Still not a fan

LeBron James and the Miami Heat won an NBA title last night, and since then, all forms of media have turned into a sermon on how fans are no longer allowed to dislike them.

We’re being lectured on how other athletes have done infinitely worse things, how he was never given the proper help in Cleveland, and how he’s gotten the point about past mistakes. The general themes have been “get over it” and “give credit where credit is due”, with prominent use of the word “hate” to describe the feelings of anyone who didn’t want to see that team win a title.

I count myself among those people, as do many other fans I know. Does this mean we’re misguided and irrational? Perhaps. But we’re fans, misguided and irrational is what we do. Frankly it’s kind of what makes sports fun in the first place, hyperbole and bombast removed from the calculating nature required in most of life. It’s tiresome to continuously be told by media types how we need to view players, teams, etc. You can present all the sound logic in the world, but if you want to take that logic a step further, then what are we all doing wasting our time watching a bunch of grown men playing children’s games in the first place? Professional sports is an irrational activity by its nature, a bizzaro world in which very few rules of everyday life apply…and thank God for that.

Many people who cover sports for a living that like to lecture the most always fall all over themselves trying to prove how far above the fray they are. “Fan” is a four-letter word, a bunch of rubes who go whichever way the wind blows and need to be reprimanded when they don’t hold the proper opinion. But it’s that very reactionary nature, the peaks and valleys, that fills talk radio hours and column inches. I understand it can make the group of us look as a whole (some of the Twitter reactions to the Percy Harvin situation made me embarrassed to count myself a Vikings fan) but for chrissakes Dad, lighten up with the finger-waving and let me have some fun.

Even those who didn’t want him to win can appreciate what LeBron James does on a basketball court. He’s an unbelievable player who will go down as one of the greats in history, no one is delusional enough to disagree with his talent. Does that mean I’m obligated to be happy about him winning? Not a chance. You can tell me to get over “The Decision” as much as you want, but the reality is that was the sh*ttiest thing I’ve ever seen done to a group of fans by a player. It wasn’t just an ‘Eff you’ to a single fanbase, but to everyone who ever invested themselves into a sports team. Like a team leaving town, it made it clear once again how little our allegiances mean in the scheme of things. A fans, we hate those moments, because it points out what fools we are for caring. Every time I’m close to getting over it, I put my shoes in the fan of some Cavs diehard who went through it, and have to wonder how I’d feel in their place.

Once again, the punditry is confusing “sports hate” with really hate, when the former is about a 1% dilution of the latter. Nobody thinks LBJ is a truly terrible person, or nobody wishes suffering upon him. (Well, at least nobody outside of Cleveland) Just about all of us are aware enough to see the bigger picture and realize that this is small potatoes in the scheme of things. If you put a real-world litmus test to it, like people you’d want living next door, then he’s probably way up the list in terms of the general population, not just pro athletes.

Did that stop me from hoping the Heat never win a title? Absolutely not, because on the other side of the equation will always be an opponent, who’s worked just as hard to get to that point and doesn’t have the baggage that Miami brings. The history here is just a deciding factor, a tipping point, that’s all. In a series between two teams with no rooting interest, the little things sway you. When you have the team built through the draft on one side and the collection of stars united through free agency on the other, I will always opt for the former. If it had been the Celtics representing the East, I would’ve probably rooted for them, due to the whole “Stolen Sonics” vibe, you never know how things will shake out until you’re there.

But as far as the “you’re an idiot if you still dislike LeBron James” lectures go, just stop. All the pundits out there go out of their way to tell us they aren’t fans all the time, and that we just don’t get it. In this case, they’re the ones who don’t get it. You can present your case, and it may be a sound one, but as fans, we reserve the right to collectively tell you to get bent.

Mock us for holding a grudge, but realize that what you’re truly mocking is caring deeply about sports in the first place, and without that, what are we doing here in the first place? If we’re guilty about something, it’s being delusional about the big picture of a fan’s role in sports, not our opinions on a single player. Accepting the underlying premise, while challenging the particulars of its execution is harping on the splinter in the finger, while ignoring the spear through the chest.

WTF was that all about?

Loserville USA, where just because a team isn’t playing, doesn’t mean they can’t be supplying bad news.

A part of me wants to thank Percy Harvin for the last 48 hours. It’s as if he knew that talk radio and Twitter were slowing down a bit with the lull in the sports calendar, and he wanted to fire things up a bit.

And boy, did he ever.

The good ‘ol arc of the malcontented pro athlete is usually predictable. Guy says there are some things he isn’t happy with, guy insinuates he may rather be elsewhere, guy makes public display of not being seen. In 2012, we can add the always enjoyable “guy defends position and/or fuels fire on Twitter” to the mix. This is usually followed by either a holdout, or speculation about the possibility of a holdout, ending when one side decides to cave.

(As a sidebar, I love Twitter. It’s humanity unfiltered, simultaneously bringing the most insightful and astoundingly ignorant opinions to you instantly. Sure, it adds to the “microwave dinner over home cooking” feel that’s all over the place these days, but that genie came out of the bottle with the Internet years ago, I say we press on and see where this ship beaches.)

I’m not sure if I can recall a time in which the cycle played out more quickly than this one, a timeline (with fan reaction):

Tuesday afternoon – Percy Harvin cryptically talks about being unhappy with several issues (“Well this can’t be good, he must want more money.”)

Wednesday morning – It’s reported that Harvin has requested a trade (“Aw crap, somebody pay this guy more money before things get really ugly.”)

Wednesday afternoon – Vikings GM says they’re not trading Percy Harvin (“If Randy Moss can get traded, anybody can. Give him more money.”)

Wednesday afternoon – Percy Harvin skips mandatory practice (“Geez, he’s really playing hardball on this money thing.”)

Wednesday evening – Bernard Berrian tweets that he’s not surprised Harvin is upset with the Vikings (“I can only assume that if he’s using a phone to do this, it was not thrown to him.”)

Wednesday night – Harvin takes to Twitter to say this whole thing is not about money (“Riiiiiiiiight.”)

Thursday morning – Harvin is back at practice (“Sweet, they must’ve reassured him they’d take care of the money.”)

Thursday afternoon – Harvin tweets once again about having a great practice and that he will see Vikings fans at training camp (“Must’ve been a sizeable amount of money.”)

I could be wrong in my assumption that this whole thing was about cash. It would be nice to think that some player was kicking up this kind of fuss because of genuine concern about the best way for the team to win, but I’ve been jaded far past that point. Every time some pro says “it’s not about the money”, it usually takes them mere moments to demonstrate that it is in fact, about the money.

Not that there’d be anything wrong with that being the motivation in this case. Percy Harvin is a highly skilled player on a bad team, playing a brutally violent game with short windows of opportunity. Not to mention by far the best receiver on a roster where he’s the third-highest paid. Not to mention, you could argue that Harvin is better than a few high-profile receivers that got healthy contracts this offseason. Add all this stuff up, and I’d argue it’d be a surprise if he didn’t demand more money coming into this year.

I’m all for respecting contracts when it comes to real life, in fact the world couldn’t function without them. But in the goofy land of the NFL, where every blockbuster deal comes with two sets of numbers, the actual pay and the fantasy millions that’ll never be earned, a contract doesn’t mean much. Are there limits? Of course. A player making these kind of disputes an annual occurrence is quickly going to become more trouble than he’s worth. But for a guy who’s obviously underpaid, crucially needed by his team, and playing a sport where he’s one big hit from an uncertain future? Who are we to say he’s wrong to want added security?

Bargaining power makes the NFL go round, the same forces that got the Vikings their stadium a few weeks ago should ultimately drive the team to (within reason) fulfill Percy Harvin’s monetary demands. This isn’t to say they should pay him like a #1 receiver, or even like the true open-market free agent he’ll be in a couple of years. But Steve Johnson will make $7 million this season, and Harvin less than $1 million. You could have a healthy debate over which player you’d rather have, so what does that tell you? And yes, I know Johnson was a free agent, the point is that the disparity shouldn’t be that large.

The last lame argument a few peoples have thrown out is that Harvin did this to himself, with knucklehead actions that caused him to fall in the draft, limiting his rookie contract. That may be true, but when you give Jerome Simpson $2 million dollars for 13 games, fresh off getting busted with a dumpster full of pot, your organization has effectively lost the high ground on that conversation. I’m no Percy apologist either, thought he’d be too small to take the punishment and wanted the Vikings to draft Michael Oher. Willing to say I was wrong on that, not quite to dead wrong, but may be there before both careers are done.

