SchmidtHaus

Intentionally Walking Nap Lajoie (or cleaning out the desk blog)

Ball One: Thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed and/or criticized my PopMatters piece. It was an imperfect work for sure, but I will get some better ones (and probably some worse ones) out in the near future, which some of you may enjoy more (or less.) Wow that was a meaningless sentence if ever I wrote one.

Ball Two: The marathon commuting continues. T-minus-10 days until we close. Oddly, I am looking forward to living in a condo with a kitchen under remodeling, no real furniture for a couple of weeks, and in need of tons of work. It has to be more enjoyable than waking up at hours when I often would have been coming home during my college years. Come to think of it...5:39 on a Wed. in Autumn...chances are I would have tapped the kegerator by now back in those good old days. There must be something worth drinking to this evening. I heard a rumor that hockey starts tonight, or something (really, I promise it is in there somewhere. Just dig around.)

Ball Three: The good news about living in Pburg for a couple weeks is I have been reading plenty. I plowed through the Sports Writing of the Year Anthology in two nights, and came away rather unimpressed. So unimpressed, in fact, i didn't bother to link it. I think they are under the impression with these yearly anthologies, that they can just cut and paste their favorite stuff. Nothing is cohesive, and few of it is going to be pertinent five years on. I mean, they talk about things like Teddy Bruschi's intensity more than they discuss, say, steroids. And Bill Plaschke has got to stop making appearances on Around the Horn. He is such an excellent writer--the rare good read in these things, each year--but his value is cheapened from the foolish things he says, and foolish people he is connected to, on that show.

Ball Four: Currently reading The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in American Voice--somebody has been reading his HG Wells--a perhaps curiosly titled book about the nature of America as a myth (the nation) and the reality of a divided America (as a conglomeration of individuals all living in one place, all bound by a couple pieces of paper written centuries ago.) It follows all kinds of texts (speeches, songs, movie, TV, literature, etc...) through the history of America in an effort to discover the true essence of what it is to be American, where we have succeeded in reaching our ideals, how we have often fallen short, and the future this portends. Really fascinating stuff, even if his writing is more-or-less just jumping from one person's words to another, rearely relying on much besides his own intellect to piece it all together. It is, thus far, the Bees Knees.

posted by g.m.s. @ 2:27 PM