Twenty Roger Ebert Quotes

[Here, in no particular order, are twenty quotations which I think summarize Roger Ebert's importance--not just as a film critic, but as a writer and an artist. Sources in quotation marks are blog posts; the rest are movie reviews.]

1. Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. (The Winslow Boy)

2. Of course some of the characters are sympathetic and others are hateful. And of course some of the likable characters do bad things. Isn’t that the way it is in America today? (Do the Right Thing)

3. That’s the sign of a great filmmaker: He only explains what he has to explain, and with a great movie the longer it runs, the less has to be explained. (E.T.)

4. Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” is one of the greatest Bruised Forearm Movies ever made. You know what a Bruised Forearm Movie is. That’s the kind of movie where your date is always grabbing your forearm in a viselike grip, as unbearable excitement unfolds on the screen. (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)

5. Pro athletes get paid. Pro fans work pro bono. For anyone to describe himself as a team’s “No. 1 Fan” is kind of pathetic…. This isn’t only, or even, a sports movie. It’s about leading a life vicariously. There’s a movie out now called “Surrogates,” about a future time when people recline at home hooked up to brain sensors, and lead their lives through more attractive and younger android versions of themselves. This practice is going on now. (Big Fan)

6. No good films are depressing. All bad films are depressing. (“Toronto #2: Deliver Us from Evil”)

7. Should a woman fall in love with a man because he desires her so much? Men seem to think so. (Twilight)

8. Two things that cannot be convincingly faked are laughter and orgasm. If a movie made you laugh, as a critic you have to be honest and report that. Not so much with orgasms. (“In the meadow, we can pan a snowman”)

9. I’ve been saying for years that I never cry during sad moments in the movies, only during moments about goodness. (“I feel good! I knew that I would!”)

10. No computer will ever be alive. But to the degree that we are limited by our programming, neither will we. The question is not whether a computer will ever think like a human, but whether we choose to free ourselves from thinking like computers. (Being There)

11. Among the lessons every young man should learn is this one: All women who like you because you make them laugh sooner or later stop laughing, and then why do they like you? (Igby Goes Down)

12. When has a film so subtly and yet so completely captured nostalgia for past happiness? The movie is about the simplest of human pleasures: The desire to get away for a few days, to play instead of work, to breathe in the sea air, and maybe meet someone nice. It is about the hope that underlies all vacations, and the sadness that ends them. And it is amused, too, that we go about our days so intently, while the sea and the sky go about theirs. (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday)

13. I know full well I’m expected to Suspend My Disbelief. Unfortunately, my disbelief is very heavy, and during “Ocean’s Thirteen,” the suspension cable snapped. (Ocean’s Thirteen)

14. Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they’re referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it’s up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. Star Wars works like that. (Star Wars, 1977)

15. It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn’t really care. (The Winslow Boy)

16. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home. Where we sit to regard the passing parade. How we learn indirectly of other cultures. When we feel good together. Meals are when we get a lot of our talking done — probably most of our recreational talking…So that’s what’s sad about not eating. The loss of dining, not the loss of food. It may be personal, but for me, unless I’m alone, it doesn’t involve dinner if it doesn’t involve talking. The food and drink I can do without easily. The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss. Sentences beginning with the words, “Remember that time?” I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to break out in a poetry recitation at any time. Me too. But not me anymore. So yes, it’s sad. Maybe that’s why I enjoy this blog. You don’t realize it, but we’re at dinner right now. (“Nil by Mouth”)

17. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris. I don’t expect to die soon…. I hope not. I have plans. (“Go gentle into that good night”)

[on Elevation, the psychological theory that some things can trigger the mind to replace cynicism with hope:]

18. If I were a film producer hoping to make a movie with deep appeal, I would consciously look for Elevation–remembering that it seems to come not through messages or happy endings or sad ones, but in moments when characters we believe in–even an animated robot garbageman–achieve something good. I have observed before that we live in a box of space and time, and movies can open a window in the box. One human life, closely observed, is everyone’s life. In the particular is the universal. Empathy is the feeling that most makes us human. Elevation may be the emotion caused when we see people giving themselves up, if only for a moment, to caring about others. (“I feel good! I knew that I would!”)

19. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out. (“Go gentle into that good night”)

[The last words of his last blog post:]

20. So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.

DOMA on Trial

Today the U.S. Supreme Court heard United States v. Windsor, a case questioning the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Under that law (DOMA), marriage is defined as a union between one man and one woman for the purposes of federal benefits (healthcare, taxes, Social Security, etc.). This hearing was in some ways similar to yesterday’s on California’s Proposition 8, but in some ways different.

The main similarity is that there are serious doubts about whether the Supreme Court can and should rule. Yesterday it was wondered why the initiators of Proposition 8 were defending it, rather than the state of California, in which Prop 8 is law. Today the justices almost all marveled at the fact that DOMA is being defended by the Republicans of the House of Representatives, rather than the executive branch, which enforces laws.

