harrisburg is crawling with thieves, charlatans, crooks

OK, raise your hand if you pay attention to the goings-on in Harrisburg, our state capital. Yeah, thought so -- state politics can often be as interesting as watching metal rust, paint dry, or soccer, all of which are equally tainted with tedium. But stick with me on this, gentle reader, because you need to understand what I'm sayin', and not just because the Capitol Rotunda really is a breathtaking structure. Our General Assembly, that less-than-august body of public servants that really is supposed to serve at our behest, is the second-largest state legislature in the country, and the largest that actually works full-time [pause for laughter]. But while you were off doing something else with your life, our lawmakers have proven time and again that they care not a wit about you, that they can take advantage of the fact that you're not paying attention because, hey, they can get away with it. And they do so in a true spirit of that notorious campaign word "bipartisanship," since Democrats are Republicans are equally crooked. In 2001, just after the dot-com-bubble bust, these bastards, with the blessing of then-Gov. Tom Ridge, wrote themselves a pension increase of 50 percent. But that was nuttin'. By 2005, in the dark of night, they literally stayed up til 2 a.m. [poor things] to write themselves a hefty pay increase. That time, anyway, the pigs were pretty much caught in the trough, and several of them were tossed out in the 2006 elections, when 50 new members were swept into office with promises of -- wait for it -- reform. Now, of course, comes word that 12 current and former state House Democrats have been charged by the state attorney general with paying bonuses to their employees to do campaign work. With taxpayers' dollars. Not only that, but according to John Baer's column in the Philadelphia Daily News the other day, only 18 of our 253 state House and Senate members -- why, again, is our legislature that big? -- have signed a petition calling for Gov. Rendell to hold a special session on ethics. Why? Because nobody's paying attention, that's why. Baer also notes that "56 percent of House members and 75 percent of Senate members seeking re-election face no opposition." Got that? Our legislature is an incumbent-protection racket, too. It gets worse. You know those casinos Gov. Rendell and others who lack the will to cut government spending have touted as a cure-all to pay for stuff without tax increases? Well, guess what: One of the guys in Philly who received a slots license is facing felony counts for perjury, while the guy in Pittsburgh who won his license even though another bidder promised to completely finance a new sports arena for the city is out of fucking money! This is all the fault of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, but still: three of those jerks are appointed by the governor, while the other four are picked by the General Assembly. How could they have possibly vetted the backgrounds of these guys without knowing one had lied to them while the other was broke? It stinks on ice. All of it. I say throw the bums out this November. All of 'em.

esquire on 'how to drink alone'

A nice, tidy guide from Esquire magazine on how best to savor the subtle pleasures of sipping in solitude. I'm not so sure the time of day matters so much, nor do I think liquor is necessarily essential to the experience, as beer can certainly suffice. There is, however, much to be said for good lighting, so as to allow for good reading. And it never hurts to begin your barstool beguine by quietly uttering a toast to yourself, preferably something along the lines of, "Here's to absent friends. Fuck 'em."

a shallow thought

So I was driving down Street Road in Warminster this afternoon, and I couldn't help but notice two things that were affixed to the back of the Nissan Maxima that was tooling along in front of me: a license plate frame that reads, "Jesus Loves You," and one of those bumper stickers from Geno's Steaks that says, "Joey Vento of Geno's Steaks Says, 'This is America, When Ordering Please Speak English.' " Does that mean Jesus really only loves people who know how to say "Wiz wit"?

finding meaning from pirates 12, yankees 5

I've clearly been making a big deal out of the Pinstripes' long-awaited return to Pittsburgh, and last night's game provided the reason why. Consider the take of Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, which clearly gleaned more from this game than an otherwise routine victory in late June:

Tonight, as the Pirates cruised with a 12-3 lead in the ninth inning and Franquellis Osoria on the mound, mopping up the last three outs, the fans stood on their feet and chanted, "LET'S GO BUCS! LET'S GO BUCS!" And maybe this game was on the North Side of Pittsburgh with an awful reliever on the mound as a bad Pirate team closed out a win over a struggling Yankee team in mid-June, but for one night everyone in the stands might as well have been in Oakland at Forbes Field in October of 1960, watching Roy Face close out a surprising Game 1 win over the vaunted Yankees, and singing, "The Bucs are going all the way!" That's what baseball can do to you sometimes, and that's why sometimes stupid interleague games in June that have no real bearing on the standings can mean the world to a bunch of fans.

