Category Archives: Kyle Schwarber

Hot Air

Prosody, Please

The boys over at Ledge Mule Press are doing their best to keep Bloomington’s summer literate. They’ll host a book release party featuring poetry reading, music, and other folderol tomorrow night, Saturday, July 18th, 7pm at the I Fell building.

Ledgmule, run by Dave Torneo, Ross Gay, and Chris Mattingly, sponsors a summer poetry series at the I Fell throughout these dog days. Tomorrow’s entry features poet Leslie Marie Aguilar reading from her brand new collection, Mesquite Manual, published by New Delta Review. Aguilar will be backed up by poets Danny Quintos and Britt Ashley as well as musicians Corn Palace.

Aguilar

Aguilar

The Texas-born Aguilar taught poetry in Indiana University’s Creative Writing Program and will begin a 2015-16 fellowship at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in the journals New Delta Review, the Bellingham Review, the Washington Square Review, Rattle, the Iron Horse Literary Review and many others.

I Fell is at 415 W. 4th St, the southwest corner of 4th and Rogers. See you there.

You Can Look It Up

In case you’re confused as to what, precisely, terrorism is, its definition has been reinforced once again by the fine folks who run this holy land’s security apparatus and corporate media. It is any blood-soaked outrage committed by a dark-skinned non-Christian. Period.

For proof, check the coverage of — as well as the FBI statements in the wake of — the shootings at military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee yesterday. The perpetrator, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez (a dead-giveaway, right?) is brown, Arab-born, and a Muslim. Ergo, his was an act of terror. The FBI special agent in charge of the investigation into the act says , sure, it’s prob. terrorism, and why not?

As opposed to, say, that lily-white kid mowing down black people in a South Carolina church last month.

Roof

Not A Terrorist

Special Agent Ed Reinhold wants to clear up any confusion: “We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined that it is not.” The Dylann Roof turkey shoot, conversely, was treated as what the cops like to call “a simple criminal act.” Even when certain boat-rockers wanted officials to characterize Roof’s goof as terrorism, law enforcement types said, Whoa, now!

God forbid we should attach the emotional weight of the word terror and all its permutations to the act of a Caucasian.

Don’t you people know nothin’?

Banalities Are Your Friends

BTW, our faithful sentinels in the for-profit news gathering industry have rolled out all their terror- and/or natural disaster-related cliches in the 20 or so hours since the Chattanooga shootings.

The citizens of the town, reporters tell us, are:

  • reeling
  • trying to make sense of it all
  • wondering if they’ll ever look at their hometown in the same way again

Expect Chattanoogans in the next year or so to:

  • pause and reflect
  • come together as one
  • celebrate a new start

Got it?

The Schwarber Era Begins

IU baseball fave Kyle Schwarber apparently is up in the big leagues for good now. The Chicago Cubs have brought the hot-hitting minor leaguer up due to an injury suffered by their regular catcher, Miguel Montero. Schwarber had a cup of coffee with the parent club in June during which he punished Major League pitchers over a six-game stay.

Schwarber has been the subject of an intensive program to bring him up to speed as a big league backstop. He’s always had a rep as a blue-chip slugger but his defensive abilities long have been viewed as subpar. Acc’d’g to insiders, the Cubs have tried to rebuild his catching skills from the ground up since they drafted him in June, 2014.

Schwarber

Schwarber’s First Big League Appearance, June 16th, 2015

It’s a good bet Schwarber will serve as a backup catcher with the Cubs but probably will garner a ton of at bats as a left fielder, a position he is equally inept at. As a left fielder, though, his deficiencies will not be exposed as often as they would be behind the plate.

So, here’s the fantasy: Schwarber bludgeons pitchers for the rest of the year, leading the Cubs to a post-season berth, during which they win their first World Series since the Theodore Roosevelt presidency. Schwarber is then assumed into heaven.

Can’t a guy dream?

My Hiatus (And, No, I Don’t Mean My Hernia)

Just a reminder, I’ll be back pontificating and opinionating here daily (well, almost daily) soon. Right now, I’m still slaving away on the Charlotte Zietlow book. Be patient.

Hot Air

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Covenants

Just in case anyone was wondering if the police of this holy land are getting more trigger happy these days, or if our Officer Friendlies are any more bloodthirsty than their counterparts in other civilized nations, there is this:

The Unites States has failed to respect and protect the right to life by failing to ensure that domestic legislation meets international human rights law and standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers.

That’s the conclusion issued by Amnesty International researchers this past week. They studied how the legislatures of the 50 states write laws setting standards for cops taking target practice on the citizenry. Murrica, they found, is failing. Our lawmakers are not living up to the standards set in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — which we signed in 1992. The Covenant, essentially, set guidelines for cops using firearms and other force. We were all for it more than two decades ago, ergo our signature on the document.

But in everyday practice, our lawmakers as well as our deputized guardians of public safety have pissed all over the document.

Militarization of Police

Ready, Aim….

And the funny thing is, those folks who hoot and holler most about big bloated gov’t, the tyranny of federal guidelines, the coming disarmament of all US citizens, and the rounding up of Christians and Republicans into re-education camps, are those most likely to shriek that our cops should be able to fire their guns at will whenever folks sneeze.

If you care to — and if you’ve the stomach for it — here’s the full text of the report. BTW, if you click on this link to the Covenant itself, you’ll note that it was drafted and adopted by some 35 countries in 19-freakin’-66! So the US didn’t jump on the bandwagon for more than a quarter of a century. And among the original signatories were such bastions of gentility and civil rights as the Soviet Union, Romania, Rwanda, Chile, and Iran.

Keep in mind that during all that time, our soldiers were fighting for “freedom” in countless hot spots around the globe.

Welcome To The Show

In more pleasant news, Indiana University’s beloved fireplug and wizard with a bat in his hands, Kyle Schwarber, had a smashing cameo appearance in Major League Baseball this week.

