Central European Art Curators Elevate Their Own, Here and Abroad

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

I can’t remember any trip of mine so richly affected by so many formal art exhibits. In the space of five Central European days in October 2018, my family took in shows featuring Gustav Klimt, Andy Warhol, Alfons Mucha, the Maine-trained Donna Huanca, Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo. Only the Klimt, long a favorite of mine, had been planned. The others we happened upon more or less by chance, as apparently one does in Prague and Budapest. European art observations include:

Ethnography Matters: Austrians naturally claim Klimt for their own; he headlined the Secessionist Movement based in his native Vienna, so it’s no surprise his most famous works remain permanently on show at the Belvedere, an 18th century palace built by the Habsburg Prinz Eugen. Sharon and I went there straight from our morning plane, checked our bags in the cloakroom, and gadded about the grounds before meeting our son Silas and his girlfriend Rene, who’d been backpacking about the Continent since Sept. 7. We treated them to lunch then went back across the strasse to see the Klimt, who didn’t disappoint. The Belvedere curators require tourists (and the place was teeming with them) to roam through 2.5 full floors of oversized Romantic Era shite before getting to the Secession stuff, which included some Munch and Von Gogh I’d never seen. Our hosts knew exactly whom we’d come to see; the entire experience was built around it. There was even a special room where folks could take selfies with an oversized poster version of The Kiss — some 50 feet from the real thing.

In Prague, later that week, we were further struck by the way Slovaks studiously maintain a different sort of claim (but still a legitimate one) on Andy Warhol, born Andrew Warhola, the son of immigrants from Eastern Slovakia. In the various placards his mother was repeatedly referred to as Ruthenian, a reference to Greek Orthodox Slavs who live outside the Rus. This show occupied the third floor of GOAP, the Gallery of Art Prague. The more intimate, dormered fourth floor concentrated solely on Warhol’s young life and his parents’ early days in Pittsburgh where so many Slovaks, Slavs and Poles landed (remember the wedding scene from The Deerhunter?). This was wholly appropriate — the attic is where old family stuff is meant to be stashed.

Read More→

Headcheese, Jelly Sticks & Hot Sauce: My Father and his Food Fetish

by Hal Phillips 3 Comments

WELLESLEY, Mass. (Aug. 28, 2018) — So, I try to write each August about my father, the original Hal Phillips, who passed away seven years ago this month and all too soon. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of him in some way, shape or form. Many times, that moment comes when I open the refrigerator door and see my collection of hot sauces.

My father was an enthusiastic eater and devotee of exotic, spicy and otherwise full-flavored food. Growing up, we used to kid him that he had essentially deadened his taste buds, such was the relish with which he applied not just hot sauce but relish, salt, butter, condiments and dressings of any kind. He took this ribbing as he took most efforts to curb his foundational behaviors — with good-natured indifference — then went ahead and treated his pig knuckle with another dollop of blazing-hot mustard.

My paternal, Jersey-based grandmother was not an enthusiastic or particularly skilled cook. Whenever we went there to visit, she would serve us the same thing, in great quantities: steak, corn and a black forest cake from Sara Lee. I gather that American cuisine in the 1940s and ’50s — in private homes, in restaurants — was pretty bland. My dad’s reaction to this cultural upbringing was to find himself a wife who, among other things, appreciated and was equipped to prepare a wide variety of food.

For her part, my mom, Lucy Dickinson Phillips, was raised on the West Coast. Because it was still America in the ’40s and ’50s, her exposures were similarly staid on the food front. But Californians did have good Mexican, not to mention proper Chinese. What’s more, my maternal grandmother occasionally cooked things like (gasp!) curry. This proved foundational enough to foster food experimentation all through my parents’ marriage. In this and so many other ways, my mom proved the woman of my father’s dreams.

Perhaps on account of their relatively white-bread upbringings, older American couples today are often satirized for this single-mindedness. How was your trip to New York? “Oh, we found the most wonderful northern Italian restaurant near Washington Square.” My parents routinely answered travel questions in this fashion; mom still does. As a good cook, she grew annoyed when my father would salt or spice food before tasting it. But their 50 years together were a more or less an uninterrupted, gleeful quest for good eats. As such, it has fallen to their children to react in kind — to try and restore some level of sanity and moderation to the food-intake process.

This remains a work in progress.

Read More→

I’m OK – You’re OK? Not Hardly. Walker earns Inaugural Harris Award for Political Nihilism

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

NEW GLOUCESTER, Maine (Aug. 22, 2018) — With this communication, we introduce and inaugurate the random presentation of the Harris Nightmare Awards (HNAs). Named for Dr. Thomas Harris, author of the 1969 pop-psychology treatise I’m OK – You’re OK, The HNAs will henceforth call out the cynical, preemptive, tit-for-tat nihilism that has informed Republican politics since Newt Gingrich executed his hostile take-over of the party in the mid-1990s. In the Age of Trump, this phenomenon has been raised to high art. Hence the need for suitable ‘commendations’.

