My Year With Proust - Day 274

. . . And yet he found himself offering this as the price for far less, for a first kiss in fact, because had met with unexpected resistance or, on the contrary, because there had been no resistance.  In love it often happens that gratitude, the desire to give pleasure, make us generous beyond the limits of what hope and self-interest had foreseen.  But then the realisation of this offer was hindered by conflicting circumstances.  In the first place, all the women who had responded to M. de Guermantes's love, and sometimes even when they had not yet given themselves to him, he had one after another kept cut off from the world.  He no longer allowed them to see anyone, spent almost all his time in their company, looked after the education of their children, to whom now and again, if one was to judge by certain striking resemblances later on, he had occasion to present a little brother or sister.  And then if, at the start of the liaison, the prospect of an introduction to Mme de Guermantes, which had never been envisaged by the Duke had played a part in the minister's mind, the liaison in itself had altered the lady's point of view, the Duke was no longer for her merely the husband of the smartest woman in Paris, but a man with whom the new mistress was in love, a man moreover who had given her the means and the inclination for a more luxurious style of living and transposed the relative importance in her mind of questions of social and of material advantage; while now then a composite jealousy of Mme de Guermantes, into which all these factors entered, animated the Duke's mistresses. But this case was the rarest of all; besides, when the day appointed for the introduction at length arrived (at a point when as a rule it had more or less become a matter of indifference to the Duke, whose actions, like everyone's else, were more often dictated by previous actions than by the original motive which had ceased to exist), it frequently happened that it was Mme de Guermantes who had sought the acquaintance of the mistress in whom she  hoped, and so greatly needed, to find a valuable ally against her dread husband.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 498-499

Proust continues to reflect upon the many infidelities of the M. de Guermantes, the social transcendence of his wife the Mme de Guermantes, and the odd emotional interplay between these two.  As we've discussed, while he would use the opportunity to meet his wife, and enter more fully into the highest level of society, to seal the deal with his mistresses, she in turn would sometimes use these women as chess pieces in her battle with her husband; "it frequently happened that it was Mme de Guermantes who had sought the acquaintance of the mistress in whom she hoped, and so greatly needed, to find a valuable ally against her dread husband."

I was also struck by the wonderful, maddening, illogical, unfathomable peculiarities of love that this little snippet reveals.  As my first year students know from Linden's The Accidental Mind, the brain bum rushes into love by overloading us with an abundance of chemical treats in the early days of a relationship, causing us to act, like all addicts, foolishly.  It means that we, among many other things, will certainly promise far more than we can possibly deliver.  "In love it often happens that gratitude, the desire to give pleasure, make us generous beyond the limits of what hope and self-interest had foreseen."  It could be that the M. de Guermantes is simply a man whore, but he may also be a person who falls passionately in love again and again.  As compared to most of us, he does appear to follow through on his promises, as it is presented that all of these women eventually do get to meet his wife.  In other ways, as well, he appears to be a man in love, including being overly possessive of them.  As Proust tells us, the M. de Guermantes "had one after another kept cut off from the world.  He no longer allowed them to see anyone, spent almost all his time in their company, looked after the education of their children . . ."  Of course, his fascination with their children might not have been totally selfless, because "if one was to judge by certain striking resemblances later on, he had occasion to present a little brother or sister.

The emotions and actions of the women is also not quite as clear cut as it might appear at first blush.  While they might have been initially drawn to the M. de Guermantes because of his fortune or as one avenue to his wife, it, as it often does, became something more.  For some of these women "the Duke was no longer for her merely the husband of the smartest woman in Paris, but a man with whom the new mistress was in love . . ."  As we've discussed previously, it is rare (if non-existent) for a man or woman to see a person from across the room and immediately think of spending the rest of their life in debt servitude to that big house in the suburbs they will need for their family.  Our goals our almost always much more immediate, and certainly much more base.  However, along the way we inevitably fall in love.  I can remember falling in love - or suddenly understanding that I was in love - with crazy/lovely British woman while doing our traditional Friday morning grocery shopping.  I don't think either of us saw that coming, but do we ever?  We are all of us like the Duke - and for that matter his mistresses - looking for one thing, and in the great evolutionary emotional shell game we end up with something else; which is really OK, because the something else is almost always much better than what we wanted in the first place.
  

