Everyone needs a walk-up song

My life would be better if I had a walk-up song – something to play me onstage for the start of the day.  An energizer.  That’s what I need. 

Baseball players have walk-up songs – music that’s played – eight bars anyway – as they make the trip from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box, weapon in hand.   

That’s what I’m talking about; I need a chorus when I crack my eyes open in the AM – a few “Hallelujahs!” to bring me up to task. 

Baseball players’ theme songs flood the airwaves, throbbing in the ears of the thousands who’ve come to witness the impending duel.  At the Plath household, it’s just me, Mr. Plath, the dog and the cats, but each day’s challenges can be daunting in a relative way. 

So we aren’t talking about ditties here.  We’re talking about anthems to inspire all kinds players, get us focused and put the fear of our mighty bats into the psyches of the opposing pitchers. 

That’s what I want – “Eye of the Tiger,” “Can’t Touch This,” or maybe that catchy C. Lo Green number where he speaks directly to his rival in love.  You know the one, bold, direct, unquotable in a family-oriented periodical. 

OK.  Nobody uses any of those tunes, but you get the idea.  It’s important to have a walk-up song for those crucial, stress-inducing moments when you’re supposed to hit a 94mph fast ball.  Or plan dinner. 

A walk-up song is a brand.  It carries a cache.  It identifies the player, regardless of the playing field, as a force with which to be reckoned.  (Note the no-nonsense grammar.) 

Once his walk-up song starts to play, a batter’s swagger kicks in.  It conveys to his teammates and the world: “No worries.  I’ve got this.” 

I could use a song like that. 

Because right now, I only get out of bed in the morning when the cats make me.   

Like baseball players – the cats have their routines.  They wake up hungry, knowing I control the rations; so they commence their demonstration of will.  And they’re good.  If these cats had a walk-up song, it would be Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” 

I can hear it faintly in their kitty voices:  “You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t…!”  They always win.  I get up in the dark and feed them.   

Once a player is in the batter’s box, he has rituals, too.  He pats his bat; kisses the pine tar smeared thereon; taps home plate at the farthest point and the closest.  Some of them sigh, and stretch their backs, then dig their cleats into the trenches, stare at the pitcher and point the bat right at him!   

Pablo Sandoval, SF Giants’ Belushi-like third baseman, skips out toward the pitcher and kicks the bat twice in his direction.  He taps his helmet a couple of taps with the bat head, turns back to home plate and then uses the bat’s handle to trace the name of his daughter in the dirt before facing the pitcher.  Who’s in control now?!   

And the Panda wallops balls inside, outside, down and up. 

I’m not sure what Pablo’s walk-up song is …”Anything Goes”? 

The concept’s a good one.  We have our routine.  All that’s missing is the music. 

I need my own theme song as a coupe de gras. 

Let’s see…The President has the best walk-up song.  So that’s taken.
 

The theme from X-Files or Alfred Hitchcock would be fun, but what tone would it set for the day?  I cultivate quirky, but one of those two might propel me into, well, the Twilight Zone. 

When I was working in the public schools, I found myself humming the theme from Rawhide under my breath – “don’t try to understand ‘em; just rope and throw and brand ‘em…!”  But I don’t think that applies to my more gentile retired life.  Still, I’m not quite ready for whistling away my days with an AndyGriffith walk-up. 

I’m looking for a track suitable for a game changer.  I have big plans.  I’m making waves.   

Hmm…It needs to reflect my approach to life:  fun-loving and formidable.  Cagey, light on my feet.  I’m thinking motivator.  Confidence builder…Here it comes….I can hear it! 

Mission Impossible!   

Double entendre notwithstanding.

Monty Python Got It Right

I love a slow news day. 

 Wake up.  Pour the coffee.  Turn on the TV to accompany your preparations for the day. 

And our top stories this morning: 

·         Princess Katherine’s wedding gown on display! 

·         Lindsay Lohan wears $1000 Manolo Blahnik shoes while claiming she cannot afford court-ordered psychological counseling. 

·         Do men do their share of household chores? 

·         And Donald Trump may announce, again, he’s running for president. 

Hooray!  We can exhale.  We can start the day free of new stress. 

Remember Simon & Garfunkel?  “I can gather all the news I need from the weather report.  Hey!  I’ve got nothin’ to do today but smile!” 

Yeah.  No news is most definitely good news.   

All right, you may say there is, in fact, news.  The “heated” debate over raising the debt ceiling, for example.  But this, for me, is not exactly news.  Or maybe it’s news in the same sense that professional wrestling is sport.  The players are in costume.  They’ve rehearsed their roles.  The outcome is decided.  We just watch to boo and hiss on cue.   

The oppressive heat wave dominating so much of the nation is news.  That weather report is nothing to smile about.  Unless like me, you used to live back there with thirty-one straight days of 100+ degrees and the concomitant double-digit humidity.  I try not to rub it in too much with my Okie relatives.  Poor form and all. 

The last flight of space shuttle Atlantis is sad news for the American dream.  But I heard this morning that NASA plans to put an astronaut on the surface of an asteroid by the year 2025.  Not exactly riveting in the moment, but something to look forward to in an abstract way.  

The players’ lockout is resolved for professional football.  Thank God. 

The SF Giants met President Obama to receive his personal congratulations for winning the World Series last fall.  That’s cool.  Tardy, but still cool. 

Best of all, nothing new to worry about today.  Nothing to add to the list of disquiets that we mull over a little bit each day.  Reviewing them.  Taking them through step-by-step, from the beginning.  How did it start?  How will it end? 

No new contingents of suffering in the world.  Only those already categorized and compartmentalized.  No new wars, or oil spills.  Only the wretched, distressing, but normal batch of car wrecks and shootings.  One animal attack, but everyone’s going to be OK. 

If anything’s startling, it’s what we take as routine, even expected, though not quite acceptable. 

So it’s make the bed.  Brush the teeth.  Get the husband off to work.  Read email.  Plan dinner.  Buy groceries.  Write.  Putter.  It’s all pretty darn good.  In the big picture. 

I’ll just thank God in Heaven for the incredible life I’m privileged to live, feeling especially free from the weight of a big news day.  Only the same old straws today.  Not a single new one. 

Coming up:  Four new ways to barbeque chicken!  I can deal with that.  I love barbequed chicken.  Matt, Natalie, Al, and Ann all wearing aprons.  Cute.  I miss Meredith, but network life goes on. 

Wait.  Uh oh.  Breaking news?  Oh no.  An explosion in Oslo.  Awful.  Absolutely awful.  Terrorists?  No.  One man!  One truly screwed up man.  Young people on a remote island.  Horrific. 

Damn.  I thought the world might maintain its status quo just this one day.  Maybe not an equilibrium of all good things, or even equally bad things, but a balance of sorts.  No new dreadfulness just this once. 

Alas.  

Our globe is populated by human beings after all.  Flawed.  Unenlightened.  Messed up.  Selfish.  Greedy. 

But wait.  What’s this?  The Good News Network!? 

Our Top Stories today:

·         Gates Gives $42 Million to Safe Sanitation Projects

·         Young Baseball Fan's Act of Generosity Caught on TV

·         North and South Korea Hold Constructive Talks

·         Logging Plummets in Mexico Reserve for the Monarch Butterfly

·         Terrified Kitten Rescued From Irish Freeway

·         Danish Mystery Donor Leaves $200,000 in Red Cross Bin

·         Healthy Snow Leopard Population Found in Afghanistan

·         From Down and Out to Happiness: It’s a Wonderful Life (If you let it be)

·         "Liter of Light" Brings Sun into Dim Shanties Using Only Plastic Bottles

·         Dalai Lama Offers A Roadmap to Inner Peace

·         Former Child Refugee Becomes Hero to Hundreds of Afghan Orphans

·         Teen Athlete Gives Entire $40K Scholarship Prize to Runners-up

·         U.S. Returns Recovered Artifacts Taken From Iraq  

And the best news of all:

·         Research: People Who Look on the Bright Side Age Best

Ignorance Repeats Itself

When I worked in the high school I used to smile to myself each September when staff lamented the newest freshman class: “They’re so immature!”

So true. Small and socially inept, the 9th graders were alternately hilarious and horrible. One minute they skipped through the hallways arm-in-arm with their BFF from seventh grade. The next minute they’d be texting each other with brutal verbal attacks on each other’s physical appearance, personality, lineage, and actual or supposed sex life.

Every year we speculated about their parents. We looked back at our feeder middle school and wondered if they learned anything there. Certainly not what they should have learned.

"They oughta know!” we’d say. They oughta know to get to class on time. They oughta know that homework counts for a big chunk of their grades. They ought to know a better way to resolve their conflicts. (The biggest percentage of fights at high schools is between freshmen.)

But of course, they were just kids. Freshmen are 14 years old, pretty much the definition of immaturity. That we acted surprised every year may be more puzzling than the 9th graders’ state of development. Why would we expect a 14-year-old to be anything but immature?

Yet isn’t it reasonable to expect folks past 18 say, or 21, to be more grown up? More feeling? By that chronological stage shouldn’t we all know better ways to resolve our conflicts? Certainly we should be able to accept your choice of a sports team good-naturedly even if it rivals my choice of a team.

Compassionate adults were all hurt and demoralized by the beating of Brian Stow, an EMT who attended a Giants v. Dodgers game last week in LA, only to be attacked in the parking lot by fake Dodgers “fans.” He remains in critical condition in a medically induced coma, perhaps having sustained brain damage – because he’s a Giants fan.

A few fake Giants “fans” went online before Monday’s home series against the Dodgers to rally the ignorant to retaliate for the attack on Stow. One even suggested murdering the attackers, who haven’t yet been identified.

However, true San Francisco Giants fans, and true Dodgers fans, showed themselves to be circumspect. Players from both teams spoke out against the regressive and mindless brutality of the cowards in the parking lot that day. Both franchises and other organizations have offered rewards totalling thousands of dollars for the arrest of the perpetuators of this heinous assault on the intellect and psyche of fun-loving freedom.