U.S. v. Windsor arrived at the Supreme Court via a peculiar circumstance. The Obama administration chose not to defend DOMA in court, but it also chose to enforce DOMA in practice–in other words, it decided the law was unconstitutional but kept using it anyway. The justices, especially Chief Justice John Roberts, think this an extremely weird choice. What happened next is just as strange: in the lower courts, both U.S. and Windsor argued that the law was unconstitutional, and when the lower courts sided with U.S. and Windsor, the U.S. appealed to the Supreme Court even though it agreed.  Roberts says this is unprecedented.

This led to the Defense of Marriage Act case being broken down into two separate hearings.

Hearing One: Standing, or, Why Are We Even Arguing About This?

The justices are confused that they’ve been asked to rule on a case by a party that got the decision it wanted. The U.S. government technically lost and owes Windsor $360,000, but they’ve said they’ll pay it. They want the Supreme Court to affirm the previous decision so there will be no doubt.

Arguably, this would set a weird precedent. One or two justices are spooked by a hypothetical future where the U.S. wins big judicial cases and appeals to win the constitutional version of bonus points.

Another weird precedent could be set by the fact that the House of Representatives, specifically its Republican faction, stepped in to defend DOMA. That’s the executive branch’s job, except that the executive branch switched sides. The House Republicans, whose legal team goes by the amusing acronym BLAG, claim that they are able to defend the law. Anthony Kennedy, obviously weirded out, asks if the Senate Democrats could have fielded the gay rights legal team to make it House v. Senate, but apparently there’s precedent for the House to argue for laws it passed and no such precedent for the Senate. Kennedy also asks some hypotheticals: what if Obama supported DOMA, but his lawyers stunk; would the House intervene then?

The feds think they have standing to argue the case even though they appealed a verdict they won. The House (BLAG) thinks they have standing to argue the case because they wrote the bill seventeen years ago and the feds aren’t defending it.  Windsor thinks she has standing even though she was married in Canada. At least one justice is skeptical about each, and although much more knowledgeable commentators (say, Adam Liptak, New York Times) are optimistic, I’m fairly worried that U.S. v. Windsor may not withstand this scrutiny.

Hearing Two: The Actual Merits of DOMA, or, Seriously, Why Are We Arguing About This?

The BLAG argument here (I like typing BLAG) is that the Defense of Marriage Act simply provides a definition of marriage which the government can use to dispense benefits and exact burdens. According to the argument, writing a definition is not a discriminatory act, and is also not a government regulation. This is silly, of course; as the U.S. government argues, “This statute is not called the Federal Uniform Marriage Benefits Act; it’s called the Defense of Marriage Act. And the reason for that is because the statute is not directed at uniformity in the administration of Federal benefits.”

Both sides agree the states are still free to have different definitions of marriage–except BLAG says certain married people should be denied federal rights.

MR. CLEMENT: No State loses any benefits by recognizing same-sex marriage. Things stay the same. What they don’t do is they don’t sort of open up an additional class of beneficiaries under their State law for — that get additional Federal benefits. But things stay the same. And that’s why in this sense -­-
JUSTICE GINSBURG: They’re not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it’s pervasive. It’s not as though, well, there’s this little Federal sphere and it’s only a tax question. It’s — it’s — as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You’re saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.
(Laughter.)
MR. CLEMENT: With respect, Justice Ginsburg, that’s not what the Federal Government is saying. The Federal Government is saying that within its own realm in Federal policies, where we assume that the Federal Government has the authority to define the terms that appear in their own statute, that in those areas, they are going to have their own definition. And that’s -­
JUSTICE KAGAN: Mr. Clement, for the most part and historically, the only uniformity that the Federal Government has pursued is that it’s uniformly recognized the marriages that are recognized by the State. So, this was a real difference in the uniformity that the Federal Government was pursuing. And it suggests that maybe something — maybe Congress had something different in mind than uniformity.

Justice Kagan’s last sentence is as loaded as a sentence can get unless it’s spoken by Antonin Scalia. What is it that Congress might have had in mind? Well, as Kagan points out, Congress actually came right out and said that the point of DOMA wasn’t to write a definition but, quote, “to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.”

When Kagan read that line out loud, the Congressional lawyer was surprised. His first reaction: “Does the House Report really say that?” He then admits that he’s not trying to defend the House’s motive, which is okay, because (as John Roberts wrote about Obamacare) the Supreme Court is free to interpret a law in a constitutional fashion if it also has an unconstitutional reading.

Elena Kagan very smartly invoked (“historically…the Federal Government has…uniformly recognized the marriages that are recognized by the State”) one of swing voter Anthony Kennedy’s favorite projects: states’ rights. Kennedy and even John Roberts dislike that the DOMA discrimination applies to both states that ban gay marriage and states that allow it. Windsor’s lawyer realizes that the conservative justices are all interested in limiting federal power and, on the fly, changes her argument entirely to appeal specifically to that interest (“the Federal Government doesn’t give marriage licenses,” she says, twice).

