Gus: It’s a throwaway, Billy. It means nothing.
Billy: Not to the Red Sox.

–”For the Love of the Game”

This is the first of a series of blogs about the wonderful end to this years MLB season, and the subsequent postseason.  You have been duly warned

Baseball had a whirlwind end to the 2011 season… as exciting and finger-nail destroying as I’ve seen in years.  I could go into all the details of what happened that final day, but if you love baseball, you know what happened.  The disastrous collapse of the Red Sox and the Braves.  The incredible comeback of the need-a-defibrillator Cardinals.  That crazy, had-to-stay-up-to-wee-hours to see it all wrap up finish.  But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The quote above is from the Kevin Costner movie “For the Love of the Game”.  Costner plays Billy, a pitcher at the tail end of his career.  At the beginning of the movie he is warming up and the pitching coach tells him he shouldn’t be pitching with his nagging injury, since the game means nothing.  Costner looks at him with that clear-eyed steely gaze he does so well, and says “Not to the Red Sox.”  The message is clear… he owes his best against this team, because the Red Sox are battling them for something important.  He will bring his “A” game because it honors the game and the teams who do have something to play for, something to gain.

That was a movie.  Over the last week of the 2011 baseball season, we saw it in real life.

In the last few days, all the division winners were locked up.  The only thing in play for them was who ended up with better records for home-field advantage.  The wild card races were where it was at, and none of them were playing each other.  All of these exciting games as baseball steamed to the marathon finish line were played against opponents that no reason to play hard…  other than to honor the game.  Because it meant something to the Cardinals for the Phillies to play Atlanta hard;  it meant something to Tampa Bay for the Orioles to bring it in their final series.

And all of these teams stepped up.  Philadelphia could have eased up in preparation for the playoffs, but they played hard… played strong defense, and hustled on on offense.  The Orioles, one of baseball’s worst teams in 2011, played Boston like they themselves had a chance to nick a wild-card spot.

And it made a difference.  A big difference.  And for us lucky fans who were watching, we got to see a honest-to-goodness, real-life “For the Love of the Game”

Suddenly, on the other side of the park, a horde of kids comes running over the crest, bellowing at the top of their lungs.  I’m talking at least 25-30 young boys and girls.  They are all wearing bandanas tied around their foreheads, and ragged strips of cloth hanging from their clothes.  At first glance it reminds one of a vignette from “Lord of the Flies”… or even “Braveheart”.  I half expect a pint-size William Wallace to appear at the top of the grassy knoll, raise a Nerf sword above his head and scream “Freeeeeedooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm!”

And, lest you think my overactive imagination is the only force at work here…. rest assured that I’m not the only one.  This scene was so surreal and displaced that everyone in the park stopped what they were doing and just stared.  The GK coach, Matthew, the kids and the YUMs (Young Urbanite Moms) in the playground area.  Everyone one looked and stared and wondered.  So this is not just me

Finally, the tail end of the Mongol onslaught included some adults, who negotiated grassy space with the coach and setup the flag football game that was to celebrate some young man’s birthday.  Pictures were taken by the fountain pool, and the game of fútbol Americano con banderas commenced…. and all was explained.

Bandanas on the forehead, marking two teams– red and blue.  The strips of cloth, upon closer inspection, were flag football attachments.  The Scottish Clan fervor provided by birthday sugar ingestion.

But, deep down….  I like my version better.

If you don’t have kids, but are part of the human race… you need to read it.  Does that pretty much cover it?  Are we clear on this point now?

The book is “Th1rteen R3asons Why”, by Jay Asher.  You will find it in the Young Adult section.  Oh, and BTW, the New York Times Bestseller List.  I came upon this book because of a review I read in one of my magazines.  And so I added it to my library ‘reading list’, and picked it up one day while my boys were running around getting Hardy Boys books….

Fair warning:  this book is very disturbing.  Unsettling, I-have-to-put-this-aside-because-I’m-having-a-down-day-myself disturbing.  And yet its power and engagement comes from just how disturbing and unfortunately realistic it is.

Mr. Asher tackles one of the most prevalent blights on our modern society in this novel– teen suicide.  Set in a fictional town, a young man receives a series of cassette tapes in an anonymous package.  The tapes turn out to from a fellow high-school student who committed suicide a few weeks before, and the tapes serve as the novel’s plot engine and an audio diary of a troubled young girl and the myriad events and people in her life who play a part in this drama de la muerte.

The author does a masterful job of creating a realistic scenario of this tragic teenage life.  This story could be set in any town, at any public high school.  And if you think these things don’t happen in your local school… I can only say “OPEN YOUR EYES!”.  Yes, these things are happening.  And too many of us make the same errors you will read about in these pages….. we close our eyes.  We avert our eyes.   We don’t get involved.  We blow things off.  We stand by and let evil happen.  And evil flourishes when we do….

Read this book.  Have your kids read this book.  Discuss it with your kids.  Find a way to get them to talk to you.  Find a way to keep them sharing with you all the deepest things in their hearts.  BE the kind of parents they can feel comfortable confiding in, a safe haven they can run to when Life gets like it does.

Teach them that “Everything… affects everything” (p.202).  Every action we do, everything thing we say, every inappropriate joke, every evil act no matter how hidden, every good act omitted, every time we avert our eyes…. we affect everything and everyone.  No one lives in a vacuum.  When you throw the rock in the pond, you make a lot of ripples… far more and further-reaching than you can even  fathom.

Teach them to take care when dealing with other human beings, no matter who they are.   We are all God’s children and should be cherished and treated with care.  Teach to them recognize when others are not doing this, and to stand up and protest.  Teach them to look past the shallow, to squelch the gossip, and to befriend the friendless.

Teach them, in other words, to practice the 2nd of the Greatest Commandments, and then pray fervently that they will have the fortitude to do so in the face of the type of world Jay Asher so brilliantly captures through the eyes of Hannah and Clay.

Want to be haunted this October?  Get a copy of this book and read it cover to cover.  Weep for the depravity of man and for a broken world that will not change until the next age, when a new Kingdom is established.  And then do whatever you can to hold back the tide in your little town, your high school, and the lives around you… lives that you and yours…. affect.

“Everything… affects everything”

• One of my pet peeves (and I know it shouldn’t be) is people who really struggle to work electronic devices in public areas.  For example, I get kind of frustrated at grocery stores when people use the self-checkout, and don’t really know how to… I want to tell them:  ”They have lanes over there… with these people who will check out your groceries.  That’s the ticket for you, trust me”  So, we’re at the Dart train station, and it is taking *forever* to get our day passes from the vending machine because people can’t figure out the instructions.  They kept trying to put their cash in first.  What part of “1.  Select your fare /  2.  Insert your payment” is unclear?
• So, when I finally get up to the machine, I’m getting our tickets, and I here someone behind me say “I’m going to watch this guy… he seems to know how to work this thing”  LOL
• Allison spent most of the train ride turned around in the seat because the backwards-orientation of the train was giving her motion sickness.  Benefit?  I got to see her pretty face the whole way
• There’s a passage in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book “Farmer Boy”, where the dad gives Almanzo a 50-cent piece, but only after explaining how much farming work is represented by that coin; as a result, Almanzo begins to value money better and spends it wisely.  Had a similar incident with Matthew yesterday…  when I told him that the drinks we bought to go with our sack lunch cost $20 in coupons… I thought I was going to have scrape his jaw off the floor.  It was a great teaching moment, and he understood for the first time why we control the spending at the State Fair so rigorously.
• Matthew loves cooking, and wanted to sit through one of the “chef sessions”, so he and I watched Chef Chris Vogelsing from III Forks make Chateaubriand.  Towards the end of these sessions, they bring out little sample plates of the food, one for everyone who is sitting in the roped area.  They also have these mirrors and video screens that show the cooking area from a “top-down” view.  I got tickled at something I noticed:  here we have a chef from one of the top restaurants in Dallas, making a classic French dish… and they are bringing the samples out on a Dickeys BBQ tray.  Only at the State Fair of Texas!
• The Killdares were magnificent, as usual.  Heard two new songs today.  One instrumental and one vocal.  Very nice.
• Took Matthew to the climbing wall in the Jeep section of the auto show.  He asked for the harder path.  It took him less time to climb than it took to fill out the waiver and stand in line.
• Matthew loves Dodge cars… and when he sat in the gray Dodge challenger, I told him one of The Killdares has one just like that.  He thought that was pretty cool….
• Funny thing about my boys:  one likes Ford, one likes Chevy, and the other likes Dodge.  We’ve got the American car scene pretty well covered.
• During the Marine Drum and Bugle Corp performance, we got to see one member receive a promotion to Master Sergeant… that was quite a thrill.  His wife was also honored with flowers from the CO, since they were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary this month….
• After Ryan finished his deep fried chocolate strawberry, I was really wondering if they just decided to roll him in the confectioner’s sugar, rather than the actual dessert….
• The twilight State Fair parade:  the same exact floats and participants every year… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
• At the “Birds of the World” show… an absolutely delicious and hilarious moment.. Groucho the talking parrot was singing for us, and one of the songs he sang was the French children’s song “Alouette”.  Why is this funny?  Because the song is about plucking the feathers out of a little bird.  I’m laughing my fool head off and people are giving me some funny looks
• Speaking of the bird show… this was the first time we arrived early enough to it to get a good spot… 2nd row, right in the middle.  Had a great time watching Allison freak out when the birds flew right over her head or dragged their feet almost into her hair
• The things we do as Dads:  as we were waiting for the train so we could leave, Logan announced that he had lost his little pumpkin that he painted.  So he and I went back and convinced them to let us back in long enough to look at the last place we were at, when the boys bought Dippin’ Dots.  Pumpkin was nowhere to be seen.   Interviewed a man eating a chicken leg on the bench, and he had seen the pumpkin, but said it was gone when he came back from purchasing the poultry.  Tracked it down to a State Fair worker who had been cleaning, and she had swept it up;  we recovered it from her dustpan, wiped it off, and finally got to leave with a much happier little boy.
• I managed to lose my sunglasses during the day.  For some reason, that is a quirk of mine… I lose/break/scratch so many sunglasses that it is not even funny….

Today I got to do one of my favorite things… I took some time by myself and ran some errands, and “… I don’t know…” just farted around No kids, no lovely DW… just me… and I’m often content just to drive around as I do a few errands, observing the changes in the cities and neighborhoods along the way, and observing this diverse and rich body of humanity that teems all over my suburban Texas stompin’ grounds….

The danger to this is… my very strange brain begins to work overtime, since I’m not constantly answering questions from my children, and the input devices observe things, and the computer whirs and bangs, and releases steam, and out comes the random thoughts, some mundane and some weird, all of which are, truthfully, only interesting and humorous to me, myself, and I. Ignoring that little nugget of helpful personal insight, and in the spirit of “If you don’t write it down, it never happened”, I record my Kurt Vonnegut trek here….

• The distance from my house to our normal Walmart is almost exactly one “American Pie” in length.  Yes, that song by Don MacLean.  Long one of my favorites, and just long enough to make it to the parking spot.  However, this highly scientific assessment is based upon hitting the same number of red lights, with similar lengths…
• There is an egg company in our little town- they no longer produce the eggs here, but are still headquartered here and have some buildings over where their facilities used to be.  There is a sign out front that got me tickled, that said in effect:  ”Warning:  Agricultural site.  Possibility of occasional dust or strong odors”.   Well, hello, Captain Obvious!!
• Fishtrap Road is a really, really, cool name for a road.
• Stopped at a gas station to buy a drink, and a mother and her teenager daughter came out, headed to their car.  After they passed me, I heard a high-pitched squeal and turned around to see a very embarrassed middle-age lady with a sheepish look, who then identified her assailant as a…. grasshopper.  She had the maturity of spirit to be able to laugh at herself, which is a marvelous trait.
• I always have mixed feelings when I see new businesses that have not survived… I feel sad for those whose livelihoods are effected, yet feel sanguine about the  continuing process of the free market system doing its thing, and also feeling a tad guilty because I know I didn’t go eat there, or purchase their wares, very often if at all.  Ah well, I’m just one little ol’ consumer after all…..
• Related to the item above:  one of the things I dislike most about where I live is that it is almost impossible for any restaurant, bar, entertainment venue, etc to survive if it isn’t part of a large chain that people are comfortable with.   The little unique places with character and great product that people make into their “place” just don’t survive on a regular basis.  So, a 30-minute drive takes one past the same chain after chain after chain, and inside they all look the same…but I don’t really want to hang out there, or frequent it any more often than the next Big Box place, rotating among the types as my appetite or procurement needs require.  I don’t really like them, per se

Now that I think about it, part of me thinks Kurt Vonnegut would agree with me on that last one.

And then it struck me… might as well give it a go. Now that I’ve taken the plunge, I’m looking forward to it!

31-Day Movie Challenge Quiz:
The rules are simple:
a. Post a quote, a picture of the poster, and/or a clip for your selection

each day.
b. Make sure to include the title.
c. Have fun (obviously).

Day #1: Favorite Movie
Day #2: Least Favorite Movie
Day #3: Favorite Comedy
Day #4: Favorite Adventure
Day #5: Favorite Horror
Day #6: Favorite Suspense/Thriller
Day #7: Favorite Animated Movie
Day #8: Favorite Guilty Pleasure
Day #9: A Movie You Never Expected To Love
Day #10: Biggest Let-Down
Day #11: First Movie You Saw In Theaters
Day #12: The Last Movie You Saw In Theaters
Day #13: Favorite Documentary
Day #14: Favorite Satire
Day #15: A Movie With Your Favorite Actor
Day #16: Favorite Movie Based On A Book
Day #17: Favorite Movie With An Actor You Hate
Day #18: Movie You Can Watch On Loop
Day #19: Favorite Movie Based On A Historical Event
Day #20: Favorite Movie Based On A Historical Figure
Day #21: Favorite Musical
Day #22: Most Over-Rated Movie
Day #23: Most Under-Rated Movie
Day #24: Movie With Best Soundtrack
Day #25: Favorite Black and White Movie
Day #26: Cheesiest Horror Movie
Day #27: Favorite Oscar-Winning Movie
Day #28: Favorite Made-For-Television Movie
Day #29: Favorite Movie Based On A Television Series
Day #30: Favorite Re-Make
Day #31: Favorite Sequel

And so, Matthew and Logan are playing baseball again after a 2-year layoff.  They are having so much fun!

Tonight, Matthew and Logan’s team won 12-2.  Matthew and Logan both got on base, Matthew via a walk and Logan by getting plunked in the shoulder blade.  Both of them scored when wild pitches worked them all the way around the bases.  I was proud of the way Logan shook up the pain and ran the bases hard.

Ryan’s team also won, 11-10.  I have not seen either of his games… Saturday I had to take Matthew and Logan to their soccer match, and tonight the games were at the same time.  I’m looking forward to seeing Ryan play this season.

I love my boys, and I love watching them play sports.  I’m so proud of them….

2> Do you remember as a teen, when you always *had* to look at the posters when you went to the store? When did we lose that? There were several in there today that I wouldn’t mind owning…..

3>  Now that I’ve bought a new TV, am I going to suffer from “TV price envy” if prices continue to drop?

4>  What makes us choose which of the same brand of some item to pick when we take it off the shelf? (IE if there are 4 boxes of the same paper towels, which one do you grab?). It has to be in the same vein of science/mathematics as picking a urinal in the men’s room. (You men understand what I mean… and the analogy only holds if all the urinals are unoccupied)

5>   Just saw a mom walk by carrying her 3-4 year boy. He was wearing a bright-red cowboy hat made of felt, in the “Woody” style. Greatness!

6>  There’s a fine art to selecting bananas- getting just the right level of ripeness so that my boys do eat most of them but leave me enough at the end to make banana bread for Allison…

7>  We are no longer a single-loaf-of-french-bread family. Just the way it is!

8>  The last scene was the best. There was a young girl in the parking lot, putting the cart in the corral, and she was meticulously straightening and lining up the carts, as her bemused father sat in the their truck, grinning at me and urging his daughter to “come on, …!”. He was amused and yet wanted to go, but his smile told me one thing: this is a man who loves his daughter, and knows her personality. it was a great moment to end my “writer’s trip” to Walmart: a wonderful little slice of this great and beautiful experiment that is the human race!

And then I decided something I’d never done before: I decided to pull my writing journal out and worked on it as I wandered through the aisles. I love writer’s exercises, and one of my favorite to do is “lists”, and one of my favorite type of lists is writing down the various nuggets of delightful oddity that my brain is capable of producing at the oddest times.

And this time, it was while shopping for peanut butter and other various sundry.

And guess what? It was refreshing! I had written down something in my writing journal for the first time in months. And that made me realize that I have been neglecting a very important part of myself… the creative half of my mind that needs to dabble in poetry, writing, art, and music.

This middle-aged dad and devoted husband needs the muse every so often to stay sane.

And so, somehow… by hook or crook, time must be made for these things, not because it is another task to cross off… but because it is almost as important as food itself for my well-being. I can play a little less Word Twist, or watch a little less TV… and spend that time instead with a pen, a pencil, a brush, a bow, or a piano.

And it begins here… this online vent for the mumblings of my life

For those of you who live near DFW and have patronized Spring Creek, I need not describe the singular joy of their rolls, for you are well acquainted.  For you unlucky souls located in other longitudes, these rolls are little miniature loaves of heavenly goodness, baked right there in sight of the dining room, and a large tray or two are upended into a wicker basket, whilst still steaming hot, and then distributed around the room.  These things don’t just melt butter, they draw it off the little squares of paper from several feet away… little yellow riptides splashing onto or into crusty brown goodness.

Logan has inherited his Dad’s love of hot bread.  He enjoys it with relish, and it is always a highlight of these particular “Daddy night out” ventures.  But what I find even more fascinating is to watch him prepare the roll for consumption.  In order to perceive the joy and humor of the moment you must understand that Logan is not a terribly meticulous child about many things in life… he has an artist’s sensibilities and the attention span of a middle child, so one would **never** accuse this handsome young man of being OCD.

Except when it comes to rolls at Spring Creek Barbecue.

I watch in fascination as he wields the knife as a surgeon might a scalpel, making a careful incision down the side of the loaf, in the exact vertical center.  Then the butter is carefully inserted into the roll, there to melt throughout the doughy Valhalla within.  I feel like I’m watching Han Solo stuff Luke into the Tauntaun so he can stay warm.  And, of course, (Logan being Logan), he is describing every step of this process to me, as if I’m an apprentice in the centuries-old artisan craft of Roll Buttering.  Maybe we should carve a wooden sign and hang it up outside, for Logan is a Master RollButterer.  And the utter joy, so endearingly child-like, that permeates his voice as he shares with his Dad, it warms my heart as surely as that roll will soon warm his gullet.

And thus I realize wherefore the meticulous nature of this act, from this son.  This, to him, is art– his forte.  This is not culinary necessity, but rather the Oleo Fresco brushed upon the Sistine Roll.  And then consumed with all the lusty gusto of one who enjoys beauty and the tactile pleasures of the plate.

And it’s a privilege to witness.  It makes a night out with my son, already a precious thing, even more remarkable.