Thought on Lew Perkins and the KU ticket scandal

1. I'm always really, really pissed off when tickets are distributed straight to scalpers*. It completely undermines the system because the whole idea of printing tickets with a value on them is to set their price. All tickets should be sold directly to the fans at face value, with a limited number being set aside some for players' families and other big friends of the department. Zero should be distributed to known scalpers. The athletic department's job is to make money but also to put fans in the seats and give them a good experience. Giving them to the Pump Brothers or anyone else who resells them is ripping off your fans. Period.

2. As for Lew's culpability, an AD should have some idea of where the tickets are going if he's making true fans pay out the ass for them in the form of donations. Maybe not Lew, but somebody Lew employs, should know who's sitting in the best seats and if he doesn't know who they are, he should know how they got their tickets. Maybe that was Rodney Jones, which would be the ultimate betrayal, but as somebody said previously. If big donors, or even medium donors, aren't getting good seats, that is something that should be looked into. I don't know if Lew should get fired for this because it's a decision outside my level of knowledge and expertise, but I think he should be giving the exact same length of rope as other employees fired by him.

3. The exercise equipment is probably not a big deal and he has already paid fair rental value, but I also think anyone who deals with NCAA compliance and ethical rules would absolutely know it's wrong to accept a gift like that. How can he negotiate the morass of ridiculous NCAA regulations and think it's totally fine to accept a high value gift for free?

4. I think one of the major problems we have here is that the Athletic Director has too many responsibilities. They're managing the athletics side which deals with hiring/firing coaches, addressing issues with players like fights and grades, NCAA compliance and making other decisions that affect players and fans. Then there are the business decisions like raising revenue and building new facilities. I honestly think they could be two different jobs just like with professional sports where you have both a general manager and a president of operations or whatever they call it. Maybe they already do divide the labor, and if they do, it should be more apparent to the fans and media who's in charge of what so we know whose head to call for (if
one needs calling for).

*This is especially true with TicketMaster and tickets for concerts. I know a person in the ticket industry who has kenfirmed to me that tickets that never go on sale to the public and are set aside for the secondary market aka scalpers.

An overlooked potentially keystone species is disapprearing

Great op-ed in the New York Times today.

Do you take fish oil capsules? Lots of people do but I doubt many--if any at all--know what type of fish go into the capsules. The NYT article focuses on identifying the species and provides a lot of information on its importation to the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem.

What the piece doesn't tell you is the ultimate cause of the decline, which is of course our broken food system. The Nutritional-Industrial Complex grinds up the fish for corn-fed animals and our beloved pets, a practice that is depleting this fish, which is the food for most of the fish we like to it. Big Ag long ago abandoned grass-fed meat, which is usually two times or more higher in omega 3 content than grain-fed beef, so people now want to take fish oil supplements to get more Omega 3's. You're also seeing processed food on the shelves that has been enhanced with Omega 3's, which I'm sure probably comes from this "trash" fish as well. I'm sure fish oil plays a small part compared to what's ground up for animal feed, but our desire for Omega 3 fatty acids, caused by abandoning grass-fed animals is now taking a toll on the oceans.

“WHAT’S the deal with fish oil?”

by Stephen Savage

If you are someone who catches and eats a lot of fish, as I am, you get adept at answering questions about which fish are safe, which are sustainable and which should be avoided altogether. But when this fish oil question arrived in my inbox recently, I was stumped. I knew that concerns about overfishing had prompted many consumers to choose supplements as a guilt-free way of getting their omega-3 fatty acids, which studies show lower triglycerides and the risk of heart attack. But I had never looked into the fish behind the oil and whether it was fit, morally or environmentally speaking, to be consumed.

The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.”

The book’s author, H. Bruce Franklin, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.” Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain.

Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.

But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.

For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden. The perniciousness of menhaden removals has been widely enough recognized that 13 of the 15 Atlantic states have banned Omega Protein’s boats from their waters. But the company’s toehold in North Carolina and Virginia (where it has its largest processing plant), and its continued right to fish in federal waters, means a half-billion menhaden are still taken from the ecosystem every year.

For fish guys like me, this egregious privatization of what is essentially a public resource is shocking. But even if you are not interested in fish, there is an important reason for concern about menhaden’s decline.

Quite simply, menhaden keep the water clean. The muddy brown color of the Long Island Sound and the growing dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay are the direct result of inadequate water filtration — a job that was once carried out by menhaden. An adult menhaden can rid four to six gallons of water of algae in a minute. Imagine then the water-cleaning capacity of the half-billion menhaden we “reduce” into oil every year.

