This is the third Tuesday (out of four) that Larry’s softball team, the Blues, has been unable to play due to rain. Larry’s comment on their website:
“I never thought the Blues would remain undefeated this late in the season.”
Category: Stuff Larry Sez
He really deserves his own blog, but I don’t see it happing.
Bagels and donuts
It’s another monsoon-like early morning here in Berkeley and Larry and I went to our favorite local breakfast spot, Sunnyside Cafe (they’re an unpretentious place and don’t accent the “e”). Larry had the smoked salmon scramble. For toast, he asked if they had bagels. “No,” answered the waitress, “but we have English muffins. Same shape without the hole.” Pretty good for 8:30 on a Saturday morning.
While waiting for his English muffin, Larry asked me if I had ever heard the word bagel as baseball slang; I hadn’t. When a really good hitter has no hits against a pitcher, the pitcher has “dropped a bagel on him.” I thought of this visually, as in encircled the hitter’s arms so he couldn’t hit, but Larry says it’s just a big fat zero (and a donut is a round weight you put on your bat for practice swings.) I looked online for some bagel poems and found this. Which just goes to show…something, but I’m not sure what
Long marriage
“What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should keep one at one’s best,” says Clarissa Dalloway in The Voyage Out (see yesterday’s post–I really am having trouble getting places as I listen!). As Shakespeare does with Polonius, Virginia gives us a foolish character who occasionally says something intriguing. Clarissa’s is a very mixed portrait in this book, published 10 years before Mrs. Dalloway.
But this comment elucidates something that happens in a good long relationship of any kind–the other helps you to see and sometimes overcome your persistent flaws, doesn’t let you get away with your particular laziness or ignorance or… fill in your specific blanks, but does it while still loving you, still supporting what is the best in you.
And as I was beginning to write this last night, Larry walked in and read me an example of an exemplary sentence, from Thinking, Fast and Slow:
“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.”
Mad as a wet hen
Actually, the hens don’t seem so much mad as unhappy. They huddle under their roof and don’t want to go out and scratch around. But the rain was a gift for Larry this morning, as he belongs to an over-60 softball league, the Creakers. You may remember them from an earlier post. And the photo I use of Larry is one in his Creaker’s outfit.
The Creakers are notorious (at least in my household) for playing in any kind of weather–like the mail, the game must go on. Had the rain been less decisive, Larry would have had to drive out early this morning for field prep. As it was, Evan Almdale, a whiz with photoshop, posted this on the Creaker website this morning.
So Larry can happily putter and stay dry.
Snippets
Over breakfast we have have some pretty far ranging conversations. I am usually reading some poems (lately a selection Larry put together of his Berryman favorites), Larry is reading the Wall St. Journal or the NY Times. I read parts of these, too, the “soft” parts. I try to avoid the news, letting Larry be my filter. If it’s ever time to flee, I count on him to let me know.
Yesterday I was musing on what makes Louise Gluck’s poetry so powerful. Her imagery is not gorgeous, and her language tends to be plain not flashy. Yet the poetry is strong. Currents of feeling move though it and jump out at you. And Larry said: Yes, Berryman writes like a man on a high wire; but Louise stands on the ground. Continue reading “Snippets”
Callista, Zeeko, and Burma Shave
I keep politics off these pages, but this morning over the Sunday Times, Larry said:
“I don’t usually read the Style section, but I have to find out what Callista’s hair style means.” Apparently, it means that she is more interested in control than beauty. I was intrigued, because I can’t remember Larry’s ever opening the Style section before. He’s not alone. Search for Callista Gingrich hair if you doubt me. This was from The Stir, via Robin Givhan of The Daily Beast:
“Already, media estimates have put Mrs. Gingrich’s hair-care time at anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes a day.”
And that doesn’t include the time everyone spends thinking about her hair.
Callista’s process and hairspray are the subject of many articles, no need to link them here.
As for Larry’s hair, he has it cut by the Ukrainian barber, Zeeko, who finishes the process by turning Larry to the mirror and saying, “Now you are movie star again.”
Beethoven’s birthday
Yes it’s today. Or actually, December 17 is the date of his baptism. In homage to this famously cranky individual, I thought I’d print a little rant on Cafe Gratitude, a Northern California restaurant chain.
Cafe Gratitude’s statement about itself says it’s “a collection of 100% organic vegan restaurants specializing in gourmet raw and cooked cuisines. Our cafes create gourmet dishes with organic produce from our very own farm in Vacaville, CA (Be Love Farm). We honor the earth as we honor ourselves and have created a menu that promotes consciousness and sustainability for both our well being and health as well as the planet and all of its inhabitants.” Apparently this doesn’t include the well-being of employees who are suing them. The cafes are allegedly closing because of labor violation lawsuits that are “too expensive to fight.”
Until yesterday, I’d never been in a Cafe Gratitude, but there happened to be one in the Oakland Whole Foods, and I ordered a cup of green tea. It turns out that they don’t have green tea, they have “I Am Glorious.” I could have had “I Am Eternally Blessed,” an espresso milkshake, or “I Am Enlivened,” the world’s only fresh algae from Klamath Lake, Oregon. You get the idea. Continue reading “Beethoven’s birthday”
Extreme Money
Larry is reading Extreme Money, by Satyjit Das. Although it’s dense, it has some great quotes, that he occasionally reads to me. In this one, Warren Buffet foresaw the end of the financial bubble, before the most recent market crash:
“Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money … normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. … they… hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party … the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”
This image seems to me exceptionally poetic for a finance guy from Omaha, or for anyone, for that matter.
Trombone tales
Larry went to a San Francisco Jazz event last night, Robin Eubanks talking and playing about the history of the jazz trombone. Robin told a story about Sun Ra, the jazz composer and “Arkestra” leader.
Sun Ra was on the phone one day trying to make arrangements to take the band to Canada, and Robin overheard his part of the conversation.
“Yes, I understand that those are the regulations for earthlings,” he said to the official, “but what are the rules for the omnipotent?”
Robin couldn’t hear the reply, but it was obviously more bureaucratic requirements. Finally Sun Ra said, “This is the worst planet I’ve ever been on!” and hung up the phone. I know just how he felt.
Larry on flat tax
A lot of people have been sending around an email about a 28th ammendment–along with Warren Buffet’s great quote about the budget deficit: “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”
However, according to Larry (and verified by Snopes), most of the information in the email is inaccurate. In regard to the “tax the rich” discussion that’s also current, Larry sez:
“If you want a flat tax (by far the simplest, most equitable solution), you need to get 218 congressmen, 60 senators (enough to prevent filibuster), and 1 president to stop selling their votes to special interests.” Larry says he’s heavily short on this possibility.
As if to prove his point, he pointed out that two New York Senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, are sponsoring a bill that would make selling fake maple syrup a felony.
From the 60s or maybe the 70s
Larry has been going though boxes, and found this note that I’d copied from a personal ad:
Dear Johnny, Please come home. Your father promises he won't argue so much and he will call you by that bird-name.
I can’t quite imagine the personal ad my parents would have printed, but like this one, I doubt it would have done any good.
Remember to catch Larry on KCSM, FM 91.1, tonight (October 9) at 9 pm PST with Mal Sharpe, autographed photos to give away, and cuts from the Ponderosa Stomp. You can stream this live on the web.
You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog
This morning’s NY Times had an obituary for Jerry Leiber, who along with Mike Stoller visited Johnny Otis as teenagers and heard Big Mama Thornton sing “Ball and Chain.” Inpired, they went home and wrote “Hound Dog,” in about 12 minutes and brought it back for Big Mama Thornton! The list of their songs reads like the contents of my teen-age brain. After reading the obituary, Larry brought out his autographed copy of the team with Elvis, the same photo featured in the obit:
Neat to have something touched by their hands. Just another reason breakfast around here is an interesting event.
Also, I had the thought that Leiber and Stoller had the perfect kind of fame: anonymous to the public and renowned among the cognoscenti.