A Few Lines from "Infinite Jest"

"'The girl's name's Tina something and she'll come up to about your knee.'

'Echt,' Avril said, looking at something on a printout.

Hal looked at her while she chewed. 'You don't like her already?'

'Tina Echt, Pawtucket. Father apparently some sort of unleavened baker, mother a public relations person for the Red Sox A.A.A. baseball there.'

Hal had to wipe his chin as he smiled. 'Triple-A. Not A.A.A.'"

(related: Squiggy Story)

Maybe I've forgotten...

Pawtucket reaches championship, is rained on and dies.

Metaphor.

Annual Septemberish melancholy. And nostalgia! Nostalgiacholy? I should have. I should have been there.

Doesn't the baseball season poke its finger into October? I remember Camden Yards in October! No October games this year? What am I going to do?

What I am going to do is go to Fenway next week in mittens for a PBE and hope it soothes me. I suspect it won't be too hard to find tix. I will trade this ugly framed picture of an owl for Red Sox tickets:

Yes, that is my ugly wallpaper from 1963. And technically that picture isn't mine. My landlord hung it in my stairwell. He is now deceased so I suppose I inherited it.

If I don't get tickets for it I will dissemble the picture on live television to reveal what is probably wads of cash hidden in the frame.

Ha, ha.

PAWSOX I WAS ONLY KIDDING!! I LOVE YOU PLEASE COME BACK!

Devern Hansack is my neighbor.

Devern Hansack pitched for the Pawtucket Red Sox in 2007 and 2008. He was my Favourite. And then he disappeared. I assumed he'd returned to his little seaside town in Nicaragua and fired up his lobstering vessel and lived out the rest of his days basking in the sun, growing old and weathered and perhaps working on his memoirs.

WRONG! WRONG WRONG WRONG! I set up an alert a long time ago, so if Hansack somehow popped up on the internet, I'd get an email. And then nothing more. Years passed.

SUDDENLY! The maid screamed. In my box, a message. And this! Hansack throws out the first pitch at a Sea Dogs game! He looks incredible! And guess what? He's been living in MAINE this whole time! ALL THIS TIME! And I've been to Maine here and there... I'm flabbergasted. Me and Devern could have been kickin it and smokin blunts all summer long. I'll bet he has a deck.

I surmised that Hansack had met a local lady while he was on the Sea Dogs and that he'd wifed up and decided to live the rest of his days in Vacationland. I was right, of course. Further investigation revealed that Hansack was hired by U Maine Farmington as their pitching coach about a year ago.

I'm inordinately amped by all of this. YEAH 39!!!

Let's take a look back at all the witty, incisive stuff I said about DBH:

1. Did Devern Hansack intentionally peg Mariano Rivera with a baseball at Fenway? Eric Gagne says so. And Eric Gagne never lies. Does anyone remember this story? How fucking old am I, anyway?
Eric Gagne, LOL.

Maybe some pictures instead?