More recommended reading

Still celebrating Banned Books Week. Here are a few more that are always on the American
Library Association's list of most-frequently challenged books.

"James and the Giant Peach" makes book burners madder than the much gorier and disturbing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Why?
Well, it uses the unforgivable and traumatizing word "ass." An obviously-racist grasshopper says, "I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!", and there are references to snuff, tobacco and whiskey. Some censors object to the fact that it encourages children to disobey adults -- and I say if we're talking about adults like Spiker and Sponge then I say they should be disobeyed.

Shel Silverstein was a genius, no question about it. He was equally skilled at cartooning, music and writing. In the poem "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony," the title character tells her parents that if they don't buy her a pony, she'll die. Her parents refuse, and she does, in fact, die. Book burners, who were born without a sense of humor, think this encourages suicide. Thank goodness for the judges at the Bedford Central School District in New York. Their verdict: "Silverstein… was apparently intending to be funny." And can't you just see the censors scratching their heads and wondering what that means.

I'm not going to try to pass "Where's Waldo?" off as great literature, but for the Barney the Dinosaur demographic it is a pleasant way to pass the time and sharpen one's visual skills. But the book has been challenged because in one beach scene, a little boy is about to throw water on a sunbathing woman's back -- and (gasp!) her bathing suit top is apparently untied. This seems to me to be a perfect example of someone looking real hard for something to be upset about.
If you've ever dealt with the eyestrain involved in trying to locate that rascally Waldo, you'll know what I mean.

More suggested reading for Banned Book Week

You might think that a book published 55 years ago would have lost its power to shock you, make you laugh or break your heart -- not to mention royally piss off the censors, but J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" is still on the most-challenged list year after year -- ostensibly because of profanity (protagonist Holden Caulfield does like the word "goddamn") prostitution, underage-drinking, premarital sex, and tons of "morons" and "phonies."
Much has been made of the fact that this book is the favorite of nutjob assassins like Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, and psychologists say it's because misunderstood social outcasts relate to Holden Caulfield -- and he probably is the patron saint of outcasts -- but Holden never shot any of those goddamn phonies. He really in his own clumsy way only wanted to make the world a better place -- that's why he was out there catching all those kids before they fell out of the rye.
And that's why he'll still be out there in that rye a hundred years from now, no matter how hard the book burners try to shut him up.

Here's some trivia about the book from Wikepedia:

• Holden Caulfield's middle name is Morrisey. Although it does not appear in this book, Salinger used it in a 1946 short story featuring Caulfield called "A Slight Rebellion off Madison," that ran in the New Yorker.
• The name "Holden Caulfield" first came to Salinger when he saw a movie theater's marquee advertising the 1947 film Dear Ruth, which starred William Holden and Joan Caulfield.
• The word "fuck" appears in the book only six times and was sometimes given as reason for it being banned. However, in context Holden is trying to remove the word from the walls of a school and the Museum of Natural History to preserve the children's "innocence."
• The word "goddamn" appears in the book 245 times. However and contrary to popular belief, it is not at least on every other page. (This is a little misleading, it might not be on every single page, but with 245 occurrences in 224 pages it averages out to more than once a page.)
  
• Approximately 250,000 copies of The Catcher in the Rye are sold each year, with total sales at about 10 million copies. [1]
• Is the favorite novel of Terrence Malick, Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Billie Joe Armstrong, David Tennant, Paul Bettany, Sarah Michelle Gellar and the late John Ritter.
• Simon & Garfunkel originally wanted to name themselves "Catchers in the Rye."

• "All morons hate it when you call them a moron." Holden Caulfield
  

Suggested reading for banned books week

Although he gets a lot of competition these days from J.D. Salinger, Judy Blume and J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain is probably the author that pisses off the book burners the most. His masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been censored since it was first published in 1885 (originally people objected to the fact that pipe-smoking elementary-school dropout Huck was not a good role model, which goes to show that political correctness is nothing more than old wine in a new bottle) and still tops lists of most-challenged books year after year. Nowadays the main objection is its frequent use of the word "nigger" -- one of the two main characters is even named Nigger Jim. This is the perfect book to read during banned books week (or any time, of course) because it perfectly encapsulates how twisted and misguided the book burners are.
They say it's racist because it uses the "n word" even though they acknowledge that it is a historically-accurate depiction og the way people in Missouri talked at that time. I say there's no way in hell these people have ever read this book. No way. If anybody reads Huckleberry Finn and finds it to be racist, that person is an idiot and should be sterilized so as not to pass on idiotic genes. The truth is this book is a beautiful, eloquent plea for racial harmony and judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The part of the book where Huck decides he's going to go against everything he's ever been taught and save his black friend Jim even though he's sure it means he'll be sent to hell is one of the most powerful moments in all of literature. Nobody , not Martin Luther King, not Frederick Douglas, not Sojourner Truth, ever expressed the truth of our racial oneness half so well as Mark Twain in that passage.
And the book burners absolutely DO NOT GET IT!!!! They don't get it, and then they want to tell me I should be as narrow-minded, as clueless and oblivious and thin-skinned as they are, and they should be allowed to pick what MY children read -- and it makes me so mad I want to renounce my lifelong commitment to nonviolence and put my foot far enough up their ass to knock some sense into their foolish little minds.
Whew.
But I digress.
Ernest Hemingway said, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." That was true when he said it in 1935 and it's still true now. If you've never read it, you need to read it -- and I know you will love it, it's hilarious, it's exciting, it's unforgettable. Please don't let the poisonous screeds of the book burners color your perception of this magnificent work of art.

Trashing Alabama

I've been a professional music critic for 12 years now. It's a lot of fun, especially when you get to review a bad record -- after all there's only so many ways you can say "This is good," but there's no limit to the ways you tear crappy artists a new one.
Here's one of my favorite reviews of one of my least favorite records by one of my least favorite bands:

Alabama
Twentieth Century
RCA

Even though this is Alabama’s 500th album, it has a youthful air about it. And it’s not just the presence of bubble gummers In the Sink. . .er, ‘N Sync. . .on “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You” (which should probably be called “Alabama Should Spend a Little More Time Picking Their Singing Partners.”) Listen to this line from the title tune: “Oh, the Twentieth Century wasn’t all that bad / It was a time like no one has ever had . . ./ We sent a man into the sky / When he walked on the moon we were so glad.” Now you can’t get much more youthful that that; sounds like a first-grader wrote it.
Maybe Alabama is in their second childhood. Like many an Alzheimer’s victim, they tend to repeat themselves a lot. (“Life’s Too Short to Love This Fast” finds the Bama boys still in a hurry but not knowing why; 9 of the 12 songs here are about romantic love, 7 of them could easily be retitled “Gosh, I Love You.”) They tend to ramble semi-coherently about the past (“Twentieth Century”) and they sometimes think old things are new (on “I’m in That Kind of Mood” a connection between dancing and sex is discovered!). In advanced stages of senile dementia people often develop unreasonable sentimental attachments to inanimate objects, like Alabama for azure ink on “Write it Down in Blue”.
We probably should have seen this coming years ago. (Can anybody really tell any difference between “High Cotton”, “Song of the South”, “Down Home” and “Born Country”?) But research goes on, and someday we will have a cure for Alabama if not for Alzheimer’s. Call it the 21st century.

Family Tradition

Friday on my way home from work, I stopped and bought (among other things) a Star magazine for my son Dylan.
Kim asked me why and I told her it was a family tradition. My mom told me how when she was a girl she got hooked on romance and true confession magazines. When people would ask her father how come they let her read such trash, he said “Hey, at least she’s reading. And it’s none of your business”

Then when I was a lad living in Richmond I tried to check Arthur Hailey’s schlock bestseller Airport out at the library. The librarian wouldn’t let me because she said I had a juvenile card and that was an adult book. Now, I never saw my mother raise hell with too many people, but she sure got on that lady. She told her I could check out any book I liked and if I couldn’t do it with the card I had then she would make sure I got an adult card.
My parents never really got on me much about all the hours I spent reading comic books and Carter Brown books either.

