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San Fran & Tim at the Half

Friday, July 16, 2010

It’s a jaded man indeed who can remain unmoved, flipping his newly acquired cable over to the high-def channels and catching an awe-inspiring aerial shot of San Francisco on a typically cool July evening, just prior to the 10:15 eastern start time of a Mets-Giants game. I’ve made no effort to hide my distaste for some of the city’s less-appealing elements, but generally speaking they have to do with people – be they aggressive street indigents pursuing you with bad intent for politely declining their request for a five, or civic-minded Van Driessen sorts bent on protecting said indigent’s right to pursue. Even a moderately-minded person like myself gets a bit fed up with countless ballot propositions to name a sewage plant after George Bush or change the name of the Golden Gate Bridge to Cesar Chavez Walkway. But pulling back from all of that crap and catching the view from a hill, plane or rooftop can render only one conclusion : this is one beautiful city.

It’s an odd angle on things, being so utterly familiar with one place while observing it from an increasingly familiar but very different other, 2,582 miles away. Add to this an intense connection with the particular setting – ballpark, team and neighborhood – and you’ve got a recipe for a crisis of identity. Luckily, I had Mets announcers Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen to pull me through. For those familiar with the Giants broadcast team of Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, Keith is more or less Mike to Gary’s Duane. (A rough translation at best.)  Hernandez’ unflinching self-love and Bob Dole tendency to talk about himself in the third-person is tempered by his quiet acceptance of Cohen’s occasional ribbing over the ex jock’s famed ego. Less palatable is Keith’s shameless condemnation of any modern-day ballplayer involved in the steroids scandal. Wasn’t this the same guy doing lines off  Mookie Wilson’s batting glove back in ’86? Hypocrisy not withstanding, the two do a decent job and have come to grow on me while accepting the Mets as my pseudo surrogate team and preference by large margin over the Yankees. But that’s another column.

It also didn’t hurt that Tim Lincecum started for the Giants last night, pitched a six-hit complete game shutout, and registered his tenth win of the season. How high has Lincecum set the bar for himself? Consider that he’s 10-4 one game past the break on a weak-hitting team with questionable middle relief, has an ERA under 3.0, leads the league in strikeouts, and yet some have questioned what’s “wrong with him” after a few poor starts. I’m guessing whatever it is, it’s the kind of “wrong” that several other teams would be willing to take a chance on. It has been suggested that Lincecum performs well in cool conditions – something that might bode well for keeping him in a Giants uniform beyond his current contract. Or perhaps he just has an innate sense for the obvious: when two well-matched teams with good pitchers square off on a typically stirring San Francisco night marking the middle of both the baseball and summer seasons, things can often live up to expectation.

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Gha Na Na

Monday, June 28, 2010

Based on a novel by a man named Lear – McCartney

Cheap is small, and not too steep
But best of all, cheap is cheap – Davies

Now that America has bowed somewhat gracefully out of the World Cup, we can all move on to more pressing matters at hand. It’s difficult to hold a grudge against a Ghanaian. The life expectancy for males is only 59 years, so they’re due every international victory that they have coming . If soccer and the occasional Bob Geldoff visit were all that America had to hang on to, we’d likely struggle to keep our proverbial chins held high. And I’ve certainly done enough dead horse beating with my poorly-constructed anti-soccer rants. Although this phenomenon of loss-recovery and why we hate certain opponents more than others might be worth a few more lines. How is it that some Giants fans would suffer a crisis of identity in the absence of their long-despised So Cal rivals? What inspires packs of shorn, shit-faced English lads to descend upon a neighboring village in Third Reich fashion even when the inciting football match is of little consequence? My uneducated guess is that it is due, in large part, to the suffocating and life-numbing lack of motivation that persists in the absence of somebody’s ass to kick. Sure, we’ll sacrifice ourselves beyond all measure in the name of love, but if you really want to get something done you’d better have somebody to hate. And make no mistake – this instinct is not reserved exclusively for the male half of the species. As Elaine Benes remarked on ‘Seinfeld’, commenting on the female version of getting even, “we just tease someone until they develop an eating disorder.” Ask any woman and they’ll likely tell you a broken pint glass to the face is a preferred alternative.

