The Umpire Has No Clothes Read online

  CHAPTER 2: Witty Ancient Astronuts Diary

  June 24) While in search of fossils this afternoon in my back yard, have run across a jawbone similar to the one found by Dr. Alfred Zimmer in Ethiopia last summer, which HE claimed was 4 million years old. (Or 40 million—he wasn’t too sure about the decimal point). What this may mean, I have no idea except that perhaps college textbooks need to be rewritten so students can’t resell their old ones next year. Plan to take this jawbone home and reconstruct a skull from it, hopefully. On the way back must remember to stop at the library and check out FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY’S ANATOMY and an unabridged copy of 100 SCIENCE PROJECTS YOU CAN BUILD WITHOUT LEAVING THE KITCHEN.

  June 26) Have encountered minor difficulties in my work with plaster molds and the posterior portion of the skull. My enthusiasm remains high, however, for in my zeal to unravel the mystery I inadvertently (but nonetheless brilliantly) substituted Red Band Flour for Plaster of Paris. Such accidents in the past, we are told, resulted in many inventions and breakthroughs in Science for such men as Edison, Goddard, and Herbert Bloom (a Dolphins fan who once constructed a Brontosaurus from one broken tooth, 900 bags of Quickrete, and—as accident would have it—19 bales of chicken wire.) Any day now I expect success.

  July 1) Am very excited, as evidence is mounting that homo sapiens did not descend from the Australopithecine line as suggested by Dr. Neils “Go Bruins!” Zahorsky, but rather from what I am calling the Cattleus Minorus family—a small, extinct species of cow. Am basing my conclusions on the shape my model skull is taking, and the fact that I have unearthed an unusually tiny ‘head’ counter, perhaps used at the narrow opening to a pre-Pleistocene soccer match prior to wholesale herd slaughter by Neanderthals as they stampeded. That this artifact is cryptically engraved with the words SATURN TURNSTILE COMPANY I have furthermore come to interpret as proof of life on other planets.

  August 6) Having completed the skull, with enough left over to bake a few cookies, I took my evidence before a tribunal of obese paleontologist/Blue Devils fans whose criticism took the form of pitchfork jabs.

  August 7) Discouraged by my rejection yesterday, I developed an appetite for junk food and in sheer frustration I spent the day waiting in thirty different fast food restaurant lines, whispering “people are cattle,” and trying to show them the skull. Always, when my turn to order came, I purchased one French fry and then went to the back of the line to take notes on how the servers say “chicken or beef?” along with the ever-popular “You want ketchup with that?”

  August 8) As there is still no word from the Nobel Committee on my nomination, nor from the principal of Bronx Elementary as to whether my theorem will be allowed voicing, I dragged my wounded ego to a sports bar on a leash and force fed it Guinness until the conversations of several coeds subtly shifted from Joe Mauer’s ass to my “charnel-house breath.” Because fortune generally favors the bold in such dives, I decided to sidle over to where the action was (at the other side of the room), and as a method of breaking the iceberg, introduce my friend Cattleus Minorus. My theories were put to the test when just then the Hulk appeared and explained his relationship with the vixens present as something similar, if only in appearance, to A Chorus Line. Although his patting me on the head, along with a well-meaning admonition to “cheer up,” only managed to dislodge several vertebrae, I did aggravate the situation by defining an optimist as a hockey fan who regards his half EMPTY brain as half FULL. Consequently, I was given a free remedial crash course on Murphy’s Law. Six hours later, regaining consciousness at the request of a wet mop, I was told by Lars the barkeep that: “Bruce either lifts Hummers with his teeth at monster truck rallies for a living, or he’s studying ballet. . .which one seems more likely to you?”

  August 10) Had a nightmare full of evidence last night. Dreamt I was given free lifetime subscriptions to those bastions of Science Journalism: The National Enquirer, The Sporting News, and UFO Abductions Illustrated. Lashed to a chair, however, I was force-read Time magazine articles instead: Army Recruiters Who Target Little Leagues, or NFL to Put Cameras in All Helmets, and Helmets Don’t Prevent Brain Damage by Al Sheimer. My eyelids were then stuck open by Crazy Glue, and my head clamped in a vise in front of a TV playing Monday Night Football reruns through Thursday afternoon.

  August 23) Today decided that science is wonderful, and hope one day to be able to change the world, or at least to make my bed so well that dad can bounce the last surviving silver quarter from his stolen collection on it. . . in hopes he won’t bring out the “cat of nine tails” from his closet as promised, and whip my backside into raw hamburger with it like Jesus did to bookies in the temple.

  DIEry ENTRY 2: Zip Daddy

  Before you pick up a dozen or so jagged stones suitable for removing the monstrosity I see in the mirror every morning, please take a moment to consider how I (and my invisible/invincible friend Walter) got to this state of damnation. Also realize that I have it on High Authority that my ambulance driver will favor the scenic route. In your own case, you probably had a father who tossed a ball with you, or at least took you to games at some point. Or maybe, when you went to high school, you played athletics, went to sports bars, and either ogled the cheerleaders or became one.

  That’s not quite my memory of childhood events.

  The school I attended was a strict religious academy where my favorite story was, of course, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It’s about a guy who likes to daydream as an escape from a dreary life. My real life was nothing like Walter’s, and the word “dreary” just doesn’t cut it in describing time spent listening to guilt-drenched hell fire sermons that Segwayed (handcart-style) into distrust of everyone outside the barbed wire fences.

  Take a moment here to imagine me scrubbing pots and pans on campus after school at the minimum wage in order to pay for this privilege...while many of my classmates bonded in extra-curricular activities involving intramural sports and various society or fraternity-like religious functions. Now consider that these hot shot jockstrap saints in high school and college were the sons of professors, and so exempt from having to pay tuition. Any time they spent off the field was either in bully training, dating, or shopping for designer Polo shirts.

  Understand where I’m coming from yet?

  Okay, I didn’t think so. So let me describe Pop.

  His hair was the color of burnt kangaroo fur, and his booming voice might have put another crack in the Liberty bell. When he looked at you tipsily with his bulbous brown eyes, you got the impression he was mentally fitting you for an anvil hat. Pop didn’t care for pop culture. Pop’s “culture” consisted of nonsensical ramblings on every subject imaginable. Kinda like George Carlin, but not as generous.

  What I remember most about dear old dad is that we always fasted on Thanksgiving Day. (That’s “feasted” with one less e, or the opposite of “eat.”) His reasoning went along the lines of starvation being in honor of those who have nothing. Not that Pop fooled us. Oh no, not for a minute. We were painfully aware that we were the ones who had nothing. He was just too cheap to buy a turkey. What earned him the nickname “Zip Daddy” in the first place? I’m mentally blocking the memory, but I can tell you that even after he died, whenever we needed to describe any situation that involved the utter absence of luck, we’d say something like, “I had three numbers on the lotto, but when the fourth ball dropped I came up zip daddy.”

  Pop’s favorite phrase was “Why me?” It’s the same question we asked ourselves. Because that’s another thing: Not only didn’t Pop know much about pop culture, he didn’t know what being a normal (or rather typical) father meant, either. Instead of taking me fishing, for example, he would just drive me around, asking “What is human consciousness, anyway?” of various traffic lights, looking up at them swinging up there over the middle of the road, hoping for some epiphanal answer. Which may explain my attempts to exorcize my demons by becoming a writer: to finally answer those questions, along with “who are we?” and “w
hy are we here?” Of course if Pop had been an astrophysicist or philosophy professor, I might have followed in his shoes, and by now I’d have tenure. Since he was just a nutty cab driver, here I am instead, in middle age, and all I really have to show for it is three drawers full of mismatched socks.

  If at this point you still don’t know why I don’t like sports, let me also add that I went on a camping trip once, at age thirteen, with a forty year old coach and Sunday school teacher who liked boys as much as Jerry Sandusky. Maybe more. (I’m not sure, since I never met Jerry, and so was never one of Jerry’s kids.)

  Anyway, I’ve been ostracized and discriminated against over my lack of knowledge or interest in sports ever since. Labeled and threatened, I am well aware now that, like the author of “The Satanic Verses,” my very attempt at suggesting anything remotely offensive to sports zealots is tantamount to raising a Swastika at the Olympic Games and whispering “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think” to the man next to me. (Just like Hitler whispered to Goebbels before cutting a decathlon loser off at the knees for wearing a green pin-striped shirt.)

  About my penning this twisted memoir, I should confess that I first tried to save my doomed soul by coming up with the Great American Sports Novel, but didn’t have much luck at starting it since the ghosts of dead literary greats wanted to influence my writing hand.

  . . .A vast plain of undulating grass mirrored the rolling clouds as the wagon caravan arrowed westward. . .

  Nope, sounds a little too much like Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!”

  . . .And then he saw it, revealed in a monster wave through which the setting sun heliographed. . . the great white whale’s flukes. . .

  Uh-uh. Reads like one of Melville’s fishy fish tales.

  . . .The ball struck the bat and burst open, propelled forward as from a cannon, trailing twine and ripped leather as it. . .

  Forget about it. Baseball is about stats and salaries, now. Who gets traded for whom, and for how much. Which loyal city loses their greedy ball team to a bigger stadium with the fatter tax base elsewhere. So as I putter my way along the back nine toward a big-mouthed clown at the end of the 18th green, I’ve mercifully come to realize that while I wasn’t given a privileged childhood, replete with expensive toys and the trappings of luxury, (or even a traditional upbringing involving mini-van rides to soccer practice), I was allowed to play with other nerds in the neighborhood during a time when television (and parental fear of drive-by skeet fans) held less sway over our attention than reading comic books and making fake UFOs out of laundry bags and birthday candles. Consequently, the seeds of my atheism sprouted an imagination that grew in a way less likely to occur than had I watched the Dallas Cowboys (instead of reading about cowboys and Indians.) Meaning Pop, in the very act of depriving me of things most people think essential today (like Gameboys or lifetime subscriptions to ESPN and Sports Illustrated) gave me instead the moon, the stars, and a curiosity about my own mortality.

  Am I suggesting Zip Daddy wasn’t cheap, after all? Not at all. You have to have at least a few coins in your pocket to be cheap, and Pop thought it was more important to have something to say. He just didn’t know what, exactly. Neither do I, although I intend to say it anyway, despite the realities of the zombie marketplace, the full Nelson head lock of the NCAA. . .and the fact that better odds in achieving success can be realized by entering the Kentucky Derby with a plow horse. Mercy, please, because I really do wish I could put aside this blasphemous text and give people what they really want, which is a sure-fire serial killer sports epic featuring a vampire, a bad cop who’s a cross-dressing vampire, and a reality show memorabilia hoarder. Then maybe I’d really have something. Unfortunately, this is the only opening line I could come up with for the damn thing:

  . . .The chicken stared across the hot black asphalt road, its beak trembling fearfully at the approaching beer truck. . .

  CHAPTER 3: Witty Fatal Distraction

  I was in the air en route to Jamaica once when the guy next to me said: “We aliens like to fly first class.”

  I looked at him, closely. He winked. Twice. On the second wink I spewed the gin and tonic I’d been sipping all over him. Luckily, the old folks sitting across from us were asleep, precluding embarrassment. Although I did have a good excuse for it. After all, the guy doing the winking had two eyelids, the second resembling an icky green jelly-like membrane. Other than this rather minor oversight he could have passed for any shower curtain ring salesman.

  When I finally regained the ability to talk, I didn’t know what to say. The only other conversation we’d made up to that point concerned the perception of American tourists abroad—the cliché image of balding, middle aged men with camcorders around their neck, their oafish pomposity, and penchant for littering. Mentally tabulating my possible responses to this new and startling revelation, I formulated—in about 3.6 seconds—these alternatives:

  A) I could scream, causing plane wide panic.

  B) I could remain calm and go quietly insane.

  C) I could ask the creature what planet he was from.

  D) I could ask the stewardess for a gin and tonic.

  I chose D.

  “Good choice,” said the alien, when the stewardess finally arrived. To her he said: “Make mine a double orange juice, and just keep his coming.”

  As it turned out, he was from the planet Thurbann in the Vega system. He’d landed on Earth in a plastic water bottle-fueled ramjet which dropped out of warp drive in the vicinity of Neptune, and he claimed to have coasted to Earth and set down in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives. Now he was just sightseeing—which apparently is what Thurbannese do best. Consequently, when I mentioned that I’d never been to Jamaica, he replied: “That’s amazing. I’ve seen everything there is to see on MY home planet.”

  “Really?” I said, excitedly. “What’s it like?”

  “Pretty boring. Most of our planet is covered by water three feet deep. No volcanoes, mountains, canyons, nothing. We live far underground, where everyone pretty much says what they think. Which isn’t much, being sports fans.”

  “What do they eat on Thurbann?” I asked, intrigued.

  “DID, not DO. No one lives there during half of the solar year—which incidentally is about three hundred of your Earth years. We’re on an elliptical orbit, you understand. In our winter, when temperatures drop about two degrees cooler than summer, we all leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, because the oceans freeze. When what you would call fish merely hibernate. But of course the flying turtles take to the air and use the time to reproduce.”

  “Flying turtles?”

  “Topaus. They’re what we hunt and eat. It’s not fair to hunt them when they can’t hide, so there’s an expensive license for the top one percent who can afford it, and a ban for everyone else. Won’t be open season on them for another hundred years.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Like sea turtles in a way, only their flippers are bigger. Over the ages they’ve adapted, you see. History has it the oceans were once deeper. Maybe even as deep as two miles.”

  I gasped. “What happened to all that water?”

  “Well, one theory has it some ice skaters from a very dry neighboring star cluster have been visiting Thurbann for ages. They arrive during our winter when we’re gone and take home ‘souvenirs’ as you would say. Couple thousand years more of this and ours will be a desert planet. Already we got ozone holes all over the place, and global melting.”

  “So the loss of water means. . .”

  “Since we have no temperature variations and therefore no thunderstorms and lightning to produce ozone like you do, less water to us means less of our oxygen producing plankton. And more holes for radiation. More radiation and it’s the end. Our turtles are doomed. Ergo, we are doomed. That is, unless we can restore the water somehow. You know—find a planet somewhere that has ice caps and a population too addicted to sports to notice that the
ir water levels aren’t rising very fast because we’re stealing it. See how it works?”