Do You Have Questions?

I didn’t think they were garbage or anything, but they didn’t make me want to read more. I also spent my 20s in grad school and never heard a good thing about him.

At one point I was talking to an office mate and realized that we were both sorta renegades, in that we both liked some unfashionable white male writers from the 70s and 80s, but even he wasn’t into Collins.

As for recent PLs, I much prefer Ted Kooser.

…it’s such a wierd concept…

Anyway, I kinda like Collins. I’ve got a couple of his collections, and I’m fond of “The Best Cigarette.”

Gerald Fitzpatrick; discuss.

Fitzgerald just seems less and less interesting to me as the years pass. There was a phase, right after I became an English major (dropping Philo and a backup plan of history) that I was just in love with Great Gatsby. I re-read it like 4 times. Just some amazing paragraphs. I don’t think Hemingway hits you the same way, but I’d much rather read his books again and teach/or take a seminar class about him.

After a certain point, what can you say about Fitzgerald? Daisy absolutely kills that novel for me now. (Unless you buy a counter reading that Fitz is saying that she was never that great and pursuing her in person or symbolically is hollow.)

some neruda, probably some borges (or maybe this is an assumption)

I have tried on multiple occasions to read spanish poetry in spanish… just pulling random books off the shelf at the library (god I miss having a great university library everyday)

my language skills just weren’t quite good enough to ever fully get it

I can understand people criticizing certain forms of art for being declasse or whatever, but when it comes to music, if you like it, you like it.

Once on a plane I talked to a guy who was a symphony violinist or something (actually he was talking to someone else and I eventually jumped in). I said something about being ashamed of liking Brahms, and he told me that was silly.

There is a certain snobbery that insists that any composer who writes, you know, actual tunes must somehow be pandering to knuckle-dragging lowlifes. Puccini isn’t really my thing, but dang, he could write incredible melodies. Most of his critics couldn’t write one if their lives depended on it.

hate the way they felt: i just felt like i was wearing a pair of shorts under my jeans

it was somehow too much and not enough at the same time

don’t understand the appeal, and sense that no one is wearing them now

i think my generation went to briefs/boxer-briefs pretty hardcore

but it’s definitely the A-Team.

how bad is the new A-Team movie going to suck?

I remember one time, must have been around christmas, when i had to chose between watching my A-team and watching what was referred to always in my house as a “special”, which was when one of the networks would show a kids show (like rudolf or charlie brown or garfield in prime time)

I had no idea what to pick and was tormented by this

I didn’t watch Teen Wolf until college, but found it amazing

I liked the A-Team better, but remember watching both with my dad.

i understand the desire to keep teaching it, but at this point it’s actually more useful to just read a detailed summary of the plots of the big plays one afternoon and move on

the whole experience just creates the worst kind of disingenuous learning experience ever, at the HS level you don’t have the time to dig too much into the background that you need, and most kids don’t have the reading skills to get anything out of reading it… so its all just Cliff Notes based

I like old stuff, but at some point, the language gets too obsolete. All those hours would be better spent on eighteenth or nineteenth century texts, where the language is still reachable

I read MacBeth (at my fashionable public elementary in a nice part of town) in 5th grade, which is just insanity

but seriously, why not make bigger vacuums than these. Perhaps for ferrel cats, or dogs, or children.

Montana was paved with the remains of those critters when I drove it in the ’80s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeywW7r4LA4

WHY?

(kidding I’ve been over to the signing thread, or what I like to call it; Cluster F*** in the Outfield Thread.)

Someone posted an article on Arrowhead Pride about the Ankiel signing and I had nothing to do so I popped over to see how fans in KC still viewed the team. Personally, I quit on them once they acquired Mike Jacobs and the article I saw in your archives about how Dayton Moore thinks of the fans tells me it was the right choice. Figure that until the Glass family no longer owns the team, I’m just going to treat them like old-time fans treat the Athletics…like they moved away or disbanded.

(No disrespect intended towards anyone here…I stuck around through the Robinson and Baird years but three crappy GMs in a row is all anyone should be required to take).

I really disliked Elarton: hated what he was supposed to represent (team veteran/leader), hated that he called out the team for not caring, hated his windup immensely, hated how slowly he pitched, etc

but during the baird era, I wasn’t as emotionally invested in the team being smart or dumb the way I have been with dayton, where the bad moves just really really annoy me

I hate Bloomquist in the way I hate Favre: its really less about him than about how he’s talked about that is annoying

but the royals never let you rest: i hated gathright, and eventually came to think he wasn’t all that terrible because i kept being handed worse

also: ken harvey

he stole bako’s place

and I don’t know what you are talking about

May all women with weird sox that don’t cover their feet be named as such from this point forward!

great name, and I am sure several wives/SOs are unaware of varying degress of mates’ interest in Ms Folgers.

that’s all i can ask

it’s all about the deals, baby! straight ballionaire style

a pretty open ended chat with about 90% of the front office people in baseball would be fascinating, only, they’d never say anything

i know that the seattle bloggers actually came to like bavasi personally after some of their events, and i can see that happening between moore and myself in some hypotetical situation in which i was relevant to get to know him

underrated: the weather and the location. it gets pretty hot and muggy during the summer, but no more so than most of the midwest and all of the south & compared to when I lived in iowa, indiana or ohio, the winters are very mild. it pretty much doesn’t get colder than 20 degrees for a daytime temp, and you never get that december-february slog where it’s always absolutely freezing and snow is regularly disrupting your life and you feel absolutely godawful for weeks at a time

and, everything on the east coast is just smaller (although the traffic kills 50% of the benefit) so you’re really close to lots of cool stuff

overrated: this may just be me, but if you don’t work in politics/govt/defense you can feel like you’re a bit left out. i’m surrounded by people with amazingly cool jobs, and I don’t have one

it seems to me that crab cakes are a highly divergent item: the ratio between crab meat to bready filling seems all over the place, so it really depends on if you like a lump of crab meat or if you like a hush puppie with crab meat in it

A real old school place but excellent crabs and crabcakes

that’s pretty crazy.

meanwhile, TO got to hang out with Joanna Krupa….

royals have too much decent pitching to lose 95+ guys

we do forget how awful they were a few years back: comparable lineup with maybe Tejeda as the best pitcher on the staff

although to be fair, Ankiel was a little different

garret anderson would be caliendo