It’s been a while, but I’m back. It must be election year.

Yeah, I know, it’s been a few months.  After a little while writing a blog becomes an exercise in both futility and ego, and what I have to say isn’t important to anybody except for me.  Everybody loves their own opinion!  That said, Willard Mittens Romney prompted me to write an entry.  Here’s the article: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/28/romney-the-world-is-not-safe/

Let me highlight a few quotes and give my thoughts on them.  

“I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place today,” he told an audience of roughly 5,000 people – many of them military families – at an outdoor park in San Diego. “It’s not.”  Must be election time, because every two years the republicans have to remind us that we’re not safe.  Over the last 12 years, though, they don’t have a good track record of increasing our safety.  9/11 happened under Bush, and Obama finally nailed the guy who did it.  No major terrorist attacks on US soil since Obama took the reins.  But yet the republicans beat the drum that not only are we not safe, but we need to spend MORE on the military…

“We have two courses we can follow,” he said. “One is to follow the pathway of Europe, to shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs.”  Nice fear-mongering there, warning of us becoming (gasp!) Europe.  We can’t be anybody but America, and we can’t be America unless we spend proportionally ridiculous amounts on our military!  Screw social programs.  We don’t need more spending on schools and education, infrastructure, and programs designed to help people get back on their feet.  Americans don’t deserve that.  What they do deserve is more Tomahawks and weapons that will never be used.

Admittedly, this presents a conundrum for me because I’m employed by the military.  Military cutbacks would probably mean me losing my job, and if that happens check with me after six months and see how I feel about reduced military spending.  My song might be different.  

My point is that if we have to face cutbacks in all other areas of our national budget, why is the military so sacred?  Most of the other cuts are drops in the bucket compared to military spending.  It shouldn’t be spared and it isn’t the solution to our economic problems.

“He believes in American exceptionalism,” McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, said.  Call me what you will, but right now I don’t believe in American exceptionalism.  I’ve been to many different countries around the world and I still choose to call America home, but we’ve lost our global edge.  We’re no longer exceptional at anything other than promoting and producing war.  Under both Obama and Bush, under the guise of safety, we’ve had liberties stripped away.  We have a massively ineffective TSA probing us at airports – under the guise of safety – with no justification and no method to their madness.  We have a government that spies on us at will and keeps pushing the envelope without even hiding what they are doing.  We can’t balance a budget and we can’t even agree to disagree, for the sake of the country.  We think it’s all the other guy’s fault, and we’re getting dumber and more locked in our positions by the week.  We need to return America into an exceptional country, and hasn’t been just the last four years that have seen us sliding down the tubes.  It’s been at least the last 24 years.  

And yet, our choices are Obama (GWB part II) or Romney (GWB part III).  It doesn’t matter which one is elected in November.  Obama has continued many of Bush’s policies but conservatives still think he’s a socialist and liberals still think he’s the better option.  Romney would obviously cater to big businesses more openly than any president I can remember but many people still think he’s the solution.  Meanwhile, our Congress is a damn joke and they’ll keep getting reelected because of name recognition, despite an approval rating in the single digits.  

And yet, what do we hear the most about as the election draws closer: keeping ourselves safe, gays, bullying, birth certificates, job creators, and which (lying) candidate loves the middle class the most.  None of which will make America exceptional again.  

I wish I knew the solution.  The only thing I do know is that what we’re doing right now isn’t it.

The Final Four

It’s March Madness!  I hope everybody else did their brackets, because I didn’t.  Even though I’ve watched more pro basketball this year than I have in the last three years combined – boredom motivates me – I don’t pay much attention to college basketball.  There are a few reasons why:

1.  I’m already dialed in to my main sports squeeze, the Angels.  After them, my mistress is the Chargers.  It really doesn’t become a man to have more than two women in his rotisserie.  Frankly, I don’t have the time or money for more than two.

