Belly of the Beast.

I woke up to the sound of my hand slapping my belly. My spare tire. My… gut. It seems that time, metabolism and Coldstone’s have finally caught up to me and I am now a regular human being. I’ve lost definition in my middle. I never really had that much definition to begin with, and those of you who know me well know that I’ve never really been in tip-top physical condition anyway, even when I was playing sports.

Alas, I cannot seem to beat back my expanding waistline. If my father and his father are any indication, I’m really going to get all bloaty and water-retainy in the near future. And I’ll still have chicken legs. A weird physique the Murphmen have, to be sure.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. A quick look at myself in the mirror reveals a Zach Braff-esque neck waddle that has, quite frankly, really flummoxed my day; a day that will be capped off by a night game at Dodger Stadium, where the Bums will take on the Diamondbacks of Arizona.

I love major league baseball so much that I want to attend three games at Dodger Stadium this week. The third game will be on Friday, when my Giants come to town. The last time I saw these two teams square off in LA in person, Steve Finley hit a walk-off grand slam to knock the Giants out of the playoffs and crush my soul. But I want to go because I love the game so much. And, well, there’s an awesome woman who will be sitting next to me, too. But I really do love the game so much that I’ll watch the Dodgers play the Diamondbacks twice.

We shouldn’t be ashamed of what we love, though. I mean, I’m only a little ashamed because it’s the Dodgers and, as I indicated in my previous post, not every Giants fan is willing to give me a free pass on seeing a game at Dodger Stadium. But it’s become commonplace for people not to like what they like just because a louder voice criticizes that like.

I love the 4th of July. I love the United States of America. I love what our country is, what it used to be, and all of its inherent flaws and conflicts. Like Easter is to the Catholic church, the 4th is to our country, and I can think of nothing better than celebrating our representative democracy together. It should be the day where we all set aside our political differences and say, for better of for worse, here’s our country. We all live here, let’s celebrate America together. Just for the day. Then we can go back to screwing each other over and being awful to one another on the 5th.

My family used to go to the fireworks on the Air Force Base, before security measures banned the public from visiting. I’m not a big fireworks guy. They’re neat, but they’re not an event to plan a night around. Still, it was great that the people of our then-small town could come together and celebrate our country with these fireworks sort of being the big birthday cake at the center of the room. This was our slice of the celebratory cake and it was a fun time to come together.

Before the fireworks, though, there is always a parade that goes through downtown. And it’s the day that all of the city’s groups march through. It’s hot, it becomes increasingly boring as you grow older, but it’s just an awesome display of patriotism. I miss it, actually. The 4th of July was always a day of celebration without tension. We went to the parade and watched the fireworks because we felt that we were a part of something bigger than us, but still ours.

Last night, I went to a stupid place in Universal Citywalk called Howl at the Moon. The piano bar guys led a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. And everybody really got into it. Most impressive, everybody knew the words. And that was cool. Wasn’t necessarily patriotic. But it was fun and it was something I hadn’t been a part of in LA, a place that I think abhors patriotism more than San Francisco.

So tomorrow night, as I watch a fireworks show to celebrate the birthday of the country we love in the stadium of my most-hated rival, just remember that it’s patriotic to love something that isn’t perfect, especially when we are free to make it better.