four-eight lefty...

the major league baseball trade deadline approaches this afternoon. I was able to make a deal for outfielders David Dejesus and Xavier Nady as well as a 7th round pick for next year's draft for outfielder Justin Upton...

'hold up,' you say? When did i acquire a major league baseball team? i didn't. i play strat-o-matic baseball, a roll playing game based upon major league statistics from the season before. I play in a seven man league and we have a website and everything—http://nylistratleague.tripod.com/ for those who care...

yeah, i play a roll playing game. So does Keith Hernandez. Countless baseball luminaries play as well. Celebrities, rich and poor, what have you...

my eldest brother and i played a bit back in the days of yore, we both have a love of baseball and both real baseball through our high school years. When I got to college I found friends who enjoyed playing the game. i hadn't played since i was a tyke but i was interested in getting back into it. It has turned into is a labor (and i do mean labor) of love and a way to keep in touch with people that i'm not sure i would even think of—without...

judge Roughneck, who would like to take credit for creating the earth and the heavens—if he could, is responsible for bringing it all together back then at St John's, where a majority of the league members were matriculated. He and i were playing yesterday here at the headquarters, that is, before we decided to abuse ourselves playing one-on-one basketball (real basketball that is). We had been in discussions about making a deal that would improve both of our clubs for the rest of the year and when talk like that happens you tend to want to make a deal just to make a deal. The discussions are nothing more than semantics in this forum but suffice to say i made the deal i made listed above...

the Judge is my best friend, like it or not. We once were debating so loudly at the Irish Cottage that the bartender came over and offered us both a beer—'violence is not the answer, fellas' he said, as he went about the business of buying our next round. We laughed because we were not going to fight we are just married to our opinions. We got a free beer out of the deal, so, what the hell. We go from bar-to-bar looking for free drinks now. We have talked each other off the ledge time and time again on any number of issues. Without strat, we'd still be this close, i mean, i was the best man at his wedding for crimony's sake. Everyone else in the league though, i couldn't tell ya', or maybe i can—i wouldn't know half of them and the other half, they would be the people on facebook who you accept their friend request because you don't want them to feel bad. And the Judge and i were in one of their wedding parties! Its crazy what time can do—What separation can do. Time and separation have taken a close friend and made him a stranger outside of playing a 12 game series in and 84 game season. What used to be an exchange of ideas, dreams and anecdotes has turned into the rolling of dice and the declaration of 'four-eight lefty,' and the reply of 'normal home run 1-4, double the rest.' A cordial pat on the back and an occasional ride home from the day...

time and separation has also given me a bolt of lightning relationship with a woman who i couldn't possibly have thought i would be involved with at this point of my life. Without the time and separation involved between us, i don't think we would have what we have, which for me has been life saving...

its the penultimate, time and separation, it deepens cuts and heals all wounds, it allows you to forget and strengthens bonds, its a line out max or a one-four home run—straight up. Its a trade deadline...

who are you trading today?...

unfrozen caveman writer...

as i came to the site this morning, I was reminded of the cluster fuck that was last night's post. i tried playing with the size of letters and quotation marks and ellipses, instead i made what seems like just another angry email from my uncle on the shore...

i will never apologize for what i sometimes refer to as my fire and brimstone-soapbox rhetoric (and by sometimes i mean i thought of that line this morning) but i do apologize for the funky look, not the pic of Obama, which is a favorite, that and the one with the wide-brimmed hat smoking a cigarette, is he a PI or the President—he's President PI. Rham is the smarmy club owner though Hillary is no TC. Nothing on Hill, I just don't buy her piloting a cruising helicopter. I digress...

the point is that when it comes to technology i know what i learned by accident, so when i try to do something all fancy lad you have to give me a pass. However, please don't pass on the piece itself, as always, there is information contained in that piece that will save your life...

as for the tech crowd, snicker-not, when the shit comes down who are you going to call to start a fire in the middle of a windstorm as we sit atop the Palisades overlooking the ashes that were our fair city. As Ten Bears says, 'a good fire is better than anything.'...

a quick update: the results are in and 'the Captain's March' did not shape up against the likes of 'Jack Nicholson and Jesus' in the Tucson Weekly's '84' contest. If i knew a hardcore joke was going to win i would have sent several in that would have blown away this cheap thrill. You can reread 'the Captain's March' in the archives, if you want to check the winner and other honorable mentions—some are decent and worth a read—you can look for the Tucson Weekly on your own time, the Constellation has no place for that rag...

i'm a jilted writer, i'm allowed to be bitter. i should've have went with the dinner party and the dude licking his baby fingers story, maybe that would have been more a hobo's speed...

the way things work...

