THE
BEST JOB IN THE WORLD, THE BEST DAUGHTER IN THE WORLD, AND THE BEST WIFE IN THE
WORLD
So I'm sitting here in the Atlanta Braves press box as I type, getting paid to
watch a ballgame. Soft breeze coming in from right. Braves and the Orioles in
the top of the second; Slammin' Sammy Sosa at the plate. I am deep, deep in the
midst of one of those hellish pre-vacation deadline sprints that wears me out
so badly it takes two days of vacation just to decompress from getting ready
for vacation.
It's been a strange few days. Just this morning, all four of us were up
pre-dawn to get daughter Riley down to the countywide swim meet at Georgia
Tech's swimming facility. Built for the '96 Olympics, it's a hell of a fine
athletic center, and damn, son, was I proud to see my little girl swimming
there. Of course, she didn't exactly set the water on fire, but she didn't
embarrass herself either. Placed fourth in freestyle--first place was only half
a second ahead of her, dammit--and fifth in backstroke, half a length behind
the leaders. Picture to come soon.
But that's not the big event of recent days. Annie and I just celebrated our
tenth anniversary, and brother, we did it up in style, up in Cape Cod. Annie
had a deposition to conduct in Hyannis on Thursday afternoon, so I jumped a
plane up to Boston and drove down to The Cape. It was a mad rush getting out of
town--I cranked out a first-person piece on stay-at-home dads for Atlanta
magazine, a feature on the new Hoop Dreams DVD for the Chicago Sports review, a
proposal for a revamping of my environmental newsletter, and a spec snippet of
an article that is so damn cool I don't want to jinx it by talking about it
yet. Suffice it to say--I'll be watching more Tom Cruise movies than any man should
over the next couple of days, but if this article--for a BIG publication--comes
through, it will be absolutely worth it.
Anyway. Logan Airport is quite possibly the worst major transportation hub I've
ever seen in my life. Dump on plasticine Atlanta all you like, but man, at
least there's some kind of organization to the monstrous airport. You know your
ABCs, you can find your way around Hartsfield-Jackson. Logan is a rat's nest of
tunnels, fire doors, and horribly overpriced Hudson News stands. Thursday
evening, I navigated the spaghetti-strand configuration to locate my rental
car--picked up a Chrysler Sebring convertible--and split the city of Boston
cranking the new White Stripes to ear-bleeding volumes.
Annie was staying at the lovely Inn at Cape Cod, and she got all woogly
when I showed up shaven, dudded up all purty, and driving a fancy-dan
convertible. We dined at the astonishingly good restaurant Abbici
(our table was the one in the second picture, front left); I had a Kobe beef
steak so good I swear I might kill to get another one. We went back to the room
and while Annie was doing whatever women do for so long in the bathroom, I
watched the tail end of the Spurs' Game 7 win. (Sorry, hon, but it WAS Game 7.)
The next day, our actual tenth anniversary, we forgot we were parents and
cruised around Cape Cod, top down, a little Lyle Lovett on the radio. We
wandered the streets of Chatham and walked out on the so-called beach.
Northerners have no clue what a REAL beach is--since the water's somewhere
around sixty degrees, these folks may as well be laying out a towel in a dirty
parking lot.
Out on the sands, far from everything and everyone we knew, I did what I'd done
twelve-plus years ago--got down on one knee and proposed again. And this time,
I made sure to ask only for a ten-year option, but Annie declined to let me out
that easily. Arm in arm, we walked back into Chatham, had a damn fine lunch at
local institution The
Squire, then began the drive back to Boston.
Not much else to tell after that, except we got back home, the kids were gacked
to see us, and Annie presented me with my gift--a first Book-of-the-Month-Club
edition of The Catcher in the Rye that looks a lot like this book right here. It's a gorgeous
artifact--I'll go into detail more about this some other time, but Catcher is
hands-down my favorite book ever. Yes, I know that's like saying the Beatles is
your favorite band, but this is the book that convinced me I could be a writer.
Hell, I reread the opening lines and realized Salinger ought to sue my ass for
grand theft literary style.
So that's where we are now (and in the game, we're now in the bottom of the
third, still no score). Wednesday we leave for Destin, Florida, but before that
I've got half a dozen articles and projects to get out the door, including the
super-secret-I'll-tell-you-if-you-ask one. Coming Tuesday, it's another GONE
YARD, this one detailing the All-Star picks my daughter and son make. Should be
fun. See you then.
GONE
YARD: THE WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDA GRADES
New GONE YARD up at the Chicago Sports Review this week, breaking down next
week's NBA Draft team-by-team--who always wins in these things, and who always
screws up? Find out by clicking here.
THE
CREEPIEST KIDS' SHOW EVER
After a couple decades out of the loop, I'm back to watching kids' TV shows
now--mainly because I spend the first hour or so of each morning waking up,
checking email, and scarfing down a bowl of cereal as the kids veg out in front
of the ol' glass teat. Some of the shows are quite good--Fairly Oddparents
(about a kid with two fairy godparents) is a smorgasbord of smart pop-culture
references that go right over my kids' heads; Spongebob is great goofy fun; and
Kids Next Door is a bizarre cross between Little Rascals and Mission:
Impossible. Can't say I'd tune in to any of them on my own, but they're worth
watching if the little demons are in the room.
Children's TV has always had its disturbing elements--cartoon characters who
crave sugary cereal like meth addicts; grown men who prance about and sing
songs apropos of nothing; tv shows that reinforce the joy of conformity and
doing what you're told (Thomas the Tank Engine comes to mind); crime-solving
teens who battle evil every week without ever once ending up like that Aruba
girl.
But I've just seen the hands-down creepiest TV show ever. In the late 1970s,
Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori posited the idea of the "Uncanny
Valley," which holds that we don't mind how much robots look
like us...up to a point, at which they totally creep us out. And the show
"Jay Jay the Jet Plane" falls straight into that valley. Click here
and you can get an idea of what these sick little planes look like...but you
won't get the full experience until you actually watch them talking; their
cheeks, eyebrows, filtrums (the cleft between the nose and lips)--all work
exactly like real people, except THESE ARE DECAPITATED HEADS STUCK ON THE FRONT
OF PLANES! It's worth TiVoing from your local PBS station just to see it--but
I'd recommend avoiding any pharmaceutical enhancements while you do so.
Jay Jay the Jet Plane--can't fault the name; message seems to be okay. But
disembodied faces on the front of airplanes...eep. When my kids are in therapy,
Jay Jay, I'm gunning for your freak-ass fuselage.
GONE
YARD: ANTIDISESTABLISMENTARIANISM, BABY!
New GONE YARD is up now, focusing on the varying degrees of fame of Mike Tyson
and Manu Ginobili. And if you don't know Manu, well, you kinda proved my point.
Check it out by clicking here.
And I can't do any more than tease it right now, but I'm sitting on some
potentially HUGE news. Big ol'
call-me-now-'cause-I-won't-be-taking-your-calls-soon news. May be nothing, may
be the biggest thing I've ever done. We shall see...
BUT
WAS THE CAN OPEN?
Further proof that even when you're dead, life'll still screw ya:
Synagogue sued over missing ashes
Potato-chip can found in place of woman's remains in mausoleum
By ROMA KHANNA
Houston Chronicle
When relatives of Vivian Shulman Lieberman went to visit her final resting
place in a Houston mausoleum one year ago today, they discovered that the cedar
chest containing her ashes was missing. In its place, behind the locked, glass
door of Lieberman's niche in Congregation Beth Israel's mausoleum, was a can of
sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. The ashes are still missing, says Philip
Hilder, an attorney for Lieberman's two daughters...Marcelle Lieberman says she
visited the niche that July and her sister visited in fall 2003. The daughters
say they returned to the mausoleum together on June 10, 2004, their father's
birthday, and discovered the potato chip can in their mother's niche. A
locksmith opened the niche and Houston police took custody of the can, which
still contained potato chips. "To their added horror," the lawsuit
states, "Harriet and Marcelle learned that the ... can had been visible in
the niche for at least six months."
NEW
GONE YARD: HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON'T GO AWAY?
Latest column is up, launching off the Jerry Rice farewell tour--I select a few
figures who've long overstayed their welcome. (Sports only, so Drew Barrymore,
Howard Stern, and Metallica don't count...this time.) Click
here and enjoy.
JUMP
THIS, SHARK: THE STORY OF THE HAMSTER STORY
I was hanging with my buddy Rich today, and conversation turned to
violence against household pets.
Bear with me here...I promise you that this is not a setup to me becoming a
serial killer.
Not me, anyway.
I was the oldest of five--four boys and one adorable little girl, the youngest
of the lot. You put two boys together, there's trouble. You put three together,
there's constant warfare. You put four together, and some Geneva Convention
accords are going to get violated.
We belted each other within inches of our lives; one of my brothers kicked out
one of my teeth and hit me in the face with a wrench--not at the same
time--among many other incidents. And when we didn't feel like beating on each
other, we looked to other targets. We never got to
crucifying-the-cat-on-the-barn-door levels; we just used to do minor harm. We'd
play Grenade--take magnolia buds, which look like grenades, and loft them at
the dog across the street. We'd test the theory of cats always landing on their
feet (as long as they've got room to turn over, they do--unless you send them
on tail-over-teakettle flips). And we decided to do a centrifuge test on a
hamster in a plastic ball, spinning it as hard as we could and sending it
across the room. (Okay, that one wasn't so minor--the hamster apparently died
of a heart attack soon afterward.)
Man, why am I telling y'all this?
Anyway, the apotheosis of our pet-tormenting came when my little brother Andrew
brought home from school a shoebox full of baby hamsters. Seems that his class
hamster had just given birth, and the teacher--foolishly, in
retrospect--trusted that Andrew's house would be a safe haven. So Andrew
brought the box of hamsters in, proud as all hell at his new responsibility. He
sets down the box in our kitchen. We all oohed and aahed over the hairless,
shuteyed little fellas. And then--inexorably, as if in slow motion--my brother
Stephen took hold of both sides of the box. None of us stopped him; none of us
really wanted to. He took the box off the table...
...and tossed the hamsters in the air.
And he actually caught most of them.
I honestly don't remember what happened next, except that we were all laughing
so goddamn hard that blood was coming out our noses. All except Andrew, of
course. Anyway, we told and retold and re-retold that story so many times that
its very name--"The Hamster Story"--came to represent any tale in our
family that had long outlived its prime. Years before "jumping
the shark" came into vogue meaning roughly the same thing, we
were "tossing the hamster"...so to speak.
Please don't hate me for this.
In the latest pimp, an interview I did with Jazma Online is now up; click here for a fine little interview that
includes the rationale behind the violence in SUNDOWN: ARIZONA, plus my recap
of the first story I ever wrote. If I can find it, I'll post it.
More soon!
MORE,
UM, STUFF, AND STUFF
So I spent Memorial Day down at Callaway Gardens, stuffing my face on Three
Little Pigs barbecue; getting lost in a trailer park; gagging on the stink of
feet from the nail salon at the entrance of the Peachtree Mall in lovely Columbus,
Georgia; and helping my folks move into a new place down there. (Best moment of
the weekend: the look on my dad's face when the clerk at Best Buy hit him with
the barrage of inane offers: "Are you a member of our Rewards Program? Do
you want to be? Do you want to save 10 percent on your purchases? Do you want a
subscription to Entertainment Weekly? Do you want to buy the extended warranty
with that?" "That" being a ten-dollar remote control--the
two-year warranty was six bucks, though as the cashier helpfully pointed out,
"there's no tax on that!")
So as a result, I kind of punted on this week's GONE YARD (click the link
above), rounding up the fantasy sports games that my brothers, dad, and I play
to keep us at each other's throats.
Also new is a SUNDOWN: ARIZONA interview at Nyxx Underground, another comics website.
Check it out.