The Sedated Ape

Popeye had four nephews.   One of which was named “Poopeye”.

Really.

When I was little my dad gave me some advice I still remember. 

He told me, “Son, you just cant fight city hall.  The city hall is actually a building, and as such,  it’s unable to  take part in any  fight.   Sure,  you could get a bunch  of diesel fuel and fertilizer and blow up city hall, but that would  really be considered more of a terrorist attack or an unauthorized demolition than a “fight” .

I think there’s a lot of truth in that

Two bits of advice for the aspiring comic book villain

1) Have you noticed that whenever you try to shoot Batman in the chest the bullets just  bounce off? Try aiming for his mouth or chin.

2) All superheroes seem to only have just the one outfit. Try to plan your biggest capers so that they take place on laundry day.

I have a new rare type of agoraphobia. That’s what they call it when someone is afraid to  leave their house. 

What makes mine different is that I’m afraid to leave Tom Bosley’s house.

So far he’s been very understanding about the whole thing

Neither of us is exactly sure how I ended up there in the first place.  I just woke up one day and there I was.

I didn’t know until today, but we have a “Safe Haven” law here. That’s where they make it legal for parents to leave their unwanted children  at any hospital and they’ll take care of them  - no questions asked.  

It’s  a good idea,  and it probably has saved some lives.

On the other hand it is pretty embarrassing …  I mean I am 34 years old. 

The guys at the hospital were nice  – They offered me some free coffee and they let me hang out in the ER waiting room, but they weren’t sure what else they could do for me.  The whole thing felt pretty awkward to all of us.

After awhile I just decided to leave and  walked  back home

You know how sometimes when someone writes an editorial or makes a blog entry they call it an “open” letter?  This is useful, because otherwise no one would know if it’s okay  read that section of the newspaper or not.

This isn’t one of those. 

This is a  private personal  letter to Vince Naimoli, the owner of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.  So if you re reading this and you’re anyone other than Vince Naimoli please stop  right now.  He doesn’t go around  reading  your  mail.  Probably.  Respect the man’s  privacy.

Vince,

This past off season you changed your team’s name from “Tampa Bay Devil Rays” to just the “Tampa Bay Rays”.

This was a mistake. 

A devil ray is a scary sounding animal,  and that makes for a good team name. 

Plus,  each half of the team’s name  had the same amount of syllables.  It sounded nice that way. Shorting it to “Rays”screws that up.

A name change was a good idea, but you chose the wrong part to change.  You should have changed the “Tampa Bay” part.

I’ll explain…

This is a satellite photo of Tampa Bay. Do you notice that there is a lot of blue in the picture? That’s because it’s water.  You don’t play your home games in a large body of water.  Good thing too – parking would be a nightmare.

This is a picture of Tampa. You don’t play there either.

This is a picture of St. Petersburg . Do you see that round thing in the photo?  That’s your stadium.

I’m sure you’re a very busy man, and I know that the owner of a baseball team can’t be expected to worry about all the small details. 

Still, it has been ten years and someone really should have brought the  location of the franchise to your attention by now.

 Regards,

Tony

PS – You never should have retired Wade Boggs number.  He only played a season and a half for you. When people think of Wade Boggs they aren’t thinking about the Devil Rays.  it makes you seem a little desperate for someone to honor.

When I was a kid  I somehow got the words “narcolepsy” and “necrophilia” confused in my mind. 

This was before the age of the internet when you can find MUCH more than you’d ever want to know about either subject.

Then one day  in class my teacher mentioned that her husband had narcolepsy. I was stunned. I remember asking her if she knew that before they got married and why would anyone stay married to someone who’s like that.

You never look at your fifth grade social studies teacher the same way again after you find out that her husband likes screwing corpses.

 …way to give ‘em Hell Angry Fish!

In Australia,  farting is called “shooting a fairy”.

Down the street there’s a sign that says “Deaf Child At Play”.  But the family with the deaf kid moved away last year. They took the kid with them, but they left their sign here.  

This bothers me for two reasons. One:  It seems fraudulent.  A  sign like that makes everyone in the neighborhood liars.  Two: it seems  like a waste of a perfectly good deaf kid sign.

I  tried calling the city to see if they could do anything about it, but  I looked in the phone book for hours searching  for a listing for “The City”.   It’s just not there. I decided that if anyone is going to do anything about the fraudulent sign, I probably would have to do it myself.  So I did.

What I decided to do is this: Once I week I round up  some deaf children  (They’re easy  to catch. They can’t hear you sneaking up on them) and bus them into the neighborhood so they can play by the sign for about an hour so before I ship them all back home.  This way the sign would be honest again.

I used to join in the “fun” with the kids, but I don’t anymore. I found out that most of the best games  don’t  really work very well when you’re playing them  with a bunch of deaf kids.  The “Marco Polo” game never even  got off the ground .  Then we tried playing “Red Rover” but that was a bust too. We just ended up standing in two lines holding hands and staring at each other  until we all started to die a little inside.