What Is The "Good Life"?

Yesterday was our day to take dinner out to my Dad. It was the day before St. Patrick’s Day, so Pam decided to plan an Irish dinner. By 3 o’clock the kitchen was alive with activity. There would be her famous meat loaf, with a raw sliced sliver of carrot, coin-shaped hidden inside one serving. Whoever got the orange “coin” would be blessed with good luck throughout the year. There would be mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade Irish Soda bread with raisins. For dessert she had made bright green Pistachio pie. In honor of the day, she renamed all of these dishes to suit the occasion. Meat loaf became “Blarney Stones,” dessert became “Shamrock Pie”. Then she went out and bought special green shamrock paper plates to serve the pie on, along with matching four leaf clover napkins. For Ezra she bought Irish themed stickers featuring Snoopy and Woodstock dressed up like Leprechauns. She even wrote his name at the top of a piece of green construction paper so he would have a place to stick them. The dinner was a rousing success. Everyone cleaned their plates. There were six “Blarney Stones” in the dish and only 5 of us, so in keeping with the famous Dunnevant luck; the lucky coin will appear in dad’s leftovers today.

As I watched Pam flitting about the kitchen preparing this meal, it occurred to me that a life well lived is not heralded by screaming headlines in the newspaper, rather it comes in the form of a thousand daily graces. It doesn’t come from wearing the right clothes, living in the right house or driving the right car, it comes from sharing your life with people who take care of the details with tenderness, people for whom the little things in life aren’t little at all. The “good life” is the sum total of these tender moments. My wife’s talent for transforming the routine into something extraordinary has made for me and our family a remarkable life. Even after nearly 30 years together, her loving kindness still astonishes me.

Want some marital advice? Marry the right woman.

I Have A Problem

 Dear Compassionate Reader,

 

I have a password problem. I love technology as much as the next guy. Seems like every week I discover some new urber-cool app that I just HAVE to have.(Not really, I am 54 after all). However, what with my business needs, personal finance demands as well as the occasional entertainment app, I am constantly being asked for a username and password to gain entry into the glorious world of the World Wide Web. So, what’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that I can’t keep up with them.

All of the cyber security folks out there are constantly encouraging me to come up with original, difficult to hack passwords. Apparently, the internet is populated with nefarious geeks bent on world domination, whose goal in life is to gain entry into my Spotify account and wreak havoc. Ok, I get it. But the more in decipherable my password is, the less likely I will ever remember it without adding it to my dog-eared password and username cheat sheet. Yes, that’s right sports fans; I have a single sheet of paper with all of my usernames and passwords written out. Now, I’m painfully aware that it would be better if I had them in some encrypted file somewhere on my computer, but I’m not savvy enough for that. So, I carry around my trusted cheat sheet. It’s like my digital keychain. It has passwords for 19 different websites and apps. If ever I were to lose this thing, my life would be over.

In addition to that potential nightmare, there’s the related problem of all the places I go where I have established a username and password, failed to write them down, so I can’t gain access.( Hello, Twitter, GoodReads and Soundcloud). I’m aware that admitting my failures in this regard will open me up to howls of laughter from my young tech-savvy friends, but so be it. I need help. I would ask my wife for help since she is the All-Knowing, Strikingly Gorgeous, Internet Goddess in my house, but I’m thinking it would less humiliating to be schooled by a twenty-something know it all than Pam. Just sayin’.

So, hit me up with the sarcastic jabs, and then offer some guidance for your old friend.

 

Clueless In Cyberspace,

Doug

NOOOO!! Is That Meeting Today?? NOOOO!!!

I was awake before the alarm went off this morning. Today is one of the two or three days of the year that I dread the most, the day I meet with my accountant and give him my 6 inch stack of paper so he can prepare my tax return.

