the life of kings broadcasting division

From the Department of Self-Promotion: I did play-by-play for a high school football game up in Bucks County last night for the web site of WPVI Channel 6, the local ABC affiliate here in Philly. The broadcast is archived at 6abc.com, and you can access it by clicking here. I was a last-minute choice and had zero time to prepare, but I was also on my own and doing this for the first time, so it's probably pretty bad. By the end of the game, when the action got good, I think I did OK. Or not. If you're in for a good laugh, check it out.

And yes, Pirates fans, I'll be weighing in on the sudden, dramatic turn in the Pedro Alvarez-Scott Boras situation before the weekend is out. Stay tuned.

thoughts on smoking in bars

Love the above ad that Triumph Brewing Co. in New Hope circulated to promote last night, the final one in which smokers were permitted to light up inside the joint. A few too-serious types didn't find the ad that appealing, of course, especially the bit about kids. But whatever. You can read what I wrote about the whole deal in today's Intelligencer and Bucks County Courier Times here.

Bottom line: I'm a non-smoker, but I've never supported laws outlawing smoking in bars and restaurants, simply because there's nothing to stop a bar or restaurant from going smoke-free on its own. In other words, let the market decide. Besides, by all indications, many people will no longer patronize a bar that allows smoking, so the laws are quickly becoming superfluous. That said, if I wished to cater to smokers, why can't I? As for the puritans who justify their smoke-free stance in the name of public health, why are some private clubs and other places that don't serve a lot of food exempt from the law, according to the bottom of this Philadelphia Inquirer report? Are employees and patrons of those places somehow less affected by smoke? Talk amongst yourselves, people.

the terrible towel is everywhere...

...including the Beijing Olympics, as indicated by the upper right corner of this photo of the women's beach volleyball medal ceremony. Beeker Buffoonery has the original screen capture from ESPN.com, but here's the photo anyway:

It's a Steeler Planet, people. Myron Cope would be proud, no doubt.

enjoy the olympics, even as they're held in a slave state

It was impossible not to have watched Michael Phelps, if only to marvel at the utter dominance he displayed in the pool. It's cool, too, that professional ballers like Kobe & LeBron actually seem happy to be competing in Beijing, and that they're genuinely interested in, you know, winning. But let's not overlook the absurdity of staging the Olympics in a place like China. Let's not forget that the Olympic ideal of one-worldism is at best just that: an ideal. At its worst, it's a dog-and-pony show that places the smiley face of moral equivalance on free nations and slave states alike, thereby providing dictators and tyrants with an international stamp of approval. When you read stuff like what's being done to protesters in and around Beijing, when you learn that actually questioning public officials in China is a foreign concept, even for foreign journalists -- and remember, this is only what we know, what's in full view for those visiting to observe -- you're left hoping that maybe some of this information will get to and inspire those who know in their hearts they deserve better as human beings.

a new gizmothingamajiggy for your browsing pleasure

My technological mastery (cough cough) continues: If you look to the left, you'll see I've added a search feature that will allow you to Google this site to find something that's been posted in the past, if that sort of thing is your bag and all. Pretty fancy, huh?

pirates sign alvarez, get to keep me as a fan

They did it. I had my doubts, and it literally couldn't have taken even a minute longer, but the Pirates signed first-round draft pick Pedro Alvarez just before the midnight deadline last night. This is important, for several reasons, as I stated in an earlier dispatch. So let's give credit where credit is due to general manager Neal Huntington, who has touted building this team from the bottom-up (i.e., scouting & development) as his preferred method of rescuing this franchise: Alvarez is the precisely the sort of player the Pirates need to really kick-start things after years of posturing and giving fans little more than fireworks nights and bobblehead giveaways. But let's also breathe a sigh of relief, since I openly stated I would give up on the Buccos had they been unable to get Alvarez signed. I honestly didn't want to have to do that, to tell the truth. But whatever. They did it, and I'm still with them, which I'm proud to be saying this morning. Beat 'em Bucs, but let's start to see some results now, K?

while buddy guy's guitar (not-so) gently weeps

You're looking at a grainy cell phone photo of the one and only bluesman Buddy Guy cryin' and wailin' his way through a set at the Mann Music Center in Philly this evening. My cousin, Jack McDaniel, was there to take in the awesome from five feet away, and he sent this along just a few minutes ago. Buddy was making his way through the crowd, much he like he did when my brothers and I saw him from the front row as he rocked some tent along the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh about 100 years ago. Damn right.

