Who Asked Me?

Tim Lincecum and the Giants were in town last week, facing the Mets for a three game series and serving reminder that we don’t always need dead, middle-aged terrorists to make us feel good about this country. Lincecum, as my vast reading audience will attest, is a favorite subject of mine. He rekindled my interest in baseball back in 2007, shortly before he emerged from a remarkably brief stint in the minors to start pitching for the Giants. As a favorite local Mets blogger recently noted, “Lincecum was so good so quickly that nobody had a chance to fuck him up, and now he sits atop the pitching mountain, walking on his hands before games and not bothering to ice his arm after starts, happily out of reach of the ligament-shredding groupthink that Organized Baseball calls wisdom.” I thought this was a solid observation, but for me he’s meant something more.

That Lincecum was too good, too fast to enable being ruined by conventional wisdom speaks to the game as much as it does the athlete. Were this football or basketball, the window of opportunity would never have been there. The crawlspace is ever-narrowing for baseball too, and it isn’t immune to checklists of physical stature and rigid methodology, but within its framework there always remains a chance. And a chance is the most any of us can expect. Knee-jerk comparisons between America and baseball pander to the grandiose and nostalgic, noting that it’s a game of heart where ambition and determination can triumph over adversity. I prefer to think that the rules for both were constructed by people who knew a thing or two about how messed up things can get over the long haul. While it isn’t as sexy-sounding as the “pursuit of excellence,” allowing for and anticipating the idiots who will inevitably and eventually run the show is a lot like putting a new roof on your house every ten years. It comes in handy with time.

But back to The Kid, as I and my buddy Miller (a Cubs fan living in Chicago) call him. While his defying convention allows for more intriguing argument among enthusiasts and fosters a new strain of delusional hope for dads with undersized pee wee leaguers, this is secondary. Sure, his delivery inspires Koufax comparisons and caused Roger Angell to liken him to a “January commuter stepping over six feet of slush.” But what he’s really done, particularly in the case of the Giants, is to bring fun back to the game. He arrived, all five-eleven in spikes and a buck sixty-five of him, on the heels of the Steroid Era where behemoths like Bonds and McGwire roamed the grass. By the time Lincecum emerged the fates of his super-sized predecessors were starting to take shape, controlled largely by senatorial hearings and men who had never played the game on any competitive level. In short, the long-ball diversion that replaced the bad taste left by the bullshit Strike of ’94 had turned in to so much bullshit itself. And it was getting worse by the day.

Enter our man Big Time Timmy-Jim as he’s called in some circles, along with the “Freak” and “Franchise.” He was mistaken for a batboy on more than one occasion when he first came up, and asked for ID at various ballparks to prove he was a player. But stadium officials weren’t the only ones taking notice. Lincecum remained in the minors for only one month of the ’07 season, long enough for Rockies prospect Ian Stewart to note “He’s the toughest pitcher I’ve ever faced. I’m not really sure why he’s down here, but for a guy drafted last year .. that guy is filthy.” The sentiment only solidified with time, and as everyone knows The Kid went on to win Cy Young awards in his first two full major league seasons and led the Giants to their first San Francisco World Series title in 2010. Anyone doubting Ian Stewart’s eye for talent need only reference Lincecum’s 14 strikeout playoff debut vs Atlanta. These were, after all, major league ballplayers he was facing.

Lincecum has grown his hair out since his rookie season and his appearance is often likened to a “skater kid” (as in skateboarder.) He’s also packed a few much-needed pounds on to his slender frame, apparently (and to the chagrin of teammate Pablo Sandoval) through a steady diet of milkshakes and In-N-Out burgers. Low-key and somewhat shy, he still seems at ease with the attention his quirky style and success have attracted, and has a natural appeal in commercial spots and feature articles. Nowhere is the phenomenon of celebrity amplified quite like here in New York, and it was interesting to see the treatment he got while the team was in town last week. Two-page photo spreads covered the inside of the Post and Daily News, and the Mets post game broadcast dedicated a solid hour to Lincecum talk. His performance in the second game was fairly standard: 12 strikeouts including the last five batters he faced for a 2-0 win. I was at the game the next day, watching him through binoculars as he sat wearing a hoodie and shades, chatting with teammates on the edge of the dugout. Seemingly unaware or unaffected by how good he is this early in his career, he just looked to be having fun.

