May 21, 2013

057.0: Living in fast forward.

Dear Linc,

Eww. Looking at the pictures of One Direction on that YouTube video really freaks me out.

If I saw One Direction in everyday life, doing everyday things, I wouldn’t give them a second thought because they look totally and utterly like children. The only outreach I’d do is probably a minor temptation to ask them if they are keeping up with their studies, or if they have a curfew to which they should be abiding sometime soon. I feel old, but I’m proud to now be this age — I’m less certain about enjoying catchy songs by an international phenomenon comprised of members who would be indistinguishable kids to me in daily life.

I keep having all these different ideas for what I want to put in a letter but I never seem to have the time to sit down and write them down, or if I do, I only have time to jot out a letter that is not especially meaningful and is only composed of perfunctory language. Does David Sedaris write essays that are not especially meaningful and are only composed of perfunctory language? No. Does my ex-lover Mindy Kaling write essays that are not especially meaningful and are only composed of perfunctory language? Again, no. Do I personally know either David Sedaris or Mindy Kaling? Aside from briefly chatting with David Sedaris at an event where I was selling his books, no.

It’s really tough keeping up with what has been happening in my own life. It’s even tougher when a natural disaster happens like that tornado in Oklahoma City. I think what has made these last few weeks so challenging is the constant push and pull of internal and external struggles: what I want to do with my life; practical responsibilities to maintain toward work, friends, and bills to pay; as well as worrying about my friends themselves, my family, and staying aware of the world at large. I can show you a good microcosm of these struggles by telling you more about my experience as a church leader. We are dealing with so much in terms of how to be socially responsible and a diverse community. It’s not easy being good Christians in a world where Christians have acted so badly. But that kind of reflection is an entirely separate letter.

It’s no wonder there are times when I just want to hide out in The Ballpark. Which I’ll be doing tomorrow. This season, day games have provided me with a much needed respite in the middle of a crazy schedule — although next week I’ll be on vacation for Selma’s wedding. The funny thing is that I didn’t start to think of it as a vacation until basically the last few days. Certainly it’s been on my mind as Selma’s Big Day, but it didn’t occur to me to think of it as something beneficial for myself as well. I wonder if that is an important oversight on which I should reflect. Or maybe it is saying nothing at all and I should not take things so seriously.

When I first started working at the bookstore, I was a full-time events coordinator. It was a role that involved a lot of responsibilities. One day, the general manager wanted to catch up with me to ask how I was acclimating to the role. I was honest and let him know that there was a lot to process but that I was starting to get the hang of all the various procedures and responsibilities of the role. Toward the end of our conversation, he nodded seemingly out of satisfaction over everything I said. But he also seemed visibly detached. What his face lacked in expression he made up for with an overwhelmingly, and unexpectedly  poignant question.

“But are you having fun?” he said.

It has been a few months since I left the position to go part-time so that I could have time to go back to school. Did I have fun as an events coordinator? I would say that I realized that even though I was enthusiastic about applying for the position, once I spent some time in it, it became apparent for both myself and my colleagues that I was not the right fit. I’m grateful that they were able to find a role for me on a part-time basis and I still consider working in a bookstore to be a dream-come-true. However, now that I am back in school suddenly the world is once again as rich with possibility as when I was the age of the kids in One Direction. At times I have even found myself thinking to myself, “I want to make a difference.” It is a youthful answer to the decidedly adult question of, “What should I do with the rest of my life?”

I do wonder if, at 31, I am too late to make the kind of difference I could have made if I had instead decided back then the things that I am deciding now. But as soon as I wonder about that kind of thing, suddenly I realize that there isn’t much time to get stuck in that kind of moment, and I have to move on.

Joe

11:40am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLylW4CDY
Filed under: One Direction Up All Night LGBTQ baseball long reads David Sedaris Mindy Kaling Tim Lincecum San Francisco Giants religion Christianity 
May 19, 2013

059.0: My darling.

Dear Linc,

Spencer gave me another talk. This time it was to reassure me.

It has not been a good week for my fandom. On General Hospital, one of my favorite actresses, Kristen Alderson, came back after an unplanned absence. (A bunch of contract drama. You know how it is.) But she’s not playing the same character anymore, and that character was one of my favorites. The new character is disappointingly irritating and so is the new storyline to which she’s attached. In fact, a lot of the young kids on the show are starting to irritate me, and I’m not just saying this as the bitter old man that I have been since taking my first breath in the world.

Usually, I think that the storylines of the younger kids are okay — for example, I like the character Molly, and the gal who plays her. I also like TJ, the guy who is her boyfriend, but I don’t like Molly and TJ together. However, I like the relationship between TJ and Shawn, the man who was appointed TJ’s guardian when TJ lost his parents. I do not like this kid Rafe, because even though it’s cool that he is the son of a vampire — don’t ask — the character himself is kind of a whiny brat, and I hate how he’s coming between TJ and Molly even though I don’t like TJ and Molly together. Are you following any of this? Haha. Probably not, but to me these are very critical distinctions.

