Friday, November 29, 2002

Still Searching for Bobby Fischer

A&L Daily (so glad it's back, one of the best sites on the web) linked a story the other day about Bobby Fischer's recent broadcasts on a Phillipine radio station. The story ("Bobby Fischer's Pathetic Endgame") was a concise and interesting overview of his career, spotlighting the incidents that make his total descent into hatemongering unsurprising.

 Bobby Fischer is one of those guys I bet you had on your college campus (I'm thinking of two from UConn back in the day: 'Lurch' and 'Physics Phil'), a genius -- maybe in the Engineering school -- with astonishing intellectual capacity in a particular field, but otherwise considered a lunatic for things like sleeping in a winter coat on a bare mattress, showering in his clothes, subsisting mainly on raw potatoes, and the like.

 I was never a chess buff, but I remember watching PBS back in the mid-70's, when they covered the World Championships with a big pegboard to show the moves, and being occasionally interested in Fischer's antics. I'm a big fan of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer which, having nothing to do with Fischer himself, at least brings the name to mind each time I walk past my DVD rack. Anyways, Fischer is a character, if only in the 'just because you are one doesn't mean you have any' sense); a tie from my lifetime to the coldest days of the Cold War, a broken genius in an irrelevant field, basically a spectacle -- the car wreck from which it's difficult to look away.

 Turns out Fischer and his family have a thick FBI dossier and he may have been recruited to spy for the Soviets. One can only imagine what kind of information the KGB might have prized that they suspected Fischer would be able to supply? The guy was always one step away from wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes.

Related: The Radio Interviews (Reads as if it may be Bobby's own page, certainly written by an ardent admirer.) / "I Was Tortured in a Pasadena Jailhouse!" / The Worldwide Church of God / bobbyfischer.net


Saturday, November 23, 2002

The Music and The Vines at Lupo's

Back from seeing The Music and The Vines at Lupo's. Gotta get up early to help Stevie with the move, so no long, drunk ramble, but I'll tell ya it was good show. Same bill is playing somewhere in Hartford tomorrow, worth checking out for those in the area.

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Atkins

In the life-imitating art category [cf. Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973)], High-Fat Diet Shows Promise in Study.
"After years of dismissing the high-fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, the medical establishment is at last putting it to a careful test and finding it might not be the nutritional folly they long assumed."

Saturday, November 2, 2002

Day In The Life (Of A Deadbeat)

Look, I'm sorry about that whole Antibacterial-Samhain investigative journalism fiasco. That kind of blogging isn't my modus operandi. Not really. I'm more about the slice of life vignette. The poignant sudden story that gives you an "in" ... a short, sharp shock of c-dog sympatico. That's what it's all about, dear reader. Me and you: connecting. I'm not going to google news, or anywhere else, for this morning's post. I'm staying right here at home. This is all about sitting 'round at home on a Saturday a.m. with yours truly.

7:00 a.m.-ish: Whoa. Way too early to be up on Saturday. Tif's still sleeping. Go back to sleep.

8:00 a.m.-ish: What?! Awake again? No. This won't do.

10:00 a.m.-ish: Tif's awake. Why? There's no hurry. Oh yeah, she's going to Boston today with her friend Sonia to get some lunch at P.F. Chang's. Girls' day out. I'm awake now, but I think I'll take a little nap before getting out of bed.

10:23 a.m.: OK, now I'm ready to start my day. What to do? It's Saturday morning and I've got nowhere to be ... let's watch some cartoons. All the cartoons on tv suck. Got those eps of Home Movies I burned, let's watch some of those. Back upstairs and into bed to watch cartoons on the computer.

10:25 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.: 3 ep Home Movies marathon. That's good stuff. Coach McGuirk, man, that guy kills me. "I can't get involved with a co-worker. Look, how old are you?" "18." "OK, potentially, I could get involved with a co-worker."

11:48 a.m.: Breakfast. Should I shower first? It can wait. Not feeling up to taking on the Oral B brush, so a quick little old school toothbrushing and I'm ready for a bowl of Crunch Berries. Still hungry. Put some water on for oatmeal and brew a pot of coffee. Getting better.

12:00 p.m. Breakfast accomplished. What now? Doot-de-doot-do-doo... [rocks on balls of feet for a moment] Phone's ringing. Do telemarketers call on Saturday? Don't want to chance it. Phone stops, then starts again. It's code; Tif knows I won't pick up unless somebody rings once or twice, then calls right back. If telemarketers ever catch on, I'm going to have to get the phone disconnected. Tif's a sweetheart. She misses me. Wants to let me know I don't have to do whatever it was she asked me to do this morning, she had time to take care of it. Asked me to do something? Hmmm. I vaguely remember something ... about something ... now that she mentions it, but I play along like I was just about to do it so I'm glad she called.

That pretty much takes us up to now. Got a few more downloads to clear off the hard drive, so I guess I should get started on that. Maybe play a little Puresim ... phones ringing again. No quick ring back. I'm not falling for that. Hey, the Badgers are playing Iowa ESPN. That's something. Catch y'all later. I'll update as events warrant. Oh, there's a new Boneyard in my inbox. I'm going to get that loaded up sometime today, so keep an eye out!
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