Fancy Meeting You Here

“Things change, people change, hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate.”

From the movie Top Secret.

I know things change. I also know that the older I get, the less I like it, but I’m trying. It’s easy to accept changes when those changes make sense, for instance requiring first and third base coaches in baseball to wear helmets. It didn’t have an effect on the game or my enjoyment of it, and it protected those men from possible serious injury should a frozen rope catch them unawares.

But when those changes don’t make sense, accepting and participating in them proves a challenge. Right now there is a fundamental change taking place in the very root of the social fabric of our great state. California, perhaps more than any other state, is bound and forever associated with the automobile. We have freeways built for no other reason than to get to other freeways, which then lead to more freeways. We have drive through lanes for everything from burgers to coffee. Lately, I’ve been using the drive through at the Sonic around the corner to get a bag of ice. (Yes drive-in movies are gone, but that is really just a prelude to the inevitable disappearance of movie theaters of all kinds). Businesses that provide an affordable service or product can still go under for no other reason than they didn’t have adequate parking, and nothing is considered more evil to the God given right to go where I want, when I want, in my car than the parking meter. The car is king in the state where the oldest road is called El Camino Real (the King’s Highway).

The change I’m talking about is called Fancy Parking. Unlike Fancy Catsup, you can actually see a difference between Fancy Parking and regular parking. Fancy Parking is simply parking backwards, or nose out if you will. What makes it “fancy” is beyond my understanding even though there are dozens of websites devoted to it. The idea behind putting your car, truck, or whatever in butt first is that it makes it easier to pull out when it’s time to leave. Apparently, there has been this consortium of parkers who have had so much trouble using their mirrors and the act of looking over their shoulder to get out of a parking spot, that Fancy Parking became necessary. Now they can get into their car after a visit to the doctor, the movies (while they’re still around), or the mall and just drive away. No more pinning their hopes on that unreliable mirror technology and no more craning and twisting their necks to determine whether or not a flaming gasoline truck is careening through the parking lot.

But aren’t we ignoring the Lincoln Navigator in the room? If these folks are having trouble backing their car from the small parking spot, into the relatively large parking lot, are they not going to have more trouble when doing the opposite? If you can’t use mirrors or turning your head to maneuver from a small space to a large one, how adept are you going to be using those same tools to move from a large space into a small one? To put it another way, being a foot or two off when you slide your car out into the lane is nearly meaningless, but do the opposite and now someone has your blue car’s paint on his white car’s door and vice versa.

I fear I’m tilting at windmills here in my effort to remove, “…so foul a brood from off the face of the earth” as Mr. Cervantes said so eloquently in Don Quixote. Visit any large parking lot today and think about what it looked like 5 years ago and you get a good idea about how many have partaken of the Kool-Aid. At work, we are required to park company vehicles in the Fancy manner. We are also required to put at orange cone at the front and rear bumper. The cones makes sense, they are to force the driver to walk around his van or truck before driving off, so as to make sure there are not pets, children or priceless Fabergé eggs that might get crushed upon his departure. But parking backwards? It has no benefits that I can see as I suggested above.

I will fight the change. I will spit out the foul Black Cherry punch, but I can foresee a day when a cop will leave a ticket under my windshield wiper for parking incorrectly. At least he’ll have to walk a little further to do it since my windshield will be at the deep end of the parking spot.

P.S. Maybe someday I’ll write a piece on another change that took place years ago. As it turns out, you’re not supposed to put two spaces between sentences anymore. Who knew?

The Book of Saint Francis and the Gigantes

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‘Why god? Why me?’ and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off. -Stephen King

One day, God is going on and on about how great this one guy Job is. Job respects me, Job is honest, Job this and Job that. Satan gets pretty tired of hearing this so he suggests to God that this guy named Job only serves God because God protects him. Satan suggests a little bet, I think it was only a twenty or something because both God and Satan are pretty well off and don’t really need the money, and you could only get twenties out of ATMs back then too, just like today. The bet is that if God removes his protection from Job, Satan will make Job as miserable as a cowboy at a rap concert. If Job turns from God then Satan gets the twenty, but if Job remains faithful then God gets a little more walking around money.

So they shake on it and God removes that protection, and says to Satan something like “knock yourself out.”

You see Job is doing pretty well. He has a lot of money, a bunch of kids (7 boys and 3 girls who all pick their towels up off the bathroom floor), and he’s a fairly healthy guy. He also has bunches of oxen, donkeys, camels, sheep, and servants.

