Stoned

This morning I heard the Rolling Stones' "2000 Light Years From Home" (from "Their Satanic Majesties Request") for the first time in years, and was reminded by how much I disliked that album.

(Critics, then as now, were split on the album, some hailing its daring experimentation, some dismissing it as a second-rate Sgt. Pepper copy).

I fall into the latter camp.

There are, in my opinion, three glaring flaws in the album:

Unlike the Beatles' psychedelia, many of the Stones' bleeps, bloops, sweeps and flourishes sound as if they were afterthoughts, rather than being integral parts of the song.

The song writing, which strays far from the band's blues-based/swaggering hard rock roots, is weak.

Charley Watts, possessor of the best back beat in rock 'n roll, abandons his usual drumming style, which is no improvement. He's also buried in the mix.

The Stones would never seriously attempt psychedelia again and, in fact, as the hippie dream faded (with their own debacle at Altamont serving as the coda), the Stones would musically grind the peace and love era under their boot heels.

And don't get me started on "Angie," the most irritating ballad of all time.

Happy Place

Tomorrow I'll have the pleasure of my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. Held in an orthodox synagogue, the service, according to my sister, will come in right around the three hour mark.

At least, unlike the Catholic services I sometimes attend (my wife and children are Catholic), in Jewish services there's more sitting and less rising, meaning I'll have more quality thinking time to drift off mentally.

First, I'll pitch the entire final game of the World Series for the Orioles, concluding a perfect game by striking out Jeter on a nasty slider low and away. He'll flail helplessly. (Yes, my fantasies are completely cliche ridden.) At my post-game interview, I'll be modest, deflecting all compliments and opining that what matters is that we've brought the World Series trophy back to Baltimore.

Then I'll record the first quintuple double (double figures in points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocked shots) in Washington Wizards history, a sterling achievement for a 5' 6" player. For my last blocked shot, I'll slap Lebron's attempted dunk into the fourth row. The look on his face will be priceless.

Once again, I'll be modest at the post-game press conference. (I'm known for my humility in the sports world.)

Then it's on to the Super Bowl, where my defensive exploits (two interceptions run back for touchdowns, half a dozen forced fumbles, tackles so savage Tom Brady completely avoids my side of the field after the first quarter). My comment to Ray Lewis just before the start of the game will be a classic: "You just be Ray Lewis. I've got your back." He'll dismantle the parts of the offense I don't. Afterwards, we'll probably hug.

Once again, my post-game press conference will stress that the team won the game, not me.

I'm not sure what I'll think about for the second hour.

Holiday Cheer

My favorite time on the New Jersey Turnpike — and God knows there have been many — was one Sunday evening a few miles from the foot of the turnpike, when I was returning to Maryland after spending Thanksgiving with my parents. (Who have since, thankfully, moved from New Jersey to Northern Virginia.)

As is customary on holiday weekends — or almost any other day — there was a five mile back-up at the toll booths. One mile into that back-up my car died.

Completely.

I got out and began trying to push it across five lanes of traffic to the shoulder. Of course, since I was surrounded by drivers who were stuck in traffic and going nowhere, several of them were happy to leap out of their cars and help me.

Yeah, right.

Not only did every driver between the shoulder and me move up and block my way as soon as the car in front of them pulled up and gave me enough of an opening to push my car another few feet, but they honked, yelled and gave me the finger if I dared to try to push my car in front of theirs.

As if they weren't at a standstill and staring at a five-mile parking lot. I mean, how was I slowing their journey in any way, shape or form? I didn't expect sympathy, but I certainly didn't deserve hostility. (On the other hand, we ARE talking about New Jersey.)

The karma scales were way out of balance that day ... well, unless I'd done something really bad in a previous life.

I eventually got to the shoulder, no thanks to my fellow drivers, and hiked to the nearest exit (luckily not far) and called my stepbrother, an ace auto mechanic, who was living with my folks (now about 100 miles away) at the time. (This was well before cellphones.)

I hung out at a Howard Johnsons for a couple of hours until my stepbrother, Bobby, arrived. He popped the hood and found the problem in five minutes: the points (this story also predates electronic ignition) had broken into pieces inside my distributor.

Now where on a Sunday night on Thanksgiving weekend are you going to find a set of points for a 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit in a small town in southern New Jersey?

Here's where the karma scales righted themselves. For some unknown reason, I'd done a tune-up and changed the points and plugs a week before Thanksgiving, and thrown the old plugs and points in the trunk. When Bobby held up the pieces of points and wondered out loud where we'd get a replacement, I remembered I had the old, worn, but still working set in the trunk and pulled them out.

