It's good to see you. Come on in, leave your shoes in the hallway, we've got fire on the stove preparing lunch for later. In the meantime, browse the bookshelves and plunk down on the sofa with one, or pick out some tunes from the music library or come in to the kitchen to help with the cooking. Our special blend of tea is steeping and will be right up.

Make yourself at home...

This weekend I was invited to an occasion I haven't been to in a long while: a good friend's bachelor party. Thankfully, being older, it was wasn't anything like those cheesy, tawdry stripper scenes I had been to in my 20's. Back then the debauchery would really kick in past the midnight hour and persist until usually after closing time. This time we were scheduled to meet at noon on a Sunday afternoon. We were going to a Mets game. Baseball instead of an eight ball.

Thing is I've sworn off pro sports for a while now. I don't think I've gone to more than two pro baseball games in the past 25 years. Which is incredible, when you consider that I've lived within a few miles literally of two major league baseball teams' stadiums for practically all of that time, and spent most of my childhood and adolescent summers at ball parks playing what was my favorite sport growing up.

The last time I was at a baseball game it turned out to be pretty significant: it was the final game of the 20th century. In late October of 1999 while working in the record industry I got a phone call while still at the office in the early evening from a radio promotion guy I knew. He told me that the person he was going to take to the Yankees game that night had to cancel and asked if I was available. I wasn't that into it, to be honest, but decided to go and wound up standing there in that stadium at the end of the century (with the Yankees sweeping a four-game series).

Baseball though for me, as I got older, was an easier sport to let go of, while football more and more completely captivated me. For the past decade, however, even and especially football has been more thoroughly infiltrated by corporate interests, covered up a brain damage scandal the game's increasing brutality was inflicting on its players, is heavily majority owned by racist RW oligarchs (Colin Kaepernick rates higher than most NFL starting QB's, but can't get a job?) and has become an un-ignorable vehicle for the military, police state, capitalism and nationalism - spinning the wheels of fascism for a mostly middle class white audience. As far as I'm concerned pro sports across the board, to varying degrees perhaps, have become fascistic.

So for the first time in a very long time I was about to go to a baseball game. In the ensuing period I'd become pretty cynical about the way in which society had been re-configured to reflect the acceptance of creeping fascism and the propaganda having a large hand in molding it. So when I go places these days it's often with the eye of a detached sociologist. Pro sports in American for the past couple of decades, and more so post-9/11, would be the envy of the Roman Empire who understood the power of bread and circuses. That said, I was excited to be there with a few really good friends who share my political views but are still sports fans.

A group of about 15 of us met outside the Jackie Robinson Rotunda where the New York Mets play baseball. I refuse to say the same of the current corporate criminals who have paid to have their namesake put on the place. Besides, as far as I'm concerned there was nothing wrong with Shea Stadium. Of course this was also the site of the largest single rock concert attendance up till that date when the Beatles played there are in 1965. Funny, that although I haven't seen a baseball game there in this new stadium I had been there twice to see concerts, ironically to see Paul McCartney.

First brush caught me off-guard. There was a live Asian musical group, a mix of ethnic and modern instruments, playing on a stage just in back of us. That was a nice nod, I thought, to the diversity of the neighboring community of Flushing, which is a very large and dense Asian community. Later on we found out it was Taiwan Day or something. Again, pretty cool; at least that it wasn't another corny, insufferable 80's band or something.

On the way up the escalator into the stadium, it's immediately apparent that these new ballparks, especially since MLB has been obsessed with tearing down and "upgrading" them, have the distinct feel of a shopping mall first and foremost. Before you even view the verdant, sprawling and manicured green field, of which that first glance upon is one of my favorite moments that just lingers, you have to pass a phalanx of non-stop merchandise kiosks and faux upscale eateries. The other thing they attempt to do, like the other new stadiums, is to recreate that pastime sense of genteel and bucolic summertime atmosphere that the sport is associated with. But it doesn't work. The application of a small patch of old-time exposed brick behind home plate and other faux legacy architecture are completely subsumed by the corporate behemoth upon which the stadium dominantly stands.

We took our seats in the hot sun and as anticipated, the first view of the broad, diamond-shaped field was enchanting. That feeling when you first set eyes on the baseball field is of timelessness and some sort of cultural glue - and it feels good and pure. All the more that the overwhelming commercialization and militarism is an encroachment on that experience is outright angering.

Encircling the entire top of the stadium were maybe a dozen American flags. If there was an American flag at the stadium when I was a kid it was usually in right or right-center filed near where the bullpen was. What's next, American flags all across the rooftops of our grade schools? The privileged seating, or sky boxes as I think the enclosed rooms with room service are called now, were in the mezzanine section, underwritten in large letters by an airline and a car company who paid for the placement. Advertising logos and ads seemed to be on every available wall surface throughout the corridors of the building. The logos continue screaming at you throughout the game too, emblazoned onto the whole of the curved outfield wall and continuing up onto the ascending levels of the stadium. The eye can barely rest on the field.

When it came time for the national anthem it was announced that it was sponsored by or had something to do with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Association. By the 3rd inning we were in for the next installment of the military industrial complex/police state. As the field crew came out to “drag the infield,” a Mets player appeared on the jumbo screen with an almost identical version of the two sentence hollow platitude politicians reflexively spout, about giving thanks to our men and woman in the military blah-blah-blah, free-dumb, "protect us," etc. Next thing we see is a decorated veteran in the flesh, in full military garb being presented some kind of plaque. The conditioned sheep respond by applauding mindlessly. I'm told this goes on at every single game. The communal 7th inning stretch is now prefaced by the overtly nationalistic, perfect prelude to declaring war, God Bless America, the saying of which always reminds me of George Carlin's bit.

