Football vs. Downton Abbey

To any younger men who read this blog who might be wondering what it’s like to be married, I have an informative anecdote to share. It happened last night and in many ways perfectly illustrates what it means to be married.

My wife and I have a standing date with the Fort family on Sunday nights at 9 o’clock. They come over around 8:45. Sometimes it’s just Leigh Ann, sometimes Katy shows up and on occasion Gordon makes an appearance. Pam makes a huge bowl of parmesan cheese popcorn. We stand around chatting for a few minutes until the clock strikes 9, then hunker down to watch….Downton Abbey. For years it was “24” but that show ended and we needed another excuse to consume large quantities of popcorn slathered in butter and cheese, so thank God for Downton Abbey.

Well, last night presented something of a problem, a conundrum, a sticky wicket as it were. The San Francisco v. Seattle game was only in the late stages of the third quarter, with local kid Russell Wilson and the boys down 17-13 and about to stage an epic comeback about the time when the curtain went up on Downton. What to do?

Being married, one of the options of “what to do” was not telling the ladies that the travails of Anna and Mr. Bates would have to wait. That would have been about as popular as a story line featuring a gay love scene between Tom Barrow and Mr. Carson. No, instead of incurring the wrath of three women, I simply dialed up the ESPN app on the old smart phone and tried to keep up with two of the most incongruent simultaneous story lines imaginable. One minute I’m wondering why if Julian Fellows wanted to introduce a black jazz singer into the show why he didn’t cast one who could actually sing, and the next minute Marshawn Lynch was running over his own teammates on the way to a 40 yard touchdown. Five minutes later I’m about to start crying over poor Anna’s post rape torment at precisely the instant when Russell Wilson hits  Jermaine Kearse with a 35 yard scoring strike. Talk about your cognitive dissonance? You try fighting the urge to fist pump a winning score while Anna is asking Miss Hughes if she can move back into the big house? And poor Bates is left totally confused because he has no clue why his sainted Anna suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with him. How, pray tell am I supposed to celebrate the Seahawk victory with this sort of personal tragedy unfolding on the screen?

So, my young, single guy friends, this is just one of the many balancing acts you must learn to perform if you want to be married. There is a time and place for everything, and when it happens to be the same time, only the seasoned professional husband can hope to succeed

Speechless

My dad doesn’t talk much anymore. He listens and understands, just doesn’t say much. So when my sister Linda sat down with him Friday night for their weekly “Book Club” reading session, she was surprised to hear him say in a very serious voice, “I have a problem and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Linda, the nurse, immediately began to worry that he was about to tell her of some new physical problem. Since she knows every detail of Dad’s condition, she couldn’t imagine what this new ailment could possibly be. Then sadness flashed onto Dad’s face as he explained that he felt that any day now my daughter Kaitlin was going to ask him to perform her wedding ceremony this July, and he knew that he couldn’t possibly do it, but he didn’t want to “let her down.”

Linda’s email was at once the saddest yet most beautiful thing I’d ever read. Here was my 89 year old Father who can barely speak above a whisper, a man grown so unstable on his feet that he requires assistance at every turn, yet he has been fretting for who knows how long about letting my daughter down by not being able to officiate her wedding.

Even though Dad has, in fact, officiated every single wedding in his large and expanding family, the last one was many years ago, long before the unrelenting march of time began to silence his booming voice and sap his strength. We had kicked around the idea of having him record a prayer before hand that could be amplified through a sound system at the ceremony, since he may not be strong enough to even make it to the service. Kaitlin and Jon have already asked a dear friend, Gordon Fort, to officiate. But, I suppose in Dad’s mind he assumed that he would be expected to come through for Kaitlin. The very idea that Dad could possibly think that he was capable of letting any of us down is a crushing thought. But the fact that he has been worrying about all of this silently speaks volumes about his noble and dignified spirit.

None of us needed any further proof of our Father’s innate kindness. None of us have needed any additional reasons to love him. None of us have needed any more evidences of the profound sweetness of his soul.

But now we have them.

A Customer Review of West Broad Village

There’s this development in the middle of Short Pump called “West Broad Village.” It used to be the site of a beautiful meandering farm surrounded by a white fence, with lush green pastures dotted by cattle. When my kids were toddlers they would always point at them, squealing with delight, “COWS!!!” Now I mostly point at the ridiculous traffic pouring out of the place and scream in frustration.