2.  March Madness and the Final Four.  This is the main reason.  Hey, I love alliteration as much as the next person, but this is so forced.  March Madness?  Really?  What’s so mad about it?  I don’t know, but it’s madness!  And…the race to the Final Four.  For basketball fans, can you remember all of the Final Four From Five years past?  Four?  It’s not a race to the Final Four, or the Elite Eight, or the Sweet Sixteen.  Please, stop that.  It’s a Championship Challenge, or a Winner Wonderland, or a Primacy Primer.  In a short time, few will remember the Titular Two who didn’t make it to Shampionship Showdown game.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my Amazing Angels are on and I need to watch.  It’s spring training – maybe they should rebrand it as Early Excitement or Preseason Psychosis – and baseball has a long way to go to get to the Wily World Series.

’tis a grand old flag indeed…

That has Obama’s face on it.  I’m sure most of you have seen it by now, but if not here’s a link to a pic of Obama Glory and an article about it: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10702389-obamas-image-on-american-flag-angers-vets  This is the loony left equivalent of Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut: a publicity ploy designed to get “the other side” full of righteous piss and vinegar.  It seems to be working just about as well as Rush’s multiple-day rant.

However (I love that word)…I’d like to point out a few things.  This is my way of trying to hog some of the attention.

1.  That’s not an American flag.  An American flag has 50 stars on it (or 57, if you’re a doltish conservative who insists Obama really does think there are that many states).  This flag has no stars.  For it to truly be a desecration of Old Glory, it would need to have Obama’s mug superimposed over the 50 stars, not replacing them.  Yes, the intent is obvious but for those moaning about the sanctity of the flag – this isn’t the flag you’re looking for.  Really. 
2. If it was Obama’s face over the 50 stars – or blocking most of them out – then I wouldn’t much care for it but I’d still be OK with it.  Freedom of expression, blah blah blah, what I fought for (by not fighting, but sitting on a boat wondering when I’d be home) all those years.  I respect the flag and recognize its place in our history, but people have the right to do this to the flag.  That’s one of the things that makes our country what it is.  And yes, I’d feel the same if Obama’s mug was replaced with Bush’s or Reagan’s.  I’d actually get a kick out of it if they used the Bush pic from the “Miss Me Yet?” billboard. 
3. If you are upset about this, I hope you don’t have any shirts with flags on them, or that if you have a flag flying at your house you treat it according to the rules of flag etiquette.  Otherwise, you’re being a tad bit hypocritical.  Attend the mote in thine own eye, and such.
4. Something that seems to be overlooked from the article…”The Obama flag had been flying two months before it was noticed by Leesburg veteran Jim Bradford.”  Two months, the flag had been flying.  That’s a long time to troll, hoping somebody will notice.

 My final point is too important for a number.  It goes something like this: CALM THE FUCK DOWN, PEOPLE.  Yeah, that’s pretty close.  Calm the fuck down.  Just like there are people looking to be outraged and offended by Rush Limbaugh and he feeds off of them, the people flying this flag were screaming for attention and now they have it in spades.  The people upset about this flag are the tail on the coin that has Rush Limbaugh’s anti-fan club for its head.  Meanwhile: we’re still in Afghanistan fighting an undefined war we’ll never win while Russia laughs at us for not learning from them, we’re squabbling about abortion and birth control and gay marriage and separation of church and state while Congress and the President continue to ignore our interests and pass the buck on to the next generation, we’re not much closer to weaning ourselves off of foreign oil and getting the hell out of the Persian Gulf area and letting them do whatever they want to each other because it will no longer affect us, and both major parties continue to give us candidates we don’t want to vote for but we vote for them anyway because they’re not the other party and the other party is bad.  I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else; I occasionally enjoy a good political argument that gets my blood pumping a bit faster. 

 The problem is that we’re arguing about the wrong things, and time is running out. 

My annual ode to the coming baseball season

In the past I’ve compared rooting for a sports team to an abusive relationship, and that comparison still works.  I’m still baseball’s bitch and probably always will be.  However…wait for it…

this year is different.  Oh yes it is!  To be certain, in baseball (as in the rest of the sports world, and life, and abusive relationships) there are no guarantees.  Few people predicted St. Louis would be the champs heading into 2012 and then lose their marque player to the Angels; even Tony LaRussa would have stopped digging for nose-gold and stared at you like a dog hearing a theremin  if you’d told him a year ago this would happen.  However, even with no guarantees this season promises to be different for me and my fellow Angels fans.

