Reality Has Always Had Too Many Heads

Congratulations to Mr. Cole Griffith (who for unknown reasons decided to pose as my wife) for correctly naming "Atlantic City" by Bruce Springsteen as the Wednesday Song of the Day.

I thought about writing an introductory sentence that provided some sort of rational justification for what's about to follow, but I'm just going to give it to you straight, my friends and readers.

Here, in no particular order, are my 5 Favorite (Living) Canadians:

1. Morley Safer: I've really started to love 60 Minutes, and I don't think there's anyone on the show whose segments I enjoy more than ol' Morley's. Andy Rooney, if you read this I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel.
2. Malcolm Gladwell: The highest compliment that you can pay a writer is that they make you see the world in a new way, and there's probably not anyone who does that better right now than Gladwell.
3. Alex Trebek-I got chastised by the wife for this one, but I've always loved Jeopardy!, and no one epitomizes Jeopardy! like Trebek. Plus, he used to have an excellent mustache. Always a strong selling point in my book.
4. Neil Young-I almost chose the Crash Test Dummies to take Young's spot on the Canadian rocker list but thought better of it. My favorite Neil Young moment is probably his performance of "Helpless" with The Band during the Last Waltz concert.
5. Steve Nash-With all apologies to The Great One, I have to choose Nash as my favorite Canadian. Does this have more to do with the fact that Nash is a massive soccer fan than his NBA bona fides? Probably yes, but don't hold that against me.

With Every Mistake We Must Surely Be Learning

Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker combines references to (King) David, Rick Pitino, the value of a well-worked basketball press, Roger Craig, and Lawrence of Arabia, and yet somehow still remains compelling and thought-provoking throughout.

Insurgents, though, operate in real time. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance—and endurance battles favor the insurgent. "And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine," the Bible says. "And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead." The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous.

But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. "The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target," the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in "The Life of David." Pinsky calls David a "point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there." David pressed. That's what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.

"How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules" by Malcolm Gladwell.

The main argument of the piece is that Davids can often defeat Goliaths if the Davids realize that they must substitute sheer effort for a dearth of ability in order to close the gap that exists between themselves and Goliath. This argument is obviously not new to anyone who has seen Rudy, studied the American Revolution, or followed the rise of Microsoft.

What is particularly insightful about Gladwell's argument is that the substitution of effort for ability must be accompanied by a wise application of that effort. The underdog who chooses to put forth all of the effort in the world by continually attacking his opponent's area of strength will often be disappointed at best and destroyed at worst.

This is in stark contrast to the underdog who chooses to put forth all of the effort in the world, but rather than focusing on his opponent's strongholds, instead chooses to center that effort on the weaknesses of Goliath. Gladwell's best example of this point is that Lawrence of Arabia wisely choose not to fight the Turks in fortified cities and instead constantly harassed and harried the Turks at their weakest point, the long exposed rail-lines that connected Medina and Damascus.

I'm not sure where journalism is headed in the next 5, 10, or 20 years, but I have a feeling that there will always be room for this type of challenging, entertaining, and thought-provoking piece.

Tomorrow's Just Another Day

In the interests of full disclosure, no, I'm not on Malcolm Gladwell's payroll, but I am here to tell you to pick up his latest effort, Outliers: The Story of Success.

If you've read Gladwell's two previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, you know that he has a gift for gathering research, studies, and anecdotes from a variety of sources, and then utilizing that material to make an engaging arguments on a number of topics, whether it be the reasons Hush-Puppies shoes became popular once again in the 90's, the ability of some art dealers to spot fakes in a moment's glance, or the reason that an inordinate number of NHL players are born in January, February, or March.

With that said, Malcolm, old buddy, since I have been so kind, if you have any spare change just sitting around, would you mind sending a care-package down to Waco?

You're obviously not using any of it on haircuts.

Update at 8:30 p.m.

Just because I love you, I'm giving you a little Gladwell-video from a recent speaking engagement in San Francisco.

It Doesn't Matter What I Say So Long as I Sing With Inflection

Congratulations to Ms. Nina Patterson for correctly naming "The Way" by Fastball as the Monday Song of the Day.

Welcome back to 1998, kids. Welcome back.

Good stuff here (as always) from Malcolm Gladwell...

This is the quarterback problem. There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching.

"Most Likely to Succeed: Who Do We Hire When We Can't Tell Who's Right for the Job?" by Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker.

The best part of that article might be Gladwell's subtle prediction that Chase Daniel will one day reach the same level of putridity as Joey Harrington, Tim Couch, and Ryan Leaf, but perhaps that's just me.

