I hope you are enjoying your Independence Day holiday. My friend Roy, the G. B. King is, cause he's on vacation. It's gorgeoues outside today. We'll be doing a little grilling with the Moms here at Stover Place. I haven't decided about fireworks yet. The crowd down at the Empire State Plaza will be LARGE and PT hates crowds. Besides, my neighbors will all be blowing off stuff till 1 a.m. anyway.
RUSH CONCERT
Tomorrow is the big day. After a lively Dungeon and Dragons game with the boys, it'll be up the Northway with Jackson, his buddy C.J. and his dad, Clayton, to see the band that you all need to see. This is the second straight summer that Rush has played at SPAC. I've praised this band many times previously, so I won't bore you. But it's the highlight concert of the summer for me. I think it'll be C.J.'s first rock concert. Good band to start your career off with. Besides seeing Bobby Sherman when I was a little kid, my first concert was the Doobie Brothers at SPAC in 1977. My buddy Todd's first show was the locally INFAMOUS Black and Blue (Sabbath/Oyster Cult, respectively) concert at Lebanon Valley Speedway in 1980. That was a good one to start with. Never in my life have I been at such an event. When we first pulled up to the parking lot, there was a line of fifteen or twenty guys that you had to drive by and they all were offering some kind of drug. All of the classics were represented. Then, they wouldn't allow bottles in, so people rolled kegs into the infield on hand trucks and just drank. One guy came walking in carrying a Matt's beer ball. Remember those? Did you have one as a lampshade in your apartment? Then some guys carried in these 10-foot tall wooden crosses and stood them up and set them on fire during Sabbath's set. Later, after it got dark, Blue Oyster Cult came out and I got to see laser lights for the first time. Motorcycles, jeans bandannas, halter tops, ciggys, party, just whatever you can imagine. Some people would call it the height of the classic 70's outdoor concert. Others would call it the nadir of human behavior. I wouldn't want to do it all the time. But once in a while.......what fun.
Unfortunately, the reason for its infamy was because some people got killed on the way home. Alot of people walked to the show, or just parked their cars along the road on the way in and decided to walk the rest of the way. A couple of people got hit by a truck and got killed, leaving the show. Also, an inebriated concert-goer trespassed on someone's property and received a shotgun blast to the chest. It was the last concert that they EVER had at the Lebanon Valley Speedway.
THE CHICAGO CUBS AND THE END OF THE WORLD
The Chicago Cubs are one of the best teams in baseball, leading the NL Central. It's been, what, 90-100 years since they won the World Series, right? Well, I'm thinking that for as good as the Cubs are playing right now, that they'll again fade in the end of summer and will not win again this year. But folks, we here at LEN IS RIGHT have the answer for all you long-suffering Cubs fans. Your team is going to FINALLY win the World Series in the fall of 2012. It will coincide with the end of the world, as seen by the Aztec calendar, which as we know, has been the be-all, end-all for a few years. So, ya know, I'm kinda thinking...I gotta be a Cub hater in 2012. I'm really rooting for them from now till 2011. I may even have to make my beloved Mets my 2nd favorite team until then because I'd like to see the Aztecs proven wrong. I'm also hoping that they ended their calendar because they ran out of chalk or something. Can you see Montezuma saying to his staff, "Pedro! Juan! Qetzqetl!! Enough of this calendar crapola. Let's go to the beach. I feel like a Corona or two. Maybe if we end it there, the fools in the future will think it's significant. Am I a funny fuckin' Yucateccan, or what?"
So, Go Cubs!! At least until 2012. Then, it's "Up Yours, Cubs!!"
ONE REASON I LOVE BASEBALL
We have alot of reasons to dislike pro sports, but I can give you a reason to love baseball. The reason lies in the play known as the bottom of the 9th Walkoff Home Run. Any time a game-winning walk-off homer is hit, the guy who hit it comes to the plate and is mobbed by his teammates. Watching that always brings me back to my youth when any kid that hit any homer, always got mobbed by his teammates when he came to the plate to score. It didn't have to be a game-winner. Any homer. And whether you're a sports fan or not, former or present athlete or not, experienced it first hand or not, it doesn't matter. And no play in any other sport is as cool as the game-winning homer. When you see a professional baseball player get mobbed by his teammates after hitting the big homer, you can see on everyones face that they're all back to being kids. And salaries and championships and endorsement deals, for a few seconds, don't matter. It's all the love of the sport, the love of a game. It takes us back to when we were kids and summers were carefree. Just for a few short seconds it all comes rushing back. Kids on a dusty Little League field, all running out of the dugout to greet the kid who hit one out. For that reason, I will ALWAYS love baseball.
Enjoy the holiday weekend. Party responsibly. LEN IS RIGHT loves his minions. Vote the poll question.
I am,
Len Tollerton
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