Tag: writing

Matters Of Little Consequence

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‘There is no one way to blog, there is simply a way to blog. Choose that which speaks to you, and if it doesn’t suit someone else? Fuck ’em’

My rebel yell style of play was going strong by June of 2007. The above thought came from a blog post which drew some acclaim for calling out the “Sam Houston Bloggers among us” who lorded over the blogosphere as if they owned the fucking place. It was a stinging response to a blogger who had called me out for not being down with blogging etiquette. The dude also happened to be one of Dan’s networking pals, and they had something in common; they were better at making connections than at actually writing.

Dan had been away from the blog for over a month when a case of viral meningitis landed him in the hospital. He was still keeping tabs from the sidelines though, and he had a few somethings to say about my bridge burning episode with one of his compadres. But I possessed hand, in the form of stats. And they were booming. My feud with Sam Houston had trickled from his comment thread to my own, with followers and daily notifications of crazy. We made it onto the featured blogs of the WordPress front page, after which I wrote a “Thanks But Who Cares” post in response which was quickly- and rightly- taken down by Dan. Admittedly, I needed a muzzle sometimes.

But I didn’t wish to be a part of a fraternal order. I simply wanted to spill my thoughts onto the page, with no preconceived notions or obligations to anyone or anything but the thoughts in my head. Because to pattern my writing after what I perceived to be the popular branding method would have been to cheat myself, and everyone else. It stole away improvisation and replaced it with a homogenized rendition.

I had effectively exorcised the Britney sugar walls episode with a post titled How To Prevent A Shark Attack, which sandblasted any residual effects of my spiritual nadir. Granted, it wasn’t great literature by any stretch. But at least it was writing and not a porn centerfold. The comment thread churned on for weeks, with a couple notable favorites; Like Patti. She introduced herself as a marine biologist and then began to critique my shark attack strategies, point by point. Then she let me know some of the best moments of her life were spent around sharks. So of course . . I had to respond in (not so) kind, and I finished my thoughts with this.

One last thing. If some of the best moments of your life were spent around sharks, it means you’ve never been laid. Good luck with that. And keep reading!

And then there was Marek- a German filmmaker who was interested in using the image in my post for one of his film covers. I told him ten grand would do the job. He took it seriously and we actually went back and forth in emails for a while before I had to break it to him that I was joking.

That was how the blog went. People either got the joke, or they didn’t. But regardless, they were reading us up. Because when we were good, we were very good. But when we were bad, we were buttah. The blog was a marriage of ugly and pretty words, and they were making babies. Furiously so.

It was to wit, the pretty words that won over The Dame. A Mother’s Day post titled My First Girl had her gushing like a school girl. Of course, outside of the Manson family, the overwhelming majority of dudes have pretty words at the ready for their mothers. I was gladly accepting of her glowing comments and our ever more involved emails to each other. But still, I was miffed at how a virtual stranger could fall for simple words. I read my Shakespeare, and I know that it works. But the logistics of it never did make much sense to me.

“You ask too many questions,” Dan said in response to my questioning her love and affection for my modern day romantic side.

“Yeah, because I realize that writing something beautiful and heartfelt is not the same as being something beautiful and heartfelt,”

“Whatever works, Marco”.

To my way of thinking, it was much too easy to make someone believe in something that wasn’t real. And with some background to go off of, I knew that she was clinging to the version of me that suited her struggling spirit. But hell if I wasn’t doing the same thing. And it didn’t matter any longer because we were a snowball, running away from the peak and straight into a catastrophe.

The morning of June 7th produced one of my least inspired efforts in months. I had too much on my mind and so I took the easy way out. I bashed the Washington Nationals new ballpark, which I equated to a money pit mausoleum for a minor league product.

The Nationals move falls in line with ‘elite’ franchise ticket prices, such as the New York Yankees, who are charging up to $400 for top seats this season, exempting natural blonde strippers. The Boston Red Sox charge $312 for an infield dugout box and $500 for a ten minute conversation with Curt Schilling. The Los Angeles Dodgers charge $450 for some premium, game-day seats close to the field and $300 for a picture with Tommy Lasorda’s penis pump.

When I got home from work that night, I checked the blog and then my emails. And there it was, the prayer to all my answers. The Dame. Her email was short and sweet and it included her phone number and an invitation. She was blaming her impetuousness on the Pinot.

