Backlogged

G-Man attributes my recent silence to despair over the Sox meltdown of the past week. And while it’s been hard to find creative inspiration amid this recent disaster, I haven’t been ignoring the blog entirely. I’ve just not been able to find the time to compose. As a result I have a long backlog of items I need to address. And just to keep my readers from losing faith entirely, I want to give everyone a preview of postings to come.

On the baseball front, I have developed two theories about Eric Gagne, or Gag-me as I think his name is properly pronounced. The first theory is that he is a Trojan horse, a Yankee sabotage; and that while he wears the RedSox uniform, and is paid a salary by the Sox, his Swiss bank account is growing exponentially, thanks to cash deposits funded by Steinbrenner, and carried abroad by Carl Pavano. They’re making a movie about this theory; I think Matt Damon will play Gag-me. The other theory is that Tito Francona is using Gag-me to destroy RedSox complacency. Tito worried that with a big lead, the Sox would become lazy and lack motivation. They needed to stumble, and to fight their way into the post-season in order to play well come October. Just don’t forget to get up after stumbling, huh Tito? The validity of this theory will only become known a month from now. Suffice it to say that this strategy, as wise as it may seem, has give the Nation a collective heart attack, or at least a chronic case of heartburn.

Another baseball posting concerns the overall inconsistent season for every team vying for a playoff spot. I spoke to my friend Matt the other day – a die-hard Mets fan – and he was not only despairing, but talking of drastic measures to wreak vengeance on those among the Mets organization, who have aided and abetted their recent collapse. This pattern is pretty much true for all the teams who look likely to play in October. The Yankees are the only team that seems to have engineered this inconsistency in the correct fashion. They got most of their crappy play out of the way in April and May, and look to be in the best position coming into the post-season. But as the past few years have shown, it’s going to be about the pitching more than anything else, and that hasn’t been the Yankees strong suit. How about the Padres in the World Series?

When I get back to writing about whisky, and I have continued my research efforts on a regular basis, despite the recent lack of postings, I want to talk more about Aberlour. Maybe I’m beating that topic to death, but I can’t get over this whisky. Right now, although the 12 is my regular malt of choice, the A’Bunadh, the cask strength whisky, seems to call out to me at all hours. It has more flavor, glass after glass, and sip after sip, than any other highland malt, and perhaps almost any other malt, period. Matter of fact, as soon as I finish here, I’m pouring myself one.

But the biggest backlog has arisen from all the Biblical literature I’ve been reading. Danny got me to look at Heschel; I’ve been reading Bloom’s Book of J; and more recently, I acquired two volumes of scholarship, or exegesis, or analysis, whatever you want to call it, of Genesis. One is Joseph’s Bones, by Jerome Segal, and seems to stem from the modern or reform tradition. The other is Understanding Genesis, by Nahum Sarna, from quite the other end of the spectrum, at least our modern American spectrum. I’ve read a bunch of Bloom, and only a bit of the other two, but I can report that I’ve yet to find any satisfactory explanation for the Akeidah, my personal departure point for trying to understand the wisdom of Abraham. In other words, even though I’m hardly a scholar when it comes to Biblical matters, I’m finding that my understanding of the Akeidah is better than any of the traditional interpretations, all of which fail to withstand even cursory examination. But there’s hardly time for all of this right now, and there will be even less time, as we move through October, unless of course the Sox continue their free-fall, and miss the post season entirely. If that happens, I will need Abraham to distract me from my despondency, and will undoubtedly fill these pages with endless commentary on the Patriarchs.

But assuming that doesn’t happen, it will take some time for me to wade through J, and to explain why both the traditional and reform understanding of what happened on Mt. Moriah are incorrect. Talk about hubris.