Spalding Gray's Job

Wearing the Cowboy Hat

2005-02-16T10:02:00.000-05:00

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1st draft

Well, I got my cowboy hat, and I have to tell you, it looks great! I have to believe that everyone, male or female, looks better with a cowboy hat on. Nobody doesn’t look good wearing one of these things. I wore mine to Manhattan last weekend. My wife, seven-year-old son, and brother Mark, who lives in the city, strolled through the streets, took the subway up to 77th on the number 6 line, and then toured Central Park. Cristo’s Gates installation had just gone up, the weather was perfect and the park was jammed with New Yorkers enjoying the spectacle. In all our hours of walking I did not see a single other cowboy hat. This may have been the only time in my life I have been unique in New York City. And I looked terrific!

It takes guts to wear a big hat, and I sometimes feel nervous walking about New England or the city with this symbol of another time and place on my head. It’s just that—did I mention?—I look so damn good wearing the thing!

I was once in the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and I was with my soon-to-be wife. On a whim, she bought me a sailor’s cap; the silly kind of thing Thurston Howell III might wear. Then she insisted I put it on. In public. Now, Virginia Beach is a Navy town. There’s a big base just up the road. I knew better to wear this hat in this town. But love blinds and lust is even stronger than that, so I put the stupid think on my head.

I didn’t have the thing on my head for thirty seconds before a carload of drunken sailors screeched up to the sidewalk and one flushed swabbie yelled out the window, “He ain’t no sailor!”

I smiled nervously and quickly removed the hat, knowing full well what was coming next: a thorough beating. My wife laughed, the way women will after they’ve cursed the insane driver next to you or induced you to wear a pseudo-military hat in a military town, knowing full well that they aren’t the one who is about to be shot or beaten; you are.

So I am very much relieved to walk through Central Park or Wilton, Connecticut, and not be accosted by a gang of seething red necks, ready to stomp me into the dirt with their cowboy boots, because they’ve noticed I’m wearing Timberlands and my belt buckle isn’t the size of a grapefruit.

Hmm… maybe a new belt and some boots would go good with this hat.

Distribution of the Cowboy Hat

2005-01-21T21:56:00.000-05:00

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From My Current MBA Class

Question

1. Think about a product that you buy. State that product and the various channels used to sell that product and why.

Answer

1. I recently decided that I want a cowboy hat. I'm not sure why exactly. I've been watching the Professional Bull Riding (PBR) tour on television--that may have something to do with it. I did live for a dozen years in Utah on and off (high school and after college). But I grew up on the East Coast and currently live in Connecticut. Living in CT, I find that distribution channels for cowboy hats are limited. Radio personality Don Imus has a home in CT only about twenty five miles from mine and he wears cowboy hats. But he also lives at the ranch in New Mexico--my guess is he buys his cowboy hats out there.

A cowboy hat is like a pair of shoes, in that it has to fit. It is even worse than buying shoes. I have been buying shoes all my life and know my size well. But I rarely in my life have bought a fitted hat of any kind. This is the kind of product where I would prefer an indirect channel; a store where I could go and try the hat on. My wife said she knew of a store in town that might carry cowboy hats. I called and they said yes, indeed, they do have cowboy hats.

I drove over only to discover that they have two cowboy hats: one was a pink and black zebra-striped plastic affair--not exactly what I was looking for. The other was closer to my style but four sizes too large. That was it. No other sizes. No other cowboy hats in stock.

Giving up on the brick and mortar channel I decided to go online. That meant typing "cowboy hat" in to Google and finding an online seller. I found and ordered a hat. The hat was kind of pricey, $150. Also it was white and I wanted a black hat. But there was a section for specifying color and I selected black.

This vendor called me few days later to tell me the hat was not available in black. The tone of her voice (she was nice, but) the tone in her voice suggested that I probably didn't know anything about cowboy hats (true) and probably shouldn't be buying one online (maybe). She sounded genuinely relieved when I told her to cancel the order.

I went back online to start my search anew. This time I found a company called Sheplers at http://www.sheplers.com/cat.cfm?TID=074425&source=google_hats_mens_straw. They have a good selection, good prices, and hats that come in black. I ordered a $59 Resistol in what I hoped was my size. I wrapped a string around my head and then measured that with a yard stick to get my size.

After a long anxious wait, the hat arrived. It was the wrong size. I re-measured my head, think I have it right this time and sent it back for a swap. It cost me $10 to ship it back, it's been weeks since I decided I want a cowboy hat and I still don't have one.

The funny thing is, I’m not even sure where or when I will wear a cowboy hat. I can see myself wearing it in the shower. But in my Subaru Impreza? That may be a stretch.

We’ll see. All I know is some day I’ll have my cowboy hat. And that will be a happy day indeed.

Naughty and Nice

2004-12-27T15:59:00.000-05:00

I just finished Donald Trump’s book entitled “How to Get Rich”. I read it in about three days and never before have I read a book in less than three weeks.

Let’s just call it an easy and enjoyable read. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that The Donald’s self-described day involves an awful lot of yelling at other people.

It is funny because when I lived in Manhattan I used to yell at people too. I mean professionally. It seemed to be part of office life in New York. It was only after I moved to Connecticut that I was yelling at some incompetent over the phone in front of other people, when I realized how wholly inappropriate and unnecessary it is to yell at other people in this manner.

This got me reflecting on the nature of being nice. I have never been nice since the first time I was made a fool of on the playground. My six-year-old son roars and bellows at us all when he doesn’t get his way. It’s not good. I don’t like it. It’s not necessary.

My parents aren’t nice—never have been and show no signs of ever figuring out how to be. They’ve had their moments, many moments, when they’ve done lovely things. But there is always a shard of glass in the punch. And sometimes it’s all broken glass.

I don’t think that holds much water, though, because I don’t think we are our parents. I don’t think we have to be our parents. I believe this, even though my wife would tell you I have yet to demonstrate that it is true.

It is funny because at the same time I was blowing through Trump’s book I have been reading Sanders’ book, “Hunting for Hope”. I made light of Sanders’ book in an earlier blog, but when he talks about fidelity and staying in one place to really learn it and connect with it, it is quite beautiful writing. It argues more lucidly than I’ve heard before for making a home and staying there.

At the same time I was reading Sanders’ exhortation that we “live small”, I was reading Trump’s advice that I should “live large”. Now, I’ve always been a bit of a chameleon, influenced most by what influenced me last. So I did enjoy watching my own brain try to reconcile simultaneous and diametrically opposed life advice.

The nice thing about getting older is I have gotten a lot smarter about what works for me and what doesn’t. I do see that where I am is exactly where I want to be, given all possible worlds. Yes, being a mack-daddy, bad-ass pimp might be exciting for a day or two, but really, I could do without the drama.

And so too, yelling at people on the phone all day. Been there, done that. It doesn’t make for a particularly happy soul at the end of the day.

Neither do I take any shit. Rather, I have learned the Zen advice I hold most dear, to move through the spaces that life opens.

Yes I want to be with the so-called winners, hanging with the celebs, but I’ve done a little bit of that and it is a pretty empty feeling at the end of the night.

My heart is most full when I am with my wife and son. Adding our foster son Dylan just added to that feeling of purpose and fullness. When Dylan’s mom won him back by satisfying State and Court, it was certainly a victory for her, and probably, hopefully for Dylan. For roughly six months we had no contact with them and that was very hard. Now that his mother brings Dylan here on weekends to visit, our approach of accepting her son, accepting her, and accepting what happened, has proved itself to be the right approach.

So what to do? It is funny. We don’t expect other people to be anything other than what they are, but so many of us are dying to jump out of our own skin and be someone else.

That opportunity will come soon enough… at least the jumping out of your own skin part. I think Sanders is right that richness is in the connection to people and place, not in the connection to glitz and money.

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Death and Christmas

2004-12-24T15:08:00.000-05:00

Went to Chris’s wake the other night. So strange these wakes. The family of the deceased stands at the front of the room near the casket and the flowers. Sometimes the casket is open, which makes the deceased look like a giant, packaged doll of him- or herself. Chris’s casket was closed, for which I was grateful. They probably reasoned it was just too shocking. Seeing the thirty-seven-year old father of two would have been tough to take.

The family greets a long line of well-wishers. They come up one at a time. Even though our small town of Monroe is in toney Fairfield County it is still quite rural in many ways. Chris was a house builder. The people lined up to pay their respects are dressed in suits and ties, tee shirts and jeans, and every imaginable fashion statement in-between. One at a time we shake the hands of Chris family members, some I don't know at all and others I know well.

I feel it must be awkward for the family members to be greeting people they don’t know. But then I remember from my own experience, it doesn’t matter. I remember greeting people in the same way at the funeral of our two premature sons, Brian’s two brothers, Adam and Christian. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the people shaking my hand and offering condolences. I just appreciated that they were there.

I hugged Chris’s wife and asked his brother how he was holding up. I could see the rings of grief under Felecia’s eyes. Chris’s brother Guy showed his typical good spirits and energy. I hope my wife and son and brothers don’t have to experience this.

I learned about unbearable grief that you can’t go over it or around it. You have to walk right through it. You just go through it. You don’t avoid it, you don’t pretend it isn’t there. You go right through it and experience it for what it is. There is no shame in it.

Today is Christmas eve. It is both awful and fitting that Chris should die just before Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be a joyous time but it is also a most awful time. It is boozing it up in the trailer home and punching your nag of a wife in the eye before setting fire to the truck; that’s Christmas in America.

It’s the time of year all the disappointments, hurts, shortcomings and regrets seem to come to the surface. It’s best not to have those things and I’ve done a pretty good job of stripping all of them from my life.

It’s also seems to be the time of year people die. I have read that elderly mortality goes up around Christmas. The local news radio has a story of the teenage pair who drove their vehicle at high speed into a telephone pole. Two nights ago I saw police vehicles in the driveway of our neighbor, a couple of doors down.

I was on the way from the grand parents' house to our house to pick up a form Suz’s dad needs. I drove past the flashing lights to our house and found the form. Then I tried to look up the phone number of the elderly neighbor a few doors down. It wasn’t in our church directory—that page was missing.

The neighbors in question are George and Sue S. George is in his eighties and has been battling cancer. His wife is a only a few years younger. Like so many elderly couples in town they couldn’t be sweeter. George and Sue always say hello in church and send our son Brian best birthday wishes.

Unable to call George and Sue, I pulled into their driveway on the way back to the grand parents’. An EMT was taking a medical supply box out of his truck as I got out of my car. “I’m a neighbor,” I announced. “Are George and Sue alright?”

The EMT muttered, “I don’t know,” and hurried in to the house. I couldn’t tell if he was saying he didn’t know their condition or he didn’t know what I was doing there.

I followed him into the house. Inside I heard the crackle of a police radio. A Monroe cop was standing in the kitchen. Behind him, in the den where I know George likes to watch NY Giants football, I could hear the sounds of EMT’s working.

I repeated my story to the cop, that I am a neighbor. “Are George and Sue okay?”

“They’re okay,” said the cop. “George was having seizures.”

“They're going to be alright?”

“They're going to be alright.”

I looked past him. Sue and George didn’t even know I was there. I thought about going past the cop to enter the room. Then I thought Sue must have so much on hands, and George might not like being seen in physical distress.

I looked the cop in the eye. He was an older gentleman. His demeanor was calm.

“Well, just wanted to see if I could help,” I said. I turned to leave.

“Good neighbor,” said the cop.

I guess. I guess he doesn’t see neighbors come over much when emergency lights are flashing in the driveway. Maybe to gawk, but not to help. That’s too bad if it’s true. If you can’t look out for these little old couples in the winter up here, what’s the point of living in New England? Especially at Christmas time.

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Humor and Death

2004-12-17T22:09:00.000-05:00

Humor is a funny thing—no pun intended. for example, today I learned that a good friend died last night in his sleep. He was only 37! He leaves behind a young wife and two very young children, both girls.

Obviously it is an awful, awful situation.

I am the only one in the world who thinks there is at least something… funny about it.

I confirmed this with my wife. I asked her if I was the only one who sees something funny in this and she confirmed, that yes, I am the only idiot who thinks this is funny. She was not pleased. Yet I detected the curl of a smile about her purposefully set lips. She sees it too! Even if she has far too much class to admit it.

There is certainly nothing funny about it to his family. Not to his parents, not to his wife, not to his children. Not to my wife’s family who raised Chris for a while as their own.

I know from the experience of having a foster child in our house, that if his wife finishes her grief and finds another good man—not easy, but doable—his daughters can grow up with a good father.

There was no sweeter man, no better guy than Chris. I was concerned to see that he had put on weight in recent years, but there is something unmanly about commenting on another man’s weight, (and something crazy about commenting on a woman’s!) I said nothing, which I now regret. But 37! Who could imagine the successful young builder didn’t have time?

I envied Chris his attractive wife (although my dear wife—may she stay with me—is looking very good these days, as a favor to me, for which I am eternally grateful); I envied his money that allowed him to put his family in a Mercedes and house them in a new home in Westport, Connecticut; home of Martha Stewart, Don Imus, and that ilk. He was doing well. But I didn’t envy these things much. I like my wife. I like my life And I liked Chris very much. Every time I saw him, it was impossible not to like him. It’s just funny that he should die.

Why?

Because the difference between life and art is there is no reason for what happens in life. You feel the lie when you tell your mother-in-law otherwise on the phone to comfort her—I do. And that’s okay. Whether it is God’s amusement park, a moral test, or the most fantastical wet dream of an intoxicated bacterium, it is one hell of a ride while it lasts. And there are worse things than that it doesn’t go on forever…

God rest your soul Chris Veneruso, a wonderful, sweet guy, gone far too young.

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My Amerika, Your America, Fear Not

2004-12-03T22:23:00.000-05:00

I wanted Kerry to win but I’m not prepared to give up on my country because he didn’t.

Today I listened again to Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Were Dying at full blast in my earphones. It is far from the best song I know, but it isn’t bad.

I explained to someone that I am listening to country lately because I am trying to catch up.

The dream of the world of equality does do battle with the world of some with power and some without. Both dreams are beguiling. Neither dream will survive long without beneficence.

But man does not have power for man is mortal. But man does have power because all men are mortal. Is it the dream to have no power or the dream to use power beneficently? Top comes to mind. Can power be used with beneficence?

Yes, I say to you, yes.

I disavow nothing that I wrote before. Yet I understand Amerika with a K. My Amerika has decided to try out a little power trip. I see it as all part of the plan. We are trying to promote a world where women have an equal chance to compete and no chance to be abused against their wishes. Can’t we all get in line with that? We are trying to promote a world where the most egregious violence you can commit is with words.

Meanwhile, if you hit me be prepared to be hit back harder. That’s the way it is; and must be. There’s no escaping it. That is as American as it gets. It’s the kind of conservative liberal I am and always have been.

Meanwhile, despair not gentle souls, for this too, is your America, a country worth loving for its raw hope alone.

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Note to My Son

2004-11-19T21:20:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up there was a saying. It was from the 1960's in America. The saying is, "The truth shall set you free,"

It may be from the Bible or Shakespeare; and for all I know it is true.

Embrace your truth and never run from it. If you do, you will be secure.

Once you are secure, you will be free.

Who you are, mostly likely isn't that bad.

So long as your truth doesn't damage other people, reject tryrants who tell you your truth isn't valid.

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Goin' Home

2004-11-18T08:16:00.000-05:00

So far the plan ride home tonight has been uneventful. This is actually bad news because it is a sure sign something awful is yet to occur. Most likely it will be a diversion to Boston or a three-hour wait on the ground after we land at LaGuardia because the plane door will fail to open. I can hardly wait...

Meanwhile I am once again sitting near the front of the plane, close enough to enjoy watching the first class passengers sooth themselves with hot towels and unwind with complimentary glasses of free wine.

I have no book to read because I left it in my hotel room this morning. I left it because I was rushing like mad to get out of the room. I was rushing like mad because the alarm I set did not go off. Instead of waking at 6:45 to conduct an 8:30 training class I woke at 7:45. I usually put in a request for a wakeup call as well as setting the alarm when I travel. But this Comfort Inn had no faceplate on this phone. Typically there is a number listed for room service, wake up calls, the front desk, the concierge. But this phone had no face plate at all. Somehow, for some reason, that stopped me. The alarm clock would do. Surely they wouldn’t have an alarm clock in hotel room that doesn’t work, I thought, killing a cockroach clinging to the ceiling with a swat from a bath towel. What a lovely establishment this is, I added, speaking to myself.

I had been looking forward to one more hot breakfast-omelet loads of black coffee at the Dennys near my hotel. While some states are banning smoking in the outdoors for crying out loud, the Plano, Texas, Dennys still has a smoking section where you can enjoy a morning cigarette with your coffee and the Dallas newspapers.

Instead of that simple but satisfying breakfast and a leisurely smoke, my breakfast this morning was a sixty-five cent bag of peanuts I bought from a vending machine on my way to the car. In a terrible hurry to get to the training session I watched in agony as the vending machine corkscrew slowly turned to release my bag of peanuts. It turned and turned and then it stopped. Like a scene from a movie, the bag of peanuts did not drop but obstinately sat there, clinging to the narrow perch remaining. This is one of the reasons why I lift weights on a regular basis. I grabbed the vending machine and shook it like a skinny girl until it dropped my bag of nuts.

I did manage fight my way through the morning traffic to the client’s site and walk into the training room at 8:25 AM, much to the delight of my two partners. They assured me they were prepared to go on without me but the look on their faces confirmed they were relieved not to have to whip these twenty-five whining, kvetching, animals, (aka the trainees), into line.

That is exactly what I proceeded to do for the second day in a row, taking the unruly class through final exercises.

Towards the end of today’s session, one of the trainees, a tall and attractive young lady, told me I had a "presence" about me. She said I reminded her of “Willem Dafoe, only much better looking, of course”. Flattered, I thanked her. She said I had a “swagger” about me.

“Actually, that’s not a swagger, it’s a limp,” I said. “I was running stairs in the hotel Sunday night and my thigh muscles are killing me.”

My colleague Ben told me last night over dinner that he and a former co-worker of ours are collaborating on a software program that could make them millions. “If this works I will never have to work again,” he said.

“Yeah, but you’ll get tired of that. You’ll want to do something,” I said. “You’ll go crazy with nothing to do. Look at the way you work now. Nobody puts in more hours than you do.”

“I work like that because I need to make enough money to stop working as soon as I can,” said Ben. “The only reason I work so much is because I hate to work. ”

That made perfect sense.

I wished him well. Personally, I’ve decided that I like to work. I certainly don’t like many things about work. But I like to get up in the morning and ride my motorcycle to the office and be a part of a team. Like any team, we are frequently dysfunctional, but we are a team, nevertheless.

I think that’s one reason why God, or I, or both working collaboratively, have conspired to deprive me of the big payday, the overnight success, or the winning lottery jackpot ticket. I am happier with just enough to get by and a little bit of a fire under me feet. I get awfully lazy and awfully corrupt when work is scarce and money is plentiful.

And besides if I was rich and quit work, I would miss all of this glamorous business travel.

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No Hope

2004-11-16T01:40:00.000-05:00

I was hoping to report an uneventful flight to Dallas, or really, to file no report at all. There’s no sense in writing about a flight in which all goes well and all was going well on this flight, for a while...

The flight was unlike most others I’ve taken lately in that not every seat on the plane was filled. The plane boarded without incident and took off on time. As is my habit, I fell asleep once we began taxiing and only awoke enough on the roar of the engines for take-off to say a little prayer before falling back asleep. The first sign of trouble came when I awoke. Actually it wasn’t when I awoke so much as how I awoke.

I awoke when an overweight flight attendant stepped on my foot and simultaneously shouted at me, “Can I get you a beverage?”

You might think that the lights being dimmed, my body being motionless, eyes being closed would be hints that perhaps I was sleeping. Perhaps that’s why she stepped on my foot in addition to shouting her offer to serve me, to make sure she got my full attention.

I started and she repeated her question. Groggily I muttered No and closed my eyes again and tried to return to my dreams of a world where there are no commercial airline companies.

The flight attendant then set to work popping open can after can of soda, holding each can as close to my ear as possible. She dug her metal scoop into ice and dropped the rattling cubes into cups. The cans popped, the soda fizzed, the pretzel bags crackled. Once I was fully awake, she moved on.

