Various Observations in Written Form

...and so it ends.

2009-12-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

In August of 2004, I got started on this blog, asking "will I be the careful blog-gardener or the apathetic blog-slum lord?"

In five-plus years and 1126 posts, I was mostly the former. But lately, I've mostly been the latter. In fact, only my commitment to finishing the State Memories Project has brought me here at all lately. I haven't even been posting Letters to Hedgehog for the last couple of months.

Why?

I think there are three reasons.

First, life with a baby is quite crazy. It takes away from the quiet, solitary time I used to spend crafting my thoughts for public consumption.

Second, my Facebook account has become my go-to place whenever anything happens that I want people to know. I've had interesting thoughts to share in the past few months, and when I can do that in a few lines, it becomes a status update. On the half-dozen-or-so occasions when I've wanted to say more, it has become a Facebook note. I have more readers there, and they're all people with some connection to me, so I also get more response there.

Third, anonymous blogs like this one have become faded considerably in the past couple of years. My friends with blogs (like Jack Bog and Jim) blog under their names, and they still move along with surprising fruitfulness. I still read them--and I will as long as they're writing. But most of my friends who blog anonymously have given it up. While I have succeeded in maintaining anonymity here--in that first post, I was convinced it'd all fall apart one day, but I was pretty vigilant, and it never did--that anonymity makes this blog less likely to develop any kind of readership (not that it was ever a goal to get readers) and also, importantly, a little less fun to write.

Make no mistake--I've loved doing this. I've enjoyed it just about every step of the way. I think I'm a better writer, thinker, and friend. Indeed, much to my surprise, I've met many friends through this blog--actual people I hang out with (pankleb and Butterbean). That alone is worth the time I've put in. And the rest of you who are out there and have read me and even responded: I thank you. It felt good to be able to talk to people about the big stuff (I went pretty haywire for the last two presidential elections, as well as my new baby) and the little (see how often I write about Life Minutiae?).

But my default reaction to stuff I that crosses my mind, which for so long was "I have to blog about this," is no longer that. It has both been reduced and transmogrified into something that Facebook does more efficiently and for a better, more set audience.

So this is it...the announcement that anyone who has been paying attention knew was coming:

I'm hanging 'em up. I won't be coming back, at least not as TRP.

I'm actually feeling a little sad about that last sentence, since this has been a big chunk of the way I've expressed myself for so long. But I'll still be out there--just on different parts of the web. The referee website will continue. The new baseball website is gorgeous--I'm prouder of it than of anything I've ever done on the old web. And then, there's Facebook, where I'll occasionally write stuff that used to belong here.

But just like thousands of others that are ending lately, this page as it exists no longer suits my needs or wants as a writer or a person. And since I've always believed that a blog is there to serve the purpose of the writer, not the audience (not that I have much of an audience), there's no reason to continue.

If you read this regularly and are not friends with me on Facebook, feel free to send me an email (to the gmail handle of bloggingref). If you tell me who you are, I might fire off a friend request.

It's been fun riding out the blog fad with you, from near the beginning to here near the end. Surf around the past as much as you'd like--I'll keep this on-line, at least for the foreseeable future. But we've reached the end.

You know--the place where the love you take is equal to the love you make.

And we leave it there...with those last few chords of Abbey Road.

Now, I'll take the needle off before "Her Majesty" begins.

State Memories Project: Puerto Rico

2009-12-29T21:58:00.001-08:00

I met Efrain during a Montreal Expos/Atlanta Braves game I attended in 2003, back when the Expos were playing several series a year in San Juan since nobody in Montreal seemed to know they existed. Yes, I flew all the way to Puerto Rico for this. (Quoth one friend: “I can’t believe you’re flying all the way to Puerto Rico to go to a baseball game.” My response: “That’s not true. I’m flying all the way to Puerto Rico to go to TWO baseball games.”

Efrain was an elderly man, there with his wife, who noticed me scoring the game. In labored English, he asked me: “Do you always do that?” I showed him my scorebook and said that yes, I always did that. That would have been it, except that shortly thereafter, the Braves turned a double play. Efrain turned to me and said “Six-four-three.” The next play, a grounder to third, I turned to him and said “Cinco-tres!”

Incredibly, my scorebook got us to talk a bit about baseball. I learned that he was a Braves fan, and an Andruw Jones fan in particular. While he struggled to find the word “defensive,” he let me know that he thought that Andruw Jones was the best defensive center fielder he’d ever seen…”and I’ve seen Willie Mays!”

It was marvelous. We were divided by generation, upbringing, race, and language, but we had a fantastic night talking about momentary baseball stuff. It was probably my favorite moment I’ve ever had at a baseball game…and that is saying something.

When he got up to leave for the night, he said “Well, brother, glad to know you.” In only a couple of hours, I got all the way to the appellation of “brother.” And that alone was worth the 8,000 mile round-trip. It solidified in my soul my need to travel far and wide to go to ballgames. Muchos gracias, Efrain.

State Memories Project: District of Columbia

2009-12-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

My first trip to the Holocaust museum was in 1994 with Alison. I remember a few specific items from the museum itself. I carried a biography card you carry with you to develop a personal story as you walk through the Holocaust. And I remember seeing horrific pictures of Jewish women forced to strip down and humiliate themselves at gunpoint. There was something in the eyes of one of the women that stuck with me--a bit of “You think you’re breaking me, but there’s a part of me you’ll never be able to impact.” And there was a very grisly bit showing Nazis sawing bones up--to re-use them in some fashion, if I recall correctly.

But at some point along there--maybe the humiliated women exhibit, maybe the bones--I started to wonder whether I wanted to look at these things at all. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to avoid knowledge of the Holocaust--I read all of the captions alongside the exhibits. But once I’d done that, I had to make a decision--a conscious decision. Did I want to look at the naked woman in her moment of humiliation? Did I want to see the grisliness of bones being sawed in half?

Perhaps I was intellectualizing the whole experience, which is probably far from a good thing, but what I started doing was watching my fellow museum patrons to see how they responded. I recall one woman at the bones exhibit who had her eyes in contact with the video for maybe three tenths of a second before she literally recoiled and briskly walked away. I recall others looking closely.

Me? Well, I may have taken a coward’s way out. But it did leave me asking the right questions, I suppose. What is the proper way to look at ourselves at our worst? Can we stare too long? Too short? How exactly are we to act when faced with horror?

State Memoris Project: Wyoming

2009-12-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

The summer after I graduated from Kenyon, my girlfriend flew out to Denver to hang out with me before I set off for Teach For America training. During that time, we took a road trip up to Montana to visit my sister. Since my girlfriend was handicapped—a spinal cord injury from when she was a kid—I had to drive the whole way. Incredibly, my dad let us use his Acura for the trip to make the driving easier on me. I was flabbergasted—it was a sure sign that he really liked my girlfriend.

We made it as far as Rock Springs, Wyoming on our first night. While I was there, I remembered that a high school acquaintance of mine (we did play-by-play for the local cable broadcasts of Columbine football and basketball) was a DJ at a radio station in Rock Springs. I found him in the phone book, called him, and we chatted for a while. He said he was the morning guy for KSIT (pronounced “kiss-it”…I know, ick) and asked if there was anything we’d like to hear the next morning. “Well, Lynn likes Madonna,” I said. He asked what time we’d be getting up. I told him.

Sure enough, the next morning, Amy and I got up and waited around in bed for a few minutes, and my old friend said “This is for my high school friends TRP and Lynn. [I guess, to expedite the dedication, he declared Lynn a high school friend by proxy.] Have fun in Yellowstone, guys.” Lynn and I bounced in the bed in a little seated dance as we got a Double Shot of Madonna...”Cherish” and “Respect Yourself,” if I recall correctly.

Haven’t heard from the guy since. Worth a Google...

Holy shit. I wish I hadn’t done that. Literally, in seeing what he was up to, I learned that my high school friend was convicted of a sex offense against a minor in Utah in 2004. I saw his mug shot for his required registration. Sad.

I’ll try not to let that impact the memory of him being so nice to us as we passed through, though, which is still my best Wyoming memory.

State Memories Project: Wisconsin

2009-12-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

It’ll be baseball again. This is the last state memory with baseball in it, I promise. I tried to find a memory that sticks out more, and while I have a few (asking my grandma football trivia questions while dropping my brother off at camp in about 1980, hanging out with friends Chris and Rebecca and their adorable kids at the Madison Children’s Museum, abandoning a July 4th fireworks show with Chris and Rebecca on the Milwaukee Waterfront before it started because it looked like rain, and then arriving in the car right before a deluge), this one sticks out the most, so we’ll go with it.

In 2007, Swankette and I did a spring break baseball tour of the Midwest, and it involved a drive up to Appleton for a Wisconsin Timber Rattlers game. It was bloody cold, but we made it through the game in Clinton, Iowa the night before (gloves, hats, long underwear, etc.). So we got to Appleton ready for a tough night. Temperatures were in the 20s and wind chill down around zero. We got to the hotel and called to confirm that they would play the game.

They canceled it. Wimps.

I said that we were in from Seattle, we were not able to exchange the tickets for another night, and was there any way we could get a refund? The person we spoke to on the phone said that we couldn’t get a refund, but we could exchange our tickets for merchandise in the team store…and that the team store closed in 15 minutes.

SOLD! We jumped in the car, zipped to the ballpark, and ran into the store. The man there said “Really? He told you you could use your ticket money here? Let me go talk to him.”

10 minutes later, the guy we spoke to on the phone sheepishly arrived and said that, um, yeah, he shouldn’t have said that, we can’t trade in our tickets for merchandise, but if we waited, he could get us Timber Rattlers baseballs that were left over from last night’s giveaway. It took him a while to find them, and we wandered the frigid ballpark taking pictures. Finally, he arrived, and we donated our tickets to the charity fund.

I guess it’s better that the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Appleton (or whatever) got our tickets than it would have been for us to get a hat or whatever. But it was still a bizarre customer service moment.

State Memories Project: West Virginia

2009-12-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

Another baseball memory, once again from the big 2006 trip.

Our West Virginia game was in Princeton, which is, as best as I can tell, the smallest city in the US with an affiliated minor league team. (Population: 6,000). Princeton as a town had absolutely zero to do--not very attractive or interesting. We decided we wanted to just chill for a couple hours in a bookstore—a nice prospect after being together in a minivan for 6 days. So we found a Yellow Pages and saw that the only bookstores in Princeton were Christian bookstores. Wow. So we drove down the road to Bluefield, where there was a Waldenbooks Express in a mall. Two-thirds of the store was dedicated to Christian books, and there were no places to chill. Thus it came to be that we spent that afternoon in a mall food court.

But that’s not the memory. The memory is of the ballgame. A guy saw my Everett AquaSox cap and said “Everett AquaSox?” Wow! I said yes, and explained that we were on a big minor league quest. His response: “You look like those kind of people.” Not sure what to make of that, but nice. He was so impressed that we had traveled so far that he gave us a free sledge-hammer whack at the car (in the “Hit A Car, Not A Pet” promotion). That was nice of him. Then, after the game, I nearly won $100 in the toss-a-ball-into-a-hula-hoop-on-the-field promotion. Came up JUST short.

But what I remember is that the general manager who had recognized us, on the field after the game said “Thanks! Drive safely! We love you!” Under most circumstances, that last sentence would feel really dorky and strange, but for some reason, at Hunnicutt Field in Princeton, West Virginia, it felt okay to me.

State Memories Project: Washington

2009-12-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

It’s gotta be the wedding. Hedgehog’s birth was transcendent and wonderful, but it’s gotta be the wedding.

The entire weekend was exactly perfect with two exceptions: the heat and the SeaFair traffic between the ceremony and the reception. But rather than focus on the weekend—the AquaSox rehearsal dinner, the close friends, the family reading and leading prayers, the fantastic minister preaching about baseball, my sister not being able to maintain her composure for prayers, my best friends all singing a Kenyon Chasers hit that broke me 100% down…

well, I’ll focus on a tactile moment.

For the whole year leading up to the wedding, I told Swankette that I wouldn’t cry—that it was not really my style, that she shouldn’t be upset about it. She said it wasn’t a big deal.

But I 100% lost it, and I lost it at one moment exactly.

The ring. Swankette is eighteen inches from my face, and I’ve slipped the ring on her finger, and there she is slipping the ring on mine. And the tactileness of feeling that ring go on absolutely set me off. I’d never worn a ring before! Certainly not on that finger. And feeling that VOW happen…is there anything more beautiful than a vow made out of deep, wonderful love?...well, I absolutely lost it. I cried. I made it through the remainder of the vows, etc., but there were real tears. Then, when Swankette and I turned and knelt in front of the celebrant…much to our surprise, SHE was in tears. And we hadn’t known her that long!

I composed myself until the friend choir sang "Go Ye Now In Peace". It’s a sweet little song—nothing special—but it has incredible sentimental value to me, since it closed every Kenyon Chasers concert. Knowing that all of these people I loved were singing that song that meant so much to me…well it brought the serious waterworks. Repeated, quaking, massive sobs. Tearfest 2005.

I got it together, grabbed the baseball that the minister had used in the ceremony, and waited to greet people outside the church. Tears came and went all night long. I remember my friend Tom Spoon asking “Are you okay? Seriously, man, are you okay?” I wanted to shouted through my tears: “YES!!!”

My friend Andrew made it all better. Quoth he: “Finally. A man as emotional on his wedding day as I was.”

Thanks, Andrew.

But it all started with the ring. She put it on me that evening, and I’ll be buried with it. That’s damn exciting.

State Memories Project: Virginia

2009-12-29T21:18:00.001-08:00

Stayed in a hotel in Alexandria one night when my nephew--who was 4 at the time--said something that totally cracked me up. As my sister was ready to take him back to the National Mall, he said, quite simply, "But I HATE the mall!"

But my better memory also occurred in Alexandria. I got together with a HS friend and sorta-kinda-girlfriend when we each were 31. All past stuff was long-since forgotten. Indeed, I had to set aside some current stuff, since she was writing a lot of stuff I passionately disagreed with in her role as policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation. But none of that mattered when we went out on a warm night and found a very cool busker on the streets downtown. He had gathered a crowd by playing wine glasses. He had a whole table of them and played them beautifully. He called up several people for an audience participation number, and I was among those called up. I followed his instructions for how to play a glass--each of us had one--and I kept that low note going as the underpinning for his rendition of the theme from Chariots of Fire.

My friend sat there smiling, watching while I played that note.

Old friends. Can't value them highly enough.

State Memories Project: Vermont

2009-12-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

I’ve been to Vermont once: on an early March day in 1990. I was visiting my then-girlfriend over Spring Break at her home in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

We spent one day driving up to Robert Frost’s grave, which, if I recall correctly, is in Bennington—about a 45-minute drive up the road from Williamstown. (Google confirms this location…but says that the drive is only 20 minutes.) I don’t remember the grave. I remember a lot of mountains, and teasing my girlfriend because, to a Colorado boy, these mountains were puny. And I remember stopping at Friendly’s for lunch. It was a calm day—handholding in the cemetery, kissing in a couple of parking lots.

Love (or what I thought love was) and sex were both new then, and having an afternoon in lovely surroundings with my first really serious girlfriend sum up my memories of the few hours I was in Vermont.

State Memories Project: Utah

2009-12-29T21:01:00.000-08:00

I drove through Utah as I moved out to Seattle in ’96. Stayed with friends and left my credit card at a restaurant…we managed to recover it the next day. Tipped the person handily.

My second time there was for Nationals in ’04. I had a Public Forum team qualify that year. One of the kids was a 14-year-old sophomore—actually, her birthday was in July, so she wasn’t even 14 yet--and it was I'm fairly sure, her first time away from her parents. I remember how very nervous she seemed…until about ten minutes after the plane landed. Then, she realized how fun this would be, and she had a fantastically wonderful time.

But the #1 memory is of my big sister Debby, who chaperoned for me that year. For her, that trip represented a similar first—the first time she’d been away from her children. She’d spent, I believe, perhaps every single night of her previous 12 years where my autistic nephew had been—and, of course, the two younger sons that were born 2 and 5 years thereafter. So heading down to Salt Lake City to judge some extemp was quite a step for her, too. Like my student, she was absolutely overjoyed at the chance to be on her own. At one point, while chilling out and reading a book uninterrupted, she said something to the effect of “Do you know that I haven’t had a SINGLE PERSON ask me a SINGLE QUESTION all day today? This is fantastic!” We spent some good sibling time together, walking through Temple Square and checking out the sights. We may have been having a little too good a time together, I guess, since one of the many horse-and-carriage operators came up to us and asked if we wanted a nice, romantic carriage ride around town. Needless to say, I totally broke out laughing. The carriage driver asked me why I was laughing.. “I have my reasons,” I said, and decided to leave it at that.

Fun week. I’ve always felt very tight with Debby, so it was great to get so much one-on-one time with her. And I know she felt the same way, even if it was merely to get her first kid-free week since becoming a mom.

State Memories Project: Texas

2009-12-29T20:48:00.000-08:00

My most vivid memory from Texas is dark; too dark to be reproduced here, I think. So are some of the others--I've generally hit life nadirs in Texas. But here, I'll try to pick something positive.

Texas is where my friends and I would go when we wanted to get away from Leesville, Louisiana during my two years there. I recall one such instance where my friends and I wanted to see The Crying Game. Rest assured that wasn't going to make the multiplex in Vernon Parish, so we made it a part of a big Saturday: The Crying Game as a matinee, then Knicks at Rockets that night.

I was fortunate not to have been told the secret to The Crying Game before getting to the theater in Houston. Thing is, the movie would have been incredible without the secret--so much intrigue and double-think. But all of us were taken aback when that camera panned down Jaye Davidson's body. "No WAY!" was how my friend Michael described his thoughts. And as we left the theater, I said to my friends: "You're not going to believe this...but Patrick Ewing is actually a woman."

Then we grabbed a bite and made it to The Summit for the game, which was a fantastic one. It came down to Hakeem Olajuwon blocking a Greg Anthony coast-to-coast layup attempt as time expired. (And, looking at the box score, wow! 42 and 12 for Olajuwon, 20 and 15 for Ewing.) Can't get better than that--two really good teams playing a tight game.

Nor can you get better than a long field trip with friends.

State Memories Project: Tennessee

2009-12-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

You’re probably noticing a disproportionate percentage of my state memories are baseball-related. That’s because so many of my vacations are baseball-related.

On the big baseball trip Swankette and I took with my geographer buddies in 2006, I was actually invited to a ballpark by a member of the front office of a team. I got an email from a nice guy named Dan saying he’d landed on my website looking for ideas for promotions and noticed I hadn’t been in Tennessee yet. He invited me. We already had a plan to head out that way, so we agreed to include Knoxville and the Tennessee Smokies on our trip, and he upsold me to a VIP package. It originally included a hat and one of us throwing out the first pitch; as there were four of us travelling, I got him to throw in an autographed baseball and an opportunity to announce a batter over the PA system. With my experience as a HS football PA man, it shouldn’t surprise you I jumped at the opportunity to do the latter.

The day was fantastic. My friend's first pitch was true, Swankette still displays the autographed baseball, and the other friend looked great in the hat. Dan sat with us for a few innings on a gorgeous warm night in the Smoky Mountains, and he and Swankette chit-chatted about life working for a minor league club (since she had done so in the past). They really put on a nice show…lots of activity, but NONE of it interfering with the baseball. I loved it.

Then, Dan escorted me up to the press box. I felt bad taking a batter from their PA man, since he was fantastic…a deep, gorgeous basso profundo with just enough of a drawl to let you know where you were. The press box featured mostly good-ol-boys; the scoreboard operator wore a glove. I was chatting with them and preparing for my moment when…WHAP!...Mark Reynolds of the Smokies (who has since been promoted to the Arizona Diamondbacks) absolutely slaughtered the baseball. It banked off the scoreboard in left center. PA guy got out a chart with distances and guestimated that the ball went 441 feet, and announced it as such. He held up a stuffed bear with a heartbeat to the microphone…that heartbeat sound reverberated throughout the ballpark.

Then…my turn. They introduced me as “VIP TeacherRefPoet.”

I tried to channel my PA hero, Bob Sheppard of the Yankees. Go slowly. Savor every syllable.

“Now batting…the first baseman…number thirty-one…Agustin…Murillo.”

Almost unbelievably fun.

He popped out to the catcher.

I am so glad Dan emailed (he’s now a Facebook friend) and so incredibly glad I let him talk me into the VIP package. It was more than worth every penny to intensify the memories of what was, on its own, already a gorgeous ballpark.

State Memories Project: South Dakota

2009-12-29T20:31:00.000-08:00

Our family went on a trip to South Dakota in 1973—my dad was the featured speaker at some sort of anesthesiology shindig up there. So all six of us piled into a station wagon and headed to Rapid City.

I was only three years old, but I do have two memories of the trip that endure. The first is not that notable. We were staying in some sort of hotel that felt like a trailer park, at least in my memory. I do remember being in a hotel room and watching Match Game ’73.

The other one is more striking, and will serve as the actual #1 memory from the state. It’s really just one quick visual. I remember looking up at Mount Rushmore while being carried by my mother. What an intense visual! We were at some kind of visitors’ center, either behind a railing or possibly even indoors in front of a gigantic window. But I remember being quite impressed.

Strange. If I was three, my mother and father were both 34—significantly younger than I am now. I remember my parents at a younger age than I am now.

State Memories Project: South Carolina

2009-12-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

When Swankette, me, and our geographer friends stopped to see the Charlotte Knights play ball in 2006 (the stadium is across the state line in South Carolina), the night ended memorably. The game, alas, didn’t end. In the tenth inning, with the score tied at 3, a huge storm started. With lightning still far away and men on base for the home team, the umpires let them play in the awful rain for fairly long—five minutes or more—hoping to end the game with a run in the bottom of the inning. But when the Knights’ Casey Rogowski grounded into a double play, they immediately dragged out the tarp and everyone—including us—ran for the parking lot. (They completed the game the next day without us. And, by the way, I didn’t remember Rogowski’s name or the fact it was a double play. I had to dig out the scorebook for that detail.)

After our mad sprint to the car through sheets of rain and with thunder getting ever louder, we sat in the traffic leaving the ballpark to begin the scary drive to our hotel in Hickory, NC. And while we all sat in the car, the Knights decided to set off the scheduled postgame fireworks even though the game technically hadn’t ended. Thus, we were treated to quite a lovely visual: the stadium lights in the foreground, the fireworks behind them, and a lightning storm well behind them. Efforts to capture the dramatic visual in a photo were fruitless, but I remember that combination of natural and man-made fireworks. It was intensely beautiful.

Letter to Hedgehog: Months Seven and Eight

2009-10-25T07:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Hedgehog,

I write this during morning boy duty. Your mom and I invented this over the summer so that she could get some approximation of sleep after waking up multiple times overnight to feed you. That's right: a teacher got up at 6 to 7 AM every day over the summer to hang out with you. Remember this when you're a teenager for two reasons: one, it will prevent the "you never did anything for me" teenage attitude, and two, if you know this is a consequence of fatherhood, it will make it FAR LESS LIKELY you'll have unprotected sex.

I'm actually kidding. Because while I don't spend every second of the mornings mooning over you (as this moment on the computer shows), it has become among my favorite times to hang out with you. It's nice and quiet and you're usually in a good mood fresh off your overnight sleep. I just put you on the floor and let you roll around, checking out a bunch of toys and the cat. This morning, you're working hard on the letter D. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Is this indicating an affection for me or for surrealism? Probably neither...probably just phonics practice. Now you eye the cat. now you grab your links and do a 360 roll over towards your mom's old Tigger.

Sounds have become wonderful in the last month. You're a fan of blowing raspberries, which your mom and I enthusiastically join in on. And there's the motoroboat noise at all pitches. That can't be easy to do. A friend reminded me yesterday that the motorboat is a good singing warmup, so I'm starting to harbor fantasies of you singing down the road. We shall see.

Hold on. You've backed yourself into a corner. Have to go save you.

Yeah, that's another thing--you're far more mobile than you were even a couple of weeks ago. You're RIGHT on the edge of crawling...for the past 72 hours or so, you've been getting up on your hands and knees and thinking very intently about what comes next, but rather than moving forward, you sort of do a pelvic rocking. Not that you need to crawl...you're moving around very nicely via rolling and pivoting on your belly. That gets you darned near anywhere you want to go. And the sitting...LOVE the sitting! We put a few toys around you and watch it happen.

You're just grabbed a cup and are talking into it. I'm not sure you understand acoustics yet, but you're into the echo.

I know I've said this before, but NOTHING beats a baby laugh. I'm often surprised at what you find funny. The other day, while your mom slept (never, EVER wake a sleeping mommy), I took you downstairs. We have old lighting down there, with a string-pull to turn on lights. The previous owners have tied up a shoulder-pad on one of the strings to make it easier to grab. While you laid underneath it, I started punching it like it was the heavy bag. You watched it bounce off the ceiling and swing around, and you laughed uproariously. Needless to say, I gave myself quite a workout on that shoulder pad.

Your biggest physical change is that bottom tooth. It now just out a ways, so your smile has this one white bump in it. Awesome.

The challenge is to really, really focus on the way you look and act every day because it's guaranteed to be totally different within a few days. I do think you're more adorable than any baby ever, and it's entirely possible I'd think that even if you weren't mine.

You keep on developing like a good boy. My new goal for you is that you'll win all of the Nobel Prizes in the same year. That'd be awesome.

Love,
Dad

State Memories Project: Rhode Island

2009-10-04T21:12:00.001-07:00

I was reading a book as I traveled by train from Boston to New York on one of my baseball trips. When the train came to a stop, I looked up and saw the signs indicating we were at the Providence train station. “Huh,” I thought. “Looks like I’m in Rhode Island.” I then resumed reading.

State Memories Project: Pennsylvania

2009-10-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

My most vivid memory of Pennsylvania is a bit of a downer. It’s the reason that I quit my MFA in poetry writing and is related to some of my darker moments of the soul. I can recall the 15-minutes-or-so that most rocked my world, but I fear it would take too long—too much backstory. Ask me about it sometime if you'd like. I can give the unabridged version.

So, for this one-page synopsis, I’ll focus on a positive memory…my first poetry reading in December of 1994. Hemingway's, a restaurant on Forbes Street, hosted readings by MFA students—one poet and one fiction writer for each reading. When I heard about it at the start of the year, I signed up for the last date possible (if memory serves, it was Monday, December 5, 1994, but memory may not serve). The goal was to give myself a chance to write as much cool stuff as I could that semester.

A good buddy came down from State College, and I expected a small crowd--just him and a gathering of my friends in the program. Much to my astonishment, the joint was PACKED. Not a seat was empty…and most of the people were strangers. I later learned why: the TAs of intro-to-poetry-writing and intro-to-fiction-writing courses required their students to attend and review one reading during the semester. Since mine was the last reading of the semester, I had every procrastinating creative writing undergraduate at the university watching me at Hemingway’s that night.

In the weeks leading up to my reading, I decided the best route for me to go was to read all of my funny stuff and all of my sex stuff. It was a cheap out, but it was my first reading and I DESPERATELY wanted to be liked. My work paid off. They laughed when they needed to laugh, focused when they needed to focus. If I have any talent, it’s the ability to own a room. My little anecdotes between poems went over nicely. The last poem, “How to Dance,” was an especially big hit, as was one called “Overheard at Harvard.” Some of the poetry was good, some not-so-good, but the fact is, I took a room full of mostly-strangers and had them in the palm of my hand for a half hour. My friends gave me many handshakes and back-slaps. The TAs of the intro-to-poetry classes told me that their students universally liked my reading. I know I liked it too, and I loved—LOVED—the feeling of being in the spotlight with just my poetry to hold attention. I liked it even more than I like singing, acting, or teaching—and that is saying something.

State Memories Project: Oregon

2009-10-04T21:05:00.001-07:00

I think the day I decided to marry Swankette is the day that I told her that I wasn’t asking her to marry me. Let me explain.

We took a huge trip down the Oregon coast in 2004—our second annual 4th of July Minor League Road Trip. After games in Seattle and Tacoma, Michelle drove me down the Oregon Coast to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Lincoln City. That’s a hotel where each room is decorated in honor of an author. She got the Hemingway room, where we had a romantic evening surrounded by many, many dead animals. We then hit ballparks in Eugene and Portland. My memory is of the Lincoln City day.

We stopped at Mo’s to have cheap fish sticks over the ocean, and my nerves got the best of me. I knew that, after two and a half years of dating, Swankette and I were approaching the point of no return. I was pretty sure I wanted to marry her, but hadn’t yet worked through the deep, intense analysis that I give all decisions (let alone the most important one of my life). I was worried that Swankette was expecting a ring that trip; a ring I didn’t have. So, as we waited for our fish sandwiches, I sort of blurted out: “Swankette, I’m not going to be asking you to marry me on this trip. Just so you know.” Yeah, I really was that smooth.

Her response: She laughed. Sweetly. That oh-that-is-so-typical-of-you-to-worry-like-that laugh. It was splendid. It was precisely what I needed. It relaxed me for the rest of the trip, and relaxed me in the relationship. In retrospect, I think that was the moment that I knew it would happen. Her calmness is a really good ballast for my intensity, and that moment proved it.

So I didn’t propose on that trip at the start of July. I proposed at the end of August instead.

State Memories Project: Oklahoma

2009-09-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Two of my all-time favorite students, Katelyn and Sarah, qualified for Nationals in Student Congress at the University of Oklahoma in 2001. On the Sunday before the tournament started, we went to the Alfred P. Murrah Building memorial downtown. It was gorgeous in its simplicity…168 empty chairs…19 of them a little smaller than the others. I’d have to say it’s more impressive than any similar memorial I’ve ever been to.

The day we happened to visit, however, was the day before Timothy McVeigh’s execution. Therefore, quite a few family members seeking closure were visiting, heading out to their lost loved ones’ chairs (only family are allowed off the paths to touch the chairs). Additionally, there were TV crews and cameras from around the country crawling all over the joint.

I remember a woman from somewhere in the Caribbean leaning in front of a camera and saying something like “Barbados says hello! Hello from Barbados!” when the cameraman very professionally and politely replied “Excuse me, ma’am, could you please step aside so I can film the family member down there?” (Paula, my coach at Columbine and one who knows something about media hordes descending on tragedy, later told me that the woman was doing the family a favor by keeping the camera off of them.)

Katelyn, Sarah and I then wandered along the mourners’ fence, where people leave tokens of remembrance for the victims. I was most moved by a Columbine HS discount card…perhaps left by a CHS debater? As we were wandering, occasionally talking about some items we saw, we were interrupted by a professional-looking young woman.

“Hi. Would you guys mind wearing this microphone? Just keep walking and saying what you’d normally say, but would you wear this microphone while you do it?”

Turns out she was from the local Fox station in Boston. We were going to be on the news back there.

If I had it to do over again, I’d have refused the microphone, but I wore it, and Katelyn, Sarah and I wandered the wall, perhaps over-aware of what we were saying, but trying to act normal and appropriately reverent—while miked for an audience of strangers.

It is a testament to the memorial that the dignity of the place won out over the circus atmosphere.

State Memories Project: Ohio

2009-09-18T20:30:00.001-07:00

I’m not a fan of the “best years of our lives” label, since there are so many ways to measure that. Nonetheless, Kenyon is #1 in many of those measures. I learned so much, pushed my mind more than at almost any time since, and made friendships that hold strong 20 years later. It is for that latter reason that my best memory from Ohio is not from my actual time at Kenyon, but from a reunion in May 2001.

Chasers, the a cappella group I was a part of, has reunions every four years or so. The only one I’ve been able to attend was that year. Most of the key representatives from my era (which I classify as the classes of 1988-ish to 1996-ish) were there, albeit with a dearth of women. One tenor buddy of mine, brought a camera to record stuff. I showed him my belly button lint. We rehearsed like bonkers, partied like crazy, and put on a concert where I sang my big hit “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” As another buddy put it, “I can’t remember ever getting so little sleep—and wanting so little sleep.” It was basically a 3-day-long party.

On Sunday, after all official reunion activities had ended, we gathered at a married Chaser couple's house in nearby Mount Vernon. I caught up with a lot of people who genuinely cared about what had gone on in my life. One, an English teacher at Mount Vernon High, listened to the latest political travails from my school. Another, a guy who graduated in 1988 and therefore had never shared a day with me at Kenyon or as a Chaser, listened to a particularly difficult life era of mine (the Pitt saga) and nearly cried. That’s how close we were.

But what I’ll remember most is the laughing. The amount of laughing that transpired actually put me in physical pain, but we just couldn’t stop. Almost none of what was funny will translate well here, but I’ll try to highlight the biggest laugh of the day..

We had filmed a really-god-awful Christmas special for the recording studio that we used (the largest studio in Pataskala, Ohio!). Libby Benson, the star of that recording label, was almost unwatchably cheesy that day. The conversation moved forward, and suddenly we wondered…what was she up to?

Hello, Google.

Libby had a website (which I cannot find right now, I'm afraid) that was so hilarious that we couldn’t stop laughing. She had contributed the theme song to the “In Memory of Pets” website, singing about people’s late, lamented Fidoes and Fuzzballs. She received a letter of commendation from Norman Schwazkopf for sending her Christmas special to the troops in Desert Storm. (Fortunately not our Christmas special…I couldn’t have that on my conscience.) And she wrote poetry so bad that we invented a game: the challenge was to read one whole Libby Benson poem, called “Touch Someone,” without laughing. Anyone who could make it through the 25 lines of lamentable free verse without cracking couldn’t get through the last lines, which had a fantastic typo: “if you/really and truly/took the time/to youch someone.”

The whole weekend had been amazing, and it ended with uncontrollable laughter and deep love. I love Kenyon. It fostered friendships deeper and more intense that any I’ve had the privilege of knowing.

State Memories Project: North Dakota

2009-09-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

I took the train across North Dakota on my big 1993 trip; I traveled all the way from Elyria, Ohio (the woman who was the high point of that summer lived there) all the way to East Glacier Park, Montana, (where my sister lived) with some intermediate stops for friends and baseball. North Dakota was not one of the stops.

As I headed eastbound, back to Ohio, a young woman sat next to me. She was 18, and I was 23 and very much on the prowl, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I noticed she had fantastic breasts. We talked for hour after hour as I tried to keep my eyes somewhere above her neckline. I even recall us talking about her breasts at some point, and her saying that some of her friends called her “big-titted bitch.”

The train stopped in Minot, where we could get off for about a half hour to stretch our legs. We did so, and I stood there and cracked corny jokes. She paused at one point out on the train platform, looked at me through the twilight, and said something like “You’re weird.” It felt affectionate.

She got off the train to start her new life with her boyfriend sometime in the middle of the night. I recall getting a hug. I don’t remember her name, but I remember the breasts. God, am I ever a stereotypical male. But that’s my best memory of North Dakota.

The health care debate. It's personal, damn it.

2009-09-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

My wife goes public with our story.

If a government bureaucrat helps someone else avoid this evil afternoon we had to endure (and evil is the only word for it), then please, let's start socialism immediately.

Letter to Hedgehog: Months Five and Six

2009-08-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Hedgehog--

The last two months have been so busy for the whole family that I didn't ever get around to writing a month five letter. But I'll update you on the whole thing now. This letter with therefore be longer and harder to follow than the others. Sorry about that--but your English teacher dad has earned a few writing mulligans, and I'll cash some of those in now.

I have heard parents say that they simply stop traveling once they have kids because it's too much of a hassle. But your mom and I like traveling so much that we don't want to make that kind of sacrifice. I was certainly brought up that way by my parents...I went on my first hike (forget the destination) at the age of two weeks. Your mom and I are not terribly outdoorsy people, as you've probably discovered, but we do like to go out to the ballpark, and that's a place you've been often already.

Back before you were born, your Grandma RefPoet's family decided that they wanted the summer of 2009 to be a summer we all got together on the shores of Lake Michigan up in the pinkie of Michigan. We've been there fairly often before--I remember three separate times I made the trip to hang out with my aunts and uncles--and even before you were around, we knew we'd want to be there. A chance to play Pass The Baby with all my siblings, all of your cousins, a bunch of grandparents and second cousins...there were 20 of us there in all. We couldn't pass that up. So even after the economy went into the toilet and some of us considered being frugal and cancelling the trip, we all decided to spend the money and go anyway. As I said to my dad, "There are costs to going, but I think there are greater costs to NOT having this experience."

Your mom and I got a really good deal on a plane ticket...to Milwaukee, which is 8 hours from the condo we were staying at. So we decided to make a big trip out of it, heading into Milwaukee, doing a baseball game in Appleton, enjoying a fairly leisurely drive across the U.P., and then resting in Glen Arbor for a week before taking the trip back to Milwaukee...this time via your second cousins in Chicago.

Ambitious? Yes. Foolhardy? We didn't know.

So we decided to test it out before doing it for real.

We determined what a similar drive was from our house in Vancouver and took it as a test.

So it came to be that you had your first real baseball road trip at the age of 4 and a half months. Our seventh annual 4th Of July Minor League Baseball Road Trip was your FIRST annual baseball road trip. We took a 3 hour drive to the Tri-Cities, a 6-hour drive to Missoula, and another 6-hour drive back to Yakima, before doing one-last 3-hour drive home.

(By the way, as a baby, you've already been on Diamondvision screens four times. The cameras seek you out--you're a charmer.)

As we went on the trip, we discovered some rules to go by.

1. If you're asleep, we don't stop. No matter how enticing some side of the road thing is, we pass it up. And until hunger or bathroom needs are horribly oppressive, we'll keep you sleeping and get some miles behind us.

2. When you're awake, we'll stop pretty often to let you squiggle. Rest areas are best. And, indeed, I made a pre-trip list of TONS of state parks we could stop at along the route just in case you needed squiggle time. While you were cranky in the car occasionally, you were always pretty thrilled to be stopped and checking out the trees in some new place.

3. Every stop--even if me and your mom were just getting a candy bar and a bathroom break--featured boob time for you.

4. Sit-down meals are vastly preferable for all of us.

5. Dad is better at entertaining--but mom is better in the back seat because she's better at calming.

6. On the plane, at Alison's suggestion, we brought a bag of earplugs. Before we took off, we offered them to people in the rows around us. On all four legs of the trip, only one person took us up on our offer, although many others said they'd let us know if things got bad. But you never got bad. You chilled through the entire trip--only minor fusses. Our seatmates--who we'd won over as allies with our offer of earplugs--without fail talked about how awesome you were. They were right.

Hedgehog, you were so very good on that first trip! Sure, you got fussy. But I don't think it was the driving, to be honest. I think it was the boredom. Your seat still faces backwards, and when I lean over to figure out what you can see...well, you can't see a blasted thing from back there--just seat and sky.

Once we developed our rules--and perhaps once you had some experience with long trips--you were an absolute SUPERSTAR on the trip around Lake Michigan. And while I won't delude myself into thinking you'll have memories from this age, I can't help but wonder whether you'll come away with a sense of adventure from all of this.

(Incidentally, early returns indicate that you like sand, can live with or without water, and, like the Pacific Northwest native that you are, you're not a fan of sunshine.)

We're taking a quick plane trip to Las Vegas for our Fantasy Football draft next month. You're too young to gamble, but we'll sit by the condo pool a bit and see if we can't bring you to Circus Circus. Even at six months, you deserve as much of the Vegas experience as is possible. (Perhaps you'd enjoy topless shows. The experience for you would be much like the experience at the buffet table for me.)

After Vegas, we don't know when we'll travel next, but I'm confident you'll be ready for action whenever and wherever we go.

I have to tell you how immensely you've impacted my mindset on some things. I attended a student funeral last month...not one of my students, but a great kid who debated for a rival high school. I wanted to be there to pay tribute to her, but more to support her coach, who's a valued friend. I've been to student funerals before, and they've obviously been difficult. But going to this funeral--one for a kid I didn't know nearly as well--was harder than all of the previous funerals put together, and that's simply because of the fact of your existence. They had a slide show, and when I looked at this girl's baby pictures...well, it was just devastating--immeasurably more than before.

I hate it when people say this, but it's true--everything's so wildly different now that I can't imagine what life was like before.

And it's all very fun. My perfectionism frustrates me sometime because I so want everything to go beautifully for you, but it's still fun. These six months have felt like far more than that...time has actually slowed down for me. Summer vacation hanging out with you has helped that, actually...daily morning walks with you in the Beco provided loads of quality time. But I do think I'm succeeding in savoring our time together. In fact, I think that savoring has slowed time a bit--and since I'm given a finite amount of time on this planet, I'm grateful to you for that gift.

Incidentally, you're still good-looking. People coo you everywhere. One woman at the coffee shop even said "Wow, there's a real Gerber baby."

In any event, I appreciate you a heck of a lot. The world is better with you in it. And as you gain more skills (you're right on the edge of sitting, you've started eating (asparagus and bananas are early favorites), I'm enjoying the ride. I just hope you continue to be as happy as you seem.

Much love,
Dad

State Memories Project: North Carolina

2009-08-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

My first trip to North Carolina was for Nationals in 2002. My second was for baseball—one of the best baseball experiences I’d ever had.

Asheville, NC is an incredibly gorgeous city—one I knew nothing about and was thrilled to discover. I had vegan nachos for dinner, served by a gorgeous tattooed granola girl named Jill. She invited me back to enjoy the fiddler they’d have playing that evening, but alas, I’m not into fiddling.

From my nachos, I went to McCormick Field, probably the most gorgeous ballpark I’ve ever been to. They’ve literally carved it out of the side of a mountain…there’s rock right alongside the left-field concourse. As I closed out my 2005 baseball trip (which began in Miami and ended here), I found myself enjoying a fantastic 1-0 pitchers duel (won by the Kannapolis Intimidators’ Ray Liotta over the Asheville Tourists’ Ching Lo).

But there was more than the game. I won two—TWO—contests that night. First, I won the trivia contest because I knew what former Asheville Tourist had homered in the opening game that season. And second, I threw a tennis ball into a hula hoop on the field after the game. For that, I also won.

After the game, I went to pick up my prizes. For the tennis ball, I won my choice of prizes from a box of cheap crap (I selected a computer mouse in the shape of Jeff Gordon’s NASCAR car). For the trivia, I won a 12-pack of Sierra Mist.

Problem: I was flying home the next morning. What the hell was I going to do with a 12-pack of Sierra Mist?

The answer was walking right by me. The victorious Kannapolis Intimidators were walking by on their way to boarding their bus. I stopped one of their stragglers (hitting coach Scott Long) and asked if the team would like some soda. He thanked me, shook my hand, and took the pop.

The way the stadium was set up, I was able to look into the bus from where I was in the stadium. So I watched as green soda cans popped up throughout the bus, gradually working from the front to the back. It was a cheap thrill. But what good is a gift if the receiver doesn’t know it’s a gift?

I tried to take a picture of a guy in the back holding his soda. It was a bad idea, of course, since it was night and the bus had tinted windows. But the guy saw me and started mugging. I mimed for him to hold up the soda. He did. Then I tried—by pointing at the pop and then pointing at myself—to indicate that the soda was a gift from me.

While there’s no way in hell he understood that, I sort of hope he did. And I hope someone makes it big and remembers my gesture (although, four years later, I still don’t recognize any major league names on the roster).

State Memories Project: New York

2009-08-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

This is probably going to be a “you had to be there” event, but whatever. It was a night that I laughed until I hurt, and I don’t see how that can be beat.

Chamber Singers tour stopped in Buffalo in 1992 a few days after we were in Connecticut. We stayed with host families, and after our performance in a church that evening, we started the customary dance of people who didn’t know us trying to find us by asking around. Much to my surprise, a nice woman, 60 or so, walked right up to me. “Are you TRP?” I said I was, and asked her how she knew.

“Well, first I found Josh, who will also be staying with us tonight. Somebody told me to look for a football players, so that’s how I found him [Josh was quite buff]. When I asked him how I’d find you, he said to look for a stick with arms and legs, and that brought me right to you!” This was the first of many heavy laughs that night.

Our host family, the Schlifkes, took us out for pizza, beer, and wings. Buffalo, bay-bee! When we walked into the place, we were pleasantly surprised to find another set of Kenyon men, Neil, Bryon, and my good friend MCMC [see Indiana]. We sat with them and talked all night long.

I remember asking Mr. Schlifke about what was up with the Buffalo Bills, who had recently dropped their second Super Bowl. He responded defensively. MCMC and I, both from Denver, stated that we knew Super Bowl losses well. “In fact,” MCMC said, “Denver has lost more Super Bowls than any other team.”

“No, MCMC," I responded. "The Vikings have lost four as well. Please do your research.”

“I was not aware of the Minnesota issue!”

Yeah, it’s not as funny here.

Later, I started a very, very long story, and when I got to the end of it, I could not remember my host family’s name. So I wound up substituting a lyric from a Brahms song we were doing: “[wrapping up long story]…So, that’s how I became an English major, Mrs….Schaffe in mir Gott ein rein herz…”

Trust me, it was really hilarious. And, like the Connecticut stop a few days earlier, it was a welcome and enjoyable diversion from the daily grind of performances. I appreciated the Schlifkes’ sense of humor, the pizza, and the friends.

As this blog slowly dies...another is born

2009-08-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

James Rosenzweig, a former colleague and continuing friend, has started an ambitious and interesting project (with an associated blog). James will read every work that has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction/novels. He's started in 1918 and will go right on forward to the present day. He's blogging as he reads, and inviting comments (it appears one need not read the books to comment on the blog, much like in our English classes...)

Check it out. Read along. Comment. He's an awesome dude.

Strange request from my wife

2009-07-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are going on vacation starting on Saturday (baby's first plane flight...wish us luck). We're already more or less all packed--tomorrow I shall clean house so it's nice when we get back here, we'll go to the sports bar for dinner, and we'll get up obscenely early on Saturday to head out of town.

Swankette had a fairly good idea. If we're cutting it close in our connection, she'll Moby the boy and I'll be the Sherpa, responsible for stroller, car seat, and my backpack. And, since it's easier/safer to run quickly with things than with a baby, she'll want me to sprint ahead of her to get to the gate.

She asked me this today. But it's HOW she asked me that alarmed me.

Here's what she said:

"Sweetie, would you be willing to do an O.J.?"

(Remember back when that meant running through an airport? It doesn't really mean that anymore.)

State Memories Project: New Mexico

2009-07-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

I was 13 when we visited Uncle Rick and his family in Albuquerque and headed down to Carlsbad Caverns. The caves were gorgeous, and have certainly stuck in my mind. But the move vivid memory is from the restaurant the night before.

The town was Whites City, an assemblage of tourist crap at the opening of the cave. There was, as I recall, some sort of Mexican buffet in the restaurant there. It was quite expansive. I had a thing for hot food, and liked being that far south for Mexican fare. So I piled a whole lot on my plate, including 3-4 jalapenos.

“Are you sure you want all those? They’re pretty hot,” my mother suggested, kindly.

“No! I’ve had these before. I can handle them,” I replied.

What I had had before was, I believe, banana peppers alongside my salad at the Pizza Hut. In case you were wondering, those are NOT jalapenos.

I turned many, many colors. Liquid oozed out both nostrils and both eyes.

It was hell. I think Dante may have written about this feeling.

For about 5 minutes (but it felt far longer), I ran back and forth to the salad bar trying to find something that would take the hothothothot out of my mouth.

Water? Hell no.

Bread? Forget it.

Cola? Surely you jest.

About a billion other things? None worked.

I was stuck with this torturous maximum-spice all over until finally we came upon the solution at the salad bar: cottage cheese made it go away. I don’t like cottage cheese much, but you will never hear me speak ill of it again, as it saved me on this day.

I haven’t eaten a jalapeno since. Nor will I again.

State Memories Project: New Jersey

2009-07-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

I stayed with my high school buddy Brooklyn in Weehauken, right across the river from Manhattan, during my trip to NYC for baseball in 1999.

On my last night there, we were in his tiny little basement apartment, and I was lying in bed on the other side of a curtain where he was practicing piano (actually, keyboard). He offered to play with headphones, but I said no--I enjoyed listening to him play. After working on whatever it was he was working on, Brooklyn started playing a 16-bar blues vamp with his left hand. And I’m not sure how we started this game, but I started shouting things that he should play with his right hand while maintaining the blues lick with his left. “Play Hill Street Blues!” I demanded. He’d play the theme from Hill Street Blues while keeping the blues up. (It didn’t sound good.) “Play Flight of the Bumblebee!” He did. It’s not a match for a blues bass line. “Play Rachmaninoff!” He did. Damn hard to do under any circumstances, but even harder with blues on the left hand.

I'm not sure I know anyone else capable of doing this on demand. Nice job, Brooklyn.

What's this dream mean?

2009-07-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm quarterbacking a flag football team. A tiptoe-on-the-sideline catch by the athletic secretary at my old school impresses teammates. An over-the-middle pattern to a character actor whose name I forget has us knocking on the door. Former Denver Bronco Rick Parros is upset that I'm not throwing him the ball. He's wearing gold chains (and I remember his hair with surprising accuracy). I am the ultimate field general, diagramming plays on my stomach, and someone is always open. On the goal line, I send everyone to the sideline except teammate Walter Payton. The rusher blitzes, and Payton sneaks in behind him in the end zone. I lollipop the Nerf over the rusher to Walter Payton. There's nobody within 15 yards of him.

He juggles, then drops, the Nerf football.

I'm incredibly angry at Walter Payton. This was a sure touchdown. He apologizes repeatedly, but I'm not sure his heart is in it.

I gather in all of my teammates for the second down play.

I wake up.

State Memories Project: New Hampshire

2009-07-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I've never been to New Hampshire.

Therefore, use the comment space to put in your memories from New Hampshire.

It's official. I'm still pretty much 11 years old.

2009-07-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

Autographs. I've never been a big fan of them. If I'm close to a celebrity, I tend to want to take their picture rather than be a big disruption (so Kinnearing is a possible outcome). When I was a kid, I waited in line to get Dan Issel's autograph, and one of my most prized possessions was a basketball autographed by the 78/79 Denver Nuggets. But I can't remember the last time I got an autograph. Most occasions to gather autographs would entail me elbowing my way through a forest of kids anyhow, and that's out of the question.

But on Saturday, I attended a pretty cool talk by Portland-area MLB greats (Dale Murphy, Johnny Pesky, Scott Brosius, and a few others who aren't as household-name). After the talk, when the line for autographs stretched around most of the outfield, Swankette and I ducked out. "I don't know what I'd have them sign anyway," I said.

Pause. Light bulb.

"Actually, it'd be cool if I brought my scorebook. The could sign under their name for a game I saw them play."

"Wow!" Swankette was impressed. I love this woman because, among countless other reasons, she understands the things I would find very cool. "Now THAT would be worth waiting in line for!"

To be fair, the only person on the panel I'd seen play was Brosius. I figured it'd be cool to pick out his best performance in my presence (reviewing the stats, it'd be this game where he hit a home run for the historic 1998 team), and have his signature right there in my scorebook.

Fast-forward to today.

For Beavers' season ticket holders like me (sorry, Jack), today was set aside for the chance to watch AAA All-Stars take batting practice and to get autographs from the players and coaches.

I sat down with the rosters and referred to my Access Database (yes, I actually have one) of stats in games I have attended. I looked for each player. About half had played in my presence...a handful in past major league games, a bunch in recent Beaver games, but significant numbers in long-ago games at lower levels all across the US.

I put sticky notes in my scorebooks, headed to the ballpark, and waited in some lines.

Much of the autograph-seeker culture feels a little slimy to me. I didn't care for the guys there who asked ballplayers to sign three, four, five, even as many as eight copies of the same card. The ushers in charge clearly said one item per player, but people ignored it--including the players, who probably didn't want to be seen as stingy. I guess I don't know why an adult would want eight cards signed. It's not a really great financial move. My 1985 Topps set, still in the box and in near-mint condition, has only doubled in value from $20-ish to $40 over the last quarter century. They wouldn't be worth THAT much more signed, would they?

Of course, in a way, I should talk. I was in line right with them. But I was having them sort of officially mark past games they'd been in...the verb "consecrate" isn't quite right, since ballplayers aren't holy, but there it is anyway.

The result was different from what I expected.

The ballplayers were sort of rotely scribbling their names on whatever was put in front of them...cards, bats, balls, programs. Few adults talked to the players (and what would they talk about anyway?). Some players would give kids a thrill by chatting a little, which was nice.

When I would walk up, though, they'd have this different experience.

For instance, I got to J.D. Martin, an all-star from the Rochester Red Wings (AAA in the Nationals system...if you count the Nats as major league...)

"Hi! Could you sign this scorecard down by your name? I think it's your first start for Kinston."

His response: "Wow!"

Next to him, pitcher Jim Miller said this: "Now THAT'S impressive."

But what was fun is that I sort of got to SHARE these past games with the players.

Nelson Figueroa is a AAA all-star this year, but in 2002 he was in the rotation of a horrendous Brewers team. I saw him pitch a game that April.

"Could you sign this scorecard from a game you pitched for Milwaukee back in '02?"

Figueroa: "Wow! I actually got into a game?" [Quite well-spirited and tongue-in-cheek. I was worried a little about players being upset or wistful about major-league appearances. They were not.]
Me: "Yep. You started. It was the first game after the manager was fired."
Him: "Yeah! Davy Lopes! And it looks like we won!"

What I liked best about doing this was the way that the players would perk up when they saw what they were signing. Almost all asked one thing: "How'd I do?" Because I tried to pick out their best games, I usually got them in a good mood.

Portland's Chad Huffman signed a game from his days as a Eugene Emerald. He habitually began signing "Chad Huffman #17," but then stopped. "Wait. What number did I wear that year?" I saw it was 31, and said so...so Chad Huffman signed his name as "Chad Huffman #31" for the first time since he was in the Northwest League.

Colorado Springs Sky Sox outfielder Matt Miller signed a game I saw him play as a Modesto Nut.

HIM: "How'd I do?"
ME: "One-for-four with a walk and a run scored."
HIM: "Yeah...[signs]...I see here I had a strikeout. I remember that. It was a bad call."
ME: [examines the scorebook] "It was swinging, Matt."
[he laughs]

When I then asked the guy next to him to sign a game I'd seen him play as a Chicago Cub, he remarked that I clearly "get around."

Yup. I do.

[Nearly-40-year-old former-high-school-nerd still likes props from jocks. Film at 11.]

The Beavers' Scott Patterson said that he'd never been asked to sign a scorebook or scoresheet before, but Fresno's Kevin Pucetas, seated next to him, said that mine was the third he'd signed that day. Maybe I started a trend. I hope so.

Because rather than commodifying their signatures, the signature was an opportunity to share their game with them. Fans don't often get to do that, really, on a one-to-one basis.

So the net result of this is that I am now into autographs. I will NOT seek them out during batting practice, after games, or anywhere else where I would be competing with kids for ballplayers' attention. That's just wrong. But I'll keep an eye out for events like this one where there are autographs to be signed, check my scorebooks, pick out a game, and ask the ballplayer (or ex-ballplayer) to sign them. I had enough fun yesterday to justify doing it again under similar circumstances. And when I do, whether I'm getting a signature from a career minor-leaguer or from a Hall-of-Famer, you can rest assured that he'll say this:

"How'd I do?"

Not a bad choice to make, I guess

2009-07-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

For reasons too complex to go into here, I wound up having a conversation about strip clubs with a friend/advisee tonight. I've never been to a strip club. I asked him if there's one out there that I might actually enjoy. (I'm not certain I'd enjoy it. I'd feel bad for the dancer.)

"Oh yeah." He gave the name of the place. "It's just a dive bar, low key. You'd be able to sit at the bar and watch the Mariner game. The girls are at a pole in the corner. They aren't overly made up, there's no MC or DJ, and they get to pick their own music."

"Hmmm. I wonder if, given the choice between breasts and the Mariners, which I would look at."

"At this place? You'd watch the Mariners, but you'd be aware of the girl."

Not sure what that meant, but I knew who to ask.

My wife is aware of my love of baseball and my love of breasts. Which would win?

"Honey, if I were at a strip club and there were a Mariner game on, do you think I'd watch the stripper or watch the Mariners?"

She thought, deeply, for longer than I thought she would. And then, my dear, wonderful wife asked this question:

"This year's Mariners, or last year's?"

State Memories Project: Nevada

2009-07-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

No need to repeat myself. I'll just send you to the post I wrote right after it happened.

Psalm 66

2009-07-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

When the Psalmist wrote "Make a joyful noise unto God," what noise was he thinking about?

I think it might be the squeaking my son makes as he practices rolling over.

Don't let the door hit you, Yuniesky

2009-07-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

The Mariners unloaded Yuniesky Betancourt today, who has had it coming for a long time. The long-suffering Royals took him off our hands for a couple of prospects (although we'll be sending some cash as well).

Curious as to the reaction, I hunted down a Royals blog and checked out the comments. In there, I found this exchange, which is as hilarious as it is tasteless:

MARINER FAN: Seriously...this is like the US Cavalry giving a small pox blankets to the Native Americans. My condolences.

ROYAL FAN #1: To be fair, It’s like giving the blanket after the village is already infected. Is one more crappy SS even going to matter at this point?

ROYAL FAN #2: Yeah, it's more like, while they're dying of small pox, you kick them in the nads.

I'll be giggling about this for a while. Ashamedly, but definitely.

Cue Beavis and Butthead laugh in 3...2...

2009-07-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

Just a minute ago on the Mariner game, Dave Sims and Mike Blowers were commenting on Mariner farmhand James McOwen, who hit in his 45th consecutive game yesterday:

DAVE SIMS: "I understand his manager is going to give him a blow tonight. He's earned it."
MIKE BLOWERS: "I'll say."

State Memories Project: Nebraska

2009-07-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was high school age for one of our trips out east to Detroit when we stopped to visit a medical friend of my dad’s who had left Denver and was doctoring in Omaha. My dad and Dr. R were an unusual set of friends, I think; to this day, I can’t see what they have in common. But they’re close enough that they get together often, and even spent a week canoeing in the Boundary Waters up in Minnesota. They joked a lot about my dad’s high-brow culture tastes and Dr. R’s low-brow culture tastes. “Have you seen Top Gun?´ “Nope. Have you seen My Life as a Dog?´ “Nope.”

On this visit, however, one wacky moment with my mom took the cake. Somehow, we all wound up visiting the SAC museum, which mostly consisted of wandering on tarmacs in 100-degree heat looking at old planes. This might have been somewhat interesting for my dad, but it was not remotely my mom’s cup of tea. Nor mine.

We were inside an exhibit room where, in the middle of the room, was a glass case. Nothing was inside the glass case except a card with the words “This exhibit not yet completed” on it. Just the card. My mom decided that we should stand outside the non-exhibit and look into the glass case as though we were completely transfixed by the fascinating contents.

And we did. I put my hand up to my chin and stroked my imaginary beard. We squinted, leaned, and even whispered to each other to have conversations about the imaginary exhibit. Predictably, people would walk up to the glass case, look inside, look at my mom and me, look inside again, and walk away with some combination of pity, confusion, and irritation.

It was a hell of a fun five minutes. Try it next time you see something similar in a museum. And from my mom…who, like me, is a bit of a rule-follower...it felt just subversive enough to surprise me, and it was quite hilarious.

A warm welcome...

2009-07-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

to my kid sister, who began blogging tonight.

Learning from the baby

2009-07-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

Monday night is Swankette's knitting night. That means I'm on baby duty solo for a few hours. Mostly we go on walks, read books, and play.

But the other day, as we tended to the in-laws' garage sale, we learned something Hedgehog likes.

He likes to look up at trees.

I decided to give that a shot. I put down a blanket and put the boy down under a tree in our backyard.

He was transfixed.

I decided this would be a great chance to get some reading done, so I grabbed a lawn chair and read. But I felt funny sort of hovering over my son like that. So I lay down next to him and read. But my arms got tired and heavy holding the book.

So I watched the tree with him. I explained to him some things about wind and leaves.

The sun was brightening a few leaves at the very top of the tree, which were sometimes obscured by the darker nearby leaves. The whole thing shifted in the wind like a kaleidoscope of green.

At one point, I closed one eye so that I would lose depth perception. A brown latticework of branches provided a proscenium for all the leaves, which maneuvered all around the brown.

We gave my son a middle name that matches my favorite transcendentalist writer, and Monday, he taught me a transcendentalist lesson--every now and then, put down the book and look at the tree.

Letter to Hedgehog: Month Four

2009-06-28T20:15:00.001-07:00

Dear Hedgehog,

Sometime this month you added laughter to the smiling. It was a fantastic addition to your repertoire, let me tell you. Because it's a cool, hearty laugh. All of the sounds you make are hearty. My dad, your grandpa, first heard you cry over the phone on your first day of existence and stated it was "a lusty cry." It remains so. But you skipped the giggles and went straight to guffaws. Deep-voiced (for you) haw-haws over your favorite things: chin tickles, gwotoms (that's a word your Uncle Dan invented for a five-fingered squeeze, the Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes game, nose touching, and beeping my nose are on the list.

And you develop like a house on fire. My mom, your grandma, saw you roll from back to front for the first couple of times (and dammit, I missed it...I was out of the house). You don't seem to get frustrated about anything...you just kind of take it at your pace and try to remember what caused you to do such a cool thing.

All parents think their kids are attractive, but I can't help but think of you as attractive in a surprising sort of traditional-Gerber way. I'm sure there's not any studies indicating whether good-looking infants become good-looking adults, but if you stay in the 95th percentile in height (I'm above that, so you might) and remain slender, and if you flash those satellite-dish uber-focused blue eyes that you inherited from your mom, you've got a shot at being a damned attractive adult. I hope that we raise you in a way that you have the confidence to go with it.

This month will be exciting...in fact, this week we're taking you on the first of many July 4th Minor League Baseball Road Trips. We'll see if our itinerary was too optimistic. I bet it's not...you're almost always a joy to travel. Only on the trip home from Seattle last week were you trouble. You would yell and even scream whenever we moved, but when we stopped (which was nearly every exit!), you'd chill out as soon as we got you out of the car seat. We were worried you'd suddenly decided you hated travel...but then, outside the Subway at exit 57, you let loose with the absolute mother of all poops. It was that, combined with some kind of strange pressure from the car seat, that was troubling you, and not travel. Thank goodness...because we'll have a LOT of travel in your near future! You'll have been to 11 states before you turn 7 months old. How many people can say that?

You're so immensely cool to hang out with. I know that parents can't exactly be friends with their kids, but until you learn how to sin (probably only a year or so off), I feel like we're buds. And I like it.

Love,
Dad

State Memories Project: Montana

2009-06-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

My oldest nephew, Matthew, was born on 10/4/92, three months premature and at a pound and 11 ounces, if memory serves. He was a member of the first generation to survive at that level of prematurity since they had just invented the drug that enhances lung development, which they gave my sister in the few critical days of bed rest before the emergency C-section. It obviously was touch-and-go for a while as to Matt’s survival, but he made it. So when I was invited up for Matt’s baptism--to serve as his godfather--over my Spring Break of 1993, it was even more joyous than most baptisms.

My parents picked me up at the Great Falls airport and drove me up to my sister and brother-in-law’s place in East Glacier Park (my brother-in-law was paying off his medical school debt by working on the nearby Blackfeet reservation). As a baptism gift, I had written a poem for Matt, and my mom asked me to read it as my dad drove. I did, and Mom cried. It surprised me a whole lot that my words had that kind of power. It started a gorgeous few days in Montana feeling immense joy with family as sunshine reflected off the snow.

State Memories Project: Missouri

2009-06-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

The decision to transfer out of the University of Missouri was a pretty clear one for me. I wasn’t being challenged in the slightest, getting a 4.0 while putting in almost no effort...constantly playing Spades and Outburst in the lounge, putting in no more time studying than I had in high school. But it was still a horrible experience buying all of those college guides again, mostly because somewhere deep inside I had a horrible, nagging fear of bungling my second college choice as badly as I had bungled the first. Thankfully, and in a bizarre coincidence, my academic advisor at Mizzou was my big sister, and my parents blessedly said that they knew I had made a big error, and that they would support my transfer wherever I wanted to go.

Still, I was a wreck. At 18, the college choice was the most important choice I had ever made on my own, and I’d failed it. Those who told (and tell) me—accurately, I think—that Missouri was a necessary part of figuring out who I was, that I obviously needed to make that mistake to mature, that I wouldn’t be who I am without it, that I probably never would have landed at Kenyon without...Mizzou…well, they didn’t (and don’t) make me feel any less stupid about making the mistake of going to a college that didn’t have a prayer at stimulating me intellectually as an undergrad.

I was in that mindset one morning—probably mid-October—when I walked back to my dorm from my Junior Honors Shakespeare class (Mizzou was so stunned to have me at all that they broke all the rules and let me cut in front of a large waiting list to take it). I was transported by the discussion of whatever play we were working on, but as soon as I was back on Conley Avenue, my head was spinning again. Do I go small school, or large? Would majoring in English screw up my desire to be a sportscaster? Should I transfer at semester and abandon my budding Missouri friendships or tough it out for a year and do an easier, after-one-year switch? And, most scarily, how would I know I wasn’t screwing up again?

I may have been shaking. It was that stressful.

Back in 628 Mark Twain Hall, I fell asleep and had a dream. In this dream, my beloved AP English teacher from high school stood before me. She simply told me to calm down, and that everything would be all right. Big school or small, English or something else, end of year or at semester…I remember her saying “You’ll be fine. You’ll be great.”

I wasn’t shaking when I woke up. Breathing had normalized, and my notoriously overactive mind had calmed quite a bit.

By the end of the day, I’d written my old teacher a letter saying that, although she didn’t know she did it, she traveled 700 miles into my consciousness that afternoon to make what was a cataclysmic life crisis into something I could handle.

In which I solve two health mysteries

2009-06-19T07:59:00.001-07:00

When asked my weight, I usually say 185. That's about where I leveled out in my late 20s. I've been as high as 215 (after vocal problems kept me from refereeing for three years) and as low as 135 (that'd be my sophomore year of HS...I'd more or less reached my current height by then...seriously, I should put a picture up here someday; it was freaky-scary).

To be sure, over the course of a year, 185 is usually my best-case scenario. I'm that at the end of the basketball season, and head up to 190-195 for the rest of the year.

I was 185 at the end of the most recent basketball season, and I began my usual 9-month regiment of not-exercising-much...I prepared for the usual 5-10 pound gain.

About a month ago, I hopped on the scale.

173.

That ain't right.

About the same time, my wife hopped on the scale. She proclaimed that she had lost a bunch of weight lately. Although she has been looking pretty damn good even by her standards lately, I had to tell her that I believed the scale had given up the ghost.

We bought a new scale.

175.

WTF? I now weigh less than I have since 1994.

While wife has me eating fairly decently, I still go to Burgerville and Moxie's a little more often than I probably should (mostly during paper-grading binges). And I haven't exercised much since basketball season ended four months ago. Yeah, I dance with the boy at nights, and I've gone on maybe a half-dozen walks with him, but that's not enough to explain a 10-pound downturn.

I couldn't come up with anything unusual to cause weight loss until today, when I think I figured it out.

The only thing I've done differently these last few months is the Month Without Cheese. (My wife's weight-loss explanation is more obvious--all of her weight is exiting through her boobs.)

Could I possibly have lost 10 pounds just through that stunt? (And then managed to keep it off by being a little more thoughtful about unnecessary cheese consumptions since?

I know that correlation is not causation, but nonetheless, I think so. Nothing else adds up.

On the negative side, I've been having some vocal troubles. Not as serious as the really bad ones back in 2001, but I've been really vocally fatigued at the end of teaching days--even conversations.

Why?

I first noticed this back in March. I figured it was after a couple of weeks of library teaching, or the fact that I now teach in a room with a higher ceiling was finally catching up to me.

But then this morning, on the first of many morning constitutionals with my son, I noticed me talking to him, telling him what a good guy he was and giving a play-by-play of the things we were passing.

Due to Hedgehog's presence, not only am I talking more than I used to (as if this is possible!), but my "talking to Hedgehog" voice is very low, unsupported, and kind of gravelly.

Time to change that!

So, this summer:

--I have a goal to eat fruits or veggies every time I eat. This is not to say that I will eat nothing but fruits and veggies. It is to force me to eat them. When I want chips and salsa (which is often), I will have them, but I will eat a handful of carrots or an apple first.

--I will talk to the boy with vocal support.

--I will continue to watch my cheese intake.

--I will enjoy daily morning constitutionals with the boy.

If this works for a month or so, I may even add--gasp!--some weight training to do something about my rather pathetic upper body.

State Memories Project: Mississippi

2009-06-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

The only time I’ve been in Mississippi as a destination (I’d driven across previously) was for some kind of Teach for America pow-wow at a state park in Mississippi in early March of 1994.

I went with my teacher buddies Chris and Dan, who drank beer the whole way. I’m pretty sure that I must have driven, because I remember we made repeated attempts to set the American outdoor record for Longest Sustained Urination along the way. They beat me handily because they were drinking a lot of beer and I was not. But most of those attempts at the record were en route and therefore in Louisiana.

I remember sitting around a campfire chatting with friends and learning about John Candy’s death (It is in looking up the date of his death that I determined that I went to Mississippi on the first weekend of March, 1994). And then Chris, Dan and I found a spot to set up our tent, when Chris suggested that it was such a gorgeous night, and there weren’t any bugs…why not just put our sleeping bags on the mattress pads, forgo the tent, and sleep outside?

That’s what we did. I remember falling asleep in a state park under the stars with two friends. That’s Mississippi for me.

If I don't make it, I won't be alone

2009-06-09T06:26:00.001-07:00

The New York Times examines the demise of so very many blogs.

I'm still slogging away--at least until the State Memories project ends in December--but one blogger puts my difficulties into words perfectly:

“The Internet is different now,” she said over a cup of tea in Midtown. “I was too Web 1.0. You want to be anonymous, you want to write, like, long entries, and no one wants to read that stuff.”

I'm not ready for Twitter, but I can see me getting there from here.

Thanks to Joe, man with one of my favorite dead blogs, for pointing me in this direction.

To the people who make instructional videos for infant-related products and activities

2009-06-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

Dear people who make instructional videos for infant-related products and activities,

I hate you.

When I attempt to use you as a resource to figure out how to do something with my baby, I always leave with a complex.

I think it all started with Harvey Karp. You know, the Happiest Baby on the Block guy. Swankette brought home his video when Hedgehog was about a week or two old, and I watched it carefully. Harvey, I watched you swaddle a million babies. I watched you crook baby after baby in your forearm and balance and jiggle their heads in your hands. Without fail, you took them from demon-child level screeching to completely calm and chilling in about 2.03 seconds.

It was impressive...until I tried it.

First of all, it took me damn near forever to figure out that damn swaddle. By the time I could reasonably burrito the baby, the fourth trimester was damn near over. But now that I've got it down, you can rest assured that I'll be swaddling the boy right up to his high school graduation. I don't want to waste this new talent.

But the jiggling...well, I never did quite get it right. Or, more accurately, I think I may have figured it out once or twice before forgetting exactly what worked and how. It just never looked like yours do. I think you filmed the babies in your video with some kind of weird baby-stop-action photography, or else somehow snuck some melatonin into your hands and rubbed it into the infants' scalps.

The point being, you make me feel like a complete remedial case, both mentally and physically.

But you are not alone, Harvey. I have to include the instructions for the Moby and the Beco baby carriers in this pissed-off rant as well.

The Moby instructions I used were on YouTube. They, without fail, show women patiently explaining the origami they're doing with their Moby (which is basically a massive scarf). There are at least 6 folds in a Moby, all of which must be done JUST SO for your baby's safety. Furthermore, how to get Hedgehog into those folds is something that I never got close to figuring out. The babies in the videos do the most beautiful swan dives into the cloth and fall instantly asleep (unless they're gazing perfectly into their mothers' eyes (and by the way, there are NEVER dads in the Moby or Beco videos, at least not that I've seen).

In real life, babies don't usually care to go into the Moby so easily. I have to balance the baby on my left hand/shoulder, spinning him on one finger like I'm Meadowlark Lemon, while I figure out if I've put the right-shoulder sash in the right position, if I've got it loose enough to allow the baby to breathe, or if I've done all the steps right. If I lose focus on the balancing baby while checking the sash, or if I've forgotten one of the steps, or if I've done the Moby just a smidge too tight or too loose...well, then, my baby splatters his brains on the ground. One time, when Hedgehog decided he didn't want to be in the stroller anymore, I tried to negotiate the Moby while on the side of the road...and that asphalt down there did not look too forgiving while I held the baby up over shoulder level in one arm (a necessary move to get him in the Moby).

My point: Your damn videos and instruction manuals do not show the contortions and balance I need to use your product. They do not show failure. They do not show pissed-off babies wriggling to prevent entry into the Moby.

Worse than the Moby are the DVD instructions for the Beco. God, I hated those. We had bought a Beco only because I failed so miserably with the Moby (which Swankette still uses and loves, by the way).

I gathered the baby, got out the Beco, and watched this video.

The video had several problems that really pissed me off.

First of all, the model (who is clearly on nitrous oxide) is using a DOLL for part of the video. A DOLL. Not my son, who is yelling and screaming and trying to figure out what kind of medieval torture device I'm springing on him. She's cheating and using a damn doll.

Second, she's on a couch that is about fifteen feet away from the camera. Is the baby's arm beneath or above the straps? Is he/she hooked into the front part of the Beco's interior or the back? Where exactly are those buckles? How can I possibly see any of this?

And--perhaps most importantly--why is the baby (once they switched from the doll to a baby) drugged? Is it necessary for me to feed my baby barbiturates before placing him in the Beco?

I have to rewind several times. Meanwhile, my son, who is getting no attention because I have to focus on the video, gets angrier and angrier, yelling more and more. Because of the noise, I miss several instructions, causing me to have to rewind again. I consider using Swankette's old Cabbage Patch doll, but it's not large enough, and it also won't wriggle, writhe, and flail like my son does. I consider using the cat, but he'd probably just pee all over the new Beco. And it's not like I can just set my son down and repeatedly watch the DVD until I get everything figured out.

I get more and more frustrated...but I also have an epiphany. I see the conspiracy.

I realize that Harvey Karp has teamed up with the glassy-eyed Moby and Beco instructional models to crush my spirit. They have come together exclusively to make me feel like a drooling incompetent idiot who can't follow simple instructions even when his son's happiness and safety are at stake.

There's a happy ending to this, thankfully...I now can swaddle the baby with a reasonable success rate, and, after paying a visit to the Beco store to have an actual human being coach me to use it with my actual baby, I have mastered the Beco so thoroughly that I go on walks with Hedgehog in it to get him to sleep.

But I've done all this in spite of, not because of, Harvey and the models. Whatever they have taught me was, for a while, anyway, entirely invisible over the rubble of what was once my fatherly self-esteem.

So, people who make instructional videos for infant-related products and activities, please heed these simple suggestions:

1. Show actual babies. Under no circumstances are you to use dolls.
2. Don't have your models smile so damn much. A look of concentration would be nice, since that's the look I've got on my face. The smile is a form of taunting...a "Look how easy this is for me!" face. By the way, Beco and Moby people...dads wear these things too. A token male or two would help a lot--I wouldn't feel like I'm crashing some estrogen-and-nitrous-oxide party.
3. Do not drug the babies before putting them on camera, nor take them directly out of milk-coma naps. Show what it looks like to put in a baby who is actually struggling against the parents' wishes, as almost all surely will struggle at first.

And finally, most importantly,

4. Show failures. Show people who did NOT manage to get their babies into the carrier or who did NOT manage to get their babies swaddled or to sleep. Explain what they're doing wrong. Troubleshoot. Because without this step, I am left with absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong, and will have to head to the store where I can ask an actual human being actual questions. More importantly, without this step, I will feel like a complete spaz and an inadequate parent, and I will blame you.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions. I am available to critique your next video before you make some other dad feel like a moron.

But until then, I hate you.

All the best,

TRP

State Memories Project: Minnesota

2009-06-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

The HHH Metrodome served as the first major league ballpark on 1993's Love and Baseball Stadium Tour. Mostly to anesthetize myself from the pain of a recent breakup, I decided I’d drive to 11 different major league ballparks and sleep on (mostly female, often romantic-interest) friends’ floors. I got started that afternoon at a fairly crappy indoor ballpark. The game was quite good—Oakland beat Minnesota 8-7, coming back from a 5-0 deficit to do so. Twin Shane Mack had two homers.

My seat was on an aisle in the second row, shaded just a tiny notch to the third-base side of home plate--just a few feet behind the Twins’ on-deck circle. When one buys single seats to meaningless games well in advance, one often gets very, very lucky.

I had my glove on, hoping for a foul ball. And I stayed alert…except once. Between innings…the 6th or so, I don’t remember exactly--there was a pitching change. I filled in my scorecard with the stats of the outgoing pitcher, focusing hard, when…BAM! I jerked my neck up. Something hit the side of my seat.

It was a ball. I guess there was either an errant throw in infield warmups or (more likely) a player decided to toss one into the stands as a souvenir. But I was so carefully doing my stats that I didn’t see it coming. I’m fortunate it didn’t hit me in the head. As it is, I’m not even sure where it wound up. It must have ricocheted across the aisle to someone in the next section.

In spite of that misadventure, I still score every game I’ve been to.

Letter to Hedgehog: Month Three

2009-05-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Hedgehog,

We had a wonderful month, and it ended with you being baptized today. Family and friends came from all around to party with you. And early returns indicate you enjoy parties. Like your dad (and NOT like your mom), you seem to enjoy being the center of attention. Today was a great day for that. We played "Pass The Baby" all day long. When the minister took you up and down the aisle at the church, everybody waved and made faces. You're a really, really cool guy and get along nicely with everyone.

You're gathering skills at a simply mind-boggling rate. It just blows my mind, the human brain and watching you develop yours. Last week (and for all weeks prior), you would just stare up and the fish on your mobile...maybe swat at them a little. Within the last few days, you figured out you could grab them. Yesterday, you even pulled one right off its velcro mooring. I notice you reaching out for the books I read you and even following them around when I move them around. It's simply an awesome experience, in both the modern sense of the word (i.e., "cool") and the traditional sense of the word (i.e. "inspiring awe and wonderment").

Yesterday, your 14-year-old cousin decided to lay down next to you and play with a baby cell phone your grandparents had gotten you. It's a little advanced for you as yet, but when your cousin sat there and smacked the buttons in a game he invented (which sounded challenging), you were absolutely transfixed. I think you focus a LOT on kids when they're around. Not so much on babies, but on kids who can do more than you can. That's a hell of a good way to learn.

And I'll keep busting my butt for you if you keep on smiling at us whenever you can. It still feels sort of unreal. I'd imagine it always will. I should ask my parents about that. Their oldest turned 45 today. I bet it still feels unreal to them in some ways. Because when I'm singing to you or reading to you or just chilling with you, I continue to think this when I look at you:

"Whoa! I helped make THAT????"

Talk to you in another month.

State Memories Project: Michigan

2009-05-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

This particular memory comes from a rite of passage in our family. At age 10, each of us—my siblings and me--got to fly to Detroit…alone!...to spend a week or ten days with Aunt Sally (mom’s kid sister) and Uncle Fred. I therefore headed out there in August of 1980, and remember loads from that trip—Bablo Island amusement park, Greenwood Village, hanging out endlessly with my cousin Joe, and my first major league game (Tigers 8, Red Sox 7…a game that ended at 12:50 AM due to a huge rain delay).

In the middle of that 10-year-old trip, we headed up to Caseville, a town at the tip of the thumb where my Grandpa Joe, who had died the previous year, had a cottage a long block from Lake Huron. My cousin, me, Aunt Sally, Uncle Fred, and maybe a couple of others had gone up there with some neighbors of Sally and Fred’s who had a daughter named Beth about my age and a son a little younger whose name I have since forgotten.

The four of us kids had headed down to the beach for the last bit of daylight, walking the five or six houses west-bound (I remember it as about a hundred yards) to the water. Once there, we saw an absolutely flat-out gorgeous sunset--a bright, vivid, very dark red sun in a perfect circle hanging a little ways above the water. We were all between 7 and 10 years old, but we were absolutely awe-struck by the sight, loudly shouting “Whoa! Wow!” a few times.

I’m not sure why, but it occurred to me that the adults needed to see this sunset. My companions agreed.

So we all ran as fast as we could off of the beach and up the road to the cottage, where we ran in and shouted at the two couples that there was an incredible sunset that they needed to see and that they had to get out there NOW because the sun was going down and they’d miss it. (Because of trees and houses, the sunset was invisible from the cottage; one had to walk to the beach to see it.)

We did everything we could to impart this sense of urgency to Aunt Sally, Uncle Fred, and their neighbors, but much to my dismay, I remember them lollygagging a little, getting on shoes, etc. At every moment of the way, the four of us shouted “Hurry up! It’s going down! Hurry!” And at every moment, the adults would not comply. Even when we were out on the road, we were running ahead of them a little, then turning around to gesticulate and tell them to run, hurry, they’d miss it--yet they were still not compliant. They walked very, very slowly and engaged in stupid adult conversation instead. They didn’t understand the urgency.

I saw the last of the bright-dark-red sunset through the trees, but when we got to the clearing, the sun—and the sunset—was gone. We tried to describe it, and said “Couldn’t you see a little of it through the trees?”

“That? Oh! I thought that was a light!” said the neighbor mom.

I remember feeling exasperated that I’d tried to share this beautiful thing with others, and they didn’t seem to understand its beauty or importance until too late.

State Memories Project: Massachusetts

2009-05-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

About three weeks after my own wedding, Swankette’s maid of honor was married in Boston. We flew out, hung out with them and their friends, and had a generally great time hanging out with cool people. Swankette reciprocated as maid of honor for her friend, and everything went fabulously...Swankette looking hot in her outfit, giving a beautiful speech or two, happy people singing and performing at the reception...it was the garden variety joyful wedding.

It was similar, and it was, of course, a little different, because it was my first gay wedding, and barely a year after Massachusetts had legalized same-sex marriage, was still a fairly new thing.

My single memory of that weekend is of the wonderful rabbi, who somehow wove together the ordinariness and the extraordinariness of what we were all there to celebrate. I wish I had his exact words, but here’s what he said as best as I could remember:

“In the middle of all of this joy, we can’t forget that what we’re doing is unquestionably a political act.”

I remember feeling like marrying someone you loved shouldn’t have to be a political act or an act of courage. I remember feeling like the wonderful moment here wasn’t any different or any less important than the wonderful moment Swankette and I had had a few weeks earlier. But I remember being grateful that the rabbi didn’t neglect either the commonness or the extraordinariness of what was happening--neither the sameness nor the difference this ceremony bore towards my own recent wedding. He got that complexity, and it helped to clarify what was on my mind as I watched my wife stand next to her best friend, one of two brides. I won’t forget how he pulled that off.

Western Conference Finals, Lakers vs. Nuggets

2009-05-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

I just saw Denver is up by 7 early on the Lakers. I watched a good amount of Game 3--sort of caught Nuggets Fever again due to the media. But, as always when I watch the NBA, I tired quickly of motionless offenses. I DO NOT WANT TO WATCH THE BEST ATHLETES IN THE WORLD STAND STILL. Please, SOMEBODY move away from the ball!

But that's not what this is about. It's about a statement I heard that the Game 2 victory for Denver was their first playoff victory over the Lakers since 1985.

My mind went back to the 84/85 Nuggets as if to an old crush. That's the first team that I honestly, totally, 100% fell in love with. And nothing's been the same since.

Sure, I liked the Nuggets equally-good teams of the late '70s--these were my first-ever pro sports events. But I was only 7 or 8...not enough to REALLY understand what it means to commit to a team. At 15, I got it.

Denver had traded Kiki Vandeweghe to Portland in the off-season and acquired Calvin Natt, Fat Lever, and Wayne Cooper in return. Dan Issel, who was going to hang it up at the end of the year, was a bench player. And Doug Moe, the coach, was still running his players like hell (an earlier Doug Moe version of the Nuggets had set records for most points scored AND most points against...128.7 and 128.0, if I remember correctly). So the games were ADD eye candy...constant set-ups and shots. Alex English, the NBA's top scorer of the 1980s (look it up! it's true!) was a silky mid-range jumper guy (who the hell is his current NBA equivalent? I can't think of any either). And T.R. Dunn would come out to stop the opponents' #1 guard--but Moe had ordered him to never, ever shoot.

The team got out to a good start--they were 11-2 at one point--and won the division quite handily. Dad and I jumped on the phone for playoff tickets as soon as they were available, buying game 2 tickets since they sold out sooner. And we watched the Nuggets LOSE to the Spurs by two in the 2-7 matchup.

Great! But we came back around and won the series in 5 (the first round was a best-of-5 in those days...as all series should be now, possibly excepting the Finals).

We put away the Jazz 4-1 in the second round (I was present for an overtime win in Game 2...which I can't remember anything about these years later) which set up the Western Conference Final. Nuggets and Lakers.

Remember: The 1985 Lakers were the absolute zenith of Showtime. I'd rank it as the #1 single-year team of the decade...I wonder if the experts would agree. Magic was at his peak, Kareem was still an honest threat, James Worthy had developed into the real deal, Bob McAdoo off the bench, Michael Cooper, Jamaal Wilkes, Kurt Rambis...hell of a team.

Dad and I bought tickets for game 4. I hoped we could poach a game in LA and ride out a 6-game series in the altitude at home.

We lost game 1 by 17. Game 2 was a late-night affair, starting at 9:00 Mountain on a Tuesday night. Parents would not permit me to stay up to watch the second half.

I was PISSED. Pissed until, alas, I went to school the next day and found nobody else had been allowed to watch the game. I also learned that, when he saw how special Game 2 turned out to be, he thought of waking me up to see the end.

I did watch the third quarter over my breakfast.

The Nuggets SLAUGHTERED the Lakers. In the Forum. They couldn't put anything together.

Our white stiff backup center, Danny Schayes, muscled Kareem into losing his cool and getting into a huge fight in the fourth quarter. Both were ejected. I remember him trying to gouge Schayes' eye out while saying "How does it feel to have your eye gouged out?"

I kinda wish they'd suspended both players for a game--that'd have been awesome for the Nuggets. But they didn't. While I listened on the radio from my grandparents' house in the mountains, I heard the Lakers win game 3 handily in Denver. We needed--NEEDED game 4.

The game I was headed to.

Here's what I remember. It was close throughout. There were signs under every seat that said "BEAT L.A." When they played Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part Two" ("Don't worry, you'll recognize it," said the directions on the back of the card), we were to shout "Hey! Beat L.A!" in the part where Gary shouted "Hey!" It sort of worked. It was DAMN LOUD. And we improvised, just chanting "BEAT L A! BEAT L A!" to the beat during the "verses" of the song (if you could call them that).

I don't remember the specifics, but Denver was down by 2, or maybe 4, late, when we popped back to a tie with a couple of buckets. 116-116. One minute on the clock. (Or was it 59 seconds? What I think I remember and what is true may be different here.) The L.A. time out...the sound never went down the whole time. I just wanted that one damn win at home.

L.A. came back out and scored. If I remember right, it was a damn skyhook.

Denver ran RIGHT down the floor. A pass, a pass, and Danny Freakin' Schayes had a step on Kareem! He's going to score on the break!

The ball bounced off of his hands and out of bounds.

Shit.

L.A. scored again, and we didn't. Final: Lakers 120, Nuggets 116.

"I just don't want this to be the way Issel's career ends!" I said.

(I knew damn well we wouldn't win Game 5.)

Issel did get a last hurrah. In the 44-point loss in Game 5 to end the series, Moe sent him back out for a goodbye stretch, and Issel hit a 3 in his career's final shot. I wish we had that to remember him by rather than his losing his cool and attacking a fan in the racially-based tirade that ended his coaching career. But, playing-wise, it turned out OK.

Denver never made it back to the conference finals until this year...when we lost game 1 and won game 2 in L.A.

And it feels familiar to me. The nostalgia was enough to drive me to watch game 3.

Go Nuggets.

Hawker bloopers

2009-05-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

At the Mariner game today, a hawker was selling both Dibs ice cream and Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Let us set aside the strangeness of the same hawker selling kid snacks and adult beverages. I guess they have a limited number of portable receptacles that keep things very cold.

What was strange--and disturbing--is that the guy kept shouting this (and, with apologies to Dave Barry, I am not making this up):

"Mike's Hard! I've got Dibs!"
"Mike's Hard! I've got Dibs!"
"Mike's Hard! I've got Dibs!"

Wife and I were, to my knowledge, the only people doing the Beavis and Butt-head laugh at all of that.

Really, really funny.

2009-05-17T09:28:00.001-07:00

This went viral a little while ago, so you've probably already seen it. But it has given me the giggles at random times over the past week or so since I first heard it.

WARNING: The jingle is so catchy that you'll probably be caught singing it somewhere marginally appropriate.

State Memories Project: Maryland

2009-05-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

All of my Maryland trips have had sports in them—two Orioles games, one Aberdeen IronBirds game, and a Washington Bullets game. The latter was on my first trip to Maryland, and is my best Maryland memory.

This was April of 1995. I was wrapping up my time at Pittsburgh, and somehow had a weekend to burn. My buddy Rob (see Arizona) was getting a graduate degree at Penn State, and we met up and headed down to Rockville, Maryland, where former Kenyon College Chaser-mate Alison lived with her boyfriend (now husband) Joe. We found their place and hung out for a couple of days.

Included in the itinerary that weekend was a trip to see the Washington Bullets play and their then-home in Landover, Maryland. A quick Google search reveals that we saw them play Phoenix and lose 127-123. Rob, Alison, Joe and I mostly sat back and made snarky comments. This is back when I would yell stuff for fun. And for some reason, we noticed the Bullets’ cheerleaders, about 20 rows beneath us on the floor by the corner of the court, were responding to some of the dorky things we were yelling.

Rob said: “I bet we could get them to join in a cheer we start.”

So, next time Washington had the ball, we tried.

“LET’S GO, BUL-LETS! (clap, clap...clap-clap)
LET’S GO, BUL-LETS! (clap, clap...clap-clap)”

By the end of our second repeat, the cheerleaders were saying it with us. We stopped chanting and started high-fiving. Yeah! We did it!

About a second later, Rob started a second chant:

“WE LOVE THE CHEER-LEADERS! (clap, clap…clap-clap)”

They laughed. And Rob later suggested we could have bedded the whole cheerleading squad due to our hilarious wit. It's a shame we didn't try.

What do y'all have for Maryland?

This just occurred to me.

2009-05-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

I've been singing a lot of John Lennon lately because I've convinced myself, based on a very small sample size, that it helps my son sleep.

Alas, as I've stated here (and am too lazy to link to), Paul Simon's songs to children are superior. In fact, the only song Lennon wrote for a kid is "Beautiful Boy."

Yeah. I'm not a fan either. I usually sing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Done right, it's a sweet little fantasy. (Yeah, I know people say it's about LSD. But let's go with Lennon's story that it's about a picture his son made.)

It occurred to me, however, that John Lennon hasn't even written the best song to his own child.

Lennon's song to his son: "Beautiful Boy."
Paul McCartney's song to Lennon's son: "Hey Jude."

That's such a blowout that we need the mercy rule.

Another take on the steroid issue...or the worst job in pro sports

2009-05-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

From the not-sure-how-we-got-there-but-it's-still-somehow-predictable department...

Here's a conversation I had with my Dad this weekend:

TRP: Hedgehog and I will be going to another ballgame this weekend.
DAD: Oh. What's Hedgehog's opinion on Manny Ramirez?
TRP: What?
DAD: What's Hedgehog think about the steroid thing?
TRP: Hedgehog thinks that all players should drink nothing but breast milk.
DAD: Nah...that won't work. People will all go for juiced, supplemented stuff.
TRP: Not if all the players are required to get milk from the same woman.

Perhaps I'm a blog weekender.

2009-05-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Most of my energies go to work and bedtime for the boy. Here's what I've got for this week:

--Something really funny happened where I said "I'll have to blog about that." Then I forgot.

--Something happened at work that pissed me off, that's a hilariously bad decision by our district. But I don't blog about work.

And everywhere I look, the daily-stuff blogs are kind of winding down, easing up...they're so very 2005.

I've committed to finishing my state memories, so I won't shut the blog down...but why am I not doing that on Facebook?

Just mulling over the future of this site, guys...

Another good look at why the steroid problem matters

2009-05-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

The best ever explanation why steroids in sports are a tragedy came from the late, lamented Batgirl years ago:

There is little doubt that Bonds would have been one of the best players of his era without the BALCO--but these substances have elevated him into one of the best players of all time. And it is a lie. A fraud. Smoke, mirrors, and "the clear." He pretends to show us something beautiful and rare, but he lies. Professional sports are supposed to be fun, a wonderful diversion--but they can come to mean so much more. And when we see Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan[...]we're reminded of humanity's capacity for greatness. True greatness inspires, excites, and enlivens--whereas false greatness breeds nothing but disappointment and cynicism. And it hurts baseball. And no one hurts baseball on Batgirl's watch, dammit.

But a close second is unabashed Red Sox fan Bill Simmons this week:

"So you won the World Series twice because of Manny and Papi," my son says, "but they might have been cheating the whole time, and so were some of their teammates? Dad, your whole book was about how you could die in peace because they won in 2004. If they cheated to win, does that make what happened OK?"

The question hangs in the air. And hangs. And hangs.

State Memories Project: Maine

2009-05-10T19:08:00.001-07:00

I have never been to Maine.

So you'll have to do this one. What's your best memory of Maine?

State Memories Project: Louisiana

2009-05-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

I was as exhausted as any teacher approaching the end of his first year teaching. In fact, I’d say more so; in addition to being in the first year teaching, I felt terribly isolated in Leesville, Louisiana and was working through a dificult breakup. I worked hard to become a good teacher, however, particularly in Math, which was tougher for me to teach, and at the end of the year, I got an unexpected payoff.

My technique for getting kids ready for The Big Chapter Tests (that they had to pass in order to pass to the next level) was to precede the chapter test with an even more difficult test on the same topic. I called it a Math Olympic Event. I’d gear the kids up for it, and then, as I passed out the test, I’d play John Williams’ Olympic Fanfare on my boom box, gradually turning it down as the kids got to work. The payoff? If a kid got an A (on either the original test or a retake) on every single one of the Olympic Events all year long, I bought them pizza.

So it came to be that Pam, Jason, and Latasha joined me at the Leesville Pizza Hut one May afternoon in 1993. Pam was a great kid who liked my sense of humor. Jason was a troublemaker who never made trouble for me, and he was great at math. Latasha was a very, very quiet kid who busted her butt at English, where she struggled, and cleaned up at math. Latasha had brought along a friend from class, Kendra, who had NOT earned pizza, but I think she wanted to feel comfortable. Her stepdad had brought both of them. And while the four of them chowed down and talked, I chatted with the stepdad.

Artemis had had a very different life from mine. He was born in a tough part of Cincinnati and had escaped through the military. He also was one of my favorite parents that year. He was a regular at parent nights, totally supportive, and insisted on his stepdaughter trying her hardest.

Between slices of pizza, he and I wound up BS-ing about sports (my plans for my first really big baseball trip that summer), movies, our quick biographies...the stuff that people who don’t know each other will talk about. He eventually asked me how I wound up teaching in Leesville. When I answered, he said something wonderful.

I don’t remember the exact words. I wish to hell I had the transcript, because it completely made my year; indeed, it made my entire two years in Louisiana (as this entry indicates), and perhaps my whole teaching career. But I know he said how happy he was that I was there to teach Latasha. I recall him saying something about how my efforts to work with Latasha had given him hope in our educational system and—imagine my shock—hope for the future of U.S. race relations.

Wow. Who gets to hear a compliment like that--ever, in their lives?

“You have a great trip!” he said to me in the parking lot. “I’ll look for you dancing in the bleachers on SportsCenter!” We laughed and smiled, and that was the last time I saw him.

Nobody who teaches plans on having that kind of moment. We’d all go insane trying to make it happen. But at the end of such a difficult year, it made a hell of a lot of difference to my mindset. It remains the best compliment I’ve ever received as a teacher. I wish I could tell him how important it was. I only hope I fumbled my way to adequate thanks at the time.

What do you all remember from Louisiana?

Who would you choose?

2009-05-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Bear with me on this one.

On my birthday this past week, we imagined having a party for everyone born on April 29, 1970 and their spouses (so my wife could be there). I was worried she'd leave me for Andre Agassi, but with Steffi Graf also invited, we'd be in reasonable shape. And if my wife did hang out with Andre, well, I could get my revenge by hitting on Jennie Garth when wife hosted her 4/3/72 party.

