Upstate and Vermont

So it is pouring rain here tonight, but slowing. Right now out my window I hear the sharp "shesh" of cars driving on a highway after a heavy rain. Many cars still at 10:30 p.m.; the cars heading, I imagine, to Memorial Day weekends to create memories upstate.

How many states in this country have an "upstate"?

Chicago is in upstate Illinois, but it's Chicago, so the fact of it being Chicago obliterates any upstate-ness. Mason City is not upstate Iowa because it's too small of a town. Burlington, VT, is part of the "Northeast Kingdom." Now that's ego.

Speaking of Vermont, I have a note tonight from my mom regarding my 95-year-old grandmother:
"We received a note from Grandma today. I had to laugh. She told us about how her friend came down the other day and got her laundry together and they went over to the laundromat. They only did one load before Grandma got restless, but she said that it was the first time that she had been to a laundromat and the first time she had ever seen an automatic washer.... no less a dryer. Quite fascinating. I thought that was so cute."

So she has seen a computer (my laptop) before seeing a washing machine.

Anyway, as regards the subject of "Upstate," I am fascinated by the idea of towns on borders: state borders, river borders, the timeline borders in Indiana.

TH

Um, Taylor Hicks is just hideous.

Barbaro

This is why they have to put horses down:

... fractures above and below the ankle -- a career-ending and life-threatening injury. Leg injuries to horses are especially dangerous, because they cannot lie down for extended periods of time to take pressure off their limbs.


And with Barbaro, a doctor on ESPN said tonight that a human with a similar fracture would have to be kept in bed for six weeks, at least, before rehab. This incredible horse is not going to make it. I hate this. A stupid pebble probably caught in his right-front shoe and the horse may have tried to shake it out, putting too much weight on that now-destroyed hind leg.

And this is terrific writing:
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/triplecrown06/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2452359

And to continue the series of paragraphs beginning with "and," you by now know the story about Barbaro's trainer, Mike Matz, who is perhaps one of the most famous plane crash survivors in recent history, given that he survived the Sioux City, Iowa, (that state again) plane disaster (one of the most famously videotaped crashes in history so far), and then rushed back into the wreckage to rescue two children.

I was very much caught up in this story, pre-Derby, so I am just broken up about this spectacular, now-about-to-be-dead horse. And what is this going to do, psychologically, to this jockey, Edgar Prado?

Thank you for your time.

Next up, the NBA

I promise ...

and a post about my miserably triumphant return to golf.

Two Memories of Floyd Patterson

Actually I have three memories of Floyd Patterson: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2442045 .

First, when I was a kid visiting my grandparents in Poughkeepsie, NY, I remember seeing newspaper clippings of Patterson's win over Ingemar Johansson stuck in the 1960 World Book stacked neatly in the bookshelf next to my grandfather's chair. It's something I should ask my mother about -- does she remember that this was an important sporting event? So important that the family had newspaper clippings 20 years later?

Second, I lived in New Paltz, NY, on and off through the '90s. Patterson of course lived there also. On several occasions I saw Patterson shopping in the only grocery store in New Paltz, a Shop-Rite. You would see him speaking to people and feel like, well, Floyd Patterson is here, um, I better buy healthy foods. Some steaks.

So in that Shop-Rite I once came to a checkout line at the same time as Patterson, which is usually one of those awkward social situations -- who goes first, who goes to the express line? Floyd Patterson made the gesture ...

OK, just to make clear, Floyd Patterson was shopping for himself.

Patterson made the gesture for me to go ahead, and then he got in line behind me. He didn't look for another, shorter, line. What were we buying? I don't recall, but I can guess that on my apartment's behalf it was probably a bottle of tonic. For me, I'd guess it was some cheap spaghetti sauce.

The next memory came when the SUNY New Paltz English Department hosted a seminar in Sport and Literature. After a day of papers (a girlfriend delivered a paper), we had a post-dinner presentation: Gay Talese Reunited with One of His Subjects: Floyd Patterson.

Awkward. A legendary magazine interview/article was to be re-enacted in front of us. Mr. Patterson was clearly not up to it, perhaps already showing signs of Alzheimer's disease. Talese would ask a question -- the two of them standing up the whole time -- and Patterson would essentially parry it, give a vague non-answer: "Yep, that's how it was."

