Follow this advice, boys, and you’ll be so cool

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

My Facebook friend Judi ran a FB entry the other day that I believe has been long-needed. As I’m sure Judi’s dance-card was always pretty full in her single days, it’s only fair she should offer some wisdom in the manner of dating tips for girls. And so she did.

As I found Judi’s idea interesting I concluded that young males should not be left out of the mix and since I, like Judi, have a bit of experience in the field, I have risen to the task.

The points I offer arise from the fact I didn’t spend all my Saturday nights sitting home alone, even if sometimes I felt like I did. Indeed, I do have a bit of romantic experience with females and I remain unjaded about the matter.

Anyway, should I be asked to mentor a young man in matters de l’amour, I would ask such a novitiate in the field to judiciously consider the points I make and I have taken it upon myself to bring you these in no particular order:

–         Destiny: you just might meet the one you are destined for in terms of the love-of-your-life about 11-minutes after you’ve made a firm commitment to somebody else.

–         That person will go away – but she’ll never really leave.

–         Femmes fatales: This is a French reference for a woman who will tear out your heart, soul and guts and steadfastly refuse to go away from your feelings. She breaks up relationships and marriages mainly because you’ll let her, you putz. A famous writer once suggested that there is a potential FF in every male’s life, but the fortunate ones never meet her. Those who do will always be impacted, for good or for bad.

–         Future shock: There is some truth to the cliché wisdom that suggests you take a look at your new lady love’s mother if you want to see her in 25 years. Mind you, if her Mom’s really hot then you should look forward to a pleasing future. If Mom’s not, well what can I say?

–         Unrequitedness: It means what it says – Not requited. You could look it up, but understand no matter how many feverish fantasies and sleepless nights you have endured over visions of ‘her’, your passion is not returned. She’s not into you. Get over her.

–         Infatuation: This is a chameleon of love in that it’s a pretty decent facsimile and seems to have all the trappings of the real thing. It doesn’t. It’s much less secure and potentially dangerous. But, it can be fun. Stick within this realm before you make any genuine commitment and you’ll be OK.

–         When: Personally I don’t think any male should consider a permanent bond until he has gained some life experience. Say, by about age 35. Really. A year after my first marriage (I was only 25) we took a trip to Europe. On a railway platform in Munich I was approached by a young female (who was arguably one of the more stunning people on the planet) who informed me that her traveling companion had abandoned her and would I like to travel with her. “Yes, please” was the first thought that crossed my mind. And then my wife came back from the bathroom and asked me who was that person I was talking to.

–         Crushes: Kind of ‘infatuations lite’. You’ll get those all your life. Get used to them. But never, ever, ever take them seriously unless you relish a chaotic life.

–         Money: Are you set to embark on a life together even though you are both as poor as churchmice and have no discernable means of earning a living other than your respective ‘McJobs’? Get real.

–         Ardor: Great at the start. Best thing in the world. Surprisingly honeymoons do come to an end and things settle down. This is actually a good thing, even if it might not seem so at the time and especially if your timetable is different from hers. You’ll get used to it – or not.

OK, boys. Now you are well-armed with my fatherly advice and I just might even consider applying some of those gems to myself. They just might work.

I might add that the male character in the illustration above bears abolutely no resemblance to the author.

–          

 

 

It was just a mistake — honest it was!

One of the more challenging tasks a newspaper editor must face is the writing of the headline. He or she is charged with putting words in a predetermined space that will reflect the gist of the story, but at the same time catch the eye and make the peruser want to read what follows.

Not always an easy chore. And sometimes things just go wrong. Jay Leno has, of course, dined out on unintentionally ‘bad’ and often equally unintentionally bawdy or suggestive heads. Meanwhile, the harried editor, working on a deadline, is usually oblivious as to what the words will look like in the cold light of the next dawn when the paper appears on some poor schmuck’s doorstep.

“Look at this, Martha! I’m not going to put up with that sort of filth. Call them up and cancel our subscription!”

By the way, word to the wise, a cancelled subscription doesn’t really hurt a newspaper very much. Furthermore, pissed-off readers tend to return eventually. What really hurts is if a big advertiser cancels and account. A paper is, after all, a business, not really a social service.

But, mistakes do, as I said, happen. The thought came to me as I posted a particularly badly stated and open to huge misinterpretation headline on Facebook this morning, and in my commentary I mentioned one of my own ill-considered heads. I actually won a ‘blooper’ award for that one at a convention.

What I used as a headline, which pertained to the raising up of the world’s largest hockey stick on an arena in the Vancouver Island town of Duncan, was “Giant stick nears erection”. Nuff sed? And potentially painful, too.

As follows will be a few more examples of some gaffes found in our local papers, including a further one written by me. I can’t lay claim to the others.

One time we ran a contest in which people living in various neighborhoods were invited to nominate somebody nearby for a ‘Good Neighbor’ award. You know, neighbors that helped out in times of trouble, and so forth.

The contest had run for a number of weeks, in each issue and I reached the point where heads were becoming uninspired. So, I thought I’d opt for a Shakespearian tone for a particular issue and wrote: “Why not enter thy neighbor?” Not until it appeared did I realize this could be interpreted in a few ways, some more charming than others.

The final two appeared in advertisements and caused a certain amount of consternation in the advertisers.

One was an ad for women’s undergarments, panties to be precise, and the ad headline read badly because it was supposed to state something to the effect of “The panties that count”. Unfortunately the finished ad omitted the letter ‘o’ in the word ‘count’.

Another one was for a fast-food outlet known as Rosie’s Pantry, and they ran an ad for ‘Box lunches at Rose’s Panty.’ Not so good.

Check Google. You can find lots more of your own from everywhere.

At times there isn’t a huge chasm between laughter and tears

I was watching an episode from a PBS series on great comedians last evening and I laughed a lot.

 I also felt a bit like crying.

I felt a bit like crying because while the premise of comedy and the role of the comedian are to evoke mirth, it also evokes (in some cases) a vicious backlash. That’s because those who anally adhere to certain institutions don’t like to be mocked. The job of the comic, like the jester of old – whence comedians came – is to mock. It is to put that giant banana peel under the foot of the pompous and self-righteous asses we are supposed to (but rarely do) revere.

This particular episode (it’s a multi-parter) revolved around the revolutionary and ‘finger-to-da-man’ comics of the 1950s and ‘60s. In truth, ‘comedian’ doesn’t describe such people as much as ‘satirist’ does.

So, we saw snippets from the ‘new wave’ of the day like Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, Nichols and May, the beleaguered Smothers Brothers (victims of corporate censorship) and right through to the beloved and still sadly missed George Carlin who wondered why we could say ‘boobs’ on TV but were forbidden to say ‘tits’.

But the two that struck me with poignancy and emotion were Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.

Pryor for both a childhood that was so wretched it would be beyond comprehension for most of us. He had problems later in life with substance and so forth? Of course he did. Raised (in a manner of speaking) in a whorehouse and brutally abused as a child, his brilliant mind allowed him to surmount and become the man who, to many others, and me became one of the most brilliant social-satirists and performers of any era. He was a man who could evoke pants-peeing laughter from presenting such brutal episodes in his life as a premature heart-attack, and lighting himself on fire. He was to comedy what Hogarth was to socially motivated art.

Bruce, on the other hand, never did capture the mainstream and was almost literally hounded to death by those who couldn’t bear his mockery and mischief around the establishment pillars of government, church, and sexual mores. Yes he was crude and frank in a manner previously unheard.  He was, quite frankly, not as lovable as Pryor. But, he was also incredibly funny.

Coming into his own at the tail-end of the ghastly red-baiting McCarthy era it’s understandable why he was reviled by those stalwart maintainers of the status quo in America. He tells a tale of Christ coming back to Earth and appearing at the door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC and how Cardinal Cushing and an archbishop conspire to keep him out of the church because he looks like a bum, what with the sandals, beard and long hair and all. What would the good uptown parishioners think?

And so it went. Bruce was often his worst enemy because he refused to waver from his path. Also hugely addicted to drugs he ultimately dies of an overdose at an early age.

One of the saddest pieces was an interview with him near the end of his life in which he, obviously stoned, explains himself thusly: “We were just trying to have fun.”

 

 

OK, I’ll tell you my darkest secrets, but only if you promise to keep them to yourself. You will, won’t you?

I’ve found during my assorted stints at addictions counselling that the rehab business is filled with cute – sometimes trite, sometimes clichéd and boring, but periodidcally relatively wise – slogans, sayings and aphorisms.

“You’re only as sick as your secrets,” is a prominent one of those. And, in that, there is a certain wisdom. The wisdom involves denial, and if you are denying to yourself and others a behaviour or something that’s eating you up, then you will not get well until you face your reality. Well, you might not even then, but the attempt will give you a better shot at a more fulfilling life. Are you knocking off two quarts a day? Have you sold the family farm to finance a crack addiction? Are you screwing whoever has a pulse even though you are married or in a relationship? Well then, pal, you have some pretty heavy-duty secrets to address.