I wrote something for a UK-based website a long while back, and they changed my suggested title to “Make It Happen.” Anyone possessing remote familiarity with my take on things could tell you that I’m not a “make it happen” kind of guy. It isn’t the instinct that eludes me, but the phrasing. “See What Happens” would have been closer, but wouldn’t have fit this particular piece, which centered on the exhilarating challenges involved in adapting to New York City. I was going through a certain phase of brain chemistry back then – interesting, but neither more nor less insightful than those before or since. Steve Earle has a line in his song Fort Worth Blues – “they say Texas weather’s always changin’ / and one thing change will bring is somethin’ new.” This and Tony Soprano yelling “I get it!” to the dawn breaking on a Vegas desert gets close, but I’m obviously off on a tangent here. One thing that did result from that particular stretch was a tendency toward first-person prose in the present tense.

I’m crossing Atlantic Avenue this afternoon with the intention of walking all the way to the 42nd Street Library. Something in the ominous cloud formation over the Brooklyn Bridge tells me I might be swimming if I persist with pedestrian plans, so I retreat to the F stop on York Street. (Funny how “F stop” has come to mean something other than a camera setting this past near-decade.) A father and daughter, she maybe seven or eight, get on at East Broadway. She’s a cool-looking girl, well-behaved with a pretty but thoughtful face and dressed kid-appropriate but stylishly. I’m instantly envious of this guy, who’s about my age give or take a few years, and wonder how he can appear oblivious to his obvious good fortune. Why he isn’t smiling or taking advantage of this father-daughter bonding time is beyond me. Can’t he see that in a blink of an eye she’ll be married to some window insulation distributor and living in Seattle?

The flip-side boards at West Fourth Street. God (in whatever form you choose to interpret the word) is good with those flip sides. An empathic-looking but terminally tired mother enters the train with her own two daughters. The first is about the same age as the girl from the earlier stop, and she’s looking cautiously back at Mom wheeling her younger sister in via stroller. The other girl is about four and screaming in a manner that goes beyond anything identifiable with a human child of this or any other age. Her choleric outburst is near demonic and draws horrified glances from other passengers; cautious looks reserved for a problem that might go beyond a mere temper tantrum and cross over to darker territory. She’s flailing at the air with her fists and rising from the carriage to kick at it and her mother violently, punctuating each foot strike with shrill exclamation. Mom has a hollowed, soundly defeated look, clearly having been here before. Similar displays aren’t uncommon on the subway, but something is far wrong here .. so much so that the typical “can’t you control that child?” vibe is absent. It’s bad enough for most to move away and crowd the middle of the car. I pump the volume on my iPod, put my shades on and wait half a stop for 42nd Street, where I bolt.

At the library, I write this shit. Late April rain pours steadily outside the large windows just below the magnificent, raised ceiling of the Main Reading Room, much as it did on occasion back in ’03 and ’04. The same old guy, who must have been at least ninety back then, shuffles by in his dusty but formal suit, with an armful of hardcover volumes clutched near. A young, French-speaking couple sits beside me, both hunched over their laptop trying to solidify some sort of New York plan. I try to come up with a clever closing sentence but unzip my backpack instead, gathering my things and letting it go.

Two from the author's collection

Of all the news items through which one might ascertain that he’s led a misspent life, I tripped across this SF Chronicle piece by Warren Hinckle today – an exposé on the state of the endangered Irish coffee glass in San Francisco. No, it wasn’t reflecting on all the Irish coffees I’ve consumed that brought me to this conclusion, nor the fact that Hinckle had beaten me to the scoop, but rather that I was already aware of the difficulties in procuring a proper vessel for the drink and had actually gathered empirical evidence myself.

