Welcome to the summer in Missouri. We currently have approximately 25 hours of daylight and it’s exhausting to me. I’ll power through for the sake of both my readers.
Just to pick up on a couple of past topics, I have reached the “don’t care” about my yard stage of the mowing season. My yard has developed this “clump grass” that can only be killed with grass killer. It is technically not a weed and therefore the expensive weed treatments do not work. It has taken over much of my lawn, and it makes me angry. I’m willing to accept the fact that I am not going to have the best lawn in my neighborhood. I’m hoping to be in the 2nd tier level of yards, but that is probably in the balance.
I attended a Kansas City Royals home game for the first time since the pandemic arrived in America. Update: Beer still works, Royals still not great and I used my stimulus check to buy Crown Club seats behind home plate and it seemed a very prudent use of the government’s money.
Honestly, the beer and food are “free” in these seats and when you consider I took my son, we have a strong family tradition of getting our money’s worth out of free alcohol and food; don’t judge, we consider it being “thrifty.”
Anyway, to summarize, the Royals are not likely to make the playoffs, beer is a good economic stimulus strategy and mowing is overrated. I’m not sure you can get this kind of insight from any other source. I don’t keep up with what Foley charges you for this, but it’s a bargain.
I think I may have strained an oblique at the game, but I played through, because “free” hot dogs are not going to eat themselves.
We have a football team in Vegas and one of their players made news this week by announcing he is gay. What the heck would our grandparents and Liberace think of all of this? They’d probably be like most of us, good for them, but let’s play football and you do your bedroom stuff as you see fit.
I have empathy for the plight of the gay community in our history and see the archaic views in that thought process, but I also relish the day that gay people don’t have to or feel the need to announce their sexuality as a process of acceptance. Would or will there ever be enough legal protections and acceptance that would be the case? Maybe not, but I wonder if that general acceptance that is developing will ever be enough for generations going forward that seem to need attention for the most mundane acts of existence (see gender, sexuality). If general acceptance is ever realized and supported, would the lack of attention for being gay be disappointing?
I can’t imagine parents of the future standing for one kid getting to announce that he is gay and another kid not getting the “fairness” of announcing his heterosexuality.
It is an interesting thought about the clashing of potential social norms of the future.
By the way, I don’t know much about Liberace and his music, but my grandfather used to talk about Liberace a lot. Not his music much but his clothes and jewelry, etc. My grandfather was a brick maker in eastern Missouri and now that I think back, he was really intrigued by this guy. Makes me wonder how many brick makers were big Liberace fans. Did the guys get together in the break room after slaving over kilns and read Liberace stories in the Enquirer, or belt out a couple of tunes while grabbing a soda pop? If so, I’d like to have seen it. Probably never know the background on all that.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com or nursing a strained oblique at Kaufman Stadium)