So, it's a Sunday in the middle of a long weekend. My girlfriend calls around noon. "Wanna go to the gym?" Hell, yes. The gym on a Sunday? Doubly virtuous, extra calories burned by virtue of time and day.

We go on a shopping expedition afterwards, she to pick up a serenity fountain for her office, me to stock up on cold and flu meds for the darling (and flu-ish) husband. I even make a pit stop at the Chinese restaurant for chicken soup.

I come home, bearing gifts and sustenance, only to be asked:

"Did Leslie get a hold of you?"

Uh, no. Why'd she call? (A friend, but not a particularly close one, and one with whom telephone communication is infrequent and sporadic.)

She had tickets to Game Four of the League Championship Series. She is my only true blue, die-hard baseball buddy. She had an extra ticket and called me. But I was out. I was at the gym, watching the Dolphins as I slogged my way over hills on the elliptical trainer.

I watched one of the best baseball games ever played -- ever-- from the comfort of my living room. But I'd rather have been in the stadium.

When it comes to stadium events this month, I am just not on a winning streak.

I present to you the following e-mail conversation I had with my brother-in-law yesterday. He's still alive, but only because I don't want to go live in the slammer. Still, as I pointed out to him, a jury of baseball fans would acquit me.

E-mail #1, from me:

So. Did you get invited to the box for the playoffs? If you say yes, and didn't invite me, I'll have to kill you with my bare hands.

E-mail #1, from Steve:

How did you know? Only kidding, but we do have tickets for Friday's game.

E-mail #2, from me:

Tickets for Marc and me, too? Or (and I am not kidding about this) am I going to have to drive up to your office and just strangle you. I'd be acquitted by a jury of baseball fans, it's perfectly defensible.

E-mail #2, from Steve:

I was given nose bleed seats for Friday.

E-mail # 3, from me:

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Nose bleed seats are still seats in the stadium for a playoff game in the League Championship Series. How can I put this more simply?

I am a HUGE FUCKING baseball fan, and a Marlins fan, and have been since I was part of the grassroots movement to get an expansion team to South Florida. One of my life goals is to attend a game in every major league park. I'm about a tenth of the way there. I have been to opening day games at Yankee Stadium and at Shea. I have seen the Red Sox play at Fenway. I cry at the first pitch.

And you have a seat for the play offs, the hardest seats to come by in the country, and you didn't even THINK of inviting me? Or trying to wheedle an extra ticket? Are you MAD? Do you think I'm kidding? I'm just going to have to, I don't know.... give your daughter a toy that makes noise?

ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I don't want to be your sister-in-law anymore. Expect to see a major rant about this on Girlyshoes, bucko.

ggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

E-mail #3, from Steve:

So does this mean your email is working? (Note: the whole conversation began with a request to fix a broken e-mail link on a site he hosts)

Sorry, I have no control over the ticket thing. So the Marlins are in the playoffs? Will I have trouble finding a parking space?

E-mail #4, from me:

Yes.

> So the Marlins are in the playoffs? Will I have trouble finding a parking space?

Yes. And yes. Take a shuttle. Unless your buddy gave you a parking pass, too.

If you weren't so cute, if you didn't look EXACTLY like David Lee Roth, and if I didn't love your idiot brother so much, I would be so very, very pissed at you right now.

He thanked me for relieving him of some of the guilt with that last message. I told him if he wanted to be relieved of all the guilt that he could give me the freaking tickets. I guess he likes living with guilt. And I hope he likes living with the child-size set of bagpipes his daughter is getting for her birthday next week.

Or I would have had to kill myself. My ole pal Andy* called me last night to gloat over the fact that he'd gone, not once, but twice, to see Springsteen at Shea Stadium. And he had his regular Mets seats, which means he was just off home plate on the first base line, down in the boxes. Bastard.

This is retribution for not getting him in to Madison Square Garden when I was up for the Reunion Tour.

But the thing that I would have had to kill myself over was this:

Shea Stadium October 4, 03

1. CODE OF SILENCE
2. The Rising
3. Lonesome Day
4. Roulette
5. Night
6. I WISH I WERE BLIND
7. Empty Sky
8. You're Missing
9. Waitin on a Sunny Day
10. Johnny 99
11. Another Thin Line
12. Tunnel of Love
13. Because the Night
14. Badlands
15. Prove it all night
16. Mary's place
17. BACK IN YOUR ARMS
18. Into the fire

First encore:
19. LIGHT OF DAY
20. Bobby Jean
21. Born to Run
22. Seven nights to rock

Second encore:
23. HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED(Bob Dylan)
24. My city of ruins
25. Land of hopes and dreams
26. Rosalita(Willie Nile)
27. Dancing in the dark
28. Quarter to three
29. Twist and Shout(Soozie on lead)
30. BLOOD BROTHERS

Two encores, 30 songs, and THE BOB. The Bob, she says with a cry and a whimper. On the same stage as The Boss. Singing, as Andy put it "For Yom Kippur", Highway 61 Revisited.

