“In whatever situation a person finds himself, he should not abandon his favorite ways and his special abilities. . . . A hero should go his own way.”
—Sakamoto Ryu014dma, 19th-century samurai
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Angel Stadium in Anaheim has been turned into a grown-up’s playpen. Four thousand tons of dirt cover the baseball field, sculpted into giant peaks resembling a scaled-down version of the San Gabriel Mountains, in preparation for a February monster truck show. Workers on break operate remote-control versions of the real monsters, soaring, somersaulting and swarming the cordillera with comic imprecision. To see the faces of the controllers is to understand why the lever in their hand is called a joystick.