Gearing Up

Ten Things I'm Doing to Prepare for the Opening Day and the 2005 Baseball Season

1. Working on the best way to insert the words Boston Red Sox, defending World Champs into every conversation. Man, that shit never gets old. The best people to try this out on? That easy - telemarketers. The other night I got a call from one of these folks asking me to take a 'brief survey." I agreed and happily replied the World Champion Boston Red Sox to every question until the poor bastard hung up.

2. Stoking the fires of my fierce man love for the Ortizzle. No, I'm not ashamed of the way I feel. Does it get any better than drifting off to sleep in your Big Papi t-shirt, dreaming of the left-handed havoc to come? Sometimes:

But it will be when he steps onto Yawkey Way that Ortiz will feel he is back where he truly belongs.

"Man, I don't know, but we're having so much fun here," he said, his 230-pound frame anchoring the picnic table outside the Sox batting cages here. "Like, when I go to Fenway, never in my life have I ever felt like that. It's like, damn, I'm at home. This is where I want to be. "

"Sometimes I want to be out of my house, hurry up, just because I want to be at Fenway. Sometimes, as soon as I walk into Fenway, everything is like I'm walking . . ." he pauses for a long moment. "I'm walking into the most unbelievable place I've ever been."

3. Trying to figure out what's going on with Shaughnessy. You know, Dan "Shank" Shaughnessy, hatchetman, hater and hack, the man whose first instinct after the historic defeat of the Yankees was to scramble to protect his royalty machine by reminding everyone that the so-called 'Curse' was intact until the Red Sox won the World Serious. You know, that guy. Well, today he goes and writes this:

On paper, New York looks better, but the Red Sox will beat the Yankees when it counts because of what happened in those last four games in October. It's the new reality, the alternative universe, a place where the Red Sox are clutch and the Yankees choke.

One constant in my life has been that I am against whatever Shaughnessy is for; the fact we're apparently on the same page may make my head explode.

4. Reading a whole lot of Red Sox blogs. Which reminds me, where all the Yankee blogs? Sure, there's Bronx Banter, the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and some others, but where are the rest? Where are the Yankee equivalents of Surviving Grady, Rallycuff, Cursed To First and the like? Maybe they're out there, and my inherent bias has blinded me to their existence, but I've yet to come across a Yankee blog with anything as funny as this:

2. When I come up to bat they would play the song "Goodbye Horses" by Q.Lazzarus, which you may remember as the song from "Silence of the Lambs" during the pivotal Push-My-Cock-and-Balls-Back-Between-My-Legs scene, and to pump myself up for my at-bats I would look into the mirror in the dugout and scream at my reflection: "Would you fuck me?? I'd fuck me!! I'd fuck me so hard!!"

5. Doing a lot of 'real' reading about the 2004 Red Sox. So far I've read Why Not Us? by Leigh Montville and A Tale of Two Cities by Tony Massarotti and John Harper; I'm currently working through Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King. And let me emphasize the "work" part; the last title is my least favorite of the three. Every day, for the rest of his life, O'Nan ought to get down on his knees and thank whatever god he prays to, be that Jehovah, Yahweh or Ted Williams, for allowing him to co-author a book about the Red Sox, during a season in which they finally win it all, with Stephen King ferfuckssake.

Some might say I'm just jealous of Mr. O'Nan. And in response to that I would say, maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But I'm definitely working on a plan to knock him over the head, put on my homemade O'Nan mask, and score some of the sweet seats in Fenway that he gets from SK.

Numbers 6 through 10 to come later.

Sifting A Meme

Like beth, I am a July baby:

Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood.Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people's feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets.Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking.

If you're so inclined, find out what your birth month reveals about you.

Wild Kingdom

I defy anyone to tell me they feel at ease when awoken in the small hours by something going bump in the night. Particularly if the bump in question happens to be a clamor and rattling coming from the back door, located a mere five or six feet from their bed.