The Likely Outcome

If the Supremes decide that they have the ability to rule in this case–and that’s, I’m afraid, a pretty serious if–they will almost certainly uphold the earlier decision ending DOMA and allowing all married couples access to federal benefits. (Please note that this wouldn’t end any gay marriage bans.)

I say this for two reasons. First, Anthony Kennedy seems to have made up his mind; he is gravely concerned by the fact that DOMA interferes with a state’s right to define marriage. DOMA works just fine with states that also selectively ban marriage, but it imposes on the others. Elena Kagan nudges Kennedy a number of times, emphasizing this aspect of the case. If Kennedy wants to protect states’ rights, or keep helping gay causes, that’s a 5-4 decision right there.

But there’s a surprise. Despite naked contempt for politicians jumping on the gay rights bandwagon, John Roberts asks numerous questions about the limits of federal power over states, so he may agree with Kennedy that getting rid of a federal definition of marriage is a conservative issue. He gets a gay rights advocate to admit that if the government offered federal benefits to gay couples where they’re banned from marrying, that would possibly be unconstitutional too.

Even Samuel Alito isn’t all that unreasonable. He asks why the federal government has to use the word “marriage” anyway, suggesting “certified domestic units,” the idea being that DOMA dies if the IRS and benefits administrators just stop using the word “marriage.”

And Alito asks a very humane question when Obama’s representative (Donald Verrilli, who also starred yesterday) contends the case against DOMA:

JUSTICE ALITO: So let’s say three soldiers are injured and they are all in same-sex relationships, and in each instance the other partner in this relationship wants to visit the soldier in a hospital. First is a spouse in a State that allows same-sex marriage, the second is a domestic partner in a State that allows that but not same-sex marriage, the third is in an equally committed loving relationship in a State that doesn’t involve either. Now, your argument is that under Federal law the first would be admitted, should be admitted, but the other two would be kept out?

Don’t make the mistake of assuming Alito loves gay soldiers. Instead think about it. That is the government’s argument, and it will probably be Kagan’s and Kennedy’s. It might be Roberts’. So we have a long way to go.

Oh, and Scalia’s still an asshole.

MS. KAPLAN: As long as the people were validly married under State law, and met the requirements of State law to get married -­
JUSTICE SCALIA: No, no, no, no.

My Best Guess

If the Supremes don’t have standing to hear this appeal, I don’t know what happens. But if they do, this is a pretty easy call. I’m not just saying that because I think DOMA is despicable; I’m saying that because, for very different motives, five justices appear prepared to strike the law down. If the conservatives are most interested in limiting federal power over states, there might be more than one swing vote. And there’s another thing, this speech by Donald Verrilli:

GENERAL VERRILLI: Whatever the explanation, whether it’s animus, whether it’s that more subtle, more unthinking, more reflective kind of discrimination, Section 3 is discrimination. And I think it’s time for the Court to recognize that this discrimination, excluding lawfully married gay and lesbian couples from Federal benefits, cannot be reconciled with our fundamental commitment to equal treatment under law. This is discrimination in its most very basic aspect.

Nobody interrupted him.

P.S. My 100th blog post!

Proposition 8 on Trial

Today the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for and against Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment which bans gay marriage in that state. It also heard a compromise argument from the U.S. government. I read a transcript of the whole discussion and was fascinated.

General Thoughts on Reading Supreme Court Arguments

First of all, everybody who speaks is deeply intelligent. No matter what you think of the two sides in the gay marriage argument, you have to be impressed by the preparation, quick-thinking logic, and clear rhetoric of everybody involved. The transcripts preserve every stutter, so you notice how few of them there are. Some justices (like Samuel Alito) can deliver entire speeches as if memorized. There’s only one slip-up in all the eighty pages, when the Proposition 8 attorney (that is, the attorney who supports the gay marriage ban) forgets a precedent case and Ruth Bader Ginsburg has to explain it.

MR. COOPER: It’s — yes, Your Honor. And well, forgive me, Your Honor. I’m not sure I’m following the Court’s question.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I may — my memory may be wrong, but…

Of course, her memory’s correct, or if it’s wrong, she’s not corrected.

There’s another thing. These people interrupt each other constantly. It’s standard procedure; justices even interrupt other justices.

The People

Charles J. Cooper. Defending Proposition 8, Cooper’s main argument is that the government can regulate marriage, and who can get married, because it’s in society’s interest to manage procreation, and marriage is essential to procreation. At one point he even says that society “has an interest of [sic] seeing any heterosexual couple that intends to engage in a prolonged period of cohabitation to reserve that until they have made a marital commitment.”