Maybe this explains why I’ve never been a Beatles fan. I don’t typically go public with this admission, because it generally draws a lot of criticism and the response that I’m just trying to be different. But I genuinely don’t care for the group, and despite having listened to a plethora of music in my increasingly long-toothed existence, I’ve never owned a CD, LP, cassette, or even eight-track by the Fab Four. Sure, there’s a select song or two among their vast catalog that I favor – I always dug Paperback Writer, for instance, and felt that it had as good a riff as Day Tripper with better lyrics. Maybe it was McCartney’s somewhat inane but catchy influence on that song that attracted me, and Lennon’s more pervasive but generally toothless All You Need Is Love vibe that pushed me away. I do understand that John was the thinking man’s member of the group, and that it was his cynicism and sardonic “it couldn’t get much worse” contribution to Paul’s “it’s getting better all the time” that kept things in check. But try as I might, I couldn’t get Dear Prudence or I Am The Walrus to fly for me. I much prefer most anything by the Stones, Who, or most consummate of English acts, The Kinks. It’s a shame that some Catcher In The Rye-obsessed kook had to take Lennon out prematurely, but give me Ray Davies lamenting a big, fat mama trying to break him any day. Then again, who asked me?

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Soccer Deux

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Straight is the gate, and narrow the way – Williams/Christ

My buddy Dave in San Francisco emailed the other day, commenting on my last posting about soccer. While I suspect part of his correspondence (like my article) was meant as tongue in cheek, he did use three rather strong qualifiers – “ignorant,” “reactionary,” and “full of shit.” He also likened me to Jim Rome, which remains a neutral remark for most people outside of Jim Everett.  Still, there was enough there to take a second look at my stance. I played soccer as a kid, and have a nephew who’s already an all-star at nine. While I can’t hear a tag like “The Beautiful Game” without cringing, I do cop to the fact that there’s a certain elegance to the sport. You would certainly never hear me assert that the game moves too slowly or is boring. And I’ve been watching much of the World Cup, whether at home or at a bar in Penn Station waiting for an incoming train.

I root for America, just as I would with any Olympic sport that I pay little attention to outside of that specific event. Heck, I even watched our squad battle to yet another tie against Slovenia yesterday and lamented the phantom foul call that cost them the win. Although unlike baseball, I couldn’t even tell what the blown call was. I still hold out that there’s too much going on with this game that isn’t really going on at all. I did chuckle and feel vindicated in my remarks about feigned injuries when the Slavic player went down writhing in pain until two officials with highway cleanup vests trotted over with a stretcher and sprayed some kind of aerosol crap on his ankle. (What’s in those cans anyway, Broken-Ankle-Away? Magic European Pain Un-doer?) Unfortunately, I’m still holding on to my rockhead line that, outside of international play, the game doesn’t do it for me. I was a bit disappointed to discover how many other knee-jerk anti-soccer rants there were out there, but the fact that these only appear during World Cup season should be an indicator in itself. The same can be said for the postings from the other side, seeking to pin America’s reticence in catching on to some sort of conspiratorial ignorance or knuckle-dragging mentality. Personally, I just enjoying goading pseudo intellectual foreigners who relish Yank-bashing while inhaling Quarter Pounders with cheese on the sly. It really isn’t a bad game at all, and I could just as easily have written a piece on the stirring feeling I got while passing a crew of construction workers in the hot Brooklyn sun, all listening to the Mexico-France match blaring in Spanish from a cement-dusted boom box. But I didn’t. Besides, Dave also favors Formula One racing and the Tour de France – two more Euro-oriented pastimes whose charms escape my Cro-Magnon perception. There will be opportunity to offend in the future.

