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The money fairy came to me in 1986. I was at a yard sale in Tennessee, and stumbled upon a plastic egg that was marked at $5. That seemed a little stiff, but when I shook it, something rattled inside (an original Constitution maybe?) so I gave the seller five dollars, and she gladly handed over the egg, then took off at a flat sprint. Later that day, when I finally got the egg open, the money fairy came out.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You gave five dollars for a plastic egg?” she screamed. “You can buy twenty of them for a quarter. I’m a money fairy and I can see my work is going to be cut out for me this time. Hey, loser. What else did you buy today?”

“Well, since you asked, I got this like-new BETA tape player. $100 I paid for it, but I think the future is BETA.”

That was the very first time she hit me. Even though the money fairy is just two inches tall, she has good bat speed, and then, as now, I was an easy target.

“Please don’t hit me with your little stick again,” I begged.

“It’s not a stick, it’s a wand. A magic wand! What part of fairy did you not understand?”

“If you’re a real fairy, do I get any wishes?” I asked.

“Just one,” she said. “You’ll wish you’d never bought that plastic egg.”

That was 23 years ago, and the money fairy is still with me. Her name is Belinda. I’ve moved eight times since 1986, but I can’t shake her. She always turns up, right around pay day, and insists I put some of my check into savings, then hits me with her wand when I don’t. My back and shoulders look like the Nazca Plains. But worse than the cuts are the shrill screams she makes when she thinks I’ve done something financially stupid.

“You’re buying stock in a company called Enron?”

“Only ten shares,” I replied.

“What do they make?” she demanded. “I’ll tell you what they make. They don’t make anything! They trade energy. I’m a fairy, but even I don’t know how that’s done.”

Two years later:

“You’re going to rent a house?” she screamed. “You don’t build up any equity when you rent. All you’re doing is paying off your landlord’s loan.”

Two years later:

“You’re going to buy this house? But then you’ll have to pay for all the repairs yourself. Then you’ll have to stay in it for seven years before you can sell it at a profit, and you hate this town!”

Two years later:

“You’re going to sell this house? It’s only been two years! We’re moving? To Connecticut? What the hell is in Connecticut? Ah, yes, expensive houses. The Gross National Product of Honduras won’t pay for a three bedroom/two bath home in Connecticut.”

Two months later:

“You’re not getting a teaching certificate so you can be a reporter? For a small town newspaper? Aren’t you the guy who said journalism majors are the only college graduates who earn less than public school teachers?”

Two months later:

“You’re going to radio school? For $10,000? Isn’t radio a dinosaur in this new age of information? Aren’t radio stations staffed with syndicated talk show hosts, leaving little, if any, room for newcomers? Didn’t we read that it takes fifteen years to break into radio? Let’s do the math here. How old will you be in 15 years?”

“66.”

“Wow! And won’t you be a force on the cutting edge. I can see it now. Take your boom box to the bathroom because it’s time for Grandpa Rock! And you’re the guy who thinks big hair bands are going to stage a grand comeback any day now.”

Several times a week:

“You’re buying bottled water? That stuff is no better than tap water!” she scoffed.

“No, no,” I countered. “Look, there’s a picture of mountains on the bottle. This is pure, mountain spring water.”

“Do you see the words ‘mountain’ or ‘spring water’ anywhere on the bottle? Of course you don’t. Idiot!”

See what I put up with? As an English teacher, it’s hard to talk to somebody who uses exclamation points so liberally. Eventually, I surrendered to most of the advice of the money fairy. Boy, did she ever gloat when the news about Aquafina came out. But, sadly, I overruled her on the radio school thing. I graduated in March, 2006. I’m still not on the radio. Every month, when I pay the student loan, Belinda laughs and laughs.

The only other person who can see the money fairy is my son, Joey. I gave him a dollar yesterday and asked it he wanted some ice cream with it.

“I have to put my dollar in my bank,” he said. “Or the bee lady will hit me with her stick.”

“I’m a fairy!“ Belinda screamed. “And it’s not a stick. It’s a magic wand!”

“But I still want ice cream,” added Joey.

And so it was that yesterday, as we walked around the Old Saybrook Green, my wife and I peered into windows with capitalistic lust at all the stuff we’d like to own. The money fairy was in my shirt pocket screaming that nobody in his right mind eats ice cream on the day after Halloween, or pays $4.50 for a single scoop in a sugar cone.

At the Feather Lust Farm Bird Store on Main Street, a young gray parrot eyed me carefully. He never took his eyes off me, and it looked like he was smiling. I called him Buddy, and asked the store owner how much he cost.

And now, I’m wondering if my lease will allow a parrot. A tiny stick is thrashing my back and neck, even as I scout a place big enough to put a large cage. I’m being forced to add that it isn’t a stick. It’s a wand, and a magic wand at that. As if that makes it feel any better.

On October 31, 1989, I was teaching my 8th-grade reading class a good and simple lesson.
“In your writing, try to avoid absolutes,” I said. “Don’t use words such as always, never, and impossible. It’s much better to say something is highly improbable.” Then I sat back, smiled, and let the wisdom I had imparted settle upon their impressionable minds.

“But some things are impossible,” said Dan, who hadn’t said anything else all year. I was prepared for this.

“Dan, the Guinness Book of World Records lists a guy who ate a tree! Piece by piece, he ate the whole thing. He also ate a bicycle.”

“Was he French?” asked Dan. “If he was, it doesn’t count. They’ll eat anything.”

“Remind me to talk later about stereotypes,” I said. “The point is, most people would say it’s impossible to eat a tree or a bike, but he did it. The Guinness folks were so impressed, they no longer accept such gastro-adventures for consideration. Nothing is impossible.”

