The Perils of Frequent Flying, a Horror Story

Readers, I was on United flight 1101 last night from Cleveland to Chicago, in seat 13D. Let me tell you, that's a prime route and a prime seat. Or so I thought.

The first thing I noticed was when the fingernails touched my shoulder, or more accurately wrapped around my shoulder, from behind me and to my right. From 14E. I could feel the fingernails touch my shoulder individually (touch-touch-touch-touch) even though she only lightly gripped my shoulder. Something was very wrong. "Are those seats taken?" queried the just-gravelly-enough-to-be-startling voice from 14E, as a couple of the nails left my shoulder to point to empty 13E and 13F next to me. "Not yet," I replied. She thanked me, and the nails left my shoulder. My seat bounced back and down as she grabbed the back of my seat to brace herself while she unwedged her enormous girth from her assigned seat. I got up and moved into the aisle to let her pass. She was splendidly large, so big you could lose her head in the folds of her sweater-suit as it struggled to cover her outsized torso. She raised the seat arm between 13E and 13F, and sat down in 13F and half of 13E. I sat, too. We took off, and I waited for the man to bring me my tomato juice and snuck glances at the nails that had disturbed my shoulder a few moments before. They were so long that they had developed a curvature of their own, far sharper than anything imposed on them by the living flesh of her fingers and hands. They were all themed a dark gray, and every second enormous fingernail was solidly painted. But oh, the ones in the middle. Some were marbled, painted with winding white veins on dark gray like some sort of finger-borne edifice. Some had texture -- clusters of silver and white and blue beads shining like treasures on the dark gray background. I was horrified, but I was transfixed. I followed them as they impaled the buttons on her miniature and grimy travel Yahtzee, as they cut into her hands as she gripped her 7-up. I watched as the reading light prismed through the 7-up bubbles and off the ice, and I recoiled as it danced off the baubles on her crookedly and artificially extended pinky finger. Turbulence, indeed.

About Blogging

Readers, a web research company says that we're not alone. In fact, there are 4,120,000 blogs set up on services like my cherished host, Blogger.com. The average blogger, it seems, is a twelve-year-old girl.

The site admits that there are some limitations with their methods; they've gathered most of their data from sites pre-teens are likely to use (they're free and easy and don't require you to run a webserver). Still, I'm happy to be part of the adolescent blogging revolution. No, I'm happy to be at its vanguard.

The Tigers are in the 2003 Playoffs

I hope I don't alienate my core audience of my girlfriend and my mom, but Readers, I'm a sports nut, even if I've seldom expounded on it here. The baseball playoffs that we're in the middle of right now are some of the most exciting sports I've seen in years. I'm still a Tigers fan, though, and the Tigers flirted with the worst record in the history of baseball this year, winning five out of their last six to cap off the season at a solid 43-119. Why think about the Tigers in the middle of all this excitement about real teams? Well, my Bengals have contributed more than their share of players to the eight playoff sides, even though they just finished their tenth consecutive losing season. I count 15, plus a manager, enough for a whole team if the starters can pitch deep into games. Of course, it's a really bad team, but here's how it would shape up:

C Paul Bako, Chicago. Bako came up through the Tigers' farm system and was the backup catcher in 1998. He's the Cubs backup now, and struck out a lot in important at bats at the end of Cubs games. He bats right-handed, which is good, because we need him to platoon with....
C John Flaherty, New York. Flaherty's a lefty. He's also terrible, and backs up Posada now. Well, he's not terrible. He used to get a lot of playing time for the D-Rays, and he kept Toby Hall in the minors for a couple of years.
1B Robert Fick, Atlanta. Fick can be our emergency third catcher, should something happens to the other two luminaries. He was a catcher in the Detroit farm system, and was a symbol of misplaced hope for a while after he hit a grand slam in the last game at Tiger Stadium, a mere few weeks after coming to the majors. We let him go this past off season, using the strategy that since we had too many first basemen and designated hitters we needed to let the best of them go. Fick had a nice season for the Bravos, platooning with 45-year old Julio Franco, and keeping his average above .300 all season. He made a move that will really catapult him in to stardom in this postseason: smacking Cubs 1B Eric Karros in the face while he was trying to beat out an infield single. The Braves benched him for that, and I wouldn't be shocked if he gets cut.
2B Damian Jackson, Boston. Jackson came to Detroit on as part of the Tigers-Padres horrible players exchange program, which has been sending players like Andujar Cedeno and this team's own Chris Gomez back and forth at a terrific rate since a father and son duo started GM'ing the two franchises in the early 1990s. Jackson was a Tigers second basemen in 2002, batting .270 and contributing some shaky defense, sloppy baserunning, and a bad attitude to the that year's aging and hopeless team. He's a star now, too. His forehead cracking Johnny Damon's face in the ALDS as they converged on a pop fly was played and replayed from enough angles that no one watching that game will ever forget it. The most tasteful part was when Jackson, still woozy, started jawing with A's fans while Damon was being carted off on a stretcher. (Johnny's fine, too).
SS Chris Gomez, Minnesota. I didn't know he played for Minnesota, either. I guess he backs up triple-machine Christian Guzman. He's a bad, bad player.
3B Juan Encarnacion, Florida. No, Juan doesn't play third. He's got a right-fielder's arm, though, and we need a third baseman on this squad, so he'll have to do. Encarnacion was the best Tigers prospect since the Travis Fryman-Milt Cuyler (lifetime .237/.305/.326) duo in 1990. He's a five-tool player. One awesome thing about him is that as a rookie he had to go on the disabled list because his teeth were so painful and decayed that he had to have multiple surgeries to correct or replace them. Not sure why we let him go; he should continue to have 20-20 seasons with a low batting average and no walks for a long, long time.
LF Billy McMillon, Oakland. McMillon bounced around the minors for a long time before he got his shot in the minors. He could always hit, and Philadelphia gave him his first chance in 1997. He hit a little with the Tigers in his brief time with them in 2000 and 2001, too. Now he's part of the A's OF rotation, outhitting the atrocious Terrence Long whenever they give him an opportunity.
CF Gabe Kapler, Boston. Kapler was another big prospect, one of three from the Tigers' farm system on this team. More of a right-fielder, though he can do center in a pinch, and did after Jackson took out Damon in the ALDS. That's loyalty! Good job, guys! He left Detroit in 1999 when we brought Proven Star and Malcontent Juan Gonzalez in for the first season in Comerica Park. We gave up two budding stars in that trade, Kapler and Justin Thompson, who never pitched again, and two unknowns who have been quite good, Frank Catalanotto and Francisco Cordero. We also got Old Expensive Sore Back Middle Reliever Danny Patterson in the trade. Juan, of course, stunk for a year, turned down $145 million, and left the team.
RF Karim Garcia, New York. Garcia was a failed Dodgers prospect long before he came to Detroit. Not sure why he's in the mix for the Yankees right-field job now. He's got a little bit of power and a talent for baiting Pedro Martinez and beating up Fenway groundskeepers.
DH Ruben Sierra, New York. Yes, Ruben Sierra played for Detroit. The same Ruben Sierra who was a sure-fire Hall-of-Famer for the Rangers in 1986; the same one who was traded for Jose Canseco in 1992. He played for the Tigers in '96 for a couple of months, acquired straight-up for Big Cecil Fielder in a deadline deal. He left as a free agent that year, disappeared for a while, and then had an out-of-nowhere fantastic season for Seattle in 2001. Never quite turned into Clemente, though.
SP David Wells, New York. The true star of this team. If we're going to contend, we may need him to pitch every third day. He's been an All-Star, thrown a perfect game, won 20 games, won a handful of World Serieses, been traded for Roger Clemens, and overcame obesity and gout. He's still going at 40-something. To think, I remember him as a goofy middle reliever for Toronto in 1988. We traded him away for CJ Nitkowski, who never was very good, but had a website.
SP Mark Redman, Florida. I always liked Redman. Tigers got him in 2001, when he was injured, a year after his breakout rookie season, for Todd Jones. I thought it was a great trade. For real. We traded him away this offseason for three minor leaguers, which might work out. This team is excited to have him as its number two. He did bat .016 this year, though, which will hurt us in those NL parks.
SP Jeff Weaver, New York. Ahh, Weaver. Too upset to talk about you. You should be great. We traded you away at 25, though we did get a lot for you. You should be winning 22 games per year for the Yanks now, but you have a 6.00 ERA and they can't trust you. You're flaky, too, you punk.
SP Steve Sparks, Oakland. The knuckleballer. We'll need him after Weaver gives up 7 in 3 innings. Tigers released him in the middle of this year, I think mostly for his sanity. He was a good innings eater for Milwaukee, Anaheim, and the Tigers. He's a postseason star now, too. He pitched in the ALDS game four against Boston when Tim Hudson had to leave in the second, and he didn't embarrass himself.
CL Todd Jones, Boston. Jones got traded for Redman, as mentioned above. He was third all-time on the Tigers' save list before that, and got himself a nice fat contract when we had hopes of being decent in 1999. We sold Jones high, and that was a rare victory. He's struggled since, but he won't have many leads to save here, so no worries.
Manager Felipe Alou, San Francisco. I have a feeling we're going to need Felipe's savvy in-game management skills in these playoffs. The bench coach to his third-step-grandcousin-in-law, former Tiger Manager Felipe Alou (I think they're related), he managed a lot of good players for Les Expos, and then after they got sold away, managed some teams cobbled together a lot like this one.

