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First dinner in Lisbon. And let me tell you, it was fantastic. I went to a a cute, little restaurant called Sul. Low-light ambiance, nice decorations without going overboard and friendly service. Sim, menu em ingles. Codfish confit with a creamy risotto in coriander-infused olive oil. They gave me two large codfish filets… tender, flaky, moist. Oh I hate the word moist but it applies. And the risotto was great! Nice flavor without being overpowering. Faro barely merits a mention in this log. It’s a beach town with seemingly little action during low season. The flight from Liverpool was fine and my hotel is nice but nada going on in the evening. Finito. I really have to admire the way that Liverpool is trying to re-invent itself. The Liverpool One development looks like a fantastic commercial enterprise and the use of former dock space for retail and entertainment is quite appealing. And the museums – Maritime, Beatles and Liverpool Life – are splendid. I tend to see Liverpool as a parallel of sorts with Pittsburgh. Old industrial towns, hard-edged populations – quick question who would in a fight, Scouse vs Yinzer! – trying to move forward in a globalized service-sector economy. And football.
I don’t know the specifics of Liverpool’s revival but it looks nicer than I remember 5 and 10 years ago. One quibble though – at the Liverpool Life Museum, there was a quote from some MP stating that Liverpool had become the New York City of Europe. I laughed at the comparison but honestly not out of any Ameri-centric hubris. Liverpool shouldn’t try to be NYC any moreso than Pittsburgh should try to b London. It’s Liverpool. It has its own unique challenges which demand unique solutions. It has its own character, which it can’t nor should run from. People will always flock to huge metropolises like NYC, London or Tokyo. But so much of a country’s fortune will also rest on the different charms of smaller cities like Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, Liverpool or Manchester. Different doesn’t mean better or worse. It just means different. December 10th, 2011, a date which will live in… famy… or something. But like Roman Catholics to Rome or Muslims on the Haaj (yes, you’re damn right I’m making that analogy, bitch! It’s called hyperbole!), so must a Liverpool FC fan make the pilgrimage to Anfield. My ticket included access to one of the indoor loungers so pre-game and during halftime, I could get a cup of tea and sit indoors. Not that I would call Liverpudlian weather anything severe of course. The first time walking out into the stands was pretty spectacular. Anfield is a smaller stadium so most of the seats seem pretty intimate as opposed to some of the larger stadia in the States. When they played Liverpool FC’s anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, I got chills all over. To be part of the masses singing in this tribute to the Reds was… beyond words.
The energy of the crowd quickly settled into the rhythms of the match and the team pressed forwards. The KOP end of the stadium produced songs, chants and all manner of noise throughout the match. The away section of QPR fans also brought a lot of energy, keeping up their taunts (Andy Carroll, he looks like a girl!) as QPR played a pretty superb defensive game. I was a little surprised by how much some of the supporters got on Stuart Downing. Apparently, he’s not much of a crowd favorite at the moment. Despite the majority of possession, as has been the case all season, LFC still lack finishers. It fell to Luis Suarez to create and take the lone goal of the match. Despite the low score, I couldn’t be happier with my first visit to Anfield. What an experience. You’ll Never Walk Alone, indeed! [I'm copying down my thoughts from my recent European vacation and posting them. They'll appear back-dated]. I think my cousin is scared of visiting America. Actually, I’m sure of it because he told me he wouldn’t want to visit there. Because we look like a Security State to the Brits. The Patriot Act, the NDAA that’s winding its way through congress, all the alleged black ops helicopters flying over US cities.
By and large, I’d disagree. I think we’re relatively free to live our lives as we see fit. And I tried to assuage his fears but are we really so far from a security state? Threats to civil liberties come only a little at a time. And I sure as hell don’t see the so-called Libertarians wings of either party doing a damn thing about it. Democrats get pasted as soft on national security/defense if they try to critique such measures. And Republicans are more worried about Sharia creep and fighting culture wars against Gays than fighting the military-industrial complex. I said this under President George W. Bush and I’ll say it now under President Obama – I trust the federal government to protect white folks’ rights. I don’t trust it to protect mine. It’s not uncommon for adults (of which I suppose I’m one) to look at youngsters and shake their head in amazement at the callow decisions of youth. But I’m of the opinion that “youth is wasted on the young” is not but so much detritus. What is youth if it is not wasted to some extent; to serve as fodder for experience. The path to equilibrium, to maturity comes not without making mistakes, lots and lots of mistakes. One of my favorite TV episodes of all-time is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called Tapestry. (Bear with me if you’re not a Trekkie, ok). In it, Captain Picard is injured and because of an artificial heart he had to get as a result of a bar fight as a cadet, he dies. In death, the character Q comes to him and offers to let him live his life over again, free from the rash and reckless decisions he made as a youngster. Picard goes back and doesn’t get into that bar fight. As a result, his life turns out much differently. He leads a safe life. Instead of becoming Captain, he is stuck as a competent but safe mid-level science officer with no prospects for advancement or leadership. In his newfound frustration, Picard calls out to Q to let him go back again, that he would rather get into that fight, be reckless as a kid, become Captain and even die than live that safe life. The second time around, he gets into the fight; fast forward and the injury to his artificial heart actually doesn’t kill him.
