Winning Chess Brilliancies

Title: Winning Chess Brilliancies

Author: Yasser Seirawan

via Amazon

Grandmaster and expert chess writer Yasser Seirawan provides analysis of twelve of his favorite professional chess showdowns.  Whereas his books normally focus on a particular aspect of the game - Tactics, Strategy, Openings, etc. - Brilliancies encompasses all, providing the full-game context his other volumes generally lack.  Chess folklore runs deep and the author provides insights into several of the top players of the late 20th century.  Included are the four most famous champions of the era: Fischer, Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov.  There are plenty of other names new to me as well.

The book begs a question: is chess a sport?  Seirawan refers to it as such several times but I'm not entirely convinced.  And if chess is a sport, are all tabletop games?  ESPN airs poker tournaments, after all.  Where is the line between the two if there is one?

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) seems as authentic an authority on the distinction as any.  The IOC recognizes both chess and bridge as "mind sports."  Chess has been featured at the Asian Games twice this century.  Chess was on the short list of new sports considered for the 2020 Olympics and is applying again for 2024.  Interestingly, it is not rejected outright as the motor sports are, though the international auto racing and motorcycle racing associations are also both recognized by the IOC.  Perhaps if the games are ever included in the Olympic lineup, I will feel differently but for now, I don't consider chess a sport.

More important to my reading habits and blogging purposes, GoodReads doesn't list chess books as sports books.  Though, interestingly, I first learned the names Karpov and Kasparov from a Sports Illustrated article in the mid-'80s chronicling their first world championship match, an encounter also documented in Winning Chess Brilliancies.  I can't deny that the sports fan in me enjoys a presentation of the game such as the one Seirawan offers here.  We see contrasting styles between the classical and modern approaches.  We have glimpses into the psychological battle within a tense match as well as the intense preparation grandmasters do ahead of time.  Seirawan includes two of his own games which is a little vain but it does afford more personal insights.

I will not pretend I followed every alternate thread Seirawan suggested in his analyses.  It's definitely the sort of book with which it's easy to get lost in the details.  I'm not sure I learned anything new from the book.  However, it is a worthy supplement to Seirawan's other Winning Chess volumes as he clearly documents how the players follow general principles, along with when they violate them and why.  As with the others, I will keep Winning Chess Brilliancies around for reference as I seek to develop my own chess game.

Squid Mixes: Breakfast Manhattan?

My wife and daughter made breakfast for dinner on Friday night: blueberry waffles and bacon.  My wife suggested Manhattans to drink and it seemed a fine occasion for an experiment.  How might one create a Breakfast Manhattan?  There are recipes around, of course.  The simplest one I found was this one from Difford's Guide.  We didn't have any marmalade (not really a fan anyway) so that wasn't gonna happen.  For the initial attempt, I simply switched out the usual Angostura bitters for orange bitters.  The result was perfectly pleasant, though not especially breakfasty.  In fact, basic Manhattan recipes allow for the substitution.

How might I fix that?  The basic idea of a fruity infusion seems a good one though I don't want to go so far that it overpowers the other flavors, always a risk with citrus and the marmalade would.  How about switching out the vermouth for triple sec?  Well, then the cocktail is called a whiskey sidecar, perhaps an acceptable alternative.  We like sidecars.  Or could I split the difference and use a combination of both vermouth and triple sec?  Would the grape/orange combo be weird?

Obviously, further studies will be required.


Squid on the Vine

Les Deux Moulins, Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2018
Strong apple and pear
My rating: 8.4

Cento Cavalli, Terre Siciliane Nero d'Avola 2018
Chocolate-covered cherry
Maybe too sweet
Astringent
My rating: 8.2

On the Coffee Table: House of M

Title: House of M
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Olivier Coipel

via Amazon

House of M was Marvel's major comic book event of 2005 and the eight issues collected here launched the story.  While an ailing Scarlet Witch is struggling to hold the fabric of the universe together, both the Avengers and the X-Men are thrust into an alternate reality.  The mutants role over mankind with Magneto at the helm.  Only Wolverine remembers the way things used to be.

There's nothing like an Avengers story to bring a cast of thousands.  The movies only scratch the surface.  Plus you throw the X-Men on top of all that.  There are a lot of characters to keep track of here!  I am grateful for the movies and for what limited comic book experience I already had.  Despite it all, I was still mostly able to grasp the broader story.  There are some great what-ifs, including what if Gwen Stacey had lived.

