The Thrill of Victory
“Oooooowwwwwwwwwwwwhhoooooooooooooooaaaaahhhhhhh goddammit that feels good” intoned the drunk at the urinal.
Reflexively everyone on line in the Whitehall terminal men’s room backed up a few steps waiting for the inebriated pisser to fall backward and become a fountain. Fortunately he did not and instead continued “Yankees! New York! Champs!” while swaying unsteadily.
“What about the Mets?” came a voice from inside one of the stalls.
“Mets? Fuck ‘em. They can’t say anything. Too bad.” He was done now and attempting to zip his fly and in doing so looked like a five year old asked to solve a Rubik’s cube. He staggered toward the sink and the crowd noticed he was wearing the uniform of a postal worker. “No. Mets. Can. Say. Can’t.” said our mail carrying pall as he waved his hands in front of the motion detector to try to get water out of the faucet, failed and reeled back out into the terminal.
I saw Hammered Postal Worker weave over to a couple of buddies and start talking to them but couldn’t hear what was said. A few minutes later we were boarding and I heard someone behind me say “Holy shit, things are bad, did you see that mailman go digging through the garbage can?” I wondered what he was after, or if he had simply bent over the can to vomit and had fallen in. He was O.K. though because as the ferry got underway I saw him at the back of the boat with his buddies saying “Yankees! Wooo! Yankees! Fuck the Mets! I’m not gonna say it again…” You know what it means when a drunk says “I’m not gonna say it again”, don’t you friends? Of course he said it again. And again. It brings to mind a quote I read about the late, great Warren Zevon being a difficult man to work with in the studio: “Warren was pretty much the same asshole drunk or sober, the only difference was when he was sober he repeated himself less.”
So last week was a good week for New York to unleash its collective id, to engage in the things that are part of what make us all human. The tribal behavior and the competition for the sake of competition that probably stems from the fact that most of us walking the Earth today no longer have to fight to survive every day of our lives but we still have the primitive instinct, the fight-or-flight or whatever which leads us to do stuff like spend huge chunks of disposable income on following and celebrating our favorite sports entities or artists or celebrities or even doing things like shutting down large parts of the infrastructure of major cities so thousands of people can run and run and run to the point of exhaustion or losing control of their bowels or even death.
Now I’m not being anti-sports or anti-arts or anti-anything here. I’m just pointing out the looniness of it all. When I point out that something is completely irrational I’m not expressing opposition to it. Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that it seems to me that human beings are collectively insane. There is nothing to be done about it really. As a human being I simply have to go along with it, go with the flow just like the rest of you. The best one can do is try to keep some sense of perspective about the whole thing and not kill anyone or get killed in the process. There really isn’t much that is both rational and makes life worth living when I think about it. I mean here I am banging my fingertips against a machine to make words appear on a screen and I call it fun, or at least a hobby. Who am I to judge? It does make me wonder though. Did you ever get the feeling that you’re the only one missing the point? You know, that creeping sense that everyone else has a goal, a meaning, a purpose in life and you’re the only one wandering around the planet, drifting to and from a job you have no emotional connection with and just sort of waiting for that bus that’s never going to show up, that bus driven by Godot? Other people spend time thinking about it or solving the mysteries of the universe or competing in these contrived, man-made circumstances that we call “games” and there you are just sitting in a corner wondering what it all means?
Well have I got a hero for you. Meet Joel Waul. Joel built the world’s largest rubber band ball. No I’m not kidding. It’s certified by Ripley’s, and who better to certify such a thing? The ball was originally named “Nugget” after the greatest culinary invention in American history. A truly appropriate name when you consider the culture of our great land in the early years of the 21st century. The name has been changed for marketing purposes; the ball is now known as Megaton harkening back to another of mankind’s greatest gifts to itself.
I know what you’re thinking though: Joel achieved is goal. He realized his dream. What purpose does he have now? Well, apparently he wants to go to stunt man school and set a record for the longest time spent as a human fireball at the International Stunt School in Seattle, Washington. Joel is an admirable fellow, don’t you think? We should all have such lofty goals. You, me, Hammered Postal Worker, even the Line Lady (who recently has adopted the stratagem of sitting in a car with her husband in the deli parking lot adjacent to the bus stop until the bus arrives – a canny move to be sure). So, dear friends, keep your dreams alive and keep working toward those goals. No matter how dopey they are, they’re all we’ve got in this life.
