A Philadelphia Story

Well I've now been in Philadelphia for a week and I'm settling in and getting used to the various quirks of the neighborhood and city. What kind of quirks, you ask? Well for one thing, I have to walk about 20 minutes to get to the train station if I want to go somewhere that I will not willingly leave my car for a long period of time (which in Philadelphia means almost anywhere). Once I leave my apartment complex, I get to walk down this wonderful marvel of sidewalk engineering...



Yes they did that on purpose. I get that maybe you want to do that to go around trees and not harm them in any way, but there are some parts where the sidewalk curves because... well, because it can. Nothing like leaving for class or social engagements and feeling like you're walking into a Salvador Dali painting. Incidentally, I can also tell you that this long walk is no fun during a thunderstorm, because I had endure that long slog the other night. That will be the last time I leave my umbrella at home... until the next time I leave my umbrella at home.

I do drive, however, whenever the situation calls for it, like when I have to go to Center City just to go to the bank, or to go to the grocery store. I have chosen ShopRite as my official Philadelphia grocery store for the moment. I am going through a bit of Wegmans withdrawal, and yes I know that there is a Wegmans across the river in Cherry Hill, but as that is in New Jersey and I'd have to pay $4 to leave the state and get home, it kinda makes the exercise pointless. Also, I am now especially wary about driving ANYWHERE in the Philadelphia metro area on a Friday afternoon. That was ridiculous... didn't matter where you were going, you weren't getting there very quickly. People going to the Phillies game, going to Center City, going home to the suburbs from work, going to the shore, going to the Poconos, and apparently all at the same time. I'm taking a trip to State College a week from Friday and I'm already dreading the South Philly-to-PA Turnpike portion of the trip.

In addition to choosing a grocery store, I also needed to choose an official local newscast. This one was easy... gotta go with Channel 6. Why? Because they use "Move Closer to Your World". Yes, I know I'm a media geek... that's why I'm here getting my doctorate. And speaking of local news... got an offer in the mail the other day from the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the local newspapers here. This special offer said that I could get the Sunday Inquirer delivered to me for the low, low price of... 50 cents more than if I just walked to the gas station for it. Okay, it wasn't just the paper they were offering, it included access to the paper's website and all that entails, and apparently the regular cost of that would be something like $4 a week. However, I have so many other sources for news so I would never use the website. So in the end, they're offering me a $2.25 special on a $1.75 paper. I know that newspapers have to find a way to stay afloat these days, but I would say go back to the drawing board.

In reading the Sunday Inquirer (that I bought for the normal price, thank you), I got yet another dose of the aggravation which is watching PhillyFan revel in the misery of Mets fans like myself. It's gotten so bad that the Philadelphia media and fans don't know whether to keep piling on the abuse or start feeling sorry for us and wishing we had a better (read: healthy) team... so we could choke again. There is nothing worse than your hated rival giving you token sympathy. Then again, we never felt bad about the fact that they sucked for the better part of the late 90s/early 2000s while we were going to playoffs and World Series, so whatever. And then there was PhillyFan's reception of Michael Vick for his first preseason NFL game last week. Not only did they surprise animal-lovers and people of good taste everywhere by giving Vick a standing ovation on his arrival into the game, they chanted for him to come back in after a disjointed performance by Donovan MacNabb led to the Eagles' starting QB giving the on-camera "cut" sign to his offensive coordinator about using the Vick gadget plays.

I have to say this even surprised me. I figured it would take until about two weeks after Vick gets fully reinstated around Week 6 for PhillyFan to call for Vick to start and MacNabb to get the heave-ho. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised, given the fact that these people have hated MacNabb for 10 years, ever since they booed him on Draft Day in '99. They are convinced that the success they've had is despite him and they would've gone farther if not for #5 under center. This, of course, is silly, but silly does rhyme with Philly...

Oh by the way, PA still doesn't have a state budget. It's now 2 months late. New York is starting to get envious of the dysfunction in Harrisburg. For a few weeks, there was anxiety that the state would get its financial house in order by axing the entire $175 million appropriation that my current institution of higher learning was due to get. Thankfully, that and the 50% spike in my tuition that would have resulted were averted for the moment. Still, this is embarrassing. Can't you guys at least have a Senate coup for good measure? Maybe have the governor get caught with a prostitute? Yes, I know the former PA Senate leader just started serving 55 months in a federal prison, but this is still tame...