Most folks will be familiar with the title of Harris’ book, which refers to an optimal state of human relations, one that most of us do indeed strive day to day to achieve. “Treat they neighbor as thyself” predates the good doctor’s coinage, but they go together: Because one cannot hope to treat his/her neighbor well if, to begin with, one does not possess a decent, ultimately edifying sense of self-worth.

Harris identified two more middling, less healthy states that describe people suffering from undue superiority (I’m OK I’m OK – You’re Not OK) and undue inferiority (I’m Not OK – You’re OK).

It is the fourth state, I’m Not OK – You’re Not OK, that is generally reserved for inveterate grumps and outright sociopaths. Go here for a more lengthy treatment of why this phrase so cogently describes today’s GOP and the media apparatus that supports it. In short, right wing media have decided there is more to gain politically, in the long run, by asserting the rampant political motivation and outright fakery of all media. By doing so, they stake out their own position and self-worth quite clearly: “We’re fake; they must be fake.” Or even, “We’re fake because they’re fake.” I’m Not OK – You’re Not OK.

I’m OK – You’re OK: Walker, GOP Opt Out

Yet this phenomenon extends well beyond right-wing media circles. Hence our need for the Harris Nightmare Awards. Our first designee is the inimitable Scott Walker, inert presidential candidate from 2016 and two-term governor of Wisconsin now running for a third term. His opponent this fall will be former state superintendent of schools, a Democrat named Tony Evers. Walker remains unfazed.

“I’m not worried about who runs for governor on the Democrat side,” he told a group of followers in Reedsburg earlier this month. “Because they’re all about the same, they’re all just as liberal as the others. What I worry about are outside groups—names like Barack Obama, and Eric Holder’s group, people like Tom Steyer and George Soros, the billionaires from outside the state who are dropping millions of dollars in the state.”

Behold, our first but entirely worthy HNA designee. We resort to that euphemism because politicking this nihilistic produces no “winners”.

To call Walker’s opposition to out-of-state political spending “highly ironic” would be to spectacularly understate the matter. Since his first run for governor in 2009, Walker has been the pet project of billionaire libertarian donors Charles and David Koch, whose views on campaign-finance laws, among other things, Walker has dutifully promoted with legislation in Wisconsin — for a price. Since 2009, the Koch’s very own “outside group,” Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has backed Walker’s three runs (he prevailed in a recall election back in 2012) to the tune of untold millions — untold because in our post-Citizens United era (another AFP pet project), we don’t have any idea how much AFP actually provided.

Outside Spending: Walker’s Middle Name

We do know how much the 2018 campaigns of Walker and Evers have spent so far: Outlays on the Republican side since the primary are about $5.4 million compared with roughly $2.2 million for Democrats. The Republican Governors Association (by definition an “outside group”) has reserved $5.7 million in TV ads for the final two months of the race while the Democratic Governors Association (yet another) has booked another $3.8 million. Americans for Prosperity on Tuesday announced a $1.8 million television and digital ad buy.

In Walker’s warning of “outside groups” unduly influencing Wisconsin elections, we see the longstanding, one-sided dynamic that produced the HNAs — one where right-wingers just assume left-wingers operate as mendaciously as they do, as utter movement soldiers. This attempt at immoral equivalence doesn’t wash, has never washed, but has nevertheless informed right-wing charges of left-wing mendacity in the context of campaign spending, gun-control, media bias, labor law and dozens more realms.

This dynamic stems from a basic tenet, held on the right: Some right winger in a position to favor or otherwise advance a right-wing cause will surely do so, will do whatever it takes — in large part because he/she reasons, cynically and inaccurately, that counterpart left-leaning types are already operating on the same scurrilous level.

I’m Not OK – You’re Not OK.

Until last month, no poll had ever shown Walker trailing a declared Democratic opponent by more than a few points, not in any of his 3-plus gubernatorial races. NBC/Marist released a poll in July showing Evers ahead of Walker by 13 points. Another poll, from Emerson College, had Evers ahead by 7.

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin! Stand up, Badgers sing!

English Football’s unique Global Following Grapples with yet Another Reality Check

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

MOSCOW (July 12, 2018) — While their close neighbors and erstwhile enemies crow this morning over another anguished English exit from the World Cup, great swaths of the soccer-loving world suffer alongside the Albion faithful. Some of this cooperative hand-wringing is due to the sheer size of the cultural footprint left by the mother country, once an Empire, today a Commonwealth. Yet millions more,  in places that long ago shook off that lighter cohesion (Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai, Capetown), follow English football fortunes because the Brits effectively invented global futbol branding, too.

Yes, close neighbors in Ireland, Scotland and Wales couldn’t be happier this morning, after England’s loss to Croatia in Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal.

But billions more pay special attention to English soccer fortunes for reasons better explained by 21st century marketing. Across Asia, the Middle East and the United States, 25 years of English Premier League broadcasts have bred spectacular ratings and merchandize sales. These ephemeral dynamics have ultimately morphed into a peculiar form of allegiance — a fandom nurtured by internet access and fed by the always entertaining, bandwagon-inclined British football media.

For 30 minutes in Moscow on Wednesday, the bandwagon was humming toward destiny. The English would appear to have produced — for the first time in 54 years — a team equal to this global glut of hope and expectation.

