Two life-changing events happened on this day; one very, very good, and the other, not so good. Twenty-four years ago today, Laz Junior was born in a small hospital in Lewisville, Texas. The bad part was, I ruined his 20th birthday by ending up in the emergency room with what was called a TIA (transient ischemic attack -- or a mild stroke). More on this later. By no means am I trying to compare the importance of both events or even try to steal a little of the Boy's thunder on his Day. I'm just being an economical blogger.
On this day in 1982, Mrs. Laz was driving me to work to the Lewisville Daily Leader where I was a big time sports writer covering high school football and important bowling leagues. Mrs. Laz and I owned a very unreliable Pontiac J2000 that was in the shop for the 30th time so we were in the more reliable, ancient Oldsmobuick that was held together by San Diego Charger bumper stickers. It was about the time Mrs. Laz was due to give birth and we had spent the previous weekend taking our doctor's advice by walking and coaxing the baby out. So when she dropped me off at work that day, I had the uneasy feeling that I would have no way to go home and get her if she went into labor (it hadn't yet occurred to us that Mrs. Laz having the only car made it difficult to get her to the hospital if she went into labor and that driving in labor is about as simple as driving and doing your taxes).
I also had an uneasy feeling about the weather. We'd had a number of tornados in the area and the weather looked a bit foreboding that morning. When I arrived at work, we had the police scanner on and it was whirling and full of activity. We could here various law enforcement personnel out on their beat following funnel clouds and tornados. Of course the scanner picked up traffic all over the region so we were careful to listen to when a tornado was spotted near us and not 50 miles away.
Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Laz was monitoring a radio station on her way home and they were literally screaming for people to take immediate shelter as there was a tornado headed down main street after picking up the usual mobile homes and tossing them about. What Mrs. Laz didn't know is that I had set the Oldsmobuick to my eclectic taste in music and that she was listening to a station in Paris, Texas, about 50 miles north of Lewisville and 6,000 miles from France. She thought it was a local station. Well, the news was quite frightening and so she wasn't sure if she should return to home or come back to the newspaper. The thought of a tornado taking her off to Oz scared her enough that she also began to go into labor. So she did return to the newspaper only to find us completely calm in the face of the onslaught of horrific weather (we newsmen are like that in the face of danger, you know). It didn't take long for us to calm her down and tell her the tornados were well north -- although it destroyed 25 percent of Paris and killed I think about 25 people, so it was a nasty storm.
All the calming down didn't stop the labor so I dropped her off at the hospital, drove to our apartment to pick up our pre-prepared, check-listed "what happens when the baby comes" items. We went through the entire night in the hospital and, after 14 hours of labor, about nine a.m., Laz Junior came into the world. He scored well on his Apgar test (he'd been studying) and mom and baby were healthy. I was a bit injured, however, as Mrs. Laz ripped my thumb out of its joint every time she felt a labor pain. Lamaze classes say to grab hold of your partner’s hand to ease the labor pain but say nothing about breaking the thumb. It’s strange how little sympathy I got and I did a lot of complaining, too. It seems people only care about the mommy and the baby, and how are they, and are they doing well, and look how cute the baby is, blah, blah, blah. What about me? What about my needs?
Twenty years later, we all weren't healthy as I was slumping in my chair at the office. My sister-in-law noticed I looked more detached from society than normal and tried to get me to go to the hospital. I instead suggested she call Mrs. Laz and have her come get me and take me to the doctor. The doctor did a few tests and suggested I go to the hospital. I really didn't want to go because I knew that I would wait for three hours, they would tell me nothing was wrong, and I would ruin Laz Junior’s birthday.
But they didn't have me wait at all. After asking a few questions and taking my blood pressure, they put me in a wheel chair and hauled me off to the emergency room, ahead of a roomful of illegal immigrants, no less. That's when I got worried. I figured if they were breaking the sacred code of citizenship over triage need, I must be in real trouble. Suddenly I didn't feel so well.
The point of this, other than showing up Laz Junior on his birthday again, is to mention a few warning signs of stroke victims. If you see someone behaving a bit more stoically than normal, do the following three things: 1. Ask the individual to smile. 2. Ask him or her to raise both arms. 3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence (Coherently), i.e... “It is sunny out today.” If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. If it's your son's birthday, try to do it quickly so it doesn't interfere with the cake and presents.
(Editor’s note: I am sure I will hear from the Girl how I wrote about the Boy on his birthday but made no mention of her on her birthday. She will note the historical context of November 9, 1983, and I’m not talking about the fact that her sixth birthday landed on the same day the Berlin Wall came down. Her historical context will be one to measure the date as it relates to the birth of HER and how schoolchildren in the future will have to memorize it as they do the date of the Magna Carta and the day Columbus stumbled into the Americas. I think you’ll all feel better getting advance warning on this.)
Monday, April 03, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
No More I Love Yous
Alone and melancholy at 35,000 feet can bring out the emotion. Most of the time I can deal with being by myself – an all too familiar trend – but being lonely is where I struggle. Stuck on an airplane, with hours of solitary confinement and too much time to think, seems to stir up memories of recent and long ago losses. It’s difficult not to acknowledge there’s been too many.
I nearly always think about my mom and dad along with Betts and Fred and even my grandma, whose death didn’t sink in until I was on an airplane. I’ve had to learn to set aside the frustration that comes with facing things you have no control over and I am thankful for all the memories from them that stick with me still. I wish the journey with them could have lasted longer but I have no complaints about the ride. Just the same, I’d give anything just to see them all again and tell them I love them one more time.
Tonight is a bit different, though. I can’t shake two strong feelings, try as I might. One is a flood of feelings about Bill brought on, perhaps, by hearing a song I connect to him, the Wind Beneath My Wings sung by the sweet-voiced Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole who himself died young with far too much life left to offer.
I really shouldn’t be this bad off when I’m thinking about Bill because I had more time with him than probably anyone in his life except for Sue. Cass and Janee lost so much by his early death but I know they feel fortunate they had such a close relationship with their father. Of course that’s the point of this particular tragedy: because he gave so much is the reason he is so missed
Curiosity and nosiness makes it nearly impossible not to occasionally visit Cass and Janee’s My Space sites to see what they’re up to. Both have their father listed as their hero and a goofy picture of him as goofy is how he will end up being most remembered. I can’t tell you how it pains me to see a comment written by Janee on how much she misses her father. I wish I could reach through to the other end of the computer and hug the little Creep. I know she’d tell me it’s OK, but it’s damn sure far from being OK.
Thinking about the weaker moments for Sue and their kids’ nearly breaks the heart because I know about my weaker moments. No word has yet been invented to explain in proper terms what should be said about the shock of Bill’s passing so I’ll borrow a line from one of our favorite movies said in the spirit of utter contradiction, “He will not be missed.” One day the tears will dry up.
The other depressing and common agenda item I can’t get away from tonight is ruminating about the number of my friends who are no longer much a part of my life. Some have been lost out of our mutual laziness, some have moved, some have moved on, and still others have passed away. Some friendships proved to be more fragile than should be the case and others’ bodies proved to be more fragile as well, no matter how much they were abused.
Even my kids have had to endure loss beyond their grandparents and uncle. One lost a crying shoulder and the other the promise of a harbor in a tempest. Losing people shouldn’t be such a big part of their young lives but I suspect they have become stronger people and have so much of their life ahead of them, including learning to love again.
And I guess that’s the lesson here – we’re supposed to gain strength from loss and grow closer together. I think we have, too. Mrs. Laz and I have never been closer; longing for the river to skate away on as we reach the empty-nested part of our relationship. The Boy works with me and we’ve found we have shared ideals of business and life and are actually more open to each other’s political views then we’d ever admit. And the Girl and I have become so close we’ve developed our own language patched together from all the great movie classics such as Zoolander and Anchorman – much to the chagrin of Mrs. Laz who wasn’t given the secret decoder ring. I’m actually happy she didn’t get the apartment she wanted because it gives us two more months of watching AI and AI, two things we’ll always remember, I suspect.
As for friends, I actually told Mr. Sladed I loved him just in case he’d lost sight of that, because I sure haven’t. And that goes for the Wop too; what a pleasure it is to finally be working together. I’m even fortunate to have old and new friends to work with, a stroke of luck that can’t be ignored.
It’s difficult not to notice there is a plan or a certain serendipity developing here. As we lose people, our hearts are opened to allow more room for others. The spark that Bill left in all he touched, and the friends who passed our way have given us all the ability to love better and love more, even if they only stayed for a short visit. I’m even slightly cheered up by this discovery, although that will about do it for long plane rides for a while.
I nearly always think about my mom and dad along with Betts and Fred and even my grandma, whose death didn’t sink in until I was on an airplane. I’ve had to learn to set aside the frustration that comes with facing things you have no control over and I am thankful for all the memories from them that stick with me still. I wish the journey with them could have lasted longer but I have no complaints about the ride. Just the same, I’d give anything just to see them all again and tell them I love them one more time.
Tonight is a bit different, though. I can’t shake two strong feelings, try as I might. One is a flood of feelings about Bill brought on, perhaps, by hearing a song I connect to him, the Wind Beneath My Wings sung by the sweet-voiced Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole who himself died young with far too much life left to offer.
I really shouldn’t be this bad off when I’m thinking about Bill because I had more time with him than probably anyone in his life except for Sue. Cass and Janee lost so much by his early death but I know they feel fortunate they had such a close relationship with their father. Of course that’s the point of this particular tragedy: because he gave so much is the reason he is so missed
Curiosity and nosiness makes it nearly impossible not to occasionally visit Cass and Janee’s My Space sites to see what they’re up to. Both have their father listed as their hero and a goofy picture of him as goofy is how he will end up being most remembered. I can’t tell you how it pains me to see a comment written by Janee on how much she misses her father. I wish I could reach through to the other end of the computer and hug the little Creep. I know she’d tell me it’s OK, but it’s damn sure far from being OK.
Thinking about the weaker moments for Sue and their kids’ nearly breaks the heart because I know about my weaker moments. No word has yet been invented to explain in proper terms what should be said about the shock of Bill’s passing so I’ll borrow a line from one of our favorite movies said in the spirit of utter contradiction, “He will not be missed.” One day the tears will dry up.
The other depressing and common agenda item I can’t get away from tonight is ruminating about the number of my friends who are no longer much a part of my life. Some have been lost out of our mutual laziness, some have moved, some have moved on, and still others have passed away. Some friendships proved to be more fragile than should be the case and others’ bodies proved to be more fragile as well, no matter how much they were abused.
Even my kids have had to endure loss beyond their grandparents and uncle. One lost a crying shoulder and the other the promise of a harbor in a tempest. Losing people shouldn’t be such a big part of their young lives but I suspect they have become stronger people and have so much of their life ahead of them, including learning to love again.
And I guess that’s the lesson here – we’re supposed to gain strength from loss and grow closer together. I think we have, too. Mrs. Laz and I have never been closer; longing for the river to skate away on as we reach the empty-nested part of our relationship. The Boy works with me and we’ve found we have shared ideals of business and life and are actually more open to each other’s political views then we’d ever admit. And the Girl and I have become so close we’ve developed our own language patched together from all the great movie classics such as Zoolander and Anchorman – much to the chagrin of Mrs. Laz who wasn’t given the secret decoder ring. I’m actually happy she didn’t get the apartment she wanted because it gives us two more months of watching AI and AI, two things we’ll always remember, I suspect.
As for friends, I actually told Mr. Sladed I loved him just in case he’d lost sight of that, because I sure haven’t. And that goes for the Wop too; what a pleasure it is to finally be working together. I’m even fortunate to have old and new friends to work with, a stroke of luck that can’t be ignored.
It’s difficult not to notice there is a plan or a certain serendipity developing here. As we lose people, our hearts are opened to allow more room for others. The spark that Bill left in all he touched, and the friends who passed our way have given us all the ability to love better and love more, even if they only stayed for a short visit. I’m even slightly cheered up by this discovery, although that will about do it for long plane rides for a while.
My Least Favorite Places
In all the words I spent writing about my favorite places (including too much time spent complaining about places I didn’t like), I thought it would be worthwhile to have a larger discussion of my least favorite places. There are more than a few.
Surprisingly I just returned from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a war-torn area that still struggles with ethnic and border disputes, and they don’t make the list. I’ve been to worse places, to be sure.
One of them is Kiev in 2005, a much worse city than Kiev was 15 years before. The new Kiev has the feel of a corrupt, lawless city of too many people who have nothing to do except scam the weak and unprotected. There are roughly three million people who live in the city and I think they were all at the airport in black leather jackets offering to take my bags to their car and to god knows where. There could be no trusting this wretched bunch. Orange Revolution notwithstanding, there is no short-term hope for the place. And if they want to continue to complain about how cold they are because Russia won’t sell them natural gas at one-third the market price, they can put on their orange scarves to keep warm.
There are some who say Paris is for lovers by I say Paris is for lovers of garbage. There are few filthier cities. When there was a garbage strike a few years ago it was difficult to notice the difference. Paris is a xenophobe’s paradise because huge numbers of immigrants and refuges have recently made it their home. This melting pot of millions has never melted and instead have all settled in their own homogenous neighborhoods. You drive through one section populated by northern Africans followed by a shanty area of central Africans until you run into a variety of disparate and unforgiving Middle Easterners. Occasionally you bump into a Parisian – or, better, their car bumps into you – but they never stick around long enough to exchange pleasantries as they’re trying to navigate the quickest way to the French enclave of the city. Seriously, look at a photo of the Mona Lisa, watch a Truffaut movie, and spend all your money on French perfume at the local mall and you’ll have no real reason to go to Paris.
Athens is another place to stay clear of. I know, it has all this great, ancient history covered in great and ancient dirt. Granted we were there in 2000 as the city was totally under construction awaiting a throng of soon-to-be unhappy tourists and athletes for the Olympics. Of course unhappy is the only way to describe the residents of Greece. Unless you’re on an over-crowded ferry heading for one of the nearby islands, there is not much in Athens to make you happy. The traffic is horrendous with irritated driver’s hands placed firmly on their horns as if this mélange of noise could possibly move the traffic one inch. As another qualifier (and to avoid an angry letter from Mari, Ari and Celeste) it should be noted that we were there shortly after our peace-loving President Clinton had just finished bombing the crap out of the Balkans, causing literally millions of Macedonians and other refuges to join the crowd in Athens and lend their hand to the important ongoing honking. This made Americans very unwanted, a point brought close to home during a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a taxi trip to a Hard Rock Café. There was one pleasant moment at our hotel – and not the one the kids are thinking about – when we had a wonderful dinner on the roof of our hotel with our Parisian friend Jean (okay, there’s one reason to go to Paris, but even he eventually moved out of town). The weather was perfect and we had an unobstructed view of the light show at the Parthenon. The food wasn’t that bad, either. Of course this was the same hotel where a British diplomat had been gunned down a few months earlier, diminishing the perks of topless sunbathers at the pool (so I heard).
Sonsanate and San Salvador, with apologies to my partner Max, were no garden spots. Sonsanate makes the list if for no other reason than its hopeless poverty. I know there are more impoverished places and giving in to the fact that the people who lived there didn’t seem to realize they were impoverished, it still broke your heart to see. Perhaps more troubling was the knowledge that it wouldn’t take more than a week’s worth of automatic teller charges in the U.S. to make a year's difference in Sonsanate. I was more bothered by San Salvador because there was a lot of poverty and some huge wealth and the people there know the difference. Crime is rampant and it’s difficult to feel safe anywhere. The wealthy have razor wire over the walls that surround their home, much of it left over from the civil war that nearly wrecked the country a decade ago. The middle class, such as it is, pool their resources to pay for heavily armed security 24/7, which only serves to drive the bandits to the neighboring streets whose residents can’t afford the security.
