Papa, Execs, Russo and Puritans

I loathe Comcast, but let me give them credit for one thing: Chronicle Live. They picked the perfect host in Greg Papa, who generally knows his stuff and aggressively mocks the on-air help, and the show delivers better analysis of Bay Area sports than you'll find in the truncated columns of local papers. Hell, they even have the occasional Sharks piece. Ray Ratto is as bitingly dry as he is in his columns and a joy to behold in his fullest of all chins glory, and players, coaches and local wannabes get the chance to defend their stupidity or fall on their swords. Sure, there are far too many Jaymee Sire (how can that not be a porn name?) parking lot updates on Cable watch, but with the near total disappearance of morning print, this is a welcome diversion from child-rearing.

Fuck NBC. Just fuck 'em up in their sagging corporate asses. I made the sappy boomer mistake of getting my ski-loving children excited about the Olympics, but now I have to put them to bed before the event air. Nope, sorry, Lucas, you can't see the keg-humping Bode Miller try to redeem himself in the downhill. Nope, sorry, Lars, just skip drama queen Lindsay Vonn faking shin injuries and then conquering the mountain to assure herself a daytime talk show. Only NBC, in an era of Tivo, could tape delay Olympic coverage WHEN WE'RE IN THE SAME FUCKING TIME ZONE AS THE HOST COUNTRY. I renounce my former position on the death penalty and call for the summary execution of all television executives who did not work for HBO between The Sopranos and The Wire. I'd like to see this on on Wide World of Asshole Executions immediately after John Boehner gets raped by rhinos in Madison Square Garden.

Richard Russo has a deft pen, and is perhaps the most generous novelist working today. He has total command of his material, but he will not make you work. All plots twists get unraveled, all questions answered. But that is not backhanded criticism, for the man delivers relentlessly sharp observations about human failings, and, even more shockingly, he's consistently funny. Straight Man is a breeze at 400 pages, and yet the characters are richly drawn, the plots plausible, the satire sharp, and the set scenes hilarious. Yea, the dialogue is a tad too quick for real life, but this is what popular fiction ought to be.

Sarah Vowell has a made a name for herself on NPR, but I only listen to KNBR because public radio is a bit like eating your vegetables while the ghost of Andrea Dworkin spanks you with a Modern American Library editon of The Awakening. I have seen her on The Daily Show, though, and despite her high quirk mannerisms and Betty Boop voice, I was intrigued by the premise of her latest book, The Wordy Shipmates, a modern take on ye olde Puritans with the promise of breaking through the stereotypes of finger-wagging and no-fun zones. And she delivers, at least in terms of humanizing the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by illustrating the range of their cowering before god and the intensity of their various forms of self-denial. Her hero is Roger Williams, a man so devout that even the Puritans found him a self-righteous prick and kicked him out of the colony. Vowell also finds him a bit of a madman but appreciates his pluck and his unwillingness to compromise on principle. One could argue that kind of rigidity is what gets us into so many problems on so many occasions, but Vowell argues that his precepts tend to favor the everyman (and even womyn) and lend themselves to religious tolerance in the here and now, convinced as he is that his enemies will soon be doing star turns in Dante's deepest circles. Vowell relies a tad too heavily on translating the events and ideas of the time into snappy modern jargon, but overall it's a nice refresher on our founders, the ones who did not dig barbecue, hookers or Schlitz Malt Liquor.