And now what you’ve all been waiting for — my official report on the California Gold Rush 2003 Vacation and Anniversary Celebration Tour (the title seems to get longer every time I mention it).

First, the facts. Yes, they did find gold in Northern California. Unfortunately, it was more than 150 years ago, and all the easy pickin’s (placer gold), have long been mined. Once I got over my disappointment, I was more easily able to enjoy my drive through the Sierras.

We started out by driving up Highway 99, which takes you through the heart of California. This is where the real gold is — orchards, and grapes, and lettuce, and nuts. If it can be grown and consumed, California’s central valley probably grows it.

The 99 is a long, straight, flat road. But it’s not as flat as you might think. There are times, you swear, that you are ever so slightly going up hill. I don’t think this is an optical illusion. A check of elevations finds, for example, that Pixley is at 271 feet, Tulare 288 and Fresno 296.

Our first proper stop on our trip was in Tulare, where there is a great Ag Center. It has a museum of old tractors and a fun learning center.

We spent our first night in Merced, which is a cute little town that I would like to revisit some time and explore more thoroughly. After a swim in a motel pool and a good night’s rest, we headed up the 140 into Gold Country. Our first gold mining town was Mariposa. It’s a pretty tourist stop, serving as sort of a gateway to Gold Country and Yosemite. Lawyers would appreciate a stop at the Mariposa Courthouse, which is the oldest, still operational courthouse in the state.

After a couple of hours in Mariposa, we headed north on Highway 49. The 49, which actually starts far north of Mariposa in Oakhurst, strings together a whole collection of old gold mining towns (Gold Rush of 1849, the 49ers, Highway 49 — get it?). Our trip, over two and a half days would take us all the way to Placerville, with stops overnight in Jamestown and Plymouth.

I’m sure we didn’t see all there is to see along the 49. There are probably about 75 historical markers along the highway (we stopped and read many of them), and we would have made slow progress indeed if we parked every time we saw a sign for a museum (we were busy enough stopping at about a third of the antique stores we saw, and all of the bookstores and even a couple of thrift stores).

The best museums were in Mariposa and San Andreas. The best “preserved” gold rush towns were Columbia City and Coloma. The stories these points of historical interest tell gives you a pretty good idea of what life during the Gold Rush was like. It was hard, dangerous, rarely rewarding, sometimes entertaining existence, but made enough men their fortunes that you can’t blame any man (or woman, and there were a few) for taking the huge risk and trying to strike a claim.

The house we stayed in on our anniversary night was in Plymouth. It’s a bed and breakfast called the Plymouth House Inn. It’s been a B&B since the 1970s. It’s a beautiful house, well appointed and comfortable (with a first class breakfast served by the charming proprietress Sandra) and was originally build in the 1880s Dr. E.V. Tiffany, who made enough money digging for gold that he put himself through medical school. After school, he returned to Plymouth and built his house (and doctor’s office) over his old mine. The old mine is now a bar under the house called the “Mine Shaft.”

From Plymouth, we cut through Placerville on our way to Coloma and the site of Sutter’s Mill. It was in a tailrace about 50 yards from the actual mill that James Marshall actually first spotted gold. The old town of Coloma, and area surrounding the old mill (now reconstructed in a different location) is a state park. We spent a good three hours in the park. Even though few of the old buildings still stand, the park service did a great job of putting up signs explaining where everything once was.

Sutter’s Mill was pretty much the end of the Gold Tour part of our vacation. We might a quick swing through Sacramento, doing a quick tour of the Capitol Building. I tried to find some of my old co-workers, but one woman apparently no longer works for the legislature (that’s a surprise) and Bill Cavala, the mastermind behind many Democratic campaigns in this state, works out of a building that now requires ID passes to enter.

I wanted to have a drink at Posey’s, a famous (infamous?) Capitol bar, but all that appears to be left is the sign. If the little outdoor cafe that’s there now is still called Posey’s, I doubt it’s the same atmosphere I was introduced to by Cavala in 1993. It didn’t look the same to me, so we didn’t stop.

The trip back south on the 99 included a luncheon stop at Pollardville, which is probably only a shadow of its past glory, but still a great, campy find outside of Stockton.

We had such great luck in finding classic motels in Merced (we didn’t even stay in the best one because we didn’t find the really cool ones until the next day) that we thought we’d try our luck in Lodi or Stockton. Lodi’s motels were all fleabags, and while driving down the main drag in Stockton, we saw several prostitutes and decided maybe Stockton wasn’t our kind of town.

