Remets-les!

So, uh, back to the titular subject of this blog, as I put off my five hours of pre-exam sleep.



Been some great ball the last couple of weeks, but I guess I'd rather miss games in May than in September ... so long as we don't spend September the way the 21st Century Mets generally have. Not a whole lot to say. But I do want to record for posterity this story about the lovable, huggable profile of Pedro the lion:

Off Mound, Mets' Ace Loosens Up in His Garden
By JULIET MACUR
Published: May 9, 2006

* * *

After every game in Queens, he goes home to Cruz, and to a wonderland. A winding paved driveway leads to his house, which is about a quarter of a mile from the road. Two waterfalls trickle down a 20-foot-tall formation of rocks. In the distance is a pond big enough for a rowboat. Chipmunks scurry between the shrubs. Bumblebees bounce from tulip to tulip. The sound of birds chirping is so constant that it seems like a piped-in recording on the property, which a landscaper helps Martínez maintain.

* * *

Connecticut is too cold for mango trees. Even so, Martínez said he planned to keep the house once his baseball career was over. He will use it as a winter vacation house for himself and for relatives who, he said, "get a kick out of snow."

Martínez hates cold weather, but has been outdoors a lot lately in the mild temperatures, gardening and playing with his three 3-month-old puppies: a chocolate Labrador retriever, a golden retriever and a cockapoo, a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle. When Martínez walks outside, they bound his way, tongues out, tails wagging.

"Stop eating my tulips!" he yelled last week to Typhoon, the golden retriever, who was gleefully chomping on a red petal.

With the house, the land and even his mischievous puppies that seem to have an appetite for his azaleas, this is his new oasis, Martínez said.

"I always wanted to have a home, finally," said the man in whom the Mets have so much invested. "This is my house, this is my town. I'm going to stay here."

This is great. Pedro lives on an 8-acre estate in Greenwich. It's like a Thomas Kincaid painting -- but in a good way. Seriously, I'd be smiling even without the mention of flower-chewing puppies.

David Bowie in the City

From a Reuters article in the NY Times:

Bowie to Curate New Music Festival in New York

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Semi-retired rock star David Bowie will curate the inaugural High Line Festival, to be held next May in New York.

As part of the programming, Bowie will play a large outdoor concert, his first show in New York since 2003. He will also select musicians and artists to appear throughout the festival, which will take place in neighborhoods underneath the High Line, a public park being created atop a long-abandoned elevated railway line on the west side of Manhattan.

* * *

He recently told New York magazine he is taking a sabbatical this year.

``I'm fed up with the industry,'' he said. ``And I've been fed up for quite some time. I'm taking a year off -- no touring, no albums. I go for a walk every morning and I watch a ton of movies. One day, I watched three Woody Allen movies in a row.''

What a dull article. First NY concert since 2003? THREE Woody Allen movies in a row? Ziggy, where's the decadence? How do you expect the culture warriors to cry 'Decline and Fall!' when you sound like a columnist for Good Housekeeping? What, do you expect us to believe you stay up late playing gin rummy and drinking English Breakfast Tea?

re: Lapham

Well, I wrote the above post a couple weeks ago, and figured I was only about halfway through. But it's been kind of busy lately and I don't remember where I wanted to go. So I'll just say I've been thinking a lot, lately, about how we convince others through language. The problem is that when different people have different goals, political writing seeks agreement only rarely (as opposed to some legal contexts, eg).

So, not a particularly profound thought to memorialize the Editor's career. But I will say there's a touch of irony in Lapham's defense of clarity: for a man who writes with such rhythm, he is surprisingly unmemorable. Something about the density of the language, I think -- it's the opposite of pointillism. Reading his essays, I would get so caught up in the punchy little metaphors and analogies and allusions that the (rather basic) argument was left by the wayside before I'd even gone ten pages into the magazine. And then the figures of speech followed, having nothing to attach them to. Yeah. Density, a real killer. Something to bear in mind.