Now Dylan enjoys celebrity gossip magazines and I think that’s great and I buy him one whenever I get a chance.
It’s a family tradition – encouraging reading.
And loving lowbrow literature.

An Open Letter to Goodwill Industries

Robert Loy
114 Gatewood Street
North Charleston, SC 29418

Goodwill Industries International
15810 Indianola Drive
Rockville, MD 20855

Dear Goodwill;

I spend a lot of time and money in thrift stores -- but not much in Goodwill stores anymore. It's not that I don't like your stores; I do. They're clean, well-lit, and always have a good selection of merchandise. But one of the things I like to shop for in thrift stores is T-shirts, and for some reason every Goodwill store I've ever been in separates shirts not by size but by color. I have never understood your reasoning behind this. Do you think that people go to the store desirous of purchasing a green shirt -- any green shirt, whether it be too large or too small or just right. I do not think I am alone in saying that I shop by size not color and having to dig through a bunch of shirts not in my size to get to one that is has become so frustrating that I now do most of my shopping at the thrift store up the street which is not as clean or well-lit and doesn't have Goodwill's selection but separates their shirts by sizes.
If you can explain your reasoning on this issue I would appreciate it very much.
Thank you.

Sincerely Yours,



Robert Loy

To Hell with Censorship!

More than a book a day faces expulsion from free and open public access in U.S. schools and libraries every year. There have been more than 8,700 attempts since the American Library Association began electronically compiling and publishing information on book challenges in 1990.

From September 23 to September 30 it is Banned Books Week, celebrating the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

So tell the book banners to go shit in their hat.

More censorship nonsense

I have no tolerance for censorship of any kind -- whether it's Rumsfeld and Cheney and other members of this evil regime trying to convince people that speaking out against that jug-eared moron in the white house is unpatriotic, or people cutting up old Tom and Jerry cartoons to get rid of the nicotine therein.
And the self-appointed arbiters of what we should see and think never rest, do they? They're at it again at Marvel Comics. Marvel has been reprinting a lot of its older comics and they're doing it with the 1970's Tomb of Dracula -- only they're not doing it right.
But here, read about it for yourself, then come back and we'll discuss.
In the meantime, remember the immortal (albeit paraphrased) words of Billy in "Easy Rider"
"This used to be a helluva country, man, till everybody turned chicken."

Oh, you're back from the Tomb of Dracula page? Is your mind reeling? How in the hell in 2006, at the pinnacle of human evolution, can we be so terrified of a breast, a baby bottle, mother's milk? But to show somebody slashing a woman's jugular vein, blood spurting everywhere, no problem, very entertaining in fact -- but before you die, cover up that booby! Have you no shame?

Greatest Archie Comic Ever

Here's a story about the sexiest Archie comic ever. That's not saying much, you say? Well, Archie and Betty register as man and wife at a motel and spend the evening playing footsie while wearing nothing but towels. That's pretty hot for Riverdale -- or anywhere. And the Archie people have never reprinted this story and vowed that they never will. (Maybe Veronica Lodge has threatened to sue them if they do.)

My favorite Rogers Hornsby quote

People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.

You and me both, Rogers, you and me both.

More things that make you feel old

A couple of months ago I was trying to remember the name of an old-time baseball player. All I knew about him was that his first name sounded like it was plural instead of singular, and the only name I could come up with that fit the bill was Johns Hopkins, and I knew he was an abolitionist philanthropist not a baseball player.
Believe it or not, I racked my brain for a couple weeks trying to dredge it up out of my subconscious, but kept coming up empty-handed. Of course I tried to look it up on the internet, but "baseball player whose first name sounds plural" elicited only irrelevant babble from Google.
And then one day it hit me out of the blue -- Rogers Hornsby, the Cardinals slugger who holds the modern record for highest batting average in a season with .424 in 1924.
End of story? No, because a few days after that I was thinking about how long it had taken me to come up with the name of that baseball player whose first name sounds plural -- and I realized that I had forgotten it again. Now I was irked and I vowed that if I ever remembered that cursed ballplayer and his stupid name again I would write it down so I wouldn't have to keep driving myself crazy about it.
And one day as I was sorting out the mail, the name came to me again, and I dropped what I was doing and ran to my desk and wrote "Rogers Hornsby" on the back of a business card.
All that made me feel old, but the fact that I've already had to refer to the card -- after forgetting his name AGAIN -- makes me feel not only ancient but senile.

Things that make you feel old

I'm talking to a DHL guy and he sees the Mary Marvel wallpaper on my computer. "So, are you into comic books?" he asks, and I say "Yeah."
He says "Me too. I've got a ton of old comic books."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Well, lots of old stuff, but I guess my prize is a Spawn #1."
That was when I decided to switch to FedEx.
For those of you who don't know, Spawn debuted in 1992. And an "old comic book" (at least in my dictionary) is one from before 1970.

Burning Issue

This is my new column for Country Standard Time magazine. As you'll see it has a lot to do with my post of 8-22-06. That's the great thing about being a music columnist, I can talk about whatever I want as long as I tie it in some way to music.

BURNING ISSUE


At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, I think we should all be a lot more upset about the news that Turner Broadcasting in England is going through every single Tom and Jerry cartoon (as well as the Flintstones and Scooby Doo) and cutting out any scenes that appear to "condone, accept or glamorize cigarette smoking."

Why? is it because toddlers in the U.K. are lighting up and having to deal with black lung as well as diaper rash?

No, but they’ve decided that such conduct is inappropriate in shows geared for children.
(So, apparently dropping anvils on your playmates heads is all right. Eating them alive, that's no problem. And you can smack them square in the face with a cast iron frying pan. Tying a piece of lit dynamite to an appendage, that’s okay too, as long as you don’t light the fuse with a cigarette.)

But, I can hear you say, that’s just cartoons – cartoons in England. Why should we care about that?

I’ll tell you why. Because if you give the priggish, self-righteous killjoys of political correctness an inch, they’ll take our entire culture. If you let them go back in time and bowdlerize our art (and don’t tell me “Tom and Jerry” isn’t art; those cartoons have stood the test of time, still popular after 50 years) they’ll be after TV and movies next. No more Hunphrey Bogart movies. No more Edward R. Murrow.

And then they’ll come after music.

First they’ll censor Kenny Rogers. From now on, the Gambler will “bum” not a cigarette but a stick of gum (sugar-free, of course.) Then they’ll go after Don Williams and tell him that he can start the day with black coffee (for now anyway) and missing his ex (in “Some Broken Hearts Never Mend”) but he’ll have to deal with his loneliness without the help of nicotine. Presumably the Statler Brothers will still allowed to watch Captain Kangaroo and play solitaire without a full deck, but they will no longer be allowed to smoke cigarettes while they count flowers on the wall.

God knows what they’ll do with “King of the Road”? My goodness, that will never do. Roger Miller not only smokes, he smokes “old stogies” that he finds on the street. How unsanitary.
And some songs just cannot be “rehabilitated.” Every copy of Patsy Cline’s “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” will just have to be destroyed. Likewise for Merle Travis’s “Smoke Smoke Smoke that Cigarette” and better go ahead and wipe out “Smoke Get in Your Eyes” even though it’s not about cigarettes. We just can’t take a chance with our impressionable youth.

Crazy, you say?

You’re absolutely right.

And so is being afraid of a cartoon cat and mouse.

I've been robbed.