Which is exactly what happened to me this morning at about 3:30 AM, and the not-being-at-ease part was why I reached under the bed for the burglar stick (read: Louisville Slugger) I keep parked there. It was a loud clamor coming from the door, a certified fucking ruckus, and in my sleep-drugged state I was wondering who would be crazy enough to try and break in through the back door in such a loud and obvious manner? What kind of lunatic was capering about the deck at this unholy hour? Didn't anyone else hear this shit?

The noise stopped as I reached the door. I listened for a moment, then flipped up the shade. Nothing out there.

Nothing except for the big ass raccoon, heading away from me and the door, walking along the railing in a leisurely manner. He was big - like dog-size big.

Weird, I thought. What was he doing there? There are no trash cans, no garbage on the deck, nothing likely to attract a raccoon's notice. And why all the attention to the back door? Was he trying to break into my apartment? In my half-awake state I pondered questions and thoughts that would be absurd in the harsh light of day: are raccoons 'advanced' enough to plan and execute a B & E? Perhaps some odor of food had drifted through the door and driven the raccoon into a frenzy? Maybe it was an evil, satanic raccoon that meant me no good.

In my experience, weirdness tends to snowball. So I shouldn't have been the least bit surprised when the raccoon returned, just as I was about to fall asleep again. And I really shouldn't have been surprised when I raised the blind to find the big son-of-a-bitch hanging off the outside door jamb, about half away up the door, staring back at me through the glass. We stared at each other for a good five minutes before he backed down the door and ambled across the deck into the early morning dark, this for good.

And if I thought you'd believe me I'd tell you I could've sworn that raccoon nodded at me before beginning his climb down. But that would be impossible, right?

The Blog's Been Drinking, Not Me

As of late, posting here has been infrequent and the content somewhat lackluster. There has been so little original content that blogorreah has listed me among the sifters ("...bloggers who could be considered "professional" if not for their time wasting scouring of the web for new and unusual tidbits of cyberflotsam of interest to just about anybody.") Comments have withered away. In short, there ain't much going on here.

I blame this time of year. Once the holiday season ends with the last hurrah of New Year's Eve the blahs besiege me in a big way. The period from January to March is one long dark tunnel, where nights come early and last forever, and there's nothing to look forward to beyond the daily grind of existing. And who wants to blog about that?

But March does bring St. Paddy's Day, which lightens the mood considerably, and soon after that the gray days of winter bleed into Opening Day. Opening Day means baseball - the Red Sox - return to action, bringing with them the illusion that there is something abiding. All of which is a fancy way of saying I will be in a better mood, and perhaps posting more, once baseball resumes.

On a somewhat related note, I am in the market for a head-to-PC-thought-beamer. This, I feel, would be of great assistance to me. I compose many more posts than are actually written (usually while driving); posts that never make it from my brain to your monitor screen. But if I could just download these posts directly from my head to my computer, as opposed to typing the damn things, oh the time I'd save! The posts I'd reclaim!

So I need a thought beamer. But not one of the ones that plugs into your forehead; I want a behind-the-ear model. Chicks don't dig forehead plugs.

Grazing the Open Pages

It usually happens when I'm ostensibly doing something else, like getting ready for work, or cleaning up around the Dan Cave. From somewhere on one of my bookshelves, a particular volume will catch my attention and I'll drop the task at hand, open the book - usually to a random page - and begin reading. I don't read the whole book, just a few pages or so, before I put the book back on the shelf. It's a snack, a word snack. I much on some prose, then move on with my hunger temporarily satisfied.
Naturally there are particular authors I prefer to snack on, authors whose prose I enjoy so much that a brief grazing through their work satisfies. The names of some of these writers will not surprise any regular reader of this space - O'Brian, Tolkien, Dunnett. Others I've never written about before, like Evan S. Connell, author of Son of the Morning Star.
Son of the Morning Star is about the battle of the Little Bighorn, commonly known as Custer's Last Stand, but Connell allows himself to be pulled where the historical currents draw him, with the result that the book becomes more than just words about some battle. All the narrative paths do lead back to Custer and his last hours, but the meandering journey the reader takes to arrive there, not least because of Connell's prose. Here's a sample, an example of why Connell is on the list of my 'browsable' writers. This is Connell's description of the last moments of Satank, a Kiowa chief:

On June 8, 1871, handcuffed and guarded by cavalry because of his part in a Kiowa-Comance raid during which several teamsters were killed, Satank was en route to prison when he decided enough was enough. A Caddo rode by the government wagon train and Satank asked him to deliver a message:"Tell my people I am dead. I died the first day out of Fort Sill. My bones will be lying beside the road. I wish my people to gather them up and take them home." Down the road a mile or two he shouted:"I will not go beyond that tree!" He got loose - it is said he tore the flesh from his hands while pulling them through the manacles. He whipped out a butcher knife concealed in his blanket, stabbed one guard, and was just getting into action when the other guards shot him down. for about an hour he refused to die. He was at least seventy years old, so it not hard to guess how difficult he must have been some decades earlier.

As you can see, Connell has a dry wit, one that makes his meandering narrative that much easier to lose yourself in.

Lovecraftian Circus

I posted yesterday, a middling-sized post about books, a post that Blogger promptly devoured. Fortunately, an expected burst of forethought prompted me to back up the post in a text file, so it will be reposted eventually. Unlike my post from Friday, which vanished as completely as my youth and optimism.

Meanwhile, a robyn_ma has combined the horror of both The Family Circus and H.P. Lovecraft. Check out The Nameless Dread for more of the same.

Number Nine

Yesterday the ever-helpful Bookslut posted links to a whole bunch of free literary content online, including this excellent profile of Teddy Ballgame by Richard Ben Cramer. Free copies were given away in front of Fenway before the start of the World Serious; I didn't mention it in my post at the time, but I grabbed one and read it on the T ride home. It's a damn good piece.

Inexplicable

On occasion I find the ways our cross-Atlantic cousins the English to be confusing, even bewildering.

For example, I am informed that this is a sculpture commissioned to honor Sir Winston Churchill. The caption tell us that the sculpture was inspired by Churchill's wartime speeches.

I, on the other hand, feel the sculpture appears to have inspired by a brisk game of Jenga.

And Another Thing

While I don't hate hot chocolate, I would like to take this opportunity to announce that tonight's festivities will in no way involve hot chocolate.

Under no circumstances will I be found at Dunkin Donuts, in a state of great agitation because the hot chocolate does not come with little marshmellows. (Not marshmellows. Little marshmellows.)

That is all.

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

In honor of the day, Heather has a post up titled Irish Things About Me, in which she mentions her dislike of Guinness and potatoes.

First, I want you all to know I've never let this come between us. I am the very soul of tolerance. Also, she might cut me.

Second, while Guinness inspires no great affection in me (if I want an "Irish" drink, a snort or two of Powers does me fine), I love potatoes.

I feel it's important that you know this about me.

I LOVE potatoes. I love potatoes in the same pure, reverent and transcendent way that I love Big Papi, pocket knives and Dunkin Donuts coffee. I could eat potatoes every day. I should eat potatoes every day: I damn near do as it is, and if some dude can get paid for an all fast-food diet, why shouldn't I receive fame and fortune (though I'd settle for just the fortune) for the diet of a 19th century Irish peasant?

But yet there is a hatred in my life as well; one's existence is not always beer and potatoes. And I feel that you should know this about me as well.

I hate cabbage.

I hate cabbage with a deep and abiding hatred, a hatred that burns as hot as the shame that Show Pony feels when he wakes in the night and realizes that he is still a colossal choke artist. And standing at the apex of my hate pyramid, at the very top of all that I loathe and despise, is boiled cabbage.

I don't like the way it smells. Thank you for listening.

Erin Go Bragh

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

-The Workman's Friend by Flann O'Brien, also known as Myles na gCopaleen

Have a grand (and safe!) St. Paddy's Day!