Bobby was floored, as was I. I was also embarrassed, because if I'd popped the distributor cap I would have spotted the shattered points instantly, and replaced them and been on my way hours sooner.

Still, Bobby popped in the old points and I was on my way.

And for the rest of the trip I never honked, cursed, or gave another driver the finger. Just to prove that it could be done.

Patience of Job

My two favorite job interviews — ones where I was the interviewer, not the interviewee — both involved people who didn't get the job. One, in fact, didn't even get the interview.

When I was a creative director at an ad agency once I was in charge of finding a new copywriter, and once we ran a help wanted ad the resumes came pouring in. One of the folks who looked promising had worked at an ad agency where I'd previously worked, though a couple of years after I'd been there. I called and invited her for an interview.

In she came with her portfolio — usually called a "book" in an ad agency — and she was showing her work. It was good, and she had a great attitude.

Everything was proceeding swimmingly until she turned the page to show an ad that I'd seen many times and always liked.

Partly because I'd written it.

Now, every ad in someone's book has a story: what the client's problem was, how the creative team or person came up with the idea, what the results were. I asked her what the story was behind that particular ad.

She told me a great story — much better than the real story — that had nothing to do with how and why that ad had actually been produced.

When she finished, I told her that it had just become an unlucky day for her. "Only one or two people would have known that you didn't write that ad," I told her. "Because I wrote it. At (name of agency). Two years before you worked there."

What could she say? I asked her if any of the other work in her book was someone else's, and she swore up and down that that was the only ad she'd included that wasn't hers.

I told her I was flattered that she'd included my work in her portfolio, but I was afraid she was out of the running for our job opening.

In a way it was kind of amusing, and I felt bad for her. What were the odds that she'd interview at the one agency in town that would have known that ad wasn't written by her?

The second person I remember from that process, coincidentally also a woman, was also someone who looked promising and was invited for an interview. When I called her to set the appointment, the trouble began.

She lived in Baltimore (we were in the suburbs), and she began quizzing me about the closest bus stop, and which buses stopped there. When I didn't know, she told me which buses stopped near her apartment, and asked me if any of them stopped near our office. When I told her I didn't know that, either, she demanded I find out.

Then, when I told her how far the bus stop was from our office (a couple of blocks), she made her second demand: pick her up at the stop, and drive her back to it after the interview.

I told her I wasn't going to do that, and she'd have to find her own way to the office if she wanted to come in for an interview. She insisted that that was a great hardship, and I HAD to drive her.

"If I do that and we hire you," I asked, "how will you get to work every day?"

It turned out that she thought I (or someone in the office, "like one of the secretaries") could drive her two and from the bus stop every day, though she grudgingly admitted she could possibly walk "in nice weather."

The woman we ultimately hired had her own car.

Bono Vox

Since I installed an XM radio receiver in my car a couple of years ago I rarely listen to CDs, but today I accidentally hit the CD button on my car stereo (I have a six CD changer) and I was instantly blasted by a semi-forgotten live Good Rats CD I'd downloaded and burned onto CD.

The sound quality (converted from mp3) isn't much — one notch below a good soundboard recording — but I was struck once again by what a great rock and roll voice lead singer Peppi Marchello has: like Burton Cummings of the Guess Who, if Cummings had been an angry, disillusioned Italian street punk from New York, rather than a fey Canadian popster.

Peppi, like John Lennon in his early years, just puts it out there, and throat shredding be damned. Peppi can howl and yowl like the best rockabilly front man — the Stray Cats would have killed for this voice — then roar with defiance at one of his many perceived injustices (union busting bosses and record company executives are his favorite targets).

Sadly, the Good Rats are now, and have been for years, Peppi as the only original member, often with his sons as backing musicians. The twin guitar attack and early synergy are gone, and Peppi seems bitter at his band's many decades of non stardom.

Having said that, aging gracefully is not in the rock and roll job description. Someone better tell Keith Richards.

Happily Ever After

I briefly managed — in this case, "managed" meant "hangs out with us and gets in for free and is the only one wearing something nicer than a T-shirt" — a band that picked up the occasional wedding gig.

My favorite wedding was the one where a huge fight broke out. Apparently, the family of the Italian bride and Polish groom (I might have those reversed) had, as they say, cultural differences. Someone's uncle took offense at something someone else's cousin said, words were exchange, someone grabbed someone's arm, that someone told the original someone to relinquish said arm, and well, you get the picture.

Adding to the comedy was the fact that the bride was both drop dead gorgeous and a head taller than the groom, who was far from drop dead gorgeous.

