Miscellaneous

Joe Conason nails it: "No recent

Posted on August 05, 2010
Joe Conason nails it: "No recent controversy has so plainly revealed the hollow values of the American right than the effort to prevent the construction of a community center in Lower Manhattan because it will include a mosque."A close second might be the Republican movement to abolish the 14th Amendment...

Elena Kagan's confirmation this

Posted on August 05, 2010
Elena Kagan's confirmation this afternoon means that the Supreme Court has three women. All of them are New Yorkers. Roberts is a New York native-- he was born in Buffalo, although he didn't grow up here (he is admitted in DC). Alito and Scalia are both from New Jersey...

Christopher Hitchens on the country

Posted on August 04, 2010
Christopher Hitchens on the country of illness."The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work...

For a variety of reasons I have

Posted on August 01, 2010
For a variety of reasons I have held off commenting on the charges that have been brought against my friend Lawrence Brose. He has been the target of several ugly and unfair columns by the Arts editor and the Arts columnist of the Buffalo News, and I have engaged both of them in private email exchanges, calling them out on it...

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Up to 64 ounces of sardines.As

Posted on July 30, 2010
Up to 64 ounces of sardines.As an extention of her midwife Praxis experience CLA signed on as a volunteer with an organization called The Priscilla Project. The group matches pregnant refugees with one or two people to assist them through her pregnancy...

From Slate (I'll add the link later):

Posted on July 30, 2010
From Slate (I'll add the link later): "So what will you do, Kindle generation, when you cannot tell which of the quiet boys holding the e-reader on the subway is engrossed by the latest, predictable legal thriller, and which one by a cheery, long-forgotten Laurie Colwin novel? If by some chance you do end up with the right one, what do you buy him a month later, when it is time for that first, tentative, not-too-expensive present?a gift certificate for a free download?"

Interesting piece about the Boilermaker

Posted on July 27, 2010
Interesting piece about the Boilermaker from Running Times: "New records and new world stars are only one side of the annual Boilermaker story. More than any other race, it seems to me to encapsulate our sport's strange binary conjunction of the global and the local...

Sometime between 20 and, oh-- let's

Posted on July 25, 2010
Sometime between 20 and, oh-- let's say 32, we look as good as we are ever likely to. The tragedy is that when it happens most of us don't realize it. The anxiety of adolescence continues to infect our consciousness, and we focus on the features of our physiognomy that displease ourselves, instead of realizing that when we are 24 we are all pretty...

LCA is a stronger rider than I

Posted on July 24, 2010
LCA is a stronger rider than I would have guessed, and she doesn't mind taking a turn in front from time to time. We went about 20 miles, more or less, and although she was feeling the burn for the last stretch down the parkway she hung on till the end.

The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy

Posted on July 23, 2010
The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy had a croquet party for board and staff last night, so A and I gave it a whack. The croquet pitch is next to the Parkside Lodge, and is exquisite. It is to my backyard more or less what the brand of croquet on offer is to the brand of backyard croquet I was familiar with...

As a general proposition it seems

Posted on July 22, 2010
As a general proposition it seems to me that blogs fail as journalism because blogs are primarily opinion based writing, with little research or shoe-leather reporting to back up the analysis. Of course, this is what most op-ed pages run too, so it's not as though this is a situation that is unique to this form...

I am advised by Erin Bonk of the

Posted on July 20, 2010
I am advised by Erin Bonk of the Utica Zoo that the llamas are fine, but they don't live at the zoo any more. They've retired and are living on a farm, which sounds suspicious, although I'm assured it is not a euphemism.The zoo has a couple of alpacas that may debut next year.

I like the idea of mayonnaise mixed

Posted on July 15, 2010
I like the idea of mayonnaise mixed with red onions that have been sautéed in red wine and chopped bacon.

One of the first things I thought

Posted on July 14, 2010
One of the first things I thought when I learned that George Steinbrenner had died was that the guy had managed to seize the spotlight one last time. Timing is everything, and now the All-Star game was going to be about The Boss. I'm not so sure that it always had to be about The Boss, but I was reminded of the famous phantom elevator altercation that followed the Yankees' World Series Game 3 loss to the Dodgers in 1981...

