Monthly Archives: October 2017

Don’t Yank the beard!

Posted on by under Generic Rant

It’s my blog. I can rant every now and then. I don’t do it that often, but sometimes the pressure gets to be too much.

I’m so grateful the New York Yankees aren’t in the World Series this year. I hate to see them there anyway, just on principle. (I’m a baseball fan. It stands to reason I’d dislike the Yankees because they ruined baseball with their extravagant spending habits.) But these days it means so much more. Why? Because Yankee players, a group of (mostly) adult professional athletes, must conform with the team’s asinine and childish “appearance policy”:

All players, coaches and male executives are forbidden to display any facial hair other than mustaches (except for religious reasons), and scalp hair may not be grown below the collar. Long sideburns and ‘mutton chops’ are not specifically banned.

What is this, a 1965 middle school??? What kind of pathetic excuse for an adult male (note that it says nothing about women’s facial hair) lets himself be suppressed like that? Oh yeah, this kind:

Nearly every player on both the Astros and Dodgers takes advantage of their freedom to express themselves creatively through their grooming or lack thereof. And they make the game that much more fun. If those teams had such an archaic and repressive rule, we’d miss out on these cool-looking dudes:

 

 

 

 

Even the relatively conservative Mr. Verlander would be persona non yanqui.

Instead we’d be subjected to the likes of these clones:

Yikes! They look like dropouts from a cut-rate accountancy school, where they could have been voted most likely to frighten small children. Do you suppose their straitjackets have pinstripes, too?

I’m not complaining. As long as the Yanks continue that nonsensical policy instituted by their former tyrannical psycho leader, George Steinbrenner (forerunner of the current tyrannical psycho leader of this country), many very good, self-respecting players will never play for them, thus keeping them out of the World Series for the foreseeable future.

And that is something to look forward to.

Extraordinary praise of the Ordinary

Posted on by under Books, Movies

I’ve seen movies that deliver more satisfaction in their first ten minutes than others do in their entirety. I’ll never forget my first viewing of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. (Note placement of period and quote there.) When Jock flies that plane carrying Indy (and Jock’s pet snake Reggie) into the sunset, I was ready to get up and leave the theater. I’d already gotten my money’s worth. There was more action, excitement, and fun in that segment than most films carry in their first two hours and three sequels.

Pixar’s “Up” is another perfect example. The opening is a brilliant, poignant short film in its own right that outshines (IMHO) the rest of a good movie.

You probably have a list of such favorite openers. (Feel free to mention some in the comments.) In a few of those, the rest of the movie goes nowhere. You wish you actually had gotten up and left or turned off the DVD or stopped the streaming. More often, the beginning is just a foretaste of a great cinematic experience.

That’s a whole ‘nother post. This one isn’t about movies.

There are books like that, too. In fact, there are paragraphs buried in the middle some books that are so wonderful, you could read just those words, close the book, and savor the experience. I’m reading one of those books. To be more precise, I’m rereading one.

I’ve said before in various places (here is just one such instance) that Mark Helprin is my favorite writer. I have to reread some of his prose on a regular basis. (Unfortunately, he doesn’t write books often enough to satisfy my needs. The good news is that, in researching this post, I discovered he has a new novel!) There have been days when I picked up one of his books and read a page or even a paragraph or two to be reminded what great prose sounds like. The following excerpt from his 1995 novel, “Memoir from Antproof Case”, demonstrates well his ability to capture profound truths in prose that is both poetic and humorous.

So many people spend so much time protecting themselves from the ordinary and the worn that it seems as if half the world runs on a defensive principle that robs it of the tested and the true. But if the truth is common, must it be rejected? If the ordinary is beautiful, must it be scorned? They needn’t be, and are not, by those who are free enough to see anew. The human soul itself is quite ordinary, existing by the billion, and on a crowded street you pass souls a thousand times a minute. And yet within the soul is a graceful shining song more wonderful than the stunning cathedrals that stand over the countryside unique and alone. The simple songs are the best. They last into time as inviolably as the light.

I find that passage simply stunning. It’s only a single paragraph, but the truths expressed therein are worth hours or days of meditation.

For a variety of reasons, this kind of writing is comforting, challenging, thrilling, enlightening, and depressing.

And aren’t those the reasons we read—to think and to feel?