Nobody asks him if this means that states could ban unmarried cohabitation, but Justice Ginsburg points out a previous ruling that established the right of life-without-parole prisoners to marry non-prisoners with whom they’ll never have a chance to procreate. Elena Kagan argues that barring gays from marrying because they can’t procreate would also endanger the marital rights of senior citizens, but this gets bogged down in a debate over how often old people have babies.

The wind comes out of Cooper’s sails immediately, when he begins this way:

MR. COOPER: New York’s highest court, in a case similar to this one, remarked that until quite recently, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived in any society in which marriage existed -­
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Mr. Cooper, we have jurisdictional and merits issues here. Maybe it’d be best if you could begin with the standing issue.

Translated into non-lawyer: “The traditional definition of marriage everywhere is…” “We don’t care.”

Theodore Olson. The attorney hoping to strike down Proposition 8 shows an easy familiarity with the Supreme Court setting, probably because he was solicitor general under George W. Bush. He’s still a conservative, by the way, but at one critical juncture buckles under attack from Antonin Scalia.

Donald Verrilli. The current Solicitor General makes an argument which Justice Sonia Sotomayor calls ironic. Basically, it’s this: if a state gives gay couples full rights (tax benefits, health benefits, adoption rights, etc.) but offers civil unions instead of marriages, as in California, this is a “separate but equal” scheme like segregated schools, and unconstitutional. But if a state gives gay couples no rights, let alone marriage, it’s “separate and unequal.” He constantly refuses to say whether that’s constitutional.

The result is that, awkwardly, California’s granting of all rights except marriage to gay people makes it unconstitutional, but other states can keep banning gay marriage as long as they’re also banning gay adoptions. Verrilli does indicate that the government would probably side against that, but that a new court case would be needed, with new arguments.

Antonin Scalia. Aggressive, rambunctious, and caustically funny, Scalia often goes on bizarre rants. When Cooper can’t come up with any good reasons to keep gays from marrying, Scalia steps in to help him out. He gets in a sarcastic reference to Roe v. Wade‘s establishment of a right to privacy. He grills Olson on when, exactly, gay marriage bans became unconstitutional, demanding a day and time.

JUSTICE SCALIA: When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?
MR. OLSON: When — may I answer this in the form of a rhetorical question? When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?
JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s an easy question, I think, for that one. At — at the time that the Equal Protection Clause was adopted. That’s absolutely true. But don’t give me a question to my question.
(Laughter.)
MR. OLSON: It was constitutional when we -­ as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control, and that that -
JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen? When did that happen?
MR. OLSON: There’s no specific date in time.

As I’m sure you’ll notice, Olson’s rather inspiring rhetorical question was deflated down to a sad little squib. Not surprising, since Antonin Scalia’s views on gay rights are well-known.

Another, better rhetorical question came from…

Anthony Kennedy.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: …there is an immediate legal injury or legal — what could be a legal injury, and that’s the voice of these children. There are some 40,000 children in California, according to the Red Brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?

Kennedy seems inclined to rule on California’s Proposition 8 without extending the ruling to apply to the United States as a whole.

John Roberts. The Chief Justice is by far the politest, kindliest justice; sometimes he even apologizes when he interrupts. Roberts is alarmed by the possibility of banning gay marriage bans across all 50 states, and asks Verrilli a lot of questions which seem designed to give him the logic needed to strike a compromise decision killing Proposition 8 but maintaining the national status quo. As a conservative, Roberts might like this outcome: it solves the issue at hand in a humane way (he’s concerned about the adopted kids, as Kennedy is) while retaining the states’ power to come up with their own solutions.

Clarence Thomas. As always, Clarence Thomas is silent.

The Themes

The Proposition 8 supporters contend that the government has an interest in legislating matters related to procreation, such as the right of non-procreating couples to obtain marriage licenses. This is frankly ludicrous, and the liberal justices are highly skeptical.  Opponents argue that this is an equal rights issue, which comes under fire in two ways: first, concerns about whether the California case is applicable to the whole country, and second, Scalia’s stuff about what exact date gay marriage bans became unconstitutional. There’s some concern about the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling, striking down Prop 8, is hardly cited at all by the team that’s supposed to be agreeing with it.

The U.S. government’s proposed compromise, that Proposition 8 be kept down and gay marriages be allowed in California but other states remain free to experiment, seems tailor-made to appeal to John Roberts.

There is considerable debate over whether the proponents of Prop 8 should even be allowed to argue for it, since they’re private citizens, and several justices wonder why the heck California won’t show up to defend its own constitution.

The Likely Outcome

Anthony Kennedy sympathizes with the gay rights cause. He speaks up for the adopted kids and he throws a blanket on Scalia’s fearmongering suggestion that gay parents are bad at raising children. At one point he even traps Charles Cooper in a corner where Cooper looks to be admitting that straight couples would be unharmed by an expansion of marriage; Cooper’s reply is feeble, that there are unknown consequences to gay people getting married.

