June 14-17, 2013
Chicago White Sox (28-35) vs. Houston Astros (23-44)
Minute Maid Park
501 Crawford
Houston, TX 77002
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SCHEDULE
• Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
• Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT
• Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
• Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
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DEAD
If somebody is haunting your mind
Look in my eyes, let me hide you
From yourself and all your old friends
Every good thing comes to an end
I’m taking a rain check for this here Series Preview. I hope it is okay with you.
I wanted to quit this fucking Series Preview gig altogether, here at Orangewhoopass. I grew to fucking hate the process; and – even more – to hate myself for not being able to steadily produce within it. And I just wanted to fucking quit, altogether; but I could not bring myself to do it. I still want to write stuff here, and enjoy it, and have other people enjoy it.
But I just cannot do it right now. Not this time, anyway. I hope it is okay.
I was out fishing last weekend; out in the Gulf of Mexico with a friend of mine, on his boat. Fishing for black drum. We caught a few of them, too.
At one point, not much was happening, and I was just sitting there in a chair on his boat, just kind of contemplating the sea water as it floated by. Meditating. Thinking about how my life had drifted by, mostly; just like this sea water was drifting by. Pretty and blueish green (we were 18 or so miles out from Bolivar, near some unmanned gas rigs) it was, but even so, mostly unnoticed. Mostly not worth noticing.
It was the violence of life that usually roused me from my somnolence along the way, at least temporarily.
Back in pre-school, they always told us about the happy times, and the gaiety of life … but, as I recall, no one ever spent too much time on the violent aspects. How you could be going happily along, then suddenly – like a great shark rising unexpectedly out of the water to take away your catch, just as you were about to boat it – the violence would rise up and snatch your best friend away when he was 9 (under the guise of some kind of cancer); or kill you cousin, or brother; or make your dad a drunk and ruin your home life forever. It never fucking failed.
It never fucking failed.
I would be roused to the utter ugliness of existence, but I never had the energy to buy into it for too long. Sooner or later I would succumb to the enticement of happiness and gaiety, once again, and believe that my life was truly charmed, and idyllic.
Until the shark jumped up again, that is; exploding through the water’s surface to twist and writhe ever so briefly in the silver sun, before snatching away my happiness again, and pulling it down, down, down … down into the darkness of the water’s depths.
That is what makes me not able to do this right now. I hope it is okay.
I’ll be happy again, though. And, next time, I promise … I’ll do better.
I hope it is okay.
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PITCHING MATCHUPS
Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Chris Sale, LHP (5-4, 2.68)
HOUSTON – Eric Bedard, LHP (1-3, 5.34)
Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – John Danks, LHP (1-2, 4.13)
HOUSTON – Lucas Harrell, RHP (4-7, 4.52)
Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Hector Santiago, LHP (2-4, 3.12)
HOUSTON – Dallas Keuchel, LHP (3-3, 4.37)
Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Jose Quintana, LHP (3-2, 3.86)
HOUSTON – Bud Norris, LHP (5-6, 3.87)
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DEAD
Someone was ’round here asking questions about someone who looks like you
I said I don’t know where you are
He said that he was going to be back
So I told him where you are
I was dead, just this one time. In college.
My roommate Rusty and I locked (well, barricaded) ourselves into our dorm room for a week once, my sophomore year, and did purple micro-dots, for a week. Never once left our tiny dorm room. Never bathed, or ate, once. For a week.
We were dead. Dead.
We saw hideous things in that time. I know I did, anyway. At any rate, whatever we were, neither one of us was real keen to go outside then. We were too fucking paranoid.
We finally came out of it. Me, first. I walked down the hallway of the dorm to the communal shower, with a towel. And I took a fucking shower. I bathed myself; and as I washed myself in the water, I realized how crazy it was to stay holed up in a tiny room for a week, doing powerful psychedelic drugs, and not eating or bathing or even sleeping very much. When I was done with my shower, I walked back down the hall to our room, and I convinced Rusty it was crazy, what we’d been doing; and eventually, he emerged, too.
In a way, I think we bonded, Rusty and I did … relying solely on each other in that scary fucking room, for a week.
Didn’t do me a lot of good, though; to bond with Rusty. He didn’t last too long, after that. He wasn’t all that reliable, anyway. And he was dead before I knew it, about the time I was settling down to get married the first time, and raise kids.
Gone.
His bones have been moldering in the ground for close to thirty years now. Nothing left of him. Nothing.
Just what I remember. That is all that holds him to this earth at all, anymore.
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PROMOTIONS
Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
Big and Bright Friday Nights – Fireworks and T-Shirts! Fuck, yeah! What more could you want? Fucking fireworks and fucking T-shirts! Fuck, yeah!
Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT
Orbit Bobblebelly – Fuck, yeah! Awesome! An Orbit bobblebelly! Fucking hell yes!
Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
Picnic in the Park – No fucking little kids running the bases! Fuck, yeah! No fucking bratty-ass little kids! Yeah! Fuck, yeah!
Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
Coca-Cola Value Days – Nothing! Fuck, yeah! Fucking nothing! Oh, yeah! Fuck, yes!
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DEAD
I met an old mistake walking down the street today
I met an old mistake walking down the street today
I didn’t want to be mean about it
But I, I didn’t have one good thing to say
I have gone through powerful changes through the years, all the while hanging onto my memories of Diane and I.
She was the one who got away. She was the one I never got over, in all of this time. I cannot even explain why.
I loved her and I loved her and I loved her. And then, just like that, she was gone from me, never to return. And I still loved her. Still.
From those crazy days in college, all the way on. I never forgot her, never forgot what it felt like when I saw her walking my way, with just that hint of a smile curling up on the edge of her lip, on the left side of her face.
She was glad to see me, goddammit. No doubt about it.
Goddamn, it made me happy to see that hint of a smile.
I have gone on, and Diane has gone on. I have married, and raised children, and divorced. And remarried.
And Diane has done all the same. And now we are both happy, in our separate lives, forever apart. And we are destined to live on, and to die that way. Forever apart.
I cannot even remember what it was that made me ever think it would ever be otherwise. Why did I ever think we could be happy together, and last, and last? Maybe it was her friend, Cathleen. Upon seeing a Polaroid of Diane sitting and smiling in my lap, taken at a local club we hung out at, at the time, Cathleen had told me, “You two look like you belong together.”
I will never, ever forget what Cathleen said to me that day, or how she said it. It was like a benediction from God. I believed it immediately, with all of my heart.
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Astros lose the series, 0-4.
Strolling the hills overlooking the shore
I realize I’ve been here before
The shadow in the mist could have been anyone
I saw you, I saw you
Coming back to meSmall things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you
Coming back to me
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DEAD
That is all I have. It sucks, and I know that it sucks.
I have asked myself and asked myself. What happened to me? How did I fall so far? Why is it I cannot even seem to string three or four coherent sentences together anymore, without it all sounding hackneyed and trite?
I am so tired, and I am so destroyed. I wish I was not, but I am.
Fuck, I am so sorry. It is not okay.
It is not okay.
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