One of my friends recently commented to me via email that she didn’t have a very exciting day job. I told her that even if I were to accidentally save someone’s life by administering the Heimlich in our cafeteria while Dan Brown’s editor looked on, I still wouldn’t have anything on my brother’s work day, and I sent her this video of one of his job assignments for April. “Is he the one singing the national anthem?” she asked.

Um, no. He’s the one flying the plane over Shea Stadium for the last home opener that the Mets will ever play there.

I took a personal day after getting the news that my dad had arm-twisted Opening Day tickets out of one of his hometown bar drinking buddies and that my stepmom had declined accompanying him upon learning that A-Rod doesn’t play for the Mets. Even if I didn’t like baseball, I would have been all over this for largely spiteful reasons. On my last layover at home, I logged some Inn time with my dad and two different people double-taked at me and then went “You have a DAUGHTER?” to my father, who has apparently failed to mention the fact that I exist during the last 800 or so hours he’s put in at that fine institution. “Oh, you mean the one who just had the baby,” one of them answered herself. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no, that’s my sister-in-law. You’re just going to have to come around to the fact that he has children that aren’t producing babies, flying jet planes, or going to Harvard. Oh, but I did get dressed all by myself this morning, and my group leader says I can move out of the locked unit and into the halfway house as soon as I learn to go to the bathroom alone. Jesus. Apparently being the only girl is no longer enough to warrant me a cursory mention between Guinnesses, so I’m going to have to apply myself to making sure I show up in the background of pictures where my brothers, Brendan (Bud) & Patrick (Peej), are doing something awesome. Luckily, I am fantastic at being spiteful. No, really. Just today I caught myself thinking that it might be fun to vote for John McCain to spite someone. THAT’s how serious I am about this genre of motivators. Additionally luckily, Bud and Peej both had moments of greatness in the pipeline, starting with the opening day fly over and winding up with Peej’s graduation in May, which I will distinguish from my own college graduation by not playing Tetris on my Game Boy through most of it. And by graduating with half of Peej’s GPA, but whatever.

I met my dad at Penn Station, as he decided that this would be his introduction to the subway system so that he can get on with his plan of coming into the city and wandering around now that he’s approaching “the autumn of his career.” “I got you a metrocard,” I told him, and watched as he got way, way more excited over that than any present I’ve handed him in my adult life. Had I known it would be that easy, I would have just wrapped up a NJ Transit train schedule every time his birthday rolled around instead of hunting down obscure books on the gardening habits of presidents or comparison treatments of the Gospel according to Mark and the music of Blood, Sweat & Tears or whatever the heck he’s into these days. “So it goes like this? Right like this? This is how I do it?” he said, miming my actions of getting through the barrier but never actually applying the card to the swiping mechanism and making people veer around him as he stood there. “Like this? And then I can just walk right through?” YES, dad. For the love of GOD, please join me on the other side of the turnstile. “Isn’t this fun? This is a nice preview of my old age for you, when you’re going to have to drag me around on a leash because I’ll be all DURRRRRR,” my dad cheerfully told me once he had used one of his many graduate degrees to enter the subway station, immediately launching into his impression of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. We made it to Shea without killing any rabbits.

I’m a little upset that this is the last season at Shea, for obvious reasons, but I’m also secretly thrilled that by the time I’m mature enough to have children and/ or dogs, I’ll be able to name one of them after the stadium without the connection being as obvious as if, say, I named him/ her Citi Field. Plus, there won’t be much of a shocking transition to the new field, as the boys are going to play all of this season literally in the shadow of it.

We were about an hour early getting to our seats, so we had plenty of time to take care of the hot dog eating portion of the day, and my dad’s Things That Make Me Happy stream of consciousness monologue. “Man, I love baseball. I don’t understand people that like football. Baseball is so much better. I love baseball. Know what else I love? YouTube,” he declared. This wasn’t as huge a shock as if he had said, say, Facebook, or music recorded in the last decade, or pants that aren’t sweatpants — I’ve heard about my dad’s love affair with YouTube before. “I don’t have to watch anything anymore. I missed the last NCAA game and-boom!- it’s up on YouTube. Or the Obama race speech. And you can fast forward through anything that’s boring,” he went on cheerfully before his tone became serious. “But they just blocked YouTube at the office.” “No! That’s awful! How are you going to watch the trunk monkey ads?” I asked, remembering when my dad was fond of acting out the commercials that showed monkeys coming to the aid of stranded motorists. “No more trunk monkey, no more darth vader goes grocery shopping,” he said sadly. I didn’t ask for clarification on the second one, but it sounds exactly like something senior partners should be devoting themselves to during billable hours.

