scripturient

#313 In which our hero receives another message from the past.

2012-02-17T12:07:00.001-05:00

You probably forgot that the site futureme.org even exists…I know I did, even though I’ve received a message from a past me before.

And I recently got another message from the past! Messageplus commentary follows.

Dear FutureMe,
Hey man. Right now it's 2/8/06 and I'm sitting in my officeat Impact Direct Copywriting.

Generally speaking, I try not to name names in my blog,especially when it comes to employers. However, to say this place wasrinky-dink is an understatement. And, more to the point, I tried to bring upthe website and it is 404, and the phone number is disconnected. I suspect thatthe owner, my previous boss, has moved on to other endeavors. Because for asmuch as I thought the guy was an advertising dumbass, I can’t take anythingaway from his hustle. He was always trying to make a buck with the next big thing.

I have a second interview at XXXXXX tomorrow, and I'mexcited as shit. I really want that job. Driving down to Akron every day wouldbe a total pain in the ass... but more money? Better working environment?Actually working with other people instead of sitting alone in a shit-holerented office answering phones for a computer repair place? Yeah, it would beworth a little extra driving time.

I got that job and worked there for five years. It startedout great, but many, many things had changed by the time I left. The companyhad been bought by another, larger agency; the focus of our work shifted, theagency name actually changed; and, more significantly, the culture of the placeradically shifted. It’s not bad, per se, but it is very different from what itwas when I started. For these reasons and others I knew it was time for achange.

(if the “answering phones for a computer repair place”comment seems like a non sequitur, understand that my hustlin’ boss was runningat least three businesses out of the one rented office so, depending on who wasin and what line was ringing, I had to answer the phone for the advertisingagency, a computer repair business or a hospital supply company.)

And the drive to Akron every day? It really wasn’t that bad.The heavy traffic was always heading north to Cleveland when I was drivingsouth, and vice versa, so that was never really an issue. In the winter I couldalways count on a couple 3-hour commute days because of the ice and snow. Butto be honest, I enjoyed the time to think, and I went through a lot of books ontape. Lots of wear and tear on my car, though.

Anyway... I hope your career is doing better. At the veryleast, I hope you're making more money. I so want to get out of here. I hopeMalone works out. I also have a resume into Point to Point Communications...but haven't heard anything from them yet.

Pretty sure Point to Point never called me back.

I'm a little surprised how much of my happiness comes frommy work. I never thought I was one of those people. Guess I am. Since I'm notreally enjoying my work right now -- or, at least, my co-worker or environment-- it puts stress on my. And, my extension, on [The Scientist] and the girls.

This still surprises me. With this new job, I’m painfullyaware that I’m 43 years old and not at the point in my career that I wanted tobe. I feel like I need to catch up. This is partly due to the fact that I’vebeen laid off from several jobs (not my fault); but it’s also partly due to thefact that I’m a little lazy (all my fault). I’m hoping for some quickadvancement at his new agency… we’ll see what happens. Could be veryfrustrating for me.

Holy shit... Doug (my current boss) just walked in and askedme, "What's a hyphen? Is it an underline?"
Good. Lord.

I don’t remember this exchange, but it sounds prettytypical. He considered himself a copywriter, but constantly had me proof hisstuff, which was terrible without exception. It doesn’t surprise me that hewould have a lack of understanding about simple grammar. Hustle, yes. Writingskills, no.

Anyway, I'm setting this to send five years from now. Ifyou're still in the same office answer that guy's dumb-ass questions at thattime... well, there are razorblades in your toolbox.

Thankfully, it never came to this. In fact, I was out ofthere shortly after writing this message.

Take care, future me.
craig.

Thank YOU, past me!

I’ll write another one, and set it for another five years inthe future. Good Lord, what will that be like? I’ll be nearly 50, and the girlswill be 13 and 10.

Yikes.

***

NEW SHOE

2012-02-08T12:37:00.000-05:00

Got a shoeshine the other day.

This is not usual behavior for me, for a couple of reasons. First, I generally don’t wear shine-able shoes to work. See, when I started this new job I adopted the “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” mentality and bought new shoes. These shoes, to be exact:

I agonized for an embarrassingly long time about what kind of shoe to buy (and then for an even longer time on what kind of socks to wear with my new shoes) because I was determined to continue to wear jeans—albeit new, more fashionable jeans—and the shoes had to look decent.

I became enamored with Clarks Desert Boots and ordered a pair online. They’re served me well. But they’re suede. So I can clean them, but not shine them.

That said, I have a pair of Doc Martens dress shoes that I like a lot. I’ve had them for years and don’t wear them as an everyday shoe. I think of them as my “grown-up” shoes, i.e., what a real professional might wear to work every day. Generally I wear them to fancy functions or for client meetings.

I had such a client meeting a couple of weeks ago, so I wore these shoes in. Since there’s a shoeshine guy in the lobby of my building, I figured I’d get a shine. This would be my first professional shoeshine since I had the shoes I wore to my wedding shined. So, it’s been ten years since my last shine.

First, a word about the shoeshine guy in the lobby.

If you saw this guy in a movie, you’d accuse the writers of lazy storytelling. I mean, he is every stereotypical shoeshine guy you’ve ever seen in the movies: older, African-American, gray-haired, stoop-shouldered, shuffling. He has the typical set-up right outside the elevators, two elevated chairs atop a platform of drawers full of mysterious shoe shining polishes and creams.

I walk past this guy every day. Sometimes he’s reading the newspaper, but usually he’s just sitting there staring off into space. I’ve seen very few people stop to get a shine. It strikes me as a sad life… sitting there waiting, waiting for someone to stop.

A co-worker and I were talking a while back about shoes shines and what they cost. Thinking back to my pre-wedding shine, I realized that I didn’t remember what it cost. I had it in my head that it was something like $15, but that seems high. But then again, I had nothing to judge it against. What’s it worth to get a shoeshine? It’s not a necessity, it’s more of a commodity. But then again, it’s a status-symbol thing more than anything. So if people will pay hundreds for other status symbols like custom-made suits, why not $15 for a shoeshine?

Finally I just stopped and asked the guy one day as I returned from lunch. “Six bucks,” he told me. Okay, that seemed reasonable. So I took my admittedly dull shoes downstairs and hit the guy up for a shine.

There were no other customers.

I found the entire experience to be a little embarrassing. First, I’m up on this elevated throne, right in front of the elevators where everyone looks automatically as they exit. Then there was the white-guilt aspect of having this little black guy shine my shoes. He asked if I had ever had them shined before, and I admitted that I had shined them myself, but probably badly. He grunted in (I assume) agreement.

I brought my newspaper so I wasn’t just staring stupidly ahead, but I mostly just held it up while I peaked at what he was doing. I wondered if there was some secret technique that I didn’t understand to get a really great shine.

But he just brushed off the dirt, rubbed off the old polish with some sort of deglazer, applied polish and shined them with a rag. He spritzed the rag with water first, I’ll have to try that next time. He spent a lot of time polishing the toes of my shoes. I suppose that’s the part you can most easily see when you’re looking down. It’s probably good customer relations to make sure that part of the shoe really gleams.

It probably took ten minutes. I paid him the six dollars, and tipped him two.

I can’t imagine he makes a living doing this. There’s a hotel in my building, and he has to be drawing a salary from them. There’s just no way he’s cutting it by shining maybe a pair or two of shoes a day at six bucks a pop.

Like I said, I felt slightly embarrassed by the entire experience. But when I was showing off my shiny new shoes back in the office, I noticed the guy had slopped show polish all over my socks.

I’ll have to remember to tell him to be more careful next time, when I get my shoes polished again in 2022.

###

WRONG SONG

2012-01-10T15:51:00.006-05:00

And here I am again, responding to a Chuck Wendig challenge. This time it was to set my iPod to shuffle and use the first song to come up as the title of a 500-word story. The song that came up for me was Kielbasa by Tenacious D.

Damn my juvenile tastes in music!

Kielbasa

Kaufmann grunted and doubled over.

It was the kielbasa, had to be. The fucking kielbasa! Heknew better than to eat something from that goddamn wop street vender… but hewas in a hurry, and it was convenient.Walked right past the greasy-haired bastard and his steaming vat of sausagesevery day. Plus, he, Kaufmann, was from solid, tow-headed German stock—Kielbasawas practically his native dish! But now here he was, sweating and crapping hisbrains out in the executive bathroom. He knew exactly what was waiting for himin the conference room: two partners, his account assistant, Marsha, and fourimpatient businessmen. Four businessmen who were waiting to hear hispresentation to decide if they would grace the firm with their business. Fourbusinessmen who, with the stroke of a pen, would indirectly earn him a cashbonus of $1.2 million dollars. Four businessmen who weren’t going to tolerate Marsha’sexcuses and offers of fresh cups of coffee for much longer. Kaufmann wiped hisass for the third time, stood and pulled up his slacks. He made it all the wayto the sink before rushing pell-mell back to the stall, barely getting hispants down before another torrent of fury hit the bowl at Mach one.

Magarelli whistled as he cleaned.

He took great pains to make sure his equipment was spotlessbefore he closed down for the night. It might be okay for other venders to selltheir hot dogs or pizza or tacos out of disrespectable grease-splattered carts,but he took more pride in his work than that. He father had taught him that ifyou were going to do a thing, then you should do that thing well. Magarelli hadno illusions that he was a great chef, but he served good food at a fair price.And he always had a broad smile for his customers, for Magarelli trulyappreciated those who choose his cart other the small herd of other food cartsin the plaza. But as much as he enjoyed serving his customers, and he enjoyed observingthem more. Something else his father had said: to understand the true nature ofa man watch how he treats his subordinates. And Magarelli saw plenty of badbehavior… barked orders to harried underlings, secretaries sent out to fetchlunch in rainstorms, berating obscenities screamed into cellphones. For the worstof these men, Magarelli had a surprise gift. Under the gleaming stainless steelsurface of his cart, beneath the basin that held the warming water, Magarellihad a secret cubbyhole. Here he would tuck away a sausage or kielbasa that had goneoff. When Magarelli was presented with the opportunity to teach the worst ofthese men a lesson—like the horrible blond man this afternoon—he took it.Through crafty slight of hand he retrieved the rancid meat, placed it lovinglyin a fresh bun, and flashed a wider-than-usual smile.

It was no grand life that he lived, but it was good enough.

###

WRITE FIGHT

2012-01-06T22:24:00.001-05:00

Here's something a little different.

I have very occasionally posted my original fiction on this site. Part of that is typical I'm not very good, am I? writer jitters and part of it is the hope that I will someday get my fiction published so I shouldn't jeopardize a sale by posting it here for free.

But I was recently reading Terrible Minds and Chuck Wendig put forth a writing challenge that actually spurred me into action. His challenge was to combine two genres (choices were Dystopian Sci-Fi, Cozy Mysteries, Serial Killer, Lost World, Spy Fiction or Bodice Ripper) into one 1000-word or less story. I'm not entirely sure why, but an idea for a Sci-Fi Bodice Ripper came to mind. I wrote this in about six hours and it comes in exactly at the 1000 word mark, less the title. Enjoy.

Miss Addison Middleton-Fletcher receives a guest.

Miss Addison Middleton-Fletcher lived with her dowager auntat a volt-farm named “Arcadia.” While Miss Addison thought the hot,cantankerous work of harvesting the wane rays of the sun and converting them tosteam better suited to ruffians and mutagenics, she reluctantly agreed that thefarm had provide her with a fine enough lifestyle and the freedom to pursue herartistic endeavors.

She was engaged in one such practice when her aunt enteredthe sitting room.

“Oh, my Addison!” She exclaimed. “What wondrous craft areyou undertaking now?”

Miss Addison beamed and held up an unevenly knotted hempcord for her aunt’s perusal.

“Dottie!” Miss Addison exclaimed, for this was how sheaddressed her aunt, “do you truly like it? I had some trouble some of the knots,but I find it is still pleasing to the eye, is it not?”

“Well enough, little duck,” Dottie replied. “And it willmake a fine welcoming gift when that handsome Mr. Deeringhouse next comescalling!”

A shadow flickered across Miss Addison’s face. How long hadit been since Arcadia had last hosted Mr. Deeringhouse? A month? Two?

Dottie’s brow knitted as she realized how she had misspoke.“My dear, my dear,” she cooed, “I am quite certain that Mr. Deeringhouse hasfound himself away from our home due to circumstances of business! It is histravels in the North that keep him away, for that is such a wild andunpredictable land! I hear tell it is peopled with the absolute worst sort!Sand herders and soot merchants! Nihilists and cannibals! Why, I should not be surprised to hear that Mr.Deeringhouse risks his very life with every journey!”

At this Miss Addison put a fist to her mouth, tearsdribbling down her cheeks at the thought of her beloved in jeopardy. Dottieproduced a stained lace handkerchief from her bodice and dabbed at MissAddison’s face.

“Now, now, my sweet,” she soothed. “Stop these tears. Look,you’re smearing your concealer.”

Dottie lifted the kerchief to show a greasy white smudge.Her ministrations had revealed a raw, blistered patch under the left eye, heretoforehidden with an artful application of make-up.

Miss Addison leapt up and fled the sitting room, stoppingonly once she was ensconced in the sanctuary of her dressing room. Shecollected herself quickly and surveyed the landscape of her face.

At nineteen she was still of the age and appearance that menfancied. True, outside of the city limits where she and her aunt dwelled wasrife with radiation that aged the skin and turned fertile young girls intobarren spinsters in a brace of decades… but she was not there yet. Not yet!

Miss Addison knew that her remote location precluded thepossibility of her catching the eye of a Magistrate or Nobleman who wouldselect her to be their reproduction-mate. However, the wealth of her Aunt allowedMiss Addison admission to some of the grander soirees in the City. It was atone such function that she first met Mr. Deeringhouse.

He was handsome and dashing; his skin baring hardly anyboils or scars. She begged an associate of Dottie’s to introduce her at once.

And once so introduced, she was stricken. As was, it seemed,Mr. Deeringhouse. He called upon Miss Addison every single day for a week. Theyspoke cordially enough, but his eyes stared into her with such intensity thatshe had to look away.

It was love.

At the end of the week, with great regret, Mr. Deeringhousehad to depart for travels in the north.

She had not heard from him since then.

Ah, but the hopeful heart is light! She fantasized of theday that they would enter the High Chamber as rep-mates, he carrying a scarletcanister marked with a black triangle that contained the sum total of hisgenetic code; and she doing likewise, her canister marked with a circle. Theirgenomes would be combined to produce a child, strong and fine featured.

She was wrenched from her reverie by the hissing clunk thatheralded the approach of their automaton servant, Higgs.

“Excuse:the:interruption:miss,” Higgs intoned in its hollow voice,“Your:aunt:wishes:me:to:inform:you:that:there:is:a:gentleman:
caller:for:you:in:the:east:parlor.”

Happy day! Miss Addison’s heart fluttered and took flight asshe hurried with all due haste to the east end of the residence.

There she encountered not Mr. Archer Deeringhouse, but adifferent man altogether. He was dressed in the dull silver coveralls of anoutside laborer, his face obscured by a scarf wrapped tightly around his mouthand nose. Over his eyes were black goggles with only a thin horizontal sliverfor sight. He wore heavy leather gloves and carried a well-worn satchel. He wascovered in yellow dust that cascaded off him, forming small mounds around hisheavy boots. Dottie would be most displeased.

“Addison Fletcher?” the man growled in a thick voice.

Miss Addison’s nose wrinkled at his abruptness. “MissMiddleton-Fletcher, if you please,” shesaid curtly. “And you are…?”

The man put down his satchel and pulled the goggles up andaway from his face, revealing ghostly white skin beneath. He blinked rapidly,then wiped some grit out of one eye. Kneeling down he opened the satchel andrummage inside. Without raising his head, he said, “He right… you a prettything.”

“Whom d-do you mean?” Miss Addison stammered. “Do you mean…are you an… associate of Mr. Deeringhouse?”

The man spoke. “Mr. Deeringhouse… he dead. But he wants youhave this thing.” Without further explanation, he rose and strode out, leavingonly a haze of yellow dust.

Only when she heard the the airlock re-seal did her gaze fallto the floor. There, on the threadbare carpet stood a faded red canister markedwith a black triangle.

She fell to her knees and cradled the container, tearsstreaming down her ruined cheeks. “Oh,Archer!” She sobbed. “You do love me, you do!”

###

#312 In which our hero celebrates a birthday with a roomful of sweaty naked men. Part 2.

2011-12-21T22:52:00.000-05:00

Part 1 here.

We filed inside the building and were immediately ushered up a staircase. At the top we took a sharp turn to a short hallway that was lined on one side with towels and sheets.

Now, when I read the emails about taking “2 towels and 1 sheet” I had assumed they would be big, fluffy white towels… the kind you’d expect to find at a spa. These were not those sort of towels. These towels which, to be fair, where white-ish, mostly, had clearly been worn and washed hundreds of times. They were thin and threadbare, ragged at the edges. And the sheet… I hadn’t really given it much thought, but I think in the back of my head I expected them to really be some soft of robe or toga thing… but no; these were old bed sheets in a variety of colors that were also fraying at the edges. I suppressed a laugh and grabbed my allotment of towels and sheet.

In fact, for the first hour or so, I was very careful about maintaining a poker face. There was an almost palpable vibe that this was an old-school sort of place run by old-school sorts of people… the kind of people who settle their issues with brass knuckles and lead pipes in dark alleys. I was honestly concerned that if I screwed something up (like grabbing two sheets and one towel, say) that I would be “escorted” out of the building. I was clearly an outsider being given a glimpse inside of something old and cherished. I really didn’t feel any safety in numbers even though there were a lot more of us than there were of the people who worked there.

After grabbing our towels and sheets we moved into a sort of locker room to change. This was a large single room lined with traditional lockers. In the center of the room were about 20 cots. But they were most like narrow beds covered in a white sheet, like what you would lay on for a massage. At first I thought these were the cots for the before mentioned optional message, but they were all pushed together, with no room to get between them. A masseuse wouldn’t even be able to reach you if you were on any of the cots except the ones on the edge. It was very confusing. Also, the lights in this room were turned low... at the time I assumed it was to give us a measure of privacy.

We all stripped down and put on our towels. There was a little dining room outside the locker room where we deposited the food and booze we had all brought. We awkwardly mingled there for a moment, waiting to be told what to do next. Those in the know directed us down a different stairway to the steam room.

I have to stress again that this place wasn’t a spa or gym or even the YMCA. You could have mistaken any of the rooms as the living room of a rundown apartment building.

So we go down the stairway into the steam room area in the basement of the building. Walking through the doorway was exactly like entering the set of “Hostel” or “Saw.”

It was a dank, humid cement room, with three exposed showers jutting out of the wall directly opposite the entrance way; a cement slab to the right as you entered (I suspect this is where the “platza” occurred) behind which was a small, shallow pool; and to the left as you entered was a rather imposing wooden door labeled, “STEAM ROOM.”

There was also a single urinal set into the wall near the door. Apparently, if you needed to pee you only had to walk out of the steam room (naked), take a leak, then return. No need to be hassled with the bother of putting on your towel again.

I was still carrying my second towel and sheet, so I stashed them in a corner and went into the steam room.

It was a pretty big room, bigger than I expected. Probably about 25x20 feet. Set into one wall was an enormous furnace with two huge cast iron doors. Opposite that was five wooden risers. And, of course, lots of sweaty naked men.

The place was already crowded by the time I got in, and the first three risers were just about full. No problem, I thought. I’ll just grab a seat up on the top, where it’s empty.

Big mistake.

It’s funny how quickly you forget simple things like “heat rises” when there’s no real practical application. But in a sealed steam room it became practical in a big fucking hurry.

It was definitely hot when I entered, but by the time I got to the top row, I felt like I was on the surface of the sun. “Holy shit,” I remarked, and a couple guys around me laughed. I retreated to the bottom row. “Yeah,” a guy said, “You want to work your way up to the top.”

It was immediately apparent which of us had been to a schvitz before, and those who hadn’t. The schvitz virgins like me wrapped our towels around our waists and sat on them that way (remembering that the first rule was “You MUST sit on a towel in the steam room!”). But those who had been there before? They walked around with their balls swinging freely. Guys stood up having conversations, walked around the room, went out to cool off for a second, then returned… all naked as could be. I mean, it’s human nature to look toward a door when it opens, and I did so at least a dozen times and was greeted by a great view of some guy’s junk each and every time.

But the longer I was in the steam room, the more I started to enjoy it (the heat, not looking at other men's junk). An attendant would chuck a bucket of water into the furnace every once an awhile, keeping the temperature up. I sat and chatted with some of the guys I had hoped to get to know better, and it was very pleasant.

After a bit I moved up a couple of feet, and the heat was fairly intense. I took a cue from the others around me and moved out of the steam room (towel firmly around my waist) to the shower room. There were a couple of old guys hanging around the pool, so I approached them. “You guys look like you know what’s going on,” I said. “This pool… should I wade in or just jump all the way in?” They smiled and me and said that they couldn’t jump in since they were both cardiac patients… but I was free to do so if I wanted.

What the hell.

I jumped in and ducked my head under the water (it was only about four feet deep). The water was ice cold. I immediately got back out and… it felt great. I had been so hot, and the shock of the water was so cold that now I felt almost equalized. It was amazingly refreshing. Now, I wouldn’t want to swim a couple laps or anything, that would have sunk my core temperature to an uncomfortable level.

I returned to the steam room and hung out some more, chatting, laughing. I jumped into the pool twice more and eventually made my way to the top row. It was intense, but not unbearable like it had been when I first arrived.

At some point I toweled off and went back to the dining room to see what was happening up there. There was a great selection of cheeses and cured meats, plus these amazing pickled vegetables provided by the schvitz. I drank some bourbon (The Scientist would have been proud), eat and chatted with some of the guys. Remember that we’re all still sitting around in nothing but towels.

One of the organizers came into the room and says, “Hey guys, if you’re done with the steam, it’s good etiquette to change to your sheets.” This struck me as incredibly funny. Seriously guys, let’s not look like jerks here. If you’re gotten your fill of sitting around naked with other sweaty men then get rid of those damp towels and put something decent on… like the raggedy old bed sheets you picked up on the way in.

So I dumped my towel and went to fetch my sheet, which I had stashed in the locker room. When I went to get it I discovered the reason for all the cots and the low lighting… there were about a dozen guys in the locker room taking a nap! I had heard something about sleeping after the steam, but didn’t realize that there was a designated nap room. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of the nap and it was really appealing… but honestly, I didn’t want to chance missing out on any of the weirdness of the evening by snoozing. That said, a nap would have really felt great after the relaxing heat of the steam room.

Once everyone was done with the steaming themselves, the room filled up with guys in sheets. When the concept of sitting around in sheets was first introduced, I really thought it was going to be like wearing a toga. I thought someone would instruct us in the proper way of wrapping the sheet; perhaps some ancient eastern European method that has been lost to the general population… but no. I just wrapped it around my waist, just like I did the towel. And so did everyone else.

We all sat at a long table and noshed on the meats, cheese and vegetables for a while. The staff passed out glasses—which is to say, cheap plastic glasses like the ones you serve juice in to your kids—and we started drinking red wine. We also did several shots of vodka, which is a tradition of the schvitz, I’m told.

Keep in mind that we’re all naked from the waist up while this is happening. I was surprised at how quickly it became not weird. There’s a room full of guys, and we’re ALL wearing sheets, so very quickly it was no longer a thing.

Finally, a waiter came around to take our orders. But that’s overstating it, really. The schvitz is a package deal that includes a salad and steak. No appetizers (other than those you bring yourself), no side dishes. So the guy didn't so much take our order as much as stop at each of use individually and ask, “How doya want your steak cooked?”

Plates and silverware were placed in front of us, and they were of the same ilk as the wine glasses—cheap plastic plates, one paper napkin and a fork and knife. It was incredibly low-rent, but also, in some odd fashion, really added to the experience.

And I mean that. There was something about the utter lack of pretension—cheap towels, used bed sheets, plastic plates—that made you focus on the real reason for the evening. It wasn’t to be impressed by sparkling clean facilities or fine crystal stemware or decadent gourmet food… the real reason that we had all gathered together was to share stories, make fun of each other, laugh, and enjoy an evening with a bunch of like-minded friends.

It was the quintessential male experience that you just don’t see in this day and age.

We ended the evening with big-ass steaks (where they great steaks? No, not so much. But they were BIG), more drinking, more conversation and finally cigars. I’m not a smoker by any stretch, but I indulged in a cigar. If I had it to do all over again I think I’d skip the cigar part; my mouth tasted like shit for most of the next day.

Oh, and there was a cake. Half for my birthday, half to celebrate the retirement of another one of the other guys.

The evening finally wound to a close. We got dressed and headed back out to our cars. The entire ride back we all talked about how awesome the evening had been, and how we’d all like to do it again. There are already semi-concrete plans to repeat the night next year.

So that’s how I spent my 43rd birthday. Definitely the oddest birthday celebration I’ve ever had. And, in many ways, the best.

***

#312 In which our hero celebrates a birthday with a roomful of sweaty naked men. Part 1.

2011-12-16T09:54:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday was my birthday. I turned 43.

There’s undoubtedly some commentary to be made on the factthat I’m probably at the halfway point of my life, and have maybe even beenthere for a couple years. But instead of that, I’m going to write about myweird-ass birthday celebration.

Couple of months ago, I guy I know organized a “Schvitz.”Now, if you’re not familiar with the term, you’re not alone. I had no idea whatit was either. It was described to me thusly:

“The schvitz is an old-school styled steam - think somethinglike the Rat Pack of guys in towels in a steam room. And then we’ll eat steaks.”

I was kinda “meh” on the idea. It sounded okay, I guess, butit’s not like I heard about it and was like, “OMG! I NEED to do that!”Honestly, it sounded a little weird.

But, I started to see the list of other people who hadcommitted to coming and it started to get a lot more attractive. It was aninteresting group of guys who I already knew because we shared a hobby… but Ihad never sat down for hours and really talked to any of them. Being that Iliked and respected all of them (well, most of them) quite a bit, I started tothink that it would be a great opportunity to get to know them better. Andthere would be steak and wine after the steam, so that couldn’t be bad.

Plus, I found out, when they agreed on a date it happened tobe my birthday. Being that I didn’t have any other plans, I figured what thehell.

So I signed up and paid my money… I think it was $65. I wastold what to bring--everyone was responsible for bringing either some sort ofmeat & cheese tray or wine. My one good friend and I discussed how we wereboth a little hesitant about this thing; it sounded like it would be fun, buton the other hand, it could be really awkward and uncomfortable. We both cameto the conclusion that it was too weird to miss.

Then the emails started coming in.

The first went out to everyone informing us that if wewanted a massage while we were there, they were available for $60/hour. Now, mymind immediately went to the “happy ending” sort of massage, but the emailexplained that the masseuse was a.) a man, and b.) a professional masseuse whoalso worked on guys from the Cleveland Browns. Sounded cool, but I wasn’treally interested in shelling out another 60 bucks. But, the email went on tosay that I could also get a “platza” for only $20. Much like the “schvitz” Ihad no idea what the hell a “platza” was. But it was explained as a “scrub downwhere they use a seaweed mop and horsehair brush with soaps that mimic thetraditional oak leaves.” And the guy helpfully included this video:

Ignoring for a moment that the video appears to be shot in aCAVE, what I saw really didn’t appeal. Some brawny guy beating me with a mopfor half an hour? I mean, maybe after getting all gross and sweaty a scrub downlike this would feel good… maybe? More than anything, it looked like goingthrough a car wash.

I passed on the platza.

More emails came with explanations of what you were to dowhen you get there. One instruction that jumped out at me was that when youfirst got there, you were to take “2 towels and 1 sheet.” Now, the towels, Iunderstood… but a sheet?

It was explained to me that when it was time for dinner,you’d dry off and wrap the sheet around yourself. See, I naively thought thatonce the steam was done, we could get dressed again. Oh no. The idea was toremain naked for the entire experience.

Another email came with details on how to get to the place,including these directions:

“There is gonna be a sign that says "DEAD END" youARE gonna go down that street. About 200 feet after the sign you're gonna seethe gate, go past the gate and park in the back. There should be an attendantthere telling you where to park ( he'll come out of his car). You can pay himnow or when you come out, your choice.”

So, two days before the event we get the final email. Itstarts out like this:

Gents-It is time.
It is time to Relax & Sweat.
It is time to Laugh and make Friends.
It is time to Drink Beers, Wine and Vodka.
It is time to Smoke Cigars/ Pipes/ Cigarettes in an enclosedplace.
It is time to Eat Steak so thick that it's cut with abandsaw.
It is time to Dine in a sheet.
IT IS TIME TO SCHVITZ!!!!!!
The Schvitz has been called, the Guy with the Gun is lettingus in and they are expecting 43 of us on Sat Dec 10 from 5-9pm. As of thisemail we are not accepting anymore guys.

My first thought is that this guy is WAY too excited aboutthis thing. My second thought is “guy with the gun”? That’s just an expression…right?

The day comes and we meet and all pile into three cars anddrive over to the place.

It is in a terrible area of town. As instructed, we drovedown a dead end street, turned into a gravel alley and parked behind whatlooked for all the world to be an abandoned building. The windows were boardedover and it was covered with dead ivy. Here’s a photo:

One of the guys in the car remarked, “Y’know, if I was beingbrought here by myself, I’m not sure I’d be going home.”

We paid the guysitting in the parking lot watching over the cars. And I found out that “theguy with the gun” wasn’t a euphemism.

We walked through the dirt parking lot and entered anunmarked door in the back.

Continued in part 2.

###

#311 In which our hero pauses to consider the question posed by a supposedly homeless man.

2011-11-10T12:23:00.001-05:00

I work in downtown Cleveland and, like any largish city,there’s a fair number of panhandlers on the sidewalks. Now, it’s tempting tosay these people are “homeless,” but you don’t really know, right? I mean, someof them certainly look the stereotypical part: ragged clothes, weathered faces,maybe a hint (or more than a hint) of crazy lurking under the surface… but I’venever seen anyone actually sleeping on the street around my building, even whenI’ve been there late at night. Far as I know, asking for change is their job,and they go home to their apartment at night.

I got hit up by one guy a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t fitthe part of shaggy, wild-eyed homeless man, he looked pretty much like anyother casually dressed person I pass on the street daily. He was crossed thestreet and headed toward me, catching my eye. Immediately I’m thinking, “Okay,what’s this dude want?” when he gets close and says, “Hey man, you got acigarette I can borrow?” This puts me at ease and I tell him no, that I don’tsmoke. Then he says, “You got a dollar you can spare?” And for a second Iactually consider it! Not because of any altruistic desire to help my fellowman, but because I appreciate his rap: he put me at ease by asking for a smoke,then followed up with the unexpected request for money. Nice work.

But I didn’t give him any money, of course.

I have a pretty strict policy of not giving money topanhandlers. I think I’ve only actually ponied up twice in my life, and in bothcases I feared that imminent harm would befall my car or my person.

This morning I was walking out of the parking garage when Isaw that one of the regulars on my street was standing right where I’d need topass. This particular guy is definitely in the “scary homeless” camp;bedraggled, wide, crazy eyes, propensity to shout at people who don’t give himmoney. This guy once hollered at me from a block away to give him some money,like I was going to go out of my way and hustle over to him to open my wallet.

