Up at the usual time on Sunday when I go to my church, I normally turn on CNN's spate of talk shows. They're usually really good: Jake Tapper's "State of the Nation"; Fareed Zakaria's "GPS"; and Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources". Good stuff. Deeper than most talk shows. I also occasionally take in the softest of the soft, CBS Sunday Morning, designed to let us all know that in spite of it all, beauty and culture still exist, which isn't all that bad a thing to keep saying at least once a week.
I passed on them today. Not sure why; just a little too predictable lately (except GPS always throws a curve or two, since he's not native to these shores and sees the world a little differently, though also pretty accurately). I mean, I know the Mueller report's been sandbagged by the Attorney General; I know 45 has said really, really stupid things lately; and Sunday Morning will include some interview with a TV or movie or music star, mostly recent; some gee-ain't-life-grand-and-we're-pretty-lucky-after-all vignette; and the one-minute, nature's-still-here clip at the very end in which you can actually hear the animals and the breeze.
It bored me. So I went to church, not because I was bored. I intended to go all along. CNN replays these shows later, so I can catch them if I think I really need to.
Or, I tried to go to church. But for the first time that I can remember, there was no place to park. I have a normal, public parking area that I patronize near church, on a half-block off a major street, and there was a space left as there usually is (maybe even two, sometimes), but two people with bad aim (or uncaring, take your pick) took up enough of that remaining spot so that I knew that, because I'm not a particularly small person, getting out of the car would involve either:
- a sucking in of breath that I'm not used to;
- scraping some part of my body that I normally wouldn't;
- having to do that twice, in fact, if these same vehicles were around in another hour or so; or
- needing to get out of the car by utilizing the passenger-side door, which meant trying to navigate the shift knob on the floor, which meant hurting myself or it or banging my head on the ceiling as I tried to lift myself; besides, see immediately above for a possible repeat.
You can see the problem. So I tried to find another spot.
Within seven blocks in three directions (the fourth being east, but nothing left there but a plunge to the lake), though, I found absolutely nothing that I could take a chance on, be it too small for a parallel parking squeeze-in, or even a half-spot at the tail end of a block that a guy could try to take and hope the cops would be in church, too.
And time was running out. Parking eight or nine blocks away would mean I'd have to really hurry in order (at this point) to get to the service, or, tardy, wait a good ten minutes to be seated, since higgledy-piggledy seating during the first hymn and prayers will not be tolerated, unless I would sneak into the last two or three rows, which is not my style. I have a spot on the left, about four rows from the front, that I have claimed by squatter's rights for, well, over two decades now. (I have rarely seen anyone else sit in that spot, or even in that pew on a non-Christmas or non-Easter celebration. I don't know why. I shower. I use deodorant. I brush my teeth. I dress understatedly but acceptably. I don't get it. Maybe it's why most kids and adults, when given that choice, almost never sit in front of any presentation, school, church or whatever thing they haven't paid for ahead of time. That includes anyone reading this, so please don't deny it.)
All this was in jeopardy. So I said, well, (cleaning up language because it's Sunday--with apologies to George Carlin): Can't go to frickin' church because there's no goldang place to park within nearly a mile? To heck with it.
My status as a sinner is no doubt well-known. We'll try again next week.
Opting for information instead of inspiration, I bolted back and re-parked in the back lot of my apartment complex. Okay--all dressed up and nowhere to go? Not really.
I just moved up my normal agenda, which includes purchasing a Sunday New York Times at the Starbucks or CVS, each of which is within a block of my residence. I chose the former today. Then, in a gesture of absolute defiance, I opted not to have coffee in Starbucks but instead in Stone Creek Coffee, which was two blocks to the north, at the far end of the Downer Avenue clique of businesses. While it has no periodicals or newspapers to buy (Starbucks is also adjacent to Boswell Books, probably the class independent bookstore in Milwaukee), Stone Creek Coffee is larger, livelier, and has far better access to natural light at any one time of the day. It also has outdoor seating, which on Sunday afternoons very soon will be filled with younger patrons and their dogs and laptops. Of the two, Stone Creek is more fun to be around, if nowhere near as outwardly intellectual (though lots of people bring books and, again, their laptops, so a decent conversation is never far away if one manages to get into one).
Out of Starbucks I walked, back onto Downer, en route to my coffee guerrilla hideout. Just as I did so, a lady who seemed around my age (Was that sensitive enough?) called out to me. This was odd by itself.
"Sir," she asked, "Do you think I can park without putting money in here?"
Her car took up a legally-allowable position right outside the bookstore/Starbucks complex, adjacent to a meter. She couldn't have had a better position if she'd driven around the block and waited all day.
Remember, it's Sunday. I have never, ever seen any parking signs that, by themselves, with the exceptions of Loading Zones, prohibited parking on Sunday. (Have you?)
She was dressed nicely, suggesting that either she was (a) on the way to church; (b) coming from church; or (c) maybe seeing the grands or something. Her face and tone suggested a sense of humor. Instead of being a tad condescending, which I could easily have been--It's Sunday, dear--I tried mine out on her.
I did a kind of Bill Murray-David Letterman combo of false pretense. "Of course you can!" I said in a tone of exaggerated gravitas, slashing at the air. "It's Sunday. This is America!"
She caught it immediately. "That's right! I can park here!" She said, starting to smile. "Stick around," she suggested, "in case the police stop by."
Oh, right. Dump it all on me. He said so, Officer. She was kidding. I think.
I wished her a good day. Off I walked.
Stone Creek was energetic, though not as much as it would be at the noon hour, so I was kind of glad I'd stopped in much earlier than I usually do. Yet, I took one of only three small tables left open.
One of the other ones was next to me. Almost immediately, a young fellow sat down. Not a big deal; lots of young-uns populate this place. But this one had a Cubs uniform shirt on.
And he approached me. His date/probably girlfriend but maybe sister, who also (gasp!) donned a Cubs jersey, hadn't arrived. He needed his coffee, though. They had to have stayed at someone's house or at a nearby hotel last night. Otherwise, what were they doing on the Upper East Side, when Miller Park's out on about 55th off of Bluemound, about five miles from here, with still about three hours before game time? Hadn't they heard of tailgating?
"Would you mind manning this spot while I'm gone?" he asked.
I couldn't resist. "You're lucky we're friendly in this city," I said with a smile. "Hey, it's a big country."
He grinned. I mentioned that the bats were hot this weekend, what with the first two games of the Cubs-Brewers series being a split with resulting scores of 13-10 and 14-8. Miller Park wasn't a baseball stadium as much as it was a launching pad.
He said he had attended the Friday night game in which the Brewers smashed five home runs. I replied that Milwaukee still hadn't found a way to handle Chicago's Jason Hayward, who went yard again last night. "They should just walk him," I said in exasperation. "They're far better off." In dignified response, he noted that Ryan Braun had hit another three-run homer last night, his second in two games, which seemed to bring the Brewers back into it, now trailing 7-5, but the Cubbies exploded for seven more runs in the next inning. (Shifts? What shifts? The hitters seem to be adjusting.)
Two enthusiastic baseball partisans commenting on the other team's prowess; this was a respectful discussion. I offered to put the sports section of the Sunday NYT in save-this-place form on the table, along with some of the special section's single-paged leafs of the effects that the internet is having on the, well, universe, along with its particularly developing quirkiness, which is far more enormous than I ever realized (see below). He thanked me.
"You might want to take a look at the story about the Yankees and their injuries," I said. They have presently eleven guys out. In baseball, this is incredible.
I followed him for a refill, which Stone Creek Coffee offers free of charge. Right in front of me was a mom with a very cute little girl, donning a silver ribbon around her forehead. "What a cute little ribbon!" I had to remark, not that it was any of my business. Mom turned to smile, and so did her daughter. "Can you say thank you?" she cooed to her, not that she could, but an expression of back-door gratitude it was. Seeing that I was only there for a refill, she let me in front of her, since I had unwittingly stood between her and what looked like her sister, the proud, smiling auntie.
I'm not sure there's anything on this earth as sweet as a smiling baby, with full belly and dry pants. That little one never did stop grinning. "Say bye-bye," said mom as I stepped away from the counter, and she waved at me. Can the world be a bad place after that?
Three other people joined the Cubs' fan while I went through the ten pages of the special section. They were individually, separately leafed and depicted with artistic displays on the whole of one side and spunky, witty discussions of separate phenomena on the other. They were fun, if sometimes disconcerting, to take in. I learned that, among other things:
- Gwyneth Paltrow, inventor of Goop, had descended from the next galaxy to promote an oval egg-shaped stone called "yoni" that she claimed would, if inserted inside vaginas, regulate women's periods and increase bladder control. I read this in the New York Times, today. But, probably upon major failures (Golly, ya think?), the Orange County DA's office made her back down from such a claim and refund all monies upon request. (Just make movies, okay? It's what you're good at.)
- You can make your own Slime. The directions were listed. Got some Elmer's Glue? You're on the way.
- In an expression of where we're all going, dogs are taking over the soul of the internet from cats because, of course, cats just won't do what people want them to do. It's all about the growing specter of control now, so not only do dogs make better videos, but so do the cats who act like dogs.
- A Russian-born Australian guy nicknamed Zyzz (pronounced Zyzz) has inspired, and is inspiring, hundreds of thousands of fitness enthusiasts, even though he's been dead these last seven years. It's also becoming evident that right-wingers, obsessed with male dominance, also view the shirtless torso of none other than Alex Jones, he of Infowars, who apparently takes macho supplements.
- There are videos that consumer-mad people can watch that potentially have the effects of relieving the need to buy stuff. These videos show people opening boxes of things that we're unlikely to ever purchase on our own. This results, apparently, in fulfillment of some sort.
- There are plenty of videos of real-life parents with their real-life little kids, going through all the ups and downs of child raising, including birth itself, pranking the kids to the point of tears, and an announcement of the presence of lice. Cute stuff, too.
- You can get a celebrity, for a certain price (Katie Couric $200, Brett Favre $500, for instance), to send you a personalized video message. You write the script, they say it. If you think this has the potential to turn creepy, you'd be correct. Favre, for example, unwittingly stated prearranged, coded anti-Semitic language, to which he strenuously objected once discovered.
- Guys have proposed marriage on video as surprises, which sounds romantic in a way, except sometimes the girls say no. So it goes, though it sure sounds cheaper than renting an airplane to fly over with a banner.
- Male bots are generally invented to do tasks, while female bots are generally designed to follow instructions from real males. If you suspect this has the potential of being about you-know-what, you'd also be accurate.
This is the internet, in part. You and I both know of other, similarly crazy things that get put on it. Good things appear, too, like TED talks and unlikely friendships among animals and famous moments in sports. But if the above items are there and are well-followed, that's a statement that bears consideration, not the least concern of which is this simple fact: a considerable number of these people vote.
I know. Can't avoid sneaking politics in there, but lightly. But I can't say (and neither can you) what Will Rogers used to: All I know is what I read in the papers. With that, I returned here to Mr. Laptop and decided to tell you all about it. Such was my mostly apolitical Sunday morning.
Gotta go. Lots more to read.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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