Crooked Still Moves Beyond Bluegrass Cliches

CROOKED STILL
Iron Horse Music Hall (Northampton, MA)
December 3, 2010

Those who have followed the music entries on this blog (or in print in The Valley Advocate) know that I have been highly critical of the state of modern bluegrass music, which has become paint-by-numbers masquerading as homage to past masters: affected twangy vocals, way-too-earnest mountain gospel, and flat-picked guitar and fiddle breakouts at predicable intervals. It’s as if everyone is trying to channel Bill Monroe and has completely forgotten the New Grass innovations of the 1980s. Until now. A handful of bands have decided it’s time to look at the calendar and bring bluegrass out of the 1930s and into the 21st century. Foremost among them is Boston-based Crooked Still. As they demonstrated on Friday December 3, in the first of three sold-out Iron Horse concerts, bluegrass is ready for some new blood and new directions.

The first of several great things about this concert was the presence of so many young folks in the audience, a sure sign that Crooked Still’s sound is tailored for a new generation. Re: that sound, several instrumental shifts stand out. First of all, the band seldom uses a guitar at all. Where most bands would have a flat-picker, Crooked Still has Tristan Clarridge, a cellist who uses his instrument to create a deep resonant aural soup in which other sounds can bubble. He also plays in a style that’s more bop than classical, one akin to what Natalie Haas does in her collaboration with Alisdair Fraser. Perhaps that’s no accident; Crooked Still’s fiddler is Natalie’s younger sister, Britanny, and though she can lay down licks with the best string players, she mainly joins double bass player Cory DiMario, and banjo wizard Gregory Liszt in putting down ambient grooves. When Crooked Still get things cranked up, there isn’t much empty space in the room, and sounds meld like a bluegrass gamelan rather than simply setting up the next solo. And this is as it should be. The instrumentalists are sublime in their own right, but the centerpiece of the band is vocalist Aoife O’Donovan. Hers is a glorious voice that is, at once, muscular yet soft as silk. On stage her exuberance and the ease with which beautiful notes pour out of her mouth are so infectious that it’s hard not to fixate on her. You should look around, though. This band isn’t flashy on stage, but there’s a lot going on. Just because Crooked Still doesn’t go in for a lot of prolonged solos doesn’t mean they’re a simple chord-progression band. Like jazz musicians, polyphonic and polyrhymic sounds are kicking about the stage and come together in a harmonious whole.

Crooked Still mostly played selections from its most recent CD, Some Strange Country (Signature Sounds) and these also indicate that this is not your father’s bluegrass music. How about a cover of “You Got the Silver,” originally recorded by The Rolling Stones? But Ms. O’Donovan can sing anything—an old chestnut like “The Golden Vanity,” bad times songs such as “I’m Troubled,” a fragile Celtic song such as “Wind and Rain,” one recorded by Emmylou Harris (“Orphan Girl”), or achingly beautiful numbers such as “Sometimes in this Country.” The dancey backbeat to many of Crooked Still’s arrangements are another reason why young folks love them. To be a 100% objective, Crooked Still’s show was not flawless. The band needs to work on ending their songs with the same flourish with which they open—quite a few dense arrangements petered out and left the audience uncertain as to when to applaud. In like fashion, the textured instrumentation on occasion felt like works in progress in which the timing was ever-so-slightly off. But for my money, I’ll take imprecise innovation over paint-by-the-numbers any day of the week. Check out this band if they come anywhere near you. The worst that will happen is that you’ll fall madly in love with Aoife O’Donovan, a fine first step in plumbing the depth of the rest of the music.

Military Blindness: Don’t Look, Don’t Think, Don’t Tell the Truth

I’ve always taken a contrarian view of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue policy for several reasons, not the least of which is that my idea of balancing the federal budget is to slash the Pentagon budget by two-thirds. I think that having a large military only encourages unscrupulous politicians to get involved in global military adventurism. Nor am I among those who valorize warrior culture; I share the viewpoint of Eugene Debs who, in 1917, observed that he couldn’t see the point of asking one group of poor workers to put on uniforms and go halfway around the world to kill another group of poor workers on behalf of rich masters. And I surely don’t understand why gays or lesbians would ever want to be part of an organization that forces them to be silent, second-class citizens with a Sword of Doom dangling over their heads.

