Cardboard Links, 2.15.09
February 15, 2009Sunday morning, praise the dawning
It’s just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning, Sunday morning
It’s just the wasted years so close behind
–The Velvet Underground
“Sunday Morning”
What to do, Sunday morning, the wasted years so close behind? Same thing as always: Read the funnies. Read the sports.
First, a combination of the two, for those not lucky enough to have yet found their way to wezen-ball‘s recollection of the greatest home run chase of all time: Snoopy taking on the Babe.
Sunday, of course, is well-known among spiritually unaffiliated journeymen such as myself for being a day of crushing existential nothingness. If you suffer from this malady, and Snoopy didn’t quite bring you out of it, then probably nothing can. But if you can’t beat existential nothingness you might as well join it with Garfield Minus Garfield.
Then, on to the sports pages. They’re pretty rich for the baseball fans of the world right now, what with spring training and all its many “everything will be wonderful for everyone” stories. Ever since The Griddle sadly came to an end, I have come to rely on Shysterball even more heavily than ever for all the baseball news that matters. Shysterball’s sole dynamo of high-quality content-production, Craig Calcaterra, sums up the enjoyable nature of this time of year for baseball fans in a post that includes this perfect Sunday morning prayer:
“Please, for a little while, deliver us from meaning, baseball.”
The hope of spring and youth and new beginnings is all well and good, but I’m a backward-looking fellow, and the sports stories that always eased the pain of empty Sunday the most, even when I was kid, were the ones that answered the question “Where are they now?”
I am going to try to make that question as it pertains to players that have been featured on this site a regular feature of the Cardboard Links posts. I figured I better start things off by considering the whereabouts of the most important duo to have graced these pages. Whither Pole and Lacock?
Finally, if you’ve read everything there is to read and still feel like you’re, you know, stuck in Lodi, then there’s always the time-killing diversion of watching idiots make fools of themselves on the internet. The video below is as good a place as any to start, I guess. I happen to have it on good information that it was recorded last night by someone who has had the tune in his head for weeks and who was at the time enjoying the prelude to the head-pounding Sunday morning he is currently enduring.
Cardboard Gods 
Straightforward and heartfelt ….I dig it! A fitting epilogue, despite the intonation mutiny of the B and high E strings. And re: the cat; that’s the way to deal with a crowd walkout–keep rockin as you escort em to the door.
What a multimedia concept; “Cardboard Gods: The Opera”. It’s like that Bill Hicks cd Arizona Bay where he has musical interludes between bits to tie things together. Nice touch !
sthek: thanks for the kind words. I appreciate that. I have to admit that I don’t know what “intonation mutiny” is, but, boy, it doesn’t sound good, i.e., something I might think about trying to avoid in the future. What is it?
I did forego the key change in the last verse from the original recording of the song, but I figured if the guy in the video below can do the song without the key change, than it’s probably OK:
“Sunday, of course, is well-known among spiritually unaffiliated journeymen such as myself for being a day of crushing existential nothingness.”
for me, sunday is all about baseball (Sunday League Baseball) I’ve been doing it since I was 15 years old, don’t feel right if I don’t play on sundays…
by the way Josh, great signing man.
Speaking of baseball and Lodi, here’s a brief Fogerty interview touching on both of those subjects (among other things):
‘Intonation mutiny’ is when the strings , on their own of course, (I always blame the strings) veer out of tune.
I bet the surviving Creedence members would see the video in the link and think ‘NOW he skips the modulation. We worked all night on that’. As a kid trying to learn to play I used to think “man, that Tom Fogerty’s got the easiest job in the world” RIP.
Isn’t it amazing that the four Creedence albums most of the songs that live on are from (Bayou Country, Green River, Willie and the Poor Boys and cosmo’s Factory) were recorded within a period of about a year and a half?
Talk about being in a zone……
i would have dropped a few coins in your guitar case bud. i always appreciate the wandering troubadour. you should probably get on top of getting your new digital converter box so you can continue watching all of your favorite baywatch and seinfeld episodes. you have until june now though.
“Watch out, the world’s behind you”
sthek: “Talk about being in a zone……” So true. Fogerty was verging on Hank Williamsville with his gem-production rate there for a while.
baddude22: Astute observation, re: my old-school means of TV-reception. I have a rebate card for the converter box that’s been sitting on a counter for many weeks. One of these days I’ll get around to using it.
That was a decent enough cover.
Speaking of TV, I never had cable until I was forced into it by the Red Sox. I just didn’t watch much TV, but finally I couldn’t watch enough games and had to get the local cable station the Sox own.
Josh, from now on when I read your posts/stories, I will forever more picture a man playing a guitar sincerely.
sb1902 I was in the same position with the Dodgers. I just got tired of having to hang out at the bar every night in order to watch the game.
Sunday baseball notes in the globe & herald, one of the top 5 things I miss most about living on Boston. Yeah, they don’t feature Gammons anymore, and I can read them online, but it’s not the same as flipping through the sections and pulling out the sports pages. Especially now, with spring training underway. Fluff pieces galore about everybody being in great shape.
my favorite band covers ‘Sunday Morning’, and does a decent job at it
I would just like to add I haven’t laughed as hard as I just did in a long time when I read Garfield minus Garfield. And in regard to Mister Pole and Mister Lacock, if you ever get a chance to listen to Vin Scully call a Dodgers vs. Padres game, keep count on how many times he points out the Padres pitching coach Darren Balsley and the various activities he is doing. “And there’s Darren Balsley keeping an eye on his young pitcher, or Darren Balsley is about to get on the phone to the bullpen in a hurry.” He relishes saying his name whenever he gets the chance. Even my girlfriend notices it. Thanks for a wonderful post Josh and some good laughs!
A couple more “Sunday Morning” covers…
No surprise Beck pulls off a good one:
But I may like this one by an anonymous piano player even better, maybe because in the “more info” section she says “Yeah, I mess up. So what.”:
Thanks for the Garfield link. I haven’t laughed out loud in, like, 17 years. The streak is finally over!!