My Year With Proust - Day 273

   As a rule these handsome "supers" had been his mistresses but were no longer (as was Mme d'Arpajon's case) or were on the point of ceasing to be.  It may well have been that the glamour which the Duchess enjoyed in their eyes and the hope of being invited to her house, though they themselves came thoroughly aristocratic backgrounds, if of the second rank, had prompted them, even more than the good looks and generosity of the Duke, to yield to his desires.  Not that the Duchess would have placed any insuperable obstacle in the way of their crossing her threshold: she was aware that in more than one of them she had found an ally thanks to whom she had obtained countless things which she wanted but which M. de Guermantes pitilessly denied his wife so long as he was not in love with someone else.  And so the reason why they were not received by the Duchess until their liaison was already far advanced lay principally in the fact that the Duke, each time he embarked on a love affair, had imagined no more than a brief fling, as a reward for which he considered an invitation from his wife excessive.  And yet he found himself offering this as the price for far less, for a first kiss in fact, because he had met with unexpected resistance or, on the contrary, because there had been no resistance.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 497-498

Several times I've found myself flagging a section for inclusion mainly because I thought that it was a necessary, albeit worthy, precursor to a section that I found more interesting.  Essentially, what Proust wrote next resonated with me more, but I thought that you needed to have seen the lead up.  In this particular instance Proust is talking about the innumerable affairs of M. de Guermantes and their relationship to the social world of his wife, Mme de Guermantes, but I think his next point about love is more interesting.  We'll get to that point tomorrow, inshallah.  That said, I feel I've been dropping the ball on the blog lately, not because of a waning interest in Proust but mainly because I've been so insanely busy lately: in various planning stages for four foreign trips; rehearsing for Kerry's play (more on that soon, doubtless); two trips to Canada for CFL games; some prep work for the "Honey Boy" and Core Talks; and somewhere in there I've been plowing through a virtual pile (I only accept online submissions) of papers.  So, I'm behind on Proust - and let's not even get started on how far behind I am on the epics project.  Sigh.  There used to be around a two hundred page gap between where I was reading in Proust and what I was focusing on for writing on Proust (and sometimes it covered two different books) but now I've managed to catch up with myself, which means that I need to carve off a couple days to immerse myself in Remembrance of Things Past; as we've discussed, Proust is not something you can just lightly pick up.

Now, the point I wanted to make before that unplanned confession was that often when I look at a passage for a second time I discover that it has merit far beyond merely a stepping stone to another section, and this is one of those moments.  While some of the women who succumbed to the charms of the M. de Guermantes did so because of "the good looks and generosity of the Duke", an even greater number did so because it was an avenue to his wife and thus into society.  In the end, I suppose this is not that different from the high school girl who gives into the clumsy groping of a boy simply because he has a nice car, and losing your virginity in that backseat is worthwhile if you can be seen in said car pulling up to the football game.  Happily, or sadly, I avoided all of this drama because I owned an AMC Pacer and no one was putting out for the honor of being seen in that wreck.  All this means, I guess, that most people don't actually act any differently in responsible adulthood than they did as a teenager, which is a depressing thought (and might partially explain why tens of millions of people are voting for Trump).  Having said all that, I find the thought processes of Mme. de Guermantes even more interesting, because she clearly knew about these affairs and why her husband was, I'm sure casually, promoting these women for the guest list ("oh, you remember, my dear, that plain woman we met at the races? Her cousin mentioned her name to me again the other day at that dreadful party we suffered through, practically begged me to talk to you about her, to get her out of the house, the poor thing . . .")  Clearly, Mme de Guermantes isn't fooled by this charade - and M. de Guermantes knows that she is not - but it is part of the play acting that dictate the interaction between couples, then as now.  Certainly part of this performance works to re-enforce the strength of her position because she is the gate keeper to admission into society, even if those women passing through the gate (at least temporarily) are the mistresses of her husband.  It also speaks to the feigned weary, worldly sophistication of the upper classes.  In addition, I would argue, it appears that Mme de Guermantes viewed these women as potential partners, or at least tools, in her long-standing battle with her husband.  As Proust reminds us, "she was aware that in more than one of them she had found an ally thanks to whom she had obtained countless things which she wanted but which M. de Guermantes pitilessly denied his wife . . ."  As my good friend Mike would opine, relationships are stupid.

