Saturday, July 30, 2005

Disruption of the Attractiveness Constant

There is a social phenomenon going right now that is just beyond my comprehension. I speak of the disruption of the Attractiveness Constant.

It seems like young men and women generally have about the same level of attractiveness. Undoubtedly, this is due to fashion trends. Adults don't understand these trends, which is probably the point. Teenage and college age kids, however, more or less understand these trends and follow them or rebel against them. This mass psychology seems to lead to a continuously constant relationship between the attractiveness of young men generally and the attractiveness of young women generally.

For example, during the 80's, there were a couple of trends that seemed to apply to both boys and girls. There was a trend toward bright clothes. For some reason, it was OK for both boys and girls to wear bright pink for a while. There was a trend toward big hair. Guys (myself included) went with hair to their collars in what is now contempuously called the mullet. My hair is pretty curly, so this took a lot of work to maintain. Without frequent haircuts to keep the sides in check, my hair wouldn't have just been long in the back, but would have blossomed into a pretty good imitation fro. Fros weren't cool then, at least for half-Portuguese guys. (They're pretty cool now, of course. You don't get much cooler than Ben Wallace's huge fro.) A lot of girls, on the other hand, wore the big hair with tall bangs. (The Muse, from what I can tell, was the exception. She found her hair groove pretty early.) The result of all of this is that, while we might look back on the 80's as a period of pretty heinous fashion, fashion was about equally heinous for guys and girls. The Attractiveness Constant was maintained.

Judging from pictures you see, it seems that the Attractiveness Constant has been maintained for the last several decades. You look at pictures from when my parents in early-to-mid 60's. My dad was wearing little narrow ties with short hair and my mom was wearing funny-shaped glasses with relatively short hair. Attractiveness Constant -- maintained. Early 90's with kids wearing grunge stuff and long hair? Same for both sexes -- Attractiveness Constant maintained. Check it out in almost any era and it's pretty much the same. 50's? Pegged pants for guys and poodle skirts for girls. Late 60's hippie fashion? Could you tell the difference between guys and girls? (I don't know. I wasn't there.)

In the last couple of years, though, there has been some sort of rip in the space-time continuum or something because the Attractiveness Constant has been disrupted. From my perspective, I began noticing the first signs of this with my youngest two brothers, Intenseus and Guitar Guy, who are now 19 and 16, respectively. For reasons beyond my understanding, they basically stopped getting haircuts and let their hair grow all long and shaggy-looking. Now, beyond the usual brotherly grief-giving, this was no big deal. When my mulle-fro was in full flower, someone my parents knew saw my picture in the newspaper and said his first impression was that I had girl hair. So everyone makes fashion mistakes as a teenager, me more than most. I initially just saw Intenseus's and Guitar Guy's follicle follies as a good opportunity for grief-giving, not the precursors of a strange phenomenon that they actually were.

About a year ago, though, I began to realize the broader implications. I was staying at my parents' house and Intenseus had some of his friends over. His non-girlfriend was there and I was struck by the fact that, while Intenseus had hair billowing out all over, she was normal-looking. At the time, I kind of wrote this off as some sort of oddity of nature, but it got me wondering. Living in a college town as we do, I started noticing that there seemed to be a number of college-type couples where the guy's hair and fashion choices seemed to throw off the usual Attractiveness Quotient that one would expect in a couple. My interest in this strange new social phemonenon was heightened when I went to visit Intenseus at college where he was a freshman. In his dorm, the guys looked like they had rolled out of bed after sleeping for a couple of weeks (maybe they had -- they were in college, after all). Intenseus's hair had gotten long enough so that, when he was facing into the wind, the wind blew it back so that he kind of looked like a lion. (Sorry, Intenseus, it's just the truth.) The girls looked pretty normal to me.

Finally, I was sitting a lunch in town last week and a college-age couple sat down at the next table. The guy was wearing a bad-looking baseball cap with grungy hair flowing out from under it all over. He was wearing one of those kind of tight polo shirts that look like they have been worn in soccer games. His female companion was blond, with her hair pulled back in the usual Brandi Chastain-type ponytail, and was wearing some kind of white tank top. They struck me as being from almost different planets. Yet, there they were, looking totally like a couple. That really confirmed for me that we are living in some kind of strange time where the Attractiveness Constant has been disrupted.