In the denouement of the episode, Picard speaks to his first officer, Riker, of his youth. He says that there are parts of his youth of which he isn’t proud; loose threads. But when he pulled on one of those threads, it unravelled the tapestry of his life. It may not be so bold as getting stabbed in the heart but I remember getting cold sweats on a flight to Abu Dhabi, thinking there was no way I was ready to lead a brand new ESM team. I had leapt before looking but ultimately the pressure of the situation brought out the best in me. I made it through that experience and it ranks as one of the best bold decisions I ever made. In short, youth is to meant to be ‘wasted’ on the young lest we become old before our time. My dad has never been that big on celebrating his own birthday. Perhaps it’s because he has two birthdays – one on his passport, the other that his mother swore he was born on. Actually, he felt that the birthdays of the the greats should be celebrated. Though he never failed to celebrate our birthdays, his refusal to acknowledge his own was, I think, his way of trying to inspire us to greatness. “You should want to be so memorable that others will remember your birth.” I think we all know someone from high school who was always the smartest person in the room as well as the laziest. It’s not a stretch to see that this person never reached his potential, never became great. He may be delivering pizzas or working at a convenience store or just muddling through life. It’s not my place to judge another life but that ain’t greatness.
The recently retired NFL wide receiver Randy Moss will be remembered as one of the top 5 or top 10 WRs of all time. Maybe even #2. But he won’t even touch #1 even though he had more talent than Jerry Rice. He could have worked harder, tried harder, been a better teammate, been less of a malcontent. But he didn’t. It’s a testament to the immense size of Moss’s talent that he had such a productive career despite his malfeasance. So how do we explain the on-court production of Michael Jordan or the insane creative genius of Steve Jobs? I think exceptions prove the rule here. Talent is as much of a distraction as it is a blessing. Not a burden per se but a distraction. These distracting, detracting behaviors are, I think, the more common reaction of the truly talented. It’s a coping mechanism. Most of the greats will attribute their success to something like 2% talent, 98% hard work or thereabouts. And therein lies the rub. To rise above the distractions that talent brings, to actually take advantage of one’s innate abilities, to even realize one’s great abilities is something of a miracle. For every Jordan (who’s lucky his gambling didn’t destroy his career), there are a dozen Vince Carters. For every Lemieux, a dozen Lindros’. For every Steve Jobs, a hundred high school flame-outs. Someone has to deliver pizza after all. Photo Credit: Flickr It’s a common lament that people read less today than in years past. In a recent Roger Ebert column, he quotes that the average American teenager spends 17 minutes/weekend in voluntary reading. Perhaps, as Ebert contends, this statistic only includes “serious” novels whereas all manner of reading should be counted. I think averages such as these fall over time only because we just have more and more and more people. I would contend that we have more people in aggregate who read a lot than we did 50 years ago. It’s also that we have many more people in aggregate who don’t read much. Perhaps this leads to a rising aristocracy of the intelligentsia. Or in the converse, an idiocracy. But for now, I think I’ll concentrate on the fact that are likely more well-read individuals in aggregate than there were in years past. One of Great Laws of the Iroquois Confederacy stated, “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions upon the next seven generations.” It’s worth allowing that the Iroquois were, from a practical standpoint, probably never that far-sighted. Such a statement is mainly aspirational for any human being to say nothing of any group which must have had many competing opinions. Thus am I reminded of the debate surrounding what to do about reducing carbon emissions. As I understand it, the natural processes that regulate carbon content in the Earth’s atmosphere are inexorably slow. Yet any attempts to check man-made emissions have higher short-term costs. So we are left with the fundamental problem articulated by the Iroquois. It also reminds me of American problems regarding the federal budget. In principle, I’m in favor of closing tax loopholes that cost the government revenue. That is, until I am reminded that one of the largest such loopholes is the mortgage interest deduction. I just filed my taxes and I’m due a fat refund because of that deduction. Admittedly, I’ll be putting all of that money (as well as my annual salary bonus) towards this year’s property taxes. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to afford my house and would be forced to put it up for sale. While one may reasonably argue that Allegheny County and Gateway School District’s property tax rates are more to blame, I suspect that level of reform would be more difficult to achieve than federal budget deficit concerns. And so I am forced to take the narrow view. Don’t cut my mortgage interest deduction but please find a way to reduce the deficit anyway. Fix the carbon emissions issues but please don’t make the reforms hurt either. Ani DeFranco, who is about my age and belongs to the age group broadly known as Generation X, once said, “The best minds of my generation are in jail.” But if we look at the baby boomers and to a lesser extent their parents’ generation, the corollary would be that some of the best minds of those generations are dead. And not by the slow decay of time but them fools was assassinated. Sheikh Mujib, who liberated Bangladesh from Pakistan, assassinated. And what leaders are we left to admire, to look up to, to aspire to become… Mahmoud Abbas, Binyamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Silvio Berlusconi, George W. Bush, Crown Prince Abdullah, Robert Mugabe, Charles Taylor?! Let me close with a quote from Fight Club (paraphrased), “If our fathers are our models for God then perhaps it’s time to realize that God does not like us.” |
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