By MONTE DUTTON

The weekend was uneventful but worthwhile.

I spent most of my time writing my next, and 10^th, novel, The Graduate Transfer, which doesn’t get italics until it’s published. I already had 19,000 words, but now the 19,000 are different ones (as if most weren’t already). I decided to use the original as a resource to start over. It’s thickening. These 19,000 words are about six or seven chapters behind the originals, which is good. I’m about a third of the way there. I’m happy with the yarn’s progress.

Caleb Penn and Sean Gallagher are the kinds of world-weary veterans who didn’t exist before transfer protocols and NILs. Penn is a six-year veteran of four universities and a like number of knee surgeries. Gallagher is a six-year veteran of one university and three surgeries.

It’s a comedy about what a harsh world does to kids while turning them into men. Imagine M*A*S*H about college football, or Animal House about the stadium instead of the frat house.

The Red Sox took two out of three from the Yankees in New York. The Sox aren’t terrible, but they aren’t good enough to make the playoffs. The one game they lost, I watched, but that’s the way it goes.

I barely pay attention to horse racing except for the Triple Crown, which I love. Arcangelo, which I didn’t know from a tangelo or yellow Jello, won. A male, Arcangelo was trained by a woman, Jena Antonucci, and it was about time, I reckon. The jockey, Javier Castellano, won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes on separate horses.

Arcangelo. Antonucci. Castellano. All difficult to rhyme.

Martin Truex Jr. won the NASCAR race in Sonoma. It was interesting in the way no one has time for anymore. NASCAR overhyped the sport when they tried to turn every race into a simulation of a video game. Now the fans only watch the last 30 laps and threaten to storm the Capitol if every race doesn’t have fiery wrecks and a side-by-side finish.

I’ve written or said this a thousand times: If every event was a classic, there would be no such thing.

The Holy Grail sits in Omaha, but no one in South Carolina is going to find it. In the college baseball playoffs, the team with the best chance exited first and the one with the least chance exited last, but they’re all three watching on TV now.

I didn’t watch the NBA finals. Miami still has to prove to me it has a chance. Besides, I watched The Outlaw Josey Wales. Remember, kids, “Endeavor to persevere.”

While the Braves are still streaking or you are enjoying a beach vacation, buy a copy of The Latter Days, my new baseball novel that is available wherever books are sold other than in a store. You can download it in your “devices” for a mere $1.99 or buy a softcover version suitable for autographs and shelves for a $11.99.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has nothing to do with gays in the military but rather my view that most of modern life is governed that way. It’s twice as long and three times as dysfunctional, making the most of dysfunction’s many forms.

One of these days, I’m going to get a novel right. That’ll be when enough people buy one to make the money worthwhile. This is most likely to occur after I am dead.

Until then, go to MonteDutton.net, and take a look at the ones I’ve got right now.