Friday, July 21, 2006

the lion king, the one bar in the salt lake city airport, the barry bonds apologist

In 1990, Sheila accepted a job in Jacksonville, and the Papelbons moved to Florida. It was a difficult time for all of them, but especially for Jonathan, who was 10. After all, the twins had each other.

"One day," Sheila recalls, "and this was so sad, Jonathan came home from school and said, 'You know what? I wish I was a twin, because then I would always have a best friend.'"


From a Boston Globe Magazine cover story back in March, which can be read here. And yeah, I'm a big girl's blouse, but the idea of ten-year-old Paps without any friends is pretty sad, though the forced exile in Jacksonville does remind me of something else:

Brad Neeley would say that lions are just lions, and gods are just gods, and the PM would say that the lion/Christ figure that the young Jonathan Papelbon most closely resembles is Simba, the tragic Hamlet from The Lion King. See, look, the resemblance is really uncanny. I dare you not to notice the next time he's prowling around up there on Pride Rock the pitching mound.

***

As the three-point bio on our profile page indicates, I am both a west coast expat Red Sox convert and one of the last three Barry Bonds fans. I've returned to the motherland for a couple days, and while it's nice to be back in the warm bosom of Barry apologists (this article was waiting for me on the front of the sports page of the local paper), I kept the Red Sox close to my heart in my travels.

(If you're gonna ask why I'm a Barry Bonds apologist, don't bother. The secret to staying one is to never attempt to justify yourself ever. I cried when the man's father died, okay? My blind spot when it comes to Barry Bonds is, well, roughly the size of his head at this point.)

Reason why I love living in Boston, #4356: Watched the game through the sixth inning at the Game On in Terminal A (lots of TVs, beers not too terribly over-priced for an airport bar, A++ would definitely afternoon binge drink there again), got on the plane with the score still tied, figured I'd just find a TV showing ESPN while changing planes in Salt Lake. While de-boarding, I called my gay disaffected hipster coworker for reasons relating to the in-flight movie sucking like Rudy Seanez. (It was She's the Man -- hey! Maybe Rudy Seanez is actually Amanda Bynes in drag!) As I was walking through the Salt Lake airport, I mentioned that I was worried I wasn't going to be able to find a bar to check the Sox score, because it's, you know, Salt Lake. Gay disaffected hipster coworker, the person least likely know any baseball score ever, said, "Oh, hang on, I'll find out," and then called out, "Hey, who won the game?" in the general direction of a group of guys standing around on the Northeastern campus, who informed him, of course, that the Sox won 6-4. Red Sox Nation: it's not just a marketing ploy, it really is a way of life.

Eventually, I did find a bar, and sat down just in time to see this, which was almost enough to soften the blow of Utah regulation 4% beer.

Anyway, that's all the news from California. If I could see tonight's game, it'd still be on at 7:00 PM for me, but, sadly, it's not to be. Still, we will be seeing the game in Oakland on Monday. (Yeah, I purposefully timed a visit to my parents' with a Sox visit to my parents' neck of the woods, you wouldn't have done the same thing?) Look for me, I'll be deep in enemy territory with a sign that says "Hey Remdawg, tell Hazel Mae I said hi!"

5 Comments:

At 11:35 PM, Blogger lauren said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 11:37 PM, Blogger lauren said...

"Yeah, I purposefully timed a visit to my parents' with a Sox visit to my parents' neck of the woods, you wouldn't have done the same thing?"

I do the same thing when I go to my mother's house in Baltimore. Can't hurt...

 
At 9:54 AM, Blogger always thinking about papelbon said...

Hey, if I had a home to time visits to that had a team that wasn't, you know, this one, I'd totally do it.

(-katie)

 
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