Baseball is coming to D.C.! Yeeeeah!!!!

Well, I’ve yet to write my list of naughty and nice for Washington D.C, but here’s something that will slot in quite high on the “nice” category — the now-former Montreal Expos, as anticipated, are coming to Washington. A few things about this:

1. I must be a friggin’ good luck charm — I move to Arizona, they get a team. I move to D.C. (area), they get a team. I should head for Portland …

2. Now D.C. residents (hopefully?) get to name the team. Candidates (according to a poll by the Post):
a) Expos — no way, let that one rest. The Expo stays in Quebec with the jazz festival and baguettes, Lovely French Canadian women, etc. Montreal is a great city in so many ways, baseball just happens not be one of them. Let it rest.
b) Senators — I like this, though the two former Senator teams sucked, then left (they are now the Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers, respectively) this team could bring a winning tradition to that name.
c) Nationals — not crazy about this. Too generic.
d) Grays — Mayor Williams’ suggestion. In homage to the old Homestead Grays of the Negro league. Idea is good. Name is, well, gray.
e) Something else — yes! How about the Loopholes? Or the Potholes? Or better yet, the Marionbarrys?

(btw, Mr. Barry was just elected to city council and opposes the plan — specifically, he said they can build the stadium “over my dead body”. The mayor plans to grant his request. Kidding. “Bitch set me up”)

3. They are going to play at RFK Stadium until they build the new site on the Anacostia Waterfront. This is good news for me — I park there every day. So I really get spoiled, the Orioles near my house and the Yet-to-be-named team near my workplace.

4. They say that the stadium financing is not coming from taxpayers. Good news, if it’s true!

5. What else? That’s about it. Play ball!

Yes, I did absolutely nothing today. Or as Peter says in Office Space, “I did nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.” As par for the course on days I do nothing, I watched a hell of a lot of TV. Yeah, yeah, I know I was supposed to disconnect, and I really tried. The Comcast guy came out and fiddled with some switches and cables, and lo and behold, my bill is one-fourth what it once was but I still get all the channels. Oh well!

Anyway, on days when I do nothing, and therefore watch lots of boob tube, the channel I always seem to end up on is VH1 …. and most recently, the reality TV loophole known as the “The Surreal Life“. I have to admit, I love this show. How can you not love Flavor Flav in Viking horns rubbing lasciviously against Brigitte Nielsen? What could turn so-called “reality” bullshit TV on its head better than resuscitating a busload of novelty acts who are waayyy past their shelf life? It’s beautiful. Fuck Survivor. Doesn’t it seem that if you hire real, out-of-work entertainers with actual personalities to do the dirty work, you don’t then have to coax normal people to eat worms, sing off-key, or pounce on each other to have “good TV”? Just an opinion. And some gold teeth and a clock around the neck can’t hurt! Yeeeeeeaaah boooyyyyyyeeeeee……!!! Thumbs up to Surreal Life!

And speaking of surreal, I guess the reason for the lazy Sunday was the interesting Saturday night …. went down to Virginia to a surprise b’day party for the infamous Rich S., high school partner in grime, known alternately as Sid, R. Sidly, Mitch Mitchell, Senor Crappy, Richard Sheriff, Mitchell Sheriff, etc., —- John and I rode into Alexandria to a tiny apartment in a huge complex. We got there, the food was hot, the beer was cold. The fog machine smelled like maple syrup. And the fun began. High- and/or lowlights of the evening:

1. Getting bearhugged by a huge Lithuanian dude dressed as Sat. Night Fever-era Travolta, but with a huge ‘fro,
2. Receiving a much friendlier good-night kiss from his woman than I had any right to (love those Lithuanians!)
3. Having an inflate-a-date thrown at my private areas from across the room,
4. Discussing the finer points of the German beer purity laws with a man known only as “Wolfgang,”
5. Witnessing off-the-patio urination, performed by a man known only as “Ahmed,”
6. Eating jalapeno poppers,
7. Chasing a lukewarm Jack Daniels shot with an even more lukewarm Corona. Blechh…
8. Watching Rich S. deal blackjack like the champ he is. The man sells cars for a living, so you know he would never, ahem, cheat at cards?
9. Texting Shelly all night with the haps, while she gave me the haps in Galveston, Tex-ass, where she and Sonya were frolicking at the biker festival. Vroom, vroom!

So back to work tomorrow. Getting one last glass of water and then its off to bed.

Happy to report that Stacey had her baby boy, River, on Saturday. They are now at home and she is getting some well-deserved rest.

So many young folk are making appearances these days. It’s amazing. My cousins Colleen and Meredith just had kids. Of course there is Lennon who I’ve already mentioned. Jason and Patricia are steering J.D. through toddlership as we speak out in New Mexico. Over in Europe, friends Julius and Zsofi, Blazej, and now Wendy are having kids. (Wondering if I’ve missed anyone?)

Just thinking aloud. Kids … such life-altering little creatures. All for the better, I imagine. I suppose there’s only one way to find out, really?!

But anyway, enough of this baby talk. Off to bed.

Putting some green, summery feeling out there for Stacey …. it’s getting autumn chilly and less green back east, so here’s to trees, flowers, lazy weekends and all that good stuff …. !

Best! — R.

I was cataloging this book at work today from India’s tourism department — on the back cover there was a quote from Atal Vajpayee, the former Indian prime minister, regarding terrorism and tourism as opposing forces. I really liked this passage, a bit pie in the sky but essentially true:

” … all of us should know why terrorism has hit tourism the most. Just as terrorism is a foe of tourism, tourism, in the broadest sweep of its effects, is an antidote to terrorism and extremism.

Whereas terrorism feeds on intolerance and arrogance, tourism breeds on tolerance and empathy. Terrorism has no respect for human life. In contrast, tourism teaches us to savor and to celebrate all that is beautiful in nature and in human life. Terrorism seeks to erect walls of hatred between faiths and communities. Tourism breaks such barriers. Terrorism detests pluralism, whereas tourism pays tribute to it.”

So help defeat terrorism. Take a vacation! Learn some foreign leaders’ names! Don’t be a dumb-ass like Dubya!

A list of things on my mind this Wednesday evening, including the news from the weekend ….

On Saturday, went to visit John in his new digs out in Sterling, VA … as mentioned in a previous post, the house in Falls Church has been vacated, and so now, I have to drive even further out in Virginia near Dulles airport to see John, which is a drag, but anyway — I got there, he gave me the grand tour of the house he’s renting at, and we walked over to the local watering hole/pool hall, located in the local strip mall (Sterling is full of strip malls) and proceeded to get shitty drunk while beating on each other and everyone else in pool (a couple of Salvadorean esse’s got a particularly thorough beating). I realized that we play so much better when we can’t feel our arms! I’m not sure if the same could be said for darts?!

So we stumbled back to the house … give or take a bar or two … I passed out on the couch. Woke up at what I thought was 6:00AM, completely mealy-mouthed and hungover. I had to meet my dad, who was driving down from Jersey, back at my place at 11:00. I figured I could get a couple hours of decent in-my-own-bed sleep time before then. So I gulped down some water and aspirin, jumped in the car (by then I’d realized that it was 8:00, not 6, the clock on the stove lied — it LIED!! Bastard!) and I rolled into Columbia at 9:30 to find my dad sitting on the patio of my condo. He had his own keys, fortunately, and was early, as usual (sigh). So no nappy-nap for me! We went out to lunch and then to B’more for the O’s/Yankees game.

But I was dragging. My dad could see it. And I told him all about the previous night’s excesses. Fortunately, he’s a beantown Irish Catholic at heart and could sympathize with his son’s plight. We jetted after three innings. He said I put in a poor showing, but I knew that his poor Red Sox blood couldn’t take seeing the “Evil Empire” manhandle the O’s, especially when the Sox were out in Seattle busy doing what the Sox do best (choking!)

Yes folks, I root for the Darth Vader of sports. So, Red Sox Nation, if you’re going to run to Toshi station to pick up some power converters, better just stay there — ’cause like Vader to Luke … we are your fathers!

Who’s your daddy?

(Let the shit talking begin!)

Haven’t put too many photos in the weblog itself (in fact this is the first), but please, is this one good-looking kid or what? Jim took this picture of Lennon at a fun park in a town not far from where we grew up in New Jersey.

Cute kid.

I really have nothing to report personally. It has been a relatively boring weekend. Hesitant to go anywhere (Labor Day traffic, sketchy finances) and not doing a hell of a lot around here (some painting, some bookkeeping, laundry … yawn) I will have to live vicariously through Morgan for yet another post!

Epilogue

International bore here again … if I could add an ‘please do not send me impersonal bulk e-mails’ button at the bottom, I really would.

Just wanted to say thankyou for your concern. I am safe and well. The bomb blast in Moscow was disturbingly close to my hostel but thankfully I left for Siberia the night before. You all seem to have seen more of it than I have … I’ve just found out about the conclusion of the Beslan hostage situation and feel pretty sick. I’ve grown very fond of Russia since I’ve been here and this doesn’t paint a good picture of it’s future.

Anyway, still having an incredible time. I have somehow been ‘adopted’ by an unbelievably generous Siberian family and have just spent 2 days living on their farm in the mountains near the Mongolian border. It’s the stuff of legend; sitting in their little kitchen washing down a breakfast of homegrown sausages, bread and vegetables with endless, proud, vodka-toasts followed by inexplicable laughter and thigh-slapping. Being driven through vast plains and forests in an amazing 1954 ‘Victoria’ (picture yourself
pulling up at Rick’s Bar in ‘Casablanca’ and add some Soviet tank engineering). Pic-nic ‘ing, dinner’ing … all day, mountains of food, magical skies and of course … vodka. We drove back to Irkutsk last night in the Victoria and after stopping to admire the view from a mountain pass overlooking Lake Baikal (and drinking
a lot of vodka), I watched in awe as they stripped down the engine and fixed a leaky brake fluid reservoir in the moonlight. After much chain-smoking, it looked like they might hold out long enough to get us home, and so, off we rolled.

They won’t let me return to my hostel, so I’m now sharing a room with Granny !! At least she drinks a little less than the others, (though farts much more).

To top all this off .. I’ve just found out I am now ‘Uncle Morg’. My cousin has just had a wee baby girl !! (Wendy, Nickolaas - any news yet ?). Very happy.

OK. Well it seems unimaginable that I’ll have anything more exciting to tell you, so I hope to speak to you all, individually, over a beer about some good old everyday life at some point in the near future.

Take care,

all the best,

morg. x

I just got this e-mail this morning from my Scottish friend Morgan Walker. I met Morg about six years ago while living in Holland. He arrived with the motleyest of crews (Angela, Christine, Mr. Jake Blake), a posse of brilliant product design students from Glasgow School of Art, and proceeded to tear things up for the entire year. So inspired I was by this group that I moved to Glasgow for six months after college.

As you can see, “Morgan Walker” is just a few letters off from the title of this post. “Margin Walker” is a Fugazi song, I don’t know what the song is about, but when I hear those two words, a mental image of a person comes into my head. Someone who is happiest when scribbling outside the lines, figuratively speaking, and then pulling us all outside the margins to watch him scribble, or smuggling the scribbles back inside to share with all of us. This can be done by way of travelling, inventing, or just freely thinking and conversing. It’s a great way to be. It’s the way I would love to be when I grow up. We’ve all got elements of margin walkers in our personas, I suppose. Some much more than others.

But only Morg jumps on the fucking Iron Dragon in Moscow and rides it all the way into Siberia. I read this and I’m just smiling all day. Morgan is in Irkutsk.

Good Morning Siberia

Wow … something happened. I remember getting on a train. That was Sunday … I think. It was Moscow. The train was going East … for a very long time. Days, many days. Beautiful nights too, where a huge yellow moon looked out, like an eye, over black, smoking plains and starlight. The sun rose red and angry this morning at 2.15 Moscow time, which of course means nothing out here but that’s how Russia keeps ‘order’ over it’s vast railway. I got off. And I’m in Irkutsk. The Paris of Siberia they tell me. Looks better I would say. Less French people about. (sorry Xav). Looks amazing in fact. Every second street looks like something from The Addams Family. Big, lop-sided, wooden mansions, out of control trees and cracked pavements. Ancient old cars and vans from russia, mongloia and china grind down the streets in a cloud of toxic fumes. Beautiful Siberian women fix you with a mysterious gaze. Men in hats drinking beer on the corner look ready to pounce.

I’ve been here for 2hrs … can you believe it ? I know what your thinking …. what the hell (or maybe even HOW … ) are you doing e-mailing !? It’s a good question. I just had to tell someone.

So … I’m going off to explore. Lake Baikal is not far from here. It’s the deepest lake in the world (1670m) and apparently there are some Shamans living on remote islands absorbing it’s powerful energy. There are also alot of drunk fishermen who you can hitch rides with. Might try something along one of these lines.

Anyway … sorry for this delibaretely odd and vague e-mail. I wrote a much more coherent and interesting account of my trip through Estonia and European Russia a couple of weeks ago but ran out of time and lost it. I was gutted. I haven’t spoke to many of you in while and really hope you have had a great summer. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some catching up when I get home …

I have to take one flight in Russia before I leave which I’m slightly apprehensive about given the number of things that have blown up here recently. But it’s to St Petersburg which doesn’t seem to be as big a target.

wish me luck,

take care,

morg.

That’s it. I’m booking a ticket to Papua New Guinea, or Nuuk, or Ushuaia. Wherever. I can’t let him have all the fun!