Indeed, television, that 1920s technology so many of us take for granted, is still coming to tens of millions with a transformative power — for the good — that the world is only now coming to understand. The potential scope of this transformation is enormous: By 2007, there was more than one television set for every four people on the planet, and 1.1 billion households had one. Another 150 million-plus households will be tuned in by 2013.

In our collective enthusiasm for whiz-bang new social-networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, the implications of this next television age — from lower birthrates among poor women to decreased corruption to higher school enrollment rates — have largely gone overlooked despite their much more sweeping impact. And it’s not earnest educational programming that’s reshaping the world on all those TV sets. The programs that so many dismiss as junk — from song-and-dance shows to Desperate Housewives — are being eagerly consumed by poor people everywhere who are just now getting access to television for the first time. That’s a powerful force for spreading glitz and drama — but also social change.

Book-to-movie adaptations: how do we watch them?

Okay, look — you’ve told me a few times that the book is better than the movie.

Did you know that I read the book, too? Honestly, I also like it better than the movie. I guess the folks that adapted it for the screen really left out a lot. Two of my favorite subplots, for instance. Yeah, the one with the unsigned letters? That was so scary in the book. Oh, and the scriptwriters added a bunch of stuff that wasn’t in the book, and, well, I sort of wish that all of the internal monologues made it to the screen, too. They added a sense of humor that just wasn’t in the movie. And I can’t believe that they changed the protagonist’s hair color.

But you know what? The movie was actually pretty good. Maybe really good.

Stop laughing! Think about this: no matter how good a book-to-film adaptation is, fans will have a one-up on whatever the filmmakers can put on the screen – their imagination. Your imagination does a lot of heavy lifting; regardless of what faults a novel has, the imagination fills in the blanks, splashes on the perfect atmosphere, gives all of the characters the best possible traits to tell the story. At least, all of the best things for the reader.

So in a way, movie adaptations are really sketchings of written stories, not photographs. And besides, film and literature are two very different ways to tell a story, with both strengths and weaknesses that don’t overlap as much as we wish they did. Trying to transfer one to the other without any changes just doesn’t work — it’s almost like trying to adapt an epic poem into a short folk song. As storytelling forms, the few similarities are crowded out by the differences that have to be taken into account. Otherwise, you’d have day-long songs that no one would want to listen to, let alone make.

There are some novels that translate easily to the screen. Cormac McCarthy’s recent No Country For Old Men is a good example; the Coen brothers’ film version from 2007 hewed closely to the book’s sparse text. But the movie still felt and looked like a Coen film, as it should have — the adapted screenplay was clay molded by them, and the fact that it worked well on its own is more of a credit to them than McCarthy. (Though I must admit, when I read the novel upon its release, I felt like the normally dense McCarthy had written a Coen screenplay!)

But a good movie doesn’t have to follow the book precisely — I’d go so far as to say that the less a movie is constrained by a book, the better. Of course, an adaptation will probably need to retain at least some of the source novel’s traits before it becomes something completely unrelated to the novel, but creative interpretation is a good thing.

Two very different examples of excellent movies that are considerably different than their literature roots: The Wizard of Oz and L.A. Confidential. The former is cemented as a film classic, so embedded in Western society’s subconsciousness that people quote the film without even knowing the source. Do you think it’s because of a long-standing cultural love of L. Frank Baum’s book series? As historically important as Baum’s Oz series is, the film has dwarfed his books. For a good reason, too: it’s a fantastic movie, and one drastically different from its literary source.  The film has stood on its own, as there aren’t many Baum purists that dismiss the movie.

The same goes for director Curtis Hanson’s take on L.A. Confidential, from James Ellroy’s novel of the same name. Like many of his other works, Ellroy writes a dense, detail-heavy jungle of staccato dialogue, complex plot elements, and almost ghoulish overtones. Hanson’s movie takes the basic structure of the neo-noir novel (three unlikely cops, one murder, chaos ensues!) and runs with it. Characters are completely changed, entire plotlines erased, endings and motives overhauled and retooled. And it totally works. I’m a fan of both the book and film, and Hanson takes Ellroy’s story and tells it again in his own way. It’s still recognizable as an adaption of Ellroy’s story, but it’s a movie first and foremost.

