The Coolest Thing Ever

There have always been heroes.  Depending on which way you believe, man was either created to look up to and want to be just like certain other men (or women up to other women, as it were), or evolution made us that way.  The point is there has always been a time when certain ones of us were – to put it bluntly – cool as hell.

In case you’re wondering, I am one of the looker uppers.  And while every generation can claim that their bigger than life citizenry was the coolest of all, I’ll take mine any day. 

See, I was born in 1960, so I was just the right age to be totally, head over heels, 100% captivated by the space program.  I’m a little too young to remember the start of it with the Mercury 7 and the earliest one man trips to space.  I have a vague memory of some of the two man Gemini stuff.  But I remember the Apollo part of the program that got man to the moon like it was yesterday. 

 

Advances in technology throughout the ages have always astonished the common man.  That continues to today.  But no matter how marvelous and miraculous the leap, up to and including the electronic age we now are privileged to be a part of, there has been and always will be only once in all eternity that men left the Earth and voyaged to another world for the first time, and that happened exactly 40 years ago.  It was July 20, 1969 to be precise.

 

And that brings me to the whole point of this exercise…the coolest guy that ever lived or ever will live was the Astronaut. 

 

James Bond, James Dean and LeBron James all rolled into one and multiplied by 10 wouldn’t be half as cool as the least known Astronaut from the 1960’s US Space Program.  You definitely had to be there, but I can tell you that if you were a boy between the ages of 6 and 16 and didn’t want to be a part of what was going on, I guarantee that you were playing with Barbie Dolls.  It was universal.  And to tell the truth, for me personally, it still holds.  I have at least a dozen books about the space race to the moon, a scale replica of the Apollo/Saturn V rocket, and even a Neil Armstrong doll in full astronaut regalia. 

 

There was some talk during the waning days of the George W. Bush presidency of scrapping the boring and repetitive Space Shuttle program and going back to the moon by 2010.  Now it looks like that might not get off the drawing board.  It would be neat to see, and it just might jump start a renewed interest in the sciences in our schools.  But it will never capture the imagination the way Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, et al did back in the day.

The Perfect Dad

Is there such a creature?  Of course not.  But you can certainly learn a lot, as they say, from watching TV.  If you’ve watched as much as I have over the years, you get to see glimpses and bits and pieces of dads doing their thing.

Imagine if you could build the perfect dad just like you would build a salad at a salad bar – some of this, a little of that, on and on.

Since this is Father’s Day, let’s give it a try.  Here is my idea of the Dad who has it all:

DAD	QUALITIES
Andy Griffith	Fairness, ability to admit when he’s wrong, consistency
Mike Brady	Even-tempered, analytical, soft spoken, firm yet fair disciplinarian
Homer Simpson	Fallibility, imperfections
Jed Clampett	Common sense, honesty, innocence
Cliff Huxtable	Humor, class
Charles Ingalls	Work ethic, family values

What would you get if you had a dad who had all these character qualities?  There’s no way to ever know, because there has never been a perfect dad.  If God wanted a perfect dad, he would have made one.

The truth is, dad’s aren’t meant to be perfect.  We as fathers just need to be who we are and give our kids what they really want from us more than anything…our time and our love.

One of the hardest things to be in this world we live in today is yourself, and it’s getting harder every day.  Don’t try to be Mike Brady or Charles Ingalls.  Your kids are smart enough to see through it anyway.  Just be who you are and everybody will be better off.

One more thing – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

Anger Management

As vastly different as we all are, there are a few things that each member of the human race have in common.  Excluding the fact that we all require oxygen to sustain life, probably the most common trait shared is that we all are endowed with a wide range of emotions.  While we are able to both experience and control these to varying degrees, all six or so billion of us know what it is like to feel happiness, sadness, fear, love, hate, empathy, jealousy, and loneliness.    And let us not forget the emotion that (at least in the last two or three generations) has become the most prevalent of all – ANGER!!!!!

In fact, anger has become such a staple of our fabric that we also endow our fictional characters with varying degrees of it as well.  This is especially true of television characters as they are portrayed in sitcoms.

Of all forms of comedy, the one which usually elicits the most frequent and loudest laughs is watching the misery/misfortune of others. 

In keeping with this line of thinking, and seeing as how it is now well into the baseball season, this long-suffering Cub fan thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the greatest examples of how someone getting downright mad can be funny as hell.

Of course, in order for someone to blow his top, there must be at least one buffoon who provides the vehicle for the eruption.  This is nothing new…long before TV ever was thought of Stan Laurel and Lou Costello were tormenting Oliver Hardy and Bud Abbott respectively into a lather until the final eruption, usually but not always climaxing with violence (another form of entertainment). 

Just as in reality, these practitioners of the made for TV boil-over do it in degrees.  Here are some of my faves:

SHORT/NO FUSE

These guys fly off the handle at the drop of a hat:

          Frank Costanza (Seinfeld)

          Ralph Kramden (Honeymooners)

          Skipper (Gilligan’s Island) 

TIME DELAYED EXPLOSION

These characters exhibited a modicum of self control, but it didn’t take much for the inevitable:

          Chief (Get Smart)

          Sgt. Carter (Gomer Pyle)

          Fred Flintstone (The Flintstones)

MASTERS OF THE SLOW BURN

The best of the best.  These poor souls were tormented beyond all human endurance, you could literally watch as the heat rose in their faces.  Giving it all they had to avoid letting their tormentors get the best of them.  But in the end, it was a lost cause.  The most fun to watch, by the way:

          Oliver Douglas (Green Acres)

          Mr. Mooney (The Lucy Show)

Where have you gone, Whitey Ford?

A couple of weeks ago, my son Nick and I went to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play the Padres.  We had chosen this particular game for two reasons; one, because most of the other Cub games were already sold out when we went on line in March to find tickets, and two, because we were hoping to see our one and only hometown major leaguer – Joe Thatcher, who for two seasons had bounced back and forth between San Diego and their AAA team in Portland.

Upon returning home, I took a few minutes to see the damage this trip had cost us. 

            Tickets:                                         $130

            Parking:                                          $30

Concessions/Souvenirs:           $70

Not counting gas and one night’s lodging, we had spent over $200 to watch the likes of Rich Harden, Mike Fontenot, Milton Bradley, and Bobby Scales.  I can’t even remember any Padres from that night except Jake Peavy.  What a bargain.

Flash forward two weeks.  I am reading a book about baseball, and the following thought occurred to me:  If you were a baseball fan in 1960, and who wasn’t a baseball fan back then, and you were inclined to go and watch a ball game, you could go to any major league park on any given day and walk right up to the ticket window.  Once inside, it’s likely that one or more of the following would have been in the lineup that day:

Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Yogi Berra, Don Drysdale, Roger Maris, Frank Robinson, Duke Snider, Whitey Ford, Billy Williams, Luis Aparicio, Bob Gibson, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Willie McCovey.  If any of those Hall of Famers were in the lineup, it’s a good bet that the card was written out by Casey Stengal, Walter Alston, Al Lopez, or Lou Boudreau.  And if you took a transistor radio to the park, the action would have been described by the likes of Harry Carey, Red Barber, Jack Brickhouse, Mel Allen, or Ernie Harwell.

The fact is, a team that you could put together from players on major league rosters that year would wipe the floor with a team consisting of the stars of any other era in the history of the game.  Period.

Who do we have to stand in awe of today?  Alex Rodriguez, the cheating PR machine?  Manny Ramirez, the cheating ego maniac? 

I once had the opportunity to see Donald Davidson, the pre-eminent Indy 500 expert/historian.  It was a question and answer event, and I asked him what he thought the greatest era of the 500 was.  His answer surprised me, but the accompanying explanation did not.  Expecting to hear names like Foyt, Unser, Mears, Johncock, Andretti, etc., he named guys I had never heard of from the early 50’s.  He then said that it’s only natural for fans to idolize the guys who were popular when we first begin to follow a particular sport.  This makes perfect sense, but does it apply to this discussion?  C’mon.

