Cloud ‘09

There’s something I’d like to confess to you.  It’s something I’m ashamed to admit.  Something I’m embarrassed about.  I don’t like Lost.  You know, the TV show?  Yeah, I don’t like it.  I wish this weren’t true.  The reasons are unimportant (mostly having to do with the way the characters speak.  I can’t stand it.  It distracts me from the story).  What is important is that way that my distaste for the show keeps me from engaging with the people around me in a small way.  I would like nothing more than to gather with my friends on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever the show is on and watch.  I would like nothing more than to participate in asinine conversation about what exactly is going on with that stupid island and why.  But I can’t.  I gave it a shot.  I made it through 2 1/2 seasons.  When I started to see ads for the new season that began a few weeks ago, I made one last push to barrel through the remaining episodes and be caught up with the rest of the world.  I just couldn’t justify the idea of spending 20-30 more hours on something that would become the bane of my existence.  This is not something I’m proud of.  I wish, I wish, I wish  it weren’t so.  But a wish and 50 million dollars will make you financially secure for the rest of your life.  So will just 50 million dollars.  You can’t wish or hope or believe something into reality.

I wish I liked Lost because it is important to me to engage with the world through pop culture.  Some people think this is silly or frivolous, but I don’t.  I have a hard time taking people who don’t know what’s going on very seriously.  Pop culture is the easiest way to be involved with people.  I know that you should strive for a deeper connection with people, but you can’t get deep with someone before you get shallow.  Find common ground.  And popular culture is really the lowest common denominator connecting us.  It doesn’t require much thought or effort; it only requires that you pay attention.  Find out what people like.  In some cases you will be confused by what people like.  I often am myself.  But at least you’ll know.  And in a small way, the people you interact with will feel known.  As far as I can tell this is a good thing.

If you didn’t know that a little over a week ago Barack Obama was sworn in as the new President of the United States of America, I would like to meet you.  I have never met anyone who lives on Mars before.  But I’m not sure we could be friends.  We wouldn’t really have anything to talk about.  Especially if they somehow beam Lost into outer space, which wouldn’t entirely surprise me.

I’m not into politics, even a little bit.  But just like everything else, I at least try to keep up with what’s going on.  I was happy to see Obama elected mostly because everyone else was so happy to see Obama elected.  I have no idea whether his economic stimulus package will actually stimulate the economy, or if any of his other policy ideas are good or bad or nothing new, but I am glad he is getting a chance to try.  The coolest thing about Obama from what I can tell is that he means so many things to so many people for reasons that you can pretty much make up.  And so the reason that Obama means something to me is that I hope that his election will stem the tide of cynicism in our culture.  I hope this because I hope that it will stem the tide of cynicism in me.  Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change, but there is a problem.  Hope and change are entirely unrelated.  And the former certainly does not beget the later.  Hope, faith, belief…none of these things are important or even relevant when it comes to changing your life (all of this assuming change IS what you want right now, and I kind of do).  It turns out that the best advice you ever got was from your high school football coach.  The most important thing in life is winning.

I am convinced, after having several months to evaluate the situation, that the most important thing that ever happened to me was the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies.  Their World Series win changed my life in tangible, measurable ways.  Ways that no amount of faith, hope, or belief ever could.  You could make the argument that since I am not actually employed in any way by the Phillies that their winning the World Series did not actually happen to me, but I would counter argue that you are a big fat jerk and I hate your face.  So there.

Here’s what you may not realize.  I, without exaggeration, spend more time watching baseball than I spend eating.  This may explain that I have a head full of baseball-as-life metaphors and a body full of, well, not a whole lot.  Certainly not enough muscle mass to push an ordinary bathroom scale past the 135 pound threshold.  Anyway, I watched at least 150 of the Phillies 162 regular season games (and every single playoff game) in their entirety.  And digesting that experience from beginning to end taught me a valuable lesson.  Nothing in life matters until you get one.  You have to win.  The beauty of baseball is that like life, it happens every day.  There are ups and downs, homers and strikeouts, days you feel great and days you have to gut it out with a hang over.  It’s hard work and it can beat you down.  But when it comes to results, the tangible is far more important than the intangible.  Winning is more important than hope.  The distance between knowing you can do something and believing you can do something is miles, not inches.

My life has changed because I now know that my years of dreaming and hoping were a waste.  And maybe you’re right if you say that the Phillies World Series win didn’t happen to me.  But I was along for the ride and I know what winning looks like.  In my life now, I don’t care about anything else.  I saw the hard work that needs to be put in and I saw what the results should be.  I won’t accept anything else.  Hope is just a distraction.  Allow me to demonstrate further.

I coach a junior high basketball team full of wonderful kids at school for losers.  Seriously, the environment there is defeatist to the point that it is toxic.  The negativity and excuse-making coming from the administration does a terrible disservice to the kids.  They are constantly let off the hook, rarely forced to work hard at anything, and are basically told that they will never achieve anything in athletics so let’s not even try.  Now I understand that not every kid is going to take to every (or any) sport and junior high is a great time to try new activities and such.  I am by no means a coaching Nazi.  We set a goal at the beginning of the season to make the playoffs, which would be the first time it had ever been done at the school.  And we didn’t just believe or hope we could, we worked our asses off for it.  I am certain that these kids have never worked for anything this hard in their entire lives.  And you know what?  We started winning.  Slowly at first, but then more consistently.  As a coach, I knew we could do it because I saw the Phillies do it.  I didn’t believe, I knew.  When we finally clinched the first playoff spot in school history and I saw the looks in the eyes of nine kids who for the first time in their lives knew they could do anything they wanted to, I got a little jealous.  They don’t have to waste 12 more years hoping for something like I did.  They have it.  They have a season full of results, and their numbers are higher.  They don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore.  It’s been done.  Of course they can do it again.

But there’s something else about winning that transcends sports or my career or whatever I want to win.  I’ll never forget Marcus, Jake, Wolf, Peter, Jasper, Mo, Kareem, Lucas, and Liam as long as I live and they’ll never forget each other.  Just like I’ll never forget Cole, Jimmy, Pat, Chase, Uncle Charlie and 21 other guys that I swear I could name off the top of my head but won’t to spare your retinas detaching.  But most of all, I’ll never forget the 2 million fellow fans that packed Philadelphia for the championship parade on that perfect Halloween afternoon.  Every single one your red-wearing best friend.  The camaraderie was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. No mere episode of Lost could ever bring people together like that, and like Obama it meant something different to each person there.  And it’s funny because that parade was what, back when all I knew was belief, I always thought church should be.  But all the faith in the world can’t top the tangible.  Phillies 4, Rays 1.  Yes we can.

The Dark Night

They don’t have thunderstorms like that in the city.  To experience a storm like that you have to go out to god’s country.  The type of place that people who live there dream about leaving and people who leave pine for.  It’s the type of storm that makes you think your roof has fallen into your bedroom when the thunder claps at 4 in the morning and you are sound asleep.  The lightning doesn’t follow the thunder as much as it coincides, tricking you into thinking that bolt that lights up the sky is also responsible for making all that racket.  And it’s a good thing you don’t get storms like that in the city, because if you did that lightning would be striking someone’s apartment building or somewhere it would be similarly unwelcome.  Out there, you can rest assured that the lightning simply touched down in someone’s buffalo pasture, leaving nothing but burnt grass.  Although “rest” probably isn’t the word for what you’ll be doing.  At least not until that thunder shuts the fuck up.

Like roughly a bajillion other people last week I went to see the latest installment in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight.  And while I won’t add to the countless breathless reviews that the movie has received (but yeah, everyone’s right, it’s good), one thing about the experience of the going to the theatre, if not the film itself, stood out to me.  Before the movie started there were the typical four or five trailers for upcoming releases.  And I know it had everything to do with marketing to the comic book/hero movie set, but every single preview was for a movie about the end of the world.  Every single one.  The world is coming to an end one way or another and somebody, preferably someone with some kind of superpower, please please please save us.  Otherwise, we’re totally fucked.  Either aliens are going to conquer and enslave us or a villain with diabolical intentions and the means to carry them out will do the same.  Or the earth will explode for one reason or another.  But whatever the case, please, please save us.  Somebody.  Anybody.

It’s apparent, with the current state of affairs on our lonely planet being what it is, that the end of the world is on a lot of folk’s minds these days, for a variety of reasons.  Some are convinced that earth’s days are numbered for religious reasons, some for political reasons, and others for environmental/scientific reasons.  Some of these reasons overlap.  But ignoring the fact that people have been fretting over the ultimate demise of our planet for centuries, everyday we are certainly closer to then.  How close, nobody really knows but definitely closer than we were at this time yesterday.  But that’s not the point really.  The point is, that it is going to end.  One of these days.

These days, everybody is going “green” in what seems like a last ditch attempt to save the planet from eventual ruin.  Now I don’t begrudge these “green” folks that much.  In fact for a while there I was kinda into all that stuff about being healthier and making the world a better place.  I adopted many green habits, but mostly only the ones that were congruous with my current lifestyle and didn’t inconvenience me.  But now, I may be starting to rethink all that.

I hate to break this to you, but that earth is not on our side.  I don’t know if you realize this, but it’s trying to kill us.  If the lightning from that thunderstorm hit someone, they’d be dead.  Or at least you wouldn’t want to take your chances.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, they don’t like your stuff and they’re coming for you next.  Even been to the middle of the ocean?  Obviously not because you wouldn’t be reading this right now.  You can’t swim that far, and even if you could you’d be drowned by a rogue wave or eaten by a shark.  Lions, tigers, and bears?  They’ll eat you if they’re hungry.  They all run faster that you.  Alligators too.  Ever been to Antarctica?  Me neither, but I heard it’s way fucking cold.  Even in more habitable places like the fair city I live in now, homeless people die on the street die all the time in the summer and winter because of the temperatures.  The very air we breathe is only good enough to keep us alive long enough for us to lose the physical and mental dexterity of our youth and die a slow death as an old man or women, wondering why our grandkids never fucking stop by.

So why are we trying to save the earth?  What are we trying to prove?  What if we, as a generation, decided you know what, fuck it.  Let’s drill the shit out of Alaska, build super highways through fields of corn, and use the rain forests as our personal toilet paper.  Let’s dump all our shit in the ocean and hunt rare animals for sport.  What if, all things considered, we decided to go out on our own terms.  Sure, the parents reading this may be concerned for the future of their little frankensteins, but the earth won’t explode in our lifetimes and probably not theirs either.  Let’s leave them to sort out all the details after we’ve been long buried in the earth that sought do destroy us and one way or another, succeeded.  If our kids want to have kids of their own, fine.  But let’s leave them with the tab.  Most of the next generation isn’t even alive yet anyway.

I love the commercials for the Discovery Channel that say the world is just awesome.  For some reason those thirty seconds make happier than I should be about anything.  And they’re right, the world is awesome.  On TV.  They way that zoos are awesome.  The way it’s awesome to see things you haven’t seen before.  The world isn’t in it with us for the long haul.  We didn’t ask to be here, and mostly all we do here is survive.  We weren’t in control of the way we started out here, it just sort of happened that way.  But we can be in control of how we end things here.  Let’s consider ourselves a generation of suicide bombers, dynamite strapped to our chests ready to blow this hoagie stand to smithereens.  It’s just, at some point you have to realize who your enemies are.  At some point, you have to take action.