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The Eleventh Month

November is here. Probably the least appreciated month of the year, what with the dwindling daylight, the prospect of elections, somber Veteran’s Day, and that dutiful holiday called Thanksgiving. Don’t the calendar makers realize that every month should be fun fun FUN? Why are they keeping us from jumping straight from Halloween’s excesses to Christmas’ excesses?

Not convinced? Okay, here are some of the things we’re supposed to celebrate in November:

British Appreciation Month
Good Nutrition Month
National Alzheimer’s Disease Month
National Stamp Collecting Month
Religion and Philosophy Books Month
Peanut Butter Lover’s Month.

This dreary parade cannot even be saved by National Fig Week, which we are enjoying right now.

But I’m not letting it get me down. One reason is, I’m practically finished with the manuscript for my new book, which will eliminate a lot of tension around the house, at least until the weeks before publication in March. My editor and I have even agreed to a title, which is a long, boring story about which I may post sometime.

Another reason is, our TIVO is finally back and running, along with our DSL modem, cell phones, and dishwasher. Can you dispute the existence of gremlins at this time of year?

So it’s a good time to revisit my New Year’s resolutions and finally toe the line. One of those resolutions was, blog every day. This can still be accomplished, since I never designated a starting date. November 1 is as good a date as any, I guess.

Besides, Nov. 1 is also the birthday of the hydrogen bomb (1952) and the brassiere (1914).

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Take Home an Amusement Park

Santa’s Village Amusement Park in Dundee, Ill., is a staple of the childhood memories of local Baby Boomers that closed last year. While nothing can take the place of those memories, those with the yard space can bring home big souvenirs tomorrow as they auction off the equipment and rides like The Dragonfly, the Fire Chief Crazy Bus, and the Tubs-O-Fun. The auction catalog can be found here. They’re even selling off their Zamboni machines. Come on, you always wanted a Zamboni, right? Probably cheaper than a Hummer.

All I want is one of their Skee-Ball alleys. With enough practice, maybe I could finally beat it.

Via Gaper’s Block.

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Scraps

* This morning, at 7:46 Eastern time, America welcomed its 300,000,000th citizen, according to the Census Bureau. He then managed to pimp me out of the last parking space in the lot.

* Speaking of pimps, the gentlemen with the bling are one of the biggest Halloween costumes this year, at least from what I can see at the transient stores that pop up in empty storefronts. Pimps and pirates this year. Hmmmm. Is there a political joke in there?

* But considering how slutty the other costumes are getting, it’s hard NOT to imagine having pimps around.

* Hey, Dr. Frankenstein: Re-Animation is Murder Backwards!

* I’m trying to figure out a way to keep our pumpkins safe from the hordes of ravenous squirrels in the hood. Thinking of spraying them with oil mixed with Thai hot sauce, but I’m afraid they’ll start to like that little endorphin rush and keep coming back for more, looking for jalapeno poppers or something.

* I was all set to make a stand this fall, and not bother to watch any football at all on TV. I had plenty of reasons–the main one being that, if a guy follows more than one sport, he’s got too much time on his hands. And what do I get for my resolve? A Chicago Bears team that apparently employs witchcraft to win games (see last night’s failed field goal by Arizona) and a Michigan team that might make it to #2 by the time the Ohio State game rolls around. Great. Just great.

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No Music, No Chicken, Just Guts

Just got through watching Kenny Rogers’ PHENOMENAL pitching job for the Tigers against the Yankees. I’ve never seen someone so in control of his curveball. He could be with Tom Cruise and the Impossible Mission squad, and throw round things with great accuracy, like into melting nuclear cores past a bad guy with a smacker of some kind. And eventually he’d snap Cruise into little pieces, so it would be entertaining AND a public service.

And he got to do it against the Yankees. Christmas in October. It’s so nice to see Joe Torre give his best Frankenstein face in the dugout, and watch Jeter and Damon and the rest of them just give up. After every strike toward the end, Rogers shouted at Rodriguez, “Come on! Gimme the Ball!” I expected him to take a bite out of it like a big Granny Smith. He’s never had any luck against the Yankees, and maybe they got lax, but he was so fired up I thought he’d have an aneurysm. It’s just so cool to see a man set a goal and rise to the occasion against all the stats. Dare I say it, I live for this.