When one of the players from 1960’s era would get to the coveted $100,000 salary, we applauded and stood in awe, mostly because normal people can comprehend what $100,000 is.  When we read about A Rod and $252 million, we sneer with contempt because none of us has even the slightest notion of what that really means.  It’s Monopoly money, and baseball (pro sports) has become something that is beyond the average man’s paradigm.

Baseball still has a large following of young fans, and that’s a good thing.  But the names on my list are as far removed from today’s 12 year old as Woodrow Wilson and Jack Dempsey are from my generation.  What do we as fans really have to look forward to?

Tony Soprano lamented the fact that he was getting in on his way of life (organized crime) at the end of the line, way past the glory days.  Is this reality or just the Donald Davidson perception?  I guess we’ll never know.

Thanks, Dad

I’m smart.

I graduated from college; I can do the NY Times crossword (in pen if I feel especially risky); I’ve never fallen for either a phone or an internet scam.

I’m a dad.

My DNA is 50% responsible for two members of the human race.

I’m just not a smart dad.

I never thought I was Andy Griffith or Mike Brady for gosh sakes, but I knew I wasn’t Homer Simpson, either. Never the less, my daughter Sarah got me the other day, and she got me good.  I’ve never been especially impressed with magicians, so sleight of hand tricks don’t usually dazzle me.  This one came so far out of left field that I wasn’t even in the ball park when it hit me.

Every dad has a soft spot for his little girl.  I couldn’t rely on advice from the Two Fat Guys on this one either.  Phil has a daughter, but she’s only 15, still in the minors, so to speak.  Denny has four daughters.  He lost his mind a long time ago.

Sarah, who is in between her freshman and sophomore years of college started out earlier this week by bringing up the subject of cars.  New cars.  On credit.  My wife and I have been drinking the Dave Ramsey Kool Aid for a few years now, and have tried to impress upon the kids the value and wisdom in saving up and paying cash for a car, at the very least your first car.  This is exactly what our son Nick did a couple of years back.

Sarah never said she was going to do it; she just brought up the subject to the extent that my blood pressure rose a few points.

The next night, Sarah mentioned how nice a tattoo looked on one of her friends.   Once again, she didn’t say she wanted permanent ink on some part of her body; she just broached the subject, to the same end as the car conversation.

Finally, Thursday night, she was telling me about the prevalence in her age demographic of body piercings.  For the third time, my imagination did the rest.

Knowing full well that I’ve averaged maybe three hours of sleep this week while lying there the rest of the time tilting at windmills, Sarah arranged for her cousin Allie to call me while she was out with a friend Saturday afternoon.  Allie’s message was clear and to the point: “Don’t kill Sarah”.  Allie then hung up.

The next few minutes are a little fuzzy.  As soon as she pulled up, I could see right away that she wasn’t holding the keys to a 2009 Ford Fusion.  Upon closer inspection, I noticed the singular lack of any ink or hardware stuck on her body. 

My relief was immediate.  So in my relaxed state, Sarah traded the small jabs she had been sparring with all week and landed the right cross – her friend Laura was holding a month old kitten.  Sarah’s kitten.

The very same kitten that in a matter of six months will stop being cute and start being a nuisance.  Not just a mere nuisance, but the kind of nuisance that I will have to provide food, shots, and litter for.  And I will have to clean that very same litter.

Oh well, I guess it could be worse.  She could have walked in with some guy with tattoos and piercings, and no new car.  He’s between jobs right now.

Pack your bags

Not that it’s anything new of course, but am I the only one who’s noticed that the world really seems to be going to Hell lately?