To the delight of Gaels everywhere, it was instead Croatia that earned a place in Sunday’s World Cup final against France, claiming a dogged 2-1 victory in extra time. This had been another pillar of English football support Wednesday — the prospect of a cross-Channel, once-more-into-the-breech final, a rematch some 1,054 years in the making! But the indefatigable Croats were deserving winners. They adjusted and persevered where England could not.

English Football: 30 minutes of Heaven

The semifinal’s opening half hour appeared to signal the next in a series of sanguine developments for the English. Kieran Trippier’s splendid free kick put them ahead 1-0 after just 7 minutes. The early goal was part of a delightful narrative: A weak group leading to a preposterously easy side of the tournament draw. A great escape vs. Colombia in the Round of 16 (on penalties of all things) was followed by a thorough bludgeoning of Sweden, a team England had beaten just twice in 16 tries. Up a goal in the semi, the ensuing 20 minutes saw Raheem Sterling, the sprightly Man City striker, run rings around the Croatian defense.

This was the key to the game: England found it so easy to get Sterling in behind Croatian centerbacks Dejan Lovren and Domagoj Vida, another goal seemed just a matter of time. Harry Kane indeed should have made it 2-0 after 15 minutes, having found himself on the doorstep with the option to shoot or slide it to Sterling for a tap-in. He went for goal, had it saved, then clanged the rebound off keeper Danijel Subasic and the post. That ball goes in and there’s no way back for the Croatians, though it seemed of little consequence at the time. The English were that good, that confident on the ball, that in control of this match.

That dominance, in a roundabout way, proved England’s undoing. Instead of continuing to patiently knock the ball around and pick the Croats apart — a side running on fumes after playing two exhausting knockout games in the previous 7 days — England were beguiled by Sterling’s ability to get in behind Lovren and Vida. The last 15 minutes of the half were squandered, as the English eschewed possession and impulsively pumped long balls over the top.

Pundits have claimed that England played an excellent half on Wednesday. They did not. They played an excellent half hour, then muddled their way to the break with a lead only half (or a third) of what it should have been.

Mid-Match Adjustments

Croatia made a vital adjustment before intermission, dropping Lovren and Vida off Kane (and his withdrawn running mate Dele Alli), in order to better cope with the speedy threat of Sterling. After halftime, they changed things up again — pressing England higher up the pitch. All of a sudden, central midfielder Jordan Henderson had no time on the ball. After 45 minutes of expert English distribution out of the back, Croatia took it away.

England made no adjustment at halftime and, much as it tried, could not make one on the fly. The long balls continued, with ever diminishing returns. Faced with this increased pressure, Henderson and the entire English defense were a study in creeping panic — launching hopeful balls forward rather than risk having it taken by the Croats who, the longer this game went (despite their travails), looked the more energetic side. In the first 30 minutes Henderson & Co. looked imperious. After 60, they no longer wanted the ball at their feet. At this level, that is a recipe for just one thing: hanging on for dear life.

All of this analysis ignores fully half the match, which would indeed require 120 minutes to decide. Ivan Perisic, leveled things on 70 minutes and England’s descent into anxiety and fatigue steepened. They were lucky to make it to extra time, where Mario Mandzukic struck the winner some 7 minutes before the onset of penalty kicks.

England made the maximum four substitutions over the last hour, desperately looking to change the game, to change its own footing in and approach to the match. Nothing worked.

Trippier injured his groin after the Mandzukic goal; having exhausted their allotment of subs, England finished meekly, playing 10 v. 11. In the end, the Croats proved more canny, more flexible, more skilled, more confident, more dogged, more fit. They were deserving winners.

Read More→

World Cup 2018 Digest: Why refs & linesmen so often get touch line decisions wrong

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

This ball was deemed out of play. Clearly, it was not…

MOSCOW (July 5, 2018) — We’ve reached the first 48-hour break in what has been a delightful frenzy of World Cup matches. The round of 16, our first knock-out stage, concluded Tuesday. Quarterfinals start Friday. Through the magic of YouTubeTV and its DVR function (we cut the cable cord in June), I’ve managed to see most every game. A few observations, starting with why the marginal touch line in/out decision is called wrongly more often than anything else in top-class football.

This may strike one as extremely small bore but possession is, you know, important. And linesmen don’t appear to know the rule. The statute is clear: FIFA’s Rule 9 reads, “The ball is out of play when it has wholly crossed the goal line or touch line whether in the ground or in the air.” The advent of goal-line technology has given us  a new, better perspective on this rule. A birds’-eye view of the ball is what matters; the ball is in play until it’s entirely over the line, until there can be seen (from above) a sliver of green grass between the ball and touchline.

Technology, now in the hands of a Video Assistant Referees (VAR), has brought new accuracy to goal-line decisions, but touch-line decisions remain in the hands of linesmen and the man in the middle. Sadly, they get it wrong way too often. I’ve noticed this for years now but VAR has brought in into clearer focus.

Touch-line decisions are called differently and I think I know why: Linesmen, or referee’s assistant, as they’r now called, aren’t looking at it from above. From a ground level view, if an assistant sees any sort of green between ball and line, he or she will judge the ball to be out of play. Even if the entire ball, according to Rule 9, has clearly not passed wholly over the line — something that would be obvious with a birds-eye view. The lead image atop this post (a screen grab; thanks again, YouTubeTV) provides a perfect example. This ball was called out for a corner.

One can sorta tell the players are increasingly peeved by this double standard and why shouldn’t they be? Players on the ball do have a bird’s-eye view. There appears to be one standard for the goal line and another for every other boundary on the field. I’ve not seen nor heard nor read of VAR ever being used to mete out a touchline decision. I’m not advocating for that. But possession is important and in/out should better hew to the standard spelled out in Rule 9.

World Cup 2018: PKs and SABs

The short-handed Colombians were put out of the tournament by England Tuesday in a Round of 16 affair that was at once pedestrian and completely riveting. That’s what an otherwise punchless World Cup match that goes to penalty kicks can do, especially where England are involved. Just the idea that some 60 million Brits were watching the game — increasingly pissed, in the fetal position, waiting for something catastrophic to happen — imbues all of their knock-out fixtures with that certain, extra-special something. Their boys didn’t disappoint — blowing the game, then rescuing it — and the rest of us duly lapped up the many layers of shadenfreude. The English did indeed have it won before conceding a 94th minute equalizer and sleep-walking through extra time toward penalties, the tie-breaking mechanism that, to date, has put them out of three World Cups and three European Championships. It’s a tragically accurate running joke in England that the national team cannot cope with, much less win, a penalty shoot-out at a major tournament (Tuesday’s win makes them 2-6 overall). It’s harped upon nearly as often as the fact that, “We invented this game.” But they won this shootout, celebrated accordingly, and they’re off to face plucky Sweden in a Saturday quarterfinal where the stakes, the alcohol intake, the national anxiety will be that much higher…

Golden Boy James Rodriquez was the reason Colombia played short-handed Tuesday, having pulled up lame in the last group game. James (pronounced hah-mez) bears a fairly striking resemblance to a young John Harkes, US midfielder from the ‘80s and ‘90s. The Colombian and his coiffure cut a more metrosexual pose than Harkes and his period mullet ever could. But close enough to meet the ‘Separated at Birth’ threshold, eh? Or maybe first cousins? This is the sort of thing an American soccer fan is reduced to when we fail to qualify…

I’ve now watched and participated in hundreds of these penalty shootouts (the Round of 16 produced three in eight matches). I’m surprised goalkeepers, at this elite level, don’t hold their ground at least once in the first couple kicks, if not to account for a Panenka or blast down the middle, then to plant in the heads of subsequent shooters the possibility that he might not be guessing/diving one way or the other as the shootout progresses. For keepers, this guessing has been the long-standing strategy: Shooters are so close that goalies must guess which way a shooter is going with the ball — and hope for the best. Yet so many elite players today basically trust their ability to see the keeper’s movement and, at the very last second, go the opposite way with the ball. A goalie who doesn’t move would completely freak the shooter out – and give every succeeding shooter uneasy food for thought.

Japanese are Snake Bit

More observations from the first two weeks: Poor Japan. They deserved better than a 3-2 Round of 16 loss to Belgium on the last kick of the game. But honestly, WTF were they thinking — committing so many men to a corner kick (tiny team vs. big team) in the 94th minute tied at 2? It was a bold decision, I’ll grant you. But I’d have put a few token dudes in the box, stayed behind the ball essentially, and taken my chances in extra time…

Sweden has played 50 World Cup matches in its history. Only Mexico has played more without winning a Cup. Yet Sweden’s international record is far more decorated. Indeed, Sverige is perhaps the globe’s most underrated soccer nation. This country of just 7 million souls, where one cannot play outside all year round, has produced a World Cup finalist (1958), three semifinalists (1938, 1950, 1994) and two quarterfinalists (1934, 2018). It may well better a last-8 finish this year — all without Zlatan Ibrahimovich, the finest Swedish player of his generation (perhaps of all time) who, though still active (in MLS), petulantly retired from international play two years ago. Sweden’s example is something for American soccer boosters to ponder when reckoning grandiose future goals. The US has reached a single quarterfinal, full stop…

FIFA is as corrupt as they come, but it’s important to recognize the root and nature of that corruption. Since the late 1980s, FIFA’s particular corruption is born of the fact that each and every participating nation (all 211 of them) have a vote in where the World Cup will be held every four years. And make no mistake: Those votes do in fact get bought. But let’s also be real: Without this sort of arrangement (which leads to both coalition-building and corruption), there would never have been World Cups in Africa, or Russia, or the Middle East. Yes, it’s conventional wisdom that Qatar paid through the nose, to literally hundreds of national football federations, order to secure the 2022 event. And yes, repressive regimes benefit from buying such events — but so do the soccer-loving masses in those countries and regions. Ask an African soccer fan if it was worth it to have the 2010 event in South Africa. Ask a Saudi if they’re happy the World Cup is coming to Qatar. Moving the Cup around is good for the world game. Without its particular brand of corruption, the event would be held somewhere in Europe or North/South America every four years, forever…

Mark Geiger, the only American referee participating in this World Cup, drew a very tough assignment in the England-Colombia match. It’s hard to imagine how a more experienced, skilled ref would’ve handled things without killing the game: Colombia deserved to have 2-3 guys sent off for dissent alone following the quite-right penalty kick decision that put England a goal up. Radamel Falcao has complained publicly about Geiger’s performance, claiming he favored the English. But any neutral observer could plainly see the Colombians, down a goal, ratcheted up the physicality in hopes of turning the match back in their favor. Unfortunately, Geiger didn’t want to decide said match by sending anyone off — something the savvy Colombians sensed immediately. In bending over backward to preserve Colombia’s chance of ultimately getting a result, Geiger may have torpedoed his own career at this level.