Schwarber

Kyle Schwarber

Schwarber was selected in the first round of last year’s amateur draft by the Chicago Cubs and he’s done nothing but force professional pitchers to rethink their career choices since then. Through four levels of minor league ball thus far, Schwarber has demonstrated an uncanny ability to hit for average and power and control the strike zone. The Cubs are trying to make a Major League catcher out of him, an aim that most scouts say is problematic. But the kid’s such a spectacular slugger that the big league club might be satisfied if he only achieves mediocrity as a backstop.

Schwarber was brought up this past week because the Cubs played in two American League ballparks where the Designated Hitter is employed. The kid, ergo, was able to take his swings w/o being forced to lug the leather onto the field. As a hitter, he continued to amaze, hitting a home run and a triple, driving in six runs overall, and even going 4 for 5 in his first start at Cleveland’s Progressive Field.

The Cubs sent him back to the minors immediately after yesterday’s game. So, what does the future hold for him? Best case scenario is that, with proper tutelage, he can become an adequate Major League catcher by Opening Day 2016. Other possibilities include the National League adopting the Designated Hitter rule, making his defensive deficiencies moot, and the sad chance that the Cubs might use him as trade currency, shipping him off to an American League club in exchange for what ought to be a bushel-full of talent.

Puttin’ On The Ritz

A pal o’mine is heading up to Indianapolis as I type this. His errand? Picking up a stack of bumper stickers for Glenda Ritz for Governor. The Loved One and I have already put in our orders. We mentioned lapel buttons as well but my source tells us Ritz hasn’t got around to getting them made yet.

Bumper Sticker

Right now Ritz is trying to raise enough dough to make her quarterly financial report, due later this month, look good. She’s competing with John Gregg for Dem dollars. Now, I was happy to vote for Gregg when he ran in the last gubernatorial election against eventual winner Mike Pence, but I’d be even more thrilled to throw my lot in with a Dem who’s closer to my heart, as Ritz is.

Ritz

Ritz Wants You

[Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/Indianapolis Star]

She’s My Best Friend

It’s The Loved One’s annual Birthday Week, wherein she takes the week off work and celebrates her entrance into the world by mowing the lawn and scrubbing down the patio furniture [I know, she’s a weirdo.]

Anyway, I’ll be featuring vids of songs I’m dedicating to her for the next five days. The first, written by Queen’s bassist, John Deacon, came out in 1975. Deacon wrote the song in honor of his wife, Victoria Tetzlaff, to whom he’s been married for 40 goddamned years. The couple has six kids — actually, adults, now. Pretty neat for a rock star, no?

 

Hot Air

An Unmistakable Statement

Think what you will about Barack Obama’s presidency. You’re entirely welcome to piss and moan that he’s a failed president, that his policies are leading us toward socialism, and/or that we’ll be paying through the nose for his programs for generations to come. Wags, “journalists,” and even entire “news” organizations have grown up shrieking such things. That’s okay; this is Murrica and we have the right to say what in the hell ever we want, so long as we don’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. We can even lie from sunrise through sunset, so long as we don’t fudge our résumés or cheat on our taxes.

So the Right can keep on peddling its slop. But those who didn’t show up at Selma Alabama, yesterday for the 50th anniversary remembrance of Bloody Sunday, are being more honest with that one single act than with all the facts, figures, interpretations, and innuendos they’ve mouthed and keyboard-spewed for the so-far six-plus years of the Obama reign.

Washington Post

Obama Embraces John Lewis At The Edmund Pettus Bridge

[Saul Loeb photo/Getty Images]

They’re saying:

  • Civil rights don’t matter;
  • Black human beings don’t matter;
  • Voting doesn’t matter;
  • The rule of law doesn’t matter.

They’re saying a lot for being so uncharacteristically silent.

Kyle Watch

Is Kyle Schwarber single? Does he go out with anybody?

Aw, what am I saying? He’s not my type.

The burly and supremely talented former Indiana University catcher came to the plate Thursday in sunny Arizona. It was his first at bat as a professional baseball player in Spring Training. He promptly hit a grand slam home run. On top of that, it was his birthday. The kid is only 22.

Sigh.

Schwarber

Schwarber

If he keeps this remarkable hitting up — he’s been tearing up the minor leagues since he was drafted out of IU by the Chicago Cubs last June — he’ll be smashing baseballs onto Waveland Avenue outside Wrigley Field by the end of the 2016 season.

Maybe he is my type after all.

Rules & Regs

Now, this may be a silly thing to make an issue of but, well, I gotta. I was in the restroom at my local Subway yesterday afternoon. After I finished my primary business therein, I stood at the sink and washed my hands. And there, right next to the sink was the sign, “Wash Your Hands.”

I doubt if there’s a restaurant or other food service establishment in this holy land that doesn’t have that sign or a similar one in its rest rooms, most of them reading, in fine print, something on the order of By order of your local health dept.

Sign

I’m willing to bet a bushel-full of cash that all those health depts. also mandate that the sign must be within a certain few inches of the sink. Which is the worst place for it to be.

If you’re standing at the sink, you’re washing your hands, right?

The sign should be right above the urinal. Or next to the flush lever in the stall. That’s when whatever king or queen of slobs who needs to be prodded into washing their mitts should be, y’know, prodded.

There. I feel better now.

Political Science

I’ll sigh again here in today’s post, but for a different reason.

A story in this AM’s Herald Times (paywall) tells us that there’ll be a Bigfoot investigation campout at Monroe-Morgan State Forest the first weekend in May. Yep, a gang of people who fancy themselves scientific researchers will be on the lookout for the famous wraith that has purportedly appeared, fleetingly, before the eyes of yahoos all around the backwaters of this holy land for decades.

Apparently, credulous souls have glimpsed the reputed giant in the woods just north of this thriving, throbbing megalopolis. And despite the fact that Bloomington is home to rational thinkers, reputable scientists, and dogged investigative types, only a select few have gazed upon the decidedly non-glabrous, towering, hermetic figure. A guy named LeRoy Nail of Martinsville, the leader of the local chapter of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, says his group has investigated three confirmed sasquatch sightings in Morgan County. The national BFRO lists 76 sightings of the beast in Indiana over the years.

