Information Blues.

It was an amazing, sunny day to be sick. It was the sort of day you might like to spend with your girlfriend the nurse, but she was busy waiting for a baby.

I slept as long as I could; I’ve resolved to expend as little effort as possible until I’m well. No more walking pneumonia, no more fighting flu: here I am, come and take me. I’ll gargle with saltwater and get hopped up on Emergen-C until you’re gone.

Following my self-perscription felt like a problem: what I’d normally do on a sunny Saturday is get lost somewhere far away that requires strenuous effort. Since this was not allowed, I followed a still noble backup plan: The Señor Piña Colada.

So this is what my Dad might do on such a day: take a drive, probably some place near the ocean, eat a burrito, stare at the water, look at a few birds. It’s even better if you have an exotic errand, like examining the stock of 00’s at Thin Man Music.

I took the long way round, sticking to scenic back roads. I was like those dudes on their new Harleys, just driving, with the windows down, savoring the navigatory puzzle. KALX was holding its fundraiser, so they were playing extra great music–during the fundraiser they try to sound like everyone’s favorite jukebox.

I drove down the waterfront, over the bridge to sunny Alameda. I spent half an hour in a colossal junk shop where I was sorely tempted by an AM radio mounted in a Coors can; I have this running fantasy of listening to an A’s game one day while floating in a canoe on Lake Merritt. We’ll drink, float and eat while hopefully the good guys win.

My burrito from Ramiro and Sons weighed many pounds. I sat on a bench at Crab Cove near the breakwater watching a line of fifty cormorants dry their wings. As I was getting smoked out on roasted serranos some chick was breaking up with her boyfriend; she was picking her way through the rocks on her cell phone as her prior man lobbied his case, “C’mon baby! Why you gotta be like this?”

He gave up and went to sit in his car. She sat on a rock nearby and said, “Scyooze me, you know what city this is?” Why it’s Alameda I said, and she looked at me strange like I spoke a different language. The water was still and clear with sparkling schools of bait.

Yes it was a beautiful weekend curiously devoid of thigh endorphins but I went on a menial walk and witnessed a Scrub Jay battle. I walked a little in the crunchy sand by the waterline and found I was smiling, and I started singing the song by The Specials:

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as you wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think

Garcias, Señor Piña Colada.

Got out of work this afternoon, plugged in to some rural Americana ragtime folk psychedelic blues. It was John Fahey, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death.

It’s hard to imagine a nicer balm for the troubled, modern soul than a middle 60’s hippie virtuoso playing fingerstyle in his living room. The songs have so much balance it’s amazing: the thumb drones steadily on the big strings, driving forward while the ring and index float melodies over the top like clouds. It’s a mesermizing interplay between fingernails, wood and steel.

I walked out the door down MLK towards Berkeley BART. I was on an American odyssey. Oh, it was a minor odyssey yes, maybe not an odyssey at all, but I was plugged into walking music, wearing simulated woodgrain shades against the harvest sun. Strings of commuters of all types resonated with the patterned fingerpicking; the human machine was advancing. Commuters seemed to move in time lapse photography, long lines steady like a pair of eyes across sheet music.

Good instrumental music is a soundtrack, makes everyday life a movie. There’s space inside to stretch out, muse more. And walking with it, a secret in your earbuds, narrative floats on top, making lyrical everything you see. John Fahey, the clusters of notes like jewels; this is golden music actually made somewhere near Berkeley. It’s music for the hills and oaks, imported eucalyptus stands, and the view out the bay past the Golden Gate.

I was walking home, off BART now and nearly there but not quite ready to go back inside. I had to pee but I didn’t care (I always have to pee.) The Lake sure looked good, so I walked out Adam’s Point to my favorite bench where I reclined and relaxed; I dipped my worried mind in the water and floated off into the sunset, lingered my thoughts in the negative space between buildings in the skyline of downtown Oakland.