Gary Beatrice on Bob Dylan

And, finally, the long-promised version of Gary Beatrice's reflections on the fifty-two essential Bob Dylan songs, laid out in a very useful album by album analysis and chock full of insightful analysis.  This also exists in Week 12 of the Discography discussion, but it was so good that I asked Gary if I could cull it off as a separate post and add links to all the songs, and he graciously agreed.  I apologize that I have not been able to track down links to so many of the songs he mentions below.

Gary Beatrice, reflecting upon the Dylan discography or another fantasy baseball trade in which he ripped me off.

Some guy, mainly made famous by Beatrice's devotion and loyalty.

I really appreciate Gary writing this up, and it's given me a lot to think ab out and I look back and begin to study more of Dylan's work.

Bob Dylan, Tangled Up In Blue


My favorite Bob Dylan song remains Tangled Up In Blue, and oddly enough considering his catalogue that's pretty much been the case for 35 years. I could not find the original studio version on You Tube, but you've probably all heard it. This is an excellent acoustic version with several different verses off of his highly recommended Biograph collection. My second favorite song is Visions of Johanna. After those two I have a tough time ranking his songs so I've decided to order these chronologically. In part I've organized it this way because several of you were looking for places to jump into his music, but mostly I've done it this way to make it easier on myself to identify the songs and comment on them where appropriate.

This helped me make a couple observations about Dylan's music and my tastes.

1) Although I consider Dylan the best songwriter of my lifetime, my favorites of his are based upon the sound of the songs more than the lyrics. This is most apparent by the nearly complete absence of his folk and protest music from my list. Blowing In the Wind, Times They Are Changing, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, are all clearly among his best songs, but I just don't listen to them because I don't find them musical enough.

2) Despite the fact that he had numerous great albums, a boatload of his best songs were never on traditional albums, but were singles, b-sides or songs never released outside of compilations. I don't think this is me choosing obscurities, I think it is more the fickle nature of Bob Dylan.

3) Dylan's comeback starting with 1997's Time Out Of Mind and continuing to a lesser extent through 2016, was almost unbelievable, especially in view of the garbage he released for more than a decade before that.

So:

From Biograph (the best greatest hits collection I've heard by the way, combining three disks of must haves, alternate takes, unreleased classics all organized thematically- a great jumping in set): Percy's Song, my only folk selection,

From Bringing It All Back Home: It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) and Maggie's Farm. BABH is considered by most critics to be one of his bests but I see it more as a transition album that doesn't flow the way his next several do. Bleeding captures the anger and pointedness of his protest music without sounding dated, and Maggie is a protest song that rocks and shows a sense of humor. The best version of Maggie is from an otherwise mediocre live album, Hard Rain.

From Highway 61: Like A Rolling Stone; Desperation Row; Highway 61 Revisited; It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. A must own album, rational minds could favor the other four songs that I didn't select. Each song finds Dylan at a creative peak lyrically (I bet there are nearly a dozen phrases from this album that are now common to people who have no clue who Dylan is) and musically, with styles that range all over the roots map. The title track features a police whistle which somehow works.

