Really short

OK.
I like print.

I read long articles in Wired. In the Sunday NYT. I also really like the new short form Newsweek. I can zip through all of my favorite columnists there, plus CW, letters, My Turn, in one bus ride.

But can I be excused, seriously, from the New Yorker's profiles that go on an on and on and seem all to adhere to a style of including personal details about the profile-ees, that add nothing?

A recent issue profiled Guillermo del Toro. Interesting, but too, too long and with too many dead-end references to the subject's fluctuating weight at various meetings with the author. Pointless.

Latest NY'er has a long article (26 pages) about Paul Haggis and Scientology. Interesting. And endless. I am at my second night of reading it and contemplating concluding it in a third (I won't). Interesting and boring at the same time. Quite a feat.

Please, get to the point. I love you, New Yorker, but get some editors. Seriously.

Thank you very much.

Katy Buchanan Remensky

Hoopin' it

Many years ago, when we were not exactly starving, but young, Carl worked as a stringer for the wire services in P'burgh, covering the Penguins and the Duquesne basketball team.

Both were abysmal.

I used to go with him and sit behind the press table for the basketball games at Mellon Arena, then known as the Civic Arena. I always froze, thanks to the ice under the basketball parquet.

So here in the 21st century, the Dukes finally are a semblance of a good team and have all the accoutrements required: a mascot, a student cheering section with rituals (turning backs when the visiting team is announced, waving wildly when visiting team tries free throws, etc., etc., etc.), dancing girls, cheerleaders, pick-your-song for halftime, etc., etc., etc., They even play in a bigger box than Palumbo Center when a nice crowd is expected.

So today, we went. Big Consol Energy Arena crowd, the architecturally bland replacement for the Civic Arena. (Real estate tip: Buy now in Uptown Pittsburgh. Duquesne is crowding the neighborhood and I bet it will be a showdown between it and UPMC creeping down from Oakland.) Oh, and years later, there's still no warm way to enjoy a basketball game played over a hockey rink.

Dukes lost, though not without a nice first half rally to go into halftime leading Xavier. Bad second half: No rebounding, too many turnovers, lousy free-throw percentage, and ice-cold shooting.

That ice-cold part I definitely get.

Pretty on 2/2

It was a beautiful morning here in my corner of Pittsburgh on the second day of February.

After day upon day of gray, cloudy skies, early morning sunlight beamed through, painting clouds pink against blue sky.

Twist and I had a lovely walk; it seemed like spring the air was so warm and full of birds singing.

As the day waned, though, so did the weather and by about two, the slab of gray overhead had returned, snowflakes were flying and the air was freezing. I watched misery return from my office window Downtown, where I had hung up my short coat nowhere near long enough to cover me for the trip home.

Despite the change in barometric pressure and precipitation, Twist and I had another lovely walk at dusk.

The wind wasn't gusting too hard and swirls of flakes slipped back and forth across the black asphalt, changing in formation from flame to tail to spiral, then vanishing altogether before gathering together again under the wind's direction.

It's not easy to appreciate this beauty; I usually take the easy way out and take it for granted, or take it not at all.

But February really forces your hand. You can be totally cranky-bitter till the end of March, or soldier on, like the valiant Northerner you are, poured into and forged from the same mold mold Calvin's crazy bike-riding Dad.

I tend to fall into to the cranky-bitter mold, myself, but, hey, had an off day today.

So, beautiful today and I'll live with tomorrow, tomorrow.