One New York Life

This nearly got lost in the shuffle of vacations and such but darn it if those series recordings aren’t persistent. The set-up is this: seven years ago, a man named John Wakefield murdered six people on Harper’s Island (off the coast of Washington state). They were the first and only murders to ever take place on the island. BUT THEY WON’T BE THE LAST. In the present day, two people who met on the island return there for their wedding. They and their wedding guests spend the five days before the wedding on the island and someone starts stealthily picking them off.

The Good

• Much like the first season of Prison Break was a full-season heist movie, this is a full-season stalker movie. I really enjoy this format. I like the idea of taking the stereotypical movie genres and expanding them to 13 – 22 hours to see how the format holds up. I mean, it’s summertime. Might as well. I’ll take 25 Little Indians to get me through the summer.
• As an added bonus, the fun case study of someone from a small town who moves to LA and then tries to go home again. Abbey Mills, likely filling the “chick who kills Freddy” role, saw her mother killed by John Wakefield and fled to LA for a new start. She returns to the island because her best friend, the groom, invites her to his wedding. If you’ve ever seen the people you went to high school with after a few years you’ll appreciate the humor. Extra bonus if you’re from a small town.
• Cameron Richardson. Good Lord. Smoking hot with a solid touch of serial-killer obsessed crazy. AND she digs on hobbits. Very cool.
• I’m very curious what they’re doing with the groom’s uncle’s bag-o-cash and gun which has appeared in the hands of two people who ended up dead shortly after. It seems like the bag-o-cash is going to be its own character.
• It wouldn’t be a show without a touch of insane woman syndrome. Your semi-abusive ex-boyfriend shows up on the island unannounced and tries to convince you to call off the wedding and leave with him. Do you: 1) tell your father; 2) tell your fiance; 3) Do nothing, try to reason with him, and hope he goes away peacefully. If you’re an hot, stupid girl — the answer is obviously 3. You know, because you’re hot and can deal with anything~!

The Bad

• As the wedding party is waiting to depart, the camera cuts beneath the boat they’ve chartered to the island. Underneath, someone has put scuba gear on “Cousin Ben” and tied him to the engine. The engine trying to start wakes him up. The propeller then takes his head off. Now, I mention this because it eliminates something like 95% of the suspect pool without off-the-charts suspension of disbelief. Someone took a full grown man, drugged him, hooked him up to scuba gear, found the correct boat, and tied him underneath it; then either got away, changed, and got on the boat (within the time window of a scuba tank), or went back to the island. Afterward, the writers spend an inordinate amount of time in the first three episodes trying to get the viewer to focus on people, like a 12-year-old girl, who absolutely could not have pulled that off. One would think the women, the middle-aged men, the fat guy, the hobbit, and pretty much everyone who lives on the island are eliminated from contention.
• Speaking of a 12-year-old girl, I could really do without the stereotypical creepy kid. Like, really? What is she going to add? We know she didn’t do it and now we’re going to have to deal with the creepy kid who knows what’s going on but won’t tell anyone. Just because it was good in Poltergeist and every Stephen King book doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it, people.
• The frat-boy groomsmen. Is any one of them not a Red Shirt? Speaking of — it seems brutally easy to pick out the Red Shirts from the people who will last. I understand the need to have a huge cast when you’re going to spend 12 hours doing nothing but killing people but geez.
• Could the casting department have done a bit better job casting the groom’s “little brother.” The younger brother looks like a 40-year-old, burnt out Irishman? Seriously, people, dressing a 40-year-old in goth clothes and dying his hair black doesn’t make the actor look 20 years younger. The exception doesn’t make the rule.

The Rest

I like it. I know what I’m getting in to because there’s no way it can come back for a second season. It’s something to fill 13 weeks of television and go away. I’m a huge fan of finite time investments. These seem like something that might become more popular — something between the never-ending stream of mystery of the weeks and the open-ended, mythology heavy shows. As an added bonus, it’s actually good. The mystery isn’t painfully obvious after three episodes and there are enough engaging B-storylines. Also, there’s a pretty solid chance that every character you hate is going to meet a horrible end. Ever want to see a stuck-up LA snob thrown in a pit and lit on fire? This is the show for you!