I was at the All-Star Game at PNC Park in 2006, and what struck me most was how good it felt to observe people in Pittsburgh taking an interest in baseball again. Indeed, the buzz that filled the ballpark that night was palpable -- a reminder that there's still no sports feeling like a playoff baseball feeling, which is something Pirates fans certainly haven't felt for a loooong time. True, a lot of folks were at PNC last night to see the Yankees, but it was still a sellout crowd on a Tuesday night when there were no giveaways or gimmicks to attract people who simply had nothing better to do. And as Dejan's story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes, this wasn't a crowd mainly made up of Yankees fans. It also wasn't a crowd that had some half-assed interest in what transpired on the field: They stayed til the end, and they were chanting for the Buccos right up until the last out. Baseball in Pittsburgh has been on life support for a long time, and while the current Pirates still have a long way to go, we are seeing signs of life, even if it's little more than just enough life to hold our interest until the Steelers get to St. Vincent. And last night, we can hope, was a great start.

(more) revisiting the 1960 world series

GREAT story and photos in today's New York Times about the Pirates' improbable World Series win over the Yanks, what with the teams meeting tonight in Pittsburgh for the first time since William Stanley Mazeroski ended the whole shebang with that home run at 3:36 p.m. on Oct. 13, 1960. Even for those who don't like sports, or who have little interest in them, this is the sort of story that clearly explains why sports are so cool. There's too much about that remarkable series in the article, so there's no point re-hashing it, but the money quote is right at the end, when the writer, Sean D. Hamill, interviews a young man who recently occasioned to visit the still-standing piece of the home run wall Maz's shot cleared on that glorious afternoon at old Forbes Field 48 years ago:

Recently, J. W. Eddy, 25, a Pirates fan from Uniontown, Pa., visited the remnants of that wall while taking a break from studying for the bar exam at the nearby University of Pittsburgh Law School. Why come to this old piece of brick wall to remember an event that occurred 23 years before he was even born? "It’s kind of sacred here, really," Eddy said. "To any true Pirate fan, it’s like folklore. You just come to touch some of that history."

Amen.

Maz is slated to throw out the first pitch tonight, which should be great. And, just to add to the cool, The Times has even re-printed George Silk's famous Life magazine photograph of cheering fans taking in the moment from atop the Cathedral of Learning, the University of Pittsburgh's towering campus landmark. Pretty neat.

yankees-pirates, 48 years later

When the New York Yankees last played in Pittsburgh, Bill Mazeroski did what he did and "made Mickey Mantle cry," as the young Colagero Anello tells Sonny LoSpecchio in A Bronx Tale, a movie moment that still makes everyone from Western Pennsylvania quietly pump their fists every time they see it, if not also causing them to point toward the screen and shout "HA HA!" to the annoyance of anyone else also present. All these years later, with the Bronx Bombers coming back for a sold-out interleague series at PNC Park starting Tuesday night, all the usual opportunities to wax nostalgic are out there. For starters, Gene Collier has a column in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that points to the obvious economic disparities between the teams, though he fails to mention that if the Pirates were better run, they'd have been much more competitive in recent years. Books-wise, I'd recommend Jim Reisler's Best Game Ever, which totally stole my own idea for a book topic but really is a terrific read. And heck, for old-time's sake, let's take this opportunity to gaze at that famous photo of Maz as he approaches home plate in what will always be Pittsburgh's greatest sports moment:

BEAT 'EM BUCS!

george carlin, r.i.p.

Always was a fan of his act, but especially the one in which he articulated the differences between baseball and football. RIP.

what would crash think?

"Well, I believe in the soul ... the cock ... the pussy ... the small of a woman's back ... the hangin' curveball ... high fiber ... good scotch ... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap ... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight." ~ Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Bill Conlin's column, in today's Philadelphia Daily News, brought to mind Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, and his unforgettable speech to Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon, in one of the great baseball movies of all time. Conlin, after all these years, and after a long-winded history lesson he no doubt thinks impresses us at the start of his piece, has reached a different conclusion: He believes the time has come for the National League to adopt the designated hitter, if only because American League teams better take advantage of having that extra bat in the lineup. (No word on Conlin's take on the works of Susan Sontag, or the cock ... the pussy, etc.) There's something to be said for Conlin's position, given many of the points he makes, but I wonder if he would have bothered bringing it up at all had Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang not injured himself circling the bases the other day in Houston. What Conlin also ignores is how much strategy is removed from the game when pitchers are forced to bat, to say nothing of the fact that the DH can also be viewed as a gimmick to prolong the careers of aging sluggers incapable of fielding a position. It's also a boon for for the players' union, which benefits greatly from the additional roster spots afforded to all those extra hitters. It may be the way of the future, at least given how the game is now being played in the AL, but there's just something unnatural about it. Part of being a baseball player is having to do everything there is as a baseball player: hitting, fielding, baserunning. That for the last 35 years half of the major leagues has played the game one way, while the other half has played it the other, is the only real scandal here. Crash, where have you gone, buddy?

