The View From the Cheap Seats

Note: Sports column alert! This may put the non-sports fans in a state of slumber, and is also being posted on The Sports Nut.

Time for a semi-regular view from where the real fans sit, and since the actual cheap seats ain’t so cheap anymore, I’m talking about the ultimate cheap seats, the broken down and well worn family recliner, or in my case, my comfy chair at Starbucks. The coffee isn’t so cheap, but it’s darn good, and the chair is free. So what is up in the wonderful wide world of sports these days?

For starters, Manny is a complete arse. For those who may not recognize a pompous arse by first name only, I am referring to Manny Ramirez, the RBI machine who has toiled for mere multi-millions for the last eight or so years with the Boston Red Sox. While there can be no doubt that Manny is a prolific run producer, which is what it’s all about for an offensive player in baseball, scoring them and driving them in, and while he is also no doubt a first ballot hall of famer, he is also a first class jerk and a malcontent. The jerk was evident in his recent physical abuse of a clubhouse attendant, the malcontent arises often, and the latest is his quest for mental peace and his little backhanded slap at Bosox fans. See, Manny thinks that you fans are just a bunch of dumb sheep that do and believe whatever the team and media wants you to. The Red Sox have turned the fans against other fellow star players, and Manny doesn’t want to be the latest victim. I’ve got a mental piece for you Manny, fans aren’t so dumb, even the ones who hail from the right coast that I semi-affectionately like to refer to as east coast monkeys due to their ape like passion for their teams. Fans turn on a player when he becomes blatantly disloyal, or when he fails to show up for work and hustle, or when he stops producing. Clearly Manny still produces, but his disloyalty and constant trade demands may finally turn fans sour on him, just as it did with Alex Rodriguez who was pretty well liked before he bailed out on the Seattle Mariners for a huge payout in Texas, or Mike Piazza, who engineered his way out of LA when 90 million just wasn’t enough to satisfy his enormous ego. Likewise for Scotty Pippen when he refused to put his shoes back on and come in at the end of a game when his number wasn’t going to be called, or Randy Moss when he declared that he only plays when he feels like it. Granted these guys to a large degree were able to rehabilitate their damaged reputations, but the real fans in the cheap seats don’t forget a slight.

You see, those of us who actually work for a living, bust our tails every day, play by the rules in our lives, don’t hold out for more money or otherwise shirk from our duties because of real or perceived slights from our bosses, we don’t take too kindly to all this nonsense about respect and mental peace and getting paid what you are worth. To us, just being able to play a kid’s game well into your 30’s is reward enough, and getting paid at all for it, let alone outrageous sums that allow you to take care of yourself and your family for the rest of time just puts icing on the cake life you already live. That’s why we dislike players who don’t seem to appreciate what they have and who act with a sense of entitlement, such as Barry Bonds, who is arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived, yet who will never hold the spot in fan’s hearts that Cal Ripken does. It’s why fans got so fired up back in the magical summer of 1998, before we became obsessed with steroids, when Sosa and McGuire were battling for the home run record. Those two guys seemed like they were enjoying the pursuit, that they got it and we could enjoy their battle vicariously through them. If A-Rod were to go on a similar pursuit now it would be hard to get as excited, the guy just seems to be a phony, and more concerned about his bank account and his image than just being about the love of the game. Pure, unadulterated love of the game is why Brett Favre is a legend in our hearts and minds, when you watch the guy play you can imagine that is how you and your buddies would be if you only had the chance. Same for my all-time favorite athlete, Magic Johnson, whose infectious smile and genuine love of the game of basketball came through every time he stepped onto the court at the Fabulous Forum back in the glory days of Showtime.

As it turns out then, fans actually do think for themselves, and don’t just go along with what the teams or press wants us to go along with, and we do usually reward the good guys and shun the bad guys. Guys like Manny and his ilk will never get it, and thankfully guys like Phil Mickelson do get it, and fans will always appreciate their efforts, even when they fall short. Think about it, Ripken won a total of one World Series with the Orioles, and Favre led the Packers to one Super Bowl title, Mickelson’s failures outnumber his successes in majors, Charles Barkley never won a title, yet all of these athletes hold a special place in the cheap seats hall of fame. Bonds and A-Rod may well end up one-two in all-time home runs, Manny surely will rank among the top RBI guys in history, Roger Clemens will go down as arguably the greatest power pitcher ever, but none of them will get the adulation and accolades that their on-field accomplishments would suggest, for the simple reason that their behavior and the way they carried themselves turned people off.

Well, it’s time for my free refill, so this will have to be a wrap from the cheap seats for today. But fear not sports fans, the view will be back, with opinions and observations on the upcoming Olympic Games, the breathlessly awaited and eagerly anticipated X-games, the shaping up of the baseball pennant races, and of course, much ado about football, college and pro, including my Pac-10 predictions. Here’s a hint, I’m picking a certain pigskin powerhouse to win their seventh straight conference championship, but I’ve got a couple perennial contenders dropping into the second division, and a couple of also-rans climbing into the upper half of the conference. Until we meet again, may the victories be sweet, may the beers be ice cold, the picture crystal clear and highly defined, the remote always close at hand, and may the good guys get the W when it’s all said and done.

Give Me A Break

I am trying something new with today’s column, and that is an attempt at brevity, as I was taught by my 9th grade English teacher Mr. Towle, that brevity is the soul of wit. I was taught a lot of things by Mr. Towle, which might have to be the topic of another column someday, come to think of it. He taught us that less is more, and since I figured he was referring to our English homework, I was all for it. So I will be attempting to limit this column to 1000 words and in honor of the U2 song “40” I will try to write it in under 40 minutes. When I saw U2 back in 1987 at the LA Sports Arena on their Joshua Tree tour, they ended their show with the aforementioned song, explaining that they needed one more song for their album at one point, and they had 40 minutes of studio time so they recorded it and the rest is history. The refrain is “I will sing a new song” so with that in mind, I will write a new column.

