Damn that bejlum

Man, I hate it when the Jumble kicks my ass. Usually I sail through these puzzles. Occasionally one of the six-letter words will hold me up. And once in a while I draw a complete blank and I end up listing all possible letter combinations -- truly moronic -- or just throwing up my hands and going to Internet Anagram Server -- which of course is cheating.
Usually if I can't get a word it's because it has an unusual letter pattern and my brain just refuses to consider it. Today I couldn't get the first word in this Jumble for a long time. It's CHAOS, and it probably eluded me because of the A-O vowel sequence. I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere, and I hope it's not that we turn stupid after age 50.
But the fact that I had to cheat the unscramble the answer -- there were only two vowels in a twelve-letter, two-word answer and that was just too much for my by-then-frazzled brain to handle -- does make me worry.

More books I've read in 2008

I really enjoyed A.J. Jacobs' "The Year of Living Biblically," which is about just what the subtitle says it's about: One man's humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible. The problem of course is that the Bible has a lot of bizarre rules in it, which is why A.J. wears all white clothing with tassels attached -- and never of more than one fabric; it's why he's building a hut in his living room and eating bugs. I think the thing I liked best about this book was that he never goes for the cheap laugh, as he himself says "the Bible may not have been dictated by God, it may . . . (be) filled with political agendas and outdated ideas -- but that doesn't mean the Bible can't be beautiful and sacred."
At the end of his year, Jacobs is still an agnostic, but now he's a reverent agnostic. "I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance."
To which I say: "Amen."

Moon for the misbegotten

I saw something today at the beer store that made me happy -- actually, I saw a lot of things that made me happy, I was in the beer store. Blue Moon Brewery's Spring Ale "Rising Moon" was on the shelf.
Ah, Spring!
I didn't buy any though. I can't fool myself. It's not Spring yet. Hell, it's still 3 weeks till pitchers and catchers report for Spring training, and we all know that baseball brings the Spring, just as surely as the Coastal Carolina Fair brings the Winter.

Cleaning House

So, I'm trying to clean up my office in preparation for my 50th birthday party later this afternoon. My problem with cleaning is that there are lots of notebooks in which that I've written down dreams, scraps of ideas for stories along with scores from domino and Scrabble games, and grocery lists, and I don't want to throw them away and I don't really want to keep them either, so I usually end up just shuffling them into the deal-with-someday pile. But I'm going to try to extract everything interesting from this one notebook and then pitch it.

Dream from 12-4-99

I dreamed I met that strange guy who used to do the sports on TV way back when I first moved to Charleston, back before sportscasters had to be pretty. Now he comes to the Port occasionally delivering parts for Bumper-to-Bumper. He was sitting on a picnic table reading a book. I struck up a conversation. He was grouchy of course, but eventually he showed me the book he was reading. It was a paperback with a picture of some garish, kindly-looking monster surrounded by children who obviously loved him. I read the back and found out it was about a friendly monster who everyone loved and then a mean monster who looked just like him wreaking havoc and destroying his good name.
I thought at the time -- my first lucid dream -- "This must be a story idea for me to take back. I need to remember this. It's a great story and I don't want to lose it."
I'm glad I remembered it and I'm glad I was able to go lucid, but it doesn't seem like a great story to me now. It's a lot like the 1944 Superman radio show tape I've been listening to.

(These are lines from some forgotten book that I loved so much I wanted to keep them. No idea what book or who wrote it)

"On the smooth brown hair was a hat that had obviously been taken from its mother too young."

"I reacted to that just the way a stuffed fish reacts to cut bait."

"I pushed the bell but nothing happened. I rang it again. The same nothing happened."

"Her voice was as cool as boarding house soup."

"Her voice faded off into a sort of sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment."


I'm sure of the author of this next fragment. It's me, getting the beginnings of an idea for a column:

"I'm as romantic as the next guy -- nay, verily, I am more romantic. How do I know? Because I don't confuse love with mental illness.