All in all, though, I am not terribly homesick yet. Although I did miss the Great New York State Fair this year with all of its wonderful fried food and racing pigs. The Sub-Standard, errrrr... Post-Standard recently touted the Fair's ability to do even better in bad economic times because this is substituted for a big family vacation. It can be a (dare I say it... because the P-S did) "Faircation." Just in case you didn't think "staycation" was a dumb enough word, you could have a "Faircation." Okay, new rule: after this blog entry, NOBODY is allowed to use that word in print ever again. Starting now.

If It's August, I Must Be Moving

It must be this time of year, summer coming to an end, people going back to school. Somehow, I wind up moving to another place in August. Obviously this happened a few times because of school, but other times the situation just dictated that I pick up and go somewhere else. So after my previous August relocations in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004, here I am fresh off another move.

This move seemed to be a lot more complicated and crazy than those of the past, mostly because I have somehow accumulated WAY too much stuff. The late George Carlin would appreciate that I was not really looking for a new apartment, but rather a new place for all of my stuff. I tried to unload what I could, but still wound up moving a ton of stuff to my new home in Philadelphia.

Which means I had to lift and carry a hell of a lot of boxes... but the real joy was driving what all those boxes went into. I am not a fan of driving large vehicles. My first experience with a larger vehicle came when I had to drive the Snow Patrol vehicle for the radio station for which I was working at the time. This particular vehicle was an oversized truck used to navigate the treacherous snow-covered roadways of Central New York whenever the situation called for it, which in Syracuse is pretty often during the winter. Anyway, after making my way through all the lake effect, I proceeded to ding up the truck... pulling into the parking garage. I tried to take the corner into the garage like I was driving my car of the time, a VW Golf. It didn't work.

As such, anytime I have to drive a large vehicle, I get petrified. I was hoping to just tow a trailer behind my Dodge Stratus and be done with it... but it was going to cost me over $300 to put a hitch on it, because those things were not designed for the very purpose I was hoping this one would serve. So I had to get a truck... and tow my car behind it. So I went into this hoping to not drive a big vehicle, and wound up driving an even bigger one. Coming down the Northeast Extension, I was absolutely gripping every time we came into a single-lane construction zone and I had to squeeze this monstrosity between the barriers on either side of the highway.

Thank goodness I didn't need to take this thing onto the Schuylkill Expressway with drivers who are completely unwilling to let you change lanes in a regular car, much less a moving truck with car carrier. As it was, I dropped the car carrier off, took the back way past the airport to get to my new apartment in South Philly... and promptly took a wrong turn and wound up at UPenn. I finally got to the new place 2 hours later, and on fumes.

But I'm here, back in PA with its state-controlled milk prices and ridiculous liquor regulations. And my car insurance premiums have DOUBLED because Philadelphia is such a crime-ridden, accident-prone city. But they have IKEA here, and thank god for that. However they also have a charter school that was just raided by the feds. I guess that's one sure sign that your school isn't doing too well...

One good way to find out what's going on in a new town is not so much watching the local news, but watching the commercials during the news. You get all the issue ads and the election ads, and right now the biggie is the New Jersey gubernatorial election. Governor Corzine is down 13 points in the latest Rasmussen poll, and in an attempt to get himself back into the race, he has stooped to airing ads linking GOP nominee Chris Christie to former President Bush. Yup, he's going with the old Christie = Bush strategy. I'll be interested to see if ginning up Bush Derangement Syndrome in a blue state gets Corzine back in the race. If it works, it may be a bad sign for Republicans with the midterm elections coming next year.

There are also ads from the dealers union in Atlantic City, trashing the CEO of Bally's and Caesars for his multi-million dollar salary and refusal to negotiate with striking dealers. The ads pretty much tell you not to go to either of these casinos because you'll be harassed by picketers, and of course you're helping evil corporate businessmen. I don't gamble anyway, so I really don't care. Lastly, SEPTA (the local transit authority) is threatening to strike. Great... I need to take the train to get anywhere because... well, Philadelphia is such a crime-ridden, accident-prone city. This is not good. Welcome to my new home!