Sigh. Again.

From BFRO

Bigfoot Footprint In Morgan County

To think there are scads of us who passionately believe that if only we can calmly and patiently lay out well-reasoned arguments, all the people of this great nation will happily accept certain scientific truths. Such a liberal way of thinking.

Which, itself, is highly un-scientific. Researchers have shown, time and again, that well-reasoned arguments — far from being convincing or persuasive — actually steel the resolve of non-believers.

For instance, I know a guy who believes the following:

  • Communist infiltrators have run vast swaths of the United States government since at least the end of World War II
  • Bobby Kennedy smothered Marilyn Monroe to death with a pillow because she’d heard JFK blab some state secrets while in flagrante delicto with her
  • The JFK assassination was a Mafia hit
  • A spaceship from another planet crashed into the Earth and the bodies of its occupants were operated on in a secret facility in Nevada
  • The moon landings were hoaxes
  • Homosexuals are engaged in a systematic plot to take over the public school teaching profession
  • Hillary Clinton ordered the murder of Vince Foster
  • The US government employs high-altitude airplanes to spray mind-control drugs over heavily populated areas

"Chemtrails"

“Chemtrails”

  • Barack Obama was trained from childhood to be a Muslim plant whose job was to take over America and destroy it

This fellow is otherwise a respectable, seemingly reasonable chap. He runs his own successful business. You wouldn’t consider him a wild-eyed lunatic at first glance.

Yet he firmly rejects any suggestion that global warming or climate change threatens us.

And, yes, he believes there are sasquatches or Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) running around all corners of this globe. “There’s all kinds of scientific evidence for it,” he says.

He is impossible to talk to.

To liberals, he’s simply misguided, in need only of enlightenment. To the Right, he’s the key to the White House in 2016.

My Pal Foot Foot

A “classic” by The Shaggs, who inexplicably were resurrected from a well-deserved obscurity back in the 1990s by musicians and critics who should have known better.

Hot Air

War!

War was declared against Winter last night by the People of South Central Indiana.

The Allies struck first, with Commander-in-Chief Big Mike ordering several divisions to attack a Winter front that had been slowly advancing from the west. Reports from the field indicate Allied forces marched through the ominous, dark gray clouds “as if they weren’t even there.”

Homefront observers, though, report Winter’s forces dumped up to a half a foot of snow on an already battle-scarred landscape. Winter terrorists had staged several dastardly attacks of snow and frigid cold in the previous months, leading up to yesterday’s declaration of war.

Winter

Dictator Old Man Winter

The Commander-in-Chief has issued a statement assuring South Central Indiana that the threat of Winter will be short-lived. “Our brave men, women, and children can expect to lay down their snow shovels and mittens within weeks, if not days,” Big Mike said early this morning on his white house’s lawn.

Meanwhile, the Allies have called up reserves including the 4th Mechanized Snowplow Battalion and have begun to stockpile road salt.

The Brother With The Grooves

Whatever you do these days, start listening to Brother William on WFIU’s Friday edition of Just You and Me. The show, formerly hosted by ‘FIU legend Joe Bourne, has been an oasis of good tunes for years. Bourne spun rock, pop, and soul classics until his retirement to New Albany at the end of 2014.

I’d thought Bourne was tops but, honestly, Bro. W. can match him disc for disc. Known to the square world as William Morris, attorney at law, Brother William digs deep in his record library for fabulous hits from the old R&B labels like Stax, Atlantic, Hi, and Chess. He throws in gospel and straight blues for seasoning and his hour-and-a-half whooshes by.

Stax Record

It’s a good thing WFIU ops. director Will Murphy snagged Brother William because the Indiana University-sponsored public radio station had been glaringly white for far too long. Last I checked, there were two or three dark-skinned folks who claimed Bloomington as home. Not only that, music lovers (like me) get a little tired of hearing only Motown when DJs want to strut their soul chops.

Motown was fine for what it was — a sepia Tin Pan Alley-esque factory for very talented songwriters, albeit their end products were a tad too polished and excessively palatable, created for a crossover audience. The Supremes were Vegas; I want something more gritty.

Give me Big Joe Turner, Betty Everett, the Impressions, some barrelhouse piano, and a lot of jumped-up blues and I’ll listen, religiously. Speaking of that, I’ll take some Mahalia as well.

Brother William gives it all and more.

BTW: B.W. still spins on community radio WFHB. He mans the board for his regular Tuesday Afternoon Mix 2 as well as Jazz Menagerie. If you’re not listening, you’re nowhere.

Kyle’s Kudos

Following up on Thursday’s Kyle Schwarber follow-up, the former Indiana University slugger has been named baseball’s number 19 prospect in Baseball Ameirca’s Top 100, released this week. The Chicago Cubs’ first round selection in last June’s amateur draft (no. 4 overall), Schwarber hurt the feelings of a lot of pitchers in his first pro season.

Schwarber’s bat makes him special. He was a catcher for the Hoosiers but his efforts behind the plate leave a lot to be desired for the big league game. The Cubs tried moving him over to left field last summer but he damaged his own team with an outfielder’s glove on his hand almost as much as he did the other team with the lumber in his mitts. The Cubs say he’ll stick at catcher from now on.

Schwarber

Schwarber Last August With The Daytona Cubs

The Ohio native is aware he’s got plenty of work to do to bring his catching skills up to par. He told attendees at last month Cubs Fan Convention that he’d learned to catch only by watching Major League games on television. He continued:

As it turns out I was doing a lot of things wrong. Luckily, I got a crash course when I was at Kane County how to catch. You know what, it totally flipped right there. It made sense. I got it. So then I went to instructs and we kind of slowed it down and made sure I got it. It was really fun. I love catching. You have to like the position to be there and if you don’t like it, you’re not going to have success back there.

So, the attitude’s top-notch, too. Stay tuned for more on Schwarber as news develops.

Rocket “88”

Some folks consider this the first real rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded. Its standard blues bass line reveals the black roots of what became a white art form.