First and most importantly, Mathis is gone.  I know there are a few free-agent signings that made big headlines, but Mathis being gone is the biggest news for Angels fans.  Mathis was the focal point for Angels’ fans woes last year and if things go kaput this year, we’ll have to find a new scapegoat.  Bobby Abreu, if you’re still here I’m looking at you and your bling.  Fernando Rodney is also gone – boy, talk about two great examples of addition by subtraction! – so if the bullpen falters, we’ll have to find someone else to blame; I think Jepsen will make the team just for that role.  Of course, we’ll always have Mike Scioscia and his aversion to consistent lineups, and Mickey Hatcher and…whatever he subtly does to make hitters change their style.

But that’s just if things go bad, which they won’t!  See, this year is different and you’ll get to see the real Angels, not the one that I always hope likes my dinner but causes me to cower in fear of every time the food goes into the mouth.  See, we got a new GM – Jerry Dipoto, or DiPoto if you will – and he’s already left the Previous GM in the dust.  Previous GM traded Mike Napoli for Vernon Wells and kept Mathis for Scioscia to dote on.  That alone is a fireable offense and has created an OF jam that will take a few more years to clear.  Dipoto got rid of Mathis, traded for a catcher who can actually occasionally hit, and signed a few big-name free agents you may have heard of.  Pujols and Wilson.

You probably also heard the details of Pujols’ contract, which will almost certainly hurt the Angels in about five years, but right now it’s pretty damn sweet.  Getting those two is like fresh flowers on the table every morning.  They make the abuse stink pretty and look bright and colorful.  They’re also eye candy that will draw other families (fans) to the house (stadium) to check them out, which is good.  Now everybody will see how good my team is to me!

However – there’s always another however, isn’t there? – questions still remain.  Will Kendrys Morales be healthy and if so will he find something like his 2009 form?  What will happen with Mark Trumbo?  Will Erick Aybar make any moves that are as gif-worthy as the famed Aybar dance?  For reference (I can watch this about 40 times before I get tired of it): 

So while there are plenty of questions and reasons for concern, I’m more optimistic than I have been in years.  This is the 10th anniversary of the Angels lone World Series championship, and even abusive partners treat you well on significant anniversaries.  The Angels are much improved from last year and the fan base is excited, which will make for a good time at the stadium.  There’s even this promo to anticipate:

 

I’m serious – I want that hat.  I just hope it fits on my gigantic melon.  I’m sure there are other promos I’ll get suckered into, but this one is the Alpha wolf.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to this season.  It’s gonna be great, just you wait and see.  You’re gonna see the real Angels this year.  You’ll finally see them how I see them!

I was raised on radio

I’m not the last generation to grow up on radio, but I’m pretty sure I will be one of the last.  While listening to the Journey CD of the same name today, I suddenly realized my youngest daughter will almost certainly not be raised by radio, and that made me a bit sad.  Most adults cherish their childhood and think it looks pretty awesome through the lens of nostalgia.  I’m no different.  Music meant a lot to me as a kid (and still does as an old-ish fart, of course), and my memories of it growing up are like a tasty warm mental pretzel to me, salty and delicious.

Hell, I’m old enough (just like that annoying guy from Everclear) to remember when AM radio stations played music, and weren’t just full of political and sports blowhards.  When I was a kid we had a swimming pool – yes, we were middle-class – and we had a stereo console near it that looked a bit like this:

If me and my brothers were going swimming, that sucker was cranked and we had glorious stereo sound.  True, sometimes it was glorious AM sound from KFI or the Mighty Six-Ninety, but it was still loud and scratchy and groovy.  Radio back then – late 70s and early-to-mid-80s – really was like the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati; to verify that all you have to do is look at a KTEL (the original NOW! compilations) record from the time.  KISS, Elton John, Molly Hatchet, KC and the Sunshine Band, James Taylor, all on the same record.    Now KFI give us Bill Handel (yay!) and Rush Limbaugh (boooooo!) (and I’m not saying Booooooo-urns) and 690 AM gives us…well, I don’t know what it is now but it was sports for a while.