A couple of important differences between the Marvel comic books of the 1960s and those of the 21st century:

• There is less text on the page now than there was in early eras.  This leaves a lot more room and storytelling heft for the artwork.
• Panel layout is more varied and less predictable.  This can be confusing in trying to follow the story in proper sequence.

Like I said, these eight issues are only the beginning.  I'm not in any rush yet but at some point, I may seek out more.

Marvel Immersion Project: The Amazing Spider-Man #22-28

The beauty of animated characters is that they are immune from the effects of aging.  Or at least, they can be.  Bart Simpson has been on television for over three decades and hasn't aged a day.  Our daughter is an Archie comics aficianado so I asked her if that gang is still in high school after all these years.  She reports that while there are some tangent, hypothetical timeline arcs that offer glimpses of later life, in the main core story all of the principals are, in fact, still teenagers.  81 years is a long time to wait to graduate.

It didn't take quite so long for Peter Parker.  In issue #28, Petey gets his diploma along with an academic scholarship to Empire State University.  And who won the athletic scholarship to the same fine institution?  Flash Thompson, naturally. 

My Recent Reads

The Amazing Spider-Man #22
Originally Published May 10, 1965
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Steve Ditko

via Marvel Database

• Villains: Crafty Clown, Ringmaster and the Masters of Menace, the group previously known as The Circus of Crime.  Frustrated with Ringmaster, they kick him out and choose the Clown as the new leader.
• We discover a Spidey weakness: he won't fight a female villain. This works out well for Princess Python.  I recall Batman had similar issues with Catwoman in the beginning (see here).

via Marvel Database

 

The Amazing Spider-Man #23
Originally Published April 10, 1965
Lee/Ditko

• Villains: Green Goblin and The Gangsters
• Frederick Foswell - aka The Big Man - is out of jail and now working as an investigating reporter for The Daily Bugle.  He seems to have a connection with the Green Goblin, too.

via Marvel Database

• It only took two-and-a-half years but we finally see a black person in the series: a police officer.

The Amazing Spider-Man #24
Originally Published May 10, 1965
Lee/Ditko

• Villain: Mysterio, masquerading as a psychiatrist
• Hallucinated (but not really): Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Vulture

The Amazing Spider-Man #25
Originally Published June 10, 1965
Lee/Ditko

via Wikipedia

• Nemesis: J. Jonah Jameson, using a robot built by a Dr. Smythe (the robot in this issue is the one in the lower left)
• A very important character is introduced: Mary Jane Watson!  But we don't get to see her face yet.  According to Betty Brant and Liz Allan, Miss Watson is movie-star beautiful.

The Amazing Spider-Man #26
Originally Published July 1, 1965
Lee/Ditko

• Beatles reference!  July 1965 was also the month the movie Help! opened in theaters. 

• Villains: Green Goblin and Crime-Master  

via Marvel Database

• Frederick Foswell is connected to the villains' machinations but as yet, it is unclear exactly how.
• We also meet The Patch, a police informant.

The Amazing Spider-Man #27
Originally Published August 1, 1965
Lee/Ditko

• The Green Goblin, Crime-Master story continues.
• Foswell's connection is revealed!  He is The Patch.  I was fooled, twice.  For a while, I thought he might be Green Goblin.  For a while, I thought he might be the Crime-Master.

The Amazing Spider-Man #28
Originally Published September 1, 1965
Lee/Ditko

• Fantastic cover.  Ditko was especially good at the trippy, pre-psychedelic stuff.  A good fit for the era just around the corner:

via Marvel Database

• Villain: The Molten Man
• As mentioned above, Peter Parker graduates from high school.

Star Trek: We'll Always Have Paris

Episode: "We'll Always Have Paris"

Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 1, Episode 24

Original Air Date: May 2, 1988

via Memory Alpha

A time distortion is quickly followed by a distress call from Dr. Paul Manheim (Rod Loomis), a scientist once kicked out of the Federation Science Institute for unauthorized time experiments.  Evidently, something has gone wrong with Manheim's current work and our Enterprise heroes rush to the rescue.  For Captain Picard, this is tricky personal territory as Manheim's wife Jenice (Michelle Phillips) is a significant ex-girlfriend.  Dr. Crusher works to save Paul's life while Jean-Luc confronts regrets from his own past.

