What Will You Remember?

I like to watch Pardon The Interruption on ESPN, where 2 sports journalists discuss current events in just about all sports. One of their segments is called “Big Deal, Little Deal, or No Deal?” They introduce some recent event and give their opinions: big, little, or insignificant (no deal). The day after the Super Bowl, I expected to watch them talk about Travis Kelce assaulting his coach on the sideline. That didn’t happen. It wasn’t mentioned.

 

About 3 minutes into the 2^nd quarter, a Chiefs player fumbled the football in the red zone. Change of possession, time out, go to commercials. TV comes back to game, and a couple minutes later, CBS replays what happened on the sideline after the fumble a few minutes ago. Travis Kelce charged Andy Reed (who has a 4 Super Bowl rings) all red-faced and shouting. Kelce actually runs into Reed, who had some difficulty staying on his feet. One of his teammates pulled Kelce away, and Reed did not respond to Kelce at all.

 

When the Chiefs got the ball back, Kelce was out there on offense. He wasn’t benched. Which surprised me. I thought Reed would tell Kelce to take a seat for a good while. That would have been the minimum punishment, or so I thought.

 

If I were playing Big Deal, Little Deal, or No Deal, I would say Big Deal. Big no-no for Kelce to assault his coach, publicly showing his disrespect for his coach’s personnel decisions. Big no-no for Reed, allowing his petulant adolescent tight end to undermine the head coach’s authority in such a public and violent way. With no consequences. Big no-no for sports journalism, for not publicly calling out both Kelce and Reed.

 

It’s been said that Kelce was upset that he hadn’t been on the field when his teammate fumbled, and that Kelce thought he could have helped the running back hold onto the ball. Wah, wah, wah, you hothead crybaby asshole.

 

That’s what I will remember about this Super Bowl.

 

Thoughts Better Not Expressed

There is a bursa sac located quite close to my right hip joint. It was inflamed, so they called it hip bursitis. After a long bout of physical therapy, I got a cortisone shot in the sac 6 days ago. The pain is greatly reduced.

Which allows me to do my full workouts again. And I need to get my strength/endurance back in order to join the annual Fight For Air climb in March. That’s 42 floors, about 900 stairs. More on that later.

This morning I felt pretty good on the elliptical machine at the gym. A lot of songs playing in my ears are set to around 120 beats per minute, which is a good pace for me to work up a bit of a sweat. My eyes are free to wander, and wander they did. A middle-aged woman, in front of me and slightly off to the right, was riding what looked like a bike. Most of the time she wasn’t sitting on the bicycle seat, but standing on the pedals.

All right, it isn’t a bicycle seat. It’s labeled SPINNING, so it’s a SPINNING seat.

When her right foot went down, the pointy end of the seat would hit her right butt cheek less than 2” from her crack. Left foot down, seat hit the left butt cheek. Back and forth, with a rhythm that would rival an atomic clock.

When I got done with my 20 minutes, I stepped closer to her and said “You are missing an opportunity. A slight adjustment in your stride would make the pointy end of the seat hit your clit, and you could get more out of your workout.”

I didn’t actually say that, but I thought it.

An old (1958) song, Standing On the Corner, has a line “You can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking.” Good thing.

Polar Extremes

The guy was recommended by a couple of neighbors and his price was 20% less than the big company down the road. It's in the name, really: Low Cost Tree & Stump Removal. I gave the guy -- let's call him Jerry, because that's his actual name -- the go-ahead to trim the dead branches out of a big ash tree in the back yard. He and his crew showed up the next morning.

When I get there, Jerry is up in the tree with a chain saw, doing his thing. The other 3 are hauling the limbs and brush to the chipper in the street. I start doing other work in the back yard.

The saw stopped and Jerry got down the ground. He's tall, thin, weathered. He fired up a cig and sauntered over to me. We make some small talk (he's not ready to come out and ask for money just yet) and somehow the Gaza Strip War comes up. Jerry says he really can't stand watching the news, so he just doesn't. Then he tells me that the shit is going to hit the fan here in the U.S. And this: "They're already here! They own about every 7-11 and all the motels! What might save us is the blacks -- they own all the guns...they're always shooting each other."

Stunned, that's what I was.

Imagine eating that crap for breakfast.

When I wrote the check ("no we don't take any credit cards"), Jerry told me to make it payable to him, not the company.

Next time I'm calling Big Company Down The Road.

Note to Jimmy

Mr. Buffett, you sprinkled fun on people's lives.

Myself included. 

Thank you.

Trash Tells a Story

If the FBI had a search warrant for my house, they would find these things in a bin that I use for scrap metal recycling.

Back at FBI HQ, they might have an analyst pore over these artifacts and reconstruct my activities over the past few months to find out whether I committed the crimes for which I am a suspect.

I sure hope to be exonerated. I would not do well in the joint.

Google

I went to the App Store looking for the Google app to download to my iPhone. Why? Well, that is not important right now.

I found the app. Before I hit the download icon, I saw this on my screen.

Now I'm no fraidy-cat and I'm no pussy. But this made my head explode. And I know I can live without the Google app.

I put my phone in the washing machine and set it for SCRUB HARD.

Maybe Google already knows everything about me. It's all out there in cyberspace, right? But I didn't sign up for that. At least I don't think I did.

But, oh the hundreds of times I have blown right through the terms and conditions! Christ.

I'm screwed. My reputation is shot. They know what I did last night.

Peanuts

 Two days after my 11^th birthday*, my dad took me to a baseball game.  Maybe to some kids this would not be a memorable event.  To me, it was Disneyland and the Super Bowl with cherries on top.

I listened to the St. Louis Cardinal broadcasts pretty regularly.  Well, second-hand listened, anyway – stepfather Russel listened on the family radio, and in a small house that meant everybody listened.  The Cardinals certainly got in my head and my heart, and I rejoiced when my hero Stan Musial hit a homer.  The flip side of the same coin is that I moped when the “Birds” lost.

 

Sportsman’s Park was a place I’d only heard about.  Now I was there! Damn, was I excited.

 

On the way to our seats, we had to pass under an overhead walkway the players used to get from the clubhouse to the dugout.  Some of the players would linger there, signing autographs for the fans.  This particular day, a player I didn’t know by sight (there were many of those, it being before TV showed us what the players look like) was signing autographs, so I handed up my scorecard.  It came back with the signature of a little-known utility player named Peanuts Lowrey.  I wished it could have been Musial.  Oh, well.

 

The game was tied after nine, so the game went to extra innings.  In the bottom of the eleventh, Musial led off with a double.  With two outs and the bases loaded, a pinch-hitter – Peanuts Lowrey – was called on.  Lowrey hit a line drive to the right-center field wall, scoring the winning run.  Cardinals win.  I’m clutching the autograph of the guy who made the game-winning hit.  I’m there with my dad.

 

I didn’t come down from that high for maybe three years.