My Date With Donnie (Pt II)

If you didn't get a chance to read Part I, click here (or just scroll down) to read that first!

Back already? What did you think?

Now this song I mentioned was a hit for about 20 minutes. Plus it was, um, several years ago (hint: I was a DJ for the college’s 10-watt radio station at the time) and it was not the kind of worldwide smash you find being played on oldies radio -- and don’t think I’m not bitter that My Music wound up on “oldies” radio – so all I’ve had was my memories to carry me through. And since memory has a way of gilding the past (have I ever told you about my triumphs on the high school tennis team? Oh, all right, my “triumph” on the high school tennis team), the song just got better & better as the years passed.

When I found myself at flea markets and the like, I would often leaf through the albums box to see if old Donnie was there, but apparently the guy who bought his album was holding onto it. Gradually the song receded from the cluttered desktop of my mind to the back of the bottom drawer.

Not too many weeks ago I was walking down a street in a nearby city, on my way to Somewhere Else. Even a “be-right-back” somewhere else… but then I passed a used record store. Actually, I just realized, that’s redundant; there are no “new-record” stores. Anyway, there was a $1 box sitting on the sidewalk.

I’m getting there – don’t get ahead of me.

Oh, all right, you guessed it – I found Donnie in the box, metaphorically speaking. I went in the store, plunked down my buck, exchanged a few words with the guy working there – one of the few living humans who could be expected to have any clue what I was talking about – and became the proud owner of a 26-year-old vinyl album (on which I only recognized one song).

But there’s a new catch, and that was that my turntable was broken – some sort of needle/stylus issue. And since the turntable is (unsurprisingly, if you think about it) almost exactly the same age as the album, it was even money whether it was fixable.

I was brooding about this some days later as I sat at my computer, when suddenly it dawned on me: everything in the universe is available on the Internet. And since guys my age tend to be both nostalgia geeks and computer geeks, I wasn’t surprised to find a site dedicated to all things Donnie.

He’s actually a real estate agent now, but he still plays in a band with one of his original bandmates from the big time. And I gather that in and around Beaver Falls, PA, they’re still the big time.

And…. And! On top of that, clicking around the site for a few minutes (sorry, boss, I promise I made up the time), I found a Downloadable. Video Clip. Of The Song. Well, I sucked up that puppy in nothing flat.

Then I had a moment’s pause. How many stories have you heard of someone who pursued a dream, an obsession, a vague notion … only to find themselves disappointed? Maybe it wouldn’t be all I remembered.

But I threw caution to the winds and I played it. I have to admit, it’s a really cheesy video; but he did have a kind of tongue-in-cheek persona, so I took that with a grain of salt. But the song… you know what? The song still rocked.

It’s a tremendous relief to know I haven’t been pursuing some sort of white-whale-shaped inflatable pool toy all these years. It’s also a relief to get that out of the bottom drawer of my mind. I’m not sure I really want to look in that drawer again anytime soon – I’m getting too old to be sucked into any more 26-year quests.

My Date With Donnie (Pt I)

Recently I caught parts of the movie “My Date With Drew”. If you’ve never had the opportunity, the movie is kind of a documentary – closer to a home movie, frankly – about a guy who gets semi-obsessed with Drew Barrymore and spends the whole movie trying to find someone who knows someone who knows Drew who will return his calls. My wife caught a few minutes and almost immediately said, “Why is this a movie? Why should we care about this guy stalking her?”

I’m sure the only reason the movie wound up being released was that at the end, Drew gets wind of the project, checks out his website, and the next thing you know they are in fact having a date. It’s not necessarily a blockbuster film (actually, I believe it is a BlockbusterTM film) but it’s pretty charming, and the ending does make you feel like you want to cheer.

It had a little extra resonance for me because I have a little bit of an obsessive streak in me too. For instance, I’m really not a neat freak; I would probably say I’m more comfortable with a certain low level of chaos than most. Certainly more so than most, if not all, of the people I’m married to. But sometimes out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of something that’s crooked – a magazine left open, a picture slightly askew – and it’s like something tunnels inside my head. I’ll try to do something else: read a book, have a conversation; but I can’t rest until I fix that thing. Not the mess in the rest of the house, mind you, and certainly not my infamous To-Do Pile, but I’m on edge till that one glaring anomaly is put right.

I experienced a musical version of this as well. I don’t mean one of my obsessions was produced on Broadway, although it wouldn’t seem that out of place from what I read about the Legitimate Theater these days. I mean I got stuck on a song.

