Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell Podcast (private feed for andy@afbray.co.uk)

Losing by Winning

There’s nothing fair about a fair. Games of chance mean you don’t have a chance. I shouldn’t go on this anti-gambling rant. My friend Greg improbably wins at every slot machine, despite the fact that they’re scientifically designed to steal your money. I didn’t participate in anything that nefarious, mainly because I’m a cheapskate and a coward. This week, Waffle’s school hosted a fall fair as a fundraiser. Across this great land, we have a proud tradition of giving our educational facilities not quite enough. Educators themselves are left to make up for that shortfall. The school festival followed the Chuck E. Cheese model, where students (actually, their parents) paid far more to play games than they could ever hope to win. It was all for a noble cause. It’s okay to scam kids if it’s for their own good.This was our first year at this school’s festival. Waffle’s old school didn’t have one. They raised money through movie nights and a family dance. Thanks to a well-telegraphed zoning change that somehow caught us by surprise, Waffle is now at the school with the festival. We had at least one kid at the old school for the last ten years. Suddenly, we were faced with uncharted territory. I’m too old to learn new things. Last week, Waffle came home with a form to buy tickets in advance. Unsure of how far the tickets would go, we sent her back to school with twenty dollars, which would get us sixty tickets at the early bird rate. Our order only had to cover five of us. Mae was still in Washington, D.C., where she was able to enjoy the fruits of the government shutdown. Fortunately, they couldn’t shut down the National Mall. It’s hard to put a lawn on lockdown. At the last minute, our party dropped to four. My wife Lola came home from work sick and spent the next two days trying not to die. I mean “trying not to die” in the sense that she didn’t feel well, not in the sense that she was literally trying not to expire as she went into septic shock for the second time in two years. Only I have that achievement to brag about—and brag I will. It offsets a few of the times I whined like I was dying when I came down with a mild case of the man flu.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This was a particularly busy week for fundraisers, and for everything in general. By Tuesday, I had given up on figuring out where I needed to be and when. When I walked in the door after work, I threw up my hands and told the rest of the family to send me wherever I was needed. We had multiple other fundraisers to attend. Those were dine-to-donate events, where groups the kids were in got a portion of the money we spent at local restaurants. I missed one of them by cooking a full meal at home before being reminded that we were supposed to eat out. If the local BSA troop folds because they needed ten more dollars, you can blame me. There’s nothing better than feeling like the bad guy for cooking dinner for your family. The school festival was cheap by comparison. I didn’t have to spend a hundred dollars on grilled cheese and chicken tenders so they could make ten bucks. I gave them twenty dollars directly. In return, they agreed to give me merriment and a chance to win unwanted plastic trinkets. It was one time I hoped my kids would lose.I was disappointed that Lola was too sick for the festival. She’s usually the buffer between me and other parents. Other moms always prefer to deal with her. For one thing, she’s a woman, and I’m me. There isn’t a female on the planet who wants to interact with me if they can help it. For another thing, I’m extra awkward at school events. I always go in assuming I won’t know anyone and won’t have to speak. When an acquaintance takes me by surprise and starts a conversation, it takes my brain a moment too long to boot up conversation protocols. It doesn’t help that I have too many kids with too many friends, all of whom have parents. I can’t remember who I’m supposed to recognize or pretend to know. Any random stranger could actually be a fellow dad I’ve made small talk with ten different times without ever once exchanging names or making eye contact. Being at a new school, there should have been fewer parents I’d know, but that just made the chance of being taken by surprise all the greater. For safety’s sake, it would be best if, during the festival, I never once looked up from my phone. It would be hard to do that and also keep track of my kids.I picked up food from the dine-and-donate of the day and brought it home for my reduced horde. Lola managed to eat a burger before going to bed for the night. I took the rest of the family out in search of adventure. Everyone else in town had the same plan. The school’s parking lot was completely full. I drove from one end to the other and back again. Every spot was occupied. It didn’t help that one section of asphalt was blocked off for the games. Even if all the spots had been open, there wouldn’t have been enough parking. School parking lots aren’t built to accommodate every parent of every kid coming to the school at once, especially when you consider working or divorced parents might be coming in two cars from two directions for one kid. Waffle’s old school had to divide the grades into two separate days of Christmas programs to avoid having parents stuck in a multi-day traffic snarl. The festival at the new school summoned all families at once, plus other members of the community who wanted to help the school raise money. That was all well and good, but I couldn’t get out of my vehicle. There wasn’t even street parking. Finally, I told Betsy to take Lucy and Waffle to pick up our tickets at the entrance to the festival. I would drive to a neighborhood somewhere nearby that had open curbs. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to walk too far. I wanted to make it back to the kids before dark.No sooner had they exited the vehicle than a lone car left its spot in the school parking lot. It was between a massive truck and a small car that parked as close to the line as humanly possible. Under normal circumstances, I never would have attempted to enter such a spot. These circumstances were anything but normal. I held my breath and carefully entered the spot with virtually no clearance on either side. I was scared that, if I sneezed, the walls of the van would expand by one micron and I’d scrape both vehicles. I managed to enter the spot in what was likely the best parking job of my entire life. You know it was good because there were no witnesses. You can trust me. I opened my door a crack and shimmied out without dinging the truck. Finally, I was ready to play some carnival games. Or to keep an eye on my kids while they played games. Or to be in their general vicinity while not watching them at all. Good parenting takes many forms.Locating my children took a few minutes. They were mixed in with hundreds of other kids of the same height and hair color. All of their teachers were there, too. I was struck by a profound sense of guilt. Not even on my worst day do I have to work mandatory unpaid overtime to fundraise for my day job. Yet despite this completely unfair task, the teachers all seem to be in good spirits. They’re better people than me, not that that’s hard. After spending all day educating the unruly throngs, donating extra time entertaining them would have pushed me past the point of no return. Revolutions have been started over less. Not all heroes wear capes, but they do get summers off to avoid nervous breakdowns.I found Lucy and Waffle at the bounce houses. Two were traditional inflatable structures but bigger, and one was an obstacle course. All of them could be enjoyed for the reasonable price of zero tickets. That just left Betsy. It was immediately clear that this festival was far below her age group. It wasn’t the first time she had been brought low for the sin of having younger siblings. She went off on her own to play the ring toss game, where contestants threw plastic circles at two liter bottles of soda. The prize was the soda. Some of those bottles were name brand. The line was rightfully the longest of the festival. Those kids knew a good deal when they saw one.After growing bored with the bounce houses, Lucy and Waffle played exactly one carnival game, spending one ticket each. Then they took off for the school playground, which was also free. Clearly the tickets we bought were money well spent. Finally, I told the girls they had to stop having fun and spend the tickets we bought them. Reluctantly, they went back to the games. There were many to choose from. There was a cakewalk that, instead of giving out actual cakes, awarded Little Debbie snack cakes that students had donated. Next to that, there was a kiddie pool full of rubber ducks. If you picked the right one, you got a prize. I think they were all the right ones. The only difference was if you got to pick from the temporary tattoos or the random plastic objects. The odds were similarly good at the pumpkin ring toss. Kids threw hula hoops at large, orange gourds. Lucy and Waffle each missed on all four of their tries. The volunteer running it let them try again and again until they made one. Then they got to choose plastic bits. This was the opposite of my experience at other carnivals. The games were all rigged for the kids to win. The prizes were things I’d rather they not take home. They didn’t need a tiny sticky hand or dozens of mochi squishy toys. I’ll be finding those things around my house forever. Winning seemed like a punishment. Yet the items were so cheap that the school made money, even while handing out prizes like candy. Some of the prizes were actual candy. Lucy and Waffle still wished they were playing on the playground. They returned to it the first chance they could get.With half an hour left before the carnival closed, I once again shooed Lucy and Waffle back to the games. I couldn’t return home after spending less than a third of our sixty tickets. Lola wouldn’t let me in the house. Waffle managed to win a bottle of Sprite and a king’s ransom of shaped plastic. Lucy collected a bunch of mochis, including one that was literally a fake piece of poop. Both were quite satisfied with their hauls. With time expiring, I took the tickets we had left and exchanged them for a bunch of cookies at the concession stand and a small bag of popcorn. It’s not wasting money if you already spent it. Not a single ticket went unused.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.Having completed my parenting duties, I dropped Betsy off at a birthday party and took the rest of the kids home. We walked in the front door heavily laden with sugar and junk. I hope the twenty dollars we gave the school, minus the expense of our prizes, keeps the place going for another year. If I were a better person, I’d buy a hundred tickets and not use any of them. Next year, I’ll just hand the school some cash and then have my kids play on the playground.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

The Alarm in the Night

The car alarm cut through the darkness. My wife Lola and I had two different reactions. She was afraid we’d be robbed and murdered. I was afraid we’d wake up the neighbors. Both fears were valid. Social stigma and falling victim to violent crimes are basically the same thing. Either way, I needed to make sure it wasn’t one of our vehicles at the heart of the chaos. I rolled out of bed and rushed to the window. That’s not an accurate description. Nothing I do in the dark—or ever—is nimble or quick. Whatever you’re picturing, imagine it with more groaning and a few joint pops thrown in. I sounded like a shambling zombie, but whinier.Somehow, I made it to the window. There wasn’t much to see. One of the most overlooked aspects of night is that it’s dark. I hate how the other side of the earth hogs the daylight half the time. The only thing I could make out was flashing headlights. They were across the street. The car alarm wasn’t my problem. I had never seen the vehicle before, which didn’t mean much. The small apartment building across from us has a few units that are Airbnbs. I seldom see the same car or truck out front for more than a few days in a row. Sometimes, a construction crew will roll into town and park their huge work trucks in front of the apartments and the old lady’s house next door. She’s the neighbor who left me a nasty note when I had to gall to park my van in front of her home on the street she doesn’t own. It pleases me to no end when her house is blocked by dirty vehicles the size of woolly mammoths. I’m pettiness personified.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The vehicle was a small SUV, not a giant work truck. I didn’t see anyone around it. I felt safe going back to bed. Lola, on the other hand, was on high alert. She was afraid someone was walking down the street pulling on door handles. It happens from time to time. Like most cities, there’s crime here. It happens everywhere there’s people. The only way to avoid it is to move away from all humans. Then you get bears. There’s no free lunch—unless you’re one of those bears, in which case you’ll never pay for a meal. Enjoy that trash, sir. Attempted criminals who pull on car door handles are the laziest sort. They’re not even motivated enough to break a window. They’ll only commit a crime if there’s absolutely no resistance. Even then, I’m not sure what they’d get. We’re long past the era when thieves stole CD players. Today, you couldn’t even sell one to a pawn shop. Most of them don’t deal in antiques. There’s no cash in my glove box or center console, either. I only have paper money about twice a year when it’s explicitly required for one of my kids’ school field trips. If a thief hit my van at exactly the right moment, they might get seven dollars. I don’t think they could steal the van itself. Modern vehicles have too many electronics to hotwire. Even if it could be done, I don’t think a thief would want to. They’d be known as the bandit who drove around in a minivan. That’s not a great way to build up your street cred in the criminal underground.I grew up in a city with some bad parts, but I lived and went to school in a supposedly safe neighborhood. A classmate who lived two blocks from my Catholic high school had her car stolen from her own driveway. She left the car unlocked with the keys inside. Even a nun will steal a target that vulnerable. The suburb where I live now is also allegedly safe. There’s still roughly one murder a year. The last one was recent. A man was killed by his roommate. The mug shot of the suspect looked exactly like I expected. The guy’s bald head was covered in tattoos, and his eyes indicated he had lived on nothing but meth for the last two years. If someone who looks like that applies to be your roommate, it’s okay to judge a book by its cover. I apologize to any tattoo-covered meth addicts who have never murdered anyone. A few bad apples ruined that look for the rest of you. Even though I consider our area to be extremely safe, bad things do happen. Lola was right not to ignore the alarm. It was a good idea to be on guard, even if the cause was completely innocent.There were a number of non-nefarious explanations for the obnoxious sound. Maybe it was a rental vehicle and the person in the Airbnb was unfamiliar with the key fob. They could have hit the wrong button. Perhaps the rental SUV was accidentally configured to be ultra sensitive and the alarm was activated by a light breeze. My bigger concern wasn’t why it went off, but why it wouldn’t stop. I laid back down, but the alarm kept going. I was afraid the driver was at a secondary location or just out cold. If they took a bunch of sleeping pills, I could be in for a long night. I don’t know if all car alarms have automatic shutoffs. This one might have gone until the battery ran out. I didn’t plan to wait that long. If the alarm hit the ten minute mark, I fully intended to destroy the vehicle. Sometimes, the neighborly thing to do is a little arson.There was also evidence for shenanigans. I hadn’t spotted anyone, but when Lola looked out the window, she saw people. Well, not quite people, but teenagers. Or kids in their twenties. It’s hard to tell in the dark. I’m leaning more towards the twenties because I’ve discovered in my old age that actual teenagers look like little kids. The local high school is filled with toddlers. College isn’t much better. The stands at a Big Ten football game look like the world’s largest kindergarten. That’s confusing because the football players on the field all look big enough to be everyone’s dads. I didn’t have any proof the teens/twentysomethings on the street were the ones who set off the car alarm, but the circumstantial evidence made them seem suspicious. In a residential neighborhood, you’re guilty until proven guiltier.For one thing, they were the only human beings out and about at that hour. It was 5:15 a.m. on a Sunday. There was no innocent explanation for them to be wandering the neighborhood at that time. It wasn’t a work day for most people, and any church service that started that early would automatically be sacrilegious. The book of Matthew specifically says good Christians should sleep in until at least 6 a.m.. I doubted these three young people simultaneously suffered insomnia and happened to wake up early in their respective homes. More than likely, they had been up all night. I’ve never made it that far. Even my “all nighters” in college usually ended by 4 a.m.. As soon as I finished whatever term paper I put off until the last minute, I collapsed. I certainly didn’t stay up that late while wandering a residential neighborhood with my friends. I’ve never been up that late for non-academic reasons, either. If alcohol is involved, I’m lucky to make it past 9 p.m.. I had one drink yesterday and went to bed at 8:30 p.m.. My only regret is not turning in sooner. I had a hard time believing the trio on the sidewalk were there for innocent fun. They were guilty merely by being young and outside. I’m officially the cranky old guy in our neighborhood.Then again, if they had been walking down the street and pulling on car doors, it seems more likely they would have fled the scene. Instead they were doing loops on our block, walking up one side of the street and back down the other. Based on their voices, it sounded like there were two guys and one girl. That was less suspicious than if it had been three guys. A group of all dudes is always up to no good. Add a girl to the group and the guys are probably more focused on her than crimes. Maybe this was a weird all night/early morning date where one of the guys didn’t realize he was the third wheel. Hopefully he figures it out before the other two invite him to their wedding. The fact that the alarm didn’t scare them away made it more likely that they were out there by coincidence. Lola wasn’t convinced. She checked the videos.We live in a high surveillance, low trust society. Not only do we lock our doors every night, but we live in a house completely surrounded by cameras. Lola checked the one on the doorbell. It was directly facing the SUV making all the ruckus. The camera hadn’t picked up anything. That was par for the course. I had it set to a low sensitivity. At higher detection levels, it couldn’t distinguish between people, cars, and shadows from suspicious clouds. We’ve had a few instances recently where it didn’t notice things that happened directly in front of it. Twice, Lola has found cigarettes on our front steps, like someone sat there smoking and left them when they were done. According to the camera, they must have been smoked by ghosts. You don’t have to worry about lung cancer when you’re already dead. The camera also hadn’t picked up the young people on any of their laps up or down the street. It couldn’t tell us if they were pulling on car doors, if a different party was up to no good, or if the alarm had gone off on its own because it wanted attention. This was not the time of night to be pondering such questions. The car alarm finally shut off. Reluctantly, Lola went back to bed. The mysteries of the universe remained unresolved.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.Hours later, when the other side of the earth was done stealing our sunlight, we checked the area again. Things seemed less serious when we could actually see. No crimes have been committed. The SUV appeared to be unharmed. There were no new cigarettes on our front steps. The young people were nowhere to be seen. Their awkward triple date/crime spree had ended by 8 a.m.. Maybe they had simply been making a long walk to a very distant church. Even if the incident hadn’t been an incident at all, it gave me an excuse to make sure all of our exterior cameras were charged. They run on battery power since we don’t have exterior outlets. We’re lucky we have interior ones. Our house was built near the end of the Stone Age. The batteries will drain even faster now. Lola changed all of the detection settings from “vigilant” to “paranoid.” If an acorn falls from a tree, we should both get an alert and a full HD video on our phones. Maybe a similar acorn is what set off the car alarm in the first place. The real criminal was nature all along. The Ents crave vengeance.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Coming Home

Homecoming weekend is over. That makes today home going, when everyone leaves again. That part never gets celebrated. It’s rude to gloat about a successful escape. In reality, I don’t know that anyone really returns to their hometown for a homecoming football game. I can’t say for sure if anyone came back this time since I didn’t grow up in this city or go to this high school. They’re all strangers to me. That’s not true for my kids. This is the only home they’ve ever known. My fifteen-year-old celebrated accordingly. For Betsy, the high school football game and dance were the social events of the season. I served on her support staff. I’m her primary chauffeur, chef, and photographer. Her mom is her stylist and personal shopper. Together, we got her through the most important weekend of her life—until the next one. The great thing about growing up is that each weekend is more consequential than the last until you’re demoted to being the support staff for offspring of your own. Stop before you get to that point if you can.Betsy didn’t need much support Friday night. She insisted on riding her bike to the football game. It’s the only situation where she doesn’t want me to give her a ride. She wants to be able to duck out at a moment’s notice without being stuck waiting for me to drive there and pick her up. Some people will do anything to avoid watching sports. Betsy stayed long enough to make her presence known and catch up with a few friends. Then she made her real homecoming and came back to our house. My youngest daughter, Waffle, stuck around for longer. She had asked earlier if she could go to the game. Being nine, she would need an adult with her. Neither Lola nor I wanted to take her. I might currently watch every sport on the planet, but that doesn’t extend to high school athletics. I gladly watch my own children participate, but I’m not interested in supporting anybody else’s kids. They’re your burden to bear. I don’t believe in communal suffering. Waffle solved her own problem by making a friend. Thanks to rezoning, she’s at a new school this year. She convinced one of her new pals to take her to the game. That kid’s mom had a golf cart, which is the coolest form of transportation in our suburb. It’s like a car, but with less power, comfort, and safety. People are crazy about them. Waffle was whisked away by that battery powered chariot before the game and stayed the entire time. You don’t need to be in high school to have a good homecoming weekend. You just need friends with the right toys.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Saturday morning, Betsy had a cross country meet about as far from home as possible. Obviously that wouldn’t do. Their coach did her best to minimize the disruption to the runner’s social lives all weekend. She had moved their Friday afternoon practice to Friday morning so the kids had time to shower before the game. Anything that’s better for high schoolers is inversely more inconvenient for their parents. I had to get her to the school at 5:45 a.m. Friday. I also had to pick up her friend on the way. Neither one of them wanted to shower at the school, so, after practice, I had to pick them back up and drop them both off of their houses. Then I had to take Betsy and pick up her friend again and get them both back to school a half an hour later. It was a lot of traveling to accommodate a game I wasn’t going to in a sport my kids don’t play. Football rules everything, even at the amateur level. I shouldn’t complain. The NFL players who make my Sundays tolerable have to come from somewhere.The weekend’s festivities affected Betsy’s meet Saturday, but to a lesser degree. I drove an hour to watch her compete that morning. Then I drove home and waited for her to get back so I could drive to the school and pick her up after her bus arrived. She got back sooner than other weekends. The coach decided not to stop to eat. She wanted the kids to have plenty of time to get ready for the dance. Hunger takes a backseat to fashion every time. Betsy arrived at the school shortly before 1 p.m.. I rushed her home and fed her, giving her the rest of the afternoon to prepare for the dance. She didn’t actually need all that time, but she did have a Spanish assignment to turn in. I left her to it. It’s not like I could help her. I can barely speak English.Betsy didn’t have much dance prep to do Saturday. She and her mom took care of that well in advance. Weeks ago, they went dress shopping. They hit up all the hottest big box stores the next suburb had to offer. They found the dress she loved on the clearance rack, but they didn’t have it in the right size. She had to buy it at full price online when they got home. It was still only thirty dollars, but it could have been fifteen. You miss out on a hundred percent of the savings on things you don’t buy. Even at thirty dollars, the dress was pretty affordable. Lola told me some of the dresses at the store cost hundreds of dollars. I don’t know who’s paying that for something they’re gong to wear one time, but I’d like to know what those parents do for a living. I assume they were the first investors in Google or are blackmailing the people who were. Even at thirty dollars, I expect Betsy to wear this dress more than once. I don’t care if she has to use it as pajamas.This was Betsy’s second homecoming dance. Last time, she had a date. This time, she didn’t. She learned. I’m not against her dating or having a boyfriend, but I also understand that boys are the worst. As a former teenage boy, I can say that. Guys start out bad and go downhill from there. Lola’s only mistake was saying yes. Still, I’m tolerable in small doses, especially when there’s something good to watch. With a gap in between picking up and dropping off kids, Lola and I binged shows all afternoon. That’s peak married life. Finally, it was time for us to pause our show and start the pre-dance photo shoot. Without a date to worry about, Betsy was free to exercise total control. She wanted us to take her picture in front of our hydrangeas. Those oversized bushes are one of the few accomplishments in my life. You’d think I gave them their genes, but all I did was put them in the ground and then manage not to kill them. Based on how the rest of my gardening went, that’s harder than it looks. The hydrangeas are so nice that another neighbor asked if she could do her baby’s six-month photo shoot in front of them. I’m finally known for something on our block other than having a wasteland of a backyard that’s full of pigs. It was a mistake to show improvement. Hopefully, once the hydrangeas die for the season, people will stop talking to me again.I snapped off a dozen pictures of Betsy in front of the hydrangeas. She asked to see the images. She gave me notes and told me to try again. I took a dozen more pictures. She examined them and leveled more criticism. I took more. She criticized more. We repeated that cycle over and over. This was different from my usual process, where I’d take two hundred pictures of my family at once in the hope of getting one good one. That approach doesn’t involve any feedback from the group. This was a whole new era. Betsy is in control of her image now. Any picture you see of her has been approved by her public relations team for wider distribution. All other photos would be deleted, but they never existed in the first place. Please disregard my earlier comments about dozens of other photos. There was only one photo taken, and it was perfect.Lola and I took Betsy to her friend’s house, where there were even more pictures taken. Betsy hasn’t looked over those images yet, so I’m not sure whether or not they exist. Lola and I left. Betsy and her friends went to the park, where they had a third photoshoot. She sent me a few of those, so it must be okay to acknowledge they were real. If Betsy later tells me otherwise, you’ll all be required to delete this email.Following the third and final (alleged) photoshoot, Betsy and her friends went out for Mexican food, which is the best thing to do in a fancy dress. On second thought, it’s the best thing to do in any attire. Eating tacos in pajamas is also acceptable, although that’s redundant since Betsy will be wearing her fancy dress to sleep at night. While Betsy was enjoying high society, Lola and I returned to our activities from before. I had college football on TV one, an Xbox game on TV two, and a show on the laptop. Lola just had the laptop show and her cross stitching. She’s so analog. We kept up this parallel play until about 9 p.m., when Betsy texted me to pick her up. I returned to the high school for the nine thousandth time that weekend to bring her back home. It’s a good thing we live close. There are people zoned for our school district who live fifteen minutes away on the edge of the next suburb. I assume those moms and dads never actually leave their cars. They’re not homeless; they’re en route. There’s a difference.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.Betsy had a great time at homecoming, even if the only homecoming part about it was the times I brought her home. I don’t think anyone actually returned from out of town. People seldom came back for my high school’s homecoming games when I was there. The real high school homecoming is the day before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving day is for family. Thanksgiving Eve is for people you barely remember from science class your freshman year. According to numerous studies, the night before Thanksgiving is the second biggest drinking occasion of the year, lagging behind only New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure if friends actually want to get together at bars that night or if they all just need to fortify themselves before dealing with relatives. I’ve never gone out to the bars in my hometown on Thanksgiving Eve, so I can’t say for sure. Hopefully, Betsy won’t know, either, not because I oppose bar homecoming, but because I oppose her leaving in the first place. I keep planting the idea in her head that should live at home while going to college and then stay local for the rest of her life. The secret to a good homecoming is to never leave. I don’t want to have to drive to visit my kids. I’ve already driven enough.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

I Was Wrong

I owe someone an apology. That doesn’t narrow down the list of potential recipients. In my years of writing, I’ve made countless enemies, both real and imagined. In order to address all of them, I’d have to write an open letter to the universe. Even that might not be broad enough. In this case, though, I owe my contrition to a very specific party. I was wrong about baseball. It might have been the most incorrect I’ve ever been about anything. That’s really saying something given the wide variety of opinions I’ve held at various times. I once thought mint ice cream was the best flavor. I’ve been lost from the start.My first ever published comedy article was titled, “Why Baseball Isn’t a Sport.” Well, my first article in a real publication. I’m not going to count the stuff I wrote for the college newspaper where I was the co-head editor. I abused that lack of oversight exactly as much as you’d expect. I couldn’t be the secretary for a book club without being impeached. My baseball slander had a much bigger audience than the handful of kids who used to grab that free eight-page pamphlet on the way into the cafeteria. I posted it on my post-college blog, where it normally would have gone completely unread. In this case, it got picked up by a bigger website, where it drew more eyeballs. It wasn’t as many as who read my current newsletter, but it was close. From there, I got an unexpected email from an editor at Reader’s Digest. He wanted to run my article. I thought I made the big time as the greatest baseball doubter in the world. I always knew my hate would set me free.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The amount of money I received for the article was negligible. What Reader’s Digest was really paying me in was hopes and dreams. That’s the leading currency for every writer who stays broke forever. Reader’s Digest might not sound like a big deal, but it has the highest circulation on earth. For each issue, they print somewhere in the neighborhood of five million copies. For reference, the newspaper where I worked during my brief journalism career ran closer to 27,000. With all those new readers seeing how much I disliked a random sport (or, in my opinion, non-sport), I thought fame and fortune were right around the corner. I neglected to realize that not enjoying something isn’t a particularly valuable skill. Also, despite the name, no one actually reads Reader’s Digest. It sits untouched in doctor's office waiting rooms for decades, as much a part of the unchanging decor is the wallpaper or the fake plants in the corners. Every few years, I’ll get a random piece of hate mail in my inbox from some kid who stumbled across the article while waiting for an allergy shot. Other than that, my piece was completely unnoticed by the universe. That was for the best. Now that I’m older and wiser, I realize it was the worst take of my life.This is the point where I was going to share a link to the online version of the article, but it appears to have been purged from the internet. I’m relieved. I can make up whatever I want about it to make myself sound less obnoxious than I really was. Sometimes losers write the history books. My main arguments for why baseball wasn’t a sport were that it was boring to watch and it didn’t take much physical ability. It’s one of the only major sports where you can do a double header. If an NFL team tried to play two games in a row on the same day, they’d run out of body bags. The article was supposed to be lighthearted satire—which means the few people who read it took it completely seriously—but I truly wasn’t impressed by baseball at the time. It seemed like a silly thing to have such a huge audience and create so many millionaires, especially when watching even a few minutes of it would put me to sleep. Then again, I’m now at the age where anything can put me to sleep. I can drift off during a car chase scene in the world’s loudest action movie. The explosions are just soothing white noise in the background.What I failed to understand when I wrote the original article was that anything could be exciting if the stakes were high enough. Take curling. It requires skill, like darts or bowling, but it’s hardly going to drive you to the point of exhaustion. Yet when there’s an Olympic medal on the line and a huge worldwide audience, I’m instantly invested. The American team that won Gold a few years ago looked like any random group of dads. You could grab any six men off the street and tell me they were on that team and I believe you. Back when I wrote that baseball article, I would have told you that curling wasn’t a sport. Today, I know better. I’m now right about sports so I can be wrong about everything else.My new definition of a sport is something where it’s possible to choke under pressure and that requires you to shower afterwards. That’s an exceptionally broad definition. Technically, chess could be a sport if you played it in the sun. Actually, chess would be a sport for me even in air conditioning. I need better deodorant. Under those terms, baseball absolutely qualifies. You can get nervous and wreck your entire career over a three-game stretch. And even if you play a double header where the ball never once comes to you and you strike out looking every time, you’ll need soap and water afterwards. I’d declare Magic: The Gathering to be a sport if I thought it would make the people at board game meet-ups take hygiene more seriously.As for baseball being boring, anything is entertaining if you watch enough episodes of it. There have been sitcoms I didn’t like that much after the first twenty-two episodes. I still watched the next six seasons. I become invested through shear inertia. If there were a World Paint Drying Championship, after watching all the regular matches, I’d be absolutely riveted for the playoffs. Matte gray is having a heck of a season, but it doesn’t have a chance against semi-gloss eggshell. A baseball season is 162 games. You can’t watch even a portion of that without caring about the characters. Every game, there’s someone who’s facing his former squad or who’s on a career-defining slump or hot streak. It’ll be the bottom of the seventh inning in a game that’s not particularly close, yet I’ll be super invested to see if the guy batting fifth can get on base for a seventeenth game in a row. Then I’ll repeat these fun facts to Lola and she’ll roll her eyes, reminding me that it’s not something normal people care about. How dare they have other interests and hobbies? I’m obsessed because I’ve watched almost one whole season. I can only imagine what this game means to people who have been tracking it for their entire lives. In entertainment, quantity beats quality every time. The only show with more episodes than baseball is the nightly news.I realized early into watching my first baseball season what I had missed as a younger man. Sports are just high-stakes reality game shows. Who Wants to be a Millionaire has nothing on the race between the Reds and the Padres for the final wild card spot. Viewers get excited if someone wins $30,000 on Wheel of Fortune. That’s chump change in the world of professional sports. Twentysomethings travel the country on buses for minimum wage while playing in the minors. But with a few good at-bats, they could become millionaires overnight by being promoted to the Big Leagues. Conversely, guys who made it could have their entire careers collapse and get sent down after a few bad days at the office. I don’t know of anyone with a regular job with that thin of a margin for error. If you do less than spectacular on your spreadsheets, you probably won’t have your pay cut by ninety percent and get sent to work outside in the alley by the dumpster. Then again, some regular jobs are that high pressure. They’re just not entertaining. Being a baseball player has low stakes compared to being a surgeon. The problem with surgery is it’s not entertaining, no matter how much of it you watch. There’s only one team. Maybe