→ May 4, 2017
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Klawchat, 5/4/17.

Keith Law: Am I coming out of left field? Klawchat.

Jake: Is the Mets season over?
Keith Law: That seems a little dramatic, but I don’t like their situation at all. They came into the year with no pitching depth, and now they’re in a situation where they need pitching depth to stay afloat.

Mike: Could the Mets have not meted out some sort of discipline for Thor after refusing an MRI?
Keith Law: Absolutely not.

Clowning Not Waving: Bellinger gonna stay up?
Keith Law: He should stay up, whether at 1b or in LF. Whether he will or not, I don’t know. They’re a better team with him in the lineup every day. You’d like to think that would win the day.

Mike: 0% chance Adam Jones is telling the truth, correct?
Keith Law: I think your question was truncated by the software. I’m sure you meant 100% chance he’s telling the truth. Unless you’re some sort of white power nut.

Anthony: Not to offend the #StickToSports crowd, but this latest attempt to repeal the ACA appears to be especially monstrous even for the GOP.
Keith Law: A bill many reps haven’t even read! But hey, it gives the top 2% billions in tax cuts. We tried that around 15 years ago, and it didn’t stimulate the economy the way supply-side economists predicted. Maybe let’s not try that again.

John: Can’t thank you enough for your book. Loving every page of it.
Keith Law: Glad you’re enjoying it. My thanks to all of you who’ve purchased it already.

Bret: Barring some miraculous season turn around, how should the Jays handle Josh Donaldson? Look to trade him at the deadline? The offseason? Try to extend him? Give it a go next year and risk losing him in free agency?
Keith Law: I think he’s their best trade piece, and they should be ready and willing to do that this summer. Their hole is bigger than the Mets’, given the division in which they play and their rotation woes.

tim: any buzz on what the Dodgers might do? Prep bat?
Keith Law: I’ve heard they like Bubba Thompson a lot, but I don’t think they are focusing on prep bats as a class – it’ll be BPA.

Slint: Your thoughts on Giolito’s continued struggles? I know you were (are) a big fan of him
Keith Law: Still am. White Sox continue to try to unravel the delivery changes the Nats made. I don’t know about yesterday but I know two starts ago his velo was mid-90s again. Just be patient.

Jonah: Thoughts on Kevin Kramer? Future starter?
Keith Law: Future utility guy.

Bosa: What kind of ceiling do you see with Jordan Hicks?
Keith Law: Potential #1-#2 starter.

RSO: How many homers does Aaron Judge end up with by season’s end?
Keith Law: I’ll say 41.

Chris: Are you a buyer that future WAR for the Cubs has Bryant and Russell as 1-2?
Keith Law: You’ve asked this twice but I don’t understand the question.

Bob: If for some reason Greene and McKay are gone – would you go with Beck at 3, what I have read, high upside – and use the savings to get a guy at top of second
Keith Law: Nope. Would take Wright there. Not sold that there will be enough quality prep prospects at the top of the second to justify taking a lesser player at pick 3 (or 4 or 5).

Ron: Hi Keith-Maybe Buxton is starting to find it a little more at the plate? Walking more and not hacking so much at stuff off of the plate. Man, is he fun to watch in the field and running the bases. The power is legit, if he gets it together, watch out.
Keith Law: As with Giolito … patience.

Greg: If you were GM of the Jays, do you wait another month (SMS) or do you start to make some changes (and which ones)?
Keith Law: Nothing you can do now. It’s not like we see an active trade market in May every year. You get ready, make sure you’re scouting the right orgs, and signal to other teams that you’re willing to deal when the time is right.

Dan: Can plate discipline be taught?
Keith Law: Not really. It can be improved, but whether that’s by teaching or by player initiative, no one really knows. We’ve seen lots of players supposedly “taught” plate discipline who couldn’t learn or hold on to the gains.

Joe: Can the Royals get a top prospect for Hosmer?
Keith Law: I don’t see it.

Taylor: What are the chances of Taylor Hearn remaining a starter?
Keith Law: Close to zero.

Concerned Friend: Keith, my buddy is a huge Red Sox fan & even bigger Keith Law fan. He’s been telling me that David Price’s injury would be worth 10 wins (!) to the Red Sox. Please help me talk some sense into him.
Keith Law: Maybe he’s arguing that Price will be replaced by a pitcher who’s three wins below replacement level.

The Sequel: Smart Cooking possible sequel to Smart Baseball?
Keith Law: I think that’s basically The Food Lab.

Mike: Going back to last season, Austin Meadows is hitting about .200 in 60 or so games at AAA. Any concern?
Keith Law: Zero concern. He’s really young for the level and didn’t have a ton of experience before reaching AAA. Also, 60 games isn’t much of a sample anyway.

Samuel: Which braves pitching prospect has the best chance to be a true number one?
Keith Law: Probably getting ahead of myself but I wonder if Ian Anderson will be that guy.

Tomas: Loved The Fifth Season – thanks for the recommendation. Just bought the sequel – have you read it?
Keith Law: Not yet. Will probably pick it up this summer.

Bob: Did you by chance, read the latest SI cover story on Hunter Greene by Lee Jenkins? Nice young man – good for him. Doing more OFF the field than on it.
Keith Law: I thought the piece was … um … excessively favorable to its subject.

Tom: I know I can’t trust the Vegas numbers, but are Rosario and Smith ready? Mets need an infusion of offensive talent immediately.
Keith Law: Your instincts on the numbers are right, but I think there’s a good case to be made that even a not-ready Rosario is better than the Mets’ current 3b or SS options.

Wave Riders: Kyle Freeland’s command is an obvious issue, but do you feel he has the stuff to stay up? Is he even ready to stay up for the whole season?
Keith Law: Stuff yes, but hasn’t really had any durability – he had medical questions in the draft, keeps getting hurt in pro ball.

John: Tyler Mahle has some pretty impressive numbers in AA this year and some reports have had him touching 99. What kind of upside is there?
Keith Law: I don’t buy him touching 99 but he just missed my top 100 and I think he’s a definite starter, maybe a solid 3. When I asked around about him last winter I got a lot of teams saying he was a reliever, but I disagree with that.

Jimmy: Without specific numbers is the book selling better or worse then you thought it would. Great read by the way!
Keith Law: HarperCollins says better. I have no real means for comparison – I didn’t have any idea how many copies it would sell.

Josh Nelson: I noticed you don’t have Jordon Adell in your Top 50 Draft prospects. Any reason why?
Keith Law: Because he was struggling horribly to make any contact earlier in the season, and was throwing like he was hurt – one scout said “he has a 30 arm right now.” I did hear just yesterday that he’s been hitting better, and teams are rushing back in to get new looks, but there were always hit tool questions with him and I don’t think a couple of good weeks would erase that.

Rob from Beloit: Are we impressed with Jake Gatewood yet? When can I be impressed?
Keith Law: You can be impressed.

RSO: Why did most scouts not have an 80 grade on Aaron Judge’s power tool when he was a prospect?
Keith Law: You’ve talked to all scouts so you can say most didn’t have that? Wow. Even I haven’t talked to that many.