I can't think for the life of me why this has happened. Why has young guys' fashion gone so wrong while young women's fashion seems to be in kind of normal-looking holding pattern? Did Clinton or Bush make it OK for guys to be kind of slobby in some way? Would things have been different if Gore, with his very put-together kind of look, had won in 2000? All of that seems pretty unlikely. Is it because of musicians? No one seems to be quite big enough these days to really influence guys' fashion generally. Anyway, they all seem to wear black (except the Killers, who seem to wear white, and the White Stripes, with their red). TV? On Friends at least, the slobbiest guy, Ross, was the one that always seemed to get made fun of. Movies? Hell, I don't know. Something has gone wrong, though.

What comes next? Do girls get slobbier? Let's hope that the opposite happens, that someone convinces young men that haircuts and clean-looking clothes are good. Let's hope that guys and girls revert to the highest, rather than lowest, common denominator. It seems that there is some hope. Last I heard, Intenseus had gone down and gotten a nice haircut without any complaining by my parents at all.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Bobby for Bonzi

The Kings traded Bobby Jackson to Memphis for Bonzi Wells last Friday. Greg Ostertag, Utah and a bunch of low-level players were involved too, for reasons that escape me. It must have had something to do with the salary cap. Bobby has one year to go on his contract at something like $3.3m. Wells has one year to go at something like $8m. I guess a bunch of other guys had to be thrown in to make the numbers work. As a Kings fan, you have to draw a real firm line between the emotional and basketball parts of this sucker.

Emotionally, this blows. Maybe more than any other player, Bobby Jackson is the guy that Kings fans love. Mike Bibby is a god and we love him, but he's cool like a jazz player (not a Jazz player -- Jerry Sloan teaches them to mug everyone). Peja has ungodly talent and makes shots that no one else does, but you wonder about his heart sometimes, although he played like crazy in the last couple of games against the Sonics. Bobby always, always, always gave it everything he had. He always left it out on the court and was pissed if he didn't get the chance to do that. I don't think that he ever said it publicly, but I don't think that he will ever forgive Rick Adelman for keeping him essentially on the bench during the overtime against the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2002 conference finals. It just must have killed him to watch Doug Christie front-rimming three's in that overtime. No way Bobby was going to front-rim anything in those circumstances. That's why people loved Bobby to the extent that, one time during the 2002 playoffs, he went flying into the crowd at ARCO after a ball and came to rest against a woman, who promptly bent over and kissed him on the forehead. It was one of the best things that I have ever seen in sports. I was at the playoff game in 2003 when Bobby received his Sixth Man of the Year award. It was absolutely deafening in ARCO. So we loved Bobby and now he's gone. That sucks. Maybe Brad Miller can take his place emotionally. He gets pretty fired up too.

The trade isn't great emotionally. No one should ever get suspended by his coach basically for insubordination before his team's playoff game the way that Bonzi Wells did last year. That's just unacceptable for a guy who's getting paid millions of bucks to play a game. It's not as bad as Scotty Pippen refusing to go into a game because the last shot wasn't called for him, but it's the same kind of thing. Hopefully, Wells appreciates into whose shoes he's stepping metaphorically, if not positionally.

OK, OK, so enough about the emotional side of this. I think that this is a good trade for basketball purposes. The reasons we loved Bobby were the reasons that he had to go. He was never able to slow down -- ever -- and so was constantly hurt. The Kings couldn't live with a backup point guard who might miss 30 games again next year. Moreover, because Peja tends to be a spot-up shooter, they needed more of a slasher/rebounder-type at 2 guard. Wells should fit that kind of role nicely. He's pretty big for a 2 guard (6' 5", I think), which should help with rebounding (please, God, let it help with rebounding). He can light it up and he has experience. The big question with him is how he is going to fit in. The Kings' offense is built on sharing the ball. Mobley couldn't quite get that, although he was only around part of a season. Adelman is going to have to get over to Wells that he will get his shots, plenty of them, in the offense. Whatever your disagreements with Adelman -- I have plenty -- he has been pretty good at managing touchy personalities, with Webber starting out basically refusing to come to Sac. and then doing very well until he got hurt as a prime example.

