The Downton Abbey Movie

I can think of at least a dozen reasons why I should hate Downton Abbey. The idea that someone with my sensibilities would not only have faithfully watched all seven seasons, but also just dropped $100 to watch the movie version at Cinebistro is astonishing. Let me explain.

Although I am fully aware of the debt which western civilization owes the British Isles, in addition to the great contributions those countries made to the establishment of our own. . .I have always held on to a bit of resentment towards Great Britain. I find them to be condescending, and their silly monarchy embarrassing. Whenever one of them gets married, women in America completely be-clown themselves with their fawning worship of the most ridiculous institution to survive modernity, second only to Free-Masonry. The British monarchy is the biggest collection of talentless, entitled white people ever assembled in one place. The closest we come to it in Virginia is cocktail hour at the Commonwealth Club.

And yet, there I was last night, thoroughly enchanted by Lord and Lady Grantham and their pretentious family, none of whom has done an honest day’s work in their collective lives. What gives?

Well, for one thing, Downton Abbey is a feast for the eyes. The grand old house and the lush grounds are simply gorgeous. There’s something to be said for beauty, no matter the source. Then there’s their impeccable, for lack of a more precise term—manners. To watch a group of people speaking to each other with courtesy and respect for seven years has been something like a salve for the soul. To hear adults, whether upstairs or down, use complete sentences, with such precise grammar and diction is to be reminded that verbal communication is now in decline. Then there's this...

We live in a loud world. We are people with short attention spans, who must be constantly bombarded with flash and pop. Turn on any television program these days, go to any movie, no matter the genre, and before long a car chase scene will break out. Everyone involved in the entertainment business seems to be screaming at us. They have come to the conclusion that we cannot be entertained without a full frontal attack on all of our senses. They are probably correct.

But, last night, hardly anyone raised their voice for nearly 2 hours. No one was gruesomely killed (although there was an aborted assassination attempt). No one felt obligated to shower us with 16 different varieties of the F word. No one got naked. And there were no thinly veiled preachy climate change sermons. What there was was fine acting, terrific writing, and freaking Maggie Smith. Watching her deliver her lines with that delightfully aristocratic tilt of the head was worth however much it cost me last night. 

Plus, I was with these wonderful people...

So yeah, me of all people, I’m a Downton Abbey guy. There. I said it.

Four Saturday Dad Jokes

Some of you have expressed great appreciation for my endless stream of Dad Jokes on Facebook. Others. . .well, others. . .lets just say, not so much. Nevertheless, I persist essentially for one reason—humor, even weak humor is better than bitching and moaning about politics. Attempts at getting people to laugh is more rewarding than pointless debates. And with the 2020 election cycle fast approaching, we’re going to be begging for something...anything to make us laugh soon enough!

So, here are four cringeworthy dad Jokes for your Saturday morning. I scared these babies up from their deepest, darkest hiding places on the interwebs.

1. Why are Irish bankers so successful?

Because their capital’s always Dublin.

2. My job is telling real trees from fake trees. I was worried that I would be bad at it, but it turns out I’m quite good.

That’s a real leaf.

3. I lost my job at the bank yesterday. An older woman came in and asked me to check her balance.

So, I pushed her over.

4. Studies have shown that 4 out of 5 men will have diarrhea at least once a month.

The other guy is full of it.

You’re welcome.

Praying For My Friend Today

My friend has her first chemo treatment today. You would think that I could have come up with something better than. . .

What do you call a hymn of embarrassment?    A facepsalm.

—and—

“Doctor, I can’t stop saying, ‘Halt! Who goes there??”

“We’ll have to do some tests but it looks like you might have...Friendorphobia.”

Some days are better than others, what can I say? 

So, she goes in and gets the chemo from 8:30 until 3:30. When she told me this I’m thinking, are you freaking kidding me? Seven hours of chemo? First of all, having to sit still for seven hours would be horrible enough, but to have to sit still for this would be excruciating. I assume that she will be in a room with others getting chemo too. How’s that gonna go?

“So, what’s you in for?”

“I’ve got pancreatic cancer. What about you?”

“Breast cancer here.”

“Two for one, eh?”

I can’t even imagine how scared she will be. I would be a mess. But she won’t be wearing sweat pants. My friend is dressed for an important meeting with a client, dressed to the nines. Her husband will be right beside her, and all of her friends will be praying. 

Office Makeover

A week ago I promised all of you that I would send before and after pictures of my office renovations as soon as they were complete. Well, everything isn’t 100% finished, but close enough. The only reason things turned out well is because my wife took matters into her capable hands, whipped out our VISA card and whipped the place into shape.

BEFORE.                                           

AFTER

That’s right, no more credentials on the wall. Just a map of the world so I can point out where we all are.

BEFORE

AFTER

No more golf pictures and no more chair rail. Just this handsome artsy thing that from this angle looks like a giant barcode.

BEFORE

AFTER

You will notice that the amazon jungle plant I used to have devouring my bookcase, and the sheet rock behind it is no longer there. This has come as a great relief to my colleagues who had become quite fearful at its prodigious growth, imagining the day when all of us would find ourselves trapped inside and suffocated by its rapidly expanding tentacles. Also, you will notice the new clock. This will help me remind my clients just how late they were arriving for their appointment.

BEFORE

AFTER

So...there you have it. 

Our Disposable Life

I volunteered at my church’s thrift store yesterday. I love that we have a thrift store. I love that it is run so well and that it offers such a wide variety of very good stuff for very little money. I’ve seen the looks on young mother’s faces as they are told that the shopping cart full of like-new clothing for their two middle school age kids comes to $64. I’ve seen the tears form and the thankfulness come pouring out. It’s a beautiful thing. But yesterday I noticed something else not so beautiful.

My favorite part of working at the store is trash duty. As you can imagine, an enterprise like Hope Thrift produces prodigious amounts of trash. You can also imagine that when a thrift store decides that something is worthless...it’s ridiculously worthless. Anyway, yesterday I emptied the huge rolling trash receptacles—the ones that are shaped like cubes that you could fit several dead bodies in—at least five times. It was a huge trash day. There’s a big dumpster out back. My job is to separate the run of the mill junk from the cardboard, since the cardboard goes in a different dumpster. The reason I love this job so much is that I get to throw everything made out of glass into the dumpster...violently. There is nothing quite so therapeutic as the sound of breaking glass!! My favorite is when I run across a set of like. . . Iowa State shot glasses or something. They make a heck of a satisfying sound breaking into a million pieces.

But yesterday, I took more time actually looking at the things I was throwing away, noticing what kinds of things people sour on, get tired of and eventually reject. So much plastic. I think we humans have an intrinsic understanding that no matter how convenient and lightweight plastic is...it’s cheap. We don’t prize things made out of plastic. Once it serves its purpose, we move on. Plastic things are disposable. Lots of things are disposable, and I have two huge dumpsters packed to the gills to prove it. The kids today, these millennials are trying to ween themselves off of convenience. Their big mantra is sustainability. We grownups mock them for it, shake our heads at their minimalistic world view. Well, if you spent a day hanging around the Hope Thrift dumpster, you would develop sympathy for their desire to produce less trash. But, this isn’t what struck me yesterday as I was firing fastballs with tea cups into that big green dumpster. I was thinking of how our relationships have also become disposable.

Pam and I have been married for over 35 years. We’ve enjoyed great successes and our share of failures great and small. We brought two little ones into this world and watched them both become beautiful grownups. We’ve built a home and crafted a family. But none of it would have happened if we both weren’t totally committed to each other. If either of us had walked away as soon as it got hard, or thrown in the towel when suddenly marriage was no longer fun and games, none of the life we now enjoy would have been possible. Our relationship, like all marriages has featured moments of great joy, deep love and combustible romance...but also epic disappointment, titanic frustrations, and times where the only thing combustible about our relationship was our tempers. Ok...my temper. But we stayed together because we aren’t disposable. We aren’t made of plastic. Human beings aren’t built for convenience, we are built for commitment. Our society is filling up dumpsters with all manner of things never intended to be so easily discarded, like small gold-framed pictures of a woman in her wedding gown—I threw one of those away yesterday. There was a lump in my throat. I hear stories of newborn babies ending up in dumpsters, the barbaric end game of this disposable culture.

So, yeah...yesterday I was reminded of just how much I love my wife while working next to a dumpster.

Thanks, Hope Thrift.

Out With The Old

Nobody would ever accuse me of being trendy. I use that word not as a pejorative, as in—someone obsessed with stylishness over substance. What I mean by trendy is someone who is tuned in to the very latest things when it comes to decorating and such. Be that as it may, I do consider myself sufficiently with the times enough to know not to cover my office walls with hideous paisley wall paper. I say all of this because this week, my office has been rendered unuseable by a horde of workers with a mission to completely renovate  the entire place from ceiling to floors in one week. You see, my business partner—more precisely the three women in his life—have decided that our office feng shui is all wrong. Yes, after ten short years, everything about the place from the floors to the drapes to the wall colors to the furniture is hopelessly and irretrievably outdated. 

They all knew this would be a hard sell to their minority owner, since I would have been completely fine with my ten year old feng shui for a minimum of ten more. But I am nothing if not a team player, so I politely nodded my approval to all of their ideas...

Blair: Doug, look over this color palette and tell me what you think.

Me: Well, er, I...

Allison: What about your accent wall, Doug? Don’t you think it should be a couple shades darker?

Me: Sure, I think, er...

Blair: Of course, this chair rail will have to go. Sooo 1990’s

Me: Wait, you’re taking the chair rail down?

Allison: Doug, we will be going with a blue-ish tint with the office carpet so your diplomas will probably have to be re-matted. Although, this might be a good opportunity to take them down anyway...nobody hangs their diplomas in their offices anymore.

Me: But, I thought, er...

Blair: Doug...these golf prints? The 1970’s called. They want their pictures back!

So, now all the furniture in my office has been shoved into the center of the room and covered in plastic. The walls have been painted a steely gray color. The chair rail is history, and by this time next week there will be wood floors all over the place, new televisions hanging on the walls—our old ones weren’t adequately smart—and two brand new chairs in the lobby. The old law firm chic having been replaced by industrial chic. I have been assured that this is what the new 21st century clients will love.

Here’s the thing. Once everything is finished and in place, I’m sure I will like it just fine. It will all look great. But then again, I was totally fine with my old law firm look. Sure, I bought those golf prints back when I actually played golf, and sure, when I hung those diplomas it was to impress clients with my credentials. Now, I give them chocolates and ask them if they would like a low-fat chai latte.

The times, they are a-changin’ and I must keep up. To do so, my wife is going to have some work to do over the next couple of weeks to properly accessorize the place—new pictures, new knickknackery etc..

I’ll share a picture when she’s done.

Some Things, I Got Right

Every other year since the early 1990s, my big brawling family heads to the Outer Banks for a week. Each year we all hike up to the top of Jockeys Ridge to watch the sunset and take pictures. Some years they turn out better than others...

This one was taken by my niece’s husband, Matt. I look at it and think, How in the world did I ever get someone like her?

This is my crew. Each of them special, invaluable. Each one of them brings something unique to the family table. None of them could be replaced.

I suppose it’s the same with you. Families are that way. Unique. Invaluable. Astonishingly photogenic! 

When I look back at my life I can spot a thousand mistakes. There were things I should have done but didn’t. There were things I did which I had no business doing. There were opportunities missed. Ill-advised projects attempted. Bone-headed decisions. But when I look at these pictures I am reminded that there were some things I got right.