The Greatest Game Ever Played

hy·per·bo·le

hīˈpərbəlē/

noun

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

synonyms:

exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment

The best place to find hyperbole in this world is Facebook. We're all guilty of it. We eat a good steak or see a spider or celebrate a lost tooth, and it becomes the biggest event since The Eagles reunited for the Hell Freezes Over tour (and then toured like 6 more times). Often, we are the guilty party, with our gushing description of the events we just witnessed.

"OMG!!!!! Holly just got 4th place in Jump Rope For Heart in her class of 22 kids!!! #proudmama #olympics2020"

"I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin. I literally have THE BESTEST HUSBAND IN THE WORLD!! He bought me my favorite ice cream (Vanilla Bean!! YUM YUM!!) after my 11 hour kidney transplant surgery. AND I CAME HOME TO A CLEAN HOUSE!!!! I LOVE YOU BOO!!!!!!"

And sometimes, our parents and grandparents and drunk friends do the job for us.

"Feeling sad since my little pup has an achy tooth. Gotta go to the vet tomorrow. :("

      Sally Bickertooth and 41 others LIKE this

Sally Bickertooth: OMG sis, I am SOOOOO sorry. This just breaks my heart. You two are in my prayers!! Get better little snuggle bear!!! Txt me when you leave for the vet so I can say a prayer while you're driving to the vet!!!!!

On and on it goes like that on almost every page on the entire bloody website. It doesn't make me angry, but it gives me pause whenever I want to say something like I did in the title of this piece, because I'm probably just blowing smoke outta my ass like I do every time I like something and tell the world about it. BUT. 

I've had 12 hours to digest the AL Wildcard game at Kauffman Stadium last night, and I consider that enough time to make a bold statement and stand by it. That was the best baseball game any two teams ever played since Abner Doubleday invented the sport. 

You've probably heard all the story lines a million times already, regardless of whether you live here in KC or not. 1985. George Brett. Dick Howser. Frank White. Don Denkinger. CD's were invented. "No outs to go!" And the ensuing lifetime of banality, struggle, 100 loss seasons, bad management, absent ownership (still an issue) and generally apathy for baseball in this town. Good fans went to 5 games a year, 10 if their company or neighbor inherited season tickets. Then, on Dayton Moore's arrival, things started to change (and stay the same). We built the best farm system in baseball and promptly traded the best prospect in the sport and a solid #2 pitcher for James Shields and Wade Davis. The coin started spinning on that day; Dayton Moore called "heads" and we waited...

Last night, with Colon in scoring position and the best young catcher in baseball at the plate hacking like hell to advance him, the coin spun around one final and precariously slow time...and landed. When we exhaled it was heads up.

If you watched the game or talked to another human being today, you know how the game went. What you probably don't know unless you live here (or root from Arizona) is how it felt. I grew up in Wyoming, long before the Rockies existed, and my hometown was so far from any MLB team that the Sports Editor at the paper would take a poll (you had to mail in your vote) to decide which team to cover as "our" team each season. Sometimes it was the Cardinals, sometimes the Yankees, and once I recall Seattle as the victor. Someone may correct me on all of this, but my point is that "we" (people born there with no immediate association or family member in the Majors) had to try to feel good about something without seeing it very often or being fully vested. That sucked. I cheered for the Yankees on and off as a bandwagon idiot (even bail-bribed myself out of a Mexican holding cell with a Yankees hat in 1990). But I moved to KC in 1994, and for the last 20 years, I've metamorphosed into a die hard, blue blooded (literally had my blood dyed blue) fan of the Royals. After 20 years of doing anything, you automatically get into the club. I'm also, by that logic, a beer.

My two boys are Royals fans by birth, and they've only ever known heartache, boredom and grainy stock footage of Brett getting mobbed and champagne bathed to build their feelings about this team. Until last night, that is.

We watched together and we gave up after the 7-3 lead looked like too much to overcome. We left the watch party and retreated to our house to get ready for school, an 8-8 Chiefs season and 6 months of cursing Ned Yost and his devilish desire to over-manage at the most inopportune times. But we never stopped watching. Then we got glued and we got a run across and it became the most electrifying 120 minutes of my sports life, and Salvy swung at a pitch that wasn't in the zone (it might not have been in the zone if the zone was an Auto Zone) and Colon crossed the plate and we hugged and laughed and I had tears on my face. Over a stinking baseball game.

The Royals might play 11 more games and sweep their way into a second World Championship. They might go to Anaheim and lose two then fly to MCI and choke away more glory at The K in front of the very people they just gave life back to last night. I don't care either way, and I mean it. I WANT them to win 11 more, don't get me wrong. And I'm not setting the bar at, "well we had a great run and the WILDCARD GAME WAS WORTH IT AND NOW WE'RE HAPPY AGAIN FOR 29 MORE YEARS!!!" Whatever they do, they will never be able to do what they did last night. In one game, they tore off the bandage on the oldest wound in professional sports. No other major sport has a city with a longer post season drought, and it would be difficult to repeat it if you tried. For today, for right now, the slate is clean.

Do you know what has happened in the world since the last time the Royals won a playoff game?

Well, I drank a pot of coffee and wrote a blog. It rained a little. Oh, and they fueled a jet and flew the team to L.A.

HEADS!

The 20-ounce Wolf Spider in the Room

I've been doing a lot of edgy (for me) things lately.

I'm generally the kind of guy that takes the exact same number of steps from bed to shower, shower to coffee pot, pot to car, car to office, and so on until my head explodes like a water balloon on a stove top. I don't mind routine, but once I shake it I realize the importance of seeing things from a different view. Our minds have a rigid tendency to conform to the known. We like to feel comfort, yearn to feel safe and it gives us great joy to be in control of our surroundings, feelings and vision. It starts from the first moment you were swaddled in your mother's arms and your heart rhythms still matched.

