No Love For Christmas

I was reminded on Christmas Eve that I'm not an attractive woman.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and I was at Petco picking up some stuff for our guinea pig. There was a line of several people, and one cashier. I was second in line, and a very attractive woman was ahead of me. The cashier, a slightly nerdy looking guy, called for the next person, and the attractive woman went to the cash register.

He began flirting with her immediately, commenting on the things she was buying (dog toys: "Some four-legged friend is going to have a great Christmas!"). He asked if she had a Petco preferred customer card, and when she said she didn't he extolled the virtues of it, then produced an application and began filling it out for her. Meanwhile, the line of people waiting to check out grew longer, and some began shifting impatiently on the feet back and forth.

Meanwhile, Mr. I've Got A Shot At This Good Looking Woman Because I Work At Petco was commenting on her address ("I've heard that's a nice neighborhood. I've always wanted to see what some of those houses look like on the inside."), her total expenditure ("You must be a very generous person.") and her outfit ("Did you make that scarf?") Finally he finished with her, and paused for a moment with a cheery look as she left. Then he looked up and saw me.

"Next person in line," he barked. "Leave the Timothy Hay in the cart," he commanded. "I'm highly allergic." (And you work in a pet store?)

My brief transaction was nothing like the preceding one:

"Do you have a Petco card?" "No." "Okay."

No offer to fill out an application for me, no comments about my merchandise or my outfit, no hinting about wanting to visit my neighborhood (he'd checked my ID when I used a charge card).

As I left the store I glanced back at him. No dreamy, wistful look at my departure, either.

At least our guinea pig was appreciative.

Charlie Says

I'm working my way through John Harvey's Charlie Resnick series, and I have to say that Harvey is a masterful writer. (I read a review of his most recent, and I believe last, in the series, and read it. It was so good I had to go the library and get the first 14 in the series.)

Theoretically these are mysteries, more precisely police procedurals. But they're really more like novels with a mystery woven in. The characters, particularly the jazz loving, sandwich eating, cat owning, slightly overweight Resnick, are lovingly drawn and very three dimensional.

I was initially drawn to the series because his most recent book takes its title from a Billie Holiday tune, a theme that runs throughout the book. Resnick listens to a lot of jazz, particularly early bop and from the period just before bop, and has cats named after Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Pepper Adams and Miles Davis (I'm sure if he acquires a fifth he'll name it after Charlie Parker). He slogs his way through the human scum of an unnamed English city in the midlands (it's Notttingham), fighting a losing battle and occasionally wondering why.

Many of the other characters — most appear in more than one book — are equally three dimensional, and the series will tell most Americans more about a certain segment of English life than most of us would otherwise ever know. (There are, as it turns out, many things one can do with a sausage besides eat it for breakfast.)

These aren't slam bam page turners — long stretches go by with little action — but they're riveting just the same. Try one and see what you think.

Love For Sale

I've now heard a good chunk of the Beatles "Love," the remix album by the son of the original Beatles producer, and it completely lives up to my expectations.

Which is to say, it's dreadful.

The concept is this: Giles Martin, son of George Martin, remixed, sliced, diced and mashed up a whole bunch of Beatles tunes for a Cirque de Soleil Las Vegas show. He assembled new medleys, slapped the guitar solo from one song into the break of another, swapped drum breaks and, no doubt, spent hundreds of hurs in the studio using all of the digital horsepower at his disposal.

The result, in my opinion, is like the old Stars on 45 records, where several current hits would be strung together using a cheesy disco beat.

I'm not a purist by any means, but this is no improvement.

Some People

One of my shining moments in public relations — I don't do a lot of PR, and I typically do it for clients who are already using me for advertising work — was when a press release I wrote landed a client on the front page of the Washington Post. A glowing story. On a Sunday.

The client was a new medical spa, a concept that was big in Europe and L.A., but was just making it to the Washington area. (A medical spa is like a typical day spa, offering hair, nail and skin care, but with the addition of an on-staff physician who offers Botox injections and outpatient plastic surgery.)

The Post's consumer reporter was intrigued by this new trend, and did a very positive story which ran, as I said, on the front page of the Washington Post, by far the paper's biggest day for circulation. The story featured our client prominently, and included two photos taken inside the spa.

That Monday morning, everyone involved in the project was beside themselves with excitement. I figured the client would send over a case of champagne and ofer to wash my car for the rest of the year.

I was wrong.

The client called bitching about the photos (two, remember) that the Post had run, because "they didn't show the people I wanted them to show, and I told the photographer what to photograph."

The audacity of the Post, allowing their photographer to shoot what HE thought was a good photo.

The account executive was floored, and blurted out something a little earthier than he should have: "Are you kidding me? Every client we have would give their left nut for a story on the front page of the Sunday Post."

The client whined about the photos a bit more, and then hung up. I was as deflated as could be.

Apparently, there really are some people who can't be satisfied.

That client is now out of business. I think the moral of the story is obvious.

Cranks And Coffee Tables

At the moment I'm reading a coffee table book about a long disbanded punk band while listening to a sardonic curmudgeon indict many of the events of the past few years.

I don't know which one I'm enjoying more.

The book is titled, quite simply, "The Clash," and although I'm not sure whether a punk band, ground breaking s it might have been, should be immortalized in a coffee table book, the book is terrific. Too big and heavy to hold and read for long, I've worked my way through it in bits and pieces. Because of the size the photos are both numerous and well showcased, but the text tells the story of a populist band that stretched the boundaries of British punk (notably by adding dub and reggae to the mix) quite well.

Oddly, although the book paints a detailed picture of the band's finances and living conditions during the early days of economic struggle, it's completely mum on life A.D. (After Dollars). Guess the mention of filthy lucre (a Sex Pistols phrase) would sully the purity of the bands ethos. Or something.

Still, rock 'n roll has always been about making money, and I don't begrudge bands for wanting to make a living. And if any punk band deserved a coffee table book, I'd have to say that the Clash and the Ramones would be the only two.

Meanwhile, the CD player is spinning Randy Newman's latest, Harps and Angels. Newman's dry wit has long been misunderstood, but the man is searingly funny. Who else would talk about "tight-assed Italians" on the Supreme Court? In fact, who else could work the Supreme Court, Pluto, Hitler, Stalin, George W. Bush (though not by name), FDR (also not by name), malaria, terrorism and Caesar's horse into one song? Not even Dylan.

Like all of his other albums, no one will buy this one, either. You don't know what you're missing.

Bless You

My in-laws were very traditional, and so when my wife-to-be (Sarah) and I got engaged, we went to visit her parents to ask for their blessing.

Because they were Catholic and I wasn't (and remain not), I knew what their only question was going to be: Would we baptize and raise our children Catholic?

That, is it turned out, was not the only question, though it was the only question for which I'd prepared an answer.

We visited my in-laws on a Sunday, and I'm sure they knew why we were visiting, since we'd just been there a week before (they lived about 45 minutes from us). We sat around their table, and I started talking. Nobody else said a word, so I kept talking.