There are plenty of examples of literary adaptations out there, especially considering that people have been adapting the written word into motion pictures for over a century. In fact, I bet you don’t realize that some of your favorite movies are based on novels, comics, or short stories. From The Princess Bride to Eyes Wide Shut to Die Hard, from Exit Wounds to M*A*S*H to Original Sin to Shaft to Slumdog Millionaire. How “faithful” the adaptation is to the source material varies from project to project, with varying results.

I’m realizing more and more that the main reason I felt let down with film versions of  the Chronicles of Narnia is not because they changed things from the book, but because, well, they were just average movies. Cute looking English kids have some adventures, a lion dies (or something) and there’s a big, suffocating CGI battle that envelopes the latter third of the movie. What fantasy movie doesn’t do this? I have a feeling that if the movies didn’t have the C.S. Lewis connection, they would’ve been completely written off by critics and fans and given a quick shove-off to the bargain DVD section of a big box retail store.

Here’s something to try: go watch a movie based on a book you love, but try to take a step back and just watch it as a movie. Pretend that you’ve never opened the book, even.

And it really comes down to this — you love the book, and you’re always going to love it. But no matter what, the film is always going to let you down if you keep treating it like a facsimile of the version on page. It isn’t, and won’t ever be. But it is a separate work of art, and needs to stand on its own two legs.

Photo: Andrea Leganza

My grandfather is dying again.  I know because my mom called.  And she knows because Aunty Cathy called her.  This is the fourth time in two years my mom has called me with this news; the fourth time, she got the call from Aunty Cathy.

He’s not well – there’s no doubt about that.  Papa’s battled just about every kind of cancer and has come out the victor each time. He’s tough. Small, but tough. Everyone in my family is small. Papa’s 5’1”, like me. My dad, the giant, is a mere 5’6”.

But not all of us are as tough as Papa. When I close my eyes and say his name I see us sitting at the kitchen table in the house that my dad grew up in, that Nana and Papa still live in. Papa’s holding his fists up in front of his face and kind of grunting. He wants me to do the same. I’m six. I raise my hands like his, my little knuckles sticking out like the tiniest mountain range.

“No, not like that,” he says releasing his stance to fix mine. “Here, higher. This is your shield. This keeps you safe. ”

I follow his lead, elevating my fist until he’s satisfied and resumes his stance. “Good. Now punch me.”

I look at him cockeyed. He answers before I ask, “C’mon, do it. You won’t hurt me, I’ll show you. C’mon. When I was a boxer in the army I could block anything.”

So I do it. I let one fly. A quick shot with my . . .

“Left! What are you throwing your left for?” he says as he blocks my slow motion punch. “Are you a lefty? Dot!” he shouts to my grandmother who’s only a few steps away at the stove, stirring sauce or something. “Dot, I think Jonathan’s a lefty.”

He’s laughing at me and I’m not sure why but he tells me its okay. He can teach a lefty to fight. He takes a swig of beer, Budweiser then and now, and resumes my lesson.

Papa was never a boxer in the army. This came out some years later. Nor did he see any action in World War II. The round scars on his stomach and chest that he said were bullet holes were not. Burns from working all those years at the naval shipyard, but not bullet holes.

He used to draw ninjas. This is a skill he told me he picked up from drawing the real thing, when he was stationed in Asia – which, of course, he wasn’t. But he could draw them well. Masks with slits for the eyes and bandanas waving in the breeze. He could draw long sharp kitana blades that gleamed with the light of a distant sun. I tell this to my wife as we drive through Boston to visit him in the hospital.

“How did he know what a ninja looked like, then?” Steph asks as we drive. I don’t know.

When we get there, Steph leads the way. I hate hospitals, but she was working with the elderly at the time. We make our way to the third floor where my mom told us we would find him. Room 313. We peek around the corner of the doorway to see him sitting up with one of those trays-on-wheels set over his legs. He has a plate full of food in front of him but he’s only eating yogurt.

“Yogurt as an appetizer?” I ask, assuming his food has just arrived.

“No.” He answers without looking up. “As dinner.” And finally his eyes lift from the nearly empty cup he’s been scraping with a plastic spoon. “Paul,” he calls out to me.

“Ah…” Is all I get out before he says, “Jonathan. I mean Jonathan.” And to himself, “Why did I call you Paul?”

He urges us to sit and so we do, I directly below the television and Steph beside his bed, nearer to him. We ask him how he’s feeling, how they’ve been treating him in the hospital. He answers that he’s not feeling so great but the hospital staff is nice. He tells us about a nurse that’s been taking care of him. He’s convinced she has a thing for him. I don’t doubt it; he’s a charmer.

