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.

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.

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.

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.

IT’S OFFICIAL! Get out that Bucket List and check it off, baby:

World Series Game in New York City? Check.

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. . .

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!

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: