The expression (see title) historically refers to Bobby Thomson's 1951 home run, and today something happened in Seattle which, as a figure of speech (exaggeration) could also fit the bill. Bobby Thomson My boy Tony advised earlier today:
The New York Giants hero who hit what is arguably the most famous home run of all time, died Monday night at the age of 86 in his Savannah, Georgia home. Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" won the 1951 National League pennant for the Giants in a best-of-three playoff against their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thomson moved to Staten Island from Glasgow, Scotland when he was two years old. He hit .270 in his career with 264 homers, 1,705 hits and 1,026 RBI over 15 years of play.
I woulnd't be born for another 20 years, but a baseball fan from my earliest memory, to call this highlight "iconic" would be a disservice. New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers, a cross-town rivalry before they were manufacturing those and printing "Subway Series" t-shirts. Further centering the baseball world in NYC, they were playing for the eventual privilege of competing against then four-time (end soon to be 5-time) defending world champion New York Yankees. It was real, organic, inner-civic pride. At the storied The Polo Grounds, Thomson's 9th inning, game-and-pennant winning home run is one of, if not THE greatest and most dramatic highlights of all time. At the very least, it's in the conversation with Kirk Gibson and Carlton Fisk. Accentuating the marvelous occasion was Russ Hodges' historic call from the broadcast booth:
"THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they're goin' crazy, they're goin' crazy! HEEEY-OH!!!"
[ten-second pause for crowd noise]
If you promise to read the rest of my short entry - I SWEAR,this one is short - there's an outstanding piece on ESPN's website with a brilliant two and a half minute mini-doc right here
Sonic Boom Today in Seattle, we had an official Sonic Boom. President Barack Obama was in town to speak at a fundraiser for Republican Senatorial candidate Patty Murray. Just kidding - she's a Democrat - just makin' sure you're payin' attention, kid. He also did the normal Presidential things like visiting small businesses, took a stroll through the Washington Park Arboretum, and then delivered an address at a $500-2g per plate occasion for Sen. Murray at the Westin hotel. While the prez was in town, everyone from Seattle to Chehalis (90 miles south) heard and felt a loud and percussive sound. Two of them, actually. I was working from home, the occasional (once or twice a month) benefit of field management.
Boom-boom.
I run outside, thinking either a truck drove into the house, or something with significant surface area and force had pounded into the house. Nothing. Nobody is outside. Weird. Maybe we're having one of those earthquakes I've heard about but haven't experienced. It's a 100 year-old house, it shakes and shifts, but this is different.
Twenty or so seconds later:
Boom-boom.
I run out and see a military helicopter buzzing rapidly over the neighborhood, headed toward the heart of downtown, two miles away. Something has happened. A couple phone calls later, nobody knows what just happened but everyone heard and felt it.
Turns out, well, the Associated Press describes it efficiently:
Breaking News: Violation of airspace around President Obama's plane scrambles fighter jets that cause sonic booms near Seattle - AP
Military aircraft from Portland (180 miles south) got to Seattle in five minutes. That's fast.
What is a Sonic Boom? Let's ask NASA:
A sonic boom is the thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other type of aerospace vehicle flies overhead faster than the speed of sound or supersonic. Air reacts like a fluid to supersonic objects. As objects travel through the air, the air molecules are pushed aside with great force and this forms a shock wave much like a boat creates a bow wave. The bigger and heavier the aircraft, the more air it displaces.
Sonic Boom - check out that link, it's cool and informative.
Turns out it was a private, family-owned sea-plane which didn't file a flight plan because the flight was short and the skies were so clear. Big noise, no harm, no foul.
Funny, some of the comments on the Blue Angels thing. To defend my assumption that many or most of those who get a hard-on for the Blue Angels are conservative, it's based on the decidedly pro-military (excess) tendency among conservatives. And nothing says military excess like spending hundreds of millions a year between the various dog and pony show troupes (Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, Golden Knights, etc.) to show off military tactics that are not even used in battle anymore. Ironically, these are the people who are for small government, even if it means leaving Americans starving and without access to health care. Conservatives want small government but they're all for spending billions a month on a war supported by less Americans than even Vietnam was. To the uninsured American, they're essentially saying, "Sorry, fella, you're gonna have to die because we blew all the money blowing shit up in the desert, putting on dazzling air shows, and not so much protecting the border as harassing anyone with dark skin who's stupid enough to set foot in Arizona - nothing left to get you the affordable health care to keep ya alive. Hey - gotta go - got a long day of yard work ahead. I wonder when those illegals are gonna show up?"
