Dodgers and Yankees and an existential scream from the road to nowhere
Letter to the Social Media Editor
Hey Bubba!
It’s been some time since our last communique and I thought I’d redress the unequal balance between us with another missive from the English branch of the Evil Empire. How are those injuries holding up after the wolverine attack? The boys in the office still get a giggle when watching the video! Please send my love to Mary Todd even though we all know she hates me and sways gently in her rocking chair at night comfortable in the knowledge she’s in the majority. I’m still trying to crack the code my old friend and if I told you I’ve penned nine lengthy articles on cricket in Pakistan (where the game is seen by hundreds of millions as akin to a religion) and several articles on the footballing fortunes of Liverpool Football Club (easily in the top 5 “brands” of world football) or that I’ve written lengthy treatises on numerous recent films and received next to nothing in terms of genuine engagement on any one of these, would this shock you? It’s a rhetorical question my old friend, just another riddle I can’t solve in my enigmatic yet pointless existence and for my failures I should be flogged in public as local children throw rotten fruit at me.
It’s the least I deserve.
Is that the correct grammatical use of that phrase? Is it even a phrase or saying? Sounds incorrect to my ear and I can’t be fucked to look it up but it seems inverted or upside down, “least” and “deserve” in the same brief sentence? How can you deserve something the least? Sets the bar a little low don’t you think? Probably makes it easier for the children to hit me with those maggot infested peaches?
Ah questions and tangents. Tangents and rhetorical questions. From a wolverine attack to rotten fruit being hurled at a loser. It’s why I’m such a popular voice in social media. So popular in fact that I pen my thoughts on two sports seen, in ever growing numbers, as greater in importance than even the worship of an invisible man in the sky or thoughtful musings on the latest and greatest from Tinseltown, and I may as well have sat with my face to the nearest wall and indulged in some primal screaming. The world doesn’t want to see or read what I have to say about anything and perhaps that’s for the best.
The idea Bubba at the commencement of this electronic letter to you was perhaps a look ahead to the World Series and following the sad death yesterday of Fernando Valenzuela, Dodger Stadium will be humming to an even higher intensity come Friday night and the visit of baseball’s Evil Empire, the Yankees of New York. How I never saw the great man pitch but have grown into my fandom of the Dodgers with tales of his spinning baseball or how I love baseball for the pitchers of the game rather than those brutes with a bat. The curve ball of Clayton Kershaw that defies gravity along with a batter’s logic or Dodgers closer Eric Gagne who bridges Valenzuela’s 1980’s with Kershaw’s search of a second World Champion ring starting this Friday, in a ravine and on a field of dreams in a city of angels. I see The Big Dance going to all 7 games and the Evil Empire winning it 4–3 but that’s just the pessimist in me, and no-one cares for my opinion anyway.
I think it’s fair to say I’ve covered the continuing heart break of putting my heart and soul into everything I write for no discernible recognition whatsoever so I won’t labour the point again. As my social media editor I know you’re rolling your eyes about now and muttering phrases such as “keep going”, “keep showing up”, there’s an audience waiting for you just around the corner. Jam tomorrow eh? Well I guess it’s better than being pelted with rotten fruit. But there won’t be jam tomorrow any more than I’ll find the peace of mind to forgive myself for my life of failure as I scrape the bottom of the barrel of a life I wish I wasn’t around to see get even worse.
But that’s a dangerous tangent even for me. So I was thinking of returning to the days of Fernando Valenzuela in the late 1980’s, of falling in love with Carly as we gazed across a college classroom at each other filled with teenage lust. Accounts and Business Studies classes were infinity more enjoyable when falling in love with that freckle faced vision of beauty that was Carly, all long light brown hair akin to a 1960’s hippie and a contrarian fuck you attitude to match. We used to sneak to her home at lunch times to listen to “Talking Heads” and without Carly’s encouragement I wouldn’t be a fan of the band to this day or indeed many years later when they would be the very reason for the name change of my musical obsession for three decades now — Radiohead. I could tell that story and I was going to, even with the bittersweet addition that lunchtimes with Talking Heads finally became a real adult date for these lovesick college teenagers, until Liverpool Football Club wrapped up the English League Title on the same day and I toasted their 1990 title triumph by drunkenly singing and dancing on the table of a pub rather than running off with Carly and never looking back.
I could weave that tale but what would be the point?
I also have this bee in my bonnet that we all exist in some twisted version of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, standing in line listening to soothing music as we all await our next medicine to be dispensed by people who despise us and wish us dead. I have a lot to say too about the election in the US of A and a choice my Americans cousins have between a pissed up actress and an orange skinned Game Show host, but you don’t want to read these musings any more than you wish to connect a wolverine attack to being ignored in social media society, a Mexican baseball player, the spectre of death or the road to nowhere the Evil Empire is paving the way for. Who needs that in their lives?
Not you Bubba.
Anyway, I’m on my own road to nowhere and I have an appointment with some children and what looks like a lifetime’s supply of rotten fruit.
Give my love to Mary Todd.
Send word.
Thanks for reading. For more Pulitzer Prize winning material, here’s one I prepared earlier:
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
The Yankees nearly always ruin things for all the other American League clubs. At least the National League has some variety with its champs....