Where does that leave the rest of the roster?

First, Mo Evans is gone. That's unfortunate because he is going to be very good and seems like a good guy. The Kings simply don't need and can't use Wells, Evans, Kevin Martin and Francisco Garcia all at the same position. Bye, Mo, good luck, try not to dunk on the Kings too much and don't go to the Spurs.

Second, the Kings still could use a bigger, Ben Wallace-type guy at power forward. Kenny Thomas is a very talented player, but his game is too much like the rest of the Kings. His rebounding seems a little soft and he gets a lot of his points through jumpshots. The Kings ideally could move him for a power forward whose game is based a little more on the block, both for defense/rebounding and back-to-the-basket offense. The offense part of that is almost optional. Maybe Darius Songalia still has the potential to be something like that. I would sure like to see the Kings hold on to him in any case.

Third, the Kings clearly need a backup point guard. Eddie House was a good shooter, but he wasn't a point guard and isn't going to be. They need someone like Damon Jones, although I would guess that he wouldn't be interested in being a backup anymore. Maybe Earl Watson, who isn't going to be needed in Memphis now that Bobby is there. One REAL interesting idea would be to sign Nick Van Exel on the cheap. His body won't take starter minutes anymore, but he might be a killer backup for Bibby. God knows it would be nice to have him make shots for, instead of against, the Kings. He would bring a nice killer instinct that the Kings often lack, too.

Fourth, the Kings are developing a nice bench, if Adelman will only use it. Assuming that they get a decent backup point guard, they could have the following bench: (1) the backup point guard; (2) Kevin Martin/Francisco Garcia at shooting guard; (3) Corliss Williamson at small forward; (4) Songalia at power forward; and (5) Brian Skinner at center. That group would be a little undersized, but could really be an effective energy group that would scrap, get on the boards and have a little low-post scoring in Williamson. Adelman could use them that way. He kind of used the "Bench Mob" that way five or six years ago. Of course, it would seem to go against his tendencies, which are to play the veterans major minutes all the time. Maybe he needs to change his tendencies.

It surely sucks to see Bobby Jackson go. He was great here (especially after he got rid of the hideous high socks). But this trade is another indication that Geoff Petrie knows what the hell he is doing. It reminds me of when Bill Walsh let Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig go from the 49ers. They were beloved and a big part of the 49ers' success, but were just about worn out. Walsh cut them loose to bring in younger players. That's the kind of cold-bloodedness that made Walsh great. If the Kings ever win a title (can they be healthy going into and through the playoffs one freakin' time?), Petrie will get the same kind of acclaim. Anyway, even if Bonzi Wells is a disaster, they're only stuck with him for one year. See, Petrie is smart.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Harry Potter

For the first post of substance on my blog, I have chosen the least surprising subject possible: the new Harry Potter book. Yes, I know that every blog on the entire Web probably has something about the book. But, hey, Andy Warhol made paintings of Campbell's Soup cans, right? J.K. Rowling's books are way better than Campbell's Soup cans, so if we've reached complete popular culture saturation with Harry Potter, then that's OK because it's good saturation, like the first rain after a really dry summer when the rain doesn't run off, but instead percolates into the groundwater so that plants can use it and, at some point, it becomes available for people to pump and use. If we need complete Harry Potter saturation so that the good stuff in the books sinks in, then saturation is good.

SPOILER ALERT: if you haven't read the book, then don't read this post because I'm going to give away lots of the plot twists.

There are essentially two key happenings in the book for the progress of the series' central Harry v. Voldemort conflict.

