DivingIn2Memphis - Books & Writing

Great Reads: Football My Arse By Ricky Tomlinson

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:46:09 -0400

While under the complete knowledge that anything Soccer will turn most Americans away quicker than a Courtney Love on-stage photo shoot (or a Pat Summitt cheerleading spread), I am still going to recommend this book to all. Soccer, while a hardcore pastime of mine, has not yet entered that phase of most teenaged and adult Americans. And no, David Beckham isn’t going to change that in the near future. But, as far as comedy goes, this book is a nonstop laugher. And, in the way the English treat their extraordinarily wealthy hero’s, there is also a lesson to be learned by all American sports fans.

Email Bag~ A Hilarious Story

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:01:50 -0400

Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that makes you believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers.

Things You Didn't Know Your Cell Phone Could Do

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:09:21 -0400

(This is an email I received the other day about cell phones. I thought it might be of use to some, so check it out. I’ve tried a couple of them and they seem to work. I have a Motorola phone with Nextel service…if that matters.)

Subject: FW: Important information about cell phones I would suggest copying this and carrying it in your wallet in case it is ever needed. I know I am. YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO.
There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:

Great Reads~ Assassination Vacation

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:18:01 -0500

Author: Sarah Vowell
ISBN: 9780743260039
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2005
Publication Date: April 4, 2005
Pages: 272

Throughout my life I have enjoyed reading. However, I generally duck out of any “what are you reading?” conversations. See, I read fluff. The stuff usually reserved for a beach vacation or a day at the pool. So, when people are stating how they are just tearing through the new biography about John Adams or raving that they can’t put down the new political book about winning back the middle class I slip away, head down. I can not bear to respond, “Oh! I am just loving Bergdorf Blondes! It’s so spiritual how much they think about their hair!” I believe the last nonfiction book that I read was about The Doors. And, let’s face it, with the amount of drugs they were on it is doubtful how much is, in fact, nonfiction.

Great Books~ Who's Your Caddy

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:13:07 -0400

Author: Rick Reilly
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (May 6, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385488858
ISBN-13: 978-0385488853

This is a book that I put off reading for so long, it was almost like I had the only chocolate ice cream on the planet sitting in my freezer but I didn’t want to eat it for fear that I would never have that taste again. On one hand, one of my favorite, if not the favorite, sports writers, Rick Reilly, penned a new novel (well, new to me at least). On the other hand, it was about golf, a sport that intrigues me just about as much as Star Jones, chicken livers and pedicures. Combined. But, as some of us have found, Reilly could write a treatise on the solidifying of concrete and it would, at the very least, be funny. So, with a looooong flight to bide my time, it was finally the moment to crack open Who’s Your Caddy.

Great Websites: Despair.com

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:13:38 -0400

Sometimes funny is just, well, making fun of things that you see in everyday life. Other times, it’s taking a peak into the lives of those people who just take everything a little too damn seriously and finding humor in their actions. Once in a while, those two realms of hilarity collide and bring us something so good, so funny and so true; we can’t help but openly laughing like we were in the middle of a Rodney Dangerfield set. Welcome to Despair.com.

Deal With The Devil: A Short Story

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:15:48 -0400

I had been walking for hours. And, the deeper I went, the thicker the trees around me grew, intertwining within each other, creating a blanket of cover for all of their evil secrets. I did not know where I was going, nor did the tress offer any insight. I just knew that when the time came, I would be where I needed to be.

The clock struck midnight in the town miles behind me, and I could feel the thunder of the chime in my heart. I stopped.

The dead of the moonless night was overbearing. Predator and prey of land and sky seemed to have vanished, leaving only me to stand weak and vulnerable for the great Predator to come. As I listened to the crippling silence, I cleared my throat just to make sure I had not gone deaf. The scratchy grinding of my noisemaking was sucked away by the night, leaving me alone, once again.

The Old Man: A Short Story

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:23:26 -0400

I saw him as soon as I turned the corner. I had noticed him around town numerous times, begging for change, cleaning windshields for a dime, scrounging for scraps. He was ragged, in ragged clothes, with what looked like little to offer anyone. He glanced up at my approaching silhouette.

From his spot on the sidewalk, he leaned forward, and, with little effort and expectation, asked, “Can you spare some change, brother?”

His voice cracked and creaked like an old house, one aching for occupants. His eyes glowed through the shadows of the night as inklings of light bounced and sparkled off of the pool of water that settled in his eyes. The old man remained motionless.

Tsunami Restaurant Cookbook Strikes — Awakening Taste Buds Worldwide

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:46:41 -0400

A few weeks ago I volunteered at a New Orleans benefit event. My job was to sell $1 raffle tickets for a chance to win numerous Memphis-themed prizes. The prizes included many gift certificates to well-known Memphis restaurants, handmade pieces of art provided by Memphis College of Art students, etc. But there was one item that really caught my eye. A cookbook. But his was not an ordinary cookbook. This was a cookbook that made my body tremble when I laid my eyes on its cover. A cookbook that was so unexpected, yet so overdue. This was Memphis’ own Tsunami Restaurant Cookbook. From the moment I saw it, I started to wonder how badly karma would kick my ass if the raffle girl were to rig the contest. Much too worried that I would be caught and forever known as the girl who fixed a raffle to benefit victims of Katrina for her own guilty pleasures, not to mention the complete guilt that would consume me of committing such an offense, I began to simply wish those who gave to charity the best of luck in winning such a wonderful gift.

