Poor Clay Hensley. He’ll be answering questions about this for years to come. I thought Greg Maddux was supposed to pitch tonight. If Bonds had hit his homer of Maddux, Maddux could have shaken it off and entered Cooperstown without feeling too badly. I mean, sure, giving up 755 would suck, but being the greatest control pitcher of the last 20 years would probably take some of the sting away.

I guess the guy who gives up 756 will have it worse, won’t he?

It must be horrible to live in someone’s shadow. I would imagine that Robert Olen Butler is feeling sort of the same way about Ted Turner right now. This kind of shit is enough to make you not want to live a literary life. Thank heavens no one cares about poets. It’s safe to be one.

I was at a baseball game with friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. He brought a date, a delightful girl he was excited about seeing. When I told her I was working on an MFA in poetry, she said, “I love poetry!”

“Who do you like to read?” I asked.

“Oh, Billy Collins is my favorite,” she said.

“He’s quite good,” I said.

She kind of furrowed her brow for a moment. There was a long pause. “I made out with him once,” she said.

“Smashing,” I said.

I really didn’t know how to follow up on that. I write poetry, too, but I wasn’t really planning to make out with this young woman to get her to read my stuff. I kind of wished she’d said she reads a lot of Mary Oliver.

Ladybug and I have watched movies in the evenings after I finish working on my essay, a first draft of which should be somewhat complete tomorrow. Good heavens. Tonight, we watched Hot Fuzz, which was pretty terrible. The preview looked good. The preview showed all the best parts.

But last night, we watched Venus, which was one of the best movies we’ve seen in a long time. I was so struck by it that I was ready to put it in my top 5– it was hilarious, pathetic, and touching all at the same time. I had read in this blog and that blog how Peter O’Toole was getting some Oscar buzz. Sure, people are thinking that he’ll win on the “body of work” principle… but why is no one talking about him winning solely on the strength of his performance in this terrific film? Peter O’Toole deserves two Oscars for this movie… one for himself, and one for all the ass he kicked.