Blog Archives

I know it’s only Tuesday but any day is a good one for Sunday Pork Ragu, live and direct from wunnerful people at Food 52.

Albert Brooks has written a book. I hope it is good.

If it is nearly as funny as this Proust Questionnaire, the world will be an unhappier (but funnier) place.

Right-O.

So I’m in the elevator of my building the other day with a woman whose parents live on my floor. I ask her what she did for Mother’s Day.

“Oh, I just got back from my grandmother’s. She lives down in Spanish Harlem.”

“Nice.”

“I gave her two rolls of quarters.”

“…For the laundry?”

“Atlantic City.”

“The slot machines?”

“Yup, she’s going in a few weeks. I get her two rolls of quarters for every holiday, Christmas, Easter, her birthday. It’s the only thing she wants.”

[Photo Credit: Joseph Holmes]

We love sports because there is no telling what will happen. Yes, we are cynical and jaded but the element of surprise is what keeps us riveted.

Last night I went to bed with the Oklahoma City Thunder trailing by 15 points early in the first half of Game 4 against the Memphis Grizzles. The young Thunder team blew Game 3 on Saturday night and I didn’t know if they’d be able to regroup. Russell Westbrook, their wonderful point guard, seems to have trouble recognizing that he’s the second-best player on the team, next to Kevin Durant. Now losing by double digits against a tough Memphis team, well, it was time to go to bed.

I was delighted when I woke up this morning and learned that the Thunder won the game in triple overtime. Triple OT?!

Here’s John Hollinger at ESPN:

You know it’s a classic when fans of the losing team give a standing ovation at the end of it.

Few people who were in FedEx Forum on Monday will forget it anytime soon. One can safely say Game 4 of the Grizzlies-Thunder series will become a staple of future NBA TV daytime programming, after the two sides slogged through three overtimes, two miraculous game-tying 3-pointers, and three missed buzzer-beaters for the win before Oklahoma City finally won the war of attrition 133-123.

We can also safely call this series “evenly matched.” Through four games and four overtimes, we’re tied at two games apiece with a composite score of 440-438. Each side has stolen a win on the other’s home court, and each has stormed back from a huge deficit to win — with Oklahoma City’s rally from 18 down Monday offsetting Memphis’ comeback from a 16-point deficit two days earlier.

The sun is out this morning, the leaves of the trees now pea green, cool in the morning, and a gentle breeze in the evening. It’s a precious time of year. And the day started with a smile. Triple OT win, and the series is even at two.

[Photo Credit: Melisaki]

The Batman and Robin by Frank Miller.

My man Brad passed along this coolness–Project Neon: A Digital Guide to New York’s Neon Signs (by Kirsten Hively).

From the latest issue of Men’s Journal, here is “The Ferocious Life and Tragic Death of a Super Bowl Star,” by Paul Solotaroff and Rick Telander:

Dave Duerson set the scene with a hangman’s care before climbing into bed with the revolver.

The former Pro Bowl safety for the Super Bowl–champion 1985 Chicago Bears drew the curtains of his beachfront Florida condo, laid a shrine of framed medals and an American flag to his father, a World War II vet, and pulled the top sheet up over his naked body, a kindness to whoever found him later. On the dining room table were notes and a typed letter that were alternately intimate and official, telling his former wife where his assets were and whom to get in touch with to settle affairs. He detailed his motives for ending his life, citing the rupture of his family and the collapse of his finances, a five-year cliff dive from multimillionaire to a man who couldn’t pay his condo fees. Mostly, though, he talked about a raft of ailments that pained and depressed him past all tolerance: starburst headaches and blurred vision, maddening craters in his short-term memory, and his helplessness getting around the towns he knew. Once a man so acute he aced his finals at Notre Dame with little study time, he found himself now having to dash down memos about what he was doing and when. Names, simple words, what he’d eaten for dinner — it was all washing out in one long wave.

No one had to tell him what those symptoms implied or what lay in store if he stuck around. Once a savage hitter on the best defense the game has ever seen, Duerson filled the punch list for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neuron-killing condition so rampant these days among middle-aged veterans of the National Football League. Andre Waters and Terry Long, both dead by their own hands; John Mackey and Ralph Wenzel, hopelessly brain-broke in their 50s. It was a bad way to die and a worse way to live, warehoused for decades in a fog, unable, finally, to know your own kids when they came to see you at the home.

[Photo Credit: L.A. Times]

Robert Lipsyte thinks that Roger Maris should be in the Hall of Fame. Allen Barra does not agree.

I just don’t see a strong case for Maris, do you?

Sunday August 7 at the Stadium gives the Runyon 5K supporting the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Dames and Dudes welcome.

Oliver Wang digs deeper in the L.A. Times:

“Shook Ones Part II,” from “The Infamous” album, is Mobb Deep’s most-cherished hit, so iconic that when Eminem needed a draught of sonic courage in “8 Mile,” he turned to it, with its distinctive tick-tock drums and dark, minor-key bass line.

