Looking back, not only can I not remember all of the topics that I thought would be good to blog about, I also can’t remember why I thought they would be in any form entertaining after all this time. But here is a condensed list of what I can remember once considering for a topic, and you can use your imagination as to where you think I might have gone with it:
For Crichton Out Loud!
In the realm of trying to entertain myself, I finished a few books, all – interestingly enough – revolving around the topic of religion: The DaVinci
Code, The Pocket Guide to the Bible, and The Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse. All three were entertaining – DaVinci was a page-turner written like a Thomas Harris novel, and the Pocket Guides were hilarious, particularly The Pocket Guide to the Bible. Whether or not you’ve read the Bible, it’s really entertaining. And I learned a ton. I also read The Pocket Guide to Adulthood (I’ve been on a Jason Boyett kick I guess), which wasn’t as good as the aforementioned two, but was still worth the read. I’m now going to try and read everything Michael Crichton’s written in one year (no lie).Thinking Outside the Idiot Box
Dawn and I got hooked on Season four of ER (more Crichton) on DVD, and are currently trying to finish up Firefly, which I’ve been borrowing from Derek for
upwards of nine years. We also rented a few other flicks: Everything is Illuminated (good); Memoirs of a Geisha (average); Waiting…(ho-hum); Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (excellent). We saw Superman Returns and Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in digital projection. I’m not sure if it was the movies that I liked, or the digital projection. Digital blows my mind and will probably make me go to more movies. The films themselves were pretty good, but neither was as excellent as the original.Just Like Hank Scorpio
I partook in a “fun-run” of sorts over the 4th of July, competing(?) in my first 5K run ever in Urbandale. Fun, that is, if you call getting passed by 11-year-old girls “fun.” It’s kind of funny because I hadn’t been running much before doing
this, I just saw in the newspaper on the 3rd that there was a 5K the next morning, so I got up, ran it and came home just as Dawn was getting out of bed so it worked out well. What didn’t work so well is the fact that I hadn’t run a race since like 8th grade, and had probably never run a long-distance race, unless you count our timed mile-runs in 4th through 6th grade, which I don’t really remember. This fact is most obvious from my taking off at top speed out of the gate, not realizing that a 5K isn’t a race around the block. I got about 150 feet and people started passing me – including people with prosthetic legs and women with strollers. I got my second wind around mile two and managed to finish it in about 24 minutes, though I was dragging tail at the end. But at least I got popsicles at the finish line. That was awesome.The Flaming Card Backwards-Talking Dream
Yes, Lou, maybe you should drive. A few nights ago I had the weirdest dream I’ve had since probably 7th grade when I dreamt my mom had turned into a lizard and was wearing my dad’s old football jersey around the house while the basement filled up with orange mittens. In my latest installment of vivid bizarreness, I was a plucky reporter that had just uncovered the truth about the legend of “The Quadruple Royal Flush,” a hand that has supposedly only been attained one time in the history of cards. And the hand belonged to none other than – wait for it – former Cincinnati Reds 2nd baseman and current ESPN color commentator Joe Morgan. Yeah. I told you it was weird. And did I mention lucid? Morgan was laying on a gurney with his head all bandaged up like he’d just had a lobotomy or something, and I’m sitting beside him
conducting this interview. So we’re at the spot where the card game originally took place, in some kind of jungle hideaway with an Amazonesque river flowing gently nearby. I ask Morgan – who is talking in a raspy voice, like he’s on his deathbed – to explain his take on the big moment, and while he tells the story, my dream flashes-back, and the world takes on all sorts of ‘70s TV graininess, complete with color loss and celluloid scratches. Imagine an old episode of Bonanza (the colorized ones) – it was kind of like that. So Joe goes on to tell me that he’s in the middle of this card game (I still don’t know what the game was…obviously not poker) when he discovers he has a chance to attain the extremely rare Quadruple Royal Flush. In retrospect, a good reporter would have actually researched (or even asked) what the heck the Quadruple Royal Flush is, and I failed to do that. Maybe I made mistake number one of a true plucky reporter – I assumed I knew what it was. Because it sounds like it’s probably a royal flush with all the suits, but who knows? Guess I should have asked. Maybe that’s why I work for an insurance company now. Anyway, as Morgan talks, I see all the Manchurian Candidate (the original, not the Demme remake) type of surroundings, complete with cult-looking people moaning and chanting while they play these card games, and then I see Morgan get the cards that could help lead him to the Quadruple Royal Flush. But he knows he can’t get the Quadruple Royal Flush, because he’s missing one card. So he starts looking around all suspiciously. Then he gives some kind of signal, and this guy in a Spider-Man suit comes swinging in on vines, yelling and screaming. He crashes into a side of a cliff and totally disrupts the culty guys and diverts everyone’s attention. It was kind of like when “Fan-Man” came crashing into that Evander Holyfield/Riddick Bowe fight back in the early ‘90s, except without the fan 
