Controversy in the Pope Room

We'd had a long day in software training. (Is there any other kind of day in software training?) There were 12 or so of us, filing out of the classroom at the end of the all-day session and ready to blow off steam. Luckily, we were on Bush Street downtown and there are plenty of steam-blowing choices within easy walking distance. After a couple of rounds at The Irish Bank, we made our way to Bucca di Beppo for dinner and several bottles of chianti.

Since our party was so big, the greeter seated us in the Pope Room, pictured above. It's exactly what it sounds like -- a round banquet room where all the decorations celebrate our two most recent pontiffs of the Catholic faith, the illustrious John Paul II and the more newly-minted Benedict XVI (seen here in the glass case atop our table).

After a few glasses of vino, I casually mentioned that the current pope had been a member of the Hitler Youth in his teenage years. No one believed me. I tried to explain that every German kid at the time was pretty much required to join the Hitler Youth, so there was no particular shame in Mr. Ratzenberger's membership. For a kid growing up in early-1940s Germany, the Hitler Youth was basically the Boy Scouts (if the Boy Scouts hated non-Aryans, that is). There's no evidence that the young Ratzenberger or anyone in his family were involved in any Nazi activity beyond dressing up in the uniforms and posing for creepy photographs. (For those of you who followed the link: yes, that's the pope.)

But it didn't matter; no one at the table was willing to accept my version of the pope's biography. So we all raised a toast to the pontiff and -- unless I'm just being paranoid -- I thought I saw his little plaster head slip me a sinister wink.

Bay Area politics in a nutshell

I snapped this in the Sunset district here in SF, walking back to my car after a late-night movie with some friends. (We saw "21," which is like "Rounders" except if "Rounders" was  really stinky.) I noticed this graffiti on the sidewalk in front of me, a perfect summary of this city's political life.

In the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, "at least it's an ethos."
 

My coach kicks ass on TV

The guy issuing the beatdown in this photo is Alex Serdyukov, my main MMA instructor at Gracie/Fairtex, where I train in the sport controversially known as "ultimate fighting." This week Alex earned himself a huge victory on national TV as a welterweight in World Extreme Cagefighting (a "feeder" subsidiary of the UFC). It's great fun to see one of your coaches handling business in front of thousands of spectators and a sizeable cable audience.

It bears mentioning that Alex is one of the many people who put the lie to the stereotype about
MMA being a "bloodsport" practiced by snarling barbarians. (Although, in fairness, Alex does
appear to be snarling in this photo.) A soft-spoken Russian immigrant, Alex earned himself a business-school degree before pursuing his pro fighting career. As a trainer, he follows the example of our mutual teachers in the Gracie family, emphasizing the application of calm, intelligence, and technique in a fight.

Alex has been a big part of my own training getting more sophisticated and productive. I'm a pretty decent jiu-jitsu player but I need work on becoming a better boxer and wrestler. Alex has been really helpful in correcting my bad fight habits and learning how to dictate a gameplan on somebody. He also cracks me up by shaking his head disapprovingly whenever someone claims to be tiring.

It turns out that mastering this sport is really hard -- who knew!? -- and it causes contusions and discoloration about the face and head; but it's also a lot of fun and downright satisfying when you're having the better
of it. There's something confidence-building about learning to stand "in the pocket" with an opponent (the pocket being the area right in front of him) and exposing yourself to damage in order to try doing some damage yourself. (It's what fighters euphemistically call "trading.")

If you get a chance to catch the replay of "WEC 33: Back to Vegas" on VERSUS Network, try and check out Alex's fight. And if it's your first experience watching MMA, try and keep an open mind about this highly misunderstood and highly awesome sport. (I sometimes wonder if I missed my calling as a defender of the sport. Playboy published my incensed letter-to-the-editor after they ran an ignorant article about it; I guess you can't count on Playboy for much, except a great reality TV show about Hefner's Bunny housemates.)

Star-struck by Lydia Millet

You don't know who Lydia Millet is. No one does. Except for the tiny readership that somehow managed to discover her surreal, satirical, and very moving fiction. Meeting this utterly obscure writer turned out to be a much bigger deal for me than meeting any of the big-wigs I've encountered in my work travels.

I recently read Millet's wonderful new novel, How the Dead Dream. The story of a young businessman who begins to face the huge issues of environmental catastrophe and species extinction, it definitely hit home with me. It also served as a reminder that great novels can come out of nowhere (in this case, from a staffer at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson), and encouragement to get in gear finishing my latest manuscript.

Happily, Lydia was in town over the weekend for a night of author readings on the theme of "Catastrophe." It's hard to imagine an event more up my alley, so I swung by to pay her my respects for her terrific novel. The readings were held at Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco -- an absolute dive, it's basically the last place in SF (short of an illicit-massage joint) where you'd expect a gaggle of literary novelists to be reading on-stage. But there was actually a nice turnout of 30 or so people to hear the readings, most of which were kind of shitty...until they finally got around to Lydia.

She read a very funny selection from the book -- smart thinking, because when you're reading to a live audience, it probably pays to go with the laughs, as opposed to reading apocalyptic passages like everyone else was doing. She was clearly "the ringer" in this crop of writers, and earned an enthusiastic round of applause when she'd finished. She was standing by herself in the back of the space, so I headed over to her intending to say just a few smart phrases and then take off.

Of course, writers are the only people around whom I get totally starstruck and tongue-tied. Big famous actors, not a problem. Sports superstars, no biggie. Mega-business luminaries, ho-hum. Obscure literary novelist from Tucson? I fall completely to pieces. I said something like: "Hi Lydia I just wanted to thank you for a great book it really means a lot to me it had quite an impact I really hope you keep it up okay thanks bye."

She was very gracious and thanked me for coming out, and I made as dignified a retreat as was possible.

Then went home and wrote for five hours without a pause, because I hope someday soon to be one of those marginal novelists reading selections in a crappy dive bar in the city. Dare to dream!

Dreaming Cool Games

Last night I dreamed up an interesting idea for a videogame. I mean literally -- I had a very detailed dream about it, and woke up with a full recollection of the details. Sometimes my subconscious is juggling so much random stuff that it reassembles into something memorable. I call these "pizza nights." In any case, it can make for surprisingly fully-formed ideas.

So here's the game: It's designed for two teams of two players each...so it's a duo facing off against another duo. The object of the game is to fight a military/political conflict against the other side, while managing the global reaction to the conflict in "the court of public opinion." Each team has a "general" and a "propagandist" -- the general is concerned with waging the combat and trying to establish military victory, while their partner the propagandist is basically a roving movie camera who tries to capture footage of the action that paints their side in the most positive/heroic light (while trying to capture enemy atrocities and paint the opposing team as devils/jackals/terrorists.) You need success on both fronts to win the game; the idea is that in the modern age, decisive military action is meaningless without a well-handled propaganda effort.

Here's the cool part: the general can improve the chances of victory by playing "rough," i.e. deploying ghastly weapons, inflicting civilian losses, and even resorting to atrocities. But the enemy's propagandist is always trying to catch these images on camera to broadcast to a horrified global TV audience. The dynamic of the game is built on this interplay -- balancing the spectrum of available military tactics with the resulting media fallout.

This would be a game that rewards "destructive" and "constructive" approaches to gameplay -- on the very same team, in fact. The general can happily concentrate on obliterating whole neighborhoods if he wants, while the propagandist can merrily play a "muckraker out to expose the horrors of war" game at the very same time. At long last, a game that warmongers and pacifists can get on board with.

I still can't think of a name for it, though. Maybe that will come to me in my next dream.

Go Speed Racer

Little-known fact: I'm a graduate of a two-day course at the Skip Barber racing school (what can I say, journalism is a career that will take you on strange detours.) There I learned the basics of race-car driving; I raced Formula 2000 cars and Dodge Vipers on a road course, and learned the basic tactics of minimizing time-around-the-track. I've never done much with the education, but when it comes to racing go-karts, you'd hope the diploma can come in handy.

Today a friend's party brought me to the track at Malibu Grand Prix -- the ultimate testing ground of human bravery. Okay, maybe not the ultimate testing ground, but the toughest testing ground available off of the Seaport exit on 101 in Redwood City. Bottom line: a serious go-kart track. I strapped into a 3/4-scale Indy-style car and took four runs at the track record.

I improved my time on each of the four runs, cutting a decent 64-second debut down to a more-respectable 60.3 seconds. The bad news: a couple of other guys had managed times in the 58-59 second range, leaving me less-than-thrilled with my results. I figured a score in the mid-50s was possible by a really skilled driver who knew the course.

Then I saw the "day's fastest lap" printout -- 42 seconds.

Then I saw the "track record" plaque -- 6.6 seconds.

And that is how much a Skip Barber primer is worth to you on a go-kart track.

In happier news, I spent some time in the arcade and cleared the first two stages of Time Crisis 2 on just one play...proof that at least my coin-up skills aren't withering.

The Morrises Take Cambridge

My sister Katie has been accepted into a doctoral program at Cambridge University, making me insanely proud of her and begging the question -- isn't that in England?? Turns out the answer is yes, which means that my favorite sis is signing up for three years of horrid weather, horrid food, and the educational opportunity of a lifetime.

"Dr. Katharine Zimmerman" will require a bit of an adjustment for me, since I'm always going to think of my sister as the tot who loved to crawl all over the exterior of my dad's car in the parking lot at 7-Eleven. Now that she's an erudite, world-traveling scholar, she completely throws off the curve of Morris-sibling education level. Case in comparison: Cambridge University was founded in 1209 and is regarded as one of the world's premier seats of higher learning; whereas the junior college I attended, West Valley College ("Go...whatever our mascot is!"), was founded in 1963, and mostly produces paralegals and Vietnamese gangsters.

But we still love our egghead sister! Congratulations, Katie...and please be on the lookout for any rampaging Normans or Vikings.