Going through my Grenada pics to find shots of the ESPN guys (see entry below), I realized that I haven’t been very good about posting stuff from the latter half of the West Indies trip. So to break up the monotony of me thanking most sentient beings and a few inanimate objects lately, I’ve knocked a few pics down to web size and present them here for your amusement before LoveFest ’07 continues. (I still owe you Barbados, more Dominica, some Martinique, and gods know what else.)

So, a few glances at Grenada, which the US alleged in 1983 was building a communist airstrip, although the Grenadian government said it was primarily for increasing the tourist trade.

After landing at said airstrip, the first thing you notice is that said tourist trade is doing surprisingly well, despite the brutal 2004 impact of Hurricane Ivan, which damaged up to 90% of the structures on the island and wiped most of the nutmeg export crop into oblivion. Looking around downtown, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t even notice.

With all the newly repaired tiled roofs, you’d also be forgiven if you thought you were on the Mediterranean and not the Caribbean. The place is spectacular, although if you look around a little, signs of the disaster are visible everywhere, usually in the form of missing roofs. Several churches are full-on Coventry in their not-there-itude.

The wipeout was perhaps most noticeable at the cricket ground itself, which you enter by walking directly through what’s left of the previous national stadium.

The fancy new Grenada National Stadium is spectacular, the result of an infusion of hundreds of millions of yuan from the People’s Republic of China.

(When did Red China become interested in cricket, you ask? When they realized that the UN votes of small Caribbean nations could be bought on the cheap, according to most Grenadians I spoke to. China and Taiwan have been bidding for West Indian goodwill ever since.)

I won’t bore you with excessive amounts of sport here. But I gotta post pics of two of the greatest bowlers in cricket history. Here’s Glenn McGrath, who has taken the most test wickets of any pace bowler in history, taking the very last catch of his career (he retired at the end of the tournament):

And here’s Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan spinner who will surely retire having taken more wickets than any bowler who ever lived. Murali’s signature is the "doosra," which requires him to flip and rotate his wrist at a speed and angle that most human beings would be wise not to attempt. Here’s Murali about to unspool his arm at high speed in full-on doosra mode:

Meanwhile, with Pakistan and India long eliminated, fans from the subcontinent weren’t feeling particularly picky.

Still, there was reason to cheer. One of Murali’s teammates, Farveez Maharoof, even had a maiden over. Several of them, actually.

This isn’t actually as personal as it sounds; it just means he bowled well. What Farveez did after the match was his own business. That said, however, cricket-as-sex metaphors were adopted nationwide as part of a pro-condom, anti-HIV campaign whose posters were visible everywhere.

Note the complete lack of sermonizing about "not playing" or "saving yourself for the right batsman" or "keeping your ball shiny" or whatever. Good for them.

Also good for them: coming up with the most unlikely product name I believe I have ever seen.

I haven’t used the words ecstasy and cholesterol together in one sentence since I gave up Philly cheesesteaks.

Meanwhile, Grenadians were deeply concerned about the tournament’s impact on the island, given the possibility that a sudden influx of tens of thousands of visitors would further ravage a nation of only about 20,000 households. At one point, Grenada’s government considered bringing cruise ships in to act as hotels for the overflow and even asking residents across the island to turn their homes into makeshift beds and breakfasts.

For one measure of how easily overwhelmed the island might have been, here’s the Sendall Tunnel, the primary traffic artery from one side of downtown St. George’s to the other:

That’s meant to accommodate pedestrian traffic, too, as I soon found out the fun way.

Fortunately, the island held, even when sometimes it seemed the roads would never empty of fans.

Out of morbid curiosity, I climbed the hill up to Fort George, where Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and fourteen of his supporters were lined up and summarily executed during the 1983 unrest.

Somehow the basketball net seems to imply that many of the locals have moved on.

Surprisingly, though, the folks I spoke with — at least the ones old enough to remember the tumult firsthand — seemed split about 50-50 as to who the good guys were. In any case, there are more pressing issues, including the increasing money flowing in from real estate investors intending to turn Grenada into one big large high-end development for Europeans with (I like to imagine) high ends, large and developed.

The big question seems to be over how to manage the influx so the locals all benefit properly and aren’t just turned into day labor on their own island.

It’s surely not for me to say, but given the island’s recent wipeout at the hands of nature, and considering the huge interest in the island from three global powers (not to mention Cuba and Venezuela, who also see Grenada as a possible source of leverage), retaining any sense of Grenadianismo (or whatever it’s called) looks like a heck of a challenge.

Incidentally, back in the hotel, you find Cuban TV just as easily as you find CNN or FOX News.

The commie pinko broadcasts are actually a lot like their imperialist running dog counterparts — not just in production techniques, scheduling, etc., but even in the notable framing and repetition of single news stories (not information, but stories, with good guys and bad clearly drawn for the viewer, eliminating any pesky need to think), browbeating the audience to maximize emotional response. (That day’s One Big Story in Cuba was the US release of a guy wanted by Havana for attacking airliners and tourist hotels. Constant message: enemy big and bad; homeland valiant good underdog. This got similar play to your typical One Big Story in the US, such as the current assertion that Al-Qaeda is back and we should all be very frightened. Constant message: enemy big and bad; homeland valiant good underdog.)

Strange thought: after a generation of TV constantly repackaging itself into bigger faster louder kapowie, I can’t even imagine what somebody simply reading a long series of dispassionate actual national news stories would look like, in almost any country. Zing! Bang! Sex! Death! Shiny!

The biggest difference between Cuban and US TV, actually, seemed to be Cuba’s complete lack of advertising, which is even more extensive than you might realize — not just no paid commercials and no product placement, but an absolute abolition of any glimpse of corporate logos or images of any kind. This was surprisingly disorienting, even to my own jaded eyes. I assumed I had realized just how bathed in logos our existence always is. Nope. This was the visual equivalent of a distant jackhammer stopping, leaving you pondering how much noise you usually live with.

