"Baseball’s Sad Lexicon," often called "Tinker to Evers to Chance," is the second-best-known baseball poem in America—close behind Ernest Thayer’s immortal "Casey at the Bat," written in 1888:  These are the saddest of possible words: "Tinker to Evers to Chance."  Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds, Tinker and Evers and Chance.  Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Giant hit into a double— Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:  "Tinker to Evers to Chance."  http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2010/7/12/1566133/baseballs-sad-lexicon-100-years  The poem, by Franklin Pierce Adams, is presented as a single, rueful stanza from the point of view of a New York Giants fan watching the Chicago Cubs infield of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance complete a double play.  Tinker, Evers, and Chance began playing together with the Cubs in 1902, and formed a double play combination that lasted through April 1912.  The Cubs won the National League pennant four times between 1906 and 1910, often defeating the Giants en route to the World Series.

The poem was first published in the New York Evening Mail on July 12, 1910.  Popular among sportswriters, numerous additional verses were written.  The poem gave Tinker, Evers, and Chance increased popularity.  It has been credited with their elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball%27s_Sad_Lexicon

Q.  What character is featured in 32 movies?  A.  Godzilla.  Find uses of the character in books and music--and find a list of 28 films, 1954-2004 from Japan, and 4 films from America, 1956-2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(franchise)

-zilla is an English slang suffix, a back-formation derived from the English name of the Japanese movie monster Godzilla.  It is popular for the names of software and websites.  It is also found often in popular culture to imply some form of excess, denoting the monster-like qualities of Godzilla.  The use of the suffix was contested by Toho, owners of the trademark Godzilla, in a lawsuit against the website Davezillaand also against Sears for their mark Bagzilla.  Toho has since trademarked the word "Zilla" and retroactively used it as an official name for the"Godzilla In Name Only" from the 1998 Roland Emmerich film. 

Find a list of words in the business and entertainment worlds using zilla as a suffix at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-zilla

April 30, 2014  "I think I'm an okay writer, but a very good storyteller," James Patterson tells Fast Company's Co.Create.  Patterson sat down with the magazine to tell them how he writes.  He's the world's bestselling writer; one out of every 17 hardcover books sold each year has his name on the cover.  If you follow his instructions, you will probably write very fast-paced books -- but mega-sales are not guaranteed.  Patterson outlines, he improvises, and he doesn't give a fig about realism.  Most important, he keeps things moving.  He wants his thrillers to be thrilling.  "I try to pretend that there's somebody across from me and I'm telling them a story and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished," he explains.  And he imagines who that is -- who his ideal reader is, and intuits what it will take to keep him on the edge of his seat.  He also has something in common with the late Elmore Leonard.  "I try to leave out the parts people skip," Patterson says.  That's Leonard's 10th rule of writing, "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."  These days, Patterson also employs co-writers to keep up his relentless publication pace.  His latest book is "NYPD Red 2" by Patterson and Marshall Karp.  Carolyn Kellogg  http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-james-patterson-on-writing-20140430,0,6383445.story#axzz30TbaYIsv

RACINE, Wisconsin  One of Frank Lloyd Wright's most beguiling and troubled buildings opens to public tours May 2-Sept. 28, 2014--and when it does, it will raise an eternal, vexing question:  Which matters more, beauty or utility?  It's easy to paint Wright's 15-story S.C. Johnson Research Tower, an exquisite mini-skyscraper wrapped in red brick and glass tubes, as a functional flop.  The tubes leaked badly after the tower opened in 1950, and its inside was so unrelentingly bright that employees demanded that the company provide sunglasses.  The tower proved difficult to expand and just as hard to escape.  It has one 29-inch-wide, twisting staircase, a shortcoming that could have proved lethal had fire struck.  Whatever side you take in the form-versus-function debate, stepping inside the tower offers a fascinating trip through space and time.  Although the free tour will cover just two of the tower's floors in roughly half an hour, that's enough to grasp the essence of Wright's innovative "taproot" structure.  Its alternating square and round floors reach out like tree branches from a reinforced concrete core sunk deep into the ground.  The tower's laboratory spaces are a vision of the future, circa 1950, at once spacious, luminous, hot and frustrating for people who like to look out the window.  When Wright's tower opened, its floors were arranged so concepts would flow seamlessly from the top down.  Research labs, where ideas were hatched, were above development labs, where ideas were turned into products.  Products were tested on the lower, quality-control floors before they were judged fit to be made in adjoining factories.  Openings between the square floors and circular mezzanines were supposed to enable verbal communication between the scientists.  The setup sounded perfectly rational, as if it had been arranged by an efficiency expert.  But as was invariably the case with Wright's buildings, artistic vision trumped practical reality.  Besides the omnipresent glare and leaking tubes, which eventually were sealed with caulk, the Research Tower had no sprinklers, as Brendan Gill wrote in his 1987 Wright biography, "Many Masks."  The architect considered them ugly.  As a result, according to Gill's account, S.C. Johnson had to pay higher-than-normal premiums for fire insurance.  When the number of people working in the building rose, its single fire stair was pronounced inadequate.  In 1982, the company moved its research and development operation to a nearby structure, essentially mothballing the tower.  Blair Kamin   See picture at http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-frank-lloyd-wright-tower-preview-20140423,0,1094442.column

Book 3 of The Alterran Legacy Series, Resurrection by Toledo attorney  Regina Joseph, was released May 1, 2014 on Amazon.  http://amzn.com/B00K1TVW3Y  for e-book and

http://amzn.com/1484817184 for paperback.  Awards and good reviews for the first two in the series.  Goodreads gives a five-star rating:  Khamlok continues the epic saga of The Alterran Legacy Series. The Alterran ruling family of Anu, Enlil and Enki, who are stranded on Earth when their home world loses its atmosphere, struggle to adapt to mortal life. In Book 1, Colony Earth, Enlil struck out on his own to preserve Alterran civilization.  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17569026-khamlok-book-2-of-the-alterran-legacy-series

From the lexicon of Bucky Katt:  ". . . how wiseful I am . . . it's all about brainishness . . . " Get Fuzzy comic strip  May 3, 2014

Juan Formell, the Cuban composer, arranger and bass player who founded the group Los Van Van and made it into one of the world’s greatest dance bands, died on May 1, 2014.  He was 71 and lived in Havana.   From the time he formed Los Van Van almost 45 years ago, Mr. Formell’s intention was to expand the foundation of Afro-Cuban music by selectively incorporating rhythms and harmonies from rock ’n’ roll and jazz, an approach that proved immediately popular with Cuban audiences.  He called the resulting mix of styles “songo” and organized Los Van Van in similar hybrid fashion. The band’s original lineup included the violins and flute typical of traditional charanga bands and was heavy on percussion, but also featured Mr. Formell on electric bass and other musicians on electric guitar, electric keyboards and trap drums.  Last year, the Latin Recording Academy in Miami awarded Mr. Formell, who was a major influence on salsa performers like Ruben Blades and Gilberto Santa Rosa, a lifetime achievement Grammy for “artistic excellence.”   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/arts/music/juan-formell-71-cuban-dance-band-leader-dies.html?_r=0   Formell also set poems by the poet Nicolás Guillén to music and composed scores for the theater.  Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (1902–1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1144  May 5, 2014  On this date in 1809, Mary Kies became the first woman awarded a U.S. patent--for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.  In 1835 in Belgium, the first railway in continental Europe opened between Brussels and Mechelen.  In 1862, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halted a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico.  In 1891 the Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) had its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.