Eight Days to Amish

Piece on earth? Our most sexless holiday

2012-12-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

I veered toward the naughty list the other day when our youngest asked me what I wanted for Christmas.

I certainly couldn’t say, “A really good romp,” to a 6-year-old and she wouldn’t have understood if I did.

So I just smiled at her earnestly and said, “Peace on Earth,” which is maybe the most boring answer you could give someone who considers a new Pillow Pet the coolest thing Santa could bring.

For most parents, peace on Earth is only slightly less elusive than the one involving the alternative spelling.

I can’t remember the last time I had sex on Christmas Day, although by one equation it was clearly 1999. Yes, we had a child born exactly nine months to the day after Christmas.

Being blessed with the greatest gift of life, alas, means a severe reduction in the number of times you’ll forever more get to enjoy the second greatest gift.

In fact, if you gauge every pregnancy by the typical 38-week period, the most popular conception day of the year is -- ta! da! -- today!

According to this New York Times chart which ranks the popularity/frequency of birthdays, the most common birthday is Sept. 16. That means the most popular conception date is today, Christmas Eve.

Silent night, holy night, my ass.

The least common birthday is February 29. That’s the leap year date. I know many married men who have sex about once every four years so maybe that has something to do with some kind of cycle women are reluctant to share.

The second least common?

Christmas Day! Can you believe it? Life’s greatest gift is stingiest on the day most renown for giving.

Fewer people are born on Christmas Day than any other. I wonder if OBGYNs induce birth prior to Christmas so they can be home with their families.

I can understand that. Plus, Christmas Day would be an awful birthday. Those who crapped out in this regard include Jimmy Buffett, Karl Rove, Annie Lennox, Humphrey Bogart and, oh, what’s his name?

Oh, that’s right. Jesus Christ.

Or so we’re told.

Many scholars say ancient clerics chose December 25 so it would coax pagans celebrating the winter solstice that a more sacred holiday would be preferable and free of unseemly secular taint.

Ho, ho, ho.

That means many of the people who were born on one of the holiest days of the year were conceived on one of the least, April Fool’s Day.

You can find a handy conception calculator right here.

A commercial caught my eye the other day. It featured a knowing babysitter telling two young girls that Mommies and Daddies need special alone time.

My mind went right to sex, of course. I thought maybe the commercial was going to break new ground and show some kind of holiday sex toys you can use to really stuff your stockings.

But then it cut away to an appealing young couple sitting at McDonald’s acting all orgasmic over breakfast sandwiches.

I was furious. How deceptive. I thought about taking to social media to vent about the fraudulent ads that tease our libidos while aiming at our appetites.

But I figured that would a waste of time so I instead got into my car, drove to McDonald’s and snagged an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown.

I read one interesting argument that said it’s kind of sinful to have sex on the day we celebrate the savior’s birth.

While that only heightens the appeal for me, I believe it’s nonsense.

Why would anyone, especially, the Prince of Peace, want to restrict people from enjoying our common humanity?

No, I think He’d be more like Al Czervik, the Rodney Dangerfield character who at the end of “Caddyshack,” exalts one of the most hopeful and euphoric lines ever heard in cinematic history.

“Hey, everybody! We’re all gonna get laid!”

Sure, it’s not exactly, “God bless us all! Everyone!” but it has its own special resonance.

Consider yourself lucky if you get to spend even a few moments tomorrow hugging even just one person you love. And if hugging’s all you get to do then that’s still pretty good.

Merry Christmas!

• Hooray for Humbug, USA!

Re-run Sunday: Christmas time = no time

2012-12-23T14:44:00.001-05:00

I kind of vowed when I posted this last Christmas this wouldn't happen again. It did. The season rushed by again with nary a single jolly contribution from me. I hope my wishing you a Merry Christmas counts. It's from the heart.

Time doesn’t fly. It drives a Maserati 190 mph down the Autobahn blithely oblivious to the brick some prankster strapped to the accelerator.

Where did Christmas go?

People who think Christmas time refers to a season are wrong.

Christmas time is a spacial acceleration that turns weeks into days, days into hours, etc.

It’s like the whole season disappears down a black hole, only the black is replaced with tinsel, glitter, and flashing colored Christmas lights and the whole giddy trip is soundtracked like one of those sped-up Alvin & The Chipmunks monstrosities.

I feel like I didn’t do anything.

My wife did all the shopping, all the wrapping, all the organizing, all the cheer spreading and somehow found time to patiently listen to all my bitching about never having any time to do anything.

I feel like I didn’t spend enough special time with my daughters, my wife or all my needy bar buddies.

Christmas cards? Not a chance.

I haven’t sent a batch of cards in 10 years. I always say I’ll compensate by spending an afternoon calling dozens of far-flung friends just to wish them Merry Christmas.

So far, I’ve phoned just one dude and part of my motivation was to remind him he still owes me $20 so that taints the whole gesture.

I cracked up an old friend earlier this year when I told him my greatest quality was self-forgiveness. I was telling him about my perceived shortcomings in dealing with my aging Mom.

“No matter how often I lose my temper,” I said, “I just say, ‘Hey, I’m doing the best I can. I’m only human.'”

It’s like I’ve extended myself a personal get-my-conscience-out-of-jail-free card.

How come I can so easily overlook cruel failings in dealing with my dear mother, yet feel forlorn I let Christmas slip by?

Is it because Christmas is only once a year?

I wondered this morning if this self-imposed funk would lift if, geez, I found a big bag of money.

I don’t think that’s it. I don’t need more Christmas money.

I need more Christmas.

I need time to take my wife out to dinner and show her how much she means to me.

I need two full days to take each of our daughters somewhere Christmas special so they’ll have memories of Daddy lavishing them with the attention every little girl deserves.

I need a night to spend with my fading mother so she’ll maybe realize her son’s there for more than just pills and bills.

And what would Christmas be without more time getting gooned up with all my buddies? The more time I spend all alone writing, the more I appreciate the time I get to spend with the friends who help keep me essentially silly.

I wish I had time to sit home alone for an evening in front of the fire to read, watch an old Western, and marvel at the shabby little Christmas tree the girls decorated while I was out doing something I don’t remember.

Maybe that quiet little reverie is what I need to deploy the self-forgiveness card and realize I’m doing the best I can.

I’m sure you are, too. I can guess I’m not alone in wondering where the time went.

I’m sure you wish you had more time to do what matters most at Christmas -- and it’s not getting gooned up with friends, although that is high-up on the to-do list.

If some Christmases, all we have time to do is wish one another a sincere Merry Christmas then let it be done.

Merry Christmas, my friends! Let there be peace on Earth!

That’s straight from the heart.

I hope you’ll forgive me if it sounded a little rushed.

Arming our educators to educate ourselves

2012-12-21T14:50:00.001-05:00

(769 words)

If teachers had been armed when I was a kid, I’d never have made it out of 8th grade and Mr. Nee would still be serving life for murdering a 14-year-old.

See, it’s against the law to murder even obnoxious kids.

I have great admiration for our elementary school teachers, even more now that we’re considering asking them to be proficient with lethal weapons while simultaneously ensuring the cookies Timmy and Suzy get are gluten free.

Just this summer Wayne LaPierre of the NRA terrified gun lovers on the Mayan-sounding prediction that the re-election of Barack Obama “will fundamentally change America as we know it.”

I heard that and, thought, hallelujah.

On the issue of guns, America needs fundamental change and I believe it’s coming.

I believe we’re about to break the lethal all-guns/no guns deadlock that’s been killing us in vast numbers for the past 20 years.

I think armed teachers will be part of it.

A teacher with a gun in a room full of darling first graders -- and I’ve got one of those -- could be the template for how we move forward to pragmatic solutions to so much bloodshed.

Because, as parents, none of us would want a teacher with a loaded gun in a room without taking sensible precautions.

The teacher would need to take safety classes before being issued a weapon. He or she would need to have a trigger lock on the weapon. He or she would need to maintain a certificate that he or she was licensed to carry the weapon.

He or she would need to comply with the “well-regulated” stipulation that for some reason is disregarded by those who revere the 2nd Amendment.

In short, he or she would need to know about 90 percent more about gun ownership than your average gun owner.

And therein lies the problem.

I know hundreds of them.

Their guns define them. They believe if everyone owned guns there would be a lot less killing. They believe guns are essential to homestead safety.

They have yet to come up with an answer why having such a handy arsenal didn’t save the life of Adam Lanza’s mother, but give them time.

These men are more like Joseph V. Loughrey than my late father. My old man died in 2004 at the age of 76 having never fired a gun much less owned one.

I don’t remember asking him about it but I know he thought guns were dangerous. He loved his family and would have done anything in his power to protect us.

That, I guess, is why he never owned a gun. He was satisfied the odds of him needing a gun to protect his loved ones were far lower than the odds of a gun mishap killing him or one of us.

In that respect, I guess he was vastly different from the aforementioned Loughrey.

I sense Loughrey was one of these gun hombres who are still contending even common sense gun legislation will result in a slippery slope and end with that Muslim tourist in the White House confiscating everything but their slingshots.

Loughrey, 44, on December 8 killed his 7-year-old son, Craig, outside a Mercer, Pennsylvania, gun shop with what I call an oops bullet.

He thought the 9 mm pistol was empty. It wasn’t. It fired a chambered bullet right through his son’s chest, killing him in his car seat.

Oops.

I doubt Loughrey had the kind of training that would be mandatory with armed teachers, but I’ll bet, man, he sure loved guns.

You’ve probably never heard of Loughrey or of Beatle assassin Michael Abrams.

Many of you have forgotten, but Mark David Chapman wasn’t the only man obsessed with killing a Beatle.

Abrams on December 30, 1999, broke into Harrison’s English manor and spent 15 minutes savagely trying to kill him.

It’s not that he was a really lousy shot. It’s that he was armed with a knife, instead of gun.

It took just four seconds for Chapman to kill Lennon.

Nothing kills like guns and the proliferation and deification of them is killing us all.

That’s why I’m hoping our first grade teachers, people upon whom we rely to educate so many on the little common sense civilities that are the glue of a healthy society, can lead the way on educating gun mad America about sensible gun regulation.

Who better than the people who remind our children to say please and thank you to help us to stop looking for so many answers to so many problems with so many guns.

• What do tiny coffins cost?

We . . . all . . . needs . . . some . . . space

2012-12-19T10:47:00.000-05:00

(679 words)

This is how sentences would appear if spaces were approximately as long as space bars.

Kinda cool, huh.

We all know how difficult reading is today, what with spaces being so stingy that sentences goose step along in martial fashion. Left! Right! Left!

It’s so much easier to sit and watch something on a glowing screen until warm drool puddles the pillows beneath our weary heads.

That’s why I’m advocating extending spaces from one anorexic character to about five or six. It’ll give the eyeball a little breather before it has to tackle the challenge of puzzling out how to spell yet another tedious word.

I adore my space bar, almost as much as the bars that over-serve me alcoholic refreshments until my behavior becomes what can best be described as spacey.

It’s just so big and commanding, a veritable aircraft carrier stabilizing a dainty fleet of dinghys. I especially like the one on my smart phone that lets me with just two taps add both a period and a space. That’s very ingenious and, I’m guessing, just the start. Pretty soon, three taps will add an exclamation point; four a question mark and so on until about a dozen taps will add a winking little emoticon ;-)

Plus, the space bar has mystical powers.

