Gopnik, Lincoln, Mommy, The Lame Duck Filibuster and a few LFAQs for your trouble.

LITERARY/JOURNALISTIC OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Read and very much liked Adam Gopnik's piece on Lincoln in this week's New Yorker. I know I ragged on AG in a recent posting, but I have to say that this piece felt free of some of the preciousness that tends to plague his writing. I suspect this had to do with the subject. Indeed, Lincoln's grave, dignified, quasi-Biblical status seemed to have a sobering, normalizing, effect on Gopnik--his prose becoming more calm, his tone more mature and measured. Writing about this great American father figure seemed to free The Gop of his ostentatious "Look mommy, mommy" cleverness. Seemed to make him write more like a man than a not fully oedipalized boy.

This is one more reason to love and admire Abraham Lincoln.

It is ironic that the article (which I hardily recommend) was largely about Lincoln's linguistic influences (classical, legal, biblical, Shakespearean) and that it had such a perceptible linguistic influence on its author.

CONFESSION OF THE DAY:

Just after I wrote this bit about Gopnik and his "Look mommy mommy" prose, my mother called me to thank me for taking her out to a nice birthday dinner. She asked me what I was doing and I said I had just written a few things for the blog--including a little blurb about Adam Gopnik and his Abrham Lincoln article. I asked her if she wanted me to read it to her and she said she'd love me to but her cell phone was running out of juice. I was really disappointed not to be able to share my "look mommy mommy" prose about someone else's "look mommy mommy" prose with my mother.

NON-SPORTS PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:

The passive aggression of the lame duck filibuster.

SUGGESTED BAND NAMES OF THE DAY:

Felonious
Lame Duck Filibuster

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“Sorry, I’ve been out of pocket here, but just wanted to jump in to clarify the b2b Index spike for the wired boomer demo.”

MOVIE OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Oliver Stone and Spike Lee. Two outsize egos and self-declared giants of 80s and 90s American movie making. They remind me of each other in that for a long time both --at least in their early, pedantic, provocative years--made loud, abrasive, unsubtle films that were not nearly as good or as smart or as persuasive as you had the sense the film makers thought they were. In fairness, Spike Lee has, in my estimation, matured into a truly quality film maker. But Stone is still something of a mess: a raving mis-shapen ego whose reach constantly outstrips his grasp.

ADDITIONS TO THE LIST OF GOOD FILMS WITH ANIMALS IN THE TITLE OF THE DAY:

Dog Day Afternoon
Whale Rider
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
My Life as a Dog
Wolf
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Lion King (?)

RINGTONE IDEA OF THE DAY:

The sound of me groaning as I leap 4” up for a rebound or as I reach down to dry my feet after showering the morning after a game. (Incidentally--they are the exact same sound).

SPORTS PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:

Sports history is being rewritten by drugs. Obviously, there's the steroid issue. (See Selena Roberts' recent article about the pall of suspicion hanging over the Yankees Dynasty.). But it's more than that. Now George Foreman is claiming he was slipped some kind of a mickey before the Zaire Rope-a-Dope fight with Ali. This is actually a pretty big deal as, without that victory, Ali’s legacy is no longer clearly that of The Greatest. In fact, Foreman was the only top fighter aside from Frazier that he got the better of (and with Frazier it was by a razor’s width) in his post Cassius Clay incarnation—before a string of ignominious losses (Spinks, Ken Norton Jr. etc. ) marked his final decline. Of course, the Ali legend is also founded on his (pre -Ali) victories over Liston. But that shocking upset of Foreman is what elevated him from a great champion to a global icon. (And hence an inspiration to Lebron James.) If the legitimacy of that shocking upset is put in doubt, then his immortality is ever so slightly tarnished.

And imagine something in the realm of boxing being tarnished!

LFAQS OF THE DAY:

What other great moments and achievements will soon lose their prestige in retrospect as a result of drug allegations?

Will Wilt Chamberlain's record of 20,000 sex partners be diminished by revelations of some kind of proto-Viagra use?

Strategically speaking, is Sasha Baron Cohen the non thinking man's Stephen Colbert?

Which is more responsible for the increased level of wakefulness associated with drinking a lot of water every day: The constant hydration of the body or the cardio vascular and aerobic stimulation caused by the countless trips to the urinal?

SINGLE SENTENCE RANDOM PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He did a mean sch'ma.

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Posted on 5/22/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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