I had no such alibi.

Heroes Of The Week!

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Shazam

Magic King-dumb- In the immortal words of Whitney Houston, I believe that children are our future. Because with the way the adults are behaving, they have to be! In the latest episode of Grown Ups Behaving Badly, I give you this video (right here) of a family get together at Disney Land that got out of hand. As in open hand. And slapping. And hair pulling. And umm . . . kids? Can you please hurry up and save us from ourselves?

The Mets win!- Well, kinda. The Mets Peter Alonso won the HR Derby on Monday night, and hey . . it’s something. Sure the Mets season is a twenty four car pileup on the Grand Central Parkway. But they’ve got a couple bright lights in Jeff McNeil and Alonso. The brawny slugger beat out Vladimir Guerrero Jr for the crown, and will donate ten percent of his million dollar prize to two charities: Five percent to The Wounded Warrior Project and five percent to Tunnel To Towers. Chicks dig the long ball, and everybody digs a righteous dude like Alonso.

One if by land, two if by sea and freedom if by air!- To think, we might really be sipping tea right now if not for Continental Airlines- which I can only assume was the airline of choice for our revolutionary heroes. Because after we laid waste to the British airports, French and American troops safely landed at Yorktown International. On time, may I add, since there was no TSA yet. Thanks to the latest history lesson doled up by Trump, we learned that the Wright brothers were lying bastards. And now I’m dubious as to all those hardship stories about how the Pilgrims spent months at sea to get here.

History Theater- And speaking of . . . William Latson is the latest revisionist to history, as evidenced by his refusal to admit that the Holocaust actually happened. The now former Principal at Spanish River High School in West Palm Beach, Florida paved over the history books in a narrow minded missive he sent to a concerned parent last year. In the email exchange, Latson wrote ‘I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,’. You know the old saying about how those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it? We’re living proof.

They put the beauty in the beautiful game- With their 2-0 win over the Netherlands on Sunday, the US women’s national team clinched back to back World Cup titles. And with it, all that talk about putting up or shutting up can go to sleep for good. As Megan Rapinoe put it, “I held up my end of the bargain (with Trump).” And now she’ll go to work fighting for gender equity. U.S. Soccer and FIFA need someone to light a fire under their asses, and she’s just the gal to do it.

Royals under glass- Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are a pretty big deal in the UK, but that doesn’t mean they owe the British press every living, breathing moment of their lives. When the royal couple opted for a private christening for baby Archie, the press cried bollocks. And when a member of Markle’s security team requested that no pictures of the duchess be taken during a match at Wimbledon last week, Piers Morgan went bonkers. Never mind the fact that Markle was not seated in the royal boxes but rather, had been personally invited to attend by Serena Williams. And never mind the fact that the Brits might be paying the rent on Buckingham Palace, but that doesn’t entitle them to treat these people like wax figures in a museum. Morgan railed on, saying that Markle should move to America if she wants privacy. Welp, she is welcome anytime. As far as Morgan goes, not so much.

Just so you know, she can dance!- Phoebe Kochis is a 19-year-old dancer with Down Syndrome. She also happens to possess the kind of fire and spirit that makes a cold world feel so much warmer. She proved as much when she accomplished her life long dream by appearing on the ABC hit show So You Think You Can Dance.

Kochis didn’t walk until she was two years old. But it wasn’t long before she got to shaking and shimmying to such a degree that her parents enrolled her in dance lessons. And what dreams may come, well . . they did just that when Phoebe won the title of Colorado Miss Amazing, which is a pageant for girls with disabilities.

The dream evolved and it talked her into believing that she had to audition for one of her favorite shows when she got older. And so she began laying out that blueprint, from the age of six. When it was simply a thought, that became a belief and then a raging fire.

It took thirteen years, but once she arrived on the dance floor she’d always dreamed of owning, Phoebe showed the world what happens when providence smiles on you. She didn’t advance. But if you watched the girl do her thing, you understand that what she did advanced you. And it made you think. Long and hard and brightly on a world that too often comes back with change on our cosmic dollar bill. Phoebe flipped the script on the time worn expression that we should ‘ . . dance as if no one is watching . .’  because she danced as if the world was watching.

That works too.

 

 

 

 

Matters Of Little Consequence

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The best way to reach Atlantis is by drowning. So, yanno . . . be advised. 

By the spring of 2007, the blog was settling into a predictable rhythm. I derived zero enjoyment from the notoriety we had garnered after the Britney shot; partly because it was fucking stupid but mostly because it wasn’t my personality. Blog hits were a currency I couldn’t relate to in the least. But rather than dwell on it, I kept my nose to the grind by rubbing more spice into the beast in order to cull that ching. I wrote provocative shit and connected with other bloggers and brainstormed ideas with Dan late in the night.

Dan wanted to schmooze and to get known and I wanted to write and be left the fuck alone, so we were able to achieve a perfect balance. We were vastly different people who found a righteous third pedal with which to ride this duct taped circus tricycle into a flow that had some keeps. And so what if the means to our endgame was polar bear opposite? We figured there’d be insurance for that.

As someone with depression, writing had become a beautiful outlet through which I could invite my inner tempest without need for a visit to the psych ward. When I wasn’t chitting with sports bloggers or chatting with food bloggers, I was commiserating with depressed peeps like me. I treated blogging the way I treat cocktail parties. Fetch a comfortable drink, find a spot on the fringe and then cozy up to someone who fits my perspective.

Unfortunately my love life didn’t follow the same set of rules. In this respect, I always seemed to find the loudest crash. After a few soft landings to break me in to the new old fashioned ways of romance, I’d gotten down to brass knuckles. In the months leading up to my head on collision with the “Dame”, my common sense had gone rogue warrior. A top five mishaps from that most interesting period? Sure why not . . .

5- Tracy loved Jaeger shots and revolvers. Moving right along . . .
4- Lizette gifted me an Irish soccer t-shirt after our St. Patrick’s Day hookup. Her gun toting baby daddy proved to be too expensive for my umm . . blood.
3- Gina smoked weed whilst driving and her hobbies included bar fights and tat collecting.
2- Karen was always there. Like when she needed a place to crash rent free. Or when she needed money. Or when she needed to recover from a bad breakup. Yep, she was there.
1- Maria

How do you solve a problem like Maria? Damned if I knew. The girl was TNT in spaghetti straps, with the ability to seduce a Pastor on Sunday morning. We’d reconnected at her birthday party the previous summer, where everyone had been invited to feel her new boobs during champagne toasts. Months later during a snowstorm, she invited me over for a private showing. She had a couple bottles of wine and smokes, which clinched the summit for me.

I’d been planning an exit strategy ever since, because every moment spent with her brought catastrophic risk. Girl had a posse of ex boyfriends with warrants and possessive ex girlfriends who hated men. Understandably, I never actually slept during the time I was sleeping with Maria. Thank God for Dan’s incredibly shitty judgement, or I might have ended up being immortalized on some after hours cable crime show.

As if Britney hadn’t harshed my mellow enough, you can imagine my surprise when I woke up to a post on our blog written by Maria. Evidently she had sweet talked Dan into letting her write with us after I kept turning her down. So it was that she treated our readers to the specs on her boob job, her crush on Jesus when times got tough. And oh . . sordid tales of sex with Marco.

My brain exploded, after which I deleted the post, changed the password on the blog and warned Dan that I wasn’t planning on giving it back so easily and that if he ever pulled some stupid shit like that again, I’d tell Emie about his recurring dreams. And then I broke up with Maria, which was awkward considering the fact we weren’t actually dating.

I decided to practice celibacy after that. It was a combination crash diet and detox program, with lots of early nights involved. I read like crazy and wrote like a maniac when I wasn’t running and meditating and for about a week and a half I thought I had the stuff of monks. Until Dan, bless his dark, misguided heart, turned me on to a blogger who would end up changing my life forever. She went by the moniker “Dame” and her blog was a literary cutlery set.

I still remember the first time I read her. She was promising to exact revenge on her former beloved in ways that would have had Messalina shuddering in her sandals. And while it was evident this fellow had proven to be a master cheat, the Dame’s punitive measures were, to put it mildly, extreme. Her vengeful anecdote didn’t mention water boarding, since it seemed too lenient a measure. Everything else was on the table, however.

She believed in an eye for an eye- as in, applying a skewer to his roving one. She talked about how she was going to sleep with his friends, his brother and maybe even his old man if it came to that. I was well aware these specific threats were made in jest, but I was also aware there was no jest in her enmity for the sonofabitch.

Her ramble was homicidal, with only trace elements of sarcasm involved, to keep you from calling the authorities; sort of like a tinctured brandy in a whodunit that lets the damsel escape to some exotic locale before a single badge makes the scene. She was straight up wicked in her brilliance, with the kind of cunning that John Grisham couldn’t touch with a satellite. She had two moves carved to a platinum inset before you stepped out of bed, and while Dan called her crazy, I knew she was something more than that. Entirely.

Truth be told, her ode to a lover gone wrong read insanely. It was the kind of beau bounty that should have had me running into the Atlantic Ocean and not coming up for air until I reached a well lit tunnel dressed in cherubs. That would have been the normal reaction, sure. But me?

I was falling.

Heroes Of The Week!

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Luis Alvarez

In this week’s episode, Imma go five strong in the old school style of business. Five stories that run the gamut, from zeroism (my word) to heroism. You’ll notice that I deviated from the typical superhero pic that usually accompanies the Friday edition of Heroes. I decided to go with a real life superhero, Luis Alvarez, who died last Saturday after a three year battle with cancer. The canyons were built for shoulders like his.

“I’ll take clueless about colonies for $1,000, Alex,”- I’ve been a consistent defender of Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protests because I’m democratic and such. But his holler over the colonial flag is more off key than Francis Scott after a night of making merry. Kaep took exception with the design of Nike’s Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July sneaker, which features the Betsy Ross flag design.

Nike, which has no problem making sneakers that cost hundreds of dollars and have gotten many a kid mugged or worse for sporting ’em, decided not to release the 4th of July special edition kicks. Because it was deemed “racially insensitive” by Kaep. It’s really getting to the point where history is being reworked to facilitate rather than to educate, and that endgame is a frightening proposition.

Tanks for nothing- El Presidente decided to take a page out of the Russian holiday playbook, switching out May with July . . of course. The Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence two hundred and forty three years ago, and not a single one of those signers asked for the top rung. They understood the shared responsibilities of a brave new world and were of the belief that no one man was more important than the freedoms and liberties enjoyed by all men. I mean . . they’d fought to get away from that.

And so this brand walk by .45 felt incongruous to what our founding fathers had in mind. The tanks and fighter jets display was inauthentic enough. But his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial was abject showmanship on a day that is meant to commemorate the courage and sacrifice of every single man and woman who fought to gain, and preserve, our way of life.

They make soccer look gooood- The US women’s national team is in the World Cup finals for the third time in a row and will go for their second straight crown on Sunday against the Netherlands. They got there thanks to goals by Alex Morgan and Christen Press, and diamond cut goalkeeping by Alyssa Naeher in a 2-1 victory over England. In doing so, they overcame the absence of supernova midfielder Megan Rapinoe, who was sidelined with a strained hamstring.

As per usual, the ladies got some peeps all up in their feelings with their greatest show on turf. Their sexy forward, Alex Morgan, fancied a cup of imaginary tea to sip on after scoring a goal early on against England. Of course, pub goers across London took to social media with modern day red coats and bayonets after the display. And a few of the gals on England’s team got their knickers all in a knot over the shenanigans as well.

Our girls are hated . . they are real . .

And they are magnificent.

Finding peace and purpose under the sea- What do you get when you combine veterans with PTSD and an ailing environment? Would you believe it if I told you magic? Because that’s what the organization Force Blue is working along an eighty mile stretch of Florida coastline.

The idea of recruiting former military members for scuba diving missions to preserve and rescue endangered coral reefs is the brainchild of Jim Ritterhoff and Rudy Reyes. The genesis of this venture came to be after the two friends went on a scuba diving trip in 2015. Reyes, who had been suffering from depression after serving as a Recon Marine, found the experience transformative.

And so now, the men are changing minds with each new ‘mission’ to save the coral reefs. Because all those cynics who are so adept at refuting scientists, are being told by their heroes that something needs to be done about the damage we’re doing to the environment.

A genius idea that profits the environment . . . what a novel concept.