Now It Can Be Told: When Media Junkets Go Wrong…

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

JAKARTA, Indonesia (June 18, 2018) — The history of working media seeking to leverage publishing capabilities to secure personal fringe benefits is long and sordid indeed. Traditionally, as befits transactions undertaken by relative paupers, such perks rarely rise above the level of heavy hors d’oeuvres. When they rise to the level of media junkets — the “FAM” or familiarization trips writers accept in exchange for coverage — the stakes and potential shithousery increase by orders of magnitude.

Again, this tawdry exercise in professional barter typically starts out innocently enough. I worked at a daily newspaper back in the late 1980s. The nightly assignment schedule invariably included this Chamber of Commerce reception or that City Hall event — places often devoid of news value, but where free food could be had. Open bar? Well, the entire editorial staff might show up for something like that.

Reporters and editors don’t traditionally make a lot of money; they’re frequently quite young. This is to say, freeloading of this ilk shouldn’t be viewed as particularly untoward or shameful. It’s something of a necessity frankly. One of our many mascots in that same newsroom was a giant cartoon headshot of a Dick Tracy-like character, complete with ‘40s era fedora. Tucked in his hatband was an index card that might have read “PRESS”; instead it read, “I’m with the PRESS. Where’s the FOOD?”

Several links up the food chain in this realm sits the media FAM. There’s no way to spin such junkets according to journalistic standards or ethics. These are flat-out boondoggles whereby some publicity-seeking entity lures reporters and freelancers on some trip — with the understanding that once they’ve been wined/dined and returned home, said media will publish nice stories about the resort property, the golf course or cuisine to be had there, or maybe the broader “destination” itself. In the golf and travel realm, where I’ve toiled for more than three decades now, FAM trips are the ultimate perk because, well, let’s not be coy: In addition to free food & drink, participating media also get complementary air fare, lodging and assorted swag.

Media Junkets & The Barter Economy

The quid pro quo nature of the FAM exercise is little discussed but well understood by all parties. One doesn’t visit a golf course or hotel, on a junket, only to savage the place in print. That would be untoward. As our moms all told us, if you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all — or concentrate on something else that doesn’t suck.

Here’s another FAM trip bylaw: Answer the bell. No matter how much free boozing and carousing was had the night before, media guests have an obligation to show up, on time, first thing the next morning (according to the itinerary) without fail.

There’s one more, less formal understanding re. media trips: Something is sure to go terribly wrong. I’ve been on dozens of these excursions as a working journalist. I’ve organized dozens more, as a PR professional, working on behalf of various clients. When one is devising a week-long itinerary in a foreign country — for one’s own travels — something is sure to be overlooked or go sideways. When organizing for a dozen people, most of whom will be drunk 35 percent of the week? The odds only increase. The mere presence of a dozen journalistic chancers eating, drinking and indulging on someone else’s dime makes the possibility of mishap a mortal lock.

Someone, someday, will write a comprehensive and hilarious book about all the great FAM trips gone awry: who got thrown in jail, what foreign dignitary got naked, why shellfish is always a risky choice… In the meantime, journalists will merely trade these yarns back and forth like war stories. In that tradition I offer up below the itinerary from a single morning gone completely haywire, in Jakarta, during Ramadan, back in 2012. This was a trip I helped to organize and host. I promised the client I wouldn’t breathe a word until a reasonable discretionary period had passed. Still, I have changed the names to protect, not the innocent necessarily, but rather those professional reputations still in play.

This Junket did its Job

In most respects, this particular FAM proved a roaring success. It produced dozens of glowing, published pieces re. the awesome golf product on offer in and around Indonesia’s sprawling capital. To produce this content I had wrangled a genial and cosmopolitan group of 12 media and tour operators hailing from the UK, China, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and the United States. From the Fond Memory Dept., I could just as easily cite the epic karaoke session we all enjoyed, the compelling version of “Take It To The Limit” I performed with the band at our closing soirée, the five superb rounds of golf we played, or the incredible dinner we organized for 20 at the Four Seasons.

But none of those vignettes would include the burning of tires or police in combat gear.

See below a timeline of events the morning after said banquet. I can vouch for its accuracy because, like James Comey, I was moved to take contemporaneous notes, on my phone — such was the utterly random and alarming nature of the proceedings.