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Not The Worst-Looking Game At The Bar

Sunday, June 13, 2010

It’s official – I’ve got World Cup Fever. Rampant, rabid, rousing, rampaging World Cup Fever. After America’s stunning upset tie with England yesterday, I’ve re-thought my stubborn, quasi-xenophobic aversion to what the rest of the civilized world calls The Beautiful Game. I’ve reconsidered my country’s immature obsession with winning, and learned to relish coming up even against a superior opponent. Never would I have imagined that a West Ham goalkeeper’s Bill Buckner impersonation could deliver the same shot of adrenaline as Montana to Clark, or Will Clark taking the Cubs and Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams up the middle to win the NL Pennant. After decades of watching the occasional Telemundo game with peaked curiosity or passing a British pub on vacation and noting dozens of red faced, pint-swilling enthusiasts glued to the telly, it’s finally all come together. This is what I’ve been missing all these years.

Or maybe not.

I did watch the game, still in my underwear and sipping a Coors Light in my Brooklyn apartment at 3:30 in the afternoon. I wanted to care – I really did. This patronizing “they’re really coming along” attitude that the Europeans take toward America is admittedly annoying. Listening to the English football commentator Martin Taylor repeatedly point out that his team had given away “one of the softest goals you’ll ever see at this level of play” and calling Clint Dempsey, the American who scored, “the lucky man” should have been enough to raise my ire. But it wasn’t. I, like millions of my oblivious countrymen, simply don’t give a shit. It was obvious in the remote television shots of the two teams’ respective fans – the English packed hundreds deep in some public square cheering the big screen enthusiastically at every touch. The Americans watched with stools to spare at Dempsey’s Pub in NYC’s East Village, some wearing goofy over-sized Uncle Sam top hats, but most wondering whether the Yankee game would still be on when this thing was over. What’s with us, anyway? Perhaps I can be of mild service in offering a few possible explanations.

First off, we have far too many choices to start embracing soccer. Maybe if our only diversion from televised darts, snooker, and an increasing cloud cover was this game, then we’d get riled up enough to go marauding three towns over to a rival watering hole and glass up some unsuspecting old lady for wearing the wrong colors. But our thugs carry guns over here, so most of us are inclined to save the bus fare. As for international play, how could we possibly get as worked up as England or France does facing Germany? We’ve either kicked or saved the ass of most places over there and in the process adopted indifference as a defining character trait. Besides, outside of about twelve minutes of post 9-11 good will, everybody hates us. Even the British, who applauded our ‘maturity’ in electing Obama after eight years of Bush now hate the guy for targeting BP and threatening their economy in the process. We have no friends and are happily oblivious.

More to the point, the game just doesn’t work for us. Besides the aforementioned commonplace tie score outcome, there’s the practice of settling things with a “shootout” when it really matters. No self-respecting American sport (outside of the much maligned ice hockey) would consider such an unsatisfying conclusion. It would be as if baseball went without extra innings and had a home run contest instead. It reduces a skillful match played on a wide open field to a game of pinball and, outside of the lineup of guys covering their nuts just in front of the goalie, removes the team element entirely. Then there’s the phantom fouls and faked injury. How many times can you watch some Frenchman hold his leg writhing in feigned agony before getting the overwhelming urge to see Ronnie Lott ring him up like it was 1940 and the Germans were calling? It’s an athletic sport, it’s a hell of a cardio-intensive sport, but it isn’t a rough sport. Just reference Zinedene Zidane’s “head butt” to the chest of an Italian player in the ’06 Cup if you need proof. Even the inciting insult – something to do with the Italian calling Zidane’s mother an Algerian whore raised by poorly mannered wolves – would only draw raised eyebrows over here. But really, if you want to know the simple answer to this ongoing confusion over why America doesn’t embrace soccer, it can be explained in one sentence. It doesn’t lend itself to commercial television.

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Replay This

Monday, June 7, 2010

Armando Galarraga. There’s a name to remember – correctly spelled with two “r’s” in the middle. As any non-comatose baseball fan is aware, the Detroit pitcher threw a perfect game against Cleveland last week. Except it wasn’t. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a little perspective and definition for the non-fan. A perfect game is among the rarest of sports accomplishments. It is, quite simply, 27 batters up and 27 down – no hits, walks or errors. Only 18 perfect games have been thrown in baseball’s post-1900, modern era. More people have orbited the moon than have thrown a perfect game.

Oddly, there have already been two perfect games in the first half of the 2010 season and they came only 20 days apart. The first was thrown by the Oakland A’s pitcher Dallas Braden, whose most notable prior accomplishment was nursing his wrath over an incident involving the Yankee’s $275 million third baseman and self-love expert, Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez cut across Braden’s pitcher’s mound returning to first base after a foul ball, reportedly because he was “tired.” Braden, having been raised in Stockton, California (generally accepted as the birthplace of all forms of etiquette – baseball and otherwise) took great exception. But he soon got over it with a flawless outing against Tampa Bay. The second perfect game belonged to the Phillies Roy Halladay – high on anybody’s list of potential candidates.Then, on June 2nd, it was Galarraga’s turn.

He was perfect against every batter he faced, covering first base himself to retire the Indian’s Jason Donald for the final out. Everybody went wild, except for first base umpire Jim Joyce, who blew the call and declared Donald safe. Joyce’s mistake ignited a firestorm of criticism and demands that baseball institute the instant replay for such situations – an interesting idea which I’ll address momentarily. Perhaps more remarkable than Galarraga’s gem or Joyce’s epic gaffe was the way both men handled the aftermath. The umpire stayed on the field after the final out, facing the animus of both the Detroit fans and players. Then, after checking the replay to assure that he’d indeed blown the call, he visited the Tigers’ clubhouse to personally apologize to Galarraga. Had Bill Clinton handled the Monica Lewinski situation in similar fashion, they would have revoked the Twenty-second Amendment.  Joyce’s classy acknowledgment of his mistake would have gone for naught were it not for Galarraga himself, who accepted the apology with sublime grace and said he would hold his head high, secure in his accomplishment even if it wasn’t going in the record book. I’m not certain if either Galarraga or Joyce is a parent, but it would be a shame if they are not. In a Jersey Shore culture of classless knuckleheads it’s always refreshing to see two grown men set an exceptional example of how one is supposed to handle himself in such situations.

I read some of the Internet discussion boards the day after the game and predictably, they were filled with comments insisting that baseball, like football, institute the instant replay to get calls right. “This is 2010,” one gentleman asserted, “the technology is there and they should stop appeasing the whims of sentimental baseball purists who won’t allow the game to evolve.” It’s an interesting argument and not completely without merit – except I’m no baseball “purist” yet am still opposed to the idea. The problem with allowing for replay calls (as they already do with home runs and fan interference) is the question of where to draw the line. The technology is there to distinguish definitively between balls and strikes as well, and a walk issued on an incorrectly judged ball four spoils a perfect game just as efficiently as a blown call at first base. How can you argue for subtracting the human element in one situation and not the other? It isn’t a “purist” observation, it’s simply the fact that if you change baseball too much you end up with, well .. football. And I prefer to keep my seasons and sports distinct and uniquely flawed. Shit happens and baseball, like life, is imperfect. But I for one will remember the name Armando Galarraga long after “Braden” and “Halladay” have slipped from conscious recollection.

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Jambalaya

Friday, May 28, 2010

seven years on

Honey, ain’t it funny how a crowd gathers ’round anyone livin’ life without a net? – Petty, “Dogs On The Run”

Walking through my old hood in San Francisco, maybe twelve years ago, I came across a small hand-written note placed in the corner of an apartment window. “Jump and the net will appear.” I must have been in the middle of a temporary, run-induced endorphin rush or under the influence of the day’s first strong cup of coffee, because I pondered the words pleasantly for the rest of my way home. Not only did they have an encouraging, reassuring slant, somebody had actually taken the time to post them for public viewing. Then the coffee and endorphins wore off and I went back to my routine and forgot about it. Several years and jumps on, I can safely say that whoever wrote those words was full of shit. This isn’t to say that jumps aren’t necessary, or even advisable at times. It’s just that it could have been a better note.

“Jump and get it over with,” for instance. Makes neither pre-jump promises nor post-jump predictions, but emphasizes the importance of not torturing those around you.  Or, “Don’t jump, but act like you did.” This is a modification of the Larry David philosophy. David quit his job writing at Saturday Night Live, decided it was a mistake, and showed up the next Monday morning like nothing had happened. It’s also an extension of  “act as if,” which advocates walking around with a happy whistle if you’re clinically depressed, or eating like a bird even when you crave that half meatloaf under foil in the fridge. Surprisingly it works, but the flip-side is that it reaffirms life’s meaninglessness. (Which is OK, because you can still act as if life has meaning.) “Jump but make sure you have health insurance.” This one is via my mother, and quite possibly the only relevant jump note worth posting. As an adjunct and in closing, “Jump, don’t jump, but don’t blame your parents” says a lot, too.

Gary Coleman, who died today at 42, probably figured he had some kind of net under him when he became an overnight sensation back in the late seventies with scene-stealing cameos on The Jeffersons and Good Times. But his future, in the grand tradition of child stars, was to be much darker. It’s one thing to be an aging rock star, having to deal with your post-prime reality. But to be a forty year old man with a debilitating kidney condition, still trapped in a child’s body serving daily reminder of your renowned but long expired cuteness .. well try living with that. Coleman sued his parents as an adult, claiming they had mismanaged and blown the bulk of his trust fund and television earnings. He was mocked after taking a gig as a security guard, and sued by an autograph-seeking woman who said he assaulted her. Even in death, it’s not difficult to envision the myriad of “what choo talkin’ ’bout, Grim Reaper?” jokes floating around office water coolers. But the fact is, this guy led a hard, truncated life, and probably found relief at finding no net present this time around. Rest in peace, Arnold.

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Op Ed Changeup

Monday, May 17, 2010

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. – Thoreau
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man. – Lebowski

Opinions, as Harry Callahan once noted, are like assh*les : Everybody has one. Along these same lines, the degree to which one shares his opinion is also a personal choice, and varies accordingly. Share it too much and you run the risk of becoming a boor; too little and you’re labeled a neurotic wreck. Alcohol is a potent opinion-liberator and having been on the receiving end of many a sloshed rant, I tend to shut up when I drink. But I do voice some opinions here, in this forum. Perhaps it’s my way of getting back at all the drunks I’ve had to endure – even if none ever reads what I write.

All of which leads me to baseball. One’s take on the game reveals more than that provided discussing any other sport. Talk basketball and you can determine if someone knows what a 2-3 defense is; football and you derive a certain intellect to testosterone ratio. Talk soccer and you quickly eliminate anyone beyond a first-generation American. Talk tennis, golf, or auto racing (outside of Wimbledon, The Masters, or the Indy 500) and you risk getting sucked into a particular conversational vacuum familiar only to a David Duke – Patti LaBelle first date. But talk baseball and you have an idea of where a person stands, even if things only get as far as an initial opinion. If somebody tells me that they’ve never followed the game, this is perfectly acceptable and the remark stands on its own. If somebody tells me it’s boring or “it moves too slowly,” this reveals an entirely new dimension. But if the person is a fan and cares to elaborate, the sky’s the limit.

As a fan of the National League, there’s a certain feeling I get attending the infrequent American League game and stepping in to Yankee Stadium or the Oakland Coliseum. I’m not sure why this is, as it’s largely the same deal outside of a few notable differences. But there’s something in the air that’s different in an American League ballpark. It isn’t entirely unlike the feeling one gets attending a WWF wrestling match, and thinking “I hope all these people realize that this is a put-on ..” Yankee fans will blether on about countless championships and A’s backers point to their club winning three more World Series between 1972 and 1974 than the San Francisco Giants have in their entire history. They will both be right, and I will simply respond with “the designated hitter” and know in my heart that there is something off about these people. For those claiming mere prejudice on my part I’d add only that as a Giants fan, I don’t get the same feeling walking in to Dodger Stadium. Sure it’s where the enemy resides, but at least the entire world hasn’t been turned on its ear down there.