The actual topic for today is things that make you say; give me a break, in the spirit of the pieces that John Stoessel used to do on 20/20. For all I know he still does them as I haven’t watched that show in quite some time, Stone Phillips and the ubiquitous Dateline show have ruined all such primetime news shows for me, but regardless since I am ripping off from Stoessel I figured it would be the decent thing to at least acknowledge him.

Let’s start with the exorbitant salaries that pro athletes make. It is ridiculous that many of these people who supposedly went to college can barely string together two sentences using proper English, and with a few noted exceptions seem to be unappreciative and arrogant jerks, yet they still make the kind of money that they do and receive such adulation. But to add insult to injury, they determine that their crazy salaries are not enough when compared to the other crazy salaries being handed out to their teammates or competitors at similar positions. Give me a break! Two people come to mind at the moment, one being Anquan Boldin, a solid wide out with the Arizona Cardinals who has decided that his teammate Larry Fitzgerald, their other wide out, is being ridiculously overpaid so he wants the same deal. Never mind that the average fan of your perennial losing team can’t even afford the nosebleed seats in the new state of the art taxpayer funded stadium, you go get paid Anquan, because what an injustice it would be for you to have to give your labor for mere millions when you can get even more. The other joker in the current deck is a second year running back for the Green Bay Packers named Ryan Grant. The guy has a decent rookie year and then decided to hold out of camp for mo’ money. Show me the money is the mantra, I say show these bums a real job and a 40 plus hour workweek 50 weeks a year making barely enough to pay the bills. Way to pay your dues and earn your status Ryan Grant, while I’d like to see the Pack bring back Favre, I hope they let this clown go and bring in the next guy, tailback is one of the most overrated positions in football anyways, a good running game depends mostly on a quality offensive line and a passing game that can keep defenses honest. Unless your name is Barry, Emmitt, Marcus, or LaDanlian, you just aren’t that special.

While we’re on the topic of sports, can we stop with all the talk of long suffering Cubs fans? Give me a break! So your team stinks year after year, big deal. First off, a lot of fans have teams that stink year after year, only they don’t get all the accolades for being such loyal and suffering fans. Granted, one hundred years is a long time to go without winning a World Series, but when is the last time that fans of the Kansas City Royals or Pittsburgh Pirates have had much to cheer about, and nobody celebrates them. Heck, even once proud franchises such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles haven’t won a championship in over a generation now. The San Francisco Giants haven’t won the Series since the 50’s, nor have the Cleveland Indians. So the point here is that fans of the boys from Chicago’s north side are not alone in their suffering. And while we’re at it, let’s not be so liberal with use of the term suffering. The Irish suffered for a thousand years under the rule of the English, Black slaves suffered for hundreds of years under slavery in America and elsewhere, people in Darfur continue to suffer at the hands of their own government while the world does little. Cubs fans going another year without getting to celebrate a World Series title is not exactly in the same ballpark.

Lest you think the silly season is unique to the world of sports, let’s get to some of the non-athletic related absurdities. How about people bringing babies to movies? I’m not talking about the Lion King or the latest Disney flick either, we’re sitting in the theater the other day, getting ready for the start of The Dark Knight, which was one hell of a movie by the way, and in comes a young gal with her baby. Give me a break! If you can’t get a sitter then stay at home, when I go to an adult movie the last thing I want to hear is a baby fussing and crying. Some people need to recognize the concept that when you have a baby there are certain things you have to give up for awhile. Of course since many of these girls having babies these days are kids themselves; I suppose it would be up to their parents to apprise them of this hard fact of life.

Now take tattoos, or as they are now known as, body art. Please. I’m from the old school, where tattoos are for soldiers and longshoreman, earrings are for women, and when you go out in public you adopt just a bit of modesty when it comes to how much skin you show and how far out you let your boobs hang. It seems as if every person, male and female alike, under the age of 30 has a tattoo, err, body art, and since they are showing more skin than ever, we all get to see their designs up close and personal. Give me a break! And while we’re at it, unless you are actually a porn star or director, what’s with all the Skin Magazine paraphernalia? I’m not even sure what Skin is, if it’s a magazine, a website, a pay-per view channel in the 500’s on digital cable, but whatever it is it seems silly and certainly inappropriate to advertise in polite society. When does it end? Will alcoholics start wearing Jack Daniels shirts, stoners start wearing Zig Zag shirts, and wife beaters start wearing, well, you get the picture.

In the interest of brevity and wit and all that other good stuff I mentioned way back when, I’ll rap up with a laundry list of give me a break items. Four dollar hot chocolates at Starbucks. Four dollars for a gallon of gas. Four dollars for a gallon of milk. The U.S. Congress. The Republican Party. The Democratic Party. Bill O’Reilly. Keith Olbermann. Four out of five radio stations in the desert in between Phoenix and LA being in Spanish. Living in a city where 110 degrees in the summer is the norm. Amy Winehouse. Brittany Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. People who still drive around with W stickers on their vehicles. People who think Barack Obama is a Muslim because his middle name is Hussein. My middle name is David but it doesn’t make me a Jew or a king. Hummers, Ford Expeditions and Chevy Suburbans with new plates and stickers that say support the troops. Envrio-fascists and Global Warmists. Sherriff Joe Arpaio. Charging 85 dollars a pop for a 20 year high school reunion. Give me a stinkin’ break!

Last but not least on the list, is the notion that I can write a column in under 1000 words and in less than 40 minutes, although to my credit I am coming in right around 1500 and 60, so I’m not too far off. I would tell Mr. Towle that I tried at least when I see him at the big reunion later this year, only with the price of gas and the high cost of the tickets, I won’t be going to my reunion. Maybe by the time that the 25 year comes around things will be less out of whack, or I’ll somehow have money to burn. If not that’s alright, I can still write my columns and enjoy my life no matter how screwy the rest of the planet is around me, and that is indeed a beautiful thing.

It's All About the Pigskin

Please note that this same article has also been posted on The Sports Nut.

Alright sports fans, time to buckle up the chin straps, slip on the pads, and get your mouthpieces in. That’s right, the long awaited and much anticipated 2008 football season is nearly upon us. So it’s still over a month away, it’s close enough that we can start measuring the time until opening kickoff in weeks not months, and that is cause for any red blooded American male, not to mention a growing number of females, to get excited. In less than six weeks we will be spending our Sunday mornings prepping for the National Football League, and in less than five we will be waking up on Saturday mornings to Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso on ESPN getting us ready for the day’s college gridiron action. From Corso’s “not so fast my friend” to Boomer’s “he could go all the way” we are in for another great college and pro football season, and weekends will once again be full of life and meaning and relevance. Get your yard work done over the next few weekends, because come September the yard goes dormant, the pool gets dirty, and the garage will remain in its present state until the bye week in late January.

There is no sport that is as classic Americana as football. Once upon a time baseball was our national pastime. It represented who we were as a nation in the early to mid 20th century, rural, pastoral, easy going and slow moving. It’s rhythms and cadence was in sync with the national populace for the first half of what has been termed the American Century, and I’m not referring to the sponsor of the celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, but to the century during which America became first a player on the international scene, then one of the two major superpowers of the world, and finished as the undisputed heavyweight champ in terms of politics, military power, and economic might. As we have grown into a more urban and industrial power, a process which began in earnest after the Second World War and had pretty much been accomplished by the start of the 1960’s, we have changed our pace and tempo. We became much more aggressive, much more dominant in the world, and much more militaristic. We also became a nation defined not so much by baseball, and the other big sports of the first half of the century, boxing and horse racing, and became a nation that embraced the passion and controlled violence of football, along with the other dominant sports of the day, basketball and NASCAR. But make no mistake, while baseball remains a big deal in our culture and sports landscape, and while basketball has become arguably the second most popular pastime with those under the age of 40, football is king.

Football is the perfect blend of brute strength, flash and finesse, incredible stamina, with strong doses of intelligence and creativity. There is something beautiful and symmetric about a march down the field that starts at the 20 yard line, a few runs up the middle, some short swing passes out to the flat, a big completion over the middle for first down on 3rd and 8 at midfield to keep the drive alive, an exciting cut back 12 yard run on 1st and 10, a precision strike 20 yards down field to get into scoring range, a big push by the offensive line and a fullback plowing ahead for a first down on 3rd and 1, and the finish, the touchdown pass, catch, and run, the ball breaking the plain of the goal line and the home crowd going crazy as six points are registered on the big board.

We hold the head coach and his lieutenants in the highest intellectual esteem, we throw around terms like creative genius to describe men in gray sweatshirts who spend most of their waking hours holed up in their coaching bunkers, watching game film and plotting strategy like military generals. Those who do it well are heralded and regaled by the public, those who don’t succeed are ridiculed and pushed to the boiling point by fans and media alike, until they are put on the next train out of town, only to resurface in some new outpost with a new crew and fresh hope. We marvel at the physical dexterity of the skill position players, the prima donna ballerina wide outs, the dashing and daring running backs, the highway bandits known as defensive backs. We stand in awe at the ferocity of linebackers and defensive lineman who get us slobbering on our chicken wings and spitting out our beer when they jack someone up. We are amazed at the sheer size and strength of offensive lineman, enormous men in excess of 300 pounds who can nonetheless move with a measure of grace and fluidity as they open holes and keep would be assassins away from their quarterback. We cringe at kickers the way we do when we see that certain neighbor that we would rather avoid, but we love them when they work their magic. And quarterbacks, ahh quarterbacks. They are the gunslingers of the modern era, the dashing leading men admired by men and women alike, the fearless leaders who ride in from the sideline on their white horse and take us to the Promised Land. We love them and hate them, cheer them and curse them, name our sons after them, my own son is named Jake, in part for my favorite Arizona State QB, Jake Plummer, and follow their moves like heads of state. In fact the only person getting more publicity and media coverage right now than Brett Favre is probably Barack Obama.

Some of us prefer the pros on Sundays, others are more partial to the collegians on Saturdays, and others like me are equally enamored of both, although I must profess a slight partiality to the pro game. Each has its own unique qualities and advantages. While the professionals are undoubtedly the more physical and more skilled, and while pro teams represent the passion and hopes of their respective cities, there is nothing quite like the raw emotion of rooting for your favorite college team, be they your alma mater or the team that portrays your home state in a positive or negative light. There is nothing quite like the intensity of the great college rivalries, the closest thing to civil war that we have had since the Yanks and Rebs squared off for keeps. There is nothing that matches the anticipation of the weekend’s upcoming games, making predictions, breaking down the matchups, analyzing the point spreads, and setting fantasy rosters. When the smorgasbord comes to a conclusion with the final gun on Monday night, we go to bed exhausted but with smiles on our faces, knowing that after a couple days to recover and occupy ourselves with the rest of our lives, it will be time to start breaking down and looking forward to the next weekend’s slate of action.

