...and the living is easy

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Ah, summer. Shakespeare understood the psychological value of summer. To his readers it meant warmth and light and freedom. To Richard the third it meant the pall of the previous king was lifted and his family (namely, his brother) restored to greatness.

For me, Autumn is the best season and stripper name. But Summer is nice. I think, given that the vast majority of my DNA comes ancestors who lived in places where the sun was absent for long cold miserable stretches of time, that I have a predisposition to not be in love with high heat and humidity. But I do enjoy gentle warmth and sunlight.

Given that, there are things about the summer that are just so, well, summery, that they elicit memories of just pure joy. Take a drive-in movie for example (any one under the age of 25 need not apply; these cinematic dinosaurs are now likely condominimums): A tinny speaker attached to your car window or, alternatively, your am radio tuned to some obscure and unused radio station. Mosquitoes and beer, and mutually accepted pubescent experimental fondling. 80 people in a car trying to cross the border that had no political implications. really, a completely crappy cinematic experience and one that I want to re-create. I saw Star Wars at the drive in. On a gigantic screen. I remember hoping as a kid that the late movie would have boobies. Youngsters will say "what's so special about that? We live in an age where movies can be downloaded from Pirate Bay at will and boobies have their own informercials. You seem quaint." Go F- urself.

But seriously, drive-ins scream summer. So does baseball. The whites of the Red Sox home unis and the green of the infield grass never look whiter or greener than in the light of the July sun. And cotton candy. Try it in January, you'll feel stupid and sticky, like an illiterate hooker. Fireworks in march seem juvenile; who wants to lose a finger in spring? A few other things that scream summer:

• Corn chowder
• Hot dogs
• Fried Dough
• Roller Coasters
• Concerts 
• Jimmy Buffet (have you ever listened to his Christmas Album? me either)

I like the passge from summer into autumn, from intensity to mildness, from solstice to equinox: a constant reminder that all things, good and bad, must pass. Autumn is soon upon us, along with football and apple cider and the smell of fallen leaves. Life is good. But summer is a lovely season, and a perfectly serviceable stripper name.

Fat ass nation

Hold on, hold on. Before I get a thousand letters from the PMRC or NOW or something, let's not go jumping to conclusions. This is not about the buttocks, although for some on the list, they are a substantial part of the equation. No, this is about placing Americans into neat little categories. I believe that many Americans fall into the following categories: Fat Ass, Lazy Ass, Smart Ass Wise Ass and Dumb Ass.

Fat Ass: Here are the facts. America is the fattest nation on earth. No one denies it. No one seems to take it as a national insult, it's like saying the the nose guard is the fattest guy on the football team, everybody knows it, but nobody's gonna tell him. This is a national problem however. We have a generation of young folks who would rather play in a virtual world than venture out into the majesty of the real one. We are still animals, one with massive intellectual ability, but still an animal comprised of organs and muscles and bones, and those things need to be used in a healthy way in order to maintain the sanctity and overall health of our brains. We need to make healthy living a national priority, because the first nation to fall is the slovenly one.
This leads me to...

Lazy  Ass: Partly perpetuated by being a nation of Fat asses, we have become lazy. The remote has to work from all angles so I don't have to point it directly at the TV, the microwave needs to be stronger, the internet needs to be faster...I need instant this and automatic that. Technology is great, it makes life easier and our quality of life increases. But it shouldn't be at the cost of, when the power goes out, becoming infants. Unable to cope with the silence of nothingness, we call the power company every five minutes to see when the power will return. We go crazy in the serenity. Think back 200 years ago. The power was always out. Our technology should serve us, not the other way around.

Smart Ass- This category can contain folks from all of the other categories. An existential society creates the cynicism this category. In older times, kings and queens and religions meant something.  Traditions were created to pay tribute to these old belief systems and a sense of duty attached to a belief in the hereafter. Along the way, science and philosophy whittled away at these belief systems until they were rendered meaningless; in fact, some believed that life itself was rendered meaningless, so adherence to hierarchy of any sort was rejected in favor of a "me first" attitude viewing the world through an ironic lens. So respect for teachers or police officers or other "order keepers" is viewed with disdain. Sometimes, I can feel myself creeping into this category, and I remind myself that life has meaning. there may or may not be something beyond what is; I do know this: what is, is. And conducting yourself in a way that is humble and compassionate and true has value.

