First is worst, Second is best.
Yeah, fine, in this case, First isn’t worst, and far from it. But what I’m interested in here is the guy who came in Second. Twice.
I was in my bunker powering through the first three pages of Tristram Shandy on Sunday, so I missed mentioning this then, but July 5th marked the date when Larry Doby became the second player to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, coming in just a few months behind Jackie Robinson.
What’s more, in 1978, Doby became the second black manager in Major League Baseball, after Frank Robinson in 1975.
Larry Doby dealt with essentially all of the same things that the guys who came in “first” had to deal with, but he gets basically no recognition for it. How many of you have heard of Larry Doby? (It’s possible our readers are not a random sample. Even so.) Everyone’s heard of Jackie Robinson. And all baseball fans have heard of Frank. (Incidentally, what do the Robinsons of the world have against Larry Doby? Jeez, give the guy a break.) Certainly, Doby didn’t have to bear the weight of being the icon that Jackie Robinson was, but he did have to experience every bit of the virulent racism that Robinson did, without the support of that iconic status.
Doby twice led the league in home runs, once hit for the cycle, and became the first black player to hit a home run in the World Series.
And, to be fair, Doby was the first black player in the American League. He was also the third American ever to play in the Japanese Nippon Professional League. Which means that, all told, Larry Doby was the worst, the best, and the one with the hairy chest.
Doby died June 18th, 2003.
Here is Larry, doing his best Lil’ Freedom impression, and again, a little older:
For the Record
Just thought I’d mention one of the
I’m not even joking. I wouldn’t. And another thing I won’t do is qualify this statement with a “…on the internet,” or anything like that. As an expert (expert!) I am qualified to tell you that this piece is pure as the driven snow (is that the saying? Dammit.) Furthermore, you should read it so we can talk about it. Zack! out.
Wherein I emerge, unscathed.
You may or may not have noticed (admit it: You noticed) that I’ve been off the radar yet again, this time for nearly a week (!). I know what you’re thinking, but, no, I was not surfing with Jesse Ventura again, although he did call to ask (I was busy… next time, JV). In fact, you might be surprised to learn that I was not surfing at all! The truth is that I hid myself away in an undisclosed location (undisclosed by ME) so that I could start my World Record attempt at reading AND FINISHING Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (hereafter probably– but not certainly– referred to as Tristram Shandy).
And so, we begin:
We’ll start where Sterne does, with his dedication of the book to William Pitt, who was, at the time, Secretary of State (for the Southern Department). Sterne’s dedication says, more or less, that he just hopes that Pitt thinks the book is funny. I’m reminded of Preston Sturges’s excellent 1941 film, Sullivan’s Travels, in which Joel McCrea (who, by the way, I first encountered in Alfred Hitchcock’s underappreciated Foreign Correspondent– I remember thinking he looked kind of funny for some reason, but I like him as an actor. Saw that the same night I saw I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and what they say about the ending to that one is true.) plays a movie director who’s known for making “meaningless” but popular comedies. He sets out to make a serious and important film, one which depicts the real human condition, and in order to learn what real hardship is like, McCrea tries to live the life of a hobo and, like most hobos, meets Veronica Lake along the way.
Incidentally, the name of the film that McCrea wants to make? O Brother, Where Art Thou?. I can’t remember what movie is playing in the movie house in the Coens’ film, but I want to pretend that it was Sullivan’s Travels. Can anyone verify this? I could, I have the DVD and it’s easily accessible, but I’m writing this and I’m slightly (read: exceptionally) lazy.
At any rate, it’s in a movie house that McCrea learns the importance of laughter, as a Walt Disney “Pluto” cartoon helps his fellow prisoners (see the movie, jeez) to forget their troubles for a moment and enjoy something. He sees that maybe what he was doing– making people laugh– is actually pretty damned important in this crazy, mixed-up world.
The point is, it looks like Sterne realized this, too. He’s not looking to change the world with his novel, he just hopes it’s funny. At least, that’s what he says.
