The Proof's in the Pudding

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I missed this when it came out.

"Repton Boxing Club" by Alasdair McLellan for British heritage label Sunspel, featuring Ryan Pickard (2011)

Boxing is one of those old-school sports I feel like I should be repelled by -- just the thought of a broken nose makes me cringe -- but even knowing next to nothing about it I find the whole enterprise totally fascinating and even romantic. (And this is not because I watched Rocky as a kid, because I didn't.) There's so much ritual to it, and so much reverence for the past. From an outsider's perspective it seems like it requires a physical and mental discipline that verges on the religious. Maybe it's so ugly that it comes full circle to beautiful.

While we're on the topic of beautiful destruction, another movie I want to see again:

Raging Bull (1980)

Training Day

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I could not care less about the Dolphins (sorry, Miami) but I'm so stoked to have football season back.

 

Hard Knocks season 7 on HBO. 

THE 12th MAN

and Emily

We're breaking our (somewhat new) no-posting-on-the-weekend rule, for good reason:


MARSHAWN LYNCH! SEATTLE SEAHAWKS!

jjjjjjyyyyeaaaah

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

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Jeans gets really into Seahawks games.

Image of the Day

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Images from Amen: Grassroots Football, a book by photographer Jessica Hilltout. Visit Hilltout's website for more photos and info (the homemade soccer balls which the children are holding in the image above are particularly cool to see), and read more about it at nytimes.com. Hilltout's scrapbooks are also great – click here to check 'em out.

Robbed

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There are not many Olympic sports I care about – or that many sports I care about in general – but I have followed World Cup skiing for as long as I can remember and I'm super pissed about what happened to Julia Mancuso in the GS. Yes, things happen, and yes, safety first, but that being the case, the fog should have stopped the first race long before either Vonn or Mancuso even hit the course. I only hope that Mancuso's two silver medals inspire her to victory on the World Cup... enough of these damn Olympics.

Franz Klammer & Annemarie Moser-Pröell

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While we're in the Olympic spirit:


Innsbruck, Austria, 1976 – kind of messy looking (this is where Bode Miller got his style) but it's one of the greatest Olympic DH wins of all time.

The apt comparison for Lindsey Vonn would be Annemarie Moser-Pröell, who won six overall World Cups in the '70s – five of them in a row, as illustrated in this photo:

There's not much about her on the web other than her own website.

Image of the Day

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Julia Mancuso and Lindsey Vonn!

[ Photo by Doug Mills for the New York Times ]

Image of the Day

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Alabama Coach Bear Bryant with quarterback Joe Namath, from an article in the New York Times earlier this week, "Texas-Alabama: Rematch 45 Years in the Making." The two teams play tonight at 5PM PST for the Bowl Championship Series title.
Image: AP

Image of the Day

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This is a random image of the day in the truest sense of the word – I'm super busy, sometimes I don't have time to plan this out. I scrolled and picked the first image I found on my hard drive. When I used to work at V Magazine we had a bowling team, and we'd play other magazines (The New Yorker, GQ...a whole bunch of different magazines). Time Out New York was always the best, they were really annoying. We were generally down at the bottom with (I think it was) American Craft magazine or something like that, these girls that pretty much had just figured out what bowling was or something. My grandpa (not Don – different grandpa) was actually a pro bowler (the diamonds in Emily's engagement ring came from a gold pinky ring he had won, which my brother and I inherited) and I'm not too bad, but I had dislocated my shoulder like three months before, so I was sucking – I would roll the ball and then walk back to the team in pain. We bowled at the Port Authority bus terminal lanes. As part of the deal each team would get these towers of beer, basically like a big vase full of beer with a tap at the bottom of it. We'd finish ours really fast and then try to steal beer from the other teams. Good times.

Meanwhile in the Nerdery

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Some things I found Saturday morning at the Seattle Public Library's semi-annual book sale, all $1 each:

An 86-minute lecture by Rem Koolhaas on his brilliant design of the central branch of the public library.

Architect Victor Steinbrueck's collection of drawings of Seattle neighborhoods and character ca.1973.

This spread is about houseboats (click to enlarge).

This is kind of a cheapy paperback but the page layouts and typography are really nice, and there are a lot of interesting photos of Picasso messing around at home and in his studio. The dude just refused to put a shirt on but his swagger made it work.

First edition, standard issue.

Remember the special version of Shalamar's "Second Time Around" that played on KJR when the Sonics went to the playoffs again in 1980?