There’s a side of Papa that resembles your typical Irish-American – think the characters of Frank McCourt or, more regionally accurate, Dennis Lehane or James Carroll. One of our family’s favorite stories involves beer, whiskey, and a bar fight between my dad and Papa. And he probably would have been that stereotype to a tee, if it weren’t for my grandmother.  For all his Irish-ness, she’s every bit Italian, bubbling with emotion and energy and, over the years, her passion for life has leaked through the cracks in his old Irish skin. When they got married in 1940s Boston, theirs was considered an inter-racial marriage.

Sitting with Papa in the gray light of his hospital room, I suddenly become painfully aware that, despite all appearances, this is the same man who tried to teach me to fight all those years ago at the kitchen table. I stare at him. He’s small now. Not the same muscle-bound, beer-bellied man I remember. He looks like the skin of that man – the skin of a once great, although not actual, boxer in the army. The skin of that man is hanging on a smaller man’s frame, like mine, perhaps.

Steph jumps in to fill the awkward silence. “So who has come to visit you, Papa?”  She calls him Papa. I don’t remember he or I ever inviting her to do so, but she does. And I love that.

“Oh, they’ve all been here,” he says. “Jane, and Jilly. Jilly comes often. Jennifer’s been here…”  These are my sisters. He says their names first, making sure I know I’m the last to come. I’m about to say something when he realizes what he, consciously or subconsciously, has done. “But they don’t have so far to travel as you do,” he says to me in the way of consolation.

“Dolly and Sean, Eddie, Kristen, and the kids.” My cousins and their families. “Your father’s come down a few times.” I had hoped he wasn’t actually keeping count, but it seems clear now that he was.

I change the topic and though I’m not sure how we get there, suddenly we’re talking about his mother and brothers. We’re talking about Ireland and the plot of land he signed away years ago, sitting at that kitchen table at his house in Roxbury, to cousins in Ireland after his father passed away.

“Jonathan, whenever we went there and saw what I blindly gave up,” he looks, for a moment, regretful. “Ahh, we could never live there. Boston’s our home.”

When it’s time to leave we tell him that we’ll see him soon, but hopefully at home. He looks doubtful. He looks, in fact, like he’s thinking we won’t actually see him again. He kisses Steph on the cheek and tells me how beautiful she is. He says goodbye and calls me Paul again.

Photo: Rebecca Brame

It was the suckiest letter I ever received.

One friend pored over the words and responded, “It reads vindictive. How could someone speak this way about your beautiful writing? I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut and can hardly breathe.” Another said, “Throw that away and never look at it again.”

The reactions were strong, and I admit that if I hadn’t been around the block a few times, I might have taken the letter to heart—maybe cried all day or used the sheet for target practice, and certainly not chosen to share about the sucky-letter-in-question.

So why am I here now? And why did I tell my 12-year-old daughter about those unfriendly words? Too, why am I seriously considering framing the feedback, or at least stuffing it into an envelope to be found posthumously in my journals?

Here’s my three-word answer: Marschall, Johansson, Gehry.

As luck or the Divine would have it, I taught a children’s art class the day I received the-suckiest-letter-ever. There’s nothing extraordinary about that except I’d chosen to focus on the story of Ken Marschall. Marschall is a gifted artist whose facility with realism has earned him a solid career as a film matte painter. He’s also a Titanic aficionado and has produced countless meticulously-detailed pieces, commissioned both privately and commercially.

But Marschall’s first attempt to enter an art show was rejected when the committee said his Titanic painting was “not art” because it was “too realistic.” Soon after, a gentleman who had seen the rejected piece recognized Marschall’s talent and commissioned a new work. This was the beginning of a long and lettered artistic life, and today he is the world’s leading Titanic artist.

Was the focus on Marschal’s story a kind of serendipity for me? Maybe. I had spent the morning reminding children to embrace their gifts regardless of criticism and rejection; good work often finds audience, just like Marschall’s did, and I wanted to inspire the kids with a message of resilience.

Over the next week, my own message repeated itself through various unexpected means. Listening to an interview with Scarlett Johansson, I was struck by her observation that artists have to live with criticism. It’s pars for the course. Good work doesn’t just find audience; it also finds anti-audience.

