Picture by Tono Stano.

This goes out to our neo-BK chum, Dimelo.

Yeah, it’s Thursday. I know that. Still, Alexandra’s Lemon Ricotta Pancakes look awfully good.

Drawing by Barry Windsor Smith.

Over at Fairfeld Writer’s Blog, Alex McNab does a nice job of curating some cherce quotes from Richard Price:

“Part of the jam that I was in as a novelist [after his fourth novel, The Breaks], was that I kept going back to my autobiography for material. . . .Life is hard enough without it having to be perpetual material, too. I felt like a cannibal eating his own foot. Once I became a hired pen out there [in Hollywood], for the first time in my life I was forced to leave my own autobiography to research my characters’ lives, and I learned, with great gratification, that talent travels. If you have enough imagination and empathy, you can write about anybody. That was probably the only good thing, tangible good thing, that came to my writing through screenwriting; knowing that I could go anywhere and learn and bring it back home and turn it into art.”

Can you be angry at a team when you’ve got no expectations? The Yanks lost again last night. Had a 3-1 lead, and Eovaldi pitched pretty well but not long enough, and the bullpen blew it. The offense rallied but came up short.

Final Score: Orioles 7, Yanks 5.

I wish I could feel outrage, despair, something other than resignation. But there it is.

It was nice to see Alex Rodriguez’s home run. Man, that was a bomb. I don’t imagine he’ll stay healthy this year but pretty wild to watch a guy well past his prime do something like that.

Picture by Bags. 

My great uncle Georgie once came in the bathroom when my cousin Donny was taking a bath. George pointed at Donny and said, “You’re all wet!” He said in an accusing tone that made Donny cry. Donny was too young to realize it was meant as a joke.

What this has to do with tonight’s game I don’t know. Maybe I just like that story. Or maybe I just like this picture of Steve Martin from The Jerk.

Regardless, it’s Eovaldi, Take Deuce in Baltimore.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Chase Headley 3B

Carlos Beltran RF

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Alex Rodriguez DH

Stephen Drew 2B

Chris Young LF

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind the suds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Head on over to Wax Poetics and dig Matt Rogers’ interview with the great Al Green:

[Photo Credit: Neal Square]

“Carnations” by Pierre Bonnard (1921)

Gandhi, The Karate Kid, Roxanne, The Last Temptation of Christ, 12 Monkeys. Saw them all, and more, at the Ziegfeld. 

[Photo Via: Wired New York]

Ah, man, but I just couldn’t resist.

Here’s the truth of it: I spent more time watching the festive and screwy Mets-Phillies last night because the atmosphere at Citi Field was bumpin’ like it was October. I saw enough of the Yankee game to know how uninspired it was in comparison. They got close, Sabathia wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t enough as they lost, 4-3.

Picture by Bags.

It’s C.C. Take Two.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Chase Headley 3B

Carlos Beltran RF

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Garrett Jones DH

Chris Young LF

Stephen Drew 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind nuthin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: McNair Evans]

Langdon Hammer, the chairman of the English Department at Yale, is the author of a new biography on the poet James Merrill. It looks like a formidable book and in the Times, Dwight Garner calls it “nearly flawless.”

I’m sure the book is an achievement and I’m not interested in minimizing that but I really like what Garner says here:

Mr. Hammer’s book is something close to brilliant, but it would have benefitted from committed liposuction. Its “Shoah”-like length will repel many casual readers, and likely even noncasual ones. While this book is not stuffed with sawdust, 800 pages is a lot of James Merrill, and its girth is admission of a certain kind of failure. Knowing what to omit is as important as knowing what to add.

Picture by Giorgio Morandi.

I love tarragon. It reminds me of visiting my grandparents in Belgium when I was a kid.

If you don’t know much about this lovely herb, welp, that’s what Food 52 is here for. 

Picture by Skip Sterling, via It’s a Long Season. 

Funski. Move your body.

