Last night I was watching the Men’s Moguls competition from Vancouver. Absolutely fantastic fun, lots of drama, the thrill of victory, apeshit Canadians, etc. But this particular event, probably moreso than anything this side of parkour, drives me bonkers. (No, figure skating and synchronized swimming aren’t sports. Anytime you can trigger controversy because your tutu is trimmed in fur, whatever you’re doing isn’t a sport. Period. Let’s move along.)

Here’s the problem.

What part of hurtling a zillion miles an hour down a double-black mogul field isn’t good enough for you? I mean, powder, skis, a steep mountain and a stopwatch – that sounds like a pretty good sport to me. In fact, it sounds like some other time-tested sports, plus the complication of all those cruciate-buckling bumps. Pass me a beer and turn up the volume, eh?

So why do they have to add the gratuitous element of judging? Seriously. Why, at various intervals, is it necessary to insert jumps – which are to skiing moguls as beat poetry is to yak-dressing – unnecessarily complicating the affair with style points?!

Imagine if the same pot-addled hippie slackers had invented track and field. You’d have an event where you sprint 30 meters, then do a ten-yard tumbling run. 30 more meters, then you do a couple backflips off a minitramp. Then you sprint the rest of the way. Six judges (at least one of which hails from a nation you’re at war with) score your tumbling from zero to six points each (factoring in degree of difficulty and artistic impression – so fur is a plus here), and that number is combined with your time to the finish line to yield your final score.

We call it the “100-meter dash.” And you don’t even want to think about what these people would do to the 5,000-meter steeplechase (but it involves a stop at Starbuck’s).

Look, bitches. We let all your wack-ass skate-punk X Games derivations into the real Olympics (granted, this was mainly because the TV folks desperately needed something that Americans could win at), baggy pants, bad posture and all. And admittedly, the results haven’t been all bad. Hell, we freakin’ love snowboard-cross, and it’s hard not to jam on a guy whose nickname is “The Flying Tomato.”

But can we please leave well enough alone? I get that some sports require judges (half-pipe, freestyle, etc.), but when you have an event that works just fine as a real hell-for-leather race, can we just, you know, race?

Next time around, I want the moguls to involve young people with no instinct for self-preservation whatsoever jumping off the side of a mountain, and the first one to the bottom who doesn’t explode one or more knees wins. Period.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

Let’s begin with the Mnozil Brass:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then there’s the Muppets:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the UC Men’s Octet (2003):

Click here to view the embedded video.

This bit of silliness is for Brian.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ummm, not sure what the hell to make of this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Ten Tenors:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Old School Computer Mix (this is just feckin’ brilliant):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another a capella take, this time from FORK:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This, from Hayseed Dixie, was completely uncalled for:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And there’s more, oh so much more. But let’s close with the original:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happy TunesDay, folks.

Thanks to bella ragazza for the inspiration.

For lack of anything verbal or written to contribute immediately to public eDiscourse due to gross information burnout, I submit, instead:

Scrawlings!

(Click to enlarge)

Song of the Soused, 12 Jan 2010

Zucchini Love, 03 Jan 2010

Sachs of Shit, 24 Dec 2009

This has been your Art Break for the evening. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Haiti, already in progress.

Much love,
Mr. Cargo

One Sunday night last year, I decided to try my hand at some of the math I didn’t understand when I was a high school student. Right away, I came face to face with a long-forgotten nightmare called the distributive property. If I read it correctly, the distributive property says that an expression such as 4 x (2 + 3) is equal to 4 x 2 + 4 x 3. Wondering if such an insight would ever prove beneficial to me, and deciding that it would not, I left the math book on the table and went to watch some television. But my timing was bad. Nancy had the remote control, and despite the pitiful stares I cast toward her, she wouldn‘t share it.

“What are you watching?” I asked. “Because the Patriots are about to play the Cowboys and they’re both undefeated.”

“As soon as this goes off, you can have the remote,” she said. “But I want to see who gets kicked off.”

“’Who gets kicked off?’ Are they on a plane? Does the loser have to get kicked out without a parachute? That sounds like my kind of show.”

“No, they aren’t on a plane,” she said. “It’s Who Wants To Be the Next Supermodel.”