Fully awake now I watched the first class passengers being served. There used to be a curtain they would close separating first class passengers from the view of the riff-raff in coach. Many is the flight I had stared at that curtain wondering about the orgies of carnal delight occurring on the other side. (The loud flight attendant just reappeared with a plastic garbage bag and held it noisily, crackling like static, before my face for far too long before moving on, even though it was clear I have no refuse to give her.) After the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, they removed that curtain—take that, terrorists! No more first class curtain for you! So now we can see what goes on there, and really, it’s pretty nice.

For example, right now I am sitting in a chair with two rigid arm rests that long ago turned both of my arms numb. If someone made chairs like this and tried to sell them on the ground he would likely be sued for causing a variety of circulatory ailments in those idiotic enough to buy them and sit in them. Certainly, he and his family would starve from his gross incompetence, and rightfully so. But up here in coach, these devices of torture are standard equipment.

The chairs in first class are wide and comfortable. I know because every once in a long and distant while, some bored god on high smiles down on me and through computer glitch or human whim, I receive an upgrade. In the first months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the planes were largely empty and first class upgrades were plentiful. Nowadays the planes are packed and if you ask for an upgrade the ticket agent is equally likely to laugh in your face or call federal marshals to drag you in back to administer a sound beating.

While we in coach get the overweight flight attendant shouting Can I get you a beverage and throwing pretzels at us from her vantage point on our toes, first class passengers get the self-described chief flight attendant, who uncorks wine and shares charming banter with his ever more jovial and intoxicated guests.

First class on this plane is rows one through four and I am in row five. I’m on the aisle, giving me a birds eye view of everything I can’t have: the roast chicken, the red and white wine, the warm dinner rolls, the heated white towels to refresh the face. I can gaze at the cheesecake and smell the sherry glaze.

The difference between where I sit and where they sit is but a few inches. The difference in fare between what my company is paying for my ticket and their companies are paying for theirs is little or no difference—most of them are frequent flyer upgrades. Yet the difference between their world and mine is as dramatic as it is cruel. On this airplane, they are gods and I am the dregs of the earth.

I recently saw an old black-and-white photo of a beggar running hard with his cap outstretched for a few pennies. The picture must have been dated from the late nineteenth century for a he ran alongside an open coach drawn by horses. In the coach sat handsome rich men dressed in impeccable suits and tall top hats. These men paid the running beggar no mind, much as no first class passenger ever deigns to glance back at the writhing mass of human misery jammed into torture devices disguised as chairs, suffering oh so close, and yet oh so far behind him.

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Hope

2004-11-15T01:15:00.000-05:00

The book I’ve recently started is called Hunting for Hope, by Sanders. It’s a good enough book I suppose—I’ve just started it. Already it reminds me a little of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig. Both are about men trying to “save” their adolescent sons. Pirsig is afraid his son will go crazy. Sanders fears he has painted such a bleak picture of the world his son will lose hope. My own view is that hunting for hope is a little like hunting for your ass with both hands. It’s right there. It’s hard to miss.

Hope is everywhere; it is what we breathe when we wake up in the morning and what lulls us to sleep at night. Right now for example, I hope never to fly commercial again. It is a vain hope as I am on an airplane right now. I fly another to Dallas tomorrow and a third Wednesday to take me home. Still, I have hope.

The reason I have hope never to fly again is the absolutely bizarre, cruel and inhuman treatment to which airlines believe they are entitled to subject you. For example, not long ago, I took off from Minneapolis on a short flight to Chicago. After we were just minutes into the air my eardrums started plugging. Next the smoke alarms in the restrooms started going off. Soon after that the captain came on the intercom to tell us that the cabin was losing pressure and we were returning to Minneapolis. As we approached the airport the cabin filled with smoke. The business man next to me looked at me and I at him as if to say, Gee, isn’t this fun? Because of course, it was not.

After we reached the ground and it was clear the airline had failed to kill us, we deplaned and were given a couple of five dollar vouchers each good for a free beverage. That certainly evened things out.

Though suspicious of coupons, I’ve been carrying these vouchers around in my wallet for some time now, hoping never to get an occasion to use them, but knowing that soon enough, I would. Today was that day.

I checked into my Northwest airlines flight at LaGuardia early. Out of the kiosk popped yet another voucher; this one good for ten dollars! Perhaps they suspect I hadn’t quite gotten over that trying-to-kill me thing they pulled the last time I flew with them.

Very excited to be bristling with coupons I listened intently as our flight attendant droned on over the intercom about our flight’s meal options. There was a $5 snack for purchase, she said, and of course, beer and wine can be purchased for $5 as well. She spoke so slowly that I feared she was losing consciousness and after each sentence there was a pause so long I suspected the announcement was over except for the static background hiss of the intercom. Actually it was a somewhat hopeful sign. A sedated flight attendant is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly it is better than the opposite.

The food service was to start first and then the beverage service. The two carts came creeping down the aisle back to back. The flight attendant with the food cart asked me if I would like a snack. I said yes. As she handed me a little box containing a ham and cheese sandwich the size of a computer mouse, a bag of pretzels, a bag of goldfish, a pack of Oreos and a pack of raisons, I handed her the $10 coupon and said, “I would like a light beer also, please.”

She seemed not to hear me but took the coupon and proceeded to the next row behind me. The next attendant pushed his cart to me and asked about beverages. I said I would like a light beer. As he took the can of Bud Light from the cart he told me it would be $5. “I gave the other attendant a coupon good for $10,” I said, in lieu of paying.

At first he looked perplexed. I waited, staring him down. Finally he told me that the other attendant and he had to “cash out” separately. He couldn’t split her coupon. I thought about pointing out that she had just taken a $10 coupon for a $5 snack. She was $5 over. Couldn’t she give him $5 and they could both “cash out” just fine? But really, this being an airline, I knew there was no point. I pulled out my wallet and produced one of the $5 coupons I had received in lieu of my death and presented it.

He looked at it suspiciously at first. Obviously I was far more evil and devious than he ever imagined; to produce yet another coupon! He examined it closely and finally conceded. He would accept it.

As he handed me my hard-fought Bud Light I said to him, “would you ask the other attendant to bring back that $10 coupon and I will give her a $5 coupon instead?” He did not answer.

Quite expecting to never see or hear either of them again I tucked into my sandwich, a white-flour, dinner roll surrounding a piece of “ham” and a piece of “cheese”. I was offering my cookies, goldfish and potato chips to the young lady sitting next to me when the male attendant returned.

He crouched down low in the aisle, several coupons in hand, and began explaining to me that my $10 coupon was good for food or beverage, but not both, and the $5 coupon I had given could not be used for a beverage, only a meal. I had used my $10 coupon for a $5 meal but I used a food-only $5 coupon for a $5 beverage. Curses! This flight attendant was even more devious and evil than I had imagined!

For a moment I thought he was actually telling me I owed him more money in some kind of fiendish Twilight Zone twist. All the time I kept it in the back of my mind that arguing with a flight attendant is not like arguing with a sixteen-year-old checkout girl at Stop ‘n Shop. A flight attendant has the power to have the plane land in Nebraska with armed federal marshals ready to haul you out of the aircraft in chains at gunpoint. Cautiously, I reached for my wallet to pull out yet another voucher with which to do battle, much like my six-year-old son reaches into his Yu-Gi-Oh deck for a wizard or a monster or a spell card to thwart the dragon at hand. Thankfully the attendant said, “you don’t owe me any money.”

Still, I pulled out my remaining coupon and examined it. Sure enough, it said it was good towards an in-flight meal. No mention of beverage appeared upon it. Yet the attendant would exchange my food coupon for food and my food and beverage coupon for my beverage. An ugly mid-air incident was thus averted. Attendant and passenger traded smiles and parted as worthy adversaries.

Meanwhile I was filled with hope; hope that whoever dictates this airline’s meal and beverage voucher policy develops painful and persistent boils over 90% of his or her body. You, see, hope is everywhere.

Popdex Citations

Post-election Blues

2004-11-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

Someone asked me how I’m doing this morning and I guess the answer is I’m pretty depressed to be reminded that I am living in a nation of cowboys and yahoos who don’t want schools or health care, and don’t mind giving fundamentalist presidents more power at the cost or their own freedom, and don’t mind creating a class of the super rich at the cost of their own livelihoods.

The real surprise is that these people aren’t the nuts on the fringes any more, dining on Fritos and Coca Cola from the comfort of their trailer homes while the sun sets over the rusting visage of their pickup trucks and the laugh tracks echo from the hypnotically flashing blue tubes of their high definition television sets. These people are us. They are America. It is those of us with education and liberal ideas of real freedom of expression and religion and equal opportunity for all; we officially are now the lunatic fringe.

Instead of an Islamic Fundamentalist state with all forms of repression of freedom and thought, and enforced inequality for women and for those who do not conform, we are entering a Christian Fundamentalist state with largely the same goals. Bush presided over more executions than any governor in my memory. Why not behead them on TV while you’re at it?

In fact, rather than hunt Bin Laden, Bush and Ashcroft and Falwell should join up with him. Except for the costumes and the implements of death employed, their goals and methods seem largely congruent. (For the majority of you who don’t read and are proud of it like our president, that means they’re pretty much the same).

So pass the pork rinds and don’t touch that dial; if you have a brain in your head the ride ahead is going to be more than just a little bit bumpy.

Popdex Citations

Real Halloween Evil

2004-11-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

A few days ago we received a pre-Halloween flyer in our mailbox. It started out purporting to give tips for keeping our children safe when Trick or Treating, but soon revealed itself to be a racist screed, warning about letting children venture into nonwhite neighborhoods.

The history of race relations in this country is as sad as it long, but there is hope. From abject slavery to Barack Obama, the passage of that time has revealed slow, steady progress towards the day Martin Luther King envisioned, when men will be judged by the quality of their character, not the color of their skin.

