BCS BS

The end of the BCS bullshit (BCS BS), and it ended with a most exciting game between the Auburn Tigers and the Florida State Seminoles to earn the right to call themselves the best college team of 2013. Auburn deserved to win but lost it in the last minute and nineteen seconds when the Seminoles took it on a long drive to a winning touchdown. Auburn had only to stop them somewhere in that final seventy-nine seconds but couldn’t get the job done. That’s the difference between winners and losers. Winners come through in the clutch and losers let it happen. But at least we’ve seen the last of the BCS. Next year we have a four-team playoff which will be a much fairer system for determining a national champion. I have to comment on the Seminoles: In an age when Native Americans object to the name of the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves , and the Cleveland Indians as demeaning to them, why isn’t there an equal disapproval of the Florida State Seminoles?

Anyone attending the game and not an FS fan or watching it on the tube had to be really sick of the continuous tomahawk chops and Native American chanting from the Seminole fans. I know I was. Also, while on the subject of college and pro football, why must so many players have to scream and pound their chests and do a little dance whenever they’ve made a tackle or sacked the quarterback? It’s like they’re playing to the camera, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m soooo good!” Why not just get up and get ready for the next play? I think all coaches—high school, college, NFL— should make it a point to discourage such behavior, maybe even take the miscreant out of the game or at the next practice make him run a hundred laps or do a thousand pushups. Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals is a perfect example of what behavior should be. When he catches a pass for a touchdown, he quietly hands the ball to the referee and then goes on about his business—no spiking the ball over the cross bar on the goal posts, no pre-planned dance or celebration. Just a “This is my job, this is what I do, so let’s get on with it.” That’s classy. Thank you, Larry Fitzgerald.

I'm Back with Pot & Wolf of Wallstreet

Okay, so I couldn’t take even a full week off. Blog writing becomes addictive, and I’m hooked. I thought I’d run out of topics but there is no end to possible topics. And I’m still seeing movies and reading books that I can review. And local and national and world news still has enough stories about stupidity and stupid people to keep me in fodder for a long time to come.

One of the top recent stories has Colorado making pot legal for recreational use. And that’s probably just the beginning as more and more states will likely follow suit. It remains to be seen if this will result in increased addiction to what was an illegal substance, which may lead to more people moving on to the harder illegal substances. Cigarettes are legal. Do they cause smokers to move on to heroine and coke? Booze is legal. Does it cause drinkers to move on to harder stuff? In both cases I don’t think so. Nor will legalizing pot lead to a nation of pot heads.

And speaking of potheads, I just saw Leonardo DiCaprio, as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, doing coke and ludes as though he was in druggie heaven. Whoa, three hours of nudity and F-bombs and drugs and booze and money in every scene. DiCaprio did his best imitation of Jack Nicholson’s brazen, screaming self as he sold and scammed his way through Wall Street, igniting his fellow stock salesmen and women to pick up those phones and sell, sell, sell penny stocks that netted them all 50% of the stocks’ values. The audience couldn’t figure out whether to root for him or despise him. But what a salesman he was and what an energetic hip-hop three hours of acting on his part. If you can’t stomach almost continuous bad language and nudity and graphic sexual intercourse, don’t see this movie. But if you want to watch DiCaprio strut his acting stuff, go see him as the Wolf of Walstreet.

New Year's Eve

I said I was done blogging for a while, but I just can't leave the year hanging without saying goodbye. So, goodbye, 2013. Sorry, but I won't miss you. You provided me with too many aches and pains and too many trips to the dentist. Will 2014 be any better? I certainly hope so.

Another day of bright sunshine and calm air, just like we’ve had for about the last week. How nice to live here in Arizona while the rest of the country is in a deep freeze. And it’s the end of another year. We’re having a steak and potato for dinner, after which we’ll probably watch a few Big Bangs and catch up on Major Crimes and Rizzoli and Isles before toddling off to bed around 10:00. Such excitement for us old folks. And tomorrow Rosalie is going to 4-Paws to care for her kitties and I’m going to feast on more football. Last night I watched the ASU Sun Devils look more like moondogs, losing to TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, and it wasn’t even close as TCU wanted it more than the moondogs did. Too bad they had to look so bad on national coverage. But the Suns simply destroyed the Clippers in LA, winning it handily by nineteen. Now, after only thirty games, they’ve won as many as Las Vegas picked them to win for the whole season. Wow, I wish I’d put some money on them before the season began. But hindsight is always better than foresight.

