The Asperger Nebula

Forward in this generation --triumphantly

2008-08-26T11:20:00.002-05:00

As a white heterosexual male, I don't really have much empirical experience of "otherness," unless one cares to count the fact that I work the kinds of jobs that typically require initial screening and vetting by women, many of them black, and gay men. It's hardly oppressive; I have plenty working against me, but I've never been given to wonder, "I'm white, I'm straight and I'm a man --how will I ever cope?"-- but in any case it's impossible to hide the fact that one is an oddball in such circumstances.

In any event, Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention was to me an utterly extraordinary event. I was exposed, at the age of six and in an all-white school in an affluent suburb of Chicago, to the story of a courageous and selfless Harriet Tubman, and it remains with me to this day. As a twelve-year-old, I watched, in turns mortified, outraged and inspired, the televised presentation of Alex Haley's dramatic encapsulation of the lives of black people upon this land through the generations.

The most interesting and rewarding experience of my four years' pursuit of a bachelor's degree was an independent-study crash course in black American writers dating from Frederick Douglass to now, during which I was putting away a novel or a collection of selected essays or poems every other day for six weeks. The groundings of my conception of what is listenable music are rooted in jazz and the blues, two forms that were born of oppression, dared to rejoice in its face and now stand as everlasting gifts of black American creative artists to the entire Western world.

I have been given, in both heartbroken and optimistic moments of contemplation of matters human, to intone spontaneously the lyrics to Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," its words speaking directly to the theft of his ancestors from their homes for the purpose of generating wealth and progeny for others and their own successors, of building a way of life that is, for better and worse, the inheritance of us all. I relate to the sentiments that he expresses in a vaguely personal way, as though on some level he speaks to things somehow only too well known to me but lying beyond my powers of direct identification.

All of this and the lynchings, the subsequent acquittals by all-white juries, the police dogs, the water cannons, the poll taxes and the literacy tests aside, I know well the stories of redlining and blockbusting, of planned shrinkage and the segregation of school districts into separate and unequal halves, of underservice from the banks and supermarket chains and overservice from the currency exchange and fast-food titans --the sad and sorry legacies of which remain with us to this day; I need only step to the end of my block, cross the boulevard and walk two more blocks to see it up close, thru the same eyes as I did when I first moved to the neighborhood 20 years ago before fleeing after three years of --when I wasn't barricaded inside my studio apartment in hiding from it all-- having no choice but to look at it each day.

As a white man, it pisses me off; were I the same man only black, it well might have driven me past the point of madness long ago. Knowing what at least I do, if any facet of the significance of Michelle Obama's performance last nite somehow was lost on me, I daresay it would be difficult for a knowledgeable observer to identify it. I heard and recognized well her song of freedom, and she sang it to the very core of my being not less than to that of anyone else who looked on.

Appy Polly Loggies

2008-08-06T10:52:00.006-05:00

Hiya, been a while. Strange summer, lots of rain, but not too much heat or humidity.

My reservoir of creative juices has been at low ebb for a while now. Just don't know quite what to say or do with all of this magnificent technology now that I've, you know, arisen from ten years' somnambulence and have at one bound entered the 21st Century.

But it'll come along. I've got plans to chuck up some vids with tales of this-could-only-happen-to-a-poor-schlump-like-me stuff, guaranteed to arouse LOLs the world over.

So hang with me. Campaign '08 remains boring, tedious, pedantic and just kinda stupid. Can't wait for the OLOLympics to come and go and get on with the Democratic convention end of the month.

Anyway, back soon.

Tuesday Poem

2008-07-22T07:35:00.006-05:00

Right, I've been getting heat from several directions, all clamoring for new materiaLOL --so here is. It's a little number I knocked out called "Language Lesson," and it might as well be subtitled, "How NOT to approach a person on the spectrum."

This is but one example, and there will be others to follow --the time I got attacked at a festival by some wacky broad with whom some bloke I'd just met tried to set me up is priceless stuff, but time and effort will be required in putting that one together to a degree sufficient to do it justice.