The very idea that I should have to save these scraps of paper in my tax shoe box all year, then pay my guy $750 bucks to construct my 50 page return galls me like nothing else in this world. Less you think I’m some 1% billionaire, think again. I am only a reasonably successful small business owner. However, because of the complexities of the tax scheme under which we labor, I began employing accountants over 25 years ago to fight my battles for me. When I sign off on the thick volume of forms, schedules, and summaries that he produces, something inside me becomes enraged. Why should I be forced to do this? How can filing taxes have become such an arcane exercise so hopelessly beyond the capabilities of mere mortals?

The worst part is I don’t even know how to help my kids file their own taxes. When you’ve had it done for you for longer than either of your children has been alive, you become worthless to them, unable to answer even the most basic of questions.

So, my meeting will go something like this:

Accountant: Ok, Doug, I see you’ve got all your receipts. Good. What kind of year did you have in 2012?

Me: Terrible.

Accountant: Sorry to hear that. So, you made less money?

Me: No, a little more, which means I’ll probably lose the ability to deduct something and end up having to pay more.

Accountant: Ha! Doug, you are so funny!

Me:…………………crickets

Accountant: Doug, I see here that you only sent the IRS $2500 in December, not the $4000 that we had agreed on, any particular reason?

Me: A very good reason…I didn’t have enough money in my account to cover a $4000 check, so I gave them what I had.

Accountant: I see…. Well, my preliminary calculations indicate that you will probably owe a bit more this year, but it might not be too bad.

Me:………………………crickets

Accountant: I’ll have this return back to you in a couple of weeks.

 “Not too bad” turns out to be an outrageous lie. I owe an insane amount of money to the Feds and the State. I scrape together the money and pay what I owe, since the last person on earth you want to have as a creditor is the Internal Revenue Service. I survive to fight another day.

This nation once had the stones to put a man on the moon, whip the Germans twice in 30 years, and invent Jazz, but can’t figure out how to tax its citizens in a way that doesn’t involve a 67,000 page tax code.

Hopeless.

Do You Need Some Nanny-ing?

The modern, Welfare State is sometimes referred to by its critics as the “Nanny State”. The term “nanny” can, of course, refer to either a hired nanny who serves as a substitute for the mother too busy for work so mundane as raising children, or it can also refer to one’s grandmother. In either case, we all understand what the roll of a nanny is, ie…to force us to do unpleasant things that left to our own devices we would not bother to do, like eat our vegetables, brush our teeth, do our homework, take out the trash, pick our clothes up off the floor, make our beds etc..

Renowned British-born and seldom watched talk show host Piers Morgan recently objected to the nanny State criticism, saying that he thought most people needed a little nanny-ing every once in a while, so why shouldn’t the State provide it? Now, let’s think this concept through.

Do I ever need “ nanny-ing” ? The honest answer is, yes. Nowadays, I get a little nanny-ing from my wife now and then, since she is the one most likely trying to get me to do stuff that’s good for me. She might shoot me a nasty look when I pick up that 7^th cookie from the plate thirty minutes before dinner and say something like, “What, are you like in fifth grade?! Stop eating those cookies before dinner! It will ruin your appetite.”  I drop the cookie and slink away before she realizes that I have two more in my pocket. But, now, let’s examine how this example of nanny-ing is different from government provided Nanny-ing.

Pam’s nanny-ing costs me nothing, except temporary embarrassment. Government Nanny-ing costs all of us plenty. Government would seek to prevent me from eating seven cookies and pilfering another two by limiting the amount of raw sugar my wife is allowed to purchase at the grocery store, which in turn drives up the cost of sugar, creates a black market for cookies and turns the Cookie-Monster into public enemy number one, severely crushing Sesame Street’s ratings resulting in ever higher government subsidies for Public television. It’s the Iron-Clad law of unintended consequesnces.

Mayor Bloomberg sees New Yorkers with huge beer bellies everywhere he looks, so in his roll as Nanny-In-Chief decides to arbitrarily reduce the size of fountain drinks sold within the city. So now, Joe the Plumber can’t get his Big-Gulp, so in frustration, goes to his local bar instead where there are no intake restrictions, which results in some of the shoddiest plumbing work seen in New York since the great toilet scandal of 1916, increased alcoholism in the Plumbers Union resulting in a new government study into why Plumbers drink so much.

The lesson should be clear, even for third rate British television personalities. Although nanny-ing may be a minor annoyance in your own home, it doesn’t result in higher taxes for your neighbors, which makes it profoundly more desirable than the government kind.

Baptist vs. Catholic

I must confess that I know very little of the history of the Catholic Church. I couldn’t name 5 Popes. Oh, I know something of the Vatican, the incredible art that lives within its walls etc. but as far as the business of the church, I am clueless. But on the rare occasions when it’s time to elect a Pope, I become fascinated.

First there’s the red-robed Cardinals walking around in circles chanting stuff and looking terrible solemn. Then there’s the walk over to the Sistine Chapel where the security detail guards dressed in the coolest uniforms ever lock the doors, shielding the 115 cardinals from the outside world. Once inside these fine feathered gentlemen will take 4 votes a day until there’s a two thirds majority agreement. Once agreement is reached on the next infallible man, a hastily erected chimney on the top of the chapel will belch white smoke as a sign to the faithful that a new Pope has been chosen. Now, let me tell you, these Catholics can teach the rest of us a thing or two about drama!

Can you imagine the Southern Baptist Convention going through these histrionics to elect a new…what do you even call the head of Southern Baptists anyway? First of all, you probably couldn’t get 115 Baptists to agree on a building to be locked away in, besides which, it would take two years to pick the 115, for fear that some annoying moderate might slip through the cracks. And, can you imagine those 115 Baptists being able to keep a secret long enough to start a fire to break the news to the world? Half of them will have tweeted the results within 15 seconds of the vote! Oh, I think the head guy is called the President.

Anyway, the Catholics have always done pageantry better than anyone. The most dyed in the wool atheist alive would feel some sense of reverence upon entering the Sistine Chapel, for example. Regardless of one’s theological proclivities, there’s something overpowering about the profound reverence one feels upon entering a Catholic church. They’re all so dimly lit, so magisterial, so quiet. What, with the flickering candlelight, stained glass, and people kneeling all over the place, it makes you check yourself to make sure you look presentable.

Now, I couldn’t take a steady diet of all that formality and ritual, but I have to say as a Baptist, that I do long for a more serious, humble experience in church every once in a while. Our services more resemble a Kiwanis club luncheon with all the glad-handing, laughter, and jokes flying around. “Greet someone around you who you haven’t met before, church!” the pastor extols while lively music rings from the rafters.  For all of Baptist rhetoric about how God is so Holy and such a righteous judge, we sure do a lot of shucking and jiving in his presence. Most of the folks I’ve seen in the pews of a Catholic Church look like they are so deep in thought that the last thing they want to do is shake hands with a stranger. Of course, it’s always difficult to be glib and informal by candle light.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire to convert to Catholicism. It’s a theological mess for one thing, biblically incoherent and just plain creepy at times, but whenever it’s time to elect a Pope, I do envy them their seriousness, their sense of history, purpose, and the grandeur of their style. They do the Glory of God better than anyone on the planet, and in 2013 there are worse things a church can be known for.

Three Movie Reviews

Pam and I watched three movies that had Oscar nominations over the weekend. The first was Anna Karenina, then Hitchcock, and finally Argo. Here follows three brief reviews:

 The great Tolstoy book was placed on screen in an almost surreal way with the heavy use of 3^rd party dream sequences that were a bit confusing at times, but I would sit down and watch Keira Knightley for two hours in practically anything, her of the beguilingly crooked teeth but amazing beauty and talent. Jude Law is terrific as Anna’s faithful husband, while the dude who plays Count Vronsky is positively dreadful. His only qualifications for the roll seem to have been his striking blue eyes and the fact that he “looks Russian”. Karenina is a great story of infatuation, temptation and the wages of sin, great book, mediocre film. The costumes and photography were amazingly well done, and the despite its 2 and a half hour running time, the story moves right along. Still, when Knightly wasn’t on camera, I was bored.