MUST READ: charlie leduff, writer, goes to china with robert frank, photographer

MUST READ is a new, occasional feature here at the life of kings. With it, I will pass along something of particular interest for you to read and absorb, something that might make you laugh, cry, quiver, or just plain stop and think. The topic might concern sports, politics, art, movies, music, religion, culture, the stuff of living and dying. But the topic, I hope, will prove to be less important than the way in which it is conveyed, and the way in which you receive and interpret it. I hope you dig it, and I think you will. Enjoy.


Charlie LeDuff is a fantastic writer who has a knack for capturing the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. In 2004, he wrote a front-page story about a desert encampment of elderly drifters for The New York Times that remains a life of kings favorite for its detailed description of "a broken-down place of limited possibilities" for those who have "inherited the burden of living." LeDuff has also published a pair of books, one of which is Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts, which is mostly a compilation of the "Bending Elbows" column he had written for The Times in the period before and after 9/11, plus numerous other short columns about the "fantastic nobodies" that populate New York City's streets and barrooms.

Not too long ago, LeDuff accompanied photographer Robert Frank, whom he describes as "the last human being to find anything new behind a viewfinder," to China, and he wrote about the trip for Vanity Fair. Frank's landmark book of black and white photographs, The Americans, turns 50 this year. As the 1950s gave way to the '60s, the book was considered groundbreaking for having foretold the social struggles that were to come -- a visual representation of what Jack Kerouac, in Desolation Angels, describes as "this modern America of crew cuts and sullen faces in Pontiacs." Frank commissioned Kerouac to write the book's introduction, and while LeDuff includes Kerouac's best quotes, it's worth noting that Kerouac also writes that the book captures "[t]hat crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and the music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral." Or, as LeDuff writes:

The book became great for what it did in its time. Before Frank, the visual orientation of photographs had been straight, horizontal, vertical. The subject of the picture was always obvious. You knew what the picture was about and what it meant to say. Frank, the shadowy little man, came along and changed the angles, made graininess a virtue, obscure lighting a benefit. His pictures were messy; you weren’t sure what to feel, who or what to focus on. Perhaps more important, Frank intellectually changed photography — that is, what a photographer was supposed to look at. If Ansel Adams chose to capture the mightiness of nature, how could you argue with that? Where’s the fault in stone and sky and snow? There is no fault. And therein lies its fault. Frank snatched photography from the landscapists and the fashion portraitists and concentrated his lens on battered transvestites, women in housedresses, and sunken mouths. Life is not boulders and snow and perfume and chiffon. Life is difficult and sad and ephemeral. Life is flesh, not stone.

The Vanity Fair piece is LeDuff at his finest: getting to the center of his subject, even as difficult as it might be to understand him. Frank, to put it simply, epitomizes the mad genius of the artist: the selfishness, the limitlessness of his personal life, the willingness to sacrifice almost anything for the sake of his art:

Frank said he used to stare in on [Willem] de Kooning from his apartment on East Third Street, admiring not the work so much as the artist. “The abstraction, not with the brush but with the mind,” he said. “The simple self-centered intellectual life. He had a stove and a refrigerator and an easel and he would be in his underwear studying that canvas. This appealed very much to me. He made me think to take risks in life. That, for artistic freedom, you had to fight and suffer for people to accept it.”

There's so much more: from Frank's thoughts on digital photography and art school to his reminisciences (or what's left of them) of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to working with the Rolling Stones during the manic sessions that created the epic album Exile on Main St. But LeDuff gets to the heart of the matter after relaying what happened to Frank's children, whom the old man ackowledges he more or less ignored:

That, we both agreed, is the fantastic and fatal blessing of the American life. One can choose to be whatever one wants in America without the constraints of societal mores. One can live in Switzerland or China, but one must behave and believe as a Swiss or Chinese man is expected to. In America you might throw away those old structures and live however you choose. But if you do not replace the old structure with a new one, this freedom will explode in your face like a car battery. “So much guilt,” Frank said, rubbing his palms on his trousers. After a silence, he gave me this: “You can capture life, but you can’t control it.”