I’d been trying to make a “correct” Irish coffee for a long while, and even before moving to the east coast, but had no idea how elusive finding the drink in its proper state could be. A lot of New York bars claim to make them in the winter and even post signs out front – Come warm up with an Irish coffee, etc. But their version inevitably resembles the Vegas variety, poured into cheesy glass mugs with handles, and topped with whipped cream from a can. Some even go so far as to use that awful green syrup to draw an insulting four leaf clover atop the cream. It seemed the only way to get a real Irish coffee was to do it yourself. But this proved problematic as well, particularly in finding proper method to get real heavy cream (the only kind permissible in an authentic Irish coffee) to sit atop the drink. Whipping the cream in to a more solidified state worked, but was an unacceptable shortcut as it prevented sipping the drink through the cream properly. After many experiments, the solution seemed to come from a friend of a friend who brought back a gift set of four “official” Irish coffee glasses from the Buena Vista in San Francisco. The Buena Vista, for the uninitiated, is the Jerusalem of Irish coffees. You cannot understand the drink without having made at least one pilgrimage in your lifetime. Reading Hinckle’s article, however, lent fresh perspective on just how seriously they take this Holy Land designation.

I went through three of the four glasses in short order. They’re delicate by design, and this combined with their specific designation as being used only for a drink containing coffee and alcohol isn’t a recipe for longevity. I decided it was time to order up some more, but after exhaustive research concluded there were none to be found outside of the expensive gift sets sold by the Buena Vista. I finally settled on a close substitute, purchasing a set of seven John Jameson glasses from an Ohio woman on eBay. The price was right, the condition good, and they were originally procured in Dublin in 1969. They even had ornate drawings of cows and sugar cubes on the sides, designating the proper level for ingredients. But they still seemed to lack in both cream support and heat retention. Not until reading Hinckle’s article did I realize it’s the special flared mouth at the top of the traditional glass that makes all the difference.

Having more or less given up on getting it right, I took some solace in knowing that I’d soon be returning to San Francisco where I could find the real deal. And so it was I found myself in Specs tavern in North Beach a few months back, secure in the fact that it was one of my three or four go-to places for an Irish coffee. I placed my order and was shocked to see the bartender lay the drink in front of me in one of those awful Vegas style Irish coffee glass-mugs. And the drink was all off; it cooled prematurely and felt heavy to the hand. Disappointed, I put it down and shuffled dejectedly into the cool San Francisco night.

It’s a long way home indeed.

You see that I’ll be walking out again – Jimmy Cliff

While doing some light reading on Freud this weekend (a recession-based compromise for actual therapy) I became convinced that my super-ego has been hijacked by one that’s merely okay. As potentially challenging as this sounds, it’s also rendered me with an over-developed id by default. I tested this by going out to a bar and having my id kick some other ids’ asses. Sure enough, it’s like the thing is on steroids – and has me considering the possibility that I may be endowed with the world’s first super-id. All of this sounds rather sexy, but still leaves me with an excess regular ego in place of that which was formerly super. And try getting rid of an extra ego, in these times or any other. Everybody’s either unconsciously hanging on to their own like their last plug nickel or making a futile, conscious attempt to let go of it. But nobody’s buying.

I put down the reading, unable to process any longer, and plugged a few relevant terms in to Google. Up came a 2006 60 Minutes interview with Jim Carrey talking about his struggles with depression and resulting foray in to spirituality. As easy as it is to poke fun at this shit, I kind of admired the guy’s sincerity. I’ve never been a big Carrey fan; his schtick always seemed burdened with a certain effusive neediness. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been able to watch him without some subliminal voice noting “this guy is hurting.” But here he was in check, enthusiastic but humble in acknowledging that whatever insights he’d attained were ephemeral and required conscious effort to return to. He talked about wasted hours of his life he’ll never get back, engaged in imagined conversations with those who had wronged him, and him putting them eloquently in their place. And he spoke of moments of peace that seemed genuine. None of this ever presents well in words, and one runs a certain risk with any attempt. When it was over, interviewer Steve Kroft remarked “I get the sense you’re a bundle of conflicting emotions – it’s all very close to the surface.” Carrey looked crestfallen for a moment before regaining composure. “Yeah, I’m emotional,” he said. “I decided to be there. I only act in movies.” I thought it was a dignified response, and much better than “and I get the sense your head is lodged squarely up your ass” – which I might have gone with.