I didn't notice it until I was organizing my comic books to go to the Baltimore convention next weekend, but somebody has stolen about 80 bronze and silver-age comics from me. I knew something was wrong when I opened the boxes and a couple of comics were sticking and crushed down as though someone had brought the lid down fast -- something I never do. Then I saw that the following comics were gone from my DC collection:
Action 356,358,362,367,369,,372,379,413, 415, 416, 417, 443,446, 454,457
Adventure 312,324,343,349
and these from my Marvel collection:
Avengers 29,46,80 Annual 2
Captain America 104,107,108,,114,115,118
Captain Marvel (V1) 5-13
Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders 3,17
Conan 38,43
(13) Daredevil (V1)-19,20,31,33,34,43, 46,47,49,114,208
Defenders 21,23,36,37,39, Annual 1
Fantastic Four (v1) 58
Fantasy Masterpieces – 2,4,9,11
Fear 13,18,19
Howard the Duck – 3-12,14, 16-21

I am heartsick and not so much for the loss of the comic books -- I'm more of a reader than a hard-core collector and none of them are in good enough shape to be worth a lot of money -- but because it had to be done by someone who knew where to look for these things, someone I trusted and had as a guest in my home.

Anniversary Eve Thoughts

Tomorrow Kim and I will commemorate 13 years of wedded bliss. I was feeling pretty good about us and our future -- until I read an article in The Week magazine that said that wives lose interest in sex after 4 years of marriage and men are still going strong after 40.
That was pretty terrrifying, so I've decided to give up reading -- and burn that issue before Kim sees it.

Something else I don't understand

So, I take my youngest daughter Cricket along with her brother Dylan to Subway on Friday night. She got the same thing she always gets, the same thing she has gotten every single time she's ever gone to Subway -- a Ham and cheese on white with a couple quarts of vinegar. I even pointed out to her that Subway has lots of different sandwich possibilities and asked her if she was ever going to try anything else there. Her answer: "Nope."
Okay, fine, you find something you like and you stick with it, I don't have a problem with that. But tonight I fixed a pizza for dinner -- a ham and cheese pizza. Cricket crinkles her nose and says, "Is that ham?" I say yes and she decides to have carrots for dinner instead. I asked her why she wasn't having pizza and she says "I don't like ham." I reminded her of Friday night at the subway and her undying devotion to ham, and she says, "Well, I like it on sandwiches but not on pizza."
Okay, fine, your taste buds are unreliable, I don't have a problem with that. But 45 minutes after she opted for carrots, she comes downstairs and wants me to fix her something else to eat.
Now that I have a problem with.

I don't get it

Why does everything have to turn out more difficult than you thought it was going to be?
ESPECIALLY home repair.
And I know I can't tell a socket wrench from a circular saw; "Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty" is just doggerel to me cuz I have a hard time with concepts like left and right; so I expect home repair to be difficult, but DAMN!
I have spent my entire Saturday trying to put a piece of rubber on the bottom of my garage door, so that when it rains (as it seems to just about every day lately) the garage won't flood and seep into my office. I sit here 48 dollars poorer and with no rubber on my garage door -- no metal either -- carpal tunnel from drilling through aluminum (what numbskull called this stuff "soft metal?) and praying it doesn't rain.
I started out by cutting a piece of the rubber under-the-garage-door stuff I need, cuz I don't speak hardware and I don't know what it's called, but at the hardware store they just look at my doohickey and say "Where did you get this?" and I have to say it's an under-the-garage-door-rubber thing, and they have something sort of like that, but it's for wooden doors, is your door wooden? A quick surreptitious phone call home lets me know that my door is metal. (And yes, I know I should have noticed some time during the seven years I've lived here; I told you I was bad at this.)
At the big home improvement store all the way across town they have lots of garage door rubber stuff, but nobody will talk to me, and I just buy the most expensive thing they have -- which may not sound economically foolish but is actually a frugal move on my part; past experience has taught me that only the most expensive thing has a chance of working and it's cheaper to just buy that right off the bat than buy something cheaper and then have to come back for the pricier piece.
(Pretty shrewd, huh?)
Back home, of course, the rubber doesn't fit in the old metal so I have to unscrew all the old metal -- and it's not really screws holding it up, it's whatever you use when you use a wrench, so it takes forever with a pair of pliers (which is the only tool I really understand other than a hammer) then comes the drilling in the new aluminum and the sweating and the cursing and finally the darkness with the job as yet unfinished.
Why?

Another odd book in my collection

Now this is a treasure. It's got all those songs and poems kids love to sing and recite -- stuff like "Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" and "Miss Lucy had a steamboat" and everybody's favorite "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance."
But wait. That's not all. You also get: "Beans, beans, the musical fruit!" and of course "Found a peanut" and the timeless holiday classic "Jingle bells, Batman smells."
And that's still not all. You get all the regional variations of these odes as well as place and date of origin (when known).
Fascinating stuff. It's out of print now unfortunately, and I bet you if they ever bring it back it will be in a heavily-censored version. There's no way you could put out a book these days with page after page of songs about burning down the school, killing the teacher and flushing her body down the potty.

You'll thank me later.

Here's some advice for all you job seekers -- do NOT send your resume to your prospective employer by certified mail -- or registered mail or express mail or anything other than good old first class. What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you really think that people are going to think your resume is impressive because you put extra postage on it?
All you've done is piss off the guy who has to stand in line at the Post Office to pick up your unnecessarily complicated crap. And you don't want to piss off that guy cuz every time I get one like that I take it the Human Resources department and say "Here's another knucklehead who doesn't have a job but is spending four dollars and sixty-four cents to mail something that should have only cost him thirty-nine cents. If he's that foolish with his own money, imagine what he would do if he had any control over the company's assets. Is this the type of person we want working here?"
And the HR people will sigh and reassure me once again that they have never hired anybody who sent in their application via certified mail.
So don't do it.

SIRF

Here's something else that has lodged itself in my memory for some reason.
I was in the third grade. I was walking around the neighborhood with my cousin Sue. I was telling her a story about something that happened in school that day. My teacher Mrs. Sobel had said something about the month -- which was December -- and she said that "December" was a long word.
I told Sue that was ridiculous. "December" was not a long word. "Dictation" was a long word. And Sue laughed at me.
I think that's why I remember this incident. It was embarrassing. I was trying to show off my vocabulary to cousin Sue and I couldn't figure out why she laughed at me.
Still can't, to tell you the truth, I mean "Dictation" is longer than "December."

Let's all smoke

Personally I love seeing cartoon characters smoke. Here's Fred Flintstone at the Bedrock Quick Stop picking up a pack of Winston:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_08_22.html#011947

Desecration

So Turner Broadcasting in England is going through every single Tom and Jerry cartoon as well as the Flintstones and Scooby Doo, and cutting out any scenes that appear to "condone, accept or glamorize cigaertte smoking."
Why? is it because toddlers in the U.K. are lighting up and having to deal with black lung as well as diaper rash?
No, it's one tight-ass, priggish, bluenose, self-righteous, killjoy son of a bitch objected, said such scenes "were not appropriate in a cartoon aimed at children."
So, apparently dropping anvils on your playmates heads is all right. Eating them alive, that's no problem. And you can smack them square in the face with a cast iron frying pan -- as long as you don't smoke while you do it.
Damn, this makes me so mad!
And I can't get over the fact that all it takes is one asshole to ruin it for everybody. Well, I guess I should by now. That's the same reason you can't find "The Catcher in the Rye" on most school library shelves.
Bad enough that Disney wants to bury "Song of the South", but going back and gutting these works of art that are still popular after 50 years because we're so uptight nowadays just burns me up. Cuz you know what's next -- Humphrey Bogart and all the great old movies where everybody smokes, then the drinking, then anybody in any video entertainment anywhere who looks like they might be enjoying themselves.