Singles (can be found on Biograph and elsewhere: Positively Fourth Street, Can You Please Crawl Out My Window. Bob decided these songs didn't fit on 61 or Blonde. Maybe they don't, but either would have served as the best song in the entire catalog of several artists I love.

Blonde On Blonde: Visions of Johnanna, Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again. Blonde is also essential rock music, every bit as creative but a bit less manic than 61, perhaps because it was recorded with some brilliant Nashville session musicians.

The Basement Tapes: Crash On The Levee, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, Please Mrs. Henry, Clothes Line Saga. Basement was recorded in secret with The Band and not released until the mid seventies (and then released a couple years ago as a six disk set as part of the Bootleg series). Each of these songs find Dylan and The Band having the time of their life playing dozens of old time instruments and styles on songs that are mostly warm and funny but sometimes apocalyptic (Levee). Basement was the polar opposite of the Sgt. Pepper era music released at the time and miles better. You can make a compelling argument that it influenced more alternative country music than anything released since it.

John Wesley Harding: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augestine, All Along the Watchtower. His most underrated album, JWH sounds similar but a bit more polished than Blonde with a series of shorter straight forward songs, several with strong biblical themes. Again, not much like late sixties radio.

Nashville Skyline: Girl From The North Country. A lot of critics praise this straight country album but I find it somewhat slight. I love this duet with Johnny Cash, however, and their voices work great together.

Self Portrait: Minstrel Boy (The Bootleg Series re-release). Minstrel Boy is, of all things, a vocal track with the Band and their voices somehow sound great in this context.

Greatest Hits Volume 2: Quinn The Eskimo. Basement tapes classics beginning to leak out. Again great but unorthodox Dylan/Band vocals

New Morning: Went to See the Gypsy, Day of the Locusts. At the time this was considered his first comeback album, he hadn't sold much since Blonde and he hadn't had much critical praise since Harding, but I see this as a decent album that happens to feature a couple great forgotten songs about Elvis and about Dylan's refusal to accept an honorary degree.

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid: Knocking on Heavens Door. I'm not sure if this his most covered song, and there are some good versions out there including Warren Zevon's. But nobody's surpassed the original.

Blood On The Tracks: Tangled Up In Blue; Shelter From The Storm; If You See Her, Say Hello, Idiot Wind, Buckets of Rain. Blood was the great comeback, and for my money it is his best album, too. These are some of the most heart wrenching break-up songs ever put to music, all exquisitely recorded. As with Highway 61, you can prefer the other tracks on this set and I'd have no argument.

Desire: Isis (the live track from Biograph is even better). One of Bob's long standing songwriting technique is to take a historic or biblical character or image and turn it into his own historic fiction and he returns to that with pretty good effect on Desire.

Street Legal: Changing of the Guards. I think this was an unfairly ignored album. I suspect listeners were put off by the strong gospel style background vocals which foresaw

The Christian Era Bob Dylan

Dylan had obviously read the bible but I sure didn't see a literal interpretation of it coming. Here's the weird thing. The three albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, were mostly lousy, even though they sometimes featured some crack musicians. But somehow a number of unquestionably great songs emerged from this bizarre phase. Check out Every Grain of Sand, Groom Still Waiting At The Alter (which, in classic Bob style, didn't qualify for inclusion among these wretched albums until later pressings), Heart of Mine, I Believe in You, Solid Rock.

Infidels: Jokerman, Neighborhood Bully. These are two exceptional songs from one of the very few good albums he released between 1976's Desire and 1997's Time Out Of Mind. And it isn't a great album, it's just enjoyable and features these tracks which I consider to be among his best.

Oh Mercy: Everything Is Broken. Somehow in the midst of two lost decades Dylan recorded a great rock tune.

Lost track: Series of Dreams (can be found on Bootleg 8). Somehow in the midst of two lost decades Dylan recorded an even better rock song. And he decided not to release it.

