Oh, Fred Wilpon! You’re breaking my heart! You’re shaking my confidence daily!

Sung to the tune of “Cecilia”

Oh, Fred Wilpon, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily.
Oh, Fred Wilpon, I’m down on my knees, I’m begging don’t trade RA Dickey
Watching a game in the afternoon with Fred Wilpon At Citifield
I get up to get a beer
When get back to Fred Someone’s taken my seat
Oh, Fred Wilpon, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily. Oh, Fred Wilpon, I’m down on my knees, I’m begging don’t trade David Wright.

R.A. Dickey – New York NL – 2011 Home (Photo credit: BaseballBacks)

If you know me or read me regularly, you know what crazy Met fan I am (yes, I am aware of how redundant that looks).  Like most, long-suffering Met fans, I hate Fred Wilpon.   I don’t care what the fine people on Morning Joe think about how wonderful a person he is.  I think he sucks and I doubt I will have a happy summer until he dies or sells the team and I am not sure which I hope happens.

Recently, pitcher RA Dickey was nominated for a Cy Young Award (if you do not know what that is, Google it).  It seemed unlikely that the Mets would want to trade such a valuable player but after losing so much money to Bernie Madoff and then losing more to the victims’ fund ($162 million to be exact and is it a coincidence that there are 162 games in a season?  I SO doubt it) but that’s exactly what they started talking about doing.  And today, I read they are also looking into trading third baseman David Wright?  WTF?  http://risingapple.com/2012/11/13/thoughts-on-latest-david-wright-r-a-dickey-rumors/

My experience with the Mets goes something like this.  Someone from the Met front office will

David Wright (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

appear on television to explain why some super popular player has been traded.  For some reason my brain is fixated on John Olerud and Dave Cone but the list is too long too put here.  Well, they give some really rational reason why this player had to be let go — Olerud and his wife “want to go home.”  Cone “wants too much money.”  Fair enough.  I get it.  I don’t like it but it makes sense.

Next up on TV.  That player who disputes the Met front office person’s story.  Olerud said he and his wife “really enjoy living in NYC.”  Cone said, “I’d play for free to play in New York.”  What? Did you even talk to the player? 

Last year’s heartbreak for me was Jose Reyes (I know he was underwhelming in Miami) — I have had ONE baseball jersey in my life and it’s his.  He said he left because “the Mets didn’t seem to want me.”  Maybe the front office didn’t want you but the fans did.

Not that Fred Wilpon gives a rat’s ass about us.

One and done

Dear Snooki, thank you for introducing me to the term.  I am not using it the way you do — your mean you have sex with a guy once and you are done.  When I use it, I mean, you only get to make me cry once.  One time.  One and done. (Caveat:  the Mets make me cry almost daily but they have permission to make me sad.  I know it’s coming.)

I am done allowing haters to influence my life.  Done, I tell you, done.  I am not talking about people who straight out hate me and send me tweets and emails telling me, after reading my blog, things like “I wish something heaving would fall on my head to get that drivel out of my brain.”  That’s from a real comment someone left here.  I love that.  Keep that hate coming.

The haters I am talking about are people in my life who claim they care about me.  They don’t.  They want something from me. Now, in their defense, I like helping people and try to help as many as I can, as often as I can.  I fail sometimes in that but every job or opportunity I have had has been because someone helped me so it feels right to do the same thing for others.  (No, I don’t think I am great or perfect or anything like that, I just like helping people.  There is a great part of the book Dangerous Liaisons, and movie with John Malcovich — Valmont does something nice for a group of people and then tells Glenn Close that people who do good things do them because it makes them feel good therefore they are really selfish so maybe that describes me.)

So, I am cutting the negativity out of my life.  My life has enough on its own, I don’t need you to add more.

Thanks for playing and to answer a question I was asked yesterday, yes — we are done.

Here’s a link to a great video about what I mean.  Thank you, Katt Williams.

You gotta believe!

Being a Met fan means summer is the most painful time of the year.

Warning: This is a TMI post.

Anyone familiar with the Mets, is familiar with this phrase.  I often think it was cruel to raise me a Met fan when New York has a winning team but I am convinced the designated hitter rule is a crime against everything I hold holy.

Digression:  Baseball is special for a number of reasons.  There is no clock.  The season is like a pressure cooker — starts slow and leisurely and ends in a race that can be a nail biter.  One of my favorite things about the sport is that every player plays both offense and defense.  When you allow such a pivotal player — as the pitcher is — to not hit you change the batter/pitcher dynamic.  This produces pricks like Roger Clemens, whom I will love to hate until I die.  It’s just not how the game should be played and once again, love you Crash Davis, I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter.

Anyway, back to my point.  Every year I practically live and die by the Mets. I even believed after what is regarded as one of the most historic collapses in sports.  You can read about that here.  I feel the need to elaborate on how seriously I take this.  I only wear Met blue nail polish.  When I watch a game I alternate between really watching and only having it on in the background.  Depending on how they are doing when I do either.  My Met clothing — Jose Reyes jersey, 1986 t-shirt, old school, blue satin jacket, hat, necklace — gets switched up  — are they doing better when I have the hat on?  Should I take the jacket off?  Now, I know I sound crazy — and I am — but any Met fan will tell you, we are a superstitious lot.  I know intellectually that nothing I do will impact the game — and I also know they can’r hear me when I yell at the TV.  My sports related Tourettes kicks in big time when I watch the Mets (and 4ers, tennis, etc.).

But despite all the loss and all the heartbreak, I believe in the Mets.  So why can’t I have the same belief in myself?  Because I have way more successes than the Mets (at least since 1986).  My successes & failures are not as public as a major baseball franchise will ever be but every day I succeed at my job, my writing and my other endeavors.  On occasion I succeed at doing stand-up comedy.  That rocks my world.

Yet, I still don’t give myself the faith I give the Mets.  Something is wrong with this picture.  You might be wondering why I am telling you this.  One goal I have for this year is to change that.  Because: I’m good enough, I am smart enough and doggone it, people like me. (Thank you Stewart Smalley.)  I have read that telling people about a goal makes it easier to achieve — or maybe you are more likely to succeed — and I want to make this happen.

It may be late for New Year’s resolutions but mine now are:

1. Focus on doing ONE thing at a time.
2. Remember that lesson I learned when trekking to Everest.  We would come to a hill that was super steep (going down was harder than up) and I would think there is no way I can make it all the way down that.  Then I would tell myself ok, maybe you cannot make it all the way but you can take the next step.  I made it base camp.
3. Make at least five people I don’t know smile every day.  Work up to 10.
4. Start to believe that I am more than my weight. And no, I am not the fattest person on earth like I like to think.  Plus this body got me up Kilimanjaro (19,341 ft) and made it to Everest Base Camp (18,192 ft) and that’s pretty awesome.
5. Celebrate accomplishments and learn from setbacks.
6. Be better to myself and the people I care about. (I have been a total asshat lately, to the people who have had to deal with me, and you know who you are, I am sorry.)

So there you have it.  My belated resolutions.  Back to your regular scheduled programming… political thoughts will be back tomorrow. Or later today.

Things that make me rowdy enough to be pepper sprayed

It seems like every day I read about someone doing something that gets ’em pepper sprayed.  Maybe they’re peacefully protesting proposed tuition hikes and the police overdose them on the stuff.  Maybe they’re just trying to get a little Black Friday action when a fellow shopper douces them with the stuff.  This morning I saw some shoppers looking to get new Air Jordans were the most recent pepper spray victime. (Read story here.)  I can’t speak for you, but nothing gets me quite as rowdy as sneaker shopping.

This whole thing got me thinking about my behavior. Do I do anything that might warrant a pepper spray?  What gets me upset?

1. The Mets.  If you say you are a Met fan and they don’t get your ire up, you are lying about being a fan.  It is impossible to watch them — on the field, off the field, having breakfast somewhere — and not want to punch someone.
2. Fresca — nothing gets my knickers in a twit like when Safeway is out of the stuff.
3. Glee:  Man, if I forget to set my DVR and miss an episode the fur does start a flyin’.
4. DC Metro.  It sucks.  Every year the tourists descend like locusts on the city and try to hold the metro doors open during rush hour.  They force the doors open and everyone has to get off the train.  I would not be the pepper sprayee in this scenario.
5. People who think I do things for sympathy.  I don’t need your sympathy.
6. Inappropriate apostrophe usage.  On a business trip my colleagues wanted to go to a restaurant with a great happy hour.  I refused to go because of the sign they had out front.  Unless there was a woman there named Margarita and she was having a personal special, I was not going.  Seriously, plural words do not need an apostrophe.  There won’t be enough pepper spray on earth for how irate this gets me.

More to come…

Happy Thanksgiving

Thank you for…

1.  The US Constitution:  It is easy to look at the recent Congressional failures, and the “super

The US Constitution, it rocks

committee” is only the most recent, and think “our system is broken.”  It isn’t.  Flawed, yes.  Injured, probably.  Broken, no.  One thing that has always confused me is why some people, upset by the results of the 2008 presidential campaign, preferred to think that we had entered the “end of days” rather than entertain the idea that they lost an election.  You see, I have some perspective on this.  I worked on the Gore 2000 campaign.  I was devastated by the result but I never — not once — considered George W. Bush to be anything but a legitimate president.  My belief in our system got me through that loss.  When you work on campaigns, sometime you lose.  It sucks but that’s part of the deal.

The other part of the equation is the recognition that as great as our system is, it is a tool.  No tool is better than the people who use it.  our representative democracy, otherwise known as a republic, reflects us.  If we do not like the results it produces, we have no one but ourselves to blame.   I have written several letters to the Washington Post about George Will.  He claims to be both a proponent of capitalism and an opponent of public broadcasting.  And yet, he hates reality TV.  I think you cannot argue that the free market is the best method to produce quality anything and then be angry when it produces crap.  The same can be said of our government. As Bill Clinton used to say, There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America.  Amen, brother.

2. The Mets.  Do I hate to love them or love to hate them?  Clearly the former.  Oh, they break my heart every year.  I am not going to write any more right now about that, I need a break from hating myself.

3. Reality TV.  Jersey Shore.  Hoarders.  Anything with people who weight more than 500 pounds.  We all know why we watch; we want to feel better about our own lives and I am no different.  No, I don’t want to see wealthy, vain housewives spend more in an afternoon on napkins than I spend in a year on rent but  I like that as dirty as my apartment may get, I don’t have goats eating holes in my walls.  Oh, and I can stand up and walk around.  Seriously, your family cooks 12 chickens a day for you?  Do they deliver your heroin, too?  See?  I am clearly a disturbed person.

4. The GOP candidates for president.  About two years ago, I called Michele Bachmann’s office.  I said, “Look, I am not a constituent but I would love it if she ran for president.”  I did not add, because I write comedy and that would be awesome, I figured it was implied. I had no idea Herman Cain even existed.

Seriously, I am thankful for the Constitution but I am infinitely more thankful for my friends and family.  Thank you for being so awesome.

You know who you are.