Hot Air

Spring!

How weird is today, Thursday, February 19, 2015, in our corner of South Central Indiana?

At the time I’m writing this, the temperature is -5ºF with a 7 mph wind, giving us a wind-chill of -19º. Here’s a chart showing how quickly you might suffer frostbite on any exposed area of your sacred temple should you decide to walk to the Book Corner to pick up the latest copy of Girls & Corpses magazine:

windchill

You will, acc’d’g to this chart, enter medical emergency territory after walking a mere 30 minutes or so. Good luck.

Wait — that’s not the weird part. This is: the Bruster’s ice cream joint near my palace at the intersection of State Roads 46 and 446 is set to reopen for the season in no more than eight days, on Feb. 27. In fact, as I waited at the red light there this AM, my toes beginning to lose all feeling and my breath steaming up the rear view mirror, a woman was unloading her SUV and bringing in bags of stuff to the place; undoubtedly she was coming in to start opening tasks, writing up employee schedules and ordering — brr!— tubs of mint chocolate chip, etc.

And there’s more: Today, my beloved Chicago Cubs open up the doors of the team’s spring training headquarters in warm, sunny Mesa, Arizona, for today’s mandatory reporting date for pitchers and catchers. That means the 2015 Opening Day game between the Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field is only 46 days away. If the weather gods cooperate, conditions at the Friendly Confines that evening should be in the 60s with some high, fluffy clouds breaking up a Carolina blue dusk sky.

‘Course, early evening April 5th in Chi. prob. will be sleety and windy with temps in mid- to low-30s.

But even that would seem downright tropical compared to today.

Kyle Watch

BTW: Here’s where things stand with Indiana University alum Kyle Schwarber, who was selected by the Cubs with the number 4 pick in last June’s amateur draft: the burly slugger will be in Mesa beginning next week as a non-roster invitee. That means the club is giving him a taste of the Major League experience because they have such high hopes for him. He’ll benefit from parent club instruction and get to know some of the teammates with whom, it is hoped, he will be playing come September of the 2016 season.

Schwarber

Schwarber Meets The Press At Wrigley Last Summer

He’s due to open the regular season with the High-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans in the Carolina League. If he hits as as did last year, when he absolutely mauled pitchers in three different minor leagues, he can expect to be promoted mid-season to the Double-A Tennessee Smokies.

Schwarber continues to wield his catchers mitt despite scouting reports that grade him sub-standard at best at that position. The Cubs organization tried him in left field a bit last summer but his performance there made the bosses’ hair stand on end.

He knows how to swing a bat, though, and Baseball America, the bible of such things, has ranked him the fourth best prospect in the Cubs’ system. BA will release its Top 100 Prospects in the game tonight at 9pm. I’ll get you Schwarber’s rank on that list as soon as I can.

Mayor Neher?

Have you checked out Darryl Neher’s platform for his run for mayor in the May Democratic primary yet?

Here are the highlights for me:

  • Neher promises to “Protect our community from excessive development.” He mentions the flood of out-of-state developers that, as I see it, threaten to turn downtown B-ton into a soulless, high-density hotel and sports bar orgy.
  • “One Bloomington [his campaign catchphrase] means proactive engagement between city and citizens.” Neher pledges to initiate regular mayoral roundtables with the public grilling “various stakeholders.” I hope that means developers, municipal dept. heads, the mayor himself, and other characters whose feet need to be held to the fire.
  • “IU Health/Bloomington Hospital must be accountable to Bloomington.” Amen. But good luck with that, Darryl. IUHBH already has unilaterally decided to abandon the city center for greener pastures (literally) at Curry Pike and SR 46. As soon as the new monument to itself is built it will be the region’s hospital, not Bloomington’s.

Everything else is pretty boilerplate political stuff. Neher stands four-square for schools, the police, the fire department, good jobs, and good weather.

The primary difference, philosophically, between him and opponent John Hamilton is about six inches of height, Neher’s favor. The other two guys running for mayor? They’ll be trivia answers precisely 24 hours after election day.

Neher/Hamilton

Neher [L] & Hamilton

And, hey, a great letter to the editor in today’s Herald Times called for Neher, a former Republican, to denounce his more antediluvian former GOP brethren and sisteren. [No link because it’s not online yet.]

That Big Round Thing In The Sky

Oh hey, the sunlight today is 80 percent stronger than it was on the Winter Solstice, December 21st. And we’ll enjoy a good 96 more minutes of sunlight today, too.

Take heart, kiddies.

Sun

Your Friend And Mine

Hot Air

Learning Luxury

Bloomington’s not the only college town whose character is being radically transformed thanks to an influx of privileged snowflakes whose parents spend big dough setting them up in plush apts. Our own downtown, in the immediate environs of the erstwhile quaint Courthouse Square, has become a set of parallel mini-valleys of soulless condo blocks. The atmosphere around the Square, it follows, has changed profoundly. High end sports bars, chichi restaurants, and urban outfitters now do trade in storefronts that once housed, well, shops.

To understand what downtown Bloomington has become, consider this: You can’t buy a pen or a notebook, a package of batteries, or a small bottle of Advil anywhere within a radius of three quarters of a mile around the Fish on the Dome.

You’ll find, though, a choice of two stores from which to purchase that bush hat you’ve been dying to wear on your next expedition to deepest, darkest Africa.

NPR’s Morning Edition today ran a story on a similar transformation in the campus neighborhood surrounding Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. It, too, has seen an explosion of high-density, well-appointed apartment blocks erected for the children of wealth for whom dorm living or renting out a cramped house would be akin to having their fingernails pulled out by enemy prison guards. Announcer David Green said, “Over the past decade, investors have been cashing in on this growing market.”

Just like Bloomington.

Smallwood

Smallwood On North College Avenue (Jeremy Hogan/Herald Times photo)

One construction contractor told an NPR reporter he’s building “luxury apartment living catered towards [sic] college students” — a 25-story highrise featuring amenities like a rooftop deck with fireplace, a fountain, a glass handrail and a view of the Atlanta skyline, as well as stainless steel appliances, quartz countertops, and laundry facilities within each unit, and a private bath in each bedroom.

