but he kept him in too late. It still befuddles me why managers make stupid decisions.
Keith Law: I was a little surprised to see Scherzer start an inning and come out with 2 men on … I’m not saying it was wrong but it felt more ad hoc than it needed to be. Shildt got very lucky on Wainwright. If Turner doesn’t chase a pitch he seldom chases, the Dodgers might put 2-3 on the board in the 4th (?) inning and change the whole course of the game.
Keith Law: Good pitch by Wainwright, of course. Just surprised Turner offered at it.

Neil: As a Jays fan this weekend hurt, but the last month was awesome. I see tons of people pushing for expanded playoffs, but I really think that would devalue September, which can be so much fun. Im guessing expansion of playoffs is inevitable, any way MLB avoids it?
Keith Law: No, there’s too much money in it for MLB. They will always take the option that increases their revenues in the short term regardless of any deleterious long-term consequences. Always.

Snarfle: Do you see a viable compromise on the whole service time thing? Start the clock when the player is drafted?
Keith Law: Can’t see that taking. I like the idea of at least connecting free agency to the player’s age at debut, or when drafted, to recognize that players who go to college are at a relative disadvantage (since they likely won’t see free agency until at least 29, versus ~27 for the best HS draftees and international FAs).

Luke: Will the 2022 MLB season start on time or are we looking at a work stoppage?
Keith Law: I believe there will be a deal, we won’t lose all or even half of the 2022 season, but the hot stove will be delayed and maybe even spring training will too.

Pete: Hey Keith, I was really excited to see Gabriel Moreno so high up on your rankings in the middle of the year. What’s his ceiling stat line? Is it higher than someone like Francisco Alvarez? Or was he ranked higher because he’s so close to being ready for the majors?
Keith Law: Moreno is closer to ready but as hitters they’re quite different – they will both probably be stars, but get there in different ways.

Josh: Were you a fan of the Dune novel or the David Lynch movie?
Keith Law: Loved the first novel. Never saw the Lynch movie. The sequel novels get increasingly ridiculous and I wouldn’t recommend anyone read past the first.

Jason Bersani: should I stay in on Corbin Martin, for sim/DMB purposes? I bought when shortly after the draft Calls thought there was a chance he trend into the best arm of the class.
Keith Law: He made my top 100 then too. Hold.

Kevin: Why would ESPN have Arod call the wild card game on Tuesday? He was incredibly biased the entire game, not to mention he isn’t good.
Keith Law: But he’s famous. Between him not really knowing the players or how most teams think about players & roster construction, and Vasgersian shouting the extremely cringey “What up Holmes” when Clay Holmes pitched, it was a pretty lousy experience. (And no, I don’t get ESPN2, haven’t since I left the company.)

Deke: The Jessica Berg Wilson death — obviously the vaccines are good and necessary and the mandates help, but when someone (not a bad-faith actor, someone genuine) holds that up to you, what do you say in response? How do you address their concerns in that regard? “It’s vanishingly rare” just isn’t going to sway those people.
Keith Law: It’s a terrible tragedy, but that’s the 4th death in 15 million doses of the J&J shot administered (and, I think, the second since the pause, after which the medical community was supposed to be more aware of the signs to watch for). The odds are minuscule, and it’s possible she didn’t get the proper care for a known if very rare side effect. On the other hand, we’re at 700,000 deaths from COVID-19. More people die of the virus every 10 minutes than have died from this blood clotting disorder.

Noah: I’m getting my booster next week (immunocompromised) and I have a hard time sussing out why there is debate in the medical community about whether or not boosters are necessary. It seems like there is waning efficacy, but a lot FDA/CDC folks are still saying we need to get the unvaxxed vaccinated and well…that doesn’t seem likely to happen until mandates are more broadly used. So, shouldn’t we be promoting those who want boosters to get them?
Keith Law: STAT had a good piece on this. The connection between science and policy, while certainly better than it was under the circus, has not been great under Biden.

