Blog Archives

Remember this? Thirty years ago…Thanks to our man Cliff for sending the link.

Happy Thanksgiving you guys!

p.s. Looks as if the Yanks want Fab Five Freddy back in 2012.

[Photo Credit: Vickisee]

Kick the Bobo.

[Photo Credit: Daniela Nobili]

A new Muppets movie is here. Here’s a scene from their original flick:

And dig this, too:

Every day is a good day for Madeleine’s. Man, check out the beautiful site: Three to One.

No matter what you are cooking, as our man, Jacques Pepin likes to say: Happy Cooking.

“Still Life with Quince, Apples, and Pears,” By Paul Cezanne (1885-87)

Lots of people getting out of town today. I’m glad that I’m not one of them. Hope that no matter where you are, you have a decent time of it tomorrow.

[Photo Credit: Thig Nat]

My grandmother on my mother’s side had dementia and spent the last years of her life in a home. I was told that she liked to bite people. I never saw her during that time–she was in Belgium, I was here in New York–but hers is the only experience I have with Alzheimer’s. I got to thinking about her as I read Charlie Pierce’s beautiful memoir about the disease, his family curse, which claimed his father and four uncles, and which may eventually claim  him, as well.

Here is an excerpt:

The waking dream is of a dead city.

There was a great fire and the city died in it. I am sure of that. I can see the smoldering skyline, smoke rising from faceless buildings, flattening into dark and lowering clouds. I can hear the sharp keening of the scavenger birds. I can smell fire on damp wood, far away. I can feel the gritty wind in my eyes. I can taste the sour rain.

The waking dream comes upon me when I forget where the car is parked, or when I buy milk but forget the bread, or when I call my son by my daughter’s name. Wide awake but dreaming still, I walk through the ruined city.

When it happens, I remember. I remember everything. I remember anything. For years, I have been a walking trove of random knowledge, but I’ve come not to believe in the concept of trivia. I do not believe that anything you remember can be truly useless because I have seen memory go cold and dead.

“Why do you know stuff like that? people ask.

I smile and shrug. I do not tell them about the relief I find in remembering that Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley. Not to remember Leon Czolgosz is to realize that one day you may not remember your son.  Leon Czolgosz goes first, and then your children. Not to remember is to realize that the day will come when you cannot find your way back home, that the day will come when you cannot find the way back to yourself. Not to remember is to begin to die, piecemeal, one fact at a time. It is to drift, aimlessly, deep into the ruined city, and never return.

…There’s a game I play now, when the waking dream comes. I make a deal with the disease. All right, I say. I will allow you to have some of my memories. You can have my first polio shot, all the lyrics to “American Woman,” two votes for Bill Clinton, and both Reagan administrations.

Leave me my children’s names.

Let me know them, and you can have all four Marx Brothers.

This is not clinical. I know the disease does not work this way. But sometimes, when the waking dream comes and I can feel the wind all gritty on my skin, I play this game anyway, and I am very good at it. I was born to play it. I was raised to believe that truth is malleable, and that you can bend it so that even its darkest part can be shaped into the familiar and the commonplace. I can play this game. I can play it well.

Makes you appreciate the moment, this moment, for what we have.

You can order Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer’s Story, here.

[Photo Credit: Best of Rally Live and  Jason Langer]

It’s Ryan Braun over Matt Kemp for NL MVP. Don’t agree with this one, but there you have it.

Oh, yeah, Craig Calcaterra weighs in on the new CBA.

Check out these collages by handi edan.

The Yankees announce ticket plans for 2012.

[Photo Credit: Vernacular Typography]

Check “Address is Approximate,” by The Theory:

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

[Photo Credit: Mudpig]

Serious Eats serves it up (better) than Stove Top Stuffin’.

NYCmovie

Seen on Broadway last night.

[Photo Credit: NY Bits]

Bobby V and the Red Sox? Oh, man, it’s just too good not to happen. Sensitive, bright, smug, insufferable, and just this side of self-parody–they are made for each other. Bobby V will make it even easier to despise the Sox.

Imagine Buck Showalter vs. Bobby? Then add dd Joe Girardi’s tight ass? Never mind Joe Maddon. That’s a lot of gamesmanship from the top step of the dugout in the AL East. Oh, man, for pure entertainment value, this will be rich if it happens. And it looks like it will.

For more on Bobby V, check out Chris Ballard’s 2007 SI profile.

[Photo Credit: Greenwich Time.com]

Why, our old pal Jay Jaffe, of course. Oh yeah, here’s the rest of Baseball Prospectus’ 2011 Internet Baseball Awards.

Over at How To Be a Retronaut, check out this gallery of lesbian pulp fiction (1935-’58):

Justin Verlander is the AL MVP.

No real surprise, here. The two candidates from Boston were sunk when their team choked away a playoff spot; Curtis Granderson didn’t have the numbers to overwhelm the field, and the same goes for Miguel Cabrera; Jose Bautista was the best player in the league but an unpopular pick with many writers because his team wasn’t in the playoff hunt, which left Verlander. It was a pick-’em vote and it went to the pitcher.

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya…

[Picture via Chill Walker]

With mustard or without?

[Picture by Bags]