34 is just a little older than 33
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty))


this time last year, i was certain i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i am still pretty certain that there is something bad lurking in there somewhere.

i don't have a real reason to think these thoughts. my neck is still jacked up, but i've been told not to worry about that. occasionally..., okay pretty much every day i'll feel some sort of twinge on the left-hand side of my back and think, "fuck me. there is a tumor in the other kidney now". i've been told this line of logic is irrational, too.

we lost it yesterday morning with hannah. i mean...lost. our. minds. she's been on-again, off-again congested for a couple weeks now and was pretty gunked up yesterday morning. naturally, we were out of liquid everything, so sarah suggested she take a pill. hannah freaks out. starts crying. backs herself into whatever corner that she can find. sarah starts negotiating in a very nice and concerned mommy voice. "you can do this, hannah. you put the pill on the back of your tongue. you put some kool-aid in your mouth. you lean your head back. you swallow." game over, right? hannah tries the first time and somehow performs an unintentional magic trick. the pill ends up in the kool-aid. sarah fishes the pill out of the kool-aid. hannah retreats, saying "it's nasty" and doesn't want to try again. sarah tells her that's not an option. she's already made the mistake of telling hannah that, now that the pill is wet, it really is going to be nasty. hannah will not try again with the first pill. sarah throws it away. she opens another pill for hannah to try again. this time, hannah gags and kool-aid ends up on the kitchen floor. it's now time for all of us to leave the house. we were running early. not anymore. all the while, the negotiating tactic has gone from cool and collected to "kick the door in, shoot...ask questions later" to sniper-level "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" i have been invoked as a weapon. "hannah, if you don't swallow this, i am bringing daddy over here and, well, you don't want daddy over here." another fail.

i come over and it's my turn. i ask hannah for her undivided attention and make sure that she hears me when i tell her "you are ruining the morning." excellent, right? i try and encourage her as best i can that she can do this. it's not scary. "here, why don't we try this. daddy puts liquid in his mouth, then puts the pill in to swallow it. try that." she takes the kool-aid in her mouth and then proceeds to toss the tiny pill under her tongue. god. dammit. she swallows the drink. catches the taste of the nasty-ass whatever kind of pill is in her mouth and spits it back out. she's crying. sarah's crying. caroline has no idea what the fuck is going on, but she is still pretty fucking stoked about her new boots that she got sunday, so she's super-cool.

negotiations have now moved from "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" level to "fuck it. let's just blow the city up. atomic bomb, please." i am ready to rip my lovely, sweet, smart, gentle, playful, wonderful first daughter into a million little pieces. i will rip her into a million pieces and i'll do it in front of her mother. her mother and i will laugh, laugh, laugh at each other the maniacal laugh that only parents at their wit's end with no discernible answers know and we'll take caroline to school and pretend like none of this ever happened.

hannah tearfully looks at caroline and mouths, "help. me."

caroline looks back and says, "zip my boots, mommy", making no sense at all.

sarah was finally like, "dude. we probably need to back the fuck off for a second." it's just a pill.

so, we backed off. we talked. i crushed the pill up (instead of my daughter) in hannah's kool-aid and she took her medicine. i walked out after making up with hannah. it took me a good hour to come down from never wanting to see her again. i picked her up from daycare after school and gave her a big hug. she was past the morning. i was thankful for that being the case.

this time last year, i was certain that i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i still wonder, but i move on with my day in the hopes that i don't.

episodes like yesterday morning and the fury with which i momentarily think unhealthy thoughts about my daughter(s), family or friends are telling. they tell me that i care again, which is different from twelve months ago. twelve months ago, i just stared into space a lot and worried about when i was going to die.

i am happy to care again, but i ashamed of how easily i can and have stepped into occasionally being a dickhead to the people that i care about the most. i suppose it's easy to do that. rather, i hear that i am not the only one guilty of it.

maybe, if i am lucky, another good report in january will free me from even more demons. maybe some of the fear and anxiety and anger and spite that boils over and into situations like yesterday morning will no longer be a part of me.

more than likely, they will be a part of me, though.

i'll just have to handle it better.

end of the world
(part eleven)
((the end of "the end of the world"))
(((the banger's embrace)))





"they say you can't relive the past, but as the lights went down it all came rushing back."

