Up From the Roots/Things Fall Apart

I was up at 4am after getting back home close to midnight. The stretch run is exciting and even though I've had a few problems over the past month I'm still grateful that I got the opportunity to work to elect Barack Obama for President; it's something I'll be able to tell me children. For posterities sake, my prediction is that Obama will win 333 electoral votes, although in our war room pool I put 353 because the guy who created the pool put 333. Putting down duplicates for an office pool is lame, so I added Ohio to my mix even though I don't think he will win Ohio. No real bother really, I think it'll be much closer to a landslide than people predict. A great site to look at is fivethirtyeight.com. It's from Nate Silver, the guy who made Baseball Prospectus, only the top statistical baseball research site in the world (well that or Baseball Reference). Into politics and baseball, sounds like a great guy to have a beer with.

Looking back, it's been memorable being part of this team, even when I let my frustrations get the best of me. It's always fun building something up from the roots, for better or worse I basically lived with these people for a month. Everyday, I was with them for 12-18 hours and I am proud of what we accomplished. And now we sit and wait and read Loaded Questions, or at least I want to, I don't think people are particularly in a boardgame mood. I can feel the anxiousness, ready to morph into excitement if (when?) we win. I feel we have it in the bag- you never want to get overconfident though. But I seriously can't help it, we're about to have the first Black president in United States history.

Building, all the way up from the roots. When you do that, you take your materials from whatever is around you. In the case of me, that means you pour in energy from your other activities, your other obligations, because out of necessity, nothing else is as important as your new project. What's going to be there to fill that voids you left? They never stay empty, something always has to fill them. It's like those square puzzles where you have to put the numbers in order, when you move a piece to the right another piece has to come and replace it. Something has to die for something else to live, you know. As we built this, this entity, this massive 4 day event, the rest of my life suffered a little. What can you expect when you average 14 hours a night? I didn't think about what would be there to fill my place, because I could coast with half the effort. Some people are talented enough, Randy Moss can play with a quarter of his effort and still be the best wide receiver. I'm realizing I can't.
History will say that John Mccain lost this election when he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong when they were clearly not. I sympathize with the man, because I actually know where he's coming from, and I think to some extent his comments were misinterpreted (he didn't make it any better with his terrible, "I meant American workers" explanation once he was dinged on it). McCain's problem was that he was mistaken about what constituted "the fundamentals," he didn't understand the extent to which FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) WAS the economy. He didn't understand the extent that people like him and Phil Gramm (his economic adviser) helped to create the environment where FIRE was our fundamentals. I sympathize because, sometimes I feel like I don't know exactly what my/our foundation is made of. Scratch that, I think I do, I have a pretty good idea. But then again, what happens if the foundation we laid is fundamentally different than what we thought? What if there's a hole there which allows something, someone, to slip in unnoticed at first until its too late.
When you build up from the roots and you fear that something is wrong with the foundation you have a myriad of options. You can check it out, at what could be great costs, only to find that there's nothing wrong. You can check it out, find that something is wrong and try and fix it. You can check it out, find something is beyond and repair, kiss and say goodbye. Or finally, you can do nothing and hope for the best. The last one is not a real option, nothing man-made, not even the best insitutions/relationships inherently work; things naturally fall apart unless you put in the energy and effort. After the election, I guess I can again.


My life use to revolve around a song.

Urban Agriculture

Stuck in an abandoned factory still. 2 days until polls open although early voting makes it feel a little less climactic. Why isn't election day a national holiday? Early voting has certainly helped percentage turnout, plus the historic nature of this election helps as well. Now if we can keep everyone who voted politically engaged.

In the so called war room, we sit around several tables with our laptops out and our Nextels on. In the morning, Meet the Press or some other news show is usually on the screen, interspersed with people's conversations. We're occasionaly interrupted when we have to check into our sites; all of the desks disperse to sound of chirping phones. To my surprise it's only slightly annoying. But most of the time it's tranquil around here now that all of the ordering is done. Really, it's not at all like how it was for most of the month. Constant running around, constant ordering, constant frustrations on how the leadership of this team operated. Looking back, I got considerable autonomy, partially because there was not a good apparatus to funnel my ideas through, but mostly because you don't need much supervision when it comes to ordering Nextels, and port-a-potties, and lunches.

When I put it like that, when I write down what I actually accomplished, it doesn't look like much. But, as in everything important, the devils in the details. Ordering Nextels wasn't just about placing an order for Nextels- it was making a connection tree for 500 phones across 10 cities. It was holding a training for all of the people who would teach their staff how to use them. It was testing those connections (although I definitely skimped on that). And it is answering every goddamn question that any person has about their functioning. Lunches and port-a-potties were similar- the order is the last thing that happens, calculations about the number of canvassers, the number of flakes, the amount of people who can hygienically use a portable toilet. Haggling with companies over rental prices, getting squeezed both by your director and the company you're dealing with.