Whoops

Well so much for that resolution. I said I was going to write something here every day and I just plain forgot yesterday. Sorry. I got caught up in my fantasy baseball games. There are three weeks left in the regular season, and I've got one team that's all but clinched their division, one team that's completely out of contention and three more scrambling for a playoff berth. (And if you think 5 fantasy baseball teams is too much, feel free to sign my wife's petition.)
Here's the way things look for my best team:

West Division
Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Div	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Gotham City Gargoyles	13	7	0	0.650	0	W4	7-2-0	2	6628.2	368.8	6744.3
Perez Hilton	10	10	0	0.500	3	L4	6-4-0	2	6442.0	555.0	6613.7
DoopDoops	9	11	0	0.450	4	W1	4-6-0	0	6620.7	376.3	6987.5
Mac Daddy	8	12	0	0.400	5	L1	4-6-0	2	6717.7	279.3	6840.8
Swingers Inc.	8	12	0	0.400	5	L1	3-6-0	0	6329.2	667.8	6803.5
East Division
Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Div	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Dreadhead's	15	5	0	0.750	0	W3	8-2-0	3	6975.2	21.8	6013.2
Charlie's Chumps	11	9	0	0.550	4	W1	6-3-0	4	6997.0	0.0	6408.8
Layeth the Smackdown	9	11	0	0.450	6	L2	2-7-0	2	6762.3	234.7	6758.7
sir bucky	9	11	0	0.450	6	L3	4-6-0	3	6659.7	337.3	6819.3
Mad Dogs	8	12	0	0.400	7	W2	4-6-0	2	6743.3	253.7	6885.3

I think everything's pretty self-explanatory, but if you don't know PF is "points for" (or the total number of points we've scored all year.) PA is "points against" "Back" is how far back (in points you are from the person who has the most points. But ultimately points are less important than standings and as you can see I'm standing in first.

Today's history lesson

Recognize this handsome chap? That's Tycho Brahe, a famous Danish astronomer. You can read more about him here, but his major contributions to astronomy were:

1. He made the most precise observations that had yet been made by devising the best instruments available before the invention of the telescope.

2. His observations of planetary motion, particularly that of Mars, provided the crucial data for later astronomers like Kepler to construct our present model of the solar system.

He evidently also made some contributions to rhinoplasty as well. While at the University of Copenhagen in 1566 Brahe allegedly challenged a fellow student to a duel with swords in a dispute over who was the better mathematician. Brahe's nose was partially cut off, and he was said to wear a gold and silver replacement upon which he would continually rub oil. He also according to Cecil Adams "didn't marry the mother of his eight children, employed a dwarf as a jester, kept a pet elk (which died after breaking a leg while going downstairs drunk), dabbled in alchemy, and tyrannized the local peasantry. After his royal patron died of excessive drink he managed to tick off everyone in Denmark, had his subsidies revoked, and eventually found it wise to leave the country."

But he is most famous for the way he died. His death occurred on October 24th, 1601, eleven agonizing days after his bladder burst at a banquet attended by royalty. Evidently it was considered bad manners to take a pee break while amongst the peerage. (Some revisionists are now trying to say that he may have died from mercury poisoning -- which I guess would be ironic for an astronomer -- but don't you believe it. He died from an overdose of urine after knocking back too many Tuborg Golds.) He is believed to be the only man in history to have died of this cause, but I have come close on many occasions -- usually in a traffic jam.

You can't go home again -- except when you can.

I don't have near as much time to read as I used to, so what I've been doing a lot of is rereading -- I mean, reading stuff that I know I will love cuz I've already read and loved it before. It's interesting cuz some of the stuff I haven't read for decades. Most of the time I impress myself with my impeccable taste, but some things don't hold up as well as others.
So for that reason I was a little nervous about going back and rereading Carter Brown. I loved these books; I had dozens of them -- Carter was nothing if not prolific. I remembered them as being funny, sexy, exciting and all about 120 pages so you could read it in a couple hours. And those covers by Robert McGinnis -- well, I didn't know his name then, but i sure recognized his style. They were the sexiest things I'd ever seen.
I'm happy to report that although not as witty as I remembered them, they are miles above other detective books as far as repartee goes. They're not as sexy either, in fact it all seems very tame, but that's okay, cuz I enjoy innuendoes and double entendres and those things our culture seems to be losing the ability to appreciate as we get clubbed over the head almost hourly with blatant sex and violence. They still have those great McGinnis covers -- and they're still sexy as hell -- the mysteries are compelling, the characters are well-drawn. But I can't force myself to plow through 120 pages of it.
Why?
Cuz I hate adverbs. Adverbs to me are the sign of a lazy writer who couldn't be bothered to find the right nouns and verbs and so propped up his prose with those damn adverbs. Hey, I'm all for free speech and everything but it wouldn't bother me a bit if adverbs were banned from the English language. And as much as I hate adverbs, that's how much Carter Brown adores them. He has several on every page. Think I'm exagerating? I'll pick out a page at random from the closest Carter Brown book (which happens to be The Sad-Eyed Seductress).
Here we go, here are the adverbs on page 48:
"bellowed angrily" (how else is somebody going to bellow?
"looked at him nastily"
"I said shortly"
"watched me doubtfully"
"I said carefully"
"he said icily"
"he said heavily"
At that is typical. Every page is laden with a-bombs and I find myself flinching at each one and cringing at the one I know is coming up real soon.
So I can't recommend Carter Brown books -- well, except for the covers. McGinnis is the man!

What is wrong with people?

In the last two nights I've heard three of my beloved family members say they can't wait for winter.
It's a world gone mad.

I'm not eating that

I know as a recovering vegetarian I'm probably prejudiced, but is there any food more disgusting-sounding that baby back ribs? It sounds like you're about to devour an infant, starting right around the spine.

Not only are they crooked, they're stupid too!

So, we recently had the pleasure of buying a new car from Gene Reed Toyota. (And by "pleasure" I mean ginormous pain in the arse.) Everybody knows what crooks car salesmen are, so that won't come as a surprise to anyone. But evidently they're so stupid they don't even know how to pump gas. The guy said he would fill the car up after we signed our life away to obtain it, and I didn't realize till I was almost home that he had only "filled" it a little more than halfway. So I took it back a few days later. A different guy went to put petrol in the Prius. (By now it was only 3/8ths full.) He came back and said there must be something wrong with my gas gauge cuz it only took a couple gallons. I scheduled an appointment to get the car serviced. But I figured I might as well try and see if I could get any gas in it. I could. At Citgo I put in 16 dollars worth.
So I called them up. And they said just bring in your receipt we'll reimburse you. So I went back again, but wouldn't you know it, the cashier had left for the day. But come on back again another day and we'll damn sure have it for you. So now I've gotta go back again.
I know I'm stupid to believe them -- and stupid for burning up more than 16 dollars worth of gas trying to get these weasels to do the right thing.
Now if I was just crooked as well as stupid I could be a car salesman.

the root of all art

Anybody know where I can get 250 dollars quick? I just found out my favorite comic book artist Gene Colan is retiring (at age 84, comic artists didn't get pensions in those days), but before he does he's doing one last round of commission sketches for the baragin price of two hundred and fifty bucks -- seriously, it used to be 400. This is the guy who gave the world Howard the Duck and Tomb of Dracula. A bargain at twice the price.
Any suggestions?

Old Girlfriends, Part Two

LAURA B

Picking up where we left off:

I don’t remember exactly where I met Laura Brown either. Either my memory is getting as bad as my eyesight or neither of these two ladies made much of a first impression.
Quite possibly I met Laura B in Summer school that year too. Certainly the girl was no genius. Unlike Cindy, she wasn’t that much of a looker either. She wasn’t ugly – although some people – most memorably my brother John – kept telling me she was – but she did have big teeth.
Now that I think about it I’m pretty sure I did meet her at Summer school. She must have been a friend or at least an acquaintance of Cindy’s. I don’t remember there being any jealousy in my relationship so I don’t think we did much flirting or anything while I was with Cindy, but we must have got together after Cindy got put on restriction. Maybe I was concentrating on Laura when Cindy got off restriction and that’s why we didn’t have the big finish.
I’m not even sure how long it lasted but I don’t think it was long. I don’t remember going out with her, just hanging out at her house. I remember going with her to pick out an anniversary card for her father to give to her mother, don’t know why he couldn’t pick his own card.
And I remember that I broke up with her to pursue somebody else (don’t ask me who) and when that didn’t pan out I called her up and suggested we get back together. She said okay but then called me immediately right back and said on second thought, she would pass on my generous offer.
I saw her once during the early 1980s when I was working a temp job moving furniture around at some company she worked for. I pretended I didn’t recognize her and she either did not recognize or she did a pretty good job of pretending herself.

Another Odd Book in my Collection

This book is just what it looks like, a collection of bathroom graffiti collected by a scholar with a lot of time on his hands. It makes me kinda sad, cuz I can't remember the last time I read anything clever or witty on a bathroom wall. Just the same old "For a good time call. . . " and "Here I sit broken-hearted. . . " but back in 1967 you could find a great graffito like:

"A toast to a German virgin -- Goesintight!"

or

"Stand up close. The next man might have holes in his shoes."

or:

"Don't write on our walls. We don't shit in your notebooks."

Odd books in my collection

I have a lot of books. Some of them are the same bestsellers on everybody's shelf. And some of them aren't.
Here's an example of the latter category.



What, why are you looking at me like that? This is a scholarly work written by a doctor -- well, a podiatrist, but podiatrists are doctors.

My songwriting career

I was going through the Microsoft Word files on my hard drive and I found this, simply titled "C&WSong". I honestly don't remember writing it. It obviously needs quite a bit of work, the rhyme scheme and meter go to hell after the first verse and I don't know of any country songs with the word "manifestations" in their lyrics, but it gave me a chuckle and I hope it will for you too.

She says she's leaving me cuz I never let my feelings show.
I wasn't trying to hide 'em; it's just I didn't know
How deep and wide they ran inside me
And I was afraid of what would happen
If I just let 'em go.

I can't ignore 'em now, her hand is on the door;
But I don't have any practise; I don't know how long
And how loud and how wet and how strong
To make these outward manifestations of the inner man.

So look in my eyes and tell me:
Are these teardrops?
Tell me when I've cried enough
and I'll do my best to stop em

Look at me; I'm walking the floor,
Don't that tell you something?
And if you're in love I've heard it said
You can't eat or sleep, well, just look here --
Ain't I wide awake?
And didn't I just put down my sandwich?

Christmas in July

Why do people send those stupid e-mails, you know the ones about how you can receive cash or gifts or answered prayers or good luck forever just for forwarding e-mail to people, or some sick kid with cancer who gets three cents every time you pass on her hard-luck story to some friend with more compassion than common sense. It seems people just can't wait to buy the biggest bunch of bull they can find.

More to the point, why do they send them to me, when they know I'm going to do what I always do, hit "reply all" and send them the relevant Snopes.com link debunking all that nonsense. What's weird is most people don't care it's true or not. I got one last night from somebody wanting me to sign an e-mail petition to Congress to stop them from voting to give Social Security to illegal aliens. I sent her the Snopes link, explained that wasn't what Congress was voting on -- and she writes back to tell me "It doesn't hurt to send 500 (or more) emails to them just for a reminder of how the American public feels." I think Congress already thinks we're gullible idiots, we don't have to e-mail and confirm them in that opinion.

Anyway, this brings me to one of my favorite e-mails. Around Christmas last year they had one going around about some little girl with cancer wanting to meet Santa, getting money for her treatment from from some omniscient billionaire who evidently watches everybody in the world and gives the little girl a couple pennies everytime sometimes forwards her e-mail. (What a chintzy billionaire, why can't he just pay for the kid's chemo without cluttering up my inbox?) I debunked it over and over, and a former co-worker sent me the following, which absolutely cracked me up.

(The modern attention span being what it is, I doubt you'll be to make it all the way through the following -- you probably even skipped some of my intro, didn't you? -- but you ought to at least read enough of the beginning to get the gist of the BS and then skip down to the red parts. If you want to read it all, feel free, of course.)

Happy Holidays!

This is touching, prayers can do miracles...

I cried a few tears over this maybe you will also. Love you and Merry Christmas.

Always believe in MIRACLES!!Three years ago, a little boy and his grandmother came to see Santa at Mayfair Mall in Wisconsin. The child climbed up on his lap, holding a picture of a little girl. "Who is this?" asked Santa, smiling. "Your friend? Your sister?"

"Yes, Santa," he replied. "My sister, Sarah, who is very sick," he said sadly.

Santa glanced over at the grandmother who was waiting nearby, and saw her dabbing her eyes with a tissue."She wanted to come with me to see you, oh, so very much, Santa!" the child exclaimed. "She misses you," he added softly.

Santa tried to be cheerful and encouraged a smile to the boy's face, asking him what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas.

When they finished their visit, the Grandmother came over to help the child off his lap, and started to say something to Santa, but halted. "What is it?" Santa asked warmly.

"Well, I know it's really too much to ask you, Santa, but .." the old woman began, shooing her grandson over to one of Santa's elves to collect the little gift which Santa gave all his young visitors. "The girl in the photograph... my granddaughter well, you see ... she has leukemia and isn't expected to make it even through the holidays," she said through tear-filled eyes. "Is there any way, Santa…any possible way that you could come see Sarah? That's all she's asked for, for Christmas, is to see Santa."

Santa blinked and swallowed hard and told the woman to leave information with his elves as to where Sarah was and he would see what he could do.

Santa thought of little else the rest of that afternoon. He knew what he had to do. "What if it were MY child lying in that hospital bed, dying, "he thought with a sinking heart, "this is the least I can do."

When Santa finished visiting with all the boys and girls that evening, he retrieved from his helper Rick the name of the hospital where Sarah was staying. He asked the assistant location manager how to get to Children's Hospital.

"Why?" Rick asked, with a puzzled look on his face.Santa relayed to him the conversation with Sarah's grandmother earlier that day.

"C'mon.... I'll take you there," Rick said softly.Rick drove them to the hospital and came inside with Santa. They found out which room Sarah was in. A pale Rick said he would wait out in the hall.Santa quietly peeked into the room through the half-closed door and saw little Sarah on the bed. The room was full of what appeared to be her family; there was the Grandmother and the girl's brother he had met earlier that day. A woman whom he guessed was Sarah's mother stood by the bed, gently pushing Sarah's thin hair off her forehead. And another woman who he discovered later was Sarah's aunt, sat in a chair near the bed with weary, sad look on her face. They were talking quietly, and Santa could sense the warmth and closeness of the family, and their love and concern for Sarah.

Taking a deep breath, and forcing a smile on his face, Santa entered the room, bellowing a hearty, "Ho, ho, ho!"

"Santa!" shrieked little Sarah weakly, as she tried to escape her bed to run to him, IVtubes intact. Santa rushed to her side and gave her a warm hug. A child the tender age of his own son -- 9 years old -- gazed up at him with wonder and excitement. Her skin was pale and her short tresses bore telltale bald patches from the effects of chemotherapy. But all he saw when he looked at her was a pair of huge, blue eyes. His heart melted, and he had to force himself to choke back tears.

Though his eyes were riveted upon Sarah's face, he could hear the gasps and quiet sobbing of the women in the room. As he and Sarah began talking, the family crept quietly to the bedside one by one, squeezing Santa's shoulder or his hand gratefully, whispering "thank you" as they gazed sincerely at him with shining eyes.

Santa and Sarah talked and talked, and she told him excitedly all the toys she wanted for Christmas, assuring him she'd been a very good girl that year. As their time together dwindled, Santa asked Sarah if there was anthing special he could do for her.

She turned to Santa and said "Yes, could you shove a lump of coal up Robert Loy's ass for me, that fucker has been telling people that I don't exist and the 3 cents that I get for every e-mail that gets forwarded for telling my story has gone down a bunch. I bet that granola munchin, beer swilling, son-of -a-bitch will even edit this e-mail, if I wasn't so tired from my chemo I'd kick his ass myself.

So Santa went and told one of his reindeer to put a "Contract" out on Robert Loy. And the last anyone heard, the proctologist was pulling antler splinters from Robert Loy's ass. And everyone, but Robert Loy, lived happily ever after.

Sorry. . .

Kim and I bought a new car tonight and we just got home (at 10:00 pm) after fighting our way through the phalanx of shysters at Gene Reed Toyota, so this is all you're gonna get today.
Hey, I just said I'd write every day, I didn't say it would be entertaining.

The Stinking Rose and I

A few years ago there was a magazine called Mostly Garlic. It didn't last very long. I guess it's hard to make any money publishing a magazine about herbs -- High Times notwithstanding. But before they became defunct I sold the magazine the following article:

IT’S AN ILL WIND – OR IS IT?

Americans are all so sensitive and politically correct nowadays that the only people you can make fun of with impunity are blondes, Kathy Lee Gifford and garlic eaters. Or hadn’t you noticed that whenever time garlic is mentioned on television or in the movies it’s always in a negative way, usually as a setup for a cheap garlic-breath joke.
Well, guess what. Pamela Anderson Lee notwithstanding, there are some bright blondes. Kathy Lee does not own slaves or have any more to do with her clothing line’s manufacture than Michael Jordan does with Nike’s. And there are a lot worse things you can do your breath than eat garlic.
I’ve put up with this thinly-veiled hostility for as long as I’m going to. No longer will I laugh sheepishly at the jokes putting down my funky-breathed brethren. Before we garlic-eaters are banished to the outdoors with the cigarette smokers and the bag ladies, I’m drawing a line in the sativum.
Say it loud! I reek and I’m proud.
That’s right; I have garlic breath, and I love having it. Not only do I not think there’s anything aromatically unappetizing about it, I wish everyone had it. That way I’d know you were enjoying garlic the way you’re supposed to – on everything from breakfast to dessert. I wouldn’t have to worry about vampires snatching you away. Plus I’d get to enjoy your exhalations.
You heard me right. I love garlic breath so much I’ll take it any way I get it – directly from garlic or my paramour’s palate. Yes, call me “Second-Hand Stinking Rose.” Call me what you like; I am not ashamed to say that I am a connoisseur of garlic breath.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not enjoy or appreciate halitosis. If you’ve been smoking cigarettes, eating pickles or – my own personal least favorite – drinking coffee, I will not be lining up at your kissing booth. (However I may later make jokes about your bland breath with my fellow radical garlic breathers.)
I can’t wait for the day when we abandon this unfounded prejudice, and realize that garlic on the breath adds character to one’s exhalations. It’s sort of like a perfume in that it doesn’t smell the same on any two respiratory systems.
Unfortunately good garlic breath is getting hard to find these days. I know plenty of garlic eaters, many of them potentially kissable, but I don’t know many who don’t immediately rush off after a meal to brush their teeth or gargle (which only makes things worse, garlic breath is much preferable to Listerine breath) or munch down parsley like a stoned bunny rabbit.
It’s gotten so bad I had to put an ad in the personal column:
SWM ISO SF. Age and weight and IQ unimportant. Sense of humor not
necessary. Must have GB.
It got results but the single female who responded came to my door not with garlic breath but with her gay boyfriend. I couldn’t think of anything else to do so I served garlic gazpacho and we played Scrabble.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The next time someone makes a joke about garlic breath don’t laugh, enlighten the poor fool. And when you’re around me remember three things:
1. Eat lots of garlic.
2. Don’t brush.
3. Kiss me.
That’s
1. Eat lots of garlic.
2. Don’t brush
3. Kiss me.
(I repeated the instructions for all the blondes in the audience.)

Working with Bubba

That dude to the left there is my co-worker Bubba. One of the reasons I no longer dread having to go to work in the morning is because I no longer have to put up with a preponderance of lazy-ass morons like I did when I was in the police department. I get to work with intelligent, hard-working people like Bubba. Bubba has taught me everything I know about the printing business. And cuz he knows I'm an autograph collector he was kind enough to get Bob Zany's autograph for me when he went to a recent Friends of the Bob and Tom Show Comedy tour stop.
What a bud.
But he ain't perfect. Here are probably his two most annoying characteristics:
1. Whenever he misses a day of work (which is frequent) when he comes back the next day, it doesn't matter what I've done, he's going to say "Is that all you did? I would have thought you'd have done this and this and that." If I have rebuilt the building from the ground up in the middle of a hurricane (while he was out) he'll say "Is that all you did? I would have thought you'd have repaved the parking lot and put a helipad on the roof too." It's kind of ironic cuz sometimes Bubba will spend days staring at calendar software trying to figure out how to make August start on a Tuesday.
2. Bubba is skinny (and neat and unmarried at 29, hmmm. . . ) and because he's skinny some of the women in the office will give him food. When they give him food he does not immediately eat it. No, he will come down to my office or wherever I am and eat it in front of me, sighing with delight and closing his eyes like these nachos (or whatever) is the most delicious thing he's ever tasted. He does this because he knows that's how you torture a fat person.
But despite the unrealistic expectations and the sadistic streak, Bubba is a pretty good person to work with.

Review of She-Hulk #9

The Black Panther and Storm’s wedding is not the only nuptials in the Marvel universe this month. She-Hulk and Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson’s son John (also known as the Man-Wolf) were wedded at the Chapel of Love in Las Vegas – by an Elvis impersonator, no less.

There are actually two stories in this issue, “The Big Reveal” wherein the world learns of the wedding, and we get a whole page of spit-takes from various members of the supporting cast, expectorating everything from Sarsaparilla (Two-Gun Kid) to WD-40 (the Mad Thinker’s Robot Head) and we see ex-bouncer-turned-lawyer, Augustus "Pug" Pugliese try to get hold of Shulkie so he can tell her that her feelings for John Jameson are the result of Starfox’s manipulation of their emotions, which may be true – probably is true, as Starfox is a skunk of the first order – but Pug also has a massive crush on She-Hulk, so his motives are suspect too.





In “My Dinner With Jonah” all hell breaks loose at the first meeting between the happy couple and the groom’s father. He actually drags out one of his old Spider-Slayers -- only now he’s calling it a She-Hulk Slayer. That’s right, he tries to kill his daughter-in-law right there at the dinner table (and you thought meeting your significant other’s folks went badly.)

All right, time for a word lesson, kiddies. Who can tell me what “Grawlixes” are? How about “jarns”? or “nittles”?
Well, they’re words for something you probably never knew there was a word for – those squiggles and symbols (like @%*#$!) used to denote cursing in the comics. I don’t know what the previous record for most grawlixes in a mainstream comic was, but I bet this beats it by a wide margin. J Jonah Jameson is a gruff man at the best of times, and the two things he hates most in the world are super-heroes and lawyers, so when he finds out his son is married to a spandex-wearer who is a lawyer in her not-so-secret alter ego, it’s not the best of times.
This is great stuff. People continue to debate what is more important in a great comic – the writer or the artist. And the answer is the writer, because writer Dan Slott actually makes comics fun again despite the fact that the artists Marvel keeps saddling him with are all substandard – the interior artists that is, Greg Horn’s covers continue to rock.
Two thumbs up. Five stars out of five. A++

Here we go

I have another journal, one of those old-fashioned paper ones, that I've kept for 11 or 12 years now. At one point I decided I would write in there every day and I did for a couple years -- and those volumes are the most fun to go back and reread, especially after I made myself do at least 3 pages a day.
I've had this blog for almost a year now. August 13th is my anniversary -- here is the link to my Amazon wish list, if you feel compelled to give me a gift -- and this is my 42nd post. That's only one about every nine days or so. And I'm not satisfied with that. So starting today and for the next year I promise you new content here every day -- yes, including the Sabbath and holidays. So check back every day or better yet subscribe with bloglines, but don't miss it.