Click here

Letting Dawgs Out

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My appetite for football, especially now that we actually live in Seahawks territory again, has grown to the point that I think I might have to start watching college ball too. As exciting as the games often are, I've resisted it. The thing is, there's limited time in the week – especially being self-employed, with various other hobbies and exploits to attend to. It's hard to add new things. I don't know.



Ah crud.
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Image of the Day

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Photograph of Marcel Duchamp, 1958, by Arnold Rosenberg

Tonight from 6–8PM at Francis Naumann Gallery in NYC is the opening reception for Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess. At 7:00 Grand Master Lev Alburt (3x US Champ) will play Grand Master Jennifer Shahade (2x US Woman's Champion and author of Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport) on Play It By Trust, the chess board with all white pieces designed by [who else...] Yoko Ono. Among others in the exhibition, open through October 30th, are Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Sophie Matisse. It proposes that "Duchamp's identity as a chess player is so thoroughly interfused with his work as an artist that the two activities are aesthetically and conceptually inseperable."

More information at Francis Naumann Gallery's website.

Oh, well

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Brazil 3, United States 2

Fabiano scores half-way through the second half
(Photo Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters via NYT)

An exciting match nonetheless. We watched it at The Attic in Madison Park – they use the same recipe for Buffalo wings as the Anchor Bar, where they were invented.

More, from The New York Times:
Slideshow
Article
Revisiting the Great Soccer Debate

Jamon It*

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Charlie Davies and Jozy Altidore
(AFP Photo/Roberto Schmidt via FIFA)

The U.S. team just defeated Spain 2-0 in the Confederations Cup, which is widely viewed as the lead-up tourney to next year's highly anticipated World Cup. Spain is the current European champion and the top-ranked team in the world. The team had been undefeated since 2006, winning 35 games in a row until today's upset.

Street soccer near the Seisa Ramabodu Stadium, where the Confederations Cup is being held. June 16, 2009, Bloemfontein, South Africa. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) via The Big Picture.

Brazil plays South Africa tomorrow, and the U.S., in its first major international final ever, plays the winner of that game on Sunday at 2pm EST.

*Yeah we know, we know: what is this, the Post? I hereby pledge that "Jamon It" is the last corny title I will ever deploy – I swear it.

The Preakness

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Fictional newspaper by teenage Jack Kerouac, part of the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. More info

A Saturday in May

The Kentucky Derby is tomorrow, and for the first time in recent memory we won't be watching the race at our friend Susan's place in Brooklyn. Susan's hospitality is second to none, and we're especially sorry to be so far away on this Derby Day, when Susan and her husband Steve will also be celebrating their wedding with a reception at Belmont Park (Congratulations!).

Strath at Belmont, 2008

I grew up riding horses and when I was little I read just about every book about horse racing that I could get my hands on, but I've never followed the sport as an adult – except when the Triple Crown races roll around every year. Despite the fact that horse racing too often seems to serve up tragedy and beauty in equal measure, there's something about the tradition, the pomp and circumstance, and the hope against hope that this year will be the year that produces a new Triple Crown champion that is undeniably infectious...it all somehow seems to me like Spring incarnate.


Strath has previously recommended John Jeremiah Sullivan's Blood Horses, part memoir of Sullivan's father, a sportswriter, and part history of horses and thoroughbred racing. I won't add to that except to agree that if you're looking for a great read this May, look no further – and to share a passage from the book that I always think of this time of year. In it, Sullivan describes watching footage of Secretariat winning the final leg of the Triple Crown at Belmont in 1973, decimating the previous world record time for the distance by 2 3/5 seconds and finishing 31 lengths ahead of the second place finisher, Twice a Prince:

There is a passage on the tape that I noticed only after watching it dozens of times. It occurs near the end of the race. The cameraman has zoomed up pretty close on Secretariat, leaving the lens just wide enough to capture the horse and a few feet of track. Then, about half a furlong before the wire (it is hard to tell), the camera inexplicably stops tracking the race and holds still. Secretariat rockets out of the frame, leaving the screen blank, or rather filled with empty track. I timed this emptiness – the space between Secretariat exiting and Twice a Prince entering the image – with my watch. It lasts seven seconds. And somehow each of these seconds says more about what made Secretariat great than any shot of him in motion could. In the history of profound absences – the gaps in Sappho's fragments, Christ's tomb, the black panels of Rothko's chapel – this is among the most beautiful.

Secretariat, the Belmont Stakes, 1973

So, tomorrow we'll be raising a mint julep or two (recipe below) to our two- and four-legged friends here and elsewhere, to Spring, and to the hope that this year is the year. Cheers.