some bull about bohemia

Get this: Philebrity is channeling Christopher Hitchens -- a life of kings favorite whose Slate columns we've linked to since Day One -- by wondering where the real Philly Bohemia is. Anyone else sense a whiff of hypocrisy in this? Anyone? Anyone? Philebrity -- in case the name didn't give it away -- is a blog site dedicated to listing "cool parties" and "shows" at which everyone flaunts how different they are by looking remarkably similar to everyone else, that makes fun of tourists in "Mom Jeans," that sneers at any kind of music you might have heard of, and that (occasionally) passes off pedestrian, knee-jerk political insight as "progressive." [Interesting that Philebrity describes it has a "man-crush" on Hitchens, considering he's arguably the most vocal supporter of the invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation out there. But whatever.] Yes, I know what you're thinking: Why do you read that site, then? Curiosity, for one, gentle reader: It's informative about certain items of interest, and it's written in a snarky, smart-ass sort of way I often find appealing. Besides -- and let's face it -- hipster girls are hot. But to think Joey Sweeney and his Band of Badasses even thought to invoke Jack Kerouac in this little dispatch, complete with a famous photo of Jack from a Beat poetry reading in the 1950s? I mean, come on. Look, I'm second to no one in my admiration for Kerouac, but there's no doubting the so-called Beat Mystique has taken on a life of its own in the last 50 years, to the extent that its cool-outsider aura has been transformed into just another clique of misguided slackers living off the bounty provided by the great material wealth of this country, if not also their parents, many of whom were more likely to have worked for (gasp!) a multinational corporation than some co-op that recycles its receipts for the good of Gaia. I mean, without Daddy's trust fund allowance, how else can Joe and Jane Cool afford that phat loft in NoLibs while spending days that end in "y" thinkingthinkingthinking about the next turgid short story they're going to write while shopping at H&M and running up a ginormous credit-card tab at Standard Tap? The funniest part is, many of them know nothing of Jack Kerouac other than that he wrote On the Road or Dharma Bums, which, you know, many of them never quite got around to finishing, either, and how's that for stereotyping, anyway? Heck, no less than The Village Voice has weighed in on what has become Kerouac, Inc., based on the sorry way some have actually attempted to cash in on his legacy. But so what? If I'm following the logic here, we want to gentrify bad neighborhoods until somebody else does, too, at which point it's just not Bohemian enough anymore. Bottom line: Capitalism isn't perfect, but it is a good thing. To paraphrase what Winston Churchill had to say about democracy, it's the worst economic system there is, except for all the others. Are there excesses? Sure. Is there crassness, consumerism and lots of crap being bought and sold out there? Yup. But it's also the reason Web sites like Philebrity can thrive and exist, and that kids with otherwise nothing better to do can debate where they can confine themselves to talk about continuing to do nothing. That's not to say there's no place for art, or for places where good art can be created and cultivated by good artists. Just that those doing the creating should shut up, do it and please spare us their holier-than-thou pontificating about everyone else who doesn't quite measure up to such rigid standards of non-conformist conformity. We don't much like you, either.

no joke: watch the real world tonight

Keep your eyes peeled for winged pigs: the life of kings is asking people to watch television tonight. Not just any television, mind you, but MTV. And if that weren't ridiculous enough, to be even more specific I want you to watch that silly reality show called The Real World, which comes on at 10 p.m. EDT. No, gentle reader, I haven't lost my mind, though I do realize this request goes against just about everything I hold near and dear. Rather, I'm doing this for a group of friends in a local band called Pawnshop Roses, whose ballad "All the Way Down" will play tonight during the show, perhaps even as one of the program's brainless drunk chicks loses one of her heels while staggering home not long after some douchebag made her cry because he walked off with some other broad he picked up at some meathead bar right after he tried to drink a shot of Jaegermeister off her midrift. Or something. Seriously, the boys from PSR are a good group of dudes who play good rock 'n roll. Guitarist Kevin Bentley told me Sunday he had always dreamed one of his songs would be on MTV. Tonight, it will be. Check it out.

dwight white, r.i.p.

Sad but true: Dwight White is dead. Condolences are obviously in order, and the details of the complications from his surgery will certainly shake out in the days ahead, but man, oh, man. Dwight White. Mean Joe and LC got a lotta love, but Dwight White was the man. Fats Holmes also died in January, which means half of the famed Steel Curtain is now gone. Hard to believe, considering neither Holmes nor White lived to reach the age of 60. RIP.

a penguins post-mortem

Well, we learned this much: The Detroit Red Wings really are the best team in the National Hockey League. Their dominance of the Pens for so much of the Stanley Cup finals was so evident -- Detroit's speed and its ability to play defense was such that often it seemed the team had six skaters on the ice -- it's a wonder the damn thing actually went six games. But we also learned this: The Pens played with tenacity and grit, enough to literally steal that memorable Game 5, which they certainly should have lost. And today, we learned that something really was wrong with Evgeni Malkin, whose play was mysteriously poor throughout the series. Bottom line: The Pens are young -- Sid Crosby is 20, Malkin 21 and Marc-Andre Fleury just 23 -- and many of the game's all-time greats had to lose before they won. They will be back.