Sometimes You Tell 'em Just to Amuse Yourself

The other night Dylan was working on something on the computer and he asked us how to spell "custody." My wife Kim told him "It's C-U-S-T-O-D-Y" and I looked at her and said "Hmm, I thought that spelled "fun" or "play". She gave me the same look you're giving me now, unless you too are a huge Tammy Wynette fan and have to sing part of "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" to remember how to spell "surprise."
For those of you who still don't get it, here are the lyrics to one of the absolute best country songs ever.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E Lyrics
Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tear the heart right out of me.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E; becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas
Or his 5th Birthday
And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell away this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E; becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

SIRF

For some time I've been trying to figure out how my memory works, how come I forget some stuff immediately and other stuff sticks with me forever. It's not just importance, there's some inconsequential memories that I just can't shake. My mom's theory is that eventually your brain gets full, and every time you learn something after that you have to throw away some other bit of knowledge to make room.
Interesting, but it doesn't explain how I can get to the control switch and decide what to remember and what to jettison.
So, I've been cataloguing things that I cannot forget, looking for a pattern. I'm writing them down in a book called SIRF (which stands for Something I Remember Forever.)
This first one has to do with baseball and food.

SIRF: When I played little league baseball, we always got 10 cents credit at the snack bar after the game was over. Doesn't sound like much, I realize, but you could buy anything you wanted at the snack bar, nothing was over a dime. My teammates usually got a hot dog and/or a Pepsi or potato chips, but I always opted for 10 pieces of grape bubble gum. When you're eight or nine years old and your taste buds haven't been burnt out by coffee and cayenne and beer and years, that burst of chemically-manufactured grapeness can only be described as intense and that flavor rush as addictive. I can still taste it in my mind, I can remember sometimes stuffing all ten pieces into my mouth -- which is probably why I have TMJ and a couple of AWOL molars now, but that's neither here nor there. Occasionally I will see that gum in the store and pick up a couple pieces. But the magic is gone, it's just annoyingly sweet and becomes rubbery and a task, not a joy, to chew within seconds.

There was a kid on my team whose father worked at 7-11, which I thought was absolutely the coolest job imaginable -- who wouldn't love working surrounded by Slurpees, comic books and grape bubble gum? Once he gave me a free Slurpee just because I was on his kid's team -- or maybe it was because I played so crappy that I made his kid look good.

Travel Tips

We are on the road in Wisconsin, but thanks to the ubiquity of wi-fi on the road, I can offer these travel tips.
1.) Teetee when you have the chance whether you have to go or not. (This first tip is from my grandmother -- and I hope I spelled teetee right). I think she created this rule the 90th time I refused to pee at a trip stop or maybe before we left the house cuz I didn't have to go yet -- but after about another mile or two I'd be screaming that my bladder was about to bust.
2. Always bring your own Charmin Ultra, cuz I don't care whether you're staying at KOA or the Ritz-Carlton, they all have scratchy toilet paper.

My favorite John Steinbeck quotes

Man is the only kind of varmint who sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Truer Words were ne'er spake

There is a theory that states that bands named after places invariably suck, and the bigger the place they’re named after the worse they suck. Which would explain why Boston is better than Kansas, why Nazareth is better than Alabama, and why the Ohio Players and Styx and Chicago are all better than Asia – who will have to live with the shame of being the biggest (and hence worst) place-named band until someone starts a group called Milky Way or Line at the DMV.

America (the country) is pretty big and America (the band) was pretty mediocre. They had a string of hits in the 70’s, starting with “Horse With No Name”, which was all over the radio back in those days despite having lyrics like “The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz” “heart made of ground” and my favorite: “the heat was hot.” After nine days (or what seems like nine days to the listener) the singer lets that horse he was too lazy to name go free “because the desert had turned to sea.”

Obviously the fly had the right idea, you’re going to have a pretty good buzz to make any sense out of this. And most of America’s song’s were just as lucid. In “Sandman” the titular character is described as “(flying) the sky like an eagle in the eye of a hurricane that’s abandoned.” Now, c’mon guys, if y’all know how to abandon a hurricane you should have shared that information with people along the Gulf Coast.

And even when their lyrics make sense they’re morally questionable. I don’t understand how come Ozzy Osbourne used to get in trouble for allegedly encouraging suicide, but nobody said a word when America told all the Lonely People that they should “drink from the silver cup and ride that highway in the sky.”

I heard an America song the other day – “Tin Man” – and while most of it consisted of their usual lyrical coherence (”Smoke glass stain bright color; Image going down, down, down, down; Soapsuds green like bubbles”) – there was one line in the song that struck me as not only meaningful but true and profound (if grammatically indefensible.) The line is “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have.” I’ll write more about the metal man from Munchkinland later, but for now I’ll just say that Nick Chopper, the Tin Man, is one of my favorite fictional creations ever, one heck of a good role model, and America was right – he didn’t need anything that Oz had to offer.

Just Wondering

I wonder if when they named Lake Titicaca they knew they were giving schoolkids a double dose of snickering pleasure.
Or maybe kids these days are just way too sophisticated to laugh at a lake named after boobies and poop.
(Haha! Boobies and poop.)

Old Girlfriends, Part One

CINDY M

I don’t even remember now where I met Cindy M. I know she rode with me to Summer school in 1974, but I don’t think that’s where I met her – although it might have been; a tiny bell just went off that sounded like Cindy’s sister Pam asking me if I would give her little sister a ride to school so she wouldn’t have to. (Pam was a year ahead of me but I knew her cuz she was in band and I hung out with the band people even though I couldn't play any instrument but the radio.) Anyway, I needed a credit to move up to 11th grade. Cindy was just a rising freshman, but I guess she had some unfinished business back in the eighth grade. I can’t imagine she was getting a jump on high school; she was a pretty girl but by no means a brain.

I do remember our first date – we went to the South Windermere Theater on a double date with Pam and her boyfriend. I have no idea what movie we saw but I can tell you every word we spoke during those two hours.

Me: So, do you want some popcorn or something?

Cindy: No, thanks.

For the first hour of the movie I was debating with myself whether or not I should try to hold her hand or put my arm around her. In fact the debate was so intense that I probably haven’t forgotten what the movie was, I probably didn’t even know it at the time. Somehow I did work up the courage to hold her hand, and I clung to it till the credits rolled even though I became severely dehydrated from all the water I lost through my palm.

I do not remember our first kiss, but I do remember a time when Pam and Cindy came to my house after dinner. They were walking around the neighborhood selling something or collecting for some cause, probably Rainbow Girls, an organization they were active in; I even went to a Rainbow Girls installation that I had forgotten about until two seconds ago. Cindy and I stood in the foyer and smooched while Pam talked to the old folks. (What a pal!) Then I went walking with them although I’m sure people must have thought I was one ugly rainbow girl. I didn’t care. It was a beautiful Summer night, I was able to hold Cindy’s hand now without needing an IV and we laughed and kidded around with Pam. That was probably our best moment as a couple.

The best but not the most memorable. That would be the occasion of the Yacht Club dance. Cindy was nervous because she had just got braces. She needn’t have worried, she looked great. In fact, out there in the parking lot leaning against the bumper of that Volkswagen 411 was the first time I ever said, “I love you” to her. Mercifully she said “I love you too.” And thinking about it now I hope I wasn’t so calculating as to time that announcement specifically when she was feeling insecure and more likely to respond in kind. I don’t think so.