It is capable of taking one of the worst things in the world -- a kidnapping -- and with one quick bang of the thumb turning it into one of the best -- a kid napping.

I also admire the space bar for its ability to do so much with so little. Like the human brain, we all use less than 10 percent of the space bar’s full potential.

Pause to take a look at yours. If it is at all like mine, the right fifth of the key is shiny and worn from use. That’s the sweet spot.

But the rest of it is in near pristine condition.

That’s because most of us type with only nine digits.

During all our typing commotion, our left thumbs do nothing, not ever even hitting the space bar. They just kind of hover there like aloof supervisors too prissy to get their hands dirty.

Yes, when it comes to typing, our left thumbs never lift a finger.

In our digitally obsessed world, I was surprised to find there was only one club that invokes space bar in its name. It’s in downtown Boise, Idaho.

It’s an adult arcade -- they do craft beer and wine -- but the focus seems to be on arcade games. It has 30 coin-operated pinball machines and games including nostalgic favorites like Tron, Galaga, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Frogger and Donkey Kong. The club offers drink specials for high scorers

(Note: Be sure to someday check out from 2007 “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” about obsessive Donkey Kong champions; hilarious with 96 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.)

But they’ve botched the concept. First of all, the name is Spacebar Arcade.

How you can name a place Spacebar and not include a space between space and bar? It makes no sense and is an affront to the space bar’s dignity.

Plus, where as the keyboard space bar provides a relaxing moment between words, the Boise Spacebar, with its cacophony of noises and blinking lights, seems designed to make you insane. Pleasant conversation must be nigh impossible.

Even shouting would likely be futile.

In the Spacebar, no one can hear you scream.

If I had the bucks, I’d open a true Space Bar. It would be large, roomy -- you could call it spacious.

It would be a place where singles tired of rejection could come without fear of being humiliated. The whole point of Space Bar would be preventing anyone from coming together.

It would be a place where, especially during these tumultuous times, we could be out and still be alone.

Because in these days when social media brings every aspect of our lives into claustrophobic focus, space is once again the final frontier.

Yes, we all need a little space.

Related . . .

• Mark Kelly, a heavenly hubby

• A galling story on useless body parts

I cry, I fart; more on Newtown

2012-12-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

(646 words)

The two most frequently asked questions of me are, “Daddy, are you crying?” and “Daddy, did you just fart?”

I don’t know why, but the questions almost always provoke a lie. I’ll say, “Why, no (sniff), I’m not crying.” Or, “I did not fart. Must have been your mother.”

I guess I lie because they can’t handle the truth.

In fact, I cry and fart all the time.

I don’t know why I fart so much, but I do.

Some people fart after consuming a big spicy meal.

Me, I fart after eating one raisin.

It’s always made me popular with the guys who think Barney Rubble’s a great actor (“Night Shift”), but it makes me in a house of three refined ladies a real stinker in every sense of the word.

The crying’s more complicated.

Something happens at least once a day that brings tears to the surface. Understand, I’m not talking blubbering.

I’m not a weepy guy. But I am emotional and full clear up to my eyes, it seems, with an endless reservoir of tears.

Here’s some examples of recent moments that left me choked up.

• Gettysburg -- I was overcome with emotion when my daughter, Josie, was with me as we saw so many historic moments during our trip there last month. It was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had in this fatherhood gig and sentimental tears dampened my eyes the whole time.

• Jack Nicholson -- Josie and I were watching “As Good As it Gets,” the hilarious 1997 movie in which Nicholson plays the most misanthropic character since Archie Bunker. But the movie features many elegant moments where the Helen Hunt character, a single mother who waitresses to earn her meager living, deals with a chronically sick child. I cry when I see fellow human beings struggle and I cry when I see fellow human beings overcome struggles.

• Mail -- I’m cleaning up the office in preparation for my big party Friday and I found an old letter from my late father. It’s nothing special, just a note about how much fun he had golfing with me the previous day. Being a father makes me cry. So does being a son.

Am I missing anything?

Oh, yeah.

I cried when I heard the news. I cried when I saw Barack Obama cry. I cried when I saw pictures of bereaved families. I cried when the children sang “Silent Night” during the SNL opening.

I’m crying now.

So next time one of my daughters ask me if I’m crying I should respond the way another Nicholson character responded when the Tom Cruise character asked him if he ordered the Code Red.

You’re goddamned right I’m crying.

In fact, the question shouldn’t be, “Daddy, are you crying?” These days the salient question should be, “Daddy, why aren’t you crying?”

We’re being slaughtered in malls, in movie theaters and in places where being a real meanie used to have a more innocent definition.

To paraphrase an alcoholic tweet of mine last week, “It’s not surprising we cry. It’s surprising we ever stop crying.”

Now, it’s been four days and people are wondering if it’s okay to laugh again. Yes, by all means.

What else can we do?

Because our rivers of tears have proven to be utterly meaningless. We’ve all cried before. We cried at Columbine. We cried at Blacksburg and none of it did any good. We still had to cry all over again Friday at Newtown.

We need to get on with our lives and laugh long and hard. We need to celebrate every moment we have. We need to party, to love and to fully enjoy this Christmas season like it might be our last.

Because everyone knows the way things are right now that’s just what it might turn out to be.

And that’s a crying shame.

It stinks.

Related . . .

• Making bad days better

• Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! A Gettysburg success

Re-run Sunday: A heartwarming tale of Christmas woe

2012-12-16T09:18:00.000-05:00

Last night Val and I attended the annual party that inspired this one, a story so filled with woe for me that people enjoy hearing it year after year. Happened again last night. And, as always, they get the key facts wrong. Here it is again, the story of one of the worst nights of my life.

And I say that with the sheepish understanding that none of my days are all that bad when compared with so many others.

Pray for peace on earth, my friends. Heck, even a decent Christmas break from hell would be nice.

I was in the concluding hours of one of those low-grade bad days. Stuck in traffic, work unproductive, loved ones ridiculed my haircut.

So my mood was grim as I sat down in the auditorium to watch the 5th grade Christmas assembly.

But as fate would have it, my day was destined to improve. I sat down next to a guy whose day was worse than mine. Malfunctioning car needed towed, crabby customers at work and then to top it all off he came home to learn the stupid dog got skunked.

I wish no ill on my fellow man, but if it has to happen I hope it happens on a day when they wind up sitting next to me. I left that assembly with all my Christmas cheer restored.

Nothing warms the downtrodden like hearing some other hapless mope is enduring a worse cosmic screwing.

Today is the 10th anniversary of what was until the 2004 death of my father the worst day of my life.

Thus, it is the most popular story I’ve ever told. It is among my friends becoming a Christmas tradition for them to gather ‘round and ask me over and over “Please! Please, tell the car story! Please!”

It’s like the scene from “The Waltons” where all the kids goad Grandpa into telling the story of the time he wrestled presents from Santa.

A friend of mine persuaded me to share it here, even though the telling of it will take almost twice as long as usual. I rarely take requests, but I recognize the value of vicarious woe. Plus it is the season of giving . . .

It was a dark a stormy night. Honest. It was snowing like crazy. I was happily ensconced in my bar enjoying boozy fellowship.

It had been, for me, a flush year, enough so that I’d splurged on some fancy new duds, including a $375 Ibiza sports coat. It was worth more than all the combined garments worn by the 20 or so patrons, worth more even than several of the duct-taped jalopies in the bar parking lot.

And this I pointed out multiple times to everyone there as I asked if they wanted to touch it.

Paul was there. He’s always there. He refused several offers to touch me and my jacket and seemed put off that I’d shown up in anything besides my standard flannel over a 1983 Molly Hatchet concert T-shirt.

If he wasn’t liking the fancy new me, well, tough. I told him he’d better get used to it.

Our wives showed up to drive us to the party. It was in a friend’s new house about 20 minutes away. We’d never been there. It was dark and snowing like crazy with about two-inches on the already damp ground.

This is the part of the story everyone forgets: I wasn’t driving. Val was. Paul and his wife were trailing us.

When I told Val to turn left she was confused by the snow-camouflaged landscape. I don’t blame her for all that happened next while stipulating if I’d have been driving none of it would have ever happened at all.

Instead of turning on the Westview Court, she turned the 2000 Chevy Cavalier into an adjacent steep and unplowed driveway. Paul and Patti did not. They turned down the road and stopped after recognizing our error.

And we got stuck. Bad. She’d overshot the darkened driveway and wound up in the yard below the vacant house.

Paul and I would need to try and push the car back onto the driveway and up the slope.

Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t think to take sartorial precautions. The ground was wet beneath the snow as we gave the car a mighty shove.

And I don’t know why what happened when Val gunned the accelerator only happened on the side I was pushing and not Paul’s.

It was like somebody had dipped a big paint brush and did one of those wrist flings that sprayed a two-inch-wide racing stripe of muddy grit from my knees, across my new jacket, clear up to my ears.

I remember looking up at Paul and seeing an expression of pure joy. It was like he was a kid on Christmas morning who’d just spied a big red wagon behind the tree.

Now, distraught, I’d need to go home and change. I told the three of them to go on without me. I’d meet them there later.

It was the first of three colossal mistakes. First, they’d get to the party without me. Everyone would ask where I was. They’d be free to embellish the story as they saw fit.

Second, there was no way I was going to get the car back up onto the road.

Third, I eventually told them everything that happened, inadvertently unloosing a legend.

The lay of the land made it look like I was 20 yards from a secondary road leading to an isolated house. In those pre-cell phone days, I thought I could drift the car backwards about 200 feet, find a friendly face and call for a tow.

I made it about 2/3 of the way there when the car drifted into a shag of bushes.

Emerging from the car was the moment I lost it because I immediately became ensnarled in jagger bushes. Dozens of needle-sharp barbs began snagging my pricey new jacket and tearing tiny cuts in my mud-splattered face.

It was the first time I’d ever engaged in fisticuffs with vegetation.

It wasn’t until I got free that I heard the barking dogs. I ignored the “Beware of Dog” signs on the fence and crept up to a beaten door with NRA and “No Solicitors” stickers in the windows.

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I was scared to death. The dogs sounded like starved Rottweilers and the cinder block structure looked isolated enough to make a dandy meth lab.

And here I was peeking through the window with a face streaked with blood and mud. I felt knocking might risk gun fire without warning.

So I crept back to the car, crawled in the passenger side and decided to take my chances drifting backwards. The car began sliding and I immediately lost all control.

I can’t say I thought I was going to die, but I did think my night was going to end with trauma surgeons scissoring off my fancy sports coat to assess the damage to my vital organs.

Because in mid-flight, the passing scenery proved I was wrong about my surroundings. This wasn’t a secondary road at all. I was picking up speed drifting backward through a string of about a dozen backyards about 1/4 of a mile long.

That I didn’t hit a fence, a tree, a swing set, a tool shed, a swimming pool or other immovable object was to me the greatest Christmas miracle since the Savior’s birth.

The last 20 yards were down a steep embankment that dropped me spinning onto a residential street where I was fortunate no cars were coming.

