100 Things

Since I had marathon conference calls today, I slapped this together for my two or so loyal readers... and others who got here by taking the wrong turn at Albequerque...

100.  I'm a Gemini and so am I.

99.  I was once electrocuted by a stainless steel meat grinder like this one on a college job. 

98.  JIF over Skippy.

97.  Sunny side up over scrambled.

96.  Soft boiled even better.  (Just like my Grams used to make.)

95.  Jack Daniel's over Jim Beam.

94.  Red Breast over Jameson's over Bushmills.

93.  I used to drink coffee with cream and sugar, now I take it black.

92.  I make a KILLER Caesar salad with enough garlic that you wear it for at least a day.

91.  I like World War II movies, especially "In Harm's Way."

90.  The right tie or the right pair of boxers can turn grey skies to blue!

89.  So can the right song.

88.  Tony Soprano lived after the screen went black.

87.  When I was young, I never needed anyone.  An making love was just for fun. 

86.  Those days are gone.

85.  The Herb Alpert "Whipped Cream" album. Rite of passage from boy to man. 

84.  I litsen to it for the music, too.

83.  Was the year I graduated from High School.

82.  I showed this blog to my wife for the first time a year or so ago. 

81.  According to my Traffic Log, she stopped reading a couple of months later.

80.  I had my first root canal at 40.  It wasn't all that bad.

79.  I have flat feet.

78.  Letterman over Leno.

77.  I used to swim on my (coed) high school team.  Wasn't that great at it because I kept having to think about baseball every time the girls swam backstroke. 

76.  I suck at golf.

75.  Favorite color: Green.

74.  As kids, my sister and I used to love listening to Marlo Thomas' Free to be You and Me.

73.  Ancestrally speaking, I am 3/4 Irish, 1/4 Armenian.

72.  I don't think "ancestrally" is a word.

71.  I have just re-attained Aadvantage GOLD status on American Airlines for the third year in a row.  Back off, bithces!

70.  I am a Kentucky Colonel.

69.  My phone still speaks German.

68.  I'm a keen observer of people's behavior, and can pretty much do an impression of anyone.  But I'm often reluctant to do it, because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

67.  "You dirty rat!  You killed my brother!"  [See what I mean??  Uncanny, huh??]

66.  I saw The Cars in concert once in high school, and the only thing that moved on stage was Ric Ocasek's leg, to the rythym of each song.  It was like the Hall of Presidents at Disney World.

65.  I once tried to start a wave at a Barry Manilow concert I went to in high school with a girl I was dating then.  Didn't work.  Neither did the relationship.

64.  I had to stay home sick on both my 2nd and 3rd grade field trips to the Bronx Zoo. 

63.  Best Bond Theme:  "We have all the time in the world," by Louis Armstrong.  It was later redone by Fun Lovin' Criminals, and they did a good job.  Second place:  "You only live twice" by Nancy Sinatra.

62.  "Waiting for Guffman" is better than "Best in Show."

61.  I laugh more at George Costanza in reruns than I did the first time around.

60.  Abraham Lincoln is the first guy I want to go see in heaven.  Always has been.  Funny thing is, I have no idea what to say to him beyond, "Nice hat."  

59.  Life is linear, not cyclical.  Nothing repeats.  Ever.  Nor should it.

58.  That being said, if I could, I'd go back to being 10 for just one day.

57.  Dwight K. Shrute is a genius!

56.  Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn could kick Timmy Turner and Sponge Bob's ASSES any day.

55.- 50. [RESERVED FOR FUTURE USE.]

49.  Once, just once, I'd like to have "Hail to the Chief" played when I enter a room... instead of my having to hum it.

48.  Beatles first, then Stones, Who's next.  

47.  Leezer's list is way better than mine.

46.  George was the best songwriter, John was strongest, but I like Paul best. (Not Pete Best.)  

45.  I daydream like Walter Mitty.

44.  I once met Ally Sheedy in Boston, by accidentally trapping her pure in a revolving door.  (So when, hopefully at an old, old age, she dies and her life flashes before her eyes, I'll be in it!!!)

43.  I believe that Vince Vaughn should play the role that Paul Newman did in a remake of "Slapshot."

42.  If I could, I'd equip my car with a device to shoot cigarette butts back at cars that throw them out the window on the highway.  

41.  My family is rather strange, and this apple didn't fall far from the tree.

40.  I cry at the end of "Mr. Roberts," and "The Last Hurrah", and at some of the gut-punching Budweiser commercials with the clydesdales.