Anyway, bear in mind that I'm no poet, with no formal training of any kind and no grasp of such basics as form, rhyme, meter, texture and all of that happy horseshit; on the other hand, I've sat thru plenty of other folks' absolute dreck at readings stretching back nigh on fifteen years, so I think that I might be indulged if only just this once.

The Almighty Cathleen Schandelmeier, unqualified living LOLegend and hostess extraordinaire of the summertime Beach Poets series for the eighteenth year running, with some lovely remarks in reply to one of my recent posts --amazing what a lady will say about you if you slip her a twenty-- and others are always welcome to post comments so long as they're properly signed up to do so.

Jed

2008-07-18T17:35:00.002-05:00

Mind your volume controls...

Tasty! Headphones are best --Phil's bass really stands out.

From 5/8/84 in Eugene.

Remembrance of 18th (?) July

2008-07-14T15:29:00.009-05:00

Andrew Sullivan over at TheAtlantic.com is feeling pretty good these days, what with public pressure being brought to bear in what may prove to be a decisive fashion on the whole matter of our severe --and, to put it frankly, embarrassing-- travel restrictions upon foreign visitors who are HIV-positive, of which Sullers himself is both.

Then there's the fact that the anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiative in California appearing a good bet to go down to defeat in November (and do forgive me for not referring to it as "gay marriage" --last I knew, the non-corporeal legal arrangement of marriage doesn't have a sexual orientation; is its opposite-sex counterpart "straight marriage"?).

Speaking as one who is not gay but who counts a number of gay people among his friends (just as his daddy said that he one day would do) and who believes in the principle of fairness under the law --which should, to the reasonable extent possible, amount to complete and total equality-- I reckon these two developments to be most welcome.

Indeed, I marvel at the social, cultural and political advancement of openly and unapologetically gay people in this country that has occurred within my very own lifetime. A lot of hard work went into it, plenty of disappointment and abuse was (and continues to be) endured, and the degree of cooperation and support lent by the majority straight population --us folks who exist in sufficient numbers to determine just who around here gets what-- in helping to advance these goals is also noteworthy.

These developments and my attendant reflections come at what is a rather weighty time for me, given that it is now 23 years ago this week --before antiretrovirals, before Magic Johnson, before ACT-UP and SILENCE=DEATH, before Ryan White and even a few months before Rock Hudson-- that my father succumbed to the ravages of AIDS, making him the first of around 10,000 in this country to do so.

A number of profound and in many cases conflicting emotions are aroused by this annual season of remembrance. It all sort of pivots off of the fact that my old man was pretty much an asshole who caused a lot of pain for many of the people in his life. It has to be said that he never had things too great himself, being a product of the South Side of Chicago, a Catholic parish kid and altar boy who never offered anything athletically and was unaccomplished as a man of intellect.

His own parents separated when he was three and eventually obtained a divorce --something that Catholics just didn't do in those days-- and by his own recollections, he was engaging in homosexual behavior from the onset of puberty. Quite how and why he got involved with my mother after leaving home for university is beyond me, and so you're looking at the written output of one of the two products of that rather unholy union --which itself was rent asunder by my father's dalliance with at least one of the students under my mother's tutelage in a suburban high school.

None of this is any sort of embarrassment to me; it is what it is, and I neither could nor can do anything about it. At the video link above, you will see my reflections that I recorded whilst testing out my webcam earlier this month. As I note in it, the whole thing began for me when I pulled a weekly edition of Newsweek out of the mail pile during the summer of 1983.

On the cover was an oversized photograph of a test tube filled with red blood and the markings KS/AIDS on the tube label. Atop the photo was the word EPIDEMIC splayed across the breadth of the cover, and my mind turned at once to the notion of a swine flu outbreak. Thus intrigued, I turned to the article inside, and I was greeted by a photo of a group of men in their 30s riding in an open convertible down Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood at what I recognized in an instant to be the annual Christopher Street West celebration of gay pride.