All The News That's Fit To Link

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Recently, as a cost-cutting measure, Emily and I have been considering scaling back our daily subscription to The New York Times to Sundays only. I'm not sure if it's because of that dim prospect or because the paper has just been extra good lately, but this week I have taken an extraordinary amount of enjoyment from reading the Times every morning. Today's was particularly genius. Here are some highlights:

Claudy Jongstra (Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

A review and a slideshow on Fashioning Felt, the new fabric design exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt. It looks great, I hope to see it next time we're there. Coco Howard should be in this show.

Kenneth Paul Block

At Parsons there was a professor I particularly hated by the name of Hively. He was an asshole to everyone and he was full of shit, but he was right about one thing: I remember him saying that when you get a little older you read the obituaries with great interest. Today was a blockbuster in that department, with remembrances of renowned fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block and Manhattan Doll Surgeon Irving D. Chais.


A review of Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Another good reason to be in Philly right now.

Kate Gilmore (American, b. 1975).
Still from Blood from a Stone, 2009.

Ken Johnson reviews a new show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that looks (maybe a little suprisingly) good: Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video.


There's a good article about shucking oysters at Hood Canal, with a slideshow. That's an hour and a half from my house, so suck it, everyone in New York.


The Nam June Paik archives go to the Smithsonian: "Clunky black-and-white television sets and 1960s record players; early video projectors and decades-old Polaroid cameras – things that were long ago relegated to the electronic graveyard – are precious and priceless in the world created by the artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006)."


There's a review of the new film about Miss Indigo Blue's Academy of Burlesque in Seattle, A Wink and a Smile . It's a little lukewarm, but hey, as WWWWD quotes, "Don't pay attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."
[–Andy Warhol]


From David Brooks' op-ed: "Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he’d translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator’s original." Interesting.


And finally, a bunch of stuff about the Kentucky Derby.

Kentucky Derby favorite I Want Revenge, left
(John Sommers II/Reuters)

I don't think we're canceling that subscription quite yet.

Take that to the bank

A couple random things, a little hodgepodge, if you will, before the weekend:

Luke Burbank and Jennifer Andrews at Too Beautiful To Live have been doing a series of interviews with a seemingly regular guy and fan of the show who used to be a bank robber. A very successful bank robber. From Bellevue. It is fascinating – catch up on the podcasts here starting with the Monday, January 19th episode. I have been somewhat obsessively listening to this radio show, TBTL, since it started last January. The Stranger's article on Burbank and the show is highly informative, and you can catch up on old episodes at toobeautifultolive.com. (Stranger photo by Curt Doughty.)

Chad put me up on a blog I've been enjoying called Archival Clothing. Today's post is on re-purposed Filson gear, using fabric acquired by dumpster diving outside the company's Seattle headquarters. Interesting.

I got the new Andrew Bird record. I like it a lot and I'm sure I'll get more into it, but I'm not flipping over it like I did the last one. I tend to like his warmer-sounding stuff (Plasticities, Lull) and the new record strikes me as purposely tinny-sounding. I also got the new A.C. Newman record. It's basically a collection of variations on the same themes and sounds he always hits (both on his own and with New Pornographers), and honestly that is just fine with me.
A.C. Newman Submarines of Stockholm (edit) MP3 via Matador

Agent Provocateur just issued Love Me Tender…Or Else, an extremely high-gloss short video reminding its customers not to forget Valentine's Day. Fashion films generally suck, and this one has a lot of annoying things about it, but hey…what, I'm a red-blooded American, what can I say. I believe I have encapsulated the plot fairly well with the photos above, or if you want to perv out, perv, watch it here.

The Times has a pretty fascinating story this morning about surf gangs of the North Coast. Approached by Pacific Standard for comment, Hawaii native SK Honda had this to say: "dude, it's gangsta up there." Read here. (Times photo by Marco Garcia.)

I like this salsa. It's only $1 a can. I'm not sure what the duck has to do with it but it's good.

I'm not crying. It's just raining…on my face

The state of Seattle sports is so craptacular that The New York Times is covering it on the front page this morning. An excerpt:

Erik Denmark, an internationally ranked competitive eater, sat at the bar. He grew up watching Seattle sports and once attempted to eat 40 hot dogs when the Seahawks played in the 40th Super Bowl. “Every week is a new low point,” he said. “It’s pretty ridiculous and pretty comical. It’s hard not to just laugh with cynical depression…everything happened so fast.”

Click here to read the rest. Try not to cry on your keyboard.

Above, Lorin "Big Lo" Sandretzky, watching the Seahawks lose to the Cardinals, 26-20, on Sunday. "I will stay positive," he said. Photography Rod Mar for The New York Times