Now, Jennie Garth is certainly a lovely blonde woman. I'd not throw her out of my hypothetical celebrity bed for eating animal crackers. And I was explaining this to my wife when she said "Which of the original 90210 cast members would you most like to marry if you could? And you have to count personality."

Wow. This is a more difficult choice than one might think, and not for the reasons one might imagine.

There's not a great choice.

The best looking of the four major cast members is Shannen Doherty--by a magnitude. Yowza. But she is also out-of-her-gourd nuts. She's SO nuts that I'm not even sure she'd be worth a brief fling, let alone a marriage.

Then we have Tori Spelling. It's sweet that she's writing motherhood advice and all that. But she's a distant last in physical attractiveness and appears to be not at all intelligent. And that sense of entitlement. Ick. I'd claw my eyes out. I might even choose Shannen over her, but it's a bit of a tough call (in the "waterboarding or electodes to the gonads?" sense.

Next comes Gabrielle Carteris. I think she was already in her mid-30s when the series was taped, so she's far too old for me, I believe. Not seeing it.

So we're back to Jennie Garth, who wins this competition. She's got a job now, and was on Dancing with the Stars,, has a regular spokesperson gig...she doesn't seem bat-shit crazy. And while she's had a bit too much work done for my tastes, she'd win out over some weak competition.

Anyone feeling me on this one?

State Memories Project: Kentucky

2009-04-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve driven across Kentucky three times, but only stopped once, and that was on my 2006 baseball trip. Swankette had left me to go back to work, and I did a few days on my own. My plan was to get to Louisville about 3 hours before first pitch and head to the Muhammad Ali Museum, then catch the game. That plan was scrapped when I discovered upon arrival that, although I had driven directly north from Nashville that day, I had slipped from the Central to the Eastern time zones.

I forewent the museum—too expensive to tackle in an hour—and instead wandered along the riverfront. It was 100 degrees. Within a few steps, my shirt stuck to my skin. But I noticed something pretty cool on the side of the museum. It was a pixelated something-or-other photo. I headed east along the river, looking back over my shoulder at the building, and slowly, surely, the image came into focus over the next half hour or so of walking…it was Ali, standing in that famous pose with one gloved hand extended after the knockout uppercut, menacingly standing with his mouth open, mouth guard exposed, over his defeated opponent. Liston? Foreman? I don’t know the opponent, but you know the picture.

Even pixelated, it was stirring and impressive. Not stirring enough to get me past the half-hour walk in 100 degree heat, mind you. But it was a fun moment from my 5 hours or so in Kentucky.

What do y'all have for Kentucky?

Letter to Hedgehog: Month Two

2009-04-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Hedgehog,

Month two finds you becoming a little bit more human-looking in my eyes. I mean, I did think you were beautiful from minute one, but newborns tend to look more like chewed-up gum than people. You now look a little more like the Gerber ideal of a baby.

Heading back to work was a bit of a bitch. I know that my job is important--that's one of the things I like about it, is how it forces me to be at my best--but it was really quite hard to get up for my job daily when the most important people in the world stay behind. And right now, while I'm grading monster research papers, it's even harder. But it's working out.

When I was in college, I found that my grades actually went up every time I dated. Some of that was that I was happier, but mostly I found that I managed my time better. Because I knew that, given the choice, I'd rather spend all day with the girlfriend, I would force myself to set aside time to get my studying done. The same principle is true now. Because I know I'd rather be with you, I'm making myself grade these huge research papers in record time by making myself spend a couple hours at the library or at Moxie's doing them -before- I come home.

Because home is so much fun now, and I know I won't want to grade there like I used to. This is a habit I'll try to keep through your childhood. I hope it's okay with you.

Occasionally I feel a little inadequate--it took me forever to figure out how to swaddle you--and when you're inconsolable, my lack of boobs is a handicap to settling you. But your mom says that you calm more from my slow-dancing than hers. So I've taken to singing slow John Lennon songs ("Julia," "Revolution #1," "This Boy") or slow-dance hits of the '80s ("Crazy for You," "True") while pivoting on one foot and putting my cheek next to yours.

And you fall asleep. Which means your mom falls asleep.

And when I can do something to calm these two most important people in the world, well, I feel as accomplished as any inventor, poet, or Nobel laureate.

As if that's not enough, your smiles arrived this month. Man oh man. The smiles. Impossibly wonderful smiles. Smiles when I come home. Smiles when you make good eye contact. Smiles for whatever other reasons are inside that developing brain. Big, glorious, open-mouth smiles.

Fatherhood, in spite of all the struggles, poop, and sleep deprivation, rocks. You should try it in another quarter- or third-of-a-century. I want you to be happy, and this is sure as heck has been effective for me in that regard.

Oh, and thanks for all the rounds of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" this morning while your mom slept in. I had fun.

Baby's First Baseball Game

2009-04-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

Hedgehog attended his first baseball game last week. Sacramento at Portland.

It was chilly—about 50 degrees—but we had him bundled up. I was wandering back to my seat after changing his diaper (only a few hundred people were there, although announced attendance was 1600) when I heard someone calling me.

“Sir! Sir!”

I turned around and saw an usher on a landing over me.

“Did you know about our infant and toddler suite?”

Apparently, the Beavers have set aside a suite just for people with infants and toddlers at the game.

The cost of admission was merely the intimation that I was an unfit parent.

“You need to go there! That boy will FREEZE!!!” (The boy was both bundled up and fast asleep.)

Still, Swankette and I took the woman up on her offer, more for our own comfort than for Hedgehog’s. Bean joined us, and a fine time was had by all of us. We’ll probably head back to the suite, just for easier breastfeeding and a better changing table than the bathroom provides.

It was “nothing night.” There were no promotions, no wacky between-innings banter, nothing…just baseball and occasional organ music. This meant that Hedgehog got a calm introduction to baseball. We think he liked it—the noises, the atmosphere. He sat on his mom's lap, facing outward, checking everything out for far longer than an infant's attention span normally is.

We’ll see on May 6 if he still likes it when all the infernal PA noise is added. And on May 24, he makes his major league debut at Safeco Field. We’re working him up to it nicely, I think.

State Memories Project: Kansas

2009-04-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

My 2004 Spring baseball trip brought me to games in Wichita and Tulsa before heading to see Rangers and Astros games. Very, very few people fly to Wichita on their spring breaks (the plane from Dallas to Wichita was nearly deserted). I went to a freezing cold April night game (a bad one, too, final was 10-0) on Holy Saturday before heading to Tulsa for an Easter Sunday matinee.

I took back roads. Not quite as deserted as the tiny ones I took that morning in Illinois, but smallish state roads through tiny towns. My only real goal was to head south and east and to get to Tulsa for first pitch, so I meandered along rather improvisationally. Looking at the map, I’m pretty sure I headed to Winfield and then struck out into the quiet farmland, passing through (perhaps) Dexter, Maple City, Cedar Vale, Wauneta, Chautauqua…three-digit population towns at most.

But what I remember was that every town had one massive church, and that every parking lot was filled—overfilled, actually—with cars. Everyone in Southern Kansas was celebrating the Resurrection. And while I probably would not have agreed with what I’d heard from the pulpit if I’d walked into these churches, it was still a very sweet, wonderful drive that day. As much as I wanted to be cynical and coastal-blue-state-liberal smug about all the heartlanders at church, I just couldn’t do it.

In fact, I popped in my CD of Jesus Christ Superstar and sang my way through the crucifixion and resurrection, singing the Passion as I passed by all of these churches, filled with what I believe to be decent people worshipping the same God I do. It was a wonderful solitary religious experience. I’d even say it brought me closer to God, and in a transcendentalist kind of way, closer to the people in these Kansas towns. I won’t soon forget that beautiful Easter.

Is Facebook reducing my blog time?

2009-04-21T22:45:00.001-07:00

Or is it the boy?

Some thoughts on the boy

2009-04-15T18:35:00.000-07:00

At this point in the baseball season, one of my favorite phrases is "on pace to." As in, "Miguel Cabrera is on pace to have thirty million RBIs this season." It's fun to extrapolate.

Let's do that with my son.

Between the first measurement (birth) and the second (at about two weeks), my son grew over two inches and gained a pound. Both measurements were quite impressive to the medical personnel. He continues to grow like a weed. I don't know that he's grown four more inches, but it sure looks like it. He's getting his father's longness and leanness. Only when I bathe him do I see the Buddha belly (much the same as the only time I can see my own belly).

But I did the math. Let's look ahead to his 18th birthday.

By the time my boy turns 18, he is on pace to be 101 feet tall!

Part of me feels like this would be pretty cool. Needless to say, I immediately thought that volleyball or basketball would be his best sports.

But then I continued the math. While 101 feet tall, my son would only weigh about 400 pounds.

He'd be the string-beaniest tall boy in history.

I'm not sure a guy with that build would make it as an athlete. He'd either have to make money as the star of a reality show or he'd have to clean storm drains.

That's okay. We'll love him regardless.

State Memories Project: Iowa

2009-04-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

My grandfather (dad’s dad) died on April 12, 1987, when I was a junior in high school. (It's an alphabetical coincidence that I post this on the anniversary of his death. I still miss you, Grandpa...you'd be 100 this year, and I wish you were still around.) The family took a week away from school to head out for the funeral, driving up to get my brother in Fort Collins before zipping across Nebraska, going as quickly as we could. My brother, kid sister, and me were cooped together for the trip; my big sister headed down from Ann Arbor to meet us in Streator, Illinois, Dad’s birthplace, where Grandpa has rested in peace ever since, waiting for Grandma to join him.

The first day, as we zipped across Colorado and Nebraska, the five of us had fun together, cracking wise and screwing around as we pretty well always do. We drove all the way to Des Moines and crashed at the Holiday Inn.

That morning in the Holiday Inn restaurant, the mood pivoted instantly. Over my French toast, we suddenly re-became aware of what we were about to do.

I remember my dad sitting down and sighing heavily.

“I am not looking forward to this,” he said. I think a lump came to my throat. Not sadness, but surprise at the way the family mood turned on the dime of my dad’s sigh. The "this" in my dad's sentence had nothing to do with burying Grandpa, who had probably fought too hard and too long against his cancer. He did make it five years past his diagnosis of 6 months to 2 years to live, but never let go, and hearing my dad describe how violently Grandpa fought his last minutes was awful. No, the "this" was the wake, the visitation, the talking to everybody from Streator he hadn’t thought about in years, the handling of his mom through the whole thing.

At 16, I think I got all of that, but the next sentence clinched it:

“Just burn my bones when I die. I don’t want any of this.”

I’ve been through Iowa on many trips, and even to Iowa as a destination at least twice. But something about the way my dad sighed in that hotel restaurant that morning, and urged us not to put ourselves through that when his time came—the way he was thinking of us even on what would be a horrible day for all of us, but especially for him—has stuck with me more than any other Iowa memory.

What do y'all have for Iowa?

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times.

2009-04-06T22:12:00.001-07:00

Don't piss off Emilio Bonifacio.

The Nationals let him go, and BAM! He's all in their grill.

TRP's Fearless 2009 MLB Predictions

2009-04-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

Are thus.

AL EAST

Boston 93-69
Tampa Bay 92-70
NY Yankees 87-75
Baltimore 76-86
Toronto 67-95

AL CENTRAL aka a bunch of mediocre teams in a lame pennant "race"

Minnesota 85-77
Chicago White Sox 83-79
Cleveland 82-80
Detroit 81-81
Kansas City 79-83

AL WEST which is actually lamer than the AL Central

LA Angels of Orange County of Anaheim of the USA of the Milky Way 88-74
Oakland 77-85
Seattle 74-88
Texas 73-89

NL EAST

Philadelphia 91-71
NY Mets 87-75
Florida 82-80
Atlanta 80-82 although they look awfully good on TV right now
Washington 62-100

NL CENTRAL

Chicago Cubs 96-66
Cincinnati 88-74
St. Louis 86-76
Milwaukee 84-78
Houston 70-92
Pittsburgh 65-97

NL WEST

LA Dodgers 89-73
Arizona 86-76
San Francisco 78-84
Colorado 77-85
San Diego 74-88

Can a team face a division mate in the first round? It doesn't matter. I have the following for the ALCS and NLCS:

ALCS: Red Sox over Rays
NLCS: Cubs over Phillies

Which means, urrrgggh, we have a Cubs/Red Sox World Series. The media will have a nonstop ten-day-long climax. It will be virtually unwatchable--maybe I'll do it without the sound.

Cubs win the World Series in 7.

State Memories Project: Indiana

2009-04-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

MCMC, the groom, was a Kenyon College Chaser buddy of mine—a bass, a year younger than me. The bride was a poetess and a Yale grad who also knew the joy of a cappella. For their May 1998 wedding (at a gorgeous state park about a half hour outside of Bloomington...they had met at IU, where he studied history and she Creative Writing), they instituted The Friend Choir. Everyone they had ever known who sang would become the choir at the wedding. A fellow Chaser served as conductor, and arranged a version of “Simple Gifts” for the occasion. We sang that, “Go Ye Now In Peace,” (a song from Chasers), and something else I am forgetting. Although we had received music and tapes to practice with, we still all arrived on Thursday for several rehearsals. And in between rehearsals, I spent quality time with old friends and became very tight new ones. We practiced at the bride and groom’s place one day, then zipped across to the state park to practice the next. In between were impromptu ice cream runs in small Indiana towns, board games at bars and at new friends’ houses, new inside jokes with people I’d known only a day or two, and an incredible amount of fun.

The one moment I’ll remember most is the who-will-cry-first pool. No money changed hands, but we in the choir each had predicted which of the bride’s and groom’s parents would cry first. I had cast my lot with the groom’s mom. Some had the bride’s dad (a poet). A few others took the longshots...bride’s mom and groom’s dad. We didn’t disrupt the marvelous service, overlooking an Indiana valley at a state park on a warm-but-not-hot early morning. But we had all made our picks, and would elbow each other and point during the service, as if to say. “I think the bride’s dad might be welling up...do you think she’ll make it through her reading?” or “I don’t know, what about the groom’s mom?” It was like a pennant race between Yankees and Red Sox...we watched them closely, waiting for the certain winner.

But then, the equivalent of the Tampa Bay Rays ran off with it all. The groom’s dad got up to give his reading, and suddenly absolutely burst into sobs. Our eyes bugged out, as this surprise cost a lot of us the fictional pool that day. As he walked away from the podium, he added one wish to the many he’d given already: “And wild nights!” he said. Turns out he’d wanted to read Emily Dickinson’s “Wild nights,” but didn’t. Instead, he just threw in the one line.

Meanwhile, in the friend choir, we were all shocked...all, that is, except Chaser buddy Shelly, the only person to pick the groom’s dad in the pool. “I don’t know,” she had said. “It just feels like there’s a lot underneath there.” There sure was.

I loved the experience of the friend choir so much that I plagiarized it. A friend choir—including several Chaser members of MCMC's choir—sang at my own wedding 7 years later. I hope they had as much fun in my choir as I had in theirs—I owe the bride and groom and their friends that much for that great weekend.

Help me out here...

2009-04-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Here's RNC National Chairman Michael Steele on the Iowa Supreme Court's decision to overturn its gay marriage ban:

The Iowa Supreme Court's decision today to reverse an 11 year old state law outlawing same-sex marriage is sadly another example of judicial activism currently threatening family values in America. While I respect an individual's right to live his or her life as they see fit, decisions like this are better left in the hands of legislators and governors.

I firmly believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman. A state's autonomous nature allows it to change its laws as the citizenry sees fit, but it should be done by the people, not through judicial decree.

There are so many things haywire in this brief couple of paragraphs that my head starts to spin a little bit.

--Why is "judicial activism" (and, to be clear, I don't think that's happening) any preferable to legislative or executive activism?

--Isn't it the job of Iowa's Supreme Court to interpret its Constitution? How is this ruling doing anything more or anything different from that?

And finally, this quote: "A state's autonomous nature allows it to change its laws as the citizenry sees fit."

Ick. He's saying that the majority of citizens can infringe on the rights of a minority of citizens if it "sees fit" to do so. If a state "saw fit" to go back a century and reinstate Jim Crow laws, thereby taking away a minority group's civil rights, it would be the Supreme Court's duty to strike down those laws. That's what happened in Iowa.

If Mr. Steele (or anyone else) wants to argue that marriage is not a civil right, or that it's okay for a state to confer the privileges of marriage unequally, I would listen (although I would be highly skeptical). But the series of nothing arguments in the above quote does absolutely nothing but make me cheer for Iowa's Supreme Court even harder.

Thankful for that recent post.

2009-04-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Because it led me to believe that A World Without Cheese is a great name for this year's fantasy baseball team.

A habit to break

2009-04-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

Why do I continue to read the comments on newspaper stories posted on the web? There are a lot of mean-spirited morons in the world.

Letter to the Boy: Month One

2009-04-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Boy,

I know...I'm already a week late with this, the first letter. But when you get around to reading these however many years down the road, it won't matter much. Your mom is much more ambitious than I am...she's writing every week. My cousin--I guess he's your first cousin once removed? Or is it second once removed?--is writing to/about his boy just about all the time. But I think monthly will be sufficient for me to communicate to you everything that's gone on in your early life. Maybe I'll keep this going right up until you're in high school. Or maybe it'll fall away. You'd understand that, I think. My parents were horrible about keeping scrapbooks (but then, I'm the third child) and I never held it against them.

But I digress. Let's talk about the first month.

Your mom woke me up just after midnight with news that her water broke. And you were quite impatient...labor started a 4AM and ended with your arrival at 9:14AM. I just can't describe that feeling. I cried all day. It's the damnedest thing, kid, and something you'll understand if you actually have a kid yourself, and there's no real way to describe it other than this: there were four people in the room (me, your mom, the doctor, and a nurse), and, the very next moment, there were five people in the room, including you...a person who had never been in any rooms before. What other word is there for that other than miracle?

You cried lustily and loudly right off the bat. Your Grandpa on my side was listening over the phone from Florida and was impressed with your pipes. But your cry is different from other babies' cries. When other babies cry, I can hear just a shade of "oh, poor me, the world is bad, pity me." Not you. Your cry is simply a pissed-off cry. You say "Hey! Mom and Dad! Give me what I want, and I want it NOW! You're not doing it yet! Get me fed!" (And food is what you want about 95% of the time. You're totally predictable that way...and growing at a pace that far exceeds other babies.) Your stubbornness and headstrongness should come as no surprise, of course, given that those qualities both appear in both parents (particularly, and I don't think she'd be mad about me saying this, in your mom). But to see such toughness and demandingness from someone who isn't yet 2 feet tall...well, that's just something else.

You mostly want to hang out with Mom these days, because that's where the food is. But we've still got some good times in together. I think it was our third night home--your fifth night on the planet--when you were absolutely driving your mom crazy with the constant demand for food. You were keeping her awake. Well, fortunately, I had purchased a 6-pack of 24-oz. Mountain Dews for exactly this occasion. I normally don't drink caffeine, but I figured I'd be doing some all-nighters with you, and I had to get you away from your mom. You fell asleep in my arms as I watched baseball (a 1999 Mariner game I'd saved for the occasion). You slept from 1:45 until 5:15, permitting your mom a little consecutive sleep.

