To play you out for the week, I had planned on finding and presenting to you the “Spider Pig” theme song from the Simpsons flick. That took longer than expected because I remembered that Marvel Comics did, in fact, have its own Spider pig at one time, though he went by the name of Spider Ham. He had his own series and everything! However, I see from Peter Porker’s Wikipedia entry that these comics, and his various appearances elsewhere, have... Read more
“I want to kill that coach!” That’s what the normally good natured Bob Lott, father of this diarist and a life-long baseball/softball coach, growled near the end of last night’s Bellingham Bells game. The boiling point was bunts. The Bells, our local West Coast League baseball team, are obsessive about bunting to advance the runner. They’re actually very good at it but a) bunts are extremely risky; b) you’re effectively trading the other team an out for a base; and... Read more
In this Splice Today essay, Noah Berlatsky concocts a multiple-choice test: Adam was married to (A) Eve (B) Steve (C) a dinosaur (D) a platypus He proposes — somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I think — that the best way to finish off creationism “as a viable public ideology” would be to “make it a nationwide curricular requirement.” He professes confidence that “given just a little time and the usual level of resource allocation, our educational system can insure that less than 46... Read more
D. Keith Mano is not well remembered today (even though, last I checked, he was still alive). He was at one time a columnist for National Review and a novelist with real talent and comic timing. Here’s a bit from my favorite scene he ever wrote. The novel is novel Topless. The narrator is Fr. Mike, a young, assistant Episcopal priest in Nebraska on his way to New York to sort out the disappearance of his brother: [A]s my plane... Read more
Aaaaaaaand that’s enough out of this diary for today. Time for friends, family, food and fireworks. Happy Fourth of July to one and all. Read more
The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler has responded to my last post in comments. That was rather sporting of him, but I’m still not certain he grasps what his critics are trying to say. Kessler commented: Fyi, you misunderstand my role. I fact check statements by politicians. There is more than enough for me to do there. If you have an issue with Washington Post reporting, then go to the Washington Post Ombudsman. That Post article was widely misinterpreted,... Read more
Glenn Kessler, who writes the Fact Checker blog and column for the Washington Post, has got himself into a bit of a jalapeno. Sean Higgins’s title pretty much sums it up here: “Washington Post Fact Checker: I Don’t Fact Check Our Own Writers.” The stated reason Kessler won’t fact check his own paper “despite the many pleas of readers to do so” is that it would be a distraction from the real purpose of his beat, which is “checking the... Read more
Show of hands: How many readers are really not looking forward to Independence Day this year? I don’t mean the time off and I am certainly not knocking friends, family, food and fireworks. The hesitation has to do with what the day is supposed to commemorate vs. what seems to me a likely looming, terrible future. Popular historian Richard Brookhiser has written, “American is about liberty or it is about nothing.” And lately I’m thinking, maybe it’s about nothing. That’s... Read more
Last night, as I was driving back from the Monday night softball double-header/mudfight, an unfamiliar, beautiful song came in over the radio. I didn’t catch the title or the artist, so it took a bit of tracking down. (Thank God for The Peak’s 12-hour playlist.) Finally determined that it was “Lost in the Light” by Bahamas, the solo project of Feist musician Afie Jurvanen. The song is slow and soulful and well written. It reminds me a little bit of... Read more
A friend suggested the above headline when he passed along this Politico piece on Jonathan Krohn’s political transformation from 13-year-old conservative boy wonder to 17-year-old Nietzsche-reading, Obama-supporting NYU film student. My critical American Spectator review of Krohn’s first book about conservatism is probably the most infamous thing I ever wrote. It’s the only controversy currently fleshed out on my Wikipedia entry, for instance. (Though feel free to add others, folks.) The review drew scores of angry comments and denunciations and... Read more
Jeremy Lott's Diary
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