Such are the courts of God

Upon watching the Lakers trounce the Nuggets in game six of the NBA Western Conference Finals, I recalled Stanley Fish blogging about his love of basketball a while back. This got me thinking: the Miltonists should organize a basketball tournament in Murfreesboro. 

And if there's one thing that basketball needs more of, it's intergenerational, quasi-Oedipal strife. I propose a game of the under-forties taking on the over-forties. Chippy youth and speed v. experienced wiliness and gravitas! Potential matchups:

Point guard

Su Fang Ng v. John Rogers

Rogers probably flows on the court as smoothly as William Harvey's circulatory system (sorry, I tried), but I bet Ng taught Blake Griffin at OU.

Advantage: Ng

Shooting guard

Anthony Welch v. Annabel Patterson

Welch is guaranteed to be a scrappy contender, but Patterson could make anybody miss a basket with the mere force of stern disapproval. And if that doesn't work, an elbow to the ribs.

Advantage: Patterson

Small forward

Tom Fulton v. Stephen Fallon

I'm guessing Fulton has a silky-smooth mid-range jump shot. But on the court, Fallon is free to reveal the bilious spleen that lies under those piercing eyes and heart of gold.

Advantage: Fallon

Power forward

Daniel Shore v. Tom Corns

Shore already has a Hanford award under his belt. Corns could crash the boards, but do they even play basketball in Bangor?

Advantage: Shore

Center

Feisal Mohamed v. Paul Stevens

The paint will be dominated by the Canadian towers. Stevens brings his military training to the court, but I'll put my money on Mohamed's baby hook. He's also the Miltonist most likely to be able to dunk. (If we play with a nine-foot rim.)

Advantage: Mohamed

Coach

Jeffrey Shoulson v. Jason Rosenblatt

Oh no, I didn't! But c'mon--compared to amassing an encyclopedic knowledge of the Talmud and Midrash, drawing up some basketball play's gotta be a breeze. But Rosenblatt gains the edge with his administrative experience as department chair.

Advantage: Rosenblatt

Final prediction: the kids win by 6.

In me is no delay (Sike! [sic])

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted. (It's less difficult to believe that what I last posted was stupid.) There's a reason, or at least an excuse, for my silence: I've been in a kind of limbo state between one accomplishment (quasi-finished revision of a chapter that turned into two chapters) and another (need to rewrite the last main chapter of my dissertation-turned manuscript). A generous observer would say that I've been letting ideas percolate; another might describe me as having been a waste of time/space.

Baby steps: I submitted a proposal to an MLA panel based on an idea about Paradise Lost and Oroonoko I've harbored for quite a while. My proposal was rejected, but I remain convinced that the basic premise is sound and original. I hope to churn out an essay sooner rather than later. I'm currently working on another conference abstract. This one I'll post here once I complete a rough draft--it's so weird and idiosyncratic that I don't think anyone could make enough sense of it to steal it.

For now, though, I transcribe what is one of the meatiest, wittiest (yes, meaty and witty!) sentences I've read in a long time. From James Nohrnberg, "Paradise Regained by One Greater Man": "The reflection of bodily well-being and whole-being in the cognate flesh of the mother calls the ego to the periphery of a diffuse romance pleasance; the outlines of the object call into being the coddled or self-boiled entity of the ego as body and subject."

It's the "coddled or self-boiled" part that kills me.