The entirety of LeDuff's essay for Vanity Fair can be read here.

why i'm pessimistic about the pittsburgh steelers

I'm breaking my own rule by thinking and talking about football before Labor Day, but an item about the Steelers' negotiations with free-agents-to-be in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette caught my eye and deserves comment. Here's the money quote from Ed Bouchette's story:

If the team has issues with its offensive line now, next season could be disastrous because [Marvel] Smith and new left guard Chris Kemoeatu will become unrestricted free agents if they remain unsigned. So, too, will Max Starks and Trai Essex, their top two backup tackles. Starting right tackle Willie Colon will become a restricted free agent. It's likely that Smith won't return if he's not signed to an extension over the next month.

The Steelers have a month to talk about extending current contracts because their rule is not to renegotiate deals once the season begins. OK, fine. But clearly, there'a a problem here. Remember, the offensive line allowed their franchise quarterback to be sacked 47 times last season, plus six more times in a playoff loss to Jacksonville. That franchise quarterback was then signed to an eight-year, $102 million extension, which is good. But how are they going to protect him? For better or for worse, they let Alan Faneca, arguably the best guard they ever had, leave in free agency -- a move I was OK with, considering how much Faneca wound up getting from the Noo Yawk Jets. But in the draft, the Steelers didn't pick on offensive lineman until the fourth round, leaving them essentially to scramble with what they had, plus the addition of free agent center Justin Hartwig, who battled injuries last year with the Carolina Panthers. And now, they seem to be in no real hurry to keep anyone else, particularly tackle Marvel Smith, who should be fully recovered from the back troubles that plagued him last year. Look, I like that they picked some sure-fire skill guys in the first two rounds in Rashard Mendenhall and Limas Sweed. But considering the Murderers' Row that is their 2008 schedule, and considering the obvious holes they had (and still seem to have) up front, is there any reason to expect that this will be a playoff team? And why, after all the years of attention that was paid to molding a first-rate, smash-mouth O-line, does this team now no longer make the guys up front a priority?

OK, that's enough. Back to summertime, though I will be weighing in on the Steelers' ownership dispute/situation in the coming days. You know you can't wait.

aleksandr solzhenitsyn, r.i.p.

Any guy who gave the finger to communism and to the old Soviet Union was my kinda guy. And no one, arguably, was more bold about it than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He certainly looked the part, with that stern Russian face, that dour countenance, that long beard, but he had also lived it: Solzhenitsyn experienced first-hand the barbaric prison camps, having been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for simply writing to a friend that the megalomanical monster Joseph Stalin was "the man with the mustache." Upon being sent to what The New York Times called in its obit of him "a desolate penal camp in Kazakhstan called Ekibastuz," this is what Solzhenitsyn was up against:

At Ekibastuz, any writing would be seized as contraband. So he devised a method that enabled him to retain even long sections of prose. After seeing Lithuanian Catholic prisoners fashion rosaries out of beads made from chewed bread, he asked them to make a similar chain for him, but with more beads. In his hands, each bead came to represent a passage that he would repeat to himself until he could say it without hesitation. Only then would he move on to the next bead. He later wrote that by the end of his prison term, he had committed to memory 12,000 lines in this way.

Imagine.

His witness, among others, was the harrowing and frightening Gulag Archipelago, a book, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I'm honestly proud to admit I've read. Solzhenitsyn's willingness to tell the truth -- "It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!" he said -- not only exposed the fraud that was the so-called "worker's paradise," but the totalitarian grip to which it subjected millions of people the world over for much of the 20th century. Christopher Hitchens, in his awesome-if-qualified tribute at Slate, writes:

[H]e kept on writing. The Communist Party's goons could have torn it up or confiscated or burned it -- as they did sometimes -- but he continued putting it down on paper and keeping a bottom drawer filled for posterity. This is a kind of fortitude for which we do not have any facile name. The simplest way of phrasing it is to say that Solzhenitsyn lived "as if." Barely deigning to notice the sniggering, pick-nose bullies who followed him and harassed him, he carried on "as if" he were a free citizen, "as if" he had the right to study his own country's history, "as if" there were such a thing as human dignity.

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, called him "the dominant writer of the 20th century" because of "the effect he has had on history." Born the year after the Russian Revolution, Solzhenitsyn outlived the Red Menace by nearly 17 years before dying late Sunday night at the age of 89. R.I.P.