Snowy: Elly De La Cruz got a lot of buzz this year, is he a possible top 100 guy next year?
Keith Law: He has top 20 overall tools but his approach is really not very good at all. It’s a bunch of 7s on the scouting report, though.

Jason: Does this week just prove Facebook has too much power and influence over our lives and needs to be regulated?
Keith Law: I don’t love that phrasing. I prefer to say that if Facebook can’t police itself – or won’t – then they should be prepared to face the consequences of their own actions. Don’t take down anti-vaccine content? Fine. Help pay for the costs that unvaccinated people impose on our economy.

Matty: What do you make of Bellinger’s season? Is this an anomaly, a result of the shoulder injury, or are there long-term concerns with his hit tool?
Keith Law: I assume he was hurt.

Ben: Would you consider Witt to be the MiLB POY? If not him, who?
Keith Law: I wrote a whole column about it.

Chris Mitchell: Did you have similar thoughts about Kapler the second time around – seems like he’s learned a lot from the PHL experience.
Keith Law: Yes, and also he was allowed to hire more of his own people. Always thought he got a raw deal in Philly, and subsequent events proved he wasn’t the problem. The roster was.

Matt: I’ve never been a doom and gloom guy over MLB popularity, but a game that’s 1-1 in the 9th and over the four hour mark is insane, right?
Keith Law: Great game. I was hurting this morning from staying up for it.

Santos: Am I just an old man yelling at clouds or is MLB creeping towards an aesthetic problem? I know advertisements have been there forever – I have no problem with them around the ballpark and on the broadcasts (though I’m not fond of how many are behind home plate now), but they put the Nike swoosh on the jerseys and that was a small change….now they have the FTX logo on the umpires’ shirts…they have betting kiosks and advertisements in stadiums…I’m not a luddite but I just can’t get behind this. I don’t mind european sports (I’m a cricket fan) but their uniforms are awful. You can’t tell what the team name is or the player unelss you wade through a stack of other companies first. Am I overreacting?
Keith Law: Oh, just wait till your screen is crowded on three sides with interactive betting tools. It’s coming.

David: Any interest in the Dune movie?
Keith Law: Absolutely.

Bill: Just FYI. People do read your completely dishonest political takes and other dishonest takes and realize that dishonesty is likely to show up in your other work
Keith Law: And yet, here you are. Really appreciate you looking out for me, though.

Henry: Nice Strangelove DM reference.
Keith Law: I give in to sin.

section 34: I’m a lifelong baseball fan but increasingly I find the game boring: too much take-and-rake, too little action. Do you feel this way too? For an analyst there’s still plenty to analyze, but do you find the game less interesting to analyze now that the Three True Outcomes make up such a high percentage of plate appearances?
Keith Law: I miss basestealing and more balls hit into play (and not finding fielders). I don’t want to see the league ban the shift, though. Deadening the baseball even a little bit would go a long way. So would raising the bottom of the strike one (although, TBH, I haven’t seen data on whether that happened this year).

James: With the huge incoming growth of sports gambling, have you ever read The Fix by Declan Hill about matchfixing in soccer? Any concerns about seeing that happen in MLB (or the minors in particular where players and umps aren’t paid well)?
Keith Law: That is inevitable. We will have a scandal around betting in baseball. I feel like we’ve already had a few, actually.

Dark Knight: what are your thoughts on Drew Rasmussen and Ranger Suarez? Drew for example pitched well against TOR 3 x, BOS 2x and even against PHI. Do you think they’re for real?
Keith Law: Rasmussen is a two-time TJ guy who was worked extremely hard at Oregon State. I’d really be surprised if he stayed healthy as a starter despite all of that – he’d be a big outlier, at least. I like Suarez as a back-end starter.

Joshua: Is there still hope for Victor Robles? Would he be best that he start fresh somewhere else? Thanks.
Keith Law: Has to start hitting the ball harder.

Alex In Austin: I missed how Shane Baz is postseason eligible. What happened to the rule of being on the roster on Sept 1st or did he arrive in the IL loophole?
Keith Law: That rule has been a laughingstock for a few decades now. If you’re in the organization on 9/1 you can be on the postseason roster.

