Put Away Your White Shoes

Labor Day! What a concept. We celebrate having jobs by not going to work although plenty of people still have to work. Like nurses and firemen and baseball players. And mattress salesmen, because we don�t seem to be able to have a federal holiday without mattress sales.

BTW, I don�t know what my sleep number is. Do you? Why does everything need to be quantified?

And speaking of mattresses...

It was a quiet, rainy weekend with just Michael and me at home. We went out to dinner one night and spent some quality time swapping massages and body fluids, but mostly I spent a lot of time lying on my bed and looking at the ceiling fan go round and round. Sort of like the opening scene of �Apocalypse Now.�

If it is quiet and rainy and Hawk is out of town and the two of you are fighting all the time, I don�t recommend listening to Tchaikovsky, especially the 6th Symphony. He was a notoriously morose queer, despite �The Waltz of the Flowers � and all that happy dancing candy in the �Nutcracker� Lovely painful stuff, Tchaikovsky, but listening to him is like a sore tooth that you keep tonguing to see if it still hurts.

And have you heard that it wasn�t really cholera that killed him, rather it was suicide over a failed love affair with a Russian prince?

In a �Farewell to Arms� kinda moment, the Royals �died� 3 times in the rain. Ok, not really died but they lost 3 games in a row. In the rain.

Michael and I watched �Eight Men Out� on Bravo last night. It�s an excellent historical account of how the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series. The good guys don�t win and it doesn�t contain a single baseball clich� which makes it a rare baseball film. Great performance by John Cusack as the player that didn�t take the money. �

Justin�s Top 10 Baseball Movies, clich�s and all:

1. �Bull Durham�, sexy and funny about life at the sub-major league level. Miss Susan Sarandon was never foxier.

2. �Pride of the Yankees�: Lou Gehrig faces death with considerable courage and still considers himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Babe Ruth plays himself. Gary Cooper plays Lou.

3. �Field of Dreams�: Baseball as a metaphor for life. A classic once you get over Kevin Costner hearing voices in the corn

4. �The Natural:� Robert Redford is outstanding as an aging ballplayer trying to make a comeback. Can you ever forget the image of him smashing the lights and rounding the bases?

5. �Major League� Laugh your Ass off funny.

6. �Damn Yankees�: A musical about baseball with Bob Fosse choreography.. What�s not to love? Even gay guys like this one. �You Gotta Have Heart!�

7. �A League of Their Own�: Ladies Night at the Ballpark.

8. �Bang the Drum Slowly": Another dying ballplayer and not a dry eye in the place.

9. �The Bingo Long traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings�: Everything you need to know about the Negro Leagues. Funny, but with depth

10. �The Bad News Bears�: Damn funny movies about Little League, where it all begins.

Honorable Mention: Tony Perkins in �Fear Strikes Out� and �Ferris Bueller�s Day Off �

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