Magic

The best thing about iconic moments, in sports and otherwise, is that they feel inevitable in retrospect. Of course Bryce Harper hit a two-run bomb in the eighth inning to win the Phillies the pennant. Doesn’t it seem now like the only way that game and the NLCS could have ended? Everything that happened before that fades away: the Padres taking the lead after that stupid wild pitch in the rain (giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Game 5 Part 1), the blown early lead in Game 2, even the disappointment that the Phillies might miss the playoffs altogether.

 

All of that fades away and here we are as the Phils get ready to take the field in Houston in the World Series, and it kind of feels like they were always meant to do so.

 

You really couldn’t have written a better ending to a deciding playoff game than Harper’s home run. I don’t know how you rank the most iconic moments in Philadelphia sports history, but that one is way at the top, and that’s not recency bias. Other big moments in sports can sneak up on fans, like a great performance when nobody was expecting it in a low-stakes game. Harper’s home run was decisive, as close to a walk-off as it gets, at dizzyingly high stakes, and when everyone’s eyes were on him.

 

File that soggy home run on Sunday as yet another example of how sports can bring people together. This week you could probably walk down the street and see a stranger wearing that red “P” and say to them, “How ‘bout those Phillies?” and get a smile. You don’t know that person; you might not even like that person if you got to know them. But you have that little, fleeting connection.

 

This is why we watch. To watch that baseball disappear into the stands and to be able to feel that exact same burst of joy with so many other people in your blast radius at the exact same time is a kind of magic.

Cor, Blimey! Make me prime minister, guv'nah!

No, I’m not a citizen of the United Kingdom. I’ve never been there and my passport has expired. If I were British, I would not be a Tory. I don’t know anything about running a government. I don’t even know too much about macroeconomics or how to fight inflation.

 

But I was reading about how Liz Truss is entitled to a pension of £115,000 a year for her 44 days as prime minister, and now I want the job. So I’m sending a job application to King Charles III on Indeed, or however one applies, and standing to become the political leader of 67 million people (or do they measure people in kilograms? I forget how the Brits do it) and the world’s sixth largest economy.

 

I mean, shit—I can hang on for seven weeks of turmoil and scandal and screw up my (their) country at least as well as Truss did if it will net me a cool $129K a year for life. I’m not even 50 so that money will buy me plenty of new gold-embroidered suits and diamond-encrusted kitchen backsplash.

 

Here is my proposal for my premiership:

 

·      Eliminate all taxes for anybody making more than—oh, let’s say £115,000 a year—and double the taxes for people making less than that. The money the rich save will literally slide down a hill to the poor people.

·      The National Health Service will be converted into a fireworks factory. Nobody will be able to get dialysis, but we’ll all have plenty of fireworks for a Fourth of July (that we don’t celebrate)!

·      Pantsless press conferences outside 10 Downing on Thursdays. Get ready to see a lot more of me!

·      Fish and chips will now be combined with bubble and squeak.

·      All Britons will now be required to pronounce the “c” in “schedule.”

·      At Question Time, I will only answer questions from MPs with a yes/no response.

·      The Crown will be illegal to screen. All current and former stars of the Netflix show will be executed. So will Dame Judi Dench, just for the hell of it.

·      Oh, and I’m also cutting funding for all social services in half, including government pensions and child care funding. Good luck!

 

It won’t be an easy 44 days, that’s for sure. All the U-turns I’ll have to do will be exhausting. Plus, I’ll have to stand in the House of Commons while the MPs berate me with savage witticisms and beat me with the Mace. I’ll also miss some of my son’s basketball games. But perhaps I can fly the family over for Thanksgiving at Chequers as I tank my adopted country’s economy and try to hang on for the full 44 days. Then I’ll come home with $129,000 worth of presents in time for a nice American Christmas! 

 

So pick me, Tories! It’s not like you can find anyone better.

 

(Please read the preceding to the tune of “Yakkety Sax.”)

 

I’d trade it all for some decorative gourds

It’s fall now, so all I can think of is fall, fall, fall, fall, FALL! Apples ‘n’ pumpkins ‘n’ sudden sunsets ‘n’ two-month-long Halloween cooking contests on the Food Network ‘n’ wearing earth tones that make me look like ass!

 

Autumn is just a string of one amazing day after another with no downside and today is the best day of all. It’s the day when our pool is officially CLOSED! Yes, summer’s reign of terror is over and now I can fully enjoy having a little less daylight every day as I drive home from work!

 

I mean, I guess we had fun all summer splashing around in our pool. I would be in and out all day on Saturdays and Sundays, and after dinner on weeknights, floating with Steve in the deep end and listening to music, and it was fine. I would jump into the salt water after working up a sweat mowing the lawn on a 95º day, and I suppose the relief was adequate. Sometimes we would jump in real quick before a storm came, and we’d watch the dark clouds gather in the west and we’d stay in as long as we could, and then watch the lightning by the side of the pool until rain forced us inside, and that was OK, I guess.

 

Our son’s birthday is in July and we always have a BBQ and party, so we spend a glittering Sunday splashing around with him and our nephews and nieces. And that’s fine as far as it goes.

 

But now, relief! I can turn off the filter, close the windows and throw on a brown sweater! The pool men will come to lower the water level, add a bunch of chemicals and throw a tarp over the pool. Instead of a view of that garish, horribly undulating blue, I’ll be able to spend months looking out the window at a black tarp, as all around the pool my flowers die! Ahh, autumn!

 

You know, floating in the deep end of the pool as the midsummer sun filters through the constantly shifting cumulonimbus clouds above me, with only the sounds of the birds and a distant lawnmower to disturb me, brings me a feeling of peace and contentment that is a true blessing in my life. But I’d trade it all for some decorative gourds.