cranelegs pond

357. groovy

2009-11-02T10:31:00.001-05:00

i was driving in the car recently with my son when someone on npr said, that’s groovy.
i got the heebee jeebees.
it is the one word from my generation that diminishes any language high road i can possibly try to take with my son’s generation.
it is far worse than “far out” or “peace man”.
and we can’t get rid of it fast enough in my book, including that dumb song by simon and garfunkel.
so i glanced over at my son to see if he heard it.
he was smirking but he always smirks at npr talk.

i asked, did you hear that?
he said, hear what? i never understand what they’re talking about on this station.
i said, good. good. keep it that way.

i had dodged a baby boomer bullet.
i could continue on with my lectures of the good old days—something i had mastered from my parents, as they from theirs.

109. job interview hint 2

2009-11-02T08:42:00.002-05:00

it’s always a smart move to never use the "f", "b", or "c" words during a job interview unless encouraged to do so by the interviewer, and even then it is recommended that you use restraint, especially on that "c" one.

176. blogging with tourettes

2009-11-02T06:54:00.001-05:00

the other day—facken dock mucker—my dog ran—betch betch betch—down the—whoo whoo blatmecot ...

(i hate when my—jast me knob—blogger's tourettes kicks in)

984. she's singing! it's time!

2009-10-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

thanks so much to regulars pam, itsmecissy, & lightly, and to all those folks who have made cranelegs pond their humor water cooler for the past few years! it's been fun!

983. hate to burst the balloon but ...

2009-10-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

i missed all the commotion from yesterday, why with that six year old being in that runaway wacko balloon, and then his not being in the ballon at all, and then his being found in the attic playing with toys, and then that tearful (well, huggy anyway) reunion with poor dad for all the world to see from the cnn situation room.

yeah, i missed it.

but i didn't miss some of the coverage today, why with those clips of dad acting deranged in that wife swapping reality show, and then the same poor kid tripping up on his lines about this all being a show, and dad and mom parading the whole clan before all the morning "news" shows, and then with the same kid puking on each and every network, and then the so called cable news shows suggesting something sinister might be afoot.

well, i don't want to burst anyone's balloon but "something sinister afoot" is an understatement.
it was a sensational hoax, the parents are certifiably uncertified to be parents, the kid is cute but on his way to a troubled life, the news networks are anything but, and we, the public, are the enablers of this freakin' mess.

our thirst for dumb reality shows, dumbed-down news and dummy people engaged in their dumb quest for fifteen minutes of fame can't be quenched.
we are riveted by the ridiculous while bored by the important.
we deserve what is coming.

and coming it is.

982. ever have one of those nights?

2009-10-14T10:51:00.004-04:00

ever have one of those nights when you fall asleep before brushing your teeth?
and you wake up at three in the morning with that god awful, gloppy taste in your mouth?
so you lumber half awake into the bathroom?
and you don't turn on the light because you don't really want to wake up?
so you brush your teeth in the dark?
and you notice that the toothpaste doesn't have that minty clean taste?
but you brush anyway because it's not so bad and you just want to get back to bed?
so you rinse and stumble your clean teeth back to bed all satisfied and all?
then morning comes and you reach in the medicine cabinet for your razor?
and that's when you notice that the preparation h tube is on top of the toothpaste tube?
and it kind of gets your mind wondering?
so you check your gums to see if they are receding?
and they are?

you know, one of those kind of nights?
just wondering, that's all.

981. eggplant and salt

2009-10-14T07:59:00.002-04:00

it seems that whenever i snuggle up to keaton, i cause her to sweat.
it's as if she's a skinned eggplant and i'm a big old block of salt.
fortunately, i just don't think that's possible.
well the eggplant part anyway.

980. those who can't do ...

2009-10-13T08:27:00.000-04:00

woody allen once observed, "those who can't do, teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym."
while i don't agree with the first part, i concur with the second.
regardless, the claim is literally old school and needs updating.
with that in mind, i'm taking a shot at it:
"those who can't do, blog, and those who can't blog, blog anyway."

again, while i might not agree with the first part, i definitely do with the last.
and if i had any self awareness skills, i would have closed this place down at post #4.
but noooo ...

