Rapid-Fire Book Club, Everything Has Cilantro On It Edition

I have returned from Los Angeles. It was very, very nice out there all week, the people were nice or at least indifferent (save for the occasional crazy-aggressive driver who'd be going about 20 mph faster than everyone else so he could dart into a lane of traffic with about two inches of clearance on either side), got some beautiful pictures- the Pacific Coast Highway in particular was just breathtaking, both from visual appeal and the fact that I was not exhaling or inhaling very much because I was driving on it during a red-flag warning and that was not a little bit harrowing when you've got high cliffs on one side, a big drop to the ocean on the other and no place to pull over and let people pass you so you can cower behind the wheel in peace.

There were really only three bad things about the trip:

A) You cannot find a Mountain Dew in that town for love or money. It's like every place I went was a Coke place.

B) There is waaaaaaay too much driving to be done. The dread of Los Angeles traffic, I think, is a little overblown- I didn't find it quite as awful as it's made out to be. It's bad. Certainly. But it's not unmanageably bad. You just have to be a little patient and a little calm and you'll be fine. (Having a Taylor Swift CD going during this process helps. About half the radio stations on my dial seemed to be up-tempo Latin stations, and really, what is going to be more helpful for your mood during a traffic jam, 'Back To December' or remixed salsa music?) The real sticking point is the act of driving itself. Getting from anywhere to anywhere is a good half-hour at least. I really wish LA was more compact than it is, and not spread out, blob-like, across the Southern California landscape.

C) Back in September, I noted the presence of LA's Skid Row district and its notoriety for being essentially a dumping ground for the homeless. The thing is, it doesn't matter where in Los Angeles you go. You will see the homeless. Often. Do not travel to Los Angeles thinking you're going to get some sanitized, totally touristy experience with no unpleasant sights whatsoever. They're there. They are wherever you are. They are in the tourist areas, they are in the parks, they are walking alongside major streets at red lights- and sometimes IN those streets during red lights- hoping someone will roll down the window and help somehow. Homelessness in Los Angeles is a problem you cannot run from, Skid Row or no Skid Row.

But from that bad thing comes at least one good thing. At one major tourist area in Santa Monica, the Third Street Promenade, if you look, you'll see a big bronze dolphin with a coin slot where its spout would be. It's one of several set up in Santa Monica (including another dolphin on Santa Monica Pier), as part of something called the Dolphin Change Program. The idea is, instead of giving to panhandlers directly, you're supposed to put money in a dolphin instead, and the money collected from the dolphins will go to various local homelessness nonprofits that can put the money to a little more effective use.

Yes, of course I put money in the dolphin.

I also brought home a whole lot of books. One was bought for the plane ride in; the others were bought in Los Angeles itself.

Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Vroom! A World Of Motorized Marvels (the one bought for the plane)
Foer, Franklin- How Soccer Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory Of Globalization
Huang, Yunte- Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History
Muller, Eric L.- Free To Die For Their Country: The Story Of The Japanese American Draft Resisters In World War II
Myers, B.R.- The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves- And Why It Matters
Napoli, James- The Official Dictionary Of Sarcasm: A Lexicon For Those Of Us Who Are Better And Smarter Than The Rest Of You (think Devil's Dictionary, 2010 Edition)
Richardson, Peter- A Bomb In Every Issue: How The Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America

Dear Occupy Oakland Protestors

Trashing City Hall and burning an American flag? Is not helping your cause or anyone else's. Just about all the other protestors, the Wisconsin ones of course among them, are going out of their way to be peaceful and respectful and did I mention peaceful which is the opposite of whatever it is you're doing. Stop it. You're undercutting everyone else.

I should not have had to get up out of my nice hotel room and come down to the lobby just to have to tell you this.

Programming Note

This is going to be the last post made before I head out to Los Angeles. Should my computer situation pan out, maybe I'll be able to fire something off while out there, but if it's similar to the situation in Hawaii, you might not see me again for the next week.

Now, while I'm gone, I need you to do a couple things for me...

*Do not spend all your money getting celebrities to tweet about you.
*Do not kill the cat of a campaign manager, spraypaint the word 'liberal' on its carcass, and leave it on the doorstep for his four kids to find. I never thought I'd have to actually tell you not to do that, but apparently we have some sick, sick excuses for people around here.
*By the same note, please do not use sports as an excuse to mob a hospital and/or raise general mayhem in search of a fan of your own team who does not root for your team the way you want them to root for them.
*Remember to set the clocks back one second. I left a note for you on the microwave. Should only take you a couple seconds.
*Please don't drop little Billy on his head. You'll make him stupid.
*You don't have to seize cities on behalf of Moammar Gadhafi anymore. He's dead. Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself.
*And don't bet food on the Super Bowl. Making food bets on playoff games is really, really stupid. Take the Packers/Giants game back in the divisional round. What Packers fan could be so stupidly overconfident in victory that he made a bet where if the Packers lost, he had to haul cheese all the way down to Los Angeles to deliver to the Giants fan he made the bet with? Who DOES that?

...oh. Me. That's right. I'm an idiot.

The Abbey Road Cup

I went and did it again. I went and drew up a factoid in search of a purpose. At the end of 2011, Pollstar released its annual ranking of the musical acts that have earned the most money touring North America over the course of the calendar year. You may have seen it yourself, but in case you haven't, I won't mention who that is now because it'll come up later on. Just about all of the articles put the top two acts in the headline, though only the top two; everyone below was saved for the main body of the articles.

Coming as it did around the end of the NFL regular season, for some reason I started wondering what would happen if you took the top two in that ranking every year, and matched them in some kind of championship-game battle of the bands. I mean, we have awards shows to say who did best over the year, but this would be a way to 'settle it on the field', as it were. And then I went and fleshed out a whole entire format, tossing in football-like elements because it is football season and I am totally insane. I even named the darned thing: the Abbey Road Cup. (Or, for sponsorship purposes, the Pollstar Cup.)

Here's what I came up with for a format:

*The two competing acts would be placed on dual stages, one right next to the other. They spend all night long staring each other right in the face. Obviously you would need a stadium for this; we could have cities bid to host it.

*Each act will complete a 12-song set. The two will alternate. Band A will do Song 1, then Band B will do their Song 1, then Band A will do their Song 2, and so on until Band B closes with their Song 12. Because we're theming things after football, the battle will be split into quarters, three songs each per quarter. There will be short breaks between quarters, with a longer break at halftime. Maybe we'll tack on a halftime show featuring the #3 band according to Pollstar, which will be high in hilarious awkward bitterness at not being part of the match itself.

*Who goes first- or, more alternatively, who gets to go last- will be decided by seeding. The #1 seed- the band that earned the most touring- will get to decide whether to go first or second.

*For each song they perform, a band can earn up to 7 points- the value of a touchdown and PAT, of course- depending on the decibel volume of the crowd after each song. (Which won't automatically max out every time; we'll calibrate the thresholds to make it very possible for a band to come in under 7. Remember, both sets of fans are in the stadium at the same time, and some will have a clear favorite. A big fan of Band A is not going to do anything to help Band B if they can help it.)

*Prior to any three of their songs, a band can announce their intention to "go for two"- that is, make their next song worth a potential eight points, the value of a touchdown and two-point conversion.

*Each band is also given three 'interceptions' to use during the concert. Both bands will have a big red button at the front of their stage. After any verse of any song their opponent is singing, a band can hit the button and 'intercept' the song. The intercepted band must stop playing immediately; if possible, maybe we can just shut off their sound equipment. The intercepting band must then take over that song and cover it, from that exact point, or until the opponent decides to take their song back with an interception of their own. As soon as an interception is triggered, it's automatically worth maximum points, awarded to whoever registers higher on the decibel scale when the audience is asked to vote for who did the song better.

*Whoever has the most points at the end of the night wins. In case of a tie, each band will do a 13th 'overtime' song, without interceptions. Higher decibel level from the crowd wins.

