cheap shot re-post

okay, some of you may have seen this before on myspace...but it is still dedicated to spotty...

Monday, April 16, 2007

1999 called...it wants right now back/got a minute? this is a document of the latest chapter in a continuing story (but not of a quack who's gone to the dogs - name the reference, i owe you a drink). the middle of march (around the time of that holiday where everyone turns irish for a day) in michigan isn't exactly a tourist stop, that's why i jumped on a plane on the fifteenth for the sunny, idyllic beaches of miami. okay that isn't why i went, but i still went. now, this story would be alot longer, for i had written the earlier chapters years ago in a different city. you see, i used to work at the best bar on the planet (it's in philadelphia on second street), and i had this story - no, epic - written out when disastrously, a pipe broke in the basement and saturated my backpack. the notebook containing this opus was waterlogged and more or less ruined. my friend spotty, upon hearing this news, related to me a story about hemmingway. apparently, once a story is lost (for whatever reason) it is gone forever. well, the story may be gone, but the memories are not. additionally, the trip to miami was certain to add to this waterlogged story at the bottom of some dump somewhere on the east coast (most likely jersey - sorry kate), and i was not disappointed. it was a great trip, even if i didn't get to see anyone naked (too soon?). the story that i have been talking about is the chronicle of a house of ill-repute. anyone who has ever set foot inside of 264 gunson knows what i am getting at here. remember a couple of years ago when the "all i really know i learned in kindergarten" fad hit? well, i didn't read that mess because i don't believe it. all i really need to know i learned in college. my teachers were my best friends. i am absolutely sure that i will never ever again have the opportunity to make friends like muir, spotty, and ford (would you rather fuck a chicken or your sister? chicken fucker). so, on a thursday, i drove myself to detroit metro airport giddy with excitement and anticipation. i hadn't seen spotty since he visited philadelphia in 2001 (or so) and pat, well, i just saw him around christmas (if you consider yourself a person that can get enough pat muir, then you are a damn pinko communist), but the three of us have not been in the company of each other since pat's birthday/aaron's going away party in february of 2000. big surprise here, i'm a bit smug as well, because i had promised spotty when he was in philly that i would repay the trip and visit miami, and i was finally doing it. thanks to serendipity (the muse, not the fucking movie - read a book), pat and i wound up on the same plane to miami, and we arrived sometime around ten thirty. we were three roommates, no old friends, reunited. on the way to the car, aaron called shotgun, firing the first shot of a war (is it okay to use "war" in a hyperbolic sense in the current political climate? i don't want to be imused off of myspace. i'm p.c. dammit!) that would last a week. it looked to be entirely dominated by yours truly, but i had to fight off a late charge from muir threatening my throne. what pat lacked in the sitting-in-the-front-seat department, he more than compensated for with his mix-cd making skills. we rocketed north on i-95, three of the gayest men on the earth as we had the windows down and the breeze in our hair...wait...i mean gay in the mirthful, jocund sense. andrew w.k. provided us with an invocation to party and the pogues administered a dose of beer craving, while peaches tugged on our nihilism, reminding us to live it up because we should neither give a damn about our reputations nor give a fuck. i'm speaking for myself here when i say that waits filled me with sentimentality and a soft regret for not being able to recapture the magic that i feel in the presence of these gentlemen (how's that for gay?). when you've got the world by the short-hairs, you're young, in miami, and ready to party; where is the first place you go? a retirement community. woo! spring break! all jokes aside, we got to meet dana, spotty's beautiful bride-to-be. dana is a trooper, she tolerated days of constant reminiscence, inside jokes, references to strangers, overuse of the moniker "dicknuts" (or dick-anything for that matter), random outbursts of lyrics courtesy of the frogs, and overall immature behavior...not to mention all the racket, the mess, and the smell. as we related tales of east lansing, a look of confusion would periodically cross dana's face. then came the disclaimer: we were all, at one time, much more attractive (according to anna muir, pat's sister, in reference to the author, "he used to be really hot". backhanded, no?). it's good to have friends that you can get ugly and old with, even if you can't see them as much as you would like. the blur of five days took its toll on our memories, physical