'Money is the root of all evil'...

you've heard it, and we'll get into it, but check it—

...say what you will about this dude,

but he took a bullet for you today...

Barack Obama our President, and occasional Boom Boom Washington impersonator, took his health care plan and hit the bricks. He went in front of people—real folk and did his best to take one for the team...

what Obama did wasn't just shill a health care plan that has Wall Street rethinking its commitment to the Health Care Industry as much as go toe to toe with capitalism. Meanwhile, his former colleagues shit their pants compromising on a re-worked bill that takes it easy on the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies that have been taking our life's blood since the last time somebody tried to call them out (see Hillary Clinton circa 1993, you know, when the Health Care Lobby and their 'Contract With America era Republicans took her out in a drive by)...

years ago my father used to sit us down when he was summarily pissed at my brothers and i for our choices, or lack thereof. He would speak of 'the game' and how you play it. Stay out of trouble, go to college, get a good job, collect a paycheck, buy American, you know, play the game. The eldest, he's knee deep in the game, doing the job of three people, trapped in a part of town where the grass won't grow for years, singing praise to the game. The other one has had his life split in half and won't admit the shit is getting to him, the game will have you talking to yourself. And me, well if you've read here regular, you know my tale— years of running from the game until the day I played it, only to have them change the rules. And rules have changed. The world is very different now...

my father, and i love him, will never understand, when i was hopped up on nuclear waste and prednisone, that I had a birds-eye view of the game. Listening to him haggle with his insurance company on my behalf. Cutting deals with my doctors to take the 80%, and eat the co-pay. Cursing in the name of every part of the student loan establishment. Watching less qualified yokels rise up the ladder in front of him. Yeah, he loved the game, but i decided long ago, i wasn't having it...

your government doesn't care about you, there is no money in it. Make no mistake, you'll hear a lot over the next few weeks about blue dogs and public option and employee mandates and other what not, forget it. When the day is done its about the free market. The Health Care Lobby has their hands in the pockets of most major politicians. Money for campaigns, campaigns for the free market. This is the way things work. Money is the root of all evil...

i had a conversation with my Aunt's husband over wine at Christmas. He is a SVP at a large finance firm. We were discussing how the recession would eventually cause a redistribution of wealth. My argument was that after people in his position and higher (and lower) made decisions to distort the natural rules of economics (supply and demand) that a natural correction was inevitable, he agreed. i brought forth the point that because of such corrections that the break between rich and poor increased and the middle class was being stretched to one side or the other. That the government needed to step in and help support families in need, especially middle class families that had chased the dragon of what his colleagues had created. He called it socialism, i laughed. Financiers, economists, and pro-business politicians preach the word of the free market. Let it correct itself, they say. Well, a year ago when the bottom was dropping out of their bottom lines they pleaded for bailouts—'Save our investment bank the free market is coming to destroy us!!'...

now that's socialism...

the free market is at work here. While fostering competition it also condones cannibalism. A company that performs poorly, gets swallowed up. This happens over and over again until there are only three or four conglomerates supplying the market with its product or service. The Health Care Industry is no different, so their lobby has been burning up the phone lines getting their senators and congressmen and women to shit all over a plan that would throw Medicaid rates into the plan. I once was fortunate to be on Medicaid, in my day of guerrilla health insurance, and it was the best health plan I had ever been on. If the market has to compete with Medicaid, it will lose its profit margin. Less junkets, less boat outings, less walking on the backs of meek and mild...

congress said today that they are near a compromise on the bill. A compromise that 'the American people are asking for.' Is that like 4 out of 5 dentists agree? Sounds like 'the game' to me...

so there was Obama, taking it on the chin for you today. Fighting capitalism head up. He's going to lose, they always do. Capitalism will be the end of this Republic, be sure of that. But I love it when some one's willing to fight...

Barry, do me a favor, when this compromised bill shows up on your desk, veto the shit out of it. You convinced a ton of people to jump off a bridge with you, lets do it, lets change the way it works...