Take architect Frank Gehry, for instance. A few days after the Johansson interview, I was treated to someone’s remote-control roulette spin: a documentary on Gehry’s journey and achievements. Like many artists, Gehry has his moments of doubt and creative mishaps, but as a successful architect he also demonstrates remarkable resilience and accomplishment.

Still, some critics have made it their mission to save the world from the likes of Gehry by being “honest” about his work. Such honesty has been expressed through words like ugly, monstrosity, and perverse.

This is not to say his critics are never right, which is what makes the whole process a tricky matter. Harsh criticism can hurt and disillusion, because it sometimes includes insight about our needs for growth. And this is why I discussed the sucky-letter with my 12-year-old daughter. She and I have been having conversations that go something like this…

“My writing is so bad.”

“Well, it does have certain weaknesses, but that’s not the whole story. Listen, Sara, it’s important to be realistic in two directions. You need to be realistic about your weak points, but you also need to be realistic about your strong points. A lot of your writing is incredibly beautiful—better than a great deal of adult writing I’ve seen. You need to remember that.”

It’s essential for my sensitive daughter to develop this kind of clear-mindedness if she’s going to face the criticism she’ll eventually encounter as a talented artist. By sharing about the letter, I was introducing her to the way of the artist’s world; I was also demonstrating the very resilience I hope she’ll develop over time.

In the end, the problem with extreme criticism is that it doesn’t tell the whole story. Or maybe it almost does, but in an unexpected fashion. Thinking on Gehry, I concluded that one reason he draws such intense criticism is because he’s done an excellent job of honing his vision and craft. People who don’t like Gehry’s brand of architecture are going to have an extra-strong reaction to his work; it’s just so good in a way they despise.

My daughter and I discussed this too, on a sunny day, driving through a peaceful residential neighborhood. Then she surprised me by bringing up the matter of the sucky-letter. “Hey, I think that person actually gave you a big compliment.”

Perhaps.

That’s why I’m seriously considered framing my critic’s words. Or folding them up and deliciously licking an envelope. Now, if only I actually kept a journal . . .

Now scientists claim to have come up with an answer to her changing moods – our eyes are sending mixed signals to the brain.

They believe Mona Lisa’s smile depends on what cells in the retina pick up the image and what channel the image is transmitted through in the brain.

Until recently, small corner grocery stores were seen by public health officials as part of the obesity problem.

The stores, predominantly family-owned, offered convenience, but the accent was on snack chips, canned goods and sugary drinks. Now, because they are often the sole source of groceries in areas with no full-size supermarket, the stores are becoming linchpins in public health campaigns.

“If you are educating people to make good choices, but those choices aren’t available nearby and they don’t have a car to drive out to the suburbs to the supermarket, or an hour to ride two buses to get there,” said Kai Siedenburg, of the Community Food Security Coalition, a group based in Portland, Ore., that promotes access to healthy food, “then it’s really hard for them to make good choices.”

At the height of the boom, art collectors scrambled to acquire works by top artists from rising markets including China, Russia, India and the Middle East. A serious approach to collecting meant trips to London, New York and Hong Kong several times a year for auctions, and mandatory stops at the art fairs in Cologne, Miami Beach, London, Shanghai and Basel, Switzerland.

Now, a full year since the recession gutted the global art market, collectors are canceling their trips. Some Westerners are now loath to dip into markets like Russian or Indian contemporary art, whose prices soared during the boom but whose long-term value is less established. Many are cutting back on expensive art-buying trips. And some collectors say they’re interested in supporting local artists, particularly at a time of economic hardship—the cultural equivalent of buying an American car instead of an import.

Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright Star

(This essay contains a few spoilers, but they’re not so bad if you already know Keats’s biography.)

A film about a Romantic poet’s romance could so easily be cringe-worthy.  I surveyed the movie poster as I bought tickets.  It flaunted Victorian script that glowed like a star, a couple about to kiss, and the tag line, “First Love Burns Brightest.”  Was I about to experience media I would have to ‘fess up to liking, like Gilmore Girls, rather than a film I could proclaim as great cinema?

The emotional tale of a three-year courtship cut short by Keats’s death at 25 could have become sentimental goop.  But I needn’t have feared.  Jane Campion – whose films Sweetie and Angel at My Table are personal favorites, though it was The Piano that won three Oscars – made several deft moves in her writing and direction of Bright Star and created a solid film.