My own interest in the game has ebbed and peaked at various points over the years and as I’ve noted, it was the San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum who renewed my current enthusiasm. On the surface this may seem an unremarkable point, but Lincecum also provided my incentive for following the Mets on this coast, purchasing a Major League Baseball application for my iPod to listen to Giants home broadcasts, and ordering cable for the first time in three years to watch ESPN. Along with this, he’s allowed for a newly-elevated level of potential conversation on the rare occasion that I wander out to a bar or social gathering. The Giants avoided an arbitration hearing earlier this year by signing Lincecum to a $23 million, two year contract – $8 million this year, $11 million in 2011, and a $2 million signing bonus. In my opinion, he’s worth every dime.

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Trigger Happy

Saturday, May 8, 2010

I’m at the Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center on Thursday night, loitering about an enjoyably mellow bar scene prior to the Willie Nelson show and sporting my (relatively) new San Francisco Giants cap – a gift bestowed by a close friend. “You like the Giants?” the guy next to me inquires accusingly and with an on-his-way-to-getting-sloshed cadence. “I’m a Rockies fan.” I tell him yeah, I do, and within twenty minutes I’ve gotten his whole run-down: thoughts on Colorado, how long he’s been in Brooklyn, his gig with the planning department, and the place he and the wife have bought upstate. She joins in too, filling in details with pleasant inflection and explaining that she comes from a family of fifteen. (Him again: “her dad’s this great, working class Irish dude, and her mom was still cranking them out at fifty .. crazy.”) We get ready to part and find our seats after the first act and he becomes mildly reflective. “You know, I wouldn’t normally start talking to someone wearing a Giants hat, but that’s the nice thing about coming to a show like this. Anybody who likes Willie has got to be OK ..”

The Red Headed Stranger is in fine form, taking the stage at nine with his traditional Whiskey River opening before segueing in to an eclectically stirring mix including songs by Merle Travis, Kris Kristofferson, Billie Joe Shaver and Ernest Tubb. Word before the show of an upcoming week of canceled dates due to a torn rotator cuff has me wondering how Willie might hold up for this performance. Thirty-two songs and two and half hours later I have my answer, watching the seventy-seven year-old slap every hand in the front row after a rousing encore of I Gotta Get Drunk. His voice is clear and strong and his guitar playing as sharp and inspired as his mind. Oddly, all the pot smoking the man’s done over the last thirty years seems to have had an inverse effect to that on the normal population. Or maybe he just knows his groove that well and sees to never losing his chops by remaining in a state of constant touring. In any case, if this is Willie with a torn rotator cuff, I shudder to imagine what he’s like at full-tilt.

The fans are spent pouring out of the venue and a saucy old broad clutching her $25 Willie doll (he’s still got some IRS bailing-out to do) brags that she’s going to sleep with him “just like I did back in ’69 ..” You can’t pigeonhole Willie Nelson fans as a group. The NYC crowd includes rednecks and buttoned-down Manhattanites, sailors in uniform and bikers in leather, Colorado Rockies types and displaced Giants fans. Many have been dancing in the aisles all night. Waiting on a downtown A Train, I reflect on my friend from the bar and his comment on the shared simpatico sensibility among these people. It brings to mind a story my friend Paul told me about his father, a decidedly conservative guy and a big Willie Nelson fan. He was driving in his car one day when he spotted a bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of him that read “Honk If You Love Willie Nelson.” So he pulled up along side, offered a friendly toot and wave, and the guy flipped him off. I like to think that Willie would dig that story.

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Chevy To The Levy

Thursday, May 6, 2010

You can’t stop what’s comin’ – ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity. – Ellis, “No Country For Old Men”

Through some set of mildly odd circumstances, I’ve recently found myself watching the first two installments the epic six-part miniseries America: The Story of Us, now playing on the History Channel. Something about the show peaked my innate sense of cynicism even before I saw one slick, computer-generated frame of Revolutionary War reenactment from the vantage of a hurling musket ball. If there’s an underlying message in the delivery of this production, it might be that the “us” referenced in the title is bonded only by a shared inability to concentrate on anything longer than thirty seconds if it isn’t packaged like a Battlefield game for Xbox 360. Still, even given the ADD-friendly slant of the series, there are enough fascinating moments in this country’s short, staggeringly inventive history to pull it through – a fact to which anyone enduring the “celebrity commentary” segments can attest. One barely has the time to gather his thoughts over Donald Trump waxing philosophic on the “character of an American” before being hit over the head with Sheryl Crow’s thoughts on slavery. It will be worth sticking this thing out if only to discover if anybody pulled the plug on Andy Dick’s Pearl Harbor soliloquy.