39.  I lost two friends at the World Trade Center on September 11th, and was morosely engrossed in it for nearly a year. 

38.  I am a Roman Catholic, and I believe what I was taught...  I'm also totally counting on the redemption/forgiveness thing.

37.  I believe in ghosts, and that my house is visited from time to time by the very benevolent presence of the man who owned the house for a good 30 years or so before we moved in.  [We bought it from his widow.] He goes on rounds every so often, usually after I make a change (paint a room, install a new light).  So far, he hasn't objected to anything.

36.  As kids, after hearing about how the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) appeared to children at Lourdes, my sister and I prayed that she'd come to our house.  Then 20 minutes later, we were scared sh*tless, told our parents what we' done [as if we'd just broken a window].  "I don't think she would scare two young children," Mom said.  "It's okay.  You can go back to sleep."  Whew! 

35.  I was not afraid to die until I became a Dad.    

34.  I'd like to think that I'd give my life for a stranger, but given number 35, I wonder if being around for my children would make me hesitate.

33.  I have met three U.S. Presidents.

32.  I was in two plays in high school and want to audition for the repertory theatre in my town someday.  [I was Edward Angkatell in "The Hollow" and Harry Dodge in the non-musical version of "Meet Me in St. Louis."

31.  The Hollow featured an on-state kiss with a gal who stole my heart.  On the show's last night, neither of us were acting. 

30.  When I was a kid, my Dad called me "Charlie Brown."  I think it was because I was a blockhead.

29.  When I was in junior high, he called me BJ.  That didn't help.

28.  One of my Great-grandmothers was a mail order bride; and one Great-great grandmother came to America as a 50-year old widow with 12 of her surviving children.

27.  You're not being cynical if you smile when you say something; you're being ironic!

26.  I am two degrees from Kevin Bacon.

25.  All roads lead to Mark Twain.

24.  Burt Bacharach is the best composer of our time.

23.  Peter Sellers was a genius.

22.  Alan Arkin is underrated. 

21.  So is Gene Hackman.

20.  [The Comedian] Bob Marley slays me.

19.  The secret to making crispy bacon is baking it in an oven at 400 degrees.  (See #11.)

18.  I don't think I'm into laser eye surgery, but a buddy of mine just had a laser vasectomy.  Kind of a "Lady or the Eye chart" decision, if you ask me.

17.  This is actually the last one I'm filling in.  I started this list at the top (100), then the bottom (1), and then filled in the middle.

16.  I have lucid dreams on a fairly regular basis.  I can also fly in them and breathe under water.

15.  Yes, I've tried it, and I inhaled, but I was already drunk.

14.  I want to learn to play the piano and sky dive... but not on the same day.

13.  I'm writing this list during a conference call at work, and just faked my way through answering a question.

12.  Sam Adams and Guinness.  Enough said.

11.  I am the Czar of Breakfast.  Specialty:  Nutmeg cinnamon French toast. 

10.  Dark chocolate over milk.

9.  Ocean over lake.

8.  Surfcasting over boat, but I want to learn how to fly fish.

7.  Stormy weather (heavy rains or snow and lots of wind) stirs my soul.

6.  Two who would have me at hello:  Deborah Kerr (in the Affair to Remember era) and Lauren Bacall (from Key Largo era).

5.  One more who could:  Amy Sedaris.

4.  I've always been much more like my Mom (cock-eyed optimist), and I strive every day to be for my kids the kind of Dad my father was to the young me.  (Before I became a teenaged asshole.)

3.  Randy Newman.

2.  Peer pressure doesn't get to me.

1.  I made this list because I saw other people doing it.  

Thank you, Mister President

Letter to a 10 year-old boy:

The White House
Washington

September 5, 1975

Dear Brian:

Thank you for your letter to President Ford inviting him to visit your hometown during his campaign. Although we do not yet have a schedule of his proposed trips, it is sugggested that you watch your local newspapers which will not doubt carry an account of the President's plans.

Sincerely,

William W. Nicholson
Deputy Director
Scheduling Office

Letter to that same boy's Mother, who had written to tell the President she would do what he asked: Keep him in her prayers.

The White House
Washington

May 28, 1976

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and encouraging message. I am grateful to know that I can count on your support.

The American people are going to be asked to make some very critical choices this year, choices which will have considerable impact not only on their imeediate future, but also on future generations. As President, I must make difficult and fundamental decisions which are necessary although not always popular. I am grateful that you support our efforts for a better America.

You and your family have my best wishes and appreciation for your prayers.

Sincerely,

Gerald R. Ford

I felt for sure there'd be a "PS, say hello to Brian." No such luck.