Under the Bleachers and Instant Replays

My friend Josh started a sports blog called Under the Bleachers. I think it'll be pretty cool. I'm going to post to it sometimes, too, since I have this fountaining well of creativity that simply cannot be stopped up or even temporarily restained.

While I'm plugging friend's sites, aspiring sports journalist and noted humorist Matt has a very cool sports writing site at Instant-Replays.com. To all those Readers out there who are sports publishing moguls, give this young man a job. For that matter, all those Readers out there who are rock publishing moguls, give me a job.

Much to my....

Readers, my hotel in Cleveland is on Chagrin Road. That does not bode well for this little business trip.

The man next to me on the plane worked for Paterno Wineries. The woman behind us sold Sour Patch Kids, presumably in bulk. Business traveler limbo on a little 40-seater from O'Hare to Cleveland. Eerie.

Axl

I saw Mike Gordon, the bass player for Phish, in concert fronting his own band on Friday night. I expected to post a review for this site about that show. It was decent -- it peaked with some country funk in the first few minutes before devolving into straight country and smooth jazz. There was a woman whose instrument was tap dance (mics in the floor beneath her feet). Another woman in the band, a flute player, seemed entirely mauve. No matter what color light she was in, her shiny skirt, her sweater, and her mass of thin braids always looked mauve. Even her face was mauve. I don't know how she did it. There was also some sweet tromboning and pedal steel playing. But at the show, I was thinking about how I didn't want to write about it. No, I wanted to write about Guns 'n' Roses' video for "Paradise City". There's a brief shot in that video, right at the beginning, in black and white. It's before the song really starts, still in the part where the bass drum and the high hat are alternating through the intro. There's a shot of Axl Rose, decked out in some sort of carabinieri hat, walking into a concert venue looking remarkably sober and clean. He's got a tag around his neck, and he holds it up to the camera so we can all read that he has "Access All Areas". Then he gives a yessir nod with a twinkle in his eye that speaks all you need to know about the areas he'll access before the night is over, and that's it. Yes, that's what I wanted to write about, the twinkle in his 1987 eye.

Sea Change

Readers, Sea Change by Beck sure is an amazing album. It used to depress me, but I now I just think it's beautiful.