“I don’t agree,” countered Dan. “Was the bike a ten-speed?” Can he eat a tree in one sitting? Did he use salad dressing?”

“Ten-speed?” I asked. “What’s that got to do with it?”

But Dan ignored me. There was a lot of chop in the educational waters that day because he was soon joined by a chorus of agreement, but I didn’t break. I bent until it hurt, but I didn’t break.

“Nothing’s impossible,” I shouted. “Now… shut up and do some grammar!”

That night, we placed a bucket of candy on the front porch, a futile gesture since we were so far in the country no trick-or-treaters ever came by, and the coyotes preferred our garbage. I remember that it was hot that night, this was Tennessee after all, so I turned on the air conditioner. The cool air that rose from the vents brought with it the stench of death.

I checked the mouse traps. Our house was bordered on three sides by a cornfield, and mice would occasionally risk some variety to their diet. Bold they were, for we had three cats, Tabby Hunter, MCKC (multi-colored kitty cat) and the Other Cat. The Other Cat was a giant black tom who appeared one day and wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t let us pet him, but he kept the skunks away so we gave him food and water. But he never came inside and I hadn’t seen him that week.

The traps were all empty so I took a flashlight and went outside. Nothing was in the yard or beside the road, so I removed the metal door from our cinder block foundation and peered into the darkness under our house. There he was, as far from me as possible, lying on his back with his four feet straight up in the air. The Other Cat had died.

“Poor thing,” said my wife, who had come up behind me silently.

“Yes, poor thing,” I agreed. “How long do you think it will take before he degrades? I mean, before we won’t smell him anymore?”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “You’re going to have to crawl under there and get him.”

“No,” I said. Between the opening and the Other Cat, over a span of 80 feet, was a ghastly Kingdom of Spiders. I could see their nasty webs hanging from the bottom of the floor, some as thick as barge ropes. I also knew that somewhere in there was the loathsome Spider Queen with whom I had waged a lifelong battle. I often greeted her ambassadors with broom and boot. Spiders don’t forget things like that.

“You aren’t going to bring up that silly Spider Queen idea, are you?” asked my wife. She never understood Nature. “Because if you’re afraid, I’ll go get him.”

I let her. She was only four feet into the blackness when the screaming began. I grabbed her ankles and pulled her out.

“Release her, vile fiend!” I screamed, but it wasn’t the Spider Queen. It was a snake skin, caught on my wife’s watch. She has this thing about snakes. You know how girls are.

That was when I had my moment. A man seldom gets the opportunity to find out how brave he is. It was time to face my fear. I was going in after the Other Cat. I was going to be brave, that was settled, but I didn’t want to be foolish, so I girded myself for war.

First, two pairs of pants, three shirts and a sweater. Next, I donned hip waders, a winter coat, my fleece toboggan and elbow-length industrial strength welders gloves. I had a rake in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Welder’s goggles to protect the eyes and I was all set. A spider would need to be huge indeed to get a fang into my flesh. I was ready. I could barely move, but I was ready.

Ten minutes later, I had crawled almost the entire distance. The rake had been an effective weapon against the spiders. I’d taken out one that was about as big as a catcher’s mitt, and the rest had retreated. But I was getting angry, and I had good reason. I was crawling on the bones of my home’s foundation, in the dark on Halloween night, hot, tired, trapped in some horrible Edgar Allan Poe story with a dead black cat that never liked me anyway. I began to curse. When I was close enough, I lifted the rake and it hovered just above the Other Cat’s body, about to drop. What I didn’t realize was that I was directly under the main bathroom of the house. The very instant the rake touched the cat, my wife flushed the toilet that was just above my head.

If there is an Olympic event for scooting backwards on fingers and toes, I want in. I covered 40 feet in less than three seconds. The sound was so loud and near that it took several seconds for me to realize what had happened. I returned to the body, placed my rake over it, and retreated with the Other Cat. The spiders laughed and laughed.

When I was out, I placed The Other Cat in a garbage bag and walked through the back cornfield toward the railroad tracks that ran behind our house. After a quick two-word benediction (“Jesus Christ!”), I swung the garbage bag over the tracks and into the trees beyond them.

As I made the trek back to the house, I was chuckling at how stupid I’d been. Spider Queen? What was I thinking? And then it hit me. A rogue idea that just came from nowhere.

What would I do if something in those trees threw that dead cat back at me?

What a strange thought. It was, of course, ridiculous. It was, let’s face it, impossible. But hadn’t I said, that very day… and I was running, running as hard as I had ever run before. Ears of corn ready for the reaper pummeled me, but I didn’t mind because they were in front. What was behind? What was so very close behind me? I hurtled into the house with such force I tore the screen door off its hinges. My wife lost her grip on a huge Tupperware bowl of pop corn that made a blizzard in our kitchen.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Something!” I replied, rather pathetically. “I have to lock the door.”

I have tried many times since to understand why I ran. I wasn’t a child, after all, I was a grown man. But that didn’t matter that night. It’s really very simple. It was the dark that scared me. The same dark that hid under my bed when I was a child. The dark that lurked in my parent’s closet and under my grandparents‘ staircase.. The awesome dark that rested between the stars had reached down that Halloween night to tap me on the shoulder just to see if I would still jump.

And I did. And I do.

Now, any normal person could glance at me and see that I was a guy destined to play football. I looked like a football player, talked like one, and ran into things with a violence that suggested a natural linebacker. But I didn’t like football that much. Truth be told, I was just clumsy and always late. Hitting other people was OK, but getting hit by other people hurt. A lot. I was too cerebral for football, so I went to the Babe Ruth Baseball League tryouts for boys aged 13-16, and was drafted by the Elks Lodge, Post 1776.

But there were problems. The fact that I was 16 worked against me. Our coach wanted younger players who he could mold and train in the mysterious ways of the Diamond. This seemed altogether unnatural to me, since in football, the positions went to the biggest and the oldest. I was the second string center behind a guy who was the only player on our high school team who was divorced. But I didn’t complain because he was older and bigger than me and that‘s the way it was.

So sitting on the bench while a tiny, shy 13-year-old played center field made me bristle. I’ll admit I even ran into him a couple of times, accidentally, but he kept bouncing up and apologizing for being in my way. And every time we played, there he stood out in center field, and there I sat on the bench.

I guess I should add that I was a terrible baseball player. I could throw and I could catch, but I couldn’t hit a curve ball or judge a high pop fly’s trajectory. I was fast, but I had trouble rounding the bases, and so I always ended up in right field instead of between first and second. But to me, that didn’t matter. I was big, and that should have been enough.

So it was that on the fourth game of the season, I sat on the bench and watched the game. I had only been put into one game so far, as a pinch runner on third base in the last inning, and I was only there for one pitch. Our first baseman sent a fastball sailing into right field and I waltzed in, scoring the winning run without having to do much more than mosey down the base path. But I was determined to do my part. I knew that if I ever got into a game, I would dazzle the coach with my playmaking ability. I just needed a chance.

That chance came in game four. We were playing the Jay Cees, it was a pitcher’s duel, a 0-0 tie, and we couldn’t get a base runner who was fast enough to get into scoring position from first. So when Randy walked, the coach put me in as a pinch runner. I knew what he wanted, and I was going to do it. I was going to steal second base.

I took my lead. The Jay Cee’s pitcher had a glacial delivery, and their catcher was a guy from Chapel Hill who threw like a girl. This would be easy. The coach was doing something with his hands, I didn’t really know what. Maybe there were bees. The windup. The pitch. I was off.

I had never slid into a base before. I’d seen it a thousand times on TV though, and it looked easy. So when I approached the bag, I threw my feet forward, and hit the ground. But when I stopped sliding, I was still 15 feet from second base, so I got up, ran

some more and slid again. Then I was three feet from the bag. I covered that distance with a furious crawl, but the catcher could have walked the ball to second by then. The second baseman slapped my face with his glove and I was out. My coach was furious.

“Why did you try to steal second?” he demanded. “Our best hitter is up. I didn’t give you the sign to steal.”

“There’s a sign to steal?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s a sign to steal! What do you think this is?” and he did the bizarre hand gestures again.

“I thought you were being bothered by bees,” I replied.

“You don’t know any of the signs,” he screeched. “How am I supposed to let you bat if you don’t know the signs that mean to swing or take a pitch!”

“I have to let you tell me when to swing?” I asked. “But I’m right there. I see the pitch. I know when to swing.”

Alas, I was wrong. The coach knew when it was time for me to swing, and the time was never, since I never got off the bench again. I stuck around for five more games before I turned in my uniform. Baseball was too cerebral for me. It was just as well, since our football team’s first-team center had joined the Marines, so there was an opening on the offensive line that fall.

But I never forgot the main lesson of baseball: look for the signs. Signs are everywhere, and all we have to do is keep our eyes open and we’ll see them. I was explaining all this to my girlfriend, who was looking out her window and yearning for my dad’s car that would take me home. She mumbled something about needing to do her

homework, and then laundry, and then wash her hair, so she called six of my friends to come over and get me out of there. I spent a lot of time at her house, and I can still see her peering out the window. When she dumped me later that summer, I was shocked. I don’t know why it never worked out between us. Maybe I was too cerebral for her, too.

Every Sunday morning we go to brunch in Denver. There are lots of great spots and we sort of rotate between them. Today we were going to see if we could get into the new Snooze location at Colorado & 7th. We’ve tried a couple of times before, but with no luck. See, the way Sunday brunch works most places in Denver is that things don’t start to pack up until 9:30 or 10:00. If you’re there before then the wait won’t be too bad.

Except for Snooze. We keep trying earlier and earlier and the lines keep getting longer and longer. Damned early-rising bastards. So today we got up earlier and arrived by 8:45…to find a 45-minute line ahead of us.

Since we were hungry we agreed that we’d head over to Racine’s and next week we’d get to Snooze by around 6:00 pm Saturday night so we could camp out and maybe beat the rush.

So, as our saga begins, it’s 8:45, I’m hungry and already a tad annoyed.

We hop in the car and head west down 8th toward the Governor’s Park neighborhood, where Racine’s is located. As we pass Cheeseman Park (if you don’t know Denver, hold on – a map is on the way) we notice lots of people in running attire with official numbers. Angela says “looks like a race – I wonder if today is the marathon?”

Can’t be, I say. A couple of the people I see couldn’t drive 26 miles without their hearts exploding. Running it would be out of the question. But there are lots and lots of people, and as we cruise by we see that there is, in fact, some kind of very organized race event under way. Hmmm.

Shortly thereafter traffic begins stacking up. And Angela remembers that she did see something on the news, after all – this is the day of the Denver Marathon, and while we haven’t seen the race map, it looks like we’ve wandered into the thick of things. Wonderful.

At Josephine we’re forced to detour, and I’m thinking no sweat, I’ll just buzz through the neighborhood, get around the traffic, and we’ll be at Racine’s in a couple of minutes.

Woops. I try to head west on 9th but it seems they’ve turned the runners south, so I’m dead-ended. Dammit. All right, fine, I’ll hang a left and work my way down to 7th. Nuh-uh. Streets are closed to the south – can’t get across 8th, and from the intersection we can see that they have the runners heading back east along 7th. What the fuck?

It’s right about now that I’m starting to think about the time my trash can disappeared. There are malevolent and contrary forces in the universe, and it sucks when it’s your turn to entertain them.

Right about now Angela checks her watch and says “you know, by the time we get back to Snooze it will be about 45 minutes since we put our names on the list.” Which is funny, of course. No big deal, she says – it’s a beautiful day, we love driving around Denver and we love this neighborhood. Fine. So we loop around to head back east, the way we came from.

Son. Of. A. Bitch! We can’t go east on 8th, obviously, because it’s one-way to the west, and 9th dead-ends at the park. I’m not going to panic just yet, but I’m getting an uneasy feeling about this whole scene.

Well, hell – I guess we can work our way back to the north, catch 14th east and go the long way around.

But…PIGFUCKERS!! They’re running them down 13th! (I do some calculations in my head, and of course, there’s no way they can get from Cheeseman, heading west, to running south on Logan without closing us off to the north somewhere. I should have realized this by now.)

How in the hell did they do this? You can’t go west, you can’t go east, you can’t go south and you can’t go north, either! I mean, there are only four options, people, and since we somehow or another got into the middle of the damned course, there has to be a way out.

By now I’m beginning to get a little irritated. I roll up to the blocked intersection at 13th, where a cop is manning the barricades. He is sympathetic. Sympathetic, but not helpful. He allows as to how I could maybe swing back around thataway and get outside of the course. Somehow. I remind him (he’s working the damned race – shouldn’t he know this already?) that we’ve tried that already. His next best idea is that we can wait a half-hour or however long until all the runners get past.

As I back slowly away, looking for a place to turn around, I eye the officer and the slow stream of runners. I think about those stories where people plow into crowds. I gun my engine. Few things are less intimidating than gunning a Honda Civic, though. I sigh, soaking in my helplessness.

So, how in the hell did I find myself in the midst of the most effective mousetrap in the entire goddamned history or traffic engineering? The course map (this is the part that’s relevant to our current discussion) illustrates:

Notice the blue arrow bottom right. That’s 8th, the one-way path into the trap. The red X at Race St.? That’s more or less the point of no return. The red dashes are street closings. The purple is the race course. Now imagine that you’re in a car proceeding westbound along 8th and that you pass Race without any warning as to what lies ahead. How do you get out?

That’s right, bitches – YOU DON’T!!!

Let me state here that I have never worked on the logistics for a marathon. I’ve never mapped out a marathon course. I’m sure this is a complex process and I acknowledge, without reservation, that there are probably very few people alive who know less about this subject than I do.

That said, what the hell were these fucking rocket surgeons thinking?! A semi-housebroken monkey could look at this map and realize that, hey, maybe we didn’t think this through all the way. Never mind the fact that lots of people live in the area and may need to, you know, go somewhere. But is it a great idea to funnel lots of traffic into an area where the only means of escape is through a goddamned race course?! If I were designing the course, this is precisely what I’d do if I hated runners, drivers, the residents of Cheeseman Park and anybody else dumbass enough to assume that you can get there from here. The only thing missing was Ashton Kutcher and a camera crew.

The asshats could at least have put a sign along 8th letting us know that we were driving into the sumbitching Bermuda Triangle! (Note: If there was, in fact, such a sign, I apologize for the previous insult. Let me instead offer this: The asshats could at least have not hidden the sign letting us know that we were driving into the sumbitching Bermuda Triangle behind a goddamned tree!

[deep breath]

We eventually gave up, found a parking place and walked the several blocks to Racine’s, where we had a lovely brunch. (I had the breakfast burrito, which I heartily recommend to anyone fortunate enough to make it to the restaurant.) Along the way, we learned that there was, in fact, a way out. If you continued down 8th and sat in the line long enough (I’m guessing 45 minutes, maybe?) they were letting a car or two through at Logan whenever there was a break in the line of runners. In the defense of the race planners, we saw at least two cars escape the trap.

If whoever planned this event ever decides to get out of the marathon logistics business, I hope they go to work designing prisons. Or roach motels. As it stands right now, their gift is being wasted.

I want to keep the health insurance I have—which is no health insurance. I was dropped when I had a heart attack. My insurance company called it a preexisting condition, and they were right. Heart attacks have been around a very long time. The important thing is that I treasure my insurance company’s free market right to maximize profits at all moral and ethical costs. I would willingly die defending that right. And now, finally, I may get that chance.

I try not to worry about my needless impending death. I don’t lose sleep over the pointless suffering between now and then, and I refuse to get down about leaving my wife and children behind without any health care of their own. What I do worry about is the prospect of private insurance juggernauts experiencing a ten to fifteen percent decline in annual gross revenue due to the availability of a public option. Now that’s scary.

I don’t have a doctor. But if I did, I wouldn’t want some bureaucrat coming between me and him. Like Sarah Palin, I am against Obama’s death panels. I prefer Liberty Mutual’s death panels, because at least they’re American. I am not impressed with claims of socialized medicine working in countries like Britain, France, and Canada. It’s far better to die of septic shock in a free country than to receive antibiotics in a single-payer one. Single-payer systems, as we know, just aren’t fair. Why should one person have to pay for everyone else? What if that person runs out of money?

I’ve always relished getting the insurance statement envelope in the mail following a surgical procedure. It makes me fee a little like a nominated actor on Oscar night. I never know if I’m going to be reimbursed 80 percent, 50 percent, or not at all. I firmly believe the suspense has kept me going all these years. But under a single-payer or a public option, let’s face it—the thrill will be gone.

Bleeding heart liberal commie pinko anti-American leftist homosexual traitors contend there are 47 million uninsured people in this country. But the truth is, 46,999,996 of them are illegal immigrants and the other four are my family. Let’s get something straight, though—we don’t want a handout. We have a little thing called pride. I can proudly say I’ve been turned away by some of the biggest names in healthcare, from Aetna to AIG to CIGNA to United Health—a virtual Who’s Who of the insurance business.

I am not in the least offended that members of Congress receive superior healthcare provided entirely by the federal government. I recently spoke to my congressman regarding this issue, and he personally assured me that were I ever elected to the House or the Senate, the exact same health plan would be made available to me.

One day, should I miraculously live that long, I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and the government better keep their grubby hands off it. Back when our country was founded by a few brave men, many of them gave their lives for Medicare. If these same patriots were alive today, they would do what any patriot would do in the face of a government takeover of Medicare—show up at Obama rallies with loaded assault weapons.

Because of government interference in the natural order of things, bloodletting has become a lost art. Castor oil and cod liver oil for treatment of everything from a common cold to multiple bone fractures has become a thing of the past.

Amputations are way down, and that’s a problem because, as everyone knows, a severed limb cannot be reinfected. I am not troubled by life expectancy in the U.S. ranking 35th, a bit behind Bosnia and a hair ahead of Albania . Life expectancy is vastly overrated. Post-mortem relapses are increasingly rare.

I am dead set against government sponsored preventive care. Preventive care not only weakens our natural defenses against disease but also casts our government in the role of parent. My own parents had a different approach to medical concerns. When my right foot hurt, Dad would stomp on my left foot, and vice-versa. Mom said he picked this up while watching old episodes of The Three Stooges, proving once again that we can certainly learn a lot from our forefathers.

The fact is, the misguided outcry for a public option—or any sort of healthcare for that matter—represents a serious threat to intelligent design. Intelligent design is a constitutionally guaranteed right granted by our nation’s founders. Under intelligent design, we evolve into a superior civilization as the strong survive, the weak perish, and the really weak run Blackwater.

Government programs are doomed to failure. Aside from the GI Bill, Social Security, the FDA, the Hoover Dam, the Federal Reserve System, the FAA, the SEC, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the National Guard, and NASA, name one government program that works.

I believe the Earth was created in six days by an all-powerful benevolent God and that on the seventh day He created our current healthcare system in His own image. Tampering with the Lord’s healthcare system is heresy and will surely bring the wrath of nations down on this once great land. When that day comes, we owe it to ourselves to bleed to death and resist the evil temptation to show up at a free clinic.

__________________________

Rich Herschlag is the author of Before the Glory: 20 Baseball Heroes Talk About Growing Up and Turning Hard Times Into Home Runs (HCI, 2007). His other books include Lay Low and Don’t Make the Big Mistake (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and The Interceptor (Ballantine, 1998).

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And…

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Been there. Feeling your pain. May all your clients not be like these…

But now it was my time. I believed football could be taught using the Shakespeare method of coaching. I would tell my team what to do, they would look at me with a complete lack of understanding and request another play, one not stated in iambic pentameter.

During our first game, I noticed the right defensive tackle on the opposing team was moving backwards after the snap, creating a natural hole for a quick hitter. I sent in the following play: “Once more unto the breech dear friends, once more. With the fullback!” My quarterback gave me a confused glance and passed instead. It was intercepted and returned for a touchdown.

“Why didn’t you run the fullback like I said?” I asked him.

“Why didn’t you tell me what a breech was?” he replied.

We lost 56-0.

“Sorry, coach,” said my quarterback. “We’ll do better next week.”

I couldn’t be mad. “Hey, boys, the quality of mercy is not strained. It dropeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath. Like our 8 fumbles tonight. Just dropething everywhere.”

Everything exists for a reason. The junior high football B-team had two functions: A. to get small, slow, gentle players ready to play on the varsity someday, or B. drive these kids back into marching band where they belonged. If an 8th grader had any talent at all, he was promoted to the varsity and replaced by a kid who often had no idea that football involved running, sometimes for your life. There wasn’t a lot of soccer out there in 1981, so if parents wanted their sons to be active in a fall sport, it was football or scouring the backwoods looking for Christmas trees to cut and sell illegally.

We weren’t very good. I know that was mostly my fault, because I didn’t have the type of analytical mind needed to coach successfully. To me, coaching was like watching a game with a really good seat. My team was getting slaughtered every week. I wasn’t making men, I was teaching young guys how to move efficiently on crutches. Wins? We didn’t score until the fourth game, and that was when our opponents fired a snap over their punter’s head and out of the end zone. I actually had two players hurt on that play, so it was a Pyrrhic victory, a phrase I had to define for the team on the long bus ride home.

But gradually, we improved. During our second season, we scored in almost every game. We even had a few intense practice sessions, like the time Crazy Bobby Merrill sacked our quarterback four plays in a row! I’d never seen our defense so fired up. Bobby was beside himself with joy. True, he was lining up as a split end and coming back to tackle his own quarterback, but that did little to diminish his enthusiasm.

We just couldn’t get a win. We got close. Against Lebanon, we were ahead 22-0 in the third quarter, before we crashed like the Hindenburg. That was my fault. After they closed to 22-16, I called a time out and told my team “He that hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart.” I didn’t know my linebackers would take that as an invitation to go home early. They did, and we were beaten 24-22.

After two seasons, my coaching record was 0-8. The school administration rewarded this by adding two more games to our schedule the next year. We lost the first 5 and seemed to be getting worse. Instead of practicing, I spent a lot of afternoons on the blasted heath, screaming things only my team could understand. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” My offensive linemen would nod and weep. That was the strange thing. As my team got worse at football, they were getting better at Shakespeare.

Then we came to our last game. Mt. Pleasant, a small community in our county, decided to form a football team for their 8th graders because they thought they could get in a quick victory against us. Everybody else had, but we took offense at this. The kids were fired up. This was Mt. Pleasant, after all, a town just down the road. Losing to them would be an embarrassment they would live with forever.

If this were ever made into a Hollywood movie, it would all come down to the last play. In reality, there was little drama to it. We scored on our first drive and were never behind. Mt. Pleasant had a decent middle linebacker, but when he looked across the line and said to our quarterback “I know which way you’re going. You look at the place where the ball is going.” Sidney replied calmly, “There is no art to tell the mind’s construction in the face.” Then he glanced right, swept left, and scored without being touched.

I stopped coaching after that year. My overall record was 1-13, but I like to think I had a positive effect on the kids. I guess football isn’t ready for the Shakespeare method of coaching, or maybe Shakespeare and football, like water and gasoline, are beautiful to look at even as they don’t mix. But I still hope that a wiser coach than I am will further investigate the possibilities. I know someone can make it work. True, there is no I in team, but there was a bard in Lombardi.

Friend of mine saw a link somewhere that wondered what it would be like if Team Obama applied its logic on health care to other progressive battles in history. He lost the exact link, which I don’t have either, so I hope my list below isn’t copycatting someone else too closely (email or comment if so, esp. if you have the link in question).

Anyway, here are a few headlines from history, if Obama logic was at work…

McKinley encourages gun presence at town hall meets
Popular president gleams, ‘Americans exercising rights is a beautiful thing’

HOOVER FILLS TREASURY WITH J.P. MORGAN EXECUTIVES
‘RICH PEOPLE GOT US INTO THIS MESS, THEY’LL GET US OUT’

FDR Drinks with Hitler at Berghof ‘Beer Summit’
Hails Chamberlain approach, says ‘no one even knows’ where Sudetenland located

TRUMAN ORDERS DRONES OVER JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA
‘Tojo could be anywhere, but we’ll get him’; warns wedding parties

KENNEDY: MOON MISSION, ‘SPACE RACE’ NOT WORTH EFFORT
‘Let Soviets do it’; JFK says NASA broke, funds better spent on eavesdropping tech

LBJ: ‘War on Poverty’ too costly
President focuses budget priorities on bank bailouts

NIXON BEGS CHINA: BUY OUR PRODUCTS!
Admits US markets weak but insists ‘dollar still groovy’; polls in freefall

Ford pardons Nixon, Haldeman, Mitchell, Liddy, entire Watergate crew
To horror of even GOP lawmakers, president says ‘time to put past behind us’

CARTER DECLARES ECONOMIC DOWNTURN ‘THROUGH’
Foresees easy reelection in post-Nixon political era

Reagan Kowtows to Dems on Welfare, Soc Security
President says bipartisanship, talks with liberal Yellow Dogs ‘keys to success’

EX-VP BUSH TAKES REINS, NAMES NANCY REAGAN SEC. OF STATE
Inauguration Promise: ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes on the Middle Class in First 100 Days’

Clinton backtracks on ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’ prefers straight military
Disappointed gays left in lurch; author Morrison calls Clinton ‘first white black president’

BIN LADEN CAUGHT, AL-QAEDA DESTROYED
‘Proud’ President Bush brings US forces home, UN promises Afghanistan rebuild
WORLD HAILS SADDAM STEPDOWN IN IRAQ; ANNAN CREDITS US DIPLOMACY
VP Cheney says Patriot Act to be rescinded accordingly — Dow rises to 20,000

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

Thx to JS O’Brien for pointing this one out.

The good reverend has had a long and storied career, with a recent highlight being his poetic excoriation of the Bush administration with President George W. Bush himself sitting behind Lowery as he spoke at Coretta Scott King’s memorial service in 2006.

What will the loquacious Lowery say at his Freedom Medal acceptance speech?

I can imagine it’ll go something like this:

Thank you all for coming today / to hear what this old bird’s got to say…

What a thrill it is to receive this honor / along with Bishop Tutu, Ted Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor…

Harvey Milk, Sidney Poitier and many other notables / but first let me talk a little bit about potables…

It’s two thousand and nine but you coulda fooled me / ‘Cause discrimination remains, like in Cambridge, you see…

Where a black man, a professor, an honorable soul / gets profiled, another brother in a never-ending toll…

Cuffed in his house by a white cop he was / for raising his voice, no real probable cause…

Obama was mad but made nice, so I hear / and invited them both to the White House for beer…

The distinguished professor preferred a Red Stripe / while the chief exec wanted Bud Light (that’s allright!)…

When it came to the cop, whose power he flaunted / I took a step back when I heard what he wanted…

Bad enough Gates was nabbed by this goon / but making it worse, his choice was BLUE MOON!

For Coors, millions more / thanks to this boor PR whore…

With so many choices, tasty and fine / he coulda drank oatmeal stout, ale, barleywine…

He coulda had a Rogue or a Stone IPA / Dogfish Head, Red Hook or a Guinness, I say…

Colorado gems from Left Hand or Dry Dock / maybe something from Europe like a top Doppelbock…

Man, he coulda picked Pabst or, more aptly, Pig’s Eye / and how come he ain’t given Sam Adams a try?

Made right in his neighborhood, in Boston no less / but it sounds like he don’t get around, I guess…

Instead he drank something like lemony pee / that my aunties wouldn’t touch, it might just be me…

But it’s all good in the end, I don’t want to insult / especially in times that are so difficult…

Economy’s weak, jobs flushed down the can / still got our soldiers out in Afghanistan…

Education a shambles, environment’s trash / bankers keep taking what’s left of the cash…

Corruption gets deeper, health care a mess / and the poor have to live with somehow even less…

The birthers, the racists, the haters, Fox News / all giving Obama the Oval Office blues…

But one thing’s for sho’, they can’t take away / no matter how they lie, how they rant every day…

How much they deny, how hard they attack / the plain truth is the ole White House is Black.

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

Just because….

No.

As the American Dream™ continues to gnaw on every last bit of exposed flesh it can pick from our flailing limbs, it will no doubt, for many of us, also eat those debt-strangled, rapidly depreciating havens of dirty secrets, personal failure and indoor allergens known as parcels of real estate.

It will eventually, after a judicial process, a waiting period and probably more judicial processes, send a henchman or three to, at long last, relieve you of the burdens of homeownership and shelter.

But, come on. People in any line of work are nonetheless good, hard-working people too! They know just as well as anybody that remembers what it’s like to be employed in recent memory that work sucks and is hard, and comic relief can get us through even the toughest of times.

Accordingly, when the Evicto Man comes to summon you to your shiny new life as a spent munition in America’s War on Prosperity, here are the:

TOP TEN ADVISORIES FOR YOUR FRIENDLY FORECLOSURE EVICTION REPRESENTATIVE!

10.
“See, I spell it ‘Waynescoting,’ because this stuff is made from actual Waynes and Scots.”

9.
“Well, Gummi worms are so much easier on the back than Pergo™.”

8.
“Won’t be the first time this place has been ‘possessed’!”

7.
“This house is not only the historic site of remakes of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Grease II,’ using actual lambs and grease — most recently I’ve been using the space to film gay chocolate mousse porn for the past six months.

…Hope you’ve got a chisel.”

6.
“You will marvel at the sound-dampening capabilities of refried beans and R-35 grade tortillas.”

5.
“I’ve been breeding fighting wasps who don’t respond well to being taken from the only home they’ve ever known.”

4.
“The next owner will be lucky to have such a radiant living space.”

3.
“The spare key’s in the toaster oven, underneath the rock”

2.
“Right this way! Don’t mind the typewriter and cigarette.”

And, the number 1 advisory to give your friendly foreclosure eviction man:
“THAT’S NOT STUCCO!”

*flying index card* *glass breaks* *uncomfortable silence I’ve grown accustomed to*

Not enough Top-Ten for you? Well, as the golden shower enthusiast said to the Yellow Leprechaun™, urine luck! JAZZ from HELL has a list as well. Pot of gold, indeed.

by Rich Herschlag and Bill Staples

We knew LA was a little weird, but we really had no idea. Not even a year out there and sweet old Manuel Ramirez from the Bronx is caught taking human chorionic gonadotropin, a female fertility drug. Soon, Manny will be studying Kabbalah, eating quiche, and opening a Botox clinic in Malibu.

This wasn’t exactly juicing. Let’s call it milking. There are boobs and there are man boobs. Now there are Manny boobs. First there was Octo-mom. Now there’s Octo-Manny. This is not Manny being Manny. This is Manny being Mommy. Just in time for Mother’s Day. And this Mother’s Day, Mom got a hypodermic needle and a syringe.

This is not so much a fifty-game suspension as it is a maternity leave. Sure we’re disappointed. In breastfeeding terms, it’s a real let-down. This will give a whole new meaning to the phrase “nursing an injury.” But Manny doesn’t need surgery. Manny needs a baby shower.

It’s funny, Manny wasn’t even showing. Too bad baseball isn’t bigger over in Sweden , where this sort of thing is covered by medical insurance. But even as Chrysler files for bankruptcy, America remains a great innovator. Manny will be the first major leaguer to file a paternity suit against himself.

No doubt fifty games is a long time, almost two menstrual periods. That’s enough time to shoot a pilot for an exercise show with Richard Simmons. It’s enough time to do a cameo on Desperate Housewives, appear as a guest on The Today Show with Kathy Lee, and go on The View. By July, Manny’s baseball skills may have eroded, but he’ll come back a better wet nurse.

Reintegrating Manny with the Dodgers after seven weeks won’t be easy. First, there’s the postpartum depression. Just ask Brooke Shields. That’s right, we don’t care what that Scientologist kook Tom Cruise says. When a power hitter comes back from maternity leave, there will be tears, and not just from fourth outfielder Juan Pierre, who will be riding the bench again. The returning slugger is liable to cry at any little thing, including the seven million dollars in contract payments he forfeited by fattening up like a turkey before slaughter.

But there is a bigger issue here than one man’s love affair with cellulite. Bigger than one hombre’s brave quest to morph into a strange hybrid of Rosie O’Donnell, Jennifer Lopez, and Michael Jackson. Just when we were getting used to the idea of a generation of ballplayers using performance enhancing substances, here comes this dude in dreadlocks taking performance retarding substances.

Frankly, it will be hard to look at all those 40-homerun seasons and not think somewhere in the back of our minds they were really 50-homerun seasons. By now, Manny could have passed the likes of Palmeiro, Sosa, and McGwire on the all-time doped-up dingers list. But alas, sometimes life just isn’t fair. Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and Ralph Kiner had World War II. Manny Ramirez had progesterone.

Moreover, we remember a simpler time, when overpaid athletes shot their buttocks full of steroids and lied about it at Congressional hearings. When America ’s pastime meant sticking your teammates in the shower and watching your head blow up like a flesh balloon. When our sports heroes looked like Lou Ferrigno in an episode of The Incredible Hulk and got busted for beating the daylights out of a retired postal worker at a fender-bender. When José Canseco was the conscience of our nation.

Manny has taken all that away. Thanks to Manny Ramirez, real baseball played by real men on real steroids is just a mammary. From now on, even our asterisks will need asterisks.