So it was certainly unpleasant to see this piece of filth emerge uninvited from my mailbox, but not a total shock. I know racism still exists and I have some thoughts on why. There are behaviors we don’t want to see enter our town. These include crime, vandalism and the like. These behaviors are associated with poverty and disenfranchisement from the American dream. Racism has historically pushed a disproportionate number of nonwhites into poverty and disenfranchisement. The behavior becomes associated with the skin color. The racist attitudes are thus reinforced, and opportunity remains scarce for these individuals. It is a vicious cycle, difficult, but not impossible, to break.

What particularly saddened me about this flyer, besides the abject ignorance of those who wrote it, was the impact it must have had on nonwhite families in our town. To see this in the mailbox as a white was disconcerting. If I was black I think I might feel as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I would feel sudden unease, possibly fear, wondering what is out there and so close. The social philosopher Hannah Arendt, taking her cue from Plato, described evil as a lack of substance. The evil of this note would be no less disturbing because morons are behind it. In fact, the opposite might be true.

Beyond that, it occurred to me that this note is terrorism. It was designed to create fear, both in clueless whites who might accept the warning it offered, and especially in the nonwhite population to know that this sentiment is so close to home. Terror is longtime historical tactic of the racist. Be it burning crosses, police repression, or vigilante lynchings, terror has been a key tool of their misguided obsession. Brutality and violence is always the resource of those who cannot advance their position through reason.

People of reason and education will always reject racism on its face. But it must be an active, not a passive rejection. As Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, “The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.” I call on all of my fellow citizens to actively reject this evil in our community. Talk to your children. Make sure they have the substance to reject this easy out for the inadequate and the slow.

Popdex Citations

Fog

2004-10-26T22:33:00.000-04:00

Everything is my fault. I know this. It is something I have learned, the hard way, again and again, over the years. Take right now, for example. I am sitting in Detroit. There is absolutely no reason for me to be in Detroit. I live in Connecticut. I have a client meeting in Minneapolis. But I am in Detroit. The reason isn’t the fog. It’s my fault.

My ears are plugged. Every year the client in Minneapolis asks me to fly out in early Fall. It is always for a different reason. And every year, just before I am to fly out, I come down with my first flu of the season. So it was no surprise that just four days ago on Thursday my throat grew sore.

This is the way it always goes. It starts with a burning throat. I try to cut back, take it easy and rest. Then I can’t stand the inactivity any longer. I go for a run or some other kind of workout. The disease travels down into my lungs and I am done. Chills, fever, muscle ache, weakness, and seven to ten days out of commission.

So this year, when the sore throat struck, I took off from work immediately the next day. That was Friday. I saw my doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics. I spent the weekend hunkered down. I sniffled my way through Monday at work. But except for a little congestion, I was ready to go today, Tuesday.

I got up an hour earlier than usual this morning, at six, in order to leave the house by seven. My plane was to leave White Plains at 8:29. I budgeted an hour and a half for the forty minute drive. I left home on time but immediately encountered traffic on the Merritt Parkway. Many times I have encountered traffic on the way to the airport and doubted I would make it, but I always do. I wasn’t too worried.

The traffic usually lets up after exit 41 and this morning the traffic did get a little lighter at that point, but it remained heavier than usual. The traffic on the service road to the airport was also heavy. I did not get to a check-in kiosk until 8:10 am, twenty minutes before my flight. “You flight has departed” said the kiosk.

My fault.

I went to the ticket counter and they told me the same thing, “that flight is departed.” It was now 8:20 am. Rather than argue I decided to take the high road. I genially asked for the next best alternative. There was a flight to Minneapolis connecting through Detroit that would arrive in MN at 1:09 PM. I had a two o’clock meeting. The meeting would have to be pushed back a little, but not the end of the world. It was a $100 charge to change the flight. I did not think to ask if the planes were on time in and out of Detroit. I did not think to ask about the weather there. The weather was beautiful in White Plains. Somehow, when you are flying, you forget that the weather where you are may have nothing in common with the weather where you’re going. My mistake.

The plane pulled away promptly from the gate at 9:30. They like to do that so they can claim on-time departure. They claim on-time departure when they leave the gate on time, even though they are going to drive the plane about one hundred yards and park, there on a forlorn stretch of pavement, and tell you the reason why they can’t take off. Fog in Detroit. We would have to wait about thirty minutes to take off.

No worries. I had an hour to make my connection in Detroit and the planes leaving Detroit would likely be delayed as well. It was getting worse but I was still okay. After half on hour they told us we would be delayed another half hour. I called the client and explained the situation. Did he want to push the meeting back? I was planning on staying overnight. Did he want to reschedule the meeting for tomorrow morning?

The client wasn’t sure. He would have to have everyone check their calendars. We agreed I would phone from Detroit.

At one point, while we sat waiting on the tarmac, after several more delays, they announced that if any of us wanted to get off the plane they would take us back to the gate. I called the client again and got his voice mail. I told him it looked like I had about a twenty minute window if he wanted to reschedule. I could get off the plane, no harm, no foul. But minutes later they announced we were going. I left that final message on the client’s voicemail and away we went into the blue.

The fog in Detroit was changing. At one point they told us visibility was 1/8th of a mile. Then it was 1,000 feet. They need 1,200 feet of visibility to land. Amazing the details they share, considering the ones they neglect to share. The visibility was better, then worse, then better again. We would land.

Airlines are run by sadistic people. There is no other way to explain the wait on the ground after the plane has landed. It is always, “there is no gate ready for us”. I always wonder, didn’t they know we were coming? It’s not like we just decided to pop in. They cleared us to take off in White Plains. It seems odd to me that they are surprised that we have turned up here, in Detroit, of all places!

Today the explanation was better than usual. First it was the standard, the gate isn’t ready. Half an hour later it was a much more imaginative story. A group of children were traveling on the plane departing from our gate. One of the children had gone missing. They had since found the child. Now they were looking for the chaperone out looking for the no-longer-missing child. “Leave ‘em”, would have been my call, had anyone asked me. They did not.

Meanwhile, as we sat there, now delayed well over two hours, we saw plane after plane arrive and turn into open gates off to our right.

“Those are planes arriving at their assigned times,” our pilot informed us.

So? We were delayed more than two hours at that point. How about getting us an available gate and making another flight wait fifteen minutes? And how are these flights arriving on time, anyway? It is Detroit that has the fog, not White Plains. Does only half of the airport have fog? Is it a beautiful day on the runway these planes landed on? It made no sense.

“Okay, uh, folks, they have found the missing chaperone and they are buttoning down for departure. We should be at the gate in minutes.”

Fifteen excruciating minutes later: “Uh, folks, this is the captain. It looks like we have mechanical problems at this gate so they are going to find us another one.”

It was at this point that I wondered about the nature of torture. This was torture; to be kept on this plane just yards from an open gate. I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you’ll just let me off this plane. How bad must real torture be?

We finally got to the gate and the seatbelt sign went dark. Then it took them, perhaps another ten minutes to open the plane door. On my way out I was going to spit on the pilot, but he had the good sense to stay locked behind reinforced cockpit doors. Our lone male flight attendant hunkered in a corner and offered weak thank you’s as we deplaned. No one acknowledged him.

Meanwhile, due to the remnants of my cold, my ears had plugged. No amount of gum chewing would clear them. I could barely hear a sound. They told us there would be a ticket agent at the end of the jet way to help us with connections. You have to love the jargon: We were on the tarmac. We deplaned. We walked down a jet way. It’s all so exciting. It’s all horse shit if they can't get you from point A to point B!

The agent told me my connection was gone. I would have to go to gate 41. I went to gate 41 and waited in line. I checked my messages. The client had left one. It was hard to make out with my ears plugged but I thought he said that the meeting was moved back until five PM. The agent at gate 41 gave me a first class ticket to Minneapolis arriving at 4:09 PM. Considering that no plane ever arrives within an hour of it’s scheduled time don’t you think they could just have an arrival time of four, four fifteen, maybe even four-ish. But 4:09?

I asked the agent if the Minneapolis flight would leave on time. She said there was no way of knowing but it was showing on time now. “We wouldn’t rebook you on a flight that was delayed!” she chirped brightly. No, of course not. Northwest airlines wouldn’t do that. Well, they did exactly that to me this morning but they wouldn’t do it again! Not now! No way!

So. I would arrive in Minneapolis at 4:09. The client had said he would pick me up at the airport. We could a make a five o’clock meeting. I called the client to tell him the latest plan. “Oh no,” he said. “I can’t hold anyone here past five. I rescheduled the meeting from three to five.” No one would be available tomorrow. It looked like we would have to do it another day. No problem, my apologies, whatever works for you, I told him. We would do it another day.

I went back to gate 41 to get my first class ticket to Minneapolis turned into a first class ticket to White Plains. Only they wouldn’t do it. Sorry. Coach for you. Back of the plane.

Fine. Get me out of here. Next flight to White Plains is at 5:13 PM. It arrives in White Plains at 6:43. As if.

So here I am, at Chiles restaurant, in the Detroit airport, in the middle of a four-hour layover back to where I started this morning. Gee, this has been fun.

The gathering fog outside the airport windows is almost as thick as the fog plugging my ears. I wonder when I’ll get home. I would be willing to bet my house it won’t be at 6:43.

And, somehow, as sure as I know anything, I know this is all my fault.

Popdex Citations

Popdex Citations

The Ride to Work

2004-10-20T09:37:00.000-04:00

My new rule is I am riding my motorcycle to work every day I possibly can. There have been many rules. One was no riding if the morning temperature was below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. But I found that leaving the house at 38 isn’t much different. An early rule was to ride rain or shine, but a few rides in a prodigious downpour suggested that I either needed better rain gear or a new rule. While I was upgrading my rain gear I was also trying different paint schemes on my bike. No professional painters or equipment for me; just a few cans of spray paint with the metal ball rattling inside to shake them up.

After I finally got the paint scheme looking great (flat black with two, thin, parallel white stripes that go down the top of the tank and both fenders) I decided the bike looked too good to ride in the rain. I suddenly became interested in polishing and cleaning the bike to make it look its best. It’s kind of like the ugly girl who feels she has no chance so she doesn’t concern herself with her weight or her clothes or grooming. But one day she wakes up and looks in the mirror and—holy shit!—she’s pretty. She’s got a shot after all. So it’s off to the gym and then Chico’s and then the salon. That’s the way it was when I finally got the paint scheme right.