I remember thinking, man, it’s too bad none of my friends didn’t see that ‘cause that would have looked pretty cool.

My heart-pounding, I shoved the car in gear and drove home murmuring ceaseless prayers of gratitude I’d survived and that the day would not get any worse by having me get partially consumed by a flesh-eating bacteria I’d picked up outside the meth chef’s house.

It’s been 10 years since I spun out of that hilly hell.

And in those 10 years, the story of one of the worst nights of my life, a night of unrelenting pain, fear and humiliation, has brought nothing but joy and laughter to the hearts of friends who revel in the misfortunes of others. I’m sure I’ll hear it all again tonight as we return to that same neighborhood for that annual party.

Know what I have to say to that?

Merry Christmas!

And be careful making that sharp left onto Westview.

What do tiny coffins cost?

2012-12-15T08:47:00.000-05:00

(642 words)

I wonder if coffin makers charge by the foot. It would stand to reason a coffin measuring 4-feet long would cost less than one measuring seven.

I know nothing about coffin construction -- it’s probably done mostly by machine these days -- but if I was a coffin maker I’d be unnerved by the sight of shoe box-like coffins rolling up for finishing touches.

The very idea is grotesque. We should never be putting unfinished lives in finished coffins. When we bury our children we are burying our future.

It would take a really thoughtful carpenter to conversationally engage the topic.

And by really thoughtful carpenter, I’m talking Jesus Christ.

And so this is Christmas.

And in one New England community where they should filling stockings that’d been hung by the chimney with care, they will instead be filling 20 tiny coffins.

Many of you know The Pond, the neighborhood tavern where I do all of my drinking and much of my thinking, flatters me by promoting my tweets on the bar electronic chalk board.

The one that’s been up for the last week is, I think, a dandy, particularly for a place where some patrons sometimes wonder if they’ve got a problem with over-consumption.

“It’s not surprising we drink. It’s surprising we ever stop drinking.”

I’ve used that line for years to defend the many happy hours I spend at so many Happy Hours taking an alcoholic break from an often grim reality.

But, my God, it’s not at its heart facetious at all.

We’re at the point where being a sentient adult who cares about topical matters requires general anesthesia.

Today in Connecticut there are now scores of grandparents who will never smile again for as long as they live.

Having an elementary school child in your life -- and we’ve got two -- is maybe life’s greatest pleasure.

They are formed enough to have their own delightful personalities. They have their own dreams. It’s an innocent age when even their sass can be described as cute. And there is nothing on the planet more joyfully exuberant than kneeling down and bracing yourself for a hug from a charging child.

So, naturally, this is the most heinous crime we can conceive.

And today I sit here and wonder where and when it’ll happen next.

Who dares dispute me when I say it’s just a matter of time?

America’s gun madness must be an inspiration or at least a handy punchline to Al Qaeda devotees who certainly chortle at our near daily barbarity. We kill ourselves and our souls with more efficiency than they could ever dream.

Remember, it was just two weeks ago Bob Costas caught hell for having the temerity to mention a high-profile crime that in the wake of Newtown seems like just a drop in the bloody bucket.

I tried to think what I’d do today if I were Wayne LaPierre, the most visible face of a movement that will certainly contend the answer isn’t to ban guns, that if only our kindergarten teachers were packing this never would have happened.

I think I’d have to put a bullet in my head, an ironic response to too much gun violence. I honestly don’t know how he can live with himself.

And the complicity of our conservative gun nut culture is pervasive.

If you today are contending a necessary host of common sense gun laws would impinge on your freedoms then you today are part of the problem.

For God’s sake, we’re past the point where anyone should be allowed into the argument if they say the slaughter of 20 elementary school children is exactly as the Founders intended.

The situation is now too dire, too grave.

Because today, instead of holiday cheer, we as a nation must face the reality of filling too many small graves with too many small coffins.

• J-students quiz Christ

Safety lessons from spree killers, again

2012-12-14T13:48:00.002-05:00

I’m re-posting, as I always do after most headline-making rampages, my 2009 piece about what we’ve learned from spree killers.

I’ve been doing this at least once a year for the past three years. The only thing that ever changes is the body counts.

So there’s nothing new here. Feel free to skip if it starts to sound redundant. After all, the ever-numbing news of spree killers has become all too redundant, as well.

Safety Lessons from Spree Killers

What we’ve learned from recent spree killers:

• It’s unsafe exercising in places dedicated to strengthening and prolonging life (George Sodini, LA/Fittness, Pittsburgh, August 4; three dead).

• It’s unsafe to be an armed, on-duty police officer responding to routine calls (Richard Poplawski, Pittsburgh residence, April 4; three dead).

• It’s unsafe to be an aspiring American, an immigrant drawn to our shores by the promise of a better life (Jiverly Wong, American Civic Association, Binghamton, N.Y., April 3; 13 dead).

• It’s unsafe to want to live out your golden years at a remote retirement home (Robert Stewart, Pinelake Health and Rehab, Carthage, N.C., March 29; eight dead).

• It’s unsafe to attend a place of worship (Terry Ratzman, Living Church of God, Brookfield, Wisconsin, March 12, 2005; seven dead).

• It’s unsafe to shop (Robert Hawkins, Von Maur Department Store, Dec. 5, 2007; eight dead).

• It is unsafe, for the love of God, to be an Amish schoolgirl (Charles Carl Roberts IV, West Nickel Mines Amish School, Bart Township, Pennsylvania, Oct. 2, 2006; five dead).

All told, the random teachers listed here killed 47 people they’d never met and wounded hundreds more. The anecdotal tally could be higher if we included the dead who learned too late it is unsafe to go to places like work or school, but we already knew that.

None of these other-wise law-abiding individuals committed a single crime until the second they pulled the triggers on their legally purchased semi-automatic weapons.

Want to be safe?

Get a job in the U.S. Capitol.

It is there that each and every one of the more than three million annual visitors gets marched through state-of-the-art magnetometers before being allowed entry.

Want to be less safe?

Continue to live without complaint amidst the carnage and under the laws our elected officials continue to pass.

2012 office party & you're invited!

2012-12-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

(657 words)

FYI: Spirit Airlines offers flights from Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale direct to Latrobe’s Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. So that’s my best route for anyone wishing to attend my office Christmas party next Friday from, I think, 7 p.m. till whenever a.m.

That means confirmed readers in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Guernsey, Aland Islands, Fiji and Sri Lanka will need to seek an alternative.

Preferably something other than Greyhound.

Can you believe this blog has readers from places like that?

It’s true. In fact, my stats page tells me I’m closing in on representatives of 150 nations who’ve stumbled onto my musings.

Talk about your Christmas miracles.

Besides the above mentioned obscurities, the blog’s also registered readers from Macau, Gabon, Liechtenstein, Nevis & St. Kitt, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

It’s a veritable Coalition of the Too Much Time on Their Hands.

Just last week, records showed someone from Isle of Man in the Manx Sea between Scotland and Ireland checked in to read the story about my mustache.

Of course, they did. Certainly no one from the Isle of WoMan would care to read about lip hair.

Nor would anyone, I suppose, from the Isle of Misfit Toys.

I was looking at this list of tiny countries and wondering how many of their armed forces could be defeated by the Greater Latrobe Wildcats 2-7 varsity football team. It might be competitive.

But that’s only sporting speculation unbecoming of a holiday renown for peace and goodwill toward blog readers.

I should offer an incentive for anyone from these distant countries to make the difficult trek to Latrobe to attend my party -- like a free “Use All the Crayons!” to whomever travels the farthest.

But I fear that would mean teams of drivers would be checking odometers driving back and forth from Dave’s house in Lloydsville and Todd’s house in Derry to determine precisely who wins and that might tempt Dave or Todd to cheat.

I’m excited about hosting the party, the first holiday gathering since 2009.

Here’s the flyer from that inaugural. It read in festive fonts:

Merry Christmas!

POND OFFICE PARTY

4-6 p.m., Apt. 2

All Friends and Honest Strangers Welcome!

Games, prizes . . . smokers welcome!

Come for the Fun! Come for the Pizza!

Come hear Bob Dylan sing your favorite Christmas Songs!

Come and enjoy my new haircut!

As you can surmise, I thought the big draws would be the opportunity to hear the new Dylan album, “Christmas in the Heart,” a collection of songs where a Jewish troubador -- a Jewbador? -- sings popular songs about a Christian holiday, and the chance to see my new haircut.

Apparently, I was suffering from delusions of Beiber.

What people seemed to enjoy was the opportunity to see a truly unconventional work place where little conventional work ever gets done. Most of the faces of my guests bore the same wondrous expression you see on children when they visit a zoo.

So people enjoyed themselves, never more so than when our daughter, Josie, then 9, drilled me right in the chestnuts with a juggling bag.

They probably heard my pained yelp clear in Cote d’Ivoire.

People have asked about the party the last three years and I always told them I wouldn’t have another because the first turned out so Christmas wholesome, and I found that appalling.

But this year’s been truly wonderful. I’ve been overwhelmed by the reaction to my book.

People love it and have gone out of their way to support its success. I was at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble just yesterday and learned they’d sold 78 copies in six weeks. They had just two copies left. We’ll hit a hundred before Christmas, I’m sure.

So now’s the perfect time to host a festive party where we can celebrate our friendship, our hopes for a better future and everyone can enjoy watching me get drilled in the balls again.

What I won’t do for holiday tradition.

Related . . .

• 2010 Office Party: Canceled!

• Yuletide taints & Christmas creeps

Busted naked at work again

2012-12-13T11:27:00.001-05:00

(897 words)

I’ve started locking my door when I’m at work. This is in opposition to my stated vow about having an open-door policy when I began renting the place five years ago.

It’s $150 a month and you can’t beat that. Even better, my landlord tells me every couple months I should only pay when I feel like it: “Look,” Dave says, “if you’re having trouble don’t worry about the rent. Pay me what you can, when you can.”

In fact, he’s more shrewd than generous.

Dave rents three apartments above his bar. He knows having a thirsty idler like me so near makes good business sense: His bottom line improves the more my bottom is lined up near his taps.

And being here makes me very happy. It’s like having a little clubhouse or like spending eight hours a day inside my very own scrapbook.

Most people with traditional offices decorate their desks. My decorations start at the ceiling and work down to the berber.

It’s really very cool. You can come and see for yourself December 21. Yes, I’m restoring my Christmas party, which I’d canceled the last two years because the first was too successful.

More about that tomorrow.

It’ll be fun and I promise to be fully clothed.

As previously mentioned, I’ve worked for years with an open-door policy. In fact, I even had a motto: “My door is always open, my toilet seat always up.”

I wanted people to know that this was a place where guys could feel comfortable, something I never get to do at home.

My daughters don’t want to see me naked. Hell, most days neither does their mother.

So there’s like a 10-minute daily window when I shower and somedays shave where I’m relaxed and au natural, something you just don’t often see in conventional offices that aren’t, I guess, in places like Capitol Hill.

In all these years, only two people have taken advantage of my hospitality and barged right in. And by that slim sampling, the consensus must be that I work in the nude.

Yes, the only two times people have entered without knocking, I’ve been buck naked.

Happened a couple of years ago with Dave. The faucet in the bathroom sink got stuck on full. It sounded like I was launching a space shuttle right above the kitchen.

I called Dave and said to come up when he had a moment and bring a wrench. My belief that I had time to shower proved in error when Dave came running in like a teenage girl who’d heard Beiber was in my tub.

And there I was.

It would make a better story if I said our eyes locked, we rushed forward, embraced, and our legs bent at the knee they way the do in all the old Cary Grant movies.

But we just cracked up and I grabbed a towel.

My reaction was completely different on Monday when an idiot friend of my jackass neighbor came in without knocking.

I was naked with shaving cream all over my face when I looked up and saw this dude standing there in my kitchen.

I just started screaming profanities at him, which I know is at odds with my open door policy.

But there I am, naked. Saying, “And what can I do for you, stranger?” I don’t think would have set the proper tone.

The guy is friends with the neighbor who’s sort of a charity case Dave doesn’t have the heart to evict. So the guy mumbled an apology and split.

And I locked the door and locked it’s going to stay.

I began to wonder how I would have handled the situation if it was a hot babe, and I have some experience with that.

It was in college in the old fraternity house where I lived with about 15 other guys who excelled at things like farting and fun.

It was once again a shower situation. I was standing there naked in front of the dresser wondering if it was time to get around to pairing my socks when I heard a knock at the door.

“Yes?” I said, pushing shut the drawer and turning around.

In walked my buddy’s girlfriend.

“I said yes, not come in.”

And she got the full monty. I didn’t flinch.

Neither did she.

She gave the boy a good long look and then just slowly backed out, a playful little smile on her face.

I knew right then I could have snaked him anytime I wanted, but the guy was a buddy and I think he owed me something like twenty bucks, which I’d have had to kiss goodbye when he busted me screwing his girlfriend.

I was really quite an idiot. Twenty dollars is very cheap for sex.

I guess I was just old-fashioned.

Of course, now I’m married and the only people who see me naked are my wife and rough strangers who seem incapable of differentiating between the numbers “2” and “3” on apartment doors.

So if you come to my Christmas party next Friday, I’ll assure you I’ll be fully dressed.

There.

That gives you seven days to come up with a good reason to get me to change my mind.

• 2009 Office party recap

A motherlode of Roald Dahl trivia

2012-12-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

(697 words)

If nothing else, you’ll come away from this post with a lot of great Roald Dahl trivia.

He’s the English wit behind “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “The Gremlins,” “James and the Giant Peach,” and so many more.

I’ve known that for years. The “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” book made an indelible impression on me as a child, and I loved the Wonka movie, as do my daughters. We prefer the 1971 Gene Wilder version, but it’s my understanding Dahl hated it and his family sanctions the one where Johhny Depp spends nearly two hours acting like he’s Michael Jackson only with less alabaster skin.

But in the last year or so Dahl’s stature in my eyes has soared. It started a while back when I was watching one of my favorite children’s movies with my 6 year old.

It was “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” the great 1968 movie with some of the best tunes in movie history. I just love it. Always have. The songs, “Toot Sweets,” “Me Ol’ Bamboo,” “Truly Scrumptious,” “The Roses of Success,” and so many others are perfectly catchy.

I also love it because mentioning it always enables me the smug opportunity to spring some surprising trivia on anyone within earshot. In fact, the author of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” is none other than Ian Fleming, the genius behind James Bond.

What caught my eye on that particular viewing was the screenplay was done by Dahl.

How about that, I thought. There must be more to this man than I imagined.

Boy, was that an understatement. I was in the library a few weeks ago and spied -- spied being the operative word -- the 2008 Jennet Conant book, “The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.”

Dahl was war hero -- and a spy!

And, it seems, a bit of a roguish jerk.

He served the Royal Air Force in World War II with distinction until combat-related injuries grounded him in 1942 when he was assigned to Washington to help persuade America to shed its isolationist tendencies and join the war against Germany.

So when I say “spy,” it was nothing like the cutthroat spying done in Fleming’s Bond stories. But the 6-foot-6 Dahl did get laid an awful lot and I always enjoy reading about that under the guise of historical research.

“He’s a killer with women,” said actress Patricia Neal, Dahl’s wife from 1953 through 1983 and the woman who played Ma Walton in “The Homecoming,” the still-charming 1971 Christmas pilot for “The Waltons.”

The pair had five children in a marriage marred by tragedy.

In 1960, a New York taxi struck the baby carriage carrying their 4-month-old son, Theo. The infant suffered brain trauma and Dahl devoted himself to caring for the bed-ridden child. His inventiveness led him and two others (neurosurgeon Kenneth Till and hydraulic pump expert Stanley Wade) to develop the DWT (Dahl-Till-Wade) valve, a device still used to alleviate suffering.

The men never accepted a dime for the invention.

In 1965, he was again working with Fleming -- the pair served in the same capacity during the war -- and penned the screenplay for one of my favorite Bond movies, “You Only Life Twice.”

He and Neal endured a tawdry1983 tabloid divorce -- he took to shacking up with a cuddly mistress -- so bitter the author excised Neal’s name from posthumously published family trees making it appear she never existed, when anyone who remembers her in the jaunty Maxim Coffee commercials knows she certainly did.

So much fascinating stuff. But there was more!

I learned Conant, the book’s author, is the wife of “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft!

I thought, man, thank God I have a blog or all this Dahl house trivia would probably go to waste.

That’s me. Devoting my every waking moment to trivial pursuits so you can go about your business engaged in productive matters.

And I promise I’ll let know the instant I find out why this complex, brilliant man went his entire life and died in 1990 without ever once bothering to correct the obvious typo in his first name.

Related trivia . . .

• Of humdingers and sockdologers

• End world hunger! Be an airhead!

"Use All The Crayons!" A 10-star review

2012-12-11T13:20:00.000-05:00

(511 words)

I’ll keep this brief because I’m fearful readers are getting fatigued reading about reaction to my book. But this letter was too pleasing to keep to myself.

It’s from a single mom -- and I have a real soft spot for single parents. She read the Eric Heyl article and asked if it was true I’d send my book to anyone who is struggling and wanted one for free.

The article resulted in requests for 30 free books, all promptly filled. I can only hope the rest of the recipients felt even marginally as happy about my book as this woman did.

John Grisham’s sold 250 million books. I’ll bet he’s never received a fan letter as heartfelt as this:

“Hello there!! I remember saying I was intending to block out a space of time to read your book, and so I did. Nice long relaxing soak and a good book. My problem here is that I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face and my daughter, who is 3, kept knocking at the door . . . ‘Mummy, what are you laughing at?’.......... I love it.

“I haven’t been a book reader since I was 13 other than non-fiction nursing guides, anatomy, psych, etc. Then three weeks ago my son brings home ‘The Hunger Games.’ Having seen the movie, I thought I'd skim over it to see how the book differs from the movie. I read that book cover-to-cover within hours. Two days later it was ‘Catching Fire’ in one evening and then I followed that up with “Mockingjay.” As I started each book, I had no intention of setting them down until I finished, hungry for the excitement.

“Then I received yours . . . As I said I was thoroughly enjoying and intending to finish it that evening. It just made me feel so happy that I thought, ‘Why should I read all of it tonight?’ I’m LOVING your book. It makes me smile. It makes me laugh. I decided that I would rather have some kind of escape for those times when I get even more down, disappointed or mentally exhausted. It has picked me up a good few days this week. My decision to slow down and stretch it out was a good one. I walk around with this cheesy grin when I remember a portion that made me laugh. It's an amazing feeling when a great book can make you smile or laugh even when its not in front of you. I just hope that everyone who reads it feels exactly the same way.

What makes it even better is I’ve been sharing parts with my 11-year-old son. He has a wonderful sense of humor and the time we spend together -- just us -- is priceless.

“Thank you again for your generosity. It really means the world to me.”

That one’s going right up on my little office refrigerator with the others.

I’d say being the recipient of such a great letter leaves me feeling humbled, but you’d clearly see through the lie.

Right now I’m feeling anything but humble.

• Giving away my book a blue chip idea

Aussie DJ prank? Let's blame the victim

2012-12-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

(670 words)

By now the best result of the Aussie DJ prank would be if Jacintha Saldana surprises bereft loved ones and assembled media at her funeral by rising from her coffin and yelling, “Gotcha!”

Faking her own death would be a dandy revenge.

It’s either that or most the serious people on the planet now have more evidence that we all need to be way more serious.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Man, where’s a loud whoopie cushion when you really need one?

That’s why the Lazarus act would be perfect. Because nobody wants to see this woman dead.

I realize it’s tasteless to blame the victim here, but I blame the victim here.

Let’s make this clear: The proper reaction to being victimized by even a devastating practical joke isn’t to kill yourself.

The proper reaction is to kill the practical joker.

Or at least get even.

That’s what Carrie White did. She was the victim of the most cruel practical joke I can remember. It was 1976.

Carrie was a nerdy, friendless, teenage girl abused by her unstable Christian fundamentalist mother. Long story short, some real meanies dumped a bucket of pig blood on Carrie at her prom.

Her prom! Pig blood!

Now, I love taking practical jokes to outrageous lengths, but if I ever find myself in a barn with a knife poised above a pig, I’m going to step back and say, “Boys, I think we’re crossing a line here.”

Stephen King wrote a thrilling book about it called, “Carrie,” and there was the Brian DePalma movie of the same name.

I don’t want to spoil the ending for you but, wow, talk about getting even.

I prefer that bloody resolution to what Saldana’s left in her wake.

How dare she?

I tried putting myself in her teenage children’s shoes. I wouldn’t be thinking that the DJ’s had been cruel or depraved. No, I’d be thinking, “Man, mummy was nuts.”

It’s my layman’s understanding of the Bible that suicide victims don’t get into heaven. That seems harsh.

But there’s so much the killjoy Bible frowns upon my most steadfast religious belief is that finding a good parking spot in heaven is bound to be a cinch.

But let’s assume all the suicides go to some purgatory where they sit around and commiserate about why they chose to end it all.

You’d have people who’d accidentally shot their children, drunken bus drivers with the deaths of innocents on their consciences, men and women who’d been scarred by war, despair or hopelessness.

They’d turn to Saldana and ask what soul-searing heartache led her to end her life.

“Well, I was the telly operator at London hospital where the Queen’s relation was having a baby. Some morning radio jokers called pretending to be the Queen and I put the call through to the attending nurse. I felt really, really bad about it.”

Tell that story in a room full of people who’ve truly suffered from life’s hardships and they’re likely to respond with something more severe than noogies.

The whole odd episode is causing people around the world to consider what is and isn’t funny. One Australian poll found 65 percent said the DJs shouldn’t be blamed.

Just 65 percent? That 35 percent feel they should be blamed is appalling, enough so that I’m urging the English to act.

Yes, I believe it’s time for the people who gave the world Monty Python, Benny Hill and Simon Pegg (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz”) to organize a "Lighten Up!" protest at Saldana’s funeral the way our “God Hates Fags!” gang does at soldier funerals.

Of course, I’m kidding. I’d never advocate something so despicable in the wake of something so tragic.

But you already knew that. You understand I’m the kind of guy who pulls your leg while he’s simultaneously asking you to pull his finger.

So, naturally, the only abomination I see is that a woman could end her life over something so harmless.

And for once I’m not joking.

