Skip to main content
Middlebrow had another litmus test for me. "We're all going bowling tonight - Are you in?" "I think I'll pass. I want to finish my origami project..." "Ori-ga-what??? Are you talking jibberish?" "No - just one of my hobbies..." Look immediately for the furrowed brow, followed by quizzical look, following by gaping mouthful of derision. I might as well be talking backwards. "Okay - well, don't forget about that summer block-buster film next week You can find time for that at least with your busy schedule?" "You mean the one with all the super-heroes taking on the space aliens?" "Yeah - you're aware that this is the third sequel that everyone's been talking about - and lining up to see for months on end..." "I would go... except that there's this Schubert sonata that I've been trying to finish...I think I may finally be able to get it up to tempo..." Get ready for that slight turn of the head that let's me know I'm a certifiable weirdo...Middlebrow will not be denied...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Parallel Universe Next Door - A Continuing Obsession...

  Over in that parallel universe next door where plastic bags have disappeared and there is no road rage....Cats can be trained and wars end in a tie....the sunlight is not melting Greenland - or at least Miami is in no danger of sinking irretrievably like some forlorn Venice of the eastern Atlantic... People are moving in droves to the Dakotas - and short-wave radios are more popular than cell phones...Taxi drivers prefer classical music to anything written after 1953...Gambling still occurs but on camping trips - not in large casinos....Ice cream is still popular....Jeans are in fashion... And democracy or something like it exists - but without all the fanfare and media coverage...not as much hand-wringing and worries about impending malaise...I envision something in many respects similar to what we find here with some necessary adjustments - a still-functioning power grid, mom-and-pop convenience stores, verdant farm land, forests and reservoirs not-so-starved of water...But mor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy (definition) = a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. .. Imagine being born in October of 1962 - when the world almost blew up... You would not understand in real time what was happening, how the world was on edge because of some "cold" (?) war that was going on or the prior Bay of Pigs invasion or all the CIA "intrigue" tied up with that... At such a young age you'd be happily oblivious to the quiet commotions of the postcolonial chessboard - yet that was the marker for your entry into the America of the 1960s. It sounds crazy to say now - but everything actually DID feel very normal back then - at least from your suburban coordinates.  An overdetermined universe as some would have it? The culmination of a bunch of wheels set in motion during the 1950s - a decade that had an important hold over so many, including your parents and older siblings - a time-frame that has forever eluded your grasp except in the form of old photog...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Basketball

It is an activity that demands speed, timing, quickness, strength, agility...one that requires running at top speed, jumping, gliding, pivoting, stopping on a dime, moving sideways and backwards, using hands, feet, legs, shoulders, core muscles, abdomen and back - allowing one to feel obscure tendons and joints - one that creates an ebb and flow of motion, generating a time-bending montage of sweat, soreness and fatigue happily obscured and subordinated to the greater task of mental focus and concentration...it is an activity that sends teams back and forth along a hardwood floor,  ninety feet at a time, shifting haphazardly between defense and offense, necessitating make-shift, ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment, decision-making and instantaneous moves in ever-changing configurations arising out of nowhere and dissolving into other combinations of players....it is a game of rudiments and fundamentals - building-blocks and skill-sets, including but not limited to: dribbling, passing, shoot...
Post a Comment
Read more