My first music purchases were a Beach Boys record (the horrible 15 Big Ones! but I loved it back then) and Highway to Hell on a bootleg 8-track I got at the Four Points swap meet, which is now a “Mexican” swap meet.  I got into the Beach Boys because my mom had one of their records, and AC/DC because of my oldest brother and a ride home from a school janitor who played it in his Celica.  Damn, that was rad!  They were swearing!

After I moved on from KFI I found KMET and KLOS.  Before it changed to lights-out jazz, KMET kicked ass.  KLOS came in second but it was a close second; KMET just had a cool factor that KLOS lacked.  To me, at least; evidently KMET didn’t match ratings with KLOS, hence the format change.  Eventually KLOS won the rock battle and even eventually-er they switched to that most horrible of genres, classic rock.  Fuck you, KLOS.  I can’t listen to you anymore.

Sometimes I got lucky and could pick up the exotic stations from further down the coast: KGB, 91X, and KROQ.  KGB was a KLOS clone, but it came from San Diego so I was always infatuated with it; the extra distance the signal had to travel to get to me made it cooler.  KROQ was my brother Bob’s station and I didn’t like much of the music on it at the time.  Same with 91X, although it had the San Diego cachet.  Weird was OK if it came from San Diego.

As I hit my teens, I found hard rock and hair metal and I was hooked.  This coincided with the launch of the mighty KNAC, which kicked KLOS’s ass like it was a big step-brother to KLOS that didn’t like them.  The only problem was, the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach Lancaster, so I only got to listen to it when I ventured through the hills to LA.  To me, KNAC was like a hot chick with a sweet rack compared to the mousy girl that was KLOS.  About that time Pirate Radio also came to LA, and it was a cross between KLOS and KNAC.  I could get it in Lancaster, so it was a decent pacifier until I could get to LA.

I have all these memories of listening to radio and the radio stations I loved as a kid.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that KMET also gave us in the LA area Dr. Demento, which was a blessing to a nerdy boy like me.  All of this, my daughter won’t have.  Radio stations no longer have personalities nor do they inspire loyalty.  More than ever they seem designed to suck the most money out of advertisers and therefore are focused on playing it safe.  Safe sucks for radio.  I want my Dr. Johnny Fever, my Fraiser Smith, my DJs who made me believe they believed in the music.  My daughter won’t get them.

I feel a bit sad for her, even while I enjoy my memories.  Music isn’t the same for her as it was for me.  However, I have hope every time we sing (or, she sings and I try to sing) “Take on Me” together on XM Radio.  Maybe when she’s my age she’ll remember XM like I do KNAC. I hope so.  Kids deserve that.

Boobs! A love story.

So there I was, in fifth grade and spending the night at my friend Jimmy Peterson’s house.  We were sleeping in a tent on the front lawn, and my brother Bob was also there spending the night in another tent with Jimmy’s older brother, Wayne.  Bob and Wayne were two grades ahead of us, and at that age that’s a significant difference.  Bob taught me a lot of things, the most important of which is to never let up when you’re in a fistfight; he taught me that by kicking the shit out of me in a fistfight when I let up on him.  Thanks for the lesson, bro!  But I digress; this is about boobs.

Jimmy and I were in our tent doing whatever fifth graders did back then, probably listening to the radio, telling bad jokes, and farting.  There was a moment of silence, and in that silence we heard a distinctly female voice coming from Bob and Wayne’s tent.  Oh my god!  They had a girl in their tent!  This had to be investigated, because it was sure to be a blackmail-able situation.  We ran out of our tent and over to theirs, and discovered that Kelly Macias was in the tent.

Kelly and her sister Kris went to our school, Wilsona.  My brother Bob set the school records for fights in a year, and about half of them were with Kelly; she was a scrapper.  Kris was in class with Jimmy and I.  Kelly and Kris were both early and rapid developers, and both had noticeable racks at that time.  Ah, the Macias sisters.