Read More→

SI Memories, Developmental & Professional, Come Thick & Fast

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
Dunes Club Keiser

The late-2017 sale of Sports Illustrated, TIME Magazine and other titles to Meredith Publishing, a deal made possible by an infusion of $650 million from Koch Industries’ private-equity arm, has elicited both howls of indignation — from those who fear the further right-wing weaponization of information — and an ongoing hail of gauzy nostalgia, from those who grew up loving SI and fear the sale will only further its fall from a decades-long perch atop the sports media food chain.

Here I will indulge in the latter, because I’d been meaning to post the above story in some way, shape or form ever since my friend Jammin’ ran across it last September. Sports Illustrated was not merely a staple of my young reading life, alongside The Boston Globe’s superb sports section. It was where I started my freelance-writing career. Indeed, this story above was my very first freelance piece, full stop. It warms the cockles of my heart to see it lovingly preserved online in flipbook fashion deep in something called the SI Vault. Check that: Said version has been recently disappeared. Copy and paste this URL and you can find it more conventional online form: https://www.si.com/vault/1997/10/27/233677/small-wonder-the-dunes-club-our-pick-as-the-best-nine-hole-course-in-the-country-is-twice-the-challenge-of-most-18-hole-layouts#

By 1997, when this piece was published (Oct. 27 issue), I had spent some 10 years as a working journalist, first for a collection of weekly and daily newspapers in Massachusetts, then as editor of Golf Course News, a national business journal published here in Maine. Indeed, taking that job brought me north and rescued me from the nocturnal newspaper grind. Nineteen ninety-seven was also year I left GCN to start Mandarin Media, Inc., with the secondary intention freelancing in earnest. The ensuing years would see my work appear in pretty much every major North American golf and travel magazine (several of which still exist!). That effort started here, with this Sports Illustrated feature.

I had pitched the magazine a piece ranking the best 9-hole golf courses in America, but, as often happens in the freelance milieu, the story ended up being something quite different: a feature on Mike Keiser and his 9-hole masterpiece, The Dunes Club, with a sidebar detailing the country’s other top 9s. The story itself frankly could have been better. I ended up submitting a finished draft, only to have the editor suggest a major rewrite. This I did, and then the bastard ended up running something that quite closely resembled the original version. Some old stories you read with great pride — this, alas, is not one of those. It feels cautious and dry.

SI Memories: Editorial Authority

The sidebar produced a funny moment: When we agreed on this feature and brief ranking sidebar, I launched into some lengthy disquisition on how we’d research and tabulate a proper Top 9 Nines list. The editor interrupted me and simply said, “This is SI. We’ll just tell people what we think the Top 9 is.” Such was the power, some would say hubris, of the magazine in those days.

Despite my failure to reprint this on the 20th anniversary of its publication, the experience was not without its serendipities. For a Boston-bred lad, it was fabulous to be included in any issue with Larry Bird on the cover. What’s more, while I wouldn’t say I discovered Mike Keiser, one would be hard pressed to find earlier coverage of the man who eventually revolutionized the golf resort business. When I first met him in the spring of 1997, the private, 9-hole Dunes Club was Keiser’s only connection to golf development. Today, having created five, award-winning, top-ranked courses in Oregon at Bandon Dunes, he’s also had a major hand in developing additional, no-less-heralded, multi-course projects in Nova Scotia (Cabot Links, Cabot Cliffs) and Wisconsin (the new Sand Valley), with another now planned for Scotland. All are links courses fashioned from sandy sites hundreds of miles from the beaten path. Keiser didn’t just build awesome tracks; he proved that American golfers would pay top dollar — and travel to the middle of freakin’ nowhere — to play this type of golf.

I remember sitting in the modest clubhouse at The Dunes Club with Keiser in the summer of 1997, eating hot dogs and conducting our interview when, at some point, he mentioned that he’d just purchased 2,000 acres of coastal property in Oregon, 2 hours west of Eugene and 4 hours south of Portland. He said that he planned to develop not just one course but a whole complex of them. I thought to myself at the time, “I like this guy, but he’s clearly delusional.”

It would not be the last time I mistook vision for delusion.

Why Parenting Books Never Discuss the Profound Limitations of Parental Agency

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment
parental agency

Long before I had kids, I recall my parents making the case that all three of their children had pretty much formed their basic, enduring personalities by the age of two. They said as much more than once, invariably in the act of throwing up their hands in exasperated resignation. They didn’t read parenting books. Other than Dr. Spock, few folks did during the 1960s. One reason: Much as they tried to shape their children’s characters further, or cajole them into this/that behavior (and trust me: they did this a great deal), fundamental personalities almost always prevailed.

On account of this experience, by the time their third kid (my younger brother) had reached high school, my parents had become markedly laissez-faire in dozens of ways that frankly annoyed my older sister and myself. “We never got away with that,” we’d grouse to each other.

Well, as has been the case in myriad respects, my parents were right. My kids are both graduated from college now and while I naturally believe them to be lovely, capable kids in most every way. Yet each of these young adults is each remarkably similar — in terms of sociability, focus, ambition, daring and temperament — to their respective two-year-old selves. Yeah, they’ve grown or excelled or lagged or flagged in these and various other respects. And I don’t believe anyone can or should stop parenting. I don’t think that’s possible.