Her first smart move is that she grounds the chaste but impassioned love of Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) and John Keats (Ben Whishaw) in the midst of reality.  That’s not to say that she portrayed the Keats-Brawne romance as mundane, measured, and reasonable.  Romantic poetry is characterized by its delight in powerful, overflowing feelings rather than Enlightenment rationalism, and Campion captures the sentimental heights Brawne and Keats soared.  For instance, in one snippet of Keats’s Romantic words to Brawne, he tells her, “I had such a dream last night.  I was floating above the trees, with my lips connected to that of a beautiful figure.”

Keats may have floated above the trees, but Campion binds him to the earth.  As Dan Persons writes in Huffington Post, “The film, in short, is sweet, sad, and moving but with Campion’s astringent edge keeping the proceedings from lapsing into sentimentality. And that makes all the difference.”

But how exactly does one do this?

Campion maneuvers away from sentimentality by showing Keats’s interactions with the Brawne family, and Fanny’s relationship with her family.  Indeed, the first expressions of love in this film are not between Keats and Fanny Brawne at all.  Instead, we see Fanny’s love for her very young sister, Toots, and Toots’s love for Fanny.

Toots demonstrates her love and trust when she and her brother Samuel walk into the bookstore to buy Endymion for Fanny. “My sister has met the author,” Toots tells the bookseller, “and she wants to read it for herself to know if he’s an idiot or not.”   The fact that Fanny has entrusted them with this mission and that Toots feels like she can repeat anything Fanny says shows their close relationship.

The family’s interactions with each other are believable, with small bickerings,  affectionate nicknames,  “I love yous,” and resigned sighs.  Keats becomes part of this family.  Right after he declares his love for Fanny and they join the picnicking family, the couple play a game of “freezing” every time Toots turns around to look at them.

These touches make the film feel like you are watching the workings of the most fun and dynamic family you know, and this makes the film so human it’s impossible to cringe.  (Okay, maybe it’s possible when characters read poetry aloud to each other.  If you can’t suspend disbelief to watch a musical and pretend that people do burst into song mid-sentence, you’ll have a hard time imagining that people do quote poetry to each other from memory.)

The second smart move is that Bright Star seems aware of how silly Romanticism could appear to 2009’s viewers.  The trailer describes Brawne as a realist, but once she and Keats are an item and he teaches her poetry, Brawne lazes about in ecstasy, cries, threatens to kill herself when she doesn’t hear from Keats, and in short, acts like a high school kid in love. As the three years progress, she demonstrates bravery, gravitas, and spunk along with her absorbing love for Keats, but at many points, she’s obsessed, and this creates humor and lets the audience observe Romanticism.

For example, after Keats wishes that the two of them were butterflies and could fill three days with pure delight, Fanny, Toots, and Samuel take the Romantic idea to the next level and start a butterfly farm in Fanny’s bedroom.  Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox) walks into the “farm” bewildered, wanting to open windows, brushing the clinging butterflies off her dress, and sighing in disgust.

Campion crafts the juxtaposition well.  On one hand, it’s ridiculous: keeping dozens of butterflies in a bedroom, shutting all the windows to create the warm environment the insects love, and not caring a hoot if they fly in your face.  On the other hand, it’s cause for awe.  The camera rests on jars of multi-colored butterflies, watches a blue-winged one flutter on a sliced orange, and looks at Toots caught up in the sight of them.  Campion’s lens gazes wryly at the aspects of Romanticism that seem over-the-top to us today, but nevertheless appreciates the same beauty these poets held dear.

In Campion’s hands, Keats and Brawne’s relationship is a way to examine what makes all types of love meaningful, even love for the world itself.  In Campion’s hands, it’s a film to proclaim as great cinema.

John Keats and Fanny Brawne dance in Bright Star

Baseball: it's not just about the game. (Above: The Yankees celebrate in 1996.)

When I am trying to recall my childhood, the best I often call forth is a phantasmagorical flash of images and feelings; for instance, a friend whose play habits I have forgotten or a name without a face—not nearly tidy enough for scrapbook presentation. Amongst the confusion, there are a few vivid, traceable “story lines,” if you will, by which I can mark my life’s progression.