First, we discover that, by killing people, Voldemort has divided his soul several (probably six) times and infused the soul slices (there's an image -- it's like Barry White-brand pizza) into vessels, called "horcruxes." This is how Voldemort survived whatever happened to him when he unsuccessfully tried to kill Harry as a baby. The six horcruxes must be destroyed before Voldemort can be killed. The book says that two horcruxes already have been destroyed. Dumbledore says that he has destroyed one, which wrecked one of his hands. He also says that Harry destroyed one because Tom Riddle's diary that Harry destroyed in The Chamber of Secrets was a horcrux. So that leaves four. Harry and Dumbledore try to get another in a particularly harrowing scene, but it turns out that it is not a horcrux because someone named "R.A.B." destroyed that one. (Sirius Black had a brother named Regulas, who was a Death Eater, tried to get out of it and was killed by Voldemort or another Death Eater. That's probably who R.A.B. was.)

As an aside, I like the initials R.A.B. My first and last initials are R and B and one of my favorite Supreme Court decision is R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, in which the Supreme Court held that a state's decision to punish a crime more severely because of the message it sends violates the First Amendment's protection of free speech. It's probably the best Supreme Court case to show that the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing someone for the message that they send. If you want to read it, go to http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html and go down to Citation Search and enter 505 for the volume and 377 for the page. It's a decision written by Justice Scalia, which kind of goes against the dominant perception of him.

See, I told you, that there would be random thoughts here.

Second, Dumbledore is killed while Harry watches helplessly because Dumbledore has bound him to be silent and immovable by a spell. More precisely, Snape kills Dumbledore after Dumbledore does some ambiguous pleading. At the beginning of the book, Snape makes an unbreakable vow to help Malfoy on some mission that Voldemort has given Malfoy. Malfoy corners Dumbledore, who has no wand because Malfoy expelliramused him just after Dumbledore totalised Harry (for Harry's protection, presumably). Malfoy can't bring himself to kill Dumbledore, then Snape shows up and does. After Harry is untotalised after Dumbledore dies (apparently the death of a spell's caster releases the target), Harry chases after Snape, who parries all of Harry's spells, but doesn't attack Harry because, he says, "Potter is for the Dark Lord." During this confrontation, Snape tells Harry: (1) no Unforgivable Curses (Imperius, Crucitae) for you; and (2) your spells will be parried "until you learn to keep your mouth and mind shut." (In this book, sixth year students like Harry were learning to cast spells without speaking. In the last book, Snape was trying unsuccessfully to teach Harry to close his mind to mindreading, at which Snape apparently has Bibbyesque talent -- that's lots of talent for you non-Kings fans). Snape gets away.

Now, we have to fit all of this in with the popular culture that derives from the basic tenets of mythology as passed on to us by Joseph Campbell. That sounds really pretentious, but my knowledge of Campbell basically derives from the fact that I have tried to soak up as much about Star Wars as possible without becoming a total geek since I first saw Star Wars as a six-year-old after waiting in a line at the old Fox theater in Hanford, California, through an entire showing of the movie. We waited all the way around the block back to the old gas station that I think was a vaccuum cleaner store at the time. (This is one of the greatest things my parents ever did for me. It will be referenced often on this blog.) Apparently, George Lucas spent lots of time with Campbell to understand the underlying themes of mythology as handed down through the ages. The Star Wars saga reflects these themes.

In addition to Star Wars, Harry Potter must be read in relation to the Lord of the Rings, which shares many of the same themes. There also are similar themes in the Star Trek movies, at least those with the original cast (don't know much about the Next Generation movies, though First Contact was quite good, particularly given that the only previous movie that I had seen James Cromwell in was Babe and it was a kick to see Farmer Hoggett play a completely different role).

