Giving, and Taking

Even I would have to admit that I don't always project the sunniest of dispositions. I'm not necessarily 100% John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, but I do tend towards the theory that not only is the glass half-empty, but the milk is probably spoiled anyway.

Regardless, I don't think I'm being unjustifiably negative when I say that one of the parts of the year that really puts me through the wringer is vacation. I'm not talking about the physical toll of travel, or the financial drain, or the difficulties of enforced togetherness/small spaces; it's probably more self-inflicted than that. And this has been very much on my mind -- pressing down hard on my mind -- since we just did our 3-day Winter Vacation Trip last week.

I don't know whether it's genetic (a Guy Thing?) or learned, emotional or strictly mental, or even pathological, but I take a huge burden on myself whenever we travel. I spend loads of time before the fact, planning and researching, scheduling Fun Activities for the Whole Family, looking for that hotel room that's 10% nicer for $5 less -- then, of course, getting everything mapped out to the last possible turn (this time, I had 3 pages of printed directions... which I basically ignored in favor of the more, you know, electronic guidance of the GPS).

The day arrives and I am, ah... not bubbly... as I'm trying to get the last details nailed down and get us out the door On Schedule. I do virtually all the driving -- not because my wife won't, or because I don't trust her to, but because it just feels right to me to carry the load. I am in general a pretty confident, and I believe competent, driver; but always in the back of my mind is that we could get lost or break down or have an accident.

If one of the stops doesn't come off, if the targeted Children's Museum turns out to be a ball pit and a card table with a box of broken crayons on it, if somebody gets a lousy meal... all of that feels like a personal failure to me.

I'm sure a lot of that sounds like egomania -- making it all about me -- or some kind of messiah and/or martyr complex. Rationally I do know that plenty of stuff can go wrong that I have absolutely no control over, and I recognize that nobody's waiting to point the finger at me just because the thermostat doesn't work in the hotel room.

But in the midst of all that burden I felt myself carrying the past couple of weeks, I also realized that there's a healthy lesson to be learned as well, and it's this: there are times that it's more blessed to take than to give. That is, I realized that what I was doing, at least in part, was living out the role of Head of the Household (now there's a term you don't hear much these days, at least in a non-census sense) in the way it's really intended: not giving orders, but taking responsibility.

The New Testament talks about the man being the head of the woman, which is a concept that got twisted so far in a particular (and particularly uncomfortable) direction that I think it eventually went SPROINNGGG! and flew off behind the couch or something. Or at least we'd like to hide it there. But I think the real point of being the "head" is that I can serve my family by being the buffer zone, getting out front, taking the blow if necessary.

As it turned out, the vacation came off fine -- a couple complaints from the GPS, but nothing that couldn't be resolved by circling the block. So I can look at it as a lot of worrying for nothing, or I can see careful planning and concern for my family's well-being paying off.

And isn't it interesting that God can take "character flaws" and use them for positive purposes?

Bloglet: As the Swallows to Capistrano

I suppose I shouldn't feel so bad about it. After all, Robert B. Parker wrote 39 novels about the same character (is there a record in that category?), so obviously he wasn't afraid to revisit the same territory more than once. In fact, there were times in the later years where it wasn't immediately obvious that it wasn't just the same novel, with some of the words rearranged... but I may be undermining my own point. But even with all of that, he's probably my favorite up-until-recently-living author.

When I planned our honeymoon umpty-ump years ago (all right, it was 1987), I went to all the hotel chains nearby and collected their thick little books that listed every one of their locations. Then I paged through and found the most likely prospects and made a bunch of phone calls. After that, I sat down with my Rand McNally road atlas and plotted the route.

The final destination was Boston, and when we got there we found one of those tourist guides with a street map in it. At one point, my lovely bride said she thought it would be neat to put her feet in the ocean... so I looked at the little map and said, "OK, we'll go this way for a couple miles and then turn and we should be there."

And in 10 or 15 minutes, she had her feet in the ocean.

We're going on vacation in a couple days. I've spent hours on the Internet, Googling hotels, checking hotels.com, looking for reviews, and then actually making the reservation. Now I have to go to one of the map sites and print out detailed directions... of course, I'll still have my GPS running the whole time as backup.

So as you can see, I'm back around to one of my pet topics, as surely as the swallows (and clearly, the swallows have a better press agent -- not to mention better taste in vacation destinations -- than the buzzards): even as much as I've lived it and read about it and written about it, it still blows my mind how much the world has changed within my lifetime, or even half my lifetime.

I suppose in the case of the trip, it might be a change for the worse; I'm pretty proud that I put together a honeymoon trip basically just by my wits, rather than making The Computer do it for me. After all, somehow the swallows still don't need GPS.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Although I probably qualify in most respects as a geek (I suppose I could conceivably be a dweeb or even a dork, but I strive for my full potential), I never reached the heights of 70s geekdom, total absorption in Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, I've never played at all and truthfully don't even know much about it, except that about 20 minutes after its invention it became an easy shorthand for all things geek. Ironically I think my fatal flaw from a DnD perspective is probably that I don't have enough imagination to live in a fantasy world... I have a hard enough time imagining my present world. I am quite good at recalling and obsessing over the past, but there isn't a 20-sided die in the world that's going to bring that back to life, except in the loop playing in my own head.

My own personal gaming obsession started in about 1971, when I got a copy of Sports Illustrated Baseball. This was a board game that allowed you to play baseball games between any two actual 1970 team rosters. I loved it immediately and forced several friends to play it (regardless of their level of familiarity/interest in baseball). I became so taken with it that I created my own version, based on the 1974 rosters -- written on lined paper (notebook paper, with all the little lacy edgy things hanging off it), drawing in my own (occasionally-)vertical dividing lines for the columns...

It just occurred to me, why didn't I just use graph paper? Certainly as a junior high student I was aware of its existence....?

In any case, I wore out several green & red colored pencils coloring in little boxes on batting/pitching charts (green for hit, red for out, blue for strikeout). And naturally, by the time I finished all that painstaking work -- and I did finish it, I'm proud to say -- the whole thing was obsolete anyway. I'm not sure what year it actually was, but it sure wasn't 1974.

Then a couple years later, I switched to APBA baseball. I probably would've stuck with SI forever... but since we didn't have internet access in 1977, I had to take what I could find, and I'm pretty sure I stumbled on an ad for APBA in the old Baseball Bulletin. And as with SI, I played with friends every chance I got -- and if I didn't have that chance, I played it "solitaire" and managed both teams.

The best part for me, maybe, was that while I was playing, I was also doing a constant play-by-play -- which as I have previously written, has always been a passion of mine. "That will bring up Dave Kingman, who homered in the fourth for the Mets' only run. He's also struck out in the first and sixth... Here's the pitch from Carlton and it's a HIGH pop fly in the air to short left field... Bowa drifts back onto the outfield grass and squeezes it for the third out. For the Mets, no runs, no hits, no errors and none left on..." Maybe you think you can't see all that just from rolling a big red die and a small white one, then checking the result from a 2"x3" card against a big cardboard chart -- but I could.

I've sort of convinced myself that that was when I got in the habit of talking to myself, although I'm sure my mom could relate tales of muffled paragraphs coming from in utero. One way or the other, I am a confirmed self-talker; almost anyone who's spent any time with me could share an instance of coming upon me engaged in an animated monologue.

It's not as if I can really help it at this point. I'm working 100% from home now, and I don't really have much personal contact with others -- at least till the kids come home, and that puts a whole new spin on "talking to myself".

I do have periodic conference calls and virtual meetings, but most of the time I'm on mute, listening, anyway. But of course I am seldom mute myself; it's certainly far from unusual for me to be commenting on the proceedings to myself -- and as you can imagine, always & only in the strongest possible positive terms O:-).

