Robert Altman once said that you could write a movie by listening to snippets of conversation as you walked down the street.

Overheard on my lunch today…

Short woman talking into her cell phone: “Don’t hang up on me, bitch, I’m trying to f***ing talk to you.”

Two young women:

“W’e’re late, it’s already 1:15.”

“I’ve got 1:07.”

“Oh, that’s cause I set my watch ahead so that I freak myself out so that I’m not late in the morning.”

“That’s smart.”

Business guy talking to another business guy: “And I didn’t get in until 2 but I don’t even feel hung over.”

Dude on his cell phone: “C’mon baby, you know I love you. I love you  like cooked food. What? No, for real, I love you like Red Lobsters.”

[Picture by William Gedney]

There was a nice, long appreciation of the late Edward Gorey in the Times a few weeks ago:

Intriguingly, explanations for the mounting popularity of Gorey’s art rarely touch on its air of hidden, maybe even unknowable meaning. Whatever Gorey’s work appears to be about, it’s forever insinuating, in its poker-faced way, that it’s really, truly about something else. The philosopher Jacques Derrida might have said it is this very elusiveness — the sense that meaning can never be pinned down by language — that is Gorey’s overarching point.

For his part, Gorey, who rolled his eyes at anyone looking for deep meaning in his work, would doubtless have groaned (theatrically) at any attempt to make intellectual sense of his posthumous popularity.

As he liked to say, “When people are finding meaning in things — beware.”

Excellent.

Mariano Rivera pitched in an exhibition game for the first time this spring–he threw 12 pitches and struck out the side.

The peaceful, easy feeling continues, even when the score doesn’t count. Chad Jennings has the skinny.

[Photo Credit: Dancing Under Grey Skies]

The Yanks lost to the Phillies today. Cliff has the recap.

[Drawing by Mary Byrom]

My main concern with spring training is that nobody on the Yanks gets seriously hurt. Otherwise, I avoid watching games and I don’t follow the stories out of Florida too closely, because I don’t want to know too much. I crave the element of mystery and surprise and I want to be fresh once the season begins. There are other sports to keep me busy now–it’s hoops galore these days–and other interests, book and movies, that I’ll put aside once the regular season starts.

This is will be the ninth season for me at the Banter and, as you can tell, baseball alone, never mind the Yankees, is not enough to sustain my interest. Writing is hard, even when it is a quick blog post, and it is important for me not to become jaded and bored. Which is why I’m lucky to have a great crew of contributors as well as a cherce group of regular readers.

Here’s hoping this season turns out to be a fun one. I’m counting on it.

Manhattan in Moscow, via Mark Lamster…cause he’s got it like that.

Five years of drawings from our guy Larry Roibal:

Picture of the Day…from the steps of Cooper Union, circa 1945.

Photo taken by Victor Laredo (via the Museum of the City of New York).

I guess he was sort of the Coco Crisp of his day. Too bad he played so long ago, or he might have made himself some nice endorsement deals. Presenting:

Bud Weiser.

Bud Weiser not shown.

Weiser came about his nickname honestly – he was born Henry Budson Weiser in 1891 (about 13 years after Adolphus Busch, who had quite a name in his own right when you think about it, started his famous brewery). That was in Shamokin, PA, where Weiser also died, in 1961, and is buried in the fantastically named Odd Fellows Cemetery.

He never made it to the majors, but he had a long minor league career, playing with a few pauses here and there from 1911 to 1928, with 10 different teams from Scranton Wilkes-Barre to Dallas, the Charlotte Hornets to the Scottdale  Scotties. I bet Bud Weiser could have told a few stories.

Bonus names: Among his teammates were Ezra Midkiff, Wheat Orcutt, Norwood Hankee, and Bunny Hearn.

Norwood Hankee!

Picture of the Night…

[Photo Credit: Larry Fink – Club Cornich, New York City, 1977]

Feast on this food and art coolness via food 52.

Dear Alex, please don’t break.

In the Daily News, John Harper has a piece about Alex Rodriguez.

Ted Barron captures Robert Frank taking Tom Waits’ picture…from the New York Times.

The Yanks and Sox, together again.

Exhibition baseball tonight on YES.

There is a show of Charles H. Traub’s photography at the Gitterman gallery through April 23rd.

Ode to Man Ray…by Bianca Mariani

“The Cellist,” by Paul Gauguin (1894)