Reprinted by permission of the authors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, with this one I find myself laughing less than usual…

While we’re here, how about a little bonus Lee on Susan Boyle and the unlikelihood of stardom.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t regret any of the formal education I’ve received over the years. It’s unlikely I ever would have invented an alphabet on my own, and math has come in handy every now and then, especially the part about negative numbers. I use those a lot these days. But there are many lessons that I had to learn on my own, from the world, and that knowledge was gained through great physical and emotional pain. I know that water balloons don’t belong in church. I know that when The Dad told me to go get a switch (after I took the water balloons to church), I shouldn’t have dragged back a tree limb as a way of making a statement. Because The Dad used that tree limb to make his own statement, and at the end of the day, his statement was far more memorable. I know it’s a bad idea to try and make a pet of a goat. Poor, poor Hargoat. Let’s not go there.

The best thing about learning lessons on your own is that the world is constantly trying to teach us stuff, even when we’re slouching in the back of the room trying to sleep. Just yesterday, as I stepped out from the hot downburst that was my morning shower, I discovered a monster in my bathroom.

“Aieeee!”

Nancy arrived in a flash.

“What’s wrong? Did another huge, hairy spider drop from the ceiling?” she asked.

“No, no, it’s…what do you mean by ANOTHER spider? Never mind. This was worse,” I gasped. “I stepped out of the shower and I saw this huge, awful two-legged thing! It was gigantic! And all lumpy and hairy and hunched over.”

“Where did you see it?” she asked.

“Right there,” I whispered. “See? It’s still there. It’s looking at me.”

“Honey, that’s the mirror,” she said. “You need professional help.”

“The mirror?” I asked. “That’s even worse! That means that that loathsome, disgusting creature is me! I look like Quasimodo without a tan.”

“Yeah, uh huh, Would you please cover yourself?” she asked.

“I tried,” I said. “These towels don’t fit me anymore. Just like my pants and my shirts. I think there’s something wrong with our dryer. Why can’t they make a relaxed fit towel?”

She stood there looking at me, and I felt naked and stupid. Because I was naked and stupid. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the mirror.

“You know, In Julius Caesar, Brutus said ‘The eye sees not itself but by reflection.’ Maybe my reflection is broken.”

“Maybe,” laughed Nancy. “But I think there’s a more logical explanation. You’re 53 years old. You don’t have the body of a young man anymore, and ever since you broke your elbow, you haven’t done much more than sit around, eat, and watch TV. You need to be more active.”

“But there’s ice everywhere,” I protested. “I don’t want to fall and break my elbow again, or worse: break the other one.”

“There is the treadmill,” she added.

“Are you kidding?” I scoffed. “Honey, where are we going to hang our clothes if I start walking on the treadmill? Oh, no! Look. My legs don’t match anymore. The right one has a different shape from the other one.”

“Yes, you had that problem with your calf two years ago,” she said. “Remember? You couldn’t walk without pain for three months, you complained about it for three more months, then your ankle turned all blue and black and it got better. Ever since, your calves don’t match. But it doesn’t really matter because your thighs never matched. That one sort of lumps out to the right. See?”

“I see now,” I said.

“But it doesn’t matter since your knees have always had that weird– I don’t know how to describe it– otherworldly appearance. Even now I have a hard time looking away from your knees. They are strange. You’ve never had surgery on your knees?”

“Not that I can recall,” I said. “But it’s officially on my to-do list. Still, the legs don’t bother me as much as my other parts. I can cover my legs, I don’t have to wear shorts, or swim or surf.”

“Surf,” snorted Nancy. “There’s a beach hazard.”

“But look at this?” I exclaimed, grabbing my side. “I‘m a walking side table. I could put my lunch here as I eat. I look like I’m overflowing.”

“That’s true,” said Nancy. “It reminds me of the time we tried to make muffins and we poured too much batter into the cups.”

“I remember those muffins,” I said. “They were delicious.”

“Do you know the muffin man,” sang Nancy. “The muffin man, the muffin man. Yes I know the muffin man, he’s 53 years old.”

“Since I broke my left elbow, I can’t straighten my left arm anymore,” I said. “It will always hook out like that. And when I move it, I can see the metal plate they put in.

Just look at that scar. I can’t hide that this summer. Throw me a blanket so I can cover myself. No, a bigger blanket. That quilt will do.”

“You’re really bothered by this, aren’t you?” she asked. “Honey, it’s natural. It happens to everybody. I still love you, and I’m not saying that just because you’re an excellent wind break. You are a handsome man.“

“I am a handsome man,“ I repeated. “A large, oddly bent, handsome man.”

“And good cover in a driving rain.”

“I always knew I’d get old one day, but I imagined it happening suddenly, in about 35 years. I thought it would be like falling off a cliff, but it was more like a casual stroll down a very gentle hill. Do you know, when I was Joey’s age, The Dad was 30. When The Dad was the age I am now, I was 28. Joey will have no memory of me being anything other than an old man. I’ve had people mistake me for his grandfather. And it will just get worse. That wind and rain takes a toll. Maybe those are the real monsters.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But it isn’t windy or rainy today. Why don’t you go and play with Joey. I have to take a shower myself.”

“Do you want me to check for spiders?” I asked.

“No thanks,” she said. “I’ll be down in 30 minutes.”

I helped Joey construct a massive Hot Wheels track that stretched across the floor of the basement. It truly was grand. 29 minutes later, I heard Nancy scream as she got out of the shower. It was probably another huge, hairy spider dropping down from the ceiling, but I spent a few minutes clearing all the clothes off the treadmill. Just in case.

Take the carbon out of sugar and you’re pretty much left with water. Methinks Someone failed their chemistry class. Or their marketing class. Or both.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a bit parched – time to have a tall glass of certified carbon free sugar.