That was just a week or so ago. Then the weather report called for seven straight days of rain with a high around 55 and a low around 40. I would be dammed if I was going to sit in my car, just another miserable commuter trapped like a lab animal in his little metal box in the sad, sad rain. So I said f- it, I’m ridin’.

Riding in the rain, particularly on my bike, is high drama indeed. It is like riding to work on ice. The rear brake is useless. Step on the pedal and the wheel just locks up and slides. And the front wheel, well, if you lock that up and it goes out from under you, prepare to lunch on cold, wet blacktop. Hard, cold, wet blacktop.

Yesterday it rained and I only went off the road once. I was slowing to make a right turn onto a country lane. I take the back roads to work and have many routes figured out to avoid most traffic. Even though I slowed for the turn, when I came upon it I realized I was still going too fast. I hit the rear brake and went into one of those ice skids. No stopping power whatsoever. I gave up on the brake and just went off the road, up a grassy bank on the other side. I road cross-country for twenty yards or so before I was able to ease the bike back onto the pavement. Never stopped. Never dropped. Just improvised…

The thing about riding a motorcycle in the cold and the wet with the falling leaves on the road is it forces you to learn. It is a little like camping. The first night out camping you are cold and your sleeping bag is over a root. Your food gets wet. You find that your toothpaste tube has exploded all over the contents of your backpack. You don’t sleep or eat well and you wonder what the hell you are doing out there. Your conveniences have been taken away from you. You have to learn and adapt. It’s a new world. So you learn how to position your tent, prepare the ground under your sleeping bag, pack your gear properly, keep your food safe from animals, and a million other things. And after a few days it hits you. You are comfortable and in control. And you did it yourself. It is a great feeling.

One of my favorite lines is from New York intellectual and humorist Fran Lebowitz. She’s kind of a female Woody Allen, if you haven’t heard of her. “Why,” asked Ms. Lebowtiz, “do we camp?” And of course she had no answer and therefore rarely left the upper east side of Manhattan.

But the answer is the one I’ve described above, the same reason I ride my motorcycle to work. It is an adventure. It forces me to reconnect with my world. It forces me to learn and adapt. It forces me to invent. While you are trapped in your mundane car trudging off to your mundane job I am in the wilds, surviving. See you at work.

--Also published in:
Harley Envy

Popdex Citations

Someday

2004-10-09T21:43:00.000-04:00

Someday I will get the Harley. Someday I will have an American made V-twin motorcycle. Meanwhile the bike I have is as cheap and as mean as I am. I’ve painted the bike maybe five times since I last added to the Harley Envy chronicles. Each time there was a flaw or the look worked from some angles but not all. So it was sand it down and try again.

Today, I went for a gorgeous ride in Connecticut in early fall with three buddies. The ride was beautiful, from Monroe to West Cornwall, Connecticut, and back. When I got back, I pulled off the tank and removed the instrument panel and petcock and sanded the tank down and painted it again. Flat black. This time I think I have found the look for this bike.

I drag raced Dave K on the way home. All four of us came off a stop light coming out of New Milford, with a flat stretch of open road ahead. Dave and I went for it. His $15K Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide or whatever it is, just edged out my $5K Suzuki classic Thumper. But not by much…

The ride was gorgeous—did I already mention that? About one third of the trees are into their fall colors. Next weekend will probably be peak. Tom had his new Yamaha 750 that he’s only ridden about 400 miles, and Gary borrowed a bike. So you have to forgive those two for not drag racing. Plus they’re mature men, unlike me.

It took Gary a while to learn not to ride down the middle of the road, swaying back and forth, but to pick the left-wheel groove or the right-wheel groove of the pavement and hold that line. I think he got it in the end. It allows you to ride in a kind of formation, staggered left and right. There is something very satisfying about riding in formation. If you’ve ever driven cross-country in a car, you sometimes feel like you are forming small impromptu conveys with the trucks and cars that share that stretch of wilderness with you. You feel like you know the other drivers and they would help you if something went wrong. Bike riders stop for each other and make sure they're okay.

That’s one of the feelings about being on a bike. Maybe the best is that feeling of leaving that world of people cooped up in sluggish little gray cars rapidly and far behind.

--Also published in:
Harley Envy

Popdex Citations

President Gets Caught in Headlights

2004-10-01T16:16:00.000-04:00

Well, my blogging is well down because MBA classes started again and I have to get through those. I am due to graduate March '05. But I can't let last night's presidential debate go without a few observations.

Best line I've heard so far: "The president showed up with thirty minuntes of material for a ninety minute debate." Howard Fineman, Newsweek

I mean, how does the president of the United States of American not have enough facts and figures at his disposal to fill a thirty second rebuttal?

"Ah, er, war president. Hard job. People workin' on it. Workin' every day. Tough job. I know Bin Laden attacked us! Resolute."

Absolutely pathetic.

Second, Kerry seemed to fall into none of the traps. He was polite, respectful, at ease, serious but not ponderous. Best job of tone I've seen out of him yet. And last night's debate was on the war in Iraq and security, supposedly Bush's strong points. Wait until the debate on the economy!

How did we get here? How did we come to have an idiot president? Let's recap:

Kennedy: shot.

Johnson: bankrupted by Great Society and Viet Nam.

Nixon: crook.

Ford: drunk.

Carter: pie in the sky liberal incompetent.

Reagon: John Wayne.

Bush One: Mrs. Wayne.

Clinton: did it with one penis tied behind his back; made it look easy.

After that, people were divided. Maybe it was time to give the Republicans a turn. More of us voted for Gore but Bush ended up with the White House and no shots were fired. Fine. Okay. Maybe Bush Two would turn out to be another Reagon. Only, he didn't and he isn't.

For the love of God and country, don't give this moron another four years!

Popdex Citations

RNC Wrap-up

2004-09-05T13:31:00.000-04:00

I was just watching the McLaughlin group and they were grading the Republican National Convention. Eleanor Clift gave the convention a C-minus for lies and ungentlemanly-ness. Pat Buchanan and Tony Blankley both gave it an A. McLaughlin said it was effective but also described it as a “complete inversion of reality”. He said this in an admiring way, even as he suggested that out-and-out lying is typically considered a bad thing. He gave the convention a B+.

Zell Miller was described by Lawrence O'Donnell as a “nut and liar”, which is nothing if not accurate. The Republicans seemed absolutely delighted with themselves to have completely lied about and distorted their record and Kerry’s and gotten away with it. Apparently...

I like some of the funny, little moments of these conventions. I was watching a little of Elizabeth Dole’s speech, and at one point she hit a clear applause line; something like “America is still and always will be the greatest country on the face of the earth!” Something that means nothing but sounds good—you know, the kind stuff that seems to really turn today’s Republican on.

So Elizabeth belted out this sure-fire line and paused for the approving roar from the throng below her. Only, there was no roar, no cheer, no nothing. Just the continual hubbub of the floor when nothing is going on. And I thought I saw it flash across Dole’s face at that moment, the realization that, gee, really nobody is listening to a word of this speech…

Maybe the funniest thing about the convention, though, wasn’t the lies, hypocrisy and piety that droned from the podium, but the lonely, forlorn look on the faces of Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw, high in the booth all by themselves, while the action and excitement swirled around Chris Matthews where he set up shop in the middle of Herald Square.

I imagine Brokaw and Russert got some guests during network coverage of the event, but when I saw them on MSNBC they looked sad and forgotten, like people whose vacation was ruined because they took the wrong train by mistake.

The thing this convention reminds me of so much is the movie Network, when Howard Beale looks into the camera and says, “We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear.”

Are people really happier when you don’t take care of them but tell them you do? Are they happier getting less but hearing they are getting more? Does this make people feel better than actually getting more and but hearing they are getting less, because they are hearing an accurate description?

I think that is the question the coming election will answer. If the answer is yes, I think I may stay in marketing.

Popdex Citations

The President Without a Brain

2004-08-31T22:59:00.000-04:00

Listening to Arnold tonight at the Republican convention I can’t help thinking that, still, wouldn't we do better with a president who reads? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an administration that analyzes policy and thinks about the consequences, you know, rather than one that decides policy based on ideology and doesn’t seem to know or care about the effects?

Arnold’s speech is over now and the Bush girls are yucking it up and actually doing a pretty good job of mirroring the Kerry girls. Now they’re taking pot shots at Barbara Bush! Hoo boy, what fun! And no, I’m not surprised, the Bush family hamster didn’t make it…

The frightening thing is Bush might actually win again. Think about that. A president who did nothing about the urgent terrorist threats the Clinton administration left him. Who instead put in place what Al Franken has dubbed Operation Ignore to deal with Al Qaeda. A president who has left the environment in worse condition. Who has left the economy in worse condition. Who in his first term added four million new souls to the ranks of the poor and one and a half million to those without health insurance. Wages are down, high paying jobs are being replaced with low. You can work full time in this country and still live in poverty. His every solution is a gimmick that does the opposite if what it is called. He is the actualization of the Republican dream to remove the leveling and elevating effects of government and leave the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. It’s as simple as that.

The middle class is beginning to disappear under this administration. Those who make enough to swallow the increase in energy prices, health insurance and pharmaceuticals will prosper even faster by dint of enormous tax cuts. Those who can’t will be pushed off the table. Buh-bye!

I told my wife tonight we are going to have to get rich because I sure as hell have no intention of being poor. I tried poverty once and take it from me, suck, indeed it does.

But what about those with less intelligence—it’s possible—and less education and little or no prospect of cranking it up to make more money? And what if this administration eliminates good paying jobs and yanks that ladder up after them faster than I can climb?

The one line Arnold didn't use tonight comes to mind: Hasta la vista, baby!

I view this election as a national intelligence test. If we are dumb enough to vote this guy back in, to tell us he cares about us and then bend us over to ram it in one more time, then we absolutely deserve what we get.

Popdex Citations

The Evil Umpire

2004-08-31T09:02:00.000-04:00

Friday night I took my six-year-old son to his first-ever Mets game at Shea Stadium. We took my brother in law, Julius, and his son, Travis. My dad had taken me to Shea maybe forty years earlier when I was a boy to see Joe Namath quarterback the Jets. Through the years I have seen a few Mets games at Shea. I have always been a Mets fan, never a Yankees fan. The Yankees are for the stockbrokers and the lawyers to cheer for. The Mets are the lovable losers real people root for. And when the Mets win it is amazin’, in more ways than one.

