A Literal Obituary

As we gird ourselves for another Mid-East war, few of us realize that another war was recently lost. It was a war of words, a war on a word, a word I tried to do my part to protect. But alas, the war is lost. The word has died.

Google's definition for the word "literally" has been updated to include this secondary interpretation:

used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true.

To simplify, "literally" now means "not literally."

Following suit, the Miriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries updated their definitions similarly. I find this very sad, and somewhat shameful. I understand the argument that in many cases, dictionaries simply reflect the language of the day. Words come in and out of common usage; that's how new definitions of, say, "tweet" or "douchebag" end up making it into our trusty word-defining tomes.

But this strikes me as a capitulation. People have been using the word "literally" incorrectly, so incorrectly as to be the opposite of what it actually means. And because of that pervasive misuse, the standard bearers of language legitimacy have kowtowed and deemed its incorrect use is now correct. It's as if the Chicago police department said "You know what, fuck it. Murder's legal now."

If this is how we're going to treat language, then "alright" should officially be a correct spelling of "all right." Most people probably think it is, anyway. There should be no official distinction between "your" and "you're," or "its" and "it's." Soon, words will cease to have any true meaning, and we'll be doomed with deadly misunderstandings.

It may seem like a small issue, but this sets a dangerous precedent: if society does things badly long enough, rather than correct the bad behavior, just label it "good" instead.

I'm going to go literally blow off some steam. And there's no telling what I actually mean by that.

Spastic Colin

Football season is almost upon us. And while this time of year always brings fresh hope and excitement, this time around, I have to admit, I'm a little bit worried.

Why? Is it because expectations for my beloved 49ers are sky-high, with Vegas lines and ESPN pundits predicting they'll win the Super Bowl after coming oh-so-close last year? Yeah, that's part of it. But it really has more to do with this:

This is what I opened my mailbox to discover the other day. (Yeah, I get GQ. Deal with it.) By now it's no secret that Colin Kaepernick, our studly young quarterback, whom many view as the second coming of Joe Montana, likes to show off his abs n' tats. After all, this shot is downright business casual compared to the spread he did a month earlier in ESPN The Magazine's "Body Issue":

Talk about overexposure. Look, I'll admit, I think Kaepernick is awesome. I'm a full-blown Kaepernickerbocker after what he did for the Niners last year. But come on, Kap. There's something to be said for humility. After all, you did lose the Super Bowl last year. You don't see Joe Flacco engaging in this sort of douchebaggery.

In fact, you don't see any other great quarterbacks going this out of their way to put their bodies on display - not Brady, not Peyton, not Brees, not Rodgers. The only one that comes to mind is this guy:

See why I'm worried now?

WTF, WWF?!?

Life is all about the simple pleasures. Those little distractions that ground us, taking our minds off the stressful hustle and bustle of a complicated world.

For me, one such small joy is playing Words With Friends, the iPhone's version of Scrabble. I play WWF every day. Without fail. At any given moment, I have between six and ten different games going on with various "friends" ("friends" being in quotes because some of these people are merely Facebook friends and not people I actually communicate with outside of Words With Friends). Often I've mused about the possibility that I may conceivably play WWF every day for the rest of my life, and if I could envision a situation in which this would not be the case. Barring a nuclear holocaust that would force me underground, I can't think of one.

But something terrible has happened. Something rotten, impure and vile. WWF has become tainted, so much so that I'm considering walking away from the game I love.

Because this week, WWF introduced something called "Vision Power-Up!" This is a feature that, for 99 cents, will assess your letters and suggest three words for you to play.

In other words: cheating.

WWF has been creeping towards this taint for awhile now. It has other pay features, such as "Tile Pile," which will tell you which letters are still available, or "Word-O-Meter," which will assess how strong your potential word is relative to what other possibilities exist. But never before has the game offered to just go ahead and play itself for you, allowing you to sit back and spend your way to victory without having to use any of your own precious brainpower.

"Vision Power-Up!" goes against everything WWF - nay, competition -  is about. If players start using this feature regularly, what's the point of even playing? Why not you and I start a game, then just hand it over to two IBM supercomputers to complete it while we go get drunk and watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo?

We already have to deal with baseball players routinely getting suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs. But at least Bud Selig isn't walking into major league clubhouses, peddling steroids for 99 cents a pop. Please, WWF, I urge you: do away with this ugly impropriety...or risk destroying yourself, becoming just another imperfection in an imperfect world.

The Los Angeles Giants Fan

The San Francisco Saloon is a lonely place these days. Far from the bastion of frenzy it became last summer, when the Giants were on their way to winning their second World Series in three seasons, this August the West Los Angeles bar attracts only the most devoted of fans, as their last place team plays for little more than pride.

One such fan is Kevin Pavlik, an LA-based attorney who hails from Northern California. Pavlik, 33, stopped in on a recent Saturday for a couple beers and to catch some of the Giants-Orioles game – a game which his team is, predictably, losing. I ask him how he is digesting this disaster of a season, especially living in Los Angeles, while the first-place Dodgers play some of the best baseball in modern history.

“It creates kind of an empty feeling,” Pavlik says. “Especially with the stretch where, it kind of occurred during a time of year when there’s no other sports...and Dodger fans aren’t quiet, so you have to deal with all this. And I kind of have an empty feeling, because I have nothing to respond with.”

Pavlik still watches the Giants pretty consistently, sometimes even streaming games on his phone via MLB.tv. He cited injuries, of course, as contributing to their downfall. But he also suggests that their very success of playing deep into last postseason is also a factor. “The problem with our pitchers is that they’ve pitched so deep into what should have been the off-season, they didn’t get their usual rest,” he says.