Jaysus I can't wait to be done with work for the day.

Speaking in Tongues

This is absolutely fascinating - a compendium of who speaks what language where in the United States. No doubt you'll be surprised to learn that Massachusetts ranks first (in terms of percentage) among states with Irish Gaelic speakers. We are, however, sadly lacking in Welsh speakers.

Dreaming

When your alarm goes off and you wake up to the sounds of Kevin Millar describing the process of getting his back waxed, well, you can't help but wonder if you are in fact still asleep and having a nightmare like the one where Derek Jeter insists on showing you what in his trunk.*

This is a much more palatable mental image of Millar.

*Hookers. Dead hookers. The trunk of Derek Jeter's car invariably has a dead hooker in it. Because that's the kind of guy "Captain Intangibles" is. Trust me - and look at his lifeless killer's eyes.

Musical Meme

I'm following in the footsteps of Beth and Red with this particular meme: the albums you should listen to before you die. The directions are to bold the ones you've listened to, and add three choices of your own.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
London Calling - The Clash
Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Think Tank - Blur
This is Hardcore - Pulp
Moon Safari - Air
Elastica - Elastica
Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols
OK Computer - Radiohead
The Kiss of Morning - Graham Coxon
Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars - David Bowie
The Wall - Pink Floyd
Setting Sons - The Jam
America Beauty - The Grateful Dead
Toxicity - System of a Down
Train a Comin’ - Steve Earle
Folksinger - Phranc
Come From the Shadows - Joan Baez
Bat out of Hell - Meatloaf
The River - Bruce Springsteen
The Very Best of Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
Copperhead Road - Steve Earle
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
Outside - David Bowie
Passionoia - Black Box Recorder
Version 2.0 - Garbage
Too Young To Die (Greatest Hits) - St. Etienne
The Complete Recordings - Robert Johnson
Absolution - Muse
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
Gringo Honeymoon - Robert Earl Keen
Buena Vista Social Club - Ry Cooder, Buena Vista Social Club
Gipsy Kings - Cantos de Amor
Passion: Music from The Last Temptation of Christ - Peter Gabriel
Medusa - Annie Lennox
The Road To Ensenada - Lyle Lovett
Nevermind - Nirvana
The Eminem Show - Eminem
Mermaid Avenue - Wilco and Billy Bragg

My three choices are:
Tim - The Replacements
Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses
More Fun in the New World - X

Mea Culpa

Yes, yes I know, such minimal posting this week. Watch while I attempt to make up for that by using the old sportswriter's trick: a collection of random and disjointed thoughts and observations presented under the guise of a cohesive whole.

Enjoy.

I have no idea what the complete list of my top five or ten Desert Island CDs would be, but Bob Mould's Black Sheets of Rain would most definitely be on it. Song for song, one of the best albums I know.

So, in The Boondock Saints there's a minor character, an Irish barkeep who randomly shouts obscenities("Fuck! Ass!") for no apparent reason. Does he have Tourettes? Deep-rooted control issues? We never learn. But, if you can manage a decent brogue, he's always a worthwhile character to mimic by randomly shouting some obscenities of your own. Makes the Bunny giggle like a schoolgirl.

A couple of weeks ago I joined the 21st century and purchased a new computer, a nifty Dell that was on sale, complete with flat-screen monitor.

As a result I have discovered that Rome: Total War is as addictive as crack.

Around the same time I finally noticed that my credit card allows customers to expend their 'thank you points' online for various and sundry items. Imagine my delight to find that various and sundry items includes Borders gift cards.

I promptly spent that gift card on the Everyman's Library edition of George Orwell's Essays. Two things to note here. First, Orwell's essays are far better than his novels. 1984 and Animal Farm are certainly worthwhile novels, full of ideas and concepts that have entered common usage, but it's a lot more enjoyable to talk about those ideas than it is to read Orwell's presentation of them. (I'm excluding Homage to Catalonia as it's a memoir rather than a work of fiction.) And second, I adore Everyman's Library.