So get the chores done, the errands run, and the long term projects completed. Take the family trips, spend some quality time with the wife, and write some letters to the in-laws. Watch some more baseball, enjoy the upcoming Olympic Games in smog choked China. Then get your hats on and bust out the jerseys, fly the flags and stock up on beer, meats that lend themselves to the grill, and anything and everything with cheese in it, and I’m not talking about those goofy foam hats either. Only four more Saturdays and five more Sundays without our beloved pigskin on the tube, and in our hearts and minds. Then the air gets clearer, the views get sharper, especially if you have high def, the food tastes better and the world gets more interesting. May your college team make a run for the roses, or your bowl of choice, and may your pro team be playing well into January. Here’s to another great football season, enjoy it while it’s here, because before you know it, it will be February and we’ll be suffering from the post Super Bowl blues and wondering how we will ever occupy our time for the next seven months. But for now, that is light years away, and life starts anew in just a few short weeks. Then it will once again, be all about the pigskin.

Just Say No

I am not referring here to drugs, or was it sex, that Nancy Reagan was telling the youth of America to abstain from back when I was one of those youth in the 1980’s, although I have come to the conclusion that both are vastly overrated in our popular culture, which sells the notion of using both without consequences and which can both lead to addictive and destructive behavior if used without morality. What I am saying no to, and encouraging all other consumers to do likewise, is ridiculously priced items that are constantly marketed and peddled to us, items ranging from tickets to ballgames, certain foods at the grocery stores, to the enormous amounts of money that our Congress and President feel fit to spend on our behalf for wars we don’t support and for welfare to the very same corporations that are charging us outrageous prices in the first place, or as in the case of the mortgage industry, selling us snake oil in the form of unrealistic home loans.

Let’s get one thing straight, we as consumers are complicit in all of this, the last example of the mortgage broker snake oil is a readily available case in point. I saw one of those feel sympathy for the poor victim pieces you so often see on the news channels the other day about a lady who was being evicted from her home, the typical foreclosure story that everyone by now is aware of. The only problem with jumping on the sympathy train was that here was a single mom, making a respectable 50,000 dollars per year, who bought a house worth over 560,000 dollars. There is a serious disconnect here between reality and fantasy land. Who in their right mind thinks they can afford a house worth over ten times their annual salary? The expression that comes to mind, which describes not only this consumer but our consumer oriented society in general, is having champagne tastes while living on a beer budget. Put aside for the moment that a quality brew is infinitely better than some overpriced and overrated French wine, the point is that we have allowed ourselves to live well beyond our means, and it is finally about to catch up with us.

I say about to catch up with us because we are still living in denial, as is evidenced by a trip to the local shopping mall, restaurant row, or movie theatre complex, not to mention the drive there with all the big monster gas guzzlers still clogging our roads. Apparently many Americans think this current recession is just a blip on the radar screen, something that will be nothing more than a small bump in the road to unending economic prosperity and unlimited spending. Our national philosophy has become buy now, pay later, and then buy some more before the original payments even come due. While no one, including your humble correspondent, can predict the economic future, it seems to me as a longtime observer of such things that this is much more than a short term economic detour and more of a long term fundamental shift than many seem to realize. Gas prices do not seem likely to drop substantially for any prolonged period of time , and housing prices are unlikely to rebound strongly anytime soon, certainly not to the insane levels they were being driven to just a couple short years ago. Prices for basic commodities, many of them tied to oil prices due to transportation costs, such as food, are likely to stay at high levels, and energy prices don’t seem likely to drop substantially either. In addition to high gas, energy, and food prices, lower housing values, we have the fact that banks and lenders are sobering up from the Wall Street financed bender they went on during the first part of this decade and are tightening the availability of credit. Unable to apply for yet another credit card, or to open or extend their home equity lines, the middle class is quite simply tapped out. Prospects for increased income from work are bleak as well, as corporations are more focused on keeping shareholders and executives happy with dividends and immoral bonus packages designed to allow the rich to keep getting richer while the rest of us fight for the scraps left over at the table. Stock prices continue to dip, the Dow average which was humming around 14,000 at the height of the most recent period of irrational exuberance less than a year ago, is now sputtering along at around 11,000, a drop of over 20% in a relatively short period of time. As a result, corporations are losing paper valuation at a pretty steady rate. Since we live in a gilded age, where the executives and management at the top have little to no sense of responsibility and ethics for those that build and support the economic pyramid, it is highly unlikely that the fat cats in the corner offices will give up their share of the shrinking pie, which means that the rank and file workers in the cubicles will start losing their jobs. Once you throw unemployment into the mix, the shiite will really hit the fan, and it will be anything but a sunni day for the typical American consumer.

This gets me back to my original premise, which is that we as typical consumers need to draw a line in the sand and start saying no to outrageous prices for stuff we don’t really need to begin with. We can start with our federal government, and demand accountability from our Congress and our next President in how our tax dollars get spent. Recently the cabal that manages our shared resources decided to spend another 162 billion dollars on the war in Iraq and whatever else they presumably threw into this spending bill. While one side claims to be opposed to the war and the other side claims to be in favor of paying as we go, in the end both sides gave each other enough of what they wanted so as to allow for each to compromise on their principles and get the deal done. If this is what is meant by reaching across the aisle and achieving a bipartisan consensus I’ll take a pass on that notion. What’s another 162 billion you ask? In addition to being 540 dollars for each citizen, around the same amount as the recent stimulus checks meant to placate us by the way, it is a lot of money that could have been spent on desperately needed priorities such as failing schools, crumbling bridges, or a 300 year-old city in Louisiana that is still not rebuilt after nearly three years. Where was the coverage of this in the media, the so-called fourth estate that is supposed to serve as a watchdog of the government but is more inclined to cover the birth of celebrity twins or the latest Hollywood star to enter rehab? Where was the public outrage over this spending measure, and the countless other bills like it that allow the federal government to take our hard earned income and use it for whatever purposes they deem will allow them to continue to keep their jobs as overpaid public servants? As consumers and taxpayers we need to start following the money, as Woodward and Bernstein taught us, and start demanding accountability from our elected officials. If the people lead, the leaders will follow, and if we don’t then those in charge of our money will continue to spend recklessly on priorities that benefit those who ensure their perpetual reelection. We need to have our Senators and Representatives on speed dial, their email in our contact list, their websites in our favorites, and a handful of stamps nearby to write the occasional old-fashioned letter expressing our outrage and concern when necessary, and our approval when they do the right thing.

Another thing we can say no to is paying too much for stuff we don’t need to be paying too much for. We need to put gas in our tanks in order to get around, that is simply the reality of modern life, and while we can drive less and drive more fuel efficient vehicles, most of us are pretty well locked into the vehicles we drive and the commutes we must make. We also need electricity and water and food and internet access and high definition cable TV with DVR boxes. So one man’s luxury is another’s necessity, the point is that I’m not proposing we live a Spartan existence and give up all of life’s simple pleasures. Everyone obviously needs to decide for themselves what is and isn’t worthy of spending their hard earned money on, and those decisions are dictated by a number of factors, how much money you make, what your interests are, and what your family wants and what you wish to provide them with. For me, there are many things I would give up before the ability to record TV programs and store them on a hard drive and to watch ballgames in high def. What I have decided I won’t spend my money on however are outrageous prices to attend live sporting events.

Doing a little searching online the other day for ticket prices for the upcoming football season put me in a most sour mood, when I realized that exorbitant salaries being doled out to often unappreciative and undeserving professional athletes are having a direct impact on my ability to take my son to a ballgame once in awhile. Here are some sobering stats for you fantasy football players, which to me fantasy football is now referring to the dream that a middle class high school teacher can afford to attend one of these games in person to support the local team. Tickets to sit in the upper reaches of the new, taxpayer funded football stadium that the Arizona Cardinals call home are 70 to 80 bucks a pop. Multiply that times two, never mind by four if I wanted to take the whole family, and throw in the cost of gas, parking, 10 dollar beers for me and 8 dollar hot dogs for my boy, and you’ve got quite an expensive outing. Mind you, this isn’t to watch the defending champs or even a contender, this is the Arizona Cardinals we are talking about, a team that in its now 20 year history in the Valley of the Sun has managed a grand total of one winning season.

So I figured that with the price of pro football out of reach, I could always take my boy to see my alma mater, Arizona State play some football at my old stomping grounds on the ASU campus and Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. Surely tickets for college football, especially for a program that has only been to the Rose Bowl twice in nearly 30 years of Pac-10 play, and one that is trying to rebuild and compete for a fan base in what has become a pro sports town, surely they would offer reasonable prices for alumni and the general public alike. Think again average sports fan, not only is there no alumni discount for single game tickets, but the primo game of the non-conference season, against the highly ranked Georgia Bulldogs, is primo priced at over one and a half times the level of a regular conference game. 65 dollars to sit in the upper decks, and even 40 dollars to sit in the no longer appropriately named cheap seats for a conference game. I won’t pay, and don’t come crying to me ASU when the stadium is half filled with visiting Georgia fans who will pay these silly prices and make a desert vacation out of the deal. I’ll be watching the game on TV along with the rest of the fans who simply can’t or won’t pay.

Which gets to the point of just saying no. If enough of us consumers simply stop paying for tickets and restaurant meals and premium cable channels and magazine subscriptions and greens fees and so forth that are overpriced and overrated, perhaps the prices will eventually come down. The law of supply and demand dictates that such would be the case. Everybody has their own threshold and their own priorities, far be it from me to be some liberal Nazi telling other people how they should live their lives and shaming those who don’t go along with the party orthodoxy as the enviro-fascists and global warmists are wont to do. But here is my personal rule; I am calling it the 25 dollar rule. Quite simply, I am no longer willing to pay more than 25 bucks a pop for what I consider to be luxury items. That includes tickets to a ballgame, play, or a concert, green fees to play golf, a book, DVD, or CD collection, or takeout food. I will make exceptions as necessary, rules are made to be broken after all, but I will try to limit those exceptions to special occasions, a box set CD of the Grateful Dead or John Coltrane, and Ray’s Pizza. But to my way of thinking, if consumers just say no often enough and strongly enough, maybe things that are now out of whack will come back into line. Perhaps our government will stop spending like the proverbial drunken sailor on leave and will start to spend on priorities that will benefit ordinary middle and working class Americans rather than, and even at the expense of, the upper class. Maybe the price of certain food items, namely dairy products, cereal, and meat will come back down to earth, and possibly the price of going to a ballgame or playing a round of golf will not require us to bust the weekly budget. And if the law of supply and demand turns out not to work its magic, at least we will have gained some measure of fiscal discipline and a sense of control over our economic lives, not to mention that we might find some interesting alternatives to activities and products that we once thought we couldn’t do without.

The Three Kinds of Workout Dudes

Another idea that came to me on one of my morning runs, an advantage, perhaps depending on your point of view, of not running with an Ipod blaring in my ear. It gives you time to think, and if there is one thing I like to do, next to eating and sleeping, it's thinking. So I'm running down Pinnacle Peak Road, and on the other side rides one of those serious cycling dudes. How do I know he's serious? Because he's got the uniform, that's how, but more on that in a bit. So as a friendly guy and fellow athlete, I give the wave. In return I get nothing but the serious straight ahead look of serious cycling dude, so my wave turned into a bird, not that he noticed it because he was looking straight ahead and he was already by me, but it gave me pleasure, and I like pleasure. It wasn't the first time, that's the usual response I get from serious cycling dude, who I will now refer to simply as SCD. Lest you think it's just a bicycle thing, that they can't take their eyes off the road or their hands off the handlebars, a few minutes later a regular dude on a bike came by on the other side of the road, and he waved or nodded, proving once and for all that you can ride a bike and acknowledge the world at the same time.