First of all, my life doesn’t seem to have improved as much as everyone told me it would the night we elected Barack Obama to be our 44^th fearless leader.  In February, the company I work for announced that we were entering into a merger.  Turns out that merger, at least in this particular case, really means “hostile takeover”, and the other guys appear to be the takers.  A-Rod, possibly the most naturally gifted athlete to ever step onto a baseball field really was cheating all along and now the new-breed of superstar, Lebron James, doesn’t have to shake hands after the game if he doesn’t want to – his mommy told him so!

In my heart of hearts, I truly think that it all started down this slippery slope that we are rapidly reaching the bottom of when Dr. Spock told an entire generation of parents that we shouldn’t spank the kids, but that’s a blog for another time. 

The point I’m trying to get to here is simply this: I’m moving to Mayberry.

I watch at least one episode of The Andy Griffith Show a night (thanks to television series’ DVD’s, one of the very few good things that has happened in the world in the last 25 years or so), and for starters, no one has gotten one second older. 
-       Andy continues to be the quintessential father:  Dispensing love, cheer, discipline, advice, and justice in equal measure.
-       Aunt Bea is still the loving, rotund caretaker who never met a scraped knee or rump roast she couldn’t work her magic on.
-       You can still get both a haircut and an earful of the latest town shenanigans for the combined price of $1 from Floyd the barber.
-       Barney proves everyday that you can screw up seven ways to Sunday and still be loved by all.
-       Opie reassures us that until you reach the age of at least 16 that life’s biggest problems range from raising a nest of baby birds to trying to fit both football and piano practice into one always sunny afternoon.
-       Otis remains living proof that if you drink too much and live in a big city you’re an alcoholic, but if you do it in a small town, you’re a lovable drunk.
-       You can rest assured that as long as Gomer (if your world is B & W) and/or Goober (if your world is colored) are around, you’ll never be the dumbest person in the room.
-       Finally, there is nothing more pleasing to the human experience than knowing that every day can end with lemonade, pleasant conversation, and hopefully a guitar on the front porch.
So somebody please tell me, what could be better than spending the rest of your life in a place like that?  No problem that can’t be solved in less than 30 minutes (24 without commercials) exists.  Everybody shakes hands, there isn’t any need for any substance that might be performance enhancing, no mergers, and they don’t even have a President.

Anybody coming along?

Pride and Joy, et cetera

Sometime in the mid sixties, pop music stopped being about and for teeny boppers, and was raised, as a long line of critics said, to the level of Art.  This is best evidenced in a trio of albums released by the Beatles starting in late 1965.

Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band showed the world that popular music was to be taken seriously, and all other performers of the era quickly fell in line and followed suit.  Almost all, that is.

There is no way to overstate the talent, magic, and influence of The Beatles.  You can’t exaggerate their importance in 20^th Century culture.  But even the Fab Four was guilty of taking themselves too seriously once or twice.  One of their most enduring legacies in the realm of performing arts is their pretentiousness. 

Apparently one group who regularly held a spot or two in the Top 40 didn’t get the memo.

While The Turtles were certainly serious about their craft you can’t help but notice, especially today when viewed through the time machine, the way they seemed to always be winking at the audience.   Howard Kaylan and company left behind some of the most memorable tunage to emerge from the whole 60’s experience.  But in every clip of performing or even in interviews, it’s not difficult to see that they never were doing anything but having a lot of fun, and never lost sight of exactly who and what they were:  A bunch of pretty talented guys who happened to be in the right place at the right time and went for the ride of their life.

Harry Caray once said that the reason for his popularity was that every fan could imagine himself sitting there and doing his job.  The Turtles made it big, and with every appearance, they were stand ins for every garage band that never made it out of the garage.

I’m in no way trying to detract from what they accomplished.  Kaylan’s voice was as good as any that blared out of transistor radios from 1965 to 1970.  A lot of groups caught lightning in a bottle and then disappeared from sight just as quickly as they appeared.  The Turtles were a headline act for many years, and that alone puts them in the top echelon.  They were, in fact a lot more than just lucky.

When it comes to what the 60’s gave us, if you want to see pop music perfection, look up The Beatles.  If you want to see what the California music scene was about, look up The Grateful Dead or The Doors.  But if you want to see what was fun about the 60’s, check out The Turtles.

