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,
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