Something ELSE the Star should apologize for

As an addendum to John's article last week, here's something else the Kansas City Star should apologize for: this article referencing a recent SciFi Channel movie called "Sharknado," which is about sharks falling out of tornadoes or some such thing.

The headline is "Sharknado: Can it happen here?"

I think the Star's article is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. But it's hard to tell from the writing. In fact, the reporter went so far as to interview the display curator at the Sea Life Aquarium in order to ascertain whether shark tornadoes are a thing that is real.

(Spoiler alert: NO)

I'd like to think this poor reporter was given a crummy assignment on a slow news day and tried to do his best with it.

The bastardization of American history

I'm a fan of the television show "American Pickers,"  the History Channel program where two "pickers," a.k.a. antiques buyers and sellers, visit farms, old houses and dead businesses across the country, buy their best stuff for cheap and then sell it for a profit.

While many have debated the obvious ethical questions behind such a line of work - Is it fair for these guys, who are experts in the field, to swoop in to an innocent civilian's home, buy items for bottom-dollar prices, then sell it at a huge markup? - I've come to peace with that part of it. "Picking" is a business, just like any other. When you get right down to it, everybody tries to make a profit by buying low and selling high. So I don't accuse the Pickers of any ethical violations here - if the owner of the property is unhappy with the Pickers' offer, nobody is holding a gun to their head making them sell. In fact, some of the best parts of the show are the tough negotiations between picker and pickee.

But then, while watching a rerun of the show this afternoon, I discovered something that makes my skin crawl.

The History Channel runs a website called the American Pickers Warehouse. On this site, you can purchase items discovered by the Pickers on the show.

Well... not exactly.

Take this Sinclair Gasoline sign, an American icon you can own for the reasonable price of $115.00. It's scuffed and rusty, which only adds to its beauty.

The problem is, it's a reproduction, made to look like something discovered by the Pickers after being hidden away in a dusty barn for fifty years.

The website makes no bones about the fact that the items are fake. Here's the description of the Sinclair sign:

Get the look of the featured Sinclair Gasoline sign seen in the show with this reproduction metal sign offering the same bright colors and classic logo; you’ll think it was the original!

At issue here is not the production of reproductions. That's been going on for centuries. My problem is the arrogance of selling these items openly to the masses. I don't know how much the actual, real-life Sinclair sign sells (or sold) for, but from watching enough episodes of "Pickers," I can make an educated guess that it would probably cost around $250 or $300. But hey, why sell one sign for $250 when you can sell a thousand signs for $115?

In addition to signs, you can also buy replica hood ornaments, fake record players, faux-vintage telephones, a bicycle costing $660, an inauthentic Coca-Cola soda machine for over a thousand bucks, and even a just-like-the-real-thing gas pump for a whopping twenty seven hundred bucks which, apparently, "has all the retro looks of the original."

There's another big problem here as well. By placing seemingly high prices on replicas, the History Channel is diluting the importance of having the real thing. If you were the owner of a genuine, vintage Sinclair Gasoline sign, and it was displayed proudly in your den... when I came over to your house, how would I know you didn't order it off the History Channel website as an authentic reproduction?

How can you tell the difference anymore between what's real and what's not?

Apparently, the buying public doesn't really care. The Sinclair reproductions have been a big hit. As of this writing, the sign is currently sold out.

But don't worry; there's plenty more fake history for sale where that came from.

Fortune cookie perspective

On January 1, I started a new blog called My Daily Fortune. Basically, what I'm doing is opening one fortune cookie every day in 2011 and following whatever that fortune tells me to do.

The blog has been a lot of fun. But I'd like to take the opportunity here, on the good ol' Henry Wiggen Blog, to step back and get some perspective on the experience so far. When I'm following the fortunes, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Fortunately, I've been getting a little bit of attention from local media outlets about the blog, which has been kind of crazy for me. For 10 years, I was on the other side, writing stories about other people. Being the subject of news stories has been eye-opening.

And I wonder if I made people feel as uncomfortable as I feel in the spotlight.

I will say that I was a newspaper journalist for my entire career, and the newspaper interview I did for My Daily Fortune was both the easiest and the most in-depth.

The TV interviews, on the other hand - those were a trip.

Channel 41 was the first to do a story. They invited me to their studio to be on the morning show. I was there about an hour and a half, and it's pretty interesting to see how much work goes into a two-minute live TV clip. All sorts of planning goes into it. The cameras have to be positioned right, the timing has to be perfect, the lighting has to be just so. You don't really worry about that too much in the newspaper world; yes, you have deadlines, but it's not nearly as intense as live television.

