Well kid, how do you like it? Gotta love this dome. Look at the view! Half the fun of going to sporting events is soaking it all in, the roar of your manly sweat-brothers. You ain't gonna get this feeling down at the twittering mall or the ice skating championships with all them guys in spandex! Not unless you're talkin' about hockey, but I'll take you out there next time.

Or maybe the "Monster Truck" rally.

I took you here for a reason. . . . . get you out of that house, away from your mother-- your kid sister. There are just some things they ain't gonna get. Mothers take their daughters to "The Gap" and giggle about boys, while I bring you to a game as we have a little man-to-man, little man.

Your grandpa never took me to games. He'd take me to the zoo, or "The Science Center", or the art museum. That's why I was probably so fucked up when I hit puberty. Too many books, not enough wrestling out in the yard. He always let me win "too easy", hoping I'd soon lose interest so we could go back inside and settle for low-energy pursuits like watching old Charlie Chaplin movies. That was good and all, but you got to remember that outside your television box, it ain't going to necessarily turn out to be a happy ending for someone like Charlie.

There were a lot of tramps back in those days, and most of them died forgotten in the gutter without "getting the girl" or "striking it rich". Most of them were mean sons-a-bitches too, if you want to get right down to it. They almost always are. . . . .

You wanna know how they get that way? They fell through the cracks and usually that was because they were hopping the train from "easy street" to "easy street" where it eventually all caught up with 'em and they paid for it royally, squatting out homeless out in some "hobo jungle" like the bane of society. It would have been so much easier for 'em if they had just settled down with something orderly, but either they couldn't take it or wouldn't put up with it and found themselves squeezed like a lemon in a letter-press. They wanted to be free, but now are more trapped than ever because they just won't "put in their time" like everyone else does. Now they can't.

You see those players out in that field? They're like warriors, and getting to where they are today you gotta put in more time than anyone else, run more laps around the track than just your standard old "Mile Run Monday" that we all dreaded back in elementary school like winded punks fainting at the finish line. They had to "kick their ass" harder than your average school teacher, or computer repairman, or miserable drudge on the phone trying to sell you on AT&T long distance who all "settled for less". Don't get me wrong-- everybody comes home exhausted, ready to drop like a stone-- but athletes are another class of human being. Their play is their work and their work is their play. They revel in punishment!

Here we are up in these stands sitting on our ass, wishin' we can be out on that field earning millions. But out on that field those guys are pushin' as hard as they humanly can, and part of them wishes that they could be up where we are, eating a hotdog and drinking a beer (-- hands off my beer, kid!). They'd still take the millions, but it doesn't work that way. You got to realize there's always that tension between the reward and wanting to quit. To break it down for ya, you can't have no pie 'till you bust concrete! Over n' over n' over! Your muscles feel like molten lead, but you keep chasin' after it anyway-- hopefully for "the love of the game".

That's more than what most folks can say, who fall into an unmotivated rut and get marched along like a dead horse hooked to the wagon of someone else. Don't get me wrong-- just about everyone is tied to some kind of wagon, but it's all a matter of degree and how much elbow room you have. And to have that elbow room, you got to earn it. You just got to find your game. But it can't be an easy game.

Years back, I figured that my game was the laid-back, pussified liberal arts-- leave the tough subjects like math and engineering to the Chinese-- and I'd be eating filet mignon without working very hard. But what you got to realize about that shit. . . . . and I'm telling you the truth, boy. . . . . is that it's a shriveled market for a racket like that. The dream jobs have been filled up years ago and you're going to have to sink lower and scratch harder to bring home a paycheck. What I'm sayin' is that you're gonna be trappin' possum instead of carving prize beef in a 5-star restaurant like "Percy Millionaire". Any idiot can do that job like that and the whole pond is stocked with idiots. . . . . the more silly and wrong-headed the better. Let me tell you about the law of counterfeit currency-- the bad drives out the good when there's so much bullshit changing hands and everyone is "gorping" after the grant money like ooze-eyed snails covering their ass.

