October 5, 2015 · 2:46 pm

The Sky is Red

20151005_071555Today is a this-and-that post because I am juggling so many things with at least one hand tied behind my back.  And because this morning, (as you can see in my sunrise photo) the sky is red.  You don’t believe in signs and portents, you say?  Well, neither do I.  Still, the old saying is, “red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”  Are there rough times directly ahead?  Rough seas?  Hard sailing?  I wonder.

101212-mlb-action-OB-G10_20121013021856700_600_400

250021_10151185182712298_1774974703_nMy favorite sports teams, the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals and the Arizona Football Cardinals have both been the best in the business in the really-recent past.  The baseball team has won 100 games and goes into the World Series playoffs expected by many to win it all.  Yet, they ended the season on a three-game losing streak with two of their best pitchers taking losses.  The football team, along with my all-time favorite football player, Larry Fitzgerald, had been cruising along undefeated at a totally dominating pace.  Yesterday they lost by two point to the St. Louis Rams.  Both teams are still sitting pretty in enviable positions in their respective sports.  Yet there are portents of doom.

My home continues to crumble and my own personal health is up and down and super-iffy.  The city gave us notice of a program to help with repairs and maintenance, but we make too much money to qualify.  And we still don’t have any money in the bank thanks to health-related expenses.  My body aches and my head spins frequently, but I am going to have to get back up on the ladder and finish painting the house.

So, what shall I do about it all?  Grim omens scare me and slow me down, but I grit my teeth and pitch in.  I have repainted the four shutters for the back of the house and re-hung two of them yesterday.  I can still paint and do work on the house.  Amazing things can be accomplished a little bit at a time.  After all, I put up new siding on the back of the house last year at this time working with only my sons and my daughter to help.  I managed to do it all before the city’s deadline and threatened thousand-dollar fine (because it only makes sense to fine people that much when they have no money to fix the outside of the house.)  I will beat whatever new deadlines they give me too.  But it is a good sign that they want to help and haven’t hit me with any new deadlines yet.

And I will double down on writing work.  I sent Snow Babies back to the editor Saturday, and I am closing in on getting that book in print.  I am getting back to work on the prequel, When the Captain Came Calling, and I even started a new character illustration, depicting Mary Philips and the invisible sea captain.  Here is the pen and ink drawing;

20151004_172507

And here is the first of the color I have completed;

20151005_084533

So maybe portents are not always bad things.  Maybe the sky is red because it is the color of cardinals, and things are looking up for the boys wearing red.  Cardinals are the little red birds that sing sweetly and never fly away when the winter comes.  We cardinals take on all comers and maybe we will win it all for the 12th time… or the 1st time since the 1950’s… or the first time ever.  After all, the sky is red.

4 Comments

Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

October 4, 2015 · 2:24 pm

Danny Kaye

Archive photo from the Los Angeles Times

Archive photo from the Los Angeles Times

My childhood was shaped by television events like the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz and classic movies on Friday nights when I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch the whole thing.  I have told you before how much I loved the comedy of Red Skelton.  Another comedian who shaped who I am through his wondrously manic movie performances was Danny Kaye.

One of those Friday movie classics that really struck home was the wonderful, kid-friendly movie Hans Christian Andersen.

1952 movie poster from Wikipedia

1952 movie poster from Wikipedia

The movie was about a storyteller from a previous century and embroidered his biographical story with his famous children’s stories in the form of songs.  And Danny Kaye could trip through multi-syllabic, fast-paced musical numbers like no other rubber-faced clown I have ever seen.   I wanted to be such a story-teller from a very early age.  I even wanted to write the kind of stories that could be made into songs.  Let me show you a few of the bits that amazed me and killed me with laughter.

This song from the Inspector General was doubly engaging because the corrupt businessmen were trying to poison the character Danny played with the wine he was supposed to drink during the drinking song.

The_Five_Pennies

The movies Danny Kaye was in were mostly about the musical comedy.  But sometimes they were just about the music.  He appeared in musicals like White Christmas with Bing Crosby and stage musicals like Lady in the Dark which won him awards on Broadway.  He made movies about music like The Five Pennies and A Song is Born.  He always said he couldn’t read music, but he demonstrated perfect pitch and scored a number one hit with The Woody Woodpecker Song recorded for the animated cartoons of Walter Lantz.  How cool is that?