One example that comes to mind is my relationship with Rich, my best friend since I was three. Another is my exploration of books and all the richness I have found there. Indeed, there are other threads equally as important to the overall weave and design of my personal history, influences that give it form and worth. But with October winding down, amidst the kaleidoscope of autumnal color, one storyline, which comes accompanied by the “crack!” of a bat and the “pop!” of a mitt, gains a particular poignancy: my love for baseball.

As a lifelong New Yorker born in the 1980s, I grew up amongst baseball chatter and rivalry. From one house to the next, loyalty was divided between the Yankees and Mets. My house belonged to the Yankees. With stars like Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, and Keith Hernandez, and having won the World Series in 1986, the Mets were the better team of the eighties. But I inherited my father’s love, became a Yankees fan, and learned to revere the history of the team. Dave Winfield, Ron Guidry, and Don Mattingly were my players of choice.

As I grew older, what I loved so much on television I took to the schoolyard, and began playing catch with my father, two older brothers, and the other neighborhood boys. And soon, I was playing in the local Pee Wee league, helping my team to the championship round in five consecutive seasons. Unfortunately, we won only the first of five. Eventually, as the skills of the other boys developed, mine stalled, and I became a mere spectator. While my playing days were over, I still found baseball exhilarating as an onlooker. And I watched year in and year out, following my team down the valleys and up the peaks, devastated with every playoff loss and elated with every October victory, devoted to my team and to my sport without demur.

Recently, a friend, peering over my shoulder while I read baseball box scores, asked me with sincerity (a rare and disarming temperament), “Why do you like baseball, anyway?” Truly, baseball, like many things personally enjoyed, is a delight to some and a frivolity to others. As with anything really loved, my love for baseball has been challenged before.

It is a challenge, honestly, with which I rarely engage because cynics—of sports, most especially—very seldom ask genuine questions, usually making proclamations through their “questions.” The conversation inevitably devolves into an each-to-his-own pact of non-aggression. They go their way; I go mine. It is not a conversation worth having often. So when I detected the sincerity in my friend’s voice, I realized that he was not showing disdain for my sport, but that he was actually asking a rather thoughtful question: “What is the meaning of baseball?”

Very quickly, I recognized that I did not really know the answer. I had never considered baseball in that manner. I had always unquestioningly enjoyed it, as I suspect is the case of all baseball enthusiasts. But that is to be expected, maybe even hoped for. As C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don and author, explains, enjoyment, the disposition at the heart of sport, is vastly different to contemplativeness, the disposition at the heart of paradigmatic construction. Contemplating baseball requires objective detachment from it—an outside view, if you will. On the other hand, enjoyment of baseball requires an unquestioning subjective engagement: humility before the sport—being inside of it.

Enjoyment and contemplation are two differing consciousnesses. One sees from without, one from within. And fans learn from the earliest age to see sports from within. Still, I thought to contemplate the question and seek an answer.

Admittedly, when measured with a detached rationality, baseball appears absurd. The principal action of the game revolves around a man who, from a raised bump of dirt, throws a stitched leather ball across a 216 square inch pentagon which lies 60’6’’ away. An opponent stands aside the pentagon and tries to swat the stitched leather ball with a narrow wooden stick. Many more precisely measured and equally ambiguous actions ensue as a result of this repeated event. While these are famously difficult feats, they appear entirely arbitrary. At first glance, baseball gives the impression of meaninglessness, and, especially in light of their enthusiasm, its fans appear irrational.

Yet, a cardinal virtue of any good sport is its ability to test the physical limits and discipline of an athlete. And, although the rules and actions of baseball may appear arbitrary, they certainly excel in testing an athlete’s physical endurance, agility, speed, and strength. To this end they have been constructed and diligently upheld; so they are not entirely random. As each game generally spans over three hours, and each player has limited opportunities to contribute to the contest’s outcome, an athlete must prove his patience and focus as well. For example, on offense the position players (players who both play the field and hit) are likely to have only four at bats per nine innings. On defense, a position player can go an entire game without fielding a single ball—a rather frequent occurrence. The athlete must remain vigilant, as a result, so as not to be caught unaware. However, the greatest test for a ballplayer is one of will, for even the most excellent hitters succeed, on average, only three times out of every ten at bats. Failure is at the very heart of baseball and success can only be had in spite of it.