To get some edge back, I'm trying to drive a different way home from work, if only by a block, every single day. (So edgy you could just faint, right?)

You remember "Fear Factor"? The show pitted normal people (and sometimes B list celebrities) in a competition to take on physical challenges for glory and cash. Thing is, they really weren't all that physical to begin with. As the title of show implies, the challenges were almost always mental. I know I don't want to eat a 20-ounce Wolf Spider on my own time (and for free), but here I am with a bunch of strangers watching me do it. I'm confident this network has gone to great lengths to ensure that Wolf Spiders aren't in any way poisonous (lest a contestant die on National TV) and that its really no different than a sandwich.  I can see the $50,000 on the table over there, but I can't shake the notion that maybe, just maybe, this is the King Wolf Spider no scientist has ever seen and he's positively loaded with poison and this will become a Faces of Death movie on You Tube in 5 minutes.

It's not that I can't physically do it, it's that I'm mentally not WILLING to accept the challenge because I never physically have done it and survived. But after one Wolf Spider and seeing my checking account balance grow by the grand prize amount, I bet I could eat a Wolf Spider every day (provided the prize would repeat itself). No longer a fear...no longer a factor.

So the edgy thing I've been doing is reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and applying some of his logic to my own thought concerning world events of today. Edgy in the sense that I was raised Roman Catholic and my kids attend really terrific Catholic and Jesuit schools and my wonderful Mom is the single most devoted and loving Christian woman I've ever met. Edgy in the sense that I have taken a different "route to work".

Dawkins is a noted atheist and an outspoken one at that, and I'm not writing to inflame anybody or to praise or quote him- or to state any particular fact about myself- other than to mention that, in reading and pondering some of the ideas presented to my brain that had been previously on the self-imposed "off limits list" I grew up with and around, it sparked me to write.

I'll try to keep this subject condensed, and if you already stopped reading I don't blame you, but here it is:

Michael Sam/Jason Collins/Arizona/Kansas/Uganda/Russia/Etc.

I am not asking that you try this exercise, I am simply telling you that I tried it. I promise you won't die if you close your eyes and reach into the cage with me. The prize if you can achieve this task is totally up to you, it's not mine to give. Oh you WANT to try it?

Ok, close your eyes tight. We are going back in time now to the day of your birth.

You are thirty seconds old. Your mother is cradling you in her arms, feeding and swaddling you.
Stop there.

We haven't yet been to the bris or the baptismal font and we never hit a synagogue or mosque. Stop there, at that moment when your mother first held you. That love that she felt right then, for you alone, unimpeded by any outside influence, was the truest form of love- more powerful than a thrashing atom bomb, tomahawk slam dunk, passionate pulpit-pounding sermon all packaged in a blazing guitar solo. Anything else you "learned" or were "taught" about love from then until now- about law and about right and wrong- were just watered down versions of true and pure love (or hatred), passed on from eons of error-prone human beings.

Keep your eyes closed.

Did she whisper anything in that first breath into your face about hell, damnation, bigotry or sin? She didn't, did she? Of course not. Because in the instance of pure and unalloyed love, there is no such thing. It cannot exist-this love- with any hint of hate or bigotry or fear. As soon as that part rolls in, it's just your path, your future routine. They begin to shape you, for better or worse, in their own image. It's out of love, quite literally and (sometimes) quite sadly.

Keep your eyes closed.

Now it's been a year. You've been to the bris or the baptismal font or the mosque. Does she still love you? Of course. Has it been reinforced by a belief system? In some indelible way, you must admit that it has, regardless of which outside influence you've been living in. That love is never pure like that again. It has boundaries and structure. Notice I am not singling out Christianity or Wicca or the Mosque or Hinduism or Scientology. It's earth, and it's huge and people are...well, strange and imperfect.

But if you could reproduce that instant post-birth feeling you only once had- bottle it and take a shot of it and and re-experience it again, how would it feel to immediately turn on your television in that state of mind and see a story about the Arizona legislature passing a bill that would allow for the discriminatory treatment of hundreds of thousands of people, once babies born into perfect circles of trust and love, now adults and no different than they ever were, except for through the eyes of...

God?

Surely not. Surely this is human bigotry. Surely the same God who gave a mother the love and energy to stare into her son's eyes and make that initial connection, surely that God hasn't also just coerced the Arizona legislature to give her the legal right to refuse service to him in the diner where she works because he's gay. Surely that God didn't just persuade the President of his own country to make it illegal and punishable by life in prison for a baby girl to be gay and to be born in Uganda. No way, right?

Hell. No. That hatred and bigotry is all yours and you are free to get rid of it any time you like.

Saying this out loud is me eating my giant Wolf Spider. My account balances are growing in empathy, respect and happiness- for myself and for all other imperfect humans.

You can open your eyes now.

For No One

Revolver first asked for a Walkman five months before the Christmas of 1981. He spotted Gus, his teenage neighbor sitting in his yard, grinning like a proud sinner and drumming his kneecaps. The cassette deck was clamped to his belt and his excellent long hair hid the earphones.

“What is that thing?” he asked Gus.

“I can’t hear you, Rev. What? It’s Foreigner! You like Foreigner? Check it out! It’s called a Walkman.”

Gus handed him the orange-eared headphones. Revolver leaned in to meet the tethered distance of the cord and was immediately transformed into a juke...box...hero. With stars in his eyes.

After soaking it in for a few seconds, and not wanting to overstay his welcome, Rev gave them back.

“That kicks butt,” he muttered, failing to sound cool, older or longhaired.

