Commercials Today…

I suppose that this particular Blog post should come with a warning of sorts like… Mature content…or…some of what follows might be inappropriate for certain audiences. Its not that I will be telling off-color jokes or talking about pornography or anything. Its more like…well, I’ll just start and see how it goes.

So, a few weeks ago Pam and I found a really good show to watch called The Split. Its on Hulu and stars Nicola Walker, one of our favorite actresses. 

The show is about dealing with divorce and marital betrayal and everything that goes with it. It’s terrifically written and brilliantly acted and features a long list of characters who go about making hash of their lives while desperately needing Jesus…but this blog is not about the show. Its about what Pam and I have had to endure while watching the show.

I mentioned that this show was on Hulu. Well that means that about every 12 minutes we have to watch 2 minutes of commercials. As has always been the case with Hulu, that means we see essentially the same six commercials over and over and over again. Whatever. I guess something has to pay the bills. And yes, we can mute the sound every 12 minutes and sometimes we do. But once you’ve seen some of these ads they are forever etched in your memory’s hard drive, and  impossible to erase. What commercials am I referring to, you’re probably wondering? Here goes…

The pharmaceutical industry has identified and sat out to eradicate the plague of Peyronies Disease, an ailment about which I knew nothing before seeing the ad. But now I will always and forever know that Peyronies Disease is a deformation of the male sex organ which results in odd and uncomfortable looking shapes down there…illustrated by a bent carrot.

 I’m not sure I will ever look at a carrot in the same way, having seen the laughably absurd use of the formerly innocent vegetable as a prop for their new miracle cure. The first time the spot aired, Pam and I looked at each other with a mixture of horror and embarrassment, unsure which of us should be more embarrassed. With each successive viewing of this ad, we just roll our eyes and laugh.

Next, we are informed that studies show that our nether regions, even after a proper shower return to their odiferous selves 75% faster than they would have had we simply used the brand new Butt Deodorant by Lume. In case confused viewers might have been wondering where and how this bum cream was to be applied, a smiling actress shared the directions to us with helpful hand motions. I sincerely believe that had I been eating anything at the time that I watched this ad for the first time, I might have spewed it across the room. The thing I can’t get out of me head is…who has the job of verifying just how good or bad the test bums smelled in that study they referred to. I mean, what would you call that job??

Then there are two other ads which I can never really keep apart since they both are pharmaceutical commercials featuring various treatments for HIV related issues, so half the ad is some guy droning on and on about all the ghastly side effects with images of gay and lesbian couples canoodling while performing a series of routine household chores.

Sometimes while watching these ads I think about the kinds of commercials that dominated television when I was a kid. The most embarrassing ad I ever remember was stupid old Mister Whipple imploring his customers not to Squeeze the Charmin. I’m sure there were other embarrassing ones too. But, I’m pretty sure that this bent carrot thing or the hand tutorial for the butt cream ad would never have made their way on to television screens back then. Thank God in heaven. I can’t imagine the horror of being in the same room as my parents watching Gunsmoke when either of these ads came on. I would have died from embarrassment.

Then it occurs to me that there is probably an algorithm that determines which ads are sent to which homes at Hulu. If so, who do these people think we are? What are they trying to suggest to us? Hmmm….

The Adventures of Running in the Neighborhood

Ok, since my son roped me into signing up for the upcoming Richmond Marathon in November, I have begun training in earnest. First of all I should point out that I am only running an 8K—because I am not an idiot—but even that requires preparation. So, there I was yesterday morning heading out for a 4 mile run. My plan was not to run through the neighborhood loop, but to venture out to a track I have come up with that takes the sidewalks surrounding Wythe Trace. I made the turn onto Center Ridge, then the left onto Hazel Tree. That’s when it got crazy.