All of that ranked merely as something between a charming character quirk and a sign of low-grade mental illness... until a call not long ago. I was on with maybe a half-dozen others, sitting on mute, waiting for someone else to "arrive". Then the "real" (home) phone rang, and since I was just waiting anyway, I answered it and handled the call -- on and off in less than a minute.

Then one of my callmates said, "Uh, Mark... we could hear all that. Did you think you were on mute?" Well, I was on mute -- at least according to the switch on my headset cord -- but they could hear me anyway. Apparently my frequent use of the mute switch, along with my constant fidgeting with it when not in a call, had worn down a connection or something so that I was no longer mutable. Immutable, if you will.

Which was fine; the call was routine and I hadn't said anything controversial or rude or... but then I started to think. OK, "think" is an overstatement; "panic" would be more accurate. How long had this been going on? Had I been sitting around making, ah, less-than-affirming remarks about people that they could actually hear?

And:

Why am I a person who would say things on mute that he wouldn't say if he knew he were immutable?

Fortunately the PC phone software I use has its own mute button, so I can override the headset's mute or lack of same. Still trying to find a mute button that will shut off the sound of that last question, however...

Into the eVortex

If there's one thing on which I pride myself, it's self-awareness. Granted, I've been vividly reminded just this week that knowing your shortcomings does not constitute a free pass for them... but that's a whole different issue. I've always seen myself as profoundly aware of my limitations (although, if I weren't aware of my limitations... would I realize it?) -- which shouldn't be news to anyone who reads this space "regularly". I haven't been too reluctant to share my foibles here.

For example, a few years back I wrote a prediction of what would happen if I ever got an iPod:

Perhaps more to the point, I just don't need something else that needs to be "managed". I'm sure it's supposed to be a selling point when they say how many zillion songs an iPod will hold, but all I can think is, "When will I have time to find the sites and find the songs and download them all?" And oh by the way, continue paying and paying. It used to be that if I wanted a collection of cool tunes, I'd go to Caldor or Ames and slap down $4.98 for the latest K-Tel album. A zillion songs times 99 cents is a daunting prospect.

Well, of course I did end up with an iPod, and I was able to distract myself for a year or more with all the music I already owned -- actually, I've hit 2 years of recording and I stillhaven't gotten everything I own digitized (although I've gotten all the good stuff, I think). But I've also been very intentional about not getting sucked into downloads; I've been afraid that I'd end up that alcoholic who just takes one little drink... and wakes up in the gutter 3 days later. I went for months not even spending iTunes cards, except to make CDs for the family. And frankly, right now I have $17.82 in my iTunes account and I've been a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing 18 songs out of Every Song in the Universe.

So I guess I can't really explain what happened to me a few weeks back when I saw an ad in Entertainment Weekly for a free 7-day trial for emusic.com: 25 free downloads. Although I knew I would still grapple with the needle/haystack conundrum, there was something about the message that spoke to me -- it could have been the word "free". In fact, when I finally gave in and went to check it out, I even found that they had upped the offer to 35 free.

This would take planning on the order of the lead-up to D-Day. I painstakingly went through the database building a list of 35 target songs. I wanted to have the whole list plotted before beginning the 7-day term, so I could get in & get out with no danger of spilling into non-free time.

I started my quest with the songs I featured in that original pre-iPod post, and was delighted to see several of them listed; also a bit frustrated to see that some of the artists I sought were missing, or didn't include the albums/songs I needed, or the songs were there but listed as album-only. Nevertheless, with a little adjusting and scraping and resetting of sights, I was able to build a very enticing list of tracks.

So I found a 7-day window that I thought would afford me a chance to do the job before the clock ran out on me, and joined. Of course, I had to provide a Major Credit Card -- for identification purposes only. After the reg process was over, I started my shopping spree.

As I went back to the songs I had already scouted, I discovered that on top of all the other restrictions I had made my way around, some of my target songs were labeled, "We're sorry, but this item can only be downloaded using paid credits." I grabbed what I could and decided I'd better regroup... only to find that some of the songs I had already downloaded that claimed to be by original artists really weren't, and others were "rerecorded" versions that didn't sound much like the version I heard in my head that was the experience I was seeking to duplicate.

Brief pause -- make your own "voices in his head" joke.

So I went back through the database yet again, even more painstakingly. I reviewed my current collection to see if I was "missing" anything from my favorite artists, and I used the Genius feature in iTunes to suggest connections I might have forgotten (keep in mind, a lot of the music I was after is from what you might call Another Era -- although like most people my age, I prefer the term "classic" to "oldies").

Finally, I had a decent list of 35 assembled, but I also had a Shadow List of songs I really wanted that were closed off behind the "paid credits" door. So I concluded: what's the harm in one month of subscription music? The basic account provides 24 songs for $11.99 (i.e. 50 cents each, half of iTunes pricing). I knew I could make a very worthwhile list of 24 more, for a total of 59 for $12: basically 20 cents each.

So I finished off the free downloads, automatically triggering my first paid month. I had enough good stuff waitlisted that, even though I was still disappointed by some songs that were missing altogether, I was able to quickly knock off what I felt to be good value.

All that remained was the formality of canceling my account so I could be free of further charges, which I was planning to so "sometime this week"... until not long after, when checking my email revealed a message from emusic: "We've just added 10,000 new albums to our database! Click here to view..." etc.

In the immortal words of Carrie Bradshaw, "I couldn't help but wonder..."

So back I went into the database and, page by page, clicked through the entire list of recently-added, something like 900 pages, not counting my frequent detours into artist listings that looked promising (some of which were the very omissions that put me behind the 8-ball to begin with).

To make a long story almost exactly the same length, but maybe a little narrower, when the meter clicks over for 24 more songs (and 12 more bucks) in February, I'll be standing there with list in hand saying, "Please sir, I want some more."

No doubt there's some fresh sleight-of-hand awaiting me -- now you hear it, now you don't. Never fear, I'm planning to bring to bear on this problem the same resolve, determination, and strength of character that enabled me to join the Columbia House Record Club in 1978, and only stay in it until... last year, when the now-BMG club folded.

OK, technically, they really just transferred me to yourmusic.com, but I hardly ever go search the entire database. Three times a year, tops.

Toward a More Balanced Mii

I've never been much of an ice skater. It wasn't something our family really "did", and I was 10 or 11 before I went the first time. So if I had to add it up, I might have skated 30 or 40 times in my whole life. I like it all right but I've never gotten any good at turning. Or stopping. Or, really, going in a straight line (and anything fancy is Right Out).

Despite my almost complete dearth of skills, I have always prided myself on one skating accomplishment: I never fall. I've gotten hurt a few times keeping myself from falling, but I never fall.

I've always used that to claim excellent balance... which unfortunately got blown away recently. I have to confess that, as part of our family's observance of the Holy Season of Christmas, I bought a Wii. And I attempted to justify it to my wife (not to mention myself) by also purchasing a Wii Fit Plus. You know, so I can do that daily workout that only lack of opportunity has prevented up to now.

So I busted it out Christmas night to get to work. First you have to be evaluated, which isn't way more fun than being evaluated in the doctor's office -- the only real advantage is you don't have to be in your underwear (although, on the other hand, nothing's stopping you).

According to the finest medical advice available via an anthropomorphic balance board, I lean a little bit to the left. My BMI was acceptable, although the virtual taskmaster pointed out that I could drop a point or so (i.e. several pounds).

But I really came a cropper when it came time for the balance evaluation.

The balance test works a little like a carpenter’s level: you lean to one side to keep the two bubbles, representing the weight on each side of your body, within a certain range. That is, there might be a rectangle representing 70-80% of your body weight on the left and a corresponding rectangle for 20-30% on the right. If you shift just so, your bubbles land in the target range, then you have to keep it there for 3 seconds.