When I moved back to Manhattan from Salt Lake in 1984, the Mets were just beginning a phenomenal run-up to taking it all in 1986. That win united New York in a way I had never seen before and have never seen since. I wasn’t in New York in September of 2001. I was up the road in Connecticut. That would be a different kind of uniting, anyway. That would be a uniting in grief and resolve. When the Mets won it all in 1986 the city united in pure joy.

I have made the drive from Connecticut to LaGuardia Airport dozens of times in the past few years for work-related travel. Each time, I drive by the big purple stadium. You can’t miss it. It’s right there, to your left, after you cross the Whitestone Bridge. So I had confidence I could get us there.

Sure enough, we came off the Whitestone, bore right onto whatever highway that is and then bore right again onto whatever highway that is and there was the big stadium—right there—out the left window of the car. Now all we needed was a sign for Shea stadium. Just a sign… any sign… a single freakin’ sign!

Only there is no sign for Shea Stadium. Not one. There are signs for Northern Boulevard, Astoria Boulevard, the airport and the Grand Central Parkway. But the stadium? Nope. There it is, right there, but if you don’t know where to get off this elevated highway to get there, tough luck. Coming from Connecticut? Fuhgedabowdit!

The next thing I knew I was on the Grand Central Parkway with Shea Stadium receding in the rear view mirror. The first chance to turn around, I knew, would be the airport.

“Hey, Bri, want to see the airport where daddy flies from all the time?”

“Sure.”

“That’s it, that glass building over there.”

“Cool.”

Only, at this point, daddy wasn’t so cool. We’d been listening to the pre-game show and the opening few pitches on the radio but now I turned the radio off to concentrate.

Heading back east on the Grand Central now, the direction Donald Trump’s limo or Puffy Comb's Escalade would travel, there are signs for Shea Stadium. Too bad, because the Donald is probably with Puffy over at Yankee stadium hanging with the rest of the swells.

We followed the signs and took the exit and waited our turn to get into the stadium. Finding parking was an ordeal but we finally found a spot. Then there was the long, exciting march across the parking lot to the rising stadium. I don't want to sound like John Rocker here, but it is a multi-cultural environment. I think that's a good thing for my son to see.

The stadium was lit up, cheering could be heard, glimpses of the interior could be seen around the big, centerfield scoreboard. Hey, let’s face it, pro sports stadiums are fun.

We made our way in and up two escalators to the Mezzanine level. Brian was concerned about the escalators but kept moving into this big, loud new world like a champion.

Getting to our section, now already in the top of third inning, of course there were miscreants in our seats. They grumbled and groused but moved as we stood patiently fanning our tickets. It was right out of the Naked Gun movie where the Queen of England arrives at Dodger stadium only to find the royal box occupied by a biker family. Some things just say, “America”.

We sat down and I looked at the score board. My eyes were perfect for the first forty-six years of my life but just in the past two it has been like somebody rubbed Vaseline on my eyeballs. My eyesight has gone to hell. “Welcome to the club”, said my M.D. when I discussed this distressing development with him. Gee, thanks, doc. My doctor’s a sweet enough guy but I don’t think he can tell cancer from the common cold.

So my eyesight sucks. I had to squint and look several to times to believe what I saw. The Mets were already up six to nothing. While I was happy for the Mets, that meant we had already missed a scoring torrent.

And you know what? It didn’t matter. I looked over at my little guy in his baseball cap in his seat at Shea stadium and my heart swelled with pride.

It was a hot, muggy night, the kind of night where you’re too hot one minute and feeling a chill the next. For that reason I kept my baseball cap on, but I turned it around so the bill was in back. That way, less heat collected in front of my face but the top of my head was still covered to ward off the chill. After a few minutes I looked over at Brian. Not only was he keeping his hat on but I noticed he now had his turned backwards as well.

A hot dog vendor was headed in our direction and I asked Brian if he wanted a hot dog.

“Sure,” he said.

Now, it is not easy to get the attention of a food vendor in a New York ballpark. Yeah, they want to hear you—that’s how they make their money. But there is so much other noise going on, talk, cheering, hubbub of all kinds, that it is not easy to flag one of these guys down.

“Go ahead and shout, ‘hotdog’”, I said to Brian.

“Hot dog!” bellowed Brian like a longshoreman, stopping the vendor dead in his tracks. He looked up at us from three rows down unbelieving. His yes focused first on Brian, then on me.

“Hot dog?”

“One,” I shouted.

“Make it three,” said Julius, who paid for the three hot dogs.

“Tell ‘em three hot dogs,” I said to Brian.

“Three hot dogs!” shouted Brian.

Up came the three dogs and down went $15.

“How’s that hotdog?” I asked Brian.

Brian is not a big eater or much interested in food. “Delicious,” he said, clearly relishing his first Shea stadium dog.

That’s kind of when I lost it. Seeing my little boy eating his first Shea stadium hot dog just about did me in. Sometimes life is just too sweet for words.

Of course, we were only there about twenty minutes before Brian started calling out, “Can we go now?”

“Not yet. We just got here. We’ll go at nine thirty.”

“What time is it now?”

“It’s eight o’clock.”

I had Brian flag down a soda and then an ice cream to keep him fueled and occupied. I also wanted to study and admire his vendor-stopping shout a few more times. Talk about a natural! I pointed out the big score board and taught him how to count balls, strikes and outs. I was delighted he could read the scoreboard with his poor eyesight, damaged by his premature birth.

Once the Mets appeared to turn a double play but our cheers turned to boos when the umpire called the man at first, safe.

“Boo!” I shouted, cupping my hands to make the sound carry.

“Boo!” shouted Brian, cupping his hands the same way. “Can we go home now?”

“Not yet.”

“Boo!”

The organ played da-da-dat, duh-dah! And I cupped my hands and shouted “Charge!” Da-da-dat, duh-dah! “Charge!” shouted Brian with me.

“Can we go home now?”

“When Travis finishes his ice cream.”

Nine thirty arrived, Travis finished his ice cream, and we got up to go. On the way out, in the parking lot, we heard more cheering. By the time we got into the car the Mets had scored another three runs. It was now nine to one. Nine runs and we hadn’t seen a one of them. The only run we saw was a single home run by one of the Dodgers.

And it just didn’t matter at all. It was the best night I ever had a ballpark.

Once, and only once, after I was well advanced into adulthood, did my father say to me, “Whatever you think I gave you by being your father is nothing compared to what you gave me by being my son.” I can’t even write that without a mist forming in my eyes, now that I know exactly what he meant.

Popdex Citations

Gold Service

2004-08-26T12:16:00.000-04:00

They gave me a new computer at work. I was initially pleased. Gee, they must think a lot of me. Then I found out the computer they gave me was the nightmare computer from hell. It was the same computer a new member of our team had tried unsuccessfully to make work for days. He gave up and here was the box on my desk.

Gee, thanks, I think…

Still, an optimist at heart, I decided to see if I couldn’t straighten out the problem and reap the rich rewards of a 2.6 gigahertz processor and enough storage space for all of the digital pornography ever created. Not that I am dumb enough to store my porno on my work computer, but still, it’s makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I could.

Since the computer would not run there was no choice but to call technical support. I started my tech support adventure by noting there was a Gold Tech Support number on the side of the box. I called that number.

I got a recording of course, asking me to press one for sales, two for support, etc. The recording asked for a customer identification number which I did not see, even though it was on the side of the computer. Instead, I had to make several more numerical choices to finally reach a human being.

The human, whose name was Tim, asked me my name and address, and for the service code number. By this time I had found it and I read it to him.

“Mr. Smeltzer. I see here that you are entitled to Gold support.” He then gave me the direct line to call for Gold support. It was the same number I had called originally. He then said he would transfer me to Gold support.

Before I could point out that I was already speaking to a human technician—you, Tim—I was put on hold and treated to another five minutes of classical music before a second human, Molly, answered the call.

Molly had me try a variety of techniques to interrupt the boot process and change settings but at the end of twenty minutes of these attempts we were back to the original error message: “Windows Product Activation: A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error Code: 0x80090006.” Molly seemed unaware that the translation for this error message is, “Three hundred billion dollars isn’t enough for Bill Gates; he needs to make your computer virtually impossible to use so he doesn’t lose out on an additional $99.”

By this time Molly was stumped. She put me on hold and treated me to more classical music while she read “articles” on possible causes of the problem.

“Try looking under greed, arrogance or raw power,” I would have suggested had she asked. By this time I had been on the phone with technical support for thirty five minutes.

Finally, Molly came back on the line. “Mr. Smeltzer, I’m not seeing anything on this. It looks like the only answer is a complete operating system reinstall.”

“How about a replacement computer so I don’t have to spend days doing this?” I suggested.

A long silence ensued.

I was beginning to think I had lost Molly when she said, “Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but let me see if it will go through.”

Again the classical music chirped gaily into my ear as Molly checked.

It was forty five minutes into the call when she came back and said, “It’s not going to happen.”

“Okay, how do I use this computer?”

“Do you want to try repairing the operating system or a complete reinstall?” asked Molly.

“I just want to use the computer.”

We started the reinstall. Molly then started rattling off a series of instructions. “Okay in about 39 minutes you’re going to see a blue screen with the green login, at this point your going to choose [something], then you’ll see a series of boxes, ignore these and press [something]…”

She followed this with about another twenty nine steps before I interrupted. “I’m not writing these down,” I said. “You’re going much too fast. You won’t send a new computer. Aren’t you going to stay on the line with me and complete this?”

“I can if you want,” she said.

“I want,” I said.

The computer copied a bunch of files and then said, “Installing Windows. Setup will complete in approximately 39 minutes.” I glanced again at my phone and noted I was now 58 minutes into this tech support call.

Molly put me on hold again and I went for a cup of coffee.

Thank God she did not leave me high and dry because what followed next was a series of complicated “driver” installations. We were well through these (and one hour and thirty one minutes into this tech support call) when one of the drivers failed to “unzip” from the cd.

I notified Molly and she put me on hold.

Molly came back on and told me she could send a technician to my site tomorrow with a new hard drive or she could send me a new system, which would take two weeks.

