"DUCKTALES Remastered": No More Games

David Gerstein was in the area doing some research and stayed overnight at our place.  Some of his and my time together included a bit of ogling of the "movie" (between-game-play) portion of the DuckTales Remastered video game.  Never having been a gamer, THIS is the part of greatest interest to me.  It is the closest we're ever going to get to a 101st episode of the series (or, if you prefer, a second theatrical feature film).

I'll post some thoughts on the action when I have time. For the moment, I'm concentrating on doing screen-grabbing from the second-season eps in preparation for resuming my regular RETROSPECTIVES in January.

Book Review: A GAME OF BRAWL by Bill Felber (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

Thanks to expansion, divisional play, and wild cards, we will most likely never again see a "good, old-fashioned" pennant race in baseball.  This book tells the story of the first pennant race to truly capture the entire country's attention.  While the setting and the baseball were old-fashioned, to describe the emotions involved as "good" would be somewhat misleading.  In 1897, the much-hated, cutthroat Baltimore Orioles did vicious battle with the comparatively mannerly, yet no less determined, Boston Beaneaters -- the ancestors of today's Atlanta Braves -- for the top spot in the unwieldy, 12-team National League.  The battle reached a fevered climax when the two teams played a late-season three-game series in Baltimore that author Felber, with only slight exaggeration, calls the greatest event in the country's sporting history up until that time.

Major-league competition in the 1890s was warped by the huge gap between the league's haves and have-nots and, more to the immediate point, by the popular idea that dirty play and intimidation of the umpire were simply part of the game.  The Orioles weren't the only team that used chicanery and bullying to triumph; they were simply the best at it and had better personnel to execute the gamy game plan, including such future Hall of Famers as John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Wilbert Robinson, and manager Ned Hanlon.  The "original O's" won three straight NL titles between 1894 and 1896 and seemed primed for a "four-peat" in '97, but the Beaneaters, whom the Orioles had supplanted as the league's top club, overcame a sluggish start to challenge the champions.  In the process, the Boston club, cheered on by the country's first organized fan contingent, the Royal Rooters, swept up a large number of neutral fans who dearly wanted baseball's original "evil empire" to be humbled.

Due to the frequent descriptions of game action, Felber's book is a bit of a dry read at times, but he mixes in occasional diversions highlighting other aspects of the game in the 1890s, such as the battle over the propriety of Sunday baseball, the hellacious treatment given to umpires (which was frequently reciprocated by the feistier ones), and the use of marionette re-creations in theaters to enable fans to follow their teams on the road.  The world may have been a much lower-tech place back then, but the "prehistoric" version of modern fan culture made up in sheer enthusiasm what it may have lacked in sophistication.

RIP Captain Harvey's Restaurant and Coffee with T.

Two local eateries of Nicky's and my acquaintance closed their doors recently.  Actually, Coffee with T. would be better described as a "nibblery," since its main selling point was -- you guessed it -- caffeinated drinks of various sorts.  After the demise of Owings Mills' Java Journeys a few years ago, Coffee with T. was one of the very few coffee-centric joints within a reasonable distance of where we live.  It was located in Stevenson Village, a collection of eclectic shops and a tiny post office in "the heart of Stevenson" (a somewhat unverifiable claim given that the town of Stevenson doesn't consist of very much to begin with).  I went to Coffee with T. to get lunch on those occasions when I needed to mail something and didn't have the time or inclination to wait in line at the much larger Owings Mills P.O.  I might still be able to do that, since the site has been turned into a satellite of Stone Mill Bakery, a larger (and much more outrageously overpriced) concern of similar type, but I would feel better about patronizing the business if it were still a go-it-alone concern.

Owings Mills itself suffered a much bigger dining loss in early November when Captain Harvey's Seafood Restaurant closed its doors.  The restaurant had existed since the 1930s and had been in its location on Reisterstown Road for 60 years. Though it is one of a relatively small number of higher-end, "non-chain" dining establishments in the area, it took Nicky and I a while before we decided to give it a try.  Perhaps it was the yardarm roadside sign, perhaps the crabhouse attached to the side of the main dining area like an oversized barnacle, but we rarely drove by it without making some joke about the proprietors greeting patrons with "Welcome Aboard!" or there being old fishing nets and crab pots tacked on the dining-room walls.  In downtown Baltimore, there's a seafood place that is literally shaped like a boat, and we figured that Captain Harvey's, for all of its conventional exterior looks, was probably such a place.

When we finally decided to gird our loins (not in public, mind you) and visit the Captain's quarters, the place turned out to be... not that bad.  Since we are not big fish, crab, or lobster eaters, the two big selling points for us were the weekly non-seafood dinner specials (beef tenderloin, fried chicken, etc.) and the everything-included Thanksgiving dinner.  On the few occasions we visited, the food was at least reasonably decent.  The wood-paneled, darkish main dining area and dark patterned rug, however, simply screamed "70s."  Since the place was partially rebuilt in 1972 after it was damaged by a fire, I suppose that we shouldn't have been all that surprised by the decor.  The refusal to change said decor, however, probably made it harder to attract a younger clientele in recent years.  Nicky suggested that the restaurant had to close because many of its key patrons had died off, and that seems a reasonable conclusion. 