I thought I was doing OK, but the target ranges got narrower and further unbalanced, and I struggled. The clock ran out and the machine announced to me that it was calculating my Wii Fit Age (while my Mii, the avatar that represents me onscreen, squinted under a spotlight with a drumroll). The Wii Fit Age is supposed to represent the relative fitness of your body – or, in the words of Satchel Paige, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” – and mine was revealed to be… 51.

While I was relieved not to come up 79 or something, I was definitely disappointed to be older than my chronological age; needless to say, I repeated the test immediately and got myself down to a more palatable 46.

Since the Wii Fit Plus provides games for improving balance, I thought that in the spirit of self-improvement I’d give them a try. The first was for heading a soccer ball – move your head from side to side to connect with the virtual soccer balls coming at you (while dodging the occasional shoe).

The onscreen instructions remind you to clear enough space and make sure you get warmed up first, but leave out the most important suggestion:

Have your spouse leave the room.

She wasn’t really paying much attention, but as I bobbed & weaved (wove?), seemingly always mixing up my zigging with my zagging, I suppose she couldn’t help noticing. I’d like to think that if she could have helped laughing out loud, she would have, but I imagine the sight of my ineptitude was too much for anyone to bear.

At the end of the round, the verdict, on a scale of 1-4 stars, was one star, officially designating me as: Unbalanced. Which I’m choosing to interpret in a literal sense, but which certainly leaves itself open to alternate explanations.

I wasn’t much better at the other games like slalom skiing, ski jumping, or floating down a winding river in a huge bubble. I did OK in tilting the table to roll the balls into the holes, which got me all the way up to 2 stars – Amateur! – but for the most part, I was certifiably Unbalanced.

Well, there’s two ways you can go with that: “Yeah, what do you know?” or “I’ll show you.”(Option 3, not being affected by a game’s opinion, is not available to an Unbalanced person). I’m going to keep at it in the coming weeks & months, and when I’m all the way past Amateur – or I drive my Wii Fit Age down under “Needs Bifocals”… trust me, it’ll be Stop the Presses news in this space.

TFD - Finding the Season

As a preacher's kid, and a preacher's spouse, and a just plain regular churchgoer, I figure I've heard the story of Christmas -- not the one with the 8 or 9 tiny reindeer in it -- as many times as anyone possibly could in the past 47 years. So there is a danger for me of becoming like the fish who doesn't really think about water... it's just "there", you know? Then you add in all the stresses and responsibilities and peripherals of the season, and all of a sudden it's December 28 and, hey, what just happened here?

So I've made it something of a quest to find bits and pieces in all the Christmas I'm swimming in that bring the truth of Christmas to me in a new way, or maybe just the same old way but a way that somehow resounds for me. I thought I would share some of these; perhaps one will strike a chord in you as well.

I do have one powerful advantage: I now have over 300 songs (well, not 300 distinct songs; for example, I have 18 versions of "Silent Night") in my Christmas playlist and -- speaking of immersion -- have been listening constantly since the beginning of Advent. As I do, I listen for nuggets of truth in addition to cool tunes.

But the quest actually started with this phrase singing hymns in church: "where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in." Keep in mind that one of the highlights of my season so far has been that one Christmas wall decoration with a punctuation mistake in it didn't make it on the wall this year (and I was already a certified grammar/punctuation/spelling geek) ... so it surprises me a little that the point of this sentence hinges on punctuation, and I've been missing it. It is the end of the 3rd verse of a 2nd-tier carol, so I have a small excuse. Plus, the way the music is phrased makes it sound like this: "Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in."

That makes it sound like all the perseverance -- the continuing action -- is on us. That is, we're still receiving Him. Good for us! Oops... look again: comma after "Him", which is to say it's Jesus who's still continuing to enter. It's not on us, it's on Him -- and He is faithful to fulfill His part of the bargain.

Two more seasonal truths come from my favorite Christmas album -- do I even have to say it? I've written it all before. Steven Curtis Chapman's "Precious Promise" tells the story of when first Mary, then Joseph, then the shepherds, then the whole world get the news of Jesus' birth. In Mary's verse, we find this line: "But her questions and her fears are met with an overwhelming joy that God has chosen her."

Like anyone, she had questions and fears; what made her special was not that she immediately reported for duty without questioning... but rather that she was able to question, and also able to let that joy permeate her to the extent that it pushed all the fear right on out. Maybe the key faith issue is: which voice do you want to listen to? Your own, or the still, small voice...

The other Chapman lyric which speaks deep truth to me comes from "Our God Is with Us": "And we will never face life alone now that God has made Himself known as Father and friend, with us to the end -- Emmanuel." The Christmas story is full of miracles, of course, but the central one is this. I'm not going to bother to look this up, but I'm pretty certain I've written about this before -- not because I'm short on ideas (or at least not solely for that reason) but because it continues to blow my mind. It comes down to this: God loved us so much that He couldn't just watch "from up there" as we struggled our way through life. He cared enough to send the very best: himself. Not science fiction, but the God of the universe fitting Himself into a newborn baby. If you can't feel the synapses in your brain popping like old-fashioned flashbulbs thinking about that, don't bother with the SyFy channel.

And if you do feel that popping, imagine how Mary must have felt. One of my favorite Christmas Scripture verses is, "But Mary treasured all these things up and pondered them in her heart". I can tell you what day it was when my daughter's teacher called to say she'd become a "leader" of her kindergarten class (in three days of school); I know where I was standing when my son's 2nd grade teacher made an emotional speech recognizing him as Most Improved Student; I can only imagine what it would be like to have shepherds and wise men and angels show up. But that's really what I'm striving to do in this season -- to treasure the story up in my heart anew, to ponder it all over again. And I pray you won't let the season slip by without doing the same.

TFD: A Transitive Verb

I don't claim to be the most widely-read guy in the world... but I do read in a lot of different formats. From Facebook to the Internet as a whole -- from Sports Illustrated to TV Guide -- from Newsweek to Entertainment Weekly to the daily newspaper -- I get a pretty broad exposure to what's being written from week to week.

But even if you didn't, you'd probably guess that the subject (or at least the hook) for a high percentage of current writing this week is Thanksgiving. Everyone's talking -- throw in TV if you like -- about the things in their lives, or the movies or TV shows, that they're thankful for. Even the political stories are telling you what politician X ought to be thankful for in current events.

It seems to me, however, that in the majority of cases there is something conspicuously absent in all the ink/pixels expended on thankfulness: an object. Now I suppose I could be totally wrong on this semantically -- although it doesn't appear so -- but my gut reaction is that giving thanks is completely meaningless without someone to accept the thanks.

On some level, I believe most people get that. Because I read not only TV Guide but also Entertainment Weekly, I'm privy to many profound utterances by the Hollywood Crowd; not to sound like I should be chewin' tobacco & wearin' overalls or anything, but my experience is that Them Thar Fancy Showbiz Folks have a heightened tendency to be thankful to karma, or positive energy, or the universe. Not sure exactly where The Man Upstairs/The Big Guy in the Sky fall into that continuum, but I think it's all a way to backhandedly acknowledge the seemingly self-evident fact that blessings don't just materialize out of the sky; every gift has a corresponding Giver.

I don't know that I've done an awesome job in my life of Celebrating Thanksgiving; that is, we don't usually have an extended family time of rehearsing our gratitude as we gather for the feast. By the time I get the turkey on the table, mash the potatoes, whip up some gravy and accidentally leave the rolls in the oven too long, I'm not always welling up with an overwhelming emotion of thankfulness (and everyone else has long since forgotten what we're celebrating). I do try, however, to remind the kids from day to day of all the wonderful things we have -- even the beauty of the world around us, which God gives us as a completely optional gift... not because it's "necessary", but solely for the purpose of our enjoyment.

