Balls in Lithuania

I surrender. No longer can I pretend I’m uninterested in the Big Baller Ball Family. In fact, I sense I’m going to write about them whenever I get the urge. I don’t care father LaVar, aside from Donald Trump, is the most obnoxious man in the nation. It doesn’t matter he gets more publicity than…

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A Dawn

Packed in a dark city canyon we march with bayonet faces to the Great War. We march for our country and those who say we must fight. We march toward bullets, shells, and trenches. We march to A Dawn many never see. Notes: A Dawn was painted by C.R.W. Nevinson in 1914. A Dawn by…

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Young Kings Routed

Sunday afternoon as I tried to nap I received a call from an aggrieved Sacramento Kings fan who upbraided me because the coach, Dave Joerger, had finally started the young, potential-laden five I’d been demanding for weeks, and look what happened: the Washington Wizards outmanned, outmaneuvered, and outshot the local lads to lead at halftime…

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LaMelo Ball at the Crossroads

I’d rather concentrate on passing virtuoso Lonzo Ball, who as a rookie seems poised to spearhead the resurgence of his hometown Los Angeles Lakers, or UCLA freshman LiAngelo and his task of making a rather heavy-footed game work against more athletic players his size and larger. Instead, boastful father LaVar has compelled me to write…

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Hot Tweet

from erect tweeter trump declares secretary of state tillerson wasting time talking to little rocket man in north korea where the donald will do what has to be done

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Puerto Rican Tweet

hurricane devours puerto rican food water and electricity and san juan mayor begs u.s. to save people from dying at one of his golf courses trump tweets such poor leadership from mayor and others who can’t get their workers to help

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Sunday Morning in the Mines

Are you looking at my legs? I bet you are because they’re the best damn legs of anyone in Sunday Morning in the Mines. I know you wonder how my pants, held high by my chest, got those big holes. I don’t remember and don’t want to after another six days digging for gold in…

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Letters from Two Basketball Coaches

Launching a book isn’t as prolonged as writing one, but it’s a tension-filled time of making sure the cover and text are editorially and graphically sound, that plenty of electronic and physical copies are sent to readers and potential reviewers who may be interested, and that internet advertising options are chosen to disperse the new…

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Happy Hairston in Shower

On a fall evening in 1967, Rick Barry isn’t at Sacramento High School. Neither is Oscar Robertson. Barry after two splendid seasons with the San Francisco Warriors is sitting out this one in order to later earn more money by playing in the wild new American Basketball Association of multi-colored balls and three-point shots. I…

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“Basketball and Football” is Published

In a rousing trip through the worlds of Basketball and Football, George Thomas Clark explores the professional basketball league in Mexico, the Herculean talents of Wilt Chamberlain, the difficulties and humor of attempting to play basketball in middle age, and observes that coaching at Caltech can be more painful than studying all night for a…

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Mayweather Writes to McGregor

Dear Conor, I’m quite comfortable writing you this letter because I know it’ll intimidate you and at the same time offer a generous warning about what’s going to happen when we enter the boxing ring in three weeks and all our insipid promotional talk won’t matter. You aren’t going to make this boy dance and…

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Extra Credit

I don’t like elementary school much because in books letters jump around or reverse themselves, and my friends read faster and get better grades and that’s okay, but I don’t want to flunk so I go to teachers and say, “Can I do extra credit projects?” “Like what?” “I’ll turn in some drawings and find…

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Kerry James Marshall Paints Big

Skin Portrait of the Artist & a Vacuum, 1981 my black ass smiles a missing tooth over a vacuum i never use Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Super Model, 1994 photographers ignore my face until i bury it in dirty blond hair When Frustration Threatens Desire, 1990 black cat black snake black glove black…

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Candlestick by the Bay

On a wet gray day late in December 2015 I was driving north on 101, telling my wife about great childhood adventures in the sixties when our family journeyed to Candlestick Park to watch the San Francisco Giants. We would come in the other way, from Sacramento through the city by the bay, and I…

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Age of Consent

A California man I knew long ago is currently in the hot waters of moral indignation and lust for punishment. His alleged crime: having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl, whom I shall correctly call a woman, from June to September a few years ago. At the time he was fifty-four. The district attorney, no doubt…

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Walter Challenges Margaret Keane

All right. You’ve read them. You should have. There are plenty of interviews when Margaret Keane admits she wouldn’t have had a career in art unless I’d virtually swept her off the streets and romanced and married her while teaching her to paint and permitting her to accompany me to exhibitions and benefit from the…

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Picasso and Rivera Talk

Really, this is quite unusual, self-portraits talking to each other from a wall on either side of a gallery door. The man on the left, a short muscular brute standing bare-chested, says, “Get out of that frame.” “Okay, as long as you do, too.” Pablo Picasso, cocky at age twenty-five in 1906, steps naked, it…

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