17th Blogiversary

Somehow, some way, I've made it to 17 years on here. Barely. As post tallies from the last several--7 especially--years have demonstrated, my blogging has dwindled almost to nil, but this period has coincided first with my increasing university workload--I have been a department chair or acting chair now for roughly 8 years, among all of my other duties--alongside all the life itself, so blogging has taken a back seat to all else. 

From 2005 or so, during a trip to DR

When I think back on those early years, which were certainly quite full with teaching, mentoring, writing, some administration, and commuting (between New Jersey and Chicago, for ten straight years!), I fill with amazement that I blogged as frequently as I did. There were, of course, days I missed, but I believe I set for myself the task--the regimen?--of blogging at least one thing every day, with my focus on arts and culture of all kinds (and politics less so because there were, I felt, already so many great political bloggers at the time). It was another form of work, but a labor, unremunerated financially at least, but spiritually and socially to a great degree, of love.

Sometimes what emerged were just announcements for events, but other days produced reviews, translations, reportage, basic documentation, my random street photos, and so on, but it has constituted a (partial) record of my life during those years. I also think of the people I was in contact with, especially early on; the community of bloggers, some friends, some acquaintances, some of them people I'd never met in person and still haven't met in person, but whom I was--and still feel, however ghostly the links today, I am still--in dialogue with, I learned and learn from, I collaborated with, and whose influence I continue to feel, in various ways. I do miss that blogging community, those blogging communities, bloggers, readers, commenters, all--what a time that was!

In recent years I have blogged very infrequently and mostly about my own work, if at all, but I do hope to find the time to blog a bit more, and to find new possibilities for this medium, especially as the net is increasingly a walled off, highly monetized and specialized world, with entire platforms in which words in particular are a second thought. So to blogging, and the future, and I hope to make it to 20 years, and more!

16th Blogiversary

The Translation Project's Black
History Month tweet, from February 21, 2021,
 highlighting my essay "Translating Poetry,
Translating Blackness"

Happy Black History Month and Happy Almost-End-of-February 2021. We are almost a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, and it has been over a year since I posted on this blog. It sometimes amazes me that more than a decade and a half has passed since I first began blogging, back in 2005, during what was a decidedly different time in the online world. Social media platforms as we know them barely existed; blogging was still a somewhat new and exciting activity, though the bloggers who inspired me had been blogging for several years; and people read and commented on blogs, including this one. I have over 2,000 non-spam comments attesting to that. 

16 years later, blogs and blogging do still exist, and the term "the blogs" is often bandied about on reality shows as a catch-all for any site, blog or not. This is the case despite that period perhaps ten years ago when some in the media trumpeted blogging's demise, and despite the proliferation of quasi-blog-like sites, like Tumblr and Instagram, the former of which has done away with words altogether, and both of which are now part of many peoples' daily consumption, even if blogs as they once existed--as they existed in 2005--seldom are. I won't rehearse my blogging history, which is available via a search of this prior blogiversary posts on blog (I started off blogging about poetry and the arts, etc.), but blogging here was, at least for that first year, and certainly for the next decade or so, a vital experience for pondering the sometimes imponderable, conveying some of my enthusiasms and interests, especially across the arts, posting translations, sharing photographs (from daily life, events I attended, my random walks through NYC, Chicago and elsewhere), and just having a scratchpad to play, in written form.

Things began to change demonstrably, I think, in 2014-2015 when I began chairing a department. My free time increasingly disappeared, which meant that that I had to rearrange my priorities, with some things suffering more than others, among them blogging. (A colleague queried whether I had In 2013, my second year at Rutgers-Newark (I was acting chair for part of that year) I blogged 140 times; by 2014 it had fallen to 59. I made an effort over the next few years to blog a bit more and got up to 78 and 71 blog posts, successively, in 2015 and 2016, but my entries plummeted in 2017. In 2018, I again made a strong push to blog, and nearly reached 100 posts, but most of them that year appeared during National Poetry Month, and by the end of the year, I was down to a 1-a-month trickle. Two years ago I only managed six posts, a miracle I sometimes think, in that I had one of my busiest and most draining years in academe, and I think I consciously tried to post something, though the results were, as the total underscores, paltry. 

This past year, the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still very much with us, didn't result in a flood of posts, but rather a feeling of PTSD-style wordlessness, at least in terms of blogging, that I am still trying to process. I had a few blog stubs I began, and I will try to finish some of them, even if they consist mostly of links and images, but I also feel like the silence--the absence of posts--is testimony to what has transpired over these last 17 months (since February of 2020). Most of the people who were blogging when I began or who started during the last 16 no longer do so, at least regularly, though Gukira bucks that trend, with entries that are always rich, subtle, lyrical, and distinctive, however brief. This month he continues his readings of Dionne Brand's remarkable 2018 collection The Blue Clerk. I keep thinking that I will again be able to find the time and focus to blog, but I also increasingly feel, as I pointed out in a blog several years back, reading itself appears  fallen by the wayside, and videos, whether on Youtube or IG's stories--which Facebook, tellingly, has adopted, even though it owns Instagram--or TikTok, accompanied by music and each with its own distinctive set of active participants, have become increasingly predominant, so perhaps even occasional posts, as loose and free as possible, might be the thing to aim for.

One of the many types of blog posts I tried to include over the years entailed reviews, of films, series videos, and books of course, and I feel proudest of some of those, which still hold up. One of my most read posts (4,100 views) is a short review of Christopher Honoré's 2010 feature film Homme au bain, starring the writer Dennis Cooper and the porn star François Sagat. Perhaps its stars drew more readers than most of my other posts, though I think it provided a helpful introduction to the film, the best I have seen by Honoré. I also have been able to write about more recent offerings like Terence Nance's 2018 Afrofuturist masterpiece series Random Acts of Flyness (one of the strangest and most original things I have ever seen on TV), Boots Riley's 2018 film Sorry to Bother You (I dream of more films like this!), and John Trengove's 2018 film Inxeba (Wound), which also spurred a series of typically, thoughtfully dazzling responses from Gukira (Ke'guro). One of my favorite films, which I haven't seen in years, is Tsai Ming-Liang's slow, astonishing Goodbye, Dragon Inn. I remember watching it and thinking, the viewership for a film like this is probably very small, but I most certainly am one of those cineastic people, yet in reviewing it, I tried to make it legible for a wider array of potential viewers. Perhaps if and when I find the opportunity I'll try a few more reviews this year, so keep an eye out.

I'll wind down here, and say that I feel like I've accomplished something just by posting something on this blog today. (I also deleted a slew of spam comments, which also felt like an achievement!) I am still chairing and teaching (including a graduate novel workshop this semester) and supervising theses, all via Zoom (like everyone else), every day of every week feels even more busy than usual (each seems to be triple-booked at a minimum in terms of Zoom meetings, calls, etc.), and my stack of required reading grows and grows, but it feels invigorating even to have gotten this far in this post. It is here. It is done. & I am going to try to post more.

14th Blogiversary

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Fourteen years ago, on February 27, 2005, I began blogging at J's Theater. I was regularly reading the blogs of friends and writers, artists, political commentators, and others I'd never met but felt a desire to be in conversation with, and so I started this blog. I viewed it as a creative and cultural space, with far less emphasis on politics and responsive to the news cycle--which has sped up incalculably more these days now that Facebook and Twitter have taken off--than it has assumed at various points. More than anything, however I wanted it to be a site where I could try thoughts and ideas out, imperfect as they might be, without the usual concern of perfection or even the struggle, customary as well, to get them into print. (My entire writing career has entailed a struggle to get my work into print.)

From writing about poetry and poets, like Jay Wright, as I did in my first post, to my life and experiences at the university (which has become a new university over the years I've blogged), to reviews of books and films, to snippets about Black history, art and culture, and history, art and culture over all, to translations from Portuguese, Spanish, French, and, I sometimes am amazed to admit, Dutch and German, to posts about rugby, track and field and other less popular (in the US imagination, at least) sports, my iPhone and iPad sketches, and on and on, J's Theater has provided an ideal space for me to explore, (mostly--haha!) pressure-free, as I see fit. It also has served as a site of documentation at times for cultural activities, and especially was so during my decade in Chicago, which wasn't even a decade ago but feels like a lifetime has passed between then and now.

I've repeatedly debated whether to keep blogging or to quit. One great frustration after the earliest years (2005-2008 or so) was the sharp drop off in comments, which were for a while replaced by spam, which disappeared (thanks, Blogger?), only to reappear in recent years with a vengeance. It thankfully is very easy to delete these days, but that requires its own dedicated attention. Far more pressing were my academic responsibilities, which have grown to include 12-month administrative duties that devour more mental space and energy than I ever imagined. I don't think it's any surprise that before this year, 2014, the first year I became a department chair (acting during that year) and 2017, just before my last sabbatical, saw the fewest posts. It was not for lack of interest, but time and vigor.

Not so long ago, we were told that blogging was dead. No one blogged, everyone had moved to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. And Tumblr, which was and is a blogging platform that in essence mostly deprioritized words. (It also has banned not just pornography, but nudity in general, that's another matter.) And Instagram, which is all pictures (for the most part). And Snapchat, of course. Now there's Tiktok, and other walled gardens. One thing I loved and still do about blogging (though to its credit, Twitter also is almost fully public) via Blogger, WordPress and similar sites is that whatever you published was and remains visible to all; a private company does own this platform, but the blog remains more a public square-style venue than many other options out there. For good and ill, of course. The dazzlingly brilliant Kegur'o M, who continues to blog at Gukira: Without Predicates, is a stellar example of the good that can come from a blogger at the top of their game.

But that public aspect is one that I cherish, and one reason I hope to continue blogging. I also wish some of my old blogging friends, many listed on the blogroll to the right, and other bloggers I never interacted with but who've given up blogging, would start up again. No shade against Medium, but before ideas are fully polished, why not bounce them off readers on a blog? You can always--well, so far--revise as you go.

J's Theater's 13th Blogiversary

A screenshot of my very
first post, from February
27, 2005 (Copyright © J's Theater)

On this date thirteen years ago, I started blogging at J's Theater. I've previously commemorated the date and written about why I began writing on this platform. In those and other posts, I discussed how my approach has changed over the years, and I've also commented a number of times about the fluctuation in the regularity of my posts. In brief: my teaching, mentoring and advising, and, in more recent years, administrative duties have sometimes led to sizable hiatuses or periods of silence. I've nevertheless tried to keep the blog going, in part because I enjoy blogging and it provides me with one of the few places to regularly and publicly share interests I have, especially if they fall outside the mainstream. What sometimes astonishes me is how much ground I've covered over the years, which includes posts I've completely forgotten about only to happen upon them when Googling some topic or other, and find that the blog is among the top links that appear.

From time to time, I with meet or speak with someone who speaks about the blog as primarily political, but rereading my posts since 2005, what stands out to me is the emphasis on culture, with cultural politics usually part of the equation. During my first year of blogging, which included 305 posts, I ranged widely, touching upon not only poetry and poets but artists, but also drawings and photos (many via Flickr, or from the web, so they're no longer visible); reviews of films, dancing performances, art shows, CDs and online audio sites, TV shows, plays; sports (primarily baseball, reports on the literary world and publishing industry; interviews, with domestic and international figures; numerous translations, by many others as well as my own original attempts; meta-commentaries on other bloggers and blogs; announcements of upcoming local and national events; obituaries and tributes; countless quotes by notable figures; random photos (always a popular feature here); and yes, discussions of politics. I've tried to maintain many of these foci over the years, the combinations changing in relation to my life at the time, while adding new ones. I probably do write less about TV and popular culture than I once did, and many of my favorite bloggers unfortunately have put their efforts to pasture or are no longer with us. There have also been strange occurrences, such as other blogs basically plagiarizing my posts and featuring them under other names; the specifics of the entries, however, makes the theft a bit nonsensical, but when has that ever stopped thieves?

What also continues to amaze me is how many people have visited the blog. According to the stat counter (which I had to reinstall when transferring J's Theater to Blogger's new platform) 745,059 people have visited the blog over the years. Blogger's analytics tell me, however, that there have been 1,061,061 (!) viewers over the lifetime of the blog. Last month, there were 29,566. The all-time most popular post remains the Julia de Burgos poem page (61,822 views), followed by my post about Vanessa Place and conceptual poetics (12,475); an entry on Allen Ginsberg (6,340); the 2007 Rugby World Cup (5,264); and my review of Christophe Honoré's film Homme au bain (4,147). Over this last week, the most read posts remain the one about de Burgos and Place, as well as one on William Butler Yeats and Federico García Lorca; the post about the new Locke biography and the Richard T. Greener statue, and my review of Inxeba (The Wound). Over the life of the blog, the most visitors have come from the US (556,277), Russia (92,407), Germany (54,849), France, Great Britain, Ukraine, Canada, China, Brazil, and the Netherlands, in descending order; over the last month, the visitors have primarily come from the same countries, with Italy, Estonia and Poland replacing Canada, China and Brazil. In sum, visitors from across the globe are checking out the new posts and some very old ones, which is heartening to see.