This is something I'd want to see. This is something I'd want televised, with a pregame show and colliding CGI helmets and a championship trophy and everything. In fact, tell me this isn't something you'd want to see on TV every year. The only thing left to determine was who would have actually competed in the Abbey Road Cup had it existed in previous years. This seemed a simple, simple search, but actually turned out to be quite difficult, especially when looking for second place. Pollstar didn't go back very far on this on their website, so I had to cobble together names piece by piece, year by year, random site by random nowhere-backwater-that-managed-to-pull-exactly-one-statistical-bit fansite. Eventually, though, I managed to get the matchups running back to 1984, save for 1986, where I only found half the matchup. After 1984, it gets really, really choppy.

Now all any of this needed was a excuse to actually use it for something. Anything.

Then I remembered: I have a blog, and this is something people are clearly having a lot of trouble finding.

So here goes. The Abbey Road Cup matchups from 1984 on, save the #2 seed from 1986 which I couldn't dig up- again, this is the top two touring acts in North America in each given year, as rated by Pollstar. (At least, Pollstar is the measure dating back to 1985. It appears as if Billboard was the stat-keeper prior to that.) The top earner, the #1 seed, is listed first, followed by the second-highest earner, the #2 seed:

2011: U2 vs. Taylor Swift
2010: Bon Jovi vs. Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd)
2009: U2 vs. Bruce Springsteen
2008: Madonna vs. Celine Dion
2007: The Police vs. Kenny Chesney
2006: Rolling Stones vs. Barbra Streisand
2005: Rolling Stones vs. U2
2004: Prince vs. Celine Dion
2003: Bruce Springsteen vs. 50 Cent
2002: Paul McCartney vs. Rolling Stones
2001: U2 vs. 'NSync
2000: Tina Turner vs. 'NSync
1999: Rolling Stones vs. Bruce Springsteen
1998: Elton John vs. Dave Matthews Band
1997: Rolling Stones vs. U2
1996: Kiss vs. Garth Brooks
1995: The Eagles vs. Boyz II Men
1994: Rolling Stones vs. Pink Floyd
1993: The Grateful Dead vs. Rod Stewart
1992: U2 vs. The Grateful Dead
1991: The Grateful Dead vs. ZZ Top
1990: New Kids on the Block vs. Billy Joel
1989: Rolling Stones vs. The Who
1988: Pink Floyd vs. Michael Jackson
1987: U2 vs. Bon Jovi
1986: The Monkees vs. ? (if I had to guess, without confirmation, I'd go with Van Halen, Kiss or Metallica, in that order of confidence, but don't take that for gospel)
1985: Bruce Springsteen vs. Prince
1984: The Jacksons vs. Bruce Springsteen

Go on. Tell me you wouldn't want to see some of these matchups. Tell me a Rolling Stones vs. U2 match in 1997- and a rematch eight years later- wouldn't be the greatest thing ever. Heck, the two look like the Lakers and Celtics for all the times they'd make appearances. Tell me the fans of the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand wouldn't look weird at each other all night. Tell me Kiss wouldn't be thinking long and hard about whether they really wanted to intercept a song from Garth Brooks.

Now tell me Pollstar and the bands want to see it. Please?

Corn Is Always Interesting

One good thing about SOPA and PIPA being put on the defensive: it means I can play Wikipedia Roulette without fear. And in doing so, we are brought the following story of a man who thought he was above the law, and tried to become the law. Strangely topical in a post-Citizens United world.

We go back to the Roman Empire to find a man named Spurius Maelius. (The link is an epic wall of text, and it's pretty dense, so be aware of that. Skip to 4.12 in the text for where we pick up.)

In 439 BCE, Rome was undergoing a famine. Why there was a famine, the text isn't sure; it was either the weather, people getting too wrapped up in city life to tend to crops, or both. But there was a famine. Corn was the chief crop, so the Senate put one Lucius Minucius in charge of the corn market to see what he could do. What he did was, he made everyone who had any corn declare how much they had. They got to keep one month's supply, but they were made to sell the rest to the government.

This, clearly, was intended to cut down on hoarding. What it actually did, though, was tell everyone exactly how bad things were, and it was worse than people thought. Several citizens flung themselves into the Tiber and drowned.

So that didn't work.