Luis Alvarez Congress

That is Luis Alvarez on the other side of sixty nine chemotherapy treatments. A ghostly remnant of the NYPD detective who possessed the physique of a linebacker and the heart of a lion. It can be said that Alvarez never did stop digging after those planes reduced the twin towers to rubble.

He lived fifty three mortal years but he lived thousands of lives in the last eighteen years; encompassing the friends he lost, the strangers he helped to recover and the fraternity he fought for until his dying breath. His was not merely the life of a public servant but a living testament to what service means. He lived through hell on September 11th, and then he kept stepping foot back inside of those nightmarish hours; day after day, month after month. Until they all found home.

In a perfect world, Alvarez would have made a great old man. But there’s nothing perfect about a place where people sacrifice everything and still have to fight for compensation on the other side. Unlike those members of Congress who didn’t show up to listen to him speak last month, Alvarez showed up. Every day. Until his body couldn’t do it any longer, until his spirit’s passing left the world a little bit colder.

The angels win, again.

 

 

 

 

 

Things We Lose In The Fire

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Back in the day, when Matters did have some consequence and I was writing on a blog that spared no one, I had a default reply to anyone who threw down on me with a nasty comment. It went something like this.

Go fuck yourself. 

It didn’t end there. Because I’m nothing if not respectful to those I hurl insults at, as dichotomous as that sounds. I feel that if you’re going to engage in name calling with me, Imma clap back with my particulars in bold faced detail. This is because I want to make clear that I refuse to be sucker punched by someone looking to bully me with words.

And let’s face it, social media is a greenhouse for peeps who wish to hit and run. They shout you down as being an -ist and then they flee the scene of the crime because they don’t have proof of assurance. Who needs to be pliable when you can be libel? And get away with it. Sweet deal.

I want to share an exchange I had with a reader of my blog back in 2007. He replied to a post I wrote about Michael Vick after the Atlanta Falcons QB was arrested for his involvement in a dog fighting ring. As happens with peeps who do bad shit, Vick “found” God in the aftermath of his crimes. So I wrote a post in which I speculated on what a phone call between Vick and God would look like. Needless to say, it didn’t end well for Vick.

I’ll narrate the exchange, starting with his comment to my post.

Guys, 

The “culture” thing I agree has been misused by some so-called black leaders to the point of boredom. However, one has only to look at the “Jena 6” to realize that the spectre of racism/cultural double-standard is alive and well. Instead of talking about Mike Vick’s depravity against dogs, how about spotlighting the foul shit that’s going down in the back bayous of good ole’ Louisiana. PLEASE Don’t get “tired” to the point of being blind. Like you stated “What’s wrong is just wrong.”

I know we all want to live in the Utopia States of America, but the fact is the racial/cultural bias in some parts of this country is alive and well. I wonder what your take on this case is, and will you write a “funny” little vignette about it? By the way the lack of national (around the clock) coverage for this case, as opposed to the Vick case, is what’s really insulting to the black community.

Okay, now at this point I could have Napalmed his opinion. But he wasn’t name calling or engaging in sophomoric assaults. His was an opinion that differed from mine. Simple as that. So I responded with this.

The difference between the Vick story and the Jena 6 story is that one involves high school kids and the other involves a grown man. Vick should have known better; his horrible judgement leaves him wide open to satirists and Op-ed junkies. His newfound relationship with God (sic) notwithstanding, I believe Vick is simply a bad guy who will hide behind anything- from the law to God and back again- in order to work his way out of the hole he dug in the first place.

Those kids in Jena? Just a little different, don’t you think? There is nothing in the world I could do to “funny” up what those kids went through as a result of a racial chasm they did not ask for nor deserve to be victims of.

Hypocrisy is fodder, and I’m an equal opportunity offender. Last I looked, Larry Craig was a white Senator from Idaho. He hid behind family values while living a lifestyle he supposedly abhorred. He gets slammed. Vick gets slammed. It’s my blog, my opinion.

We don’t believe in sacred cows here. No one is beyond our reach; black or white, man or woman, Dem or GOP. And what we’re really tired of is a homogenized news cycle that shows a brilliant propensity for missing the point. We want the point, as I believe you do, to be driven home. Why Vick over Jena? Indeed.

And as far as the bayou is concerned, we both know it’s not necessary to travel to the swamps to find the depths. It’s everywhere.

