August 28, 2001
Underleague Cosmic Game Report
Valhalla Minstrels @ Speed City Velocitors |
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This game was more important to the Velocitors than to the Minstrels. The Speedsters are less than two games out of first place in the crowded Underleague pennant race. The Minstrels don't have much of a prayer at 10 games back and this game showed why: the Minstrel pitching staff has been decimated by exhaustion.
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August 27, 2001
Cosmic Baseball Player
Kerouac Archive Sold to New York Public Library |
Jack Kerouac |
The New York Public Library (NYPL) recently purchased, for an undisclosed amount of money, the personal and literary archive of American writer Jack Kerouac. Included in the archive are over one thousand manuscripts and typescripts of novels, short stories, and poems; 130 notebooks, 52 journals from the years 1934-1960, 55 diaries (1956-1969) and nearly two thousand pieces of correspondence.
The archive will be housed and maintained in the NYPL's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.
It will take curators two years to process and catalog the new acquisition. An exhibition of some of the archive will be launched at the Library on March 22, 2002 and continue until July 27, 2002.
Curiously, by agreement with the Kerouac Estate, access to the new archive material will be restricted until 2005 or sooner if Douglas Brinkley completes his so-called "authorized" biography of Kerouac. Apparently, Brinkley has exclusive and unrestricted access to the materials.
According to press reports, among the archive material are two sets of handwritten baseball cards and hundreds of pages documenting and reporting on various Summer League games played between 1936 and 1965. The Summer League was Kerouac's imaginary baseball invention originally created when the he was a young boy living in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Jack Kerouac joined the Cosmic Baseball Association in 1982 as the owner of the Eden Bohemians (CBA's team of novelists, poets, etc.) Since 1995 he has been the starting left fielder of the Dharma Beats, a team once owned by his mother, Gabrielle Kerouac.
Related Links
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August 20, 2001
Cosmic Baseball Player
Woodsox Outfielder Oscar Janiger Dies at 83 |
Oscar Janiger |
Psychedelphia Woodsox outfielder Oscar Janiger died on August 14 in Torrance, California of old age. He was 83. Born in New York City, Janiger moved to California in 1950 and received his MD from the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. One of the earliest LSD researchers, Janiger became a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who, according to Reuters reporter Sarah Tippit, "turned on scores of artists, intellectuals and elite members of Hollywood's entertainment community."
Janiger had taken LSD thirteen times in his life. He spent the years 1954-1962 studying the drug's effect on individuals who knowingly took the drug under his supervision. A cousin of the American poet Allen Ginsberg, Janiger was fascinated by LSD's potential for creative/intellectual work. He devised the "Kachina Doll" experiment to study the effect of LSD on artists.
His work with the powerful psychedelic drug stopped when social and political opposition to the drug emerged in the 1960s.
Tippit reports that after his work with LSD Janiger made several important contributions to medical science including establishing "a relationship between hormonal cycling and pre-menstrual depression in women."
Janiger is survived by a sister and two sons.
As usual, Janiger's corporeal death has no bearing on his status as a cosmic baseball player. Janiger joined the Cosmic Baseball Association as a rookie outfielder with the Woodsox in 1985. He has a career .260 batting average and his name has come up as a possible replacement for Woodsox manager John Lennon. The Woodsox are currently in first place in the Cosmic Middleleague.
Related Links
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August 13, 2001
Cosmic Baseball Players
Summer Nominated Rookie Draft |
Stephen Crane |
Six nominated rookies were selected by five teams during the Nominated Rookie Draft held July 20 in Bhutan. The Eden Bohemians selected two nominees: the American poet Robert Frost and the American writer Stephen Crane, both nominated by Adam Klinker. Peter Tholix nominated and the Bolex Poetics selected filmmaker John Cassavetes. The Delta Dragons picked country musician Hank Williams who was nominated by Denny Smith. Seth Hopkins nominated entertainment personality Ron Howard picked by the Telecity Superbas. Finally, Stephen Cathey, nominated by his wife Cathy Cathey was drafted by the Psychedelphia Woodsox.
The Fall Involuntary Rookie Draft will be held in October.
To nominate a cosmic baseball player, click here.
John Cassavetes
Date Born: 12/9/1929, New York, NY
Date Died: 2/3/1989, Los Angeles, CA
Art (Film director, Writer, Actor, Editor and Producer.)
An American filmmaker who, in the late 50s, brought spontaneity back into a stagnating discipline. Throughout his career he relied on various acting jobs in order to finance his own film projects.
Selected Filmography: As Director: Shadows (1959); Faces (1968); Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)*; A Woman Under the Influence (1974); Gloria (1980). As Actor: The Killers (1964); The Dirty Dozen (1967); Rosemary´s Baby (1968)
Nominated by: Peter Thölix ( peter.tholix@telia.com)
Stephen Cathey
Date Born: 12/20/1948
Date Died: 6/30/1999
Very esoteric personality who loved sports of all types, charlie rose, rush limbaugh, hunter thompson, elmore leonard, fine music, and making great food especially cajun and creole foods. A manly man who would cry in the movies.
Steve was born in richmond, ca 12/20/48. He grew up with his mom and dad and two younger brothers. The family moved quite a bit. Steve graduated from Santa Clara High School in 1967. Steve attended West Valley Community College.One of his early jobs was as a tour guide for the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Ca. Steve worked in retail for most of his adult life and owned his own business for 6 years. Steve married (me) in 1984 and had two children, a daughter in 1985 and a son in 1992.
Steve died on June 30, 1999.