As the fight spread beyond the original two participants, the band had two crucial questions:

Should we stop playing?

Is the guy who's supposed to pay us involved in the fight?

Luckily, the guy who was paying the band was not among those who wound up being arrested. He didn't even try to negotiate a reduced price because the band hadn't played a full set.

I often wonder how that couple is doing.

My second favorite wedding — well, besides my own, which didn't involve violence of any sort — was the wedding of two friends, Ray and Teal. They had a band whose singer fancied himself quite the MC and comic, and when the bridesmaids/groomsmen walked into the reception, h introduced each couple with a flourish.

My friend Elliott Finkelstein happened to have the good fortune of walking in with a bridesmaid named Lisa Frankenfeld. The MC, who was in no danger of giving Einstein a run for his money, glanced at the list of names in his hand. "Presenting," he bellowed, "Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein!"

Elliott turned to Lisa, and in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, asked her, "When did we get married?"

When Elliott, who is almost a dead ringer for Groucho Marx, actually did get married years later (not to Lisa), he and his new wife turned around after making their vows to discover that half of the guests had donned Groucho glasses while the happy couple was facing the other way.

But that's another story. And Ray and Teal, as far as I know, are still married.

Maine Event

No doubt you’ll be fascinated to hear about our recent vacation in Maine. (Come over any time for a two-hour slide show.)

We did see an actual moose, albeit through binoculars from a distance (they’re very good at avoiding people) and ate a ton of wild blueberries. We also had some of the worst tomatoes I’ve ever had in August; couldn’t wait to get back to our garden.

On a side note, since Kodak ceased making carousel slide projectors in 2003 how do people clear the room of family and friends? With a PowerPoint presentation of their last vacation? A special effects laden horror overproduced and under edited in iMovie? And, without a movie projector, how do folks make shadow puppets? Can today’s children even make a duck or rabbit using only their hands and a bright light?

Maine, if you’ve never been there, has three industries: blueberry products, maple syrup products, and gift shops. Apparently, state law decrees that every town of more than 500 people must have a gift shop. Since every shop carries the same moose and loon themed merchandise, I’m not sure why this is. Visit the state and see if you don’t agree.

Shoot Me The Answer

You may have heard that the teachers of Harrold, Texas, a town whose school system boasts 110 students, will now be allowed to carry concealed weapons if properly certified by the state of Texas. That certification, the town's trustees assured, includes training and tests. (Teachers, or anyone else seeking a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Texas, must score at least a 70 on the test.)

The reasoning is simple: the nearest law enforcement officers is 30 minutes away, and the school district is just off a heavily travelled highway. The school system is afraid that if someone decided to exit the highway and terrorize the school, armed assistance would be half an hour away.

There's been a predictable uproar, since anything involving abortion/birth control or firearms/the Second Amendment is guaranteed to raise a ruckus. My favorite part, at least so far, was that the trustees assured parents that the teachers would use bullets designed to minimize the chances of ricochet in the halls. Oh, and the superintendent saying that the need for teachers to carry guns is "just common sense."

Not common enough, apparently, for any other school district in the country to have come up with a similar regulation.

No doubt classroom discipline will improve tremendously as will, I suspect, test scores. I know that if my teachers had been armed with something larger than a red pencil, I would have done better. Who wouldn't?

I don't think the reason is that the teachers fear the students: the one school, which houses students from kindergarten through 12th grade, reportedly has 50 teachers and staff members to watch over 110 students. I'm not sure why 110 students require 50 adults to teach them — there can't be more than one class per grade level, or 13 classes total — but apparently they do.

The real question, at least for me, is what this might do to the school district's liability insurance premiums. If I was the school's insurer, the idea that dozens of teachers and administrators are going to be walking abound with guns would make me nervous. And make me want to jack up the school's premiums.

Perhaps the teachers will institute a new school tradition of firing their guns in the air on the last day of school. After all, it is Texas.

Yee-hah!

Monster Mash

If you're ever thinking about becoming part of the world of amateur theatre, I have one word of warning for you: monsters. I'll get to that in a minute.

Back in my 20s I joined a local amateur theatre company, not because I loved acting, but because I liked the backstage stuff: set design and construction, lights, sound, special effects. I did some acting, though I was by no means God's gift to the acting world, and did some directing. But mostly I worked backstage (literally) at a particular theatre company, partnering with someone to run lights and sound. I worked on dozens of shows over an eight-year period, and, as you might imagine, I have a lot of stories about the odd characters and situations that cropped up.

