PriorBlog

Bambi asked if I could knock it off with the Mark Mulcahy for a while. But I haven’t been playing him too much lately. She shook her head. Oh, you mean stop talking about him all of the time. She nodded. OK.

Last night, my sister Nancy and I went to see Mark Mulcahy play at the Lizard Lounge. There was some confusion as to when he would be going on, or if he would be going on at all. It turns out that he was playing, but that Matt, my brother-in-law, would be unable to attend because Cebine, the dog of Matt and Nancy, as well as their daughter, my de facto niece, Maeve, had diarrhea. While Matt tended to his dog, Nancy and I made our way to Cambridge. We got to the club at about 8:30, and found out that Mark wasn’t going on until 11:45.

To kill time, I decided to show Nancy some of the sites along the Mass Ave in between Harvard and Porter Squares.

Then, Nancy had her last slice of pizza before the new baby arrives, while I drank Dr. Pepper and ate baclava. Then Nancy had another slice of pizza, because we still had a lot of time to go and it was cold outside. We tried and failed to get in touch with Mike Bukhin and Carl Thein. Finally, we headed back to the club and waited for the show.

As Mark was setting up, I noticed that unlike last time when I saw him, this time he had a lot of extra accompaniment. One of the guys looked kind of like Mr. Ray Neal (in case you don’t know, Mark and Mr. Ray played together in Miracle Legion), but I couldn’t be sure because last time I saw Mr. Ray was maybe eleven years ago, and then he had short cropped hair. This guy had a hat on, big mutton chop side burns and glasses. Plus, this guy was tuning up a bass, and Ray always played the guitar. But, I told Nancy anyway, hey that kind of looks like Mr. Ray. And as this man gradually lost the hat and the glasses, and the heavy jacket he had on, it became very obvious that it really was Mr. Ray. I know that Mark and Ray have played together over the last few years, but I wasn’t exactly sure how often this kind of thing happens. All I know is that Nancy and I were really excited about it, and spent the night taking cellphone photos and having between song conversations the gist of which could be summarized as ‘Matt is going to be so pissed! This is great!’

After the show we thought it would be funny if we got Mark to sign an autograph for Matt that went something like, ‘Matt, sorry you missed the show because your dog got diarrhea– Mark Mulcahy”, but Mark was somewhat reluctent to mention diarrhea in an autograph. So instead, he drew a picture of Cebine the dog, and signed his name to it. Then he told us a story about once, right before a gig, his cat became semi-paralyzed, but was later cured through accupuncture. The best part of the story, to me at least, was when he said, ‘yeah, the same thing happened to Ray’s cat.’

My apologies for not blogging too much when I was in Houston.  I just felt like blogging wasn’t a manly enough thing to do, at least not in Houston, where manliness is king.  What the the northeast lacks in gunshops and executions, we make up for in sport Championships.  Places where championships are scarce are usually hotbeds of machismo run amok.  When was the last time Afghanistan won anything in the Olympics?  I can hear the Texasuards saying ‘but what about last year’s NCAA football championship?’  This only proves my point though, as UT is in Austin, the only city in Texas without a nuclear arsenal for the expressed purpose of deer hunting.

Normally, I would read the above paragraph and accuse its author of having a provincial attitude, of trying to impose his own cultural norms on another place, and, failing to do so, resorting to an unfair wholesale condemnation of said backwater.  But since I just spent five days there I can talk all the smack I want.  Afterall, their guns can’t reach me from here!  Note to Texans, I am in Montreal now.

There are some good things about Texas, like the barbeque joints.  There’s always a supply of fresh meat because the gun ranges have live targets.
 
Rimshot.

