I feel like I probably don’t spend enough time appreciating how great Elvis Costello is, so here’s my favorite Elvis Costello song, Oliver’s Army, as a tribute. This is what Costello had to say about it:
“I made my first trip to Belfast in 1978 and saw mere boys walking around in battle dress with automatic weapons. They were no longer just on the evening news. These snapshot experiences exploded into visions of mercenaries and imperial armies around the world. The song was based on the premise ‘they always get a working class boy to do the killing’.”
The song was released in 1979. It is 2016, and some of the locales have changed, but the story never really does.
Was just perusing a Facebook thread where a guy threatened to punch another guy in the face for not liking Hillary enough and voting third party instead. So proud of my political party for being above it all.
(Yes, I’m a registered democrat, and yes, that was sarcasm.)
Sometimes it feels like the universe throws you a bone, however small; the night before this matchh was five years ago today, I had one of the least pleasant nights I can remember having. I had been going through a bout of depression and general ennui and had gone to a friend’s Halloween party hoping to shake it off. The night started off well enough but I started sinking into my own thoughts as the night went on. On top of that, a then-friend of this friend had made it a point that every time she came across me at this party she made a huge, huge scene about HOW BIG I was. I am very tall, and this often gets people’s attention; I’m usually good at politely laughing it off or deflecting it, but I don’t particularly enjoy it. There’s only so many ways you can make the same joke about the air quality at whatever elevation I breathe at (I assure you, it is fine).
I digress. I fended it off the first couple of times with the usual uncomfortable laughter the first few times, but as the combination of alcohol and the underlying malaise set in, my patience became thinner and thinner. I estimate it was about the 8th time she made a spectacle of the whole thing before I finally exploded; I told her to shut the fuck up, that she wasn’t funny, that I was well aware of how tall I was and she was a fucking idiot if she thought anyone gave a shit about her amazement at the whole thing. A very close friend of mine who wasn’t aware of the fact I’d been getting harangued by this woman all night stepped in to defend her and ask why I was so angry; I told him to go fuck himself, among other less pleasant things. The lid was off the can, and it was pouring out full bore. Defcon 1 was in full effect, and now that I had made the other guests fully uncomfortable, I just sat around seething for a while and not really talking to anybody.
When I had finally cooled off from the initial rush of anger I stepped outside to be alone. My best friend came out to talk to me. I spent about an hour telling him how this was all bullshit, that people had been doing this to me my whole life and that it was only a problem to anyone when I finally snapped back at them. This is dumb, of course, because I’d just made a scene that I can say now I wasn’t proud of, but then I went off into a hundred other tangents about the insecurity I was projecting. That people think I’m entertaining in the same way a freak show is, that nobody would ever love me because I was too hideous (in fairness, this hasn’t been proven incorrect yet). Like I said - full on meltdown mode. I eventually calmed down enough, or at least run of material from my encyclopedia of self-loathing, and thanked him for talking me off the ledge somewhat. I’ve been at times a massively exhausting person to be around, and this was definitely one of those times. I have no idea why people bother with it, though honestly I haven’t had an episode like this since - I’ve become a lot better at handling these things.
Once I sobered up enough to drive home I did, and woke up the next day with a terrific hangover for my trouble. I had the sort of morning you do when you remember doing something you really regret, but it was magnified because I had gotten up extra early to watch the Manchester Derby before our softball game. I sort of sat on the couch silently watching the game in a haze as it started up; I usually get fired up for these things, but my head felt like scrambled eggs and my body felt about the same. City had been my team since 2007 and it didn’t take me long to loathe United on the same level as the Yankees or the Islanders. But I just couldn’t shake the cobwebs or the regret at first.
At 21:22 of the first half Mario Balotelli scored and revealed his “Why Always Me?” undershirt. I laughed. If you follow Mario, you’d know why that was funny, but that’s besides the point. I felt something other than anger or sadness or regret for the first time in something like 12 hours, though it felt like a lot more. I was alive again.
Now it was on. Manchester United’s Jonny Evans, notable for his often hilarious defensive implosions, was thrown from the game right before halftime for a red card worthy foul on Balotelli. Then Balotelli scored again. Then Sergio Aguero. What was going on? Old Trafford, United’s fortress, began to empty. Edin Dzeko scored. Then David SIlva. Then Silva fed Dzeko with the best open-field pass I’ve seen a City player make to this day and Dzeko buried another one past David De Gea in second half injury time.
It was over. Six goals. 6-1. An unfathomable result. I had completely forgotten about the previous night, stopped feeling like an asshole, stopped hating myself for a bit. Sports are escapism and this was escapism at its best and timeliest. City just humiliated the Evil Empire of the Premier League in their hours. Everything was a little bit better, at least for now.
I remembered I still had to go to softball afterwards. I saw my buddy, the one I had told to fuck off the night before, and apologized. He forgave me, and we talked about the 6-1. What was a salve to my wounded ego was a salve to our friendship as well; he’d begun following City in large part because I did. THe following May, as that same season drew to a close, he was at a graduation ceremony and unable to watch one particularly famous game when I was keeping him up to date on the game. Then, before my phone died, I got off one final text:
Everything came full circle. We still talk about this game to that day. A few weeks later we went to a pub in New York City to see the Premier League trophy. The woman at the party who had badgered me to the brink of insanity, faded from memory. She ended up falling out with my other friend who threw the party over one thing or another; in any case, I had recovered. What was a terrible night now reminds me more of the resiliency of friendship and of the value of having something that can sometimes make you forget about how shitty you think everything is. At least, that’s what came to mind when I saw the anniversary posts on social media this morning.
Oh, and I ended up buying a Mario Ballotelli jersey based almost entirely off this one game that’s now hanging in the closet behind me as I write this. Thanks for the memories, Mario.
I caught this documentary on Netflix this morning while being unable to sleep. Rather than lull me into dreamland it was actually very interesting and well done. Aptly named, it focused on Gore Vidal and William Buckley and their infamous 1968 series of debates that happened at a time when the United States seemed particularly fractured.
A lot of the arguments that were had at the time, and the origins of political punditry on TV, resonates with what’s going on today. which they address right at the end. These were two very intelligent men who absolutely loathed each other and everything the other stood for, and I thought that the documentary did a good job in being fair with both of their stories from different perspectives while remaining entertaining in its storytelling.
My only complaint, really, is that I wish they would have shown more of the actual debates. It spent a good amount of time on the infamous “crypto-nazi” debate but I would’ve like to have seen more footage from the others as well, although they’re all readily available on YouTube. I spent part of the afternoon today watching them, because I’m very cool.
Anyway, if you’re any kind of political geek, check it out.
A brief story on an experience with some xenophobia.
Anytime I read or hear someone talk about how immigrants need “assimilate and speak English” I always think back to my mother, who’s been in this country since 1970 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1989. A little background about my mom: my mother left her home on Crete at 12 to go work in Athens at a factory making coats, then saved enough money to come to the United States. She split an apartment with my aunt, then met my dad and got married. They worked 60 or 70 hours weeks at times to support my sister and later myself and in the meantime put aside enough money to afford their own home on Long Island, which is where we’ve lived since 1990.
So, all that said, my mother’s had a pretty good go of it during her life with a much harder road to travel than I ever had. In the meantime, she never had the time or inclination to go take an English class, but picked up enough from TV and her children to at least be conversant in it. (My dad’s English is much stronger, but not perfect either.)
Becoming fluent was neither necessary or vital or raising her children or doing her job; in fact, she was pretty good at both without it. My sister and I are both bilingual; she is an attorney, I have a master’s degree and am “between jobs” (I’m the black sheep, if we’re being honest; I digress). I’m 30 now and I still don’t speak English when I’m home with my family unless I’m yelling at the television during a sporting event. My mom did pretty alright for herself and her family, has paid her taxes since coming here, and been an American citizen for over a quarter-century now.