I’m trucking along, mind racing with suicidal thoughts—my default thought pattern while running—when all of a sudden a black shadow darted out from behind a trash can to my left, right in front of me. It was making a grunting sound and nearly knocked me over. Since I had my cell phone in my hand, I somehow had the presence of mind to snap a photograph…

I have never seen a black pug in the neighborhood before. There are two white ones who live next door to me, Van and Rookie, but this guy I had never seen before. He seemed thrilled at the sight of me, running like a maniac all around me as I continued my pace forward. This was a timed run after all, and I wasn’t about to let this mutt stop me. So as I ran I offered several verbal commands to the pup ordering him to cease and desist. But he was having none of it. He continued to run circles around me as fast as his little stubby legs would carry him. But there was a problem. I was rapidly approaching Pump Road. Surely this dog would turn around and head back where he came from soon. Not a chance. When I turned onto Pump, Killer came with me! He would run ahead maybe 30 feet or so, then turn around and race back towards me darting this way and that like some sawed off whirling dervish. Since Killer was showing zero interest in going home, I had a decision to make. If I continued my route there was an excellent chance that this pup would get hit by a car. Since I didn’t want a dead Pug on my conscience, I abruptly bailed on my scheduled track, reversed course and heading back to the relative safety of the neighborhood, Killer in tow, all without once breaking stride! This is clearly illustrated by the following…

At this point I reasoned that when we both passed by the trash can from which he had introduced himself, Killer would peal off back into his yard and that would be that. Nope. He was just having entirely too much fun. He stayed with me, tongued flapping wildly out of his grinning mouth, all the way to Summer Stream Drive when fortunately he was distracted by another runner heading in the opposite direction. I never saw him again.

I suppose that the lesson is, keep a sharp eye out for Killer if you decide to run early in the morning in Wythe Trace. 

Fresh Worry

My day began at 4:25 am. At least that’s what the clock across the room said as I got close enough to see it on my way to the bathroom. It was a fitful night. The number of things racing through my mind lately seem almost infinite. As a result sleep has been very hit or miss. Whenever I wake up after 3:30 or so there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep. Good thing I have this blog.

During the day, the pressures of my profession ebb and flow. During times of high “flow” I have grown accustomed to taking short diversion breaks, no more than a minute or two in duration to distract myself. One of them is the game Words With Friends, which I play with only one other person, an old friend from my Grove Avenue days. I’ll pull the game up on my cell phone and fire a word at her, then put the phone down and get back to my work. Whatever gets you through the day.

Yesterday was another friend’s birthday, or so I was informed in the wee hours of the morning. This provided me with another distracting coping mechanism for the rest of the day. At regular intervals throughout the day I would pause and think of old age jokes, then post them on Facebook…

You’re so old you knew Burger King when he was just a Prince.

You’re so old, the key on Ben Franklin’s kite was to your first apartment.

You’re so old you sat behind Jesus in 2nd grade.

You’re so old you’ve used Preparation A thru G.

You’re so old when you were born the Dead Sea was only sick.

Between these time-wasting side shows I managed to get some things accomplished. I completed my entire 2022 Firm Element Compliance regime between 11:00 and 3:30, managed to calm the fears of two clients, compose and edit a client letter for submission to legal for review, and eat lunch at a new-to-me Greek joint near Staples Mill and Broad where I discovered the epicurean delights of a Gyro Pizza. 

Then I arrive at home only to discover a fresh source of angst, a difficulty which one of my adult children is going through, and about which I am powerless. Honestly, this situation is worse than any work-related anxiety because it involves one of my kids. One of the things nobody ever tells you when you’re out there having babies is that one day thirty-plus years later you’ll still be losing sleep worrying about them. You desperately want to swoop in and save the day, but you can’t. It’s not your fight anymore. Well…it is but you no longer have jurisdiction. So you go to bed with something new dancing around in your head thinking of how you would fix it if you were King. But you’re not King.

You’re not even a Prince.

My Latest Role

Like all human beings, I have been asked to perform many roles in my life. I have been a child, a teenager, and an adult, each of which carried its own set of expectations. I have been a son, a brother, an uncle, and a friend. I have been a husband and a father. I have been a student, an employee and an owner of a business. Each of these required a specific skill set. Some of them came natural to me, others stretched me.  Over the years I have excelled at some of these roles, and failed miserably at others. More often than not I have excelled and failed at the same role over a matter of days. Life can be hard to carry off without mistakes. I have made my share.

For a long time my primary role, the one that dominated my thoughts and energy was that of businessman and provider for my family. It was the last thing I thought about at night and my first thought every morning. It shouldn’t have been that way. I should have lived a more balanced life in those days. A faith and trust deficit was largely to blame. I worried too much, about things that in hindsight I had no control over anyway. Those periods of stifling anxiety were all wasted moments that I will never get back. But, you move on.

