All posts by Matthew Callan

Amazin Avenue, Literary Endeavors

The First Ever Scratchbomb Contest! Win This Book!

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Amazin Avenue CoverSo I just got myself a few copies of the Amazin’ Avenue Annual. I am blown away, and I think you will be too. I’m still astounded that I have writing in the same book as Joe Posnanski. Like, I thought somehow such an event would be outlawed between when I turned in my piece and when the book rolled off the press. Luckily, our lawmakers have bigger fish to fry and I’ve slipped through the cracks.

To celebrate this event, I am holding the first ever contest in the history of this site. I am giving away a copy of the Annual to one lucky reader, and all you have to do to get it is be the first person to correctly answer this question:

Who was the first batter I saw step up to the plate in the first major league game I saw in person?

I won’t say exactly when this game was, because, duh. But if you read this site, you can probably guess my relative age and take a stab at it. In fact, there are clues as to the answer to this question not-so-carefully hidden in posts I’ve written over the years. The one hint I will give you is that the game was at Shea. So that means the first batter I ever saw hit in person was not a Met, right? Not necessarily. I’m tricky like that!

You can post answers in the comments section, or email them to me here. In the unlikely event that two or more respondents come up with the correct answer at exactly the same time, we’ll figure out some way to determine a winner. I’m thinking either a knife fight or one-potato two-potato.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Baseball

The Internet Redeems Itself Again

Sometimes I think we should blow up the internet and just become hermits. In this case, sometimes = when I am baselessly criticized on it.

I don’t mean when someone merely disagrees with me, because I enjoy debating people. But debate does not happen as often as it probably should. This is mostly because the vast majority of what I write falls into black hole, never to be read again. But it’s also in part because the internet does something to people’s brains, where it turns off the filter in their mind and causes them to spew the first dumb reaction that crosses a synapse.

Just within the past week, here’s what I’ve had flung my way:

  • A snotty comment on this site about the Inappropriate Walk Up Music series, which didn’t let the fact that s/he entirely missed the point keep them from leaving completely unconstructive criticism
  • A response tweet from someone bothered by the amount of “pimping” I’m doing for The Amazin Avenue Annual, because I guess I’m the only person who uses Twitter to promote his work
  • Two “dislikes” on a YouTube video I posted from last year’s WFMU Pledge Marathon

That last one really bothered me, because said video features a live Nerd-Off between Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman. Seriously, internet? This video is the kind of thing the internet was created for (well, that and to speed up military communication). If you can’t get down with that, you just hate life.

This is typical of the Internet Bully, who lives to shit all over everything, contribute nothing positive or constructive, and never have to receive reciprocal treatment because they’ve never made anything in their lives.

It’s enough to make you give up on silicon, I tells ya. But just when thought I’d lost faith in the internet altogether, it redeems itself. What could pull me back from the brink of asceticism?

This site, dedicated to the collection of ice cream sundae baseball helmets. At least one example from every team in the majors, plus quite a few minor league squads, with examples going back as far as the early 1970s. Amidst a sea of fetid, rotting cynicism and ignorance, an island of hope and purity.

I am firmly of the belief that ice cream of any make, flavor, or consistency is enhanced by being placed in a miniature plastic baseball helmet. My mom had a collection of such helmets–mostly Mets but some Red Sox from a trip to Boston–and I did not eat ice cream out of any other receptacle until I was in college. Seriously.

We have one in my house now, from a trip to CitiField on a hot summer day last year, when The Baby insisted on getting some Carvel (which promptly turned into sprinkle soup). I have seriously curtailed my ice cream intake lately, because I like seeing my own feet, but when I do eat it, I must do so out of this helmet. To keep the tradition alive, if The Baby gets ice cream, she also gets The Helmet.

Bless you, sir. The internet was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Inappropriate Walk Up Music 2011

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: “Goodbye Cruel World”

For an intro to this series, click here. For the original series way back in 2009, click here.

One of my collegiate roommates had had an extensive music collection. Most of it fell under the heading of punk, with a particular fondness for Johnny Thunders live bootlegs where poor Johnny was barely coherent. (I remember one that started out with him announcing, in his intensely Elmhurstian accent, “This song goes out ta Yassah Arafat. I heah he’s movin ta Queens.”) But he also had a weakness for doo wop of the late 1950s/early 1960s, the more New York-y the better (think Dion).

In keeping with this latter category, he had a few Billboard compilations from that era. Once, he burst into my room and demanded I listen to a song from the 1961 collection because it was so singularly bizarre: “Goodbye Cruel World” by James Darren.

Mr. Darren was best known as an actor, most notably as Moondoggie in the Gidget movies. He also had a recurring gig on T.J. Hooker. If you’re a nerd of more recent vintage, you may recall him as the holographic crooner Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But he enjoyed a singing career in the early 1960s, and “Goodbye Cruel World” was his biggest hit, charting at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 1961.

The pre-Beatles pop music landscape was really weird. If you weren’t aware of that fact before, you will be now. “Goodbye Cruel World” is a song in which the protagonist uses the titular phrase to signify that he’s “off to join the circus” to be “a broken-hearted clown.”

Let’s review: A song named after a saying that usually means someone is going to kill themselves, weirdly censored to mean the singer is merely becoming a carny, was the third biggest hit in 1961.

The circus milieu of this composition was not subtle, either. The song has blaring carnival horns, booming drums, and calliopes. It’s like “What’s New Pussycat,” only a thousand times less swinging. And I know that if I ever saw a batter come up to the plate to it, I would lose my mind.