(post #4 follows)

(from the files, 4/7/07) 4. 3 women from houston

2009-10-13T08:22:00.000-04:00

on the train into manhattan today there were three women from houston sitting right in front of me.
one said, i need me some big old white sunglasses, no rhinestones though.
another said, ya know my sister needs to live the life she was given, that's all there is to it.
the third said, i don't want any of them fake handbags. i want the real thing.
they all said, i just love your hair color.

i thought to myself, keaton and her feminists sure do have their work cut out with their own kind.
listening in a little longer and concluding it was mission impossible, i then wondered, if i jumped from this moving train, could i be certain i'd die.

979. peace and bombs and intelligent design

2009-10-09T07:44:00.038-04:00

it took us forty years from our first steps on the moon to bomb it.
and what a better way to acknowledge the feat than for our president to win the nobel peace prize.
if this isn't the death of intelligent design, i'm not sure what is.

978. another keaton birthday

2009-10-08T12:00:00.003-04:00

this is that period of time when keaton's elliptical, age-differential path is closer to me, and thus the "gettin' old" jokes at my expense diminish somewhat.
it's why i like her birthday so much.
every october ninth she closes within three years of me until late february when she orbits back out to four years.
she's like the moon really.
i see her more clearly when she passes closer to my age.
it's as if she becomes a bigger font of some sort.

and let me tell ya, what i see, i love.
clearly or blurred for that matter.

happy birthday keaton!

977. it's always jamais auparavant

2009-10-07T11:19:00.004-04:00

most people i know occasionally experience deja vu—that feeling you been there before.
not so for me.
i always experience jamais auparavant (rough translation: "never before").
it always happens when i go to a place i should know but feel like i've never been to before.
like this blog for instance.

(from the files) 435. a forest fire just in time

2009-10-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

i'm in the midst of a grand forest fire.
leaves ablaze in orange, red and yellow.
a smokeless sting to the eyes that lifts my heart.
it is autumn.
just in time, once again.

976. we both have our causes

2009-10-04T08:34:00.006-04:00

today keaton is finishing up the third leg of her three day walk (60 miles) throughout the hills of windy san francisco for breast cancer.
it is just one of her many causes that make me proud.
as for me, today i'm sitting for hours in anxious wait to support my beloved n.y. giants play yet another game.
it is one of my many causes and while i haven't asked keaton, i'm certain my total devotion to this cause has a special place in her heart somewhere—like an aortic aneurism perhaps .

and when i think about it, this is exactly why keaton and i get along so well.
we maintain a shared desire to be driven to something bigger than ourselves.
and at the end of the day, we just do it with the quiet confidence that it isn't so much what the relative merit of our cause might be but that we have one.

(although nothin' for nothin', placing my very being in the hands of the n.y. giants sunday after sunday isn't exactly like a stroll through the park. i'm just sayin'. that's all.)

974. bob gets caught at the airport

2009-09-30T09:34:00.006-04:00

okay, so i had too much cabbage the night before my departure from ireland.
how was i suppose to know they used heat sensing scanners at security?
the only thing i can say, they was silent ... and they was deadly.

973. the shipyard dog

2009-09-29T12:15:00.009-04:00

keaton and i hopped out of the car to begin a 3.5 mile walk just a stones throw east of the small town of ballydehob.
the walk started at a shipyard, and curled around the nob of a small peninsula.
up hills and through pastures with mindful views throughout.
like all the other walks in every way.
except this time we had the pleasure of being accompanied by a four legged guide.

as we made our way around the first bend in the road, here he came.
he quietly walked up to us, sniffed our knees and carried on ahead.
the entire walk.
all 3.5 miles.
sometimes behind us.
sometimes along side.
but mostly in front.
and always making that next choice for us when we came upon a fork or crossroad that required a decision.

he didn't speak much.

but he was a busy little guy.

at one point we were faced with a rather large herd of hefty heifers coming up the road.

our guide walked through the open gate that led to the field the cows were clamoring towards, where we can only imagine he helped the farmer shepherd them to their final grazing place.

we pressed on without him, making a few turns here and there along the way.

and soon enough, here he came.

marking his spots at every chance.

as quietly competent a canine as ever there was.

and when we arrived back at the car, off he pranced to the shipyard from where he came.

no paw out for a tip or a treat.

just another job well done.

the people we met were great but when the dogs are even first class, you start to wonder what's in the water.

972. either perfect or brilliant

2009-09-29T07:05:00.004-04:00

what i miss most about ireland is that everyone thought i was either perfect or brilliant.

bartender: and what will you have?
me: i'll take a pint of guinness.
bartender: perfect!
(three minutes later)
bartender: another guinness there?
me: no, let me try a murphy's.
bartender: brilliant!

either perfect or brilliant.
all the time.
everywhere.
i know keaton heard them tell me too.
and do you think she might just show me a little acknowledgement?
nooooo!

(maybe she's just plain awe struck. i do that to people you know.)

971. an irish home, a front view and a kitchen view

2009-09-28T13:17:00.008-04:00

an irish home

a view from the front

a view from the kitchen

i think i figured out why the irish drive so fast.
it is to get home, pour a cup of tea and smile with the earth.

970. safe and not sound

2009-09-20T11:58:00.005-04:00

"you take the high road and i'll take the low road and we'll both be dead by the morning."
i think that's how the song goes.
and if it isn't, it should.

well we made it to our destination but i'm certain i shortened keaton's life by three years and mine by seventeen.
it was a recipe for disaster.
no sleep for 24 hours.
a car with the zest of a three legged cow.
a steering wheel in the front passenger seat.
200 miles on the contrarian side of the road.
two lane country roads the width of a driveway.
in town roads the width of sidewalks.
insane speeds nearing light.
people in a rush to somewhere.
rain.
93 roundabouts.
and keaton, a demonstrative passenger caught in a four hour keystone cop chase.
in short, i will never, ever speak unkindly of new york city cabs again.

i can tell you first hand, the path to hell may be paved in gold but the path to heaven is paved through hedges and brimstone.
i am shaking just thinking about it.
almost killed us five minutes into the drive, which didn't bode well for the remaining three hours and harrowing fifty five minutes.
but somehow we made it.
and i only clipped one mirror in route.

i do not recall any scenery from the ride.
keaton tells me it was quite beautiful.
i wouldn't know.
my knuckles actually broke through my skin and the bleeding was distracting.

however, now that i'm out of the car, the place is something out of middle earth.
i half expect to see frodo baggins come over the heathered hills behind our abode.
pictures will be forthcoming, i swear.
it's just that they are all blurred from the shaking.
some ex-pat we met at a food festival today said my condition would subside in another day or so, and i'd soon see the folly of my old driving ways.

anyway, i'm on my second guinness and third prozac right this moment.
so i'm feeling a little nick nolticky.
stayed tu...

969. blogging from ireland

2009-09-17T08:59:00.003-04:00

keaton and i are heading off to ireland.
never been there.
keaton has been there a few times.
i'm not irish but my son is 50%, which i think entitles me to be 25% pseudo irish, which i plan to take advantage of.

been working on two things in preparation:
1. i've been driving on the opposite side of the road and through circles the opposite way to practice. it was suggested by benny and seemed like a good idea but frankly the tickets are starting to pile up.
2. i've been practicing my pseudo irish brogue. it needs work though. keaton says i sound more like pseudo ramesh patel, who honestly doesn't sound very irish.

anyway, i'll be snappin' photos and bloggin' beginning sunday.
so stay tuned.
and if any of you have "must see" suggests, please do tell.

until then:
"may the road rise up to meet you.
may the wind always be at your back.
may the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
(except for lightly.)"

just kidding there big fella!