Wise ass: These are merry mirthful folks who take a good-natured view of the silliness of the world and sarcastically view the world as silly, just silly. They are quick to point out the absurdity of, well, just about any pretenses or contrived emotions and usually accurately so. They do have trouble maintaining focus, and once labelled as such, is hard to shed. However, I understand Eeyore was a Wise Ass until he discovered the Tao of Pooh and became a wise ass.

Dumbass. I don't need to explain this one, do I? Look around.

Feel Like Bacon Love

Thurg stood over the dying beast, keeping his distance as the animal thrashed. Finally drawing its last breath, Thurg looked to the sky to thank the yellow god for providing him with such sustenance. His family would eat for weeks. He withdrew his cutting stone, and began to carve the flesh from the beast. As he carved the stomach of the great beast, he was preparing to cook up the entrails for his trusty dogs that helped him track the beast. The fire raged. Slicing through the belly, a thin slice of the belly meat landed on a hot rock next to the fire. The smell hit him almost as instantly as the sizzle reached his ears. His neanderthal brain's pleasure center was aroused. Gingerly he picked up the hot slice of meat, pinched between two fingers, and greedily consumed it. A ring of grease around Thurg's lips framed his smile. He threw the cooked entrails to his dogs and sliced more belly and placed it on the stone.

Bacon is one of those foods that just by the mere preparation people stop and smell and just for a second, the pre-historic, primitive part of their brain is activated. They sniff the air; they salivate just ever so slightly. Even vegans and veggies stop and instantly recognize the majesty of the smell. For those of us who utilize their canines, we don't just stop and say "Hey Bacon's frying." We immediately want the bacon. We become that commercial of the dog searching for  bacon bacon bacon. 

Bacon is indeed the belly of the beast, at least in the States. This is superior to other types of "bacon" found around the world. Other "bacon" is only ham. The bacon, as we state-siders know it, is an almost perfect balance of fat and sinew, whereas "Canadian bacon" is mostly lean. There is no taste comparison. I like ham, but I've never craved ham and I've never wrapped scallops in ham.

A researcher has determined that Bacon has a particular chemical make-up of the fat chains found with-in it. These chains possess several qualities of umami and are highly addictive in nature. Poor little piggies, an actual drug for the human brain.

It can come in apple smoked, hickory smoked, cured, uncured, maple cured, apple cider cured or just plain. I have memories of my grandmother's house, bacon wafting through the kitchen, a stack of thin pancakes with butter and a side of bacon and the smell of bacon brings me there. The aroma transports me to a simpler place, where a boy could dip his bacon in his maple syrup and enjoy his cousins' company while his uncle cooked for him and then sat down to share in the feast. A place where my grandfather was still alive and my grandmother lovingly made her coffee bread to dip in strong coffee or to butter heavily.

Bacon, you wonderfully crunchy time machine! Bringing me back to a time when I didn't have a care in the world.

Thurg smiled, and finished the belly meat before telling of his discovery with his family.

Rhymes with Pistachio

There's a lot of talk about mustaches these days. What? There's not? Oh, well indulge me a little bit. First of all, I love the fact that the word "mustachioed" even exists. Etymologically speaking, that is one of the most efficient uses of language. Bearded, goateed, soul patched and mutton chopped are cool and everything, but for cool words, Mustachioed is king.

The word Moustache (Mustache is the American version, so I will use that here) is a derivative of several older European language words meaning, well, mustache. It is so perfect, that it is itself. Like a divine revelation, it just simply was. Some cave dweller looked at his reflection in a deep pool of water and uttered "Glorg has good mustache" right before he was eaten by a pre-historic alligator the size of a Hummer H3, not the real hummer; that would be so large as to strain credulity. Luckily his hunting partner heard his grunts. And thus, the first polysyllabic word, Mustache, was uttered. It's only a theory.