John Roberts is harder to make out. He seems less worried about gay rights and more about the national consequences of a Proposition 8 decision. I get the impression that he is trying to see what compromise tightrope can be walked–like the one he found on Obamacare.

The case could be thrown away on the technicality that the pro-Prop 8 legal team isn’t qualified to defend it, but there was a similar technicality brushed off in the Obamacare decision because the justices wanted to issue a clear ruling. There’s evidence here that they feel similarly.

My Best Guess

I’ll guess that the Court decides, 6-3, to let the Ninth Circuit decision stand, overturning Proposition 8. John Roberts or Anthony Kennedy will write a narrow opinion explaining the idea: that, in some form, the Court accepts Verrilli’s argument that California’s ban can be overturned without national implications. Thus civil unions will become marriages in California, but that doesn’t mean gay people can run out to get married in Texas just yet.

In a concurring opinion, somebody will urge a case from a state like Texas to come before the court to really answer the question once and for all. Even Antonin Scalia wants this issue cleared up. Cooper suggests that the Court let the American public debate gay marriage longer before deciding its merits, and Scalia retorts:

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s too late for that, too late for that now, isn’t it? … ”We should let it percolate for another -­-” you know, we — we have crossed that river, I think.

Hey, I agree.

Fun with Numbers!

Freed of the burden of reporting on a presidential election, respected research firm Public Policy Polling has released the results of a poll on the most important subject of all: food. It’s called Americans Pick Ronald McDonald over Burger King for President, and it’s fascinating. Let’s see what we can learn!

1. Men are from Krispy Kreme; women are from Paris. One question asked respondents which breakfast food they’d pick: a donut, a bagel, or a croissant. 30% of women chose croissants, but only 19% of men did–they were distracted by the sugary frosting of donuts, the favorite of 37% of men but only 29% of women. Would you like to make broader assumptions about men’s preferences for frosted sugar bombs? Be my guest, but a butter croissant isn’t health food either.

2. All your beer stereotypes confirmed! Poll data doesn’t get easier to interpret than this:

I’d like to buy the ladies a Coke, and live in harmony

3. Liberal African-American ladies who lunch. The study found that women and Democrats are more likely to choose lunch as their favorite meal of the day, although admittedly not by that much. On the other hand, being black seriously enhances your passion for midday meals: only 11% of the general public picked lunch as their favorite meal, but that number leapt to 26% in the African-American community.

4. People have Chick-Fil-A figured out. The gay-hating evangelical-owned chain is cited as the “least favorite” chicken chain by 28% of Democrats but only 11% of Republicans; it’s the favorite of 48% of Republicans, but Democrats prefer KFC and Popeye’s.

5. Only 3% of people switch between regular soda and diet. Isn’t that kinda weird?

6. Republicans don’t like vegans, but they are more likely to be vegan. Get this: vegans have a 41% disapproval rating from Republicans (31% approve, 29% don’t care), but fully 10% of all Republicans surveyed are vegan. That’s against just 7% of Democrats and 3% of independents. In fact, two-thirds of all vegetarian Republicans go all out and opt for the vegan diet.

7. Nobody likes Church’s Chicken. The favorite of 5% of people, and least favorite of 20%. Interestingly, black people are much more likely to love it (12%) and even more likely to hate it (33%).

8. Parks and Recreation half-captures the American zeitgeist. The best sitcom on television has one character who’s spot-on and one who’s more of an anomaly. Ron Swanson lives: men overwhelmingly choose breakfast as their favorite meal, look down on vegetarians, and prefer alcohol to soda. On the other hand, Leslie Knope’s passion for waffles is something shared by African-Americans, me, and nobody else. Among the general public, asked their favorite breakfast foods, waffles somehow came in dead last. This despite the well-known fact that “We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.”

Tragically, PPP didn’t think to test the approval rating of calzones.

9. So you think vegetarians are all rich white people. Surprise!

Must be the rice and beans? Or something?

I don’t know if it’s the product of a tiny sample of respondents, or what, but an insane 26% of Hispanics told PPP that they’re vegan, compared to 4% of white people. Gotta be the sample size, right? They only asked 500 people, but they do think the margin of error is just plus-minus 4%. If they’re right, the odds of fewer than 22% of Hispanics being vegan are the same as the odds that there are no white vegans in existence. Yeah, that seems weird.

10. Burger King is uncool. A plurality of respondents aged 18-29 singled it out as their least favorite, while it was the top choice of those 65+. Similarly, youngsters are much more likely to choose beer over Coca-Cola.

11. Everyone agrees: stupid questions are stupid. As you saw, the title of the poll was “Americans Pick Ronald McDonald over Burger King for President.” And while that’s technically true, the runaway winner–with 42% of the vote in a three-way race–was “Not sure,” which tells me nearly half of respondents thought the question was too stupid to live.