• I know Victoria’s secret

Sorta monthly tweet round-up

2012-12-09T10:05:00.002-05:00

Yes, yes, I realize after two months I’ve slipped from my commitment to posting a best-of tweet round-up faithfully on the last day of the month.

It would be cool if I could say there was a huge outcry and people were demonstrating outside The Pond like it was some kind of blog Tahrir Square, but that hasn’t happened.

When it comes to my tweet round-ups people, I guess, basically just don’t care.

Who can blame ‘em?

You can catch up anytime at 8days2amish and I’ll be sure to put all the really good stuff -- or at least what I consider the really good stuff -- right here where everyone’s always welcome.

Later today I’m going to post what is the best letter I’ve received about my book before getting back to what for lack of a better word call “work” tomorrow.

Up next: When it’s okay to kill yourself after being the victim of a practical joke.

Hint: Never! Ever! Ever!

• My faith in humanity is always restored anytime I see someone get out of a handicap space with a cane. Me, I always fake a little limp.

• Families are God’s way of reminding us we humans are incapable of helping even the ones we love most.

• Election makes Nov. 8 feel like a liberal holiday. I'm going to celebrate by saying a prayer to Allah, smoking some medical marijuana and kissing a man.

• I'd like to see Prez impose common sense tax hikes on wealthy and screw the bejesus out of just Sheldon Adelson, Trump & the Koch brothers.

• I vow to never engage in petty back and forth. You can have your tat. I'll keep my tit.

• Mick Jagger's 40-yr-old love letters up for auction. I'd like to see Keith buy them, get shitfaced and host a dramatic reading.

• US to be world's top oil producer in 5 years. Does that mean we get to soon deny women the right to vote and drive?

• Aggressive stationary sales people are always pushing the envelope.

• Quick! Anyone recall the name of Viggo Mortensen movie where he's an ex-hoodlum who owns a small town diner and takes up fiddle? "History of Violins?"

• Auto tech advances mean we'll one day be able to eliminate all traffic accidents. If that happens, man, I'll drive like a maniac.

• Any truth to the rumor Yoko Ono is licensing a John Lennon app aimed at cleaning up grammatical clutter? #InstantComma

• The 2nd most famous elevator company behind Otis is Schindler. Yes, there's a Schindler's Lift.

• Hit a poignant milestone with 12-yr-old daughter outside elevator. She let me win race to push button. Waa! What's next? Please, don’t. I’d rather not know.

• Sentence sinking writers who terrorize readers with reckless and unnecessary punctuation are commakazis.

• Sold 3 audio "Use All the Crayons!" to friends last night after I threatened to otherwise come to their homes and read aloud thru bullhorn.

• One advantage of writing book on being colorful: I could rob a bank in Speedo & people would say, "Ah, Rodell's just being colorful again." This I plan on exploiting.

• Something you may not know about me: I always feel sad whenever I’m someplace where shouting profanity is frowned upon.

• Great Keith quote: "When I was a junkie I learned to ski and made 'Exile on Main Street.'"

• Giddy scientists at Hadron SuperCollider claim to have created a new type of matter. I predict it will become known as the Doesn't Matter.

• Here's how far ahead I'm planning 2013 stories. I'm pitching a “Thanksgiving in Turkey!” story. You're right. It'll never happen.

• Just once I'd like to hear news reports of a man being slain by a blunt instrument and learn the weapon was a tuba.

• There ought to be hangover parking just a few spaces down from handicapped parking. And there ought to be vendor selling Bloody Marys.

• Love this so much wish I worked someplace: "Army had a saying that bread is staff of life and the life of the staff is one long loaf."

• Friends have been doing outstanding webwork for me for free. For years, I told 'em to, c’mom, charge me! Today they finally did. Bastards.

• I've cut my nose off to spite my face so many times it's no longer possible for me to stop and smell the roses.

• It'd be great for the GLBT movement if Scalia uses historic SCOTUS consideration of DOMA, etc., to announce he pines for Barney Frank.

• I believe there is a market for smaller, more petite pens and that these pens will be a huge success if they are called inklings.

• It must gall dedicated vegetarians when contentious circumstances force them to admit they have a beef with one another.

Another smashing book signing

2012-12-07T11:29:00.000-05:00

(789 words)

One clear lesson from my two major book signings: People in places where there is lots of booze and mine is the only book are more apt to buy my book than sober folk who can choose between my book and tens of thousands of other books by people like Twain, Steinbeck and Grisham.

I intend to plan accordingly.

Don’t get me wrong. The Saturday book signing at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble was a smashing success. Sold 18 books in two hours.

That’s a lot.

In fact, you could argue the 43 I sold over four hours to friends and local inebriates at The Pond on October 4 makes Saturday’s effort a statistical tie.

I’ve done my share of book signings over the years and when it goes poorly you begin to have sympathy for good-hearted, but homely hookers.

You’re there all by yourself for hours. Most people ignore you. A few will ask about what you have to offer and how much you charge. Some will try and shame you into giving them a freebie.

So it was a real joy to have so many enthusiastic people show up to buy “Use All The Crayons!”

Some had seen this Eric Heyl story the previous week. A few heard me on Dow Carnahan’s radio show that morning. Most were strangers.

One burly guy stood there dumbfounded in front of my table for a minute or two before asking a question: “You from around here?”

Affirmative.

“I’m a trucker from over in Somerset,” he said of the nearby town. “I’m driving eight to 10 hours every day so I listen to a lot of audio books. This morning I was on Audible.com and your book was featured on the self-help page. I looked at it and thought, man, I’ll have to remember this one. It looks perfect for a long drive.”

He said there were already two positive reviews.

“And now I come here and I see the same book and the guy who wrote it. It’s hard to believe.”

I was tempted to tell him it was bound to be a sign from God and he should buy a dozen books. Instead, I just agreed in wonder. It was very weird.

I told him he should really buy the hard copy of the book, rather than the audio, and I’m not saying that because even homely hookers have to eat.

My little drawings and how I sign the book is making it very special for people. It brings tangible joy.

I know this because I’m in the thick of Christmas signings. Just this week, three satisfied readers placed Christmas orders for 14, 12 and 10 crayon books (discounted to $14 a piece) destined for dozens of friends.

This type of thing has become common. I’ve filled orders for 24, and twice for 20 for people who are so mad for my book they are intent on giving it to friends and loved ones, certain it’s the perfect gift.

Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t order three or four. Certainly, I should be directing them to Barnes & Noble or amazon.com so those healthy sales would register with national beancounters.

But the signings make them special. Why would I deprive someone of the opportunity to give a gift that shows a lot of heart from every angle?

And let’s make this clear: nobody buys 10 or 20 copies of my book because they’re friends with me or my wife. That’s too much money to spend out of chummy obligation.

No, people love the book and they want to share it with others.

The heady reaction is causing me to shed my default self-deprecation earned through years of failure and rejection.

There’s too many positive indicators assuring me this book is striking a chord and is going to succeed.

I thought of that when the woman you see pictured above came up to my table and asked to buy two books.

She and her husband had read Eric’s story, checked out the website and packed their two daughters up and drove 30 miles just to meet me.

I’d have been blown away even if the woman hadn’t endured a day of family taunting by wearing her crayon sweater. Lovely!

I’m beginning to appreciate just how many people are yearning for something exuberant, something colorful, something that understands just how difficult this life can be and how essential it is for us to do everything we can to fill it with fun while we all still can.

If you know someone like that, I swear, I have just the thing.

And shame on you if you think I’m talking about fixing you up with some lonely hooker.

Related . . .

• Bar book signing Thursday!

• “Use All the Crayons!” on iTunes!

Costas & truly innovative gun violence solutions

2012-12-05T11:58:00.001-05:00

(912 words)

I was disappointed yesterday after Bob Costas said talking for 90 seconds about gun violence during an NFL halftime show was “a mistake.”

Actually, talking so much about football violence in a country where there’s so much gun and domestic violence is the real mistake.

I’ll die happy if I can go the rest of my life without hearing some football announcer drone on about another torn ACL.

The problem is my life could end prematurely any minute because someone with a gun and a grudge is having a bad day.

I’ve always liked Costas, even as he’s undergone so much youth-preserving plastic surgery he’s starting to appear less like a thoughtful sportscaster and more like one of those kids who used to stand on the corner and shout things like, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

By referencing this Jayson Whitlock column about Jovan Belcher’s horrific murder -suicide, Costas indicated he was fed up that gun violence is such a daily staple in a nation that dares call itself civilized.

I’m fed up it’s taken him so long to become fed up.

Gun enthusiasts consider talking about gun violence so soon after gun violence an etiquette breach only slightly less proper than the gun violence itself. This is a very clever tactic because our gun tragedies happen with such overlapping frequency it ensures we’ll never have an opportunity to discuss it. So we never do.

We should be talking about nothing else.

Costas ended by citing Whitlock’s final line, “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

In your dreams, boys.

Mine, too.

In fact, in my dreams I’d like to wake up one morning and read that overnight Barack and Michelle had piloted a black Stealth helicopter over every home in America and used a giant magnet to suck all the guns and probably a bunch of toasters up the chimney for federal confiscation.

And that they were going to reconstitute the metal for use in rural windmills and playground swing sets in underprivileged Hispanic neighborhoods.

And to think I used to dream about things like Pamela Anderson.

Over the past year I’ve become America’s foremost writer offering innovative solutions to our kill crazy gun crisis (God help us).

Here’s a rundown of my ideas and how they would have played out with Perkins and Belcher:

• The Barney Fife Amendment -- Everyone is allowed to carry a loaded gun everywhere, all the time. But you only get one bullet. Use or lose your bullet and in addition to existing laws, you have to appear before a judge to explain what happened to your bullet before you get another bullet.

This would have likely saved the life of Kasandra Perkins. With one bullet Belcher might have winged her or missed entirely. Either way, Belcher would have felt instant remorse and called 911. We know this because after he shot her nine times in front of her distraught mother the mother told police she saw him bend down, kiss her on the forehead and say, “I’m so sorry.”

And their daughter would not have been orphaned because Belcher wouldn’t have had the additional bullet he put through his brain in front of his coach and general manager.

So there’s a lot to be said for the Barney Fife Amendment.

• Enforce 2nd Amendment -- I contend most of the he-men rednecks I know would give up their guns if it meant monthly drilling, safety and calisthenics down at the high school football field when they’re used to being home nursing their Saturday hangovers. Why the part of “well-regulated militia” is never mentioned in discussions about the 2nd Amendment is incomprehensible to me.

There’s absolutely nothing well-regulated or militia-like about the majority of today’s handgun owners. Enforcing the exact wording of the 2nd Amendment would entirely change our gun culture. It would ennoble it to the original intention of our Founding Fathers and we’d all sleep better knowing those crafty Canadians would be more wary about invading us knowing our militias are so well-regulated.

Belcher wouldn’t have had a gun or felt much of a need for one, so Perkins survives this, too.

• “IN CASE OF SPREE KILLERS, BREAK GLASS” -- The armed hombres all say if they’d been in the Colorado theatre when James Holmes had started firing they’d have cooly risen from their seats and put the gunman down, a hypothetical that always causes veteran police officers to crack up. But let’s assume it were true.