Okay, that’s me and I understand that lots of folks disagree. But here’s what I really don’t get. How can anyone who knows a damn thing about history or military experience possibly believe that having gays and lesbians serve is in any way harmful to the nation’s defense? One hears all manner of nonsense about how homosexuality would harm morale, destroy unit cohesion, and jeopardize military preparedness. Such points of view are a combination of ignorance, mindlessness, and downright lying. They each rest on the presumption that homosexuality has been largely absent from US military history--that just a small band of “perverts” have populated military ranks. (And one also hears of how such people “violated their oaths” by lying about their sexual orientation.)

In my other job as an academic I was recently asked to review a book by Justin Spring titled Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade. It tells the fascinating tale of Steward (1909-1993), a gay man who would have been labeled a “slut” if he had been female. Steward had sex with over a thousand men and kept a detailed journal on each liaison. He also amassed a huge collection of gay pornography, adorned his apartments with graphic gay murals, was one of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s major collaborators, and had his journal and explicit photos in plain view during an age in which doing so exposed him to great dangers. Under the name Phil Andros he also wrote homoerotic pulp fiction and operated a tattoo parlor that doubled as a gay parlor. This is to say that Sam Steward was in the closet, but just barely.

What does this have to do with don’t ask/don’t tell? Steward had flings with bohemians and famed figures such as Rudolph Valentino, Thornton Wilder, and Julien Green, but Steward’s number one source for gay sex was the U.S. military. I exaggerate only slightly when I say that, if Steward is to be trusted, there were more straight men in Greenwich Village gays bars than there were on U.S, Navy and Marine Corps bases in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. When Steward wrote, “the U.S. Navy has always had an attraction for me,” his double entendre was as factual as funny. He had sex with hundreds of sailors, Marines, and soldiers and history does not record that World War II, Korea, or the Cold War was lost because of oral sex. (Would it be too much to call Steward’s biography a real Fellatio Alger tale?)

Why don’t we know this story? Well, we do actually. Alfred Kinsey told it, the proliferation of gay literature and bars verified it, and the presence of gay-themed tattoo joints and bars adjacent to military bases was so apparent that it was hardly necessary to “pursue” an investigation of it. How can we say that the U.S. military didn’t harbor homosexuals? One way was to change the definition. For much of Steward’s most active sexual life, a man who gave oral sex or received anal penetration from another was a “homosexual,” but he who was on the other end (so to speak) was not. (That’s the sort of logic that says one is not an automobile driver if another person pays for the gas.) Still another was to fixate on periodic gay bashing administered by uniformed personnel and sell it as the military cleaning up Dodge City. Mainly what we got instead of full disclosure was the great denial. Thus, in the name of ferreting out a small number of “deviants,” gays and lesbians were outted and discharged.

What a farce! And what sanctimonious old demagogues are those politicians who served and now say that gay soldiers and sailors are a threat. Wouldn’t you just love to hook them up to lie detectors and ask them if they ever met up with the likes of Sam Steward?

Like I said, if it were up to me our military would be much, much smaller. But I would also replace don’t ask/don’t tell with a policy suggested in a recent Boston Globe op-ed: don’t know/don’t care.

How to Opt Out of Christmas

Years ago Phoenix and I opted out of Christmas. It wasn’t the money. We simply wanted release from the stress, crowds, and mindless consumerism associated with the most intensely crass and secular of all American holidays. Spare us the Babe in the Manger speeches; Christmas in America has more to do with Adam Smith than Baby Jesus.

We decided to spend December dining with friends, making contact with family, and consuming fun rather than getting caught up in rituals of reciprocity and gluttony. The breaking point came about ten years ago when our nieces were literally swamped under a mound of gifts. They no sooner opened one present than another was thrust in front of them so that every relative under the sun could snap a photo of the bewildered lasses. Soon, they were dazed and numb. As clichéd as it sounds, by the afternoon they were having more fun with the wrapping paper and boxes than with the content. And here’s the worst part: the wreckage represented expenditures of hundreds of dollars, a lot of it from folks who could have used the cash for much better purposes.

