Steven Strassberg

Cox/Getty

In a way I felt disappointed, but that is baseball is it not? Sandy Koufax could not find the plate in his early years. Of course, Sandy was brought up because the rules on bonus babies required that they be with the home team. Nowadays, phenoms, as Steven Strassberg has been called, can find themselves in the Show to fill seats in a stadium in a non-baseball city with lousy weather, mediocre talent, and a poor record. “First in war. First in Peace. Last in the American League.” He could, on the other hand, be the real deal. Last night, he wasn’t. Moreover, he showed he might not be.

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Lena Levine

Lena took gas, according to George. She discovered her husband played around and took her own life. She lies in OZ’s hallowed cemetery.

Very hard explaining to UVM students studying death and dying the Jewish way that the religion prevents suicide victims from burial in consecrated ground without knowing how or why she got there. Someone wanted her beauty to live on, putting her image on the stone.

Quake

Hard to believe, but we felt the effects of an earthquake in Burlington just after 1:00pm. At first, we didn’t know what it was. The doors rattled. The glasses clinked. The ceiling creaked. Had one when we lived in Manchester in 2002. Lasted for 20 seconds. No apparent damage here, but 5.0 can put a charge in ya. They say it came from Ontario. A few weeks ago, they sent us smoke from forest fires. So much for our friendly neighbors from the North.

Skate 6/20/10

Melissa

Fundraiser for new Skate park near the Moran building. DJ from90.1. Sponsored by the usual suspects like JDK and Burton, the skaters competed in varying age groups for glory and gifts. Price Chopper donated hot dogs. Some company sent that caffeinated green juice which in my era was called “pea juice,” albeit without the kick. The teachers at school and counselors at camp served it in those paper cups that looked like a pleated skirt.

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Lizz Winstead

Not funny enough. Dated. Lazy. Feminist slant without explaining where it was coming from or why. She had some ready to do local humor from the stupid runoff elections that were recently voted down to the farmers market, which she says she is a fan of, which was packed with girls covered with ink on Saturday morning, and didn’t touch it. Just the same bull about how cool Burlington purports to be which it isn’t, though it isn’t bad, so long as you don’t really ask what is going on.

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Humble Phil #2

Ageless Roth

Have to be fair. Nothing he writes could leave me unaffected, so I thought. I did remember some additional things about the story. But I still didn’t like it.

I read the book on a respite from Infinite Jest, about which more will come later. I have reached page 300 of this monstrous tome, a page of note, because I am reading more quickly and understanding what I am reading without having to reread. In the back of my head, a place readers go with books they hard read, I had traveled off the pages too often into my own experiences, real and imagined, not to mention the travail of understanding what I was reading and seeing the vivid images created by the words. Moseying around at the Fletcher Free Library, I saw two copies of Phil’s book, a book I had not bought due to the less than favorable reviews. Hey, out of sorts actor who lost his skills who has an affair with a lesbian after his wife leaves him late life who cannot figure out if he should die in the fire or put it out, and only 140 pages, what could be bad!

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Humble Phil

Sun Dancers

The Humbling didn’t take too much time to read. It lasts only 140 pages, small ones with big print, thanks be to the publisher who should have put it out in magazine form, possibly in Playboy, with graphics, either ink or photographic of the sex scenes. No more perfect book of recent vintage which would have benefited by images, which as they say can take the place of words. No need here to show my love for or my knowledge of Phil’s work; suffice it to say I have been with him from book one, including his short stories. After reading this book yesterday afternoon in under two hours, some of which I spent ogling at boats and babes, while sitting at the Burlington Boathouse, I can say that Simon Axler does not enter into the main argument, unless it, somehow distends to a discussion of the oldest person to have sex with a woman who left lesbianism to have an affair with a man twenty-five years his junior in which she made him her woman, picked up a drunk chick at a bar for a threesome, and then left him. When he killed himself at the end of the story, if you can call it that because it has a beginning, middle and an end, the book ended. Just in time to go for a walk.