12. The western United States likes beer more than everybody else. Almost twice as much as Midwesterners, in fact. But that’s not surprising, since the western states have many of America’s best breweries.

13. Independent voters can’t decide on anything else, either. Click this image to expand it:

But if you don’t want to click to expand, here’s a summary: the independents voted “Not sure” on everything.

This is fascinating. Independents refuse to choose a political party, but they also refuse to choose everything else. They’re more likely to be unsure about Pepsi/Coke preferences, vegetarian people, the authenticity of Olive Garden, and their favorite fast food joints. They’re more likely to hate soda and liquor, and less likely to go vegetarian than Republicans. And literally all the people who couldn’t decide on a favorite soft drink were political independents.

To summarize: have we learned anything here? Probably not. Have we had fun? Probably yes! Aren’t pointless polls the best? Yes, yes they are.

Operation Bacon Makin’

Whew! It’s been nine months since I last posted on this blog, but a lot has changed in the interim: I now live in Dallas, for one thing, at a new job in a new home with a new car (after a careless driver pulled in front of my last one). But today I’m going to talk about a very different, but equally essential, part of becoming an independent young man in today’s society.

Knowing how to make your own bacon.

Operation Bacon Makin’ was a long time coming. The process of buying and curing the proper cut of meat, slow-roasting, and getting it ready to serve requires some prep work.

The first step was realizing that making my own bacon from scratch was not just possible, but desirable. For that (and for the instructions used) I owe Michael Ruhlman, whose book Ruhlman’s Twenty explains: “Making your own bacon is as easy as marinating a steak. When you do, you’ll find out what true bacon is all about, as opposed to the brine-pumped, water-logged versions available at the supermarket.” Now who could resist a description like that? Answer: not me.

Step two was procuring the necessities. Don’t just run out and find a slab of pork. First you’re going to need an extremely large Ziploc/Hefty bag: 2.5 gallons at least. More difficult to procure is sodium nitrite (not nitrate), a powdery salt which acts as an antimicrobial agent. Notice I didn’t say you need sodium nitrite, but you will want it, because it also provides bacon with its color. Think about it: pork chops aren’t bright red, so why is bacon? Because sodium nitrite is pink.

To acquire sodium nitrite, look online. From Butcher & Packer I got basically a lifetime supply for $10 ($2.50 plus a hefty shipping charge).

Now, following Ruhlman, find a grocery store that sells pork belly. This wasn’t easy: I was turned away at Kroger and Whole Foods, and one Hispanic butcher counter guy thought I was asking for stomach. At last I found my quarry for just over $3/lb. at Central Market. I bought five pounds.

I discarded the slice on the left. Fat makes bacon fun, but this section was literally nothing but fat.

I now had everything required for Bacon Makin’:

Pork belly, crushed garlic cloves, salt, brown sugar, three kinds of pepper (black, red, cayenne), sodium nitrite, and bay leaves. (click to expand)

I combined the various ingredients more or less the same way you would marinate a steak, threw the pork belly into a gigantic Hefty bag, and stored it in the fridge for a week.

The hardest part begins: waiting a week before you can have bacon.

During this time, I turned the bag and slosh the seasonings around a bit so that one part doesn’t taste way more garlicky (or whatever) than the rest. My pork belly created mad amounts of condensation on the fridge shelf, so my future bacon lived fairly consistently in a puddle. And lo, on the seventh day, it was time to slow-roast the bacon in the oven. The wire rack I have for my baking sheet was small enough I had to further cut the pork belly into smaller pieces, but here’s what slow-roasting does:

Slow-roasting, before and after. Afterwards, a tip: find a corner, tear off bits, and eat them shamelessly.

Now the pork belly is ready to wrap up and store in the freezer, or slice up and throw in the frying pan! Since this is 5 lbs. of bacon, I recommend not eating it all at once. I have about three-quarters of my supply in the freezer. With the rest, it’s time to enjoy the delicious results. Homemade bacon really is different: its flavor is fuller, richer, but also subtler, so you’re not so much clubbed over the head with baconness as seduced by it. Using Ruhlman’s rub, there’s a nice hint of pepper and spice without it being excessive or aggressive (the cayenne was my idea). Plus, you can slice each piece to the thickness you want.

And all of a sudden that ordinary turkey sandwich is a turkey club. I’ve also thrown bacon into pasta and served a few strips plain with breakfast.

Left: bacon. Right: bacon. Background: no bacon.

-

Here’s an abridged version of Michael Ruhlman’s recipe (the book contains much, much more, including more photos of the process and a honey mustard cure which yields a sweeter result):

Bacon at Home

3 tablespoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon sodium nitrite (optional)
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
4 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a knife
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
4 bay leaves, crumbled into little bits
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes [I also added cayenne]
5 pound slab of pork belly

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for the cure. Place the pork belly and cure in a large resealable plastic bag, about 2.5 gallons, or in a nonreactive container of the same capacity. Seal the bag or cover the container and refrigerate for 7 days, occasionally rubbing the meat to redistribute the seasonings and turning the bag or the belly every other day.