Now I feel like I am entering a new phase of life, one which will require a new and challenging set of skills I’m not sure I possess. At some point soon I will begin winding down my business life, not retiring—that pathetic and terrifying word—but more a reordering of my schedule which will yield an abundance of free time. This will require a change in lifestyle. I hope I’m ready. One day I will take on the role of grandfather. I have been shamelessly auditioning for this role for several years now. Hopefully I will one day get the call. I’m sure that when the time comes I will be delighted, however, my children might be terrified by my grand-parenting style which I’m sure will be wildly out of compliance with all modern grand-parenting protocols. I plan on making up for any mistakes with lavish financial gifts.

Throughout all of the roles I’ve played in my three score and four years, some personality traits have remained in tact. No matter if I was 16 or 60 I have always been a sarcastic, trash-talking, practical joke-pulling, inappropriate joke-telling man child. I have been accused of such by enough people to be forced to admit that it is true. In addition, especially in the early days of trying to establish myself in business, I have often had to battle a blunt, aggressive, forceful style of communication. You will notice the lengths I have gone to trying to avoid the word rude. Although this is something about which I am not proud, neither do I spend a lot of time beating myself up over it. The fact is, I have gotten better with age. It is a flaw I have battled to temper, if not fully eliminate, from my personality. But, some things are just a part of your DNA. Anyone who ever spent thirty minutes with my mother on a bad day will understand the cruel power of genetics.

But life is about making transitions. The great thing about human beings is that we have the astonishing ability, unique in all creation, to transform ourselves from one kind of living to another kind literally overnight. A human being can live a certain way for forty years then one day wake up and say, “I’m tired of this,” pick up, pack up, and move somewhere else and start over. I heard a speaker talk about this one time. He said, “Suppose you were a tree. If you had sucked up all the nutrients in the ground where you were planted and were tired of the view you couldn’t change location.  Because you’re a tree. You’re stuck! Not so with human beings!” I’ve never forgotten that illustration. Which brings me to the point of this post…the changing roles of life.

I think I know what I want to be for the rest of my life. I mean, I’m still going to be sarcastic. I’m probably still going to blurt out inappropriate things at times, and I’m sure I haven’t pulled my last practical joke. But I want to spend the rest of the time I have left being an encourager. There aren’t enough encouraging people in the world. Everybody’s a critic because its easier to be one, especially with the anonymity of the internet. But being an encourager takes intentionality, the ability to follow through. How many of us have had the thought pop into our head that “that person did a really nice job with that presentation”, or “that was awfully nice of her to do that.” The hard part is the follow through…letting the words come out of your mouth, taking the time to write the note or send the email. And it’s so stinking easy! What does it take…a minute? A mere word of affirmation has incredible power to transform someone’s day. We have no idea what the people around us are going through at any particular time. Someone might be at the end of their rope when you come along with a box of donuts and an iced coffee. How cool is it to think that you might have inadvertently been someone’s life line?

Here’s something I’ve learned about this encouraging thing. It is tremendous fun! Seeing the smiles on people’s faces when you show up with treats, reading their replies to your notes, sometimes seeing the tears, is truly a beautiful thing. It makes you feel like you’re doing God’s work…because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Being a blessing to someone is about as wonderful as life gets in this crazy screwed up world. And yet, too often I’m so caught up in myself I miss opportunities. Either I’m distracted or lazy. When this happens everyone loses. If I’m going to do it, it can’t be a part time gig. But, like every other role I’ve gotten to play in my life, I’ll get better with practice.

Here’s Some Great News!!

Want some good news? How about this??

This is about the best thing I’ve seen on the news in quite some time. How many times in life do the good guys win? Seldom. You could look it up. And yes, the Ukrainians qualify as the good guys in this conflict if for no other reason than they were the ones attacked by an overwhelmingly superior force. They are the ones who suffered the brief but barbarous occupation, they are the ones who had their civilian centers ravaged by the tools of war. But now, 7 months after the invasion, their inspiring forces have gone on the offensive, and the Russian war criminals are fleeing back to Mother Russia. Vladimir Putin is suffering a profound humiliation, and lovers of freedom around the world should be celebrating. In every conceivable way this is a win for the world. Although the fight isn’t over, on this Sunday afternoon, I will rejoice in these pictures of jubilant Ukrainian soldiers atop personnel carriers waving their flag in victory. Well done!