pensblog has some fun with sykora's called shot

This is just too fantastic for words, courtesy of the pensblog:

the epic that was game 5 of the stanley cup finals

As the one and only Mike Lange might say, if you missed it, shame on you for six weeks. But if you saw it, if you sat through all or most of that five-hour sporting epic that took place last night in Detroit, you're surely not going to forget it anytime soon, if ever. Hockey is one of those games with what might kindly be described as a niche following -- though still sometimes mentioned as one of the U.S.'s four major professional sports, its national television ratings often rank somewhere between poker and re-runs of Murder, She Wrote. With the constant white screen and the difficulty that goes with following that little black puck, hockey can be a tough game to watch on TV. But then, alone in your living room, you sat through something like last night, something like the three periods and the three overtimes that added up to Penguins 4, Red Wings 3, and you wondered: What's not to get? Granted, not all games are like this. They don't all involve a team staring at elimination and staking a quick 2-0 lead before suddenly falling behind 3-2, the creeping inevitably, the home crowd on its feet, the Stanley Cup being polished and ready to move for the pending coronation until ... the game gets tied with 35 seconds left, the Pens' Maxime Talbot improbably poking the puck into the corner of the net, causing folks from one city to jump and scream while those from the other just screamed. And then the overtimes -- not one, not two, but three of them, all filled with constant sways of action, with big shots and even bigger saves -- all hail Pens keeper Marc-Andre Fleury -- with a back-and-forth melodrama that left you bug-eyed and delirious, a dizzying display that caused you to wear a path in your living room carpet by the time it was all over, at 12:46 a.m., when Petr Sykora of the Pens finally found the net with a goal he had literally guaranteed to a television reporter sometime in the second OT. And that's when your phone started ringing, when friends began texting with congratulatory messages and your parents suddenly called from Pittsburgh just to ask if you saw it, knowing full well you did because they simply needed to share their excitement with you. All it means, in the long run, is that there will be a Game 6 Wednesday night Up-tahn at The Igloo, that the Red Wings still have a 3-2 edge, that the Pens must win two more without losing to win it all. But so what? It'll always be something to savor, something to remember, something that's just a simple reminder of why you really love sports so much in the first place.

brian howard is a better person than you are. just ask him.

The funny thing about Philly's alternative weekly newspapers is the utter unseriousness of their political commentary, most especially when they deign to be serious. It's all so reliably predictable -- one frequently need only take one look at a headline or byline to instantly know what one is about to read. Honestly, the alt-weeklies' politics makes for a cutesy, run-along-now diversion when measured next to the papers' otherwise sound (if somewhat occasionally overwritten) arts and music commentary.

That said, Brian Howard's editor's letter in this week's Philadelphia City Paper really does set a new standard for narcissism, vanity, and self-righteous sanctimoniousness masquerading as true political insight. It reads like a childish book report, and its tone represents everything I find distasteful about contemporary liberalism, even in this era of Bush administration excesses and disappointments. [Disclosure: I know Brian Howard. I went to college with him.]

Brian Howard hates war, you see. Passionately. So much so that he was "on the verge of shedding angry tears" at the dawn of the conflict in Iraq. It's such an admirable stand, really. So admirable I can't wait for him to weigh in on his opposition to kicking puppies, murdering your neighbor, and forgetting to call your mother on Mother's Day. But it goes deeper than that, gentle reader. See, Brian Howard once spent a few "intense months" in Cairo, where he interacted with "Muslims from a number of Middle Eastern countries." And guess what? He became friendly with -- wait for it -- "people with beliefs much different from my own but with concerns not so dissimilar." No! Really! It can't be! I was reminded of all those kids in Leningrad and Kiev during the 1980s, the ones you sometimes read about who wore blue jeans and listened to the Beatles and Tears for Fears at the clubs while openly wondering why Reagan and Gorbachev couldn't just shake hands and get on with that whole peace thingy because, you know, we're really not that different deep down, man, and peace in our time would only happen if people just sort of, you know, let it happen and stuff. Except, of course, for the inconvenient fact that the Soviet leadership had begun that decade by invading Afghanistan, much like it had been swallowing up the eastern bloc, Central America and even southeast Asia since the end of World War II (God, I miss the Cold War). Fast forward to today, where the Iranians are about to go nuclear at a time when their president consistently makes idle boasts about wiping one of his neighbors off the map, to say nothing of entire cultures who are rapidly reproducing while simultaneously raising many of their children to strap bombs to their waists before sending them into pizza parlors and nightclubs to blow up grandmothers and teenagers. Look, one can argue reasonably about whether Iraq was the proper front for the current conflict, but the sad fact of life is that war is a perpetual part of the human condition. The only way 9/11 really "changed everything" was by reminding us once again of this unfortunate reality. But Brian Howard is conspicuously silent about all that and what to possibly do about it, since it would requite actually thinking and understanding something that doesn't directly concern him.