They started building this planned community the very second the old farmer finally agreed to sell the land, unfortunately just before the mortgage crisis broke and dried up all the credit. For awhile only ten percent of the place was out of the ground making it look like the dumbest idea ever. Many of we Short Pumpians were worried that we would be stuck with this still-birthed mountain of debris and hollowed out shells for years. There was worry about colonies of rats breeding in the rubble that would soon branch out into our neatly trimmed communities. There was dark talk of crack houses sprouting up. All of that overwrought suburban angst proved wasted after the financial markets recovered and the money started to flow again. Now it’s nearly completed, and we have a fully functioning, er, eh, well, actually I’m not sure what we have honestly.

The developers seemed to have wanted to build a neighborhood that looked 100 years old. Row houses with tiny little front yards no bigger than a large coffee table would line both sides of the street with fake gas lamps lighting the way. The rear of these houses featured concrete alley ways where the upwardly mobile young couples could park their two Tahoe’s in their big garages. But these alleys don’t have dumpsters or rats so I’m not sure they even count as alleys. To make the place even older looking some genius suggested making all the streets out of brick, which looked great until 6 months of traffic caused them to settle all catawampus-like so now you need a Tahoe to make it through the place.

Mixed in amongst the rows and rows of townhouses are businesses of all descriptions, just like a real town might have, if by “all descriptions” you mean “restaurants.” The website says, “West Broad Village is designed for people who want to live, work, shop and play within the community they call home.” And this community of chain restaurants, health clubs, wine lofts and cigar lounges is all crammed into 115 acres along with the 2000 or so hipsters who live there.

This is called the New Urbanism by it’s proponents. But, it comes with some very Old Urbanism problems, namely…traffic. The problem seems to be that there are a ton of people who would never dream of living there but nonetheless are crazy about Tex-Mex. That was Pam and I last night. We head over to Chuys for dinner and spent literally 10 minutes inside the parking garage sitting still while an overmatched Asian woman tried to make up her mind whether or not she wanted to park. It didn’t help that she was driving an SUV and it also didn’t help that she didn’t know how to drive. The poor thing had no chance. At one point she even got out of her vehicle to plead with the ten of us in line behind her to all back up so she could more easily maneuver her Escalade into the space recently occupied by a Honda Civic. I was smugly proud of myself for maintaining my composure( thanks to the two beers I had had earlier at Mona’s Cigar Lounge!), when suddenly Pam reached across and violently engaged the horn. “Get back in your car and move along woman!” Pam was hungry and not in a mood to be trifled with. Ten minutes later we found a spot on the roof, then had a lovely meal of way too much steak burrito and you’ve got to be kidding “Chuychanga.”

The developers essentially wanted to relocate the Fan into Short Pump while leaving the crime down on the Boulevard. The problem is, they forgot to bring the Fan’s charm during the move.

Packing Heat?

There is a new hobby blazing through my part of the world. It seems close to a passion among its devotees, men and women. Many of my friends have taken it up, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. It appears that I stopped paying attention for a few minutes and suddenly half of my friends are packing heat!

I hear the stories about otherwise stable, ordinary, unthreatened people my age buying Smith & Wesson’s, and heading off to the shooting range for some good old fashioned family fun. Others, even more alarmingly, have secured concealed carry permits and so they never have to leave home without a deadly weapon.

Ok, before you guys get all “fired-up” and start lecturing me on the 2^nd Amendment let me first say that I fully recognize your legal and constitutional right to keep and bear arms. I’m not part of the anti-gun crowd. It’s just that the idea of a movie theatre filled with upper middle class middle aged men and women packing newly issued handguns, makes me nervous as hell!

Of course, if while walking from the movie to my car in the parking lot, I suppose I would be grateful for one of those Glocks if I got accosted by some drugged up meth head demanding my money or my life. Although, come to think of it, I would just give him my money. Gun play with a twitchy addict might prove problematic.

