Cleaning Out My Inbox: September Edition

Some recent clutter in my inbox, worth sharing with the BillyBlog audience....

Here's an overseas perspective on "Why rednecks may rule the world," via the BBC. Thanks, Mom!

Michelle Obama has a rabbi in her family. Thanks, Jon!

How I and my fellow Packer-fan New Yorker's have adjusted to Brett Favre wearing a Jets uniform here.

My young friend Emmett playing harmonica with a wedding band:

A Random Assortment of Blogfodder

The latest New Yorker fiction podcast features Jonathan Lethem reading James Thurber’s short story “The Wood Duck”. Click story name to listen or right click to save and download.

Last Saturday night, Shayna and I went with friends Max and Jonathan to a professional indoor soccer game in New Jersey. The New Jersey Ironmen faced the Chicago Storm in an exciting contest that saw 6 lead changes in the second half. The home team won 10-9.

We had great seats thanks to my friend and co-worker Steve, who was there with the girls’ soccer team he coaches in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Here’s the last minute of the game, which was extended slightly by a penalty:

I resisted all the bad tabloid covers last week during the Eliot Spitzer debacle. But I had to run this cover of New York magazine because it sums it all up in one word and one photo:


Sephora lent me this CD Inhuman Rampage by Dragonforce:

Listen to "Through the Fire and Flames" here (click to play, right click to save). The guitar is excellent, but the jury is still out on the vocals. They start to sound the same after a while, but the guitarist takes your mind off of that with a virtuoso ferocity.

I’m also deciding whether I like the Shins album Wincing the Night Away, which I borrowed from the Brooklyn Public Library. Apparently, I am supposed to like it. It was on a lot of 2007 best album lists. Lets see if it grows on me.

Sadly, our local branch of the BPL, is closing. The Fort Hamilton branch, a mere 0.16 miles from my front door, will be shuttered for a couple of years while the 100+ year-old building gets renovated.

Our nearest library is now the Bay Ridge branch, which is a mile away, as opposed to a stone’s throw.

And finally, how cool is this:
No, that's not photo-shopped. It's real. Read more about Dinner in the Sky here. Thanks to Cynthia for the link.

BillyBlog Random Tuesday Assortment

Just skimmed the recent New Yorker anniversary issue. Of note was a piece of personal history by David Owen about nicknames (a little bit more of the piece here) and a good story ("Free Radicals") by Alice Munro (who rarely writes "bad stories").

I was thrilled to see a doubling of my traffic on Tuesday when BillyBlog appeared as a link on the New York Times website in a daily section on notable items in the blogs. My photo of the Smart Car got some attention. Thanks to the good folks over in the City Room for noticing me.

A gaggle of tourists just boarded the N train to Brooklyn and were cacophonous when they realized they weren't Times Square-bound. Lovely day to forget my BilliPod at work.

Check out this artwork:



Want to see more, go here. The artist, Philip Dusel, was spotted by me in the Chelsea Salvation Army store last Tuesday. He had tattoos and, well, you know, the rest is history. Read about one of his tattoos, which he designed himself, here.

Finally, one of the perks of working near Penn Station/Madison Square Garden is all the free stuff they give away to commuters as promotional items. Tuesday was an exciting day, to say the least, as they gave away these:



Mmmm. Nothing like the taste of bacon and cheese on a cricket! I am saving mine for after I've had a few beers.

Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

A visitor recently chimed in over on Tattoosday about a similar blog focusing on tattoos, but with a more specialized slant. It is called Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium, and it's pretty cool. Check it out when you get a chance. If you forget, I added it to the sidebar for future reference.

Links of the Week

Here's a new feature....a random assortment of things that piqued my interest over the past week:

Billboard magazine discusses and exhibites the Top 25 concert posters of all time.

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This was delicious:

See a lot of other delicious-looking items from American Spoon here.

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Another great fiction podcast from The New Yorker. Take 19 minutes to listen to T.C. Boyle read and discuss Tobias Wolff's brilliant short story "A Bullet in the Brain" here (click to listen, right click to download). Click here to read.

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New Yorkers are still talking about this:


More on David Tyree's Amazing Catch in the Super Bowl and how he's not an anonymous diner at the IHOP anymore: article here.

