Vjesná Svjashchjénnaja / Le Sacre du Printemps / My First Time at the Plate

Spring 2009

Welcome to the inaugural post of Blaiserblog. I'm Blaiser; this is my blog.

Let me first thank Tom Willner for setting this up for me; thanks, also, are due to everyone who has expressed interest in my writing, or encouraged me to launch this sucker, especially Suzanne Hevner.

So... what to expect on BlaiserBlog?

I like to write about everyday inanity, outrageous juxtapositions and Swedish fish.

Lately, I've been the early bird, but the worm frequently snaps in half as I'm pulling him from the ground. Life is like that.

Speaking of which, I roll through it--life--generally agog, a country boy working in the city, a lover of books and upland hunting, an approximater of poetry and a hack on the piano. In my wildest dreams, I'm the Dread Pirate Roberts. Most days, however, I'm a mix between Pig Pen and Potsie--an extraneous crooner with an impressive cloud of detritus in his wake.

Some random things to ponder for March 26, 2009:

Now that Curt Schilling has retired from baseball, will Jesus still want the Red Sox to win?

You may already have won $10 million....

If I get half as many visitors to this blog as Martha Stewart's dogs get on their blog, I'll have more audience than most first-time novelists... Woof.

Since I'm now testing the waters outside of the warm, squishy comforts of Facebook, and this is an actual blog, and not a test, you'll get some instructions on where to go and what to check out.

So here's a topic: Children's books are the bullet-trains of transportative literature. The bedtime story, it turns out, is an occasional battleground for my son, Benjamin, and myself--last year was "Around the Harry Potter Canon in 365 Days...". But at this writing, we're five chapters into his latest pick: my favorite, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame's dreamy turn-of-the-century classic. (A more literary adventure for 8-year-olds I have not found.)

I'm acutely aware that I'll have one shot at this, really--it's doubtful he'd sit through the whole thing again, so I'm relishing every page and giving my best performance. Benjamin, for his part, loves it, and patiently listens when the author inevitably soujourns into ornate, descriptive bramble, just as lost as Mr. Mole in the Wild Wood. The copy I have is a well-loved hand-me-down from my aunts and uncles, and sports wondrous full-page color illustrations by Ernest Shepard. I can hardly wait for the Battle Royale against the ferrets, weasels and stoats at the end. It'll be great.

One of the great joys of childhood is that there are several classic books for small people, and a bunch of smart guys have had the audacity, apparently, to take their best shot at transferring one of them to the big screen. Here's their handiwork:

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/where-the-wild-things-are/trailer

This trailer has just hit the Zeit-Consciousness-Bahn, and like countless others, I'm passing it along 'cause I liked it. Perhaps you will, too. Beg pardon, but I'm off to mark my calendar for October 16...

Comment at will below. Tell your friends and neigbors. And thanks for reading.