Whereas Coffee with T. was at least replaced by another, somewhat similar establishment, Captain Harvey's suffered the indignity of being bought out by the Royal Farms convenience-store chain.  For the moment, the crabhouse is still open, but the place's supplies are slowly being sold off.  It's a sad way to end 80 years in business, but the dining world, like the rest of the cosmos, does move.

More Hoops, More Hooves

This week, for the first time ever, Stevenson's men's basketball team received a vote in the d3hoops.com Top 25 poll.  The Mustangs are 6-1 following a couple of tough conference road wins at Hood and at Arcadia, the latter in double OT.  The girls have also rebounded from an 0-3 start, posting four straight wins and taking first place in their conference.  This bids fair to be SU's most interesting season of hoops in quite a while.

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**PONY SPOILERS**

The first two half-hour episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 4 were pretty decent, all things considered, but they were a "fur piece" from completely nit-free.  "Castle Mane-ia" went all Scooby-Doo on us as the "Mane 6" (well, most of them, anyway) took turns having the bejabbers scared out of them in the abandoned castle that once belonged to Princesses Luna and Celestia.  Before you ask:  Yes, the ponies were split up, but no, they didn't split up DURING the adventure; they actually arrived at the castle in groups.  Sounds overly convenient, I know, but there it is.  The ep introduced what looks to be the "official replacement" for the moral-bearing "letters to Princess Celestia" and teased us at the very end with the unresolved appearance of a mysterious figure; no clue as of yet as to who said figure might be, though.

"Daring Don't" delivered a real sucker punch as it was revealed that Rainbow Dash's "fictional" heroine, Daring Do, actually does exist and that her book-length adventures are merely retellings of her real exploits.  After playing the compleat fangirl for a while, Rainbow Dash gets to help the notoriously solitary Daring on her latest mission.  The episode incorporates ideas from Indiana Jones movies, The Lord of the Rings, and (yes, indeed) DuckTales, and the mixture makes for a lot of fun... but hoo, boy, does it open up a giant can of worms regarding what is "real" and what is "fictional" in the MLP universe.  I find it extremely hard to believe that Daring Do, her archvillainous opponent Ahuizotl, Ahuizotl's minions, and a giant, vaguely Mayan-esque temple have existed in Equestria for this long without anypony getting wise to the fact or intervening in the struggle.  And I don't even have an elaborate series of fanfics about "the real Daring Do" hanging in the balance.

Music, The Final Frontier

I generally find "flash mobs" to be annoying, but not this one, which took place at the National Air and Space Museum the other day.  This was a really nice tribute to the season by the U.S. Air Force Band.  Now, just watch some secular Grinch or other lodge a complaint about the playing of a Christmas-affiliated hymn on government property...

For those keeping score, this was my 800th blog post!

Book Review: IKE'S BLUFF by Evan Thomas (Little Brown, 2012)

Dwight Eisenhower has long since been "rehabilitated" as an excellent Chief Executive, and Thomas' book contributes its own mite to the reassessment, demonstrating how Eisenhower managed to keep the peace during the supposedly placid, but actually quite perilous, 1950s. Ironically, Ike did this by keeping friends and foes alike guessing as to whether or not he would carry through on his administration's stated policy of "massive" nuclear retaliation against any Communist threat.  At the same time, drawing upon the immense fund of good will and trust that he had banked during his service as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II and later head of NATO, Eisenhower held the line as much as he could against "unnecessary" defense spending.  Hard as it may be to believe today, he had as much trouble defending his defense policies from ambitious Democrats (John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, to name just two) as he did calming the fears of right-wingers in the Republican party.  The famous farewell speech in which Ike warned against the "military-industrial complex" was his parting shot in this sometimes-visible, sometimes-subterranean internecine war.

This is not a full-fledged biography of Eisenhower so much as a review of his foreign and defense policies, though a fair bit of personal and cultural detail is included (Thomas appears to have cribbed energetically from William Manchester's THE GLORY AND THE DREAM on the latter score).  Even those who have a fair degree of familiarity with the 50s will find some interesting tidbits here.  For example, while I knew that Ike had some serious medical problems (including a heart attack) while in office, I was unaware of the extent and severity of many of these problems.  Eisenhower's ability to hold it together despite these physical issues and a terrible temper that only rarely surfaced in public reminded me of a bit of how George Washington suppressed his own inner demons to present that famed surface imperturbability.  With the fate of the world (if not humanity) at stake throughout his Presidency, Ike's balancing act may have been even more impressive.  Like many of the successful modern Republican Presidents, he had the self-confidence and self-discipline to allow himself to be "misunderestimated" while accomplishing many of his goals out of public view.  In that respect, he is a good role model for any ambitious GOP Presidential candidate of today.