Let’s have a rack of guns right beside the fire alarms and, obviously, everyone who wants to can carry. Having loaded guns everywhere might reduce spree killer body counts, but I contend random rage killings and deaths from what I call oops bullets would skyrocket.

Under this scenario, Perkins is a goner, but so is Belcher most likely, so it’s a bit of a wash.

There. That’s a host of innovative solutions to our gun crisis you won’t hear on any of the talk shows. They range the gamut from no one gets guns to everyone is packing.

I’m going to try and spend the rest of the day coming up with some more because I believe it’s a moral imperative we all propose ideas to break the dreadful deadlock about what to do about so many senseless gun deaths.

If we don’t, it’s a lock more innocents will wind up dead.

Related . . .

• Safety lessons from spree killers

• (See above)

A great Pittsburgh freelancer on "Jeopardy!" tonight!

2012-12-03T09:33:00.003-05:00

(636 words)

One of the coolest freelance writers in Pittsburgh will become immeasurably more cool this evening at 7 when Christine O’Toole appears on “Jeopardy!”

That sentence about the show where people must answer answers with questions ends in a titular exclamation point. But with Chris, I’d end it with an exclamation point in any construction.

For example: “Tonight on ‘Jeopardy!’ you can catch one of Pittsburgh’s coolest freelance writers, ‘Chris O’Toole! Thats’s right! Chris O’Toole! Yay!!!”

Here’s how cool she is: I’ve written stories about her writing stories. She wrote this really great Oct. 2011 National Geographic Traveler story about why Pittsburgh is one of just 20 must-see destinations on the entire planet, and the only U.S. city worthy of the designation.

I wrote a story for MSNBC.com announcing her story, a story progression that ought to this day still cause the city businesses to swoon with relief.

Had I written the story touting Pittsburgh in such a prestigious magazine, I’d to this day be using it as a key to the city demanding free stuff from every hotel and restaurant near the Golden Triangle.

I rarely use them anymore, but I still have business cards emblazoned with “Palm Features.” I did this starting out because I wanted my travel writing to convey tropical idylls and dreamy destinations.

In fact, I called it “Palm Features” because my palm was always out reaching for freebies.

That O’Toole and two of the cities other top freelance writers don’t treat a guy like that with kneejerk disdain pleases me.

The other two are James Scott Thornton and Matt Stroud.

O’Toole and Thornton I taught to my class. Stroud I taught in my class.

Thornton does wonderfully offbeat stuff for Men’s Health and other top Rodale publications (and note that’s RoDALE, not RoDELL, damn it).

I’ve written for Men’s Health, too. Like twice. He gets invited to their Christmas parties and is way too cool to go.

He does a lot of very good cerebral stuff, but I remember the one time he lay in the desert for something like 12 hours trying to convince a buzzard he was dead enough to bite. It didn’t work. Even buzzards know Thornton’s too lively to ever appear dead.

Matt was the best student I ever taught in four years that included many stellar graduate students at Point Park University. That’s the Pittsburgh school where I was an adjunct professor before the alarmed administrators realized many of the students I was teaching were more qualified to teach than me.

Or should it be more qualified to teach than I?

He asked questions the very first day that really let me know he had a great intellect, drive and there was no way I’d be able to coast through the class offering up my usual lame jokes and war stories about my days with National Enquirer.

I nearly broke down in tears.

Since graduating in 2010, he’s been teaching me how a professional freelancer should approach his or her career. In just the past six months, he’s earned multiple bylines in such prestigious outlets as The Atlantic, The Verge, Reuters and The Nation.

And, I swear, he’s just getting started. It’s going to be fun to watch his career progress from here to Jon Krakauer-like levels.

I could see any of the three of them doing well on “Jeopardy!”

But tonight the popcorn’s reserved for my friend Chris.

I’m so excited for her. She said taping the show in August was a life-time ambition for her -- and that’s saying something for someone who’s traveled around the world and written about so much of what makes the world go ‘round.

I hope she does great. If she does, it ought to feel familiar.

Great’s something she’s been doing for a long, long time.

Related . . .

• My fears of public speaking

• To hell with ethics, eat at Claddagh Pub!

Arnold Palmer NOT attending my book signing

2012-11-30T12:02:00.001-05:00

(692 words)

The following story is mostly true. I always try to tell the truth. I do it all the time except for when it seems advantageous to do otherwise.

I was driving down the parkway to Pittsburgh yesterday when the phone in my pocket began tickling my hip. It was a stranger who’d read the Sunday newspaper story about me and my book, which I’ll be crayon signing tomorrow at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble from 2 to 4 p.m.

“A friend of mine said Arnold Palmer was going to be there,” said Jim. “I thought, wow, what a great opportunity. Your book sounds really fun. I could pick up some copies for friends and we could meet Arnold Palmer. What time is it?”

I told him the times and said he was mistaken. It is true that my friend Arnold Palmer, the most popular golfer of all time and one of the few Americans to win both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal -- our nation’s highest civilian awards -- had provided the gushy foreword to the book. But he’s in Orlando and won’t be back until Christmas.

I say we’re friends and that’s true. But he’s not the kind of friend who’d text me to meet him out for beers and wings or invite me to swing by to meet Queen Elizabeth, with whom he’s chummy.

But I never dreamed there’d be a day I’d be able to say my friend Arnold Palmer provided the foreword for my kooky self-help book, so who knows?

I promise if he ever texts me the Queen’s in town because she heard wings at The Pond were good and they wanted me to join them, I’ll tweet it right up.

Jim said he’s still coming and said it made his day to find an author’s phone number on his website, call it, and have the actual author pick up.

I told him I’m not like other authors.

So I set the phone down and the devious parts of my mind began to fidget.

How’d that crazy rumor get started? How many people were believing it? How could I use this to my benefit? And, gadzooks, what if it’s true?

If it was, I knew I’d need a haircut. Palmer’s made fun of me before for looking too shaggy.

I knew what I needed to do first. As soon as I could, I dashed off an e-mail to Palmer’s assistant. I wouldn’t want him thinking the rumor was something I’d concocted.

“Is Arnold Palmer flying from Orlando to Latrobe to help draw interest for my crayon book signing Saturday at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble from 2 to 4 p.m.? That would be outstanding.

“And if he's not, would you please issue a press release to every media outlet in America saying Arnold Palmer will not be attending Chris Rodell's book signing Saturday at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble from 2 to 4 p.m.?”

I knew at this point an official press release strongly denying he’d be there would draw as much attention as if he were.

My e-mail received the sarcasm-rich two-word response: “Nice try.”

I spent the next hour debating whether it would be worth my time to contact representatives for Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, Donald Trump and Nelson Mandela to ask if they’d issue honest press releases asserting these luminaries wouldn’t be attending my book signing tomorrow at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble from 2 to 4 p.m.

I’m going to try to make it fun. I’m bringing a little bell to ring anytime someone purchases more than one copy. And I’ll have a sheet of paper where people can do a little crayon doodling while I’m signing their books.

I’m thinking of putting up a list of things I’ll do as incentives for people to purchase multiple copies. Example: “Buy 100 copies and next week I’ll clean your gutters!”

But that’ll be about it. Because, in fact, none of the mentioned stars will be attending. Neither will Palmer nor the Queen.

But I’ll be there.

If you’re not busy, I hope you will be, too.

And that’s the truth.

(Can’t make it? Tune in tomorrow at 8 a.m. to Latrobe’s 1480 WCNS-AM for a lively 30 minute interview host Dow Carnahan taped earlier this week. And the book’s available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com and on iTunes)

Related . . .

• The Great Chris Rodell

• Yesterday, Arnold Palmer watched me golf

Movember & my magnificent mustache

2012-11-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

(730 words)

Chances are as you’re sitting there reading this on your computer or smartphone, I’m standing in some brightly lit bathroom admiring the reflection of my mustache in the mirror.

It’s magnificent. It’s salt ‘n’ pepper. It’s unruly. It’s better than Tom Selleck’s.

It’s a sad fact of life that as men age our mustaches become more splendid even as the faces to which they are attached continue their inexorable march to hell.

You may not know it, but we are nearing the end of the month of the mustache.

Yes, there’s only two more shopping days in Movember.

Movember is an Aussie import -- “mo” is Aussie slang for mustache -- that grew out of some friends seeking a playful way to call attention to prostrate cancer awareness.

If it seemed like a bigger deal last year it might be because greedy NHL owners are locking out greedy NHL players.

Hockey players had really embraced Movember. At least half of the players grew really cheesy mustaches that had people wondering if hockey players were moonlighting as porn stars.

They wish, I’m sure.

Just hearing about uncomfortable things like prostrate exams makes the butt cheeks of most men tighten right up -- and when you’re talking about prostrate exams nothing could be more counter-productive.

But I like Movember more for its focus on facial hair.

I’ve been tending a mustache ever since I was about 20.

I shaved it once when it was still a toddler, maybe 3 years old.

My late father hated it and challenged me to a round of golf. If I lost, I’d shave; if he lost, he’d grow one.

Dad played that day like Arnold Palmer without all the dignity and scruples. He was a terrible golfer, but a very skilled cheater.

“I golf for my health,” he’d say, “and I feel better when I can tell people I shot a good score.”

I had to admit his logic was impeccable.

My efforts to bust him kicking the ball to a better position distracted my otherwise superior game. He kicked the part of me doctors need to access when they’re checking my prostrate.

So I shaved and immediately resumed growing it back. I had for the next 10 years what could be called a spite mustache.

I could give my father the finger simply by smiling at him.

But he was right. It was a terrible mustache. Had zero character.

So now my mustache is about 25. It could walk into a bar by itself and not have to worry about getting carded.

I haven’t grown up, but it has.

And we’re very close. It understands I’ll always have its back.

It has character, depth, and it’s now superior to Tom Selleck’s.

Selleck played a key role mustache history. He was one of the world’s most handsome men in the ‘90s. And everyone loved him, the girls because he was sexy and men because he was a real guy’s guy. “Magnum, P.I.” still holds up.

I always admire anyone who is both beautiful and funny, or beautiful and smart, especially women because if you’re beautiful you don’t have to be anything else.

In fact, you jeopardize your beauty simply by opening your mouth.

My brother was taller and more appealing to the babes than me. When he grew his mustache everyone said he looked like Magnum.

They said I looked like I didn’t get enough sleep.

Growing the mustache didn’t change any of that. So I gravitated to bars where it was dark and the girls weren’t so picky or too drunk to care.

I was thinking about all this when I saw an ad for Selleck’s show “Blue Bloods.”

He’s really gone to hell, hasn’t he? What happened to him? He looks like such a mope.

He used to be so cheerful and funny. I haven’t heard anyone say, “Man, you have to watch ‘Blue Bloods.’ Selleck’s still got it.”

You know what I think happened?

He betrayed his mustache. He trimmed it to surface whiskers and put paint on the stubble. Clearly, he’s dying his hair. That’s disgraceful.

I vow to never dye my mustache or do anything to depress its joyful individuality.

I do this because I know it could get even with me the way Selleck’s is getting even with him.

And I don’t want to do anything to risk losing my mo-jo.

• How I look with half a mustache

My week of obnoxious self-promotion

2012-11-26T15:59:00.001-05:00

(1001 words)

This will surprise anyone who remembers me as an Ouzo-fueled streaker running naked across campus at Ohio University with bottle rockets shooting out my butt, but I’ve always considered myself a bit of a wallflower.

Reserved. Bashful.

The stupid things I’ve done that attracted the most attention were often done on a dare -- and I wish I could blame my chronic occupational predicament on that bone-headed motivation.

I guess it’s because being the center of attention makes me uncomfortable. The person I’m most interested in without exception is the person right in front of me.

The best conversations involve engaged strangers, full eye contact and topics that reveal what makes us tick. Have you kicked the drugs? Do you hate your job? What was the last movie that made you cry?

I have so little patience for small talk with people who look past us I’ve even coined a word to describe the phenomenon: Glibberish. It’s the pointless party chatter between two people who’d rather be talking to anyone else.

So with the exception of those times when I’m launching bottle rockets out my ass, I’m really kind of shy.

That means this week is bound to be a little difficult.

It started yesterday with Eric Heyl’s great B-1 story in Sunday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Eric and I were acquaintances who became friends after he wrote about my wrongful arrest for scalping Steeler pre-season tickets.

I’d sent him a copy of “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness” with the hopes he’d find it interesting enough to profile.

I was thrilled he did and focused on my efforts to give the book away for free to anyone who says they can’t afford it, to servicemen and women, and anyone who asks nicely.

It says so on the book’s very first page under the headline “This Book Is Free.”

I’m sure I’ll look back on the story’s publication as a key date in the book’s success, still by no means a sure thing.

This is the kind of clip, I hope, that will create cascading attention. It already has from Eric’s readers. I received heartfelt requests for free books from 23 readers and orders from paying customers for another 15. That’s a good day.

You can check it out here and I hope you do. And share the ever-loving daylights out of it. Take it to bookstores. Have a sky-writer reproduce it above your town.

It would be cool if it were a coincidence, but hours after Eric’s article appeared I got a call from KDKA 1020-AM radio. Talk host Johnna Pro was eager to have me on to discuss the book.

Johnna and I were reporters together many moons ago. She loved what she’d read about my book and was eager to promote it. So last night one of America’s most historic news organizations hosted one of its least for 20 lively minutes.

Live radio can be an unnerving gig over the telephone, especially when you have two young daughters barging into the room to make monkey faces while you’re on the air.

You want to scream at them to scram, but know if you do listeners all across the land will say things like, “Hey, Myrtle, you gotta hear this! This guy who wrote a book about how to be happy is being a real asshole to his kids!”

Johnna couldn’t have been better. She really dug what she’d read and flattered me with great questions. I’ll post it when I can snag an audio clip.

This all happened one day after I posted the first YouTube video of myself speaking to a packed house at Allegory Gallery in Ligonier. If it sounds like there are only about eight people there, that’s because it was a very small house.

Observant viewers will note at the end of the video I look directly into the camera, a pre-arranged signal that it was time to shut it off just five minutes into a talk that went 30.

I wanted to give the video a cliff-hanger feel and I figured five minutes was plenty. I’m shy, remember?

What’s next? I’ll be sitting down with my friend Dow Carnahan of Latrobe’s 1480 WCNS-AM to tape a show that will air Saturday at 8 a.m.. I’ve known Dow a long time and we drink together so there’s a good chance he’ll ask at least a few potentially embarrassing questions and that’s always fun.

The timing for Dow’s segment couldn’t be better because that same day from 2 to 4 p.m. I’m doing my first big book signing at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble.

I tingle in anticipation.

It’s impossible to underestimate what a lift the acceptance and support of B&N means to me and my book. Store staffers have gone out of their way to recommend the book to customers. And it’s really working. Store manager Megan Sowinski tells me the book is selling like crazy. Her exact words: "It's selling like crazy."

In my dreams, I see myself standing there behind a table like George Bailey at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as everyone in the community approaches to fill up a big basket full of dough.

It could happen. I have a lot of friends around here who are eager to support me and my book. Then there’s all the people who don’t really like me, but have heard the book’s good.

Then -- and this is the majority -- there are people who have read there’s a local author who is vowing to give his book away for free to anyone who wants it. They believe I’m an idiot and my family will starve if they don’t pay for a copy.

Either way, it’s shaping up to be a banner day for me and my book. I promise I’m going to do everything I can to ensure Saturday will be truly memorable for everyone who attends.

And you know what that means.

Yep. I’m bringing bottle rockets!

Related . . .

• My Day in Court

• No. 1 Party Boy from America’s No. 1 Party School

Black Friday thoughts on shoplifters & other dummies

2012-11-23T13:40:00.002-05:00

(726 words)

An Italian mannequin manufacturer is charging $5,072 for store mannequins that can spy on shoppers with eye-embedded cameras that profile customers, they say, to mine more shopper data.

It’s maybe the first time in history true dummies can be called visionary.

The Almax SpA EyeSee mannequins scan and gather data with the goal of informing stores about what interests which customers. To me, store security is the more obvious application. In this regard, highly motivated Dep. Barney Fife was visionary beyond his years.

I remember “The Andy Griffith Show” episode in which Fife pretended to be a store mannequin. His plan was to stand there motionless and spring into action any time he saw someone attempting the five-finger discount.

It was a brilliant idea, but the execution was flawed. A fly kept buzzing Barney’s face and one runny-nosed kid blew his cover by standing there and asking him questions about things like fishing.

In the end, however, he did catch a little old lady who’d been robbing Ben Weaver blind.

Oh, if only life were like TV Land.

Biologists have detected a chemical reaction in shoplifters stemming from the “high” that comes from getting away with it. Alas, I’m not immune to this.

I remember my first shoplifting experience. I was in the fourth grade at Julia Ward Howe Elementary School in Mt. Lebanon -- and admitting I attended school in posh Mt. Lebanon is way more difficult than admitting I was a crook.

There was a little general store right next to the playground. I was in there with a couple of my hoodlum friends. I remember the clerk being distracted and the Sugar Daddy beckoning me from behind the counter.

Quick as lightning, the teeth-rotting confection was in my pocket.

The rush was fleeting and overwhelmed by shame. I knew what I’d done was wrong.

I haven’t stolen from a store since.

But there is one venue in which I steal services and will, I’m sure, continue to do so whenever I can get away with it.

It’s where the Pittsburgh Pirates play baseball.

Regular readers know my love-hate relationship with the home team. I adore baseball, but Pittsburgh is now into its 20th year of losing. Twenty years!

Talk about criminal activity.

For some reason sneaking into a sporting event’s always struck me as fair game. Perhaps it was because my late father often regaled me with stories of his sneaking into old Forbes Field for so many splendid afternoons of freebie ball.

It was 1992. My friends and I were partial season ticket holders the year the Pirates were playing the Braves in the playoffs.

It was so long ago I actually had a job that came with a working press credentials.

The games were in old Three Rivers Stadium, a baseball venue that included many obstructed seats deemed unworthy of spectator viewing. So the seats were empty, even as they were more near the field than many regular seats, including ours.

So I’d take my press pass and one ticket and march solo through the turnstyles and get a stamp that would allow me press re-entry privileges.

Meanwhile, one of my friends would sell the remaining three tickets for an indecent profit which we’d use to buy multiple domestic beers the Pirates were selling for an even more indecent profit.

Then I’d one-by-one bring my friends in and we’d filter our way to the front row of the obstructed seats, which were better than ours. We’d toss the usher a $20 and had the whole section to ourselves.

I remember telling my dad about the scheme. The old man beamed with pride.

I still sneak in whenever I can and, in fact, the last game I ever attended with my dad was done on a clever sneak. I understand what I’m doing is stealing, but the urge to sneak into a ballpark is difficult to resist. It’s an urge that grows with each Pirate losing season.

It just galls me to pay that much money for a team that just keeps on stinking.

So I vow to continue my subterfuge for as long as the Pirates continue fielding so many players who turn into lifeless mannequins after the all-star break.

I may be a petty thief, but I’m no dummy.

• Taking pregnant women to the ol’ ballgame

Happy Thanksgiving! (old post, same sentiment)

2012-11-22T08:53:00.000-05:00

On this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful I do not feel embarrassed by subbing something original for a perfectly fine Thanksgiving column from last year. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

I advise you to start tomorrow, as I do every Thanksgiving, by playing the 2006 Ray Davies song, “Thanksgiving Day.”

We can argue all day and night about our favorite Christmas songs -- there must be a million of them -- but there’s only one Thanksgiving song.

And I mean that. Can anyone name even one great traditional Thanksgiving song?

Leave it to an Englishman to write the song about one of our most authentic American holidays. Be sure to download it as soon as you finish reading this. I promise to keep it holiday snappy.

The song’s got it all. The poignancy, the longings, the Greyhound rides home, the hearth, the family dysfunction and in the end the euphoria of my very favorite holiday.

I’ll be thankful tomorrow for Ray Davies.

And I’ll be thankful for the U.S. Marine Corp and all who serve.

We were in Washington, D.C., over the weekend where I went to write a story about the lavish Christmas festival at the Gaylord National Hotel (and, man, I’m thankful I get to do cool stuff like that as part of my job).

The place was crawling with Marines in their dress blues. The hotel was the site of their annual ball.

It diminishes me even further, but I get kind of squishy whenever I’m around a serviceman or woman, especially a Marine.

I’m grateful for their service and they are just the most impressively composed human beings on the planet.

I’ve never seen a Marine in action, but I imagine they could overwhelm most any enemy merely with manners and posture.

I understand they teach other more lethal things in grueling boot camps, but if someone told me it was 13 weeks of manners and posture I’d believe it.

It’s like they are constructed with steel spines that make slouching physically impossible. My body would assume a natural slouch if it was suspended from a noose.

I was in the company of about 100 other journalists who, like me, stood around slouching for hours at a time waiting for someone to bring us something free.

I’ve never seen a more vivid mingling of the givers and the takers.

I’m sure if I’d have spilled a free bourbon a Marine would have sprung from the rafters and thrown his medal bedecked jacket over the puddle to assist my wife and daughters over the floor hazard.

I don’t know how to say thank you without sounding cliche or maudlin, so I just tried to make eye contact and say, “Happy Holidays,” hoping it would convey so much more.

But that, too, has pitfalls, as I learned on the elevator.

We got on together in the lobby. I asked this man who does so much for me and our country to do one more thing. Could he please push 15?

Guys like me can’t do anything for ourselves.

He was wearing a Steeler jacket. Eureka! I could make Pittsburgh small talk!

If my room had been on the 353rd floor it might have given us enough time to strike up a real friendship.

But we had a very friendly chat, enough so that when the elevator floor bell rang I felt comfortable looking this strong, proud man eye to eye and saying, “Happy Holidays” hoping he’d know what I really meant was:

“Thank you for all you sacrifice for me and my loved ones. Thank you for the friends you’ve lost, the tears you’ve shed, and the enemies you’ve killed. I hope your holiday season is filled with love, joy and a peace that’s so often elusive to warriors like yourself. And I hope the Steelers we both cheer act like United States Marines and kick the asses of their every opponent clear through to the Super Bowl.”

It was perfect. He knew exactly what I meant. The door opened and I gave one last firm nod and gathered up my stuff.