A handsome brown pelican was fishing, ranging across the loch. Sometimes I think pelicans look like old men with their buzzcuts and ice blue eyes. Other times they seem like teenagers, gawky adolescent basketball players not fully in control of their limbs. This fisherman seemed more like a young fresh fellow, already dressed in his mating plumage, ready to go to the prom in a few months time.

He was ranging back and forth, flapping like a pterodactyl. When he spotted a fish, or the illusion of fish, he went in for the dive, spiraling down into the water with a half barrel roll; who knows if he got something. But the sun was going down, which means zero visibility for hungry young males, so dive while you still can.

Ah, what an excruciating baseball game. The A’s reached out gently and tapped into four double plays. They advanced 13 men to second base or beyond yet managed to score only one run!

The home plate umpire had an idiotic strike zone and was getting fooled like a little leaguer by Zito’s curveball; the moment it came out of his hand he gave up, mind buckled, regardless of where it crossed the plate. And the reception was extra bad last night, so an excruciating ballgame was delivered in wavy resolution and the asinine Fox announcers’ voices were coated in crackle.

I wanted to bail out. Four innings in I couldn’t take anymore, I had to disassociate myself and my ego from the trainwreck. But this is special, October baseball, the most dramatic kind that comes only so often. It was an excruciating game I felt the need to savor.

So everything was frustrating in so many ways, there was no avoiding it or hiding. We’re surfing in October, which means monumental peaks and depressions below sea level. I’ve subscribed to this, like a fool I’ve placed some portion of my happiness in the hands of a group of guys in green and gold.

Oh well, this is the neverending challenge for the impassioned fan: learn to rationalize defeat! Take the feeling and turn it around, embrace it by every side, marvel as it returns and every time feels new again.

A sunny Sunday to myself: I hopped on my bike and rode out to the Laney Flea Market.

The estuary bridge near the fleamarket is an established kingfisher hangout; I’ve been wondering when I’ll make the first sighting of my spirit guide this season. The tide was extremely high and water was surging up the inlet into the Lake; I watched brown leaves and cheeto bags catch in the grate. Schools of fish got vacuumed through the filter, then a few moments later they swam back against the current, going nowhere.

It’s fall now, playoff baseball season, and a candle melted near my radiator but I could not spy a kingfisher anywhere. “Donde estas, buey?” I muttered, and immediately heard a familiar cackle: a ‘fisher was flying overhead, boisterous as usual, flapping/falling through the air.

At the fleamarket I haggled for a nice old Pendleton shirt. I eyed the amateur pencil drawing of the Beatles, the mermaid made of seashells and the ceramic cardinal sitting on a cactus but I didn’t buy. I watched a biker work on a salvaged jetski; it was an extra-fascinating sight, watching a guy with tattooed elbows try to start a broken jetski in the parking lot.

I wore my A’s hat and everyone wanted to talk baseball: “Think they’ll beat The Tigres, man?” Oh yeah they will!

All of that junk made me hungry for a burrito so I rode out to Fruitvale for an interview with Tacqueria San Jose. I interrogated a burrito that was so big I couldn’t finish it, even though I rode 50 miles yesterday. (Well, they are awfully fond of the rice at San Jose…) I went to Mora’s Boots and received full court press from a cowgirl, “Buenos tardes!” she started, falling back to “Hola!” when I didn’t answer. “Se busca algo especial?” she continued, and when I said no she chuckled.

The light out my window is perfect right now: everything is glowing beige and John Fahey is playing the Sligo River Blues. It’s getting to be the right time to grow a beard.

(I’m trying a new concept: beer blogging. I’m at Pacific Coast Brewing drinking a goblet of their house triple. It’s okay.)

Today after work I rolled downtown to check out the A’s Rally Monday in the “city center” which is actually a small mall-style courtyard above 12th Street BART. I was skeptical, figured I’d just linger on the perimeter and observe a bit, bike by, maybe approach if something looked interesting. When I arrived there was a terrible band playing covers, but the temporary stage was facing the wrong way and I couldn’t see much. I lingered at the railing above the BART station, sort of acting like I was waiting for someone, wondering if this was really worth it.

Finally I got curious and locked up my bike. As I approached the band broke into a rap/rock rendition of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back. My jaw dropped to the brick plaza floor as I noted the matching adidas tracksuits that labelled them the “Wonder Bread 5″. They were wearing novelty wigs. Right at the part that goes “LA face with an Oakland booty” Stomper (the A’s anthropomorphic elephant mascot) jumped on the stage and started wagging his fake stuffing butt.

I almost had a seizure it was so wrong. This was about as un-cool a function I’d EVER seen. I mean, cool is relative, I know that; as I transition from my more headstrong/naive/maybe-almost-sort-of-cool 20’s into these self-conscious 30’s I know it’s just a myth, a matter of how others perceive you, something totally out of one’s control and not worthy of pursuit. But sometimes you still feel cool (for a few moments), you think you’re edgy and you know stuff… “everybody’s Fonzie” as Rob likes to quip.

I still don’t know if I’m cool, but if I was/am I follow the Bob Dylan formula of coolness via negation/elusivity, so when the Wonder Bread 5 broke into their next song, Ice Ice Baby, it was all I could do not to leave. But there was something interesting going on, it was a remarkable moment that got me thinking; I needed to stay.

I examined the A’s fans massed around me, wondered if anyone else was grimacing as violently as me. But the other A’s fans were NOT COOL too, they were like cartoons, gingerbread people, marginalized freaks from the far ends of the BART tracks. They were wearing their rally beads and wide-brimmed hats, their ill-fitting replica jerseys and fake fashion jeans from Target, dancing like Moms, shuffling in place to the WB5’s cover of Kris Kross’ Jump Jump. “OMG there’s nobody here like me!” whined my inner coolguy.

But isn’t this one of the truly fascinating things about following baseball, uniting oneself with the common man? I’d never felt so bonded with so many freaks until I gave my heart to Oakland baseball. And this A’s Rally Monday was making me wonder what I’d done–why was I counting myself among the semi-retarded?

Oh well, lighten up you jerk. The music stopped and they played pre-recorded messages from the players to the fans, stuff like, “Hey Oakland! Thanks for coming out to Rally Monday and I look forward to seeing you at the Coliseum this Friday! Remember to get loud and wear green!” It was just too surreal to think about, being a fan: these players have no relationship with us except a vague white noise exchange, it’s all fantasy, a strange illusion to which we’re all bonded. And the players have no control, they’re employees in a business, they get passed around between teams like raw commodities. And the teams are just stupid corporations, trying to make money like any other corp before anything else.

(This beer blogging is pretty fun; I feel like quite a freak sitting here at the bar with a white iBook, but now I’ve got a tulip full of Maredsous 8 and things are looking up.)

I went to Rally Monday and I reaquainted myself with the rough edges, the non-plusses of Athletics Baseball. I am in view of the entire picture yet still I love it; it’s pretty stupid, I know. I don’t have a very good feeling about the A’s going into the Metrodome to face the Twins; they have one of the best homefield advantages in baseball: they play on hard/fast astroturf and the ceiling of the dome is white (WHITE!!!) so it’s hard to pick up pop flies, white baseball against white dome background. And the place, being a dome, is probably the loudest venue in baseball so crowd participation (white noise exchange) becomes one of the most significant of anywhere, and 55,000 midwesterners are going to be yowling their heads off. You actually hear stories of players using earplugs for playoffs at the Metrodome.

So yes, it doesn’t look particularly good, and the edges are rough and wholly imperfect, but I still love it. I’ve bound myself to something that seems essentially like a crap-shoot: best team of 8, first to win 11 games. You play 162 games in a marathon, then discover the “best” team via sprint. The World Series is coming, it’s high drama, heart-breaking, cruel. It’s another moment to reinforce the idea that it’s not the destination, it’s the journey, but the train is coming to the end of the line, summer is over, and winter will be long and hard. Like everything, I’m doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts.