Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Tao Lin Should Write About Baseball More

I'm not wild about Tao Lin's style, but this was great. It is excerpted from this essay I was told about by Chad, who read with Tao last Sunday. At the reading, Chad got a free BRITNEY SPEARS sticker. Congratulations Chad.

SEATTLE IS SARCASTIC ABOUT SPORTS

When I watched baseball as a child, I always felt strange when I saw the Seattle Mariners on TV. I wasn't sure then why I felt strange, but now I think I know. I think it's just that the blue uniforms they used to have made it seem like they were "merely screwing around." The blue uniforms, in combination with being called the Mariners, made me feel strongly that they actually wanted to be playing Marco Polo in a swimming pool but were forced into professional baseball and so wore blue uniforms to "continue the dream" of "screwing around" in a swimming pool for five hours every day with no responsibilities. Ken Griffey Jr. was a Mariner then and he seemed to be the perfect example of what I just typed about. He seemed to always be trying really hard at being good at baseball which to me only conveyed that he was distracting himself really hard from thoughts about wishing he lived in a special world where each day you woke up, played games in a swimming pool with other adults, ate dinner, played more games in a swimming pool, and went to sleep.



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