Gymnastics vs. Track and Field

Hooked on the Olympics like so many others, Ann Althouse states her preference for gymnastics over track and field, and her argument is reasonable:

I like the events where form and complexity vary infinitely. I can develop my own perception and judgment, and if the judges do something else, I can think about that and try to figure it out or get pissed off.

It's a reasonable argument, but one with which I strongly disagree. First, I don't think it's really true that "form and complexity vary infinitely" in gymnastics competitions, given the number of required elements in so many of the events. But the main problem with the argument can be summed up in her comment, "if the judges do something else." Well, that's the thing, isn't it. The judges are charged with making subjective judgments about very specific elements in a performance, with the goal of identifying the competitor who completes the best performance. While form and complexity can play a role in the perception of each judge (if, for instance, a competitor on the floor exercise is more "artistic" than his/her competitors, a judge might be inclined to award a higher score for that competitor), each judge is also expected to fairly and objectively deduct an equal number of points from each competitor based on a designated list of errors developed by the sport's governing body.

Let's assume that the judges in this Olympics have been fair and completely above-board with respect to their treatment of the individual competitors. If that is the case, then the only explanation for the awarding of a medal to an exercise which can clearly be demonstrated to be unworthy of the award (I'm talking about the bronze medal awarded in the women's vault) is incompetence - the judges simply don't know what they're doing. What they have to offer isn't any different or better than what you hear from Randy or Paula on any given week of "American Idol." And that's how you're making decisions in the most prominent event in the sport? Come on.

About track, Althouse goes on to say:

What's the point of monitoring races to see who crosses a line first?

Well, I suppose I'd say that the point is that in track, form and complexity vary infinitely. There is more strategy involved in a 10,000 meter race than there is in an entire week of gymnastics events. Sure, it's about who crosses the line first. But in many races, the "fastest" person doesn't win. The history of the Olympics is littered with the memories of track favorites who went home without a medal. In many of those cases, tactics and strategy kept the favorite off the medal stand. Every now and then, there is a super-human performance, the likes of which was seen on Saturday from Usain Bolt. But that's the exception that proves the rule.

You can make a similar argument for just about every event in track and field. And that's why I prefer track and field to gymnastics, or any other event which is left to the whims of subjective judgments from people who even the experts seem to agree are not necessarily qualified for the job.

Life Sciences Building

To celebrate the opening of my Flickr page (see link at left), a photo from last weekend's campus tour of UC Berkeley.

The Life Sciences Building was where I had my first political science class, Poli Sci 2 - Comparative Politics. The professor, the late Dr. Leslie Lipson, was probably the best lecturer I had at Cal, and I still remember how offended he was by the election of Ronald Reagan as President - setting aside his lecture the day after Election Day to discuss why he thought Reagan would be a failure as President.

Great Olympic Moments: Dick Fosbury

There are athletes. There are great athletes. And then there are the athletes who are truly revolutionary - who change their sport because of their ability and their innovations.

Dick Fosbury was such an athlete. Before Fosbury, high jumpers used one technique. After Fosbury, they used another - the "Fosbury Flop."

Fosbury became somewhat of a folk hero in Mexico City at the 1968 Olympiad, where he won the gold medal utilizing what then was an unusual, even scoffed-at technique. You don't hear his name spoken that often anymore, but he remains one of the greatest Olympians.

Elvis

Elvis Presley died 31 years ago today.

I've posted this before, but it's worth taking a look at again:

“If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others’ objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.”

- Lester Bangs

More Random Thoughts on the Olympics

* After a week of the Beijing Games, I'm more convinced than ever that the saturation coverage - 18000 hours on 45 stations! - is one of the worst things that ever happened to the Olympics. The average viewer is left with the nightly coverage on NBC, and they're doing a horrendous job - just sucking the drama out of nearly every event they cover. And as far as NBC is concerned, there are only 5 sports being contested in this Olympics. It's a classic case of more is less - sure there is more to see if you have 18 hours a day to sit in front of your TV, but the magic of the games is a casualty as a result. In their nightly broadcasts, NBC isn't even trying to give viewers the full flavor of what is going on in Beijing - and the program (not to mention the viewer) suffers as a result.

* I really don't understand how Beach Volleyball became one of the handful of sports that was granted a pass to appear nightly on the NBC telecasts. Sure, I get that Walsh and May-Treanor have great bodies and all, and their story is somewhat compelling - although not as much as NBC would have us believe. And sure, these are great athletes - no argument there. But with all due respect to enthusiasts of the sport, it's boring - deadly boring. As far as I can tell, there are a limited number of possibilities on each play, and there isn't enough strategy involved in the game to make up for the monotony of the play. I love watching "regular" Volleyball, but have totally tuned out when the beach version comes on.

* Sports Illustrated has an incredible set of photos of Phelps' miracle finish up on SI.Com. It's one of the most amazing things you'll ever see - and underscores how miraculous the victory really was. Without today's technology, there's no question that the judges would have awarded the victory to Cavic. And no one would have been the wiser.

Buy Yours Now - Beat the Rush!

Let the record reflect that our local supermarket put up its Halloween displays today, August 15 - a mere 77 days before the actual event. If my math is correct, that means I should start looking for my Christmas ornaments on October 9.

Sorry for the blurry photo - I was trying not to embarrass myself by being seen taking a photo of a witch inside of a supermarket.

"Marooned" - What A Drag It Is Getting Old

To the extent that a book of rock criticism can be considered legendary, “Stranded” certainly falls into the category. The premise of the book, released almost 30 years ago, was simple: twenty of the leading rock critics of the day would select the one record that they would want to have with them, if they were to find themselves stranded on a desert island. Nearly all of the major first-generation critics were represented: Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, Paul Nelson, Dave Marsh, Ellen Willis, Kit Rachlis, Simon Frith, John Rockwell, and others. The book was edited by Greil Marcus, who had made a name for himself a few years earlier with “Mystery Train,” which made the argument for rock and roll music as a major American art form while trying to find where the music fit within the wide spectrum of American cultural history. “Mystery Train” was a serious book, meant to be taken seriously.

“Stranded” was more of a lark; some of the authors took the premise very seriously (and some, like John Rockwell, a bit too seriously, devoting the book’s longest essay to Linda Ronstadt’s “Living in the U.S.A.,” of all things), while others like Dave Marsh turned it into a joke, calling his entry “Onan’s Greatest Hits.” In the book Lester Bangs was atypically inscrutable discussing Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” while Simon Frith was breathtakingly brilliant on the Stones’ “Beggar’s Banquet.” The rest of the essays fell somewhere in between.

At the end of “Stranded,” Marcus contributed a section he called “Treasure Island,” which essentially tried to fill in the blanks left by the previous 20 writers. As he said, someone had to take responsibility for the tradition, and present a case to the rock neophyte as to what represented the very best of the genre. Marcus’ tastes are wide and varied, and he has a healthy appreciation for trash, so his list definitely lived up to its title. I still read it with pleasure today, and every now and then learn something new about a work that I’ve listened to for decades.

All of which brings us to the 2007 “sequel” to “Stranded,” “Marooned.” To be honest, I had no idea the book existed until my family’s trip to San Francisco last weekend. But there it was, sitting on a counter at the Virgin Megastore on Market Street, 20% off, and I knew right then and there that before the weekend was over I’d be walking out of that store with the book.

Full disclosure: I haven’t read every essay in the book yet, but I believe I’ve read enough to capture its tone. The key to the new volume is right there at the beginning, in the Foreword contributed by Greil Marcus (the book, by the way, was edited by Phil Freeman, a critic with whom I’m not familiar):

Whatever pop music might be between the covers of this book, it isn’t lingua franca. In the fifties, young people woke up to find that, somehow, they’d been born knowing the pop language that was taking shape all around them. How was it that, for a white, teenage girl on a farm in Iowa no less than for an eight-year old African-American boy in Tulsa, Little Richard needed no translator? That was the pop world; it isn’t any longer. Over the last twenty years some of the most interesting and many of the most radical pop artists have worked as if to erect barriers between themselves and any version of a so-conceived mass audience, if only to ensure that whoever made it to the other side really wanted to be there. Again and again, writers here find themselves speaking not of how a record or a musician or a singer changed their lives, or the world, or the face-of-pop – but rather “invented a language,” or tried to.

What I read in what Marcus is saying there is a theme that he has explored since at least 1980, and before that – the fragmentation of the rock audience. Whether it’s because I’m an idealist or a fuddy-duddy is for others to decide, but I find that to be almost unbearably sad – that, as Lester Bangs wrote in 1977, “never again will we agree on anything like we agreed on Elvis.”