There’s a couple people walking about three yards in frontof me, and he hits them up first. “Hey lady!” He nearly shouts. “Can you giveme some money? To get something to eat?” Everyone keeps walking without makingeye contact.

It gets to be my turn, and when he asks for money I say,“Can’t help you, buddy.” This is generally what I say, and it usually seems todo the trick and the panhandler in question moves on to his or her next mark. Idid throw in the “buddy,” because I was in a good mood.

But instead of moving on, this guy looks me dead in the eyeand demands, “Why not?”

And I pause.

I try not to be an asshole to strangers. It’s not like I’veever told a homeless person to “Just get a job!” or something like that. So Idon’t want to be that guy who just moves on and doesn’t even acknowledge thisperson’s existence. And while I’m pretty quick on my feet generally, I don’tknow what to say. My first thought is to say something like, “I give you money,you’re just going to spend it on booze.” But I don’t say that because what ifhe really is just looking to get something to eat? And my second thought is,“Why don’t you give this guy a dollar? What’s a buck to you?” In the end, Ijust put my head down and keep walking.

I’ve been thinking about it since, and I’ve come to theconclusion that the real reason I don’t give any panhandlers money is that Idon’t want to contribute to the system. The system where people beg for moneyon the street and other people actually give it to them, which in turnencourages more people to beg for money in the streets. I don’t want to beapproached for a handout on the street, and I don’t think anyone else (I’mthinking of women, mostly) should be made to feel threatened on the street. Ifsomeone really is homeless, there are local outreach programs that can helpthem—some of them, at least.

At least, that’s how I’ve rationalized it to myself. Maybethe truth is that I’m a racist asshole. I don’t think so, but I’m sure mostracist assholes don’t think of themselves that way either.

As I walked away, the guy shouts at me, “When I hit it bigin the lottery I bet then you’ll wish you gave me some money!”

***

#310 In which our hero give a quick recap of recent events.

2011-11-03T13:12:00.002-04:00

Cat dies

My cat died a couple of weeks ago. He was 17 and, eventhough he was a terrible pain in my ass who insisted on sleeping on my pillowand waking me up nightly, I was pretty broken up about losing him. He hadreally been going downhill for the past year, more so then I really allowedmyself to acknowledge. I finally had him put to sleep. I’ll write up a propermemorial at some put, but I’m not up to it right now.

Child ages

My oldest turned 8 yesterday. That amazes me. She’s such asmart, beautiful, reasonable little person. I can hardly get my head around thefact that The Scientist and I made her. From scratch.

And she’s a little nerd, too, like her daddy. More thananything she wanted a membership to Club Penguin, this online MMO for kids. Wewouldn’t allow it for a long time, figuring she’d just lose interest and thenwe’re out 30 bucks. But she’s stuck with it, and we finally relented. It comesat the perfect time, with the weather getting colder I won’t have to try to pryher away from the computer, which she will be glued to for months to come. Atleast six months, since that’s the length of the membership.

Hero frets

There seems to be a bit of an exodus going on at work rightnow. We had some layoffs recently, which suck but aren’t anything I’m not accustomedto. But more than that, we’ve had several people in the department resign inthe last two weeks. It doesn’t really affect me directly, these are people thatI didn’t work that closely with. But it does give me pause… why is everyone insuch a hurry to get away from this agency? It starts to give life to my growingconcern that this place really isn’t as creative as I’d like it to be; and theaccount services staff seem to be, with a few exceptions, just stuffed suitsthat don’t know creativity from a hole in the ground. Worrying. Worrying.

That’s it for now. More (lengthy) posts to come.

###

#309 In which our hero catches you up on something that might have been life-altering, but wasn’t so much.

2011-10-06T13:51:00.000-04:00

Under the heading of “stuff that happened while I was inblogger radio silence” there’s this:

I had cancer.

There was a persistent sore on the side of my nose thatdidn’t seem to want to heal completely. It wasn’t a horrible weeping mess oranything, just a spot that was sometimes just a little dry, and sometimesopened up. At first I assumed one of the girls scratched me there while we werewrestling, and that maybe I kept knocking the scab off of it.

If finally concerned me enough that I went to my familydoctor and asked. Specifically, I asked if he thought it was skin cancer.

He didn’t.

He thought it was a patch of dry skin. He suggested I tryapplying lotion to it a couple times a day and see if it cleared up in a weekor so. He said that if it didn’t, then maybe I should see a specialist.

So I lubed up my nose with lotion in the morning and rightbefore bed for about two weeks running. It didn’t seem to help. So I went to adermatologist.

Now, I should mention something about my family’s historywith cancer: we have a lot of it. My father died of pancreatic cancer, one auntdied of a brain tumor, one uncle died of colon cancer, my mom had a lumpremoved from her breast. Given all that family history, I thought I would bemore worried about the diagnosis than I was.

The dermatologist walked into the room, took one look at thespot on my nose and said, “Oh yeah, that looks like a basal cell carcinoma.”

I was a little pissed at my family doctor for not being soquick on the uptake… I mean, it took this guy literally seconds to diagnose me,while my family doctor had me slathering on useless lotion of a week.

But, since I had already combed the internet forinformation, I can’t say it was much of a surprise. I had seen photos of basalcell carcinomas and they looked a whole lot like what was currently living onmy face.

The doctor told me all about how basal cell is the mostcommon of cancers, and that it has a dramatically high cure rate. Especiallywith the way he was going to treat it, which was with the Mohs procedure. Ninety-nine percent cure rate? I’m in!

So I made the appointment and all that. He said it shouldtake about an hour, give or take. I’d be awake the whole time, albeit heavilynumbed up in the nosal area.

Mohs surgery is pretty interesting. If you didn’t read theWikipedia link above, you basically cut out a small cup of flesh around thearea, freeze it, then look at it through a microscope. If the edges arecancer-free, then you’re done. If there is any left on the perimeter, you cutout a little more and repeat until you can’t see any more cancer.

When the doctor was explaining it to me, he said that hemakes a small incision, and that I’d go home with “maybe 3-4 sutures.” Since itwas going to be so much not a big deal, I didn’t even bother with taking offwork. I figured I’d just go in with a Band-Aide over my nose.

The nurse scrubbed my nose thoroughly, then the doctor camein and started cutting. I couldn’t feel anything, or course, but there was asensation of pressure. The worst thing of all was the electric cauterizer (theyhad to ground me by attaching a wire to my leg… otherwise there’s the risk thatsomething might catch fire—comforting thought). Cuts to the face bleed likecrazy, like everyone knows, so he was constantly in there zapping some littleblood vessel. It made a disconcerting spark noise, and stunk terribly. Ugh.

So it took him maybe 45 minutes to cut away some of myflesh. They wrapped up my nose, and I just sorta hung out while waiting for thelab report. Forty-five minutes later he came back in, saying that they hadn’tgotten it all. So he cut on me for a big more. Then more waiting. This time thereport came back clear.

He explained how he had to cut away more skin than just alittle circle around the cancer… not because the cancer had spread, but to makethe incision lay flat and heal correctly. I took a quick cell phone photo of myface before he started sewing me up. It was an alarmingly large hole. “Eh, it’sno record-breaker,” my doctor said.

Record-breaker or not, it took 23 stitches to close me up. Afar fucking cry from the “three or four” he promised.

So, as it turns out, The Scientist worked in the samebuilding in which I was having this surgery. So she left the lab for a bit tocheck on me. I had just had the last suture put in when she came into thesurgery suite.

I had an incision that went from roughly the top of my noseto the bottom of one nostril. It was pretty impressive looking, if I do say somyself.

Now, my wife really isn’t good with blood and guts sort ofstuff. And she, like I, had been expecting just a couple stitches. She took onelook at me and got light-headed. Then she fled the room.

I wasn’t allowed to leave yet, but I heard the nurses tryingto calm her down in the hallway, and one came back into the room for a coldcompress. I knew exactly what was happening. “Look,” I told the nurse who wasbandaging my nose. “You need to know that my wife may faint, and if she faintsshe’s going to have a seizure. This is what she does.”

I finally was allowed to leave, and I found my wife, layingon her back in the hallway. She hadn’t had a seizure (thank God) but she wasstill lightheaded and generally in not a good way. She had her feet elevated ona chair, a cold, wet towel on her head, and a nurse sitting with her pattingher hand.

“Good Lord,” I said. “I’m the one who just had surgery.”

I got the nurse to get me a wheelchair, and we wheeled herback down into the lab where she worked. She had more or less recovered by thistime. People took one look at me and the stupidly big dressing they had put onmy face then tired to figure out why I was the one pushing a seemingly intactwoman in a wheelchair.

So, anyway, my face has healed up remarkably well. Everyonesaid this dermatologist was one of the best, and I believe it. You really can’tsee the scar at all, unless you get really close and are looking for it. A yearlater I still have a little numbness in the area, but that is to be expected,I’m told. After the first night there was never really any pain, and I have abottle of leftover Vicodin to prove it.

All in all, I find that I’m really unconcerned about thiscancer scare. My doctor told me, “If you’re going to get cancer, this is thekind to get.” I feel like, on some level, I should be losing my shit, given myfamily history.

But I’m not.

###

#308 In which our hero reads an article that pertains to his children, then follows a link that immediately crushes his excitement.

2011-09-26T13:31:00.000-04:00

I came across an article titled, “How to Talk to Little Girls,” by Lisa Bloom. As the parent of two little girls, I was intrigued. Ivery much liked what I read.

In the article Bloom discusses how our culture typicallypraises little girls by telling them how cute or pretty they are. I’veexperienced this first hand. Inevitably the first thing anyone says about mygirls is to comment on how they are just adorable! Now, my kids are adorable,and I just say, “Thank you,” and don’t think much of it.

However, I have been careful to always praise them for theirbrains, too. I want them to know that it’s okay to be smart, and good looks,which nice, aren’t the be-all and end-all of their existence. This message maynot resonate as strongly as I’d like right now (they are only six- andseven-year-old), but I want to make sure that I’m constantly reinforcing thevalue of intelligence and education.

Bloom embraces this stance in her article (you should readit, it’s short). She writes:

“Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing younotice tells them that looks are more important than anything.”

She says she always asks little girls what they’re reading,This icebreaker generally, she writes, into a discussion about books and readingand all sorts of general girl-empowerment stuff. Which is all good in my book.

Except.

After I finished the article, I followed the link to learnmore about the book that Bloom had written, titled, “Think: Straight Talk forWomen to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World.”

Wow, I thought. That sounds awesome.

So I followed the link to Amazon, and found this staringback at me:

I was staggered by the irony of what I saw.

Wikipedia tells me that Bloom is 50 years old. She looksgreat for a woman her age… maybe too great? I’m not suggesting she’s had “workdone,” as they say, but maybe she has. At the very least, she’s had a crew ofhairstylists and make-up folks make her look as attractive as possible for thisphoto. And there was probably some re-touching done after the fact, too.

But that’s really beside the point. Maybe this is really howfabulous she looks as soon as she rolls out of bed in the morning. But if yourbook is about exercising your mind… is a glamour shot that emphasizes your goodlooks really the best choice?

Now, to be fair, I haven’t read the book, and from what Iglean it’s not just a screed about how women are unfairly judged by theirlooks. However, the article from which I found the book was squared delineatedby that criteria: little girls are more than just their appearance, and youshould support that notion.

So, I probably won’t be buying this book. But, I willcontinue to talk to my girls about the importance of education, and how it’scool to be smart. I’ll continue to read to them every night. And I’ll continueto stress how it takes more than a beautifully composed photo to make yousomething in the world.

###

#307 In which our hero recounts a mysterious and new word he learned at his new agency.

2011-09-15T09:55:00.000-04:00

I’ve been at the new job for about eight months now. I feellike I’m getting into the groove of this place, finally, but the first coupleweeks were a little rough. This agency is a purely digital agency, and myexperience is primarily print and collateral. I’ve done plenty of websites andonline banner ads, but I’ve never gotten into the finer points of search engineoptimization, highly-interactive user experiences, rich media banners and allthe other stuff that takes the online experience to a much higher level.

I expected there to be a learning curve, but it was steeperthan I thought. There was a lot of information presented in orientation thathad me scratching my head; stuff that I assumed I would pick up as I gotsettled in.

But then, there was the lingo. This agency is thick withjargon and agency-specific titles, programs and processes.

My first week on the job I was anxious to prove myself andjump in and start producing good work. I was almost immediately pulled into aproject for a smaller east coast bank. During the briefing, the CreativeDirector mentioned that we were going to have to turn around a concept prettyquickly, and would be producing an adlob to sell the idea.

Adlob?

This is a term I was not familiar with. He mentioned it inpassing, like it was something that everyone would know. I wrote in my notebook“ad-lob? WTF?” and planned on looking it up later. Maybe it was a banking term?I’ve done lots of financial stuff in the past, but that wasn’t ringing any sortof bell.

But I let it go. Then, a couple of minutes later, the CDmentioned it again. I stopped him, saying, “Okay, sorry, but what’s an ad-lob?”

He explained that it was an “ad-like object.” Adlob. Ilaughed and shook my head. In my previous agencies we would have probably saidit was a mock-up. Most likely something that looked similar to an ad you mightsee in a magazine. Nothing that was to proper dimensions or even with finalizedcopy and graphics—just something to get in front of the client so they knowwhere our thinking was.

This was my first taste of much more silly jargon to come.

###

#303 In which our hero shakes off the cobwebs of apathy and returns to his scribbler’s desk.

2011-09-14T10:16:00.001-04:00

Hi! Hi!

This blog is one of those things that sits at the back of mybrain and occasional pokes at me, saying, “Hey! Hey! Update me! What’s yourdeal?” But lately I’ve been sorta apathetic about non-work related writing.Plus, with this new job I no longer have an office to myself, I sit in a cubewhere anyone strolling by can look down and see what I’m writing. But honestly,that’s a bit of an excuse… I suspect that most people—if they care what I’mwriting at all—only see words on paper, not “OMG that dude is wasting companytime writing blog entries! Must call HR!!”

A big part of my reluctance to just hammer out some entriesis that:

A.) I’ve structured my writing so that entries are generallyof a long and involved sort. I feel like I need to write something of substanceto fill them out. I mean, the last time I wrote here was for my annual Father’sDay letter to my dead dad, so that’s some weighty stuff. Following that up withhow I can never seem to get a decent Reuben sandwich out feels a littlefrivolous.

B.) I’ve gotten way behind on stuff that’s happened to me.Like the new job, and the girls’ starting school again, and how my wife justbought a new horse… I feel like I can’t write about the most recent stuff untilI get past the stuff that’s already happened and then you’re talking aboutwriting four entries, not just one and oh-my-oh-my who has the time?

So.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to re-think the way Istructure this thing (and that is probably a completely esoteric writer’sthing: who really cares if my writing is following an established hierarchy weekto week? I do.) and take a page (i.e., completely rip-off) another blogger’spage whom I recently rediscovered, Mimi Smartypants. She chucks together abunch of sometimes random topics, gives each its own subhead and calls it done.

I can do that.

And so I shall, starting later today.

###

#302 In which our hero writes his yearly letter to his father.

2011-06-18T11:26:00.002-04:00

Dear Dad,

It’s Father’s Day. This year, I’m struck by how laissez-faire I am about the holiday. But then again, this is my seventh year as a father, so I suppose the novelty is wearing off. On my first Father’s Day (as a father) The Scientist made little girl footprints in paint on a piece of construction paper alongside a poem she wrote for me, as if written by my then 7-month-old daughter. I was so overwhelmed by the whole thing that I cried.

Seven years later I still appreciate having a day to recognize me as a father, but I’m not nearly as wrapped up in it. I know there are cards coming, because I saw them quickly secreted from backpacks up to the girls’ rooms, the entire time Lily and Macey saying, “Daddy, don’t look!” It’ll be sweet when they give them to me (if they can remember where they hid the cards) and I’ll hug them and kiss them all over… but that amazing and humbling emotion of “wow! I’m a dad!” is long gone.

My first thought is that I’ve finally settled into my role as a father, that I have it figured out. But just as quickly I realize what bullshit that idea is. You never get used to it, you never figure it out, not really. Because just as soon as I learn how to deal with a cranky 2-year-old, then she’s three, with an entirely different set of behaviors to deal with. You might think that I could use this learning to deal with daughter #2, who’s 18 months younger after all… but no. Macey is such a different child than Lily that it takes an entirely different strategy to deal with her.

So I’m constantly figuring out how to address whatever is foremost in my kids’ life at the moment… from best friends to time on the computer to the toy they absolutely MUST have. I’ve realized that I’ll NEVER figure this job called “parenting” out, not completely. It’s the nature of the job that it’s always changing, always evolving.

And I wonder if you ever figured it out.

You certainly had more experience that I. And not just because you had four kids who were considerably more spread out then mine. As a teacher and principal it was your day job to deal with kids. Maybe that accumulated knowledge gave you a leg up so you could anticipate the next stage of your own kids, that you were never blindsided by screaming fits or broken hearts.

Last weekend I came into Lily’s room, where both girls were sleeping (they insist on sleeping in the same room on weekends; I wonder how much longer this sisterly love will last?), both of them with various limbs sprawled, half under the covers and half out, and a weird thought came into my head unbidden:

I must protect these girls.

I don’t know where this thought came from, other than the fact that it’s always there, rattling around in the back of my head. I want these girls to grow up to be confident, well-adjusted, even bold woman, so I’m always balancing giving them a long leash to make their own mistakes and carve out their own victories without hovering over them, to make sure they are shielded from any possible harm.

And, being that they’re only six and seven, I know the real challenges are yet to come. Dating, cars, sex… ugh, I don’t really want to think about it. Not yet.

I’d love to ask your advice. Ask how you did it with my three sisters. How you dealt with late nights, questionable boyfriends, overnight trips… and all this before the age of cell phones. Because my kids will have phones, giving me the power to check in with them at any time, and even track their location with built-in GPS. And I will.

But, still, I hope to instill in them the sense to make good decisions, so I don’t have to constantly call them or surreptitiously keep tabs on where they are.

Time will tell.

Then again, I don’t really need to wonder what you did, because I already know. You worried. You stayed up late and fretted. Because you did the same with me. If I told you I would be home by 8 o’clock, and didn’t make it in until 10, you were on high alert for those two hours. I couldn’t comprehend, at the time, why you would give me so much shit about it. I mean, two hours? What’s the big deal?

Now I understand.

It was your job, as our father, to protect us. Even when you were giving us as much freedom as you could stand, optimistic in the notion that you taught us to make smart decisions, you worried.

Just like I’ll worry.

So I guess I don’t really need to ask your advice, because I already know the answer. But I would love to swap stories with you.

I miss you, Dad.

Love,

Craig.

***

#301 In which our hero reveals the rather unlikely story of how he got his job, part 2.

2011-04-19T08:54:00.006-04:00

When we left off, I was again trying to get my foot in the door of a new agency.

I saw the creative director’s tweet, so I fired off the following email:

Hey D.,
Word on the street is you're back in the market for a copywriter. I'd love to continue the conversation we begin at Starbucks way back when.

My resume is attached.

Thanks,

craig.

I didn’t hear anything back for two days. On the afternoon of the second day I figured I’d send a “hey, you got my resume, right?” sort of email just to remind him that I was still interested. I was also very aware that last time we talked it was mentioned that I didn’t have a lot of online experience. I was assured this wasn’t a big deal, but it still concerned me. As it so happened, I had just finished a really cool internal website project—featuring zombies. It was for the agency Halloween party, and the art director I worked with did a fantastic job. As of this writing the site is still up and functioning at this link, but I imagine it will be taken down at some point. I thought it really expressed my creativity and I hoped this guy would appreciate it.

So I logged into my email account to send off the reminder email and the zombie website link, to find this email waiting for me:

Hey man...good hearing from you. Quite honestly...I worked with you and Brad says great things about you (which is key) but quite honestly, my guess is you're a bit "high" for our salary...I wanted to hire someone a bit more junior...not unless you're interested in taking a big pay cut ;-) Be happy to chat or grab a cup of coffee with you sometime...thanks for the note.

I was disappointed, but what could I do? If they were looking for a entry level writer, I most certainly was out of their price range. So I wrote back:

Yeah, if you're looking for an entry level person, I'm sure I'm way out of consideration.

I'd love to work with you and Brad again. If a senior level position opens up I hope you'd consider me.

In the meantime, here's a project I worked on recently that was a lot of fun:

http://www.malonealert.com

It's a website for our agency Halloween party. We had a week's worth of games, including a contest where you had to shoot cut-out zombies with a NERF shotgun. I wrote everything you see, including the scripts for the PSA videos on the bottom of the page. I shot and edited those, too.

I'll hit you up for that coffee sometime when I'm in the area.

Take care,

craig.

And I figured that that was it. But then, about 20 minutes later, I got this email:

Dude..I consider myself a zombie expert...me and my son. Have you read The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks? Classic! Thanks for sending...keep in touch...I'll be sure to do the same.

I had no idea that this guy was into zombies, of course. But fate seemed to give me an in. So I followed up with this:

I haven't read that, but I did read "World War Z" by the same author. Highly recommended.

Not to brag, but I won "Best Zombie" in the costume contest this year.

And got this email in return:

Photos?

So I sent back this:

(Actually, this isn't the photo I sent back. I had a much better one, a close-up on my face where you could tell I was wearing one red contact.)

And almost immediately got this in return:

Dude...LOVE the red contact...killer! Where did you get it?

And at this point, I’m kinda like, what’s going on here? We’re chatting back and forth like old friends, but the whole point of this exchange was that I wanted a job, and it seems like we’re moving away from that. But I figured what the hell and sent this:

The contacts are a brand called "Gothika." You can get all sorts of crazy lenses. I bought these online a couple years ago for a vampire costume (photo attached).

Now, not to toot my own horn, but that Nosferatu costume was bad ass. It is by far my best Halloween effort ever. I loved it, but in no way did I expect to get this kind of response back:

Get the fuck outta here! That rocks! Did you shave your head?

Keep in mind that there are actual emails I'm cutting and pasting here. So when I get a f-bomb email in response, like we're best buddies, I’m still very much where’s this going? But replied with this:

You bet. Shaved my head, shaved off my goatee, the works.

The best part? I lost the costume contest. To a guy who came in drag. Three years later, I'm STILL bitter about it.

And then, got this in response:

I want to hire you more than ever now.

I was home when I received this email and called The Scientist over. “What am I supposed to make of this?” I asked her. I mean, I was all about winning this guy over and making the jump to another agency, but then I started to worry that he was some sort of flake that would make a hiring decision based on a Halloween costume.

But, things at my current agency were really rather shitty, so I continued to play along.

Shit, say the word and I'll shave my head TONIGHT.

And I honestly figured that would be the end of it. This guy would send me an email that said Ha, ha! But unfortunately, like I said before, you’re too expensive for us. But keep in touch!

What I did not expect is this:

Let's grab coffee next week. I think it was the vampire picture. Let me know what works for you.

So we met for coffee. Spent the first 20 minutes talking about zombie movies. This guy, as it turns out, is a zombie NUT. He told me how he and his son will play a game where they pick the best places to hole up in case of a zombie apocalypse. He is INTO zombies.

The funny this is, I’m not. I mean, yeah, I enjoy a good zombie movie as much as the next guy, but I like most monster movies. It was just through a weird twist of fate that I suggested that the agency Halloween party be zombie themed, allowing me the present a zombie website for consideration and giving me the excuse to dress up like a zombie, which in turn gave me an in to showcase my vampire costume from three years ago which, it appears, so impressed this guy that he decided to interview me again.

Weird.

I mean, I have a good portfolio, and I took his advice and updated it with samples that better showed off my digital experience and my “big idea” creativity in general. I think (I hope!) that he wouldn’t have given the job to any smuck who happened to share his love for zombie movies.

So, long story short, he did offer me the job in the end. Not on the spot or anything, I still had to jump through several painful hopes for their HR department—including talking to SEVEN different HR people. But here I am, working for one of the largest agencies in northeast Ohio, the largest privately-held digital agency in the world, and the #1 “Agency to Watch” as rated by industry mag Advertising Age.

Thanks, Nosferatu!

###

#300 In which our hero reveals the rather unlikely story of how he got his job, part 1.

2011-04-13T09:21:00.003-04:00

As promised, the tale of how I landed my current job.

About two and a half years ago the agency I was working at hired a new writer named Brad. When I was looking at Brad’s brief background info on the “welcome new hires!” wall, I noticed that we had worked at a lot of the same places. In fact, he had been hired in at my old job at The Columbus Dispatch shortly after I left.

We chatted and hit it off. But Brad was fired after three months. No fault of his own; the agency had staffed up anticipating that we would win at least one of the three new pieces of business we were pitching. When we ended up with none of them, the decision was made to “de-staff.” I’ve seen agencies make this sort of move before, and I’ve always thought it was pretty shitty.

Brad and I stayed in touch after he cleared out. He ended up going to Wyse Advertising, the same agency that I worked for when I first moved to Cleveland. Our careers were on weird parallel paths.

About a year ago Brad emails me out of the blue and tells me that he’s at a new agency, and they’re looking for a writer. Up to that point I had been really happy with the agency I was at, but things had started to go south there, and I was growing increasingly unhappy. So I shot Brad my resume. Someone from their HR department contacted me and the wheels of the interview process began to turn. But they were turning veeery sloooowly.

I had to fill out some online employment forms, and have a pre-interview phone interview with another recruiter from the agency and jump through a few other hoops. I was a little frustrated by the glacial pace of things, but I think Brad was even more frustrated. Which was understandable since he was the other writer and was getting severally shit upon with a ridiculous workload.

Finally Brad calls me and says, “Screw this! I’m just setting up an interview myself. You can meet me and my boss at Starbucks and we’ll talk.” He tells me his boss’s name and I’m like, jeez, that name sounds familiar.

About a week later I show up at the appointed time and place and find Brad already there. We get some coffee and chat for a bit. Then his boss (who’s the Group Creative Director for Cleveland) shows up and I realize that I do know this guy. In fact, we worked together at Wyse which is, remember, the same one that Brad went to after he was fired from my current agency. The advertising community is pretty insular in northeast Ohio.

He remembers me and we BS for a minute about how Wyse is doing, and the people that worked there, and so on. Then we get to my portfolio and start going through it.

Then, in the weirdest of coincidences, as we’re sitting at Starbucks with my book wide open on the table when who walks in but my old Creative Director from Wyse. He and the department’s writer (a guy I also worked with) just happened to be on that side of town for a client meeting and popped in to get some coffee. This guy sees Brad’s boss first and says, “Hey D. Good to see you.” Then he notices Brad (he didn’t know those two were working together now) and says, “And Brad! Hey!” Then he notices me, and says, “And Craig? What the hell is going on here?!”

We all laugh and share a small world moment. Then he sees my portfolio and starts flipping through it. It’s funny because I still have work from my time at Wyse in there and he’s like, “Oh yeah! I remember this project!”

It’s all rather odd.

We finally get back to my interview and it’s all pretty positive. My work is mostly traditional advertising (i.e., print ads, radio, brochures) and the place I’m interviewing for is a digital agency (mostly websites and email) so there’s a little concern there… not so much that I can’t do the job, more that the work I’m showing doesn’t put me in the best light to get hired.

Hands are shaken all around and it’s over.

What follows is a really disappointing series of emails from Brad and the HR department, that boil down to this: you’re awesome, but we’re not going to hire you right now. We’re going to hire a freelancer instead. Catch you next time.

So that’s that.

A year passes. Brad and I stay in touch, and he laments how the freelance writers they’re getting in suck and how they should have hired me.

Then, about five months ago, the creative director tweets “Immediate opening for a copywriter in Cleveland. Send me your resumes.”

I pat myself on the back for being smart enough to add this guy to my Twitter feed after our last meeting and shoot off an email right away.

What happens next is so strange that I still have a bit of trouble believing it’s all for real.

###

#299 In which our hero tries to catch up.

2011-03-28T10:41:00.003-04:00

The blog’s been dark for a couple months not because I don’t have anything to write about, but just the opposite. Lots of big stuff has been happening lately. Some highlights:

Mom’s Health

After all the doom and gloom in the past six months, mom is actually doing really well. I mean, she has COPD and as such, she’ll never have the quality of life she once did. She progressed rapidly from needing oxygen when she exerted herself, to needing it for longer periods while she recovered from illness, to full time. For a long time she keep telling me that she was sure that she’d get off her oxygen as soon as she recovered from the latest bout of flu or pneumonia or whatever.

She doesn’t say that any more.

It’s pretty clear that she is now permanently tethered to her O2 tank. In fact, there was an incident several weeks ago where she lost power in the middle of the night, meaning her oxygen concentrator machine stopped working. She didn’t think she had enough bottled O2 to make it through the night (she only keeps a few small bottles in the house, enough for her to take with her when running errands) and she panicked. She called 9-1-1 and the local fire department brought her a big bottle of O2. Of course, the power came back on an hour later.

She said it was quite the fuss in the neighborhood. She laughed it off, but I know full well that the reason it was a fuss in the neighborhood is that when people see an ambulance in my mother’s driveway, they assume the worst. And they should.

But, as of now mom’s in pretty good shape, all things considered. Even her latest cancer scans came back clear. And the weather’s finally starting to turn, so mom’s getting back out and about. Being how social my mother is, this is a critical turn of events.

Bullying at School

Lily (my 7-year-old) had a run-in with a bully at her daycare. She had mentioned had N. was sometimes mean to her, and both The Scientist and I witness N. being a little bossy, but we really didn’t make much of it.

But one day while my wife was picking up, she was there when this little girl mouthed off to the teacher. The Scientist chided her (that the teacher didn’t immediately address this disrespectful kid is a whole other story) telling her that she was being rude, and shouldn’t talk to her teacher, or any grown-up, like that. She pouted a bit, and stomped off. A couple minutes later one of N’s hangers-on came over and told my wife, “N. says she doesn’t care what you say, because you’re not her mommy.” So The Scientist went over to N. and said, “Y’know what? I know your mommy and maybe I’ll just talk to her about your behavior directly.” This seemed to put the fear of God into her, and she straightened up. For the rest of that day, at least.

But soon after Lily started telling us that N. was bothering her at school. We told her to ignore N. as best as she could and not engage her. But Lily said that she tried that, and N. would follow her around the classroom, taunting her and basically being a shit.

So, the next day of daycare, The Scientist pulled the center director aside and told her what was going on. And then the director pulled N. aside and said something to her. Whatever it was, the situation seems to be handled. N. isn’t bothering Lily any more, and even plays with her sometimes. Lily is such a sweet kid that she holds no grudge whatsoever.

It’s tempting to just dismiss this as kids being kids, but it worries me. Mostly because Lily is such a sensitive soul, and it only takes something minor, like being excluded from group activities by one mean girl, to set her off. And bullies, like the proto-mean girl N., feed off of that. I worry that Lily will constantly be the target of shitty kids who enjoy making other kids cry. Part of me wants to always be there to intervene and smack down anyone who dares hurt my child; but another part of me wants Lily to learn to be tough, and deal with crap like this herself. I’m sure the real answer is somewhere in-between the two.

