• Whenever I eat baby carrots, I feel like I should apologize to the mother.  “Your son is tasteless — but crunchy,” I would say to her, offering a slim ray of hope.

• The City of Pittsburgh is planning to redevelop the site where its Civic Arena once stood, the venue where I saw The Doors (once) and Chicago (twice) from up in the crow’s-nest section.  The plan calls for restoring part of the Lower Hill street grid.  If and when they do, I hope they bring back Epiphany Street.  Who wouldn’t want to live on Epiphany Street?  It would be…  what’s the word I’m looking for?

• Television shows (like Dr. Phil, CBS News, The Today Show and Ellen, among others) have to stop anointing themselves as family-reunion facilitators.  I thought this genre had exhausted itself fifty years ago, but some producers still seem to think it is all right to manipulate people and record their raw emotions for others’ entertainment.  If reuniting lost relatives is such a noble endeavor, it is worth forgoing the proceeds of broadcasting their tears.

• The harder the winds of change blow, the deeper the diehards dig their storm shelters.

• The Pittsburgh Pirates are leading major league baseball in batters hit by the pitcher — the team is averaging one hit batsman every 14-plus innings.  Some maintain that this is part of the game — if so, then the game they must have in mind is hockey.  For the sake of avoiding injuries and dugout-clearing brawls, I concur with those (going back at least as far as Carl Furillo of the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers) who have called for awarding two bases, not one, to the batter who is hit by a pitch.

• The only thing I can say about being dead is that I wouldn’t know what I was missing.  Other than that, how can I, or anyone, speak with authority about that state of un-ness?  For instance, will I need to be fitted for my halo (I mean, horns) or is it one-size-fits-all?  How will I keep from accidentally stepping on thin spots in the heavenly clouds and falling back to earth?  Does God speak English or will I have to learn Esperanto?  If we are stuck with silly answers, we may as well ask silly questions.

• MLB baseball teams that lead after five innings go on to win the game 80% of the time [2015 data].  NFL football teams that lead at the half go on to win 77% of the time [2007]. NBA basketball teams with a six-point lead at the half win 80% of the time [1993-2009].  The protagonists and major antagonists of Shakespeare’s tragedies die at the end of Act V 85% of the time (Julius Caesar dies at the start of Act III and Marc Antony during Act IV).  It may not be over till it’s over, but most of the time, it is.

• Politics knows only the logic of politics.  As with the addition of positive whole numbers, the domain of political operations is closed: the outcome of any  political calculation is another political result.  The real political revolution that we need is for people to solve problems, not jockey for power.  But just as adding whole numbers can never yield a fraction, this is not a result politics alone will ever produce.

• As I make art, my forces and intentions are in tension: surprise but do not indulge; inspire but do not impose; intrigue but do not ingratiate.  Some artists (Mapplethorpe, Duchamp, Picasso, Warhol) were determined to reject those tensions, to break the cables.  So we remember them, for having broken them — just as we remember bridges that fell, and not the ones yet standing.  It is my nature to be among the ones yet standing.

• I am going to stop using the perfect and past perfect tenses for a while.  I have had it with all those haves and hads.

• In films about The Holocaust, Jews have at times been depicted as complacent, or even complicit, with the horrors being inflicted upon them.  If you ever find yourself asking the outsider’s question, why didn’t Jews fight back, I would invite you to watch the Academy Award winning film Son of Saul.  Certain scenes in that film had a greater impact on me than any other drama or documentary on this subject.  Asking why Jews didn’t fight back is plainly the wrong question, as well as the wrong conclusion, when one sees that the real fight was to preserve humanity, not humans.  That fight, Jews won, conclusively.

I encourage you to read this interview with the producers of Son of Saul, conducted last year by Terry Gross of Fresh Air, after you see the film.

“History is more of a tragedy than it is a morality tale.  The will to power, the will to use human beings in social experiments, is to be distrusted at all times.  No greater cruelty will be devised than by those who are sure, or are assured, that they are doing good.”
Christopher Hitchens, from Arguably.