The scary part of all this for Vikings fans? What if Harvin is being honest when he says it’s not about money? What if a highly skilled football player who’s played on championship teams likes so little of what he sees from this team at the moment that he wants out? Having dealt with years of the Wolves, Wild and Twins being unable to attract or retain star players, it’s almost too much to fathom the Vikings being thrown into the same limbo. This is the one team, and the one league, where things operate on a truly even playing field. Now if some factor is at play that will make Minnesota the pariah of the NFL amongst current players and potential free agents?

Well the thought of a guy holding out for more cash is comparably a dream scenario.

This really has nothing to do with anything

Everything in life is more interesting when cast in a hero/villain context. Sometimes when stuck in traffic, I’ll pick out two cars near me, dubbing one as hero, the other enemy. It gives me great satisfaction when HeroCar vanquishes VillainMobile, particularly if VillainMobile was trying to game the system but weaving in and out of rush hour traffic. Incidentally, there’s no way to get branded in that role more quickly, it’s a pretentious act that indicates you feel your time is more important than the rest of us. “Traffic? Unacceptable! I’ve got 4 episodes of Mad Men on DVR that I need to get home and watch!”

I bring this up because I can’t decide who is the villain in the NBA Finals. The easy answer is the Heat, given that they employ the guy who gave a double-middle-finger salute to an entire city of adoring fans a couple years ago. But when you think about it, how is that better than an entire franchise giving that same gesture to an entire city? Perhaps it’s just the jilted North Stars fan in me remembering the North Stars leaving town with a talent, young nucleus and going on to win the Stanley Cup in short order, but I’m having trouble throwing my weight behind Oklahoma City.

Getting to watch Kevin Durant for one year was the cruelest thing that could’ve happened to the people of Seattle. If he’d shown up the first season after the move, it would’ve just been like hearing about some unworthy douchebag from high school who won the lottery and married a knockout. Instead it’s like your girlfriend dumped you, moved in with the guy next door, and they leave the curtains open when they have sex. At some point I’ll get over this, but it’s too soon, my 12-year old self is insisting I stand in solidarity with my fellow orphaned fans.

On a completely unrelated (and decidedly more personal) note, I inadvertently spit on someone the other day.

Fortunately it wasn’t a stranger, just a friend who happened to say something funny right after I took a sip of beer. Accidentally spitting while talking (spalking) is just one of those things that happens once in awhile when you’re brain can’t process the three commands of drink/laugh/talk as discrete events. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of ways that can go down, a whole spitting-while-drinking continuum, or Spit-In-Uum, if you will. It goes from a single tiny droplet of spittle, small enough as to only be visible when passing through a ray of sunshine, to a full on carwash-with-the-windows-open sort of effect. This was closer to the latter. Not the worst I’ve ever done, but definitely not something that went unnoticed.

The odd thing about the Spit-In-Uum is, the more egregious the incident, the less likely you are to bring it up. Watching a microscopic fleck exit my mouth in the general direction of someone a half-acre away immediately sends me into a profuse “Oh, I’m sorry, did I just spit on you? Heavens to Betsy” sort of apology, even though 9 times out of 10 the at-risk party has no idea how close they came to being violated by a micro-loogie. On the other hand, foaming at them like a geyser-meets-Ocean Spray commercial inspires an “Oh geez! Maybe they didn’t notice?!?!” silence that’s more awkward than the first time your junior high football coach told you to “Get in there and give Jimmy a blow”. Needless to say, he was not speaking literally…resisting the urge to make a Jerry Sandusky joke.

Before I go any further with this line of thinking, I want to disabuse you of any notions along the lines of “starting to get some insight into this fellow’s lack of success on the dating scene”. I’m not walking around spraying reams of saliva in every direction, not channeling Daffy Duck or anything over here. (There is a nasty allegation of a drooling incident a few years back, which I flatly deny) It simply happens that through years of accumulated conversation and drinking, you’re going to have a few of these incidents. You may not have had enough to require pondering the subject on these levels, but I like to talk a lot, and it’s usually while drinking, spit happens, get over it.

To go A-to-B-to-C on this conversation, the direct correlation between cubic centimeters of spittle loosed and reluctance to call attention to it made me consider how this played out on other bodily mishaps. When a small French horn fart is loosed in mixed company, it can be laughed at and played off; it’s more tuba-like cousin however cannot. Some things are an exception, like bleeding on stuff. The more blood you lose, the more you want to call attention to it. Unless of course you were doing something stupid that you were warned against. In that case you’d want to patch it up, get to the hospital and try to blame any collateral damage on “the dog getting into something”. Particularly if you’ve bled on something important. Tis always better to risk life and limb than handing someone an “I-told-you-so” moment they can lord over you.

Shots to the nuts fall right in line with the general rule, you really would rather not have them brought up. Again, particularly if you were doing something highly questionable immediately prior. The rarer cousin of the spit problem, is the inadvertent nasal projectile, of which there are two classes: Bat-In-Cave and Snot Rocket. In the most egregious Bat-In-Cave scenario, etiquette requires a subtle pointing out of the problem, likely featuring the words “you’ve got a little something”, similar to when someone has lettuce in their teeth. The Snot Rocket is just one that should never be acknowledged, period. If you’re ever witness to one of these sad occurrences, have the human empathy to act as if you didn’t see it. Give the person a chance to salvage some of their dignity, lest they be scarred for life. They’re perfectly aware they just blew a snot on their shirt, and are just feverishly hoping you didn’t, even though it’s tough to miss.

So, if I had to rank these types of items, based on level of embarrassment, I’d do so as follows:

(All are assumed to have occurred under the worst case scenario, e.g. first date or job interview. If you’re hanging out with your friends, or spouse, all bets are off.)

1. Urinating anywhere other than outdoors or in the intended receptacle – Ahhh, college.

2. The Snot Rocket – Extremely rare, just as deadly, an argument for not cropping nose hairs too closely.

3. High level spalk – If occurring outdoors, attempt to play off on passing shower. If occurring indoors, ignore and fake slight cough, as if something’s caught in your throat, tough to blame a choking victim.

4. Any injury involving burns, breaks or bleeding (non-life threatening of course) that occurs through a voluntary activity with no real point – Usually preceeded by the phrase “Hey, check this out!”

5. A shot to the nuts under the conditions listed above – Who knew that testing out the 20 year old pogo stick you dug out of the garage could have negative consequences?

6. Bat-In-Cave - Happens to the best of us.

7. Low level spalk – Can actually be turned into a positive by making a self-deprecating joke. Look how confident and self-aware you are, you sly devil.

Yup, this is the kind of stuff I end up pondering when I spend a week trying to stay out of bars.

Happy Friday.

The Lull

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, what started out as a simple funk became a full on lull there, which I never meant to happen. 

The progression of places to be stuck goes: Funk, Lull, Rut, Black Hole. Things haven’t quite reached Rut status, but there is a severe lack of things to get fired up about.

Unlike most people (especially those in cold-weather climes) I don’t place great value on the summer months. With the playoffs winding down, I’m as antsy as a heroin addict . Hockey and basketball kept the fix alive for a moment but it's all about to go cold turkey? The Kings held the Cup aloft last night, soon another team will be doing the same with whatever that NBA trophy is called, then nothing left to look forward to but a lot of July evenings.
Okay, it's not quite that stark, but you get my drift.  Baseball is fine, but with the Twins eliciting phrases like “lost season” and “see what the young guns can do”, there's not much hope anything compelling in that department.  It’s only mid-June, but spending the better part of two months staggering around like a bunch of drunken hobos has dug a hole that’s far too deep to crawl out of. Baseball just isn’t the same when you’re team is two bus rides and a short flight from contention. The bio-rhythmic relationship developed following a relevant ballclub day-to-day is enough to make things interesting. I can’t say the same about catching the Royals and Tigers facing off in game #84 of 162.

Not to mention, May 31st marked our 600th day without a playoff game here in Loserville. I don’t know what’s more depressing, that streak, the fact that we’re an absolute lock to reach 2 years given the recent state of the Twins, or the fact that, barring an unexpected push by the Wild or Wolves, 1,000 days is easily attainable. (In case you were wondering, Day 999 would be July 4th, 2013, festive, eh?) Although there is a bit of comedy to be found in the headline of this story. Dark comedy perhaps, but still.

For all those reasons, it's time to find alternatives to thinking/talking/writing about sports. Now before you start in with the snarky get-a-life cleverness, I do am aware of the upside summer brings. Golf, boating, fishing, patios, barbecuing, riding a tandem bike around a lake while singing the theme song to Luverne and Shirley, there a plenty of quality things to do when it’s warm. Problem is, it's weekend stuff, it takes time and planning, and is difficult to fit into the couple hours available each evening after the day winds down.

Work is the main problem in the pursuit of summer fun, what with their outrageous demand that we show up for 8 hours a day, every single weekday. Tack on the morning commute, some kind of physical activity to ward off a future as a 300-pound diabetic, and there's not much of the day left for anything time consuming.  I’d love to boat more, but my thyroid had other plans.

So, you get home at night, after all that nonsense, have a little bite to eat, maybe set some things up for tomorrow, and have a couple hours to kill. What do you do to unwind?

Let’s consider some options:

Watch network TV
A couple whacks in the face with the sharp end of a claw hammer sounds preferable.

Most network television is like having the back of your chair kicked on an airplane. You can put up with a few minutes, but after that, bad things are going to happen if it doesn’t stop. I’ve never physically harmed a child, and don’t think myself capable, but the times I’ve come the closest all this particular annoyance and some smug little sh*t who knows exactly what he’s doing, yet chooses to persist.

For anyone who’s ever shaken their head at someone taking a bunch of guys tossing a ball around way too seriously, let me just say that the feeling is mutual whenever we try to contemplate the crap you watch. Doesn’t matter if it’s American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, any show involving the word “Housewives”, or any of the dozen detective shows involving an acronym, the entertainment value is totally lost on me.  I’m a Law and Order guy from way back, but in those days they kept the soap opera plots confined to afternoons.  Now everything is “long-lost daughter” this and “running an online escort service out of a dorm room” that.  How lowbrow, Lenny Briscoe is rolling over in his grave.

Also, I’m probably about a decade late to the party on this one, but I just can't get past Ice-T, the guy who performed the song “Cop Killer”, making his living playing a cop on TV? Excuse me, but the irony police would like some answers here.  Life is too bizarre to count anything out these days, five years from now we’re headed for The Rock and P!nk teaming up as former X-Games competitors turned cops in Law & Order: EXTREME! 

And when one of them slaps the hancuffs on a bad guy after while hurtling towards Earth after skidiving out of a plane, people will love it, just watch it happen.
(Incidentally, the only network television show that I watch regularly these days is "How I Met Your Mother", and frankly I'm not sure that's going to continue when it cranks up again next fall.  At this point, I'm watching more out of obligation than anything, having invested too many years following it to turn back now.  But with each passing week, it feels more like throwing good money after bad.  The brilliant writing witnessed in running gags like Slap Bet has been increasingly replaced by the kind of mundane season-fillers that marred "Friends" after they neutered the only funny character on the show (Chandler) and turned it into something only women would watch.

I'm also getting sick and tired of the never ending run of false starts surrounding things that may or may not happen in the future.  Seriously, this damn show has more parallel threads than "Inception", and even less motivation to move any of them toward resolution.  At this point I'm trying to back into how old Future Ted's kids are, so I can add 9 months and arrive at a minimum timeframe for him to finally meet their damn mother.  One of the episodes showed him holding a baby in what was supposed to be 2015, but that certainly won't stop them from twisting that into some kind of "baby left on the doorstep" plotline if the checks are still cashing.

Yet I can't turn it off, we've come too far.  The whole thing has an ugly Soprano-esque feel to it, where the ultimate ending will be crushed under the weight of the buildup and leave people walking away feeling bitter about something that they once loved.

End rant, needed to get that off my chest, I feel like a prisoner on my own couch.)

And yes, I’m painfully aware that no one else cares about the things I enjoy either (NOBODY!), as this article makes abundantly clear. If you’re a hockey fan still holding out hope of the game gaining popularity in America, you probably don’t want to click that link.

Follow the news/politics
Not a typical thought of as a “leisure” activity, I know, but kicking back with a bit of serious reading material for some news and opinion is still a staple of many an evening. Attempting to stay informed is sort of our duty as Americans, but lately it’s been difficult. Most days a kick in the nuts is preferable to a dose of economic news, the pain passes more quickly.

Not to mention, the term "informed" has become kind of meaningless, because anyone can find some outlet that will support whatever harebrained position they've come up with. While it's nice to not have to concern yourself with facts (which as Homer Simpson reminds us are meaningless), the downside is that it makes it damned hard to reach agreement on anything, and the incessant arguing gets tiresome.