For those who may be too young to recall the original "Catch" by Dwight Clark,


you can read about it here.


And if you want to watch that see "The Catch":



And Tyree's catch also has its own wikipedia entry here.

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And a little politics to end this week. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd opines about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton here.

Updates from Monday, August 27

Let's look back....

I updated this post with a link to a local television news story about the funeral of William Alfred Bujold. My cousins Marc and Noelle are among the family interviewed.

I retro-posted here about the Brooklyn Cyclones-Oneonta Tigers game at Keyspan Park last Friday night.

Um, we used some old movie passes to see this film:


Check out the movie website here.

New Yorker Update

Just recently read three pieces in The New Yorker:

"How I Spent the War; A Recruit in the Waffen S. S." a fascinating memoir piece from Nobel Laureate Günter Grass. Strongly recommended reading.

Significantly less compelling, but still a nice piece of writing is the short story "Faith" by William Trevor.


Both came from the June 4, 2007 issue.

Also, a very good story from Marisa Silver in the November 20, 2006 issue: "Night Train to Frankfurt". The writer Michael Lowenthal, on his non-blog, remarked on the story:

I did, however, read this week's short story, "Night Train to Frankfurt," by Marisa Silver, and I'm very glad I did. The story is about an adult daughter accompanying her elderly mother, dying of cancer, to a German clinic for an alternative treatment. Silver's prose is heady but humorous and full of heart (hearty?), with an almost Philip Rothian (and yet distinctly female) fluidity. Here's an exchange between Helen, the daughter, and her mother, Dorothy:

"Would you like me to read to you?" Helen asked, once they were back in their seats.
"What have you got?"
Helen dug eagerly in her bag. "Vogue. People. Neruda."
Dorothy smirked. "That's cheap, sweetheart."
"You love Neruda."
"Are we searching for my epitaph?" Dorothy said.
"That's unfair," Helen said, with the requisite amount of hurt in her tone. The truth was that she had thought about what to read at her mother's funeral and had made the private decision that it would be Neruda.

I agree with Lowenthal's assessment. It's a haunting journey with an underlying sense of humor in the face of a parent's mortality.

Colony Collapse Disorder

There's been a lot of buzz since the beginning of the year about the problem beekeepers are having with a mysterious "colony collapse disorder" that is decimating bee hives in certain segments of the United States. The August 6 issue of The New Yorker has a good article by staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert here.

Also read an interesting fiction piece here by Daniil Kharms, a Russian writer who died during the Siege of Leningrad. It's short and worth a peek.

Miscellaneous Bits of Information for the Week Ending July 21, 2007

I gave up on Per Petterson's In the Wake. Someone reserved a copy at the library, so I had to return mine unfinished. I made it to page 38 (out of 202). Some other time, perhaps.

Interesting blog name of the week here.

All the News Thats Fit to Read This Morning on the Subway

The New York Times had a glut of interesting fodder to read on Sunday. Since I had an extremely busy weekend (more on that later), I am throwing you links to the pieces that my beloved set aside for me to peruse.

A great article about Bloglyn, the propensity for blogging in Brooklyn. Here.

A piece about Don Mayo, a Maui resident with season tickets to the New York Yankees here.

An essay by Haruki Murakami about the influence of jazz on his writing here.

A fun article for tourists on how to survive/navigate New York City subways. Here.

This is a must for Harry Potter fans. Five suggested ways to end the series. Including a gruesome one from the co-creator of Lost. Links here.

For those who do not wish to register with the Times website, or you are reading this at a future date when they want to charge you to read the archived articles, head over to BillyBlog2 for the cached versions:

Blogging in Brooklyn

Hawaii Yankees Fan

Murakami on Jazz

Surviving Subways

Sorry, too much work to cache the whole Potter piece (five separate essays)

End of the Week-est Links

A beer after my own heart! Article here.

Friday Links

Check these out:

An interesting look into the final days of Tony Blair as Prime Minister, through the eyes of novelist Martin Amis.

These guys had way too much time on their hands.

This century-old ad for Theodore Dresier's Sister Carrie ran in the Paper Cuts Blog (my new favorite to check in on).

As I did here, I'm playing a little "What if...." game with this ad.

