Expect low output from this blogger for the next few days as I prepare for the relocation to our new house. Most of the move will be taking place on Saturday, but I've already unearthed one possible complication: I put down the wrong date for the hookup of our cable and internet services. This could mean a whole week separated from the WWW. Whatever shall I do? That's why I've been inspired to list a few of the sites and content that have caught my attention over the last few days and some blogs that are worthy of your attention. I hope to be back soon:
One blog that I've really been enjoying of late is the great PrettyFakes. Professor Fury and Gorjus provide a nice mix of the visual and the written, the literary and the personal, the high arts and the loner NIN fan.
I'm happy to see the nonist is posting again. Always a good source of esoteric information.
Ditto for Out of the Woods Now. A.M. Correa comes out of the woods to post about Faulkner and the language of As I Lay Dying.
Now if only we could get something new from Asheville. And wouldn't it be nice if Jimmy Beck fought off the hackers and reclaimed the Large Vibrating Egg?
Sometimes a great blogger gets it dead wrong: "Opener and fellow Team Love-r David Dondero's country-folk sounds midwestern to a fault, which is strange since he actually hails from San Francisco via Austin. He also sounds like what I suspect is an ever-growing generation of songwriters who really do hold Conor Oberst in higher regard than, oh, anyone, often apeing his pinched, emo-wounded vocal delivery and verbose lyrical style. I arrived a little late so I didn't see the full set, but I saw enough to figure what he was about and wasn't especially impressed or offended." No, no, no. It's the other way around: Oberst aped Dondero.
The folks at my favorite Braves blog, Rowland's Office, are using the Braves' depressing plummet to the deep end of the standings to move their headquarters from the painfully unreliable Blogger to the just plain unreliable Typepad.
Finally, if I ever decide to reinvent this blog with all new content, I might go the route of The Baseball Card Blog. Not only does Ben do a great job analyzing card sets, making me regret the day I decided to quit collecting, but he also dedicates a lot of his writing to individual cards. It's not always about a card's monetary value, sometimes it's more about its worth as a memento from his childhood. Or perhaps the card triggers a commentary on a movie he's just seen. Here's a great example and one of my favorite posts from this still young blog:
Sometimes, just by looking at the picture, you can tell that either the photographer forgot a player until the last minute or, as is the case here, it was written into the standard baseball card company
photographer’s handbook that one should never ever approach Gaylord Perry when he’s relaxing in the bullpen with a baseball bat across his lap. You never know what might happen, especially if someone calls him Herman Munster to his face. It’s sad, really. Here’s one of the best long-term, long-haul pitchers of his generation who was consistently robbed of great baseball cards because photographers had a way of making his head look elongated like Fred Gwynne. It’s the same reason why Kevin McHale never really had any close-ups taken: they’re just not good-looking individuals. Especially in this case: after a career full of bad card photos, it was probably best to get a shot of him waiting to knock the crap out of an unsuspecting passer-by.
Some of us are more into being Chauncey Gardiner these days: we like to watch.
Posted by: Jimmy Beck | June 15, 2006 at 11:33 AM