 I love Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve seen all his movies multiple times. I believe him to be one of the few real geniuses in cinematic history. I also love Anthony Hopkins, who may be one of the two or three best actors alive today. So, what was not to like? Enjoyed every minute of this film, which essentially tells the story of the making of Psycho, of how Hitchcock was considered old and over the hill, and couldn’t get Paramount to approve the movie so he financed it himself by mortgaging his house in exchange for 49% of the profits. Of course, the rest as they say is history. Great performance by Hopkins. I especially loved the 98 minute running time, as if the ghost of Hitchcock was in charge of editing!

 Finally we watched the 2012 Best Picture winner…Argo. Terrific picture. Suspenseful, great pacing, amazing actors. In short, it deserved its awards. The fact that Affleck didn’t receive a Best Director nomination just proves how screwed up is “the Academy.” I lived through the 1979 hostage crisis with Iran. I remember it very well. As I watched the film I kept thinking, here it is 34 years later and we have learned absolutely nothing. We’re still hip deep in Iran’s business, still getting our guys killed in Afghanistan, still rubbing shoulders with towel-heads from Jordan to Yemen, WHY??? Nothing good has ever come from fooling around in the Middle East. Can we just develop our natural gas reserves here and tell the whole lot of them to hit the road?! I say Frack, Frack, Frack and then Frack some more until we have to buy ZERO barrels of oil from the Abdul’s of the world, then we’ll see what becomes of their “civilization”. But, I digress. Argo was amazing. Who knew that Ben Affleck had actual talent?

Justin Bieber's Gas Mask...As Predictable As The Tides

What do the following people have in common?

Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Charlie Sheen, Rihanna, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and now Justin Bieber?

They are all American entertainers who burst on the scene with All-American charm and good-looks and a certain naïve innocence, only to be transformed into raving lunatics. Three on the list are dead by their own hands, the other five, not yet.

This morning in my round up of the morning news I am treated to a picture of Justin Bieber wearing a gas mask, and a headline informing me that the 19 year old had collapsed onstage and been taken to the hospital. The sad truth is that nobody in America is surprised. This is what happens here, this is what we do to famous people.

It probably doesn’t help keeping one’s own self-image in perspective when at age 19 you already have your own line of designer toothbrushes. Must be difficult to maintain humility when before you’re even old enough to take a drink, you have enough money to buy the brewery. So, seeing Bieber’s boyish face covered with a gas mask surrounded by body guards and paparazzi seems the most normal thing in the world at 7 in the morning. TMZ will have all the details tonight, but the story will be so old hat, it will probably end up third in the queue behind Rihanna’s latest porn video or Lindsay Lohan’s latest court appearance.

Fame in America has become a ticket to insanity, a cycle as predictable as the tides. First we discover the latest fresh face on America’s Got Talent or American Idol. We fall in love with the voice, the style, the possibility of greatness. Then our new hero has hit after hit, sells a billion records, and before they know what has hit them, there’s an “Inc.” at the end of their name. Then come the endorsements, the round the clock exposure, the superhuman schedule, magazine covers, televised interviews. Before long rumors swirl about wild parties, drunkenness and drug use. Then pictures surface of violent clashes with cameramen. A sex tape emerges as sure as the sun rising in the east. They develop a reputation for being “difficult” to work with. Showing up 2 hours late for everything becomes commonplace. Then we’re treated to a series of hook-ups with other equally young, rich, and ungrounded celebrity types. Eventually there will be run-ins with the law, DUI’s, and the unavoidable paternity suit/ unplanned pregnancy. The cycle most likely ends with our hero hold up in a Xanadu of their own making wasting away into madness. The nation mourns at the inevitable news of their tragic and untimely end.

Momma’s, don’t let your babies grow up to be famous.