THE NUCLEAR WARHEAD AND ME, Part Two

Media quickly jumped upon the cold war saber-rattling by creating movies such as "Special Bulletin" and "The Day After"

The latter was aired in 1983, and followed by telephone numbers for the express purpose of contacting counselors to help you deal with the 3 hours of terror you had just taken in. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, refused to let me watch the film. Having dodged that bullet, I was nonetheless filled in by my many junior high classmates and teachers that had observed the grim spectacle of the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Somehow, it wasn't much better than not watching the movie myself. Some 20 years later, I finally saw the picture on the SCI-FI Channel, (ironically, there's nothing science fiction about it) of all places, and it still, despite the lack of strong visual effects and the presence of Steve Guttenberg, packs one hell of a punch.

In the 11th Grade, my Russian History Teacher, a cool cat named Mr. Mueller, showed us a documentary film depicting the possible end results of the ugly parlance between Us and Them. My classmates and I witnessed not only the unholy crushing of souls and their property, but were given insights into possible survival techniques. We watched tests of bomb shelters, and ways to avoid becoming dust and a shadow burned into the concrete where you were standing, should you be unfortunate enough to be within the rather expansive reach of an atomic detonation.

But the film asked a bleak and depressing question. Should you get to your shelter and have sufficient uncontaminated food, water, and air to subsist on for a couple of weeks, what would there be for you to exit your cellar door to witness? It was a question that caused a couple of nights of uneasy slumber. The Shadow continued to stand behind my mindset through my late teens.

Another horrific side-effect of a nuclear occurrence was the inevitable reaction of those that were aware of an oncoming onslaught. At 17 I took in the little know sucker punch of a movie, "Miracle Mile", wherein downtown Los Angeles erupts into cataclysmic rioting. Those who were sound enough of mind to get away from the potential target city were trapped in endless coiled snakes of traffic jams. Those who lost their reasoning participated in violent social unrest of the worst sort. The last half hour of this movie also anchored itself into my mental recesses.

Nuclear paranoia may have been the birthplace of my anxiety disorder.

TO BE CONTINUED......

THE BREWERS AND THE DEFLATING BALLOON

"I can feel it coming in the air tonight"---Phil Collins.

"You didn't even try....How does that feel?"--Buddy Revell, "Three O'Clock High"

It's been disheartening to watch to say the least. Back a few weeks, I was thinking with Milwaukee only being out of first by a mere 4 or 5 games, that with the impending schedule of "less than noteworthy opponents" they could make some hay.

Mmmph.

This parade of less than stellar opponents has proceeded to rack up hits at a dizzying pace, pitch like Sandy Koufax at times, and as a result the Brewers have been losing series to the likes of the Pirates, Nationals, and Padres. Management is however more my issue with this ball club. The same things that were wrong with the Brewers before the season started are what's wrong with them now. Somehow for the first couple of months they overachieved. A combination of coming back to earth, and a couple of injuries had them treading water.

But beginning to drown. And management retracted their hand.

Ryan Braun called it and took flak for it, but when you're right, you're right. The trade deadline came and went and the Brewers walked away with Claudio Vargas. I hear hibbidy-jibbidy about how GM Doug Melvin was in on "something big". We didn't need something big, we just needed help. Then the waivers names started piling in. They passed on Carl Pavano, did a half-ass on Doug Davis. Now the Cardinals, who had me biting my fists when they went out and got what they need in Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday, have bolstered an already solid staff with John Smoltz.

The Brewers have picked up Jesus Colome, a dude with an ERA of close to 8. Then they got David Weathers who has proceeded to get crushed. We needed starting help, not washed up bullpen arms. They sent JJ Hardy to the minors and ended the 3 year long experiment with Bill Hall. And replaced them with an unseasoned "can't miss" and an 8 year journeyman named Jason Bourgeios.

Don't tell me management didn't give up on the season at the trading deadline. I don't buy it. Just like they weren't buying. We didn't need Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee, but 2nd or even 3rd tier starters would have been better than sending Carlos Villanueva and Mike Burns out there as sacrificial lambs. That futility ends up spilling over to The Gallardos and the rest is downhill.

Here's how bad it's been. Can you tell me the last time "Hell's Bells" rang?

THE DODGERS & SPOILED NATURE

"We don't want the same situation as last year in the playoffs, when Philly threw at Manny and we didn't retaliate," Martin added, referring to last fall's NL championship series against the Phillies. "We don't want to be known as a team that doesn't have each other's backs."--Dodgers catcher Russell Martin.



OK, let me get this straight. You were pusses against Philly last year when it counted most. Chris Smith, who most baseball fans have no idea of who he is,(that fact not helped by his generically innocuous name) barely SCRAPES Manny Ramirez, the steroid queen. The Dodgers, with 2 out and a 36 run lead have a man warming up, and the guy on the mound, Guillermo Mota, drills Prince. If you want to play the whole "He did it first" game, Hiroki Kuroda hit Frank Catalanotta in the 2nd inning.