I'd spent the previous summer out there with the old man and in fact had strolled around at the pride parade. I knew West Hollywood well, having spent plenty of time enjoying its restaurants, shops and magazine stands as a 15-year-old with bugger all to do for the summer whilst the old man worked his gig at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I sought no trouble on those streets, and it never managed to find me.

So it is rather needless to add that my concern was aroused when I delved into the Newsweek article, and I developed an immediate sense that I would be touched by this awful new disease within the confines of my own life. I had heard vague talk the previous summer about a "gay cancer," but details were lacking. The article brought it all into focus, with its dire tales of pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma and its stark presentation of rates of infection and mortality.

A year and a half after that, my old man rang me up and asked what I was up to. I'd graduated from high school in June and was up to fuck all, and he thereupon invited me out west for an indefinite stay. Things were full of promise for this then-17-year-old, not least of all with the prospect of spending a warmer winter than anything that the Midwest might serve up.

I soon was disabused of any notions that the good life was my inheritance once I stepped off a plane on the day after Christmas in 1984. The old man's psoriasis was giving him fits, and the L.A. weather wasn't cooperating; he relied upon the sun's rays to work magic on his skin condition, but it was a gloomy December, and he was receiving regular light treatments from a Westwood dermatologist.

By the end of my first month there, two unwelcome developments had cropped up: my skin was itching something awful, keeping me up nites scratching myself raw, and showering only made it worse; also, the old man sprouted one and then a second purple lesion on his face --one on his forehead, and the other along his jawline.

I had no idea what was bothering my skin and torturing me to the point of near-madness in the bargain, but I knew at once what the old man's lesions were all about. Having read the Newsweek article a year and a half before and taken note of the accompanying photographs, I knew that it was Kaposi's sarcoma and that my father was exhibiting one of the known symptoms of AIDS.

I recount in the above vid the occasion of when he and I made one of his regular trips to the dermatologist for a light treatment, at which time he paraded me before the doc for a look at my skin --and an instant diagnosis of scabies for me, which also accounted for his own persistent skin problems. He also had asked about his lesions, and the doc referred him for a biopsy.

So it was another trip to a doctor a few mornings later for a biopsy, immediately after which the old man, in an irritated and unceremonious fashion, declaimed to me that it was very possible that he had AIDS. What followed in the weeks ahead was a series of doctor visits to specialists at locations spread throughout the Los Angeles Basin, with the end result of that being regular treatment at the hands of one Dr. Mitsuyasu at the UCLA Medical Center.

The waiting room alone was an education in the AIDS crisis, packed wall to wall as it was with sick people --some of them desperately so and dying. They started the old man off on Interferon, which he injected subcutaneously twice each day; eventually he was moved to chemotherapy, which sickened him horribly --he would shiver with cold on sweltering 90-degree afternoons, and he found air-conditioned indoor environments utterly intolerable-- and only hastened his demise.

As the end neared, he dropped me off at Cedars-Sinai one morning --I had gotten a job there tracking down loose reports in the medical records department-- and drove himself to UCLA, where he got himself admitted and stayed for a few days. He only spent one or two nights at home after his discharge --an unspeakable nightmare to witness-- before being admitted to the hospice center at Cedars, where he lived out his final couple of weeks.

And so on the morning of what I believe was the 18th July, upon being picked up for the ride to work by a friend of his who worked at the hospital, I was informed that he had succumbed on the previous evening. Living a life in denial to the very end, the old man had not made aware of his illness any of his family members --mostly elderly aunts and uncles, as he had no surviving parents and no siblings-- and so upon me devolved the dubious privilege of taking phone calls from crestfallen 80-year-old Catholic grand-aunts demanding answers and sobbing into the phone; truly my father's son to the bitter end and beyond, I did as I knew that he wished in lying about the cause.

My grand-aunt Bernice was one exception in this parade of stunned grief --she was the gentlest of souls, the sort who would trap a fly in the kitchen and release it outdoors in preference to swatting it dead as would any of the rest of us-- and she was a picture of calm understanding; she didn't say as much, but she knew.

