Pull the conspiracy wool from your eyes
Despite the risk of being termed a sheep by certain people, I got vaccinated in all of my arms last Saturday. Left arm for COVID, right arm for your basic meat-and-potatoes flu. All I can do at this point is cling desperately to the hope that — contrary to some very insistent people with loud opinions — the vaxes aren’t microchips that will allow corporations and/or governments to control and/or surveil me or that large corporations will send signals to the microchip using 5G networks thereby controlling vaccinated people like me and my fellow sheep. To counter those crackpot theories, I prefer to believe that I’m indestructible now. I don’t even look both ways before I cross the street.
Our stupid house
Things fall apart. Don’t believe me? Ask my house, which I continue to throw money at. Virtually rebuilding a water-damaged bedroom was $20,000 or $30,000 (I forget how much, but it wasn’t walking-around money), another $4,000 to have all of the plumbing torn out and replaced, probably another $25,000 for a new roof which I keep putting off.
This week I’m getting away easy, just $700 and change for trimming our front-yard carrotwood tree and a copse of towering birds-of-paradise trees out back. Plus, whatever my plumber is going to charge me to fix the severely leaking sink in the Barn.
I figure in the 34 years we’ve lived in our house we’ve spent enough to keep it maintained to have purchased a new home today, so long as that new home is the cheapest property in Long Beach currently: a 650-square-foot one-bedroom condo Downtown on West Fifth Street listed at just $250,000 — in Realtorspeak “a perfect opportunity for those looking to add their personal touch.”
Turning to sports…
Our son Ray was one week old and probably asleep as was my wife when I went screaming down the hallway of our home in a Termino Avenue duplex hollering “wake up! You’ve gotta see this!” And I dragged a woozy, disoriented Jane out to the TV to see the incredible walk-off game-winning home run by a crippled Kirk Gibson to beat the Oakland A’s in the 1988 World Series. I stayed up all night switching channels to watch it on news shows in the pre-YouTube days. Still one of the great moments in baseball history.
And the moment returned with a blast again in Game One of this year’s series against the Yankees when Freddie Freeman belted a 10th-inning walk-off grand slam. It was a truly epic swat and while I won’t know where to put it in the pantheon of historic home runs, it currently ranks second only to Gibson’s, but happily shoves down another notch Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard around the boroughs” that clinched the National League pennant for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951.
As I write this, the Dodgers are headed to New York for the next three games and I’m brimming with confidence, though that doesn’t always result in a positive result for me.
Binging like a pig
Yeah, I’m ashamed of myself for not savoring every moment of Season 3 of “The Lincoln Lawyer.” A responsible and restrained viewer would watch the 10-episode season over a bit more than a week if not longer, but I scarfed down the whole thing in one gluttonous and shameless weekend.
The series, based on books by the prolific Michael Connelly, is an always-enjoyable show and features my favorite sidekick, Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski, played by Australian actor Angus Sampson (which is actually a better name for the character).
The season ends with a cliffhanger as usual, so now comes the waiting for Season 4.