Trav: Quick appeal to your readers for last second calls to reps offices. Even if this comically villainous bill passes, they need to hear it from their constituents.
Keith Law: Agreed. Also, bear in mind the GOP wanted the vote today before any Reps go home tomorrow and face the angry public.

Joe: Keith, do you see Kevin Smith and Marty Costes of Maryland being drafted somewhere in the first few rounds this year?
Keith Law: Neither will be on my top 100. They could be drafted there, but I would bet against it.

Oilver: What do yo make of Jordan Montgomery? Seems like you have been down on him in the past .
Keith Law: Down compared to what you wanted me to say? I never really understand that sort of comment. He’s working with pretty ordinary stuff and his fastball gets hit. I don’t think he’s going to be a long-term starter.

Brett: Can Brandon Woodruff becoming a legit MLB starter?
Keith Law: Yes, I think this year.

Tracy: Keith, I enjoyed your book and it certainly enlightened me on the way to look at the game beyond simple (and outdated) metrics. It also opened my eyes to the sweeping mobilization organizations took to grasp and parse this advanced data while the social arena has been very slow to adapt and, in many corners, stubbornly cling to such outlandish horse-and-buggy rhetoric (The Will to Win!). Unfortunately, I think the only way we ever get up to speed is to let the old guard fade away. It reminds me of Max Planck’s claim that might be fitting here: “Science advances one funeral at a time.”
Keith Law: Planck’s quote is particularly apposite to Hall of Fame voting.

Henry: Devers is tearing it up. What kind of numbers do you expect from him in the majors?
Keith Law: Across the board production – high average, OBP, slugging, 25-30 homer type with everything else. I’ve had him top 10 in baseball two winters running.

Charles: Rhys Hoskins keeps hitting after Reading….is it real?
Keith Law: Yeah. I’m buying it. I wrote about him when he was in low-A that he reminded me of Goldschmidt (I think I said he might be “Goldschmidt Lite”) and I’d probably stick to that now. Nothing super flashy, but quiet approach, good eye, more power than you’d think because the swing works really well. But to be completely candid I was concerned the Reading line was a little inflated too. (At least he hit on the road last year, unlike Cozens.)

Chandler: How much longer until Luis Urias gets on a top 100 list? The youngest player in the Texas League and a .347/439/.551 slash line isn’t enough?
Keith Law: Have you ever seen him play? Or even seen him walk around?

Samuel: I remember in a previous Klawchat you discussed Alex Jackson and how he looked awful at the plate. Any news on that?
Keith Law: Tommy Rancel, who does some fantasy writing for us, just saw him the other day and sent me a little video – it looked like Jackson’s getting that lead elbow down so he’s not pulling off everything. That’s good. Three walks in 100+ PA … that’s bad.

Tyler: Do you do any player rankings? You talk a lot how to accurately value players but it seems most of your work is with prospects. I think giving a top 5/10 at each position with a brief explanation would be very interesting.
Keith Law: I will do a top 25 MLB players under 25 in a few weeks. I don’t rank MLB players overall and frankly don’t find that interesting enough to write.

Patty O’Furniture: Should the Braves go after Mackenzie Gore if he’s still there at 5?
Keith Law: That’s about right.

Brett: Noticed you have Calvin Mitchell as a 1B. Why can’t he handle a corner OF spot?
Keith Law: I have yet to find a single scout who thinks he’s anything but a 1b in pro ball.

Johnny O: Is the ability to make adjustments a skill? You never got off the bandwagon because he has that ability, but what exactly is it? Something mental? Do you need elite athleticism to have 80 Adjustment Tool (ok i made that up).
Keith Law: I think the ability to make adjustments is a combination of mental acumen, athleticism and/or flexibility, and confidence. It’s hard to spot unless you either 1) see a player a lot or 2) get some very fortunate looks.

Johnny : When will your first mock go up?
Keith Law: I think two weeks.

Chris: How do you see the Diamondbacks closer situation playing out? Could Archie Bradley work there?
Keith Law: I’m hoping they leave Archie in relief all year and let him have more success rather than running him into the rotation to replace Miller.

Ron: When Sano connects, things go boom. Will have to live with the strikeouts, but it isn’t that he doesn’t have a good eye, just seems to swing through some good pitches. 35-40 HRS, 260/375/550 seem out of line for the next few years? Thanks
Keith Law: That’s probably a little high on the AVG component but the rest seems reasonable. Dude’s a star.

Chris: I know it’s a sss for this year, but perhaps not over the last 12 months or so. And Jake Arrieta demanding so many years on a new deal last year at this time and the Cubs opting to forgo talks should be a cautionary tale against such long-term deals for 30yo+ power-armed pitchers, no? Yet presumably some team will still venture down the rabbit hole.
Keith Law: I think we’re past SSS for Arrieta not looking like the Cy version. He’s lost something. Maybe 2015 was just the outlier.

Jeremy: Yanks off to a hot start and assuming they maintain this level of play, I’d rather them stay put and keep their prospects, rather than go out and trade for a “proven” starter, like Quintana. Obviously it depends on what’d it’d cost to give up, but what would be your philosophy if you were running the team?
Keith Law: If I could get a single high-impact, multi-year guy like Quintana, I would be willing to part with prospects. I wouldn’t even entertain any rentals if I had to trade even a top 20 prospect from my own system.

Andrew: Hey Keith, I love these chats as I have them marked in my phone for every Thursday. I have a question about public speaking. As a guy that has battled anxiety, how do you public speak and is it something you were always able to do? If not, what did you do to combat the fear/anxiety?
Keith Law: I’m much better speaking to a crowd than walking into a party of strangers. Go figure.

Jett: Thoughts on Eduardo Rodriguez’s start? Is he a #2 this year in that division?
Keith Law: Could be. Is not a #2 right now. Gotta stop walking guys, and there are still outings where the SL is just a fringe offering.

Danny: Keith, I know its only been 3 weeks in the minor league season but Jorge Mateo, statistically, has been awful for about a year now- has the quality of his contact changed from last year?
Keith Law: He’s never made quality contact. That was always an issue.

Chris: Are you happier if 1M people buy the Kindle version or the hardcover – environment aside?
Keith Law: One million people? I’d be too happy to worry about how you bought it.

Clement Davies: Is there anything in the collective bargaining agreement to prohibit a team such as the Phillies from frontloading a contract to a Harper or Machado in the first few seasons of a deal when they will likely have relatively low payroll otherwise? Thank You.
Keith Law: Nothing in CBA but agents tend to dislike such deals. Historically, they would screw with post-contract arb offers, which would be based on the final year’s salary rather than the AAV.

Oren: It’s obviously early, but are there any particularly strong draft team/player connections you’re hearing?
Keith Law: If I had to do a mock today, I’d go McKay, Greene, Lewis, Wright, Gore 1-5. Have heard Baz a lot to Phils at 8. I think the Padres would try almost anything to get Greene to them, but right now i don’t think he gets by two teams.

Tristan Beck: Do I have a deal with a team or am I coming back to school as an old junior?
Keith Law: Heard the former rumor too, but I don’t really know either way. Sometimes that’s true but we don’t know until after the draft.