Time Out & American Hustle

I seem to be all tapped out of things to write about. I don’t know if it’s just me or if it’s a lack of subject matter. The year is grinding to a conclusion; the nation is slowly returning to financial stability despite all the screaming about the Affordable Care Act; the NFL is moving into playoff mode with the Cardinals getting screwed out of a playoff spot; new movies are still grist for my mill but I’m sick of reviewing them; our three kitties are all nearly into adulthood and give me nothing new on which to comment; and all my old-age aches and pains are too painful to broadcast. So I guess I’ll take some time off to reinvent myself, or to regain some mental vigor (“Vigor” rhymes with “rigor.”)

But before I momentarily retire, I have a few comments about a film I saw yesterday. The critics are almost unanimous in their acclaim for American Hustle, but I felt a little like I’d been the one who was hustled. I hated the plot, which had me confused from start to finish, but I loved watching the five principals strut their acting stuff, especially Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld, a tubby, balding 1970’s con man. And Amy Adams, with her boobs hanging out for most of her scenes, as Bale’s fellow con-person and lover. And Bradley Cooper as Richie DiMaso, a curly-headed eager-beaver FBI agent who cons the con team into helping him con assorted politicians and mobsters into wiretap confessions of their larceny. And speaking of 70’s coifs, at the movie’s start, Bale spends several minutes carefully doing an intricate comb-over with a super-glued hairpiece, and Jeremy Renner, as Mayor Carmine Polito, has a pompadour that would out-pomp Elvis. Jennifer Lawrence is interesting as Bale’s screaming Jersey wife who sticks her nose into the final con and disrupts the whole game. A good movie for watching everyone trying to win Oscar nominations, a good movie for enjoying the music of the 70’s and the hair and clothing styles of that period. But the story left me empty.

Christmas Day & Light of the World

Christmas Day with clear skies and rising temperatures. A very nice day in the Valley, and the promise that soon, after too much to eat and too many house guests, we’ll have the holiday behind us. There just seems to be too much festive pressure this time of year, with carols assailing us at every turn, with too many concerns about buying friends and relatives gifts they truly want or need, with too many conversations competing for center state, with endless strings of Christmas specials on the tube. I sound more and more Ebenezerish in my dotage, but I must confess I’ll be happy when January one is here. I want my quiet, regulated life back. And then 2014 will be hurtling by, marked Super Bowl, March Madness, the Masters, and so on until I’ll be peering ahead to Thanksgiving and Black Friday and then you-know-what. And so it goes.

No one writes about evil the way James Lee Burke does—evil men and evil deeds. I’m just beginning his latest Dave Robicheaux saga, Light of the World, in which a trio of men seem to form a dark triptych of evil. It’s set in Montana, where Dave and his daughter Alafair and his good friend Clete Purcell and his daughter Gretchen are visiting a retired English professor. And soon we meet three men who out-devil the Devil: Bill Pepper, a sheriff’s deputy with a mean streak several miles wide; Asa Surrette, a serial killer that Alafair tried to interview for a book she was writing; and Wyatt Dixon, who may or may not have tried to kill Alafair with an arrow that just missed her head. Another good Burke read with the typical nod to Faulkner and his Southern Gothic voice even though the setting is now Montana. Here’s a part of his opening commentary: “Police officers keep secrets, not unlike soldiers who return home from foreign battlefields with a syndrome that survivors of the Great War called the thousand-yard stare. I believe that the account of the apple taken from the forbidden trees is a metaphorical warning about looking too deeply into the darker potential of the human soul. The photographs of the inmates at Bergen-Belsen or Andersonville Prison or the bodies in the ditch at My Lai disturb us in a singular fashion because those instances of egregious human cruelty were committed for the most part by baptized Christians. At some point we close the book containing photographs of this kind and put it away and convince ourselves that the events were an aberration, the consequence of leaving soldiers too long in the field or letting a handful of misanthropes take control of a bureaucracy. It is not in our interest to extrapolate a larger meaning. ¶ Hitler, Nero, Ted Bundy, the Bitch of Buchenwald? Their deeds are not ours. ¶ But if these individuals are not like us, if they do not descend from the same gene pool and have the same DNA, then who were they and what turned them into monsters?”