What surprised me the most was how much research news anchor Amy Hawley had done for the two-minute segment. She knew everything about the blog, and she was prepared to ask me a lot more questions than she had time for. I guess that's necessary: what if I had frozen up? What if I was only able to give one-word answers? If that happened, that two minutes becomes a lot longer for her.

The interview with Channel 4 was much different. They came to my house, which was a bit invasive, but mostly because I had to clean. The Channel 4 folks, while very nice, were also quite demanding.

That interview was also picked up by Fox News. Which was funny, because the news station that prides itself in being fair and balanced got a lot of the facts wrong. Not to say I don't appreciate the coverage; I really, really do, and the errors they made did nothing to take away from the blog. They called me a "Missouri man" (I live in Kansas) and they proclaimed that I was down on my luck and had no other choice but to put all of my faith in fortune cookies. That's not exactly the case.

But the news coverage has been - pardon the pun - a real fortune. I've got nearly 100 followers on Facebook, and I'm getting lots of hits on the blog. I had no idea whether it would take off or not, but so far it really has. Since this is sort of a "New Year's resolution" type story, the media attention may wane soon, but hopefully I can keep the ball rolling and make this thing popular nationwide by the end of the year.

Father Time is catching up to me

Not to pause the Zack Greinke-related dialogue, but I've been dealing with a bit of a confidence crisis recently.

I was born in 1979, which makes me 31 years old. According to some unscientific Internet research, I'm still four or five years younger than the average American. But over the past few weeks especially, I've been made to feel positively ancient.

I started a new job last month, and I'm in the middle of a seven-week training class. Of the eight people in my class, I am BY FAR the oldest person. I am years older than one of my trainers, and I am roughly the same age as another.

At work the other day, I was describing a jewelry purchase I made for my wife, who is one year younger than I, and one of my young classmates said the style I was describing was very appropriate for "older women."

Also at work, another co-worker and I were discussing Royals player Wilson Betemit. The co-worker described Betemit as "That old guy who played really well off the bench for the Royals last year." Betemit is two years and two months younger than me.

I write for another Web site, and one of the other writers on the site recently said, "I can't believe I've been writing professionally for a whole year now!" I've been writing professionally for nearly a dozen years.

In baseball terms, I haven't been prospect-age for nearly a decade. Fans wouldn't criticize me if I considered retirement.

I still feel young, at least when I'm not around the whippersnappers in my training class. And I'm sure the co-author of this blog would argue that I too fall into the whippersnapper category.

But I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm no spring chicken anymore.

And that's not any fun at all.

John's wish is my command

Let me just add - If you saw Dan Quisenberry and Renie Martin walking down the street, would you say to yourself, "There go two Major League Baseball players?" Or would you say, "There go two guys who work the loading dock at Wal-Mart?"

Just sayin'.

--Matt Kelsey

Bedazzle Your Resume Today!

In September I was laid off from a temporary job with the U.S. Census Bureau, a fascinating, nine-month-long position about which I will write more later.

Now I am unemployed and I am searching for a job. During my search efforts, I am collecting unemployment benefits from the State of Kansas. I feel no shame in this; that's exactly what the benefits are there for, to lend a helping hand to the millions of people like me who are looking for work.

A couple weeks ago I received a letter from the Kansas Department of Revenue which stated, essentially, that I'd been "selected" to received re-employment services from the Kansas Workforce Center. I was told to report on Nov. 2 to meet with a re-employment specialist.

What I gleaned from the letter - and today what I found out is absolutely true - is that I'd been randomly selected by the State to make sure I was actually looking for work, and not simply claiming benefits for a living.

I have no problem with this. I understand the State has to make sure people aren't abusing the system. I filled out the form with the names of some of the companies I had queried, although I could have written a whole lot more had the form been longer.

Today during my appointment I met with a re-employment specialist. She was a very nice lady who gave me some helpful suggestions for where to look for a job, such as the internet. At the end of our appointment she asked if I would like her to take a look at my resume, and I obliged.

After glancing at my resume for, at most, one third of a second, the very nice lady said - verbatim - "Your resume needs some work, Matthew. This resume is boring."

