Sunday, November 07, 2010

Books, Criminals and Bicycles: A personal update for LafayetteWeAreHere, or whatever.

Sometimes I use the blog to write notes to myself, and this is one of them.

In deference to my fans, I'll endeavor to keep these personal thoughts out of the weekly Tribune column, although I have yet to formulate a plan for this week's effort. Fortunately, the quarterly "Food & Dining" piece almost is finished. I await an e-mail with answers to a question or two, and I can put that one to bed.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's novel, "Freedom," and enjoying it immensely. This may be why I've gotten no work done this weekend -- although last night's interlude at Bank Street Brewhouse absorbed a few hours, too. The firm, meaty John Dory fish with fingerling potatoes and mushrooms, washed down with Tunnel Vision, was sublime, as was the company.

Another reason: Yesterday's screening at Baxter Avenue Theatres of 4192: The Crowning of The Hit King, a hagiographic, revisionist, fluff piece of a "documentary" about baseball player Pete Rose that compelled me to being making bullet lists of the many pertinent facts omitted, including serial gambling, indefinite expulsion from baseball, exclsuion from the Hall of Fame owing to tne preceding, imprisonment for tax evasion, use of a corked bat, and a central tackiness of character second only to Elvis in the annals of misplaced America hero worship.

Two tickets cost $13.50, a sum better spent for alcohol of any grade. In related news, I learned that after forty years, I still heartily detest Pete Rose.

Three days after crashing my bicycle on dry keaves (the indignity), my left wrist and right knee remained sore, so I went out and stuck 45 km on the year's tote board, which put me past 5,500 km bicycling for 2010. The goal is 6,000, and an average of 500 km a month for my 50th birthday year. There's time, and then, in January, it starts again. But Edison Pena ... whoa.

Books, criminals, bicycles ... their cerebral stimulation is dedicated to fascist fighters everywhere. Concurrently, a new theme is emerging since Tuesday's debacle, one with multitudinous impact on next year's city elections.

The enemy of my enemy truly is my friend.

Our friend. I'm going to see if I can finish that book. Later.