968. the best part about hair that grows

2009-09-12T08:37:00.015-04:00

the best part about hair that grows is that it has to get cut, eventually.
and that means you have to find someone to cut it.
and right after a dentist and before a car mechanic, the haircutter is the most sacred bond i have that's not of the marriage or domestic partner sort.
a bad haircut is the equivalent of a flapping dry nostril booger atop the head.
you just can't take your eye off it, and for all the wrong reasons.
a good haircut is tantamount to self-confidence, making the haircutter relationship as important as any one can have.

this is the story about such a hair relationship.

upon my return to new jersey many moons ago and after three years in phoenix, i found dexter.
i was a walk-in to a hoity toity joint in an upscale mall.
he was great.
fabulous hair-cuts and boy did he give me a lot of attention.
it didn't take long for the sacred bond to be created.
things were moving along swimmingly too.
that is until dexter suggested we go out for drinks at a cabaret, which to my way of thinking was stressing the bondy part a little too much for my liking.
i guess i was sending out same sex vibes, but i think it's just my affable nature getting all misconstrued.
that's happened a few times, if the truth be told.
sooo ... i told him okay but only if my girl friend could join us which was pretty bold since she wasn't within thirty miles of the joint at the time and i'd have to convince a female stranger in the mall to play the part.
he was visibly crushed (can you blame him) and fortunately dropped the offer.
but the sacred bond was never the same.
soon, we decided it best to go our separate ways.
alas, i entered the long, lonely process of beginning a new sacred bond.

two years to be exact.
painful ones at that, bouncing from barbershops to two bit haircut factories, only to find emptiness at the end of dull scissor blades and the bottom of a bottle of blue comb anticeptic.
but i would persist.
and in my lowliest hour, i struck gold.

desperate for a decent haircut and to reclaim my heterosexualness, i decided to change course and give a female hairdresser a whirl.
not that my hair needs dressing.
it just needs cutting.
but this concept of the hair dress was untapped and i was lowly if you recall.
a little walk through the local yellow pages and there she was, just a hop, skip and jump away.

i found june of june and company in 1987.
june runs a small salon in a tiny rented house amid a hodgepodge of little town shops and worn out strip malls.
quaint is a word that comes to mind, much like her patrons.
actually, i'd call her clientele rustic, like fluffy blue hair rustic.
it's the kind of place in which i immediately felt young and vibrant.
and they loved my material.
it's not every day that mature women preparing to contact venus with their hair dressed up in tin foil, rods and oil paints under mind meld domes can carry on in witty conversation with the likes of a virile, dashing young man such as myself.
it gives them cause to enjoy the rest of their eighties.
and as for me, it simply confirms that the kid still has his mojo, contrary to whatever keaton might think.

now let me say this right up front, june was a slippery pete of sorts.
after the first hair cut, she massaged my head and shoulders for a good five minutes.
dexter did that a little too but i thought he was just fastidious about how my shirt sat upon my shoulders.
this was different.
being in the state of mind i was in (i.e., confirming my sexual proclivity), i have to say, i ... i ... well i got a little aroused.
not full blown or nothing, but there was definitely twitching amidst.
and it was just the sign i was looking for!
a new sacred bond was established, albeit still a little more bondy than sacred but at least every one was on the right team.
oh yeah, the haircut was pretty good too, i think.

and that was that.
i have been going to her ever since.
over twenty years and only one breach of the sacred bond.
i was desperate, she was on vacation, so her salon partner cut my hair in the pinch.
i learned quickly that an in the pinch replacement is a no-no in the salon constitution of sacred bonds.
there was bad karma there for a while resulting in a few suspect cuts to my ears, nothing some iodine and snoopy band-aids wouldn't repair.
but a sacred bond is a sacred bond and it all sorted itself out in about three years.

oh yeah before i forget, you know that massage?
there was only one.
it was her male patron, sacred bond creation technique ("the old head and shoulders" in salon parlance).
i know this to be true because i have it on good sources that other guys had the same experience.
now that's some slippery salon shenanigans alright.
but hey, men are simple creatures who get what they deserve.
good for her.

