brainsplotch

Hi everyone, sorry that I've not been here in awhile. I've been spending most of my time on my MSU sports-related blog, the ridiculously titled "Treasures from the Spartan Attic." It's a little late--in fact I really should be getting to bed--but thought I'd take some time in these wee hours of Saturday morning to jot in here. Went to see Life of Pi tonight. It was a good movie. Sort of Castaway goes to India with a ferocious Bengal tiger replacing "Wilson" the volleyball. Okay, that's severely underselling the movie, but go out and see the movie and let me know if you agree.

I see that by Edgar Winter review has had 647 views...but no comments. Come on folks, what do you think? If you think it's crap, let me know. I'm a big boy, I can take it! If you have any feelings about They Only Come Out at Night , let me know about that, too. In fact, I'm offering up this post as an open invitation for you to let me know what you like on this blog and what you don't like. Apparently, there are some people out there who actually look at it once ain awhile. If you dig my local history stuff, maybe I will get off my butt and write more of that. If you want to read more Bargain Bin Finds, I will oblige. Here's your chance to let me know what you think. Thanks in advance.

I like football, as you may have gathered from reading this blog. I know it's violent and excessively macho, chockful of ridiculously overused war cliches--but I love it anyway. Having said that, I'm already sick of Super Bowl coverage, and the game hasn't even started. The wall-to-wall analysis and coverage of this game has reached insane proportions. It's probably been this way for several years, but I have really noticed it this year. Every day and every hour for the last two weeks, ESPN, NFL Network, Fox Sports and just about every other television outlet has had some kind of Super Bowl show. Who the hell watches all of this? There must be an audience for it, or else they'd have some other programming. Right?...Right?!? I long for the good old pre-cable TV, pre-internet days when the pre-game hype consisted of an hour-long show immediately preceding the game--and that was it. Those days are long gone and will probably never return. Okay, the game started finally...

Hi folks. I am coming to you from the Michigan Chess Association's youth tournament at the MSU Union. It's an all day affair and it will probably go until late afternoon. I've become sort of an old pro with these all day tourneys, as I've been through several of them and know what to expect from the parents' perspective: bring lots of toys to occupy you throughout the day, which in my case means a good book, my Nook, my writing journal (which zI have neglected for far too long) and my phone. My son has his laptop and phone. As you can see, we're not hurting for electronic toys to keep us busy during the down time between matches (and to keep me busy in the quiet time when the kids are upstairs playing their matches). The way these tournaments work is as follows: all of the kids and parents establish a "base camp" in the basement of the Union. Each community has a designated area of the basement to camp out. I was thrown off this morning because the...

Hello everyone and welcome to 2013. I hope your new year is going well so far. I am writing this on my/our new Nook tablet. It's quite a nifty device and the kids are not allowed to touch it. We finally packed up the Christmas decorations and took the tree down. As I was wrapping the tree in a tarp, shoving it in the back of the van, and finally disposing of it at the township-sponsered Christmas tree drop-off, I was struck by how odd the whole Christmas tree tradition is. We cut down a perfectly good tree, place a lot of shiny decorative objects on it in our homes and allow it to slowly die (though we keep it on "life-support " by watering it). When our holiday is over, and the tree is as good as dead, we remove the decorative objects and unceremoniously dump the tree corpse in a huge pile of other tree corpses. December and January are months of massive coniferous genocide. *** I'm taking a break from this post for now, but will try and get back to it later....

I'm writing this from my phone, while watching Gangnam Style on  New Years Rockin' Eve or whatever it's called these days. This television experience is not one I've chosen myself--I want to make that clear. I just want to wish everyone out there a Happy New Year.

I'm taking a break from politics to switch gears entirely, (though it could be argued that this post is somewhat political). First a little background. In 1988-1989, when I was a junior at Michigan State, I took a particular interest in the 1961 Detroit Tigers baseball team. The '61 Tigers were quite possibly the greatest 2nd place team in baseball history, winning 101 games but still finishing 8 games behind the pennant winning New York Yankees. '61 was also the first year that the Tigers had prominent black players who made significant contributions to the team. The Tigers were, unfortunately, tardy to the integration of baseball. Almost every evening from autumn 1988 through almost all of 1989, I spent a minimum amount of time on my school work and trudged over to the MSU Library to study microfilm. I took voluminous notes on the '61 team, from infomation gleaned mainly from microfilmed back issues of the Detroit Free Press and a few other newspapers. I have ove...