Employment

And now, the really big news! I quit my job! And got another one! Not necessarily in that order!

I’d been increasingly unhappy at my job for some time. First, it was in Akron, meaning a 45-minute commute every day. Which sucked in terms of gas consumed and wear and tear on my car but, honestly, after five years I had gotten used to the drive. In fact it was kinda nice to have the time to listen to the news or, more often, audio books. But still, in the winter you could count on at least a couple days in which the 45-minute drive turned into two hours or more. And it was always a pain to juggle kid pick-up and afterschool activities with the drive.

The agency had also changed considerably from when I first started. Five years ago it was fairly laid back, and really tried to keep things fun with monthly activities like a 5 o’clock ice cream social, or 2 o’clock margaritas or an impromptu pancake breakfast.

But, over time that stuff started to go away. My department used to have departmental outings; for example, we all took off at noon one day and went bowling. That stopped happening, mostly because the volume of work demanded that we needed people there at their desks churning out the work at all business hours.

And that’s really the biggest thing that got to me, the agency turned into a factory. It felt like we were all on an assembly line, and the overriding goal to was crank out a large volume of work. If it was good work, and creative work, that was a plus. But mostly we needed to hit the deadlines. Which became shorter and shorter, most of the work due in a day or less. And even the projects where we had enough time to give them some good thought got short shrift, since they went to the bottom of the pile so we could address the short deadline stuff.

I had some run-ins with account people who actively dissuaded creative thought in favor of “safe” concepts that would sail by the client. More and more I was put into the position to create copy that wasn’t the best, just the least objectionable.

Everyone in the Creative Department was worn down. I didn’t even put up much of a fight anymore when confronted with absurd deadlines or piss-poor direction. I just rolled over and did what I was told.

Which is the worst possible situation a creative person can him themselves in. Because I really believe that creativity is a muscle, and if you don’t exercise it regularly, it will atrophy and die. I was very much in jeopardy of having that happen. Which could mean that not only was I not doing my job very well, but I might actually be hurting my chances at ever getting another job. I’ve seen co-workers who have a portfolio of work they did five, ten years ago. With nothing creative to show done recently. That’s a huge red flag to a perspective new employer.

Even so, I only half-heartedly looked for another job. And, as it turned out, a job found me. This is such a ridiculous story that I’m going to write it up as its own post. Stay tuned!

###

#298 In which our hero discusses what he's been reading in the past year (2010 edition, part 2)

2011-01-14T08:45:00.001-05:00

Duma Key by Stephen King (audio book)

Ah, good ole’ reliable Stephen King. I keep going back to his audio books because they are comfortable for me. Rarely any big surprises and, oddly enough, rarely any real horror anymore, either. But I enjoy his style and I can always count on him to provide a couple fucked-up moments, usually involving A.) an elderly person cursing like a sailor, B.) an African-American person talking in a dialect that never existed outside of Al Jolson movies, or C.) Both. King didn’t let me down this time either.

As to the story, it was typical King: an ancient evil is awakened and the hero suffers greatly before it is put back to rest. The end.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (audio book)

When this book came out I remember reading some favorable reviews, and being interested in the concept (man involuntarily time travels). I picked it up at the bookstore once and read the first few pages, then put it down. For some reason that I can’t remember now, the beginning didn’t grab me.

But, as I’ve said many times before, my interest level for audio books sets the bar much lower. So when I saw it on the shelf at the library, I gave it a go.

This is very much a chick book. It’s a love story first and foremost, and I’m sure there have been many a geek who picked it up for the science fiction angle and walked away disgusted with all the longing looks and heartfelt absences that make up the heart of the story.

But I loved it.

Not to get all gushy about it, but I’m deeply in love with my wife, so the idea of being suddenly ripped away from a loved one and the hole it leaves in your life is something that I can appreciate. I found myself tearing up in a couple places. That’s the romantic side of me.

As for the geek side, I loved that the author didn’t even fuss with the endlessly discussed paradoxes of time travel. In her novel, when you bump into yourself in the past you don’t cancel each other out or cause a rift in the time stream or whatever… you just have a conversation. And sometimes you even give your past self the head’s up about winning lottery numbers.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (audio book)

Outside of the “Illustrated Classic” version, I’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes before. This is a collection of short stories, and I enjoyed them very much. Doyle is a great writer (obviously, right? But what I mean is that some of the classic writers don’t do it for me, I get bogged down in with their stilted style; but Sherlock Holmes reads well to a modern ear, in my opinion) and I may seek out some of his novel-length works to see how well he develops characters.

Because there’s practically no character development in these short stories. They very much remind me of the “2-Minute Mysteries” I read as a kid. Most follow a very rigid pattern: a mystery is reported, clues are observed, Holmes makes connections that the average man might miss (to the wonderment of Dr. Watson), then he delivers the solution in a monologue, generally with many of the players present.

This isn’t to belittle the writing which, as I said, is very good. And I was surprised with the conclusions of many of the stories because they didn’t follow the pattern above. In some they go to track down the felon and he’s already flown the coop, or he’s died at sea, or something similar. This added an element of realism that I appreciated.

What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson (audio book)

Ugh. I saw the movie adaptation of this book when it came out years ago. I remember it being visually stunning and emotionally powerful. And since I've recently read Matheson's I Am Legend and some of his short stories, I figured I'd give this a go.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this novel was overwrought, overwritten and mostly pretty boring. If I was actually reading it, and not just passively listening to it in my car, I think I would have abandoned it midway through.

The book is clearly a love letter from Matheson to his wife; and I have no doubt that on that level, it is amazingly successful. I'm sure it taps into emotions that can scarcely be expressed on paper. For Matheson and his wife, that is. For me—the awkward third wheel in the equation—it was tough to maintain a level of caring. I cared so little for this book or its characters that, honestly, I can't be bothered to keep writing a review of it.

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

The last physical book I read in 2010. This is a non-fiction book written by a security specialist that provides a lot of practical information on how to predict and recognize violent situations, and how to avoid them and/or prepare yourself for them when they happen.

This was given to me by a friend to help me with some mental roadblocks I've had in the martial art I practice. I don't know how successful it has been in that area… somewhat, I suppose. But as a general textbook and predicting violence, it was very interesting and informative. The major message I walked away with is this: trust your instincts. If you feel nervous or threatened, listen to what your mind is telling you. Even if it isn't readily apparent, you may have picked up on some cues in the environment without consciously recognizing them. Don't automatically dismiss the fear you feel.

I'd recommend this book to just about anyone as a means to be smarter about your safety in the world. And, this is a book that I will definitely make my daughters read when they're older.

And that's it for 2010! I hope to read a few more physical books in the coming year, and get a new CD player for my car so I can get back on the audio book horse.

***

#298 In which our hero discusses what he's been reading in the past year (2010 edition, part 1)

2011-01-11T11:34:00.004-05:00

Here's what I "read" in 2010. I put read in quotes since I listened to many more audiobooks than I did read physical books. You'll notice that this list isn't as long as the 2009 list, and that's because my car CD player stopped working in the last third of the year, greatly curtailing my consumption of books.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (audio book)

I actually started this book in 2009 and finished it off in the beginning of the year. I picked this up at the library on a lark. I liked the sound of the universe the author created, even if I was a little hesitant about the references to Charlotte Brontë. I’ve never read any of her work, and have never been motivated to do so.

And while I continue to be indifferent about Brontë, I loved this book. I find the parallel universe genre attractive, especially when it’s done well. I thought this book was especially well written, and the setting was familiar enough to seem real, and the “alternative” elements woven in skillfully. I enjoyed the protagonist, Thursday Next, as she pursued evil mastermind Acheron Hades through the novel Jane Eyre. I suspect that there’s a lot in this book that I didn’t pick up on, not being well read in the classics, but I liked it nevertheless. So much so, that I’ll be looking for additional books in the series, of which there are several.

The Domostroi: Rules for Russian households in the time of Ivan the Terrible by Carolyn Johnston Pouncy (editor, translator)

I have sort of vested interest in Russian history, as it plays a part in the medieval reenactment group I play with. That said, it often feels like studying and not reading for pleasure when I pick up a book like this—which explains why I haven’t done much reading about Russian history. But, I had hoped this book would be different, more entertaining and less like a written lecture. It mostly was (entertaining, that is). That said, it was still a tough slough in parts, and I felt a great deal of relief when it was done. I’m better off for having read it, though.

The Library Policeman by Stephen King (audio book)

This is from King’s “Four Past Midnight” collection, which I read years ago. I don’t remember much of the story, other than there’s a horrible child rape scene in it performed by a weird old guy with a speech impediment. The audio book is read by Ken Howard and, I must admit, I was intrigued by the prospect of hearing the White Shadow perform an old, lisping pedophile.

As it turns out, Ken Howard can read the hell out of a book! Since I started aggressively listening to audio books, I’ve heard a lot of performers who are good, and a few who were great. I’d put Howard into the great category. He managed to give each character a unique, believable voice of their own; no mean feat with a Stephen King book full of characters who lisp, sputter and scream. And children… it’s hard for an adult to sound like a believable child, but Howard pulls it off pretty well.

The story itself with pretty much typical King: an ancient evil returns to torment a colorful cast of characters in small-town Maine. But I have a soft spot in my heard for his writing, even when it gets strange.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan (audio book)

Maybe it’s because I worked in a restaurant for years (not a Red Lobster, though) and I could relate to a lot of what was discussed, but I really enjoyed this book. Many of the Amazon reviews scored it harshly, criticizing it for being too brief and lacking a real plot. I don’t disagree with that—the book’s about what happens to the crew of a Red Lobster on the last snowy night before they close forever—there is no big plot developments nor any really exciting action, really. But that’s part of the reason I liked it, it was a wonderful character sketch. The characters talked and acted like real, breathing people. And the action, what there was of it, was realistic, too. Because that’s what happens most nights at a restaurant… people come in, food is made and served, minor disasters are cleaned up… that’s it.

I also enjoyed this book because the author gives wonderful descriptions. When he described removing the heavy, damp snow from the parking lot, he wrote that it was like “shoveling wet cake.” I thought that was an amazing choice of words, and it really struck me. I’d read this book again just for the language.

Haunted: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk (audio book)

Palahniuk’s writing can be an acquired taste, but I’ve always enjoyed his work. However, this novel can be taxing, even for a fan, like me.

This is essentially a collection of short stories, strung together with a rather contrived plot device. I enjoyed the short stories on their own merits. But the framing device was sometimes a labor to get through. I mean, Palahniuk’s narratives are often divorced from reality, but this one took the notion of suspension of disbelief and cut it into pieces. At times, I wished I could just enjoy the short stories without having to slough through the rest of it.

That being said, I do admire Palahniuk’s skill as a writer. Many of the concepts he brought up were paid off much later in the work. This really is much more than a collection of unrelated stories; it’s a narrative woven together from more than a dozen different vantage points and voices.

Checking reviews on Amazon, I was amused to see that it’s almost a dead heat between each rating, with 5- and 4-star ratings just barely nudging out 3-, 2- and 1-star ratings.

The Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard (audio book)

I had it in my head that Elmore Leonard wrote westerns. I’ve since realized that I had him confused with Louis L’Amour. Not that westerns are bad, just not my preferred genre. Anyway, the back of this audio book reminded me that Leonard wrote Get Shorty, which I really enjoyed as a movie, and wasn’t a western at all, so I picked it up.

Now I wish I had read his stuff years before.

This particular book is set in the 1920s which, I’ve since read, isn’t his usual time frame. But the setting doesn’t matter, because what hooked me was the action and great dialog. I’ve written before that I love dialog that rings true in the books I read. And all the tough guy talking in this book was fantastic. Halfway into the thing I found myself wanting to talk in the short, sharp cadence of these characters, and maybe pick up a tommy gun and direct a hundred rounds toward the nearest bank robber and/or lawman.

I’ll definitely be reading more of his stuff in the future.

“The Fat Stamp” from The Scent of Spiced Oranges and Other Stories by Les Roberts

This short story was available for download from the author’s website. Les Roberts writes tough guy mysteries, which aren’t really my thing, but I downloaded and read this story because I have a history with Roberts, in a way.

Years ago I took a creative writing class through a local continuing education program. Actually, I took this program every quarter it was offered for a couple of years, until they stopped offering it. The teacher knew Les and had him in a couple of times over the years to give a short lecture about the art and business of writing.

What he had to say was interesting, if not exactly fascinating. But he was (and is) a working author, so there was real value in what he had to say. But one anecdote he related left me cold.

He related how he was at a signing at a local bookstore when a man presented Roberts with a book to sign. As he was doing that, the man asked, “Can I give you some constructive criticism?” To which Roberts replied, “Have you ever won a prestigious award for your writing?” The man had not, so Roberts continued, “Then no, you cannot give me your criticism.”

This stuck me as incredibly rude. Here was this guy, clearly a fan as he was standing in line to have his book signed, and Roberts insults him. I mean, I understand his rationale, that guy probably didn’t really have any amazingly illuminating insight to offer. But what if he had? What if he told Roberts something he had never thought of before? What if he gave him some tiny nugget of information that he could expand into a best-selling novel?

But my real question is, what harm would it have done to just let the guy talk? Maybe Roberts would have had to suffer through some nonsense for a couple of minutes… so what? Roberts is out five minutes, and this guy continues to be an admiring fan.

By insulting the guy, I think he risked losing a fan. I suppose if you’re Stephen King or John Grisham it doesn’t matter if you lose a fan or a hundred. But mid-list authors should be more careful about their fan base, I think.

Moreover, he told the story with glee, and clearly felt like he got one over this dumb rube who would dare critique the work of The Great Les Roberts.

So, I’ve been cold on Roberts ever since. That, coupled the fact that he doesn’t write a genre that appears to me, is the reason I’ve never read any of his stuff. Until this short story.

I found it unimpressive.

It was never meant to be a crowning achievement (and that’s probably why it is available for free on the Internet) but it’s just flat. There are some nice observational details in it, but they aren’t enough to save the story from its predictable progression, and implausible conclusion.

Guess I wasn’t really missing anything.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (audio book)

I remember hearing about this book on NPR. It caught my attention as the protagonist was described as a “Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien.” However, I had forgotten about it until I stumbled upon it at the library (the source of all the off-beat books I consume).

The book started with a quote from Galactus, so you know I was hooked from the beginning. In fact, the entire narrative was sprinkled with fanboy references, some of which I’m sure flew over my head.

The book is really three books in one… detailing the life stories of the titular Oscar Wao, his mother and his grandfather. I enjoyed Oscar’s story very much. It was uncomfortably familiar in some parts, funny in some parts, and ultimately heartbreaking. The other two stories… not so much. They seemed to drag in parts, and I felt myself wishing that the author would get back to Oscar. That said, they’re very well written, and just as my attention would start to drift, the strong writing would pull me back in.

This is one of the times that the format (audio book) made the experience less enjoyable for me. The disks themselves were in back shape, and skipped terribly, forcing me to fast forward over big chunks of the story. But the structure of the novel itself—numerous footnotes, untranslated Spanish dialog—would have been more enjoyable to read, rather than listen to. I should mention, however, that the voice actor who read the book was fantastic.

Also, this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. I’m going out on a limb and say that this is probably the only Pulitzer-winning novel in which The Watcher plays a significant role.

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard (audio book)

As stated above, I was excited to get into another Elmore Leonard book. Sadly, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. It was a little slow, and didn’t build to any big moment that really excited me. Reading Amazon.com reviews, a lot of people agree with me and found this to be one of Leonard’s lesser works. That’s too bad. I’ll probably give him another chance at some point in the future, but I’ll be sure to pick a highly-rated book, not just what happens to be available at the library.

To be continued.

###

#297 In which our hero completes the saga of his mother's health. For now.

2011-01-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

I've been very meh about blogging lately—"lately" being the past six months or so. But I feel like I need to come full circle on my posts about mom's health.

Last I wrote mom had been released from the hospital and the girls and I went down to have thanksgiving with her and my youngest sister. It was a nice visit, but I couldn't shake a subdued feeling of gloom… mom's health wasn't good and maybe this was the last Thanksgiving I would ever have with her.

On the table at the time were a suspect spot on an x-ray of mom's lung and an unexplored lump in her breast. I haven't mentioned the lump before, since mom has successfully had a lumpectomy for a small breast cancer tumor in the past and it seemed like small potatoes compared to the possible lung cancer thing.

The really scary thing about the spot in mom's lung were that if it did turn out to be lung cancer, there wasn't much that could be done about it. In fact, mom's doctor told her, point blank: "There's really no reason to biopsy it right now. If it is a tumor, your lungs are too weak to handle radiation, and chemotherapy isn't very effective against lung tumors. So we might as well wait until your healthier and re-do the x-ray."

Yikes.

The doctor didn't say so in so many words, but basically it sounds like if mom does get lung cancer, then that's it. No effective treatment. A death sentence.

I know that's how mom took the news. It took a while to get this particular bit of information out of her, because she didn't want to tell me.

I'm 42 years old, and mom still worries about upsetting me.

But! As it turns out, they did re-do the x-ray when mom was feeling better, and it came back clear. The original spot was apparently some pneumonia that appeared to be a mass on the film.

Then! A week or so later, they re-did the mammogram, and that came back clear, too!

All in all, an amazingly happy series of phone calls.

Now, mom's still compromised and more frail then anyone really wants to admit, I think. And now that winter is here in full swing, she's hunkered down in her house and basically won't leave for the next three months. It's not how she wants to live, but it's how she got through last winter without getting sick and ending up in the hospital again.

Bottom line: mom is pretty much status quo for the moment. Her "normal" is greatly reduced from what it was when I still lived at home. Hell, it's reduced from just a couple of years ago.

But she's not checking out yet.

###

#296 In which our hero thankfully doens't have to spend his Thanksgiving in the hospital.

2010-11-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

Since I’m all about being timely with this blog, I’m updating my Thanksgiving vacation nearly a week after the fact.

The big news is that we didn’t have to celebrate the holiday in the hospital with mom. It went down like this:

Mom saw a bunch of different doctors while she was in the hospital: an oncologist, a pulmonologist, the doctor on rounds, and her regular GP. The oncologist (as mom tells the story) was very eager to biopsy the spot in her lung. Mom wasn’t keen on the procedure, as you can expect, and was sure the doctor was only pressing the issue to get more money from mom’s insurance company. I rolled my eyes at this notion, but still, sticking a needle into what may be a patch of pneumonia didn’t sound like the smartest thing in the world.

Finally, mom’s GP decided that it may very well be just pneumonia (and not cancer) and chose a conservative approach. She told mom that if mom could remain fever-free for 48 hours, that she’s get to go home with oral antibiotics to knock out the rest of the pneumonia. Then they’d repeat the chest x-ray to see if there was still a suspect spot on her lung. If so, they’d formulate a new plan of attack then.

Well, mom kept the fever away for two days and was released. This was on Saturday, which gave her a couple of days to relax before my sister, Linda, arrived home for Thanksgiving.

Part of me thinks I should be happy about mom being out of the hospital. And I am… but I remind myself that mom was only given a reprieve, not a pardon. There’s still something going on in mom’s lungs and, given her history, it could very well be cancer. I worry that delaying a biopsy only delays treatment, which could be a serious thing. Then again, mom is 78, and you have to figure in how hard the treatment would be on her.

Sigh. This brings up all sorts of topics that I wish I could just ignore and have them go away.

But, as for Thanksgiving itself, it was very nice. The girls and I drove down to mom’s house (The Scientist ended up having to drive to Columbus that day to fetch her horse from OSU Vet Hospital which is a different and much more expensive story).

I think it was killing mom a little bit to sit on the couch and watch my sister and I cooking. But I think is really starting to understand her limitations; plus, she has confidence in my ability as a cook (maybe more so than my sister’s).

Everything was delicious, especially the 20-pound bird that mom got.

It was a relaxed visit, and even the girls were good for the most part. My 5-year-old did have to sit in time out at one point during dinner, but I think that was mostly because she didn’t think I’d actually interrupt Thanksgiving dinner to do it. She was sadly mistaken.

Mom spent a lot of time on the couch, and she dozed after dinner. Which I can’t criticize, because I wanted nothing more than to take a nap myself. Mom’s just slower now, with less energy. She seems to be in decent humor. But she seems old. At 78 I guess she’s earned that right, but it’s just not a way that I’m accustomed to seeing her.

I hate thinking that this might be the last Thanksgiving I have with my mother, but it might be. Or she might stick around for another decade. She’s certainly a tough old broad.

###

#295 In which our hero discusses his mother and her declining health.

2010-11-22T16:12:00.000-05:00

My mom is in the hospital.

She had been running a fever, off and on, for about 10 days, she told me. I talked to her on Thursday last week, and she was going to the doctor (again) the following day. When she did, the doctor decided it was best to admit her.

My mother is 78 and, even though no-one really ever talks about it, she is in declining health. She was always very active, playing golf, participating in bowling leagues, teaching swimming lessons… my mother isn’t the kind of person to just sit around and watch TV. Even as she got older she stayed busy with more golf, garden club, her church, meals on wheels, band boosters and the like. Maybe she slowed down a little, but it was hardly noticeable.

Mom also smoked for most of her life. She didn’t stop until after my dad died in 1993. Even then, she only quit because she was getting sick and having breathing issues. And even thought that gives her close to 20 years as a non-smoker, the damage has already been done.

Mom has COPD, and it’s really limited what she can do. She starting having breathing issues several years ago (this is after she quit smoking) and a series of doctors tried a series of things to help her. It got to the point where she was using bottled oxygen any time she exerted herself. Then it got to the point where she had use her oxygen at night while she slept. Now, mom uses oxygen all the time. She was a big machine that somehow concentrates oxygen in the air, and she’s connected to it via a long tube. Whenever she goes out, she brings along a small bottle of oxygen.

The COPD has also made mom more susceptible to breathing/lung problems, most notably pneumonia. Two winters ago mom had a really bad case of pneumonia and ended up in the hospital for two weeks. That was scary.

This last winter she made a concerted effort to avoid people/situations that might make her sick. She was basically a shut-in all winter. She managed to avoid pneumonia, but for an active and incredibly social creature like my mom, it was really tough.

So when mom told me she was being admitted, I assumed it was pneumonia again. And I was right… she did have a patch of pneumonia in her right lung.

When she hadn’t told me, up to this point, is that her doctor also found something worrying in her left lung. Something that looked a lot like a malignant tumor.

Mom had a PET Scan that showed something was definitely there. I found out later that one of her doctors told her that it was most likely lung cancer. She played it cool with me, only telling me that no-one knew for sure what it is.

It’s almost funny that mom is still trying to protect me from bad news, even though I’m 41 years old.

The plan was to stabilize her, try to get the fever under control, then do a needle biopsy of the area to find out for sure what it was. Again, mom played it cool. But I think she was really scared about the biopsy. I have to believe that any hardcore smoker is just waiting for the day they’re told they have lung cancer… and mom thought her day had come.

I got all of this info on Friday. I wanted to get down and visit mom, but I was out of town all day Saturday. So I drove down Sunday afternoon.

Mom looked kinda bad.

Not death’s door bad or anything, but not good. Mostly because mom is always pretty fastidious about her appearance, especially her hair. But her fair was a mess when I got there, and she was hooked up to various tubes and wires. She was tired, but in decent spirits, all things considered.

There was no news to report. Her doctor was going to talk to her on Monday and, most likely, the biopsy would be preformed on Tuesday.

So we sat and chatted. I don’t know what you’re supposed to talk about with a person who possibly has a fatal condition, but mom and I talked about a variety of things, including my children, my achy hands, her lawn, and how she believed the doctors wanted to do more tests just to run up her bill.

We also talked about Christmas. This has been a hot topic between my sisters and I recently. My sisters and I are spread across three states and two continents, so everyone getting together at once is a rare occasion. But we always make sure that someone is with mom over the holidays; either at her house or at one of ours. This has become more challenging recently as mom’s health gets worse.

I’m the closest to mom, and it often falls to me to be with her for Christmas. Which is usually fine, but this year we’re taking the kids to California to spend Christmas with The Scientist’s side of the family. Plus, we’re taking the girls to Disneyland for the first time. It should be a fantastic trip. But that means that I’m out of the equation for Christmas visits.

There’s a very real chance that mom might be alone for Christmas.

Well, that’s not true, really. My middle sister has been talking to mom’s one neighbor and they assure her that mom can spend Christmas with them. But it’s still not the same.

Mom got a little melancholy when we were talking about Christmas. She told me she was just going to give everyone a check, and we could buy whatever we wanted with it. This is a simple, sensible solution in my mind, and mom’s done this for the past five years or so. It never occurred to me that mom would rather shop, if she could.

She told me that Christmas shopping just hasn’t been the same since my father died (this was in 1993). She told me how much fun they had creating Christmas lists, then going out shopping, then hiding the presents from us kids.

This was a bit of a shocker to me. By the time I was old enough to really take stock of my parents’ marriage, then had been married 25 years or more. They never seemed UNhappy to me, but they never really struck me as being really happily in love, either. They just were my parents and they did more things apart then they did together. That’s just the way it was.

To imagine them laughing and fooling around as they shopped for their kids’ Christmas presents… I have a hard time imagining it.

But I do know what it’s like to shop with my wife, and we most certainly do laugh and fool around and have a good time. To have that, then to have my wife die and have to face Christmas shopping alone…? I don’t know whereas I could face it. Maybe that’s why mom just started giving us money.

Mom also mentioned how she didn’t want to end up on a machine. “If something goes wrong,” she said, “Just toss me out with the trash.”

I don’t think mom is giving up on life. But she is facing the end of her, and that cannot be fun. “I’ve had a good life,” she told me. “But the last two years have been shitty.”

Driving home I was sad. Not so much at the prospect of losing my mother, but more I’m sad that my mother, the active, sometimes obnoxious, tends-to-drink-too-much-at-parties social butterfly is stuck in a hospital bed, alone.

###

#294 In which our hero foolishly leaves his child alone in the car to hilarious (?) effect.

2010-10-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

Couple weeks ago I picked up the girls from daycare. This is not an unusual thing, since The Scientist and I split picking up duties pretty much 50/50, on average. When we got home I got out of the car, then opened the rear passenger side door to let the girls out. Macey, who is 5, instead of getting out, climbed across the seats to sit in the driver’s seat.

Now, this isn’t unusual either. Both girls love to do this. Mostly, I’d guess, because I make a big deal out of it, saying things like “Hey! You aren’t old enough o drive!” or “Let me see your driver’s license!” The result is always much giggling.

Macey in particular likes to turn the wheel (what little she can) and push buttons. I’ve forbidden them from honking the horn though, because that’s obnoxious. There’s been a few occasions where I’ve turned on the car later to have the wipers on, which makes me smile.

So, I got the mail, then went to unlock the door to the house. About this time I heard Lily say, in a somewhat alarmed voice, “Daddy! The car’s rolling away!”

And indeed it was.

I turned to find it already halfway down the driveway. Our driveway has a slight incline, which I discovered is just enough to set the car rolling if a little girl somehow manages to put it into neutral.

I clearly remember saying, “Holy shit!” then taking off running after the car. Across the street from our driveway is a big tree in the neighbor’s yard. I really don’t know how, but the car managed to miss it, and roll partway up the opposite driveway. I tore open the door and yanked the wheel away from the tree, but the car was already losing speed by this time. I sat down and jammed on the brakes.

Amazingly, no harm done.

As soon as I opened the door Macey started yelling, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Once the car was back in park, I lifted her up and gave her a big hug. I think she was more worried about me being angry with her, because it was only after she saw that I wasn’t going to yell at her that she started to cry.

She was a little scared, but not terribly so. She recovered quickly.

For my part, I laughed it off. I was still amazed that the car didn’t roll into that tree, but considering that it didn’t, then no harm done, huh?

It wasn’t until I told The Scientist the story later that I realized what a close call it really was.

“Good thing Lily wasn’t behind the car,” she said.

I hadn’t thought of that.

“And good thing the neighbor kids weren’t out,” she said.

I hadn’t thought of that, either. But she was right, our street, especially the stop right in front of our driveway, is usually full of kids playing football or riding their bikes. If the car had rolled into a pack of unsuspecting kids, someone could have been killed.

You see stuff like this on the news every day, and you wonder how the parents can be so irresponsible. Well, this is how. By letting your kid fool around in the car, just like she has done a dozen times before.

So, the girls and I had a talk, and we all agreed not to play in the car any more. It didn’t take much convincing.

That’s one less thing to worry about. Until they turn 16 and want to get their driver’s licenses, that is.

###

#293 In which our hero helps his wife enter a contest thereby exposing some of his lesser qualities. Pt. 3

2010-09-27T09:49:00.002-04:00

When we last left our hero, his wife had just lost the contest.

My wife was devastated. She had worked so damn hard on this contest. She cried and cried.

I was furious. Furious that cheating had won the day, not effort. Furious that the people running the contest over at major horse feed manufacturer HAD to see what was going on, but did nothing to fix it.

During that last, horrible week I vented a good deal of my anger and frustration on EXTREME SICK. I wrote pretty nasty things on her posts, still anonymously. I called her a cheater. I said she didn’t deserve to win. I called her a coward when she refused to publish my comments.

It was not my finest moment.

But, I walked away from all the bullshit once the contest was over. There was no appeal, nothing to do about it except try to comfort my wife.

But then. Oh, but then.

EXTREME SICK wrote a snotty post on her personal blog about how she wished horse people could just be nicer to each other, and how she tracked the IP address of posts to learn that one of her competitors was posting nasty things to her blog (EXTREME SICK thought it was The Scientist posting, not me) and oh, woe-is-me why can’t we all just get along?

This completely flew in the face of the confrontational posts she had made during the contest and was clearly nothing more than her rubbing my wife’s face in her victory.

So I commented on EXTREME SICK’s shitty post, using my real name this time. I told her that I knew she had cheated her way into first place, and hoped she was proud of how smart she was to suss out my real identity from my IP address. I also told her that I had an intense dislike of her; a visceral reaction that struck me when I saw her very first video.

I also told her that I was walking away. There was nothing I could do to sabotage her victory, and I wasn’t going to try. I was done.

That is, I was done until her husband emailed me the following day.

He used my work email, which I suppose he though was threatening in some fashion. I wasn’t impressed. I mean, I can use Google, too.

He called me names and was basically an arrogant prick. He said that I could “make this all go away” by apologizing. There were some veiled threats, even though I’m not sure what he had planned. Tell my boss that I bad-mouthed a woman online? Try to hack my credit report?

The ironic thing is that I was sincere about walking away from the whole thing. Until I got this email. I responded in kind, reiterating that I knew he cheated for his wife (funny, but neither of them ever denied this) and that he needed to drop the bullshit posturing because he didn’t intimidate me and wasn’t likely to any time soon.

Basically, I prepared to go to war.

Now, I have to say I can’t really blame the guy. He was defending his wife. I get that. I would have done the same thing. But threatening me, even is a round-about way, was more than I could bear.

Then I told my wife about the exchange, and things got REALLY ugly.

She was angry at me. Not, not angry, enraged. She told me she wanted to be done with this bullshit, that she had cried enough, and that I was just fanning the flames.

Fuck that guy, was my response.

