constructive summer (we're gonna build something this summer)

how to get through a sudden and terrifying thunderstorm in the heart of Ohio: crank up the Beastie Boys, be careful with the gas, and if you're in the passenger seat, just keep knitting.

how to survive Chicago in rush hour: let Alan Rickman take the wheel, yell "MARCO" out the window till your best friend responds with "SCUTARO," let your inner Southern belle give advice on life as you crawl thirty miles in three hours. when all seems to be lost and the sky opens up with another monsoon, break out the Rick Springfield.

how to find a hotel in South Bend, Indiana on an hour's notice: call the Quality Inn, it's cheap and there's free breakfast. turn on your high beams if your headlights burn out; Indiana makes that kinda shit happen, but you still end up loving it more than Ohio.

how to get in a Minnesota state of mind: look at the sky. look out as far as you can because it's the flattest land you may ever see, turn on the Replacements and marvel.

how to enjoy Ohio: Rancid, Offspring, Green Day, blue skies. not necessarily in that order. try not to get off the interstate more than once. also, be careful which exits you take or you will find yourself in Alabama very, very quickly.

how to sleep an average of five hours a night and drive six to seven hours a day: take full advantage of the following: coffee. Rich Harden (ooer - leave it). pop-punk. the lack of state cops in Ohio.

how to ensure that you will be up way too fucking late for anybody's good in Chicago: start showing your best friend pictures of ridiculously attractive baseball players and, any time the conversation lapses, yell "HEGGEDY". this is a better idea than you might think, as it sometimes leads to the writing of brilliant Creed parodies. at four in the morning.

how to get to Wrigley Field: Red Line train to Addison, north of town. put on your Cubbies hat when you get off the train and pretend like you fit in. subtly take pictures of the Ernie Banks banner and marvel at the fact that you're in the Friendly Confines for real.

how to get moving on a gray, soaking wet morning in northern Indiana: "This Year," the Mountain Goats. do it.

how not to tackle Ohio efficiently: stop in Columbus looking for an open public restroom on a Sunday afternoon. assume that Columbus will be a normal city, or at the very least, no more asinine than Pittsburgh about things being open. I tell you this for free: do not count on Columbus for anything, ever. even a McDonald's.

how to come back home: cross the Allegheny and get a little teary, railroad tracks winding back into the woods like they wanted to construct the most Pennsylvania-like scene possible, just for you.

waiting for a door back into the life he wants, the confession of the bench

okay, one more post.

as they say - or at least as I often seem to say - Boston is the reason. in junior high I was playing sports but had essentially wandered away from watching them; I had bands, it was all good. then hockey came back into my life in a huge way, and I could write a novel about that, and probably will at some point. but that's not what this post is about.

there was hockey, and there were the Red Sox. then there was this kid Dustin Pedroia, five-foot-six on a good day and beating the shit out of major league pitching by sheer force of will. I stumbled across him one rainy night in Fenway Park, fell in love very suddenly, and the ten-year-old kid in me woke up and was like "HEY. remember baseball?"

fuck yeah, do I remember baseball. my dad had all these books about the greatest players of the century, top 100, big black and white pictures of Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Ernie Banks, up through Cal Ripken and the guys who were big when I was a kid (fuckin' Barry Bonds, I still spit at the mention of his name, almost more because he fucked the Pirates over and broke my dad's heart than because of any of his many steroid abuses). I lived with those books. I did multiple reports on Jackie Robinson, read all the books I could on that dude. I mean, I had it bad.

Pedroia, he brought it all back. kid can't go an inning without getting his uniform dirty, diving, sliding, covering every single inch of the ground he can. kid tells people he's gonna be the best thing their team's ever seen, and then he goes out there and he is. I watched the Red Sox lose to Tampa Bay in the ALDS that year - 2008 - for him.

I watched them lose to Anaheim in the ALDS the next year for him, and because I was living in Boston in a tiny-ass dorm room, sitting on the floor pretending to write a paper but really just holding my breath for Jonathan Papelbon not to blow it. (and man oh man did Papelbon blow it - gets two outs on the Angels and blows a two-run lead as all of New England gapes in horror, REALLY BRO? I went out on the street to run about an hour later and there was still Fenway traffic as far as the eye could see, people sitting there shell-shocked.)

and then I spent the offseason getting way over my head with baseball. the Sox first, because let me explain to you, if there is anything in your soul that loves the game of baseball, it comes out with terrifying force when you live a tenth of a mile from Fenway Park. you become desperately invested in Jon Lester's every move. you instinctively yell "YOOUUUUUUUK" when the situation calls for it. you suddenly need to understand Theo Epstein's approach to building a championship team.

