Back to Writing After Being M.I.A.

That’s “missing in action” M.I.A. and not the trigraph for “Miami”.

I’ve been M.I.A. from writing for a few months now. Well, kinda…instead of writing pithy blog posts, I have been focusing on more long-form projects. Namely, trying to get my crack at the Great American Novel off the proverbial ground. It’s been tough. As the father of two kids, I find myself slipping into “children’s book voice” without even knowing it. For example, just last month, I submitted this to Karl— editor to the stars:

Jack Dagger sat at the bar under a heavy layer of cigar smoke. As he waited for Martina de St. Monique, he sucked down another drag of his C+ grade gin and tonic. He hated to wait, but Monique said that she had microfilm images of Dr. Frankenpoop’s plans to fuse cat poop with dog poop. When the analysts at CIA HQ got their jelly doughnut stained fingers on this, well, shit was really going to hit the fan.

Karl added a few commas and an interrobang. He told me to keep following my muse and charged me another $250. I shelved the spy genre and tried my hand at historical fiction. However, I couldn’t remember when the War of 1812 started, so that flirtation was brief and fruitless. It is probably for the best. The world does not need to read about how the defense of Fort McHenry hinged on the Paw Patrol’s ordinance disposal skills. Thus, I am back to the lowest of the low-hanging fruit: short form observational humor. Karl’s pauvre urging to use more foreign adjectives are all but gone from my cruieux mind; all that is left is to tell you what I did and what I saw. So let’s start with…

…baseball!

My wife and I took the kids into Baltimore to watch an Oriole game. It was Youngest’s birthday, and he likes baseball well enough. Plus, he asked to go, so he waived any right to complain about anything. Baseball is a majestic game that is played on a field of dreams and a diamond. I have no idea why anyone would want to place a stadium in the middle of Baltimore, a place as seen on The Wire and Saving Private Ryan (little known fact: the D-Day scene is really just Tom Hanks superimposed over news footage shot in Fell’s Point).

Luckily, the O’s are a moribund franchise (they lost by four touchdowns when we went), and each of the 17 fans in attendance get their own security details. Not even panhandling servers from the nearby — and equally moribund — Bubba Gump Shrimp Company franchise can breach that perimeter. We made it, and took our seats.

In a stadium that seats 40,000k+, we were directly in front of a quartet of *those* fans. Four 30-somethings who only cared enough about baseball to occasionally break from a conversation on whether or not Tom Selleck is the best choice to headline Quentin Tarantino’s new biopic on Harry S. Truman (“I imagine him as more of a Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Pierce…”) to yell something tragically stupid.

Moron #1 (yelling): “I GOT IT!”

Moron #3: “AAAAAAAAHAHAHA…good show mate! Hold my pinot noir so I can give you a standing ovation, Sir!”

The home team went down by 18 runs — inexplicably — after just the third pitch, so we were able to focus on…

…food!

We had more than 7 hours to fill before the Birds would be finally put out of their misery. We agreed to a budget of $500. Oldest and I each got a pit beef sandwich, which is nothing more than shredded cow cooked to a temperature that the FDA finds acceptable and served on a bun, swimming in its own juices. Topped with some pre-packaged BBQ sauce and washed down with Sierra Mist, it was delicious. Youngest, ever the more daring of the crew, picked out a cheeseburger.

Vendor: “How you want that done?”

Wife: “Medium well for the patty, well for the fly crawling on top, please.”

My lovely wife secured 18 pounds of Boardwalk brand french fries, complete with a Cal Ripken Jr. commemorative “Fry-barrow” sponsored by the Oily Heart Cardiology Clinic. The whole contraption had an eerie glow about it that would eventually light our way back to the car not unlike a Red-nosed reindeer suffering from heart disease. We closed out our night — a few shillings before hitting out budget — with some popcorn doused with a Fry-barrow’s worth of butter and a pretzel that could barely fit on one of those night Falcon 9 cargo rockets.

The chuckleheads behind us also struck out into the wild to get food, but — sadly — left in shifts, meaning that their vapid conversations about a Happy Gilmore remake continued unabated. On the plus side, one of the merry fools bought a lobster roll for sustenance. It turns out that a baseball stadium is not a good place to get a lobster roll. For starters, it was $17. Furthermore, it apparently couldn’t compare with the exquisite fare at Chez Clawface’s Lobster Emporium.

Purchasing a lobster roll at a sporting event and then bitching about it is just like purchasing a kick to the junk and then complaining that your junk hurts.

No matter — the night was almost over…

…fin

With the game all but over, the Orioles resorted to the universal baseball sign of submission: pretending to be struck by lightening in order to get the game stopped. But, even then, the Birds managed to screw it up. As statistically improbable as it was for one player to get hit on a mild, dry night, no fewer than seven Orioles fell to the ground flopping around in “agony” (the pitcher might have been in on it too, but their pitchers had looked stricken all game, so it was tough to tell). With that final pitiful display, we took our leave and returned home.

On aggregate, it was a good time. Sure, we had to sit within earshot of people who can’t believe there won’t be “at least” 25 Fast and Furious movies. And the home team routinely gripped the wrong end of the bat. But we’ll be back. Hopefully when a more evenly matched opponent is in town. That plucky team from the Johnsonville flea market — the Tiny Itchers — have been wracked with groin pulls this season.