I wasn’t nervous but I probably should have been. I was wearing a dress shirt – a new experience for me. I never wore anything that had to be tucked in. That’s what I called the cursed things too – tuck-in shirts. But it was a semi-formal event and I wanted to look good for Cindy. The only problem was I couldn’t get it to look right. Naturally I had no experience with tucking in shirts (except for church and I didn’t really care how I looked at church; I was just counting the minutes till I could get out of that tuck-in shirt) and no matter how many times I tried there was always some billowing out or something. I wanted it to look perfect which to my mind meant absolutely tucked, no billow, like a Ken doll all dressed up for a night out on the town with Barbie. (It would be years before I learned that this look I had in mind was impossible to achieve.)

After a couple of hours of standing in front of the mirror I hit upon what I believed to be the perfect solution. I tucked the shirt tails into my underwear. Now that looked sharp! Absolutely nothing billowing.

I had been praying that the music would be all slow songs. but of course it wasn’t. Our conversation was almost as awkward as my dancing, but at least I had the consolation of knowing that I looked good – well, not me so much as my perfectly-tucked shirt tails. I kept checking them every few minutes to make sure they hadn’t come untucked, and they hadn’t. But what I did not realize that while I was out there gyrating spastically around to Abba or the Starland Vocal Band or whoever, my underwear started riding up. From the back it was obvious that my shirt was tucked into my underwear, and my underwear was headed toward my shoulders.

It could have been a huge traumatic disaster but Tommy Meteraud pulled me to the side and discretely informed me of what my Froot of the Looms were doing. (What a pal!) I’m sure Cindy saw it but she never said anything. Neither did I.

Unfortunately this great love affair did not end happily or even dramatically. Cindy M’s father was one of the meanest men I’d ever met. Nobody believed me when I told tales of this tyrant and his terrible temper until the day he had a temper tantrum at the Hess station where my brother was working. Now I have at least one witness. Anyway I brought Cindy home a few minutes late one night and she got put on restriction for eight or nine years.

We never officially broke up but Summer was almost over and so were we. The next time I became aware of her she was dating some rock-headed JV football player and I had moved onto a girl named Laura B, a definite step down.

Bricks of bread and the Big White

When I was a kid growing up in Richmond Virgina, there was a drive-in movie theatre we frequently passed and that I used to call the "Big White" (because the screen was big and white.) My parents thought this was cute and they picked up on it and they started calling it the Big White too. Even after I learned to read and knew it was called the Broadway, my parents still called it by my childish nickname till the day we moved out of Richmond.
I was mortified at the time, but now I understand why they did it. When our kids were growing up they had their own words for some things, and a lot of them Kim and I liked better and still use even though the kids have outgrown them. Actually, in a rather dramatic example of history repeating itself, they used to call the Charlestowne Square Cinema the Big Light (cuz it's big and lit up colorfully) and Kim and I still do.
At some point I figured I should save some of these neologisms for posterity and I compiled a family dictionary. Here are some of the entries in that lexicon:

Bank (v) To strike, usually on the buttocks, as a punishment.

Brick of bread (n) better known as a crouton.

Brokan! Brokan! “That object is no longer in working condition.”

Kid Radar (n) An uncanny ability generally found only in young people whereby one can know exactly when nudity or xex is on television. This also works if grownups begin to get physically intimate or to discuss anything xexy. (Kim's and my contribution)

Painolish (n) Colored polish applied to the finger or toenails.

Pinkleberry (n) A color almost indistinguishable from periwinkle

Polluter (n) Another name for a computer.

Pooter Thing (n) a Whoopee cushion

Privacy (n) A person’s genitals, or less commonly their butt or some other part of their anatomy they don’t want others to see.

Table of Continents: Page near the front of a book or magazine that tells you on what page each chapter or article begins.

Tarzaran (n) A cosmetologist or hair-stylist. Also used as an adjective as in “Tarzaran school”.
(an off-the-wall term from Leah.)

Thing With No Pictures (n) Radio

Toast Intolerant (adj) Unable to properly digest milk and dairy products.

Twoever (too-ev-er) A long long time. Maybe even longer than forever.

Two Nut Sandwich (n) it means tuna salad sandwich

Whacked Out of Your Oars (adj) Extremely silly or intoxicated.

Whistle (n) The epitome of cuteness. If something is “cute as a whistle” it is some kind of cute.

What we've learned from the McRib

A few years ago, Dylan fell under the spell of a commercial for McDonald's abominable McRib sandwich. He had to have one. I tried to dissuade him, pointing out that he didn't like ribs, he didn't like barbecue, he didn't even like McDonald's, but there's never any talking Dylan out of anything; logic is powerless against him. So I said I would take him to McDonald's and buy him one of the damn things, but he would have to either eat the whole thing or pay me back. He agreed.

He took like two bites out of it before he said "Okay, I'll pay you back." But I had mercy, and I decided to give him a way out of it. I told him about advertisers and said if he would sign the following paper he would not have to pay me back.

This is the paper he had to sign:

I understand that advertisers' job is to take my hard-earned money away from me. They do this by using every sneaky, underhanded dirty trick in the book to convince me that I must have their newest piece of junk. They also lie almost all the time. From now on, when I see something advertised and I think I want it, I will stop and ask myself why I want it. Is it something I really need or have I been hoodwinked by dirty rotten advertisers? For example, if it is a barbecue sandwich offered and I do not like barbecue, I probably will not like the sandwich.
Name ________________ Date _____________________________

This is my new column for Country Standard Time magazine. Sometimes I just slap these things together cuz a deadline has snuck up on me. And some I like cuz I actually found a way to say something within the context of country music. I'm sorta proud of this one.


Money AND Honey


When I was a young man I made up a list of my life goals. I wanted to find my soul mate, fall in love, get married and stay married and in love. And I wanted to have plenty of money.

That's all I wanted. (And because I was more romantic than rapacious, I wanted them in that order.)
I am happy to say that I have found the woman of my dreams and this summer we will celebrate our lucky 13th anniversary. Our love grows deeper and stronger all the time, and if the second part of my plans shows no signs of ever working out, I know I really shouldn't complain.

But. . . but, sometimes I do wonder what two nickels rubbing together would sound like. What it would feel like to know you could afford take your kid to the doctor or fix the washing machine without having to worry about where the money's going to come from.

And I finally figured out the problem. Country music messed me up. It taught me at an early age that you can't have both love and lucre.

I mean, I was probably in the womb when I first heard Patsy Cline singing "Poor Man's Roses" and Hank Williams wailing "Mansion on a Hill," the former about a girl who chose love over money and was happy, the latter about a girl who chose a man with money over her broke-ass boyfriend and was miserable.

As I grew older, I listened to Jeanne Pruett doing "Satin Sheets," about a woman married to a rich guy pining away for the pauper she really loves; to Whispering Bill Anderson's "Peanuts and Diamonds," about the girl who married the rich guy who gave her diamonds but who wishes they were peanuts from the destitute dirt farmer who owned her heart and not much more.

The list of songs that drove home the same message goes on and on. "Crystal Chandeliers" from Charley Pride, "Rose in Paradise" from Waylon Jennings, "Tight Fittin' Jeans" from Conway Twitty, and perhaps most explicitly, Johnny Paycheck when he sang "Slide Off of Your Satin Sheets . . . You know where to find my door and I know what you're crying for."

The subconscious is a powerful thing. I've spent my life listening to country music and absorbing its messages, one of the main ones being as soon as you can afford really nice fancy bedclothes your wife is going to leave you for some penniless guttersnipe (or cry herself to sleep every night wishing she had.)

So, this is a plea to all the songwriters in Nashville. Can't y'all please write a song about a guy with buckets of money, a diversified portfolio, a big house AND a satisfied spouse?

Oh, and make it a catchy one so it will stick in my subconscious and do some much needed reprogramming.

Come on, people. I'd like to sleep on satin sheets before I die. Just not alone.