What was boring about the resume was not apparently the content, since she did not have time to read it, but the font, the lack of color and, I don't know, perhaps the paper weight. She recommended that I come to a resume writing class at the workforce center and referred me to another very nice person whom she labeled "The Resume Guru."

The Guru said the resume workshop would be very helpful for me, and to prove it he showed me a copy of his own resume. Emblazoned in 18-point script font (yes, script) was the Guru's name. A thick black border surrounded the entire document, and the resume itself was written using, at a minimum, four fonts of varying sizes and styles.

This was the resume of The Resume Guru.

I smiled, handed the lovely document back to the Guru, and said I'd be sure to stop by for the next resume writing workshop.

But I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. After my appointment today, I got a job.

That's right... I'm starting my own business:

Matt Kelsey's Resume Boutique!

Is your resume a plain, boring, readable document? Throw that sucker in the trash! Come to Matt Kelsey's Resume Boutique, and we will bedazzle, bejewel and make a bespectacle out of your resume!

No work experience? NO PROBLEM! Matt Kelsey's Resume Boutique specializes in filling out YOUR resume with the prettiest utter nonsense you've ever seen! Your resume will LITERALLY jump into the hands of future employers! The job offers will LITERALLY roll in!

Act fast to take advantage of our limited time offer - TWO FONTS for the PRICE OF ONE!

Why I love baseball

My I-70 Baseball colleague Bill Ivie recently told me about a blog called The Baseball Docent. One of the missions of that blog is to ask people a simple question: Why do you love baseball?

What a beautiful question to ask about a perfectly imperfect game.

For me, and perhaps for many others, the answer to the question is not so simple.

I love baseball because my dad and my mom took me to games, back in the days when the Royals played respectable ball and you could take a family of four to a big-league ballpark for less than twenty-five bucks - parking and food included.

I love baseball because after the games, my brother and I would go stand around next to the visiting team bus and the home team parking lot, asking for autographs. More players said no than yes, but the ones who said yes - regardless of how they performed on the field - became our favorites.

I love baseball because of my grandmother. A first-generation American, she was born and raised in the small central Missouri town of Loose Creek, and grew up in the days of Ruth and Gehrig. She became a fan of the Kansas City Royals out of spite, for the exact same reason she voted Republican: her husband, the jovial town barber, told her she ought vote Democrat and root for the St. Louis Cardinals. My grandmother did the opposite. Our family friend Ralph Lynch took my grandmother to a playoff game in 1985, and bought her a Royals jacket. The jacket, and a commemorative Dwight Eisenhower plate, were her prized possessions. She wore that jacket every spring and fall until the day she died.

I love baseball because of that jacket.

I love baseball because of Ralph Lynch. Ralph was the kind of guy who would throw away caps when they became too worn out. Once, when he was over at our house, shucking corn and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon out of the can with my father, he decided his old Royals hat was too worn out and chucked it in a garbage barrel. I dug that sucker out of the trash and wore it the rest of my childhood.

I love baseball because of Bret Saberhagen. He was the kid pitcher on the Royals in 1985, and he went on to win a Cy Young Award and the World Series MVP. He was my favorite player, and still is, even though he sprayed bleach on reporters while playing for the Mets and wore his hair in a ridiculous perm.

I love baseball because of Game 7 of the 1985 World Series. A Cardinals fan tried to tell me recently that the Royals would have lost the series if Don Denkinger, the guy who blew a call in Game 6, hadn't been behind the plate for Game 7. The Royals won Game 7 by a score of 11-0. Cardinals fans are delusional if they think a different umpire would have changed the outcome of Saberhagen's complete-game shutout or the Royals' offensive explosion. But I digress... I love baseball because I was six years old during the 1985 World Series. My family watched the game from our living room, in the house where my parents still live. Ralph Lynch was there, too. My brother and I watched from the living room carpet, laid out on our stomachs, our heads cradled in our hands. When Darryl Motley caught the ball for the final out and Saberhagen leaped into George Brett's arms, we pounded on the carpet and screamed until our fists were sore and our throats were raw.

I love baseball because I love hating the Cardinals, and I love hating the Yankees.

I love baseball because of George Brett, the greatest player I ever saw. Years after he retired I witnessed him at an exhibition game. He was joking around with the crowd, signing a few autographs, and then he took batting practice and his expression became deadly serious. He whacked the ball all over the park, with that wonderfully ridiculous back-to-the-pitcher stance of his. I'll bet money George Brett could still hit .275 in the big leagues.

I love baseball because of birthday money. On my birthday, I would get $15 from my parents to spend anyway I liked, and my brother would get $10. On his birthday, we'd reverse it. One year on my birthday, I blew my entire wad on baseball cards. My brother had always had more cards than me, and it was sort of a sore subject. That night I came home and opened all my cards (probably 30 packs - they were a lot cheaper back then), and shoved all the gum in my mouth. Then, with a mouth full of sugary sweetness, I took my cards and stacked them up in a skyscraper. My brother stacked his cards up too. My stack, for once, was taller.

I love baseball because of the gum. My brother's friend once built a small box out of baseball-card gum and stored his valuables inside, because he swore the gum was fireproof.

I love baseball because of Buck O'Neil.

I love baseball because there's an old family rumor, largely propagated by my brother, that we're distantly related to Mickey Mantle.

I love baseball because my wife lets me teach her about the game, and she's come to love it, too, in a way only a perfect wife can, the kind of wife who doesn't just suffer her husband's obsessions, but shares in them.

I love baseball because it's the only game that matters. It's the only game I'll ever truly love. It's a game that belongs to me in the same way it belongs to all fans, and I belong to it as well.

-- Matt Kelsey

Big questions about the girl in the polka dot bikini, folks sucking in their guts and the future of photojournalism poolside at The Jones

Who are these people?

(You can plug in the lyric from "Who are you..." here if you are a Who fan.)

One of my guilty pleasures is the photo galleries the Star posts to its Web site via INK. This one is about a pool party on the roof of the long-gone Jones Store. Go there, then come back.

I say to you again, who are these people? Never in the history of photography have so many people expended so much effort holding their bellies in. You can almost hear the choir of sighs after the camera goes off.

And what are these poses? Who are they imitating? Do they all imagine they are shooting a still version of a rap video? Hmmm....Not a very integrated rap video, eh? I mean, what are these poses they are striking about?

The star here seems to be the young woman in a polka dot bikini. Isn't that a song from the 1950s? Somebody needs to buy her a sandwich. Maybe she's in so many pictures because she doesn't have to hold her belly in. It's concave.

And is this the proud future of photojournalism?

--Lofflin, puzzling the mysteries of the universe.

The Pig Roast

Every Labor Day weekend for the past 36 years, Charles and Darlene Lamberson of Logan, Iowa, have held an end-of-the-farming-season celebration on their spacious farm.

Chuck and Darlene are family friends, and my family has been attending this event, called The Pig Roast, since before I was born.

Even though Jamie and I haven't been in a few years, someone from the Kelsey family is always present, with only one or two exceptions over the three-plus decades of the Roast. This weekend, my wife and I were able to attend, and since my parents couldn't make it (only the third time they've missed in 36 years) and my brother and his wife were unavailable, Jamie and I were the family representatives.

I could write a book about how wonderful The Pig Roast is. But for today, I'm going to stick with the food.

Of course, the main dish is the pig. The pork is slow-roasted in a huge rotisserie firepit with an electric motor. They start cooking it on Saturday afternoon and it cooks all night before being served on Sunday. The pork is then sliced and chopped up fine and served up as sandwich meat. The pork is always tender, but this year it was indescribably succulent. They also cook a boatload of cubed, seasoned potatoes and onions in the firepit, and they were also exceptionally tender and delicious.

Then everyone brings something to contribute to the feast. The first year my parents attended, my mother asked Chuck what they could bring, and Chuck said, 'Bring a covered dish.' My mother did not know what that meant in pot-luck etiquette, so she brought an empty tupperware dish. It's become a running joke, and in addition to my wife's cornbread, we also toted an empty dish to the festivities this year to present to Chuck on behalf of my parents.

The side dishes range in variety from pasta salad to cole slaw to deviled eggs and fruits and breads and vegetables. All delicious, of course.

And then there's the dessert.

Here's one of the many beautiful things about the Pig Roast: they serve the food at about 1 p.m., but then they leave the buffet available all night long. People often bring more desserts than will fit the first time around, so after everyone gets a plate at 1 p.m., Darlene will place the rest of the desserts on the buffet throughout the night. So if you go in at 3 p.m. for a snack, you might find peanut-butter rice crispies treats that weren't there before; go back at 6, and you'll find a raspberry cheesecake.

Like I said, I could write a book about this.

But I'm not going to tonight. Even after the four-hour drive home, I am still stuffed to the gills. I'm going to go rest in my easy chair, and I may never eat again.

... Who am I kidding? The next Pig Roast is just 12 months away.

--Matt Kelsey

Go ahead and die already: Advice to aging hipsters

Here is our advice to the aging hipsters out there clogging up the system:

1. We don't really give a damn if you saw The Who in their first American tour. Stop telling us you saw Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, or The Beach Boys when Glenn Campbell filled in on guitar. Who the hell was Glenn Campbell? How good could a concert be that you paid twelve bucks to get in? This is just boring and we don't really care. We wouldn't care if you told us you caught Beethoven live. BTW: You should have taken The Who's advice and died before you got old.

2. Stop yelling at us about our gadgets. You didn't have them when you were our age, which is not our problem. And don't decide to take up texting now. You have a hard enough time driving your Honda in a straight line.

3. When we come into McDonalds with our kid in the car seat, stop looking at us like you're trying to figure out how old we are. If you'd had the same chance when you were fourteen and you didn't happen to have a condom in your wallet, (or a wallet for that matter) you'd have done the same thing we did. Tell you what -- you don't worry about our sex lives and we'll try not to throw up thinking about yours.

4. And by the way, just because you hitch your pants up just below your man-breasts doesn't give you the right to tsk, tsk, because you can see some of our boxers. Don't even try to tell us you never wore anything funky. What about those bell-bottom pants you just had to have from Temple Slug. Jeeeeze. And what was that strawberry incense you bought each week at Strawberry Fields supposed to cover up?

5. Wear a helmet when you ride the new Harley you bought with a chunk of your kid's inheritance. We aren't worried about your health. We thought we made that clear. It's just that out on 69-Bypass around 103rd, the afternoon sun glinting off your bald head is gonna cause a big time wreck which will make us late for class at JCCC.

6. We don't want to hear about how good your mother's fried chicken was. It couldn't have been as good a Popeyes' and it took a lot longer than seven minutes to get on your plate.

7. We absolutely don't want to hear any more about how baseball players can't bunt these days. Nobody cares about baseball anymore anyway. If you want to do something constructive, try to learn soccer.

8. What's more, we've heard all we want to hear about that game you and your crotchety, broken down buddies play with softballs. That game is more like croquet than baseball. And baseball is more like coquette than football or soccer. And don't even start in about Bill Russell. We've heard it one million and one times. LaBron makes more money every minute than Bill Russell did in his entire sorry career.

9. If you want to read books, fine. Don't foist that crap off on us. If God wanted us to read books He wouldn't have created Control-C / Control V. Oh, and don't start in about newspapers. If the person who delivers the news on TV doesn't have decent cleavage, we don't need to know about it.

10. Just go ahead and die, will ya, and get your single-tasking self out of the way.

-- Matt, Dylan, Jacob, Trent and Williamson.

Props to Chrissie Hynde, Taco Bell, and the modern university

Sitting in a coffee shop sipping some exotic blend, watching the sun come up on Taco Bell. What a life. Coffee picked by hand from organic trees somewhere on the other side of the planet and the sun rising over Taco Bell. Who could ask for more?

When I graduated college many years ago, I did. I believed my life would be special because I believed I would be special. But what I found out across time was that the world I lived in did not want special. It wanted interchangeable. The more special you are, the more dangerous you are because the harder you are to replace.

So I moved into academia a quarter century ago; the lure was that academia was home to the special. I had special profs myself who civilized me first, then, once I was civilized, taught me something. Sometimes they taught me because of their quirks. The agnostic religion professor. The peace loving down to earth artist. The befuddling philosophy professor. The hyperventilating journalism teacher. I could tell you stories, and some of them might be special, but all of them would amount to the same thing. It was good to be different.

But my timing was bad. I moved into academia just as academia became corporate America and began fearing the special. If you have special talents, you invent special classes, you attract special students, you build special programs, you are part of a special university, you, my friend, are dangerous. You are, in some sense, irreplaceable.

We really want interchangeable.

Interchangeable credentials. Interchangeable methods. Interchangeable syllabi. Interchangeable assessment rubrics (don't even try to understand that phrase...). Interchangeable research agendas. Interchangeable desires. Especially unchangeable desires.

Because, ultimately we've decided to operate the modern university as a drive-up window. Drink yer exotic blend, mister, then get your butt over here and start buildin' tacos.

--Lofflin

PPS: Guess what. We crossed the 10,000 mark this week. Of course, one stupid Youtube video does that in an hour but, you know, it's still a little amazing.

