2001-06-18 - 2:17 p.m.
Currently in the CD player: Chumbawumba, Tubthumper. I bought this one back in 1997 and, like a lot of my music purchases, it got listened to a few times and then languished in my CD collection for years waiting for me to rediscover it. I�m not often in the mood for happy-sounding dance-pop by gay British Marxists, but when I am, these folks tickle me in all the right places. Perfect music to copyedit by.
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A couple of quick diary recommendations: Turtleguy and Monitor.
Judging from recent e-mails, I�ve picked up quite a following among precisely the sort of people I�d expected to run screaming from this diary: angst-ridden postadolescents with too much time on their hands and too little sense of irony. (I�m guessing all that pain and melodrama weighs so heavily on them that they can�t get out of bed in the morning without someone kicking their asses--hey, glad to be of service.) Not these two, though. They get it, and in a big way.
You�ll both make fine overlords for your respective cities. Your official Team Miguelito steel-toed jackboots and aviator glasses are in the mail.
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I love San Diego. Have I mentioned that recently?
Saturday was the fifth anniversary of my arrival here, and I celebrated by watching the Padres lose, again. About the only excitement came in the eighth inning when a fistfight broke out right behind me. Padres fans hardly ever fight--they�re too mellow. The only other time I�ve seen anyone come close to fisticuffs at a baseball game here was with some Yankees fans at Game 3 of the 1998 World Series, and in that case the Padres fan involved wussed out and ran complaining to the usher that the New Yorkers were "mocking" him. Good fucking grief, Charlie Brown ... I wanted to punch him for that.
Over the weekend ZZYZX asked me how the Padres manage to sell out so many home games each season when the team looks so pitiful on the field so much of the time. There�s no easy answer to that question--unconditional love for the Padres is so much a part of the whole gestalt of San Diego that being a fair-weather fan is unthinkable. (Contrast that with the Chargers, who are widely loathed, largely because the players are cocky shits who don�t earn their huge salaries and the team�s owner is a full-blown asshole who blackmailed the city into subsidizing the cost of unsold tickets.) Beyond that, I think it boils down to:
1) They give out lots of freebies at games. Saturday was Trevor Hoffman Button-Down Jersey night, for example. As a friend of mine once put it, "Just what I need, more corporate swag."
2) San Diego thinks it�s still a small town. It�s in total denial about being the sixth biggest city in the U.S. Thus it relates to the Padres as if they were a small-town AAA team rather than a major-league franchise--and considering how closely their playing resembles that of a minor-league team, this is probably a good thing.
3) San Diegans love the Padres because they�re not the Dodgers.
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Another reason I love this town: I was at Target yesterday and I saw an electric quesadilla maker for sale. I almost bought the thing just so I could say I had one; unfortunately I needed a new food processor more.
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