A Tale Of Two Parties

Two invitations found there way into our mailbox today. One from Mrs. Joan Delaney, owner of my beloved New York baseball franchise. The other from Elliott Pollock, commissioner of my beloved game of baseball. Both invitations were for "holiday" parties. Both requested my presence this coming Saturday. And both were for 8PM.

Coincidence?

Being that ownership and labor has had a history of often cantankerous relations, better lately, but still skating on ice that never really gets thick enough for the Zamboni to clean, I found it interesting that both owner, who employs commissioners, and commissioner, employed by owners, invited me, a member of labor, to their upcoming soirees. Being that both are New York-based, one would also wonder how many people were invited to both, and why neither invited the other to their individual soiree. Don't these people communicate with each other? And why are they inviting me 4 days before their New York-based soirees?

Complicated.

When I was in the sixth grade, I couldn't wait to be invited to "holiday" parties. I remember going to a bunch one year. Loved them all. Each would end with Donna Summer's "Dim All The Lights" playing and each of us trying to pair up with a member of the opposite sex. 1980 seems a long time ago.

But now, I wish I'd been invited to neither of these. Too much politics. Obviously, there's some strained blood going on between Mrs. Delaney and Elliott (I can use his first name because I'm older than he is). I'm sure they know of the competing soirees the other is hosting. Maybe it's a big game of chicken for them and they're waiting to see who will postpone first. Otherwise, there will be lots of people running around from East Side to West Side in New York City this Saturday trying to appease the warring factions.

Counsel is appropriate in times like these. Vanessa thought we (I keep saying "I" but she'd of course come along with me since she's my spousal equivalent) should go to Elliott's first, hang out for an hour or so, then go to Mrs. Delaney's and stay until the sun rose. She is the one, after all, who ultimately signs my checks.

I called Jack Perry, agent who descended from the heavens and is the spawn of Miraculous, the Greek God of renegotiation. Jack said to do the opposite. In his opinion, and he was invited to neither, Elliott has consolidated more power than the last three commissioners combined. If he wanted me at his party, I should spend the bulk of my Saturday night there, bowing down to the man and telling him how nice the second coat of lead paint looks on his dining room walls.

Howard Phillips, union head who rarely leaves his office before three PM for lunch, said the best course of action was to call both, thank them for their invitations, and fly to Venezuela for the weekend to buy an oil farm.

So many conflicting opinions. I decided to get one more from my two-headed monster I call twin daughters, Julia and Grace.

It's not easy to get them in a room together. It's like asking Simon & Garfunkel to make one more record just for the fun of it. My girls like each other enough, but they say their powers of twin-dom allow them to know what the other is thinking far too easily. As a result, they don't get enough privacy. When they graduate high school, they each want to go away to college in a foreign country, like Indiana, where they can complete their educations following their own agendas. I fully support them in whatever they want to do, as long as I don't need to obtain a passport to visit them.

I told Julia to come down to my Entertainment Veranda to give me a concert of the latest songs she's written. She plays her acoustic guitar constantly and prefers to sing rather than speak, stating speaking is a Cro Mag Non form of communication and singing virtually Renaissance. I was never a good history student and the music room back in high school was replaced with a men's weight room, so I tell her to stick to her principals, whatever the hell they mean.

Grace was harder to get down. Since this third papering, she's been pretty distant. Yes, it's only been a day, but she locked herself in her room last night, went to school today and locked herself in her room when she got home. The only way we could communicate with her was to text message her on her cell. I found it humorous how one daughter will only sing and the other will only type. Which, I wondered, was more advanced in terms of human development? I lost my train of thought pretty quickly on that one, so typed to Grace (it only took an hour to type a stupid text message) that if she didn't come downstairs immediately I'd have her phone sent to the Smithsonian for the 21st Century Modern Woman exhibit. She was down in a flash.

I laid out for both of them my quandary: Two parties, same time, different places, both equally important to the industry I like to call baseball.

They agreed that both parties should be attended. They also agreed that Mrs. Delaney should get the bulk of our time because she not only signs my checks, she also, allegedly, really likes me. She once stated of this blog, "It's so cute. If you ever write anything badly of me you'll regret you were ever born." She's a great woman. Did I ever mention that?

So as Julia strummed along with a Pepsi commercial that came on the TV (we are endorsers, after all) and Grace ran back up to her locked up room, I called Jack's assistant and told him to RSVP for Vanessa and me. We'd be going to both parties. We'll see if we have any fun.

Shifting Agendas

Strange morning. I'm never the first one up unless kicked out of the bed by a very attractive lady who has some secret agenda. No agenda like that today. My body, all screwed up from getting up early or getting up late or digesting too much Italian food, was done with sleep at exactly 8:03 AM. Vanessa, who'd been up all night throwing up, had, after all, not had the will power to kick me out of bed at 5:17 in the AM time to get me exercising. And since she had no makeup and had been throwing up all night, the only agenda this vaguely unattractive woman was following was to purge her body of this flu bug. Which meant she'd be in bed all day.