So the way I see it there are three kinds of workout dudes, actually there are more but I'm not going to count the hefty dude with the dirty white cutoff tshirt that shows his hairy arms, man boobs, and the cotton shorts that gather unflatteringly up his stubby legs, who shows up at the gym once every six months, gets on the treadmill for 10 minutes with a newspaper and talks on his cell phone, then goes to McDonald's for a post work out meal. I'm limiting my observations to the workout dudes that actually workout.

First up is runner dude (RD). RD is a down to earth guy, the kind of guy who for some odd reason actually enjoys running, an activity that for most people is akin to getting their teeth pulled, or to pulling weeds, which by the way is what I would be doing right now if I wasn' t sitting here writing this. He drives a sedan or compact car with a minimum of 75,000 miles that makes noise so that you can always hear him driving up the road. So RD gets out of bed, puts on a pot of hot water for the tea or starts up the coffee pot, clears some dishes out of the sink so there's space to operate, drinks his morning cafeneited beverage, finds whatever clothes are laying around and most accessible, grabs his trusty and worn pair of $50 running shoes, stretches out, and hits the road. He is a salt of the earth kind of guy, pounding the pavement, breathing audibly, sweating through his shirt, and happy to be alive. He waves at anyone who might pass by, and feels good all day after his morning jaunt.

Next up is the aforementioned serious cycling dude (SCD). SCD is a pompous arse, the kind of guy that drives a Lexus or one of those 300 series BMW's that look just like a Saturn. He works in sales or some other soulless job, kisses backside all day long, then comes home and gives a half-hearted attempt at paying attention to his wife and kids, but is really thinking about how he can get on the 22 year-old blond with fake jugs at the office who flirts unconvincingly and wears clothes two sizes too small for respectable society. He gets up, puts his beans and water through his french press machine, and brews his specialty coffee that he ordered off of some website for $20 a pound. Then he grabs his $100 cycling uniform, which includes the stretchy pants that no grown man should really be getting into unless he's a professional ballet dancer with the body to prove it, his multi-colored shirt that says Zimano or something like it, his funny little pointy shoes and space man helmet. He gets on his $1500 bike and puts on his SCD face and off he goes. He's tired all day long because he stayed up too long last night on the Internet trying to hook up with 22 year-old blonds with fake jugs like the one at his office.

Last but not least is serious gym dude (SGD). SGD is here to pump, you up! He has 28 inch biceps, or whatever size is really ridiculous, I actually have no idea how big biceps are, but 28 inches sounds pretty impressive to me. He has a barrel chest, which is shaved by the way, same as SCD's legs, he can barely afford his rent, but he manages to afford the monthly wax job and the membership at the tanning salon, not to mention the subscription to Muscle Magazine. He drives a big truck, with stickers on the back window that say Skin and Tap Out, and also one of some half naked girl with a halo over her head, and another half naked girl with a devil horn. He gets up and goes to the fridge for his tall can of Red Bull, swigs it down, then makes a protein shake. He doesn't know who the two candidates for president are, but he can tell you all about the different types of proteins. Then he puts on his muscle shirt, the one that shows all the tattoos up and down his arms, oils up, does 10 sets of push ups so he's got a good pump going, and heads out to the gym. He spots some of his fellow SGD's, greets them with whatever he thinks cool black guys do, even though the cool black guys stopped doing it a long time ago as soon as they saw lame white guys doing it, and hits the free weights, which he proceeds to slam down to the ground with authority after his sets, and which he will not re-rack after he is done. After lifting for an inordinate amount of time, hitting all the major body parts, he goes to the cardio room, gets on the treadmill for 10 minutes, then goes to the snack bar for a 1200 calorie muscle milk and raw egg fruit smoothie, or something to that effect. It will increase the size of his biceps, but not as much as it will expand his already expanding midsection, but when you can bench press over 300 pounds you don't worry about things like an expanding midsection.

Well what about women you wonder, what about the different types of workout gals? That will have to wait for another column, but let's just say that women go through different stages, and by the time they reach their 40's they have hit near perfection, and it only gets better from there. I'll leave it at that for now, because I am feeling good, my metabolism is humming along, the knees are holding up, I've just finished my third and final cup of java, and I have avoided pulling weeds for yet another day. What more can you ask for?

Blog Update

I just wanted to touch base with my legions, or maybe scores, or perhaps dozens, or at least the handful of loyal readers of The Daily Grind (TDG). While I have only posted twice on TDG this month, I have not exactly been inactive, and no I didn't spill coffee on my keyboard again. For one thing I've started drinking green tea, but that's another story, I still drink my coffee too, I just try to keep it off to the side. I have however, started two new blogs, which I hope you will have the chance to visit, and as always comments are welcome and appreciated.

The first new blog to mention will be dealing with politics and current issues, it is called The Political Progressive (TPP) and can be found at http://thepoliticalprogressive.blogspot.com/.

The second blog will be dealing with the wonderful world of sports, and is called The Sports Nut (TSN) and can be found at http://sportsnut-nmark.blogspot.com/.

I will still be posting to The Daily Grind, and using it for pretty much everything else that isn't specifically about politics or sports. I am also more than happy to take requests on topics that anyone would like to have discussed. In addition to writing in the three blogs, I am working on a manuscript for a book about my life and my observations of the world we live in, titled Ordinary Average Guy, and I will be starting work on a manuscript for the novel I wrote about here recently, which I have tentatively titled The Fab Four. If anyone seems interested, I will try to post some excerpts from time to time from each of these on this site. I also hope to start posting work from these three blogs onto other blogs, but as a novice blog reader I am looking for ideas, so if anyone would like to suggest sites I should check out and submit to, I am very interested. Please leave a comment and I will get it in my email, if you would like me to respond directly please leave your email if I don't already have it. Of course those of you that I know personally can always shoot me an email or visit my Facebook page if that is easier. Thank you all for you support and your comments, I appreciate having you as readers, and will continue to do all I can to put out quality and hopefully thought provoking columns. Happy reading!
Mark

Happiness is a Warm Run

So you want to live in the desert? Many people do, Phoenix and Las Vegas are two of the fastest growing communities in a nation of fast-growing communities, an increasingly urban landscape that is projected to become even more so by the year 2050. The Sun Belt is where it’s at in terms of population, if you look at the top 10 American cities by population, you will find seven of them in the warm weather states of California, Arizona, and Texas. This doesn’t even take into account large metropolises such as Atlanta and Miami that are outside of the top 10. Only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia are cold-weather climes that have a population that put them into the most populated cities, and Philly, like Detroit before it, is falling fast and may not last at the top of the charts for more than another decade or so. What is it that attracts people to these warm climates?

For starters, the idea that you don’t have to brave cold winters, shovel snow off of walks and scrape the ice off of your windshield in the morning before heading to work or school. And as anyone who has ever spent time back east or in the upper Midwest in the summer can attest, the hot and humid summers there are no picnic either. The four seasons are often touted by people who still choose to live in such places as a reason for staying put, but as one who spent two years in Iowa, I can say that as nice as that aspect of life is, it’s also pretty overrated. The summers are hot and humid, the winters are just plain cold, the springs are full of rain, and the wind and crazy amounts of leaves in the fall are no bargain. You can’t beat the beauty of the changing of the colors to be sure, but I’m not much into doing yard work, and that doesn’t go over well in Iowa in the fall, when a couple weekends of laziness and watching football on TV can lead to a couple dozen trash bags full of leaves in your yard.

Why else do people move to the Sun Belt? I would imagine the laid back lifestyle has its appeal for many, not being tied to traditions and a certain social hierarchy that seems to be associated with older cities. A chance for a fresh start, to be able to make your own path free from that of your parents and grandparents holds a certain sway that appeals to our American sense of adventure and striking out on our own. The new slogan is probably more aptly, Go South Young Men and Women. Of course, the old folks have always been hip to the move south, kind of the human equivalent to birds flying south for the winter of their lives. Cost of living is also a plus, at least outside of the Golden State, you can move to Arizona, Texas, Georgia, or Florida and get a lot more value for you money in terms of a home and all the trappings of modern life. Newer communities also mean newer schools and neighborhoods, better shopping malls, more chain restaurants, and less decay and grime.

There are also some drawbacks, as with anything there are going to be tradeoffs. Let’s face it, the southeast has nasty humidity, the southwest has scorching summer heat, and Texas has the best of both worlds, especially Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city weighing in at over 2 million souls. Which brings me to the point of the article and the title of this column, the warm, or perhaps more accurately, sweltering runs that I take in these July mornings in the desert. Look, I am the first guy to complain about the heat of Phoenix from the middle of May through the middle of September, and sometimes well into October. Every summer I come up with a new fantasy place to live, past locales have included Flagstaff, which is up in the cool pines of northern Arizona, Bayfield, Wisconsin which is a little town I located once on a map that sits on the shores of Lake Superior in the northernmost reaches of the Badger state, and most recently La Plata, Argentina. La Plata is not too far from Buenos Aires, and being in the southern hemisphere would be the ideal place to spend a northern hemisphere summer. Other standbys include anywhere in the Sierras, Mammoth Lakes or June Lake would do just fine, because in fantasy summer home land housing prices and little things like making a living are not part of the equation. My wife and I will be driving up to Flagstaff this weekend to visit some friends who have a second home up there, and you can rest assured that the drive home will consist of us trying to figure out what in the world we can do to be able to afford a cabin up in the high country, a place where we could get away from the oppressive heat of the desert.

Back to reality however, finds me faced with the truth of the desert, which is that just as sure as the fall and winter will be beautiful with sunny mild days and cool and comfortable nights, the late spring and summer will be in a word, hot. It is just a fact of life, as immutable as the laws of physics and as unavoidable as political pandering in an election year. So you learn to deal with it, and even embrace the heat if you can, fantasy summer homes are one way, getting up and out early in the morning is another. Just as I made up my mind while living in Iowa that I wasn’t going to let the ridiculously cold winters stop me from running, and believe me, there were some early mornings where it was all I could do to get my legs moving and simply hope that I wouldn’t hit an icy patch of road where the early morning light was barely shining, I similarly have decided that the insanely hot summers of Arizona will not keep me indoors either.

