Daily Archives: March 2, 2010

Seated Nude, by Richard Diebenkorn (1966)

Guru, the vocal half of Gang Starr, suffered a heart attack over the weekend. I’ve heard that he is in a coma. Earlier today, DJ Premier tweeted that Guru had surgery and is doing okay. I don’t know any details but Guru’s monotoned delivery is legendary for Hip Hop fans of a certain vintage.

Here’s hoping he’s going to pull through.

I didn’t like fennel until I had a shaved fennel salad at Frank, an Italian jernt in the East Village about ten years ago. Since then, I’ve learned to love fennel, even if it isn’t shaved thin. Still, that’s my favorite way to prepare it: so fresh and so clean (clean).

Dig this yummy recipe from Pen and Fork, an excellent food blog.

When this tune came out there just wasn’t anything else that sounded like it. I remember listening to it on the bus as my high school baseball team drove to away games. Twenty years later, it stands as one of the great Hip Hop singles. Gotta love that 808 drum machine.

28 Going Back To Cali

Dig how Kid Koala flipped the horn intro into this classic turntablist routine:

It’s still cold here in New York City but the position of the sun changes each day, letting us know that the spring is near. The air is starting to smell different too. I haven’t had baseball or the Yankees on my mind too tough this winter; I’ve actively tried to keep my distance, if you can do such a thing updating a blog four, five times a day (even if a majority of those posts are not related to baseball).

I’m suffering from a case of information overload–from tweets and blogs and newspaper columns and hot stove shows on TV–and I’ve taken a step back so that I don’t become completely numb. I want to keep my senses sharp, which isn’t always easy after seven-and-a-half years of blogging about living in New York and rooting for the Yankees.

But this morning, I got excited for the season. What got me is a photograph of Mariano Rivera in a New York Times article by Ben Shpigel. It is the classic Rivera pose, his upper body perfectly aligned as he threw a pitch, his teeth showing.

We’ve talked about the need to appreciate Rivera’s greatness a lot over the years because we know isn’t going to last forever. We’re in bonus time with Rivera now–every performance is gravy. Looking at this picture reminded me how fortunate we are to root for him and the Yankees.

Oh, yeah. I’m ready.