The current political climate in America as like two people looking at a picture of a duckbill platypus:

A: “This is clearly a picture of a rabbit”
B: “I can see how someone with your lack of perspective might assume that, but obviously it’s a duck”
A: “Your problem is that everything looks like a duck to you, every situation it’s ‘duck this’ and ‘duck that’; perceiving a rabbit as a duck is exactly why your policies don’t work”
B: “Oh really? Well your problem is that you feel so threatened by the very existence of ducks, so much so that you need to delude yourself into thinking the world contains only rabbits”
A: “And all you care about is forcing your duck-based agenda on everyone, regardless of the consequences”
B: “What can I say, learned from the best, that’s the one and only play in your book”
A: “YOUR INABILITY TO RECOGNIZE THAT THIS IS A RABBIT IS WHAT’S RUINING AMERICA!”
B: “WHO’S AMERICA? YOURS? THE AMERICA THAT I GREW UP LEARNING ABOUT IN SCHOOL WOULD ACCORD DUCKS THE PROPER RESPECT!”

Meanwhile, the sane among us stand off to the side and think “For f*cks sake, it’s a platypus.”

The only amusing moments come from laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.  Case in point, what happened last week in Wisconsin.

I get that their governor broke Jesse Ventura’s record for most people pissed off during the first few months of an administration, but requiring the guy to get re-elected to the job he’d just won?  Well that just seems like being a sore loser.  But he did, which is great. Notbecause of his policies, or character, or any of that nonsense, just because it lessense the chances of more elections.  When a guy gets elected, nothing short of felony charges should be cause for putting us all through another election before his term has run it's course.

Otherwise, the whole thing was a superb idea, when you can get the exact same result out of a second divisive political election for the bargain price of $60 million and a ton of wasted time…well you’ve gotta do it!

The good people of Wisconsin saw where all this was going an made a preemptive strike against the horror of more elections. The last thing we need is political battles adopting a UFC-type schedule here. Imagine never having a week pass without being asked to sign some ouster petition in the entry way of the supermarket. You're just minding your own business, making a quick stop for some chocolate milk and a box of Steak-Ums, and a representative government debate breaks out in the frozen foods section. The commercials, the rallies, debates preempting stuff you wanted to watch, the horror of it all is unfathomable.

So that’s why I say thank you Wisconsin, even if you didn’t agree with what was going on, you did the right thing. Elections are like the Summer Olympics, barely tolerable every 4 years, likely to incite homicidal violence if held more often. Way to make the next batch of busybodies think twice before they start flitting about with their clipboards.

Woodworking/Gardening/Cooking
Much like how certain things can’t be sports, these can’t be hobbies. Woodworking is a way to make places to sit and places to put stuff. Gardening and cooking are methods of feeding yourself, and I’ve already mastered that art, as anyone who’s seen me eat can attest. Plus this all sounds too much like work, woodworking even has work in the name. Not to mention that it’s a good way to lose part of your anatomy, people who don’t handle sharp objects on a regular basis are rarely lacking any of their digits.

Catch up on summer reading
This one actually has some potential, because I legitimately enjoy reading. Not only are the narratives far superior to anything in film or television, it allows me to use to utilize the sneakily condescending “No, I didn’t see that, but I read the book”, in response to many questions. The subtle air of intellectual superiority, framed in a passive-aggressive enough context to avoid being taken as an overt putdown, it's wonderful. Because they know, and you know that they know, but what can they do? After all you’re a reader, protest too much and you might melt them with your mind ray.

The problem I have is the guilt of not reading weighty enough subjects. Not talking about textbooks, because I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime. I’d rather string barbed wire from said scholarly tome to my genitals and throw it off the roof of a building than read another word of it. But there are all those other books out there, they populate the non-fiction section under an “entertaining, yet thought-provoking” guise. Unfortunately, they’re about as interesting and easy to follow as Facebook posts written in Farsi. Usually the trap is laid by someone above you on the reading continuum, who happens to drop a recommendation in passing about the “fascinating” book they just read on Eurasian hegemony in the Bronze Age.

Normally, my bullsh*t detector picks up on this stuff pretty quick, and you dismiss that person as a self-aggrandizing a-hole. I mean who really cares about Eurasia, hegemony or the Bronze Age? Never mind all three at once. But every so often, the insecurity kicks in, and my brain suddenly screams “OH MY GOD, YOU’RE NOT WORLDLY ENOUGH! QUICK, READ SOMETHING SMART-SOUNDING!” So I do, and occasionally it’s very good, and not a slog to get through. But most times it ends up making me wonder why I feel into the trap again.  While gamely plowing through the remainder, of course, just to prove I can, but resenting the experience.

There’s potential here, but it need to be handled with great care, if only I had the money to screen and hire a personal reader with identical tastes to weed out the stuff I won’t like. Perhaps next quarter.

Anyway, the search for an acceptable time killer continues, at least I will have more time available for blogging.

(I know, oh boy!)