→ February 26, 2019
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Popular Music from Vittula.

I really need to start writing down where I hear about certain books, because once again, I can’t figure out who told me about Mikael Niemi’s Popular Music from Vittula, a quirky, intelligent, yet often vulgar novel that delivers vignettes from a child’s memories of growing up in a small Swedish town inside the Arctic Circle and right near the Finnish border. Niemi, who grew up in that same region, Pajala, has a quick wit and delves into the kind of issues that would surround people in that environment – a linguistic minority also coping with extreme weather and sunlight patterns – but sinks the novel with some stylistic leaps and overemphasis on gross-out humor.

Vittula is the colloquial and unprintable (in translation) name of the village where the narrator Matti and his best friend Niila live, experiencing adventures real and fantastical, forming an ad hoc garage band, drinking too much, discovering girls (and then having something vaguely resembling sex with them), and … well, puking and shitting and peeing all over the place, as it seems. It’s as if Niemi started out trying to write a fictional memoir that would be heavy on the magical realism, and then shifted partway through to write something the Farrelly Brothers might call ‘a bit much.’

Those first few chapters are the most delightful, as the kids are younger – which may explain why the memories veer into the impossible, which becomes less prevalent as they get older – and so many things are new to them. Music is a regular theme in the book; at one point the boys get their first record, discover the Beatles, and create that incompetent rock band with two other classmates, even staging a few shows before anyone but the guitarist (who has drunk deeply of Jimi Hendrix, even though the book seems to be set before Hendrix arrived on the scene) knows how to play his instrument.

There’s also an ongoing theme of language and linguistic identity, established early in the novel as Niila appears to be mute but suddenly is able to translate the words of a visiting African priest who tries a dozen languages before hitting on one Niila knows (I won’t spoil it, as it’s a pretty funny moment). The residents of Vittula are in linguistic purgatory, as they’re part of Sweden, but Finnish by descent, and speak a local Finnish dialect first and Swedish second. This deepens the sense of isolation already in place due to geography, while also fostering a keen sense of community among the older generations, some of who view anyone who leaves the Pajala region as a traitor. Niemi even loops in the Laestadians, a revivalist Christian movement that began in the Sápmi region, although I think some of his references to its tenets were lost on me.

The memories of Niemi’s narrator are colored, or I guess discolored, by bodily fluids, which seem to flow freely in every chapter. Adults and children alike get drunk on moonshine, rotgut, and beer smuggled over the Finnish border, and then piss or beshit themselves, or, if they’re still capable of standing, engage in competitions over who can urinate the highest or farthest. (This does lead to one of the few bits of bathroom humor I found funny, late in the book, when Matti wins such a competition in artistic fashion.) Men and boys are throwing up all over the place – the women and girls in the book rarely even get names and are mostly above this kind of wanton drunkenness – and Matti and Niila sometimes roll over unconscious adults to ensure they don’t choke to death. And then there’s the blood, albeit not human blood, which shows up in a chapter when a visiting writer offers to pay Matti a bounty for each mouse he kills at the cottage the writer is renting, which leads to a widespread muricide (by Matti), described graphically, that ends in disaster. It’s hard to square Matti’s delight in killing these rodents with the depiction of his character in other parts of the book, especially when he speaks as an adult in the epilogue.

There is some highbrow or at least not-lowbrow humor in Popular Music in Vittula, but there just isn’t enough of it, and once the drinking starts in a chapter, we’re trapped in a mire of people falling down and soiling themselves and yelling or mumbling or just whipping out their dicks. If that’s your cup of tea, you may enjoy this book a lot more than I did, but I found it a tougher slog the closer I got to the end, and that brief epilogue just felt so disconnected from the rest of the book that I wasn’t sure what I had just read.

Next up: Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry.

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→ February 24, 2019
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Oscar picks for 2019.

With the Oscars coming up tonight, I’ve put together this post with some loose predictions, my own picks for each award, and, most importantly, links to every one of these films I’ve reviewed. I’ve seen everything nominated in all of these categories except one documentary, one foreign film, and one animated short. 

Chris Crawford and I also recorded a podcast (for the second year in a row) to preview the Oscars, which you can download via iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Best Picture

BlacKkKlansman
Black Panther
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice

Who will win: Roma
Who I’d vote for: Roma

Snubs: I don’t understand why the Academy would only fill eight of its ten allotted spots for nominations in this category, especially in a year with easily twice that many films worthy of the honor. The two most obvious candidates the Academy overlooked here were First Man and If Beale Street Could Talk, but I’d also have pushed for Burning, Cold War, even Widows before pablum like Green Book or Bohemian Rhapsody.

Best Director

BlacKkKlansman
Cold War
The Favourite
Roma
Vice

Who will win: Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)
Who I’d vote for: Roma

Snubs: I’m surprised Bradley Cooper wasn’t nominated for A Star is Born.

I’d be very surprised if Cuarón lost this one, even if Roma doesn’t win Best Picture.

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Vice
Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born
Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate
Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Virgo Mortensen, Green Book

Who will win: Bale
Who I’d vote for: Cooper

The Academy really botched this category, giving four of five nods to actors who portrayed real people, three of them giving us extended impersonations that were more remarkable for their accuracy than for any depth of performance. The fifth is playing a role that has been played three times before. Is that what the Oscar is supposed to reward? Is this acting, or just impersonating?

It seems like Malek has the popular momentum, and maybe he and his prosthetic teeth will win the award, but I’ll be a bit contrarian here and predict Bale takes the honor because the role is also more ‘important’ – Vice is an unabashedly political film, an outright attack on the legacy of the George W. Bush years, that has to resonate with the generally left-wing voters of the Academy.

Snubs: Woof. Ethan Hawke for First Reformed and Joaquin Phoenix for You Were Never Really Here come to mind immediately. Ryan Gosling was great in First Man; Stephan James was solid in If Beale Street Could Talk.

Best Actress

Yulitza Aparicio, Roma
Glenn Close, The Wife
Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Lady Gaga, A Star is Born
Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Who will win: Close
Who I’d vote for: Colman

The Wife was the worst movie I saw in 2018 – it is awful, sentimental, hackneyed, one-dimensional dreck – yet Close seems likely to win for a fine performance of a poorly-written character.

Snubs: No shortage of whiffs here either – Rosamund Pike for A Private War, Joanna Kulig for Cold War, Elsie Fisher for Eighth Grade, Viola Davis for Widows, Natalie Portman for Annihilation, Juliette Binoche for Let the Sunshine In, Claire Foy for First Man (perhaps as a Supporting Actress).

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott, A Star is Born
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell, Vice

Who will win: Ali
Who I’d vote for: Ali*

I put an asterisk there because I’m torn between Ali and Driver – BlacKkKlansman does not work without Driver’s performance. Grant is wonderful as well.

Snubs: Rockwell belongs here least of all – he’s just doing a good impression of W. as an amiable post-frat boy. His slot should have gone to Steven Yeun for Burning, and you could make a case for Michael B. Jordan for Black Panther.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams, Vice
Marina de Tavira, Roma
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Who will win: King
Who I’d vote for: Weisz

King has been penciled in as a lock since before this movie even hit theaters, even though she’s not in the film very much and her role isn’t all that well-written. Weisz and Stone both had far more to do – there’s a real debate over whether those are supporting roles at all – and do more with what they’re given.

