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Near the end of Manhattan, Woody Allen lies on a couch and talks into a tape recorder:

Well, all right, why is life worth living? That’s a very good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile.  Like what? OK… for me…Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing. And Willie Mays.And… the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony. And… Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues. Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental Education by Flaubert. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne. The crabs at Sam Wo’s. Tracy’s face.

I’ve never sat down and come up with a list myself but last night a friend of mine showed me the folloing Laurel and Hardy clip. Now, I’ve never been enamoured with Laurel and Hardy in the same way I am with Buster Keaton or the Marx Brothers, but this scene brightened my week and reminded me of some things really do make life worth living.

The Super Bowl will have come and gone and in less than two weeks, spring training will begin.

The Yanks are still the champs and this year brings the tension of a possible repeat. Winning consecutive championships is one of the hardest things to accomplish in team sports. Be interesting to see how they react. 

There is no reason not to think that this is gunna be another exciting year…

The spring crop of baseball books is just around the corner and I’m especially eager to read Howard Bryant’s biography of Hank Aaron. Closer to home, there are two baseballish memoirs of interest, The Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told through Baseball Cards, by former Toaster pal, Josh Wilker, and 90% of the Game Is Half Mental: And Other Tales from the Edge of Baseball Fandom, by our own Emma Span. In a baseball round-up from Library Journal, the word is such on Emma’s book:

A warm and funny memoir (casual swearing included) by freelance writer Span, consisting of separate essay-chapters relating to her own experience of baseball, from her father’s nurture over scorecards, through her time (2006–07) as sportswriter for the Voice, to observations of what the game brings out in all of us around this country and beyond—players, writers, and fans included. This will be especially enjoyed by Span’s twenty-something peers who follow the Mets or Yankees. She has a refreshingly unassuming and appealing voice.

Josh and Emma are not only friends but I think they are two of the most interesting and engaging writers to emerge from the baseball blogosphere. I’m so excited for them both and I hope that their books get the attention and praise they deserve. This is just the first you’ve heard about both projects in this space.

Ya Hoid?

[Photo Credit: ckaroli]

I am a bona fide vinegar junkie. Much to the wife’s chagrin, I’ve got over a dozen bottles at a time, and can’t keep any of them neat or clean. I’ll cop to it–I’ve got a sticky problem. I denied it for years, but I’m like Pig Pen, man. Emily is always harumphing, “How come this counter is so damn sticky?!” And I shout back, “I wiped it down twice!” Which isn’t always the case, but I usually try to clean after myself a little bit.

Then, one time when she was out of town for a few days, and I was in the apartment and I’ll discovered it for myself–I am sticky. What the hell, dude? I make a mess. Hey, we all have our flaws.

But back to the finer things in life, namely, vinegar. This here is one of my favorite products of all-time, an aged red wine vinegar from Spain.

It is not nearly as distinct and syrupy as aged Balsamic vinegar, but it is a little sweet and mellow. Anyhow, I think it is the bomb and use it constantly. It isn’t cheap, but for twenty bucks it makes a terrific gift. You can buy it here.

Our two cats, with that certain Bronx attitude.

Ms. October, this is for youski.

New Year, Same Story…

While we’re on the subject of food, check out this article (and video) on a simple fried rice dish from the Times’ Mark Bittman.

[Photo Credit: Evan Sung]

There is nothing as discouraging as a weak pepper mill. Or should I say, there is nothing as satisfying as a good one. The feel in your hands, the sound of a coarse crunch. There are many good pepper mills, of course, but when the good people at Cook’s Illustrated recommended The Magnum as the best of the best, I tried it and was converted. Never mind that it sounds like a vibrator. It is a simple design, efficient and wonderful. I have the bigger model, and if I had to do it again, the small one would do just fine.

Either way, Magnum Force is the way to go.

And yes, that’s what she said.

Another youngster…this one straight outta Connecticut:

My wife calls me a food snob, which in many ways I am. I like plenty of junk food too, but as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have gotten more refined. “Snooty Ham,” is what the wife calls anything but Virginia Ham, and she takes great pleasure in busting my chops.

I’m more of an enthusiast than an elitest but there are some things that I’ve grown so attached to, it is hard a culinary life without them. First up, salt. I’ve traditionally used kosher salt for just about everything but over the past few years have experimented with a bunch of different sea salts, especially fleur de sel.

Then I saw the light: Maldon Salt. 

