El Blog Que Es Un Poquito Màs Macho Que Fernando Lamas. A Companion to the Assassin Bug: On Baseball, Jews, Baseball and Jews, Politics,Politics and Baseball, the Musical Genius of Susanna Hoffs, Books, Plutocracy, and Piano Music, scribbled by an unapologetic liberal. Lately, including posts on parenting, divorce, moving, and my bad attitude. Contact at themetabug@gmail.com
But if you’re thinking of getting a bulldog (or a Cocker Spaniel, for that matter), feast your eyes on this:
This poor guy just had what is called a Total Ear Canal Ablation (TECA), because his ears were chronically inflamed and infected. Imagine a circle around the ear canal, deepened all the way to the level of the skull.
who had traveled to Chicago to see their beloved Orioles play, now that they finally are leading a division late in the season, and will in all likelihood be in the playoffs for the first time in a long time. (They lost Machado yesterday, and Wieters is out, but remember that baseball is probably, of our 4 major American sports, is the one where any one single player matters the least. ) The Faithful of Baseball make their pilgrimages to Fenway and Wrigley, and they ooh and ah over the quaint charm of these places. The truth is that Wrigley is interesting and charming, but it is also a dump. So is Fenway. Going to them once or twice is fine, but once you’ve been to Camden Yards or AT&T Park, they just seem like rusting tourist traps, selling history rather than a good place to watch baseball.
So today my son and I made what has become our annual trip down to the “Friendly Confines”. Because weather prediction is for shit in the summer in this part of the world, we decided to go even though there was a chance of rain. And it did rain. It poured. The floodgates of heaven opened up upon us, and we all made for the concourse under the grandstand.
Then we waited.
After that we waited some more.
And after that we decided to do what most of the spectators did: We left.
And on the way out, the cheerful young woman in her bright blue Cubs polo shirt informed us,
“If you leave, you can’t come back in.”
It seems, then, that the Cubs (and MLB) have an internal monologue that runs like this:
We are not only going to make you wait as long as it is necessary for us to finish the game–and we don’t know how long that is–we are going to make you wait in our ivy -covered but extremely uncomfortable stadium where beer costs $8.00 and a hot dog is over $5.
No, you may not go out of the park to wait in reasonable comfort. We’ve got your money already, and frankly, we’re on a very tight schedule.
So according to the Powers That Be in Major League Baseball, it’s perfectly OK to make 30,000 people wait for an indefinite period of time in a ball park that has no accommodation for it. Even though attendance has dropped by nearly 700,000 over the past 6 years, MLB seems to be using the same strategy that the airline industry uses: We are going to just bluster onward, regardless of how it makes you feel about us.
Next year, we may go to a Cub game when we visit Chicago, but we probably won’t. We’ve seen Wrigley enough, and if I want to flush $100 down the toilet, I can save the trip on CTA.
Not my loss of youth, which is of no consequence. Promise. But 31 years later the title to my motor scooter shows up while I’m packing things up, and I’m thinking
“Great, the title to my scooter had my favorite president’s picture on it.” I had fun on that scooter, the best thing being cops wouldn’t ticket it on Chicago streets, or sidewalks, more likely. At least not in those days. And my girlfriend looked really funny with the helmet on. She had kind of a round face, so with the helmet, her face and head combined to form a sphere with nose, lips and eyes. A really cute sphere. Then we broke up, and this quasi-Amazonian blonde would ride on the back but we were just friends. That was fun, too.
But as I said, it is of no consequence.
Tim Curry was in the production, but I already knew him from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I thought he would become the great actor of our generation. This was April 1981. I was wrong, of course. Raiders of the Lost Ark came out that year, too, but voice for voice, Ford can’t hold a candle to Curry. (Or sing “Sloe Gin.” Or rock lingerie and high heels.)
I have searched high and low for a video of this performance. The screenplay was very different from the script for stage. If anyone knows of one, lemme know.
In the meantime, anyone want a playbill? I can’t keep carrying this stuff around with me.
This is not what I want to be doing. I want to be outside enjoying the day, instead of deciding which of my belongings I truly need and which need to be consigned to the trash heap, the thrift shop, the public library (do we need them anymore?), left anonymously at Starbucks or a lunch counter…
Here is a book called Facts about Israel, published by the Division of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I’m thinking sometime about 1975.
There are 34,393 sqm within the cease-fire lines from the Six-Day War.
The distance from Jerusalem to Haifa is 94 miles, to Tel Aviv a mere 38.
Modern Israel has never known permanent boundaries.
Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950. (I don’t know when/if they released the claim).
Ha’Aretz , the oldest Hebrew language newspaper, was founded in 1917. The Jerusalem Post, the oldest English language daily, in 1932.
The Israel Communist Party had one seat in the Knesset at the time of publication.
Men were in the Reserves until age 55.
The book refers to the geographical place as “the Land,” a direct translation of the Hebrew “Ha’Aretz.”
So, this isn’t about packing things up. It’s about What I Will do With Facts about Israel from 1975. To me it is a fascinating snapshot of a moment in time, that time when Jews traveled to the Sinai and the West Bank in tour groups (someone carrying a gun), but basically without fear. There were no big hotels in Sinai. Tourists slept on top of their sleeping bags under the desert sky. There were some grass shacks, but there wasn’t any plumbing. Israelis didn’t build anything, they knew they were leaving someday. They probably had no idea it would be so soon. I think that Camp David took us all by surprise.
And then there is now. Most everyone hates us for being Jewish and Zionist, but we’re sort of used to it. Conservative (i.e. Republican Jews, shudder) have no problem. They can hate the liberal world for everything, from political policy to its anti-Israel zeal. For liberals like myself, we find ourselves at odds with the Left we are normally sympathetic to. We are not going to give in to anti-Semitic (because that’s what it is) propaganda just because we think that all Americans should have health insurance and that American defense spending should be lower and the death penalty is a travesty and that we need to spend more on infrastructure . Ain’t gonna happen.
Like I said, shouldn’t I be outside, enjoying the ridiculously short New England summer?
Books are the buggy whips of our age. But worse. You only need one buggy whip: books act in synergy to make sequels, trilogies, collections, and ultimately libraries.
But nobody wants them anymore. The pleasures of reading are experienced ever less.
So what am I supposed to do with all of these books I’ve collected, from stories that I’ve liked to the so-called canon of “Great Books” that are supposed to be on Everyman’s shelf?
I have to fucking move. Why? Because I didn’t have it in writing. I trusted my stupid idiot landlord, which makes me the stupid idiot. She goes and gets knocked up by someone who isn’t even her boyfriend and decides that she needs her house back. I told her: I need to stay until my daughter finishes grade school. But she’s pregnant now, and it’s probably the first time anyone in MA has been pregnant for at least 10 years, so such a momentous occasion trumps everything else. What, she can afford this place now that she can shake someone down for child support? Whatever.
And I have all of these books to move. Here’s a copy of EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization &Reprocessing, purporting to be “The Breakthrough “Eye Movement” Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety , Stress, and Trauma.” (I actually tried this therapy once. Years ago. Went to a guy in Newton who got paid to move his finger back and forth like a metronome. Then I found out that he wrote “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Reincarnation.” It ranks #1,484,901 on all Amazon book sales, but it just barely makes it into the top 100 (it is #100) in New Age Books on the site. By comparison, Eric Kraft’s Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella’s Lunch Launch, a great and inventive read, ranks #3,731,034.) So let’s see. I save the lives of dogs, and this guy writes books on reincarnation and teaches people to watch metronomes. He lives in Newton, and I can’t even afford to live in Framingham anymore. Hmmmm.
So here’s the question: why on G-d’s green earth would anyone spend his time writing? Certainly not to be read, because it ain’t going to happen. Too busy tuning into Netflix, hoping to find the one good movie that has been rotated in as enticement to keep us from canceling our worthless subscription.Ya certainly don’t write for money. The internet put even more unnecessary words out there, and the jobs that once paid $1500 per article dropped to $150. Not worth the time. Intellectual burger flipping.
Collect books to pass them on? My children, alas, show no great interest in reading. The hours I spent with my head buried in discovery don’t seem so appealing to them. Did I waste all that time reading? Does it make any difference now? Was all the money spent on books better spent on tomato seeds (heirloom, naturally), travel, and automobiles ?
Oh, I am disillusioned. But I am not bitter. Promise. I am sitting here on the piles of books, needing to say good-bye but unable to do so. They won’t even go to a good home. They will be sent to the recycling plant and turned into cereal boxes and grocery bags, and maybe even toilet paper. The words that once made the author so proud will be brought low, made to wipe someone’s ass.
I came across Yukio Mishima’s The Sea of Fertility tetraology today. He killed himself–well, not just killed himself, but committed seppuku–when it was finished. It was his final effort, his statement to the world.
For those of you interested, it starts out like this:
When conversation at school turned to the Russo-Japanese War, Kiyoaki Matsugae asked his closest friend, Shigekuni Honda, how much he could remember about it. Shigekuni’s memories were vague–he just barely recalled having been taken once to the front gate to watch a torchlight procession. The year the war ended they had both been eleven, and it seemed to Kiyoaki that they should be able to remember it a little more accurately. Their classmates who talked so knowingly about the war were for the most part merely embellishing hazy memories with tidbits they had picked up from grown-ups.
Two members of the Matsugae family, Kiyoaki’s uncles, had been killed. His grandmother still received a pension from the government, thanks to these two sons she had lost , but she never used the money; she left the envelopes unopened on the ledge of the household shrine. Perhaps that was why the photograph which impressed Kiyoaki most out of the entire collection of was photographs in the house was one entitled “Vicinity of Tokuri Temple: Memorial Services for the War Dead” and dated June 26, 1904, the thirty-seventh year of the Meiji era. This photograph, printed in sepia ink, was quite unlike the usual cluttered mementos of the war. It had been composed with an artist’s eye for structure: it really made it seem as if the thousands of soldiers who were present were arranged deliberately , like figures in a painting, to focus the entire attention of the viewer on the tall cenotaph of unpainted wood in their midst.
Sometime around 1996, I went to a workshop called Writers for Riding. It took place at Ruidoso, home of Ruidoso Downs, once an important place in the world of quarter-horse racing, and now just another fading track near yet another Indian casino.
Was the conference a scam? Maybe yes, maybe no. There used to be turf writers in the US. but this wasn’t about turf writing–it was just about horses as a centerpiece to write around. There still are turf writers, but they are a dying and diminishing race. As one turf writer wrote:
The truth is, there is not that much racing media left, at least from the traditional standpoint of the daily newspaper. In fact, horse racing hardly exists in many American newspapers that used to employ one or more full-time racing writers and handicappers. Feature stories, outside of the Triple Crown, are few and far between, and many papers in racing cities have stopped publishing handicapping selections, entries, and results.
–Ray Paulick, http://www.paulickreport.com, November 23, 2012.
I found a canary yellow legal pad with some scrawls on it today. I am dumping stuff (see The Great Book Sale), but not without a moment’s reflection.
We all stayed in large rented condo. Who was there? Carolyn Elkins, who was my friend for a while, was there. She came with her sister, Marilyn. (Oddly enough, the trip was to be life-changing for Marilyn.) There was a Rebecca, from Arkansas, and a Becky, who was older and if I remember correctly had skin deeply etched by the sun.
After our initial excitement at meeting each other and the perfunctory politeness, the personality element is beginning to insert itself. The sore spots are starting to wear. The Olympics were on, and Becky could not resist making fun of the synchronized swimmers, especially the inverted legs-out-of-the-water splits maneuver. She used language from porno magazines. But when I suggested that the Olympics should be performed as they were in ancient Greece–naked–she got offended in a way that seemed to come from left field. Rebecca, the Arkansan, has her buttons pushed quite easily if the shortcomings of the South are brought up. I live in the South, as do Carolyn and her sister, and none of us seem to think that it is some sort of wisteria-covered paradise. Sometime, before the week is over, I will solemnly assert that the best thing that has happened to the South has been an influx of Northerners.
The names in my notes now mean nothing to me, whether I remember the person’s face or not. They are just names. There was a rodeo rider named Johnny Gas, according to my notes, but if I google that name I get Johnny Cash. There is a Walker Porter, DVM. The internet tells me that he is now retired, and that his wife of 55 years died last year. Someone must have gone to the desert endurance races in the UAE. Maybe it was Dr. Porter. It seems fairly certain that he did head down to Guadalajara to be the veterinarian at some match races. The track wasn’t flat–the starting gate was on an uphill.
Lee Abbott taught part of the course.One thing that annoys me about about writing courses is that the book signing session, with the weird sort of pressure to by a copy. Does anyone want a signed copy of Strangers in Paradise, or Love is the Crooked Thing?
Ronnie Stewart–trainer a three-word note says. He is on facebook, and is still working with horses.
Another forgotten rodeo cowboy, a note–probably a quote from Abbott–to “exhaust the emotional possibilities of a moment.” I am sure that that is not one of my ideas.
Here’s an interesting quote, but I can’t give it proper attribution:
“The American Cowboy is most overrated work in the U.S.”
It’s fucking 8:30 in the evening. It’s been a long day. It’s time to be enjoying the evening. But no, my idiot neighbor is out there making sure that the grass won’t be too tall in the morning in case it grows overnight. Does he add up the hours that he expends making sure that his lawn looks nice? I feel like telling him that I’m sure the grass over his grave will be nice and neat–won’t that be enough? How is it that I always end up next door to people whose life’s mission it is to make sure that their house has curb appeal?
The last place was worse. There was an acre of conservation land that used to belong to my neighbor, but which he still considered it his most sacred duty to keep mowed. Out there on the riding mower, hour after hour, in a tank shirt, or (heaven help me) shirtless, going in endless, noisy circles. Mowing down blackberries, columbine, leaving nice edges for poison ivy to flourish…
As soon as the weather gets nice, finally, sometime in the middle of May, I think of getting back outside. Not necessarily to do anything, but to just get outside without the burden and discomfort of cold and extra clothing and let the sun irradiate my skin. O let the sweat drip from my forehead, let my clothes stick to me, I do not care. I do not have to shovel. I do not have to clear the car off. I can open the windows and turn off the heated seats.
But then they start. The incessant whine, the buzzing around your ear like that damn mosquito that won’t go away while you try and sleep. Cursed things! Could somebody tell me why on G-d’s green earth an able-bodied person needs a riding mower for a 1/4 acre plot? Or even a motorized mower? Get some exercise! Use a reel mower! Let’s ignore the fuel that it takes to run the mowers of this country–just imagine all the fossil fuel used in creating and transporting the mowers. Is any device more suited than the mower in showing us how inconsiderate our neighbors are, out there at 7 am on weekend mornings, conveniently ignoring the fact that some of us may be sleeping (typical New Englander)? Is this a good use of technology? To be sure, there’s hardly an hour when someone isn’t mowing somewhere within earshot–can’t we have a few hours to listen to the wind and the birds and parents screaming at their children?
The pride people take in their lawns! Folks–It’s just grass. And I, for one, refuse to pour perfectly good drinking water on the ground on purpose. What’s the worst that could happen? That my lawn turns beige? and I don’t have to mow it at all. Chemicals? Why? To get rid of the dandelions, which are a) pretty, b) native, and c) edible? There are various species of things growing out there, and they are no less green that bluegrass or fescue.
