That life worth living.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written an entry, although there certainly has been no shortage of topics to blog about. I worked 31 straight days in Wyoming, my cousin John got married, I found myself in LA for two games of the National League Championship Series, a co-worker was deported (kind of, more like not let back in), and I shouted to Delonte West from behind the Cavs bench during a game in Detroit.
Good shit, right? For sure, but even I can stop strutting my decadence, peer through my hubris shaded glasses (yeah right, I don’t wear glasses, my vision is beyond perfect [ok, I’m disproving my own postulate with this digression]) and recognize an opportunity for some reflection when reflecting is what really needs to be done.
My grandma turned 90 at midnight, about two hours ago (12-9-2009). She’s not going to make it through another day. So I’m at my mom’s crib, drinking coffee and trying to crack the jokes that are only attempted during such dire times, with the Saint Ada DiLoreto Hagan in the next room over, in the finality of a coma, her final breaths assisted by machines and her discomfort muted by morphine.
All 14 of her kids are here or within a couple of blocks, taking turns comforting each other, sitting by her, crying, laughing, and just kind of being here. No one quite knows what to say, and the notion of dramatic bedside profundity was put to sleep hours ago. We’re just here, a family, and grandma or mom is dying.
Grandparents, at their utopian core, are sweet. They’re wise, open, and compassionate. I understand every family dynamic is different, but I know that my grandparents were two of the most remarkable people ever to grace this planet. I know mine were extraordinarily important to me because of a lot of factors. And I know that I don’t know jack shit about dealing with this death.
And trust me, I can take a shot. Grow up without a dad, get dumped after buying your girlfriend a $126,500 gift, spend seven years with a soulless mentor at work, wake up to a friend dead in bed with you after overdosing, and chug a glass of vinegar that you think is bottled water after playing hoops—that’s my narrative. And I wouldn’t trade any of it, other than the vinegar chugging part (which was a total accident). While I don’t believe in many things, I do believe that life experiences define us. And these are mine. The bad ones. The good ones swing the arc of the pendulum even higher on the other side, so I’m not complaining.
But I can’t stand to see the tears of my mom, my aunts, my uncles, and my cousins right now. Watching someone die sucks. Watching my grandmother, the matriarch of the most influential family I’ve ever been a part of (blame my penchant for going boastful on paternal genetics, my friends, or rap music—but not Saint Ada, she had rooms full of humility... and hair curlers) die is surreal. Now what do we do? She was our common bond, holding the teachers, grad students, and rogue-ass businessmen laborers (wink) together.
Although it’s impossible to consider my humongous, dysfunctional family unit without its ROCK, it’s now all of our reality. And even though I’ve never been one to espouse the concept of trickle down economics (and neither was Ada!), I’m gonna believe in trickle down compassion, trickle down wisdom, and trickle down love. Because if I get just a little of that sugar, I’ll be plenty sweet enough to get by.
I love you Grandma Ada.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Business Travel...
...Or, "Telling Lies, and Getting Paid."
On location, Little Rock, Arkansas, where's Gennifer Flowers? I think I have a thing for her...
The journey started earlier this perfectly autumn day at home, trying unsuccessfully to balance an egg upright on the kitchen counter because I've heard you can do that on the equinox. Equinox my ox!, either the hens that birthed these eggs have similar extracurricular substance habits as I do, or Ben Franklin or Newton or Churchill or whomever the hell came up with this balancing egg theory was just plain wrong. I couldn't do it.
With the science experiment portion of the morning concluded, it's time to get ready for a one day business travel extravaganza. Throw on some brown searsucker pants, a golf shirt, and flip flops, and I'm already feeling arrogant, which is the right frame of mind for business travel. Pack another golf shirt, real pants, real shoes, undies, socks, the laptop, and a couple bathroom necessities (Nair, eyeliner, and lipstick- just kidding- or am I?), and let's do this.
My new roommate Paul drops me off at the airport, and the fun begins. I'm two hours early, as always, even though I know it won't take that long to make sure I'm not a terrorist. I'm forced to go through the new-style imaging machine, as I was on my last flight to Vegas a few weeks ago, and my anger over reactionary federal government policy begins anew.
I guess my too-full beard and the fact that I have Lebanese cousins makes me an obvious terror threat, as I'm forced to submit to a digital scan of what lies beneath my asshole outfit, and what lies beneath my asshole. You know, just in case I have a pipe bomb in my scrotum and a machete in my butt. Tommy and Tina TSA eyeball me as I wait (with feet firmly planted on the carpet where the yellow feet outline tells me I had better plant my feet) not quite patiently. My civil disobedience to this stupid procedural ritual is limited to a death stare, and a good one at that.
OK, so this little diversion only took five minutes, and whatever, I was two hours early, but I'm still steaming. Without making light of the events of 9-11, they got us that day, and they got us hard. And they got us with planes because they rushed the cockpit with box cutters. Now the cockpits are locked. I realize that locking the cockpits doesn't the end to jihad make, but I think it means they aren't gonna get us the same way. But here we are, eight years later, and this entire invasive process, which allows us U.S. Americans (thanks Miss South Carolina) to travel on unprofitable bailed out airlines, is dictated by one tragic morning. Part of me thinks they've won, particularly if our airports are staffed with scores of power-tripping dropouts who relish the opportunity to unleash their federally granted authority arbitrarily. The entire operation screams inefficiency and obtuse government control, which is ironic considering the same people preaching the ethos of American capitalism are the same ones that ushered in this subsidized and totalitarian rite of aeronautical passage. Screw building new schools or keeping our libraries open, my America only invests in keeping us safe from outdated terror tactics. In related news, the terror level is still orange, which I think means people wearing Cleveland Browns jerseys or eating candy corn are much more likely to commit acts of sabotoge against symbols of American prosperity.
After waiting at the gate for a while and wolfing down a seven dollar bagel, I'm the second to last person to board the Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago. Practically no one is on this plane, so I get a row to myself. The ride is pleasant enough, as I review some bidding documents and devour an issue of Sports Illustrated.
At Midway in the Windy City, I re-up on reading materials, grabbing Harper's, the New Yorker, and New York. Harper's and the New Yorker are staple purchases at airports, because I'm a condescending liberal and I like to read clever shit by people sharing my point of view. New York was an impulse purchase, because Neil Patrick Harris was on the cover and Doogie is a pretty intriguing dude.
Before I could board the flight, I learned that the TSA had randomly subjected this flight to additional searches for carry-on bags. I know, dude, I'm on your list, don't judge me too harshly by my deodorant and hastily folded clothes. This perfunctory search yields nothing, as they didn't find my anthrax stash.
As it were, the flight from Chicago to Little Rock was not nearly as empty as my first flight. Actually, it was 100 percent full. Being the last one on the plane meant squeezing my 200 pound ass (with the machete still inside me) between two much larger gentlemen with wider asses (though presumably not burdened by weapons of ass destruction, thanks to our friends at the TSA).
Armrests were not able to be accessed, and I quickly ruled out a nap. If I'm sitting next to a relative or friend on a plane, they can count on me drooling on them and trying to spoon them at awkward angles. This rapport never developed with the two dudes I was sitting between, so I remained awake for the duration.
The guy to my left was conversant at the end of the flight, and while he talked about the stock market, I threw him glances and thought to myself, "I'm sitting next to Colonel Freaking Sanders, I better tell him how much I like his mashed potato bowls!"
After an enlightening sermon on the virtues of buying low and selling high by a guy I'm convinced has singlehandedly captivated my tastebuds and raised my blood pressure, we're blowing into the land of Bill Clinton, the Razorbacks, and the first Wal-Mart store. Whether getting a blowie, blowing opponents out (Nolan Richardson's 40 minutes of hell hoops squads of the previous decade), or blowing up local economies, Arkansas blows. And I mean that kindly and apologetically, as I am in no position to judge the people of this state, and that was a strech of an analogy.
The hotel in downtown Little Rock offers a wondeful view of surface parking lots. I wish Monet was around today to paint some of these wonderful landscapes (note: my lack of art knowledge may have been exposed here, I don't know who was really good at painting landscapes. But I'm pretty sure Monet is dead, and I think you don't pronounce the "t" in his name).
Settled, I'm ready to get some work done, work I should have done last Friday, but instead went golfing with my friends Zak and Ryan, justified in my own head because Ryan would be getting married the next day and I would never get another chance to golf with him the day before his wedding. His wedding ended up being a blast, even though I don't remember most of it due to my binge alcoholism (I want to do a Kettle One commercial that mirrors the pompous EAS spots starring the Browns' high school quarterback Brady Quinn, but instead of showing me lifting weights or running through cones, I'm falling on the dance floor or staring into the camera with glazed donut eyes... "thirty drinks or none, now I'm done").
Anyway, my plan to do work is rendered moot by the fact my laptop took a dump, and I'm wondering if it decided to put a machete up its ass before the flight too. The hard drive is toast. Work must wait again, and now I'm nervous about that.
Darkness falls on Little Rock, and I end up going to dinner with a guy from my company (who mysteriously had a boarding pass allowing him to get on both flights 100 people before me) and a competitor in the niche market I work in. This guy is about 115 years old, but he is as sharp as the machete in my ass- I should have taken that out at the hotel- and his war stories about moving libraries from the 1950's through the present day make the dinner enlightening and kinda fun. I soak in a lot of it, and even though I'm an overly outspoken boar, I recognize this as an opportunity to sit back and listen.
After returning to the hotel, I jot down a couple of industry secrets that were probably only unleashed because of that third vodka and tonic (my two Sam Adams do nothing to dull my lucidity). The day offers frustration, hopelessness (the down laptop), but finally a bit of an education. I'm saying it was all worth it.
Tomorrow I'll be sizing up the State Library of Arkansas, and reversing course back to the Land of Cleve.
Tonight I'm dispatching war stories from the blackberry (English teachers better give me a pass on the grammar and stuff), and now I'm gonna go to bed. I think I'll leave that machete right where it is, I'm kind of getting used to it.
On location, Little Rock, Arkansas, where's Gennifer Flowers? I think I have a thing for her...
The journey started earlier this perfectly autumn day at home, trying unsuccessfully to balance an egg upright on the kitchen counter because I've heard you can do that on the equinox. Equinox my ox!, either the hens that birthed these eggs have similar extracurricular substance habits as I do, or Ben Franklin or Newton or Churchill or whomever the hell came up with this balancing egg theory was just plain wrong. I couldn't do it.
With the science experiment portion of the morning concluded, it's time to get ready for a one day business travel extravaganza. Throw on some brown searsucker pants, a golf shirt, and flip flops, and I'm already feeling arrogant, which is the right frame of mind for business travel. Pack another golf shirt, real pants, real shoes, undies, socks, the laptop, and a couple bathroom necessities (Nair, eyeliner, and lipstick- just kidding- or am I?), and let's do this.
My new roommate Paul drops me off at the airport, and the fun begins. I'm two hours early, as always, even though I know it won't take that long to make sure I'm not a terrorist. I'm forced to go through the new-style imaging machine, as I was on my last flight to Vegas a few weeks ago, and my anger over reactionary federal government policy begins anew.
I guess my too-full beard and the fact that I have Lebanese cousins makes me an obvious terror threat, as I'm forced to submit to a digital scan of what lies beneath my asshole outfit, and what lies beneath my asshole. You know, just in case I have a pipe bomb in my scrotum and a machete in my butt. Tommy and Tina TSA eyeball me as I wait (with feet firmly planted on the carpet where the yellow feet outline tells me I had better plant my feet) not quite patiently. My civil disobedience to this stupid procedural ritual is limited to a death stare, and a good one at that.
OK, so this little diversion only took five minutes, and whatever, I was two hours early, but I'm still steaming. Without making light of the events of 9-11, they got us that day, and they got us hard. And they got us with planes because they rushed the cockpit with box cutters. Now the cockpits are locked. I realize that locking the cockpits doesn't the end to jihad make, but I think it means they aren't gonna get us the same way. But here we are, eight years later, and this entire invasive process, which allows us U.S. Americans (thanks Miss South Carolina) to travel on unprofitable bailed out airlines, is dictated by one tragic morning. Part of me thinks they've won, particularly if our airports are staffed with scores of power-tripping dropouts who relish the opportunity to unleash their federally granted authority arbitrarily. The entire operation screams inefficiency and obtuse government control, which is ironic considering the same people preaching the ethos of American capitalism are the same ones that ushered in this subsidized and totalitarian rite of aeronautical passage. Screw building new schools or keeping our libraries open, my America only invests in keeping us safe from outdated terror tactics. In related news, the terror level is still orange, which I think means people wearing Cleveland Browns jerseys or eating candy corn are much more likely to commit acts of sabotoge against symbols of American prosperity.
After waiting at the gate for a while and wolfing down a seven dollar bagel, I'm the second to last person to board the Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago. Practically no one is on this plane, so I get a row to myself. The ride is pleasant enough, as I review some bidding documents and devour an issue of Sports Illustrated.
At Midway in the Windy City, I re-up on reading materials, grabbing Harper's, the New Yorker, and New York. Harper's and the New Yorker are staple purchases at airports, because I'm a condescending liberal and I like to read clever shit by people sharing my point of view. New York was an impulse purchase, because Neil Patrick Harris was on the cover and Doogie is a pretty intriguing dude.
Before I could board the flight, I learned that the TSA had randomly subjected this flight to additional searches for carry-on bags. I know, dude, I'm on your list, don't judge me too harshly by my deodorant and hastily folded clothes. This perfunctory search yields nothing, as they didn't find my anthrax stash.
As it were, the flight from Chicago to Little Rock was not nearly as empty as my first flight. Actually, it was 100 percent full. Being the last one on the plane meant squeezing my 200 pound ass (with the machete still inside me) between two much larger gentlemen with wider asses (though presumably not burdened by weapons of ass destruction, thanks to our friends at the TSA).
Armrests were not able to be accessed, and I quickly ruled out a nap. If I'm sitting next to a relative or friend on a plane, they can count on me drooling on them and trying to spoon them at awkward angles. This rapport never developed with the two dudes I was sitting between, so I remained awake for the duration.
The guy to my left was conversant at the end of the flight, and while he talked about the stock market, I threw him glances and thought to myself, "I'm sitting next to Colonel Freaking Sanders, I better tell him how much I like his mashed potato bowls!"
After an enlightening sermon on the virtues of buying low and selling high by a guy I'm convinced has singlehandedly captivated my tastebuds and raised my blood pressure, we're blowing into the land of Bill Clinton, the Razorbacks, and the first Wal-Mart store. Whether getting a blowie, blowing opponents out (Nolan Richardson's 40 minutes of hell hoops squads of the previous decade), or blowing up local economies, Arkansas blows. And I mean that kindly and apologetically, as I am in no position to judge the people of this state, and that was a strech of an analogy.
The hotel in downtown Little Rock offers a wondeful view of surface parking lots. I wish Monet was around today to paint some of these wonderful landscapes (note: my lack of art knowledge may have been exposed here, I don't know who was really good at painting landscapes. But I'm pretty sure Monet is dead, and I think you don't pronounce the "t" in his name).
Settled, I'm ready to get some work done, work I should have done last Friday, but instead went golfing with my friends Zak and Ryan, justified in my own head because Ryan would be getting married the next day and I would never get another chance to golf with him the day before his wedding. His wedding ended up being a blast, even though I don't remember most of it due to my binge alcoholism (I want to do a Kettle One commercial that mirrors the pompous EAS spots starring the Browns' high school quarterback Brady Quinn, but instead of showing me lifting weights or running through cones, I'm falling on the dance floor or staring into the camera with glazed donut eyes... "thirty drinks or none, now I'm done").
Anyway, my plan to do work is rendered moot by the fact my laptop took a dump, and I'm wondering if it decided to put a machete up its ass before the flight too. The hard drive is toast. Work must wait again, and now I'm nervous about that.
Darkness falls on Little Rock, and I end up going to dinner with a guy from my company (who mysteriously had a boarding pass allowing him to get on both flights 100 people before me) and a competitor in the niche market I work in. This guy is about 115 years old, but he is as sharp as the machete in my ass- I should have taken that out at the hotel- and his war stories about moving libraries from the 1950's through the present day make the dinner enlightening and kinda fun. I soak in a lot of it, and even though I'm an overly outspoken boar, I recognize this as an opportunity to sit back and listen.
After returning to the hotel, I jot down a couple of industry secrets that were probably only unleashed because of that third vodka and tonic (my two Sam Adams do nothing to dull my lucidity). The day offers frustration, hopelessness (the down laptop), but finally a bit of an education. I'm saying it was all worth it.
Tomorrow I'll be sizing up the State Library of Arkansas, and reversing course back to the Land of Cleve.
Tonight I'm dispatching war stories from the blackberry (English teachers better give me a pass on the grammar and stuff), and now I'm gonna go to bed. I think I'll leave that machete right where it is, I'm kind of getting used to it.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Ch-ch-ch-changes...
...And I'm not afraid to dress like Ziggy Stardust to make it happen.
Big changes are in store for the Haganational, and they are designed to give you, my six loyal readers, a better reading experience. Several things are being discussed, but you can count on a better platform for reading and writing blogs, so this will mean goodbye to google’s blogspot, and a new domain name. You can also expect more content, some graphical interplay, and contributions from readers as well as new and exciting writers. It’s too presumptive to say the Haganational is going big time, but we are being called up from rookie ball.
Did I, Matt Hagan, the sultan of surliness, have the vision to make these changes? Of course not, I am an idiot. That’s why I’m pleased to announce Jason Tabeling as the first president and publisher of the Haganational. I’m sticking around as the senior writer and editor-and-chief. You can still expect my almost unique brand of muddied metaphors, slimy similes, gross grammar, sad spelling, and abhorrent alliteration…. Wait a minute, wait a minute- Mr. Tabeling is telling me that our new platform will have something resembling a word processor- Tabes, we’ll have to consult on this, I think the people regarded at my butchering of the language as quaint… Whatever Mr. IT, I pity the fool who think some fancy new processor is gonna challenge my propensity to reach for the most improbable of analogies…
OK, it’s clear we have a few things to work out, but if all goes according to plan, this could be one of the last Haganational’s on google’s blogspot. I’ll post one more, at least, with directions about how to follow us to our new home (pleaaassssseeee).
The impetus behind these changes is Mr. Tabeling, a Lakewood High School and Ohio University graduate. In his spare time he enjoys golf, softball, and drinking draft beers. No, this isn’t my bipolar alter-ego or an imaginary friend. He is also a devoted family man, tech-savvy, and generally more conservative than me (not hard to do, rest assured he is certainly not Joe Wilson). But most importantly, his area of professional expertise is under the hood of the internet machine, and from what I hear (from him), he's a pretty good mechanic.
Also, Mr. Tabeling did not know how to spell the word “surprise” until he was 21. He is the starting shortstop on our five-time Lakewood Softball Championship squad (I am his understudy- and since shortstop is my favorite position- I love when he misses games) but has never backhanded a ground ball. When I play second base, our double play combination has a name in the vain of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, and that name is “oops-pow-suprise” (see first sentence of this paragraph). He is bald (he may own the new domain, but let’s test his editorial prowess).
His wife, Sarah Ellis Tabeling, has been a friend and classmate of mine since elementary school. While we were in fifth grade, our teacher, Mrs. Vahue, called us to the front of the room to tell us we were “enriched” or “really smart” or something like that. Anyway, we weren’t put into the gifted class, that’s all I know, we were simply placed into the kinda smart group of two. I didn’t understand why I was in this pedagogy purgatory, until we were given a quick oral test designed to elicit rapid responses. Sarah and I were on fire in this back and forth, as we took turns nailing the questions, “photosynthesis,” “Thomas Jefferson,” “e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a,” and then Mrs. Vahue threw me a softball, asking what 400 divided by 200 equaled. “Two-hundred!” I proclaimed exuberantly. OK, I now understand why I didn’t get the call up to the gifted class. Still not sure why Sarah didn’t though, she was always pretty smart.
The Tabelings have a one-year old daughter, Allison Rose, and she is very cute and makes expressive faces. If all goes according to the plans of the Haganational’s oops-pow-suprise managerial team, she’ll be contributing articles to the only URL U’ll Really Love, the new Haganational, in about fifteen years.
Big changes are in store for the Haganational, and they are designed to give you, my six loyal readers, a better reading experience. Several things are being discussed, but you can count on a better platform for reading and writing blogs, so this will mean goodbye to google’s blogspot, and a new domain name. You can also expect more content, some graphical interplay, and contributions from readers as well as new and exciting writers. It’s too presumptive to say the Haganational is going big time, but we are being called up from rookie ball.
Did I, Matt Hagan, the sultan of surliness, have the vision to make these changes? Of course not, I am an idiot. That’s why I’m pleased to announce Jason Tabeling as the first president and publisher of the Haganational. I’m sticking around as the senior writer and editor-and-chief. You can still expect my almost unique brand of muddied metaphors, slimy similes, gross grammar, sad spelling, and abhorrent alliteration…. Wait a minute, wait a minute- Mr. Tabeling is telling me that our new platform will have something resembling a word processor- Tabes, we’ll have to consult on this, I think the people regarded at my butchering of the language as quaint… Whatever Mr. IT, I pity the fool who think some fancy new processor is gonna challenge my propensity to reach for the most improbable of analogies…
OK, it’s clear we have a few things to work out, but if all goes according to plan, this could be one of the last Haganational’s on google’s blogspot. I’ll post one more, at least, with directions about how to follow us to our new home (pleaaassssseeee).
The impetus behind these changes is Mr. Tabeling, a Lakewood High School and Ohio University graduate. In his spare time he enjoys golf, softball, and drinking draft beers. No, this isn’t my bipolar alter-ego or an imaginary friend. He is also a devoted family man, tech-savvy, and generally more conservative than me (not hard to do, rest assured he is certainly not Joe Wilson). But most importantly, his area of professional expertise is under the hood of the internet machine, and from what I hear (from him), he's a pretty good mechanic.
Also, Mr. Tabeling did not know how to spell the word “surprise” until he was 21. He is the starting shortstop on our five-time Lakewood Softball Championship squad (I am his understudy- and since shortstop is my favorite position- I love when he misses games) but has never backhanded a ground ball. When I play second base, our double play combination has a name in the vain of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, and that name is “oops-pow-suprise” (see first sentence of this paragraph). He is bald (he may own the new domain, but let’s test his editorial prowess).
His wife, Sarah Ellis Tabeling, has been a friend and classmate of mine since elementary school. While we were in fifth grade, our teacher, Mrs. Vahue, called us to the front of the room to tell us we were “enriched” or “really smart” or something like that. Anyway, we weren’t put into the gifted class, that’s all I know, we were simply placed into the kinda smart group of two. I didn’t understand why I was in this pedagogy purgatory, until we were given a quick oral test designed to elicit rapid responses. Sarah and I were on fire in this back and forth, as we took turns nailing the questions, “photosynthesis,” “Thomas Jefferson,” “e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a,” and then Mrs. Vahue threw me a softball, asking what 400 divided by 200 equaled. “Two-hundred!” I proclaimed exuberantly. OK, I now understand why I didn’t get the call up to the gifted class. Still not sure why Sarah didn’t though, she was always pretty smart.
The Tabelings have a one-year old daughter, Allison Rose, and she is very cute and makes expressive faces. If all goes according to the plans of the Haganational’s oops-pow-suprise managerial team, she’ll be contributing articles to the only URL U’ll Really Love, the new Haganational, in about fifteen years.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Backing Up on Browns Backing
As another Cleveland Browns season draws near, I can hardly contain my excitement. No, not really. For the entirety of the last decade, save two outliers of seasons, the Browns have sucked. The three years before that, they did not exist. This does not mean I do not love the Browns; rather, it underscores the dismay I have when one considers that a once proud franchise has rightfully become a league laughingstock.
This perpetual putridity is even more disturbing set against the backdrop of the Pittsburgh Steelers ongoing stability and success. Since the Browns began being terrible, right before they left town, the Steelers have appeared in three and won two Super Bowls. They have an identity borne of toughness and consistency. They are to be, as a child of Northeast Ohio, the hated rivals.
The only problem is I can’t hate them anymore. They also can’t be considered rivals, unless you’re in the camp that considers the Washington Generals a rival to the Harlem Globetrotters because they play each other a lot. At some point, one has to throw their partisan die-hard feelings aside, and respect the superiority of the opposition. Once you acknowledge this unchallenged superiority, the rivalry is over, until it is once again challenged.
This moment, the death of the rivalry, with the benefit of hindsight’s razor sharp vision, occurred on January 5, 2003. I was a 23 year old punk (much different than now, as I am a 30 year old punk), visiting Heinz Field to watch my beloved Brownies take on the Steelers in the wild card round of the playoffs. This was the Browns first (and as we know now, only) dalliance with postseason play since they were resurrected in 1999.
A little background for this seminal moment may be in order; the 2002 season was my NFL season of dreams. I was making roughly eleven dollars a week, but managed to attend eleven NFL games that season. I made a trip to Cincinnati to watch the Browns, a memorable journey with two friends who shall remain nameless that included induced hallucinations, a freestyle rap session on interstate 71 at eight o’clock in the morning, scalping 40-yard line tickets ten rows up for twenty bucks a pop, a Browns victory, at least fifteen draft beers, a midnight footrace on the campus of UC, and vomiting. Yet I remember that day very clearly.
In November, a group of Lakewood guys made a trip to New Orleans, the Browns won again, and I reached into a reservoir of rhythm to that point undiscovered and to this point absent and unreachable (my only regret is that my interpretive dance session was not recorded). The boys and I happy-footed around the crescent city, turning the French Quarter and Superdome into a playground of Lakewood debauchery. I will never forget proclaiming, shirtless, to a section of Saints’ fanatics, that “N’awlins… is a Browns Town!”
The last home game of the Browns season was a culmination of unlikely events, as the Browns scooted by the Falcons and their electrifying young quarterback, Mike Vick. The Falcons, driving the field on the last possession, received news via the PA system that another NFC game had ended, a game that solidified Atlanta’s position in the playoffs. With nothing on the line, the Falcons did not unleash nor expose their wunderkind, and were content to run the ball into the Browns’ defense, ensuring the Cleveland victory. The Browns that day needed three other games to go their way in order to secure the tiebreakers that would enable a playoff berth, and wouldn’t you know it, everything fell in order.
Earlier that year I attended two non-Browns games in Pittsburgh, an exciting Monday night tilt against the Colts, and an epic tie against Vick’s Falcons, in which Vick led his team to 17 points in the final quarter. That game was the first tie in years, and the last until a season or two ago, a game in which Donovan McNabb notoriously admitted to not knowing the NFL’s tie rule.
Back to January 5, 2003; the Browns were piloted by Kelly Holcomb, the journeyman backup with a propensity for putting up big numbers in limited opportunities. He threw for a ridiculous 400 plus yards that day, and the Browns led the Steelers 24-7 with about four minutes left in the third quarter. I sat in the upper deck that day, flanked by three similarly clad Browns’ backers, orange and brown drunken needles in a black and gold haystack. We taunted the home crowd as we built our lead, absorbed the thrown peanuts and beers, and homo-erotically celebrated most innocuous of moments, like a first down on second and one or a holding penalty on the home team.
And then the karmic tides changed. In a little more than a quarter, our egos were deflated and the rivalry was over. The Steelers won. The Browns have not won squat since. They’ve tried everything in the interim, but with less than a modicum of success. One aberration of a winning season in 2007 (although they lost to Pittsburgh twice), and a bunch of unwatchable football.
This bothers me immensely. The Browns are, and will always be, the most popular team in town. Unfortunately, we are entering a huge demographic shift, as the median Browns fan no longer loves the team because of its tradition and identity (the tradition has become losing, the identity is a lack of one), and is merely there because it is the thing to do, to tailgate and drink and put on a jersey and be seen. The beer swilling Dawg Pounder of the 1980’s is fifty-something, the orange pants Kardiac Kid is sixty-something, the Otto Graham fan is probably dead. The kids that are left, the present and future of the fan base, has no recollection of Cleveland success.
I’m on the edge. I lived and died with Bernie and the mid to late eighties Browns, read up on the juggernaut of the fifties and sixties, and studied the lean but generally competitive teams of the Ryan’s, Alzado’s, and Sipe’s. Between their founding in the All American Football conference until Modell picked up and left in 1995, they were at minimum, relevant. Let’s tell the truth; since the loss to Pittsburgh in that fateful playoff game, they have become irrelevant.
We’re losing the connection to success, and the tradition is slowly following. Let’s contrast this to our former rivals, the Steelers, a team that has had three head coaches since 1969, and Mike Tomlin ain’t going anywhere for another decade or two. The Browns have had five coaches since 1999. There is no comparing these two teams any longer.
And so the season begins anew this Sunday, and I’ll definitely be watching. I’ll give their latest supposed savior, Eric the Mangenius, a chance. But my expectations are not that high, and at the end of the season I’ll be begrudgingly rooting for a blue-collar, Midwest team that always finds a way to win. It will hurt, and it will feel like adultery, but I can’t help but respect that team. Yeah, I said it; I like the Steelers. I will always love the Browns, but my masochism has its bounds. Until proven otherwise, these teams play in the same division but operate in separate universes.
This perpetual putridity is even more disturbing set against the backdrop of the Pittsburgh Steelers ongoing stability and success. Since the Browns began being terrible, right before they left town, the Steelers have appeared in three and won two Super Bowls. They have an identity borne of toughness and consistency. They are to be, as a child of Northeast Ohio, the hated rivals.
The only problem is I can’t hate them anymore. They also can’t be considered rivals, unless you’re in the camp that considers the Washington Generals a rival to the Harlem Globetrotters because they play each other a lot. At some point, one has to throw their partisan die-hard feelings aside, and respect the superiority of the opposition. Once you acknowledge this unchallenged superiority, the rivalry is over, until it is once again challenged.
This moment, the death of the rivalry, with the benefit of hindsight’s razor sharp vision, occurred on January 5, 2003. I was a 23 year old punk (much different than now, as I am a 30 year old punk), visiting Heinz Field to watch my beloved Brownies take on the Steelers in the wild card round of the playoffs. This was the Browns first (and as we know now, only) dalliance with postseason play since they were resurrected in 1999.
A little background for this seminal moment may be in order; the 2002 season was my NFL season of dreams. I was making roughly eleven dollars a week, but managed to attend eleven NFL games that season. I made a trip to Cincinnati to watch the Browns, a memorable journey with two friends who shall remain nameless that included induced hallucinations, a freestyle rap session on interstate 71 at eight o’clock in the morning, scalping 40-yard line tickets ten rows up for twenty bucks a pop, a Browns victory, at least fifteen draft beers, a midnight footrace on the campus of UC, and vomiting. Yet I remember that day very clearly.
In November, a group of Lakewood guys made a trip to New Orleans, the Browns won again, and I reached into a reservoir of rhythm to that point undiscovered and to this point absent and unreachable (my only regret is that my interpretive dance session was not recorded). The boys and I happy-footed around the crescent city, turning the French Quarter and Superdome into a playground of Lakewood debauchery. I will never forget proclaiming, shirtless, to a section of Saints’ fanatics, that “N’awlins… is a Browns Town!”
The last home game of the Browns season was a culmination of unlikely events, as the Browns scooted by the Falcons and their electrifying young quarterback, Mike Vick. The Falcons, driving the field on the last possession, received news via the PA system that another NFC game had ended, a game that solidified Atlanta’s position in the playoffs. With nothing on the line, the Falcons did not unleash nor expose their wunderkind, and were content to run the ball into the Browns’ defense, ensuring the Cleveland victory. The Browns that day needed three other games to go their way in order to secure the tiebreakers that would enable a playoff berth, and wouldn’t you know it, everything fell in order.
Earlier that year I attended two non-Browns games in Pittsburgh, an exciting Monday night tilt against the Colts, and an epic tie against Vick’s Falcons, in which Vick led his team to 17 points in the final quarter. That game was the first tie in years, and the last until a season or two ago, a game in which Donovan McNabb notoriously admitted to not knowing the NFL’s tie rule.
Back to January 5, 2003; the Browns were piloted by Kelly Holcomb, the journeyman backup with a propensity for putting up big numbers in limited opportunities. He threw for a ridiculous 400 plus yards that day, and the Browns led the Steelers 24-7 with about four minutes left in the third quarter. I sat in the upper deck that day, flanked by three similarly clad Browns’ backers, orange and brown drunken needles in a black and gold haystack. We taunted the home crowd as we built our lead, absorbed the thrown peanuts and beers, and homo-erotically celebrated most innocuous of moments, like a first down on second and one or a holding penalty on the home team.
And then the karmic tides changed. In a little more than a quarter, our egos were deflated and the rivalry was over. The Steelers won. The Browns have not won squat since. They’ve tried everything in the interim, but with less than a modicum of success. One aberration of a winning season in 2007 (although they lost to Pittsburgh twice), and a bunch of unwatchable football.
This bothers me immensely. The Browns are, and will always be, the most popular team in town. Unfortunately, we are entering a huge demographic shift, as the median Browns fan no longer loves the team because of its tradition and identity (the tradition has become losing, the identity is a lack of one), and is merely there because it is the thing to do, to tailgate and drink and put on a jersey and be seen. The beer swilling Dawg Pounder of the 1980’s is fifty-something, the orange pants Kardiac Kid is sixty-something, the Otto Graham fan is probably dead. The kids that are left, the present and future of the fan base, has no recollection of Cleveland success.
I’m on the edge. I lived and died with Bernie and the mid to late eighties Browns, read up on the juggernaut of the fifties and sixties, and studied the lean but generally competitive teams of the Ryan’s, Alzado’s, and Sipe’s. Between their founding in the All American Football conference until Modell picked up and left in 1995, they were at minimum, relevant. Let’s tell the truth; since the loss to Pittsburgh in that fateful playoff game, they have become irrelevant.
We’re losing the connection to success, and the tradition is slowly following. Let’s contrast this to our former rivals, the Steelers, a team that has had three head coaches since 1969, and Mike Tomlin ain’t going anywhere for another decade or two. The Browns have had five coaches since 1999. There is no comparing these two teams any longer.
And so the season begins anew this Sunday, and I’ll definitely be watching. I’ll give their latest supposed savior, Eric the Mangenius, a chance. But my expectations are not that high, and at the end of the season I’ll be begrudgingly rooting for a blue-collar, Midwest team that always finds a way to win. It will hurt, and it will feel like adultery, but I can’t help but respect that team. Yeah, I said it; I like the Steelers. I will always love the Browns, but my masochism has its bounds. Until proven otherwise, these teams play in the same division but operate in separate universes.
Monday, July 20, 2009
So Close, Uncle Tom
My workaday routine has morphed into a workaweek routine, so gloriously predictable if unsettling and unstable it is. Work during the week, sprinkle in a softball game or two, assault my liver, decency, and all sensibility on a Friday or Saturday night, golf on the weekend mornings, and channel the 50 year old WASP in me by taking in the tennis or golf tournament du jour Sunday afternoon.
So it was the same this past week, the Ohio State library one week closer to opening its doors, the softball squad picking up another couple of victories, firing an extremely mediocre 99 at Legacy golf course, and ensuring the Kenilworth stays open by washing down jukebox tunes with bottles of finely aged Bud Heavy. Yet the sameness of it all was rendered memorable by seemingly the most mundane element of my routine; watching golf on Sunday.
Tom Watson, only a month or so shy of turning 60, was one putt away from turning the Open Championship, golf's oldest event, into a coronation and celebration of defying age and inactivity through determination, focus, and religion-less spirituality best described as faith in one's vision of self, surroundings, and experience.
Watson was one of golf's greatest champions, a contemporary of Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman and Seve Ballasteros and Nick Faldo. Eight major championships to his name, five British Open titles (though none since 1983), and all of the accolades and admiration rightfully associated with such preeminence were his. But at 'ol Turnberry, in July of 2009, he stood on the doorstep of what I believe would have been the singular greatest sporting achievement of all time; winning the big one for the fogeys, and claiming the Open for the sixth time at age 59.
For 71 holes, he danced the dance of serenity and "dude, I got this." With winds whipping off the Irish Sea and the undulating fairways and greens frustrating golf's best in the world (the Tiger himself missed the 36 hole cut), Watson presumed his experience and game plan would carry the day. No matter the English bookmakers had punters betting on Watson at one thousand to one odds against him winning, he believed.
And his silky swing, though robbed of some of its violent superiority, was as steady as the Scottish thermometer was skittish. He hit almost every fairway and green, running the ball off the mounds and over the hills, dodging the pot bunkers and overgrown rough, and sinking improbable putts from all over Ayrshire. He was truly the eye of the hurricane, individually calm amidst turbulent chaos circling about. He was an old freaking man, about to tame one of the game's most challenging beasts.
And then came the 18th hole on Sunday. Needing a par to win, his drive was pure. His second shot looked perfect, but was just too much, rolling dangerously off the back of the green and onto the lip of the rough. To the hack like me, when I hit an eight-iron pure and straight and it bounds off the back, I'm happy with my swing and curse the result, which will invariably be double bogey. But Tom had to have a plan, right? Just get up and down, a chip and a putt, or a push putt and a putt, or something.
His first putt crept dangerously beyond the hole, leaving a testy eight footer for it all. And at that moment, the serenity left his soul, and history left the British Isles. His putt looked like the putt of a 59-year old man with the weight of history on his shoulders, or the putt of a 30-year old project manager with the weight of a $25 bet on his neck. He pussied it, never gave it a run, left it short and allowed it to veer off line.
He tapped in for bogey and forced a four-hole playoff, but the epic story that had been all but written was reduced to a woulda-coulda-shoulda rough draft, crumpled and sky-hooked into the wastepaper basket of too-good-to-be-true along with all the other fables that just don't quite sync with reality.
The playoff was an anticlimactic foregone conclusion. Stewart Cink, an affable man with scary-good golf talent and a likable disposition, was gonna eat him up. Though Cink had stared history in the face before, and not only blinked but threw up and pooped a little bit on himself (he choked away the 2001 US Open with a series of blown putts, including an unforgivable two-footer on 18), this was different. He was the wrestling heel, Drago in Rocky, the guy that in this moment was just too good, too now, too ready to even think about letting it slip away again. He realized he was the villain in this movie, and was all too content with it, as long as he, in his words, "got the girl in the end." And he claimed what was, as it turned out, rightfully his.
For 17 holes on Sunday I couldn't help but think of my uncle Jim. Like Watson, he is a middle-aged going on old man, still trim and fit and blessed with enough spunk and guile to run with the kids-- hell, in Italy, he was outdrinking and homoerotically out-thrusting his decades younger nephews, but that is a troubling story for another day-- and for a while, he did. Uncle Jim dusted off his Manny Sanguillen swing and subbed on my Sunday softball team, doubling his first at-bat and going five for his first six at the age of 62. But the dog days of summer wore on, and the cramps in his thighs didn't subside. I still got it, his eyes said, but your asking me to give it just a little too much.
And so it was that Tom Watson has still got it, but all of us asked for him to give it for just one hole too many.
So it was the same this past week, the Ohio State library one week closer to opening its doors, the softball squad picking up another couple of victories, firing an extremely mediocre 99 at Legacy golf course, and ensuring the Kenilworth stays open by washing down jukebox tunes with bottles of finely aged Bud Heavy. Yet the sameness of it all was rendered memorable by seemingly the most mundane element of my routine; watching golf on Sunday.
Tom Watson, only a month or so shy of turning 60, was one putt away from turning the Open Championship, golf's oldest event, into a coronation and celebration of defying age and inactivity through determination, focus, and religion-less spirituality best described as faith in one's vision of self, surroundings, and experience.
Watson was one of golf's greatest champions, a contemporary of Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman and Seve Ballasteros and Nick Faldo. Eight major championships to his name, five British Open titles (though none since 1983), and all of the accolades and admiration rightfully associated with such preeminence were his. But at 'ol Turnberry, in July of 2009, he stood on the doorstep of what I believe would have been the singular greatest sporting achievement of all time; winning the big one for the fogeys, and claiming the Open for the sixth time at age 59.
For 71 holes, he danced the dance of serenity and "dude, I got this." With winds whipping off the Irish Sea and the undulating fairways and greens frustrating golf's best in the world (the Tiger himself missed the 36 hole cut), Watson presumed his experience and game plan would carry the day. No matter the English bookmakers had punters betting on Watson at one thousand to one odds against him winning, he believed.
And his silky swing, though robbed of some of its violent superiority, was as steady as the Scottish thermometer was skittish. He hit almost every fairway and green, running the ball off the mounds and over the hills, dodging the pot bunkers and overgrown rough, and sinking improbable putts from all over Ayrshire. He was truly the eye of the hurricane, individually calm amidst turbulent chaos circling about. He was an old freaking man, about to tame one of the game's most challenging beasts.
And then came the 18th hole on Sunday. Needing a par to win, his drive was pure. His second shot looked perfect, but was just too much, rolling dangerously off the back of the green and onto the lip of the rough. To the hack like me, when I hit an eight-iron pure and straight and it bounds off the back, I'm happy with my swing and curse the result, which will invariably be double bogey. But Tom had to have a plan, right? Just get up and down, a chip and a putt, or a push putt and a putt, or something.
His first putt crept dangerously beyond the hole, leaving a testy eight footer for it all. And at that moment, the serenity left his soul, and history left the British Isles. His putt looked like the putt of a 59-year old man with the weight of history on his shoulders, or the putt of a 30-year old project manager with the weight of a $25 bet on his neck. He pussied it, never gave it a run, left it short and allowed it to veer off line.
He tapped in for bogey and forced a four-hole playoff, but the epic story that had been all but written was reduced to a woulda-coulda-shoulda rough draft, crumpled and sky-hooked into the wastepaper basket of too-good-to-be-true along with all the other fables that just don't quite sync with reality.
The playoff was an anticlimactic foregone conclusion. Stewart Cink, an affable man with scary-good golf talent and a likable disposition, was gonna eat him up. Though Cink had stared history in the face before, and not only blinked but threw up and pooped a little bit on himself (he choked away the 2001 US Open with a series of blown putts, including an unforgivable two-footer on 18), this was different. He was the wrestling heel, Drago in Rocky, the guy that in this moment was just too good, too now, too ready to even think about letting it slip away again. He realized he was the villain in this movie, and was all too content with it, as long as he, in his words, "got the girl in the end." And he claimed what was, as it turned out, rightfully his.
For 17 holes on Sunday I couldn't help but think of my uncle Jim. Like Watson, he is a middle-aged going on old man, still trim and fit and blessed with enough spunk and guile to run with the kids-- hell, in Italy, he was outdrinking and homoerotically out-thrusting his decades younger nephews, but that is a troubling story for another day-- and for a while, he did. Uncle Jim dusted off his Manny Sanguillen swing and subbed on my Sunday softball team, doubling his first at-bat and going five for his first six at the age of 62. But the dog days of summer wore on, and the cramps in his thighs didn't subside. I still got it, his eyes said, but your asking me to give it just a little too much.
And so it was that Tom Watson has still got it, but all of us asked for him to give it for just one hole too many.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Self v. Whole, Micro v. Macro, Fairness v. Necessity
Alternately titled, "Adult Challenges in a Fucked Up World"
I received some disconcerting news at work today, which should come as no surprise considering the economic climate as a whole and what I know of my own organization's financial dynamics. Without getting into too many specifics, I'll be making ever-so-slightly less than what I was making.
The pill becomes difficult to swallow when one feels, as I do right now, as though they are performing better professionally than they ever have before. Leave it to a stubborn contrarian like me to produce like Japan in the eighties when my company and the rest of the economy is floundering like Guatemala in every decade. So I understand. I get it. It still sucks.
By nature and by nurture I've been raised on principles of social fairness, pacifism, and equality. By circumstance and-or genetics I've gravitated towards thought-by-profit, competitiveness, and justification via my main man Darwin for anything that can be justified through said main man.
So here I am, looking people dead in the eye, telling them they can't work for me anymore. It's a business decision, I say, and I ain't lying. But my inner-bleeding heart still can't help but fight the slightest sensation of nausea, knowing that I just took a chicken breast out of the freezer or an ounce of weed out of the bong (disclosure: I hire mostly college students, which mitigates the dire nature of my decision making... somewhat).
And I step away, knowing, er, thinking, um, hoping that these decisions pay off for the organization, and pay off for me, the new-aged capitalist with a soft spot for the afflicted and a genuine longing that all of this is justified in the end to meet some as-yet-to-be-determined end. But the doubt lingers.
What the hell am I getting at? In order for me to continue to have make money, I have to make less money, and I have to tell some people that they are done making money for me. Ouchie. But there is no other way, I tell myself, and I'm getting closer to believing it, as I brush off resentment like dandruff and swallow pride like it's ecstacy at a gay Austrian rave.
And I have to keep producing. I have to run my jobs. I can't let my original, years in the making, carefully crafted facade, that of the overgrown college kid that can be your friend but is still your boss, the dude with a mind for logistic creativity and an affinity for big words out of context that sometimes lands the big contract, I can't let that facade crumble. Even if the inside is screaming and crying and getting all passive-aggressive on that ass, the outside must remain steadfast and firm and funny. The paint job that is the three-day stubble and one-size-too-tight t-shirt must not chip or peel, revealing the conflicted mess within.
It would be unfair for me to cry foul now, not when my old bosses have been laid off and my co-workers had their hours and pay slashed and my higher-ups are dealing with my same set of challenges, yet to people with families and mortgages and all that jazz. What is fair is not what is necessary, what is necessary is certainly not always fair. It wasn't fair for me to make $800 a weekend five years ago when working in a similar capacity I mauled a company job based on inexperience and ineptitude. It probably wasn't necessary for a transportation company to hold on to a loose cannon with a DUI when his division went oh-for-ten on proposals last year. It might not be fair that I am looking at myself and some of my compadres treading water in the face of one of our largest, most prestigious, and profitable (in the micro-sense) gigs. But fuck it. I know it's necessary.
After all, I am a team player (ask my softball team after I slide head first into home just to tie the score against Kenilworth, ask the guys I play hoops with- the best YMCA game I played all season long I played the whole game, took two shots, and defended and rebounded and set picks- we won). And I'm a socialist, too.
Back in 1995, I only led my baseball team in one category: sacrifice bunts. I'm laying another one down, but this time I'm gonna try to beat it out. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe, score the winning run, and the team will win in the end.
I received some disconcerting news at work today, which should come as no surprise considering the economic climate as a whole and what I know of my own organization's financial dynamics. Without getting into too many specifics, I'll be making ever-so-slightly less than what I was making.
The pill becomes difficult to swallow when one feels, as I do right now, as though they are performing better professionally than they ever have before. Leave it to a stubborn contrarian like me to produce like Japan in the eighties when my company and the rest of the economy is floundering like Guatemala in every decade. So I understand. I get it. It still sucks.
By nature and by nurture I've been raised on principles of social fairness, pacifism, and equality. By circumstance and-or genetics I've gravitated towards thought-by-profit, competitiveness, and justification via my main man Darwin for anything that can be justified through said main man.
So here I am, looking people dead in the eye, telling them they can't work for me anymore. It's a business decision, I say, and I ain't lying. But my inner-bleeding heart still can't help but fight the slightest sensation of nausea, knowing that I just took a chicken breast out of the freezer or an ounce of weed out of the bong (disclosure: I hire mostly college students, which mitigates the dire nature of my decision making... somewhat).
And I step away, knowing, er, thinking, um, hoping that these decisions pay off for the organization, and pay off for me, the new-aged capitalist with a soft spot for the afflicted and a genuine longing that all of this is justified in the end to meet some as-yet-to-be-determined end. But the doubt lingers.
What the hell am I getting at? In order for me to continue to have make money, I have to make less money, and I have to tell some people that they are done making money for me. Ouchie. But there is no other way, I tell myself, and I'm getting closer to believing it, as I brush off resentment like dandruff and swallow pride like it's ecstacy at a gay Austrian rave.
And I have to keep producing. I have to run my jobs. I can't let my original, years in the making, carefully crafted facade, that of the overgrown college kid that can be your friend but is still your boss, the dude with a mind for logistic creativity and an affinity for big words out of context that sometimes lands the big contract, I can't let that facade crumble. Even if the inside is screaming and crying and getting all passive-aggressive on that ass, the outside must remain steadfast and firm and funny. The paint job that is the three-day stubble and one-size-too-tight t-shirt must not chip or peel, revealing the conflicted mess within.
It would be unfair for me to cry foul now, not when my old bosses have been laid off and my co-workers had their hours and pay slashed and my higher-ups are dealing with my same set of challenges, yet to people with families and mortgages and all that jazz. What is fair is not what is necessary, what is necessary is certainly not always fair. It wasn't fair for me to make $800 a weekend five years ago when working in a similar capacity I mauled a company job based on inexperience and ineptitude. It probably wasn't necessary for a transportation company to hold on to a loose cannon with a DUI when his division went oh-for-ten on proposals last year. It might not be fair that I am looking at myself and some of my compadres treading water in the face of one of our largest, most prestigious, and profitable (in the micro-sense) gigs. But fuck it. I know it's necessary.
After all, I am a team player (ask my softball team after I slide head first into home just to tie the score against Kenilworth, ask the guys I play hoops with- the best YMCA game I played all season long I played the whole game, took two shots, and defended and rebounded and set picks- we won). And I'm a socialist, too.
Back in 1995, I only led my baseball team in one category: sacrifice bunts. I'm laying another one down, but this time I'm gonna try to beat it out. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe, score the winning run, and the team will win in the end.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Back to School, But Did I Ever Leave?
The internal clock propels me out of bed at 6:40am, ten minutes before the cell phone override alarm blasts some imitation Bach telling me it's really time to start the day. After this morning workout (sit-ups, one set, one rep) I cool off by walking to the bathroom, where I stand nude in front of the mirror at my uncle Jim's old house in Grandview, the years forcing the slow descent of my eyelids into the realm of my great-grandma Hagan, gravity weighing heaviliy on the outside, delusions of gravitas bouncing about on the inside.
I pluck the grays that line my beard and temples diligently, each singular pull revealing two more offending whites. The strength of my will and the longing for a youthful facade are no match for these insurgent foreshadowers of old age. After about a dozen pulls, I retreat from this quixotic battle.
My chest is covered in the most exotic of furs, the Irish-Italian brunette blend, a curly confluence of testosterone and genetic freakiness. The years have not left well enough alone, as they view my shoulders, back, and ass as fresh pulpits in which to spread their gospel of folicle proliferation. (Go ahead, mix your metaphors, bitch, and I'll mix mine.)
I'm still relatively trim and debatably fit, the body giving little outward indication of the self-inflicted and outsourced abuse it has absorbed over three decades. But my knees crack with every step, my right shoulder has limited range of motion, and my wrists, ankles, and feet occasionally scream, "you fucked me over too!"
One thing I've learned is that these "ailments" are very minor and will only get worse. Such is the joy of aging. So for now, I give the mirror one last "hi and howarya?", and unleash a snarl-sneer-wink combination that still melts my inner-Narcissus. Brush the tizzlers, slap on some deodio, and let's attack the day.
Work takes me to college campuses all over the country, and now I'm doing the Ohio State Thing (I WILL NOT CAPITALIZE "the" in the Ohio State University until my alma mater is renamed "The Muthafuckin Ohio University" or "The Shit"). The kids I hire have remarkably similar interests and maturity in relation to me, though I fear that this is more of an indictment on my hobbies and sources of joy than it is a vindication of America's Youth. They are burdened with the triviality of youthful circumstance, and only by glancing in the rear-view do I realize how innocent and endearing these problems are. Your girlfriend left you? Sorry bud, at least you're not on the hook for a $1200 a month house payment. You're missing your bestie's birthday bash for a family obligation? Sucks for you, try spending five consecutive birthdays of your own in five different states, just so you can pay that Lowe's bill for the dryer, ceiling fans, and lawn mower.
Lest I sound woe is me, this is more woe is old. I still get down. I don't have any kids, so my rueful rants will undoubtedly ring hollow for those with children and-or those with a preponderance of gray hairs on their head.
And so I stare at the blonde girl browsing books in the stacks, not a stare that will put me on some state-wide database with my picture on it and require the county to send a mailing to my neighbors letting them know that a guy like me happens to live in your community, but a gentle stare of longing and appreciation. The human form, in full. The bloom of youth, freaking blooming.
My journey today has taken me from the bed to the bathroom to the workplace, and not many tangible locations in between (other than KFC). But Introspection Boulevard has a plenty of points of interest on it, and I know I've been on that all day.
And then it happens, I catch eyes with blondy. I give her a slight snarl-sneer-wink combo. She smiles back. Maybe she likes me. Or maybe she's just intrigued by the descending eyelids on the bearded old guy. Or maybe none of it matters and she is being awkwardly polite in a "don't put me in an unmarked van and force me to live at the bottom of a well at an abandoned farmhouse outside of Coshocton" sort of way. I'll guess we'll never know. But still...
Where are my tweezers? I've got grays to pull. I'll be in the bathroom if you need me.
I pluck the grays that line my beard and temples diligently, each singular pull revealing two more offending whites. The strength of my will and the longing for a youthful facade are no match for these insurgent foreshadowers of old age. After about a dozen pulls, I retreat from this quixotic battle.
My chest is covered in the most exotic of furs, the Irish-Italian brunette blend, a curly confluence of testosterone and genetic freakiness. The years have not left well enough alone, as they view my shoulders, back, and ass as fresh pulpits in which to spread their gospel of folicle proliferation. (Go ahead, mix your metaphors, bitch, and I'll mix mine.)
I'm still relatively trim and debatably fit, the body giving little outward indication of the self-inflicted and outsourced abuse it has absorbed over three decades. But my knees crack with every step, my right shoulder has limited range of motion, and my wrists, ankles, and feet occasionally scream, "you fucked me over too!"
One thing I've learned is that these "ailments" are very minor and will only get worse. Such is the joy of aging. So for now, I give the mirror one last "hi and howarya?", and unleash a snarl-sneer-wink combination that still melts my inner-Narcissus. Brush the tizzlers, slap on some deodio, and let's attack the day.
Work takes me to college campuses all over the country, and now I'm doing the Ohio State Thing (I WILL NOT CAPITALIZE "the" in the Ohio State University until my alma mater is renamed "The Muthafuckin Ohio University" or "The Shit"). The kids I hire have remarkably similar interests and maturity in relation to me, though I fear that this is more of an indictment on my hobbies and sources of joy than it is a vindication of America's Youth. They are burdened with the triviality of youthful circumstance, and only by glancing in the rear-view do I realize how innocent and endearing these problems are. Your girlfriend left you? Sorry bud, at least you're not on the hook for a $1200 a month house payment. You're missing your bestie's birthday bash for a family obligation? Sucks for you, try spending five consecutive birthdays of your own in five different states, just so you can pay that Lowe's bill for the dryer, ceiling fans, and lawn mower.
Lest I sound woe is me, this is more woe is old. I still get down. I don't have any kids, so my rueful rants will undoubtedly ring hollow for those with children and-or those with a preponderance of gray hairs on their head.
And so I stare at the blonde girl browsing books in the stacks, not a stare that will put me on some state-wide database with my picture on it and require the county to send a mailing to my neighbors letting them know that a guy like me happens to live in your community, but a gentle stare of longing and appreciation. The human form, in full. The bloom of youth, freaking blooming.
My journey today has taken me from the bed to the bathroom to the workplace, and not many tangible locations in between (other than KFC). But Introspection Boulevard has a plenty of points of interest on it, and I know I've been on that all day.
And then it happens, I catch eyes with blondy. I give her a slight snarl-sneer-wink combo. She smiles back. Maybe she likes me. Or maybe she's just intrigued by the descending eyelids on the bearded old guy. Or maybe none of it matters and she is being awkwardly polite in a "don't put me in an unmarked van and force me to live at the bottom of a well at an abandoned farmhouse outside of Coshocton" sort of way. I'll guess we'll never know. But still...
Where are my tweezers? I've got grays to pull. I'll be in the bathroom if you need me.
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