Northbound

I don’t even want to talk about last month.  It happened.  Let’s move on.

• I want to break the evil bookcase down into subparts:
  • I have to get the two things that are still on the bookcase (some fall holiday decorations, which go in the basement, and a big huge heavy sack of lawn fertilizer) off the bookcase (accomplished).
  • I have to clean all the crud off it (got some Pledge wipes to do just that) (accomplished).
  • I have to stain it (accomplished).
  • I have to schlep it upstairs (finally accomplished at long last).
• Glue the last pieces of tile to the mosaic dealie (accomplished), clean all the grout and crud off of it (in progress), attach the wire to the back and hang it up and then put in the brackets (one thing at a time).
• Hang the two pictures upstairs that have been sitting around for months (accomplished).
• Get pictures together for new baby video.
• Get high chairs put together (I probably have yet another month to do this).
• Choose funds and open account for 529 plan (accomplished).
• Make edits to novel as suggested by freelance editor (accomplished).

New this month:

• Query letters, I guess.  God, but I hate query letters.  This is the last round, though, if this doesn’t work, then it’s off to the merry world of publishing-on-demand and begging nice people like you to buy a copy.  (Do not say I did not warn you.)  (deferred)
• Installing hooks in garage for edger and fertilizer buggy (accomplished).
• Schlepping to Lowe’s and buying rack for long-handled tools, and putting it together and organizing garage space (accomplished).
• Go to every Toyota dealer in 50 miles to find the one Sienna that has the features we want (accomplished) and actually buy the thing (FAIL) and if that doesn’t work, order a new one from our local dealer (accomplished) and sit around patiently and wait for it to show up (accomplished).
• Mow the lawn (on the list because it’s been so wet for so long and now the grass is out of control) (accomplished).
• Weed the front flower bed (accomplished).
• Enter McSweeney’s contest (deferred while I decide I can write like Dave Barry or not).
• Plug in new backup drive and plug in speakers that got unplugged accidentally (accomplished).
• Update IE and iTunes and suchlike (accomplished).
• Schlep to Shop-Rite and pick up stuff for chicken salad for M-I-L and S-I-L (accomplished, and got those pan dulce rolls my wife likes).

The NYT discovers supply-side economics… in France.

The drop in taxes is expected to cost the French budget about $3.3 billion. But that, in turn, is supposed to create 40,000 new restaurant jobs, half of them for younger people, by 2011.

Yeah, those little green balls, look like peanut M&Ms. But they’re not. I mean, they’re peanut, but they’re not chocolate. I don’t want to mislead you about that. They’re so not chocolate.

Wasabi. It’s Japanese. I mean, the peanuts are American – I think they’re American, I don’t know where else they grow peanuts. But the wasabi is Japanese. It’s like fusion or something.

I know you don’t like Japanese food, but this is really good. Besides, just because it’s Japanese doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it, at least. Remember when I got you to try Sudoku? That was Japanese. And you play that every day.

I know Sudoku isn’t a type of food, I’m just making a comparison.

Wasabi? It’s not – it’s not anything really exotic. It’s just the Japanese word for horseradish.

Yeah, horseradish. Horseradish isn’t bad. You eat horseradish. Yes, you do. I’ve seen you. Cocktail sauce? What do you think is in cocktail sauce? Horseradish, that’s what. Look at the ingredients. You eat cocktail sauce, that’s not any worse than a delicious wasabi peanut.

I know you don’t like hot and spicy food. But it’s just horseradish. It’s not that spicy. It’s mild. It’ll just clean out your sinuses a little, that’s all.

I’m not saying to eat like six of them at a time. Because that would be abusive. I mean, yeah, there was that time I ate half a package watching the Steelers-Titans game, and you kept asking me why I was crying. That was the wasabi. But you can just try one; it won’t hurt you.

No. This is not at all like the time I got you to try that hot Vietnamese rooster sauce. That was a prank. And no, it wasn’t very nice. And I am sorry about that. I said so at the time. This is not anything like that. Or the time I got you to eat that dried pepper in my kung pao. I mean, it was funny. I know you didn’t think it was funny at the time, and you threw that egg roll at me, but we can look back on that now and laugh. Right?

Sweetie, I am not trying to get you to eat anything bad. It’s just one wasabi peanut. And they’re really good. The shell is really crunchy, and then you bite into it, and you get the peanut and the horseradish, and it’s a very strong, very complicated flavor.

Just try one.

You might like it. You don’t know.

I’m not saying dip it in Tabasco sauce and roll it in cayenne pepper. Just taste it. For me.

You just said a minute ago you wanted a snack.

Okay, that’s how you feel. I think there are some yogurt pretzels in the pantry. Nice, bland, safe tasteless yogurt pretzels. If you don’t want to try something new, that’s fine.

Come on. Just one.

I agree with Robert Kagan about what President Obama is doing:

The United States had to provide some guarantee to the regime that it would no longer support opposition forces or in any way seek its removal. The idea was that the United States could hardly expect the Iranian regime to negotiate on core issues of national security, such as its nuclear program, so long as Washington gave any encouragement to the government’s opponents. Obama had to make a choice, and he made it.

Now, look.  I think this strategy sucks noodles.  Oodles of Noodles, even.  I miss the old axis-of-evil days.  I think the only thing wrong with axis-of-evil is that GWB didn’t talk about it enough, or at least try and defend it against people who thought that the axis of evil was Bush-Cheney-Rove.  I think we ought to be telling the world that the mullahs are dictators, that their theocracy is a pretext for theft and regional ambition, and that the Iranian people are enslaved.  I think we ought to be joining Iranians in saying that their election process is a mockery.  I think we ought to hang I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket from a sour apple tree, and that every day that he breathes air and eats hummus is a reproach upon our banners.

But I’m not President, and that’s probably a good thing.

Obama is President, and he is doing absolutely the right thing - the only thing he can do, which is to keep his big fat mouth shut.  (Anyone who doesn’t think that’s the best strategy in most instances has never been married.)

Kagan:

Whatever his personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition. His strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government’s efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition’s efforts to prolong the crisis.

This is exactly correct.  I don’t agree that putting out a hand to the mullahs is the best way to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but if that’s what Obama wants to do (and he won the election, after all, saying he would do just that, even when everybody from HRC on down opposed him) then he can’t slap that same hand by giving any public support to the students.

The Tiananmen Square anniversary is this summer, and it’s instructive to look at that example to see how America should respond to democratic unrest overseas.  A million people gathered in the heart of a corrupt, evil Communist government to call for greater democracy, and what did the President do?  He “implied that the action could damage relations” with Beijing.  That’ll show ‘em.  There was (still is, according to Wikipedia) an arms embargo in place.  That’ll really teach ‘em.

Could we have condemned China more?  Yes.  Should we have?  Probably.  Would the Chinese be buying up all our debt and selling us lots of cheap knockoffs now if we had?  Maybe not.

The West’s failure to support the students of Tiananmen Square was a betrayal, an immoral act of cowardice.  But it was the prudent thing to do at the time, and that counts for something.  Obama is being prudent here, and that’s not a bad thing, and he shouldn’t be kicked around for it.

UPDATE:  Krauthammer sees the same parallels to Tiananmen that I do:

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible.

The last line is the key for me.  I don’t think the protesters can win.  I don’t think they can beat the mullahs - or at least that’s the way to bet - that’s certainly the way Obama is betting.  Krauthammer argues that the risk of helping the protesters is worth the reward:

Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception — Iraq and Lebanon — becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance.

I just think that’s a lot of hope to hang on the slim thread of Iranian revolution.  In my view (and I could be wrong about this) the United States should be the patron of the Iranian revolution, in Dr. Johnson’s sense of the word - “Is not a Patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and,when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?”

I don’t know who Harold O. Levy is, but he really should know better than to spout idiocies like this lunatic prescription for American higher education:

AMERICAN education was once the best in the world. But today, our private and public universities are losing their competitive edge to foreign institutions, they are losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges and they are losing control over their own admissions because of an ill-conceived ranking system.

Wait, wait, wait.  Foreign institutions?  Really?  You want to tell me specifically what foreign institutions are competing with American private universities, there?  Oxford and Cambridge?  Okay.  What else.  If you are seriously telling me that there’s a long line of American college kids who are breaking down the door of McGill and the Tokyo Institute of Technology and, I don’t know, Southeast Morocco State, then I want to see numbers and graphs and data.  What I remember from my days on campus at Georgia Tech were international students breaking down the doors because American students were too fat, dumb and lazy to study engineering and high-level math and science.  Tell me that American universities can’t compete with overseas schools.  Tell me.  I want to hear this one.

And I take it that the “ill-concieved ranking system” is the U.S. News and World Report system.  Well, the ratings systems don’t hurt the system as a whole; they help some schools and don’t help others.  If your school isn’t ranked that highly on whatever survey, don’t hate on the survey.  Suck it up and do better next time.

 With the recession causing big state budget cuts, the situation in higher education has turned critical. Here are a few radical ideas to improve matters:

Well, at least he got the “radical” part right.

Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. Simply completing high school no longer provides students with an education sufficient for them to compete in the 21st-century economy. So every child should receive a year of post-secondary education.

You have got to be kidding me.  My parents are both retired teachers who worked in vocational education with at-risk kids; trying to teach them the job skills they need just to make it in this society.  They would have kittens if they knew somebody was trying to force the kids they worked with to take an extra year of school (especially as some of them had to drop out to work full-time to support themselves and their families).  They’d be the first to tell you that if kids don’t want to be in school, that it’s a mistake to keep them there - they’ll be disruptive, cause problems, etc.

Look, it would be nice to think that every child who graduates from American high schools is going to have the tools to work in a globally-competitive 21st century workforce.  But it’s not true.  Anyone who has spent any time in high school - much less been the chancellor for a big urban system like New York’s - knows it isn’t true.  And it’s not like every single job in the economy is going to be globally competitive - nobody is going to outsource their auto repair, or their manicure, or their lawn care to India anytime soon.  Saying “every child should receive a year of post-secondary education” is like saying “every kid should get a bright red sports car on his or her sixteenth birthday,” or “the Yankees should win the World Series every year.”  It ignores reality.

The benefits of an extra year of schooling are beyond question: high school graduates can earn more than dropouts, have better health, more stable lives and a longer life expectancy. College graduates do even better. Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career.

Oh, Lord, doesn’t anybody learn anything about statistics anymore?  If the average college attendee has a better average health and lifestyle, what do you suppose will happen when everyone is forced to attend college?  Hmm?  Everybody will be included in the average, and the average will go down.  Simple as that.  Or, if you’re into logic:

• Everybody wants to have a higher income than average.
• People who go to Harvard, on average, have a higher income.
• Therefore, if everybody goes to Harvard, everybody will have an above-average income.

If you can’t see the idiocy in that, then maybe you can benefit from the explanation:  the key to better health, more stable lives, and a longer life expectancy is the ability to make good choices, which correlates with college attendance, but is not necessarily caused by college attendance.  And taking away the choice to go to college means that it won’t say anything about one’s ability to make choices, thereby skewing the entire process.

President Obama recently embraced the possibility of extending public education for a year after high school: “I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training.” He suggested that this compulsory post-secondary education could be in a “community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship.” (I helped start an accredited online school of education, and firmly believe that the coursework could also be delivered to students online.)

Obama, you see, was using nice, cheap words to suggest that people get more education.  Which is different than using expensive money to force them to do so.

If the federal government ultimately pays for the extra year, it would be a turning point at least as important as the passage of the 1862 Morrill Act that gave rise to the state universities or the 1944 G.I. Bill that made college affordable to our returning service personnel after World War II. Every college trustee should be insisting that we make the president’s dream a reality.

You can put this entire paragraph into one word, and that word is bailout.  Pure and simple.  I have no problem with a college trustee going, hat in hand, to the federal gummint for a bailout, but if that’s what you want, say that.  There’s no need to dress the pig of federal bailout money in the dress of compulsory universal education.

And for those who graduate from high school early: they would receive, each year until they turn 19, a scholarship equal to their state’s per pupil spending. In New York, that could be nearly $15,000 per year. This proposal — which already has been tried in a few states — has the neat side effect of encouraging quick learners to graduate early and free up seats in our overcrowded high schools.

That’s not such a bad idea, I guess - if someone had offered this deal to me when I was sixteen I would have taken it.  Yes.  Drop out of Grand Prairie High after my sophomore year and take $15k a year to go to UT-Arlington and live at home and get a college degree a couple of years early?  I would have taken that, just to get out of gym class.  Still, a paragraph of sense in a sea of nonsense, and it gets worse:

Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy. Casual truancy is epidemic; in many cities, including New York, roughly 30 percent of public school students are absent a total of a month each year. Not surprisingly, truants become dropouts.

But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. Making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses might be egregious tactics when used by, say, a credit card company. But these could be valuable ways to compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day.

Ye gods.  The only good thing to say about this is that you’d end the unemployment crisis by hiring a million truant officers.

I could go on with the rest of this, but it’s mostly one complaint after another - the University of Phoenix has a bigger ad budget than Montclair State, the U.S. News ratings aren’t fair, the public schools are turning out graduates without basic skills, parents aren’t listening to the Blessed Redeemer and are letting their kids play video games.  You want real radical reform, try improving the quality of education instead of complaining about other factors you really can’t control, or bringing up ideas that are nonsense on stilts.

Oh, pity the hipsters of Williamsburg, whose parents can no longer be counted on to pony up the rent or cough up the down payment on a trendy Art Deco loft, or even further subsidize their layabout lifestyle:

They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ 

You want me to work eight hours.  Great John God.

I love little intellectual exercises like listing all the ballparks you’ve been to, in chronological order:

1. The old Arlington Stadium
2. The old Astrodome
3. The old Kingdome
4. Kaufmann Stadium
5. The Ballpark In Arlington
6. The old Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium
7. Camden Yards
8. The old Yankee Stadium
9. Tropicana Field
10. Enron Field (now Minute Maid)
11. The old San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium
12. Turner Field
13. Dodger Stadium
14. Citizen’s Bank Field
15. The old RFK Stadium
16. Skydome
17. The old Shea Stadium
18. Fenway Park (for a minor-league doubleheader)

Next up, the new Yankee Stadium and the new Shea, and maybe the new Nationals park.  Maybe Pittsburgh after that, or the new Miami stadium once that’s built.

August 20, 1995 – Following the successful under-the-table payment of kickbacks from local contractors, construction is completed on the new Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
 
April 29, 1999 – Pepsi machine installed in Perry Middle School cafeteria.
 
August 29, 2002 – Michael Benson, Christopher Kerr, and Matthew Woodward enter Perry Middle School as sixth-grade students.  They are assigned to the second lunch shift. Unfortunately, they are unable to obtain seats at the coveted “popular kids” table, and settle for a smaller table over on the left, between the fat kids and the nerds.
 
May 10, 2004 – Prompted by an article in Modern Nuisance, interfering busybody Roseanne Bragg begins campaign to have all sugary sodas removed from New Jersey public schools.  The Lawrenceville school board caves to Ms. Bragg’s demands in June.
 
August 1, 2004 – Kerr’s older sister Nicole returns from trip to Cancun.  Kerr inadvertently sees Nicole hiding a disposable camera under her bed.
 
August 31, 2004 – Benson, Kerr, and Woodward enter their eighth-grade year, and find that the Pepsi machine has been stocked with Diet Pepsi.
 
