Ballpark District graffiti adheres strictly to Roman alphabet in subversive call to arms

If you found the cry of the subaltern somewhat underwhelming here , you are not alone. The above graffiti has, however, inspired in me the desire to do an "installment" on a local warehouse wall, wherein I will inscribe placeholder text across the length of the facade: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. And so on. The defiant sprays of pidgin Latin will at once underscore man's inability to adequately communicate, forced as he is to use the imperfect written signifiers of the Roman alphabet as a medium, as well as the shallowness which with his words - now assembled into hopeful phrases - do wash over and by his fellow man, who wonders if "i'm" [sic] should have been capitalized, or if the lack of capitalization was a deliberate and cunning refusal to accommodate "the rules."

The past-time of 50,445

This week is remarkable for little other than repeated formatting issues in MS Word, and misbehaving printer settings in Excel. I did, however, attend a Rockies night game down at the old ballpark, like a good, Tornadough-eating, light-beer swilling Yankee.

Of course we did not actually consume any of the $10 food items for sale on premises, despite the agreeable vendorship of rainbow snow-cones and "cheese cups." Instead, we chipped away at the five-pound bag of peanuts our friend had brought (at games' end, his feet were partially buried under the shells, the detritus clambering up his ankles like two anthills).

Balls were hit and caught, missed sometimes, and players went for brief runs between the bases to the delight and admonition of the crowd. The outing provided an opportunity for me to shuffle my thoughts on the sport; one I have long considered as bringing out the most endearing qualities of Americans. Following are the aspects of the sport I find most curious:

1. "The wave." Known in the U.S. simply as "the wave," the wave is referenced internationally as "the Mexican wave," and enjoys high popularity within both the National and American Leagues. For a full-stadium wave to occur, there must exist one seating section intent on little more than standing up, arms raised, multiple times while "woo"ing enthusiastically; much like an old lawn mower, this seating section must crank the starter through the "wave and woo" maneuver many times before it "takes" to the rest of the crowd, and must sacrifice their attention to, and enjoyment of, the game in its pursuit. Their collective hopes then ride the crest around the stadium, invariably heartbroken when it disintegrates around the expensive seating sections with good views of home plate. Members of the greater crowd will acquiesce the approaching wave with a half stand or throw up of the arms almost without thought, they way they might pass ketchup from table to table at a crowded sports bar. Oddly enough, when asked to recap a game they have attended, Americans seldom mention a memorable wave in which they partook.

2. The multimedia distractions peppered throughout the innings. Each stadium has its roll of "boredom alleviating devices" which they will insert between innings to assure the public that progress is being made - no surprise when you consider that 18 half-innings stand between Joe Citizen and his comfy chair at home. Downhearted and distracted, the most apathetic fan has been known to perk up at the sight of the "watch the ball" hat-switch game or the third inning "tractor race." In fact, fans that were catatonic just moments earlier will reanimate in the interval between innings to crow for the purple tractor, or to register their "song choice" (Bon Jovi always wins) via hollering indiscriminately into the ear of the person in front of them. By the time the first ball of the new innings is in, their behind will be firmly rooted in the bucket seat, and roused by little less than a tie-breaking homer.

3. Jumbo-tron moments. Late in the 8th or 9th innings, when all pitchers have failed, and an emergency pitcher is being prepped to "close," fans get most ancy. Before the advent of the jumbo-tron, fans were left to throw pizza at one another, and make period insults: "Your behind is wetter than a liquid lunch." Today, however, win-challenged teams like the Kansas City Royals have succeeded in almost completely distracting fans from the presence of a ball game via an oversized digi-screen of stats, pictures, replays and useless information designed to obscure the location of the score. During the latter stages of a ball game, fans are encouraged to shake their booties or kiss one another or flex their muscles in return for a semi-second of jumbo-tron fame. The palpable excitement seen on their faces as they realize they are on the big screen, part-way into their feature, is priceless: like a good "funniest home video" of a child totaling their tricycle, it can be guaranteed to solicit laughs from the crowd; similarly, the moment is snatched away from the micro-celebrity as quickly as it has been granted. Side note: Coors Stadium utilizes Bob the Builder's (DJ Otzi?) seminal dance hit "Hey baby (I wanna know if you'll be my girl)" - otherwise known as "the song that makes everybody dance like a moron." Other stadiums have also kept their fare to outdated dance or country numbers: "Cotton Eye Joe" gets a good turn at Coors, while Garth Brooks provides the seventh inning stretch distraction at Royals Field.