I can't wait to see how Dave and Clete deal with these three badasses.

Holiday Greetings, 2013

Here we are again, with several changes to my usual Holiday epistle. In this age of electronic communication, sending out Hallmark cards seems too old fashioned, too out of date, too expensive, too unnecessary if all I’m going to do is send a card with our names attached—no news, no personalization. In my case, no letter of time passing and technological advances, no complaints of cell phones and cell phoners (or should that be, cell phonies?) who continue to chat while driving, or worse yet, text while driving. I think I say pretty much what I want to say on this blog, so I won’t bend any ears or tweak any noses here in this greeting.

Isn’t it odd that even the word “holidays” expresses an archaic meaning for this modern age? Holidays, holy days. Now this season seems more concerned with gift giving and receiving than with any holiness. More’s the pity. Even the attached card is my unconscious inclusion of unholy things—Christmas trees and Santa Clauses and presents and cute little mice and kitties. No sign of any silent nights or oriental kings or figures on a cross. Forgive me for that oversight. And forgive me for going back to a card I put together when we still put up trees and swept up needles and sent out tardy seasonal cards.

To all of my regular readers as well as those who might stumble onto this blog, I wish you a Merry Christmas, but I also wish you a more holy Christmas, one in which we all spend more time being thankful for world peace, for friends, for a holiness we need to hold onto in difficult times. Oh, and by the way, may your new year be bountiful and peaceful.

Obituaries Again

At the end of September, I ruminated about obituaries and how I was affected by them. Well, I'm ruminating again, saying much the same thing I said almost three months ago. Forgive me my repetition. Lately, I’ve come to examine the obituaries in several papers, not looking to see if I’m listed but to see if I know anyone there. My hometown paper, The Mobridge Tribune, usually has only two or three deaths notices a week, and since I no longer know most of that town’s residents, I hardly ever read about anyone I know. But school classmates are mentioned even though most of us relocated as soon as possible after graduation. We still feel a connection to that tiny, dusty South Dakota village located on the banks of the river by which it got its name. My youth was so Huck Finnish. One by one my classmates fall. I think we’re now down to about half of the original fifty-eight, shrinking each year by one or two. I wonder which one of us will be the last man or woman standing. And when that time comes, will the one of us return to our roots for a one-person reunion on the Fourth of July? Probably not since the last one would probably not be standing . . . or walking . . . or even crawling. And the old hometown would no longer even slightly resemble the home we once knew. I have better luck finding obituaried people in our local news (Better luck?). We Sun City Westerners drop with great regularity. The sounds of our local firemen rushing to the site of a rescue call fills the air four or five times a day. We always mutter to ourselves when we hear that claxon call, “Well, there’s another house for sale.” I even check the large Phoenix Independent. The odds against my spotting anyone I know are about the same as winning that megamillion lottery we just had. But I look anyway, just to check out the ages at which those people died, comparing them to my own numbers. I also glance at the small section listing the birthdays of well-known people. I saw today that Cicely Tyson is a year younger than I. And Jennifer Beals is now fifty. Oh, the humanity. It was only a year or so ago that she was Flashdancing. And Brad Pitt hit fifty a few days ago. Whoa! I remember as if it were only yesterday when he rode with Thelma and Louise in their ill-fated Thunderbird convertible. I’ve noticed that most of the listings are for ages under fifty, and I don’t recognize most of them. I’m sure that one of these days I won’t remember why I’m examining the obituaries. Or maybe not even remembering what an obituary is.

Three Movie Reviews

A few quickie reviews.

I saw 12 Years a Slave almost three weeks ago and couldn’t figure out what to say about it. Critics have raved about the acting, especially that of Chiwetel Ejifor as Solomon Northrup, a free black violinist in 1841, and Michael Fassbender as Master Epps, the brutal, strangely dual-personality Louisiana plantation owner who winds up with Northrup when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. The movie was difficult to watch as director Steve McQueen gave us a no-holds-barred view of this country less than two hundred years ago, showed us what atrocities some whites could inflict on other human beings with a completely blind eye to their inhumanity. It was a film that we needed to see, just in case any of us forgot what a horrible institution slavery was. But I can’t see the acting of Ejifor or Fassbender as being academy award worthy. Good, but not great.

