Who said this?
1 day ago
Friday, August 8, 2008
Johnny comes clean ... sure!
Maybe now the Big Media will take a break from the Get Obama Elected campaign and do a few lines on this disgusting man.
One more on Favre
I saw the new Jets QB at his NY press conference last night. Clearly he is worried about how he is being viewed around the country, particularly in Green Bay. I love his comment about this situation sorting out the "true Brett Favre fans." You know, the Kool Aid drinkers.
Favre mentioned that "some things happened this summer."
Let me repeat.
"Some things happened ..."
Brett, you quit!
You said you didn't want to play any more.
The team believed you. America, even the Kool Aid slurpers, believed you. It was over. Back to Kiln.
The Packers moved on to Rodgers, then drafted TWO quarterbacks with picks that could have ben used at other positions. They went through free agency, making decisions based on you not playing.
And by the way, Randy Moss doesn't play for the Jets either!
The Packers could and should have handled this better, but the primary responsibility for this mess belongs with the Kid from Kiln.
Favre mentioned that "some things happened this summer."
Let me repeat.
"Some things happened ..."
Brett, you quit!
You said you didn't want to play any more.
The team believed you. America, even the Kool Aid slurpers, believed you. It was over. Back to Kiln.
The Packers moved on to Rodgers, then drafted TWO quarterbacks with picks that could have ben used at other positions. They went through free agency, making decisions based on you not playing.
And by the way, Randy Moss doesn't play for the Jets either!
The Packers could and should have handled this better, but the primary responsibility for this mess belongs with the Kid from Kiln.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
More on Skip
Here's another piece on Skip Caray. It's by Mark Williams, who learned a lot at my knee many years ago. His blog is definitely worth checking out regularly.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Skip
I am a wiseguy and I appreciate another wise guy.
For that reason and others I was a Skip Caray fan.
But it would be a mistake to remember Caray only for his orneriness and sarcastic wit. Make no mistake, he was a very good baseball announcer, always remembering that fans tuned in first for the game, not for his repartee. Skip called a bad ballgame well and a good ballgame superbly. And when we saw greatness, Skip admirably matched his words with the pictures.
Last night I saw a replay of Otis Nixon's heartstopping theft of Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke's deep drive to right center. It was a watershed moment for the emerging Atlanta powerhouse and Skip's call was electric.
The amazing athleticism of Nixon's play and the unrestrained joy of Caray's call makes that one of my favorite sports moments.
And of course, those who suffered the The Dark Years of the 1970s will always revel in Frank Cabrera and Sid Bream and Skip giving us "Braves win. Braves win!"
A lot of us will take that memory to our graves.
As has Skip.
RIP
For that reason and others I was a Skip Caray fan.
But it would be a mistake to remember Caray only for his orneriness and sarcastic wit. Make no mistake, he was a very good baseball announcer, always remembering that fans tuned in first for the game, not for his repartee. Skip called a bad ballgame well and a good ballgame superbly. And when we saw greatness, Skip admirably matched his words with the pictures.
Last night I saw a replay of Otis Nixon's heartstopping theft of Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke's deep drive to right center. It was a watershed moment for the emerging Atlanta powerhouse and Skip's call was electric.
The amazing athleticism of Nixon's play and the unrestrained joy of Caray's call makes that one of my favorite sports moments.
And of course, those who suffered the The Dark Years of the 1970s will always revel in Frank Cabrera and Sid Bream and Skip giving us "Braves win. Braves win!"
A lot of us will take that memory to our graves.
As has Skip.
RIP
Monday, August 4, 2008
Solzhenitsyn
I read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" as a teen. It is is one of the reasons I never went through the "soft on communism" stage that some people never fully emerge from. Later, I read "The Gulag Archipelago," which was exhausting and almost demoralizing in its portrayal of the brutish Soviet government.
In part because of Solzhenitsyn I hated the monolithic Soviet state, as I now despise the monolithic Chinese state.
Solzhenitsyn spat in the face of this enormous evil.
Whatever his flaws, he was an intellectual giant.
On a lighter note, I took a European literature class in college. A week or so in the professor was discussing Turgenev or some other author and I made a reference to Solzhenitysn. He asked the class how many had read "Ivan Denisovich." I raised my hand. He asked if anyone had read any other of the author's novels. I raised my hand and cited "Archipelago"
After class, he caught me on my way out the door and said "I think you're going to do OK in here."
He never called on me again in class unless I raised my hand. I was the Golden Boy.
Easy A.
It pays to read, people.
In part because of Solzhenitsyn I hated the monolithic Soviet state, as I now despise the monolithic Chinese state.
Solzhenitsyn spat in the face of this enormous evil.
Whatever his flaws, he was an intellectual giant.
On a lighter note, I took a European literature class in college. A week or so in the professor was discussing Turgenev or some other author and I made a reference to Solzhenitysn. He asked the class how many had read "Ivan Denisovich." I raised my hand. He asked if anyone had read any other of the author's novels. I raised my hand and cited "Archipelago"
After class, he caught me on my way out the door and said "I think you're going to do OK in here."
He never called on me again in class unless I raised my hand. I was the Golden Boy.
Easy A.
It pays to read, people.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
A not so special special
I ordered the Sunday night special from Dominos. It was a large pizza with one topping for $8.99. The driver arrived and said the bill was for more than $12. There was a $2.50 delivery charge.
My office is a block from the pizza parlor. A whole block!
Sholdn't they tell customers there is an extra charge?
Shouldn't they waive that charge for deliveries with 200 yards?
Am I mistaken here?
My office is a block from the pizza parlor. A whole block!
Sholdn't they tell customers there is an extra charge?
Shouldn't they waive that charge for deliveries with 200 yards?
Am I mistaken here?
The wings? The wings?
I have it on good authority that Lizzi's Deli has closed. We will be looking into this tragedy, but if it is true, let me be the first to let out a public scream of rage.
Where will I get wings that good?
I have a hundred memories of Lizzi's -- a handful of which are printable in a family newspaper environment -- and I am sure other folks do too.
Back in my first Dalton tour -- in the mid-late 1980s -- Lizzi's was my favorite watering hole by a mile. Cheap beer and great conversation. as well as some really good food.
It was a fun place to eat and the owner Jamil Ibrahim and big family were a joy to do business with. Hard to believe those kids are all adults now and moved away.
When I came back here to live in 2000, Jamil treated me like I had never left. A dozen wings and a cold one made a lot of afternoons better.
Hopefully this will all turn out to be some kind of cruel prank and I will be writing a correction of this piece by tomorrow. But I fear not.
Where will I get wings that good?
I have a hundred memories of Lizzi's -- a handful of which are printable in a family newspaper environment -- and I am sure other folks do too.
Back in my first Dalton tour -- in the mid-late 1980s -- Lizzi's was my favorite watering hole by a mile. Cheap beer and great conversation. as well as some really good food.
It was a fun place to eat and the owner Jamil Ibrahim and big family were a joy to do business with. Hard to believe those kids are all adults now and moved away.
When I came back here to live in 2000, Jamil treated me like I had never left. A dozen wings and a cold one made a lot of afternoons better.
Hopefully this will all turn out to be some kind of cruel prank and I will be writing a correction of this piece by tomorrow. But I fear not.
My Sunday column
“No one claimed book collecting is rational.”
Those are the words of a man who knows a few things about books.
Larry McMurtry has certainly written a few. In fact he’s authored more than 40, including a few of my favorites.
Unlike the charmingly modest McMurtry, who refers to his best known work as “popular” but not “great,” I firmly believe “Lonesome Dove” transcends mere popularity. It is a truly great book. Certainly one could pile a tall stack of overrated “classics” that lack the fire and soul of McMurtry’s western epic. In fact ...
Ha.
A few paragraphs in and I already digress — thinking about books has that effect on me. One idea catapults me to another and my carefully aimed thoughts fly askew.
Let me start again.
Focus!
This column is about books. It’s also about “Books.”
Books are those quaint objects that some of us over 35 insist on buying and stacking on our bedside tables.
“Books” is the newest book by Larry McMurtry. It is about books.
You see, McMurtry is not only a superb and prolific author, he is a bookman. He buys and sells books and I don’t mean in any rich man’s hobby sort of way. He’s not Sir Geoffrey Snooppoodle raising freakish roses and naming them after the Royal Family.
He’s a serious bookman, wheeling and dealing from a mammoth store stocked with well over 200,000 titles in Archer City, Texas.
Best of all, McMurtry loves to read. He devours books like Jethro Bodine goes through a stack of Granny’s flapjacks.
As do I.
I am not sure what the first book I read was, but I do remember the thrill I felt as a first grader making my initial trip into the school library. It was heaven. Then, it wasn’t.
At Summerville Elementary the library was divided into separate sections for each grade — one through four. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the really good books were in the other sections. I didn’t give a tinker’s dang about Dick and Jane. And Spot could take a flying bark at the moon as far I was concerned.
I wanted to read about Davy Crockett, Jim Bridger and Daniel Boone and those stories and more like them were in the second-grade section. Or the third. Or the fourth.
One day, when I could take it no more, I slipped away from the first-grade aisles to sample the forbidden fruit. Busted! An ill-tempered librarian caught me, chewed on me a little and ordered me back to the hell that was Dick and Jane’s domain.
Fortunately an angel appeared. It materialized in the shape of a lady teacher who must have had the good sense to realize that my wanting to read a more difficult book wasn’t a bad thing at all.
She spoke to the librarian and after that, for the next three years, I was allowed to roam the library at will and check out whatever I wanted.
That’s why at the delicate age of 8, while most of my contemporaries were being bored to tears by those morons Dick and Jane, I was trapping beaver in the Wild West with Kit Carson, shivering with Gen. Washington at Valley Forge and getting into cozy adventures with Henry Aldrich.
A few short years later came books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and the wonderful Ray Bradbury. I was hooked.
Since then there have been hundreds of other books and writers.
A billion words.
Today I live in a house jammed with thousands of books. Bradbury and Howard are still well represented. They are joined by Papa Hemingway and Rick Bragg. Pat Conroy and Tom Wolfe. William Faulkner is neighbors with Steinbeck and they both look down (from their higher shelf) on Stephen King and a blue million science fiction authors. Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler explore the shadows where Poe and H.P. Lovecraft go bump in the night.
In fact, they are all bumping around and making a racket tonight.
McMurtry’s “Books” has stirred them.
And me.
Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. You may see him on his lunch break this week. He’s the one reading a history of the “Winter War” between Russia and Finland. Leave him alone.
Those are the words of a man who knows a few things about books.
Larry McMurtry has certainly written a few. In fact he’s authored more than 40, including a few of my favorites.
Unlike the charmingly modest McMurtry, who refers to his best known work as “popular” but not “great,” I firmly believe “Lonesome Dove” transcends mere popularity. It is a truly great book. Certainly one could pile a tall stack of overrated “classics” that lack the fire and soul of McMurtry’s western epic. In fact ...
Ha.
A few paragraphs in and I already digress — thinking about books has that effect on me. One idea catapults me to another and my carefully aimed thoughts fly askew.
Let me start again.
Focus!
This column is about books. It’s also about “Books.”
Books are those quaint objects that some of us over 35 insist on buying and stacking on our bedside tables.
“Books” is the newest book by Larry McMurtry. It is about books.
You see, McMurtry is not only a superb and prolific author, he is a bookman. He buys and sells books and I don’t mean in any rich man’s hobby sort of way. He’s not Sir Geoffrey Snooppoodle raising freakish roses and naming them after the Royal Family.
He’s a serious bookman, wheeling and dealing from a mammoth store stocked with well over 200,000 titles in Archer City, Texas.
Best of all, McMurtry loves to read. He devours books like Jethro Bodine goes through a stack of Granny’s flapjacks.
As do I.
I am not sure what the first book I read was, but I do remember the thrill I felt as a first grader making my initial trip into the school library. It was heaven. Then, it wasn’t.
At Summerville Elementary the library was divided into separate sections for each grade — one through four. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the really good books were in the other sections. I didn’t give a tinker’s dang about Dick and Jane. And Spot could take a flying bark at the moon as far I was concerned.
I wanted to read about Davy Crockett, Jim Bridger and Daniel Boone and those stories and more like them were in the second-grade section. Or the third. Or the fourth.
One day, when I could take it no more, I slipped away from the first-grade aisles to sample the forbidden fruit. Busted! An ill-tempered librarian caught me, chewed on me a little and ordered me back to the hell that was Dick and Jane’s domain.
Fortunately an angel appeared. It materialized in the shape of a lady teacher who must have had the good sense to realize that my wanting to read a more difficult book wasn’t a bad thing at all.
She spoke to the librarian and after that, for the next three years, I was allowed to roam the library at will and check out whatever I wanted.
That’s why at the delicate age of 8, while most of my contemporaries were being bored to tears by those morons Dick and Jane, I was trapping beaver in the Wild West with Kit Carson, shivering with Gen. Washington at Valley Forge and getting into cozy adventures with Henry Aldrich.
A few short years later came books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and the wonderful Ray Bradbury. I was hooked.
Since then there have been hundreds of other books and writers.
A billion words.
Today I live in a house jammed with thousands of books. Bradbury and Howard are still well represented. They are joined by Papa Hemingway and Rick Bragg. Pat Conroy and Tom Wolfe. William Faulkner is neighbors with Steinbeck and they both look down (from their higher shelf) on Stephen King and a blue million science fiction authors. Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler explore the shadows where Poe and H.P. Lovecraft go bump in the night.
In fact, they are all bumping around and making a racket tonight.
McMurtry’s “Books” has stirred them.
And me.
Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. You may see him on his lunch break this week. He’s the one reading a history of the “Winter War” between Russia and Finland. Leave him alone.
Friday, August 1, 2008
James Lee Burke
Brooding New Orleans detective Dave Robicheaux and his partner, the one-man-cyclone Clete Purcel, head north to Montana in the newest novel in the popular series. I was disappointed in Burke's first post-Katrina Robinceaux novel, "The Tin Roof Blowdown," but have high hopes for "Swan Peak."
On his game, Burke is the most flavorful of the modern crime writers. Check him out at this site.
On his game, Burke is the most flavorful of the modern crime writers. Check him out at this site.
Family
FamilySlow blogging the last few days. Company in town and we're trying to show off the area to my brother-in-law who has never been to a small Deep South burg. They get to see the Vann House and Fort Mountain today and we're going to work in the Tunnel Hill tunnel and Chickamauga tomorrow.
Any suggestions?
Sugars in Chattanooga for supper tomorrow night. Probably the Iron Gate pizza parlor tonight.
As I said, suggestions welcome.
Any suggestions?
Sugars in Chattanooga for supper tomorrow night. Probably the Iron Gate pizza parlor tonight.
As I said, suggestions welcome.
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