November 7, 2009
Somehow I don’t think Washington will ride to the rescue of the ailing book business, as the age of pulp fiction and nonfiction gives way to the Kindlezoic Era.
By the way, I saw several Kindlers Kindling (Christmas lyric?) on the plane to New York last week, and–Updike help me!–I must admit they looked pretty darn cool, though I lamented the loss of pulp-powered history and aesthetics in a recent radio commentary. Sample tease:
Books are also cultural touchstones, part of the timeline of our lives. Even cheap, lurid crime and Sci-fi paperbacks from the Forties and Fifties speak volumes about what people valued, what they desired and what they feared.
Books have an individual character, a tactile reality, a smell, a life span, that make them precious and loveable in ways no collection of bytes can be. They take up space, they react to moisture and heat and light. Mortal and tattered, they age along with us.
November 3, 2009
Even though the Yankees turned last night’s debacle into something closer, finally losing 8-6, an L is an L is an L, and I’m starting to think this is going all seven games.
An excellent piece from the NY Times sports desk sums up all the reasons why the gallant Andy Pettitte, working Game 6 on three days rest, may have little more left than A. J. Burnett had last night. Key quote:
The Yankees know they can count on Pettitte’s competitive will. If there is a way out of trouble, they know he will find it. But if his pitches are as lifeless as Burnett’s were in Game 5, there may be nothing he can do, no magic to summon.
As they sing in the old Damn Yankees musical, “You gotta have heart.” Pettitte’s got the heart of a lion. But what about that 37-year old arm?
The full piece is here. And I’d just like to add one thing: Walk that blasted Utley! Every time! Don’t pitch to him! Lesson learned.
November 3, 2009
You want to meet a group that is fighting the most hopeless battle of them all? Compared to these people, Tibetan vegans are a super-majority. But let’s never forget the importance of lowest-c0mmon-denominator free speech; we mustn’t do anything that would keep X-rated “artists” from doing their thing.
Anyway, good luck to these folks. They’ll need it.
November 1, 2009
Wow! What a trip, what a game. Longtime dream fulfilled. And it was a great night.
By total coincidence, we found ourselves sitting among the infamous Bleacher Creatures of Section 203, who are so notorious, I didn’t know, that they have their own columnist in the New York Daily News. We were actually interviewed by the guy, who had the noive to ask how much we’d paid for our tickets. (We weren’t telling.) Here’s what he wrote in the Daily News next day.
So we were right there when the Creatures did their famous Roll Call, chanting each Yankee starter’s name until he acknowledges them in some way–and all the players go along with it. Go here and run it to about .45 if you don’t want to see all the prelims. By the way, the Roll Call is G-Rated, unlike some of the Creatures’ other schtick. But it was nothing I hadn’t heard in the 8th grade.
Want more? It turns out the Creatures also have their own biography and of course their own Facebook page detailing their history:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bronx-NY/Bleacher-Creatures/106426811050
Now I understand the memorial plaque to the “original Bleacher Creature,” R. I. P., that was affixed to the seat a couple rows down from us.
Anyway, it was a super night that I’ll remember fondly–and the 3-1 Yankees win was even more than I could ask.
October 26, 2009
IT’S OFFICIAL! Get out that Bucket List and check it off, baby:
World Series Game in New York City? Check.
October 23, 2009
After last night’s heartbreaker, millions of fans of the Babe, the Iron Horse, Joltin’ Joe, the Scooter, the Mick, Whitey, the Old Perfessor, Mel Allen, Red Barber, Don Larsen, Mr. October, the Louisana Lightning, Buuuuckyyyyyy Dent, Catfish, Donnie Baseball, Sweet Lou, Paulie, the Rocket, Moose, Bernie, the Captain, A-Rod, and, yes, even Billy Martin wonder if this will be. . .