Oh no. Reality television had come to the Hargrove home. I knew all about survivors on deserted islands and text messaged votes for singers and the one with Hugh Hefner’s wives, and the rapper who wore a clock on his chest, but this one was new.

“Wasn’t she in court last summer?“ I asked, pointing to the host. “What does she do, throw a phone at the loser?”

“Funny,” said Nancy. “No, but she does pick who goes on and who stays in the competition. This is a repeat, but I didn’t see it when it came on.”

“They all look like super models to me,” I said. “The same vacuous stares, the same perfect teeth. Why would someone aspire to be a super model, anyway? I can’t think of a profession that requires less of an individual. Stand there, be pretty, don’t talk, and look bored. Can you walk a straight line? Do you smoke? You’re in. It‘s all genetic. They don‘t have to work at anything.”

“Oh, yes,” Nancy replied. “They can’t be normal people like, say, an average professional football player. No genetic benefits in the NFL. We can all grow to be six foot eight and weigh 340 pounds.”

“I’m pretty sure I could get to the weight,” I said. “OK, we’ll watch this for a while. How long does it last. An hour?”

“Well, this is a super model marathon, so it will go off in five hours.”

I hate to admit this, but five hours later I was still watching. I found it very enlightening, especially how the girls fawned over the host at the end of each show, sobbing joyfully because they weren’t rejected for reading a book or ballooning up to a size 2. And once, the host went off on a girl. She laid onto her like a middle school vice principal, and the girl cried and cried. Then she was kicked off the show.

I tried to stay detached, but the damage was done. Super models were walking the runway of my mind, splashing provocatively in my spinal fluid, strutting down my cerebral cortex, then spinning on stiletto heels that dug into my rhombencephalon. It seems there is a lot more to being a super model than I suspected. It wasn’t enough to look bored and be pretty. You had to get into the proper context, then look bored and be pretty. A perfectly bored and pretty girl couldn’t let feathers or tigers or stuffed crocodiles or tidal surges distract her. Then, if she hadn’t mastered the perfect bored and pretty look, there was a lineup of guest photographers and former models and fashion types who would tell them just how close they were to being perfectly bored and pretty. Nullvana was the state they were looking for, and nullvava is hard to achieve. There might be a Dummies Guide to Nullvana out there, but most of these girls couldn’t read. They stared at the words on a teleprompter as if they were written in High Elven runes.

I went to bed that night feeling sufficiently superior, but on Monday, something happened. A friend of mine wanted to know if I was ever going to put blinds up on my front window.

“I’m sure I’ll get around to it,” I said. “But there aren’t any houses in front of our condo, so I don’t worry about anybody watching us.”

“Well, maybe you should think about it,” he said. “See, we don’t have cable, so every Sunday night, we pile into our car and park across the street from your condo and watch you guys. Then we provide our own dialogue for what we think you guys are saying. We sort of have a club now. About ten families. We meet every Sunday night, share music and food, and watch you guys. It’s a lot of fun. Yesterday, you didn’t move from the couch for over five hours. What were you watching? You sure looked bored.”

“Football,” I said, too quickly. “And baseball. And HBO. I have a sore ankle, and Joey’s been sick. I wasn’t watching the super model marathon, if that’s what you’re asking. You don‘t think I‘m pretty, do you? Because I‘m not. And I can read.”

I said too much. He knew. But I hate reality television, and I don’t like people who watch it, as if we need some sort of electronic validation of our existence. But I watched it, and I look forward to next week’s marathon. And I had become a reality show to a group of folks who don’t watch TV. That meant something. I’ll watch the next super model marathon closely to find some insight. I mean, a marathon is all about suffering, right? So if I suffer through seven hours of reality TV, then I’ll reach some magical plateau, my own person nullvana. Right?

Maybe we all become what we despise. Maybe we all despise what we’ve become. Maybe the answer is in the distributive property. Nah. I’ll wait until next Sunday. Tyra will answer all my questions, if I can just look bored enough for her to speak to me at all.

