When You're Hot, You're Hot, You Really Shoot Your Shot
I was playing basketball out on the street yesterday afternoon in front of my neighbor’s house, with a bunch of high school kids, mostly. I spent most of the playtime feeling embarrassed, inadequate, and humiliated. I am still as game as I ever was, but what the hell happened to my physical coordination? I was missing easy shots. My mind could still see me making a quick feint and inside move to the basket for an uncontested lay up, but my body would not or could not follow the mental instructions. This depressed me greatly. Although I have never been a great athlete, I have always had a physical ease and grace, an ability to hit or throw or shoot a ball quite competently, without having to think about it. When I start doubting my athletic skills, that is something very fundamental. Yesterday, contemplating my athletic demise, I found myself standing at the door marked ‘Profound Despair’, ready to knock and enter. . . I shook myself from my reverie and suddenly realized I was in possession of the ball and free along the baseline, and I put up the prettiest arcing 18-foot jump shot you’ll ever see. Swoosh! All net, and even the schoolboys were impressed momentarily. My day grew suddenly brighter.
*****
Well it's 3 a.m., I'm out here riding again
Through the wicked, winding streets of my world
-- (Poe, "Hey Pretty")
I came across a really good deal on a very large and pricey sports utility vehicle the other day. I am not in the market, but a friend of mine has this thing that is sort of a Jeep and sort of a luxury SUV, vaguely based on a military transport of recent vintage. We call it his 'urban assault vehicle.' I have always been a SUV/pickup truck person myself; but I have been fascinated in recent years by the phenomenon of the well-heeled doyennes of Belle Chase and Oak Trace and Thomas Road (see West End Wandas) cruising around town running errands in these huge-ass family transport vehicles. These petite, made-up, oh-so-stylish thirty- and forty-something babes strapped into Suburbans and Yukons and Sequoias and Excursions, going to the Wellness Center and then to Bando’s for a light lunch and then afternoon tennis before picking up the kids fom school. The drive-thru at All Saints in the afternoon looks like a combination of the Detroit SUV Show and a military parade. A military parade because, even better than tiny South Beach Diet-ized women piloting these huge land barges down Delaware Street and Phelan Boulevard, are the ones commanding Land Rovers and Hummers through the wilds of Montclaire and Bayou Bend. Rich women steering $50,000.00 off-road vehicles which will never leave the pavement of the West End. . . Anyway, this friend of mine, motivated by a recent re-escalation of gas prices and a desire in these economic hard times to not appear rich and trendy, is selling his Hummer. Since it is hard to sell or even give away most large SUV-type vehicles nowadays, he has it priced quite reasonably. I could probably afford it; I have always secretly desired a Hummer, even though today's version is nothing more than a fancy SUV, and a far cry from the first domestic models available, which were basically right off the Desert Storm battlefield, albeit with an interior makeover and a nice paint job. It is tempting, but I think I am going to pass. It says something about where I live that driving a perfectly good extended cab F-150, which is at the high end of what I can reasonably afford, makes me feel a bit like some kind of proletarian rebel in my neighborhood. It is just one little exercise in fiscal restraint and not following the crowd by me, in a world going economically insane and obsessed with pursuing the latest trends; a world that I sometimes feel is trying to plow me under. You strike your tiny blows for liberty and freedom where you can.
*****
Well it's 3 a.m., I'm out here riding again
Through the wicked, winding streets of my world
-- (Poe, "Hey Pretty")
I came across a really good deal on a very large and pricey sports utility vehicle the other day. I am not in the market, but a friend of mine has this thing that is sort of a Jeep and sort of a luxury SUV, vaguely based on a military transport of recent vintage. We call it his 'urban assault vehicle.' I have always been a SUV/pickup truck person myself; but I have been fascinated in recent years by the phenomenon of the well-heeled doyennes of Belle Chase and Oak Trace and Thomas Road (see West End Wandas) cruising around town running errands in these huge-ass family transport vehicles. These petite, made-up, oh-so-stylish thirty- and forty-something babes strapped into Suburbans and Yukons and Sequoias and Excursions, going to the Wellness Center and then to Bando’s for a light lunch and then afternoon tennis before picking up the kids fom school. The drive-thru at All Saints in the afternoon looks like a combination of the Detroit SUV Show and a military parade. A military parade because, even better than tiny South Beach Diet-ized women piloting these huge land barges down Delaware Street and Phelan Boulevard, are the ones commanding Land Rovers and Hummers through the wilds of Montclaire and Bayou Bend. Rich women steering $50,000.00 off-road vehicles which will never leave the pavement of the West End. . . Anyway, this friend of mine, motivated by a recent re-escalation of gas prices and a desire in these economic hard times to not appear rich and trendy, is selling his Hummer. Since it is hard to sell or even give away most large SUV-type vehicles nowadays, he has it priced quite reasonably. I could probably afford it; I have always secretly desired a Hummer, even though today's version is nothing more than a fancy SUV, and a far cry from the first domestic models available, which were basically right off the Desert Storm battlefield, albeit with an interior makeover and a nice paint job. It is tempting, but I think I am going to pass. It says something about where I live that driving a perfectly good extended cab F-150, which is at the high end of what I can reasonably afford, makes me feel a bit like some kind of proletarian rebel in my neighborhood. It is just one little exercise in fiscal restraint and not following the crowd by me, in a world going economically insane and obsessed with pursuing the latest trends; a world that I sometimes feel is trying to plow me under. You strike your tiny blows for liberty and freedom where you can.
*****
1 comment:
I have a friend who drives a Hummer and I suspect she wonders why I've never commented on it. "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." That's my motto.
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