Check, check, checka, check, check.Hi, everybody.Hi, everybody.It is Heavy Things Lightly.That is the name of our sub stack.It is the name of our podcast.It is the name of the articles that we write and that I write in particular.
And it is where you've landed for another podcast, a short one today.Listen, do support us by supporting the podcast. This is Greg Gilbertson.He's playing music.
We're doing a fundraiser in Chippewa Falls, where he resides, with a guy named Joe Pug, who's also a world-class musician, and some cool people, including Vesper Stamper.We're doing this very cool thing.
On stage, concert, talk, live podcast, all that, December, no, sorry, November 30th, up in Chippewa Falls.That's Greg's music. This is the end of baseball, the end of us all.Guys, what's a team?
I'm wearing a green hat today of a team in Greenville called The Drive.It's a minor league baseball team.I have a lot of hats.My brother makes fun of me for it because he probably should, I'm old.But I have a lot of hats, yeah.
I think they remind me of my childhood or of how I am childish even today in old age.I have a lot of team hats.What's a team?Hmm.
In Byzantium, an old world Roman post-Western fall empire times, Byzantine times, I really don't like that term Byzantine, but in the times of the latter day Roman empire,
after the fall of Rome, the thing that still existed, well, there were teams of chariots.There were the greens, there were the blues.The greens were basically sort of the commoner team.They were old school.
They had been around a long time, but they were supported by commoners, right?They had been a powerhouse in like Roman, Roman Greek, history.They had always been sort of the tough team.Their famous fans were like nutty emperors, like Commodus.
If you saw that movie Gladiator, that's him.He's the bad guy. Right?He was famous.He was famous for thinking he was Hercules, right?
And he would throw animals and tie up wild, he would throw javelins and tie up wild animals and kill them and cut off their testicles.Anyway, he was one of their supporters.
The Greens had a lot of supporters and often very rough and tumble common supporters.People who were, I don't know, might've been like little on the dark side, sort of like the New York Jets fans, of which I am one.
The blues, the blues were like the New York Yankees.They were like the football giants.They were deeply rooted in the upper class, right?They were the blue bloods.
At the time of our story that I'm not gonna tell, but the time of this story, they had the best horses and they were known, right?They were known to be supported by Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora.
Legend has it that the Blues were even supported by Constantine himself in the early 300s when he was the emperor of Byzantium of early, of late Rome.
Yeah, sort of like rooting for the Blues was like rooting for Real Madrid or IBM or McDonald's, right?And the reason I'm telling you this is because in history, teams, well, they always have character, you know, like a way of being.
Like your sixth floor crew at work, it has a character, it has a mojo, it has a way of being contours, right?It's different than, say, the eighth floor crew at your place of work, if you still do that, right?Teams have life.
I'd even say teams have soul.But now, officially, I'm pounding my fist on the desk Now teams in America have lost their souls.
If you're watching the baseball playoffs like me right now, by the way, the Mets are currently defeating the Dodgers six to three.It could end badly.It's I, I I'll get back to it.
But if that's kind of my team, my childhood team was the Baltimore Orioles, but it became a New Yorker married in New Yorker babies in New York.And I became a Mets fan and they're usually awful and they aren't worth watching.And they won like,
two World Series and one of them was in 1986 and was barely alive.I was alive, but, and anyway, their mojo is losers and their mojo is like losers compared to the Yankees.
And yeah, but this week they're taking on the IBM of the West coast, the Los Angeles Dodgers, AKA the Dodgers of like, what's their payroll, like 2 billion or something.It's ridiculous.It's not that much, but it's a lot. They're the Blue Bloods.
But the Dodgers aren't really the problem in my podcast right now.The problem is that my team, the losers from Queens, are now forever yoked to the Blue Bloods of Los Angeles and to the Arizona Diamondbacks or everybody.
They're yoked to them because all the teams are now owned by something called Strauss.I know. I know you don't know what that is either, but I learned this week what it is.It's a watch company, I believe.I think they make watches in Switzerland.
Corey, can you, Corey is our editor.It could be Andrew editing, editing, editing, Andrew editing.Corey, will you please show a picture of the New York's Mets wearing a Strauss logo on their beloved Brooklyn blue helmets?Can you please do that for me?
Brooklyn blue is a type of blue. It's a beautiful blue with their magnificent orange interlocking NY.You know, it all has history there.
They're blue and orange because at one point that New York lost the Dodgers and then they lost the New York giants and they lost them.And the Met said, we'll replace them.
And they have by being losers and all of it has character and a soul, but show the picture.Can you see it there?There it is. Strauss.Who the is Strauss?Why is Strauss on my team's helmet?I didn't curse.I cut myself off from cursing.
So folks who are listening with their kids, hi kids.Baseball is a fun sport.You should play it.But also what the, what is happening?Why?Why do I have to look at my magnificent interlocking NY and then also see Strauss?What is Strauss?
You know what Strauss is?Strauss is just money, right?By the way, if you notice and you look at the Strauss, if you can't see it right now, it's because you don't have a computer.
But if you're actually looking and you can't see it, it's because you have some sort of eye defect.Cause it's fricking huge. And if you still can't see, you have oppositional disorder, like defiance disorder.You have ODD or whatever that is.
You're just refusing to see it.You know why?Because MLB and Strauss designed the logo and put it on all the major league baseball helmets in such a way, in such a way that you cannot not see that thing.
It's so frigging ugly and out of place and horribly realized that my whole baseball being has been basically spilling out and into my soul like an infected appendix.
The logo, it just, the logo drives me to consider watching any other sport, even the WNBA.Yeah, that's right. All right, maybe I'm not gonna watch the WNBA.I just can't do it.It's not because they're women, man.
It's just, it's just, it's just like a slower version of the NBA.I'm just not into it.Maybe that's a new podcast.I don't know.I'm just telling you, I'm not driven even by Strauss to go watch the WNBA.
But I might have, I swear I might end up becoming a serious Indian cricket fan, men and women. I mean, I'm seriously close to subscribing to some Asian sports channel so I can watch Malaysian lawn bowling.I don't, at this point, that might happen.
I'm serious.I'm serious.The Mets were winning.I turned it off in part to do this podcast, but also because you know what, Strauss, I don't care much.Strauss is not, now they're the Dodgers and the Mets.They're everybody.I don't get it.
I'm so flummoxed by this thing that I just need to take a breath. and calm down.And I was pissed when I first saw it.I went out to my wife and she was like, I had problems.And she's looking at me.
She's like, I told her, I said, this is, this is, I can't live like this.And she said, man, do you know why you can't?Because, and then she said these words, you know why this is bothering you?She said these words, are you ready?
You don't know how to make money. That, what?That was weird.I tried to tell her about this thing that was happening to me, this Strauss thing.And she looked at me and said, you don't know how to make money.That's why it's driving you nuts.What?
You lack a proper merchant morality, she said.And then I felt better.I was still poor after she said it. But I felt better.Yeah.Lacking a merchant morality.Yeah.I'm poor, but now let's get to the end of the podcast already.
If we keep selling everything that has anything like nostalgia and hope and joy attached to it, you know, like almost everything that people care about.If we keep putting everything up for sale, we're literally going to lose our humanity.
I know you want me to calm down and say, bro, it's just sparts.You're overanalyzed.That is the mantra of my beloved daughter.I love my daughters.Like, Papa, you're always overreacting.You're overanalytical.Look, no, it's no.We have to stop.
It's what we do.It's what Americans do.It's what these Americans, us, We do this.We people live in a world called the new world.This one, we have adopted a merchant morality that knows no limits.It like abides by zero rules.
It respects no persons and it feels no pain.I wish that was just rolling off my tongue, but I wrote that, but I'm serious.I'm serious.It's, it's what,
It's look at the very center of this thing, this monster that's been developing over the last 50 years, really since the, since World War II, at the very center of this monster, this machine, what Paul Kingsnorth calls the machine.
And I like to call it the new world machine at the very, very center, the very little center.If you could get in there, there's just a little man sitting there named Plutus.And who's Plutus you ask?
If you know who Plutus is, you've been watching Peugeot.Plutus is the son of the goddess Demeter and the fallen angel named Mammon.Plutus would also be one of the few pagan gods who willingly said he'll live in hell.
He joined some other gods there like Nergal, right?Oh, and this other God, this God of like, a fake light named Lucifer.
Yeah, and if you like Dante and you're reading Richard Rowland or you're listening to Rowland, you'll find Plutus around the fourth circle of hell.Yep, yep, yep.He's punishing there people who are like himself, greedy.
We should stop selling everything all the time, everywhere.It's probably gonna end badly.The marketplace is a bad god. And now my Mets have been sold to Strauss.
And if you're a baseball fan, you're going, yeah, but they already put that on their sleeves.I know, but what's something about the head, right?Last year or two years ago, they already put it on their sleeves.
Like they sell concrete on their sleeves, but now it's on their head.Something about the head. I am done.Will you guys consider doing cool stuff with us?
Like attending future Art of Tamadas, becoming monthly donors, joining us in the field, tracking me down for a Supra, calling us up, or calling up Supra Dinner Society, SDS, led by my pal Daniel Paternos and Dave Gross.
They're starting a very cool first thing spin-off where they do Supras, the Georgian feast that our restaurant does, but they do it, they do it for you and they do it in a professional way and they'll come to your business and do it.Or your house.
They're taking advantage of the things that we cannot.I'm rooting for them and praying for them and I hope you're praying for us.This is John.This was a quick little foray into the hell that is marketing. This is Heavy Things Lightly.Peace out.
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