I also don’t like the way they brought back Morgan. I hate the way he says “bro” all the time now. When this character was still a child, there was no indication he’d grow up to be such a douche. But I guess the show needed a “good brother, bad brother” pair, since Michael is, mostly, the good brother. I hope that Morgan is quickly redeemed, though, because this is getting old. Fast.

Where is your head these days, Linc? Is it a lady? Of course my head will always go there. I think it’s funny how there are so many fangirls who also wonder about this kind of thing. I guess the world is more accepting about this stuff when it comes to girls. One of my friends always makes me feel better about these letters, for example, because I know for a fact that she spends her spare time actively trying to marry a baseball player — not writing never-to-be-sents, Linc, but pushing herself through autograph lines and conveniently making herself available at bars where ballplayers are hanging out. Hell, even Ray knows where your condo in Seattle is! He has friggen driven by it. I don’t know how he knows — or why — but, um, apparently he does.

I am not that much of a fan — yes, there are these letters, but nothing more. I feel bad even having one too many of your bobbleheads on display. One is on the shelf, another is tucked away behind some books. I only have two. I don’t want my room to look like a creepy shrine.

To be honest, I save the true creepiness for my mind. When Ben Franklin advised against venery, he didn’t specify whether or not it was okay to have pleasurable sex with your spouse — which is what I fantasize about, really. People joke about me “needing to get laid,” and that stupid phrase is a whole separate sociological conversation altogether — but maybe they are right. In that I don’t merely need to get laid, however, but that I need a committed relationship, a family. Lasting love. And yes, to have regular sex with the other half of me, whomever that might be. I’m working on it — by working on myself first. It’s why I’m busting my butt going back to school.

When I saw the lopsided score from yesterday’s game, I knew that it was partly because the team overall has been having problems with this road trip but also because you started that game, and so the focus — and blame — would be on you. This was the second strike against my fanboy heart. The third was finding out that the new Star Trek movie made “only” $70M over the weekend. 

I’ll tell you the truth, Linc. As big of a fan I can be about certain things like Star Trek, if there isn’t some grand gesture involved, like a lot of people being a fan right along there with me, I can get bummed out pretty easily. I know it’s stupid to rely on that kind of validation, but when I read the first box office reports, I immediately whined to Spencer, “WHY ISN’T THE WHOLE WORLD WATCHING THIS MOVIE?!”

To which she said: “Box office profits never correlate to quality.”

That made me feel a little bit better. And it made me feel better to remind myself that in 2016, the Star Trek franchise will be 50-years old, so there is a moral obligation — moral, I tell you! — to release at least one more movie, even if might very well be the close of a singular trilogy.

Maybe they could spice it up by adding a sub-plot about a gay crew member with a low-level, even boring, job on board the Enterprise whose husband is in a senior and much more dangerous position. Heh.

Listening to this piece of music, I’m reminded of how wonderful Into Darkness was, and that Spencer is right. This piece of music belongs to a part of the movie that is like nothing else I’ve ever seen in Star Trek. The only way I can describe that part of the movie is to say that it feels like a coalescing of many other and different stories that I’ve ever loved — The Fault In Our Stars, Felicity, General Hospital, and yes, Star Trek itself — with seemingly overwhelming disparity between one another, until now. A lot of people saw Into Darkness, but even though I feel spoiled saying it, I wish so many people had watched Into Darkness that it could have broken through the $100M barrier. I will just have to content myself with knowing that it is at least a critical darling.