Christmas is even more crass when we buy for adults. In our families the holiday had degenerated into a zero sum game--you buy me the item on page 72 of the L.L. Bean catalog and I’ll buy you one from page 104. For adults Christmas involves two types of people: those who can afford to buy things and thus already have what they need and want; and those who can’t afford to engage in consumer frenzy, yet are pressured into doing so. If you fall into the second category, for heaven’s sake stop! Consider this sobering statistic--if you rack up $6,000 on your credit card and try to pay it off by making the minimum payment, it will take roughly 54 years to do so even if you never use the card again! Fa la la, indeed! In trying to conform to manufactured images of seasonal jollity you have placed yourself in economic thralldom akin to that of 19th-century sharecroppers.

It’s our seasonal prayer that none of you are in that sinking boat. But even if you have plenty of dough, there’s simply no reason to put up with the stress and the madness. Just say no. It may already be too late for this year, but it’s not too late to prepare for next. Here’s our how-to-guide for opting out.

1. Step One: The Power of Guilt. We must ask ourselves how Christmas got to be such a mess in the first place. The answer is simple: We’ve been sold a bill of literal and metaphorical goods on what a “perfect” Christmas is supposed to be like. Don’t underestimated how powerful that imagery is. To counter it, you need to present an equally powerful counter image.

As you gather this Christmas, subtly drop remarks such as “We have so much and there are others who have so little. What do you think about scaling way back next year and making donations to charity instead?” My guess is that about three-quarters of your friends and relatives will breathe a sigh of relief and get on board immediately. Your job is to follow up on this and start dropping reminders in late summer and again several weeks before Thanksgiving. Don’t call and say, “We’re no giving presents this year, right?” Instead remind them that they said they wanted to give to charity. Tell them you plan to make a donation in their name and ask which charity they’d like you to support.

2. Step Two: Phasing In the Plan. There will be some people on your list who won’t buy in immediately. One or two may even feel hurt and assume you don’t care enough to buy them something. You need to go gentle with these folks. Start by scaling back instead of going cold turkey. Appeal to their soft side. Do they love animals? In addition to a modest gift, get a really nice card and insert a Heifer International brochure with a note that you’ve given a donation in their name. It may take a few years before these folks stop the gift cycle altogether, but they will.

3. Step Three: Be True to Your Principles. It’s not enough to say you want to spend time with friends and family instead of gift buying; you need to do it! Make sure you schedule dinners out (or potlucks in) with close friends and family. The goal is to make the holidays joyous, not to become the Grinch. And make sure you write those charity checks.

4. Step Four: Replace Consumer Goods with Thoughtful Ones. What people really want during the holidays is a reminder that you care. A plate of home-baked cookies can say this louder than an item plucked from a catalog. So too can cleaning someone’s gutters, fixing a squeaky door, or taking their car in for an oil change. Want to do something really simple? Rent “It’s a Wonderful Life” and watch it with someone you care about. Provide the buttered popcorn. The biggest gift you can give is your time!

5. Step Five: Buy Your Kids a Pen Pal. If you have little ones, it’s hard to eliminate gifts totally, but the U.N. and other agencies have programs that allow you to sponsor a child abroad. Do this for your kids and spend part of Christmas with books, pictures, and maps that illustrate where their pen pal lives. Help your kids write a letter to that child. Follow it up in the weeks to come with language lessons, food, and other such items. I had pen pals as a kid and it made me think about the world. I remember a correspondent from Peru way more than I remember most of my toys.

6. Step Six: Treat Yourself in December. Take some of the dough you’re not spending on prezzies and go out. Take in a concert or a show. Fun is always a good antidote for stress!

7. Step Seven: Replace Old Rituals with New Ones. Okay, I admit it: If I hear “Silent Night” at a mall one more time I may spew. I loathe Christmas carols, plastic reindeer, and blow-up lawn displays. But I’d be the last to say that rituals are bad. If you dislike the old ones, make some new ones. We buy a new tree ornament every year and label it. We also have some invented holidays, such as Moosemas on December 16, which is celebrated by eating clam chowder and drinking Scotch. A small ritual is walking amidst the downtown lights on Christmas Eve after the stores have closed. Another is a short walk in the woods behind the house on late Christmas morning. Still another is playing CDs of English and Scottish carols that we’ve not heard a billion times. Our most cherished is an annual pre-Christmas dinner at a restaurant with our dearest friends.

