A Clarification on a Name

Many peoiple feel like we named our son Cassius as an homage to the late boxer and activist, Muhammad Ali, who viewed his other name as a slave name: Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.

We actually decided on the boy's name before Ali died, and while we never found out our baby's gender, we had conversations for far longer on girl's names. We both liked Cass, "Ca-shuss" and "Cass-ee-us" as pronunciations and use all three with regularity.

But Ali wasn't the only inspiration.

I liked the heritage of the Cassius moniker, dating back to anti-despot Epicurean philosopher, military leader, and politician Gaius Cassius Longinus:

Most famous as the main instigator in the assassination of Julius Caesar and one of the villains in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", his legacy is one of strict adherence to rule of law and to oppose dictators in all forms.

And then there's the OG Cassius Marcellus Clay:

This Cassius Clay was an abolitionist and served as Lincoln's ambassador to Russia during the Civil War. Clay having the ear of the tsar put Russia in position to help out the Union: Russia threatened to declare war on France and the UK if they sided with the South.

Herman Heaton Clay, the child of former slaves, named his son Cassius Marcellus Clay, after the abolitionist, who in turn named his son after himself, and the rest is history...

2016 Nearly Over

Many people have taken to calling this year, 2016, some form of catastrophic adjective and even coming up with silly hashtags about it G(ing)TFO.

I was never really a Bowie fan or a Prince fan or a George Michael fan, But Ali was an inspiration, and Carrie Fisher and her mom, Debbie Reynolds, dying within a day of each other was storybook bizarre.

And those were just the deaths that came to the top of my head as typed this. So much death...

And our country's quick slide back to regularity with the election of president Orange Roughy.

But for us, 2016 was pretty freaking great. We have a beautiful son now, and at this time in 2015 we didn't, and that has definitely shaded our view of this year by any measure.

And the Cubbies won the World Series!

Here's a quartet of some of the better material from this year:

1. Conferences: Vacations That Aren't
2. WonderCon 2016
3. Our Biggest Adventure Yet
4. What Have You Done for the Cause Today?

One's about a yoga retreat, one's about a comic convention, one's about the baby, and one's about my late grandfather.

Happy Turning the Page! Happy Life!

Happy Old Year!

Happy New Year!

A Chair's End

(or)

Eighteen + Years with a Second Owner

The last of my grandmother's chairs have finally left us.

After living in the dorms, I moved into an apartment with Tony and furnished the place with my late grandmother's furniture: a couch, two chairs, two marble-top end tables, a wooden hexagonal doored table, and two brass lamps. 

The effect of all that legitimate furniture, all of it already close to 30 years old, was to make our little apartment the most home-y out of all of those in the Jungle, the nickname our section of those shitty apartments had.

When I moved into the Oceanaire house with Tony and Ryan, I brought all that same furniture. The couch was the first to be destroyed/replaced. We had three couches in our living room, and two throne-like chairs set up for our drinking game, Caps. One of the throne chairs was one of my grandmother's chairs. After four years of being basically a drinking hammock, it was worse for the wear and obviously shabbier when compared side-by-side with the other chair, safely tucked away in my bedroom. The couch lasted only a few years. Both chairs made it to our own place before we left town.

In Brooklyn, Tuxedo chose the Caps chair as his scratcher of choice. By the time we left, all that cat-scratching and Caps-playing had taken its toll and that chair didn't make the move to Texas.

After Texas and a half-decade in California, getting another cat, having a baby, and the general falling-apart of gear, the other, formerly pristine Oceanaire's-bedroom-chair, has met it's final demise:

I'm not sure how long my grandmother had the chairs, but I'm guessing close to thirty years, and then I had them for another eleven and eighteen, respectively. 

We considered having it re-upholstered, but very few people seem to know how to do that anymore. Eventually it had fallen too far apart to be taking up as much valuable space as it had.

The lamps, marble-top tables, and hexagonal table are all still around.

The end of a sitting era in our midst...

Saturnalia Celebrations and Magoo Memories

Corrie and I aren't particularly religious, and don't really celebrate Saturnalia in the traditional-Christians-hijacking-the-12/25-day manner.

Corrie does quite enjoy the traditional pagan activity of taking some nature and bringing it into your home, and decorating it with lights and whatever shiny baubles you may have (which in our case is very few---baubles, that is).

So we bought a tree.

A huge Douglas fir. This sucker is eight feet up of bushy pine smell, and probably fatter at the base than it is tall. It's quite spectacular.

We were getting it all set up last night and she put on a time-appropriate video:

My mother could see right away that it is "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol."

Magoo's Christmas was a household tradition in my family, and I've seen it many times, and have varied memories of it.

Those memories all came rushing back as we listened and worked--I realized I haven't watched it multiple decades.

What follows are the impressions I had as a child and less my impressions now as a film cricket theorist. I synced them up with pictures.

1. Magoo is a blind idiot:

This scene of him driving against traffic used to piss me off an unreasonable amount. Not only can he not see, he's oblivious to everything. I remember immediately disliking this Magoo person.

2. The sound effects stuck with me. Remember the "knot untying whistle" noise or the "mistaking the fat guy for the turkey poke" noise?

3. The sound of Jacob Marley wailing was the scariest sound I'd ever heard when I first encountered it:

4. Young Magoo/Ebeneezer's song, "A Hand for Each Hand", was the saddest thing I'd ever encountered anytime I heard it---up until "Lilo and Stitch."

5. I remember both my mom and my Auntie Peg singing along with the criminals after they cashed in the dead Magoo/Ebeneezer's gear in the future:

6. I remember not having a sense of humor about the ending, after the scenery comes crashing down on the director, thinking, "Shit. That guy has to be dead. How is that funny?"

Decemberween is upon us in Long Beezy...

Some Firsts

I have gone to what may amount to be an unreasonable amount of colleges and for majors that are quite thinky. Also, I have worked for many years in blue collar environs and readily identify with working class people. My background is a strange mix of intellectualism and working class ethos, the kind of guy who can do grunt work for ten hours and then come home and work on a new kinematics system to replace Newton's. (And that's how I spent the summer of 2003, by the by, trying to figure out why cubic Hz's are everywhere at night after days setting tile.)

While I've never been in a position of controlling any real amounts of capital to be considered bourgeois, and I'd firmly self-identify as proletariat, I find it funny that Corrie and I had this problem the other night:

Baby's first quinoa.

He smashed it into the table and into the folds in his hands and wrists.