This story of lost love, including its title, is largely inspired by Casablanca, the 1942 cinema masterpiece starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.  Early in the episode, Riker, Troi and Picard discuss an old bar they know called the Blue Parrot Cafe, also a locale name borrowed from Casablanca.  What could have been one of the season's stronger episodes was negatively impacted by the Writer's Guild strike at the time.  Filming had already begun before the production staff realized the script wasn't quite finished.

I have a little tidying to do.  With Tasha's death in the previous episode (see here), the Scotty chair in the Star Trek legacy pantheon (see here) is now vacant.  In the initial exercise, I assigned the quality of loyalty to TOS's chief engineer as his main contribution to the broader narrative.  Will Riker is the best choice to pick up the baton from here, his devotion to the ship, his captain and his duty being the prime driver for his character.  As noted in my original TNG post, I was tempted to put Riker in this spot from the beginning but then I wouldn't have known what to do with Tasha.  So, the legacy of the Scotty character, in this strange, self-devised game of mine, shall run as follows:

Scotty = Tasha = Riker (originally Will Dekker line)

Acting Notes

via Wikiquote

Michelle Phillips is the first but not the last TNG guest star who has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in her case as a member of the Mamas and the Papas.  She was born Holly Michelle Gilliam, June 4, 1944 in Long Beach, California.  After Michelle's mother died of a brain aneurysm when Michelle was five years old, her father moved the family to Mexico for six years.  They moved back to Los Angeles when Michelle was 13.  She left for San Francisco to pursue a modeling career while still in high school.  There, she met John Phillips who divorced his first wife in order to marry Michelle.  She was only 18.

John and Michelle formed the Mamas and the Papas along with Cass Elliott and Denny Doherty in 1965.  The band became one of the iconic acts in the folk rock scene of the late '60s, their first three albums certified Gold.  Success was short-lived.  Michelle and John divorced in 1969 and the band was finished for good by 1971.  Many of their songs remain classics of the era, including their calling card, co-written by John and Michelle:



After the split, Michelle embarked upon what turned out to be quite a successful acting career.  She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in 1973's Dillinger.  Television has been particularly kind.  In addition to numerous guest appearances, she was in the principal cast of Knots Landing for 88 episodes.

Michelle is the last surviving member of the Mamas and the Papas.  Her daughter Chynna Phillips was one of the members of the vocal group Wilson Phillips.

On the Coffee Table: Black Panther

Title: Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book One
Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Artist: Brian Stelfreeze

via Amazon

Title: Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book Two
Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Artists: Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Laura Martin

via Amazon

In 2016, a new Black Panther comic book series was launched with esteemed author/journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates as head writer.  The two books listed above collect issues #1-8 along with three classic comics.  Fantastic Four #52 (first published in 1966) features the original introduction of the Black Panther character while Jungle Action #6-7 (1973) introduce Killmonger, Black Panther's nemesis in both Coates's story and the blockbuster film.

Wakanda is in turmoil.  A superhuman terrorist group called The People is encouraging the populace in armed rebellion.  T'Challa (Black Panther) struggles to reunite the people and regain control of his nation.  He even enlists some despicable nation-builders to consult though, thankfully, he doesn't follow their advice too far.  The story challenges the very idea of monarchy, a long-standing conflict within the Black Panther idiom if the earlier issues provided are anything to go on.

The early comics, in particular, leave me confronting an uncomfortable question: is the Black Panther story racist?  Is inclusion coming at a cost?  I have no problem identifying Star Trek's "Code of Honor" episode as racist.  Is Black Panther so different?  I don't feel it's an issue with the more recent series.  Having a black and racially conscious author like Coates and a black and racially conscious film director like Ryan Coogler guiding the character's arc in the 21st century is a good thing.  But when white Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Black Panther in 1966, perhaps the politics were sketchier.

As I work my way through the early Spider-Man issues, the lack of black and brown faces on the streets of New York City is both astonishing and preposterously unrealistic.  The first black character I saw was a police officer in #23.  So, inclusion was definitely an issue at the time.  Still is half a century later, appallingly.  Having any black face on the page or on the screen seems a revolution, let alone a character with nuance or even one the consumer is encouraged to root for.  Once you've crossed that inclusion threshold, the slope gets slippery awful quick.  Why not a story set in modern black America rather than going to Africa?  And if you must go to Africa, why must everyone be outfitted according to Euro-American stereotypes?  Is it even entirely Stan and Jack's fault?  Were these the sorts of compromises that had to be made in order for the book to get published for fear of alienating what I assume was a predominantly white readership? 