Apple Watch Mindfulness

This past Christmas Pam got me an Apple Watch. I didn’t ask for it but she knew I would like it, and I do. It is especially helpful when you’re on a run, what with all of its health monitoring capabilities. The thing keeps track of my heart rate, blood pressure, pace, elevation change and even maps out my run for me. Pretty cool. But, the minute I strapped this baby on Christmas morning I immediately became aware that the people who are responsible for conceiving and building this devise…aren’t like you and me. I knew in an instant that these men and women probably all live in California, drive Teslas, and enjoy hot yoga. Not there’s anything wrong with that.

Every morning I get this message on my watch:

When you hit that open mindfulness button, you are instructed to reflect. Just in case you aren’t clear on what exactly you should reflect upon, it gives you this helpful hint:

After this reflection thing, you are then asked to concentrate on breathing, which sounds easy enough, but in the event that you’re the kind of person who doesn’t generally give breathing a whole lot of thought, these handy tips are helpful:

Again, absolutely nothing wrong with any of this stuff, it’s just that I’ve never been the type of guy who feels comfortable with anything that requires such blatant self-consciousness, not to mention the fact that softly touching my heart while breathing would bring back some rather horrible memories from a health scare I endured 20 years ago!

So every morning when all these self reflection prompts pop up on my Apple Watch, I hit the clear all button and get on with my day. For me, I don’t need a mindful moment to “decide how I want to be today”. Every day when I wake up, I want to be a good person, maybe slightly better than I was the day before. This was drilled into my head by my father, a man who believed that most of the horror and sinfulness in the world was a result of people far too obsessed with themselves and not nearly concerned about their neighbor. He would say that we should probably seek something more grand, more noble, more majestic to reflect upon than ourselves. Even the term, self-reflection, would for him be suspicious. But, he was a man born in a different time. A man who came of age in the Depression and spent his 19th birthday in a jungle in the New Hebrides Islands. Mindfulness would have been a foreign concept.

Here’s my question though, aimed at my tech-savvy readers. Is there a way to turn off these daily notifications?  That might be helpful.

The Queen is Dead

The queen of England has died at age 96. Her reign started six years before I was born. As queen she has presided over the unraveling and dismantlement of the British Empire. When she ascended to the throne, Great Britain was one of the three or four most consequential and powerful nations in the world. Today, it less resembles a powerful, influential nation than it does a museum piece. Yet, she remains more popular and beloved now than at perhaps any time over the past seven decades. The BBC churns out one show about the queen after another and we Americans watch with a mixture of fascination and confusion.

I would venture to say that there is a giant disconnect when it comes to attitudes towards the queen specifically and the British Royal family in general among men and women. I remember back when Prince Charles married Princess Diana. I had just graduated from college and was sharing an apartment with my sister Paula. I looked on in astonishment as Paula—along with every other woman I knew—sat there glued to the television watching the nuptials. Several decades later, I watched my wife eating her freshly made scones and tea while she watched Prince Harry marry that gold-digging American girl. For the life of me I will never understand.

I have to admit that the old girl held up nicely over the years. By all accounts, Elizabeth was a fine woman who conducted herself with grace and dignity and represented her country with devotion and integrity. But last night as I scrolled through the reactions to her death on social media I just had to laugh. One decidedly non-British commenter dramatically declared that she would, “Never forget where I was when I got the awful news!!” Wow.

I happened to be chatting on line with a baseball-loving buddy of mine when the subject of the queen came up…

Then he added this observation:

“I was more sad when my favorite bartender quit than literally anything that has ever happened to the royal family”

To which I responded:

“No Kidding! What about when the Nationals traded away Max and Trea on the same day?! Comparing that with the death of a 96 year old queen? No way!”

And that’s about the size of the chasm that exists between men and women on the subject of all things British Royal Family. However, I believe it possible to respectfully mourn the passing of an iconic figure of world history while at the same time being baffled by the outsized admiration people have for a family so shot through with degenerates, narcissists and ne’er-do-wells.

Perhaps with the promotion of the Prince of Wales to the throne, people all over the world will suddenly snap out of it and come to realize that royal blood is just like any other kind.