A Quick Note on the Passing of Gary Carter

Here's my one-and-a-half cents regarding Gary Carter, who died today.

Back in the early 1980s, my brother and I and another pair of brothers who lived a couple of doors down supplemented our baseball card collection with a baseball sticker collection. Baseball sticker books contained two pages for each team, and something like five spots per page where you were to pasted the stickers for the appropriate players. The best player on the team arrived in a thicker, foil sticker.

We spent what little money we had on these stickers — I cringe when I see that Pokemon cards cost like four bucks a pack today — and, unlike the baseball cards of the time, the stickers have absolutely no value as an investment.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GARY CARTER?
On each team's set of pages, there was a bit of information about the team, including the name and address of its home stadium.

During that sticker-collecting summer, I shared with my friends an idea: Let's write to our favorite ballplayers, using the addresses for the stadiums, and ask for their autographs.

So that's what we did one afternoon, huddled around our friends' picnic table, writing letters. "You can't just come out and say, 'I want an autograph.' That would be rude," I strategized. So we wrote our letters like this:

Music I Love to Hate to Love, Part I

Sigh.

So, Whitney Houston died, and as a result, we've been hearing several of her biggest hits, from "The Greatest Love of All" to "I Will Always Love You." But the song of hers that comes to mind  — that is, my mind — is one of a number of songs I categorize as songs I hate, but listen to anyway.

The Whitney song I'm talking about, by the way, is "Love Will Save the Day," which I talked about in my other blog that discusses the reviews of "Dean of American Rock Critics" Robert Christgau.

Enough about Whitney (for now). I'd like to discuss some other songs that I'm ashamed to have had (and may still have) on various CDs, iPods, and cell phones.

The Day I Actually Fixed Something

I should blog about my problems more often. The problems I can actually attempt to fix myself, that is.

After writing my last post about all the stuff in disrepair around my house, I decided to attempt to replace the defective detergent dispenser in the dishwasher.

As I've mentioned before, the little door wasn't closing. The unit is powered and opens, to reveal the detergent, during the appropriate point of the wash cycle. Because the door wasn't closing, my detergent would immediately run down the side of the dishwasher door, and my dishes and flatware turn out cloudy and gross. This would not compel Mrs. The Anthony Show to soak her got-damn oatmeal bowls in the sink instead of letting them air-dry all day like a slow-cooker kiln and cement the leftover oat fragments to the bowl like a dried chicken-pox scabs on an 8-year-old, but I digress.

The Crap in and Around My House: An Update

Note: This is not my house.

When you own a house, and I don't suggest you do, there are a number of things that you'd like to eventually improve or fix or remove or add, but time and money and skill and laziness stand in the way of executing these updates.

I noted a number of the things I'd like to have done in my house, in a post I wrote nearly a year ago, and it's no surprise that I haven't enjoyed much success.

What ELSE Has Been Going On?

I haven't completely abandoned this blog, despite all evidence to the contrary. Here's what I've been up to in 2012, so far:

• Kinda sorta started (again) on a novel, but I actually haven't done a lot of work on it in the past couple of weeks.
• Trying to hit the treadmill a few times a week.
• Playing Grand Theft Auto IV, though I accidentally erased all my save files from the Xbox over the weekend, meaning all my "work" for the past two months are gone. But this might be a good thing, if it prevents me from wasting my time with the game.
• I started ANOTHER blog, about music (sort of), at  http://the-a-plus.blogspot.com. Check it out!

No, Really, YOU Go First

It gives me a headache.

I've been thinking about my last post, which was like a hundred years ago, in which I discussed the chaos that occurred when I tried to play a simple (but in reality, not so simple) game of Sorry! with my kids and they fought over who was going to be red, or maybe it was blue, or whatever.

I forgot to add this tidbit: once we're able sort out which color each player is going to be and repair the broken furniture, a new battle begins over who goes first. As I type this, I realize I could possibly achieve harmony if, for instance, Son chose the color and Daughter got to go first, like how they decide who gets the ball and which side of the field to start a football game.

It's a solution worthy of the wisdom of King Solomon! But I also know that both children will want to pick the color, or vice versa, and like King Solomon, I'll want to pull out a sword and just split the game in two.

The point of this story, to paraphrase the tagline to Alien vs. Predator: whoever wins, I lose.

Who's SORRY Now?

There is no forgiveness.

Because my children are now 5 and 7 years old, Mrs. The Anthony Show and I felt it was time to supplement their collection of board games.

Last year we bought our son (the older one) Battleship and Trouble, and this year we picked up Sorry! and Stratego. Both of these new games reacquainted me with old memories passing lazy summer days with neighborhood friends, gathered 'round a board game on a picnic table or stoop or garage floor.

It also reminded me that young siblings can be major pains in the ass — to themselves, and, more importantly, to me.