The Daily Procrastinator

Students, teachers, parents, professors, and procrastinators rejoice! Summer has arrived! I’m trying to keep thoughts of oppressive heat and suffocating humidity by focusing my mind on fishing, swimming, and sitting up late into the night chatting with friends. I sincerely hope your plans are the same. Before we drift off into reverie, though, let’s take a look back at this week’s offerings on The Daily Procrastinator. Even in the summer, you don’t want to miss a thing.

The week began as BigRedPoet assigned you some simple Memorial Day homework. Admittedly, I only completed two of the three sections of the assignment, but Magnus only did one. Go double-check, and gloat if you did all three.

On Tuesday, FlashCap drew a fine line between what’s believable and what’s not. A guy with adamantium in his skeleton and huge claws that sprout out of his forearms? Of course that’s believable. A guy with adamantium in his skeleton and huge claws that sprout out of his forearms who’s pretty much indestructible? That’s ludicrous.

Yes, that's a spider eating a bird. Run fast. Run far. Run now.

Midweek, TallGirl spoke up in the face of Jon & Kate hysteria. While many Americans are obsessed with this pseudo-celebrity couple, TallGirl is having none of it. I couldn’t agree with her more whole-heartedly. See the comments…

On Thursday, BigRedPoet went just a little bit nuts. After attending an Astros game and sitting behind the un-fans from hell, BRP went off on a rant that just might peel the paint off the walls…or at least cause you to chuckle and shake your head.

The week ended as FlashCap found a way to use brownies, literature, and manure to make a brilliant point about the way people think and encounter their world. It’s almost like he was on one of those improv comedy shows and had to find a way to link three unrelated objects on one routine. The result will enlighten you.

Visit The Daily Procrastinator at any of the links above and sign up to receive daily email updates so you never miss an article!

The Daily Procrastinator: Contributing to the Dramatic Reduction of Your Personal

Recently, I had the good fortune to be invited to watch the Astros play in Minute Maid Park. A friend of mine had some really great second-row seats she wasn’t going to be able to use, so J-Roy and I got the nod. Whether or not the Astros won (which they didn’t, of course) is immaterial to this post. The thing that deserves my scornful eye (and yours, procrastinators) is the group of “fans” who sat in front of me at the game.

If you’ve been paying attention, you must realize that anyone who sat in front of me was in the FRONT ROW. These people were just a few feet from the grass at field level about two-thirds of the way down the right-field line. The right fielder was so close I could smell his bubble gum. Was this fantastic view of the game enough to keep my neighbors interested? Of course not! Of the four “fans” (one guy and three women, all in their early twenties), only the guy, who sat on the far right, and a girl in a purple shirt, who sat on the far left, paid any attention whatsoever. The two girls who sat in the middle, YellowShirt and TankTop, literally didn’t watch the game for a single moment.

That guy in the background is neither J-Roy nor I, but this should give you some idea of what we were trying to accomplish.

As soon as the gang sat down, YellowShirt and TankTop both busted out their cameras and began holding them at arm’s length and snapping pictures of their group. I don’t know when this practice of digital onanism began, but the girls seemed intent upon taking the perfect picture of their group at the game. They fussed with timers and flashes, balanced their cameras on the railing (which divided their seats from the FIELD OF PLAY), tried several different poses, and generally wasted about an inning and a half trying to get some nice shots for their FaceBook pages. J-Roy and I joined the fun by occasionally leaning down and making distasteful faces in the backgrounds of their pictures. We’re kind of hoping to show up on ruinedphotos.com.

Once the exercise in narcissism was complete, TankTop embraced the opportunity to complain loudly about her employment situation. Allow me to quote: “I don’t know why I can’t find a job. I have an eighty-thousand dollar degree hanging on my wall. I mean, I majored in communications and took a minor in business (imagine an eyeroll and finger-quotes as she said “business”). I should totally be able to get a job. Maybe it’s because I’m only applying in Austin, but that’s, like, the only place I want to work.” She continued in this vein at great length. As she spoke, her designer sunglasses, used not for (gasp!) blocking sunlight, but instead as a hair accessory, bobbed in time with her incompetence.

J-Roy and I immediately launched into a loud conversation about what a pain it is to be a member of an interview committee. You just have to interview so many idiots before you find a few good candidates, ya know? Of course, TankTop didn’t hear us. Or if she did, she wasn’t able to make the tremendous cognitive leap that would have lead her to understand that she was being mocked. Meanwhile, YellowShirt used her iPhone to compose a long, sappy, badly-punctuated letter to someone named Piper. We read it over her shoulder. Apparently, Piper is way behind on what’s happening in YellowShirt’s life, because it took her two full innings of pecking away at her touch-screen and nodding in response to TankTop’s incoherent babble before she could finish her manifesto.

By this point, J-Roy and I were sincerely hoping that they’d all have to get up and pee soon. Apparently, though, while this pair had the mental capacity of field mice, they had the bladders of grizzly bears. They didn’t leave their seats once during the whole game. Not. One. Time. Just when we thought this was a bad thing, a trivia game sponsored by a travel company came on the JumboTron. A kindly-looking woman with a microphone appeared on the screen, standing next to an excited fan. In order to win a round-trip airline ticket, all the fan had to do was listen to these three clues and then name the city they described:

• The Imperial Palace is located here.
• This city is home to the world’s largest sushi market.
• This city was formerly known as Edo.

Upon reading the clues, TankTop loudly offered this sage bit of wisdom: “Oh, that’s gotta be someplace in California.” YellowShirt responded, “Could be.” My God. Even if you don’t know that the city being described is Tokyo, you’ve GOT to know it’s in Japan. Imperial Palace!?! It took every bit of willpower I could summon not to reach down and knock their heads together. Wow. I wonder why she can’t find a job.

After the trivia debacle, the dynamic duo grew quiet. They weren’t watching the game, though. They were wiling away the oh-so-boring final hour in the front row at the ballpark by playing games on their cellphones. Remember the game where you draw a huge grid of dots and then take turns connecting two of the dots? The one where the object is to draw the line that will close in a box, then put your initial in that box, thus scoring a point? YellowShirt’s iPhone crushed her at that game. Three times in a row. I had to stop watching for fear that I’d actually burst out in hysterical laughter.

Oh, well. At least they were quiet for the last couple innings.

I learned a few new things at Minute Maid park the other day, and some things I’ve known for a while were confirmed. Let’s review them:

• The Astros cannot hit with men on base.
• The Astros’ bullpen is awful.
• Piper is, like, totally out of the loop.
• California is the only logical place for the Imperial Palace.
• iPhones are surprisingly skilled at games of wit.
• Dressing, talking, and acting like a spoiled teenager will NOT get you a job, even if you have an eighty-thousand dollar degree.

On Monday night, I excitedly rushed to the local Buffalo Wild Wings to get a good table in the bar. I made sure I could see the big-screen TVs, ordered a beer, and settled in for the most important game of the Spring. The only thing that put a damper on my evening was all the damn basketball fans who gathered to watch the final game of that interminable tournament. I braved hordes of them so I could get a good seat for the Astros’ season opener.

I get nostalgic just from looking at images like this...

That’s right, people. I’m excited, really excited, that baseball season has arrived. You see, my love affair with baseball stretches back literally as far as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of watching my father play in a city-league fastpitch game when I was barely old enough to walk. I can’t remember a day when I didn’t own a baseball mitt. The neighborhood where I grew up had about 15 boys who were close enough in age to get a game of baseball going literally every day of every summer from about 1987 until 1992. I watched my home team win the World Series in 1987 and 1991. I can still name every position player from both of those fantastic Twins teams. Baseball was a central point of my childhood. It’s a game of my past.

When the players’ union decided to quibble with the management a few years back, and we all had to endure strikes and other shenanigans from the players, I bailed out on baseball. I stayed gone for a long time, too. I’m just not into celebrity millionaires who whine because they don’t get paid enough. A few years ago, though, my buddy WrongFoot (who you may recall from his St. Patrick’s Day hijinks) got me started again. All summer long, any day they had a game, he had the Astros on one of his TVs. That’s right. There were two TVs in WrongFoot’s living room, one for sports and another for more sports. This is a tradition that both WrongFoot and I have chosen to continue to this very day. It’s a game of obsession.

Once WF got me started again, I fell back into my old ways. I have rediscovered my love for America’s pastime. Nothing in the world could be more indicative of summertime than baseball on the TV or radio, a cold bottle of beer in one hand, and a spatula in the other as I stand in front of a smoky Weber grill. Baseball IS summer, and that’s all there is to it. It’s a game of sunny days and charcoal.

I have acquaintances (because who could be friends with such people?) who say things like, “How can you watch baseball? It’s so BORING.” These misguided souls just don’t understand. Baseball is the easiest sport in the world to watch on TV. If you want to sit and really concentrate on the game, there are countless nuances to observe: the defensive shift against a left-handed hitter, the way a pitcher changes his pitch selection the second time through the line-up, the cat-and-mouse games a baserunner plays with the catcher, and the hitter keeping his hands back so he can slap the ball into the opposite field instead of grounding out to his strong side. It’s a game of a million details.

If you’re not in the mood to study the game, though, you can also watch baseball far more casually. I can stand at the grill and just listen to the commentators tell me about the game while I have another conversation or concentrate on my steaks. If anything truly astonishing happens–a towering home run, an acrobatic double play, or a diving catch in center field–they’ll give me a nice slow-motion replay. It’s a game of grand moments.

The Astros lost to the Cubs with flying colors, and I don’t even care. I’m just glad to see baseball on TV. Another of the beautiful parts of baseball is that the season is 162 games long. One loss doesn’t really mean anything. Hot streaks and slumps come and go. Baseball fans know–just know–that their boys will step it up tomorrow, next week, next month, and get back on the winning side of the ledger. It’s game of hope.

Sure, football is more exciting and fast-paced than baseball. One could argue that basketball, with its last-second buzzer beaters, is more intense. Certainly, ice hockey is a greater gladatorial spectacle. Baseball, though, is epic. What moment in sports is greater than watching the pitcher mop the sweat from his brow and look to the catcher for the sign that will decide the pitch he’s going to throw the opposing clean-up hitter, who’s threatening to drive in the tying run in the bottom of the ninth? What else could make thousands of people hold their breath, cross their fingers, and silently mouth the words, “Come on come on come on”? Even if you’re not usually a baseball fan, tune in to a game during this opening week and see what we fans see all summer long: It’s a game of grandeur.