When things were buzzing at the beginning, I felt very disconnected from the actual campaign. I felt more like I was planning a 4 day concert festival instead of a GOTV effort. It's kind of like being in the accounting department for Proctor & Gamble. Yeah, your company makes toothpaste and diapers and all of those other household goods so vital to our consumer society. But YOU work on spreadsheets and control systems, you worry about Sarbanes-Oxley and internal audits. In the end, accounting is very important to the process of making paper clips but it just doesn't seem like at the time. That's how I felt- how was what I was doing helping get Mr. O elected president? Then the get out the vote canvassing started. The drivers needed to check in with their Nextels, the waiting lines for pay receipts meant that a lot of people had to go to the bathroom. The hungry canvassers ate their lunches as they traveled between their respective areas.

Went out to my site yesterday night. I work for our largest site, in the heart of Milwaukee's northside. The northside's rough, just another blighted side of a Midwestern factory city trying desperately to regain its former glory. We're staging out of, get this, another abandoned factory. I heard that we had as many as 250 people we had to turn away on day one- all of them lined up to work, ready to make 80-100 bucks for a long day of canvassing or, for the lucky and felony free, driving. Who says that people in the hood don't want to work? I don't know what brings them there- a genuine belief in the policies of Mr. Obama perhaps. Or would they do the same thing if McCain was offering the same amount of money to knock on doors for him? Maybe they're worried about making rent or paying for formula- maybe their SSI wasn't covering their necessities. Maybe they just want to get high. Regardless of their reason, they came out in droves because had plenty of work to give. But apparently not enough work; to the people we turned away there probably is never enough work. So they'll walk off looking for some other hustle. Or they'll come back Tuesday, when we'll need all the canvassers and drivers we can get.

By the time I got there late that night the vans had been gone for a long time, and they wouldn't be coming back until late evening. Except one, which came back early because the canvassers refused to go back out to their turf. It was a little cold outside and it may have seemed pointless, but an agreement is an agreement and they refused to complete their end of the bargain. If they'd been smarter, they could have just chileld in teh car until the night was over. Then they'd still have a job tomorrow. As it was, they were all fired. After the van parked, they all shuttled over to the pay table to collect their receipts, where they were told that we would not need their services tomorrow, that there were plenty of people we could use who would complete all of the tasks we'd asked them to do.
I noticed the look on their faces; a mix of a slowly realized dejection and a mild acceptance. There were some arguments- only one lady argued vehemently, most of the people just stood there before slowly walking away. What I noticed even more though was WHO they were, the people who would be available on a Monday at 2:00pm or all day Tuesday. You had a few college kids doing it because of their political inclinations as well as for the money. But there was also a Hispanic man with a bad hip, who slid across the asphalt gingerly in a cane. I could only imagine him having to walk up and down the block, up and down the stairs for 6 hours. Standing next to him was a middle-aged Black lady, dark and short, with a jacket about five sizes too big for her and an entire row of missing teeth. Most troubling of all were the two young boys who claimed they were 18 but in my estimation looked closer to 15. Decked out in their M&M race car jackets that for some reason are popular in Milwaukee. They were eating fries out of a McDonalds bag- younger than they look, younger than they act too. In my mind they were the answer to teh question "What happened to all of my classmates when they dropped out between freshman and sophomore year." Scrounging for money, not many prospects, they weren't particularly tough, they didn't sell drugs. They just bounced around for awhile before they got desperate and either got their GED (hopefully) or ended up in jail on a possession or gun charge.
And we had to fire them all. As a person, it hurts to let people go who need the money. As a representative for an entity, they're expendable, another group of door knocking bodies, and there are plenty more from wherever they came from.

A break in the action, so I walk alone to the corner store down the street. It's about three of these industrial deserted blocks from central. To my left, halfway there is a fenced in area of shrubs, brown and overgrown by weeds. A sign above the gate read "Urban Agriculture;" I had to shake my head and smile at the unintentional aptness. The bell rings as I walk into the store, a husky lady is blocking the path to my destination. Mercifully, she heads to the counter to pay for her 12 o'clock beer and I stoop low to pick up two 99 cent bags of Flaming Hots (cheetos for those not in the know). When I arrived at the store, I thought I would end up having a "Juneau Breakfast" (also known as a Milwaukee Public Schools breakfast), Flaming Hots and a 20 oz. coke. But then I saw a Giant Peach soda, something I hadn't had since I lived in Nashville and I just couldn't resist.
Fruit soda is a funny thing. Except for a few Fanta commercials, it's almost exclusively marketed in urban areas. There is also a scale for just how "hood" fruit sodas are- orange and grape are two universally accepted fruit sodas, with strawberry just a little bit behind them. Once you get to the exotic fruits, like peach or pineapple though, you are completely in hood territory. I guess I just want to know what the justification for it all is? How come some fruit sodas are more marketable than others to a broader public? Even something like Tahitian Treat is not universally liked. It was relatively hard for me to find it at the grocery stores near my house in Nashville, but very easy for me to find it once I went to the projects. One time, when me and my brother were driving back from the library we passed a corner store that had a Tahitian Treat advertisement on their door; we did a quick u-turn, bought a 2 liter, and drank it on our way home. I bet the makers of all these fruit sodas just hope that someone thinks they actually have fruit juice or something. They sure are good- those rich folks don't know what they're missing.

