Trading the most spectacular card to complete the perfect set

Almost every baseball card collector I’ve met takes the hobby very seriously. At home, our tax files, titles, the marriage license, passports etc. are in some box on the floor of the basement. However, the box of baseball cards is on the highest shelf in the basement, “in case we have a flood.”

The value of a card depends on its scarcity, popularity and condition. I’ve noticed the art of trading cards is primarily focused on:

1. Obtaining one-off spectacular cards like this 1933 Goudey #53 Babe Ruth of the Yankees worth $5,000.

Side note: my great grandpa Spence Adams played for the Yankees. I never met him. But I loved my grandma’s stories. She said Babe Ruth was a mean fart that would pick up kids, smile sweetly for the camera, then drop them.

And once, when on the road, one of the girlfriends of a player showed her how to put silk stockings on so they wouldn’t run and so the seam at the back of the leg was straight.

2. Another reason to trade cards is to assemble a perfect set.


Tonia is right, we are baseball cards. We are always evaluating, categorizing, and commoditizing ourselves. We try to keep ourselves fit, and in prime condition, we work hard to maintain good stats, and we’re always surrounding ourselves with friends and family because, together, we make a perfect set.

BUT, I’m sorry my friend. I choose to read through the lines on your post. I see a company that knows they have a one-off, spectacular card that they will never trade away because you have stellar stats and it so happens trading you to another department completes a perfect set.

You’re nothing less than a Cal Ripken Jr. my friend.

End of Daze

It's snowing today.
Micquelle says it means the end of days.
But I thought she meant end of daze.
I think this is much more profound because anyone from Utah knows that a good snowstorm always ends the atmospheric haze that keeps me in a daze of general malaise.







The view of snow from the neighborhood coffee shop.

Phrenyl Chondomyalegia

It is very good fortune if you have a healthy relationship with your parents. Our relationship spans beyond the perfunctory "honor thy father and thy mother," formality. I relish every moment spent with my mom and dad. They live an hour from my home so, while I don't visit as often as I'd like, I make it worthwhile when I do. This means camping out all day, opening the fridge many times to eat the good food I don't indulge in buying, and talking endlessly about jobs, family, relationships, life and what it's all supposed to mean.

Here is a perfect example of what I'm trying to say. I get these great e-mails from my Dad every so often. They are nice to hold onto in case i need a pick-me-up. Like today:

***

From: Amie's Dad
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:24 PM
To: Amie
Subject: Phrenyl Chondomyalegia

Yes it is a disease we should all be careful of.

I like a good subject in an email to baffle the hell out of the corporate email sniffers. Who would want Phrenyl Chondomyalegia?

Just checking to make sure your work life is improving, that every days is better and better, and you are looking forward to trying to find a way to get people to come to your conference in Barcelona instead of the OTHER one.

Works sucks so bad sometimes we are forced to remember this whole thing is an illusion. I mean, look at the worst time you ever had five years past. Can you remember your feelings about it? We have intellectual assent to it, but we really live in the NOW. And I guess we just have to find ways to accept that it is as good as we make it.

I've been making mine pretty bad. I don't own a Glock though. :)

The cult of Santa

My favorite Dr. Seuss book is the Cat in the Hat. Other childhood characters I related to are Cinderella, Little Orphan Annie, and basically anyone that had to clean. I was always perplexed at how Gidget could surf all day and not get stuck with chores.

Growing up, I had a list of household chores that rivaled Cinderella’s. We were a family of six and the Cat in the Hat made think a lot about the residue left behind from our daily living. That ring around the tub goes somewhere when scrubbed, that dirty laundry water goes somewhere, the sink disposal makes food disappear, where does it go?

Thinking about residual household goo metastasizing for eternity is overwhelming. It has to end somewhere. Dr. Seuss knew this so he invented Thing One and Thing Two. The famous whatsits that made the mess disappear with comforting finality.

If non eradicable goo exists in a household, so it exists in the soul. And, just like the book, it requires closure, which often leads to the search for a mythical savior to cleanse our shameful messes. It’s human nature to seek a Thing One and Thing Two. The Buddha, Jesus, Brahman, Muhammad, the Tao, Mr. Clean, etc. all respectable choices.

Picking the right product for the job is a personal journey. Do I need Spring cleaning, light maintenance, a garage sale or a Hazmat crew and a breather. Exposing this process to the pious judgments of peers is deflating. I’m not sure when this happened, but letting the dishes in the sink grow mold has become unacceptable behavior.

Ugh. Enough! I can’t live up to today’s meticulous standards. I’m joining the kid table. I’m joining the mess makers.

Enter Santa Clause. A perfect Thing One and Thing Two solution. I think Dr. Seuss would approve of the Cult of Santa. Santa’s chief cause is kid happiness. Santa wants us to be good, but knows we probably won’t. This is okay because he knows “we didn’t mean to.” Santa threatens us with coal, but has anyone actually received coal? The best part of the Cult of Santa are the followers. Kids are EXPECTED to make messes and NOT EXPECTED to do a good job cleaning up. Kids don’t have agendas, they don’t care who has the biggest mess, or who’s a better cleaner, or whether one cleaning product is superior to another.

I’d like to worship at the alter inside a gingerbread house filled with elves that make gifts of shoes, stereos and candy. I’ll call upon the patron saints Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem to help me through my days. And Santa will eat my fresh baked cookies with milk instead of me having to eat his flesh and blood.

The cake topper: Santa’s preferred method for penance via the US postal service. Feeling bad about bouncing that check? Send an apology letter to Santa. Feeling like you’ve been working hard and deserve a few toys? Send a letter to Santa.

North Pole Christmas Cancellation
Postmaster
5400 Mail Trail
Fairbanks AK 99709-9998

Good Night LA!

Something is because it just feels like it should be. In David Lynch's book Catching The Big Fish, Lynch says life is filled with abstractions and the only way we make heads or tails of it is intuition. He says sometimes a piece of music, or a sound just marries to the picture and is so important to the feeling of his films. These things don’t need to be explained. We intuit what we need to in order to get what we want out of the experience.

So, try this:

1. When you feel like a bold exit is in order (after a boring meeting, after you’ve just plunked $175 for jeans, after you’ve had a shot of tequila, after you finally got all of the formulas in a monster Excel spreadsheet working…. you get the idea)

2. raise your fist in the air

3. pretend your other fist is holding a microphone and yell

“Good Night LA!”

don’t substitute any other city and don’t deviate from the prescribed rock star pose. The louder the better.

This feels so right.

Thanks Micquelle! Good luck with the new job!