And it costs money to be bombarded by this relentless fascist propaganda! Lots of money. We sat in the right field corner, and tickets still cost around $70. Parking is now $25! And even though I expected it on some level I was still aghast at just how many people were lining up to buy the corporate food at exorbitant prices. Want a hamburger and fries? Cough up another 25 bucks. I couldn't believe how many families there were, with kids holding their own individual cardboard containers full of junk. A family of four attending the game, eating there and taking home just a cap and a pennant could easily spend over $400. Four hundred fucking dollars!

At times I felt like a visitor from another era or realm, asking questions of and getting clarity from my good friend while sharing observations with him. For instance, I learned that there are now “challenges” in baseball. Of course the stadium owners pounced on that too as yet another opportunity to sell more space and time to another advertiser. To that extent he told me of one of the more garish examples. Boxers can now be seen appearing in the ring with temporary tattoos on their backs, with the logos of say, Caesars Palace or a dot.com company. It is incessant in our culture. It is rancid.

Each inning begins with the bombardment of still more ads on the big screen. Then at regular intervals a chirpy young woman with a slightly toned down but still annoying newscaster/game show host type-demeanor comes on to give away things, if people answer trivia questions correctly (we just love Trivial Pursuit in this country, don't we? "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" for the upscale Neoliberals, and regular weekly appearances at bars now too...doesn't anybody read anymore?). I saw a middle-aged woman in a Desert Storm-style, camouflaged fatigue Mets jersey walk up or aisle. I also learned that MLB now plays at least one game a year in these ghoulish uniforms. All Hail the Homeland and its Heroes (sound like the name of a reality tv show in waiting)! Players now come to bat with their selected personalized music, of which appears on the big video screen. Probably the most fun part of the day was watching the kids' car coaster race along the warning track just before the sixth ending. Maybe because it was followed by Led Zeppelin's "Wanton Song." Everything is carefully micro-marketed today.

I left feeling pangs of an experience long gone from how I remembered it. On the way out we walked past four soldiers in super heavy-duty battle gear, carrying machine guns. In front of them was a long line of children lined up to "run the bases," which I had to admit was a nice touch too. But what does it mean if the child has to do so in the shadow of that kind of overwrought militarism?

We talked about all this on the walk back to the colorful Central and South American residential area outside the stadium where we were parked. Just before we got to the car we passed a live Caribbean band practicing in a garage with its doors opened. That was right next to the Malcom X Community Garden. That combination was just the tonic I needed.

I wish I had more time to talk about Dick Gregory, as I intended to do after waking up Sunday morning to hear he was gone. But I'm finding increasingly I just don't have the time. In my ongoing education process post-Occupy he's somebody who has turned up over and over. You dive in to study him a bit and are amazed.

Like all the really powerful, social critic comedians Gregory was a sage and philosopher. Some of the things that have stuck with me have been his declaration that the "most important person in Black American History is John Brown." I love the moment in the film American Revolution 2 in which he handles a cop trying to stop a protest march he's at the head of in his hometown of Chicago in 1968, in which he says he's not marching but the people behind him were friends he's invited to his house. His selflessness and commitment to activism during the Civil Rights movement, sending a private place full of turkeys to Mississippi after hearing folks couldn't afford them for Christmas. His introduction speech before a Bob Marley concert in Boston in 1979.

He was selfless, fearless, incisive, a radical, endlessly giving of his wealth and fame to the underprivileged, black causes and integral to the Civil Rights movement. There's really so much to Dick Gregory's career. This is just barely scratching the surface.

"Baldwin's Nigger" (A 1969 conversation with writer James Baldwin and Dick Gregory in London about the black experience in America and how it relates to the Caribbean and Great Britain.)

"Walk In My Shoes" (1960)

(was a landmark in TV history. Nominated for 3 Emmy awards, Nicholas Webster's documentary explores the state of Urban Black America from several perspectives. Associate produced by Louis Lomax (The Hate That Hate Produced), the film features interviews with regular people from different classes to understand how black people think, feel and survive. It is notable for including the first national TV appearances of comedian Dick Gregory (15:16) and extended footage of Malcolm X,, lawyer Percy Sutton and CORE founder James Farmer. A seldom-seen classic from the ABC News Archives, it s assumed to be in the public domain and as been uploaded under Fair Use.)

So, whats going on with you?

Back in the kitchen we're listening to:

Reading/Browsing List:
"No More Lies" Dick Gregory
"Becoming Richard Pryor" Scott Saul
"The Black Jacobins" C.L.R. James

Vegan Sausage & Paprika-stewed Vegetables over Quinoa

Cook quinoa, 2 to 1 water.

Caramelize thinly sliced onions, then add sliced carrots, broccoli, mushrooms and Trader Joe's vegan Italian Sausage to sautée.
Add chopped fresh tomato, garlic scapes and ample smoked paprika powder.
Cook until blended.

Lemongrass Chai Blend

heaping scoop of dried Thai lemongrass
shards of cinnamon bark
a few cardamom pods
a few black peppercorns
A few cloves
fresh chopped ginger