Dan: Pedro Leon seemed to start putting it together after a tough start, all while learning a new position. Do you think he can be a star?
Keith Law: I think so but he’s near the top of my list of guys to see in the AFL.

Wayne: Is Votto a Hall of Famer in your opinion?
Keith Law: Yes.

Scott: You seem like a guy who likes good smart pop tunes, you should give The Beaches a listen if you havent already. I think they would be up your alley, punky yet very catchy.
Keith Law: I’ll check out their new EP. I can’t remember if I listened to Talk Show when it came out – too many indie bands with Beach in their name (Beach House, Beach Fossils, Beach Slang).

Dave: I would to see either Jamey Stegmaier or Elizabeth Hargraves on the podcast to talk about Wingspan and board game design. Would be fascinating.
Keith Law: Great idea. I’ll get on that.

Dave: Did anyone see this kind of season coming from Cedric Mullins?
Keith Law: I know some Orioles scouts who thought he could be a good regular but thought he was underappreciated in the org (and especially by Showalter). I don’t know if any of them would have expected (waves hands around) this.

Arturo (Mexico): I think Soto was better this season than Harper, but it seems to me than Harper was more relevant to the Phillies winning than Soto (for example many hits that were decisive in victories in an order at bat with little contributions from his teammates). Would it be a good argument in favor of Harper’s candidacy to MVP?
Keith Law: Sure, especially with the two fairly close, although I only use that as a final arbiter when I can’t decide otherwise.

Matt: Political takes are dishonest? Funny, I thought they were opinions.
Keith Law: He just means he doesn’t like them.

Dana: Any idea what happened to Gleyber Torres the past two seasons?
Keith Law: Not really. I think he’s a buy-low candidate for someone. But I also know that I don’t know what happened.

Dark Knight: Will Michael Kopech be a starter for the Chisox next year? How good do you think he’ll be?
Keith Law: If he starts, he’ll be really good. Might take a year or two. But he’ll be really good.

Guest: If you’re the Yankees, you sign Correa, and then what with Peraza and Volpe? Trade Peraza when he’s ML ready and trade Gleyber if Volpe turns out to be the star he looked like this year?
Keith Law: Volpe can play SS, but I’m okay with signing Correa and then either moving Volpe to 2b when he’s ready OR moving Correa to third. Peraza isn’t good enough to merit changing the plans around those two guys.

Mac: Trey Sweeney will be in the Yankees SS mix too.
Keith Law: I don’t know any scouts who think he stays at shortstop.

Margarita: Hi Keith, how did you manage to invite Lauren Mayberry to your podcast? How did it happen? Probably an interesting story.
Keith Law: Just used my network. I was thrilled to get her and she was an amazing guest, too.
Keith Law: OK, that’s all for this week. No chat next week as I’ll be out at Fall League, but I’ll write up what I see there. Hope to see a few of you at the games as well! Stay safe and thank you as always for reading.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ October 7, 2021
→ By keith

Harlem Shuffle.

Colson Whitehead’s last two novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making him the first Black author to win that prize twice. Both were serious novels, the first with fantastical elements to try to tell a familiar story in a new way, the latter more straightforward, but neither presaged what he’s done in his latest novel, Harlem Shuffle, which is funnier, more action-packed, and just generally more entertaining.

Harlem Shuffle is the story of two men in that part of Manhattan in the early 1960s. Raymond, the son of a crook who has become an entrepreneur, owns a furniture store in Harlem that caters to the customers the white-owned stores downtown won’t serve. Freddie, his ne’er-do-well cousin, has been getting Ray in trouble since they were kids, and this time, he lands Ray smack in the middle of a heist that has half of Harlem looking for them, and involves Ray with the kind of people he never wanted to be involved with – the people with whom his father did jobs, that is. When a mobster’s goons show up at the store, and a crooked cop does too, things go pear-shaped for the cousins, leaving Raymond to try to find a way to clean up the mess and protect his family. Meanwhile, Ray’s situation at home is always tenuous. He needs a bigger house for his growing family, while his in-laws continue to look down on him as the son of a crook, which makes him not good enough for their daughter. He’s already conflicted about taking any money from Freddie’s shenanigans, but now anything he gets from the big score would help him move to a better place … while also risking further scorn from his in-laws and even the trust of his wife.

