T.D.

Larry, I think you told that story on some other thread (forget where, but it's buried inside an ulta-long thread). IIRC, it concerned Higgins submitting a book review when he had clearly not read the book in question. A nasty exchange ensued. I was once a huge fan of Higgins, based on his earlier Boston/crime based novels, but my enthusiasm diminished over the years, because many of his later novels became incredibly stylized and tedious. (Michiko Kakutani of the Times, for whom I have no strong feelings one way or the other, once wrote a hilarious review of The Manderville Talent, which ended with a lengthy lampoon of Higgins's prose, praising the beautiful craft but concluding (IIRC) "But why does it have to be so boring?". I read the book anyway, and she was right.) Certainly Higgins, who was once a lawyer, wrote remarkably good dialogue. I once had occasion to go over courtroom transcripts, which also featured interesting/verismo dialogue, and theorized that his legal pursuits helped develop that part of his writing.

Really, if Congress wanted to seriously investigate performance enhancing drugs (PED) within the context of the antitrust agreement, they should go after MLB management (Commissioner, club GMs, owners) and the Players Union. I'm certain that, from the mid/late '80s on, the sport was riddled with PED use, management from the Commissioner's Office on down turned a blind eye to it, and the Players Union fostered a fertile environment for drug taking. I don't particularly blame individual players; with so much money at stake, what do you expect? "Don't hate the player, hate the game..."

I guess the DBs shoulda taken knees after intercepting the passes... The sheer number of drunks at sporting events is pretty scary. I've been to one MLB playoff game, the Yankees' first home game vs. Seattle in 1995 after the strike (interestingly, tickets were easy to buy, and didn't sell out for several days. That all changed by the following year). I've never seen so many drunks as were walking up and down River Ave. before the game. Definitely made me uneasy, and I was rooting for the home side; I imagine M's fans would have been terrified. There were subsequently many fights in and under the stands. [Never been to a football playoff game, but expect they'd be at least as bad; have attended several NHL playoff games, and they were nowhere near as hairy.]

Thanks for posting that. Pretty lame interview IMO. Now I don't have to watch and be p**sed off/let down. I'm not expecting too much from the Congressional hearing. I often listen to radio broadcasts of the Federal Reserve Chairman (Bernanke, earlier Greenspan) being questioned by the House and Senate, and many of the questioners aren't, shall we say, very astute. Interestingly, one of the worst offenders is Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), former baseball hero. Wonder if Bunning will chime in on the steroid issue.

Thanks. I'll probably tune in some of the football (with the sound off), to be sure of the start time. I agree, it won't be a hard-hitting interview. My subjective probability of Wallace pursuing my (and NY Post's) suggested Why was McNamee even injecting you? line of questioning is less than 5%. I assume the interview will have been previously taped, and edited prior to broadcast (could it possibly be live? Hard for me to imagine). IMO, this makes it even less likely to be revealing; I wouldn't be surprised if Clemens's reps were allowed to screen the edited tape to make sure that Roger isn't "slandered"...

I rarely watch TV, but will have to watch the Clemens interview on 60 Minutes tonight. I assume that it'll run as the final 20-minute segment, in order to sucker in the maximum # of viewers and minimize the audience dropoff from football. Not sure what to expect from the Congressional hearing. A Sosa-McGwire style farce is possible...but that didn't appear to work out so well for McGwire, who subsequently withdrew into self-imposed isolation.

Yevgeny Mravinsky Gennady Rozhdestvensky George Udny Yule

I disagree. That's some serious hindsight. Both two-point calls were "by the book" according to The Two-Point Conversion Chart. And conditional on missing the first one, surely the Steelers had to go for the second one, with a mere one-point lead. So you can only argue with the first call, when down 5. Even in retrospect, I have no beef against going with the odds and the chart.

Based on a recent review (forget the source), I'm going to get the new Everyman edition of complete novels by Flann O'Brien. Expected release 8 Jan.

I used to buy bunches of weird "shot-in-the-dark" CDs by modern composers I'd never heard of. Some were hits (in which case I'd get more discs through "normal" channels), some were misses. Would never have taken that many chances with full-priced recordings.

I've explored a lot of modern music (some CRIs, but often Euro labels like Kairos) via Berkshire Record Outlet offerings. Used to check their inventory carefully, but have been more focused on jazz the past two or three years.

Peter, I see your point, and certainly a lot of concert-goers share your POV (eg NY Philharmonic subscribers, who are famously "conservative"). But how do you know that the modern pieces are presented as part of some "moral mandate" (by which I assume you mean that "concert-goers should be exposed to modern music")? Maybe the featured ensemble(s) (shudder) actually like playing the pieces, and want to share their enjoyment? As far as ordering the pieces on the program, you're correct in that the modern works are usually sandwiched so as to dissuade late arrivals/early departures. But I'm not sure we can conclude that they are regarded as some kind of musical equivalent of castor oil. Even in an all-warhorse program, the "big" attraction would be reserved for last, and the relatively obscure piece placed in the middle. Perhaps your "rigged" comment shows a certain preconception.

I think a very fruitful line of questioning, which seems to have been overlooked so far, is Why was Clemens even receiving injections from McNamee? 1) The guy's not even remotely medically qualified, and seems to be a scumbag (as portrayed earlier in the thread). Why would an athlete with a multi-million dollar contract conceivably risk getting medical treatment from some numbskull off the street? 2) Surely receiving athletic-related pain-killing injections from non-team (or non-team approved) entities (I can't even say physicians here ) would be a violation of team policy, as the player could subject himself to further injury (or malpractice ). 3) The very fact that he got injections from McNamee suggests that he knew the procedures were not sanctioned, or even illegal; otherwise why not get treatment from legitimate (or team) sources? 4) Perhaps there was team complicity, with ballclubs referring players to shady sources for treatments they didn't wish to administer directly.

I Googled "lidocaine knee injuries", and lidocaine does appear to have use in treating knee pain. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Clemens used it for knee or elbow injuries. I'm sure that pain-killer injections are common in the NFL (although maybe less so than they once were), so why not baseball? The B-12 thing, though dubious-sounding, has precedents. ISTR cyclist Greg LeMond receiving highly publicized B-12 treatment during one of his Tour de France wins; granted, many cognoscenti sniggered at the reports (and still do, given Greg's loud anti-doping posturing), suspecting other substances. Looks to me like, by introducting the B-12 gambit, Clemens is trying to go the Sheffield (and other BALCO clients) flaxseed oil route, i.e. "My trainer gave me this shit, but I just thought it was B-12". Has Sheffield gotten into serious hot water yet? That defense wouldn't work in international athletics, which are governed by IOC/WADA, but it might be OK in the unregulated MLB, in which the substances weren't officially banned (in spite of the Mitchell report rigmarole about prescription medicines). For some strange reason, the public seems to be inclined to believe Roger... [Disclaimer: I've always considered Clemens a juicer, and personally believe that his story is complete BS. But he might get away with it.]

Still -4 (F) at 10:30. But the sun's out.

Duluth in January...that's brutal. I shudder to even think about it.

Below zero (Fahrenheit) tonight. Just got through two snowstorms, 7" and 9", about 2-1/2 days apart. Hoping for a big thaw soon, close to 50 degrees expected early next week.

Yeah, but in the context of classical music, Holland's barb is a thinly-coded dig at "avant-garde"/"high modernism"/"serial" music. I don't happen to agree with the sentiment, but it's very commonly expressed, almost knee-jerk. I wonder if Holland ever reviewed Wynton's "Blood on the Fields"... I've found B.H. bizarre and unreadable (don't know his age, but have suspected senescence) for many years, but that's one I'd like to peruse.

Well, I got all 9 of 9, but I started answering the questions without noting the time limit, so I'm not sure I got them all within 2 min. So my score should be heavily docked for not reading the instructions! BTW, yours should be docked for misspelling "Wonderlic".

My order placed 12/22 shipped today. All items were in stock and shipped.

If you want cheap cantata recordings, Berkshire Record Outlet has the whole set (60 CDs for $99.40) and various pieces (5 CDs for $14.95) thereof, with Leusink on Brilliant Classics. Warning: these recordings use mostly amateur performers, so may not be as polished... You can find more info at the Bach Cantata website.

In terms of ego/reputation, not necessarily so. Parcells can still claim some credit for the Cowboys' renascence. And if he manages to get the Fish to 9-7, say, it'll further burnish his genius tag. Granted, if the Pokes reach or win the Super Bowl this year or in the next couple, B. P. will have missed out. Gee, I wonder if the Dolphins will try and trade for T. O...

Waldenbooks is a subsidiary of Borders Group, which is a publicly traded company, ticker BGP. Earlier this year (March), BGP announced downsizing of the Waldenbooks chain. Here's a company press release, in which they call it "right-sizing". I didn't notice any recent news about "going under".

No need for such pessimism Al. There were quite a few teams who looked like they just packed it in: Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis. Shame on Dungy and his team for playing with a skeleton team: he gets a week off anyway with the bye. I don't know: I prefer Bill Belichick's way of playing every game for the win. People pay hard earned money to watch these teams on the field. Kudos to Tom Coughlin for playing to beat the Patriots. His team will go into the playoffs sharper than some others. I can understand Pittsburgh and Jacksonville and Tampa Bay packing it in because they have to play next week, but Indy and Dallas? Why? It was a very interesting week for point spreads, because the bettors' consensus was that certain clubs would pack it in. For instance, the Skins were favored by 9 to 9.5 points. So you can't say that the Pokes' showing was a surprise! Dungy has a history of resting players in the final week (this seems to have developed in recent years, motivated by many past Dungy-led playoff flops), and the Colts were 6.5 point underdogs to the Titans. And the Seahawks were only favored by 3 against the stinky Falcons, and proceeded to lose. Many props to Coughlin for having the Jints play hard. Leading up to the game, there was huge debate about him resting the players, but as the game concluded, it became clear that he "did the right thing" 100%.

Happy birthday and happy cycling! (Lon beat me to that...)