[Photo Credit: Marcelo Montecino via This Isn’t Happiness]

Last weekend’s reprint at the Daily Beast gave true crime. Dig this fine Albert Borowitz piece on The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills:

On the morning of 14 July 1965, Eddie Crimmins received a telephone call from his estranged wife Alice, accusing him of having taken the children. When she had opened their bedroom door, which she kept locked by a hook-and-eye on the outside, she had seen that the beds had been slept in but Eddie Jr, aged five, and his four-year-old sister Alice (nicknamed Missy) were gone. The casement window was PM cranked open about 75 degrees; Alice remembered having closed it the night before because there was a hole in the screen and she wanted to keep the bugs out. The screen was later found outside, leaning against the wall beneath the window, and nearby was a “porter’s stroller”—a converted baby-carriage with a box on it.

Alice’s husband, an airplane mechanic who worked nights, protested that he knew nothing of the children’s whereabouts and, alarmed by the message, said he would come right over to see her. Alice and the children lived in a dispiriting redbrick apartment complex flatteringly named Regal Gardens, located near the campus of Queens College in the Kew Gardens Hills section of the New York City borough of Queens. Shortly after joining his wife, Eddie called the police, and the first contingent of patrolmen were on the scene in a matter of minutes. By 11 a.m. precinct cars were parked all around the grassy mall adjoining Alice’s apartment building at 150— 22 72nd Drive.

Jerry Piering, who was the first detective to arrive, quickly made the case his own. Hoping for a promotion to second grade on the Queens’ detective command, he immediately sensed that he had stepped into an important investigation. It took only one glance at Alice for him to decide that she did not look the picture of the anxious mother, this striking redhead in her twenties, with thick make-up, hip-hugging toreador slacks, flowered blouse and white high-heeled shoes. Patrolman Michael Clifford had already filled Piering in on the background—the Crimminses were separated and in the middle of a custody fight, but the role that the vanished children might have played in their skirmishing was still obscure.

The first fruits of Piering’s look around the premises confirmed the unfavorable impression Alice had made. In the garbage cans there were about a dozen empty liquor bottles that Alice later attributed to good housekeeping rather than over-indulgence, explaining that she had been cleaning the apartment in anticipation of an inspection visit from a city agency in connection with the custody suit. Still more revealing to Piering was a proverbial “little black book” that Alice had dropped outside; the men listed outnumbered women four to one.

While Piering was making his rounds, Detective George Martin found trophies of Alice’s active social life in a pastel-colored overnight bag stowed under her bed. The greetings and dinner programs that filled the bag documented her relationship with Anthony (Tony) Grace, a fifty-two-year-old highway contractor with ties to important Democratic politicians. Alice’s souvenirs showed that Tony Grace had introduced her to such party stalwarts as Mayor Robert Wagner and Senator Robert Kennedy; messages from Grace and important city officials addressed her as “Rusty.”

[Photo Credit: Tom Gallagher N.Y. Daily News]

The correct answer is D) Zero.

Oh, right, the question. Yeah, the question was: What are the chances that Stephen Drew does anything productive here?

This would be in the top of the 7th inning last night when Drew pinch-hit for Brett Gardner. I mean, when could that ever be a good thing? This was after Jacoby Ellsbury reached on an infield single to load the bases (had Chris Davis made a better play at first the inning would have been over). The Yanks were down a couple of runs and with Drew up I told The Wife there was no way Drew would do anything good. Not a chance. When the count went to 3-1 I told her he was under orders from the Universe to take a strike and try to work a walk. But what does the Universe care about me and what do I know about the Bigger Questions?

Because Drew swung at the 3-1 pitch and hit a grand slam.

That was enough to survive a shaky appearance by Dellin Betances as the Yanks won, 6-5. Andrew Miller got the last five outs.

[Photo Credit: Jill Freedman via Time]

It’s Pineda tonight as the Yanks start a thee-game series in Baltimore.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Carlos Beltran DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Alex Rodriguez 3B

Chris Young RF

John Ryan Murphy C

Didi Gregorius SS

Gregorio Petit 2B

Never mind dem boids”

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: The Retrologist]

Do the Wok of Life.