The Writer's Life 10/22 - Bling, Blang, Blung

While I don't ignore modern pop culture, a lot of it eludes me, as fascinating as it often is. This morning I learned there are vending machines that dispense jewelry. A brief item in the NY Post informs of a robbery of one at a Brooklyn hotel. The thief used bogus credit cards. The machine carried locket necklaces and silver link chains ranging in price from $165 to $1588 - when you just got to have some new bling. Here's a pic - as far as I know, it's not the one that was hit:

According to ESPN Stats and Info, Justin Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens has been the most accurate kicker in NFL history. He'd made all 78 of his field-goal attempts from 33 yards or less in his career. He'd never missed an extra point. That adds up to 300 straight conversions from 33 yards or less. So yesterday when his team scored with 24 seconds left in its game with New Orleans, OT seemed a lock. He missed, sending shock waves throughout pro football. I was unable to find definitive stats on overall extra point percentage in 2018, but in watching highlights of games on youtube it seems an awful lot have been errant. The league added a lot of drama when it increased the distance in 2015. It was a great move. 

Good thing I broke out my heavy coat, as the brilliant sunshine the weatherman predicted didn't materialize. My thanks to the gentleman who bought Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and to Boston-born Barry, who, giddy about the Sox and Patriots, overcompensated me for Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and the Evergreen Review Reader, a collection of pieces, many by Beat Generation writers, published in the literary magazine from 1957-'67. Founded by Barney Rossett, publisher of Grove Press, it continued until 1973 and included the work, besides Beat authors, of the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, LeRoi Jones. Jean Genet, Günter Grass, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Tom Stoppard, Derek Walcott, Malcolm X, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Albee and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Michael O'Donoghue of SNL fame was one of its illustrators. The zine was  revived in 1998 in a web edition edited by founder Barney Rosset and his wife Astrid Myers. The online version ceased publication in 2013 and was revived in March 2017 by John Oakes as publisher and Dale Peck as editor-in-chief. (Facts from Wiki)

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