Here we are, the midterm elections nearly upon us, so you’re probably wondering what I feed my campaign volunteers. They’re sitting there on the phones all day long and knocking on doors to beg for votes for my improbable candidacy, so obviously they need sustenance.

You imagine we’re doing a lot of bland pizza takeout, like in movies about improbable candidacies. Ha, what a laugh!

In the real-life front lines of bruising political battles like the one I’m embroiled in right now, well, let’s say I can’t be expected to get away with serving any old pizza. The American public is looking for my leadership, pizza-wise. It would be especially good if I could keep a constant flow of pizzas that I make myself in my backyard brick oven, my political tacticians keep telling me. “It’ll look good in photo ops!”

To hell with photo ops! Better than photo ops is getting Frank Pepe’s pizza right here in greater Chestnut Hill, MA for my campaign volunteers, who are, like, dude! Clams? On a pizza?

But that’s only half the story. The other half is the spinach, mushroom, and gorgonzola pie story. One of the great pizza stories ever invented.

And there you are in middle America thinking pepperoni is the national pizza of the USA.

See you on Tuesday.

The number of blog posts I should have but didn’t enter in the past month is astonishing. Did you know that I saw Titus Andronicus in Chicago? And no, I don’t mean the Shakespeare play.

I’ll save that for a different date, as I have photos to share.

What about the “caravan” of Latin-American “invaders” (i.e. poor people)? What about the latest mass murder via military-style weaponry, this one involving a deranged anti-Semitic psychopath? And, oh yeah, what’s the status of my home addition?

Sorry, not blogging about that today. Instead, today is all about the Boston Red Sox, who took the World Series again, beating first the hated Yankees (the only playoff series I really cared about), then the “best team in baseball” – the Astros, then dear old Dad’s Dodgers.

I blame my lack of posts on the late nights watching 18 inning games and enduring Craig Kimbrell’s myocardial infarction-inducing ninth-inning “relief” pitching as he tried and mostly succeeded in saving games. But not before making me dread the appearance of his Whoville beard. 

The good news is that baseball is now over. Ergo, I get my life back.

A friendly heads-up.

There’s a lot of chatter these days about whether there will ever be a brown ale craze that matches the current IPA craze, and I can tell you with a very high degree of certainty that there will be.

You’re thinking: what, do I have a crystal ball or something? It turns out I do. I found a dirty old crystal ball in a garage sale this past weekend when we were vacationing in Jackson, NH, and as soon as I got home I set my mind to restoring it to near pristine condition. It’s not that hard to polish up a crystal ball. A little WD-40, some emery paper, some human spit and elbow grease, and, voila: a perfect crystal ball.

My investment paid off immediately: I’m already less resentful and hostile toward meteorologists, thanks to my crystal ball. I also can see the end of the hoppy ale craze, and the beginning of affection for the subtler, sweeter flavors that brown ales offer. When I look deep into the future, like three years from now, I see myself cutting deals with beer distributors for my brown ale, and imposing tariffs on those pubs that won’t play fair with brown ale.

I know what you’re thinking: any chance you can borrow my crystal ball? Sorry, I’m planning to use it this week.

However, I’ll note that you’re on the Crystal Ball waiting list.

Let’s say I’m going to die one day (though, let’s be honest, the jury is out on that), I bet that my family, through their grief, would see the silver lining of an opportunity in my demise. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have held onto some things that other people would erroneously regard as useless junk, and I can see my loved ones leaping at the opportunity to lose my precious keepsakes. Some stuff would inevitably require a dumpster: the wood from my parents 1970’s-era deck that seemed just too good to be tossed in the landfill; the boards I retained from the attic of my house in Roslindale when I renovated the space (“old growth pine is valuable wood!”)

There I’ll be, watching from my relaxed perch on a big, puffy cloud up in heaven, as they root through my belongings and decide what to include in my casket with me, like that swatch of fabric I cut from an old hide-a-bed in my parents’ basement so I could frame it like an old photo (“why? why?”). They’ll have me dressed me up in a double-breasted suit from the mid-1990s, with smelly old bike shoes that I keep for rainy days (literally), the Mass General Hospital tie that I was given upon my departure from that job in 1989, my threadbare Sanibel Island hat, and torn bike gloves. Maybe even the glasses that I purchased online, which promptly broke, will be taped and glued back together and jammed onto my face.

Despite packing the casket with old drum sticks, international postage stamps of little to no value sprinkled around me like confetti, and an old 1940s-era clam rake that the undertaker manages to get my stiff hand to grip, my family will be forced to hire a one of those “picker” guys to come and haul away mounds of other (highly valuable) stuff. “Take the drums too! He never played them after he injured his leg in that gruesome hurricane in 1991.”

Given that I’m in heaven, I won’t be angry, but, wait, that old computer has a hard drive on it with interesting tidbits of my writing! And which of you is going around telling people that my college notebooks only serve to reveal me to be more of a doodler than good note-taker. “To hell with all of you!”

I’m quickly jabbed in the ribs by an angel, who reminds me that there is a 90-day probationary period in heaven and I ought to be on my best behavior if I want to retain my spot for the rest of eternity.

Of course, the 90-day heavenly probationary period is irrelevant if I stay alive forever.