Luxury indeed. Nothing can goose a GPA like truncating that interminable walk from bed to bowl at two in the morning.

Anyway, throw an ear at the report and take solace at least in the fact that we are not alone.

My Aim Is True

Speaking of the changing nature of our cherished downtown, City Council member Susan Sandberg was pounding the pavement drumming up voters for the county Democratic Party Saturday at the 4th Street Festival for the Arts & Crafts when two college boys approached her. One of them said, “Can I ask you a question?”

At this point, S-Squared was almost giddy. Huzzah, she thought, perhaps the youth of this holy land isn’t such a lost cause after all. Here are two lads hoping to learn about our sacred political processes.

Pledge of Allegiance

Um, No

Only she hadn’t noticed one of the two was videoing the encounter on his smart phone. Nor had she immediately sensed that the two were boozed up. The first college boy proceeded to inquire whether Sus. Sand. might contemplate performing certain acts of a carnal nature.

The normally eloquent S-berg was left speechless. The boys giggled and pranced merrily away.

I advised the tall blonde legislator that young men like those two possessed testicles just so she could take aim at said gonads with the toe of her combat boot. Miss S. replied she is loath to take such physical steps.

I can only wonder what’s wrong with the Democrats nowadays when we can’t even depend on our party officials to kick deserving louts in the balls?

Or Is Sandberg’s Aim Truer?

Rob Crilly writes today in Al Jazeera America that for the US to respond militarily or otherwise violently to ISIS’s latest video beheading is precisely what those ghouls want. Crilly writes that ISIS:

… [S]eeks to provoke more powerful enemies into rash actions as their publics demand that justice be done for the wanton act of violence against an innocent, and that the perpetrators be prevented from repeating the act. Thus the wave of pressure on Obama to come up with an Islamic State strategy on the fly, the complexities and challenges of combating the group in Syria and Iraq not withstanding.

So that masked man with the decap. blade is trying to play us, acc’d’g to Crilly. He goes on to say that when ISIS demands the US stop fighting them in Iraq and Syria or else there’ll be more beheadings, the al Qaeda splinter group is lying. Crilly writes:

… [I]s that [what ISIS] really wants? Does it want the US and its allies to back off, or is the group’s real goal to provoke sufficient outrage to provoke Western powers to launch another war in a Muslim land, helping to sustain its warped vision of jihad?

My own initial reaction to the beheadings is that we should dash back over to Iraq and kick the living crap out of ISIS, the way we should have finished off the Taliban in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. Only ISIS couldn’t ask for a better PR and recruitment tool than another US incursion into their backyard.

Screencap from ISIS video

An ISIS Captor And His Prisoner

Then again, maybe Susan Sandberg is right. Maybe a swift kick to the balls really doesn’t solve the problem.

All Schwarber, All The Time

Indiana University alum Kyle Schwarber, fast tracking his way to the major leagues in the Chicago Cubs organization, led his Daytona Cubs teammates to a 9-1 victory in their playoff opener last night.

Schwarber clubbed an opposite field grand slam home run during Daytona’s decisive five-run fourth inning. Daytona holds a one to nothing lead in its series against the Dunedin Blue Jays.

Schwarber

Schwarber Earlier This Year With The Kane County Cougars

So far as a pay for play athlete, the kid whose Hoosier teammates called The Hulk has done nothing but impress.

Hot Air

More On GMOs

So, I know an evolutionary biologist who is working tirelessly on her PhD. This morning at The Pencil back office (AKA Soma Coffee) I leaned close to her and cooed the words, “What’s your take on GMOs? And can you say it in one sentence?”

Her response: “People are afraid of the wrong thing.”

[Just to clarify, she doesn’t mean the gen. pub. should be afraid of a nuclear exchange rather than GMOs, for instance, or the bogeyman. She means people’s knee-jerk GMO repulsion is based on a basic misunderstanding of the process.]

From "The Creature from the Black Lagoon"

Scarier Than GMOs?

Which is what I’ve been saying all along!

Bullets Vs. Kid Gloves

Just wondering: Why do cops kill unarmed black kids for everything up to and including jay-walking but when an armed, white gun nut goes on a deranged quest to ambush police and fire fighters (employing live fire and bombs) in order to overturn our purported tyrannical gov’t, the greatest care is taken to insure his safety before he’s apprehended?

Leguin

Douglas Lee Leguin: Still Alive Despite Firing At Cops And Detonating Bombs

Kid Stuff

Personal to police depts. all over this holy land: Stop playing GI Joe; you’re adults now (links here, here, and here).

Ferguson, MO

Law Enforcement?

Negotiable Justice

Justin Wykoff’s att’y sez his client’s case will go to a jury.

Wykoff, of course, was the well-liked, well-respected Bloomington Department of Public Works project manager who got cracked for allegedly scamming a quarter of a mill USD* in a kickback scheme with a Bedford contractor (*of a total of $800,00 bilked). Folks in and out of local gov’t were shocked when news of Wykoff’s bust emerged. Nevertheless, the feds seem to have a strong case against him.

Wykoff

Likable

Usually, guys accused of fraud and embezzlement in federal district courts don’t go to trial because they strike plea agreements with prosecutors. Wykoff’s lawyer, John Boren of Martinsville, acc’d’g to today’s Herald Times, is ready to go all the way to fight the charges. Boren told the H-T he’ll call for a jury trial.

Kinky public employees rarely want to go before a jury because if there’s one thing a panel of peers doesn’t cotton to, it’s stealing their tax dollars. Still, Wykoff and Boren want to take their chances before a dozen registered voters.

My guess is they’re betting Wykoff’s likability will be a big asset in their case. In fact, Borden just may be negotiating a plea agreement even as we speak with Wykoff singing about his co-conspirators in exchange for a slap on the wrist. By threatening to go to a jury, Boren may effectively be saying, Hey, you willing to risk your whole case? Gimme the best you’ve got and I’ll sign my guy up for voice lessons.