Just Release the Names

Just got back from a few days in Boston at my first "academic egghead conference". Boston is a very nice-looking city, very walkable as I discovered when I went sightseeing the other day. I didn't get to see everything I wanted to see, but hey, just more incentive to go back, right?

The only thing that causes me to scratch my head about Massachusetts is the way people drive on the Mass Pike. You know me and my obsession with erratic drivers... anyway, on any other major highway when you approach an exit, the right lane tends to slow down because of people exiting and then entering the highway. On the Mass Pike, the PASSING LANES slow down. I do not even pretend to understand why.

Anyway, the big news in Boston these days is the leaking of positive tests involving David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. Back in 2003, the players submitted to random drug testing in order to determine if there was indeed a steroid problem in baseball. Well, we all know how that turned out, and the result was a list of 104 players with positive tests. The tests were all supposed to be kept confidential, but in recent months, one or two at a time, names are starting to be leaked, and it's causing this whole steroid mess to dominate the baseball headlines this year. First Alex Rodriguez, then Sammy Sosa, both of whom were already linked to steroids so it wasn't much of a shock. The fact that Manny is on the list isn't a surprise now, in light of his positive test and suspension earlier this season. The presence of Ortiz, however, is surprising, given that he had pretty much told baseball to throw the book at anyone who gets caught in an earlier interview.

It also puts the Boston Red Sox' 2004 and 2007 world championships under a great deal of scrutiny. When the news broke, I immediately had visions of T-shirts rolling off the presses for Yankees fans, saying something along the lines of "Boston Red Sox: STILL no legitimate championships since 1918." I'm inclined to believe Ortiz after his press conference where he claimed that he got busted for a bad supplement; that's why today you have a pretty much universal policy where players have to go through their doctors if they want to try any kind of supplement. If you don't... well, Manny Ramirez is Exhibit A.

The big problem with all of this is the leaking, of course. Nobody knows who is leaking the information, but he knows what he's doing. Keep putting names out one or two at a time and we'll never stop talking about the damage that performance-enhancing drugs has done to baseball. This is why there has been a growing chorus of people who want the full list of 104 people released, for two purposes: 1) so that we can finally discern the guilty from the innocent, and 2) so we can get this whole damn thing over with. However, that is not likely to happen. Before and during Ortiz's presser, we were treated to the players' union issuing a bunch of legalese that pretty much says, "There's nothing we can do, there's a court order preventing the names from coming out, we have to just live with things as they are." Except it was the union that got the court order in the first place.

Therefore, it would be "in the best interests of baseball" (and when's the last time you actually heard THAT phrase used?) for the union to go back to court, tell the court, "Hey, we changed our mind, rescind that court order and let the names out," and get this whole mess out there in the open. The fear of people being "outed" is far outweighed by the suspicion that people who never tested positive have to face from a disbelieving public. Unfortunately, the union still to some extent seems to live in a Never Never Land where the public doesn't give a crap about cheating. Marvin Miller, the man who made the union what it is today, clearly showed his senility at 91 years of age by proclaiming during spring training that the union should have never agreed to a drug testing policy in the first place. Never mind that Congress was about to throw the book at baseball if it didn't institute one, and let's just ignore the fact that this issue almost resulted in yet another players strike in 2002 and we've had labor peace since then.

Sadly, there are a lot of people who actually don't give a crap about cheating, but I'd like to think most Americans still respect the idea of integrity in all facets of life, and if we can't get it from our politicians, can we at least get it from our athletes? Release the names!

And I close with an opportunity to pat myself on the back for being right yet again. The columns are coming fast and furiously now from liberals, all saying virtually the same thing: anyone opposed to the Democrats' health care reform plans is an extremist member of an angry mob and probably a "birther". Paul Krugman has said it, Ellen Goodman has said it, any number of letter-writers have said it. Could it be any more clear that these people all read from the same set of talking points? It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad... and completely untrue.