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I think this is a bit of a hysterical over-reaction, but what I do wonder about is whether MLB is legally obligated to make up the difference in ticket sales and the concession take. I would be royally pissed (oh, sorry wrong city) if I was in a league and I was ordered to play a game at which I had to forgo so much revenue. For that matter, what if the networks decide it is too creepy to show a game with no audience and no stadium noise at all, and black it out?

This is impressive, but he isn't playing the rhythm guitar that kicks in halfway through (unless it is double-tracking which of course might be feasible). Do they explain this in the original video?

I've used Total Recorder, though it costs a nominal amount. I actually have to reinstall this after my desktop computer died. I used to record compulsively, but seem to have kicked the habit close to a year ago and am not sure I want to start up again.

Not sure the Mravinsky is a great deal, at least not at present. Suggested retail is $55 or so. But the Sony 20th Century Masterworks looks very tempting. Can currently be pre-ordered at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.ca. I believe for US residents, Amazon.co.uk is the better deal (18 GBP) whereas it is basically a wash for Canadians (with less chance of a customs hold-up if one goes with Amazon.ca). Thanks for the heads' up.

In the end I really disliked Philadelphia Fire. It was such an unstructured novel with Wideman going in 3 or 4 directions and not resolving anything. While it may have been inspired by Invisible Man, it ultimately felt to me like one of those saggy postmodern novels without an ending. It could have been quite something if he had just picked one thread and saw it through, but jumping around so much was just annoying and (to me) pointless. I'll be going through Travesties tonight and seeing what references I missed in the staged production, which was quite enjoyable. I should be wrapping up !Click Song shortly and probably start Vasily Aksyonov's The Burn over the weekend. Next week I hope to launch into Of Human Bondage.

In the middle of a few books, which always makes me a bit edgy, so I am trying to wrap at least one up tonight. I'm about halfway done with both Williams' !Click Song and Wideman's Philadelphia Fire. Of the two, I like !Click Song a bit better, but neither of these is going to become a perennial favorite or anything like that. After I wrap these two up, I'll probably read Stoppard's Travesties, in honor of just having seen it (in Montreal no less!). And perhaps move on to The Real Thing and Night and Day. I find Stoppard is an acquired taste, but I acquired that taste a while back and think he is probably the most interesting playwright of our time. I'm still waiting to see if New York or Chicago will be staging his latest play, The Hard Problem, anytime soon.

I found Diary of a Nobody a bit exhausting. So many mishaps in one household. However, you can clearly see that Mr. and Mrs. Pooter (and Mr. particularly) are the putative ancestors of Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances. (A show about social strivers that pretty much left me cold.) Just starting John A. Williams' !Click Song. So far I am liking it a bit better than The Man Who Cried I Am. This month and next month are set aside to go through novels I've carted around for over 10 years in some cases without cracking them. Now is the time to find out if it was worth it. In addition to !Click Song, I am tackling The Burn by Vassily Aksynov and Bleeding London by Geoff Nicholson. This should keep me fairly busy. After this, I will read Of Human Bondage, where I am fairly certain I will enjoy the book.

Standards are too low, and it would serve them right if a bunch of these one and dones didn't get drafted. But it never seems to work out that way.

The reviews (by average people not literary reviewers) are all over the map. Interesting. You sometimes get this wide range of opinion on Douglas Coupland's work as well. Looks like one I might borrow from library but definitely not purchase. Anyway, going to launch into Diary of a Nobody today. I got the copy I read from the library and didn't know what to expect. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a copy yesterday. It's a book that I'll reread and/or delve into sections of in the future. Ok, good to know. I'll definitely try to get around to it some day. I have just the vaguest idea of its plot, though actually it sounds in this case the comparison to Coupland is apt -- some aspects sound a bit like Generation A (not a misprint, a newish book -- which has garnered divisive reviews). I've liked some of Smith's other work.

The reviews (by average people not literary reviewers) are all over the map. Interesting. You sometimes get this wide range of opinion on Douglas Coupland's work as well. Looks like one I might borrow from library but definitely not purchase. Anyway, going to launch into Diary of a Nobody today.

I don't think I'd bother with Lagoon. I'm probably not going to finish it myself. I am pretty allergic to books, even those written by Africans, with pidgin English.

That's a good metaphor. I'm not in love with it, but it is interesting and I'm glad to cross it off the list. As far as Lagoon, I need to get a bit further in before I can give it a rating. At the moment I am trending slightly towards the negative.

60 pages to go in The Big Money (vol. 3 of USA Trilogy). I'll cross the finish line tonight. It definitely has some interesting moments. What is a bit dispiriting is how many of his characters end up as slightly bad-tempered functional alcoholics, even during this Prohibition Era. I guess he was mostly interested in showing how the grind of trying to make a living in the US (and how many phonies there were and scam artists) broke almost everyone down eventually. One character in particular went from being a good airline mechanic and inventor to a pampered executive who screwed his workers but still thought he was one of the guys. He was one of the biggest lushes in the book. Where Dos Passos is quite frustrating is that few of his storylines (and we follow at least a dozen main characters throughout the trilogy) have any kind of wrap up. He simply stops writing about them. It's sort of akin to a long running TV series but with no finale. I guess this was kind of radical for its time, but I found it frustrating. As I said, Diary of a Nobody quite soon and, believe it or not, a SF novel set primarily in Lagos: Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon.

I held off for quite a while, but ordered Henry Mancini The Classic Soundtrack Collection. My main concern is how often I will actually listen to a soundtrack all the way through, but there are some great ones in this set.

This sounds a bit more up my alley, though I've haven't read it (yet). I just wasn't that into Things Fall Apart.

I lived a bit down the street from a big Moonie complex in Chicago. I don't think the Moonies are nearly as big a thing as they were in the 80s and 90s, at least in North America, but they are still around. I think it is true most people who are apt to join cults are missing something and hope to find it in the brother/sisterhood that one falls into immediately when one joins. But it is maybe just a question of degree from the other kinds of groups and associations one can join, and a question of degree how outward directed these groups are. After all, one could argue that someone trying to spread the gospel of Parker or Coltrane is a missionary of sorts, trying to save the world, and probably an unpaid one at that...

It's probably just an urban legend, but my impression was that Scientology was more or less started as a bet between Hubbard and Heinlein that Hubbard could actually start a religion based vaguely on the lines of what is portrayed in Stranger in a Strange Land. Obviously the engram stuff got added later.

Nearly done with 1919 (second in USA Trilogy). This one happens to be illustrated with a bunch of sketches by Reginald Marsh (one of the New York Ashcan artists of the 1920s/30s). Dos Passos's cynicism about everything really comes through here, and perhaps is even stronger in The Big Money. You can sort of see why he eventually broke with all progressive political movements. Anyway, the Marsh line drawings are pretty cool. (They aren't in the Modern Library version and I don't believe they are in the L.O.A. edition that came out recently.) I went back and forth for a while, but just ordered a set that is supposed to have all the illustrations from all three books in the trilogy. It just wasn't clear whether I could track these down at the local libraries. Still, the likelihood of my reading the USA Trilogy a second time is fairly low, but I guess I can envision thumbing through the pictures from time to time... For a complete change after this, I am going to read Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This is largely to see if my son is old enough to handle this material (probably so). Then The Diary of a Nobody. I've gotten about 25% through in the past, but want to just push on this time. A bit later in the year, I plan on reading Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). Something light from time to time to cleanse the mental palate I guess...

I noticed this on my library website, but I assumed it would just be Naxos jazz, which is ok but hardly earth shattering. I'll definitely take a look tonight. Thanks for the head's up.

I've been reading quite a few of Philip Levine's later poems. This one is from Breath (2004) The West Wind When the winter wind moves through the ash trees in my yard I hear the past years calling in the pale voices of the air. The words, caught in the branches, echo a moment before they fade out. The wind calms, the trees go back to being merely trees and not seven messengers from another world, if that's what they were. The alder, older, harbors a few leaves from last fall, black, curled, a silent chorus for all those we've left behind. Suddenly at my back I feel a new wind come on, chilling, relentless, with all the power of loss, the meaning unmistakable. Apparently there was an audio clip of this over at Slate, but it has been removed: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2001/06/the_west_wind.html Perhaps I'll be able to track it down.

Maybe Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt or another disaster book: Dennis Smith's San Francisco Is Burning.

I'll listen to it some time after work. Thanks for sharing it.

I have a copy of the Paton right here and may include it too, but would like to read some African voices first. The Armah and Mpe sound interesting. Thanks for the suggestions. I'd like to read some Soyinka. Also, Sembene Ousmane, "Xala". Some others too besides Achua. Depressing seems to be the quality they have in common so far, but interesting nonetheless, seeing the same places from differing angles. Wole Soyinka studied in the English Department at Leeds University that I attended, though I was later so never met him. I met a woman who said she'd refused him when he tried to date her, but later wished she'd said yes when he became famous. For African writers, Zakes Mda is interesting, though I've only read two of his novels. The library here has most of them, so I'll probably get around the rest one of these days. For non-fiction, Can Themba's Requiem for Sophiatown is quite good. Sophiatown was one of the few townships where Colored and Blacks could buy property near Johannesburg, so of course that couldn't be permitted. The entire place was razed with many forced evictions, and a white-only township (for lower income Afrikaaners) was put up in its place. This place was called Triomf. Very charming. Bloke Modisane's Blame Me on History is a good memoir covering these times as well, though I like Requiem for Sophiatown a bit better.

I'm trying to decide if I liked that. I seem to remember enjoying the first two, but I lost the third and never had any desire to go back and finish. Not a rousing endorsement... It's funny because Dos Passos starts out by just mocking Horatio Alger a bit in the first book and clearly has some understanding that massive structural forces are what cause mass unemployment and that the deck is stacked against workers, and yet he still has individuals triumph against the odds and most of his labor leaders are humans with serious foibles (as opposed to the almost inhuman overachievers). And somehow he turns so far against leftist movements that it is like he repudiates everything he once wrote. That is pretty sad. I do think the last section of the 49th Parallel where he talks about the mood of pro-War near-hysteria surrounding the US entry into WWI is quite good. FWIW, I'll definitely finish the trilogy.

I think after one look I'll avoid InfoWars like the plague...