4. The seventh inning stretch. Not only do fast food vendors walk through the stadium to deliver fatty, synthetic treats to the fan too lazy to walk to the nearest kiosk, but the short duration of each innings encourages even the frugal fan to purchase beer at repeated intervals - many are well neigh sodden by the time the stadium goes "dry." Come the middle of the seventh inning, game organizers cunningly invented the "seventh inning stretch" to combat the extreme resulting atrophy, and ensure the safe departure and vitality of all patrons at games' end. At the behest of the announcer, the entire stadium will lumber forward onto its peanut-shell-littered feet, and bellow out "Take me out to the ball game" - a song only steps above the "Diarrhea" song in terms of sophistication. But the Yanks love it! Almost as much as they love Cracker Jacks. If only all public health policy was as easy as "Stand up! Just this one time! Okay you can sit."

This is a partial list.

Artist's response to fruit bowls

Well, bugger me if life hasn't painted itself again, courtesy of the iPhone and Photoshop. It hardly bears mentioning that the fecund soil of our rental property has given us a bounty of fruit, life's own gift to itself, so vast the tree must almost orgiastically heave and discard its expired pears into the post-coital winds of early fall as part of its daily ritual now. Yes, there is no need for rumination on the famine and feast of our very souls, in "these conflicted times." Sigh, the artist is not needed here.

Slow road skyward

Squaw Pass near Echo Mountain

Kenneth Graham-appropriated Fall catalogue hits TopShop

The Fall catalogue for TopShop has "dropped" at last, and was it worth the wait. Deriving from both the urban tramp aesthetic of recent seasons, and the trend toward looking like a crazy old bag lady, TopShop's Fall line is heavily redolent of game hunting, or olde timey homelessness, when well-dressed gents would sleep under bridges with the quaint charm only disenfranchised businessmen seem to be able to effect.

On second look, the provocative line began to stir my memory. It recalled the sentimental lawns of Kenneth Graham's "Wind in the Willows," over which strode the strappingly dressed Mr. Toad and his lesser friends during my formative years.

The bushy eyebrows in particular sparked a nostalgic longing for walking canes and monocles. Here, I thought, is a theme I can get on board with: the thick, coarse, weather-repellent hair of a polar bear, and a contrasting vest - both quite appropriate for Fall weather.

Above, Ratty and Mole take in the sights of a local pond, discussing literature, politics and the state of the human condition. Squint, and you could be looking at any two hipster pals practicing an ironic renaissance in Central Park on the rent-a-boats.

The above BBC production of "Wind in the Willows" features Matt Lucas and Bob Hoskins in a "handsome" revival. Note the overlap in fine tailoring, layering and highly textured knits between the BBC production and Britain's TopShop.

In fact, TopShop were not the first souls to identify the saliency of "Wind and the Willows" for an impressionable young audience. The girl pictured above right pulls off a winning combination of nautical style and animal or "furry" subversity - a cry to the "never grow up" crowd, and highly insightful from an anthropological standpoint.

And then there's this.

Anyone for Tennis?

I came across the delightfulness of Tennis yesterday via another blog. Tennis, I have learned, are a husband and wife team of musos who wrote their first album while sailing south down the east coast of the U.S. They sport that rendered crackliness of '50s records that is in fashion right now, and I guiltily lap up the faux retroness. Apparently these charmers will be playing in Denver tonight at the Larimer Lounge, and I'm going to make a bold prediction, so as to make it first ... Tennis could very well be the next Captain and Tennille.

For a listen, click here.

Meanwhile, yesterday's "day-ender" was what Yanks term a "trail-run" (but which every understated Australian knows simply to be a jog) out in Denver's foothills. The view up to Red Rocks was not too shabby.

And the tall roofs of Denver's downtown district, and ruckus of the Rio Grande, were about as close as I like them, visible here in extreme miniature.

Along the Castle Trail, I was accosted every 200 yards by a mountain-biking 50-year-old man. Evidently they were each on a reconnaissance mission for their own vitality and youth - mountain bikes are an excellent vehicle for recovering your virility, I hear, being as they are so burly. An excellent vehicle for recovering your youth? A race car bed.

The banker mystique: Wall Street returns to screens

In Oliver Stone’s 1987 “Wall Street,” a binary examination of good and evil in Manhattan’s canopy ginned up the excesses of eighties capitalism so well that the moral hammer missed many movie-goers. Instead, aspiring brokers and bankers took Gordon Gekko as a deity of sorts. Ruthless, suave, hair combed back, Michael Douglas’s Gekko exemplified full-scale investment in the false idols and Dionysian pleasures born of wealth, fully aware they came at the expense of others. “That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs,” says Gekko. “They love animals and hate people.”

