Forty years ago today-- the Sex Pistols release "God Save The Queen"

Sometime during the 1979-80 school year, when I was eleven or twelve, my older brother returned home from college in Colorado, where he was a freshman and hating it. When he’d gone off in the fall, Clark had had shoulder-length hair and was listening to the Marshall Tucker Band, the Eagles, and the Who; when he came back home, his hair was half an inch long, and he was wearing cracked mirrored sunglasses and an amused snarl. One day during his visit, Clark told me I needed to call the KSHE Radio request line and ask for a particular song to be played. At the time (and probably to this day), KSHE played “Real Rock Radio” and was where white St. Louis went to hear Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Charlie Daniels, Steely Dan, and Yes—it was, at my brother’s insistence throughout high school, the only radio station we ever listened to on family car trips. Now here was Clark wanting me to call up these arbiters of dinosaur rock taste and request some song with bad words in it he'd heard about while away at college. As the younger brother who always wanted to be included in any mischief and mayhem, I was eager to comply.

I’m not sure I actually remember placing the phone call, so I always imagine my fingers shaking as I dialed and my voice cracking as I asked the man who answered the phone on the other end of the line, “Can you play ‘God Save the Queen’ by the Sex Pistols?” But I have no trouble recalling his response— he quickly shouted “Fuck you!” and crashed the phone down. Needless to say, I was thrilled—what powers had I just unleashed? What was this music that made grown men cuss out little kids over the phone just for requesting it? I hadn’t even heard the song yet, but I knew was hooked.

I saw the St. Louis Cardinals play the Seattle Mariners, Part Three

What I saw: the St. Louis Cardinals play the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field. The Cardinals hit six solo home runs from the sixth inning on and won 11-6.

 

What I wore: black Nike sneakers (same as the previous day), tan Levi's jeans (same as two days before), light red Arizona Cardinals t-shirt, faded blue Cardinals hat.

What I did beforehand: continued a multi-day conversation/argument on the phone with my older brother about whether St. Louis is the most racist place in the United States and how that impacts rooting for the Cardinals. (My argument, which I'm not sure my brother ultimately agreed with, involved a complicated, lengthy cooking analogy about how the basic ingredients of racism-- political disenfranchisement, economic oppression, threats of or actual violence by the police or white citizens, etc.-- exists everywhere in this country, but that each local area combines them in a slightly different recipe based upon local conditions. So while the racist stew dished out by the white people of St. Louis may be particularly repulsive, it's not necessarily all that different or worse than a similar city such as Cincinnati or Baltimore. My brother's argument involved a lengthy list of all the horrible things that have ever happened in St. Louis.)

Who went with me: my friends Dorothy and Paul, whose daughter went to preschool with my daughter almost twenty years ago.

How I got tickets: Mariners ticket office-- the friendly ticket agent helped me choose different but excellent seats for all three games.

Why I saw this game: I've loved the Cardinals ever since I was a little kid. There were a lot of other Cardinals fans there as well.

Pretty much everybody in red in this picture is a Cardinals fan.

Where I sat: section 245, row 2, seat 12. These seats were in the club section, which has it's own concessions area and padded, slightly-wider seats. There were ushers who would take your order and bring food to your seat if you wanted (we didn't). The bathrooms in our section, though, were some of the dirtiest I've ever seen at Safeco Field.

Things that were sad: one of my all-time favorite Mariners, injury-plagued Franklin Gutierrez, hit a three-run home run in the sixth inning to tie the game at 6-6. 

Things that were funny: the Mariners gave all dads belated Fathers Day barbeque tongs.

If you weren't a dad, you couldn't get one

Things that were not funny: the people behind me had a long conversation with a young man who seemed to be some sort of relative (but maybe not a son) about how to choose a fraternity when he heads off to college.

What it is: a satisfying ending to a weekend spent watching baseball.

Who should see it: me and my friends and the chatty Mariners fan who sat in front of us who once worked for a year-and-a-half in St. Louis for the circulation department of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

What I saw on the way home: a lot of people were leaving Seattle Pride at the same time that the game ended, so the light rail was very crowded (but not as crowded as some train riders (who were telling people on the platform not to try to get on) seemed to think). 

(Thanks to How Way Leads On To Way for the inspiration.)

Go watch this movie right now.