I guess the rise in popularity of guns has something to do with the growing sense that society has gone off the rails and that we are headed for some sort of dystopian world where only the fully armed citizen will have a chance at survival. Either that, or we upper middle class folks are getting more bored by the minute and enjoy the thrill of filling a sketch target with lead. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

Knowing that so many of my friends are now armed does give me pause. Maybe I should think twice before playing that 100 point triple word score at Words With Friends against someone carrying a .357 magnum. Perhaps I should rethink trying to sink that 5 foot putt on the 18^th hole for the match. Or maybe…just maybe, I should buy a gun. Can you just imagine? Me and my nervous energy, can’t sit still, practical joke-loving, easily pissed off, quick with the snarky putdowns self, walking around with a Springfield XD-S 45 on my hip?

Yikes!

Thunder and a Memory

Just a few minutes ago the strangest thing happened. I was transported back in time…by a sound.

I was sitting in my recliner reading P.J. O’Rourke’s new book when I was surprised by the tingling of sleet on the window pane. I turned off the floor lamp to my left so I could see out and there they were, tiny sparkling pellets of ice dancing on the sill. Then I was startled by the sudden, misplaced peel of crackling thunder. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, I flew through time to the basement of the Winn’s Baptist Church parsonage, to a wildly similar cold April night in my eleventh year. It was after 10 and I was supposed to be asleep, but on this night I was sleeping in the bed in the basement, not my warm room upstairs for one reason and one reason only. It was opening night of Major League baseball, and my green hard plastic radio could pick up the Cleveland Indians games better from the basement. It was either 1968 or 1969, I’m not sure which. The Indians were playing the Tigers, or the Orioles, or somebody.

The radio was a mess, the color of diseased avocado, with a disfigured glob of burnt plastic on one side from where Donnie and I had propped it up against the baseboard heater one night to improve the reception for a Yankee game. As ugly as it was, there was something about the unheated, molded, mice infested atmosphere of our basement that agreed with my second hand radio delivering perfectly the high fidelity radio waves from WERE, 1490 AM in Cleveland along with the dulcet tones of Herb Score.

On this particular night I was about three innings in to a pitcher’s duel when I noticed the wind blowing a gale outside. Then the sound of sleet against the window panes of the outside door, and finally a frightening peel of thunder so full of cracks and pops, that it sent this eleven year old scurrying up to his bedroom faster than Lou Brock going from first to third on a single to left field.

I hadn’t conjured up that memory since it happened. But tonight, 17,000 sunsets later, it comes rushing back as clear as a bell. The mind and its memory is a terribly awesome thing.   

Guilt-free Eating

It has been my experience that there exists nothing on Earth more irritating than the zealot, the passionate fanatic, the newly converted to some perceived kernel of truth. The one person every smoker tries to avoid at a party is the guy who has just quit. Nothing can rip the joy out of a Holiday spread faster than the arrival of the guy who has just lost twenty pounds at Weight Watchers. Not that there’s anything wrong with losing weight or stopping smoking of course. It’s just that there is something so off putting about people who think they have figured everything out, especially when they suddenly believe it their duty to enlighten the rest of us.

I make this observation in light of the torrent of newsfeed-killing stories warning me about the mortal dangers lurking in practically everything I eat. From the evils of genetic modification, to the diabolical designs of high fructose corn syrup, all the way to the sinister intentions of “Big Food”, I am constantly being scolded for not educating myself, of being a victim of glutens, or worse, a hater of animals for my disgusting consumption of meat.

I am tempted here to tell the joke about the guy who gets run over by a truck while riding his bike ten miles out of his way so he can buy organic tomatoes. Actually, I just did…sorry. Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. I am 55 years old and in pretty decent shape. I work out 4 times a week in a manic attempt to keep my weight down and to relieve stress. Having said this, I must admit that I love food and eat prodigious quantities of my favorites. Most of my favorite foods fall into the category of “dangerous to human beings." However, if someone told me that I could no longer have them, I might conclude that life wasn’t worth the living. The following is a list of the staples of my diet, the consumption of which provides me with great joy and about which I will never apologize.