The gas mowers will remain in reserve for those occasions when the grass has grown too high, or when the neighborhood is suffering from too much quiet. Actually, I may need to buy a house, so maybe I’ll let the whole thing go to hell and lower the property values until they reach an affordable level.
Wherein this bozo from Central Casting actually and without irony answers Pat Robertson’s question: “Why are Jews so rich?”
In case you missed Pat Roberton’s TV show, or in case you don’t watch Fox News, this embarrassment to the tribe was on the 700 Club perpetuating medieval stereotypes about his own group. Poor guy, his rebbe probably told him that The Merchant of Venice was a dramatization of real occurrence. Here’s the Salon article.
ONE COULD MAKE THE ARGUMENT THAT WRIGLEY CEASED TO BE WRIGLEY when the Tribune Corporation bought the Cubs, or when they in turn sold it to Sam Zell, or certainly when Zell sold it to the Ricketts family. Baseball ain’t what it used to be, and however quaint we try to make it in our minds, Wrigley is basically just an ivy-covered dump. True, it’s a really nice ivy-covered dump, but a dump is still a dump, and after one has made a trip to Camden Yards or AT&T field, it is apparent that charm only goes so far, and that good sight lines and comfortable seats might, in the course of 81 games, be even more important.
Wrigley Field was cool, but that ended with lights in 1988. Baseball played at night is just another reason that some think it’s declining. Time was when everyone watched the World Series and didn’t quit watching when the hometown bombed out (which was every year in Chicago). But a weekday game in the sunshine–that’s an excuse to turn on the TV at work or just light out and play hooky.
Wrigley Field was really cool when they had to share the field with the Bears. On a rainy Sunday the football players would get covered in mud as they made runs up the middle through the grassless baselines infield. It was cool to walk to Wrigley Field from my grandmother’s home on Cornelia and the lake (they lived previously lived at Pine Grove and Addison, but then they moved up in the world), past LeMoyne Elementary where my dad went, by that time covered with Latin Kings graffiti, showing that the old neighborhood wasn’t what it once was. My dad, though only in his early 30s, had season tickets–they weren’t so expensive then–and they were almost the worst seats in the house. We sat a row or two from the very top at the south end zone. The vortex of lake winds formed by the bowl of the stadium had us huddling under blankets, thermoses in hand.The season highlight, the Bear-Packer game, was in December every year. I froze my ass off and loved every minute of it.
Season tickets? Unless it’s a St. Louis game, where busloads of Missourians (and Southern Illinoisans) come to gloat (do they ever get tired of it?) at the misery that is Cubs baseball, tickets can generally be had out front at less than face value, especially at the beginning of the season, when the weather is more suited to Bear-Packer games or outdoor hockey, or at the end of the season, when even the faithful realize that rare Chicago days of warmth and sunshine can be enjoyed with beers that cost less than $8.50.
A sign of the times is that the Cubs organization was actively recruiting season ticket holders. I was called on the phone multiple times by a salesman attempting to get me to buy in by relying on my out-of-date feelings about the game. I got on the waiting list for season tickets, probably around 5 years ago. I was sort of interested until I realized that it would set me back at least several thousand dollars to get middling seats. I’d never be able to break even, unless of course the Messiah came and the Cubs made it above 85 wins (well, it has happened around 35 time–since 1874). Attendance at Wrigley has been falling for 6 years, even as the seating expands. I confess to having fantasies about selling the tickets a profit to benefit the nonprofit (PAZ), and then being first in line for NLCS tickets (the World Series is too much to hope for). I am not in a position in life to indulge fantasies at the cost of several thousand dollars. Leave that to the corporati in their luxury boxes, or those who believe that a trip to the ball park with the family should cost as much as a weekend vacation.
The Meta-Bug 