I surviving 2017

How do I do it? I keep in mind the old Estonian saying, “your face should be like Ice”. You see, we Estonians are used to being taken over by many bamboozling buffoons- first it was the Danes in like year 1200, then the Teutonic Knight Order, the Germans, then the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviets again- so being ruled over by bufoonery is old hat to us.

tombstone

How do we deal with less than savory rulers? We expect only shit from life all day every day. We tough through life and smile for no one expecting nothing but drudgery cold and darkness.

in this way, any brightness seems to us a great and wonderful surprise. Like when your dog lives to be older than 8 or your goat does not freeze into block of ice.

So get your Estonians balls America, its going to be a bumpy knight.

Why did Trump win?

  1. This question came to Zamboni from Hillary herself, via snapchat, 20 minutes ago.
  2. This is above most people’s pay grade, but- after the Cubs won the world series, the bi-cameral and hemispheric balances were thrown off kilter allowing heretofore unheardof phenomenon to occur like Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg doing a cooking show together and us having a President Trump.
  3. Liberals are in love with thinking that people use reason in voting and  hence would be swayed by three endless debates (they weren’t) or Trumps racist bullying rants (they weren’t). We  all missed a lot of football for nothing. People decide with their gut.Undecided is statistical anomaly? Ever known one? See.
  4. We all thought it’d be a coronation with the royal name of Clinton. Americans don’t do royalty.
  5. People like to elect outsiders as potus. Look at all the governors from out of DC vicinity: Reagan, Carter, Clinton, Bush II. Not senators or DC insiders. (I know but Obama was a recent arrival and being Black, had his outsider card. ) Hillary if you really want it, move back to Arkansas and run!)
  6. Whitelash.
  7. Guns. People like them. Look Hillary, how the hell am I to hunt squirrels without my two AR15s? (I like to have one in each hand and just spray up in the trees, less time consuming and fun to see them drop!!)
  8. BTW its the best possible thing that could happen to the democratic party. Take it from an Estonian that lived under dictator USSR puppet for years. Nothing like cruel and unfair oppressor to really make people come together.

How Zamboni knew the Cubs would win even when they were down 3-1

You’ll notice my last post was Oct 30th, when it seemed it would be lights out for the Cubs, When Cleveland had their Wahoo fingers around the necks of the cute and cuddly Cubbies, when it seemed all over. After all, coming back from being three games down to one?- it had only happened five times in 132 years of this batting game you Americans love. Yet I predicted a Cubs win. It was easy.

Zamboni knows the ultimate truth that all mortals know deep in their chotzkes:  Everything ends. Sometime. Every leaf, at some point, falls. Red Sox fans know this. Game of Thrones fans know. Mad Men watchers even faced the end. Sopranos too. Even my favorite author, Pulitzer winning Danielle Steele, may one day expire and stop spinning her beloved yarns…Fabio’s hair even, one day will cease.

Also, you remember the man who brought the billy goat into Wrigley field, was ousted and cursed them? IT WAS MY UNCLE!

Yes, this is factual and I can vilify it as well. My uncle Tormallen had come from Estonia, changed his name, and opened a pub. Of course he had his goat with him when he came over to this country and named his pub the Billy Goat Tavern as the bond between an  Estonian and his  goat is as strong as iron yet as tender and soft as a newborn baby’s willy.

And so he brought his goat to game four of the 1945 world series. Evidently the smell of his goat -which we Estonians barely notice- bothered some. Yet I believe it was intolerance to immigrants!! He was booted, and summarily spoke on his way out the turnstile, as his poor goats’ horns were entangled- “these Cubbies aint gonna win no more!”

Until last night. Because you see, even the curse of someone in the bloodline of Zamboni can only last a maximum of 71 years. (Unless of course you have the fingernail of a toothless fishmonger’s wife, the eye of a marmot, the toe of a tax collector, and an evil eye stone, put all said sundries in a bag, bury it beneath the victims home and say out loud 11 vigorous times the ancient bon mots “I FUCKING CURSE YOU GOOD MOTHERFUCKER!”, but old Tormallen did none of that. We all know an off the cuff curse has an expiration date.

And yet it is more than that. It is also due to the power of love, brotherhood and extreme emotional vulnerability. This is like a mighty wall that there is very little can trounce or triumph over.

Late in the game, Anthony Rizzo put his arms on the shoulders of veteran David Ross, and poured forth, “I can’t control myself..I’m trying my best…I’m an emotional wreck…I’m in a glass case of emotion right now…” And was at this moment when the “grit” was found to finally beat the Indians, and end the 71 year old curse, and the 108 year old drought, and win the World Series.

So there is your doggy bag  for today’s lesson. Always pour out your fears and anxieties to your friends, it is not weakness, but strength. Your little fears?- clowns, finding a bit of sand in your sandwich at the beach, the Kars for Kids commercial, who cares. But when you are in a glass case of emotion? Always.

‘I’m an emotional wreck’: Watch Anthony Rizzo’s touching dugout exchange with David Ross

Will the Cubs win the World Series?

This question comes to me from my old Uncle Kringle, though he’s as Estonian as blood sausage and wife-carrying, he lives in Winnemucca, Nevada. He’s been there since age three when he was adopted by a family that drills for mines and for water for farmers in this remote desert land. Growing up in the outback of America, little Kringle and his friends had no baseball team to root for. But they did have the very strong signal of WBEZ Chicago, and so he and his desert friends grew up rooting for a team in a windy land far away that none of them had visited.

