A Few of My Sunday Reads...

Interesting, and offered without (much) comment… “Yes, Dear. Tonight Again.” Excerpt:

LET’S say you and your spouse haven’t had sex in so long that you can’t remember the last time you did. Not the day. Not the month. Maybe not even the season. Would you look for gratification elsewhere? Would you file for divorce? Or would you turn to your mate and say, “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”

That’s more or less what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. And in another example of an erotic adventure supplanting married ennui, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.

Both couples document their exploits in books published this month, the latest entries in what is almost a mini-genre of books offering advice about the “sex-starved marriage.” The couples, though, are hardly similar. The Mullers are Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C. The Browns are backpacking multigrain northerners who moved to Boulder, Colo. The Mullers’ book, “365 Nights,” is rather modest and circumspect in its details. The Browns’ book, “Just Do It,” almost makes the reader feel part of a threesome, sharing everything they used to stimulate sexual desire (it’s hard to visualize and even harder to explain).

I’m entirely serious when I say the article is interesting. What it’s not is titillating…it’s simply informative and illuminating in a clinical sort of way. Sex is probably everyone’s favorite subject, and there’s definite interest even if it’s not a fave, eh? After all, this story is today’s “most e-mailed” article from the NYT. It doesn’t crack the Top Ten in the “blogged” category though.

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Also from the NYT:

THE sandwich was perfectly executed: an overgenerous helping of fresh Dungeness crab meat, dressed in a gossamer coating of mayonnaise and piled between two warm slices of sourdough bread that had been scrubbed with garlic and griddled crisp. The drinks were excellent, too: a split of Laurent-Perrier Champagne for my girlfriend; a tall, ice-cold glass of hoppy Anchor Steam Beer for me. And the view at our walk-up, alfresco table was impossible to beat: palm trees swayed, sailboat masts bobbed and, in the distance, the Bay Bridge stretched out across foggy San Francisco Bay.

The service was unobtrusive, except for one thing: we were encouraged to put down our sandwiches and stand up when the national anthem came over the public address system. We were, after all, dining in the company of about 40,000 other people, at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

I spent a few weekends after opening day this year bopping around to 10 American cities, where I ate my way through 12 major league ballparks. My mission: to hoover down a shameful number of hot dogs and to sample the increasingly ambitious and occasionally delicious world of ballpark cuisine beyond peanuts and Cracker Jack.

Mmmmm! Sushi! But I digress... Great ball park food? Who’d a thunk it? I was hungry after finishing “Buy Me Some Sushi and Baby Back Ribs.” SFO and Seattle get kudos, NYC’s ball parks don’t fare so well.

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Lotsa folks are linking Fred Kagan’s “Voting for Commander in Chief” today… and I’ll pile on, too. The contrasts Mr. Kagan paints between Senators Obama and McCain are both stark and revealing. There are lotsa links and lotsa quoted sources that substantiate and re-enforce Mr. Kagan’s analysis. Excerpt:

For any voter trying to choose between the two candidates for commander in chief, there is no better test than this: When American strategy in a critical theater was up for grabs, John McCain proposed a highly unpopular and risky path, which he accurately predicted could lead to success. Barack Obama proposed a popular and politically safe route that would have led to an unnecessary and debilitating American defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.

The two men brought different backgrounds to the test, of course. In January 2007, McCain had been a senator for 20 years and had served in the military for 23 years. Obama had been a senator for 2 years and before that was a state legislator, lawyer, and community organizer. But neither presidential candidates nor the commander in chief gets to choose the tests that history brings. Once in office, the one elected must perform.

Those are the final two grafs in Mr. Kagan’s excellent article. The meat is in how he came to these conclusions, though. Do go.

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And finally… I was watching the Journal Editorial Report on Fox News Channel yesterday and did something of a double take when they got to the “Winners and losers, picks and pans, ‘Hits and Misses,’ best and the worst of the week (their words)” part of the program. One of the Talking Heads said “Winner…the Detroit Red Wings, for winning the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Detroit, and Michigan in general, have been losing a lot lately. The Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup makes them Number One in something, at last…and it’s a great morale booster for Detroit and all of Michigan.” Complete with video of a couple of Wings’ goals and Nick Lidstrom raising the Cup. How very cool. And very unexpected. I love it when that happens.

(Note: FNC hasn’t posted a transcript of yesterday’s show, yet. I’m quoting from memory, but I’m reasonably close.)