I can't find any articles examining the comic books along these lines, though there are plenty in regards to the movie.  I want to focus on the comics for this post but for anyone interested, these folks write more thoughtfully on the matter than I could anyway:

• "Black Panther Is Great.  But Let's Not Treat It as an Act of Resistance." - Khanya Khondlo Mtshali
• Kimberle Crenshaw
• "'Black Panther' Is Not the Movie We Deserve" - Christopher Lebron
• "Black Panther Is a Deeply Satisfying, and a Deeply Troubling Film, for What It Delivers and What It Does Not" - Hamid Dabashi

Getting back to A Nation Under Our Feet, Coates's language is beautiful and the artwork is outstanding.  As with many contemporary comics, the reader is expected to know a lot going in.  I was glad to have seen the movie as I would have had difficulty keeping up with all of the characters otherwise.  I felt more secure by the time I got to Book 2.  Coates, an avowed feminist, has gotten a lot of credit for elevating the female characters and Coogler has certainly followed his lead in that regard.  I'm up for more, with the character in general and this story in particular.

Squid Eats: Subway

via Wikimedia Commons

We need to talk about fast food.  Rest assured, I require no convincing that it is emblematic of all that is horrible in our modern consumer culture.  It's bad for the environment.  It's bad for our health.  It's bad for our society.  Indeed, I realize it's not even good food.  But sometimes it is damned convenient and ruthlessly reliable.  As with other aspects of our dietary life, it is highly ritualistic in the sense, at least for me, that I always get it in particular circumstances.  I'm not talking weekly or even monthly.  But within a broader time frame, I will confess to eating it regularly.

In particular, let's talk about Subway.  There is a franchise in the town where I teach and there are a couple nights every year when I have about an hour between the end of one meeting and the beginning of an evening commitment.  No time to run home.  Going to the grocery store seems like too much hassle and doesn't really provide preferable quick options.  Bringing something from home requires too much advance planning.  And, I will admit, it does have the seductive appeal of a mild indulgence.  Besides, it's Subway.  That is the healthier, more responsible alternative to the Scottish Bistro, right?

Right?

I love a good submarine (not subway!!!) sandwich as I love few things.  (In Vermont, they're called grinders.)  I have devoted considerable time and thought to the elements of the perfect sandwich (read here).  Given access to a full kitchen and prepped ingredients, I am fully confident that I could prepare a superior sandwich on my own.  If I lived in New York City rather than northwest Vermont, I could easily acquire a more satisfying meal at a corner deli.  But again, given the circumstances, I have neither.  Subway it is. 

I didn't grow up with Subway.  Maryland and Virginia are still well-served by a robust local chain: Jerry's Subs & Pizza.  I didn't encounter the global operation until college.  Subway does require a little more patience than its competitors but the relatively fresh ingredients (are they really?) will generally win out for me if I have a few extra minutes to spare.

If you check the nutritional stats between Subway and McDonald's, Subway does offer a broader range of healthier, less fatty options.  But, and this is a huge condition, one must choose carefully.  Including cheese on that sandwich?  How about mayonnaise or one of those other tantalizing squeeze-bottled condiments?  Advantage negated.  Even if you stick to the healthier choices, you're still getting a lot more sodium than you need, especially if you're adding a bag of chips to your meal.

And no, the ingredients, even the vegetables, are not as fresh as they seem.  Fresh is an illusion for all chain restaurants, even the sit-down places like Red Lobster or Olive Garden.  I know this.  Under the right circumstances, I guess I've decided I can live with it.

I suppose that's what it comes down to in the end.  Fast food is an inexorable part of the devil's bargain I and billions of others have made in navigating life in the 21st century.  I know the choices I make are often, in ways both large and small, damaging to the greater good and even my own.  But they make my life incrementally easier.  I'm not proud of this.  But it is the truth. 

For the record, my order: foot-long turkey on white, no cheese, not toasted, all the veggies, mayo (my guilty pleasure), no chips, tap water.  Met the factory specs very nicely.  Done in plenty of time to make my call at 5.