back in march of 2009, i picked up propagandhi's supporting caste with the expectation that it would be every bit as valuable to my music collection as their previous effort, potemkin city limits. after the first listen, i knew i was not going to be disappointed. after the second, third, fourth and fifth spins, i was certain that, based only on my own opinions and taste, caste had leaped into my own personal pantheon. the place where good albums go after they are determined (by me) to be great. in the last 12-14 months, this album, above every album in my vast and varied broken plastic case that sits on the floor of my closet, has taken its rightful place. it sits on the throne. it looks down at every other album purchased by me or for me. it sees potemkin at it's right hand. burn, piano island, burn to the left. it glances across the room and sees nevermind and dookie and one chord to another, pinkerton and chumps on parade and hello rockview and dog problems and tell all your friends and out come the wolves and dude ranch, electric boogaloo and 59 sound and when the pawn... and tens on top of tens of other albums that, over the course of the formative realization and continuing creation of one kevin michael o'kelley, have served as my personal soundtracks. caste looks over his subjects that, at some point in time, i personally allowed to define and motivate me, and caste sees that it is good.

i "luff, two f's" this album. i completely consumed it in a way that would have never happened before my blog became a four letter word. before the blog, i loved music. played it badly. appreciated and respected those much more talented than me. appreciated and respected those that ever crafted a tune that i couldn't get out of my head and made my life a better place. since the blog's inception, though, i have written about my music and the way it has moved me. for a couple years, i wrote out "best of..." columns in which not only could i identify which of my purchases provided the most healthy return on my investment, but i could process why. i am no music critic. i don't know the difference between a "good" album and a "bad" one. but i can tell you if an album is "AWESOME"  and i can tell you if "it sucks". taste is relative. "your favorite band sucks", right?

as an extension of those "best of..." posts, at some point early last year i decided i would deconstruct caste in a way i had never thought of before. i would take each song, play it on a loop and see where my my mind and my fingers would take me for a little while. fucking cancer interrupted that flow last summer, but i was happy to pick it back up several months ago and today brings us to the conclusion of the "end of the world" series.

"bangers" is a song written by a fan for a fan. it details any and every long strange trip any person has ever made to pay good money to watch their favorite band play a show. we all have "that story" to tell, right? we've all packed too many people in a protege and headed east to atlanta since, with very few exceptions, only shitty bands come or ever came to birmingham in their prime. we've all packed way too many people in a protege and headed east to atlanta ready for a moment captured in two or three hours that could possibly "change our life, man". the sound hall would be small, smoky and stink like hell. the proprietors would keep letting people in the door even though you knew they reached capacity, like, 100 people ago. you stood shoulder to shoulder with bastards you've never met, but, for the next three hours, you would be their best friend and they yours. if their ass got knocked to the ground, you would pick them up and they you. you would stand, jaw agape, at being 25 feet away from this band that had wrecked your crappy-ass stereo and car speakers for months. they looked just like you. same age. same size. same shitty goatee. but there was one difference. they played your favorite songs.

you would bounce and bellow, scream and wail at the top of your lungs. force yourself a foot closer...and then a foot closer to the stage. scream in agony if you took an elbow to the face. stick your chest out and glare like a bad-ass as you delivered elbows of your own. this wasn't just a show, man. this was fucking war, albeit amidst the friendliest of fire. the opening band that you never heard of with the killer-ass name rocked you more than you anticipated. you went and bought their shirt. the headliner did what headliners do. they tore the roof off of that dilapidated auditorium, temporarily paralyzed your eardrums and sent you home completely cool that some dude behind you sprayed vomit on your back an hour ago.

the last song in this series is what music and a show is about and can be about. communal, live together or die alone experiences that you share with yourself as much as you do your buddies. it's not an original thought that there is something shreddingly primal and intensely personal about the music we love.

chances are, you probably don't worship the ground proagandhi sweat on. it's okay. it only makes you a moron. and all of my best friends are morons.

chances are, i don't like your favorite band either. it's okay. it only makes me a moron. and i've been a moron for a lot longer than you've been a moron.

sarah, let it be known that i would like "night letters" to be played at my funeral. turn it up to eleven, please. the congregation will whisper to each other that it makes perfect sense. "he's always been such a fuck-up". and i will move forward with a smile on my face to...