So what is the seeker of omega-3 supplements to do? Bruce Franklin points out that there are 75 commercial products — including fish-oil pills made from fish discards — that don’t contribute directly to the depletion of a fishery. Flax oil also fits the bill and uses no fish at all.

But I’ve come to realize that, as with many issues surrounding fish, more powerful fulcrums than consumer choice need to be put in motion to fix things. President Obama and the Congressional leadership have repeatedly stressed their commitment to wresting the wealth of the nation from the hands of a few. A demonstration of this commitment would be to ban the fishing of menhaden in federal waters. The Virginia Legislature could enact a similar moratorium in the Chesapeake Bay (the largest menhaden nursery in the world).

The menhaden is a small fish that in its multitudes plays such a big role in our economy and environment that its fate shouldn’t be effectively controlled by a single company and its bottles of fish oil supplements. If our government is serious about standing up for the little guy, it should start by giving a little, but crucial, fish a fair deal.

The most interesting person I've heard about in a while

The pharmaceutical companies call him a pirate with no respect for the law because he sells HIV medicine at a discount in Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_Hamied

I found out about him from this NPR story about how we might need to start importing his drugs to deal with the flu vaccine shortage.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120254536

But just remember, people, the key word in "swine flu" is "flu." If you're a non-immuno-compromised adult, it really is OK to get the flu every once in a while.

Who should fill in for The Beastie Boys at Outside Lands?

But first, I just want to say thank you to Tom Watson (from Kansas City) for getting me to believe the impossible could actually happen--even if it was just for a little while.

So....Adam Yauch has the cancer, which leaves a headline spot open at Outside Lands. It will be interesting to see who they have to back up the Brinks truck for to take their place.

1. This isn't life threatening, but get well soon, MCA.

2. It seems like so many people are getting cancer these days, even kids I went to college or high school with. I would have bet my life savings that cancer rates were increasing at an unprecedented rate and I would have told you it was because of the chemicals they intentionally or unintentionally put in our food, water, and air. But according to cancer.gov, new incidents of cancer have been decreasing since the early '90's. Shows what I know.

3. The Outside Lands twitter page has asked for suggestions on who to add. I'm glad I'm not the person who has the responsibility of signing a major artist to a festival and just over a month to do it, but it's nice that they're looking to the fans for input. So, who ya got?

I would say to get some cool up and coming band or somebody with local history, but this is the headliner of a $90/day festival, so they're going to have to get someone with a Name to compliment DMB and Pearl Jam. I just hope it's something just a little unexpected. So far, the lineup is pretty insipid and designed to appeal to the broadest audience possible.

See "Food Inc." for free and a great profile of an urban farmer

Will Allen, the ultimate urban farmer and a truly larger than life figure, was profiled in last week's New York Times Magazine. It's a great read and indirectly poses an important question: Can the good food movement be sustained without some sort of subsidy, whether it be in the form of private grant or government pay?

Michael Pollan, when I saw him speak at the Herbst Theater (click here for video), argued that no food system has ever been successful without some sort of subsidy. That's why some have argued it's important that we redirect our government emphasis on commodity crops like corn and wheat and soybeans and reward more complex systems that grow a variety of plants, such as vegetables.

My grandmother told me that she would love if it were economically viable to grow something else besides GMO corn*. Is there any reason the Farm Bill won't pay Will Allen a dime and would discontinue paying my grandparents if they planted a row of broccoli next to the corn?

*Whether it is realistic for octogenarians in South Central Kansas to switch to organic farming at this point is a question better left for another day.
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http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2009/07/free_screening_of_food_inc.php

Free Screening of 'Food, Inc.'

By Tamara Palmer in Events, Palmer

Wednesday, Jul. 8 2009 @ 1:30PM

Still haven't seen Food, Inc.? Your procrastination is paying off, for once. Catch a free screening of the startling film -- sponsored nationwide by the burrito chain Chipotle -- on Thursday, July 16, at Embarcadero Center Cinema (One Embarcadero Center) at 7:30 p.m. Get there super early to guarantee yourself a seat; you know how people can be when it comes to free things.

More info on Chipotle's screenings is here, and to get in the spirit before you go to the theater, read SFoodie Editor John Birdsall's conversation with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner.

Double Feature Sunday: Woody Allen and Food Politics

Is "Food Inc." a movie for the average person?

"Food Inc." is the new documentary* about the way we produce and eat food in America and the latest attack on Nutritional-Industrial Complex. It basically takes Michael Pollan's and Eric Schlosser's writings and reduces them to an easily consumable 90-minute documentary.

Being familiar with just about all the stories in the film, I found it easy to follow and still found myself outraged at the actions of the government and the corporations who are most responsible for our Western diet and all the diseases that come along with it: cancer, obesity, and whathaveyou.