Other than a very successful baseball team and the alleged invention of both the hot dog and the ice cream cone, there was little to be proud of about St. Louis when I was growing up there. Imagine my surprise when I grew up and discovered that, for many historians, political scientists, public policy experts, architects, and others, St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe housing project had come to symbolize all that was wrong with public housing and government anti-poverty programs. For years, I knew little about Pruitt-Igoe other than that it was demolished in the early-1970s leaving behind an large series of completely empty blocks. This movie did a fantastic job in getting past the myths and uncovering the system of racism, oppression, and neglect that resulted in Pruitt-Igoe. Go watch this movie right now.

Picture of the day

Elsewhere on the internet

This summer Deadspin.com has been running a regular feature about major league baseball stadiums called Why Your Stadium Sucks. In honor of the All-Star Game, this week's column featured the new Busch Stadium, and it also included a contribution from one of the folks here at Ape Canyon News Service. (Keep reading - you will find it.)

Most of the installments in this series actually talk about the stadiums themselves, but this one focuses on the St. Louis fans, who are widely rumored to be the "Best Fans in Baseball."

For the record, here is my personal list of the most shameful moments in Cardinals fan history:

• Redbird fans boo Garry Templeton and Keith Hernandez on their returns to St. Louis after being traded;
• St. Louis welcomes and embraces slugger Mark McGwire;
• Fans throw cowbells and other objects at the San Francisco Giants outfielder Jeff Leonard during the 1987 National League Championship series.

Abandoned Books and/or Movies #3

Sometimes when you are reading a book, you realize that you want to stop. Sometimes that happens with movies, too. Here are some recent examples:

Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass. Famous German author admits that he voluntarily signed up for the Waffen-SS as a youth during World War II.

The Black Arrow by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Adventure story set in England during the War of the Roses. I read it once as a kid. I have tried (and failed) twice as an adult.

Rebels Without Borders by Marc Vachon. True story of a Canadian hoodlum who becomes a logistics expert for an international medical relief organization. Not as interesting as it might sound.

Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball's Most Enigmatic Slugger by Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg. Discussed elsewhere.

The Italian Job. Boring movie from 1969 that was remade into another boring movie in 2003. I actually have watched the 2003 version twice but could not quite make it through the 1969 one.

Escape from New York. Way back when, movie director John Carpenter needed to find a place that looked like Manhattan would look if they turned it into an island prison colony run by the prisoners and then the prisoners went wild. He chose downtown St. Louis, which is the only reason I would ever watch this movie. I fell asleep on the couch about halfway through.

Below- downtown St. Louis

The Sixth Man: A Season Inside the NBA Playground by Chris Palmer. Do you know those little, tiny square candy bars that are about two centimeters across? This book has the same relationship to a real basketball book that a little, tiny square candy bar has to a real, full-size candy bar. (The "season" in question is 2004-2005.)

A Sad Death Goes Practically Unnoticed

Last month, St. Louis Steamers' superstar goalie Slobo Ilijevski died while playing in a men's over 55 soccer tournament in Bellingham, WA, an hour north of Seattle. Slobo was playing in the United States Adult Soccer Association (USASA) Veteran's Cup for the Kutis team, which represented Missouri in the tournament. Slobo began to suffer pain after making a save and doctors discovered he had ruptured the wall of his aorta. He died several hours later.

I have many fond memories of the Steamers, St. Louis' franchise in the MISL (Major Indoor Soccer League), as do many, many people from St. Louis. With Slobo as goalie, the Steamers reached the MISL finals three times ('81, '82, and '84) and were consistent fan favorites. I am sure Slobo will be sorely missed by his numerous family members, friends, and fans.

One disturbing aspect of this sad event, however, is that it received absolutely no mention outside of the St. Louis media (for an article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, click here : http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/othersports/story/1D15C6881E34DEB38625748700558F82?OpenDocument.) Neither of the daily Seattle newspapers (the Times and the Post-Intelligencer) nor the Bellingham Herald mentioned the event, and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, the official website of the United States Adult Soccer Association made no mention at all of the fact that a player in one of their tournaments (who was also an MISL superstar!) had died while playing in a match.

Even if many choose not to acknowledge the untimely death of this outstanding goalie, we here at Ape Canyon News Service would like to take a moment to recognize the passing of a St. Louis sports legend.

Two zambonis cleaning a dimly-lit ice rink

Watch as two zambonis clean the ice between periods at the ice arena in St. Louis. What do they call the arena - the Savis Center, ScottTrade Arena, Kiel Auditorium, the Checkerdome? What periods was it between? I have no idea - the Blues were playing Nashville on April 1, 2008. They went up 3-0 early, but lost 4-3 in overtime. That's just what happened.