It has become my favorite finishing salt or table salt, easy to manipulate. The texture is wonderful and the flavor is sharp. Yeah, it is pricey, but well worth trying.

In going through some of correspondence from my Old Man, I found this, the start of a letter he wrote to me when I was 19 and spending the summer visiting my mother’s relatives in Belgium:
 

It is with more than a little glee that I send you these clippings from the several New York papers. It is not often that the good guys get theirs and the bad guys get what’s coming to them but Mr. Vincent would seem to have made the latter portion of that sentence come to pass. I don’t know whether it is the solution that I would have wished for but it ain’ta bad’un. Being required to divest himself of all control of the Yankees, and doing so as publicly as it must be done, must tick in Steinbrenner’s throat and that makes me feel very good indeed. Whether Vincent is aware of it or not, he has done the citizenry a great service which they were powerless to do for themselves.

July 31, 1990

This from the same man who would only consider believing in Hell if only Walter O Malley could burn in it for eternity. Pop hated bullies, which is ironic because he was one himself.

Still, for all that Steinbrenner has contributed to the success of the team–and he has certainly done that–when Fay Vincent punished him in 1990 it was the first glimmer of hope that the Yankees could rebound. At the time, I believed that the Yankees would never be great again until he was gone. That wasn’t the case, of course, though the Dynasty of the ’90s was formed during his second hiatus from the game. It’s hard to imagine a late-bloomer like Bernie Williams being afforded the opportunity to grow during the ’80s.

[Illustration by Lyndon Hayes]

Are the Twins about to sign Joe Mauer to a long-term extension?

The rumors are flying.

[Drawing by Peter Chen]

This week, we’ll hip you to some cool tracks recorded by young uns.

First up, these cats..Fifth graders, y’all.

Just a couple of few things for you.

Ledger beat writer Marc Carig has just started his own blog. Sure to be a regular spot for Yankees fans. Welcome aboard, Marc. Site looks dope. 

Hank Waddles, a regular contributor to the Banter, has just launched a new site for his wonderful series of interviews with writers: Behind the Book.  Check, check it out.

(more…)

Been thinking a lot about the term “recluse” this weekend. There is such a negative association with it. But is it such a bad thing? Anyhow, this caught my eye–a short interview with the “reclusive” creator of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Bill Watterson, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

BW: This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

I think this is a rare quality in a writer, columnist, artist, you name it–the ability to leave sooner rather than later, especially when you are a success. I was duly impressed with the visual wonder of Avatar but I would have been that much more impressed if the movie was an hour shorter.

Waiting for the train at 231st street, Sunday afternoon.

Stupid Bowl this weekend. Then, the countdown to spring training begins in earnest.

Here’s just a few more Salinger links for you.

1)  The Heart of a Broken Story, Salinger’s first short story for Esquire (1941).  

2)  This Sandwich Has No Mayonaise, another Salinger short story for Esquire (1945).

3)  JD Salinger: The Man in the Glass House, a profile by Ron Rosenbaum.

5) Justice to JD Salinger, a defense of Salinger’s work by Janet Malcolm for the New York Review of Books.

6) Finally, a nice appreciation in the New Yorker (there are several tributes in the current issue) by Lillian Ross:

At one point during the more than half century of our friendship, J. D. Salinger told me he had an idea that someday, when “all the fiction had run out,” he might try to do something straight, “really factual, formally distinguishing myself from the Glass boys and Holden Caulfield and the other first-person narrators I’ve used.” It might be readable, maybe funny, he said, and “not just smell like a regular autobiography.” The main thing was that he would use straight facts and “thereby put off or stymie one or two vultures—freelancers or English-department scavengers—who might come around and bother the children and the family before the body is even cold.”

A single straight fact is that Salinger was one of a kind. His writing was his and his alone, and his way of life was only what he chose to follow. He never gave an inch to anything that came to him with what he called a “smell.” The older and crankier he got, the more convinced he was that in the end all writers get pretty much what’s coming to them: the destructive praise and flattery, the killing attention and appreciation. The trouble with all of us, he believed, is that when we were young we never knew anybody who could or would tell us any of the penalties of making it in the world on the usual terms: “I don’t mean just the pretty obvious penalties, I mean the ones that are just about unnoticeable and that do really lasting damage, the kind the world doesn’t even think of as damage.” He talked about how easily writers could become vain, complaining that they got puffed up by the same “authorities” who approved putting monosodium glutamate in baby food.

Sixteen and counting… 

[Photo Credit: AFP]