Let me start with a follow-up to last week’s piece. The article that posted on Thursday last week. I may or may not have, hypothetically sent an email to my landlord with Shorebilly’s Swill attached to it. Either way, I awoke early Friday morning to the sound of commotion outside of my house. I looked out my window to see what appeared to be the Keystone Cops, the Marx brothers, and all Three Stooges frantically darting about. There was a convoy of white work vans lining my side of the street and what appeared to be the equivalent of a starting football team’s worth of HVAC techs. After five weeks of sweating off all of my winter weight by simply sitting in my own home, suddenly I have a whole team outside working with the sense of urgency as if they were rescuing a toddler who had fallen into a deep well. I sat and watched for a while smiling like I was a little boy attending my first Major League baseball game with my Dad. Most of these guys seemed to work straight through their lunch break. The alacrity and efficiency with which they worked on my house looked as if they were only a few hours away from that bobblehead Ty Pennington standing in the street in front of my house shouting; “move that bus” through a bull horn. Evidently two of the guys were instructed to stay behind until it had gotten down to 72 degrees. The pair sat on my front porch with their faces in their hands like a duo of elementary school kids whose parents forgot to pick them up. Just to be a prick, I waited until it was down to 70 before I opened my front door and dismissed them like the chaperone of after-school detention. Apparently the lethal combination of really hot, pissed off pregnant woman and local editorial writer get things done, despite the beach mentality.
And in other news from the “my world is crumbling around me” files; as of this afternoon, I finally have my van back. After only six incorrect “it will be ready by…”and a few minutes shy of a month, it’s back in my possession. If someone had told me as recently as six years ago that I would be so incredibly excited about getting back a minivan, I’d have thought them insane. But now that I’ve reached the point in life where the coolest thing I can say about my vehicle is; “yeah, that’s right, I got stow-and-go seating” it’s perfectly in line with my existence. Oh how I did miss my third row.
It’s difficult to tell with certainty, since my short term memory was already slipping like a drunken newborn wildebeest on a frozen pond, I believe my concussion from the accident is healing up well too. I believe my concussion from the accident is healing up well too. I believe my concussion from the accident is healing up well too.
I could be wrong though because even though I’ve always known all of the words to the song, suddenly the lyrics to Blinded By the Light make sense to me for the first time in 40 years. Perhaps a CT scan wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Unfortunately this is the worst week of the year if you are a sports fan. Major League baseball All Star break. I think the NBA season is finally over, but I can’t say with certainty. So while at work the other night, I had no choice but to watch the ESPYS. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a made up award show created by yup, you guessed it, my least favorite network, ESPN. The network that once reported sports, but since has gone the way of MTV. The very same network that graced us with a brilliant piece on the showering habits of Michael Sam in the locker room. Who spent hours giving us live aerial footage of Brett Favre driving to the airport to fly to Minnesota. Who devoted an entire week to a cell phone video of a drunken redneck NFL player at a country music concert using the “N word”. Who goes to great lengths to downplay any indiscretions of anyone involved with either the Red Sox or the Patriots organizations. I think that’s enough examples for now.
Under no circumstances is this channel ever on in my home. But since I work in a bar, and every once in awhile they do still air some sports coverage, I’m forced to see the channel just about every night. My only saving grace is that we almost never have the audio on.
So anyway, the other night at work we had the ESPYS on all 10 TVs only because my boss wouldn’t let me put the Green Acres marathon on TVLand on. And while I didn’t have audio for this off Broadway comedy show, I could still see it, read the captions and had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
Personally, to me the highlight of the night was seeing Rachel McAdams as a presenter. I think that after my wife, she’s the second hottest woman on the planet. But that’s neither here nor there. She’ll probably never get the chance to meet me. Much as I loathe the program, I have to admit I did learn a few things from watching it. For example, I learned that apparently ESPN doesn’t realize yet that Lebron’s team didn’t win. You’d think they would have done some research.
I also learned that either the definition of the word; “courage” has changed, or I’ve just misinterpreted it for my entire life. To me, whenever I heard the word “courage” I envisioned young soldiers storming the beaches at Normandy. Or I think of my Mom fighting and defeating cancer five times before losing bout number six. And she did so with not a single moment of self pity. In 2015 however, the only requirement to win a “courage” award is to be a has-been athlete who decides to jump gender teams through free agency.
To my generation, The Jenner was and is one of the greatest athletes ever. To us Jenner was the cover of a Wheaties box and a gold medalist. The only reason anyone under 35 has ever even heard of Jenner at all is because it spent the past several years as a secondary character on a freakshow living in a houseful of tramps. You take that out of the mix, and nobody younger than me has ever even heard of shim.
Now don’t start attacking me. If this is what makes Jenner happy, than I think it’s fantastic and I’m happy for shim. But receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award I think is a little beyond the scope of dignity and decency. I actually had people get up and leave the bar when that portion of the program was on. To use a phrase from my July 4th piece, that’s the new America.
On a personal note, if you’re local, then you probably read about or heard about a terrible car accident on 611 this past Sunday. A couple was stopped at a red light when they were rear ended by a truck driven by a man who apparently was under the influence of multiple substances. The couple in the car were both seriously injured and flown from the scene. Well that couple are very, very dear friends of mine and my family. I never do this, but if you could keep them in your thoughts and prayers it would mean more to me than you realize. Thank you.
Syd Nichols
Share your thoughts and input with me at sydnichols@yahoo.com