Larry: I’ve read that Royce Lewis is having a down spring. Any truth to it and where could he fall to?
Keith Law: He hasn’t performed that well, but he’s probably still going top 10, likely top 5. I saw him Tuesday night – smoked the first pitch he saw, ran well, body is good, bat speed is real. It’s a little weird to say but his body language wasn’t very good – I should have liked what I was seeing more than I did, and I think the body language is the reason I didn’t.

Tom: Not a question, just a comment. I finished Smart Baseball and gave it to a co-worker who still thinks batting average and RBI matter. He’s just started reading but so far he’s enjoying it. I’d say that’s mission accomplished, Keith.
Keith Law: Excellent! Thanks for spreading the gospel.

Chris: Is B. Rooker a real prospect or just a corner guy with some power? He seems like someone who could make his way to the sandwich round maybe even higher if he keep this up. What do you think about him?
Keith Law: I’m told he’s a DH with power, and while he might go that high the vast majority of people I’ve asked have him nowhere near there – nobody told me he belonged on my top 50, for example. He’s 22.5 and most of the pitchers he’s facing are younger than he is, some as much as 3+ years younger.

Drew: Bought the book for my dad who loves baseball and can’t wait to talk about it with him.
Keith Law: Thanks!

Chris: Have you heard the new(er) War on Drugs single they just released for Record Store Day and, if so, are you encouraged for their follow-up to Lost in a Dream?
Keith Law: It came on the radio the other day when I was in the car. I went inside, had a four-course meal, and when I came out it was just finishing.

Johnny : thoughts on Buehler’s start to the year? Stuff sounds ridiculous
Keith Law: I saw him in March and wrote about the ridiculous stuff.

Michael Conforto: Man, if only the Mets could find a spot for me huh 😉
Keith Law: The excuses they made last year (and some Met fans still make for the team) are so much more embarrassing now. They wasted a year of his career dicking around with inferior options.

RSO: Would you prefer a prospect who is guaranteed to be a league average regular but nothing more, or one who has the potential to be a superstar but a high chance of being a bust?
Keith Law: Depends on what I’m giving up to get such a player. For example, if I’m drafting in the top 5, I want to roll the dice on the superstar prospect.

Chris Williams: Ever think of putting together a list for future scouting directors? Who are some of the top national scouts in the industry?
Keith Law: No. That’s not something that would attract much of an audience and it’s a good way to burn some of my relationships.

Taylor C: Do you still see Severino as a future reliever?
Keith Law: Yes.

Chris J: Keith, you can’t tell me that the Red Sox ownership or at least front office wasn’t already aware that fans in Fenway had a propensity for this kind of racist behavior. They obviously just didn’t care enough until it became a big PR issue.
Keith Law: You can’t exactly stop it before it happens. If a fan screams something racist at a game, you throw him out. I don’t know what more they could do.

Drew: Ryan Zimmerman. Obviously his current pace isn’t sustainable, but given how hard he has hit the ball the last year and change, do you see him having a good year simply by working to change his launch angle? He seems like a very interesting case study for exit velocity and launch angle given how terrible he was last year. Thanks Keith!
Keith Law: Also health. He might be fully healthy for the first time in several years. And maybe being healthy means better exit velocity (he can swing hard again) and a more consistent launch angle (his swing isn’t restricted by shoulder pain)?

Johnny O: Klaw thanks for the chats as always.
You are pretty active on Twitter but also seem to get a lot done in all aspects of life. Do you just glance at Twitter throughout the day or allot specific time to it and ignore most of the day?
Keith Law: I just glance here and there. It’s always open in a tab on my desktop, and I’ll scan it a bunch every day to stay up to speed on news.

Ron k: Favorite baseball movie?
Keith Law: If you consider it a baseball movie, Everybody Wants Some!! If not, Sugar might do the best job of getting the baseball right and telling a good story.

Sean: As I notice that Werth is hitting second today and Murphy fifth, I have to wonder how many wins can a team expect to gain from perfect lineup construction?
Keith Law: All the research I’ve seen says maybe one win as measured by RAR/WAR (Tom Tango did a lot on this in the public space). But I have a feeling that you could get more as measured via WPA if you’re getting the right guys up in the 9th inning more often – which is only partly in your control.

Mose Allison Brie Larson: Just wanted to say a sincere thanks to you for speaking about your issues with anxiety. As a father of two daughters (13 and 10) this Obamacare repeal has me terrified that the psych care they’ve needed will no longer be covered because of their “pre-existing condition”.
Keith Law: You’re welcome, and yes, I worry about that too, just in general. We are terrible at treating mental illness, and there’s a massive cost to society as a result.

Danny: Your Hicks breakout pick turned out true a year late- assuming the Yankees can’t trade Ellsbury, who do you like more for LF/CF by the end of this year- Hicks or Frazier?
Keith Law: I have a habit of being a year early on some of those picks. I’d play Hicks every day and give Frazier the year in AAA. Clint’s plenty young for that and I think facing some ex-MLB pitchers will help him work on cutting down on the swing and miss.

J.O.: In watching my son’s little league team – and maybe I’m overthinking this – but the umpires are instructed to call pitches two balls outside and one ball inside a strike (or else it would just be a walk fest). I understand for the LL game, but (a) are we teaching bad plate discipline and (b) why not just NOT have the kids pitch until like 12 or 13 since they probably can screw up their arms anyway?
Keith Law: I think if umps didn’t call those pitches strikes you’d have pitchers hitting their pitch limits in the second inning. It’s a problem without an easy solution.

Brett: Michael Mercado from San Diego has had a strong season. Have you heard anything on him?
Keith Law: Yes, heard maybe second round but also maybe not signable there.

Phil: Shipley is coming up to start for the Dbacks…is he effectively a non-prospect at this point, or is there still some potential he could develop into a mid-rotation guy?
Keith Law: Depends on his velocity. Somehow he lost a few mph off his fastball, as did several other AZ prospects the last two years. Bradley got his back in the bullpen. Let’s see where Shipley is now.

Robert: I saw someone recently say they thought there was a good chance Dane Dunning might be the jewel of the Adam Eaton trade, rather than Lucas Giolito. Is this opinion putting too much emphasis on early season results, while ignoring age for level?
Keith Law: That’s not crazy – Dunning was a legit first round talent last spring.

Chris Williams: Thoughts?
Keith Law: Sorry, I don’t have those. They’re going to be illegal under this fall’s 2017 Alien & Sedition Acts.

Matt: Do you see Carl Edwards Jr as future starter?
Keith Law: No, too small, doesn’t have the third pitch.

Mike: Your thoughts on the Nats sending Joe Ross down (apparently to work on change-up) and using Jacob Turner in the rotation?
Keith Law: I’m OK with that. Surprised Ross’ changeup has been a problem; it was his best offspeed pitch in HS.

AJ: I’m excited about Christian Arroyo. Seems like he’s holding his own in the big leagues. Would you say the lack of walks is a concern? What are realistic expectations for him? What’s his ceiling?
Keith Law: Doesn’t walk, has no power (or projection for it), can’t play SS. Think he needed more time in AAA.