One thing I didn’t do in Texas that I thought of doing a while back was mail a letter.  There’s this asshole I have had to deal with at work a bunch of times.  The last time I spoke with him I got so mad it ruined the rest of my day.  He doesn’t work at my office, he’s some out in the field sales rep guy who really doesn’t know anything about me.  Anyhow, after he pissed me off, I had this great idea.  I knew he wouldn’t have a clue that I was going to be in Houston in a few weeks, so I took an envelope, wrote his name on the outside of it, and then I took a piece of paper and typed out “You’re a dickhead” right in the center of it.  It looked so cool, so lethal.  First off, he’d be getting the letter from Texas.  That would really throw him for a loop.  He’d have no idea who it was from.  Or, maybe, better yet, he knows somebody in Texas and he begins to think they sent the letter and this sets in motion a whole series of events that ultimately end in his contracting scabies and/or Jerusalem syndrome.  But better than that, I think would be the general feeling of unease that would take over “Rodney’s” life after opening the letter.  I can just see that dickhead now at the police station insisting they get fingerprints from it, and the police laughing at him until he gets so indignant that they eventually have no choice but to take him back to some room called the “stockade” or something where they beat him senseless.  That would be awesome.  But of course, I wussed out and didn’t send it.  I figure it’d be more fun to just punch him in the face next time I see him.

We are in Houston doing holiday stuff. I am catching up on some reading. I have been reading The Guermantes Way for a while now, taking it slow, meaning I only read it when I am on the bus. But since I am away from home, I have had some time to really read it. I often wonder if there should be some type of synchronicity between the reader and the author in terms of what is read and when. Specifically, I don’t think that Proust would have wanted his readers to sandwich in sections of his novel in between the Firth St stop and the Islington stop on the 34e. My guess is that he would hope for something more idealized, such as reading the whole thing straight through without stopping. If for some reason, this wouldn’t be possible, then the reader would at least try to honor the author by finishing a scene in the novel, and having the beginning and ending of a scene be the starting and stopping points of a read. To my mind reading this way seems more congruent to the author’s intentions. I have kind of always thought this, and I suspect that some authors write for readers in this way. I also think that chapters are an offspring of this line of thinking, although I realize that such a groundbreaking proclamation might cause considerable controversey.

I bring this up because of the slow pace I was making on Guermantes Way, something like 10-15 pages a day. Finally yesterday, I got to really sit down with the damn thing and realy get lost in the book, but at the same time, something was going on, I didn’t feel like I was making progress, and that’s when I realized, I was in a single scene that was lasting over 100 pages long. It’s a society party, and everybody is making comments about the Dreyfus case. (To be honest, it’s fantastic, but I want to complain about it to make a point) Not only are these 100 plus pages filled with just one scene, the party, but, they are also just a single part of a particular day, which I am not even through yet, but seems to have gone on for maybe 170 pages or so. And, it’s not like this is some Ulysses deal, it’s cooler because this book is part of a larger body of work (plus it predates Ulysses anyways), so the giant day really stands out, I mean REALLY STANDS out. Anyhow, I am pretty late in the day, and I am sensing a bit of closure, bigtime closure. Don’t want to ruin it for anybody behind in the reading, but I think the day is going to end with one of the characters getting it. Bye, bye, grammy!

I also got The River of Doubt by Candice Millard for Christmas and I got to read a bunch of that today. It’s all about how manly and tough Teddy Roosevelt was. He’s kind of the anti-Proust, although they both started as sick children.

Speaking of manly and tough. Tonight my brother-in-law and I went to see Rocky Balboa. To be honest, I really wanted to see this movie just to see what happened. There is this “great idea” for a website I have been toying around with forever called spoilitforme.com. It’s for people who are watching a lousy movie on teevee for no other reason than they have nothing better to do. They’re watching this crappy movie, usually on a Saturday afternoon or something, and they fully understand that what they are watching is awful, but they keep watching, just to see what happens in the end. I know I have been these people many times. Then what happens is, the phone rings, their wife gets mad at them for wasting time, they suddenly have to do something, but they don’t want to move, even though the movie is so bad, because they just want to see how it ends. Now, you won’t get addicted to bad movies, because you will simply be able to log onto spoilitforme and find out right away what happens.