Snubs: Elizabeth Debecki for Widows. Her performance was the film’s biggest revelation and she had by far the best story arc of the script; Adams’ spot should have gone to her.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
BlacKkKlansman
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
If Beale Street Could Talk
A Star Is Born

What will win: BlacKkKlansman
What I’d vote for: If Beale Street Could Talk

This feels like the spot where Spike Lee gets an Oscar, even though the screenplay for BlacKkKlansman was all over the place. Of course, I think Burning deserved a nomination here, certainly over the Coens’ screenplay for what was basically an anthology.

 

Best Original Screenplay

The Favourite
First Reformed
Green Book
Roma
Vice

What will win: The Favourite
What should win: The Favourite

As much as I loved Roma, the screenplay itself is the least important part of the film – it’s the look, feel, and sound of the thing, as well as the lead performance by Aparicio.

Best Foreign Language Film

Capernaum
Cold War
Never Look Away
Roma
Shoplifters

What will win: Roma
What I’d vote for: Roma

I haven’t seen Never Look Away, from the director/writer of The Lives of Others, because it’s 188 minutes long. This feels like a dead lock for Roma, but my #1 movie of 2018 was South Korea’s submission, Burning, which made the shortlist (of nine films) yet missed the cut for the final five. It absolutely should have taken Capernaum‘s slot.

Best Animated Feature

Incredibles 2
Isle of Dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

What will win: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse
What I’d vote for: Isle of Dogs

This also feels like a lock, although I think Spider-Man is notable only for its animation style, with a very undistinguished story that relies on superhero tropes and far too much violence for its audience. Isle of Dogs may have come out too early in the year, and it may have suffered from criticisms of its portrayal of Japanese culture, but it’s a better movie across the board – and so is Mirai.

Snubs: Tito and the Birds, a Brazilian film with gorgeous animation and a good story, would have been a far better choice than Ralph Breaks the Internet, which is a mostly forgettable sequel.

Best Documentary Feature

Free Solo
Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG

What will win: Minding the Gap
What I’d vote for: Of Fathers and Sons

I haven’t seen Free Solo yet – I will in about two weeks – but I truly have no good sense of what’s going to win this one, especially since the most popular documentary of 2018, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, was one of the biggest surprise omissions of all of the nominations this year. It’s remarkable that Of Fathers and Sons was even made, and its story is as important as any of the five nominated films.

Best Animated Short Film

Animal Behaviour
Bao
Late Afternoon
One Small Step
Weekends

What will win: Bao
What I’d vote for: Weekends

I haven’t seen Animal Behaviour, but any of the other four could win and I’d be happy with it. All are well-made, appealing to look at, and boast strong, short stories. I’d say Late Afternoon is the weakest of the four.

Best Documentary Short

Black Sheep
End Game
Lifeboat
A Night at the Garden
Period. End of Sentence.

Lifeboat was the only one of these I didn’t fully appreciate; the others are all excellent. A Night at the Garden was assembled from existing footage of a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in the 1930s, and runs all of seven minutes; I can’t see voting for that over the others, which are all original works. End Game is the most moving, and devastating. Black Sheep is the most original. Period. End of Sentence. has a wonderful story of female empowerment. I’m fine with any of those three.

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→ February 24, 2019
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Los Angeles eats, 2019.

The best meal I had on my brief vacation to Los Angeles was at Rosaliné, an upscale Peruvian restaurant that particularly focuses on ceviches and paellas, all of which were superb. The corvina sea bass was the milder of the two we ordered, so the flavor and freshness of the fish shone through, while the ceviche crocante, with raw (but cured) halibut and crispy calamari, tasted more of the sauce, with tart yuzu and a good but not overpowering amount of heat. I’m not a big paella fan, since I think every version I’d ever had in restaurants used cheap rice and was dominated either by tomato or saffron, but the chaufa paella here is excellent, served smoking hot in its cast-iron skillet and tossed table-side so the crispy part of the rice gets mixed in and slightly softened by the steam (so you can chew it without breaking a tooth). It comes with prawns, pancetta, and a little sausage, while their other paella is all shellfish; there isn’t a vegetarian option on the menu but I would imagine they could accommodate you with some notice. I also recommend the pan andino, a house-made bread with quinoa that is served with a rocoto pepper butter and a botoja olive spread that are both fantastic, savory and salty and perfect for spreading on warm bread. We were way too full for dessert.

I had lunch solo at the now curiously-named A.O.C., which predates the ascendance of Ben Shapiro’s favorite Congressperson. It’s a wine bar from Suzanne Goins and Carolyne Styne of Lucques and The Larder, with a small-plates menu that focuses on foods from around the Mediterranean as well as an extensive cheese list that lets you order just a single kind (which I did, trying a pacencia, a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Spain that was like a stronger, nuttier manchego, served with bread, dried fruit, and raw walnuts). For lunch I had the brussels sprouts, radicchio, and burrata sandwich on house-made focaccia, which was a delightful mess and did not skimp on the vegetables, with aged balsamic giving some sweet/tart notes to balance the slight bitterness of those two vegetables. I didn’t plan to have dessert but when I saw the butterscotch pôt de crème with fleur de sel & salted cashew cookies I couldn’t exactly say no – the cookies were good, although I think that’s the kind of cookie that needs to be consumed within a few hours of baking, while the custard was absolutely superb in texture and flavor, with that little bit of salt and big caramel and butter flavors.

Republique, like the first two restaurants I mentioned, made the Eater list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in LA for the year – I still don’t know what they mean by ‘essential’ but I do find those lists incredibly useful when traveling and rarely have a bad experience at any of their places. It’s modern French in a very cool brick building that was supposedly once owned by Charlie Chaplin, previously occupied by the Nancy Silverton-owned Campanile. Modern French probably misrepresents the food, though, as it’s more just modern global cuisine with French influences. I went with a writer friend and we grazed our way through some of the lighter dishes, skipping the meat/fish mains. The spinach cavatelli with fresh morel mushrooms was among the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had, both because the pasta was so well-made and perfectly cooked and because the morels were … well, morels, which are generally so expensive (they only grow wild, typically after forest fires, and are harvested by hand) that I rarely get to eat them. The grilled octopus salad with multiple kinds of citrus plus pistachios and a hint of chile was another standout, as was the bread with cultured butter and the smoked eel beignets (yep, just what it sounds like, and so good) with horseradish sauce. I normally don’t care for white chocolate desserts but their caramelized white chocolate sabayon with local berries was really superb – the cloying nature of regular white chocolate is dampened by the caramelization, which converts some of the sugars and brings out a broader array of flavors than the one-note sweetness of regular white chocolate.

I met up with movie critic Tim Grierson, with whom I’ve had a longrunning email dialogue but had never actually met in person, at The Henry in west Hollywood, where I had that rarest of things, a truly memorable salad, in a rather over-the-top (if on brand for that area) space. The green garden kale salad has romanesco and broccoli along with kale, brussels sprouts, green beans, snow peas, arugula, pistachios, and comes with a tahini vinaigrette that was lighter than most tahini dressings (like goddess dressing, which I do like quite a bit, but can be heavy).

Molly Knight and I had dinner at Badmaash, a favorite of hers, located on Fairfax a few doors down from Jon & Vinny’s. Badmaash has both traditional Indian dishes and some strange mashups like Chicken Tikka Poutine – fries topped with gravy and chicken tikka and cheese curds, good but definitely too heavy for me – and chili cheese naan, where the naan dough is wrapped around cheese and serranos and comes out like a stuffed pizza (but much better than that, obviously). The traditional samosa and rosemary naan were actually my favorite dishes, though, because they were so simple but well done, and since I seldom eat Indian food because there are so many things on Indian restaurant menus I can’t eat.