American Idle

Normally, it isn’t until the actual completion of an event that I begin to rue the decision that I made to partake of it. This can be anything from spending money on some ill advised purchase to a trip that wastes most of an entire day.

But the other night as I, along with approximately 75% of my fellow American citizens, breathlessly awaited Ryan Secreast’s anointing of either Kris Allen or Adam Lambert as the eighth American Idol, I realized that I once again had freely given time that I wouldn’t ever recapture. Time itself may be timeless, but we as mortals only are allotted a finite number of hours to conduct business during a lifetime. Over the past couple of months, I had squandered about 40 of my hours watching my generation’s version of the Christians versus the lions.

Even before the winner was announced, I had formulated, processed, and sanctioned the following thought: What the heck am I doing? After all, I gave up the same number of hours last Spring, and gosh darn it, my life barely changed for either good or bad once David Cook won the crown. Come to think of it, Jordan Sparks and Fantasia’s great fortune didn’t make one iota of difference in my being, either.

So why bother? Just as the handsome host was about to announce the name of Americas next millionaire, I shut the TV off. That’s right, I let it go. Didn’t care.

If I could just take each of those minutes that I sat couch potato style and watched American Idol each year as Winter melted into Spring and give some purpose to them, the world might just be a little better off. Help someone, volunteer, be a real humanitarian…then I’ve done something worthwhile.

I know I can’t ever recoup the time I’ve spent watching Simon, Paula, and company, but boy are things going to be different from now on. Believe me, I’m going to get started making a real difference – just as soon as the baseball season ends.

Close This

By now, you might have figured out that in addition to being (and having) nothing to do, I am also a Cub fan. I have been almost to the mountain top (see: 2003 NLCS, 7th inning), as well as several trips to the valley (same playoffs, 8th inning). I desperately hope that sometime during my trip to this planet (generally thought to be more than 2/3 over) I get to hear the words "The Cubs win the pennant!!!!"



The one thing I am sure of, though, is that if I ever get to hear Pat Hughes make the above exclamation with Ron Santo sitting beside him experiencing simultaneous rapture, orgasm, and heart failure, it will be right after some Cub (any Cub) hits in the winning run in the bottom of the 9th. That way, I won't have to pin my hopes on Kevin Gregg getting the last three outs of the game.



Let me stop right here and say that I'm not picking on this year's Flavor of the Month in the Cubbies bullpen. No, unfortunately Gregg is just the latest in a long line of Cub "closers" who have brought more flames to the greater Chicago land area than Mrs. O'Leary's cow. The same organization who traded, in their primes, Hall-Of-Famers Bruce Sutter and Lee Smith (and sent washed up starter Dennis Eckersley to Oakland so Tony Larussa could make him into a HOF closer) and traded for the likes of Dave Smith and Goose Gossage long after the sun had set on their careers.



The dominating closer has evolved into the most important puzzle piece in the complicated game of baseball. You can have the pitching staff of the 1970 Orioles and the lineup of the 1927 Yankees, but if you don't have the one man who can come in and slam the door with a one run lead and three outs to go, you ain't got squat. For most of the past 25 years, since the Cubs have been generally competitive, their bull pen has hosted more bums than the bus station. I haven't forgotten Rod Beck or Randy Myers, but basically speaking they were one season wonders.



Baseball is never supposed to be easy, and even the greatest teams in history lose once every three games, but in my opinion, Cub fans spend the ninth inning of games in which they have the lead unnecessarily sweaty. Even during seasons in which the Cubs knocked on the World Series door, their closers provided more than their fair share of thrills, such as Mitch Williams in 1989 and Joe Borowski in 2003. I'm ready for a lights out closer. I'm ready for that one guy who, when the Cubs have a lead going into the ninth comes in, I put my feet up and relax. In other words, I'm ready for LaTroy Hawkins.