This is sort of the way I felt about this Rocky, especially after the last Rocky. I know a lot of people will probably think I am a clown for saying this, and will see right through the Proust as protective opinion shield above, but, yes, this Rocky is a really good one. The premise is ridiculous sure, but so were George Foreman’s last few comebacks. Plus, there are a lot of redeeming qualities to this one that Rockies II through V steadily lost, most importantly being Rocky is once again a lovable oaf. In fact, if II-V had never been made, all of the critics would be dancing in the aisles for this one. If I was some cornball movie critic myself, I would say something along the lines of “if you let Rocky into your heart, in the final scenes it’ll get punched out of your chest.” The movie is very understated, thanks in large part to Adrian’s being dead. Adrian was great in one, but her speeches in the later Rocks really dragged down the franchise, most notably the inspirational (??) beach scene in III. Was there anything worse than the beach scenes in III? Maybe the My Lai massacre, but I digress. With Adrian six feet under the pontificating is not nearly as grating, in fact, the hokiest speech of the movie (given by the kinda new girlfriend) gracefully turns joke in just the right amount of time to save you from feeling like a schmuck.  I may be a schmuck for liking this movie, but I really did.

This afternoon I had to pick up some tapes for the video recorder at Best Buy in Dedham. Pulling into the parking lot I came this close to bagging it because the place looked so crowded. Of course, since it’s Best Buy, I’m not going to go in there, buy something and leave. I’m going to putz around the video game area for a half hour or so. I am really into watching other people play John Madden Football. It’s the most amazing game, but I have no intention of ever playing, mainly because it seems so complicated.

John Madden wasn’t on, but there was a boxing game equally as complicated. The kid playing it was in a gym learning how to punch. As I am waiting for this kid to get into a real fight, or a “real” fight (so many quotes around here), I noticed that Curt Schilling was standing about six feet away from me. I did a double take, thinking something like, ‘I better make extra sure it really is him, because I don’t want to spend the next eight months telling everybody I saw Curt Schilling on December 22 only to find out that he was in Arizona.’

There were three tell-tale signs that this was the real Schill.

1.) Shonda Schilling was standing right there next to him.

2.) He was wearing a Green Monster Games hat.

3.) As a disinterested looking Best Buy employee sauntered by, I gave him a nudge and said, ‘hey that’s…’ and his face lit up, just exploded with a smile, and he said ‘I know.’ Even though I didn’t say anything to Schill, because he seemed real intent on looking at the games (I think Schilling loves attention though, why else would he be milling around a packed Best Buy in Boston right before Christmas with his Green Monster Games hat on? And when I say milling, I mean milling (not in the grist mill sense, in the loitering around sense)), that moment of shared excitement between the Best Buy employee and me was enough to make my day.

For the record, Schill looked like a guy who lives in his mother’s basement. Oversized blue and white basketball player warmup pants, a hooded sweatshirt that gave the impression of being worn for at least the last 72 hours, and the aforementioned hat. He also had one of those phones you hook on to your ear. This last little detail gave a comic flourish to the total ensemble, as though he was at once extremely busy and at the same time prone to waking at one in the afternoon.

Schilling is probably most noted for the bloody sock game. That’s all well and good, but myself, I most remember the following moments:

June 22, 1998. The day after my sister gets married my dad and I hightail it out of Philly to see the Red Sox take on the Phils in Fenway. There is something I hate about watching my two favorite teams play each other, and in a lot of ways I hate interleague play for doing this to me, but of the Phillies-Red Sox games that I have been to, the majority have been great games. This one was no exception. Red Sox are ripping Schilling apart 8-2 in the bottom of the sixth. Francona comes out to pull Schilling off the hill. Shilling isn’t going anywhere. Appears to tell Francona to head back to the dug out, which he does. Schilling pitches two more innings, the Phillies come back and win it 9-8 in 10 innings.

Game 5 of the 1993 World Series. The night before the Phillies and their bullpen were up five runs going into the eighth and ended up losing the game 15-14. The toughest non-series ending games I think I’ve ever seen. Schilling the next night throws a five hit shut out to send the series to that fateful game six.

Uh-oh, I am getting pinged on IM and my Schilling reverie is dissapating. What a great day! Maybe I’ll write some more on Schilling later.

I feel really under the gun here because I am getting out of work early and I haven’t written anyhting on PriorBlog yet. Since I took yesterday off, it is imperative that something should get posted here, otherwise I might quit the thing all together, because that is the way I work. If something is negelcted for more than a few moments I can never go back to it, my interest in it is sealed for all eternity.

On the other hand, if I really bear down and force myself to concentrate on something, I can really get going and keep a good habit going for upwards of five or six hours.

This is a problem of mine that I plan on working on in the upcoming year. Other people might say something along the lines of “my new years resolution is to write another novel and run 1500 miles.” Those things sound great, but there is no way I’d be able to achieve them. I certainly fantasize about those things all the time, my fantasy self is fit and trim, and dedicated to producing piles of unpublishable manuscripts which only warrant flip websites making a joke of all the effort I put into them. But enough bitterness. When I was writing the book, even though towards the end I began to get the sense that nobody in their right mind would read, much less publish, such a pile of crap, it did give me some motivation to do something other than play Season Ticket Baseball (I have almost simmed into the 25th century and still nobody has broken Pete Rose’s record for most lifetime hits. You go Pete, you’re awesome.). Plus, when you mention to somebody that you’ve written a book (when in essence all you have is a giant .doc file on a suspect hard drive), people immediately fake being impressed, and some of them are actually pretty good at it, which is no surprise considering that roughly 10-15% people were in the drama club in high school. This impressed impression displayed by other people, however disingenuous, is especially believable after I’ve had a few beers.

And then, another fantasy I have is to be able to run a few miles a day. It would be nice to be a runner, because I always feel really great after I have gone for a 12 mile run, but these days I don’t know if I could even go 4.

So, my new (tentative) year’s resolution is to work on building up the discipline to be able to accomplish some real goals for myself. The plan is to get myself to the point where I can honestly and realistically make a goal for myself, in other words, I would like to get to a point, in a year’s time, where I can realistically make a new year’s resolution, because this year, it would just be a waste of time.

I guess there is fighting breaking out near Baidoa in southern Somalia. This is the city where the UN backed government sits, but it is a flashpoint because the Islamists (UIC), who are in control of most of the rest of southern Somalia see the government there as being propped up by Ethiopia. But you already know about all of that stuff from reading the news.

It’s actually the news that I wanted to comment on, and not the situation in Somalia. I was struck by this odd little question inserted into the BBC’s breaking story:

Are you near Baidoa? Send us your experiences

Interestingly enough, I was recently reading that for all of it’s problems (warlordism, lack of potable water, about a quarter of all children dying before their fifth birthday, something like 1 doctor per 75,000 people, etc.) Somalia is one of the most advanced African nations when it comes to telecommunications. This is attributed to the lack of a government, which makes it easier to set up businesses because you don’t have to worry about taxes or corrupt officials taking your cash. (I sure am glad nobody reads this thing, because otherwise I’d have to have links to all that stuff up there.  Wikipedia this ain’t. Trust me though, I read it somewhere or another.)

This means that it is not completely out of the question that a person near Baidoa might be able to log onto the BBC and give them a full run down of the day’s activities. I’m surprised they aren’t asked to upload videos as well. After all, if you want to see war now, just type Ramadi into Youtube.

It does make me think though, as much as I don’t like to, about events beyond my own little world. There might be a real person in Baidoa or Mogadishu reading the BBC, who at the moment is beginning to get an unsettling feeling from the reports, the sound of shelling in the distance, and their own knowledge of their surroundings, and in the midst of their anxiety the rest of the world, so inquisitive, asks politely “Are you in Baidoa?  Send us your experiences.”

Send us your experiences. A packaged delivered to the BBC with famine and lawlessness inside, bet they’re sorry they asked for it now as bullets rip through the cubicles. Send us your experiences… in printed format.

I know that it’s important to “stay informed ” and stuff, but staying informed is very often associated with a type of arrogance, like when news stations boast of being ‘your most trusted source,’ or the music and backdrops they display reflect an undeniable sense of urgency. How many viewers are themselves in an urgent situation when watching this crap, or more precisely, are in the urgent situation being described?

If you are in Baidoa, would becoming a cub reporter for the BBC really be that much of a priority. If I was in Baidoa, I’d be packing my bags and getting ready to head west to become a refugee in Ethiopia. I’d be miserable and scared more than anything else.

This reaching out on behalf of the BBC to the citizens (are people citizens when there is no real government?) of Baidoa, reminds me in a way of a radio broadcast I heard in 1994. I know what I am about to tell you is shocking and you won’t believe me at first. I also don’t have any links to prove what I am telling you is true, but if you really want it confirmed you can ask Jon Manders, because he was there when this happened.

It was the summer of 1994 and Manders and I were roommates in Boston, where we worked as inflatable Coke cans as part of promotion for the World Cup. I know some people were on the internet back then, but it was definitely before we were. Those were the days when if you wanted to find weirdos, you couldn’t just google an outlandish phrase, you had to religiously read the editorial page of the newspaper and look up the authors of the most insane letters in the phone book, or scan the AM dial trying to find the most off the wall preacher.

Such were the strategies of Manders and myself during that lovely summer. One time, we got bored of scanning the radio for the obscure, and opted just to listen to Pete Rose’s radio show. In retrospect, it seems odd that Manders agreed to listen to Rose, because Manders was never much of a baseball fan, but by tuning in he was about to hear one of those moments in sports that a true fan will wait a lifetime hoping to experience, an event that transcends all the statistics on the back of a bubble gum card and puts things in a completely new perspective.

An alarmed caller got on the line. “Pete, I don’t know if you can see what’s going on teevee right now, but…”

At this very moment, O.J. Simpson was in the white Ford Bronco. The caller and Pete discussed what was going on. They agreed that they were both worried.  The caller mentioned that Rose and Simpson probably had crossed paths a number of times, and Pete responded yes, they weren’t extremely close, but they had met a few times and had a lot of respect for one another. That’s when it happened.

I am paraphrasing here, but I bet I am extremely close:

“You never know, Pete. O.J. might be listening to the radio to try to take his mind off things. I mean, we all know that people listen to radio when they are in their cars. It’s conceivable that he might just, at this very moment, be listening to this show.”

“You know something, you’re absolutely right.”

“Pete, if O.J. is listening, what would you say to him?”

For the next two or three minutes Pete Rose, working under the assumption that O.J. Simpson was listening to the Pete Rose Show (or whatever it was called) attempted to convince O.J. to stop the Bronco. He said all the things they say on cop shows when there is a hostage situation or when somebody is about to jump off a tall building. In short, it was really awesome.

It was one of those moments in which you don’t realize what has happened until a few seconds after it ends.  I’m not saying that I wasn’t immediately amazed that Pete Rose could be that easily convinced that he could help O.J., on the contrary, I was completely dazzled by his stupidity (Pete, if you’re reading this, I don’t think you’re stupid. Just that one time.  You were awesome with the Phils, and they would have never won in ‘80 without you.  When Boone dropped the ball and you caught it in game six, THAT WAS AWESOME, DUDE! I think you should be in the Hall.). It was only afterwards however, that I realized, with a sharp needle of regret making its way into my joy, that I may never again hear something as patently bizarre as that “conversation” between Pete and O.J..

If you’re in Baidoa, let me know what it’s like. I am curious.

Last night, Bambi told me that not only am I getting fat, but I also dress like a fat person. I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked her to be more clear and in response she made fun of all the clothes I was wearing. I told her that I would try to dress nicer. Also, sometime in the near future I am also going to start running again to lose some of the extra weight. Bambi suggested I start waking up at five to go running in the morning. The thought of waking up at five in the morning all winter to go running fills me with dread, so much so that I probably won’t start my running program until it’s light enough to run home.