My experience with Whitehead is limited to the two novels that won him the Pulitzer, both of which were weighted down with heavy themes and only lightened by Whitehead’s remarkable prose and rich characterization. Here, Whitehead gets to have some fun, even though there are undercurrents of violence, internecine warfare in Harlem’s Black community, white cops assaulting Black citizens (including the real Harlem riots of 1964, which occur right around Ray’s store and shut down much of the commerce on which he depends), and more. There’s also a subtle theme of the growing divide within the Black community between the upwardly mobile and those still held down by the extensive obstacles of the time and the history of oppression that still limits Black Americans’ economic opportunities today.

I’ve seen media coverage of Harlem Shuffle that makes it sound like a heist novel – possibly pushed by the publisher – but it’s more heist-adjacent, since Ray doesn’t participate in the heist itself, just in the misadventures that follow when you steal something that a very powerful and violent person would not want to have stolen. Whitehead adapts one of the best aspects of the heist genre, or just the hard-boiled crime genre in general – the array of eccentric and often funny side characters that populate many of those novels. A thief named Pepper who worked with Ray’s dad turns out to be a pivotal character as the novel progresses. Miami Joe is one of the main antagonists in the first part of the novel. Chet the Vet is so-called because he went to vet school for all of a month before turning to crime. Between these fun, if only morally compromised, side characters and Whitehead’s ability to shift between the highbrow prose of his award-winning novels and the vernacular of his 1960s setting, Harlem Shuffle was a blast to read, perhaps an entrée into his work for folks who want to start with some lighter fare before reading his two more serious books.

Next up: David Ewalt’s Of Dice and Men, recommended to me by Foxing lead singer/songwriter (and longtime D&D player) Connor Murphy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2021 novels, african-american literature, american literature, crime novels, heist novels, highly recommended

→ October 2, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/2/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my hypothetical ballots for the six major postseason awards. Fans are taking it extremely well, as you might imagine.

On my podcast, I spoke with Conor Murphy of the band Foxing, talking about their new album Draw Down the Moon and our mutual interest in games – he’s particularly into D&D and Magic: the Gathering, but we talk a lot about tabletop games we both enjoy. They’re hitting the road next week with Manchester Orchestra and I’m bummed I’ll be in Arizona for Fall League when they come through my area. You can hear their newest album on Spotify, and you can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I was also on the Athletic Baseball Show again on Friday, where you can hear me say Dylan Carlson might be a breakout candidate for 2022, which I recorded a few hours before he hit 2 homers against the Brewers.