But we digress...
Some lighter fare today. From the funny sports commentary site withleather.com
It’s a tale as old as time – boy meets girl, boy courts girl, boy takes girl to Houston Astros game, boy turns hat sideways, batter hits foul ball, boy moves out of way, ball hits girl. Ah, summer romance, it was in the air Monday night at Minute Maid Park in Houston, where the Astros pummeled the Atlanta Braves 10-4... Said cute blonde human shield: “As soon as I got here and I saw where we were sitting, I said, ‘Baby I’m gonna get hit’ and he’s like, ‘No, no you’re not, I’ll catch it if you do.’” And caught it after she was hit he did. At least he was a gentleman and gave her the ball afterward... Just kidding, he kept it.
The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels are very impressive, but they represent a very funny hypocrisy from our pals on the Right. For the sake of this commentary, we must assume that many or even most of the people who get a big boner over the Blue Angels are politically conservative for all the obvious reasons. Which is ironic, because our amigos to the Right tend to be violently opposed to anything they'd categorize as wasteful government spending. But when it comes to the Blue Angels, the conservatives eat that shit right up. Why?
Because these colors don't run, son!
To be fair and sure, the Blue Angels' shows of aerobatic maneuvers and precision flying are simply awesome. I have enjoyed them and, like anyone, find myself awestruck by the sights and sounds, the baffling skills and the show in general. But at what cost does this seemingly free entertainment come? A Blue Angel fighter jet burns 1,200 gallons of fuel per hour of flight. The current price of jet fuel is $3.79 per gallon (it got as high at $7 in 2008). The commanding officer of the Blue Angels team is required to fly a minimum of 3,000 hours just in training exercises in order to qualify to be commander. The other team members, just to get into the Angels, must fly 1,350 hours to qualify. There are 15 pilots, although only 6 perform at a time.
In 3,000 hours of training, the Commanding Officer uses up 3,600,000 gallons of jet fuel (3,000 hours X 1,200 gallons/hr). At $3.79/gallon, that's $13,344,000 in fuel alone just to train that one guy.
As for the other 14 officer pilots... 14 x 1,350 = 18,900 training hours. At 1,200 gallons/hour, that's 22,680,000 gallons. At $3.79/gallon, we're talkin' $85,957,200 in fuel cost for the training of the 14 officer pilots.
Total Fuel Cost for TRAINING the Blue Angels: $99,301,200
Can we just round up and call it one hundred million dollars? Gracias. Pilots typically serve two years, so to arrive at the annual fuel training cost we can cut the number in half and say it costs $50MM per year in fuel alone to train the Blue Angels.
There have been 230 Blue Angel pilots since the team's 1946 conception. That's, uh... 5.6 billion gallons of jet fuel. Just for training. Practice. As Allen Iverson might say, "We talkin' practice, ma'. Practice? Practice." Prices and USD value indexes have changed over time, but we can agree that we're talking about one enormous mother f**king number, right? For practice. The show hasn't even begun yet.
Cost of a show: This week, the Angels have been in Seattle since Wednesday, practicing for Saturday's Air & Water Show. They typically practice Tuesday in Pensacola. Six jets flying for two hours each day is twelve hours of flight per day, which over five days comes to 60 hours (dude, I'm wicked good wit' numbiz!). At 1,200 gallons of jet fuel per hour at $3.79, the cost of fuel alone for the Blue Angels at the Seattle Air & Water Show is $272,880. The Blue Angels do 70 shows a year. Assuming they rehearse similarly for each one, that's an annual fuel cost of $19,101,600. That's for rehearsals and shows only, not any other flying they do between Pensacola (where they're based out of) and the shows. So, can we very conservatively round this up to $20MM to just partially account for the travel to and from the shows? Spank you very much.