Russell Martin, as he so eloquently stated, feels the team did this to make a point. So the Milwaukee Brewers are supposed to turn into marshmallows and martyr themselves for your cause, because you douched out last year when conflict presented itself? At the hands of a different team no less? How presumptuous and pampered can a team be? Typical west coast sports attitude.

If I'm Milwaukee, I'm going down swinging in the last of 3 games, and the final matchup with L.A. of the season. Fielder was wrong to go after the Dodgers in the locker room, I'll grant that, but who do the Dodgers think they are, just expecting some team to take a fall so they can flex some nonexistent muscle?

Should of taken care of your business last year, because if all is right with the world, the Brewers will take care of theirs tonight. I don't know about you, but the last person I want charging me is Prince Fielder

VINYL DESTINATION 4: The Blue Oyster Cult

"The Blue Oyster Cult were American psychos who emerged fully formed and full-blooded on a wave of scintillating imagery" --Dave Thomson, "I Hate New Music"


"Dont Fear the Reaper" is one of the penultimate songs of my youth. From the moment when I first heard Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser's signature riff (which I'm having a whale of a time playing myself, damn rigid fingers) to the time when my brother-in-law and I sat up for an hour after he completed his third shift week trying to interpret the lyrics from listening closely to my sisters ancient Panasonic tape recorder. But it isn't the album it came from, "Agents of Fortune", it's their late 70's romantic masterpiece I need to speak on here, "Spectres".

It opens with the apocalyptic waffle-stomper "Godzilla", a riff as memorable as any, (this one I can play, with relative ease), and a seminal rock chop. The riff begins a fun tune that finishes in typical BOC fashion, with seriousness. The reprised lyric, "History shows again and again, how nature points out the folly of man.". It's a message echoed by the 1954 Inishiro Honda film of the same name that inspired it. Nukes are bad. Radiation is a monster.

"I Love the Night" is a great piece of rock and roll storytelling about a heartbroken chap having late night hook-ups with a mysterious "Lady in White". It's beautiful layered harmonies provide a nice apex for a mid-tempo ballad. Very cool stuff.

This LP actually provides a few glimpses into off-kilter romance and obsession.

"Going thru the Motions" an Eric Bloom track co-written with Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, speaks in a melancholy yet whimsical way of an ill-conceived relationship that is somehow fondly remembered when viewed through the sandy glass of time. A sad-feeling verse leads to an almost doo-wopish chorus complete with hand claps and piano. It's actually catchy.

"Nosferatu" tells the legend of Dracula in the guise of F.W. Murnau's German expressionistic horror film of the same name. Instead of ending with the stake through the heart, it climaxes with the dread vampire dying because he "stayed too long in her room." He's a victim of the sun and it's light, and his own love.
Simple yet beautiful piano scales accompanied by Buck Dharma's guitar provide a gorgeous backdrop for the story.
The fate of the Demeter never sounded so lovely.

There are other rockers here besides "Godzilla" however. "R.U. Ready 2 Rock" is a great fist-pumping concert opener, and "The Golden Age of Leather" is a ripping rythym line over a lengthy lyric about Excalibur-style battles taking place on motorcycles in a distant future that somehow feels like the past.

Weird, huh?

That's what BOC does best. "Spectres" is exhibit A.

Do your own deliberation and give it a listen.

IT WAS A GRAND OLD GAME

Growing up in the early 80's, my first exposure to baseball was the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, a team of blue collar, long-haired, crush-em and ask questions later beasts with a local who had a wooden leg as the manager. I loved it. It had mystique then, and has it even more now.

Observe, if available:
http://www.amazon.com/Harveys-Wallbangers-1982-Milwaukee-Brewers/dp/B000MX7TY0


Oh, how it's twisted since then. Like everything else I've taken in since my brother Dan, God bless 'im, introduced me to the grand old game, I inhaled it's history. I've read dozens of books on baseball lore and biographies, memorized stats from bubble gum cards, and absorbed World Series highlight films as if it were my lifeblood. I take a look at current tv shows like the ones being run on FSN where they clean up old home videos of the glory years, watch MLB TV retrospectives, and can't help but feeling as if something's missing.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Money has made the game ill. It's dying. The era I grew up watching the Brewers, there were million dollar ballplayers, but they were the ultra-elite. Today's "common" ballplayers are millionaires, and the elite are performance-enhancer taking liars. Don't insult me or the game by comparing HGH to the "greenies" ballplayers took back in the day for alertness purposes on road trips. The logic doesn't match up.
Guys like Mays, Aaron, Mantle, and Maris got by on batspeed and natural strength. They weren't much bigger than I am, and quite often smoked cigarettes and even imbibed on occasion

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that behavior. My point is the numbers produced by these people today on ridiculous foreign substances aren't that much greater than what was accomplished by "normal human beings".

Attitudes. Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens are more often referred to as a-holes than nice guys. It's a sad state of affairs considering their considerable gifts. Yes, there were jerks back in the day, but the buttface to nice guy ratios is tilted much more significantly in the negative direction these days.

I carried baseball cards, bound by a rubber band, in my back pocket. Now they're stored in airtight, sealed containers, and little kids get trampled by adults for that expensive autograph, and in culmination, memorabilia has become a cottage industry.

It's all about what it's worth today. Not how it matters.

MY COMPONENTS (an attempt at poetry)

WHY I HATE THE CUBS (and most of the haves in the major leagues)

"See, this is the kind of thing, quite honestly right now, that makes you want to see this Chicago Cubs team lose. .. [F]ar and away, the most obnoxious fans in baseball, in this league, are those who follow this team right here. ... You simply root against them. I've said all winter — they talk about this team winning the division — and my comment is, they won't win it because, at the end of the day, they still are the Chicago Cubs, and they will figure out a way to screw this whole thing up." --Marty Brenneman, legendary Cincinatti Reds Broadcaster

After sitting by idly and watching the rich get richer yesterday, (i.e. Red Sox get Victor Martinez, White Sox get Jake Peavey, Cubs get Doug Grabow and Gorzelanny), I decided to vent. My therapist says it's a good idea. "Rage, Rage, against the dying of the light"--Dylan Thomas.

Here's why the Cubs suck, have sucked, and always will suck.

1. There rich North Shore moron fans come up here in droves and take over Miller Park. Yeah, partial blame should be given to the locals for not buying up all the tickets ourselves, but it's not merely the space-occupying that annoys the Brewer faithful as much as it is Cubs fans complete sanctimonious obnoxiousness. The holier-than-thou Crapitude where they act like they have the world coming to them because they've been losing for the last 100 years.

Try not sucking.

Illinois Cub fans, let me share a few things with you:

2. The Brewers payroll is less than half of your bonus babies, and they have won more playoff games in the last two years combined than the Cubs, yet the Brewers didn't even make the post-season in 2007. Can I get an LOL?

3. Your players are jabronies. Nobody admires their flyballs more than Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez, and this is coming from a fan of the team Ryan Braun plays for. (And yes, I loved every second of it when the Hebrew Hammer cadillacked a little when he took Dempster over the right field wall at Miller after getting donked in the head with a slider two innings earlier. One good turn deserves another.) Soriano couldn't play his way out of a wet paper bag in left field, lollygags like a tee-baller out there after he kicks one, and his batting stance looks like a futile attempt at a painful bowel movement.
Ramirez postures like an overgrown heavyweight champion after he homers, and if it was off the walk-off variety, he dances around the bags. Soriano, as well. Jeez, act like you've been there before. And the pundits criticize the Brewers for their "arrogance"?
And Zambrano. Where do I start? He's a borderline psycho who creepily wandered out onto the field during a Matt Young/Derrek Lee dustup (Yes, the classic brawl where Lee took a poke and quickly flitted away Carmelo-style behind his aging manager) with his removed belt in his hands, grinning like an undertaker. Wow. Oddly, despite the fact that it was recorded in HD by several sports nets, no action was taken by the league. He was what, changing his pants?

4. There are no Bears in Illinos, let alone Cubs.

5. Question: If Chicago is so awesome, why do you people buy up all of rural Wisconsin?

6. Wrigley Field fans still have to pee in troughs. It's 2009. Who built your bathrooms, Charles Ingalls Construction?

7. Your fans launch trash and debris at outfielders of the opposing team (Braun, jealous of a real right fielder?) WHILE THE BALL IS IN PLAY. Holy Cow, indeed.

8. Again with the rich get richer theme. Did you notice how the bulk of your team is made up of free agents from other organizations, but most of our guys came from the AAA Nashville Sounds Brewers farm club. Must be nice to BUY a team. But it hasn't gotten you much farther than us anyways.

9. Lou Piniella. I've read several books by former teammates of his, namely Sparky Lyle and Jim Bouton, and the tomes display what a bloomin nut this guy was. Now they didn't use the terminology, but their description of events paints the picture. He was beyond gifted as a hitter, they didn't call him "Sweet" Lou for nothing, sure as hell wasn't his personality. He's about as cuddly as a porcupine. Where Ken Macha seems like a kindly old uncle, Lou comes off as Macha's annoying alcoholic neighbor. It's been illustrated that he's been known to beat inanimate objects with other inanimate objects, and umpires shoes have a nasty habit of getting dirty when Lou's around.

The fact that he's still in the big leagues is a testament to his managing ability. I begrudgingly admit that fact, just as I'll begrudgingly admit that, just like the Chicago Bears, I need to hate the Cubs. It is what keeps my Brewer fanblood moving.

I think my shrink would appreciate that admission.

Chicago, I need you.

Damn it.