Monday, June 29, 2009

So smooth it gets into any party.

Excuses are a Yankee fan's best friend.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

the lie becomes the truth

Here's my idea for a much better way to cover the sad death today of Michael Jackson.


Silence.

Let's declare a moratorium on covering this story for three days. We can all have some quiet time to think about what Michael Jackson meant as a public figure, and as a person. Then we can come back in a few days and talk about it intelligently and coherently. Wouldn't that be much better than just tearing the story to shreds right now and speculating for hours on end about how and why he died? There's just so little to report here. The cable news channels will do what they always seem to do, which is have the hosts interview guests who really don't know anything that the hosts don't, so they pretty much just make stuff up. Meanwhile, an endless loop of file footage is playing, basically reducing the television medium to a dressed-up version of radio. Thanks, but no thanks.

I can commemorate Jackson myself by reflective meditation on his life and music. I don't need to be told how I should think by television hosts and commentators who are underqualified to think for themselves.

Monday, June 22, 2009

There hangs the fool who once had it all

Some of Le Bill Simmons' best work.

Exceptionally well-written, except for this little slip-up:

That was what happened to an arena when Jordan walked in. You would freeze, and you would hear screams, and then it would be a sea of lightbulbs.

Come on, Simmons, you're better than that. Flashbulbs, buddy. Respect to the big guy, though, that was a thoughtful column.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

i make dough, but don't call me doughboy

WEEI's Jon Meterparel, commenting without irony on the oh-so-lovely way the Lakers' Pau Gasol can take it to the cup with either hand:

He might have one of the best left hands in the league. He's amphibious!

Way to keep those standards high, guys. Incidentally, I don't find Meterparel's Boston College football play-by-play work to be repulsive-it's actually quite decent. This, however, is something which I will not tolerate from someone who is handsomely compensated to speak on the radio. The word for which you went fruitlessly searching is ambidextrous, and you're making America stupider.

Monday, June 15, 2009

come sail your ships around me

My semi-conscious thought during the drawn-out process of waking up this morning: I'm Captain Ahab and getting out bed is my White Whale.


Avast!

Sunday, June 14, 2009

like a waterfall

you've given me so many songs,
ones that kept me going on when i'd wonder why

I'm wondering about the meaning of love, and the importance it has in the life of anyone. I want to be with someone, because every now and then I feel a sort of nagging, quite subtle loneliness. I know what it is. I want someone to share things with. I want someone who gets me on my terms, so that I don't have to change how I am to impress them. And now it seems like that person will never come around, and maybe even that I'm wasting my twenties not being in love. That's no fun of course, to feel like something is slipping away, specifically the chance to be young and in love, but I'm trying not to worry about it. Things have the darndest way of turning around on you when you expect it least. For now I'll bide my time until destiny shuts me up.

think of you that way a lot,
singing to the coffee pot and the kitchen wall

(lyrics by Kate Wolf)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

It's 16 miles to the promised land

I was completely fascinated by this quotation from an article by David Hare in the New York Review of Books:

"It's incredible but the country itself still feels provisional. Of what other state can this be said? I notice when I am in Britain that you plan for 2038, you say that there will be this railway or that airport. But no Israeli plans so far ahead without feeling a pang in his heart which asks whether we shall be here at all. We look so strong from the outside, we have such a large army, so many nuclear weapons, we're so certain in our expansion, and yet from the inside it doesn't feel like that. We feel our being is not guaranteed. You might say we have imported from the Diaspora the Jewish disease-a sense of rootlessness, an ability to adapt and make do, but not to settle. After sixty years, Israel is not yet a home."

Hare is quoting an unnamed Israeli writer. What he said floored me. Sixty years gone by, that's a lifetime for many people, and his insight into the country is that it is deeply ingrained in the souls of Israelis to wonder whether each day might be the last for their nation. Sixty years of being, followed immediately by suddenly not being. Can you imagine the great, great fear that state of mind would bring? Can you imagine living in constant terror of the end of your existence?

The writer is correct, we could never think of the state of things that way in a country like the US, Britain, or almost any other on earth. The mentality he describes is so inconceivable from where I sit that I am having a very hard time putting myself in his shoes. I'm not sure if I believe him either, but if it was true, what consequences it would have for our planet! Would we finally understand the Israeli mentality? Would we know the secret to peace? Would we have fairness and justice and equality on both sides? But we cannot the greatest question of all, and the one that may never be answered, Will Israel ever feel safe enough?

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I'll miss the alimony too

I used to own 32 shares of GM stock that I purchased for 5.50 per share. Now I own it all over again as a US taxpayer.


I'm raising my can of Schlitz to new beginnings.