Charles Agvent has a signed copy (1 of 1500) published by the Limited Editions Club in 1939 for only $330.

Serendipidty Books has a first printing of the second edition advertised above for only $875.

But the true prize would be a "true" first, of which there were reportedly fewer than 600 copies published, in 1900. Heritage Book Shop in L.A. has a copy for a cool $5000.

Cool Site

This seems apropos as the fortieth anniversary of my birth is rapidly approaching.

This site here lets you easily figure out what song was at the top of the Billboard Charts the week you were born.

I had to try, no? And like, everyone who checks has to report back here in the comments section, so we can all have a groovy time.

So what was numero uno in the first week of July in the Summer of Love?


Listen: "Windy" (mp3) by The Association.

For those who know my spawn, the number 1 pop song the week Shayna was born was:



"Angel of Mine" by Monica. Awwww. Isn't that fitting to hear, right before Father's Day?

And Jolee? Would her #1 be appropriate as well? You decide:



Yes, it's "Macarena" by Los Del Rio.

Milk, Eggs, Vodka, redux

The author of Milk, Eggs, Vodka saw my post and linked it in his blog here. Check it out over there at the blog home page and see the latest grocery lists he is posting. There's also another site called GroceryLists. org that pays homage to these abandoned snapshots into peoples' lives. I'm definitely taking a closer look at the wayward lists I chance upon in my semi-regular forays into grocery establishments!

Tuesday Links

First, a shout-out to the readers:

Benjie dropped me a link to the 101 Greatest George Carlin quotes. Courtesy of Blogzarro.

Also, the Ancient One, Blessed Be He, has a post about Culver City urinals. You may recall (or maybe you won't) my post on designer urinals here. Like father, like son.

Rocklahoma! Where the metal comes sweepin' down the plain

And the wavin' fists can sure give pain

When the guitars' wails make Headbangers insane!

Rocklahoma! Awesome! It's an 80's child's dream:

White Lion, Y&T, Slaughter, Quiet Riot, Poison, and Ratt. That's just Friday!

On Saturday, you've got Bang Tango, Faster Pussycat, FireHouse, Warrant, Skid Row, Vince Neil, Winger and Dokken!

And the festival closes on Sunday with Britny Fox, L.A. Guns, Great White, Jackyl, W*A*S*P* and Twisted Sister.

For more info, go see it for real here.

Shout Out to Licorice Pizza

One of my favorite music blogs to check regularly is called Licorice Pizza.

At the end of March, he started doing a recurring post called "Saturday Boxing," in which he highlights some choice tracks off of the box sets in his collection. Head on over and take a peek:

The Who: Thirty Years of Maximum R&B

Aerosmith's Pandora's Box

Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings

Eric Clapton's Crossroads

Elvis Costello

The Rolling Stones - Singles Collection: The London Years

Last Links for April

Well my injury (more on that later) hasn't impaired my ability to type. So, taking advantage of BillyBlog's most prolific month ever (this will be post #83, double that of last April), here are some links to send you out.

Good news for Warren Zevon fans (of which I am one). There's a new book, and a new double-disc commemorating his life. The New York Times review of the book here.


And the disc? Early, uncollected, unissued, rare tracks on Preludes. Click link to read the review on Amazon describing how this record was made.

Picked up 4 items at the library recently:

The Essential Ozzy Osbourne

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A.R. Ammons: Selected Poems

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On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay by Robert Creeley

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and most interesting, perhaps:

Part Asian, 100% Hapa Portraits by Kip Fulbeck

Check out Kip Fulbeck's website (click link above) and see these samples, and more:

Say Cheese! (And Other Interesting Tidbits)

I have taken part, for a while now, in the blog of the Bay Ridge Jewish Center. It's a humble little blog, whose counter reflects fewer hits than I get in a week. I'm not saying I'm a big dog, some blogs get more hits in a day than I do in a month. It will be interesting to see what happens. The main contributor to the blog posted a story about the loss of kosher certification to Junior's of Brooklyn, purveyors of some of the finest cheesecake in the land. With Shavuot approaching, this has made some folk mighty verklempt. The story was even picked up by the online version of the Jerusalem Post here. Oy, gevalt!

