Mark Athitakis

[October 27th, 1986] XTC releases their eighth studio album "Skylarking"

Kid got a pair of AirPods for his birthday. I'll cherish the sweet memories of talking to him.

<tugs suspenders>

Replace the Brewers 'pen with the Nats 'pen, just for funsies.

What a palace. Truly, a cathedral of baseball.

I love my father dearly (turns 89 this year!) but his worst tidying-up-the-house habit was combining boxes of cereal into one box to save space. We were eating off-brand stuff to start with, and now some sad kid* had to settle for a bowl of Dusty Puffed Lucky CharmiOs. *me

CLASS PLANNING HELP! I'm teaching a course on Literary Feuds & Culture Wars next semester. I'm looking for novels, short stories, poems that dramatize feuds or culture war debates about literature, writing, or art. What are the great (& teachable) literary feuds of the last 50 years?

There’s nothing like baseball

Krackel. I know it's basically a Crunch bar, but the minis had a different size/texture/something.

Damn, William Contreras

Just a reminder that it's fun to see Brewers superfan Kato Kaelin lose his shit even good things are happening.

I did *not* need that Yandy graphic.

Dumb baseball broadcast add-ons, ranked (most to least dumb): 1. Mound cam 2. Mic'd-up players 3. Mid-inning chit-chat with the manager 4. Ump cam 5. Base cam

If we're going to do mediocre poetry before the World Series, could it at least be Marianne Moore's? poets.org/poem/basebal...

If you’re looking for something to do before first pitch of the World Series, check out the latest issue of @thetwinbill.bsky.social, which includes a lot of great stories and poems and essays, and my short piece, “Big Leaguer.” thetwinbill.com

Thomas Merton, "The Seven Storey Mountain"

When you spend 99 percent of your sports-on-the-radio time tuning in to baseball, football play-by-play sounds like a livestock auction.

My FLW knowledge isn't all it could be, but IIRC, acrylic-glass roofing is not original to Taliesin West. Wright preferred canvas shades, but they weathered poorly and eventually got replaced with glass.

Cover for history of Trump II just dropped.

I loved Tom Skerritt's small but memorable bit in "Singles," playing the Seattle mayor who gently annihilates Campbell Scott's dream of a Supertrain. RIP. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK3w...

Big for fans of criticism, big for fans of sweater-and-sport-coat combos.

Attention: Our rare book team is hiring a full-time book photographer. Details at the link. No calls or walk-ins, please. If you call or walk in asking about it your inattention to detail will be noted. www.capitolhillbooks-dc.com/hiring.php

Never thought I'd say this, but we may be fact-checking Trump too much.

The Phoenix Symphony is suspending its current season starting Nov. 1 due to financial shortfalls. It's unclear when the organization will resume its programming.

The author is dead! (Crowd cheers) But the author function lives on (crowd boos) Rather than attributing the text to a single origin point, we as critics must map the complex web of institutions and power relations that constitute "authorship" (crowd yawns, disperses)

<angry goose meme>Why would home values rise? WHY WOULD THEY?

so many poems in this Miltos Sachtouris collection are now my favorite poems @archipelagobooks.bsky.social

Crossword Clues Where It’s Clear the Puzzle’s Creator Got Themselves into a Jam Letter-wise: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/cro... ("The eighth US president if all of the letters in his name were U’s and V’s.")

Ex-Nat does good.

Rogério Renato Mateucci, the rector of a private Brazilian university died Friday afternoon in a freak accident while on a walking tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s historic Taliesin West home in Scottsdale. www.azfamily.com/2026/10/17/b...

Want an overview of book publishing? Here you go, by yours truly. And if you want more in depth info, read our blog: www.page1m.com/blog

For updates on the start time for tonight's Rays-Guardians game, text OPPOTACO to all of MLB's social media feeds.

The dysfunction in this thread is triggering because it echoes what I saw and heard and experience in Web 1.0-era journalism in SF. But it speaks to how messy editorial leadership can be. Oh, you're really good a pulling public records? We're gonna put you in charge of *people*!

I wrote a whole-ass essay about that. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...