PPS: Special thanks to Chrissie Hynde for this morning's idea. That guitar is no prop strapped across her shoulders and she is no pretender. And to my daughter who recently taught me what this song means.

Giving up television: An update

This is more difficult than I thought.

It's not even like there's anything on that I want to watch, but turning off the TV - or, more appropriately, not turning on the TV - has proven to be tough. It's an odd feeling for me, just sitting there, reading a book or a magazine, without the TV on in the background. Even now, as I type this post, I can hear the TV blaring from the other room, where I left it on earlier this evening.

I think this difficulty in kicking the habit shows conclusively that I am addicted to television.

And I'll bet most of the people reading this are, too.

I'm gonna keep trying, though. I don't want to go cold turkey, but I'm going to wean myself off the tube.

The first step is to go turn it off right now.

-- Matt Kelsey

The end of "Lost" begins a new phase

I just watched the "Lost" series finale on Hulu. The two-hour episode was beautiful, a fitting end to a groundbreaking series. I won't ruin it here; if, like me, you didn't get to watch the show on television Sunday night, you may be avoiding any news about the show to keep from spoiling it for yourself.

For me, "Lost" is one of those entertainment events I'll never forget. The six-season series kept me enthralled the whole time (even though seasons 3 and 4 were a bit boring and confusing).

But now that it's over, I can step back and take stock of my free time, of which recently there has been very little. When I do have free time, though, I'm usually planted in front of the television.

Not only does it promote a sedentary lifestyle, some say it also does little to stimulate your mind.

Now that "Lost is over, and the reruns of summer are here, I really don't have any reason to watch television any more.

I'm not saying I'll quit cold turkey. If Jamie and I are home at the same time (which is rare these days) and there's something on that she wants to watch, I'll gladly sit with her and watch it. We'll also continue to watch movies together, at home and on the big screen. And I may check sports scores and the weather from time to time, although I can get both from the newspaper and the Internet. If I hear about an interesting TV program after it's aired I can always check it out online.

But when I'm home alone, I can find other uses for my free time. I love to read, and TV only keeps me from that hobby. I should write more, both for profit and for personal growth. And, yeah, for fun. I could exercise, too, and I really should. I could fix up the house. Manage the lawn and landscaping. Play with the cats. Learn a language. The possibilities are endless.

In fact, I have two new hobbies in mind. They may sound silly, but I don't care. I want to be able to look at a tree, any tree, and know what kind of tree it is. I know many people who have this ability. I don't. And I'd like to learn. Also, I want to be able to distinguish military ranks by insignia.

Maybe those hobbies will lead to others.

And if TV calls me back, I guess that won't be the end of the world. But hopefully, after awhile, I won't care one way or the other if the TV is on.

(Although, I just read an article about a new Michael Chiklis show coming out this fall. It's about a plane crash. "Lost" meets "The Shield"? Oh. My. God...)

--Matt Kelsey

Another Tony Pena Jr., update and a short e(e)rie story

Another update you didn't know you wanted.

OK, I'll give this a rest for a while but once I found out where Tony Pena, Jr., landed I couldn't help checking. After all, it has rained all day, my Thursday night league is rained out, and my mind is just now adjusting to life without classes to teach for the summer.

TJ pitched three-and-a-third innings this afternoon for Richmond against the Erie SeaWolves. He gave up two hits, struck out seven and came away with his third victory against no losses. His ERA dropped to 1.09.

Here's an excerpt from the game story on the Richmond Squirrels' Web site:

"Tony Pena Jr. (3-0) took over for Clark in the sixth and dominated the rest of the way. He fanned seven SeaWolves over 3 1/3 innings, allowing just two singles as he earned his third win of the season. ..."

I saw the SeaWolves play in Erie a few years ago. I was in Pennsylvania to do some reporting and as usual, wanted to sneak in a minor league game. My interview was scheduled for 7 a.m. the next morning. At maybe 6:30 the night before I went to the grocery store for oranges, bread and cheese to feast on in my room. I looked in the newspaper and discovered the SeaWolves playing at home that night then I consulted the map and calculated I could make the drive in time to catch the seventh inning.

So off I went, 250 miles between me and Erie, oranges, cheese and hunks of bread in the passenger seat of the rental car. I couldn't get the game on the radio until just outside Erie about 9:30 p.m. To my surprise the game was only in the first inning, having endured a two-hour rain delay.

And it was in the eighth inning, at 2 a.m., when it dawned on me I had a three-hour drive ahead and I had left just enough time to change clothes and, blood-shot eyes and all -- make it to the interview. If memory serves, I slept like a baby on the plane home that night.

--Lofflin

Where is Tony Pena Jr.? With Rocky and Bullwinkel firing sidearm heaters, of course...

Here's the update you didn't know you wanted.

Where, you ask, is Tony Pena, Jr.?

Pena is a relief pitcher for the Richmond Va., Flying Squirrels, a Double A team in the San Francisco Giants organization. The Flying Squirrels have just begun their initial season in the Eastern League, opening a new ballpark called "The Diamond" and, with an off day today, they are seven games over .500 in second place.

Last night against Altoona he closed out the game in a losing cause, going an inning and a third, giving up one hit and no runs while striking out two. He contributed a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth.

Tony Pena Sr.'s son has a 1.27 ERA at Richmond, having appeared in 11 games in relief. His ERA last year in Double A was 2.67.

Kind of warms the heart, doesn't it?

--Lofflin

Photo/ USA Today

Muscle control

I worked a 14-hour day on Monday.

It's not the first time I've done something like that, and likely won't be the last. But maybe this is a sign that I'm getting older:

I arrived at the job at 10 a.m. and I left just before midnight. By 11:15 p.m., I started losing my motor skills, one by one. First I lost the ability to draw a straight line, which was critical for the task I was completing. Byt 11:30, I was having trouble with reading and comprehension. I'd read a word or a series of numbers, and then I'd have to re-read it seven or eight times to make any sense out of it. I found walking difficult. So I overcompensated, like an experienced drinker, by slowly placing one foot in front of the other. My speech was low and slow, again overcompensating.

So I called it a day. And I very carefully drove home.

Which, in hindsight, was pretty stupid.

-- Matt Kelsey

Trash Day

-Photo via naturewalkboston.blogspot.com

Sometimes to hang on to sanity, you must seek out - or better yet, stumble upon - beauty in the little things.

Friday is our Trash Day. Usually I drag the barrel and the recycling bin to the curb Thursday night, because you never know what time the garbage crews will show up.

(Sometimes it's 6 a.m., sometimes the middle of the afternoon. But I am not criticizing garbage men and women. They have one of the worst jobs in the world. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. They say New York City garbage workers make six figures. They deserve it. But I digress...)

But I procrastinated this week and I took the trash out Friday morning before leaving for work. The sun was peeking over the horizon. The air was brisk but full of promise for the coming spring. I placed my barrel and my bin at the curb and glanced down the block.

House after house, from my block to the corner, the garbage receptacles were lined up in a perfect, arrow-straight row. Garbage can. Recycle bin. Garbage can. Recycle bin. Garbage can. Recycle bin. All the way to the intersection.

And in its own way, the symmetry of early-morning trash was beautiful.

Of course, when I arrived home, the barrels were strewn about the neighborhood, and all symmetry was lost to chaos. But for a brief glimmering moment Friday morning, the stars - and the cans - were aligned.

-- Matt Kelsey

Virus schmirus

The three-day Martin Luther King Day weekend would have been the perfect chance for me to buckle down and work on my book. I'm ready to make the final polish before sending out my query letter to prospective literary agents. Last Saturday, as I sat down at the computer to begin my work, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Turns out, it was an oncoming train.

The "train" in question was a nasty, nasty computer virus called Internet Security 2010. As you may be able to tell from the name, IS2010 looks like your typical anti-virus program, but in fact it is, itself, a virus. And a bad one.

Now I'm not a computer guy, but I've never seen anything like this. By Saturday afternoon, the virus had me on the ropes, dishing out annoying pop-ups and fake "security alert" messages every few seconds. I tried to delete the program via my computer's control panel, but in the list of programs, IS2010 wasn't even there - it was hidden somewhere, buried deep. My Norton antivirus program was defenseless, and in fact Norton couldn't even find anything wrong with my computer.

By Sunday, I was too scared to even turn the damn thing on.

On Monday, a friend of mine who's substantially more computer-savvy came over with his laptop with hopes of uploading a malware program onto a flash drive and downloading it onto my infected desktop. But minutes after he arrived, the virus finally decided to make me its bitch. Pardon my French.

By then, the virus wouldn't even let Windows boot up, not even in Safe Mode.

Here's the good news: the computer was pretty old. And here's the even better news: my book was backed up onto a flash drive.

