Rest in peace Ray Bradbury. A master.

Here is the Paris Review Q&A with Bradbury:

Science fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

Imagine if sixty years ago, at the start of my writing career, I had thought to write a story about a woman who swallowed a pill and destroyed the Catholic Church, causing the advent of women’s liberation. That story probably would have been laughed at, but it was within the realm of the possible and would have made great science fiction. If I’d lived in the late eighteen hundreds I might have written a story predicting that strange vehicles would soon move across the landscape of the United States and would kill two million people in a period of seventy years. Science fiction is not just the art of the possible, but of the obvious. Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

The Spurs and the Heat are up against it now. Both had 2-0 leads, both have lost 3 straight and have to win on the road in order to force Game 7. I think Miami has a better chance of doing that, but I’d like to see the Spurs win Game 6 and then I don’t care what happens. Got no trouble rooting for OKC.  My only rooting interest is to see the Heat lose. Be great if the Celtics can do it. I’m not convinced they can but I can always hope…

This is the kind of game we pined for during the first couple of months this season when the Yanks seemed like they were behind 2-0 before the game started. A laugher, free and easy.

That’s what we got tonight as the Yanks took advantage of some poor fielding by the Rays, who made three errors, and an off-night from James Shields. It was nice to see Nick Swisher smack a couple of base hits but even better to watch Russell Martin line a grand slam over the fence in right field (he had three hits in all).

Andy Pettitte pitched a wonderful game. Over seven-and-a-third, he allowed a couple of hits and a couple of walks and struck out ten, though after almost every inning he walked off the mound talking to himself. Not muttering it was more like lecturing. Just another old craftsman, working out some kind of private contest for himself, perfection required.

Final score: Yanks 7, Rays 0.

Ahhhhhhh.

[Photo Credit: Pus-Say; Sleepless Dreams; Mike Stobe/Getty Images]

Yanks and Rays at the Stadium.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Nick Swisher RF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C

Never mind the shift: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Joe Martz]

Jonathan Abrams profiles Stephen Jackson over at Grantland:

Jackson is a person whose past influences his present and will probably shape his future. Is he a good person who occasionally mixes in the bad? Or a bad person sometimes inclined to do good? The answer, with most like Jackson, is not as black and white as the familiar jersey he wears again.

“A lot of people mistake my passion for the game with being a thug or a gangster,” he said. “I’m far from that. I’m just a guy who come up in the hood and came from nothing and made something and hasn’t changed. I’m still going to be in Port Arthur all summer walking around with no shoes on, eating crawfish, barbecue, going fishing. I’m going to be the same guy, and I take pride in saying that because a lot of NBA players are not touchable. They’re not real. But I take pride in being a regular guy that people can walk up to and I’m not Hollywood. I want people to understand that that’s the person I am and I’m not changing for nothing.”

Over at SI.com, our pal Jay Jaffe says the Mets’ moment in the sun may not last.

[Photo Credit: Michael G. Baron]

Show business folk

by Albane Navizet

over at Everyday I Show.

Perhaps caught in a malaise in the aftermath of Lou Gehrig’s death and funeral, the Yankees dropped their third straight game, falling to Hal Newhouser and the Tigers, 5-4. DiMaggio tripled into the left field corner in the sixth, but that was it for him. His one for five day at the plate saw his average dip to .326, but during the streak he was hitting a bit better, .354 (29 for 82). Ted Williams, meanwhile, was keeping pace. He had now hit in twenty-two straight, and was hitting an even .500 (40 for 80!) during his streak, pushing his season number to a laughable .434.

Head on over to River Ave. Blues for all the latest on tonight’s draft.

[Photo Via: Smiles and Pretenses]

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be talking Yankees tonight in Tarrytown with Rob Fleder.

[Photo Via: Dead Serious]

From Buzzfeed via Hardball Talk…

Here’s Charles Simic in the New York Review of Books on “Why I Still Write Poetry”:

When my mother was very old and in a nursing home, she surprised me one day toward the end of her life by asking me if I still wrote poetry. When I blurted out that I still do, she stared at me with incomprehension. I had to repeat what I said, till she sighed and shook her head, probably thinking to herself this son of mine has always been a little nuts. Now that I’m in my seventies, I’m asked that question now and then by people who don’t know me well. Many of them, I suspect, hope to hear me say that I’ve come my senses and given up that foolish passion of my youth and are visibly surprised to hear me confess that I haven’t yet. They seem to think there is something downright unwholesome and even shocking about it, as if I were dating a high school girl, at my age, and going with her roller-skating that night.

