Oh, Christmas.
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember stuff very well. Except for regrets. I’ve got a photographic memory for regrets, which it turns out is unnecessary and burdensome. Still, for your amusement, I will keep digging…
The sounds of Christmas! Such sounds!
A cacophony of voices! Seven children jostling and fumbling through a mound of winter clothes, shouting plans for a busy snow day. “That’s my glove!” “That’s my boot!” “Give me some room, I’m try’n to get dressed here!” “Somebody just kicked me in the teeth!” A police siren, somewhere in the distance. Or possibly in the driveway — my godfather was a cop who liked to drink and “play” his siren.
But oh, it was cold out! Bitter! Or maybe not so bad. It might have been warm. Let’s go with “lukewarm.” It was a fine, Christmastime lukewarm outside, so us kids didn’t spend too much time getting dressed, and there wasn’t any snow. I know for a fact that we did fight a lot. Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe we weren’t fighting at all — maybe we were caroling. Yes, that’s what it was, the sounds of children caroling. Sounded like a bag of cats.
The family, always the family, at Christmas!
Each of us took on a special task. I was assigned to spend the day with my aunt Frank on a search for a Christmas staple — mint chocolate candies to be frozen to a cold crisp.
My aunt Frank, who smelled of tea and cement, wore saggy jeans and a tattered Chicago Bears knit cap with the logo half-fallen off. She was either a man or a lady of such wizened age that one didn’t publicly comment on her sex. She lived alone, or with another old man-woman, downtown, in a neighborhood that had once been ethnic but was slowly becoming…less ethnic.
finders, beepers!
As Aunt Frank and I traversed the town we would munch on warm egg-salad sandwiches. She would chew and chew and describe her latest visit to the doctor and I would watch her jaws roil, frothing with bits of white and yellow and pickle. Damn you for making me remember this! Anyway, I think she was a man in the end.
Off we would go on our appointed rounds. We would drive around town in circles, searching for these waxy chocolates that had somehow, by accident perhaps, become a custom in our house (along with the beer-drinking I mentioned). Eventually we would find the damn things and bring them home to a gentle chorus of baffled burps.
Holy Christmas!
And if I’m not mistaken, there was a story told each year, a fairy tale about someone named “Jeebus.” I’m getting his name wrong, I’m sure. Josey. Jesus. Jesus H. Chriminy! That’s it. What a strange name. He lived long ago, and he spent his life trying to find the brightest star in the sky. He made the first zombie! And though he was a man full of joy and love, at the same time, this man — whom I never met — was deeply disappointed in me on a very personal level. Yes, this Jesau fella had something against me. Which makes no sense, I know, so I can’t be remembering it right.
Anyway, Christmas…was that really what we called it? Bottom line: there was a lot of disco music, a tree got knocked over, and there was a naked man dancing barefoot in the snow. That’s all I’m sure of right now.
~ ~ ~
Famous Quotations — Unabridged
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. You won the frickin’ lottery, man. You’re rich! It wasn’t even that fun to ‘play’—all you did was buy a stupid ticket!”
— Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
BASEBALL PLAYERS’ POEMS ABOUT SPORTSWRITERS AND SPORTSWRITING
“ELEGIAC”
What does the word
“elegiac” mean?
What about “pastoral”?
And “contemplative”?
Why do you
Keep calling
Baseball all these weird French names?
Stop it.
Douchebag.
THE BLANK PAGE
Fat fingers dance across
the clattering keyboard
Grinding out meaning
Ennobling the actions
Of real men doing something tangible
for a living
And not sitting on their asses
“analyzing” shit.
Pathetic.
SPRING TRAINING
A gin and tonic for breakfast,
plenty of sunscreen,
a note pad.
A hot dog.
Fat ass
Planted in the stands.
Taking it all in,
gorging yourself.
SPRING TRAINING pt. II
Later, alone
in a motel room,
farting.
INSTANT ANALYSIS
We played hard
We lost
End of story.
You, however,
are the real loser.
Famous Quotations — Unabridged
“The Buck stops here. Seriously, I will not give you even one buck, this one stays right here, in my hand. I don’t care if you’re a girl scout and I already ate half the cookies, I’m the president, I can eat any cookies I want and I DO NOT PAY.” —Harry S. Truman
THE ORIGIN OF “BLACKBIRD”
Paul McCartney was generally seen as the generous, “upbeat” Beatle. However, some claim he had a well-hidden dark side: envious, resentful, belittling. If that’s true, it rarely showed. Evidence of this tendency in McCartney can be found in abundance on the day he premiered the song “Blackbird” to the other three Beatles. Unarguably a masterpiece, it was also written and arranged by McCartney alone. Legend has it that “Blackbird” came to “Macca” fairly easily and completely, with almost no conscious effort on his part. Despite being a solo creation, “Blackbird,” like all Beatles songs, is attributed to “Lennon/McCartney.” This shared-credit situation has been known to irk McCartney, and yet even that tension doesn’t explain the unbridled assault of sarcasm and peeve that issued from “the cute Beatle” on this singular occasion.
August 18, 1968, Abbey Road Studios, Studio 4, 11:15 a.m. Engineer’s notes:
Band members came in fairly early (and fairly shagged-out) from another night of “creams and ales and whatnot.” Mini jam session. Lennon kept asking Starkey to “play quieter” and finally to “Stop! The drums in me head are all I need.” After a tea-and-jam-butties break, McCartley [sic] grabbed an acoustic and said, “Here’s something, see what you think,” then played a song called “Blackbird” in its entirety. Excellent song. Excellent, excellent song. Unbelievable song. Like God humming. When he finished, he suddenly became vituperative…
Transcript from the audio tape:
McCARTNEY [As the final notes of “Blackbird” ring out]: Well? What do you think? Anything to it? “Ugh,” right? Don’t say anything! I know. I’m sorry. Get the trash bin out! I’ll reimburse for the studio time. Please forgive me…