Over at Paste, I recapped my experience at Gen Con, running through every game I saw or played at the convention, and ranked the ten best games I tried.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, with this week’s edition talking about how challenging I’ve found my role as an adjunct at a local university. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Guardian profiles Prof. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author who has emerged as a major celebrity in the culture wars while allying himself with some disreputable figures, including the white supremacist blogger Steve Sailer. Pinkerite, a blog dedicated to exposing Pinker’s links to bogus “race science” proponents, asks if this column is “the end of the gentlemen’s agreement” to avoid asking Pinker about his history of defending and working with white supremacists.
Zach Helfand writes in The New Yorker about the imminent arrival of the automated strike zone and the loss of the human element. I disagree with the basic premise here – as you might have guessed – but there’s one point worth bearing in mind: The actual strike zone is probably a lot smaller than the de facto one umpires call, and that might mean more walks and longer games.
From October of 2020, WIRED looks at the cultural problems that have bedeviled Amazon’s attempts to buy its way into the gaming market.
My colleague Meg Linehan wrote a powerful investigative report on NWSL coach Paul Riley’s history of abusive behavior towards his players, including rape, after which his employers, the North Carolina Courage, terminated him within hours.
A 2019 book called The Psychology of Pandemics presaged much of our country’s reaction to this current one.
Pitcher Kieran Lovegrove came out as bisexual, making him just the second player ever in affiliated baseball to do so and the closest player to the majors as well.
A 10-year-old girl in Virginia died of COVID-19 after she was told to walk sick kids in her class to the nurse.
As more evidence emerges against the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory, why does the mainstream media continue to push it?
Youtube appears to be finally moving to ban all anti-vaccine content.
The New York Times did what it too often does, highlighting the views of the deranged few, here talking to New York state health care workers who said they’d choose job loss over vaccination, but I think there’s a subtle message here: These people will use any loophole they can find to avoid the consequences of their choices, like claiming a religious exemption they don’t merit.
Yale historian Dr. Beverly Gage resigned as head of the school’s Program in Grand Strategy, citing the school’s unwillingness to fend off influence from conservative donors, including San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson, whom you might remember from his donations to Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
UNC officials met with an Israeli diplomat who pressured them to remove a teacher who criticized Israeli policy while teaching a class on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) used her office to pressure a subordinate to issue Noem’s daughter a real estate appraiser’s license, according to the Argus-Leader.
Toxic microbial blooms on freshwater lakes and rivers may be a harbinger of a coming mass extinction event.
The New York Times’ Pete Wells offered an unflattering review of Eleven Madison Park’s new $335 vegan tasting menu.
Board game news: Days of Wonder is selling pink train sets for Ticket to Ride, with $2 from each $4.95 going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
The massive 4X game Voidfall, from European publisher Mindclash, is nearing $1MM raised already on Kickstarter.
Queen Games is publishing four Stefan Feld “city collection” games, three of which are reimplementations of older games of his (Bruges, Macao, and Rialto) and one of which is new, with a deluxe edition bundle that costs $695. (Not a typo.) I’m not linking to that nonsense, but I am linking to this video critique of Feld’s cultural appropriation in the game Marrakesh, including an embarrassing photo of him in a fez holding some sort of chain to an invisible camel. That this is still happening in 2021 – seven years after Bruno Cathala put actual slave cards in Five Tribes, which is the first major outcry to result in a change to a game that I can remember – boggles my mind. Whether you agree that this is cultural appropriation, or merely harmless appreciation, it was completely unnecessary, and says to me that no one around Feld or Queen thought to say, “hey, maybe this is a bad idea.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, board game news, environment, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, vegan

→ October 1, 2021
→ By keith

Music update, September 2021.

Whew. That turned out to be an epic month for new music, with my top album of 2021 so far dropping on the first Friday, a bunch of returns from old favorites, even some tracks from artists I didn’t love who surprised me with great new material. That means this playlist is one of my longest ever – 29 songs and 104 minutes. Enjoy. You can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Little Simz feat. Obongjayar – Point and Kill. I’ve said a few times now that Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is my favorite album of 2021, and this track, featuring the Nigerian singer Obongjayar, is a major reason, one of the many standouts on the record along with the title track, “I Love You, I Hate You,” “Woman,” and more.

Sleigh Bells – True Seekers. My favorite track from this duo since “Rill Rill” over a decade ago. Their music can be so deliberately abrasive that it often turns me away even when there’s a good vocal hook, but this song is a sort of anti-pop anthem that I can’t get out of my head.

Hatchie – This Enchanted. I loved the melodies in Hatchie’s first album and earlier singles, all in the sort of dream-pop sound that reminded me of early Cranberries or Lush, but her voice is a little bit soft and I think she fares better when the production puts her voice down into the music rather than out front. This new single does just that and it’s among her best so far.

Snail Mail – Valentine. Lindsey Jordan, who records as Snail Mail, is now all of 22 years old, and her second album, also called Valentine,

Parcels – Somethinggreater. I was not familiar with Parcels at all before hearing this track, but I’m all in on this funky, R&B-inflected pop gem. It’s the third single they’ve released ahead of the double album they’re putting out on November 5^th.