On the way to Modesto, I suggested to my wife that if the Modesto A’s were in town, maybe we could stay in Modesto two nights and catch a minor league ball game. She thought that was a great idea, so we got ourselves a nice room at a chain hotel and settled in for an “extended” stay.

Minor league baseball is a lot of fun. It’s been a couple of decades since I went to a lower league game, and I’d never seen Class A teams play before, but it’s still baseball and these guys are professionals. It’s not a sloppy or poorly played game at all. Modesto won, which was fine by me.

At the game, some nine candidates for governor showed up and shook hands and threw ceremonial baseballs. For some, I imagine, this will be about the biggest highlight of their political career.

Around the 7th inning, I decided to wonder around the stadium a bit, and all but one candidate had left the promenade. That was Brooke Adams. Adams is 25, an independent, and running for office for the first time. I asked her why she was running and she talked about the problems of the state and how many people were leaving because of those problems. I said, “Let’s be honest, you haven’t got a chance to win, so why do it?” “I think I can win,” she said. “I’m getting a lot of coverage in small town papers and I’m starting to get some name recognition. People are fed up and I think they’re looking for a change.” (or something like that … not an exact quote).

We’ll see.

When you plan a vacation, especially one as important as this one was to us, you’re always nervous. Many things can go wrong. Our vacation, I would say, was about as perfect as they come. We had a great time, enjoyed each other’s company immensely, and even learned a thing or two about our state. For nearly a week, I got to spend everyday pretending I was Huell Howser (though it would have been more fun if I’d had a video camera for the trip). We also met many fine Californians (who uniformly seem to favor recalling Gray Davis, but are leery of voting for Arnold … that’s my very unscientific, unprompted poll … amazing how many people wanted to talk about this issue without prompting). California is a great state and I’m glad I got to spend some time exploring it. Next year, we might head into the same territory and see a few things we missed this time around.

I’ve peppered this post with links to related photos, but I have an entire slideshow/photo essay you can view (all of 71 photos) right here.

Colby Cosh wouldn’t put Bobby Bonds in the Hall of Fame.

If you look at the most-similar batters to Bobby Bonds (using another James method), you see names like–to take the top five–Ron Gant, Reggie Smith, Jack Clark, George Foster, and Fred Lynn. Bobby Bonds isn’t truly similar to any of those guys, and he was probably better than all of them, except maybe Lynn at top form (or Clark coming to the plate in the bottom of the ninth). But the list reminds you that it won’t do merely to show that Bobby Bonds was terrific, fantastic, splendid: so were Jim Wynn, Kenny Singleton, and Jesse Barfield, for a while. Anybody want to put Singleton in the Hall? (I know some people want to put in Bobby Murcer, who was once traded straight-up for Bobby Bonds.) Now, me, I’m almost willing to vote for Bob just because he smoked in the dugout between plate appearances. But let’s do this in the right order, eh? Bobby Bonds isn’t going to get any deader while he waits for Evans, Murphy, and Raines.

I liked Bobby when I was a kid, but I remember being disappointed when it turned out that he wasn’t really another Willie Mays. Bonds the Elder was a good and poetic player, but he wasn’t one of the greatest ever. Barry on the other hand …

Happy Birthday Charles Bukowski.

Franxman thinks we should post pictures of our offices. Here’s my home office.

Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?

The question will never lose its luster, just as the same question about Shoeless Joe Jackson, will never fade away, so long as he is excluded from the Hall.

My quick answer is, “No.” That’s my personal answer. My person answer is based on the belief that any player or manager who bets on baseball deserves a lifetime ban from all things MLB related. Betting on baseball while actively involved in the sport is the worst baseball sin. If baseball were a religion, which some would argue it is, betting on baseball is comparable to breaking all Ten Commandments simultaneously. It is the one thing a baseball man mustn’t do at all, ever. It isn’t a character issue, like using drugs, it is an integrity-of-the-game issue. And while corking a bat or spitting on a ball is properly called cheating (though I’d entertain the idea of making spit balls legal, as they once were), either of those transgressions only effect a small portion of the game and are subject to other unpredictable human variables. Betting, however, deals with final outcomes, and cuts too close to (if not outright) directly manipulating those outcomes. That is unacceptable. Ever. Forever. Period. End of debate.