Joe

12:53pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLylMbOV9
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Michael Giacchino Star Trek Into Darkness London Calling General Hospital Kristen Alderson Tim Lincecum San Francisco Giants baseball LGBTQ long reads 
May 17, 2013
061.0: Strike a pose. Dear Linc, The world has moved on. I imagine that when I receive the inevitable news that you have gotten married, the disappointment will be comparable to a recent conversation I had with Spencer. When we first met in college, I had drifted away from watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My first semester happened during the show’s fifth season, and like many people who made the mistake of not having faith in the storytelling prowess of the great Joss Whedon — can you tell that I’m a little, little bit of a fan…? — I abandoned the show because the sudden introduction of Buffy’s little sister Dawn did not seem to make sense. Also, with the start of college came the start of a new life on another coast, a new life entirely. I couldn’t commit to Buffy. When I met Spencer a couple of semesters later, she was an uninvited guest who was accompanying a friend and I on a hike. My friend had asked me at the last minute if Spencer could tag along, and I didn’t want to be the jerk that said no, even if the question was asked of me only at the last minute. (We were in our early twenties, which is my excuse for not having any concept of manners.) It was even worse when we swung by Spencer’s place and she strolled out in an especially stylish leather jacket. I was sickened for two reasons: firstly, it struck me that my friend was probably having her tag along because he was totally just that into her and, secondly, she looked pretty good in that stylish leather jacket, which at that time meant to me that she had to have an accompanying bitchiness. (I know that sounds sexist so, to be fair, I think the same about guys — I see so many guys that look oh, so good. From the bus to the sidewalks, my eyes are constantly wandering, yet at the same time warring with my mind which constantly advises me that though the packaging is good the contents are probably jerks.) Spencer never wavered from her fandom of Buffy nor of Joss Whedon. She has watched The Avengers probably about as many times as I’ve watched each of the Star Trek movies, which is to say: a lot. I’ve watched The Avengers one time. I meant to watch it again not long after that first time, but I never got around to it. Which is to say: I liked it, but not as much as Spencer did, and not as much as I’ve liked most of the Star Trek movies. (Even that heinous fifth one where Kirk asks of a terrible special effects alien pretending to be God, “What does God need with a starship?!”) I feel bad that I haven’t watched The Avengers more often because I have often professed to be an unabashed follower of Joss Whedon. I am. But for me his greatest work will always be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And there will only ever be one Buffy Summers — with respect to Kristy Swanson, who certainly contributed to the legacy, to me Sarah Michelle Gellar will always ever be the only Buffy Summers. That being said, years after the show ended, I’ve been clamoring for its return, either as a movie or some other limited-run TV show. I know there are canonical comics — but it’s just not the same. I miss Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy. I miss her so much that I even had high hopes for her big return to TV, on a show called Ringer, which I recognized as a flop several episodes in and then it barely lasted its first season before getting canceled altogether. Next season she’ll be back in a sitcom (!) co-starring Robin Williams. I’m excited that she gets to work with Robin Williams — and I’m actually excited that she’s doing comedy. Watching Buffy, you can see that her physicality isn’t just about the action, but there’s also slapstick. Sarah Michelle Gellar can be hilarious. But I don’t think there will ever be anymore Buffy, not the way that I want to see it. “Would you expect JJ Abrams to go back to Felicity?” Spencer asked me. “Yes!” I said quickly. (I loved Felicity, too, by the way.) I knew her point, though. Did you know that Sarah Michelle Gellar also once popped up on Sex and the City? Man, in high school, I hated that show. I was convinced that it was immoral — yeah, really. But then I started watching it more and then my life started going in a direction where I could find myself relating to the characters. There’s a prequel show on right now called The Carrie Diaries, and I admit that I read the book on which that prequel show is based, and that I liked it. There’s another Carrie now, since it’s a prequel and all, and I hear she’s actually pretty good. But I haven’t gotten into it because, well, it’s just not the same. Selma’s fiance made me buy new shoes for the wedding. Keep in mind this is Selma’s fiance, now, and not Selma herself. Selma could care less what shoes I wear. When I told Selma’s fiance the kind of dress shoes I have, he actually said to me, “Maybe it would be best to get different shoes.” I don’t mean to make him sound like a jerk. He’s not. We’re both Trekkies, so he already scored points with me a long time ago. But this shoe requirement required me to devote a singular but intensive hour in the middle of a packed schedule yesterday to the act of shopping in consideration of 1) budget; 2) style; 3) honor. You know me, Linc: only I can turn shoe shopping into an existential nightmare. About number three: the thing is, I’m giving a toast. I’m also in the wedding party. I’ve known Selma since we were twelve. Should I invest in a decent pair of shoes that might be a little beyond my budget but will return lasting values, lasting memories? Should I honor Selma’s special day by dressing a little better than I usually do? I will. I do. You should have seen me walking around yesterday, Linc. I was such a poseur, with a big shopping bag slung around my shoulder like I was some sophisticated urban guy! I have to admit that I felt like I was channeling a little bit of Carrie Bradshaw — okay, a lot. I even happened to walk past a movie theatre with a marquee advertising that it was playing this new documentary that I want to see called, get this, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s. But I have to admit that the first time I saw the trailer for that, my first thought was that Bergdorf’s was way too expensive for my blood. If I were going to have my ashes scattered anywhere that wasn’t AT&T Park, then it would be Macy’s. Joe

061.0: Strike a pose.

Dear Linc,

The world has moved on.

I imagine that when I receive the inevitable news that you have gotten married, the disappointment will be comparable to a recent conversation I had with Spencer.

When we first met in college, I had drifted away from watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My first semester happened during the show’s fifth season, and like many people who made the mistake of not having faith in the storytelling prowess of the great Joss Whedon — can you tell that I’m a little, little bit of a fan…? — I abandoned the show because the sudden introduction of Buffy’s little sister Dawn did not seem to make sense. Also, with the start of college came the start of a new life on another coast, a new life entirely. I couldn’t commit to Buffy.

