There are some who call me...Tim

Video

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:29:06 -0400

"That’s what Game 7, in overtime, is. It is regret, waiting to happen."

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:23:09 -0400

"That’s what Game 7, in overtime, is. It is regret, waiting to happen."

"On game night, the massive parking lots of the Coliseum don’t seem so hopeless. The Islanders are the only major American sports franchise dedicated to one mostly homogeneous suburban area, which gives the pregame festivities the feeling of the world’s biggest block party. The previously ironic “We are all Islanders” is not just the parking lot signage; it's now seen on hats and T-shirts. These people really are all, unmistakably, Islanders."

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:09:38 -0400

"On game night, the massive parking lots of the Coliseum don’t seem so hopeless. The Islanders are the only major American sports franchise dedicated to one mostly homogeneous suburban area, which gives the pregame festivities the feeling of the world’s biggest block party. The previously ironic “We are all Islanders” is not just the parking lot signage; it's now seen on hats and T-shirts. These people really are all, unmistakably, Islanders."

"Having reverence for Fitzgerald's novel isn't the same as having a grip on it."

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:06:18 -0400

"Having reverence for Fitzgerald's novel isn't the same as having a grip on it."

"Some people come up expecting to win. We came up hoping not to lose. Even in victory, the distance between expectation and results is dizzying for both. The old code remains a part of you, and with it comes a particular strain of impostor syndrome. You have learned another language, but your accent betrays you."

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:34:15 -0400

"Some people come up expecting to win. We came up hoping not to lose. Even in victory, the distance between expectation and results is dizzying for both. The old code remains a part of you, and with it comes a particular strain of impostor syndrome. You have learned another language, but your accent betrays you."

Video

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:25:21 -0400

"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:38:56 -0400

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he were related to one those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”

- Gatsby

"We resist Grimes and are happy to see him fail, because it’s like he’s trying to reach through the TV screen and shake us out of our happy reverie. Leave us alone, Grimes!"

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:38:13 -0400

"We resist Grimes and are happy to see him fail, because it’s like he’s trying to reach through the TV screen and shake us out of our happy reverie. Leave us alone, Grimes!"

Yes, please.

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:24:54 -0400

Yes, please.

"This is a photograph that will torment us in our dreams. Quietly it tells us. Never again.”

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:23:45 -0400

"This is a photograph that will torment us in our dreams. Quietly it tells us. Never again.”

Video

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:33:40 -0400

"Our meaning is how we live in an imperfect world, in our time. We have no other."

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:17:04 -0400

“Our meaning is how we live in an imperfect world, in our time. We have no other.”

- Stoppard, Coast of Utopia

"New York sports radio host Mike Francesa, a rancid veal breast wrapped in Today's Man microfiber blends..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:49:01 -0400

"New York sports radio host Mike Francesa, a rancid veal breast wrapped in Today's Man microfiber blends..."

"It looks like demanding some inordinate amount of respect for your opinions for the club you happened to be born in, or chose to enter with little to no effort on your part. There should no guaranteed starting spots on the depth chart in our country."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:06:17 -0400

"It looks like demanding some inordinate amount of respect for your opinions for the club you happened to be born in, or chose to enter with little to no effort on your part. There should no guaranteed starting spots on the depth chart in our country.":

Tim Brando and Chris Broussard spoke out after Jason Collins came out on Monday. Spencer Hall gives out credit where it’s due.

Brevity is the soul of lit...reviews

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:02:53 -0400

“We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of those elements existed at Columbine—which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders. The lesser myths are equally unsupported: no connection to Marilyn Manson, Hitler’s birthday, minorities, or Christians.

“Few people knowledgeable about the case believe those myths anymore. Not reporters, investigators, families of the victims, or their legal teams. And yet most of the public takes them for granted. Why?

“Media defenders blame the chaos: two thousand witnesses, wildly conflicting reports—who could get all those facts straight? But facts were not the problem. Nor did time sort them out. The first print story arrived in an extra edition of the Rocky Mountain News. It went to press at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, before the bodies in the library were found. The Rocky’s nine-hundred-word summary of the massacre was an extraordinary piece of journalism: gripping, empathetic, and astonishingly accurate. It nailed the details and the big picture: two ruthless killers picking off students indiscriminately. It was the first story published that spring to get the essence of the attack right—and one of the last.”

I actually read Columbine about a year and a half ago, but for obvious reasons, I’ve thought about it again this week. What was most interesting to me wasn’t the psychologies of the respective killers* — Harris the sociopathic leader, Klebold the shy, lovelorn follower — but rather how Dave Cullen justifiably scorches how the media covered the shooting; specifically, how quickly the media narrative infused the eyewitness accounts of events. (Witnesses heard the media’s speculation and agreed with it in interviews with the media, thus serving as some bizarre form of confirmation.)