Remove the meat from the cure, rinse well [remove all bay leaves!], and pat dry with paper towels. Discard the cure. The belly can be refrigerated in a fresh plastic bag for several days if you are not yet ready to cook it.

If roasting the pork, preheat oven to 200F/95C. Place the meat on a rack on a baking sheet/tray. Roast until the internal temperature reaches 150F/65C, about 2 hours. Begin checking the temperature after 1 hour.

If smoking the pork, smoke the belly with the wood of your choice at 200F/95C, until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 150F/65C.

Let the bacon cool to room temperature. Wrap it well in plastic wrap/cling film and refrigerate until chilled. The bacon can be refrigerated for 2 weeks or wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months.

When you’re ready to eat, you know what to do.

Fermi Questions

My brother Alex recently introduced me to the concept of “Fermi questions.” I would define it here, but it’s much easier to steal this site’s definition:

A “Fermi question” is a question in physics which seeks a fast, rough estimate of quantity which is either difficult or impossible to measure directly. For example: The question “How many drops of water are there in Lake Erie?” requires an estimate of the volume of a drop, the volume of Lake Erie from its approximate dimensions and conversion of units to yield an answer.

Another classic problem is, “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” (You can’t look at a phone book.) In other words, a Fermi question asks the solver to find some plausible mathematical way to at least guesstimate the answer to an utterly ludicrous question. And, as readers of this blog will know, there are few things I do better than asking utterly ludicrous questions.

So without further ado, here are a few problems for your consideration.

1. How many Olympic swimming pools full of methane are released by the world’s cows every year?
2. How many notes are played on the album A Hard Day’s Night?
3. How many coffee mugs’ worth of gasoline does America spill on its shoes every day?
4. If there was a giant bridge to the moon, how long would it take Forrest Gump to run there?
5. If you were smuggling contraband Post-It notes out of the country in cellos, how many cellos would it take to smuggle five million pads of Post-It notes?
6. How loud, in decibels, would it be if you stood in the middle of a field as cargo planes dropped 500 grand pianos around you?
–6a. How many splinters would you get?
–6b. How much would that stunt cost?
7. How many commas have ever appeared on Yahoo!?
8. If you wanted to turn yourself completely orange from head to toe, how many Cheetos would you need to use?
9. How many hippie bumper stickers are there in Austin, Texas?
10. How many times have you ever sneezed?
11.  If you wanted to build a full-size Lego replica of the Seattle Space Needle, how many Legos would it take?
12. If you wanted to build a Jenga block tower the height of the Seattle Space Needle, and had an indoor space controlling for wind and other atmospheric effects, how many blocks could you pull out before it fell over?
13. If you printed the Internet, how many sheets of paper would it take?
14. If you filled every bathtub in Tokyo, and then covered them all with rubber ducks, how many rubber ducks would that take?
15. How many pints of soy sauce would the world’s hungriest man require for his meal of 50,000,000 pieces of sushi?

Pictured: the world’s hungriest man’s nightstand.

16. I kind of like the idea of the world’s hungriest man. The world’s hungriest man wants to eat 3500 pounds of mashed potatoes. How many kitchen cabinets filled with Yukon Gold potatoes will he need?
17. How many flushing toilets would it take to equal the volume of Niagara Falls?
18. If you made a chain of people from Columbus, Ohio, to Columbus, Georgia, what’s the total number of calories they would eat in a day?
19. Assuming perfectly steady seas, how many individual strokes would it take to row from Miami Beach to Reykjavik?
–19a. If you left Miami on June 1, how long could you stay in Reykjavik before the temperature dropped below 0 Fahrenheit?
20. What’s the total number of years people are sentenced to in your state penitentiary?
21. If the world’s hungriest man bought an M1 Abrams tank and filled it with slices of Gouda, how many official servings of dairy would that be?
22. How many points did Olympic judges give out in 2010?
23. How many times did a tennis ball hit the ground in the 2011 U.S. Open?
24. The world’s hungriest man uses a napkin every time he eats one barbecued pork rib. If he is about to sit down to a feast of three U-haul trucks of pork ribs, how much money will he need to spend on Walmart’s cheapest brand of napkins?
25. If you covered Interstate 90 from end to end in tortillas, how many tacos are you an idiot for not making instead?

So maybe I wrote this when I was kinda hungry myself.

Spring is for Baseball

Ah, spring! The season of renewal, when green returns to the landscape, bringing with it a feeling of new beginnings, of hope arriving again after long nights of darkness. Spring, the season when the entire year seems to truly begin.