Boilermaker pix are a bit of a

Posted on July 14, 2010
Boilermaker pix are a bit of a disappointment this year. This is the best of Jim and Wendy that I've seen; I haven't seen one with Caroline in it at all.

I'm very sorry to learn that Harvey

Posted on July 13, 2010
I'm very sorry to learn that Harvey Pekar has died. His irascible personal demeanor and his chosen medium probably prevented him from achieving the sort of glory that his work deserved-- he wrote a comic about a a crabby, opinionated autodidact. When I saw him lecture a year ago at the Buffalo Public Library he said that his intended audience was "people who will get it", and he was uncompromising about that, in the tradition of the musicians he was so knowledgeable about...

To the Utica Boilermaker over the

Posted on July 12, 2010
To the Utica Boilermaker over the weekend, after a one-year hiatus. CLA ran it with me, and Jim's sister Wendy ran it with him, a pleasant family outing. It's still one of my favorite summer things to do. We committed late, so getting a place to stay turned into staying in Syracuse, and there were a few other adjustments...

Spain loafed through this Cup.

Posted on July 06, 2010
Spain loafed through this Cup. I liked them going in, but they were undistinguished in the first round, losing to Switzerland, beating Honduras 2-0, and giving up a goal to Chile in a 2-1 win. I don't see how they can get past Germany.Uruguay's decision to play volleyball against Ghana was unsporting, even though it was what an economist would call a rational choice...

With the death of Robert Byrd,

Posted on July 03, 2010
With the death of Robert Byrd, Joe Biden is next in line,to the Presidency, then Nancy Pelosi, and then... wait, who is the President pro tem of the Senate now?It's Daniel Inouye, the senior senator from Hawaii! Inouye has always impressed me as a decent guy, but he's 85 years old...

A lonely vuvuzelia sounded at the

Posted on July 03, 2010
A lonely vuvuzelia sounded at the FC Buffalo-Maryland match this afternoon. There were three or four of the horns in the stands actually, but in a crowd of a couple hundred you don't get the same swarming effect you hear on tv.That's not the only difference of course...

Robert Chrisgau's last Consumer

Posted on July 02, 2010
Robert Chrisgau's last Consumer Guide. This day had to come-- I'm sure the job felt more and more like work all the time. It has to have been difficult to love music as much as Christgau obviously does, and yet never have time to listen to an old favorite...

Unheard Dylan songs.

Posted on July 01, 2010
Unheard Dylan songs.

Ten movies that weren't made. Twenty

Posted on June 30, 2010
Ten movies that weren't made. Twenty sci-fi movies that are coming next year. And five MGM movies that might be shelved. The Beatles in "The Lord of the Rings" works for me. So does an X-Men prequel. Green Lantern I have my doubts about: it seems to me that in the comics he mostly used his ring to create giant boxing gloves, although I understand he got a lot more angst-y once I stopped reading them regularly.

Doc Ellis' no-hitter.

Posted on June 30, 2010
Doc Ellis' no-hitter.

I don't know why this is, but "The

Posted on June 24, 2010
I don't know why this is, but "The Maltese Falcon" haunts my practice. For the past few months we've been negotiating the final terms on a settlement agreement in a fairly substantial matter. Most of the fine points have been picky issues between the plaintiff and the other party to the matter, but when they'd worked out what they wanted to do I offered to draft the settlement agreement...

It's been a summer that has been

Posted on June 23, 2010
It's been a summer that has been marked by two bad sports calls-- the disallowed goal in the USA-Slovenia game and the nearly perfect game pitched by Armando Galarraga, and in both instances various commentators have used the event to call for replacing or supplementing the human official with some sort of technology...

The Making of Blonde on Blonde

Posted on June 22, 2010
The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

Manute Bol was the Roberto Clemente

Posted on June 21, 2010
Manute Bol was the Roberto Clemente of basketball. I'm with Charley Pierce -- put him in the Hall of Fame now.

The 49 Cent Deer

Posted on June 19, 2010
Concluding LCA weekend, this performance at Community Music. She called an audible and threw off her accompanist, but otherwise a solid performance of "The 49¢ Deer". Freebird!

You know what has gotten really

Posted on June 18, 2010
You know what has gotten really old? Sports columns about how Americans hate/don't understand soccer. For the most part these pieces amount to the self-exaltation of the author's own ignorance or jingoism, but beyond that they are also demonstrably false...

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