Epitaph

Spudnuts is a familiar name to the regular WWDN reader.
He makes me, and everyone else, laugh and think, and laugh some more.
He also types in this form.
That.
Is.
Very.
Unique.
Well. I recently read something he wrote, and asked him if I could post it here, because I thought it was really cool.
Quoth Spudnuts:

I have this thing for cemeteries. Always have. I’m not morbid or goth or anything. They usually are just scenic, empty, and verdant.
But I always notice the generic script that accompanies even the most flamboyant tombstone. It makes no sense. Surely, there must have been some cut-ups, clowns, subversives, eccentrics, mavericks, firebrands, freakshows, or just someone who wants MORE on their grave than…
“Died in Troutdale.”
What is so fucking sacred about a tombstone that you can’t be shocked or amused when you happen upon the burial site of some HUMAN?
Jesus.
It’s like being interred at the Christian Science Reading Room, laundry mat, or DMV.
So…
INSTITUTIONAL and sterile.
Then…
Who knows?
Maybe only the boring ones actually get a gravestone. All the interesting ones had their ashes scattered from a hangglider over Euro Disney.
Two years ago, I wrote down about fifty variations I would like on my tombstone. Here are a couple of the better ones…
— Caucasian. Gamer. Hermaphrodite.
— He was better than you
— It’s fucking dark in here
— Buried with a big sack of emeralds. No, really.
— Secret agent
— He owned a television
— He was kind of funny in an annoying sort of way
— RIP BFD
— He went straight to Hell
— Feeds upon the blood of the Irving
— He is in space now
— Deposit urine here
— He neglected his colon
— Yet another dead guy
— He was full of shit

Bird

It’s nearly 10PM.
The kids are with their dad, leaving Anne and me in an empty, quiet house.
We sit at our dining room table, Ferris asleep at our feet, the 85 degree Southern California air stirred only by a single fan in our air-conditioner-less house.
We’re reading. She reads a magazine, I read a book, and Charlie Parker travels through time from 1950, transported by our radio, tirelessly bebopping at us.
These moments that we share, just the two of us are precious few, and I cherish them.
I close my book and tell her, “You are the other half of my heartbeat.”
They’re not my words. I’ve borrowed them from Dizzy Gillespie, who was speaking, ironically, of Bird…
…but truer words have never passed my lips.

Just the TIPS of the iceberg?

When I heard about the US Government’s TIPS program this morning, I nearly choked on my breakfast. I’ve been struggling with my outrage and astonishment at this program all day, trying to compose myself long enough to write about it, but my friend Tom Tomorrow has managed to put into words exactly what I am feeling, far more eloquently than I ever could, so I’ll freely steal it from him:

“Facism is a term thrown about too freely, and I don’t believe we’re at a point that its use is justified–but an oppressive and intrusive government, however you want to label it, does not ride into town wearing the uniforms and waving the flags of recognizable evil. It creeps in slowly, wrapped in the flag of your own country, and speaking the language of patriotism and duty, and at each step along the way, its actions seem plausible and defensible–until one morning you wake up and realize the gulf between the way things were and the way things are has grown so wide that there is no going back. Sinclair Lewis tried to point this out more than a half century ago, and given the current climate, It Can’t Happen Here is well worth re-reading (or reading for the first time, if you’ve never come across it before).”

Be careful what you wish for

You know that adage, “Be careful what you wish for?” I should have heeded it. For months I was complaining about how bored I was and how I had nothing to do…there are few things in the world that I hate more than being idle…and, while I wasn’t looking, I got busy.
Really, really busy.
I crammed months and months of work into about 8 or 9 weeks: Writing for Arena, two different sketch shows, preparing for the show we did on the cruise, trying to keep this website interesting and relevant…oh, and being a husband and step-father, too.
Actually, it was pretty cool, and I’m really grateful that I was so busy, but I’m glad it’s over.
I have never been so creatively exhausted in my life as I am right now.
And get this: to end it all, in the last 36 hours I’ve been in 4 different states, and seen two major oceans with my own eyes. (More about that later, when I actually have the time to tell a long and interesting story)
So this morning, as I sit here, drinking my coffee, listening to Exodus, getting ready to go to the beach with my wife and kids for the first time this summer, I take a deep breath, look at my dog, and enjoy this moment.
I don’t believe that we’re ever given more than we can really handle, even if we don’t think we can handle it.
Life is good.

Let them play

I have been a baseball fan my entire life. When you cut me, I bleed Dodger Blue. I can remember stats and significant dates in baseball history as clearly as I can recall birthdays and anniversaries in my family.
I hate the DH, I wish they’d raise the mound. I sing “Take me out to the ballgame” when I watch the games on TV.
I buy the Baseball Prospectus each year.
I calculate player’s OPS.
I play roto every season.
I keep score during most games I watch, and I save my scoresheets in a folder in my closet.
When I play softball, I hear Vin Scully and Harry Carry calling the game in my head.
Yeah, I am a baseball fan.
I watch the All Star game. Every year. If I’m not going to be home, I tape it, and if I catch a replay of a classic game on ESPN, I’m lost for the duration.
Yeah, I’m a baseball fan, and I am furious. I mean, vein-popping, ear-steaming, teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling furious.
Just when I thought that Bud “King Jackass” Selig couldn’t do more damage to the game, just when I thought that we’d nearly hit rock-bottom, he calls the freakin’ All-Star game!
A major comeback by the AL, amazing individual efforts from players on both teams, towering home runs and extra innings, the hated Barry Bonds being robbed of a homer in the 2nd only to hit a two run shot in the third.
The first game in a decade that is TRULY exciting and Selig calls it.
No winner, no MVP. Randy Johnson couldn’t even be bothered to show up.
Those fans who paid their money to watch a game tonight in Milwaukee expected to see a full game. With a winner and an MVP ceremony. That’s what they paid for, and that’s what they deserved.
What they and we got was a nice big “thanks for your money, now please leave.”
I don’t buy this idea that the game doesn’t mean anything, so the players shouldn’t give their all. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to the players, but it sure means a lot to us fans. Sure, it doesn’t count towards anything in the standings, but we baseball fans wait each year for this mid-summer classic, when the best of the best show us what they can do. It is supposed to be an honor to play in the All Star game. It is supposed to be a time when the owners and players give something back to the fans.
Major League Baseball should be ashamed of itself. During a year when Selig has talked of contraction, players are threatening to strike, and the spectre of steriod abuse looms large over each and every ballpark, this game was an opportunity for Baseball and it’s players to transcend the controversy and just play, the way we all play in sandlots and back fields and vacant lots all across America.
Instead, they showed us what they’re really made of, and it’s outrageous.
I have been a baseball fan my entire life, but I promise you this: after tonight’s disgraceful ending to an otherwise magnificent game, if there is even one day of strike or lockout, I’m done.
Let them play, Bud. Let them play.