And you already know that The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie of all time.  In 1964 Danny became the host for CBS’s annual showing of the film.  He was able to do funny songs that made you snort your hot cocoa through your nose from laughing, and he could also do beautiful ballads like these.

I will always take the opportunity to watch a Danny Kaye movie one more time, whether it comes on YouTube or a Netflix oldie or a $5 DVD from the bin at the front of the Walmart Superstore.  And I will always think of him in his role as Hans Christian Anderson.

Oh, and he was a very funny comedian too when he wasn’t singing, as in The Court Jester and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

7 Comments

Filed under autobiography, comedians, humor

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 3, 2015 · 2:48 pm

Lazy Plugs for Small Holes

Snowies

I have been working on final edits for my novel Snow Babies.  I have also been struggling with diabetes, arthritis, and COPD.  At the same time, I have been writing up a storm on my blog and posting all kinds of incredibly goofy and somewhat creative stuff.  So today is a break without leaving a hole in my goal of posting a blog post every single day of 2015.  I have to go all the way to Balch Springs, Texas today for a flag football game.  So, if you are disappointed with this meager post, go back and look at any of the other recent posts you may have missed.  I’m not saying they are worth the effort, but wasting your time is what I do.

2 Comments

Filed under NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, writing humor

Tagged as , ,

October 2, 2015 · 2:01 pm

I Can’t Believe I Did That

I was a teacher, once upon a time.  I learned to do the job correctly.  I think I earned the pay they gave me.  I think I choose to believe at least a few of those kids who told me, “Mr. B, you were the best teacher I ever had.”  I’m not full of myself and conceited or anything.  But the world needs good teachers.  And I think I answered the call.

But I had to give it up.  I am not well enough to even be a substitute teacher.  I can’t breathe very well.  My body is wracked with arthritis pain.  I am subject to bouts of depression brought on by chronic pain.  And I am worried that it is a job which has become so very much harder to do.  Politics and people’s opinions of teachers and the sacrifices you have to make in pay for your work are all making teaching an impossibly hard job.  I fear that more and more it is being populated not by the best and brightest, the ones who love teaching kids, rather it is a place for losers.  A job held by people that were trapped by mistakes they made or lack of real choices.  A job that they don’t take up as “holy mission from God”, but as a way to get by.  Too many people are taking up teaching so they can fake it and pick up a paycheck.  They hate the job.  They hate the kids.  And there is no joy in Mudville.

20150807_135323

So here is the best thing that I can say or do to try to help this problem.  Read this plea and seriously think about doing it.  Become a teacher!  It is the most important thing you could ever do.  And who, exactly am I talking to?  Well, you made the mistake of reading this far, didn’t you?  If you are young and have your life ahead of you, especially if you are brilliant enough to be reading my obscure little posts on my obscure little blog, you have to realize that becoming a teacher is about more than building your own personal career castle.  It is about guiding future generations in the pouring of concrete, the shoring up with strong wooden and stone pillars, and the laying of strong foundations for their own castles.  The castle you build will never be as grand as the castles you will help others to build.

Neuschwanstein castle will look like a sandcastle next to those.  I can testify that there is no more satisfying experience than seeing a child you taught grow and thrive and become a worthy citizen of the world.

And I know some of you are smugly thinking that, “He’s not talking to me.  He’s just talking to those young goobers headed to college or not sure what they want to do with their lives.”  Not at all.  I am talking to you too.  No adult is immune to the needs of the young.  Every act of every day can be used to show the way.  Read to a kid.  Tell them that story about that time your Uncle Everett learned the hard way that raising chinchillas was not the road to riches and easy money, that it came with numerous foul-tempered rodent bites. Spend time with them.  Get to know them.  And if you are like me and have lost your good health and your access to kids other than your own, then write it all down in your blog, all the stuff that you know.  It will help them and heal them and give them wisdom to grow.  If that sounds like Dr. Seuss stuff… well, that’s because it is.  Dr. Seuss was one of the best teachers I ever had.

I can’t believe I did that.  I can’t believe I just told you all to be teachers.  I am alone during the school day, feeling ill and feeling depressed.  I strut and fret my hour upon the stage (of the front of the classroom) no more.  But what can I do about it?  I just did it.  And I feel better!

2 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 1, 2015 · 2:26 pm

The History of Government as I See It

Raygun RonnyIn the beginning, God made men naked and helpless.  He made women naked and in charge.  And then he tossed an apple to the women and said, “let there be evil and monsters and such.”  So, naked people began to huddle together in caves to get out of the storm.  They began to kill and eat other animals that didn’t eat them.  They began to wear the fur of whatever they killed and ate.  And then because Cain had a you-like-him-better-than-me fit, they began to kill (and hopefully not eat) each other.

So, the need for government came about as a matter of survival.  Cavemen put their thick heads together and decided that some guys were bigger and tougher and got more girls than the rest.  And some guys knew how to use their heads for something more than a place to keep their animal-skin hats.  So, when all the heads were put together, the smartest ones realized that if they made weapons for the big guys to kill other guys with more efficiently, then the big guys could protect all of “us” and kill all of “them” and we would all be safer and live better lives.  Of course, the big strong guys wanted to keep all the better girls and all the stuff they took from others, and they expected everyone they protected to give them more stuff.  Thus, taxes were born.  And when you had to count stuff and plan stuff and figure stuff out (like managing taxes and keeping track of who you need to hit because they haven’t paid) that task went to the scrawny guys with the big heads.  And so, Kings were born.  And queens were mostly the kings’ sisters, because, after all, the big guys still got all the best girls.  And as time went on, we had kings and their big guys and all the other “common” people.  But you couldn’t just kill (and hopefully not eat) all the “common” people, because they were useful too.  You could put them to work so they could pay more taxes and make more stuff for you and it made your life better if you had a lot of them working for you.  But some old king named Louie discovered you had to make the “common” people a little bit happy too because they outnumber you by a lot.  Unfortunately for Louie, he didn’t discover this until they cut his head off… some argument about eating cake or something.  So, some other smart guys with big heads got together and decided to make a new government.  It was really still the old government.  They just had the brilliant idea of re-naming everything and lying to the people.  Now, instead of kings and their big guys who got all the good girls, you had “elected representatives” who were actually the kings of old.  They just figured out how to lie to people and make them believe they worked for the “common man”.  And the big guys were re-named the “Military Industrial Complex”, or maybe it’s the Illuminati.  I’m not sure.  And then there’s a Pope, and possibly some alien beings from Roswell, and… okay, maybe I need to save the rest for the Tinfoil Hat Club when we meet every Wednesday evening and plot how we are going to “wake up, sheeple” and take over the world.  (Dues are fifty cents.  We are meeting again on Sunday because we think the world ends next Tuesday… or something.)

5 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, satire

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 30, 2015 · 2:34 pm

Why Does Walmart Hate My Car? Episode Two

I wrote a thousand words yesterday about terrible things Walmart did to my car.  I intend to follow that up with an even more harrowing tale of Walmart car-maintenance malevolence.  They really do seem to be out to destroy my car.  This attack was on an innocent little Ford Fiesta that I bought in 2011.  Prepare for a journey into the bizarre and horrible world of Walmart oil changes and attempted autocide with malice of forethought.

20150929_103033Episode Two;  Murder by Massive Car Farts

Now, I know that there is no posted policy anywhere in the Walmart automotive section where they do oil changes, tire mounting, and random acts of evil, but I really believe they all work under the same directive to stick it to Mickey anytime and every time they can.

I have been cheated by them before.  One time I took the car in, waited for two hours, and even though I was watching through the window as they did the oil change, I had no visible evidence that they actually took any old oil out or put any new oil in.  When I asked them for the empty oil bottles, they said they pump oil from an overhead reservoir (which I did not see anyone physically do).  So, I paid them and went home.  But before I made a trip to Iowa, I had the Ford dealer do a more expensive oil change.  They said the oil looked okay but it really didn’t look like it was only a week old.  So, I’m deducing Sherlockian-style that Walmart charged me twenty dollars just hold my car for two hours and look at the oil.

That brings me to last Wednesday.  I knew better.  I knew I should take the extra time and pay the extra money to take it to the Ford dealer, but Walmart is temptingly close and convenient.  So, I took the thing in.  The amount of oil in the engine was a little low, so they did the oil change (I actually saw oil go in this time) and made me sign a waiver that said that Walmart was not responsible for any damage that might’ve been caused by having too little oil in the engine.  On Friday, while picking up kids from school, the engine overheated in traffic.  While sitting at one foul-tempered stoplight with fifty or sixty… thousand other cars, and running the heater on a ninety degree day to keep my engine from flaming out, the check engine light came on.  “Oh, no!” I thought.  “Walmart was prescient about damage from too little oil.”

At home I checked the ridiculously hot engine and found the cap from the top of the engine (where a Walmart technician puts in new oil) was missing.  So I take it back on Saturday afternoon to show them the problem.  “Oh, yes, we’ll clean this mess up and put in new oil for free.  Don’t you worry about this.”  (He miraculously found the cap in the precise spot by the radiator where he had left it three days before.)

I waited it out, and, sure enough, the engine light was no longer warning of imminent car death.  So I failed to notice that he had kept my receipt from the previous visit.  We chugged happily out of the Walmart parking lot and down Marsh Lane to a spot where we were closer to home than to Walmart.  The car started making choking sounds and blinking multiple warning lights at me.  Number two son pointed to smoke coming up from the corners of the hood.  And a massive blue-white cloud of car fart exploded out of the tail pipe, obscuring the traffic behind me for miles.  My Sherlockian brain immediately deduced that something was wrong.  An oil change is NOT supposed to have an effect like that on your car.  So we limped the rest of the way home and called Triple A.

Fixing the problem was no bowl of Jello pudding.  I called Triple A and they recommended a tow so that no further damage would be done to the engine.  The tow truck came and I asked him to take it to 5-Star Ford whom I had previously called and explained my dilemma.  This he did.  And there are at least three 5-Star Fords in the North Dallas area.  He took it to the wrong one.  So, I arranged to have them keep my little Ford pony for the rest of the weekend and fix the potentially expensive problem on Monday.  I was depressed all weekend.  The evil Walmart goblin hordes had apparently destroyed my car.  I ate a lot of ice cream… probably more than was good for an aging diabetic.

Finally, the day came when I could find out the bad news and possibly get my car back.  I learned Monday that it was not a completely fatal blow.  The technician at Walmart had put new oil in without draining out enough of what was in there.  So there was far too much oil in the system when I tried to drive it home.  Too much oil and too high an oil pressure apparently gives a car massive amounts of intestinal gas.  That led to the nearly fatal car fart.  I ended up paying six times as much for the corrected oil change as Walmart had initially cheated me out of.  At least I didn’t have to sell one of my kids into slavery in order to get the money to fix it.  And I learned a valuable lesson from this whole experience.  Walmart hates me!

5 Comments

Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 29, 2015 · 2:23 pm

Why Does Walmart Hate My Car?

I have been having a lousy automotive time for the past few days thanks to Walmart.  And the kicker is, it is not the first dent in my soul put there by the Walmart corporate boot.  They are out to get me.  Specifically me.  Well, maybe paranoia and depression from chronic illness are not only good friends, but cousins.  But it does seem that Walmart is trying to destroy me.

20150929_102117

Episode One : Evil Decorative Parking-Lot Rocks

About five years ago I had a run-in with one of the corporation’s most seemingly innocuous assassins, namely a decorative parking-lot rock.

Look carefully at the expression on this rock's face. Do you see the vicious smirk? No? Then he has you precisely where he wants you.

Look carefully at the expression on this rock’s face. Do you see the vicious smirk? No? Then he has you precisely where he wants you.

A more insidious lurking evil I have never encountered.  Why is it even there?  Does it make the parking lot more beautiful?  Does it make you want to buy hand lotion, bananas, and school supplies from Walmart?  Does it make you want to buy car tires?  It may make you need to buy car tires.  But this particular decorative rock nearly destroyed my car.  You see, Walmart parking lot drivers are some of the best drivers in Texas.  You can tell by the kill stickers on their driver’s doors.  The one that was coming for me that late October afternoon was an Ace.  I swear, I’m sure I saw a little stick man, a stick woman, three stick kids, and five stick cats on her car.  It only takes five kills to officially become an Ace.  She even had one of those stickers in her back window of cartoon Calvin peeing on a Ford logo… and my cars are all Fords.  I was trying to turn out of the adjacent parking area in front of her.  She was at least thirty yards away and going at a snail’s pace when I turned in front of her.  Suddenly she floored the thing and was zooming straight for the driver’s door.  I swerved up onto the curb to avoid a grinding death of shattered glass and broken metal (or possibly plastic… it is an American car after all).  And guess who was waiting for my car at that precise spot.  The front passenger-side tire went up over the rock and the car came down hard on top of it, impaling itself, making a huge dent in the floor of the car right underneath number one son’s passenger seat.  We were stuck there.  The car still ran at that point, but there was no way to get the car off the rock.  The Ace driver sped off down Marsh Lane satisfied with the kill.

So I called Triple A to get a tow truck to come and lift the poor impaled car off the rock.  The rock would not let go.  A passing guy who had been previously t-boned on that corner stopped to help my son and I get the car off the rock.  No matter how we all pushed or pulled, forward or reverse, the car was not going anywhere.  So I called the tow truck, thinking surely it could lift the car off the rock and I could still drive away from this.  But then we were blessed with the help of a family of portly Mexicans (honestly, the license plate on their car was from Mexico, and they spoke only Castillian Spanish from the central part of that country, so I am not being racist here.)  The jolly little man told me in Spanish that I could only partly understand that he had tow cables in his car and could pull me off the rock.  I tried to tell him in Pidgeon Spanish (yes, my Spanish is apparently for the birds) that, “no, no… I want to wait for the tow truck I called.”  Apparently my no, gracias meant something like “yes, please, and make it snappy,” in his version of Spanish.  So, the guy who took pity on us because he had also been a victim at that spot, and the happy Mexican guy hooked the back axle of my car up to the back bumper of his little Mexican car and then he had me put the car in reverse and try to drive backwards while he tugged away with his little chugger of a car that contained his plump little wife and three plump and excessively happy little kids.  He assured me in Spanish that he would rescue my car.  So… we got the car off the rock.  But we left a chunk of the oil pan from the bottom of the engine on the tallest of the three knobs on the top of that evil, evil rock.  There was a long trail of oozing black car blood on the rock and on the parking lot.  I could envision Walmart handing me a bill for cleaning up the mess in their parking lot and on their evil rock.

The happy smile on the face of the Mexican guy disappeared.  He quickly retrieved his tow cable and they chugged happlily off down Marsh Lane too.  The man who first tried to help us helped us move the now fatally wounded car in neutral over to an unused parking space to wait for the tow truck.  Of course, by the time he got there, the garage where I wanted to take the car was closed, so we had to hitch a ride home, and we arranged for the car-corpse to be towed in the morning.  The evil decorative rock had won.  There was now a gaping hole in my car, and an even bigger hole in my heart.  One would think that fate and evil corporations would be satisfied with such an outcome.  But no, there is more to come in Episode Two, which I will have to tell you about tomorrow.

6 Comments

Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 28, 2015 · 2:27 pm

Toys

A new doll bought to combat depression. Part of a collection of Tinkerbell fairy dolls.

A new doll bought to combat depression. Part of a collection of Tinkerbell fairy dolls.

I have basically written an awful awful lot about my toys.  (The awful is repeated on purpose because I have been having a really awful time this week for reasons I will post about if I survive them).  And there is a reason a retired old man who seems to be rotting away into a second childhood is so obsessed with toys.  Playing is my primary goal for every day right now because darkness is closing in and, while play for children is practice for life in the future, play for an old man can be the reanimation of all the good things in life.

A Lego steam engine and a 1000-piece puzzle that my wife bought me to cheer me up.

A Lego steam engine and a 1000-piece puzzle that my wife bought me to cheer me up.

I have been a toy-maker and a toy-restorer as a part of my over-all quest to be an artist.  I even made some money with an online e-Bay store where I sold collectibles and restored toys.  I bought toys from Goodwill and re-sale stores, repaired them and cleaned them, and sold them for twice the sum I bought them for.  I also made a few porcelain dolls in a kiln I bought in the 1990’s when my mother and I became porcelain doll-makers.  I would show you some of my babies, but the real live children have managed to break all the dolls except for a couple my mother made.  (Well, toys are made to be played with, right?)  But I do still have many of the repaired and cleaned toys that I either didn’t sell or couldn’t bring myself to part with.

Toys in every corner of the house, dang it!

Toys in every corner of the house, dang it!

I have also been a model railroader since childhood, spending countless hours building tunnels and repainting rolling stock, and making buildings and scenery from kits and plaster.  I haven’t rebuilt my layout since moving north away from South Texas, but maybe I will get to that too in my retirement and second childhood.

I do still have some trolley street scenes on the tops of book cases.

20150928_143543

20150928_143708

And toys serve as memory objects.  They can do magic with time and space.  I have saved many of my toys from childhood.  Toys were precious and mostly Christmas and birthday gifts.  I learned to save and salvage them because they treated me well, and… well, I owed them the same in return.  My own children were not like that.  They loved toys to pieces and even sometimes ate them, to a point where many of them were un-fixable junk.  But toys bring things back to life from the long-gone past.  Take for instance the toy in this next picture;

20150928_144034

No, I don’t mean the baby doll.  He grew up and joined the Marine Corps.  I mean the stuffed white tiger in the background. That was the first toy I ever bought for baby Dorin.  And it is still with us, though not as fluffy and pretty as it was in the picture.  My daughter, the Princess, inherited it and christened it “Baby Tiger”.  That is, of course, still its name to this very day.  I look at it and see all three of them… my super-destructo toy-flinging and clockwork-wrecking children.  And it is the toys that we have all played with that still link us all together even though they are almost grown.

20150831_165425

20150928_143818

20150928_144004

6 Comments

Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, playing with toys

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 27, 2015 · 3:25 pm

Devotion in Motion

How long have I been a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals?  Since Bob Gibson and the World Series victories of the 60’s.  When will it end?  I have to know if there is baseball in Heaven before I can tell you.  And I believe there is.

970012_598081996889896_1749856650_nA true baseball fan never abandons the team he or she loves.  They live and breathe and die with the team.  In the 1960’s I got to experience my Cardinals win the World Series against the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.  I got to experience the defeat in seven games by the Detroit Tigers and Mickey Lolich their star pitcher in 1968.  And I followed them mostly by the sports page in the Mason City Globe Gazette.  And sometimes second hand when I listened to the Twins’ games on radio with Great Grandpa Milo Raymond.  I followed the individual players and their numbers.  Curt Flood, the center fielder was a vacuum cleaner with legs in center field.  Lou Brock could steal a base, though he was even more amazing at it in the 1970’s with veteran savvy and know-how on his side.  Gibson was extraordinary as pitcher.  And I followed the others too.  Dal Maxvill at short stop, Tim McCarver at catcher.  Mike Shannon at third.  And a fading Roger Maris in right field, having never reached the heights again as the Yankee slugger who hit 61 home runs in 1961. 1010493_520267051372821_2054131685_n

I watched and waited in the 1970’s, when I could follow them on television at least occasionally.  I didn’t get more World Series victories that decade, but I listened to the ball game on radio when Bob Gibson pitched his no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  I was giddy about the base stealing record that Lou Brock set in the 70’s, later to be eclipsed by Ricky Henderson.  I followed Ted Simmons, the catcher, and Joe Torre the third baseman.

The 1980’s brought more World Series with victory in 1981 over the Milwaukee Brewers, and losses against the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins.  I invented some new cuss words the night the Royals came from behind to win the sixth game of the series because an umpire blew the call at first base that would’ve given the Cardinals the series win.  That bad call (the runner was clearly out at first) changed the series from a Cardinals’ win in six games to a Royals’ victory in seven games.

524889_10150850428301840_374060612_n

In the late 1990’s I cheered for Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris’ single season home run record.  I watched on TV as he did it, holding my young son in my lap and cheering loudly enough to scare all the cockroaches out of the house in South Texas.  It burned me later that the steroids scandals and Barry Bonds would later tarnish that moment.  But I lived it never-the-less, and it was a highlight of my life as a Cardinals’ fan.

62722_574692719263587_14180130_n378194_10151001599341840_1087304628_nAnd now, this year, as everything is going wrong in my life and my body is breaking down more often than my car does, the Cardinals are surging again.  They could win a hundred games this year.  They could win World Series number twelve.  We have history, this team and I.  And I am a devoted fan.  I can no more explain my love of the team to you than any baseball fan anywhere could ever explain to you why they love baseball.  Or what the heck Fredbird is all about.  12032015_547957218694150_5911281379869985407_nBut there it is.  We don’t wait til next year.  Not the Cardinals.

268528_849033021814650_8866133938817785739_n576916_10150868354161840_2084334553_n

Jun 9, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols (5) reacts at home plate after he hit a solo home run during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Jun 9, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols (5) reacts at home plate after he hit a solo home run during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Albert Pujols will always be a Cardinal in my mind.  We won it all in 2011.

082913-FOXiest-MLB-OB-G28_2013082813420640_600_400

9 Comments

Filed under autobiography, baseball fan, humor

Tagged as , , , ,

September 26, 2015 · 2:29 pm

Television Can Be Literature

How stupid is it that a former school teacher can write a nutsy title like that?  If that were true, why don’t English classes just show movies all the time?  Why read?  Honestly, teachers do worse things to students every day.  Well-made film for the theater or television is literature, and it is relevant to study it.  When you are teaching kids to read, the ones who already read and devour books on their own are not your target audience.  The vast majority who hate reading need to be pulled into the miracle of being enfolded into a good a story, made to discuss and analyze why they liked it, made to determine what their own personal standards of good are, and taught how to find that for themselves, in the theater, on TV, and yes, even in books.  So, why does an idiot former school teacher think about stupid stuff like this?  Well, my brain has been permanently wired for that kind of thinking.  And now that I am retired and have time for stuff like Netflix, I am discovering just that sort of monumental epic literature that I have always sought in television shows, of all places!

tww_cast

I just finished watching the final episode of The West Wing on Netflix.  I was completely absorbed by this seven-season show for the entire summer.  And now I have finished it.  And this essay is the first symptom of withdrawal that is going to hit like the black plague.  I am not going to do a review of it.  Others have done better at it than I ever could.  Here is a bit or evidence for that at this link; Contemplating Media on WordPress  or this one; Arts.Mic

I am telling you why this show is indispensable literature and powerful, functional art.   It is because it just IS!  The writing on this show by Aaron Sorkin is seven seasons’ worth of vibrant, lively, in-depth, and funny stories that keep you tuning in at a higher level of gravity than any mere soap opera.  You learn to love or hate the many characters you get to know so well, and you have to find out what happens to each of them in each and every episode.

I most identified with the character of Joshua Lyman, played by Bradley Whitford.  I once was a young and idealistic man who believed that my passion for ideas could change the world and make it better.  I too fell to the hammer blows of cruel reality.  When Josh was shot as collateral damage in a presidential assassination attempt, it brought me back to the dark years of teaching when I almost quit after having my life threatened and my tires slashed by students.  I was in his skin too when it came time to put myself back together and make myself whole enough again to continue doing my job.  Good literature is like that.  It holds up a mirror in front of our shocked little faces and shows us exactly who we are and what we have to do about it.  Here is the scene that made the waterworks flow the hardest, after Josh has seen a psychologist to help him overcome his PTSD;

For seven seasons this TV show maintained a high level of powerful storytelling and life-changing meaning.  I can’t begin to tell you how well this has helped me understand politics and good people.  There is no other kind of literature that can do what a series like this can do.  And this is not the only one.  I can name any number of other series I felt the same way about over the years and had to find some way to watch every episode I could; there was Alex Haley’s Roots, Shogun and Centennial (both epic mini-series), Lonesome Dove, Ken Burns’ The Civil War, Ken Burns’ Baseball, Hill Street Blues, Mork and Mindy, Cosmos (both the Carl Sagan original and the new Neil DeGrasse Tyson versions), and, of course, Dr. Who in all his incarnations.  In some ways television series like these have given me more and done more to make me the man I am, than any single teacher or parent or grandparent I ever had.  It doesn’t replace any of those essential people, but, boy! does it ever supplement!

4 Comments

Filed under humor, review of television, TV as literature

Tagged as , , , , ,