Monthly Archives: February 2012

Anton’s books and Corredor Verde by Andrew Moore. Part of his beautiful Cuba series.

Happy Friday.

Nifty sample flip by Puba:

For more on The Kid, check out tributes by Greg Prince and Jason Fry at Faith and Fear in Flushing, Ted Berg over at Ted Quarters, and Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus.

Gary Carter, Rest in Peace.

[Photo Credit: Bernard Brault/AP]

I love books. Love them as objects. I want to hold them, sometimes mark them up with a pen, dog-ear the pages. I like to look at them on my shelves at home. I don’t own a Kindle or a Nook but I don’t have any beef with them either. For some people they make all the sense in the world. I think you can like both formats. But this piece by Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books gave me a new appreciation for E-books:

Literature is made up of words. They can be spoken or written. If spoken, volume and speed and accent can vary. If written, the words can appear in this or that type-face on any material, with any impagination. Joyce is as much Joyce in Baskerville as in Times New Roman. And we can read these words at any speed, interrupt our reading as frequently as we choose. Somebody who reads Ulysses in two weeks hasn’t read it any more or less than someone who reads it in three months, or three years.

Only the sequence of the words must remain inviolate. We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order they appear in. The literary experience does not lie in any one moment of perception, or any physical contact with a material object (even less in the “possession” of handsome masterpieces lined up on our bookshelves), but in the movement of the mind through a sequence of words from beginning to end. More than any other art form it is pure mental material, as close as one can get to thought itself. Memorized, a poem is as surely a piece of literature in our minds as it is on the page. If we say the words in sequence, even silently without opening our mouths, then we have had a literary experience—perhaps even a more intense one than a reading from the page. It’s true that our owning the object—War and Peace or Moby Dick—and organizing these and other classics according to chronology and nation of origin will give us an illusion of control: as if we had now “acquired” and “digested” and “placed” a piece of culture. Perhaps that is what people are attached to. But in fact we all know that once the sequence of words is over and the book closed what actually remains in our possession is very difficult, wonderfully difficult to pin down, a richness (or sometimes irritation) that has nothing to do with the heavy block of paper on our shelves.

The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, the page to come has yet to appear) would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience. Certainly it offers a more austere, direct engagement with the words appearing before us and disappearing behind us than the traditional paper book offers, giving no fetishistic gratification as we cover our walls with famous names. It is as if one had been freed from everything extraneous and distracting surrounding the text to focus on the pleasure of the words themselves. In this sense the passage from paper to e-book is not unlike the moment when we passed from illustrated children’s books to the adult version of the page that is only text. This is a medium for grown-ups.

[Photo Credit: Digital Journal]

Here’s an ESPN report from the Red Sox training camp:

“When I look at the program we devised, I don’t think of it as tough. But it seems it’s different because a lot of people are frowning. I just asked them to give (it) a few days,” Valentine said, according to The Boston Globe.

“We all know that nobody likes change except for those who are making other people change to do what they want them to do. I happen to be one of those guys who likes change because guys are doing what I want them to do,” Valentine said, according to the report. “I would bet there will be 100 guys who won’t really like it because it’s change for them. But they’ll get used to it.”

…”Everyone says (spring training) is too long. I think that’s baloney,” Valentine said. “To get guys really ready, I think everyone’s working the deadline to get a starter with 30 innings and five (starts). The numbers just don’t compute.”

Ten Hut.

Bangin’.

Grandmaster:

Found on the walk between uptown pre-schools a few weeks ago: one of New York City’s greatest mysteries.

To me, anyway. The first time I remember seeing sneakers strung across telephone wires I was in the Bronx around Yankee Stadium. I asked why, and I’m sure I received an answer, but the answer didn’t have sufficient tack to stay with me.

Here are a bunch of theories, though not exclusive to New York. I like the idea that when you get a new pair, you throw the old ones up there. And since my wife snapped this pic on a block between my kids’ schools, let’s be tooptimistic and rule out the crack, murder and gang-related explanations.

The Yanks are interested in a 19-year old Cuban outfielder named Jorge Soler.

[Picture by the most Robert Sturman: click here to see more of his fine work.]

Check out this gallery of Kim Cogan’s New York City paintings over at If It’s Hip, It’s Here.

Knicks are back home at the Garden tonight.

Rest in Peace, Adam Adamowicz.

For more, click here and here.

Jay Z, Kanye West meet the Wood Man. Ya hoid?

[Photo Credit: Four Eyes]

Here’s what I hear on the street on the subway and in my office: talk of Jeremy Lin and the Knicks.

No question the bandwagon is filling up. I’m a bandwagon Knicks fan. First jumped aboard in ’83-’84 when Bernard had that great playoff run. Then a few years later when Pitino coached the team. I rode the highs and lows of the Riley-Van Gundy Era with great passion. I’ve never stopped watching the Knicks but I stopped caring about them or watching them with any kind of devotion.

Now, I’m on the bandwagon again because a New York winter is better when the Knicks matter and the Garden is thumping.  And it’s fun to hear people who don’t care about basketball talking about Lin.

All aboard.

The only downside to all the buzz about Jeremy Lin is talk about how Carmelo Anthony is going to spoil all the fun when he returns to the line-up. But over at SI, veteran basketball writer Ian Thomsen doesn’t think that will be the case:

Carmelo Anthony is now the villain. One year ago New York couldn’t wait to trade for him, and now the city fears his return. The fear is Anthony will slow the Knicks’ offense, stop the ball and ruin everything Jeremy Lin has accomplished in the last week.

But look at this from the view of the Knicks’ opponents, who shouldn’t be focused on Anthony as saboteur. Instead, rival teams should be concerned that the breakthrough partnership of Lin and coach Mike D’Antoni — in combination with the bottom-line pressure to win in New York — is exactly what Anthony needs to elevate his career. Instead of fighting the progress of the Knicks, Anthony is likely to embrace it and become better than ever.

That’s what I think is going to happen, because I’ve seen it happen before. It happened to Paul Pierce, who seven years ago was his generation’s version of Anthony. Pierce was a terrific scorer who was viewed throughout the NBA as a sulking, self-indulgent ball-stopper with an array of teamwork skills he didn’t care to use. When Doc Rivers arrived as coach of the Celtics in 2004, he and Pierce had it out. The coach convinced Pierce to push the ball up the floor and share it with less talented teammates in faith that it would circulate back to him.

We shall see. I’m rooting for Melo, though. Better to cheer than to boo, you know?

David Lebovitz gives marshmallow cream fudge. And I says, “Sure, why not?”

On a rainy winter Wednesday in New York.

[Photo Credit: Terrance Chan]

Dig this scene from the 1928 Harold Lloyd feature, “Speedy” featuring Babe Ruth.

And check out this post that our man William did on the movie not long ago.

Yesterday, the baseball analyst Dave Cameron sent out this tweet: “So, apparently, it takes as long to complete an AJ Burnett trade as it takes for AJ Burnett to get through five innings.” Burnett to the Pirates could be close but nothing is imminent. You know the drill.

Meanwhile, the big fella, Michael Pineda is in Yankee camp. Kevin Kernan has the story. Here’s another report, this one from Anthony Mccarron.

[Photo Credit: Ron Antonelli/N.Y. Daily News]