I stole my dad's copy of Moneyball and read it cover to cover as fast as I could. then I read it again. I quoted it at people. I called my mom up to explain how great it was that the Oakland A's had been able to draft Nick Swisher as late in the first round of the 2002 draft as they did. I came to regard RBIs and wins on a pitcher's record as laughably outdated relics of another time. I developed a huge fucking crush on Billy Beane. I still possibly aspire to be the general manager of a hockey team. we'll see about that one. I have a crush on Marco Scutaro's on-base percentage, so you can draw your own conclusions.

I've basically spent this summer so far forming opinions on baseball and baseball players, and it's great. I was coming in with very few specific prejudices (fuck the Yankees, fuck the Rays, Southern California teams are generally bullshit) and almost no players I was really attached to. last time I was big into baseball, the Pirates' 2-5 hitters were Jack Wilson, Aramis Ramirez, Jason Kendall and Brian Giles. I love Freddy Sanchez to the point of tears now, but his time in Pittsburgh was kinda during what my friend Em would call "my black hole years."

so I've kinda just jumped in and started loving everyone this year, everyone who hasn't pissed me off right away by a) wearing a Yankees jersey and not being named Nick Swisher, b) being a bitchass, or c) being fat. (but Evan Meek and Kevin Youkilis are the good kind of fat, see.) I'm fucking fascinated by Tim Lincecum, his weird-ass delivery and how his scrawny little body doesn't blow up with the force of it. I actually gawk in awe at Barry Zito's curveball, when it works. I watch Neil Walker dig in at the plate and I hold my breath and pray, because I believe in him like he's a fucking miracle. I groan and fall off the couch when Garrett Jones chases pitches in the dirt. I want desperately, for reasons that would take a real essay to explain, for Bobby Crosby to succeed, even though he does it about once a month.

I'm back in love with baseball. I decided to do it, back in October as Papelbon was melting down, but I kind of lost control of the magnitude. I didn't mean to adopt West Coast teams. and I didn't mean to end up rooting for the Braves to go to the World Series for the sake of Tim Hudson (and that McCann kid, he's the good kind of fat too). but that's how I know I'm really into it - it's carrying me now, this baseball thing. I feel like it could carry me out to San Francisco and up to Toronto and down to Texas if I'd let it.


but there's nothing - never will be - like Fenway on game day.

here comes a regular (am I the only one here today?)

this thing is all but discontinued - I use it more at school, I guess. and all that happens is I make a post and then people attempt to send me Asian porn in the comments, lololol. I'm thinking of starting up a Wordpress thing for my actual, yannow, writing. but we'll see if/when that happens.

I'm leaving on route to Chicago, then Minneapolis, in fourish days. it's hard to express how fucking excited I am. here is something I wrote about Minnesota around eight or nine months ago, in Boston:

"I’m a little bit afraid to go to Minnesota. I’m afraid because I think it won’t measure up to the way I think it will be. When I think of Minnesota, I think of the guitar sound on “Here Comes a Regular.” For some reason, to me, Bob Stinson’s guitar is ringing off this huge, open sky, probably in the fall, just as the last leaves are falling, and it’s heart-achingly beautiful.

The vast open sky is what I think of the most – I have this idea that it feels different there than in any other flat state between Pennsylvania and Colorado, that it’s colder, and a little lonely, but not the way you would be lonely in Nebraska, the kind of lonely that inspires poetry.

Maybe it’s because a couple Replacements songs that immediately come to mind mention the sky (I write this as I look at “Waitress in the Sky” and “Skyway” on my iTunes player, and I remember how I felt when I first drove over the Chicago Skyway into the great Midwestern city). I think of “On the Rainy River,” possibly my favorite chapter from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, of driving through an entire state with something called an Iron Range, and on to Canada beyond. I want Minnesota to be breathtakingly beautiful, but not in an obvious way. And if I get there and it looks like Ohio, I may be slightly disappointed."

if it's possible to be obsessed with a state you've never been to? yeah. Mighty Ducks, up through Chuck Klosterman, through the 'Mats, to everything hockey. it's ridiculous how many of the important things in my world involve this state. between MN and CA you've got a good half of my life.