Can't Touch This: The Perfect Game, The American Dream, and Three Ugly Guys

It has been exactly one year since this happened:


three hundred and sixty days ago, Matt Cain joined the ranks of Catfish Hunter, Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, David Wells, and... Philip Humber. The Perfect Game. Watching the 9th inning on the MLB.com archives still makes me pumped, and I'm not even a huge fan of the giants. He now rests on laurels along with Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, and... Dallas Braden. How is it that some no-name who played for Oakland had one solid year, couldn't get a single winning season, and ultimately now has a worse chance of re-entering the MLB than Roger Clemens could have such a timeless achievement? In the words of the Arctic Monkeys, Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden went from ritz  to rubble in a few years.
Let's look at another Oakland Oddity, but instead of a no-hit wonder, he had a one-hit wonder. However, he had the same long-standing memory: U Can't Touch This. Bay Area baby MC Hammer is a household name and a bad memory of old MTV. He went broke, acted like an idiot, and yet we still laugh at his parachute pants and call him pop genius. At the same time, we deem Michael Jackson immortal music royalty, Run DMC rap pioneers, and revere The Beastie Boys for their daring antics. Try naming three songs by MC Hammer. Impossible. Try naming five songs from any of the other music hall of famers. Easy.
So why do flashes in the pan like MC Hammer and Dallas Braden still so well thought of, even though they didn't have it in them to last for three years in their business? Simple. Good timing and Good Luck. These two Oakland kids reminded that every person has a chance to be as great as Cy Young or the Beastie Boys. MC Hammer and Dallas Braden lived the modernized American Dream: obtaining glory while not really deserving it. Let's all follow these men's example.

Bonus Piece, here's a great song and music video by the Brooklyn Jews

Can You Dig It?

This is hopefully the first of many posts. I would like to start out with the fact that it is summer vacation. Nothing beats hot weather that makes your shorts stick to the back of your legs, tall glasses of lemonade, and a mission statement to lie beneath the shade of a tree at least once a week. While my mother screams at me from the other side of town to go do something with my life, I sit in my bedroom and read aging books and Calvin and Hobbes treasuries. I jump out of my room, annoy my mother to no end about her obsession with her favorite food channel show, and then watch countless hours of ESPN. This, my few followers, is the beginning of Nostalgia. The Calvin and Hobbes collection I'm currently reading is There's Treasure Everywhere, which starts with this strip:

Indeed, my six year old counterpart, there is treasure in all places. my treasure these next few months will hopefully lie in memories. Memories of watching Gilmore Girls with my mother, memories of listening to Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless duke it out on ESPN First Take, memories of running on hot asphalt and working out in parched fields, and memories of reading Steinbeck's Cannery Row while listening to Modest Mouse. Today, the Heat punished the Spurs and I found my Vibrams had hole in them, but tomorrow, a whole new day of vacation awaits.