September 9, 2004 – At lunch, Benson expresses the opinion that Diet Pepsi is “gross”.  Kerr concurs, stating that Diet Pepsi is “repulsive”.  Woodward replies by comparing Diet Pepsi to classmate Amanda Murphy, sparking a spirited discussion.  All eventually agree that Diet Pepsi is more repellent than Brittany Darby, but less loathsome than Jessica Pruitt.
 
September 10, 2004 – After completing his science homework, Woodward picks up a copy of Search!, the official magazine of the Google Pre-Teen Indoctrination Project.  He reads an article that says that “blogs” are the “happening wave of the cyber-future” and “the free Blogger service is way cool.”  Encouraged by the article, Woodward decides to start a blog.  He writes his first entry about how the school board should put regular Pepsi back in the Pepsi machine.
 
September 12, 2004 – Woodward tells Benson and Kerr about his blog, and they judge it to be “awesome.”  Woodward invites Benson and Kerr to write entries for his blog, and they agree to do so.  At Kerr’s suggestion, Woodward changes the name of the blog to the “Diet Pepsi Eradication Society”.
 
September 14, 2004 – Kerr completes a blog entry, entitled “The Top Ten Reasons Diet Pepsi is Repulsive”, which includes items such as “Diet Pepsi is made from vomit” and “Diet Pepsi smells like Megan Greber’s feet.” 
 
September 16, 2004 – Benson writes a lengthy blog entry, modeled after the Gettysburg Address.  He writes that the “Pepsi machine of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
 
October 8, 2004 – Kerr swipes the disposable camera hidden under his sister’s bed while she is away at Vassar.  The camera has one exposure left.  He takes a picture of the Pepsi machine.  He later takes the camera to CVS, and orders a CD-ROM of the contents instead of getting the prints.  Using the Picasa software, he uploads all the pictures off the CD-ROM to the blog.  He then uses Microsoft Paint to draw a red circle and slash over the picture of the Pepsi machine, and then, using the bold Comic Sans font, types “Diet Pepsi Eradication Society” at the bottom of the picture.  He never looks at any of the other files on the CD-ROM, and does not realize that the other pictures he has posted are topless photos of his sister, taken on her Cancun trip.
 
October 27, 2004 – A space at the “popular kids table” opens up after the parents of eighth-grader Joshua Logan finally make good on their frequent threats and send him to Curtis LeMay Military Academy in Simi Valley, California.  Kerr accepts an invitation to join, leaving Woodward and Benson behind.  Woodward and Benson agree that Kerr is a “girly wussy boy” and a “stinkytoes butt bandit.”
 
November 18, 2004 – Woodward completes three line drawings and uploads them to the blog.  One of these drawings features advanced spaceships firing high-energy weapons on space stations shaped like Diet Pepsi cans.  The second features hobbit Bilbo Baggins urinating on the Diet Pepsi logo.  The third shows the main character from the movie Napoleon Dynamite force-feeding Diet Pepsi to a llama.
 
November 28, 2004 – The Philadelphia Eagles defeat the New York Giants for their eleventh win of the season.  Woodward and Benson develop an interest in the fortunes of the Eagles, and frequently discuss their chances of making the Super Bowl over lunch.  The Diet Pepsi Eradication Society blog is largely forgotten.
 
May 27, 2005 – Woodward, Benson and Kerr complete eighth grade.  Benson transfers to a prep school in Princeton.  Kerr moves with his parents to Phoenix.  Woodward attends Lawrenceville High School. 
 
November 20, 2014 – Woodward, now an intern with an investment bank, receives a letter from an Atlanta-based advertising firm, asking permission to use the Diet Pepsi Eradication Society concept in a commercial for Coca-Cola Zero.  Woodward discusses the proposal with his girlfriend, who advises him, “Sure, go ahead, do it, if all you want to be in life is a shill for the Coca-Cola people, who are exploiting kola-nut growers in Colombia as we speak.”  Woodward does not reply to the letter, and the advertisers develop a new idea for their commercial, featuring talking spider monkeys.
 
