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I love the farmer’s market. Other than Walmart, there’s simply no place you can go to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of smug superiority, and Walmart doesn’t feature Amish folks exhibiting their own special brand of eccentricity. At least, the Walmart in New Castle, Delaware doesn’t. (That particular Walmart is a true hotbed of intellectualism; did you graduate high school? 60% of the other shoppers didn’t, and as far as I can tell none of the employees. Also, it’s a good place to get shot, which every neighborhood SORELY needs.¹)

The farmer’s market is great because it’s always “THE farmer’s market,” not “A farmer’s market,” even if it’s not entirely clear which one you mean. It’s as if the place has such gravitas that it ALWAYS warrants the definite article (because you’re DEFINITELY going to see some shiznit up ins). We have two major ones available to us: the one in New Castle, only a few miles from our house, and one in Boothwyn, PA, which is all the way up 495 and through some backroads. Getting to the one in New Castle requires you to go through the intersection of routes 273 and 13, which takes a minimum of 10 minutes, plus another 15 fighting your way through the parking lot because most of the folks who go to the farmer’s market are no smarter than the average sea anemone and have no concept of “not getting in the way.” (More on this in a bit.) As a result, it’s actually faster to get to the one in Boothwyn, particularly if you know the sneaky back way in that avoids the bulk of the parking lot idiots. Also the one in Boothwyn (namely, the Booth’s Corner Farmer’s Market) has an “Amish BBQ” (whatever that is) featuring good rotisserie chicken and a potato soup that we’re fond of that they haven’t served the last 4 freaking times we’ve gone.

We went on Saturday, and oh man the fat emphysemics were out in force. I haven’t seen that many oxygen tanks since I helped bury Natalee Holloway behind a scuba shop in Barcadera. (Too soon?) It’s always fun to wade your way through the sea of inhumanity and see someone you know (we ran into a friend from church), or someone who clearly is as overwhelmed by morons as we are (anyone with a college sweatshirt usually fits the bill). We got food at the BBQ (Rotisserie chicken, enjoyed by all) and I found a place selling Phils paraphernalia so I coughed up $16.99 for a Mike Schmidt tshirt in the totally hideous 80s uniform color scheme.

I’m pretty sure most of the people who shop or work there have rusty above-ground pools and/or trampolines in their backyards.

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Footnote 1: In the 3.5 years that we’ve lived in our current location, we’ve had the wife of a university professor get STABBED TO DEATH a few blocks away (by the professor’s mistress and former student, who then went to a Jewish cemetery in north Wilmington and attempted to burn the knife and her clothes on the ground there), and another resident rape someone and then walk out onto the Delaware Memorial Bridge with the intent of ending his woes. We’re, um, hoping to move soon.

I’m working one of those ridiculous jobs in which I’m up all night, sleeping all day, and drinking the blood of hookers I dump in the woods of South Jersey. I mean…well, dang. Anyway, the gist of this is that I have little time for such frivolities as “blog posts” or “pooping,” but because I’m a nice guy, I’m throwing this up on here as a sign unto you that I am rad and care deeply about your personal feelings towards, I dunno, stuff.

Anyway, I thought I’d talk about Old vs. New. Some people are what I call “conservative fuddy duddies” and prefer only the old; some people are what I call “liberal hippie forward-thinking types” and have an endless drive for All That Is New And Rad. Like most people, I fall somewhere in the middle, as evidenced by the following, um, evidence:

• In sports, old is better, like WHOA. The Designated Hitter: bad. Juiced baseballs: hella bad. Umpires wearing some kind of green shirt that makes them look like park rangers: craptastic. NASCAR’s “Car Of Tomorrow”: the stupidest idea since I started cutting myself to stop the crying. Football teams passing on 65% of downs: BOORRRRRIIINNNNNGGGGG.
• Technology: Dell Latitude D410 (my new work lappy) > Packard Bell Pentium 133. XM Radio > cassette tapes. PS2 > Ms. Pacman. The internets > libraries. CDs > vinyl LPs, despite the audiofreaks who say things like “digital recordings are just missing something.” They are, of course; they’re missing tape hiss. This is a good thing. Dorks.
• Women: modern sorority skanks dressing like 7th Avenue streetwalkers are a pretty solid improvement over the grunge-y sweater-wearing style of the early to mid-90s. Unless you have a 14 year old daughter, in which case I suggest you chain her to a radiator. On the other hand, apparently the 70s was the decade for hot chicks getting busy with no repercussions, so who knows. (I was, sadly, like 2 then.)
• Modern hotel keys suck, because invariably they are encoded to deactivate while I’m at work, such that when I return, completely exhausted, they don’t work and I have to take like 8 elevator rides back to the main desk to have them fix things. Argh. (It’s happened twice to me this month.)

In short, I’ve been awake for something like 32 of the past 36 hours and probably need to stop drinking caffeinated sodas because I haven’t blinked in a few minutes.

Welcome to Spring! It couldn’t have come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. You may recall last week we had SNOW, and just 4 days ago the wind and rain and temperatures were that of a normal January day. And it sucked. Like whoa.

Now we’re going to get a week of warm temperatures, which is nice because most of next week I’ll be working nights, enabling me to rest and relax outside during the day. Which I will undoubtedly spend sleeping. Come on, summer!

The warmer weather does enable me to exercise more; I ran twice this week in the cold and was very unhappy about it, although I did set personal bests for 3.3 miles and 1.1 miles. Yesterday I ran a mile in 8 minutes 27 seconds, which is the fastest I’ve run a mile since 8th grade, when I managed a 7:45 once. At the time, I weighed maybe 130 pounds. I, uh, don’t weigh that little anymore.

Since I hate lifting weights, but want to exercise my arms and abs and back, I decided to supplement my running with some batting cage fun. I have the interesting problem of throwing left-handed but batting right; this is the result of teaching myself to hit when I was little by throwing the ball in the air with my left hand and swinging across my body at it. The end result of this is that I’ve always been next to useless from a baseball/softball perspective, since left-handers can’t play 2nd or 3rd base or shortstop (because a left hander throwing to first has to turn his body around before whipping the ball over, which takes extra time), and right-handed batters are as common as pigeons. (Not that this makes much difference in softball.)

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to actually learn to bat left-handed, thinking that as an actual lefty I would be a better hitter from that side, and also give myself the benefit of batting switch, so I can direct softballs to weaker fielders (who are invariably at first base and right field). So I’ve been swinging from the lefty side, and I can report the following: apparently there are muscles in my body, that you only use when batting left-handed, that have completely atrophied. Because I am in Pain.

I went to the cages on Monday and was completely crippled until Wednesday, including bizarre unexplained pain in my NECK muscles, which I had not believed were involved in the act of swinging a softball bat. I thought myself recovered today, so I went back, and within 20 swings I was reminded of why exercise makes Baby Jesus cry. Ow. I’d be in less pain if I had simply handed the bat to someone and told him to go to town on my arms and torso.

The lesson, as I believe I have mentioned: I’m a wuss.

My office has geese. Not, like, indoors; that would probably interfere with our business processes, and Baby Jesus knows we have more than enough problems already. No, the geese are outside, but they are plentiful, and they have distinctive personalities.

I know what you’re thinking; geese are geese, man! Even worse, they’re Canadians! But I tell you truly, these geese all behave completely differently. For example, there’s one that hangs out by the big pond out back, right next to the path I take to get into the building. It seems to have taken up permanent residence there, and has no apparent fear of humans. I walk within 2 feet of it at least twice a day and it barely even takes notice of me, preferring instead to eat pieces of grass and leave nasty green poop on the concrete sidewalk.

However, there are at least two more who see fit to avoid humans as much as they can, so they sit by themselves out by the running track, hissing at all passersby. (A hissing goose is HILARIOUS, if you haven’t seen it happen. They are the least threatening creatures I’ve ever seen.) By the sixth lap on the track, I’m openly yelling at them “Stop hissing at me! I’ve run by here 5 times already and have yet to threaten you!” But they never learn.

Those are the three that seem to be permanently on hand, but sometimes we’ll have entire flocks of them, splashing around in the pond, nearly getting run over in the parking lot, and hissing at the dreaded humans.

I guess I should be glad; my good buddy Kyle works in a place with a significant goose population, and one gander in particular actually started attacking folks because he thought they were fronting on his woman. Yelling “I have no interest in your woman, you feathered freak! Leave me alone!” had no effect. And in case you’re wondering what a goose attack is like, basically they run directly at you with their big wings a-flapping and hoping to maybe nip a bite out of your arm.

Kyle weighed his options: he could kick the bird’s ass, but he would feel guilty about it, and also probably be FOUND guilty of bird abuse by a court of law; he could call animal control, but figured there wasn’t much they could do other than take the bird away and probably kill it; or he could exercise the third option, which was to buy an air horn.

So Kyle went out, wandered up to the gander, which, as was its wont, came at Kyle with murder in his eyes, and Kyle fired off a blast from the air horn as soon as the bird got close. The bird immediately stopped, honked the goose-speak for “My bad, dude, I didn’t realize you were the head gander all up in this peace, I’ll be going now,” and shuffled back to his lady.

I’d give up to $100 to have video of this, btw.

(Speaking of Kyle, and of money, he and a lot of his close friends are Virginia Tech alumni, so this has been a tough week for all of them. I don’t really have anything useful to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere, so I’ll just link to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and prevail upon you to donate some small amount of whatever vast cash reserves you may have.)

A Work of Fiction.

Chapter 1

“Jimmy, you know, you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Bob smiled warmly, as if he had just dispensed sage advice on a loving disciple.

I hated my job, and Bob Roop was a big reason why. He was only five years older than me, but he insisted upon treating me (the whole team, really) like we were children. I can’t remember how many times I had sworn to myself, “If he calls me ‘Jimmy’ one more time, I’m going to drop a monitor on his head.” Luckily for him, I’m very non-confrontational, or as my ex-wife liked to call me, “a pussy.”

“Bobby,” I replied, “I am dressing for the job I want. I want a job sitting around my apartment drinking beer and chatting online with hot babes, all day.”

He laughed. “Who are you kidding? If you had a job like that you wouldn’t even put on pants.”

He had a point.

“Jimbo, technically you’re within the dress code rules. You’ve got on a collared shirt, and you’re not wearing jeans. But look at Steve, for example; pressed shirt, dark slacks, and shoes he didn’t steal from a hobo.”

A hobo? What is this, 1923?

“Yeah, and he spends all day writhing in his chair because he’s wearing wool pants in July and it’s giving his ass a rash. Bob, if I’m uncomfortable, I don’t do my job well. Comfort for me means sneakers and clothes made of unnatural fabrics that don’t make me scratch my junk all afternoon.”

Bob took a long sip from his coffee mug, something he did when he wanted to seem thoughtful. “Fine, but remember; promotions tend to go to guys who dress the part.”

I took a deep breath to prevent myself punching him in the balls. “We’ve been over this. I don’t want a promotion. I want to keep typing away at my computer, getting periodic cost-of-living raises, until someone like you gives me a heart attack by bugging me about my damn collared shirt. Now, I’ve got fifty emails to read and a conference call that starts in one minute. Can I get back to my job?”

Without waiting for an answer, I put on my headset and started dialing into the conference call. Bob stood there for a minute, trying to look intimidating, and walked back to his office.

A chat window popped up on my monitor. It was Steve, being a smart-ass.

S.Albert: u know, it wouldn’t hurt u to buy 1 nice pair of pants!!
J.Graves: Suck it, Steve.
S.Albert: im just sayin, if u wanted to go shopping later i have some time before i meet angela tonite, we could get u a couple shirts and slacks

The last thing I wanted to do was spend any more time with Steve than I already had to. Angela was his latest flame, and every hour you spent in his presence required you to listen to at least 45 minutes of detail about their spectacular sex life.

J.Graves: Hey Steve, you have a pendejo hanging off your mustache again.
S.Albert: a what
J.Graves: Look it up.

I closed the window and logged out of chat, just for a few hours, until my glowing hatred of all humanity had dimmed.

I know nobody really wants to read about the weather; either you’re local to me, and already aware of it, or you’re not, in which case it’s not a concern for you. Nevertheless, what in the ham-handed hell? There was SNOW this morning in North Wilmington, which is like 10 miles north of me. It was sort of sleeting when I left the house this morning, and the wind about caused me to dent my car with my head. As B pointed out, we basically went through a category 2 hurricane. And Al Gore wasn’t anywhere near us!

Anyway, I’m tired of this weather, and I’m tired of being sick, as both are preventing me from exercising, since there’s nothing worse than riding a bicycle in cold weather, and jogging sucks bad enough when it’s dry. I seriously need to exercise, because I keep doing things like making pans of cinnamon rolls and eating the entire batch in a weekend, despite the fact that they kinda sucked because the dough never rose properly (I blame low-fat buttermilk, which I think was acidic enough to kill the yeast before it could get its rise on). I did get a LITTLE exercise on Saturday, mowing the lawn and putting dirt around my patio and whatnot, but the end result of that mess is that my back hurts and I still weigh 240+ pounds.

I am a large devil, I am.

I’d like to get at least some amount of exercise every day, but my legs just can’t take running every day, based on the ankle pain I suffered through last week. So I’ve decided to hit up the batting cages around the corner from my office a couple days a week. Work the core and arms, develop some hand-eye coordination, learn how to switch-hit; it’s win-win-win-triple-X-throwdown-WIN! Plus it helps improve my odds of being called up to AAA.

Yes, I played something like 15 hours of video game baseball over the weekend. Update: you may recall I made myself a switch-hitting catcher. By “mid-June” I was batting around .320, with 11 home runs and 25 or so RBI, so they called me up to the majors, where they made me play first base. I was like, whaaaaaa? I guess they needed a temporary backup for Ryan Howard. Whatever. After 4 games (I was batting a healthy .300 or so, but only had 6 or 7 ABs) they sent me back down to AAA, where I am continuing to play first base for some reason. Argh. I’m going to try and get them to move me to the outfield, where at least I have a chance of platooning with Burrell.

Not that you care about ANY of that. Ha ha! That’s the joy of talking about fantasy and video game sports: nobody cares. It’s just like the weather.

Lots o’ little thangs:

• Some new photos over at CharlesHearn.com, check them out with great gusto.
• This Don Imus thing has gotten out of hand, for reals. At this point, listening to the racial opinions of a nearly 70-year-old white guy in a ridiculous hat makes about as much sense as listening to my great-grandfather expound upon the “Slavering Huns” (he was in The Great War, you see). Who cares? So an old man made a racist joke on the radio. There are worse things going on in our culture, trust me.
• Don’t tell my wife, but I have secretly acquired a copy of “MBL 2007: The Show,” on a recommendation from my buddy Kyle. I plan a full review next week, but here are a few thoughts:
  • I haven’t even tried anything but “Road To The Show” mode, in which you start as a young player in the minor leagues and work your way up to the bigs and see if you can make the Hall of Fame, and which may be the most addictive thing I’ve used since I got out of the methadone clinic. Apparently there are a variety of ways in this game to play it like a regular video baseball game, but I don’t have time for that because I’m living and dying with a 19 year old switch-hitting catcher who’s batting .265 for the Ottawa Lynx, a triple-A Phillies affiliate. I’ll give all the details of this mode in next week’s review, but I’d just like to leave you with my most recent game’s effort: 6/6, with 2 doubles, a home run, and 4 RBI, and would have gotten “Player of the Game” honors if the bullpen could have held an 8-3 lead.
  • I did play a game with Kyle over the weekend (before I bought my own copy) and I can report that the graphics are a little irksome; Chase Utley, for example, is so dark that Kyle and I referred to him by his full name, “Black Chase Utley,” every time he came to bet or fielded a grounder.

  So far the game gets a 10/10 out of ten for gameplay and a 100/10 for “unintentional hilarity.”

• Speaking of Kyle, he also lent me three books, which I may or may not also get around to reviewing:
  • Why My Wife Thinks I’m An Idiot, by Mike Greenberg. I never really listened to Mike and Mike on the radio, because sports radio is about as interesting to me as The World Beard Championships, so I didn’t know much about Greeny going in. The book was good, and hilarious, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he seemed like a bit of a dick. And I can’t explain why, exactly. He describes himself as a “metrosexual” and tends to go into great detail about the expensive clothes he wears; I also like expensive clothes, but every time he said something like “my Prada backpack,” I kept envisioning an overtanned 19 year old brunette sitting in the college cafeteria showing off her new Uggs to her Long Island hookers friends.
  • Fantasyland, by Sam Walton, which details his season playing in the toughest fantasy baseball league in the country. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far it’s been equal parts interesting, revealing, and hilarious.
  • Moneyball, by whoever it is that wrote Moneyball who I don’t feel like looking up. Okay fine, it’s Michael Lewis, you guilted me into it. I haven’t gotten to this one yet, so I’ll just relate a couple of other people’s blurbs:
    • Weekly Standard – May be the best book ever written on business.
    • Wall Street Journal – Another journalistic tour de force.
    • Hearnwife – Stop sitting on the toilet reading those $%#&ing books and come to bed.
• I may be setting a pointless record for “unordered list depth” for blog posts.
• And speaking of sports, just check this out; scroll down to the line for Robert Horry in the San Antonio box score.
• Everybody at Team Hearn is sick again. Charles is pretty good at bringing home germs; he, of course, is over them in all of a day, and we suffer for 2 weeks. I’m going to go to bed. Have a nice weekend, and avoid the clap.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for baseball. Teams in the Midwest are losing entire series because of SNOW. (Even here in the East temps are topping out at a balmy 50 most days. And tonight there’s supposed to be rain! Argh.) The Indians are playing their Seattle series in Milwaukee, which is a bit counter-intuitive (isn’t Milwaukee NORTH of Cleveland? And thusly colder?) until you remember that Milwaukee has a dome. The media of course has been freaking out, but remember that a couple quick doubleheaders and the Indians and Pilots Mariners will be all caught up. What’s more annoying is that anyone with those players on their fantasy teams has been kinda screwed (I’ve been starting CC Sabathia every bloody day in hopes that he might actually throw the ball; no dice).

And speaking of fantasy baseball, our season is basically straight jacked at this point because ESPN’s IT department appears to be staffed with chimps. The statistics are all wrong, and entire rosters keep disappearing and reappearing randomly. ESPN’s solution to this is to WIPE OUT EVERYONE’S RESULTS and start over, by simply resetting our teams to our opening day rosters and calculating the last 11 days of results based on that opening roster. They’re simply discarding any roster moves we’ve made. Which is totally great because

• I’ve placed one guy on the DL and replaced another guy because I needed more pitching; all of that is gone and will have to be redone.
• In our league you can change your rosters every day, so most of us have been swapping starting pitchers in and out of the rotation in order to maximize wins and strikeouts; none of that will be happening.

This is the second time we’ve ventured from Yahoo for a fantasy league, and we won’t be doing it again.

And best of all, the Phillies are 1-6. ::openly weeping::

So, baseball’s in the dumps for me right now. But things are looking up! I ordered a copy of MLB 2007 “The Show,” a highly recommended video game which features the ability to create a player from scratch and move him through the minor leagues into the majors and hit baseballs with him! With his bat, I mean, not with, like, his head.

I’ll tell you, having kids produces some highs and lows. And I haven’t even gotten to the point where Charles is reporting amusing anecdotes about other people’s thighs, or reminding us that it’s time to eat by repeatedly pointing at his wristwatch and gaping mouth. So far the greatest thing Charles does is grin like an idiot at pretty much everything, which is pretty entertaining, and sometimes during diaper changes he grabs his own junk and giggles, which is HILARIOUS, though often painful to watch.

His cousin Nathaniel is slightly more advanced in hilarity. Yesterday we were all at my aunt’s house in Lancaster, enjoying a spot of dessert, so Nathaniel decided it would be fun to steal everybody’s fork and all of their food. Later, he pulled his pants down and stumbled around. (I’ll try and get the pictures up later this week.)

Charles and Nathaniel also had lengthy conversations with my aunt’s sheep, although Nathaniel was a bit scared by them. Charles was mostly trying to figure out if there was any way he could eat one. (“How can I eat that” is his main train of thought; it applies also to neckties, fingers, furniture, chunks of drywall, cats, and paint.)

The lows consist mostly of when you go to put your son to bed at 8pm and he feels kinda warm, so you take his temperature and realize it’s 101.6. Not high enough to call 911, but high enough to make HW and me scramble for all our baby manuals and find out exactly what to do, which was “check it again later and see if it’s gone up.” Since he was asleep, we figured we’d check it in the morning, or earlier if he woke up.

Which he did. At 3am. With great displeasure. Sarah went in to try and calm him down; she changed him and gave him a bottle, but to no avail. She tried a little tylenol, which seemed to make him a bit happier, but didn’t make him tired. Around 3:30 I took over. We played on the floor for a bit, tried the bottle again, tried reading “The Little Engine That Could.” He rolled onto his belly, pulled his feet in, wedged his head into the corner, and seemed to be drifting off, until about 3 seconds before I was about to stand up and sneak out, he sat back up and said “Woowoowoo bleh DAH” and then sobbed a little. We played some more, and finally about 4 I said okay that’s enough, laid him down, and went back to bed. He alternated screaming and loud whimpering for about a half hour until Sarah went back in to get him.

She brought him into our bed, and together we calmed him down enough so that we all went to sleep around 5, until 8:30 when he woke up and grabbed my hair and giggled.

You may notice that this particular post is sort of rambling and makes no sense. This is because my son kept me awake from 3 to 5. Which you would KNOW if you would READ MORE CLOSELY. So there.

To cap off a week of not posting any funny stuff at all (for reals, it’s like I’ve turned into Thomas Pynchon, except that Thomas Pynchon probably never took a picture of his junk and put it on the interwebs), here are some shots I took whilst a-wandering aimlessly around The City Of New York with Teh J0sh. Enjoy ye them!

I know how you love that artsy shiznitzel.