At the base of it, the two-year-old in all of us understands the urge to hit back. You hurt me. You hurt my friend. Let me hurt you. Let me show you how it feels.

But since we’re not two anymore, most of us also recognize the world of food-gumming blind people who subscribe to that Biblical adage about eyes and teeth. It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t get the results. Don’t we all know this by now?

In trying to understand why this seemingly straightforward concept escapes fanatics (it’s where the word “fan” originated), gangsters, bullies, and others who keep violence alive, I’ve come to a sort of philosophy that helps get me through the days: Humankind may seem not to be evolving because earth provides a proving ground. It’s a high school for enlightenment and we get a new freshman class every year. Freshmen are immature by definition and cause many problems because of it.

And nowadays, it seems, for the radically unenlightened, the overblown penalty for every infraction, real or perceived, is death. Cut me off in traffic; I kill you. Flirt with my girlfriend; I kill you. Root for my team’s rival…

All the dark atrocities we would call Medieval still exist in the world in 2011, well past the age of the Renaissance. All the pettiness…easily found. Thieves, check. Barbaric dictators, here. Mindless attackers and mindless avengers, present, thanks to the mental 14-year-olds among us.

Sometimes it looks like these things will persist no matter what. And maybe they will because there’s always a new freshman class somewhere – a category of folks who haven’t seen the memo: Stop the violence. We’re here to make the world a better place.

Thanks for listening, Dear Choir. I don’t think the young ones will be reading this - short attention span and all. So if you don’t mind, please pass it on. Otherwise, ignorance repeats itself.

Mid-Term Elections: Oh Well...

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-------!
The cat stood on the keyboard and inadvertently expressed my opinion about our election results.

What hurts most? In our little town it could be the loss on Measure C, a modest request for school funding. Having spent 30 years in education washing cars and icing cupcakes to raise funds, I feel the pain of those still in it. It’s quite demoralizing when a community backs away from its schools.

I know, I know, I know. The economy. And of course, each voter has a personal reason for saying yes or no. It’s just that when you’re on the front lines, slogging through the mandates and the muck, when so much depends on what a school does for its students and its town, when so many people seem to be standing on the periphery watching, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads, but not offering $5.00 a month to help…it’s hard to take.

Of course that required 2/3 majority made a heavy anchor, too. But my not-too-scientific calculation says that in our little town, only 306 more affirmative votes could have carried the day. Who stayed home, darn it! Students and teachers in every town and district need help.

Maybe we should consider a measure for Benicia similar to statewide Proposition 25, lowering the required majority to a simple 50%+1. I notice some other cities require a 55% majority to pass certain types of fund raisers. Sixty-two percent of Benicia voters approved Measure C – but it wasn’t enough. How is it that 38% of the voters get to tell 62% of the voters how it will be?

Proposition 21’s failure is deflating, as well. Funding for State Parks and Wildlife Programs at a buck fifty per month was just too much. No matter all the analysis or rationalization I employ, this decision eludes me. Perhaps if the measure is re-written asking for only $10 per vehicle registration, it would carry. Maybe the DMV could put a voluntary donation option on the registration renewal form, similar to the option to donate to the Presidential election campaign on our federal tax forms. More people might be encouraged to give something to our parks and wildlife, the essence of beauty and well-being in our state.

Oh, good news in the election? Sure! Proposition 25 passed! Perhaps we will have a state budget complete and on time since the legislators’ paychecks now depend on it. I heard a concern that they might pass a hurried and therefore flawed budget under these circumstances. That could be true. But we will only notice that it’s on time. The flaws we’re already used to.

With the passage of Proposition 20, we took redistricting out of the chicken house, so the foxes will have to find more legitimate means of bolstering their election results. That’s good.

On a national front, no witches will have a seat in Congress. That can only be a good thing, though sometimes an incantation might still be in order.

The President got a message he seemed to need to hear. I hope he makes the most of it. I hope his opponents don’t get caught up in gloating, or make his mistake of forcing legislation just because they can. It’s such poor form and so far off point.

Any more good news? Sure! The San Francisco Giants won the World Series of Baseball! They did it on a budget of $98million dollars, about $40million less than a certain unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate.

Through 160 torturous regular season games, and a jubilant post season with sports heroes and characters aplenty, they prevailed. Whenever I grew weary of political rhetoric, and dubious of the candidates’ claims, all I had to do was tune into Tim Lincecum v. Chris Lee, or Edgar Renteria at bat, or OOOO-ribe, or Posey behind the plate.

It gives you hope. If that ragtag bunch of talented individuals could come together as a team, setting their egos aside to reach such a pinnacle, maybe our elected officials could do the same.

The Giants gutted it out through a gauntlet rivaling any political minefield or caucus, and emerged victorious, not just for themselves. Okay, maybe they did it for themselves, but their victory elevated us too.

Politicians could take a lesson. They could focus on our common goals, put their heads down, sacrifice for the team, and make something really big happen for our state and our country. Go Democracy! Go Giants!