We all have secrets. Even the most saintly do. The Dalai Lama’s got some, I suspect, and that old Mother Teresa was just rife with them, including neglecting to mention her years as a liquid hash mule in Iran. I mean, who would’ve suspected. But, truly, life revolves around secrets. Gossip mags would do no business if they weren’t revealing so-called secrets; politicians would be in unemployment lines if they revealed all that they know or actually told the truth (for a change. I was in the ink-stained trade for a long time. And, while my paper never overtly lied, there were sins of omission prevalent in what we wrote. Or indeed could write, due to libel laws. I could tell people stuff I know about some politicians locally and farther afield that could keep us all in courts for decades and make litigation lawyers even richer.

Mind you, there are also certain things about me and my past that people could spread arount but, bless them, (mostly) they haven’t.

In that context, there is the matter of keeping secrets. Somebody reveals an item to you “in confidence.” Well, of course, it is not going to stay in confidence. It is going to be passed on at the earliest possible instant. In fact, if you’re a normal human being, you probably can’t wait to reveal it to “somebody you trust won’t tell a soul,” which they will do as soon as they get the chance. Why not? I mean, the first person to break the code of secrecy was the one who told you in the first place.

And, with electronic communications of today it will go viral. Stepping out on the missus? Check out YouTube, or Facebook at the very least.

We like knowing ‘secrets’. To know a secret is to be empowered. You know something somebody else doesn’t and it’s at your discretion to reveal it – or not. But, you will in all likelihood.
 
Human secrets generally fall into various categories in terms of seriousness. They include:

Harmless secrets: Nothing spectacular here. Sort of guilty pleasures. Maybe you take some kind of kinky pleasure in the lingerie ads of the Sears catalogue, or maybe you secretly listen to hip-hop when the kids are at school.

Secrets that you will only share with the privileged: Your spouse knows many things about you that you would not like revealed to the general public unless you’re some sort of a sleaze. This is where doctors and therapists can come into the picture, too. In such cases, you may hold certain items back from you spouse that you might tell a shrink. TMI situations come into this, too. People will glibly reveal some bit of esoterica about themselves (especially if they have been tippling a little too extensively), and then utterly regret what they told another. Especially prevalent in drunken 3 a.m. phone calls.

Secrets you don’t want revealed: These include such items as childhood sexual abuse, infidelity, breaches of the law, substance abuse, spousal abuse, incidents of driving while intoxicated, inappropriate sexual overtures to others. The ‘elephant in the room’ sort of secret falls into this category. Thank God none of those apply to any of us.

Secrets you have difficulty admitting to yourself and would be mortified if somebody else were to ever find out: Surprisingly enough, or maybe not surprisingly, we all have these. These are found in our innermost thoughts (and agonies). Such secrets are highly guilt-inducing and will sometimes prompt expressions of disgust or even behaviors in which others are assailed for beliefs that the assailant actually holds. Here you get gay-bashing by the closet gay-in-denial, anti-pornography crusades by the porno-addicted; and racist or sexist jokes (“Hey, it was only meant to be funny; I don’t really believe that”) by people who ‘really do believe that.’ Such secrets can also involve sexual feelings or attitudes that might be anathema to others, so those who hold on to such secrets are often in a deep moral struggle.

As for me, my life is an open-book. At least those aspects of my life I choose to reveal.

Happy New Year, baby, wherever you might be

Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

–          Sonny James 

Whatever happened to my first steady girlfriend? I’d love to reconnect with her, you know, just to find out how life went for her. I mean, we once were a ‘major item’ and knew each other very well in most accepted (and maybe even unacceptable by some, like parents) senses of the expression.

We also fancied we were in love, albeit an idea we really knew very little about. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I know much more about it now, though I do believe I have been in love with a few hundred females in my life, including some I know no better than just having passed them on the street one sunny day.

Anyway, we linked up in the summer I had finished my senior year of high school. She was just passing into her senior year. We hit it off virtually immediately, right from our first date. I’m of the era when people still formally dated and if those dates seemed to indicate something promising was afoot, then you ‘went steady.’

She became my ‘steady’. We didn’t do the ring thing, or any other talismanic fol-de-rol, but we did have an ‘understanding’ of the sort that meant you were supposed to be ever so slightly engaged.

It was neat to have a steady in one respect, and that was the ego boost that came from somebody attractive – and she was very attractive – finding you equally attractive. She was (I’ll call her Elaine, though that’s not her real name, but I shall respect her privacy) not only attractive, but extremely bright and well-read and had a great sense-of-humor. If a 17-year-old can be ribald, she would even qualify as ribald. An utter gem. Oh, and she also had a slightly chipped front tooth. I found that highly sexy for some warped reason.

That was all great for me at many levels because I had just weaned myself off a two year enraptured crush of the sort that makes the brilliantly plaintive and hurt songs of Adele seem even more poignant. Hey girl, I know what that feels like. And then Elaine came along and the world seemed brighter.

What felt good is that I finally felt like something of a winner and it was a tremendous boost to self-confidence to have somebody I loved and respected in my life. So, parents, don’t discourage your kids from getting involved with another, especially of those kids have esteem problems. It’s a huge bit of encouragement.

I suggested there is a slight downside to the steady ritual as it was and that was that one was not expected to tomcat around other nubile young things even though one is only 18. And if one does, and any of the steady’s %$#&& girlfriends should see one being a little too chatty with another girl those same %$#%^& girlfriends would make sure to tell the steady. And steady wouldn’t be quite as friendly as she had been and it was her ‘friendliness’ in certain respects that kept a fella coming back.

The relationship lasted two years and then we went our respective ways. But we remained friends for a while. I went to her wedding to another dude, and she came to my first wedding. You know, as friends. But it wasn’t ever quite the same again.

And ultimately we lost touch and haven’t been in touch for decades. But, you know, I sort of miss her at times. I’d love to sit down and talk with her and find out what her life was like. If you know her, get her to give me a call.

I was put in mind of this as something of a seasonal thing based on the fact I found this old photo of the two of us at a New Year’s Eve party at her place.

May she have a happy new year.

I, for one, happen to be very afraid of Virginia Woolf

I have a friend who, not in a joking way, refers to ambulances as ‘ambliances’, and she’s not joking with the mispronunciation. I can only suppose that is what she thinks the pronunciation is. She is otherwise a very intelligent and well-educated woman. Weird.

I only say this because an ambulance/ambliance just went up the street. I wonder why and wonder of its destination. When I hear or see an ambulance in the neighborhood I always think of my former wife who only lives a little over a block distant and is not in good health.

And the only time I have ever heard Max howl is when he hears sirens. An earlier dog, Simon, used to howl when my stepdaughter played her flute. Not that she was bad at it – she was quite accomplished – so the dog sang along with the notes.

This, by the way is my pathetic attempt to emulate Virginia Woolf – no, I’m not becoming lesbian and I don’t plan to weigh myself down with rocks in my pockets and jump in a river – by writing a sort of stream-of-consciousness piece. It’s a better thing I do than actually having to re-read To the Lighthouse, which is something I refuse to ever do again.

Anyway, it’s an interesting premise to try to recapture and then elaborate on the crap that is going though one’s mind at any moment. It’s all about ‘associations’ of thought. In this case it arose from an inspiration evoked by highly-respected blogger pal, Pearl, whose entry this day speaks of her miserable sinus infection that trumped her New Year’s weekend.

I have no further thoughts on New Years, but I do have some on sinuses. Actually, sinuses came to me earlier in the day, but Pearl confirmed my impulse of a few hours ago. It happened when I put on my orange shirt. It’s a favored garment. I’ve had it for years. I know one of my wives hated it, but am not sure which one. I think it wasn’t Wendy.

It’s kind of a heavy T-shirt thing (it’s a mild day today). And somehow I feel a deep connectedness to it and feel more at ease with the world when I’m wearing it. Orange has long been my ‘comfort’ color. I also really like Orange Crush when I was a kid. Actually I still do.

Anyway, the shirt makes me think of France. When we lived in Grenoble for three weeks in 2006 I was the laundry guy. Wendy was at school, so I had to trudge to the Laundromat when needed. The place was about 2 blocks away, up a sidestreet (siderue?) that took one into the Arab Quarter. I liked the Arab Quarter. The assorted Moroccans and Algerians there were much friendlier and more obliging than were a lot of the French. And I loved seeing the inhabitants of the street in their often authentic garb that put me in mind of Arabian Nights. “Cool, they actually wear that stuff and they aren’t even going to a costume party.” Not a camel in sight, however. I guess the song ‘Ahab the Ayrab’ wouldn’t be deemed very politically correct in these tense times.

Anyway, the orange shirt. Damn thing would never dry properly but remained damp even after two spins through the dryer. I’d have to spread it out on a towel on top of the bed when I got it back home.