She wasn’t happy with this. She demanded that I apologize immediately. She frankly pushed some buttons that she should not have. But she made her point.

I apologized to EXTREME SICK and her arrogant prick of a husband.

I emailed them both to express that these past few weeks weren’t me at my best, and it certainly wasn’t an accurate representations of who I really am. Worst of all, my actions cast my wife in a negative light, and perhaps made her seem like a bad person. That, I wrote to them, was unforgiveable.

My apology was heartfelt, even though I doubt they believed a word of it.

That done, I did walk away. I haven't read a word about the contest, EXTREME SICK's personal blog or anything that might get me fired up again.

Looking back now, I’m rather amazed at my behavior. I mean, I turned into the worse of Internet trolls, not something I would have expected from myself. It was driven by anger and frustration, but that didn’t make it any more excusable.

In a way, I’m glad it happened. I learned something valuable--it would have been great if I could have learned this lesson without having my wife’s hopes and dreams violently dashed like they were, but I had no control over that.

I learned that it’s waaay easier to turn into an abusive dick when cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet. This is no surprise to anyone who’s ever read a thread on just about any message board ever, but it had never happened to me. It was alarmingly easy for me to take on the role of troll. And when it was happening, I felt… not good, but empowered. Like lashing out could actually make a difference.

It didn’t of course. Not in any positive way.

But, I’m hopeful that next time the roles are reversed, as they surely will be some day, that I can step back and remember that the asshole at the keyboard on the other end of the Internet maybe isn’t a dick by nature, maybe he’s just so enflamed by something that he’s lost his mind for a minute.

Like I did.

###

#292 In which our hero helps his wife enter a contest thereby exposing some of his lesser qualities. Pt. 2

2010-09-24T14:34:00.003-04:00

When we last left our hero, his wife was suddenly down by more than 1000 votes in an Internet contest.

This miraculous accumulation of votes seems more than a little fishy to me. The Scientist did a little Internet sleuthing and discovered that EXTREME SICK’s husband was a web administrator.

As it turns out, The Scientist’s brother is bit of a computer deity, so she asked him if he thought there could be cheating going on. He looked at how the website was set up, and reported that anyone with even a little background in web administration would be able to exploit the system to rack up a boat-load of votes without much effort. More to the point, it could be set up to be virtually undetectable for the people overseeing the contest.

There were a couple back and forth messages from The Scientist to the contest reps questioning just how things were supposed to be working. It was during this period that we were told that you could actually vote FIVE times a day (not just once, as we were told from the beginning), if you cleared your cache after every vote. This pissed me off royally. I suspected that EXTREME SICK figured this out early and that this was the source of many of these mysterious votes.

In short order EXTREME SICK was in the lead by thousands of votes. It was clear that there was no catching here. I don’t doubt for an instant that the majority of these votes were fraudulent. And I was pretty angry about. You’re taught that “cheaters never prosper” when you’re a kid, but it was clear that this cheater was going to prosper the whole way to a free trip to Kentucky.

And then something ugly happened. I started to comment on her posts. Anonymously.

I like to believe that it was the tenor of her writing that put me over the edge. Because every post was written like a 14-year-old’s diary entry, full of over-the-top expressions and snarky comments. For example, she wrote that most Dressage riders (my wife rides Dressage, remember) wore “clown make-up” during their rides. In my anger and frustration, I took a few pot-shots at her via comments. Nothing too terrible, but certainly nothing kind.

And even worse than her writing was when she wasn’t writing. The idea of the contest was to post every day for a month. She wouldn’t post for days at a time. And, amazingly, even when she hadn’t posted in days, her vote tally continued to rise.

So my anonymous comments on her posts started to become much meaner. I expressed how she was obviously cheating, and she didn’t deserve to win.

But even as EXTREME SICK’S votes reached untouchable (and unbelievable) levels, I still thought The Scientist would win the contest. Remember that it was the top TWO vote-getters that would receive the prize. The Scientist and the #3 woman were pretty close in votes, but my wife seemed to keep just ahead of her.

I should mention that this #2 placement was due to the incredible outpouring of support from our friends and family. And not just close friends… there were a lot of friends of friends who voted their asses off. I heard stories about people going to their university’s computer lab and going down the row, voting five times from each machine. It was really touching how hard people worked to prop up my wife’s vote count.

But no-one worked as hard as The Scientist. She made calls, drove out to barns, interviewed people, took lessons on horses, tried new and sometimes dangerous things and recorded everything on video so she could share her experiences. Incredibly, she managed to get first-hand experience with all eight disciplines over the course of a month. She even threw in an extra discipline when she went to train with a mounted horse “posse” so she could know what that was like.

I’ve rarely been more proud of my wife. She kicked ass top to bottom.

On the strength of her video serious, I still expected her to come in second. This would cause some awkward moments if she had to share a booth or whatever with EXTREME SICK, but that’s a small price to pay.

Then something happened in the last week of the contest. The Scientist dropped to third.

She was still regularly posting her Great 8 series, our friends were still out beating the bushes for votes… but she started to slip. Then she started to fall. It was gut-wrenching.

EXTREME SICK was about TEN THOUSAND votes ahead of #2 at this point, so no-one was ever going to catch up to that. But The Scientist was still neck-in-neck for a long time. Then about Tuesday, she was behind by 200 or so votes. Then Wednesday it was 500. Soon it was more than 1,000.

I kept a brave face for her, but by Thursday I was pretty sure she was going to lose. Did I think the second place girl was cheating, too? Yep. But there was nothing I could do about it. And at least she had the sense to keep the lead to hundreds of votes, not thousands.

The last day of the contest came and that was it. The Scientist was in third place, by about 1,200 votes.

To be concluded.

###

#291 In which our hero helps his wife enter a contest thereby exposing some of his lesser qualities. Pt. I

2010-09-13T15:47:00.005-04:00

Couple of months ago, my wife entered a contest. It was fun at first. But it didn’t end that way. Here’s what happened:

A major horse feed manufacturer who will remain un-named in this post was sponsoring a contest in which the grand prize was a trip to the World Equestrian Games. Now if you, like me, had never heard of the World Equestrian Games (or “WEG,” as all the cool kids like to call it) all you need to know is that it’s a big F-ing deal in the horse riding community.

If you follow that link above you’ll see that it is “considered by many horsemen to be more important than the Olympics.” Some of the best riders and horses in the world would be at this thing. It was also a big deal that it was being held in the United States for the first time ever.

The Scientist got wind of this contest and emailed me, writing, “I’d love to win this thing!”

The deal was that this major horse feed manufacturer wanted to send two people to act as bloggers/correspondents (or “blogospondents” as they put it) who would report from the show daily with blog posts. WEG is a two-week event, so one winner would go the first week, the other the second week.

The deal was that you had to put together a video that introduced yourself, and quickly outlined why you’d be a good choice to go to the show. Major horse feed manufacturer would select four finalists from the entries, then they’d be posted to a website where people could vote on their favorite finalist. The top two vote-getters would go to the show.

So we shot a 60-second entry video. You can see it here.

The deadline for entries came and went and we waited with bated breath to see if she was going to make it to the finals. And, despite quite a bit of “oh, I’ll probably not make it” my wife did indeed get the call telling her that she was one of four finalists. Yah!

It took a week or so to get everything set up (on major horse feed manufacturer's side) but eventually The Scientist and three other women were put up on a voting site.

Now, the idea was that each contestant would post a blog entry daily for a month running and people would vote—daily—on who they liked the best. Or which blog entry was the most interesting that day. Or whatever.

This element of the contest is what would make the contest experience so fucking terrible in the end. But more about that later.

A month worth of daily blog posts is, in the best of cases, a little daunting. When you’re trying to make them super awesome posts so people will vote for you, it’s even more intimidating.

So, to help fill up the time, The Scientist had an idea. There are eight disciplines featured at WEG (dressage, jumping, endurance, vaulting, driving, eventing, reining and para-dressage), so she would write a post about each discipline. Better yet—she would find a trainer in each discipline and actually give it a go!

So, to keep this in perceptive, remember that my wife rides dressage and, other than the occasional train ride, she hasn’t trained anything else in the last 15 years or so. So she was planning on tackling skills that were alien to what she knew. And she was going to do all of this in 30 days or less.

Now, my wife is an over-achiever, and when she sets her mind to do something, that shit generally gets done. And she certainly wanted to win this contest. But this seemed like a pretty huge challenge, even for her. I mean, she didn’t even know if she could find a trainer for each of these disciplines in the area!

So she started making phone calls.

She talked to people who pointed her to other people and she started to line things up. Some of the disciplines were easy… her trainer is good friends with a jumping trainer, and The Scientist would be welcomed to come over for a crash course in jumping. Hmm, maybe not the best choice of terms.

Some were a lot more challenging to find, like para-dressage.

Now, the idea was that she would take a lesson in each discipline, and video the entire thing. I, in turn, would edit it together and post it to YouTube for the world to see. She called the video series “Sheri’s Great 8.”

The first discipline she did was reining. You can see the video here.

About this time, the voting opened.

For the entire first week, The Scientist was in the lead. By hundreds of votes. Two other contestants were in second with a nearly matching number of votes, and the last place contestant was waaay last, by hundreds of votes.

The way the voting shook out the first week seemed right to me. I mean, yeah, I wanted my wife to win, and her being in first place was great. But more to the point, I thought her posts were the most interesting. This insane quest to find eight trainers and try eight new things in a month aside, I found her writing the most genuine and engaging. The middle two women were fine… readable, mostly enjoyable, but they weren’t writing about anything that I found engaging. And they certainly weren’t going out and trying new things like my wife was. The last place woman wrote in a style that I found annoying and grating. She wrote things like: “The equestrian world is going EXTREME with SICK new gear and events!!!” This style of writing didn’t appeal to me and, judging by the dead last placement, it didn’t appeal to a lot of other people, either.

Now, a word about the voting. Major horse feed manufacturer set it up so that anyone on the Internet could vote. You didn’t have to register, provide any personal information or do anything other than press the VOTE button beneath the photo of the contestant you liked. We didn’t realize how big a problem this was until a couple days into the contest.

I was, naturally, following the voting like a hawk. And one day my wife’s vote count suddenly dropped by 60 votes. She emailed the technical representative for the contest about this, her fear being that somehow a wire got crossed somewhere and some of her votes were being shunted to another contestant’s tally.

She was told that her total was reduced because several of her votes registered as coming from the same IP address in a short amount of time, indicating that some sort of trickery was involved. As it turned out, what happened was that I sent out a mass email to my company and said, “Hey! Vote for my wife!” And out of an employee roster of 200 people, sixty of them said, “why not?” and voted.

For what it’s worth, this wasn’t just conjecture on my part. The technical rep confirmed that the IP address in question was from my company, and my IT guys confirmed that, due to the company firewall, it would look, from the outside, as if all of those votes had come from a single IP address. I even had the director of IT shoot an email to the rep confirming that those votes were on the up-and-up.

And this is where things started to get a little shitty.

We were basically told, “too bad.” The contest rules stated one vote/one IP address per day, and that was that. Out of the hundreds of potential votes that could come from my co-workers, only ONE would be counted per day. This seemed grossly unfair, but there wasn’t any appealing it.

But, the blogging continued, and by Thursday evening, The Scientist was still well in the lead, and the EXTREME SICK contestant was well in last place.

Then Friday morning came. EXTREME SICK started to get votes. A LOT of votes. In fact, by late afternoon she was neck-and-neck with the middle of the pack. As evening pressed on she started to threaten The Scientist’s lead. By Saturday morning, she was in first place, by a couple hundred votes.

All in all, she gained more than ONE THOUSAND votes in the span of 24 hours.

And things were just starting to get bad.

To be continued.

###

#290 In which our hero writes his annual letter to his father, 2010 edition.

2010-06-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

Dear Dad,

Yesterday was Father’s Day. It really snuck up on me this year. Macey brought home a foam door hanger covered in ink stamps and glitter glue (still wet) early in the week, then I forgot about it.

The actual day was pretty low-key. The Scientist had to work, so I played with the girls and surfed the Internet all morning. We went to the store, had McDonalds for lunch, played outside… just a fairly relaxed day.

Saturday morning I realized that I needed to post my annual letter to you. It got me down a bit that that was my attitude… that I “needed” to post, not that I wanted to.

I’m actually at a bit of a loss as to what to write. It feels like I’ve covered a lot in the past… your sense of humor, the horrible injustice that you died before meeting my wife and kids, and so on.

More than any other single person, you’ve had the biggest influence on the man I am today. So why do I feel my connection to you fading? The obvious answer, of course, is that you died 17 years ago. Couple of years after you died I stopped having bad dreams about you. Couple of years after that I stopped thinking about you every day. I know think about calling Mom, never Mom and Dad.

It makes me sad, makes me feel like a bad son.

But, I don’t imagine that railing against God for taking you or obsessively pondering what you would do in a given situation every day would be any better. Saying, “I miss my dad” feels like a disconnected thing, like I’m talking about a friend I had in grade school, someone I lost touch with a long, long time ago.

But, it’s not like I only have bad or weird feelings about you. The very fact that I’m here, living my life, is keeping your legacy alive. Mom sometimes calls me “Ted,” which tells me that even after all these years, even with the cold connection I sometimes feel with you, that I’m probably more like you that I consciously realize.

And that somehow makes it better.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Your son,

Craig.

***

FLAG HARANGUE

2010-05-26T09:44:00.000-04:00

This morning I noticed that a friend of mine of Facebook (a real friend, BTW, not just a “Facebook friend”) had joined a Facebook group called “WE SUPPORT COL VAN T. BARFOOT'S (RET) EFFORT TO FLY THE U.S. FLAG.” This piqued my interest because who’s preventing people from displaying the flag? Also, I’m a natural cynic, so I assumed there was more to the story.

So I clicked to see what the hubbub was. Here’s the official group description:

90-year-old Retired Army Colonel and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Van T. Barfoot has been ordered by his homeowner's association to stop displaying his U.S. flag on his own flagpole in front of his own home. The homeowner's association disapproves of the 21 foot flagpole (not the flag) and has now hired a law firm and legal proceedings against him appear to be pending.

It continues, but that’s the gist of it. As of this moment, there are 62,884 members of this group. That’s more than 60 thousand people who read this description and said, “Hell no! No Big Brother government organization is going to keep a veteran from proudly flying the stars and strips on my watch!”

But, out of those 62,884 people, I wonder how many really read the news stories the page linked to or, really, took note of this one line: The homeowner's association disapproves of the 21 foot flagpole (not the flag).

Clearly, no-one is telling this war hero that he can’t display the flag, they’re just saying that a 21-foot flagpole is too damn high. That’s a flagpole TWO STORIES high. Maybe these homeowner’s regulations stem from safety concerns. I mean, if 21-foot of metal pipe fell on your head while you were out walking the dog, wouldn’t you be upset?

Also, that’s the job of homeowner organizations, to make rules and regulations that all homeowners agree to live by. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Col. Barfoot didn’t review these regulations before erecting his flagpole.

And maybe he did a half-ass job of it. Just because he’s a hero doesn’t mean he can pour cement. Maybe the thing threatened to crash into his neighbor’s house in every moderate wind?

Or, maybe it’s the butchest flagpole you’ve ever seen and the homeowners’ organization is a bunch of tight-assed jerks. Actually, as I read more about the homeowners’ association, it sounds like that’s exactly what they are.

But the point of my rant, though, is that tens of thousands of people signed up for this group; most without bothering to look deeper into the issue. And this grassroots movement was successful! After Fox News (ugh) got hold of it and the story went national, and after many calls and letters from the nation, the homeowners’ association backed off.

I do have to wonder though, if this was a story about someone wanting to display the Confederate Flag if it would have gotten so much traction in the news? What if it was a legal immigrant wanting to display the flag of their home country? Would the Governor of the state weighed in on the issue then?

I’m pretty sure Fox News wouldn’t pick up that story.

Resolution Absolution

2010-04-05T10:24:00.002-04:00

I made several resolutions this past year; or rather, I kept telling myself I needed to make several resolutions. Just mulling them over in my head doesn’t count; they need to be published on this page.

But, history has shown that I’m not really good with keeping resolutions, at least, not for any length of time. So, I am taking a cue from Matthew Baldwin (aka Defective Yeti) and presenting these as “projects,” not resolutions.

I’m better at working on projects. Not much better, but better. And the irony that the year is already a quarter over before I’m even writing this stuff now isn’t lost on me.

2010 PROJECTS

Project Name: Paid Publication

Description: I want to get a fiction story published. In a real magazine. And I want to get paid for it.

Status: I’ve been writing a lot more lately. Short stories. That’s the first step, having something to send out. It’s also the easy part, in a way, because everything I write is brilliant until someone else sees it. Next steps are picking up the new Writer’s Market and start sending out pages again.

Project Name: Game Thing

Description: I’ve had an idea for a genre-specific board game kicking around in my head for quite some time now. I’ve even sketched out some ideas and written some rules. I want to finally get it to a play test stage.

Status: I’ve done nothing with this in 2010.

Project Name: Online Store

Description: This is directly tied to the Game Thing above. I’ve played with the idea of setting up an online store to sell the above game (when it exists) as well as a few other things I have in mind.

Status: I registered a URL for it end of last year; poked around in PayPal a bit; have done nothing since.

Project Name: Fitness

Description: I want to get in better shape. This has everything to do with the fact that I’m in my 40s now, and there are physical things I want to achieve.

Status: I had a friend at work who’s serious about weightlifting/fitness create a weight lifting plan for me, and I’ve pretty been good about keeping to it. I can actually see results. Now that it’s warm enough to run, I’m hoping I can diminish some of this spare tire.

That's all I can think of right now, although I feel like I've missed something. Maybe the last one should be project: write things down as you think of them.

###

#289 In which our hero makes a pointless post.

2010-03-24T09:45:00.002-04:00

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that most of what I do at my job is pointless.

As my long-time readers (both of you) already know, I work in advertising. I actually love it, which seems to fly in the face of what I’ve written above. But I don’t see advertising like other people do, i.e., blaringly loud TV commercials that interrupt your favorite show just as it’s getting good, or obnoxiously scented ads that fall into your lap when you open your favorite magazine.

I see it as a dynamic job in which I help connect people with products they need in creative, entertaining ways. I get to do something different every day, and am faced with new challenges that push me to improve my skills.

That is to say, that’s what my job should be. That’s not the day-to-day reality.

No, the fact is that at my current agency my real job is to creative advertising that makes the client happy. That’s job 1. Not connecting with customers, or positioning the brand or, even, selling product. It’s making the client happy.

And not even that, really. What I’m really tasked with is not making the client unhappy. So, if I work on advertising that touches on brand promises, clears their legal department easily and doesn’t offend anyone… they’re happy. Not happy like “Wow! That’s great advertising! This is really going to move some product!” More like, “Good, this won’t rock the boat and force me to do more work then the bare minimum I need to.”

Let me give an example. Well, not an example really… I don’t want to lose my job, so I’ll speak in generalities.

One of the clients I work for is a large food manufacturer. One of those mega-conglomerates that makes everything from frozen pizza to gumballs. One of the many things we create and execute for this client are FSIs. FSI stands for “free-standing insert,” and it is that loose piece of paper printed with a coupon that you find stuffed into the center of your Sunday paper.

And coupon is the critical part of that description. The only reason that FSIs exist are as a vehicle to get that coupon into the hands of a shopper. They aren’t designed to build brand awareness, make you feel good about the company, or any of the touchy-feeling stuff that Marketing Directors love to talk about. One reason: coupon into hand.

And I’m sure you get that. I mean, if you’re a coupon clipper you’re used to flipping through all those sheets and putting aside the coupons for products that you like or would like to try. I seriously doubt that you take the time to really read the rest of the page… the part that talks about the wholesome ingredients or the earth-friendly manufacturing process or whatever. You just want the 50 cents off.

The clients I work with, however, do NOT get this. They think that this FSI is just as valuable as a marketing tool as it is a coupon delivery tool. And part of me gets where they’re coming from. They’ve been taught through marketing classes or from their superiors that each touchpoint on the path to purchase is an opportunity to herald that brand position and blah, blah, blah.

Coupon. Into. Hand.

But these clients labor over every tiny aspect of the FSI. Should it say “delicious ingredients” or “taste-tempting ingredients”? Are we showing enough racial diversity in this ad for hot dogs? We need to change the photo because the kid shown is a little overweight, and that doesn’t support our health and wellness platform.

And so on.

I want to shout at them, “Hey! The only part that people look at is the coupon! If you want to up your redemption, make the whole fucking page your coupon!” Honestly, that’s all you need to do: slap on a nicely shot photo of a slice of your frozen pizza or mini corndog or whatever and make the 75 CENTS OFF as big as you can. Or better yet, if you want people to buy your stuff, give them more money off. A $1 coupon will redeem better than a 75 cents coupon any day of the week.

Instead, I say things like, “Okay, we’ll try to find some stock photography with a more fit child,” or “Okay, we’ll try stacking the packaging vertically instead of horizontally,” or “I’ll change ‘healthy’ to ‘healthful’ to make the lawyers happy.”

This pointless revision and effort over such minor advertising vehicles is exhausting. And, worst of all, it seems like that’s most of what I do nowadays.

###

#288 In which our hero considers a birthday of some import.

2010-02-28T16:43:00.001-05:00

There’s a tall thin man standing in the shadows
When he calls your name his voice is strong and clear
It’s a dark and smoky place, so you can’t quite see his face
He pulls you close and whispers in your ear

I turned 40 last year. Actually, since my birthday is in December, it was the end of 2008. I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts since then… and I’m not sure I’ve come to any sort of conclusions. Forty is a pretty significant age… by most reckonings, my life is half over. Then again, if I die at 65, like my father, I only have 25 years left. Either way, it’s pretty sobering to consider your mortality.

And he tells you he was born into some money
But it didn’t mean he had to sit around
And he knows a thing or two about the things that you should do
If you don’t want to take life lying down

What I’ve really been thinking about is what kind of mark I’ve made on the world to date. Have I made any sort of difference? What kind of legacy would I leave if I kicked off tomorrow? Have I done anything worth remembering?

First of all hang out a lot with Hemmingway
Spend some time fighting bulls in Spain
You should go three rounds with Archie Moore and Sugar Ray
It’s so damned scary you won’t mind the pain

I dunno. I look at my wife… I’m made her life happier. Not always, I suppose, but most of the time. We’ve been married for eight years, and they’ve all been happy. And we’re still in love. That’s more than a lot of people can say.

Be ringside at the rumble in the jungle
Make friends with Hunter S. and Jackie O.
And when they shoot poor Bobby down, you wrestle Sirhan to the ground
Love your friends and miss them when they go

And I look at my children. I’ve had a bigger impact on their brief lives than anyone else I’ve ever met. And they’re turning out great. So maybe I should be happy with that, that they’re growing up healthy and smart and funny. They’re supported and loved. Who know what the future holds, I’m guessing there will be a lot of yelling and hurt feelings in the preteen and teen years, and maybe beyond. But I do hope they always feel the love of their parents.

So, is that enough? That I’ve helped raised some good kids?

You should write a book or two and start a magazine
Even if it never makes a dime
You should swing out by your feet above the circus ring
At the very least throw parties all the time

I’m always reading about people who have made such a tremendous difference in the world by this age… hell, well before this age. Bill Gates was in his early 20s when he founded Microsoft. Steve Jobs was also in his early 20s when he founded Apple. Stephen King had published four novels by the time he was 30. Lee Clow was named Creative Director of Chiat/Day before he was 40.

And so on.

Enjoy yourself, do the things that matter
Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all
Love the things you try, drink a cocktail wear a tie
Show a little grace if you should fall

But I have enjoyed my life, almost without exception. And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been right now. Love my wife, love my kids. Have a hobby I enjoy a great deal, and, incidentally, I’ve made some significant achievements in said hobby. I don’t have a lot of friends, but have powerful relationships with those I do.

So why do I feel like there’s so much more I should have achieved by now?

Don’t live another day unless you make it count
There’s someone else that you’re supposed to be
There’s something deep inside of you that still wants out
And shame on you if you don’t set it free.

“A Talk with George” by Jonathan Coulton.

###

#287 In which our hero discusses what he's been reading in the past year (part 2)

2009-12-21T11:00:00.003-05:00

Cell by Stephen King (audio book)

When I was younger, I was a huge Stephen King fan. I read everything he put out. As I got older, I became a little tired of his writing (Will this Dark Tower saga ever end?) and then finally disgusted (Bag of Bones? More like Bag of Shit). So, it was with some reluctance that I picked this audio book off the shelf.

Shortly into it, I remembered why I so enjoyed King in the first place. And also why I grew to dislike him. The story treads very familiar ground (at times I felt like I was reading “The Stand Lite”) and King deals out all the old familiar tropes that he likes so well. But, his story telling is always engaging and there were a few truly suspenseful moments.

King also has a distinct style of dialogue… I find it hard to describe, but I immediately recognize it when I read it (or hear it, in this case). It’s not that his characters sound phony, and it’s not even that they speak in contrived sentences… it’s more like they speak a unique dialect based on old-fashioned movies. I found myself thinking, “that’s an odd way to express that” in many places. Perhaps that’s how King really talks. Again, it all felt very familiar.

A thing of note: the audio recording had clearly been re-edited at some point. There are odd passages when a jarringly different voice actor inserts a phrase here and there, sometimes even a single word. Distracting, to say the least.

The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III (audio book)

I picked this up at the library after learning from the cover blurb that they guy also wrote “House of Sand and Fog.” I never read that book, but I heard good reviews about the movie, which starred Jennifer Connelly, and I have a serious thing for Jennifer Connelly so, in a round-about fashion, I was really attracted to this book.

Now, this isn’t a nice book. It’s not pornographic or gory or violent (even though there are elements of all of the above in it) but it does dive into great depths in the mind of a terrorist. A September 11th terrorist, to be exact. This is unsettling, to say the least.

That said, I enjoyed this book a great deal. I walked away feeling like I had a better understanding of terrorists and why they feel driven to do the things they do--not sympathy, mind you, but understanding.

I connected with the characters, even the “villains,” and enjoyed how they were intertwined in the plot. I was even rooting for the redneck fuck-up.

Now, as is my wont, I usually look up Amazon.com reviews of these books after I’m done reading them. I was surprised to read that a lot of people thought this novel was overly long, and plodded in places. I, in contrast, felt like it kept a quick pace, especially once the major tensions were established.

However, I suspect this is, again, the result of listening to the novel as an audio book and not actually reading the words on the printed page. I listen to these books exclusively in my car, so I’m only ever giving them part of my attention anyway (the majority part being not driving into another car). So, it’s possible that I tuned out for a moment during another description of Al-Qaeda training camps or the patrons of a strip club or whatnot. While I’ve fretted that I might be having a lesser experience with the work since I’m listening and not reading, in this case it may have actually improved the experience.

Regardless, I think this is a great book.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King (audio book)

As I wrote above, I was/am a big fan of Stephen King. I don’t slavishly follow his work any more, but I notice it when it comes out. That’s why I was so surprised to see this on the library shelf, a collection of short stories that I knew nothing about. So I picked it up.

I’ve always liked King’s short stories, and these were no different. I enjoyed them all, most notably Willa, N. and The Things They Left Behind. The last so struck me that I listened to it twice (I really enjoyed the voice actor in that one, too). After listening to this, I realized that I had already seen N. when it was adapted to (or maybe it was written specifically for) a series of animated shorts hosted on the Internet. As I write this, you can still find the episodes on YouTube.

Forever Summer by Ray Bradbury (audio book)

It’s been a while since I’ve read any Ray Bradbury, so it took me a minute to get into the swing of his rhythms again. Because Bradbury has a definite style, one I’ll call “American Hokey.” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy his writing, but a lot of it has a wide-eyed, Norman Rockwell, gee-gosh-golly quality to it, especially when he’s writing kids. And about 65% of this novel is written from a 13-year-old’s perspective. Some sample dialog:

“Let’s get out of here, Doug. I got the willies!”
“The willies, heck! I got the heebie-jeebies!”

And while it’s incredibly corny, it’s also sweet. Since I was listening to an audio book instead of reading the printed word, this hokum come through even stronger, especially considering that the voice actor made the decision to give the protagonist’s 10-year-old brother a lisp. “You thure ‘bout that, Doug? That thure looks thuper thcary!”

When I started listening to audio books, I wondered if I was missing something by not actually reading the words and processing them myself. For most books I think it works out just fine, but this is one case where I think I would have gotten more out of it by reading it the traditional way.

One last thing. The entire novel was a nice coming to age, young vs. old, ah youth! tale that unfolds by comparing and contrasting a 75-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy. Then, in the final chapter, the old man has a conversation with his boner. Needless to say, I didn’t see that coming. Not only does he talk to his boner, it talks back. Tells him that he’s going away now, and won’t return. Then, the same boner suddenly appears on the 13-year-old, apparently for the first time. The results are unintentionally hilarious. Especially when the boy asks his new-found boner if he is his friend, and the boner replies, “the best you’ll ever have.” I laughed out loud in my car.

The Last Centurion by John Ringo (audio book)

I picked this up on a lark because the back blurb indicated it was about a pandemic plague that wiped up a large portion of life on earth. For some reason, I’m drawn to stories like this. That said, it turned out to be mostly a true war sort of tale, which doesn’t appeal to me. But, in the end, I liked this book… mostly.

The story is the first person account of a soldier who was on the front lines when the world-ending flu spread across the globe, and what he did to lead his men back home. I think I enjoyed it because I like engaging stories that reveal to me a part of the world I don’t know; in this case, the American military.

The author relates, in what seems to be a high degree of accuracy, how the military works, how they would respond to a disaster of this magnitude, etc., etc. He goes into great detail about military equipment and procedures and strategy and other things I am largely ignorant of. Hey kids, learning is fun!

However, the voice of the protagonist (i.e., the author) is painfully didactic at times, and just annoying. Some of the themes beaten over the head include: global warming is bullshit, city folks are stupid, farmers make the world go ‘round. And, y’know, whatever, that’s fine… it’s your book so you can have whatever point of view you want. But it just got tiring to hear him go on and on about how the “ants” (smart, salt-of-the-earth people like farmers who planned ahead) were superior to “grasshoppers” (soft, soiled city dwellers who had no commonsense and were caught with their pants down when the world collapsed). Yeah, we get it. You don’t have to go on for 10 pages detailing how the “tofu eaters” (a euphemism used ad nauseum for liberals) screwed things up.

I enjoyed most of this book, but the proselytizing became overbearing by the end, and I was glad to be done with it.

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (vol. 13) edited by Stephen James

I inadvertently read this book twice.

I bought this book years ago, started to read it, but never got the whole way through. I’m not sure why. So when I finally picked it up again, I just started from the beginning instead of trying to remember where I stopped.

However, it seemed like I was familiar with every story I read. I’ve come to the conclusion that I must have read everything save the last story or two. But, it wasn’t bad to read it again; most of the stories were entertaining.

However, the editor clearly has a different interpretation of what “horror” is from what I do; with few exceptions I didn’t think the stories were especially scary or suspenseful.

Out of all the stories the only ones that stick with me (as I write this months after the fact) is “Our Temporary Supervisor,” by Thomas Ligotti and “Shite Hawks” by Muriel Gray. These are also the only two that really got under my skin. So much so, that I think I’ll seek out some of their other work.