I know there is a certain segment out there who loves Amsterdam. I just don’t like the city or that particular segment who loves it. Sure, there are cultural amenities to Amsterdam such as the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums, and plenty of good, classical concerts. It’s just that they’re all overridden by the graffiti on the outside of the museums and the local permissiveness that attracts people who crave permissiveness. With low cost airlines targeting Amsterdam, it has become the Tijuana of Europe for badly-behaved bachelor parties, inebriated miscreants and serious drug users (although t
he Harold and Kumar types who still giggle that they can get some legal pot, man, can be charming). Because of the beer flowing out of all sides of the drinkers, the city was forced to install outdoor and very public urinals to better organize the public urination off the walls of businesses and restaurants and out in the open where, I suppose, they believe it belongs. Where else can the ladies get an outside glimpse of the inside of a men’s room but in Amsterdam? And then there are the rows of “cabins” where Eastern European, Russian and African women show what they have to sell. Okay, it’s fun to see it once, but after awhile it gets sort of boring. It’s not like you’d want to do anything other than walk down the alleys and avoid direct eye contact, unless spending 300 euro to get 10 minutes of detached sex with a stranger is attractive to you. Not that I know it costs 300 euro; it’s just a guess. I know there are lovely sides of Amsterdam – the canals, the history, the work ethic. I suppose the people who live there learn to put up with the section of the city that is a monument to tolerance and progressive thought. It’s just not for me.
There are a number of other cities that are pretty disgusting, but they have some overriding charm to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere. St. Petersburg, Russia is a frightful place for the most part, but there are areas that are unbelievably rich in culture and history. Bucharest, with its attempt to mix huge numbers of gypsies with gypsy-haters and which holds the world’s worst architecture by the world’s worst dictator/architect still has sections of the city untouched by crazy communist leaders where you can enjoy a coffee and snack at a number of outdoor cafes. Romanians like to call their capital the “Little Paris” and fortunately they modeled much of it on the old Paris just in time before people will start to call Paris the “Little Bucharest.” Tirana is a dusty dump (see below) and there is no excuse for the place. The Albanian capital has been made all the more distasteful by a new government (that we help get elected) trying to outdo the corruption of the last corrupt government; a difficult task indeed.
The U.S. has its ugly cities too. Drive around any city or town in Texas, save for Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, and there is no place you’d less rather be. Midland/Odessa is downright scary it’s so ugly, El Paso makes Juarez livable, and East Texas is something out of To Kill a Mockingbird. Large sections of Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago will make any reasonable person long for the natural beauty of Tirana. And don’t get me started on New Orleans. What a dump that place is, and that was before the hurricane.
Understanding I just insulted millions of people (although I suspect the people of Tirana would wholeheartedly agree with me); I also recognize there every place has something of redeemable value. It may be more difficult to find it, but I’m sure it’s there.
Surprisingly I just returned from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a war-torn area that still struggles with ethnic and border disputes, and they don’t make the list. I’ve been to worse places, to be sure.
One of them is Kiev in 2005, a much worse city than Kiev was 15 years before. The new Kiev has the feel of a corrupt, lawless city of too many people who have nothing to do except scam the weak and unprotected. There are roughly three million people who live in the city and I think they were all at the airport in black leather jackets offering to take my bags to their car and to god knows where. There could be no trusting this wretched bunch. Orange Revolution notwithstanding, there is no short-term hope for the place. And if they want to continue to complain about how cold they are because Russia won’t sell them natural gas at one-third the market price, they can put on their orange scarves to keep warm.
There are some who say Paris is for lovers by I say Paris is for lovers of garbage. There are few filthier cities. When there was a garbage strike a few years ago it was difficult to notice the difference. Paris is a xenophobe’s paradise because huge numbers of immigrants and refuges have recently made it their home. This melting pot of millions has never melted and instead have all settled in their own homogenous neighborhoods. You drive through one section populated by northern Africans followed by a shanty area of central Africans until you run into a variety of disparate and unforgiving Middle Easterners. Occasionally you bump into a Parisian – or, better, their car bumps into you – but they never stick around long enough to exchange pleasantries as they’re trying to navigate the quickest way to the French enclave of the city. Seriously, look at a photo of the Mona Lisa, watch a Truffaut movie, and spend all your money on French perfume at the local mall and you’ll have no real reason to go to Paris.
Athens is another place to stay clear of. I know, it has all this great, ancient history covered in great and ancient dirt. Granted we were there in 2000 as the city was totally under construction awaiting a throng of soon-to-be unhappy tourists and athletes for the Olympics. Of course unhappy is the only way to describe the residents of Greece. Unless you’re on an over-crowded ferry heading for one of the nearby islands, there is not much in Athens to make you happy. The traffic is horrendous with irritated driver’s hands placed firmly on their horns as if this mélange of noise could possibly move the traffic one inch. As another qualifier (and to avoid an angry letter from Mari, Ari and Celeste) it should be noted that we were there shortly after our peace-loving President Clinton had just finished bombing the crap out of the Balkans, causing literally millions of Macedonians and other refuges to join the crowd in Athens and lend their hand to the important ongoing honking. This made Americans very unwanted, a point brought close to home during a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a taxi trip to a Hard Rock Café. There was one pleasant moment at our hotel – and not the one the kids are thinking about – when we had a wonderful dinner on the roof of our hotel with our Parisian friend Jean (okay, there’s one reason to go to Paris, but even he eventually moved out of town). The weather was perfect and we had an unobstructed view of the light show at the Parthenon. The food wasn’t that bad, either. Of course this was the same hotel where a British diplomat had been gunned down a few months earlier, diminishing the perks of topless sunbathers at the pool (so I heard).
Sonsanate and San Salvador, with apologies to my partner Max, were no garden spots. Sonsanate makes the list if for no other reason than its hopeless poverty. I know there are more impoverished places and giving in to the fact that the people who lived there didn’t seem to realize they were impoverished, it still broke your heart to see. Perhaps more troubling was the knowledge that it wouldn’t take more than a week’s worth of automatic teller charges in the U.S. to make a year's difference in Sonsanate. I was more bothered by San Salvador because there was a lot of poverty and some huge wealth and the people there know the difference. Crime is rampant and it’s difficult to feel safe anywhere. The wealthy have razor wire over the walls that surround their home, much of it left over from the civil war that nearly wrecked the country a decade ago. The middle class, such as it is, pool their resources to pay for heavily armed security 24/7, which only serves to drive the bandits to the neighboring streets whose residents can’t afford the security.
I know there is a certain segment out there who loves Amsterdam. I just don’t like the city or that particular segment who loves it. Sure, there are cultural amenities to Amsterdam such as the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums, and plenty of good, classical concerts. It’s just that they’re all overridden by the graffiti on the outside of the museums and the local permissiveness that attracts people who crave permissiveness. With low cost airlines targeting Amsterdam, it has become the Tijuana of Europe for badly-behaved bachelor parties, inebriated miscreants and serious drug users (although t
he Harold and Kumar types who still giggle that they can get some legal pot, man, can be charming). Because of the beer flowing out of all sides of the drinkers, the city was forced to install outdoor and very public urinals to better organize the public urination off the walls of businesses and restaurants and out in the open where, I suppose, they believe it belongs. Where else can the ladies get an outside glimpse of the inside of a men’s room but in Amsterdam? And then there are the rows of “cabins” where Eastern European, Russian and African women show what they have to sell. Okay, it’s fun to see it once, but after awhile it gets sort of boring. It’s not like you’d want to do anything other than walk down the alleys and avoid direct eye contact, unless spending 300 euro to get 10 minutes of detached sex with a stranger is attractive to you. Not that I know it costs 300 euro; it’s just a guess. I know there are lovely sides of Amsterdam – the canals, the history, the work ethic. I suppose the people who live there learn to put up with the section of the city that is a monument to tolerance and progressive thought. It’s just not for me.There are a number of other cities that are pretty disgusting, but they have some overriding charm to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere. St. Petersburg, Russia is a frightful place for the most part, but there are areas that are unbelievably rich in culture and history. Bucharest, with its attempt to mix huge numbers of gypsies with gypsy-haters and which holds the world’s worst architecture by the world’s worst dictator/architect still has sections of the city untouched by crazy communist leaders where you can enjoy a coffee and snack at a number of outdoor cafes. Romanians like to call their capital the “Little Paris” and fortunately they modeled much of it on the old Paris just in time before people will start to call Paris the “Little Bucharest.” Tirana is a dusty dump (see below) and there is no excuse for the place. The Albanian capital has been made all the more distasteful by a new government (that we help get elected) trying to outdo the corruption of the last corrupt government; a difficult task indeed.
The U.S. has its ugly cities too. Drive around any city or town in Texas, save for Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, and there is no place you’d less rather be. Midland/Odessa is downright scary it’s so ugly, El Paso makes Juarez livable, and East Texas is something out of To Kill a Mockingbird. Large sections of Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago will make any reasonable person long for the natural beauty of Tirana. And don’t get me started on New Orleans. What a dump that place is, and that was before the hurricane.
Understanding I just insulted millions of people (although I suspect the people of Tirana would wholeheartedly agree with me); I also recognize there every place has something of redeemable value. It may be more difficult to find it, but I’m sure it’s there.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Laz Logic
Mrs. Laz and I were having an intellectual debate that was fascinating. Well, fascinating to me that I am alive and able to write about it. One could say I was being a bit controversial or “having fuzzy logic,” but I prefer to believe I was thinking outside the box, engaging in intellectual discourse or perhaps breaking down barriers of all thought. And still I am fascinated that my fingers are free to type and free of hairline fractures that usually occur following such intellectual wanderings that begin with, “Dear, I was thinking …”
I can’t lay claim to the general thesis of the theory I presented to Mrs. Laz; that belongs to someone else. However, I took the premise to a more practical use by attempting to put it in motion – as all pioneers feel the urge to do. And it was the very same “urge” part that drew a bare-knuckled beat-down by the Mrs. And in the sanctity of my home own too!
In the interest of science I will present my research to you, dear readers, and hopefully this will help Mankind (or at least one man).
We begin with two key facts:
Fact No. 1: The definition of marriage is a union of two people, a man and a woman.
Fact No 2: Gay, Lesbian and Transgender activists don’t like the part of Fact. No. 1 that limits their options regarding the two sexes. And so they rallied and rumbled and bullied cowering politicians (not a difficult task, mind you), went to court, yelled a little more, stomped their feet, held their breath, and had a number of jurisdictions agree with them: marriage should not be so exclusive as to be just between men and women. What’s wrong with two men, or two women, or two sexually confused humans, they asked? In fact I believe the final demands of Gays, Lesbians and Transgender people were to define marriage as just between two mammals -- and I think they’re pretty flexible on that point, too.
And so they largely got their way by declaring their definition of marriage to be a right. I still like Kinky Friedman’s comment that gays should be able to marry so they can have the same right to be as miserable as the rest of us. But that was before I was spraying Bactine on the heavy cuts about my head and neck as I was, apparently, taking this theorem to its next logical conclusion. Naturally all men of Science and High Thought have had to suffer for being ahead of their time and I am no different. Unfortunately for Newton and Socrates Bactine wasn’t invented, as Newton may have needed it to salve a bump on his head and Socrates, well, actually, Socrates may have had to drink it. I’m glad I had Bactine at the ready, but it still stings!
Which leads us to Fact No. 3: If marriage is no longer defined as that between a man and a woman, we should no longer be bound by the union of “two people” either. If we’re breaking down half the equation and have gotten over the “man and women” thing, then we should have no problem declaring the random number of two as no longer “operative.” (Ohhhhh, funny story about that. When President Clinton’s first press secretary Dee Dee Myers was asked about a statement she had made a day earlier regarding Hillary’s cattle future’s problem that had proven to be a lie, Dee Dee was questioned about it by the press. She simply said the answer she had given the day before “was no longer operative.” That’s much better than saying it was a lie, don’t you think?).
OK, keep your focus fellow scientists. We’re back to the Multiple Party Marriages or MPM as I like to now call them. Aside from the ungrateful swipe by my hostile bookkeeper that I couldn’t “handle” more than one woman (first we kill all the accountants!), you can’t debate the logic that one breakdown of the marriage equations leads to a breakdown of the other. Well, to be fair, you can only debate this theory if you’re wearing protective head gear and a padded jock strap.
I have come to find that men, in general, are out front of women in accepting this new paradigm. Men have supported my radical thinking while women have cast scorn on the idea and, I might add, cast more than a few household items at me. But all such shifts in great thinking begin this way: with a few believers before the other, slower people come around.
The only part of my theory that isn’t working out is the part about women not being too keen on the whole more than one spouse part. Why, what would happen if my logic is sound but no women were willing to participate? I don’t think I calculated this divergence of opinion when I ran my chaos theories, at least in the context of behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems (e.g. women). It’s the Butterfly Effect all over again. I guess it’s back to the drawing board and my studies. I’ll need books and tools and volunteers for study, but where do I find them?
I can’t lay claim to the general thesis of the theory I presented to Mrs. Laz; that belongs to someone else. However, I took the premise to a more practical use by attempting to put it in motion – as all pioneers feel the urge to do. And it was the very same “urge” part that drew a bare-knuckled beat-down by the Mrs. And in the sanctity of my home own too!
In the interest of science I will present my research to you, dear readers, and hopefully this will help Mankind (or at least one man).
We begin with two key facts:
Fact No. 1: The definition of marriage is a union of two people, a man and a woman.
Fact No 2: Gay, Lesbian and Transgender activists don’t like the part of Fact. No. 1 that limits their options regarding the two sexes. And so they rallied and rumbled and bullied cowering politicians (not a difficult task, mind you), went to court, yelled a little more, stomped their feet, held their breath, and had a number of jurisdictions agree with them: marriage should not be so exclusive as to be just between men and women. What’s wrong with two men, or two women, or two sexually confused humans, they asked? In fact I believe the final demands of Gays, Lesbians and Transgender people were to define marriage as just between two mammals -- and I think they’re pretty flexible on that point, too.
And so they largely got their way by declaring their definition of marriage to be a right. I still like Kinky Friedman’s comment that gays should be able to marry so they can have the same right to be as miserable as the rest of us. But that was before I was spraying Bactine on the heavy cuts about my head and neck as I was, apparently, taking this theorem to its next logical conclusion. Naturally all men of Science and High Thought have had to suffer for being ahead of their time and I am no different. Unfortunately for Newton and Socrates Bactine wasn’t invented, as Newton may have needed it to salve a bump on his head and Socrates, well, actually, Socrates may have had to drink it. I’m glad I had Bactine at the ready, but it still stings!
Which leads us to Fact No. 3: If marriage is no longer defined as that between a man and a woman, we should no longer be bound by the union of “two people” either. If we’re breaking down half the equation and have gotten over the “man and women” thing, then we should have no problem declaring the random number of two as no longer “operative.” (Ohhhhh, funny story about that. When President Clinton’s first press secretary Dee Dee Myers was asked about a statement she had made a day earlier regarding Hillary’s cattle future’s problem that had proven to be a lie, Dee Dee was questioned about it by the press. She simply said the answer she had given the day before “was no longer operative.” That’s much better than saying it was a lie, don’t you think?).