appearances, and spotty's tolerance for traffic (wait, that was already shot). it was a litany of beer runs (oh, the duality of that statement), goldeneye for nintendo 64, surgically enhanced body parts, and the best fucking soundtrack ever. we even made it to a record store, if you could call it that. this place, stocked to the rafters with really cool shit minus price tags, was sauna hot. the "merchandise" sans tags was not for sale (we're talking the majority of the store). so really, let's not mince words, your operation is a museum. boo-urns. we ate giant hamburgers, drank too many margaritas, took off our clothes and jumped in the ocean (i'm not helping my own cause here...i swear on a stack, i'm straight), and wound up bringing home a shot glass and about a pound of sand in my pants. we went to a pub where we were attracted to the bartender. being the only single member (huh-huh-huh) of the group, i pleaded with pat and spotty (both in committed relationships, suckers) to go when she invited us to another gin joint called shenanigans (i'll pistol whip the next person that says shenanigans), i swear i had a chance with her, and she was hot. i think it was the night that spotty had play wet blanket (justifiably), pat and i were being quite loud, and spotty had to be responsibly up early the next morning. it really was a beautiful thing, the crescendo that led up to the eruption. pat and i were in the throes of chemical passion, playing bond (after pat whooped my ass at madden - the more things change, the more they stay the same...fucking screen pass. i hate you pat, you're worse than hitler), when pat looks at me and says: "you know what dude? 1999 called, it wants right now back." uproarious laughter ensued, and then someone (i'm not pointing any fingers here) broke a relic from the gunson house, that is to say, a glass. spotty's yells immediately lowering our boisterous voices and eliciting apologies. the next day, upon spotty's return from work and amid the questions as to how the day was, we regaled him with stories of our tough day ensconced in profoundly important discussions of world series champions and the finer points of the simpsons. we're dicks. the week went way too fast. the rapport that we all have in company of one another set in and i think we all took it for granted while it was happening. before i knew it, spotty was driving us to the airport so we could fly to our respective homes. separation anxiety sucks, that's my psych 101 analysis. so much did happen on this trip, but even more intriguing is what did not happen. none of us were arrested, something of a miracle considering that one of the first things we all admitted to was putting aside bail money. spotty didn't call me a hipster doofus, a favorite insult of his dating back to the gunson days. i didn't threaten anybody with the phrase, "i will slap you in the face, i am aaron kluza!", one of the best instances of my tendency to make jokes by citing pop culture (my original usage, yeah...gunson again, was all about timing). nobody saw pat consume ramen noodles or a frozen burrito from quality dairy -that doesn't mean it didn't happen- EPILOGUE -with apologies if anyone's name is incorrectly spelled- spotty stayed at home in miami and will wed dana on september 15, 2007 and i will be there in north carolina with bells on. (by the way dana, all the comments about pat and me and our roles in the wedding tug my heart. it's quite a complement to be held in your esteem.) pat returned to yakima/zillah where he is lucky enough to learn the art of crafting peirogi with adrianna and to urinate off his back porch (that's the one that's gonna get me in trouble, but it's every man's lifelong manifest destiny to use the world as his toilet). aaron returned to grosse pointe park where he is still chasing something but not totally knowing what something is and listening to the song "got a minute?" by kid dynamite because it's a damn good song and the lyrics encapsulate gunson... we used to see each other everyday. now we're lucky if it's twice a year. i don't know what i've been thinking. without blinking we've been set back. remember driving through the yesteryears and the conversations of our dreams and fears. you grabbed yours. i'm grabbing mine now. at your wedding i just smiled and thought about how life goes by so fast and how so many friendships weren't really meant to last. we have always been good at keeping in touch, but for some reason it never meant this much. it's hard to believe that you have a brand new life, while mine i take in stride. it's hard to believe how easy dreams come true when you want them to. ...and that's pretty fucking cool. lastly, i'm sensing a theme and i'm having my james-fucking-patterson recurring character moment. the first chapters have been erased, but fuck hemingway, what does he know, anyway? stay tuned for the next installment of "the gunson street adventure series". i need to start my memoirs somewhere, don't i?

Tom Mees, We Hardly Knew Ye; The Meteoric Rise and Precipitous Fall of ESPN

"So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
-Robert Frost

"Marge, I've been watching women's volleyball on ESPN..."
-Homer Simpson

The absolute masterful authority television wields over our consciousness is both terrifying and well, terrifying, and I must confess, with great regret, my inability to completely divorce myself from it's inexorable clutches. Recent history, the last month or so, has found me migrating away from my previous weekly average of cathode ray consumption. Many factors have influenced this negative trend and are not of importance vis a vis this discussion. This notion finds its praxis upon examination of what I feel I am missing, and what has faded into the background cacophony. My thesis, while somewhat shocking to me, is simple: I don't miss Sportscenter.

Now in my younger days, I was a rather impressionable little waif, subject to the will of the media, my parents, the rest of my family, the kids at school, and the Catholic Church (don't worry, I'm a recovering Catholic now). One of the most influential franchises on my overall adult psyche happens to be the Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN). My younger days, especially in summer, went this way: wake up, watch Sportscenter, do chores, then play baseball with the kids in the neighborhood at Cleon Yards at Huron Park. Sportscenter, along with many other factors, made me into the rabid sports fan that I am today (I watch horse racing for crying out loud).

Sportscenter used to be the pinnacle when it came to informative programming. An impressionable youth could at one time be indoctrinated by Tom Mees or Charlie Steiner in a matter of thirty minutes. The show was a non-stop barrage of pitchers' won/loss records, quarterback ratings, and pga tour rankings, all seen without the benefit of one in-show promo. The show, on a daily basis, was always thirty minutes unless it was Sunday when they expanded to sixty. It seemed necessary at the time. The move accommodated an increasingly vast palate of newsworthy sporting events on any given Sunday. Tragically, it was the beginning of the end.

The fledgling Connecticut network, behind the strength of a growing audience, was making waves nationally. Unfortunately, ESPN began to focus more on the personalities of the anchors rather than the actual games being played. Admittedly, I too fell victim to this trend. I loved when Craig Kilborn and Keith Olberman would yuk it up on the set. I loved when the network introduced their special brand of off kilter commercials featuring athletes and on-air personalities. Little did I know the successes of these baby-steps into the greater media would lead to the denigration of the entire franchise.



Eventually, the network launched sport-specific highlight shows like Baseball Tonight, thus enabling them to put less content in their flagship program. This is that damn red flag. The show is a mere shell of what it once was. It caters to the average fan as much as Access Hollywood does. Sure, I would love Sportscenter if I were a New York, Boston, Cowboy, or Los Angeles fan. Don't get mad at me for saying that they concentrate all too much resource on those markets, because I understand that is the way the business runs. That is understandable and even forgivable.

When I watch Sportscenter, I want to know what happened. I don't need some overly concussed ex-athlete, short on dollars from too many trips to the bunny ranch, telling me what I just witnessed in a game in order to make his house note and his child support payments. I don't need a lisping, has-been coach spitting all over the set about how he is the greatest coach ever. I don't need fifteen minutes out of sixty devoted to what is coming up later in a show. What I need the least is hackneyed catchphrases out of a pill popping, alcoholic blow hard. (Please, for the love of humanity, send him back, back, back, back, back, back to where he came from.)

Now, you don't drink apple martinis on guys' night out, you don't study during recess, you don't let Jesse McCartney perform during halftime at football games (oops, unless you run the Detroit Lions organization...but that's the least of their problems), and you watch 24 - not American Idol; so how on God's green earth is it permissible to talk about A-Rod, Madonna and divorce on Sportscenter!?!

Any good news person knows the stories that will get the most attention go first. BUT: So what if Tony Romo grew up watching Brett Farve? So did I, but that doesn't really effect my quarterback rating, the likelihood that Jessica Simpson have the slightest chance with me (she is in more danger of growing man parts then me ever using mine on her), or how many times I pick my nose in a given day. Tony Romo is still overrated, and Jessica Simpson is still as vapid as her dad is creepy.

It pains me to say snidely, what a joke. Catastrophically, ESPN is now run by the Disney empire and Sportscenter is about as informative as Perez Hilton. What's next, Oprah buying in?

A Very Special Christmas, Sponsored by: Your Ad Here

"I think there must be something wrong with me Linus, Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy"
-Charlie Brown

It's the Saturday before Christmas and I have done no shopping whatsoever. I am no Grinch, no Ebenezer Scrooge, not even the Grumple. Quite the opposite, I used to absolutely love Christmas, and I still do. I merely wish that I loved it for the same reasons that I did when I was a young rapscallion.

(The Grumple)

I hear it all of the time, "You're too young to be jaded." Maybe I am, but that is an issue for another time. So many elements constitute my lack of Christmas cheer, but one in particular stands alone above the rest. I am an orphan (ahh yes, nothing says immaturity like a grown man declaring that he is an orphan).

Christmas to me is my father taping hours of Christmas music from the radio so that he wouldn't have to go to the store and actually buy it. Of course this is back when radio stations ONLY played non-stop Christmas music from the morning of Christmas Eve through the end of Christmas Day. Christmas is my father playing the tapes that he made the previous year while the five of us (my father, mother, sister, brother, and me) put up our decorations. Christmas is waking up early (not too early) to open gifts with the previous collection of people. Dad's hair was always so disheveled, his robe was tattered (he liked his tried-and-true clothes and was stubborn to adopt new garments), and somehow still, always with his pipe, he appeared noble and aristocratic as every family's patriarch should.

Christmas is my mother hurrying us away from new toys and into our Sunday best for the inevitable journey to church. The Catholic Liturgy is tedious I know, but somehow on this one day of the year, it was at least tolerable and at best uplifting and inspirational. One particular instance stands out so concretely. I couldn't tell you what year it was, only that I was still a youngster. One of the songs for the service was Pachelbel's Canon in D. Along with the normal organist, there was a violinist and my mother played an additional organ that was amplified. I was eager to lend a hand and was given the crucial task of turning the sheet music pages as my mother was playing. Okay, maybe not that big of a deal on the surface, but no less significant to me. Even to this day, as the Canon may be redundant and cliche, it remains one of my favorite pieces of music ever to grace these ears (and don't get me started on George Winston's "December" - my all-time favorite Christmas album). The injection of music into our family's Christmas ritual is priceless and finer than any other, graciously given to us from our mother. Most important was how much she loved us and never forgetting to tell us such, even when we were being brats (which was pretty much all of the time).

Christmas is my sister, the second oldest (i'm going to catch hell for that one), always in charge of passing out the gifts at my aunt's Christmas day gathering.

Christmas is certainly my brother ruining pictures, quite possibly my all-time favorite Christmas memory, indeed forever fossilized in a fantastic photograph.

Christmas is Grandpa opening his gifts with his careful hands not ripping the paper, but rather deliberately removing the tape in order to save the wrapping. Okay, Grandpa saves way too much, but I always loved him hoarding paper and bows during the yule tide.

Christmas is Grandma sitting in her chair with her feverishly heated cup of coffee (or the adult beverage, the "aunt stel" as I believe it was called), watching her children, her grand-children, and now her great-grand-children with that contented visage. It is always a sign of her love and pride.

Christmas is my aunt and uncle welcoming a rag-tag horde of vagabonds into their pristine and embracing home, stuffing us as if we were calves on the way to a slaughter, and sending us on our way with a kings ransom worth of chocolate and peppermint.

Christmas is the rag-tag horde of vagabonds, from the uncle that would play "look" at the dinner table, to the cousin that always got too rambunctious from a sugar overdose, to the sister-in-law that would sleep on the couch after dinner, to the warm-hearted, affable sarcasm of her husband (Can sarcasm be affable and warm-hearted? Survey says...absolutely.), to the ever growing family of little geniuses, thanks to their children.

This is what defines Christmas, not playing non-stop carols on the radio starting July 5th, not trampling people for an Xbox at Wal-Mart, and surely not going on CNN and weeping because you don't have enough money for that Xbox. Christmas isn't about consumerism and to me, Christmas is not about Jesus (nothing against him, I'm sure he was a swell guy). Christmas is about family.

Try as we might to stay within our comfortable niches, things always change. The holidays of my youth are long gone, and the holidays of adulthood are here. I must report, I am somewhat lugubrious and woebegone, but my melancholy is stirring, inspiring, and heartwarming. I'm a lucky guy. The process of carving new traditions is upon us, and this reporter says, "So far, so good."

I'll tell you what, you can keep your Xbox, your Tickle Me Elmo, or whatever other money vacuum is the latest rage. I don't vividly remember specific gifts that were given to me, nor do I really care about the material things that have been bestowed upon me, for I have known Christmas riches far beyond the imagination.