October 21, 2016 – Kerr, a junior associate with a Los Angeles entertainment law firm, breaks up with his longtime girlfriend Ashley Connor as an alternative to spending Thanksgiving with Connor’s family in Carbondale, Illinois.  Connor, a website designer, finds the Diet Pepsi Eradication Society blog while searching for dirt on Kerr.  She copies the blog to the Google Spam service, where it finds its way into eight billion inboxes worldwide.  As a result, the managing partner at Kerr’s firm later informs him that he is no longer on the partnership track.
 
October 24, 2016 – Benson, a noted commercial director, is set to shoot a Diet Ginger Lime Sierra Mist IV commercial in Toronto, but is removed from the project after his participation in the Diet Pepsi Eradication Society is discovered.
 
November 2, 2017 – Woodward’s wife, Nicole Kerr-Woodward, is the Gryffindor Party candidate for Congress for the 118th District of New Jersey.  She loses her campaign after a Slytherin Party operative uses Google Pornography to find the topless photos on the Diet Pepsi Eradication Society site that were uploaded by her brother Christopher.  Woodward’s marriage suffers severe strains.
 
November 26, 2017 – Kerr and Benson return to New Jersey for Thanksgiving.  Benson drives to Woodward’s house to confront him about the blog, only to find Woodward already in a confrontation with Kerr.  The three men brawl in Woodward’s yard, inflicting minor scrapes and injuries, until one of them starts laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, and they all join in.
 
March 1, 2019 – At the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Benson’s film, “The Diet Pepsi Eradication Society”, wins the Oscar for Best Non-Pornographic Short Film.  Kerr and Woodward share the award as co-producers.  At the Vanity Fair party, the three cannot find a seat at one of the popular tables, and settle for a smaller table on the left, over by the documentary winners and the special effects nerds.

Actually accomplished a lot last month, I did, although not everything.

• I am going to get that durn bookcase upstairs if it harelips everybody on Bear Creek (step one completed; got most of the cruft off of the bookcase - now I have to clean it and make time to stain it).
• Finish and hang mosaic dealie in bathroom (a little over halfway through).
• Once that’s done, decide what sort of tiles I need for kitchen mosaic project (I really need to figure out what to do next - I kind of want to make some dominoes out of some of the scrap marble I have.)
• Call the guy in Green Brook back on home theater wiring (accomplished) and see if he will actually give me a bid or not (Oh, my God, several thousand dollars, ay ay ay), if not, go with local guy and suck it up (done, waiting to schedule time).
• Couple of pictures to hang up (deferred).
• Produce the next baby video - waiting on inspiration for a good song to use (deferred).
• Get high chairs put together (I probably have yet another month to do this) (deferred).
• Call agent and get update on my manuscript (accomplished) and wait patiently for her to get back to me (EPIC FAIL).

New this month:

• Write new piece to submit to McSweeney’s skewering Michael Kay (accomplished; they didn’t go for it - will post here)
• Get haircut (accomplished).
• Go to dentist for cleaning (accomplished).
• Get to appointment with lawyer to go over wills and estate plan (accomplished).
• Figure out what kind of 529 plan to go with and how to fund it (accomplished).
• Get bids on freelance editor in preparation for self-publishing (accomplished).

(A little literary piece here, for your amusement.)

First thing I have to say, you know, is that I understand I really have nothing to complain about.  Being the announcer for the New York Yankees, I mean, how could you ask for a better job than that?  The history, the tradition, the pinstripes, the twenty-six world championships.  There’s nothing like being part of the greatest team of all time in professional sports.  And the people I’ve been privileged to know in the organization, from Mr. Steinbrenner all down, Mr. Cashman, all the great people at the YES Network, you could not ask for better, classier people to work with.  And now that we’ve moved across the street into the new House in the Bronx, it’s just that much better.  If you haven’t been there – and I know a lot of you haven’t been, yet – it’s just mind-blowing.  The concourses are so much wider.  The new steakhouse, which is just incredible, and the new Mohegan Sun sports bar.  And they’ve kept so much of what made the old Yankee Stadium such a great place, too.  It’s really a testament to Mr. Steinbrenner’s vision. 