Time Out of Mind: Not Dark Yet, Trying to Get to Heaven, Standing In The Doorway, Million Miles.
Love & Theft: High Water (For Charley Patton), Summer Days, Mississippi
Modern Times: Thunder on the Mountain, Working Man's Blues #2
Tempest: Pay In Blood, Roll On John, Duquesne Whistle, Tempest

And then he found his muse. Legendary musicians tend to get undue praise even when releasing adequate material. This is decidedly not the case with Dylan's return to prominence. The best of his turn of the century original material is every bit as compelling as the music he released when he was in his twenties, and if anything it benefits from his age, wisdom, and awareness of his own mortality.

There you go. I think that's 52 songs.

My Year With Proust - Day 272

A grace and sweetness that were conditional, you may say, upon the meekness with which the arriving guest bent her knee. Very likely, and it would seem that in an egalitarian society social etiquette would vanish, not, as is generally supposed, from want to breeding, but because on the one side would disappear the deference due to a prestige which must be imaginary to be effective, and on the other, more completely still, the affability that is gracefully and generously dispenses when it is felt to be of infinite price to the recipient, a price which, in a world based on equality, would at once fall to nothing like everything that has only a fiduciary value.  But this disappearance of social distinctions in a reconstructed society is by no means a foregone conclusion, and we are at times too ready to believe that present circumstances are the only ones in which a state of things can survive.  People of first-rate intelligence believed that a republic could not have any diplomacy or foreign alliances, and that the peasant class would not tolerate the separation of Church and State.  After all, the survival of etiquette in an egalitarian society would be no more miraculous than the practical success of the railways or the use of the aeroplane in war.  Besides, even if politeness were to vanish, there is nothing to show that this would be a misfortune.  Finally, would not society become secretly more hierarchical as it became outwardly more democratic.  Very possibly.  The political power of the Popes has grown enormously since they ceased to possess either States or an army; our cathedrals meant far less to a devout Catholic in the seventeenth century than they mean to an atheist of the twentieth, and if the Princesse de Parme had been the sovereign ruler of a Sate, no doubt I should have felt moved to speak of her about as much as of a President of the Republic, that is to say not at all.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 472

Once again, it feels as if Proust is, a century out and in relation to a different country, is giving us a glimpse at the America of today.  The cult of the celebrity has been growing for decades has been growing in the US, and we've now reached the point where an astonishingly, breathtakingly unqualified - by experience or temperament or intellect or vision or moral compass - man is dangerously close to being elected president, and solely because he is a rich celebrity.  I guess the true difference here is that a century ago Proust was commenting on a France that was becoming more democratic and more egalitarian, whereas, sadly, we are living in a US which is daily becoming less democratic and less egalitarian.