Remember, at this point we're only talking fuel cost. We're not estimating the administrative costs, hotels and meals, all the expenses any company or organization would incur to exist and execute. For example, $5.6 million in annual salaries for 114 personnel in 2007 (Boston Phoenix). We haven't added in the pilots' salaries, either, but we're about to. Technically, they volunteer for Blue Angel duty but with as many shows as they do and as much training as they must complete (the 1,350 hours for the officer pilots would require a year to do, if they averaged 4 hours in the air per day and worked seven days a week, including holidays), being a Blue Angel is a full time job. These guys and gals are not pulling kitchen duty or leading the enlisted through marching drills in their spare time. And although military personnel tend to not be paid in a way I'd call respectful given the incredibly risky proposition they extend in the name of (or under the guise of, depending on how you view the military in general) serving their country, the cumulative annual salary for this team of elite pilots is $12MM (from the same 2007 Phoenix piece). I'm not saying they don't deserve the dough. They are, after all, the best of the best, the major league all-star team of their field, one in which very few can excel at their level. But as they are public sector, we have a right to take an interest in these numbers.
Travel Expenses & Staff. The traveling crew is 21 (15 pilots and 6 support staff). If they're doing 70 shows a year and staying in the host city for four nights, they're on the road 280 days a year. Average cost of lodging, meals, shared car rentals, incidentals, etc. can be very conservatively estimated at $150/person/day. 21 people on the road for 280 days means 5,880 travel days. At an average of $150/day, we're paying $882g a year for the travel team. The other 114 dedicated staff members live on-base at Pensacola. Let's say the military-grade slop they call food costs only $20/day to buy and cook, including the annually amortized cost of kitchen materials, making for an annual food cost per staff member of $7,300. And let's say we charge ourselves a mere $250 in monthly rent per person for the accommodations (apartments in the U.S. haven't been that cheap since the 70s, but I'm trying to low-ball so the offensive number we're sure to arrive at will not have been fattened up by any of my wackadoodle liberal estimations). That rent factor means $3g per person per year. Add to the food cost and we're at $10,300 in food and lodging per person. Let's continue the generosity and round that down to $10g, which makes for $1.14MM. Add to the $882 large we're dropping on T&E for the travel team and we're just over $2MM in this category.
We haven't addressed facilities expense, the real estate and buildings used for this operation. Let's just skip it and assume if the Navy wasn't using these facilities for this, they'd be using them for something else. We can also skip expenses related to marketing, research & development, postage, utilities, insurance - the hundreds of items any corporate middle-manager is familiar with from any P&L spreadsheet. We just won't find sources for those numbers like we can for any of the numbers I cite in this little rant, many of which come straight from the U.S. Navy and military per diem websites and the balance of which come from legitimate news sources and not politically-charged editorials (I chose to save time by not citing every source or creating a bibliography - what do you think this is, anyway, a term paper? Ironically, one person who will read this is my Uncle Rob, the Larry Bird of English teachers - sorry for the bush league form, sir). So screw it, we'll live with an underestimated number here which lessens the magnitude of the position I'm taking, but it still doesn't defeat the purpose and we'll still be quite miffed by the number we do reach. Or, as Bill Belichick might say, "We're movin' on."
Let's not forget that the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds are doing the same thing, so whatever numbers we arrive at for the Blue Angels can be doubled. There's also the Army's parachute team, the Golden Knights. If we continued our little mathematical exercise, we'd come up with some astronomical numbers, but I hope the point has been made. Okay, let's knock a few more digits around. This is fun, isn't it?
Each new F/A-18 Hornet the Blue Angels use today costs $56MM. The basic acquisition price is approximately $21MM but the cost of additional weapons-related equipment varies according to the configuration and use of each aircraft, but the average total price tag rings in at $56MM (the differential is partly represented by the $16.9MM required maintenance contract). With a fleet of twelve, that's a paltry $672MM in fleet cost. A drop in the bucket for any Joe Plummer out there, really. How's my sarcasm working? The F/A-18A/B Hornet entered the fleet in 1986 and they're currently transitioning into the F/A-18C/D. Let's be generous and figure that'll come to fruition in 2016, for a round shelf life of thirty years. Divide the 30 years into the $672MM fleet cost and our annual fleet expense is $22.4MM.
