Blog Archives

The Giants are Whirled Champs for the first time since 1954.

Congrats on what’s been a great run.

This is a money game for Cliff Lee, in more ways than one.

I say he comes up Aces and the Serious goes back to San Fran.

I watched horror movies as a kid–respectable ones like “Carrie,” and “The Shining,” “The Exorcist,” and “The Omen,” as well as “Halloween,” and “Friday the 13th.” I also saw a bunch of low-budget horror classics like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “I Spit on Your Grave.” But it was a phase that didn’t last. Horror movies were never my thing, and the older I got the less interested I was in being scared.

I was also just as likely to be scared by an action movie like “The Road Warrior” or “Aliens” or a thriller like “Fatal Attraction” than I was by a horror movie. Horror movies were just iller, with all the blood and guts gore.

I got to thinking about scary movies over the weekend cause of Halloween and you know which one stands out? “Taxi Driver.”

It’s not a horror movie, strictly speaking, but it is a nightmare vision of New York and one that was easy to identify with–the isolation and danger, the fear and violence.

Scorsese once told an interviewer:

It was crucial to Travis Bickle’s character that he had experience life and death around him every second when he was in south-east Asia. That way it becomes more heightened when he comes back; the image of the street at night reflected in the dirty gutter becomes more threatening. I think that’s something a guy going through a war, any war, would experience when he comes back to what is supposedly ‘civilization’. He’d be more paranoid.

Pauline Kael gave it a rave in the New Yorker:

In its own way, this movie, too has an erotic aura. There is practically no sex in it, but no sex can be as disturbing as sex. And that’s what it’s about: the absence of sex–bottled-up, impacted energy and emotion, with a blood-splattering release. The fact that we experience Travis’s need for an explosion viscerally, and that the explosion itself has the quality of consummation, makes “Taxi Driver” one of the few truly modern horror films.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw it, this scene featuring Martin Scorsese himself, really freaked me out…just, so…tense:

Nah, I haven’t been to Four and Twenty Blackbirds in Brooklyn yet.

But I aim to change that in the near future.

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times:

The story of Frank Sinatra’s rise and self-invention and the story of his fall and remarkable comeback had the lineaments of the most essential American myths, and their telling, Pete Hamill once argued, required a novelist, “some combination of Balzac and Raymond Chandler,” who might “come closer to the elusive truth than an autobiographer as courtly as Sinatra will ever allow himself to do.”

Now, with “Frank: The Voice,” Sinatra has that chronicler in James Kaplan, a writer of fiction and nonfiction who has produced a book that has all the emotional detail and narrative momentum of a novel.

Mr. Kaplan’s spirited efforts to channel his subject’s point of view can result in some speculative scenes, which make the reader race to the book’s endnotes in an attempt to identify possible source material. For instance Mr. Kaplan tries to recreate Sinatra’s tumultuous romance with Ava Gardner and tries, not always that convincingly, to map his complicated feelings about the mob. But at the same time Mr. Kaplan writes with genuine sympathy for the singer and a deep appreciation of his musicianship, and unlike gossipy earlier biographers like Kitty Kelley and Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, he devotes the better part of his book to an explication of Sinatra’s art: the real reason readers care about him in the first place.

Some couple of few things to click on:

The first round of organizational meetings for the Yankees will be held today in Tampa. George King reports that Kevin Long will return as the hitting coach.

Ben Kabak on a certain former New York team…

Rebecca G takes a looks at the 10 best moments of the 2010 Yankee season.

Steve Lombardi serves up a dirty trick.

And over at The Captain’s Blog, William talks Core Four and “The Diplomacy of Saying Goodbye”:

The decline of legends like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera (well, maybe not Mo) is inevitable, and at some point, the Yankees will have to move on. However, they don’t need to do it in such a cutthroat way. In the case of Bernie, there was no reason for not giving him a guaranteed deal. Even if the money was a concern, would the Yankees really have been worse off with Williams taking the roster spot of guys like Andy Phillips, Josh Phelps and Kevin Thompson? Luckily, Bernie’s relationship with the Yankees remains strong, but it would have been a shame had the result of the team’s decision been estrangement from one of its homegrown stars.

Do we really follow sports only to watch a winner? If so, why not jump from bandwagon to bandwagon? Although many casual fans do take that approach, the diehard’s attachment to a team stems more from its history than its prospects for future success. Because of their financial advantage, the Yankees can have their cake and eat it too. As a result, the team shouldn’t feel the need to abide by Branch Rickey’s famous advice about trading “a player a year too early rather than a year too late” when handling its Hall of Fame core. The Yankees can still win while catering to their stars. The end doesn’t always justify the means, and in this case, the cost of winning in the future doesn’t have to involve turning away from history.

[Picture by Richard Sandler]

Here’s some flicks from around town…

taken by Bags, our man in the street.

Happy Monday.

Madison Bumgardner, 21-years old, branded the Texas Rangers tonight, but good, throwing eight shut-out innings.

Wait, who? That’s right, Madison Bumgarner. Believe it, folks, it was a thing of beauty.

The Giants won the game, 4-0, and now the Rangers look to Cliff Lee to save their season.

Sunday Slather, Whirled Serious Style!

I’m pulling for the Giants but I think the Rangers will win again tonight.

Trick…

or treat?

So I was down on Broadway looking for a parking space this morning and I couldn’t find one so I had to drive around for a minute. Dig what I found…baseball in New York! The Yankees’ season might be over, but the Whirled Serious is cookin’ down in Texas, and the Kingsbridge Little League is still in full effect.

Ya heard?

The Rangers look to avoid going down 3-0 tonight in Texas. It says here that they get it done.

Let’s Go Base-Ball.

Mid-90s Underground Goodness…

Foodie fun for Halloween from the fine ladies of Food52….

Salted Pumpkin Caramels from Food52 on Vimeo.

Chilly but sunny Saturday morning in the Big Apple.

Hope everyone is having a good one.

Whirled Serious continues tonightski…

[Picture by Bags]

A childhood favorite…

From Bay Area Legend, Elmer Bischoff…

Willie Bobo was from Harlem. He made a name for himself playing for Tito Puente and then, in San Francisco, with Cal Tjader and Mongo Santamaria.

Please to enjoy…

01 Grazing In The Grass

01 Spanish Grease

03 It’s Not Unusual