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.

I hope putting 'Quiet Qutting' in this headline will increase my SEO

Hey, have you heard about the exciting new trend in the world of work? It’s brand new! Are you ready?

 

It’s called “Quiet Quitting,” a term whose very name evokes an exotic world that the masses are about to explore, thanks to a young freelance writer who identified this brand new trend with a gimlet eye. Quiet quitting refers to the—again, only recently identified—phenomenon of not giving 110% at work. It’s the phenomenon that some employees just do the bare minimum at work. Get it? They’re not actually quitting but they’re doing just enough to keep themselves employed.

 

… wait a minute. So “Quiet Quitting” is basically just … work? Where you go in, perform the tasks you’re asked to perform, leave after eight hours, and await your paycheck? Which billions of people do and have been doing since time immemorial? This is the big trend we’ve just identified?

 

This is so, so stupid. Some writer comes up with a catchy, alliterative name for a common phenomenon—one that’s actually so common that nobody ever felt a need to name it—and the initial trend piece births dozens of other trend pieces? And suddenly we’re all reading about this common aspect of the human condition like it’s something beyond conception that’s just now being explored, like a white dwarf star at the center of the universe? And then everybody needs to publish something about this trend to boost their publication’s SEO?

 

You’re not even quitting quietly. Doing so would mean resigning and not making a big public spectacle. You’re still employed but just not killing yourself at it, which people have been doing since the invention of labor. It’s just so stupid.

 

I know I’m sounding “OK, Boomer” here but coining the term “Quiet Quitting” is like when each generation thinks they invented sex just because they recently tried it for the first time. Meanwhile, the rest of us have at least heard of what these wide-eyed kids are doing.

 

Since COVID and the upheaval about working from home and the Great Resignation, there has been so much discussion about labor and the presumptions related to that. And I just want to ask, what do people think work is? You go in. You do your tasks and meet your deadlines. You go home. You use your paycheck to build the life you want. You hope you have enough money to retire comfortably at the end. I think it’s actually a healthy way to live.

 

I mean, what do people think life is? 

Things to Remember 2022

So that’s it for 2022. Here is a comprehensive synopsis:

 

Watching the huge orange harvest moon rise over the bay

 

Joe Biden sailing by on the SS Slut

 

Playing our umpteenth game of Setback together

 

A huge thunderstorm and hail in the middle of the night

 

Sex Work is Work (aka Shore Whore) from “Fuck the Pain Away” to “Computer Blue”

 

Penne? Uh! Good God, y’all! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again!

 

Takeout and messed-up sandwiches

 

Sunbathing on the dock

 

Riverdance Bootcamp

 

I GET SO EMOTIONAL!

 

Thanksgiving dinner in September

 

Seagulls (that aren’t real) fighting for space on the dock

 

Potato salad smoothies

 

Air Force One flying over the bay

 

Turtle sculpting at Indian River

 

The Kiss cover band serenading us from Dewey

 

Smoked salmon for breakfast

 

Getting Jepped!

 

Copious box wine

 

Mouthfeel

 

Secret Service Submarine

 

Funky Breakfast… Breakfast of Funk

 

US Open

 

Taco Night

 

Pistachio Lush

 

Successful Butt Porkin’

 

The Valentino Deedling Wildlife Preserve

 

Food Poisoning Casserole

 

80’s Playlist

 

You Can Do MAGIC! (DEET DEE DEE…..)

 

The General Store

 

Monday night lightning show over the bay

 

Hanging out all night on the porch with your friends for the 27^th year in a row

 

Let’s do it again next year!

 

 

 

Too Soon?

In Westminster Abbey, King Charles III is giving the first speech of his reign before the Accession Council.

 

King Charles III: … Therefore, garlic shall be reinstated on the Official Menus of State at all royal functions. I am also ordering all the swans in His Majesty’s realm to be painted chartreuse.

 

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Bloody hell, guv’nah! Not the swans!

 

King Charles III: Also, the Crown shall change the official spellings of the words “color,” “rigor” and “humor.” These shall be spelled without a “U.”

 

Lord Simon Mungington-Hapsburg: But that “U” defines us as a country!

 

Baron Huw FitzHugh: Crikey! That’s a bridge too far, it is!

 

King Charles III: Finally, I am changing the pronunciation of the words “aluminum” and controversy.” They shall be pronounced as “ah-LOO-min-num” instead of “ah-loo-MIN-i-um” and “CON-tro-ver-sy” instead of “con-TRO-ver-sy.” Say them with me now: “Ah-LOO-min-num CON-tro-ver-sy.”

 

Nigel Plantagenet, the Fifth Earl Kensington-on-Tyne: Oi! Who died and made you king?!

 

The sky immediately darkens and thunder booms. A vision of an angry Queen Elizabeth II appears before the Accession Council.

 

Queen Elizabeth II: I did!

 

Her eyes flash red and lightning strikes in their midst. The Council scatters and Charles smirks.

Passive-Aggressive Renovation Revenge

You ever watch Renovation Island? It’s completely ridiculous. This insanely wealthy couple, Bryan and Sarah Baeumler, is renovating and running a resort in the Caribbean. This season, they’ve moved from Canada to Florida and—hoo boy.

 

I don’t like the way he talks to her. Bryan just seems very condescending, and their arguments shade a little too far for me into uncomfortable territory. It just seems like he’s barely holding himself back from saying something so nasty they can’t come back from it. Sarah laughs a lot of that off, but it seems sometimes she’s trying to push away something deeper. I realize a lot of this is scripted and edited but it’s amusing to speculate on all this while I’m reading a book and half-watching the show on Sunday nights. (I’ve never watched reality TV, unless you count the HGTV shows.)

 

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Sarah surprised Bryan with the massive office space she bought. It was an empty shell that would need extensive renovations and Bryan, not unreasonably, told his wife he really didn’t want to spend his nights and weekends renovating the office space while still having to look after the island complex. Sarah did need an office space, since her office at the rental space wasn’t cutting it, but why she didn’t just rent an office that was already finished, I don’t know.

 

Bryan seems reasonable here but at the same time, he’s overseeing construction on a hangar to house his airplane. Must be nice to be able to afford a huge office space, incredibly expensive renovations on your home, a rental home while you renovate, renovations on your island resort, and a hangar for your airplane. So they’re both kind of insane. Then Sarah decides to up the budget on their home renovations to like $150,000, and when Bryan says she didn’t tell him, she does this “oops!” eyeroll, like someone who came home from the mall with a new coat. Again, must be nice. We just had our landscaping redone on our front lawn and it cost not even a fraction of what they spent, and I’m still feeling anxious about the cost of a crepe myrtle.

 

They should just call this show Passive-Aggressive Renovation Revenge because it’s so tit-for-tat.

 

It got worse. A few weeks ago, Bryan surprised Sara by buying a huge RV. It’s always a recipe for a great marriage when you don’t tell your spouse about six-figure purchases. Not only that, but he had to go to Winnipeg to pick the thing up, then drive the RV back to Florida. He was leaving imminently and it would take a few days. Sarah could watch their four kids and oversee all the construction when he was gone.

 

You know what, I would have had a process server track his ass down in that RV and serve him with divorce papers. Leave me with the kids with no warning while you journey cross-country to find yourself, and come home saying you really needed that time to decompress? You can leave that RV running in the driveway while you pick up the clothes I left on the front lawn. I would not want to be in that marriage.

 

Plus, Bryan’s assistant (I don’t know his name so I’ll call him Doug since they’re all Canadian) is totally in love with Bryan. A few weeks ago, he was thrilled when Sarah was off the island and the two of them could spend a day doing projects like repairing the resort’s sign, or go fishing or have a drink by the pool. Then Doug asks about skinnydipping in their pool, and takes his suit off when it’s just the two of them. And he’s happy to volunteer to help Bryan renovate for a few more weeks. Don’t go chasing that waterfall, Doug—Bryan’s a jerk.