Stella Barra pizzeria is a solid 50 for me, which probably puts it in the lower tier of my pizzeria rankings since I tend to avoid places I hear are below-average; I thought their dough was quite good if stretched a little too thick, and don’t love that their white pizzas come with a ‘parmesan cream sauce,’ whatever that is – true white Neapolitan pizzas shouldn’t have anything like that. But the toppings on the two pizzas we tried, the sausage and fennel as well as the spinach & kale with garlic and green onions, were very high quality. I’m usually a purist when it comes to old-fashioneds, but their lavender-tinged version was surprisingly good.

I did all my coffee-ing at Verve and Andante, as well as tea in both spots as well; Verve was slightly better in both categories, especially for pour-over coffee, and they offer hojicha, my personal favorite green tea (the leaves are roasted, so the flavor is deeper and less grassy). Verve’s space was nearly always packed, while Andante had more room to chill, although one time I was in the latter’s shop near the Grove and realized I was the only person there not working on a screenplay.

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→ February 23, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 2/23/19.

Just one ESPN+ piece this week, looking at the Padres’ deal with Manny Machado. I held a Klawchat on Friday since my afternoon game in Texas was rained out.

I sent out the latest issue of my free email newsletter this week, complete with Obscure Music Reference as the subject. I nearly always tailor those song quotes to the subject of the email, although I think this week’s might have been a bit too obscure.

For the next five Mondays, High Street on Market, my #1 restaurant in Philadelphia, will host “sandwich battles” in the evenings, featuring area chefs and personalities in a competition to build the best sandwich using High Street’s phenomenal artisan breads and a mystery ingredient each week. Tickets are $25 apiece and you might see me in the crowd one night.

And now, the links…

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→ February 22, 2019
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Klawchat 2/22/19.

Keith Law: Feel like I’m floating in a warm sea. Klawchat.

Steve: sooo… Soroka is out with some shoulder issues already… time for me to completely panic on him?
Keith Law: Not panic, but concern, yes. I’ve voiced my issues with his delivery for a while now – I think his arm swing puts stress on his shoulder – and this is twice in two years that he’s come up sore.

J: Happy spring training! With his freedom for Baltimore, and the SSS success of the end of the year for Kevin Gausman, what are your thoughts heading into 2019? Optimistic at all? What does a good but reasonable year look like for him?
Keith Law: Optimistic, but his Atlanta run last year included some crazy luck on balls in play (even accounting for batted-ball quality). I think his K% will go up and he’ll have fewer of those disaster starts that marked so much of his time in Baltimore.

Zach: Do the Rockies actually think Desmond should start in center? This is just a sunk cost that they’re unwilling to admit, right? They have to understand how much a minus he’s been since he signed there.
Keith Law: Yes, this is my belief – they won’t just accept the cost is sunk, and are determined to play him.

Jon: As a Philly resident, I really enjoyed your restaurant list. Have you been to Parc yet? If so, what did you think?
Keith Law: Never been.

Anthony: Will Manuel Margot ever be a 100 wRC+ guy?
Keith Law: Yes.

J: In terms of Yordan Alvarez’s ranking, to what extent is falling outside the top-100 about DH-probably? And to what extent is it that the bat just doesn’t look as good as the numbers do?
Keith Law: Both. Body projects poorly long-term too.

Nick: Are the Phillies bidding against themselves for Harper?
Keith Law: Doubt that. But they are probably bidding against Machado’s contract.

J: Brendan Rodgers 2019 250 PA atAAA/250 PA in MLB?
Keith Law: Seems like a fair bet.

John S: In light of the record setting deal, what do you make of the Padres opening the books to claim poverty weeks before signing Machado? Not that we will ever know for sure, but… was it a negotiation ploy? Do you think that the backlash from fans and some media had any affect in the decision to sign MM?
Keith Law: Don’t think it was a ploy; I think they recognized that adding Machado would likely produce revenues & franchise value well in excess of what he’ll cost.

HH: Does Tristan McKenzie appear in the majors this year?
Keith Law: Unlikely but not impossible.

Charlie L.: Are you going to Spiel this year? I’ve been living in Germany for about 18 months now and think I should go, but mein Deutsch ist nicht gut so if you have any English-speaking advice it’d be grand.
Keith Law: Never been – it’s a bad time in the baseball schedule. I’ll do GenCon and PAX unplugged again.

J: Oneil Cruz is pretty fascinating. He feels like… 10% star, 70% bust/bench guy, 20% solid player. Off in any direction?
Keith Law: It’s hard to see him becoming just a solid player. Either he’s above-average or he’s nothing. He is fascinating, though.

Andres: Hey Klaw! As a Mets fan, what should I hope for when it comes to D. Smith and A. Rosario? You think the Mets finally let the youngsters just do their thing?
Keith Law: I think Rosario will get to just do his thing and Smith will get buried by Alonso and Davis.

James: Of all teams the freakin’ Padres invested $444 million on two players over the past two years, including the largest free agent contract in American sports history. I really don’t want to hear another front office say that they don’t have money to spend ever again.
Keith Law: Every team has money; they do not want to reduce their profits. I’ll give a pass to Tampa Bay and Oakland, who really do take in less revenue than the other clubs, but that’s all.

Mike: Keith, how often are you recognized by fans at non baseball related events and where is the strangest place a fan has approached you?
Keith Law: Happening a bit more lately, which is flattering. One of you spotted me on the rental car shuttle this morning.

Chris: Did you know Nick Cafardo at all? Any favorite stories about him?
Keith Law: I did – he was always very nice both to me and to others whenever I saw him.

Joe S: Baseball related question now: what are your opinions on the Vlad Guerrero Jr situation?
Keith Law: I’ve written about this many, many times. He belonged in the majors last summer.

Joshua: There is growing buzz for Julio Rodriguez on the Mariners, what have you heard amongst scouts? Anything noteworthy?
Keith Law: Growing buzz how? I did have him in my Mariners’ org report, but nothing’s new since then.

Darren: Which pitcher do you think has the greater upside, Brandon Woodruff or Joey Lucchesi?
Keith Law: Woodruff. Lucchesi is a back-end guy only. Woodruff could be mid-rotation/a little above league-average.

Ray: For Mike Soroka’s write up in the Top 100 you wrote “…even though he has that low slot and an arm swing that puts some stress on the shoulder.” Do you have any biomechanical data to back up that claim?
Keith Law: I have pointed out issues with deliveries for years – scouts have been evaluating pitchers’ mechanics since long before I was in the industry, probably since before I was born – and this is no different. I don’t use “biomechanical data,” whatever you might think that is, in these scouting reports.

Andrew: How nervous should I be about Soroka’s shoulder?
Keith Law: See above, but yeah, I’m concerned.

Marques: If you ran the Padres, would you pursue external pitching or wait for your system to come up at this point?
Keith Law: I’d pursue external pitching this summer and next winter. Let some of the A-ball prospects advance a little and they’ll have a bit more trade value.

Buckner 86: I looked back on 2017 & 2018 and never saw anything on Josh James in your Houston top 10. Can you give a little write up about him here? Thanks
Keith Law: He’s in this year’s top 100 and he’s in this piece from September that explains why he went from borderline non-prospect to potential mid-rotation starter.

John: Do you think steroids are still prevalent in baseball? And if so, how widespread would you guess usage to be?
Keith Law: I do not … except for international free agents. The testing results that I’ve heard indicate that many July 2nd prospects have at least tested positive for banned substances. The % depends on where you draw the line of ‘prospects’ but I have heard major names coming up positive in recent years.

Bobby C: I read that Harper has no offers for 300 mil. now. Surely he won’t sign for less than Machado?
Keith Law: Can’t imagine he would.
Keith Law: I think signing second is also the way to ‘win’ that particular competition.