Black Ball Pt. 1

In 1975, black baseball players made up 27% of all major league rosters. Today, American born black players make up about 8%, a 19% drop in a little over 30 years. The percentage of black players is actually much higher than that; but that's if you count Hispanic players of African descent (Vladimir Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, etc.). Hispanic players, like hispanic people in general, tend to all get lumped in together no matter where they are from and no matter what their ethnic background is. In general, when commentators talk about the dwindling black population in major league baseball, they are talking about American born black people.

A lot of ink has been expended to try and explain the cause of this "problem." The consensus seems to be that 1) the game of baseball is too slow/boring for the inner city black kids who were raised on the more action generating sports of football/basketball and 2) that MLB, in turn, has not done a good job at promoting the sport in inner city areas. The first point I will discuss later on, probably part two of this post.
As to the second point, that MLB has been lax in its efforts to promote the sport in inner city areas, that is of course true, for myriad of reasons. Gary Sheffield got into a lot of trouble when he said that one of the reasons for this was because Latin players are easier to control than Black players. His point, while unskillfully delivered and mildly prejudiced, makes sense. All Latin American players except for ones in Puerto Rico are not subject to the draft, which means that a team that "discovers" said ballplayer does not have to compete with any other teams for his services. The team can pay him whatever they want, knowing full well that a) he will not get offers from any other teams, and b) it's an enormous amount of money in context. Black American players are subject to the draft, so you cannot control a player in the same fashion. American Black players have other options and often times other sports in addition to the standard bonus structure for first round picks. Finally you cannot "ship" him back to the island so to speak if he "acts up". As a further example, look at how Puerto Rican baseball has suffered since the island became subject to the draft... where are the Puerto Rican stars post Carlos Beltran, Ivan Rodriguez, and Carlos Delgado? Putting all of that money into scouting a player only to see him taken by another team is not a good use of a precious resources. As a result, players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela are, objectively speaking, better investments.
The other side of the scouting coin is the inferiority of competition in our inner cities. I'm not sure if this is a cause or an effect of the decline in American Black ballplayers; what I do know is that I played in an inner city baseball league in high school. The upkeep on the fields was terrible, and most of the non-white/non-Hispanic teams had a hard time filling their roster spots. Baseball becomes less of a priority, which further exacerbates the above problems. Talent disperses into football and basketball, making it harder to find, and really not worth a scouts time. Sure, he could look for great athletes who got roped onto the baseball team after basketball season was over (which is pretty much how we recruited a few of our players), but again that is a high risk little reward investment.
Travel ball or non-scholastic league ball has its own problems, cost being one of them. I can only go off my experiences, which can help to explain another problem. I played Dixie ball when I lived down south, and after a very successful season I was selected to play on the regional all-star team. The makeup of the team was pretty much the children of all the coaches, and in particular the well-off coaches. The son of a prominent doctor, dealership owners, lawyers etc. Now, some of these guys were really good and more than deserved to be on the team (the son of the doctor was our best pitcher), but some of them were only slightly above average and a few of them were terrible. My team had three players selected but only two of us belonged. If a third player from our team was to be selected, it should have been our "PWT," our poor white third baseman who was tied for our team lead in home runs. He wasn't particularly connected though. Looking back, and you know how memory is, I can remember three players on our team (including myself) who were not the child of a coach or at the very least a friend of a coach.
While we were practicing before our first game, my dad pulled me aside. "Pito, I just want to tell you that you're not one of them, you weren't an automatic selection. Don't get discouraged if you don't start." I didn't get what he meant at the time. I was not the greatest batting practice hitter but I was scorching the ball in practice and fielding the ball flawlessly, plus I was one of the top three hitters during the regular season, I just knew that I would start. It wasn't to be (and it wasn't until later that I understood what he was telling me), I sat on the bench while the starting shortstop flailed at pitches and fielded like his hands were made of cast iron skillets. Our team, particularly our pitching (I'm telling you that doctors kid was good), was pretty strong, so we only lost one game during the round robin. I didn't get up to the plate at all; my only appearance was as a pinch runner during our only loss. Finally, during the quarterfinals, I came in the game to bat for our "star" shortstop who had popped out in his previous at-bat. I played the rest of the game, smashed two doubles, walked, and played fine in the field. I was sure to get more playing time now... it was my last time coming to the plate. I came in as a defensive replacement for our right fielder in the finals. We won the regional championship so really I shouldn't complain, it always feels good to be a champion. But I was more than a little discouraged about how it turned out.

I've heard similar stories, both in person and from various black sportswriters. It's probably not that prominent, particularly once you get to high school age and the coaches only care about winning. Maybe the winnowing process starts before then though, so by the time you get to high school age the choice has already been made for you. Next time I'll talk about the second part, about baseball's lack of appeal to young black men in the city because of its perceived boringness.

WORLD SERIES PREDICTIONS!!!!

Stuck in a conference call at 9 at night; it is what's preventing me from going home. Oh God I hate conference calls! I'm currently having a debate in my mind about whether conference calls are more boring than they are useless, or more useless than they are boring. I cannot describe it in specifics but man I cannot wait until this is over so I can. Right now though, I'm really happy that I learned to type in sixth grade so I can look like I'm paying attention while I'm steadily typing on my blog. More importantly, I get to talk about something that is actually important, the World Series matchup between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. I'll do a classic breakdown by position and by team aggregates for the season. Just so you know ahead of time, the Philadelphia Phillies are my second favorite team and the 1993 Phillies are one my all-time favorite single season teams so I am rooting for them in this series. It will only slightly effect my analysis.

Catcher
TB-Dioner Navarro (102; 35.7%) PHI-Carlos Ruiz (62; 17.7%)
Big advantage for Tampa Bay. Navarro is a league average hitter, which is great for a catcher and led all qualifying catchers in caught stealing percentage. Ruiz is a terrible hitter and had one of the lowest csp of all catchers. Going forward, Navarro has a chanc to be an all-star. He was a highly regarded prospect with the Yankees and Dodgers and he seems to have put it all together with the Rays. Plus he's still only 24. Ruiz on the other hand, will start for 2 more years before he moves to his more natural position, backup.

First Base
TB- Carlos Pena (132; .729; 44) PHI- Ryan Howard (123; .743; 32)
Rating from this season alone it would be a push or even a slight advantage for Carlos Pena. Ryan Howard finished incredibly strong though and he has a better overall track record. Overall, I will give this one to the Phillies first baseman because of that track record. Pena and Howard are actually similar players- both are slow as molasses in January, both have good/great patience that's added by their tremendous power strokes. Both are incredibly strikeout prone and both are very susceptible to left handed pitching. Defense is a wash, with Pena having more range because he's slightly faster. Like Navarro, Pena was a HIGHLY regarded prospect who was pilfered from Texas by Oakland. He also comes across as highly intelligent; I loved reading his blog on MLB.com. He was good with Detroit and then flamed out with the Red Sox. Last year, he was close to being MVP. Howard is from St. Louis (a plus) and has actually won an MVP. He's been steadily going down in all his key stats though so that is something to watch for.

Second Base
TB- Akinori Iwamura (96; .787; 44) PHI- Chase Utley (133; .839; 66)
Chase Utley is so much better than Iwamura it's not even funny. It's rare for a player to be the best offensive and defensive player at their position; Utley is unquestionably the best offensive second baseman and I'd argue that he's also the best defensive. He's surehanded and has ungodly range, no mean feat. He easily outdistances Iwamura in out of zone plays and Iwamura has a HIGH OOZ. Iwamura is a good glove who brings a decent stick and good speed, nothing wrong with that. But Utley is a perennial MVP candidate and this generations Ryne Sandberg with even more power.

Third Base
TB- Evan Longoria (130; .731; 43) PHI- Pedro Feliz (80; .714; 27)
Just about as lopsided as the second base matchup; a huge win for the Rays. Longoria has a bright future ahead of him, there aren't too many 22 year old third baseman who post a 130 OPS+ and don't go to the Hall of Fame. Pedro Feliz was never a good hitter but has consistently been one of the top defensive third baseman in all of baseball and with a serviceable bat that meant he could play everyday. His defensive stats are way down this year, it could be a fluke, or he could have hit a wall at 33. If it's the latter, this should be his last year as a starter as he simply does not have the bat to warrant extended playing time without a gold glove. Since he was the best third baseman last year though, I guess he's earned one more chance. Anyway, big advantage to the team with the future HOF as their starter.

Shortstop
TB- Jason Bartlett (85; .807; 44) PHI- Jimmy Rollins (101; .849; 57)
Advantage Philadelphia. He didn’t have the numbers from his career year, but Jimmy Rollins still blows Bartlett away with the bat. Both hitters have good defensive reputations; the numbers point to Rollins being better but I’d call their defense a wash.
As another aside, Jimmy Rollins is from Oakland. It seems to me that Oakland and St. Louis are the only two cities with sizable black baseball playing populations. We should probably see why the baseball tradition still succeeds in Oakland and try to apply that to other places around the country. This is going to be an extended post in the very near future.

Left Field
TB- Carl Crawford (91; .911; 47) PHI- Pat Burrell (123; .829; 46)
Philadelphia has a very slight advantage because of Burrell’s bat and his okay glove. Crawford had a down year with the bat, but he also had a broken finger which caused him to miss significant playing time. As a plus though, Crawford is far and away the best left fielder in the game and has been for several years. His defense and speed narrows the gap considerably, to the point where I’d almost call it a wash. I may be stretching it a little, but this match up represents a kind of dichotomy. Crawford is the kind of player baseball needs to cultivate more if it wants to be seen as exciting. He’s fast, he plays good defense, hits plenty of triples, puts the ball in play, and always looks like he’s having fun. Burrell, while not as droll as JD Drew, is slow, hits home runs, plays mediocre defense, strikes out a ton, draws a lot of walks, and seems like he’s sitting in front of excel spreadsheet when he plays. Burrell’s bat is WAY more valuable, but Crawford just seems more valuable because he always looks like he’s doing something, always looks like he’s playing hard. From a managerial, winning games perspective, players like Burrell (and Adam Dunn, and Jack Cust) are the kind of bats you want. From an entertainment perspective?

Center Field
TB- BJ Upton (111; .921; 87) PHI- Shane Victorino (105; .913; 83)
Going strictly by regular season numbers this would be a wash both offensively and defensively with maybe a slight advantage to Upton. After this postseason though? Upton has nearly doubled his home run output having seemingly rediscovered his power stroke instantaneously; we may remember the 2008 playoffs as his official coming out party. Joe Posnanski likened BJ Upton to a young Eric Davis- I don’t remember a young Eric Davis, shoot I barely remember the old one, but I wish I’d seen him if he was as exciting as BJ Upton. Now if we could get him over the penchant for laziness…. Oh yeah, Shane Victorino- he’s a speedy centerfielder with good defense, a rat face, and a taste for spam. He’d annoy me if he was on another team, but on the Phillies I like him.

Right Field
TB- Gabe Gross (99; .943; 33) PHI- Jayson Werth (119; .898; 37)
Werth has a much better bat, Gross is a much better defender. Rightfield defense is not that important. Advantage Philly. Gross should split time with Rocco Baldelli, which will narrow the offensive gap.

Starting Pitching
TB- Jason Shields (122) PHI- Cole Hamels (145)
Scott Kazmir (125) Jamie Moyer (120)
Matt Garza (118) Brett Myers (98)
Andy Sonnanstine (100) Joe Blanton (106)
The top two starters from both teams match up well, with Hamels and Garza both winning their respective LCS MVP awards. I like Tampa Bay’s depth more, and I really like the fact that Kazmir gets to face Utley and Howard and switch around Jimmy Rollins. Playoff series hinge on hot pitchers though so depth means much less than it does in the regular season. With that being said, the dropoff from 1 to 3 for the Phillies means that they need stellar performances from Hamels (I’d think about starting him three times). I like Jamie Moyer in this series; he should be more effective against a young team. I also love how set up the Rays are for years. Slight advantage to Tampa Bay.

Bullpen
TB- Dan Wheeler; JP Howell; Grant Balfour; Chad Bradford; David Price
PHI- Brad Lidge; JC Romero; Ryan Madsen; Chad Durbin; Clay Condrey

Philadelphia has a superb bullpen anchored by post-Pujols Brad Lidge. They’re right handed heavy, but that should not be too big of a problem against the Rays; and Romero is definitely more than a LOOGY. All of the primary members of the bullpen have ERA+’s over 130. Tampa Bay HAS to score early against the Phillies. Tampa Bay’s bullpen on the other hand is very shaky at times; Wheeler looked positively petrified in both Game 5 and Game 7, Balfour has lost the trust of Madden, Howell has had a rough go of it, and I’d have a hard time trusting Bradford for more than two batters. The Rays secret weapon however, is David Price, last year’s number one pick and the savior in Game 7. A lefty with a 96mph fastball and a mid-to-high 80’s slider will give anyone fits. We should see him face the heart of the order in crucial situations. I am proud to say that I was at his debut in Yankee Stadium- he’s gonna be special. Overall though, this is a big advantage for the Phillies.

Bench
TB- Cliff Floyd; Eric Hinske, Rocco Baldelli, Willy Aybar; Ben Zobrist
PHI- Geoff Jenkins; So Taguchi; Gene Dobbs; Matt Stairs; Chris Coste

Both teams have solid benches, for Tampa Bay Floyd, Hinske, and Baldelli have all been all-stars and Aybar has been very good this postseason. For Philly, Jenkins, Taguchi, and Stars have all been solid players. Both benches supply power, Stairs in particular is dangerous against righties. The difference, I think, is in Baldelli because of his speed and defense in short bursts (Baldelli has a mitochondrial disease which saps him of his energy so he cannot usually play a full game). Overall, because of its versatility, Tampa’s bench has the advantage.

Other Key Indicators
Batter VORP
TB- 159
PHI- 228

Pitcher VORP
TB- 291
PHI- 226

Defensive Efficiency
TB- .710
PHI- .696


This is a very evenly matched series. On an individual player level, I like the Phillies in this series; if their stars perform to their highest capabilities (particularly Cole Hamels) I think they win. They are better at more individual positions, have a lights-out bullpen, and have a much more balanced team. Tampa Bay leans heavily on their pitching and defense; they have a much harder time scoring runs in bunches, although Upton’s emergence and the Boston series has changed that somewhat. A lot of their pitching advantage, however, comes from their depth, which does not matter as much in this series. Overall, I think that Hamels will handle Tampa Bay nicely, and Moyer will give them fits. Games not started by those two I think are wins for the Rays. My prediction is Philadelphia in a classic 7 games. Hamels is again the MVP and Philadelphia gets their first championship in any sport since 1983. Don’t fret Tampa, you will have plenty more opportunities in the near future.

A Night at Lake Michigan

There's nothing quite like drinking beers on the edge of Lake Michigan at night. The winds blowing, not beating down on you really, it's just enough to make it slightly uncomfortable. There are fish popping up every so often, they can sense you getting closer and they wonder if you have anything for them to eat. The waves lap against the rocks below the strong metal railing, yet it doesn't feel quite strong enough to hold you up; if you leaned a little bit harder it would deposit you gently into the water. And it may be the Newcastle talking even though you've only had two, but you kind of wish that it doesn't, you wish that the wind could lift you up. But mostly it's the cornflower blueness that reflects off the city lights and the high white clouds that look like they're dyed black, and in the middle the lighthouses and buoys and occasional speedboat, both with their shining red lights, one a constant reminder in the distance the other a fleeting image. I went to the lake with a friend for a little while after we got off work. We were loud, raucous, indignant in a way, but it was as peaceful if I'd been there by myself content from listening to the waves.
Me and my brother would go to the lake during the summer; there's few things like Milwaukee in the summer. The oppressive heat alleviated by the lake effect wind; and after using spring for the dress rehearsal, the young ladies were finally ready for opening night unveiling every conceivable inch of skin.
That was awhile ago though, the only thing on my mind as I finished my second Newcastle and walked back to the car was logistics, and nextels, denied credit cards, lax security, and inept managers who needed a few more hours of marinating. I forgot one thing, the canvassers are good (which is what I thought I'd be doing)

After night beers at Lake Michigan, we drove up Lake Drive to look at all of the enormous houses, places where doctors and minor stars and big time businessmen live. Shorewood and Whitefish Bay; cities and neighborhoods for the tastefully ostentatious.
"I want to be castle rich," my coworker said and all I could do was nod my head as I tried to keep my eyes on the road and on the 10,000 square foot house to my left at the same time. I smiled inside, because I'm only 22 but I think I've already chosen my route, not completely, but enough to know that "castle rich" is probably not in the cards. There's no doubt my coworker could be that kind of rich, or well on his way, if that's the way he wanted to go. Maybe I could too.. I don't know (as an aside, it's crazy for me to think that by the time this is done I'd have spent 95% of my waking hours with this particular coworker; if we spend any more time together we'd get common law married, I mean, if we were in California or Connecticut). We've made our choices though and it feels good to live with them for the time being.

I floated an idea by a friend the other day, the concept of "diner people." It's hard for me to explain it. I went to George Webb (a Wisconsin diner) the other day with my coworker, the one near my old closed down high school to get grilled cheese sandwiches and to have a little time away from the office. For some reason, even diners nowhere near the highway confer an aura of transience, travel as a state of being. Yet when I eat at a diner, theres also a feeling of warmth, even a vague sense of safety. The combination makes a diner an ideal resting spot for a journey, short or long.
Another reason I love diners is because you know (for the most part) what you're going to get there. I'm always willing to try different kind of food, but people who know me know that at heart I am pretty simplistic in my eating habits. If I could, I'd have a patty melt every meal. But within that simplicity, the mundaneness, I try and find something profound, maybe that's the best way I can articulate what I mean. Always looking for something fantastic in the ordinary; it's the best I can come up with for now.

Free Write Vol. 1

I have a blog post that I've been working on for some two days, but because I've been getting home so late, I'm having a hard time concentrating enough to write it. Thinking of the words I want to use is always so challenging, hopefully if I get maybe an hour or so to myself I can figure it out. But I still want to write, have the feeling to write. So instead I'll just free write, let a stream of consciousness flow from my head to my fingers to the keyboard to the screen and finally to your eyeballs. Who knows, maybe something will stick. At the very least it's the ultimate in navel gazing, almost like a live-blogging of my immediate thoughts, enjoy!