My Year With Proust - Day 271

Now, given the principles openly paraded not only by Oriane but by Mme de Villeparisis, namely that nobility does not count, that it is ridiculous to bother one's head about rank, that money doesn't bring happiness, that intellect, heart, talent are alone of importance, the Courvoisiers were justified in hoping that, as a result of the training she had received from the Marquise, Oriane would marry someone who was not in society, an artist, an ex-convict, a tramp, a free-thinker, that she would enter for good and all into the category of what the Courvoisiers called "ne'er-do-wells." They were all the more justified in this hope because, inasmuch as Mme de Villeparisis was at that time going through an awkward crisis from the social point of view (none of the few bright stars whom I was to meet in her drawing-room had as yet reappeared there), she professed an intense horror of the society which thus excluded her.  Even when she spoke of her nephew the Prince de Guermantes, whom she did still see, she never ceased mocking him because he was so infatuated with his pedigree.  But the moment it became a question of finding a husband for Oriane, it was no longer the principles publicly paraded by aunt and niece that had guided the operation; it was the mysterious and ubiquitous "family genie." As unerringly as if Mme de Villeparisis and Oriane had never spoke of anything but rent-rolls and pedigrees instead of literary merit and depth of character, and as if the Marquise, for the space of a few days, had been - as she would ultimately be - dead and in her coffin in the church at Combray, where each member of the family became simply a Guermantes, with a forfeiture of individuality and baptismal names attested on the voluminous black drapery of the pall by the single 'G' in purple surmounted by the ducal coronet, it was on the wealthiest and the most nobly born, on the most eligible bachelor of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, on the eldest son of the Duc de Guermantes, the Prince des Laumes, that the family genie had fixed the choice of the intellectual, the rebellious, the evangelical Mme de Villeparisis. And for a couple of hours, on the day of the wedding, Mme de Villeparisis received in her drawing-room all the noble persons whom she had been in the habit of deriding, whom she even derided with the few bourgeois intimates whom she had invited and on whom the Prince des Laumes promptly left cards, preparatory to "cutting the painter" in the following year.  And then, making the Courvoisiers' cup of bitterness overflow, the same old maxims according to which intellect and talent were the sole claims to social pre-eminence began once more to be trotted out in the household of the Princesse des Laumes immediately after the marriage.  And in this respect, be it said in passing, the point of view which Saint-Loup upheld when he lived with Rachel, frequented the friends of Rachel, would have liked to marry Rachel, entailed - whatever the horror that it inspired in the family - less falsehood thatn that of the Guermantes young ladies in general, extolling the intellect, barely allowing the possibility that anyone could question the equality of mankind, all of which led, when it came to the point, to the same result as if they had professed the opposite principles, that is to say that he was treading in evil ways.  Certainly from the moral standpoint Rachel was not altogether satisfactory.  But it is by no means certain that, if she had been no more virtuous but a duchess or the heiress to many millions, Mme de Marsantes would not have been in favour of the match.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 466-467

Proust continues to reflect upon the Guermantes, and the larger issue of class and privilege.  As we've discussed, it's not as if Marcel's thoughts and actions aren't dictated by privilege - you only have to think back to our earlier discussion of him feeling up the serving girl at the tavern and telling her to feel in his pocket for coins (he just needed to pop a few Tic Tacs and he'd be Donald Trump).  In this particular passage he's reflecting upon the peculiar, at least on the surface, habit of the aristocracy to play at an appreciation of intellect.  The hope was that "Oriane would marry someone who was not in society, an artist, an ex-convict, a tramp, a free-thinker, that she would enter for good and all into the category of what the Courvoisiers called 'ne'er-do-wells.'"  Of course, in the end that is not what happens, and the choice was made by the "family genie" on some incestuous marriage to someone of the appropriate privilege.  You don't have to reach the level of the super rich to see the same thing.  My family played much the same game, made all the more hurried and urgent because of our deep inner shame of our yellow clay, hillbilly Hoosier roots.  We've always talked a good game in regards to social issues, in the end we all (with the exception of the black sheep socialist Muslim) end up watching Fox News and voting a straight Republican ticket.

CFL Excellence - 2016

And a few pictures of yesterday's trip up to Montreal to watch the Montreal Alouettes battle the Edmonton Eskimos.  Truthfully, I guess I should be more thoughtful in the use of the word battle, since the Alouettes were creamed by another bully from the Western Conference.  As my friend Craig opined, "I can't wait to go back, but we'll have to schedule a game where they're playing some Eastern Conference team they can beat."  There is some truth in this statement.  As all right-thinking individuals know the Western Conference has claimed the last three Grey Cups, and they're looking like the better conference once again. Despite the pretty epic beatdown on the field, there was excellent camaraderie and convivial splendor amongst the Vermont contingent.  This was actually my second CFL game of the season (more on that later).  In the previous two years I attended one Alouettes game a season, and my goal this year was to push it to two - and I'm already looking at games for the three games package for next season.  I've declared myself Vermont's Leading Alouettes Fan, which might be true, although there might be pockets of much better fans up near the border.

The delegates from the Gentlemen of Excellence attending this Event of Excellence were: Kevin Andrews, Craig Pepin, Sanford Zale, Mike Lange, Mike Kelly, and some other old guy.