OK, keep your focus fellow scientists. We’re back to the Multiple Party Marriages or MPM as I like to now call them. Aside from the ungrateful swipe by my hostile bookkeeper that I couldn’t “handle” more than one woman (first we kill all the accountants!), you can’t debate the logic that one breakdown of the marriage equations leads to a breakdown of the other. Well, to be fair, you can only debate this theory if you’re wearing protective head gear and a padded jock strap.
I have come to find that men, in general, are out front of women in accepting this new paradigm. Men have supported my radical thinking while women have cast scorn on the idea and, I might add, cast more than a few household items at me. But all such shifts in great thinking begin this way: with a few believers before the other, slower people come around.
The only part of my theory that isn’t working out is the part about women not being too keen on the whole more than one spouse part. Why, what would happen if my logic is sound but no women were willing to participate? I don’t think I calculated this divergence of opinion when I ran my chaos theories, at least in the context of behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems (e.g. women). It’s the Butterfly Effect all over again. I guess it’s back to the drawing board and my studies. I’ll need books and tools and volunteers for study, but where do I find them?
Monday, March 06, 2006
My Favorite Places
Lately, a lot of people have been asking me about places I’ve been and, particularly, which places and countries I like the best.
It should first be noted that I go to a lot of the same places a lot of the time and therefore haven’t picked up any special worldly knowledge. I haven’t been to Africa or the Middle East and my travels to Asia are a bit suspect (I had a bewildered taxi driver take me a few feet into the Asian section of Istanbul so I could rightly say I’d been to Asia). I have been to nearly 50 countries and there were a lot of dull ones among them like Luxembourg, Albania, and Canada.
I don’t know which country or countries I prefer. I suppose I like certain things about all of them just as I like certain things about the U.S. New Zealand and Scotland have by far the friendliest people. France has the snootiest people but make up for it with good wine, warm baguettes and croissants, and the best drivers driving in reverse on the planet.
The Germans have surprisingly good food and very unfriendly people, especially if you don’t take the time to learn their language (and why would you want to take the time to use words twice as long in German as in English?).
I have a couple of good memories in Munich; one at a Kriskrendlemart (sp.), a holiday craft show where someone scooped a cup into a big bucket of simmering wine and spices and gave me something called Glühwein. It will cure what ails you, especially on a cold winter day. The other memory is of a solitary violinist playing a Handel piece in an alley off the main shopping road. It was beautiful as the music bounced off the ancient walls of the shops above him. It all came to an abrupt end when a group of inebriated soccer hooligans came charging through the alley, knocking the violinist and his music to the ground as sort of an instant critical review of the concert. Apparently Glühwein and Handel don’t mix well.
Speaking of inebriation, Ireland is the country with the most drunks, although Sweden comes in a close second. Walking near any bar or restaurant in any town or city in Ireland requires the walker to be sober and have a nimble gait less he step in the many puddles of vomit along the sidewalk. And what keeps the average Irish drinker on the sidewalk, you ask? The clever Irish have placed side rails along the busier roads to keep the drinkers and socializers from stumbling into oncoming traffic (or French vacationers driving in reverse).
As for the Swedes, it has come to the attention of the Swedish Government’s Alcoholic Consumption and Warnings Your Mother Gave You but You Ignored Department that Swedes drink too much. They actually have a government agency that tracks the amount of alcohol each Swede consumes. You drink too much and you get a visit and a stern letter from an agency busybody. The Swedish solution? Denmark is only a short drive or ferry away and no such busybodyness exists in Denmark so they take the quick jaunt and drink it up, crashing cars and breaking curios and such. It should be noted the Danes have disliked the Swedes outside of their public drunkeness. Apparently, I was told, the Swedish King said something unpolite to the Danish Queen in 1206 and things haven’t been right between the two neighbors since. What has followed is a bunch of loud Swedes and annoyed Danes; entertainment you can’t get at home at any price.
I have gotten to know some places better than others by either living there for a while or because the host government was foolish enough to give me a multiple-entry visa. The foolishness went both ways as I chose to spend a great deal of time in Russia and its nearby republics, now countries that had the good sense to leave Russia when the same good sense escaped me. Nobody had a gun to my head when I domiciled in Romania for six months either. The two countries share this much: they make you appreciate capitalism and some semblance of Democracy a great deal more. Kissing the passport control floor at LAX is not uncommon for returning travelers to these countries.
The biggest mistake we all made about Russia was in thinking they just wanted to be like us. They didn’t. They wanted to be like the Swedes (except for the strict alcohol consumption codes) because they had bought into the whole “cradle to grave” society. They didn’t want to have to work or give up potatoes and Vodka, they simply wanted to be able to get their cranky government off their back and travel whenever they wanted just to reinforce the world view of Russians.
I once asked the obvious question to a woman about why the Soviet Union fell. We were standing near the entry of the “Hammer Center,” a hotel and restaurant complex that was a shrine to free marketers but off limits to the average Russian. She talked about how frustrating it was to see all the goodies the West had to offer through the window of the Hammer Center but no right to take part in spending $400 for a pair of shoes. So the Russians had a revolution to buy uncomfortable footwear and a $60 steak. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, you could buy a pizza at a place called Pizza Hat. I guess there was a revolution just because some entrepreneur needed to buy a vowel.
Since Romania and Russia were Communists countries, they had a few things in common: an overabundance of moles, poor dental care and astonishingly ugly sofas. I have no inside information on the moles but the high degree of tooth decay and gingivitis comes from a rational fear of the dentist. Since the trademark of all Communist countries is for all workers in the Worker’s Paradise to be employed by the State, there was no need to be a better, more caring dentist than the next. Imagine dental care by the Department of Motor Vehicles and you have imagined a Soviet dentist. The offshoot is that Novocain costs the State money and is therefore superfluous. Without the Novocain, surprisingly few people filled out those silly tooth-shaped postcards to remind them of their next dental appointment, which was good for the State since the lack of repeat business further lowered costs so there was more money to keep Lenin looking green in his tomb.
I also can’t explain the prevalence of the astonishingly ugly sofa. It seems the ideal sofa in former Communist countries has a tree-full of carving and gilt and is upholstered in plush, petit point, plaid, and paisley as if Donald Trump, Madame Pompadour, Queen Victoria and the Doors had gotten together to start a decorating firm. You see the astonishingly ugly sofa everywhere. In the homes of the well-off and otherwise; hotel lobbies; office reception areas; furniture-store windows (of course) and, most spectacularly, on local sitcoms. One actor sits down and makes an exasperated face while the other actors gesticulate comically. I couldn’t understand what was going on in these sitcoms, but I could tell it was a lot more charming than Oprah.
Bad driving on bad and very wide roads also seems to be a consistent theme in formerly Communist countries. Whether in Moscow, Warsaw, Bucharest or Kiev, crossing a major intersection alive takes bravery and guile, or blindness, since the only way I was willing to act as a pedestrian is with my eyes closed. The traffic is too scary otherwise. I was taught in high school that it was good to be an aggressive driver. I think drivers in Eastern Europe and Russia are taught to drive angry. If you try to cross a major street in Russia or Romania, you will note quite quickly that drivers, without expression, speed up and aim for you. A simple street crossing reminds one of that old video game “Frogger.” Except you get across the street more often on the computer.
Not all is bad in these countries. Moscow has become as fashionable and trendy as any city in the world. Housing prices have skyrocketed and the rich have been buying up apartment buildings and huge houses with astonishingly ugly sofas like hotcakes. And they buy it all in cash; which has the upside of cutting down on receiving 30 letters each day explaining how they’re paying too much for their mortgage. I once asked someone, “who can afford these places,” and I was told, “Officials and prostitutes.” “Aren’t they one and the same?” I asked.
I was in Kiev during the start of the so-called Orange Revolution. The Revolution’s spontaneity couldn’t have been better planned. Before the results of the elections were announced, there suddenly appeared 200,000 people with orange scarves and the secret code to show up at the right time in Independence Square. Also, someone just happened to have a couple of Jumbo Trons in their trunk so angry speechmakers could make angry speeches. The best part is that the rubes in the world press bought the spontaneity angle so the newly anointed Ukrainian government decided it needed to keep the joke going and tried to run a government. Governments are difficult enough to run but when your whole plan revolves around calling the former government all sorts of bad names, trouble is on the horizon. The new government was able to get the “Own a Black Mercedes and BMWs on $400-Per-Month-Scheme” in place before the country tanked, so they had that going for them.
Albania may be the sorriest of a lot of sorry former Communist states. If wealth was measured in dust, Albania would be the Beverly Hills of the world. I don’t know where the dust comes from or where it settles, but it is constantly coming from somewhere and apparently never settling. Albania is the only country that decided to exit a Communist economy and dip its toe in capitalism by creating a massive, country-wide pyramid scheme. When it predictably collapsed, the entire country went on a looting spree, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down including the astonishingly ugly sofas (fortunately for future generations of Albanians, dust can’t be nailed down). After a while, the looting came to an end. When asked why the people stopped, one Albanian man simply said, “We were done.”
On the other side of the world, I was able to spend 10 delightful weeks in New Zealand. New Zealand is the Bigfoot of countries; hiding behind rocks and trees in fear of being discovered. Kiwis (as people from New Zealand are known) live in this tormented contradiction of enjoying their isolation but, at the same time, wondering if the world knows they’re still alive. When I mentioned I enjoyed the movie The Whale Rider, the Kiwis couldn’t believe I had seen it. They still can’t believe they are interesting enough for a busy American to take the time to notice.
Kellen and I were working on the elections in New Zealand. Besides the obvious side show that is politics, we were amused by the dire predictions of a country headed to hell by the opposition government (our client and still in opposition). If Americans only had to worry about the minor annoyances of the kind of government that angers the Kiwis, all the fun would go out of politics. Since there are only 2.8 million voters in New Zealand, the government is run like one large condo association with the same amount of general goofiness consistent with a Landscape Committee. But it still runs better than Congress
All the same, I found the mix of unrivaled natural beauty, every season available within a one-hour plane ride, friendly natives, and the availability of all the creature comforts of home in New Zealand to be the perfect blend to the best place to live or visit. Scotland comes in a close second with summer in Sweden not far behind. All of which is to say I spent a lot of time writing about places not to go and far too little time discussing nice places to visit.
However, I have come to believe that “nice” isn’t always the best reason to travel somewhere. I prefer interesting places with long histories where the locals feel the need to do something extra to keep you from going to Euro Disney. I also tend to like smaller cities. With that in mind, my favorite places are:
Krakow, Poland
Bruges, Belgium
San Sebastian, Spain
Wellington, New Zealand
Sibiu, Romania
Koblenz, Germany
Galway, Ireland
Avallon/Vezaly, France
But there is no place like home.
It should first be noted that I go to a lot of the same places a lot of the time and therefore haven’t picked up any special worldly knowledge. I haven’t been to Africa or the Middle East and my travels to Asia are a bit suspect (I had a bewildered taxi driver take me a few feet into the Asian section of Istanbul so I could rightly say I’d been to Asia). I have been to nearly 50 countries and there were a lot of dull ones among them like Luxembourg, Albania, and Canada.
I don’t know which country or countries I prefer. I suppose I like certain things about all of them just as I like certain things about the U.S. New Zealand and Scotland have by far the friendliest people. France has the snootiest people but make up for it with good wine, warm baguettes and croissants, and the best drivers driving in reverse on the planet.
The Germans have surprisingly good food and very unfriendly people, especially if you don’t take the time to learn their language (and why would you want to take the time to use words twice as long in German as in English?).
I have a couple of good memories in Munich; one at a Kriskrendlemart (sp.), a holiday craft show where someone scooped a cup into a big bucket of simmering wine and spices and gave me something called Glühwein. It will cure what ails you, especially on a cold winter day. The other memory is of a solitary violinist playing a Handel piece in an alley off the main shopping road. It was beautiful as the music bounced off the ancient walls of the shops above him. It all came to an abrupt end when a group of inebriated soccer hooligans came charging through the alley, knocking the violinist and his music to the ground as sort of an instant critical review of the concert. Apparently Glühwein and Handel don’t mix well.
Speaking of inebriation, Ireland is the country with the most drunks, although Sweden comes in a close second. Walking near any bar or restaurant in any town or city in Ireland requires the walker to be sober and have a nimble gait less he step in the many puddles of vomit along the sidewalk. And what keeps the average Irish drinker on the sidewalk, you ask? The clever Irish have placed side rails along the busier roads to keep the drinkers and socializers from stumbling into oncoming traffic (or French vacationers driving in reverse).
As for the Swedes, it has come to the attention of the Swedish Government’s Alcoholic Consumption and Warnings Your Mother Gave You but You Ignored Department that Swedes drink too much. They actually have a government agency that tracks the amount of alcohol each Swede consumes. You drink too much and you get a visit and a stern letter from an agency busybody. The Swedish solution? Denmark is only a short drive or ferry away and no such busybodyness exists in Denmark so they take the quick jaunt and drink it up, crashing cars and breaking curios and such. It should be noted the Danes have disliked the Swedes outside of their public drunkeness. Apparently, I was told, the Swedish King said something unpolite to the Danish Queen in 1206 and things haven’t been right between the two neighbors since. What has followed is a bunch of loud Swedes and annoyed Danes; entertainment you can’t get at home at any price.
I have gotten to know some places better than others by either living there for a while or because the host government was foolish enough to give me a multiple-entry visa. The foolishness went both ways as I chose to spend a great deal of time in Russia and its nearby republics, now countries that had the good sense to leave Russia when the same good sense escaped me. Nobody had a gun to my head when I domiciled in Romania for six months either. The two countries share this much: they make you appreciate capitalism and some semblance of Democracy a great deal more. Kissing the passport control floor at LAX is not uncommon for returning travelers to these countries.
The biggest mistake we all made about Russia was in thinking they just wanted to be like us. They didn’t. They wanted to be like the Swedes (except for the strict alcohol consumption codes) because they had bought into the whole “cradle to grave” society. They didn’t want to have to work or give up potatoes and Vodka, they simply wanted to be able to get their cranky government off their back and travel whenever they wanted just to reinforce the world view of Russians.
I once asked the obvious question to a woman about why the Soviet Union fell. We were standing near the entry of the “Hammer Center,” a hotel and restaurant complex that was a shrine to free marketers but off limits to the average Russian. She talked about how frustrating it was to see all the goodies the West had to offer through the window of the Hammer Center but no right to take part in spending $400 for a pair of shoes. So the Russians had a revolution to buy uncomfortable footwear and a $60 steak. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, you could buy a pizza at a place called Pizza Hat. I guess there was a revolution just because some entrepreneur needed to buy a vowel.
Since Romania and Russia were Communists countries, they had a few things in common: an overabundance of moles, poor dental care and astonishingly ugly sofas. I have no inside information on the moles but the high degree of tooth decay and gingivitis comes from a rational fear of the dentist. Since the trademark of all Communist countries is for all workers in the Worker’s Paradise to be employed by the State, there was no need to be a better, more caring dentist than the next. Imagine dental care by the Department of Motor Vehicles and you have imagined a Soviet dentist. The offshoot is that Novocain costs the State money and is therefore superfluous. Without the Novocain, surprisingly few people filled out those silly tooth-shaped postcards to remind them of their next dental appointment, which was good for the State since the lack of repeat business further lowered costs so there was more money to keep Lenin looking green in his tomb.
I also can’t explain the prevalence of the astonishingly ugly sofa. It seems the ideal sofa in former Communist countries has a tree-full of carving and gilt and is upholstered in plush, petit point, plaid, and paisley as if Donald Trump, Madame Pompadour, Queen Victoria and the Doors had gotten together to start a decorating firm. You see the astonishingly ugly sofa everywhere. In the homes of the well-off and otherwise; hotel lobbies; office reception areas; furniture-store windows (of course) and, most spectacularly, on local sitcoms. One actor sits down and makes an exasperated face while the other actors gesticulate comically. I couldn’t understand what was going on in these sitcoms, but I could tell it was a lot more charming than Oprah.
Bad driving on bad and very wide roads also seems to be a consistent theme in formerly Communist countries. Whether in Moscow, Warsaw, Bucharest or Kiev, crossing a major intersection alive takes bravery and guile, or blindness, since the only way I was willing to act as a pedestrian is with my eyes closed. The traffic is too scary otherwise. I was taught in high school that it was good to be an aggressive driver. I think drivers in Eastern Europe and Russia are taught to drive angry. If you try to cross a major street in Russia or Romania, you will note quite quickly that drivers, without expression, speed up and aim for you. A simple street crossing reminds one of that old video game “Frogger.” Except you get across the street more often on the computer.
Not all is bad in these countries. Moscow has become as fashionable and trendy as any city in the world. Housing prices have skyrocketed and the rich have been buying up apartment buildings and huge houses with astonishingly ugly sofas like hotcakes. And they buy it all in cash; which has the upside of cutting down on receiving 30 letters each day explaining how they’re paying too much for their mortgage. I once asked someone, “who can afford these places,” and I was told, “Officials and prostitutes.” “Aren’t they one and the same?” I asked.
I was in Kiev during the start of the so-called Orange Revolution. The Revolution’s spontaneity couldn’t have been better planned. Before the results of the elections were announced, there suddenly appeared 200,000 people with orange scarves and the secret code to show up at the right time in Independence Square. Also, someone just happened to have a couple of Jumbo Trons in their trunk so angry speechmakers could make angry speeches. The best part is that the rubes in the world press bought the spontaneity angle so the newly anointed Ukrainian government decided it needed to keep the joke going and tried to run a government. Governments are difficult enough to run but when your whole plan revolves around calling the former government all sorts of bad names, trouble is on the horizon. The new government was able to get the “Own a Black Mercedes and BMWs on $400-Per-Month-Scheme” in place before the country tanked, so they had that going for them.
Albania may be the sorriest of a lot of sorry former Communist states. If wealth was measured in dust, Albania would be the Beverly Hills of the world. I don’t know where the dust comes from or where it settles, but it is constantly coming from somewhere and apparently never settling. Albania is the only country that decided to exit a Communist economy and dip its toe in capitalism by creating a massive, country-wide pyramid scheme. When it predictably collapsed, the entire country went on a looting spree, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down including the astonishingly ugly sofas (fortunately for future generations of Albanians, dust can’t be nailed down). After a while, the looting came to an end. When asked why the people stopped, one Albanian man simply said, “We were done.”
On the other side of the world, I was able to spend 10 delightful weeks in New Zealand. New Zealand is the Bigfoot of countries; hiding behind rocks and trees in fear of being discovered. Kiwis (as people from New Zealand are known) live in this tormented contradiction of enjoying their isolation but, at the same time, wondering if the world knows they’re still alive. When I mentioned I enjoyed the movie The Whale Rider, the Kiwis couldn’t believe I had seen it. They still can’t believe they are interesting enough for a busy American to take the time to notice.
Kellen and I were working on the elections in New Zealand. Besides the obvious side show that is politics, we were amused by the dire predictions of a country headed to hell by the opposition government (our client and still in opposition). If Americans only had to worry about the minor annoyances of the kind of government that angers the Kiwis, all the fun would go out of politics. Since there are only 2.8 million voters in New Zealand, the government is run like one large condo association with the same amount of general goofiness consistent with a Landscape Committee. But it still runs better than Congress
All the same, I found the mix of unrivaled natural beauty, every season available within a one-hour plane ride, friendly natives, and the availability of all the creature comforts of home in New Zealand to be the perfect blend to the best place to live or visit. Scotland comes in a close second with summer in Sweden not far behind. All of which is to say I spent a lot of time writing about places not to go and far too little time discussing nice places to visit.
However, I have come to believe that “nice” isn’t always the best reason to travel somewhere. I prefer interesting places with long histories where the locals feel the need to do something extra to keep you from going to Euro Disney. I also tend to like smaller cities. With that in mind, my favorite places are:
Krakow, Poland
Bruges, Belgium
San Sebastian, Spain
Wellington, New Zealand
Sibiu, Romania
Koblenz, Germany
Galway, Ireland
Avallon/Vezaly, France
But there is no place like home.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
A Kinky Weekend
I think Jerry Garcia might have had a weekend such as this in mind when he wrote, “what a long, strange trip it’s been.”I’m in Texas, which I used to refer to as “The Cultural Demilitarized Zone” or “Below the Smith and Wesson Line.” I’ve mostly been in Austin, but did go to 100 miles of strip centers and freeways known as “Houston” for part of the day on Sunday. Austin is a great city but if you can at all avoid Houston, you’d be ahead of the game. Sorry about that one Phil.
The purpose for this trip was to help out an old friend named Reid who is running part of the campaign for Kinky Friedman for Governor. For those of you who haven’t heard of Kinky, he’s a irreverent country singer whose band was called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. He’s friends with Willie and Waylon and the Boys and also toured with Bob Dylan so he has a little reach musically.
He’s got a few songs that are worth a listen; one is called Sold American and the other is They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore, which is a great satirical song on racism and bigotry.
Reid and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Kinky last night as he had a “big ol’ hairy steak” and it was quite a Texas adventure. He was joined by a lady friend and his longtime friend and former band mate Jeff Shelby who is determined to go by the name “Jewford.”
Reid is a bit of a musical savant and has introduced me to a number of offbeat musicians – some of them who are pretty good. Reid began the dinner by singing show tunes at Kinky’s request which lasted up until the steaks arrived. The singing was punctuated by generous belches from Kinky and Jewford. Since we were in tight quarters – a point that Kinky rarely let pass by saying if he was governor he’d get a better table – the tables near us heard the strange combination of South Pacific and bad manners. He lost about a half dozen votes to the table behind us, but probably picked up another 30 just by chatting with people who came up to meet him.
Kinky has a unique campaign style and even more unique slogans. He says he’s running for governor so he can begin the “dewussification” of Texas. He’s for gay marriage, explaining that gays should have the right to get married and “be just as miserable as the rest of us.” He says he is neither pro-life nor pro-choice but pro-football and, on the death penalty, he says, "I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damn sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed." His two main slogans are “How Hard Could It Be?” and “Why The Hell Not?”
Will he win? My guess is it’s a long shot. But he will make the campaign much more interesting in Texas, and his down-to-earth, home-spun style is something that is sorely lacking in politics.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Forgetting the Past
I thought I could try this out on you first, just in case what I come up with is either unworthy of cheap blog space or otherwise irrelevant at least compared to other more pressing stories. I’m not sure how much of this will hold up to the discourtesies of investigative journalism but I have to get it off my chest somehow.
Thanks in large part to my subsidizing a college education at a California institution, my son became knowledgeable on the subject of Latin American history. In most circles this would draw a yawn or at least the close-out of all discussions and arguments, a “so what?” To avoid embarrassment of paying for but not receiving a proper education on any subject, I began to do my own research so I could say “so what” whenever the boy brought up one of his tidbits of historical fact on Latin America.
The more I read and listen, the more I realize how badly we Americans have behaved in the region during the past century. Iran-Contra will go down as a misguided footnote compared to the evil deeds our leaders sanctioned to rescue the poor underclass south of the border from other evil deeds perpetrated from other proxies.
Don’t misunderstand, I believe there were willing evil doers waiting to take advantage of us leaving our backdoor unlocked and unguarded, but keeping the argument based in simplistic “us versus them” terms misses the point by a wide margin. We did many of our nasty things for the sake of protecting corporate interests and regional hegemony. I’m not sure history will treat those acts as noble.
For example, there is ample evidence that CIA-sponsored assassins whacked the president of Chile and, on a roll, the leaders of Panama and Ecuador within two months of each other. When we didn’t feel killing was useful, we helped organize coup d’états in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador (again).
Panama’s Omar Torrijos’ crime was to sign a treaty with Jimmy Carter to take control of the Panama Canal, and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador wanted a few environmental impact studies done before Shell Oil destroyed the rain forests and displaced thousands of indigenous people without regard to their welfare. Reasonable people can agree that signing anything with Jimmy Carter can be grounds for a mini-mental exam, but murder hardly justifies the crime. And, while we’re pumping oil out of Ecuador and have a fancy military base in there, history may prove that Roldós’ desire for prudence was justified.
The last half of the 20th Century was a confusing and confounding time and I’m not so naïve as to believe there weren’t important stakes confronting U.S. policy makers as they took strong measures to keep Marxist influence out of our backyard (if only we had been half as successful at keeping Marxists our of Congress and our major media). And, even though Jesus said to love our enemies, he never said we shouldn’t have any.
There were plenty of activists working against our interests for the past 50 years. But here’s the deal, we have to look at what we gained from taking out unfriendly governments and installing, in some cases, brutal regimes. In the understated way that roosting chickens come home, I’m afraid we’re now worse off than if we had left the whole place alone decades ago.
By year’s end, there will be only two governments in all of Latin America that will be universally considered friendly to the U.S.: Colombia and El Salvador. All other countries will have tilted left with many led my devout Marxists. We will likely even see the return of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and a Mexico that may become a less-friendly neighbor than Canada, if that’s possible. The new leaders of Latin America will accomplish their leftist takeover by using ballots where they couldn’t succeed years ago with bullets. Sure, they will be helped along by money and assistance from Fidel Castro and his ugly stepchild, Hugo Chavez, along with money from narco-terrorists and other evil gangs, but they can’t force the people to vote against their will and that, for the moment, is against America.
Why this out-of-character, mild anti-American rant slipped by my censors and is important is best summed up by a minor philosopher who had one great line. George Santayana wrote in his Reason in Common Sense the immortal words, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I look at our tactics around the world and can’t help wonder if we’ve learned anything and if there isn’t, somehow, a better way.
Thanks in large part to my subsidizing a college education at a California institution, my son became knowledgeable on the subject of Latin American history. In most circles this would draw a yawn or at least the close-out of all discussions and arguments, a “so what?” To avoid embarrassment of paying for but not receiving a proper education on any subject, I began to do my own research so I could say “so what” whenever the boy brought up one of his tidbits of historical fact on Latin America.
The more I read and listen, the more I realize how badly we Americans have behaved in the region during the past century. Iran-Contra will go down as a misguided footnote compared to the evil deeds our leaders sanctioned to rescue the poor underclass south of the border from other evil deeds perpetrated from other proxies.
Don’t misunderstand, I believe there were willing evil doers waiting to take advantage of us leaving our backdoor unlocked and unguarded, but keeping the argument based in simplistic “us versus them” terms misses the point by a wide margin. We did many of our nasty things for the sake of protecting corporate interests and regional hegemony. I’m not sure history will treat those acts as noble.
For example, there is ample evidence that CIA-sponsored assassins whacked the president of Chile and, on a roll, the leaders of Panama and Ecuador within two months of each other. When we didn’t feel killing was useful, we helped organize coup d’états in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador (again).
Panama’s Omar Torrijos’ crime was to sign a treaty with Jimmy Carter to take control of the Panama Canal, and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador wanted a few environmental impact studies done before Shell Oil destroyed the rain forests and displaced thousands of indigenous people without regard to their welfare. Reasonable people can agree that signing anything with Jimmy Carter can be grounds for a mini-mental exam, but murder hardly justifies the crime. And, while we’re pumping oil out of Ecuador and have a fancy military base in there, history may prove that Roldós’ desire for prudence was justified.
The last half of the 20th Century was a confusing and confounding time and I’m not so naïve as to believe there weren’t important stakes confronting U.S. policy makers as they took strong measures to keep Marxist influence out of our backyard (if only we had been half as successful at keeping Marxists our of Congress and our major media). And, even though Jesus said to love our enemies, he never said we shouldn’t have any.
There were plenty of activists working against our interests for the past 50 years. But here’s the deal, we have to look at what we gained from taking out unfriendly governments and installing, in some cases, brutal regimes. In the understated way that roosting chickens come home, I’m afraid we’re now worse off than if we had left the whole place alone decades ago.
By year’s end, there will be only two governments in all of Latin America that will be universally considered friendly to the U.S.: Colombia and El Salvador. All other countries will have tilted left with many led my devout Marxists. We will likely even see the return of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and a Mexico that may become a less-friendly neighbor than Canada, if that’s possible. The new leaders of Latin America will accomplish their leftist takeover by using ballots where they couldn’t succeed years ago with bullets. Sure, they will be helped along by money and assistance from Fidel Castro and his ugly stepchild, Hugo Chavez, along with money from narco-terrorists and other evil gangs, but they can’t force the people to vote against their will and that, for the moment, is against America.
Why this out-of-character, mild anti-American rant slipped by my censors and is important is best summed up by a minor philosopher who had one great line. George Santayana wrote in his Reason in Common Sense the immortal words, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I look at our tactics around the world and can’t help wonder if we’ve learned anything and if there isn’t, somehow, a better way.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The "Death" Of Customer Service
Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die. This is so priceless, and so easy to see happening, customer service being what it is today. A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance, which had been $0.00, now is somewhere around $60.00. A family member placed a call to Citibank and this is approximately how it went:Family Member: "I am calling to tell you that she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections."
Bank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."
Family Member: So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"
Bank: "Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!"
Family Member: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"
Bank: "Excuse me?"
Family Member: "Did you just get what I was telling you - the part about her being dead?"
Bank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor."
Supervisor gets on the phone:
Family Member: "I'm calling to tell you, she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"
Bank: (Stammer) "Are you her lawyer?"
Family Member: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given)
Bank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"
Family Member: "Sure." (fax number is given)
After they get the fax:
Bank: "Our system just isn't set-up for death. I don't know what more I can do to help."
Family Member: "Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don't think she will care."
Bank: "Well, the late fees and charges do still apply."
Family Member: "Would you like her new billing address?"
Bank: "That might help."
Family Member: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Highway 129, Plot Number 69."
Bank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"
Family Member: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?"
A Crack In The Mirror
There comes a time in everyone’s life, I suppose, that we take a long look in the mirror and don’t always like the reflection. I’ve been in a reflective state of mind for the past week or so and I decided there are some things I don’t like about myself and I would like to share them with you, my friends. In the end, there will be a short test so pay attention.
Number one, I am a dreamer who tends to tilt at windmills. Having one’s head in the clouds is better than having one’s head in the sand, but if you look at the win/loss expectancy, then burying one’s head leaves less room for disappointment. To give some kind of perspective on the levels of my dreaming, and therefore optimism, I picked the lowly Sacramento Kings to win the NBA Championship. Mind you, this wasn’t done with the head but with the heart and therein lies the problem with being a dreamer.