Hurtling through the ages, I assume mustaches were prevalent universally as a lack of cutting tools encouraged their growth. Man discovered fire, fire led to stone and iron tools and eventually, shaving started.  This was especially good for the bearded ladies who could now be distinguished from their brothers. According to http://www.moderngent.com/history_of_shaving/history_of_shaving.php, at first, regular shaving was utilized as a way to prevent opponents from grabbing the beard in battle. Then, as this practice continued, Barbarians (the unbarbered)  were the warriors with facial hair. It spread from the warrior ranks and shaving became, historically, a common practice with the ladies and gents.

Beau Brummel and Victorian fashion sense made shaving more commonplace and almost a necessity for men to be accepted in Europe. Think of pictures of the founding fathers  Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin: all dandies with powdered wigs and no hint of facial hair. In fact, the portraits of these great men suggest that their skin was pink with the hue of razor burn and hard cider.  

Then came the civil war and there was facial hair everywhere. Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Hooker, Burnside (where sideburns comes from), these warriors brought facial hair back into the mainstream. Certain styles of facial hair became fashionable. Think about it. All our presidents with mustaches were filled to the brim with badassery. Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt (Teddy). Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter? No mustache. But Carter's breath always smelled like peanuts and he legalized home brewing, so that was good.

Now the mustache, and the beard and almost all facial hair is commonplace and accepted. Even Frida Kahlo rocked a mustache. I am going to rate my top five mustaches.

5. The Magnum: Nuff Said.

4.  The Zapata: Banditos with no Mustache are no threat at all.

3.  The Ear to Ear highway: This look brought back together the ears in a furry landmass across the face. That's General Burnside in the picture.

 2. The Tickler: One caveat with this stache: You must be crazy. Look at his eyes. Loopy.

1.The Handlebar:  the awesomeness of this Mustache is so unmatched that only a select few can pull it off, and only a percentage of those won't be tying damsels to railroad tracks.

There are of course, the porn mustache, the pencil thin and, infamously the Hitler (shoulda been the Charlie Chaplin, but that bastard Adolph ruined it). Men from all walks of life sport the mustache, from Jesus to Buddha, Martin Luther King to Evander Holyfield, John Waters to Johnny Depp, Clarence Thomas and even Superman.

Me? My mustache looks like crap. A cross between a Mongolian raider and a 12 year old boy. But to the other mustachioed fellas, i say keep the Barbarian tradition alive.

*Note. there is a great Mustache piece found here. http://artofmanliness.com/2009/09/08/a-treatise-on-the-mustache/  ;it's funny comprehensive and well written.

Thankful

I knew before I knew, if you know what I mean. My father began to look old.  His eyes were beginning to to sink and his skin was beginning to hang loosely from his bones. He looked grey and sick. "I have cancer." He told us matter-of- factly, late in the winter of 2006 . He discovered a growth on his head and he went to the doctor to have it looked at. Concerned, the doctor ran some tests. A short time later, the test results were returned. The growth, the doctor said,  was cancerous. The tests also showed the cancer in other parts of his body, namely, his lungs.

My father was veteran of the Vietnam war, serving in the Air Force. He once told me that he guarded Agent Orange, the defoliant used to kill the lush vegetation of Vietnam's jungles. Perhaps, this was not the only thing it killed.  He never talked about his experience there very much. It was too hard for him.  He was unable to disentangle himself from the horrors he witnessed, so much so that he couldn't even watch movies about the subject. It changed him.

As a father, he was sorely lacking. He drank too much and was never keen on discipline and structure. He was there/not there. It's hard to explain unless you've experienced it: the feeling of someone being present and not present. It's as though his body returned from Vietnam, but his soul remained. I recall very little emotional connection from my father while I was growing up. I have no doubts that he loved me and consider my childhood, all things considered, relatively scar free. But I also don't remember a lot of affection.  I don't remember him at birthday parties; I remember waiting for him to come home from the bar. I remember going to the bar at 10 years old.

I rebelled in my teenage years and was given a lot of leeway. I was never really disciplined, and knowing this, I never really pushed it that far. What would be the point if no one was going to come get me? I grew up (or out) of it and settled down.

In 2003, my daughter Lily was born, and something inside of my father changed. He became a loving, doting grandfather, inundating my daughter with such affection, the likes of which I had never seen. He showered my new family with gifts in an attempt, I think, to make amends. I appreciated the help and gifts from my father, but that hole that I felt was still there. Apparently it could not be filled with things.

Before he discovered the growth on his head, he stopped drinking, a part out of necessity and a part out of a new consciousness. He started going back to church. A lapsed catholic, he sensed, I think, that there was something wrong with his soul. He was taking steps to fix that. He started taking my mother on nice vacations and watching what he ate. I concluded that with the birth of my daughter, he saw an opportunity for his own rebirth. I appreciated and treasured his relationship with my daughter. However, my relationship with him was still in shambles.

I am to blame too. I could have confronted him and taken the difficult path and made myself vulnerable. Alas, I did not. Prideful, I told myself that I did not do the damage, it was not mine to undo. I was wrong. Life is for learning. I did learn from my father the type of father I didn't want to be, I told myself, so there's some value in that.

In January or February of 2006 he announced that he had cancer. He told us he would be getting treatment and that the prognosis was unclear. He would be getting radiation and chemotherapy to fight this monster. A few months later, in July, my son Max was born. This seemed to steel his resolve to fight. It wore on him, but he had a purpose. He started a time capsule for his grand kids, with thoughts and notes and memorabilia. I, thinking he was winning his war with cancer, thought this was novel. Looking back I see he was creating his legacy.

Sometime in the summer after Max was born, my father called me.

"Hi, dad" I said.
"Hi son. I just wanted to call and talk to you" he said, seriously.

I put my lawyer hat on. I was thinking he was going to ask me about trusts and estates or living wills. I was completely unprepared for  what followed.

" I want to apologize for being a drunk for all those years. I should've been a better father." he said, his voice cracking.

"Da..." I was stunned. It was like a cool rain on a hot summer day, rinsing over the heat and uncomfortableness, washing it away. I responded, my voice strained with emotion.

"...that's all I ever wanted from you."  It's hard to believe that those words from my father could undo all the feelings of resentment I had. But they did. Just like that. I can't change the fact that my history with my father is what it is. But forgiveness and love really are powerful things.

I was closer with my father for the last few months of his life than I ever was for the previous 34 years. He died on January 20, 2007. The chemo and radiation proved too much for his body to handle and he died of a heart attack.  I cried, a little, mostly for my mother. They were truly soul mates and they adored each other and were having fun being Mumuu and Bumpy. But I didn't cry for my father.

It's not that I wasn't sad. I was. Or that I wasn't going to miss him. I do. I would have wept if my father had died with this strangeness between us. In retrospect, he was making his peace with himself, his God, his son. In doing so, he allowed me to make peace with myself and with him. And let him go. I am thankful he gave this gift to me.

Accounting for taste

For a while now I've held a fairly strong opinion about a particular topic. This opinion has turned friends and loved ones against me, made colleagues whose trust and respect I have gained question my sanity and made strangers instantly dislike me (which, thinking back, is not that rare). I believe that pie is superior to cake. There it is. I did not arrive at this opinion easily or half-heartedly. Nor am I alone: Adam Carolla has commented on the awesomeness of pie and there is a blog devoted to the comparison between pie and cake. This is not to say I don't like cake. I do. But if at gunpoint I would choose pie. Here are some other gunpoint decisions.

• Empire over Star Wars
• Pulp Fiction over Reservoir Dogs
• John over Paul (White Album over Sgt. Pepper)
• Gibson over Fender
• Marianne over Ginger
• Guinness over anything else
• Connery over Moore, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan or Craig

I would make these assertions not as "I prefer" but as "X is better". I'm not going to foray into the pointless exercise of "It's just your opinion"  and "It's not right or wrong, just preference". Blah. For me, the best pie I ever had wipes the floor with the best cake I ever had.

Allow me to explain. Think of a cake. Simple ingredients: flour, egg, sugar, butter, leavening, vanilla or chocolate. Mix, Bake, Frost... Presto-chango Cake. They even have instant cakes that are idiot-proof and deliver satisfactory results. Of course, you can over-mix made from scratch cakes and have tough or dry cakes, but for the most part, pretty basic. And delicious. Let me state again, I like cake.

But a pie is no simple apply, lather, rinse repeat deal. First there is the crust. Oh the crust. A delicate blend of flour, lard, butter, salt and sometimes sugar, blended just so and brought together by a cold liquid. No over- mixing please. And chilled. And wait. And brought out to be rolled just right. The chilled butter will create pockets of air and the lard will melt at a different rate to create a delicacy that is at once tender and crusty and...heavenly. Or you could create a graham cracker crust,or a hybrid, as advocated by the America's Test Kitchen for some custard pies. It takes skill and experience to make perfect pie crust. Which brings me to the filling.

Savory or sweet, the filling completes the pie. I would be content to just eat the crust, if need be, but an expertly prepared filling is Divine on its own. Whether the savory silky goodness of a quiche , the rich sweetness of pecan pie, or the nostalgic euphoria of apple pie, there is nothing better. Even cake's best argument, cheesecake, is actually a custard pie. The chemistry and timing needed to combine superb crust and delicious filling is not a hasty undertaking and is not for the weak. Frosting can cover up sub-par cake, but sub-par pie is just that, sub-par. And completely unacceptable.

For me, a slice of expertly made blueberry pie, a strong cup of coffee and good conversation is like a momentary foray into Shangri-la. Cake has never taken me there. In fact, I would say, pie takes the cake.

Late to the game...

 Late to the Game

Everybody is blogging. Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks, tall kids short kids even kids with chicken pox...Now I am. And I am late to this electronic super nerd party.  But at least I'm here.

I envision setting the blogosphere on fire with my posts. Somehow, through the din and confusion of the noisy marketplace of ideas called the internet, my voice will rise above the others and be seen as original, unusual, triumphant.  I will be Farmer Ted driving Jake Ryan's dad's Rolls home with the Prom queen in the back, digging on my idiosyncrasies.

But then i hear the voice in the back of my head, you know the one that says "You are not special".

"Scram!" I say to the voice, but he never really leaves. He replies, "You'll end up like Bryce in Sixteen Candles, going home with his nerdy friend."

"Seriously, you're no good for me!" I tell the voice, but he's a permanent tenant in my brain, so much like my wife does to me when I am rambling, I simply learn to ignore him.

So this is it.  The first one.  We all remember our first time right? Underwhelming you say? Perhaps. It got better, right? Maybe it'll be little better if I'm drunk? Maybe you'll experience it once and have no desire for it ever again. Maybe you'll have a headache and not be in the mood to read it. I've heard all the excuses. I'm married.

In any case, a bit about me. I'm a 37 year old (when the hell did that happen?) father of two. I am a lawyer and I work for a Institute of higher learning. But what I really want to do is dance. Just kidding. I rant and babble and decided that maybe a blog would be good for me (well, better for those who would be spared my lunacy). Will I touch on politics? Probably. Religion? Yeah. Mostly pop culture and shit that annoys me? Likely.

I will probably offend somebody.

 
"If anybody reads it at all!"

"Shut up!". Sheesh,  that guy's annoying. In any case, I don't think blogs aren't supposed to be a concrete permanent impression of the writer. It's a snapshot. A diary entry.  The snapshot of me in 1986 wearing my Mork suspenders and Evel Kneivel long sleeved T shirt isn't me right now. It's a little piece of the jigsaw puzzle called me, without it, you don't get the complete picture, and you can't tell the complete picture just by looking at the one piece.

 
It's like good ole George Bailey throwing stones at the old house in "It's a Wonderful Life". The snapshot of George in that moment was a brash kid who viewed the old house as decrepit and deserving of ridicule.

This makes his "Oh, look at this wonderful old drafty house" statement at the end so moving (Yes, I get misty each and every time I watch it...so what?). So I'm throwing stones, and looking for Zuzu's petals. I'm trying to keep up. Quoting movies from the 1940's should help. How do you shut this typewriter off? Til next time.