Glories Strung Like Beads

Glories Strung Like Beads

(That's the girliest title I've ever had for a post).

It's late, and here lately, I've needed an optimism boost:

From Norm by way of Sheila:

This is mine:

I love the smell of a summer day when it rains. All the crap gets washed out of the sky. The air just smells clean. It just smells like the day called "do over."

I love a contest between a great power pitcher and a great hitter. I love seeing the pitcher serve it up, saying "here's my best. Hit it if you can." And more often than not, I love seeing the pitcher blow the guy away.

I love comfortable silences. I am not so good with people, sometimes. It is rare that I can find a person who is comfortable with quiet, and around whom I am comfortable being quiet. I tend to think the person you can be quiet with is a true friend.

I love a person who can paint a picture with words. Who can put me in the environment. Zora Neale Hurston did it. Ferrol Sams can do it. Stephen Ambrose can do it. George Carlin, back in the day, could do it. Bill Cosby can do it.

I love good standup comedy. Can I tell you the admiration I have for a person who can stand up in the front of a room and make a group of people laugh? I love making people laugh. I could not do it for an audience. I have the utmost respect.

I love Maura Tierney. Yep.

I love when the Indians win the pennant in the movie Major League. I love the call of Bob Uecker's Harry Doyle, especially the "Oh My God, the Indians Win it!"

I love James Kochalka's comics. It is only recently that I have come to this way of thinking. He does the opposite of painting a picture with words. Sometimes, with his line drawings, he can make one of those thousand word pictures.

I love hot dogs at a baseball game. I love the taste. I love the texture. I don't eat them outside of a stadium anymore. But somehow the taste is just right at the baseball game.

I love professional wrestling. Gigantor posts preceding this one might help to prove that. I will watch 2 hours of bad wrestling because I like it better than most anything else that is on television. Wrestling is, by and large, a neverending stream of revenge stories.

I love revenge stories. Maybe I have an unhealthy fascination with people getting even. My favorite revenge story is that of a former co-worker's grandparents. His grandfather cheated on his grandmother. She took him back, took him to the bedroom, had him lie down, and she shot him in the back, and paralyzed him. Nobody knew if she meant to kill him, or just hurt him. She went to prison for a while. I never knew if the story was 100% true, and I'll say that it more than likely was part bullshit. I enjoyed it all the same.

I love the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Because it teaches that symbols and legends are often more important than the truth.

I love The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read it for the first time when I was in seventh grade. I hated it for being made to read it. I've since read it four times. Once in high school. Twice for college. Once again, about six months ago. I love when Huck realizes the contradiction in the dichotomy of whites and blacks, and realizes that when taken on his own account, his friend Jim is better than most men he has ever known.

I love when Tom Sawyer shows up, in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Taken on is comedic merits, a finer piece of comic literature has never been written, especially when Tom shows up.

I love Arrested Development. Also, Futurama. Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Mr. Show. The State. Reno 911.

I love that they are putting shows on DVD fairly regularly. Because I have a bad memory for when things come on.

I love Keith Giffen's, J.M. DeMatteis' and Kevin Maguire's run on the old Justice League America/International Comic. I read it when all my friends in the sixth grade who read comics said that it blew chunks. It was funny. It wasn't about superheroes. It was about people, who were also superheroes. I love that it's made a couple of brief comeback runs in recent years. I am so sorry that DC made a sorry attempt to retcon the whole thing into a devious plan on the half of Maxwell Lord. I am even sorrier that they killed Blue Beetle.

I love a double play. I stole that answer. But a perfectly turned double play is like watching a perfectly crafted machine.

I love the Randy Savage/Ricky Steamboat match from Wrestlemania III. In terms of story, in terms of athleticism, it was two guys at the top of their games letting it all hang out. It is, in my opinion, the best match ever put to the ring, and done on the biggest stage of them all.

I love it when a girl wears her hair in a pony tail, and pulls it through the back of a baseball cap. I cannot tell you just how bananas that drives me. I nearly failed an 8 o'clock English class because of this fascination.

I love it when I can make my parents laugh.

I love the movie Animal House. Whenever I feel down, I can watch Animal House, and I feel better.

Same with Super Troopers. I love Super Troopers. I love Broken Lizard. I love than they can make a silly comedy and let it stand on the strength of both the writing and the ensemble performance, and not depend on an Adam Sandler, or a Chris Rock to get all the jokes across to you.

I love Ellen Degeneres. I like her comedy. I like the misdirection. If you look at their standup comedy styles, Ellen Degeneres and Dave Chapelle have surprisingly similar standup styles.

I love camping. I don't camp enough. I'm going in a weekend or two.

I love sunrise. Especially when camping.

I love it when somebody uses the euphemism "See a man about a horse," when they're going to the toilet. It makes me laugh every time. Every time.

I love Harlan Ellison. His work. His persona. His writing output. I am not one to walk up to people, and engage them in conversation. I was proud of myself for getting the gumption to ask Mr. Ellison a question last fall at a convention at a time he was not scheduled to be entertaining conventioneers. He was gracious enough to not scream at me, and he was kind enough to talk to me for a couple of minutes.

I love road trips.

I love the calzones from the New York Cafe, in Murfreesboro. Is it even there anymore?

I love the burgers and fried pickle chips from Toot's, in Murfreesboro.

I love the seventh inning stretch, and singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." I don't know if Disney's warped me, or my folks watched too many musicals, or if I just saw too many Harry Caray songs on WGN. The idea that there is a time where we all voluntarily stop what we are doing, stand up, stretch and sing a song is absurd enough that I get a small chuckle out of it every time we do it. It is terribly satisfying to me.

I love in the movie Run Ronnie Run, when Clay gets warned off, and called a hillbilly. He responds to this request with a disinterested "Am I?" and says "Moo."

I love used book stores. I love the smell of old books.

I love coffee from Waffle House. Nothing else from there is worth mentioning. But their coffee is excellent.

I love LaBatt's Blue. I love that we once got fairly buzzed on the sidewalk of a motel in Atlanta, venting our frustrations at vacation plans gone awry, on LaBatt's.

I love looking at a clock and finding a symmetrical time. 12:21. 10:01. I especially love looking at clock and finding a time like 11:11

I love Dr. Venkmen's indignation in Ghostbusters, when the Staypuft Marshmallow Man steps on the church.

I love the movie Contact. It's one that I don't think gets enough love, nowadays.

I love the movie Three Kings. Same deal.

I love that feeling you get when the writing comes easy. Especially after a drought, when every word seemed like drops of water being wrung from a dry cloth. I love that feeling when the words keep a coming, even after you've run out real things to say.

(I think I love having a forum to put in a few thousand words, even when there is very little really being said, and I love having no one to answer to for it, but myself.)