Cheeky's Hideaway

My Problem with Baseball

The other night I was out with a buddy of mine, a huge Yankees fan.  As I worked my way through a Sierra Nevada he offered up this conversation starter.

"Your Mariners look like they've got a pretty good shot this year."

"Oh really?" said I.

"Yeah, so and so from the Angels is banged up, and Vlad Blahblahblah is out.  Texas can't hit (or catch, or pitch, or something...I can't remember) and something something else wah wah wah wah waaaah waaaah"

Living in New York and not liking baseball is like living in Brazil and not liking plastic surgery.  You get by, but everyone notices how ugly you are. 

The problem is that I pretty much hate baseball.  I think it's fun to play on the occasional weekend with a bunch of out-of-shape thirty-somethings, and it's a great excuse to get drunk on a summer day with 52,324 of your closest friends.  But everything else about it is about as interesting as a health care seminar.  In Malagasy.  With no lunch break.

It's boring.  Nothing happens for 95% of every game.  The geeks in the stands may be furiously scribbling on-base statistics into their programs and discussing how the batter stacks up against left-handed pitchers, but all I see is a staring contest between a dude with a stick and a dude with a mullet.  Oh, he hit the ball!  Oh, someone caught it.  Rinse.  Repeat.  For HOURS.

Then there's the length of the season.  How can anyone give a rats ass about any individual game when you have to play 643 of them every summer?  In New York everyone gets all hot and bothered when the Yankees play the Red Sox, but you don't hear them make a peep when the Royals or the Nationals come to town.  Why?  Because WHO CARES!!!  You're going to be playing another game in 12 minutes anyway, so just try harder next time. 

And for the record, the whole Yankees-Sox thing is a facade.  There's so much cross-breeding between those fan bases that you'd think they'd give birth minotaurs and griffins.  They should all take a good look in the mirror and take stock of who they really are.

One of the things I'm trying to do with my time off is give up my prejudice and try to appreciate the sport.  That way I can actually talk to other guys during the summer without dozing off like Lawrence Summers at a "fiscal responsibility" summit.  But even if I get past all the politics and intrigue and over-hyped personalities I know I'll end up dealing with the thing that made me drop my engineering scholarship:  the math.  There's nothing human in a baseball box score; it's all ratios and percentages! If I wanted my sports to be like the SAT I'd follow competitive crossword puzzles.

I'm a football man.  I love watching men actually compete against each other, drawing up plays to surprise their opponents and making acrobatic moves to escape their clutches.  There's drama, there's skill, and there is finesse, and every Sunday is an event.  I'll even take hockey, basketball, or soccer, where guys take a field or court and actually where a split-second opening can mean a fast-break that changes the entire texture of a game.  Baseball has none of that.  It has the same thrill--and payoff--as timing traffic lights.  It's great when you hit them right, but you spend most of your time tapping your fingers waiting for the pitch light to change.

So sorry boys.  I'm doing my best, but until you add an octagonal cage or balls that explode on impact I just don't see us being friends.  Let's talk some other time when the real sports begin...

It's Not Waterboarding, But....

Barack Obama made several memos public recently outlining CIA techniques which could be construed as torture.  The detail in the documents is eye-opening, as it performs some impressive legal acrobatics to justify certain methods of interrogation, many of which would get a thumbs up from Pol Pot.

There is a little noticed tactic highlighted in the report which has not received as much press as some of the other more memorable methods.  As the report reads:

"This technique is used to cause psychological discomfort.  When the technique is employed, the detainees spouse is required to spend the entire day, every day at home.  During and between interrogations, the detainee will be required to share a cramped kitchen with the spouse, get used to the spouses lack of knowledge of the daily routine, and generally put up with his/her annoying habits and attitude for the entire day.  This technique may be used on an ongoing basis so long as the health and sanity of the detainee is not in danger."