Damn. Wrong floor.

He was too gracious, of course, to point out I asked him to push 15 and was exiting the elevator on 11.

But to ride four more floors in awkward silence risked ruining the perfect micro-conversation.

So what did I do?

I marched right the hell out that elevator door like I knew where I was going, leaving this Marine to logically conclude I’m an idiot.

That's okay. I’ll bet the nation is full of slouching idiots like me.

We have to wait around 364 days until the one day comes when we feel comfortable saying a truly heartfelt thanks.

So Happy Thanksgiving to all our servicemen and women, their families, Ray Davies and to each and everyone struggling to get along in this great, big beautiful land I’m forever thankful to call my home.

"Use All The Crayons!" on iTunes!

2012-11-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

(739 words)

As of last month, Bob Seger and I have one less thing in common: I’m on iTunes and he’s not.

It should be the exact reverse.

If you want some of Seger’s truly old time rock ‘n’ roll, you need to purchase a physical version of it.

I’d call that old school, but today even all the old schools have computers so I don’t know what the heck to call it.

Yet, here we are. You can now download “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness” for $3.99.

One of Seger’s best songs advises you to “Turn the Page.” Now, there’s version of my book where that’s impossible.

It’s read by Don Hagen, a man you’ve certainly heard even if you’ve never heard of. Hagen of Washington, D.C., is a top voice talent who does adds dramatic flourishes to the copy for commercials for Volkswagen, Lockheed Martin, PBS and the non-annoying lines for Aflac.

I was eager to talk to him about my book for many reasons. Foremost being he’s read every word.

Some friends say they have, but the eye may skip over parts of it. I’m sure many people read it while the TV’s on in the background or while they’re waiting for the internet porn to download. And that’s fine.

I promise not to issue a pop quiz.

But Hagen’s read each and every one of the 46,167 words. If he skipped even a single word, a producer would yell, “Cut!” and he’d have to start that part over.

So I had about a 1,000 questions for him.

What was your favorite part? Did any of it make you cry? Were you surprised by the ending?

All these questions, of course, are patently nonsensical, as is the whole book. In fact, it makes so little sense I felt compelled to include an entire page of actual upfront reader instructions, which conclude thus:

“The book is not a mystery. There’s no surprise ending. The butler didn’t do it. You can read it backwards or forwards, either way really isn’t that important. I think the best way to explore what follows is with an open mind, a playful heart and without any ambition that any of it is ever going to make perfect sense. Sort of like life.”

I e-mailed Hagen to thank him for what I’m certain is an entertaining and professional job and to ask him if he’d have time to answer some questions.

His reply: “Thanks for getting in touch. I enjoyed your book and wish you much success with it!”

He is a busy man and doesn’t have time for chat and that bothers me not even one little bit.

I’ll hear his voice one of these days soon when I download my own book. I plan on using it as an audio club to beat musical tastes into my daughters during long car ride:

“All right, you guys decide: It’s either Bob Dylan’s “Oh Mercy” or another audio hour of ‘Use All The Crayons!’ And YOU will get quizzed. What’s it gonna be?”

It’s too bad the publisher couldn’t have persuaded Dylan to do the reading.

Imagine Dylan’s ravaged voice croaking: “No 470. Don’t complain the next time someone does or says something that throws a real monkey wrench into an already difficult situation. Instead, do something constructive and try to locate a loose monkey.”

Many of my friends have said I should do my own reading. The suggestion flatters me, but I’m sure I’d make a fairly straight-forward process a chaos.

I’d find the opportunity to really ham it up impossible to resist.

But as I aim to be a full service author/blogger, please get in touch if you’d like me to read any of it aloud to you over the phone. And for a small fee, I’ll even ride along with you in the car to the store and read selections or just talk about stuff.

I doubt you’ll get that offer from Seger. He is among the last holdouts yet to bow to Apple. He says the business model cheapens music and will lead to the ruin of artistic opportunity.

He has integrity.

I do not.

I am thrilled to get my book out there to readers by any means. There’s already ample evidence word-of-mouth grassroots promotion is leading to success.

I’m optimistic that will continue.

Even when my words are coming from Don Hagen’s mouth.

Related ...

• Turn the Page: A Bob Seger salute

• Audio rights for “Use All the Crayons?” Sold!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! A Gettysburg success

2012-11-20T13:42:00.000-05:00

(735 words)

Sitting there freezing our butts off about 300 feet from where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, I wondered if Lincoln lied.

Maybe all men aren’t created equal.

If we were, then how come I had to wait about 90 minutes in the cold to hear Steven Spielberg speak?

It eventually dawned on me that all men and women are created equal, but many of us spend the ensuing years goofing off, getting drunk, sleeping in or cutting short productive work hours so we can race home in time to watch Drew Carey announce the Showcase Showdown on “The Price is Right.”

We have our priorities.

As a filmmaker, Spielberg is without equal. It was a thrill to be among the 9,000 or so attendees at the Gettysburg Soldiers National Cemetery on Monday as part of the 149th Remembrance Day activities.

And he gave a great speech, as did historian Doris Kearns Goodwin -- and that’s a difficult compliment for me to bestow upon an avowed plagiarist.

I’m always amazed at the effect being near a celebrity has on me. As Spielberg walked out, he gave a dapper bow then spent considerable time scanning the audience.

I straightened up, put my arm around my daughter and drilled him with eye contact.

I was hoping Spielberg would notice me and think, “Now, there’s a clear-eyed young go-getter. Brings his daughter to Gettysburg! No doubt a man of substance. Probably a responsible social drinker like myself. I wonder if he’s a writer. I’m going to approach him and introduce myself.”

If the great director thought this, he didn’t act upon it.

I thought momentarily about writing the premise of my unpublished novel on a piece of paper and tossing it to him as he concluded his speech.

But it was a bit windy so I’d have had to wrap the note around a heavy rock. And me tossing a rock at Steven Spielberg during his speech would have certainly drawn security.

And by security, I’m not talking about the several thousand bayonet-armed Civil War re-creators. On each side of the stage were two severe-looking men in overcoats who looked like today’s Secret Service agents minus the eyes filled with 21st century hooker lust.

I guess maybe they were there to prevent a John Wilkes Booth re-enactor from assassinating the Abraham Lincoln re-enactor.

I’m happy to report our daddy-daughter weekend exceeded my fondest hopes and expectations. It was marvelous.

History-rich Gettysburg is one of America’s greatest small towns. It is filled with wonderful restaurants, museums, book shops and according to Josie, 12, the world’s greatest candy store. It’s “Sweeet!” at 100 Baltimore Street, home of the two-foot-long gummi earth worm.

Yum! Yum! Yum!

I think years from now I’ll look back on this weekend as the one where I succeeded in ways General Robert E. Lee did not.

Our tasks were similar. We needed to conquer a resilient combatant on foreign soil against long odds.

With Lee it was the Union army.

With me, I was trying to bond over history with a 12-year-old girl who dearly loves her mother and iCarly (in mostly that order) and spent the first morning morose at the unbidden separation.

But as our days filled with activities, she began to brighten and by the middle of a three-hour battlefield tour, the tide had turned. Our expert guide was teaching us how equestrian statuary can be used to discern the rider’s battlefield mortality when Josie asked if she could use my iPhone.

I trembled. Was she going to text call Mommy she was bored? Disperse Facebook ridicule?

No.

She wanted to take notes.

OMG!

She was so inspired by what she was learning she began taking lengthy notes to remind her of stories she will this week share with her class.

My heart swells with pride. I have forged a creative bond with her that will endure and strengthen throughout our lives.

All men are created equal; mothers and fathers are not.

Biological imperatives mean fathers of daughters are destined to be parental punchlines. The advantage will always reside with the female because in the eyes of our children, mothers suckle while dads just suck.

Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

And this Dad’s truth goes marching on.

Related . . .

• My novel done! Again!

• My work week sabotaged by distractions

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

2012-11-16T10:08:00.000-05:00

(679 words)

I’m doing something tomorrow I haven’t done in more than 20 years: I’m getting in the car and going for a long drive hoping I can get a girl to fall in love with me.

The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, even as the girl is lower than any other.

She’s my 12-year-old daughter and we’ll be consecrating our weekend together in the blood of dead heroes.

We’re going to Gettysburg. As prelude, I’m yanking her out of school today for lunch and an early screening of Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

My march to Gettysburg is every bit as important to me as Robert E. Lee’s was to him. It’s do or die.

As the country is poised on a fiscal cliff, I sense Josie and I are perched on a personal one.

I understand in a year, maybe months, she won’t be applying the brakes as she approaches the cliff. She’ll be flooring it.

It’s perfectly natural. I remember at her age being so eager to grow up -- and just because it still hasn’t happened with me doesn’t mean it might not happen with her.

She’s starting to understand the joy of camaraderie, of being with your own, of friends banding together against common enemies.

That’d be Dads.

And I’m playing my role, too.

As she’s starting to test the boundaries of her freedoms, I’m there standing guard against her going too far. Kids need that.

To mix in another military metaphor, she wants me on that wall, she needs me on that wall (DVR alert: “A Few Good Men” 20th anniversary showing, Saturday, AMC, 8 p.m.).

Many fathers of daughters I admire say the same thing. When a daughter hits about 13, she just goes away from her father who as a result of her biological and emotional changes becomes an even more alien creature next to Mommy.

They say we’re on the verge of a Civil War destined to last about five years, a little longer than the duration of what many of our Southern friends still refer to as “The War of Northern Aggression.”

A natural pacifist, I will do everything I can to avoid the inevitability of the coming storm.

That means taking my sockdologizing old mantrap of a girl on a daddy/daughter weekend to Gettysburg.

Calling a girl a “sockdologizing old mantrap” probably doesn’t sound like a term of endearment. It is with me and J-Ro.

It was a year ago when I was reading Jay Winik’s outstanding Civil War history, “April 1865: The Month That Saved America.”

Josie was watching something I deemed insufficiently worthy and told her to shut the damn TV off. I had a story I wanted to tell her.

I read to her the part where John Wilkes Booth skulked into the presidential booth at Ford’s Theater and waited for the precise moment when actor Harry Hawk calls an adversarial character a “sockdologizing old mantrap.” The insult provoked the biggest laugh of the play and Booth hoped to use the guffaws to cover the pistol’s clap.

And those were the last words Lincoln ever heard.

The story had the intended effect. Josie was mesmerized.

She became even more fascinated when I told her Lincoln died 47 years to the day before Titanic went under.

So we bond over history and when I was invited to attend Lincoln Remembrance Day festivities in Gettysburg, I seized the opportunity.

Tomorrow she and I will drive four hours, tour the battlefield, visit the museums and on Monday morning witness the 149th historical reenactment of Lincoln reading 263 of the most powerful words ever written (this is already plus-600 for those of you keeping score).

But it won’t be Lincoln and all that happened between Union and Confederate that’ll matter most to me. It’ll be all the little father and daughter moments in between. I will revel in the talks, the secrets and the togetherness of times I know she’ll never forget.

Me neither.

See, this weekend despite what we filled out on the school permission slips isn’t about studying history.

It’s about making it.

Related . . .

• Of humdingers and sockdologers

• Daughter, 4, thinks Dad works too much