UPTOPIA, KA – Happy Sunday, everybody! Wait, not exactly chipper? Hungover? Thinking the work week looms? Well, here’s a glimpse of a day in my life that might you feel a tad better about your situation… and I’ve tied a sports movie into it, just to keep with all things Mattville.
7:00-7:15 The day starts with the misses waking me up as she leaves for her commute to work in The Boogie Down. It takes a couple of taps on a decaying body and a few shouts of my name before I give the good-bye wave that I’m awake/still breathing.
7:15-7:50 Yep, it takes this long to get out of bed and much slower than Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty minus the morning ‘doobie’ and pills but all of the snaps, crackles, and pops of joints and muscles. After the body’s version of Rice Krispies is complete, I take to the bathroom for a Tom Hanks A League of Their Own monster piss with a similar gait. Looking in the mirror, Reg Dunlop is talking back to me the same way Paul Newman’s character baited “Killer” Carlson into defending his aging coach in Slapshot. I also see Ernie MacCracken’s thinning, out-of-control hair during his bowling showdown with Roy Munson in Kingpin. And with the way life is going, getting or being ‘Munsoned’ has been officially changed to ‘Bruined’.
I pull on my ‘Rocky Balboas’—gray out of shape sweatpants with well-worn vents, a long-sleeved tee and my Boston Bruins hat before putting on my kicks with the aid of an elongated shoe horn. One of these mornings I hope Kareem Abdul-Jabbar appears as the basketball angel, his role in Slam Dunk Ernest, bestowing the same speed and flight upon me as Jim Varney with a pair of magic sneakers.
7:50-8:00 Whining time approaches as I tell the girls it’s time to shut the television off and leave for the school bus stop. They know the routine but insist on carrying on every day. No matter how much I pray to Pedro Serrano’s voodoo statue in Major League will things change because they are little women after all and the problem lies within their estrogen-laden DNA.
8:30-11:00 Half an hour goes by after making nice-nice with the neighbors and I’m ‘jonesin’ for coffee. I’m good for at least 48 ounces of black no sugar and should I miss a day of java my behavior matches Will Ferrell’s character in Kicking and Screaming. Coach Phil is turned onto coffee for the first time and becomes wired and high but I’ll be the one calling Iron Mike Ditka “juice-box boy” if I don’t get my fix of liquid crack. Breakfast, the NHL Network, NESN, and MTM gets me through the pleasant part of the morning until it’s time to get inventive like Jackie Moon of the Flint Tropics from the movie Semi-Pro in paying the bills with money I don’t have.
Somewhere around noon and loads of laundry and other menial tasks I’m reminded of the moral in Let It Ride that every (under)dog/loser has its day. Right, I’m still waiting Trotter!
MTM winner, West Coast Craig, tomorrow!
