Archive for Boughten

Recently, in these electronic pages, the author drove significantly more traffic than usual by means of a post alerting the public to five ballcaps of great merit available (at that time) on internet auction house eBay.com. What follows represents a nakedly desperate attempt to re-create that rare success.

To wit:

Montreal Expos 20th Anniversary Hat (Link)
Style: Snapback
Time Left: 28 days, 23 hours
Cost: US $25.00 (Buy It Now)

Some will argue that beauty is subjective. Ancient mathematician Euclid, who explored in some depth the idea of the Golden Ratio, would argue that those people are super wrong. What else he’d probably argue is that, among all the ballcaps currently available on eBay, this vintage and white Expos one is manifestly the most appealing. Of note for potential buyers: there’s no indication from the relevant auction page whether Jonah Keri is or isn’t included in the purchase price.

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This bassist actually appears to know a little bit what love is.

Much like the various members of popular British-American rock band Foreigner, I have often wanted to know what love is. Nor, as is the case with Mick Jones et al., have I neglected to ask this or that individual to provide a simple, illustrative demonstration of same (i.e. love).

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Annotated racking information c/o the USPS and Carson Cistulli’s boundless imagination.

Sometimes it’s the case in this world that, if you ask, you also shall receive. This post is an example of a different thing, however — namely, of not asking, but receiving anyway.

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The tracking number has been obscured, in case murderers read this.

A lot of people email me or contact me by way of social media because they’re interested in how a successful and handsome and talented and handsome Real Author conducts his affairs.

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It’s a truth as old as time, if not somehow older: the most immediate way to apprise the world of one’s virtues as a human person is not by means of wealth or education or spiritual excellence, but rather by the purchase and then subsequent vesting of an excellent ballcap.

In the service of doing that exact thing, the author has recently inspected popular online retailer eBay with a view towards identifying those ballcaps which might most ably cultivate a sense of what Andre Breton referred to as “the marvelous” and what Kanye West referred to more recently, probably, as “a celebration.”

Anderson Lawmen New Era Hat (Link)
Style: Fitted (7 3/8)
Time Left: 19 days, 8 hours
Cost: US $29.99 (Buy It Now)

The Lawmen, according to Baseball Reference, were an Indiana-based independent-league team which belonged, first, to the Mid-America League and then, after that, the Heartland League. I have it on decent, if not good, authority that anyone who wears this hat is automatically deputized in whichever municipality he currently resides.

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Because the waking life holds nothing for me, I took an afternoon nap recently. Within the gauzy bounds of that nap, I learned that Pedro Martinez, baseball merchant of the sublime, had recorded and released a country music album. I purchased and downloaded it but — in keeping with the general state of shit — I woke up before I could listen to it.

I was so struck by this dream that I hinted at it to the world …

Pedro Martinez Country Music Album.

— Dayn Perry (@daynperry) November 2, 2013

This was at once a statement of fact, the first entry on a list of demands and — like all forms of communication — a distress signal. As badly as I wanted Pedro Martinez Country Music Album to exist, I might as well wish for an electric sandwich.

Things as they are, I am left with nothing but remnants in the foul-smelling penumbrae of my imagination …

In Donald Barthelme’s “How I Write My Songs,” whomp-whomp is a refrain, and so the title of one track on Pedro Martinez Country Music Album will be “Whomp-Whomp,” which could be a thinly veiled song about coitus — suggestive yet necessary, like a bra. “Got Damn, Woman” will be another track, honky-tonkish in execution. “Funeral for a Mockingbird” is yet another, acoustic until Pedro himself drifts in with the pedal steel in the second verse. “Angina in Carolina” is his hymn to long-haul truckers. During production, Pedro used accomplished Nashville session players, I feel sure.

I know little else about Pedro Martinez Country Music Album. It visited me in a dream, is all.

Doctor Cyclops, by Will Johnson

When I am sad, I like to spend money. Because I am often sad, I am in big time mondo debt, as many of you know. At the moment, my cash flow is such that I cannot purchase any of these high quality screen print reproductions of Will Johnson’s baseball paintings — which I happened upon while learning more about Johnson’s recent musical project, Overseas, a collaboration with David Bazan of Pedro the Lion “fame” and the Kandane brothers of my [probably] favorite band ever, Bedhead (more recently of The New Year).

But that doesn’t mean that you should not buy these prints — or the very painting themselves! — dear affluent and/or fiscally responsible NotGraphs readers.

Look, you cannot take your money to the grave with you. Well, you could, but you can’t spend it from the grave. You could save it to give to your children, but let’s face it: your children will probably be jerks who don’t deserve an inheritance of significance, or they will be far wealthier than you, or both. Should they be neither, they will probably be the kind of people who would like to inherit a nice baseball painting or a high quality screen print of a nice baseball painting.

When you have grown putrid and reek also of antiquated ointments, you will be able to look upon these paintings and feel comforted: the Greats have preceded you in death; to yield to death is to follow their greatness in the only regard that you will ever manage to do so. You will be able to look at these paintings or prints one day and die consoled. In the meantime, you will enjoy their colors, the memories they evoke, a feeling of connection with other discerning baseball fans, one of whom produced these pieces of art, others of whom have similarly made the wise decision to purchase some of said pieces.

Let’s face it: you should spend your money on these things.

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It’s not really important how events conspired to have me stumble upon and examine like a jewelry appraiser this seemingly valueless 1990 Fleer Johnny Ray card …

Johnny Damn Ray! Since tradition demands that you can liken a player only to another player of similar ethnic extraction, I’ll point out that Johnny Ray was Ray Durham before there was any such thing as Ray Durham.

But here’s the point of all this. Take a look at the flip-side …

Please do note the “Vital Signs” section at the bottom. That, friends, is OBP and SLG — the good two-thirds of our cherished triple slash! The miracle is that this happened, as implied above, in 1990, when everyone was stupid.

I like to think it was Hermes Fleer himself who insisted on deviating from the de rigueur AVG-HR-RBI trinity that prevailed in his industry.

“Cistulli,” I said. “How do you like my new Hiroshima Carp fashion t-shirt?”

“Bah,” sniffed Cistulli. “I am a proud and relentless Occidental. I care not for those at the poo end of the spice-trade routes. They are beneath me. Literally. For look at this elderly Japanese man ‘neath my boot-heel.”

I noticed that there was indeed a elderly Japanese man struggling and purpling over underneath Cistulli’s awful stilettos.

“But Cistulli,” I said. “The Japanese play a unique and compelling brand of baseball. Surely you would agree that, considering our game’s global reach, talents from the Pacific Rim will continue to enrich the U.S. major leagues.”

“For God and country,” he whispered as he increased the pressure on the windpipe of the elderly Japanese man to the point of death and then beyond that point. “Now, that’s better.”

“Cistulli,” I said. “Look at the Carp’s logo. Is it not pleasing whimsy? Is it not prepossessing in its use of fractals?”

“To piping-hot hell with the lot of them,” sniffed Cistulli. “Foreordination favors those who look like brawny and alabaster me!”

Then he ravished me.

Via a series of Action-News FOIA Requests, your correspondent was able to steal a glimpse of Banknotes Harper’s Amazon.com shopping cart. Presented largely without comment, here is said cart …

Banknotes Harper’s levels of discretionary income barely felt a thing. Fuckers.