Bobby Fischer RIP

It has now been a week since Bobby Fischer died, at the age of 64, in Iceland. I first heard about his death last Friday morning when I tuned into ESPN's The Mike and Mike Show. The cause of death was kidney failure. The countless press accounts uniformly described him as probably the greatest Chessmaster ever and as a true enigma.

For about 72 hours, you could not avoid Fischer. All the major news networks covered the story, but ESPN really pushed it. They did a nice job covering his whole life, both before and after he defeated Boris Spassky in 1972 to become World Champion. They also managed to repeat a treacly feature that Jeremy Schaap put together after Fischer was exiled to Iceland a couple of years ago, ostensibly about the friendship between Fischer and Schaap's father, Dick. Dick Schaap was a great sportwriter. Jeremy is still riding his dad's coattails and probably should be working for Entertainment Tonight.

The details of his life are already known if you saw any of this coverage. Youngest Chess Grandmaster ever in 1958, world champion from 1972-75 and then the slow decent into madness. The 1992 Spassky rematch in Yugoslavia that violated UN sanctions, the anti-US and anti-Semitic rants, culminating with his gleeful endorsement of the 9/11 attacks. Finally, the endgame - the US revokes his passport, Japan arrests him and prepares to deport him until Iceland offers him asylum, where he dies.

A fascinating aspect of this coverage is that it was ESPN that did it. ESPN, an all sports network that did not even start up until 1979, which was 8 years after Bobby's last real "sporting" related feat. In no way, shape or form can I even imagine ESPN covering a major chess tournament now, although this is the network that covers poker as a sport and, I kid you not, had the U.S. National SCRABBLE Championship on at about 3:00 a.m. last summer. Why I was awake and watching TV at 3:00 a.m. is another story.

Back in the early Seventies, Fischer was a legitimate sports star, right up there with Joe Namath and Tom Seaver. I remember being at camp in the summer of 1972 and our daily morning assembly always started with a Fischer-Spassky update. After he won, he was all over the place - Johnny Carson, Playboy(!), Sports Illustrated, etc. He also sparked a worldwide interest in chess, including with me. I learned how the pieces moved and tried to understand the strategy of the game.

Like your average 10 year old, though, I lost interest in the game. Then in the early Nineties, Fischer again caught my attention, through the great movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer". Although Fischer really only appears in the title, the movie's coverage of the world of competitive chess got me playing again. I hung around Harvard Square and played against some of the speed chess players (and got spanked). I played online chess and read books and actually figured out some of the game's strategic aspects. I will never be great or even very good but I enjoy the game and enjoy playing against opponents that are near my skill level. Bobby, you may have descended into ranting, bigoted loonieness, but I thank you for the introduction to this great game.

A final note on his life and death. I googled Fischer this morning to check some facts and came across this item from the London Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/01/25/ftfischer125.xml. As a result of Fischer's uncertain citizenship and his need to cloak every action in mystery, some authorities in Iceland are claiming that he wasn't even buried legally. Who knows if this controversy will result in Fischer actually being disinterred and reburied elsewhere, but the mystery of Bobby Fischer continues even beyond the grave.

I seek a meme

It seems that a meme is the way to fill up down time on the blog. I have seen plenty of good ones and now I will go find one that will be worth my time and give you, my loyal reader , a real sense of me!? Tag me please oh lords and ladies of meme!

What to do.. follow up

So I went to the enviro event. But you guessed that from my previous post.

I have to say I am glad I went. Without a minute by minute description of events, it did turn out to be a total googoo greeny love in. Jimmy Tingle .. funny but not worth the price of admission. On the other hand they did say that the greenhouse gas emissions from the event were being offset by GREEN, CLEAN POWER! Hallelujah! I say, but most of the attendees are Godless heathens. I did have a good time and met some people that I needed to, so thanks to my friend Tom for getting me in and thanks to Jim for giving a great speech as he moved on.

A quick anecdote. After Jim took over the enviro group and then his one time boss became head of the regional EPA office, Jim wrote an newsletter article titled "Meet the New Boss". Apparently, I was the only one that caught the Who reference and paid Jim the appropriate homage. I say it now and I will say it again, the single biggest problem with the enviro movement is their inability to laugh.

I do think that my pop culture pick up will count for something in the long run. Guess the reference?

What to do, what to do.....

I am sitting here trying to figure out what my evening will consist of. On the one hand, I am supposed to go to a big event honoring this guy, Jim, who led a big local environmental group for about fifteen years but was shuffled out by his board for under performing. On the other hand, Netflix has sent me Trainspotting, the greatest heroin comedy movie ever.