Steve: keep hearing Arkansas Soph P Blaine Knight’s name as an early round guy. Familiar with him, Keith?
Keith Law: He was on my top 50 last week.

Dave: What’s your read on JP Crawford? Rough month but up in August?
Keith Law: Worse than a rough month. He’s too talented to perform this badly.
Keith Law: OK, I have to run to a radio hit in studio out here in LA, and then do a few things this afternoon before seeing Griffin Canning this evening at USC. Thank you all for all of your questions and for all the kind words about Smart Baseball!

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→ May 4, 2017
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Toni Erdmann.

My first book, Smart Baseball, is out now!

The German film Toni Erdmann (amazon • iTunes) was critically acclaimed all over Europe and here when it first appeared last year, winning the German equivalent of the Oscar for Best Picture and earning a nomination here for Best Foreign Language Film (which it lost to The Salesman). The 165-minute movie has been widely described as a comedy, but it is anything but. It is a truly unpleasant movie to watch, an extended, pointless exercise in misanthropy and the humiliation of its characters.

Winifred is a divorced and apparently retired German man, probably around 70, who appears to be unable to stop himself from playing juvenile pranks on people, most of which involve the use of a set of false teeth. His daughter, Ines, is an ambitious, hard-working management consultant who is working in Bucharest on a difficult project involving a Romanian oil company. Winifred tries to connect with her for some quality time, showing up in Bucharest unannounced for a weekend, but the effort fails as she prioritizes work over her father. As a result, he decides to play a huge prank, posing as Toni Erdmann, a life coach to the oil company’s CEO, with an utterly ridiculous shaggy wig of black hair and those same false teeth. Every plot description says he’s doing this to spend time near his daughter, but I think he does it because he’s a giant asshole who doesn’t care what damage he does to anyone else as long as he gets a laugh.

I said as long as he gets a laugh, because we don’t. This movie isn’t funny, and I don’t think the script was trying to be funny most of the time. I suppose the brunch scene at the end may have been intended as humor, but it is so unrealistic that it doesn’t even get the cringe comic effect of the excruciatingly awkward. If Toni Erdmann had some charisma – say, as a platitude-spouting new age thinker, or a parody of the consultant who borrows your watch to tell you the time – he could have been hilarious. Instead, he’s just constantly in the way, and the script is totally unable to achieve the comic effect of the bumbler or the walking satire.

It doesn’t help that neither Winifred (outside of Toni) nor Ines is a particularly sympathetic character. We’re almost forced to believe that Winifred misses his daughter, but without any context for their past relationship, it’s hard to imagine why she’d suddenly want to be closer to him when he’s still unapproachable. Ines’ character is written as the woman who has to work twice as hard as the men around her to get the same respect, and has the awful habit of deferring to men in meetings even when they’ve disagreed with her or even undercut her points, but the script gives us nothing to hang on to in support of her character – no evidence of inner strength, or even something to explain her sheer competence, some reason to root for her against the dimwits and chauvinists around her.

(I also felt that the look of Ines, played by Sandra Hüller, didn’t work. Here’s a character who, again, we’re supposed to accept as a strong, hard-working, sharp woman in a male-dominated workplace. Yet she’s almost sickly looking at times – her hair, makeup, even her clothing all work against the character, and Hüller being so pale unfortunately plays into it as well. It was a chance to reveal something more about Ines by exaggerating her physical appearance. Perhaps this is a woman unconcerned with her appearance, but that would contradict a scene near the end where she seems overly concerned with it instead.)

So much of this movie just does not work on screen, in ways it’s hard to fathom would have worked on the page. What begins as an unconvincing sex scene between Ines and the coworker she’s sleeping with turns into an utterly gross non-joke, as if she’s playing a bizarre prank on her partner (who may have had it coming – but I liked almost no one in this movie anyway). Somehow Ines and Winifred end up at a Romanian family’s Easter dinner, where Winifred volunteers Ines to sing a song, which she does, and then runs off, after which the whole event is simply forgotten by all participants. At one point, a few of the characters, including Ines, do lines of coke, which seems completely out of character for her given everything that came before. And the brunch scene … well, without spoiling it, I’ll just say the whole thing was so preposterous I couldn’t buy into any aspect of it.

I tend to think that English-language remakes of foreign films always lose something from the original. But with word coming that there’s an American version of Toni Erdmann in the works starring Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig, I wonder if it could be any worse than the German film; if nothing else, it will at least be shorter, as there’s no way they could expect American audiences to endure nearly three hours of this. And Wiig is truly too funny for the original script. I can only hope they rework it from scratch and see if there’s actually something good to be found in this premise.

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→ May 2, 2017
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Music update, April 2017.

I wrote a book, Smart Baseball. You should buy it.

This month’s playlist has 24 songs, and started out over 30 before I started cutting back; I have usually tried to keep them under 20 songs or under 90 minutes but I reached a point where I didn’t have anything left I felt good about removing. A few songs are here because of who’s singing, but most are here just because they’re good songs (Brent … I need to stop using that line). If the embedded widget below doesn’t work you can access the Spotify playlist here.

Royal Blood – Lights Out. This British duo had my #1 song of 2014 with “Out of the Black,” and this new single from their upcoming sophomore album does not disappoint – it’s heavy, dark, and menacing, just like their biggest hit.

DJ Shadow, Nas – Systematic. Nas sounds as good as ever here on this track from the soundtrack to the HBO series Silicon Valley. I particularly like the part where Nas gives us a recipe, complete with directions on how long to cook the cranberries.

The Afghan Whigs – Demon in Profile. Afghan Whigs’ comeback album in 2014? didn’t do as much for me as their upcoming record In Spades, which I heard early thanks to the band’s publicist. Gregg Dulli still sounds great for 52 (!) and the album brings a strong mix of hard rockers and more midtempo tracks like this one.

Ride – All I Want. Another big comeback, as Ride’s first new album in 21 years, Weather Diaries, comes out on June 16th. I believe this is the third single from the new album and they all sound like classic Ride, who were among the most important bands in the first shoegaze era.

Anteros – Cherry Drop. This London quartet sound straight out of the 1979 London new wave/post-punk scene; you can hear Debbie Harry’s influence in the vocals.

Tigers Jaw – June. This punk-pop act from Scranton has apparently had some drama in the last few years over whether they’d actually broken up. This single from their album spin, due out May 19th, marries sweet, high-register vocals with distorted guitar work that sounds like math-rock acts (such as Polvo) for a power-pop result.

The Night Game – The Outfield. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, or some trick of the mind, but this song reminds me strongly of the band The Outfield, both in the style of music and lead singer’s voice. Anyway, this is a strong pop track with background vocals from Gotye. And I’m not the only one to notice the similarity to the band behind perennial walkup song “Your Love.”

The Aces – Physical. The Aces, an all-girl quartet from Utah who made my top 100 last year with their single “Stuck,” return with their second release, “Physical,” another solid pop song that just doesn’t quite have the same hook as their first track.