Guest: Even aside from Harper/Kimbrel/Keuchel, are there way more free agents than normal dangling at this date?
Keith Law: I believe so but I haven’t actually counted/compared.

Tim: Should people feel dirty listening to Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, watching Polanski or Allen movies, etc? Is the solution to stop listening/watching?
Keith Law: Depends on your comfort level. I actually feel like Jackson’s is the easiest call, as he’s no longer alive to benefit from someone purchasing or listening to his music.

David: Do you think Eloy starts after spending 2 weeks in AAA?
Keith Law: Yes. He’s ready too.

Nick: Who did you come to see in Houston, and how did they look?
Keith Law: JJ Goss, who looked great, and Matt Thompson, who has to be hurt; his was in the mid-80s by the end of his outing. I haven’t had a ton of time to write this week up – and Bobby Witt’s doubleheader today got banged so I’m not sure I’ll see him.

Casey: When the Cardinals drafted Scott Hurst and Kramer Robertson with their first two picks in 2017 I don’t think anyone thought they’d be stars but would at least be useful bench players. Is that still the projection for them or are they non prospects at this point?
Keith Law: Hurst maybe – he was hurt a ton last year, and was too old for Peoria, but I don’t want to write him off just yet. Robertson is probably an NP.

Mark: How far out are we before we see the bulk of the Padres pitching prospects?
Keith Law: Paddack, Allen, Nix all see the majors this year. The best guys like Gore, Morejon, and Patino are 2021 and beyond. Well, Morejon could get there faster, but they’ve been cautious with him since he’s had some minor arm stuff.

JR: You see Aubrey Huff’s twitter fit after MM signed and people came after him based on one of his tweets? He specifically called you out as the “poster child of new era of pointless stat geeks” and said give him 25 guys with heart, grit and determination. How has no one handed him a GM job yet since he has it all figured out?
Keith Law: I saw. He wanted attention. Meh.

FA: What’s the last book you read ? And what non fiction and fiction books would you recommend? Thx
Keith Law: If you look below this post on the blog, you’ll see a review of the last non-fiction book I read. The last novel I read was Le Carre’s A Murder of Quality.

Ryan: Klaw, how reliable do you think the advanced defensive metrics are for past players?
Keith Law: Directionally correct. Doubt they’re all that precise without play-by-play data including ball location.

Ken: Would a good solution to the Guerrero situation be to end the separate service time calculations for the minors and MLB and replace it with something like 8 years of combined control between the two?
Keith Law: I love that idea in theory, although 1) owners would have a fit and 2) it would dramatically change how we draft and develop players. Those unintended consequences deserve more consideration.

JR: Twins got a steal with Marwin at 2/21MM right?
Keith Law: Yes. I view that contract as a sign that something’s amiss in the market.

David: Please help me understand. Jo Adell is a 6-3 / 215 super freak athlete with throws 97, has a 44-inch vert and led the nation in HRs. And a team like Philly drafts a slap hitting 4th OFer over him. Why don’t teams use the draft to take the best talent available and then trust their org to develop them? Has a team ever built a championship roster by drafting league average or below low upside starters in the Top 10?
Keith Law: Adell wasn’t very good before that spring, and then had some kind of arm issue too. The Phillies’ first-round woes are a separate issue, but I wouldn’t use Adell as your counterexample. I’m surprised the Phils haven’t overhauled their draft approach, though.

Pat: Mike Elias is essentially doing 2 jobs at the moment: GM of the Orioles, and Scouting Director of the Orioles. How long can that keep going? Seems like these are 2 separate 60+ hours a week jobs.
Keith Law: Devil’s advocate: If you were the Orioles’ GM, how much would you really need to watch the major-league club this spring? They don’t have many prospects near the majors, and they don’t have a lot of difficult roster decisions. Plus watching that team every day might drain Elias’ soul.

Jeff: So many Braves questions! Do think think Fried or Gohara is more likely to see more time as a starter this year?
Keith Law: Gohara but I like both quite a bit.

Guest: I got the board game Sagrada based on your positive review and have been enjoying it (thank you). Along with Azul, I like how it evokes an ancient creative art in an abstract way. What board game is the most aesthetically pleasing to you?
Keith Law: Takenoko and Tokaido, both by the same designer, are also gorgeous games. Everdell is too. Publishers are putting more effort into game art & design now.

Ttttt: Is Texas giving Lance Lynn 3/30 the worst free agent deal of the offseason? They could have gotten him for two years at a lower AAV, and he was awful last year.
Keith Law: It’s a bad deal compared to how the market went the rest of the winter, but I think he’ll deliver value commensurate with the contract.

Pat: Opposing batters in 2018 hit .302/.371/.574 against Dylan Bundy’s fastball, .360/.421/.733 against his changeup, and .419/.419./.645 against his curveball. However, they only hit .178/.216/.360 off his slider/cutter. Is he a candidate to go to the bullpen and essentially be a 1-pitch pony?
Keith Law: Cutter was his best pitch as an amateur too. I think he needs to relieve for bigger reasons than this, but your idea is pretty good.

Max G: Thoughts on Abraham Toro?
Keith Law: Maybe a bench guy.

Sam: I’m here for the baseball but seem to agree on your political views more consistently. Do you have any go-to sources you, um, go to?
Keith Law: I try to read a lot of sources but I will say I find british takes on US and world politics are often more informative – the BBC and the Guardian in particular.

Obscure music reference: Keithchat
Keith Law: This absolutely cracked me up.

Aaron Houston: KLAW, in regards to you being in Houston, how do you specifically get notified about certain highschoolers? Does someone literally say “KLAW, this kid is A GUY!!!”? Siphons are great and have a cool factor about them, but I agree they are expensive. Thanks.
Keith Law: Yes, I talk to scouts and they tell me who I need to see. Eric Longenhagen and I chatted earlier this week about guys we’d heard about too. He had a few names I didn’t have, and I think I had a couple he didn’t have.

Chris: Man the whatabouters/second chancers were out in force on your reaction to the Heyman/Reyes tweet, huh?
Keith Law: They were so quick to whatabout me they didn’t take five seconds to try the google.

Jon: Do you have any thoughts on Jason Ochart and DriveLine baseball working with the Phillies prospects? Is there anything to look for from Haseley or Moniak that would be a successful sign of a change in swing or approach?
Keith Law: Those guys are swing overhaul candidates, not minor changes. I’m not optimistic about either but that has nothing to do with Driveline or Ochart.

Don’t Stick to Baseball: Pretty sure we have similar age kids. I am picking up on a great deal of college prep advice and pressure directed at students these days as early as 6th grade. I find this unproductive and have been trying to guide my son to pursue his interests, work hard, and let that be enough, particularly as he’s still 2 years from high school, even). As someone that went to a prestigious university, what kind of advice are you giving youngsters these days?
Keith Law: That young? I don’t give them any advice. That’s way too young for that stuff.

Hesqo : Assuming he has another quality season and stays healthy, does Anthony Rendon crack 25 per year on a long term deal next offseason?
Keith Law: In theory, yes, but after this winter … who knows.

Rick Sanchez: It definitely stung to see my ChiSox whiff on Machado. With Jiminez, Cease, Kopech, Robert, Madrigal, etc. waiting in the wings, do you think we have enough to make the playoffs in 2020?
Keith Law: Yes, but I look at them more as a homegrown core that could use some outside help. Maybe they’ll feel more like spending if guys like Giolito or Moncada have big years in 2019.