“No,” Gus said, “it kicks ASS, man. Their best album yet, and it sounds so much better on cassette than on vinyl. Hey, and don’t tell your Dad I said ass, right?”

“Oh I won’t. Man. That thing kicks some...damn ass.” His eyes dropped to his shoes and he blinked hard.

Gus winked at him and red-faced Revolver sulked back into his house to brush up on his cursing and to memorize the Encyclopedia entry on speeding up the growth of one’s hair.

By Thanksgiving, he’d made his case abundantly clear, taping pictures from magazine ads for the Walkman all over his bedroom and the fridge. His favorite one featured a pair of doublemint-twin blondes roller skating in a park and wearing astoundingly short shorts. And while Revolver’s Dad certainly seemed amiable to his quest, his Dad’s new girlfriend was not.

“I don’t know, Tom. Seems like anytime I see a Walkman I see a cigarette or a beer can, too. Isn’t that a little too hippie and grown up for a ten year old?”

Dad would hug Rita and lift her off the floor, trying to change the subject or make her laugh, which, while serving a purpose, also made Revolver sick to his stomach. His real mother (who would have already bought him a Walkman by now) had only been dead for two years. She loved music and would sprawl out on the living room shag playing records, singing loudly almost every night. She named her only son after her favorite album for crying out loud, so Revolver was repulsed by this replacement woman’s lack of taste and (possibly) a human soul. Her opinion meant nothing to him, so he ignored it and stayed on the mission.

Two weeks before Christmas-- the back of his hair now past his shirt collar--Revolver found a Radio Shack bag on the top coat closet shelf. Inside was a Walkman. A clean yellow deck with black foam earphones; vacuum sealed in clamshell plastic. A piece of folded green construction paper was taped over the price tag.

For: Rev

Love: Dad

Exploding in a blend of happiness and guilt, he quickly wrapped it shut and went to replace it when another bag caught his eye. He reached into see if it was the new Foreigner cassette and pulled out a small felt-covered box.

Inside a diamond ring sat nested in silk.

For: Rita~ Will you?

His eyes welled and spilled. In his mind spun the vision of his mother singing her favorite McCartney lyric:

“And in her eyes you see nothing

No sign of love behind the tears

Cried for no one

A love that should have lasted years.”

Revolver shoved the ring into his pocket and went outside to dig a really deep hole.

Try to Avoid Bad Words

(My round 10 entry into NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest, which mandated the story be no more than 600 words, and to be in the form of a voice mail)

“Ahem. Hello and good evening Mr. and Mrs. Palabra. This is Irving Skinner calling, Dean at the Northwestern Directional School for Boys. I’m sorry to trouble you during the dinner hour, but I was hoping I might be fortunate enough to actually speak with either of you as you’ve been terribly difficult to reach.

As you’ll recall, you enrolled your son, Mala, here in September. I’ve heard reports that your Volvo left a lengthy patch of warm rubber in front of his dormitory on drop-off day, and unfortunately the opportunity to introduce myself escaped more quickly than you did. On a side note, I appreciate the consistent and very gracious checks you’ve been sending in the envelopes with a large smiley face in place of a proper return address.

I have repeatedly attempted to reach you at the emergency contact numbers you provided the admissions office. When I call the number for Patty, I am asked to leave a message regarding my thoughts on “the driving habits of any of Highway Master’s over the road professionals.” I was forced to weigh the odds of you being in the trucking business, Mrs. Palabra, with the notion that you made a typographical error on that particular line...

I also tried the number listed as the best way to reach your husband, Tristan. I was promptly and loudly given the hours of operation for Pete’s Ping Pong, Pool and Pizza Pub. Out of morbid curiosity, I paid a personal visit to Pete’s, and yes, all of those wonderful things are indeed present under one roof, along with a surprisingly valid permit to serve food. Not present was Tristan Palabra.

As luck would have it, one of our students here has a parent working for the FBI, and he helped me track you down. Let me say for the record that I wouldn’t normally leave a message like this, but your evasive actions have left me no choice.

On the day Mala arrived at our prestigious school, we had our first recorded fire. In nearly 150 years of caring for and instructing the leaders of tomorrow, we’ve never had such an incident. Your son took full responsibility for the blaze during a group interrogation when he wrote “I started the fire” in magic marker on my pant leg. Our school psychiatrist assisted me with an impromptu counseling session for him that evening, during which, and to my complete amazement, he managed to start the second fire in school history.

The list of atrocities has been lengthy in his first two months here.  We’ve had several organized spray painting contests, a statue relocation into my office, and, in the most memorable incident at the Homecoming Football game, a solo streaking of the field that lasted seven...full...minutes.

The final straw occurred today, though. Over the course of the semester, despite all his tribulations, Mala has actually attended class. In between food fights and the sit-ins he leads in solitary protest of mandatory showering, your son has also begun to fancy himself a writer. He handed in an English paper this morning that shocked his teacher so deeply that she immediately left the classroom to bring it to me. She’d instructed the boys to write a poem about  the human heart, and for his part, Mala could only muster thirteen words. Let me read it to you:

Mine sped off in a fast Swedish coupe, and I never said goodbye.

Perhaps a visit is in order? Some of us here could probably use a hug.

Oh, and bring your checkbook...”

My entry in Round 9 of NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest.
The prompt, write a 600 word story that revolves around about a President, real or fictional.




Amigo’s New Hope

Fresh coffee drips while the girls pick through yesterday’s magnificent May Day arrangement. Each places a spring bud behind her ear; a pale pink Primrose for Malia and a shock-white Ghost Flower for Sasha. Kisses and goodbyes fill up the kitchen and then they exit. Neither acknowledges me under the table, my chin propped along Father’s shoe; my legs lazily splayed.

From down here, he doesn't look well. The nervous tapping of his unoccupied shoe narrowly misses my ear. His face is tired and drawn like an old scarf. He leans down, tousles the scruff of my neck and slowly pulls straight the curls there, ten or twenty times. He’s out of sorts and distracted- hasn’t flung my tennis ball once across the room, though I patiently wait.
Mother rises, kisses his forehead and whispers slowly against it, “Be calm. Breathe. You’ll make the right decision.” His smile for her is awkward at best; painful at worst.

He’s walking now and I tether. I adore his gravelly voice in my ears and his large hand on my neck. In the sprawling circular office I rest near him, but out of reach. I've learned that if I want to stay in here, I must stay out of the way. People fire in and out throughout the morning. Mr. Gates and Mr. Biden arrive first and never leave. Mrs. Clinton comes in just before lunch, straight from the helicopter that seems daily to invade my yard. I can’t stand the violent, spinning blades; howl at them with thunder. Sensing my agitation, she is quick to me; spending a minute around my ears, eyes locked with mine. I like her immensely.

Food and tea trays rush in and out during the long day, and three times I leave to stretch my legs in the grass. Mr. Biden joins me once while talking rapidly into his phone. The roses are in glorious bloom and I spend hours wandering around them, nuzzling, admiring and dozing off in the freshly cut grass.

It’s nearly 4:00 when I wander to the kitchen for water. The girls should have come home slinging their jackets and laughing, but they’re nowhere to be found. I’m rankled by all of it. Our routine is missing. When I trot back to his office, he’s halfway down the hall, heading to another room. He turns on his heels and calls me to follow with his eyes and hands.

The Situation Room is packed, but silent. “I need to watch this,” he says, and I spin under his chair and press my chin onto his shoe. Again, the scent of leather and coffee beans makes me heavy-eyed. People murmur and drone for a while. I hear the snap of a camera; raise my head quickly at their sharp claps and solemn hand raps on the tabletop.
“He’s dead,” someone says.  The room slowly empties.

Now, it’s very late and I’m curled up against Sasha on her bed. He watches her chest rise and fall in restful beats. He kisses her, pulls her covers up and tight, and turns his hands to me.

He’s different now.  Lines from this morning have softened; the dim light of the room imbues his face. A corner smile rises as he gently runs his hands along my back.

“After today, I hope to sleep as well as you do, Bo…Amigo’s New Hope, indeed” he whispers.

I can’t comprehend, but I understand. I doze away dreaming of Roses and Ghost Flowers; worn leather soles and Arabica beans.

A short story for NPR- His Floor

This is my submission to NPR's new short story (600 word) contest. It must be about someone coming to town, and someone leaving town. Wish me luck...

His Floor

Her nose drained down her lip, tried to freeze there, but dropped to a button on her coat. Winter’s gravity pulled everything toward the sidewalk. She imagined sleeping there, but the wind pushed her legs further down the street. Rusty pulled up in his truck, yanked his coat and briefcase toward him, and pled with her to accept the offer. This time, after three days of declining with soft smiles, she took it and climbed slowly into the warm cab.

He’d been watching her for weeks. He knew her patterns and paths, and could tell the time of day by her location on the street. He did what he knew he should have done before winter landed in Laramie, and offered her the space. She stared out the cracked windshield of the blue Ford and thought about what he’d just explained.

He had a house on Grand, had rehabbed the entire thing and, being single and in a college town, split it into two apartments. He lived in one and rented the other to grad students. But he never properly finished the basement to create a third unit suitable to rent. She could stay there if she wanted, free of charge. Burdette wasn’t afraid of Rusty, and never needed to look closely at him to judge his character. In 83 years, she’d heard enough voices to trust through tone.

The basement was dark, but heavily insulated and dry. He’d already moved a spare single frame and mattress into the corner with an unfinished nightstand next to it. He was in the process of stripping and re-staining it, and that told her he was sorry he didn’t have much more in the way of furniture. The tenants upstairs might loan her a spare chair or a radio. He said he would check with them, and she nodded and ran her hand under her eyes. Then she hugged him a bit and he hugged her back, warmly and without regard for the smell in her hair and clothes.

She came and went freely for the winter, awakened each morning straining her eyes to see the floor joists above her. The comforting cut wood suspended across the ceiling of the room, her strong and oak-scented shelter. Rusty brought her a grey porcelain mug full of coffee each morning before he left for work, and on finishing it, she departed for the 12^th Street Mission Kitchen. No matter the depth of the snow, the wind’s force or the pain in her bones, Burdette spent every day walking. Her legs went for loops of blocks, stopping in the Kitchen twice a day and always back to Rusty’s at dusk, falling asleep under the oak joists. Her ceiling was his floor.

In April, as the swell of snow slipped to rain and tulips, he sat down with the grey mug and touched her hand. He was quiet while she drank her coffee and looked up the joists. Her eyes dropped and caught his, reddened. He took off his glasses and spoke softly.

He’d been transferred to Cheyenne. More money and somewhere he’d always wanted to live. His renters upstairs had graduated and were moving to Omaha. The house was sold to a man, he explained, moving to Laramie with a family- two children and his pregnant wife. They needed a big house, so Rusty had sold it to them. He kissed her forehead and went to his truck.

Burdette drank her coffee in silence, and imagined the feeling of running her hand along that ceiling. She put on her coat and she walked.

2012 Breakdown: Fantasy Style

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Debt Ceiling Problems? Lower the Floor.

I was granted an exclusive interview with the world's foremost expert in the Debt Ceiling Crisis recently, and he reluctantly agreed to allow me to publish the interview here with the stipulation that I not reveal his identity. Imagine listening to this interview in the slowed down voice of Will Ferrell from this classic scene in "Old School". We shall refer to our Debt Ceiling Crisis Expert henceforth, as Fritz, since all people with that name ought to be wise and scholarly.

CK- Good morning. Lots of people are unwilling to admit they don't know enough about this issue to be as worried as CNN and FOX news says they should be. Can you help the general public get a grip on the Debt Ceiling Crisis for us?

Fritz- Good morning, and yes, I'm happy to help. Please imagine for a moment the largest stack of pancakes you can possibly imagine...Do you see it?

CK- Uh, yes. I see it.

How tall is it?

Well, almost as tall as me. It has a golden hue to it, glistening with Wisconsin Maple syrup. It's gorgeous.

No. Wrong. This is an analogy, so think bigger.

To the "ceiling"? That high? (I'm laughing, cleverly)

Son, the debt ceiling, if it were a stack of pancakes, would reach from your plate on the table, to SATURN. This is the magnitude of what we're talking about. Our National Debt is into the TRILLIONS. A trillion pancakes is so tall that most people can't even comprehend it.

What about that competitive eating champ? Aaaahh, shoot. You know the guy that got banned from the Nathan's Hot Dog competition...Could he imagine it?

You mean Joey Chestnut?

No no. The Asian kid that weighs 120 pounds. Kokomo?

Kobayashi?

YES! Could he eat the Debt Ceiling Pancake?

This is not about eating, this is about understanding the magnitude of the crisis we face. Forget the pancake analogy. Let me break it down more simply. The US has a credit score, just like you and I do, and we've attempted to keep it blemish free by borrowing when we need to and repaying our debt on time. Right now, our credit score is dangerously low. For decades, we've been the two buff dudes in the commercials with "749" across their chests. If we don't raise the Debt Ceiling or erase our debts by August 2nd, Moody's will downgrade us...we turn into the Fatty Arbuckle with the "510" and a hockey mask. Got it?

Moody's? What is that? A bar and grill for menopausal women? I'm picturing Kathy Bates checking ID's at the door...

No. For cripes sake. It's a credit rating agency which performs international financial research and analysis on commercial and government entities for the purpose of positioning them in the global investment market.

Uhhh...do you see the irony in that name? They rate the strength of a company or country's economy on any given day...and their name is Moody's?

Wow. You're right. That's like Zagat changing their name to "Deservedly Bitchy and Tired with 3 Hungry Kids"...

Totally!

Anyway, Moody's downgrades the credit worthiness of the US and experts agree there would be total financial chaos. The stock market would suffer terribly. Interest rates would climb. Because of your country's debt, which you repay as a taxpayer, you would be forced to pay private lenders 2 to 3 times as much to borrow private money. That's best case scenario. The downside includes 11% mortgages and 20% auto loans for good credit.

That's like letting the Car and Driver awards be chosen by a guy who walks to work everyday! Moody's...what a great name for a shitty bar where everbody hates your name. Oh! What if we came up with a company that rates how good a movie is and call it "Rotten Tomatoes"? The IRONY!! I love it, Fritz. While we're at it, let's hire Rupert Murdoch be the new spokesperson for ADT.

Do you not see the seriousness of this issue?

I do, but if the writing is on the wall and the WORLD knows that a credit default is imminent if we don't work out a deal, why don't the powers-that-be just carve out a deal that allows us to increase the debt ceiling temporarily while we find a long term, bi-partisan strategy to reduce the National debt through spending cuts in silly foreign wars, fat trimming on frivolous projects and imposing higher taxes for the uber wealthy that pay little to nothing?

Impossible. That would mean that someone would have to admit defeat in a pre-election year. Nobody is that stupid.

So this is political posturing for the 2012 election?

Jeez, dummy. Did you pay any attention to the NFL Lockout?

Sure. Why?

Same game...different name. Millionaires fighting millionaires over millions of YOUR dollars. What came of that debacle? Huh? Friend of mine told me that the collective bargaining agreement was reached 4 months ago, but that Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith played golf every day since then pretending to carry on the battle. Why? So there wouldn't be a perceived loser. The public salivates like rats waiting for the desired outcome, finding it implausible that they won't get it, but cautiously afraid that they might not. What if they don't have football? What will I CARE about this fall? During the waiting, posturing and fighting, the media gravitates over hot button issues that sell papers and ads and cause web traffic to spike. It's a big scam. You lose nothing but your self respect. You get football, and you'll gladly pay the increase in season ticket or parking prices because you got your crack back.

What's my crack in the debt ceiling debate?

National pride. History. 

Can it really be fixed...the debt?

Sure. We can find middle ground. We could legalize marijuana and tax it. Legalize internet gambling and tax it. Keep the business in the private sector and let Uncle Sam have his share. End the Afghan and Middle East wars. Bring troops home to long term jobs. Let the private sector flourish. Stop letting GE and big oil off the hook for billions in untaxed profits. Bring the American dollar back to something with value. Burn clean coal and spend the profits finding free renewable energy...blah blah blah. So no. It can't be fixed, because we will likely never agree to do anything as a team. This is the World Series of Poker. Boehner has a 3-7 off suit. Obama has a pair of two's. The Flop was King, Queen, Ace. Rainbow. Fourth street was a 4. We're just waiting for someone to fold this shitbag.

You're getting really pessimistic and political. Is there any bright spot here that I can share?

Sure. A deal will be made. Just like the NFL. The 30 days of posturing will cause both sides to proclaim victory. Moody's should downgrade us now if they really wanted to prove a point. But they won't.

That's not really bright. Give me something that will make people feel better. Feel like we're getting somewhere as a country!

Moody's has two for one well drinks tonight from 8:00 to Midnight.

Good enough. I'm buying.

Earning Your Stripes

I'm pretty sure I was 24 when my wife and I decided we needed to end our run of apartment living and grow up, buy a house and have some kids. We had no cash and decided to take out a loan to rent a picket fence to go with it. When we first started house-shopping, I looked immediately at the lot size, imagining the dream yard from my Wyoming boyhood. We needed at least an acre of green grass so I could install a batting cage and a putting green. On the other three acres we'd raise horses and build a self-sustaining garden. I would prance each morning through the lush greenery with a piping hot cup of coffee and sing the praises of nature. Also, I would need to quadruple my meager living as an assistant golf professional with some street hooking and heroin sales to pay the lawn crew to keep up the illusion.

It was then, during a sweaty daydream about lawn bowling and Jarts with the neigbors, that she challenged my manhood for the only first time.
"We have to buy a condo, dumbass sweetie. Maintenance provided. You can't take care of grass," she said. And when she said it, she sounded like an old German Kindergarten teacher telling me (a math genius) that I couldn't recite Pi to 3000 digits.

"You...can't take care... of GRASS!"

It was sooooo true. I worked Monday through Friday at a sweet private golf course where my job was to show up at dawn and make people happy and better at golf until nightfall. Then on the weekends, my job was to show up 3 hours before dawn to get ready to make people happy and better at golf until two hours afer nightfall. On my days off, I had to play golf so that I didn't accidentally teach these people how to drink 3 gallons of coffee on their drive to work (my only other talent) by mistake. So in truth, I had no time to take care of a sweet, Wyoming-style 5-acre yard with a full baseball diamond in the middle. But I wouldn't relent. She struck a chord with me the way Nels Cline strikes a chord during this. It was hard hitting and real and it pissed me off undressed my vision of what I was supposed to be. That chord resonated until I'd owned a house for a couple of years, and tirelessly failed at upkeeping a lawn between the hours of 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. and finally decided to give up the golf business in order to keep on being a half decent member of my own family.

I soon gained a freedom I'd never before had which people referred to as "weekends".

They were strange to me. There were hours with which you could do things, like mow and sleep. You could also coach and ride bikes and go to movies and breath air. IT WAS STARTLING. But the flip side of every wheat penny is still Abe Lincoln...so I had to come to terms with who I really was. I was (and still am) a yellow and black-striped worker bee...to the core. Wow, so self indulgent. I work soooo hard.

I don't sit still very well, except during funerals and old episodes of The Benny Hill Show, so I had to keep moving. I became a fanatic at proving my wife wrong taking care of my grass. As small as it was, that little patch of chlorophyll was going to be the earth's greenest, lushest, most tropical piece of earth on earth.

But every August in Kansas City- when grass falls from the ocean into hell in 30 seconds- my yard would die. It would flourish in May and early June, then struggle mightily past the 4th of July, soaked in firecracker dust and barbeque sauce. Sadly, by the time Leo came to roar around the Zodiac, the Keefe yard looked eerily similar to the illustrated cover of The Grapes of Wrath.

I got better by buying chemicals and invested in watering (GENIUS!) the grass. Now, it's a decent patch of earth.

The point of my little story is proving her wrong the caring. I got my first job caring (about grass) when I was thirteen. My old man dragged me and our 1/2 horsepower mower down Oak Street on a Saturday morning and basically paid a few hungover elderly neighbors to let me shittily mow their grass. They gave me my Dad's money back and got a hackjob for their time. I reaped all the benefits ($12)

On the way to the grocery store riding in the back of my Mom's car, we'd pass one of my shitty yards with asymmetic lines in it and a dozen 6-inch mohawks of missed cuts and it would be neatly framed by yards on each side where the DAD OF THE YEAR that lived there had spent 3 hours hand clipping every stem for the big yard award show that never happened (but which he felt he won every Sunday morning as he pranced out to fetch his paper with a cup of coffee). My yards had that Pig Pen swirl around them. I needed to change.

But I didn't change. Not until I turned 40 and grew the hell up started mowing feverishly, five yards a week. That's what I do now. I get it right. I mow yards on my block on my day off and during non-committed weekend hours. I mow grass like Da Vinci painted flowers...hyperbolically and without my left ear.

And I do this almost for free and entirely to prove to my teenage son and wife that there is solitude and great joy in doing something with purpose. Sometimes, it takes an hour to get the pattern right and the edging takes another hour you could be spending watching Benny Hill Reruns playing X Box. But when you step back and admire the symmetry of a piece of earth you care for and love, you have something that other teenagers people don't have...

The $10 bill and sense of pride that comes from a summer job.

I love a fresh cut lawn, whether it's my own or not. I love the fact that symmetrical lines in your yard can make the chaos inside your head house seem normal.

Maybe, just maybe, I will pass this curse trait on to my son this summer as we begrudgingly heartily launch Keefe and Sons Lawn Care.

Don't try to hire us, though. We have just enough earth beneath our feet to perfect before we can really get to work.

Shoes Drop...Deal With It

Sometimes I sit down to write something and find myself without a subject. You might attribute this to mid-life doldrums or my apparent inability to leave the city to find adventure, much less take a different route to work or try a new cereal. It's times like these, when I'm in a bit of a rut, that I fear a life altering jolt the most. It's not so much the other shoe dropping as it is the first shoe dropping. Nobody ever worries about that...It's after the first shoe drops that we walk on eggshells until the second one hits. And no, I have no idea where that idiom was born. Legend says that it was a guy from Pawtucket, standing under a power line staring at a pair of shoes, laced together, hanging 20 feet above his head. He was walking his dog and noticed them, wondered how the hell they'd gotten there in the first place and stared at them until Rover urged him home. Three weeks later, he noticed there was only one shoe, dangling by a thread. It really perplexed him at this point, so he waited, breathlessly, for the other shoe to drop. He knew it would; gravity demanded it. But when and why, he might never know. So we watched when he could (without losing his job or being accused of being crazy) to no avail. One day, on his customary walking of Rover, the other shoe was gone. He'd waited, nervous for the conclusion to the mystery, and it happened without his knowing. He was devastated. Then he got over it. A week later he tied his old running shoes together and lopped them over another power line on a different street in order to torture some other bastard.