I was captivated by politics by reading about JFK and watching the example of my best friend's dad and my own father. I was crushed when Nixon resigned. As John Chancellor narrated Richard Nixon's walk to the helicopter and that awful wave, I walked into my parents' den with a photo the White House had sent me when I had written to him... and without saying a word, tore it to pieces. At age 9, I knew nothing of what an Erlichman a Liddy or a water gate was. "Was that something like a dam?"

Yeah. Something like it. But I knew enough that he was the--no--The President, he'd betrayed The Country and that was bad--no--Bad.

This new President, though... Mom wept when he said our "long national nightmare" was over. He asked a nation that had not given him their votes to "confirm him with your prayers." And so we did. I'd never known anyone called Gerald before, but I invited him to come to town. In getting the brush-off, though, I gained a new portrait to hang on my wall. And so I did.  And there it stayed, until replaced by Jaclyn Smith (my favorite Angel).

In a tumultuous age when the suffix “gate” was first shackled to the notion of scandal, you said that “none of us are more than caretakers of this great country,” and you showed us that with honesty, courage, sacrifice, and what you called “the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square” the Republic would endure. And so it did.

Now you have taken your leave of us in another tumultuous age. Two nations are burying former presidents, and the front pages are a study in contrasts between majesty and the macabre: grandeur for our former leader/the gallows for theirs. That is cast-iron irony—the kind that leaves a mark.

This morning, I showed these letters to my 10 year-old boy who is gaining his own awareness of politics, and I told him your story. We’ll get through these times, too. I sure as heck don’t know when, but you showed us how.

“The ultimate test of leadership,” you said, “is not in the polls you take, but the risks you take. In the short run, some risks prove overwhelming. Political courage can be self-defeating. But the greatest defeat of all would be to live without courage, for that would hardly be living at all.”

So thank you, Mister President. I guess it’s okay that you didn’t come to Watertown. Your letter did, and you are in the prayers of those “future generations” you wrote about—and worked to keep from harm.

Week's end wrap up

The smartest thing I've heard this week:

If I ever get lost in the woods, I hope I have a deck of cards with me.  I could play solitaire.  Eventually, someone's bound to show up and say, "Black nine on the red ten"...

The best thing I've heard this week:

Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

The damn funniest thing I've read since I don't KNOW when...

Opinion piece in The Onion written by our Lord Himself:  'There's No Way I'm Saving That Guy'
[Pay particular attention to His use of capitalization when He refers to Himself.  Too funny.  Credit to my sister Mo for finding it!]

Rock on, everyone!

Kirk out!

It happens every time

It is an unalterable law of sociological and meteorological science that no matter the circumcstance or time of day, if you want someone to magically appear and walk into your office... fart.

Don't ask me how I know.  You've probably already guessed. 

(And so has the woman on the cleaning crew who just walked into my office.  Pour soul.)

A Whitman's Sampler for Valentine's Day

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.

So there I was, in the Detroit Wayne County Airport, with a two-hour layover to kill at the end of a work week.  No more talking points or power points.  Time to fertilize the brain.  I spy the ultimate Whitman Sampler: Leaves of Grass.  In my growing devotion to all things New York, I've come across his stuff... Manahatta... Crossing Brooklyn Ferry...  But now this bracing jolt.

It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms.

That's good.  

I look up and around the store.  He's talking to ME!!  Can they tell?  Did they see me recoil at that line and nearly drop the book?  Got. To. Buy. This.  Act natural.  Be cool.  It's Leaves of Grass, for crying out loud, not Tropic of Cancer.  (Although just in case, I buy some gum, a Sports Illustrated, and a comb just to be safe.)  And so, in these first few pages, he sprang into my arms, to the background music of CNN Airport News...

... all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward.
(CNN: "In entertainment news, Kelly Clarkson brings home two Grammys"...)

Oh, to be self-balanced for contingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs as the trees and animals do.
(CNN: "In sports, another NBA player jumps into the stands after a hapless blowhard of a fan.")

Stop this day and night with me and you shall posess the
     origin of all poems,
You shall posess the good of the earth and sun, (there are
     millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor
     look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres
     in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things
     from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
(CNN:  In the Situation Room, the yammering talking-head-of-the-moment tells Wolf Blitzer what "really matters to the American people.")

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of
yearning.
(CNN:  In entertainment news, Billy Joel calls out two 'Nylon Curtain' songs that are two faves:  Where's the Orchestra; She's Right on Time.  One I used to sing to Her our senior year in college.  The other is more or less about us, too.  I'll never get over the smell of her hair.  She broke my heart in 17 places.  She knows.)