What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, the whole “See-ya!” thing.

I gotta tell you, I love making that call.  It’s the best part of my job.  Late innings, the Bombers are down, and Jeter or Damon or Posada come through in the clutch with a home run, well, there isn’t anything more exciting in sports than that.  And I get to punctuate that great moment by saying “See-ya!” over the YES Network, broadcasting to millions of Yankees fans in the tri-state Ford area – well, that’s an incredible feeling, I don’t mind telling you.

But even better than that is when I’m out on the streets of the City, and Yankees fans come up to me and say hello, and then when they say “See-ya!” when I’m walking away – well, that just gives me chills.  Because that means they’re out there, listening, and that means a lot to me.  And of course, they always want me to say “See-ya!” back to them, which of course I don’t do, because it’s kind of a strain on the old pipes to give out the home run call all the time.  That’s a little disappointing for them, and I recognize that.  But that’s not really the problem.

Let me kind of illustrate what I’m talking about.  The other day, the Bombers are in Baltimore, taking on the O’s, and it’s a day game, so I go out to a nice place in the Inner Harbor to get dinner.   And I’m there by myself.  Which is no big deal.  I usually go out with my YES Network broadcast partner, Ken Singleton, but of course he had a great career in Baltimore, and when we go back, it’s like Old Home Week for him, so he ended up going out with Boog Powell and some other old Orioles, and I wasn’t invited for some reason.  Same thing used to happen with Kitty up in Minnesota, so I’m kind of used to it.  Come to think of it, Cone does the same thing in Kansas City.  Anyway. 

So I went to this seafood place.  And the waiter comes over, and I ordered a Miller Lite and some chowder.  And he says, “See-ya later!”

First of all, it’s not “See-ya later!”  It’s just plain “See-ya!”  That’s irritating.  But I didn’t think it was meant in a mean way, so I shrugged it off.  He came back with the beer and the chowder, and it was Manhattan chowder, so I sent it back, because I can’t risk all that spicy tomato sauce somehow messing up the old instrument.  I had some really hot salsa once in Arlington, and my throat was so irritated I almost couldn’t finish the road trip, but that’s beside the point.  So I asked him to send it back, and he said sure, and then he said “See-ya!”  I sort of smiled at him, because at least this time he got it right. 

So he brought the right chowder back, and then he did it again with the “See-ya!”  Only this time, half the other waiters were watching him do it, and when he did, they all started cracking up.  That’s disrespectful, if you ask me.  I know there’s a lot of resentment of Yankees fans in Baltimore – after all, we outdraw them in their own stadium nearly every game – but there’s no need for that kind of treatment.

I finished my chowder, which wasn’t half bad – they had the oyster crackers and the saltines with it, which is nice, you usually just get one or the other.  And the waiter guy brings me my crabcakes, which are always great in Baltimore.  And I look up at him, and this time the entire wait staff is looking at him, and he does it again.  “See-ya!”  And everybody in the restaurant starts breaking out laughing.  And I don’t see why, because it isn’t funny or anything.  Well, eventually, the manager came over and apologized, and offered me a free dessert, which I had to turn down because I’m starting to maybe get a little tubby, you know. 

That’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about.  You see me out on the street, and greet me with a nice “See-ya!” – that’s a nice thing for me.  All I’m asking is that people not overuse it.  That, and come out and see the new House in the Bronx.  You’d be surprised at how affordable the tickets are – the sightlines in the upper deck over by the left-field foul pole are amazing.  Like I said, it’s a real testament to Mr. Steinbrenner’s vision.