8. Step Eight: Make Christmas all about the Food. When you ask most people to name their favorite holiday, it’s usually Thanksgiving. Why not? It’s about food, family, and a relaxed pace. So make Christmas into a second Thanksgiving. Prepare foods that take a long time to make. Buy a really, really good bottle of wine. Have a multi-course meal that unfolds over several hours. And, above all, share it with friends and family. Don’t forget to mention how lucky you are to have so much when others have so little.

Paul McKenna Band In Time for the Holidays

PAUL McKENNA BAND
Between Two Worlds
Mad River 1019
* * * *

The Paul McKenna Band is a quintet of five seriously talented young Scotsmen. They did the festival circuit in the U.S. last summer, but they remain under known because the band’s album Between Two Worlds was hard to find. No more; Mad River has released it and one of the biggest favors you can do yourself this holiday season is to grab it. If this album isn’t the antidote for the endless barrage of Christmas carols, you’ll probably need to check into rehab!

Paul McKenna has a singular voice, one that is simultaneously soothing yet contains a hint of rasp. Check out “Dancing in the Dark,” a song that is gentle but has an ever-so-faint undercurrent of unsettledness. Another standout is “P Stands for Paddy,” a song borrowed from Ireland that manages to be defiant and sweet at the same time. McKenna’s intriguing voice is backed by a stellar group of musicians, including fiddler Ruaridh Macmillian, who will remind longtime Celtic fans of a young (and smoother) Brian McNeill. That’s partly because Brian was his mentor at the Royal Scottish Academy and Macmillan is unabashed in his admiration for him. David McNee and Ewan Baird handle much of the rhythm work on bouzouki and bodhran (or box drum) respectively, and Macmillan’s swooping melodies are matched note by glorious note by Sean Gray’s flutes and penny whistles.

Sample these lads on YouTube and then buy this album. It will make you feel better than a boatload of fa-la-las.

Screw the GOP and Obama

Once again Tom Toles proves smarter than elected officials.

Have these people no shame whatsoever? In the midst of an acrimonious Congressional debate over whether the George W. Bush tax giveaway to the rich should be continued comes the news that arrogant Republicans have killed a proposal to give Social Security recipients $250 checks to make up for part of the cost of living adjustment (COLA) they didn’t get this year. (And they won’t get one next year either.) The Republicans say that the $14 billion price tax is “too expensive.”

Let’s see if we have this straight—the poor bastards making over $200,000 a year can’t afford a tax increase, but SSI recipients don’t need a COLA? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Have Republicans, at last, no shame whatsoever? And now we have President Obama—aka/ Kid Spineless—saying we “must” pass the GOP bill that extends tax cuts or they’ll not allow middle-class cuts to continue or extend unemployment benefits. What kind of a patsy is Obama, and does he think we’re all that stupid? Here’s our message—let all the tax cuts die and let the benefits run out. And then let the GOP explain why the economy is still in recession.

As for Mr. Obama, its’ time to give up on that sinking ship. He has proven to be the rank amateur his critics charged in 2008. We, like many, were duped. But as The Who sang, “We won’t be fooled again.” If he won’t fight the class war, let him take his sorry act back to Chicago and let’s get someone with more cojones—Hillary Clinton anyone?—to take charge. We’re fed up with all the talk about the need to move to the center. A message needs to be sent to Democrats—if you won’t protect the American masses, we’re not voting for you. And, to paraphrase a Marxist (Groucho), anyone who thinks the Republicans care about anyone except fat cats and robber barons has the brain of a six-year-old child and we bet he was glad to get rid of it.

We’d welcome a tax increase on everyone and some distribution of real pain to the pampered middle class. (Never have so many privileged people whined so much about so little.) If the middle class experienced some real grief—the sort felt by stretched seniors and the jobless working class—maybe they’d turn off Fox News, get off their soft duffs, and get on board the social justice train. The first station is tax equity. Here’s one from the New Testament you won’t hear from the Cadillac evangelicals: “To whomever much is given, of him will much be required…”