Anyway Kringle, I know it doesn’t look good right now, but Zamboni is here to tell you that yes, I do believe the cubs will still win.

Yet Uncle, you also know my credo, “only ask what is vital importance for you”.

Win or lose, how will this change your life?

If they win, will it mean for you that patience and time can overcome any curse, any obstacle? That no one is always fated to be at the bottom forever?

If they lose, will it just mean that though long suffering and waiting sucks- we can always yet do more?

Both are true. But above all importance:  the  faith that any of it matters.

Sports- they matter so much because they don’t.

Like William Carlos Williams and his red wheelbarrow, slick with rain.

 

 

 

 

 

“Why are Italians having fewer babies?”

This question comes to Zamboni via Pope Francis, who is very concerned about this, rightfully so as he is a Pope and a friend to Zamboni when I  couch surf across Europe on occasion.

Oh my Pope….. This has been puzzling people for a while and is true: Italians are not having many babies. It has been chalked up to this or that , either the fact that couples live with their parents in cramped houses. Also to the economy, jobs are scarce so both man and woman must work thereby delaying child bearing etc. Blah blah…All of these are errogenous. The real reason is quite simple and evident when you just step back and think of it.

fashion

It’s very tiring to be Italian. Like, really, really exhausting. Look at these guys! Do you know how hard it is to maintain the caloric surge of being so sprezzatura and effortlessly chic all fucking day? The pants are very tight, the shoes are chafing my bare feet. These men are worrying a lot about leaving their sunglasses at home and being laughed at. Ever wear white jeans? Of course you have not, neither have I- because THEY GET CRAZY DIRTY SO FAST! They literally just vacuum up stains from everywhere. With clothes so tight (not helping sperm count Pope!) much time must be spent at the gym just to fit them- is this making you anxious just reading? me too. Look at this beard guy far left- so tightly wound-  imagine him throwing a toddler in the air- I can’t either!

Look, I feel for them. Italian is like the last most cool nationality. Even I had to get my name from them. Sadly my Estonian birth name is Shuffleshitz. See! How cooler it is to say, “hey, Zamboni!”….Would George Clooney call me up on speakerphone so much if I was a Shuffleshitz?

With everything being universalized and globalized, there is so much sameness happening. “Italian” is just like a cinnamon for “cool” right? Lamborghinis, Giorgio Armani, Al Pacino, Parmaggiano, The Godfather, espresso for Pete’s sake, they are just so cool, like Dennis Hooper said in that movei to Dean Stockwell, ” you’re so FUCKIN’ sauve….”  And for a small country with not a whole lot else going on, corrupt government, the EU falling apart- they have to cling like hell to whatever identity they have. Even if it means when the men get home and peel off those suits they are exhausted from the smiling, laughing and their eyes hurt from too much shading. They must sleep a lot to get up and do this all over again. This= less babies.

The solution Pope?

Make babies cool! get Gucci to make a diaper with that cool green and red stripey pattern. Make Versace shades for the babies! Treat baby as accessory to coolness! It has been very hard for anyone to be cool with a baby for a long time as moms and dads have to wear strange Baby Bjorn strappy things everywhere, juggling rubber nipples and humongous strollers. In my day, I could merely carry my little Zamboni jr. like a football in  crook of my arm as I walked a runway in Milan or panned for gold in Chile.

So make babies cool, and those guys in the picture can wrap one in calfskin and carry it right in that little satchel thingee! Good luck Pope!

 

 

 

Zamboni travelling to the heartland

Tomorrow, I , great Zamboni and little Zamboni Jr. will start our driving journey to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana USA. Will arrive there on July 4th, your American Independence Day- (and I thought it was only a movie! totes lol!)

I look forward to seeing what this day looks like on Indian land and in their minds and hearts.

I encourage me and all of us to ponder this question on that day–

“what does it mean to be ‘independent’ and is that even a good thing?

(England just gained some, but maybe will get more than they bargained for, #brexitremorse…)

father day

 

If we are lucky enough to survive the next 5.5 billion years and the sun expands enough to fry the earth, and we think we will be better off living further out in the solar system, and we can hope for cutting edge technology, like what that those boards tied together was to our intrepid early ancestors who shoved off and headed for their horizon, is there something we should be doing first? What I am wondering, G.Z., is should we take our wanderlust to Estonia before launching more space exploration? Starring into space in Louisiana,

Long question! from “Staring into space in Louisiana….”

Yes. And no.

The fact is, every day is a day you should set out to explore a new world. But there are new worlds right under your nose and around the corner. Such as:

-your feelings

-Grasses. There are like thousands of varieties even just right off the road or in an abandoned lot. Did you know they even have little flowers, many of the grasses? But they are small since they pollenate with wind and don’t need bees and such, hence no need for big petals and smell.

-Mustard. You can make it yourself, and flavor it with anything!

-Sunsets and sunrises, can literally be seen from anywhere!

-Take a walk, look closely at things at your feet and in the air. Watch.

Yes indeed the sun will fry the Earth like a doughnut somewhere way off in the future- but that’s a hill of beans. It’s our beans, yes, but still. Thinking about it won’t really change anything. Just explore the world that are already here. Not frying.

As my one-eyed uncle Slippknot used to say back in Estonia, “Finish the plum brandy before you go to the liqour barn!” Wise.