Epiphany, like religion or political opinion, is best kept to oneself. If you’re going to share it, non-verbal dispersion is preferable. (Try discussing ‘epiphany’, for instance, at your next meeting of the Pipefitters Union.) Writing also holds itself up for critical scrutiny, and words are intrinsically inadequate. If you’re going to go this route, metaphor might be the best bet, particularly if set to 4/4 measure with a solid back beat. Or, as the Rolling Stones put it, “my best friend he shoots water rats and feeds them to his geese ..” Everybody’s looking for an answer; they just don’t want yours. Or maybe they want it – they just don’t want you telling them about it.

Despite wet weather, Carrey insisted on taking Kroft to a spot on his expansive LA property where he went when in need of serenity – a wooden temple of sorts with a deck and place to sit. He put on a good face while words like Buddha and Christ were thrown out, but I got the sense he’d rather have been sitting up there by himself, alone in the rain.

Although we’re of the same generation, I’m not a huge Charlie Sheen fan and he’s only ever occupied a small space on the periphery of my consciousness. I saw Wall Street and Platoon, have never caught a full episode of his television show, and my awareness of the guy prior to the last few weeks could be limited to the following: actor, 40s, Apocalypse dad and Repo Man brother, good hair. If the central objective of celebrity is boosting one’s visibility, Chuck’s been on a tear of late. I didn’t know, for instance, that he was the highest paid actor on television. And while some small corner of my cognitive process likely linked his name to the terms porn star and cocaine, I’ve definitely filled in some blanks.

Mass public condemnation not withstanding, I’m probably a slightly bigger Sheen fan now than I was before. I still don’t think he’s much of an actor, and his much-publicized rants have done nothing to boost his ranking on my list of Great American Minds of the 21st Century. Despite the hypothesizing of armchair feminists, he doesn’t placate some fantasized ideal of what a middle aged, married guy can get away with, given the right combination of money, genes, and fame. Is he a good role model, dad, husband, A.A. graduate or reformed narcissist? Probably not. But in the larger realm of Hollywood, celebrity culture, and society, he’s not bringing up the rear, either. If his choices seem selfish and his behavior indefensible, where does that put the legions of workaday voyeurs lapping this stuff up on TMZ and Gawker, anticipating his every move? This isn’t what we’ve come to accept from low brow celebrity, it’s what we’ve come to expect. And this guy’s holding up his end of the deal spectacularly.

Sure, Charlie seems to be pushing the envelope. But with every concession given his critics, there’s an equally relevant caveat. Is he a good dad or husband? Maybe not, but he wouldn’t be the first to fail in this arena. Further, his reputation preceded him, so it would be suspect to claim that any of these women were caught off guard. (A simple IMDB check would have revealed that he played Artie Mitchell in a made for Showtime movie.) And while some of his behavior appears antithetical to fatherhood, a parent’s true relationship with his kids is privy only to them. Am I suggesting that blow and hookers should be on the ledger of every dad’s inalienable rights? Of course not, and it would be a shame if his excesses led to his children never really knowing the man beyond this current stretch. On the other hand, nobody’s accused him of being a poor provider and despite his Hunter S. Thompson leanings, he seemed to show up for work every day until they canceled his show. Put another way, there are kids growing up in that zip code with biological pops doing worse by them – ask Mackenzie Phillips.

While the above may avail itself nicely to being shot full of holes, I’m not without criticism. If Sheen appears guilty of anything in recent weeks, it’s his becoming a bore. This is an unfortunate side effect of his reputed substance of choice – it tends to aggravate a certain David Lee Roth sector of the brain, making one susceptible to repetitive, self-aggrandizing rants and phraseology seeming clever only to those using it. (Although I have to admit to cracking up whenever he slips a congratulatory “winning” into a sentence.) But who among us, having reached life’s middle, can safely say we’d do better drawing the same potent card in the genetic lottery? So Charlie isn’t going gentle in to that good night and he’s got the funds to cover the tab. It’s worth noting that the producers of his show only canceled the final two episodes of the season and haven’t pulled the plug completely. In the words of Bobbi Flekman, money talks and bullshit walks. As long as he’s making them money, they’ll be riding this guy straight to the edge of the cliff.