The mirror also tells me that I am not good at following through on things. It’s kind of weird because I am always there for others to assist in helping them reach their objectives, which just happens to include follow-through. When it comes time to take care of myself, I am a no-show. What would Freud say about that and why would I listen to him since Freud was a known coke-head? With or without the drugs, I suspect it would set off alarm signals.
The recent proof of poor follow-through is in the blog and the others things I have given up when I was really into blogging. I haven’t posted much lately, partly because I have been busy and partly due to the ruse that I was going to spend my writing energy finishing a novel I began two years ago. I had 405 pages written on the novel one year ago and I have 413 pages now; some of it jumbled and some of it not too awfully bad. This is my history: I start off with great enthusiasm and then slowly it drifts away until I lose track of what I was working on. This is true with diets, work projects, and remembering to take out the trash. I know this happens to most people but I sweat it so much I wonder why I haven’t learned to beat it.
I have a strong suspicion the mirror would tell me I tend to see people’s potential rather than who they really are. I turned this naïve attribute into a nifty phrase and call it “Mike’s New Best Friend Syndrome.” I usually get burned by this and only have a few heroes left. I suspect I will have even fewer by the end of the year, but the best part about this affliction is that I will have a gaggle of new Best Friends to disappoint me by the end of the year.
The mirror wouldn’t be completely negative and, anyway, sometimes negative traits can be taken as a positive in the right context. I like to live in right contexts so I have to say the mirror would comment that I find comfort in staying in the middle, allowing the momentum of events to dictate my decisions and that I am sentimental to a flaw as I still feel the pain of moving from Michigan 35 years ago and miss too many old friends. I would be told I am a sucker for bittersweet romantic movies, I’m kind to strangers (also to a flaw), curious without remembering what it did to the cat, and have an unusual flair for expressing myself. I’m also difficult to please and find it even more difficult to please myself; I will always be searching for the greener grass when it’s pretty green right in front of me; that I have a debilitating illness for autos and I am already trying to figure out how to tell Mrs. Laz that I want to trade my car with 6,000 miles on it for a new S430 (maybe I just did if she’s reading) or, even, perhaps this $140,000 Bentley that I swear if I get one I wouldn’t want another new car for another six months.
All of this is to say that my odd personality traits are what keep me from writing on my blog and sharing my weird thoughts with you all.
I thought for a moment to write about how odd it is that Muslims are rioting and killing people and buildings over one not too classy cartoon when we’ve had thousands of political cartoons about Catholic priests and negative stories and cartoons about celebrating Christmas and Christianity in public. And one could throw in the articles that appear daily on the evils of Zionists in the Arab press. All this attack on “our” religions without a single shot fired. How quaint. I was even thinking about cowboys and wondering what I would do if my nephew told me he wanted to play cowboy with the neighbor boy. I might say, “No!!!!!!! Not you too! Not so young!!!” Instead, I decided to tell you what’s really on my mind, or was it my heart? Who can tell?
Number one, I am a dreamer who tends to tilt at windmills. Having one’s head in the clouds is better than having one’s head in the sand, but if you look at the win/loss expectancy, then burying one’s head leaves less room for disappointment. To give some kind of perspective on the levels of my dreaming, and therefore optimism, I picked the lowly Sacramento Kings to win the NBA Championship. Mind you, this wasn’t done with the head but with the heart and therein lies the problem with being a dreamer.
The mirror also tells me that I am not good at following through on things. It’s kind of weird because I am always there for others to assist in helping them reach their objectives, which just happens to include follow-through. When it comes time to take care of myself, I am a no-show. What would Freud say about that and why would I listen to him since Freud was a known coke-head? With or without the drugs, I suspect it would set off alarm signals.
The recent proof of poor follow-through is in the blog and the others things I have given up when I was really into blogging. I haven’t posted much lately, partly because I have been busy and partly due to the ruse that I was going to spend my writing energy finishing a novel I began two years ago. I had 405 pages written on the novel one year ago and I have 413 pages now; some of it jumbled and some of it not too awfully bad. This is my history: I start off with great enthusiasm and then slowly it drifts away until I lose track of what I was working on. This is true with diets, work projects, and remembering to take out the trash. I know this happens to most people but I sweat it so much I wonder why I haven’t learned to beat it.
I have a strong suspicion the mirror would tell me I tend to see people’s potential rather than who they really are. I turned this naïve attribute into a nifty phrase and call it “Mike’s New Best Friend Syndrome.” I usually get burned by this and only have a few heroes left. I suspect I will have even fewer by the end of the year, but the best part about this affliction is that I will have a gaggle of new Best Friends to disappoint me by the end of the year.
The mirror wouldn’t be completely negative and, anyway, sometimes negative traits can be taken as a positive in the right context. I like to live in right contexts so I have to say the mirror would comment that I find comfort in staying in the middle, allowing the momentum of events to dictate my decisions and that I am sentimental to a flaw as I still feel the pain of moving from Michigan 35 years ago and miss too many old friends. I would be told I am a sucker for bittersweet romantic movies, I’m kind to strangers (also to a flaw), curious without remembering what it did to the cat, and have an unusual flair for expressing myself. I’m also difficult to please and find it even more difficult to please myself; I will always be searching for the greener grass when it’s pretty green right in front of me; that I have a debilitating illness for autos and I am already trying to figure out how to tell Mrs. Laz that I want to trade my car with 6,000 miles on it for a new S430 (maybe I just did if she’s reading) or, even, perhaps this $140,000 Bentley that I swear if I get one I wouldn’t want another new car for another six months.
All of this is to say that my odd personality traits are what keep me from writing on my blog and sharing my weird thoughts with you all.
I thought for a moment to write about how odd it is that Muslims are rioting and killing people and buildings over one not too classy cartoon when we’ve had thousands of political cartoons about Catholic priests and negative stories and cartoons about celebrating Christmas and Christianity in public. And one could throw in the articles that appear daily on the evils of Zionists in the Arab press. All this attack on “our” religions without a single shot fired. How quaint. I was even thinking about cowboys and wondering what I would do if my nephew told me he wanted to play cowboy with the neighbor boy. I might say, “No!!!!!!! Not you too! Not so young!!!” Instead, I decided to tell you what’s really on my mind, or was it my heart? Who can tell?
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Salvador
This past week Kellen and our fellow partners are in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. We’re here involved in some sort of mischief; and why should we be different than any other American who has been involved in wayward behavior down here for centuries? At least nobody has died because of us. Yet.It’s funny that I was warned by everyone to “be careful” after telling them I was coming here. While there is crime here and some tough neighborhoods, I haven’t felt at all unsafe. I wonder why people never tell me to “be careful” whenever I tell them I am traveling to Los Angeles. I didn’t even get expressions of concern when I went to Ukraine last year and that place is scary.
It’s funny how we hold a certain perspective about places. San Salvador has terrific restaurants, a vibrant nightlife (so I hear), and several beautiful new malls. There is also abject poverty and the remnants of displacement from a 12-year civil war (in which the U.S. was able to sell off spare military hardware), a devastating earthquake, and recent flooding from the hurricanes that seemingly hit the U.S. and nowhere else, as far as the media is concerned.
But they’re nice people, friendly and helpful, and very proud of their country. El Salvador is doing well by a lot of standards. It is the most stable and economically strong country in Central America and its people haven’t learned to hate Americans yet (in fact they have 600 troops supporting us in Iraq).
Salvadorans have much to be proud of and as long as they continue with their reforms and work at closing the gap between rich and poor, El Salvador has the chance to become the Latin American version of Ireland’s success story of the Seventies and Eighties. And for those of you still stuck in winter; it about 85 with a cool breeze every day.
However that does sound like gunfire down the street, or, optimistically, fire works. The body count tommorow will tell the story.
The Kids Are Alright
Some people never get the joy and honor to work with your kids. I worked with my dad for a while and I am not sure he thought of it as an honor. There seemed to be a lot of yelling and screaming while I was in his employ, not too many raises that I didn’t have to beg for, and a lot of grumbling about him having to re-do my work ( I have got to get over this).
Of course my dad didn’t have Kellen working with him, he had me. And I consider myself lucky to have had the last year with Kellen at my side. In my 26 years as an employer, I have never had a more eager, honest, tough-minded, bottom-line-oriented, and intelligent employee. Not the least to say he’s a great guy to be around.
When he first suggested working for me, I think it was because he had just graduated college and needed to get a job before he figured out what he wanted to do. He has become involved in every one of my business schemes, from my old crappy domestic political company, to my international business, to the new business I have started with an old friend Tom (and, I am happy to say, Phil – pictured below – has just joined).
He’s often quiet at meetings but you know the mind is working all the time. Behind his back he has been given the name “Hoover” because he sucks up all that can be known about a subject and can recite it back more adeptly than the original. He has a tremendous grasp of business (not bad for a History major) and I often turn to him for advice. And his advice is always good. I am very happy to learn that he wants to stick with my businesses and eventually kill off Fredo and take them over. I couldn’t be happier about it.
If you have a kid and he asks for a job, I highly suggest taking them up on it. What other prospective employee can you get a lifetime resume from?
As for Emily – and I have to explain that she is so competitive with her older brother that it needs to be noted she is second in this post due to a flip of the coin – she is scheduled to graduate with a degree in Communications from Sacramento State University in May. However, she has already picked up a fulltime job with Maloof Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Sacramento Kings and Monarchs. She will be a marketing and media relations assistant (that doesn't sound as important as it probably is), primarily for the Monarchs.
She worked as an intern with the Kings and Monarchs while going to school and is one of the few to get a fulltime position after interning. She’s also one of the few among her peers who have been able to get a job in her chosen profession, which is even more impressive due to the competition for jobs in the sports communications world.
As icing on the cake, she will be featured in Elle Magazine in an article about interesting jobs for young professionals. The picture above will be in the magazine.
I know this post is beginning to sound like one of those bragging letters you get instead of pre-printed sentiments from someone else around Christmas time. Mrs. Laz and I had always wanted to write up our own Christmas “brag” letter in which we would announce that “we’re thankful this year because Kellen finally made parole” and “Emily’s six-year marriage to her cousin is going well and her fourth baby actually turned out normal.” But we stuck to the standard ones out of decorum and good taste. Just the same, we are both very proud of our kids with what they have achieved and what great people they both are.
She is an incredible person, witty, and beautiful. She's a pretty big deal and has many leather-bound books and her residence (our back bedroom) smells of rich mahagony. She told me to write all that.
Of course my dad didn’t have Kellen working with him, he had me. And I consider myself lucky to have had the last year with Kellen at my side. In my 26 years as an employer, I have never had a more eager, honest, tough-minded, bottom-line-oriented, and intelligent employee. Not the least to say he’s a great guy to be around.
When he first suggested working for me, I think it was because he had just graduated college and needed to get a job before he figured out what he wanted to do. He has become involved in every one of my business schemes, from my old crappy domestic political company, to my international business, to the new business I have started with an old friend Tom (and, I am happy to say, Phil – pictured below – has just joined).
He’s often quiet at meetings but you know the mind is working all the time. Behind his back he has been given the name “Hoover” because he sucks up all that can be known about a subject and can recite it back more adeptly than the original. He has a tremendous grasp of business (not bad for a History major) and I often turn to him for advice. And his advice is always good. I am very happy to learn that he wants to stick with my businesses and eventually kill off Fredo and take them over. I couldn’t be happier about it.
If you have a kid and he asks for a job, I highly suggest taking them up on it. What other prospective employee can you get a lifetime resume from?
As for Emily – and I have to explain that she is so competitive with her older brother that it needs to be noted she is second in this post due to a flip of the coin – she is scheduled to graduate with a degree in Communications from Sacramento State University in May. However, she has already picked up a fulltime job with Maloof Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Sacramento Kings and Monarchs. She will be a marketing and media relations assistant (that doesn't sound as important as it probably is), primarily for the Monarchs.
She worked as an intern with the Kings and Monarchs while going to school and is one of the few to get a fulltime position after interning. She’s also one of the few among her peers who have been able to get a job in her chosen profession, which is even more impressive due to the competition for jobs in the sports communications world.
As icing on the cake, she will be featured in Elle Magazine in an article about interesting jobs for young professionals. The picture above will be in the magazine.
I know this post is beginning to sound like one of those bragging letters you get instead of pre-printed sentiments from someone else around Christmas time. Mrs. Laz and I had always wanted to write up our own Christmas “brag” letter in which we would announce that “we’re thankful this year because Kellen finally made parole” and “Emily’s six-year marriage to her cousin is going well and her fourth baby actually turned out normal.” But we stuck to the standard ones out of decorum and good taste. Just the same, we are both very proud of our kids with what they have achieved and what great people they both are.
She is an incredible person, witty, and beautiful. She's a pretty big deal and has many leather-bound books and her residence (our back bedroom) smells of rich mahagony. She told me to write all that.
Ringing In The New Year
Mrs. Laz and I spent New Years with our old friends Skip and Linda and Phil and Jill. Skip, Phil and the Lazer have been friends since we were 14, which is either a testament to their patience or they are as weird as I am.Skip lives in suburban San Diego and Phil just moved back to the area so it made sense to have us all get together and welcome in the welcome New Year.
Just after Christmas, I was whining to Kellen that it would be nice to see 2005 in the rear window. He told me that there were plenty of sad events that happened in our family this past year, but there were happy things too. We were able to travel a lot together, our business remained successful, we met new friends, and we all had each other. A most interesting perspective and one that can only come from a younger person who hasn’t had the chance to have all the optimism reasoned from him.
Well, I do believe I will take the optimistic point of view for 2006 and know that everything will turn out well for me, my family and my friends.
Oh, and on the two photos, Skip, Phil and I were attempting to recreate the magic of 29 years ago. The first (in case you don’t notice) is a picture of the three of us at the half-century mark. You can see that the years have not been kind to Phil’s hair, Skip’s forehead (and, not pictured, his colon), and my big fat ass. Of course Linda took the photograph and I have heard it said that a bad picture angle can put 20 pounds on someone. This must be the case and not the pounds of chocolate I had for the holidays.
The second picture is when the three of us were celebrating Phil’s 21st birthday in 1977. For seasoned readers you will note this picture has appeared before on the blog. Phil had this picture on his desk at home so the three of us made our best stab at looking like three 21-year-old gay lovers again. Sure hope we pulled it off. And, yes, I was an idiot back then. But not anymore, right?
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
The Pain of Another
Anytime you lose a family member, especially when it occurs so suddenly, you have a special right to declare the entire year a disaster. It's easy to get lost in your own hurt when something like this happens and you tend to see everything through you own eyes and your own pain.
The problem with this myopic view is that you block yourself off from others who are suffering too. Not that you want to get into one-upsmanship on who has it worse, but I can't sit here and tell you I've had the worse go of things on the planet. There are certainly thousands upon thousands of families touched by the Tsunami along the rim of the Indian Ocean, several hurricanes in the Gulf, and three devastating earthquakes in Pakistan. The loss of life and living well are unfathomable and the simple enormity of the disasters almost makes it too difficult to grieve. Almost.
In a certain odd sense, Stalin was right for all the wrong reasons when he said a single death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic. Perhaps it is easier to get your arms around one death and mourn a single loss.
Below is a column by a friend of a friend who writes for a newspaper in Mississippi. He is a gifted writer who usually spends his insight on politics and the government operations in his home state. This year he has suffered through the death of his mother, his wife, his best friend and, unfortunately, soon his twin sister. You often hear that God only gives us what we can handle but I would have my doubts by now were I him. But I don’t think he is a man who doubts God and His plan and for that I am in awe.
I would love to tell you the story of what has happened to him and what I only know of on the periphery, but I know I could never tell it as poetically and with the right mix of words and music as he could himself. Instead, without regard to copyright restrictions, I have posted his entire column. Sort of puts my life in perspective:
By Sid Salter
Not all of life's storms come with wind and water.
I don't know a smooth transition by which I can communicate the level of "uncertainty" my daughter and I have confronted in 2005 along with our extended family and the wonderful friends with whom we've been blessed.
So, here's the blunt assessment on what should be the most joyous day of perhaps the most joyless year of our lives.
Alline Salter, my mother, passed away on April 2 after a long, dreadful illness. I miss my mother, as I've missed my father since his death.
Paula Salter, my wife, passed away May 1 after an even longer, even more dreadful illness. I miss my wife — and watching my daughter grieve for her mother and knowing the depth of her pain cuts me in half.
Sheila Salter Klimetz, my twin sister, is dying of a brain tumor in suburban Memphis. Time is likely very short, according to her oncologist and neurosurgeon.
My very first memory on this planet is the sound of my Sheila's breathing and moving in the baby bed we shared until we were toddlers. Watching this unrelenting cancer take my twin from my family is literally like losing a part of me in the process.
Kate and I spent much of this year together either in intensive care units, hospital rooms or in funeral parlors. We closed two estates and in the process disposed of the personal possessions of two women precious to both of us. It hurt.
But in the midst of this uncertainty came a certainty of sorts. Family members carried us, church family members lifted us up and friends fed us, took care of us and stood behind us through it all. Doctors, funeral home operators and other professionals gave us the strength to deal with the realities we've confronted.
I have never been more certain of the love of my beautiful daughter, the concern of my family or the compassion of my friends. The page will turn on the calendar next week. I can't say I'll be sorry to see this year from Hell in the rear view mirror.
But what of the New Year to come? It's the absolute certainty of change — and of memories.
The problem with this myopic view is that you block yourself off from others who are suffering too. Not that you want to get into one-upsmanship on who has it worse, but I can't sit here and tell you I've had the worse go of things on the planet. There are certainly thousands upon thousands of families touched by the Tsunami along the rim of the Indian Ocean, several hurricanes in the Gulf, and three devastating earthquakes in Pakistan. The loss of life and living well are unfathomable and the simple enormity of the disasters almost makes it too difficult to grieve. Almost.
In a certain odd sense, Stalin was right for all the wrong reasons when he said a single death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic. Perhaps it is easier to get your arms around one death and mourn a single loss.
Below is a column by a friend of a friend who writes for a newspaper in Mississippi. He is a gifted writer who usually spends his insight on politics and the government operations in his home state. This year he has suffered through the death of his mother, his wife, his best friend and, unfortunately, soon his twin sister. You often hear that God only gives us what we can handle but I would have my doubts by now were I him. But I don’t think he is a man who doubts God and His plan and for that I am in awe.
I would love to tell you the story of what has happened to him and what I only know of on the periphery, but I know I could never tell it as poetically and with the right mix of words and music as he could himself. Instead, without regard to copyright restrictions, I have posted his entire column. Sort of puts my life in perspective:
By Sid Salter
Not all of life's storms come with wind and water.
I don't know a smooth transition by which I can communicate the level of "uncertainty" my daughter and I have confronted in 2005 along with our extended family and the wonderful friends with whom we've been blessed.
So, here's the blunt assessment on what should be the most joyous day of perhaps the most joyless year of our lives.
Alline Salter, my mother, passed away on April 2 after a long, dreadful illness. I miss my mother, as I've missed my father since his death.
Paula Salter, my wife, passed away May 1 after an even longer, even more dreadful illness. I miss my wife — and watching my daughter grieve for her mother and knowing the depth of her pain cuts me in half.
Sheila Salter Klimetz, my twin sister, is dying of a brain tumor in suburban Memphis. Time is likely very short, according to her oncologist and neurosurgeon.
My very first memory on this planet is the sound of my Sheila's breathing and moving in the baby bed we shared until we were toddlers. Watching this unrelenting cancer take my twin from my family is literally like losing a part of me in the process.
Kate and I spent much of this year together either in intensive care units, hospital rooms or in funeral parlors. We closed two estates and in the process disposed of the personal possessions of two women precious to both of us. It hurt.
But in the midst of this uncertainty came a certainty of sorts. Family members carried us, church family members lifted us up and friends fed us, took care of us and stood behind us through it all. Doctors, funeral home operators and other professionals gave us the strength to deal with the realities we've confronted.
I have never been more certain of the love of my beautiful daughter, the concern of my family or the compassion of my friends. The page will turn on the calendar next week. I can't say I'll be sorry to see this year from Hell in the rear view mirror.
But what of the New Year to come? It's the absolute certainty of change — and of memories.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Time To Say Adios To Rick
This is particularly harsh, especially coming so close to the good will and mirth conjured up by Christmas. The holiday season aside, it’s time for the Sacramento Kings to fire head coach Rick Adelman, which makes it all the more harsh because he’s a good coach who deserves better and because the losses piling up in Sacramento are not his fault. Just the same, it needs to be done now and not at the end of the season as has seemed to be the plan all along.The truth is, the Kings stink and the owners and the players are the stinkees, not Adelman. His teams have won 718 NBA games in 15-plus years, and his winning percentage at better than 60-percent is one of the tops in the League. He’s had players of lesser talent who have won, but never players with lesser heart than this current team. He hasn’t had the support of the players or the team owners all year as he lingers in coaching purgatory as a lame duck in the last year of his contract. If he can’t see the writing on the wall, his players can and they quit him a long time ago.
The Maloofs did the same by tinkering away with a good product; adding a piece here and there until all athleticism and chemistry vanished. Who knows how they really feel about Adelman as a coach? They seem far more interested in getting their mugs on MTV and flipping the pockets out of their Armani pants to show the city of Sacramento they don’t have enough money for a new arena. Anaheim beckons and this ownership clan will fit right in with the collagen and silicon crowd down south.
As for the players, they should all be sharpening their writing skills to craft the right letter of apology to Adelman. Without a strong coach who is backed by management, this has become a leaderless team. Surely a professional player can see what the fans see and you’d thing pride alone would give one of these Alpha Males the desire to lead. Mike Bibby was the obvious choice but he didn’t even have the discipline to come into training camp in shape. He muddled through the pre-season and the early games, treating them as nothing more than an aerobics class at the local gym. His shot was off, he was a step too slow, and his defensive play looked about as sharp as white socks with a black suit. Who would follow the lead of a player who cared so little that the gift of being one of the world’s greatest athletes seemed to be a burden and not worth the effort?
This season will mark the end of Peja Stojakovic as a King and it seems the right time to pack up his wide ties and wide pin-stripe suits and ship him off to New York or Philly where they will throw beer cups at him for his lack of effort. Has there ever been a player who runs from rebounds and fears mixing it up in the middle more than Peja? People used to compare Peja to Larry Bird but the truth is he will go down as a timid, spot-up shooter who lost his will when Vlade Divac left the Kings. Any team willing to part with $12 million a year for him as a free agent deserves what they get.
Brad Miller is certainly no leader and I’m not sure if the players really like him anyway. He’s temperamental, slow of foot, short for a center, can’t jump and makes big stiffs like Joe Przybilla and Eddy Curry look like the second coming of Wilt. He can shoot a mid-range jumper, pass well for a center, and have the occasional good game on the boards, but he looks spent this year after watching too many passes fly through the hands of players who don’t have their head in the game.
The Kings are 10-17, have dropped five straight and are 3-9 for the month of December. They have lost nine of 16 games at home this year, which is already more losses in a season at Arco Arena then they have endured since the 1999 season. They have the collective talent to be a better team but there’s just something wrong with the mix. It’s tough to watch the Lakers win with only Kobe and a group of players who would ride the bench for most teams, including the Kings. The Lakers winning puts the spotlight on the obvious: good coaching and leadership make a difference.
There are a number of sports clichés, among them that the coaches get fired because you can’t fire the team. The good people of Anaheim may facilitate the equivalent of a mass firing of the players, but until then, coach Adelman has to go and a caretaker put in his place. This season is shot and next year the Kings will have to start over with new faces and maybe a new hometown. It’s difficult to see a better coach out there, which is further evidence that the ownership doesn’t know what they’re doing. Last year the Maloofs had Maurice Cheeks, Nate McMillan, Larry Brown, Flip Saunders and even Phil Jackson to lure to Sacramento with their inherited money. Who do they have to court at the end of this year?
John McKay, the great football coach at USC and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was once asked a stupid question by a rookie sports writer from California who was out of league. “What do you think about your team’s execution?” he was asked after losing 33-6 to the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game. Steam came out of his ears as he searched the room for the weasel who asked such a stupid question. And then the answer, “I’m for it.” After tonight’s lackluster performance by the Kings against the former worst team in the Western Conference Rick Adelman knows exactly what McKay was talking about.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Merry Christmas To All
The Russian Orthodox Christmas isn’t until January 7th but that didn’t stop me from getting a Christmas lecture from a Russian. She asked me what was wrong with my country that we say “happy holidays” and proudly declare there is a decorated “holiday tree” rising above the White House lawn. I tried to explain we were just being sensitive to other religions but that drew an even stronger rebuke.Later the thought occurred to me that she had a point. There is nothing wrong with celebrating Christmas without concern for political correctness, because one can’t deny Christmas is a significant day of reverence in the Christian religion, just as many other holidays and celebrations are for other religions. To attempt to make Christmas an inclusive holiday misses the point of December 25 by a wide margin.
Tonight the malls and Main Streets fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children are but ghostly echoes across silent streets. But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives; liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of many. It should come as no surprise that hundreds of millions of people in this country and indeed around the world derive comfort from this fact. In and of itself, the celebration of the birth of Christ should be enough to keep the PC police at bay for at least one day.
But if we want the holiday to be all things to all people – and isn’t that the goal of all social engineers today? – then let’s speak of another miracle of Christmas that’s worth celebrating. Beyond the Christian religion overtones, the day brings families and friends together; sometimes for a rare visit, other times for the last time (if only we knew). It brings so many lasting memories and traditions that Christmas has virtually kept the family at the center of our society, if only for one day.
My earliest memory of Christmas created a family tradition in the old Arno home and continues on into the new Arno home. For 45 years members of my family have opened presents on Christmas Eve for no other reason than Peter, Bill and I were too excited to see what Santa left us and saw no reason why we had to wake our parents to share the booty. Needless to say there were looks of shock on Jeanne and Doug’s faces when I nudged my dad to help me button up my authentic Confederate army uniform (Peter got the Union outfit as my parents always loved him best). The next year, we were told Santa came early – roughly 9 p.m. Later, Santa got a boost as my parents did a little shopping for him and Christmas presents were opened after dinner. Man, could my mom wash the dishes slowly, or what?
I came to view opening presents in the darkness of Christmas Eve as part of the charm. When we were older and taking our time and enjoying the thought that went into each present we passed around to each other, the blinking lights on the tree, the ever present television blaring, and a full stomach became as much a part of our family tradition as anything else. Which isn’t to say any other way is the wrong way, it was only our way of keeping our family together and happy – even if I never got everything I wanted.
Like all good traditions, it’s important to keep them going and when I grew up (yes, I did eventually grow up), I had a family of my own. Mrs. Laz wanted to stick to her tradition of opening presents on Christmas morning and I still wanted my presents on Christmas Eve … errr … I wanted the kids to open their presents on Christmas Eve. Three kids in the house eventually won out and after a few very early mornings for Mr. and Mrs. Claus, it didn’t take much fancy footwork on my part to get Mrs. Laz to agree to the much better post-dinner exchange of presents; with or without Santa.
Of course the joy of giving becomes secondary to spending love and joy with those close to you. It won’t be long before our children begin their Christmas tradition and we, as parents and grandparents, will become loving bystanders to new customs. It won’t be quite the same for us but at least I won’t have to assemble anything.
All of this is to say that I wish all my family and friends a very Merry Christmas with the hope you are surrounded by the biggest gift of all; the family. Keep your traditions close and your families closer. Love each other just a bit more, eat a bit less, and set a place at the table for those who won’t be with us after choosing instead to sit with the one person who got all this started 2000 years ago.
Friday, December 23, 2005
More Crap From Little Kids
(taken from papers written by a class of 8-year-olds)
Grandparents are a lady and a man who have no little children of her own. They like other people's.
A grandfather is a man grandmother.
Grandparents don't have to do anything except be there when we come to see them.
They are so old they shouldn't play hard or run.
It is good if they drive us to the store and have lots of quarters for us.
When they take us for walks, they slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars. They show us and talk to us about the color of the flowers and also why we shouldn't step on "cracks." They don't say, "Hurry up."
Usually grandmothers are fat, but not too fat to tie your shoes.
They wear glasses and funny underwear.
They can take their teeth and gums out.
Grandparents don't have to be smart.
They have to answer questions like, "why isn't God married?" and "How come dogs chase cats?"
When they read to us, they don't skip. They don't mind if we ask for the same story over again.
Everybody should try to have a grandmother, especially if you don't have television, because they are the only grown ups who like to spend time with us.
A 6 year old was asked where his grandma lived. ''Oh,'' he said, ''she lives at the airport, and when we want her we just go to get her. Then when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."
Grandparents are a lady and a man who have no little children of her own. They like other people's.
A grandfather is a man grandmother.
Grandparents don't have to do anything except be there when we come to see them.
They are so old they shouldn't play hard or run.
It is good if they drive us to the store and have lots of quarters for us.
When they take us for walks, they slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars. They show us and talk to us about the color of the flowers and also why we shouldn't step on "cracks." They don't say, "Hurry up."
Usually grandmothers are fat, but not too fat to tie your shoes.
They wear glasses and funny underwear.
They can take their teeth and gums out.
Grandparents don't have to be smart.
They have to answer questions like, "why isn't God married?" and "How come dogs chase cats?"
When they read to us, they don't skip. They don't mind if we ask for the same story over again.
Everybody should try to have a grandmother, especially if you don't have television, because they are the only grown ups who like to spend time with us.
A 6 year old was asked where his grandma lived. ''Oh,'' he said, ''she lives at the airport, and when we want her we just go to get her. Then when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."
Surf's Up
Every now and then San Diego is hit with the southern swell. These photos (courtesy of the San Diego Union) are from the La Jolla Cove. I've only seen it this big two other years; once in 1970 and the other in 1981 (although I only saw them through Skip's photos, courtesy of Skip). I know one or two of you who read this are from San Diego and have moved elsewhere, so enjoy the surf.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Christmas Greetings
If you're getting tired of all the shopping and bumping into people in a hurry, perhaps this will give you reason to laugh.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Great Sign
This is a stolen post fromHenry-Doodle at http://sladed.blogspot.com/. I wish I found it first, but I think it's hilarious.
A Blonde Christmas
A blonde goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Christmas cards. She says to the clerk, "May I have 50 Christmas stamps?" The clerk says, "What denomination?" The blonde says, "Heaven help us. Has it come to this? Give me 6 Catholic, 12 Presbyterian, 10 Lutheran and 22 Baptists."
When the Cow Bells Fall Silent
(Editor's note: I apologize to my fan that it has been so long since my last post.)
