Liqueur is spelled with two u's, ouzo with two o's

I am an awful sport.

And it truly mangled my soul to see that Kasey's team lost in 4 overtimes to North Carolina last night in the championship. The ouzo at the greek tavern didn't help me commiserate either.  I was following the match on the Twitter and donning my Maryland visor with avuncular pride. It's really hard for me to be a supporter of a team because the emotional investment makes me die a little each time, win or lose. For eleven years in Australia I was completely ambivalent to a fan's life of sport. Ironically I read both A Fan's Life and A Sport and a Pastime while there and even though the sport in the latter is sex, well I forgot what my point was. H emailed me to say he was reading it the other night. I don't love the book. He had been drinking whisky.

I don't know if it was the greek liqueur, my horrendous sleep schedule from the holiday inn, street-facing placement of my new bedroom (Johnny Boy is moving in and I am giving him my bedroom because it's bigger and he wants to set up his drum kit) or the lacrosse match or or the pacers game, or or or all of the above, but I awoke in the middle of the night paralyzed by the world and darned if I could exit the bed to relieve myself of the water and the terror of my own existence!

Anyways, I am so glad that I flew back east to see her play.

I sent a text

Im too destroyed for mias 2nite. Gonna chill instead and I would suggest u all do the same.

Maryland, Home of the Battle of 1812

Visited family in Maryland for the first time in twenty years, which means my next visit will be when I'm sixty. Stayed long enough for my phone to die and my camera and my iPOD to die also. A little power is all that is needed to revive them however. My phone battery is in my carry-on, but I am not too fussed about that. It died in the middle of a text to tim-tam. I do wonder if it sent. Took some snaps of Baltimore. Had a great time. Saw my niece play lacrosse. Kasey tends goal. This is really quite significant. Those ladies are undefeated and number one, watching them is a blur of speed and power. They have very good traction and only slip when they are tripped. 

Here's a photo of me with their star Katie, who looks a lot like my high school girlfriend, a celebrated Olympian with unreal thighs. 

They're currently in the Final Four at Villanova atop Syracuse at half 7-4. We ate crab claws dipped in spicy green chile sauce before the game. We drank beer in the rain before, during and after the game. Also vodka tonics (That was when the sun was out). It was rather muggy. There was a huge tailgate party afterwards, then we went and saw some of my sister's boyfriend's brother's world-class taxidermy.

Me and my other niece, I have two, they are twins, spent my last day at the Baltimore Museum of Art. We witnessed a great many things. I fell in love with the Matisse. 

We stared monumentally hard at Rodin's monumental thinker. 

The classical art and the children were like seraphs with beautiful perfect skin, yet their hands were strangely misshapen. Matisse's women hilariously reminded me of my brassy grandma. Afterwards, I had a telltale ale to make up for missing E.A.'s grave.

Don't understand why the Mona Lisa is such an attraction when Picasso's such as this exist 

Not to be outdone dad caught a rockfish.

On eloquence

Russel Westbrook, on his season-ending knee injury (never to be mistaken for Gore Vidal):

I want to play in every game as long I'm able to walk, but this time I wasn't able to walk around like I'm supposed to

Found this inscrutable note to H scribbled on the back of an old worksheet

Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is like if Oregonian sportswriter Dwight Jaynes tried to shoot a music video from the free throw line.

Good evening

Foxygen are a badly named bad band with a really good single called No Destruction. The rest of the album is a stinker. I wanted to text timtam and tell her that the album gave me an aural stomachache because for 16 hours my tummy hurt. It was my ears this time that were hurting. I had downloaded it and went on a bike ride that was cut short from the peppering of wind and rain that I got peppered with. I expected the album to be better , it is awful and then I went and sold it back from where I bought it for half of what I paid and bought another record, Nite Jewel's debut album, which compared to Foxygen is literally the greatest album of all-time and I mean that Nite Jewel's Good Evening is that amazing, in so many ways. 

Those are her shoes on the right and her getting sandwiched by Alex and me above. She didn't love the idea of getting her picture taken with us back in Austin in 2012, but who would? It was nice. We were cool.

I gambled and I lost today on music which almost never or rarely happens, but it sure feels like a win in how Nite Jewel redeemed my faith in music again. The reason it took me so long to get this album is because her last album was good, but I kind of need things to be remarkable these days. Did I mention that on my bike ride I have never seen so many prairie dogs running their little asses off to get to their hole? 

I am appreciating the new Eat Skull as I know Lindsey Buckingham would

Naked Lunch, to these brains, is the great American novel of the modern era. H threw it across the room as a reaction to how queezey it made him. It's not for the faint of stomach, but the humor is immortal. Here's a description of him in the Paris Review by whom sadly I shant recall:

William Burroughs, met in Paris,

is an absolutely astonishing personage, with the grim mad face of Savonarola and a hideously tailored 1925 shit-colored overcoat and scarf to match and a gray fedora pulled down tight around his ears. He reminded me of nothing so much as a mean old Lesbian and is a fantastic reactionary, very prim and tight-lipped and proper who spoke of our present Republican administration as that “dirty group of Reds.”

The Beats live on. James Franco's impersonation of Ginsberg in the Howl film is terrific. What a well-made film! The language of Howl and Naked Lunch are outstandingly well-suited to each other.

McGuane salutes Kerouauc in his essay Roping, From A to B.

There has been a great effort to discredit Kerouac, but i won't hear a word against him. He trained us in the epic idea that the region was America, and that you don't necessarily have to take it in Penciltucky forever just because you were there when your hour had come round at last. It was called On the Road. Kerouac set me out there with my own key to the highway...

My time in Australia told me that there was a lot I didn't know about the U.S. I talk to the nifty Navajo about sunrise puberty ceremonies and appreciable tears of wonder flood my eyes. I've been at the Holiday Inn for a few weeks now. Once again, I am contentedly surrounded by kooks. You meet interesting people coming and going, but the staff themselves are hilarious. This just in: the lone sausage fixed my high school basketball coach's oven today and l.s. reports back coach says I was too slow and still owe him laps.

LB and friends' Tusk is the album I have listened to with the greatest scrutiny in 2013. A candied ear thing of prismatic wonder.

Margarita party tonight. Guests are instructed to bring anything but Jimmy Buffett records. There is enough Jimmy Buffett in me to spare us his muzik. Thank you.