In praise of Venus shoes
Well, the goal drought has ended; but, in a way, it continues. I still haven’t scored with the new cleats that I bought this summer. But I did make a rather complicated golazo almost as soon as I took off the cleats and put on Venus shoes, some ten or fifteen minutes before the game’s conclusion. So, my record this summer is: four goals with Venus shoes, in less than one hour; zero goals with cleats worn for hours and hours. I could tell immediately that with Venus shoes I was three times better as a footballer.
Of course, it made all the difference that we were on artificial grass and not on the slippery mud-grass of previous weeks.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I finished reading the shortest item on my book list: Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl. Friends, this author oozes intelligence. This book is on a par with, if not better than, García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. A man is killed by the mafia; the subsequent investigation is narrated not only with logical exactitude – this is a police procedural, after all – but also, occasionally, by means of wry dialog between shadowy, unnamed men of power. Sicily is a morass of subservience and paranoia, with inhabitants (one hardly can call them citizens) who nonetheless make their meanings clear through innuendo. Hilariously, they adorn this innuendo with affirmations of Catholic piety. This book is what I wish I were clever enough to write.
Of course, it made all the difference that we were on artificial grass and not on the slippery mud-grass of previous weeks.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I finished reading the shortest item on my book list: Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl. Friends, this author oozes intelligence. This book is on a par with, if not better than, García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. A man is killed by the mafia; the subsequent investigation is narrated not only with logical exactitude – this is a police procedural, after all – but also, occasionally, by means of wry dialog between shadowy, unnamed men of power. Sicily is a morass of subservience and paranoia, with inhabitants (one hardly can call them citizens) who nonetheless make their meanings clear through innuendo. Hilariously, they adorn this innuendo with affirmations of Catholic piety. This book is what I wish I were clever enough to write.