Wednesday, August 1, 2007

random wednesday...

The most read article in the Akron Beacon Journal yesterday was this one which detailed a condo association's crusade to keep a 1 year old tenant out of the swimming pool and a mother's quest to preserve her toddler's "civil rights". Apparently there's a concern about "floating Baby Ruth syndrome". I'm not sure if Carl Spackler was called or not. The shocking thing to me isn't the article (all local papers are guilty of publishing ridiculous fluff pieces like this one), but rather the response from on-line readers. At last check, over 200 people had submitted comments, some of them quite angry and vehement. Ah Middle-Brow America, if only we could muster the energy to get as fired up about things like health care and the War in Iraq and homelessness and poverty as we seem to do for baby pee in a public pool.

The Garnett trade is a bold move by the Celtics. Suddenly that roster looks pretty intimidating with Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Garnett. Of course the Cavs have been on the sideline all off-season because GM Danny Ferry crippled the salary cap by wasting gazillions of dollars on stiffs like Donyell Marshall and Larry Hughes and Damon Jones. Hopefully Lebron picked up a jump shot over the summer.

Finished reading "Natural Selection" by Frederick Barthelme. It's a witty, funny, sophisticated read. But it's almost too witty. The characters spend the whole novel having these absurdly hyperliterate, intellectual conversations that are just seeping with irony. It's entertaining, but I don't know anyone who talks like that. It almost seems scripted. It's like all the things I would have liked to say to people but don't because I'm not that quick witted. Which can be annoying, to read some guy spouting off perfect lines page after page. Someone needs to write a book where the conversations are all perfectly stupid and banal, just like real life.

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