When I met Spencer a couple of semesters later, she was an uninvited guest who was accompanying a friend and I on a hike. My friend had asked me at the last minute if Spencer could tag along, and I didn’t want to be the jerk that said no, even if the question was asked of me only at the last minute. (We were in our early twenties, which is my excuse for not having any concept of manners.) It was even worse when we swung by Spencer’s place and she strolled out in an especially stylish leather jacket.

I was sickened for two reasons: firstly, it struck me that my friend was probably having her tag along because he was totally just that into her and, secondly, she looked pretty good in that stylish leather jacket, which at that time meant to me that she had to have an accompanying bitchiness. (I know that sounds sexist so, to be fair, I think the same about guys — I see so many guys that look oh, so good. From the bus to the sidewalks, my eyes are constantly wandering, yet at the same time warring with my mind which constantly advises me that though the packaging is good the contents are probably jerks.)

Spencer never wavered from her fandom of Buffy nor of Joss Whedon. She has watched The Avengers probably about as many times as I’ve watched each of the Star Trek movies, which is to say: a lot.

I’ve watched The Avengers one time. I meant to watch it again not long after that first time, but I never got around to it. Which is to say: I liked it, but not as much as Spencer did, and not as much as I’ve liked most of the Star Trek movies. (Even that heinous fifth one where Kirk asks of a terrible special effects alien pretending to be God, “What does God need with a starship?!”) I feel bad that I haven’t watched The Avengers more often because I have often professed to be an unabashed follower of Joss Whedon. I am.

But for me his greatest work will always be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And there will only ever be one Buffy Summers — with respect to Kristy Swanson, who certainly contributed to the legacy, to me Sarah Michelle Gellar will always ever be the only Buffy Summers.

That being said, years after the show ended, I’ve been clamoring for its return, either as a movie or some other limited-run TV show. I know there are canonical comics — but it’s just not the same. I miss Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy. I miss her so much that I even had high hopes for her big return to TV, on a show called Ringer, which I recognized as a flop several episodes in and then it barely lasted its first season before getting canceled altogether. Next season she’ll be back in a sitcom (!) co-starring Robin Williams. I’m excited that she gets to work with Robin Williams — and I’m actually excited that she’s doing comedy. Watching Buffy, you can see that her physicality isn’t just about the action, but there’s also slapstick. Sarah Michelle Gellar can be hilarious.

But I don’t think there will ever be anymore Buffy, not the way that I want to see it.

“Would you expect JJ Abrams to go back to Felicity?” Spencer asked me.

“Yes!” I said quickly. (I loved Felicity, too, by the way.)

I knew her point, though.

Did you know that Sarah Michelle Gellar also once popped up on Sex and the City? Man, in high school, I hated that show. I was convinced that it was immoral — yeah, really. But then I started watching it more and then my life started going in a direction where I could find myself relating to the characters. There’s a prequel show on right now called The Carrie Diaries, and I admit that I read the book on which that prequel show is based, and that I liked it. There’s another Carrie now, since it’s a prequel and all, and I hear she’s actually pretty good. But I haven’t gotten into it because, well, it’s just not the same.

Selma’s fiance made me buy new shoes for the wedding. Keep in mind this is Selma’s fiance, now, and not Selma herself. Selma could care less what shoes I wear. When I told Selma’s fiance the kind of dress shoes I have, he actually said to me, “Maybe it would be best to get different shoes.”

I don’t mean to make him sound like a jerk. He’s not. We’re both Trekkies, so he already scored points with me a long time ago. But this shoe requirement required me to devote a singular but intensive hour in the middle of a packed schedule yesterday to the act of shopping in consideration of 1) budget; 2) style; 3) honor. You know me, Linc: only I can turn shoe shopping into an existential nightmare.

About number three: the thing is, I’m giving a toast. I’m also in the wedding party. I’ve known Selma since we were twelve. Should I invest in a decent pair of shoes that might be a little beyond my budget but will return lasting values, lasting memories? Should I honor Selma’s special day by dressing a little better than I usually do? I will. I do.

You should have seen me walking around yesterday, Linc. I was such a poseur, with a big shopping bag slung around my shoulder like I was some sophisticated urban guy! I have to admit that I felt like I was channeling a little bit of Carrie Bradshaw — okay, a lot. I even happened to walk past a movie theatre with a marquee advertising that it was playing this new documentary that I want to see called, get this, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s. But I have to admit that the first time I saw the trailer for that, my first thought was that Bergdorf’s was way too expensive for my blood. If I were going to have my ashes scattered anywhere that wasn’t AT&T Park, then it would be Macy’s.