One good thing from her perspective about not being 100% fluent in the language is it’s been an easy out anytime a telemarketer calls the house. My mom will spend approximately 8 hours on the phone talking to family, but telemarketers have always been anathema to her (as to they are to most Americans). One day, however, one particular telemarketer didn’t take well to her standard excuse for not wanting to talk and started berating her for not knowing English. A fucking telemarketer! I have nothing against people earning a living however they have, but isn’t a modicum of decency the expectation if you’re already doing one of the country’s most despised jobs? Like, “No problem, have a good night!” Nope, this became this woman’s soapbox.
I wouldn’t have ever known this happened if I didn’t hear my mom yelling into the phone in English before hanging up. I don’t have to repeat what she said; you can probably imagine it (I like to think she learned some language from overhearing me watching Mets games). I’ve rarely heard her become enraged towards strangers, but she explained what the conversation and it all made perfect sense pretty quickly. I didn’t blame her for losing her shit at some random yokel on the phone; I would’ve done the same thing.
If you know me, you know that I’m Greek-American, and obviously my parents are white, so they’ve thankfully been spared a lot of the discrimination that befalls immigrants from say, Latin America or Asia, particularly the former, who’ve become a target during this Presidential campaign (I can probably guess at who this woman, wherever she is now, is voting for this year). And, genuinely, 99% of Americans they’ve come across have treated them well.
But any time I hear rhetoric about immigrants that “don’t speak English” I can’t help thinking of this woman who harassed my mother, who had no clue who she was or what her story was but used her accent and her own prejudices to launch into a unwelcome lecture about her mastery of the language. Even before this happened I had sympathy for anybody who comes to this country to work for a better life. I’m a child of immigrants, and I would call my family a success story, so for me to sit here and deny others that opportunity would be hypocritical at best.
I realize immigration is a complex issue for a lot of people, but when I see and hear things like “learn English!” or the more toxic rhetoric that’s emanated from certain corners of the political sphere, I tend to think the people behind those words lack empathy, or just don’t want to take a moment to think about the people they’re talking about (I’m referring to the average American, not the cynical politicians who speak these words to rustle up support in a populace that’s seen its economic fortunes dwindle for decades). This is actually a problem in this country that extends beyond the immigration debate, a problem of basic empathy and understanding on things that actually matter to your fellow human beings, even in instances where you may disagree with them. With what’s gone on the past year, it feels like it’s only getting worse, which is troubling.
That said, I’ve tried hard not to judge the telemarketer who called our house, because just as this woman knows nothing about my mom I don’t know anything about her, so I’ll leave my admonition of her at this: if you ever come across someone who’s a little different from you, do yourself and this country a favor, and at the bare minimum, please, don’t be that asshole.
Exciting news: Thursday I’ll be returning to the outside world for the first time since breaking my leg in August. I’ll be pretty happy to finally be able to leave my house (aside from visits to the doctors) but I’m also just a slightly bit…apprehensive? Did I lose my ability to be sociable? Was I ever sociable in the first place? Did the outside world become crazier? How many times will I be asked how tall I am? How many times will I be asked how tall I am before I hope my leg is re-broken? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
The Mets making it as far as hosting a Wild Card playoff game with so much of the roster partially or completely compromised due to injury was an admirable accomplishment, an unlikely story that fits with the motif of some of the franchise’s other success story. That they strung you along, giving you occasional glimpses of hope against Madison Bumgarner and the Giants all night until waiting until the last moment to finally, rip your heart out was also, without a doubt, a perfectly Metsian way to go about business. I don’t want to re-analyze or rehash the game again, but in retrospect its conclusion was hardly out of place. When the Mets lose, it’s always in a memorable way.
The last two seasons have managed to account well for everything that goes with supporting this team; the ups and downs, the unexpected successes and the crushing blows. It’s hard to write the retrospective on this season; in a vacuum it’ll probably be looked on favorably as a story of perseverance, a team managing to play an extra game with band-aids and spare parts everywhere. But it’ll be impossible to judge what it means for the bigger picture for a while. Is it a temporary half-step back after last season’s unexpected run, with their pitchers coming back healthy in 2017 and fulfilling their promise? Or was this injury plagued season an omen of another era of unfulfilled promise?
This coming offseason will have a good deal to do with determining that, with a myriad of questions to answer that I don’t have the energy think about right now. It hasn’t yet been 24 hours since Noah Syndergaard confirmed his superstar credentials, Conor Gillespie joined the Yadier Molina Club™, and the Mets did what the Mets have done so well throughout the years, albeit at the end of what became a pretty compelling and unexpected ride.
And yet, as all those questions get settled and the 2017 Mets take their shape going into next spring, I’ll be more than ready to do this all over again. Because hey, there’s always next season.
Lately, I’ve been trying to find the energy to write something political on here, but I have trouble finding it. This campaign is exhausting. Donald Trump is a misogynist and a racist, a demagogue who has created a vocal undercurrent of the absolute worst this country has to offer and ridden it to a nomination for President. That fact he’s a nominee is an embarrassment to the country and continues to be borne out with every sound clip, every revelation. These sentiments has been expressed and enumerated countless times by countless writers, and yet here we are. I hope he loses, but the precedent is alarming. If he were even marginally more competent a campaigner, or well-spoken, he’d have a far better chance of pulling this off (and he still might).
Both parties are, at this point, bloated, corrupt institutions run by political machines and beholden to corporate donors, but the Democrats have at least been progressive on social issues where the Republicans have made their bed for decades with religious conservatives. Personally, I’m pretty left of center and I’ve voted Democrat in the past, but the older I get the more disillusioned I’ve been with the DNC. Hillary Clinton has skeletons in her closet, not least of which the potential for influence-peddling that’s existed with the Clinton Foundation. She also ran a primary campaign openly hostile to young progressives in the party who found Bernie Sanders more to their liking; an example would be Clinton surrogates bludgeoning those on social media who found Hillary less palatable with shallow identity politics (see: “Bernie Bros” as a pejorative). That said, in a choice between a sociopath and an oligarch, she’s the lesser of two evils - a phrase I’ve grown to hate as the choices seem to be getting worse and worse for the average person.
As far as third party candidates, I’ve voted Green in the past as a protest vote but I’ve been wholly uninspired by Jill Stein’s campaign, and I’m not a libertarian in the slightest. I’ve never experienced an election where I’ve felt so strongly against one candidate and so completely indifferently about the others - this is saying something, because I very much disliked Bush in ‘04 and very much liked the promise of the Obama campaign in ‘08 (another story for another day) - but Donald Trump is dangerous, of that I have no doubt.
While I continue to be laid up, I’ll have my fingers crossed and hope that America comes to its senses, and that younger voters continue agitating for change within the Democratic Party. In the meantime, if you read this, make sure you don’t forget your local elections, all-important and oft-ignored by the media and voters alike. Vote!
(I decided I’d take another crack at writing about one of my favorite songs/music videos after digging up my “Enjoy the Silence” post. Here goes.)
A lifetime ago, when I was in middle school and way before Billy Corgan was making guest appearances on Alex Jones’ right-wing conspiracy nutjob program InfoWars, there came Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and its symphonic hit “Tonight Tonight”. The video was released in 1996, just as I was coming of age musically. The first time I saw it on a light-night program. We didn’t have cable, so there were a few years where my exposure to music videos was reduced to top-10 countdown programs that aired on network TV late at night. I remembered being blown away by how trippy I thought the video was, in particular the creepy, malevolent, moon, and being a (not very good) string player, hearing a song that prominently featured string instruments gave me hope that I’d somehow become cooler by association. Sadly, it did not.
There’s a lot here, too, if you weren’t a Smashing Pumpkins fan. I’ve heard people who don’t like the Smashing Pumpkins, aside from not liking the music, mentioning Corgan’s pretension, which seemed to grow as the band’s success did. Sure, it’s on display here, with the art house video and the full orchestral score a huge departure from their early 90′s feel. Even as someone who loves this song, this album, and most of the Pumpkins’ catalog. Corgan’s ego was probably the biggest reason quickly went off the rails after the follow-up album Adore and why it’s now been reincarnated as essentially a Billy Corgan solo project. But this? I loved this, I loved all of this. I still do, pretense be damned.
I prefer to think of Mellon Collie, “Tonight Tonight”, and of the better times for Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins.
The song was written in reference to Corgan surviving an abusive childhood, as an ode to self-belief. That underlying message of self-belief is, I think, why the song’s significance has endured for me through my formative years and into adulthood; it’s epic-sounding and dramatic and accessible and fun to listen to while managing to get to me to feel some kind of way. It’s the Pumpkins at the height of their powers, and its why I’m willing to mostly pretend that Billy Corgan doesn’t do interviews now about weaponized zombies or whatever.
We’ll crucify the insincere tonight, tonight We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight, tonight
To play it safe, because I’m a giant, I have to stay off my right leg for three more weeks. Everything is healing fine, I just have to play it safe because I’m a big guy. My doctor has been fantastic, and if he says I have to play it safe, I’m playing it safe, but I was very much looking forward to being able to, you know, leave the house. Oh well.
Throw another one in the “Well actually, you don’t wish you were almost seven feet tall” bin.
First off, it seems worthwhile to preface that “Enjoy the Silence” might be about Depeche Mode lead singer Dave Gahan’s near-fatal heroin addiction. A lazy and inadequate Google search yields no conclusive interview or proof one way or another aside from internet comments citing unspecified interviews with Gahan, so if somebody could point me in their direction, by all means do. Taking the song’s phraseology literally, it’s not hard to come to that conclusion. It is, after all, the drug you literally put in your arms.
It’s also true that a projection of one person’s demons could affect someone else in a profoundly different way. That’s what art does, of course. While the song itself, without any further background, is easiest to view as a tribute to a silent embrace with a lover, the video always painted a different view to me, and not one that necessarily had anything to do with drug use, either.
Here in the video, after the customary black-and-white intro (Depeche Mode loved black and white), we see Dave Gahan dressed as royalty. But he’s a lonesome king. In fact, the entire video is shots of Gahan ceaselessly wandering various visually appealing locales, bereft of any other human contact, with a lawn chair. It’s not flashy. It’s not action packed. But I always found it relatable.
Really, aren’t we all King Gahan at some point? Wandering around the world with a lawn chair, looking to set down somewhere until we find some peace from the voices inside and outside our heads? That place could be something different for everyone. Maybe it’s a lover’s arms, maybe it’s a lawn chair in the middle of some idyllic plain. Whatever it is, many of us struggle to find it, and maybe for Gahan and others that’s what leads one into the throes of addiction.
Enjoy the silence. —Tino Evangelou
Here’s something I wrote about one of my favorite songs for Alicia and Doug’s music video blog.
After a terrible and surreal 36 hours in baseball, the ceremony before the Mets-Marlins game in Miami to honor the memory of Jose Fernandez was beautiful - sports at their finest. I had no idea how any of these guys would be able to play coming off of that, and then Dee Gordon of all people hits a ball into the second deck.
While talking to a friend earlier tonight, I came up with a sad Mets haiku sometime after the Duda near-walkoff and right before the Phillies administered a would-be death blow in extra innings:
Watching the Mets game,
Near a win, but all for naught
So sad, it endures
It would for a bit longer, and then with the final swing of the night Asdrubal Cabrera would hit a game winning three run homer to pull it out, 9 to 8, and put a merciful end to my sad poetry for the evening.
Also, I paused for an extra split second before screaming at the television, still traumatized from the previous evening.
I digress; what a bipolar season. At least nine more of these to go.
In a year that’s been up and down and weird and frustrating and sort of bad on a personal level, this unlikely Mets playoff run with half the team physically decimated (relatable!) has been something of a welcome reprieve the last couple of weeks. Whether or not they can finish the job is entirely another matter, and being the Mets this still have every opportunity to end calamitously, but then again rooting for this team has never been a straightforward exercise in unbridled optimism. Let’s see where the last few weeks of this strange season takes us.
(Bear with me, these are some thoughts I had at 3AM that I hastily tapped into a tablet.)
If I could say that I made one fatal mistake in leaving my last job, it’s that I didn’t do it months prior. It was long before June that I became disillusioned, that I realized I disliked what I did and worse yet that I disliked myself even more than usual for making myself put up with it. That’d I’d grown tired of management that treated it’s employees as replaceable macros on an Excel spreadsheet. Whether stubbornness, or laziness, or misplaced loyalty to my bosses, or not-so-misplaced loyalty to my colleagues, I fucked up. That was clear.
So, when I returned from another vacation that did nothing to refresh me or quell any of my anxiety, I was already months into a daily ritual of asking myself if this was worth it or if I should walk in and quit that very morning. When I was told I hadn’t done enough work prior to vacation, my bosses mercifully made my mind up for me. I was already under review as my performance was declining. To be frank, what I did was easy enough, and I fully understood it, but I never excelled at the details, a point that was beaten over my head repeatedly. At some point, I subconsciously decided I just didn’t care enough anymore, and while I out the hours in, it became harder and harder to care. I can say this now, with a clear head, looking back.
At a meeting with my bosses I was presented with an ultimatum of sorts and, being smart enough to read the writing on the wall, chose to walk out with dignity and a farewell rather than the usual cloak and dagger my office was so fond of for employees who’d overstayed their welcome. Of course, this couldn’t go off smoothly either, and when I sent a farewell e-mail message to my colleagues, a few of whom I genuinely liked, my manager tried to quite literally snatch the keyboard out of my hands, presumably for nothing in the e-mail that I hoped my co-workers would be heard from. Tyrants especially dislike subtle dissent, it would seem, but I was glad to get the last word and I was pleased with my decision.
I had nothing full time lined up, which i guess could be said to be mistake number two, but I did work part-time for my softball league and have a fair bit of cash aside. I took time to decompress and search out other opportunities, which quickly reminded me how much I hated the whole job hunt in the first place. My sense of relief mostly carried me through a few lean weeks of sending job applications out and hearing radio silence in return, though of course everything took longer than I anticipated.
I was starting to withdraw from having a social life aside from softball on Sundays trivia night at the local pub, mostly the product of being on a shoestring budget. And, of course, I had underemployment’s greatest reward, too much time to think, which started as a positive self-assessment about how I was going to Go Out And Get It and eventually became a inventory of the various things I’d done wrong in my life. Oh, and drinking, obviously.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I broke my leg in a collision while running out a grounder for my two-win softball team, the same one that two years ago went 25-3 and won a championship. I’m sure there’s some convoluted metaphor here about a fall from grace but suffice it to say surgery and four days in a hospital later I would’ve thought I’d been rock bottom.
Not so, however. It feels like getting my leg broken reminded me of what I too for granted and of how privileged I actually am. I needed to look at everything that’s happened this summer soberly; to remind myself there are people in my life who care, and to remind myself what I am about. The past couple of weeks have given me that. I’m actually looking at this summer as a hard reset, one that was sorely needed and probably overdue.
I’m looking forward to getting back on my feet and to getting started again. This world is yet to see my best.
PS - If on the unlikely chance my former bosses ever come across this: I’ll forever take satisfaction in knowing my mostly innocuous farewell e-mail pissed you off, though I should thank you for making it clear what it is that I don’t want to become.
PPS - With all this said…please don’t ask me how I feel about dating, ok?