I didn’t want to sit and watch a ballgame all night, have other important things to take care of. But that game was one for the ages, and if the Tigers are going to advance in the playoffs (a big if–I expect the Yankees to score about 15 runs tomorrow, just out of blue-ball frustration), I needed to see this one. Hoo Dog. I’m going to go strap some ice on my thumb, cuz I kept rewinding the Tivo to replay the pitches.

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Old Flame vs. New Love

Iconic imageThroughout the summer, my affections have been pulled in two directions. I’ve been faced with the decision of whether to root for my current hometown White Sox or my former hometown Dee-troit Tigers.

Old loyalties die hard; I was 8 years old when the Tigers won in ’68, and without that, I might never be a baseball fan. But this summer, I was more inclined to the Sox, because if they were to falter, impatient GM Kenny Williams would start to dismantle the team, swapping a player here and a player there, until what was so powerfully delicious last season begins to resemble a college sophomore’s attempt at Sunday cooking. (Now his job involves which of his five starting pitchers to trade to make room on the roster for rookie phenoms coming up, as well as bullpen help. Good luck with that.) Besides, even with today’s communications, it’s hard rooting for a team from a distance. Even though I saw the Tigers beat up the Cubs in June here at Wrigley Field, they’re still strangers to me.

This week, the Sox made the decision for me by finishing with the fifth best record in baseball. Hardly sputtering, but not enough to move into October. Now I can cheer for the Tigers until the Yankees come up and clean their fridges out.

After that, it’s easy. Just cheer for whoever’s playing the Yankees.

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Front-Line Fishies

Hail the beloved bluegill. This summertime staple, this amiable bream, this scintillating sunfish is now being used to fight terrorism in several major cities. This article explains how this patriotic panfish is being used to detect whether any type of toxins or contaminants have been dumped into our water supplies.

Small numbers of the fish are kept in tanks constantly replenished with water from the municipal supply, and sensors in each tank work around the clock to register changes in the breathing, heartbeat and swimming patterns of the bluegills that occur in the presence of toxins.

“Nature’s given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there,” said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the bluegill monitoring system. “There’s no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill.”

And here, I’ve been cursing them for stealing my bait. So put that bluegill back in the lake, little lady. He’s got to grow a little bigger so he can do his civic duty.

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A Fraternal Shout-out

Wanted to alert the world (and especially that part of it in NY that supports the theater biz) that the showcase starring my brother Patrick Garner has had two performances added in the coming week.

“Desperate Measures” is the musical, an update of “Measure for Measure” set it in the Wild West. It’s playing as part of the New York Musical Theater Festival. There’s more info and photos at the link for Broadway World dot com.

So get out there and support live theater, unless you’re one a them lowlifes who hates both Shakespeare, musical theater AND cowboys. And if you are, I don’t know how you can live with yourself.

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A Disconcerting Irony

For all of Dubya’s faults—all of em, he thought wearily, all of them—there are two things that people say about him through crisis after crisis. One is that of all the human virtues, he holds loyalty in the highest regard. The other is that once he decides on a path, he cannot be turned from it. He doggedly hangs on to what he considers his mission, regardless of anything else at all.

So, I started thinking: There must be a job somewhere in which these two traits would spell success. Dubya’s gotta be suited for some job somewhere, right?

Loyalty to his fellows, dogged tenacity toward a goal.

Loyalty, tenacity.

Then it hit me: Dubya’s talents would’ve made him a first-rate soldier!

What a shame those pesky National Guard types in Texas and Alabama kept him from truly shining in Viet Nam, making him complete training missions and stay sober, then went and lost his papers and everything.

What a shame.

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Makin’ with the Funny

There’s so many things I want to write in this blog…

...and that sentence makes me sound just so diligent about things, doesn’t it?…

But they are going to have to wait for a while. Shock on shock, I have a new book deal. Well, six weeks old, but new enough, and the publisher wants it as of yesterday. So my apologies to those of you who want my salient opinions on circuses and CIA secret prisons, but my nose must be affixed to the handy grindstone for the foreseeable future.

Don’t want to say here what the book is about, but in researching it, I came across this movie quote that I’d never heard before. Clifton Webb delivers it in “The Razor’s Edge”:

You know, I’ve never been able to understand why, when there’s so much space in the world, people should deliberately choose to live in the Middle West.

Ha!

PS:THere was a crazy thing on the Huffington Post this morning about a strange sea beastie that washed ashore in Siberia. It’s probably a hoax, but there are some cool pictures. Looks kind of like one of the Muppets used during the early years of SNL.