Except, it turns out, the source of that bass line wasn’t a bass line at all, one reason the sample eluded discovery. The longer “Shook Ones Part II” kept its secrets, the more it became a holy grail for sample seekers, complete with debated theories and false leads. In solving this cold case, Bronco (born Timon Heinke) and his revelation harkens to a seemingly bygone era of competitive sampling and sourcing.

In the late 1980s, as affordable digital samplers such as E-mu’s SP-1200 and Akai’s MPC-60 entered the market, beatmakers discovered the creative potential of looping and manipulating bits and pieces of music from other artists’ recordings, called “samples,” to build new songs. They sought out unused sounds on increasingly obscure records to stay ahead of their peers — and possibly copyright attorneys — and sample hounds followed just as intensely. The adage that “knowledge is power” gave samples cultural capital — DJs could build sets using “originals” while vinyl sellers could mint small fortunes by selling records sporting “known” samples.

Channeling the spirit of E.B. White, here’s Chris Jones with 20 things that should rarely, if ever, appear in your copy:

1. Is your name F. Scott Fitzgerald? [Edit: Or Gene Weingarten?] No? Then take your adverbs out back and shoot them in the head and bury them in lime.

2. Popular culture references, unless you’re writing about popular culture, in which case you should probably occasionally refer to popular culture, but only through your clenched teeth. The names Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Bilbo Baggins, and Lady Gaga should not appear in your copy unless you’re writing a story about three fictional characters and their chance encounter with a hobbit on a quest.

3. Any sentences that read as though they might have appeared in an academic text; therefore, “therefore” is not permitted. “Heretofore?” Get the f**k out.

Goodness how delicious…

Spring is the time for peas and over at Serious Eats there are a bunch of good-looking recipes like this one…one time for your face.

Here’s Peter Bogdanovich on Ernst Lubitsch:

Sometime in the late 1960’s, I asked Jean Renoir what he thought of Ernst Lubitsch. He raised his eyebrows and said, enthusiastically, “Lubitsch!? But he invented the modern Hollywood.” By “modern Hollywood,” Renoir meant American movies from about 1924 to the start of the ’60s. Before Lubitsch’s arrival to California from Germany in 1922 (to make a Mary Pickford vehicle called Rosita), Hollywood films were under the overwhelming influence of D. W. Griffith, circa 1908 through the epoch-making The Birth of a Nation in 1915 and beyond. Victorian, puritan, Southern, montage-driven, Griffith was the father of film narrative. As pioneer Allan Dwan told me, he would go to see Griffith’s movies and just do whatever Griffith was doing. The majority of American directors felt similarly, including John Ford and Howard Hawks.

When Lubitsch arrived, however, things started to change. He brought European sophistication, candor in sexuality and an oblique style that made audiences complicit with the characters and situations. This light, insouciant, teasing manner became known far and wide as “the Lubitsch Touch.” By the end of the 20’s and throughout his short life—he died in 1947 at age 55—Lubitsch was probably the most famous film director internationally, except perhaps for C. B. DeMille. Today hardly anyone remembers either one of them. Yet while most of DeMille is pretty forgettable, if sometimes fun, Lubitsch is always fun and often as good as it gets.

Meow.

[Picture via Jhalal Drut]

Here’s some Alex Rodriguez notes from Lo-Hud:

• The other two errors belonged to Brett Gardner, who failed to scoop the ball while fielding a single, and Alex Rodriguez, who made a nice play at third and then made a bad throw to first. “That play has to be made 10 out of 10 times,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just kind of an unusual play. I was almost getting ready to throw the ball to a kid in the stands.”

• Rodriguez and Long have been working on his leg kick, which has gotten too high. Both were encouraged by his at-bats today. “I was happy with all my swings today,” Rodriguez said. “I wish I’d get three or four hits, but the bottom line is we won a game. Overall, my balance was good, my strike zone control was good, and if I do that, there’s going to be a lot of damage.”

Nice line…Yanks need to get Rodriguez back in the groove in order for the Score Truck to be fully operational.

[Photo credit: Retro Illustration]

Derek Jeter had a nice weekend and a great game on Sunday.

Feels good.

Sunday’s game between the Yankees and Rangers was tedious, filled with fielding errors and bone-head base running. Can’t anybody here play this game? No matter which team you were rooting for, it was a long, frustrating afternoon. Here in New York, the only relief was the steady pleasure of hearing David Cone call the game with Michael Kay.

The Yanks were down 4-0 but crept back into the game and it held a 6-5 lead in the eighth thanks in large part to four hits by Derek Jeter and three by Curtis Granderson. Two of Jeter’s hits went over the fence, his first two home runs of the season. Now in the eighth, the bases were loaded for Francisco Cervelli who worked the count full and then hit a fastball on the sweet spot of his bat to dead center. I thought it was a sacrifice fly and then maybe a double but the ball cleared the fence. Whadda ya hear, whadda ya say, indeed! It was the first grand slam of Cervelli’s career and the first homer he’s hit since June, 2009. Mark Teixeira added a two-run moon shot and the Score Truck was in full effect.

Final Score: Yanks 12, Rangers 5.

Bombers tied for first with the Rays. Applaud, exhale, digest.

Dear Yanks,

Git ’em.

‘Nuff said.

Doughnut Plant via scissors and spice.