I thought Bud had the coolest job of the day, but we later found out that one of his, uh, coworkers? pilot-mates? flew up to NY ahead of the boys who were doing the fly over so that he could stand behind home plate from batting practice through the national anthem and radio to the pilots. So while I was having a hot dog, he had a bunch of the Phillies come up to him and go “Hey man, were you in Iraq?” and then have their eyes get really wide when he said yes. I look forward to the day when professional athletes are envious of and impressed by what I do for a living, and I am happy to have David Wright over to the office to watch me do V-lookup in Excel (which is an actual thing, not a dirty metaphor, get your mind out of the gutter) any time he wants to make that happen. It was also, as I understand it, this guy’s job to sing along to the national anthem into his headset so that Bud could time the fly over for the ending. If you’ve already watched the YouTube video then you know that this didn’t work out perfectly — due to some issues with the opera singer, Bud was 12 miles away when the anthem started. But I also look forward to the day when I can cover 12 miles in under 2 minutes.

When they announced that the fly over would be happening, my dad immediately tapped the person sitting in front of us on the shoulder and said “That’s my son!” then he remembered he had an offspring with him already and, in some attempt to include me in our family awesomeness, slung his arm around my shoulder and pointed at me saying “and her brother!” Phew, I feel much better now. Not about having my association with Brendan clearly spelled out for complete strangers who don’t care, but that I didn’t have to worry that that guy thought I was there as my dad’s date and not child. This is a fear I have with all of my male relatives, regardless of age and the fact that we all have the same face, and one of the biggest indicators that living in new york has messed me up. Why, of course I’d love to pay $1100 to live in a box! And it’s not unreasonable at all for men in their 50s to date women my age! Seriously! During college, someone once mistook my little brother for my boyfriend, and ever since then I’ve been really into loudly and publicly declaring my relations in situations that don’t warrant that kind of attention, at all. “Well, DAD, mass sure was great today, I’ll meet you at the car!” “Hey Patrick, what are you getting mom for mothers’ day? Since we have THE SAME MOTHER, and all.”

I took a video of the fly over on my camera and intended to post it but the YouTube ones are, remarkably, much better quality. I have a bit of a shaky hand for a videographer, something I’ll have to figure out before my mom and I head out on Road Trip USA 2008, since I recently decided that I’m going to buy one of those flash memory video camera things so I can record footage of my mom and I at Graceland, oohing and aaahing over Elvis’ toilet. So I chucked the video of the fly over due to the issues I had with its quality, and also because as soon as they got to “and the hoooooome of thhhheeeeee…” you can hear my dad and I both shouting “BRENDAN! Come on, Brendan!” as if we could summon his multi, multi million dollar jet plane with just the dulcet tones of our voices.

And the planes came, and it was awesome, and people in Shea Stadium high fived each other and my brother flew over their heads, which is not something a lot of people can say that they’ve seen. Bud landed at LaGuardia and then had seats on the other side of the stadium, but he came over to visit during the 7th inning stretch.

My dad didn’t wear anything Mets related to the game, because he thinks wearing baseball jerseys to a baseball game makes you look “silly.” (Spoken to the girl who was, at the time, wearing 4 different pieces of Mets apparel, including a Reyes jersey). Falling down in public for the sole purpose of embarrassing your preteen daughter is apparently fine, but showing support for your lifelong favorite team by wearing the appropriate apparel comes in at “silly.” Fine.

True to form, my Mets lost, but I (almost) didn’t care.

Looks like I’m going to have some free time on my hands this October. Thanks a lot, Mets. No, it’s cool, it’s not like I actually enjoy watching playoff games. I appreciate you saving me the trouble of having to do so. I thought it was just bad luck that you kept hitting into double plays or giving up 7 runs in the first inning, but I understand now that you were really just trying to protect me from what could have ultimately been an even bigger disappointment at the hands of the Rockies. Much appreciated, boys. Le sigh.

Though I have to say, watching Kaz Matsui single-handedly destroy the Phillies was a lot of fun for me. I almost forgive him for never hitting a grand slam with the Mets because he pulled it out at exactly the right time last night. I spent a lot of time this morning darting in between the bathroom and the TV, trying to flat iron my hair and see Kaz finally doing something worthwhile on a baseball diamond during the 7am SportsCenter.

So the question becomes, what do I do with all this free time? How do you fill an empty October? Keep in mind I already have a Halloween costume (will be reprising The Pirate for the 6th consecutive year, see profile picture) and I don’t like apple picking. Answers:

1. Watching Friday Night Lights, discussing it endlessly, and badgering everyone around me to do the same. Ever since they took Veronica Mars off the air I’ve been all dead inside and unwilling to throw around my “Best. Show. EVER.” label, mourning the tiny blonde detective full of sassy. And then Borders put the Friday Night Lights DVDs on sale of $19.99 and within three episodes I was already at the point where just hearing the theme music (which is conveniently played over the load menu on the DVD) makes me cry. And I’m not a crier, unless there’s a Hallmark commerical on that has dads and daughters or one of those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLaughlin and the sad puppies.

Listen, this show is out of control good. I don’t even like football– particularly not high school football, which carries with it strong associations of my junior year of high school when my class decided to vote, in an overwhelming majority, a male student who only spoke 5 words of English into the Homecoming Princess spot and the Least Likely Homecoming Court Occupant girl into the Prince spot–and I think this show is the best thing on earth. If you watch two hours of this you’ll be attached to these people for life. And this season, it’s on (duh) Friday Nights, so that’s a great little mneomnic device for those of you who don’t color code your day planner and live in fear of your DVR having its memory erased. My mom recently got tivo and I found myself telling her “I frequently find myself categorizing my life to this point as Before I Got DVR and Since I Got DVR. It’s really made me a much more efficient television enthusiast.” Which is a complete joke, since all it’s really done is allowed me to keep episodes of True Life way past their emotional expiration date, but still.

2. Carefully crafting my entry for the People’s Sexiest Fan contest. I’ve long said that my problem with sports broadcast journalism is that there’s not enough People Magazine in it. Yes, I want to know what the score is, but I would also like to know who has a sixteen year old daughter that just announced she’s bringing her 23 year old boyfriend to the prom, and how that’s going to affect daddy’s game on the field today. Just once I’d like to see Perez Hilton with a headset on mapping out all the girls Derek Jeter has given herpes to (google it, trust me). I have never, however, thought that we needed more sports in People magazine. I think People is great just the way it is, and remains my go-to source for articles about cats who can predict death. People seems to disagree, though, and has come up with this:

https://peoplesexiestfan.secondthought.com/register1.jsp

(Sorry, I’m having trouble embedding links. I do know how to do that, though. I might not be able to network printers, despite the volume of requests I get to do just that due to my printer-adjacent cube location at work, but I generally can get links up. Just FYI). Basically, all you have to do to enter this thing is give them a picture and thirty words. Thirty words is effectively two sentences (when you have the addiction to parenthetical asides that I do) so I’m going to assume that they’re putting more weight on the picture. And judging from the sample pictures they’ve provided, it looks like they’re leaning toward the “nice looking to unremarkable” end of the attractiveness spectrum without any hints of remote sexiness, which rules out my original idea (wearing a Mets bikini and standing in front of the American flag) and my backup idea (wearing a Mets tshirt rolled up to bra level with “#5″ written on my stomach in lipstick surrounded by a heart). I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

As for the thirty words, I think I’m going with “Because I cried more when they traded Al Leiter than I did when my dog died. And I really loved that dog.”

I’m vastly more excited for the premiere of “Gossip Girl” on the CW this week than I am for NFL football. Granted, this probably has more to do with my obsession with cheesy teen literature than it does with the sport itself, but it probably also doesn’t hurt that every time I’m at my dog adoptions gig at the ASPCA someone asks me what I think about Michael Vick. For the record, I think he should have his balls coated in A1 steak sauce before being dropped into a pit of his own fighters. I think his probation should include trailing after me every weekend when I walk shelter dogs because it would be fun to watch him obey the Clean Up After Your Pet ordinances without the help of plastic baggies. I think I’m seriously considering making the dog shelter the lone benefactor of my 401(k) so that, should something happen to me before I’m able to enjoy the fruits of the rule of 72, I’ll be comforted knowing that the pit bulls I work with have the option of buying up a couple of football players and making them fight to the death for fun. In short, I’m not terribly thrilled with the man.

But I’ve never been terribly thrilled with pro football, and I can’t blame that on him. My family never really had room for the NFL, what with all the time they spent framing pictures of the ’59 Dodgers and screaming “God, you are WORTHLESS! Throw an effing STRIKE!” at whatever hapless 22 year old the Mets decided to put on the mound. Wait, that was just my dad. My experience with football is comprised of a short stint as a cheerleader where I was way more invested in wearing saddle shoes and a side ponytail than I was with anything going on on the field, and attendance at high school and college games as part of a crowd that was most interested in lording their intellectual superiority over the opposing team. I associate football spectating with the use of proper grammar and punctuation, as was always practiced at my alma mater (“Give me a W! Give me an Ampersand! Give me an M!”), along with the healthy sense of entitlement that came from chanting “Safety School” at every team we played for four years, blissfully unaware that they were kicking our Fulbright scholarship asses up and down the field.

It all turned around a little bit when the NFL draft showed up this year. I don’t really care about draft days, largely because the baseball draft is totally lame and involves a bunch of 18 year olds I don’t feel comfortable assessing on my patented scale of Athletic Hotness who are just going to marinate in the farm system for another 3 years anyway. Besides, the best thing about drafts are the controversies, and if I need a fix of that I can just start googling phrases like “Patrick Ewing” and “frozen envelope” and see what comes up. But all it took this time around was 20 minutes of watching Brady Quinn’s shit eating grin slowly downturn and I was completely hooked. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that pro sports need more of a People Magazine angle, and if ever there was anyone to prove that, it was Brady Quinn. I watch a lot of sports for your average pair of ovaries, but most of my probing questions go unanswered. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have one relentless but well spoken gossip in the press box or on the sidelines chiming in with “He may be having a career year, but his wife was recently spotted giving Cuba Gooding Jr. a lap dance.” No one on ESPN answered my important questions about Brady Quinn on draft day—who was the chick sitting next to him holding his hand? Is she planning on moving to whatever city drafts her man? How is she dealing with the fact that he has obviously at least given serious consideration to, if not actualized, sex with another man?

In middle school, I ran in a tight-knit band of girls that were constantly talking shit about each other. If you ever had the passing thought that “hey, we all seem to be getting along pretty well recently, even though I did accidentally buy the same exact pair of converse one-stars as {name redacted},” that meant that it was your week in the dog house and the other three were at the mall trying on flannel shirts at Aeropostale and talking about how ugly you were. Of these girls, one I’m completely ambivalent towards, one retained her best friend status, and one achieved the coveted position of Nemesis when she turned into a heartless biatch during college. I subscribe fully to Chuck Klosterman’s analysis of human nature when he says that everyone has both a Nemesis and an Archenemy, but I also truly believe that only women are able to fully understand and embrace these titles. I know plenty of men that are living a Nemesis-free life, but I don’t know a single female who can claim as much. If she tries to, that means more people dislike her than she could possibly imagine, and it’s best that you not explain that to her for her own mental health. Around when we were juniors in high school, that particular Nemesis became obsessed with a series of annoying things; namely, her own boobs, hair, face, and general perceived prettiness. It was enormously satisfying, then, when she was the last person in our grade asked to the prom. And that was precisely why I loved the NFL draft, because it was like watching people pair up for the prom, only with a level of statistical analysis and commentary that would have made high school exponentially more interesting. Because, deep down, everyone secretly loves it when the ones who expect to go first are left to the 22^nd round.

I am getting completely spanked by the boys in my fantasy league, and not even in a remotely fun sense of the word. This is the first time I’ve been up against anyone without ovaries after spending two baseball seasons dominating my Hos Before Bros girls-only fantasy league, where the vast majority of GMs drafted their players based on themes (fat guys, foreign-born guys, guys with weird facial hair) that coordinated with their team theme song (Baby Got Back, Coming to America and Pencil Thin Moustache, respectively) and one girl tried to draft A Rod and Alex Rodriguez separately, thinking they were two different people. (That’s not a note of condescension in my voice, it’s intense pride—the lone fact that my girls adhered to the “no calling boys to consult” rule during the draft party was an enormous step for us). I intended to live this season fantasy-free (except for that recurring dream I have where David Wright and I get a brownstone and a puppy together) but wound up sucked into a league at the last minute where I know only 1 of the other 12 managers and quickly fell into the “token chick” role.