Sixers Win

They are finally showing the sixers on television. It was the seventh game of the series with Milwaukee yesterday, and what an awesome game. Philadelphia won. Now they have to somehow find a way to defeat Los Angeles, a team that has looked unbeatable. It promises to be quite a show. If Milwaukee had defeated the Sixers, I don't think they would have had much of a chance to beat the Lakers, but the Sixers have the defense and the rebounding to keep it close. The series starts Wednesday at 6 p.m., so I'm going to try to get a couple of friends over to watch it. Wish me luck. Earl's very married. And Devon's wife just gave birth to a baby girl, Isabella.

I'm supposed to go to "Pearl Harbor" tonight, and I loath to go, knowing somewhat what to expect: vapid triteness and good actors embarrassing themselves with melodrama of such galactically hysterical proportions that it makes vaudeville look like serious art. I mean, Alex Baldwin is an accomplished actor, so why would he agree to do this movie. Cuba Gooding, I can understand. But is this the same Alex Baldwin who does such a good job in Glenn Garry Glenn Ross? Now I have to sit through three hours of mind numbing drivel.

I just came back from my first visit to the new library. It's large so it seems very sparse. That word, "very," creeps into my sentences all the time. It's a pointless word. Either the place appears sparse or not, adding "very" doesn't help me visualize it any better. I took out a couple of books, of course -- Numbers in the Dark by Italo Calvino; and Steering the Craft by Ursula le Guin, about writing. I like to read books about writing, they inspire me for some reason, almost like an injection of amphetamines straight into the cerebral mainline. The jazz. But it's an artificial tonic. What I need to do is develop my own music, my own momentum and rhythmic swing, pushing higher and higher until it cranks over three hundred and sixty and keeps cranking over like the camshaft of an engine, the momentum doing much of the work. One gets that from actual writing, the story builds its own momentum but it's hard to begin and even harder to keep dutifully attentive to what you are being asked to write.

They had some books for sale. I picked up The Outsider aka The Stranger by Albert Camus for 30 cents. I thought at the time I might read it again, but now I'm not so sure.