I may be the all-time champion of getting a song stuck in my head, particularly at about 4 AM, but what I really mean is that this song stayed with me for years. You see, as all right-thinking Americans agree, the music of my youth is the best music there ever was. And although Billy Joel, Styx, Barry Manilow and the like are not considered cool, I’ll put them up against anyone today. In fact, they’ll put themselves there – they still tour, very successfully. You may not be as familiar with Donnie Iris.

Donnie was the ultimate One-Hit Wonder, and if you remember his smash, “Ah, Leah”, you’re probably exactly the same age as I am, so perhaps I should pause while you rinse out the Grecian Formula. In fact, you're probably a bit fatigued -- so I will take a break and resume this story next time....

Best Supporting Actor

In the hazy days of my childhood in the pre-cable era, awards shows were always a big draw. The Emmys and Oscars were annually among the most popular shows. I'm not counting the Tonys, of course; nobody watched the Tonys, then or now. When you think about it, it's kind of amazing that they even put it on TV. What percentage of the nation lives within commuting distance of Broadway, and what percentage of them care enough to go to a show? Maybe we should start televising Little League banquets and the like.

I still watch awards once in awhile (it's hard not to; in the cable era, there's a new awards show almost weekly), but it gets harder to find the entertainment. I blame the homogenization of the acceptance speech. There used to be, it seemed to me, a presumption that the winners might say something interesting or even unpredictable, but those days are gone forever. Now it's a list of thank yous: my agent, my manager, my accountant, the head of the studio... zzzzzz.... sorry, did I doze off? The writer, the director, my costars..... if you're lucky and the music doesn't start up, they might squeeze in thanks to the family (actually, there have been some high-profile instances of the family being left out and some attendant marital friction).

Kind of reminds me of Father's Day. The most important "thank you day" is clearly Mother's Day -- that's the day with the flowers, the candy, taking Mom out to brunch, gifts (I gave my wife a stepladder this year*). Then down there at the end, there's Father's Day. There are a lot of reasons for that, like the fact that some part of society has convinced themselves fathers are optional. And the fact that an enormous proportion, whether they like it or not, are doing without a father to varying degrees. And the fact -- have I mentioned this previously? :-) -- that mothers are sometimes perceived as doing the real work.

[*Editor's Note: Lest I be tarred with the 'typical male' brush, the ladder was a big hit -- perhaps my most successful present since I gave her a wheelbarrow for her birthday.]

I hasten to assert that I am not complaining with a personal motivation. I'm grateful just to be a father, and my clan has made plenty of fuss about me today. In fact, I'm getting my Father's Day Wishes: I'm not cooking dinner tonight (they don't know it yet, but I intend to extend that notion all the way to the complete avoidance of any sort of chore); and I'm actually sitting on the couch, watching an entire Mets game from start to finish. Hey, it's the 18th of June -- I'm entitled to one.

And after all, what says "Hey, I'm a great dad!" more eloquently than completely abdicating my responsibilities, and ignoring my children between 1 and 4 PM?

Little Worksite on the Prairie

I am a creature much sought-after by advertisers: the Name-Brand Buyer. Since I was a boy old enough to take a bologna sandwich to school day after day (after day after day after day), those sandwiches have been unfailingly made with Oscar Meyer bologna and Hellman’s mayo. And as much as I love my laptop, I still use a lot of pens … but I will hunt through the drawer till I find a Pilot -- although in a pinch I’ll go for a Bic Z3. Also, I’m probably a “Toyota buyer” – although it’s hard to tell since they last so long we’ve only bought two.

In the movies, one of the brands I look for is Tom Hanks. According to imdb.com, I’m stunned to realize I’ve seen about 20 of his films. I’m not saying they’re all winners; do all in your power to miss Bachelor Party, The Man With One Red Shoe, or Turner & Hooch. And I’m not sure I’ll be making it to DaVinci Code, for that matter.

One I have missed to date, and which I might be safer to avoid entirely, is the 1986 Hanks/Shelley Long classic, The Money Pit. When it came out, we were apartment dwellers; since then we’ve lived in houses owned by our churches, so it never seemed quite relevant somehow. Now, however, I’m just too terrified to watch it.

About two years ago, we decided it would be great to have our own camp – somewhere to hide out, and a way to simplify vacation-time with two small children. So we bought a double-wide located near a lovely pond, not far from where we’re living. It’s not only a camp, but also a pointed lesson about perceptions, because where I see a quiet spot to get away, my wife sees a blank canvas.

When we were camp-shopping, we agreed we shouldn’t get a fixer-upper since neither of us is particularly handy. Little did I know she would become fanatical about developing those skills. Since then, we have experienced the following … ah, improvements (* - incomplete):

• Paint: Master bath (including trim and cabinets), master bedroom, kitchen, bedroom 1* , back porch, front porch (stain)
• Also in the master bath: light fixture, sink faucets
• Living room – paneling and trim*
• 2nd bath – wallpaper*, tub faucet

The outside has also experienced weeding, mulching, planting, digging up rocks… I can’t even recount it all. Suffice it to say that I made an enormous hit for her last birthday when I bought her a wheelbarrow. I was nuts to shell out for jewelry all those years!