If I’m making an early call, it takes a certain kind of douche to guilt his supposed best-friend in to going back to the island on which her mother was brutally murdered. I mean, what makes you pick THAT place to have a wedding when money is no object? This sounds like a douche who might not have a problem murdering his entire wedding party to make a point.

I haven’t watched many Oscar movies since moving to New York. No specific reason — it’s just that most of my Netflix time has been spent catching up on TV Shows. I recently hit a run of movies following the end of Battlestar Galactica and Syriana was by happy coincidence in line as I’d recently finished reading the source material.

I don’t really understand the Oscar nod for George Clooney here. Clooney essentially plays the same plain-talking badass he originated in From Dusk Till Dawn except here he put on some weight and threw in some facial expressions to communicate confusion. What, exactly, he brought to this supporting actor role that he didn’t bring to previous movies I don’t really understand. Add in to that he was up against Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain? Really?

Sadly, this movie didn’t stick as close to See No Evil as I’d hoped. The Bob Baer storyline was just one of four ongoing things in the Traffic-like multifaceted storyline. Since I didn’t really love Traffic, this whole thing is kind of lost on me. I always feel like when a movie gets filled up with multiple things going on, some of which are intentionally unrelated, it ends up with things going on I don’t care about. Like, did I really need to see the investigator’s alcoholic father randomly showing up and not doing anything but drinking and grunting? It didn’t add anything for me. I don’t find them hard to follow, I just don’t enjoy them.

Did it communicate a similar message as the book? Sure. I can absolutely buy the idea that the US Government via the media and their corporate interests would decide the prince who wants Iran to be free and democratic with equal rights for women is a terrorist because he wanted to sell the country’s oil rights to China instead of the US. I can buy the US Government supporting the other prince as the country’s savior because, while doesn’t care about his people, he’ll continue to operate business as usual like his father. The whole thing was summed up by Alexander Siddig’s Prince Nasir Al-Subaai: “When your government has a budget shortfall, my father orders a dozen jets.” He wanted to stop that, so the US Government plotted to get him out of the line of succession.

On top of that, I feel like the movie really didn’t break any new ground. We get it — suicide bombers exist because their lives aren’t all that great to begin with. The cynical among us think the US’s interests are for sale to the highest bidder. I don’t even disagree with any of it. If anything, the recent XM/Sirius merger puts it in perspective. Senator Herb Kohl actively drew out the merger talks to keep the industry struggling. Surprise, Senator Kohl has a financial stake in terrestrial radio. Getting that kind of message out isn’t a bad thing, I guess.

It’s also entirely possible I expected it to follow more closely to the book than it did and thus came away disappointed.

Bravest Ale

Brewed By: Possibly Anheuser-Busch, but unconfirmed.
Brewed In: ?
ABV: “About 5%”
Type: American Ale

What they say: Not much. It’s theoretically a house ale. However, an unconfirmed source gave me an interesting factoid. I was told that the “house ale” is really an InBevheuser product called “Horseshoe Ale” which is marketed to bars via distributors. The bars are offered this beer without the InBevHeuser label with the right to market it as their own house ale. On my initial review of this, I was going to make a comparison to Bud Select or American Ale — as it turns out, it might actually BE Bud Select or American Ale. I find this equally sketchy and awesome. Who knew I was getting a Fine Belgian Ale? Just remember everyone, just because the company isn’t American anymore doesn’t mean it loses the ability to be shady.

Why I Picked It: Bravest is a bar near my office that we discovered because of its proximity and relative cheapness. On Manhattan, the happy hour bars close to Grand Central Station are tremendously overpriced and serve the after work suit-and-tie crowd. The bars know customers are probably only having one or two drinks and everything’s priced accordingly. It’s normal to find $6 drafts and $8-$12 mixed drinks. The aura around Grand Central is spotty, but bars become mostly reasonable in the high 30s. The East 30s are mostly residential so everything is more neighborhoody. The only gotcha is to avoid places full of 19-year-old Long Jersey Kids looking to kill more Jagerbombs then they can handle. This is the bar’s house ale.