Dune by Frank Herbert (audio book)

Sometimes I’m in a big hurry in the library, so I grab the first audio book that seems interesting and get out. That’s why I ended up with Dune, even though I had read it years before (and the first couple sequels, I believe).

It’s fantastic writing, no-one will even dispute that. And I’m amazed that more than 40 years later, it has aged so well, remaining relevant and engaging as it ever was.

I was delighted when I started listening to it to find that it had a full cast of voices. Most audio books have one reader and, like ‘em or hate ‘em, you’re stuck with that voice for the next 10-20 hours. But, for reasons I cannot understand, only parts of this book used the full voice cast. You’d be listening to one section where Baron Harkonnen was voiced with evil glee from an actor with a deep baritone, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen was acted out with wonderful treachery by an English actress, Paul was voiced by a young man… then in the next chapter, it was just the narrator, voicing all the parts again. It didn’t seem like there was any rhyme or reason to it; it’s not like specifically exciting or climatic events got the full cast. It made the audio book a little jarring, as the main narrator made some different acting choices than the main cast, as if they never spoke or compared notes on the characters. Odd.

Still an amazing story, though.

Tales from Jabba’s Palace edited by Kevin J. Anderson

A long time ago I read “Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina” and hated it. I enjoy the Star Wars universe, but I was annoyed with this book because nearly every character you see in the Cantina scene in the movie is represented in this book. And not one of them is there simply for a drink after work; everyone is achieving their destiny or some such bullshit.

This book (also gifted to me by the same guy who gave me “Glory Lane”) is along that same lines. However, for some reason changing the setting to Jabba’s palace made it more palatable for me. And maybe because most of the stories centered around one main conspiracy, I found it to be more cohesive. Not a terrible book; but not one I’d ever return to, either.

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey (audio book)

Another “this looks good, I need to get out of here” selection from the library. But I enjoyed this one immensely.

I love contemporary horror, and this book had that with a great helping of humor alongside it. Plus, the author/protagonist is English, and stories sent in England always sound so quirky to me. And the voice actor had a wonderfully engaging accent, too.

You can tell that I really enjoyed this book because after listening to the audio book, I went out and bought the actual paperback so I could see the words for myself.

The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key

This is a book I read probably when I was 13 or so. It really stuck with me, so much so that I was moved to look it up and buy it from Amazon a couple of years ago. It sat on my bookshelf until I finished my last (hard copy) book and was casting about for something else to read. So I read this.

I didn’t know at the time that Alexander Key also wrote “Escape to Witch Mountain.” But after re-reading this book, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s definitely an early adolescent book, a little heavy-handed with the morals at the end.

Fangland by John Marks (audio book)

Another book that I think I enjoyed more than I would have otherwise because I learned something from it; this time, how a televised news program operates.

The protagonist is a female field producer for “The Hour,” a thinly-veiled version of “60 Minutes.” The author clearly has some experience with the show or programs like this, and goes on at length about its internal operations.

At its heart it’s the story of a woman who encounters a modern day vampire, and the fall out of that encounter. It’s sufficiently scary in parts, and has several inventive twists on the tired old vampire mythos. It also has a surprising amount of sex and blood, with an ending that was both oddly off-putting and satisfying at the same time.

It’s told in first person, a narrative mode that has a soft spot in my heart. Several of the characters recount their version of the story, and although this can get tiresome, I thought the author handled it deftly enough. Even though he does lapse into straight third person for a couple scenes that just don’t work from a viewers perspective. Something I always hate--it seems like a cop-out. If you want to write in first person, you should tough out the tricky parts, too.

I Am Legend (and other stories) by Richard Matherson (audio book)

I had also read “I Am Legend” before, albeit in comic book form. I enjoyed it, even though it was severely dated in parts. And the science that Matherson works so hard to establish fall apart in the end (the vampire bacterium causes fangs to grow on the infected? Really?), but otherwise a good, satisfying story.

The audio book also included several short stories, some of which I had read/seen in one form or another in the past. They all tend to be the of Twilight Zone variety, i.e., build up the tension then introduce a twist ending. Not bad, and some quite good.

“I Am Legend” was read by one actor, who sounded great. Another actor read all the short stories and, frankly, some of his accents/inflections detracted from my enjoyment of the book. At least once his delivery was so convoluted that I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

This is a book that The Scientist got me for my birthday. It's about improving your writing, from a professional agent's point of view. It's interesting, even if a lot of the advice seems pretty obvious to me. Then again, I like to think of myself as a capable writer, and a lot of the insight seems geared toward the very new writer. Still, it's all good review. I haven't finished it as of this writing... mostly because it's more textbook than absorbing read. But, I'll finish it here soon, probably over the Christmas break.

Ohio Oddities: A Guide to the Curious Attractions of the Buckeye State by Neil Zurcher

Another birthday present from my wife. I love weird roadside attractions like The World's Biggest Frying Pan or whatever, and this is full of them. It's not the kind of book I'd read cover to cover, but it has an honored place in the bathroom, and I'll definitely get through all of it in time.

Fray (volumes 1 “Busted” & 3 “Sex & Death”) edited by Derek Powazek

"The Fray" used to be my favorite website. It featured true stories about a variety of topics, with beautiful accompanying illustrations or photos. I read it for years, until the guy in charge, Derek Powazek, shut it down, saying that it had run it's course. That was years ago. Recently,
for no real reason, I looked it up again. Turns out that Powazek is still compiling personal stories, only now in the form of real, tangible books (I guess they're really more like magazines). Out of the three currently available, I bought two (they were on sale together).

I finished the first (Busted) and am halfway through the second. I'm enjoying them... but they're really reinforced that true stories aren't always great stories. Most of these are well written, but seem to peter out in the end. Because that's the way real life works, I suppose: you have an interesting experience, but rarely does it conclude in a dynamic, exciting and satisfying fashion, like it does in fiction. The books are filled with beautiful illustrations as well.

And that is it! The last couple of books on the list will get me into 2010, where I'll start a new list.

And, if you're keeping score, that's 12 books and 11 audio books that I've consumed in 2009.

***

#286 In which our hero discusses what he's been reading in the past year (part 1)

2009-12-17T11:07:00.004-05:00

Some time around the beginning of this year I started writing down everything I read. Well, not everything, just novels and collections of short stories. This is something I had been meaning to do for a couple years, mostly to figure out how many books I read a year. Because this question comes up from time to time, and I really have no idea.

Once I started on the list, I figured I might as well write a little review of what I thought about the book, too.

You’ll notice that around March I discovered audio books. It’s not like I didn’t know about them before, I just never bothered to check any out of the library. But, being that I have a 40 minute commute twice a day, five days a week, it gave me something to do other than listen to the news.

Holy crap, I wish I had started listening to audio books years ago. As you’ll see, I’ve been tearing them up.

Also, I suppose I should include SPOILER ALERT because I'm not taking any pains to conceal the plot. I'm just writing about what I thought, which may include the ending. Be ye warned.

So, here’s my ear-end wrap-up of what I’ve been reading.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

I was out with some friends, and the topic of great sci-fi literature came up. This book was mentioned and several people around the table enthusiastically agreed that it was a great one. So I picked it up.

While I enjoyed it, this book left me with the same feeling that I’ve experienced with a lot of old (circa 60-70s) sci-fi. That the story wasn’t the point, that it was only there to set up a bigger and (in the author’s mind) more important thing. In this book, the preface by the author even states that his real reason for writing the book was to introduce the idea of Ender being a “speaker for the dead.”

And that’s all well and good, but it left me feeling that the bulk of the manuscript was hurried, like Card wanted to get to what he considered the good stuff and the bulk of the story was just in the way. And when we do get to the “good stuff,” it seems like it comes out of the blue, like a tacked on ending. The entire book is about Ender being a war strategy prodigy, and the twist ending (which I saw coming a mile away) in which he successfully defeats the aliens. This battle at the end, which seems like it should have been the big climax, felt anti-climatic. Mostly because that wasn’t the author’s idea of the climax, it was the last 20 or so somewhat rambling pages about what Ender did after the war. And the whole “Ender fought against the aliens so much that he formed a kind of psychic bond with them” was a huge WTF? moment for me.

Enjoyable old-school sci-fi, but not the best I’ve ever read and not, despite what was said around that pub table, one of the greats of the genre.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

And enjoyable horror story. It read to me like it was written by a younger and more in touch with the times Stephen King. Which isn’t surprising, I suppose, since Joe Hill is the pen name of Stephen King’s son.

Some of the early ghost-in-the-house stuff was really pretty unnerving (which is the point) but I was less impressed with the second half and climax. Very nice coda to the story, however.

Soon I will be Invincible by Austin Grossman

As a comic book geek I was instantly drawn to this story. I had read a favorable review and stuck it on my Amazon wish list (this is SOP for me… any book that sounds interesting goes on my wish list immediately or I tend to forget about them. This way I can review my list when I’m looking for something new to read or, even better, sometimes one or more of these books magically appear at my birthday or Christmas).

As I write, the concept (superheroes/villains in the real world) appealed to me, but I’m afraid it was better in the abstract than in the reading. It was good, don’t get me wrong, and I tore through it… but it seemed that I had read better executions of this concept before, most notably “Astro City” and “Ex Machina” (both real live comic books, not novels, so maybe the comparison isn’t really fair).

But, the ending did catch me off guard--which it shouldn’t have since the author played fair with comic book logic--and I found it very satisfying.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I have been reluctant to pick books from the “Literature” section of the store before, since I’ve found that this label often translates to mean “inaccessible.” I enjoy reading, but I don’t want to labor to finish a book. That’s why I’ll probably never read Moby Dick… even though it’s a classic, etc., the bits and pieces I’ve read of it are dense, and it takes some doing to get through them. No thanks.

But I was pleased to find that Cormac McCarthy, despite being labeled “America’s Greatest Living Author,” writes in a clear, straightforward manner. It’s not without art, but his prose never feels like it’s in danger of collapsing under it’s own weight.

My one beef, though, is how he eschews proper punctuation, especially the “quotes” mark. This made it hard to follow some of the he said/she said dialog in the book. This complaint comes from a deep part of my brain, which says that if I have to follow proper punctuation in my writing, he should have to, too.

However, this punctuation omission is mostly forgiven because the dialog is so damn strong. There’s nothing that takes me out of the narrative faster than ham-fisted, fake-sounding dialog. McCarthy’s dialog rings true to me in every instance; it sounds like read people talking. I really love it.

That said, this was an odd book. The first hundred pages unfold at a rapid clip, and it sets all the characters on what seems to be a well-used and understood path. The resourceful everyman will defeat the overwhelming obstacle of the psychotic hitman, perhaps with the winking approval of the weary sheriff, and emerge with a few more scars, wiser for the experience.

But that’s not where the book goes. Not even close.

Instead the everyman dies, well before the end, and does so “off camera.” His death is senseless and, to me at least, unexpected. I went back to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a chapter.

Then, as things are wrapping up, the psycho killer shows up at the dead man’s house to kill his wife, who’s been innocent of any wrong-doing in the entire novel. And after he kills her, he gets away. Not without injury, but still, he’s never caught. In fact, the killer is actually rewarded in the end, moving on to bigger and better clients. It is the complete opposite of what you’d expect to happen.

And finally, the grizzled old sheriff who took on the case is left with no resolution, to final fulfillment, no “it was all worth it” moment. He just fades away, his soul disquiet.

I was so surprised by the ending of this novel that I immediately went out and rented the movie. Surely, I thought, the movie doesn’t end on such a downer. They must have Hollywoodized the ending to make it more digestible to a mainstream audience.

Nope.

Even the movie ends quietly, without any real revelations, no neat tied-with-a-bow conclusions. I really respect the film makers for that (but then again, it was made by the Coen brothers, and they’re phenomenal).

I think what I liked best, in both novel and movie, is that it all rings true. Unlike most novels, where the author jumps through considerable hoops to make the good guy win in the end, that doesn’t happen in real life. The good guy can do all the right things, and still lose. The bad guy can be really bad, but still get away scott-free.

Glory Lane by Alan Dean Foster

This book was in the unfortunate position of being the first one I read after No Country for Old Men, a great book. It is also in the unfortunate position of being a shitty book.

Now, I’ve read a lot of Alan Dean Foster, he was a mainstay of my early teen years. I like his stuff. But this book was just a turd, start to finish.

I probably most enjoy the dialog in the books I read. Again, this book suffered from the fact that I had just finished No Country for Old Men, which had great, realistic, telling dialog. This piece of crap had that overly-clever, look-how-cool-this-character-is dialog. For example, here’s a bit from the main protagonist (a spike-haired punk rocker) as he tries to hit on a cute girl working behind the counter at a bowling alley.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Well now, that’s a leading question, isn’t it? I mean, it presupposes that I need help and that you could be of some assistance to me without even knowing what my problem is. Fascinating concept. You aren’t by any chance telepathic, are you?”

Ugh. And here’s a bit where he’s about to be thrown out of the same bowling alley by the owner.

“We don’t want your kind in here.”

“My kind?” [He] tensed as he glanced diffidently at the big hand, but didn’t otherwise react to the touch. “What kind might that be?”

“Bums. Jerks. Punks.”

“Ah. Now there you have me, sir. I will admit to the third. As for the preceding pair I’m afraid you’re way off base, but then I can see that you didn’t quite complete your graduate degree in sociology so I suppose we need to make some allowances.”

While this is painful to read, I also found it nostalgic. Because this is the kind of stuff I loved to read when I was 14 or so. I imagined that kids older and cooler than me (which wasn’t really saying much) really did talk like this, and I wanted to grow up to be as cool as they are. Now, I see that it’s just bullshit writing, with no ring of truth to it. This nostalgia is the only thing that kept be reading… that and the fact that the book was given to me by a friend.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (audio book)

While I wasn’t blown away by Heart-Shaped Box, I enjoyed it enough to try some more of Joe Hill’s stuff.

Am I ever glad I did.

This collection of short stories is really amazing. I found it far more enjoyable than his novel-length work (but, to be fair, I’ve only read one of his novels). I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, of course, but I don’t think there was a clunker in the lot. And a couple, most notably “Abraham’s Boys,” “In the Rundown” and “Last Breath” were really remarkable. These three in particular are creepy, emotional, moving and really got under my skin.

But the standout, in my mind, was “Pop Art.” The concept is so ludicrous it shouldn’t work, but shortly into it my skepticism was completely gone and I was wholly into the story. I’m a sucker for stories like these anyway, but I haven’t been so moved by a story since, perhaps fittingly, Stephen King’s “The Body.”

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a collection of horror stories per se, in fact, many of them are rather sweet (or, at least, bitter-sweet). I find this collection even more impressive since Hill is so often working outside his chosen genre.

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk (audio book)

Wacky. That’s what this book was. Soaked with sex and wacky. I may have learned a little about the porn industry, but it’s difficult to determine what is factual, and what is just made-up bullshit. I suspect that a lot of what I thought was too crazy to be true probably IS true. I guess this was a fun book but, honestly, it’s so demeaning and misogynistic at it’s core that it’s difficult to get past it. Like all of Palahniuk’s stuff, not for everyone.

Twisted Little Vein by Warren Ellis

I’m a big fan of Warren Ellis. I’ve read several of his comics, and thought some of them (most notably “Transmetropolitan” and “Planetary”) were amazingly nuanced and insightful works of art. That’s why I was so disappointed in this, his first prose novel.

The over-arching theme--that America has slipped so far into depravity that many of the formally marginalized acts by the sick and twisted are now mainstream--is gleefully hammered over your head time and time again with great ham-shaped mitts.

And much of the writing simply does not work. I wouldn’t have expected there to be so much dissonance between a comic page and a novel page, but there is. In the comics you can slip in some outrageous act in the background, and it doesn’t interrupt the flow of the narrative. But in a novel, when that same outrageous act is described in detail, I found the entire novel coming to a crashing halt. It doesn’t help that the book is set in modern day, providing the additional hardship of limiting the amount of disbelief I was willing to suspend. So when, say, the Secretary of State mysteriously visits the protagonist and injects himself with monkey feces to get high… I’m sorta not buying it.

Probably most damning is that this book pales compared to Transmet, which is much better and was written nearly a decade earlier. Many of the same themes are explored, but being that Transmet is set in the future, Ellis’ tendency to invent outrageous drugs/sex acts/etc. (Bowel Disruptor, anyone?) adds to the setting, unlike his novel, in which they detract (e.g., Godzilla bukkake porn – ugh).

It’s sad, because Ellis is a great writer, but he seems hell-bent in this book to push the Mad Englishman persona he has so skillfully developed as a personal brand. I suspect that his secret ambition is to have Twisted Little Vein shelved at the local Borders with Naked Lunch, Still Life with Woodpecker, Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas and other works that appeal to college kids and pretentious douchebags. Sadly, they’d be better off heading over to the comic book section to see his good writing.

To be continued.

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#285 In which our hero recounts his quest for the perfect man bag (part 4)

2009-12-11T12:45:00.005-05:00

The first thing I put together was the handle. I really wasn't sure how this would turn out, and I looked at it as a bellwether of the entire project. It's constructed of two pieces of leather, but the way its assembled I ended up sewing through three layers. It went surprisingly well.

I was super happy with the results. It looked, I dare say, professional. I showed it off to The Scientist and my children, all of whom were much less impressed than I. After the handle, I began to feel confident that the entire satchel was going to end up looking pretty close to what I had in my head.

Because that's the painful part... I've worked on lots of leather projects where the end result fell well short of the image I had in my head. The projects weren't bad, per se, just not what I was hoping for.

The handle done, I started on the main body. First I sewed both gussets to the center divider piece.

Also, I forgot to mention, at some point I decided to cut down the width of one of the gussets. I was afraid the bag would be too thick (girthy) and would look more like a piece of luggage than a briefcase. This ended up being a good decision, as my laptop fits perfectly snug in the smaller pocket.

After that, I sewed on the front of the bag.

You can see in the photo above both gussets sewn to the center divider. The front buckles are also sewn on, as they share a seam with the bottom of the bag. That done, I started on the back piece.

This was a little tricky because I'm sewing through three pieces of leather (the gusset, the back piece, and the back pocket). It's not the sewing part that was hard, it was making sure all the holes lined up correctly.

Remember when I wrote that I was a little laissez faire with the measuring part? This is where it went wrong. Somehow I made the back pocket piece about half an inch wider than the back piece. If I just forced all the holes to line up, there would be an unattractive bulge with that pocket. It would clearly have to be trimmed.

In this, I got really lucky. The pocket piece overhung the pack piece by half an inch, and my seam allowance was a quarter of an inch. This meant that I could trim a quarter of an inch off, and the already punched holes wouldn't show, I could punch new holes and everything would line up just about perfectly.

At this point there was also a problem with the gusset and the main body lining up right. This was a much more serious problem. I'm still not sure what went wrong. And to make it right, it was a brute force fix. I basically cut a wedge in the bag, pulled the edges together and pulled really tight on the thread. Again, I got really lucky. It's virtually invisible from the outside. You can definitely feel it on the inside, but it's low enough in the bag that you can't see it unless you really stick you head in it and go looking for it.

Then, I ran into another problem.

Like I wrote before, I had used a belt blank to fashion the shoulder strap. By my rough estimates it was just the right length. But when I actually attached the bag to the strap, it hung too low, almost to my knees.

I was afraid that cutting the strap and adding a buckle would make it too short. But, other than cutting off the buckle on the end and refashioning that entire thing, a buckle in the middle of the strap was all I could do. And it was the easiest fix. So:

It actually turned out really well. There was plenty of length left for it to hang right. And I had always imagined it with a buckle on the strap anyway.

I added the handle assembly to the bag, and it was done!

Well, almost done. I went to Things Remembered and got a brass plaque with my name engraved on it a couple days later. Once that was riveted on, then I was really done.

The the photo above, you can see the two-tone affect from the straps finished with gum trag. I didn't like it at first, but have since grown really fond of the look. As it ages and gets all the little nicks and scuffs that come with use, it'll look even better.

Of course, as the person who made it, I see all the mistakes. But even so, it's really good looking, I have to admit. And it should last a lifetime. Even if it starts to fall apart, I know how to fix it.

The best part (other than being able to tell people, "Yep, I made this") is that I paid considerably less than the $800 it was selling for in the Filson catalog. I have maybe $200 worth of materials in it, but that includes leather I didn't use and can use for other projects, plus some left over hardware (D-rings come in packs of a dozen, for example). Plus my time, of course.

So, after years of searching for the perfect mag bag, I finally made one myself.

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#284 In which our hero recounts his quest for the perfect man bag (part 3)

2009-12-08T21:43:00.006-05:00

First up: cut out the big pieces. This is always the most nerve-wracking part, for me, at least. Math is my enemy, so I end up checking and re-checking my measurements half a dozen times. And since I'm very much of the "eh, close enough" school, this sometimes bites me in the ass (as it did at a later point in this project).

But, after some trepidation, I had the major parts cut out.

There are four pieces that make up the bag, sewn together with two gussets (that's the two long strips in the foreground). I also cut out all the little fiddly bits of leather: straps for the front, straps to hold the buckles and the parts of the handle. I had a pre-cut length of leather for a belt, but I decided to use that as the shoulder strap.

When you're sewing thick leather, it's not like sewing cloth. You use a dull needle (actually, a pair of dull needles) called harness needles and push them through holes that have already been punched in the leather. There are a couple handy tools I have to help get the holes evenly placed from the edge and evenly spaced apart. But there's no shortcut in the actual punching of holes part.

I punched somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,300 holes. One at a time, with the awl shown. It's tedious, and probably the worst part of a project like this.

Next: dying.

I dyed all the pieces before assembling them to keep it simple. It's easier to get an even coat of dye of a flat piece of leather compared to something already assembled. What you see above is after three or five applications of dye (Fiebling's Professional Oil Dye, Dark Brown, if you care). The leather really soaked it up, and it took six coats before it looked even and not splotchy. And it still wasn't the rich, dark brown I was hoping for. Different leather's take dye differently, so you really never know how it's going to look until it's in the leather. The back pocket is cut from a different hide, and turned out a little darker than the rest.

This caused me a little consternation at first. I really liked the color of the Filson satchel, and had hoped to match it as closely as possible. But the leather just wasn't getting there. So I moved on to the next step: finishing the edges.

I don't have any photos of this part of the process, maybe because it's fairly labor intense. And it is also one of the most important. Nicely finished edges really make a project look professional.

Here's the thing: if you've ever picked up a solid leather belt (not one of those crappy ones with two thin pieces of leather sewn together over a cardboard core) or a nicely-crafted bridle, you can run your hand along it and it feels great. What you're reacting to, if you were conscious of it or not, are the edges. When you cut heavier leathers you end up with a squared-off edge, which feels sharp and uncomfortable in your hand. If you round over this edge it feels much nicer.

My process of finishing an edge is to first use a tool called, fittingly enough, an edger. This takes off some of the sharpness of the edge. Next I use fine grit sandpaper to smooth off the remaining edges and give it a rounded profile. The sandpaper leaves it with an almost furry appearance at this point. To give it that nice, slick surface, I use a product called Gum Tragacanth. It's designed for this purpose and, apparently, it's used in confections, too. I had no idea. But you dab a little on the edge, rub it briskly with a piece of canvas, and it leaves a smooth, slick edge.

It also darkens the leather. I wasn't careful enough when I was finishing the edges of the straps and got some of it on the surface of the strap. This left an unattractive blotch of darker leather. To hide my carelessness, I just finished the entire surface of the straps with the gum trag, making them a uniform color.

Now, this darker color was closer to what I had hoped the body of the bag would become. I toyed with the idea of slathering gum trag over everything, hoping it would result in the color I wanted. But, two things stopped me: 1., gum trag also softens leather, and as I've talked about before, I didn't want a floppy bag; and 2., it's not a water repellent. So I only did the straps this way. This decision payed off big-time later.

After dying the leather and finishing the edges, I had to figure out how to finish the leather (that is, treat it to be water repellent). The obvious choice is a commercial sealer that would protect it 100% from water. But I've used these acrylic sealers before, and while they work great, they can leave the leather looking a little plastic-y. Then I considered beeswax, which is supposed to leave a really nice, deep luster. But I've never worked with beeswax as a sealer, and I didn't want this to be my first experiment with it. I also briefly considered shoe polish.

I ended up just oiling it with linseed oil. Linseed oil is also supposed to soften leather, but in my experience it doesnt have much affect on thicker leather like the kind I was using. It'll work itself out of the leather eventually, and I'll have to re-oil it every now and again, but that's fine. I'm hoping that the oil will also darken the leather over time.

With everything dyed, sealed and edged, all that was left was to actually put the thing together.

To be continued.

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#283 In which our hero recounts his quest for the perfect man bag (part 2)

2009-12-03T09:15:00.005-05:00

The first step is creating this bag was getting the pattern right. The Filson catalog only had the one picture of the satchel, I didn't even know what the back of the thing looked like, let alone how the insides were assembled. So there were details I needed to work out. And, honestly, I still wasn't sure if I could even pull it off.

But, since we live in an age of wonders, I went online and found exactly what I was searching for: this forum includes a post by "TidyBeard," who bought an actual Filson Field Satchel. Most helpful to me, he took pictures of nearly every conceivable angle and posted them.

This not only gave me what I needed to draft a pattern, it also confirmed something I suspected all along: the craftsmanship on this bag wasn't that impressive. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Filson's bag isn't well-crafted, because it is. It's just that it is a straightforward, rugged construction—by design. Take a look at this:

Ignore that this is a woman's purse. See how fine the stitching is, especially down the center? And see how there's a sort of yoke around the opening in the top? Construction-wise, there's a lot going on with this bag. That's craftsmanship well beyond my abilities.

But the Filson bag has big, bold stitches. I can do that. The photos I found online also allowed me to figure out the pattern... which wasn't complicated. It's basically three rectangles of leather sewn together with two gussets. Add a couple straps and buckles, and you have yourself the perfect man bag!

I drafted a pattern out of plain paper, very roughly. Like I said, there were no confusing parts, so it didn't take much time. Actually, the majority of my time was spent figuring out the dimensions. Thanks to TidyBeard, I had a handle on the dimensions of the actual bag, but I made mine slightly larger, so my laptop could fit easily inside it.

Next was a trip to the leather store.

I brought all my pattern pieces so I could make sure I got a big enough hide. If you're not familiar, leather typically comes in three sizes: the entire hide (basically all of the usable leather off a cow in one piece), a side (half a cow) or double shoulders (pretty much just what it sounds like). Double shoulders tend to be the finest leather, but they are also the most expensive (and more to the point, they typically aren't big enough to yield the size pieces I needed). I didn't need an entire hide, so I looked at the sides.

A little more background. The thickness of leather is measured, oddly enough, in ounces. One ounce equals about 1/64 of an inch. Since leather is a natural product, it's not completely consistent across the entire hide... the leather is thicker in some spots, thinner in others. Therefore leather is usually sold in a range, i.e., a "6-7 oz. side." To give you some reference, belt leather is generally about 7-8 oz., or roughly 1/8" thick.

The leather used in the Filson bag is really thick. In the catalog it's described as "genuine bridle leather,"which really doesn't mean anything. "Bridle leather" is more a descriptor of how it can be used, not it's weight. But, looking at the catalog and online photos, I'd guess it's about a 10 oz. leather.

So I went into the leather store with a 9-10 oz. side in mind. But, talking to the owner convinced me that this was overkill, that I could use a lighter weight leather and still get a very rugged bag with plenty of body. Plus, he had some 6-7 oz. leather on sale. I bought a side of that, plus a side of 4 oz. leather to use for the gussets (they are designed to collapse or fold in on themselves, so they needed to be lighter than the main body). I also bought some of the brass hardware I'd need, namely D-rings and buckles; and a bottle of dye.

I took all this stuff home, and there it sat in the basement. For months.

Every once in a while I'd bring up that website and look at all the photos of that great Filson bag. I'd think about tackling the project, then the mood would pass.

It was a pretty big project, using rather expensive materials. I didn't want to jump into it and screw it up. And I wanted to make sure I had enough time to invest in doing it right.

Finally, I took a week of vacation time I needed to burn. I didn't have any plans, other than a few around-the-house errands, so I decided to tackle the construction of the bag.

Once The Scientist was off to work and the kids were deposited at school, I trundled down to the basement and got to work.

To be continued.

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#282 In which our hero recounts his quest for the perfect man bag (part 1)

2009-11-29T21:32:00.010-05:00

I have a long history with man bags.

It started in college where, like everyone else, I had a backpack to hump around my books. I believe it was the same backpack I used in high school. Some of the backpacks I see today are really cool with ergonomic strap placement and multiple zippered pockets and WiFi and God knows what else... but the bag I used was a plain old blue nylon backpack.

And this served me well for the first couple years of school. Then I came across an army gas mask bag at the Army-Navy store near campus. It was made of heavy, well worn canvas. I thought it was really cool.

And yes, I drew a unicorn on it with a black Sharpie. I hoped it would look like a cool military emblem, but it's clearly more Hello Kitten then Semper Fi. Regardless, I hauled around a lot of books in it.

After I graduated college, I didn't really have a need for a book bag any more. I worked in a restaurant for a while, then got a job at The Columbus Dispatch newspaper. There was nothing to carry to and from work, other than my lunch, and I just carried that in a plastic bag.

After I left that job and moved to Cleveland, I was suddenly in need of a bag again. I was taking the train to work every day, and carried with me the newspaper, a book, my lunch and any work I may have taken home with me.

So I found a new bag.

I got this from The Fray, a website that used to be something very different than it is today. When they offered an interesting messenger bag via CafePress (a brand-spanking new online service at the time) I bought one.

This bag carried dozens of books and hundreds of newspapers on my daily commute. I loved how obnoxiously bright and yellow it was. It also saw me through a couple layoffs and one firing. Presumably unrelated to my choice of bags.

I was still carrying this bag when I came to the agency where I'm working today. However, by this time I was more serious about my career, and I was starting to think that I would be better off with a more professional-looking accessory. So I bought this:

I was hot for hemp at the time (not like that!) so I was really happy when I found an all-natural hemp messenger bag (this one was from Ecolution). This is the bag I've been using for the last two years and it's been great. Well, for the most part. My only complaint is that the bag is a little bit... floppy.

And, now that I look at it again, it sorta looks like a woman's purse.

So, even though I liked my hemp bag, I continued to search for something better: the perfect man bag. Much like I had been enamoured with hemp, later I decided that canvas was the way to go. So I searched around on the Internet and found this:

Cool bag, but just as floppy as my hemp one. I was becoming clear that I just wasn't going to be happy unless I found a bag with some body to it. Thinking back to my college days, I tried another military bag:

It, too, was made of a canvas too thin to hold its shape. This was also a reminder to pay better attention to dimensions when ordering online. This bag, even if it was heavy enough, is too small to carry everything I need it to carry.

So I continued to search. And did you know that there are numerous websites which have hundreds of bags from which to choose? I wasn'tsurprised, but I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of styles.

However, most of the messenger style bags which I favored where made of nylon, which just didn't appeal. That said, a quick google search for "canvas messenger bags" gave a lot of results. But, I was now gun shy of ordering a canvas bag in fear of it being too thin and floppy yet again.

I also half-heartedly looked at leather bags. Most of the leather ones just didn't do it for me... most were of a thin leather that wasn't as rugged-looking as I would like (and again, many looked more like a purse than a manly-man's bag).

Then I found it.

I was flipping though the Filson catalog one day. Filson is an outdoor clothing outfitter, kinda like L.L. Bean on steroids. My one brother-in-law favors their clothes so I've seen them up close... their "tin cloth" material seems durable enough to damn near stop a bullet. But, unbeknownst to me, they also manufacturer other stuff besides clothing, including footwear, luggage, hats... and leather goods. Including this:

The Filson Leather Field Satchel.

I feel in love with this thing as soon as I saw it. It was everything I was looking for in a bag: sturdy, cool-looking, professional in appearance... it had it all.

It also had an impressive price tag: $795. Seven HUNDRED and ninety-five dollars.

I know to a lot of people that price might seem a little steep, but not outrageous. Well, I'm here to tell you, it IS outrageous.

Because here's the thing: I have done some leathercraft over the years, and I know that even the finest leather materials don't come close to justifying that kind of cost. And I didn't believe that there was an unreasonable amount of labor in it, either.

I suppose, like anything else, if you don't know what goes into making something, then you can only assume that the given price is a fair one. Looking at this bag you might assume that $795 (plus shipping) is the going price and that's all there is to it. But I knew better and there was no way in hell that I was going to pay that much money.

Then I really stopped and studied it. And I came to a realization:

I could MAKE this bag myself.

To be continued.

***

FAB AD

2009-11-12T21:55:00.002-05:00

Advertising can suck.

Not advertising in the sense of a commercial coming on just as the movie was getting good, or half a dozen inserts falling into your lap when you open a magazine. I mean Advertising, the industry, capital “A.”

I’ve been working in advertising for almost 12 years. I’m a copywriter, and in the decade plus since I’ve been a professional advertising writer, I’ve written copy for nearly everything you can name: print, TV, radio, online, direct response, experiential, outdoor… I’ve never done skywriting, even though I’ve suggested it a couple times.

My experience in this industry is that most everything you do is extremely frustrating. Nine out of ten times when you recommend something interesting, engaging or “out of the box” (dear God how I hate that overused term) the client tells you how much they love it, how much they appreciate your thinking… then they take the safe, boring route.

I’ve seen great ideas destroyed by a casual glance. Wonderful concepts die a painful death because another idea is 2% cheaper to produce. Powerful executions that never see the light of day because the client is too cowardly to take even the smallest chance.

I’ve written entire ad campaigns knowing that it was an exercise in futility; that the client was too enamored by the status quo to give my ideas more than a passing glance.

As I’ve gotten more experience and become better at my job, it seems like the clients have pulled back even more, become terrified to try something fresh. I’ve never had a shortage of idea, just a shortage of client with nerve.

And I’m not even talking crazy, wild ideas. Just things that haven’t been done a thousand times before. Something that’s not a print ad with a coupon. A 30-second radio spot. A banner ad that links back to the client’s (worthless) website.

Over the years, my frustration has done nothing but increase. There are days when I can barely stand the monotony of writing the same bullshit claims for the same bullshit products over and over. Days when I’d love to spit in the eye of the sycophantic account managers who are nothing more than order-takers for the client. Times when the sheer banality of my job forces me to get up and walk away from my keyboard before I start to weep.

But then, there are days like today.

Today I sat down with an art director to brainstorm some concepts for a corporate video. I’ve worked with this guy a lot, and we’re good partners. We think along the same lines. Oddly enough, when we work together I often come up with visual ideas, and he comes up with copy ideas.

We walked into a conference room with ZERO ideas. This video is going to come together quickly, and we needed something, and we needed it now.

Ten minutes in, we had the skeleton of an idea. Twenty minutes in, it had flesh and began to breathe. We played off each other’s thoughts, each building on the last, improving with every step. We finished each other’s sentences. We got up and paced the room, getting excited about our shared vision.

This is why I’m still in advertising. This is what makes it all worthwhile.

When you work with someone smart and creative and collaborative to pluck fantastic ideas out of thin air and mold them with your brains to create something amazing… there’s nothing else like it. Nothing for me, at least.

We came up with a truly kick-ass idea. And because we were working against two other teams and didn’t want to walk into the presentation with just one concept… we did it again. The second idea wasn’t as inspired as the first, but it was still damn good.

And they got better as I put them on paper, working out the details, finessing the language, adding in little things that maybe only mattered to us. My partner and I talked about it some more, hammered out some things we didn’t agree on, and they got better yet.

I live for days like this.

Of course, it will never be filmed as we envisioned it today. In fact, it may never go any farther than the client pitch. And even if it does, it’ll be picked apart, watered down and chewed up until only the remains bare only the slightest resemblance to what we dreamed up.

And that’s okay.

Because today was about creating a great idea for a corporate video, and we did that. Big time. Hours later, I’m still jazzed about it. This is why I got into advertising. This is what it’s all about.

I love my job.

###

#281 In which our hero relates the events of The Great Daycare Debacle (part 5)

2009-11-09T12:29:00.002-05:00

But, before we confronted the director, we needed a back-up plan. The Scientist and I were trying our best to be fair, and were willing to hear this guy out… but we both expected the conversation to end the same way: with us yanking the girls out of that daycare on the spot. And if that was going to happen, we needed somewhere else to put them.

We revisited the list of acceptable daycare centers in the area. On was still out because they wouldn’t transport Lily to Kindergarten. We went round and round, but kept coming back to the one center that I liked so much, but was too expensive.

The Scientist got creative with our finances, and it began to appear like we could swing it, just. Or maybe we’d be slowly sinking into debt. Either way, we had gone the cheap route once, and it had bit us on the ass. We weren’t going to do that to the girls again. You get what you pay for, after all, and we were willing to pay what it took, even if it meant maintaining more debt than we wanted for longer than we wanted.

We called the “good” center first thing in the morning and scheduled a meeting. We dropped the girls off at the “bad” center, then headed right over to the other place.

We told this new director our tale of woe, and she was horrified. She reassured us that the children always come first, and that they’d never transport in a private car, and they had an established curriculum, etc., etc. I had already been there once, so I had heard all this before. We talked money and how soon the girls could start (immediately, was the answer, thankfully) and so on. We told the director of this new place that we still needed to talk to the director of the old place first. She was very understanding. We took a bunch of paperwork with us, and drove over to the “bad” center.

The director of this center is a very cheerful guy. A very “no problem!” sort of guy. While this is generally a good attribute, it wasn’t winning him any points when he told us that the illegal turn and subsequent citation was “no big deal.”

We sat down and asked him to tell us what happened. He repeated the story pretty much as it had been told to me the day before from the teacher. She made an illegal turn, got pulled over, was so upset that she couldn’t drive back to the center.

So I asked, “She was cited for an illegal turn on red? That was the ONLY citation?” And he assured me that yes, that was the only citation.

Then I told him that Lily had told us that the teacher’s license was expired.

He danced around this for a moment before confirming that, well, yes, as it turns out, her license was expired. We told him that we were pretty horrified that he didn’t know that one of the teachers in his employ was transporting kids with an expired driver’s license. I mean, isn’t that his job to keep track of things like that? He told us that it wasn’t expired when he put her on the center’s insurance.

He tried to glad-hand us some more, reassuring us that he really was taking the situation seriously, but that in actuality it was no big deal. Frankly, I had heard enough already, and decided to end it right then and there.

ME: So, when you told me that Miss A--- was only cited for an illegal turn on red, that wasn’t the truth.
DIRECTOR: Well, at the time, I didn’t know her license had expired.
ME: But when I asked you the question ten minutes ago, you DID know.
DIRECTOR: Well, um, yes, I guess I did.
ME: Okay, we’re done here.

We pulled out the kids on the spot and took them over to the new center.

The director of the new place was very accommodating, and let the girls spend the rest of the day there, getting used to the place. We took a little time with the director, making sure she knew Lily’s schedule of when she had to get to school, and when she had to be picked up.

I was a little concerned that no other kids in the center were going to Lily’s Kindergarten, meaning that she was the only one to be transported to this particular school. This was the issue at the last place. But the director assured us that it wouldn’t be a problem. And I wasn’t really all that worried; this place had it’s act together.

We picked up the girls at the end of the day, and they had had a fantastic time. They actually didn’t want to leave. Very encouraging.

The Scientist dropped Lily off at school in the morning, after briefing her on how she was going to get back to the center at the end of the school day. Things were going seamlessly.

Then, at 3pm, the school called my wife. No-one from the new center had shown to pick up Lily.

I was furious. Bad enough to think that my little 5-year-old daughter was standing at the bus stop waiting, waiting, waiting for a bus that never came; but we had just told the director at the new center about all the bullshit we went through in the past couple months. She was SO horrified and SO sympathetic and now this?!

As my wife was rushing out of work to pick up Lily, I called the center.

ME: Let me speak to the center director.
FLUNKY: I’m sorry, she’s out right now. This is the assistant director, can I help you?
ME: Yes, you'll do. This is Lily’s father—
FLUNKY: Oh yes! We’re just waiting for Lily to get back.
ME: Well, you’re going to be waiting a long damn time because the school just called to say that your bus never showed up!

She was, of course, very apologetic and blah, blah, blah. I drove over there after work to talk to the director, who was equally apologetic. She is a bit of an over-talking and rushed over my words in her haste to reassure me that this would never happen again and I finally had to say, let me finish! to say my peace.

She told me that it was just a scheduling problem, that they thought they could make a stop at another school before picking Lily up but it took longer than they thought and it was fixed now and would never be a problem again.

Then, the next day, it happened again.

While I am quick to anger, my wife is much less so. But after having to leave work early two days in a row she was in a rage to put mine to shame.

This time, the bus actually got there, but just after the school’s cut-off time. The school, which is really strict about these things, told the bus driver, basically, sorry Charlie, and wouldn’t release Lily. And honestly, I’d glad of it. I like it that her school has a no compromises policy on stuff like this.

So, we had another discussion with the center director. We told her that if she couldn't get her act together enough to pick up our kid on time, that we were gone. She told us that she had a new plan, that they were actually going to get another bus from a nearby center and that she, the center director, was personally going to drive Lily to and from school.

Good.

I’m pleased to report that this new center has been successfully transporting my kid for months now. No emergency calls from the school. No problems.

And both girls love it at this place. They are learning things, and we get daily report cards on their progress.

It took some doing, but it would appear that we finally got it right.

fin

###

#280 In which our hero relates the events of The Great Daycare Debacle (part 4)

2009-11-02T09:12:00.001-05:00

So it came to pass that I didn’t get to any of the projects I had planned for when I had the house to myself, because I was too busy calling and visiting daycare centers. I stuck to commercial centers (we weren’t going to put our kids into private care again) that were reasonably close to the house, so that narrowed the choices down to four.

Finding daycare this time around was a little trickier, since Lily would be going to Kindergarten in the fall, meaning the center would have to transport her to school in the morning, and pick her up at the last bell. Then she’d be at the center until The Scientist or I could pick her up around 5:30.

One school on the list didn’t transport to her Kindergarten, so it was right out. Another one was at the intersection of two really busy streets, and I thought it would be a nightmare getting in and out of there. A third was fantastic, but just too expensive.

That left one.

This center was housed in an old schoolhouse, so it had plenty of big, spacious classrooms. But “old” is the key word here. It was a little run-down… not dilapidated, but certainly not new. The basement smelled like mildew. The (admittedly large) playground had old, rusted climbing toys. And a swing set without any swings.

I had my reservations, but the people (especially the center director) were really nice. The classroom sizes were small, meaning that our kids would be getting lots of individualized attention. And they had a curriculum plan in place so the girls would be learning something. And we could afford it.

And, honestly, I was running out of time.

I really wanted to put our kids in the awesome center, but since we didn’t have the money, this was probably the next best thing. Or, maybe the only viable option.

So, The Scientist and the girls returned from their trip on Sunday, and we got them ready for the new place on Monday. The beginning of Kindergarten was still a couple months away, which was good in that it gave Lily plenty of time to acclimate to the new place before another disruptive element was added to the routine.

The girls quickly settled in to the new center. And things were fine… not great, but fine.

There were some things that didn’t really raise a red flag, but were a little… off. The woman who monitored the girls first thing in the morning was strange. Quiet, withdrawn, emotionless. Not someone you’d look at and say, “Oh, she just LOVES children!”

After a week or so there, we asked the girls if they were having lessons. They said they weren’t. This confirmed something that we had seen… it appeared that no matter what time of day we picked up, they were just playing. Education is very important to both The Scientist and I, and when asked about the curriculum the center director kept telling us that the teachers were “working on it.”

And then one day some little bastard in the classroom wrote “Kick Me” on the back of Lily’s white shirt, in ink.

We knew this wasn’t the best situation, just an emergency fix. And again, it was what we could afford. We rationalized it by saying that Lily would soon be attending Kindergarten, and would only be spending a few hours at the center. And Macey… well, Macey got the short end of the stick. But there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Lily eventually started going to Kindergarten. We had some bothersome conversations with the center director about transportation. We made it clear that she had to be AT school at a certain time, and had to be picked up FROM school at a certain time. His attitude was very much, “don’t worry, we’ll get her there one way or another!” Which isn’t what we wanted to hear… he may have been lackadaisical about it, but we wanted to know EXACTLY when she would be getting there and EXACTLY who would be driving her to school.

The center had some scheduling issues with Lily. Since she was the only one being dropped off/picked up at this particular school, they had to work around it to get all the other kids where they needed to be. I tried to be understanding and considerate about this… but the director said, “Eh, if she’s a little late, she’s a little late.” To which I relied, “No, she can’t be a little late. She needs to be on time, and it’s YOUR job to make sure she’s on time.”

Things came to a head a couple months later.

At this point Lily was being transported by a teacher in her car instead of the center’s van. This made us a little bit nervous, but we were told that the teacher was "certified" to transport children, whatever that meant. And I guess it didn’t really make a difference if it was a van or a car, right?

One afternoon I showed up to pick up the girls, and Lily’s teacher rushed over to me. She told me that there was an incident, and she wanted to explain what happened before we heard it from Lily.

It seems that this teacher made an illegal right turn on red, and was pulled over for it. She had never gotten a ticket in her life before, and was so upset by the situation, she explained to me, that the center director had to come pick her and Lily up.

Now, I wasn’t that upset by this. I mean, I knew the intersection she was talking about, and even though it’s labeled no right on red, I could see making that mistake. And I’ve been ticketed myself for an illegal turn on red. Lily wasn’t upset or frightened by the experience, and there was no accident or near-miss that might have put her in harm’s way. I was prepared to let it slide.

Then, Lily and I had a conversation on the way home:

ME: Lily, what happened today?
LILY: Nothing.
ME: No? You didn’t have a police man stop you on the way home?
LILY: Oh yeah! Miss A--- broke a law!
ME: I heard! And were you frightened when it happened?
LILY: No.
ME: Was Miss A--- upset?
LILY: No, not really.
ME: No? She wasn’t crying or anything?
LILY: No.
ME: Did the police man say anything to her?
LILY: Yeah! He said she turned wrong.
ME: Yes, she sure did.
LILY: He also said that her license died a year ago.
ME: Wait, what did he say?
LILY: He said her license died a year ago.
ME: Did he maybe say her license expired a year ago?
LILY: Yeah! That’s what he said!

No-one had said anything to me about her license being expired, and I had no reason not to believe my daughter. She sometimes tells tales, but this didn’t seem like something she could make up.

The Scientist was equally concerned about this development. A minor traffic infraction is one thing, but being lied to was something entirely different.

Now, driving on an expired license is a dumb thing, but not necessarily a dangerous thing. It wasn’t like this teacher would drive safer with a valid license. But the real issue was that we were be lied to. Or, at the very least, not told the entire truth.

This incident, in addition to all the other little things that we didn’t like, pretty much decided it for us. We didn’t want the girls there any longer. If the teachers would lie about something like this, then they might lie about other, more important things. And we were not going to leave our kids in a facility that we didn’t trust.

So, we planned to confront the center director the next morning.

To be concluded.

***

#279 In which our hero relates the events of The Great Daycare Debacle (part 3)

2009-10-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

The new daycare was a storefront building. Actually, two storefronts with the dividing wall removed. The space had some nice advantages over the rooms at the church, notably better security and self-contained kitchen space. But, there were some rather big drawbacks, too.

Overall, the space was smaller. Half of the place had been a dentist’s office, and was still very compartmentalized. The other half of the space was essentially one huge room, which would serve as the infants and really young kid’s space. Also, the only outdoor space was a small, fenced-in section of asphalt. This was a huge bummer for the girls, especially after the huge yard and swings and climbing equipment of the church.

Since this was an emergency move, the entire half for the infants wasn’t ready. A big sheet of plywood blocked the entrance to that side. It was really cramped.

But, the girls still got to hang out with all their little friends all day, and still had their favorite teacher, so all was well.

For a time.

Then, Susan ran into money problems again. A significant amount of the kids in her daycare were lower income, and those families paid for daycare with the help of government vouchers. Which was actually great for Susan because, unlike a lot of the parents, the feds always paid tuition on time.

Well, since Susan had moved in and started operating the daycare before renovations were completed, that meant that she was no longer certified by the state. And while you can legally operate a daycare without state certification, there are consequences. The biggest one being that you are not allowed to receive vouchers. Susan found out the hard way that a big part of her venue stream was suddenly shut off at the tap.

Then, things just got weird.

Susan was apparently have troubles in her marriage. Which is none of my business. But it was made my business when her husband emailed a copy of an IM chat to all of the parents in the daycare. In this chat Susan was flirting (rather innocently, IMO) with some other man.

A month or so after that, Susan’s husband called The Scientist at home. He told her that Susan had left him, and that she was now living with another man. And this man had a criminal record. He provided his name and birthday and invited us to look up his record on the Internet.

Which we did, of course. It wasn’t a violent crime, but it still made us feel strange. The Scientist asked one of Susan’s kids (her kids were always with her at the center) about this guy, and she replied that he was fine, “as long as you give him his respect.” This unnerved me, and The Scientist, too.

We both knew that if Susan was living with this guy, he was going to be around the center and, by definition, around our kids. And we didn’t like that.

There was some other stuff happening at the same time, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the little stuff, but the end result was that we decided that it was time to pull the plug on Susan.

It certainly wasn’t an easy decision, especially considering that we had been with her for more than four years and our kids loved it there. But we worried that things were only going to get worse, and perhaps even get to the point where unsafe things were happening.

As it happened, The Scientist and the girls were out of town for a week visiting the in-laws when all this came to a head. The Scientist and I hashed everything out over the phone. I had some time off, so I took it and started to look for a new daycare. Thankfully, there are plenty to choose from in our area.

I found one (more on that later), I signed papers, and it was a done deal. The girls would be starting in this new place the Monday after they returned from their trip.

All that was left was to tell Susan.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I suspected that she would feel betrayed. Which, I decided, was fine… she could feel however the hell she wanted, because I no longer felt like my kids were in a safe environment, and that was that. It was good that my wife was out of town and I handled the “break up.” The Scientist probably would have apologized, and over-explained and most likely cry. In contrast, I went in, pulled Susan aside, and told her that we were leaving the daycare.

I told her that there was just too much drama around her. Between her husband calling us, her new living arrangements and some other things, we were done. I told her that we weren’t mad at her, but we couldn’t stay. There was no drama in this moment, just me telling her the way it was going to be. I collected the extra clothes the girls had there and their medical records, and was gone.

Meanwhile, The Scientist did her best to prepare the girls for the change that was coming on Monday.

To be continued.

###

#278 In which our hero relates the events of The Great Daycare Debacle (part 2)

2009-10-19T16:03:00.004-04:00

I’m not always as quick on my feet as I’d like, but if you give me the chance to prepare some remarks in advance, I think I can lay down a pretty good argument. So I spent some time putting my thoughts together, and I thought I had a pretty good set of points in favor of the day care moving into the church. They were, in order of importance:

Much-needed income
Lots of new people (i.e., potential members) coming to the church for the first time
More diverse people coming to the church

The “debate” – if you want to call it that—was conduced pro/con/pro/con, with me speaking second.

I found the “con” arguments not very convincing, since they basically boiled down to “we don’t wanna.” One presenter tried to bolster his argument with numbers, basically trying to say that Susan wasn’t going to be paying enough compared to what other tenets paid. Which was absolutely ridiculous, considering that one of the other tenets was a kindergarten co-op which hadn’t had a rent increase in 15 YEARS.

All of this information was presented and we were told that the powers that be would discuss it and get back to us with a decision.

During this entire process The Scientist and I were encouraging Susan to NOT move into the church. I mean, the church was sending a clear signal that they (or, at least, a significant number of them) didn’t want her there… why go knowingly into a situation where the people are already biased against you? But Susan was determined.

Things drug on for weeks, and finally through whatever maneuvering needed to be done, Susan’s contract for two rooms in the church was approved.

As predicted, there were a lot of sour looks from the trustees. And, frankly, they continued to do whatever they could to screw Susan over. First, they made her pay rent that was considerably higher than what other renters were paying. They made her agree to clear the snow and ice by the side entrance herself. She was responsible for hauling trash out to the dumpsters. I found the entire thing rather un-Christian.

That said, Susan was far from the perfect tenant. You’d think that she would tread softly, being that she knew she wasn’t exactly being welcomed with open arms. But she didn’t. She moved in and made herself at home. She helped herself to room within the church’s kitchen, which wasn’t mentioned in the contract. She allowed the kids to run around in the gym, which wasn’t one of the rooms she contracted for. She basically took advantage of what little goodwill there might have been. Even those in the church who wanted her there started to give her sideways glances.

The Scientist and I both saw this, and cautioned her. But Susan is very much a “ask forgiveness, not permission” sort of person.

So, things were a little contentious at the new space. But, after a year or so, things pretty much settled down. I don’t know if the church saw that she wasn’t going to be as big a thorn in their sides as they thought, or maybe they just really started to like the new income.

Susan expanded at the church, renting two more rooms for a total of four. She and the church came to an agreement about using the kitchen and the gym. Honestly, things were pretty good for a time.

Now, The Scientist and I still had qualms about certain things. We were both on her board of directors, but were rarely informed of any significant changes. Staff turnover was higher than we would like. Some of the women who worked there seemed a little lazy. EVERYONE who worked there (including Susan) were on their cell phones ALL THE TIME.

But, we never felt like our children were in any danger, and Susan was pretty aggressive about introducing a real curriculum. Our children (Macey had been born by this time and was at the center) were learning things… it wasn’t just a babysitting service.

But, the wheels really came off a couple years later.

Susan had always wanted her own building. She wanted a space were she wouldn’t have to deal with so many restrictions and, I suspect, so many sour faces. One day she informed The Scientist and I that she had found a place, and was moving forward with plans to open a second center.

I was really annoyed with this. As a board member (The Scientist was the President of the Board, no less), she should have consulted with us first. But by the time we were brought into the loop she had already signed a contract.

My wife had more important concerns, namely, could Susan afford to open a second center? We weren’t privy to her financials, but even though I’m sure she made a profit, she wasn’t raking in the dough by any means. And the space she had put money down on needed significant modifications. In fact, other than the lobby, the entire space had to be gutted and rebuilt from scratch.

But, Susan assured us that she had run the numbers and it was going to work out. She could maintain the current center in the church, and open the new one at the same time.

Somehow the church got wind of this new center, and started asking Susan if she was leaving. No, no, she told them, I’m opening a second location, not leaving the first.

Then, a series of events occurred that didn’t surprise The Scientist or I at all. The construction of the new center was more expensive than anticipated, and took longer than planned. Susan began to run out of money, and became late in paying her rent to the church.

The church—never happy with having her there in the first place, remember—saw this as an excellent opportunity to drive her out (this is only my opinion, of course… but events really seemed to support it).

They demanded the rent in full, even after Susan made it clear that she didn’t have it. One evening (she was already three months late at this point) members of the trustees approached her and demanded she write a check for a partial amount on the spot. She did. At this point Susan’s story and the church’s story diverge: Susan claims that she told them right then and there that there wasn’t enough money in the account to cover the check, but if they wanted one, by God she’d write one. The church claims that she never said anything about insignificant funds. Sadly, I believe the church.

After the check bounced things really came to a head. The church changed the locks on her, and said she couldn’t get back in until she paid in full. They did let her go in and retrieve some of her stuff and pack it over to the new site, but locked her out again (in the pouring rain) before she got everything, screaming at her the entire time.

At this point Susan decided to just go ahead and dump the church and open up in the new space, even though it wasn’t finished. Frankly, I think this was her plan all along: to string along the church until the construction in the new place was done, then jump ship. Even though she swore she never intended to leave.

The screaming/moving/raining incident happened on a Friday, and the next Monday we took the kids to the new place.

To be continued.

###

#277 In which our hero relates the events of The Great Daycare Debacle (part 1)

2009-10-14T15:23:00.002-04:00

Daycare was one of the biggest challenges The Scientist and I had to address early on in the child rearing process. I mean, not just us, most all working parents, but I don’t really care about anyone else’s childcare problems. We don’t have any family in the area (none close enough to sit daily, at least) so we were going to need outside help.

We were told repeatedly that if we wanted quality care we needed to get daycare locked down before we even had children. So, when my wife was seven months pregnant or so, I started to look for daycare. This task fell to me since I was laid off at the time.

We started with the big centers, the KinderCare’s and Child Time’s and the like. We found them to be too expensive. So we started to look for in-home day care. The Scientist had a list of providers that had been vetted to some degree by her employer. So I started there.

Most wouldn’t even talk to me.

That is to say, when they learned that my child hadn’t been born yet, they wouldn’t. “Call back when she is three months old,” was a common sentiment. This, of course, flew in the face of what we had been told about getting everything lined up well in advance.

But a few showed interest, so I went to check them out. One lady had an incredibly small and cramped house, and another wasn’t home when I showed up at our pre-arranged time. Both of them didn’t make the cut.

I interviewed one woman who seemed nice, had a big house with a huge fenced-in back yard, and seemed loving. She was already watching a couple kids, and had room for one more in the fall (when The Scientist was expecting). I liked her, and told my wife that I thought this could work out.

The Scientist went to visit herself a couple days later, and agreed. “Susan” was our new daycare provider!

As new parents, we were freaked out by the prospect of having someone we didn’t really know that well mind our children for five to eight hours a day. But we both needed to work, so we didn’t really have much of a choice.

We liked Susan, and Lily seemed to be doing just fine. She met a bunch of other little kids and developed friendships. In fact, if nothing had changed, our kids might still be happily spending their days with Susan today.

But things did change.

Susan started to get more inquires about childcare than she could manage in her home--Ohio regulates this, and there’s a limit to the number of children who can be watched by one person. In fact, Susan already had an assistant who came in to help her out. It was getting really crowded. So Susan began to think big and branch out into a commercial space.

As coincidence would have it, the church that The Scientist and I attended had some empty rooms in its education wing. These were basically two classrooms that were only being used for storage and the occasional Sunday school. Susan got wind of this and inquired at the church about renting them.

And here’s where it all started to go downhill.

A little background first: this church is a small Methodist church (although the religion really has nothing to do with the rest of the story)--small, that is, in the number of parishioners; the building itself is rather huge (and ugly, it was constructed in the late 60s, I believe; it’s a big grey cinderblock square with an attached bell tower). It’s also an old congregation. The Scientist and I were welcomed with open arms as everyone was happy to see “young people” in the church again. My wife and I were both in our late 30s when we started going there.

We also quickly realized that everyone had their designated roles and didn’t take kindly to anyone trying to rock the boat. How much so we wouldn’t realize until later.

So, Susan sent a letter to the church outlining how she’d like to move her daycare into the empty classrooms. As is their typical process, this letter was shunted to the trustees for consideration.

The trustees, without comment, rejected the idea.

Now, something I didn’t mention was that the church is poor. With a dwindling congregation and a giant space to heat, the bills far surpassed the income. I was puzzled why the church would turn away anyone who came offering money.

Now, I have my theories. The obvious one is that since Susan is black, and the church congregation is wholly white, that someone in the church didn’t think it would be a good fit, to put it charitably. I hope this isn’t the real reason, and I don’t think this church is racist by nature… but I can’t rule out the idea, either.

Another theory (and probably the real reason) is that no-one wanted to deal with what they feared would be additional work to accommodate the day care. The kids would be using a side door that’s not usually used, so in the winter someone would have to shovel and ice that area of the sidewalk; there would be extra trash that would have to be hauled to the dumpsters in back; and, good heavens, can you imagine the noise of a bunch of kids running around in the hallways?

I don't know what made the trustees say no, but no they did say.

This not only puzzled me, it puzzled Susan, too. So much so that she went directly to the pastor for more information. Turns out, the pastor didn’t know anything about it. That is to say, none of the trustees bothered to tell her that a potential revenue source had come knocking, and they refused to open the door.

Now, I should also mention that the pastor at the time had only been at the church for a year or so, and was not very well liked. She had some new ideas that weren’t well received, and her sermons tended to ramble and go long.

But this pastor saw an opportunity to beef up the bottom line and probably--less opportunistically--thought she could reach out to the community, help foster quality child care in town, help a local small businesswoman, blah, blah, blah. But really, I suspect dollar signs were the first thing she saw. I know that’s what I would have felt in her position.

So the pastor pushed back on the trustees, and it got a little ugly. Like I said, everyone had well defined roles in the church, and the trustees didn’t take kindly to this new pastor trying to force something past them. There were meetings and heated words and finally the higher-ups got involved.

The church had a “charge conference,” in which a high-ranking official for the region came in and had a town hall-style discussion in which both sides, pro and con, had time to present their position.

Susan asked me to speak in favor of having the center move into the church.

To be continued.

###

BEAT REPEAT

2009-09-16T11:21:00.002-04:00

History Repeats

In 1856, United States senator and noted abolitionist Charles Sumner delivered a fiery three-hour speech on the senate floor in which he condemned slavery and those content to see the practice continued. He was particularly unkind to fellow senator Andrew Butler.

Two days later, while Sumner wrote letters at his desk in the empty Senate Chamber, Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina and Andrew Butler’s nephew, approached Sumner. Brooks is reported to have said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” And then he began to savagely beat Sumner with his metal-capped walking stick.

Sumner was unable to rise from his desk to defend himself, as it was bolted to the floor. He was finally able to tear the desk from the floorboards and, blood pouring down his face, stagger into the aisle to collapse. Brooks continued to beat him until his cane broke, at which point he quietly left the chamber and the unconscious Sumner.

Tensions were high in America at this time, it being less than five years away from the beginning of the Civil War. This division was perhaps no better illustrated than by the aftermath of the attack.

While Northerners were horrified, Brooks was heralded as a hero in the South. In an editorial, The Richmond Enquirer declared, “We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission.”

The House moved to expel Brooks, but the vote fell short. Back home, Brooks was sent dozens of new canes, at least one of which was accompanied by a note which read, “Hit him again.”

This all occurred more than a century ago, and it’s easy to think of it as ancient history. We, as a nation, are much more advanced today, right?

I’m not so sure.

Flash forward to September 9th, 2009. In a joint session of congress, president Barack Obama discusses his tumultuous health care reform plan. In the middle of the president’s remarks, congressman Joe Wilson (who, like Preston Brooks before him, represents South Carolina) jabs a finger at the president and shouts “You lie!”

This outburst is not only against congressional rules, it is a nearly unthinkable breach of decorum.

Unthinkable, that is, at any other time.

While our nation isn’t facing a civil war, we are divided by an ideological rift that seems nearly as severe. The public “discussion” of health care reform has become anything but. The discourse has coarsened to the point that it’s become scary. Protesters carry signs portraying Obama as Hitler; a supporter of the administration had a finger bitten off during a scuffle; and some protestors have arrived at events openly carrying guns.

And while no-one has yet sent Joe Wilson a new cane in the mail, he did receive more than $1 million in new campaign donations in the days following the outburst. On September 15, the House approved a "resolution of disapproval" against Wilson, on a near party-line 240-179 vote… in other words, most of Wilson’s fellow Republicans didn’t see the need to register disapproval at what he did.

The parallels are unmistakable. More than 150 years ago, this sort of furious name-calling and righteous anger let to the most divisive and bloody period in our nation’s history.

I wonder what the next three and a half years will bring?

###

#276 In which our hero encourages, nay, begs, his children to enjoy soccer practice.

2009-08-17T06:57:00.004-04:00

Couple of months ago The Scientist was browsing through the catalog put out by our city’s recreational board. They offer a wide variety of “enrichment” programs for kids and adults (in fact, I took their “creative writing workshop” offering for a year or so). There’s a bunch of kids’ program, including sports. We thought the “Hummingbird Soccer” program (kids 3-6) sounded good.

We talked it up, and they seemed excited about it. They sometimes kick a soccer ball around with the little boys across the street, and it was strictly beginner level, so we thought they’d get something out of it.

Now, The Scientist and are aren’t die-hard sports fans by any stretch. While we’re both very active and competitive in our given activities, these activities are far from mainstream sports, and I’d be surprised if anyone thought of us as “jocks.” So we’re really just trying to expose the girls to sports, not force them into it. Personally, I think team sports are extremely important for the lessons they teach about teamwork, working together, dealing with losing, etc. And, y’know, who doesn’t want to be the guy sitting in the stands bragging, “That’s MY daughter who just made that goal!” And at 4-years-old and 5-years-old, respectively, we didn’t expect our kids to be God’s gift to athletics, but we thought that at the very least they’d get to run around with a bunch of other kids their age and have a lot of fun.

They did not. In fact, they hated it.

But not right off the bat. In fact, it started on a very promising note. The first day we were one of the first to arrive, and they got first pick of the soccer balls they’d use that day, and got their team t-shirts (they were both on the “red” team). All told, there were probably 40 kids on the field, in about eight teams. The first half of the one hour practice was drills. The coach had them kick the balls around, kick them in the goal, etc. Fun stuff. Them seemed to be enjoying it. For the most part.

About 20 minutes in we noticed they started to run off the field to visit us. First, they wanted a drink of water (which we completely forgot to bring the first session, since we’re terrible parents), then they just wanted a hug, then they started to complain they were tired.

We were very accommodating of this at first (“Okay, here’s your hug. Umph! Great, now, ha-ha, get back out there! “) but became a little more stern as they starting coming off more often. And when the actual 20-minute scrimmage started, it got really obnoxious.

See, there were mostly fine with drills. But when other kids tried to take the ball away from them or blocked their shots, holy shit, that was not cool with our children.

“They won’t pass the ball to me!”

“They’re faster than me!”

“He kicked the ball away from me!”

And so on. Clearly, they didn’t understand the “competitive” part of competitive sports. And it didn’t help that there were a couple of older boys who were both serious about playing and had some skills (for 6-year-olds). One kid in particular loved to come running at whoever had the ball and take a sliding kick to knock it away. He did this to Lily at least twice. “Lily would be having a better time,” I remarked to The Scientist, “If fucking Pelé would relax.”

It was at this point that they really started to whine and cry. Now, The Scientist and I were really trying hard not to be those asshole parents you see on the sidelines berating their kids. However, we didn’t want them to outright quit without trying either. “Come on girls, get out there. Your team needs you!” I tried this one several times. “Only 10 more minutes, girls! Try to tough it out for 10 more minutes!” I tried that, too. Finally, it came to: “Lily! Macey! Go!” This in my dad big voice.

I started to feel like a big dick, commanding my whining and crying kids back to the field. But I’ve seen this behavior before, especially in Lily. If things don’t go her way right away, her first reaction is to take her ball and go home. I hate this. So, yes, I made her play.

Well, I couldn’t make her play, of course. What I made her do was stand on the field. And both girls did this… stood in the field sniffling, making only token efforts to kick at the ball if it happened to come near them. When the final whistle finally blew, both girls couldn’t get off the field fast enough.

Thus began eight weeks of suck.

Most every week, it was the same. They'd complain that they didn't want to go to soccer, that it wasn't fun. When we got there, they'd have fun the first half of the practice, then the wheels would fall off when it came to the game.

One day it started to rain, hard, just as we pulled up. "Well, girls, it looks like soccer is going to be cancelled for today." Huge cheers from both girls.

I was very, very tempted to just pull the plug, tell them they didn't have to go any more. But the thing is that the eight week session was already paid for and, more importantly, it was the principle of the thing. They needed to learn that not everything is fun right off the bat, especially anything involving competition. And they needed to know that there are things you need to practice before you have any skill in them.

So we kept going.

The big complaint became that they got tired in the middle of practice. So I started to bring "energy pills." Let me explain.

A year or so ago, Lily got into the habit of saying that her stomach hurt her every night at bedtime. We didn't really believe her (it was clearly a stall tactic) but we starting giving her a single Rolaid. She ate it, said her tummy didn't bother her any more, and went to bed. But, we started to feel weird about doing this... Rolaids are a kind of medicine, albeit a weak medicine. Still, there was no reason to dose our kids (because Macey got in on the act, too) every night for no reason.

So, I bought a bunch of candy bracelets at the store and cut the strings. I took the candy and put it in a plastic tub, and told the girls this was the new tummy medicine. So, one "tummy pill" a night, and all was well. At some point we stopped calling it tummy medicine and started calling it tummy candy, just so there would no confusion about when medicine was, and when it was okay to take it.

This candy became our de facto cure for just about everything. Tummy hurts? Here's a tummy candy pill. Eyes itchy? Here's an itchy eye pill. And so on. So, when the complaining about being tired at soccer practice hit a fever pitch, I broke out the energy pills. The girls were allowed five a day (since they were so strong). I don't know where as it really helped. But it did give me an excuse to send them back out on the field; "You had your energy pills, now get back out there!" I was waiting for some other parent to chide me for giving my kids speed, but they never did.

We missed a couple weeks, due to vacation. The girls didn't mind. Then finally, the eighth and last practice rolled around. We told the girls that this was it, the last hour of soccer, and they needed to play today, but never had to play soccer again in their lives if they didn't want to.

Amazingly, Lily had the best day out of the eight. She was engaged, active, drove the field a couple times, and generally seemed to be having a good time. She didn't come off the field crying once.

Macey, on the other hand, was having a melt down. She stomped around, head hung low, complaining about how tired she was, so very tired. As it turned out, the red team was split into two, with Lily going with the older kids to a different field, and Macey and the younger ones staying where they were. Even with the level of competition reduced, Macey wasn't having it.

Finally, The Scientist pulled her off and promised that if she kicked the ball once, just once, that we'd all go to McDonalds for lunch. So she gave the ball a half-hearted kick when it rolled right to her, looked at us to confirm that that kick was good enough, then called it a day. Even though the game wasn't over, she ran over to the field Lily was on and started screaming, "Lily! Lily! Come on! Mama says we can go to McDonalds now!" She was none to happy to learn that we weren't going that instant.

At the end, all the kids gathered and they passed out trophies. Everyone got one, it was part of the fee. It was nice, I suppose, and the girls were happy to get something, but, I dunno, it just doesn't seem to send the right message.

I mean, my kids barely participated. I'm not saying they should be punished for this, but I don't think they should be rewarded, either. And get a trophy? For what? Showing up six of the eight weeks and half-assing it around the field? Maybe I'm just a prick, but effectively telling all these kids that the slightest effort on your part will score you a trophy isn't the best message. Eh, maybe at this age it's only about encouraging them to stick with it. I'm no coach.

I talked to Lily afterward, and told her how proud I was that she stuck it out, and how cool it was that she really seemed to be getting the hand of it this practice. She agreed that it was better this time, more fun.

ME: Fun enough that you might want to do it again next summer?
LILY: (immediately) No!

So, my kids have their cheap plastic trophies, and that seems good enough for them. They're well on their way to becoming nerds, just like their parents.

#275 In which our hero keeps his eye on an odd office in his building.

2009-07-16T13:11:00.006-04:00

The building I work in used to be a big warehouse. At some point it was refurbished and transformed into offices. But they cut away the floors in the center of the building, leaving a really cool open atrium kind of space. Some of the offices have windows that face into the atrium.

There’s also a breezeway from the parking lot across the canal, which is where I park. I walk across the breezeway every day, past an office that has a row of windows looking out into the atrium. But by the way they’re positioned, they’re also looking into the walkway. So anyone sitting in that office is pretty much at eye level for people walking in to work.

This is going somewhere, so stick with me.

So, this one office space was vacant for a long time (there’s also an office on the opposite side, but the tenants of that space were smart enough to install blinds, which they never open). One day when I was walking in, I saw that a business has moved into the space; architects, judging from the rolls and rolls of blueprints.

The space is basically one big open room, with a conference room (which also has a window opening to the atrium) and a couple small offices with doors on the far side. There also appears to be a small waiting area and reception desk, but I can’t really see that from the walkway.

The new tenants moved eight or so big wood desks into the space, abutting them back to back, like an office environment from the 50s. I thought it was interesting, and looked forward to seeing people sitting in those desks, staring across at each other, sketching architectural renderings longhand and smoking Lucky Strikes.

But no people ever came.

Days, then weeks went by, and I never once saw a person in the office. I supposed it was possible that they were out in the field, overseeing construction or something, and only occasionally came to the office. Maybe after 5pm, when I was already speeding north.

So I took note of one desk in particular, which had a fat, loosely rolled blueprint atop two small, tightly rolled blueprints. I watched to see if they ever moved.

Every day, as I walked in, I took note of the blueprints: one fat on top of two tight. No lights were ever on in the office, no signs of people having been there. And the blueprints never moved.

Now, it wasn’t like the place was just a storage area, there were desks with chairs, a big conference table in the conference room, staplers and the like… clearly people were meant to work there.

But no-one ever did.

This went on for months and months. One day I took a side-trip around the corner to look at their front door. It had the company name stenciled on it, and they were commercial architects, as I suspected. There were no lights on, and I wasn’t brave enough to try the door.

Almost there.

Then one day, I came walking across the breezeway as normal to find a work crew in the office. They were hauling out all the big 50s-era desks and replacing them with modern-style cubicles. On my way out I saw that they must have installed a dozen of these cloth-lined cubies, each with its own desk, overhead drawers, chair and computer.

And still, no people working there.

I found this all more than passing odd. I asked a couple of people at work about it, but they were as clueless as me.

Then! One day, I came to work and saw a woman working! She was sitting in one of the cubies, with her computer and chair positioned so that she was looking out the window. She had brought in a picture to hang on the wall, and some deck doo-dads to personalize her space. It looked like she was going to be there for a while.

And now we get to the part that bugs me.

Every morning when I come to work, if she’s already there working, I’ll glance over at her, and she’ll look up over her computer screen, and she’s give me a dirty look, as if to say, “What are YOU looking at?”

She is literally the only person in an office FULL of cubicles, all but three of which do not face this window, and run no risk of having the occupant accidentally make eye contact with another human. If you’re so annoyed that I’m peeking in on your own private work world… then move. Anywhere. Or just turn your computer so that it’s not facing the window. It’s really that easy!

The odd thing is, I still haven’t seen anyone else there. Just this one woman with the miniature stop sign and photos of (presumably) her children on her desk.

Maybe I’ll get a sheet of paper and write a little sign to hold up next time I pass:

GET SOME BLINDS

###

#274 In which our hero sorts a great many comic books.

2009-07-08T07:04:00.007-04:00

The Scientist and the girls are away for a week (!) visiting the grandparents. This left me with a lot of time on my hands in the evening, so I decided to undertake a big chore that I’ve been putting off for a long time: organizing my comics.

I’ve been collecting comics since I was in 5th grade. This means that a large portion of my collection is old superhero comics that no longer hold any real appeal to me. Not that I’d throw them out! So I have a bunch of longboxes in my basement filled with bagged and boarded comics that I haven’t looked at in years and years.

All of my books are alphabetically sorted and, honesty, that’s the problem. See, if I start collecting a new comic that starts with the letter “A” then if I want to file it properly, I’d have to find room in the “A” box for it. Add enough new comics and you have to displace some into the next box. Displace enough of the second box, and it cascades down and down until I’d have to fuss with a dozen boxes or so. Ugh.

So, instead, I keep a couple short boxes and file away my new comics in them. The idea being that I’d let them fill up, then have one big sorting session and put everything where it belonged.

That was about three years ago.

And, as I’m still getting new comics (not a lot, I probably get 2-4 books a week) I had something like 400 mixed comics in shortboxes; some in the basement with the rest of my collection, some in my bedroom.

I knew it was going to be a major undertaking, so I didn’t enter into it lightly. And I certainly wasn’t going to leave a bunch of my comics around where the kids could get at them. So, when it was decided that The Scientist would be taking the girls with her, leaving me alone in the house for a week, I knew it was time.

Step one: haul all boxes up out of the basement.

I suppose I could have done this in the basement, but I knew I’d be spreading out all over the room, and it would be more comfortable in the living room.

As any serious long-time collector can tell you, the photo above doesn’t show an overwhelming number of comics. I never bought a huge number of books, even in my hey-day. And as I got older and typical superhero books started to lose their appeal, I bought less and less. And there was one point where I decided that comic books were kid stuff and I was done buying them. I think that was around age 19. I think it lasted all of a year.

Why this is such an ordeal is that I have to pull out every comic, make sure they’re all in numerical order within the title, organize all the titles alphabetically, then stick them back in boxes. And, of course, stop and read a comic every now and again.

That’s what sucks up so much time, of course. If I just buckled down and powered through, I could probably finish in half the time.

But these comics are, in a very real sense, the only tangible reminders I have of my childhood. There are certain issues, or moments within an issue, that stick with me today. The death of Dr. Doom. Yellow Jacket sabotaging his career. The Invisible Girl having a miscarriage. Jesse finally kicking Jody’s ass. Dream challenging a demon to a battle of wits to retrieve his lost helm. Rorschach unmasked. The Bowel Disruptor.

And so on.

So I get sucked in and find myself reading. And reading. And while there are a lot of books that still hold a special appeal to me, I also come across ones where I'm like, "why the hell did I ever buy this?" And I have to read it to try to figure out the answer to that question. Bottom line is that it always takes way too long to get this chore done. I'm lucky that I had an entire week.

ABOVE: halfway done.

Turns out I have a comic for every letter of the alphabet (thank you Quantum & Woody and Y: The Last Man) and I also have a robust "S" section. Long runs of Sandman, Starman, Sin City and a surprisingly large assortment of Spider-Man and Superman comics; surprising only in that I've never really gone out of my way to collect those titles.

ABOVE: 95% done.

The clock started to run out, because the girls come home on Sunday, and I was busy all day Saturday. So Friday night I buckled down and finished sorting, and boxed everything up again.

ABOVE: 1:30am, done! All that's left is to hump all these boxes back into the basement.

Until next time.

###

#273 In which our hero writes his yearly letter to his dead father.

2009-06-22T13:06:00.000-04:00

Dear Dad,

Yesterday was Father’s Day. The Scientist had to work, and I had a bunch of stuff to do around the house, so it wasn’t exactly the most festive Father’s Day ever… but I did spend a bunch of time hanging out with the girls.

I am sometimes amazed at how much of me I see in them. Lily looks like me, so there’s no denying parentage there. But more so, she acts like me. She’s timid around strangers, until she warms up to them. She’s sometimes nervous to try new things, and frets about how things will happen, who will be there, if anyone will talk to her, and so on. She’s quick to feel wronged, and have her feelings hurt. She’s emotional and sensitive.

All like me.

Macey acts like me, too, but in a completely different way. She’s pig-headed and quick to anger. She’s more likely to lash out then cry when wronged. She likes to get her own way, and woe be to the person in her way.

This is kinda like me, too. Maybe more like her mother, though.

So it had me thinking of how I’m like you. I know there’s a physical resemblance, because people have remarked on it. I am balding now, just like you did. But more than looks, I think I act like you.

I remember how much you hated unexpected delays and hassles. And how quick you were to get angry about them. I’m like that, too; even though I’ve made a concerted effort to be more mellow, to try to just go with the flow and not let it ruin the day. I’ve been somewhat successful in that endeavor.

But on a more positive note, I have your sense of humor. I’ve always been the “funny friend,” which is a blessing and a curse, I suppose. But I laugh a lot, and the fact that my wife can make me laugh—HARD—is proof positive that I’ve married the right woman.

Mom sometimes slips and calls me “Ted,” which means she sees you in me as well. You’ve shaped me in ways that I can’t even imagine. And if I ever have cause to doubt that, I need only look at my watch.

I wear my watch with the strap on the top of my wrist, and the numerals facing down. I’ve never really given it much thought as to why, this is just how I wear my watch. To me it’s just like the fact that I wash my left armpit in the shower before my right… it’s not a conscious decision I’ve made, it’s just something I do, and have always done.

However… this isn’t really the case. I recently came across a newspaper clipping from when I had won some sort of drawing contest when I was 10. In it, there’s a photo of me holding the winning drawing, and you can clearly see my watch. It’s an oversized black plastic deal with, God help me, a built-in calculator. But I’m wearing it with the face on the top of my wrist, like almost everyone does.

You always wore you watch “upside down,” like I do now. I remember asking you about it once, and you told me that you did that because in college you didn’t want to be constantly reminded of the time, so you flipped your watch around so you couldn’t see it as easily.

I’ve also had people tell me that this is a workman’s way of wearing a watch; presumably so the breakable bits were further away from harm for those who work with their hands all day. I guess you could say that I work with my hands, if typing counts. Actually, my watch face is more scratched up from clinking on the wrist rest then it would be if I wore my watch the “normal” way.

I look at 10-year-old me and see that I did make a decision about my watch at some point. And that decision was to wear my watch like my dad did. Just one more way that I’m like you.

And I wonder what little things the girls will pick up from me. The way they brush their teeth? Tie their shoes? Ride a bike? I hope I can continue to be a mostly good example to them. Like you were for me. I miss you, dad.

Your son,

Craig.

***

#272 In which our hero receives a message from the past.

2009-06-11T11:05:00.003-04:00

I’ve previously mentioned this cool website, Futureme.org, in which you can send messages to yourself in the “future,” that is, these messages are stored somewhere and not delivered until the future date you set.

I had sent future-me a message at one point, but I forgot how long I set it to wait. Every once in a while this website would bubble up to the surface of my mind and I’d wonder if that message would ever come. But it had been so long I assumed the service just didn’t work.

But I got my past message yesterday!

I had completely forgotten what I had written, and it was really funny to (re)read. Message follows with commentary.

Hello Future Craig!

It is June 10, 2004 as I write this. The kinda cool website futureme.org says it will send this to you any time in the future... I'm going to set it for five years. I wonder what'll be different by then.

Right now, Lily is only seven months old. Just in the past week has she started to really crawl, she can get around now! By the time you read this she should be walking and talking (something she can't do at all now), and will be even more a real little person. I hope to God she finally grew some hair.

Wow, it’s amazing how little I knew about kids then. I though she’d be walking and talking at age 5? Holy crap, this kid can run like a demon. And talk? She spins these amazingly elaborate tales that never fail to surprise and delight me. She’s so much more of a real person at age 5 that I could ever of imagined.

And it’s hard to remember that it took Lily so long to grow hair. Now she has thick, luxurious red hair halfway down her back.

You're working at ADPRO right now... it's not terrible.

Well, it certainly got terrible. This would have been my first year there, and it was, as reported, okay. Not terrible, not wonderful. That would come later. As an aside, I’m going to censor some of the names that follow, but I don’t have to obscure the agency name since it went out of business less than a year after firing me. No real surprise there… it was struggling financing well before I started working there.

Your boss is XXXX XXXXXXX, who isn't a horrible boss, but he's clearly out to cover his own ass first, and screw everyone else. At the beginning of the month you were turned down for a raise, even though XXXX (says he) wanted to give you one. You're still more than a little bitter about that.

This was the first sign that ADPRO was not a healthy place to work. My boss outright lied about compensation, making it sound like it was likely that I would get a raise at 6 months, 12 months, 18 months… while the truth was that no one in the agency had received a bump in compensation in YEARS. So yeah, I was bitter… and still am. This is alleviated somewhat by the information I received a while back that my former boss is now working for an extremely small shop (like 5 people) and the two principals work him into the ground and don’t appreciate his work. This may or may not be true, but I choose to believe that he’s getting a taste of his own medicine now.

You work with XXXX XXXXXXX and XXXXX XXXXXXXX, graphic designers.

The first of which was fired four months before me, the second of which quit several months after me. I’m not in touch with either any more.

AE XXXX XXXXX is one of the bigger assholes you've ever had to work with.

Man, that was the truth. In a weird twist of fate, this guy came in to interview at my current agency. I really wanted to run to the general manager and torpedo any chance he had to actually getting hired… but I didn’t. I guess I believe that what comes around goes around, and I’m not willing to roll those dice. Man that guy was a dick. He wasn’t hired here anyway.

You and [The Scientist] and just starting to pack up the house in preparation to moving. Actually, [The Scientist] has started, and you're dragging your feet because you fucking hate moving. I hope you guys found a nice house... bigger, nicer room for Lily, bigger kitchen, PLEASE.

This must have been when we were just moving stuff into a storage area to de-clutter it and make it feel bigger. We ended up selling our house much quicker than expected, and had to scramble a bit to find a new one. Which we did in short order. But not without first having to deal with a bunch of bullshit which is chronicled here.

And a bedroom for Lily's new brother or sister? S/he should be born by now, huh? Wonder how that went. Another C-section for [The Scientist]? I hope it was less stressful for you guys this time.

Let me do the math. This was sent June 10, 2004. Macey was born June 9, 2005. So, The Scientist wasn’t even pregnant yet, by a couple of months. I don’t really remember this, but The Scientist and I must have planned when we were going to try for #2 pretty carefully.

[The Scientist] just started the job at XXXXXXXX. Knowing her, she'll be at this job for 10 years. I hope she still likes it... after hating her job for so long, she deserves one that she likes at least a little.

She still likes it. So, yah!

You're still driving the Neon. I really hope by the time you read this that you have a new car.

Ah, my old red Neon. How I loved that car. I really wanted to get another manual, but The Scientist insisted that I get an automatic. Which has worked out for the best, I suppose. But I miss that zippy little 5-speed.

You love your wife very much. Looks like[REDACTED].

This section detailed some personal stuff that my wife and I had to work through which you--nameless, faceless Internet--need not know about. Suffice it to say that we did indeed work it out.

Man, she's one hot piece of ass.

That sentiment is no less true now than it was five years ago.

Hope all is well with you and yours,

craig, circa 2004.

The Scientist thinks I should write another one. If I set if for another five years, that would make Lily 10 and Macey 9. I can’t even imagine what those kids will be like then. And The Scientist and I will have been married 13 years.

Here’s hoping that her ass remains as hot as it is now.

***

#271 In which our hero discusses the manner in which the man decides if his oldest child is fit for school or not.

2009-05-30T09:10:00.002-04:00

Several weeks ago my 5-year-old, Lily, was evaluated for acceptance into Kindergarten. We were briefed on this evaluation at the mandatory parents' meeting (along with dress code, religious requirements--it's a Catholic school, after all--etc.). We were to drop off our kids at the scheduled time, then leave. They would be tested in 10 areas.

A brief aside about language.

At the meeting, the principal told us several times not to refer to this evaluation as a "test" because he didn't want our children to be apprehensive about it. He said to just tell our kids that they would be playing some "games." Again, he didn't want a bunch of 5-year-olds freaking out about a "test." Now, what kind of anal, too-tightly-wound child is experiencing test anxiety at five? I know my kid has never been tested for anything so far, and even if she had, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't care if she passed or not.

It just strikes me as a self-fulfilling prophesy when you start talking like this. "Don't call it a test, they're freak out if they think they're being 'tested'!" Instead of avoiding "scary" words like test, why not just teach your kid to deal? "Look, Jimmy, it's a test, and you might do well on it or not. But even if you blow it, it's not a huge deal. You'll face LOTS of tests in your life."

Anyway.

The kids would be evaluated in 10 areas, the results being grouped into three categories: Strength, Average and Need. If you kid shows a "need" in four or more areas, you're supposed to sit down with the kindergarten teachers and principal and devise a plan. I kinda think this means that if your kid is struggling in four or more areas, you might not be invited to attend this particular school.

So, Lily has her test and it's no big deal. She says she had fun for the most part, but some of the games were boring.

Couple of weeks later, we get the official letter from the school. It doesn't say she "passed" because, presumably, that would put undo pressure on the administrators or some such shit. But it is a "welcome to" letter, so my kid is in!

Here are the categories Lily was tested in, and the results (I've included some of the definitions that were included with the letter because, frankly, if I hadn't read some of them I wouldn't know what my kid was tested for):

Visual Motor Integration ("the ability to coordinate vision with motor movements")
Result = STRENGTH!

Visual discrimination ("ability to recognize differences and similarities among things that we see")
Result = STRENGTH!

Auditory Memory ("refers to how well one listen and is then able to repeat what he has heard")
Yeah, that should be "how well one listenS" and also, nice sexism, school board!
Result = Average

Draw-A-Person ("used to help assess visual-motor ability along with visual-memory")
Result = STRENGTH!

Test of Auditory Analysis Skills ("refers to hearing sounds and auditoraly discriminating individual sounds within words")
I think when I was a kid this was called "listening."
Result = STRENGTH!

Peabody Picture Vocabulary ("refers to one's understanding of words that are heard")
Why does this one get a brand name? Who's this Peabody, anyway?
Result = STRENGTH!

Articulation ("ability to express thoughts and ideas.")
Result = Average
"Average"? Holy crap... anyone who spends more than a couple minutes with my daughter knows she has NO trouble expressing her thoughts. In fact, after a while, you might wish she'd STOP expressing her crazy, creative, endless thoughts.

Fine Motor ("ability to plan and perform movement using small muscles of the hands and/or fingers)
Result = Average
Again, maybe I'm just the doting father, but you wouldn't believe the detailed little clay creations this kid has made.

Basic Concepts ("major ideas, generalized from particular instances or experiences")
Result = Average
I'm not even sure what this category is telling me. Additional examples make it seem to relate to colors, letters, numbers, shapes and the like. And if that's the case, my kid has it down. She knows all of her colors, shapes, numbers and the like.

And that's the entire test. I'm clearly biased, but I suspect that Lily just got bored of all the questions and started to slack off. I've seen this before.

But, we'll see how she does in Kindergarten. I'm sure she'll do great. As long as no-one mentions the word "test."

***

#270 In which our hero invites Oprah Winfrey to go fuck herself.

2009-05-26T13:07:00.004-04:00

On Google! News this morning I saw this headline: “Oprah apologizes for slamming author James Frey.”

If you don’t remember, James Frey is the guy who wrote “A Million Little Pieces” which was purportedly his wholly true autobiography; but later it came out that the author had altered some events, and completely made up some others.

There was a bit of hoopla when this information came out. And honestly, I understand none of it. I mean, I never read the book, but apparently it was good enough that people got something out of it, and well-written enough to shoot up to the top of the best seller charts (and, of course, Oprah had a lot to do with that).

But, apparently, the people who read it, and were moved by it, suddenly found all of their enjoyment negated by the fact that it was, in part, fabricated. Stories came out that they felt “betrayed” and “mislead” and other bullshit that seemed completely overblown for a book. I mean, these people weren’t duped out of the last penny of their retirement money… they spent $20 on a book which—up until the instant they learned about the made-up parts—they really enjoyed reading. Nevertheless, many of these disgruntled readers demanded their money back and—unbelievably—got it!

Now, I’ve read my share of shitty books. Some of these books were by respected authors, people who had written other books that I enjoyed. But never once did it cross my mind to demand my money back from the retailer because the “reading experience” didn’t live up to my expectations.

So I had no respect or sympathy for these dillrods who wanted some sort of retribution for reading this book. And Oprah Winfrey was at the front of the fucking bus when it came to seeking revenge.

She named “A Million Little Pieces” to her book club, which naturally catapulted it to mega-best seller status. And, to a degree, I get why she was so pissed. She talked him up, fawned over him, related how inspirational and moving the book was… and then she found out that some of BS she was spouting was based on, well, BS.

It’s her reputation on the line, and so she should protect it. But Jesus, she raked this guy over the coals. She had him on her show so she could spout venom at him and humiliate him on a national stage. For an HOUR. She was relentless in tearing him down. I felt bad for the guy; he took his lumps like a bad puppy and did little to defend himself.

Shortly after the televised beat-down, Stephen King wrote an editorial in Entertainment Weekly that I found very interesting. You can read it in its entirely here, but the part that jumped out to me was this:

“The amazing thing is that anyone—including Oprah—believed any of Frey's stories once they realized he was trying to manage good sobriety without much help, because this is a trick very few druggies and alcoholics can manage … Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it.”

King, as a recovering addict and alcoholic himself, writes with an insight that Oprah could never have. So, should Oprah have suspected ahead of time that Frey’s book just might be embellished a bit? I dunno… most non-cynical people tend to assume the best, I guess.

But I do think that when you start up the massive book-selling machine that is the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, and you pluck books out of the rank and file of mere mortals and invite them into the halcyon company of the gods (especially those books written by admitted drug addicts and liars) that you just might get burned every once in a while.

But Oprah was pissed and wasn’t shy about letting people know about it. And his guy suffered considerable fall-out. Lost his publishing deal. Had to give back millions of dollars. Was branded a fake and liar. And, let us not forget, that the part about him being a recovering addict was absolutely true… having your world crumble around you like that cannot be good for your sobriety.

And honestly, I’m willing to give Oprah her you-fuck-with-me-I’ll-fuck-with-you moment. But now, she’s going public with an apology SIX years after the fact? That reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness.

Let’s break it down for a moment: Oprah was angry because she took James Frey at face value… that he had a hard battle with drugs and alcohol and, through amazing force of will, emerged on the other side better and healthier. She really believed that he could stand as a shining example of what people can achieve if they put their mind to it. But then it turned out that it wasn’t (all) true.

Now, let’s go back to 1988, when Oprah revealed her amazing weight loss on her show. I don’t watch The Oprah Winfrey Show, but this event was all over the place, you could hardly miss it (wheelbarrow full of fat and all). Oprah had a long and difficult battle with her weight and, through amazing force of will, emerged on the other side better and healthier. Not only had she lost the weight, she was now committed to a healthier lifestyle that would keep the weight off. She stood as a shining example of what people can achieve if they only put their mind to it.

