Sportsmanlike conduct

    Are we able to adopt this ancient

    phrase where the structure of the

    game has evolved to penalize fair-

    ness? An idle world admired an up-

    set victory in basketball last e-

    vening as two distinctly sadistic

    practitioners of immeasurable cow-

    ardice, squished an honorable man

    they'd been suspending from piano

    wires for months. Their names are

    Donald J. Trump and Jeff Sessions.

    In their gutter flows our Rubicon,

    a minor stream no one has located

    on a map, yet undoubtedly exists,

    a spring of timeless expectations.

    Now they have turned upon this Re-

    public not by right but by force,

    and we know them by its splatters.

No mistake about it

       Our days have
       won new names

"We need to see the pool from the casino"

There are days, in any pundit's
life, when he frets whether he's
committed himself to the wrong
avatar for his favorite figure
of satire. Our American Presid-
ent, long may he flap, cast him-
self so endearingly candidly in
the Primaries and the Final Heat
as a helplessly craven debauché
of age 15 at military school, we
dubbed him, Donny Thump-Thump, at
no foreseeable risk of revision.

To our chagrin, who on Earth had
foretold his appropriation of the
mantle of Benjamin Siegel, "Bugsy" 
to the social-climbing, in no more
than an hour upon touching down
in the desert to unfold his para-
dise? Undergraduate film societies
and willing slaves to portable de-
vices suddenly leapt to the screen-
play of James Toback, recovering
gambler himself, for Warren Beatty
and director Barry Levinson's im-
mortal Genesis epic, Bugsy (1990). 

As the great President - indeed,
the most great, the most massive -
proclaimed that his border wall on
the glittering casino of liberty
and justice for all must, must,
he flagellantly underscored, have
a window upon the talent pool be-
ing denied entry for lack of loot
or influence among friends, such 
as Nordic flesh, dance hall legs,
or steamer trunks of rubles to
rinse in his desolate condominia,
cinéastes of devout reverence for
precedent began to recall that
earlier desert boondoggle, the
Flamingo in Vegas. And what a
cash drain it was upon the Treas-
ury, as Benny continually fret-
ted the lack of grandeur in his
monument, the lack of requisite
enviability, to justify the name
of country.

The unsheltered must be surtaxed,
as night follows day, for a header
beam between the casino and the
imploring pool beyond, to mount
a sheath of glazing fit for awe
and wonder, beyond any splitting
bodice one could rip.

We forbear to recall how all that
worked out, as some volunteering
Second Amendment people rose to
virtue's own primordial summons
- wink-wink, lecherously aside -
to perfect Benjamin's martyrdom.
We'd be just as glad to laud the
pulp-bred exhortations of our sage
as adequate, for curdling's sake.

But maybe, as Virginia says, he's
just getting old.

Once upon a time in Pennsylvania

     We haven't launched a trade war
     against our partners in commerce
     to protect national security or
     to uphold fairness. We've done it
     for one district in Congress, and
     we'll back further away from it,
     in a matter of hours. We haven't
     barred a foreign merger in the
     microchip industry to safeguard
     our cybersecurity. We've done 
     it for applause on a visit today
     to San Diego, and we'll proclaim
     our safety by bedtime, tonight. 
     All the world's a frightening
     mirror to the narcissist in the
     White House, and every day's a
     clawing panic to be flattered. 

 

     Conor Lamb is on the ballot to-
     day in Pennsylvania, for grown-
     ups. Let's see if they're home.

First, do no harm

       Hubert de Givenchy

       la ville, le fleuve, la femme

       

Safer than Google, truer than the Yellow Pages

If fly fishing is not one's
exact thing yet, inevitably
it will be. It has in com-
mon with cricket or curling
a whiff of provincial eccen-
tricity, although it remains
still less arcane than the
Field Game at Eton or the
bedtime sports of the Amer-
ican President. The setting
is indeed wet, but without
risk of cholera.

By far the best primer in
fly fishing known to me is
so bracingly recondite as
to exceed the Wrykyn tales
of P.G. Wodehouse in scar-
city, and equal them in hi-
larious compensation. The
sense of a triumph of des-
tiny in the book's discov-
ery is bound to strike one
as worth the wait, to be
convulsed so benignly, giv-
en prevailing alternatives.

The book is not widely a-
vailable anymore, if it ev-
er was, which rather ful-
fills the hilarious prin-
ciple in its inspiration,
an advertising campaign
in Britain for what were
known as the Yellow Pages,
some time between Hearst's
campaign for war with Spain
and the Steele memorandum.

I suggest contacting the
London bookseller where I
found my copy. She may be
able to direct one to a
bad book, but she'll warn
one not to go there. What
makes these stories so
delicious is precisely
the joy they instill, of
being in a true place.
For all their high and
low humor, they embody
a humane genius for ob- 
servant travels in the
inexhaustible island.

Michael Russell
All the Way to
  the Bank
  Fly Fishing
  by J.R. Hartley
  1991
  J.R. Hartley
  Casts Again
  1992
Patrick Benson
  illustrations
Michael Russell, Ltd., 2015©

Cole Sprouse