A Quick Guide to Solving Sudoku

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:32:39 -0400

”Sudoku master, am I.” ~Yoda

Sudoku has taken the country by storm and many people want in on the fun. Before you decide to go out and get yourself a big book of Sudoku (or more precisely, before you decide to spend the next four days with whiteout and a bag of pens), an explanation of how to begin the puzzles is a must. Sudoku is the complete opposite of the Crossword. The Crossword is a game of addition while Sudoku is a game of elimination. In Sudoku, the most important part of completing a puzzle is the knowledge of what numbers can’t go where. This leads to a common practice in Suduko where the person writes the numbers that can go in a certain square off to the outside of the corresponding box and work the puzzle that way. While it works for some, it confuses me and it makes solving the puzzle much longer. As is with almost everything in life, keep it stupid simple- or, you know, something like that.

A Quick Guide to Quick Reads

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 02:41:19 -0400

When I was going through some of my old books a couple of days ago, I ran across a book, Big Drops, that while having one of the more hilarious unintentional comedy titles is a book that shows the biggest waterfalls and rapids that a kayaker can go down in the United States. It was also a book that my father, ever the humorist that he is, kept religiously in the bathroom when I was a kid. While he was a semi-professional kayaker at one point in his life, I never thought for one second that the book was there to remind him of the glory years. Anyways, it underscored a greater point and that was that it was the perfect bathroom reading full of short chapters with the only continuity being that it was about rivers and kayaks. So, here’s a list of some great bathroom reading- books that you can pick up time and again without having to reread or even pick a particular page.

Great Depression: The Rise and Fall of a Mediocre Rock Band

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:33:50 -0400

"The Map Room was a place where any band, no matter how rinky-dink, could book a show. My band, The Living Room, had played there countless times, blasting out ear-shattering rock and roll for whomever wandered in from the street. There was no set time to stop; the bartenders didn’t have anything better to do than to listen to you, and there was no management to pull the plug."

Aaron Brame, a Memphis writer and musician, has written a book about his experience playing in The Great Depression, a Memphis garage band that relocated to Baltimore and attempted to tour the nation and make it in the rock world. Aaron’s book is insightful while at the same time humorous. The book is available at local bookstores around town or by contacting Aaron Brame directly. Here is an excerpt from the book titled ‘Great Depression: The Rise and Fall of a Mediocre Rock Band.’

A Fictional Conversation with your Editor regarding Sports, Politics & Miscellaniae

Thu, 11 May 2006 15:22:56 -0400

(Apparently I had been drinking or living on another planet when the Grizzlies decided to throw up their 12th stright playoff stinker because this conversation is supposedly draped somewhat in truth. Although Justin refers to many of my ramblings, I don’t remember uttering any of them and really don’t even remember thinking most of this. Regardless, he says it’s false, so we’ll all just have to believe him. Hoy-Hoy!
The Aforementioned ‘Your Editor’.)

So the scene begins a bit like this….

Diggity makes a reference to pre-history: “Look at him, he’s a f**king Neanderthal!” (referring to Dirk Nowitzi) “His eyes are sunken four feet into the back of his head! His forehead makes it seem like he’s wearing a parasol - how does he see? I mean, seriously, how does he see? (It’s important to note Tim’s actually an urban planner, not an anthropologist.)

Book Review~ Sputnik Swetheart

Mon, 01 May 2006 18:45:42 -0400

Sputnik Sweetheart is the 12th of world-renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s novels. A spinning, mysterious tale centered upon the unrequited love of three individuals truly finds form as an investigation into the nature of longing in the human soul. The narrator, a 25 year-old teacher who we only know as “K”, Sumire, a self-condemned struggling female writer two years his junior and Miu, a sophisticated, successful businesswoman who are all thrown into a tragic menage-a-trois, which seems not only destined to fail, but may in fact spell doom.

The Great Haiku Contest

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:29:58 -0400

For the beginning of 2006, we thought we would start the New Year off with a little competition. Nothing physical, mind you, but a little competition amongst friends. This idea came to me from my brother, Justin, all the way from China when we were emailing me and I thought (incorrectly, I might add) that he had ended his communiqué with a haiku. Because he hadn’t, and he had, in fact, ended a similar communiqué with one of my other brothers, Will, the previous day, he sent me a myriad of his rambling haiku’s. Seeing as I like a good haiku as much as the next guy (or gal), I figured let’s have ourselves a little Haikufest. (As an aside, I don’t know whether it’s the haiku itself, or the name that draws me to this form of poetry, but either way, I’m hooked.) As you might have figured out, none of the immediate members of my family will get squat for emailing me haikus, so while Justin is the leader in the clubhouse, he won’t be winning this match.