Frank Turner – Haven’t Been Doing So Well. Love when Turner gets into his punk roots more, which he really does here as on “1933” or “Recovery.”

The War on Drugs Feat. Lucius – I Don’t Live Here Anymore. At least Adam Granduciel is just leaning into the Bob Dylan thing, singing “a creature void of form” on this song before name-checking Dylan directly. The singers from Lucius bring a lot to the chorus here, too.

Cœur de Pirate – On s’aimera toujours. Béatrice seems to be locked into singing in French these days, which is fine, as I think her voice is beautiful, as is the language, although I feel like the U.S. audience is going to miss out on some great indie-pop because of it. If you’re wondering, the title means “We will always love each other.”

Jerro & Panama – Lost for Words. Producer Jerro’s debut album comes out today, and this single features Australian producer Panama, who appeared on several of my playlists in the mid-teens with “Always” and “Hope for Something.”

Obongjayar & Sarz – Sweetness. And here’s a track from Obongjayar’s latest EP of the same name, also featuring the Nigerian musician/producer Sarz, an Afrobeats-centric record with a heavy dose of ’80s R&B.

Bartees Strange – Weights. Strange is an avowed fan of the National, but I like him anyway, and here it sounds like he merged the National with the Hold Steady while adding his own vocal flourishes. It’s more than the sum of its parts.

Pond – Human Touch. These Aussie psych-rockers just released their ninth album, simply called 9, today, with this as the second track and third single released ahead of the record, along with the also strong “America’s Cup.” Their brand of psychedelic rock emphasizes groove over the hazy production more typical of the genre.

The Lottery Winners feat. KT Tunstall – Dance With the Devil. I’ve been on the Lottery Winners for a few months now, but just discovered that the bio on their Youtube channel calls them “a mob of four twits from a rubbish working class town called Leigh, near Manchester.” Anyway, Something to Leave the House For, their second album, drops on October 29^th.

Sam Fender – Get You Down. I wasn’t familiar with Fender’s work, although with a name like that, you’d better play one. He’s pretty popular in the UK, with his first album hitting #1 and his second due out on October 8^th, with a sort of emo-tinged indie-rock that I think could play pretty well here too.

Zeal & Ardor – Bow. The gospel/black metal fusion isn’t quite so present here – there’s some distorted guitars at the back of the mix, but this minimalist track from Manuel Gagneux puts his vocals front and center, where they belong.

Yard Act – The Overload. I feel like this particular brand of post-punk music only works if you have a working-class English accent, so that the deadpan talk-sung lyrics sound charming rather than offputting. Whatever the reason, it works for me.

Stereophonics – Hanging on Your Hinges. The Guardian‘s final tracks of the week column called this song “the biggest pile of sh**,” but this song, while not exactly vintage Stereophonics, rocks. That’s a great riff that carries the whole track.

Eels – Good Night on Earth. I didn’t realize Mark Oliver Everett – sometimes known simply as E – was still churning out albums every two years or so, but so it is. This track wouldn’t be out of place on Electro-Shock Blues, which is high praise. Also, I need to say this pretty much every time I talk about Eels: E’s father, Hugh Everett III, came up with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. What’s the cooler legacy: that, or “Novocaine for the Soul?”

Talk Show – Underworld. I feel like at some point this new wave revivalist band will run into trouble thanks to the one-album act of the same name that included three members of Stone Temple Pilots (without Scott Weiland). “Underworld,” the first release off their EP Touch the Ground, due out in early 2022, straddles the genres of new wave and post-punk, like someone remixed a Gang of Four track.

Mini Trees – Carrying On. Lexi Vega, who records as Mini Trees, just released her debut album, Always in Motion, two weeks ago, featuring this lush dream-pop track and earning some extremely positive reviews already.

Ovlov – Land of Steve-O. Ovlov doesn’t release much music – their 2018 album Tru is their only LP since 2013’s am – but their sound is still intact, very ’90s Dinosaur Jr./Sebadoh lo-fi fuzz-rock.

