Week 4

Like Istanbul in 05, sometimes we're about 40 minutes late to the party

It’s been a bit messy the last couple of weeks around Castle Black.

While school has started, after school has not. Which means I have to grab my little angel every day at 2:35. I almost have time to get two complete thoughts in my “work day.” It’s been exhausting and also done a real number on my … “mental health” I guess you’d call it? Also, with her school across the street, it’s taken my summer of walking 5 miles a day out completely.

It’s been a real drag for me that I can’t say I really managed well if we’re being completely honest.

Thankfully, the world has been a remarkably calm place the last two weeks … other than the shit storm going to 11.

Fifteen years ago, Cliff Lungaretti and I became work friends. I also got fully integrated with his high school and college friends. Somewhere in the Pandemic That We All Recognized, he mentioned that one of the things he missed the most was the random chat with the random people in your day. The guy that makes your salad … the woman in the elevator. The bartender.

Somewhere about the time my kid started daycare, I started passing a guy also in a Guardians hat pushing his kid up the hill as I was pushing my kid down the hill. I became resolute that this guy was going to be my limited purpose friend. All we were going to do was talk baseball. Never exchanging names. Nothing else. Just baseball. Just on the street passing each other with our kids.

The next year, his kid started going to a school down the hill, mine started going up the hill. We’d pass each other going the other direction.

“Guards are looking good lately.”

“This is our year.”

“These guys are bums.”

Last year, at a school carnival, my daughter’s best friend’s dad found an abandoned cell phone. My Guardians Guy on the Street was in the family photo on the lockscreen. I instructed the other father to not tell me anything about the guy. I didn’t want his name or anything, because it would ruin my Guardians Guy on the Street.

This year has brought changes. My Guy’s kids are all now down the hill. We don’t cross paths. I was a little sad. But this is the way these deals go. We’d done our duties to each other. It was time to move on.

Some fucking how, moving on has meant I am the fucking Vice President of the Pre-K’s PTA. No one is more surprised than I am.

The way I got this job, besides my gullability, is I’ve been spearheading the fight to get the streets and intersections at our school safer. Suddenly, my grumpy old man instincts are paying off … with a volunteer position.

Our local NYPD precinct promised the school a patrol car presence for the first day of school last week. I bragged a bit too much to folks. Hoping that might maybe get me retired from my VP duties for the year.

The cop didn’t show.

Fuck.

Buried in my emails from the night before was the precinct saying, “sorry. We don’t have anyone.”

Fuck. We’re sunk.

I look up.

Walking his 3 year old into our schoolyard was our state representative. (i’m going to put this gently) A lovely guy, by all standards, but the local politician who’s always at every ribbon cutting and everything. No disparagement intended, but if you can recognize your state legislator by sight on the street, that guy is an A level gland hander. Good for him.

Also, the guy went to high school with … Cliff Lungaretti.

I actually exclaimed, “The lord has sent me an angel.”

I get home and add said State Rep to my email chain that includes the staffs of 3 schools, 4 PTAs, the NYPD precinct, our City Council member, the cemetery across the street from the school, our Community Board, the Department of Transportation, and … others.

Within an hour I get an email from the Rep’s Chief of Staff. “Come talk to us next week.”

I block off my whole 2.5 hour work window on Wednesday to prepare for my Thursday meeting. I draw and redraw maps by hand of the block the school is on. I rehearse adding the bus stops. I figure the best way to depict the bike lanes. I’ve got a mind map of all the agencies involved, up to and including the Vatican (i’m being serious).

I take a break and check my email. Rep’s Chief of Staff: “Ummm. If something came up, that’s cool, but the Rep has left for another meeting now.”

THE MEETING WAS ON WEDNESDAY … NOT ON THURSDAY.

I scream things that I should probably confess so as to not have to continue my time on the PTA.

I have Gemini write me an apology and a request for another timeslot. I also might have shit in my pants. It was all fuzzy.

It was also not lost on me that, as the VP of his kid’s PTA, I had also managed to blow off my own constituent.

(I told you I probably wasn’t handling this funky school schedule well.)

I am granted an audience for yesterday.

I get there an hour early.

I walk into the meeting room ready to confess I’m friends with Cliff Lungaretti and various other high school friends of his.

I …

What?

What’s my Guardians Guy on the Street doing here?

Oh … you know … just being the Chief of Staff for my State Representative.

First 20 minutes of the meeting was about how we’d been talking baseball on the street for 3 years with no clue who the other one was, and then how I was a Guardians fan, and then West Texas, and then Willie Nelson, and then Americana versus Country music.

I think we’re going to get our patrol car out there working these mean streets.

That’s just about all I’ve got.

Zan, The floor is all yours.

Way to bring it all the way back to Guardians guy. I was wondering where that story was going for a while there but what an ending. I love it when you find someone in the wild with the same passions as you. It’s such a male thing to talk about sports with someone and never catch their name. It doesn’t always have such a happy ending, though!

There is a local cafe I have been going to for the past three years on my lunch break for an afternoon pick me up and one day last year, I happened to be wearing a Liverpool kit into the shop when the guy taking my order couldn’t contain himself and asked me in his very british accent what the score was in the match. I said it was 1-nil just before I left and he delightfully punched the air with an enthusiastic “Up the Reds!” before handing me my Americano. Random sidenote, some cafes in Toronto have started referring to Americanos as Canadianos since the orange man’s tariff drama came into practice earlier in the year and I find it absolutely hilarious.

I saw that British guy for a few months almost every week and we’d discuss everything Liverpool for the five minutes that I waited for my coffee. He loved Darwin Nunez and I can only imagine his broken heart when Liverpool sold him this summer. “He’ll either bottle one from five yards out or score an overhead kick from the halfway line, that Nunez,” he used to say.

Then summer came and he vanished. No goodbye, no forwarding address, just a new barista where our ritual used to live. I never found out his name, never got his socials. I am assuming he moved or got a job elsewhere, but not every friend you meet ends up being the Chief of Staff for your State Representative.

This disappearance reminded me of another kind of loss; the wound that we carry when our heroes abandon us. I don’t know about you, but I feel quite icky about the whole Alexander Isak situation. I’m thrilled that he’s a Liverpool player, but I hate the way he became one because it reminds me of the trauma I went through when Fernando Torres forced his way into a transfer to Chelsea 15 years ago. He was my beacon of hope, the man who filled my heart with utter joy whenever he scored a goal and he chose to join one of Liverpool’s most hated rivals at that point in time. I imagine there are kids, teenagers and adults all across Newcastle who feel the same way about Alexander Isak.

The guys at The Rest Is Football discussed it extensively a few weeks ago and I agree with Alan Shearer in that it was one thing if his contract was due to expire but he still had three years remaining! It seems all too familiar that Isak’s reasoning was that Newcastle made promises that they didn’t keep – mirroring a lot of what Torres said when he forced his way out of Liverpool – but the contrast of Isak and Wissa forcing their way out of Newcastle with that of Marc Guehi was a sad reality of the world we live in. Guehi’s contract is expiring at the end of the season and he was all set to join Liverpool for 35M pounds, leaving with dignity and respect before the deal fell through on deadline day because Crystal Palace could not secure a replacement central defender. While some players forced their way out through the back door, Guehi waited honourably by the front door, only to find it locked at the final moment.

These parallel stories teach us something about human connection. Some relationships are meant to be brief but beautiful and others are meant to endure but we rarely get to choose which ones stay and which ones fade. Whether it’s a friendly barista or a football hero, whether they leave quietly or dramatically, it’s important to treasure the connections we have while we still have them. Because sometimes you end up with Guardians guy as the Chief of Staff for your state representative and other times, you end up just waiting in line at a coffee shop, scrolling through your phone rather than talking about Liverpool Football Club.

Besides the Liverpool match this weekend, I’ll have an eye on Arsenal v Nottingham Forest to see how Ange makes his triumphant return to the Premier League and I’ll take a peek at Fulham v Leeds. Fulham had some sneaky nice additions on deadline day and it will be interesting to see how they begin to mesh together as the season gets into full swing.

Get your red hot football here:

Saturday, September 13

7:30 AM

Arsenal vs. Nottingham Forest | USA Network, Universo

10:00 AM

AFC Bournemouth vs. Brighton & Hove Albion | Peacock

Crystal Palace vs. Sunderland | Peacock

Everton vs. Aston Villa | Peacock

Fulham vs. Leeds United | USA Network, Universo

Newcastle United vs. Wolverhampton Wanderers | Peacock

2:30 PM

West Ham United vs. Tottenham Hotspur | NBC, Peacock, Universo

3:00 PM

Brentford vs. Chelsea | USA Network

Sunday, September 14

9:00 AM:

Burnley vs. Liverpool | USA Network, Telemundo

11:30 AM:

Manchester City vs. Manchester United | Peacock

My oldest open browser tab

Ok, it’s not actually open, but I have had it bookmarked for a year.

84 Ways to Behave Online

Seems relevant to our interest down here at the moment.

And from the worlds of AI and Fantasy Football,I give you:

Earth, Wind and Harry Maguire

Take care of yourself and each other.