backpack. So by this time, everyone’s looking at the Spidey look-alike, and (I laugh at this part now) a whole bunch of cops in the stereotypical ‘80s police uniforms go scurrying up the rocks to apprehend the “perp.” You know the uniforms I’m talking about – light blue shirt, badge on the pocket, badge on the stupid looking navy blue hat….up the hill they run, and – cut back to Joe pulling the correct card out of his sleeve and replacing it in his hand. The commotion dies down and Joe acts distracted like everyone else, then looks back at his cards. “Would you look at that!” Joe Morgan says, “The Quadruple Royal Flush!” Everyone gasps. Ripple dissolve back to me at his bedside, writing furiously with my pencil and pad. Because “this is good stuff,” as plucky reporters always say…The Babysitters’ Club
Dawn and I got to babysit our nephew Zachary a few weeks ago. He’s 18 months old and was pretty fun to have in the house. Now everyone’s saying things to us like, “Uh-oooooh, are you thinking about having a baby now?” and “Ohhh booooooy, did that make you want to wait to have kids, or do you want them right now?” and “What did you say? The printer’s too loud.” The answers to those questions are pretty much: Our babysitting Zach has nothing to do with our timetable for kids, we were just babysitting and it was fun. Now get over it. You’re not getting any insider information about whether or not we’re having a baby in the near future. Do you really care, or do you just want to try and be the first person to know in case we did say when we were planning on having kids? And yes, the printer is loud.
People say you can learn so much about yourself just by having kids. Well, I think you can learn a lot about yourself just from babysitting. Here is a list of five major things I learned about myself (and humans in general), or general observations from that weekend:
1. Milk is so freakin’ good for us. I think if we had to, we could live off of it and nothing else.
2. Toilets are probably the greatest invention ever created (#2 all-time: the sippy-cup).
3. Learning English is such a waste of time – so much can be communicated in grunts and hand gestures.
4. I don’t think the top of the bottle was named the “nipple” to trick the babies into thinking it’s their mother’s milk. I think it was because of its shape.
5. So much of a person’s life is obviously sculpted by their upbringing. My generation’s children are going to be a sick, twisted bunch.
The Old Men and the Idiocy
My biggest beef of the last two months has got to be old men playing baseball. I mean, it’s a great novelty act and all, but does this really need to be some sort of competition? A few weeks ago an 83-year old man played in a minor league baseball game and became the oldest man ever to play in a baseball game. They showed the guy on the news and the highlight of his game was him fouling a pitch off (he ended up striking out swinging). I mean, what did people expect, the
guy to hit a dinger or something? He’s 83 freaking years old. It’s not like the pitcher’s going to let up, even a little. He wants to send the guy down on strikes. He does not want to be the guy that gives up any kind of hit to a guy that’s older than his great-grandfather. Why is this old man in uniform? Seriously. The guy did not earn a spot on the team for any reason other than that HE’S OLD. If that’s the case, if we’re just putting everyday schmoes into pro games, then throw me in the game. You can call me “the most average athlete ever to play professional baseball.” Come on. What’s next, a three-year-old that stands in the batter’s box and draws a walk because his strike zone is so small? Nope. I’ll tell you what’s next. A 94-year-old guy playing in a minor league All-Star game. Yep, an All-Star game. Did he make the All-Star team because he was having a good season? No. He made the All-Star team solely because he’s older than crap. That’s the only reason. Yeah, he used to play in the Negro League and was a two-time batting champ there. He was also the Major League’s first black coach. Sooo...great, he was good 60 years ago, and yes, he 
deserves to be honored. But guess what? You’re only embarrassing the old man now by putting him in the game -- and in his Levi's for that matter! He just pretty much got up there in his blue jeans and uniform top and stood with the bat on his shoulder and took a free pass to first base, at which time a stinking pinch runner came in for him. What kind of an All-Star has to have a pinch runner? Answer: The kind that doesn’t belong. This man is no All-Star.And I don’t want people to think that I’m against this man being there, because I’m not. I think he should definitely be honored in some way, but don’t put him in the record books like he worked his way onto the team this year. What happens when a 47-year-old that’s batting .451 for the Omaha Royals and has been in the minors for 24 years makes his first All-Star team? What's he going to say? He’s gonna say, "That should be my name in the record books, going down in history for something – the only thing – I will ever be known for." But it will never be his name because John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil made the All-Star team at 94 years old simply because he was old.