When I was struggling through my first adolescence during my high school years, I heard stories of real-life girls my age who were called a tease. Except quite often there was a word and a hyphen placed before the word tease. Many late hours did I scheme to meet such a creature. To no avail and little surprise, I never got the hyphenated girl. Regrettably there is a balance in the universe that dictates that a 16-year-old male with gentlemanly habits well beyond his years and hormones gets approximately the same from the opposite sex.
During my college years while my brothers were burning the midnight oil (and quite nearly my parent’s garage) with hyphenated women of all sorts, I did meet Mrs. Laz who had to beg for a goodnight kiss on our first date. The fact she agreed to a second evening out with me on the basis of a quick peck on the cheek may say more about her than me.
The reason the tease comes up is due to sports. The female tease causes a certain kind of frustration not easily requited in a crowded house with no locks on the doors. A sports tease is worse. It takes the whole body prisoner and doesn’t release it until all hope of being liberated back into normal society has vanished.
My sports tease, my never ending lost romance without any return on investment, is the Sacramento Kings.
Sure, there were moments when the Kings took me to the brink and then left me without as much as a good-bye peck on the cheek and cold shower. They have been able to keep me close and monogamous, sports speaking, by simply promising to give me what I want: a championship. I feel so cheap because I’ve been believing their promises for so long. Like the enabler I am, I continue to wait them out. The waiting may be over and I think I have finally mustered the strength to start talking about a break-up.
The Kings and I had our first real date six or seven years ago. It was a magical eveing – more than a peck on a cheek. I was tempted to take the risk and date the “pretty one” because of a trade for Chris Webber, a free-agent signing of Vlade Divac and the drafting of Jason Williams. Three pretty maids all in a row and they were all mine for the season; or so it seemed.
They were collectively so good looking that I missed key danger signs. Webber was damaged goods from several previous relationships and reluctant to get into another so soon, especially in a cowtown like Sacramento. But his rugged, muscular body and wink in his eye made all his suitors weak in the knees (which, ironically, turned out to be his weakness). Vlade, despite the fact he came aboard at age 50, brought along his skills from previous relationships, including many with much older Europeans. He had the guile of a worldly man and the playfulness of a youngster to keep it interesting. And Jason, flashy, impetuous Jason, came with a swagger and bad-boy attitude, just like those girls smoking out behind the high school gym.
It was a relationship that you knew was bad for you and one your mother would warn you against. But it all felt so good. For the first time, you were in the midst of a winning streak so it was easy to overlook the frayed edges. You could even envision settling down with them and exchanging Championship rings every year.
After a few years, our relationship went down hill. Webber kept the twinkle, Divac the finesse, but Jason stopped calling. For months I’d wait by the phone hoping against hope he’d just say hello or go through the motion of tattooing my name on his spindly arm. No such luck, however. I heard he moved to Canada and then to Memphis and later to south Florida. Someone who once dated him heard he was doing well in Miami but I don’t care anymore. I’ve shed enough tears over him, I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. Besides, there was a new face in town with better pedigree and a far more stable personality. His name was Mike Bibby, and after never knowing where I stood with Jason, Bibby’s steadiness was far more appealing than J-Will’s style.
Now there was more promise with the core of Divac, Webber and Bibby. It felt even better when we traded an under-sized power forward named Corliss for a defensive stalwart name Doug, allowing a young Serbian sharpshooter the chance to play at the three. I never gave a moment’s thought that Doug came with the baggage of a relationship that was embarrassingly clingy.
There were no longer just the three to keep my fantasy going, there was a full five stars to watch. You knew there would be children and grandchildren to bring up with this bunch. And the bench? Oh, the bench could have outplayed nearly all of the others with Bobby and Hedo, and Gerald, and Jon. We called them the “Bench Mob” and between them and the five stars, never had so many white guys outside of Boston caused so many hearts to flutter.
Did you ever have one of those relationships where there were so many good things happening that it just had to be wrong? Twice these guys took me to the brink of the Championship altar and twice they left me there in a tuxedo and a real bow tie, not just the kind you clip on your collar. Suddenly my stars couldn’t perform. These missed the gimmies one year and said they felt it best to wait for another year. The next year they stumbled down the aisle, one with a bum knee the others with that glassed-over look as if they were searching for the church exit and hoping the priest got drunk in the confessional with an altar boy and wouldn’t show up. I knew in my heart it just wasn’t right. They were forever damaged goods and no amount of vases full of flowers or awkward poetry would work anymore (although the chocolates had me for a while).
I admit it, I started over. I said good-bye to all of them except for Peja and Mike and told them to come around every now and again and I might take them out for a drink if I was feeling charitable; no hard feelings, it just didn’t work out between us.
Now there is a new bunch surrounding the remaining two – the two I had only half a heart for, Mike and Peja. There’s a new guy named Shareef who never had a good home and seemed to fail no matter how hard he tried, but he’s so good looking on the outside that you had to take him. There are no plans to make much of an investment in him, though. Another guy just started hanging around named Bonzi. He’s on his best behavior right now, trying to fit in and feel loved and escape his past. I’ve heard about it; the drug use, fights, no heart. It’s easy to tread cautiously with him and not be swept away by a few pretty quotes in the paper and a strong desire to please. Even Corliss came back (unfortunately not Corliss Campbell), and, you know, it’s not too bad having him around as long as you don’t have to think about him that much.
For the past few years there has been a simple country boy named Brad at the arena. One moment you want to love him but there are too many times he chews tobacco and burps whenever you bring him home to your parents. He sometimes puts in a big effort but too often he sulks when things aren’t going his way. I just don’t have anything left for malcontents.
Peja’s become distant, protecting himself from the pain of playing the game. You wish he would just drop the pretty-boy persona and put more heart and energy into our relationship, but I’m learning that you can’t start out expecting to change the man. Poor Mike. He has a faraway look in his eye. I suspect he’s lonely now that all his friends are hanging out in LA, Philly, Detroit and Houston. It seems he’s just going through the motions of our relationship and it’s tough to bear.
I tune them out now. There are times when I know they’re on TV and all I can think of is heading for the bedroom with a bottle of Ambien stolen from my daughter and watching Will and Grace re-runs. Some days I wish I was Will, or even Grace; I don’t think it matters anymore my heart is so beat up.
Don’t get me wrong, they have their moments. They won three straight in fine fashion after dropping five straight. I’m too jaded now and I’ve learned when a tease is just a tease. I’ve been there before and I just won’t go down that road again.
I have my eyes open on a new bunch in Philly who seem to have a heart if not a lot of wins. There’s a steady bunch in San Antonio and Detroit. They have occasional flash of personality but always in the context of doing what’s best for the others. I think about them a lot, but following the words of JB, “I had a lover, it’s so hard to risk another these days." If only JB was Jon Barry….
When I was struggling through my first adolescence during my high school years, I heard stories of real-life girls my age who were called a tease. Except quite often there was a word and a hyphen placed before the word tease. Many late hours did I scheme to meet such a creature. To no avail and little surprise, I never got the hyphenated girl. Regrettably there is a balance in the universe that dictates that a 16-year-old male with gentlemanly habits well beyond his years and hormones gets approximately the same from the opposite sex.
During my college years while my brothers were burning the midnight oil (and quite nearly my parent’s garage) with hyphenated women of all sorts, I did meet Mrs. Laz who had to beg for a goodnight kiss on our first date. The fact she agreed to a second evening out with me on the basis of a quick peck on the cheek may say more about her than me.
The reason the tease comes up is due to sports. The female tease causes a certain kind of frustration not easily requited in a crowded house with no locks on the doors. A sports tease is worse. It takes the whole body prisoner and doesn’t release it until all hope of being liberated back into normal society has vanished.
My sports tease, my never ending lost romance without any return on investment, is the Sacramento Kings.
Sure, there were moments when the Kings took me to the brink and then left me without as much as a good-bye peck on the cheek and cold shower. They have been able to keep me close and monogamous, sports speaking, by simply promising to give me what I want: a championship. I feel so cheap because I’ve been believing their promises for so long. Like the enabler I am, I continue to wait them out. The waiting may be over and I think I have finally mustered the strength to start talking about a break-up.
The Kings and I had our first real date six or seven years ago. It was a magical eveing – more than a peck on a cheek. I was tempted to take the risk and date the “pretty one” because of a trade for Chris Webber, a free-agent signing of Vlade Divac and the drafting of Jason Williams. Three pretty maids all in a row and they were all mine for the season; or so it seemed.
They were collectively so good looking that I missed key danger signs. Webber was damaged goods from several previous relationships and reluctant to get into another so soon, especially in a cowtown like Sacramento. But his rugged, muscular body and wink in his eye made all his suitors weak in the knees (which, ironically, turned out to be his weakness). Vlade, despite the fact he came aboard at age 50, brought along his skills from previous relationships, including many with much older Europeans. He had the guile of a worldly man and the playfulness of a youngster to keep it interesting. And Jason, flashy, impetuous Jason, came with a swagger and bad-boy attitude, just like those girls smoking out behind the high school gym.
It was a relationship that you knew was bad for you and one your mother would warn you against. But it all felt so good. For the first time, you were in the midst of a winning streak so it was easy to overlook the frayed edges. You could even envision settling down with them and exchanging Championship rings every year.
After a few years, our relationship went down hill. Webber kept the twinkle, Divac the finesse, but Jason stopped calling. For months I’d wait by the phone hoping against hope he’d just say hello or go through the motion of tattooing my name on his spindly arm. No such luck, however. I heard he moved to Canada and then to Memphis and later to south Florida. Someone who once dated him heard he was doing well in Miami but I don’t care anymore. I’ve shed enough tears over him, I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. Besides, there was a new face in town with better pedigree and a far more stable personality. His name was Mike Bibby, and after never knowing where I stood with Jason, Bibby’s steadiness was far more appealing than J-Will’s style.
Now there was more promise with the core of Divac, Webber and Bibby. It felt even better when we traded an under-sized power forward named Corliss for a defensive stalwart name Doug, allowing a young Serbian sharpshooter the chance to play at the three. I never gave a moment’s thought that Doug came with the baggage of a relationship that was embarrassingly clingy.
There were no longer just the three to keep my fantasy going, there was a full five stars to watch. You knew there would be children and grandchildren to bring up with this bunch. And the bench? Oh, the bench could have outplayed nearly all of the others with Bobby and Hedo, and Gerald, and Jon. We called them the “Bench Mob” and between them and the five stars, never had so many white guys outside of Boston caused so many hearts to flutter.
Did you ever have one of those relationships where there were so many good things happening that it just had to be wrong? Twice these guys took me to the brink of the Championship altar and twice they left me there in a tuxedo and a real bow tie, not just the kind you clip on your collar. Suddenly my stars couldn’t perform. These missed the gimmies one year and said they felt it best to wait for another year. The next year they stumbled down the aisle, one with a bum knee the others with that glassed-over look as if they were searching for the church exit and hoping the priest got drunk in the confessional with an altar boy and wouldn’t show up. I knew in my heart it just wasn’t right. They were forever damaged goods and no amount of vases full of flowers or awkward poetry would work anymore (although the chocolates had me for a while).
I admit it, I started over. I said good-bye to all of them except for Peja and Mike and told them to come around every now and again and I might take them out for a drink if I was feeling charitable; no hard feelings, it just didn’t work out between us.
Now there is a new bunch surrounding the remaining two – the two I had only half a heart for, Mike and Peja. There’s a new guy named Shareef who never had a good home and seemed to fail no matter how hard he tried, but he’s so good looking on the outside that you had to take him. There are no plans to make much of an investment in him, though. Another guy just started hanging around named Bonzi. He’s on his best behavior right now, trying to fit in and feel loved and escape his past. I’ve heard about it; the drug use, fights, no heart. It’s easy to tread cautiously with him and not be swept away by a few pretty quotes in the paper and a strong desire to please. Even Corliss came back (unfortunately not Corliss Campbell), and, you know, it’s not too bad having him around as long as you don’t have to think about him that much.
For the past few years there has been a simple country boy named Brad at the arena. One moment you want to love him but there are too many times he chews tobacco and burps whenever you bring him home to your parents. He sometimes puts in a big effort but too often he sulks when things aren’t going his way. I just don’t have anything left for malcontents.
Peja’s become distant, protecting himself from the pain of playing the game. You wish he would just drop the pretty-boy persona and put more heart and energy into our relationship, but I’m learning that you can’t start out expecting to change the man. Poor Mike. He has a faraway look in his eye. I suspect he’s lonely now that all his friends are hanging out in LA, Philly, Detroit and Houston. It seems he’s just going through the motions of our relationship and it’s tough to bear.
I tune them out now. There are times when I know they’re on TV and all I can think of is heading for the bedroom with a bottle of Ambien stolen from my daughter and watching Will and Grace re-runs. Some days I wish I was Will, or even Grace; I don’t think it matters anymore my heart is so beat up.
Don’t get me wrong, they have their moments. They won three straight in fine fashion after dropping five straight. I’m too jaded now and I’ve learned when a tease is just a tease. I’ve been there before and I just won’t go down that road again.
I have my eyes open on a new bunch in Philly who seem to have a heart if not a lot of wins. There’s a steady bunch in San Antonio and Detroit. They have occasional flash of personality but always in the context of doing what’s best for the others. I think about them a lot, but following the words of JB, “I had a lover, it’s so hard to risk another these days." If only JB was Jon Barry….
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Flying the Coop
I am finally getting a chance to visit our "estates" in Virginia again. It's been a long time since I have been back there and it conjures up mixed feelings. On the one hand, I like how DC brings a sense of excitement out of me. On the other, the last time I was there was the day I learned Bill suffered a seizure and Sue told me she was headed to Japan. I remember how frightened she sounded. I told her things would be OK and I would take care of the business. I wanted her to tell Bill to feel comfortable to stay as long as he needed. She told me that she hoped she had a chance to tell him that.
I'm not sure if she knew more than she was telling or it was just a wife's intuition, but she never was able to say another word to him. I know how frustrating that is for me, I wonder how she's dealing with it.
The whole family (what's left of it) saw Sue on Thursday and she's coming by for a visit on Saturday evening. She looks great and seems to be doing well. It's been a big adjustment for her and her kids but they are getting through this together.
All of this is to say I will either have airline time to write more or choose to listen to my IPod (not a free one, mind you) and not write a thing. Not that anyone will notice. By the way, all that talk about getting more comments on the jokes, I barely got any! I got more in a desperate attempt for attention by offering the free IPod. What gives, you occasional readers?
I'm not sure if she knew more than she was telling or it was just a wife's intuition, but she never was able to say another word to him. I know how frustrating that is for me, I wonder how she's dealing with it.
The whole family (what's left of it) saw Sue on Thursday and she's coming by for a visit on Saturday evening. She looks great and seems to be doing well. It's been a big adjustment for her and her kids but they are getting through this together.
All of this is to say I will either have airline time to write more or choose to listen to my IPod (not a free one, mind you) and not write a thing. Not that anyone will notice. By the way, all that talk about getting more comments on the jokes, I barely got any! I got more in a desperate attempt for attention by offering the free IPod. What gives, you occasional readers?
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Jewish Catskill Comics
You may remember the old Jewish Catskill comics of Vaudeville days; Shecky Green, Red Buttons, Totie Fields, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, and others? You've probably heard of them before, but don't you miss their humor? Here's just a sample:
* There was a beautiful young woman knocking on my hotel room door all night! I finally had to let her out.