I’m talking about baseball, of course. As everyone knows, a new year does not truly commence until someone, somewhere, is playing baseball. And this year my friends Rory, Michelle, and I were able to ring in the new year in central Florida, home of spring training, those casual weeks where professional baseball players prepare for the year while playing casual scrimmage games in cozy little ballparks. It’s nothing like the typical major league game, which has become a circus of sensory input: raucous sound effects, fireworks, glitzy pre-produced videos and advertisements, mid-inning entertainments where six-year-olds play video games to win prizes. Spring training ball has some of those things, but they feel like shrugs, and you grow to enjoy them: the utilitarian scoreboards; the Washington Nationals’ single sound effect for foul balls, endlessly repeated; the Atlanta Braves’ announcer’s irritated blitzes through more or less everything he is forced to say. Actually, the Braves’ stadium, because of its location (inside ESPN Wide World of Sports, in turn inside of Disney World), is the most major-league of spring training parks: there’s a scoreboard that can display images, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is grotesquely punctuated by fireworks (a garish interjection after “bombs bursting in air”; we burst out laughing), and the center field grass is mowed to feature a gigantic Mickey Mouse head.

Speaking of Mickey Mouse... (click any picture to expand it)

But the poor Braves’ circus of a home field is the exception that proves the rule: that spring training isn’t Serious Sports, it’s there for our pleasure. Once a year we don’t have to worry about whether or not our team wins, or how the playoff picture looks, and we don’t have to scream over stupid plays that cost games. Heck, the score doesn’t even matter. This week the Washington Nationals let a game end with their pitcher taking the batter’s box and watching three strikes, because why not? Spring training is what baseball would look like if nobody was watching, except that people are allowed to watch.

Our view of Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Florida

Seeing baseball for the first time in five months, and driving nearly one thousand miles for the privilege, does prompt a question to slip into my mind: why love baseball?

As if it’s possible to answer that. Let’s try. I like to describe baseball as a canvas, the most social of sports. Baseball is the game you go to with friends, and the salient thing is that you’re with your friends, not that you’re watching a game. Football doesn’t permit that sort of casualness, for whatever reason, and basketball takes place in arenas which approach the deafening loudness of jet engines. At a baseball game you can sit back, relax, and watch the flow of action–like people-watching, or going to an outdoor bar with tasteful entertainment.

The tempo of baseball is slower, too. On a television screen, the pace gets boring, because 75% of a game is spent watching a single camera angle of a pitcher preparing to pitch. Plus, there are those annoying announcers, who care so much about the game, whereas if you were there your eyes would be casually scanning the field, soaking everything in, waiting for the action.

Now, there’s another thing. Baseball is the delayed-gratification sport. Basketball games can involve 220 points scored in 48 minutes (the record for a 48-minute game is 320, or one point every 9 seconds). American football goes in fits and starts, with long pauses and spurts of action, like baseball, only in football at least the teams have to move around, and everyone has to run, and for a split-second chaos might break out. In its delayed gratification, slow tempo, and weird timeless feeling–like you could go away for 15 minutes and not miss a single run scored but somehow miss an essential part of the narrative anyway–baseball is most like soccer. I can’t peel my eyes off a soccer match even though I know nothing big is likely to happen; the same is true in baseball. You at least get a sense, in the very small moments of those sports, that you’re witnessing some sort of grand story play out, like the quieter scenes in an epic novel which make the big climax all the more rewarding.

A Houston Astro grounds out. The ball can be seen far off to the left of his hips, as a blur in the grass.

That must be part of the appeal: the slow beat of baseball, the way that every few innings big things start happening, releasing all the narrative tension that has been building up in the expository parts of the game. And then there’s the look of it. Baseball fields are beautiful.

Look, we as Americans have a bizarre obsession with grass. The Boomer generation is fixated on having gigantic lawns around their houses, and mowing all the crisp green Kentucky bluegrass. Our parks are mostly great big green expanses of grass; it’s sort of our all-time favorite plant. And a lot of sports take place on it: soccer, rugby, ultimate Frisbee, golf. But none of them offers the fascinating symmetry, riveting color, or strange curving perfection of a baseball diamond.

Cole Hamels of the Philadelphia Phillies delivers a pitch.

I’ve started to realize how little television captures the experience. On television, you have a constant reminder of the score; when I’m not really watching a baseball game, I care deeply about the score, but I’ve found that when I’m actually at one I can enjoy it without even being sure who’s winning. Plus, television brings close-ups on players spitting or just generally looking fat, things nobody makes you watch when you have seats in the park. And there’s the beauty of the diamond sloping away from you, the behavior of all the other players as they wait for a pitch, the banter between a baserunner and an umpire, the way it’s all so darn relaxing. A training game in Florida is all about fresh beginnings; at the start of a game, the baseball field is clean, waiting for something to bloom upon it. We aren’t in a hurry; we can watch and wait. We’ve seen this before and we’ll see it again but it always feels like we’re coming home.

In other words, baseball is a lot like spring.

Randall Delgado of the Atlanta Braves pitches to Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals. As if it really mattered what was happening in a scene as beautiful as this.