"...the place where all the best bands go." 

i am pretty sure humc just jumped the shark


i was chatting with the right reverend, chris perry, a couple weeks back about a lot of things. as always when we talk, i asked him about his progress at robinson springs united methodist church. as always when we talk, he asked me if anyone had firebombed my house because of my dirty little mouth on my blog. actually, he doesn't really ask that. but, he does ask me how i am feeling about things in general (he is nice like that) and how i am feeling about the church. this most recent conversation happened on the heels of blog-gate 2.0, version why can't kevin not say those words about cellphones and boring worship and george carlin or something like that. it's all a big ball of fuzz a few weeks removed. funny how i bet that seemed really important to some people in the moment. anyway, we got past blog-gate 2.0 and started talking about the church. he and i agreed that humc was in need of some serious victories. happy-stances that we could rally around, do together and feel good about ourselves for a little while. i mentioned that the halloween carnival was on the horizon, and, based on past experience, i hoped that the carnival would serve as just that. an event outside of worship where many in our congregation would actively choose to participate in some form or fashion, feel good about what will inevitably be a positive turnout and event, and wear a smile to church for a few weeks after. we are still in line to do those things. make the carnival happen. enjoy it and each other. smile for a few weeks after. use that positive to motivate us towards more positives. and i can't wait...

then this past sunday happened. nasty and i had already left the worship service sunday morning heading to atlanta when fonzie got on his skis. sarah called me just after we had said hello and good-bye to anniston, heading east on i-20.

"hey."

"hey."

"what's up?"

"i just wanted to tell you about harris' announcement/plea at the end of his sermon."

oh, god.

"go on."

"as he was finishing up his sermon, he came front and center, made sure everyone was paying attention to him and told us that if we didn't start filling up the pews on sunday morning, he was fairly certain the bishop was going to move him due to ineffectiveness."

...

alright.

i wasn't as much surprised as i was sad. sad that he felt like it had come to this. sad that, after having been with us for less than a year and a half, the powers that be in our conference were threatening (make no mistake either. the threats didn't just come down this week. they've been there for months) to remove him from this congregation because he had not steered us back onto (their) course fast enough for them. you see, humc, for those not familiar with the inner workings of our church or the united methodist church, is "asked" to pay a portion of their budget to the conference on the whole so that that money can be used for many, many connectional things. that portion is called apportionments. all churches are "asked" to find a way to meet 100 percent of their apportionment number, but if there is an honest effort being made towards the 100 percent, the conference will work with the church. huffman's problem is this. in the conferences eyes, it has been a really long time since humc has made an honest effort towards even 50 percent of our apportionment, much less 100. a couple years ago, the conference drew a line in the sand. no longer could united methodist churches be part of the connectional system if they were not willing to be true to the connectional giving. and huffman isn't true to the the figure we are being asked to contribute. not even close.

that doesn't mean we aren't working on it. not a finance committee meeting has gone by in the last year and a half where our connectional giving has not come up. we try and massage the money that we have to find ways to give more, but for us to make the letter of the number, we would have to make serious cuts to every section of the budget. that includes staff. which is where we are stuck between the biggest rock and our hardest place.

we love our staff. we can't cut one of them, can we? how would they buy groceries? and if we do, what potential does that give us to grow in the way our church hopes to grow in order to continue finding ways to minister to our huffman community as part of huffman united methodist church?

we love our building. in an unfortunate turn of events, our building now defines us. old. always on the border of being out of repair. seemingly more concerned with how we look on the outside versus what is going on inside. the maintaining of our old building is expensive. we can't cut there, can we?

and so, if we don't want to cut, if we don't want to redefine who we are or give up our building, we only have one choice. we have to grow. in number. and in "number". and by "number", i mean what is truly important to the bishop and our conference. the money we are expected to pay them. and that is all that matters. it's not our attendance that the conference cares about. it's our lack of connectional giving. it's money. it's what makes the world church go round.

maybe the conference jumped the shark before we did, but don't be confused. we got on skis sunday right along with them. if i won the lottery today and gave every bit of it to humc and only asked that humc pay our connectional giving for the the next ten years in one lump sum, we would never hear from the conference again. well, we'd hear from them. they'd ask to use our building sometimes, but there would be no more pressure on our senior pastor or on our members.

instead of sunday's service being about god, it was about money. it was not about worship. it was about attendance that, in theory, would make our bottom line look better. it was not about church. it was about business.

i don't blame harris for doing what he did. everyone has a boss. if his boss was god, we'd be fine. we'd be in good and the right hands. his boss is not god, though. it's our district superintendent. and his boss is our bishop. and our bishop is pissed at huffman because he thinks that he's sent us his best of the best and, in his mind, we keep burning down the forest.