Fair Game Exposes Bush Lies Despite Weak Direction

Fair Game (2010)
Directed by Doug Liman
108 mins. PG-13
* * *

Need a reminder that things could always be worse? Check out Fair Game, the film that tells the real-life story of former CIA spy/analyst Valerie Plame and her husband, ex-diplomat Joe Wilson. It’s not a great film, but it is a hammer-to-the-face wakeup call that even if you think Barack Obama is a disappointment, he’s not actively evil like his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Is evil too harsh a word? I don’t think so. Plame, you may recall, was a CIA operative whose identity was outted by the Bush administration in 2003 as a way to exact revenge against her husband. What did Joe Wilson do that was so awful? When he found that a study he authored was doctored and being cited as justification for going to war against Iraq, Wilson wrote to the New York Times to tell the truth. In the lead up to the war, the Bush team told Americans that Saddam Hussein had purchased enriched uranium cake from Niger, which it intended to pack into aluminum tubes and make into nuclear bombs. Problem one: the CIA’s own intelligence said that the tubes could not be used for that purpose. Problem two: the CIA could not confirm that Saddam even had aluminum tubes. Problem three was a doozie: the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger with the express purpose of verifying the purchase of “yellow cake” uranium; he reported back that there was absolutely no truth to the rumor. Understand the magnitude of this. It means that the entire of Gulf War II is a lie. It means that every single U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq has sacrificed his or her life for a deliberate falsehood, as have tens of thousands of Iraqis. Does that qualify as evil?

If not, how about the fact that Dick Cheney forced the CIA to agree with the administration’s concocted reading of non-evidence? How about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby convincing President Bush to strike back at Wilson by exposing his wife’s identity? How about the decision to go forth with that plan even though it meant signing the death warrant of all of Plame’s on-the-ground Iraqi intelligence sources and scientists who had cooperated with her? And how about an organized campaign by the Bush team to smear Plame and Wilson, harass their family, and libel their character? How about creating a climate of fear so palpable that anyone who spoke out—remember the Dixie Chicks fiasco?—found their patriotism impugned? How about creating an environment so poisonous that the actor who plays Bush in this film isn’t even credited on imdb? (Too bad; he got the smirk, swagger, and arrogance down perfectly.)

Fair Game takes its name from Plame’s own memoir and is meant to be taken literally—as in anyone was fair game for the Bush team’s lies—and ironically—as in no sense of fair play whatsoever. It is a well-acted film with Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as Wilson, two veterans capable of taking Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s limp script and Doug Liman’s uninspired direction further than they ought to go. Watts is especially good at balancing the character of Plame as a woman who must simultaneously cordon off from her friends her real identity, play spy hardball in dangerous places, be a mother to two small children, and try to express the very emotions she had been taught to suppress in her relations with her husband. Penn gives his usual intense performance and, though I could have done without the clichéd schoolroom speech near the end, he does a decent job of expressing moral outrage and of showing what gave Wilson the sheer chutzpah to speak out at a time in which it cost a lot to do so.

It is a testament to Watts and Penn that this film works as well as it does. It’s a chilling story that’s nearly made pallid by weak direction. Put simply, Liman—best known for directing The Bourne Identity--doesn’t seem to be up to the challenge of presenting nonfiction material this potent. I kept wondering how much better this film would have been if directed by someone such as Sidney Lumet. Go see the film for the civics lesson, not the filmmaking. People have wondered why only Scooter Libby went to jail and why Bush wasn’t impeached. After seeing this film your position will shift and you’ll find yourself asking why he, Cheney, and Rove weren’t lined up against a wall and shot. Fair Game? I think not. How about War Criminals?--LV

Baseball free Agency: A Guide for GMs Who Want to Stay Employed

Which GM will be the next to get burned by baseball's Hot Stove wheeling and dealing?

Somebody told me they’re still playing NFL football. As if I care. Not! December means major league baseball’s Hot Stove League is stoking up. This is the time of the year in which--as they say of second marriages--hope triumphs over experience and guys who have had mediocre careers become instant gadzillionaires. As a public service I offer a guide to save general managers from themselves. Here’s my insider’s take on the free agency market.

Let’s start with the early dumb signing. That would be the Marlins’ decision to sign Javier Vasquez to a one-year $7 million deal. The world “gutless” pretty much sums up Vasquez. He may have “good stuff”--as we’re always told--but the $7 million arm comes with a fifty-cent makeup. He’s had one decent year (Atlanta 2009) and simply can’t pitch under pressure. I’d say $7 million is inflated by a factor of at least half.