So as the day approaches, by all means take some time to reflect on all the good things in your life -- but don't forget to direct the message of thanksgiving where it really goes. Oh, and also, don't forget to take the rolls out of the oven.

Making It Official

Over the years – and yes, my fourth Blogiversary is approaching; I’m thinking of registering at the Apple Store – I haven’t said much about the Ginormously Extensive corporation I work for. I mean, I could try your patience by Giving Extra hints and such, but I’m not really sure it’s worth Great Effort to see if I can, ah, make the light bulb come on for you.

Suffice it to say that my Generous Employer is also one of the sponsors of the upcoming Winter Olympic games; they have even provided me with a screensaver that informs me that it’s exactly 87 days till the Games open. You probably didn’t realize that unless you were either an Olympian yourself, or you had a pretty good idea where to get a bet down on luge.

This means, by the way, that if you’re looking for a gallon of paint between now and March, you might better try Lowe’s.

Another sure harbinger of an approaching Olympics – besides NBC putting on lousy prime-time shows so you won’t feel deprived when they’re pre-empted for two weeks – can be seen in advertising. For the next 3 months, you’ll be seeing glossy spreads for the Official Panty Hose of the Winter Olympics, and logos on the end of TV commercials for the Official Motor Oil of the Winter Olympics.

I was thinking I ought to declare myself the Official Blog of the Winter Olympics. A lot of times, they break these things up into market segments to, um, maximize revenue, so I’ll take either “(10 or Fewer Regular Readers)” or “(2 or Fewer Monthly Posts)”, whichever one hasn’t already been bought.

I’m pretty sure that if I made any Official claims, I’d get tracked down & sued, even way down here at the last off-ramp of the Information Superhighway, and I clearly don’t have the revenue to pay my way in (although I’m sure that the rest of the Official products were chosen because of their quality and not due to any financial considerations), so instead maybe I’ll turn the concept on its head.

I have already declared in blogs past the Official Airline of Random Access, as well as the Official Hotel, but I just felt the urge to declare a few more categories, as follows…

Official Auto of Random Access – I have hinted at this in the past, but there’s no question that it’s Toyota. Toyotas are safe, predictable and boring… I can’t imagine why that resonates with me. Of course, it's me, so I really pushed the envelope -- I got one of these. And it looks like this.

Official Snack of Random Access – Since I began working at home (initially part-time in 1999, but then permanently beginning in 2003), I have demonstrated with clarity that I am not discriminatory with regard to snacks. Candy, cookies, donuts and chips alike; if it can be held in one hand while typing with the other – or, failing in that, if it can be found in the cupboard – it has a treasured place in my daily schedule. However, my first love dating from my childhood has always been the salty/greasy food group… and the one that stands above the rest is Fritos. Fritos rank high on both the salty & greasy scales, of course, but they also have a satisfying crunchy substance to them, plus corn is also a vegetable, so they’re actually good for you (they're even vegan!). The Scoops are OK in a pinch, but not preferable, and naturally-- this is me we're talking about -- the flavored varieties aren’t really Fritos at all.

Official Store of Random Access – For those of you in the Upstate NY area, this will comes as no surprise; the rest of you may be mystified. I visit my nearby Stewart’s with almost unimaginable frequency. As of this writing, the last time was… 4 hours ago. Stewart’s produces their own milk, which we purchase roughly every two days, but they’re also excellent for their bread and eggs. And locals are amazed that I’ve gone this far without mentioning Stewart’s excellent ice cream, available both in half-gallons and OTC. Come to think of it, each member of the family can get one of their favorite things there, so I guess we really don’t need to go anywhere else.

Official Tech-Gadget of Random Access – Again, this one’s no surprise, for multiple reasons. I’m on record with multiple rhapsodies about my iPod Nano… plus the iPod Nano is basically the Toyota Camry of high-tech. We’re not talking Blackberry or iPhone or some awesome Windows 7 laptop, or even a Wii; just an iPod, and a last-generation one at that (don’t get me wrong, if someone leaves one of those others on the doorstep overnight, it’ll find a home). Honorable mention here goes to the Xitel inPort, the gadget that allows me to convert 20 years of vinyl and cassette memories to ones and zeroes to fill up (and overflow) that iPod.

Official Beverage of Random Access – When I was a kid, I drank a good amount of soda, particularly Coke (and just as particularly, not Pepsi). As time went on, I found that carbonated drinks very often have a harsh effect on my stomach... and also discovered the wonders of iced tea (always with sugar & lemon). The instant versions are easy to replenish, which is a huge advantage; one of the reasons I don’t drink alcohol is that when I have something to drink, I often drink in quantities that would be pretty unmanageable in an intoxicant. Later I progressed to home-brewed versions, but nowadays if I have to choose one drink, it’s this one – which is, much like my blog entries, sweet and tart both, and Made from the Best Stuff on Earth.

Official Blog of Random Access – I do like to read and re-read my own stuff, I cannot tell a lie. Well, I can, but there’s no advantage in this case. And at the rate I publish, it would be a lot more re-reading than reading. So I do enjoy others, but the best is Joe Posnanski, who recently left the Kansas City Star for Sports Illustrated. Yes, he writes a lot about sports, but also about music, people, writing,… as I find myself saying a lot when I read someone really talented, his writing is basically what I wish mine were. Also -- despite having an actual job writing -- he posts a lot more often than I do.

It occurs to me now that, rather than having to pay to be an Official Blog, I've actually just endorsed a bunch of stuff, so I guess I can sit back and wait for the checks to roll in. Or I'll accept in-kind donations (although a "lifetime supply" of Fritos would probably doom me to a pretty short life). I promise if I do get the cash, I'll plow it right back into the business; maybe I can even scrape together enough to pay to be the Official Blog of Biathlon or curling or one of those sports nobody cares about anyway.

Ready... or Not

Not long ago, one of my Facebook friends celebrated her 21^st birthday – believe it or not, not all of my friends remember black & white TV and rotary phones. Of course, I had to remark on this milestone from the lofty perspective of my double-21-plus, so my response was: “You’re an adult now… go pay some bills or something.”

Ah, if only it were that simple.

The adult part, not the paying bills part – that never gets any simpler. The fact is, I’ve found myself continuing to struggle with all that’s involved with the word “grownup”. And there’s no question that it’s getting pretty late in the day for that; there aren’t too many places I go any more where I’m the youngest person in the room! It’s probably more common for me to be the oldest.

My daughter is in 2^nd grade and she’s told me several times that she’s worried about multiplication, i.e. 3^rd grade. I always tell her: don’t worry; when it gets here, you’ll be ready. I figured that growing up was the same way -- I just assumed that when you got to be an adult, with adult responsibilities, you’d feel somehow ready for it. When I was a kid, the adults around me (and I actually spent a lot of time, with many different adults in my life) seemed so grounded and serious and, you know, grown-up. They went to work every day because that’s what adults do – dressed in very serious grown-up clothes — and they made decisions without seeming to wrestle much with it, and just generally appeared to me to be in charge… masters of their domain, if you will. And really, really old, too, of course, but that’s just the default kid perspective.

I get this thrown in my face frequently, in a lot of different ways. Parenting is the daily one; being a parent is a constant series of “Is this allowable? Is that a good idea? Is the other necessary?” kind of decisions, and of course unrelenting responsibility… you need to come up with the Right Answer, quickly, and in a way that at least leaves the illusion that you’re in control!

Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve had several trips for work: flights, rental cars, hotels, business meetings. It seems like especially in the airport, I’m conscious that I want to look like a smooth, confident, well-traveled businessman… but inside I’m pretty sure that I’m going to trip over my shoelaces or have my briefcase fly open or something.

I still have a little video playing in my mind of the time I was rushing to the gate because boarding had already started, slipping into my place in the moving line just in the nick – only to realize that my flight was boarding at the gate across the way. Got almost to the agent taking boarding passes before I figured that one out, and as a result just barely made my (correct) flight!

And I’ve mentioned before that our camp is something of an ongoing project; recently we’ve concluded that there are some things we need to do that we can’t really do ourselves. So we need to hire someone to do the work… and I realized: I have no idea how to do that. Doesn’t it seem like a grown-up would know how to find someone and how to evaluate whether they’re fit for the job?

For that matter, a mature adult would probably know better than to write 600 words about how he doesn’t feel very competent.

I suppose this probably sounds like the typical mid-life crisis – a guy gets halfway (oh, all right, a little more than halfway) through his life, assesses the cards he’s been dealt, and asks for a new deal. But I want to make clear that’s not really what I’m talking about. I like my cards; I like being a husband and a dad and having a good job and owning cars and the like. If this is the hand I’m dealt, it would be hard to imagine a much better one.

I just can’t shake the feeling that everyone knows how to play their hands but me…

Running the Four Corners

When I was a kid -- you know, in the days before ESPN -- I'd end up watching whatever sports event did show up on TV, and I enjoyed most of what I saw. Somehow, though, in those days I never got too interested in college basketball.

One big reason was named Dean Smith. He was the coach of the University of North Carolina basketball team, and he was famous for a strategy called the Four Corners. Basically, whenever his team got ahead late in the game, every time they got the ball they'd hold it as long as they could. Eventually.................. I'm sorry, did I doze off? eventually someone might get open for a layup, but if not he was content to just let all the time run off the clock.

At some point, everyone realized that this tactic was really against the spirit of the game (and boring), and a rule was passed that the team with the ball had to shoot within 40 seconds (later 35).

Stall tactics were back in the news recently with the story of Roman Polanski, the film director who pled guilty to a rather unpleasant crime in 1977, but fled to Europe before sentencing. A couple weeks ago he was captured in Switzerland and the process has begun to have him extradited to the US to face justice.

I don't generally comment too much on the news in this space; this blog doesn't exist for the purpose of antagonizing people or shoving my views down their throats. But there has been much blather (oops, did I tip my hand there?) in the press, much of it prompted by the Moral Compass of Our Nation -- Hollywood celebrities -- about how we should leave the man alone because he's suffered enough already. One French official even chimed in that America should stop persecuting such a gifted artiste.

Now I can see how it would be difficult, even wearing, to move to the country of your birth. And continue pursuing your livelihood without interruption. And travel around Europe to various film festivals to receive applause and awards. So perhaps we can agree that reasonable people might disagree about how much Monsieur Polanski has suffered; then let's add in one more inconvenient fact:

He's still a criminal.

Most crimes have a beginning point and an ending point, but since he's a fugitive from U.S. justice, every day he didn't surrender himself to authorities was itself a felony. Remember, no "innocent till proven guilty" like your common street criminal: being a fugitive proves itself.

In that sense, he's piled up over 10,000 crimes since he was convicted -- so I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of "No, he hasn't suffered enough". I still don't believe it's fair to run out the clock.

Nostradamus and Me

When I was a bit younger, the National Enquirer and Jeane Dixon had a little thing going. It seemed like every week -- and I am measuring this from checkout-line exposure, not actual reading; the NE is perhaps the only English-language publication I've never subscribed to -- there was a big headline touting Ms. Dixon's latest revelations of what lay ahead for us all.

It also seems that whatever else happens in the twice-yearly reorganization of the local newspaper, the horoscope column is a cornerstone of the local News Dissemination Effort (not sure why you need a subscription to the paper if today's edition tells you what happened yesterday and what's going to happen tomorrow).

It turns out that you've all been wasting your time, although hopefully not your money; I can't quite imagine a reader of this space going to a palm reader (although I'll probably find I'm woefully naive on that score).

All you have to do is read this blog.

All The Rage these days is the discussion of "public civility", due in large part to our friends Rep. Wilson, Ms. Williams, and Mr. West. But you know, if you are a regular visitor to this very page, you should have seen this coming -- almost four years ago. Because some of you hate links, and because I can make an entirely new blog entry out of something I already wrote, I'm going to reprint the post here in its entirety. Below, my 12/21/05 entry (my third post ever!) entitled "Motivational Speech":

I belong to an e-mail list made up of a number of ministers and laypeople in my area. Most of the time (like most people, I suspect) I just lurk. A couple of years ago, however, a topic came up I couldn’t stay out of… no matter how hard I tried.

Never mind what the issue was; as the mails & responses progressed, it became clear that the Majority Opinion was at odds with mine. This did not surprise me – and it also eliminated any temptation I had (at first) to get involved in the discussion. I know I’m in the minority, so I saw no need to “out” myself as an oddball.

Gradually the tone shifted from “we’re right” to “they’re wrong”. After that there were assertions that anyone who disagreed was trying to take over the church for their own nefarious purposes.

Can you see what happened here? It’s not enough for me to be right; my position has to be the one that any right-thinking person would take. In fact, it’s not enough for me to disagree with your conclusions – even your motives must be called into question.

I got a strong sense of déjà vu not long ago, watching the news: the President and some of his administration began accusing anyone who dares to criticize the war policy of being unpatriotic and of aiding the enemy. I notice that they backtracked from that position pretty quickly, but it’s clearly not an accident that several people close to the Administration said pretty much the same thing at the same time.

In the case of the e-mail thread, I finally did post. I didn’t bother trying to defend my position, or even explain it – I’m sure everyone drew instant conclusions as to what “side” I was on. My point was, I may disagree with you 100%, and I may battle tooth and nail to see my viewpoint become the accepted wisdom… but I will not commit the error – the sin, if you prefer – of assuming that anyone who disagrees with me has questionable motives. A civilized society, not to mention a church, can’t survive that way.

Behold, the Power of Cheese

This past school year, as our daughter conducted her ongoing first-grade-inspired seminars, I was most distressed by her lecture on The Food Pyramid. I liked it better when we only had to keep track of The Four Basic Food Groups: Pasta, Cheese, Meat, and Potato Chips. These are the staples around which my Cuisine is based... well, I don't generally cook with potato chips, but I do have seven different kinds of cheese in my fridge right now.

Of course, my daughter isn't the only one who relishes illuminating my ignorance. Maybe 18 months ago, I bought something at Best Buy (I should never be allowed in Best Buy unsupervised. Even though I'm far from an impulse buyer, nearly every trip in there plants a seed for a future purchase). They had a deal: join Reward Zone and get a short-term subscription to a magazine. Since I already get most English-language publications, I decided I'd give Entertainment Weekly a try.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to the Free Introductory Offer. I figured I'd let it go a couple months, then cancel; unfortunately, I didn't fully account for my voracious thirst for printed material. At this point, in addition to the daily newspaper, I have no fewer than six weekly subscriptions... including, of course, EW. I say "weekly", but somehow several of them tend to print a lot of "double issues" and then take a week off.

EW provides coverage of all forms of entertainment media -- TV, movies, music, books, even video games -- and while I enjoy keeping up-to-date on all those topics, I sometimes feel their primary purpose is to reinforce something I've known for a lot of years: I ain't hip.

The articles and especially the reviews usually tout the band that's stretching its genre, the movie that is an intricately crafted work of art, the novel that is unflinching in its portrayal of blah blah blah... even the TV shows are most often the ones more noted for Critical Acclaim than for, you know, viewers.

It seems like human nature, or maybe just the nature of criticism (or a bid for job security), but it's frustrating that seemingly the only Worthwhile Art is obscure and challenging and difficult -- almost as if something that's actually enjoyable is somehow less worthy.

As for myself, I find that in almost all matters of taste, and not just the literal one, that I have a deep-seated appreciation for cheese.

I've read and enjoyed Shakespeare and I'm familiar with at least the most obvious literary classics, but I'd probably say my favorite author is Robert B. Parker. At least statistically: he's written 68 books and I know I've read well over 50 of them. Is he a master literary stylist, constantly breaking new ground? 68 books in 36 years -- you do the math.

Wikipedia helpfully links my favorite musical artists to the Star-based Music Critics, so I'm painfully aware that they range from tolerated (Billy Joel) to widely panned (Styx) to downright laughingstocks (Barry Manilow)... but if the iPod dials up "Until the Night", or "Come Sail Away", or "Can't Smile Without You" and no one's around, I'll be singing along at the top of my lungs (my daughter caught me singing AND doing air guitar to "Rockin' the Paradise" the other day, which was... awkward). Incidentally, "Can't Smile" is the single best karaoke song in recorded history -- sure, "everybody hates Barry", but I've never failed to get an ovation with that one.

While I don't see much more than a half-dozen movies a year, even in the DVD/PPV age, I like movies that make me laugh.. although I'm not opposed to a drama, or even a tearjerker if it doesn't totally insult my intelligence. I guess you'd say I'm more "Stripes", or "Rocky", or "The Incredibles" than "Leaving Las Vegas" or "Trainspotting". I'd rather watch "Sixteen Candles" once than a whole pile of auteurs producing finely-observed Works of Art about despair and depravity.

In television, I think the critics look for "raw" and "gritty", or maybe "quirky/offbeat". Now I believe I rank pretty high up on the Quirkymeter, but if you've read anything I've written about my favorite shows, you'll note they are for the most part pretty general-appeal. Exceptions that prove the rule: the critics and I agree wholeheartedly on Hill Street Blues and Sports Night.

I've gone to two art galleries dedicated to a single artist, both of those for Norman Rockwell -- also the only artist featured on the walls of my home. He ranks roughly as high on the coolness scale (not to be confused with the Quirkymeter) as myself, but -- not meaning to flatter myself -- I think of his art in the same kind of terms as my blog: take a moment that's familiar and see it in a slightly different way, or perhaps take another moment that's personal and try to find the universal in it.

And of course, coming full circle to the literal cheese theme, I've made no secret of my preference for simple foods cooked well: steak, BBQ ribs, fried chicken, lasagna, pizza. And although I'll always watch Top Chef and Next Food Network Star with interest, I'll never understand or appreciate the culinary approach that produces a slice of this and a dollop of that, and something smeared around the edge of the plate. Suffice it to say that if there's anything on the menu you can't pronounce or define (or tablecloths on the table, for that matter), you won't run into me there.

I suppose that in some respects this makes me appear Ignorant and Proud of It. Don't want none of that Art 'round here! But if there's a grand moral to the story, it might be that I don't want my dining, or any entertainment, to be like taking vitamins. I'd rather have a big ol' tasty hunk of cheese.

Just Forward My Mail to 1981

If it were up to me, we wouldn't need much more than one TV channel. But after a period of time (that is, a span of time about as large as the average punctuation mark) my wife can't take any more baseball -- and this is only on once a week. So we end up over at HGTV a fair amount of the time. Often, they are talking about real estate values... and of course, when you turn off the TV and pick up the newspaper, the big story is the economy and people just trying to make ends meet. Well, I've found a place to live where the cost of living is a lot lower...

The past.

Last fall, of course, I visited Homecoming at my alma mater; this spring and summer, under the influence of a group of my Facebook friends, I've been thinking and talking quite a bit about my days at Gaslight Village -- which culminated in my most recent post here. Then to complete the trifecta: this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend my 30th high school reunion.

Now, even though I've proved I have a rose-colored rearview mirror, I remember plenty about high school that would not lead one to want to revisit it. So why is it that every time there's a reunion, I'm there when the doors open? I'm 4-for-4: 10, 20, 25, and 30.

Well, for one thing there's always the chance I'll get to see someone I've really missed. OK, that actually doesn't happen -- in reality, it seems I spend a lot of each reunion talking to all the people who never talked to me on the first go-round -- but still I live in hope.

That's one of the reasons I find reunions pretty interesting -- if only in the sociological sense. And it has gotten better over the years; I think at least at the 10-year reunion we were all a little preoccupied with how the others saw us, trying to impress each other with all we'd accomplished (which for me was a little dicey since I had only a part-time job, no kids, and was living in a one-bedroom apartment). Now we've all more or less come to terms with who we are and what we've done -- and even if we're not, we're far enough away from high school that none of these people are really our primary peer group any more. Or is that just me?

As for the actual event, it was enjoyable enough. We ate a lot; I did connect with 1 or 2 people I'd lost touch with; and I did get to do not one but two karaoke numbers. Surely any day with karaoke is not a total loss. And I was at least able to collect a few oddities to take home with me (and, you know, post on the World Wide Web).

• - One of my classmates asked me if I was “still really smart”. I suppose if I were really all that bright, I would have had a brilliant riposte to that, so maybe the question answers itself. Even I (not at all desperate for an infusion of self-esteem) would be hard pressed to answer that one, “Why, yes – yes, I am.” Instead, I opted for, “Actually, I’m much dumber than I was then; back then I knew everything,” which I thought struck the right reunion-oriented note of light-heartedness, crossed with wisdom born of the passage of years, seasoned with just a sprinkle of good-natured self-mockery. I do wonder in hindsight whether someone who would even ask such a question is capable of perceiving that level of nuance, of course…
• - Given that the ticket price included all-you-can-drink beer, it was perhaps inevitable that someone’s thirst would outstrip his capacity for self-restraint. The crowd as a whole was very well-mannered, but at least one guy had over-refreshed himself: in the midst of my karaoke number he decided to come up, wrap his arm around me and start to sing along. I’ve already noted my wife’s flair for persuasion; she came forward and very clearly pantomimed that she was supposed to be the one I was singing to, which distracted him enough that some others were able to peel him off. Given the effect that karaoke usually has on me, it’s perhaps predictable that my main concern was whether my performance would be spoiled.
• - Heading out to the parking lot at one point, I ran into one of my classmates who asked whether I was headed out to “smoke a bowl.” Pretty sure he was just ribbing me there… but there were those in attendance who confused a high school reunion with a re-creation – on a later trip to the parking lot, I did discover there was a group out there in the dark somewhere having a non-tobacco-related group smoke.

In similar fashion, I’m just as much of a stick-in-the-mud as I ever was, so we left pretty early. Later that evening, as I was absorbed in my usual never-ending rehash, my wife in the fashion of wives everywhere asked the question that cut to the heart of all the underlying issues: what is it that makes me so enraptured (I’m not sure if she used the word “obsessed”, but it was more or less implied) with all these journeys back into the past?

There might be a hundred answers or there might be no good answer at all. High school reunions for me can serve as a chance to do it all again – an opportunity to relive it and get it right this time, a chance to connect with people that I always felt somehow separated from. Not above or below, but rather just apart. But at this juncture so many years later, I have the feeling that we’re more alike than different.

I think my interest in all things Gaslight Village is probably partly an effort to recapture a simpler but also more exciting time. I could name a half-dozen incidents from those days that I recorded in my journal with a joking “Dear Diary” because they seemed So Very Momentous to me. Probably because it’s the first time for many different experiences, or perhaps just because when you're young, there’s not such a thicket of real life to lose them in. Either way, it's pretty awesome to recapture even a little of that excitement.