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Presentation (5): I don’t know whether or not the semi-shady purchase of this beer comes with a free tap design, but I was impressed with this tap. It’s a long tap with a huge fireman’s helmet on top and a FDNYish shield on the side. The only presentation score is really the tap and it does a good job by standing higher and more noticeably than the rather pedestrian beer selections in this bar. 4

Originality (5): They claim it as an ale, but I find the claim somewhat dubious. The beer sits amongst the Coors Lites and Budweisers of the world, so pretty much anything different would stand out. This bar is, mostly, a Budweiser bar — featuring Bud specials and the like, so this is an original gem amongst others. On the other hand, after being told this really isn’t an offering original to the bar, I find myself hard pressed to give them big points. 1

Body (10): The initial pour is a somewhat pedestrian reddish amber with a small head. It’s ale-thin, as promised, but the hoppiness of the ale was something of a surprise. I usually expect these standard house ales to have a certain body type and this wasn’t it. 6

Taste (10): As previously mentioned, my original notes told me to compare this to Bud Select or Bud American. It’s a light, kind of refreshing ale with a blast of hops in the aftertaste. It’s too hoppy for me, personally, but so are a lot of things. I did like the flavor after I got used to it but, for me, I’ll stick with the $3 Bud specials before I’ll pop the extra $2 for a pint of this. 7

Efficiency (10): The really hoppy flavor kills any hope of efficiency for me. During happy hour, for $2.50/pint, it’s as efficient as any other 5% draft. After it kicked up to $5/pint after happy hour — well, $5 pint isn’t terrible by Manhattan standards, but there’s nothing so amazing in the flavor that it would prevent me from buying the “always $3 Budweiser”. 4

Versatility (10): Tough to rate versatility on a beer that’s only available at one bar in Manhattan (supposedly). However, even in this bar where there are better beers available cheaper, I wouldn’t recommend it. To be fair, I’ll not rate the versatility here because it’s really not possible. N/A

Final Grade: 22 of 40 = 27.5 of 50 — OK beer.

The Line-Up

• Vanilla Stout: 21
• India Brown Ale: 32
• Bohemian Pilsener: 33
• Belgian Ale: 27
• Extra Special Bitter: 39
• Season’s Best Nut Brown: 23

Best: Extra Special Bitter. If someone had told me that Ye Olde Holiday Stand-by ESB was going to come out on top in this pack, I would have thought them crazy. But there it is. Not only did the ESB come up huge in the clutch, but the holiday pack staple actually turned out to have an outside shot to crack my top ten.

Worst: Vanilla Stout. If the Vanilla Stout makes an appearance in next year’s 12 Beers I’ll have to give it a second chance. When I started this 12 Pack, I was expecting something to rival the sadly lost Caramel Porter. It’s possible any of the three new beers would have fallen to my sad rage.

Final Thoughts: The Pilsener and the Belgian were odd choices to include in a Winter sampler. As mentioned in the individual reviews, I expect winter samplers to have a bit more, well, winter in them. This particular sampler is much, much better than the trainwreck Samuel Adams Winter Sampler, half of which are beers available in normal rotation, but it didn’t quite hit the high of their 2007 offering (sadly unreviewed since I didn’t start doing this until a few months ago), which featured Chocolate Lager, Caramel Porter, Oatmeal Stout, and the absurdly awesome (and sadly missing) Winter Wassail. But, as always, points for making their two seasonal sampler packs into things where we can try new offerings from the brewery instead of thinly-veiled marketing strategies to get their big releases in more homes. Yes, Sam, I’m referring to your asinine need to put two Boston Lagers IN EVERY SAMPLER PACK.

In extra happy news, a bunch of the reviews for these are coming up on the first page in Google. In that vein, mission accomplished.

Average Score: 29 – Good sampler.

It’s way early in the year to be thinking about football, but I figured it was worth a look even if I didn’t watch the NFL Network’s ridiculous 2-hour schedule unveiling show. Only in the NFL can they try to make a media event about “unveiling” a schedule that’s set the day the regular season ends. Hint to everyone — your division, one other conference division on a rotating 3-year schedule (NFC South for the NFC East this year, NFC North next year), one opposite conference division on a rotating 4-year schedule (AFC West this year, AFC South next year), and the two other conference teams that finished the same place as your team in their own division. Mix-n-match to make the schedule work. Make sure New York teams play at the right times on Jewish holidays. Ta-Da! An NFL Schedule.