Time, as a point of reference, never appears relevant until it’s too late. Anything that happens before one is brought in to the world, or before one has the facility for conscious recollection, might as well be ancient history. As a kid I placed Hitler somewhere between dinosaurs and the Beatles. Similarly, I’ve never known a time when America hasn’t been the world power. But watching this show with its flashy visual enhancements of our breakneck expansion and the mixed bag, viral repercussions of say, the cotton gin, got me to thinking. The lifespan of a country isn’t terribly different from that of a person. It’s born, if it’s lucky goes through a period of intense creation and growth, then grows older and dies. In an odd manner, I’m as fiercely patriotic as anyone I’ve ever known. But as much as I might like to, I can’t parlay an intense appreciation or sense of nostalgia for this country into some deluded denial of our likely impermanence. At the very least, I’d be doing the History Channel a disservice.

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Moving In Stereo

Monday, May 3, 2010

I’m livin’ for givin’ the Devil his due –Blue Oyster Cult

My friend Heather , who visited last week from Philly, possesses perhaps the most sincere laugh on the planet. Once engaged, it eclipses mere amusement and shifts in to something more electric and potent, knowing neither decorum nor inhibition. It is equally likely to power on at a ballgame, on the subway, or during a polygraph test. It can begin as excited acknowledgment of the intricate processes of humor and then quickly erupt in to joyous appreciation for laughter itself. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell what she’s breaking up over; only that it’s innate and has to run its course. None of which is to suggest that the girl is an easy laugh. Her disappointment over failed or substandard attempts is as real and visceral as her connection to the genuine item. “Wait, wait  …” she’ll sometimes say, “that isn’t funny.” Then she’ll stare with a child-like look of disappointed anticipation, wanting the offender to make it right.

I met Heather when she was nineteen and had just moved to San Francisco. I like to tell the story that she moved there because of a crush she had on the (fictitious) WWF wrestler Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, whose ring introduction included the line “from San Francisco, California …” She did have a thing for Beefcake, but that was when she was thirteen. By the time she left home she’d figured his deal out, but had also developed a soft spot for the city after visiting there with an aunt. San Francisco and Heather were an incendiary combination with a decent shelf life. The place reflected both her youth and alternating current, fluctuating evenly between excitable and grounded. She used to ask me to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard – either to stir something up or to settle it down. The city and Heather also shared a deep history belied by their years. With some people and places, you can just tell that they’ve been around for a spell.

I hadn’t seen Heather for a long while, despite our paths running almost identical east/west coast routes. She arrived in Brooklyn a week after my latest vintage stereo receiver came via UPS from Los Angeles. I’ve been purchasing these old receivers of late – the last one was a Harmon Kardon that I bought from a guy in the neighborhood for fifty bucks, and it lasted three years. The current model is a 1974 Pioneer SX-737, an eBay find that ran me about a hundred with shipping from Los Angeles. I like its weight and the solid feeling you get when turning its pulley-rigged tuning dial. The face glows with subtle, cool blue light and there’s a faint, warm waft and scent of electronics from the top vent on the wooden cabinet. When I first turned it on the right channel sputtered and the sound crackled, cutting in and out. I reasoned that this was the risk one takes buying something that’s over thirty-five years old, and prepared to chalk it up to experience. But after leaving it on for a few hours the internal connections strengthened and I could sense it coming back to life. Since then it’s performed flawlessly and the sound seems to become richer by the day. Maybe I’m projecting these qualities, influenced by a combination of nostalgia and that nifty blue glow – but I don’t think so. The thing just plays right.

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