County Signs: Rainy-day ruminations

By MONTE DUTTON Peroxide has agreed with the Raiders. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Things I’ve noticed in movies and TV: It never drizzles. Movies shot in a studio have rickety doors. Many times the bad guy or gal in modern movies is the one who smokes. In old movies, everyone smokes. The second coming …

County Signs: Crazy and crazier

By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. It’s all the same. Sports. News. Weather. Music. Talk. Talk. Talk. Everything’s a talk show. Everybody’s got a podcast. So why am I writing this? So much seems micro, and so little seems macro. So much minutiae. So much of the obvious. Superstar curses teammate in tunnel …

Furmanology: Accustomed to an absent mind

By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. On Saturday, I watched the closest finish in Kentucky Derby history. On Sunday, I watched the closest finish in NASCAR history. On TV, mind you. I’m not some globe-trotting bon vivant hiding behind a cloak of seeming poverty. I’m worse than a poor boy. I’m a poor old …

Furmanology: But first, a bit of aged philosophy …

By MONTE DUTTON Evidence suggests the rain-shortened game was justified. (Furman photo) Click here. All is tangible, and all is not. Time, for instance. Precise. Measurable. Inviolable. Examined another way, it is not. For me, time crawls every morning, and then it gets faster and faster until late at night, when it runs out of …

County Signs: Tennis teams triumph

By MONTE DUTTON Nathan Meade (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I never thought I’d read books on my phone. Or watch sports called cornhole and pickleball on TV. Then again, I never thought I’d hear of a fellow named David Pecker, though I have to admit it’s an apt name for the guy who ran …

Blue Hose Blurbs: Baseball pounds Winthrop … again

(PC photo) Click here. On Friday night, I watched football, and in a way, it felt like spring practice for me, too. I started out at Clinton High School watching baseball, and when I got home from the Presbyterian College spring football game, I had two sets of photos to process, select and lay out. …

Furmanology: Dick Sheridan’s losing season

By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. Young men wouldn’t play football if it wasn’t fun. The most fun is winning. At the same time, a losing season, while unthinkable, can be beneficial. Dick Sheridan, who died last summer, coached the Paladins for eight seasons, accumulating a record of 69 victories, 23 defeats and …

Furmanology: No baseball … but lacrosse wins

By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. I conducted some web research and have confirmed that Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan is not a Klingon, though, in fairness, I did find some disreputable site that claimed he was, as well as Purdue’s Zach Edey and N.C. State’s D.J. Burns. The Wolfpack had quite a run. I can’t …

County Signs: Figures that it began with a funeral

Brett Young (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. A high percentage of people who attended a funeral and wrote about it mentioned the weather. For the record, it was drizzly and overcast at Fort Jackson National Military Cemetery when Jim McLaurin took his mortal bow. I saw no hidden meaning. The poet laureate of the working …

Thoughts this time of year

Laurens Academy's Olivia Huck (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. When I get up in the morning, brew some coffee while I’m taking some meds, turn on the TV and see what awful happened last night, my set (remember when a TV was a set?) recommends what I want to see. Then I commence translating sports …