46th Place

Readers, the results are in from our California brethren, and Mark Valdez is perplexed about the lack of the community musical theater response in the Davis area:

"With 100% of the precincts now reporting, it now appears I got 1499 votes! 46th place in a field of 135: about 1/3 from the top. Ballot placement helped - I was third on the ballot list in LA County, and I got about 500 votes there. The Hispanic name no doubt helped. Plus maybe a video that played on cable access channels in the LA area. Yolo County, where I do musical theater, was not as productive as I had hoped: 16 votes, if I'm not mistaken. I need to look into the matter more deeply and see what happened."

Books

Readers, on the left side of this page, there's a little panel that shows the books I'm reading. I feel like I need to justify the fact that I'm reading a book called "Ship of Magic". But no. You'll get no such satisfaction from me. I'm clearly too secure for that. It's laudable that I don't just put books I think I should be reading up there, isn't it? So what if it looks like a romance novel and is something I would have ripped through when I was nine years old. I'm still an intellectual, right?

I'd love to find a similar blog plugin that would let me show current albums. I could maybe write one, but my JavaScript isn't so hot.

Ten Years Gone

Dan Bern, Martyrs', Chicago, 10/3/2003

Last night, I realized that time passes, even for quirky young folk singers. They get bored with their old stuff, they change their tone, they get older, they move on. Dan Bern's great masterpiece, the self-titled album that will never not be a staple of my listening rotation, was released ten years ago. I've seen Dan a half dozen times in that span, and sadly the first couple shows were the best; acoustic, solo, irreverent, hilarious, and based on outrageously good material. A couple shows where he seemed stoned and lost followed, but I kept showing up every time he came through town. That loyalty was rewarded last year, when Dan strolled into Chicago with a backing band, The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy (cool name), and rocked up both his old standbys and some energetic new songs.

This time around, there was no band and there were no old standbys. Dan's been, he says, hanging out in a warehouse in New Mexico for six months, writing soft folk songs on a teardrop-shaped electric guitar. Those songs were the focal point of the show. Martyrs' was subdued and quiet, as if the crowd knew what to expect, or at least knew not to expect a greatest hits set. We stood respectfully and listened. I think some of the new songs were pretty decent, but they all shared the same subdued tone and only twelve hours later are blending together in my head. One had a neat minor chord progression that reminded me of a modern Chili Peppers' radio hit. Another one that got a big laugh referred to "Jerusalem" from his first album, the part where he sings about his love for olives. It went something like this, though I've definitely messed up the meter and even the rhyming:

"I used to sing about olives/People would bring me lots
Then I started to sing about weed/The green stuff magically appeared
Now I'm singing about pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy."

He also sang to us about how he was through with love and about how his first ten days in office went when he was elected president. It was a scattered effort, but oh-so-earnest, punctuated by heartfelt thanks to the audience for sticking with him as he tried out his new stuff ("I know this isn't exactly 'Marilyn Monroe'"). His entreaties were completely successful -- there weren't many first-timers there and we were all happy to be asked to give him a break.

The best part of the night came when Dan introduced a "hymn" and said he hoped we'd all share the gospel on the subway and on our voicemail messages. It went "Bush must be defeated" over and over and over, and rhymed that with "his supporters unseated," "the Rose Garden weeded," "his evil depleted," etc etc etc. It was energetic and hilarious and fantastic, exactly what we'd all come there to see, and I was warmed by seeing Dan stand up and belt something out with his eyes sparkling.

The last song of the night was called "Sammy's Bat", about religion and sacred cows more than it was about baseball. I'll close this post with the words that Dan closed that song and the show. In typical Dan rambling fashion, it was the only reference to Mr. Sosa in the song:

"Sometimes you play by the rules/
And sometimes you gotta cork your bat."

Stage Fright

I understand that there are a few more Readers these days. I'm mildly ecstatic that my adventures in India were enjoyable to my friends and family, and maybe even to a stranger or two. Could be the start of my publishing empire. Of course, now that I've gotten some nice feedback, I stopped writing. Hopefully it's not because of the feedback. I'll assume it's because trips to Minnesota don't have the same inspirational value as trips to Bangalore. Hopefully this weekend's rock shows loosen me up, so to speak.