Towards the end, I started wondering if they weren't trying to present too much information or spending too little time on certain aspects. I found myself wanting to hear more about the court cases Monsanto brought against farmers, more from Joel Salatin, or more about what people can do to get involved. I was a little surprised the letters C-S-A weren't mentioned even once.

So I was left wondering if it's a movie that is perfect for elucidating the average viewer who eats at McDonald's and buys groceries at Wal-Mart or if it was simply another sermon to the converted to make us high-fallutin' liberals feel better about spending half our income on fancy food. I honestly don't have a good feel for what the answer to that question is.

And maybe I don't have a great answer to that because so far it has made barely more than a million dollars at a mere 83 theaters** (compare that with 4300 for Michael Bay's latest defecation on celluloid). It still has yet to hit one major outpost in the Corn Belt that I know of, Kansas City. I suspect, though, that the movie is probably intentionally enjoying a slow release so word of mouth buzz can spread. Its $2,900 average per theater puts it way ahead of mainstream movies like "My Sister's Keeper" and "Year One."

So it's proably going to take more time to see if this movie will have any crossover appeal or if it will get lumped in with all the other indie documentaries like "King Corn." I do know that some farmers near where I grew up weren't that impressed. I feel like farmers are the real heroes of the film, but I can see how my grandparents, who grow commodity crops in Pratt, KS, would get upset that Big City-types think that they know what's best for folks on the farm.

So if you've seen the movie, now would be a good time to tell me what you think. And please see if you can't get a somebody who isn't converted to go see the movie and report back.

*Follow link for trailer.
**http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
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"Whatever Works"[insert pun about how well or not well you think the movie works]

Discolure: I am complete Woody Allen apologist. I may recognize the occasional fault in some of his films but I have enjoyed every single one of them on one level or another.



After seeing the man himself in the stands at the marathon Wimbledon final on Sunday, it was a no-brainer to see "Whatever Works" last night.

There are so many things I love about Woody Allen but almost above all, I love that he continues to work no matter what. Even if he were to acknowledge the existence of writer's block, you wouldn't be able to tell because he would still release one or two movies that year.

I love that no matter what else is going on in the world, I can count on that familiar smile coming to my face as a black screen with plain white type appears, old-timey jazz starts playing and I am informed that Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe were executive producers of the movie I'm about to see (even though Charles Joffe is dead), and I'm about to find out some more universal truths about love, death, and the human condition.

I love that though so many themes and plotlines tend to show up again and again, each film seems to be a different statement from the director about himself. Is the initial tone of this film so much more angry because Woody is pissed about what's going in the world? Is he getting cranky in his old age or is it just because he wanted to write a character who would be easier for Larry David to play? Is there any way his overall theme of telling everyone to stop being so damn judgmental is not influenced by everyone in the world judging him for choosing to ignore society and fall in love with the most unlikely of brides?

I suspect many will deride the movie for not being funny enough, for the characters being a little too caricatured, or for the narration direct to the audience just not working. I don't think Larry David is going to ever be successful at not playing himself, but he definitely excelled in the role as Boris. All of the characters were well cast as well and by the closing credits, they had somehow gone from caricatures to dynamic characters.

For a Woody Allen apologist, this was classic latter-day Woody. In the end, I laughed; I learned something; I didn't feel like I wasted $11.

The return of the monoculture

I didn't really think I'd be posting so soon about an alcoholic monoculture, and I'm not sure it really deserves a post to it self, but again last night, only a few weeks removed from the last bewildering experience, I found myself at a bar where only one alcohol was being served.


At least this time I was expecting it. And at least this time it was whiskey--and a decent whiskey at that--which is a damn sight better than a sea of Bacardi. And it was free, another notable distinction from the last debacle.*

This particular monoculture was advertised beforehand as a promotion for (ri)^1 whiskey, which is some relatively new rye production from Jim Beam. For those who didn't have the differences between rye and bourbon or plain old whiskey explained to them last night, here's the deal: All whiskey is distilled from corn, wheat/rye, and barley mash. Like bourbon, rye also sits in oak barrels to age.

Rye, though, must be made from a mash of at least 51 percent rye grain, whereas bourbon is made from at least 51 percent corn. Pre-Prohibition, rye was the whiskey of choice in the Northeast. So if you are really, really old and you had a whiskey drink in New York, Boston, or any of those other fancy Yankee cities before Carrie Nation ruined this country for a few years, that was what you were drinking.

After Prohibition, rye didn't really survive. Maybe it's because in the past I found rye to kick like a mule and bourbon to be more smooth, or maybe it's because the rise of corn-based whiskey after WWII has to do with the nefarious plot masterminded by the USDA and the military-industrial complex to inject us with as much cheap corn as possible and cripple us with obesity and apathy while they conspire with the Federal Reserve to financially enslave us and..............WHOA.

Sorry about that. So maybe it's just because people prefer bourbon.

Anyway, rye has enjoyed new found popularity and traditional rye cocktails like the sazerac are making a comeback. Jim Beam is capitalizing on this trend with (ri)^1, hence the tasting event last night.

Strangely enough, though, the event last night hardly seemed to be about whiskey at all. Sure, the whiskey label was clearly visible throughout the art gallery, but the only four drink choices involved copious amounts of simple syrup, citrus juice, herbs, chunks of pineapple, and even chipotle peppers. My company (all female) agreed that most, if not all, of the drinks were too sweet, even by their hairless chest standards.

It was explained to me that the purpose of the event was to present rye as a versatile alcohol that can be used in a variety of ways. The slogan on their Web site is even "mixes well, but never blends in." So the point was to show all sorts of people who think they don't like rye whiskey that it can be just as palatable as the insipid vodka. I guess that could make sense if you were trying to expand your market, but to me it's kind of silly.

I'm fairly certain that rye whiskey is never going to replace the ubiquatous and tastless vodka as the base liquor of choice for cocktails among people who enjoy drinking lots of sugar. It's just not.

I would think it would make more sense to show people what their whiskey actually tastes like, which I found to be fairly smooth and enjoyable. If people don't want to drink it straight like I did, then have some cocktails like the sazerac that show what rye is all about. Why would people switch to rye if it's flavor is masked just like vodka? It seems even more likely that people would opt for vodka when it's so much cheaper than the $40 and up price tag I've seen on (ri)^1.

The only way you could get some people to start drinking expensive rye if they don't even know what it tastes like is to market it as something hip and cool. Therefore, you hold a free event in a hip gallery, invite lots of young people who are interested in trends, hire attractive young women to serve drinks and give them tight-fitting futuristic/nostalgic orange dresses to wear, and hope a bunch of other trend-savvy people see them order (ri)^1 next time they go to a hip, new bar.

I think that could work in the short term (like maybe one or two visits to a bar after the event), but I still don't see people ordering a bottle of rye next time they go to Ghostbar or wherever. That won't come until they convince L'il Wayne to put down the cough syrup and slug some rye next time he's on camera. Even then, most alcohols who go down this road until people became sick of it or move on to the next hooch de jour.

But then again, I guess they are big enough that they already make plenty of money from Knob Creek, Basil Hayden's, Booker's, Baker's, and Old Overholt. So with all the cushion to work with, I guess this foray into tempting the average liquor swiller might actually be a pretty good plan. Thanks again for the rye, Jim Beam, and good luck.



*Thanks again to Dan Cohen and Rachel's friend Greg from Australia.

MONOCULTURES SPREADING...

In what is surely one of the most bizarre and aggressive marketing campaigns in the history of advertising, Bacardi® tried to seduce me caveman-style with sheer, brute force. For better or for worse, they definitely got my attention by clubbing me over the head, but I'm not sure they managed to drag me back to their cave to consummate the relationship.

For those who didn't attend the Ghostland Observatory show at the Mezzanine last night, the event was so inundated by Bacardi® propaganda that in retrospect, I can't believe admission wasn't free.

The ad wizards at Bacardi® decided the best method to endear me to their product was to take away my beloved whiskey and microbrews and replace them with [cornfield-like] row after row of fermented sugar cane. My choices were either sobriety or Bud Light® and rum drinks*.

There literally wasn't a drop of bourbon or pale ale in the house, so I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled I was.

My compensation for suffering this indignity? A plastic baggie filled with metal coins embossed with the rum giant's corporate logo that could be traded for Bacardi® merchandise, such as freshly screen-printed crappy white T-shirts, crappy Bacardi® posters, and cheesy photo-booth pictures which I'm sure were tagged with the nefarious organization's signature markings. Pretty cool, right?




I wonder if Bacardi® also pays the Haitians who cut their sugar cane in the same funny money to be used at the campesino store. Thanks for the 16 hours of hard work, fellas. Now go get yourself a Bacardi® beach towel and a pint of rum to take back to your shanties.

So what are we to take from this experience, other than that supply seems to drive demand when it comes to the industrial food and beverage complex? Has the government started to subsidize sugar cane? Is rum making a Prohibition-like comeback? Are alcoholic monocultures the wave of the future? How much responsibility should The Mezzanine and Ghostland Observatory share in this debacle?

Those questions are probably best answered by somebody smarter than me. All I know is that I probably won't be drinking Bacardi® for a long, long time**.

Nice backfire, marketing guys.

* I opted for a steady diet of mojitos.
** Possibly ever.