“I asked for a replacement system an hour and a half ago,” I said.

“I know, but the operating system loaded and now we are having trouble with the drivers so those are your two options.”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“Okay, hold on,” she said.

After a few more minutes of silence, Molly came back to say, “Okay can I put you on hold again?”

“Sure.”

More tinkly, bright classical music ensued.

My phone counted past two hours for this call. If I did not have a speaker phone, the phone’s receiver would have been welded onto my ear from the sweat and the continuous pressure and my right elbow would have been screaming in agony. But I do, so they weren’t.

At about two hours and five minutes into the call, Molly came back on to ask if I wanted to install the hard drive myself or have a technician come out.

“Technician,” I said.

“Okay, I do apologize but I will not be able to get a technician out there tomorrow. Because of the image and that operating system he won’t be able to make it until Monday.” It was a Wednesday.

“Okay, in that case, just send me the new computer. The only reason for going with the technician was you could do it tomorrow. I will wait the two weeks for a new box.”

“Okay, let me put you on hold for a moment while I change the order.”

More classical.

Molly came back to tell me I was all set.

“And I’ll get the replacement computer when?”

“In approximately two weeks.”

“Approximately?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, thanks for your help.”

“Thank you for using [manufacturer’s name].”

I glanced back at the phone. Two hours and twenty one minutes.

That’s what they call Gold Service.

If you don’t have Gold Service they put you on the phone for five hours with an individual who speaks English as a second language in an accent so thick you can only pick out every fifth word if you really, really concentrate. This technician’s job is to actually make your computer worse and pro-actively drive you to violence.

So I am pretty happy we have Gold Service.

Popdex Citations

Work and Speed Traps

2004-08-24T21:17:00.000-04:00

I am in the Paul, Sr. camp; Paul, Sr., from the television show, American Chopper. Paul is a no-nonsense guy. For most of my life I have been a nonsense guy. I’ve been big on nonsense. But lately, I am getting more serious about life.

The way I see it, I go to my job and I work hard at it. I don’t particularly like my job. It’s a job, not a passion. But it’s still my job. I have a family to feed. So I get to work on time and I work hard when I get there.

It’s not like I work in a coal mine. I work in an office. But I work hard. I do the best work I can for them, all day long. And I virtually never hear a thank you or a nice job anymore. When I first started with the company four years ago, and I did nothing at work but surf the internet, I heard nice job all the time. Lately, nothing. This is the joy that is my life.

My wife and I played tennis last night. It was a beautiful summer night, a rarity this summer. My wife warned me a police car was checking speeds with radar on the way to the park.

"They’re not here two hours earlier," she complained. "When the all the lunatics are rushing home from work."

"No," I said, "now’s the time to do it. Not during rush hour. When I’m on my way to work, let me get there."

"I think that’s incredibly selfish," said my wife, saying what came to mind.

Suz is usually right in matters of the heart or moral judgments, but this time I had her.

"No! Wrong!" I shouted in Paul, Sr. style. The way to sound like Paul, Sr. is to shout every sentence like it’s the last thing you will ever say before you explode. But it's not a high-pitched scream. It is a deep, guttural, growl.

Women can’t do it. Sorry. If a woman shouted like Paul, Sr. it would be like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Maybe a woman could do it. But it would surprise the hell out of you. It wouldn't sound much like a woman.

On a roll now, I continued my shouting.

"People who get up, and go to work, to some crummy job every day, and do the right thing, don’t need a goddamned speeding ticket on the way to work! It’s the rush hour, for Chrissakes! Everybody knows what’s going on! Why do you think they call it the rush hour?!? Because you’re rushing to your crummy job, that's why! To feed your family!"

I could feel the veins bulging on my neck, just like Paul, Sr. I don’t know if it was the voice or the fact that I might actually be right but she was silent for a moment.

"And what if you run over some kid?" she ventured, not willing to give up yet.

"It’s the rush hour! Get your goddamned kid off the road!"

"That’s going to sound good if you hit someone's child."

"Listen, I’ve got a six-year-old kid too! When I’m at the end of the driveway putting him on the school bus, I know the cars are going by at a hundred miles per hour! I keep him away from the road! That’s it! End of story."

In blessed silence, we drove on.

Sometimes it's not so much about the argument as it is about the passion you put into it.

Sometimes it’s good to be Paul, Sr.

Popdex Citations

NOPI Tuner Vision

2004-08-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

My second favorite show is NOPI Tuner Vision. American Chopper is my favorite. I’ve seen parts of the NOPI show and been on their website and I still don’t know what NOPI stands for.

Relax. It doesn’t matter. This is a show that you only need to see parts of.

This is a television show about drag racing, spinning your tires (burnouts) and bikini contests. If this show was only about motorcycles instead of cars it would be possibly the best show ever in the history of television.

The NOPI show bills itself as being about a lifestyle, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s hard to tell these days who is most in a hurry to eliminate all vestiges of freedom in this world, the mullahs or our own government.

Now, I know I have to be careful comparing Osama bin Laden to George Bush. One important difference is George hasn't planned and carried out the slaughter of thousands of completely innocent civilians. It was an accident. Collateral damage. The fog of war.

This is a significant difference.

And certainly if Taliban rule is any hint, they have a willingness to limit freedom to the point where it can literally be said not to exist. But then again, so does John Ashcroft...

The similarity is, whatever freedom there is, both seem to want less of it. Much less of it. Personally, neither me nor my family was hurt by Janet Jackson's breast.

When hot rods, motorcycles and bikini contests are over, America is over.

Standing Up to the Bully

2004-08-20T21:33:00.000-04:00

Letter sent to Matthews 8/20.04

Bravo to Chris Matthews! Somebody has to stand up to these guys! And it's not that self-proclaimed champion of the little guy on the other network, it's you, Mr. Matthews.

The Republicans are playing the same dirty little game they played in the South, with smiling George talking all high-minded for the people, while vicious Carl dishes out the sleaziest mud to win at any cost.

It may have worked down South--shame!--but it isn't going to work on a national stage.

A rat is a rat. And a powerful rat is a scary creature.

Cheney has no ambitions except to wreak conservative vengeance upon the country. According to Woodward, it was Cheney's insistence that they ignore the thin-to-less-then-none margin they "won" by and take the country hard to the right.

Well they took us to war and grabbed a lot of cash in the Amerikan tradition, God bless 'em.

Still, we need someone to stand up to Fox and lies and take back this country from the rich, just as surely as we had to take it back from the poor a few years ago!

Repeat after me: the Middle Class must have money to drive economies! The rich can't spend it fast enough.

If they would, Bush-er-omics, or whatever they call this abdication of responsibility, this Republican sacking of the treasury, would work.

Popdex Citations

Inventory

2004-08-18T23:29:00.000-04:00

My wife felt bad about going out with her friends and playing darts in bars. I told her not to.

I think everyone has an inventory of things to do before they die or get too old to do them. It could be anything from “sleep with the twins” to “knit that tea cozy”. Neither of these are on my list. Sleeping with twins sounds like double work for the same pay, to me. And I don't even know what a tea cozy is. The point is we all have these life inventory items; these things we think we should do before we die. And we have lot of them, in all different areas of our lives, checked off to varying degrees.

For many women, going out and being attractive in public is one of them. For a lot of men too. Fortunately it was never on my list to be attractive in public. This is fortunate because I don’t think I ever attracted a strange woman in public unless we were both really, really drunk. But then, whoa momma.

In a way my generation sort of missed everything. I was at the Limelight and the Palladium but missed Studio 54. I missed Viet Nam. I missed bumping into John Lennon. He probably would have spit on me, saying something like, “Out of me way you filthy swine!” Or invited me home for tea. Who knows? I was just a little too young.

My dad was too young for World War II and left the Marines before Korea. He hated military service and encouraged me to avoid it. We’re these sort of tweeners, a half-generation removed from the so-called greatest generation. Greatest? I mean, they were great, no doubt about it. But greatest? Ever? Maybe.

In any case, I’m not one of them or one of their kids. This may have contributed to my introspective side. For example I will head right for a stall if there is any peer pressure whatsoever at the urinal. I’ll take off my pants and sit right down. I don’t care. I’m with Larry David on this one. It’s very comfortable.

Today my boss came out and did the closest thing he can to yelling at me. He told me we had a pissed-off client on our hands and it was my responsibility. I started to smile but he said, “I am serious.” The smile evaporated. I looked at him. I don’t really like my job much lately, although, ironically I’ve never worked harder for them in the four years I’ve been there.

“This is your fault,” said the unhappy company president.

My head sort of did a 360 as I tried to run through the series of errors and omissions that had created the current situation. There was any number of people to blame. But not really. It was my fault.

“Yes,” I said.

Then he told me he was counting on me to fix it and left. Even when he was pissed off at me he managed to say something encouraging. He’s a very decent guy, my current boss. He’s like someone from a more dignified generation.

Still it wasn’t much fun being pointed at. Maybe that’s what defines my generation. We’re fun. We like fun. We expect fun. We’re the first generation of people to ever imagine that we might be entitled to lives that are fun. Most other generations doubted they were entitled to all of their appendages. Food would be nice. But fun? That was for the afterlife, or never.

But we—and maybe it’s not my generation but only an odd clan within it—we expect life to be fun. Not all the time. Things happen. Life hurts, it sucks, but when all that’s not going on, hell, let’s enjoy it!

I asked my son if he wanted a soda.

“Can I have lemon in it? I love lemon." He's six.

“Sure, but I don’t think we have any lemons, just limes,” I said, opening the frig. I like mine with a lemon or lime in it, too.

“Prepare a soda with lime in it for me please,” said my little man walking out of the kitchen. I proudly watched him go. Clearly he is his father’s son.

And that’s good. That’s progress. That’s what we want for our children; a better life. And we’re good at it. Years from now our offspring will complain that their jobs don’t always keep them ecstatic. Fun will be a dim memory of a distant hardship. God bless them.

This is why I think it is important to ride a motorcycle, and lift weights and ride my bicycle in the hills in the rain or the sun and give my wife a ride when I get home. You’ve got to really get outside and do things, not just watch television depicting people doing them. Not just imagine you could do them, if you wanted to. When you engage in real life you run the risk of gettting hurt. But that's part of the fun.