Attendees at the event will consist of a few friends and a bunch of enviro googoos, few of whom I can tolerate for more than 2 minutes. Conversation will consist of how fabulous Governor Patrick is and isn't it great to get a Democrat back in the Corner Office and how the choice between Hilary and Barack is sooooo tough. As a card carrying Republican, albeit one that treads a moderate's path, this will be torture as I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming. Yet I really need to attend. Given my current state of underemployment and given that my skill set lies squarely in the environmental policy and government relations arena, I really need to keep my ugly mug in front of this crowd (shudder). Why did I pick this career? Just think, if I had kept on waiting tables and sailing 20 years ago, I would be ...waiting on tables and sailing now. As I sit here at my keyboard wearing a fleece hat and jacket because the thermostat is set at 58 degrees to save oil, maybe advancing my career opportunities is the right decision. Plus Jimmy Tingle is the MC and although he's a knee jerk liberal, he can be pretty funny.

Of course, my wife wants me to go, at least partially because we are also getting some chick movie from Netflix and with me out of the house, our fabulous entertainment center is all hers. I hope she can get the movie started.

So I just have to find time this weekend to see Trainspotting. I haven't seen it in 5 or 6 years and it's a pretty great movie. Of course it has to be when the kids are asleep. If the drug use, drinking, random violence and swearing isn't bad enough, the incomprehensible accents would freak them out.

Been a long time, been a long lonely (x5) time

So where have I been? Nowhere exactly, just hanging out. I remain amoungst the underemployed, although I have picked up some work here and there to help tide us over. I still have too much time on my hands and should be writing everyday. But just after I started this blog, we ran into all sorts of computer problems and once they were cured, I kind of forgot I had this little place for my thoughts. Don't fret my faithful reader, there will be more.

Glad It's Over

Thank God it's Monday. Now I bet that there very few of you out there that have ever prayed for the beginning of the work week but listen to this. Well for one thing I am under/unemployed so the kids headed off to school, the wife to work this morning and the peace and quiet have returned. But the last four days have been of hellacious in terms of the amount of Sheer Stuff that had to get done.

An Inventory and Timeline:
1) Took on a one week project last Monday, results due today. Reading, writing and, unfortunately, some arithmatic involved.
2) Coached three (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) of my daughter's softball games. We won the first round of the playoffs. Onward Pleasantville Cardinals!
3) Annual Pleasantville Community Day preparations/setup on Friday. This is the big annual event that the local Lions Club, of which I am a member, throw for the town. Lots of booths, games, pony rides etc., so the set up involves erecting a huge circus tent, collecting stuff from all over and just basically sweaty work for five hours.
4) Pleasantville Community Day opens Saturday morning in a light drizzle but we persevere. At high noon, the clouds open and thunder rumbles in the distance, there is a mad scramble for the cars and we officially bail out on Community Day. Missed you Kal.
5) The wife and I race home take showers and drive two hours to a wedding. Dance, drink, eat too much and drive home. Fall into bed at midnight.
6) Wake up Sunday at 6:00 and begin preparing for the PMC Kids Bike Ride/fundraiser we host for the Jimmy Fund.
7) Coach a portion of the aforementioned Softball Playoff game.
8) Come home, host 150 kids and their parents for our fundraiser. We raised over $10,000 for the Jimmy Fund. Missed your kids, Kal.
9) Had a couple of beers and headed off to a meeting on the Project from item one. Sat with a bunch of local activists to help them figure out how to save a huge piece of open space in their town.
10) Meeting gets out at 10:15. Drive home, drink another beer, realize that the reason I am buzzing if that I haven't eaten anything since breakfast. Heat up some frozen potstickers and some miso soup, snarf them and crash.

And then - Sweet Bliss, its Monday Morning. So I apologize to you working stiffs but Thank God It's Monday.

Bollocks Defined

Bollocks is one of those wonderful words that makes me proud to be a descendant of those pasty and snaggle toothed natives of the British Isles. The Picts, the Celts, the Gaels, the Franks, the Normans, the Germans and even the Romans (what have the Romans ever done for us?) all left their mark on the language we call English. Instead of being bound by strict rules of usage and meaning like the Romance languages, instead of having to set up the language police like the French, we have this wonderful hodgepodge of words and phrases that have evolved over time to make English one of the most expressive languages in the World, the language of Chaucer, Shakesphere, Donne, Dickens and Dick Francis. And as a result of the Sun Never Setting on the British Empire for 200 years, and the dominance of the US during the last century, English is also the official language of international business, though I am learning Cnatonese as fast as I can.

But I digress. I want to give you a sense of bollocks and bollix as the all-purpose all-stars that they are. The Concise Oxford Disctionary (I can't afford the big one) defines bollocks as British vulgar slang, being of Germanic Origin and originally spelled as ballocks, with bollix being an informal version. But what does it mean, you ask? Why, testicles of course.

And isn't more fun to say "Oh Bollix" than shouting "balls"? Why I have even used the word in business meetings with impunity. And if you are feeling superior, use ballocks, as Kingsley Amis recommends in "The Kings English". But he was always such a classicist snob.

Yet these little words have so many more uses. For instance, to bollix something up is to screw it up or, to use a more vulgar term, to fuck it up. And more germane to this blog, talking bollocks means to talk foolishly or to bullshit. Of course, there is perhaps the most famous occurance of the word in popular culture, on the Sex Pistols first album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols".

So please feel free to work bollocks into your repartee. You will find it most useful and, more importantly, fun.