Recent Posts by Richard Freed

Topic: Shaun Inman vs. Kevin Cornell 9/28 / Conversation About Today's Match

In being asked to declare a winner, we need to know the game. In focusing on the two most noticeable players, we shouldn’t forget the third—Gruber himself, whose own ideas are in play (the trouncing, for example, of Marker Felt) and whose own feelings about the match are felt by the other players. When Gruber implies as early as the fifth round (volley) that Cornell may be going for a “knockout,” we begin to understand that his “play-by-play commentary” is different from that in an ordinary sporting event: His audience is not only we the spectators but also the participants themselves. More than just commenting on the action, he has the ability to influence it. In response, then, to both Cornell and Gruber, Inman can only ask, in round six, “Bleaten Already?”