I intend to continue blogging for as long as it remains of interest and I have the time and energy to do so. At some point I probably should see if I can hire an assistant to cull through the posts and draw up a list categorizing and indexing them by date, subject, and so on. I am not sure how many translations of my own I've posted on here, but I often find ones I'd completely forgotten, including an entry featuring a poem by the late Dominican-immigrant writer Carlos Rodríguez (1951-2001). To my surprise, someone commented on the post this past January 16, under the title "Escritor de la nada," to say that there's an anthology out featuring 4-5 poems by Rodríguez was now out. They did not leave a name, but I have put on my list of books to seek out.

‡‡‡

It's also a little surprising, at least to me, to note that blogging as we know it is roughly only 21 years old. I noted the 10th anniversary of the platform and genre back in 2007. Perhaps it was around this time or not long after that some pundits began declaring blogging over and done, and yet just a few years after that, it had come back with such force that reality shows were touting the fact the some of their stars' occupations included "blogger." "The blogs" even became an epithet of sorts. Blogging has morphed several times since, with platforms like Tumblr including blogs with almost no words at all. There are still many wordsmiths still toiling out there, and, in the case of publications like The New York Review of Books, some of their more vital, relevant writing is appearing on their blog, NYR Daily.

In 2005, I also wrote about one of the important proto-bloggers, Clarice Lispector, whose formally inventive and topically expansive newspaper Crônicas are more like blogposts and less like the conventional opinion pieces one usually finds in contemporary US journalism. New Directions plans to publish one her most difficult and personal books, The Chandelier, later this spring.

8th Blogiversary + Iraq War's 10th Anniversary

Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

I didn't start blogging until 2005; last month marked my 8th J's Theater blogiversary (I usually am deep in the vortex of teaching when the date rolls around, so I always end up missing it, but I will post a poem by Jay Wright, the subject of my first post, this week.)  In the run-up to the horrendous Iraq War, however, I expended screens of email, countless posts on various sites I belonged to, and time and energy attending and participating marches against what was, clear enough to me, a looming disaster. It was not just the architects behind it--George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Ahmad Chalabi,  Colin Powell, everyone involved with the Project for a New American Center and everyone clustered like a nauseating cloud around them--but the timorous and complicit US Congress, including all of the Democrats who cravenly or fearfully fell in line, as well as the still intellectually and ethically bankrupt, compliant, duplicitous US mainstream media and commentariat, all of them who cheerled this neoconservative debacle, from Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart to Thomas Friedman and Judy Miller, all of them, who enabled this catastrophe whose immediate effects, 4,000+ US and coalition troops dead, many thousands wounded and suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or injured, sectarian lines more sharply drawn than when Saddam Hussein was in power and the decimation of Iraq's minority populations, including Christian Iraqis, trillions of US and Iraqi dollars flushed into the pockets of the military industrial complex, and the destabilization of the entire region (and consequent empowerment, of all countries, Iran!). That is to say, they have blood and lives on their hands, their souls.

What was clear back in 1999 and 2000, that George Walker Bush would be the worst president in my lifetime--I continue to believe that despite several nadirs in American leadership over the last two centuries (Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Rutherford Hayes, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, etc.), W Bush will never be matched again if at least 50% of the voting population is even moderately sane--and would lead the country into certain disaster, the nature of which were not yet known then but the certainty of which was as clear as the candidate's stumbling, hazy answers and demonstrably phony cowboy persona, as well as by the toxic political and economic records of the people gathered round him, took material form from the day he assumed office, after the Supreme Court's judicial coup. But even with the California electric blackouts and the Enron collapse and of course, the sort of horrific incident and its aftermath that would have sunk many a presidency, the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda, not even I could have imagined that Bush would, on the flimsiest of pretenses, con the Congress, the media, and millions of Americans, into the Iraq War. But he and his gang did. His and his associates' neoconservative, libertarian-laissez-faire fantasies, which included pimping out the US military to get ahold of that "sea of oil," as Wolfowitz once put it, and imposing their failed Randian policies on the new, juy-rigged state they created, predictably turned out badly. Very badly. Very, very badly. Criminally, and criminally badly. But that not of single of one these criminals has served time in jail or even been tried for war crimes speaks volumes to how rotten to the core our political system and media are. That any of the war-cheering pundits, like Friedman or David Brooks, both of whom still pontificate from their perches at The New York Times, also were not cast into the void of silence in the face of repeated critical failure, also is a dead mark on our society.

Tom Friedman's infamous "Suck on This" commentary about Iraq

In part because of all of the great blogs and sites that preceded and then swung into action in criticizing the rush to war, and its inept and corrupt prosecution, or the ones that emerged in the war's run up and wake, I initially vowed that I would not focus on politics, except indirectly, and for the most part, especially during my initial year of blogging, I maintained that stance. But I stepped away from that stricture a while ago, and while this never has become a political blog per se, I realized during the final, awful years of the Bush administration, which included the coup de grace bookend of the bursting housing bubble and global financial collapse (thank you, W!), and during various moments throughout this current administration's tenure, I have spoken out here and elsewhere. (I have often thought back about my early support for Barack Obama, in 2004, when he was running for the US Senate, and how I based that in part on his strong, vocal anti-war stance. I heard him articulate in person his opposition to the war. Perhaps the Presidency does change one, and perhaps his critique of Bush was opportunistic and paper-thin, but it was convincing. He will never be able to convince me of the viability of his drone war, or his stalwart support for the security and surveillance state, or many other issues on which he has shifted considerably to the right since his initial run for presidency, in 2008. (I also have come to realize that were she to run in 2016, I probably would support Hillary Clinton without hesitation, despite how abhorrent and pandering I found her support for Bush's folly.)

Iraq remains a deeply torn, traumatized society and country. While we should be hearing about what is happening there on a weekly or at least a monthly basis, we hear almost nothing about Iraq beyond intermittent posts about bombings, political quarrels, and demands the US continues to make on Iraq. Very few of the war enthusiasts devote more than the most cursory space, if even that, to Iraq today, to the challenges it faces, to its people and their voices, their stories, their lives. It is just another thing chewed on for a period, while it seemed useful, and spat out, without any real concern for the ramifications. In a sense, the war--which I do not want to reduce to the status of an analogy--is a good analogy for so much of what elites and their enablers wreak on this society. Perhaps they do consider the impacts of their actions, and perhaps they do pause, if for a second, but then again, if one goes simply on their actions as opposed to suppositions about their behavior, they act and apparently could care less. Unethical barely scratches the surface of such an outlook and mode of operate. But that's where we are. Ultimately those of us who see through the BS, the lies, the chicanery, the gaming of the system, the cravenness, the corruption, the destructiveness, the looming disasters, must never be silent and still, even if our cries and steps lead us into what looks like a cul-de-sac, a tunnel, a void. And we must be vigilant to call out those who lead us down paths of destruction, no matter how favored or well-placed or powerful they are. They bank on our silence, and our fear, and especially on a combination of both.

7th Blogiversary + Poems: giovanni singleton

Two days ago, in fact, marked the seventh anniversary, or blogiversary (or is it blogaversary?), of J's Theater. There are times, usually during the summers, which are always more vivid to me than any other season or part of the year, when 2005, and February 2005 specifically, doesn't seem that distant, and other times when it feels as far away as the summit of K2. I still recall who and what motivated me to start this blog; Bernie Tarver's blogging about sports and life and politics was one spur, and Charles Stephens's accounts of his and his friends' lives was another.

There were many other blogs that I was reading with pleasure too and which inspired me. Some are still around, others are long gone, and there have been more than a few times that I thought this blog would join them in the byteheap of history (save for the ministrations of the Wayback Machine).  Throughout the life of this blog, I have tried to focus mostly on arts and letters, and the political implications of both, and originally I tried to away from big-"P" politics in particular, since so many other blogs were covering that ground.  But that changed in short order, though I have tried to return as often as possible to original emphases of this blog.

I began by blogging by writing a short note about one of my favorite poets, Jay Wright (1935-), always underheralded, extraordinary though he is, and followed shortly upon it with posts about other poets and literary arts, the visual arts, and, also part of the early mix, popular culture.  To that end, I will post two poems by a poet I have known for many years, and whose first book, Ascenscion (Counterpath, 2012), is now available for purchase: giovanni singleton.

giovanni is an editor (her journal nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts has been a pacesetter in terms of publishing innovative writing); a teacher; an administrator; and a poet of sly and powerful wit, who knows who to turn a phrase on its end, and then turn it again. I cannot forget her unforgettable performance of her deceptively simple, deeply erotic little poem "chair" one year at Cave Canem's summer workshops. I swear I couldn't think about chairs the same for weeks after that. So here are two poems by giovanni, from the Woodland Pattern website, which offers a full(er) biography of her.  (Should you ever get to Milwaukee, please do visit Woodland Pattern, which is one of the best bookstores in the country.)

giovanni singleton (Photo by Sarah Collins)

(You can read a conversation between giovanni and poet D. Scott Miller here. You can hear a conversation between giovanni and E. Ethelbert Miller here.)

sepia


sitting in a darkened hallway. salt water bodies rock steady. muffled pounding.
the door of no return. is closed and closer. under measured reconstruction.
living seeps through in echoes. stillness outside in. a collective breath persists
without apology. mud stained spoons undulate from shore to distant shore.
then one day walk as if rowing a boat.

isotope

        after beauford delaney

dark blue to gold abstraction
patterned figurations
scattered light

        as if you would marry me

abstraction in red
blue light abstraction
abstract of black and gold

        as if we could marry someday

streaked light
cool blue green
light
light
red gold black abstracted

        as if we could amaze

Copyright © giovanni singleton, 2011, 2012. All rights reserved.

