The return

For those familiar with me and my history, The Monster paid me a visit - I guess it was on Wednesday at work. Nearly 4 years I held him off, not so bad when you think about it.

More details to follow when I have the strength and the clarity to type it and pull all the facts together to explain exactly what happened. I'm not totally clear myself.

Peace.

Un

When love and reality crash into each other, where do the broken pieces fall to the earth?
What do you do when time passes so swiftly, it forgets that you were a passenger?

As evil as hate is, can it be healthy to simply not like? If the worst thing in life is to be let down by someone, is the best thing in life forgiveness for the same?

I saw a group carrying signs, “impeach” and “start over”. Were they saying they could do better, or simply unhappy in knowing they themselves could not?

Your team lost, then went home. Your team lost, and you moped about for 3 hours. Tell me again; who lost?

An old, filthy dirty man, smelling of a mixture of booze, cigs, and body odors asked me for a bit of spare change. I emptied my car of it. Will he buy more liquor and tobacco? I hope so, for his sake.

The dog stared at me today with a look of confusion and sadness. He knows in his mind he’s leaving soon, and he probably longs again for the days when he could run like the wind with me chasing him. Yeah. So do I.

The mornings come too fast and the evenings seem too short. Life is about repetition and the occasional break away from it. We never seem to break enough, do we?

I think we need Billy Graham’s face showing up on a corn flake, don’t you? I know I check my raisin brand every day for a sign that tells me it’s about more than 0% interest rates, self cooling beer cans, and cavemen selling insurance.

It is…isn’t it?

Nike Red Sox World Series commercial - 2004

In an earlier post, I got to tell my version. This is NIKE's. Same thing as mine...better technology. Watch the dads with their boys and wives/moms. This makes me cry every time I see it.

Daddy, why is that center fielder wearing a football helmet?

Last night, entering the top of the fourth inning, the Baltimore Orioles were leading the Texas Rangers 3-0. That meant the Rangers had 6 innings to try and rally to tie the game. They actually scored in four of those innings, failing to score in the remaining two. 5 runs in the 4th inning, were shortly followed by 9 in the 6th, 10 in the eighth, and 6 paltry runs in the ninth.

30. Runs....not points. Runs. 30. In the four innings they actually scored in.

My son said to me, when was the last time that happened? I thought I knew everything about sports, but I couldn't remember. Wanna know why?

Because the last time it happened was 1897.

A.D.

Hitler was a year old. Henry Ford had an idea for a piece of machinery, but he wasn't sure it would catch on with the general public. He also had some fanciful idea of something called an "Assembly Line".

Friggin dreamers!!!

Some Irish guy was 15 years away from finding the funds to build an unsinkable ship. World War Zero had not been fought. Some dude named Lennin - who didn't play for the Beatles by the way - was ruling Russia. Telephones and televisions weren't yet invented, mostly because they were still working to refine something called electricity.

42 year old Dick Clarke was hosting a Broadway show called New York Bandstand. George Burns was an occasional guest host. Walt Disney wouldn't be born for another four years, which meant Orlando still had something called "grass and trees" instead of cement, porto-potties, and traffic jams.

Five years earlier, the country opened up a way-station in New York City called Ellis Island. Spanish had yet to become our national language.

The following things did not exist in 1897:

The Zeppelin (no, not Led Zeppelin, stoopid), the safety razor, radios, vacuum cleaners, neon, teddy bears, crayons, airplanes, tea bags, tractors, corn flakes, cellophane, talking pictures, gasoline, crossword puzzles, zippers, band-aid's, and of course as hard as this is to take - myspace.

Right next to Camden Yards baseball park in Baltimore is the stadium the NFL's Ravens play in. The last time they gave up 30 points was in November of 2005.

So here's to you, Baltimore Orioles. You refuse to succumb to modernization and the evil pull of success. You've reminded us all, if you give up just enough, you too can go down in history...right there with the Edsel, Enron, and Paris Hilton's acting career.