*This isn’t to say the psychologies are uninteresting. The book includes excerpts from each’s journal, which are both pretty frightening. As is that what actually happened was just a minor piece of the original plot, which centered on bombs in the cafeteria that were supposed to flush students to the school’s main exit, where Harris and Klebold would be waiting.

The overwhelming desire to extrapolate the plan of two students into something meaningful about the American adolescent experience led to half-truths and untruths. Columbine and Littleton became, in a turn of phrase that I believe is Cullen’s and which I like very much, “observed beyond all recognition.”

There are myriad lessons, then, to be learned from where the media went wrong in Columbine. Let’s hope we do a better job this time around.

Brevity is the soul of lit...reviews

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:39:00 -0400

“It’s not that kind of story. It’s not lithe and clever. It’s just dark and full of blood.”

I’ve been waiting to read Farewell, My Lovely since it inspired Jason Schwartzman’s character in Bored to Death oh-so-many years ago.

In general, I think I like the idea of noir more than the execution. I’m more a sucker for the earlier detective fiction of Doyle and Christie, of the let’s-gather-round-the-table-and-mess-with-everyone’s-head-for-a-conclusion ilk. Noir can get buckled down in style over substance, and I’ve found the mysteries occasionally lacking and almost always forgettable. (I had to double-check to make sure that I did, in fact, read something else by Chandler before this — The Big Sleep.)

Of course, you come to noir for the style, and Chandler delivers it better than anyone else. Few are better at succinct physical descriptions, like:

“It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.”

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

(It’s funny how Chandler takes a few shots at Hemingway in here, since the prose styles are fairly similar. Neither really goes in on compound-complex sentences.)

There is also a fair amount of sports references in the text, which I found interesting for a book written in 1946. Basketball even made the cut.

The mystery here is pretty good — I didn’t see it coming exactly, and it was a lot less muddled than it is most times. There are still extraneous scenes and extraneous characters, but we have to be thrown off the scent just a little, right?

And of course, anytime I read noir, all it does is make me want to watch Brick.

"So Boston already is healing. So it's not "Bitter-Sweet Caroline" after all. So far, so good, so good, so good."

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:45:13 -0400

"So Boston already is healing. So it's not "Bitter-Sweet Caroline" after all. So far, so good, so good, so good.":

The remedial powers of the summer game were summoned once more Saturday at Fenway Park. Raise a pennant, wave a flag. Wave a magic wand and make it all disappear. And it all worked. Boston had stood at attention, rigid and staring straight ahead, not wanting to look, for too many days. It was at ease again Saturday.

“Shortly before the game, the center-field video screen...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:33:00 -0400

“Shortly before the game, the center-field video screen began to display photographs of the marathon’s premature ending. A series of still shots were, nonetheless, moving pictures that met with applause and cheers. Photos of the governor prompted an exclusively positive response, a Boston-New York dissimilarity. Aside from half-dozen postseason moments, some instances Saturday were as emotional as anything this venerable arena had seen since Mr. Theodore Ballgame was wheeled across the lawn before the 1999 All-Star Game, instances as splendid as the Splinter himself.”

—Marty

Video

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:16:23 -0400

Brevity is the Soul of Lit...Reviews

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:26:00 -0400

Sometimes I start a book with the reservation that this isn’t the right time to be reading it, not because I’m not in the proper mood, but because I won’t have enough time to devote its way.

That was kind of the case when I began Zadie Smith’s NW during spring training. Every year, I go into spring training thinking it will give me ample time to read — not only the baseball book or two I bring down, but legit fiction as well. I’ve been disappointed in that regard all three years.

And so NW’s been on my nightstand for the better part of two months, when in actuality I could have read it in about five days. My protracted time reading the novel — I frequently went several days and maybe even a week between opening it — took away from some of my enjoyment of it. It was tough to remember some of the connections between the characters, which proved particularly important for the story. (Usually, I take some notes. This time, I was too lazy.)

Nevertheless, what makes Smith such a joy to read is her complete confidence in her voice and style. She’s ever-willing to try out new ways of expressing otherwise conventional thoughts. Early on in NW, Leah’s walking route is laid out in one chapter as a sequence of simple directions, as if drawn from Google Maps. In the next chapter, the route is replayed, now via the stimuli and thoughts Leah experienced along the way. Directions aren’t always as simple as they portend to be, especially in the NW.

These are things Smith has done before in White Teeth on more of a sentence level. I always enjoyed her equation:

In NW, we see more of Smith’s experimentation with form at a macro level. The novel’s sections are written in different forms to correspond with the different characters. Some work better than others: The heart of the book is the long third section on Natalie, her relationship with Leah and the rest of her childhood neighborhood evolving through 185 short vignettes. Sections like this can get too opaque — ahem, JOYCE! — but Smith manages to have some formal fun without sacrificing too much clarity. (The subsequent section was a little muddled to me.)

So while a book I enjoyed, it’s one I regret reading the way I did.