(This actually became the middle portion of this column -- one of my favorites.)

Then there's the stuff that must have made sense at one time, like this page that just says:

Jack Larsen
Jack LaLanne

And then it obviously became my work notebook when I was in the police department as there are several pages of driver's license numbers, names and addresses of drivers involved in accidents in the late 90's. And then a section where I plan for an upcoming fantasy baseball season.

And there you have it. Now 30 minutes later I've thrown away one notebook. My office is still a mess.

My 400th Post

A copy of the letter I sent to the editor of my local newspaper, the Charleston (SC) Post and Courier:

Regarding your story "Homeless vets: Why does this still happen?" there's another question that needs to be answered first, and that is: "Pointless wars: Why does this still happen?" Because one thing's for sure, if our next president is someone like John McCain or Hillary Clinton, who has not learned the lessons of history and wants to prolong that senseless bloodbath we started in Iraq, there will be many, many more of our best and bravest young men and women returning to America and ending up homeless, damaged mentally, emotionally and physically.
If they return at all, that is.

Robert Loy

More books I've read in 2008

Valedictorian Denis Cooverman doesn't want to make the usual graduation speech about going forth and fearlesly facing the future, et cetera, so he uses the forum to say we should all do the things we will regret forever if we don't do them, and we should do them now.

That's when he announces that he loves head cheerleader Beth Cooper and outs his best friend Rich. Which leads to one unforgettable night. Former "Simpsons" writer Larry Doyle is a very funny guy and this book kept me turning the pages. My only complaint was that some of the car chases and property destruction seemed written with an eye toward a movie deal.
I found this book by way of one of my favorite web comics "Unshelved" which does a book review every Sunday -- one of the reasons I like it so much.

Rocky II

Last night my wife and I were watching the returns from the New Hampshire Primary and they kept showing Mike Gravel with 1 per cent of the vote. "Who the heck is Mike Gravel?" we asked each other. We even made jokes about Mike Gravel being there on the "rock" bottom.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that Mike Gravel is actually my choice for president -- at least according to this internet quiz. (And we know internet quizzes are never wrong.)
90% Mike Gravel
90% Dennis Kucinich
84% Joe Biden
84% John Edwards
83% Chris Dodd
83% Barack Obama
81% Hillary Clinton
71% Bill Richardson
41% Rudy Giuliani
28% John McCain
23% Ron Paul
23% Mike Huckabee
20% Mitt Romney
17% Tom Tancredo
11% Fred Thompson

Are you a Gravel man too? Take the quiz and find out:
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

New Column

This is my new column for Country Standard Time Magazine.

ON A SERIOUS NOTE

The world of music lost a lot of greats in 2007 – Denny Doherty (of the Mamas and the Papas), Beverly Sills, Frankie (“Rawhide”) Laine, (lead singer of Boston) Brad Delp, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Don Ho, Luciano Pavoratti , Ike Turner, Robert Goulet, Luther Ingram, and of course Porter Wagoner and Hank Thompson, to name just a few – but none that I personally will miss more than Dan Fogelberg.
I had the privilege of interviewing Dan a few years ago, and of all the interviews I’ve ever done, this was by far the most enjoyable. It was the only time I can think of where an interview felt more like talking to a friend than talking to somebody trying to sell me something. The man had no ego. When I informed him that on the same night he was playing in town George Jones was performing as well, Fogelberg laughed and said, “If I had to make that choice, I think I might have to go with George.” His concerts had that same feeling of intimacy to them too, like your coolest friend welcoming you into his living room.
Some people only know Fogelberg for the ballads like “Longer” and “Same Auld Lang Syne,” but he was a lot more versatile than that, doing everything from rock to jazz, bluegrass to Renaissance Christmas music. My favorite song of his is “Leader of the Band,” probably because there are so few songs of filial love, and as a father I appreciate it. In that song, Fogelberg calls himself the “living legacy” of his musician father. When I interviewed – well, when Dan and I talked that day – I asked him if he ever thought about what his legacy might be.
“No, I don’t think in terms of legacy,” he said. “I think in terms of life. That’s why I’ve never been self-promoting. Life is more important than what happens afterwards. I really don’t care if fifty years from now nobody knows who the hell I was. It’s more about having a great day tomorrow.”
A couple of years after our conversation Dan Fogelberg was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and he put up a message on his website (still there today) encouraging men to get their prostate exams so they don’t have to leave their loved ones too soon.
He didn’t say it was his legacy. I’m saying it.
Guys, PLEASE, if you’re over 50 (or over 40 with a family history of prostate cancer) get a DRE (Digital Rectal Exam) and a PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test EVERY YEAR. I know people make jokes about the DRE but have you noticed nobody makes jokes about prostate cancer? Get it done, it’s not that bad, and it very well might save your life. Do it today, don’t wait. If caught in time prostate cancer is very treatable. If you wait too long and it becomes advanced prostate cancer, your chances for survival are significantly slimmer.
I personally think Dan Fogelberg’s music will live forever, but I’m sure Dan meant what he said, and he doesn’t care if you forget all the great music he gave us, so long as you have a great day tomorrow and live to see many more happy pain-free tomorrows on earth.
Somehow I think it’s fitting that the Living Legacy’s legacy is life itself.

Polar Plunge 08

Well, we've done it two years in a row now, so I guess that makes it more of a tradition and less of a wild hare. I'm talking about the Polar Bear Plunge at Folly Beach on January 1st 2008. Here are some pictures from that event.
No, it's not Baby New Year, it's my brother John participating in his first plunge. He had threatened to wear a Speedo and here he's attempting to turn his bathing suit into one.
All of the plungers preparing for a dip -- or is that all the dips preparing for a plunge?
Part of our cheerleading squad -- that's my sister Susan, my wife Kim and my Dad dad.
Me and my youngest daughter Cricket post-plunge.The young 'uns.The ride home -- well, actually the ride to Andolini's for pizza and (more) beer.

Books I've read in 2008

History repeats itself. The CD replaced the LP not because it was better, which it was in some ways and less so in others. CDs became king because the music industry made vinyl expensive and hard-to-find and they added extra tracks to the CDs, so they could say "The consumer has spoken and they prefer the CD format" ignoring the fact that it was anything but a level playing field.
Something similar is going on in the world of comic books. The traditional 32-page saddle-stitched comic book is held in great disdain these days; they're called "pamphlets" and "floppies." The "graphic novel" is king, or soon will be, despite the fact that most of them aren't novels, but paperback collections of comic book series. Readers are discouraged from purchasing "pamphlets" because many stores only carry enough for subscribers and have shelf after shelf of paperbacks but no copies of this month's She-Hulk comic. And they make you feel like an economic ass to continue purchasing comics the old-fashioned way. This collection of Bill Willingham's great series "Fables" collects eight issues for $18, buying the eight issues individually would cost you 24 dollars, and usually they throw in some extras that you can't get anywhere else -- an introduction by the author, design sketches from the artists, unpublished short stories, et cetera. I've quit buying the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book because when the paperback collection of the first story arc "The Long Way Home" came out it had all the beautiful variant covers included as well, and I don't even know how much that would cost individually, but I know I can't afford it. (A variant cover for those who don't know is an identical-on-the-inside edition of a standard comic book but with a different cover which OCD completists such as myself have to buy.) So I'll wait for the second story in paperback. Yes, it's farewell to the floppies. And the paperbacks are better in some ways, easier to store and catalogue, nice to read all in one sitting rather than waiting months -- or sometimes a year or more, since floppies have also become notoriously late more often than not.
Okay, end of rant. Fables Volume Four "March of the Wooden Soldiers" may be my favorite collection to date. We get the big showdown in Fabletown between the Fables and the Adversary's army of invincible wooden soldiers carved and brought to life by Gepetto himself. Snow White is pregnant with Bigby Wolf's baby and there are hints that something might be a little unusual even by Fables standards with the child. There's a magic battle between Baba Yaga and the witch of Hansel and Gretel and the mayoral race between Prince Charming and King Cole. And lots, lots more.
I also read and enjoyed Craig Yoe's "Arf Forum" as I've enjoyed as I've enjoyed all the Arf books. Yoe has a knack for finding cool stuff about comics. Here you learn that Elvis was an Archie fan, Smokey Stover is an underrated strip, and we get to see rare stuff from Stan Lee and Joe Maneely and Krazy Kat too.

