THE RETURN OF THE EEPHUS PITCH

Over the years in major league baseball, the occasional "floater", or eephus pitch, is a tantalizingly slow pitch. Sometimes it's a curve, sometimes it's just a pitch thrown so ridiculously slow it takes forever to get there and catches the hitter off guard. Observe:



That was Steve Hamilton's "Folly Floater". Dave LaRoche threw something referred to as the "La Lob". Now journeyman reliever RJ Swindle has been recalled by the beloved hometown Milwaukee Brewers. He throws an 85 MPH fastball, a slider, and a curveball so slow, and so tedious to get to the plate, it at times fails to register on the radar. God love 'im.

Swindle, by the way, is a perfect name for this cat, being that most hitters probably feel swindled when they take that falling meteor for a called strike, and swing and miss by 3 feet, as Carlos Delgado did earlier this season.

Look at the dude. Doesn't he look like he's up to something?

THE NUCLEAR WARHEAD AND ME, Part One

As a kid growing up in Reagan-era America, I had one fear of the outside world. Things could be tumultuous at home with some illnesses and typical sibling infighting as the primary source of my domestic anxieties. But the fear outside my front door, the horror on the front page of the newspapers and leading off the 530 newscasts brought by Tom Brokaw every night was the dark beast of my mind-made nocturnal horror films. Nuclear Holocaust.

The haunting reminders were thrown at me on a nightly basis from all three network news teams. Sometimes I intentionally avoided watching the evening news with my parents in order to shelter myself from the barrage of increasingly distressing information. The verbiage of the whole messy conflagration between the United States and the Soviet Union were terms that a child of 12 should probably not comprehend, much less digest, but somehow I got it, and I was not particularly happy to do so.

Arms race, tactical nuke, MIRV buss, ICBM, ad infinitum were words that I feared and heard on a growing basis. It seemed like daily I would be briefed about one of the two nations, horns ensnared in the cold war, developing something so powerful that the yield of the weapon would be multiplied exponentially by "the bomb dropped on Hirsohima". Was this necessary, did we need to expand on destsruction so complete and extreme?

It seems it wasn't a desire to push the magnitude envelope, as much as it was one nation goading the other to stay ahead of it's rival's ability to annihilate the world. Reagan and Brezhnev, the two titans of atom-splitting might, would have been accurately portrayed on one of those main event boxing advertisement posters, staring each other down with resolution and barely restrained antagonism.

The nightmares I mentioned in passing earlier, still occur to this day. They feature myself sitting in some calm place of enjoyment, a cove of peace that I feel secure in and happy. I would be relaxed, fully absorbed in some activity that was pleasing to my psyche, whether it be throwing the rawhide around or simply vegetating in a lawn chair.

Then it happens.

A fearsome, monolithic mushroom cloud rises up in the distance. The titanic demon would be far enough away for me to avoid being decimated by the blast, yet close enough to awaken in me all the gut-wrenching dread of accumulated news-watching and headline-reading. I then snap up from the dread sleep, wide-eyed and in a confused state of agitated pensiveness. It was awful, and could become a load that would take me days to shake loose.

TO BE CONTINUED......

DEALING WITH IT : A Portrait of Hatred in one Part

God would damn dusk, if it wasn't hell already. It has a pointless pink sky that somehow despite it's bright tone seems to muffle light. As if it were a brief time period where the clock stops and and life becomes something you should perhaps be a little more careful around, be wary of. The headlights of my car do absolutely nothing to cut the dimness, and it's too dark to make out some of the shapes that cross my path on the road. I sink my 2006 Ford Taurus further into a massive wooded area that is like something made out of a mixture of Cajun swamp and the northern woods of Alaska. It is grimy, cluttered, foreboding and does not seem to welcome life.
I pass through this wooded damp in my car and see another vehicle shimmering toward me in the opposing lane. It's headlights are not on. Not that they would help. This car is spectral as it almost seems to just fade in from nothingness.
"I know whose car that is." I think, almost startling myself with my own inner monologue. Did I think it, or speak it?

It doesn't matter.

A flash of static impedes my vision. Dead air. When sight restores, everything I see is tinged red. Seeing the world through blood-colored glasses, now. My breathing is now rushed. The other car is a 1940's Ford, jet black, and the driver is Cancer. He turns his head and looks at me. It's not a smile, nor a frown,...his facial expression just is.

I slam on the brakes of my 1969 Dodge Charger and wheel the Beast around.
I've seen that black car before many times. I've been in this movie prior to this. I lean over, reaching ito the hidden holster under my glove box and pull out my Beretta, finger the clip, check the action. The piece is fine, and in this vision, Cancer becomes tangible. It is now on.

As the Charger runs him off the road, his Ford shudders to a stop in the ditch. I'm rocket-sled harnessed into my seat, so I barely feel the jar. I get out, walking hard down to the Ford. It's leaning almost on it's side, steam dancing through the bent hood, seeming to enjoy playing in dusk's unsubtle shitpile. I kick the glass in on the driver's side door, reach in, and pull Cancer out.
Not an attractive one is he, but I'm used to looking at him. An eyeless black wraith that has a cowling set of wings instead of arms. He smiles like a chainsaw. I grin back as I turn and see my father in the back seat of the Ford. He looks to the floor of the massive vehicle and just shakes his head. Tears? I don't give a damn. I put the Beretta in Cancer's jagged-toothed mouth and cock it.
Clenching my teeth, I utter, "You've taken so many." My grin grows wider so slowly, I can almost hear it. "I am gonna shut you off."
There's a low chuckle from Cancer, as we've done this before. I pull the trigger repeatedly until all 16 in the clip and the one in the pipe exhausted and the clink of falling shells stops it's consistent jingle. They are not unlike coins to pay the ferryman. I could almost have danced to their twinkling rhythm. Right now, I don't feel like dancing. No, not at all.

Cancer squints his empty eyes and shakes his head. I turn to see Father in the back seat mouthing inaudible words.
"Robby, let it go."

That wave of brief static is there again, and my vision restores minus the crimson. I shake my own head out of this dark fantasy, as dusk continues to suck the light out of the air. I see a Doe and her fawns grazing on the crisp fall grass on the side of the road, from behind the Taurus' windshield. I continue shaking my head. It's clear now, but filled with the feeling of foolishness, and not a little bit of embarassment due to the game I just played in my head.

Cancer of course, is not a being. He doesn't walk the streets freaking out children. He doesnt call your house in the middle of the night. He drives no ancient black car of death with his loved victims in the back seat. He's just a motherfucker who doesn't watch where he steps because more often than not, he doesn't have to.
I put my beretta, back in the sleeve, the safety never having come off. It's black metal now glistens with my perspiration, my palms now mirror the texture of the pistol's grip.
I think I just heard my dead snap the holster shut.
See, the car is still a Taurus, it never turned a rubber burning sphere in the country road to seek my vengeance. I am facing the same direction as when the static came, just with a few more miles behind me. I shake the self-induced stiffness out of my hand as I accelerate. I grit my teeth into the blackening sky and flip the radio on.

The Stones: "I see a red door and I want to paint it black".

No.

I flip to AM: "....another body found this afternoon, as Milwaukee's record murder count rises by one..."

No.

I tap the CD button...

Misfits: "Come on, sweet death, one last caress...."

I punch the off button and it snaps in half, clicking to the floormat. Looking ahead, shivering, the sun crawls down the sky like a tear.

So be it.

VINYL DESTINATION 3: CINDERELLA

SUMMER 1988

A ridiculously boiling hot day. Nuts. And I was one of many who were seeking shelter from the swelter by browsing the vinyl of the Camelot Record Store in the Wausau Center Mall. Some prototypical dance-synth-pop had just faded over the in-store sound system. I don't remember what the cut was and why would I after 20 years?

A gust of acoustic blues starts shortly thereafter and it grabs me. Not because it so different stylistically from the garbage that just ended, but because it's a bona fide hook. The vocals start, a gruff tone that knifes through the riff like William Wallaces broadsword through one of King Lonshanks' thugs. For a brief moment I question it.

"Indeed, is this old Stones?"

Then the METAL starts, a thudding riff that is the distorted electric twin of the acoustic blues that opened the track. The mournful swoon that voiced the lyrics previously has become a screeching falsetto. Damn, I know that voice.

That's Tom Kiefer. And this is Cinderella.

I bought the album, "Long Cold Winter" based upon the opening 60 seconds of a song called "Bad Seamstress Blues". Still listening to it to this day. As a matter of fact I still have that vinyl copy.

There were a lot, and I mean a lot of hair metal bands in the 80's. Most were awful.

But Cinderella wasn't just a good hair metal band, indeed in my opinion they were the best of all of them, they were a damn fine rock and roll band. "Long Cold Winter" is a track by track resume of why.

"Bad Seamstress Blues" is a kicking rock metal blues song, as strong an opener as there was in the 80's. All hair metal bands needed their ballad and the one here is far better than any of the claptrap snoozers put out by Winger, Poison, or Motley Crue. "Don't Know What You Got", (laugh if you must) is a nice melody with some well executed lyrics and chorus. It is mournful, like it or not. Tom Kiefer was a damn fine songwriter, and shouldn't be grouped in with the Nikki Sixxs, Bret Michaels, and Kip Wingers of the world.

Further proof of Kiefer's versatility is when his voice becomes a baritone for the first verse of "Coming Home", a country song, yes you read right, and the bastards pull it off. The title track is almost as good a ballad as "Dont Know". "Gypsy Road", "Fire and Ice", and especially "Fallin Apart at the Seams" are all great rockers, better than most of the metal SINGLES of the time period.

Kiefer, along with vet Andy Johns, and bassist Eric Brittingham produced the album. This goes a little ways more in exemplifying why he wasn't your average heavy metal bear. Not too many hair metal (getting sick of that term here) purveyors were producing their own records.

20 years later, Cinderella is still by and large grouped in with the Aqua Net Aquanauts of those Heavy Metal Knights of Olde, and to me, it's a shame.

