I got a haircut the other day and the guy before me asked for white sidewalls. For those who don’t know, white sidewalls is a euphemism for a buzzcut which pretty much eliminates hair from neck to crown. Marines are poster boys for the style and I jerked my mental knee and mentioned The Marines. Yes, he said, I was a Marine. I looked closely at him and I could see a hard life written on his face, the cracks deep and ancient. His life hadn’t been easy.
It was opening day yesterday— for baseball, in case you’re wondering. Time for the so-called Faithful to breathe in the aroma of Spring and pay homage to overpaid athletes who had better be as good as they can be because that home run that center-fielder just hit cost the club $27,102.56. I don’t know what it is but even the intelligent lay aside any real maturity they gained since the last out of last years World Series. Cubs fans talk of a pennant, Red Sox fans rejoice in the fact that they have yet another chance to win it all and Dodger fans— well, the Dodgers haven’t been the Dodgers since they left Brooklyn, in my opinion. Major League Baseball died for me on the day they announced the move. Walter O’Malley destroyed not just one childhood fantasy of mine— that baseball was a sport— but also what I had always thought the only major league worth caring about— The Pacific Coast League.
I saw a photographic exhibition once in which a photographer attempted to lay out his life in black & white. I don’t remember the person’s name but you wouldn’t know him anyway— he never reached any level of fame as far as I know— yet, anyway. He was a nobody who loved taking pictures and being in pictures and he laid his whole life out in photos, mostly of himself and people who must have been nobodies too.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 