Kevin is quick to cherish what the Giants have accomplished in recent years; the magic has not faded. “I’m grateful that I got to see two World Series championships in the last three years,” he says. “It’s easy, especially after last year, to start going into seasons with the expectation that you’re gonna win. I kind of started sympathizing with Yankee fans, who must be disappointed every year, because they can’t get excited over a playoff run. At the same time, my dad was a (Giants) fan all his life and didn’t see a championship until he was 60.”

Still, isn’t it a bitter pill to swallow, living in Dodgertown during this disaster of a season? Pavlik waves his hand, dismissing the sincerity of the baseball fever that has swelled around him. “LA fans love a winner, so it’s not even the Dodger fans that you sort of knew about,” he says. “Now they come out of the woodwork. You see Dodger hats everywhere, and people are really excited about the team who wouldn’t have been saying anything the last couple years. But I guess that’s to be expected.”

I ask Pavlik if he disdains Dodger fans, even hates them? There has been a lot of bad blood between the teams’ faithful in recent years, even boiling over into violence. “I wouldn’t say I hate them," he muses. Dodger Stadium "is certainly an interesting place to watch a game, and they certainly have a lot of aggressive and intimidating fans. But in the last couple years I’ve seen a lot of the same type of fans up at AT&T (Park). I think it’s everywhere. People go to games and think they can just yell out whatever they want. It just seems kind of unnecessary.”

When asked about the Dodgers’ recent signing of former Giants closer Brian Wilson, Pavlik is similarly objective and understanding. “It doesn’t feel like a defection,” he says. “It feels like a guy who’s kind of struggling to keep playing and had to find a home somewhere.” And even if he did sign with LA in part to spite San Francisco for not picking up his contract following Tommy John surgery, “every time he looks at his World Series rings, he has to look at the Giants emblem.”

Does Kevin hope Wilson fails as a member of the Dodgers? “I hope the Dodgers fail,” he says definitively. “So if he has to fail for that to happen, then yeah, I guess so. But I wouldn’t mind seeing him pitch well and still have them lose, and then maybe see him get an opportunity to go somewhere else. But I certainly don’t want to see him close out a World Series in a Dodger uniform.”

When I ask Pavlik if the Giants’ season has him looking all the more forward to football season, he smiles broadly. “So excited about the 49ers. That’s the thing: in past years, when the 49ers were terrible, the Giants had a couple years where they’d pick up the slack, make the playoffs, lengthen the season and it took some of the sting off football season starting. And now I guess it’s sort of the opposite, where football will take some of the sting off the Giants’ season. So it’s pretty nice to have two teams like that, where every year we get to watch legitimate contenders.”

Overall, Pavlik isn’t bitter about how this season is gone. He’s ready to turn the page, and is optimistic about next year. “When you look at the Giants, even when they’re losing, you still got guys like (Brandon) Crawford, who’s learning how to hit. (Brandon) Belt’s starting to pick things up. As opposed to some of the teams the Giants fielded when (Barry) Bonds was around, and if you were losing that year, watching a team that was built for one year, it was frustrating.

“But now, you’re losing watching a team that’s not just built for this year. They weren’t rebuilding, but at the same time, next year could be a perfectly good year without having to make too many changes because we have some good young guys. We’ve just been unlucky. They’re not untalented, they’re just having a bad year.”

Above all else, Pavlik remains a loyal Giants fan, even in the buzzing hornets nest that is LA. “It sucks being in last place, especially with the Dodgers winning, living in Dodgertown,” he concedes. “But I’d still rather have our team than the Dodgers.”

Time's Up

Bukowski said "A good writer knew when not to write." I couldn't agree more. I can't stand those smarmy writing "experts" who tell you that to succeed, you MUST write EVERY DAY. Hogwash. Writing a bunch of daily garbage for the sake of writing isn't a formula for success. It's an exercise routine, nothing more.

The last time I posted on this blog was December 14, 2012, the day of the Newtown massacre. After that, I just didn't really feel like I had anything to say. Certainly nothing in the spirit of Kaptain Kvetch, which I created to complain about life's trivialities, which, after the horrors of that day, seemed, well...trivial.

The ensuing months of 2013 have been difficult for me. I've been perpetually frustrated by the screenwriting trade, one disappointment after the next leaving me wondering if I have what it takes to succeed in this business. Lurking behind those doubts is the question of what else I could possibly do with my life to gain fulfillment and money - or at least just to kill the next few decades until I can call it a life.

The answer to that question is a great unknown, and it's burdened me with an unsettling feeling that grows weightier by the day. I used to think I wouldn't trade places with anyone I knew, all those friends with the boring day jobs whose lives are so predictable. Now, more often than not, I find myself feeling like I'd happily switch places with almost any of them (almost).

This past weekend, another senseless act of random violence occurred on the Venice boardwalk, a few blocks from where I used to live. These horrific episodes seem to be happening in greater frequency. I'm not sure why that is. I'm tempted to say this country is going to hell in a handbasket, but that's the sort of cliche old people have been spouting since the dawn of countries and handbaskets. And I'm not THAT old. Yet.

I am getting older, though. That's a reality I've become more aware and fearful of this year than any other, which is a trend I suspect will continue. And just like Newtown jarred me into a bout of depressive abstinence from writing silly blog posts, the tragedy in Venice may have contributed to flipping another switch in my head.

Maybe I'm not as good a writer as I fancied myself. Or maybe I am. Maybe my dreams of writing screenplays that actually turn into movies won't ever be realized. Or maybe it'll happen ten or twenty years from now. I don't know. Man, there's so much I don't know. About myself, my future, and everything else.

But I know when not to write.