Happy Useless Fruit Smashing Day everyone.

~Matt

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It’s that time of the year again. It’s time to gather all your useless fruit. It is time to smash it authoritatively.

I recommend starting with a few good oranges. Perhaps you have an orange tree that is overproducing fruit that is deemed inedible. Or perhaps you have some skunky ones growing some mold and hanging out in the vegetable crisper.

Grab a baseball bat or the sporting equipment of your choice (hint: if it’s anything other than a baseball bat you’re making the wrong choice), and take a few good practice swings. Start with the harder fruit, and work your way up to the most moldy. You really want to splatter the squishy ones.

Next grab the jack-o-lanterns that have been aging away on your porch for the past 9 days. Have a friend or loved one pitch to you. Feel the jack-o-lantern explode as your bat meets  pumpkin in a messy and glorious burst of smash-icity. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching those pumpkins burst.

Apples, eggplants, and even old bananas can be used as well. Try to maximize both splatter and distance. You’ll find no two fruits splatters look the same way. Kind of like snowflakes, only more beautiful.

You’ll know you’ve done it right when you’re covered in fruit guts. Well done my friend. Well done.

Happy Useless Fruit Smashing Day. May your fruit splatter mighty and triumphantly into the night.

The post Fruit Smashing Day 2011 appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

This is baseball. It’s not just a game played between a set of white chalk lines on a field. It’s not just a player throwing a ball, or another swinging a bat. It’s history. It’s community. It’s family. It’s generations.

In 1987 I watched my first baseball game with my father. As a transplant to the area, my father had never watched a lot of baseball. But our local team was in the playoffs and he got swept up in the excitement like everyone else. Community. It was the first time I had ever watched a baseball game. Dad explained the rules. 3 strikes, 3 outs, 9 innings, top and bottom. We cheered and we rooted and we watched in dismay when our team lost, ending their season, and ours.

From that moment on, we were rabid fans of the game. But it wasn’t just about the game. It was about our mutual passion for our team. Our love for the game. It was about the time we spent together. Family.

Our team would make the playoffs, and even go to the World Series a couple of times. But every year they would come up just short of winning it all. And Dad was suddenly stricken with cancer, much, much too young.

In the final year of his life, our team would enter the playoffs one last time. I watched each game breathlessly, having fooled myself  into believing that if our team could somehow just keep winning, then maybe Dad could hold on just a little longer. Maybe miracles would happen, both on the field and in our lives. Our team lost in the first round, 3 games to 1 that year. About a month later, Dad was gone. Our team had not been to the post season since.

Before he died, I asked my dad about his loyalty to our team. I asked him when it was that he became a true follower of our franchise, and a fan of the game. “I never watched baseball growing up,” he responded simply. “I just started getting into it because you liked it so much.” That was Dad. That is baseball.

Our team finally won the World Series this year. I wonder if the players have any idea what this means to so many of us. As I watched the game and those final victorious outs, I stood in the same room where I watched my first baseball game with Dad so many years ago, the same room in which he passed away. This time the tears were of joy.

Someday I will have children of my own. I will teach them about the game. I will teach them that there are 3 strikes, 3 outs, 9 innings, top and bottom. I will teach them to be loyal to their team, even when they lose. And they will learn as I did, that baseball is more than just a game. That it’s about communities and families and generations.

Thank you Dad, for the gift of baseball. And thank you baseball, for the gift of my father. I love you both.

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Useless Fruit Smashing Day is next week.

The post Fruit Smashing Day 2009 appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

11/9/2007 Here’s to another angry “Useless Fruit Smashing Day.” May your fruit and pumpkins splatter mightily. We miss you Dad.

Halloween was a huge success. As promised, my haunted house made kids cry and adults scream. It was great. New holiday decorations soon.

10/28/2007 Whoo! Halloween is this week! I made the coolest haunted house! Children will cry, mark my words.

The Red Sox are lame. Stupid east coast media bias.

Happy Halloween!!

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