And for the next few weeks I spend my days and parts of my nights in an abandoned factory on the southside of Milwaukee, working and hoping desperately for an Obama win. I'm doing logistics, thought I would be doing recruiting, traveling across the state canvassing. Not that I mind, I stay warm, stay indoors, makes the long days a little easier. Besides I get considerable leeway.
Good to be back in Milwaukee, although as it turns out I'll barely get to see my family. I knew that it would be like that really, but it's an entirely different thing in practice. So close yet so far, even the cousin I'm staying with I don't see. She leaves before I wake up and I come in after she sleeps. Anything for a victory though.

We talked for almost an hour and ten minutes and for my money it was an hour and ten minutes well spent, after a long day all you want to do is hear that voice. Not the exapserated voice you sometimes hear when you messed up only you don't really know how. Not the tired voice you hear because you know that the conversation is going to be short. The sweet one, the content one, that's the one that warms your heart and that's the one that keeps you coming back to the phone hoping that the waves hitting your ears will prompt you to remember that it's all worth it. Because it is, when you smile and you hear her laugh, it really is.
Still trying to figure things out, why is love so hard you know? Well, it wasn't explicitly stated that we were "trying to figure things out," because that would be silly, that would be hurtful that would be? The TRUTH? I don't think it is, because I know my feelings, know what I want eventually. Sort of like you see the light at the end of the tunnel, or maybe the tall building out on the horizon. But there's this, other shit or rather there's a bunch of traps and snares on the unpaved road that you insisted on traveling because you KNOW that the end result is something that you'll be happy with for the rest of your life. So you figure out how to best make it happen because the last thing you want is for the light to grow dim, for the building you see in the horizon to collapse.
So you compromise, you make a compromise because you've both been through this before and you know how badly it can turn out and deep down you fear the worst. The best, you silently hope for- you wonder if your best efforts, the clothes, the plane tickets, the baseball game, the love, especially the love, in the end only the love. You wonder if the best you have to give will come up short- because you're messy, because you're distant, because absence, while making the heart grow fonder, also erodes the spirit, and makes you drift slowly away like a soggy piece of wood in the sea. You wonder if the best you have to give is good enough because there will be other Adonis' that aren't jerks, because that one guy wants to be a doctor too, because you know he's really nice, because deep down you want to save the world and everyone in it and yet you still have no clue what the most effective way to do that is, i.e., you only have the vaguest idea about what you want your life to be about while other people are already on their path to financial security.
And the thing is, it's the thought that's nerve wracking. The thought, of sex sure, the thought of her getting the kind of pleasure which by this time you think is your birthright to bestow upon her from someone else. But it's also the thought that you are slowly being replaced, the conversations you once had reserved for another. You learn in kindergarten to share and you know you might have to. And you're willing to swallow your pride in order to do it, a means to a more perfect ends. You think you are a mature person, and rationally this makes sense, but irrationality makes sense too.
But you also compromise because there's a little devil in you also; isn't there in everybody? You make a compromise because there's a girl eyeing you from the back of the bus or behind the counter at Starbucks or down the hall of your office and up until now you've been good at pushing them off. But what's a little slice of devil's pie? It's tempting, there for the taking. Remember, you've been good, remember, you're 22 in New York, it's only natural. And when those thoughts start to creep in, your inadequacies from the previous paragraph start to vanish and the good things about you come to the forefront as justification for any potential indiscretion. Yeah I'm good-looking, yeah I'm interesting and intelligent, yeah I've got a charming personality, it's not my fault, they're just attracted to me that's all. Besides, it's only sex and I'm able to disconnect the two. And that's the rub; you always think that somehow you're different from her. YOU are able to get your one-timer to understand while SHE will fall hard and mad. YOU will always come back to her SHE will move away with each passing day. Then you put yourself in her shoes. Think about it, somebody else, rubbing my back, kissing my lips, calling my name, having those discussions with me. Which one's really worse? Can you have the first ones with or without the last one? Everything is predicated on that, you think that you can. Most of the time you even think that she can. But nobody wants to make the first move, like two skillful checker players, eventually one of you have to get captured but you just hope that the other one makes the first mistake.
And suddenly you understand, again, that both of you are going through this, together. And you go back once again to the uneasy compromise because once again you don't want to lose her and you'll do anything to make sure that you don't. In the end you go back to being rational because you're both smart and four years is a long time. You have faith in how its all going to turn out, you just wish it was easier.

414-933-9774

I talk to my mother just about every day. There were times when I wouldn't admit this because of the stigma of being known as a "momma's boy." It means that you cannot do for yourself, that you always need to be taken care of. That feeling passed a long time ago. One reason is simply because I've gotten older and don't particularly care what people think. I've always been the most independent of all my siblings; suggestions that I need to be taken care of ring pretty hollow. The biggest reason though is that my mother is just a really cool person. She's very easy to talk to, very understanding, has an opinion (whether or not it's right) on most topics, and because she knows me so well we can remember and make connections to the past while having a discussion about some current event.