But there does seem to me a remarkable, observable consistency of character that is more or less resistant to “parenting.”

Parenting Books and their Willing Audience

I’m always amused when I come across yet another parenting book reviewed in The New Yorker or New York Times. I muse at the publishing industry’s having identified and exploited this incredibly willing (read: anxious) audience. Then I laugh outright, at myself, because I nearly always read them, too. The reviews anyway.

The irony is, as parents we possess an agency that simply isn’t so strong as we want to believe. Even if we accept our limited impact, on some level, this desire for agency tends to seep into other areas we believe we can control. Those include etiquette, dress and manners; identification and pursuit of extracurricular “passions”. It extends to geography (i.e., buying houses in towns with “good” school systems); self-esteem (i.e. “premier” soccer and other invariably commercial gambits); and the entire SAT prep and college admission culture.

There’s no harm in trying all this stuff, in doing one’s best. But it’s really a hit or miss affair, I’ve come to believe. Ultimately, 9 times out of 10, it’s down to the kid and his/her fundamental self.

This is not parental fatalism. It is an attempt to recognize (with serenity) the agency one possesses. It’s an attempt to accept (without prejudice) those situations beyond one’s control; and (in a perfect world) to capably distinguish one from the other. I held onto this quote from Adam Gopnik’s January 2018 review of yet another parenting book, in the NYer:

As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized behavior is artificial and ridiculous: It means pretending to be glad to see people you aren’t glad to see, praising parties you wished you hadn’t gone to, thanking friends for presents you wish you hadn’t received. Training kids to feign passion is the art of parenting. The passions they really have belong only to them.

The Nurture Assumption

Surely environment matters. Even then, however, it’s not the environment parents provide that seems to matter most — or so writes Judith Rich Harris in the best book I ever did read on this subject, The Nurture Assumption. In short, Harris argues that we assume our kids turn out the way they do according to a pretty even split between nature (genetic inheritance) and nurture (environment). “The use of ‘nurture’ as a synonym for ‘environment’, ” Harris explains, “is based on the assumption that what influences children’s development, apart from their genes, is the way their parents bring them up.”

If this were true, siblings — who are as genetically similar as any humans can be (save identical twins); who are traditionally raised in the same household by the same parents — would all have very similar personalities. Anyone raised in a family of two or more children understands just how ridiculous that idea is.

Ever wondered why the children of recent immigrants don’t speak with accents, even though their heavily accented parents do? Or why the children of deaf/mute parents learn to speak at all? Put simply, Harris argues that a child’s peer group accounts for far more environmental influence in the long run — influence that, since Freud, had traditionally and unduly been attributed to parents.

If we’re honest with ourselves, as parents, we’d admit that our children generally do put a lot more stock in the opinions, social mores and examples of their peers. To an extent, parents can help determine or control a child’s peer groups, but those peer groups comprise the environment that matters most, and the variability of peer groups helps explain why siblings turn out so very differently.

Behavioral Genetics

Children do pick up quite a lot from their parents — most of it genetic. This is the other seminal nurture assumption: that we pick up traits and habits and behaviors by copying our parents. Harris argues, persuasively, that we humans don’t do this nearly so often as is commonly accepted. Parents assume they have this influence, but mMst of those things we attribute to parental modeling are in fact inherited from parents genetically, not environmentally.

I’m on board with this idea of behavioral genetics, too. Growing up, there were dozens of things that my mom and dad did that drove me absolutely crazy — and yet today, at 56, I find myself doing many of these same things! I didn’t “model” my behavior on them in these cases. Far from it. Still, I couldn’t resist these behaviors because they are genetically baked right in.

Which brings me back to my brother, and how my sister and I felt he got a sweet deal — coming third and last, by which time, my parents had given in to the power of personality (and behavioral genetics, though they wouldn’t have put it that way). Invariably, she and I would inveigh against this new libertine parental stance of theirs, or make some wise-ass comment in place of outright carping. At which point my mother or father would issue another pearl of wisdom, one we’d heard before, one that has nothing to do with nature or nurture but still rings true: We’ve never tried to treat everyone exactly the same around here. Everyone gets what they need.

With Marcus Smart Back, The Smaht Money’s on Boston

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

BOSTON, Mass. (April 26, 2018) — When Patrice Bergeron returned from injury during the Maple Leafs series, he made the Bruins better. But I wouldn’t say he was the difference. Too many hockey players (20 to 22 of them from any one team) participate in playoff games to connect the dots through any non-goaltender, unless that man’s name is Gretzky or Crosby. Basketball is different. The playoffs typically shorten any team’s bench to 7-9 guys. I don’t see the Celtics losing this series to the Bucks if Marcus Smart is able to play.

Smart tore a tendon in his thumb six weeks ago. Kyrie Irving went in for the first of two knee surgeries three weeks later. Irving is clearly the best player on this team. Without him, the Celtics aren’t good enough to make The Finals this season, much less win them.

But Smart’s return should win the Celtics this series and perhaps the next. He’s that good, that influential, and it’s sort of amazing how far under the radar he manages to fly.