Cinderella was indeed the one band of all the goobers that showed up for the Big Dance who fit into the glass slipper.

REVENGE OF THE THE

I've seen a trend of laziness in film titling of late. For example, the powers that be at whatever studio is responsible for this monstrosity rejuvenated the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker franchise known as "The Fast and The Furious". What did they decided to call it?

"Fast and Furious." Come on. Remove the thes? That's the best you can do?

Now they are going to do another, I believe fourth, "Final Destination" film. The title: "The Final Destination."

So, now we know where one of the thes from "Fast and Furious" went, but what about the other one? I hope this doesn't continue.

What if they decided to get Clint Eastwood to don the garb of "The Man with No Name" one last time. What would they call that film? "Good,Bad, and Ugly"? Now you got 3 missing thes. Perhaps you could keep it in the family and have Eastwood direct a sequel to his own recent masterpiece, following the life of the young Hmong boy he befriended in the exciting Part 2: "The Gran Torino".

Still got two thes left, though. Hmmm.

"The Dirty Harry"? "Play the Misty for Me"?

I don't know. Perhaps there's a position in the film studios whose main focus is to name all the films in production? His job description?

"The Titler".

He Called me Dad

Back in January, I took my 14 year old to the movies. We were in the self-serve soda section, (which is preposterous, if I'm gonna pay $4.50 for a soda, they ought to fill it for me) when I heard a voice say, "Hey, Dad, do you need a straw?"

It hit me like a bolt out of the blue.

He called me Dad.

I cocked my head and looked at my son, much like that quizzical Jack Russell Terrier looks into the antique speaker on those old RCA Victor ads for record players. Thoughts began to pour into my head. Thoughts about how this person is my charge. For now, this human being belongs to me. It reminded me of that old George Carlin riff from the HBO special, "Playin' with Your Head" about claiming lost children: "That's mine, the tall one with the hair."

My son.

And I got a little teary with pride. Where was this coming from? I looked straight into the eyes of my greatest gift and considered those poor orphans of gutless turds who beat on them and their mothers. Fatherhood is not a right, it's a privilege. I felt like a lucky man. I thought about that guy walking his dog who gives my son and I the occasional odd look as we're strolling down the street. Maybe I don't have a booger on my face after all, maybe he's looking at me that way, just wishing he had a son to saunter down the road with. That lucky feeling expanded.

My kid handed me the straw and I looped my arm around his shoulder as we strolled into the theatre together. I wish I could label that feeling. It was somewhere between pride and absolute boundless joy. One of the great "quiet" moments in my life.
Oddly enough the movie we were set to see was "Gran Torino". Not only an incisive look at racial tolerance, but a pretty heady look at the negative gap that can grow between fathers and kids, and the dissonance it can create.

I felt even prouder still as the movie unspooled.

So when you wake up the weekend of June 21st and realize it's Father's day, yes, you should call your Dad. Maybe visit him and bring him a little something. Be sure to do yourself a favor as well.

Look into the mirror for a couple of minutes closely and say the words "He called me Dad." Think about how it makes you feel.

Pretty damn nice, isn't it.

THE 70'S GRIND: Revenge, Poetic Justice, or simple baser human evil?

In the 1970's, the darker side of the filmmakers mindset sold some tickets. There was a slew of movies where a crime committed saw reprisal, and the films did well, either in the mainstream, or on the grindhouse and drive-in circuits. A lot of those flicks have already been, or are in the process of being remade, for better or worse. Obviously they struck some kind of chord with the viewing public.

These kinds of films, "Last House on the Left", "I Spit on your Grave", "Straw Dogs", and "The Hills Have Eyes", to name but a few were successful at the outset, and saw second lives on VHS and eventually DVD. Deeply rooted in Ingmar Bergmann's "The Virgin Spring" mentality, they were classic revenge flicks without the "revenge fantasy" element. Too dark for all that. They also were difficult to watch at best, and each trumped the other in the controversy department.

Still, critics and sometimes the filmmakers themselves labelled the movies as an "examination of violence" and claim the statement being made on celluloid here is that the gap between the barbarians and the "normals" and what they are both capable of doing is not all that wide.

There may be some truth to that, but to compare the awful to the innocent is a mistake and somewhat foolish.
It's all about intent.
After that, all bets are off.

What these so-called experts don't see is the behavior of the protagonists in these movies is merely survival or retribution. These people who have been so grievously wronged act in one of two ways:
1. Self Defense
2. Levelling the playing field.
These two things are a far cry from the depraved homocidal or psychosexual acts of the antagonists. You see, by virtue of their existence, they are not the instigators. Evil is as evil does, it's not a reaction.

To group murderously evil people in with folks on vacation (The Hills have Eyes), or preparing for a daughter's birthday party (Last House on the Left), is not only off base, it's overly cynical.

Because after the score has been evened and the dust has finally settled, The victims will attempt to put back together the pieces of their broken life, not look for their next victim.

Therein lies the difference.

Good and Evil/Black and White.