Crossing Mason-Dixon

I'm back in Jersey City again, staying at a hotel just across the river from New York City. I snapped this photo from my hotel room.

I don't know how much I'll be able to keep things updated this week, but I'll check in when possible.

Tuesday night, I'll be meeting up with Levi Asher and his son to take in a Yankees game. I'm sure Levi would like for me to point out that I had to beg him to go to a Yankees game, he being a Mets fan and everything. But his beloved, first-place Mets are out of town, so we'll be cheering on the Indians, putting aside our bitter National League East rivalry in hopes of seeing Satan's Minions lose a game in our presence. And while I know there will be plenty of baseball discussion, I'll be sure to ask Levi about one thing.  From an interview with Bill Ectric:

Bill:  Did you get the Moby Dick tattoo before or after you tried to impress Ginsberg with your knowledge of Melville?

Levi: I got my Moby Dick tattoo on my 40th birthday, 11/18/2001. I took my three kids to the tattoo parlor with me, and it was quite a fun day.  So, this was several years after I met Ginsberg. I think he would have been impressed by the tattoo, but I also don't think his affection for Melville is as great as mine. He's more of a Whitman/Blake guy.  I'm more of a Melville/Dostoevsky guy. I think the photograph of a tattoo of a tiger on the cover of my poetry chapbook Tiger's Milk would have impressed him more, especially if I told him it was a "tyger" a la Blake.

At least it's not a tat of Howard Johnson.

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The News Observer (Raleigh) asks thirty-two North Carolina writers to weigh in on the NY Times' recent "best book" debacle and to offer up their own best fiction of the last twenty-five years.  The winner, which I'm sure will make Levi cringe, was Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.  I am happy to see that someone finally nominated one of my favorites: Raymond Carver's Cathedral.  Where's the love for the short story been in all of these surveys?

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San Diego Union Tribune books editor Arthur Salm details the love affair many publishers seem to have with right-wing pundits.

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So I've yet to watch a single World Cup match and don't know when I'll have time to watch my first.  Am I stressing, losing a lot of sleep because I'm not among the couple of billion who are tuning in on their televisions?  No.  Despite playing soccer as a little boy, I don't have much need to watch the sport on TV.  In my unofficial survey of myself, the World Cup goes down as the most overrated sporting event, barely beating out the Daytona 500 and the WNBA Championship, though it's arguable as to whether the latter actually qualifies.  Go ahead and send me reasons why I need to be watching this exciting tournament.  I've heard it all before.  So has the Indianapolis Star's Bob Kravitz:

This quadrennium, I swear, I'm going to try to care about the FIFA World Cup, at least for as long as I can stand it, because I am told those who are not consumed by the world's biggest, most popular event are essentially mouth-breathing, Ann Coulter-reading morons who vote for Taylor Hicks and think Dan Brown is the literary descendant of William Styron and Elie Wiesel.

Comments

[Levi Asher]

Funny, funny ... Jeff, I am looking fwd to our Bronx journey and I like your choice of the term "Satan's Minion's" to describe the Yankees. I'll be sure to wear a short-sleeved shirt so I can show you the tattoo.

About the North Carolina survey, well, yeah, there is some Cormac-related cringing going on here right now, but on the other hand it's nice to see Charles Frazier get some respect. He is from North Carolina, after all, so it would have been a crime if he didn't show up on this list. I'm disappointed, though, that North Carolina is joining New York in the belief that John Updike wrote four books about a guy named Rabbit and nothing else. My new battle cry may be "Forget the rabbit, read the rest".

See you tomorrow ... don't work too hard, we got baseball to go to.

[mchenrmd]

Hey, I was just there - well, NYC, not Jersey. Went for the first time over the weekend. Here are my 2 questions: why is the fruit on the street so cheap, and where does it come from???