if there were two surgeons—one working to save the patient, and one trying to kill him—it would make for more compelling drama. Someone call TLC. I found the perfect replacement for Toddlers and Tiaras.Baseball might not require as much physicality as football or as much cardio as track, but its players are among the toughest in all of organized athletics. Flopping is a problem in soccer and basketball. Players throw themselves on the ground and fake being hurt to get penalties and fouls called. Even in football, players fake injuries to stop the clock. It was such an issue that the NCAA had to make a rule against it this season. That’s not a problem in baseball. Guys get hit by 100 mph pitches, hop twice, then walk it off. There’s no extra incentive for being in pain, so they act like it didn’t hurt that much. It’s a level of stoicism I aspire to, even as I whine like I’m dying when I get a paper cut. Baseball might not be the most action packed sport out there, but at least it doesn’t stop play for minutes at a time while players writhe around when they weren’t even touched. Baseball is definitely a sport, and I’m not tough enough to play. I’m barely tough enough to watch.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.One of the best parts about sports in general and baseball in particular as a form of entertainment is how nearly everyone ends up disappointed. It might take a few extra games for the fan bases of the best squads to get there, but the landing spot is the same for all but one team. It looks like the Reds are going to miss the playoffs, but twenty-nine other teams will join us in the losers column. Even the fans of the team that wins it all won’t be overly happy. They’ll get a week or two to celebrate before they start to worry that they won’t be able to repeat next year. It’s said that comparison is the thief of joy. On the contrary, knowing that everyone else is just as unhappy as me is one of life’s greatest comforts. Baseball isn’t just a sport; it’s an entire philosophy of existence. Play ball.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. 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Baseball After Dark

Baseball was meant to be played in the dark.More specifically, it was meant to be played with the regular UV spectrum turned off and black lights at full blast. I didn’t realize until Saturday night that the perfect sports experience looks like a cross between an EDM concert and an episode of CSI. Ideally, the only things glowing would be people’s clothing and not mysterious stains on various surfaces, but beggars can’t be choosers. After all, it’s the minors.My friend Roscoe invited me and two other guys to Cosmic Baseball at Victory Field in Indianapolis Saturday night. I did zero research beforehand. All I knew was that it was free and it would get me out of the house. Either one of those qualifiers would be enough to make me agree to go. I assumed it would be a regular game for our local AAA affiliate, the Indianapolis Indians, but played under different lighting conditions. As part of my recent quest to watch all sports as a form of therapy/reality avoidance, I vowed to follow the Indians this season. I failed completely. I’ve watched zero games and couldn’t tell you where they are in the standings. I found it hard to get invested for several reasons, not the least of which is I hate the team name. It’s less than politically correct these days, but they can get away with it based on location. They’re the Indians, playing in Indianapolis, Indiana. If one name isn’t okay, none of them are, and nobody is ready for that conversation. Besides, what else are we going to call the state? It’s not like we could trust voters to rename us in the age of the internet. Best case scenario, we’d be Corny McCornface. Worst case, we’d officially be Nowhereville, USA.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Unlike the former MLB Indians/current Guardians, the Indianapolis Indians don’t have an offensive caricature as a mascot, which makes the situation a little better. I mostly dislike the name because it’s wildly uncreative. It’s a generic and overused theme that has nothing specific to do with this city. Yes, there used to be Native Americans here, but they used to be everywhere in the country before certain historical unpleasantness. It also has no connection to the team the Indians feed into, the Pittsburgh Pirates. To align with them, we should be the First Mates or the Cabin Boys. We could also be the Scurvy, which would connect nicely with the Fever. If we wanted to keep the theme specific to local history and culture, we could be the Corn Kernels. That doesn’t sound intimidating, but they can withstand the harsh acids of the digestive tract and emerge unscathed. That’s the closest you can come in nature to being indestructible. Your move, Toledo Mud Hens.My elaborate excuses for why I haven’t followed the Indians this season proved to be unnecessary. I soon discovered that the Indians weren’t even playing Saturday. This was instead an exhibition game by the Tri-City Chili Peppers, a collegiate summer team playing in the Coastal Plain League. I only know this because I looked it up on Wikipedia after I got to the stadium and saw that the Indians weren’t there. If you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what three cities make up the Tri-Cities in Virginia. I’d guess Richmond three times in a row and hope for partial credit. The team plays in an independent league outside the traditional farm system. It’s not AAA, AA, or A, either high or low. It’s college kids who have played at least one season under the NCAA and have at least one year of eligibility left. My next search was to find out how much they got paid. As a petty person, I’m always looking for reasons to validate or regret my life choices. I quickly discovered these amateur collegiate athletes were unpaid. They were playing for exposure, which is another way of saying they were suckers. That seems a bit anachronistic in an age when some D1 football players have different Lamborghinis for each day of the week. NIL money has yet to hit college baseball, mostly because it’s only hit professional baseball’s very highest level. Players in AAA, who are one phone call away from the majors, make below the median salary in most states. The average Hoosier makes between $52,672 and $54,742 a year, whereas AAA players make between $35,800 and $50,900. Most of them would be better off quitting and working for Costco. Of course, they won’t do that because a few good at-bats could land them in the majors. The minimum salary there is $750,000. As for the maximum, Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers makes $70 million per year. A slimmer than slim chance at vast fortunes keeps thousands of players on the field for next to nothing. Next to nothing would be a step up for the Chili Peppers players. They play for literally nothing. They dream of the day when they can pull in 35k. That’s a lot of beer money.Given that this was an amateur event put on by unpaid entertainers, I expected the stadium to be mostly empty. To my surprise, downtown was a zoo, unrelated to the actual zoo, which is also downtown. I sarcastically said that all these people must be there for minor league baseball. They actually were. The stadium was sold out. That’s 14,000 paid attendees. The Chili Peppers players might not have made money, but their organization certainly did. I respect the hustle. At that level, teams fold all the time. Organizations will try any gimmick to get butts in seats and keep the lights on (or, for Cosmic Baseball, off). I can sympathize. I had to debase myself online for years with relentless attention whoring to carve out the modest writing career you see today. Amateur baseball has turned professional clowning into an art form. The Savannah Bananas have used their antics to sell out football stadiums and get featured on ESPN and Disney+. Based on what I saw Saturday night, I suspect the Chili Peppers and their brand of Cosmic Baseball are on the same trajectory. Buy their baseball cards now and don’t let your mom ever throw them away.The early part of the game was what you might expect at a Savannah Bananas performance. The players danced and revved up the crowd. The PA system blasted music. The announcer made random rule changes. For one inning, the batters had to run the bases backwards. For another, there were no foul lines. Some of the rules were an improvement. Instead of walking, a batter who received four balls had to toss the ball up for himself, hit it, and run to first (or, in one inning, third) base, where he could still be thrown out. As someone who’s watched 140 Reds games so far this season, I’d be delighted to have that rule in the Big Leagues. Imagine game seven being determined by a guy pitching to himself like he was playing in his own backyard. The world could use that kind of levity.Things really got crazy after the third inning. The announcer said there would be a half hour break for the players to change into their black light uniforms. I suspect only about five minutes of that was for the wardrobe change. The other twenty-five minutes was to give the earth a chance to get darker. If the game had actually had a start time compatible with sunset, I suspect it would have been too late for families and would have hurt ticket sales. I support a little deception if it enables the level of chaos that followed. At the end of the half hour, the stadium shut off all of its regular lights and turned on the temporary black lights the Chili Peppers brought with them. The effect was incredible. Shirts and hats across the stadium glowed. The field itself was pitch black except for the bases, chalk lines, and the ethereal players who danced between them. It was like watching a human fireworks show. If I had been on a party drug, it would have been mind-blowing. Even sober, it was pretty cool. The kids in the crowd absolutely loved it. Selling out the stadium wasn’t an accident.Last year, I went to a heavy metal concert. This was louder than that. The biggest cause of that was the balls. Every time a baseball got fouled off or just used up by being pitched too many times, a player not currently in the game would rush to the crowd and offer to toss it over the net. He’d run back and forth, pantomiming that he’d throw it to the loudest group. Children are highly susceptible to any excuse to get noisier. This happened for dozens of balls per inning. It was somewhat dangerous. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but baseballs are hard. I had to stay on my toes to make sure I didn’t get hit with one falling from the sky. Before the lights were turned off, one of them did actually land directly on the head of a woman who looked like she was in her eighties. Stadium staff quickly ushered her and her family out of the seats. We didn’t see them again. Hopefully she survived and got some brightly colored swag for her trouble. If not, I hope the Chili Peppers supplied her with a complimentary neon coffin.There were even more balls in the stands after dark thanks to another rule change. After every inning starting with the fourth, one player from each team participated in a home run derby. Those home runs counted as actual home runs for the game. It was mesmerizing watching those glowing dingers sail through the dark sky. That’s another change I wouldn’t mind for real baseball. It would be a more exciting tie breaker than extra innings.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The game was a grand spectacle, but my attention soon wandered. That’s due to my own deficiencies. My mind also drifts off during fireworks. After a few minutes of colorful explosions, I’m ready for something else. The internet really has broken my brain. The main downside of Cosmic Baseball was that the stakes were low. It didn’t matter who won. This was a team I’d never heard of playing in a league I’d even know existed. It wasn’t even a real game in that league. They were playing a fake team called the Glow Mojis, which I assume was just other players also under contract with the Chili Peppers. Major League Baseball might not have the flare of Cosmic Baseball, but the stakes are epic. Getting called up to the majors or sent down to the minors is the difference between being a millionaire and having your car repossessed. There are meaningless games in September where some guy who’s been in AAA for ten years suddenly gets his chance in the show. For seventeen other players on the field, it’s just one of 162 games, but for him, it’s the culmination of his entire life. Woe unto him if he strikes out. You could look at it as the world’s highest stake game show or season of reality TV. Cosmic Baseball was fun, but nobody’s lives were at risk of being ruined or elevated to the stratosphere. These college kids were still years away from that pivotal moment. When they get there, I’ll root for them. Until then, I’ll stick to watching the Reds fail their way to the end of the season. Maybe if tied games ended with a home run derby in the dark, they’d actually have a chance.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. 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