No Time To Write. But Soon...

Too much going on today for me to take the many moments of considered reflection required for writing. So what the heck, I'll just blog a bit in the conventional fashion...

Somebody's Got Their Eyes on My Boy. I've bragged like the proud pop in the past about my two boys, Michael and Patrick, though I've tried to avoid doing it too often. But every now and again something so cool happens to, by or about them that I feel the need to relate here. Another occurred this week, when Michael's pals were buzzing a bit over some online rankings of the top high school hoops players in the region that someone puts together (we know not whom). I'm immediately just a bit dubious, because of some misspellings and wrong height measurements (they've added two inches to my 6'-3" son), still it's a bit of harmless fun to see your kid ranked in the top 20 freshmen hoops players in the Northeastern Ohio area (along with his Iggy teammate Brian Sylvester, a wizard with the ball), no matter how accurate such a subjective ranking might inevitably be. Still, it was kind of nice to see.

Couric vs. Blair. No surprise that the obnoxiously lightweight Katie Couric was the one to nab the first on-camera interview with the far more obnoxious pint-sized, troubled fiction writer Jayson Blair, tonight on NBC's Dateline. I'm afraid I'll be forced to watch it, like the car wreck from which no curious human can avert their eyes. The best line of the day, perhaps the week, goes to the incomparable "Book Slut," a bookish 20-something Chicago woman, who notes today that Couric "ask Blair the tough (but perky) questions." Nicely done, Divine Ms. S...

Now That's Method Acting. I was glad to learn that I'm apparently not the only one to have formed a close personal attachment to the work of actress Laura Linney, a 40-year-old beauty whose brains, smarts and careful role selection are even more impressive than her pretty face. This well-done Boston Globe Magazine profile of the lovely one is filled with great touches. But my two favorites: her observation that Mystic River co-star Sean Penn prepares for his roles "on a cellular level." And at the end of the piece, she again proves her idiosyncratic smarts, by giving the interviewer an unexpected answer to the stock Hollywood interview question about whose career she would like to have as she ages. "'Mine,' she says quietly. 'I really like mine.'" We do too, Laura...