Bastille Day: Peskine at MoCADA + Phillies' Folly + 10 Years of Blogs

Since it's Bastille Day, here's info about something French--at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Brooklyn, from a press release I received (I'll get over there one of these days soon):

The French Evolution: Race, Politics & the French Riots
Works by Alexis Peskine
Curated by Kimberli E. Gant
May 25-September 9, 2007

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is pleased to present The French Evolution: Race, Politics & Riots. The museum premier of this provocative exhibition features approximately fifteen multimedia images informed and inspired by the 2005 riots that rocked Peskine’s native Paris, and explores the social and political climate sustained by the uneasy truce that continues today. The exhibition will open with a reception on May 25th, and be on view through September 9th. Several educational programs have been created to complement the exhibition.

The twenty-seven-year-old Peskine, a Howard University and Maryland Institute College of Art alum and Fulbright scholar, is an emerging artist who has gained considerable recognition with his provocative interpretations on social inequality. Set against the backdrop of a global consciousness with strong influences of the worldwide hip-hop movement, Peskine’s work is informed by his experiences growing up with his peers of African, Arab and Caribbean descent in Paris, where random ID checks, joblessness, and racial and religious discrimination are an everyday reality. His images in video, photography and mixed media using wood, nails, canvas and installations reflect his graphic and bold approach to social, religious and political commentary through art.

Take that, Sarko!

+++

I have complained at times about the Saint Louis Cardinals, who're having a lackluster 2007 season (though they're not at the bottom of their weak division). At the same time, I'm quite aware that historically speaking, they have had their share of successes, to the extent that they're second only to the New York Yankees in total World Series wins, and managed to pull off a shocker last year after dragging themselves across the finish line into the playoffs.

Tonight, the Cardinals had their hand in a bit of infamy: they helped the Philadelphia Phillies notch their 10,000th loss. That is the most in Major League Baseball. Not even the Chicago Cubs, a study in futility, have as many losses. Nor do the Boston Red Sox, the Baltimore Orioles (once the hapless Saint Louis Browns), the Chicago White Sox...you get the picture.

I only know the Phillies as having middling teams, sometimes good ones. Their roster included the nutty Hall of Famer Steve Carlton and the great Mike Schmidt, a prototypical third baseman, and they won the World Series in 1980, when I was in high school. That counts for something--the win, I mean. People with longer memories or a better handle on stats, however, know that they have had many, many bad seasons, from 1883 on. Some were awful, or worse. 1964 is particularly notorious, in that they fell out of first place with a 10-game losing streak or something to that effect, permitting the Cardinals--oh the ignominy!--to leap in, win the pennant, and defeat the Yankees, in the process showcasing several future Hall of Famers, including Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.

So my thoughts are with Phillies fans tonight. At least for a little while. Just think, it's a record, even if a humiliating one, and no other team will be able to say they got there first.

+++

It's also the 10th anniversary of the blogosphere. The Wall Street Journal's Tunku Vadarajan writes an article about this rather unheralded birthday, "Happy Blogiversary." For some reason I thought they were around a little bit longer, but then I can recall when cell phones were uncommon and C and another friend were among the very few people I knew who had them. But then that was before Craigslist, social networking sites, or Netscape's apogee and disappearance....

Anyways, Vadarajan asks some NOT VERY DIVERSE notables about their favorite blogs and gets an array of responses, including this one from that conservative bombast Tom Wolfe:

And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that way.

Blogs are an advance guard to the rear. For example, only a primitive would believe a word of Wikipedia (which, though not strictly a blog, shares the characteristics of the genre). The entry under my name says that in 2003 "major news media" broadcast reports of my death and that I telephoned Larry King and said, "I ain't dead yet, give me a little more time and no doubt it will become true."

And people actually thought this man had even a passable grasp on today's undergraduates? At least he did label his last volume of claptrap fiction....