They stared. I talked. I talked about how I felt about Sarah, the life we'd talked about having together, our plans, everything. Finally, I'd run out of things to say.

My future mother-in-law asked the children-Catholic question, and I was ready: when that fat pitch came over the plate, I knocked it out of the park. I thought I was home free.

Then Sarah;s father, a retired Air Force colonel who had his gruff side, surprised me.

"Will you," he asked with a slight bit of darkness in his voice, "support her in the style to which she's become accustomed?" Then he thought about her teacher's salary. "Actually," he added, "would you do a little better than that?"

I assured him I would do my best. So far, so good.

(As an aside, when Sarah's older sister got engaged her fiancee was so nervous when visiting my in-laws to seek my father-in-law's blessing that he followed my father-in-law into the bathroom. My father-in-law told him that if he waited outside they could converse in a moment, but there was more pressing business at hand.)

Sales Job

My current job search reminded me of a phone call I once received from a headhunter — sorry, executive search firm — pitching a creative director position at an ad agency in Kansas. (I'm an advertising writer and magazine/newspaper editor). I don't remember how he got my name, but from the moment I said hello he was pitching the position vigorously. The agency was great, he said, the work was strong, the atmosphere was friendly and the community was wonderful. I'd be challenged, I'd grow professionally, my family would love the community.

At one point I broke into his conversational stream to ask what the salary was. He kept talking as if I hadn't interrupted him. I asked again, and he ignored again. And again.

Finally, he'd run out of glowing things to say about the agency, the community, the cleanliness of the air, the four seasons of recreational opportunities, the good schools and non existent traffic. It appeared to be heaven without the wings and harps. Once again I asked about the salary.

He paused. "You do realize," he said, his voice deepening and becoming serious, as if he was about to share a closely held, valuable secret with me, "that the cost of living is much lower in Kansas?"

My reply: "Are you asking me to take a pay cut to move to Kansas?"

He danced around my question, but the answer was yes.

Now, I have nothing against Kansas. But to ask my wife to give up her career here, ask our children to give up their schools and friends and everything familiar to them, uproot ourselves and move would have to be for the job of a lifetime. Granted, we might be able to get a much nicer house for much less money, but food, cars and gas would still cost the same, and retirement would still require roughly the same amount of money.

I turned him down and, for the first time, he dropped his salesman persona and became himself. "Damn," he said. "I can't get anyone interested in this job."

Apparently, I was not his first choice.

Loco Motive

Sadly, I'm now at a stage in life where I can pay professional movers to do the sweating and hauling, but that wasn't always the case. More than once, a friend has dangled the offer of free beer and pizza in return for helping him/her "move a couple of things."

We've eased heavy sofas out living room windows, stuffed giant dressers into non giant cars, and done things for pizza and beer that no professional would do for money. My favorite move, I think, was when our friends Kirk and Mary moved into a third floor apartment in Ellicott City.

Ellicott City, Maryland, is an old mill town, with narrow streets, narrower homes and not enough parking. Kirk and Mary's new apartment was above a store, with only one impossibly narrow and rickety set of stairs leading up to it. There was no way to fit any of their furniture up those stairs.

The only way to move their furniture was to park across the street, carry it across a railroad trestle bridge and behind their apartment, then bring it in through the back door. The trestle, like everything else in town, was narrow, barely wider than the train tracks it supported.

As we parked out cars near the trestle and began to unload the furniture we realized the error of our ways: no one had checked to see when trains might roar across those tracks. If a train came while we were in the middle of the trestle, there was no place to go. The only option would have been to leap to the street below, probably suffering a broken leg in the process.

We shuffled our feet uncertainly and looked at each other. Would one of us be macho and stupid enough to say "hell with it" and grab the end of a sofa to begin? Would the rest of us bow to peer pressure and do the same?

The answers were "yes" and "yes." We each grabbed ends of sofas, tables, beds and dressers, and began hustling them across the street. Since we didn't even know from which direction the trains might come, we peered over each other's shoulders while straining our ears for the sound of a train whistle.

It was the fastest move I've ever been a part of. Kirk and Mary were impressed and thankful. "Beer and pizza doesn't seem like enough to repay you," Kirk said to us.

Maybe so. But it was all we got. When Kirk and Mary moved out of that apartment a couple of years later, we had him check the train schedules before we arrived.

Ups And Downs

Apparently it's Lackluster Books Month, because I just finished another. As usual, I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but the opposite occurred.

The book was Coronado by Dennis Lehane, a collection of five short stories and a play based on one of those stories. I've read several of his mystery novels, and enjoyed them: the writing is taut, the plots believable and fast moving, the characters fully three dimensional.

Coronado is none of those: characters and situations that defy belief, stilted dialogue and a play that was somehow produced at least twice (although the first time was by a theatre company that counts his brother among its members).

The play, which is the last piece, is based on one of the preceding stories. It somehow manages the trick of being both longer and less substantial than the story on which it is based.

Very disappointing.

On the flip side, I just picked up to solo-ish albums by Terry Adams, the sometimes brilliant, often idiosyncratic, keyboardist and co-founder of NRBQ. Only Adams would have the chops to tackle (and very well, I might add) a Monk tune and follow it with a tune that offers his dream of a perfect woman: one who loves the Three Stooges. I say solo-ish because one is a duet with guitarist Steve Ferguson.

Adams, who might be the American equivalent of lovable English eccentric Robyn Hitchcock, includes in the liner notes to "Rhythm Spell" a brief poem about pants, which is worth repeating:

Every morning I put on my pants

Go out there and take a chance.

Every night I take a chance,

Go in there and take off my pants.

Oh, and he promises "if you come see me I'll play extra good for you."

I've seen him half a dozen times. And he has, every time.

Tail Tales

I'm mostly a dog lover, though I don't mind cats. Actually, I like all pets, though some — fish, for example — don't lead to deep relationships. We have a black lab who might be the best dog I've ever had.

But they haven't all been great. We had a beagle who was as cute and lovable as could be, but dumb as a rock. Whenever he escaped out the door (which was often) he would take himself on his normal walk route, because that was the only place he knew. When he dashed out the door and started on his route I'd walk it in the opposite direction, and catch him somewhere in the middle. He was always surprised.

I had an afghan hound, a mangy looking thing, who was a dead ringer for Cloris Leachman, the actress, and was, in fact, named Cloris. Whenever I'd take her for a walk people would stop me to excitedly say, "Do you know who your dog looks like?" Why, yes, I do.

My parents had a great dane named Duke who tipped the scales at about 160 pounds, closer to a pony than a dog. They never locked their door during the years that they had him, because no one in their right mind was going to break into that house. Once he escaped and was hit by a car. The driver jumped out of his car (it was a Toyota) to see if Duke was all right. Not only was Duke all right, but he was pissed, and leapt for the guy. Luckily, the guy got back into his car and slammed the door before Duke could get him. Not only was my stepfather the only person to whom Duke would listen, but he (Duke, not my stepfather) had a problem with flatulence. I wasn't that sad when he died.