Cheers!!

Simply complicated

He stands for choice, but makes few.
He senses true warmth, but knows the pain of coldness.
He lives beneath a protective shield, but yearns for the excitement of freedom.
He is the dog that chases the cat, and then plays with it.

His values are respect, honesty, and loyalty.
Without them, he is nothing.
Without them, so are you.
Friendship and love cannot exist in their absence.

He is dearly passionate, and stubbornly conservative.
He lives by the lyrics, and dies with the chords.
His heart can pound like no other, or melt at the sight of a child.
He has shown anger, but prefers kindness.

He will fight for justice, and then defend the indefensible.
He will press for tolerance, but pass on ignorance.
He is the sword as well as the feather.
He can be so very strong, but has glaring weaknesses.

He loves powerfully, but asks for such from few.
He listens intently and speaks too much.
He can or he cannot.
He is a man and he is a boy.

He is a conquering hero who needs no parade.
He is the opposite of simple and as complex as a single-syllable word.
He is tears mixed with happiness.
He is a tuxedo with running shoes.

He is

…just

…himself

Learning Life's Lessons

Been gone for 2 weeks. Took the fam up to New England to college shop for the oldest (no shit...I'm an old bastard, huh?), and took the rest of the time exploring. After 13 days, I learned three things:

Number 1. Parents and grandparents - no matter how old - are very special to the children, as well as to those parents and grandparents themselves. Currently, I am part of the third of four living generations of me, and that is totally f'ing cool.

Number 2. If there is a place on this great green earth that is better than Fenway Park on a sunny summer afternoon - especially with two wide-eyed boys who have never been there before - I'd like to know where it is.

I'm tellin ya - I fought back tears thinking of the fact that my dad sat next to his dad, I sat next to my dad, and my boys have now sat next to me in that nearly 100 year old ball park. The seats are way to small, way to hard, they face the wrong direction, and they're wonderful. The bathrooms should be condemned, but they're serviceable. The food is too expensive and tastes like crap, and I relished in every dollar spent. The green on the walls, the monster wall in left, 3 foot tall wall in right, a manually operated scoreboard, and 39,000 people - each wearing anywhere from 1 piece to an entire wardrobe of Red Sox attire - screaming, clapping, and chanting their boys of summer on. When one of the Sox hit a two-run homer, the volume was deafening. Freakin deafening.

...Just the way I wanted my boys to experience it.

...Just the way my dad always experienced it... And his dad before him... And all the dads - all the time - as a matter of fact.

Number 3. The thing I learned most of all is that some things just should not change. Ever.

WKRP - Turkeys Away - Part 3 of 3

When it was simple

Was there anything more empowering than riding a bicycle when you were a kid? Originally, I had a no-speed bike, then as time wore on I had the miracle of 3-speeds. A 10-speed cycle had yet to be invented, so if I wanted a 5th or 6th gear, I pedaled faster.

My first love was a bike my dad sprung for and put together himself. It looked almost exactly like the one pictured. He bought the frame, a banana seat (you had to have a banana seat or you weren't cool), and the high handle bars (step #2 on the "cool scale"). Compared to today's sleek, ultra-lightweight, high tech bicycles, it was a piece of shiite. But I'll still take that bike over anything they offer today.

Back then, comedies were based upon real people in real-life situations. They simply made them funnier and occasionally added something serious to bring further reality to the shows. Barney Miller was about the 12th Precinct in NYC. WKRP in Cincinnati was about a radio station trying to survive during the initial days of FM. Incredibly funny, WKRP represented the times and the social upheaval in America, taking on such topics as censorship, the religious right, the dangers of spectacle seating at rock concerts, and of course - the little known fact that Turkey's cannot fly. We also had a show called "All in the family" and another called M*A*S*H. Not ringing a bell, eh? I turn on the TV now, and I see yuppies drinking coffee and I can't relate. Gimme back my MTM (If you don't know who MTM is, you won't get this post anyways).