I’m not sure why the college homecoming trip was so important. I think it started as nostalgia for a wonderful period in my life, but eventually became a realization that it wasn’t really as wonderful as I like to remember… but that there's nothing wrong with that. I felt like I came out further ahead by working that out than just reliving misty watercolor memories.

And Facebook, which honestly is just another side of the same coin… while I have Facebook friends that I also see in person, it’s also a way for me to integrate all the parts of my life: the slightly odd kid from high school; the rushing-to-be/afraid-to-be grownup from the Gaslight Village days; the young married guy trying to figure out how to be a grownup; and yes, even the middle-aged guy with a wife & 2 kids, a good job and a lot of gray in his hair (but less actual hair).

I’m not always crazy about all the me’s I run into as I observe myself in all my time-travels. Still, just as I’m richer for all the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve shared them with, I believe I get a benefit from keeping in close touch with all my prior selves… and perhaps even learning something about my present self into the bargain.

BOFOH Bits

Amid all the reams and wads and stacks of information (and "information") available on the World Wide Web, there's relatively little written about a topic near and dear to my heart: Gaslight Village. I suppose that's only natural; nobody really remembers Pete Best (forget about Stu Sutcliffe), no one writes scholarly biographies of Shemp Howard, and good luck finding someone who's heard of the DuMont Network.

All of these, of course, were in some way overshadowed or even made obsolete by contemporaries (unless you're one of the four people in the world who believe Shemp > Curly, to which I can only say this: no). It was Gaslight's fate to be the ugly corporate stepsister in the empire of Charles R. Wood -- now fondly remembered as a philanthropist, but for us the man who employed most of the teens in the Tri-County area and screamed at a significant percentage of those -- to the legendary Storytown, soon to be known as The Great Escape and eventually to become a part of the Six Flags universe.

The conceit -- the shtik -- the premise of Gaslight Village was a "Gay Nineties" theme. I think I'm safe in saying the concept predated the use of "gay" to mean something else entirely... but in either case it's kind of a hard theme to carry through in an amusement park. There is something vaguely old-fashioned (maybe even musty) about T-shirt shops and skee ball and bumper cars, but maybe more '50s than '90s.

I landed at Gaslight in the summer of 1978 more or less by accident: our high school did The Music Man for our spring musical, and 2 of the guys in the show's quartet decided that was a great path to a summer job (that didn't involve too much work), but the other 2 guys weren't interested, so I was invited to join.

The revised quartet was hired, and a couple or 3 times a day we'd put on red vests and straw hats and belt out "Lida Rose" and "You Gotta Have Heart" and... a bunch of other barbershoppy stuff. However, if you do the math, that's only about a half-hour a day, and Charles R. Wood wasn't about to pay 4 teenagers a day's wage to sit around for all but a half-hour a day.

So Jeff & Steve ran rides, and Kevin & I became grounds boys. I was always assiduous about my duties; there were several spots scattered throughout the park that were polished almost to a gleam. It's possible that, in an effort to be polite, I might have made conversation with young ladies that might have been located in the vicinity of those locations.

As dedicated as I was to keeping my corner of Lake George popcorn- and cigarette-butt-free, my ambition was always to make it to the Opera House, the park's "dinner theater" (okay, snack bar theater). The theater featured 7 shows a day -- the old-fashioned mellerdrama, with a clean-cut hero rescuing the innocent heroine from the dastardly villain, 4 times a day; and a full-fledged ice show, performed on an ice rink about the size of your dining room table, 3 times a day. Seriously, I have about half that much ice in my drink right now. Anyway, suffice it to say there was always a very clean spot in the Opera House doorway.

In the course of time -- lots of time; I worked at Gaslight for 6 summers, so that's more than one calendar year -- I was to weasel my way into the Opera House, bit by bit. Towards the end of my second summer when everyone quit, I joined the cast of the mellerdrama. The show, which narrowly missed a Tony Award nomination for Best Amusement Park Parody/Ripoff of a Recently-Popular Movie, was entitled "Star Squabbles"; I played the character role of Kindly Old Okee Dokee. A character role, if you're not theater-savvy, means you don't get any funny lines and you don't get to do anything in particular; you're there mostly to give the hero somebody to talk to. Occasionally you get to do Exposition, meaning you say something like, "Look, Fluke (the hero's name was Fluke Skycrawler), we're on a spaceship!" so the audience can figure out what the scenery's supposed to be depicting.

The acting... um, performing?... no, stage gig only lasted about 2 weeks, but I got to wear stage makeup and a wig made of the finest yak hair (and from the smell of it, the yak was using it on my day off), and get paid, and not sweep any grounds, so I felt myself Quite the Big Cheese Indeed.

Overall, during those three long summers of custodial servitude, I had the opportunity to fill a lot of other roles that even today lend my resume a madcap air that would otherwise be lacking:

• - opening cages, backstage, for the tiger show
• - onstage announcer for the performing bear act
• - actor in the Keystone Kops pie fight

But I may be proudest of my lighting work for the ice show -- which started while I was still working grounds; eventually, the show's impresario/skating magician, Ron Urban, came to trust me sufficiently that he handed me the show's running order and asked me to devise my own light cues. Not to mention that I ended up dating the girl who ran the other spotlight, for over a year!

But it wasn't till my fourth year at Gaslight that I reached the apex: Singing waiter in the Opera House (incidentally, we always called it the Big Old-Fashioned Opera House, or BOFOH -- hence BOFOH Bits). I've been asked this a lot: you don't sing while you're waiting on tables, but from the bandstand between customers. I featured those well-known Gay Nineties standards, "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "All the Things You Are". We were, as I said, basically a snack bar -- pizza, pretzels, soda, and beer -- so the combination of an average check under $10 and my own uniquely winning personality meant that I sometimes made as much as double figures in tips.

This is when it gets tricky to write. I did have a great time in my three Opera House years; we became in a lot of ways a family, or at least a team, in a fashion that just didn't happen in the rest of the park. In fact, I was really prompted to write this by recently reconnecting with a bunch of my old OH pals via Facebook (hi guys! love ya...).

I also know that I'm unusually susceptible to the Good Old Days virus that makes (almost) 30 years ago look like a lot more fun than today, and perhaps than it did then. Plus I have to be unusually careful about accuracy with a group of fellow survivors auditing me.

And... I'm afraid I'm not wholly up to the challenge of capturing what it really felt like: to be on the doorstep of adulthood, taking my first real steps toward independence, trying to figure out -- painfully at times -- who I really was, experiencing the exhilaration and devastation of my first truly adult romantic relationship.

I do remember a lot of snapshots, flashes really, like in the old prison movies when the spotlight sweeps across the darkened prison yard:

... a lot of laughter, feeling like we were banding together against a mob of surly and cheap tourists

... going out dancing with the gang after work, and on top of "having a great time", feeling that swell of "hey, I'm a grown-up"

... timing my trip past the side of the ice cube so I could do my "special cheer" just as our star skater, Kim, was finishing her routine

... sitting on the bench outside the kitchen door crying because someone had said something like "Hey, why do you have to be so sarcastic all the time?" -- and thinking Big Thoughts about "Who am I really?"

... feeling jealous when new people came to the Opera House and acted like they belonged there, when it felt a little like they were horning in on My Thing.

... driving away from the last time we were all together, in September of 1983, knowing in my heart (and the pit of my stomach) that something important in my life had just come to an end, something I'd never get back -- and getting stopped by the cops on the way home for running a red light because I was in such a daze.

I realized suddenly while writing this (although to be honest it's taken me almost 2 months to write) that I'm actually glad Gaslight's closed. Like I said, I'm jealous: the place was special to me in a variety of ways, some obvious and some not so much, and somehow to have it go on without me doesn't seem right. I know that's a Mark-centric view of the world... but hey, it's my blog.