What followed for me was the discomfiture of a public memorial service in the conference center at Cedars --he was far from universally beloved there as elsewhere, but there was a huge crowd, and more than one chuckled at the spectacle of a Catholic priest presiding over a service in a Jewish hospital (in spite of himself, the old man would have loved that).

His uncle, a former executive at Marshall Field's State Street flagship store, and his uncle's (ahem, gentleman) companion flew out from Chicago for that, and it was the last occasion upon which I received holy communion --which I wouldn't have done except for the fact that my granduncle was in attendance, and, as with so many other things in my life where my father was concerned, it was the keeping up of appearances that mattered.

Then there was cremation and a burial at sea in the company of a handful of his friends outside of San Pedro Harbor, and the bastards at the Neptune Society charged an extra fee for the handling of his remains on account of his death having been due to complications from AIDS; if subsequent legislation in that regard entitles me to a refund for that, then I would like it to be paid with interest.

So I returned home in mid-August to north-central Illinois for three weeks' R&R --a lot of beer, weed and mushrooms, in other words-- before heading back out there, staying with a host family and working another job at the hospital before pretty much losing my mind and coming back here for good two months later. My last day in L.A. was spent consuming a fifth of Tanqueray before noon and heading off to Westwood in search of Marilyn Monroe's final resting place, but that's another story to be saved for some other time. I haven't been back since.

So anyway, enjoy the vid if you can --it's kind of eerie, and I look like about a dozen different people throughout. I've got sores on my face from bug bites --can't keep 'em out of here during the summer-- and regret that this is so. As I noted, I did it late one nite when I was testing out the webcam, and it was lit only by the TV perched upon my desk. I'm sure that I'm capable of better, both in video and in writing --but it's anniversary week, and I felt a need to get something up here. So cheers for your indulgence.

Week 2 Recap

2008-07-14T08:10:00.002-05:00

Not a lot said; not a lot to say.

Big Blasts and a Mighty Wind

2008-07-07T08:41:00.005-05:00

Just to be clear, I'm a big fan of fireworks and always have been --so long as they're done by professionals in appropriate settings. Crowds of morons and post-display traffic insanity aside, the Fourth has been a favorite of mine since I was a wee 'un of four; the White Sox have the exploding scoreboard for celebrating home runs hit by the home side and always put on a good fireworks show after games on Saturday nites, and there was nothing quite like when the Grateful Dead used to play Soldier Field and then blast off a massive display after the run's final gig --you'd get the feeling they were going to blow the place up. Terrific stuff, professionally done and in settings entirely appropriate for it.

Anyway, this here blogaroo is supposed to serve a multitude of purposes, not least among them as a resource for individuals on the spectrum and those who would like to know more about it. I've chucked up a couple of vids over @ Y'allTube and have provided a link at the right side of this page --so do check 'em out.

Speaking of links, I've added one to the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at --of all places-- the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It's absolutely indispensable during hurricane season and has it all: maps with actual and predicted storm tracks, links to forecasts from the National Hurricane Center, satellite photos and movies --the works, kids.

As far as I know, there's no better place to look during hurricane season, and so with Bertha now the first named storm of this season to reach hurricane strength (Bermuda in the crosshairs, but not a threat to land other'n that, it would appear), give that link a click and go have a butcher's.

Local Color

2008-07-05T12:43:00.003-05:00

It occurred to me long ago --and the point was hammered home last nite-- that there are two kinds of people who live in Chicago: those who clear the fuck out of here for the Fourth of July, and the rest who remain behind to blast off fireworks like maniacs in this big, tightly-packed city.

I'm serious --I live steps from a beach, it's a gloriously sunny and dry but not hot day, and there is an abundance of available on-street parking out front during the noon hour of a Saturday, which is otherwise unheard of (and the same goes for other major summer holiday weekends, but it's particularly noticeable on and around the Fourth).

As for those who stuck around, they were at it bigtime late into the evening last nite. Loud, colorful, elaborate and seemingly endless displays went on, with howls of delight and approval issuing forth into the nite. I tried to bed down at about 10:30 I guess and just put up with it for a while --just when you'd think that a moment's silence indicated that the show was over, you'd be rudely corrected by the next salvo-- but I at least managed to sleep until nigh on 7 this morning.