The crazy thing is, that even though I talk to my mother everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, I ALWAYS have to call her on Sunday. I could have talked to her for 16 hours on Saturday, until 11:59 pm, but she'd still want me to call her on Sunday, no matter the circumstances. I don't mind so much really and I understand that it's a traditional thing, a habit I think she developed with my grandmother. A reminder of sorts, to always keep the person who raised you in your thoughts, to keep your connection with home. Like I've explained before, I'm not a religious person, but Sunday does hold a special place for me both because of the cleaning and because of those Sunday calls.

One, four one four, nine three three, nine seven seven four. My grandmother's phone number, when she lived at her apartment next to Sentry's grocery store. Every Sunday when I was a kid, me, my brother, or my sister would have the honors of calling my grandmother so we could each have our five minute conversations before we handed the phone to my mother, so she could talk for what seemed like hours. I hate to admit it, but I use to dread making those calls. Not because I didn't like my grandmother- I loved her she was a wonderful woman. It's just that, she was old; old and boring. What did we have to talk about? What could she possibly tell me about herself? I would tell her about school, tell her that I was fine, tell her that I loved her before handing the phone to my sister and get back to playing with my Ninja Turtles.

But it was like clockwork most weeks and her number was the first one that I memorized, the only one from childhood that I can still recite. We lived in Milwaukee when I was 4; it was then that I remembered the trips to the grocery store with my brother and Granny to buy a newspaper, a few groceries, and most importantly race car cupcakes with yellow frosting that we got from the bakery where everyone knew Granny's name. We'd take walks, to the colorful park, the type of metallic park that gets rusty and has sharp edges; the kind of park that can't exist anymore out of safety for our vulnerable children. One one particular trip she bought me a Green Bay Packers helmet from a Salvation Army; my head was so small that it covered up my eyes but I wore it all the way home with pride. And the times we stayed home, me and my brother would play on the patio with our Ninja Turtles or those McDonalds toys that looked like different food items but transformed into dinosaurs. I can still distinctly remember the smell of potting soil and the sound of water sloshing in her watering pots and how we use to drop our toy cars down the slits between the wooden planks onto the concrete abyss below never to be seen again. And then we'd pick up my sister from the bus stop.

We lived there in 1990-1991 and when we moved we didn't come back again until 1996. Five years is literally another lifetime for a 5 year old. We'd come back intermittenly from 1996 until my family moved back to Milwaukee in 2000. Flash forward to 2002. I'm 15, I still share a room with my brother, we fight all the time because young male testosterone and a shared space almost never mix. After one particularly egregious fight involving a broken bedroom door, a mother left with a bag of groceries in the front, me being a coward and hopping out of a window, and a sever beatdown at the hands of my mother, me and my brother were sentenced to separation. One week, I was confined to stay with Granny, who by this time had moved into an assisted living complex. Of course I dreaded going over there because there was nothing for me to do but sit, sleep, and read, things I could only do for a few hours. She didn't have cable and I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere. I resigned myself to staying in her bedroom and finishing Catcher in the Rye before I willed myself to sleep while she sat on the couch and read or watched the news. I finished Catcher in the Rye and started to go to sleep. Only I didn't, only I got bored in her room and walked into the living room. I had just started to get into jazz and she had a nice collection of jazz and soul and even a little bit of country. And we started to talk, about Ray Charles and Miles Davis and Al Green and Dolly Parton and what type of music she use to listen to when she was younger and where she had gotten her record collection. And then we talked about baseball, how she use to listen to it on the radio, while my mother and my aunt would sit there bored out of there minds; and about the Milwaukee Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers and the okra bet she and my father had over the 1992 World Series between the Braves and Blue Jays. And then we talked about books, from romance novels to Catcher in the Rye and school and how my mom was when she was a child, how she behaved, what kind of grades she got. We talked until my mother came to pick me up. By that time, the images I had of my grandmother, stoic, predictable, boring, had been washed away one topic at a time- I cherished that moment we shared because we moved a little while after and she died less than one year later.

My brother and I visited her grave today. I miss her more and I'm much sadder than I was when she first died because I think about my kids never knowing her. We bought her flowers, carnations and lillies to replace the dying ones in the pot at her site. We both knelt down to pay our respects, we had a good time talking and laughing about the time we hooked up our PlayStation to her tv and she thought it was going to explode. I kissed my hand and touched her "headstone" before we left and we were off. I grabbed my phone, I have her number in there even though I didn't get my first cellphone until two years after she'd passed away. I just hope whoever inherited that number is worthy recipient.