Then there’s Matthew McConaughey’s performance in Dallas Buyers’ Club. Wow! He’ll certainly be nominated for best actor, maybe even win it. Just picture him as we saw him in some of his other films: Mud, The Lincoln Lawyer, A Time to Kill, Reign of Fire, and two of his better known romcoms The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. About six feet tall, maybe 185 pounds, a handsome hunk who likes to take his shirt off. Well, he lost 45 pounds for this role as Ron Woodroof in Dallas. That’s a bunch of weight, to go down to about 140. He was portraying Woodroof, a racist homophobe in 1985, a boozer, a smoker, a womanizer, a snorter of cocaine. And when he was admitted to a hospital for an injury, he was told he was HIV+ and had only about thirty days to live. He set out to prove the diagnosis wrong. He talked a hospital orderly into selling him AZT pills, the drug that was then in trial status. It was soon discovered that large doses of AZT was as toxic and dangerous as it was an aid to the treatment of Aids. The drug-supplying orderly gave him the name of a doctor in Mexico who was treating Aids patients with other FDA non-approved drugs. And then he started smuggling large quantities of these drugs back into the U.S. for his own use and to sell to other Aids patients. When he found out how illegal such sales were, he began a club called the Dallas Buyers’ Club, to which people could join for a monthly fee and then get his drugs free. And all the while he has this running battle with the FDA. But he ran the club for seven years before he died. A gritty story about a gritty subject, but McConaughey played it to the hilt—scrawny, bleary-eyed, pale, dying. And by the end he had come to understand and even like most of his fellow Aids victims, especially Rayon, played brilliantly by Jared Leto, a transgender victim who helped Woodroof in his drug club. Jennifer Garner was also in it as Dr. Eva Saks, but hers was only a bit part while McConaughey and Leto will both probably be nominated for best awards. Oh yes, and an odd fact about McConaughey: he’s afraid of revolving doors.

And finally, To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Amazing how our memories of old movies can be so different when we see them at dramatically different times. I remember getting High Noon from Netflix a few years ago and couldn’t believe how hokey it was. I was remembering it as one of the great films I’d ever seen. And then the reality of fifty or more years later. It just wasn’t very good. The same can be said of Mr. Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. It was supposed to be suspenseful, as are all of Alfred’s flicks supposed to be. But instead it was slapsticky silly. Bad acting, silly story. Now I’ll have to get Rear Window and The Birds and see if they are also silly and unsuspenseful. Sorry Mr. Hitchcock wherever you are.

Sunday and The Boys

It’s a Sunday, with the day dawning clear and calm, a bit chilly, but what I think of as chilly anymore really isn’t when one considers how frigid the rest of the country is. Thinning blood, creaky bones. And for the first time I’m playing Christmas music. Right now I’ve created a Pandora station of holiday music to play on my back-room television. Right now, Mannheim Steamroller is quietly giving me their rendition of “Silent Night.” I guess ten days before the event is about right for the barrage of carols we hear on nearly all radio stations, the holiday specials on the tube. Jimmy Stewart is once again finding his wonderful life, and Frosty is melting all over the ether. Hallmark has a new one tonight, Finding Christmas, and I know if we watch it that I’ll tear up during the commercials. Such a sentimental marshmallow I am. What seem like a hundred or more bowl games will soon begin making their ubiquitous appearances. Lots of NFL action today but nothing of interest in golf, the Franklin Templeton Shootout and the Father/Son Challenge. Whoopie do. The real golf season doesn’t get started until the AT&T at Pebble Beach in February and the match play World Golf Championship at the end of February here in Arizona, the Cadillac World Championship in Florida in early March, and Arnie’s invitational in late March. Then the Masters in April and another year of golf from then on, with Tiger trying once again to win a major. I hope he does just to quiet the talking heads who keep saying they doubt he can win another.

Our two boys, Tiger and Tuffy, are now almost six months old, kitty teenagers and no longer the terrible twos they were just a few months ago. But they’re still driving us crazy. This year we’ll have a non-decorated Christmas—no tree, no table stuff like the fat snowman we got a decade ago, no strings of lights hanging anywhere. The boys would have everything on the floor just after we put it up, chewing on Mr. Snowman, on the downed light strings, on the upended tree. We love them dearly, and they’re so very sweet . . . when they’re sleeping. But when they’re awake, oh my. Yesterday morning while I was golfing, Rosalie heard a loud crash in the laundry room, rushed there to find the million glassy remains of a Mason jar in which she’d kept tiny multi-colored glass beads. The boys had discovered it on the window sill behind our freezer, and one had climbed up on a nearby paper shredder, then leaped onto the window sill and decided to see what would happen if a curious paw could move the jar thing to the edge. And down it came to the tiled floor, with glass shards and glass beads everywhere—under the freezer, under the washer and dryer, into the food and water dishes, into the litter box. I’m so sorry Rosalie had to clean it all up. I’m so glad I wasn’t here to witness the devastation.

And Charlie just sits and watches these two bad boys, shaking his head at their misbehavior. He’s such a good fellow. And Tiger and Tuffy will soon leave their teens and become responsible adults. End of childhood and into manhood. Sort of sad to see them leave their kittenhood, but then, as with our own children, it was nice to have an empty nest. This won’t be an empty cat nest, but we’ll be able to put trinkets and trees out again without worrying that the boys, now men, might pull anything down to see how much noise they can make.
People who aren’t owned by dogs or cats don’t know what they’re missing. A few years ago, Rosalie’s sister Bonnie, who died last year at ninety-five, spent a horrific five months alone in her house during an unusually cold winter, alone except for occasional guests dropping by, the television that she seldom watched, the local radio station telling her about local news and local weather. Not really much company on those long winter days and nights. If she’d only had a dog or cat to share her house and time. Phyllis, Rosalie’s other sister, lived alone in her apartment for the last twenty years before she died recently. How much fuller her life would have been is she’d had a cat or dog to greet her whenever she went for a walk. Dogless or catless people just don’t know what they’re missing.

Just look at the sleeping Tiger, resting in his favorite spot. Isn't he sweet? (As long as he's sleeping.)

Billy Collins

I forget if I ever shared this poem with anyone. My good friend Anne Smith sent it to me a few years ago and I just discovered it again, momentarily lost among the million documents I’ve saved on my computer. It’s too good and too relevant to someone my age not to share it with others who may have been touched by a friend’s or relative’s dementia or Alzheimer’s. Billy Collins was appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, and, according to one of many Google searches, is the modern equivalent of Robert Frost. Since I’m an ardent Frostian fan, I think I may have to find more of Billy Collins’ poetry. But then, I may forget what it was I was looking for.

“Forgetfulness,” by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Gray Clouds, Silver Lining

Yes, there really is a sun behind all those gray clouds. Yesterday was cold and ugly, as it was all over the country. And it put me in one of those ugly gray funks that pose too many questions without any answers. I wrote that gray piece about good and bad death and what lies beyond the dark conclusion to life. Pretty depressing, right? I went back to my memoirs and read what I had to say several years ago about my religious and philosophical beliefs, and I found them refreshingly cogent. Enough so that I’m going to include them here.
* * * * * *
I was a science fiction addict, so religious explanations of the universe never made much sense to me. It was provable scientifically that our planet, Earth, was a tiny insignificant little speck in the immensity of the universe, third planet out from a tiny insignificant little star set way off in a corner of our galaxy, the Milky Way, one of an infinite number of galaxies in the immensity of time and space. That we could be the only intelligent life in that immensity made no sense to me. I always believed that we created God in our own image, not the other way around.

And as for our souls and what happens to us after we die, I always believed that we would live again in the next closest to us genetically. If I had one son, his mother and I would be combined psychically in that son. If we had more than one child, we would be spread out among them. But there would be a continued consciousness evolving and spreading out into the future. Walt Whitman said something like that in Leaves of Grass, that our individual spirit is one speck in an ocean of spirituality and that when we are born we are removed from that pool and placed here in this physical space for the length of our lives, to be returned to the spiritual pool when we die, to await our next time in life. Reincarnation, yes, but not involving insects and lesser animal species. But I take it one step further and believe the human connection must be more direct, a genetic connection, not a random placement.