Kyle Killing Minors Moundsmen

Kyle Schwarber, late of the Indiana University Hoosiers baseball nine, still is battering minor league pitchers as he enters his third month of professional baseballing.

Schwarber pounded college hurlers on his way to becoming the Chicago Cubs’ top choice in June amateur draft (No. 4 overall). He’s kept up the onslaught even against superior competition in the for-pay game.

Schwarber

Schwarber, The Night He Was Drafted By The Cubs

The kid known as The Hulk has settled in as a left fielder for the Daytona Cubs, a High A minors outfit. Schwarber played catcher for the Hoosiers but isn’t considered an adequate potential major league backstop. By playing the outfield, his path to the bigs just may be shorter. Again, expect to see him swinging the bat in Wrigley Field either in September 2015 or right out of the gate after spring training 2016.

And, again, stay tuned here for all the Kyle Schwarber news you can ask for.

Hot Air

Lady Business

I squawked about vajazzling in Open Salon a few years ago. You know all about vajazzling, don’t you? If not, it’s where you get tiny gems implanted around your lady parts because…, well because you have an obscene amount of money and rather than help the needy or something stupid like that, you choose to bejewel your nethers.

I wrote:

Maybe vajazzling is the last gasp manifestation of the Age of Reagan — you know, the fabulous three decades that gave us Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, real-life Gordon Geckos, McMansions, the Hummer H2, gazillion-inch flat screen TVs, Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lloyd Blankfein. I thought the Great Recession had cooled off this holy land’s fascination with greed and hyper-materialism.

At the time, I figured it was the height of idiocy that women should want karat-ed cooters but — silly me — I neglected to take into account the human race’s capacity for insanity. Turns out one of the biggest growth industries in the doctorin’ world these days is elective female genital plastic surgery, AKA “designer vaginas.”

O'Keeffe

A Georgia O’Keeffe Painting

[Attn. all female readers: be prepared to have the hair on your head stand straight up.] Females as young as 14 are ponying up thousands of dollars for cosmetic surgeons to give their hoo-has the “clamshell” look. This includes the surgical removal of their labia because said flaps are “ugly” or “too long” or “irregular.”

In other words, upper middle class Western kids, of their own volition, are undergoing what many females in Third World countries are suffering unwillingly. Okay, to be fair, fundamentalist Muslims in certain African countries are mandating that females get their clitorises lopped. Kids in this holy land aren’t doing that, natch, but still, they’re getting their gender bits sliced off so’s they’ll look “prettier” and, people, that’s nuts.

Why young teens — and their parents who, presumably, foot the bill — would go all in for a below-the-belt scalpel job to improve the decor of their genitalia is today’s conundrum. How do they know their labia are unattractive vis-à-vis other teen girls’? And to whom would these anatomical structures be repulsive?

Frankly, I can’t imagine a young man beholding his first female genitalia and thinking (or saying out loud), You know, I was all hot and bothered to go through with this but after espying that overly-large set of labia minora, I believe I’ll sit this one out.

Then again, loads of young men are weirdly misogynistic these days so I don’t know what they think about things of that nature anymore.

And what about the bizarre competitions that teen girls have with each other? You know, as in my tan’s better than yours, my teeth are straighter than yours, or even my breasts are rounder or bigger or pointier than yours. The proof for each of these claims is out front, as it were. How do young ladies compare the relative symmetries of their labia? Do they inspect each others’ undercarriages?

This is all too puzzling for me. I think I’ll go back to contemplating something less taxing to my brain, like how can the Palestinians and the Israelis learn to get along.

[For more reading on “designer vaginas” check out this piece in The Daily Beast or this one in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald.]

Deer Prudence

The question of whether to shoot deer hanging around Griffy Lake or not has been argued with some passion of late. The Bloomington City Council recently okayed a contract with a wildlife management outfit to cull the Bambi pop. around the newly-refilled lake because neighbors are sick and tired of the ruminants snacking on their garden pansies, violas, and buttercups.

Deer

Fitting, then, that our town’s Science Cafe gang will present a couple of speakers who’ll tackle the Q. of what deer dig to eat tomorrow night at Finch’s Brasserie.

Angela Shelton, a research scientist in Indiana University’s Department of Biology, and Steve Cotter, Natural Resources Manager for the city’s Parks & Recreation Department, will double-team a talk about Invasive Species in Bloomington and Deer Herbivory around Griffy Lake.

The gabfest begins at 6:30pm and usually runs about an hour, unless the audience presses for more. In any case, the food and booze both are good at Finch’s so see you there.

Schwarber Soars

As your source for all news concerning Indiana University’s own Kyle Schwarber, I’m happy to report that the baseball player known as the Hulk among his former Hoosier teammates is rising fast in the Chicago Cubs farm system.

The big bat he became noted for during his years here is just as potent against professional pitching. In fact, Schwarber’s numbers against minor league hurlers are even better than those he posted in collegiate ball. That could be because he’s benefitting from top-flight coaching or it could be because, well, he’s the real deal.

Kyle Schwarber

Schwarber

Schwarber, in case you’ve forgotten, was selected number four in June’s Major League Baseball amateur draft. Very few experts had him pegged that high but, according to Cubs’ VP of player development Jason McLeod, he’d had his eye on Schwarber beginning in his freshman year and was certain from the start that the catcher was going to be a special hitter.

Schwarber has risen swiftly through the Cubs system, starting out in Boise in June, earning a promotion to Kane County after a week, and in July already has been promoted again, this time to Daytona. Schwarber’s still catching even though many scouts feel his big league future is in left field or at first base. The Hulk’s presence in the Cubs organization has contributed to the system’s ranking as the best in baseball recently by ESPN expert Keith Law.

Even if Schwarber continues to punish minor league pitchers, don’t expect him to make an appearance at Wrigley Field until late 2015 or, more likely, 2016. The current Cubs brain trust led by Theo Epstein believes strongly in getting kids plenty of minor league at bats before exposing them to big league hurlers.

Me? I can’t wait to see the Hoosier Hulk swinging for Sheffield Avenue on Chicago’s North Side. Stay tuned here for further updates.

More On Paris

According to her obituary in the Nashville Tennessean, a memorial will be held for RE Paris sometime in September.

Paris was born and raised in Nashville, as anyone who’d ever heard her twang could attest. It’s not known at this time if the memorial will be held here or there. Stayed tuned here for further updates.

Hot Air

Camp Is Fun!

Susie the Self-styled Clown of Chapel Hill, NC, is a pal of The Loved One and me. On any given day she’s as likely as not to uncover fascinating historical arcana such as this:

Camp Sign

Have An Exhausting Day, Girls!

One Q.: To whom is the “Drive Carefully” admonishment directed? Teenaged camp girls who happen to be driving while in those eponymous throes or visitors and parents who might encounter flopping, writhing camp girls at any moment?

In either case, safety first!

Clickers

How can you not love living in Bloomington? The place is chock full of creative souls. For instance, I just came from the Richardson Studio on 6th St. for a photo shoot. Jeff Richardson is a merlin behind the shutter, cajoling, wheedling and otherwise squeezing the poses out of his subjects. From what I hear, B-town’s high school seniors are big on getting their mugs shot by JR and his lovely bride Michelle (who, BTW, is also the biz brains behind the operation.)

And then yesterday I had Shannon Zahnle over to Pencil World HQ for yet another photo shoot. Her modus operandi is different — she’s quiet, watching and waiting for the subject to come alive. Her way takes a tad longer but produces results as fine as anyone’s in town.

Richardsons & Zahnle

(l to r) Jeff Richardson, Michelle Richardson & Shannon Zahnle

The work of all three photogs can be seen in any given issue of Bloom mag, and therein lies the reason I had appointments with the two. Keep reading Bloom to see the results thereof, and, in any case, just because you ought to.

Kyle Watch

The Pencil is now your headquarters for monitoring the inexorable march of Kyle Schwarber to major league baseball glory.

Schwarber, of course, was one of the stars of Indiana University’s successful baseball team the last two years. He was drafted in the first round earlier this month by my beloved Chicago Cubs (number 4 overall).

Schwarber/Effross

Harbinger? Schwarber Being Comforted By Scott Effross Earlier This Month

I have no religion but I have faith. Faith, natch, is an irrational thing. One of the tenets of my faith, for instance, holds that the historically unsuccessful Cubs will play in and — deep breath — win a World Series some time in my lifetime. My great hope is that I won’t have to live until the ripe old age of 248 before my faith is rewarded.

Anyway, I’m fantasizing that players like Schwarber will lead the Cubs (and me) to the mountain top.

Schwarber has only played five games as a professional and he’s already earned a promotion from the Boise Hawks to the Kane County Cougars. That’s quick, babies. Next up, possibly even later this summer, the Daytona Cubs. Should his rise through the organization continue apace, he might swing the ash for the Iowa Cubs beginning next year and then sometime around June, 2015, hit the big show at Wrigley Field.

That, of course, is a dream scenario. He’ll hit some rough patches along the way; we’ll see how he handles them. Keep your dial tuned here for further developments.

Professional Discourtesy

Flannery O’Connor, an author who actually knew how to write, once took on a more famous author who, well, didn’t.

O’Connor, penner of such classics as Wise Blood and A Good Man Is Hard to Find, once wrote a letter to a playwright friend about contemporary scribe Ayn Rand. O’Connor, who knew of such literary injunctions as brevity, subtlety, show-don’t-tell, avoid speechifying, and try, try, try to be at least somewhat interesting, was moved to advise stage scripter Maryat Lee in her 1960 letter:

I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

 

O'Commor/Spillane/Dostoevsky

(l to r) Flannery O’Connor, Mickey Spillane & Fyodor Dostoevsky

Generally, authors and other creatives, as well as card-carrying members of other less imagination-based vocations, tend not to slam each other no matter how slam-able one or the other is. For instance, you’ll rarely hear of a writer stating that James Patterson is a formulaic plot-pushing hack. It should be noted, though, that horror meister Stephen King last year savaged three spectacularly successful female authors, Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), and E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey). It is to be hoped that King wasn’t simply dissing dame authors and their predominantly female readership. Let’s assume he was criticizing for only the most pure of professional reasons.

Nevertheless, pros tend not to bash other pros. It’s bad juju, I suppose. You know, I could tear, say, Rhonda Byrne apart not only for being a bad writer but a sloppy, undisciplined, infantile thinker but I won’t — and not because I buy into her The Secret karma-payback bullshit — but because, well, oh hell, screw it all, she just blows.

Anyway, most writers don’t insult others. Then again, there’s that rare keyboard pounder who’s so bad, so worthy of pejorative that even the most sanguine of colleagues cannot resist bullying him or her in print. Such is Ayn Rand.

Yet Rand, her bizarre little cult, and her fiction are perhaps the prime philosophical touchstones for a generation of Republicans.

In that sense, O’Connor was not only a literary critic but a political one.

Suicide Sons

If you haven’t caught Doug Storm’s three-part Interchange interviews with the Lockridge boys yet, you’re in luck — links here, here, and here.

Ernest and Larry Lockridge are the sons of Indiana’s own Ross Lockridge, Jr., who penned the sensational bestseller, Raintree County, and then offed himself at the tender age of 33 in 1948. The book became a just-as-sensational blockbuster movie starring super heavyweights Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Agnes Moorehead, and even DeForest Kelley, later of Star Trek fame. Directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1957, the movie was the most expensive ever shot at the time. During the shooting Clift smashed up his car and nearly died. His life was saved by Elizabeth Taylor; she says she actually pulled his tongue out of his throat lest he die of asphyxiation. If you watch the movie closely, you’ll be able to see which scenes were shot before and after the crash as Clift suffered severe facial injuries.

