But you can say that Ryan Howard is the perfect player all you want.

Quick thought.

I love Albert Pujols as a baseball player. Completely convinced that he is by and far the best player in the game today.

But can we please stop with the "Albert Pujols is the perfect baseball player" stories? Seems like I've seen a similar sentiment expressed in four or five different outlets since the All-Star Break.

I mean, he's pretty fucking inhuman, honestly, but I'm just afraid he's going to blow out his Tommy John or something. So please stop.

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Now playing: Brian Eno - Mother Whale Eyeless
via FoxyTunes

We are the neighbors, the nosy neighbors, we think just like you would, we think just like you should.

Here is my gauge to which all good days are measured:

When your MP3 player, on shuffle, kicks up your three favorite Eno songs back-to-back-to-back, you know it's gonna be a good day.

In this case, "The True Wheel," "China My China" and "King's Lead Hat."

Yeah. A good day, it will be.

(Who am I kidding? It's all downhill from here.)

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A forgotten postscript to the Transformers post below (but not about Transformers):

You know what I *did* love about the 80s?

Reagan. Fucking Reagan, man.

And that's *it*.

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Dragged kicking and screaming into a 25-year-old fad

I don't really remember what I liked 25 years ago. That would have put me squarely at 9 years old, and my only vivid memories of that time involve my parents divorcing.

I do know this, though. I was vehemently against the popular kids' toys/merchandising vehicles at the time. Masters of the Universe, GI Joe and Transformers never floated my boat the way they did other little boys my age. I wonder if it had anything to do with being poor and feeling left behind whenever other kids brought toys of that ilk to school. I don't know.

Anyway, I didn't have the "wet dream come true" feeling a couple years ago when the live action Transformers film was released. I can't pinpoint why, but it's probably for the same reason I never got on board with MTV's "I Love the 80s" series. I mean, really, what's the point, other than to point and laugh and say, "HA HA HA IT WAS THE 80S WE WERE SO STUPID AS A CONSUMERIST SOCIETY HAHAHAHAHA LOOK AT THE BIG HAIR AND PASTELS AND MUSTACHES HAHAHAHA" ....

(Believe me, this phenomenon isn't limited to "I Love the 80s." I also could not give less of a shit about "I Love the 70s" or "I Love the 90s." I say this as a man who loves his nostalgia, probably a bit too much. I just can't get behind anything that gives Mo Rocca continued employment. Now there's someone who inspires in me feelings of humorless revulsion. Talk about not remotely funny. If Mo Rocca were a cable channel, he'd be Not TBS, and his tagline would be "Not Funny.")

Where was I? Oh, right. Transformers.

Anyway. Wife loved Transformers, and borrowed the live-action flick from her sister. I put it in the DVD player with the indifference I normally reserve for those ASPCA commercials with Sarah MacLachlan's "Angel" playing and settled in.

And, really, it wasn't the soulsucking piece of shit I'd expected it to be. Maybe it was because I'd already damned it with low expectations and therefore could not be disappointed. (For the record, my wife gushed over it. Naturally, this past Saturday, we ended up purchasing our own copy of it, for reasons that will become apparent in the next handful of paragraphs.

("My God! A point is forthcoming!" you say. "Shut up," I say.)

You know who else loved the Transformers movie? My son. He's taken to it as if it were the newest Pixar film.

So now everything in our house is "Optimus Prime" this and "Bumblebee" that. Which is OK, I guess. As long as he's not beating prostitutes or raising my taxes or getting sucked into "Grand Theft Auto." (And I am in no way granting those things any sort of moral equivalence.)

On our shopping trip on Saturday, we also ended up purchasing the first season of the original Transformers cartoon. This is a perfect example of the maxim "having more money than sense."

I was certain that Son would be grandly disappointed in the cartoon, but this doesn't appear to be the case. I believe he's finally made the transition from Thomas the Pain Train to something else, and to an extent, it's kind of sad. He's growing up, which is as joyous and sad as you could expect.

As far as the cartoon goes, I didn't miss out on anything when I was a kid. I can't get past the high cheese content. But as long as it keeps Son off drugs, that's fine with me.

Three postscripts.

1. We're going to see the new Transformers movie this weekend. It's the least I can do, seeing as how she sat through more Will Ferrell movies than she cares to count, and by the way, wasn't Land of the Lost just a turgid piece of shit (to dust off a 15-year-old phrase coined by The Captain)?

2. When she borrowed the first Transformers movie from her sister, Wife also borrowed Marley and Me. I only point this out because I cried during the last 20 minutes of it, and so I called my mom, who has no comparison when it comes to being an animal lover, to ask if she'd seen it. She picked up the phone and, instead of "hello," said, "Did you know Billy Mays died?" I was floored, and everything in my life can now be placed neatly into "pre-" and "post-Billy Mays."

3. No truth to the rumor that if *I* were a cable channel, my tagline would be "I Hate Everything."
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This is my Belle.

Gorgeous. I could become a car guy.
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When Abe Lincoln wrote the Declaration of Independence, it probably sounded like this.

Another holiday weekend into dust.

Here at summer's apex, it surely hasn't felt like summer since the seasons changed a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday was miserable, the first time I haven't swam on the 4th in God knows how many years. In fact, the wind picked up sometime in the late afternoon and I had to put on some long sleeves. Which went well with the swim trunks.

My grandma brought a copy of the Declaration of Independence to my dad's party. She said, "I thought I could read it while I was here." Dad says, "I hope not to us!"

And then, ultimately, I got drafted into reading it. I did well, but I need to learn it a little better so I can do a dramatic reading next year. If we do it next year.

I wouldn't have gotten pulled into reading it if we weren't sitting around trying to recite the Gettysburg Address. But there was a point where everyone got stuck, and I whipped out my crackberry (or, as my uncle called it, my "huckleberry," which is almost as funny as when Doom called it a "blueberry") to find its text. Lo and behold, I found it, and read the remainder of it. I did learn that when my dad (and his mom) were in school, they had to memorize it. That requirement went by the wayside by the time I was in school, which seemed to shock them to no end. They know that our public schools have turned into a morass of self-esteem management at the expense of, you know, things like learning the Gettysburg Address, but I think there was an assumption that memorizing such things was still being done when I was in school (seeing as how I'm in my mid-30s now).

So I read the Gettysburg Address, and then was handed the Declaration to read. This was six beers into my day (in other words, *real* early on). I hate being read to, and I hate reading to people, but it seemed like it could be the start of a quaint tradition, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Five weeks till we send Son off to school, speaking of "public school morass". Five weeks till we stop spending hundreds of dollars a month on daycare, probably to be replaced by the hundreds of dollars in gas money I will spend going to the school to have chats with his principal or teacher. The worst trouble I ever got into in school was the very first week, when on the playground, I thought it would be a grand idea to throw sand into the air. So the bar is set pretty high as far as expectations about his behavior. Let's just say that I have some reservations, accented by trepidation. I fear that I've done a horrible job of parenting, and I'm afraid this is going to come to light in the coming weeks. Doesn't help that I believe that doing anything less than a perfect job equates failure in my book, and this view tempers all I do (my job, my home life, my parenting). I hope to God I am wrong.