Meanwhile, Lem and Phil have their usual morning quarrel, this time over coffee and microscopic organisms. (Trust us, folks—it’s hardly as sexy as it sounds.) When Phil leaves to get a cup of joe, everything in the lab suddenly shuts off. Lem is confounded by this, even more so when everything springs back to life upon Phil’s return.

As it turns out, the problem is that Phil is white, Lem is black, and the sensors apparently respond to light reflecting off the skin. Which means that Veridian has managed to create racist technology.

The company’s efforts to address the problem lead to all kinds of hilarity (simply reinstalling the old tech, which worked just fine, doesn’t occur to anyone). They hire white people to follow black employees around, for instance, but that creates HR issues (these new positions are rather explicitly not open to black applicants). It all crescendos in one of the most outrageous, fall-off-the-couch funny moments in television history (seriously, I laughed until I hurt).

Hilarious concept, if a bit unrealistic, right?

Except that once again, life imitates television: it was recently revealed that HP, evidently the Veridian Dynamics of the computer technology world, has invented racist webcams.

In a video posted on December 10th, a black male and a white female show how an HP computer’s facial-tracking software fails to recognize the black man’s movements. Yeah, you know where this is headed. When the woman, Wanda, enters the frame, the camera follows her wherever she goes. But when the man, Desi, enters, the camera won’t respond to any of his movements at all. His only comment? “I’m going on record, and I’m saying it,” he says. “Hewlett-Packard computers are racist.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

We applaud the good humor of the narrator here, but the whole episode raises an obvious question: doesn’t HP, you know, test its products before release? Even Veridian engages in rigorous product testing (granted, they tend to use their own employees as unwitting guinea pigs, but still)…

Flight 253 passenger: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport

(MLive.com exclusive)
By Sheena Harrison | MLive.com
December 26, 2009, 2:22PM

According to witnesses, the suspect had a long beard and was driving a red 1937 Chevrolet coupe. Police forensic artists have released the following sketch:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and out in the kitchen, mom’s cooking something, and man, it smells bitchin’.

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care. Mine’s full of jerky treats – I can smell them from here.

Dad’s drinking egg nog, all spicy and sweet. A couple more cups and he’ll be out on his feet.

When out in the yard we heard such a racket. I started barking and Dad grabbed his jacket.

Dad clicked the deadbolt and opened the door. What I saw in the yard made my jaw hit the floor.

It was a guy in a red suit, he was built like Chris Farley. But there wasn’t a sleigh – he was riding a Harley.

He threw us a wave and wished us good cheer, but I was confused – where’s the reindeer?

He got off the bike and began walking toward us, with a bag on his back the size of a tour bus.

“No more reindeer and chimneys,” he said. “Can’t get insurance, so it’s the front door instead!”

He set down his bag and plopped on the floor, started pulling out packages and boxes galore.

Mom got a necklace, said “that’s just what I want!” Dad got some power tools and tried to act nonchalant.

And then he gave me the best gift of all, wrapped in a bow was a red jingle ball!

As he fired up his Harley and shot up the street, he yelled Merry Christmas and threw me a treat!

Our friend Lee Camp lays the nard-stomp on American culture, and we’re okay with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heck – how about six more minutes of celebrity nard-stomping?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happy Saturday, Happy Holidays, Happy Shopping, and just in case you can’t think of anything good to get somebody, how about a gift that makes a difference?

The few canine altercations we witnessed in my neighborhood always involved our dog Hamlet, and whatever large stray stumbled into town looking for a handout. Hamlet hated other dogs and attacked them whenever the opportunity came wagging along. But Hamlet was small, so all his contests were Pyrrhic victories, and we spent many a Saturday afternoon taking him to the vet for stitches. Eventually, our neighbors took to calling him Frankenstein’s Dog, and he looked the part.

But Hamlet was afraid of cats, especially Snowball, the large white deaf cat who my mother doted on, and who was the most even tempered feline I ever shared an abode with. Snowball lounged around our house for most of the ’60s, and never bit or scratched anybody. But Snowball was deaf, and in the world of cats, you run from the trouble you hear coming. Snowball sat and patiently waited, like a glacier, for any tom bold enough to intrude into his space.