Obviously, after a hard-fought season where they failed to make the playoffs again, the Dallas Cowboys and the Jerry Jones Temple To Excess (which is my entry for a name if they can’t find a corporate sponsor) are being rewarded with five prime-time games. More surprising, the Giants are getting the same five prime-time games. In what may be my most compelling argument ever to have Thanksgiving in the city is the the Giants drawing the Thanksgiving Night NFL Network game against the Broncos.

In an fortuitous bit of scheduling, the Giants get both the Raiders and Chargers at home keeping them off the west coast entirely. They play in Mile High on Thanksgiving and travel to Arrowhead in week four. The tradeoff is a brutal three-game road trip in weeks two through four that sees them playing in Dallas, Tampa, and Kansas City. Fortunately, the league was kind enough to schedule their first bye week after that relatively tough stretch.

In another weird quirk, the Giants will get their second bye in week ten before playing the Falcons and Broncos in four days. It sucks to be the road teams in short weeks. I wouldn’t go so far as to call their schedule “brutal”, but the three road games and the post-bye double-shot aren’t easy. Their two extra games are against the NFC Champion Cardinals, who are actively trying to make their team worse and the Stunning Fantasy Disappointment NFC North Champion Vikings.

For the first time in a few years, I find myself not the least bit confident about the team’s chances this season. After dismissing Plaxico Burress after his refusal to renegotiate a contract with stuff like “if you’re in jail” stipulations and their depressing dismissal of Amani Toomer (because salary caps in professional sports are SO AWESOME) — the Giants have NOTHING like the targets they had last year. On top of that, news they’re looking to trade of draft picks and Domenik Hixon for Braylon Edwards are a sobering indication of what’s available. The Giants recently traded away an overrated receiver who liked dropping passes and apparently have decided the answer is to trade for a new one. There are no free agent wide receivers who have anything in the tank and they’d have to trade half the draft to trade up to Michael Crabtree.

Here’s the problem. When Eli Manning misses, he misses high. Always. This is why they need genetic freak wide receivers who are super tall and can jump. Plaxico fit this to a T. The Giants weren’t the same team without him and there’s no one available that fits the bill. Anquan Boldin’s a great player — but 6’1″ just isn’t going to cut it and he’s going to cost a 1st and 3rd at minimum. Especially after the Giants tipped their hand with what they’re offering for Edwards.

And with all of that, 2009 marks the end of Giants’ Football as anyone who grew up here has ever known it. Starting in 2010, the people who populated the lower bowl for the last 50 years will be gone, replaced in the new stadium with the $20,000/seat PSL crowd. And that overpriced crowd, if the silence in Yankee Stadium and indifference in Lukoil Stadium are any indication, is going to suck. American sports in the 21st century.

As Mr. Horse once said — No sir. I do not like it.

Name: Season’s Best Nut Brown Lager
Brewed By: Saranac Brewery
Brewed In: Utica, NY
Type: Vienna Style Lager
ABV: 5.3%

What They Say: Brewed with a special blend of domestic and Belgian malts for a delicate nut-like character, you’ll love this Lager’s rich taste and signature hop aroma. The exceptional full-bodied taste reflects our Brewery’s extraordinary commitment to brewing beers of the highest standard of quality.

Website: Saranac passes my muster for a good website. Navigation on top, everything easily noticeable and findable without much work. Well done, guys.

Why I Picked It: The seasonal brew for this year’s pack. This replaces the pretty popular Winter Wassail, which was a staple of the 12 Beers for quite some time. The label on the bottle’s neck informs me that Each year we brew a batch of very special beer to celebrate the holiday season.

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Presentation: A very holiday-like red label with a green Saranac logo. A lovely watercolor of the stereotypical snow-covered lodge next to a babbling brook. The full moon is rising over the mountains in the background. Full disclosure: I’d totally buy this painting and hang it in my house. This deserves an extra point. 4

Originality: I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever had a nut brown lager as opposed to a nut brown ale. I don’t think I have. However, nothing we haven’t seen before. 2

Taste: While the name teases you in to thinking it’s going to taste somewhat like their brown ale, the tastes are about as similar as Sam’s Boston Lager to their Boston Ale. That is to say — not at all. The hops take the the forefront here, beating the malts in to submission. The flavor, though, is surprisingly bland. You don’t really get any hints of anything until a blast of hoppy bitterness in the aftertaste. I like a bit of a stronger flavor in beers. 5

