Blog Archives

Can someone, anyone, give me just one good reason why LeBron James would choose to come to the Knicks rather than Miami, Chicago or Cleveland.

Just looking for one good reason as we wait for the ESPN stroke-a-thon tonight at 9.

There is an air of playful desperation about Nick Swisher’s campaign to be an All-Star. I don’t know that he deserves it over Paul Konerko or Kevin Youkilis but if Swisher doesn’t get in it sure won’t be for a lack of trying. And if he does make it, man, I assumed he’ll be teased by his fellow All-Stars (not to mention his teammates) to no end. Swisher comes across like a goofball without guile, at least I think his Polly Positive schtick is not an act. Which is probably why he can pull it off. My wife loves him for it; me, I’m not so sure. I’m not as hard on him as I was last year, but I’m still cautious.  But so long as he keeps playing like he’s done for the first half of the season, you won’t hear me bitchin’.

Swisher had three hits last night, including a home run and double, Mark Teixeira also homered and AJ Burnett pitched well for his third straight game as the Yanks completed a nifty, three-game sweep of the Oakland A’s.

Final Score: Yanks 6, A’s 2.

Man, you don’t see that often. The Yanks sweeping on the West Coast. They head off to Seattle in what’ll be their last west coast stop of the year. Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez wait but the Yanks are playing well. Here’s hoping they end the first half with no less than a series split.

We’ll take a re-run of AJ Burnett’s last performance, now won’t we?

Let’s hope the wild man evens his record at 7-7 and the Yanks leave the Bay Area feelin’ fine.

And yo, speaking of the Bay…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

According to a report filed by Andrew Marchand, Robbie Cano will not be part of the Ding Dong Derby, after all.

[Photo Credit: 3:10 to Joba]

Let’s stick with Mr. Hopper…

Cape Cod Afternoon (1936)

One of my favorites from Uncle Louis:

It reached 103 degrees in New York yesterday. It’s supposed to hit 98 today.

Man, it’s too hot to think about food. I just wish I was near a pool so’s I could do the Nestea Plunge:

Hot news for us Buster Keaton fans.

According to David Kehr in the New York Times:

A new, double-disc edition (also available as a single Blu-ray disc) of Keaton’s 1928 “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” presents both the familiar, public domain print that has been a staple of film societies and television screenings for decades, and an alternate version, newly discovered in the Keaton estate archive, that uses different takes or different angles for many shots and is cleaner and sharper than the standard print. (It was common in the silent era to produce two different negatives, one for domestic and one for export use; in this case, it isn’t clear which is which.)

…After “The General” (1926) and “College” (1927), “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” was Keaton’s third costly failure in a row, and would prove to be the last film he would make for his own independent production company. Audiences had turned their back on him (In The New York Times the reviewer Mordaunt Hall described “Steamboat Bill” as “a sorry affair”), just as Keaton had turned his back on them, quite literally, at times, given his penchant for shooting himself from behind. Keaton invited neither the audience’s identification, as Lloyd did, nor its sympathy, as Chaplin did. He presented a closed-off, self-sufficient figure, his emotions, if any, hidden behind his famous stone face.

Here is the most famous shot from the movie (no such thing a tough guy actor these days when you see this):

I can’t wait to get this new DVD…

Couple few news items worth noting…

Mariano Rivera is banged-up. He has a sore right knee. His left rib cage is aching too, so Rivera will not appear in the All-Star Game next week. Joe Girardi is downplaying the injuries but at 40-years-old, Rivera’s health is of concern.

I’ve daydream occasionally, wondering how Rivera’s career will end. The daydreams are always tidy–the Yanks win another Serious and Rivera walks away on top. Reality usually doesn’t comply with these kinds of fantasies but still, it shouldn’t stop us from dreaming. Anyhow, I could easily see this being Rivera’s swan swong, or I could see him returning for another season or two. One thing I’m hyper-aware of–and have been since, oh, about November, 2001–is that it’s not going to last, that life as a Yankee fan will soon be different, that it is important to appreciate every time Rivera is out on the mound, no matter the result.

* * * *

Robbie Cano is going to participate in the Home Run Derby come Monday. My first thought, without causing undo embarrassment, I hope he goes out in the first round. Then I read this from the Yankees’ hitting coach, Kevin Long:

“I would prefer he’s not involved in it, but that’s not my decision,” Kevin Long said. “History suggests that guys that do the home run hitting contest get fatigued and exhausted from the process. I’m happy for the fact that he’s maybe getting the opportunity, but in the same breath we have to be careful in how he goes about this.”

…”I think it’s a lot of swings for a player; physically, I think it’s somewhat of a grind, but it’s an honor to be involved,” Girardi said. “The biggest thing is that we keep Robinson Cano healthy and strong the whole year. If that in any way would fatigue him, then I would prefer that he didn’t get fatigued.”
(Feinsand, N.Y. Daily News)

(more…)

I was thinking about the two impressive starting pitchers being featured tonight in Oakland, but this being Oakland, up popped the image of the Tooz:

Good ol’, Oakland.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Since July 4th was Louis Armstrong’s birthday (and even if it wasn’t his official birthday, play along), let’s dedicate the rest of the week’s beats to him. Here’s one of Woody’s favorites:

Man, an ice-cold, air-conditioned movie theater sounds like the place to be today as the temperature hits 100 in the Big Apple.

From There’s No Business Like Show Business:

How do you follow that? Well, never one to be upstaged…

Yo, where you at?

[Photo Credit: Mamrie’s Weblog]

Jeremiah Moss, who runs the most excellent blog, Vanishing New York, has a piece in the Times about the location of Edward Hopper’s famous painting, “Nighthawks.”  Moss dug through archival photographs and microfilm to pinpoint the exact spot only to discover that the scene Hopper painted didn’t entirely exist in the first place:

Back home, I dug through my bookshelves and unearthed Gail Levin’s “Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography.” The book is autographed by the author — I had gone to hear Ms. Levin read in a bookshop that is now gone — and dated from a time when I was still new to the city and knew it largely, romantically, as a sprawling Hopper painting filled with golden, melancholy light. In the book, Ms. Levin reported that an interviewer wrote that the diner was “based partly on an all-night coffee stand Hopper saw on Greenwich Avenue … ‘only more so,’” and that Hopper himself said: “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”

Partly. More so. Simplified. The hidden truth became clearer. The diner began to fade. And then I saw it — on every triangular corner, in the candy shop’s cornice and the newsstand’s advertisement for 5-cent cigars, in the bakery’s curved window and the liquor store’s ghostly wedge, in the dark bricks that loom in the background of every Village street.

Over the past years, I’ve watched bakeries, luncheonettes, cobbler shops and much more come tumbling down at an alarming rate, making space for condos and office towers. Now the discovery that the “Nighthawks” diner never existed, except as a collage inside Hopper’s imagination, feels like yet another terrible demolition, though no bricks have fallen.

I’ve come to appreciate Moss’ blog–it’s a regular stop for me–but I don’t share his disappointment here because I think an artist’s natural inclination is to combine his (or her) imagination with what they see in real life. Once it becomes a picture, on the canvas, it has its own rules, and isn’t meant to be a document like a photograph. And this picture gets at one of Hopper’s most compelling (and enduring) themes–“the lonliness of the big city.”

 When I look at the painting, actually, my eye always goes across the street to the empty store front on the left-hand side of the canvas, the triangle-shape of green in the middle window above that store. I love how it gives balance to the scene inside the diner. It is an empty space but sturdy and sure.

What I don’t know from professional hoops is more than somewhat. Still, as a casual fan, I just don’t see the Knicks’ splashy signing of Amare Stoudemire as anything but a prelude to more disappointment at the Garden. Maybe I’m jaded by all these years of Dolan depression. Amare strikes me as the guy you’d ideally want to be the third-best player on your team, not the guy you build around. He is a stud, he is a good player but he also feels like Plan B.

I’m curious to know just how much better he is than David Lee (he’s better for sure, don’t get me wrong). Anyhow, unless he lures a couple of more stars to town–preferably a point guard–this could be the start of something familiar. To be fair, it is too soon to judge this signing. I just hope it is the start of something…better, for the Knicks and their fans, and not just another re-run. It’s still early…

Am I crazy? Am I mising something?

The Yankees make their final west coast trip of the season, and we’re not even at the All-Star Break yet. Go figure that.

Sox and Rays are playing tonight, so have at it if you’re just kickin’ around before the late night game in Oakland.

We Keep the Light On…

[Picture by Bags]

It is supposed to be in the upper nineties this week in the Rotten Apple. Oy and veh. I’ve got the day off and I hope you do too. Blogging will be light, but we’ll be back tonight (if not sooner) when the Yanks take on the A’s.

Hope the holiday is making like Chubb Rock and treatin’ you right (and I hope most of you’ve got tomorrow off, too).

While we digest, and wait for Dee’s recap of the game, here’s the rosters for the 2010 All Star Game.

Mr. Hughes tries to rebound this afternoon.

It’s a scorcher…Hope everyone has a great (and safe) holiday.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Happy Birthday, George.

And speaking of George, here’s Mr. Cagney as that other famous George, Mr. Cohan:

Bow Down.