Plus, David Brooks offers his thoughts on Gladwell's latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Such is the Promise, Such is the Curse

On Friday, I mentioned the enshrinement of NY Times columnist David Brooks in the Running Down a Dream author/writer/columnist Hall-of-Fame. At the point when I made that famous declaration, said Hall-of-Fame was an entirely contrived entity, and I guess it still is, but I wanted to run with the idea and commit it to the firmament of the internet. That last clause is probably an oxymoron, but I'm moving ahead regardless.

If I had to construct my version of Canton, Grauman's Chinese Theater, or Cooperstown, it would look something like this:

First-Ballot Members (since Cooperstown had 5 initial members [Mathewson, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson, and Cobb] I'm going with 5 of my own) in no particular order:

David Halberstam

As if it were not enough to have written the definitive book on the Vietnam War (1972's The Best and the Brightest), the Pulitzer Prize-winner also authored one of the best sports books in the last half-century with 1980's The Breaks of the Game.

Over the years, he developed a pattern of alternating a book with a weighty theme with one that might seem of slighter import but to which he nonetheless applied his considerable reportorial muscles. “He was a man who didn’t have a lazy bone in his body,” said the writer Gay Talese, a close family friend. Obituary in the April 24, 2007 edition of the NY Times.

David Brooks

I was introduced to the writing of Brooks through the Op-Ed page of the NY Times, but his best work, at least in my opinion, is found in his two books, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. When viewed as two parts of a larger whole, they represent one of the most accurate pictures of modern America that I have read.

Bill Simmons

Even though his rampant homerism for the Great Satan this year has been a bit too much to handle, the Sports Guy still holds down a spot in the Pantheon (I know, I'm mixing my metaphors), due to the fact that he has introduced me to The Ewing Theory, the Manning Face, the Levels of Losing, the Tyson Zone, and "Yup, these are my readers." His first book, Now I Can Die in Peace, chronicling the 2004 World Series run by the Red Sawx, may just be required bedtime reading for my (non-existent) children or grandchildren when the Rangers, Cowboys, and Liverpool still have not won a title.

Malcolm Gladwell

Out of the Top-5, Gladwell is easily the figure that I have read the least, but his ability to present technical, jargon-laden information in an engrossing and engaging manner is a skill that I greatly admire. Whether it was 2000's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2005's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, his pieces for the New Yorker, or his blog, almost all of Gladwell's writing makes me view the world in a new way that I had never before considered.

Jon Krakauer

Krakauer rose to prominence based on his first hand-account of the 1996 Everest Disaster in Into Thin Air, but 1990's Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, 1996's Into the Wild, and 2003's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith are just as good, if not better than Into Thin Air. Krakauer's writing is reminiscent of the settings he describes: stark and often unforgiving. If the sign of a great writer is the ability to remove himself from the story and place the characters on center stage, Krakauer is surely near the pinnacle of the modern non-fiction genre.

Honorable Mention (Maybe next time, fellas)

• Ernest Hemingway
• John Grisham
• Stephen Ambrose
• John Steinbeck
• Bob Woodward
• Chuck Klosterman
• William Manchester
• Edmund Morris
• David McCullough
  
  
  
  

The Less You Find Out as You Grow

For what it's worth (probably not much to some of you):

• I was 1 for 2 yesterday on my picks for the final two squads to reach the Champions League knockout stages. Lyon (France) dismantled Glasgow Rangers today by the score of 3-0 to claim the second spot in Group E behind FC Barcelona, which defeated Stuttgart by the score of 3-1. In Group G, Fenerbahce (Turkey) secured its first ever appearance in the Final 16 of the Champions League by defeating CSKA Moscow 3-1 in Istanbul.
• The draw for the Round of 16 will take place next Friday, December 21, at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. Don't forget to invite me to your "Round of 16 Draw" parties.
• The always interesting Malcolm Gladwell on the controversial debate over the relationship between I.Q. and race in the latest issue of The New Yorker.

I Been Workin' On it From the Start

In a return to action for one of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in this week's New Yorker regarding the work of criminal profilers. Perhaps the term "criminal profilers" is redundant due to the strong likelihood that people never use the term "profiler" outside of the criminal context, but I digress.
Gladwell has also recently stated that he is currently working on his 3rd book, which is highly anticipated due to the widespread acclaim that greeted The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. In my mind, Gladwell's true appeal lies in his ability to take seemingly disparate, dense subject matter and distill it in an inherently enjoyable fashion that is also accessible to those of us who do not happen to possess MBAs from Harvard or a PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins.