Saw my first game at Dunkin field tonight. Sentimentality aside the layout is much better than Shea's. Anyone capable of paying admission can expect an unobstructed view of every advertisement in the place.
True, the first grand slam in the field's history did not land anywhere near the Dunkin Donuts ad in center field. It was not in that respect perfect. However, when you looked by sheer instinct in the general direction of that ad, it did glow a little brighter. The mystery of the missing g in the verb seemed more pronounced, more pressing than ever. Was it meant to be colloquial and therefore familiar? Psst. The rules of grammar don't apply here, you're safe, friend.
And then you realized that the g stood for grand slam. Like inserting the jewel into the pagan statue that brings it to life. And we stood in amazement and roared as one breathing intellectual mass, thousands strong, potent in the Queens night.
In the glow of that slam I was struck by a marketing concept. Out of loving trust I share it here without fear of breach of patent: Edible adult diapers. Possible promotional giveaway should ticket sales lag. Endorsement opportunities from veteran players. Able substitute for Pepsi T-shirt launch.
Primary note in favor is novelty. For the man who has everything (and uses adult diapers). Perfect as a gag gift. Or as a deadly serious one. Possible spokesperson: Mr. Met; whose heretofore shadowy personality could be explored in a sequence of emotionally vulnerable radio spots, ala the Boston Medical Group. 90 is the new 69.
Cons: saddest gag gift ever. Health risks/possible liability. The difficulty of establishing a material that is both edible and leak proof.
Americans are resilient, creative, and entrepreneurial; nothing during the last two years has erased any of that. We will resolve this challenge as one.
4.23.2009
the stations of the cross
I went to a double funeral this week, to support a friend who'd suddenly lost people she loved. The mass was Catholic. The presiding saint was Sebastian. The first time they tried to kill Sebastian they tied him to a stake and shot him full of arrows. When that didn't stick they beat him to death. That worked out pretty well.
Guy died twice and only got one funeral. For these folks it was the same way, two deaths, one basic mass. The priest just did the necessary rites twice. The altar servers still bumbled and smiled and joked under their breath when they thought no one was looking. I wanted to believe but I still didn't.
The church was in Queens, right under the elevated train. But once the mass started you didn't notice it going by. Maybe they stopped it, or maybe looking at kids who no longer had parents took precedent.
There should be stations of the cross for modern times. In one you have Jesus checking his email. In another he's doing the crossword. But besides jokes and maybe one of Jesus looking somebody in the eye, a close friend or family member, the others would just be worse and worse violent things the modern world throws at you.
In one there's a crucifixion. But in another maybe two of the people Jesus is closest to get killed in a senseless wreck. And you the viewer are his friend who has to watch him try to make sense of his new world. As his friend you know you should say something but what is there to say. In another is a neutron bomb. In another is crushing poverty. Another: depleted uranium. Challenge to the artist.
I imagine she takes comfort in the stations of the cross. That she sees his suffering and hers and everyone's and knows that in the end when that good trumpet sounds we'll all be together. I hope that's how she sees it, even after all that's happened.
Guy died twice and only got one funeral. For these folks it was the same way, two deaths, one basic mass. The priest just did the necessary rites twice. The altar servers still bumbled and smiled and joked under their breath when they thought no one was looking. I wanted to believe but I still didn't.
The church was in Queens, right under the elevated train. But once the mass started you didn't notice it going by. Maybe they stopped it, or maybe looking at kids who no longer had parents took precedent.
There should be stations of the cross for modern times. In one you have Jesus checking his email. In another he's doing the crossword. But besides jokes and maybe one of Jesus looking somebody in the eye, a close friend or family member, the others would just be worse and worse violent things the modern world throws at you.
In one there's a crucifixion. But in another maybe two of the people Jesus is closest to get killed in a senseless wreck. And you the viewer are his friend who has to watch him try to make sense of his new world. As his friend you know you should say something but what is there to say. In another is a neutron bomb. In another is crushing poverty. Another: depleted uranium. Challenge to the artist.
I imagine she takes comfort in the stations of the cross. That she sees his suffering and hers and everyone's and knows that in the end when that good trumpet sounds we'll all be together. I hope that's how she sees it, even after all that's happened.
4.10.2009
cry it out
They say we're supposed to let you cry sometimes, that it'll help you develop. It's a counter-intuitive move that still has a certain logic, despite the fact that doctors say it. I picture a Ferber box or Freud administering liquid cocaine to cranky newborns. But I still -- almost -- get it.
And enough people that I trust as parents have said it makes sense. Yet I've clung reticent, even though I buy it to a degree, even though the lack of sleep from running to your side in the middle of the night has primarily impacted your mother.
The other night we were in a strange town, you were in a strange crib and you cried a little more than usual going to sleep. I sat on the steps outside your door and rocked back and forth, caught myself saying you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay. Caught myself reliving your first surgery, the one we had no vocabulary for, the one where I could feel our ancestors huddled around to make sure you were okay. The one where I paced the halls of the hospital willing you with them to be okay, to be okay, to be whole and right.
I haven't been drinking now for about a month, so the things I self-medicated into oblivion are starting to become conscious. One of the big but recently buried ones is the worry from the summer that you would have died at just a few days old. You didn't, you obviously didn't, but I still carry around the fear that you would have. And with it the worry that somehow we'll hurt you, or let the world hurt you.
Realizing the depth of that has helped me to release some of it. Made me more willing to let you cry it out. And here you are, you've gone to sleep. Your dreams each night add magic to the world, make more luck possible. The images, the plots must be absurd.
And enough people that I trust as parents have said it makes sense. Yet I've clung reticent, even though I buy it to a degree, even though the lack of sleep from running to your side in the middle of the night has primarily impacted your mother.
The other night we were in a strange town, you were in a strange crib and you cried a little more than usual going to sleep. I sat on the steps outside your door and rocked back and forth, caught myself saying you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay. Caught myself reliving your first surgery, the one we had no vocabulary for, the one where I could feel our ancestors huddled around to make sure you were okay. The one where I paced the halls of the hospital willing you with them to be okay, to be okay, to be whole and right.
I haven't been drinking now for about a month, so the things I self-medicated into oblivion are starting to become conscious. One of the big but recently buried ones is the worry from the summer that you would have died at just a few days old. You didn't, you obviously didn't, but I still carry around the fear that you would have. And with it the worry that somehow we'll hurt you, or let the world hurt you.
Realizing the depth of that has helped me to release some of it. Made me more willing to let you cry it out. And here you are, you've gone to sleep. Your dreams each night add magic to the world, make more luck possible. The images, the plots must be absurd.
the physiology of chills
Music can arouse extraordinarily strong affective responses, up to ecstatic “chill” experiences defined as “goose bumps” and as “shivers down the spine” (Panksepp, 1998; Sloboda, 1991); even, in some cases, "shitting oneself" (Freeman, 2009).
Since emotional states may change in the course of every piece of
music, it is necessary to measure psychological and bodily reactions continuously. In order to investigate distinct musical events related to chill reactions, we combined psychological and physiological methods in one experiment.
The experiment: See if your cracker ass can hold on to its ironic detachment through five minutes of this video, sent to me by my friend Jolene, who doubtless intended just such a chipping away of useless reserve.
4.09.2009
choose your own exodus
This day is like every other but also irreplaceable. Part of a continuum never to be repeated. The day you’re supposed to notice that and ask about it. Is there a God, does she care about us a smidge and if so why not intervene, or why intervene this way. But to undercut that pessimistic bullshit the baby kid who can’t ask directly is asking questions with his face, checking in with his eyes and waiting for the green light to smile and laugh.
So we name and check suppositions. Best not get hung up on G-d in a Jason mask, horrors plagues etc., it's choose our own Exodus. If Israel implies too mercenary a nation-state to inspire, let’s say California’s the promised land and New York is Egypt, go down Rt. 80 and show them what they’ve done. Let’s add back-door syncretistic Christian Zoroastrian or Pagan shit, hide everything from the seder plate and run a Passover hunt to start the festive meal. Leave the door open for Elijah, the Easter Bunny, and penitent golden calves.
There are so many questions that they infuse the objects on the table with their own life and self-consciousness, their own questions. The Manischevitz skips like rams, the kugel, also like rams. (There was a run on lambs). The bitter herbs have bitter questions. What’s your problem, you lame-assed self conscious idiot, not when do we eat but when do we die and let New Jersey Pac Man eat our stinking corpses.
The shank bone is all Ozymandius-am-I, I was hot shit/coulda been a contender but how did I get so dead? The boiled eggs just want to talk abortion. The Gefilte fish want to know how much is Yiddishkeit and how much is religion, want to know street addresses in the Bronx or Brooklyn, precise GPS coordinates of shtetls in second-century or 1930s Poland, whether anybody else remembers that fetching Golem and where it got to when it was needed most.
The Matzoh is itching to get out on the road and keeps asking about travel destinations, alternating that with gossipy questions about things folks and deeds it thinks might be Chametz. The Haroseth and the spring vegetable are outnumbered but they’re trying to keep it positive, aren’t we lucky to be here at all, guys? Isn’t it amazing, that unbroken chain of survival from here to us, everything that had to go right for us to make it to this dinner?
The chopped liver has more ontological concerns; wants to know how it got here and what it might be called, the meaning of life, etc. What am I? Am I chopped liver? What am I, chopped liver?
So we name and check suppositions. Best not get hung up on G-d in a Jason mask, horrors plagues etc., it's choose our own Exodus. If Israel implies too mercenary a nation-state to inspire, let’s say California’s the promised land and New York is Egypt, go down Rt. 80 and show them what they’ve done. Let’s add back-door syncretistic Christian Zoroastrian or Pagan shit, hide everything from the seder plate and run a Passover hunt to start the festive meal. Leave the door open for Elijah, the Easter Bunny, and penitent golden calves.
There are so many questions that they infuse the objects on the table with their own life and self-consciousness, their own questions. The Manischevitz skips like rams, the kugel, also like rams. (There was a run on lambs). The bitter herbs have bitter questions. What’s your problem, you lame-assed self conscious idiot, not when do we eat but when do we die and let New Jersey Pac Man eat our stinking corpses.
The shank bone is all Ozymandius-am-I, I was hot shit/coulda been a contender but how did I get so dead? The boiled eggs just want to talk abortion. The Gefilte fish want to know how much is Yiddishkeit and how much is religion, want to know street addresses in the Bronx or Brooklyn, precise GPS coordinates of shtetls in second-century or 1930s Poland, whether anybody else remembers that fetching Golem and where it got to when it was needed most.
The Matzoh is itching to get out on the road and keeps asking about travel destinations, alternating that with gossipy questions about things folks and deeds it thinks might be Chametz. The Haroseth and the spring vegetable are outnumbered but they’re trying to keep it positive, aren’t we lucky to be here at all, guys? Isn’t it amazing, that unbroken chain of survival from here to us, everything that had to go right for us to make it to this dinner?
The chopped liver has more ontological concerns; wants to know how it got here and what it might be called, the meaning of life, etc. What am I? Am I chopped liver? What am I, chopped liver?
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