The following question was recently posed to me: what does the title of the Duran Duran album Seven and the Ragged Tiger? Who are 'the Seven?' Who is the Ragged Tiger? Are they working in conjunction, or in opposition? What is their ultimate goal? And doesn't it sound like the title of a kung-fu movie?

David Halberstam will be speaking at Salem State College about Lore and Legends: The Boston Red Sox on April 4th. If you're a baseball fan you should already have read Halberstam's books on baseball (Summer of '49, October 1965, Teammates) ; Firehouse is also a damn good (and moving) read.

While I'm on the topic of books (alternate opening: since I'm always on the topic of books) here's a review of the two alternative history books edited by Robert Cowley, What If? and What If? 2. I own and recommend both volumes; each is full of speculative essays by note historians and authors like Victor David Hanson, Caleb Carr, Thomas Fleming, John Lukacs and Richard B. Frank.

Beatdowns

Courtesy of Dog Snot Diaries, justice is served:

To the pimply faced idiot 16 year old at Circuit City this weekend, I offer you a smooth open ended beatdown. When I ask "do you have the iPod Shuffle in stock?" I didn't mean "I'm an idiot and really need to be taught how a flash mp3 player works and should be sold some out of date thing from some other company." I so hate shopping at brick and mortar stores. I assure you, Chachi, that I know far more about portable music players than you do. I was downloading MPEG2 audio bootlegs off the internet before you were done listening to your Barney tapes in the back of your mom's Taurus.

Phrase Dropping

Some years ago Oliver Stone made a sprawling mess of a film featuring Val Kilmer attempting to channel Jim Morrison with lots of spiritual Indian imagery. But I do not come before you today to discuss this movie (one of my favorite bad films) but rather a phrase from this flick that popped into my head several days ago and hastaken up a seemingly permanent residence.

Whip the horse's eyes.

I need to rid myself of this unwanted visitor, and hope to do so in the time-honored manner: by planting in someone else's brain.

To that end I need your suggestions, dear readers, on the best way to work this phrase into casual conversation.

In Print

Inspired by this article, Sheila posted earlier today, asking readers about their favorite fictional characters as well as listing her own. Her criteria?

I guess that, above all, was my criteria: a character who transcends his or her own genre, who steps up off the flat page, and lives. Lives on, long after you finish the book. Like Cathy in East of Eden. Or The Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov.

Without further ado, Here's my own list of favorite fictional characters.....

John Grady Cole. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
Stephen Mathurin. Master and Commander (and many others) by Patrick O'Brian.
Beren. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Luggage. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.
Travis McGee. The Deep Blue Goodbye (and many others) by John D. MacDonald.
Francis Crawford of Lymond. The Game of Kings and others by Dorothy Dunnett.
Robert Jordan. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
Scaramouche. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini.
Tyrel Sackett. The Daybreakers by Louis L'Amour.
Danny. Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard.

On Screen

Chris was kind enough to point out this article on movies filmed in Boston. A sidebar includes this crucial bit of information:

Time and again, actors have thrown themselves suicidally off the cliff and onto the rocks of the Boston accent. The mistake? There is no Boston accent.
There are several dozen distinct regional dialects, sometimes separated by mere
blocks.

Anway, after I read the piece I added Monument Ave to my Netflix queue.

Bunker - esque

I took the above photo (UPDATE: now deleted), blurry and poorly composed, with my camera phone last night at the main branch of the Thomas Crane library. I stopped by after work to return some book, and then went to the H.H. Richardson Reading Room, where I took the picture.

I like it there. As you can see by the professional snap below, the Reading Room is everything the ideal library should be, all gleaming wood surfaces, high ceilings, with plenty of dark nooks. It smells like a century of books and even has a giant fireplace (which now has a weird metallic moosehead hanging over it). There's never a lot of people in there as it's kind of off the beaten track, the corridor leading to it from the main building being tucked away in a back corner.

I think I shall make this my new lair. The atmosphere is perfect for plotting.