ESPN reports that Brett Favre is considering coming out of his all-too-brief retirement. New rule: If you hold a press conference and tearfully announce your retirement, you have to stay retired for a year for every tear you shed. We had to endure it, you have to follow up on it.
Venus Williams qualified for the finals at Wimbledon setting up a potential all-Williams sister final with Serena. Asked to comment, the Williams sister’s father, Richard, said; “I want them both to do well, but the angry voices in my head are leaning toward Venus.”
The Tour De France begins today. The Tour is a cycling race that takes place in France. “I’ll take something Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about since Lance Armstrong retired, for 100, Alex.”
This Sunday at 4:30 pm, NBC is airing the AVP Crocs Slam Boulder Open women’s beach volleyball tournament. Come on, is that really a sport? Four beach babes in tiny bikinis jumping up and down and hugging each other and slapping each other’s butts when they score? So what time did you say that was on NBC? Sunday at 4:30 huh?
It turns out a Russian businessman promised to give “two beautiful chicks” for each goal scored by Russia in the Euro semifinals against Spain. Russia lost 3-0. This just in: the Russian soccer team is gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
The Tour De France began. Despite all of the doping scandals – including last year’s winner, Floyd Landis - I feel Americans are going to watch the Tour De France if for no other reason than to support the French who have been such brave and staunch allies of the United St. . . ha ha ha, oh my, I thought I could say it without cracking up. Whew.
Major League baseball is considering whether to ban maple bats because they break too often and are dangerous. Supporters of the maple bats point to the fact that some teams like the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners, have not broken a maple bat all year. Of course that is because the Mariners and the Padres have not hit a ball all season.
Pamela Anderson said she has never slept with a woman. This just in: In my mind, Pamela Anderson is a liar, liar, pants on fire.
Lex waxes sentimental about the Fourth of July.
Besides my birthday and Christmas, this was my favorite holiday growing up. Every year in the beautiful, Midwestern Norman Rockwell-like Winnetka Village Green, a huge open grass field a block in diameter just west of town with a playground and a war memorial, Winnetka held their Winnetka Township Championship Footraces. Guess who won his age group every year but when I fell down at 9 (I think I was pushed but I can't prove it) including the Open Championship when I was in college at Santa Barbara? (Sniff, teeth-suck, chortle and sigh of smugness)
Oh yeah, buuhhhh-beeeeeeee. Who's the man? I'm the man.
In all honesty I had an advantage in this race as my birthday was August 15th so I was usually the oldest one in the age-group race. But I would get a knot in my stomach from July 1st on worrying about it.
If all went well and I won, after getting the awesome gold shield-shaped medal with the red, white and blue bunting ribbon pinned to my shirt, my parents had a barbeque in the back yard where we played croquet and flung Frisbees.
And then we ate, bless-my-Dad’s-heart, char-burned hot dogs smothered in mustard, baked beans and fresh-from-a-farm corn-on-the cob, rapidly melting Neapolitan Sealtest Ice cream followed by ice cold watermelon. We always got in trouble for spitting seeds at each other.
“Gross, Dad, Howie just spit on me.”
“Howie, don’t spit on Alex and Alex, stop being a tattletale. Nobody likes a tattletale.”
“Bob, you’re burning the hot dogs again.”
“Oh, Ann, I am not. Besides they taste better that way. Right, Alley-Cat?”
My dad called me Alley-Cat when he was proud of me instead of telling me he was proud of me which I understood and was more than fine with. He was a great guy.
That night we walked/ran the six or seven blocks down to the Winnetka Park District baseball fields to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were so beautiful they would actually distract me from the warm glow of the excitement I would get from looking down at that medal pinned to my ice-cream-and-mustard-stained red and blue striped Lacoste alligator shirt and remembering, for about the five hundredth time, that I had won the race again that year.
And, just like about every year when I won, I would think, man, if this medal feels this wonderful, what will it be like when I win the gold medal in the Olympic Decathlon? Not if, when. Then I would get too excited thinking about it and return to watching the fireworks to calm myself down.
Cue: Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown."
I was eight-years-old and running with a dime in my hand
To the drugstore to pick up a paper for my ol' man
I'd sit on his lap in that big ol' Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tossle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown, this is your hometown
posted by Alex at
12:13 PM
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