The first shoe drops more and more often as we age. Life clips along at whatever pace we choose for it, and then it happens.
Your car breaks down in the middle of a rainstorm.
An old friend has a heart attack and never wakes up.
Your boss tells you that your postition is being eliminated.
The stock market falls like a house of cards in a Kansas dust devil and you lose your kid's college fund.

Having the first shoe on the ground should be a relief. We already have the pain and angst. We're already in fight or flight mode. If Jason jumps out from behind a tree sporting a bloody hockey mask and a pickaxe, you crap your pants and start to run. If Freddy Krueger pops out behind him and takes chase as well, it's really no big deal. In all likelihood, if you simply outrun Jason then Freddy will get tired and just slaughter him and leave you alone. You could even become friends and have a laugh over a beer about the whole thing later.

So, right now I'm in the mode of waiting for the first shoe to drop. How sad is that? I'm assuming that life is so simple and natural and gliding along at such a terrific pace, that there must be a slasher behind one of the trees I'm about to pass when I'm walking my dog. What a stupid way to walk the dog.

There are roots in my fear; they're based in past experiences and faith and reality. Life is abrupt. In the grand scheme of things, it starts and stops like a trigger thumb on a stopwatch. Babies are born every second, and bodies are lowered into the ground almost as often. Three different people inside one city block could be minding their own business when one will trip and break their arm, another crash their car into a fence and the third will be laughing with gusto at a joke. Life happens. Shoes drop. Waiting for it is ultimately the biggest sin against proper use of your time that you can commit.

I want to dedicate this roustabout of non-linear thought to my little brother, his wife and their daughter. She was born about a year ago and she is perfect. She arrived just in time for them to be able to handle the other shoe dropping. Their first "kid" Maddie, was a beautiful Golden Retriever who buried her head in your crotch, not to sniff, but to hug you. She was regal. She was 11 and lived a stellar life of love and happiness in the confines of a terrific Colorado yard and many hiking and camping adventures. She had a brother Goldie named Charlie added to her world, and she loved him too. When her human sister (my sweet niece Quincy) joined the team, I think Maddie realized that the other shoe could drop and it wouldn't break a house of cards. Love and bravery make us ready and capable of handling anything.

And just so you know, that pair of shoes I hooked on that power line in 1999 are still there, swaying lightly in the afternoon breeze. And I don't care. Sweet dreams, Maddie.

Sarah Palin's Arizona is my Saratoga

One beer soaked night in 1987, I arrived home from a party at some dude's house in Casper, Wyoming with two of the five dollars I had taken with me (spent the other three on the keg price for entrance). I went to go check in with my parents, who were fast asleep*. I tapped my Mom on the shoulder and let her know that I was home safe, and she taught me a lesson (drawn out from her in large part due to my Old Mil breath) that it took me a long time to learn.

"With freedom, my son, comes responsibility."

(*100% wide awake)

She probably said a million other things to me and was relievedly admonishing my behavior while trying to do her best to stop the partying from happening again (123 times). Her words fell flat. I heard them, but I didn't get it.

In 1992, fresh out of college and student teaching in the fine little town of Saratoga, Wyoming, I made a really interesting choice. I was single, but engaged and alone, teaching High School English to kids I was only slightly older (and probably less mature) than. I wrote a weekly humor column for the Branding Iron back then, the University of Wyoming student newspaper. I was cheeky and smug, and a little too vain to be a good journalist, but occasionally wrote something worth reading. On this occasion, however, my readership jumped to levels I never imagined. I wrote about Saratoga- a town of fewer than 2000 residents- and I lit them all up. I made fun of the grocery store's hours, the ratio of bars to churches, and the Hobo Hot Springs Pool's "no alcohol" policy (did you ever see a hobo without a brown bag?). You get the idea.

They let me have it. A kid from Saratoga drove a copy of the paper home to his folks to make sure thay saw it firsthand. I was banned from showing my face anywhere. I had made a monumental blunder, and forgotten my Mother's lesson.

So, the pen is mightier than the sword, right? I've heard that actions speak louder than words, so I'm at a crossroads here in my awful attempt to draw a segue into the recent shootings in Arizona. Everyone wants to point a finger and lay some blame...let me chime in.

I posted a Facebook status update immediately after Fox News declared that Congresswoman Giffords had died (a lot of stations had that wrong). It said, "RIP Rep. Giffords...apparently if you have a D in your name you better move out of Arizona. Horribly tragic." I got a mixed bag of reaction from it, and the next day, retracted my sentiment as it pertained to the people of Arizona. I had clearly cast a wide net over friends and family that did not deserve to be painted as crazy or fanatical. I remembered my lesson Mom taught me.

Free speech-be it whispered, shouted through a megaphone or written on a website- comes with responsibility. You have the right in this country (without slander or threat of violence) to say what you want. How people perceive and react to you is another matter altogether. That's your bed to lie in and if you aren't willing to accept that your words have an unimaginably wide-open chance to affect another person's actions, feelings or thoughts, you're being flat out irresponsible.