After 9:30 or so this morning I cued up Hunky Dory on Y'allTube and let it play. I didn't blast it, but I played it loudly enough to hear it from across the unit whilst doing the dishes --and if it distracted anyone else's sleep, well, serves the buggers right for staying up so goddam late with their fireworks displays...

Week 1 Recap

2008-07-04T07:27:00.004-05:00

Just wanted to see if I'm getting a handle on this video thing, and it would seem so. It only can get better from here.

Happy Independence Day --or Thanksgiving, to our dear cousins over across.

Ziggy School

2008-07-02T14:53:00.009-05:00

I've stumbled upon a pretty significant set of twin documentaries about Bowie during, roughly kindasorta, the Spiders from Mars era. Important stuff, this --a true goldmine.

Here's the first of eight segments of Part One, which covers the years 1969-'72:

Here's the rest of Part One (total runtime is 71:08):
#2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8

Part Two, which covers the years 1972-'74, begins here:

...and finishes with these (total runtime 51:55):
#2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Featured throughout are the two surviving Spiders from Mars --bassist Trevor Bolder and percussionist Mick ("Woody") Woodmansey, who in recent interviews provide detailed insights into Bowie and the band's recordings of the time.

Producer Pip Williams is most useful throughout. Not a producer of Bowie's work, he pulls no punches as he speaks at times critically and at all turns knowledgeably of personnel, song arrangement, chord selection and changes, time signatures, instrumentations and the instruments themselves --all the inside geek stuff boiled down for average stiff.

I always knew, for instance --and a trained musician I am anything but-- that there was something peculiar about the opening acoustic guitar bit of "Starman"; Williams explains how Bowie, at least from a purist's perspective, did in fact play it sloppily (and quite on purpose). Oh, and I always just knew that in the beginning verses of "Five Years" they were strumming one of those damnable autoharps that they made us play in seventh grade music class!

Bob Carruthers, who produced and directed the whole thing, displays an incomplete grasp of the facts when he says that Bowie is hanging on for dear life whilst "playing" Rick Wakeman's piano bit from "Oh! You Pretty Things" on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC TV; er, it's rather obvious on all of those old shows that the lead vocal was done as a fresh take, but the background vocals and all of the instrumentation were taken from the commercially released tracks. ::rolleyes::

Anyway, anyone who considers oneself a Bowie fan ought to carve out some time and enjoy this stuff, conveniently packaged into small parcels for viewing at leisure.

I've given quite a bit of thought to the musical output of David Bowie of those years in recent weeks, and not without reason. I reckon it about as relevant now as it's ever been, and within a few days, I'll do my damnedest in an attempt to spell out in some coherent way why that is so.

Their Finest Hour --Isn't It Though

2008-07-01T18:58:00.009-05:00

British funnymen Armstrong & Miller bring the LOLaffs:

Plus three others: #6 #7 #8

Watch 'em all in under 15 minutes.

Spain Reign

2008-06-30T09:19:00.004-05:00

A superior Spanish side beat the Germans one-nil in Sunday's final of the Euro 2008 tournament, with Fernando Torres netting the game's lone goal on 33' to bring Spain their first major title since winning the 1964 version of the same competition.

Spain were better throughout, and Torres had headed off of the base of German 'keeper Jens Lehmann's post ten minutes earlier. After some patient buildup play at the back by the Spaniards, the ball found Brazilian expat Marcos Senna in the center circle. Senna quickly played the ball directly forward to the officially recognized player of the tournament Xavi, who at once pivoted and threaded a pass forward to Torres, who in turn let the ball run past him and outmuscled pursuing German left-back Philipp Lahm as he drove toward goal.

Lehmann came off his line and nearly got his hands to the ball, but Torres deftly dinked it over his diving form to send it goalward, and in it trickled in at the same far post off of which Torres' headed ball had caromed ten minutes earlier.

Apart from a very threatening spell of about 15 minutes from the increasingly desperate Germans that began near the hour mark, Spain were easily better on both the day and throughout the competition than their opponents, who rode their luck at times over the recent three weeks and appeared to have run out of steam at the last hurdle --indeed, notwithstanding their status in some quarters as pre-tournament favorites for reasons of geography as much as anything else (the tournament was played in neighboring Austria and Switzerland), it would not be unfair to say that they overachieved a bit in going as far as they did.

Spain are a top quality side who play attractive, attacking football and can pass the ball as well as any national side these days. They have youth going for them, and they at one blow have shaken the label of chronic underachievers on the big stage. Now bouyed by their ultimate tournament success and justifiably confident, they should be a force at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, for which the long road to qualification out of the European federation begins with group play in September.

They're in a comparatively manageable qualifying group of six with Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgium, Estonia and Armenia, and they'll qualify automatically for the final tournament if they top their group; a second place finish likely would suffice to entitle them to play off over two legs with another second-place finisher from a different group for a berth in the final tournament. Should be quite the ride, and we'll have total coverage right here.

Y'gotta make way...

2008-06-28T21:11:00.007-05:00

Been on an absolutely massive Bowie kick of late --Spiders from Mars era, and Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall... in particular. Much more on that in the coming days, but this worthy tribute is deserving of notice:

The rest:
#2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11

Spain got thru to Sunday's Euro final by stuffing Russia three-nil in their semifinal encounter on Thursday. A fair enough result, as Spain made the most of the running throughout and dominated in the statistical categories of shots taken, shots on goal and time in possession.

Their first goal was an accident, as Andrés Iniesta attempted to find the far post from long range on the left and miscued his shot, but it so happened that his teammate Xavi was streaking up the middle and was on hand to blast home; it all happened in a flash on 50'.

Cesc Fábregas the Arsenal boy had subbed on for injured striker David Villa in the first half and breached the Russian defense with a deft lob from the edge of the area that played in fellow substitute Daniel Güiza for Spain's second on 73', and Cesc would cross superbly for David Silva to add their third eight minutes from time.

So that's the other darlings of the tournament --now Russia, to go along with Turkey-- dumped out at the penultimate hurdle, and it'll be Spain and Germany in the final on Sunday from 1:45 PM sharp Chicago time on ABC, and one may follow along online at soccernet.

With the exception of their 120 minutes of frustration against a bunkered Italy side in a goalless quarterfinal encounter that they won in a penalty shootout, Spain have looked sensational throughout the competition and already had pasted the Russians 4-1 in the group stage.

The Germans dwarf them and will look to use that advantage in height and bulk to make the most of whatever set pieces come their way, so Spain will have to take care not to commit fouls in their own half and try to avoid conceding corner kicks on purpose.

Spain, notorious underachievers on the big stage, haven't won a major international tournament since Euro '64, and the Germans --who got away with theft against Turkey in the semifinals and will need to be much better if they hope to stop a Spanish side playing anywhere close to recent form-- have a knack for having a knack in these competitions. Should be a cracker, and let's hope that it is.

Counting our blessings...considering the alternatives

2008-06-26T07:57:00.010-05:00

Michael Scherer at Time's Swampland blogåsbord ties it all together tidily in a post called "Mid-Campaign Malaise."

No doubt we're in a serious rut here after the near-constant gratification of the primary campaign, and of course that of the Democrats in particular; generally speaking, the cycle of debate>major campaign address>voters to the polls>flip on cable news to count the ballots and take in "expert" "analysis">day after>repeat in full furnished its own rewards for the rapt observer of whatever degree of actual expertise --and the indeed most agonizing phase of the campaign was the long six-week layoff, at least in terms of actual voting, between Mississippi on 11th March and Pennsylvania on 22nd April (and such would've been the case even without the agony of the Wright story dominating the intervening news cycles as it did).

So with the primary season ended and the party conventions not due for another two months, we're now back into the old, familiar attack-and-rebut silliness on the cable news shows, of adults acting like overeducated children; we're in a place where there seems to be a presumption of some reward for getting in a particularly pithy zinger or, when all else fails, just talking the loudest and not having any compunctions about interrupting others.

