buddy
The symposium, "Lewis Nordan and the Heartbreaking Laughter of Transcendence and Hope" is now available on video, for free, at iTunes. You'll find me there.
blinis
Chekhov said he tried to write as calmly as if he were eating blinis. If you want to understand what Chekhov was talking about and also get yourself in a serene mood on, say, the evening before you write, try the following recipe for blinis. (When I wasn’t eating shashlik, Middle Eastern barbecue, at Kiliki, on my trips to St. Petersburg, I was eating blinis and caviar with sour cream, and drinking, naturally enough, iced Russian Standard vodka at The Idiot on the Moika Embankment, (which bills itself as a vegetarian restaurant, meaning fish eggs are considered flora there). Mix two eggs with three cups of milk, add a cup of flour, half teaspoon of baking soda, salt to taste, and mix. Fry the batter in vegetable oil—just like crepes or thin pancakes. Add your caviar and sour cream or crème fraiche. You can, of course, have this for breakfast, in which case I would strongly advise against the vodka before the work is done.
galosh
The nuns at St. Stephen’s School did not like us to wear our rubber boots in the classroom. They said that wearing them all day would damage our eyes. They didn’t bother to explain the cause and effect. They didn’t have to—they were married to God. We were to remove said boots and set them beneath our jackets in the cloak room. The nuns favored galoshes, which we wore over our shoes, and forbade the wearing of those green rubber hunting boots into which you slipped your stockinged feet. Jane Austen, by the way used galosh (the singular) as a verb, meaning to furnish with a galosh, in The Watsons: “Nankeen galoshed with black looks very well.” Commas after Nankeen and black might have helped the reader out there. (But she’s Jane Austen, and I’m not.) Nankeen is a kind of pale yellow cotton cloth, originally manufactured in Nanking (Nanjing), and came to mean the trousers made from the cloth, as here used by Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory: “At tennis, when he was server, he would firmly stand on the back line, with his thick legs, in quaint nankeens, wide apart, and would abruptly bend them at the knees as he gave the ball a tremendous but singularly inefficient whack.”
marlins
The Yankees and Mets try again this year to buy a World Series. Yankees' payroll leads the Majors at $201.4 million. Marlins' divisional-rivalMets come in at $135.7 million, second highest in the Bigs. The Marlins have the lowest payroll, and currently the best team, in the Majors with a $36.8 million--three million more than Alex Rodriquez. Marlins are due--they won it all in 1997, six years later in 2003, and now it's 2009!
bdelloid rotifers
These adorable little gals are everywhere--in ponds, lakes, roadside puddles, your bottle of drinking water--and they've survived, all 360 spcies of them, for 70 million years without having sex. They are the most radiation resistant animals on the planet. Read all about 'em.
hooray for hollywood!
Liz Smith has news about my friend Bonnie. (thaks to Cyndi in Paxton)
fiucked up!
By now you may have heard that FIU has hired Isiah Thomas as its new head basketball coach. Not sure how much this is costing the school, but it's likely to be less per year than the $11.1 million he cost the New York Knicks in a sexual harrassment suit against him. But he's probably making more than any professor at the school. His record with the Knicks as coach was 56-108. He's also been a loser as an executive for the Raptors, coach of the Pacers,and as the owner of the CBA. Yes, but we all love a story of redemption, I suppose. FIU has a habit of spending money on everything except education. Just jettisoned the Religious Studies program this week, so maybe the RS budget went to Isiah. (He is giving whatever his first-year salary is back to the school.) From 2002-03 to 2008-09, the FIU faculty grew by .5% (that's one-half a percent or five faculty members! Five in six years!) while the number of administrators grew by 96.8% (365 positions)--and that does not include the law and med schools! (These figures from "How Does FIU Spend Its Money?" published this month by the Research on Social and Economic Policy Center fot Labor Research and Studies at FIU.) FIU collected 57.7% more tuition and fees from students in 2008-09 than in 2002-03, but total faculty salaries increased only 10.7% How much did administrative salaries increase? By 106.1%! There has been a 17% increase in faculty teaching loads in that time. You can see how that might happen if the student population increases 18% but the faculty only .5%. I'm too depressed to go on.
amazon breakthrough
Karen Kravit, one of our Friday night writers has made it to the semifinals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From 10,000 to 100! Congratulations!
gone fishin'
I'm off to Worcester for the week. Meanwhile it's opening day for baseball and the Marlins! Here's Fogerty! (Thanks to Joe in Cheese)
after you've gone
My review of Jeffrey Lent's new novel in today's Globe.
resurrection
Today's short story waiting to be written. Woman starves her one-year-old to death because he won't say "Amen" after meals. (thanks to CD in Tuscaloosa)
something physical
Memoir from my friend Nina Romano.
the diagram prize
The winners of this year's oddest book titles have been announced!
the chipley bugle
The Bugle covered last night's Awards Ceremony in Tallahassee. Check here to see the list of recipients. Harry Crews didn't show to receive his Hall of Fame Award, but Mel Tillis did, and he was delightful, humble, and charming. He brought along his high school English teacher, who said she couldn't get him to stop stuttering, and his ninety-five-year-old Sunday School teacher. You can watch Mel sing the great Bob Wills' song that Audrey sings in Requiem, Mass. (And if you like Bob Wills you'll love the new Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel album of Wills' covers, Willie and the Wheel.)
juice, the book
Juice Up the True Say, Volume I, is now available for purchase!
tulip
Tulip by Don Bullens, flickr photo of the day
raymond chandler
Raymond Chandler died fifty years ago this week. The Telegraph has a story. I happen to be reading The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler. My favorite entry in the book so far is a parody of Hemingway called "Beer in the Sergeant Major's Hat (or the Sun Also Sneezes)." It's hysterical. Here's a sample paragrph: "Hank drank the alcohol and water. It had a warm sweetish taste. It was warm all the way down. It was warm as hell. It was warmer than whiskey. It was warmer than that Asti Spumonte they had that time in Capozzo when Hank was with Arditi. They had been carp fishing with landing nets. It had been a good day. After the fourth bottle of Asti Spumonte Hank fell into the river and came out with his hair full of carp. Old Peguzzi lauged until his boots rattled on the hard gray rock. And afterward Peguzzi got gonorrhea on the Piave. It was a hell of a war."
follow the balloons
Another short-short from Merle Drown.
signs of life in dania beach
Venus de Dania