In my never ending quest to come to terms with my mission here, and having recently resolved to maintain a lighter tone in keeping with my "bathroom reading" definition of The Blogger's Purpose--I will continue to do my literary equivalent of singing in the shower and hope that anyone passing by the ensuing steams of consciousness may find some amusement in the digital vapors. 

Mentioned Andy Borowitz (who I know mostly by way of his New Yorker parodies) and his anthology of American Humorists--so I visited his blog--The Borowitz Report. And I can report that it's a solid Onion-esque place.  And anyone with Posts that carry headlines like:


Obama’s Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy;
Romney Pays Surprise Visit to his Money in the Caymans; 
and...
Fox News Wins Pulitzer for Fiction 
...is ok with me. 

Arthur Krystal --whose books of essays I've previously praised here--has a nice piece in this week's New Yorker about "guilty pleasure" books and writers.  Arthur writes about writing about as well as anyone I know...and though he doesn't come right out and say it, he seems to be making the point that I've always thought cuts right to the chase about all art--which is that something is either a pleasure or it's not--and guilt is just a byproduct of snobbery.  

Ellen and I are contemplating a trip to Vietnam.  We contemplate lots of trips that we never take, so no reason to believe at this point that we're going anywhere any time soon.  But just in case,  I spent a little time wandering the web looking for travel related stuff and as usual found all the digital detours and hyper-linked side streets too intriguing to resist and found myself reading about the Susan Sontag piece called Trip to Hanoi—from her 1969 book Styles of Radical Will.   I  read it in college cause it was required by my poli-sci professor (who was particularly enamored of it …and her) and I recall being alternately compelled and repelled by it. Maybe I'll go back and re-read and see if I can relocate the cause of my ambivalence.  But in the middle of this piece is a self critical quote from Sontag:  “A problem: the thinness of my writing. It is meager, sentence by sentence. Too architectural, too discursive."
And I'm thinking, yeah, she's right, and kind of impressed she was aware of it...and then wondering if I know what is meant by 'discursive' .  So looking it up I discover that it means:

a : moving from topic to topic without order : rambling

b : proceeding coherently from topic to topic

Hmmm, so which is it?

...then the Sontag piece leads me to other Vietnam War era readings from which a few things written during that period stood out as both profound and prescient:

From Daniel Ellsberg: "The lesson which can be drawn here is one that the rest of the world, I am sure, has drawn more quickly than Americans have -- that, to paraphrase H. Rap Brown, bombing is as American as cherry pie. If you invite us in to do your hard fighting for you, then you get bombing along with our troops."

Stanley Hoffmann, professor of government at Harvard: "The ethics of foreign policy must be an ethics of self-restraint. The saddest aspect of the Vietnam tragedy is that it combines moral aberration and intellectual scandal."

Sir Robert Thompson, former Secretary for Defense in Malaya: "The prospect of going in as a political reformer frightens me more than anything else. I would not touch political reform in these territories with a barge pole -- and I certainly would not touch it with an American political scientist."

Edwin Reischauer, former Ambassador to Japan: "Vietnam has shown the limited ability of the United States to control at a reasonable cost the course of events in a nationally aroused, less developed nation.... I believe we are moving away from the application to Asia of the 'balance of power' and 'power vacuum' concepts of the cold war."

.... and moving them to the middle east? 

What the Puck...?

I'm watching NY Rangers Playoff Hockey games.  In fact I've been watching since the middle of the Ottowa series.  I've never watched Hockey this closely before. In fact, not even sure I've ever watched (on TV) an entire game before--and that includes the historic Olympic Games drama with the Russians.  So why now?  Hmmm.  Could be:

Boy oh boy, these guys can skate!  Back in the mid 90's I worked in an office building in White Plains that was 4 blocks from a public skating rink...so I skipped lunch and went skating instead.  Really got into it.  Learned some technique and took a few lessons and had a blast...good workout too.  And now appreciate even more the skills these guys have.

Boy oh boy, these guys are working hard.  Way harder than the NBA guys who often look to me like they're just goofing around till the last 5 minutes...and that's only in the playoffs--during the regular season, they often look like they're hoping to avoid having to take a post game shower. 

Boy oh boy, my High Definition TV looks great.  I can see the puck now!  Remember when they experimented with the blue tail thing?  And if you don't, never mind...but it sure is better when you can see that Ring Ding they're all trying to get their sticks on. 

Exhaustion from a five month immersion in fat books.  My Melville obsession was followed by a G.K. Chesterton binge was followed by Voltaire and most recently Joseph Conrad...who had me transfixed briefly before I threw in the towel halfway through "The Rescue".   Inevitable that all those weighty thoughts would start clogging the brain at some point and some swift and slippery action on ice seemed to be just the thing to cool down and just relish some action. 

Elimination of Center line in Two line pass rule in 2005 has made Hockey more exciting.  I kinda miss the old rule cause it required more coordinated positioning and skating, but it also created a lot more mucking about in the neutral zone and cut down on breakaway chances. 

Saw a game a while back where player got slashed above the eye, then got seventeen stitches in the locker room and came back the same period to skate his regular shift. Between stuff like that and the fighting, it's hard to relate to the game as a "sporting" competition.  On the other hand, there's something to be said for the level of dedication these guys have.  

Fed, Nole, and Rafa are only on TV during the majors...or on the Tennis Channel, and I refuse to pay additional fee to Cablevision. 

I sit on the couch and practice guitar scales and progressions--and Hockey is just fine to watch without the sound.  Not a good or smart or particularly productive habit for a serious musician, but I'm not all that serious a musician.

And not to get too heady about it, but I think there's a beauty to the "geometry" of the sport.   Call it situational awareness or spatial intelligence or pattern recognition--but good players (and great one's like Gretsky--who had this one great mental advantage, and no physical one) can see and anticipate the flow of the action and put themselves in position to arrive at (or pass to) the right place at just the right time.  Watching great players skating,  passing and shooting with precision within the framework of established and carefully designed plays is a thing of beauty.  You see it often in Basketball (but not much in the NBA) with great teams, but in Hockey it's a constant part of the flow.  It's similar to soccer --where it's at it's highest level and to me, the most beautiful--but in Hockey it's happening so much faster its often more difficult to discern.  


And Eastern Conference finals series with Devils (cross river rivals) is tied 2-2.  Game 5 tonite.  Eli flew in this morning and hope we can watch together.  He's primarily a soccer guy (and back in action playing in pick-up games as the only 'Americano' on the field in Latin area of LA) but I'm hoping he'll indulge his old man and keep me company. 

And I leave you with this "smile music", as my son once called it,  courtesy of friend Dave S. who has been playing this and other wonderful  Jacob do Bandolim Choro compositions recently and with whom I've shared many a musical joy...