On top of all that, it seemed kind of extravagant to buy a lawn mower for a camp, so I’ve been making do with a reel mower I bought some time ago to trim around the house. Now a reel mower – that is, the old-fashioned push mower with no engine – may be quite effective under some circumstances, but with uneven terrain and intermittent mowing leading to very tall grass/weeds, it’s roughly equivalent to cutting the grass with a steak knife. I might be better off if I just steal Bob Lanier’s basketball shoes from the NBA Hall of Fame and stomp the grass down (that’s mostly what the bar on the front of the mower does anyway).

Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough left in the bank to purchase a place to get away from the getaway, so for the time being I guess I’m still signed up for the work crew. There is one significant consolation, however: the kitchen is always stocked with Hellman’s mayo & Oscar Meyer bologna.

Lower Education

I recently found myself wondering (you’ll understand in a moment how I came to pursue this line of internal inquiry) whether any Nobel laureate, Rhodes Scholar, Pulitzer Prize winner, or someone of that ilk, has any 2-year college experience lurking in his or her past. Do you suppose a search – I’m not sure if Google is up to the task – would turn up such a thing as an A.A in Liberal Arts & Sciences (Mathematics)?

I am not a recipient of any of the above honors, although I’m hoping the Pulitzer gang inaugurates a prize for Outstanding Achievement in Sporadic, Polysyllabic, and Often Meandering Blogging. I am, however, the proud holder of the aforementioned degree.

Its main function in my life is to enable me to say I have the same number of college degrees as my wife. We each have three; big deal if 2 of hers are Master’s and one of mine is an Associate’s! I paid good money for that degree… well, actually, in those days you could almost pay for community college with change you found between the couch cushions. And I think, to be more accurate and less entertaining, my parents paid for it. Be that as it may, I’m doubly proud to assert that my community college education was every bit as valuable as the rest of it and almost incomprehensibly cheaper. But the point I set out to make, if I recall correctly, is that my family has really done its bit for education.

Of course, we also did our time on the other side of the desk, having a combined 18 or so years of teaching experience, depending on how you choose to count. I pile all this up not to brag, but instead to achieve the utter pulverization of my original thesis: around here, we know from education.

Just when we thought, however, that it would be safe to sink into the soothingly overstuffed Easy Chair of Ignorance, along comes the next generation of learners… and naturally (whether we like it or not), while they are learning, they can’t help but show these aging canines a few things along the way as well. So in case you were consumed with curiosity about whatever happened to Robert Fulghum, the following are a few lessons I’ve picked up from our in-house tiny taskmasters (or, if you prefer, half-pint headmasters):

• A pile of dirt, a plastic cup and some water beats anything you can find at a toy store. Why is this so hard for parents to learn? It’s a well-worn cliché that kids ignore the present and play with the box, and still we persist in handing them “stuff” that interests them for even less time than it takes to break.
• If you keep looking around, you can find something interesting in every situation. For example, my daughter is almost 4. Her name starts with “K”, so she is always on the lookout for the letter “K”. When she sees it, she experiences a sense of triumph on par with any world-famous archeologist.
• Every question is worth asking, as many times as it takes to get an answer that makes sense to you. I find that when I ask for help (as a man, I am permitted to do so at work, although not in my personal life and under no circumstances when directions are involved), a lot of times I give up after one round of questions – even if the answer doesn’t make any sense to me. Not so my son; he’ll keep drilling all day till he strikes oil.
• When you feel something, let yourself feel it all the way. Like any idea, this one can be taken to extremes. I’ve had it up to here with people (some of whom are not my children, or children at all) who think that being angry is a good reason to rave like a maniac. However, it’s wonderful to watch my kids being so happy they can’t physically contain it; and I wonder whether by letting themselves be reallyreally sad, they don’t get over it faster.
• The journey is more important than the destination. Yes, I know that one’s a cliché of greeting-card proportions (and not the Shoebox greeting cards either, I’m talking Helen Steiner Rice with flowers on the front). But it does take on a whole new life when you’re out for a walk and you keep stopping to pick up sticks… search for rocks… chase a toad into the bushes…
• If you love someone, tell them over and over and over again, at random intervals and for no apparent reason. A big hug around the neck & a kiss ain’t bad either.

Go talk to a kid today; if you really listen, you'll probably come up with something to make you laugh, or make you think. If you want to make an impression, bring a plastic cup and a pile of dirt.