Body: The beer pours a deep brown with a very thick and creamy head. The foam sticks to the side of the glass for the entire life of the beer. The head’s thickness teases a thick, meaty beer — and this just isn’t. The odd pairing suggestion on this beer’s information page — Minestrone and BBQ Pork Ribs — is not particularly helpful. Maybe my distrust of the whole experience is because I don’t really dig minestrone? Could be. Regardless, the very thin body doesn’t do it for me. 4

Efficiency: If this beer actually is 5.3, the leanness of the taste should own the efficiency rating. I just don’t know if I could make a night out of this because it’s boring. I might have to add an relative boredom caveat to the efficiency rating. That is, I could drink this all night and probably get pretty messed up but I don’t think I’d want to. 5

Versatility: I don’t know what I’d do with this beer other than try it in the 12 Beers Of Winter. I wouldn’t recommend it as the “must have” beer out of this year’s sampler and, if anything, I’d tell people about how good the Winter Wassail was in last year’s pack. I can’t think of anything I’d cook with it — I probably wouldn’t think “hey, you know what I need with these ribs? Nut Brown Lager.” If you’re reviewing a 12 Beers Of Winter pack, though, you — uh — need to drink this. 3

The Snob Says: A disappointing seasonal offering. Their Winter Wassail was much better and this just doesn’t seem to add much to the party.

Final Grade: 23 (of 50) – OK beer.

That Bootleg Guy beat me to the punch on this one. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was looking forward to it, but I will say that the cast (fired Scrubs‘s intern Aziz Ansari and Amy Poehler) and the writer (Former FJM writer/owner Ken Tremendous) led me to give it one shot.

The Good

• I loved Aziz Ansari’s short run on Scrubs as Intern Ed. The slacker medical intern was both funny and cool personality clash with the crazy, Type-A, kiss-ass interns who they’re desperately trying to transition the show to. To see him get a new gig was satisfying and, even if he’s kind of playing the same character, he’s making it work and I enjoy it.
• As someone who spent the first 22 years of his life living and working in towns this size, I can confirm that people like this both DO exist and are elected to public office — especially the school board. Areas of the country where people don’t really have to worry about crime so much go out of their way to find other stuff to worry about. The stuff I read in my local paper drive me crazy so I don’t know if I want to go out of my way to watch a show about it. Whether or not I want to move back to the land of cars and Big Boxes is a hotly debatable point.

The Bad

• The biggest problem I have with this show is that I really, really hate people like Leslie Knope. In the commercial pimping this show, Amy Poehler is sitting on a park slide talking about how she thought the slide was too dangerous so she had speed bumps installed. That would be more funny if I couldn’t see some small town (or not so small town) overprotective parent doing something like that. The lack of monkey bars and swing sets in elementary schools happened for a reason. If the whole season is going to be about her building a park, that’s probably fine. But I’m sure they’ll slide in other stuff which is supposed to be funny while really being a study of local governments wasting your money.
• Really, I didn’t find it that funny. About 10 minutes in, PLR and I looked at each other and shared an “oof”. I don’t remember anything really standing out as a funny moment in the pilot and, minus the SNL and Office connections, I can’t imagine this being something that gets a show picked up.
• The Office is a special combination of a great cast and really (ken) tremendous writing. A lot of people have worked in that environment and can recognize the stereotypes. I don’t know that the format translates to other environments. Most of us don’t go to PTA meetings or community group meetings. I mean, my old town is facing a crisis of being forced in to dredging PCBs out of the Hudson River which may or may not contaminate the county’s water supply. According to the local paper (which, yes, I get delivered in New York because I own real estate up there) the turnout for, you know, possibly poisonous water is lackluster. I don’t know if people care enough about local politics or activists to recognize the stereotypes enough to laugh at them.

The Rest

As a huge SNL and Amy Poehler fan, I’ll give the show at least this season to be funny. I have to say, though, that I found the first episode to be pretty terrible. It came across as a particularly bad Office knockoff. Really, it’s almost exactly what I expected, right down to the amount of laughs I got out of the half-hour.

That’s not really a good thing.