For those of you who don't know, on Yom Kippur, the torah reading is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Or, as The Bob puts it, and I mutter under my breath, every single fucking year:

"Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Well, just bite me. I would have had to kill myself after such a peak experience as that. And what if, by some amazing freak of good luck, my girlfriend with the all-area access had me backstage and introduced me to The Bob?

Well, my head would have spontaneously combusted, and there'd be no more Girlyshoes. So I repeat, it's a good thing that I wasn't there. Or so I tell myself.

* Andy and I have been pals since college. We went to see "A Boy and His Dog" together at a midnight movie. And loved it. When I married Marc, Andy looked around and figured out that he was the only person on the bride's side not related by blood. So for the rest of the day, he walked around introducing himself as my "only friend." And I refuse to give my name when I call his business, saying only that I'm HIS only friend. The secretaries all know who I am, and put me through.

I'm standing around the temple yesterday morning, waiting for services to begin, feeling virtuous and all, and chewing the fat with a friend from my political life. I'm telling her about the Peaceblog Project, and asking her to write for it. She's enthused. I'm enthused. Her husband walks up.

Background interlude: I like her husband. I've known him for 20-some years, during which time he has declined to hire me on no less than three occasions, and we have both won awards for our work. He is now a nationally sought-after designer and conference speaker. His company has merged, grown, merged and grown again. Did I mention that I like and respect him? I do. A lot. I have a nagging feeling, though, that he doesn't much care for me at all, regardless of our mutual professional respect. And frankly, I'm only guessing and hoping that it is mutual.

So she tells him that I'm telling her about my blog project. He gets a look like he's just stepped in something that was left in the grass by a dyspeptic dog. He says: "Oh, no. Not a blog. People who write blogs have way too much time on their hands. The only thing more pathetic are the people who read them. Who wants to waste time reading someone else's virtual rants?"

OK. He told the unvarnished truth of his own opinion. I can respect that. I'd do the same. Usually do, and usually with the same results: seething resentment and hurt feelings on the part of the person so addressed.

The wife says that she likes reading them. I wander away, feeling like the thing that was stepped in.

I have this suspicion that the reason this man doesn't like me so much is that I'm too much like him. Our birthdays are a day apart. But he came from a prominent local family and is male. I suspect that he looks at me and thinks, there but for the grace of money and gender, go I. And that thought is unsettling. To him, at any rate. Not to me, because, as I said, I actually like this guy. A lot.

Which brings up the next question: Why? Why, if he is usually the same kind of prick that he was in temple yesterday morning, and why, if he continually interviews me, but then doesn't hire me, and why, if I can tell that he barely tolerates social discourse with me, DO I like him?

And that I can't answer. I think because he is so talented, and so funny, and so smart. All the things that make us similar. I think I like him for exactly the same reasons that he doesn't like me: we are very, very much alike. Except that he's real tall, and real good looking and a guy. And rich. And famous. And has his own very successful business. But, you know, except for that....

In the old days, back before G-d invented dirt, and I was a young designer who still had visions of a career standing at a drafting table, getting my hands full of ink and 2-coat rubber cement, only designers (or the paste-up guy at the local printer) could produce newsletters and such.

And then came the desktop computer, and it was OK. And then the desktop computer begat the desktop publishing software industry and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Suddenly, secretaries were using the words "font" and "typeface" interchangeably. Point sizes were replaced by pitch (on IBMs). People with no eye, queer or otherwise, were able to put together newsletters. They used every typeface installed on their machines . . . in each publication. Because they could. Grayscale tints were placed behind blocks of copy. Black boxes contained knocked-out lettering. Xerox machines replaced printers.

And, in the immortal words of Stan Freeberg, "Everybody Wants to be an Art Director."

But they are not. Many, if not most, people haven't got what it takes to be a good graphic designer, top of the line software notwithstanding. If you don't believe me, just look at how the average man or woman dresses to appear in public. If they can't tell what looks good on themselves, what makes them think they can figure out how to make something look good on a page? Huh? Answer me that!

Here at the hospital, I used to have to work with the nurses who would bring me "designed" newsletters to publish. I would say this to them:

Everybody here went to school for something. You went to school to become a nurse. I went to school and studied design. While I could, theoretically, start an IV, it would be painful and messy, and you would not want me to do it to you. Likewise, although, in theory, you could design a newsletter, it would be messy and painful ...

Now I'm out of the printing business, and in the web publishing business, and you know what? I didn't think it could happen, but it's even fucking worse. There are so many more ways to be incompetent. JPGS that are articulated and bitmapped are presented as quality graphics for me to post.

Can I retire yet and become a luddite?

The following wedding announcement is from the Miami Herald. The names have been abbreviated to prevent any lawsuits against your author. That everything I say is fact makes it hard to charge me with libel, but the new missus has a history of bogus and frivolous lawsuits, not to mention some heavy black arts. Nevertheless, it is with much joy that I present the annotated version.

B******n - E*****t

Ms. B***y B******n and Mr. M*****l S. E*****t were married, 5 September 2003, in an American Indian (this would be after Ms. B had burned through Judaism, Zen Buddhism, New Age Crystals, Witchcraft and Feng Shui. Mr. E is a former Jesuit.) ceremony at their mountain-top home in Ludow, Vermont. (This is at least the third marriage for Ms. B, and the second for Mr. E. Her first two ended in divorce, after she had drained the souls and pocketbooks of her victims husbands. Mr. E's first marriage ended with the death of his wife, of breast cancer. Her funeral was produced and hosted by his then-mistress, Ms. B.) They will honeymoon in Madrid and London in the fall. (Ms. B likes to honeymoon in Madrid. She's done it before, with number 2. Although the adjoining suites in the Plaza during the first Mrs. E's funeral was probably the "real" honeymoon for these two.) Mrs. E*****T is the former B***y (nee Bernyce) G*****n W*******n, daughter of Y****e and B******n G*****n (Aha! Now we know where the latest last name came from. It's important, when one is a grifter, to change names often. Don't know if she changes her social security number, too. It would help with that back taxes thing she was running from for the past dozen years, though.) of Forest Hills, New York, both deceased. (And, no doubt, spinning furiously at what their spawn has become) M*****l S. E*****t, son of M**y and the late M*****l J. E*****t of Bayonne, New Jersey, (and tell me that dad isn't doing some heavy spinning of his own) is the former Associate Vice President Medical Affairs, Executive Director, UM Hospital Division and Chief Information Officer, University of M**** School of Medicine. (Former being the operative word here. He was "asked" to leave rather suddenly, after an argument over the cooked books and the half million dollar make-over his office had, under the Feng Shui direction of his mistress. Marble floors, a five-foot fountain, crown moldings and custom office furniture as the hospital was bleeding red ink. There were reports of loud voices and the words "lying" and "horse shit" being bandied about. Ms. B was asked to leave shortly after her protector.) The couple reside in the Cayman Islands, BWI, where Mr. E*****t is the Chief Executive Officer of the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority. Mrs. E*****t is Director of Marketing for the Cayman Islands Hospital. (Gee, I wonder how she managed that? As the dearly departed Leapin' Larry Greene was wont to say: It ain't who ya know, it's who ya blow. Here in M***i, her skills at writing and promotion were, shall we say, uneven?) The E*****t's (yep, it was printed with the apostrophe. Herald misprint, or grammatical error from the author? Probably the latter. As I said, writing was never her strong point.) will retain their primary residence on Key B******e, Florida. (There is no mention of their combined five adult children. The bride's three are estranged from her, and have been for years. They are: the lesbian chef, the Hollywood sex worker, and the lawyer. The groom's children haven't spoken to him since their mother's funeral. Well, that's not quite true. His daughter was living with him, until Ms. B moved in within the week following his first wife's death. She was actually in the apartment before the body cooled. She couldn't abide having the daughter there, so she threw her out. The son quit speaking to the father shortly after, when Ms. B decided that the son could sell his car to pay for law school, since his veteran's benefits didn't quite make that nut, and Daddy needed all his money to pay for the remodeling of their home. The old Mrs. E's stuff had to be cleared out and her memory effaced as quickly as possible. There is no photo accompanying this announcement, one assumes because the bride -- and is it correct to call a thrice-married, 67-year-old hag a bride?-- does not show up in photographs, nor does she cast a reflection in mirrors. )