Waiter: How did you find the chicken?
Customer: It was under the potatoes.
This poem by Tomás Q. Morín was today’s poem-a-day from Poets.org. It’s called “Bird.”
After I fumble another conversation about love, I think,
Bird wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment, played
coy as if everyone didn’t already know what #33 would do,
daggers for eyes, soft hands ready to guide that orange ball
exactly where he said he would. I’ve taken shots before,
fear be damned, and missed more than I made,
gone up and down the court enough to know
halftime won’t fix everything.
I’m bruised, my knee barks, my shot is shit, and I
just need the bank to be open for once, for the glass to
kiss the ball back, softly. I’m always writing to you
like a last-ditch prayer, a heave from halfcourt
moving like a meteor, like I could turn this white page of
nothing into a night sky, these words constellations,
old messages that would say in a hundred different
shapes that I love you. All I ever wanted was Bird’s game,
quietly telling opponents the spot on the floor where he would
rise, after a screen and two dribbles, in the corner like a yellow
sun and let the ball fly. I’m always writing to you
to remind myself that all love poems are about the future.
Under the bright lights of this metaphor, I’m digging deep, not
vanishing when it matters most, to find the heart to take a shot
when the clock winds down to nothing. The X-Man,
Xavier McDaniel, laughs when he tells of how Bird took his heart once.
You already know you have mine when the clock says
zero my no-look mouth, my honey crossover, my silky net.
Morín said this about the poem:
“Hall of Famer Larry Joe Bird of the Boston Celtics was my favorite basketball player when I was a kid, partly because we both hailed from small, rural towns, and because he played with so much passion and joy. Stories of his confidence are legendary, especially how he told opponents what he planned to do and then did it. An abecedarian also announces to a reader its formal intentions. In keeping with the ancient function of the form, my poem is a hymn, a praise song for love and basketball and our beautiful human hearts that dare.”
Here’s a shot Phil sent in of Larry and Mrs. Larry. Phil: Whatever you said to them to coax out a smile — don’t try that again. Sheesh.
The actor Sean Patrick Small played Larry Bird in an HBO series that first aired in March of 2022. It was called “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” (Ouch.)
Overheard snippet on WQXR this morning (NY’s classical music station). Jeff Spurgeon discussing some opera: “If he was in such a hurry, why did he hold those notes for so long?”
Pretty California girls celebrating Israel Independence Day in these troubled times. The blond near the teacher is our grand-niece Cordelia (older sister of Maeven, the new one, a munchkin, pictured below).
From The Onion:
Trump: Russia Must Be Allowed To Keep Fighting As Part Of Any Ceasefire Deal
Today’s puzzle was by beloved constructor Robyn Weintraub. Her puzzles can be chatty. So, e.g., at 40A for the clue “Yadda, yadda, yadda,” the answer was YOU GET THE IDEA. And at 25A, “Is that an amazing offer or what?” was HOW CAN I RESIST?
Her cleverest today IMO was at 17A. The clue was “Sides of circles?” and the answer was ONION RINGS. Get it? Think “side dish.”
At 51A, for “To nobody’s surprise. . . ” the answer was AS EXPECTED. It led commenter Teedmn to share this story:
AS EXPECTED reminds me of a letter I got from my doctor. I had gone in due to feeling dizzy occasionally and was afraid I had Lyme disease. When I mentioned this to the doctor, she totally pooh-poohed the idea, told me to drink more water. She did order a blood test for the Lyme disease. The letter she wrote about the results said, “negative for Lyme disease, AS EXPECTED.” Ouch, what a CRAB!
At 24D “Concrete example of rotational forces and fluid dynamics?” was CEMENT MIXER. This old tune is new to me, but only because I had a deprived childhood.
At 6D, “No need to respond right now” was THINK IT OVER.
25D was a little puzzling. The clue was “One of two for one” and the answer was HALF. Here’s Rex on it, followed by a very good song shared by Son Volt:
I could not make heads or tails of the HALF clue at first (25D: One of two for one). I am doing so many cryptic crosswords these days that I just looked at the clue and started thinking about it on a very literal basis, i.e. “what does the word ‘one’ have two of? Uh … vowels?” No no no. I mean, yes, it has two vowels, but no, that is not relevant here. But yes, any one thing, cut in half, has two … halves? I guess you can’t really argue with that.
I picked up a copy of Erica Heller’s book about her family “Yossarian Slept Here.” Her parents met at Grossingers resort in the Catskills. Her grandmother saw Joe Heller joking around with his friends and something about him caught her attention. She went up to him and said “Have I got a girl for you!”
After they got engaged her mom decided she didn’t want to marry Joe and asked her mother (Erica’s grandmother) to break the engagement for her. Erica writes (a bit jarringly?): “But asking my grandmother to intervene in this way was like entrusting Hermann Göring to light your Shabbat candles. There was no way it was happening.”
Story in The Onion:
Professor Deeply Hurt by Student’s Evaluation
Leon Rothberg, Ph.D., a 58-year-old professor of English Literature at Ohio State University, was shocked and saddened Monday after receiving a sub-par mid-semester evaluation from freshman student Chad Berner. The circles labeled 4 and 5 on the Scan-Tron form were predominantly filled in, placing Rothberg’s teaching skill in the “below average” to “poor” range.
Although the evaluation has deeply hurt Rothberg’s feelings, Berner defended his judgment at a press conference yesterday.
“That class is totally boring,” said Berner, one of 342 students in Rothberg’s introductory English 161 class. “When I go, I have to read the school paper to keep from falling asleep. One of my brothers does a comic strip called ‘The Booze Brothers.’ It’s awesome.”
The poor rating has left Rothberg, a Rhodes Scholar, distraught and doubting his ability to teach effectively at the university level.
“Maybe I’m just no good at this job,” said Rothberg, recipient of the 1993 Jean-Foucault Lacan award from the University of Chicago for his paper on public/private feminist deconstructive discourse in the early narratives of Catherine of Siena. “Chad’s right. I am totally boring.”
In the wake of the evaluation, Rothberg is considering canceling his fall sabbatical to the University of Geneva, where he is slated to serve as a Henri Bynum-Derridas Visiting Scholar. Instead, Rothberg may take a rudimentary public speaking course as well as offer his services to students like Berner, should they desire personal tutoring.
“The needs of my first-year students come well before any prestigious personal awards offered to me by international academic assemblies,” Rothberg said. “After all, I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of knowledge, and to imparting it to those who are coming after me. I know that’s why these students are here, so I owe it to them.”
Though Rothberg, noted author of The Violent Body: Marxist Roots of Postmodern Homoerotic Mysticism and the Feminine Form in St. Augustine’s Confessions, has attempted to contact Berner numerous times by telephone, Berner has not returned his calls, leading Rothberg to believe that Berner is serious in his condemnation of the professor.
“I’m always stoned when he calls, so I let the answering machine pick it up,” said Berner, who maintains a steady 2.3 GPA. “My roommate just got this new bong that totally kicks ass. We call it Sky Lab.”
Those close to Rothberg agree that the negative evaluation is difficult to overcome. “Richard is trying to keep a stiff upper lip around his colleagues, but I know he’s taking it very hard,” said Susan Feinstein-Rothberg, a fellow English professor and Rothberg’s wife of 29 years. “He knows that students like Chad deserve better.”
See you next time Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 