On Six Year Old Friday Nights

Last night, my wife and I caught "Friday Night Lights" at the local cinema. I sat there for almost two hours in deep culture shock. High school kid's SAT scores are all the talk of the town up here, so no one else in the theater could understand the movie like I could. Everytime some idiot would tell one of those kids that high school football "was all you got, after that you just have the memories and nothing else to hope for", I flashed back to the faces of the people who once told me that. Man, how crippling that could have been. Saying that to an 18-year old should be a capital offense. But, as is often the case, the coach was the one guy in town with the proper perspective. Billy Bob Thornton nailed the mythic figure of "high school football coach". Winning football games is not much different than losing, it just changes the way people treat you. The only thing that really counts is that you held nothing back for your team.

I laughed, I cried, I got all nostalgic. Then I came home and went to bed. Good movie, great book, but best of all are the six year old memories without all the bruising.

On Politics

I, Matt Porter, do solemnly swear to not turn my blog into a daily political rant.

That said, let me give you my thoughts on politics just a few days before an election. Put the women, children, and undecided voters to bed! I will now handicap the race between the Three Stooges.

Bush> I honestly do not believe that a guy smart enough to make it through Yale University cannot pronounce "nuclear" properly. Everytime he says "nuculer" I cringe, feeling like I am being mocked by a guy with barely above average intelligence. Who is this guy trying to kid? He grew up with a silver spoon wedged between his mandibles, and Barbara would never allow one of her children to sound like a redneck. But the worst thing about W is foreign policy. I remember sitting at home during a spring break watching the war start on CNN. During the televised (!) portion of the "shock and awe" campaign, Wolf Blitzer (Cpl. Putz) kept warning us that the next cruise missile may ignite one of those stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. How gullible we all were! What we were really seeing is a bunch of innocent Iraqis get killed, which is not much different from what we are seeing today. If WMD and a dictator are a recipe for a pre-emptive war, get set to invade Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Russia, Cambodia, Indonesia, North Korea, and the state of Maine.

Kerry> This guy is dying a slow, suffocating death. He really never stood a chance and is an embarrasment to the ttwo-party system. Which party does he represent? The party of "I am not George W. Bush". Yet another victim of American democracy. Why was he "for the war before he was against it"? Simple. Because most of us were, too. Kerry is imprisoned by public opinion and unwilling to take a risk in giving his own views. Why do we not know what he believes? He won't tell you until you tell him. Then he will agree with you and ask for your vote. If he simply had the guts to vote against the initial war resolution in the first place, we could at least all see that he was a true alternative. I don't have much to say about John Kerry, and neither does he.

Nader> Don't waste my time. When your biggest supporters are Republicans who hope you steal votes from Kerry, you have to admit that you are wearing a big sign that says "Mr. Irrelevant".

We really have only two choices, bad and bad. Most people justify this by saying that to vote for president is to pick the "lesser of two evils". They usually say this meaning that their own candidate is bad, but not as stupid as the other guy. I disagree. What we have here is the evil of two lessers. Surely America can do better than two rich, obnoxious white guys who graduated from Yale only a few years apart. How about Barack Obama v. John McCain in 2008?

On $800k

Baseball again, but then the season is over tonight (?), so just deal with it.

Barry Bonds has now hit 700 home runs over his career. Which, incidentally, is about 700 more than I ever hit in my career, but I could bunt way better than he ever dreamed of. He may just be the best baseball player of my lifetime. His 700th homerun was certainly a historic moment. And I must not be the only person to think so, because some moron paid $804,129 for that baseball via an overstock.com auction. No typos here, once again, $804,129. If only I could have been the guy who dropped the hot dog and peanuts jumping up to snatch my one-way ticket to financial security at that game. Small price to pay for more clams than I will ever see in my lifetime.

Then again, I did catch a ball once too. I was in Stillwater, OK at Allie P. Reynolds Stadium with my good friend Ryan Maloney. A young man named Thad Chaddrick fouled of an 0-2 pitch in the bottom of the fifth inning (sure, why not? I was 13 years old, like I'd remember. But it makes for a good story. ) I outran the 8 year old girl and her little brother while Maloney held our sodas. I took that ball home proudly and proceeded to never play a single game of catch with it. Chaddrick made my investment pay off later that year when he was chosen in the 37th round of the 1994 Major League Baseball draft (#1,036 overall).

http://www.sports-wired.com/draft/1994/JuneR/d37.shtml

So, in comparison to Bonds' $800,129 hunk of leather, my piece of baseball history has gotta be worth at least seventy-five cents. And that, my friends, is three more quarters towards that next load of laundry.