And that's my favorite part of this month so far--the times when I can get you to sleep. You relaxed when I sang a John Lennon song early on, so I decided you like John Lennon, and I've been singing his stuff to you to keep you calm since. It certainly isn't 100% effective--nothing cancels out your hunger--but it's nice when it works. Makes me feel like I'm making your world better, which is a good way to feel when we feel, as many parents of infants do, kinda helpless and rudderless a lot of the time. So if John Lennon helps, I'll sing him.

What gets me most is how quickly--instantaneously, even--you became a permanent part of my life, in the sense of "you've always been here." People talk about what an incredible change the first child is...and it certainly is. But from the very beginning, it's like you've always been here. Like my dad singing to me was a necessary prequel to me singing to you. Like my first dates with your mom were necessary just get get you with us. Like every joy and hardship has been about this first month of your life...about getting me ready for you.

Oh, and we think you may have superhuman strength. We're biased, but when you're taking a bath (not your favorite thing), you tend to put your feet against the edge of our mini-tub and arch your back so that your butt is in the air. And you were pushing off with your feet way, way earlier than is normal. I'm not sure when this will end, since neither me nor your mom are athletes by any definition of the word, but as of now, you could kick other one-month-olds' butts.

I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Love,
Dad

A month without cheese

2009-04-01T11:37:00.001-07:00

It has come to my attention of late that my cholesterol, while not officially "high," is closer to the high border of normal than to the low border. And, since my dad damn near died of a "widowmaker" heart attack at 64, and since I plan on retiring at 62, and now I have a boy and would like to see him as a man, and since my dad took (and takes) way better care of himself than I generally do...well, I'd like to do something tangible to get down to "low" rather than "normal."

But where, oh where, do I eat much cholesterol?

I don't have a lot of high-fat dessert-type things. We will occasionally enjoy ice cream, buying a carton every couple of months and eating it until it's gone. I don't eat high-fat meats. I'm not downing Oreos.

But it has come to my attention that I do eat one high-fat food all the time.

Cheese.

I can't break myself of the cheese habit.

On those occasions where I go out, it's usually for nachos or a cheeseburger or a burrito with loads of cheese on it. Seriously...if I could make my kitchen into a Chili's, I'd consider it. Just take anything and melt a bunch of cheese over it. Mmmm.

And when Swankette bought a package of cojack for sandwiches...well, much of it didn't make it to sandwiches. I like the stuff right out of the package.

I need to see if I can break that habit. So I'm doing it. Cold turkey.

April shall be A Month Without Cheese.

This could be a little tricky. Swankette says she will support me, but only to the point of calling this "the month without cheese slices." So if she melts a little cheese over my dinner, I will eat it...unless it is feasible to do it separately, in which case I will endure a cheese-free existence.

The hardest part: I can't say "A Month Without Cheese" without heading Peter & Gordon's damn song "A World Without Love."

I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without cheese...

But stay tuned. I can do this.

State Memories Project: Illinois

2009-03-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve been to Illinois a fair number of times…my dad was raised there, and I’ve had relatives there my whole life, which has resulted in many trips there as both a child and an adult. I’ve probably had more years where I’ve been to Illinois than years where I haven’t. But the best memory, strangely, is one where I was alone.

In 1993, the summer between my Louisiana teaching years, I had my original baseball stadium tour. It was a life nadir for me…a major breakup had nixed my plans to live with my college girlfriend in Pennsylvania that summer. I decided to change plans by driving my 1987 Subaru GL to all the ballparks in the Midwest. After a Cardinals game, I slept in Vandalia, drove to Effingham (home of the Chasers Nite Spot…since I was in the Kenyon College Chasers, I was sure to stop there to purchase a sweatshirt), and then...

Well, I’d always wanted to go off the map.

My destination that day was Valparaiso, Indiana, where Jennifer, my HS friend and prom date, was going to kindly allow my to sleep on her couch. It would have been easy for me to zip straight up I-57 to get there...2.5 hours, if that. But instead, I made up some rules that would take me to places I wouldn’t otherwise go.

--I would leave the interstate.
--I would stay on pavement.
--But beyond that, I would simply turn north and then turn east at every opportunity and see where the road brought me. If I got to Indiana, I would end the adventure and go north. If I got to I-74, I would end the adventure and go east.

I wish I could remember whether I tried to pull in local radio or if I popped a tape in the boom box in the backseat (my Subaru’s tape deck was broken almost from the day I got it from my folks). I think I probably picked music, and the music was probably sappy love songs designed to make me feel more intensely like a lovelorn sensitive ‘90s man. But what I remember most is the corn. Tall, tall corn on either side of me, and farm houses not far from the tiny, lineless roads.

At one point, I entered a town on some tiny local road heading northbound. I was curious what town it was, hoping I could find it on the map. Strangely, the town’s name wasn’t on the water tower, and the road I entered the town on was so small it didn’t have a “welcome to ____” sign on it. I turned east at the next intersection, as the rules required, and slipped out of the town not long after I entered it. To this day, I do not know what town I was in.

I happened upon the Lincoln Log Cabin Historical Site, which I checked out, and where I called my friend to say I was running late. I then resumed the trip through nowhere, eventually crossing into Indiana just south of Danville, Illinois. I believe the whole off-the-map experience lasted nearly five hours.

I like traveling, getting a sense of “I am here. I was here. I have parted the air here. I existed here.” On that day, I was doing that…but nobody knew I was there, and I didn’t even know where it was I was existing. I lived somewhere on a line between alienating and exhilarating. I’m glad I did it. Won’t soon forget how it felt.

It's payback time

2009-03-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today both Mizzou and Pitt lost, preventing them from making the Final Four.

Take THAT, institutions I left early because they dissatisfied me!

(Very few people see the cause/effect relationship here. They're not looking closely enough, and forgetting that I am the center of all events.)

-Odd Man Out-: It just gets weirder

2009-03-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

A while back, I blogged about Matt McCarthy's book Odd Man Out. I liked it. More than one commenter stated that they doubted the accuracy of McCarthy's account of life in the low minors, specifically the 2002 Provo Angels. I stuck with McCarthy until the New York Times pretty well obliterated his credibility by showing not one, not two, but dozens of moments in the book that simply could not have occurred at all as they were written. We're not talking dialogue here, or moments of poetic license. We're talking about literal impossibilities. Many critical events were so far off the actual, documented events surrounding the 2002 Provo Angels that, simply put, it led me to no longer trust McCarthy's version of events. If McCarthy's "detailed journals," as he called them to the Times, are that far off that often, I don't think we can reasonably call the work non-fiction anymore.

So, faced with that evidence, I said that I no longer believed the book was true and that I no longer recommended it.

Now, a few weeks later, the since-quiet comments section on that post receives this comment defending McCarthy:

Wait a minute. Has anyone bothered to follow-up on this story? The New York Times invented almost all of the so-called errors in McCarthy's book. Odd Man Out isn't being retracted. They're not even publishing a revised edition. All of you who feel for the Times article were duped. The book continues to get great reviews in Fortube, Forbes, Huffington Post, etc. Don't believe everything you read! The Times should be held accountable for such irresponsible journalism.

All in all, a pretty passionate and utterly factless defense. Yes, the book was well reviewed in several places, including my blog for a while. But at this point, any defense of McCarthy needs the specific facts the Times calls into question addressed in a manner more satisfactory than simply calling the Times liars.

Guess what?

That visitor to my blog came from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

Matt McCarthy is currently a resident at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

Therefore, there are only two reasonable possibilities as to the identity of this visitor:

1. It is Matt McCarthy.
2. It is a co-worker of Matt McCarthy.

I can't prove anything, but my money is on #1. I say why in my own comment...my hunch is that a co-worker would say "Hey, I know Matt McCarthy, and he's a good guy" rather than simply calling the New York Times a bunch of irresponsible liars.

I find the image of McCarthy sitting in the hospital Googling himself and his book and commenting on my little blog (just a couple dozen visits a day) pretty tragic. I imagine him staying up on a late shift by Googling his name and his book, desperately trying to get his name back through anonymous postings.

That's just the cruellest paradox. He's anonymously trying to get his name back.

Mine isn't the only blog he's stopped at. Check out this post from a ways above me on Google. See that comment way down on the bottom? It's identical to the one on my blog. He's cut-and-pasting his defense (such as it is).

Whoa! Even as I write this, he comments on a different post of mine on the same topic. Same comment, with only minor changes. And it was him again:

Wow. No way this is a co-worker. This is the man himself, trying to comment on every blog that has written negatively about him.

It's too sad to laugh at.

So I repeat my statement from the comments: Mr. McCarthy, I'd like to hear your specific defenses, and will do so with an open mind. If you're willing to go public with your journals or to disprove the Times' painstaking point-by-point dismemberment of so many of the events in your book, I'd like to hear it.

But anonymously going to every blog on the internet will NOT do much for your name.

***UPDATE: A CPMC visitor has now been here, and chose not to comment. If you're back here, welcome, Mr. McCarthy! Feel free to take me up on my offer, which remains open.

State Memories Project: Idaho

2009-03-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

Swankette and I went to Boise on the original Minor League 4th of July Baseball Trip. We’d attended a game in Spokane on July 4th and then drove into Idaho for a game the next day.

We took the scenic route. I drove for a while, then Swankette drove. For whatever reason I was quite tired, and tilted my seat back a bit so I could catch a quick nap. I briefly roused in a beautiful resort town on a lake…a map tells me it was probably McCall. I got a nice sense of the gorgeousness of Idaho, and snuck a peek at my girlfriend, who was driving while I slept. There was something undeniably protective about that moment, and I felt safe. So I fell back asleep, happy to have had that two-second look at Swankette and the lake.

Debate season over.

2009-03-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

Well, we did our best. I had a freshman sneak into state in Lincoln-Douglas. And while it looks like she had her hat handed to her this weekend, it was still a highly worthwhile trip. What I liked best was how at the end of every round, she'd tell us exactly what arguments came up, exactly what she didn't understand, exactly what she did with what she did understand...it's like you can see the learning happen. Great kid, and coachable, and three more years to go.

But now I have my weekends back. Huzzah!

State Memories Project: Hawaii

2009-03-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

The best part about the honeymoon was that we had come in under budget on the wedding. So when Swankette’s parents kicked in timeshare at a condo and my parents bought us plane tickets, we suddenly had a week on Kauai and loads of cash. We decided that we would, for the only week in our lives, completely ignore all price tags and do what we wanted. This meant we enjoyed all of the absolutely best restaurants for the whole week. But my best memories turned out to be not at the fancy-pants places but at Taco Bell on the first day (see Alabama’s story…) and the Waimea Brewpub.

Waimea Brewpub bills itself as the westernmost brewpub in the world. It’s well out west on Kauai, in the tiny town of Waimea, which is downhill from Waimea Canyon, which is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous places I’ve ever seen. Swankette and I wandered along rainforests at the top of the canyon and checked out the river down below. With gorgeous mountains, this transcendent canyon, and of course, the Pacific Ocean all within easy striking distance, I was hooked. We drove by Waimea High School, and I entertained some fantasies of teaching AP English there for a living….grading kids’ papers on a balcony overlooking the ocean in 83 degree weather every night of the year isn’t a shabby way to live. (But it’s way too removed, alas, from all the people I love.)

On the way home, Swankette, a lover of microbrews, decided that we should stop at the Brewpub. What I remember about it is how awful the service was. It took forever to get our food (I believe I had the Kalua pork enchiladas). The wait staff were on Hawaiian time. But, sitting on the patio in the thick, salty air with my wife of four days, time didn’t matter. Where would I rather be than in that place at that moment, enjoying a drink with an umbrella in it while Swankette negotiated her microbrew? A longer wait was far preferable to a shorter one. I loved that place, that moment, and that woman.

Holy crap, holy crap.

2009-03-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

All in all, I've had some tough student/parent meetings, but none like this.

My former debate coach reports.

Nat Quals and Kelly Clarkson

2009-03-08T21:37:00.000-07:00

We're still an infant program, so no qualifiers and no finalists. But kids saw what the best of the best are like. The growth continues. I'd love to go to Nats in another 3 years or so. Maybe a little more.

The weekend was a success, however, if only for the drive home. We played the game of "My iPod, your choice" for a while, and kids picked songs off my iPod. First choice: Jason Mraz. Second choice: The Monkees. Quite a shocker to me, that second one.

But then they put their own music. All five of the kids were girls, and all started passionately singing along with Kelly Clarkson's "Behind These Hazel Eyes." And as I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw all five of them singing along, semi-head banging...

well, I couldn't stop grinning.

Then, at the very end of the trip, they decided we had to sing "Since U Been Gone" too. This one I know the chorus of, so along with the five of them, the interim coach and me sang along with rare gusto. I was even able to do it in Kelly's octave (except for the really high bridge..."again and again and again and aGAAAAAAIIIIINNNN"...that one's not for me. Kids sang and laughed...

At the end, they said "This was the best trip ever. WAY better than band or choir! That last song was EPIC!"

And that, more than a finalist or even a national qualifier, probably does more long-term good for my program.

State Memories Project: Georgia

2009-03-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

I went to NFL Nationals in Atlanta in 2003 with Amy, who, if you made me pick, would make the short list for Best Student Ever, and with Swankette as chaperone. On Sunday night, several Washington coaches (including Jim, although we weren't yet friends because we weren't yet blog-friends because we didn't yet have blogs) and their kids made their way to the Underground Atlanta mall in the heart of the city. It was about 6:50. We gathered everyone around and said “Go anywhere in the mall, and meet us back here at 8. Oh, but don’t go to Hooters.” Everybody laughed.

Swankette and several coaches and I wandered around the mall, examining our options, looking for the best one, when we suddenly every restaurant we could find shut down in front of us. Except one.

Hooters. And, faced with no other options to eat, most of our students had ignored our directive and had settled into Hooters for their evening meals. Against our better judgment, we hungry coaches decided that we’d just tough it out and join them. I knew Amy’s folks wouldn’t care, Joe, one fellow coach, wasn’t worried either. Carolyn, however, was a little worried about one of her more conservative kids (and his parents back home), so she was quite nervous. But I was fine. I just figured I wouldn't turn in the receipt for reimbursement.

We ordered our food and our drinks. We waited. And waited. And waited. It was virtually endless. No food was in sight. Our students were starting to wander to the gift shop to buy mugs and T-Shirts, which we strictly forbade. Carolyn was beside herself with nerves, and we were hungry and tired of waiting. So we decided that enough was enough, threw a five-dollar bill on the table for our drinks, and walked out.

I was at the ATM outside, getting money and preparing for the walk back to the hotel, when Swankette tapped me on the shoulder.

“TRP, come with us now. A policeman just made Joe walk back into Hooters.”

Incredibly, the waitress found a cop and told him we’d walked out without paying. He walked out to Joe and said “Take your hands out of your pockets!” Joe did. And all four of us walked back inside.

Carolyn was livid. All four of us were, but she did most of the talking. We pointed at the money we’d left for the drinks, and pointed out the complete lack of food on the table. Our large-breasted but stupid waitress aided our cause immeasurably by walking up and saying: “Oh! Your food is ready now!” The cop walked away at that point, and the embarrassed manager offered to box everything up for us. We told him no way and left.

My teaching and coaching career might have gone differently if I’d gone to jail for pulling a dine-and-dash at Hooters, but I was surprisingly close that day. And anytime you're close to a dine-and-dash rap from Hooters, well, it's a state memory.

So what are your Georgia memories?

You've gotta admit, it's kinda catchy

2009-03-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

My son does not like wearing pants. But seriously, who among us does? Given the choice, wouldn't we all be pantsless? But we pants him up when we go in public. Might as well teach him now that the world will force us all to wear pants. Bastards.

But when I'm pantsing him up, I've taken to singing this song. It's to the tune of the "Hands Across America" theme song, and it goes something like this:

Pants across America
Pants across this land I love
Divided we fall
But we all wear pants
Pants across America

Now you'll be singing this all day...much as I'll be singing it until the kid is old enough to tell me to shut up.

Looks like I've been James Freyed.

2009-03-03T09:41:00.000-08:00

The minor league baseball book, Odd Man Out, that I enjoyed so much?

Pretty much looks like it's fiction. The NY Times has a highly damning list of impossibilities and some reaction from justifiably pissed off teammates and coaches.

Looks like the Yalie southpaw is a first-class butthole. It'll be interesting to see what the fallout is for him. The Times did such a good and thorough job listing McCarthy's many, many verifiable inaccuracies that I can't trust any of the unverifiable stuff, either. So I doubt that there's any real long-term impact on his teammates.

McCarthy was such a good writer--it's a shame he had to lie. Why not just write fiction?

State Memories Project: Florida

2009-03-01T13:42:00.001-08:00

(For an overview of what I'm doing here, look here.)

My elderly Aunt Dorothy was kind enough to let me stay with her in Tampa during my 2005 spring break baseball trip to Florida (the only time I’ve been in the state). I made it a point to bring an audiotape player. My plan was to talk to her about family lore for posterity’s sake.

She told her whole bittersweet story. Dorothy never felt welcomed by the family. She married my great-uncle Casimir just before he went off to serve in WWII. She was not Polish and not Catholic, so it was a bit scandalous that Uncle Cass, who was both, would marry her. But when I looked at those pictures…damn, they were a good-looking couple. Cass was a star football lineman at the U of Detroit who played a year professionally with the Giants, and Dorothy was a major, major beauty. But it was clear she always felt like an outsider. “We stayed married for 54 years!” she boasted to me—I think defiantly at all those who rejected her.

I’m very thankful for my Aunt Dorothy. When my mom married my non-Catholic, non-Polish dad twenty years later, it surely raised some eyebrows, but my great-grandma insisted she loved my dad, to the point of INSISTING he help her across streets, etc. Maybe it was that Dad was a doctor, but maybe Dorothy had softened the blow for her and prepared her for the next non-Catholic to come along.

After my interview of Aunt Dorothy, we--along with several other family members--had a party. There were signs, cake, and the works, all to celebrate Prince Charles’ marriage to Camilla Parker-Bowles that week. “They want her to be like Princess Diana,” Dorothy said, “and she never will be. But she still deserves a party.” So I ate meat pie and cake and celebrated the marriage a woman who could never be accepted by the family of the man she loves. And after listening to Dorothy’s story, it didn’t seem like a strange celebration at all.

Aunt Dorothy passed away in August 2007. She's probably in heaven, her gorgeous young self again with her gorgeous military football-player love. And for her, heaven may well include just a pinch of I-told-you-so.

(I also told a brief version of this story back when it happened.)

What are your Florida memories?

State Memories Project: Delaware

2009-03-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

It's the first of the month, so I will remind everybody what I'm up to with this State Memories Project. The concept is here, and audience participation is encouraged.

This was supposed to be posted last Sunday, but I postponed it due to the birth of my son, which you might be seeing when we get around to Washington's memory. So those of you who have been breathlessly coming back here, eager to read my best-ever Delaware memory: gee, I'm sorry.

Anyhoo. Delaware. It's a baseball-related memory.

There was almost nobody in Wilmington on the day I visited it for a ballgame in 2007. Wilmington is a credit-card and financial center, so it is absolutely deserted on the weekend. I got a fantastic deal at a ritzy hotel—but so few people were in the hotel that they’d even shut down the restaurant for the weekend.

I wandered along the lovely waterfront walk. It was a sunny day, and I figured I’d find people there. Nope. It was also totally abandoned. I then made it to the ballpark very early for a Saturday night game…about an hour before the gates opened It’s a good thing I did, too, because attached to the stadium was the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. I love sports museums with extremely local flavor. I wandered in, checked out the plaques, and kept saying “Huh! I didn’t know he was from Delaware.” A Hall of Fame with such a miniscule population to draw from honors some athletes that wouldn’t make any other Hall of Fame. Steve Watson, a pretty-good-but-not-great Denver Bronco wide receiver of my youth, was in there. So was Val Whiting, a women’s basketball player for the my dearly-departed Seattle Reign ABL basketball squad.

The most memorable part of the day, however, was that I had a personal museum guide the whole time. I can’t remember his name, but the man in charge of the museum must have been extremely lonely (NOBODY was in there, and since NOBODY was anywhere else in Wilmington on a Saturday, he must have sat there all alone all day.) He walked me through the museum on a personal tour. When he found out I was from Washington state, he took me to the couple of Hall-of-Famers with Washington ties. When he found out I was a sports official, he took me to the two or three referees who were enshrined. When I said I wanted to write a piece for Referee magazine on a specific game, it turned out that he (who was a basketball referee in addition to his museum duties) knew one of the guys who reffed that game—and he gave me the ref’s address and phone.

Sure, it’s not the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum, or even Cooperstown, but when the heck else am I going to get a 45-minute-long personal tour of any museum by such a nice guy?

Okay, friends and strangers. Out with it. What crazy-ass stuff do you remember from the First State?

Good day.

2009-02-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

Not always a fan of his content, but his delivery was irresistible.

Now Paul Harvey knows the rest of the story.

Book: -Odd Man Out-

2009-02-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Thanks to Anonymous below for pointing me in the direction of these two damning articles about the book. Looks like McCarthy's version of events is not trustworthy--and often impossible. In my eyes, the New York Times has eliminated McCarthy's credibility. I no longer recommend this book.

I've just finished reading Matt McCarthy's book Odd Man Out. Sports Illustrated ran an excerpt I liked recently, so I grabbed it right before Hedgehog was born and have managed to read it over the last few days. It helps that it's a fun read.

McCarthy profiles the only minor league team he ever played for, the 2002 Provo Angels in the Pioneer League (Rookie level). The Yale-educated McCarthy is a little different from his teammates. In the tradition of lefty pitchers everywhere, he views the world through his own, unique lens. I'd say that he mulls over the conflicting motivations and goals of the players and coaches he spent that summer with, and the result is several very interesting character sketches.

But man oh man. I never thought that ballplayers were choirboys. But McCarthy lays out all the icky misogyny, racism, sexism, and homophobia that happens everywhere he goes. I'm sure that the 2002 Provo Angels (including those who have since attained fame in the majors--a surprising number, actually, for that low level of ball) are angry at McCarthy for the same reason that people were angry at Jim Bouton for Ball Four. He broke the sacred clubhouse tenet of keeping everything on the inside, blah blah blah. But Bouton's revelations--that players liked to scope women out, particularly through binoculars--were pretty damned tame compared to the exploits of these guys. It's not the exploits that bother me, of course, it's the horrific way they speak of the many women they bed (or seek to). The racist attitudes of the Caucasians towards the "Dominicans" (their catch-all term which includes any player from anywhere in Latin America) are also quite ugly. The homophobic bullshit that the players and their manager speak and say is awfully disgusting.

I guess none of that surprises me, because while I haven't been in a pro locker room, I have been in a locker room, and men tend to act like misogynist homophobic assholes in there, from junior high all the way up to (I assume) the senior center. I was surprised, however, by the contempt with which the Angels--both players and staff!--treated the Mormons in the Provo community. The team has since moved a few miles down the road to Orem and renamed itself the Owlz, but if the field staff is still the same, I wouldn't be surprised if the Provo/Orem community, once they get around to reading this book, demanded an apology or even a removal of the team. When the team trainer, Clayton Wilson, says (according to McCarthy) "Remember, we're in Provo, and these people walk around with sticks permanently jammed up their asses," and when, speaking of players' possible host families, he says that "you'll stay at their home, likely for free, and they'll cook for you and some will even clean your shit for you...but these fuckers are Mormon, so be prepared for that..." well, I'm glad that's been aired.

Wilson is now the trainer for the Binghamton Mets, so Orem/Provo doesn't have to deal with him anymore, and all the players are long gone, but one wonders if they'll decide that an affiliated minor league team is worth it when they have overt contempt for their community and its people. Maybe, at the very least, the community will encourage the Angels to look elsewhere for their rookie affiliate and seek out a team that doesn't tacitly approve of this crap.

I wouldn't be surprised if McCarthy is facing blowback from his book, like Bouton did. There's probably more than a little anger from players who were presented negatively or who were called out for steroid use (quite common in 2002, of course). The dude violated the sacred code of the locker room.

My response: Good.

When you've got a code of silence, it's because something is rotten at the core of it that people don't want to be heard. This book proves it.

Anyway, it's a fun ride. McCarthy lays it all out there, and if you're a fan of minor league baseball, it's worth a read.

Baby surfing

2009-02-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

I love my son, but I have to say I'd like it if he worked out this day-night confusion he has. He's mixing them up; chilling and sleeping with his eyes barely open all day, then wanting to be social all night. Swankette and I are switching off overnight duties...I'm not sure how I'll be able to resume work two Mondays hence without exhaustion debilitating me...but for now, I'm looking to kill a lot of overnight time.

Fox Sports has been showing old Mariner games. They're collecting on the TiVo. Fun to look at dudes like David Bell again.

And I've worked out a way to keep baby in a safe, secure position while typing on the computer. Yay for overnight web surfing.

Anyway, y'all should check this out. It's a story I first saw on ESPN at the hospital, and the more I check it out, the cooler it gets.

Rinku Singh and Dinesh Kumar Patel finished one-two in Million Dollar Arm, an Indian reality show competition. The premise: who can throw a baseball the fastest and most accurately? The winner, Singh, threw 89 MPH. Patel threw 87 but is a lefty. Singh won a hundred grand (a big deal since his family is extremely poor) and a baseball tryout in the US. They sent Patel along for the tryout as well.

It's a marvelous story. Neither has ever heard of baseball--neither had picked up a baseball before Million Dollar Arm came along. Neither had seen a baseball game or heard of any players. Calling these guys green is an astonishing understatement.

They received pitching assistance from Tom House (former coach of Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson) for a few months. They had three separate tryouts.

The Pirates took a flyer. Some say it's a publicity stunt, but I see it as a low-risk, high-reward signing. Why the hell not?

So now the pair are in Bradenton at the Bucs' minor league spring training, working on not just their arms, but the very basics--baseball rules, English language, and the like.

And they have a blog, which is charming in the extreme. A sample:

Today Mr. Trevor Goodby, Sir saying he teaching us to playing the pool. We already knowing this game, but we not saying this.

He showing us how playing. And then we playing very good. he saying you guys playing very good… You hustling me man… and we just laughing but not knowing meaning of hustling me man. but we all laughing. we good at pool. much easy than pitching.

Seriously--check it out. It's surreally fun.

Just awesome.

2009-02-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning, 9:14 AM, he happened to me.

His mother is wonderful.

His family and friends are wonderful.

This is day 3. About 6,800 more until he's 18. I hope we do well for most of them, and that I can pass on at least a little of the unfathomable joy I've experienced from him already.

A problem with the super-late part of pregnancy

2009-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

Wife is due Tuesday.

Lately, every time I've called a friend or family member, I hear this breathless "Oh! Hi! Hey! How are you???" to lead off the conversation. Then, I say "Well, things are fine. Swankette is a little tired of being pregnant, but baby will be here any time now."

Friend or family member will usually respond: "Oh! We were hoping you were calling to say the baby was here!"

Net result: until baby arrives, all of my phone conversations (that I initiate) with friends and family members begin with a tremendous letdown for them. I wish there were a way around it, but I don't see one. Sorry, family and friends.

Maybe this means I should call people more often?

I guess I've been doing it wrong?

2009-02-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

Survivor features a really, really big tool this year. I dislike him more than last season's Ace, and that's saying something.

He's a soccer coach from Missouri. He goes by "Coach."

Anybody who asks that anyone other than the players on his team call him "coach" because he's a coach is a pretty significant lameass right there.(*)

But his sense of what a coach does is even more bizarre.

He was referring to a fellow contestant when he uttered this head-scratcher:

"She has a personality that's the same as mine. She looks to find faults in other people. I do it because it's my job."

Nice! It's the job of a coach to find faults in other people! That's what I do every time I coach debate, is say "Here are your faults, kids!" Then I go home.

Later in the same episode, he said this:

"It's my job to get people to trust me."

There's no better way to get people to trust you than my listing their faults for them, one at a time. Try it sometime. Then maybe--just maybe--you'll be every bit as unlikeable as Coach.

*The only exceptions I can think of to this rule--guys who I think can be called "Coach" by the general public--are Mike Krzyzewski, John Wooden, and Ernie Pantusso. The former two by virtue of earning their nicknames through years of exemplary work; the latter who, while a coach, was called Coach because he never flew first class.

Deep-fried things

2009-02-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

Pankleb turned 35 tonight. He and many of his cool friends--I'm a friend, we'll let you decide if I'm cool--celebrated at Fire on the Mountain, a local wing joint.

I suppose I could have had a salad. But once I looked at the recipe for their hot sauce and found it had no ingredients on my banned list, I decided to go with some hot wings. Tasty. It's been a while.

Some others present were recommending the deep-fried pickles. Worth a shot. They were quite good. The hot pickle juice bursting free from beneath the frying was quite a tangy surprise. It had some kick to it.

Next up: well, we decided pankleb needed a deep-fried Twinkie. Seriously--NEEDED one. Two orders arrived. I had a bite of one.

Holy shit, was that ever good. I don't think I'd ever eat an entire deep-fried Twinkie--God knows how many calories and how much fat I would be ingesting--but damn, that one bite was good. Transcendently good, I swear to God. If you have a the opportunity to taste a deep-fried Twinkie, do NOT pass it up.

Then, once pankleb had eaten 18 wings, several deep-fried pickles, and most of a deep-fried Twinkie, we noticed that deep-fried Oreos were on the menu. We bought an order for him. The Oreo (not just the middle...the cookie part too) melts a little in the deep-fryer, making for an unexpectedly gooey-crumbly treat. Not as good as the Twinkie, but still pretty good.

It occurred to me in the midst of all of this buying-deep-fried-stuff-for-pankleb activity that this felt a little like a 21st birthday party...where friends keep buying the birthday celebrant drinks to see how he handles them. By 35, we've all been drunk (well, most of us...I hadn't been). So at 35, rather than buying pankleb drinks, we kept hitting him up with fatty calorie-laden treats to see how he could handle them. Rather than saying "Chug! Chug!" we were talking about how many times he'd have to climb Mount Tabor to work off just that Twinkie...suggesting he might not be man enough to handle all that fat.

And how did pankleb respond? With all the bravado of a 21-year-old showing off his ability to hold liquor.

He held up the Twinkie, brought it towards his lips, and shouted the following immortal statement:

"Metabolize THAT, motherfucker!"

(It seems he was actually taunting his own body there. But it was still pretty awesome.)

One other idea: The fine folks at Fire on the Mountain could add one more deep-fried item to their menu.

Now, we all know about deep-fried ice cream. (Tried it once. It's not as good as an Oreo and not in the same time zone as the Twinkie.) Fire on the Mountain could go a step further.

My recommended recipe:

1. Take a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drop it in a cube about the size of a baseball-holder filled with root beer.

2. Freeze the root beer with the ice cream in it.

3. Drop the whole kit and caboodle into the deep fryer.

The result? Yep. A deep-fried root beer float!

Who's with me?

The Amazing Race 14 Predictions

2009-02-15T14:23:00.000-08:00

It's TONIGHT, bay-bee! The debut of my favorite show. While I have only sporadically made predictions, I find myself with a little time to kill while waiting for my wife to go into labor. Thus and therefore, I present to you my predictions for this, the 14th season of TAR.

I will first offer first impressions of the teams in alphabetical order, then try to sort out who has what it takes to make the final mat, who will fall short, and who doesn't have a prayer.

Let us begin:

AMANDA AND KRIS.

Hot young Southern California couple. Appear athletic. No major red flags. A couple like this usually makes it far.

BRAD AND VICTORIA.

Married for nine years. Late 40s and early 50s. Appear in good shape, but she's coming off major foot surgery. She's out to prove the doctors wrong who said she'd never run again. While she'll prove them wrong by running, I'm not sure it'll be fast enough.

CARA AND JAIME.

Former NFL Cheerleaders for the Dolphins. No dummies, these...one's starting law school and the other is a former cop. Stage presence matters in these things. I can see them doing well, actually.

CHRISTIE AND JODI.

Flight attendants, 37 and 40. I'm not sure how the one on the left will be able to get those implants to the finish line. They'll have spunk, but being flight attendants and having a knowledge of the "ins-and-outs of the travel industry" won't nearly be enough.

JENNIFER AND PRESTON.

I've noticed South Carolina is overrepresented among Amazing Race contestants lately. But this couple, while good-looking and in good shape, has some red flags. They've broken up and made up several times, seem to approach conflict differently, and are doing the old let's-test-our-relationship-by-doing-the-Race thing. They won't go early, but I can't see them winning it all.

LaKISHA AND JENNIFER.

Sisters who might be the most athletic team out of the bunch...one played college volleyball, the other college basketball, both at Louisville...so they'll be in the thick of things. But when the profile says you argue...well, that's a red flag. So is the lack of travel experience.

LINDA AND STEVE.

Married couple. He's 43, she's 52. Travel experience will keep them around. Age will prevent them from winning it all. (Unless I'm mistaken, nobody over 40 has ever stepped on the map first. Or was what's-his-name...the guy who looked like George Foreman and his wife...that old? Crap, time to hit Wikipedia...OK. Chip and Kim were in their 40s, as were Uchenna and Joyce when they won it all. But nobody over 45 has ever finished first. Maybe these guys change it? Hard to say. Not much to go on here.

MARGIE AND LUKE.

Mother/son team. Luke is 22 years old, deaf, and proud of the fact that he doesn't read lips. They communicate via signs. I don't think this will be any kind of impact on the race, since communication will be a problem for everyone anyway in foreign countries. In fact, it might be to Luke's advantage, since he's accustomed to living in a world where it's hard to communicate with most people. They're a bit of a dark horse.

MARK AND MICHAEL.

Interesting! A pair of stuntman brothers. They're unquestionably athletes...but they're little guys, at 4'9". One is a sometime jockey, the other a stuntman actor. They're a little older, straddling either side of 50 years old. Hunh. I see them hanging around a while. They've got most of what it'll take, I think.

MEL AND MIKE.

Nice guys: gay-rights advocate dad, screenwriter son, 68 and 38. Probably the team I'd most like to get to know, but they won't be able to keep up, so I won't likely get the chance.

TAMMY AND VICTOR.

Debaters! As I was doing a little research the other day, I saw that Victor is in charge of a big debate website. The two of them are both attorneys; he's 35, she's 26. The red flag is that they seem to be carrying above-average duffels of sibling baggage on board; he's a control freak, and she wants her big brother to know that she's not a little kid anymore. That's potentially toxic. Harvard Law siblings? Who could possibly win when they disagree?

ANALYSIS: I honestly think CBS really wants an all-female team to (finally!) win. They've put in several tough woman/woman teams this year, more so than usual.

All right. I will now divide these into groups of no-chance, middle-of-pack, and in the running, and in the process make my pick for who wins it all. Note that the actual order is sort of whimsical...the real prediction is which third they'll be dismissed in rather than exact order.

WON'T SEE MUCH OF THEM:

11. Mel and Mike
10. Brad and Victoria
9. Christie and Jodi

MIDDLE-OF-PACK:

8. Linda and Steve
7. LaKisha and Jennifer
6. Jennifer and Preston
5. Luke and Margie

REAL CONTENDERS:

4. Tammy and Victor
3. Mark and Michael
2. Amanda and Kris
1. Cara and Jaime

That's right...for no discernible reason, I'm going with the cheerleaders!

Gotta go prep for the premiere...

State Memories Project: Connecticut

2009-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

In March of 1992, Kenyon Chamber Singers tour took us through Pennsylvania to New England. One of those gigs was in Westport, Connecticut, which was the hometown of Liz, an adorable freshman who was in Chasers, my other a cappella group. We didn’t have to stay with a host family that night because Liz invited six of us—three guys, three girls—to her place for the night.

Unusually, our gig was in the afternoon… we had performed at Liz’s alma mater high school that day. So, after a low-stress performance, we had a free afternoon and evening.

What I’ll remember most from that night was dinner. Liz’s parents took us all out to a pizza joint, and we were all letting off a LOT of pent-up steam from being on guest behavior every night. This mostly meant being loud and marginally appropriate. (The previous night, we had performed at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City…a major venue…so after performing at the high school, we were ready to cut loose.) I remember sitting at the head of the table and laughing a lot. Liz was at the opposite end of the table.

While I have no idea what joke caused this, Liz—a willowy dancer who moved her body gracefully—elaborately mimed barfing in response to some of our comments. She pretended to smile and nod, then, all at once, would lock her entire torso, bug her eyes out, throw her head back, and throw her body to the side under table-level, pretending to retch for four or five seconds at a time. It was hilarious. She kept doing it, and it somehow got funnier every time. The visual of that brilliant imitation barfing has stayed with me to this day.

What do y'all remember from Connecticut?

Facebook etiquette

2009-02-14T21:56:00.000-08:00

Help me with a minor moral dilemma:

A guy I sang with in high school, but didn't know too well--a guy I haven't thought much about in 20 years--recently offered to friend me on Facebook. I said yes. Why the hell not?

We chatted briefly. He's going through a contentious divorce. He's in a dead-end job he hates, and commutes an hour each way. We chatted a little bit. I tried to commiserate.

Since then, well, all I see of him is his status updates. They are, without fail, breathtakingly angry slams at his soon-to-be-ex-wife or his horrible job or his commute. Not just ordinary ones, either. He suggested we should have never stopped stoning adulterers. He wanted to send dead poisonous flowers to his ex for Valentine's. He thinks his son is partly deaf solely so as not to listen to his mom's awful voice.

The guy's status updates makes me feel like crap.

Okay. As I see it, I have several options.

One is to, quietly and without fanfare, simply unfriend the guy. Positives: it'd keep him and his unrelenting, gut-curdling anger off of my computer every day. Negatives: The dude clearly needs help, and I don't feel good walking away. He has over 100 friends...so maybe there's a little bit of a bystander effect going on here...since so many of us are seeing this, we're less likely to help him out.

Another is to sort of ask if he's okay. "Hey, Ed, you sound really, really depressed. Are you getting any kind of help?" Positives: I am doing something to help him out. Negatives: I've spoken to the man literally once since 1988. Isn't it rather presumptuous of me to step in and try to solve his major life problems?

But shouldn't SOMEBODY be saying "Hey, are you getting professional help?" The guy has a son who needs him through the divorce, and based on the strangely-intimate-but-admittedly-incomplete status updates he's giving, he's not emotionally available as a Dad right now.

Option three: send the dude an email, say "hey, I hope you're getting some help, but I'm going to step away from your unrelenting negativity" and then unfriend. Don't care for that option. It feels cowardly, like the way Michael Scott told Andy Bernard about Angela's affair a couple of weeks ago on The Office.

Anyhoo...how would you handle it? I'm leaning somewhat towards option two. I mean, the dude sought me out, after all, not the other way around, so I guess he needs a friend.

But option one would feel far simpler.

Have any of you faced similar dilemmas? How'd you handle them?