I remember watching TV in my parents room in April 1974, and watching LA Dodgers Pitcher Al Downing (the greatest living sports trivia question of all time, by the way) - throw a curve ball to Henry Aaron for his 715th home run. Now I get to watch a test tube swing a syringe in hopes of hitting his 756th through a night haze caused by thick innuendo anda blanket of insincere statements. Hardly anyone will cheer, and that is even worse.

What happened to my baseball? Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

There was a bad guy back then, called the USSR. We were the good guys, by the way. The world was safer you know, even if at the time we thought the opposite. They took care of their half their way, we in turn took care of our half our way. All the idiots were scared of both of us, and therefore stayed beneath their rocks.

We now live in an age where our kids had better not go too far when they're out playing, and free-wheeling around on their bikes is a 2007 form of Russian Roulette. We now live in a world where you can see your nice, quiet, friendly neighbor on-line at the county child predator page. Instead of allowing someone to cut in front of you on the highway, you chose to cut him or her off with a dramatic single-finger salute and a burst of cuss words. He in turn pulls out a pistol and shoots you at the next interchange. Music was at one time all about love, lost love, found love, reclaimed love, forlorn love, and lack of love. It is now about "slappin' yo beaaatch ma-fuckin' ho", which I can only imagine has nothing to do with the love I'm familiar with.

Back then a man married a woman and they stayed together like my parents have for 50 + years. Now they don't even care about marriage unless they're gay and want to make a political or financial statement.

In short...today's music sucks, the comedies on TV suck, driving sucks, people look upon marriage as old-fashioned bufoonery, my kids can't go more than 15 feet from my yard because the single dude who walks his 4 dogs wearing shorts, black socks, and sandals, really is the creepazoid he portrays himself to be....

And - worst of all - Nick at nite stopped showing Gilligan's Island...

So...how's your day going?

Frank Sinatra Mack The Knife Lyrics

I'll bet you didn't know

I have always held the belief that Audrey Hepburn was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.

Yup...the same Audrey Hepburn. That's her.

Recently for Father's Day, my daughter made me a CD in which she (my daughter) was talking to me through music about our 25+ years together. The last song on the CD was Audrey singing "Moon River" on the balcony in the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's". I knew very little besides her beauty of this woman who left us nearly 15 years ago, but I was intrigued. What I found out was one third shocking, one third inspiring, and one third confirmation that beauty in some goes far deeper than eyes and skin tone.

It goes to the soul.

Born in 1929 in Arnhem, Netherlands, Audrey had no idea her surroundings were going to become some of the most dramatic of the 20th Century. In 1940, the Nazis invaded and occupied Arnhem. During the war, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. The name Edda was a version of her mother's name, Ella.

She was 10 at the time.

By 1944, aged 14, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. She later said, "the best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance."

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch Famine in the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes or food to eat, people starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. Arnhem was devastated during allied bombing raids that were part of the failed British Field Marshall Montgomery's Operation Market-Garden. The outstanding film, "A Bridge too Far", made Market-Garden and Arnhem famous in the 1970's. Hepburn's uncle and a cousin of her mother's were shot in front of Hepburn for being part of the Resistance. Hepburn's half-brother Ian van Ufford spent time in a German labor camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anemia and respiratory problems.

In a 1991 interview, Hepburn said, "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child who would never return."

From 1988 until her death in 1993, she served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her efforts. In 1999, she was ranked as the third greatest female movie star of all time.

I have her ranked a lot higher in life.

More! Give me MORE!

Dateline: Washington. D.C. 1 Aug 2007

Unhappy with the punishment handed out, Mary Tillman will open a new lawsuit this morning, demanding the immediate execution of every soldier currently serving on active duty, reserve status, national guard, and all retired Army still living, as retribution for her son being killed in Afghanistan. "I don't think it's an unrealistic request under the circumstances," she was quoted as saying yesterday.