Splashh – Closer. This Australian indie-rock act’s second album, Waiting a Lifetime, came out on April 14th, more evidence of that country’s tremendous music scene right now, producing great rock and electronic music. The production has a real shoegaze quality, with the vocals mixed somewhat towards the back (but not incomprehensible like on My Bloody Valentine’s work).

WATERS – Molly Is A Babe. Van Pierzalowski’s main band will release its new album, Something More, on May 19th, with this track the second single and “Stand By You,” which just appeared in the last few days, the third. Good luck getting this song’s whining guitar lick out of your head any time soon.

Panama – Hope For Something. Here’s another Aussie act, one I first found with their single “Always,” which I put at #51 on my 2013 year-end list. “Hope for Something” is more layered, with ornate instrumentation and a slower build to the hook, but it’s still a big one.

Feist – Century (feat. Jarvis Cocker). I have mixed feelings on this song, but Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker makes an appearance, so here you go.

Joseph of Mercury – Find You Inside. This was the first song I’d heard by Joseph of Mercury, a Toronto-based singer-songwriter who debuted in 2015 with the song “Lips.” This song, his second single this year, combines a less-poppy sort of ’80s new wave with brooding baritone vocals, enunciated like Morrissey does. The result feels soulful without any evident R&B influences.

Sundara Karma – She Said. This may not be new to Sirius XM listeners, as Alt Nation has it in heavy rotation because Sundara Karma is on some XM-sponsored tour.

Black Asteroid – Howl (feat. Zola Jesus). I’m not a big Zola Jesus fan – her incredibly pretentious stage name doesn’t help matters – but her voice’s hollow quality and the stark production here perfectly match the sci-fi horror feel of the electronic music.

Foster The People – S.H.C. Foster the People just put out a three-song teaser EP ahead of their third album, which they’re promising for June or July. “S.H.C.” is the most recognizably FTP of the three songs, with a ’70s guitar riff and vague Latin influences in the percussion.

Portugal. The Man – Number One (feat. Richie Havens & Son Little). Their first single from their upcoming album, “Feel It Still,” might be my favorite song of 2017 so far. This song, though … I don’t even know what I think of it and I’ve listened to it at least a half a dozen times. It’s way out there even for P.TM, with samples from the late folk singer Richie Havens’ song “Freedom” and a collaboration from singer Son Little. The new album, Woodstock, is out June 16th, and they have my full attention.

Pond – Paint Me Silver. Spacey psychedelic rock from Australia. Recommended if you like Tame Impala. Recommended even if you think Tame Impala could stand to keep their songs under four minutes.

Sylvan Esso – The Glow. I am truly not a fan of Sylvan Esso, neither their music nor Amelia Meath’s overly precious vocal style, so it says something about this track that I included it anyway. Saying I think it’s the best thing they’ve done doesn’t tell you much, but there’s a great chorus here if you can get past the track’s opening sound of a digital file skipping.

Miami Horror – Sign of the Times. This Aussie trio has a little bit of a Foster the People vibe, mixing electronic and funk, but more decidedly out of the mainstream, especially with the spoken-word section towards the end of the track. Their latest EP, The Shapes, just came out last week.

Sepultura – Iceberg Dances. I understand people have strong feelings on post-Max Sepultura, but their newest album, Machine Messiah, features some progressive and technically impressive fretwork, most notable for me on this instrumental track.

SikTh – Vivid. I’ve read in a few places how important or influential SikTh have been since their 2003 debut album, but I find it hard to believe given how little I’ve come across their music or how infrequently they’ve recorded anything. Their forthcoming The Future in Whose Eyes? will be just their third album in fifteen years. This frenetic track seems to veer in style from progressive death metal to aggro groove metal and back again.

DragonForce – Judgement Day. DragonForce cracks me up, although I don’t know that this is intended to be funny. They’re just such an unrepetant throwback to the earliest days of thrash, where soaring vocals reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson were common, and fantasy and mythology themes were king. If you remember vintage Helloween with Kai Hansen, that gives you some idea of what DragonForce is about, maybe with a few shakes of Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force.

Memoriam – Memoriam. This is some heavy, sludgy, old-school death metal, with the band and song a tribute to a deceased member of the seminal ’90s British death metal band Bolt Thrower.

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→ April 30, 2017
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Stick to baseball, 4/30/17.

My book is out! You can find Smart Baseball absolutely everywhere – online, in bookstores, and even in some libraries. HarperCollins has links to various online vendors, but if you prefer to walk into a bookstore like it’s 1947 and buy the book directly, well, I like to do that too. I know thousands of you have already bought it, so my thanks to all of you.

I went to MLB Network on Friday and appeared on MLB Now, the show hosted by my friend and former ESPN colleague Brian Kenny. You can watch our discussion of the book. I talked to SI’s Richard Deitsch about baseball on TV and about not sticking to sports on social media. I also appeared on my good friend Will Leitch’s podcast to talk about the book and mock his hatred of Fletch.

I also discussed the book on over 50 radio shows this week; highlights included a long chat with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate, talking to Connell McShane on the Don Imus show, appearing on the Felske Files podcast, appearing on the Fantasy Focus Baseball podcast (with Karabell! But no bias cat), talking to WBAL’s Brett Hollander, and talking to WABC’s Sid Rosenberg.

I do have some upcoming appearances as well: May 8th at Pitch Talks Philadelphia, May 16th at The Georgia Center for the Book (in Decatur), and May 18th at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis. There are further readings/events scheduled in Toronto, Miami, and Brooklyn for June and July.

My other writing from the past week included ranking the top 50 prospects for this year’s draft for ESPN Insiders, a list I’ll eventually expand to 100. It wasn’t easy getting to 50, though. For Paste I ran through the best new boardgames of 2017, including a few titles from the tail end of last year.

OK, finally, let’s get to some links:

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→ April 30, 2017
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Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.

My first book, Smart Baseball, is out now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. You can find links to order it here or get it at any local bookstore.

Kate Wilhelm won the Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Novel in 1977 for her book Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, which Locus called – I kid you not – the best book about cloning, which I guess is a subgenre I just missed over the years. It’s also much more than just a book about cloning; like the best genre fiction, it uses its setting as a platform to tell a bigger story, in this case one about the importance of individuality in a society that might overvalue the collective good.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang starts with the fall of civilization; environmental degradation leads to worldwide food shortages and global pandemics. One family in the Shenandoah Valley starts planning for the apocalypse by building a research facility and eventually a hospital on their rural property and beginning a cloning program to combat declining fertility. Over the course of the novel, which jumps forward a few years at multiple points, the clones take over the kibbutz and start building their mini-society in a very different way than their ancestors would have, creating something akin to true communism as described by Marx in the end of Das Kapital. That attempt runs into massive practical and cultural problems, and Mark, the hero of the last half of the book, becomes the reluctant individual who tries to topple the status quo.

I don’t know what Wilhelm’s political views were, but I found it hard to see this as anything but a criticism of communism and its advocacy of a command (centrally planned) economy. The clones aren’t just similar; they experience a psychic bond to each other, so when one is injured, his/her clone siblings feel it, but so they’re also unable to function apart from their broods. Mark is raised outside of the commune for several years by his mother, Molly, who was part of a group that attempted to explore the ruins of nearby Washington, D.C., the members of which were all permanently altered by the traumatic experience of their separation. That leaves Mark the one true individual in the colony, not just able to function on his own, but able to think critically and creatively in ways that the clones cannot. At first, he acts out the way that bright kids do, playing pranks on the clones who can’t think their way out of trouble, but eventually realizes (or decides) that he’s the only person who can save both the colony and what remains of humanity.