Later, we in the English Department got to meet Patterson. I'd already "met" him buying whatever at Shop-Rite at the same time. (Me fantasizing that he was buying it for Tracy Patterson, his adopted boxing son.) I was struck by two things, one that I'd already noticed: I was taller than a former heavyweight champion. And two: when I went to shake his hand, I couldn't fit my hand around his; my long fingers just went around the palm of his hand and no farther. Like I was a kid shaking his dad's hand.

I won't go into a litany about his hands. Others like boxing journalist Bert Sugar should. But his hands had decked Archie Moore, protected him from Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, belted Ingemar Johansson ... I'll just say that I've met several professional athletes since and always measured those moments to meeting Floyd Patterson. And I've made many more grocery store trips since, and always measured those moments to encountering Floyd Patterson in the aisle of a small Shop-Rite in New Paltz, NY.

How far have I fallen?

Re: the previous post. Um, the ground floor of a motel in Highland, NY? How far have I fallen?

Bugs

I live on the ground floor of a motel in Highland, NY. One room and a bathroom ... well, a shower stall and a toilet.

Last week, I looked up from the TV one afternoon and beheld on the wall a centipede. In a rush I crushed it with one of my notebooks. The body flew off, probably into one of my shoes. I joke ...

Yesterday, while at this very computer, I beheld out the corner of my eye (or as Clyde Frazier deems it, my "peripherial vision") something scurrying from my shoes (on my left) away from me to my foyer, where my sweaters are. Hello, next chilly night.

And then today, I got up and went to the room that holds the toilet. In my shower stall, stumbling on the far wall, was a centipede. In the tile-lined shower stall. How the eff did that thing get in there? I turned on the hot water and pointed the steaming hot shower nozzle at the critter; it fought a good fight, such that I should have acknowledged its strength and simply captured it and set it free outdoors to be eaten by feral cats, but my blood lust knows no bounds when it comes to protecting my face while asleep. The hot stream finally subdid it, I gathered its remains, and threw bleach all over the shower stall.

Blaine Game

I do need to post a quick thing about David Blaine -- I watched, I admit it, but only the live segments. My magic trick is using the remote (see previous entry) to only hit the high spots. (I missed his usual taped "on the streets" magic scenes, except one, which involved him tying his shoes by shaking his foot left and right and then getting a class of seven-year-olds to do the same, which was pretty neat.)

The complaints today in the MSM were that he choked. Well, yes, he did, literally. But I agree with Tony Kornheiser that holding one's breath underwater for seven minutes (out of nine, a record which by all accounts was an anomaly) is "fabulous." I can barely do five-ish with a pillow on my face while depressed.

So David Blaine, even though you will never see this blog except IN YOUR MIND ... next time, don't live in a liquid bubble for a week (at Lincoln Center!) on a fluid diet if you intend to keep up your lung strength, and don't give interviews while you're doing it.

Trying Again

I am trying to sell myself as a writer but for some reason for the last six (?) years I have been afraid of writing. I let the TV push stuff into my head but I edit the TV with the remote control: CNN, MSNBC, what's Bill O'Reilly pushing on FNC, Yankees, Mets, now the NBA playoffs, and back around. So I'm still writing, with the remote, but really not. It's the epitome of ephemeral ... and usually I do it increasingly inebriated, which is thus even more ephemeral.

Maybe it's discipline, maybe ... ok, a skunk just let off outside my room.

So still I live with my writer brain and I use the phone as a blog, lately, my mom has been my best audience, and via IM'ing, my friend JB -- in today's high-paced world of today, the blog has replaced the phone. IM'ing has replaced writing.

None of this makes sense -- as a columnist I was famous for writing at the last moment.
I was always trying to find the perfect lead ... I haven't heard that lead, or listened for it, in six years. So we won't abuse the muse ... everything I thought I was going to type into here the last week struck me as lead-less and uninteresting. A phone anecdote. So now I'm writing around it all ... but I'm writing.

First entry: very late, after 1:00 a.m. I'm setting this up so that I have a reason to get up in the morning. I'm a former newspaper columnist, won the New York Press Association "Best Humor Columnist" award. This online diary is going to be fun. Happy May Day!