* A car hit an elderly Jewish man. The paramedic says, "Are you comfortable?" The man says, "I make a good living."
* I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.
* I've been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife ever finds out, she'll kill me!
* What are three words a woman never wants to hear when she's making love? "Honey, I'm home!"
* Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife did.
* We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.
* My wife and I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night, only this time I stayed in the bathroom and cried.
* She was at the beauty shop for two hours. That was only for the estimate. She got a mudpack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.
* I was just in London - there is a 6-hour time difference. I'm still confused. When I go to dinner, I feel sexy. When I go to bed, I feel hungry.
* The doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.
* The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen answered, "So did my arthritis!"
* Doctor: "You'll live to be 60!" Patient: "I AM 60!" Doctor: "See! What did I tell you?"
* Patient: "I have a ringing in my ears." Doctor: "Don't answer!"
* A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says, "You've been brought here for drinking." The drunk says "Okay, let's get started."
* A bum asked a Jewish fellow, "Give me $10 till payday." The Jewish fellow responded, "When's payday?" The bum said, "I don't know! You're the one who's working!"
* Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? They're worth it.
* Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.
* There was a beautiful young woman knocking on my hotel room door all night! I finally had to let her out.
* A car hit an elderly Jewish man. The paramedic says, "Are you comfortable?" The man says, "I make a good living."
* I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.
* I've been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife ever finds out, she'll kill me!
* What are three words a woman never wants to hear when she's making love? "Honey, I'm home!"
* Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife did.
* We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.
* My wife and I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night, only this time I stayed in the bathroom and cried.
* She was at the beauty shop for two hours. That was only for the estimate. She got a mudpack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.
* I was just in London - there is a 6-hour time difference. I'm still confused. When I go to dinner, I feel sexy. When I go to bed, I feel hungry.
* The doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.
* The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen answered, "So did my arthritis!"
* Doctor: "You'll live to be 60!" Patient: "I AM 60!" Doctor: "See! What did I tell you?"
* Patient: "I have a ringing in my ears." Doctor: "Don't answer!"
* A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says, "You've been brought here for drinking." The drunk says "Okay, let's get started."
* A bum asked a Jewish fellow, "Give me $10 till payday." The Jewish fellow responded, "When's payday?" The bum said, "I don't know! You're the one who's working!"
* Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? They're worth it.
* Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
A Festivus Miracle
Skip first pointed out in his Blog that this is the season of Festivus, a fictional holiday founded by Frank Costanza (aka Jerry Stiller) from the show Sienfeld. Festivus has to do with feats of strength, a heartfelt airing of grievances, and an aluminum pole. There have been known to be recorded instances of Festivus miracles. One miracle this year is that there is an entire site dedicated to Festivus. Don't ask me how I found it because I don't remember. Anyway, for you Seinfeld fans and especially Festivus followers, here's the link: http://thefestivuspole.com/blog.htm
The Big Fix
Just re-watched an old movie that is a real sleeper. Made in 1978, The Big Fix starred Richard Dreyfus and is a crime-mystery wrapped up in a search for lost 60's social activism. It has great twists and turns with a mix of old memories thrown in for either us old-timers or you kids out there who want to know more about what your parents were up to in the old days (well, not me, I was too young).F. Murray Abraham and Johnathon Lithgow also star in the movie in very early roles in their careers. Abraham, as an Abbie Hoffman-type character has a great line in the movie about the loss of radicalism in the late-70's: "Do you know why being a revolutionary doesn't work in this country? Being a revolutionary in America is like being a spoil sport at an orgy. All these goodies being passed around and you feel like a shit when you say no."
The movie is only available on VHS but I saw it on one of the thousand movie channels Mrs. Laz allows me to keep.
For My Grandma
Four years ago December 3, my grandmother died at age 97. By anyone’s measure she lived a full and useful life and was greatly loved by four generations of my family. I also loved her dearly.
Following my mother’s death in 1995, my grandmother and I gravitated toward each other, I suspect because I wanted to be near the part of her that was my mother and she wanted the same from me. We talked nearly every week for the rest of her life and I discovered even more in common with her and relished our talks. She especially liked to talk about my mother and often repeated the wonderful deathbed conversation she and my mother had when they closed the books on a lifetime of misunderstanding. Since I liked to talk about my mother too, I was always there to oblige. She buried a husband, three children and countless friends and relatives before she died and each time you thought this would be too much for her, she dug deep to find more strength to carry on. She would just tell me it’s what happens when you live so long. The fact is, she loved life and never wanted to leave.
She had a project going all the time, which I think was partially responsible for her longevity (along with a sip of whiskey more often than she would admit). One year she would plan to paint the house, the next year to put in new carpet, and perhaps the next year it would be new window treatments. She always had something to look forward too.
When her husband died in December 1983 she visited my parents for Christmas. She looked so frail when she arrived, we all believed she wouldn’t last long. It was a bittersweet Christmas as it felt like we would lose both grandparents in the span of a few months. She surprised us all. My aunt bought her a puppy a short while later, believing she would get it back in a few years, but my grandmother stubbornly outlived the dog.
When we would visit, she would show off a ring or a bracelet. She would tell us it was a birthday present from her husband, the same one who had been gone for a decade. She actually went out and picked out the piece of jewelry she suspected he would buy for her, wrapped it up and gave it to herself on her birthday or Christmas, always with a wry smile and telling us "look what Bill bought me."
She also always felt and acted younger than her age. She was an avid bridge player and sharp as a tack so she always kept score (regrettably not allowing me to cheat). She knew what cards you were holding and was the first to tell you if you were leading from your hand or the dummy. When playing with her local bridge club, she complained that the people were just too old; despite the fact most were 10-20 years younger.
Once she told me the reason her husband was bald on the top of his head was because he kept hitting his head on the backboard of their bed (you youngins may have to think about that one for a bit). Never one to care what people thought of her, she also went out and bought what she called “stretchy pants” with stirrups that were meant for teens and proudly had her picture taken in them.
She had a lot of money but you would never know it. She and her best friend, the wife of the founder of K-Mart, used to go shopping every Wednesday. Too often they came back with nothing, complaining they would never spend more than $1 for a good pair of underwear. She actually was so cheap that she had a dual headstone made for her and her husband. Because she got a better deal for each letter, she had the cemetery chisel in her lifespan as 1904 -19_ _, not thinking she would make it into the 21st Century. I used to love to tease her about the fact she would live beyond her expectations and it would cost her more to knock off the 19 part. I’m happy to say she had that problem.
Because she had lived such a long life, I once asked her what she thought was the greatest invention or achievement in her lifetime. Now I would have said Saran Wrap and given a thought to the airplane, computer, or landing on the moon, but she quickly answered “penicillin” because she knew how many lives it saved. Her generation was never about collecting new toys and technological inventions, but about making the life of others more comfortable and better.
Most people who live that long have some slip in mental acuity. She never did. I once asked her why and she told me it was because she read five or six hours every day and it kept her mind sharp. Her mental alertness may have ultimately made her death more frustrating.
She fell one day in late November of 2001 and broke her hip. Five days later she died from being in the hospital, hooked up to tubes and well-aware of what was happening around her. She didn’t fear death, but as with all things in her life, I think she wanted a say in how she died. I doubt she was ready to go that day and was probably pretty ticked-off that she wasn’t home baking pies. My relatives never told me she was in the hospital and I never had a chance to tell her good-bye or say how much I loved her and what she meant to me. Alice Brosier, if you’re looking over my shoulder today, I want you to know I love you so much and miss you every day.
Following my mother’s death in 1995, my grandmother and I gravitated toward each other, I suspect because I wanted to be near the part of her that was my mother and she wanted the same from me. We talked nearly every week for the rest of her life and I discovered even more in common with her and relished our talks. She especially liked to talk about my mother and often repeated the wonderful deathbed conversation she and my mother had when they closed the books on a lifetime of misunderstanding. Since I liked to talk about my mother too, I was always there to oblige. She buried a husband, three children and countless friends and relatives before she died and each time you thought this would be too much for her, she dug deep to find more strength to carry on. She would just tell me it’s what happens when you live so long. The fact is, she loved life and never wanted to leave.
She had a project going all the time, which I think was partially responsible for her longevity (along with a sip of whiskey more often than she would admit). One year she would plan to paint the house, the next year to put in new carpet, and perhaps the next year it would be new window treatments. She always had something to look forward too.
When her husband died in December 1983 she visited my parents for Christmas. She looked so frail when she arrived, we all believed she wouldn’t last long. It was a bittersweet Christmas as it felt like we would lose both grandparents in the span of a few months. She surprised us all. My aunt bought her a puppy a short while later, believing she would get it back in a few years, but my grandmother stubbornly outlived the dog.
When we would visit, she would show off a ring or a bracelet. She would tell us it was a birthday present from her husband, the same one who had been gone for a decade. She actually went out and picked out the piece of jewelry she suspected he would buy for her, wrapped it up and gave it to herself on her birthday or Christmas, always with a wry smile and telling us "look what Bill bought me."
She also always felt and acted younger than her age. She was an avid bridge player and sharp as a tack so she always kept score (regrettably not allowing me to cheat). She knew what cards you were holding and was the first to tell you if you were leading from your hand or the dummy. When playing with her local bridge club, she complained that the people were just too old; despite the fact most were 10-20 years younger.Once she told me the reason her husband was bald on the top of his head was because he kept hitting his head on the backboard of their bed (you youngins may have to think about that one for a bit). Never one to care what people thought of her, she also went out and bought what she called “stretchy pants” with stirrups that were meant for teens and proudly had her picture taken in them.
She had a lot of money but you would never know it. She and her best friend, the wife of the founder of K-Mart, used to go shopping every Wednesday. Too often they came back with nothing, complaining they would never spend more than $1 for a good pair of underwear. She actually was so cheap that she had a dual headstone made for her and her husband. Because she got a better deal for each letter, she had the cemetery chisel in her lifespan as 1904 -19_ _, not thinking she would make it into the 21st Century. I used to love to tease her about the fact she would live beyond her expectations and it would cost her more to knock off the 19 part. I’m happy to say she had that problem.
Because she had lived such a long life, I once asked her what she thought was the greatest invention or achievement in her lifetime. Now I would have said Saran Wrap and given a thought to the airplane, computer, or landing on the moon, but she quickly answered “penicillin” because she knew how many lives it saved. Her generation was never about collecting new toys and technological inventions, but about making the life of others more comfortable and better.
Most people who live that long have some slip in mental acuity. She never did. I once asked her why and she told me it was because she read five or six hours every day and it kept her mind sharp. Her mental alertness may have ultimately made her death more frustrating.
She fell one day in late November of 2001 and broke her hip. Five days later she died from being in the hospital, hooked up to tubes and well-aware of what was happening around her. She didn’t fear death, but as with all things in her life, I think she wanted a say in how she died. I doubt she was ready to go that day and was probably pretty ticked-off that she wasn’t home baking pies. My relatives never told me she was in the hospital and I never had a chance to tell her good-bye or say how much I loved her and what she meant to me. Alice Brosier, if you’re looking over my shoulder today, I want you to know I love you so much and miss you every day.
Friday, December 02, 2005
First Chistmas Joke of the Season
(In honor of Kellen who only wants humor on the blog).
Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates.
"In honor of this holy season," Saint Peter said, "you must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven."
The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. "It represents a candle," he said. "You may pass through the pearly gates," Saint Peter said.
The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, "They're bells." Saint Peter said, "you may pass through the pearly gates."
The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women's panties.
St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And just what do those symbolize?"
The man replied, "They're Carols".
Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates.
"In honor of this holy season," Saint Peter said, "you must each possess something that symbolizes Christmas to get into heaven."
The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. "It represents a candle," he said. "You may pass through the pearly gates," Saint Peter said.
The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, "They're bells." Saint Peter said, "you may pass through the pearly gates."
The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women's panties.
St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And just what do those symbolize?"
The man replied, "They're Carols".
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Anyone Out There?
Okay, so I have this need to feel appreciated. And noticed. Well, and to be honest, to have praise heaped on me. Call me needy, but just call.
I have been asking anyone who will listen (thus narrowing the field) why I don't get many comments on my posts. The answers range from "you write too long," to "nobody wants to hear your right-wing drivel," to "have you told anyone about your Blog?" and my favorite, "your posts are so complex and well-written that people are too intimidated to comment." Okay, so the last one was mine.
Mark Twain always said, "if you can't get a compliment, buy yourself one." So here goes: If I can get 10 people to indicate they have read any of this Blog recently by writing a simple "hello" in the comment section, you will all win a new IPod!
So please, if you want a new IPod and for me to be your new best friend, just type h.e.l.l.o. so I know you're still out there. I'm beggin' 'ya.
I have been asking anyone who will listen (thus narrowing the field) why I don't get many comments on my posts. The answers range from "you write too long," to "nobody wants to hear your right-wing drivel," to "have you told anyone about your Blog?" and my favorite, "your posts are so complex and well-written that people are too intimidated to comment." Okay, so the last one was mine.
Mark Twain always said, "if you can't get a compliment, buy yourself one." So here goes: If I can get 10 people to indicate they have read any of this Blog recently by writing a simple "hello" in the comment section, you will all win a new IPod!
So please, if you want a new IPod and for me to be your new best friend, just type h.e.l.l.o. so I know you're still out there. I'm beggin' 'ya.
Mars/Venus From The Eyes of Kids
HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? (written by kids)
(1) You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming. -- Alan, age 10
(2) No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with. -- Kristen, age 10
WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
(1) Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then. -- Camille, age 10
(2) No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married. -- Freddie, age 6 (very wise for his age)
HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
(1) You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids. -- Derrick, age 8
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
(1) Both don't want any more kids. -- Lori, age 8
WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
(1) Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough. -- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure?)
(2) On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date. -- Martin, age 10 (Mrs. Laz never learned that one).
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
(1) I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns. -- Craig, age 9
WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
(1) When they're rich. -- Pam, age 7
(2) The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that. -- Curt, age 7
(3 ) The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do. -- Howard, age 8
IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
(1 ) I don't know which is better, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm never going to have sex with my wife. I don't want to be all grossed out. -- Theodore, age 8
(2 ) It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them. -- Anita, age 9 (bless you child)
HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
(1 ) There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there? -! - Kelvin, age 8
And the #1 Favorite is.....
HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
(1 ) Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck. -- Ricky, age 10
(1) You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming. -- Alan, age 10
(2) No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with. -- Kristen, age 10
WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
(1) Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then. -- Camille, age 10
(2) No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married. -- Freddie, age 6 (very wise for his age)
HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
(1) You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids. -- Derrick, age 8
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
(1) Both don't want any more kids. -- Lori, age 8
WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
(1) Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough. -- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure?)
(2) On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date. -- Martin, age 10 (Mrs. Laz never learned that one).
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
(1) I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns. -- Craig, age 9
WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
(1) When they're rich. -- Pam, age 7
(2) The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that. -- Curt, age 7
(3 ) The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do. -- Howard, age 8
IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
(1 ) I don't know which is better, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm never going to have sex with my wife. I don't want to be all grossed out. -- Theodore, age 8
(2 ) It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them. -- Anita, age 9 (bless you child)
HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
(1 ) There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there? -! - Kelvin, age 8
And the #1 Favorite is.....
HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
(1 ) Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck. -- Ricky, age 10
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