So what do Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek tell us about Harry Potter? The part about Dumbledore seems the simplest. There is a theme that the mentor's sacrifice is necessary for the hero to become what he -- it's always a he, damn paternalistic mythology; someone tell me what Ursula K. LeGuin does -- needs to be to do what he has to do. Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in Star Wars, telling Darth Vader that "if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." (Never quite understood that part. Was Obi-Wan going to be moss on Luke's rolling stone?) Similarly, Gandalf is killed or something by the cave monster thing. (The "Bullrog?" Who knows? It was hard enough to keep track of Saruon and Sarumon.) Spock is killed in Wrath of Khan (if you haven't seen the Seinfeld where Jerry and George tear up in talking about this, you should because it is classic.) Both Obi-Wan and Gandalf return to indirectly help the heroes as more powerful beings, Gandalf turning from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White. You just have to trust Obi-Wan when he says that he is more powerful because I have watched the first three Star Wars movies (not the first three "episodes" -- George, you may have more money than God, but you don't get to reorder my childhood) lots of times and never seen a lot of evidence that Obi-Wan became more powerful than Vader could imagine. While Gandalf returns to life, he doesn't return directly to Frodo until after the Ring is destroyed. Spock returns, too, although he is much more active in Kirk's adventures (plus Star Trek doesn't involve one evil that must be defeated, so it's not a perfect analogy anyway).

If you accept that Harry Potter must be read in the light of Campbell-esque mythology as expressed in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, then that leads to three conclusions: (1) Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him; (2) Dumbledore will return in some manner to help Harry, possibly through portraits or something that allows him to give Harry advice (like Obi-Wan telling Luke to turn off his computer and "Use The Force" when trying to blow up the Death Star, advice that Luke followed to Leia's and CEPO's temporary dismay as the Death Star got ready to blow them up); and (3) Snape, though vile, is not evil. This would explain Snape not attacking Harry. (While Voldemort said that he wanted to kill Harry himself in the fourth book, he didn't seem to hung up on doing it himself in the first, second and fifth books.) This also would explain Snape preventing Harry from making any Unforgivable Curses and essentially giving Harry advice on how to be a better spellcaster.

The more difficult conclusions to make are about Snape's future role. What role does he have exactly? Is he a Rogue Hero along the lines of Han Solo or Aragorn? That would be hard to swallow. Since saving Harry's life in the Quidditch match in the first book (which I don't think has ever been properly explained -- even if Snape is not evil, why would he decide to be the Good Samaritan?) -- he has done little but make Harry's life difficult. Han Solo and Aragorn came around pretty early in the action.

I think that the better answer is that he will be more like Gollum. Star Wars doesn't really have a similar character, unless you count Darth Vader in the light of his conversion back from the Dark Side. Either one of them, however, works as an Unexpected Agent of Evil's Destruction. Gollum causes the Ring to fall into Mount Doom when it is unclear if Frodo will do it. Darth Vader pitches the Emperor down what some critic called an "intergalactic sewer" in reviewing Revenge of the Sith (that was a good one, if I could remember who wrote, I would attribute it). Harry probably can't kill Voldemort directly. That would involve an Unforgivable Curse. Morever, as we discovered at the end of the fourth book, Harry's and Voldemort's wands won't work against each other because they have the same core of a feather from Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes. This means that book seven will have to involve an Unexpected Agent of Evil's Destruction. Because of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, I am putting my money on Snape.

There you go. This is what happens to your mind when a significant part of it is hard-wired for this stuff by Star Wars.

What This Is

You're reading this, so you know this is a blog. A little more specifically, this is a blog for my random thoughts. It won't be about work. I like my work, plus I'm an attorney, so I couldn't tell you anything good anyway. It won't be very political because there is enough of that right now. It'll be about lots of theories, comments about stray things and maybe some about my wife (The Muse) and our kids (Mermaid and Enthusio). There will be updates on our dog, whose real name is Buster, which I will be using without remorse. There will be occasional book, movie, TV and music reviews because what good is a blog if you can't have stuff like that? I'll put up pictures if I can figure out how. As the opening credits of Six Million Dollar Man said, "we have the technology." I'm just not entirely sure how to use it. Of course, if Google can somehow manage to post satellite images of what seems like the whole world in a searchable database (try it -- it rocks!), then I imagine that I'll eventually figure out how to post static, unsearchable pictures. Finally, I'm a complete sports junkie, so you will be hearing about sports a lot, particularly the Sacramento Kings. In keeping with the sports milleu, as Ralph Barbieri says at the end of every Razor and Mr. T show on KNBR 680 (that's a shameless plug -- http://www.knbr.com/razorMrT/index.html), "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." That's what we will be doing here.