But the worst dog, by far, was one we got from the pound a week or so before my borthday and only kept a few weeks. a mixed breed who was mostly German Shepherd, she was good natured, but very high strung. We thought that our relatively calm home might help her.

We named her Pinky, though I can't remember why. The week we had her prior to my birthday passed uneventfully.

Now, one my favorite parts of my birthday was the chocolate cake with rich chocolate icing that my mother would bake me. (My mother was an outstanding baker and cook.)

The morning of my birthday she baked and frosted the cake, and set it on the kitchen counter, where it sat undisturbed. For awhile.

I got home from school and rushed into the kitchen for an after school snack and a peek at my cake. Or what, as it turned out, was half a cake. Half the cake was gone, and the remaining part had bites that were suspiciously dog shaped around the edges.

It had to be Pinky. But where was she? I angrily yelled her name as I ran through the house looking for her.

I found her, cowering in my bedroom, afraid she was going to be punished. I also found the missing half cake.

Pinky had thrown it up. On my bed.

I was beyond furious. My mother threw out the rest of the cake, and my birthday was cake free that year. My cake was gone and, shortly thereafter, so was Pinky.

Man's best friend? Not on man's birthday.

Spin Cycle

I was once the unwitting victim of a lonely, hopeful, carnival ride operator. My stomach will never be the same.

In the town where I spent most of my childhood, the carnival's annual arrival was the high point of every summer. The rides and attractions would set up in a dusty field on the outskirts of our small town (approximately 15,000 people), and everyone would spend at least one evening (and generally more) winning stuffed animals, tilting and whirling on rides and eating greasy, fried, sugary foods.

It was always one of the best weeks of the year. I had every reason to believe that the summer I was 16 would be no different.

At the time I had a girlfriend named Barbara. The evening we decided to go to the carnival she asked if her friend, Beryl, could tag along. Beryl wasn't much for rides, but she was visiting Barbara from out of town that weekend, and really had nothing else to do. So of we went as a trio.

After the girls insisted on some carnival food, we hit our first ride: the octopus-like creation (I can't recall the name) where riders tilt, whirl and spin. Barbara and I squeezed into one of the cars, while Beryl declined. The operator pushed a button and off we went.

Beryl, bored with just watching us ride, began chatting with the ride operator, who was only a few years older than us and, as it turned out, still filled with teenage hormones. Sensing that he had a chance to get to now Beryl more intimately, he began flirting madly with her.

As we spun and swooped he told Beryl he had a private spot (his trailer — classy guy) and a break coming up, if she wanted to try a ride of a different sort. Beryl, too polite and non assertive to turn him down, kept talking to him. Emboldened by the fact that she hadn't said no (even though she also hadn't said yes), he kept talking to her. Once she mentioned that she was waiting for her friends (us) to get off the ride, our fates were sealed.

There was no way he was going to let us off that ride until Beryl agreed to join him in his trailer. So, as Beryl continued to not refuse his advances, Barbara and I rode the ride. And rode. And rode.

Finally there was too much of a line for the guy to continue letting us ride, even though he hadn't come any closer to his goal with Beryl. Reluctantly, he pushed the stop button and we slowed to a stop.

Barbara and I staggered off to the nearest bushes and promptly threw up. Beryl, sweet innocent that she was, filled us in on why we'd received such great value for our ride dollar.

Our comments didn't include much gratitude, I'm afraid, and the relationship between Barbara and Beryl was frosty for awhile.

And I haven't been on that carnival ride since.

In-laws

My in-laws, for the most part, made me feel welcome and part of the family from day one. But that's not to say that all of them did.

When my wife and I were dating she waited until the relationship was solid — in fact, until we got engaged — to introduce me to her Aunt Hody. I'd been warned about Aunt Hody's attitude and nastiness by every other in-law, so I thought I knew what to expect.

In her 80s, confined to a bed in a nursing home by a broken hip, Hody has lost much of her hearing and eyesight, and even the ability to feed herself. But her tongue was as sharp as ever.

After greeting her, my wife-to-be introduced me: "Hody, this is my fiance, David." Hody's greeting: "Are you cross-eyed?"

My wife-to-be was horrified. "Hody, does he look cross-eyed?" she sputtered, unsure of what to say. "Yes, he does," was the reply.

I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. If I was cross-eyed, Hody was certainly the first person who'd mentioned it.

The second incident happened during the first Christmas dinner with my future in-laws. Knowing that cherry pie was (and is) my favorite dessert, my (sadly now, late) future mother-in-law had made a cherry pie as one of the desserts. My future father-in-law, a sometimes gruff sort (retired Air Force colonel) also loved cherry pie. We each had a slice.

After dinner he and I were the only ones left at the table, finishing our coffee, as everyone else drifted out of the room. My future mother-in-law came into the dining room, noticed there was one slice of cherry pie left, and asked me if I'd like it. Before I could reply, my father-in-law answered for me: "He doesn't want it."

I guess I didn't.

Car talk

A few years ago, I inadvertently hit upon a brilliant car buying strategy. It's yours if you can use it.

I walked into the nearest Honda dealership one cool, drizzly, weekday evening, with no appointment. I had some spare time and I wanted to look at a new Civic Si.

When I walked in a woman at a desk near the door asked me if I had an appointment with a salesperson. I asked her if I could use the bathroom before I talked to anybody. She gave me directions to the bathroom, which was down the back hallway behind the showroom.

Now car dealerships, like other sales organizations, generally have a sales chart outside the sales manager's door showing how each salesperson is doing that month. I happened to pass that sales chart on my way to and from the bathroom.

Although it was almost the end of the month, one salesperson had only sold two cars, while all of the others had sold at least 10. I looked at the name of the laggard, and had an idea.

I walked back to the front desk, and told the woman I had an appointment with ... I had to guess at the gender, since the sales chart had only listed last names — Mr. Jackson. Luck was with me, because he was a Mr. and he was working that night. "Hi, Mr. Jackson," I said. I introduced myself. "I called you earlier about the Civic Si." I stuck out my hand and he shook it. "Oh, yes," he said, remembering the call I, of course, had never made. After being unable to find the information he was sure he'd taken down during our phone call, he apologetically asked for my personal information again and off we went for a test drive.

I really liked the car and wanted it, so we went back to his desk to negotiate. Although this was pre-Internet I had a pretty good idea of what the invoice amount was on that car. His first offer was $200 under sticker. My first offer was what I thought was invoice, a good $1,000+ less than his offer. He grimaced slightly, and trotted off to the sales manager, no doubt hoping for his third sale of the month.

"Good news!" he exulted when he returned, showing me the number his sales manager had authorized: another $200 off sticker. "I'm very sorry," I said, rising and shaking his hand. "I think I need to look somewhere else." I turned and starting walking towards the door.

I made it six steps. "Wait," he pleaded. "Let me talk to the sales manager again. I think I can get you your price if I tell him you're a serious buyer. You are a serious buyer, aren't you?" I assured him I was, and he disappeared.

I sat in his cubicle for a long time, imaging the conversation. "Please, Mike, I've only sold two cars this month. This guy is serious." "I can't go this low." "Come on, it's only three days 'til the end of the month, and I'm hurting." "I don't know."

Finally he came back, with my offer approved. Because it was late, we agreed that he'd prep the car the next morning, and I told him I'd be in after work to pick it up, which I was.

When I came back and sat with him and the finance guy to complete the paperwork that next morning, I overheard a couple in the next cubicle agreeing to pay $400 more for a Civic that was one model down from mine. I felt pretty good.

I notice that in the dealership where I bought my most recent car (a Subaru) the sales chart is nowhere near the bathrooms. Maybe they're getting smarter at the dealerships.

Name Game

The name of this blog grew out of an odd period in my life which was the basis of a philosophy which remains the cornerstone of my world view to this day. (In fact, "Yikes" has been my license plate for 25 years.)

When my first wife an I separated, I moved into an apartment in a big old house in Catonsville, Maryland. Catonsville, with roots in the early days of the railroad, has a number of big, old houses that were once the homes of railroad executives, and have now been broken up into apartments. The building had eight apartments, I think, and it was magnificent: 10 foot ceilings, (non working) Italian marble fireplaces, beautiful woodwork. It was drafty and expensive to heat, but it was lovely if you didn't have to pay for it.

It was also filled with the most bizarre collection of characters I'd ever met.

The landlords were a man and woman who were heavily into est — look it up — and were constantly trying to get all of us to go to a free introductory seminar. I eventually went to one, which was another story. Bill, the male half of the duo, was completely incompetent when it came to repairing anything in the house, often turning minor problems into major ones. He never did get the heat working correctly, so we alternately froze or roasted. The female half of the duo swung both ways, I think, because she was always visiting the lesbians' apartment (more on that in a minute).

The other inhabitants of the house included:

 a woman who tended bar in a topless bar (she invited me to come down for a free drink, but I decided I couldn't see her topless and then pass her in the hallway), 

a guy who made his living playing the horses (and did pretty well), 

a guy who played violin in a string quartet in the U.S. Army (they played a lot of fancy generals' balls and events like that) and was stoned every waking moment (he was amused that the generals had no idea), 

a woman who filled her Volvo station wagon with everything she owned and left her husband and children to find herself (she ended up in bed with every male in the house at one time or another, except for me — I declined — including my oldest stepbrother when he came to visit me once),

a musician who played trombone in a jazz band and bass in a punk band, was superb in both, but definitely tended toward the dress and lifestyle of the punk side, rather than the jazz side,

two lesbians who used to have screaming, throw things at each other, battles at least once a week,

and Bill, one of the only two fairly normal people in the house (I count myself as the other one).

The house was semi-communal, in that many folks kept their doors propped open and sometimes people would wander in and out of each other's apartment, generally when looking for the occupant.

One day Bill and I were walking up the stairs from my second floor apartment to his third floor place. His apartment was at the end of a hallway, with the lesbians' apartment next to his. As we approached their open door we heard yelling. Just as we were bout to pass their door, a teacup came flying out the door to smash against the opposite wall, missing us by inches. As we paused to make sure no other missiles were about to be launched, the saucer followed it.

Bill turned to me and shook his head. "Yikes" was all he said.

I decided there were too many things in life that all you could do is shake your head and say,

"Yikes," and that's been my philosophy ever since.

Just before I moved out of that house I took a play-writing class, and decided to write about some of the people and incidents that took place while I was living there. I handed in my play, and proudly waited for what I was sure would be the professor's glowing praise.

"Is this farce?" he asked me. "No, it's my life," I replied. I got a B. His criticism: "often humorous, but not believable."

Furry Friend

If your office holiday parties are boring, do what I do: rent a gorilla suit.

Several years ago I worked for a company that was bought by a competitor. The first holiday party after the acquisition was deadly dull: everyone clustered with their immediate co-workers and talked shop. No one from any department talked to anyone from any other department. No one from the new company talked to anyone from the old company. The venue was fancy, the food was great, the party was boring.

The following year the company hadn't lost any of its cliquishness. The holiday party had every indication of being another deadly dull affair. Someone, I thought, had to do something to liven up the party. I nominated myself.

At the best costume shop in town I rented a gorilla costume — not some cheap kid's Halloween costume, but an expensive, authentic model. From what little I could see through the eye holes when I tried it on at home, I looked smashing.

Wiggling into the costume in my car outside the party was no easy task. But once inside it was worth it.

Heads turned. People laughed. The entire atmosphere of the party (100+ people) changed.

Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on the fact that the head allowed me no peripheral vision whatsoever. I could barely see right in front of me, let alone to the sides. I'd turn to the side and knock a tray out of a passing server's hands. I knocked over a couple of chairs and a couple of people. The more I moved, the more chaos I created. Servers were making wide paths to avoid me as they carried trays of drinks and finger food. I started to sweat, and not just because I was covered in fur.

Meanwhile, no one knew who was inside the costume. Not having much of a reputation as a jokester at the company, everyone who spoke to me guessed I was someone else. It was only my anonymity, I thought, that was protecting me from getting fired. But I was there, the damage was done, and I thought I'd see how it all played out.

A couple of hours into the party the president of the company, a very serious man who hadn't said 10 words to me in the year and half I'd worked for him, came up to me. He asked me to take off my gorilla head so he could talk to me.

"How much did this costume cost you?" he asked me. I told him. "Put it on your expense account. This is the best holiday party we've ever had."

I bet the servers didn't think so.

In (my) heaven there is no beer

I don't mean for this to turn into Kids Say The Darndest Things, but I was reminded yesterday of one of the many times out oldest, Madeline, publicly embarrassed me (a great talent of hers).

We were visiting my in-laws at a timeshare in Naples, Florida, back in the days when they were alive and spent every winter in Florida. One day I took Madeline, then bout two years old, to the grocery store. In Florida, as in many other places (but not most of Maryland), beer and wine are sold in the grocery stores. I drink very little, and a six-pack of beer could, at the time, last me for two weeks. Still, it was a warm week, and when I passed the beer coolers it seemed like a good idea. I was getting a little tired of orange juice.

The store was quiet, with only one cash register open and one older (of course) couple in line when Madeline and I, she in the cart, approached the checkout line. I put my groceries, including a six-pack of beer, on the conveyor belt. No one was paying me any attention.

Madeline saw the beer and spoke up. "I like beer," she chirped brightly. The couple behind us, who'd been quietly talking to each other, stopped in mid sentence.

"Madeline," I said, as lightly as I could, "you've never had beer."

"Yes I have!"

"You don't even know what beer is," I said, this time a little more forcefully.

The older couple had turned to look at me. So had the cashier. I didn't get the sense that they were considering nominating me for the Father of The Year award.

"Madeline, you know you've never had beer. You have no idea what it tastes like."

"Yes I do!" Her honor impugned, Madeline was getting louder. The more I doubted her, the firmer she became.

The older couple fumbled for their money and one of them paid the cashier. The cashier, transfixed by the scene, fumbled the change, but eventually recovered and processed the money.

She began ringing up our groceries. I was afraid to say a word, and even more afraid of what words Madeline might say. Luckily, we finished without further comments on Madeline's part, and I fled the store with Madeline.

The beer wasn't quite as refreshing as I thought.

Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

I'm reading a new biography of Cheech and Chong, by Tommy Chong, which is odd in more ways than one (the book, not that I'm reading it).

First, although it purports to be about both members of the original stoner comedy team, Chong wrote it without Cheech Marin's input while the two weren't talking (they've since reconciled and are, I believe, touring again).

Second, although I'm only about halfway through, the book is poorly written: it meanders, repeats itself, skips large chunks of time and then backtracks, almost as if the author was ...

Nah, couldn't be.

Little Pisser

Should you ever have children, or if you have a baby or two in the house, here's my advice: keep a close eye on your coffee. Especially if you have a boy. Especially especially if you're suffering from extreme sleep deprivation.

When our son, Adam, was born, he was our second child, following his sister by 19 months. We were sure that with all of our baby memories so fresh there would be no surprises with Adam.

There was one.

We had a changing table in his room and early one morning my wife, Sarah, had him on the table and was changing his diaper. He was, at only a couple of weeks old, significantly smaller than the table top, so Sarah had plenty of room for both Adam and her cup of coffee on the table. It was safely out of the way of his feet, so no worries about spilling.

Spilling, as it turned out, wasn't the danger.

If you've ever changed an infant boy's diaper, you probably know what Sarah learned that morning: when cool air hits that boy's penis, he's going to pee. In Adam's case, it was a perfect arc that landed dead center in her coffee cup.

Luckily she saw it, though at first she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Adam looked proud and, given his aim, he had every right to be.

Sadly, when we were potty training him his aim didn't turn out to be quite as good. Then again, he wasn't aiming for a coffee cup.

That's Rich

I was checking On Demand the other night (love FiOS) and stumbled across this odd show, apparently either the first of a series or a promo for the series, called All U Need Is Love, put together by Tony Parker. A quick Internet search turned up no information, and I don't know a thing about it, but some of the clips of upcoming shows were hilarious.

The clips ping ponged dizzily from B. B. King to Cream to Edith Piaf — Edith Piaf? — with both interviews and live performances. My favorite clip was an interview with Buddy Rich, the master of pyrotechnic jazz drumming. Rich, who disdained most rock drummers, comes out swinging in his interview, and I mean swinging in the boxing, not the jazz, sense. "They hold their sticks wrong!" he thunders about rock percussionists. He demonstrated, holding his drumsticks like two flags, and showing all of the things a drummer can't do when holding his sticks that way.

He flipped his sticks to hold them "correctly" unleashed a typical volcanic solo, and then sat back, with just the hint of a smile flickering across his face.

A few clips later the show cut to Cream's drummer, Ginger Baker, a strong contender for the most ham handed drummer in rock. Baker was, as Rich noted, holding his sticks the wrong way. Sure enough, he attempted a couple of the moves Rich said couldn't be done when holding the sticks incorrectly ... and couldn't do them.

Rich was, at least when I saw him, somewhat prickly, and known for being less than pleasant to those he considered lesser musicians. Still, it's not bragging if you can back it up (a quote credited to both Muhammad Ali and Dizzy Dean, two names you rarely see in the same sentence), and Rich could back it up.

Or two paraphrase, "if you listen to only one drum solo this year, make it Buddy Rich."

Tris

This post will be neither humorous or music related, so it's a bit of an anomaly for me. I was thinking today about graphic designers/art directors; I've met many and worked with and managed several.

The finest art director I ever had the privilege to work with, and someone whom I still think was one of the best advertising art directors in the Baltimore-Washington area, was the late Tris Johnson.

Tris graduated from the Rocky Mountain School of Art + Design, where he was a gifted sculptor, primarily working in bronze. He apparently blew everyone away at the annual student art show in his freshman and sophomore years, to the point where he was asked not to compete during his junior year, so someone else would have a chance.

Unlike most artists, Tris saw no difference between commercial art and fine art. To him, your job was to communicate something, and the only difference was the medium and the tools. He won many advertising awards for his work, and deservedly so.

For reasons I won't get into, Tris and I saw many, many designers and writers and their portfolios. For the three years we worked together, I'm sure we saw at least one person most weeks, even if we didn't have a job opening, because we liked seeing who was around and what they were doing. For Tris, who valued substance over style, the worst criticism of any graphic designer was this: page decorator.

"Tris, what'd you think of that guy?" I'd ask after we'd reviewed someone's portfolio.

"Page decorator."

"Didn't like his work, did you?"

"No. Good typography, though."

To this day, when I look at beautiful, empty work, I think of Tris' two-word dismissal.

Tris was a large man, 6' 5", holder of a Bronze Star from his tour of Vietnam. He rarely spoke and was, in fact, rather shy. Given his size and silence, most folks were intimidated by him. I, a foot shorter and ten times more gregarious, got along with him famously.

We worked together in a very high pressure, high volume ad agency. Freelancers who worked with us couldn't believe the volume of work we sent out the door. It was quality work, too: the first year I was there we won eight ADDYs, finishing second only to an agency 15 times our size in that year's competition.

The agency owner would bring in an impossible project with an insane deadline, and I'd look at Tris.

"Tris, we're screwed."

"I know."

"Are we gonna dodge the bullet this time?"

"Yeah."

And we always did.

Now I'm a writer, and not a designer. But I try to never be the writing equivalent of a page decorator.

Your Witness

Today I got an unexpected letter: handwritten, in the type of handwriting that made me think the sender was older, from someone I've never met who lives about 10 or 15 miles from here. It was a letter exhorting me to become a Jehovah's Witness, and inviting me to a church. The sender, a woman (according to her signature), helpfully enclosed a tract about the serenity that awaited me if I became a Jehovah's Witness, and the eternal damnation that was my future if I didn't.

Although I support some of the group's pacifist beliefs, and applaud the many contributions they've made to civil liberties in this country — the First Amendment would be a mere shell if not for many of the Witness' historic court cases — I think I'm going to pass.

As an advertising writer who's written many direct response campaigns, I wonder how successful this one will be. The rule of thumb for the success of a direct mail campaign is this:

50% of the success or failure of a direct mail campaign can be attributed to the mailing list

30% depends on the offer being made

20% hinges on the design and writing

Granted, study after study shows that a personalized, hand written letter gets much higher results, so we can assume that last 20% is taken care of. The offer — eternal salvation — seems pretty strong. (Certainly stronger than the other piece of direct mail I received today, which was a buy one, get one free offer on a Big Mac.)

But I think the mailing list — Jews who have never expressed any interest in Christianity in general, or Jehovah's Witnesses in particular — might be the problem. Surely there are other groups, such as people who are already Christian, that might offer better odds of success.

The real question, of course, is who this woman is, how she got my name and address, and why she decided to invite me to her church. I man, my wife is Catholic, but I've never received a solicitation from any Catholic church (although I did once give a check for $350 to the Baltimore Archdiocese, but that's another story.)

I might follow up with the woman and see how the campaign is going. Or I might just go get myself a free Big Mac.

Strike

Everyone should have a childhood friend who is at least foot taller, and preferably of a different skin color.

I did — my best buddy, Alvin, ultimately grew to 6' 6", exactly a foot taller than me, and was (and is) as brown as I am white. We were the interracial Mutt and Jeff.

When I was a teenager I had hair down the middle of my back. When Alvin an I would hitchhike together, we'd wait a long, long time for someone to give us a ride: 90+% of the population was guaranteed to dislike one of us on sight.

Alvin's whole family, in fact, was the Land of the Giants: his brother was well over 6 feet as well, his mother was around 5' 10", and his father, who'd once played in the Canadian Football League (he was a lineman) was one of the largest human beings I ever saw. To this day, he's the only person I ever saw pick up a sofa by himself and carry it up a flight of stairs.

I remember one time Alvin, Alvin's brother,  his father and I went bowling. His father, whose name was Marvin, had never been bowling before, for some reason, and when we arrived at the bowling alley the three of us began giving Marvin a stream of unsolicited advice. As he picked up a 16 pound ball — the heaviest in the place — our advice became critical. "No, Dad, stand this way." "No, put these fingers in the holes." "Don't start from there, start from here."

Alvin's father got madder and madder. Finally, he yelled give me the damn ball and get out of the way, took one step and launched the ball down the alley. It bounced once and slammed into the pins, shattering two of them.

Needless to say, it was a strike.

He picked up another ball. This one bounced twice on the way to the pins, which exploded when the ball hit them. Another strike.

His third ball broke another pin on the way to strike three.

At that point the manager approached and nervously asked us if we could either stop shattering pins or perhaps do our bowling elsewhere (or not at all). Marvin was convinced he'd made his point, and none of us were going to argue with him.

Needless to say, we all decided he'd won.

It's In The Bag

Our weekend at the beach ended the way I always like a vacation to end, which is to say it involved a car chase and a narrow escape from an angry pursuer.

And, of course, a big bag of trash.

My wife's sister and her husband are on an Alaskan cruise, and so they offered us their house, which is just a couple of miles from the Delaware beaches, for the weekend. Because we didn't want to put trash in their trash can that would sit for a couple of weeks until they returned, we brought one of those giant lawn and leaf bags with us. and used that to collect all of our trash for the weekend.

Sunday comes, and my wife suggests that we drop the bag of trash in a dumpster behind a nearby grocery store on our way out of town. Sounds like a good idea to me, so with the car packed we head to the store, with the bag jammed between the dashboard and me in the passenger seat.

We pull around the back of the grocery store, and there sit three dumpsters and one sign "Not for personal trash. $500 fine." Out of the six of us in the car, I'm the only one who notices the sign. I don't say anything, but get out of the car and look around. No one in sight (we're behind the building). I gently put the bag of trash next to the dumpster, turn to get back in the car, and

"Hey!" The yell is much too deep to be my wife and children. I jump back in the car. "Go! Go!"

Around the corner roars a large, older blue pickup truck, from which a large man is yelling. He is pissed.

My wife starts driving out of the parking lot, the truck with the yelling man in hot pursuit behind us. Who is this guy? Why does he care? I have no idea.

We race to the parking lot exit, ready to make a left turn. There are no cars coming from the right, but a long line coming from the left. My wife hesitates. The blue pickup is behind us, and the yelling man is opening the door to get out.

I yell for my wife to go, and she races out of the lot. The man closes his door, but it's too late: the line of cars has blocked him from turning left out of the lot to follow us. My wife drives off, with all of us peering anxiously out of the back window of our van. Is he after us? Have we given him the slip?

As we're watching, I tell the kids about the sign threatening a $500 fine. Our 13-year-old son: "Did it say anything about going to jail?"

That opens the floodgate to questions from all four children. "Do you think he's still following us?" "Can he follow us home?" "Will he call the police?" "Will they come after us?"

I assured them that the Delaware police were unlikely to follow us to Maryland to pursue the crime of illegal dumping, though I don't even know that what we did was illegal. (In retrospect, legal or not, it wasn't a very nice thing to do, and we should have found some other spot for our trash bag.)

Anyway, if you don't see any posts from me for 30-60 days, you'll know why.

Rahsaan

Jazz has always been known for its eccentric characters. There was pianist Thelonious Monk, who would sometimes stop playing in the middle of a solo, leap to his feet and begin dancing, Why? Just because. There was Sun Ra, who claimed to be from another planet (generally Saturn).

But perhaps the most eccentric, as well as arguably one of the most talented, was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Kirk played a variety of instruments, some of his own design, often simultaneously. A one man horn section, he could play three different horns at once — fingering one with his left hand, one with his right, and playing a drone note on the third. He was a walking encyclopedia of jazz, with his solos spanning the range from Dixieland to Duke Ellington to bop to what we would now call post modern, a genre that Kirk pioneered.

A master of circular breathing, a technique that enabled him to play without pausing for breath, Kirk could be both lyrical and intense, often at the same time, hilarious and jaw droppingly ground breaking. (He could also play through his nose as well as his mouth.)

Ian Anderson's (Jethro Tull) flute technique is a third-rate Kirk imitation. Entire horn sections have tried to duplicate Kirk's feats, and it took a three-man section to do it.

Kirk's music was both deep and joyous. If you want the history of jazz in one package, one of his anthologies might fit the bill.

Money Honey

Four times I've had a bank or brokerage try to give me money that wasn't mine. Twice I've been successful in returning it.

The first was when I was 16, and withdrew $100 from my checking account. I dutifully handed my passbook and withdrawal slip (yes, this was awhile ago) to the teller, who just as dutifully counted out 10 bills and handed them to me.

Ten $100 bills.

"Ma'am," I said, "I think you should count these again." "Why, didn't I give you ten?" she asked. I silently handed her the bills and my passbook. She looked at the bills, and her face turned white. A $900 shortage in her cash drawer at the end of the day? She would have been fired, and possibly liable for the $900.

She was so stunned she never thanked me. No big deal.

The second time was one morning, many years later, when I stopped at an ATM (not at my bank) for cash on the way to work. It was about 8:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the bank opened. When I got my cash, some $20's were stuck together, so although I'd asked for (and was debited) $40 I received twice that.

Seeing the employees inside the locked branch, preparing for the day, I thought I'd do the right thing. I knocked on the door.

A couple of them shook their heads "no," pointing to the clock on the wall to indicate the branch wasn't open yet. I held my money up and pointed to it.

They shook their heads "no" more vigorously. I pointed to my money more vigorously. They. no doubt thinking I wanted to complain about not receiving ENOUGH money, continued to shake their heads and indicate that they had no intention of even coming to the door and talking to me, let alone letting me in.

I needed to get to work and decided I'd been as honest and helpful as I was going to be, and left. That bank is now out of business, perhaps because of the great customer service.

The third time I received money that wasn't mine, it wasn't from a bank and it wasn't money. One month when opening our brokerage statement (it was Merrill Lynch at the time), I thought we had an unusually high amount in our account. Had one of our stocks or mutual funds suddenly skyrocketed without my noticing?

I scanned the statement and discovered the culprit: there were 1,000 shares of Kansas City Power and Light (why do I remember that?) that we hadn't bought and didn't own that had mysteriously found their way into our account. According to the statement, they'd been in our account for a couple of weeks.

I called our account manager, who wasn't at all alarmed. Nor, it seemed, did he know who owned those shares, but he assured me he'd find out and our next statement would be correct. I asked him what would have happened if I hadn't called him, and he assured me, "Oh, we'd have discovered the mistake."

Maybe so.

The last time was, coincidentally, at the same ATM of the same bank where I'd tried, unsuccessfully, to return the extra $40 I'd actually received. One lunch hour I withdrew some money and was startled to see on the receipt that my checking account had a balance of just over $30,000. (Just over $300 was probably more accurate.) Wow, $30,000 in "found" money.

I rushed back to work and asked the comptroller, who was a friend of mine, what my liability would be if I withdrew that $30,000? Would I have been arrested?

"Well," he said, "if the $30,000 COULD have been in your account for real, the worst case scenario would be that you'd have to give the money back once the error was discovered."

"How would the bank know or prove that the $30,000 wasn't a legitimate number? I asked."

"They look at your average balance over the last couple of months and see if a  $30,000 balance would be an assumption you could reasonably make. Do you typically have $30,000 in your checking account?"

The look on my face answered the question. His advice: "Don't withdraw the money. They'll figure it out."

And they did.

I was sorry when that bank went out of business. I had good luck at their ATMs.

Food Fight

I've had some of the best and worst service I've ever received in a restaurant at Bob Evans, a place I only go to when someone else makes me.

The worst service happened one evening when I told our four children I'd take them out to dinner if they could agree on a place, and they chose Bob Evans. Not my top 10, but they agreed with a minimum of arguing, and I thought I should encourage this temporary cessation of the sibling rivalry hostilities by being supportive.

The hostess gave us the back room all to ourselves, and our server was prompt with drinks and order taking. The food arrived in a timely fashion. Well, all of the food except for mine.

The kids dug in while I sat. And sat. Our server, who'd been very attentive up to this point, was nowhere to be seen. Finally I walked up to the counter and spoke to the person who turned out to be the assistant manager.

When I asked where my food was, she assured me everything we'd ordered had been delivered to our table. I assured her it hadn't. Then (I'd ordered a salad with fried chicken strips on top, can't recall the name), she'd told me that they'd been unable to prepare my salad because "we had to turn off the deep fryer to clean it."

I told her I couldn't believe they'd turn of their deep fryer in the middle of the dinner hour, when a high percentage of the menu items were deep fried. I also asked how my children were able to get their french fries if the fryer was out of commission.

Finally, I said, "Please don't lie to me. If someone forgot to turn my order in, or forgot to make it, just tell me."

She assured me that wasn't the case. Since my children were done eating by that time, and we were ready to go, I told her just to forget it. "We can make it for you to go right now, at no charge," she said.

"I thought your deep fryer was shut off for cleaning."

"It's working now."

"No thanks, we'll just go."

A year later Bob Evans redeemed itself, sort of, to me. Our son, Adam and I were in Detroit for a long weekend (he was in his car phase at the time, and we went to visit several auto museums as a father-son trip). I let him choose the restaurants, and our first night he picked the Bob Evans near our hotel.

The manager, alerted by our server that with our accents we were probably from out of town, stopped by our table to say hello. He and Adam chatted about the origami figures Adam had made from our placemats while waiting for our food (Adam is an origami expert, which is going to look great on his college applications). Hearing we were from Maryland, he exclaimed, "I have a great gift for you. It's perfect for someone from Maryland. I'll be right back."

Two minutes later he returned, beaming, and gave us his gift: a map pinpointing the locations of every Bob Evans in the continental United States, complete with addresses and phone numbers.

I wa speechless. Though not with delight.

Politically Correct

In this political season, it seems appropriate to mention that I once lost a job — well, I was fired, actually — over a political candidate.

The candidate was an evangelical Christian, very conservative. The owner of the ad agency where I worked had been a long-time supporter of him, and when he decided to run for president she was ecstatic. (Much of the agency's staff was less so, but that's another story.)

She offered the agency's resources — I believe she initially proposed charging $1/month — and we became his advertising and marketing agency. Immediately shredders, locks on doors and an upgraded security system appeared, and all employees were directed to drop what they were doing and begin working on his political campaign.

I, politely and professionally, asked not to be assigned to the project and, much to my surprise, wasn't. One other employee, an art director, asked for the same treatment, and he received.

Now, when you turn down the company owner's pet project, you can assume that you should update your resume, because your time at that company is about to come to an end. I redid my resume and cleaned up my portfolio, just in case.

The months went on, his campaign began to sputter, and despite the regular messages on our paychecks about who our next president would be, he withdrew. Life seemingly returned to normal.

A couple of months later I was suddenly dropped from the distribution list for memos that went to everyone in the department. My assignments dried up. Clearly, in the mind of the agency president I ceased to exist.

I bet someone in my department $50 that I'd be fired on a Friday two weeks in the future, at 3 p.m. The bet was that I was correct within an hour.

I actually got fired a little after 2, and collected the $50. More importantly, I was able to clean out my desk, say my goodbyes, and leave before rush hour (the agency, which no longer exists, was in Washington, D.C.)

Interestingly, when I told friends and family at the time I asked not be assigned to the account, I received all kinds of reactions. Some folks said, "Good for you." A few said, "You're an idiot." My parents, rabble rousers from way back, were proud of me.

My favorite part was trying to explain to the folks at the unemployment office why I'd been fired. This was one they'd never heard before.

The art director who'd also not worked on the account? He quit before he was fired, and hasn't worked on a political campaign since.

Nor, in fact, have I. Though, to be honest, no one has asked.

NRBQ

For my money, NRBQ remains the best bar band in the world: that is, the line-up with guitarist Al Anderson remains the best bar band in the world (later incarnations didn't compare).

The name stands for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet, but rhythm and blues is about the only type of music the band doesn't play. Who else could put together a set list that featured Johnny Cash, Thelonious Monk, Carl Perkins, Sun Ra, traditional tunes and their own wacky paeans to girls, marijuana, cars, dictionaries, biting dogs and Moon Pies? WHo else could cover the themes from Bonanza and old John Wayne movies? Who else could jam with Carl Perkins, Keith Richards, Skeeter Davis and the young lions of jazz?

Just to prove their versatility, the band had a gimmick they employed at live shows for years: pass a box through the audience and invite audience members to write song names on scraps of paper and drop them in the box. Later in the show, the band would randomly draw one or two slips of paper out of the box and attempt those songs. They always succeeded.

Bassist Joey Spampinato was good enough to be tapped by Keith Richards to play in the backing band in Richards' film about Chuck Berry, when the Rolling Stone guitarist could have called any bassist in the world. Keyboard player Terry Adams, sometimes brilliant, sometimes catatonic, recorded an album in which he led several jazz masters (and more than held his own).

They've backed wrestlers (Captain Lou Albano) and rockabilly singers (Perkins), played music from the 1950s and music from outer space, and presented some of the tightest and sloppiest live shows on the planet. Never imitated, never equalled, they're more fun than any other three bands you can name.

Quick Hit

Award for the best title for a live album (best live album remains, of course, James Brown Live At The Apollo) goes to The Replacements, one of the best things to ever come out of Minneapolis-St. Paul (Prince and Husker Du would be the others). Known for their drunken, lurching live shows, where wrong chords sometimes battled with forgotten lyrics, the 'Mats' (fans affectionately dubbed them The Place-mats) live album is named, appropriately, The Shit Hits The Fans. The album is better than you might think.

Lost

A person with no sense of direction probably shouldn't be a navigator in a sports car rally. That, at least, sums up my rallying career to date.

Now, when I say no sense of direction, I mean I once took a wrong turn in a hallway in the middle of the night and walked into a closet instead of the bathroom. (Luckily I realized my mistake in time.) Truly, I think I could buy a GPS for my car and deduct it on our taxes, claiming medical necessity. I get lost constantly.

The first rally I ever did was with my first wife, and I suspect my poor navigational skills were part of the reason why we divorced. God, did we argue that day.

After that, I began rallying with my friend, Elliott, and what a pair we made.

Elliott had an old, bulbous Saab, with manual steering and a steering wheel the size of a pizza pan (for leverage to turn the wheels, I suppose). It was, as I recall, a Saab 96, with a four-speed on the column. It was slow and not very powerful, which proved to be a problem.

If you've never been on a sports car rally, here's how it works: every car has a driver and a navigator, A few minutes before the start (cars generally start one at a time at five-minute intervals, give or take) the navigator gets a set of instructions that involves following difficult directions (sometimes only using clues or riddles) to specific points in specific amounts of time. Teams must make their way to a series of checkpoints, each of which must be reached at a certain time. (And by certain, I mean to the second: teams get a point for every second early or late to a checkpoint, and a winning team might get through 7-10 checkpoints and only have 20 points.)

Sometimes the navigator is given a distance and needs to calculate the speed at which the team should drive, sometimes the opposite. Experienced rally folks have sophisticated computers in their cars. Novices, such as us, have a calculator, a couple of pencils and a pad of paper.

I should have known how the event was going to go for us when I gave Elliott the first direction 20 seconds into our first rally. "Left! Left! Turn left now!" And turn we did, into a parking lot.

"This can't be right!" And we were already a minute behind.

Now, what happens during rallies is that each checkpoint has a couple of folks staffing it, and they pack up and leave after the last car SHOULD have come through. Elliott and I employed the same strategy in every rally: get hopelessly lost, than have to drive like maniacs to get to the next checkpoint before it closed. At awards ceremonies, as winners came forward with their scores of 20 points or 30 points we scanned the leader board for our score, which was always in the thousands.

We got lost every way you can get lost. We'd pass signs that said Now Entering ________ County when the directions had made it clear that the entire rally was going to remain within the county we were leaving. We'd see other cars we were sure were in our rally (and had started long after us) going in the opposite direction. ("Think we should turn around?" "Uh, yeah.")

The Turn Around Strategy — second only to our Drive Like Maniacs Strategy — ultimately proved our downfall.

On a narrow country road in the middle of farm country, we realized we were hopelessly lost. In attempting to make a U-turn, Elliott got stuck in a ditch.

Since he was driving, I was the one who had to get out and push. The tires spun, covering me with dirt and mud, but the car stayed stuck in the ditch. As we pondered what to do, a farmer came along in a truck and, in less than two minutes, pulled us out of the ditch and got us back on the road. We gave him our heartfelt thanks, and as he left the trouble started.

Elliott took one look at my dirt and mud covered clothes, and reached a decision: "You can't get in my car." "What?" "You're covered in mud. You can't get in." "I'm covered in mud because I had to push your car out of the ditch you drove into. Stop wasting time, we gotta get going." "I don't want my car to get all dirty."

Finally, Elliott relented and let me in. We drove until we saw a Burger King, and I tried to clean myself up in their bathroom.

That, I think, was our last rally. We're still very close friends — I've known Elliott for 30 years — and since that rally, which was 20+ years ago,  we've never had a disagreement.

Nor, now that I think about it, has Elliott ever asked me for directions.

Bar None

Sitting through my nephew's Bar Mitzvah this weekend reminded me of why I like ice cream.

Prior to my Bar Mitzvah, I went to three years of Hebrew school, which meant classes after my regular school at the synagogue one or two afternoons a week (I can't remember the exact schedule).

Next to the temple was a Dairy Queen, and occasionally when the six boys in that class arrived before Hebrew school started, we would go to the Dairy Queen for a cone.

One day we arrived at the temple and the rabbi hadn't. The doors were locked. So we went to the Dairy Queen and bought ice cream, and then sat on the steps of the temple with our book bags and ice cream cones, waiting for the rabbi.

When he arrived and saw us he was furious. Why? Because the ice cream wasn't kosher. Even though we weren't inside the building with it, he felt we were being blasphemous in some way.

He yelled at us for awhile, and then said, "I suppose you'd rather eat non kosher ice cream than study the Torah." Before we could admit that, well, ice cream was preferable to Hebrew School, he hit us with the worst punishment he could think of: "Fine, sit out here and eat your ice cream, then."

We spent the entire class period outside, while he sat inside the building. No doubt he felt that by denying us our Hebrew studies he was causing us great sadness.

It was the best class we ever had.

This End Up

I once dated a woman who was finishing up her residency as an OB/GYN at the University of Maryland Medical School, and our one date at the theatre proved to be much more of a comedy than the show's producers intended.

It was a one man show with, I think, Jason Robards; probably the life of Mark Twain, but I'm not sure. Halfway through the second act, an older gentleman in the front row collapsed.

Just as in the movies Robards stopped the show, broke character, and bellowed, "Is there a doctor in the house?"

My date leaped out of her seat and began rushing down the aisle towards the front. On the other side of the theatre, a man jumped out of his seat and also scurried to the front.

My date and the man arrived at the passed out theatre goer at the same time. "I don't know how much help I can be," my date said. "I'm Obey/Gyney."

The other man looked at her for a second. "I," he said, with a funny look on his face, "am a proctologist."

They called an ambulance.

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.