American cinema has long gazed inward upon itself, co-opting foreign narratological conventions and romanticizing the raw culture of a young country even as it built an ideology atop the it empire left behind. The western was built upon the Arthurian notion of heroism and conquest. The musical was a populist response to the classical music canon in Europe. Hollywood was created as a fantasy for the masses to aspire to; its stars and studios teasingly accessible in cinemas to the lower and middle classes, who bought wholesale into the meritocratic American Dream. Likewise, on Wall Street, every man is just one big trade away from fortune.

“Wall Street” fits into the fantasy genre quite neatly. Charlie Sheen stars as the ambitious ingénue, broker Bud Fox, intent on money, glamour, good-looking women, and an easier life than that of his father, Carl (Martin Sheen). The era: bear market America. Bud Fox’s moral arc is somewhat derivative, and consequently feels a little cobbled: he descends into the pits of moral depravity (insider trading!) assailed by the lion (Douglas as Gordon Gekko), leopard and she-wolf (Darryl Hannah), before emerging, soul intact, to summit Mount Purgatory and reach Paradiso. (Fourteenth century Italy has nothing on 1980s America.)

The great contradiction in the film, however, was the notion that audiences had to first buy into the construct of capitalism to follow Fox down the rabbit hole. And at the end of the film, many remain plied with the images of penthouses, gilded skyscrapers, expensive suits and that oh-so-slick ‘80s technology. (At one point Gekko shows Fox the portable television he bought for his son. “That screen is like two inches!” Fox exclaims.) The great star of the film is Manhattan,* whose social geography places characters into cubicles and offices, down on the street, or atop the urban canopy looking down, according to their status. The buildings not only serve as a means of classification, but symbolize the sheer depth of the illusion bracketing an entire society together. “It’s a zero sum game,” Gekko smirks, “somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred

from one perception to another.”

*The other great star of the film is, of course, Gekko’s brick-sized cell phone.

The film is a fantasy because Fox’s revelation (greed is bad!) doesn’t alter the future landscape of America: twenty years later, the bottom fell out of the financial markets again, only this time it wasn’t the savings and loan scandal did us in, rather, simple folk pursuing the American Dream – the “dog shit stocks” Gekko trashes – beyond their own means. In reality, Gekko always gets away with it.

Which brings us to the impending release of the sequel “Wall Street: Money never sleeps” on September 24. According to IMDB, the plot concerns a young Wall Street trader who teams up with paroled Gekko to save the financial markets from global economic doom. The few things I know about this film leave me with a series of questions:

1. In the original film, Gekko had sired a fat son, seen only in a gratuitous nanny cameo, and quickly retired for a nap. Where does Carey Mulligan fit in to this family picture?

2. Gekko is the preeminent antihero of modern-day America. After an entire film of quips like: “You take it right in the ass you cocksucker,” and “Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit,” are we really supposed to buy Gekko as reformed? People with egg-shaped mansions and ridiculous art installations don’t regain perspective.

3. How will Stone portray the highs of Wall Street trading now we’re living in the virtual era? No pink slips to wave, no shoehorn telephones to dial, sensible hair … it’s not quite so sexy, is it?

4. It is interesting to note that bicycle messengers essentially have not changed since 1987; according to the original “Wall Street” they were satchel-toting douches then as they are now. No, that’s not technically a question.

5. What influence will globalism exert upon our fragile 21^st century financial instruments? The original featured Sir Larry Wildman, a British villain of the Bond variety, as well as nigiri sushi machines and such haute cuisine as egg yolk on meatloaf (French?). Now that the world is officially “flat,” we’re close to exhausting the exotic – Korean street tacos and jokes about Greek insolvency is about as edgy as it gets.

6. In a similar vein, how will movie sex have evolved from the Martha Graham impressionistic, blue-silk silhouette sex seen in the original? Perhaps focus is less on pointed toes and “the wheelbarrow” position, and more about yoga triceps and off-axis maneuvers today.

7. Without Sean and Madonna, what does the Upper West Side real estate market have going for it in 2010?

8. Anyone care to venture some speculations as to the stock in question? BABs, perhaps, or shoddy pension funds?

9. What is the penultimate symbol of upper class recreation? What is today’s equivalent of a) the backless dress, b) martinis, c) evil Brits, d) town cars, e) MS-DOS, f) WASPs? And tell me we can do better than Oslen-twin chic and Dubai.

10. Shia LeBouf. I just don’t get it.

“Wall Street” verdict: Before it was distasteful to flaunt wealth, we had this gem celebrating the clunkiest conspicuous spending (a handheld facsimile machine!) in the most entertaining town.

Potential “Wall Street: Money never sleeps” verdict: Provided we don’t have to hear about Ben Bernanke or the stimulus bill, this could still be fun. Though I suspect we aren’t as much fun these days. Worth it to make fun of the wealthy once more, and to see what old Gordon Gekko still has up his sleeve, “pal.”