So instead of spending a few hundred bucks to have the Geek Squad or something similar swoop in to fix my machine, I just spent a few hundred bucks on a new computer.

We also got a cool wireless printer. And a tough antivirus program. And no interest for 20 months.

Beware of Internet Security 2010. And if you think you have it, try to fix it as soon as possible. The little bugger will take over your computer faster than you can imagine.

And if you wait too long, you'll have a thirty-pound paperweight. Just like me.

-- Matt Kelsey

A fly in the champagne

If I were a cynic - and some days, I am - I would look on a particular occurrence during the Kelsey family New Year's Eve celebration as a metaphor for the year that was 2009.

Jamie and I celebrated quietly at home this New Year's Eve. Part of that celebration included a stop by a local liquor store for a bottle of champagne (not the cheapest brand they carried, but the second-cheapest). In the minutes before midnight, we popped the cork and poured a couple glasses.

After the foam died down, we noticed a few floating bits in each glass. We assumed it was pieces of cork. So we fished them out and continued to pour.

Then, from the bottle and into Jamie's glass flowed a very large and very dead housefly.

The cynic in me says 2009 was a pretty damn fly-in-the-champagne year. In January, Jamie and I were both laid off on the same day, and we've each struggled to find work ever since. In part, we're victims of a dreadful economy which has torpedoed the local job market. Our bank accounts are low, and our debt is creeping higher all the time. To add insult to injury, Jamie's car was broken into a few days ago, and the crooks went on a trashy little shopping spree with our credit card (K-Mart, Walgreens, Smokes 4 Less and, to top it all off, lunch at McDonalds).

But the optimist in me sees 2009 a little bit differently. Jamie, for one, used 2009 to move one year closer to the completion of her education, and it looks like she'll be finished with her teaching degree in 2011 - which, now, seems right around the corner.

And I've been able to grow as a writer. For one, I started this blog with my friend John Lofflin (and we'll be celebrating our one-year anniversary later this month!). I've also completed some rewarding freelance writing assignments and, over the course of three very difficult and taxing months, I wrote a book. Hopefully, 2010 will be the year I sell that book. And now I have a dayjob, albeit a temporary one, which has raised our hopes and our financial prospects significantly.

But the best thing about 2009? Because of our joblessness, Jamie and I have been able to spend more time together than we ever have in our six-year marriage. And we've had a blast.

So last night we dumped the fly-tainted champagne down the sink, and we toasted the new year with a couple ice-cold bottles of Woodchuck Draft Cider. And we had a damn fine New Year's Eve.

I can't imagine champagne tasting any sweeter.

--Matt Kelsey

Jeff Bezos is Santa, or maybe Santa is Jeff Bezos...

With Christmas coming,
a funny idea (among many) coursed through my head.

Where do you think the idea for Amazon.com came from?

Whether Jeff Bezos knows it or not, he got the idea from Santa Claus.

Just imagine what it is like tonight at the various Amazon distribution centers and at Fed Ex and UPS. Why, it's just as you always imagined the North Pole, is it not?

Amazon has morphed into the exact idea of the North Pole. I ordered everything from books to a basketball goal at Amazon this year. So did a lot of other people. And, just like Santa, Amazon always comes through.

In fact, Amazon works from "wish lists" just like the letters kids have always sent to Santa.

And, in these modern times, why, you can't get the job done with a sleigh and reindeer. You've got, instead, a fleet of trucks and planes. Same concept, different vehicle. Who would have imagied you could order a basketball goal one day and receive it the next? Only Santa can pull off such a trick, right?

The inspiration for Fed Ex and UPS? You got it... Santa Claus.

So, if you go back a few years and you imagine the young entrepreneur sitting around a table in a local tavern with a few buddies trying to come up with the next big thing, well you might as well imagine Jeff Bezos thinking, hey, Santa Claus. Now that's the business I should be in.

(BTW: Amazon just sent me a message as I was writing this telling me a very important present from Santa is on the way... guaranteed to arrive on Christmas Eve...)

You know, maybe Santa Claus is Jeff Bezos. Or, maybe Jeff Bezos is just a front for Santa Claus. I mean, how else do you fund all these toys?

--Lofflin .... stuffed full of Christmas cookies, ham sandwiches and redskin peanuts and hoping Santa has a new ball glove (maybe a Nokona infielder's mitt ... I have plans my manager doesn't know about...) in his bag.