I appreciate your comments, I really do. And believe it or not, I offer no wisecracking comebacks to you, because I believe you are coming at me from the heart. I like that, I respect that. And I invite that.

I don’t feel as if you’ve called me out on this one; but rather, you’ve asked me to see another side. And I do, I try, and where I fail, please let me know. The worst I will do is disagree, but I won’t ignore a thoughtful attempt.

And he came back at me, not with vitriol, but with this.

Thoughtful response. Much appreciated and respected. I think I’ll continue to read your blog.

True to his word, he read us and he would comment from time to time. And like . . . wow, right? Two people, one black and one white . . disagreeing with each other in harmony. And to think, back then we used to wonder where the world was going to?

Now I wonder where it went.

Matters of Little Consequence

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I think God created blogging when he had nothing else to talk about.

I had to admit Dan had gone bulls-eye with his little idea. The 800lb Gorilla was chugging along on nicotine, friendly drinks and unsympathetic satire that offered no quarter for sacred cows. The blogosphere had plugged me into a tantric remedy in which I was writing practically every day. Shop hours would vary depending on the day ahead. Sometimes I would go for an early morning run and then post something before heading out. On other days I would regale in the simple comfit fixtures of a laptop and a well armed Martini after hours. It was Zen capture inside the tear drops of a clock whose purpose now seemed to dovetail its method into my madness.

I was enjoying myself immensely, in spite of the detours that would crop up now that our elbow bending riffs were being held in a virtual forum. Like the time Dan called to tell me Google had taken a shit on our Blogger platform and he had moved us over to a place called WordPress. But just like all the other bumps in the road, this one proved to be quite fortuitous. Because whereas our former website behaved like a rural dirt road, the new digs were akin to an eight lane highway.

Everything was coming back peach as summer moved into fall. My kids were feeling good about how life was looking on the other side of the split. My soon to be ex-wife had met a man on a dating site and things were promising. And I had met a nice girl inside the same week, on the same site as the ex-wife and things were promising as well. For a couple months. After which I got back to dating and black book research.

As far as writing was concerned, I had unlocked a parallel of myself to which had always been a mystery before this time. It was a quicksilver reckoning in which my creative bones were shaking loose, as if pole vaulting over thunderheads.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat

December 12th, 2006 is when push came to shove. It was some time in the middle of the night when Dan posted what would launch the Gorilla from obscurity into a grass roots movement that would end up getting play in a couple online magazines and local radio shows.

It was later that morning, I was doing a supply run when my phone came to life. It was Dan.

“Dude, you checking this shit out?”

“What shit?”

“The blog!”

“Oh, yeah . . the shot of Britney’s front yard. You know what you sonofabitch, next time give me a heads up when you post some shit like that,”

“Sorry to offend your delicate senses,”

“Dan, my daughter listens to Britney, okay? I don’t need to see her business is all I’m saying. I prefer to keep her in my sexy little Smurf collection where anatomy doesn’t exist. And where did you find that pic?”

“I hit on a website when I was surfing around last night for something to write about. We were one of the first sites to put it up,”

“Wow, I always wanted to run a porn site. I guess the degenerate blue ribbon goes to us, huh?”

“Marc, you see the hits?”

“I don’t look at hits, I look at writing. I’m the insufferable artist and you’re the soulless networking prick, remember?”

“We’re at 2,900 hits so far . . . I think we could hit 10 grand,”

“Jesus Christ, that Federline douchebag was right! She does have a magical vagina!” I exclaimed before I realized I was talking out loud in the middle of Staples.

“This is our hanging curve ball, it’s how we’re gonna get known for all the writing we’ve been doing in the dark,”

“As if Hemingway isn’t dead enough,” I whined.

“We have the eyeballs now is how I look at it. And I’ll tell you what man, we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Dan said before we hung up.

This should have been cause for celebration. But whereas Dan was sewing this latest turn of events into a Matterhorn applique, I was dubious. For fuck’s sake, we’d been writing our asses to the tune of a couple stray comments here and there; so stray were these comments that we should’ve tested them for rabies. It was that kind of virtual desert island shit. And that was fine by me, because the writing was keeping me upright.