Sticking with a Jewish theme, my poem for Professor Liviu Librescu got reposted recently over here. Even though I suspected this might happen, it's still a little breath-taking for me to see complete strangers finding inspiration from my words. I'm not Melinda Doolittling here, honest, but that initial reaction is still, wow.

And check it out, over at the Ancient One's blog, here, he appears briefly in a commercial. I never realized the Cohanim were a Native American tribe! Equally great news is the fact that googling the phrase "Ancient One, Blessed Be He" will show you Dear Old Dad's link first. Mazel Tov!

This has been quite a religious post! I am sad to say, in a sense, that the Poetry in Motion project, which has gone so well, is winding down. Three more posters to go. I must add, however, in the interest of full disclosure, that the Sandburg poster is no longer in my possession. When I heard that eldest daughter Jolee was reading Carl Sandburg in her 5th grade class, the poster was immediately donated to Mrs. Silverman at P.S. 104. She's apparently a big Sandburg fan, and Jolee has reported it is placed prominently over the door to their classroom.

Tuesday Menagerie

I came across another blog, Nerd Litter, that posted (via a guest poster) about last month's Lucinda Williams concert at Radio City Music Hall. Read it here. It's a nice complement to my review here.

Micah alerted me to a recent review by Charles Simic of Zbigniew Herbert's Collected Poems in The New York Review of Books here. Oh. Just realized, the full review is only available to subscribers. Micah must be a subscriber because he excerpted one of Herbert's poems, which I will share here:

Report from Paradise:

In paradise the work week is fixed
at thirty hours
salaries are higher prices steadily
go down
manual labour is not tiring
(because of reduced gravity)
chopping wood is no harder than
typing
the social system is stable and the
rulers are wise
really in paradise one is better off
than in whatever country


At first it was to have been different
luminous circles choirs and
degrees of abstraction
but they were not able to separate
exactly
the soul from the flesh and so it
would come here
with a drop of fat a thread of
muscle
it was necessary to face the
consequences
to mix a grain of the absolute with
a grain of clay
one more departure from doctrine
the last departure
only John foresaw it: you will be
resurrected in the flesh

not many behold God
he is only for those of 100 per
cent pneuma
the rest listen to communiques
about miracles and floods
some day God will be seen by all
when it will happens nobody
knows

As it is now every Saturday at
noon
sirens sweetly bellow]
and from the factories go the
heavenly proletarians
awkwardly under their arms they
carry their wings like violins

(Trs. by Milosz and Scott from The Collected Works of Zbigniew Herbert; The New York Review of Books April 26, 2007)

Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced.



Cormac McCarthy has won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and Natasha Trethewey has won for poetry.



New York Times article here.

I am fiddling with the good folks at Amazon, as I continue to sell out.

Thursday Links

I'm off from work for the next six days, so let's see how BillyBlog fares in the down time:

A favorite poem of mine is Charles Simic, there's a new interview with him here.

Comedian Eric O'Shea's take on some suggested good music for commercials:



Three funny signs from Canada:




See if you can guess a band by its hair. Take the Entertainment Weekly "Name That Hair Metal Band Photo Quiz" here. I didn't do so hot, 8 out of 11, but that's not necessarily embarrassing, depending on your perspective.

What may be one of the most diverse and interesting poetry blog's, Silliman's Blog (also one of the first blogs to link BillyBlog) had this boast about last month:

For what it’s worth, this blog received 36,845 visits in March as readers accessed 63,788 page views, both records for the site. That translates into one visit every 72 seconds, one page view every 42. This is the third straight year that March has set record figures for this site. The current numbers are more than double those of two years ago.

Humbling numbers when, in contrast, BillyBlog had 2200 visits in March as readers accessed approx. 3600 page views. Great numbers for BillyBlog, but little league compared to the big boys. In all fairness, those are decent numbers for me, considering how I don't really put much effort into BillyBlog, at least compared to someone like Ron Silliman. My numbers are great, and I am growing in readership, or at least viewership. It helps when I blog about "hot" topics, like the Naked Brothers Band and Pearl Jam.

Speaking of Pearl Jam, the website pearljamlive.com is back up and running. You can stream countless concerts and see video as well, including the Letterman aftershow from May 4, 2006. Still gives me chills.