Now, I will give the City Paper credit for this: Doron Taussig's lengthy cover story interview with Bassam Sebti, an Iraqi who has come to the U.S. to study writing while leaving his family behind, is fascinating, thorough and nuanced. Many readers, in fact, will no doubt miss this little nugget toward the end of the piece: "...Bassam does not believe America should pull its troops immediately out of Iraq. He doesn't even believe that the invasion necessarily had to be a bad thing for Iraqis. He does believe that Americans and Iraqis will need to work together to build a better Iraq, and if that's going to happen, Americans will need to pressure their leaders to make better decisions, and offer more than blithe assurances that things are getting better." In other words, despite having endured more direct misery than any of us will ever know, Bassam Sebti is still thinking about the long-term stakes. He's remarkably aware of what lies beyond the here and now. His part of the world, perhaps more so than ours, needs more people like him.

But Brian Howard, in trying to draw on the human toll of the Iraq War as if he were the first to think of such a thing, only insults Sebti's (and his readers') intelligence when he writes: "It's important to see this war, when we do bother to see it, to look beyond explosions and try to imagine the hell living through this war for the last five years has been for families, civilians in Iraq. Reading Bassam's story brought a lot of that back for me." Good to know, pal. Good to know.

That's not even the worst of it, though. See, Brian Howard wonders, just after Memorial Day, how many of us even realize we're in a war. He then proceeds to point out that he spent Memorial Day weekend vacationing in Maine with his girlfriend's family, a jaunt that included a swing by the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, which his girlfriend's father "saluted" as he drove past. Got that, gentle reader? Brian Howard is thinking about the war. Brian Howard hates the war. Brian Howard hates George W. Bush. And Brian Howard hates you for not thinking about all this as much as he does, even as he's happily sticking his feet in the sand, smug with his own sense of moral superiority.

some jokes just tell themselves

Click on this photo for a closer look....


Yes, this gentleman really does have a Flyers sticker and a Confederate flag sticker on his car. He no doubt has no idea the joke's on him, but that's the point. the life of kings rests its case, your honor.

apologies for the lack of posts

the life of kings has been tending to some personal and professional matters in recent days, so please excuse the dearth of material on the site. We just know you've been waiting with baited breath.

and so the penguins eliminate the flyers...

I'm going to be careful in how I write this, if only because a number of my friends are good, knowledgeable and respectful Philly fans with a clue. But to be honest, this series exposed a few simple truths about Philadelphia and many of its sports fans:

1. Much of the talk about how good and knowledgeable Philadelphia fans are is a bald-faced lie. Fact is, folks in this town are probably the most provincial in the country -- completely and utterly clueless about the reality beyond Broad and Pattison. Before the series began, a lot of commentary had focused on the falsehood that the Penguins had "tanked" their final regular season game against the Flyers so as to avoid playing them in the first round. The thinking was, the Pens were afraid of a physical team like the Flyers, as if this were 1975 and Bob Clarke was going to be punching someone in the face and frightening him into playing poorly from the moment the puck dropped. What it ignored was that the Pens wanted to rest Sidney Crosby for what was essentially a meaningless game because he was still feeling the effects of his high ankle sprain. Anyway, now, after a series in which the Pens won four games against just one for the Flyers, after the 6-0 whitewash that that took place in Sunday's series-clinching game at The Igloo, how does that analysis hold up?

2. Another misconception that made the rounds these last two weeks is that Pens fans are johnny-come-latelys to the sport of hockey. Even Rich Hofmann's column in today's Philadelphia Daily News has generated some comments from folks who continue to argue a) the Pens are in this place because they were so bad for so long, thereby allowing them to draft good players (which is true), and b) unlike in Philly, where everyone is supposedly loyal, no one cared about hockey in Pittsburgh until now. Now, while the life of kings pleads guilty to being on the bandwagon (and shamelessly so), many others in Pittsburgh have indeed been loyal since at least the mid-to-late 1980s, when the team began its first real run of success. But the Pens eventually got to be so bad again because their ownership group had literally run them into the ground. A perceived lack of fan support, as a simple read of Mario Lemieux's Wikipedia page makes clear, had nothing to do with why the team nearly folded or left town before Lemieux rescued it. Besides, as we've already demonstrated, Philly has also failed the loyalty test in recent years. But few in this town will tell you that, and fewer still will want to accept it.