Only, she gained the weight back, didn’t she?

Where are the people demanding their money back for show tickets? Where are the outraged women who thought, just like Oprah, that they could lose the weight, only to find out that their example had stumbled? Where the hell is Oprah’s public lambasting for saying one thing, then doing another?

As far as Frey goes, he’s taking the high ground. He’s quoted as saying, “It was a nice surprise to hear from her, and I really appreciated the call and the sentiment.” What he didn’t say was what he was probably thinking: “But, y’know, I’m still a little pissed about her aggressively dismantling my career and life six years ago.”

I’m waiting for her to do an hour long special in which instead of the gentle platitudes about how she “let down her fans” with her yo-yoing weight loss and gain, she really tears into herself and says how she has lied and mislead everyone about her commitment to a healthy lifestyle.

THAT is an Oprah Winfrey show I’d tune in for.

***

#269 In which our hero’s children pose with a giant anthropomorphic rabbit.

2009-05-01T09:47:00.004-04:00

Let me tell you about Easter. Yeah, not exactly timely, I know. But worth it. Stick with me.

The in-laws came up for Easter. It’s an eight hour drive from Maryland for them so, to make it worth their while, then generally stay for a week or so. For the most part I like my in-laws, so that’s not a big deal. But sometimes, after a week, it starts to get old, y’know? Mostly because they mess up the carefully orchestrated routine we have in the house. And this sometimes leads to no nap on the weekends, which is just not acceptable.

Anyway, by the time Easter rolled around, they had already been here for five days, so I was getting a little on edge. That Saturday was a jam-packed day: swimming lessons, Easter egg hunt at the church, going out for dinner… it promised to be a busy day. And potentially a nap-free day which, again, is just no good.

So we load up the entire family (in-laws included) and head out for swimming lessons. A little about that first.

We signed up Lily for introductory swimming lessons. The class is for five- and six-year-olds. Macey, who is four, was obviously too young. There was a class for younger kids, but it was full-up when we scheduled. Being that we think it’s important for our kids to learn to swim, we went ahead and signed-up Lily, thinking that Macey would catch up the next year.

I wasn’t in town for the first class, so The Scientist took both girls. Lily’s class isn’t parents in the water, so my wife stayed by the side of the pool with Macey and watched. Long story short: when Macey figured out that she wasn’t getting into the water, she had a huge fucking meltdown. This lasted, apparently, for the entire duration of the class (45 minutes) and well into the ride home.

A helpful employee of the pool saw this happening, and offered to let Macey into the littler kid class, even though it was full. So, my wife explained to Macey that NEXT TIME, she can get into the pool, too. This did little to stem the flow of tears, from what I’m told.

Flash-forward one week.

The entire family (in-laws included) shows up at the pool, only to be greeted by a group of parents and kids standing outside a locked door. It turns out that the powers that be decided to cancel lessons over the Easter weekend and not bother to tell anyone. Macey, as you can imagine, was NOT pleased by the news that she would have to wait another week to get into the pool. It’s worth nothing that she wasn’t nearly as displeased as The Scientist, who was ready to tear someone’s head off.

We go back home, kill a little bit of time, then head off to the Easter egg hunt at our church. We did this last year, and it was about an hour of crafts which were met with poor to middling enthusiasm from the girls, followed 15 minutes of Bible lessons, follow by 15 minutes of screaming, running around looking for plastic eggs filled with candy. The last part, as you might imagine, was the best received.

The entire family (in-laws included) show up to the church, and it’s strangely quiet and empty. We ask a fellow parishioner who happens to be there and she says, “Oh, the Easter egg hunt was cancelled. No-one told you?” This is mostly our fault, being that we’ve been more than a little lackadaisical about our church attendance in the last, oh, year, and we hadn’t bothered to add the girls names to the sign-up sheet, assuming that two more among the droves that would be there wouldn’t make any difference.

So, for the second time in one day, the activity that our girls were really looking forward to was cancelled. They’re grumpy, my father-in-law is grumpy, and I’m maybe the grumpiest of all. I don’t like to see my kids disappointed, which sucks, and I didn’t get my nap, which sucks ever harder.

The Scientist and I do a quick huddle to figure out what to do next. We both feel like we owe the girls some sort of entertainment; to just slink home and plop them in front of the TV seems like a cop-out.

I suddenly remember that I saw the Easter Bunny at the mall last time I was there. So we pack up the entire family (in-laws included) and head off to the mall.

When we get there, there’s no Easter Bunny.

Thankfully, he’s just on a break. We have 15 minutes to kill, so we wonder around the food court, get a pretzel, buy The Scientist some underwear at Victoria’s Secret, and head back.

When we get back to the photo area, suddenly there’s a line of 20 people. My comment at seeing this was something akin to, “Oh, fuck me!” But we get in the line. And wait. And wait. And wait. You wouldn’t think it would take so long to sit a couple kids on a guy in a bunny suit and click a photo. But it is taking a long time. The kids are restless and bored. The in-laws have bailed on us and are resting on a bench away from the madness. I’m just about at the end of my rope.

But then something happens which turns everything around.

There are two families in front of use, each with two little kids. The first family gets up there and the older kid sits down next to the bunny, no problem. But the other kid wants nothing to do with it. He’s got that three-year-old version of “no fucking way” written all over his face. He literally digs in his heels and his father ends up dragging him beside the Easter Bunny. And this kid is howling the entire time.

Now, it probably makes me a very bad person, but I find this incredibly funny. I mean, I sympathize with the parents; like us, they’ve waited a half hour or so, and now their kid is blowing up. Finally they station this screaming, tear-streaked kid on the opposite side of the bunny and say, “Just take the picture. Just do it.”

This is absolutely the best part of all, because they’ll have that photo to embarrass the kid with for the rest of his life. Priceless.

So the next family gets up there, and it’s the same deal. The old brother hops up, no problem, but his brother is screaming protests the entire time. His parents try to talk him down, but he’s not having it. At one point, the older brother looks at us and shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “whatya gotta do?”

They also receive future photographic blackmail.

Then I start to fret a bit that MY kids are going to freak out (making it 3 for 3). But they don’t, they’re total professionals.

Oh yeah. Thumbs up for the Easter Bunny.

###

#268 In which our hero thinks about his oldest daughter, and how she continues to grow up.

2009-04-20T23:42:00.003-04:00

Today my oldest, Lily was evaluated for Kindergarten.

Today is the 10^th anniversary of the Columbine shootings.

Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about these two things. It’s just a coincidence, of course… one has no relation to the other. But I think about Lily, my silly, sensitive, giggly child and how she’ll be in school this fall. Real school, not day care. It’s a big thing, a sure sign that she’s getting older. My days of being her favorite playmate are numbered. And as frustrating as it can be to listen to her whine, “Daddy, play with me! Play with me!” when all I want to do is sit and read the paper for a damn minute, it makes me a little sad to think that there will come a day when she won’t say that any more. Soon enough she’ll want to play with her real friends, and won’t have time for me. She might even be embarrassed by me, at least in public. My hope is that this embarrassment is only in public; the day she starts being embarrassed to be around me even in the privacy of our own home… well, that will be heartbreaking.

At this kindergarten they have a big lunch room, where all the grades eat at the same time. I can’t imagine my little girl collecting her tray and sitting at a table with her friends, eating and chatting. She’s so little yet! And, of course, I worry that no-one will want to sit next to her, will want to be her lunch buddy. I worry that other kids will be mean to her, make her cry. I want to protect her from all of that.

But I can’t. And whatever she faces in kindergarten or elementary school will be nothing compared to what’s to come in middle school and, yikes, high school. She’s so emotional now, so sensitive. She gets her feelings hurt if I tell her that whatever I’m doing at the moment is more important than playing with her. How can she possibly survive high school?

I’m speaking metaphorically, of course… but 10 years ago today, a lot of parents where not.

As a parent I can’t help but put myself in the position of those parents who stood outside a high school building in Colorado for four hours, waiting to see if one of the dead was their child. How can you possibly endure such a thing?

The world we live in seems so ruthless, so dangerous. It seems foolhardy at best and criminal at worst, to send your children out into it unprotected. But that’s what we have to do. The alternative is to have a woefully sheltered, backwards kid… and I’ve seen kids like that. It’s not desirable.

In our living room we have an old green chair. Since we rarely use the living room, it’s almost never sat in. In fact, it is used much more often as a ladder to get to the Playskool slide that sits next to it. However, whenever Lily is really upset about something, something we can’t talk out, I’ll scoop her up and sit in the green chair and just let her cry. It’s become shorthand in our house. “Honey, are you really upset? Do you want to go sit in the green chair?”

Usually a good cry in the green chair will set things right, or at least help Lily get over the worst of it. This probably helps me was much as my daughter, because when I’m powerless to help her, when I can’t fix the problem, I can still let her sit in my lap on the green chair and cry.

But Lily’s problems today are that her sister broke her favorite toy, or that she didn’t get to watch the TV show she wanted, or that there wasn’t any more lemonade or countless other things that seem so minor to me that I have to remind myself that they matter to a five-year-old in a way I can no longer understand.

But, the day will come when the problems are that the boy she likes doesn’t like her, or that she doesn’t have a date to the prom or that her best friend’s parents are getting divorced or who knows what else. Big problems. Problems that even 40-year-old me (or more like 55 by then) can understand.

And I won’t be able to scoop her up and take her to the green chair any more. And even if I could, she probably wouldn’t want me to. She’ll be on her own to face the big bad world.

And when she’s even older yet, and living on her own? How can I know she’s safe if I don’t see her every night? How do parents deal with that? I suppose, like most things, it becomes easier the more often it happens.

But how do you deal when something unimaginable happens, like Columbine? Waiting outside in the cold, hoping for the best, fearing the worst? Twelve kids died that day. And none of their parents thought anything about them going off to school. Assumed they would be safe and that they’d see them for dinner that evening.

How do you go on if your kid doesn’t come home for dinner and is never coming home for dinner ever again? How do you get over that grief?

I have to think that you’d have to sit in the green chair for a long, long time.

###

DAUGHTER FODDER

2009-04-06T09:24:00.001-04:00

One reason I love my youngest child:

Last week Macey went upstairs to use the potty. She’s been doing this lately… she seems to like the upstairs bathroom better than the downstairs one. I don’t really know why. Regardless, she had been gone for some time, so I called up to her and asked what she was doing. I couldn’t make out her reply so I went upstairs.

ME: What’s going on up here?
MACEY: I pooped, and my poop stinked, so I gave it a courtesy flush.
ME: A what?!
MACEY: A courtesy flush!

Don’t ask me where she got the concept of a “courtesy flush.” But I totally believe her that it was justified.

One reason I love my oldest child:

Couple of weeks ago at dinner time, Lily, out of the blue, turns to me and says, “Daddy, tell me everything you know about vampires.”

I laughed out loud, because there was an edge of urgency to her voice, like she knew something I didn’t know.

So, I spent the next five minutes telling her about vampires. I started with the obvious stuff: they have pointed teeth, they drink blood instead of eating food, they burn up in sunlight, you have to put a stake (“What’s a stake?” “It’s a big pointed stick”) through their hearts to kill them, they can turn into bats and wolves and mist (“What’s mist?” “Like fog?” “Oh, okay”), they sleep in coffins…

Every time I paused, Lily would say, “Daddy, keep telling me about vampires.”

I had to really dig deep to think of what else I knew about vampires. They can’t cross running water (right? I think I read that somewhere), um… I seemed to remember that to be sure they were dead you had to cut their heads off and fill their mouths with communion wafers--but I keep this bit of knowledge to myself. I mentioned that Nosferatu was one of the first vampires (in the movies, at least)… both girls are familiar with Nosferatu because he makes a cameo appearance in a SpongeBob SquarePants episode (yeah, really).

And that’s why, an hour later when The Scientist came home from the barn, the entire family was sitting around the computer watching Nosferatu clips on YouTube.

###

#267 In which our hero discusses a movie that he may have mentioned his desire to see in passing, pt. II

2009-03-23T22:59:00.007-04:00

Part I here.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE, BUT UNDERSTOOD.

The pacing.

This was, by far, my biggest gripe about the entire movie. It just seemed like everything moved so fast. Of course, there's a lot of ground to cover in the comic, and Zack Snyder seemed determined to keep as true to (and as much of) the source as he could. But the result, in my opinion, was a breakneck pace. I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, this is good... imagine how much better it would be if they had more time... like a 12-hour HBO miniseries.”

So, even though I enjoyed seeing all this little moments from the comic, none of them got as much attention as they deserved. Take Rorschach's series of interviews with the doctor in prison. This is reduced to a single encounter lasting a minute or so. I'm curious if people who hadn't read the comic felt the same as I did. The comic unfolds at a somewhat leisurely pace, comparatively. But if you hadn't read the book, maybe it just seemed like an action-packed movie.

After watching the movie, I have a renewed respect for how well the comic narrative is put together. One event flows nicely to the next; and things that you thought were just set dressing turn out to be important in the end (Oh, the crazy guy with the END IS NEAR sign was really Rorschach? That missing comic book writer was key to the mystery? In the end Ozymandious refers to The Black Freighter thing going through the entire movie? No shit?)

The fast pace also forced some of the things that unspooled organically in the book to seem rushed to the point of incomprehension in the movie. Doctor Manhattan is the perfect example of this. In the comic he started out in a full black body suit for a costume. As time passed his costume became skimpier and skimpier until he wore nothing at all. But in the movie, rather than this being an illuminating metaphor for him becoming more and more disassociated from the human race, he starts out in a Speedo then, a scene later, he’s naked.

Sub-plots.

There was no way that everything was going to fit in this movie, but some of the critical sub-plots which needed to be there were almost just mentioned in passing.

The Comedian/Silk Spectre I/Silk Spectre II sub-plot is a perfect example. We see the Comedian trying to rape Laurie’s mother, then we find out he’s actually Laurie’s father. No time is spent developing this incredibly complicated and human relationship.

And there are other odd incongruities, things related to sub-plots that weren’t developed. Like Bubastis. Without the tie-in to the squid, and the explanation that she (Bubastis) was an early triumph in genetic manipulation... there's really no reason for her to be in the movie. In fact, I have to think that virgin viewers would think, “Um, what the hell is that? And why's it in this movie?” Also, near the end when Doctor Manhattan reassembles himself (again) he speaks the line right out of the comic; “It didn't kill Osterman, did you think it would kill me?” And I had to stop and think, have they established that Doctor Manhattan's real name is Osterman? Was that even mentioned?

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE AND DIDN'T UNDERSTAND

Silk Spectre & Ozymandias’ costumes

Like I said, I liked most of the costume updates, but these two really fell flat for me. From the first still I saw of Silk Spectre’s costume I didn’t like it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for skin-tight latex on the ladies, but her costume seemed needlessly complicated. I guess that’s a corset thing around her middle? It just seemed to me that you could have updated his costume, kept it sexy, but not have had so many moving parts. But I actually have much bigger issues with Ozymandias’ getup. I understand that the gold and purple thing of the comic doesn’t seem especially heroic onscreen… and they did capture the Egyptian feel of it in the movie. But I hated the giant foam muscles. Not only was it obnoxious (and way too reminiscent of the worst of the movie Batman suits), it didn’t feel true to the character. Ozymandias never enjoyed playing superhero like the others, and he certainly didn’t need to enhance his look with fake muscles. If anything, it seems like Ozymandias would have a simpler, more functional costume.

Laurie and Dan getting mugged.

This is right out of the comic, of course... Laurie and Dan and jumped by a gang of toughs in an alley, and they have to fight them off. But unlike the comic, Laurie and Dan seemed to have no qualms about MURDERING several of them. As in, NiteOwl snaps a guy's neck, and Silk Spectre stabs a guy in the neck with a knife. They're still supposed to be superHEROES, and this just seemed way out of character.

The ending.

Yes, I know I wrote that I was okay with the ending… and mostly I am. But there’s something fundamentally different about positioning the attack as being from Doctor Manhattan and from an alien squid. In the comic, it’s made clear that the squid appearing wasn’t an act of war, it was a mistake. As such, the world unites to deal with something that may or may not occur in the future. This, in my mind, makes it much more conceivable that Adrian could guide the world toward a new utopia. Because this wouldn’t happen in the movie version. If all of the world’s governments thought that Doctor Manhattan attacked them, and that he might do it again at any moment, this wouldn’t lead to utopia… if anything, it would lead to the largest police state ever known. I can’t imagine any politician would support funding for the arts when a giant blue mass-murderer was on the loose. If anything, the world would be united in building the biggest gun possible. This would lead to a state of unending war preparation… something not conducive to enlightened thinking.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other little things that I loved or hated that I’m forgetting at the moment. I did only see it once. After I’ve watched it a bunch of times on DVD (oh yes, I’ll definitely be buying the super-duper extended director’s cut platinum edition) will I pick up on everything.

Maybe I’ll even go see it again in the theater. But if I want to, I best hurry… it’s kinda tanking. Which really tells me everything I need to know about want non-fanboys think of it.

###

#267 In which our hero discusses a movie that he may have mentioned his desire to see in passing, pt. I

2009-03-20T13:20:00.002-04:00

I spent a fair amount of time obsessing about the Watchmen movie on this site before its release and now people (and by “people” I mean my brother-in-law) are busting my balls about not commenting on it. So, my thoughts on the Watchmen movie follow.

A little aside first: The Scientist and I planned on seeing it opening day. I’m really not an opening day sort of guy, but I was extremely curious about the movie and -ahem- eager to see it, so we made plans. In fact, I took a half-day off work so we could see a matinee. Seemed like the best way to avoid the crush of unwashed fanboys. So we planned on meeting at a theater that’s about halfway between home and my work.

I left work a little later than planned, so I was rushing to get to the theater. Thankfully, the route is a little four lane divided highway that doesn’t see a lot of traffic outside of rush hour. But, of course, since I was trying to get to a movie, it suddenly became s a huge stop and go traffic jam. The road rage immediately wells up inside me. I call my wife to say something like, “Well, I’m suddenly stuck in a FUCKING traffic jam for no GODDAMN good reason and I’m not even FUCKING sure if I can get to the COCK-SUCKING theater in time now!”

Another aside: I’m very particular about where I sit in a movie. I like to be three-quarters of the way back, and as centered as possible. And it’s not just that I’m a prima donna… if I sit too close to the screen it strains my eyes (and if I have to sit in the first couple rows, it strains my neck). I hate it. This most likely stems from going to movies with my friends in high school and screwing around so much ahead of time that we got crappy seats. So now, anytime we’re running even slightly late for a movie, I, well, I turn into a dick. Because I want good seats! The Scientist is well aware of this propensity to dickness, and does what she can to keep us on time.

So, taking these two factors into consideration, I was nearly beside myself trying to get to the theater. And, as it turns out, I got there on time, and even had time to pee before it started (it is 3 hours long, y’know). So when we finally entered the theater we found maybe 10 other people in there. THEN we sat through 15 minutes worth of coming attractions. All my stress was for nothing.

So, on to the actual movie. And here’s the part where I have to say SPOILERS AHEAD, and if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to have anything ruined stop reading now and blah, blah, blah. Frankly, if you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a big enough geek that you say it opening day like me.

In general, I enjoyed the movie. I knew there was going to be some major changes from the graphic novel, especially the ending (more on that later). So I went in with expectations managed, and by and large, it didn’t disappoint. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t LOVE the movie, but I did enjoy it. There were things in it that I liked very much, things I didn’t like but understood why they changed them, and things I didn’t like and didn’t understand.

THINGS I LIKED.

The sets.

I read ahead of time about the amount of detail they put into the sets, and it really showed. Every room was packed with little details, most of which flashed by far too fast to really appreciate. I imagine that once out on HD DVD, there will be plenty for fanboys to pause and admire. I especially enjoyed the care they took to match the color schemes from the comic. Dave Gibbons (the guy who drew Watchmen) took care to choose colors that were fairly non-traditional… most comics, at least old-school comics, use primary colors: reds, greens, blues. Watchmen used a lot of secondary colors, especially oranges and purples. By the way, the original comic was colored by a man named John Higgins, who rarely gets any credit for his contribution to Watchmen.

The costume updates.

Comic book costumes rarely translate well on the screen; that’s why you’re not seeing Wolverine running around in yellow and blue spandex in the X-Men movies. And remember that this comic came out in the 80’s, so the costuming aesthetic is a little different. By and large, the costume updates were cool (with two notable exceptions in my mind, see below). It’s no secret that Rorschach is my favorite character, and he looked great. Niteowl’s update was a rather big change, but it stayed true to the original, I thought. Also: the Owlship was dead on. And I really liked how they handled Doctor Manhattan. I sure at some point some studio head said, “Um, does this guy really need to be naked the entire time?” But naked he was, and unabashedly so. In the comic he clearly had some sort of odd texture to his skin, and I think they made a real effort to convey that… even if it just ended up making him look dirty most of the time, in my opinion.

Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach.

Holy crap, this guy did a fantastic job. I was a little iffy on him from some of the trailers I saw, but in the movie he completely pulls it off. I think I enjoyed him as the unmasked Rorschach even more than when he was wearing his “face.” The voice, the stiffness of his movements, the emotion in the end… incredible. I would have liked to see a whole lot more of him.

The ending.

Not that I didn’t want to see the giant squid, we ALL wanted to see the giant squid… but there’s just no way that was going to happen. I mean, in the end this still had to be a movie with broad appeal. If, after spending 2 ½ hours in a movie theater, the typical non-fanboy was suddenly presented with a giant intra-dimensional squid monster, there would have been hell to pay. I’m sure many people were confused as it was, but the WTF? reaction coming out of the theater would have been off the charts.

I thought the ending as presented still embraced the spirit of the comic (not that there aren’t problems with it, again, see below) but presented it in a fashion that was easily explained and digested by the non-obsessive fan.

This is getting really long. Think I’ll break it into two parts.

###

WIFE STRIFE

2009-03-03T15:11:00.004-05:00

The other day The Scientist was in a mood. Which affected me only slightly, being that I was leaving to go do something or other.

THE SCIENTIST: Man, I am pissed off.
ME: Why? What happened?
TS: Nothing that I can think of… I’m just in a mood. I mean, I am pissed!
ME: Okay.
TS: Seriously, I am not fit to be around people right now.
ME: Well, you know I still need to go out, right?
TS: Yes, yes, that’s fine.
ME: Don’t murder the children or anything, okay?

An hour later, I got this text:

Oh no! What happened?!

Dear God! What have you done? What have you done!

Nooooo---!!!

So yes, an evening of murder/suicide. Or was it... the little feet in the final photo are a little ominous, don't you think?

###

Keen Keene

2009-02-05T15:28:00.001-05:00

Remember, the Watchmen premier is only a month away!

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#266 In which our hero welcomes back a long-forgotten retailer.

2009-02-03T14:54:00.001-05:00

I know I wrote about New Comic Book Guy, but did I tell you about New NEW Comic Book Guy?

Well, New NEW Comic Book Guy is actually a girl! Gasp! It went down like this: New Comic Book Guy announced to me one day that he was leaving. Moving on to a better job. And I’m all, good for you! Because working in a comic book store is sorta a shitty job. I mean, if you’re a 30-year-old burn out, then yeah, sitting around all day talking about comics and taking people’s money for the same might appeal. But New Comic Book Guy clearly had more ambition than that, so he jumped ship.

For a time there was a substitute--surprisingly, also a woman. She was older and actually worked in the other store (guy who owns this store has two locations, I believe) and was just filling in until the owner could hire a permanent New NEW Comic Book Guy.

So one day I go in and there’s this young woman behind the counter. I say hi, tell her my name so I can get my pull, then head to the new issue tables to see if there’s another else I wanted. It was a Thursday, because I only get my new books on Thursdays. Wednesday is actually the day new books come out, but the store is packed with comic book geeks on that day, so I avoid it. Anyway, there’s me and one other guy in the store. He starts to talk to her, and we learn three things:

The owner hired her because he’s a friend of her father
Previously, she was working as a bartender
She doesn’t read comic books

#3 is alarming, of course. Why work in a comic book store if you don’t dig on comics? She tells the guy that she’s making more money doing this than tending bar, which makes me think she had to have been a pretty shitty bartender; because this job can’t pay jack.

Then this comic book geek starts to chat her up, and it’s a little obnoxious. He’s probably 40 years old, and she’s clearly in her twenties. I very nearly step in and say, “Dude, you’re making all us comic book geeks seem like creeps; cut it out, huh?” But he pays for his books and leaves. I likewise pay for my books and bug out.

In the weeks to come, I try to be friendly and make conversation. This is a means to an end, of course, because what I really want is for her to learn my name so she can see me coming, fetch my books, and hand them to me as soon as I walk in the store. Plus, part of me wants her to know that not all comic book guys are weirdoes.

One day I’m chatting with her, asking her why she’s working in a comic book shop if she doesn’t like comics, why she doesn’t like comics and blah, blah, blah. At one point I get the vibe that she maybe thinks I’m hitting on her and suddenly I feel like the 40-year-old creep making moves on the young clerk and I’m disgusted with myself. I think next time I go there I bring the girls, as if to say, “Look! I’m really a family man! Not a creep! No siree, no me!” This perhaps does not work.

Anyway, before the New Year she tells me that she’s leaving. Going back to bartending. Which, y’know, whatever makes you happy. But she has another bombshell: original Comic Book Guy is coming back! More on that in a moment.

So in addition to my regular pull I pick up a new reprint of Watchmen #1… this is clearly out to support the movie (which, holy shit, I now realize is only a month away!) and I don’t need it, but buy it anyway. Maybe the writer and artist will get a couple extra bucks. But when she rings it up she says:

HER: Looks like that Watchmen movie might not happen (this was when the studio was still in negotiations with Fox, and there was talk about the film being delayed).
ME: Yeah.
HER: That would really rock the world of all your comic book geeks, huh? Bring you to tears.
ME: Heh, yeah.

What I didn’t say was, “Y’know what? Fuck you.” Because we comic book geeks had been paying this girl’s salary for half a year now, and she certainly wasn’t making any cracks about her clientele then.

But she’s gone now. And original Comic Book Guy is back!

This made me sad when I first heard the news. Because in the four years that I dealt with him, he seemed like a big, chubby zero. But then he got married, and quit the comic book shop to go work for a bank. And I thought, good for you, dude. Growing up, getting a real job. Well done.

But coming back to the shop seems like such a back slide. Again, it can’t pay that well, and it just seems like such a dead-end sort of position.

But, as so often happens when I pre-judge people… I was off the mark. Maybe.

First time I go back there when he’s working I say hi, welcome back, blah, blah. He remembers my name and fetches my pull without being asked (bonus). I ask him about the bank job, and he tells me it was boring, and he changed jobs a couple of times before the store owner finally offered him this job back.

And he went on to tell me how he and the store owner have big plans for the store, and he’ll be spearheading new stuff, and much of it sounds like BS to me. The kind of stuff you’d say to a guy to get him to accept the job… and only too late he finds out it’s all bunk.

But, Comic Book Guy does tell me something that seems very real: he says that he worked in comic book retail for 10 years, and you don’t stay in a business that long unless you really love it.

Hmm.

That I can understand. So while I was quick to think of him as a loser, a man-boy who never grew up, I never took time to consider that maybe this is the profession for him; maybe it’s his calling. And honestly, if he’s happy doing it, why am I so quick to shit on him?

It’s these moments of self-reflection that make me stop and reconsider my opinions.

So anyway, I have a new attitude now. Comic Book Guy is happy with his work, far as I know, and so I’m happy for him. Somebody’s got to sell me my weekly illustrated fix, after all.

And better the original Comic Book Guy than some snotty girl.

###

#265 In which our hero writes his daughters a letter regarding the day things changed.

2009-01-20T23:01:00.004-05:00

Dear Lily & Macey,

Earlier today I witnessed the inauguration of the 44^th President of the United States. Barack Obama has been president for almost 11 hours. Now, by “witnessed,” I mean I watched it on TV… there were more than two million people actually there in the streets of D.C., a crowded, cold environment that I had no desire to be part of. That said, it was amazing to watch. So many people wanted to be there because it was a big event. Perhaps, one of the biggest that I’ll ever witness.

You’re only five- and three-years-old, respectively, right now, so the importance of this event is wholly lost on you. And, God willing, it will always be lost on you. That is to say, when you’re old enough to care about such things, having a black president hopefully won’t be anything special.

But right now, it is special. Because America, the wonderful, exciting, forward-looking country that she is, is also pretty backwards in many ways. Like our puritan attitudes about sex, or our constant meddling with other cultures, to name two examples. Sadly, these are things that I don’t expect to have changed when you’re older.

But today… today we, as a country, seemed to turn a corner. We did something that many people thought to be unattainable: we elected a black man to the highest office in the nation. That’s a big deal. Because that means a lot of people voted for the guy; actually, more people voted for him that any other presidential candidate in history. Black and white alike. I voted for him, and so did your mother.

Now, his landslide win was certainly assisted by the horrific situation that the past president put the country into. George W. Bush will be judged, I believe, to be one of the worst presidents in history. Not in modern history, but in all American history. I could rant and rave about him, but I won’t. Not right now, at least. When you’re covering the modern history unit in school, I’ll give you girls an earful.

I find it difficult to articulate the… hopelessness… I’ve felt over the past eight years. It seemed not a day went by that I didn’t look at the people around me and feel like a stranger in my own country. I was in the minority, an outsider. I didn’t think like most other people in the country. Frankly, I just didn’t get it how people could vote for a man like Bush, and then do it again four years later.

But now, with Obama in office, I feel like I belong again. It’s a little self-serving, but I feel like all those dense people finally figured it out, finally pieced together how they needed to vote for something new, something different to get the country out of the mess its in now. And man, what a mess it is.

The economy is in the dumper. Homes are being foreclosed left and right. We’re still mired in pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Banks are failing. People are watching helplessly as their 401Ks spiral down the drain. It’s a bad time. A scary time.

And you girls, thank God, are oblivious to the whole thing.

I really wonder how your views of the presidency will be shaped by the Obama administration. If he serves for two terms (and at this instant it seems unthinkable that he wouldn’t win a second term) that means you girls will be 13 and 11 when he steps down. The only president you’ll ever have known in that time will have been a black guy. That’s amazing to me.

Now, I don’t expect Obama to save the world. I hope he can start moving this country back toward prosperity but, frankly, I’m not too hopeful of that, either. The country will recover… probably more slowly and painfully than anyone wants, but we’ll get there.

What I am hopeful is that America can once again regain her standing as a noble, respected world power.

The last eight years have sucked. Not every part of them, of course. I mean, both you girls were born, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. However, at times things seemed so dark that I questioned the wisdom of bringing in a child (or two) into such a shitty world.

I want the world for you girls. I want you to achieve everything you set your hearts on. And now, as we near the end of the very first day of Barack Obama’s time as our 44^th president, things feel different, better. I’m filled with something that I haven’t felt in far too long: hope.

Hope for the future of the country. Hope for the future of our family. Hope that you girls, you silly, rambunctious, sometimes frustrating girls, will have a future of happiness and prosperity.

Love,

Daddy.

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