Still, I never thought anyone could out-flag FOX News. I stand corrected.

After a while, Flag Lady went away and was replaced by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, doing his red shirted fist thumping thing.

You kind of know where he’s heading after the first three hours or so. Eventually, I flipped the channel over to a broadcast of I Dream of Jeannie from Paraguay.

I mention this because, hey, I Dream of Jeannie from Paraguay. I stuck with this for the night because the Spanish was easier to understand. Todavía estoy aprendiendo. Lo siento. Plus, preferring this over Hugo Chavez slowly droning about matters of international import makes me a total hypocrite for grouching about the packaging of news. So there. Whee!

Anyhow, back to Grenada. Despite numerous hardships, the island may have a great future. Certainly the government’s recent ability to actually use post-Ivan foreign aid, rather than allow it to slip away via corruption or incompetence, is encouraging. And sure, Grenada may yet again become a mere pawn in superpower affairs. But maybe that’s a ways off. The local office of the Organization of American States is still located upstairs in the back of a strip mall — right under Glorious Hut — and the sign isn’t even spelled correctly.

While I was there, I got curious and tried to find out just how glorious a hut can be. Unfortunately, it was closed. So there may be even more glorious stuff in Grenada than I can yet imagine.

Not that it needs it. Grenada can be plenty glorious as it is.

Some of you may recall that I spent the months of March and April bopping around the Caribbean, following the Cricket World Cup toward its inevitable conclusion with an Australian victory.

About a week after I arrived, I wound up sharing a flight between St. Vincent and Antigua with a couple of guys covering the tournament for ESPN International. Long story short, they were amused by the presence of an enthusiastic American cricket fan, so they more or less adopted me. The routine thereafter, basically: cricket, then drinks after work. Repeat.

By the time the tournament reached Grenada, I had been appointed as their "sound guy," suddenly finding myself admitted to the press box and practice facilities simply for carrying a fuzzy boom mic around and saying something useful at a rate of perhaps twice per day.

This was a total gas. I mostly used the opportunity to watch the finest cricket batsmen in the world from absurdly close range, deluding myself with the idea that I was picking up a few pointers.

Too often, friendships struck up while traveling can end with promises to get together that never really materialize, but that won’t be the case here. Last week, while I was on the east coast, they invited me up to the ESPN corporate mothership for a behind-the-scenes visit.

Bristol, Connecticut, the most glamorous spot in the entertainment world

ESPN International turns out to have the coolest offices I may have ever set foot in: rugby and footy and cricket practically hang in the air, office mates babble a Babel of tongues making calls to sources all over the world, and the energy of impending deadlines gives the room an urgency not unlike the competitions they cover.

The folks couldn’t have been nicer. After accepting a nice cup of Earl Grey from the anchorwoman who hosts ESPN Soccernet, I mostly wound up spending the day watching my buddies Trav and Dave rush together copy and then hanging out in the control room as they blasted through tapings of Sportscenter for Australia and around the world. Then we went out drinking. I believe the cricket vibe may last a good long while.

So, as long as I’m thanking the known universe for being super-friendly for last few months: thanks, ESPN International.

And while I’m busy catching up with thanking people, J. Keith gets a hearty hurray for the invite to the panel on his live version of What’s My Line? a few weeks ago, which you could probably just think of as a 1950s cocktail party with live music and an audience.

My thanks to all.  Robert even handed us all spiffy silver letter openers as friendly parting gifts which can also double (in true Tarantino fashion) as stylish shivs.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and you haven’t yet trotted down to Acme to go see the show, do.

I’d also like to say a belated public thanks to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who stunned this blog and a small swarm of guests with not just a primo batch of seats behind home plate, but a personal escort and pre-game field passes, allowing us to tromp around the edges of the field itself while the pros were taking warmups.

When I was a kid in Cleveland in the 1970s, Dodger Stadium was this unimaginably faraway place where it never rained and the team never sucked and the players seemed friendly and the stands were filled with people from TV.

Sure enough, we got a perfect night, the Dodgers were playing for first place, and while we were hanging out, closer Takashi Saito wandered by to greet a Japanese guest near us. Then Dodgers manager Grady Little wandered over for a quick chat with us all, and about five seconds later I started noticing the stands behind me filling with recognizable faces. So this was exactly what I had imagined about 35 years earlier. I wondered briefly if I was actually still eight years old and only daydreaming.

Anyhow, this whole thing was unexpected and severely cool, and I’ve been meaning to grab a minute and say how much I appreciated it for weeks. So to Ellen and the entire Dodgers front office: thanks from all of us for a wonderful, memorable, terrific evening.

Didn’t mean to let the site go slack for so long, but life got busy on me. I’m sure you survived. Meanwhile, much fun cooking here.

However, now that I’m briefly home again, I must first head to the dentist, because the other day a poppy seed challenged one of my molars to a duel, the molar accepted, and the poppy seed promptly kicked the molar’s ass. So I’m down several minor tooth chunks and an aggravated tongue, actually, although that didn’t stop me from some weekend goofiness I’ll write about later today while the novocaine dissipates.

Said goofiness made me feel like a pudu among giraffes for a little while. And, handily enough, when the L.A. Zoo’s docent was leading Team Pudu around the facility (see below), I got a shot which may or may not have depicted that very thing, shown at right.

The pudu would have been just slightly out of frame.

A small festival of gratitude and contentment will likely begin occupying this page for a while. I know the world is a nigh-hopeless mess, yes — I just wrote another book about that, if fact — but kindnesses should be acknowledge, and there have been many in my own life lately.