Enter a very rich, very opportunistic, and very ambitious Spurius Maelius. Through his connections, he not only managed to buy up corn during this period, he more or less cornered the market. Except he made sure there wasn't much of a market, as he then distributed the corn for free. Why did he do this? Originally, he was going for a consulship. The idea was that by handing out so much corn to so many people in what has to be the weirdest variation on the Robin Hood principle ever, he could get popular enough to win election to consul. But then he kept handing it out, and he kept getting more popular, and his head got bigger... and Maelius eventually got it into his head that he ought to be not merely a consul, but emperor.

So people started meeting in his house, and an arsenal began to pile up. Soon, consul elections were rapidly approaching, and though any plans to go for the throne weren't ready yet, they were getting close as well; everyone that needed to be bribed had been bribed. Before Maelius could make his move, though, someone noticed all the goings-on at Maelius' house and all the weapons going in but not coming out. Minicius called Maelius out on the carpet, as well as the consuls for not catching it and handling it themselves and allowing things to get to the point they did. One of the consuls, Quinctius Capitolinus, blamed bureaucracy for the delay and called for a dictator that could cut through all the red tape and do something.

'Dictator' here being used in its original context, and without the modern connotations, though they were aware of them.

His nomination was Cincinnatus. Yes, that one. He had already cemented his legacy by resigning the post in 458 BCE the second he was no longer needed, and hoped not to have to do this again. After all, he was 80 years old at the time, and if that sounds old now, remember how much longer we live these days compared to ancient Rome. The Senate more or less begged him to take over, though, and eventually, Cincinnatus agreed to do it.

Cincinnatus' first decree: name a Master of the Horse (read: right-hand man, the first thing any dictator was required to do), Caius Servilius Ahala.

Second decree: post some guards. This is the point where Maelius started to get wise to the fact that they're on to him.

Third decree: send Servilius to go fetch Maelius and haul him in for trial. When Servilius read Maelius the summons, Maelius, with a crowd gathered, feigned outrage, then stalled for time, then kind of just looked around and began to back away.

Retreat was not a good idea in ancient Rome.

One of Servilius' officers grabbed Maelius, but couldn't hang onto him, as the crowd, who was as you will recall on Maelius' side, grabbed him back. Maelius ran off, crying for help and that it was all a big conspiracy and save me I don't wanna die. He didn't get far. Servilius ran Maelius down himself and stabbed him to death, after which he reported back to Cincinnatus, who then had to go explain to the jittery populace that even if Maelius was innocent of trying to start a coup, he was guilty of failing to respond to a dictatorial summons and of resisting arrest, and besides, he would have been declared guilty and executed anyway had the trial gone forward as planned.

He made it up to them, though. After ordering Maelius' house torn down to prevent it from becoming a symbol, Cincinnatus confiscated Maelius' remaining corn- that which had caused the whole incident- and sold it off at rock-bottom prices. Corn being all the people really wanted in the first place, that settled them down enough to where any threat of a coup died with Maelius.

Then he stepped down. Again. The first time he was dictator, it was for 16 days. This second time, he was in charge for roughly a week.

Something Maelius, had he taken over, clearly had no intention of doing.

That Does Very Complicated, That Does Sophisticated, That Does Whoa, Amazing, And That Does Whizz Bang Far Too Technical To Explain

Trip prep is ramping up, so nothing big. Well, nothing that takes a lot of time to get prepped, anyway. It's time for another X In Y Minutes quiz.

Here is a list of 200 historical events, all of which happened in a CE year (remember, that's what we call AD now). For each event, you are to supply the year in which it happened. You have 20 minutes to get as many as you can.

Kaj: Money

Today we welcome a new name to the Journalism All-Star Team.

First, let's recap the 18 current members, in no particular order: Soledad O'Brien, Gwen Ifill, Christiane Amanpour, Louis Theroux, Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Schaap, Fareed Zakaria, Lisa and Laura Ling, Jon Stewart, Nate Silver, Mariana van Zeller, Sanjay Gupta, Bob Ley, Stephen Colbert, Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow.

Two of the All-Stars, Laura Ling and Mariana van Zeller, have logged time as members of Current's Vanguard team. van Zeller won a Peabody for a report she did for Vanguard, and when Laura was abducted by North Korea, it too was during filming of a Vanguard episode. Needless to say, the Vanguard team was not playing around.

Then came Keith Olbermann.

After leaving MSNBC, Olbermann arrived at Current last February. Not only was he to import his old show, Countdown, he was also named Chief News Officer of Current and given an equity stake in the network. Current quickly underwent a makeover to put Olbermann on the air as much as possible, and to bring in people friendly to Olbermann, chief among them Cenk Uygur (who also left MSNBC acrimoniously). By September, when the AV Club checked in to write an overview of the network, they found a lot of Olbermann and not a lot of much else, to the point where Current had nearly become the Keith Olbermann Network.

The Vanguard team was not among Olbermann's people. Last month, citing budget cuts, most of the team was laid off, G4TechTV-style, with the announcement that further episodes would be done by freelancers. van Zeller was among the cuts, though she's quickly been snapped up as a correspondent for National Geographic Explorer. Which tells you right there the caliber of reporting Current was kicking to the curb. Her first report, 'Guerilla Gold Rush', is unavailable online but will next air at 8 AM Central on Sunday morning on National Geographic.

Another of the cuts has been taken in by CNN, and his first report, 'Narco Wars', will air 11 hours later, at 7 PM Central Sunday night. This is our inductee, the third member of Team Vanguard to make the squad.

Welcome to the team, Kaj Larsen.

Reporting on the drug war from various fronts in the United States, Mexico and Central America is getting to be almost a rite of passage for the All-Stars. van Zeller got her Peabody from a report on Oxycontin trafficking, and she's also reported from a trafficking route along the Amazon and a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Both Laura and Lisa Ling have been to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an epicenter of drug-related violence. Anderson Cooper reported on drug tunnels burrowed underneath the US/Mexico border. Sanjay Gupta attended a drug bust in Peru. Christiane Amanpour, Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow have said their piece as well, albeit from the desk, and Fareed Zakaria particpated in this debate over it.

On Sunday, it becomes Larsen's turn. Truthfully, Larsen probably should have been named to the team earlier. That's my fault for not doing so. I think what it was, was that I didn't want to go hog-wild and name the entire Vanguard crew to the team, for fear of devaluing the All-Star designation. The 1927 Yankees are widely considered the greatest baseball team of all time, but you wouldn't name starting catcher Pat Collins to the Hall of Fame. So I only took one or two from the group, and Laura and Mariana made the cut. In any case, I'm past that hang-up, and now Kaj joins them.

As usual when we name someone to the team, we post a clip of them at their best. For Kaj, it's a pair of Vanguard episodes done alongside Christof Putzel (Putzel and Adam Yamaguchi, the other two members of Vanguard's core group, have been retained by Current after the layoffs), in which they reported on Somalia. Somalia is notable for being the nation on Earth where journalists are seemingly more afraid to visit, due to the danger involved, than anywhere else on the planet. There may be countries that attract fewer journalists, but that's due to apathy. Somalia actively scares them away. There are some very courageous journalists out there who will look at Somalia and conclude that it's just not worth it.

Kaj- and Christof- went.

Twice. Kind of.

This is the original report, called 'Mogadishu Madness'. Christof is narrator in both; Kaj is helping with camerawork.



This is the second report, called 'Beach of Death', in which they reported from Yemen about refugees from Somalia.



As you can see, while Kaj is the one named today, Christof may well be joining him very, very soon; the reason he and Adam currently remain on the outside looking in is that, in the wake of Olbermann's effective takeover, the Vanguard team had to shift to more Olbermann-friendly topics. Kaj, now with CNN, no longer operates under that restriction. Christof and Adam, though, are still both very, very good, and who knows? Maybe the entire team will eventually make it in after all.

Smooth move, Olbermann.

UPDATE: Kaj has written back, accepting his induction. In doing so, he passed along three of his other pieces: a third piece from Somalia- his favorite- where he and Christof purchase an AK-47, a solo report on gun culture in America, "and of course, the waterboarding video."