That’s expression on his face is “chagrin,” in case you were wondering.

Some of you may be familiar with the title of this blog. It is shared with a 1980 motion picture that dealt comically with the convergence of what the majority of society would consider a “primitive” lifestyle with what we so arrogantly call “modern” (or worse still “civilized”) society. The concept of the “crazy gods” is the result of a Coca-Cola bottle falling out of the sky and striking a traveling Bushman on the head, much to his chagrin.

This post has nothing to do with that.

This post is about it being October and for every year since 1970 when the latent genes in my ten-year-old body kicked fully into gear and I became a no-holds-barred fanatic, October has been about post-season baseball.

Furthermore, since even before the fateful year of 1970, I’d been a Yankees fan, because I lived among Yankees fans. So even before I bought in all the way, I heard the names “Mantle” and “Maris” spoken reverentially, and I didn’t really understand that someone could be anything but a Yankees fan.

I still don’t, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to have some very good friends who somehow, somewhere along the way were led astray and who swear allegiance to other teams. One of my newest friends is a Dodgers fan, which of course is a team that has given the Yankees a lot of competition in October over the years. I was fortunate enough to be living in New York City in the fall of 1978 and got to experience Bronx life during a Yankee victory in the World Series against that very team. I even have a good friend, a buddy of my son’s when they served in the Marines together, who is a Red Sox fan. And while this was a good season to root for Boston, in the end, I’m hoping that will all be for naught.

So where does the mental instability of the gods come into play?

Well, yesterday my television died.

Sunday was an off day for the Yanks and Sox, who are tied one game each in the best of five games ALDS, and who will play tonight at Yankee Stadium. And now is the time of year that my heretofore very dependable LG 50″ decided it would like to try life as a radio, for although the sound works just fine, the screen will show images nevermore.

This cave dweller is seen here marking out where he will wall-mount his pathetic 32″ TV, much as I must do.

But don’t cry too loudly for me, Argentina, or anywhere else. I have another television. It is, however, a 32″, which has taken the place of its much larger predecessor, and looks, on our TV stand, much like I imagine a single red Lego looks when placed on the white chalk 50-yard line of an American football field.*

And I say to myself, “I’m living like the beasts of the forest.” I am not comfortable in my man cave. I’m wearing skins at best, cowering in an actual cave. An actual drafty cave, with only a 32″ smart TV. And cable. Barbaric.

If all goes well by the time the World Series begins on the 23rd, I will once again be looking at a TV screen that is so large and so HD that I’ll be able to see into the mind of the opposing pitcher and can telepathically relay the pitches to the Yankees hitters. My contribution to their eventual victory will be such that Yankees management will issue an internal memo that will read, in part: “If not for the fact that his assistance in securing our most recent World Championship is clearly outside the realm of anything that can be even remotely considered legal, we would owe the upstate author S.J. Varengo a loud, public debt of gratitude, and maybe even his own World Series ring. As it is, however, we must publically disavow any association with him whatsoever. He is dead to us.”

* I should probably add that if there were a single red lego on the 50-yard line of a football field, I would still find a way to step on it barefoot.