And that’s really what this is – a savior story, set against the backdrop of a collective society that doesn’t just deny the individuality of its members, it breeds all individuality out of its members, selecting clones based on physical or mental characteristics needed to maintain the colony. (There’s an anti-eugenics theme in here as well, although it’s not as well-developed.) In a novel with few complete characters – that’s a feature of a cloning story, not a bug – Mark is the best, and comes across as the reluctant hero, beset by internal demons that resulted from mistreatment by the very society that he’s trying to save. I haven’t read the works of Ayn Rand beyond a few snippets, but this seems to mirror the anti-communist, individualist themes of her objectivist philosophy, just with better writing.

Next up: Kelly Link’s Pulitzer-nominated short story collection Get in Trouble.

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→ April 23, 2017
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Spin.

Smart Baseball is out on Tuesday! You can still preorder it here.

Robert Charles Wilson’s ambitious novel Spin, winner of the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel, combines some hard science fiction with some highly speculative work in both cosmology and nanotechnology as it follows three characters after the cataclysmic event that gives the book its title. It’s a bold novel of ideas that struggles a little in its midsection but comes through with a rousing, clever finish that also gives a bleak story a hopeful if uncertain resolution.

The Spin of the title is the name humanity gives a temporal bubble that an unknown, external entity (later dubbed the “Hypotheticals”) has placed around the Earth, causing time inside the bubble to move more slowly than it does outside. Where one year passes on Earth inside the Spin, a hundred million years pass outside of it, which means that after thirty to fifty years inside the Spin, the region of the solar system where the Earth exists would become uninhabitable as the Sun begins the expansion that precedes its death.

The story itself starts with twelve-year-old Tyler Dupree and his two friends, Diane and Jason Lawton, from the night the Spin first appears, obscuring the stars and knocking out satellite communications worldwide. Jason is the scientific genius of the trio; Diane, his sensitive twin sister who turns to religion; and Tyler, the narrator and balancing figure, a bit of a Nick Newland for his bland presence in the story, whose love for Diane is unrequited and whose friendship with Jason feels professional even before, later in life, he becomes Jason’s personal physician.

The narrative jumps around in time, with vignettes from a distant future where Tyler is going through a process we later learn is a massive physical adjustment to a sort of drug regimen brought to earth by a human who has returned to Earth from Mars. It’s one of Wilson’s most clever gambits in the book – Jason and others at his father’s think tank/quasi-governmental organization Perihelion decide to create life on Mars by terraforming and seeding it from afar and then sending people. This takes advantage of the time discrepancy, so the hundreds of millions of years required by evolution take just a few years of Earth time. And it turns out that Life on Mars advances even beyond what life on earth has, with a life-extension treatment that upends the lives of the few on Earth who try it. His return to Earth sparks a second, even more extensive space program that holds the key to humanity surviving the imminent death of its home planet and solar system.

Spin is saved from itself by Tyler and the twins, as the story, while entertaining for its speculative aspects, could not support a 450-page novel by itself. They’re only moderately well-developed, but are at least developed enough to feel real (unlike the twins’ parents, who are straight out of central casting – the hard-driving, materialistic, unloving father, and his miserable alcoholic wife); the twins have a yin/yang dichotomy between them, the hardcore rationalist against the emotion-driven sentimentalist, but Wilson has them behave in ways that transcend two-dimensional stereotypes. Jason’s tortured relationship with his father could make up its own book, and felt more authentic than Tyler’s cold pining for Diane over years when he doesn’t see or hear from her.

The speculative science involved in the second space effort and the resolution of the Spin story reminded me a bit of Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds, a non-fiction science book that delves into the idea of the multiverse and whether, for example, wormholes might exist or someone (or something) might travel through a black hole into another universe. In the science world, this might be called “bunkrapt,” but it is fantastic fodder for hard science fiction, and gives Wilson an improbable but internally consistent resolution to the story. There was a point around 2/3 of the way through Spin where I felt like the narrative had slowed down and I was probably going to end up giving it a negative review, but the truly clever endings to the various plotlines make the book a success.

Next up: Another Hugo winner, Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.

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→ April 22, 2017
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Stick to baseball, 4/22/17.

Smart Baseball comes out on Tuesday, so this is the last stick to baseball post before its official release. If you haven’t preordered yet, you can still do so here, or by, you know, walking into a bookstore and asking them to preorder it for you.

The media push for Smart Baseball has begun, with my hourlong chat with Joe Posnanski on his podcast, including talk about the book, boardgames, and how Mike Schur is dead wrong about pies. The Baltimore County Public Library interviewed me about the book and asked about time management. I also answered some questions in an interview for AM New York.

I currently have signings/appearances scheduled for Philadelphia (May 8th), Atlanta (May 16th), Minneapolis (May 18th), Toronto (June 26th), and Miami (July 8th). There are a few more in the works, including a likely signing at GenCon in Indianapolis, but if you don’t see your city on there, contact your local bookstore and ask them to contact HarperCollins. It’ll depend on my travel schedule, of course, but I do have time for a few more of these.

I wrote one draft blog post this week on Vandy’s Kyle Wright and Jeren Kendall, with notes on some Florida players as well. For Paste, I reviewed the epic boardgame The Colonists, which is actually a good game but punishingly intricate.

As always, you can get even more Klaw by signing up for my email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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→ April 19, 2017
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Grocery.

If you’re here, you almost certainly know I’m a fan of Michael Ruhlman’s work, whether it’s his narrative non-fiction books like The Making of a Chef or his indispensable cookbooks like Ruhlman’s Twenty, Ratio, or Egg. He’s also become a potent voice in the drive to get American consumers, who know more about food than ever before but seem to cook it less for themselves, to reconnect with the sources of their food for the good of our health and our planet. He brings those concerns to his non-fiction work for the first time in his newest book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, a work that simultaneously a paean to the American grocery store and a lament over the importance that processed foods play in our diet (and, perhaps, many of our first-world health problems).

Ruhlman does this by revisiting a regional grocery chain from his youth, Heinen’s, which has survived as an independent business when national chains have been snapped up by multinationals. Heinen’s is still run by the grandchildren of its founder, but they take a progressive view of the business and have shown agility larger chains haven’t by being quick to offer organic produce, prepared foods, and craft beers to consumers. The overarching structure of Grocery begins with a brief history of the grocery store – I remember A&P, but had no idea it was once the biggest company in the world – an then takes us department by department, explaining not just what’s in them but how the food (or not-food) gets to the store and how the markets profit off them.

Heinen’s early forays into non-traditional areas for grocers mirrors the industry’s movement as a whole, sometimes foreshadowing changes (like prepared foods, which accounts for between 4 and 8 percent of sales for each Heinen’s store) elsewhere, sometimes lagging, as with organics. Ruhlman specifically cites the changes wrought by Whole Foods, which, depending on your point of view, either found unserved demand for organic items and higher-quality ingredients or created that demand by offering the goods and marketing themselves well; and Wal-mart, which became the country’s main food retailer the day they sold their first box of Cheerios. The industry-wide shifts have allowed medium-sized chains to add value by offering specialty products, like the Lava Lakes lamb Heinen’s offers (with Ruhlman enduring an interesting adventure on the sheep farm to tell us about it) or some artisanal cheeses from makers who could never service a large national account.

Ruhlman’s always at his best when he’s writing first-person accounts, and that’s true even here, as he spends days with various Heinen’s executives and suppliers, as well as going shopping with one of his personal doctors, Dr. Sukol, who has very strong opinions on what is and is not food. That particular chapter is one of several that points out just how much sugar is in processed foods – more on that phrase in a moment – and how eating these “not food” products, in Dr. Sukol’s eyes, may be compromising our health. She says something that has become a sort of mantra for Ruhlman – that food is not “healthy;” we are “healthy,” and food can be nutritious or it can be harmful to our health (or, I’d add, sometimes both). Some of her opinions are based in sound science and others on working hypotheses (e.g., that glyphosate residues harm our intestinal microbiomes, because that chemical targets the shikimate pathway found in microbial metabolism but not in humans). She buys organic to avoid glyphosate and antibiotics, but doesn’t believe GM foods are harmful in and of themselves. She also says something is not food if you look at the ingredients and couldn’t buy them all individually in a grocery store; by that definition, to pick one example, almond milk is not food, even though the unsweetened version is nutritious and is a godsend to people who can’t drink milk.

Heinen’s also employs a full-time doctor to oversee its “wellness” section, and in my view this is where the author could have cast a more skeptical eye, because this “Dr. Todd” sells a lot of bullshit. He’s light on the science, throwing appeals to nature at Ruhlman in between advocacy of useless supplements like turmeric (the tricky chemistry of which means it does nothing useful in the body despite positive results in the test tube). Heinen’s, like all grocery stores – including Whole Foods – makes millions off selling bottled panaceas, nearly all of which do nothing and get by the consumer with vague promises of “promoting” health but no scientific evidence that they do anything at all. Ruhlman does indeed mention their uselessness and his own skepticism of a supplement-based diet, but I would probably have been thrown out of Heinen’s for pointing out all of the woo that Dr. Todd was spinning.

I enjoy when Ruhlman lets a little snark penetrate his thoughtful tone, like when he was behind a shopper at the grocery store who was buying fat-free “half and half,” a product that, ontologically speaking, cannot exist. It’s okay to disdain such abominable food choices – but Ruhlman emphasizes that corporate marketing has contributed to consumer confusion over what’s good for us and even what certain products might contain. (The entire discussion reminded me of bread vendors who made high-fiber breads by adding wood pulp, which almost certainly wasn’t what consumers thought they were consuming.) And the media have contributed to this by jumping on single studies that appear to identify single culprits for all our food-related health woes, first fat, then cholesterol (poor eggs), then salt, and now – although this one may have some legs – sugar, which appears in products under a variety of pseudonyms, including evaporated cane juice, dextrose, maltodextrin, brown rice syrup, or tapioca syrup. They’re all sugar, and by separating them out in the ingredients, manufacturers can avoid telling you that the #1 component of a product is sugar.

Grocery tends to stick to the very common and widely accepted distinction of processed foods, what Ruhlman describes as being in the center of the store, and the other foods, like meat, dairy, and produce, that are found around the store’s perimeter. (If you’ve heard the advice to shop the edges of the grocery store, those are the departments where you’ll spend your cash.) And I may be overly pedantic on this, but almost everything we eat is processed somehow. Take yogurt: First, it’s processed by bacteria, fermenting milk into yogurt. And second, it’s further processed by man, at least to put it in plastic, but often to add sweeteners, fruits, sometimes gels or gums, and other ingredients. (True Greek yogurt is strained of whey and lacks additional thickeners, but many brands sell “Greek” yogurt that is thickened with pectin or other agents.) The meat you buy at the butcher counter is processed too – a process Ruhlman details, explaining how more of the butchering is done at central locations today rather than in-store as it was a few decades ago. Very little of what we eat is truly “unprocessed.” And there are processed foods in the middle of the store that are quite nutritious – oats, nuts, seeds, whole grains, alternative milks (if unsweetened), maybe even dark chocolate. So don’t tell people to avoid “processed foods,” but tell them, as this book encourages, to read the labels and try to understand what you’re buying.

If everyone in America read Grocery, it would cause a cataclysmic shift in our food system. There would still be a market for Oreos and Frosted Flakes, for fast food and donuts and bad coffee, but the book points out how consumer demand can reshape the food production chain, and how retailers can reshape neighborhoods in turn by bringing better food choices to “food deserts,” underserved populations without easy access to quality food. It’s a potent call to action, as well-written as you’d expect from the author of Soul of a Chef, that should change your approach to feeding yourself and your family.

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→ April 15, 2017
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Stick to baseball, 4/15/17.

I updated my ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors this week; there’s minimal reranking in there, just status notes on players, with guys moving up to replace those already in the majors. (Jesse Winker was promoted after the piece ran.) I wrote a long draft blog post on Hunter Greene, Brian McKay, and other draft prospects I’ve seen so far. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

  • The one great longread I saw this week was from Backchannel on what’s happened to Google Books, the tech giant’s stated effort to scan every book, ever, to make them all searchable. I’ve used this feature quite a few times, including during the research for Smart Baseball, where I could search for certain terms or keywords in books I couldn’t get my hands on.
  • California passed a tougher law on childhood vaccinations, and, lo and behold, inoculation rates went up about 3 percentage points.
  • The handful of loonies who opposed the law largely claimed “parental choice” as a reason why they should be allowed to deny their children a safe, effective treatment that can prevent debilitating and sometimes fatal diseases. It’s a terrible argument, because those “choices” affect everyone, not just your children. (Also, that choice isn’t for you – it’s for your child, who can’t choose for him/herself, and depends on you to take care of his/her medical needs.)
  • If you’ve seen a vaccine denier point to measles outbreaks in China as evidence the MMR vaccine doesn’t work, well, the outbreaks occurred among unvaccinated groups. Facts may not carry the day with deniers, but it is on the rational among us to make sure the truth is still out there for people who might be on the fence.
  • A Utah judge praised a convicted sexual abuser during sentencing, with at least one of the victims present. This kind of behavior will only discourage victims from coming forward in the future. Utah judges may be removed from the bench via a judicial conduct commission censure or a 2/3 vote of the legislature, so if you live in that state, get on the phone.
  • I think my new least favorite food buzzword is “clean.” Panera, which is a decent chain choice if you want something vegetarian while traveling, claims its food is 100% “clean,” which means absolutely nothing unless previously they were rolling their bread dough out on the floor. It’s also a buzzword for people who eat weird, ultra-restricted diets that probably don’t provide enough nutrition because so-called “clean eaters” often skip dairy or wheat, foods that are often demonized without scientific basis. I’ll keep eatin’ dirty, thanks.
  • Dr. David Dao, the passenger beaten and dragged off a United flight last week, has filed court papers in preparation for a lawsuit and compared his treatment to what he experienced while fighting in the Vietnam War. Tim Wu of the New Yorker wrote about why he stopped flying United after it merged with Continental. Deadspin’s Albert Burneko discussed the absurdity of backing the corporation in such cases.
  • An American doctor has been charged with mutilating the genitalia of two girls under the age of 10, a barbaric practice common in eastern African countries and in Indonesia known as female genital mutilation.
  • New Mexico has banned “lunch shaming,” the cruel practice of embarrassing children whose parents have unpaid school meal debts.
  • I listened to the entire seven episodes of the podcast S-Town, and I’m not sure if I think the time was well spent. Did I really get anything out of it? Was John B. McLemore, who was most likely a manic depressive on top of the later medical issues revealed in the final episode, someone worthy of a seven-hour biography? The Atlantic also asks about the ethics of revealing so much of his life after his death, and the details of other characters in the play. The Guardian went to Woodstock, Alabama, to interview the locals about their sudden bit of fame, and most didn’t seem to mind the portrayals.
  • I was apparently behind the times, as I was unfamiliar with the Twitter replies-to-retweets ratio until this past week.
  • Paul Krugman wrote that publicity stunts aren’t policy and then Trump ordered (or simply handwaved along) the dropping of the ‘mother of all bombs’ on Afghanistan. It’s working, though: Compare media coverage of the Russian connection, or of GOP rollbacks of Obama policies, to coverage of the Syria and Afghanistan bombings and now our taunting of North Korea. (For what it’s worth, the North Korean government has always been the one that worried me, because it’s essentially sociopathy in government form, and they’re well-funded enough to do mass damage to someone, South Korea or Japan or us. But I would prefer to see a long-term policy solution to the issue, not threatening to Pyongyang to wag the dog.)
  • There can be no beatings and imprisoning of gays in Chechnya because there are no gays in Chechnya, say Chechnyan authorities. This Guardian report says otherwise.
  • I enjoyed this interview with Dana Cree, pastry chef for Chicago’s Publican restaurant group and author of the new cookbook Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream: The Art and Science of the Scoop. Within the Q&A she discusses which ingredients serve as stabilizers to minimize the size of ice crystals in ice cream, providing a smoother texture. I personally do not like the eggless ice cream known as Philadelphia-style, which is just dairy, sugar, and flavors, for that very reason. I prefer frozen custard, sometimes called New York ice cream, which includes egg yolks – often a lot – and less butterfat, because the yolks contain lecithin, which emulsifies the fat and the water in the base and thus prevents large crystals from forming. Lecithin can break down at subzero temperatures, however, so vegetable gums may be better if you’re going super-cold, if you can’t eat eggs, or if you don’t want that slight eggnog note in a delicate flavor like vanilla bean.
  • The first part of this NPR Fresh Air interview with author David Owen, about the Colorado River, is interesting and particularly relevant to me, because one of the main reasons I did not want to remain a long-term resident of Arizona was that the state has no strategy for dealing with the coming water crisis in the region. The Colorado River is overtaxed, badly, and Arizona’s idea of coping is storing a few years of water in underground reserves. He has a new book out on the topic, Where the Water Goes, and discusses some of it in the Q&A. Then he talks about golfing with Donald Trump and I moved on with my life.
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→ April 14, 2017
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Tough Guys Don’t Dance.

I’ve had mixed results with Norman Mailer’s work in the past – I loved The Executioner’s Song, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction even though it’s pretty clearly a work of non-fiction, but bailed on The Naked and the Dead after just a handful of pages because of its turgid prose and Dickensian attention to detail. When I read that he’d written a noir-ish detective novel, though, I figured the genre would at least make up for any obstacles I found in his writing, and contemporary reviews of the book, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, were so positive that I gave it a shot. It’s somewhere in the middle for me, overdone as a work of genre fiction, but also, I think, exploring a theme that’s basically absent from the first fifty years or so of hard-boiled detective stories.

Tim Madden is a writer who never seems to write anything, and whose wife has walked out on him, apparently for good this time. Their relationship is built on nothing much at all, but he’s broken up about it, and goes on a bender one night after meeting a couple from California in a bar in his adopted home of Provincetown (a small town at the tip of Cape Cod that, then and now, is known as a gay haven, which turns out to matter substantially in the story). He wakes up the next morning to find he has a tattoo with the name of a woman he doesn’t know, blood all over the inside of his car, and, eventually, a woman’s head in the place where he stashes his marijuana. He’s then left to try to figure out what happened – including who the woman was and whether he killed her – while various people from his past and present show up, including the woman he once dumped for his wife after they went to a swingers’ party, and complicate his efforts to solve the crime.

The novel’s style seems a clear callback to the hard-boiled novels of which I am so fond, although Mailer’s prose is more involved than the clipped tones of Dashiell Hammett or the sparse artistry of Raymond Chandler. It’s almost too well-written for the genre, in that you can tell this is a very good writer trying his hand at an unfamiliar type of writing. Nearly all of the side characters are straight out of central casting – dimwitted hoods, ex-boxers, corrupt cops – but Tim himself is unique, a writer rather than a detective, a child of privilege who got kicked out of Exeter, a former drug dealer who did a stint in prison where he met a former Exeter classmate of his who’ll also figure in the present mystery.

I’m completely interpreting here, but I think Mailer was trying to explore questions of masculinity, especially as it related to homosexuality, something that’s even telegraphed in the novel’s title, which comes from an anecdote within the book where a mobster utters that line, as if dancing would erode his toughness. (It also called to mind the Belle & Sebastian line, “We all know you’re soft/cause we’ve all seen you dancing.”) Most of the male characters in the novel are grappling with maintaining some sort of facade of manliness in the face of emotions that, I think especially in the 1970s and early 1980s, would have marked them as effeminate, if not as “gay” in the pejorative sense of the term. There’s a lot of just plain ol’ fashioned heterosexual depravity in this book, and of course given the time of its writing (published in 1984), there’s quite a bit of homophobic language, including a reference to “Kaposi’s plague,” which refers to a rare cancer that became common among gay men at the time and turned out to be associated with AIDS. But so much of that content read to me like men trying to prove they’re men – I’m not gay, see how I say awful things about gay men, they’re all (bundles of sticks), I’d like to kill them all, etc. The straight men doth protest too much.

And while I doubt “toxic masculinity” was even a term back in the early 1980s – as far as I can tell, it was coined well after the book was written – there’s a huge element of that within the book and behind the crime itself. Without spoiling the whodunit, I’ll say that men trying to either prove their masculinity or suppress characteristics that might be labeled as feminine or gay loom very large within the story, enough that when I finished the book, I found that theme was much more on my mind than the plot itself, which was a little too convoluted, with the murders kind of too pointless for this style of novel. That makes it a cerebral detective story, but maybe not as compelling of a mystery as the classics of the genre are.

Next up: Robert Charles Wilson’s Hugo Award-winning novel Spin.

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