• BREAD. Not stuff that comes from a bag, but the homemade kind, made from scratch, biscuits and rolls hot out of the oven slathered in…
• BUTTER, not margarine.
• CHEESE, not the stuff that gets squirted from a tube or covered in cellophane, but hard, block cheese from places like Wisconsin, Vermont and France
• SAUSAGE. Pretty much any type, from Andouille to Jimmy Dean. Links or patties, it matters not and the spicier the better.
• MEAT which includes but by no means is limited to…chicken, beef, pork.
• MASHED POTATOES loaded with salt and pepper
• VEGETABLES, drizzled with olive oil and caramelized in the oven on a flat cookie sheet
• COFFEE. Two cups a day with cream and a half teaspoon of SUGAR, not sweetener
• SWEET TEA with lemon.
• BEER, the darker the better and please, nothing “Lite”

There are many other foods which I love, these are just the basics. Now, I’m sure that many who are reading this are aghast at the fat content, the artery-hardening, politically incorrectness, the sheer audacity of what, to you, seems like an assault on healthy living. To each of you I say, the one thing I know for sure is that I am going to die from something. If the diet listed above is the thing that kills me, then I will die with a satisfied smile on my face. Incidentally, with the exception of the beer, this is virtually identical to my 89 year old Dad’s diet. So, there’s that.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re a devoted, gluten-avoiding, Monsanto-hating organic-loving vegan, I take my hat off to you and wish you well. But don’t ask me to buy into the guilt thing, because I’m not interested.   

16% Socialist??

Over the weekend, during a brief interlude of faint curiosity/ boredom, I succumbed to the temptation of filling out one of those internet surveys. You know the ones I’m talking about…take our ten question survey to discover your ideal Tuesday work outfit!! Only this one promised to tell me which political party I was most aligned with. My son had taken it and posted his results so I thought what the heck?

It was a rather lengthy list of questions. Since the survey was presented by a Libertarian website, I expected the questions to be phrased in such a way as to encourage Libertarian responses, but generally found them to be fair. It was a YES, NO format. A third option was CHOOSE ANOTHER STANCE. When this was checked a dropdown box appeared that listed four or five alternative answers. An example follows:

Should gay marriage be allowed in America?

Yes

No

Choose another stance:

• Let each State decide
• No, allow civil unions for same sex couples, but don’t call it marriage
• Take the government out of marriage and instead make it a religious matter
• Yes, but allow churches the right to refuse gay marriage ceremonies

 Not surprisingly, I found myself clicking the choose another stance option most of the time. The problem was that often I was unsatisfied with any of the options I was given even then! Then I was reduced to the, “add your own stance” answer. It took me forever to finish the survey. Once completed, I pushed the results key and was informed thusly:

Parties You Side With:

89% Libertarian

86% Republican

41% Green

30% Democrat

16% Socialist

 This survey blows! First of all, I know without question that the Republican and Libertarian parties do not agree anywhere approaching 85% of the time, and yet it says I agree with them almost equally. Secondly, the Green party? Do they have a position on abortion or gay marriage? If so, why? What does the death penalty have to do with the environment? And lastly, I agree with the Socialist party on something?? Wait..what??

So, I comb through the results searching for my latent Socialist weaknesses. It turns out that I am a closet pinko because of my opinion on the National Park Service, as follows:

Should National Parks continue to be preserved and protected by the Federal Government? My answer was “Yes.” I believe this largely because the National Park service is one of the very few government success stories. I have visited many of them and found them to be beautifully maintained, well run National treasures. The alternative of having a for profit business running these parks is wrought with peril. I keep imagining a gigantic billboard announcing how 15 minutes could save me 15% on my car insurance right next to the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore! The actual “Socialist Party preferred answer was “Yes, and expand the Federal Governments domain to protect more land.” Since my answer was “Yes”, it was deemed “similar.” Like I said, this survey blows.

Another thing that suggested Socialist leanings was my answer to the question, “Should the US interfere in the affairs of other countries?”  My initial answer was “No.” Then I clicked the other responses.  What I really believe is closer to “Only when there is a direct threat to our National security.” But, that opening allows the pinheads in Washington too much parsing of words and nuance and before you know it the discovery of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction become a direct threat. So, I just went with plain “No.” BAMM, I’m in league with the Socialists.

So, there you have it. I’m 89% Libertarian and 16% Socialist. Let’s legalize Marijuana and redistribute wealth!! Potheads of the world unite!!