The dance of the fighting cats was a spectacle that, once observed, was never forgotten. It started with some strange cat, a newcomer or a wanderer, standing at a distance, howling a challenge in alien tones. The opponent replied. This was as far as most cat fights went, since the depth and rhythm of those calls sent all sorts of information to the combatants, and the more timid of the two would beat a hasty retreat. As you might guess, deaf Snowball was at a decided disadvantage, since he never heard the calls. This was strange behavior to the challengers, and it puzzled them mightily. They would sit and repeat the message, sometimes for hours, since obviously this large white thing couldn’t understand basic feline. The lull gave us enough time to invite all our friends over to watch the show. The caterwauling continued, but Snowball just sat.

Eventually, the interloper would begin a slow but determined slink toward Snowball, keening in a high pitched wail that suggested all manner of slashing and biting and general nastiness. Snowball just sat and waited.

“I can’t believe another cat has come to face the champion,” said Johnny Miles, our next door neighbor. “Who is this one? You seen it before?”

“Some big yellow tom,” I said. “We saw it hanging around the school day before yesterday. He’s a big boy.”

“Yeah, but Snowball ain’t afraid of him,” said Johnny. “Look at him. Cool as a cucumber, that one is. I just wish you guys had given him a better name. Snowball. Jeez. What kind of name is that for a fighting cat? Now, Frankenstein’s Dog! That’s a name.”

“Our dog’s name is Hamlet,” I said.

“Does Snowball come to you when you call him?” asked Johnny.

“No. He’s deaf, remember?” I said.

“Maybe if you yelled real loud, or beat a cymbal or something. Maybe he hears in high tones that we can’t.”

“I don’t think he can hear at any tone,” I said, although I liked the idea of getting a pair of cymbals, you know, for around the house. You never knew when you might need cymbals. For dramatic effect.

“I wish you would stop this before it begins,” added Amelia. She was a new kid to the neighborhood, and had a crush on my older brother, a peculiar affliction that made me distrust her.

“I tried to break up a Snowball fight once,” I said. “See this scar? And this one? And this one? And this one?”

“Don’t forget the one on your ear,” added Johnny.

“It was like being eaten by two wood chippers,” I said. “And if I did stop this fight, the stranger would just wait until tonight when we were asleep. Better he gets this out of his system now, when we can get him to a vet if we need to.”

“I just don’t think it’s right,” sighed Amelia.

Girls. When the yellow stranger was within a foot, Snowball lifted his head. The yellow cat attacked, but Snowball enveloped him in a blanket of white. Yellow fur and white fur flew up in the air. The yellow tom’s challenge became a scream of defeat, but Snowball wouldn’t let him go. When he paused to get a better grip, the yellow cat took off. Snowball stood there for a long moment, ears back, waiting for another attack that never came. After two minutes, he began to lick his wounds, and I casually walked over and picked him up. He tensed for a second, then went limp in my hands and purred. Everybody came over to congratulate the champion by scratching his head. Amelia came last. She looked at Snowball closely, held his massive head in her two hands, then looked at me.

“This cat is deaf?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said. “Has been since birth.”

“He’s blind, too,” said Amelia. “See how his eyes don’t move? He’s probably been blind all his life. Poor thing.”

Deaf and blind. And there we stood, deaf and blind as well, around Snowball. Our awe of his prowess was replaced by pity. I carried Snowball into the house, and vowed never to let him outside again, although The Dad said that wasn’t a good idea. Confinement was an insult to the disabled, he said. Let the cat be a cat, as far as he could be one, and that was actually pretty far indeed.

And so I broke that vow. I’ve broken others since then. Snowball sat in sunlight and moonlight like a fair, wintry hill, in silence and in darkness, waiting for the occasional random attacks he could never see or hear coming. And so we all sit and wait for the next revelation of a hero who isn’t godlike after all. But the attacks don’t hurt any less, just because we don’t see them coming. And like Snowball, sometimes we react to the attacks with a greater violence than is necessary, a counter offensive that does more harm than good.

But I did buy my cymbals. I use them all the time, and my neighbors wish my life, like everyone else’s, wasn’t so dramatic.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, which is really more unnatural – gay marriage or competitive eating?

Happy Saturday, y’all.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.