This morning I was putting on my clothes, trying to look nice, when Bambi struck again.
“You can’t wear that!”
“Why not, it has a collar.”
“It’s green.”
“So.”
“You’re wearing green pants.”
“It matches.”
“You look fat and ridiculous.”

I thought it would all blow over, but at breakfast, it came up again.
“This kid sure has a great sense of humor,” I told Bambi as I was playing with Hazel.
“She’s laughing at you.”
“No she’s not. She really likes me.”
“She thinks you look like a lieutenant colonel in some third world army.”
Hazel laughed and threw a cheerio at me.
“She says it looks like you should be marching alongside a bunch of skinny ak-47 wielding targets for insurgent firing squads.”
“But you said I’m fat.”
“Which is why you look like the lieutenant colonel, and not a grunt, now go change your outfit.”

For the record, I don’t wear outfits. Outfits are for dolls and clowns. Soldiers wear uniforms!

A few months ago there was a scarey looking man on the T, who befriended Bambi and I. Bambi wasn’t scared. She talked to him about what books to read kids. I was horrified, the guy seemed like a real whack job. He even had a beard. If that doesn’t scream psycho, I don’t know what does. After we got off the T, Bambi spoke of the man as if he were a new friend. I was still in too much a of a state of shock to say anything to the contrary. I let it pass, hoping as I did that we would never see that terrible man again.

This morning as I was walking to work, I noticed he was coming up behind me. My guess is that what he was doing could be considered jogging, although most joggers do not wear flannel shirts and sandals. Also, it should be noted, this man is fatter than me, and dresses (if you can believe it) more like a slob than me. I could hear him shuffling along behind me for a few blocks. A terrible fear spread out upon the sidewalk in front of me, as I knew in mere moments it would be stained with his horrible shadow. He eventually made his way past me, singing a half audible hymn to his delirium as he did. All I could think of was that phrase “and this too shall pass.” Thank GOD it did.

He probably reads this thing. I’m done for.

There’s this guy, he used to be a spokesman for the Northern Alliance, his name is Sayed Sardar Ahmad Ahmadi, and now he works as in the Afghan Foreign Consular office in New York. Here’s the thing that’s really going to surprise you, though. He used to be in the Taliban, I know because I read about him on a website called Right Wing News. Or could it be that the “humor” writer for Right Wing News, in an effort to come up with Afghan sounding names, combed through the internet for one and just planted any old name into his fake article.

I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to trying to make a joke of everything, but at least, if I was trying to make a joke about a Taliban type guy, I’d make sure to not give him the name of one of his enemies. That’s like mixing up Condi Rice with Muqtada al Sadr.

I wonder if Sayed Sardar Ahmad Ahmadi has had to deal with any backlash over the use of his name by Right Wing News. Supposing he was on match dot com and met some nice chick, and they had a lunch date in an Indian restaurant (Note to Right Wing News, India supported the Northern Alliance, so that is why in my fictional account of his match dot com date I am supposing that they would chose to go to an Indian restaurant. You morons probably would have placed him in a Pakistani restaurant run by the ISI with Mullah Omar working as the maitre’d.) and after the date, she really digs him, so she says to her friend, you know I met this great guy, and the friend says, be sure to google him, because you can get a lot of information from the internet on people. And, what does she find when she googles his name? Some site calling him a member of the Taliban. And even though it’s a joke site, she’s so furious to find out that he’s with the Taliban that she can’t even bear to read the fine details, instead she has him thrown in jail. I mean, that would totally suck.

“In 1980, Dolenz produced and directed the sitcom “Metal Mickey” ([1], see also IMDB), featuring a small metalic robot with the catch-phrase “boogie boogie”. Due to the similar nature of the character’s name and his own, causing chaos on set, it was at this time that Micky officially changed his name to Michael Dolenz.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micky_Dolenz