Jimmy and I opened the tent flap and caught our brothers red-handed (hopefully that was a hand!) with Kelly.  As I recall, nothing was going on at the time but that didn’t matter.  We had grade-A dirt on our brothers and we were going to use it!  ”We’re gonna tell on you!  We’re gonna tell on you!”  we chanted with joy.  This was great!  They were so busted.

“Don’t tell on us, please!  Keep it a secret!” they pleaded.  I didn’t want to tell on them, I just wanted to enjoy the power that I had over them.  It was intoxicating, because I’d never had anything like this over my brother before.  Now it was time to bargain.

“What do we get if we don’t tell?” I asked, opening the negotiations.

A silence followed and Bob and Wayne looked at each other, trying to figure out the least they could give us.  However, Kelly stepped in.  ”If you guys shut up, I’ll show you my boobs.”

More silence followed as Jimmy and I looked at each other, stunned.  Wow.  That possibility may have occurred to us in a few minutes but it wasn’t even on the table yet.  Kelly dropped the boob bomb and ended the negotiations right when they started.  I wish I could travel back in time to see my prepubescent face when this offer was made; it was the crowning moment of my life thus far.  I was gonna see boobs, and my friend was right there with me!  This must have been what it feels like when a team wins the World Series.  I wanted to laugh and cry and I wasn’t quite sure of why.

It took Jimmy and I about two seconds to yell out “OK!” and get ready for our reward.  We didn’t even think to add any conditions such as length of time.  This was good enough.  Jimmy and I sat, and Kelly pulled down her top.   That was – let me calculate here – 32 years ago and all I can remember is that they were boobs, they were big, and they were on a seventh-grader, two whole grades ahead of me.  I heard the heavenly choir and the tent was lit with an otherworldly light.  Oh yeah, the rest of my friends at school were gonna know about this!

Kelly pulled her top back up and said “You guys can’t tell anyone about this or we’ll all get in trouble.  That’s part of the deal.”  If I’d had more sense back then I’d have said something about not adding terms after the deal has been struck, but Jimmy and I were still giggling and and enjoying ourselves too much.  We’d seen boobs!  We were practically men now, the world was open to us.  We agreed that it was our secret and we wouldn’t tell; I’m pretty sure we kept that promise, at least for a few months.  Or weeks, or days.

This episode taught me a few things that have stayed with me throughout my life.  First: boobs are cool.  Second: don’t let somebody dictate conditions after the deal has been consummated.  Third: heh heh…boobs.  Fourth: losing your innocence isn’t always a bad thing.  Finally:  you guessed it, boobs.

A preview of the first story I’m working on…

Five Balls: The Biography of Ralston Schmidt

Chapter One:  The Bastard Son of a Bastard Son

Ralston Schmidt.  The name evokes many images for the baseball fan: jail, wild pitches, game-winning home runs, dwarves wrestling in oil, the bottom of the ashtray, and of course Ralston’s legendary tattoo.  Ralston Schmidt is a baseball legend for all of the wrong (and a few of the right) reasons.  His years with the California/Anaheim Angels are remembered both for his on- and off-field accomplishments, and his baseball career is punctuated with statistics that if spread out over 15 years – instead of over parts of seven seasons – would all but guarantee a bust in Cooperstown.  It’s also no coincidence that Ralston was busted in Cooperstown, one of his many arrests.  How a neglected young boy turned into the magnificent asshole we all know as Ralston Schmidt is just as interesting a tale as what Ralston did between and outside of the foul lines.

Not much is known about Ralston’s early years, and if you ask Ralston about it you’ll get a different version every time.  Ralston and the truth have a casual acquaintance and sometimes they’ll go weeks without bumping into each other.  What is known is that Ralston was born on September 25, 1967 to Myrna McCobb after a long and complicated pregnancy.  His father is suspected to be Dinsmore Schmidt, but as his mother had a reputation for enjoying the company of men both gentle and non-gentle, his exact lineage is uncertain.  Dinsmore Schmidt was the only man in Myrna’s orbit at the time to grudgingly accept the possibility he might be the father, if not the responsibilities that went with said fatherhood.