1) I am so happy they’ve continued to improve the subway service from Manhattan to the ballpark. The terrible, 6 turnstiles through a stupid iron tower choke-point is gone, replaced with a huge staircase leading up to something like 20 turnstiles. On top of that, they’ve kept the post-game “Super Express” service that only makes four stops in getting to Grand Central. Getting to Grand Central in a 20 minute train ride is so much more awesome than getting there in 50 minutes. I know that isn’t really the Mets call, but I’d like to think they had some sort of input with the MTA.

2) I can’t really put in to words how absurd the location of Citi Field is in the world of stadiums. I mean, granted, Yankee Stadium is in a hole in the South Bronx — but at least there are a couple bars nearby. At Shea, once you were in the parking lot, you were surrounded by fence and barbed wire so the stuff outside the perimeter was of little consequence. In the new place, everything is open and beautiful and new and you can walk all the way around the building. When you walk out to 126th Street, you get a full view of the trainwreck of property across the street from the stadium. Instead of restaurants and bars, you have interstates, chop shops, and car repair garages — and that’s ALL there is. Thanks Robert Moses! You knew neighborhoods! I really hope the Wilpons get their wish to flatten this disaster and turn it in to a little ballpark neighborhood.

3) The entryways are also a billion times better. We were able to enter through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda in a very efficient line for bags. I look forward to getting a better look at the Rotunda later in the season when it isn’t mobbed. I’d like to congratulate the Mets also for successfully stealing most of the Dodger’s historic importance. As Hulse put it: “It’s not like the Dodger’s are using their New York history anymore. Would you leave an orphan sitting around the city?” When we were leaving, gone are the terrible ramps that took forever to walk everyone down to the same door. Instead, we walked to the promenade and directly out via a stairwell. Fantastic.

4) Speaking of the promenade — absolutely amazing. All of the concessions on the promenade have views of the field. Gone are the days when you had to totally leave the action to go buy beer. You can see the field and crowd from everywhere. And the concessions! My opening day meal was a shrimp po’boy with spicy mustard, corn and clam chowder, cheese fries, and a Blue Point Toasted Lager on draft from the “Long Island styled seafood stand” Catch Of The Day. Besides that, Danny Meyer’s Shake Shake and Blue Smoke make an appearance — along with two new offerings in a Taco Stand and a French fry stand. This is on top of a pizzeria and the old Shea/Aramark concessions. In case you were wondering, the Sausage & Pepper hero from Shea is still available and still among the best stadium deals at $7.

5) Also on the promenade is plenty of picnic tables and standing room tables where you can eat your food without bringing it back to your seat with a perfect view of the game. Mike and I were able to watch most of the opening ceremonies while eating before taking our seats. His girlfriend got a double Shackburger and the deliciousness is the same without waiting an hour in line.

6) I don’t have kids, but the “Fanfest” area is pretty awesome. They have a “scale version” of Citi Field (Kiddie Field) where kids can hit wiffle balls off a tee and run the bases. In dead center field is even a mini-Diamond Vision screen where you can catch replays. On top of that are batting cages, an X-Box area where you can play 2k Sports and a dunk tank!

7) For sake of completeness, I took a moment to walk upstairs to the Caeser’s Club. They have people at the doors checking ticket stubs and, I will say, I find the whole “tiered ticketing” thing to be confusing and stupid. Near as I can tell, they have various clubs that you can go to if your ticket is of a certain tier and you can go to your club and anything “lower”. I find the whole thing snooty and ridiculous, but it’s New York so whatever. I went in to the Caesar’s Club and it was very Manhattan-loungey with couches and tables and waitresses and $15 martinis. You can barely tell you’re in a ballpark. I was only in something like this in Shea once when we had the luxury suite. Now there are at least five of these of varying quality. I was going to have a drink in the club just to do it (and get a picture with their live action Cleopatra model), but we were running close to game time now and still had to get dinner.

8) The power alleys in to deep center are insanely far. All three of David Wright, Carlos Delgado, and Carlos Beltran all hit balls as hard as I’ve ever seen hit that both died in a combination of the wind off Willet’s Point and the 415 feet to deep center alcove. I understand their desire to create a pitcher’s park but yeesh. And, could I get some official ground rules somewhere? Citi Field has a crazy right field wall with overhangs and porches and such — I’d like to know what’s actually a home run and what isn’t.