Happiness comes from activity according to the wise ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He believed in balance and moderation, in achieving what he called the golden mean, which is the middle point between extremes. For instance, running 10K’s as opposed to sitting on the couch with a bag of hot cheetoh’s on one hand, or running a marathon on the other. Or drinking a couple glasses of wine or bottles of beer at night instead of being a teetotaler or a complete drunken lush. The idea of happiness coming from activity really appeals to me as well, because when you stop and think about what makes you feel good, it usually comes from being around and communicating with people you enjoy, and from doing things that make you feel good. A long hike in the desert or a walk along the beach, which of course becomes even more enjoyable when done with someone you enjoy. Reading a good book, taking a nice hot bath, watching a good movie or TV show, going to a ballgame, eating a good meal, drinking that glass or two of wine or knocking back a cold one, getting a good sweat going at the gym, going for a long drive up to the mountains, going to a play or concert, writing a letter or email, or a column, and going on a nice warm run in the heat of the desert morning. These are the things that make life worthwhile, that make all the stuff we have to do make sense. The more activities one does that give them pleasure, and the more good people that one surrounds themselves with, the less reliant we are on material things and money to provide happiness. The more we find true happiness the more we want to share it with others, and that only leads to a better world and to a more meaningful and fulfilling existence during the short time we have on it.

E Pluribus Unum

This is the unofficial or De facto motto of the United States, and appears on the Great Seal of the United States, which is used by the president and vice-president, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. It is also found on our coinage, and is Latin for Out of Many, One. Originally it is said to have referred to the consolidation of the original thirteen colonies into one nation, or united states, and has since come to refer to the merging and blending of many different cultures, races, and ethnicities into one nation of people, an American nation founded on principles such as liberty and justice for all, and on the notion of inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are a nation that proscribes on our Statue of Liberty that we welcome the tired, poor, and huddled masses from all corners of the world. We are described as a melting pot society, where as the slogan goes, many different elements blend into one. E Pluribus Unum.

At this point you might expect me to go into a tirade against bigots and racists who have abandoned such principles in an all-effort to keep out those who wish to join our great society. While there are certainly plenty of such people that deserve all the condemnation due to them, the Minutemen intent on vigilante justice on the Mexican border come readily to mind, this is not to be the purpose of this column. For there are also many forward thinking Americans, mostly free of racial prejudice and bigotry, who nonetheless see a problem and potential crisis brewing for our democracy, and who wish to come up with a humane, enforceable, and reasonable immigration policy that above all else protects our national interests.

That's right, national interests, and I bet you thought all liberals and progressives were pie in the sky internationalists who sneer down from their lattes at anyone who suggests nationalism and patriotism are anything to be encouraged. Well here's the news flash, just as not all conservatives are ignorant, jingoistic, NASCAR fans who drink cheap beer out of the can, not all liberals and progressives are smarmy, cosmopolitan, soccer fans who drink expensive hot chocolate out of a paper cup. While conservatives and liberals often disagree on issues of substance, there are many areas where with a little compromise and understanding, and yes even tolerance of the other side, areas of agreement can be arrived at. I truly believe that immigration reform is such an issue, and as with many of the important issues of the day such as health care reform, tax and spending policies, and foreign policy to name a few, this true spirit of compromise is not only warranted but absolutely necessary if we are to produce productive policy solutions to the problems that plague us.

Back to the motto, which suggests what we have historically, and ought to continue to strive towards. That being a society where many come together, and without selling out their individualism become part of something bigger than themselves. The notion of the common good must be revived if we are to get ourselves back to the garden, and back on the path laid out for us by our founders during the Age of Enlightenment, when America was founded with the idea that we would be a city on a hill, a shining example for the world to follow. While we are not at the point of a civil war, despite what the political pundits would have us believe with their red and blue maps, we are at a point where as President Lincoln stated in his famous Gettysburg Address, we are being tested whether a nation so conceived as ours can long endure. We have become a hyphenated America in many respects, and we run the danger, perhaps not in the next few years or even decades, but over time of becoming a fragmented society, one which loses its sense of purpose and for which the common good becomes increasingly replaced by individual and factional desires. These are the types of changes which occur gradually, but which once a tipping point is reached it becomes exceedingly difficult to return to the way things once were and should be.

The onus however is not solely on those citizens, native born as well as foreign born, to welcome those who wish to join our society. It is also incumbent upon those coming to our shores, or across our borders, to do their part, which means to become full-fledged members in the society which they have chosen to join. This means learning the language for starters, and embracing the culture and its people. While it is understandable that people would want to associate with those with whom they share a common heritage, and certainly throughout our history we have seen ethnic neighborhoods, it is not acceptable to come to America and then shun the very society which one is now a part of by refusing to adopt to the new home culture. This does not mean people should check their loyalties and native tongues at the door, but it is to say that the phrase, when in Rome, do as the Romans do applies.

Comprehensive reform starts with fixing the broken system of illegal immigration, which allows for employers and consumers to benefit from cheaper goods and services at the expense of the common good. It then continues with a reasonable solution for dealing with the millions and most likely tens of millions of Americans who are here without documentation, but who play a vital role in our society and who in many cases have been productive members of that society for years and even generations. Finally, we will have to make often difficult decisions regarding who and how many people we wish to allow into our country every year, because while immigrants do contribute to our economy as producers and consumers of products and services, they are also consumers of finite economic and natural resources. In an age of increasing worldwide population growth, much of it coming from the developing world, even the wealthiest and most developed country in that world does not have limitless resources and the ability to take care of everyone who wishes to be a part of it.

We are still a relatively young nation when compared to many European countries, and certainly when compared to ancient cultures in China, Japan, and Iran. Many skeptics believe that our best years are behind us, we are often compared to the declining Roman empire, a culture that is decaying and about to be done in by the barbarians at the gates. This is a most pessimistic view of our own history and of that of the world. I prefer to think that America has her best days still ahead, that we haven't even yet begun to enter the decadent and corrupt period of Roman Empire, but are still in the glory days of the Republic. We are still striving toward the ideals of our founders, and are still working our way up that hill, with lights yet to shine, and stories yet to write. Our strength has always been, and always will be our people, our many people, who come together for a common purpose to form one. One nation, one people, one way of life that while not for everyone, can serve us well and can be a model for other people if they desire to follow it.