Sinuses. I got a sinus infection that followed a cold I had in Grenoble (my direct Pearl connection). Sinus infections lay me low and I always get them post-cold. My head gets like concrete and I cannot breathe. I get panicky sometimes, thinking I’ll suffocate. And there is only one answer for the grief – medication.

I needed nasal spray badly. Ever try to ask for something like nasal spray in a pharmacy in which absolutely nobody speaks your lingo. Oh, and French pharmacies indulge the quaint practice of having absolutely everything behind the counter, so you have to ask for it. I went to three different pharmacies (readily identified by the little green neon cross) before I finally got some satisfaction (oh, and don’t expect normal OTC stuff like Dristan or Otrivin) when your sinuses are laying you low in France. At home I have some wonderful prescription stuff that works like a charm, but I forgot to bring it to France along with my orange shirt.

Finally, by the third shop, I managed to get through to the ladies (pharmacies seem to be always staffed by the distaff side) and they have me some stuff in a little brown bottle with a spray thing on it. It was called Humoxal, and it is a ‘solution nasale’. Long to short, the stuff worked like a hot damn. Within days my sinuses were clear.

A few weeks ago I had a minor sinus thing happening. Rummaging in the vanity drawer I found my old Humoxal and used it. It still worked brilliantly.

Now it’s all gone (le sigh). But, I am wearing my orange shirt and it’s still in good repair.

And if you did read, then thanks. I’m sure Virginia felt the same way when people read her stuff. But, maybe not. The River Ouse beckoned despite the votes of favor by certain literature profs.

The more it changes the more it stays the same — until it changes again

Did you know that as recently as 1990 the word ‘Internet’ wasn’t used? Did you know that a reference to 1990 as being “recently” kind of dates me? It’s 22 years ago, for God’s sake.

But, as we pass from yet another year after 1990 into a further year, it gives me pause for thought that some elements of life that seemed of vital importance not so very long ago have become archaisms.

Winston Churchill once wrote that some of the gentlemen present at his baptism had fought Napoleon at Waterloo. Churchill fought Hitler and was alive into the space age. I was an adult when he died. It moves along quickly, does history. So does life and so do things that may seem vitally important at any given moment.

Like dated fashions the vital elements of times past can seem quaint, disagreeable, or downright hilarious in their tastelessness. For example, I watched a bit of Saturday Night Fever a couple of days ago. Hee-hee. White suit, guffaw. Vinnie Barbarino as credible sex symbol. ROTFL.

By the way ‘ROTFL’ would have meant nothing in 1990. So, blessedly, would have LOL. There were virtues to life-oldschool. By the way, and only as a smug aside, I have never once used LOL in an email, Facebook or elsewhere. But that may be because not too many things are so mirthful that I actually “laugh out loud.” “Why are you laughing out loud?” Wendy will call out from the other room. “That’s not like you.”

Now that I am a country mile off-topic I’ll get back to what I was attempting to say. That is that stuff comes and goes and what once seemed so important (like a former marriage, for example) fades into either irrelevance or just a bad memory to not be exercised too often.

But the old-order changeth, and it does so very rapidly. Remember when:

–         People taped TV shows and movies on VHS cassettes. I have a huge rack of VHS tapes. I almost literally do not watch any of them.

–         People bought videocams and ubiquitously violated the privacy of others with them. I have one. I paid $1,000 for it. It hasn’t been used in years. My little digital camera does the same thing and less obtrusively.

–         Cameras used films that had to be processed and waited for.

–         It was boss to have a car with a four-barrel carb. Cars had carburetors and fuel-injection was viewed with suspicion.

–         Car interiors were littered with both cassette-tapes and tobacco ash.

–         You were just a little wary of unleaded gasoline.

–         Older cars exuded plumes of smoke due to burning oil when the valves were shot.

–         Cars got 15-miles to the gallon and that was considered good mileage. They also rarely lasted much past 100,000 miles and tires were good for about 20,000 tops.

–         You warmed your car engine up before starting out and then you tramped on the gas before turning it off so you could blow out any unused fuel from that four-barrel carb.

–         You bought that ultra-modern typewriter into which you could insert a correction tape, thus negating the need to use Whiteout. (Still have on of those sitting in the garage. Want to buy it?)

–         Whiteout.

–         Genuine filament-bearing incandescent lightbulbs were the norm and nobody could imagine that somebody with an overbearing sense of moral rectitude could find Mr. Edison’s invention questionable and demand that you replace it with an inferior product at an inflated price.

Now, before you think I am being negative, I’m not. I believe most of our tech advances are great. Except for those stupid light bulbs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.