But "Baby's first quinoa" is a decidedly bourgeois situation.

For full disclosure: in my time working in restaurants in Manhattan, the first time I saw quinoa written on our prep lists I incorrectly pronounced it "kwi-noa" before being corrected with a respectful "keen-wah."

I also thought salisify was a verb, like to "salsa-fy" something, before being corrected: "salsa-fee" is a light-ish root vegetable.

We recognize the inherent problem with just handing the Boy some food to gnaw on. He mostly can't get anything into his mouth, but he looks so longingly at us while we eat. I think only banana has made it into his mouth at all. Most make it onto his face.

We ordered some blender heads for our busted hand mixer and await their arrival.

Working Weekends

As the year comes down to crunch time, I think back to a working Saturday two months ago. Sometimes it feels like it was just the other day; other times it feels like it was last year. 

It was held in a building in downtown LA that was also a studio, as the hallways were wall papered with the posters of their movies and television shows ("Liar Liar" was easily the biggest and most prestigious production for which they were responsible.)

I took the train, because that's what I do. Drive? Are you kidding me? Look at the traffic down the 110 at quarter-to-three on a Saturday:

It's moving at least, right? Slowly...

The travel fun didn't end their. Walking back to our place from the Long Beach stop, my path was mildly obstructed by the filming of some production of its own. They were letting locals walk past quietly on the sidewalk, and when I made the other side, I wheeled around a snapped a picture, trying to not look like an a-hole with a phone.

Judging by the two cars, one pristine old brown Benz with a joke vanity plate and one Benz shell of the same color with both camera and light mountings, this was a movie shoot.

This weekend has been in the forefront of my attention as the initial work to be put in based on what we learned there is coming up soon.

Being Thankful

Over the years I've pontificated on Thanksgiving on this forum, discussing my personal history with the American holiday and how we watched the personification of gluttony evolve to where it is today. But yesterday, Thanksgiving 2016, was my son's first Thanksgiving, and we spent most of the day at home. I cooked a feast, but not an unreasonably large amount of food.

I deboned the turkey like you would for Turducken, brined it heavily for a short time, slathered the inside with compound herb butter and rolled it with twine. Roasting three pieces---two small thigh/drumstick combos and the larger double breast roast---with no stuffing or bones, goes so quick. It takes maybe an hour to 75 minutes.

My cousin living in London reached out for some advice: she wanted to throw an American-style Thanksgiving party for about a dozen people, and she wanted there to be too much food. I typed up some ideas and sent them to her. Her dinner is tomorrow--Saturday for anybody reading this too far from now. In England they have their American-Thursday-Special-Holiday on Saturday.

Then I started to think about for what I'm thankful.

My Boy is healthy and growing like a champ, outgrowing his bouncy seat ahead of schedule and into the highchair:

I'm thankful to still be learning. I just learned about the Ruke-man's newest book, a collection of short fiction, due out next May:

I just learned about (and located) the Saturday-morning-cartoons-meets-Michel-Foucault's-philosophy masterpiece "Coyote's Gospel", presented in Animal Man #5, from 1988:

And I just learned about the caracal, a breed of exotic cat. I went down the rabbit hole of research upon finding an article titled "Rare Breeds of Housecats" with the accompanying photo:

THESE ARE HOUSECATS? PETS?!??!! ARE YOU SERIOUS!??!!?

That's what my brain was doing when I saw those kittens. 

Pets? Eh, sure...maybe...depending on where you live...and how much meat you keep on hand...

In the exotic-pet world, narrowing the gaze to cats, the caracals are popular, but not as much as the serval or ocelot, both of which I've heard of. The caracal is a wild cat from northern Africa to the Middle East up to Turkey. It will grow to about 40-50 pounds and eat 1 to 2 pounds of meat a day.

The article made sure to remind you to keep them away from your pet birds.

I'm also thankful the Cubbies won the whole enchilada; thankful I don't hate the Cowboys new QB and RB rookie combo; thankful our neighborhood changed the times that tickets get handed out, thereby alleviating some of the issues with overnight parking.

I'm thankful California voted for decrim.

I'm thankful for books like The Stranger and Leaves of Grass and Gravity's Rainbow, and that at least academics have recognized Narrow Road to the Deep North as the masterpiece it is and awarded its author enough funds that he'll be able to avoid having to find work in the mines.

I'm thankful for author and professor Viet Than Nguyen's essay on how the establishment Democrats need to start listening to the radicals and artists in the constituency after this last election. See what playing it safe can get you?

I'm thankful for Durand Jones and the Indications self-titled album:

I'm thankful my cats can actually peacefully coexist for at least twenty minutes:

And I'm thankful to be married to an awesome lady who does more work than I can imagine. She does right by the kid, runs her own business, grows artistically, and stays as sassy and sexy as ever.

Was this inventory corny enough?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Also, I couldn't resist one of the Black Friday memes:

Also also: here's a link to a celebratory deal originated by AdBusters back in the Dubya era. 

Heirloom Botanicals

We've been getting all sorts of crazy heirloom orchard apples lately in our farm delivery boxes. After a recent box had five varieties of apple inside, I decided to set them up and take a picture, and then label them and showcase them here.

One reason is that I wanted to unpack the term "heirloom orchard" apple. There has been talk among people I know about what actually constitutes an heirloom apple. This conversation coupled with an internal desire to figure out my own favorite apple variety were the main motivators here.

One apple that I first had while living in New York and instantly fell for, as do most who ever try one, was a honeycrisp. With oversized cells that burst with a sweet and tart juice with every crunching bite, it's easy to see the popularity. The honeycrisp is awesome.

But it was created in a lab in Minnesota in the '60s. It was an accidental seedling that was set for the rubbish bin before being salvaged. It was patented in the '80s and finally brought to the market commercially in the '90s.

It would seem funny to me choose this as my favorite apple without even a quick glance through the ranks of "heirloom varieties". 

The following picture shows and labels the five varieties we got that Thursday night in alphabetical order:

After doing some research, the entire idea of heirloom variety is worthy of discussion.

On our trip to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch a few weeks ago with Cassius, we picked a big bag full of pippin apples. The russeting around the stem was awesome, but such a thing turns off most consumers at markets these days. The pippin was developed in the late 1600s on Long Island and became a favorite of the colonists. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved them, and Jefferson even lamented in a letter from Paris that they had no apples that compared to their pippin.

The ones we picked were all awesome, and we didn't even wait for them to be really good, as their flavor develops while in storage.

In any case, the pippin would likely count as heirloom, while the honeycrisp usually represents the newer order.

So, from the picture above:

The Arkansas Black was developed in the mid 1800s around Bentonville, Arkansas. Apparently in the apple connoisseur world it is either loved or hated, with no middle ground. Most likely it is a cultivar that started as a winesap seedling. I find the flesh dense and crisp with a little sweetness, but a dry sweetness. I can't imagine anyone hating it. I think it's safe to call it an heirloom variety, and since the winesap is claimed as one of its ancestors, that's probably also safe to claim as heirloom.

The Braeburn, I was surprised to learn, was discovered in 1952 on Moran's orchard in New Zealand. Thought to be a cross between a Lady Hamilton and a Granny Smith, I find them delicious. Tart and juicy with a creeping sweetness, this apple is easy to overlook. Heirloom? Only slightly older than Honeycrisp, so I'd guess not.

Then the Cameo...I really like the cameo. It's easy eating, similar in tart and sweet to the Braeburn but different in crunch style, it probably doesn't qualify as heirloom because it was discovered in 1987 (!!) on a guy---Darrel Caudle's---property in Washington state.

Granny Smith apples, I just learned, were cultivated by Maria Ann Smith in Australia in 1868. She died two years later, but some of the local apple farmers extensively planted her cultivars, the lovely tart greenies they called 'Granny Smith'. This variety is likely ranked second on global scale cultivation, and has done many varieties like the pippin harm, in that they are not russeted, are larger, and more intense in flavor.

The last one is the oldest variety on this list, the Winesap. It looks like it was known during the colonial period, and possibly came from New Jersey. Like the pippin, it stores better than most other apples, but in today's age of refrigeration that is less necessary. I found the flavor in the same dry-sweet and crisp category as the Arkansas Black, but with less intensity.

Like the pippin and winesap, we were lucky enough to get our hands on some Orleans Reinettes, a French variety that was popular back in France in the 1770s and is being grown stateside recently in the rush to preserve these old apples. They were awesome. Less awesome were the Calville Blanc's, which was a bummer because the apple was cultivated in France in the 1600s. The ones we've been getting were a little mushy.

The following is a list of otherwise hard to get apples that we've been getting this season in our boxes, to go along with the nine varieties mentioned above that have at one time or another, been arriving in our box (pippin, honeycrisp, Arkansas Black, Braeburn, cameo, granny smith, winesap, Orleans Reinette, and Calville Blanc):

1. King David (introduced 1893, Washington County, Arkansas)
2. Mutsu (1948, Mutsu Provence, Japan)
3. Golden Russet (early 19th century, upstate NY)
4. Gravenstein (17th century or earlier)
5. Grimes Golden (1832, Virginia)
6. Jonagold (1953, upstate NY)
7. Rome Beauties (early 19 century, Ohio)
8. Gala (1934, New Zealand)
9. Fuji (1932, from the research labs in Fujisaki, Japan)

I'm not trying to make the case for how we should define our concepts of heirloom botanicals. I just love apples and love nerdy rabbit-hole diving, and love seeing the information on the 18 (!!) different kinds of apples shipped to our apartment over the last two months all in one place.

Also, I wanted to talk about something else.

If you're down for a revolution, I'm ready to put in the work. Otherwise...apples!

My favorite apple exists as a list that is ever fluid. But three varieties will always occupy spaces:

• Granny Smith
• Honeycrisp
• Pippin

And maybe the King Davis or Orleans Reinette can be added, but their season is short. Possible the Cameo, too...or the Braeburn...that first gigantic Mutsu I had was pretty goddamn fantastic also...

The Obama Illusion and an Election Postmortem

So...what now?

Right?

There are too many things to get to after an election night like the one last week. If you value dignity and decency, the thinking on "our" side goes, then this was a catastrophic night where the world we thought we lived in crumbled down slowly around our heads.

Sounds a bit melodramatic, no?

It should. In hindsight the signs were all there.

Electing Barack Obama was not the norm, it was the capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle moment when the world we wanted came into being for a brief moment. An electrifying and brilliant orator, a charismatic and charming young guy---a black guy even---a fucking cool guy came along and snagged the moment and was the world.

Nevermind he was as white as he was black. And some of his policies were not favorites of mine. But, hell, he got a pass on most of those things in my book because he was the man. He was given a broken down mess and he did his damnedest to fix it. He got troops out of the Middle East (mostly), he watched Seal Team 6's Go-Pro as they shot Osama bin Laden in the goddamn face, he took on healthcare and got 22 million more people insured (with mixed results I hear).

But he represented The Future. He was The Future.

But we can't ignore the general trajectory of this country in the years between the last "cool guy" to leave the White House in Jimmy Carter.

Reagan, Bush I, Slick Willy, and Dubya. Yikes. The lone Democrat on the list did a bang up job finishing the dismantling of the social safety net started by Reagan. And he got impeached!

I had been saying during this campaign that Donald Trump was the exact candidate the Republicans deserved, seeing as they have been pandering to the worst in people for so long, but especially hard since the Karl Rove/Dubya years. Trump was the logical result of that direction.

Stages of Grief

When I saw everyone at work on Wednesday dressed in black, like somebody had died, it made me feel a little better. A person wasn't what we mourned, rather an idea. Our idea of what America was, or is...what we thought we could love about it. The idea of "Looking Forward" was met with the guillotine.

Corrie and I didn't watch the results like normal people. We put it on in between episodes of Nurse Jackie, but it was pretty clear what was happening. "Cass deserves better than this shit," Corrie was saying. "Weren't we past this? Wasn't George Dubya enough for you assholes?" she yelled at the television. Obviously, eh, No and No.

As for Cass deserving better...

He's a baby and will be nearing kindergarten by 2020. Norm asked me about the election back in July when we visited Sacramento and I told him that Trump is the bastard the Republicans deserve and if he somehow wins, then he's bastard we all deserve.

That "somehow wins" part...that's a sticky wicket...

Getting Perspective

One thing helping me with perspective at this moment are my charges. They have some ridiculous notions about what the future holds for them.

Some are convinced that Trump is sending death squads to come and kill them within 9 months. Some are convinced that martial law will be declared just so law enforcement will be allowed to shoot anyone on sight. 

What?

I mean, it'll get worse before it gets better, but death squads and martial law?

Then I realize that these kids don't come to these conclusions in a bubble, and how have we, as adults, been talking about this election? Has it been reasonable?

I let my kids talk about it for as long as they wanted. But I realized that they've only really known Obama as President. They were born after 9/11 for the most part (!!!) and have no real connection to the dark days in the years after that and before that magical November night in 2008 that I wrote about as one of the first posts ever on this site, A Beautiful Sight.

They've only ever known the country as the Land of Opportunity, and hear about the Land of Oppression in history class or on the news with the police shootings. This makes it a little more real for them.

Treating "Them" as Jokes

Raise your hand if "Trump Voter" was a thing of ridicule for you, was a stereotype of a redneck bigot. Hillary and the Democrats never took Trump, or his supporters, seriously. I know I didn't, and I'm not a Democrat or a die-hard Hillary backer.

Apparently some of those supporters were working class folks for whom the alienation from the political machine is fucking real. Millions of working-class people who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary---they either voted for Trump or stayed home.

These were the people Bernie Sanders referenced in a recent interview. He said it was simply shameful that the Democratic party lost these voters. He also spoke to the clarion call put out by Trump: "I, [insert your name], alone will help you. I alone will bring you work. I will do it."

Of course it's all bullshit, but people were serenaded. That's what the Democrats never get.

The Electoral College

When was the last time a Republican won a popular vote? Was is Bush in '88 or Bush in '04? It looks like it was Democrats Clinton in '92, '96, Gore in '00, Obama in '08 and '12 and Clinton again in '16.

At least we have that, right?

President Orange Roughy

So...sitting in the White House will be a person who has no domestic policy experience, no foreign policy experience, no education plan, and no healthcare plan beyond undoing the Affordable Care Act. The person is openly hostile to environmental activists, minorities, and women. He's groped women, bragged about it, and bragged about how some women aren't attractive enough to grope. He lost nearly a billion dollars in a single year, so we know he just great at business.

His campaign was full of bombastic calls about interning and kicking out 12 million people and banning an entire religion from entering the United States. His own supporters who weren't confederate flag waving mouth-breathers have said things like (in NPR interviews), "Oh, he doesn't mean those things, he's just trying to be outlandish."

Do you know what that means, Trump-voter? That means you recognize he's a demagogue, and that's something you like about him! I guess being a demagogue is better than being the next Hitler...

When the best thing you can say is: this politician is a demagogue, things don't look so hot.

Don't get me started on Mike Pence, the let's-defund-AIDS-research-and-pour-money-into-coversion-therapy asshat.

And what does "Make America Great Again" really even look like? Should it be "Make America White Again"? Are there going to be new jobs magically arriving? Maybe a complete destruction of NAFTA and super high tariffs on Chinese imports will spawn those gigs. For what it's worth, I can't say I'd fight that too hard.

What does a Trump presidency look like? Either Republican business as usual (we're all screwed); or crazy Hitler-esque Trump (we're all screwed, but worse); or do-nothing-pre-9/11-super-vacation-Bush (we're only as screwed as we are right now); or...or...I'm trying to figure out that one. I'll get back to you.

What really does it all mean?

For you Obama was either great or the devil or somewhere in between, but did he bring you groceries? Did he pay the gas bill? The day to day shenanigans that we all do, and have to do, are affected very little by the orange-faced turd-blossom person sitting in the Oval Office.

Did what we think we saw as the possibility of our country get squashed the other day?

Yup.

I think the silver lining is that after the dark Bush years and the hopeful Obama years that we actually expected the country to get it right. 

That's progress, right?

One Last Thing

What I told my kids that made me nervous for their future had little to do with what happened last Tuesday. It's what happens in 20 years, when the hundred million baby-boomers all begin to need Social Security and medicare, and our working class people are still living at home paying off college degrees that they can't use because the nice-pay middle-class work has disappeared.

What happens then? Especially if Trump dissolves Social Security even more, or privatizes it, or some other fuzzy-headed Republican idea...

I told my kids that at least one adult in their life needed to tell them about it, if only one.

Sounding the Big-Picture alarm...

Was Game 7 the Greatest Baseball Game Ever?

Game 7 of this year's World Series was played the other night, and I watched the majority of it with the sound turned off, thankfully missing the drivel coming from Joe Buck. Mainly we have the television off when the Boy is awake, but Game 7 between the Cubbies and the Indians?

I say mainly because there were times when I angrily turned off the tube, quietly cursing the Cubs' manager Joe Maddon. As the game progressed, it became clear that it could be in the pantheon of Greatest Games Ever, and then, as it ended, how could you argue that it wasn't the Best Ever? Sure Mazeroski and Jack Morris and Joe Carter...but...

The Stakes: Representing the American League was the Cleveland Indians, owners of the longest drought for World Series Championships in the AL, having last won in 1948. They lost the World Series in 1995 to the Braves and in 1997 to the Marlins, but were so bad for so long that they inspired one of the best baseball movies ever with "Major League".

Now, while that World Series drought for the Indians is bad, it had nothing on the Cubs. The last World Series they were even in was in 1945, which they lost in seven games to Detroit. The last championship they won was in 1908, an over-a-century of futility, the longest drought in American professional sports, and possibly sports in the world. Few teams have remained so popular without ever winning anything.

Game 7s are weird things, and especially in the World Series: an entire season coming down to one game. A marathon of a season, from March until October, then two more weeks, and then one more week, and after all that, everything comes down to 27 outs.

The Ramifications: One team was ending an historic drought, but both teams are on the cutting edge of the data analytics revolution. How about that Theo Epstein, the architect of both the 2004 Red Sox and this Cubbie team?

The Game: Lead off homer by the Cubbies, ala Jeter against the Mets in 2000, 1-0 Cubs. Indians tie it at 1. Cubs go ahead, and sit at 5-1 when the Cubs pitcher, Kyle Hendricks---who's pitching a helluva game by the way---walks a guy with two outs.

Cubs manager comes out and removes Hendricks (who had only thrown 60+ pitches) in favor of game 5 starter Jon Lester. Lester walks a guy, throws a wild pitch, and then another, bouncing one off the dirt and into the head of the catcher, allowing two runs to score. 5-3 now, Cubs leading.

This is the first time I turned off the television in a rage. But silently.

Whatever, right? Back and forth until the 8th inning with the Cubs now ahead 6-4. The Cubs' fireballing but overtaxed closer---also a hard-to-root-for-charges-against-dropped kind of guy---Aroldis Chapman serves up a two-run homer to soft-hitting center-fielder Rajai Davis: Tie game.

Crowd totally goes apeshit. I shake my head as Corrie emerges from the bedroom. The Boy is down, but still the TV is muted. "It's karma. You can't root for Chapman," I tell her.

No score after the top and then bottom of the 9th, which Chapman pitches. I thought he was going to lose the whole season right then, obviously out of gas. This guy throws 102 regularly, but in those moments looked like toast.

THEN A RAIN DELAY!

Holy shit, the tension! A full season, a full World Series---seven games!---and now extra innings, and now a fifteen minute rain delay! (It was seventeen minutes.)

When play resumes the Cubs just keep coming. They scored two hard fought runs, taking an 8-6 lead. In the bottom of the 10th, the Indians scored a run and got another guy on base. The score was 8-7. with the season-winning run at the plate. The hitter was a defensive replacement from earlier and was getting his first at-bat of the game.

He chopped a ball to third-basemen Kris Bryant, who looked misty-eyed as he fielded it, throwing the runner out easily.

Game over, World Series over, longest drought in professional sports...over.

So...there was game 7 in 2001, when the D-Backs beat Big Mo and the Yankees, and Jack Morris pitching 10 innings in game 7 in 1984, and Bill Mazeroski beating the Yankees in game 7 in 1960 with a walk-off homer---all fantastic and classic WS Game 7s.

But these stakes? These teams? These starved baseball franchises? A game that was heart-attack-inducing every five minutes?

Has any game ever been better?

Three Sightings

1

Finally Some Weather

Normally down here in the Southland we get "nice weather." This is usually defined as sunny days and warmth. 300+ days a year of both, which spoils us.

Corrie mentioned to one of her mommy-group pals about this winter heading to the surrounding mountains to "go to the snow." This friend is from Chicago and shook her head: "Such a California thing to say."

It is "such a California thing to say" if your frame of reference is the Los Angeles region, as the majority of the state doesn't share in the mild weather patterns. Mostly.

But today the sky betrayed some "weather", and I took a picture on the walk home from seeing friends at breakfast:

See! Clouds!

It even rained! The duration was only long enough to cover the sidewalk with a damp appearance, but it may have been months since such a thing happened.

2

Working on  a Saturday

Yesterday I looked out our window while holding the Boy and caught a glimpse of someone hard at work:

You may be able to see him just right of center. 

Corrie asked if I was gathering evidence for an OSHA report. Maybe his safety harness is invisible...

3

What is this "dab" you speak of?

We had the Boy's four month appointment at his pediatrician last week and on the walk home, there was something set up on the sidewalk.

We came to it from the back, but it looked like a haz-mat suit set up to resemble some scary Halloween decoration. As we passed, though, this is what it was:

I laughed and took a picture, telling Corrie and Cass, "My kids always ask me to dab, and I always refuse. This photo will haf'ta suffice."

"What the hell is 'dab'?" Corrie asked. My mom said the same thing.

I tried to explain, sounding as white as possible in the process: "It's like a cross between a dance move and a celebratory gesture. Popularized by Cam Newton, it looks just like this cement mixer sales-mannequin."

What Have You Done for the Cause Today?

"What have you done for the cause today?"

That was a question asked by my late grandfather, Thomas Caswell Schumacher II, of his first grade son---Tom, III---back in the mid sixties. This was the Hubert Humphrey-boosting, Kennedy-voting, young father of three that is spoken about in gentle tones, albeit rarely.

Obviously this is not the man I knew, and the idea that the man I knew only as Grandpa Tom was a Democrat is any sense at any time is, eh, anachronistic.

This father of two girls and a boy is the same guy who grew up in the Los Angeles area, and who once took his son out on a dirt-bike ride, only to get sideswiped by a drunk driver, landing both he and his boy in the hospital. According to my uncle: to my grandfather the dirt-bike ride sounded like a good time, and he never thought anything bad would happen.

That optimism was reshaped as the years went by.

As a young man, fresh out of high school, my Grandpa was handsome and fresh-faced, jumping at the chance to enlist in the military and join the war effort:

He hit boot-camp within a fortnight of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and spent his wartime service in San Diego.

He met my grandmother, Mary, at College of the Pacific in Stockton, now known as University of the Pacific. They had their three kids---my mom, auntie, and uncle---but eventually they divorced. Grandpa Tom soon made his relationship with his new dame Lorraine official, and I've only known her as Grandma Lorraine.

The first time I met him may have looked like this---me with both of my grandfathers:

My paternal grandfather served as a meteorologist in Cairo during the War, and then returned home to start a huge brood in upstate New York and work in the airline industry, devising the logistics of commercial air-flight travel.

Grandpa Tom worked as the boss of the CTA, the California Trucking Association. The group formed, I heard later, as a way to help keep trucking companies in business after deregulation. Many people credit him with helping keep California's heartbeat of commerce flowing up and down the state's interior in the rough and scary years after dereg.

Many people remember him fondly, remember him as a titan of industry, remember him as a political junkie and lover of conversation, or maybe even as a bully.

This is how I remember him, at the house in Cameron Park, playing with my brother:

Or taking us on our first fishing trip:

Now, the figure of "Grandpa Tom" loomed far larger in my childhood than the hulking man himself, which is nearly hard to believe. The 6'5" man was the biggest person I ever knew up close, and one of the first names my young brain ascribed to someone was "Big Man"---what I called Grandpa Tom.

I actually remember the point where I stopped using Big Man and started using "Grandpa Tom." (I had three names that I remember all changing around the same time: Big Ma became Grandma (my maternal grandmother), Big Man became Grandpa Tom, and Big Man-Ma became Grandma Lorraine.)

But the figure---the character---loomed like a volcano over the family. Generous and gregarious with his employees, his family felt the slight that comes with the absence of that same compassion. For reasons best left explained by psychoanalysis, the fallout caused by the divorce and his political shift from "the Cause" to the right to the far-right augured and strengthened the estrangement that lead to the stories I grew up with.

Stories my cousins and I almost never encountered in our lives.

In the last few years Corrie and I would visit, and besides the occasional political baiting (which I never took), Grandpa Tom was nothing but happy and loving. Maybe the end was closer in his field of vision, but still.

When I was fucking up at college, he drove down from Cameron Park to lecture me on decision making. I knew he never approved of my long hair or recreational habits, but I did get the sense he respected my intellect and curiosity.

I often joke that both myself and my cousin were being groomed for politics, and the beef with Grandpa Tom was because I was jeopardizing my position in that. Having been paying attention to politics for as long as I have, I'm confident nothing has been jeopardized.

And I feel that my inclination towards public service in the political sphere, whether seriously or as a larf, could never have been possible without having the figure of Grandpa Tom---a career lobbyist---in my life.

And I feel that if that's the direction towards which either my cousin or I gravitate in the future, my late grandfather would be pleased as punch.

Definitions of Family

During Grandpa Tom's memorial dinner after the service there were conversations concerning Grandma Lorraine. She is not out biological grandmother, but the loss of her husband for forty years doesn't negate her connection to our family.

She was never anything but wonderful to me, at least to my face, always treating me as a grandson. There are things we don't agree on politically, but I'm under forty and she's over ninety, and that's to be assumed.

But I was happy to have her meet and hold Cassius, and happy to have this picture my mother took: Cass and his Great-grandma Lorraine.

Mr grandfather passed away over this summer. He was the middle of three kids and outlived both his siblings. His nephew had a son and named him Tom---technically Tom IV. At that memorial dinner, T3 and T4 (as they called each other) were having a grand time.

T4 is the young man in the white-striped front and center in the picture below. Grandpa Tom's only biological great-grandson, Cassius, peeks out from behind T4's shoulder:

What have I done for the cause today?

I'm doing my best to steer the lives of hundreds of young people everyday, to model the necessary respectful attitudes towards women our society needs moving forward, and to spread the knowledge of systemic oppression existent in the world today. It is a difficult and necessary job, and it's one aspect of my adventure.

I live on the front edge of that cause, and can say that I have a constructive answer to that question. I'm doing my best to do the best, and it makes me happy. I think that's all my Grandpa Tom would have wanted.

Pumpkin Patches: Citified and Authentic

I'm often asked what I did over the weekend. This week the answer resembles a Steve Harvey bit: I did white-people things and had a "wonderful weekend."

Earlier this week we took the Boy to his first "pumpkin patch." There were a few rides like at a midway at a carnival, but of course a four-month-old can't do anything like that. A mostly empty corner on the outskirts of town is taken over by the seasonal carny-folk and a pumpkin patch market is born. There are gourds of all kinds on the offer, and of all sizes. Even some games-of-chance and aforementioned rides.

But mostly, if you have young children and live in Long Beach, you bring them to this place for some "authentic autumn-ing", to choose some pumpkins, and to take these kinds of pictures:

I guess the odor of hay is supposed to make it easy to pretend you don't live in the city.

After not too long, the photos get here, right before the manifestation of "losing his shit" occurs:

A few days later, on the weekend, we decided to go do white people stuff: we would drive off into the mountains and go "appling"---pick apples at an orchard. Since our destination, Riley Farms, also had pumpkins, we could check out a real pumpkin patch.

We didn't leave when we really wanted to, so the last forty minutes of the trip was the mile-and-a-half stretch of Oak Hills Rd outside of Yukaipa leading to the place. I spent the entire time in first gear.

Like the city pumpkin patch in Long Beach, apparently, the thing to do with young children is to take them to one. But here it was the real deal, and there were thousands of mostly affluent, mostly white families swarming the place.

It also looked like the place to go to court your sweetie if neither of you drink.

Anyway, we took a hay ride to the top-side glen---the pippin apple section. Down below was the sweeter offers, the "Rome beauties". We stuck to the more tart favorite of Washington, the hearty pippin:

From our perch up at the pippins, we could see the pumpkins off in the distance. We finished filling out paper bag for the u-pick, paid our nearly twenty-five bucks (!!!) for the pleasure, and headed down:

We picked two pumpkins, took the Boy to meet the sheep at the petting zoo (where Corrie got sneezed on in rather gross fashion by a sheep), were told the wait for a two-top at the 18th century diner would be two and a half hours (when told this I smiled and said, "Well, good for you guys."), and hung out in the shade of a tree to change a diaper and rest. Throughout nearly every one of those activities, Cass was either asleep, staring at his fist, or chewing on his fist.

Kids...am I right?

This was our first non-family/funeral outing, where Corrie wore the Boy all day and I carried everything else: the diaper bag, the bag of apples, the bag with our two pumpkins, and the expensive camera I bought Corrie a few years ago.

What is fatherhood? Being leaden down with a ton of shit and constantly bending over to pick up the HST hat that kept falling into the dust. I kid, of course, but only a little.

I also wouldn't change any of it.

My two favorite people:

Long Beach Disguised as Our Memories

Today is Yom Kippur, and in the Southland public institutions have a day off. Pretty cool.

That made it possible for Corrie to reschedule the Boy's 4-month pediatrician appointment to today so I could be there. Corrie likes for me to be the Boy's rock when he's getting his shots---one of the few things she doesn't do well with.

The pediatrician's office is just down one of our main connecting thoroughfares, Atlantic. There is a tall building that houses many medical offices, clinics, and pharmacies on Atlantic between 10th and 11th, and we essentially live at 3rd and Atlantic, so we walk to the pediatrician as often as possible.

The pediatrician's is on the sixth floor, and today was the first time we got a room with a window. I had a flashback the moment we entered:

It may be an innocuous thing, and for people living in suburbs or rural areas, the sight of another high-rise filling up the view of a window may be a sight rarely seen. For me and for Corrie, it brought us back to every interview we had in Manhattan, every conversation we had with our wedding photographer, every late evening office gala Marc and Linda took us to...

"My goodness..." I found myself saying out loud. After Cass had his shots, got his screaming out of the way and was busy with the boob and chilling out before the walk home, I looked closely out the left side of the window in the picture above and took the next picture, something that could easily be mistaken for another Manhattan shot:

It's nice because the bottom isn't the ground, it's roof of a lower section of a connecting building.Off in the distance is one of the few other buildings in our neighborhood in the eight- to twelve-story.

The gray day this time of year, the "landscape"...it's almost as if Long Beach secretly celebrated Halloween with only us a few weeks early.

Four Months Today

I've been meaning to get to a discussion of the Big Fish:

Today marks the Boy's four-month-birthing day. Check the photo evidence:

Four generations in two photos...

Weekend Shenanigans in Our 'Hood

Our neighborhood parking situation has recently reached the level best described as "fiasco" under normal circumstances. This weekend, apparently, we're hosting a huge music festival: Music Tastes Good.

I guess nobody asked us residences about taking up three-quarters of the parking spots for the entire weekend.

On the left in the picture below is our grocery store. It looks like nearly half-a-mile of Broadway is shut down to traffic:

One block north is our street, 3rd, and here you can see they've cut off left turns. You can still park on our street.

I can say that living at a place where people congregate for events is pretty cool. Sometimes these visitations royally screw over us peons, and the annoying thing is that no one really gives a shit. The city looks good; local businesses have a nice weekend; and so what if the working class residences can't put their car anyplace...

At least the sound coming from down the street is loud music and cheering, which does beat the loud and egregious whines of the Formula 1 cars during the Grand Prix every April. The Grand Prix, though, mostly doesn't ruin parking from Friday to Sunday...

JonBonet Ramsey Television Special

The dad's name is Jon Bennett Ramsey and he named his daughter "JonBenet?" And it's pronounced ""zhoun-buh-NAY"?

Norm was more knowledgeable on the players in this scandal back when it was unfolding on television live. The information above was about all I knew, and I did pretty well ignoring it all.

There was the very recent, two episode special on primetime. It was two episodes, right? From the thirty or so awkward minutes of the second episode I saw, I found myself confused. What was so difficult back in 1996 or whenever it was? This was a "Bones" episode, or any other number of police procedural.

This girl's older brother bashed her head in and the family covered it up. That's what the evidence they discussed in my abbreviated viewing said.

Of course I'm not an investigator or police detective. And, in a specific sense, I'm of one type of scientific disposition. I'm the type of scientist that will, when seeing a monkey elegantly and casually do an action, make note of it. When, in very quick succession, I see the monkey do the same elegant and casual action as part of their daily business, I then assume that this action is part of their normal routine, and try to envision the previous actions that lead to its development.

A different kind of scientific disposition would never make the intellectual leap from brief (even if repeated) witnessing of an event to that being a regular thing.

So when someone like me watches the interview with the older brother in the first days after the murder, it's striking how he responds to the various details. That footage is pretty wild, and I never knew it existed.

I also didn't know that the grand jury (whose records are usually to be sealed) recommended to indict both the father and mother for conspiracy to cover up, but not to indict either for murder. Well. It sounded like they had the evidence and pieces they needed to make their recommendation.

And while there is no statute of limitations on murder charges, there are Colorado laws regarding how young a person can be and be charged with felonious decision making: ten years old and up. The boy was only nine at the time, so even now he can't be charged.

But he sure is raising a stink about the specials. It sounds like he's planning on suing whatever channel upon which it aired.

Spa Day for the One with the Easy Job

At one of our baby showers a gift was bestowed upon us: a gift certificate for a Burke Williams day spa. The fact that I routinely mislabeled it as "Burke Sonoma" or "Williams & Burke" should shed light on the fact that I'm not a typical spa-going person.

I work.

I get up early and leave for work before 7 am. I'm home usually by 4 pm, when I take the Boy and spell Corrie for a few hours. Afterwards we switch again and I make dinner, then we eat, then I do the dishes, shave, and head to bed. And I consider myself and those days as "having the easy job."

Corrie spends all day with the boy, making sure he flourishes. It's her who wakes up at 3 am to soothe and nurse; it's her who spends sleepy mornings watching him smile---and nothing else, and it's her who gets only a few hours a day to keep her business afloat.

It was this confluence of forces that caused me surprise when she said that I should take the gift certificate and have a "spa day"...or maybe just get a massage.

I'm a regular person. I may travel to remote Earthly outposts and have legitimate literary aspirations and know my way around a kitchen more than most American men, but I work for a living. I don't lounge away the days at the spa or out golfing. (I do like to golf, though.)

Corrie set the whole thing up, which was both nice and necessary, as I lag at the best of times. It was to be a fifty minute massage, and, because the massage was north of a cost threshold, I would be able to use the facilities for the day.

After changing into a robe and their (sorta gross) little everyman-sandals, I headed down to the waiting/mustering area, trying to make sure my robe didn't flop open flashing the "kept" women also spending a Friday afternoon at the spa. (Thanks for the long weekend, public institution!)

They had tea on the offer. I would have preferred coffee, but that doesn't yield calm clients. I sat with the tea and read an article about the 50th anniversary of "Revolver" and how it was the Beatles first LSD album. The article talked about how John and George were spiked unknowingly for their first trip, and went on into details about how they got the other boys into the fold, and how it began to alter their music---I was enthralled. Which meant that they had to come for me.

I didn't get to finish the article. I'm sure I could find it...

The massage was nice, but seemed like it was over fast. It was a deep tissue Swedish deal. Maybe I didn't drink enough water afterwards, because my shoulder was killing me for the better part of a week, just returning to its normal tense recently.

From there I decided to take advantage of "the facilities." That meant either the steam room, the sauna, the jet pool/hot tub, and probably some other rooms I decided I didn't need to know about.

The sauna was very nice and very hot, even as it cooled down to the upper 160s as I kept opening the door, coming and going. At this point it was just me and I felt like ruining that robe. I spent a few minutes in the jets of the hot tub, in between stints in the sauna and steam room.

The sauna was super dry. I guess that afternoon was when I learned the difference between the sauna and the sphitz: the sauna is the hot-as-balls room with the wooden benching where you sit and sweat, but it's a dry heat. It was making me sleepy, and that was on the wall as a serious thing to pay attention to. The sphitz is the steam room, so foggy and humid visibility is barley feet, and inches when the steam valve does its emitting. It's very hot as well, but probably only in the 140s to 150s.

I turns out I like the steam room better. It got to the point where I felt like a space traveler on a new planet, one who's atmosphere is so dense and humid and hot that humans can survive without the helmet, but maybe for only a bit of time. Is this what a hot, humid, steam planet might be like?

Pretty soon I showered and rinsed the oils and sweat off my body and headed home.

I'd rather hold my kid any day, at least while I still can.

Saturday Red Box Night

For the first time since the Boy arrived Corrie brought home two Red Box movies for us to watch on a Saturday night. It was a regular "date night."

We've been trying to get to the cinema house for a while as the summer finishes up, but haven't made it yet. Red Box is as close as we've come.

Anyway, the two movies were "Zootopia" and "Deadpool." Fully enjoyable pair, it turns out. Not that I expected anything different.

I had heard very good things about Disney's "Zootopia" but had kept my expectations low. I had heard rather extravagant things about Pixar's "Inside Out" which had perked my attention, but after finishing it and having a long conversation with Corrie about it, our disappointment solidified. That movie seemed to be for parents of teenagers who want colorful ways to relate to those kids. In any case, Joy isn't the first feeling infants have---they take months to learn to smile.

Back to "Zootopia": any animated film that teaches kids that they can be anything with perseverance is a) a good thing; and b) rather unoriginal. What was pretty original and novel was the lesson that there is immense power in lies and pandering to people's fear.

Teaching kids what "using fear in a political way to consolidate power" looks like is always a good thing. Plus the way they broke the four sectors of Zootopia up I found more exciting than the way "Inside Out" broke up the realms of the human brain/psyche. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the movie.

Then we watched "Deadpool".

I had had a post/comment-section conversation with Norm about the character Deadpool and his appeal and my not-understanding it.

I understand it now, of course.

The commercials made me want to see it---it looked cheeky in a way that had potential to be funny instead of annoying. Also, I like Ryan Reynolds.

Anyway, I wanted to go off on how much fun this movie was, how the action and storytelling and characters all hit the perfect notes, but I'm tired, and I kinda just said all I wanted too in far less words than I originally planned.

If you like R-rated comedies full of action and revenge and haven't seen "Deadpool", do yourself a favor and get to a Red Box this weekend.

Bolt and Biles, Phelps and Federer

(Full Title:)

Bolt and Biles, Phelps and Federer

Or,

On the Casual Use of the Phrase "Greatest Ever"

My dad was out visiting a few weeks back and he and I share a deep love of a few things: the Simpsons, the Yankees, and literature. Our conversations, when they aren't rollicking laugh-filled Simpson quote-tennis or State of the Yankee time-spenders, tend to meander to "Have you heard of this writer?" or "Do you prefer Gould's Book of Fish or Narrow Road to the Deep North?"

He was out to see our Long Beezy place and meet the Boy.

Anyway, one of our conversations started with him saying an awesome and blasphemous-for-baseball-fans sentence, one that fully got my attention: "I would need to see a pretty serious argument that Derek Jeter isn't the greatest shortstop ever."

Say wha?? Okay, I'm listening: "Okay, so, I get the complaints about defense," he says, "but the defects late in his career weren't so bad, and were, frankly, blown out of proportion. They didn't lose a bunch of games because of his defense. And early in his career, his range never gets the credit it was due."

Okay, I was thinking. Sure. I grew up with Jeter and love hearing anyone, even an inveterate Yankee homer, make a case for Jeet as Best Shortstop Ever. "And Honus, well, what can you say? Besides he mostly played before World War I against only white players who chain smoked cigarettes and worked in warehouses during the off-season. Honus was weight training to stay in shape and these palookas would be on the docks."

That's true. Honus Wagner's performance is so much better than his competition that it is the personification of "outlier." This begs the question: How much of that can be chalked up to his highly strict diet and nutrition, his ahead-of-his-time weight-training in the off-season, and the lack of black and Latin competition?

I have no doubt that Honus Wagner would be a Hall of Famer today, but would his numbers be as many standard deviations ahead of his competition?

My dad and I have been having an ongoing conversation about Jeter versus Cal Ripken Jr for the last few years, and have settled on the following position: Ripken is ahead in HR and RBI and that's it. Jeter is ahead everywhere else.

So my dad's point was really Jeter vs Wagner and Jeter vs Ripken. Having already settled the Jeet vs Ripken debate for ourselves, he'd focused on Wagner. "There aren't any tapes or stats to show Honus' range, or anything about his defense. And how many rings did he win in Louisville or Pittsburgh? Just 1, in his age 35 season."

I looked it up. He had a pretty good year. Led the league with .339 average in 137 games. It was his first championship.

In 2009, Derek Jeter's age 35 season, he too won a championship, only this was his fifth, in a season when he had 212 hits in 153 games with an average of .334.

In what is one of the most important positions in the game of baseball (shortstop), the premier team for visibility had a shortstop who spent 20 seasons in the spotlight, created zero controversies, led the team to five World Series victories, and ended up 6th all-time with 3465 career hits (45 more than Honus' 3420 total).

Why not just recognize him as the best ever?

And that got me thinking about the current times and talks about the Best Ever.

Either we live in a wondrous time, a golden era if you will, for witnessing some of the most amazing feats ever by athletes, or...or...drugs?

Usain Bolt has overtaken the mantle of World's Most Historically Important Jamaican from Bob Marley, or at least that conversation has started, which blows the mind. 

Usain's Olympic line: games in 2008, 2012, and 2016: 9 events---9 gold medals; and world records in all three separate events, the 100m, the 200m, and the 4x100m relay.

Moving on to gymnastics in both men and women, at this Olympics we have been inundated with "Best Gymnist Ever" talk, with American Simone Biles representing the ladies and Japanese Kohei Uchimura representing the fellas.

At first I thought, Best ever? Really? And then after watching both I thought, Okay, that could be the best ever. 

Phelps...Michael Phelps is a pot-smoking dolphin hybrid. Katy Ledecky is a phenom and on the verge of being considered the next Greatest Swimmer Ever.

How about Roger Federer? Federer is finishing up his career (over the next decade), and has pretty much cemented his legacy as "Best Tennis Player Ever", but Serena Williams may have a word about that.

Mike Trout playing center field down in Anaheim? We live in a world where we get to see Mike Trout play baseball all the time? Tom Brady behind center in Foxboro?

Too bad Tiger Woods melted down so badly over the last seven years...

Will anyone ever be as fast as Usain Bolt? Will anyone ever win as many Olympic gold medals as Mike Phelps? Will anyone ever be better at tennis than Roger or Serena? Is there another set of Simone and Kohei out there? Could Mike Trout be the best ballplayer ever? Is Tom Brady better than everyone at QB?

Weren't we saying the exact same thing about Lance Armstrong?

To answer: no; no; maybe in 50 years; doubtful; sure; likely; we sure were.

We live in an era when either the use of Best Ever is either casually thrown around because of lack of memory, or because it is warranted. 

Back to Jeter and a few of my own thoughts: how many key playoff games were lost because of a Jeter error? ZERO. And if there had been one, us fans would all have the same reaction: bummer. We'll get them next time. How many other players have been a part of so many memorable plays in a storied career? The Maier homer, the Flip Play against Ryan's A's, the walk-off in his last Bronx at-bat...

I'm also working on a Bolt centered piece. After long conversations back in 2008 with my Jamaican coworker (and now executive chef of the restaurant where we both worked) Denton, Usain Bolt became an athletic hero of mine (an for large swaths of the world) and I've gleefully watched him kick ass since then.

And, for what it's worth, both my father and I feel that Narrow Road to the Deep North could be the more accomplished novel, but we both prefer Gould's Book of Fish.