The Great Summer Slowdown?

Wow! I was just checking my favorite blogs -- okay, blogs by two friends, Daryl Chin and Michael Giltz, and you can click on the links on the blogroll to do the same -- and realized that all three of us have slowed down our posting habits lately. Must be the hot weather, rain and general summer malaise. Well, I'll let them speak for themselves, I'm just goddamned lazy.

Be that as it may, I urge you to dash to Anthology Film Archives to catch the lovely new Ken Jacobs film Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World. I had a delightful afternoon with Jacobs recently and some of the fruits of that conversation can be found here. I'll be adding some materia on the blog shortlyl that I didn't have space for in Jewish Week, so keep your eyes on this spot. The film itself is a gorgeous and moving kaleidoscope and well worth the trip to Second Avenue and Second Street. (Unless you are reading this blog in, say, Banska Bystrica (a region of Slovakia that I chose because I like the name. if you really want to know more about it, go here. And don't every say that you never learn anything from reading blogs.)

As I write this, Madrid (and probably every other large city in Spain, with the possible exceptions of Bilbao and Barcelona) is awash in cheering humanity and fireworks displays. I have to say, the Spanish really earned the European title. They scored more goals (12) than any other team in the tournament, conceded the second-fewest (3, with only Croatia stingier, although both teams had an average of 1/2 goal allowed per match), averaged nearly 20 shots per game whle blocking the most (19) and had the highest percentage of complete passes. Of course football (the real football, not American football, which is played mostly with the hands) is not a sport that really lends itself to statistics, which I suspect is one of the many reasons North Americans just don't get it. So let me add that Spain, whatever story the numbers tell, also played stylish, exciting attacking football and for that, if nothing else, they deserved the victory they worked so hard for.

Now I can turn my flagging attention to New York's two struggling baseball teams. I think that the subway doubleheader tells you everything you need to know about the Yanks and the Mets; when one team wins a game 15-6 and lose the second game 9-0, you're looking at a couple of teams that have serious pitching shorts. Could be a long, ugly summer.