Joe


11:01am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLylBos2u
Filed under: Ciara Click Flash Sex and the City Buffy the Vampire Slayer Joss Whedon Sarah Michelle Gellar Star Trek The Avengers LGBTQ Tim Lincecum long reads JJ Abrams Felicity Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorfs Macys ATT Park baseball 
May 16, 2013

062.0: Yes, love.

Dear Linc,

Yesterday was basically a one-day vacation staycation for me. Since February, I’ve had May 15th at 7pm marked on my calendar for Star Trek: Into Darkness. I even told my boss about it on the same day that I got the tickets for me and Clara. But he just grinned at me like I was a fly that he’d just swatted, because the date was still too far away to put me down for a day off.

That’s exactly what I ended up getting. The showtime was actually at 8pm but all this time I had a 7pm time marked in my calendar. I guess I was so nerdishly excited about getting to the movie theatre on time that I scheduled it an hour earlier. I only realized this when Clara and I were leaving the house and when she looked at the ticket I’d just printed from the confirmation page bookmarked months before, she said, “But this says 8pm.”

So, we stayed home and continued doing what we’d been doing all day: watching episodes of Star Trek from all its various TV incarnations.

Except that I’d been up at my usual early bird hour, long before Clara, which is the norm for me now, especially since my internal alarm clock now outpaces my actual alarm clock. This day was not only going to be a day for Star Trek but a fanboy’s day in general: I had General Hospital episodes to catch up on, too!

I sprung into consciousness sometime around 5:45 in the morning but I already knew that my calendar was clear, because I intentionally did that: the day before, I woke up even earlier in the morning to get a head start on what I already needed to do, to allow for extra time to catch up on whatever work I might wish I could be doing on the next day that was supposed to be my day off.

I did it anyway. There were times on my supposed staycation when I couldn’t keep myself away from opening my laptop. I’d be on the sofa with Clara, and then she’d have an important question to ask — “How many people did that thing live inside before Jadzia?” — that I would merrily answer while also intently checking my e-mail, or browsing one of the syllabi of my classes to double-check that I wasn’t falling behind on my assignments.

Even though her question about Jadzia sounded direct like a non-fan’s condescension, Clara is actually a Trekkie, although not as nerdy as I am, obviously. Clara and I didn’t meet until college. We were raised on separate coasts but in terms of our Star Trek fandom we led parallel childhoods. She once confessed to me, “I like the one where Doctor Crusher falls in love with a ghost — that was a ghost, right?”

Because I’m a Trekkie, I answered specifically: yes, and no. The creature that Doctor Crusher fell in love was ghostly, I explained to Clara, but in the Star Trek universe, it was actually an alien identified as an “anaphasic lifeform”. 

“I bet you liked that episode a lot,” Clara had said with a knowing laugh.

Actually, I sort of did not. The episode was indeed soapy, and by the time it had aired, when I was in the vicinity of the sixth grade, I was already watching soap operas for a long time. But I didn’t like soap operatic elements creeping into Star Trek. It just seemed out of place — although I did like that episode’s explanation that a ghost could in fact be an alien. There was something comforting about how Star Trek provided knowledge into those kinds of mysteries, even though it was pretend science fiction knowledge. I still daydream that the reason why I write these letters is because this life is an echo of a life in some alternate universe where you and I are, in fact, together.

I won’t spoil Star Trek Into Darkness, in case you want to see it, which I think you should even if you aren’t remotely a Trekkie. It’s just a damned good action movie. With heart. The Star Trek franchise has never been good at writing love between its characters. Hello, Doctor Crusher falling in love with a ghost? Er, an aniphasic life form. Whatever.

But there were moments when Into Darkness was so good, in all of its action and adventure and, yes, love, that when a shocking moment happened and Clara and I would lock arms, there was a corner of my otherwise grateful heart that was saddened I was not in that movie theatre locking arms with a man I loved.

There are many things about adulthood that I find belatedly shocking. Whereas others have long since experienced these coming of age revelations, I feel as they are only dawning on me at the too-late age of 31. One issue that’s really getting to me is time management. I’ve been trying to be good at it but in the last couple of weeks I have had to confront the glaring problem of being overextended. I have had to make cancellations, and each time I would cancel my stomach felt like it was eating itself up with acid. I don’t like flaking on commitments but, as they say, live and learn. Parallel to the acidity in my stomach these last few weeks, I am living, and learning.

Sometimes I imagine that you and I had lived parallel childhoods, you in Washington and me in Maryland. Maybe we had a lot of similarities — but more than likely we did not. The reality is that you were playing a variety of sports, while I was reading a variety of books. I was watching soap operas, and as I sit here writing this today, the notion of you watching a soap opera seems foreign and baffling. More than likely you and I are entirely different creatures so pronounced in our separation that I imagine it would take just one conversation to reverse four years of letters and dreaming.