yeah, june.
she is like a sister really.
been through marriages, kids, divorces and new relationships together.
now my son goes to one of her young hairdressers.
it's a family affair really.
and one of these days i'm going to write about the joint.

yeah ... soooo ... that's the best part about hair that grows.

blogger's block

2009-09-11T14:04:00.005-04:00

deleted because lightly is right.
(see comment)

(from the files) September 11th, 2001: A Troubling Metaphor

2009-09-11T08:33:00.002-04:00

At the time I watched the towers crumble from the sudden strike of the previously unimagined, I did not realize I was watching a metaphor for the great promise their soaring human achievement beaconed to the world. It is five years later, and I see the vast optimism our nation once promised the world at the tipping point.

In the day’s wake, we have strayed from a nation united with others, to a nation on the brink of wandering a lonely, isolated trail. And a great many of us don’t seem to mind. “Pre-emption is our prerogative.” “Shoot now. Ask questions later.” We no longer care how our actions, right or wrong, are embraced by the greater world. Just get out of our entitled way.

At the same time, we have slowly tightened the noose around the neck of our freedoms—willingly. “I have nothing to hide. Go ahead. Spy on me as you see fit.” It is the least we can do when under siege by the invisible—give up freedoms so that liberty might endure.

Nineteen men, a simple plan executed, five years later, and a great power is floundering. It lurches along a “war” unguided, left virtually alone to attend to a civil mess of massive proportions with no way out and of our own creation. The plan appears to unapologetically embrace the low road at every turn, rebuking every moral departure point for the chance to wrestle in the mud.

Five years later and all we have to show for all of this is a government in political stalemate. Rather than dialogue about how we conduct “the war” or how we improve our vigilance, our partisan leadership debates whether horses should be sold for human consumption, argues about the definition of marriage, writes amendments on burning the flag. And we, the people, don’t seem to care.

What has happened to us? It is as if we are the towers ablaze. Soon to buckle and collapse from the searing heat of 9/11—a white-hot heat that continues to melt the steel-like principles that made us what we were on 9/10/2001.

We talk about not being attacked again since. Some say it’s the result of policy. Some say it’s the result of luck. I think it may be that the first attack is far from over yet, that it continues to burn in ways still unimagined, that it hasn’t run its full course.

I worry that if we do not re-embrace the grand values the rest of the world once rested its dreams on, that one attack—nineteen men and a simple plan—will be, in the end, all it took.

The beacon that once illuminated a better way, is weakening fast, and like the towers, soon to crumple. The consequences of that should haunt us all.

[author's comment: It has been three years since I wrote this, and we are still scrambling: Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, economic collapse and now internal fighting much greater than a democratic family squabble. For god's sake, we are only now beginning to fill the hole in the ground where the towers once stood.]

967. a rupture in the 12/21/2012 rapture!

2009-09-08T10:56:00.004-04:00

all this talk about the end of the world on december 21, 2012.
well i'm about to rupture the rapture folks.
big time.
all you have to do is look in your spam folder.
i have a boatload of emails from the future, specifically 2038, and let me tell you.
men will still need enhancement.
women will still have a secret weight loss program.
and i personally will be the object of a zillion hot babes' fling desire.
oh baby!

so good riddance 12.21.12 and all your "end of days" rabble-rousing!

966. a bird afraid of heights

2009-09-07T10:27:00.003-04:00

this is why i panic about coming back in another life as an animal of some sort.
i just know that if god has a hand in it, he will send me back as a bird.
mainly because i'm a fraid of heights and he likes to have dominion levity as payback from time to time.
and he'd probably make me a canada goose at that.
they fly high and often.
i wouldn't be able to do it.
i'd have to forego the "v" and walk the migration.
and have you ever watched them walk.
walk isn't even a word that describes it.
it's a waddle really, and a pigeon toed one to boot.
a pigeon toed goose afraid of heights.
what a mess.

maybe there's time to turn in my agnostic ways for some kind of guarantee.
i'd take a hippo right about now.
anything land loving really.