One day a servant comes and tells Job that some people from another country attacked and took all his oxen and donkeys and killed all his servants except one, the messenger.

Then another servant shows up, un-killed somehow, and tells him that fire came down from heaven and burned up all his sheep and servants, except for the messenger again.

As Job is taking this in, yet another (living) servant shows up and tells him that some folks from a different country than oxen-stealers showed up and took all his camels and killed, you guessed it, all his servants. Except…well you know.

By this time you’d think Job would start suspecting his servants of some kind of conspiracy but wouldn’t you know it a (what is it?) fourth servant shows up and tells him all his sons and daughters were in a house when a “Great wind” comes along and blows the house down, it must have been made of either sticks or straw. All the kids are killed along with all the servants. Well, one servant survives again to deliver the message.

Satan if feeling pretty good by this time but wouldn’t you know it, Job does not reject God. Instead Job says something like easy-come-easy-go and just goes on serving God. So Satan, naturally, changes the bet to add physically hurting Job. God says okay and the next morning Job wakes up with painful spots on his body. Job explains to his wife that God must have put those spots there and they had nothing to do with a recent visit he made to Eliphaz and the Temanites Gentleman’s Club. By some miracle his wife buys it so Job goes on serving God.

This goes on for awhile so let me wrap it up by saying Job never turned from God, all his stuff was returned and then some, God won the bet but used the twenty to buy a round of Guinness for himself and Satan, and the two of them returned to sending tornados to trailer parks.

No mention if made in the Bible of how faithful the families of Job’s servants remained.

One day God is going on and on about how great the San Francisco Giants are. The Giants won the World Series, the Giants have great pitching, the Giants have a top-notch closer, the Giants have a Rookie of the Year catcher, the Giants this and the Giants that. Satan, being a Dodgers fan, gets pretty tired of hearing this so he suggests to God that the Giants are only doing so well because God protects them from the disabled list. Satan suggests a little bet, I think it was garlic fries or something because neither God nor Satan really need the money because God has a huge 401k and Satan got a sweet golden parachute when he was “let go” from heaven. The bet is that if God allows Giants to go to the DL, then the Giants will lose faith and their pitchers will throw only balls out of the strike zone or grapefruit, their bats will be coated in horsehide repellant, and their closer’s beard will fall out and he will quit baseball and take over the hosting duties on the George Lopez show.

If the Giants keep winning God gets the fries but if they loose faith and lose games steadily then Satan has a tasty, albeit slightly greasy snack. They shake, God removes the protection from the DL, and the two of them grab a seat in the Spanish language broadcast booth to settle in and watch.

One day a trainer informs the Giants manager that his closer will not be available to start the season and he will have to depend on a closer by committee alternative. Unlike Job’s servants, the trainers survive.

Another trainer comes and tells Bruce Bochy that his Panda has a broken hand and will be on the DL for weeks, maybe months. The trainer, in fact all the trainers continue to live through this disaster.

Then a trainer, come to think of it probably the same one, tells the Giants manager that a warrior from the desert attacked his prize winning catcher and removed him to the DL for the foreseeable future. Again the messenger trainer and all the other trainers were allowed to live.

Just when Bochy and the Giants think things can’t get worse, they do. Their best hitter and the league’s best defensive second baseman dives for a ball and separates his shoulder. Freddie Sanchez heads to the DL and the Giants look posed to spin into a downfall from which they cannot return. No trainers will need to be injured during the making of this motion picture, should one be made.

Sprinkle in trips to the DL for names like Ross, Torres, Belt, and Ford and you might think it would send the Giants into a downward spiral from which even the faith of Job could not extract them. But so far it hasn’t. The Giants win, not buy a bunch, but they win. Is it faith in their starting pitching? Is it reliance of their bull pen? (Sergio Romo with his biblical mutton chops struck out the side with a stingy 11 pitches in the “Sanchez” game.) Is it that they are just too knuckleheaded to know when their beat? Only the rest of the season will tell.

The Giants have had so much taken from them but if they don’t lose faith, the reward will be a repeat of the World Series win. Yesterday Fred Lewis got a World Series ring. He was on the DL on April 15^th last season and didn’t have a single at bat for the 2010 Giants, but they said he contributed. I see World Series rings being passed out next year to several men who may have few, if any at bats left in 2011.

Go Giants.