To summarize what I guarantee is a far incomplete inventory of Blue Angel-related taxpayer expense: $50MM - annual fuel for training the pilots $22.4MM - annual fleet purchase and customization $20MM - annual fuel for 70 show rehearsals and performances $12MM - pilot salaries $5.6MM - staff salaries $2MM - staff lodging and meals = we are paying at least $112MM per year for the Blue Angels.
Admittedly, we do get some military recruitment out of the Blue Angels, and some breathtaking entertainment. But as I search for the true value, I see little else beyond showing everyone how big our military penis is and how magnificently our best pilots can stroke it in front of large audiences. And that's wonderful. It just isn't a hundred and twelve million dollars a year wonderful. Still, I admit, it's not a ton of money in the context of a $10B/month war or any of the offensive Wall Street bailout expenditures we've watched in amazement. But, to change the subject by defending the money spent on this grand form of entertainment and military recruitment by comparing it to other wasteful government spending practices would be, well, changing the subject. If $112MM is not a lot of money, if it's all the same, then, just give it to me. Thanks, everyone. I'm here every Tuesday. Tip your waitress. Try the veal.
Don't you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!
I've seen the movie Inception twice. What a marvelous film. The premise, plot, acting performances, script, direction, cinematography - this thing knocks it out of the park in all phases of the game. Simply put, if you enjoy movies, you need to see this one. No matter which elements of film reside in your personal wheelhouse, this one will rub you well enough that you just may do what I did: exit the theater with your gears turning, fall asleep later than usual as you lay in bed working through ideas and theories about what you saw during (and recall from) that 2 hour and 28-minute period, spend some time thinking about it for the next 2-3 days, and then return to the theater and see it again.
Writer/Director Christopher Nolan has previously given us such critically acclaimed and artistically endearing gems as Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. Jessica and I were just talking about the great leading men of American film, naming the few from this generation will be mentioned among the all-time greats fifty years from now, in the conversation with the Jimmy Stewarts and Katharine Hepburns of the world. George Clooney comes right to mind. So do Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchett. And an actor we agreed has either arrived (to us) or will very soon (to the court of public opinion)... Inception's leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio. Some dismiss his greatness because he's always had a young facial complexion, and as a child actor he worked on the sitcom Growing Pains and the soap opera (pardon me: "daytime drama") Santa Barbara. In case you're not hip to the DiCaprio-as-great-leading-man idea, here are just a few films in which he simply crushed it: The Basketball Diaries Catch Me If You Can The Aviator The Departed Blood Diamond Romeo + Juliet Shutter Island What's Eating Gilbert Grape I have not seen Titanic but it was a huge success and Leo picked up some nominations for it. And we digress...
Inception is the kind of film you can't discuss without declaring a spoiler alert. Spoiler-free, I'll warn that it does use technology in a way which at times enters science fiction territory, and it is a big-budget Hollywood epic. I've never been a big sci-fi buff. I prefer character development, plot, story, enough ambiguity to prompt some of what they used to call thinking. As a simple matter of personal taste, I prefer a film that prompts some engagement and interpretation from the viewer, that's all. (I generally prefer documentaries to fiction, a tendency which also applies to my taste in literature, but those are posts for other days). I tend to be more impressed with a film that registers on a lighter or shoestring budget, the estimation being that in the absence of expensive things like big stars and huge explosions, a filmmaker is forced to get creative and appeal to the viewers with more foundational, "brass tacks" elements like thoughtful writing, direction, editing, and other choices. That said, I also sometimes like to sit back and enjoy a big Hollywood blockbuster that carries me through the cinematic experience like an automatic car wash, where all you need to do is pull up to the runners, put the vehicle in neutral, sit back and take in the sights and sounds of the big green fettuccine slapping against the windshield, the R2D2-sized spinning brushes, and the spot-free rinse.
Inception does it all. It's a great film by any standards. If you need fantastical soundstage sights and sounds, James Bond action sequences and Matrix technology, you get those. If you need characters, plot and a story that makes you think, you absolutely get those, too.