I'm tellin' ya, I did NOT expect being home all day to be this rough.  Any fantasies I had about sitting around, drinking beer and playing video games for a couple weeks were never seriously entertained, but the oppressive boredom and repetitiveness can get to you quickly.  After all, Cheeky is at that age where everything is super important and requires my immediate undivided attention, particularly if it involves something an inanimate object is supposedly saying.  Oodgie and I are discovering all kinds of new ways to miscommunicate.  And the fact that we're sandbagging our money for necessities like groceries and barbiturates limits our options to anything within walking distance and can be foraged. 

If I weren't the only person around here who knows how to operate our stereo Oodgie would have stabbed me with a spork by now.

OK, maybe that's a bit extreme (sporks are, after all, a tool of satan), but it ain't easy.  I'm probably spending way too much time hunched over our computer, hitting refresh every two minutes in case some recruiter has written back.  My internet celebrity career hasn't really taken off, probably because posting Blip.FM Tweets and ranting about COBRA doesn't exactly draw a Kutscheresque following.  What can I say?  It's a little grim...who wants to hear about that?

I'm keeping my head up, though.  Or at least I'm keeping it from dragging on the floor, which, if you try to picture it, would look pretty awkward and uncomfortable. I'm convinced that this glorious opportunity to get to know my apartment is a temporary thing, and that massive success is just around the corner, albeit completely hidden behind a very large middle finger.  And I still have the last few unwatched episodes of Freaks & Geeks and Firefly to get through, so it's not like I don't have things to do.

And in the meantime I'm taking on an ongoing quest I've titled the "Tour de Starbucks."  (Today's destination:  Court St., Cobble Hill) This generally involves carrying my ridiculously heavy laptop from Starbucks to Starbucks, glaring at sweatshirted layabouts napping in the comfy chairs and trying my best not to fit in too much with the bespectacled latte-sippers surfing dating sites working on their novels.  Brooklyn is stinky with both, and the way I've been shaving lately it would be easy it would be hard to pick me out of a lineup of them. Worse, I'm becoming uncomfortably familiar with Diana Krall's musical output; I need my headphones and some Silversun Pickups to cleanse the pallet.

Maybe you'll see me in your local Starbucks, too!  The first person to find me wins a laser pointer I stole from work and a coupon for a free back rub.  Just don't approach to quickly...I'll probably be so hopped up on Pike Place Blend that I might tear a limb off before you can say "getajobyoubum!"

Next Thing You Know You're Livin' in a Van Down by the River

Getting laid off feels a little like vacation at first.  You sleep in late, eat crap, and wear clothes that you probably should have thrown out in 1994. 

You also find yourself constantly stressing out about why a recruiter you talked to 18 minutes ago hasn't called you back and offered you a job yet, or whether renewing your subscription to Cat Fancy magazine is going to be the final straw that sends your family reeling into abject poverty. 

It's a weird dichotomy, whipsawing back and forth between being an International Man of Leisure and Kevin Costner in the last hour of No Way Out.  I angrily stew over not having enough time to network or dig up freelance work, then when given a few minutes I stare blearily at the screen and eventually end up browsing through Digg looking for emberassing prom pictures.

I've managed kept myself pretty busy, though. I get to spend a lot more time with Cheeky, and we still have our morning fist-fight over which clothes she wants to wear (I suggest a pair of pants or a dress, and she insists on wearing and outfit that doesn't exist in our dimension).  Oodgie is psyched to have a co-schlepper.  I'm making a tiny but concerted effort to write more.  And I've been working on a new look to correspond with the lifestyle. 

I am a little disappointed, however, that my emergency backup plan of becoming an internet celebrity hasn't gotten off the ground yet. By this time I had expected to be co-hosting a show with Alex Albrecht or exchanging Tweets with Jimmy Fallon.  My social profile has yet to catch up with my self-image of being interesting and awesome, proving definitively that high school wasn't a fluke. 

So I need your help. I need to become famous so I can get paid just for being my handsome, witty self.  I may not have the skills or the sponsors, but I'm certainly more deserving than some.  And then you can tell everyone you knew me "way back when." 

Sure beats workin'....