The day began with breakfast at Sneaker's in Winooski.  We were going to start at the more traditional GOE stop of the Pearl Street Diner, but it was a Monday and they were closed (plus, they normally open later than we needed to eat; one of the odd/annoying peculiarities of Vermont diners is that they tend to open later in the morning and aren't open late at night, which sort of defeats the point of a diner).  Our goal was to get some smoked meat at Schwartz's Deli on St. Laurent Street, but we weren't certain about the timing as we factored in crossing the border and the inevitable traffic jam in Montreal.  As it turned out that part of the trip was painless.  We had chosen this 1:00 p.m. game on a Monday because it was Canadian Thanksgiving, but we didn't really know what this would entail in regards to traffic. As it turns out we breezed across the border and into Montreal, and found our reserved parking lot on St. Urbain at the CHUM (I tend to record this seemingly useless information here so that I can look it up and jog my memory for the next trip).

While at Sneaker's I led a CFL trivia competition to see who was going to buy Kevin's beers (because, as I explained in a lengthy Sanford Zalesque email, he had looked up valuable stuff online for the trip).  Since it was the first CFL game for four of the six travelers it also worked as preparation.  The tough questions were:

1. How many teams are in the CFL? [answer: 9]
2. What is the best seat in the stadium? [answer: on the 55 yard line]
3. Name the winners of the last three Grey Cups? [answer: Edmonton Eskimos, Calgary Stampeders, Saskatchewan Roughriders]
4. How much is a rouge worth, and how is it scored? [answer: simplified version, the failure to return a punt or a missed field goal out of the endzone (which is 20 yards deep) - this is usually done by running the ball out or, rarely, the ball can be kicked out - it is worth 1 point; we felt happy to explain it to a very nice visiting British guy in front of us]
5. What team has won the most Grey Cups? [Answer: Toronto Argonauts]
6. What team has appeared in the most Grey Cups? [Answer: Edmonton Eskimos]
7. What are Scudder's three favorite CFL teams? [Answer: Edmonton Eskimos, Montreal Alouettes, Winnipeg Blue Bombers]

We did end up finding Schwartz's and, although we had just had breakfast three hours earlier, four of us (the most heroic of the group) did follow it up by eating smoked meat sandwiches (which were excellent).  We did visiting the tailgating area, which is really pretty crappy.  The general consensus is that Western Conference teams are better at tailgating than Eastern Conference teams.  We give the Alouettes a bit of a pass since they play their home games on McGrill University campus, so maybe they don't have the freedom or parking space for true tailgating.  One of my odder bucket list entries is the desire to see a game in all the CFL stadiums, so I might be able to speak more eloquently about this subject later.  I was hoping to eat a turkey leg at the game (it was Thanksgiving, after all), but sadly I waited too long and they were sold out.  That said, despite the absence of a turkey leg - and the drubbing the hometown crew received - it was a wonderful day.  I have extraordinary friends, and I am quite blessed.  Oh, and we saw a rouge - with the score at one time being Alouettes 1 Eskimos 0 - so it was a successful trip.

Sanford, Mike K and Kevin waiting for the smoked meat to arrive at Schwartz's Deli.

The crew: Craig, some dude, Mr. Big Helmet Budweiser Guy (who was quite nice), Mike L, Mike K, Sanford and Kevin.

The crew at the game, with Lange ruining it for everyone.

An action shot.  Lange is pensive while Sanford and Kevin are posing, although not posing.  Kelly and Scudder are actually discussing football strategy.

The excellent Mike Kelly enjoying the game, reveling in his victory in the pre-game CFL trivia quiz (with a near perfect score), and generally loving life (even if he took a bath betting on the game).