Parquet Courts – Black Widow Spider. I have never been a fan of Parquet Courts, or Parkay Quartz as they once called themselves, but this song is fantastic. It’s off Sympathy for Life, their seventh album, which comes out today.

Aeon Station – Queens. Aeon Station is Kevin Whelan, bassist and co-founder of the dormant band The Wrens, along with two other members of the Wrens. Their first album, Observatory, comes out in December, and includes five tracks Whelan wrote for the never-completed fourth Wrens album. Charles Bissell, the guitarist and co-founder of the Wrens, is not involved, and has said that band is now “dead” and he’ll release his own solo work. It sounds like a big mess. Anyway, I wasn’t familiar with The Wrens at all before this track, but it’s good.

Mastodon – Pushing the Tides. These metal stalwarts’ eighth album, Hushed and Grim, comes out on the 29^th. This track, the first single released off the album, veers back more towards the heavier technical metal of their early career, and while I loved their last record’s more accessible sound, I’m good with just about any direction Mastodon wants to take – as long as they don’t release their version of the Black album.

Thrice – Summer Set Fire to the Rain. Featuring Puig Destroyer drummer Riley Breckenridge, Thrice will release their eleventh album, Horizons/East, next Friday.

Monolord – The Weary. This is the first track I’ve heard from this Swedish doom metal band, with some stoner metal influences here as well, so this is more than just the eight thousandth version of Cathedral or another Sabbath ripoff.

Black Map – Chasms. I thought Black Map, which comprises members of several other bands (Dredg, Far, The Trophy Fire), was a one-off project, but they’re back, with the same style of classic metal with hints of prog.

Iron Maiden – Days of Future Past. Obligatory, although I maintain that the vocal melodies are beyond Bruce Dickinson’s capabilities at this point and end up detracting from the song.

Carcass – The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing. They’re back, with their first album in eight years and only their second in the last quarter-century. Torn Arteries includes this track, which has an incredible 70-second instrumental opening, as well as 2019’s “Under the Scalpel Blade.” I don’t think their sound has changed or evolved much if at all since Surgical Steel, which was the best extreme metal album of the last decade and maybe the best metal album of the decade, period, but I’m okay with this. Carcass more or less perfected melodic death metal, and while I could do without some of the blast beats and will never really enjoy the death growls, the guitar and bass work here is just incredible.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2021 in music, afrobeats, alternative, indie, melodic death metal, metal, Music

→ September 30, 2021
→ By keith

The best books about writing.

I put out a call on Twitter for writers’ suggestions of resources for the students I’m teaching this fall in a Mass Communications class at a local university, and you did not let me down, with over 100 responses to the tweet and a few emails as well. I decided after I saw all of your replies to turn it into a post here, so that everyone could see the list more easily.

Twelve books earned at least two votes apiece. The runaway winner, unsurprisingly, was Stephen King’s On Writing, which garnered 25 mentions. In second place, with eight mentions was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, edging out William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by one vote. Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, and Roy Peter Clark’s How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times rounded out the top six, all of which earned at least three mentions from you. I have read … none of these. Clearly, I have some work to do. Maybe some day I’ll be a good writer!

Here’s the complete list of books that you mentioned, which I’ve also tried to categorize by subject where possible (going off others’ descriptions, since I haven’t read any of them myself). I have picked up Harold Evans’ Do I Make Myself Clear for my Kindle, since it’s on sale for $3.99 right now, and put in hold requests at my library for several others. I have ranked them within each category by how many of you mentioned each book, with that number in parentheses if it’s greater than one. All links below go to Bookshop.org, from which I receive a commission for any sales through this site. Please don’t feel obligated to buy here – you can and should ask your local independent bookstore, or hit the library instead. If you have other recommendations that didn’t make it into this post, please leave them in the comments below.

General writing

On Writing, by Stephen King (25 mentions)

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott (8)

Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity, by Ray Bradbury (2)

The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, various authors

The Lively Art of Writing, by Lucile Payne

Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark

10 Rules of Writing, Elmore Leonard

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

Style

Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg (4)