writing

I step into the batter’s box, placing my right foot in the hole … scraped inside the back chalk line. I am aware of nothing but [the pitcher] — not the crowd, not the infield in and Lord knows not the blue sky.

This moment is the essence of the game, its molecular core. It is why we love baseball as we love a family member, while the other sports have to manage with our lust, infatuation or uncommitted affection. Either I will win or [the pitcher] will win, and even the most rudimentary fan will immediately know it. No one will have to wait for the game films. And no teammate can help me.

A baseball game will stage about 80 of these batter versus pitcher matchups, all of which appeal to our American sense of democracy — we must take turns at bat — and our thirst for conflict and for quick and clear resolution, the backbone of prime-time television, our real national pastime, as well. Eighty miniversions of CSI.

Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci spent five days as a Toronto Blue Jay during spring training this year. His account of the experience appears in the March 14, 2005 issue of SI.

If I ever get a chance to write my memoirs, I think I will name them either: “What to Do If You Are Surrounded by the Entire Bolivian Army and Have No More Bullets” or “Snapshots: Twenty-seven 8 x 10 Color Glossy Photographs with Circles and Arrows and a Paragraph on the Back of Each One Explaining What Each One Was to be Used as Evidence against Us”.

These are from a joke email circulating that purports to be “ANALOGIES & METAPHORS FOUND IN HIGH SCHOOL ESSAYS”. I highly doubt that these were actually culled from high school essays. The main reason I don’t believe it is because there is no point of reference. There is no notation or source. The second reason I don’t believe it is because, even if there was a source listed, it’s a freaking chain email, for the love of Pete Sampras. I am skeptical - and you should be, too! - about 73.6% of the news I hear on NPR or NBC; you think I’m going to trust a chain email? And the other strong reason I have to be cynical about the origins of this bit o’ electronically-transmitted comedy is because, with the possible exception of a few cousins and my half-sister, I don’t think I know of anyone sub-20 that can write a complete sentence.

Regardless … it’s still quite a funny collection of sentences.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like socks in a dryer without Cling Free.

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Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Placing Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not in the 1930s - an essay by David Gagne
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On Thomas Hardy’s “The Self-Unseeing” and “The Haunter”
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On Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions and Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanacks

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by Peter Lefcourt (Editor), Laura J. Shapiro (Editor), William Goldman
I’m about 70% into this collection of essays by Hollywood authors and scriptwriters and I love it. I devoured that much of it in one sitting and then had to put it down because I wanted to savor it a bit more.

The first story - by Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame - sets the tone for the book. Alda writes about the first time he felt the thrill of creation while working on a script for an episode of the famous Korean War television series. After Alda’s three-page story the editors deliver a barrage of mini-editorials by some of the most famous creative minds in show business. There are essays by well-known talents such as Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Bochco, and Cameron Crowe that will excite any fan of good writing.

I want to make it very clear that the book is *not* an instruction manual, a tutorial, or a “how-to”. There are no chapters detailing how much writers earn in Hollywood, how to “break into the biz”, or to what address you should send your script for “Ally McBeal”. It is simply a collection of stories written by prominent Hollywood writers about their experiences the first time they ever got paid to write. “Simply” is not a word, though, that should be used to describe this book. If you are a writer, or are fascinated by the process of writing - and by that I mean putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and creating a story - you will love to read about these authors’ first times.
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This is from an English lit. class; it was written on February 10, 1993 …

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

What makes a man a hero? Where lies the line which when crossed changes a mortal man into a legend? Is it at the altar at Canterbury? in the Minotaur’s labyrinth? or is it an age or a time? Does a man become a hero when he transforms from a boy to an adult? or when he stops being a man and becomes a martyr? Where are the heroes of 1993? In whom do the children of this age believe? Like whom do they strive to be? Kennedy, Lennon, and even Superman are dead. World leaders are mockeries of real men, more like Pilates than Thomas Mores. Pop culture’s icons change daily. It is interesting that nearly 600 years ago someone was writing about heroism in a way that can be understood today. The poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells a tale in which a man is proven to be a hero through the seemingly un-heroic decisions made in the course of numerous tests. Sir Gawain is a hero for the 21st century. He is tried and trapped, he is inundated with opportunities to fail and yet he does not lose. More importantly though, in the end he learns an essential, inescapable fact about himself and human nature.

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Here’s an idea. How about a television show all about nothing? I wonder if that would be popular. Maybe Jerry should have read NBC’s helpful tutorial, “How to be a TV Writer“.

But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the image of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God?

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If Blake was not simply stoned out of his mind, then what explanation can there be for this troubling work?

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You can’t eye can’t I can’t they can’t she can’t he can’t it can’t why can’t why can’t eye don’t no. Y’no? It’s im-poss-ib-al. If there’s one overwhelming iota that I’ve been shown by some auricle at some distant point in my youth, it’s that things that are written are written and things that aren’t aren’t. It’s not fair to me or anyone else (altho to b honest eye don ot really care about anybody else] to say that one thing in the world of written langu-age means anything. These words : certainly don’t mean anything.

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“I got the regular stuff about race and color and pride and prejudice and the sound and the fury and the cultural implications … but what about me?”

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