live your life like it's the first day of football season and the game starts in 2 hours.

the only bad thing about football season is football.

i don't like football (i don't like any sports) although i have been known to get fairly fired up about it at crucial moments. like that one fiesta bowl a few years back (it was the fiesta bowl, wasn't it?) and the game went past midnight and down to the wire. i like football then.

but mostly, i don't like football.

what i do like, however, is the first day of football season - because damned near everybody is in an extremely good mood.

damned near everybody is not in an extremely good mood any other time of year or even for very long at this time of year. you get about 2 minutes into the first quarter and half the folks are pissed. which has always perplexed me. i mean, what the hell did you think was gonna happen? that both sides would play perfectly?

i don't understand being enthusiastic about something that makes you blow a gasket. 

what i think would be swell would be if everyone approached all the other days of their life the same way they approach the first day of football season, before the game starts. just think about it........everyone would be smiling, everyone would be optimistic, everyone would be excited, nobody would mind when you tell them you forgot to pick up the chips so would they please run over to the store real quick and get some.

you'd never have to worry about what to wear because your team has already dictated that to you.

you can yell all you want and turn up the t.v. real loud and no one has to know it's because you're losing your hearing.

and you can drink more beer than usual. well, hopefully more than usual.

you can also slip out at half-time and go buy a pumpkin. while you're there, you can have some hot mulled cider and pull your sweatshirt a little tighter around you. if you're not in a big hurry to get back for the third quarter (and you're not), you can kick through the leaves and inhale the smell of hickory burning somewhere off in the distance.

and, as you leave the pumpkin farm, if you don't want to go back home to the game and the crowd and the noise and the swearing and the acting like it's any other day of the year except the first day of football season,

you don't have to.

we. are. fam. i. ly.

my brother and sister-in-law and i do not see eye-to-eye on politics and religion. not only not eye-to-eye, about eye-to-toe. 

but that's ok.


one of the nicest parts of my life is that my sister-in-law (i think it's my sister-in-law.......it could be my brother, but i think it's my s-i-l) frequently checks this blog to see if i have posted something new. i know that because i have this "feedjit" thing (see below right) that supposedly tracks all the visitors to my blog. it doesn't track all of them, though. it misses about half of them - for whatever the confounded technological reason - but it doesn't miss "st. augustine." st. augustine (florida) is where my brother and sister-in-law live. feedjit must either be a catholic or love hot weather. maybe both.

anyway.........my s-i-l (or maybe my brother, but i think my s-i-l) checks my blog rather regularly, despite the fact that she/he knows that she/he is gonna disagree - probably vehemently - with whatever it is that i have to say.

i like that.

i like that i can rant and rave against all things liberal and still, somebody liberal in st. augustine comes back for more. and comes back. and comes back.

whether it's my sister-in-law or my brother doesn't really matter. what matters is, whoever (whomever? i never know) apparently either likes me enough or likes my writing enough to come back and read more.

or maybe my s-i-l or my brother only comes back because she/he likes to blow a gasket. i mean, that does happen, you know.......it's kind of like rubbing your tongue over that sore in your mouth......it hurts, but it's fun.

so, maybe my s-i-l or my brother (maybe both?) visits my blog because they love to hate me. even so........i'll take that. there's a fine line, you know, between love and hate.   :)


anyway.........thank you, amy. or steve. or both. i appreciate it. very much.


(i think it's amy.)


:)

how to grow up: go to a festival.

i remember the year my grandpa took me - just me - to the ohio state fair. i won a transistor radio at one of the game booths and was in heaven. and no amount of my grandpa's encouraging me to select another prize (knowing that the radio was a piece of crap) could change that. 

carrying that radio proudly out of the fair, i felt so grown up.

last night, olivia and i went to a local catholic church's festival (sidebar here: where in the Bible does it say to hold festivals? it must be in there somewhere because i have never met a catholic church that doesn't have them.).

catholic church festivals, i have found, vary widely in their appeal. some go all out, with local bands, upscale food, and high-end silent auctions. some barely deserve the title "festival," unless you consider one plastic baby pool with toy ducks floating around in it and all you do is reach in and grab one and you get a prize to be a festival. 

(even the youngest kid in the whole wide world knows that's a dud of a festival.)

but, most catholic church festivals fall somewhere in between, with a bouncy house or two, some bingo, maybe a dunking booth, probably a raffle, and lots of good "fair food." that's the kind of festival last night's festival was. and, from a kid's point of view, that's the best kind.........good enough to have decent prizes but not so good that it over-appeals to adults.

olivia tried her hand at several of the games (she has a mean pitching arm, as evidenced by  her nailing the "throw-three-basketballs-and-if-you-get-one-of-them-through-the-hoop-you-win" game. 

she didn't fare so well on the bean bag toss game, but of course, that gig was rigged.

:)

she skipped and danced and cartwheeled her way through the festival, went up to the various costumed characters who were strolling the grounds and gave them giant hugs, tried to high five the guy on stilts (you try doin' that!), and licked the mustard off her hamburger and left the rest, uneaten.

she had a ball.

and so did i.

just before we left, we spotted an artist doing caricatures, and olivia wanted hers done. 

the guy who did her caricature was nice as pie and he didn't mind a bit that olivia kept wiggling around and asking if he was done yet.

but, when he handed us the finished product, olivia took one look at it and said, full of pride, "grammy! look how grown up i just got!" and indeed, the picture did make olivia look older than the 4 1/2-year old that she is.

as we walked out of the festival and to our car, olivia clutched her caricature and held her head up high, proud and feeling so grown up.

just how transistor radios make 7-year olds feel, too.

how keeping the faith nearly ruined a generation. actually, it did.

adam clayton powell, jr. coined the term "keep the faith, baby" in the mid-1960s (when he got into trouble with congress for various offenses including mismanaging finances and slander) and the phrase caught on like crazy. i remember having a "keep the faith, baby" patch sewn on the back pocket of a pair of my faded (bell bottom) jeans.

"keep the faith, baby" quickly spread and gained popularity, and soon, most everybody forgot that it ever had anything to do with adam clayton powell, jr. and its meaning changed (if, in fact, it ever had any meaning other than to adam clayton powell, jr.'s supporters who thought it meant "let's hope adam clayton powell, jr. gets away with it.").

what it came to mean was, well, whatever the hell you wanted it to mean.

pinpoint - right there........right there........the moment absolutely everything fell apart.

you would think that "keep the faith, baby" would have a connection to, well, faith. and not just any faith, but Christian faith - seeing as how it was a Christian clergyman who came up with it. but, of course, you would think wrong.

"keep the faith, baby" came to mean anything you wanted it to mean - as long as you didn't want it to mean -gasp! - faith. (remember - this was the '60s - and apart from a brief appearance by a handful of "Jesus freaks," faith, as in religion, had no place in anybody's "consciousness raising.")

no. we raised our consciousness against faith (because that's how sophisticated we were. still are - most of us).  

we raised our consciousness against faith and towards ourselves. towards ourselves and our own desires and whatever the hell it is we wanted to do. and we wanted to do a lot of stupid, immoral stuff. and we did it. consequences be damned.

i am ashamed of my generation and of my contribution to my generation's decline. (and believe me - i contributed to its decline.)

"keep the faith, baby." 

how about get the faith, baby, first.

we can worry about keeping it later.