Sarah Palin is not responsible for the shootings in Arizona. She did not know Jared Laughner, she did not insist that mentally unstable people should visit her website and support her tone. There will likely never be any proof that the shooter ever visited her SarahPAC website and looked at the TakeBackthe20 poster she pulled from her website minutes after the shooting. Her office has said that that page should have been taken down immediately after the November election, that it was no longer relevant (responsible?) and that the images on the map are not gun sights, but "surveyor sights". Oh...so we should believe that Sarah wanted her supporters to measure the elevation changes between Gifford's office and Allen Boyd's campaign headquarters? Utter hogwash.

Listen, I support the responsible use of the 1st and 2nd Ammendments. I believe in my right to say what I want (and live with the consequences) and my right to own a gun (which I choose not to excercise unless you count an airsoft rifle). What I will not sit quietly and listen to is the demonizing of the media that Palin has chosen to partake in when referencing her SarahPAC website content. She authorized that content. She "forgot" to take it down. She made the choice to sound gun-sexy as it pertained to removing unwanted (according to their voting record) candidates from office. For her to say that you cannot link her site, it's tone and underlying nuance, to the Saturday massacre is RIDICULOUS.

So why can't she apologize- distance herself from the gunsights by saying they were her bad idea? Why can't she admit that, though obviously not causing this crazy bastard to do what he did, her words might have caused something unintended? I'll tell you why, because she'd lose the race for Mayor of her own household if she so much as accepted a modicum of responsibility for her words and actions. There's just too much at stake (politically and economically) for Sarah to be responsible and honest.

You might not believe that her rhetoric has anything to do with the violence, as she claims she feels, and that's fine. So, this grand coincidence is the harmless sidebar to a fantical killer. Fine.

Then why did she take the website down?

With great freedom comes great responsibility, Sarah.

Time to Burn the Flag

Today, I am going to anger a lot of people. I will have friends and family that turn their backs on me for what I'm about to do...and I don't care. No, I'm not leaving my senses and burning the American flag. I'm burning the symbolic flag of loyalty I've hoisted for the Denver Broncos since 1977.

It is finally over. For a variety of reasons you can currently see in the headlines of any sports rag, and for the one that ultimately made my mind up that you can't read. Losing is not the reason, but it doesn't help. 16 of 21 is bad...but I am still a Royals fan, so I can't lay it a the feet of poor play. Taping scandals? Don't say that everyone does it and it's not a big deal because it is. It's silly and cowardly and most importantly happens to be cheating. That's not why I walk away today, either (but it doesn't help).

When I was seven years old, the Broncos played in their first Super Bowl. Red Miller led them there in his rookie year as coach. Craig Morton quarterbacked a steep underdog team that lost to Dallas, but won my heart. As a Wyoming boy, we had no close franchise in any sport to shove our loyalty toward. I distinctly remember that the Casper Star Tribune, pre-Rockies, ran a reader poll (where you mailed your ballot to them with a stamp and everything...bizarre) to see which Major League Baseball team they should cover as the "home town" team. The geographic choices based on distance? Kansas City, St. Louis or Seattle. I voted along with the majority of other Casperites to make it the Cardinals, even though I wasn't a fan. But who you rooted for during NFL play was never in question in my home. Once we snatched John Elway from the Yankees and Colts in '82, my love was sealed.

I've literally taken punches for being a Bronco fan. I went to a Monday night affair at Arrowhead Stadium (Chiefs vs. Raiders) in the mid 1990's with three big Chief fans. As a Donkey lover, I wanted them both to lose, but had to side with the Raiders to get a rise out of my buds. I (not altogether wisely) finished my 5th beer in the parking lot and wagered with them that they could each punch me in the left shoulder as hard as they liked, one time each, for every score the Chiefs had. Derek Thomas had seven sacks and KC scored an NFL record 22 touchdowns according to the X-Rays on my shoulder. It was worth every one of the 14 days I sported that greeple* bruise.

John Elway and Terell Davis brought me to the coveted land I'd always dreamed to visit in '97 and '98. I cried in my living room when Elway held the trophy above his head. I will always contend that he's the best all-around QB to ever play.

But something wasn't sitting right with me then...and it has come home to roost. Literally.

I moved to Kansas City in 1994. That's going on 17 years. My kids were born here. There was no question in our house and no Tribune mail-in contest to determine who to cheer for on Sundays. Its the Chiefs, of course. Except there's me, sitting there in my T.D. jersey, sulking as the other three trade high fives on the couch (last year's season-ending blowout loss to the Chiefs at Invesco). Sometimes I'll walk past the room where they sit and watch Cassel to Bowe touchdowns and enviously stare at them, like a hungry dog under the Thanksgiving dinner table. And they don't give me scraps. "It's your choice, dude", my wife once said to me during a chest-bumping contest they were having in the living room.

Well, Pat Bowlen, I'm mailing in my ID card. I'm sending back my badge. I took the jersey to Goodwill. I'm burning the ratty old flag with the big orange D in Times New Roman with a snouty white Mare poking though it.

I'm sorry Denver. I always loved you, but you've given me to the ultimate reason to love something...it's right in my living room.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the family to the Chiefs/Broncos game at Arrowhead. It's going to be extrememly cold and positively hard to hear-yourself-think-loud. I'm going to do something I've never done before. Eat seven hot dogs before noon.

And then I'm going to root for my hometown Chiefs.

Don't try to argue with me or call me a bandwagon boy. The Chiefs are rising, and they have a chance to make the playoffs for the first meaningful time in forever, but that's not what this is about. Even if Denver fired McDaniels tonight and Elway came out of retirement to coach them to six straight wins and an 8-8 division title, I wouldn't go back. If Denver wins by 50 and the Chiefs go ten more years without making the playoffs, they still have me now. It's not about loyalty...it's about loving the ones (fans, family) you're with.

Oh yeah, one more thing...Suck it, McDaniels. Go Chiefs.

*It's that disgusting clotted blood colormash of purple and green. It looks like boogers and grape jam.