My choice for President

I'm not real knowledgeable about Pakistani politics, but that's not going to stop me from endorsing Bilawal Zardari for president of that country. Bilawal is the son of slain leader Benazir Bhutto and according to a friend of the family, (in the UK Times) a big Buffy the Vampire slayer fan:

I have always known him as one of Benazir’s three children, for whom she and I drove around London buying Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books. Bibi (Benazir) was keen on reading and bought books by the boxful. But she was broadminded enough to realise that teenage tastes can vary. I remember one summer, we spent the entire afternoon at a comic book shop near Russell Square as Bilawal, with his sisters, completed their collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel comic books. Bibi patiently accompanied them.

(By the way, if you're running for president in another country, like say the USA, and you want that big rise in the polls that only a Green Genius endorsement can give you, than let me know what comic books you read, or call me and we'll talk Buffy.)

Frosty pink hangover cure

New Years Eve is a fairly quiet time for my beloved wife and me, with no more than the usual Monday night amount of alcoholic beverages. But for those of you who still like to overindulge, you might want to go ahead and get started on this hangover cure involving ice cream and Pepto-Bismol. Whole story and recipe here.

Tumbleweeds rolls off into the sunset.

I couldn't let Tumbleweeds -- Tom Ryan's great western comic strip which began in 1965 and ended this weekend when Tom decided to retire -- roll off into the sunset without saying a word or two about it. "Tumbleweeds" was the favorite comic strip of me and my buddy Tommy Garriss in sixth and seventh grade. We used to laugh out loud on a regular basis at Hildegarde Hamhocker's efforts to woo and win the title character, we loved the undertaker Claude Clay and Judge Horatio Curmudgeon Frump, Snookie and Snake-Eye McFoul. But our favorite was the ever-optimistic Limpid Lizard, who never gave up on winning the hand of Indian maiden Little Pigeon.

I haven't read the strip on a regular basis the last few years, but I did send off for an autographed copy of "The Best of Tumbleweeds" awhile back and I suggest you do the same at

http://www.tumbleweeds.com/index.html. Good stuff. Thanks, Tom.

More books I've read in 2007

Unless work tomorrow is historically slow, this will be the last book I finish reading in 2007.

I found this one in a new way. Previously I've purchased books just because I liked the cover. (This is how I discovered Russell Hoban, one of my favorite writers; there was just something I couldn't resist about the several-shades-of-red hosiery on the cover of "Her Name Was Lola.") I've also purchased books because I liked the title. "The Time-Traveler's Wife" is my all-time, better-than-Dickens, better-than-Twain favoritest favorite book ever, and I picked it up even though I hated the cover, cuz I loved the title.
The website where I waste the most time nowadays is Bookmooch.com, where you can give your old books a new home and replace them with books you desire. Even when none of the books on my extensive wishlist is available, I like to mess around on Bookmooch, seeing what books other people who like some of the same books I like are reading or searching for. And that's how I found Marina Lewycka's "A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian." Somebody who liked Jonathan Carroll or Russell Hoban or George Saunders or Harlan Ellison or "The Time-Traveler's Wife" or "Horton Hatches the Egg" had this book on their wishlist and because I have given away a lot of books and consequently have a lot of points, I mooched it.
It's the story of an elderly, recently-widowed Ukranian man living in England who falls under the charms of a big, blonde, fake-breasted Ukranian woman. His grown daughters who don't agree on much agree that they need to save dear old Dad from this dangerous gold-digger. This book never loses its light, sure touch even when we discover that the sisters' animosity toward each other has much to do with the Nazi concentration camps that Mom and Dad (barely) survived.

Happy Birthday, Stan Lee!

Stan Lee turns 85 today. There was a time I considered him to be the greatest writer who ever lived, and even though he's no longer in my top spot he's still way up there. I will always be grateful for the hours and hours of reading enjoyment he gave me. And no other fictional couple -- not Scarlett and Rhett, or Romeo and Juliet, or Lancelot and Guinevere will ever enthrall me nearly as much as Peter and Gwen, and the Silver Surfer and Shalla Bal.

Thanks, Stan. You are definitely "The Man."

More books I've read in 2007

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE

In this graphic novel Gene Luen Yang tells three separate stories -- one about the Chinese Monkey God and his rejection by other Gods and attempts to remake himself, another about a shy Chinese boy in America and the third about a kid named Danny with an embarrassing -- to say the elast -- cousin named Chin-Kee, who is the living embodiment of every unpleasant Oriental stereotype ever. Amazingly, by the time the book ends all three stories have entwined and become one, and somewhere along the line we've learned how important it to be yourself.

One of my dreams is to start a non-profit group called RIFYS (Read It For Your Self), which will encourage people to read and study and meditate upon their own religion's holy books and not do it the modern lazy-ass way of having some evangelist or some wide-eyed fanatic or even a well-meaning person of the cloth read it and interpret it for you. It seems to me that the people who are hollering the loudest about what Jesus would do have never read the Bible other than in little out-of-context chunks spoon fed to them by someone with their own (usually hate- or fear-based) agenda. Likewise these Muslim terrorists -- or terrorists of any faith -- who are supposedly doing God's will murdering innocents -- or murdering guilties either. That's not what Muhammed would do and you obviously haven't read the Koran, you've let Ayotollahs and other nut jobs read it for you. Read it for your self. Read the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita for YOUR SELF. Nobody can tell you what these scriptures mean to you except you.

The Living Legacy passes on.

Dan Fogelberg is no longer with us. He died of prostate cancer this morning. I had the honor of interviewing Dan a few years ago when he came to Charleston, and I can honestly say that it was the most enjoyable interview I've ever done. He was a lot of fun to talk to. He had just turned 50 when we talked and he told me he was thinking of hanging up the guitar and becoming a painter. The half-century mark was a good time to change careers, according to him. I'm sorry he didn't get a chance to do so. If he was half as good a painter as he was a singer-songwriter he'd have been a heck of a painter.

More books I've read in 2007

Biography was my first literary love and I read every single one of them on the shelves of Jackson-Davis Elementary School in Richmond Virginia, but somewhere along the line fiction stole my heart and I read very few biographies anymore. But I do read everything Bill Bryson writes whether it's about travel ("In a Sunburned Country" "I'm a Stranger Here Myself") linguistics ("The Mother Tongue") or everything else ("A Short History of Everything") so I was glad to get my hands on his biography of William Shakespeare. There are a ton of books written about Big Bill Shakespeare -- more than there are about Jesus or Abe Lincoln -- even though we know very little about his life. One scholar said that "Every Shakespeare biography is 5 per cent facts and 95 per cent conjecture." So Bryson tells us more about the life and times of an Elizabethan actor, so we get to see the world through Shakespeare's eyes.

Russell Hoban is one of my favorite writers, but I'm not sure what to make of his "Linger Awhile." An octogenarian falls in love with a long-dead 1950's B-movie actress. With the help of some friends he succeeds in bringing her image to life but she's black and white in a full-color world and she becomes a vampire, and they clone a second one who also goes around sucking blood. There's at least one love story in here -- no, there's at least three love stories here -- along with some great lines and observations from Hoban, but it's not one of my favorites of his.

Happy birthday, Peter Bagge!

The great Hate-monger is 50 years old today. If you haven't checked out "Hate" or any of Bagge's other neat stuff, do yourself a favor and check it out now.