Next up: The beginning of the book!
Update: Just found out that Preston Sturges was born Edmund Preston Biden. Related to Joe? A quick search with the Google yields little help. Found only one mention of Sturges and the political Bidens (it said he was related), but that was a blog with no sourcing. If someone else wants to find the answer that would be… just fine.
Shut the Fuck Up
Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.
Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.
[all punctuation sic, by the way--ed.]
So mumbles (former) Governor cum pin-up girl Sarah Palin at her recent press conference, explaining (if that’s the right word for it) her decision to resign her post halfway through her first term. As the Agenda’s resident Sarah Palin expert-I sat behind her in 10th grade geometry class, her hair smelled like raspberries–I want to have a startlingly piquant opinion about this, but the whole thing makes me feel redundantly bored. I’m boringly bored.
Although, to be honest, it might be more than that. I keep closing my eyes and hoping that they’ll go away, and by “they” I mean, of course, the stars of the Republican Party. Obviously, I didn’t start from a place of affection with the Repubs, but I’m a little dismayed that I’m beginning to lose some of the schadenfreud that I once held and loved dearly. This just isn’t all that fun anymore, guys.
Palin, Sanford, that dude from Nevada, Cheney, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Steele. And meanwhile, there’s stuff to do, by which I mean the actual real actual stuff that functioning governments do, as opposed to the soap opera that gets covered every night by the news networks, and yes, even us. I know it’s nerdy, but I’ve always preferred the drama of C-SPAN to that of CNN: I don’t need flashing tickers or cleverly manicured pundits when there’s a spicy debate happening in the hallowed halls of government.
To be really, really honest, the whole modus of the Republicans reeks of sabotage; cloak and gilded dagger. The PAC’s are well-funded, the listening audience is tuned in, the ringers are ringing. They’ve got the stage, they’ve got their megaphones; the cameras have focused on the whole miserable mess. Worse, they’ve got no real power (in Congress, anyway) and yet they still manage to determine the terms of discourse while the Democrats flop around like lubed-up jellyfish. Typical.
The message coming from the right is this: Watch us destroy everything from sea to shining sea: California to Alaska to South Carolina to D.C. Their platform is essentially rhetorical suicide bombing. Of course, the perpetrators of this modern day Jonestown deflect blame onto the forces of “big government” and leftist media and so on, but peek behind the curtain and you’ll see barrels and barrels of Kool-Aid. I’m perfectly content to let them drink it–the problem is they don’t have the courtesy to find a nice, quiet place to do it, so as to not bother the rest of us.
It might be time to demote the G.O.P. from its current status as opposition party to something more fitting: an annoying third-party, maybe–kind of like the Libertarians, or the Constitution Party. At any rate, I can’t understand any of the Republican laity feeling proud or uplifted by the state of their party. I’m talking to you, GOP’ers: you ought to be ashamed of these guys, and fearful of the cesspool they’re dragging us all down into. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, well–just tell them to shut the fuck up.
You Know It When You See It
Tell me this isn’t the hottest shit you’ve seen since the Tarantula Nebula supernova in 1987 (yes, 1987).
Oh, drool, oh pant.
Oh gag. Is that even legal to do with a flag? Pose all nasty like while it lays there crumpled over a chair? Is the flag a stand-in for a certain 2008 presidential candidate? Is this her version of the Iwo Jima flag raising?
This makes me uncomfortable on sooooo many levels. I can’t take my eyes off of the sconce in the background. Why is that carpet so clean and shimmery? Are those shoes or boots behind her on the window ledge? What are we to make of that slightly crooked U.S. Army hanging thing? Why is only one of the outlets childproofed? Why is it childproofed at all when this kind of thing is happening in the room?
God help me, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. And for all the wrong reasons.
Infinite Summer? I got your Infinite Summer RIGHT HERE! (Ooo, burn!)
No, actually, I think it’s a great idea, and you should follow Zack! and his progress reports on David Foster Wallace’s masterwork, Infinite Jest, throughout the next couple of months. And you should really probably also read it, because 70 pages a week really isn’t that much, you lazy jerk. And maybe even drop a line here and tell everyone how things are going from your end, or are you so selfish that you can’t even share that?
Okay, having said all that, I’m just going to admit that the Infinite Summer is not for me. And I think probably Infinite Jest is not for me. What am I gonna do? I’m not going to lie to you about it, Dear Reader. Sometimes that’s just how it be. But I do think the whole thing is a very good way to get a person to read a book that would otherwise collect dust and just look very pretentious and important sitting on a shelf, and while there’s a lot to be said for looking smarter than one actually is, I usually like to kick people like that in the shins. (To be fair, I usually like to kick just about everyone in the shins, so this probably isn’t that surprising. Even so, stop pretending you’re well-read, it makes you look Kobachy.) So, like anyone of great import, I’M GOING TO STEAL THIS GOOD IDEA.
I figure if I have to blog about it, I’m far more likely actually to do it, so I’m going to set about reading Laurence Sterne’s postmodern-before-there-was-even-modern monstrosity, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a book which NO PERSON HAS EVER FINISHED (no you haven’t, stop lying. Liar.), all the while blogging the basic “story” (ha ha– there isn’t one!) and any reactions I might have.
Needless to say (although I’ll say it anyway, because doing so makes it fit right in here), this is an entirely self-indulgent exercise, and is basically just designed to make me, Fletch, the FIRST PERSON EVER TO FINISH THIS BOOK. Follow along with me, or don’t. If following two books by proxy is too much for you, pay attention to Zack! If the Infinite Summer is not for you, as it is not for me, perhaps a book that is full of digression and mad wanderings and not much of a point at all is more to your liking. Wait, now I’m confused about which book I’m talking about.
No arbitrary benchmarks or time horizons from me, no promises to you about regularly scheduled updates. Some of these chapters are half a page long, some are 50 pages long, and some don’t even exist. So I’ll update when it seems necessary. Or, more accurately, when I feel like it. But you will witness, here, SOMETHING THAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. Namely, I will read this book and finish it. If one of you would contact Guinness, I will be excited finally to hold a World Record. And while you’re at it, if someone would bring me a Guinness, I’d appreciate that, too.
By the way, if anyone out there wants to help me set another World Record, the record for longest handshake is an absurdly low nine-and-a-half hours. Jeremy and I talked about blasting that one out of the water, but we never tackled it. I’m still willing to attack that one with him, but failing that, I’m looking for another partner. I don’t need to tell you how intensely awesome it would be to hold a World Record. I would put it on my resume and probably tell everyone I ever meet about it. And so would you. I would even make us some trophies, although, if you think about it, they would be pretty unnecessary considering we would be WORLD RECORD HOLDERS.
At any rate, I’m certainly not trying to steal Zack!’s thunder here, I just know that we have a ridiculously intelligent audience (yes, even you!) and we need to do more in the way of book clubs and smart things and less in the way of fart jokes (kidding! We need more of those, too). And it’s summer, so you don’t have anything else to do anyway, unless you’re something other than a teacher or retired or on furlough, and then your life is going on pretty much as it always does, which is to say that it’s ending one day at a time and you should stop looking forward to the weekend and hating the week because these are precious moments of your life that you’ll never, ever, ever get back, and you’re wishing them away just so you can sleep in on Saturday. And that’s just so, so sad.
And with all that, I’ll start reading TOMORROW. Because it’s late and now you’re bothering me.
Really?
Saw this headline on Huffington Post a few hours ago and had to take a screen grab. I still can’t decide whether or not they did it on purpose– JP insists they knew exactly what they were doing, and considering that they’ve got a pretty savvy bunch working over at Huffington Post (although I have noticed that their headlines have gotten pretty lazy– and, to use a technical term, sucky– lately), he’s probably right. Then again, considering their audience, it seems like a strange risk to take just for a tasteless joke. But there would be a certain amount of plausible deniability available to them, so I’m back to not knowing. Take a look, you decide:
I, of course, am all for tasteless jokes, intentional or not.
Week 1: Prep/Pep Talk: Year of the Infinite Summer
As a few of our readers may know (I let on about it in our Twitter feed), this week the Infinite Summer began. The goal is to read the imposing Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, moving at a leisurely 75 pages a week, including footnotes. DFW has recently crossed the veil, and while some bloggers over at Infinite Summer have tried to avoid the memorial-ish aspects of this event, I don’t see anything wrong with that–and really, if that’s what it takes to get you to read this book (which is supposed to be, like, totally awesome), then fine. Of course, we should mention that James Joyce has been dead for quite some time now…Finnegan’s Wake, anyone? No?
I was going to write about the first “assignment,” but then I realized that the week’s not up yet, so we’ll get to that in a couple of days. However, if you’ve started, you will have had some opportunity to form some impressions (or deeply felt fears) of the novel: “daunting” may be at the top of everyone’s list. Ever the overachiever, I’ve finished the assignment ahead of time, so I’ll just take a moment to dish out some tips that I’ve found helpful. Maybe they won’t be, but if that’s the case, Infinite Summer has more. And truthfully, the best ones that I can offer I probably cribbed from that site, anyway.
1.) Two bookmarks: one for your place in the main text, and one for the endnotes. There’s some talk over at the Infinite Summer that you might find colored post-its helpful for keeping track of all the character/narrators/plotlines, etc., but I’m willing to bet that’ll make you quit reading that much faster. As much as I would love to go full-geek on Infinite Jest, I’ll save that pleasure for the second go-around. The endnotes, it turns out, are important to the story, so you’ll probably just have to put up with that. It’s not as bad as you might imagine though.
2.) When the going gets tough, quit reading and start watching. In other words, let the insanity of DFW’s writing take over and enjoy the ride. Part of the beauty of this book, its linguistic achievement, lies in its Obsessive Compulsive Schizophrenia. I realize that I’m mixing disorders here, but the point is that if you spend too much time consulting your dictionary or psych textbooks, you’re probably going to miss the rhythm of the text–not to mention drive yourself a little batty in the process.
3.) Above all, cultivate a sense of superiority as you lug this behemoth around with you. Act like you don’t notice the stares (they’re admiring gazes) and whispers (hushed exaltations of your heroism). Merely touching this book makes you smarter, cooler, more culturally adept, and, yes, sexy beyond measure. Finishing it may just turn you into a god. No promises.
Okay. If anyone of yous guys is taking up the summer challenge, I’d love to hear about it. Maybe we could get together for tea and biscuits and talk about the book. Or cucumber sandwiches, if that’s your thing. Please like me.
Good luck!
Because We Kinda Deserve It
And because you might miss this–the winner of the “Wish-It-Were-Real-But-It-Probably-Isn’t-Because-It’s-Too-Damn-Good” comment award:
This one showed up inexplicably in one of Fletch’s brilliancies the other day. We really wish we could contact whoever this is–we have a job opening, and we were looking for someone just like this. Mainly, we’re just thrilled that s/he called us an “organization.” Mainly, we’re just thrilled that s/he spelled it right.
Now, before anybody gets all bent out of shape we’d like to point out that Mr/s. Poindexter does have a few points–and, out of fairness to our readership, we’d like to go ahead and mock them. It’s Saturday afternoon, after all. What else is there to do? Plus, we’d hate for this to turn out to be a real comment and find ourselves in the awkward predicament of having been soft on the laity. No one likes that. No one.
Of course, like we posited at the beginning of the post, this is probably not for real–in which case, we say, good on you, anonymously gendered reader! Give yourself a pat on the back–you’ve done us proud. You really have.