October 20, 2009
No, I haven’t succumbed to the swine flu. No, I’m not still wandering dazed at the State Fair, trying to find the missing Texas offense that never showed up on Saturday vs. OU. And no (bitter local joke ahead), I didn’t take the DART Green Line to the Fair, so I’m not still waiting on the platform somewhere in South Dallas.
I’ve just hit a heavy patch of work, with incoming rounds of assignments bouncing off my flak jacket. Hope to dig out in a day or two and be back with scintillating stuff.
BUT….I do have this: If the New York Yankees cooperate, this time next week I’ll be fulfilling a lifelong dream and checking a big one off my Bucket List. Yes, I’ve bought $$$$$$$$$$ World Series tickets, booked my flight and my hotel, and if the Bronx Bombers come through, I’ll be perched over the Yankees bullpen for Game Two, knowing at last that there is a heaven.
The pesky Angels bounced back in Game 3 yesterday, but my faith in St. A-Rod cannot be shaken. I’m bound for glory!
October 14, 2009
A National Public Radio piece here recounts a controversy over a Jewish ritual that for some reason requires the slaughter of thousands of chickens as atonement for sins. It’s easy for the non-Jew to shake his head at such apparently barbaric acts–until we remember how many chickens give up their wings and their lives on a typical NFL Sunday and dozens of other occasions devoted to little more than mindless enjoyment and referee-cursing.
One rabbi who disagrees with the slaughter gets right to the point. Meat is more than just taste, though its taste can be great. It’s also tradition, family, community, memory:
“It is a kind of double world for me because I love all these people I’m with and I’m part of their world,” he says. “I wear a yarmulke; I’m with them; they’re wonderful people. But I disagree with them on this point.”
That’s the point I’ve been struggling with in numerous blog posts about my two-year effort to kick meat, as witness here. More on this front to come soon.
October 10, 2009
NPR’s Scott Simon has some trenchant words on the Obama Nobel Peace Prize, which should now perhaps be renamed the Nobel Hope for Peace Prize. His essay is titled with a question that answers itself. Read and listen here.
October 9, 2009
One of the World’s Shortest Lists must be: “List of Hollywood Movies Mentioning Garland, Texas,” the Dallas-area town where your humble host made a long and largely unsuccessful attempt to grow up.
Comes word now that the new Woody Harrelson flick “Zombieland” opens in Garland and starts out with a snarky crack about the not-so-beauteous burb:
“I know it looks like zombies destroyed it, but that’s just Garland,” says one character.
Ouch! I feel like a hungry zombie just bit off my elbow.
How can these H’wood haters possibly say such things about the site of the upcoming 102nd Annual Tucker Reunion? There’s no justice.
October 9, 2009
Well, let me share my flabbergastation with much of the world. It’s not only amazing that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize after less than a year less than nine months in office, but it’s even more mind-blowing that he was added to the secret short list for the Prize after being in office only 12 days, when the nomination process closed.
Best-Case Spin: It’s a kind of promissory note based on the judges’ hopes about what he can accomplish, not what he as done so far, which is little. Those Nobel dudes don’t need much time to size up major potential, apparently.
Worst-Case Spin: Yet another Euro-whack on the Scary America of GWB. Yawn.
Oh. Remember the other day, when I wondered how Obama would bounce back from the Olympic slap? Wow.
More on the Prize here.
October 8, 2009
“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without universal health insurance.”
from The Progressive, 1917
October 6, 2009
Naturally, inevitably, a new book has reduced much of Western Philosophy to a series of Tweets, which for the recently arrived Martian are short text messages that cannot exceed 140 characters.
Some are pretty funny:
Socrates: Drinking hemlock; toes tingling; legs getting numb. Maybe unexamined life worth living? Guard!
Some are pretty dumb:
Descartes: Check out the new Facebook fan page 4 my fav starchy tuber! I link there4 a yam.
And some, I have to admit, are surprisingly right-on:
Locke: Our minds @ birth are like blank slates, except 4 all the ideas, dispositions, and powers we are innately born with.
More shrink-wrapped Great Ideas here.
