Image Conscious

A few corrections to yesterday's Kirby Puckett post:

I said that espn.com writer Scoop Jackson "always" nails his stories. Well, maybe half the time he does.


And I may have been a little too hard on sportswriting legend Frank Deford. He does annoy the hell out of me but I usually will read his stuff or listen to his NPR commentaries. So he must doing something right even if it's not managing his moustache. And why does he have to call it "sport" instead of "sports"? I guess the notion that "language is liquid" goes two ways, Ali.

And I wrote (since corrected) that Kirby Puckett hit his Game 6 home run in the 10th inning. Of course it was the 11th inning. And so what if the only one who noticed the mistake was me?

Now, a follow-up on something I promised to write about a couple of weeks ago: The Hold Steady concert. It was a great show. The crowd, most of whom were there to see headliner Les Savy Fav, got into the Hold Steady as much as one would expect. There was a smattering of Minnesotans in the crowd, evidenced by one woman's Gophers hoodie and one man's North Stars jersey (they're gone; they're never coming back). And Craig Finn knows how to command a stage. I love the way he holds the microphone with one hand and "sign-raps" with his other hand. A lesser man would use a mic stand and employ both hands. Not Craig, bless him. They played most of the new album, a little of the old one, and a couple of new songs, one of which was about the poet John Berryman's suicidal leap into the Mississippi River off the Washington Avenue Bridge at the University of Minnesota. Some of you who know of this incident will say, "well, what former or current Twin Cities resident hasn't written a song, poem, or book about John Berryman's suicide?" I'd concede your point but still insist that it's Craig Finn's finest song. Who would've guessed though that the best moment would be the closer Killer Parties? I always liked the song but I never thought it would have send shivers down my soul canal? Yes, I've been to Ybor City but not like that.

But hey I don't live there anymore. I l ive here. Los Angeles. The recent rains have cleansed the air. The street on which I newly live smells like lavender. There's a poker game on Saturday which will finance my April rent, I can feel it. The Clippers are a better option than the Timberwolves. The NCAA basketball tournament starts next week. And if my employer's basketball team can pull of three upsets in a row in the Pac 10 tournament (and they can do it because they're better than they realize and Coach Floyd, scratchy voice and all, knows what he's doing if he didn't really know when he was doing in his NBA days), they too can be part of America's finest sporting event: March/April Madness. And if the Trojans didn't have enough motivation to beat Cal today, well there's this. Follow the blue link. It's worth it. Really, it is. Here it is again.


Am I going overboard with the photos. I swore that my blog would never kowtow to The Man and get all visual. After reading freedarko I realize that pictures have a place alongside or in between words, especially when there's only a little context a grab on to. You see, where they lay low in the light, there's a river. A crowd is forming in the half-darkness. A narrow-eyed man with a baboon's heart crouches near a wooden plank. This morning I woke to the sound of car alarms.