"it only takes a spark to get a fire going.
and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing
that's how it is with god's love
once you've experienced it
you spread the love to everyone
you want to pass it on"

you may not like the methods with which i have chosen to articulate my love for my church on this blog. i get that. you don't like my potty mouth. i totally get that. you think i am stubborn. hardheaded. demanding. unwilling to submit. "always right". guilty as charged.

that being said, please get a copy of sunday's service if you missed it. listen to harris' plea with this post and your past experience with the church and this church as context.

i don't hate you, huffman. i hate this broken-ass down system and how we have fed this ugly beast for as long as we have.

getting butts in seats isn't what church is about. getting people to give their money to our conference is not what church is about. if people coming to our church or opening their wallets to give to a cause or a group outside of themselves happens as a result of god's love, then great.

god's love was not what sunday was about.

it only takes a spark.

war harris. and war humc.

the first post of october (baseball)


from february 11, 2010:

"do note that not one of my storylines worries about the braves chances at winning the division. i would love it if it happened. but the braves didn't add roy halladay to an already stacked team. the phillies did. it's wild card or bust, in my mind, when setting a realistic goal for the season."

so, the braves made the playoffs...as the wild card.

wow!

i mean that exclamation with the utmost sincerity. i resisted the temptation to post sunday because i would have been caught up in all the euphoria of the last game of the season, the last inning of the season when billy wagner looked like an absolute killer after showing his mortal side in the eighth, and how the braves, backs against the wall one last time in a season where that had become a recurring theme, gutted it out and held on for a win in their "most important game of the season". in baseball, though, moreso than any other sport, perspective is dreadfully important. one game or one series only becomes "important" based on the outcome of the previous game or series. the same logic can be applied to any sport, of course, but not in the same meta way that a 162 game regular season requires. given a few days now to ponder the strange course of the season, here is what i remember as the highlights.

 - opening day and the "THIS STADIUM IS UPSIDE DOWN!" call after jason "julio" heyward stepped up to the plate for his first major league at-bat and destroyed a ball into the right field bullpen. we'll get back to heyward in a second, but this moment had a more impactful lifespan than any other during the last five years.

- troy glaus being his usual terrible self in april only to explode and carry the braves through may and part of june, playing well enough to be the national league player of the month in may.

- heyward hurting his thumb, cox not allowing him to heal and heyward missing the all-star game.

- brooks conrad's monster walk-off grand slam to complete the bottom of the ninth, down by seven rally over the reds that propelled the braves into their best stretch of baseball they played all season.

- beginning of august, chipper gets hurt. i lobby for heyward being moved to the three hole. bobby cox does not listen.

- my timmy's string of dominance in late july and most of august that propelled him into the cy young conversation. he lost it a little bit in september, but made two HUGE starts during the last week of the season, won both, including the final game, and was the braves most dependable starter all year.

- derek lowe going insane during the month of september. 5-0, era under 1.25, commanding the confidence of this braves fan that he is totally going to beat tim lincecum in the opening game of the divisionals tomorrow night.

- martin prado and omar infante, period. last year, these guys "weren't good enough to play everyday". how about this season as one big "fuck you" to the detractors. infante finished third in the batting race, made the all-star team. prado was the braves offensive mvp this year, finished in the top ten in the batting race and made the all-star team. i was more heartbroken when prado went down for the year in the next-to-last week of the season than i was when chipper shredded his knee. that, in and of itself, tells me how emotionally attached i had become to prado. love that guy.

- mccann. mccann's the offensive lineman of the braves. you don't hear much about him. he just goes about his business being the best offensive catcher in the league and winning all-star game mvp's and hitting walk off home runs and braves fans, including me, just take him for granted.

- jonny venters being nasty and unhittable for the first five months of the season. billy wagner extending the same type of dominance through the end of the year.

- jason heyward will get his own post when the regular season awards start rolling out, but he should be the rookie of the year. end of story.

that's it. that's the scrapbook i have in my head for the braves, version 2010. this past sunday's game was incredible, but only because the previous 161 games had set it up to be so. the miracle win that i witnessed way back in april was every bit as important. the nine game losing streak that left the braves bandwagon searching for a driver was every bit as important. losing six of nine to the terrible nats and pirates down the stretch was just as important. the braves' sweeps of the mets and the marlins during the last 15 games of the year were every bit as important.

91-71. TWENTY games above .500. the sixth best record in all of baseball. in the meta-narrative that is any mlb team's season, the braves accounted for themselves quite well.

however the braves end up faring in the playoffs, in my opinion, the season has been a massive success.

while we are talking about it, though, the braves are going to beat the giants. tomorrow night and in the series.

we'll talk about the phillies if that prediction holds true.

roll braves.