Americans love excellence, even of the purely physical sort. It satisfies our meritocratic predisposition. On that level, one can understand an American’s appreciation for a baseball player or team. But can appreciation for excellence explain the intensity of the fan’s communion with his team? Can it explain the fan’s tears over loss, adulation from victory, or even prayers for a player’s well being? Can it explain his devotion during years or even decades of competitive futility? No, it certainly cannot. Again, the fan is either entirely irrational, or there is something more to baseball. I suggest that there is something more, which can only be found in the experience of the fans, a testimony that cannot be discounted. To see it, we must move a little further in.

Simply put, baseball has a visible level—a physical dimension viewable by all, even cynics—and an invisible level—a metaphorical dimension experienced by fans only (often on the subconscious level) which is unknown to cynics; especially empirical statisticians. If baseball is a body, the rules are the bones and flesh, and story is the blood. Only together does it have fullness and its fullness can only be found in fandom.

So what does the fan see, exactly? While it’s different for each fan, it certainly contains nostalgia, as I have recounted from my own life. More importantly, the fan sees a microcosm of the human story. In my experience, I of course appreciated Don Mattingly for his offensive and defensive prowess. Nevertheless, he became my favorite player during years when his back was balky and his numbers declined. During those seasons I appreciated his perseverance, humility, sacrifice, and sympathized with a career that became increasingly demoralizing. Don Mattingly became my favorite player because I empathized with his personhood. This is common: in one breath fans will praise a player statistically, the next in universally human terms.

In addition, the drama of baseball is entirely unscripted, which makes its structure both analogous to life and more theatrical than a stage play, film, or television show. In this way, a baseball game reflects spontaneous human achievement, action, and emotion: a physical dramatization and symbolization of everyday living. Furthermore, the story of a particular game, season, franchise, or player establishes the meaning, and thus the dramatic content, of any given physical action. For example, a home run hit in an April contest, while physically impressive, is quickly forgotten. On the other hand, in 2003, Aaron Boone’s home run to defeat the Red Sox and send the Yankees to the World Series was a narrative masterpiece, complex and deep enough to stir true euphoria and genuine devastation. As a result, the moment is memorialized in both infinite honor and infamy. This demonstrates an indelible fact: no matter how impressive the physical act is, its meaning is understood, and memorability determined, by its place in the story of the game.

On a subtler level, baseball is symbolic for an overarching metaphor that mirrors human existence at its most primal: that life can only be lived in the face of certain death. A baseball contest progresses by outs, failures, if you will, not by time. Generally speaking, a standard ballgame is complete only after both teams in the contest record twenty-seven outs. In the bleak world of baseball, both teams fail. The victor is merely the team who has accumulated the most runs in spite of their own demise. Concomitantly, the hitting side, dubiously named “the offense,” is postured from the start in a defensive position, and their task is to temporarily stave off the efforts of the pitching side to retire them. Ultimately, the world of baseball is a fallen one in which even the victors inevitably perish. Much like life, victory in baseball is achieved in the face of a harsh fatalism. Ballplayers are actors in a passion play and the fans are the beneficiaries of their willingness to demonstrate the human struggle.

If victory means failure, and winning the World Series is so supremely difficult, why play? Here I can only make a suggestion: for good reason baseball first took root amongst rural Americans, a people famous for their protestantismus. Imported from England, baseball became a reflection of the Americans that claimed it. Like all, the people of rural America were aware of death’s certainty, yet they still hoped that on the other side promises would be fulfilled and dreams come true. Baseball, their game of choice, offers players and fans a mirrored anticipation. Fielding a baseball team is like taking Pascal’s wager: when a team wins the World Series, all of their hopes and dreams for the season have been realized. Wouldn’t it be worth it to dedicate oneself to that cause even if humiliation was assured and victory uncertain?

From icanhascheezburger.com, a site filled with cats being funny.

Balloon Boy. Sneezing Panda. Sleepwalking Dog.

There is a sort of warped existence in this world that controls much of the way we interpret humor and mystery. Plainly put, a large amount of things that are “weird” can be considered “funny,” and as a culture, we seem to be exploring this more frequently than ever before.

Technology, it could be said, is the defining feature of our current age, the sitting poster boy for technology being the internet and the new way we process the world: through the lens of a computer screen.

If one of technology’s main goals is to advance human flourishing through efficiency and knowledge by means of direct access to information, then one could rightly say that technology has brought certain combative elements to being efficient into our cultural sphere. In other words, too much information doesn’t necessarily mean more efficiency, mostly because we’re too fascinated by that which is warped and mysterious – so much so that we’ll watch a video of a dog sleepwalking and running into a wall ten times before it gets old. Why? Because it’s weird. And hilarious. And “cats doing funny things” has permeated our worldwide web of information to a point of warranting investigation.

A number of companies have capitalized on this fascination – the main one being, of course, YouTube, where one can click frantically through this world’s oddities for hours on end. But another source of constant entertainment has to be Yahoo! Odd News, a news page completely dedicated to the stories that evoke hilarity from the mystery.

Compiled of five “weird news” sources from around the globe, including Reuters and the AP (yes, apparently they have “weird news” divisions), Yahoo! Odd News has brought a journalistic sense to the weird, mixing the small town police blotter with Barnum’s American Museum.

If you haven’t seen the headlines on Yahoo! Odd News, you are missing out on a magical land of wonderment that will give you a good laugh and make you question the advancement of human evolution. Some headlines include “Burning bunnies keeps people warm and cozy,” “Texas man finds a rocket launcher on his property,” and “Lottery winner causes riot at Ohio coat store.” What?

The odd or otherwordly has always been newsworthy, but viral videos and citizen journalism has made it even more so. What’s interesting is that this content is not substantive, but strange. Instead of giving weight to a thought-out investigation, readers and viewers seem to be more interested in the inexplicable. In a post-enlightenment culture, where everything is weighed on the merits of scientific plausibility, this seems to be a universal interest of the masses that reason can’t trump.

On YouTube, you can while away the hours watching top viewed videos like “Baby Panda Sneezing,” “Charlie Bit My Finger,” and “Bizkit the Sleepwalking Dog.” All of these are out-of-the-ordinary acts in familiar contexts.

Why is this important? Because it takes up our time.

“Bizkit the Sleepwalking Dog” has had over 17 million views, if you add up all of his videos cumulatively. That’s nothing. “Charlie Bit My Finger” has a whopping 127.4 million views, or 242 years worth of viewing time for one video. The number of videos of babies doing weird/funny things has reached staggering proportions (a baby laughing an old man’s laugh – 95 million views, “Baby Laughing Devil Laugh”- 23 million views, “Snake Swallows Hippo”- over 12 million views combined, “Battle at Kruger”- 46 million views equaling 755 years of viewing time for that one video alone). “America’s Funniest Home Videos” would have a problem on their hands. We have such quick access to the technology that is imaging our world that our eyes can’t keep up with our brains. We are capturing too much to see. Moreover, we are capturing too much to explain.

It would be hard to imagine that the creators of YouTube started their video venture in an attempt to give voice to all those crazy things that animals and babies do. But that is largely what it has become. The weird, warped, and otherworldly aspects of this planet have always been around; we just now have a medium to readily view them. In other words, the world is not a stranger or more inexplicable place than it was 500 years ago – we’ve just come up with more ways to shine light on the fractured earth we live on. This begs the question: in its explanation of those things which we didn’t before understand, does technology also uncover the same amount of things we never knew existed? Is technology filling a hole by digging another hole?

Whether it is proof of a broken creation that a dog sleepwalks and runs into a wall can be debated. But even our highest sources for news can’t resist the temptation to put a camera on the bizarre. CNN’s coverage of the Balloon Boy has been widely satirized because the network gave it such weight. It was a story of epic proportions that ended in ordinary fashion. The major news channels couldn’t pass up the possibility that a boy might be flying, Flight of the Navigator style, in a saucer-shaped homemade dirigible. It was the potential for otherworldliness that caught the attention of the masses.

It is human nature to be inquisitive, to stand in wonder. Whether it’s a viral video or a journalistic account, these things provoke us to engage others in our fascination. But why do we feel the need to share this with others and insist that they be fascinated, too? This has become a significant cultural tool. If something can provoke a “you gotta see this” response, then people will follow.

Imagine if we had that same fascination about legislation. Every time a bill passed, would you email your friends after reading it, saying “OMG, you gotta see this amendment that blocks the G.O.P. effort against Rangel”? No. That would never happen on the level that YouTube has achieved. The old saying goes, “There are two things you never want to see being made: laws and sausages.”

Culture is shaped by what fascinates us, and according to our time spent watching the aforementioned videos, we’re attracted to the mystery in our world.

If comedy is truly the highest form of drama, then it is obvious that something isn’t quite right. It is this same instinct that makes us step back from our computers, chuckle in complete confusion, and ask: WTF?