Yeaaah Boyeeee!!...

on us all a little rain must fall...

so, to get you up to speed...

went for a ride yesterday, what i like to call the 3 boro-bike tour—'cause the Bronx ain't worth the trouble and who even believes Staten Island is actually a borough, i mean at this point we're just being nice...

the 3 boro tour consists of me strapping supplies on my back, revving the 'rebirth of the kool' to 10 and letting the rubber of the mutt hit the road. For reference: i took Metropolitan up to Grand and snuck in to Brooklyn that way, cut over onto Union Ave to Flushing and made the roundabout to the Brooklyn Bridge. Once in Manhattan I shot across Centre street and made my way through the madness to Delancy on the way over the Williamsburg. Kicked it over Roebling through McCarren to McGuinness and took the Pulaski into the old stomping grounds in LIC—its been 5 months off the hook now. i continued through the -sides (Sunny and Wood) and cut a swath through Flushing Meadow Park on the way into Bayside and then the Throgs Neck bridge. I finished up by riding to the boyhood home in Queens Village via the Cross Island Parkway Bike Trail, Cloverdale and Springfield Blvd. After a feeding on the folks' arm I made my way back to the Fhills via Union Tpke and an overblown guido at Austin and Ascan, who 'could have killed me'. Brother, i'm indestructible...

what the description of my route left out were the two deluges (+ one I was able to beat to my front door) that put an absolute and literal damper on my afternoon. Now there is nothing to worry about fair readers, i have come to the conclusion that water does not have the ability to melt my skin, and i was equipped with towels and i was even wearing a swimsuit under my shorts. What i wasn't prepared for was the bath my poor phone took. Since then use of the phone has been sketchy, i've been able to get it to come on long enough to listen to a few voice mails...

my original idea was to share a few pictures and talk about the weather in detail, sound off on how the park by Ft Totten is an abomination for the bike riders who once longed for it and about the dude in the Lincoln Navigator who went more dramatic then one of those fairies on Daisy in Love. Instead, you get a diatribe on my cell phone...

i first bought a cell phone for use on my way down to Florida for the first time through AT&T Wireless. i've been under their plan through 4 phones, the latest, the blackberry pearl i picked up about a year and half ago after my last contract re-up. It has served me well and for the most part so has AT&T Wireless, who i've stayed with through the change to Cingular and back to AT&T. i went there today, after not being able to revive the phone last night or this morning, hoping to get a cheap deal on a new pearl and hoping my SIM card was still hanging in. The gentleman who helped me turned the phone on and after a miraculous few seconds the phone was up and running. Great! Saved me some dough. He advised that if i still had problems that i should get another battery, a battery they didn't have. Later in the day, after giving it a charge, since it didn't have much left, it went dead again, so i rode to another AT&T store to try and find a battery, no dice and in the meantime i was met with another—wait for it—monsoon. On the way back down Metropolitan i stopped at a private cellular dealer, i figured maybe he stocked the battery—he did. i requested to try the battery out, it didn't work, after some discussion with owner on how i treated the phone after today's trip to the AT&T store and how i charged the phone. He told me that was bad for the phone because if the phone is still wet it could cause a surge which could scramble the whole operation. He continued by saying that you should take it apart and leave it to dry for two days...

shit...

question is, why didn't the dude at the AT&T store know this and shouldn't i be allowed to stick my foot in his ass?...

its a story we all know so why harp on the obvious but to say that corporations have been allowed to mistreat us for over '50 years and their financier partners-in-crime have kept the score. if i bought a phone from a store, and that store continues to sell that phone, shouldn't they have the accessories that go with that phone? And i'm not referring to the phone holders or ear pieces that make you look like a tool, and yes, you look like a tool, i'm referring that which the phone can do without—a battery. And why isn't the personnel working at such a store aware of the effects of liquids on a phone and how to facilitate the continued usage of the device...

i don't have the energy to wail about the horrors of the corporation. They are why we are at war, why we're unemployed, and why we are poor. They are why there is a pill to cure impotence but not cancer. They are we have co-pays and the dumbest children in the industrialized world. Any good that the corporation ever brought to society they washed away years ago with the blood, sweat and tears of the folks they fired and left for dead long ago, so fuck them...

i don't have a way of preventing the corporation from profiting and i don't have the power to stop them—its the most frustrating fact of life of them all. The corporation is in my phone, my sports, my doctor's office and at my union hall. Its everywhere, so i guess all you can do is draw your line in the sand where you can and hold it there for as long as you can...