So to CD and O'B and Kim and Jeff and Leslie... and to Amy... and Steve, Ron, Bernie, Chucko, Warren Boden, Anne Bishop, and Bob Carroll (but not to Fred Dufel) -- thanks so much for being part of my life. I promise not to blame you for any of the less-desirable aspects of who I've become, and I leave you with this thought:

• Just remember that sunshine always follows the rain,
• So wrap your troubles in dreams, and dream your troubles away.

Upholding More Than One Tradition

For some reason when I think of doing a travel piece, my mind always goes straight to Kerouac. This despite the fact that I've never read On The Road (but if you're a Frequent Reader you know that my titles, in particular, trend toward the pretentiously literary). It's also true that there is a long and honorable tradition of the Comic Travel Piece; I myself have read such essays ranging from Twain, to Benchley, Perelman, and all the way up to P. J. O'Rourke (but perhaps my favorite example of Travel Literature is Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty"). I have it on good authority, however, that none of those worthy creations mention children's museums, zoos, or amusement parks. Of course, they're most likely more entertaining too.

I decided to forgo the obscure road-related puns in this title; I refer rather to the fact that each summer we go on a family vacation, and each summer I write about it. I'm not offering any warranty that this will be in the same league as any of the guys mentioned above.

Vacation doesn't inspire coherence, so instead of a linear narrative, consider this a series of snapshots. Maybe I should have titled it "Postcards from the Edge".

• $ For any trip, I marshal the full resources of the 21st century: Internet research, including directions from destination websites; full turn-by-turn directions, calibrated to 0.1 mile, from Google maps; and, starting this year, GPS as well. Despite all that, I still had several moments of (if not outright lostness) at least uncertainty. North Carolina in particular has a disturbing habit of combining & then re-dividing their numbered routes. So I asked my dad; he told me that in the late 40s he made three round trips from New York to California. They did have basic roadmaps, but no "interstate highways", and no way to really know what was up ahead; they drove until they found a "tourist cabin" where they could stay the night.


• $ We passed some of those developments bulit practically in the interstate breakdown lane. It's too bad nobody still bakes pies & leaves them on the windowsill to cool, because if they did, you could snag yourself a good snack from the right-hand lane. They had that sign that says, "If you lived here, you'd be home now"... but I couldn't help thinking it should really read, "If you lived here, you'd be wondering what on earth possesed you to spend all that dough on a place where cars are always going through your front yard at 70 mph."


• $ With regard to E-Z-Pass: what took me so long? Some of these highways now have Express E-Z-Pass -- you don't slow down or even drive through the cattle chute; just keep on rolling, they'll get your money. What's more, you can even pick up an e-z-pass transmitter at the grocery store!


• $ Parents traveling with relatively young children do well to deploy several weapons, including extra snacks, electronic games, and a portable DVD player... however, the two most important words to keep in mind: suite hotel. For me, it would be difficult to survive a vacation where lights-out was at 8 every night -- so the separate bedroom is indispensable. Caution: for some chains, "suite" means "has an armchair and a mini-fridge", so don't be fooled by cheap imitations.


• $ Best thing about crossing old Mr. Mason & Mr. Dixon's stripe: Chick-Fil-A. It turns out that there are some in the northeast; the nearest one to us is only 150 miles away. But they're easier to find in the South -- in fact, when I finally got a chance to enjoy my visit, it was here. I don't understand why I can't get a chicken sandwich that good without paying my way into an amusement park.


• $ Twice in a row while visiting Baltimore, my wife pulled off one of those deals only she can, to get things people don't want to give us. We went for the stadium tour at Camden Yards: first she got the parking guy to let us park (in the "wrong" lot) for free, even; then when the tour was sold out after only the other three of us got in, she met the tour guide and talked him into letting her come along after all. I don't know whether it's "feminine wiles", or "selling ice to Eskimos", or The Power to Cloud Men's Minds... but I'm sure glad she's on our side.


• $ Later on in Baltimore, I was going to put my credit card in the parking meter when a guy slipped in ahead of me, stuck in a card, and pulled out a $2 ticket. He said, "I'll give you this $2 ticket for $1 cash." I had about 4 seconds to think about it, so I said, "OK, sure." As I walked away, I decided it must have been some kind of scam -- stolen credit card? -- but I'm still not sure exactly what happened there. In any case, I was able to park all day long in a major American city for $4!
• $ It's good that my literary ambitions are basically drained away by this blog (and, of course, all my Facebook masterpieces), or I would be tempted to write the definitive guide to Children's Museums of the Northeast. This trip brings me to 5, lifetime, I believe -- plus at least 5 other museums with varying degrees of family-friendliness. There is a Children's Museums association, but I'm starting to suspect that the certification process is mostly a formality...
• $ The sequel would be a compendium of hotel pools -- as soon as my fingers un-prune enough that I can hold a pen.
• $ One of the charms of the road trip (or indeed, of getting out of bed each day) is the chance to see something you've never seen before. Quite often it turns out to be something you never imagined wanting to see, but that's another story. For this trip, my nominee for Eighth Wonder of the World was: a restroom hand dryer that actually dries your hands. It's called the Xlerator and after seeing it in action, I can only conclude that it's powered by the same engine as the Boeing 737. The only downside is that every time I use it, it sets my watch back about an hour.

Ten days, 1800 miles, 6 states, 4 hotels, 4 visits to the beach, about a dozen visits to souvenir/gift shops, and all the fast-food cheeseburgers you can eat. Actually a few more than you can eat. In any case, it sure is good to be home. I think I'm going to stick to the roads that are too small to have numbers for awhile.

Papa Song

I suppose it's possible my sense of humor has changed over the years -- although this is never not funny:
but I recall a song that, when I was in college, always had me & my roommate in stitches. It was called "Papa Song", by Phil Keaggy, and what made it funny was the voiceover at the beginning of one of his small children saying "Papa!"

Yeah, I know, I just read that over & it didn't make much sense to me either. The kid did kind of sound like he was weaned on helium, and we always giggled -- in fact, many nights we'd just play that few seconds of the song before we went to bed. I suppose "you had to be there, and also then, and maybe even me" doesn't quite cut it in print.

In any case, as a companion piece to my Mother's Day post (there's still time to send the link to your mom as a special post-Mother's-Day remembrance, if you haven't already!), I'm thinking about dads as the big day arrives. You know, the day where everyone makes a big deal out of dads and there are gifts and dinner out and... well, maybe not. I'm not sure Father's Day is quite as much of a big deal; sometimes it seems a bit like an afterthought to me. I already wrote about this a few years back in my trademark snarky/whimsical style, but since it's summertime I'm in reruns.

I was out shopping for the card for dad this week (observing my own card rules & regulations as laid out in the Mother's Day post), and I noticed a curious theme. Mother's Day cards, of course, are all about "Mom, we love you so much and you're so wonderful and you bring joy to our lives".... all very valid & commendable sentiments.

Many of the Father's Day cards, on the other hand, seemed to cluster around this idea: "Dad, even though you find it hard to say how you feel, we know you really love us." In fact, the ones from sons read more like this -- "Dad, even though we never talk about our feelings, I hope you know I love you."

I've always led the charge against this kind of male stereotype -- and I'm well aware that "Hallmark" comes from the Latin, meaning "cliche" ... but I'm a little hesitant to start painting the picket signs just yet. I'm also aware that cliches get to be cliches from a basis in fact, and maybe I've just seen this scenario actually happen too often in real life to automatically dismiss it as slander.

All I can do is work against it in my own house. I make no claims to parental excellence; I just try to control what I can control (which, believe me, does not always include any of the other residents here): I try to make sure I know my kids better than anyone else in the world, and I let them know every day, a bunch of times a day, exactly how I feel about them.

And, you know, probably 73% of the time or more, that's a good thing.