Having spent the last week in Santa Monica, California I didn’t draw any cartoons so I have none to post or talk about and we’ll both have to settle for this report on my just concluded West Coast vacation.
If you’re a self-centered asshole (and I’m speaking from personal experience) having kids can be a pain in the ass because suddenly there’s someone in the world more important than you (theoretically) and you’re expected to give up your shit to do their shit, like skipping a televised football game between two colleges you never heard of to go to a school play performed by five-year-olds and the only parts of the play you’ll find interesting are the lines your kid delivers because he or she is performing with a bunch of untalented kindergarten hacks that will never get an Actors’ Equity card.
Also…
Kids go through an incredibly lengthy period where they’ll die if you don’t feed them and let just one child starve to death and suddenly everybody thinks you’re a jerk.
(OK, the previous paragraph was written “tongue in cheek” which is a weird phrase and according to the internet was originally a way of showing contempt which is even weirder than the meaning it eventually came to have: biting your tongue to stop yourself from laughing.)
Which reminds me I once went to see An Evening With Mark Twain which in reality was An Evening With Hal Holbrook Pretending to Be Mark Twain and Hal/Mark (I can’t believe they didn’t start a greeting card company) told a story about making an appearance in some small town and the audience didn’t appear to enjoy it and afterwards a woman told Hal/Mark he was so hilarious she could barely stop herself from laughing.
(I think I went on a date with her once.)
Anyway…
People who resent their kids’ need for attention came up with the concept of “Quality Time” which essentially means ignoring your kids for 23-and-a-half consecutive hours and then spending 30 minutes treating them like the Sultan of Brunei and thinking you’ve done your job as a parent:
“Here’s that Barbie doll you wanted, now shut the hell up and tell your nanny I’ve got a bone to pick with her and how she’s raising you because you want way too many hugs and seem pretty goddamn needy for a seven-year-old.”
Which also reminds me…
When a child called into the government’s “Santa Tracker” run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, then-President Donald Trump answered some phone calls and having the same feel for children that Vladimir Putin has for Ukrainians, told a seven-year-old girl her belief in Santa was “marginal.”
Which is unbelievable, mostly because Trump didn’t take the opportunity to also crush her beliefs in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Universal Health Care.
So Where Were We?
Right…ridiculing “Quality Time.”
Comedian and former U.S. Senator, Al Franken (more on him before we’re through) wrote several books and in one of them talked about “Quality Time” and said he preferred “Quantity Time” meaning big chunks of time doing pretty much nothing, but doing it with his kids.
And I just got done spending Quantity Time with my son in LA.
During our week together we watched all five World Series games, three Miami Heat games, the entire Netflix Starting 5 documentary series, four movies:
The Drop (about a murder in Brooklyn)
Lone Star (about a murder in Texas)
The Guard (about a murder in Ireland)
Drop Dead Gorgeous (about a beauty pageant and murder in Minnesota and we watched it because barely detectable variety is the spice of life)
Had lunch and/or dinner in five restaurants:
Rae’s (diner food)
Sugarfish (sushi)
Fusion Sushi (Italian food – I’m just testing to see if you’re still paying attention)
Bossa Nova (Brazilian steak house)
And…
A Mexican restaurant (whose name I neglected to write down even though the food was terrific).
We also walked down to the beach to make sure the ocean was still there, strolled to Starbuck’s every morning, fed a neighborhood cat named “Prince” and talked about every subject under the sun and/or moon and I can’t think of a better way to spend my time and money.
A Big Thank You to the Dodgers and Yankees
I flew to LA the day before the World Series started and was scheduled to fly back the day after Game 5 and once the Dodgers went up 3-0 we said wouldn’t it be perfect if the Yankees won Game 4 and the Dodgers then won Game 5 so we could watch the entire series together and that’s exactly what happened.
Which proves dreams do come true if you just dream small enough.
If you watched the Series, in Game 4 you saw two Yankee fan/assholes grab Mookie Betts’ glove and arm when he caught a foul ball near the right field wall and apparently having the collective IQ of a pair of lamp posts, seemed to think if they pulled the ball out of Mookie’s glove the out wouldn’t count.
Guys, you did it on camera and everyone could see what you did.
So they get escorted out of Yankee Stadium and go to a bar where a reporter tracks them down and they say they “patrol” that part of the wall and “D up” when an opposition outfielder gets near them and one of them says he was assured he’d be welcomed back for Game 5 which made me say WTF because after grabbing a player and twisting his arm during a game you’d think they’d never be allowed into a Big League Ballpark again.
Fortunately, someone somewhere came to their senses or maybe went on social media and realized the two fans were now National Pariahs so they took their tickets away and gave them to a pediatric cancer patient and his family instead.
Someone asked why we see that kind of behavior in baseball and not basketball or football and I said because Mookie Betts is 5-9 and weighs 180 pounds and I’d pay good money to see a fan try to pull a ball out of Travis Kelce’s (6-5, 255) or LeBron James’ (6-9, 250) hands.
Moving on…
While my son and I are Royals fans, we were both pulling for the Dodgers because he lives in LA and the Yankees already have 27 World Series Championships and if you think those Yankee fans were an exception, try watching The Comeback on Netflix about the rivalry between the Red Sox and Yankees and you’ll see plenty of obnoxious behavior from Yankee fans throughout the years.
(Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure Red Sox fans behaved much better.)
Fans yell all kinds of insults from the safety of the stands that they’d never say to an athlete’s face, so if you think about it — and I have — most heckling is cowardly and you shouldn’t do it.
So What About Al Franken?
As you might recall, Al Franken resigned from the Senate after being accused of sexual misconduct, but as usual the incident was way more complicated than it first appeared and if you want to read more about that, here you go:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken
Today’s Lesson
Quality Time is overrated, don’t joke around and pretend to grab a woman’s breasts to get a laugh and don’t try to pull a ball out of an athlete’s hands because you might find out why they’re a professional athlete and you’re not.
Have a nice weekend and if you have kids, if at all possible, try to spend some Quantity Time with them.
A tourist is backpacking through the highlands of Scotland, and he stops at a pub to get a drink. And the only people in there is a bartender and an old man nursing a beer. And he orders a pint, and they sit in silence for a while.
And suddenly the old man turns to him and goes, "You see this bar? I built this bar with my bare hands from the finest wood in the county. Gave it more love and care than my own child.But do they call me MacGregor the bar builder? No."
Points out the window. "You see that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands. Found every stone, placed them just so through the rain and the cold. But do they call me MacGregor the stone wall builder? No."
Points out the window. "You see that pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands. Drove the pilings against the tide of the sand, plank by plank. But do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? No.
But you fuck one goat ... "
Baseball as a second language when some guy had major hate for Oscar Gamble and ran to the railing to spew a creative and impressive array of compound words at him every time he took the outfield. Every single inning! Finally, about the 6th inning, after yet another display of astounding cussing, he returned to his seat where his buddy asked, “Whatever happened to ‘asshole?’”
Also… what a raw deal Al Franken got. The double standard and hypocrisy are maddening. I wish I could remember some of that guy’s combos… I could use them now.
Anyway… loved this epistle.