If writing truly mattered, how was it that I could write madly for a year and elicit nothing more than a yawn? Meanwhile, Britney simply had to play 21 Jump Street with a mini-skirt to clobber the fuck out of me. I was thinking too hard, and I knew this. Dan was right. Eyeballs were the bottom line to any kind of future for the site, and now we had them. It was time to put on my big boy swimming trunks and pray at the altar of Mary Shelly.

We were looking straight into the eye of a storm, even if we didn’t know it yet.

Heroes Of The Week!

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Dare Devil

Family Value$- Rep. Duncan Hunter out of California is what Big Politics is all about. He is expert at talking out of both sides of his mouth; railing on about wanton spending and people’s personal lives whilst playing the role of Hugh Hefner in sequined Uncle Sam hat. Last year, Hunter and his wife were charged with bogarting a quarter of a million G-Dubs from his campaign war chest for family outings, private school tuition and beer runs (well, it said personal expenses but the dude likes beer). And wait! There’s more! He re-purposed even ‘mo money for ski trips, bar tabs (told ya) and hotel trysts with various congressional aides. His “Do as I say and not as I do,” act needs to get slam dunked.

Let’s get high!- I watched Nik and Lijana Walenda walk the high wire over Times Square . . the night after it happened. On YouTube. Because hells if I was gonna watch it live. The duo tiptoed across a 1,300 feet wire the width of a quarter, 25 feet off the ground. Oh, and it was Lijana’s first walk since a near fatal fall two years ago in which she broke every bone in her face. For those who shrugged off the performance on account of the fact they wore harnesses (NYC law), ummm . . . let’s see them try it.

There’s a catch- Next time some football diva celebrates a touchdown catch, Imma clap back with this video because “That’s not a catch . . . that’s a catch!” Check out this kid in Turkey as he catches a toddler who fell from a window. And if babies ever start falling from the sky, dial him up.

Girls just wanna have fun- Okay, the US women’s soccer team is a lousy act when it comes to sportsmanship. I got some flak for letting them off the hook in last week’s episode of Heroes, but lemme ‘splain. I’m a Yankees fan (Death Star) who digs on Negan from Walking Dead and Darth Vader. The girls are hated in many corners, and rightfully so, but I happen to find them interesting as hell. And unlike the men’s soccer team, they get shit done.

Fuck that- Imma root on the girls because they make the pitch a sexy intrigue, but Megan Rapinoe’s got to ditch the four letter sorties she’s flinging at Trump. She ain’t the first person to engage in a rubber band fight with .45. From De Niro to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the middle finger movement has one thing in common. It doesn’t work. Kudos to Rapinoe for coming out this week and saying that while she still ain’t stepping foot inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, she shouldn’t have used a four letter reply in saying so. That’s more like it.

My kind of (sports) town- I’m of the opinion that St Louis Cardinals fans are the best fans in baseball. They helped prove me right this week with a five minute standing ovation for Albert Pujols- who left the Cards in 2012 and signed a $210 million dollar contract with the Angels. It was his first trip back to the Gateway City since, and the hometown fans made Pujols feel as if he never left. They didn’t boo him for leaving, they cheered him for what he meant when he was theirs. At Busch Stadium, class is always in session.

Is there a Lemonhead Law?- A car dealership in Alabama (It’s hilarious already, right?) is offering up a holy shit of a deal for anyone who buys a new or pre-owned car. “Gods, Guns and Freedom” will gift each customer a bible, an American flag . . . and a 12-gauge shotgun. In a Facebook post, Chatom Ford heralds the promotion as an opportunity to “celebrate our independence”. From what? Sanity?

Great call, Ump- Last week I shared a story about what NOT to do when you’re a parent by chatting up those imbeciles who rumbled during a game being played by seven year old kids. The fight was precipitated by a call made by the umpire, who’s all of thirteen years old.

It’s a good thing we have peeps like Chris Guccione, who gets it. Guccione is a MLB umpire who read the story and then decided to reach out to the family of Josh Cordova- that thirteen year old umpire. Guccione invited them to be his guests at a game he will be calling in Colorado, between the Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“This is my state, this is where my heart is,” Guccione, a Colorado native, told The Denver Post on Thursday. “So when I saw the incident that happened, I was concerned. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is in my backyard.'”

Forget killing the ump, let’s kiss this one instead.