Raintree County

Clift And Taylor In A Publicity Still From “Raintree County”

Lockridge pere suffered from debilitating depression and then took his own life via carbon monoxide poisoning. His fils have clashed publicly over the possible reasoning for their daddy-o’s suicide. Ernest has claimed his pop’s depression was caused by molestation at the hand of his father, Ross, Sr. Larry doesn’t buy it.

So it turns out the Lockridge family was almost as fraught with scandal and drama as the antebellum Shawnessey family of Indiana and Georgia in Ross, Jr.’s novel.

WFHB’s Doug Storm gives us good three-parter on the book and the Lockridges. Catch it.

[BTW: Doug Storm won WFHB’s coveted Rookie of the Year award at the station’s annual meeting earlier this month. I’m not too modest to say I copped that very plaque in 2010, my first year here in B-town and at the station, natch. Let’s see it’s here somewhere, maybe under this pile….]

 

Hot Air

Hoosier Hope

[Warning to loyal Pencillistas: This first entry is about sports. Read it at your own risk.]

My beloved Chicago Cubs last night selected Indiana University catcher Kyle Schwarber as their first pick in the 2014 Major Leaguie baseball entry draft.

Schwarber

Kyle Schwarber (Bleacher Nation Image)

Hey, maybe this’ll get me to start caring about Hoosiers baseball which, I understand, has been pretty good the last couple of years. My back-office (Soma Coffee) colleague Pat Murphy broke the news about Schwarber to me last night, seeing as how he knows about my Cubs “problem.” So, just to make small talk, I mentioned that IU lost a heartbreaker in the NCAA regional tournament the other day. That set Murphy off on a seemingly endless soliloquy about everything IU baseball. He spoke of the rain on Monday night, the Hoosiers’ injury problems, something about the coach’s son, Stanford’s triumphant performance after the rain delay, the unfairness of teams from California being able to play baseball all year while Indiana is pretty much limited to a week and a half in late May/early June, the IU leadoff hitter’s 0-for-5 collar in the ultimate game, Stanford’s mighty batting order, and a whole host of other minutiae.

I smiled nicely at him and nodded my head at what seemed appropriate times. Pat went on to tell me he’d gone home mid-game after Bart Kaufman Field officials cleared the place due to a threatening storm eight miles to the west. Murphy had to change his rain-soaked duds, which seems to me prima facie evidence that he, too, has a “problem.” He returned in time for the game to resume and for Stanford to overcome a three-run Hoosier lead.

Back to Kyle Schwarber. Man, the kid looks like a catcher, all squat and pug-faced. He won’t be a catcher as a pro because he’s not good defensively. He’ll be an outfielder and the Cubs brain trust hopes he’ll hit in the pros with the same jaw-dropping power he’s shown in the collegiate game.

Cubs director of scouting Jason McLeod says, “We felt Kyle was the best hitter, hands down, in this year’s draft.”

Should Schwarber turn out to be a star for the Cubs in a few years, I’ll consider my move here the turning point in his personal history. Don’t ask me to defend that statement; just keep in mind I have a “problem.”

Book Fair

Speaking of Chi., the Printers Row Lit Fest runs tomorrow and Sunday on Dearborn Street between Congress Parkway and Polk Street. It’s the unofficial kick-off for the Windy City’s summer fair, fest, and carnival season. If June seems a little late to be starting outdoor activities, keep in mind that winter just ended six hours ago there.

Anyway, here are some of the notable authors appearing this weekend at the PRLF:

  • Chris Albani, The Secret History of Las Vegas
  • Hisham D. Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture
  • Tashe Alexander, the “Lady Emily” series and Elizabeth: The Golden Age
  • Jim Aylesworth, children’s author, Old Black Fly
  • Eric Banks, senior editor of Artforum
  • Lidia Mattichio Bastianich, Lidia’s Commonsense Italian Cooking
  • Elizabeth Berg, Open House
  • Ira Berkow, Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter
  • Paul Buhle, graphic novelist, Studs Terkel’s Working and The Beats (with Harvey Pekar)
  • Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once Upon a River
  • Katie Crouch, Abroad, Girls in Trucks, and Men and Dogs
  • Stanley Crouch, MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, writes about jazz and the Black experience
  • Monique Demery, Finding the Dragon Lady
  • Anton DiSclafani, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls
  • Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
  • Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers
  • John Feinstein, On the Brink
  • Gene Ha, graphic novelist
  • Chuck Haddix, Bird

PRLF/Fitzpatrick

The Official PRLF Poster By Tony Fitzpatrick

  • Paula Haney, founder, Hoosier Mama Pie Company
  • Christina Henriquez, The World in Half
  • Blair Kamin, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic
  • Greg Kot, co-host, public radio program Sound Opinions
  • Malcolm London, TED speaker and poet
  • Gillian McCain & Legs McNeil, co-authors, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
  • M.E. May, the Circle City Mystery series
  • Walter Mosley, the “Easy Rawlins” mystery series
  • Dana Norris, founder, Story Club storytelling shows
  • Jenny Offill, Last Things
  • Sara Paretsky, the “V.I. Warshawski” detective series
  • Brigid Pasulka, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
  • James Patterson, the “Alex Cross” series
  • Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm and Nixonland
  • Chris Raschka, children’s book author
  • Kimberla Lawson Roby, The Prodigal Son
  • Amy Krause Rosenthal, Duck Rabbit
  • Amy Rowland, The Transcription
  • J. Courtney Sullivan, The Engagements
  • Marlo Thomas, actor and author, Free to Be… You and Me
  • Jacinda Townsend, Saint Monkey
  • Sam Weller, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury
  • Colson Whitehead, The Noble Hustle
  • Beatriz Williams, Overseas and A Hundred Summers
  • Gabrielle Zevin, YA author, Elsewhere

This is the 30 anniversary of the book fair. Lots o’books, loads o’food, tons o’music and sunshine, the Loop to the north, the lakefront and museums to the east; you can’t go wrong at the Printers Row Lit Fest. If you’re feeling ambitious, take the road trip up to Chi. this weekend and enjoy.

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