3. If it wasn't already known, this series made it demonstrably clear: Philadelphia fans are the most boorish and obnoxious anywhere. It's funny to me that some will point to incidents in other cities as evidence that it's not just a Philly thing. But in Game 4, both times the Penguins scored goals and began to celebrate in the corner, several Flyers fans stood against the glass above the boards and raised their middle fingers -- some even reaching above the heads of children to do so. Real classy. After all, as we all know, a true tough guy does such a thing from the safety of his front-row seat. Losers.

4. Passion and knowledge are not to be confused with loutish behavior. But a lot of people in Philly will never understand this.

5. The back page of today's Philadelphia Daily News. Just 'cause:

10 years on: frank sinatra and the american male

Hard as it might be to believe, but Frank Sinatra died 10 years ago today. To many of us youngins, Sinatra is remembered as nothing more than a caricature, a wrinkled old Vegas lounge act who took the cheesy Rat Pack schtick too far but still sang some pretty songs that always made for nice background music or for a swell moment or two at your college buddy's wedding. But if you're the life of kings, you were in college and you were dying to know more after you saw Bono introduce him by saying this at the 1994 Grammy Awards:

Who's this guy that every city in America wants to claim as their own? This painter who lives in the desert, this first-rate, first-take actor. This singer who makes other men poets, boxing clever with every word, talking like America -- tough, straight-up, in headlines. Comin' through with the big stick, the aside, the quiet compliment, good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. You know his story 'cause it's your story. Frank walks like America -- cock-sure. ... Frank Sinatra. His voice as tight as a fist opening at the end of a bar. Not on the beat, over it, playing with it, splitting it, like a jazz man, like Miles Davis. Turning on the right phrase and the right song -- which is where he lives, where he lets go, where he reveals himself. His songs are his home and he lets you in. But you know that to sing like that you've gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance you've gotta have had your heart broken...

You soon learned about a man who really was bigger than life because, unlike so many other entertainers, including any number of rock 'n roll poseurs, The Sinatra Way really was a way of authenticity, a non-conformity rooted not in any juvenile desire to be "different" for its own sake, but rather to be exactly what he was, no matter the time or place. When he died, the world seemed to stop: Television and newspaper coverage was incessant, with The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, like many papers throughout the country, publishing enormous keepsake special sections in the days that followed. Philly's WWDB-FM, which used to be a talk station but which also was the flagship for Sid Mark's long-running programs "Fridays with Frank" and "Sundays with Sinatra," cancelled its programming for the entire weekend, instead giving Sid carte blanche to tell old stories and play the old records, with a few updates straight from the family estate in Palm Springs.

All these years later, in trying to recall why, I found myself drawn to the obituary the incomparable Mark Steyn wrote for the London Sunday Telegraph, which Steyn has re-posted on his Web site this week:

If only 20 per cent of the gossip is true, it was an amazing life: Frank delivering two million bucks in an attaché case for mob boss Lucky Luciano; the horse’s head left in an uncooperative producer’s bed; Nancy and Ava and Lana and Marilyn and Lauren and Mia in his bed, being very cooperative, sometimes (Ava and Lana) simultaneously; even towards the end, when ex-wife Mia Farrow told him of her troubles with Woody Allen, Frank sportingly offered to break Woody’s legs. But what’s even more amazing than the life is that the records live up to it, and then some. The swagger and attitude, the chicks and mobsters are the incidental accompaniment; the real drama is in the songs.

Pete Hamill, the legendary New York writer, said at the time that Sinatra's death marked the true end of the 20th century, if only because he figured in it so prominently. Not long after that, Hamill was moved enough to write a book entitled Why Sinatra Matters, which includes the following in its introduction:

He was funny. He was vulnerable. I never saw the snarling bully of the legend. That Frank Sinatra certainly existed; on the day that his death made all those front pages, there were too many people who remembered only his cruelties. But he never showed that side of himself when I was around. On those nights, I was in the company of an intelligent man, a reader of books, a lover of painting and classical music and sports, gallant with women, graceful with men. Perhaps he was just donning a mask in my company, presenting images to a writer so that they would be remembered by the writer in a certain way: a kind of performance. Or perhaps the snarling bully was the true masked character, a clumsy personal invention, and behind the mask there was simply a young man afraid of the world. Or perhaps, by the time I knew him, he had just grown out of his angers, exhausted them, and settled for what he was and the way he was regarded. I don't know. Like all great artists, Frank Sinatra contained secret places, abiding personal mysteries, endless contradictions. On occasion, a curtain would part, there would be a moment of epiphany, and I could see the uncertain older man who wanted to understand what it all meant, the man who said that dying was a pain in the ass. I liked that man very much.