It will be one more sign of the coming apocalypse and the end of time if Pete Rose is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

But when Rose and the hall are discussed, another debate has become fashionable of late — whether, based on Pete’s on-field performance, does Rose deserve to be in the Hall? The average fan would answer, “Of course. He’s the all-time hits leader.” Some statheads say, “Hey wait a minute. Sure, Pete got a lot of singles, but he really didn’t contribute much to helping his team win.”

Keith Woolner, writing for Baseball Prospectus, crunches some numbers and concludes that while Rose, while not putting together anything near a Ruthian or Bondsian career, did well enough to make the Hall. As much as I think stats, and the right stats, are important for evaluating baseball talent, I have never had much interest in comparing players from past eras with other dead legends for the propose of saying, “Frank Chance was overrated, and Wee Willie Keeler was under appreciated.” I don’t think those kinds of exercises do anything productive or useful. The purpose of studying past performance, to me, is to gain some insight into future expectations. GMs, like Billy Beane, should use sabremetrics to help them build better ball clubs. Fans should study the numbers to help them evaluate their favorite teams and to build fantasy rosters. The past is only important if it helps us understand the future.

Furthermore, I’ve never been a big fan of deciding whether a player should be in the Hall based solely on stats (traditional or otherwise). Don Sutton, for example, is in the Hall, because he won 300 games. Obviously, Sutton was one of the better pitchers in the game during his era, but he wasn’t a Tom Seaver or Nolan Ryan. He wasn’t an impact player. He was, at best, non-descript. He wasn’t a player fans envied other teams for having. He just glided through his career well enough and long enough to amass 300 wins. And that’s about all he did.

This is an entirely subjective evaluation, of course. But to me, the question of who makes it into the Hall and who doesn’t should be, first and foremost, a subjective question. The Hall should be for players who were judged great by their contemporizes (fans, fellow players and sports writers). They should be the kind of players fathers will tell their kids about, and their kids will tell their kids about. Fifty years from now, nobody will be talking about Don Sutton the way I heard Sutton talking about Warren Spahn the other night. The writers who vote on players should ask themselves, will my grandchildren really care about Brett Butler? Players in the Hall should only be players who are exceptional and remarkable, not just good.

And by that standard, Pete Rose is Hall of Fame calibre. Not only is he the all-time hit leader (a remarkable accomplishment no matter how much you value sabremetrics), but he defined hustle, hard work and dedication for all future generations of ballplayers. That’s something no calculator can measure. Any fan who ever saw Charlie Hustle play can’t help but think of him every time they see a current ballplayer slide headfirst or bowl over a catcher. That, as much as the hits, define Pete Rose, and to transcend mere stats. It’s the kind of transformation of the game than earns a trip to Cooperstown — so long as you don’t bet on baseball.

Of all the music I’ve ever owned, the CDs labelled “Buddy Blue” are among my all-time favorites.

Why? Because Buddy Blue is nothing if not authentic. There’s no posing here. Buddy is a true American-music aficionado whose taste and range of knowledge spans the spectrum of blues, folk, country, jazz, rock, hillbilly, rockabilly, jump blues, ragtime — you name it. If it’s music made in America, Buddy has absorbed it. He hasn’t just picked up a few licks or memorized the right chord progressions. The full range of the American musical experience has become twisted in with his DNA.

Whereas many other purveyors of “retro” American music, whether it be Wayne Hancock or Big Bad VooDoo Daddy, succumb to mocking their own genres through comic book posturing, Blue plays music purely for the love of the concoctions he can mix. He imitates stylings out of love, and expands arrangements out of respect, not only capturing the essence of the older sounds, but also the intentions of the musicians who originally coined the musical vocabulary.

So when Blue announced he had signed a record deal to record an all jazz CD, I was excited. Blue is a formidable songwriter and given the sorry state of modern jazz, I expected Blue to release something truly astonishing.

For people not familiar with Blue’s music to date, especially jazz fans, Sordid Lives, might really knock them on their asses. Americans haven’t made jazz with this much gusto for at least four or five decades. Blue’s music hits listeners like too much mescal and cigarette smoke. It is full of life, not the listless life of the David Sanborn or Kenny G crowd, but jazz like it was meant to be, derelict and seamy.