Which meant I'd be on my own all day.

Well, if that's how she wanted to play, then I could follow my own agenda by eating, watching TV, and giving my body more time to heal after my invasive April elbow surgery, exactly 6 months ago today. My agenda including anything but preparing for the next baseball season. Did I mention how being lethargic has been so cathartic for me?

At 9:03 sharp, the phone rang. I let it go since nobody ever calls me. Grace, throwing up 37% less than her sister and mother, was watching TV, the TV I wanted to watch. She picked up the phone and said it was for me. I picked up in the kitchen and figured I'd pour myself a bowl of cereal. I thought we still had some Cocoa Puffs in the cabinet. It was Howard Phillips, who is our union head.

Howard: I read your blog last night.
Me: That's when I wrote it.
Howard: I didn't like it.
Me: You can stop reading then.

It's not so much he didn't like the concept of this fabulous blog, my way to reach out to the masses in a very impersonal way yet still get things off my chest without hurting any feelings or affecting the world negatively. He had two problems with my last post:

1. I had lunch with the commissioner without telling anybody ahead of time.
2. Maybe I stated some positions the union had that could hurt us in upcoming negotiations.

I asked Howard if he'd read the part about how I cut my thumb and ended up getting 6 stitches. He said he was too upset with me to remember. Apparently, commissioner Elliott Pollock, he of the young, charming and good looking ilk, had called Howard this morning to talk. Elliott had gotten a cold feeling from me at lunch and wanted to know if this was true of how our negotiations were going to go. Howard, who already drinks too much Pepto Bismol from the bottle, told Elliott that we would proceed in a professional manner and don't take anything Jimmy Scott says or does as what the entire union wants. Elliott then asked if I was being facetious by characterizing him as young, charming and good looking in last night's blog. Howard said he couldn't speak directly for me, but he was sure I meant nothing other than the fact that Elliott was, and is, young, charming and good looking. Elliott ended the conversation gracefully, as Howard did with me, asking me not to blog for a few days or so to "let the congestion in the air clear of the foul smell I'd created."

A little miffed, I couldn't eat my Cocoa Puffs. I guess neither Elliott nor Howard cared about my bloody thumb and six stitches. I decided to leave the kitchen to itself.

Vanessa still hadn't stirred out of bed, so I went upstairs. She was in the same position I'd left her in 30 minutes or so earlier, only Julia had joined her on my side of the bed. Neither female was wearing any makeup, but they were awake, watching TV. She could tell something bothered me, Vanessa that is, so she asked me to get her a wet washcloth and then tell her all about it. I got her the washcloth, but it wasn't wet enough. I went back into the bathroom and brought it back to her. Now it was dripping too much. I went back and squeezed the hell out of it. Just right. Now Julia wanted one. I had to go into the hallway and find another dry washcloth so that I could make it not too wet but wet enough that it would be just right for my lovely daughter whose face was covered in burst blood vessels from barfing for almost two days straight. I did so and she smiled, which was nice to see. Vanessa clicked off the TV and said they were going to try to sleep some more. She'd forgotten that I was supposed to tell her everything about the Elliott lunch debacle I had created and Howard's distressed call over how my cut thumb that neither man seemed to care about was going to lead to the owners contracting 5 teams and making salary cap of five dollars and ninety five cents per team. I left them to their germs and returned downstairs.

Grace was still watching TV. But now she was texting on her cell phone. I asked her why she just didn't call the person and save the skin on her fingertips. She hushed me and went on tapping, quite intensely. I asked her what the subject was and she looked at me, knowing I was completely bored. Here's how the conversation went.

Me: What are you typing?
Grace: Nothing.
Me: Are you keeping a secret from your father?
Grace: No.
Me: Well, still...

I left the room to her tapping and her germs and her teenage angst. I should have told her to put a Nirvana disc on the CD player for some angst inspiration, but I don't think she knows what a CD is. If you can't download it for free from some site that is named after strange fruit or extinct Japanese giant monsters, then it must not be worth owning in the first place.

I still wasn't hungry, the TVs were taken up, and I was completely confused about my place in the union and bored with doing a whole lot of nothing. At a crossroads, I had two ways to go:

1. Come up with a hobby real quick and immerse myself in it.
2. Work out.

I took a deep breath, positive that I was immune to my family's vomit spasms, and snuck back into my bedroom. The ladies without makeup were snoring gently. I picked spots on the floor that wouldn't creak and grabbed some sweats out of my drawer. Picking the same spots for the return trip out of the room, I closed the door with a gentle thud.

Ten minutes later, I was running the streets of Madison, waving to cars honking their horns at me and some college kids on Thanksgiving break who sang the "Rocky" theme song to me. Yeah, we forget how fat Sly was in the first Rocky.

So today was Agenda Slapdown Day. At least for me. I felt pretty good after my run, too. Maybe it won't be so bad getting up early tomorrow. As much as I seem to fight it, the road beckons this bored soul. The time of my self-imposed lethargy has just about run out.