To be Daniel Okrent for a week...

OK, I've finally found another job I want. At least for a week.

If you've seen the incomparable Ken Burns "Baseball" documentary or read the New York Times the last few years, you know the name Daniel Okrent. And if you've ever played fantasy baseball, you owe him thanks.

Okrent created Rotisserie League Baseball back in the late 1970s. He was one of the best talking heads on Burns' ode to our national pastime. More importantly he is an accomplished writer and editor.

He has written a blog this week for Paris Review's website. As if I needed yet another reason to want to be back in Manhattan...

Bredesen gives Haslam some advice...

In today's New York Times, Phil Bredesen gives some advice to his successor, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam.

Egypt and the Spirit of '76

Points to ponder here, from the pen of columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, for anyone who still believes in the Spirit of '76.

How I finally landed in the 21st century

Well, it seems I blinked and have landed smack dab in the middle of the 21st century.

Hope you and yours had a Merry Christmas. Mine was fantastic. Even got some snow. OK, so I got a migraine, too. Nothing is perfect.

But back to this new century business. I guess I got the ball rolling by asking for -- and receiving -- an Amazon Kindle as a Christmas present. I had hesitated for a long while, waiting to see where eBooks were headed, saw a demonstration and decided I wanted one. Jennifer bought it for me.

Early verdict: I love it.

After a few pages you forget you're holding an electronic device. The screen's font isn't like a computer's. Think back to the Etch-A-Sketch. No glare in sunlight, either.

It's lightweight. It holds a ton of stuff. Purchases are backed up on the Internet. Books can be yours in less than a minute.

I am also trying out the New York Times free for two months. That is especially handy given that finding a copy of The Paper of Record in Halls is a bit like finding an atheist in a foxhole. It ain't easy. I am mulling over giving up my printed version of The New Yorker magazine when it comes due in May in favor of the Kindle edition. We'll see.

Downloaded and read my first book, an excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Yesterday, I found a copy of Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" for a whopping 88 cents. A bunch of titles, slipped into the public domain, are free or close to it. A nice feature is the ever-present dictionary. All you have to do is move your cursor to the word and, presto. So much for keeping that telephone book-sized college dictionary on the coffee table.

The good news is that the Kindle (and Nook, and iPad, etc.) appears to be complementing, as opposed to replacing, traditional books. Not every novel will appear in Kindle form. Some books you're still going to want to collect, or put on the shelf, or just hold in your hands.

If that weren't enough, pal Dean Harned went overboard and bought me a Blu-Ray player. Still can't believe it.

Bought a documentary on Hawaii that Jenn and I watched over the weekend. It looks stunning. Haven't yet bought a feature-length movie that was originally filmed in HD. But I have to say that "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Elvis On Tour" both look fantastic -- and even standard DVDs look better on the Blu-Ray.

Then, to beat it all, Jenn brought over the Nintendo Wii that she's yet to take out of the box. Haven't felt like hooking it up yet, but I'm going to get the Wii Fit and try to lose 15 or 20 pounds. Plus, I want to bowl and play baseball, too.

Something old, something new, something borrowed -- but it's made me anything but something blue!

An endangered species?

Sometimes I fear for the future of this country.

Oh, that's hyperbole. A better way of saying it is I wonder what will happen in the next 30 years.

Let's forget about the economy for a second -- it is too depressing -- and talk about a subject near and dear to my heart.

Literacy.

I yelled and screamed in an earlier blog about the downturn in reading. I won't repeat myself.

But I read a few minutes ago in the New York Times that the Washington Post has decided to eliminate its stand-alone Book World section. Such content will be spread between two other sections.

The Post says the advertising -- or lack of it -- didn't justify the print costs. That is a trend. The modern-day newspaper -- or at least the corporate suits that run them -- don't value the department that creates the reason one purchases the product. It is all about the almighty dollar. Same, too, for magazines. There was a time, if you can believe it, when the New Yorker didn't even print advertisements.