9) After spending years of my life watching baseball in a stadium designed for football, it’s really great to finally have a baseball stadium. There really aren’t enough good things to say about these new digs. Great job to the organization — you know, besides the whole winning the first game thing.

10) If anyone would ever like to argue with you over the idiocy of the “Loss” stat, I’d point them at this game’s box score. Brian Stokes took the loss in this game. In the game itself, starter Mike Pelfrey gave up 5 runs. Stokes then “allowed” a man on base with a three base error before getting an out. Pedro Feliciano came in and balked in the winning run. Stokes took the loss without having actually given up an earned run or really doing anything at all to contribute to the team’s loss. This is how we are supposed to judge pitchers.

I think this book came to PLR via a co-worker. It’s not a genre normally on her reading list because it’s not 1) by a woman 2) about women 3) historic fiction or 4) Glamour. See No Evil by Robert Baer is an autobiographical account of an ex-CIA case officer writing about his time on the ground in the Middle East. The book is presented in its final draft form as it was presented to the CIA with the Agency’s redactions intact. It’s the source material on which 2005′s Syriana was based and is sold as a glimpse in to how the CIA operated in the 70s and 80s vs. how it currently operates. The publishing company certainly struck while the iron was hot, putting it out about 18 months after the September 11th attacks.

The lion’s share of this book deals with Baer’s own experience as a field agent in the CIA. He goes over how he recruited spies, how he met with them, and how he kept them safe. He takes the reader from the agency he joined — one that actively recruited agents with ties to the families of suicide bombers and terrorist leaders — to the agency we have today. An agency that doesn’t really believe in the gathering of intelligent via word-of-mouth, but instead with satellite imagery and computer networks. The problem, he points out, is that a satellite image can’t find a network of tunnels and a computer monitor can’t track not put on a network. Opponents of political correctness will have a field day with this book. The most egregious example being a passage where Baer describes taking over an informant contact from an agent who’s moved on. We find out the agent, on the US’s dime, spent all of her meetings trying to convince the informant to accept Jesus Christ as his lord and savior instead of debriefing him for information. When informed of this, the government tells Baer they can’t reprimand her because of the First Amendment.

The book takes a trip from interesting to disconcerting in final section. The final section deals mostly with the invasiveness of oil companies in the US Government. It tries to put in to context exactly how much money flows in to DC via oil companies and foreign governments and how it shapes policy. CIA operations that are stopped so they don’t tick off a royal family. Oil money donated to the Clinton campaign leading to suspended CIA investigations. Stuff that if read on the Internet would be dismissed as conspiracy theory nonsense. With a real, vetted source describing this stuff, it carries a frightening amount of weight.

Another somewhat disconcerting thing I took from the book — it turns out that federal government agencies really don’t get along together. It’s not something created by Hollywood for movie conflicts. This seems unbelievable. Why is the government divided in to the DEA, DOD, FBI, CIA, and DHS if none of them care to share information or work together? What’s the point? Why do we pay people in multiple agencies to work against each other? It’s a scary thought that the agencies tasked with preventing attacks and crime are actually as chaotic as 24 portrays them.

There is a quote from the book that has stayed with me. Baer is investigating a bombing in Saudi Arabia and his superior tells him he may have to stop because of Amoco’s interests in the region. Baer asks his superior: “Do you mean to tell me we have to stop an operation against a terrorist group — one perhaps responsible for killing five Americans in Saudi Arabia — to protect Amoco’s balance sheets?” That’s the theme from the last part of the book. Oil company wallets reach so deep in to Washington that it affects Washington’s ability to gather information. And that’s a very scary thing. And don’t think it starts and ends with the Bush family. The book touches on money trails that include the Clintons, Kennedys, and other deeply rooted in DC.

It would be easy to write this book off as a guy grinding an axe with an agency that passed him by. You could do that — and you might even be right — but what you find is that the agency probably shouldn’t have passed him by. He seems to simply want an agency with eyes on the ground gathering information from people. Not via coercion, but from the folks in these Middle Eastern countries who don’t really believe in blowing themselves up to make a point. Regardless of what fear-mongers would have you believe, they are out there.

Everyone should read this book. Seriously.

I’ll be going to the first game at Citi Field today. For the occasion, I joined Twitter. We’ll see how it goes, but you can follow me on Twitter for opening day.