{"id":853,"date":"2013-11-12T15:11:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T21:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/?p=853"},"modified":"2014-11-16T23:27:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T05:27:11","slug":"in-maine-there-seems-to-be-something-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/?p=853","title":{"rendered":"In Maine…there seems to be something…missing."},"content":{"rendered":"

My first culture shock came during my visit to Maine<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

or<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind…but a dimension with no football.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I have been all over this country introducing people to the sick glory that is Arsenic Lullaby, and in all my travels I have come to the conclusion that we’re all pretty much the same. All the cities are more or less the same, some of them are laid out different and have different buildings but when it comes right down to it…they are all just places we’re people live that have grocery stores, restaurants, some sort of landmark and roads and homes.\u00a0 If you can have a conversation with a guy from Des Monies…then you are equipped to have a conversation with a guy from new york…the only difference will be the guy from new york will think he’s really cool because he lives in new york and drop that into the conversation whenever he feels like people have forgotten he’s from new york, because living in new york is way cooler than living anywhere else, just ask anyone from there.\u00a0\u00a0 In his defense a guy who lives in the city with the biggest ball of yawn will drop that into the conversation and hold that notion to his bosom as vindication for his existence just as dearly. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“are you comparing living next to the empire state building to living next to the biggest ball of yarn?!”\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah..I am, unless you built it or work there who gives a sh*t?\u00a0 They both probably are interesting scenery, but as near as i can tell no one from NY ever looks up anyway…that’s for tourists, only people who aren’t from there would look up at all the stuff that makes it so cool to live there.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m being a smarts ass, I like new york and can see why other people would be proud of living there, but I can see that in pretty\u00a0 much every city I have traveled to. They are all great and unique but at the same time, when you break things down they are all pretty much the same.\u00a0 I love Chicago the best but I grew up near there and that pretty much explains 90% of people’s pride in their region…it’s home. Another 9% is- it’s not home.\u00a0 It’s a place they worked hard to get to.\u00a0 I’d say only about 1% is actually grounded in the place itself, because once you live somewhere for more than a couple of months the only things that matters are the people around you, your job, a favorite restaurant or two and the grocery store.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So up to a couple days ago I had not actually had much culture shock in any of my travels. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But Maine…Portland Maine threw me for a loop.\u00a0 They…they have no football!\u00a0 Now lot’s of cities don’t have a football team.\u00a0 Milwaukee doesn’t have a football team, so like most cities they adopt the closest team and consider it theirs.\u00a0 Milwaukee is Green Bay Packer territory with small pockets of resistance of Chicago Bears fans.\u00a0 I will explain what this means just in case there be other cities I am unaware of that exist outside the world that has football.\u00a0 This means there is Green Bay Packers crap as far as the eye can see for 6-9 months of the year. Every Bar has “packer specials”, and posters with the logo and a beer logo side by side.\u00a0 Every store,\u00a0 Kiosk, and even gas station has Packer bumper stickers, car flags, t-shirts, water bottles, coffee mugs, bobble heads…you name it and there is a version of it for sale with a Packer logo on it.\u00a0 There are “special edition” Coca-Cola cans with Packer colors. The Mcdonalds has specials where a cheeseburger is the cost of how many points they held their opponents too.\u00a0 I am not giving any breaking news to 99.9999 percent of the U.S., I am explaining this to the people in Portland Maine.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

From the time I got off the plane at an airport that had not one single item in the gift shops related to football, all the way through my visit to the local fast foot place that did not have a poster of a football player eating their hamburger,\u00a0 to the town I walked through that didn’t have “go Packers!” painted on the windows of the local businesses, I felt like I was in a different dimension. I had gone through a tear in time and space to a world where football was never invented.\u00a0 It was jarring.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Even when I went to Athens…while there was no football, people were very passionate about their soccer teams and lived by their\u00a0 trials and tribulations and local rivalries existed.\u00a0 I felt right at home in Athens.\u00a0 It was similar in size and layout to Chicago, similar to Detroit in economy, and the people were very much like mid-westerners-\u00a0 Proud, hard working, friendly, curious as to why a stranger had decided to visit their town, and even though they spoke a different language, and had some different social customs…I found once I adopted a soccer team and put the patch\/logo on my shirt I knew exactly how to interact.\u00a0 Sports fans are sports fans.\u00a0 People would see who I had chosen and give me a thumbs up,\u00a0 after which I would point at the logo and give a cheer, or they\u00a0 give me the finger, after which I would point at my logo and give them the finger. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If they gave me the finger, I would then know, even though I am foreign, what kind of person they are… They were a person with very low self respect.\u00a0 They were cheering for an INFERIOR TEAM…a team of crybabies who whine because my soccer team always gets the best players..well maybe if your team didn’t suck so much you’d be able to attract better players.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But hey , don’t take my word for it…here’s photo evidence<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

get back losers, I’m doing fancy stuff here with the ball.\u00a0 That’s how much you guys suck, I can show boat a little during a game.
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The POINT is, we football fans, we’re not all so different<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got that patch\/log by the way…a block away from the Parthenon!\u00a0 One of the greatest monuments in the history of mankind had a kiosk selling soccer merchandise one block away…not plastic\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span>Parthenons<\/strong><\/span>, or Parthenon flags…SOCCER MERCHANDISE.\u00a0 This is was not odd to me at all…I’m from Milwaukee and if we had such a monument I would expect to see a kiosk selling Green Bay Packers merch blocking it’s view from the street. It’s FOOTBALL for f*cks sake and it’s FOOTBALL SEASON.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I went to Maine with two goals in mind.\u00a0 First, move a lot of Arsenic Lullaby books. Second, get a picture of me in a New England Patriots hat to send to my dear friend Decapitated Dan, who’s team recently lost (was humiliated by) the New England Patriots.\u00a0 These should have been simple goals seeing as how Arsenic Lullaby is top notch and the New England Patriots play just an hour or so away from Portland Maine. ..and it is football season. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It is football season Portland Maine…are you listening to me?!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 Even people who hate football know this, and take some delight in the local team losing because the rest of the city is bummed out about an event they couldn’t care less about.\u00a0 The rest of the U.S.A. knows it’s football season Portland Maine.\u00a0 WTF?!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I searched the usual places for a hat…Gas stations, convenience stores, Pharmacies…you know…places that sell stuff.\u00a0 ANYPLACE\u00a0 that sells stuff in any other town will clear a shelf off to put out football merch for 6 months.\u00a0 Looking for aspirin at walgreens? Well, it’s behind the counter until football\u00a0 season is over because they need that shelf for Chicago Bears hats.\u00a0 Need some squaredrive wood screws from Home Depot, well you’re going to need a stock boy to get them from the back room…that isle is required for New York Jets flags.\u00a0 It is football season and headaches, remodeling and everything else will wait.\u00a0\u00a0 I found no Patriots hat at any of these places.\u00a0 I asked locals where to get a hat…MOST OF THEM DIDN’T KNOW!!!\u00a0 All of you…imagine for a moment someone asking you where to get a hat featuring the nearest team’s logo on it.\u00a0 Even if you are not a fan , you would have seen seventeen places\u00a0 just going about your usual business.\u00a0 The only reason you wouldn’t answer is because you would think the question was a sarcastic joke.\u00a0 The few times I got an answer it was “try the mall”<\/span>…which means “I don’t know”<\/span> because “try the mall”<\/span> is an answer for ANYTHING.\u00a0 Well…I tried the mall. I went to Sears, they had one or two goofy looking hats with the fuzzy ball on the top. ..the rest of their sports crap was discounted Red Sox Baseball gear.\u00a0 I didn’t want a goofy hat, I wanted a simple grey or black knit hat with the logo on it like their coach wears.\u00a0 So that Dan could see me wearing the same hat as the man he watched on tv direct his team to crush Dan’s team on national television. The clerk was uncertain where to find more football hats.\u00a0 I wandered the mall and eventually found a sporting good store.\u00a0 That “sporting goods” store only had four different hats, all goofy and all 20.00 or more!\u00a0 20.00 for a knit hat?! Our you people out of your minds?!\u00a0 I can get a Packers hat for free in Milwaukee by getting my promotional card punched four times at a local burger joint. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually I had the poor bastards who run the convention swing by a walmart after dinner.\u00a0 Surely a walmart would have cheap crap with Patriots logos on it.\u00a0\u00a0 Why, in any other state in the union they would have replaced the”gardening” section with rows and rows of football merch. I found a grand total of five different hats.\u00a0 FIVE!? All goofy and all over 15.00.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I have since returned from this parallel and disturbing dimension.\u00a0 Later this week I will go to one of the 17 sporting goods store in the area where I will be able to choose from a wall of hats featuring any team in the league. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime…Hey Dan…”THE NEW ORLEANS SAINTS SUCK!”.\u00a0 They do, but at least they exist in the world where football is life for six to nine months and we are all one nation under it.\u00a0 One nation united by our teams, at odds with those supporting other teams, or untied with others by our disinterest in a sport we cannot avoid hearing about.\u00a0 It is a force of nature in our dimension, like winter, or tornadoes, or rain or wind.\u00a0 Portland Maine is a nice place but I must list it even above Athens as the most foreign land I have ever been too.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“Hey, what about the comic book convention?! ain’t ya gonna tell us about that?!”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

huh? oh yeah…the show was good. Later this week I will review all the shoes this year including pros and cons…right now I have a lot of espn to get caught up on. I have to know what happened this weekend or people will think I’m some sort of weirdo.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By the way Decapitated Dan produces a podcast about horror comics and heavy metal.\u00a0 I always have a segment on it, usually about ten minutes long about half way through the show.\u00a0 You can hear it here…or just go there to email Dan and tell him his teams sucks.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.monstersandmetal.blogspot.com\/<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first culture shock came during my visit to Maine or You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind…but a dimension with no football. I have been all over this country introducing people to the sick glory that is Arsenic\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}