All isn't lost. I suspect that the newspaper of tomorrow will be a Web site. If I weren't poor, I would buy an Amazon Kindle. What a neat contraption.

The traditionalist in me will forever enjoy curling up with a tangible book. But, frankly, I will support anything that promotes reading for pleasure.

My biggest complaint about the plethora of so-called "reality shows" is that networks favor them because they don't have to pay writers. Call me crazy, but I don't think any of this bodes well for the future.

History repeats itself. I can't help but think the pendulum will swing the other way.

I just hope the ink-stained scribe doesn't become extinct before it does.

Good 'Times'

I've almost forgotten what it's like to read an engaging, solid, well-written daily newspaper.

Felt like crap today. Some kind of intestinal bug. It's such that I'm not going to see Robinella tonight, if that tells you anything, which it should.

Was able to get out this morning long enough to secure a Sunday Times. The Halls Kroger either doesn't stock it anymore or was sold out by 11 a.m. I headed south and found one -- the last one -- at the Fountain City Kroger. Hey, I'm not complaining. If it weren't for Kroger, I'd have had to drive all the way to West Knoxville.

So, I've sat here in my chair all afternoon, sipping Sprite and eating toast. Not fun.

But, I've been reading the Times, too, with baseball playing in the background. And guess what? It's taken me all afternoon just to get through the A section. Something else might take you 10 minutes to scan through its entire contents. At this rate, though, I don't know when I'll make it back to the sports section or the book review.

Meanwhile, the Tigers took care of bid'ness against the A's and the Angels just completed a sweep of the Yankees at the Big A. I've been looking in on the Olympics, but missed what I wanted to see -- the U.S./China basketball game.

Back to the paper, I guess. Read an interesting piece about a little-remembered December 1975 bombing of a baggage terminal at LaGuardia. Apparently the major suspect (the perpetrators were never caught; no one, in fact, was charged) was deported in July after his life sentence was paroled on another crime.

Just for the hell of it, I looked at Amtrak rates from Charlotte to Penn Station. I can get up there and back for less than $200. Part of me wants to make it up to Yankee Stadium before it closes this September. Doubt I can get decently priced tickets at this point, though.

Oh, well. I'll get to the new park, I guess. Maybe next spring.

Late night nostalgia

Well, this sure puts my blog to shame...

People ask me all the time if I'd been happier had I been born a generation before my time. The short, simple answer is yes.

Honest answer, though, is no. I feel like I get the best of both worlds -- plenty of nostalgia, but with modern technology and convenience. I'd hate to think about putting together our newspapers without desktop computers, for example.

Anyway, to my point. Discovered last night while looking for something else classic clips from Dick Cavett's old late night ABC television show. Very quickly for those who don't know, Cavett was ABC's early '70s competition to Johnny Carson's beloved, ever-popular NBC program. Cavett was intelligent, quirky, and tended to attract eclectic guests -- everybody from Norman Mailer to John Lennon.

Found out, too, that Cavett writes a funny, erudite blog for the New York Times. It can be found at http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com. Treat yourself to it for a few minutes.

A few days after the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman died, TCM played an entire interview Cavett did with him in the early '70s. I think it was Bergman's American TV debut. Happened to catch it one night when I couldn't sleep. It was fascinating stuff, light-years away from the drivel you'd get on Letterman or Leno.

Surely there's room for such intelligent talk on TV today. Oh, I think Charlie Rose comes close, even if he doesn't ask hard questions and lacks, or at least doesn't display, Cavett's offbeat sense of humor. But you'll never see anything like this (or even what's on Charlie Rose's engaging show) on the Big Four, at least not in the late night time slot.

Take a few minutes and perform a "Dick Cavett" search on YouTube if you get time. If you're a movie buff, be sure and watch the interviews with Orson Welles. That guy was a genius, I don't care what anybody says.

OK, that's enough for now. Peace out. Gotta get back to work.