On Being a Yankee Hater

Last week was one of my favorite weeks watching sports. Not only did the Oklahoma Sooners and Michigan Wolverine football team bookend the week with a pair of victories, I watched the team for which I have grown quite a soft-spot, the Boston Red Sox, vanquish their hated rivals. The New York Yankees legendary history failed them, losing four straight games.

Throughout the series, I was fascinated by what I was seeing. I have been a marginal Red Sox fan since I spent a summer in Rhode Island a few years back. But what was really driving me to see the Red Sox undo the Yankees was more simple: I am a hater.

Since I was a little boy, I have hated the Yankees. I stopped playing baseball in junior high, and watched very little of it on TV. But I knew about the Yankees. They were those guys. You know, they were the ones who were supposed to win. They reminded me of the kid who had a mustache in the sixth grade. When he played football with everybody else, we all knew what was gonna happen. Or the girl who had been head cheerleader since the fourth grade. She just felt entitled because of her history, and nobody was going to question it. That, to me, sums up the Yankees. They were supposed to win because they always have. They had no skeletons in their closet, nothing even resembling a curse in their history. Now, they do.

I also find it to be profoundly theological. Now, to a seminarian everything is theological. But think about it: isn't the gospel about such things? The high and lofty are undercut, and the things that count are to be found among the poor and lowly. No one is entitled to anything nor is anyone left out, no matter where they have been or what they have done. In short, all things are made new.

This is what happens when a seminary student watches too much baseball during a week he should have been studying his arse off!

On New Jersey

For well over a year now I am sure that most of you have been wondering why anyone would pick up stakes and move to New Jersey. After reading this post, I am also sure that many of you will continue to wonder. I myself have grown to enjoy pondering why anyone would choose to live in New Jersey. Putting aside the harsh and bitter winter cold, the obscenely dense traffic at all hours of the day and night, the outrageously high cost of living, and the general sense of doom and despair that hangs in the air along with the smog, I can think of only a few reasons why anyone would not wish to live here in the jewel of the Mid-Atlantic. And here they are, in no particular order.

#1 Instead of Fox Sports SouthWest and Big 12 football every Saturday, I am stuck here observing the scandal that is Big East football. Instead of watching a very important bedlam matchup next weekend, I will probably be stuck with entertainment similar to last Saturday's riveting matchup featuring Rutgers and Pittsburgh. I may get to catch Syracuse take on New Hampshire. Lucky me.

#2 Sonic Drive-In is poised to complete their crawling advance to the north very soon. A new location opened up in Philadelphia, a short 2 hours away (if you are lucky). Of course, the next closest locations in Baltimore and Pittsburgh mean that Sonic's dream of being a nationwide franchise have finally come true. Meanwhile, denizens of Perkins, Cushing, Stillwater, and Shawnee are laughing their heads off at these stupid Yankees. Can an Oklahoman even throw an Aggie without hitting a Sonic?

Enough for now. My neighbors may not appreciate the good-natured fun. (Hey, I am sure you have seen the Sopranos. I am done here, lest I be gutted like a fish)

An Apology

First off, I must admit that I am quite the loser. This all began when a few of my long-lost friends thought it would be fun to blog random current events in their lives. It was interesting to see how everyone had changed, or not, since I had seen them last. But I was not content to be merely an observer, oh no. I had to jump in and give it a try myself.

So, I sincerely apologize for my utter lack of imagination, creativity, ambition, ingenuity, etc. I am going to blog basically the same load of poop that the rest of you seem to be blogging. If you checked it out thinking, "Hey, I remember Matt! He was kinda nerdy. I wonder what he has to say, for it might be interesting," then you are terribly mistaken. Whereas many Internet hounds utilize blogs to wax profundities about the local music scene, geopolitical happenings, or social analysis, I promise to do nothing but sound off on my latest (mis)adventures as a married seminary student in New Jersey. I may mention politics, theology, philosophy, but only in reference to topics such as the breed of dog my wife and I aspire to own when our lease permits it. (Campus housing still sucks, even in grad school)

That said, if you have read this far, I take the apology back. You are certainly reading this nonsense under your own free will, and you have no one to blame but yourself for the five minutes you have just wasted. Cheers.