If you have seen Inception, scroll below the photo for my analysis. If you have not seen Inception, do not scroll below. I've inserted the photo beneath this paragraph to protect your peripheral vision from any spoiler material. Go see this movie, then come back here and read my analysis beneath the photo. If you want to find where this awesome film is playing in your neck of the woods, consult MovieTimes.com. Lastly... you're welcome!
I like the symbolism of Mal (Marion Cotillard) and Cobb (DiCaprio) designing their world on the beach. As Jimi Hendrix wrote, "Castles made of sand fall in the sea eventually." Definitely more interesting than Scorsese's rat on the window sill at the end of The Departed.
Timeline. Each level of dreaming slows time by a factor of about twenty relative to the level above. There's an early reference to three minutes of reality being an hour in the dream state, and when they're three levels down in the snow, Ariadne (Ellen Page) asks Cobb how much time they have and he does the math: Yusuf's (Dileep Rao's) van will hit the water in ten seconds, which gives Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) three minutes in the elevator shaft, so [we] have about an hour. This clears up the strangeness that in all this time, Cobb's children haven't aged - and kids that young age quite quickly and visibly. If Cobb and Mal spent 50 years in limbo, the third level, that translates into about 2.5 years or 30 months in the second level, which means a month and a half on the 1st level, or 2.5 days or so "up above" in the real world. That doesn't tell us how long Mal has been dead, but Cobb hasn't visibly aged, either, and I guess just as each character is prompted to do at various points, maybe we take a leap of faith that it hasn't been more than a few weeks since Mal's death.
Questions: who is grandma, taking care of the kids while the film plays out? Is she Miles' wife, ex-wife (Miles - Michael Caine - refers to Mal as his daughter in his first scene), or Cobb's mother? How does she factor into the equation and why don't we see her in the final scene? Answers: we'll never know and we don't get enough material to let it matter. Grandma's voice is not heard in the early phone conversation between Cobb and the kids while he waits for Arthur before meeting Saito (Ken Watanabe) in the helicopter, so we don't even get the benefit of an American or European accent to play the odds. Not that it matters much, but none the less... another leap of faith. For our purpose here, we must remove her from the equation.
Dream vs. Reality seems easy enough to differentiate. Cobb wears his wedding ring only in the dream state, not in reality. Nolan (writer/director) makes sure we see his left hand in every scene. Except the final scene. Nolan, you mother f**ker...
The Final Scene. The top spins, wobbles just enough to challenge us to decide if it's going to topple (indicating reality) or remain spinning (indicating a dream state). We're not given the luxury of seeing Cobb's left hand, so the choice is ours. Is this a dream, likely cultivated by Miles, whose motive may be just that of Cobb and Saito, to take a leap of faith instead of becoming an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone? Or is it reality, living in the U.S. with the kids, exactly where Cobb's mission sought him to end up?
If we decide it's a dream, another leap of faith is required of us. We don't see Cobb or Miles go under after the plane lands, but Miles is like the Yoda of this extraction/inception thing so perhaps we can trust that given the film's point of view is not omniscient, Miles made it happen. Cobb has purged Mal from his subconscious, so now he can look his children in the face and live happily with them and without the demon of his guilt over having practiced inception on her which ultimately led to her suicide. He is now free from his dark subconscious and its associated demons and guilt, and he can live freely with his children.
If we decide it's reality, there's still a leap of faith involved. We know Saito is a very powerful man, but exactly how did he remove U.S. law enforcement's interest from capturing Cobb? And, it must be that Saito himself took a leap of faith by arranging that prior to boarding the plane and realizing the success or failure of Fischer's (Cillian Murphy's) inception. Or can we put stock in something Mal says in her final scene, when she refers to Cobb having similarly lost his mind by "working for imaginary corporations and running from non-existent authorities?" Maybe Cobb was never wanted in the first place? Perhaps he was a refugee of his own subconscious and its associated demons and guilt.
Either choice re: what that final scene is - dream or reality, and further, whose dream, whose reality - involves a leap of faith, bridging the gaps between what we've seen and what we think based on the characters' profiles, abilities, tendencies and motives. Either choice is valid. Either choice aligns us with the main characters as each of us (viewers, that is) are engaged as participants in the meaning of the film. That's why it's great.