…The mystery to me is that I continued writing poetry long after there was any need for that. My early poems were embarrassingly bad, and the ones that came right after, not much better. I have known in my life a number of young poets with immense talent who gave up poetry even after being told they were geniuses. No one ever made that mistake with me, and yet I kept going. I now regret destroying my early poems, because I no longer remember whom they were modeled after. At the time I wrote them, I was reading mostly fiction and had little knowledge of contemporary poetry and modernist poets. The only extensive exposure I had to poetry was in the year I attended school in Paris before coming to the United States. They not only had us read Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, but they made us memorize certain poems of theirs and recite them in front of the class. This was such a nightmare for me as a rudimentary speaker of French—and guaranteed fun for my classmates, who cracked up at the way I mispronounced some of the most beautiful and justly famous lines of poetry in French literature—that for years afterwards I couldn’t bring myself to take stock of what I learned in that class. Today, it’s clear to me that my love of poetry comes from those readings and those recitations, which left a deeper impact on me than I realized when I was young.

[Photo Credit: Fernanda Chemale]

“Drugstore Cowboy” came out shortly after “Sex, Lies and Videotape” in the summer of 1989. It was a strong year for movies. Scorsese’s short, “Life Lessons” was released that spring. Later came “Do the Right Thing,” and “Casualties of War,” “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “Sea of Love,” “Glory,” and “Enemies: A Love Story” to name just a few.

“Drugstore Cowboy” was the first movie I saw at the newly-opened Angelica movie house on Houston Street. I saw it again uptown and the movie gripped me.  I saw it again on TV last year. It holds up.

I think it’s Matt Dillon’s finest performance. Kelly Lynch is fantastic as well.

Here’s P. Kael’s blurb for the New Yorker:

Nihilistic humor rarely bubbles up in a movie as freely as it does here. Set in Portland, Oregon, in 1971, the story is about two couples who live together and travel around the Pacific Northwest robbing hospitals and pharmacies, grabbing fistfuls of pills and capsules. They’re like a junkie version of Clyde Barrow’s gang. The director, Gus Van Sant, takes us inside a lot of underground attitudes: the druggies are monomaniacal about leading an aimless existence-they see themselves as romantic figures. They’re comic, but they’re not put down for being comic. The picture keeps you laughing because it’s so nonjudgmental. Van Sant is half in and half out of the desire of adolescents to remain kids forever. As the gang’s 26-year-old leader, Matt Dillon brings the role a light self-mockery that helps set the tone of the film, and Kelly Lynch is strikingly effective as his wife.

Derek Jeter led off the game with a home run to right field, a few innings later Alex Rodriguez turned around a 95 mph fastball from Justin Verlander and hit a grown-up homer to left (eat your heart out Miguel Cabrera).

But I buried the lede–Phil Hughes was terrific. His fastball was in the mid-90s, the curve ball was crisp, and he out-pitched the Tigers’ ace as the Yanks sailed to a 5-1 win. Hughes went the distance (four hits, three walks, eight strikeouts), a remarkable comeback after his lousy outing in California. A solo homer to Prince Fielder was the one blemish on one of the finest performances of his career–he even struck the great Cabrera out twice.

I didn’t see this one coming. But after last night’s tense game, this one was a cool breeze.

Yanks have the day-off tomorrow and then will host the Rays followed by the Mets. Should be a fun week.

The Yankees’ inability to come through with a rally last night cost them the game, particularly in the ninth when Jose Valverde was wild–effectively wild, I suppose. Derek Jeter says the Yanks probably won’t score again this year.

Still, the loss was a drag because Justin Verlander pitches this afternoon. Verlander wasn’t great earlier this year against the Yankees in the Bronx and he was roughed-up earlier this week by the Red Sox. Smart money has him throwing a gem today.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Nick Swisher RF
Eric Chavez 3B
Russell Martin C

I was so pissed last night I told the wife I’d pay her $100 if the Yanks win today and she has to pay me $10 if the Tigers win. She said she’ll buy me five dogs if the Yanks win, I get her five dogs if the Tigers win.

Never mind the odds: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Oyl Miller via It’s a Long Season]

When they got off the train in Detroit the night before their series against the Tigers, the Yankees were greeted with the stunning news that Lou Gehrig had died earlier in the day. Several of the older players, including DiMaggio, who had played with Gehrig were concerned for his wife and considered skipping the game. DiMaggio decided to play, and his fourth-inning homerun was a small bright spot in a bleak day as the Yankees lost, 4-2, while mourning their former captain.

You Gots to Chill.

[Photo Credit: Ana Kras]

On Star Wars night at Comerica Park the Yankees and Tigers played a taut, tension-filled game. The Stakes seemed high for both teams–for the Yanks because Justin Verlander is pitching tomorrow, for the Tigers because they’ve been horrible lately.

Rick Porcello got Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson out in the first on hard ground ball outs and after Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano singled, Mark Teixeira popped out to end the inning. Quintin Berry walked in the bottom of the inning, stole second, and was sacrificed to third. Then the rain came and the game was called for forty minutes. When it resumed, Hiroki Kuroda got out of trouble, retiring the demolition duo known as Cabrera and Fielder.

The game moved quickly. In the fourth, Don Kelly, a tall, thin left fielder, stretched out and robbed Teixeira of a homer. Bottom of the inning, however, there was no robbing Cabrera of anything as he hit an absolute bomb to center field. The Tigers added another run in the fifth and it stayed 2-0 when the Yanks led off the seventh with back-to-back singles (Chavez, Martin). Juaquin Benoit came in and Jeter sacrificed them over, as we all knew he would, and in spite of some of our hollering.