Nominated by: Cathy Cathey (CATJCAT@aol.com)
Stephen Crane
Date Born: 11/1/1871
Date Died: 6/5/1900
Field Category: Literature
His life cut short by tuberculosis, Crane nevertheless shaped American literature with his large corpus of writings. Perhaps best known for his Civil War novel "The Red Badge of Courage," Crane wrote the novel, arguably America's greatest war story, having never witnessed a battle. Crane was an adventurer of romantic proportions. As a college student at Syracuse, Crane played catcher on the baseball team. He served as a correspondent in the Spanish-American War and the Greco-Turkish War, and saw combat in both which provided him with experience enough to write hundreds of short stories and sketches. He was also fascinated with life in New York's Bowery, and turned out another novel, "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets."
As a naturalist, Crane decried 19th-century America's fanatic religiosity, most brutally handled in his poetry. His journalistic style was hard-hitting and coupled with his philosophy, inspired such later writers as Hemingway. He remained a globetrotter and subtle artisan despite his declining health. He died at 28 in Badenweiler, Germany.
Nominated by: Adam J. Klinker (ajklinker@hotmail.com)
Robert Frost
Date Born: 3/26/1874
Date Died: 1/29/1963
Field Category: Literature
As the most prominent American poet of the 20th century, Frost is well known for his vivid depictions of life in New England, although he himself was born in San Francisco. He was transplanted in New Hampshire shortly after his father's death in 1885.
He was a rugged artisan, and the themes of isolation and stolid perseverance run through his poetry. His personal life was tragic, as his children suffered difficult lives and his only son committed suicide. Frost himself was an alcoholic and often placed his aritistic career ahead of his family's well-being. Nonetheless, he produced perhaps the finest and broadest collection of any American poet.
Nominated by: Adam J. Klinker (ajklinker@hotmail.com)
Hank Williams
Date Born: 9/23/1923
Date Died: 1/1/1953
Field Category: Music
Hiriam "Hank" Williams became one of the most famous and enduring figures in the history of country music, and of American pop culture in general. Born in rural Alabama, Hank Williams was taught to play the guitar at age 8 by a black blues musician, Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne. At the age of 13, Hank organized his first band, "The Drifting Cowboys." His recording career began in 1947 with Sterling Records. Hank scored his first hit, "Honky Tonkin'" there. He achieved his biggest success with MGM REcords, though, where he recorded "Lovesick Blues" in 1949. That single catapulted him to superstardom, and he went on to write and sing other legendary songs such as "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Hey, Good Lookin'."
Throughout his career, though, Hank was plagued by alcoholism and and spina bifida, a painful, near-fatal curvature of the spine. His rigorous touring schedule only heightened his health problems, and Hank died under mysterious circumstances in the back of a limo on New Year's Day, 1953, presumably of an alcohol overdose.
Nominated by: Denny Smith (gashousegang@earthlink.net)
Ron Howard
Date Born: 3/1/1954
Field Category: Show Business
Occupations: Actor, Director, Writer, Producer. Claim to Fame: 1974-80: Richie Cunningham on the long-running ABC sitcom Happy Days. Significant Other(s): Wife: Cheryl Alley, writer; married June 7, 1975; has appeared in most of her husband's films (in nonspeaking roles); Family: Mother: Jean Howard (aka Jean Speegle Howard), actress; Father: Rance Howard, actor; has appeared in most of Ron's films; Brother: Clint, actor; has appeared in most of his brother's films; best known as the child lead of TV's Gentle Ben (CBS, 1967-69); Daughter: Bryce Dallas, born in 1981; Daughter: Jocelyn Carlyle, twin; born in 1985; Daughter: Paige Carlyle, twin; born in 1985; Son: Reed, born in 1987. Awards: ShowEast George Eastman Award: presented by National Association of Theater Owners; 1995: Directors Guild of America: Theatrical Direction; 1997-98: Emmy: Outstanding Miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon; shared award; 1998: Golden Satellite: Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, From the Earth to the Moon; shared award; 1998: Golden Globe: Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, From the Earth to the Moon. Factoids: Three of Howard's four children are named for the places they were conceived: Bryce Dallas in Dallas; Paige Carlyle and Jocelyn Carlyle at the Hotel Carlyle in New York City.
Education: Burroughs High School, Burbank, California; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; attended briefly; left to pursue career.
Nominated by: Seth Hopkins (seth_hopkins@yahoo.com)
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August 6, 2001
Personal Cosmic Game Report
Cucumber Cultivars @ Macadamia Nut Cultivars |
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Nuts and Vegetables. Does that sound like a crazy idea for a cosmic baseball game? Our friends in the Cultivar League (much like our compadres playing in the Clone League) always provide some interesting cosmic baseball moments. Today's game was no different.
How exciting was the seventh inning homerun by Beaumont, a popular Macadamia cultivar? Or the outstanding pitching by Waimanalo, winner of the game's MCP award?
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August 1, 2001
Lists
Mid-Summer Reading List |
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| Category |
Title |
Author |
| Baseball, General |
Playing Hardball: The Dynamics of Baseball Folk Speech |
Laurence Frank |
| Baseball, Biography |
Joe DiMaggio: A Hero's Life |
Richard Ben Cramer |
| Beat Generation |
Paradise Outlaws: Remembering the Beats |
John Tytell |
| For Women |
Mars Arena |
James Axler |
| For Men |
Delta of Venus |
Anais Nin |
| For Citizens |
The Autobiography of Malcolm X |
Malcolm X |
| For Lawyers |
Bartelby the Scrivener |
Herman Melville |
| For Doctors |
Long Day's Journey Into Night |
Eugene O'Neill |
| Poetry |
The Mind Fuck of Poetry |
Anna Marie Kersade |
| Inspiration |
Metaphors on Vision |
Stan Brakage |
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