Vasquez falls into the category of players who should have been great but never were. They’re like Chicken Little and after a while, a smart GM would just walk away. Here are a group of never-will-bes to which a general manager would have be crazy to offer anything more than a minor league deal: Vicente Padilla, Kyle Farnsworth, Kevin Millwood. Jeff Suppan, Jeff Weaver. Seriously--these are the kind of guys who get GMs fired. They light up radar guns and look great in tryouts. In actual games they turn .240 guys into Ted Williams. The hitter equivalents to these flameouts are Matt Stairs and Carlos Pena. Why would anyone want a strikeout king with an iron glove like Stairs? Pena hits lots of homeruns. The problem is he hits almost nothing else. Do you give several million to a player who can’t hit .200? Not me.

Closely related to the above are the guys who were good at one time, but who have been so ravaged by injuries that it simply makes no sense to offer serious money: Brandon Webb, Erik Bedard, Freddy Garcia, Scott Prior, Ben Sheets. These were rising stars once, but they’re supernova now. Sign only at bargain basement prices.

And let’s hear it for the over-the-hill gang. These guys would be worth Filene’s Basement prices, but if they start talking salad days salaries, hide the checkbook: Johnny Damon, Lance Berkman, Edgar Renteria, Orlando Hudson.

A subset is the don’t-touch-this guys who are either poison or steroid frauds, with Jason Giambi and Jose Guillen topping the list. And then there’s Manny Ramirez, who has a category of his own titled “More Trouble than He’s Worth.” In the flat-out “Stick-a-Fork-in-Him-Done” category is Jason Varitek.

Also to be avoided are the walk-year wonders. Heading this list is Carl Pavano. I don’t want to hear about his “turn around year” in Minnesota. Let Pavano pitch three straight decent years and I’ll remove him from the Turkey list. Until then, any GM who fills his carcass full of green stuffing is as stupid as Brian Cashman four years ago. Pavano’s 97-89 lifetime. How does that translate into anything other than short change? While I’m on the topic, why on earth would anyone offer Adrian Beltre a multiyear contract? A little history. The dude hit .334 in Los Angeles in his walk year in 2004 and then averaged around .255 in five mediocre years in Seattle. In 2010, another walk year, he hit .321 in Boston. Detect a pattern here?

Are there any bargains out there? Austin Kearns is a good buy for a team in need of a solid backup outfielder, and I’d be tempted to pay Magglio Ordonez an incentive-laden one-year deal rather than overpaying for Jayson Werth, especially if I’m an AL GM. Those NL guys have a habit of flaming out in the AL. Besides, I think Werth will end up back in Philly.

So let’s get to the Big Names in free agency. Add me to the list of those leery of Carl Crawford. The Angels are Jonesing for him and I’d say “good luck” and save my money. I would have wanted Crawford three years ago, but his game is simply built too much on speed and he’s already lost a step. He’s a solid player, but not worth what will be demanded. Love Scott Downs, but do you surrender a first-round draft choice and a supplemental for a situational lefty? Not me. I’m also fond of closer Rafael Soriano, but he’s a Scott Boras client and will command way more than his actual value.

This leaves Mariano Rivera and all any sane person can say to the Yankees is, “Pay the man.” At age 41 he’s still among the best in MLB. Who can you sign with an ERA of 1.80? Nobody. On the other hand, as big a fan as I have been of
Derek Jeter, three years at $45 million strikes me as very charitable. It may be time for the Yankees to remind Jeter’s agent that they let Damon walk last year. Jeter would not get half of this on the open market, so hardball is the game to play. Face-saving gesture: add a passel of incentives to Jeter’s contract. Hey, if he returns to form and hits .330 again, it would be worth another $5 million, yes?

This leaves the big prize, Cliff Lee. I like Lee, but I don’t like him for more than three years and I think it will take five or six to sign him. This leaves the Yankees as the clear favorites to sign him. If they do, they need to think of it as three years of production and two (or more) years of charity. He should get three years at $60 million; he’ll probably get five at $120 million. Lee has said he doesn’t like pitching in the Texas heat and who can blame him? Arlington in August is more suitable for a reptile ranch than Rangers baseball. But if he takes inflated dough to go to the Bronx he’d better help deliver championship 28, or he’ll be the new Carl(a) Pavano and the Texas sun will seem like Baffin Island compared to the scorching he’ll get in the New York media.