Pitchers and catchers are reporting for duty, and the marathon that is the major league baseball season will soon commence with the cactus and grapefruit leagues splitting squads and testing arms on the way to telling us almost nothing of value in terms of accurately predicting the events of the upcoming season. In the vein of pointlessly speculating, and in lieu of more productive activity in the real world, let’s examine the prospects for the 2014 Kansas City Royals. Continue reading →
To my untrained non-Peloponnesian eye, save for the superb and cheap souvlaki/gyros sandwiches everywhere, the Greek financial crisis has not made anything in Athens more affordable for tourists, but despite the heavy price tag for a trip to the birthplace of western civilization, I ventured forth in search of answers to the eternal questions put forth by the philosophers of old.
Indiana Jones hesitates to take the idol, unsure whether the Incas forged it during the steroid era.
Maybe Indy wouldn’t be so upset about the Baseball Hall of Fame insanity that we’re subjected to in the new millennium, but I’m growing very weary. Today, around ten players who are obvious, no doubt, sure-fire first-ballot hall of famers were given the shaft by the collected baseball writers of America, most of whom were left out in the cold because they are proven/admitted/suspected steroid users and a few because the voters have no understanding of how to measure greatness. Continue reading →
David Stern is retiring soon, because apparently Satan’s powers are more limited than once thought, but before the man leaves us with the yawn-fest that is on-court NBA basketball, we get one more parting gift of his organization’s focus on profits at the expense of integrity. Continue reading →
In 331 B.C., Alexander III of Macedonia journeyed from a new city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, a city that would soon give rise to one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, and which three-hundred years later would provide the last gasp refuge for Mark Antony and Cleopatra against the onslaught of the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
Modestly dubbed Alexandria by the conqueror of the known world, he walked through roughly 300 miles of barren desert from the city to the Siwa oasis, home of the Oracle of Amun, who promptly (one can only assume it was prompt, what with the conquerer of the known world showing up on your doorstep in the middle of the Sahara desert) informed Alexander he was the son of Zeus, a child of the Gods, helping to solidify his rule in Egypt. And providing a bit of an ego boost, I would imagine.
No simple task given the failure roughly two-hundred years earlier by the King of Persia, Cambyses the Second, son of Cyrus the Great and predecessor to Darius I, who himself gained fame by beginning a campaign of retribution against the Greek armies of Athens and Sparta, among others, and who died before the ultimate defeat his empire suffered not long after led to the rapid Hellenization of the world and much, much later to this:
Anyway, Cambyses II took his own palm reading from the oracle badly (history is unclear on exactly why the temple needed to be razed to the ground, but my money says the oracle made gentle, good-natured fun of Cambyses the Second’s name and lineage, and there was, as the ancients were often wont to do, a bit of an overreaction) and sent an army of 50,000 men to destroy the temple. To a man, they were lost in the swirling sand storms, becoming a legend, a historical question mark that passed through the ages and also led much, much later to this, if a little indirectly:
These photos were taken just outside the central square in Sarajevo after Bosnia qualified for its first ever World Cup as an independent nation. Continue reading →
Traveling when you’re sick is the worst. I spent a few minutes trying to think of a good metaphor for the experience, and the best I could come up with is that tourism while ill is like trying to enjoy a movie while on a roller coaster, which makes a lot of sense to me, given how sick I get on roller coasters, but largely fails to impress in the grammar department.
Regardless of Strunk and White’s opinion on the aforementioned, I came down with the flu two days before leaving Istanbul for Cappadocia, but there was no way I was missing out on one of the great natural wonders of the world.
Goreme
Having said that, this was one of the lamest trips ever. I did very little. I saw precious little. I somehow managed to still have some fun in between the frequent bouts of fatigue/blahness, but most of that was reserved for playing tavla while being stalked by a vicious demon cat.
Vicious Demon Cat
Somehow, Ferda manages to tame Vicious Demon Cat
Ferda and I flew from Istanbul to Nevsehir airport, which is in Central Anatolia, aka the middle of Turkey, aka the middle of nowhere. A forty-minute shuttle ride to our hotel in Goreme, one of the largest towns in the Cappadocia region, and the first step was to lie down and rest. Super lame, but super necessary, what with me being a delicate flower and all. Continue reading →
Split is that bizarre animal that defies every attempt at singular categorization. The city on the coast of the Adriatic is almost hideously ugly at times, a shocking surprise coming after the uniformly lovely Dubrovnik, and almost every view that didn’t include the sea during the bus ride in was ruined with some factory or Soviet-era architectural relic that was continuing to fight the good fight against the tyranny of pretty. Continue reading →
Skopje is a bit of a dump. There has to be a more delicate way to describe a city with some of the most impressive statues I’ve ever seen, great food, a huge and hugely impressive old bazaar and uniformly friendly people save for one jerky cab driver who overcharged me and then got pissy when I brought the subject to his attention because I was an American and could easily afford it, but when push comes to shove, sometimes the simplest terms are the best at conveying the reality before us. Continue reading →
Bitola is a gorgeous little town in southern Macedonia, though little is a relative term in describing the second largest city in the country. Roughly three hours from Skopje by bus, the ride there was largely uneventful save for the brief stop at a gas station/convenience store in which Ferda took the opportunity to hop off and stretch her legs, but failed to return before the bus began to pull out of the station. I did my best to yell in Turkish and English, and it was either that or my wild gesticulations that stopped the driver from leaving her stranded in the middle of Macedonia. He also very graciously arranged a taxi to our hotel, speaking with the driver on our behalf once we’d arrived in the outskirts of Bitola.
The highlight of the city for me was seeing the ruins of the ancient city of Heraclea Lyncestis, founded by Alexander the Great’s father Philip II of Macedon in the middle of the fourth century BC. Most of the relics, buildings and monuments still standing are from the Roman era several centuries later. The amphitheater is especially impressive, in excellent condition, so much so that performances still take place there during the summer. There were also a number of truly spectacular mosaics left from the Byzantine era, but photographs were unfortunately not allowed. Continue reading →
Summer of Baseball 