My Year With Proust - Day 270

To a certain extent, it is true, though not nearly enough to justify this state of mind, the Guermantes were different from the rest of society; they were rarefied and precious.  They had given me at first sight the opposite impression; I had found them vulgar, similar to all other men and women, but this was because before meeting them I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence or Parma, as names.  It was evident from this drawing-room, all the women whom I had imaged as being like Dresden figures resembled after all the great majority of women.   But, in the same way as Balbec or Florence, the Guermantes, after first disappointing the imagination because they resembled their fellow-men rather more than their name, could subsequently, though to a lesser degree, hold out to one's intelligence certain distinctive characteristics.  Their physique, the colour - a peculiar pink that merged at times into purple - of their skins, a certain almost lustrous blondness of the finely spun hair even in the men, massed in soft golden tufts, half wall-growing lichen, half catlike fur (a luminous brilliance to which corresponded a certain intellectual glitter, for if people spoke of the Guermantes complexion, the Guermantes hair, they spoke also of the Guermantes wit, as of the wit of the Mortemarts), a certain social quality whose superior refinement - pre-Louis XIV - was all the more universally recognised because they promulgated it themselves - all this meant that in the actual substance, however precious it might be, of the aristocratic society in which they were to be found embedded here and there, the Guermantes remained recognisable, easy to detect and to follow, like the veins whose paleness streaks a block of jasper or onyx, or, better still, like the supple undulation of those tresses of light whose loosened hairs run like flexible rays along the sides of a moss-agate.

   The Guermantes - those at least who were worthy of the name - were not only endowed with an exquisite quality of flesh, or hair, of transparency of gaze, but had a way of holding themselves, of walking, of bowing, of looking at one before they shook one's hand, of shaking hands, which made them as different in all these respects from an ordinary members of fashionable society as he in turn was from a peasant in a smock.  And despite their affability one asked oneself: "Have they not indeed the right, though they waive it, when they see us walk, bow, leave a room, do any of those things which when performed by them become as graceful as the flight of a swallow or the droop of a rose on its stem, to think: 'These people are of a different breed from us, and we are the lords of creation'?" Later on, I realised that the Guermantes did indeed regard me as being of a different breed, but one that aroused their envy because I possessed merits unknown to myself which they professed to prize above all others.  Later still I came to feel that this profession of faith was only half sincere and that in them scorn or amazement could co-exist with admiration and envy.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 454-455

In this section Proust reflects upon the Guermantes, and in turn his fascination with him, and introduces the issues, to be continued later, of their interest in him.  I've talked before how there are more than a few places in Remembrance of Things Past where I can't help reflecting back to The Magnificent Ambersons and the inevitable decline of a social structure that was dying.  However, I wonder how inevitable that inevitability actually was.  A few months back on Twitter I ruminated - well, it's hard to ruminate in 140 characters - maybe it's better to say that I proposed - that this election was really about whether the top 1% was going to become the top 1.5% (with a Clinton win) or a 0.5% (with a Trump win); essentially, that neither side really was proposing a radical, or even meaningful, transformation of society.  This weekend the Donald Trump "grab her by the pussy" tape was released.  Sadly, who knows if its revelations will make any difference, since so many of his followers are clearly just voting for him because he's running against Clinton.  In that way, the tape is a metaphor for the entire campaign because it speaks to, at best, the base objectivization of women, at worst, an actual misogynistic hatred of women.  Yes, Trump, as compared to his normal insensitive, boorish, childish nature, comes across quite clearly as a sexual predator.  However, when I read his comments I also keep thinking about the broader issues of race and wealth and gender and privilege.  Do Trump and his ilk unquestioningly think of themselves as "the lords of creation"?  The rest of humanity - as expressed by his view of women - as existing solely for their amusement.  All of this brings up the obvious question: why in the hell would you think this person is qualified to be president of the US?  As I've said repeatedly, he'll lose and lose comfortably, at least in the Electoral College, but what harm has he done to the political and social discourse?  As distasteful as that tape is, it should be on constant play every time one of the super rich discuss their potential roles as saviors for humanity.