My Storied Stuff

My friends Steve and Sharon Fiffer started a marvelous site a year ago called STORIED STUFF, where people show the various precious objects in their lives and share the story. He asked me to write one about baseball, so here are my random thoughts attached to an old autographed pill. To see the post in the original site, and to check the many other cool pieces of people’s personal memorabilia, visit Storied Stuff here.

This circus wagon toy from Fisher-Price was one of the most well-built and elaborate playthings I can remember from childhood. The wagon, which contained a multitude of pieces, had wooden bars, working wheels and entrance hatches both front and rear. I’m certain my brothers and I used it as a surfboard, go-cart and mule wagon many times, without inflicting any noticeable strain. Inside the wagon was all the rigging needed to put up a show: ladders, washtub platforms, trapezes, and a yellow center ring with a smooth side and a slotted side.

The circus itself had 11 performers. A camel and giraffe and show horse. A baby bear and a puppy. A monkey with a pipe cleaner tail that in no time snapped off of his wooden body. A seal with a red ball to snap on its nose. A ringmaster who looked like he enjoyed his drink (but remember, drunkenness was funny back then). And of course, a clown.

While I don’t remember getting this wagon as a gift, I do remember that this was basically mine alone, not shared with my older brothers. I spent many hours putting together performances with these and with any other character laying around: a GI Joe, a rubber orangutan, an orange, a swizzle stick.

A few days after President Kennedy was shot, Sacred Heart Church held a special memorial mass. My mother walked up to church and left us three in the care of a neighbor. While she was gone, I decided that all the characters in the circus needed a bath and dumped them in the bathroom sink. That is why the paper adorning the characters peeled off badly, ruining the resale value of the whole set 50 years later.

Apparently, our Scottie dog Tammy smelled some peanuts or cotton candy on this figure and treated himself to some circus food.

And this might be one reason I’ve never been afraid of clowns.

My Storied Stuff

My friends Steve and Sharon Fiffer started a marvelous site a year ago called STORIED STUFF, where people show the various precious objects in their lives and share the story. He asked me to write one about baseball, so here are my random thoughts attached to an old autographed pill. To see the post in the original site, and to check the many other cool pieces of people’s personal memorabilia, visit Storied Stuff here.

This baseball was signed by all of the 1973 Detroit Tigers. I sprayed it with lacquer before my hands wore off the ink of all the signatures. This spherical madeleine is for:

–all the neighbor ladies (Mrs. Moran, Mrs. Galer, Mrs. Caccavo) who knew baseball and knew the players, and taught me a lot about dedication

–Father Bueche who was in charge of the altar boy ranks at church and took us down to Tiger Stadium occasionally, before being removed in scandal later

–all the men in the dark recesses of The Bengal Bar on Michigan Avenue—though I could never see you, I heard your shouts and laughs, and marveled at the tawdry pleasures of adulthood, and wondered who painted that near-psychedelic tiger on your vestibule wall

–the dozens of transistor radios — silver, aqua, cherry red, as the fashions changed — that I used to listen to Ernie Harwell

–the high school Dad’s Club dads, who always managed to snag a dozen of these baseballs to raffle off on new parent night, gladhanders my dad never could stand

–my mother, who pushed my dad constantly to take me downtown to a ballgame

–my dad, who only very late in his life finally told me he much preferred basketball over baseball

–Willie Horton, “Willie the Wonder,” always my favorite player, home-grown

–and Jim Ray, signing right next to Willie, about whom I remember absolutely nothing.

Doggerel of the Plague Year

Let’s pause and raise a glass of cheer
To the closing of a horrid year

(Without our loved ones in the room,
We’ll have to give our toast on Zoom.)

Headaches and heartbreaks too long to list
In our own Annus Horribilis

Nor will all be fixed overnight
Like switching off the Christmas lights.

But you would have called me cray
If I’d described all this…STUFF… in May

The crisis has stretched on and on
But still we need to soldier on

Think of all we have endured
Grab your loins, get set to gird.

The one way out of this is through.
We all know what we have to do.

Stay safe, keep faith, be kind to each other,
Soon we’ll gather, sister and brother,

And sing “Auld Lang Syne” and dance and spoon
On or about the 12th of June.

MLB All-Boardgame Team

For those of you who miss baseball and have been playing boardgames way too long:

1B   Ted “Clue” Kluszewski
2B   Wally Backgamman
SS   Leo Cardenas Against Humanity
3B   Howard Battleship

LF   Carl Yahtzeestremski
CF   Candyland Maldonado
RF   Shin-Soo Choo and Ladders

C     Ches Crist

RHP   Boardwalk Brown, David Riske, Chase De Mahjong
LHP   Lefty “Life” Leifield, Marshall Bridges

MGR   Luke Apples to Appling

Rex Koko Does Inktober!

Airan Wright, my partner in illustrative crime (my book covers, Single White Vigilante, and this very website), has been busy with Inktober over on Instragram.  His portrait of Rex below was drawn for the prompt “Mindless.” Not sure if I can take that as a compliment.

New Rex Koko Short Story in AMERICAN BYSTANDER

For all you fans of “Rex Koko, Private Clown” — and if you aren’t a fan, may I politely suggest you get on the stick? — a big treat is just around the corner.

The American Bystander is the funniest magazine in America today. Every issue is packed with short- and long-form humor from the best writers around. Alums from Letterman, the Daily Show, the Onion, the Simpsons, the New Yorker, plus cartoonists like Sam Gross, Rick Geary, MK Brown, Rich Sparks and more. You can get it through a Patreon subscription, which you can check out right here. You can also get a sample copy or PDF by contacting the publisher at the website above.

For the past couple of issues, I have been proud to be published by the Bystander. But now comes the Big Bertha. Issue #10 will present a complete Rex Koko short story entitled “The Tiny Taxi of Justice”!

Is there a flashy murder? Sure

Is there a despicable villain? Oh, yeah!

Does Rex turn to his Top Town pals, like Lotta, Bingo and new character Eddie Echo , to try and right this wrong? Whaddya think, rube! Right there, in front of the Club Bimbo!

The artwork for the story is below, done up by the wonderful Joe Oesterle. If you’re a fan of humor, you really need to check out The American Bystander. It’s a bountiful smorgasbord of belly laughs.

Copyright by Joseph Oesterle.

Great Review of The Wet Nose of Danger: A Rex Koko, Private Clown Mystery

Here’s a great review of Rex Koko #3 from the pages of White Tops, the magazine of the Circus Fans Association of America. Now, you might think that an audience of circus fans would be a slam-dunk, that they’d like anything associated with the big top. But you’d be wrong. They are experts, and they will call out something hinky in a New York minute, just like any other expert would do. Luckily, the fans at CFA know what I’m trying to do and, while they will caution that kinkers are not as desperate and crime-prone as I paint them, they enjoy the feel of the world of Top Town and the larger-than-life characters who live there. They’ve seen them, but with less murder in general. I’m very happy that they are fans of Rex.

 

Louder Than a Mom

One of my favorite Chicago reading series is Louder Than a Mom. It’s hilarious, it hits my demographic sweet spot, it brings many of my old friends back together, and it takes place in a dark tavern that hosts rocknroll the rest of the week. The closest I will get to enjoying myself in a rock club at this stage of the game.

I’ve performed in the show 3-4 times, but in the March show, I finally had a performance I was proud of. The Link is below. If you are in or visiting Chicago, Louder Than a Mom happens every third Monday at Martyr’s, 3855 N. Lincoln. You should definitely check it out.

Spitballing Stage Concepts for Alice Cooper 2017 Tour

  • Video projections of Alice’s liver spots
  • Alice learns to use SnapChat onstage
  • A mean caddy (maybe a Cyclops!?) whistles while Alice lines up a putt
  • During “School’s Out”, a bunch of teenagers treat Alice rudely at the CVS
  • Alice realizes he should’ve kept all his vinyl
  • Dancing car keys taunt Alice while he searches for them
  • Eight-foot-tall “roughage monster”

An Oldie from Bardball

Feb. 17, 2017 —  but updated for today’s realities:

Life is Good

Winter’s been raw as a campout in Banff.
Your new basement walls are moldy and damp.
Your drapes caught fire from a knocked over lamp—

.         Relax!
.         Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

Your check-writing hand’s developed a cramp,
Your bills are all due and you ain’t got a stamp,
Creditors cling to your neck like a clamp—

.          Smile!
.          Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

Your yard now faces a new freeway ramp.
Your son is engaged to a gold-digging tramp.
Your “guitar hero” neighbor’s just bought a new amp—

.         Life is good!
.         Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

Breaking news makes you break out in a rant.
You want to stop watching; duty says you can’t.
I fear Lady Liberty’s being measured for implants–

.         With luck we’ll survive,
.         And pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

 

Now that baseball season is on the horizon, take a break and check out our doggerel, served fresh daily, and maybe even contribute if you have a mind to.  Consider it part of your “self-care” regimen.  We ALL need a short break now and again!

BARDBALL.COM

RIP Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey

People sometimes ask me, since I write about a noir circus underworld, whether my parents took me to the circus a lot. Actually, they didn’t. The main excuse was that all the hay and animals made my mother allergic, though it might also be that doing things with the kids never struck my father as a particularly good use of time.

I don’t remember ever going to the circus, though I might have. My appreciation of it only grew when I began to research circus lore and practices for the “Rex Koko, Private Clown” books. One of the top perks of this research was taking my own kids and nephews to see live circuses, like the Big Apple Circus (on its one and only tour of the Midwest), the UniverSoul Circus, Cirque de Soleil, and of course, the old reliable, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey.

