Table scraps…
Sad, even discouraged, that no big country star or even a little one has bought my latest song, Losing Your Love in Fractions, One Fifth at a Time. Have semi-coveted a novelty hit ever since I was a boy and heard the timeless If There’s a Ring Around the Bathtub, I’m Coming Clean Home to You …
Remember Wordle, how everyone back at the turn of the new year was crazy about this word game? Could not swing a cat without someone asking, “You done the Wordle today?” People texting you their “Wordle Score.” I seldom think of Wordleing during these non-Wordleing times, but I did on Father’s Day: the answer was “LOSER,” which is also my now-grown daughter’s pet name for me. I texted her a screen shot of my answer. She wrote back, “They must have known.” Kids …
Lots of talk since the Field of Dreams game in Dryersville, Iowa back in August about the term “have a catch,” which, in the semi-mythical Field of Dreams movie, Kevin Costner’s character asks his dad: “Want to have a catch?” Had never heard that until 30 years ago when I watched the movie. It means “throw the baseball to each other to loosen up,” but we always said, “Do you want to play pitch,” and maybe I’d heard somebody say, “Do you want to play catch,” but never “have a catch,” and you don’t really ask it as much as you just say it. “Do you want to have a catch?” sounds too much like a proposal. Stick with “play pitch” or “play catch” …
Chicago’s Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2, in that game, by the way. Wonder if before the game, the Cubs asked the Reds, “Want to have a loss?” …
The book the movie’s based on is Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa, by W.P. Kinsella, which is better than the movie (and I like the movie) and it’s got one extra character in it the movie doesn’t have, The Oldest Living Chicago Cub. Think about reading it, and investigate other books by the late Canadian author who passed away in 2016 at 81, a gracious gentleman who loved baseball and Scrabble and championed the oppressed. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and a short story collection, The Thrill of the Grass, are good places to start. “Go the distance…”
Speaking of baseball, when was the last time you saw kids in a yard playing whiffle ball? …
My friend Jimmy, who knows a lot of things about different stuff, asked me an “irony” question last week because I’m the self-appointed Irony Sheriff of these here parts. Sports commentators are the worst; it’s often something like, “The Cowboys lead the Chargers by 10 here in the fourth, and ironically, the Cowboys beat the Chargers by 10 last time these two teams played.” Sigh … That’s not irony. That’s a coincidence, and not even an interesting one. If the fire station burns down or the police station gets robbed, that’s irony. Jimmy, wise to this way of thinking, had surgery lately (a very non-ironic surgery) so has been laid up with time to think and asked, “If the FedEx truck shows up at the UPS building with a delivery, is that irony?” It’s such a brilliant question that I’ve A) deputized Jimmy and B) farmed the question out to an Irony Sub-Committee. Meanwhile, what do YOU think? (I think if FedEx is somehow delivering a UPS package to UPS, maybe that would be ironic. Or what if the FedEx guy and the UPS guy were standing in your hard “having a catch” with your package?) Jury still out …
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