This hour I tell things in confidence.
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
(Both of us are married, with three kids apiece.  We just emailed each other at Thanksgiving. I can go months without talking to her... longest was a year and a half... but it's a Brigadoon kind of friendship.  [Editor's note:  More on that later.  Remind me.]

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my
     faintest wish,
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the
     friendship I take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the
     metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
The air tastes good to my palate.
(I don't know why things catch me the way they do.  But there's whimsy to be seen in each day.  As Elvis Costello says, "I'm having the time of my life; or something quite like it."  Because I'm home now, Grass stains on the brain, ready to cook Saturday morning breakfast for the kids!) 

[Written on Saturday, filed late Monday night.]

Piano player, could you please play something snappy?

"When I picked up the banjo, I had no real musical gift or talent, but I was about 18 and I thought, well, you know…. one day I’ll have been playing for 35 years."    -Steve Martin

I heard him say that in 2003 on Imus, and scrawled it down.  It was profound.  "You gotta start somewhere," he was saying.  Time for me to pick up the banjo.

Mo Ohh!At 40, I don't consider that I've qualified for "Mid-Life" to begin my crisis yet... and it's going to be a helluvalot bigger than playing a banjo.  [I can't go into details, but it involves Maureen O'Hara and a Wayback Machine.  But that's not important right now.]

So rather than a banjo, I think I'll take up the piano.  Here's the logic:

I'm already pretty good at the keyboard:  Granted, a computer keyboard.  But if I can navigate my way through 26 illogically placed letters, 10 numbers, and assorted shift, space, and delete keys, I can handle a few notes, chords, majors, and minors.  And if I can be trained on gas-brake-clutch,three pedals don't scare me. 

There's never a banjo around when you really need one:  And let's face it, unless you ARE Steve Martin, nobody's gonna talk to a guy carting a banjo around.  But where there's a crowd to be had... in a bar, restaurant, somebody's house... there's almost always a piano standing by.  So here's the deal:  I'm going to skip the hours upon hours sweating out scales and nursery rhymes and learn THREE SONGS...  really well.  I'm gonna OWN them, setting up the following.

The Piano Bar, Todd WhiteThe scene:  An inviting neighborhood watering hole.  The kind that has regulars, a tin ceiling, a hand-carved, brass-festooned mahogany bar that stretches the long, arrow lane from the front door to the open area in the back, where a well-worn but stately baby grand keeps a quiet watch.  It's cold and windy outside.  The patrons are enjoying some good craic inside.  Then, unseen, Wry Guy takes his fresh Makers Mark [Double.  Neat.] and accompanying glass of ice in hand and approaches the piano; sits; lifts the cover; straightens his back; stretches his arm up, out and back, cracks his knuckles, and...

Plays [song one].  A ripple effect spreads out through the crowd.  People turn, voices fall.  They listen, smile.  Some even sway.  Depending on the song, percussion and a bass line magically join in on cue.  (Cut me some slack, it could happen.  It's my fantasy.  )  By the stretch turn of the song, they're all his.  The Big Finish!  Applause.  He smiles; head drops; nods a quiet thanks; closes the keyboard cover; begins to rise; reaches for his drink.  The hook is set. 

"Do another one!" 
"I couldn't."
"Aw, go ahead."
"I shouldn't."
"Come on!"
He sits. 

Plays [song 2].  Really pours it on this time.  The crowd runs with it, and he gives them as much line as they'll take.  Finishes strong.   The night is his!  More applause.  Maidens swoon.  Handkerchiefs deployed. Men gnash teeth; hate and envy course through their veins; they have seen greatness and they're powerless to do anything but watch it.

He stands.  This time he means it... two and out.  He takes a deep, savoring draw from one one of the drinks sent his way.  Eyes meet.  Smiles are exchanged. An eyebrow is cocked.  He turns, dons his coat, and leaves.  It's all about leaving them wanting more.

Nine out of ten times, that's how it's done.  What about the third song, you ask?  Well, it let's him rotate the material.  And he's always ready for that one-in-ten occasion when it's all about driving them right over the edge.  In that case, he gets to finish the second drink.

Request lines are open...

Okay gang.  I know you're out there.  Even you, Gordon from Accounting. 

• Where is this bar? 
• What are the three deadly melodies that you'd play... or the three that you're dying to hear?  

There's plenty of time.  I just remembered I don't have a piano...  but one day, I'll have been playing it for 35 years.