Begone, knave

Johnny Damon reminds me of a knave from a Shakespeare play. He’s Edmund from King Lear; Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew; perhaps, he's the Sweet Prince himself in Hamlet. By calling him a "knave," I don’t mean that Johnny Damon is necessarily evil. He is, however, disingenuous, boastful while seemingly sincere, a trickster, a chameleon, and overall, full of shit.

I hope I can post this piece fast enough for it to be relevant. Right now, Johnny is “thinking hard”—a paradox, for sure, in The Land on Damon—about whether or not he will accept Boston’s offer to return for the final six weeks of the season. But seeing he’s absolutely loves New York…I mean, Detroit, like any good actor, he needs time to rehearse his role.

My thoughts on this issue were said best by Boston Globe columnist Eric Wilbur. Unfortunately, Mr. Wilbur had to refrain from using any of George Carlin’s seven dirty words. I don’t. So here goes.

If Johnny Damon does return to Boston, baseball fans everywhere will see---once and for all--- how two-faced and willfully ignorant that these Red Sox Nation Pink Hat, media-created, fair-weather, piss-soaked, retarded shithead motherfuckers truly are. Like a bunch of trained seals, they’ll stand and give Johnny his big phony "welcome back" ovation, and ever the performer, Johnny will raise his helmet and rub a crocodile tear from his eye. There will be all this cooing about “the reunion” and how it was never really Johnny that Sox fans hated, but those dreaded pinstripes. And The Pink Hats will forget (if they bothered to read about it) the barking Johnny did in the off-season in 2006 about how the Red Sox disrespected him—before running that saccharine full-page bullshit ad in the Boston Globe (above). And The Pink Hats will forget how Johnny was so, so happy to be a Yankee and how he so, so appreciated that rich Yankee-tradition—after he told Boston media he would “never” play for the Yankees.

Is anyone seeing a pattern?

Maybe this new marriage between the knave and the clueless Pink Hat fans who stand only to sing “Sweet Caroline” or when some small melodramatic morsel of nostalgia---remember Nomar's return?----compels them, maybe it will be harmonious. But I, for one, am not buying Johnny Damon’s bullshit. I hope he stays in Detroit where he really, really loves it, and let my injury-stricken Sox go down with their dignity intact.

Knave, begone.

Just because.

Just because I'll be seeing old friends this weekend.

Just because we're all a little better off with a little Jerry in our lives.

Just because my wife is home, and we need to relax.

Just because this makes me smile.

MULLET-OUS: Part II: "My Face Is About to Explode"

Things were slightly better in Mullet-ville after a dismal sophomore year of high school. There are, however, a couple of things that can be discerned from Mullet Portrait #2:

1. It's still the same essentially mullet; in fact, I'm not someone who changes my hairstyle all too often. I've had the same haircut, varying in length, for the past 12 years or so. There was a brief period, circa 2003-05, where I bought hair-clippers and buzzed my head, but, as you might expect, I looked like a guy who should ride the little bus. Unless a male---especially Caucasian males---is going bald and trying to work with baldness, he should not shave his head. Ultimately, it looks bad, grows back into Chia-hair, and seems largely unnecessary unless you're a.) in boot camp b.) serving our country in a Middle-Eastern desert, or c.) part of the Aryan Nation. The only thing worse is "cop hair," which is the close buzz with a little pubic patch on top. I digress.

2. The blue sweater, which I rocked for the next decade, is a step up from the sad shower curtain-patterned shirt, unbuttoned halfway to expose my pasty white hairless chest, in Mullet Portrait #1.

3. I'm almost smiling. This can only mean one thing: There was a female insane enough to let me touch her boobs.

However, despite advances toward becoming a semi-tolerable member of the human race, my acne became an indefatigable force on my face, shoulders, and back. For the next two years, I would see a dermatologist, a short man shaped like a weeble with a creepy Hitler 'stache, who tried everything known to modern medicine at the time to clear it up. Finally, I decided to take Acutane, which was like taking daily napalm pills that nuked my skin from the inside out. I had a six-month sunburn, but it did the trick and my skin cleared before I left for college.

Yes. Things were slightly better, but the mullet was also starting to lose popular favor as Grunge music, flannel shirts, and the spider-plant---sometimes referred to as "half-a-hippie"--- hairstyles [edit: for those of you who don't remember, you shaved the sides and back while the you grew the top long, long, long) became the rage. I would eventually grow the spider plant, but only after grudgingly giving up my mullet, two years later.

So take it in, folks. While certainly not the most ostentatious mullet (it's no Kentucky Waterfall), it's clear that I partied while getting my business done. And look at that shit-eating grin. I have a mullet and I'm modestly happy. It only goes to show you what I complete idiot I was. Am.

Someone call the little bus.