Chris: Severino ext a good deal for Yanks, with the proviso pitchers are always a risk and maybe somewhat moreso for him given your concerns with his top heavy delivery?
Keith Law: If his second half was really about him tipping pitches – I am skeptical of such claims about 90% of the time – then yes.

Mike: I read this week that Loaisiga hired a trainer and worked on strengthening the smaller muscles in his shoulder. Spring optimism aside, why wouldn’t the Yankees get a guy like that a trainer, given the potential payout if he stays healthy?
Keith Law: Offseason work is too often considered the player’s responsibility, rather than the team’s.

Augustus : Are you a believer in superstition? Any wild stuff you’ve seen players do?
Keith Law: I am certainly not.

Joe: Did you ignore my question about why you didn’t think Andujar was a good fit for the Padres because you knew they would sign Machado?
Keith Law: I get hundreds more questions each week than I can answer. I don’t even know if I saw yours.

addoeh: I’m one day into my fortnightly three day bender.
Keith Law: Did she ever apologize for basically saying poor people are drunks who deserve to be poor?

Mike: Did the pitch clocks in MiLB make a noticeable difference in game times?
Keith Law: I will say they made games feel faster to me when I was in the stands.

Erik: Have you seen what Alex Bregman did today (he flew a 9 year old kid from Atlanta to Florida to hit BP with him). Great story and one MLB should be marketing the heck out of…
Keith Law: MLB should be marketing the heck out of Bregman, period. He’s the charismatic star they want Trout to be.

PD: How bad of an excuse is an imbalanced payroll for not signing free agents?
Keith Law: That’s a really bad one, especially since there’s no real evidence to support it – and the whole idea behind building from within was to get a cheap, homegrown core that you could afford to supplement with highly-paid free agents.

Bradley: upside of Greyson Jenista?
Keith Law: Unless he’s a way better hitter than I think he is, I don’t see a path to a regular.

PD: What’s your estimate of the current $ per WAR?
Keith Law: It will *always* vary by team. Always. The idea that you can just calculate a market $/WAR was wrong at a philosophical level.

Richard: Did you find anything good to eat in Houston?
Keith Law: Lunch at Himalaya, which was … not my favorite, but I recognize that may be the limitations of my palate. Dinner at Xochi which was fucking phenomenal.

Jeff B.: Probably crazy, but should the Rockies offer Bryce 31M/yr/10 years then challenge him to break the HR record before he turns 35?
Keith Law: Won’t happen but I do love the idea.

David: What do you make of Harper’s disaster defensive metrics last year? One-year blip or serious trend?
Keith Law: More blip. Mike Petriello did a great breakdown of that for mlb.com in the fall.

Ridley Kemp: Sorry I missed you in Austin. Did you get to try Loro or any other new-ish restaurant?
Keith Law: Better Half (get the waffled hash browns), Micklethwait Craft Meats, Backspace, Cane Rosso.

John: The sky is blue, the Pope is Catholic, and Keith Law doesn’t believe in superstition.
Keith Law: To be more accurate, the sky is blue, the Pope is Catholic, and superstitions aren’t real.

Sam: What is a good board game gift for a 10yo boy?
Keith Law: Has he ever played a ‘good’ board game? If not, Ticket to Ride. If yes, 7 Wonders.

Elton: “Kingdomino” is the other board game I’ve been enjoying with my family with help from your recommendation. It really hits the sweet spot of being strategic enough for my wife and I to enjoy, but simple enough for my seven year old to play (and even for my four year old with a little help).
Keith Law: It’s also fast to play, which I think is really important. Hardcore gamers disdain so-called gateway games – I actually blocked someone on Twitter once because he was being an asshole over my dislike of the length/complexity of the game Scythe – but there is a much bigger market for those than there is for complex games.

Jack: When you’re scouting high school senior pitchers, what’s the absolute maximum you can expect to see a guy gain on his fastball as he develops? I.e., is there any chance a guy that touches 88 will ever touch 98, or is the velocity ceiling close to being tapped at that point? Thanks!
Keith Law: Joel Zumaya did that. Strasburg did too.

Smrt Baseball: Like most of baseball, I am completely on board that OBP is more important than BA. OBP, of course, is somewhat dependent on the opposing pitcher’s control. If we assume that playoff teams have better pitchers with better control, is it possible that BA could be more important in the playoffs (at least compared to its importance in the regular season)? In other words, your ability to work a walk is somewhat mitigated by better pitchers in the playoffs.
Keith Law: A fair question but I do not know the answer. Are pitchers in October also throwing harder, since there are fewer low-stress pitches, so they have a higher chance of a swing and miss but also worse command?

John: Would you mind providing a little detail as to what the limitations of your palate are?
Keith Law: Oh, in this case I meant my unfamiliarity with south Asian cuisine in general, and the fact that I don’t eat beef or lamb. The waiter was somewhat adamant that I get the lunch special, which is the picture I posted on IG, but it had two things i don’t eat (I tasted them, but that’s it … eating too much of either will make me feel sick).

Jeff: Heading over to Surprise to watch Rutschman?
Keith Law: I’m in Fort Worth.

David: How serious are Verdugo’s makeup issues?
Keith Law: That depends on whom you ask. I have heard of his involvement in one issue serious enough to matter about four years ago.

SC: Does Machado accelerate or slow down Tatis’s timeline?
Keith Law: Neither.

Bill: Keep seeing you on guitar, not bad. Fan of Eddie Vedder?
Keith Law: I liked Pearl Jam’s first two albums quite a bit, tapered with Vitalogy, and was out by album four. I think their sound changed, which is absolutely their right as artists, but they went from something I really liked to something more influenced by the hard folk-rock of Neil Young and his spiritual descendants.

Jay: I was watching a Pirate game last summer and Huntington was a guest on the telecast and he would mention that he wasn’t a believer in having his top guys making so much more than other guys in the clubhouse or taking up more than X% of the payroll. Like it sowed some kind of clubhouse discord with the have and have nots and it was something he learned in his time in Cleveland. I mean, I get that winning cures most (all) clubhouse woes, but is there something to that? And yes, I understand at some level, that means bringing up the floor too so the disparity is not so large.
Keith Law: I don’t buy it. If the team wins, then the lesser-paid players get playoff shares, and perhaps can look forward to more earnings in the future.

Doug: How important is RH/LH balance within a lineup? I ask because depending on who is catching, Hosmer is the only LH hitter in the Padres projected lineup.
Keith Law: I only think this is real when a lineup is too left-handed, because it makes you vulnerable to LH relievers. Too right-handed shouldn’t matter much, or at least enough to make you want to specifically court LHB.

Illinois Paul: Is there value in a Matt Davidson being able to give you an inning or two on the mound in a blowout, or is that sort of two-way option much ado about nothing?
Keith Law: I think there would be value if he’s more than replacement level on the mound. Doesn’t have to be average, but somebody you could use in a game that’s still up for grabs.

Sam: You are in FW? You making any public appearances? I’m in Dallas
Keith Law: No public appearances, sorry. TCU tonight, Witt in the morning if he plays, then going home.

Pat D: If an AL team intends to keep 3 bench players and 8 relievers, what would they do with a proposed 26th roster spot? Another reliever, right?
Keith Law: Yes and I see that as a problem for pace of game and also for in-game strategy. I think you’d be better served with another bat anyway.

Pat: If you’re looking for a restaurant in Ft Worth, check out Ellerbe Fine Foods.
Keith Law: thanks but they open too late for me to hit them pregame

Ryan: Do you think Byron Buxton will bounce back this year or will he always be a disappointment offensively?
Keith Law: I’ve said this many, many times in the last year: He was hurt in 2018, and didn’t play much. He was good the last time he was healthy for an extended period.

Anthony: Did you follow any of the D1 opening weekend? If you did, anyone jump out?
Keith Law: No. If I’m at a game scouting, then of course I’m bearing down on players, but to watch what are often weak non-conference matchups doesn’t seem like a great use of my time. And my sister visited with her family so we were all quite busy.

Gregg R.: Please tell me the Mets are going to be good this year…pretty please? With a cherry on top?
Keith Law: I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you they’ll be bad, either.

Alexander: I read that Bregman ranked 30th among 3rd basemen in defensive runs saved. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I thought Bregman was an excellent defender. Is this random variance, a bad statistic, or a misinformed fan?
Keith Law: That is not accurate. Fangraphs shows 19 qualifiers at 3b last year. Bregman is 13th in UZR (-3.1) and 15th in DRS (-6). Miguel Andujar was the worst by a wide margin.

Derick: Hey Keith — thoughts on the redone episodes of Good Eats? Or just waiting for the new ones? Or just rewatching old ones?
Keith Law: I’ll watch them eventually but I almost never put my TV on at home any more.

Matt: Taking personal stuff out of it, as we probably both agree Cubs should’ve released him, where are you at with Addison Russell the player? Bat redeemable? Cubs need his D in middle IF?
Keith Law: Bat redeemable, Cubs don’t need him. If he can’t take responsibility for himself, I’m not sanguine that he’ll do what he has to do to improve as a player, either. And yes, fire him into the sun, I’m fine with that.

Chad: Do you think Max Muncy’s 2018 was a fluke or can he be a legitimate starting 1B going forward?
Keith Law: I expect regression but he’ll still be a regular.

gavin: could the Padres attach at top 100 prospect to dump Wil Myers?
Keith Law: Not sure that does it with teams so afraid of bad contracts. Irony – the Rays are one team that might consider it.

Sam: Any chance Nomar Mazara finally breaks out this year?
Keith Law: I thought he was breaking out last year, but got that one wrong.

Kevin : Who is somebody (non baseball) you would love to meet/have dinner?
Keith Law: People who are way outside of my field but do something of interest to me – a great novelist like Ann Patchett, who writes wonderful prose and crafts believable, compelling characters; or maybe a Jose Andres, who has shown dedication to helping his fellow man like few others with his fame and material success.

John: If it looks like the Phillies are about to land Harper, should that give a team like the Mets or any of the NL East contenders incentive to jump in? It would probably make you the team to beat in the East and seriously hurt the chances of one of your main competitors. I know there’s no chance the Wilpons would do it, but should they?
Keith Law: You would think, right? Or the Nats? If Harper signs with the Phils, they’re the preseason favorites. That doesn’t mean they’ll win, or even make the playoffs for sure, but there’s immediate value in being the favorites (you’ll sell a bunch of tickets and jerseys). And the Phils could use the boost of good news too.

MikeDP: Should the Rays continue to try to solve the stadium issue or just move? I just don’t see the area supporting the team enough even with a stadium in the city. The franchise seems to know how to win games in the highest payroll division.
Keith Law: That’s the one franchise I think needs to move to another metro area.

Rick: Can Soler return to the form he had early last season, before he went out for the year?
Keith Law: I will stubbornly say yes.
Keith Law: OK, time to find something to eat quickly before the Frogs’ game. I should have a draft blog post recapping my soggy week in Texas sometime this weekend, and then will be home next week to work on a draft top 30 (we postponed it a few days because my travel has been a mess). Thank you all, as always, for reading, and thanks for the lack of creepy weird questions this week. Have a safe and dry weekend.

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→ February 22, 2019
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Innovation and Its Enemies.

The late Calestous Juma died shortly after the publication of his last book, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies, which may be why the book is still so little-known despite its obvious relevance to our fast-changing, tech-driven economy. Juma was a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School with a longtime focus on international development, especially the application of new technology to developing countries and to boosting sustainable development. While the prose is a bit on the academic side, Juma uses very well-known technologies and even other inventions that you might not think of as ‘technologies’ but that still drove massive cultural and economic changes that led to substantial societal, religious, or political opposition.

Juma’s main thesis is that there will always be forces that oppose any new technology or invention that offers the potential for change, and he tries to categorize the reasons for and the types of opposition that any innovation might face. Some of the case studies he covers are ones you’d expect, like the printing press, refrigeration, and genetically modified crops, but he also covers less-expected ones like margarine and coffee. Margarine was invented in the mid-1800s and faced a torrent of opposition from dairy farmers, leading to the development of dairy associations that lobbied Congress and state legislatures for absurd laws that restrained or prohibited trade in butter alternatives, from requiring labeling designed to scare consumers to requiring the stuff to be dyed pink to make it less appetizing. To this day there are still regulations that overtly favor dairy butter that date from decades ago, although the discovery that the trans fats in traditional margarine are deleterious to heart health has made such laws anachronisms.

Coffee might be the most fascinating story in the book because it appeared and spread like a new technology, even though we don’t think of it as one. Coffee originated in east Africa, notably Ethiopia, and spread across the Red Sea to Yemen, from which it began to permeate Arab societies and faced its first wave of opposition from Muslim authorities who feared its stimulant effects (with some imams ruling it haram) and from secular authorities who feared the culture of coffeehouse would give rise to organized political groups. The same two forces applied when the drink spread to Europe, where it also faced a new group campaigning against its spread: producers of beer and wine, who feared the drink would replace theirs – in part because all three were safer than drinking well water at the time – and employed every trick they could find, including getting “doctors” (such as there were in the pre-science era) to claim that coffee was harmful to one’s health. While there are still some religious proscriptions on coffee, the drink’s spread was eventually helped by its own popularity and by the split among many authorities on its beneficence and value, with monarchs and even the Pope coming out in favor of the drink.

The two chapters that look at the ongoing controversy, most or all of it fabricated, over transgenic crops is probably the most directly relevant to our current political discourse, as genetically modified organisms are probably required if we’re going to feed the planet. Juma shows how GMOs suffered because regulatory authorities were consistently behind the technology and had to react to changes after they happened, and then often did so without sufficient guidance from technology experts. No example is more appalling than that of a genetically modified salmon called the AquAdvantage salmon that grows to maturity in about half the time required for wild salmon, and that thus has the potential to reduce overfishing while providing a reliable protein source that also has less impact on the environment than protein from mammals or poultry. The U.S. government was totally unprepared for the arrival of a genetically modified animal designed for human consumption, which also gave opponents, from Alaskan legislators (including Don Young, who openly promised to kill the company behind AquAdvantage) to fearmongering anti-GM advocates (look at the “Concerns” section on the Wikipedia entry for the fish), time to maneuver around it, blocking it through legislation and excessive regulatory obstacles.

Where Innovation and Its Enemies could have used more help was in how Juma organizes his conclusions. There are common themes across all of his examples, from the natural human fear (especially those of adults over age 30) of change to concerns over job loss to questions about environmental impact, but the choice to organize the book’s narrative around specific case studies means that the conclusions are dispersed throughout the book, and he doesn’t write enough to bring them together. A book like this one could be extremely valuable for policymakers looking to create an environment that encourages innovation and facilitates adoption of new technologies while providing sufficient regulatory structure to protect the public interest and foster trust. It has all of the information such a reader would need, but it’s scattered enough that a stronger concluding chapter would have gone a long way.

Next up: Mikael Niemi’s Popular Music from Vittula.

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→ February 21, 2019
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Euthanizer.

Continuing my trek through films submitted for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, I watched the Finnish entry, the dark, disturbing film Euthanizer, which seems to start out as a revenge-fantasy story and ends up in an even bleaker place by the time the film wraps up. It’s also quite short, under 90 minutes, and the script sticks the landings on most of its gymnastics, although a film this tight probably needs a more limited thematic focus. It’s streaming free for amazon prime subscribers.

Veijo is the euthanizer of the film – he euthanizes pets as a side job, charging less than the local vet, but seems only willing to take on such cases if the pet is being mistreated or is otherwise ill, emphasizing that he only does this to end suffering, not, say, to help someone get rid of an unwanted pet. He lectures owners who bring their pets to him for how they’ve mistreated them – cooping up a cat in a tiny apartment, ignoring signs of illness in a dog, buying a guinea pig as a pet without getting it a companion. Veijo’s father is in the hospital in the late stages of some kind of terminal disease, in a good bit of pain, but Veijo’s caring for the suffering of others doesn’t extend to his father for reasons we’ll learn near the story’s end.

Veijo’s strange, solitary existence, punctuated by facial expressions worthy of late-career Harrison Ford, is interrupted by two visitors: the nurse who’s taking care of his father and hears him discussing his side gig, and a local thief who falls in with a white supremacist group and wants his dog put down strictly for reasons of convenience. The nurse is obsessed with death, and seduces Veijo, which leads to the most bizarre sex scene of the year, but she sees in him a fellow traveler without understanding the reasons why he euthanizes select animals but not others. The white supremacist, who looks way too much like the bassist/actor Flea, is about to lose his job at a mechanic’s for stealing tires, which he then resells to his racist buddies while trying to get into their ‘gang,’ and spends much of the film screaming at his wife on his phone or raging against nothing at all while sitting in his car. There’s a third subplot with the local vet, who appears to be more motivated by money than by any love of animals, that doesn’t work as well and serves mostly as a plot device to send Veijo off the rails for good. Veijo runs afoul of the white supremacists (not hard to do), which begins a back-and-forth revenge pattern that is satisfying at the start but ends in utterly gruesome fashion that throws the meaning of everything that came before into question.

There’s a clear point here about how we either treat animals far worse than we treat other people, as if they’re not even sentient, or how we treat animals better than other people, although Euthanizer doesn’t do enough in either direction. The film also doesn’t give us enough about Veijo until the very end of the movie to explain why he is the way he is – both why he euthanizes pets to prevent further suffering and why he’s isolated himself from just about everyone else, at least until the nurse pries her way into his life. There’s certainly satisfaction in watching him dress down people who have abused or neglected their pets, and there’s even more in watching him go after the white supremacists – who are amusingly stupid and, fortunately, never do anything racist on screen in the movie, instead just talking about how tough they are – but the final scene falls short as an explanation of everything.

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→ February 20, 2019
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At Eternity’s Gate.

Willem Dafoe earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor this year for his turn as Vincent Van Gogh in the sort-of-biopic At Eternity’s Gate, which is a beautiful but sort of dreadful film that doesn’t give the viewer much of a sense of who Van Gogh was, while advancing a somewhat questionable hypothesis about his death. Dafoe is excellent, as he nearly always he is, but I have no idea what this movie was trying to accomplish.

Van Gogh was one of the most important painters in the western canon and an important bridge from impressionism to post-impressionism, a prolific painter during a short period of his life who struggled to make any money from his art while alive – we know of one painting he sold during his life, although there may have been others that were not recorded – but became immensely influential in death and whose paintings now sell for millions of dollars. At Eternity’s Gate has some wonderful sequences where we see Van Gogh at work, both in how the film reconstructs his painting or sketching – I have to assume someone stood in for Dafoe in these scenes, although the editing is seamless – and in how Dafoe depicts an artist in the flow state, oblivious to many things around him, including the discomfort of many of his subjects.

That’s about the end of what’s good in At Eternity’s Gate, which takes its title from one of the colloquial names of the painting most commonly known as Sorrowing Old Man, as the rest of the film is muddled in story and in technique. There are some positively bizarre, disorienting camera angles, often at 90 degrees to the ground, or POV shots of Van Gogh’s feet as he walks through a sunflower field, that only make the film harder to watch without adding any value. The film makes frequent use of extreme close-ups, to no apparent benefit. There are a lot of shots of Van Gogh running through fields – so while the landscape scenes are gorgeous, it’s often unclear what the purpose is. Even when there is a purpose here, such as showing Van Gogh’s confusion in tangible terms through camerawork and layered, hollow audio tracks, it also has the side effect of making the movie harder to watch.

And ultimately the film doesn’t tell us anything about Van Gogh that we didn’t already know, which is probably the greatest disappointment of all. The generally accepted cause of Van Gogh’s death is suicide by gun, but the script pushes the alternative and unlikely hypothesis that he was killed by some local boys in an accident, which feels like revising history and whitewashes Van Gogh’s history of mental illness (itself the subject of ongoing debate). Oscar Isaac appears as Paul Gauguin, another post-Impressionist artist who was similarly underappreciated during his lifetime, and the film depicts their troubled friendship, where Van Gogh appears to adore Gauguin. He does indeed eventually cut off his own ear in some sort of gesture towards his friend, although that story, which also should be part of the bigger picture of Van Gogh’s mental infirmity, also becomes muddled in the retelling here. Isaac is also generally quite good, but he does a bit of Poe Dameron here and overacts a modest part, with points added back on for his Parisian accent.

There’s no reason to watch At Eternity’s Gate unless you’re an Oscars completist; I don’t think this film does Van Gogh justice or tells us anything new about the man, his life, or his works. Dafoe is great – I thought he should have won the Best Supporting Actor award last year for The Florida Project – but even a top-tier actor can only do so much with inferior material.

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→ February 19, 2019
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Kero.

Kero is a pure two-player game that is absolutely perfect if you like games with lots of dice-rolling – not the Monopoly sort, where you roll once and are stuck with it, but more like King of Tokyo and other games where you get to re-roll repeatedly until you get a result you like or you bust. There’s a lot of luck involved, and I’m not sure all of the elements here are strictly necessary, but there’s something very appealing in how Kero works the dice.

Kero’s theme is postapocalyptic, and each player has a truck full of kerosene that must be refilled from time to time. Players roll the dice to collect various resources and use them to collect cards worth points at game-end and that also give one-time or permanent benefits, and can place ‘recruits’ on the four territories on display to claim those for more game-end points. Your truck contains an hourglass with sand in it, and on your turn you flip it and may continue rolling your dice as long as you have sand (kerosene) left in your tank, or until your dice all show fire icons, after which those dice have ‘burned up’ and can’t be re-rolled. The other sides of the five basic white dice show various resources – metal, food, recruits, fuel, or bricks – and you may pay fuel to add any of the three bonus dice, which have bigger rewards on them.

When your fuel runs low, you can spend one jerrycan token to refuel – and your opponent gets to roll the dice. You flip your truck the other way, so the sand fills the visible portion of the truck’s tank, and your opponent rolls all eight dice, and rerolls every die until all eight show fire tokens, at which point the refueling stops and you set your truck on its wheels again. (If you get seven fire tokens, then you roll the eighth die a maximum of five times before you just give up.) So there’s randomness all over the game, but the designers – Prospero Hall, the same group behind the Villainous games – have mitigated that with the ability to re-roll, and additional tokens you can use to allow even further rerolls or that let you ignore fire symbols for a particular turn.

Once you’ve decided to stop rolling dice on your turn (assuming you didn’t run out of fuel, which would end your turn immediately), you can use the resources shown on your non-burned dice to buy things from the board. The most common choice will be to buy cards from the market, with cards granting you points at the end of the game and most cards giving you either a one-time bonus or a permanent (unique) bonus for the rest of the game. The permanent bonuses mostly appear in the first round of the game – there are three rounds, separated by ‘claim cards’ shuffled randomly into the main deck – and grant you powerful benefits like a specific resource in every turn for the rest of the game, or the ability to convert something into fuel. Each player also starts the game with two Tuarek tokens, which grant one-time abilities like the power to ignore fire icons on dice for a turn or to move explorers to different territories.

Those territories, of which there are twelve, appearing four at a time across the three rounds, are the other source of points for game-end, either flat bonuses or bonuses tied to the cards you’ve collected. Each player has seven explorer tokens they may place in each round, usually by combining a recruit icon and a metal icon from dice. When a claim card appears to end a round, players compare who has the most explorers on each territory; whoever has the most gets that card for the rest of the game, taking any immediate bonuses on it. (There’s a power you can gain that helps you win ties, which happen frequently.) This is one of the few clumsy mechanics in the game, because the rounds are short enough that territories often go to a player who placed a single explorer on them, and it’s nearly always more efficient to go claim an empty territory than to compete with your opponent for one where they’ve already placed a token.

Kero games run about a half-hour, as the game’s length is determined by how quickly you move through the card deck; any time a player finishes their turn with at least two fire icons showing on the dice, you also ‘burn’ the rightmost card in the market to keep things rolling (pun intended), so there’s no way to stall progress through the game. The mixture of controlled randomness through the dice and the light engine-building aspect of the cards with permanent benefits makes Kero better than a pure dice-rolling game, so there is some strategy involved, but it’s definitely a game of luck – perhaps one of making your own luck, but still one where the randomness of dice rolls has a lot to say about who wins. That makes it a good game to play with your kids, since the dice will help smooth out any gaps in your skill levels, and one I think we’ll keep on the shelves here, but not something I’d pick over my favorite two-player titles like Jaipur or 7 Wonders Duel.

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→ February 18, 2019
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Petrichor.

I got my first look at Petrichor back at GenCon 2017, where the APE booth had a prototype of the game and both the stunning artwork and the clever theme (players are clouds? Sign me up!) caught my eye, although there wasn’t much available yet about the actual mechanics. The game finally hit U.S. shelves this summer, and it didn’t disappoint, with a smart combination of individual strategy and direct interaction between players, plus the replay value of a modular board that can alter the tenor of each play depending on what tiles are available and how they’re aligned.

Players in Petrichor aren’t actually clouds, but they get to place clouds on the board, adding their own rain drops to clouds to try to gain the most points from watering the various crops shown on the board’s tiles. On a typical turn, a player will play a card from his/her hand showing one of the four main actions – create a new cloud with one of the player’s own raindrops in it and place it on the tile, add two raindrops to a cloud the player is already in, take one or two of the player’s raindrops from clouds and make them ‘rain’ on the tiles below, or use the wind to blow a cloud to an adjacent tile – and then cast a vote for the weather for the next round. There are four types of weather actions, and the player can vote for the kind shown on the card s/he played, or can vote for the next weather type after that (clockwise) on the board. The player can also skip the vote and choose to reduce the value of one of the three harvest dice to bring the game closer to the next harvest; that action brings the player one or two points immediately, and the Harvest itself is when all crops are scored and raindrops on the board are cleared.

Players continue taking these actions, potentially taking a second action by playing two cards of the same type, until someone passes, after which the remaining players may take one final action before the round ends. At the end of a round – there are six rounds in the full game, or four in a shorter game – the votes on all weather spaces are tallied, and the two with the most vote tokens on them are used; the player with the most votes on each space moves up one on the weather voting track, which can be worth quite a few points at the end of the game, enough that you ignore it at your peril. Those actions can upgrade light clouds (1-3 raindrops) to thunderclouds; cause thunderclouds (4-7 raindrops) to rain; allow each player to double his/her drops in one cloud; or allow each player to move one raindrop of any color to an adjacent tile. (A cloud with 8 or more raindrops ‘overflows’ immediately, raining those drops directly to the tile underneath.)

Most tiles begin to grow once the minimum number of raindrops shown on the tile, one to seven depending on the crop, is reached – counting only drops on the tile itself, not those still in a cloud – and the tile is then eligible to score at the next Harvest. Some crops just reward points based on each player’s raindrop count on the tile. Wheat tiles give three points to anyone with drops on the tile, no matter how many, except for the person with the most drops on it, who gets two points plus a special wheat token; at the end of the game, the player with the most wheat tokens gets 12 points. Potato tiles give 7 points to the player with the second-most drops on them, but only 3 to the player with the most. Coffee and rice plants must first be sprouted, and then award more points when they develop into full-grown plants. Thus a huge part of Petrichor strategy is figuring out where best to place or move your raindrops to maximize your point total and potentially reduce those of your opponents.

The wind action is a big part of that strategy as well. If you use a wind action yourself, you can move a cloud on to a tile with another cloud on it, which causes them to merge – a way you can snipe points from an opponent who might have thought s/he had that tile’s bonus locked up already. If one of the two weather spaces activated by vote at the end of a round includes the wind, you can also use this to change the scoring of tiles, often significantly, as a sort of sneak attack. That makes the two ways the wind appears in the game particularly useful for a player who’s fallen a bit behind – more so if the player can stack up enough votes on the wind space to gain the voting bonus for the round as well.

At the end of the final round, there is always a Harvest regardless of what the dice show, and all four weather actions are activated, although only the top two are scored in the voting. Players then add the value they’ve reached on the voting track to the points they’ve acquired throughout the game, as well as the bonus for wheat tokens if the wheat tiles were used in the game, to determine the winner. Games take 45-60 minutes, and while the strategy can be quite involved because you’re searching for moves that will benefit you without helping your opponents, and possibly taking points away from them, the mechanics themselves are quite simple to learn, enough that younger players should be able to play along with the adults.

There’s also a solo mode available called the Southern Winds variant, where the board comprises six tiles (with certain tiles unavailable in this mode). You play against a neutral player, whose moves are controlled by a special nine-card deck that allows that player to make moves unavailable to you and tends toward the aggressive, which requires you as the solo player to play quite differently. The solo game goes four rounds, and the neutral player still gets to vote on weather and to reduce Harvest dice values for points, with a Harvest guaranteed at game-end. The neutral player is strong, but it’s also ‘dumb’ enough that it can’t adjust for the presence of weird tiles like the potato (second-most raindrops gets more points) or wheat, so you might want to remove those tiles from the possible layout. Solo play becomes a bit more of a puzzle, or even a bit like programming – you can work through the likely set of moves for the neutral player, and then counterprogram with a set of potential moves for yourself to set yourself up to capture the majority of the scored tiles in each Harvest. I’ve found it’s easier to focus on the tiles than the voting in the Southern Winds, and have beaten the solo player outright before giving myself the bonus for wheat tokens.

Petrichor also comes with many variants in the rulebook to further enhance play, most notably a card-drafting option to replace the random card draws of the base game, which assumes players have some experience and will further lengthen game times. It’s solid with two players, better with three or four to get more clouds on the tiles and more chance of players interacting with each other (even though you make the board slightly larger). And the artwork is truly stunning, some of the most appealing I’ve seen this year, boosted by the choice of white backgrounds for all components to brighten the table and the clear glass beads that represent the players’ raindrops. It’s well worth seeking out if you’re looking for a midweight game that’s quick to learn but can provide you with the strategic depth of a slightly heavier title.

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