The difference makes “Marooned” a very different kind of book than “Stranded.” In 1978, I believe the writers wrote as if the universal rock audience could still exist; they wrote about the works they loved accompanied by a thought in the back of their minds that all someone had to do was read their essay in order to become entranced by the subject at hand. I think the writers in “Marooned” write as if the opposite is true – the universal rock audience will never again exist, so they might as well celebrate the fragmentation and write about the stuff that lights the fuse that blows up the entire ship. So you have artists as diverse as Elton John, Iron Maiden, Dionne Warwick, Dio, Scorpions, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, The Meters, Sonny Rollins, and Stereolab. An entertaining (if somewhat mystifying) mix, but all just little pieces of a vast universe.

Which is fine, and I’m just going to have to get used to it. My only quibble so far is with Freeman’s “Return to Treasure Island,” which in my less than humble opinion should be characterized as falling somewhere between a disappointment and a travesty. Sure, it’s just one person’s opinion, but if you’re going to take the responsibility for a tradition, then you need to do better than having as many songs by William Shatner as Nirvana, having three Slayer albums and none by Sleater-Kinney, and totally ignoring the recent efforts of Bob Dylan and (dare I say it) Bruce Springsteen. It may be defensible, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly honest.

But then again – what do I know? I’m just an old guy.

New Dorm

This is what the dorms they're building these days look like.

Hardly seems fair, does it? The damn thing is probably air conditioned.

Old Dorm

Deutsch Hall on Durant Avenue in Berkeley, south of the campus, where I spent 9 months of my life in 1980-81. The lowest floor with a balcony, the third floor, was where I lived. My room was on the far left, at the end of the hall.

I'm not sure when these dorms were built, but I like to call this architectural style "Early American Communist." The X's across the windows on the left side of the building were not there 28 years ago, so I assume they were added to bolster the building's defenses against an earthquake.

We strolled past the dorms on our way to a campus tour, and of course I had to show the kids where I spent some of my formative years. The details I kept to myself.

Happy Birthday

...dear blog.

I let the first birthday pass by without comment, but I feel compelled to recognize the second birthday of this here blog, which began life two years ago today. At that time it was called "Apropos of Nothing." I still like that name, but after 9 months or so decided to change it because there were several other blogs with the same name. On August 14, 2006 the very first post was about Elvis Presley. And 785 posts later, here we are. In two years the most frequent post topics have been rock and roll, NFL, Golf, Bruce Springsteen, and Tiger Woods. In other words, just a bunch of stuff running 'round my head. And thanks to a recent documentary which aired in Great Britain, my post from July on John Akii-Bua leads all others in hits. Regular readers - thanks for reading! Help yourselves to a piece of cake.

Views From The Top

Some shots just speak for themselves.

Almost There

OK, we're almost there. Just a huge flight of stairs to walk up, and we'll be at the base of Coit Tower.

You can just barely see the outline of the Golden Gate Bridge in this shot.

I Think I Can...I Think I Can...

I think this was taken about halfway up the hill.

One of the greatest things about San Francisco is how you can take pictures of the same thing, but from a different angle, and when you see the end result you think that you're in a completely different city.

Of course, having an elevation change like the one that San Francisco has helps a lot in this regard. And as far as I know, there aren't many - if any - other American cities with elevation changes like the ones you see in the city.

Taking Coit Tower By Strategy

[Bonus points to anyone who gets the obscure homage in the title of this post.]

Much to our surprise during the Friday afternoon walk, the kids decided as soon as they saw Coit Tower from this angle that we needed to make the walk up to the base of the tower.

Trust me, this hill is a lot steeper than it looks in this photo. But begin the trek we did. I'd say that I'm in good shape from all the running that I do, but my shins definitely paid the price for this conquest.

Can We Start Track and Field Early?

OK, I've had enough gymnastics melodrama. Setting the debate over the age of China's gymnasts aside, you know something is way out of whack when a silver medal in the Olympic Games somehow becomes one of life's great crushing disappointments. Fortunately I did myself a favor last night, and checked the results before the program began on NBC. Once I knew where the U.S. Team placed and how it got there, there really was no reason to watch. Al Trautwig is a vast improvement over John Tesh, but it would be nice every now and then to try and lend some humor to the proceedings. Notwithstanding the reactions of the U.S. team members, this really isn't life and death stuff.

So there's at least two more nights of this, but at least it's the individual competitions, where the storylines aren't quite the soap-opera of the team event. I'm just ready for it be over, so we can get to some more events that don't involve judging.

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Doggie Diner Head, Ocean Beach, San Francisco:



















Top Dog, Berkeley: