"This is a game for nihilists, and it's played six days a week."
Boss2 is out today because he's going to the US Open, so it seems like a good time for these links:
Serena Williams's Moment, Forever, which is not only paean to her greatness that quotes Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red, but also includes links to this Times Magazine piece and this New York magazine profile. Greatest of all time, indeed.
And for a little eye candy, Rafael Nadal's amazing Tommy Hilfiger commercial. Oh my. (potentially NSFW)
In baseball news, I don't care about the Blue Jays, but the opening paragraphs of this article are pretty amazing:
For an entertainment venture, baseball really isn't all that escapist. Baseball is an ordeal. The players spend most of a given game needing to pay strict attention on every single pitch, but only have to react a couple of times per game. The sport requires constant mental focus, the overwhelming majority of which is wasted. And even when a player gets involved, he has relatively little control over what results from his actions. Bloopers turn into triples, while scalded line drives can turn into double plays.
Consider the two great axioms about hitting, both of which are true: "Even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time" and "The difference between an average hitter and a great hitter is two hits a month." This is a game for nihilists, and it's played six days a week.
It's an endeavor that requires unceasing effort every day, but in which most of that effort goes to waste, and the bit that doesn't is set adrift in a sea of uncontrollable and often inexplicable factors, ending in failure most of the time. That sounds like real life to me, and this inexorable, beautiful conveyor belt of failure appeals to me the way the novels of Richard Ford and Graham Greene do. Baseball is like having your soul crushed slowly by a steamroller made of platinum and diamonds. (The sunshine and the smell of fresh-cut grass are nice, too.)
You'd think that something so relentlessly awful wouldn't be worth such a great investment of time and emotional capital. But it's precisely because baseball is so torturous when it's bad that it can be so intoxicating when it's good.
There's a reason (well, many reasons) my Mets tag on tumblr is #the existential futility of being a mets fan. (sadly, it's too long to be a DW tag.)
And here's one non-sports link that I keep forgetting to mention: Born to Run and the Decline of the American Dream: Bruce Springsteen's breakout album embodied the lost '70s-the tense, political, working-class rejection of an increasingly unequal society.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/775905.html.
people have commented there.
Serena Williams's Moment, Forever, which is not only paean to her greatness that quotes Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red, but also includes links to this Times Magazine piece and this New York magazine profile. Greatest of all time, indeed.
And for a little eye candy, Rafael Nadal's amazing Tommy Hilfiger commercial. Oh my. (potentially NSFW)
In baseball news, I don't care about the Blue Jays, but the opening paragraphs of this article are pretty amazing:
For an entertainment venture, baseball really isn't all that escapist. Baseball is an ordeal. The players spend most of a given game needing to pay strict attention on every single pitch, but only have to react a couple of times per game. The sport requires constant mental focus, the overwhelming majority of which is wasted. And even when a player gets involved, he has relatively little control over what results from his actions. Bloopers turn into triples, while scalded line drives can turn into double plays.
Consider the two great axioms about hitting, both of which are true: "Even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time" and "The difference between an average hitter and a great hitter is two hits a month." This is a game for nihilists, and it's played six days a week.
It's an endeavor that requires unceasing effort every day, but in which most of that effort goes to waste, and the bit that doesn't is set adrift in a sea of uncontrollable and often inexplicable factors, ending in failure most of the time. That sounds like real life to me, and this inexorable, beautiful conveyor belt of failure appeals to me the way the novels of Richard Ford and Graham Greene do. Baseball is like having your soul crushed slowly by a steamroller made of platinum and diamonds. (The sunshine and the smell of fresh-cut grass are nice, too.)
You'd think that something so relentlessly awful wouldn't be worth such a great investment of time and emotional capital. But it's precisely because baseball is so torturous when it's bad that it can be so intoxicating when it's good.
There's a reason (well, many reasons) my Mets tag on tumblr is #the existential futility of being a mets fan. (sadly, it's too long to be a DW tag.)
And here's one non-sports link that I keep forgetting to mention: Born to Run and the Decline of the American Dream: Bruce Springsteen's breakout album embodied the lost '70s-the tense, political, working-class rejection of an increasingly unequal society.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/775905.html.
people have commented there.