Dan Balz in the Washington Post lays it out thus:

It is difficult to believe that Americans are enjoying all this -- or even
paying close attention to it. The attack-counterattack cycle is so quick that
only the most devoted of political aficionados can keep up, and the tone is so
relentlessly critical that only the most partisan will applaud it.

Yep, a whole lotta preachin' to the choir going on these days, and not at all unlike business as usual during non-campaign years. It's also perfectly understandable in a way --this is the generic Democratic nominee's election to lose, and Barack Obama fit the suit; he's also got a lead to protect, can't risk spending the summer "being defined by" the opposition and all that. From the other side, it's all about "raising doubts," and so on and on it'll go until Labor Day, the conventions and the beginning of the serious business of the dead run to 4th November looms in the near distance.

In the meantime, what by turns and for the most part had been a thrilling, enlightening, entertaining and exasperating campaign season has degenerated into one gigantic snoozefest. What would fill this vacuum is the same kind of thing that does so under normal circumstances having nothing to do with the whirlwind primary campaign ended in the first days of this month: the sort of Anna Nicole/Britney/Paris/JonBenét/Elizabeth Smart/Phil Spector/Scott Peterson/hostage drama/high-speed CHP freeway pursuit stories that --if they were happening at all during the primaries-- went unseen by those of us watching cable news on a daily basis.

The Greatest Game You Never Saw

2008-06-25T18:59:00.011-05:00

They played the first semifinal of the quadrennial European football championship today, and it looked like a hell of a game --or at least what I and the rest of the planet saw of it, anyway.

No fewer than three times did the global TV feed completely conk out during play, and Germany scored a go-ahead goal during the second blackout; the game would end with the commentary team of the incomparable Derek Rae and on-loan (from Sky UK) Andy Gray narrating the action as cameras panned a "fan zone" outside the stadium in Basel, Switzerland.

Rae even called the end of the game prematurely, and he did so based on the only direct visual evidence available to him and anybody else not at the stadium or watching a working feed on local Swiss TV: the delighted reaction of German fans, who in fact were celebrating a late Turkish freekick taken from a dangerous position that had come to naught. Fierce storms in Vienna, whence the action from Basel was beamed to the world, was blamed for the troubles with transmission of live images from what was actually happening inside the ground.

At least we did get to see a Turkish side, one riven by injuries and suspensions along their utterly improbable way to the semifinal round, run riot over the Germans during much of the first 25 or so minutes and opening the scoring on 22' as Uğur Boral jabbed home a rebound off of the German crossbar (the second time a shot from the Turks' London-born Colin Kazim-Richards had hit the woodwork).

Turkish joy didn't last as Germany drew level within five minutes, with Bastian Schweinsteiger redirecting home from close range with the outside of his right foot from a Lukas Podolski cross from the left. Scores were level at one each at halftime, and so they remained during the first TV outage of six minutes at around the hour mark, until Germany --with the live match feed gone dead again-- took their first lead on 79' from a long header by Miroslav Klose past Turkish backup goalkeeper Rüştü Reçber, who had come well off of his line in a feeble attempt to defend a ball played in by German left-back Philipp Lahm.

Turkey --with the TV feed having been restored by now-- were back on level terms seven minutes later as Lahm got skinned on the right wing by Sabri Sarıoğlu, who then drove toward and fed Semih Şentürk, who in turn slid the ball home inside of Jens Lehmann's near post from close range when Lehmann really should have done better.

Then Lahm --with extra time beckoning and the world still bearing live witness-- would atone for that defensive lapse in the final minute of normal time, initiating a sweet give-and-go on the left with Thomas Hitzlsperger that wrong-footed the Turkish defense and ended with Lahm lashing home the winner to Rüştü's right. Seconds later, the TV feed went out again, and so it would remain until the full time whistle.

So a game that well could have gone the other way finished 3-2 to the Germans, who on Sunday will meet the winners of the other semifinal to be played on Thursday between Spain and Russia. Let's hope they've got that TV situation sorted by then ::rolleyes::