Still, given Blue’s talent and inventiveness, it is a little disappointing that Blue didn’t take this all-jazz CD further. All but two of the tracks are remakes of songs from his four previous record. Great songs to be sure, and they are improved by Blues better understanding of his own material, a few jazzier touches, and an extra lick thrown in here or there, but for the most part, the arrangements don’t depart far from the originals. That may be a testament to how tightly crafted the songs were in the first place, and they were, but it would have been more of a treat to hear Blue stretch himself further.

All of the covers of himself makes the lone new, self-penned song on the CD all that more frustratingly tantalizing. “Uptown at Minton’s” is a fine tribute to be-bop, both in subject matter and execution. It once again displays the range of Blue’s talents, and shows what he could have done with this opportunity to make a through-and-through jazz album.

Longtime Blue fans need not feel the compulsion to rush out and buy this CD (ed. Rush out? You’re review is months late. Yes. Sorry.), but anybody who has never heard Blue, and has any taste for jazz at all, should give himself (or herself, of course) a steamy Christmas present in August and buy Sordid Lives. On its own, it is certainly a five star record.

Oh, another favor you can do for yourself, stop by Buddy’s site and sign up for his e-mail newsletter. It’s the most entertaining musician’s newsletter on the net.

I’ve been remiss in not linking to Jay Christopher’s blog sooner. He’s doing good stuff, and he wrote to me more than a month ago to introduce himself. Somebody should call me an arrogant fuck for this.

Oh, and Jay’s a fellow Venturan. Somebody should nominate him for the Bear Flag League (I think I just did).

And Jay’s not the only blogger I’ve done  this to. I remember one guy a couple of months ago sent me a URL to his new blog. It was great stuff. He even wrote some pretty damn fine poetry. Before I could write anything, I accidently deleted his e-mail. Sorry to whomever that was. And before the evening’s over, I bet I find more such misplaced blog URLs.

Where was I Friday night …  I was poolside, at the concert event of the year — at the “Retraction” tour appearance, the one-and-only appearance, the reunion show of Newshole.

Yes, Ken Layne and Matt Welch aren’t the only journalists around with musical talent.

I bet neither of those guys played in a little rockin’ combo that included killer accordian.

And just to preserve the historical record, I took pictures.

I can’t decide what in this story is hardest to believe:

• That people would actually buy stuff via spam
• That lots of people would actually buy stuff via spam
• That lots of people would buy a penis enlargement product via spam
• That some guys would pay lots of money for large quantities of a penis enlargement product
• That the spam company would expose information about all of its customers to the entire internet
• That these customers would make credit card purchases on a spam-related site with no visible contact information using non-secure server
• That the guy running the “business” is a tournament-level chess player
• That the guy who mentored the spammer is a former neo-nazi who dropped out of the movement when it was revealed his father was a Jew

This is the kind of wacky plot you could weave into a wild novel. I think Larry Jonestowne needs to get on the case. All it needs is a statue of a predatory bird to pass around, a few dead bodies and a fat man.

Glenn Reynolds thinks that Matt Welch didn’t like Le Divorce. I’ve got news from him, because the way I read it, Welch loved the movie:

“An urgent bit of advice … see this movie. … You’ll be glad you did, or I’ll give you your money back.”

Whatever Matt says …

First Listen: Lisa Marie Presley “To Whom It May Concern.”

Presley can sing. No doubt about that. She’s sultry, controled and expressive. There is really only one reason to praise her debut CD — her natural talent. Not even mounds of over production and pop-commercial lameness can hide her gift.

Musically, the CD is thin at best. It’s not that Lisa Marie is a bad songwriter. She crafts pop songs reasonably well. The songs are just too layered with studio techniques designed to be radio friendly.

I think the CD will grow on me, but what I’m really waiting for is the day she escapes her record company handlers, whose obsession with commercial viability stifle artistic expression, and makes a record that reflects the real Lisa Marie Presley. There is something there that is more than this, and hopefully someday it will get out.

I love all kinds of music. A lot of the best music was made before I was born, and some of it even pre-dates my parents. Here’s a site dedicated to some of the great tunes of my grandmother’s youth. Thanks to James Lileks for bringing this site to my attention. I have a bunch of CDs, too, that my dad made for me. The songs are culled from 78s he and I have bought over the last couple of years. My Dad digitizes the music, cleans up the recordings a bit with his fancy software and then makes these wonderful CDs of songs from the 20s through 50s.