When the playoffs started, national media and the talking heads on ESPN and TNT made a big deal about how Boston would contest these playoffs without two starters, Irving and Gordon Hayward. But the latter has been gone so long (having gruesomely wrecked his ankle in the season opener), it honestly doesn’t feel anymore like we’re playing without him. In theory, Hayward is a stud, exactly the sort of wing shooter the Celtics need. But he was a brand new free agent signing back in October. He might have taken Boston to the next level but we really don’t know for sure. [One thing is for sure: If he had played this season, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown would not have progressed as far as they have. The minutes and end-of-game possessions would not have been there for them.]

But too many folks missed the fact that Boston opened these playoffs without three starters, because Smart is one of the five best guys on this team and the best all-court defender in the NBA. He might not have started every game, but he finished every game (that mattered). Without Irving and Hayward, Boston will always struggle to score down the stretch. But with Smart guarding the other team’s best player (a role he relishes and routinely occupies), with Smart representing a massive upgrade over plucky-but-limited Shane Larkin in the guard rotation, the Celtics are a different team.

There’s no one like Mahcus

There is no one in basketball quite like Marcus Smart, and I’m not sure why the rest of the league fails to appreciate this fact. He is the best defender on the league’s top defensive team but garners no laurels. He wasn’t even named to the All-NBA Defensive Team last season, when he was healthy. See here that list of 10 honorees from 2016-17:

1st Team

Chris Paul

Patrick Beverly

Kawhi Leonard

Draymond Green

Rudy Gobert

2nd Team

Tony Allen

Danny Green

Anthony Davis

Andre Roberson

Giannis Antetokounmpo

This is a pretty fair representation of top NBA defenders for 2017-18, as well, but Chris Paul and Tony Allen are shadows of the defenders they were 5 years ago. Beverly and Kawhi have been hurt all this season. Roberson has been out since January and is a complete offensive liability. Danny Green? He blocks it well for a 3, but otherwise I don’t know what he’s doing on this list. Draymond, Gobert, Anthony Davis and the Freak are superb defenders — as big men. They are a particular type of defensive asset; they are not all-court defenders.

Once we remove those bigs, I would take Marcus Smart over any of the remaining six guys. Of those who are injured, only Kawhi compares. At 6’4” Smart can check your point guard, your shooting guard, your small forward and most of the league’s shrinking 4s. He routinely guards LeBron James and drives him crazy. He is perhaps the only guy in the league to get inside James Harden’s head.

There is no one quite like Marcus Smart playing in today’s NBA. I’ve been singing his praises for several hundred words now, but I haven’t even detailed his best qualities: He’s wicked smaht. In fact, he’s flat-out smahter and more competitive than anyone in the game today, with the possible exception of LeBron — who is so good, he allows his competitive nature to flag on occasion. Marcus never does.

He is not without fault. Marcus is not a good shooter — a reality underlined by the fact that he refuses to acknowledge it. Though he shot just 37 percent from the floor this year (30 percent from 3), Smart never hesitates; he shoots with the confidence of Bradley Beal — which, in a perverse sort of way, makes me love the guy even more.

Like I said, the Celts aren’t going to The Finals this year. Ultimately, while injuries have catalyzed the development of Brown, Tatum and Terry Rozier (which bodes well for next June), Boston doesn’t have the horses to play for a title this June. But with Smart back and Brad Stevens pulling the strings, they’ll beat the Bucks — probably tonight.

Larry Sanders: I Never Knew Ye

Larry Sanders: I Never Knew Ye

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (April 4, 2011) — I’ve never subscribed to HBO. There may have been a month here and there when it was provided to my family, by mistake, or as part of some promotion. Invariably, when our cable monolith attempted to charge us, we balked. The movie-watching we missed as a result of this cultural diminishment we didn’t see as relevant. However, each time I told Spectrum to go fuck itself, I did think twice about acess to all those episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Larry Sanders Show.

Last year, from some Bangkok street vendor, I procured the first four seasons of Curb for a ridiculously small sum. The entertainment was good. I had seen the odd 30-minute installment here and there. But ultimately I had trouble watching them en masse. After 5-6 episodes, not even a full season, I found myself worn out by the sameness of each plot: No, Larry. No, don’t do that. Oh geez…

By contrast, IFC started rebroadcasting The Larry Sanders Show in January and, with a deft flick of my DVR settings, I have proceeded to record each and every episode, in order, from the very beginning of the show’s run in 1992. It’s hard to keep up. My family rolls its eyes when they glimpse the list of recorded shows and spy this vintage Sea of Larry.

I’ll temper my ultimate, unbridled enthusiasm by saying the first two seasons of Larry Sanders were only slightly better than average — and something of a letdown when contrasted with the glowing tributes this series routinely garners from television cognoscenti. These episodes didn’t suffer from a sameness, a la Curb, but I did find myself wondering why I am supposed to care about any of the main characters who are unfailingly funny, but rather shitty.

Well, I can report that by Season 4, the show officially hit its stride. It’s not just easy for me to sit down and watch 2-3 episodes in a sitting; I make time for it. I recently watched the fictitious talk show’s 8th anniversary special. It struck me that a number of things have come together, revealing the show’s genius and explaining all the accolades I’d read and listened to over the years.

Read More→