It’s the difference between playing sports and watching them on TV. That’s a big difference. That's what's on my inventory.

Entertainment

2004-08-17T20:46:00.001-04:00

My friend, who bought a bigger motorcycle than mine after I bought mine, recently told me not to feel bad about it. My little bike.

"At least you're ridin'," he said.

"Thanks, Dave."

He looked at me and shook his head, like we both knew what he was going to say next.

“Q,” he said. “You gotta get with the program, step up to a real bike. Come ridin’ wi’d us.”

Somehow he was offering to let me into the club I kind of thought I started. And my wife wonders why I don’t have friends.

Today, I have to tell you I feel like someone beat my legs with an iron pipe. And I mean, a professional. Muscles I haven’t felt—ever—are aching tonight, and I stay in good shape year round. I tore my knee up six weeks ago and yesterday is the first day I’ve gone running since. I ran again today. My knee feels fine, by the way. It's just every muscle in both legs that are screaming in agony every time I move.

I ran at the Wilton high school running track. After the run, I did a few pushups in the bleachers. I didn’t go sit in the far seat where I sat alone about forty years prior and realized two things: I was pretty much doomed, but I was definitely me. I know you don't know what that means, but maybe you kind of do.

My six-year-old son just came out in his underwear and announced, somewhat breathlessly, “I saw Sentacon, and Charmander, on the road today, and I said to them,” and here he paused to think of something funny to say. “What are you doing there?!?”

Sometimes he genuinely makes me laugh. But this joke needs work. He cracks his friends up. Brian has more friends today than I’ve had in my entire life.

And by the way, I have as much idea as you who Sentacon and Charmander are—none. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with Brian, I do. But these cartoons he soaks up are unwatchable. Shrieking, Japanese, post-apocalyptic, martial cartoons. I can’t stand them. He can’t get enough.

I made Brian a snack of a muffin and some milk his mother wanted him to drink. For his bones. His broken wrist is in an orange cast he got yesterday. He wanted a black cast but his mother talked him out of it. I’m glad he settled on orange. It is an amazingly cool-looking cast.

Of course he got it karate fighting with his friend, Marcus. Which brings us back to these violent Japanese cartoons he watches. They can’t be all bad, can they?

I looked over and saw Brian sitting there eating the muffin and drinking the milk. I thought about going back to the television or the computer. I sat down in the kitchen with him at the kitchen table. I no sooner sat down than he swallowed another quick bite, leapt up and ran to the bedroom where he is watching his “shows”. He calls them his “shows”. I watched him go with a smile. I did the right thing. I don’t need to be his priority right now.

I remember Spalding Gray wouldn’t let his kids watch commercial television. I thought about joining Spald and ripping out the cable and just watching the occasional movie. Art films. In French. Without sub-titles. But I never acted on the impulse.

A couple of years later my choice was somewhat vindicated when I read David Sedaris’ story about the people in his neighborhood who didn’t watch TV. This was presumably back in the fifties or sixties when television and radio was all people had. I don’t even think his neighbors listened to the radio. Who were these people? What did they do in there? How could they live life oblivious to important cultural references like Leave it to Beaver? Sedaris wanted to know and so do I.

Still the older I get the less I can stand television. I used to like the news. But FOX is so outrageously biased to the Right, and CNN is so ponderous, and so many commercials! I can’t watch either of them anymore.

I am down to bikes and bikinis. If your television program features motorcycles or girls old enough to wear a string bikini and young enough to be my daughter, I’m there. A little embarrassed, but there.

They say as you grow older you revert back to a child again. In that case I think I’m revisiting roughly age fourteen right now.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Brian’s Anatomy

2004-08-14T22:43:00.000-04:00

I rode my bicycle twenty five miles today. I felt very good, very smooth, very efficient. Pedaling up a winding New England road my wife suddenly appeared going the other way in her car. She honked three times and then was gone. There was other traffic. I thought she was just saying hello. I kept going.

A few moments later she reappeared behind me and honked again. I pulled over.

"Brian may have broken his arm", Suz said.

I looked in the back seat at my six year old ninja fighter. There was chocolate around his lips and he looked sad and scared. He had been at a birthday party.

"What happened", I asked, brushing his hair with my fingers.

"Marcus body-slammed me", he said.

"We’re going to the doctor’s now", said Suz. "Then we may have go to the hospital."

"Will you come with us", asked my son, fighting back a tear.

I held his hand. "You be brave", I said. "You’re going to be fine."

I thought about throwing my bike in the car and going as I was, dressed in a sweat-soaked nylon jersey and spandex shorts. I would crawl through a crowd of Republicans in spandex if I thought my son’s health was at risk, but he was fine.

"I’m going to ride home and change", I said. "Call me from the doctor and let me know what’s going on. If you’re going to the hospital I’ll meet you there."

"Okay", said Suz, and drove off.

I wasn’t home long when the phone rang.

I grabbed my motorcycle helmet, keys and wallet. I also grabbed my rain suit. Rain was threatening. The remnants of hurricane Charley were working their way up the east coast.

I stuffed the rain jacket and pants in the black, leather saddlebags and took off for the hospital on my motorcycle.

Halfway there it started to rain. I pulled onto a side street and donned the rain gear.

I found Brian and Suz in a waiting room. After a long wait they took us to x-ray. In the x-ray room Brian asked how many pictures they were going to take.

"We’re going to take three, honey."

"On Jimmy Neutron they take four", he informed her rather matter-of-factly, as if he doubted whether she really was a qualified x-ray technician at all.

"Well, here we take three", she said.

"Why?"

"Just let her do her job, Bri, she knows what she’s doing."

The x-rays showed a clean break through the larger of the two wrist bones and a likely fracture in the smaller.

We went back to the examination room and waited some more. I lay down on the gurney and wanted to fall asleep but didn’t. Brian huddled in his mother’s arms.

Finally a technician came in and built Brian a splint for his arm.

"You know what", asked Brian. It was about the fiftieth time he had used the phrase in the past few minutes. "You know what?"

"You know what?"

"What, chicken butt", asked the technician.

When we walked outside the skies were still overcast but the rain had stopped. I kissed the two of them and headed to my bike. As I drove by Suz she had just finished buckling Brian into his seat belt. I was on my black motorcycle wearing black boots, blue jeans, and my gray, Orange County Choppers tee-shirt, with Paul Sr.’s size 12 boot print on the back.

"Is he alright," I asked later that night.

"He’s fine, he’s sleeping."

"Good."

"You know, you looked pretty cool riding by on that motorcycle today", she said with an arch smile on her lips.

"Thanks", I said. "That’s at least part of the idea."

Spalding Gray's Job

2004-08-06T22:05:00.000-04:00

I am a writer. And I like applause. Who doesn’t? The problem is I work at a marketing job where there is no applause. I feel like my writing is going to waste. If a writer has only so many words in him then I would like to have back all of those I have written about satisfying consumer needs. Frankly, I don't care if the consumer is satisfied anymore.

I majored in philosophy. This may have been a mistake. I had a philosophy professor who told us if we wanted applause--and here he paused for dramatic effect. He looked at each of us in turn and began to slowly, clap, his hands.

“If you are looking for applause, a profession such as a professor of philosophy, might not fit the bill.”

This same professor once told our class, “Just because I can scramble eggs with my penis, doesn’t mean that’s what it’s for.” I think he was making a point about ontology.

The same professor once listed his career path to a friend of mine: "Associate Professor, Professor, Full Professor, Tenured Professor, Professor Emeritus, Dead Professor."

He seemed to bitterly hate his daughter. He implied she was stupid. Ouch!

In any case, at this point I felt I knew more about philosophy and philosophy professors than necessary. Evidently I had some qualifications for the job--culinary--but I took his pronouncements as a sign and did not pursue advanced degrees in the introspective science.

Instead, I took my bachelors degree in philosophy to the world of the common man. I took jobs in warehouses, drove delivery trucks, bussed dishes, waited tables. I wanted to gain practical experience in life. I also wanted to eat. It was 1978 and this was the only work I could get with a degree in philosophy and the aftereffects of a mild, nervous breakdown.

When the world is crazy, the sane are crazy—King Lear.

Then things started looking up. I don’t know why. I moved to Manhattan, married, divorced, got married again and moved to a nice home in Connecticut. Now I have a wife who is irreplaceable and a son whom I adore. I have a job that’s less than fulfilling, but at least I get to commute by motorcycle, when the weather is tolerable. I don’t mind rain but cold is just miserable on a motorcycle. Wet and cold on a motorcycle is medieval.

The thing is, if I don’t start my career in writing, and soon, I will surely regret it. You might regret it if I do, but that’s your problem. It's not that I don't care about you, I do…

The man who seemed to me to have the perfect job was Spalding Gray. Mr. Gray was something of an angst-ridden author and performer. Mr. Gray would tell you the truth. He wrote stories about his life and performed them before small audiences. He read in live shows seated at a simple wooden desk with a simple glass of water. He made movies of two of his manic, monologues that careened from ecstasy to despair to high humor.

He got to write, which is great. He got to read his writing in public, which is scary. But at least he earned enough that he didn’t have to work in marketing.

So when it was reported that Mr. Gray had disappeared over the side of the Staten Island ferry just this past February, in just this past, frigid winter, my wife and I were shocked and saddened. After a respectful pause, we looked at each other and then lit up in unison. “Job opening!” we said.

Now, I know that is terribly harsh. Mr. Gray was a hero of mine. I have all his books. I have seen his movies. I’ve seen him live, in concert. He has a six-year-old son; I have a six-year-old son. It is tragic. Spalding was one of those people who made you feel better just knowing that you share the world with them. I felt the same way about John Lennon. I actually wanted to share New York with Lennon, but I didn’t move to Manhattan until 1984, four years too late. People have laughed at me for saying this but I regret that.

But when Lennon died there was no thought in my head of becoming the fifth Beatle and reuniting the lads. When I heard the news of his sudden death, that was it.

Mr. Gray on the other hand, held my job, the dream job, if one could only do it.

So I hope to write these stories, and maybe one day perform them, in honor of Mr. Gray. With thanks. He invented the career that just might save my life. Or end it.

And if it doesn’t work out, hey, I can always go build motorcycles with my son.