Here are two:

During one show, my friend Elliott and I were backstage running the lightboard, a huge, primitive box that featured giant levers to control each channel of lights. We rented it for every show, and it took two people to carry it up the stairs to the second-floor stage. Our "sound system," a stereo receiver and two tape decks (this was awhile ago) was on a rickety table next to it.

The light/sound area was just behind the flats that made up the scenery, so with the actors only a few feet away (and the audience not much farther) the light/sound crew had to be quiet. This was normally not a problem with Elliott, since he spoke very little, but one particular performance he had a hard time keeping silent.

No doubt the wisps of smoke he noticed coming out of the lightboard had something to do with it. The wisps became more substantial, and we commenced a furious, albeit almost silent, argument. Should we tell someone? Should we stop the show? Was the thing about to catch fire? Was it just overheating? Was the smoke normal? Had either of us ever seen any smoke before? Should we err on the side of caution, since the theatre was a 100-year-old firetrap?

And the show was going so well, too.

As we gestured and hissed at each other, the smoke stopped, never to reappear. The next day we returned the lightboard to the rental company for a replacement. "Oh yeah," the guy said. "That one smokes sometimes. It's never caught on fire."

The second story began with a cache of LSD that my friend Glenn's brother-in-law left in his freezer during a visit, promising to return for it in a few weeks. Noticing that there were over 100 hits of acid in the package, Glenn was quite sure his brother-in-law wouldn't miss one.

By this time the theatre's backstage had been reconfigured, and lights and sound were in opposite corners. The lightboard was now next to a set of stairs that actors used to go between the stage and the dressing room. The sound equipment was on the other side of backstage, beside the stage manager's area. Typically, the light operator was alone.

One night, just before show time, Glenn apparently dropped a hit of acid and then came to the theatre, ready to run the lights (I was running sound). The show had very few light cues, so it was boring for the light guy, but tons of sound cues. I was busy, Glenn wasn't.

Midway through the second act, cuing up a sound effect with headphones and peering at the script for my next cue, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around to be confronted by Glenn, his face contorted by fear.

"Monsters," he whispered a little too loudly. "There are monsters coming up the stairs."

I looked at him. Even in the dark of backstage I could see his eyes. They were almost whirling like pinwheels. Yes, the LSD had kicked in big time.

Knowing Glenn had no light cues for awhile and, in a pinch, I could run both lights and sound for the rest of the act, I told him to sit tight until I played my next sound cue, and then I'd help him. He stood stiff as a board until I could take off my headphones and gently guide him back to the lightboard.

There didn't appear to be any monsters.

Glenn insisted the monsters were coming up the stairs from the dressing room. I hadn't recalled seeing any monsters in the dressing room — just actors — and I was at a loss until I had a thought: "Glenn, what do monsters that creep around in the dark fear the most?" "Uhh, I don't know." "Light, Glenn, light. They're scared of light and they run away." "Yeah, okay, I guess so."

I gave him my flashlight and told him to be ready to flick it on any time he saw anything coming up the stairs. "Make sure you flick it right at them," I told him, hoping that the audience wouldn't notice the flashes of light from backstage.

That seemed to satisfy Glenn, and the rest of the show passed without incident. After the show, a couple of cast members were asking Glenn why he'd shined his flashlight at them every time they came up the stairs from the dressing room to get ready to go onstage.

Glenn stared at them blankly. "Monsters," I helpfully explained. "Glenn was keeping the monsters away."

It must have worked. There hasn't been a monster since.

Land of Lincoln

I had the pleasure of reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," and while the first 100-150 pages were tough sledding (at least for me) and the book comes dangerously close to becoming hagiography, in general it kicked ass. I was sorry to see it end.

Seeing how Lincoln elevated the office of the presidency made me think about how much the current occupant of the White House and his recent predecessors have diminished it. Bush, the frat boy Cheney puppet; Clinton, the philanderer (who even with a Democratic majority in Congress wasted much of his presidency and could have accomplished so much more); Bush the Elder, who had no idea what to do with the position once he achieved it; Reagan, who slept through most of his presidency (talk about plausible deniability!) and committed the unpardonable sin of Bitburg, for which he should never be forgiven; Carter who more than lived up to the words of Golda Meir (she was speaking of someone else, and there are some who attribute the quote to Mark Twain), who said, "Don't be so modest. You're not that great."; Ford, whose sole claim to fame appeared to be that he was a nice, and not scandal tainted, guy; and Nixon, who would have bombed his own people (and certainly bombed the Constitution) if Kissinger had told him to.

Small men all, who made the office of the presidency smaller with their pathetic attempts to fill it.

Another Lincoln would be nice. I'd even settle for another Harry Truman.