Like the seasons, Ringling came to Chicago with regularity, always at the end of November, forcing the Bulls and the Blackhawks to play on the road for two weeks. Tickets were pretty affordable. The crowds were always nice, though the arena was never more than half full. Many big Mexican families would attend, probably because circus still has a big legacy south of the border. I liked smaller circuses better, but Ringling brought that particular American value of “make it big, make it splashy.” I liked how they always tried to squeeze another buck out of us, as tradition requires. I liked it in much the same way I like opera: It’s people at the top of their profession, doing something strange and thrilling.

The news that Ringling Brothers would no longer tour hit me like a gut-punch last Saturday night. “Big Bertha” couldn’t end, could it? It had been going since 1870, since before Germany and Italy were nations. Since before professional baseball. Since before the Great Chicago Fire. For 146 years. And now, nothing.

I like circuses for the same reason I like parades: To reflect on how people are entertained. Beneath the high tech gimcracks of video and lights, the circus still exists because people want to see something extraordinary. A girl who can twist her body into shapes. Daredevils who like to walk on wires. Human cannonballs (how great is a human cannonball! Also something that premiered after Barnum & Bailey, in 1871).

And the animal acts. Protests against animal acts were what forced Ringling to shut down. When they “retired” their elephants from performing, their shrinking audience lost even more interest in attending. PETA can crow about it, and has been, of course. They’re zealots, in my mind, as unbending as abortion opponents. No middle ground, no grey areas. In much of the world, an elephant is a working animal, and only an idiot would harm a valuable animal that helps them make a living. Not denying there are lots of idiots in the world, of course.

I think the circus loses its appeal as its audience gets further away from the land, and further away from working with their hands. Only someone who climbs to fix a roof can grasp what it’s like to walk on a high wire. Only someone who knows horses can appreciate a really fine equestrian act. This is another part of the circus that tickles my imagination: What it must have been liked when it arrived in small, isolated towns. When locals saw an elephant for the first time, or a pretty acrobat in spandex. (Many young men also found other ways to enjoy women at the circus, though Ringling never had anything like that.) It was a venue of amazement, the Greatest Show on Earth. As someone said of Ringling, not admiringly, “The Biggest. The Grandest. The Goddamnedest.”

Now it’s gone. And no 3-D movie or virtual reality headset will ever replace the thrill.

Harry Lichtenbaum is an 86-year-old survivor of the Ringling Bros. Great Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. You can read an interview with him here.

RIP to the Best Dog Ever

There’s no one begging to be walked when I get home late at night.

There’s no one pushing himself into my lap whenever I dare to sit on the floor.

There’s no one who will bark at phantoms he hears in the Chicago night.

There’s no one who will leave a mess for us to step in when we wake up in the morning.

There’s no one who will sniff at every corner of every fence in the neighborhood, especially when it is windy and below zero.

There’s no one who will love us so strongly and unreservedly.

A couple of days ago, we had to put down Duffy, the wheaten terrier who had been part of our lives for 15 or more years. He was named Harley when we adopted him, but that macho name didn’t suit him at all, so we re-named him Duffy. I’ve never not liked a Duffy. And no one ever disliked him. If anything, he acted too much like a human in the family, getting underfoot, barking to be included in everything. He was pretty uninterested in food yet extremely well behaved. He might have had a dumb name when we got him, but his owner had trained him extremely well.

But his quality of life had gone downhill and wasn’t improving. He’d gone blind and deaf, and didn’t know where he was. Seizures would hit him when he went out for a walk in the sunshine. (I think the sunlight somehow triggered them, but was never sure.) His intestinal tract was irritated more often than not, and when he could find the back door to be let out, sometimes he needed to be carried down the stairs. So it was time to end his suffering. My wife did it while I was out of town on a college visit, because she’s a little tougher than me. (Okay, a lot tougher.)

We probably won’t get another dog soon, because we’d like to travel a little more. But also, because no other dog could really match him. He was one of a kind. He was the dog of dogs. So long, little buddy.

Minnie Minoso, Your Name is a Song

 

minoso

Minnie Minoso
Your name is a song

And why it took so long
To integrate Chicago baseball
God only knows

But you came and showed
The joy of speed
The command of glove
And changed the game
But why do I love
You, Orestes, besides your name?

The Cuban Comet
You flared and flamed
and lit up the place
Wherever you came

Minnie Minoso
Your name is a song
I hope to recall
My whole life long

Big Giveaway for Double Indignity

Hey all you kinkers and flatties out there!

I’m trying to gin up a little flash for Double Indignity in the weeks before Christmas. So I’m going to wade into the waters of a book giveaway, like all the experts tell me.

So if you’ve been waiting for the chance to get a signed copy of Rex Koko, Private Clown #2, as well as a signed poster and who knows what else I’ll throw into the envelope, click on the button below, or head over to Goodreads and look for it in the Giveaway listings before December 10.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Double Indignity by James Finn Garner

Double Indignity

by James Finn Garner

Giveaway ends December 10, 2014. See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win