Just a week ago, the Cubs were cruising with a 4-0 lead after eight innings. Kevin Gregg came on and then left less than five minutes later with the score tied, two men on base, and no outs recorded. By the time Gregg had showered, the Cubs ended up winning in the bottom of the ninth. Just like I like it.







TFGWNTD Top Ten Worst Cub Closers, A.S.*

*After Sutter's trade



1. Dave Smith

2. LaTroy Hawkins

3. Kevin Gregg

4. Goose Gossage

5. Antonio Alfonseca

6. Kyle Farnsworth

7. Bill Caudill

8. *

9. *

10. *



I could finish this list, but to truly honor the men whose names are on it, I thought it would be appropriate to not get the final three spots nailed down.

Book Report

When you spend most of your time with Two Fat Guys, as I do, you soon realize that the options for leisure reading fall into one of three general categories: fiction, non-fiction, and menus.

It’s also true that as a member of this particular gang you learn that the most desirable leisure activities are of the passive variety such as watching, listening, spectating, etc. In an effort to break away from the pack (yes, Phil and Denny collectively qualify as a pack), I thought it might behoove me to celebrate my pre-TFGWNTD days and jump back into a more active pastime – reading books.

Don’t let it bother you that the reviews you might read here will never end up in the New York Times…after all, the Times doesn’t review the floats in the Macy’s Day Parade.



The Rocket That Fell To Earth Roger Clemens And the Rage For Baseball Immortality

Jeff Pearlman



Let’s start with a quick pop quiz. Roger Clemens:

A. Is living proof that hard work and an iron will makes all your dreams possible;

B. Is the world’s most self-centered, self-serving prick;

C. Has some really strange methods of preparing to pitch a game;

D. Will do whatever it takes, including cheat, to maintain success;

E. Is the inventor of Ray Ban sunglasses;

F. All of the above.

If you answered “F”, try not to get too much drool on the keyboard. But if you answered “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”, give yourself a point. You probably don’t need to read this book, because other than expand on these four facets of the former future Hall of Famer, there’s not a lot to Pearlman’s book.

Even the casual baseball fan knows that Clemens career followed this arc: Twelve or thirteen years into a certain first ballot HOF career, his body began to show the effects of age. Then, literally overnight, he not only revived his dominance, but actually took it to an even higher plane. We all sat astonished during the first years of the 2000’s as Clemens and Barry Bonds both took their respective games to unprecedented levels. It wasn’t until five years later that we knew for sure how they did it. Performance enhancing drugs, etc…etc…etc.

In Clemens case, this was a particular shame because of how he got there in the first place. Pearlman does a great job of detailing how Clemens went from the number three pitcher on his high school team to a JC, then the University of Texas, and then straight to the Red Sox. As Pearlman points out, the only performance enhancer employed was working his ass off. His training regimen makes Marine boot camp look like a Sunday school picnic.

Once Roger made it to the show and started to see his name in lights, he fell in love with the attention and bought hook line and sinker every line of hype ever written about him. His ego expanded to the point that during the last couple of years he played, he demanded (and received) a clause in his contract that he only had to show up at the ball park when he pitched. Although no teammate ever doubted his commitment to winning, he was generally not the most loved guy in the clubhouse.

One humorous (and painful) anecdote Pearlman reveals is Clemens’ pregame ritual of having the trainer smear his entire body with Icy Hot. His entire body. Entire. Leaving nothing out. By the time the trainer had rubbed the searing salve into his testicles, Clemens was literally snorting like a bull.

To this day, despite overwhelming and indisputable proof to the contrary, Clemens maintains that he never used steroids. That same trademark stubborn will that never allowed him to give in to a hitter now betrays him and paints him as not only a cheater, but a liar as well.

If you haven’t been around as a fan for the last fifteen years, especially the period of 2004 to 2007 when the steroid story exploded, then you probably would be greatly enlightened by this book. If you have been around, there’s not a whole lot new here, unless of course you’ve never read about someone preparing for a game by having a paid employee rub Icy Hot on…hmmm.