Would the Tigers walk Granderson to face Rodriguez? I thought they would. Instead they went right after Grandy. The first pitch, a change up, low and away was called a strike though it looked nowhere near the strike zone. Grandy popped the next pitch foul and out of play near the Yankee dugout and apparently Kevin Long said something to home plate umpire–and notorious crank–Bob Davidson because in not time he was thrown out of the game. Joe Girardi was heated, charged over to Davidson and he too was excused from the game. Then Grandy whiffed and Rodriguez hit a soft pop up to second and once again the Yanks couldn’t come through with the big hit.

In the bottom of the eighth, Cory Wade replaced Kuroda and got Berry to ground out to Cano for the first out. Cano moved to his left and fielded the ball on a short hop. He made the play look easy but it was anything but–second base always has odd plays that appear simple because the throw to first is short. Wade got a pop out to Cano and then had to deal with Cabrera.

But Cabrera dealt with him instead launching a 2-1 pitch to deep center right into the cameras.

“What a terrifying hitter he is,” said Tim McCarver on the Fox broadcast.

Enter the Jackass: Jose Valverde, who has added to his jackassedness with a blond billy goat beard since last we saw him (the tail of his hair is blond too).

First pitch he threw clipped Russell Martin in the left shoulder. Dwayne Wise pinch came in to run for Martin and he took off on the second pitch to Derek Jeter (and second ball) and made it to second safely. Three pitches later, Jeter drew a base on balls. Granderson took ball one and then hit a harmless fly ball to center for the first out.

Once again, Rodriguez was in a key spot. He took the first pitch for a strike while Wise and Jeter took off and successfully reached third and second respectively. The infield came in. And Rodriguez took a fastball, high and inside for a ball. The next pitch, another fastball, was outside. The next pitch summed up the season for Rodriguez. Right down the pipe, inside corner, 94 mph. Good swing, but futile, swung right through it for strike two. And then came a fastball that nailed Rodriguez on the left elbow, the funny bone. Rodriguez looked to be in considerable pain as the trainer Steve Donohue led him down to first base.

Leyland commenced to pacing as Valverde’s first pitch was so far outside that I was surprised that it wasn’t his last of the night. But he got the next pitch in on Cano’s hands and the second baseman hit a weak pop fly to short. All down to Teixeira.

The first pitch was way high for a ball. Next, another fastball outside, 2-0. The next pitch, again outside, and not even close, 3-0. How could the Tigers escape this? How could the Yanks find a way to screw it up? The crowd cheered when the following pitch was a strike down the middle. Would Teix take another one? He would not as he fouled a ball off.

Now the Tiger fans were shouting, trying to will their team to a win. Fastball inside, like the one that got Cano out, but Teix fouled it back. More screaming, fans standing, clapping. And ball four in the dirt. Game tied. Now, those same fans booed.

Raul Ibanez leaned back and took a 95 mph fastball inside for a ball.  A called strike. Another ball and then a pop up. The catcher Omir Santos came over near the Yankee dugout and he missed the ball. Flat missed it. More boos. Life for Ibanez as he tipped the next pitch–a good pitch to hit. Fouled off the next pitch too. Then grounded out weakly to Fielder.

David Phelps got the first man out in the ninth, gave up a single and then Jhonny Peralta sliced a ball to right. Nick Swisher, moving to the corner, fielded it on a hop with his bare hand. The ball was tailing to his left. It saved the game though runners were on the corners. Enter Boone Logan. Ramon Santiago, a right-handed hitter, pinch hit for Kelly. Took the first pitch in the dirt for a ball. Next pitch bounced too and Chris Stewart, the new catcher, blocked them both. Then Santiago was walked intentionally.

Bases loaded. Again. For Santos. The 9 hitter. And sunken stomachs in Yankee land, figuring this would just about figure. So Logan throws him a breaking ball for a strike. He lined the next pitch to right, good enough for a sac fly and good enough for the win.

Final Score: Tigers 4, Yanks 3.

Less than fourteen hours until Phil Hughes. Sleep well.

While the Mets remain the talk of the town the dullards from the Bronx look to win another game behind Hiroki Kuroda. Be a nice “w” what with Mr. Verlander vs. Phil Hughes tomorrow.

How ’bout some more runs, fellas?

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Nick Swisher RF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C

Never mind the storm troopers: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Scarlet Pimp]

The Yankees attempted to complete a sweep of their series against the Indians but were faced with the daunting task of hitting against one of the league’s hottest pitchers, Bob Feller. Coming into the game he hadn’t allowed a run in twenty-nine straight innings, and although the Yankees snapped that string in the second, Feller was still able to earn his eleventh win of the young season as the Indians came out on top, 7-5. DiMaggio had a single and a double on this day, and back in his hometown, the San Francisco Chronicle picked up on the streak for the first time. Soon enough, every paper in the country would be tracking DiMaggio’s progress.