Excited about Gonzalez

If you're sensing a cosmic disturbance today, don't be alarmed. The disturbance can be easily attributed to the fact that every male Red Sox fan, from New Haven to Bar Harbor, got a hard-on this morning after reading that, at long-last, Theo got his man. There's no need for Viagra in New England today; Cialis, see you later. Simply whisper the name Adrian Gonzalez, and you'll find five guys with stiffies that can cut through diamonds.

As of this morning, and pending a physical, San Diego's superstar first baseball will now be donning the threads of The Olde Towne team. Like most rabid Red Sox fans, who have no life of their own and live vicariously through baseball, I am elated. This is analogous to spending years trying to land a date with one of the hottest women you know---to quote Van Halen, "A blue-eyed murder in a Size 5 dress for years---flirting and getting close to her, and closer, only to have her pull away each day. Then you wake up one morning, and she's in your bed, going down on you.

That's gives you some idea of the unfettered joy we're experiencing right now. And, yes, I understand how gay all of this sounds. And, no, I don't have a man-crush on Adrian Gonzalez. I'm monogamous in my man-crushes, and Jon Lester and I still haven't broken up from last season.

However, I'm not alone here. Check out this article on NESN ambiguously titled "Top 10 Reasons to Get Excited About Adrian Gonzalez."

So what, exactly, does all of this mean? If you're not a baseball fan, I'm assuming you've already stopped reading before getting to this point---unless, of course, you're curious about how far I'll take this clearly homoerotic post. I'm like Mr. Garrison writing his romance novel on South Park. If you are a baseball fan, I don't need to explain it.

But I will!

What this means is the rest of The American League, particularly the peckers in pinstripes, are going to start scrambling to follow suit. What it means is The Yankees are going to throw obnoxious amounts of money and maybe the keys to Gotham at Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee. What it means is The Red Sox now have a top of the order that rivals any in baseball with Ellsbury, Pedroia, Gonzalez (I giggled like a giddy little girl while typing that), Youkilis. And, hey, why not go after Jason Werth? You match that with a starting rotation that is arguably the deepest in baseball---Lester and Lacke and Beckett and Buchholz, oh my---and the holiday season just got sweeter for Sox fans.

Careful standing under the mistletoe tonight, ladies. There's a virile group of Sox fans prowling town. Boston got Gonzalez. Grrrrr, baby. Grrrrr.

Happy Thanksgiving

I know, I know, I post this same video every year. However, Burroughs wrote this in 1986, and it's still spot on. Actually, it might be more pertinent in these partisan days of Glenn Beck and a "wholesome" white America. In fact, if I may, I'm going to humbly add my own Thanksgiving verses of appreciation...

Thanks for the Tea Party, and the perpetuation of "stupid" as an American ideology.

Thanks filibusters and assurance that nothing gets done in our government.

Thanks for fighting against gay marriage, and the vigilance it requires to protect the "sanctity of heterosexual marriages." Everyone knows that it's the anatomy of whom you lie with in bed that determines the level of your love.

Thanks for squawking about health care reform. Only the white or the wealthy or the educated or the employed deserve the basic human decency of being treated when they're sick.

Thanks for The New York Yankees.

Thanks for Fox News, and the perpetuation of "stupid" as an American ideology.

Thanks for reading my blog...no, seriously. Thanks.

On teaching poetry

If you're looking for some profound musing on craft to pass out to your graduate students, this ain't it.

If you're looking for one man's subjective account of teaching poetry to high school students in a public school, you've come to the right spot.

Let me start with a rhetorical question, because we all know how well rhetorical questions work at the beginning of a piece of writing: Why is it that two weeks into any poetry unit I teach I suddenly want to strangle myself with my own tongue?

First of all, I'm a poet. Scratch that. I write poetry but cringe whenever someone uses the label "poet" to describe their self. There's something so very, very pretentious about it. As if to say: Despite the fact that I practice a craft that has far more practitioners than readers, I still manage to maintain an air of self-importance that can't be penetrated by a diamond cutter.

Anyhow, my last three books have, indeed, been collections of poetry, so when the poetry unit comes rolling around each year, it's not something I'm entirely ill-prepared to teach.

In fact, each time I start a poetry unit, I begin it with an entirely misguided and delusional sense of optimism. I think, This is it. This time I'm going to hook 'em. This time I have all of these great new poems by all of these great young poets in my arsenal, and dammit, these kids are going to learn to love poetry. To hell with those dead white men and suicidal white chicks; this stuff is new and fresh and vital and in touch with these kids' worlds.

Wrong.

I'm actually starting to accept the fact that the vast majority of people in this world---aside from, apparently, the Chileans---could care less about poetry. Regardless of what I do as a writing or literature teacher, every time I put a poem in front of a student, they're going to look up at me like I've placed a turd on their desk.

Listen, I'm not saying that poetry isn't important. I believe it is fresh and vital and contains the potential to reach people in ways that no other art form can. However, this does not change the fact that few people read it, and even fewer care to learn how.

Does this mean we should stop teaching poetry in public schools (you should end with a rhetorical question, as well)? No. Not at all. Like we do when we write our poems, we need to forge ahead and lower our shoulders against everything that seems logical and impossible. While, for most people, the turd will likely never turn into a vibrant pulsing slice of someone's life and experiences and observations, a sneak peek into the mind of a true and vital seeker, it does matter.

Strange yet exuberant, the poems do matter. And that, my friends, is called "movement."

Stuff to use for stuffing

My favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal is the stuffing, which should come as no surprise (see the blog entry titled "Trouble with Man-Titties"). However, I find it a little vulgar when the turkey itself is stuffed. I know, I know, vegetarians out there are already clutching tofu pillows and wiping their eyes with kale. But seriously, there's something I find oddly unsettling about reaching into the hollowed guts of a turkey carcass and munching on the stuff.

I digress.

There's been some stuff going on in my little literary life that's worthy of mention---assuming you're reading this right now because you 1.) know, or know of me, and 2.) understand the relativity of the word "worthy."

I recently had a short story published titled "Vandals" in a great new literary journal titled Sententia, edited by Ryan W. Bradley and Paula Bomer, the latter who has a really interesting-sounding collection of short fiction titled Baby and Other Stories coming out shortly from Word Riot Press.

The Trailer Park Quarterly, edited by my friend Dan Crocker, recently posted their second issue, which included one of my flash pieces, "Hot Dog Night at the County Jail." Also, Dan and I are participating in a new realm of idiocy on the internet, a radio show called The Natty and Cracker Hour. Check it out every other Friday at 11 p.m.

Finally, I recently signed with the super bad-ass literary agent Sarah LaPolla at Curtis Brown Ltd. We're cooking up some literary stuff, and it's super bad-ass awesome. I'd tell you what it is, but I'd have to kill you.

It just occurred to me: Has anyone ever invented a grilled stuffing sandwich? I'd like to try that and feed my man-titties.

Vote on Tuesday!

Need I remind you why you need to get out on Tuesday?

While I try to shy away from political grandstanding on my blog, this feels like a moral obligation. With the GOP---and especially these Tea Party wing-nuts---threatening to take over The House and filibuster the shit out of everything in The Senate for the next two years, perhaps it's time to remember those eight years that lead up to our Orwellian war on "terror" and the current economic tailspin.

Listen, I would never be audacious enough to blame it ALL on the cowboy, Darth Sidious (a.k.a. Dick Cheney) and the rest of the Bush gang, and the Democrats are, admittedly, wussies when it comes pushing through their policies; however, if the pundits are correct and things comes to pass on Tuesday the way they're predicted, this country will wake on Wednesday morning in a whole new world of shit.

So be sure to take the time to vote on Tuesday. I'm Nate Graziano, and I endorse this message.

The word is schadenfreude

I like to consider myself a man with a rock-solid sense of ethics, seldom do I vacillate and, less often, am I baffled by situations of ethical ambiguity. In short, I'm usually Kenny Powers confident in this category.

Last night, however, I was stumped by baseball. While my distinct enmity for The New York Yankees---that special venom that sits on my taste buds anytime I see pinstripes---required that I celebrate in New York's misery after taking a veritable ass-whuppin' at the hands of The Texas Rangers, I was somewhat conflicted by the aforementioned celebration. For two reasons:

The first---and I couldn't quite get past this---stemmed from the image in Game 2 of former-president GW Dipshit clapping in the stands at Arlington. Like most liberals, I will never forgive The Lonestar State for eight years of violence, kowtowing to the rich while the middle-class was obliterated, and pure, unfettered, ass-in-my-hands stupidity. Can I really rejoice with a team that was owned and supported by this clown? This is also the state where Darth Sidious, aka Dick Cheney, blew off his buddy's face with buck shot, an ancillary yet pertinent side note.

Then there was the simple fact that the team celebrated their victory by spraying ginger ale all over each other. Now, I have nothing but admiration for Josh Hamilton and the way he turned around his life; however, as a fan of baseball and a bit of a traditionalist, there's something flat-out wrong about this scenario. Admittedly, all male athletic celebrations reek of homoeroticism, and I'm cool with that. But I can't quite seem to wrap my head around the ginger ale. Sure, it's a sweet and touching story, but, goddamn, it's just wrong.

Nonetheless, I'm still slightly giddy by the fact that 1.) The $2oo million All-Stars got spanked by a team with a regular reason record comparable to Red Sox; 2.) It was A-Rod, who The Spank-boys paid Texas plus his exorbitant salary, watching the final strike; and C.) The fucking Yankees lost! While I know and anticipate The Yankee fan response ("The Red Sox were playing golf" and "Who has 27 rings?"), the German word for what I'm feeling is "schadenfreude," or taking pleasure in someone else's misery. And were the tables turned, Yankee fans would be singing the exact same tune.

After The Yankees go on another ridiculous Hot Stove spending spree and land Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford and every other aging free-agent asking for a gaudy salary, I'll be regretting this post. But for right now, the word is "schadenfreude." And right now, I left my heart in San Francisco. Go Giants!

Not funny

Jokes.com
Greg Giraldo - Drinking
comedians.comedycentral.com
Greg Giraldo Stand-Up Greg Giraldo Jokes Hasselhoff Roast Videos

I just found out today, while surfing the net instead of doing anything productive, that comedian Greg Giraldo, forty-four, passed away from an apparent prescription drug overdose.

Simply said, Giraldo, who was ubiquitous on Comedy Central in recent years, got it. For me, he was a rare stand-up comedian in the sense that he always seemed to be speaking directly to me and my own unique experiences. Unabashed, he called them as he saw them and never pulled a punch---the type of comedy that takes razor-wit and an abundance of balls to pull off.

He left behind three sons. None of this is funny.