I have one sport that I really, truly love. Baseball. I remember the family sitting around the TV watching Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt in my grandmother’s mobile home (never a trailer – she’d correct you if you called it a trailer). I remember the long dry spell of the Daulton and Dykstra years. I remember the Philadelphia equivalent of the Bad News Bears take it to the Series versus the Blue Jays, then letting Mitch ‘Wild Thing’ Williams blow it for them. We’d go every Sunday for a day game and eat KFC in those last couple years when grandma started to lose it. It had less to do with sports or admiration of the players’ prowess and skill growing up. It was a thing that made my dad and my grandmother happy. It brought us together in hating the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Mets over a Sunday lunch.
Between grandma’s death in the late nineties (the decade, not her age) and the constant drubbings my appointed team received on a regular basis, I tuned out for a bit. I had lots of other things to occupy my time by then and my baseball interest wouldn’t really return until the rise of the team in 2007 and their 2008 World Series Victory.
And now, honestly, Baseball feels like it’s dying. People hear me say ‘I love baseball’ and I see their eyes glaze over in pity. ‘Oh… you chose poorly’ the look says.
Go for the cup with the NFL crest on it next time. Play some Madden for chrissake.
There’s not as many fans of the sport I actually have some genuine interest in anymore. Being a Phillies fan also draws a fair amount of ire because Philadelphians are largely assholes when it comes to their fandom.
Football is apparently where it’s at though. Football stymies me. Most everyone else in the country seems to get it. It’s generally deified as The One True Sport. I understand what’s going on in Football in only the broadest sense of the word. I know about downs, I know about turnovers, field goals, and some of the lingo. But, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a lineman or a tight end. I see almost none of the grace of baseball in football. It’s too much going on at once for me to parse. There’s too much emphasis on willingly breaking the shit out of someone else’s body in a very tangible way to get what you want. Too many players get a few years of mild-renown before the permanent physical or mental injuries start to rack up from getting knocked around so hard. Basketball is fast, easier to watch, and results in fewer concussions (or at least that’s my perception – I hear more about football concussion injuries than in basketball), but doesn’t really thrill me. Hockey is close. I have my own baggage with hockey – that was something Erik was bringing me into when he died. Same for Lacrosse. And both of those tend to be really hard on the concussions too.
And golf. Don’t get me started on golf. I understand it’s hard and it takes skill. It’s also as fascinating to observe as watching paint dry.
Or like watching a hundred cars make left turns for three hours. Also like watching paint dry.
And, despite what you read above, I know for a fact that there is grace, skill, ability, and strategy in all of the sports above – even NASCAR.
I just don’t care.
Those other sports don’t move me. Baseball can – but no other sport really does. Burn me at the stake for saying this, I don’t even particularly care about the Olympics – which shocks the hell out of my former-figure skater girlfriend, tell you what. The bruises are still healing from that statement.
Most of my friends growing up weren’t athletes given I was in the nerd set, but they all had at least one sport they watched. A healthy number of those friends had multiple sports or even multiple teams within a chosen sport that they followed. They had role models and heroes in their chosen sports – something my mother frowned upon growing up. A subset of friends even get into the fantasy league stuff which really confuses me. If I want a game with juuuust enough math, I know where to go.
Roll for initiative.
I’m told that sports are the thing that seemingly hold disparate people together with common experience. It’s the ‘acceptable’ topic for people to discuss when they come from different groups. They provide an external way to come together and have some kind of common ground around a sport or a team. Or, as is likely in America, coming together against a team. Ever watched Philadelphians go to town on a Cowboys fan? Holy shit. Instant bonds. “You hate Troy Aikman? SO DO I!!!”
Why? I have no goddamned idea. There are so many other interesting things people could bond around, but ultimately the most popular one revolves around a person doing something with a ball. An end zone, or a net, a hoop, or another person, or a team of other people, who don’t want him to have the ball may or may not be involved. The following of men with balls (take a moment to laugh – it’s funny) takes priority over everything else that could be talked about. Sports are exciting, but to me, so is reading a great book, watching an action film, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or taking a run in the park.
What he said.
Even as a baseball fan, though… I have to admit, I just don’t see what the big deal is with sports generally. I love the sport of Baseball for many reasons, but more than few of don’t even revolve around watching or playing of the sport itself. It’s long storied, our national pastime, and there’s a lot of neat history to it. There’s an entire pantheon of greats that stretch back far into history across multiple leagues and over a hundred years (and that’s just here in the US – stick ball games have been around a long time). Going to stadium games is fun just to people watch, let alone actually seeing the game. It’s also a sport with a strategy I can grok. It’s easy for me to understand. Mostly though, my fandom was the result of indoctrination. Baseball is a family approved way we have fun with each other (or commiserate in as Phillies fans will tell you). It was passed down by paternal grandfather to my father to me, then reinforced by my maternal grandfather who loves all sports excepting hockey (I hope his grandsons haven’t disappointed him too badly – we’re three relatively big guys who became unathletic computer nerds). Interacting with the family with the baseball ritual was, and is, easy. It was learned behavior. As it turned out, I liked it too. That helps.
With other sports and especially with their fans… it’s mostly uncomfortable for me. It’s not their fault. It’s me. I’m a baseball fan in football country. In the months between November and February, I don’t have that connection with other human beings that comes from sports. I guess that nominally I’m an Eagles fan. I like Philadelphia. I want the people of my adopted city to be happy. It’s a lot easier to deal with them when they’re happy and their teams are winning.
Okay, probably not, but, you can understand I might want Philadelphia to have nice things.
Even though we have a proven track record of not being able to have nice things.
My friends, great people that they are, are absolutely inclusive. They invite me to join them in sporting the other sports. I love hanging with my friends, though gathering around under the pretense that there will be a sports game at the center of things mostly means me coming along and eating chips and dip. They’re all invested in the game. Taking time out of their game to address something I’m more interested in seems selfish of me, given their stated purpose was to watch the game. In some cases, they might not have even got together if it wasn’t for this shared fascination of something I relate to in no identifiable way. They are with friends who enjoy both the game and company. I like to see my friends very excited, but as the guy who just sees football as a bunch of dudes wearing skin-tight shiny pants and body armor until some unseen kind of strategy results in a touchdown, it kind of sets me up as the odd man out. Well intentioned as the sports event invites are. I feel a little excluded at sports-centric gatherings as a result. (though they’re appreciated – I like that my friends think to invite me regardless of my sports aphasia).
And it doesn’t really stop with friends either. When you look at the workplace, from the lowest hamburger joint to the height of the corporate arena, there’s an entire sports cult at work there. Businesses are really the only audience that can afford box seats at these games, and they’re some of the most prized perks of the business arena. If you’re in the fantasy football-basketball-hockey-baseball-curling league, your work status just went up. Water cooler talk about the big game? Did your fantasy team finally crush that guy everyone can’t stand in the office pool? You’re a part of the family now. You’re wearing the jersey of my favorite guy? High five, sports lover! We both like a popular thing together! The language of business isn’t economics – it’s sports. You can be really good at your job, but unless you identify with a sports and teams the rest of the guys in your cube farm like (preferably one that ties in with the city the central office is in) you’re mostly just Bob the Guy Who’s Good With Spreadsheets.
Go team? Maybe? If there’s a raise in it?
By not understanding sports, I feel like something was left out in my upbringing that could have proven insanely useful across all of the spectrum of life. It seems that everyone loves sports, and if you’re not down with them, there’s obviously something wrong with you.
I fear I shall never understand it. But, that’s okay. I have all of these novels, comics, and video games around. I just have to find the way to make a workplace where those have replaced sports.
Madden doesn’t count.
Well, here I am at the other end of my vacation. I didn’t go anywhere, didn’t really do anything big. It was staycation. The girlfriend and I simply had a moment to sitdown, generally ignore our calorie counts within reason, and binge watch the entirety of season two of ‘The Following’ on Netflix.
The family that slays together stays together.
Naturally, it was everything I hoped it could be.
I even got some more writing done on Occupancy (yes I slightly changed the working title) and broke the 7K word mark. It has been a while since I put focused dedication into a story I’m afraid, but I’m feeling the creative juices flowing again, and by that benchmark alone, I declare staycation a rousing success.
On the less successful side of things, I’ve sent my PS4 in for repairs where the hardworking repair unit in Indiana will send me out a refurbished unit with my hard drive in it. It seemed to have the chronic disc ejection problem I hear so much about. While it certainly sucks to be without it (especially when I could be playing The Evil Within on it) at least it’s still under warranty given all units are still under warranty for at least the next couple days.
I succeeded not at all in terms of reading. The girlfriend and I wanted to have a single day dedicated to just reading on staycation, and while I managed to buy an obscene amount of new-to-me reading material, I didn’t get through a single book save for a single graphic novel which has now become my new favorite thing ever, Atomic Robo. Which you should read. Now.
Go on. I’ll wait.
Needless to say, I’ll be buying a whole bunch more of the next volumes and reading through them with great speed.
Apart from that, not a lot of news to post. Not even traffic was all that exciting.
Ain’t no traffic, really.
And I gotta say, I’m okay with that.
So, let me tell you a personal ghost story.
In 1996 I went off to college. It was about an hour away, and over the state line. The college didn’t have much of a dorm setup – there were three options. The first was a converted Best Western with truly squalid living conditions. An old hotel with all of the amenities of the house from the Amityville Horror. Or, the really expensive option: an apartment in an aging, highrise apartment complex.
Which led to its own kind of haunting.
After some conversation, my parents and I decided that the highrise apartments seemed the best choice.
The drive was uneventful. We arrived in my dad’s station wagon, filled to bursting with what little items I owned. And on the way, my dad starts talking about my grandfather, long passed away a full ten years before I’d even been born. I was always fascinated with stories about both my father and I’s namesake. Old Maury had done much in his life. He’d been in the second world war. He’d been a rum runner when he was still in Minnesota during prohibition. He’d once set himself on fire in a drunken and ill-advised decision involving a generator, a cigarette, and a plot to siphon gasoline from his car.
And, as it turns out, my grandfather worked at this very complex I was moving into when my father was just a boy. He was one of the maintenance men when the buildings were brand new. They treated him pretty well too – he got an in-city basement apartment as a perk. I get the impression old Maury didn’t stay there for too long – he had a few demons of his own that kept him moving around between jobs. He was a complicated kind of guy. The kind of guy who tells his fourteen year-old only child that he has four brothers and a sister.
In fact, one of the heavy blankets that is in our car, a thick, woolen beast that feels like steel wool but is warm as you could ask for in cold winter weather, came from this very complex – or stolen, depending opn the version of the story you believe. There’s a reunion of sorts going on here, the blanket coming home. We have a good chuckle at that.
We pull into the complex and we find my apartment after a few misadventures. And as we’re pulling things up through the elevators, dad and I become separated. I’m walking across the courtyard of the buildings to get to the office. Dad is going to the car to grab something. And as I walk I hear someone. Someone who is calling my name.
‘Hey! Hey Burt!’
Not what you’re thinking.
Now, I’m brand new here. I know exactly nobody – my roommate hasn’t even arrived yet. The only person who really knows me is Dad – and he’s somewhere else. I look up and at the windows. Nobody is leaning out to shout at me – as a matter of fact, from the angle I’m at with my own building, it’s hard to get a vantage point on me.
But, I heard it. Sure as anything, I know someone called my name. And I felt like I was being observed. Not maliciously. Not with ill intent. But with curiosity.
When I reconnect with my father I ask him if he was calling me, and he says ‘No, why?’
I tell him what happened and he says that it’s odd, but definitely not him. We both have a look around. We both felt a little weird about it. But dad eventually shrugged it off. ‘Maybe the old man is looking after you.’
To this day, I’m convinced that dad was right, Pop was looking out for me. Keeping an eye on his blood while roaming the halls of the complex.
And for the remaining two years of my time at that residence, I did feel like I was protected. Like whoever called out to me that day was keeping an eye out for me. Making sure I was okay.
That’s my ghost story. And I’m sticking with it.
You Know What? I don’t think I’m gonna wait for NaNoWriMo this year. The past couple years have been fun, but I gotta say… I participated in it one out of those three years and finished a manuscript. I can cross that off the bucket list. Participation is fun and all, but this year I’ve decided I don’t just have to be creative in November.
I got my idea early this year and just couldn’t keep it in. Not even after compiling a database of all of my favorite stuff to create a killer mash-up generator – shout out to Ben for writing the script to make it happen. Not even with the promise of literary abandon and excitement. Not even with the sweet, sweet promise of a seal of achievement.
Eh.
I think a big part of it is that a group of good friends in the past three years got together to take the challenge, but also to up the stakes. We’d toss stuff into hats for each other to write about and see what came out. But, as groups of adults are wont to do, some procreated, some got busy with their lives, tragedies struck. It’s just not gonna come together. Without that collaborative event, I think this year I’ll start working early. I think I’ve started to learn what a lot of NaNo critics say:
Why should we put all of this effort into just November?
I’ll be creative when I goddamn feel like it.
I felt creative three days ago and posted a bit from the most recent project, tentatively titled ‘Occupancy’ (you might even still see some of it here). And then, I heard a ridiculous little voice say ‘just wait, it’s two weeks until November!‘
I strangled that little voice before it could say anything else as colossally stupid.
I wonder if the little voice looked anything like this idiot…
Because why defer that which makes me feel right in the world (though writing a story about a seemingly abandoned apartment complex-slash-prison being a thing that makes me feel good is kind of frightening)? Why put it off when all of the cylinders are firing exactly as I want them to? Procrastination for the sake of Nano feels suddenly dumb. I can use that idea generator anytime I want. I don’t need target word counts, I don’t need a feel-good certificate from total strangers.
I need to sit my ass in my chair and work on my stories. I need to pump out words because they’re the right words, not because of an artificial time constraint. I loved NaNo the years I participated, and some great stuff came out of it. But, this year, I think I’m in it because I want to be a writer. I want to have something I’m doing all of the eleven other months of the year too.
So I’m gonna write at my own pace this year. I’m gonna do my thing how I’d like to.
Cause the guy stuck in this weird apartment complex I’ve created isn’t going to go insane on his lonesome.
Better get writing.
So, this is almost it. Tomorrow I go back for my A1C check-up. It’s down to the wire. Improve or face the needle for the rest of my life.
This is a big thing for me.
It’s not about the diet. It’s not about losing weight. It’s not about doing the right thing because it’s the right thing.
It’s about fear.
Slenderman’s nudist cousin is coming for me.
I am phobic of needles. Just don’t like em. Don’t want ’em in my life. I’ll have to look away this morning when the nice gentleman who comes to our office to distribute flu shots gives me mine. I hate them. The needles, not the nice people who administer them.
It is about the worst nightmare a Type 2 Diabetic can be offered. Fear of your salvation. Because recombinant insulin doesn’t get in you any other way. Needles are the only way to get it done. I badly want to not require recombinant insulin or their needles.
It’s why I’m working so hard. It’s bad enough I have to strike myself with a lancet once a day. There’s times I’ll just sit there for a couple second, slowly pressing the button to release the pinprick required to take my numbers. The dread just builds. I don’t want to do it.
The idea of having to do that with a needle makes it even worse.
You can hide it in a pen. But it doesn’t change the knowledge. What you can’t see stabs you just as badly.
‘What’s in the box?’ ‘Liberty Medical. Probably oatmeal too.’
I’ve prepared myself and my girlfriend for the reality that it’s possible that, no matter what I do, injections may need to happen. Diabetes is a progressive disease. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you eat, your body just stops being receptive to the insulin you make. Doing the right thing hedges your bets, but it’s a dice throw on a long enough timeline.
It’s been at the forefront of my thoughts all month, and now it’s down to the wire. As Roy Batty said in Blade Runner: Quite a thing to live in fear isn’t it?
I don’t feel like a slave to it. But even after all of the good work, I have a lifetime of doing it to look forward to. A seasoned alcoholic though could tell you the best advice: to take it one day at a time. And that’s what I’ve been doing.
It’s just one more day until I find out if that’s the end of the road I’m on and if I must branch onto a new one.
I cannot claim to be a comprehensive connoisseur for all things horror. I don’t watch slasher films. I don’t dig on Freddy or Jason. Obsessively gory films are generally not a thing I seek after, though I can make exceptions for zombies. Ghosts are my go to guys, but I also like a good monster movie on occasion – the more vague and menacing, and the less you see of it, the better. Which brings us to a 2002 film often overlooked, partially for good reason. It’s a little no-budget, guilty pleasure film called ‘They.’
You can still find They on DVD – but you have to go to monsterland (or Netflix) to get it.
It’s a Focus Film with no particularly notable cast other than this guy who you probably recognize from Joss Whedon’s Buffy. I don’t remember They getting a lot of promotion or marketing. And overall, the movie wasn’t particularly well received. The lead actress only ever did this particular film, and her delivery was lackluster. It’s viewer reception was lukewarm at best. The film’s biggest claim to fame was that it was initially labeled as Wes Craven Presents: They, but he didn’t really have anything to do with it. His name apparently was just tagged to the film to push it during release – he’s not credited anywhere in the film.
They is focused around Julia, a woman studying for her psychology master’s degree who encounters a childhood friend, Billy. When he begins babbling about a shadowy ‘they’ that affect electricity, trigger fear in children, and that move only through darkness, she tries to console him, but instead witnesses his suicide. Shortly thereafter, she begins to experience the same terrors. She finds that she’s on to something however when she meets friends of her auto-darwinated childhood friend, and is drawn further into insanity.
The monsters in the piece are utterly alien. They have all of the powers claimed by Billy: they move only in shadow, they cause malfunctions in electrical equipment, they torment children. And, as it turns out, they mark their juvenile victims for tracking to be ‘collected’ later when they have matured.
Especially in the subway.
However, the movie never explains why. And that’s where the movie’s appeal lies. It doesn’t have to explain anything. The many limbed, inky malefactors simply have rules they behave by – their motives are as inscrutable and alien as their outward appearances. They are the Things That Cannot Be Known. It’s Lovecraftian. The fear of the dark unknown is one of the strongest possible fears one can have.
Except maybe clowns. Fuck those guys.
Yet, this film failed – it didn’t recoup the money that went into it, even after it went up for DVD sale, marking it as a box office flop. Even though its sales figures wouldn’t justify it, I think that this is one of the few films out there that could benefit from a remake. Perhaps with a new cast, a retained focus on the fluid nightmare fuel of the otherworldly fiends, and possibly with better direction, this film could take the step it needs to become something better – though I do still like it for what it is.
Terrifying