That's why I'm taking you out to the game. . . . . it's real down there on that field. See those guys shoving each other? Either you block that wall of meat or you don't. Either you can deliver that ball to that wide receiver or you can't. Bullshit doesn't make the cut. And you won't last very long if you ain't genuine, whatever you want to say about how flawed America is. "Stand & Deliver", or get your stuck-up little ass out of the way, you know what I'm sayin'?

We got to "hang tough", or else get blown over like the story about the pig with the little shack made out of tin cans & sticks. Your grandma used to tell me the moral, you know, "build with bricks"-- but set us up for failure with this pathetic little $1.50 allowance that didn't encourage "a creed of iron". It was really funny-- this silly, sing-song woman telling us to save 60 weeks for a Nintendo game when we could always just beg, borrow or steal or even wait for Birthday's and Christmas. There was no real way to earn fast pocket money through honest chores because she leased all the jobs out to workmen and gardeners.

Yet in her own screwy way she was thrifty. . . . . she didn't pay us to wash and wax the car; she waited for cleansing thunderstorms to wash away the happy tweeting of bird shit she felt so attuned with. For a long time, I didn't know the value of money-- it might as well have grown on trees, or dropped out of my cat's asshole. (-- Don't tell your mother I said that).

We were up in New York for Thanksgiving one year when I started going on and on about "how deprived" I was. Then my wizened old Jewish grandpa leaned back real easy and began to tell me that I ought to start my own lemonade stand. I began to see where this was headed and cringed, bearing my teeth in agony as he drove the knife in further and got me to laugh harder as I puckered my lips over this sour truth and refused to concede to the wisdom of this parable. How you invest in lemons. And sugar. And ice cubes. And send a kid up & down the block, clanging a pot with a spoon. Everything required work and risk. and you can bet that I avoided work and risk like a week of the yellar shit storms!

But you got to believe some part of me deeply intuited that I was going to grow up to become the next Donald Trump. Like a king, I would eat filet mignon in the finest restaurants with the finest women because in my head I was "Lord of my jungle" and no one ever told me otherwise as I beat my chest and hollered when the cards didn't fall my way. I'd piss and moan over raking some leaves, or the physical push of playing soccer, but when it came to furthering "the glory" or "the ego" or "the pleasure" of the king inside I became like Richard the Lion-Hearted where no trek across the mall was too lengthy on the holy crusade for Nintendo games.

Now, if this could only be channeled into something constructive. . . . .

But let me tell you, all "young kings" fall from grace and find themselves pushed back to "Square 1" as a squire or stable-boy who has to "earn his keep" in the castle of ordinary affairs. To be noble, we must serve and "put in our licks" before we can sit with the knights and become lordly.

One time, a gym buff passed me a promotional video about a bodybuilder promoting his fitness challenge for America. He went into his background, and told how it all began when he was 10 years old-- around your age-- and on a hiking trip with a group of adults in the mountains. They expected him to slow down the party, but his inner king wouldn't "give in" and he trekked all the way to the peak and realized that he could accomplish anything he wished. It made his inner king grow stronger and stronger until he became an unstoppable champion whose splendor was so great that he gave away cash and cars and prizes to those who signed up and sent in "before" & "after" pictures of their physical transformation of hard work and kingly desire.

And let me tell you son, that's what we call "empowerment". Make the inner king live by honoring your desires and being willing to work for it and chase your destiny while lifting others. When the football gets launched with "the kick-off", you see those players rushing at the other team as fast as they can. They're not really quite sure exactly how this play is going to end, but only that they're going to do their damnnest to stop that wide receiver in his tracks.

By believing you will, you become it.

You don't want to be around folks who are late in a losing 4th quarter and are quite literally pulling the boulder in front of the cave, the lid over the coffin like my parents were-- planning for retirement when me and your uncle were just warming up.

Nor do you want to find yourself frustrated if your first quarter isn't going so well. What you do is call a "time-out", perhaps a long "time-out"-- but you always get back in the game!

And don't forget about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who came to The United States with nothing but a plane ticket and his gym bag. Don't ever think it can't happen. . . . . and just remember that he made all his dreams come true! May some of that inspiration guide you home to a new land.

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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(Rheeee of Crickets)

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("I heard that, Missy!")