One of my best friends from childhood has lately been posting angrily pro-gun comments on his Facebook. I shouldn’t be surprised at this because he is a career Marine man. We are both military brats, and thanks to my upbringing alongside Pop’s career in the Navy, I have special respect for the American military to which I would not otherwise be privy. That being said, I am not someone who takes literally the right to bear arms. I think think that you should have the right to own guns — with restrictions. With necessary government oversight. American democracy was originally envisioned as a way to protect the people from themselves — the Founding Fathers knew that just because the people had the right to be heard didn’t mean that they would always be right. The issue of guns is a good example of where the government needs to protect the people from themselves. Sometimes I get very sad when my friend says he wants to move out of Maryland, where he has lived our whole lives not counting when he was away on duty, not for a change of scenery but because his belief in gun ownership is more than I could ever embrace for myself. It is a startling thing for me to comprehend this difference in adulthood that I could not have imagined in childhood.

Another experience in adulthood that recently/belatedly opens my eyes is something simple like going to the movies. When I took the day off yesterday for the evening showing of Into Darkness, it was so that I could spend the whole day with Clara reliving favorite Star Trek episodes and, of course, watching the 2009 movie again as the last thing we watched before leaving the house. My original vision for that day also included eating very bad foods — the very kinds of very bad foods that I found myself eating as a kid whenever there was a new episode of Star Trek on TV or when I was at the theatre watching a new Star Trek movie: popcorn, pizza, sodas, high-fat and full-flavor ice cream. You name it, I was snacking on it. Also, I am not exaggerating when I say that there was pizza involved: I don’t have to think too long to find myself reminiscing about those Wednesday nights when I would gather in front of UPN with a pie of Tombstone fresh from the oven. Yes, I could eat the entire pie in an hour.

My plan to order a pizza for the day was canceled the night before when I came home from work and Clara and her fiance had already ordered from Domino’s. Until I woke up the next morning, I was still set on reliving my childhood and ordering a pizza anyway, all to myself, but I ended up getting a fish burrito instead. At the movie theatre, instead of a buttery tub of extra large popcorn from the concession stand, I got a box of Crunch N Munch at Target that was half the price and probably half the terrible nutrition as well. I wanted to get soda, too, but at Target the only singles they had for sale all had caffeine: Coke, Diet Coke, and even Coke Zero, to which I have lately taken a liking. I was not in the mood for any of the caffeine-free sodas, and the movie was going to get out at about ten, so I would need to fall asleep fast if I wanted to get up early to resume the unavoidable reality of real life. I got water.

But the chance to relive simpler times wasn’t a total loss: I like Crunch N Munch today because it was always Ma’s favorite snack when we watched General Hospital together.

Joe

7:30am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLyl6h7It
Filed under: Star Trek Into Darkness Sex and the City Bliss - Kissing General Hospital Jadzia Dax anaphasic life form Beverly Crusher Sub Rosa science fiction sci-fi LGBTQ Tim Lincecum long reads military guns politics adulthood movies democracy government UPN 
May 12, 2013

066.0: Signature.

Dear Linc,

I know that today is a problematic day for you. Ever since I first read in some article a few years ago about your feelings about your mom, I haven’t read much else about the matter. Maybe you haven’t given it much thought — baseball players, after all, are supposed to remain focused on baseball, at least during the regular season, and who knows what you think about during the rest of the year.

I wonder if the image of goofy aloofness that you project so skillfully conceals a racing mind. Supposedly, Geminis are known for that sort of thing. I recently blew a couple of bucks on some astrology book that I’ve been reading at work during idle moments. I had finally decided to buy it because no one else was, possibly because of the crease in the spine that I was at least partly responsible for creating from of my repeated perusal.

Astrology is not something that I “believe” in, per se, but I think it’s fun, and sometimes it is inspiring to think that the predictions and descriptions apply just to me, or at least people like me. The book says that you, as a Gemini, have a mind that is constantly racing. Your mind is always thinking about something, or about many various somethings, and this I found amusing because the image that you project is so convincing that, quite frankly, I would be a little surprised to know you are consumed by anything existential…

Aries are supposed to be leaders. I’ve never seen myself as a leader. I have always thought of myself as more of a helper but whenever I’ve consulted a second, third, and fourth pair of eyes about my resume, I am consistently told that I need to project myself as taking the lead. This is apparently what works in the workforce.

A couple of letters ago, I mentioned that I’ve been using social media to help guide me along my career. To tell you the truth, the idea of what I want to do with my life has crystallized only within the last couple of years. As I’ve mentioned before in other letters, becoming a fan of baseball really helped with that. I’ve spent my whole life thinking that I want to become a published author, and even though I would still like that someday, something else has entered the picture, some other goal that consists of my own interests and goals while aligning with Pop and Ma’s own hopes for me and, ultimately, the realities and practicalities demanded of the world.

