The Green-Eyed Monster of Boston

My left-handed baseball glove, used to play ball in gym class.

I’m the odd man out among most of my friends, because I’m not a dyed-in-the-laundry Red Sox fan. I enjoyed playing baseball as a kid, at least until needing glasses but, like Stephen Colbert, professional sports doesn’t interest me. I like to go running, and I used to participate in the Boston Marathon, but that’s it.

I am obviously very much into enjoying and appreciating music, to the extent of being a former radio DJ, and yet I’ve never felt much of a connection to Bruce Springsteen. So it’s perhaps semi-ironic that my favorite song by the Boss is “Glory Days”.

What got me started on this was watching “Fenway Park”, the first episode in the PBS series Iconic America, with rich guy David Rubenstein. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Red Sox ending the Curse of the Bambino. The documentary makes the case that the curse was less about superstition and Babe Ruth, and more about management and longtime owner Tom Yawkey.

Gin & Orange for Christmas

At 9 PM tonight this is where I’ll be.

https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/135080

Until then, on this Christmas evening I will be watching Top Secret!, the totally whacked-out follow-up to the totally whacked-out Airplane! This is the movie that made Val Kilmer whatever it was that Val Kilmer became. It asks and answers the question, “What if the Nazis had held onto power in East Germany at the end of WWII, and where the French resistance continued to resist?”

https://youtu.be/FHUgwQjO9Mo

Keeping the Cartoons Moving

Tommy José Stathes is an animation film collector, curator and historian. A few months before the panic of pandemic lockdown, I attended a very enjoyable and entertaining presentation by Stathes. The event was sponsored by Paul Howley’s comics and collectibles store, That’s Entertainment in Worcester, MA. The New York Times has this profile of Tommy.

I think [“Somewhere in Dreamland”] helped me to better understand and connect with the inner children in my own grandparents, all of whom were born right around the time of the 1929 stock market crash and grew up during the Great Depression.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/nyregion/stathes-vintage-cartoons.html

Tommy has posted “Somewhere in Dreamland” on his YouTube channel.

Fun fact about my friend Paul Howley. We were introduced almost 50 years ago at a Christian youth gathering that was held at Freedom Farm, in Bolton, MA. My girlfriend Karen thought I’d like to meet him because of our mutual interest in comic books. After many years as a Christian fellowship ministry, the Freedom Farm property was sold and it’s now a commercial operation.

My all-time best story about troubleshooting a problem at work involved Karen. I’ll have to tell it sometime.