He was a terrific actor, as any number of his films makes plain. But for my money, I like the early scene in Young at Heart, when we first see him standing in Doris Day's doorway, skinny-shouldered and sad-eyed, his hat brim back just so, the camera locked on him for several seconds. It's our introduction to Barney Sloan, a self-described "stumblebum" nightclub singer who was good for a snarky comment or two, but little else. Seeing it all those years after its 1954 release, I couldn't help but feel there was a lot of the real Frank Sinatra in that character, a wiseass dago kid from Hoboken who just happened to make the big time because he had as much balls as he did talent.

But the music, as Steyn has written elsewhere, is "the only reason we’re remotely interested in what broads he’s nailing." His days as a spaghetti-thin crooner who wowed the bobbysoxers while their GI boyfriends and husbands were overseas saving the world from Hitler and Hirohito soon gave way to a voice that gave out on him just as Ava Gardner broke his heart. But he came back, first with his Academy-Award-winning role as Pvt. Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity, and then, throughout the 1950s, with a series of recordings that are among the greatest in the popular American songbook. "Like the smoke rings, the loosened collars and pushed-back hat brims of the album covers," Steyn wrote in another context, "it's mere confirmation of what the records tell us already -- that, whether the heady intoxication of Songs for Swingin' Lovers or the bleak resignation of In The Wee Small Hours, these things have happened to him." From then on, he was bigger than big, all the way to the end. In Steyn's obit, he points to Sinatra's ability to phrase a lyric, and while it's true he wrote none of his own songs, he certainly knew how to sing them. I'm especially partial to the sad ones, if only in appreciation of the raw emotion laid bare, as in "It Never Entered My Mind," when he sings the line about having to "order orange juice for one" by placing just the right emphasis on the words "for one" so as to wring every ounce of feeling from them. And just the other day, I again happened upon the rare gem "Everything Happens to Me," which was written by a couple of guys named Tom Adair and Matt Dennis. It concludes with a heartbreaking verse that again would take on a whole different vibe when uttered by some lesser mortal:

Telegraphed and phoned
I sent an air-mail special, too
Your answer was goodbye
And there was even postage due

The best of the books -- aside from Hamill's -- is Bill Zehme's The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and The Lost Art of Livin', published just before Sinatra's death. In it, Zehme expands on a 1996 essay he had written for Esquire: "Men had gone soft and needed help, needed a Leader, needed Frank Sinatra. I wanted to ask him the essential questions, the kind that could save a guy's life. I wanted what might approximate Frank's rules of order." What resulted was an all-encompassing "exploration of the Sinatra mystique" that covers "[m]atters of heart and heartbreak, coolness and swank, friendship and leadership, drinking and cavorting, brawling and wooing, tuxedos and snap-brims..." Of all the wonderful anecdotes, by far the best is the letter-to-the-editor Sinatra wrote to The Los Angeles Times in 1990 after he heard pop star George Michael had been complaining about being a "reluctant" star:

And no more talk about the "tragedy of fame." The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you're singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn't seen a paying customer since St. Swithin's Day. And you're nowhere near that; you're the top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in Latin means thanks-to-the-fans who were there when it was lonely. Talent must not be wasted. Those who have talent -- and you obviously do or Calendar's cover article would have been about Rudy Vallee -- those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it, and share it, lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you. Trust me. I've been there.

memo to anthony gargano: shut up. just shut up.

Heard from a friend back in Philly that 610 WIP-AM radio host Anthony Gargano had ambushed a newspaper columnist from Pittsburgh on the air today, accusing the city of being a johnny-come-lately in terms of its passion for hockey. He also mocked the guy for daring to pick the Penguins to sweep the Flyers -- despite the inconvenient fact that, last we checked, the Pens were already halfway there. And for his coup de grace, Gargano proceeded to taunt the guy for wearing "Penguins panties" or something or other. OK, tough guy, OK. Your station has also often pointed out that the Pirates failed to sell out a few playoff games back in the early 1990s -- an inexcusable act for the fans in Pittsburgh, even if the unsold seats were way up in the outfield upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium, about 10 miles from the field. Very well. But lookie here, cuz: the life of kings has discovered that, as recently as 2000, the Eagles -- the so-called pulse and passionate lifeblood of Philadelphia sports -- needed the Fox Network to buy up approximately 1,500 available seats to avoid having a playoff game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers blacked out. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself right here in The New York Times. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: Less than a decade ago, the Philadelphia Eagles needed help to sellout a playoff game. So shut up, Gargano, and enjoy your head start on the next 25 years of rooting for one loser after another while you continue to parade around with your knuckles scraping against the pavement.

even the hipsters in pittsburgh are all pucked up

Here's how crazy it's getting: the life of kings is in Pittsburgh for Mother's Day, and because we suddenly had some writing to do this evening, we needed a wireless connection like quick (don't ask). So we went to our favorite hipster coffee jawns in Squirrel Hill, the kind of place where the girls are super cute and the music is always something you never heard of, because if you did they wouldn't want YOU to hear it. Anyway, to our surprise when we entered, we found the usual arrangement of Cool Bands You Never Heard Of had actually been replaced by the Penguins Radio Network broadcast of Game 2 of Flyers-Pens, complete with Mike Lange loudly uttering his trademark inanities like "How much chicken can you eat?" and "She wants to sell my monkey!" And when the Pens scored to take a 3-2 lead in the third period, the darling little blonde behind the counter whooped like she had just been told they were giving away bandanas across the street at Eat 'n Park. Or something. The handful of people on laptops or pretending to read Proust all reacted, too, except for this one guy on his laptop who was listening to an i-pod. He suddenly heard the fuss and looked around scornfully before intently returning to whatever the hell it was he was working on. [C'mon, dude. Smile a little and enjoy this. All the cool kids are doing it.] And if that weren't enough, Bob Smizik has written a column in the Post-Gazette that suggests this town's love for the Pens is beginning to rival that of the Steelers. Can it be? I mean, whoa.

phil sheridan makes nice

With all the smack-talk being flung around our great commonwealth this week (ahem) in anticipation of the big Pens-Flyers series, which begins Friday at The Igloo (in case any of yinz were wondrin' 'n at), Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer has decided to take a kinder, gentler approach. In his column today, Sheridan seeks to find some common ground between the life of kings' hometown and the life of kings' adopted home. Money quote:

We're talking about Pittsburgh, that bridge-happy city on the other side of the state. We're talking about our neighbors. Taking cheap shots at Pittsburgh would be like picking a fight with your favorite cousin. Think Pittsburgh and you think blue-collar, beer-drinking, salt-of-the-earth folk who are working hard to reinvent themselves in the post-industrial era. That makes you want to hang out with them and compare notes, not insult them. ... Pittsburgh fans [are] a lot like us, only more polite.

Cheers to that. And cheers to what promises to be a fun series. They're calling for all the fans at The Igloo to wear white for Game 1, which means the joint will look a lot like this:


Sweet.

fox sports ranks the worst franchises in professional sports...

...and, to no one's surprise, look who's No. 1. Sigh.

it's on.

Penguins. Flyers. For the NHL's Eastern Conference championship. Winner advances to the Stanley Cup Finals. Loser gets to hear about it from here to eternity. I expect to have few friends in Philly over the course of the next couple of weeks. And I don't care. The Igloo and the Wacho Center are both gonna shake. Oh, boy, is this gonna be fun.

matt leinart likes to party. why is this an issue?

"Leinart speaks about party photos"

Saw the headline and had to read the story, which was published today in the Arizona Republic.

OK ... Lemme see ... Matt Leinart, a 24-year-old, good-looking quarterback for a professional football team, was ... OK ... lemme see now ... hang on ... photographed partying with young girls and ... hold up ... just a minute here ... wait, what? ... really? ... he also was pictured holding a ... wait for it ... this is shocking, horrifying stuff .... a beer bong?!?! Oh, the horror! The horror!

Don't believe me? Go here.

It's enough to make one shudder for the future of the republic (no pun intended).

Not because of what Leinart did, of course. Nope. No way. Bear with me, 'cause it's just a hunch, but I'm willing to bet my ability to read that Leinart is not the first multi-million-dollar athlete who likes to party with chicks and get wasted. That he has to answer for this and have his judgment questioned by "older," "wiser" types who no doubt have never had any fun in their lives is mind-numbingly stupid. You'd think, based on the breathless coverage, and on this browbeating delivered by Arizona Republic columnist Dan Bickley, that Leinart had killed someone -- or worse. All because he was doing something every red-blooded American male would otherwise want to do if he were in Leinart's board shorts. Look, I realize we're a long way from Joe Willie Namath, whose Mark-Kriegel-authored biography fantastically contains an entire chapter called "Booze and Broads," and whose exploits in and around New York City in the 1960s will always represent the gold standard of true bachelor cool. "He walked off with Jagger's girls," Kriegel writes. "He spilled drinks on Sinatra." I also realize athletes' actions are under greater scrutiny than ever before, that they constantly run the risk of getting in greater trouble than the rest of us because of their fame and fortune. But still: Why does the flip-side have to be that they're not entitled to any fun at all? Why does the revelation that they are having fun somehow imply that they're shirking their duties, as if they should all be studying their playbooks on Saturday nights and making sure to be at the gym by sunrise the following morning? Why does Matt Leinart have to answer for anything in this instance -- other than a handful of in-depth questions about why I wasn't invited?