my bike is a mutt 7700 from Bianchi, the oldest bicycle company still in existence. They run out of Italy. i used to ride mongoose, since i was fifteen, but then i found out they were bought out by a large American conglomerate who were just using the name for public relations and promotion and that the bikes were second rate, unlike the way they were years ago. People may get on me for not buying American, but fuck 'em, that's my line in the sand. Maybe we can't get rid of the corporations, but we have to make them accountable...

and to the dude and his trophy wife in the Lincoln, i'm just not that lucky. i'm not going to get hit by some well-fat-blowhard, i don't have that kind of juice. Best day i ever had is the day you hit me. i get hit by the poor Pakistani in the Volvo who doesn't have a penny to his name...

i got pickles!...

we've all had the experience, when the little things supersede everything else. When the most minute detail in a day overcomes the incessant pounding of the clock of existence...

i've heard tale of the mid-life crisis—i laugh, since rarely has my life been devoid of crisis, and that those who claim to be in the throws of a mid-life crisis are in a state of disbelief that their fairy tale lives could be at risk, that death could actually come and wipe it all away and leave nothing but regret and ash. Listen up, fairy tales are for fairies. I think most of you probably already know this—I'm no different...

i'm not complaining, i never do, and what do I have to complain about? i have loving parents who have stayed together in an era where that is increasingly becoming rare and a family that looks out for one another. i have my health—generally, close friends and a wonderful woman that thinks i'm the bees knees, whatever that means (you see bees don't have knees). But hours become days, days to weeks and weeks to months and it begins to pile up. The stress of unemployment and how long I can live off of the state and the stress of trying to reinvent yourself in the face of the recession you saw coming years ago—the one that ultimately got you laid off twice (once then and once now). The stress of trying to reinvigorate a writing career that had laid dormant too long, and the stress of not knowing whether or not I can pull it all off...

i went food shopping yesterday and bought a couple of pickles out of a barrel at the Natural—you might remember the Natural from the scene in Spider Man when Peter Parker is learning how to use his new found web-slinging powers—great produce there. i returned home and cut them into quarters for future consumption, put them in my refrigerator and went about my day of writing the derelict story, playing a twilight round at Forest Park and finishing with Pizza and Mario Cart with the kid down the street. i awoke in my normal morning malaise, my body hurting from the fourth round of golf in a week, the obligatory bike rides and running that keeps me in pseudo-shape since the warm weather has come. My mind focused on the list of tasks tattooed on my brain. After a cup of coffee and my survey of the Time Trial in the Tour De France (one of the advantages of joblessness) i opened the refrigerator to discover what had slipped my mind—'I got pickles!'...

there has been a sea change over the last generation to make kids believe that they are special, that, individually, they are unique and they should celebrate this belief. i say, pah! You are not special, you are not unique! And its about time someone in the know let you in on that deep dark tale of woe...

Welp, I GOT PICKLES! And I am special—fuck the rest of ya'!...

shit, i have to do laundry today. Maybe i'm not so special...

don't cry, dry your eye...

traditionally, today is one of two days where there is no major sports being played. Basketball, hockey and football are in hiatus, and baseball is at it mid-summer, all star break—the WNBA and MLS don't count. People talk about how this day, the day after the baseball all star game, is the penultimate day of emptiness...

looking for something to grab onto in your time of need? How about the Tour de France which has been pedaling away for the past week and a half? Check Versus out and check it out, and don't miss starting next Tuesday when the race enters the Alps, and the drama of team Astana's Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador' power struggle will lay itself out for all to see...

and Phil Ligget is a commentary god...

my ankle, man—my foot!...

i defy you to find a better half hour of revenge cinema then 'Mad Max'...

good luck...

back in the days on the boulevard of Corporal Kennedy...

i was waiting for a couple of friends outside of a Bayside eatery for a buy/sell sell/buy meeting, when all of a sudden a mid 90's Jetta with 5 kids—high school seniors/college freshmen from the look of it—rolled by with 'Check the Rhime' from Tribe Called Quest blaring from the speakers along Corporal Kennedy Blvd (insert guido joke here)...

1991 off the classic Low End Theory record—everyone should have a copy in one format or another of this record. i was pleasantly surprised that 5 kids who probably weren't born yet when this song was recorded deemed it worthy to blow through their stereo in the age of the voice modulater or as i have termed it—the Yoko Ono of hip hop. i took pause and then smiled...

it seems rap may not be dead yet...