It hasn’t been an easy thing to do, Linc. These kinds of revelations have been happening to me all of my life — I become consumed with something that I want to do, and then I do it until I can’t anymore, like writing. And then I am forced to try something new.

Hopefully this something sticks and, you know, the thing is that I think it will. I think I’m lucky this time: being consumed with something that I want to do, and being at a point in my life where my own interests are in such wonderful alignment with the rest of the world. Stubbornly, I’ve played a kind of lone wolf all these years. It’s romantic… in youth. And when youth ends, I think, the rest of your life can begin.

So now I am on this human resources kick. It’s what I want to study now that I am in business school. It’s the kind of internship or low-level starter job that I want to have while I am in business school. It’s the kind of career that I want to have in the near future. 

I am not entirely certain why human resources took so long to come to mind. Maybe I just needed to endure the natural progression of the years to understand that all of my work in customer service and admin assistance in tandem with this indefatigable and seemingly congenital drive to get along with so many different kinds of people was all meant to crystallize into human resources. Also, there is a concentration on public policy available at my school and when I think about declaring that concentration, my chest soars with expectation. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the politics of labor…

I don’t know why I am telling you all of this. I don’t really know why I have spent the last four years telling you a lot of This. You will notice that I have dispensed of “never-to-be-sent” and referred to these things as, finally, just letters. When I started Baseball 2.0, the conceit was that it would be a blog of unsent letters to you written as a public and living memoir — or, put more simply, a regular ol’ blog where I write about my days and other various #firstworld idiosyncrasies that are stylized, perhaps presumptuously, as letters. Never-to-be-sents. Whatever. They’re letters, and even though I keep saying out loud that I know you will never read them, anyone who reads them knows that I feel differently in the privacy of my heart.

It has been an undertaking with a presence in my life significant enough that I’ve included it as part of my repertoire. That’s kind of a risky move. The field of human resources is necessarily conventional — there are policies with which to comply, standards to uphold, all of it constructed upon a firm ground of trust and good character. My background as a writer could, justifiably, be called into question. But that’s part of policy, and politics: explaining yourself.

Do you have a resume, Linc? Let me be straight with you. (Har har har. If this were an episode of The Golden Girls, at this moment I would have glanced at an ajar angle toward the frame of the scene and ever-so-subtly away from the audience as kind of snarky self-referential acknowledgement of the hilarity of my saying “let me be straight”.)

Anyway, you should consider having a resume. You should have a follow-up plan. Baseball history has shown that when a player’s career comes to an end, his options are limited. Some are lucky enough to put their college education, if they have one, to good use. Many end up finding other kinds of work in baseball or, sadly, pursuing questionable business schemes. Unless you’ve developed a forecast in which you’ve budgeted all of your millions of dollars so that you can basically give yourself a paycheck on a regular basis if this baseball thing ends up having to come to an end, you’ll have to go into something else. Have you ever thought of doing anything with your life outside of sports? In response to that question, I find myself amusingly thinking of the SportsCenter commercial where you’re sitting at a desk awkwardly trying to use a computer mouse. Maybe you do think about stuff like this. That’s what Geminis are supposed to do. Who knows.

Joe

10:04am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLykqIr5N
Filed under: LGBTQ long reads Mothers Day Diana Krall Love Letters Gemini Aries astrology Sydney Omarr human resources labor policy baseball school business college sports Tim Lincecum 
May 11, 2013
067.0: Lips.

Dear Linc,

No one is the exclusive conduit of God’s charter; many claim to be the one true messenger, but even the Bible has not stars but multiple co-stars upon a stage of prophets and soothsayers. Still, I’m amused at how often God leads me to Safeway for good times.

Years ago, when I was in the earliest of my twenties, and success was still a dream that didn’t require work just yet, Spencer and I were making a late night run — as one does in one’s early twenties — to Safeway after a non-getting-high attack of the munchies. When we got to the Safeway closest to where I lived at the time, which was on the outskirts of Robin Williams’s tony neighborhood, there wasn’t much going on inside. It was a 24-hour Safeway, so there were transients with dogs (why do transients always have dogs?) who were hunting for beer and evading the wary eyes of the night watchmen. There were few patrons like Spencer and I — patrons who were not high, nor transient, but were just out late getting a snack because they were hungry, or had to run some errand that suddenly came to mind.

I followed Spencer to the dairy section. We were both in low-key outfits headlined by sweats and flops. The chill of the refrigerators gave me a start. We were young and I felt carefree, immature. Spencer stopped at the display of yogurts.

“Are you going to get some for your yeast infection?” I said, with deliberate volume.