Reflexively everyone on line in the Whitehall terminal men’s room backed up a few steps waiting for the inebriated pisser to fall backward and become a fountain. Fortunately he did not and instead continued “Yankees! New York! Champs!” while swaying unsteadily.
“What about the Mets?” came a voice from inside one of the stalls.
“Mets? Fuck ‘em. They can’t say anything. Too bad.” He was done now and attempting to zip his fly and in doing so looked like a five year old asked to solve a Rubik’s cube. He staggered toward the sink and the crowd noticed he was wearing the uniform of a postal worker. “No. Mets. Can. Say. Can’t.” said our mail carrying pall as he waved his hands in front of the motion detector to try to get water out of the faucet, failed and reeled back out into the terminal.
I saw Hammered Postal Worker weave over to a couple of buddies and start talking to them but couldn’t hear what was said. A few minutes later we were boarding and I heard someone behind me say “Holy shit, things are bad, did you see that mailman go digging through the garbage can?” I wondered what he was after, or if he had simply bent over the can to vomit and had fallen in. He was O.K. though because as the ferry got underway I saw him at the back of the boat with his buddies saying “Yankees! Wooo! Yankees! Fuck the Mets! I’m not gonna say it again…” You know what it means when a drunk says “I’m not gonna say it again”, don’t you friends? Of course he said it again. And again. It brings to mind a quote I read about the late, great Warren Zevon being a difficult man to work with in the studio: “Warren was pretty much the same asshole drunk or sober, the only difference was when he was sober he repeated himself less.”
So last week was a good week for New York to unleash its collective id, to engage in the things that are part of what make us all human. The tribal behavior and the competition for the sake of competition that probably stems from the fact that most of us walking the Earth today no longer have to fight to survive every day of our lives but we still have the primitive instinct, the fight-or-flight or whatever which leads us to do stuff like spend huge chunks of disposable income on following and celebrating our favorite sports entities or artists or celebrities or even doing things like shutting down large parts of the infrastructure of major cities so thousands of people can run and run and run to the point of exhaustion or losing control of their bowels or even death.
Now I’m not being anti-sports or anti-arts or anti-anything here. I’m just pointing out the looniness of it all. When I point out that something is completely irrational I’m not expressing opposition to it. Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that it seems to me that human beings are collectively insane. There is nothing to be done about it really. As a human being I simply have to go along with it, go with the flow just like the rest of you. The best one can do is try to keep some sense of perspective about the whole thing and not kill anyone or get killed in the process. There really isn’t much that is both rational and makes life worth living when I think about it. I mean here I am banging my fingertips against a machine to make words appear on a screen and I call it fun, or at least a hobby. Who am I to judge? It does make me wonder though. Did you ever get the feeling that you’re the only one missing the point? You know, that creeping sense that everyone else has a goal, a meaning, a purpose in life and you’re the only one wandering around the planet, drifting to and from a job you have no emotional connection with and just sort of waiting for that bus that’s never going to show up, that bus driven by Godot? Other people spend time thinking about it or solving the mysteries of the universe or competing in these contrived, man-made circumstances that we call “games” and there you are just sitting in a corner wondering what it all means?
Well have I got a hero for you. Meet Joel Waul. Joel built the world’s largest rubber band ball. No I’m not kidding. It’s certified by Ripley’s, and who better to certify such a thing? The ball was originally named “Nugget” after the greatest culinary invention in American history. A truly appropriate name when you consider the culture of our great land in the early years of the 21st century. The name has been changed for marketing purposes; the ball is now known as Megaton harkening back to another of mankind’s greatest gifts to itself.
I know what you’re thinking though: Joel achieved is goal. He realized his dream. What purpose does he have now? Well, apparently he wants to go to stunt man school and set a record for the longest time spent as a human fireball at the International Stunt School in Seattle, Washington. Joel is an admirable fellow, don’t you think? We should all have such lofty goals. You, me, Hammered Postal Worker, even the Line Lady (who recently has adopted the stratagem of sitting in a car with her husband in the deli parking lot adjacent to the bus stop until the bus arrives – a canny move to be sure). So, dear friends, keep your dreams alive and keep working toward those goals. No matter how dopey they are, they’re all we’ve got in this life.
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