And, talk of the biggest contract ever.
Plus, a rumor about a guy I’ve always liked: Howie Kendrick.
[Photo Credit: Jeff Curry/AP]
Friday
April 26, 2024
Since 2002
Monthly Archives: November 2014
New York Minute
Sal and Carmine’s on the upper west side. A representative New York slice. Thin crust and on the salty side but that suits me just fine.
Gone But Not Forgotten
Sure did enjoy Francisco Cervelli’s time in pinstripes. He was The Wife’s favorite. Loved that smile. He was a mascot and more–had a little passion, could hit a little, piss off the opposition a little. He’ll be missed.
And if he’s got to go somewhere, hell, why not Pittsburgh? It’ll be easy to keep rooting for him. He’ll join another former Yankee, Chris Stewart.
Slowhand Forever, Man
Few months ago I met a guy on the bus in the Bronx and we started chatting about photography. Turns out the guy–Gene Shaw–is a photographer and a mighty accomplished one at that (check out some of the movies he’s work on). He’s also a charming, approachable and engaging dude.
Shaw’s been taking Eric Clapton’s picture for more than 30 years and now has a book documenting that relationship–Journeyman: Eric Clapton–A Photographic Narrative.
Worth thinking about for your holiday shopping list.
Ya heard?
All They Do is Give Out Awards…
Baseball’s awards season has begun.
And…Chris Young. Try to remain calm…
[Photo Credit: The Baltimore Sun]
But Beautiful
Illustrator and designer, Gary Cieradkowski runs a beautiful site, Infinite Baseball Card Set.
Top of that, he’s got a book out, The League of Outsider Baseball.
Put it on your holiday shopping list. Looks like a keeper.
New York Minute
My man Max passed along this cool Jazz Profiles interview with Milt Gabler:
Q: Let’s start with the shop. It was your father’s shop, but it wasn’t a record store until you got involved in it, right?
MG: … My father’s store was on Third Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets at that time. He had a radio and electrical store, a supply shop. Originally he was a hardware man, and when electrical stuff came in, he took that in. Then at the end of World War I, my Uncle Sid, my mother’s younger brother, talked him into putting in radio parts and stuff like that, and they opened their radio department.
Later, a store became available between Lex and Third Avenue on the downtown side of the street, at 144 East 42nd Street, a little nine-foot store. Sid talked my dad into opening a radio shop exclusively on 42nd Street, to be nearer to Grand Central and get the flow of traffic when people walked to the Third and Second Avenue El. They had elevated trains in those years, although the Lexington Avenue was below ground.
Radio was coming in by ’26 and ’27, especially ham radios. Everybody built their own sets in those years. You bought kits, or you bought parts. You got these radio magazines and learned how to put together a crystal set or a one-tube set. And we sold batteries and aerial wire and all that kind of stuff.
I, of course, went with Sid to the 42nd Street store, and would wait on customers. Acetone speakers came out . . . Cone speakers were invented in those years, where you would get, like a wooden frame and you would stretch airplane cloth that they used on the wings of the airplanes in 1918, like the Wright Brothers and all. You stretched it over this square frame. They had magnetic coil and stuff with a stylus coming out of it, and a gimmick for putting the hole in the cloth, and then tightening on with a thumb screw, and pulling it back. Then you bought this stuff that kids used to sniff later, the glue, and you poured it on the cloth and it would shrink and become taut, and you would have a cone. Now they’re made out of paper, but then you did it with this airplane cloth. And we sold all those kits and everything. It had a better sound the little magnetic thing, like a more sensitive earphone in your telephone. Those were the first loudspeakers with a cone on them, a cone diaphragm.
Deep Dish
Another week, more fun book reviews by Dwight Garner at the Times. I remember enjoying when Ruth Reichl wrote restaurant reviews for the paper. I wasn’t interested in going to fancy restaurants I just enjoyed reading her. I feel the same about Garner, although sometimes I do want to read what he’s reviewing–I just like reading him.
Here he is on pair of celebrity memoirs. The first, Yes, Please, comes from the comedienne Amy Poehler:
Amy Poehler’s memoirish book is titled “Yes Please,” as in Bring it on, but its tone is more “No, Really, Make This Stop,” as in Get me out of here.
Composing “Yes Please” was a burden, this gifted comic actress says, that she shouldn’t have shouldered. “I had no business agreeing to write this book,” she declares in a preface, pleading a hectic existence: young sons, new projects, a recent divorce, a new love. What’s it been like to write “Yes Please”? “It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver.”
…Ms. Poehler’s slow drip of gripes (“Dear Lord, when will I finish this book?”) breaks Rule No. 1 about comedy and about writing: Never let them see you sweat. Her persecuted mood is airborne and contagious. Reading “Yes Please” is not like hacking away at a freezer. It’s like having the frosty and jagged contents dumped in your lap.
The second, A Curious Career, comes from the British journalist, Lynn Barber, who is famous for her interviews withe celebrities:
Ms. Barber’s interviews are prized because of her ability to seize on a telling detail, and to not let go even if clubbed with a stick.
“I do believe that detail is everything,“ she says. “Detail is evidence. When I interviewed the novelist Lionel Shriver, she obviously thought I was mad to keep asking about her central heating. But I was trying to nail my hunch that she was frugal and ascetic to the point of masochism, and I needed the evidence — which indeed she delivered. She told me that she prefers to wear a coat and gloves indoors rather than have the heating on, even though she suffers from Raynaud’s disease, which means her hands and feet are always cold, and she will only let her husband switch the heating on if it is actually freezing outside, but not until 7 p.m.”
"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver
--Earl Weaver