If elected, I promise to deliver links every Friday morning!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: May 30, 2008”
Unrequired Reading: May 23, 2008
It’s the Memorial Day Weekend! Here are some links to check out in between grilling dogz and burgz! Have a great holiday, American readers!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: May 23, 2008”
What It Is: 5/19/08
What I’m reading: Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad, and the first 8 issues of the new Omega the Unknown miniseries, sorta written by Jonathan Lethem, whose prose I’ve never tried out. I oughtta sample some of his stuff on my Kindle
What I’m listening to: A new Mad Mix. More to come.
What I’m watching: Game 7 of Cavs/Celts, and wondering if the LeBron/Pierce matchup was going to live up to the ‘Nique/Bird shootout in 1988. It was pretty awesome.
What I’m drinking: Wet by Beefeater.
Where I’m going: Nowhere, not even for Memorial Day weekend. Sigh.
What I’m happy about: Getting out for a fantastic meal at Saddle River Inn on Saturday night, even if Dad raised the stakes on inappropriate conversation by launching into a discourse on the method used by my mohel. Seriously.
What I’m REALLY happy about: My pal Tina got married!
What I’m sad about: The Celtics won.
What I’m pondering: Microsoft’s strategy. Post to come.
Rich white guys RULE!
In the Official Newspaper of Gil Roth, Tim Marchman has an article today on how the “corporate ownership” wave in baseball never came to fruition, looking back on the 10th anniversary of the Piazza trade from LA to Florida. Marchman makes the key point that, as the decade has passed, the ranks of MLB ownership includes more smart, rich, white guys (and hispanics) and fewer Belgians. And that’s a sentiment we can all get behind.
(BONUS! Today’s ONGR also has an obit for Irena Sendler, the righteous woman who helped smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto. I got choked up while reading her story at the lunch table, but no one else was in the room, so I didn’t have to kill anyone.)
What it is: 5/12/08
What I’m reading: Lush Life
What I’m listening to: Rain
What I’m watching: More NBA playoffs and the third season of The Wire
What I’m drinking: Brooklyn Brewery Summer Ale.
Where I’m going: Nowhere!
What I’m happy about: That lunch on Friday still seems pretty awesome to me.
What I’m sad about: That I had to mute the broadcast of the Lakers-Jazz game on Sunday after Mike Tirico had to deliver an extended shill for the new installment of High School Musical . . . and two of its stars happen to be sitting right next to us at courtside! Great corporate synergy, DisneyABCESPN. You probably managed to ensnare a whole new audience for High School Musical: you know, hardcore hoops fans who blew off Mothers Day to watch an NBA playoff game.
What I’m pondering: A whole ton of gardening/landscaping issues, now that the tree removal guys have done their business.
Friendship, character . . . rebounding
Separated at birth: Charles Barkley from tonight’s TNT NBA playoff pregame show, and Jon Polito (as Johnny Caspar in Miller’s Crossing).
“I’m a sporting man. I like to lay the occasional bet.”
You stay classy, Atlanta!
I’ve referred to Charles Barkley as a knucklehead for years. I was wrong; he’s a dumbass.
It’s the quiet ones you need to worry about
I’ve always loved Marvin Harrison for great performances and his lack of showboating, but how awesome would it be if he turned out to be the most badass mo’fo’ in the NFL? Amy thinks it’d be like that SNL skit about Neil Diamond.
What It Is: 4/21/08
What I’m reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What I’m watching: NBA Playoffs, except for most of the Nuggets-Lakers game.
What I’m listening to: not much. I haven’t played a lot of music lately, partly because I can’t (work-)write when there’s music on, and partly because my mom is visiting for a week and it’d be rude to play my music as loud as I like to. But I did just fall in love with Academia, off the new album by Sia.
What I’m drinking: G&Ts with G’Vine, a fancy French gin that my associate editor bought me for the holidays.
What I’m happy about: That Rufus was impossibly well-behaved (well, sleepy) during our Seder on Saturday night, despite the presence of 5 people he’d never seen before.
What I’m sad about: All the games we could’ve played. (oh, and these, too)
What I’m pondering: Going back to Montaigne and writing more of those Monday Morning Montaigne pieces that you hated.
Papal Bull
I am so pissed off right now.
Yesterday’s kickoff of the NBA Playoffs featured a great game in the Suns-Spurs double-OT tilt. Nuggets-Lakers looked like the best game on tap for today, with the possibility that Kobe would go for 70 against the no-defense Nugs. So 3:00pm rolls around, and I click over to ABC, only to see:
The pope’s mass at Yankee Stadium. And guess what? It’s being carried on SIX local networks, plus uncountable religious and Hispanic channels! And the DirecTV guide says this mass runs from 2 to 6pm!
ABC’s corporate bitch, ESPN, is meanwhile carrying the “Mexico 200,” a NASCAR event in which drivers do their best to get across the border and back to civilization.
Now, I’m not biased against Catholics, but I’m going to compare this BS to the 1994 Ford Bronco run that pre-empted the fifth game of the Knicks-Rockets NBA finals.
You heard me: I’m comparing the pope to O.J. Simpson.