Today I’m still overweight but back then there was quite a bit of me to go around. After Spencer performed the customary widening of her eyes in horror, her arm was like a torpedo propelled in trajectory for one of my man-boobs. My reaction time had the quickness of instinct, and in that moment not only was I attempting to slap her away, but I had also noticed that a woman standing very nearby had, while innocently holding a shopping basket and giving thoughtful perusal to the yogurt display, overheard what I said and glanced our way with a bemused look. But I insisted.

“I heard yogurt helps,” I continued, quaking with laughter.

“I’ll help you,” Spencer countered, but she was laughing, too. “Come here!”

I slid backward, not out of defense, but because my flops didn’t work so well over the floor, which was in the middle stages of receiving its nightly mop job. After the space that opened up between us, I took off and Spencer quickly chased after me.

“Come here!” she said through a cackle of eerily convincing witchiness. And then: “I’ll get you, my pretty! And your nipple, too!”

“DON’T TOUCH ME WITH YOUR YEAST INFECTION!”

A dog barked. I could feel the stare of a transient as we raced through the potato chips aisle, which was also the beer aisle. Eventually I took shelter in a checkout line even though I didn’t have anything to check out. I was panting, out of breath from youthful thrills and being out of shape, as I tried to compose myself in line so as not to alarm the others in front of me. But then Spencer was behind me and relentlessly slapping my arm, my shoulders, and she tried to pinch my man-boobs again but I wouldn’t let her. 

The others in the line ignored our light fighting and we might have continued like that if the cashier hadn’t started giggling at us to such a degree that we decided to cool it. Also, at some point during our chase, Spencer had in fact picked up a carton of yogurt. As she handed it to the cashier, I said helpfully, “It’s for her yeast infection.”

The cashier gasped.

I yelped as Spencer finally made contact with a man-boob.

“That’s what you get!” said one of the watchmen.

I stared in disbelief at him because he was at the entrance, which seemed to me a significant distance from the register. And then he was walking up to us!

“You cannot put a lady’s business out there like that, man,” he scolded, shaking his head even as he grunted in laughter. 

“You had it coming,” the cashier agreed. And then: “Did you put in your Club Card number?”

I turned to Spencer and feigned innocence: “Did you put in your Club Card number?”

“No!” she cried, and then proceeded to enter her phone number into the pinpad.

“You should put him in the doghouse,” the watchman suggested.

“Oh, he’s a dog, all right,” Spencer agreed.

I was staring at the floor, trying to hold in another wave of laughter.

Yesterday, my shift didn’t start until 6 in the afternoon because I wasn’t actually working at the store but at an off-site evening event. I had lunch with Spencer to catch up on this and that. Afterward, we didn’t know what to do for the rest of the afternoon until I casually mentioned that I was running low on toilet paper, which somehow reminded Spencer that she wanted to browse for lamb because of a new recipe she’d been meaning to try. Safeway it was.

I don’t know if you ever had to worry about the challenges of living on a tight budget before you made it to the Big Show, but when I am doing something like, say, shopping for toilet paper, it takes me a while because I am comparing prices, quality, brand, how much paper is actually on each roll. Is it two-ply? What’s the texture? I want to get the most for my money, even if it is for something like toilet paper. 

“I didn’t find any good cuts,” Spencer said with disappointment, suddenly at my side. We had gone our separate ways and now I was a few minutes into my deliberation about toilet paper.

Suddenly, I started a cough that for a while did not seem like it would stop.

“You okay?” Spencer asked, her voice soft with concern.

“Yeah,” I said, and then I cleared my throat. “I just forgot to take my Dulera this morning.”

“Oh shit.”

I gave her an assured grin and tapped my pocket. “Don’t worry. I have my rescue inhaler.”

“But that’s only for emergencies. You should use your Dulera.” And then she slapped me. All of our adult lives, she has been slapping me, or pinching me, but mostly laughing with me.

“If I start gasping for breath, I want you to call AT&T Park,” I said.

She groaned. “No, Joseph.”

But I ignored her. “Ask for Tim Lincecum.”

“They’ll put me on hold, Joe. They’ll play middle-of-the-road hits from the early 80s and by the time someone answers, you’ll probably be dead from lung collapse and even then the person who answers will just tell me that Tim is unavailable to take my call right now.”

“I don’t mind a little Bread playing while I make my last, dying gasp.”

Spencer shook her head. “Why can’t I just call 911?”

“Because only Tim Lincecum’s lips can save me.”

“You are very insane.”

“That may be true, but it’s a proven scientific fact that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is only effective when Tim Lincecum’s mouth is pressed against mine.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Are you gonna look for yogurt?”

“Come here!”

Joe


11:49am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzzsLyklH1QP
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Tim Lincecum Make It With You Bread LGBTQ Dulera asthma ATT Park long reads 
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