James Hall, in his novel Buzz Cut, paraphrased from the Tibetan Book of the Dead: “The soul when set loose from the body begins to roam the dark plains of afterlife searching for some speck of light. Finally seeing it, moving toward it, then entering it as the sperm enters the vagina and battles its way up the hostile twists of tube to reach the great mother egg. A dead man wanders until he sees his new parents, then reenters the world through their moment of great pleasure. Becoming a child again, a disembodied scream. All of it starting over and over and over.” I think that’s pretty much what I’ve believed all my life, but never said it so well.

What, then, is God, or some creative force? I don’t believe there is a single creative force. I think life began at some distant time and that all life is a combined force that evolves and spreads out in many different forms in many different parts of the universe. That life force is Godhead. I’m a part of it, everything that has life and motion is part of it. The substance of our universe isn’t part of it anymore than the husks of our bodies are a part of it. When we die, the shell that held our spark of life returns to the substance from which it came. But the spark returns to the body of the life force—Whitman’s pool of spirituality.

Most people haven’t really thought it through and instead let their church or church leaders do their thinking for them. They accept on faith what the church tells them, the church’s explanations of life and death and good and evil and the nature of the universe. Most of them are afraid of death and need the comfort of a social organization to lessen their fears. Most of them believe that good people attend church and evil people don’t.

I believe in the humanity and teachings of Christ. I believe that there is evil in the universe and that we have to combat it through a universal or personal code of ethics, a morality we need to work at and to pass on to our children. Christ was a messiah, a messenger who brought that code of ethics for us to follow. But he wasn’t a messenger from God. He wasn’t the son of God. And he won’t be reappearing tomorrow or any tomorrow thereafter.

Death makes little sense to me. I’ve often thought, if there really is a God, that he must be an unfeeling bastard, allowing the bestiality we read about in the papers every day, allowing the unfair deaths and tragedies that occur all around us. And cruelest of all, the span of our years is like some awful practical joke. Just when we become skillful physically or mentally, just when we’re able to answer most of the questions we asked throughout our lives, it’s time to die. This is the plan of a God who pulls wings from flies. About a quarter of a century ago, Peggy Lee made popular a song called “Is That All There Is?” When I first heard it I thought it was the most cynical, despairing, darkest set of lyrics I’d ever heard. It was, still is, but the words are becoming more and more personal. Is that all there is? Just this ridiculously short span of time without any meaning and then an eternity of nothing? I hope not. But I guess I won’t really find out for sure until it’s too late to report back to the living.

Life, even though painfully short, beats the alternative. Even when we become so weary we’d like to get off the train, we can’t. Somewhere I read that life is like dancing with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you get tired, you stop when the gorilla gets tired. So I guess I’ll just keep dancing.

The Grim Reaper

More and more often, my body keeps reminding me that I’m getting old. No, not “getting” old; I AM old. Every morning, Arthur Eyetis wakes me up and then screams at me as I prop my weight on an arm to hoist my aching body out of bed. The shoulder aches, the lower back moans, my feet tingle. I take two ibuprofen every morning, along with a handful of other meds, and they keep me relatively pain-free throughout the day. I feel like I’m relatively healthy compared to a lot of the oldies I see at Safeway or at Hole-in-One, the restaurant where we breakfast quite often. I see them shuffling to the restroom, tiny steps, backs hunched over their walker, faces contorted with the effort. But lately I notice a sway in my gait, and the gait is a lot slower than it used to be. Now that I’m an octogenarian, I’m thinking more and more about that exit door just down the hall, with the green ripper behind it waiting for me. A little girl in one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series overheard her parents talking about the Grim Reaper and thought they were describing some green monster who ripped people apart, thus the Green Ripper. I don’t envision any ripper or black-cloaked figure with a scythe. I know death is a kind of farewell, a closing down. But what comes after? I don’t believe in God, at least not the God of any of the world’s religions. No heaven, no hell, no limbo.

Some deaths are better than others. My father fell dead from a heart attack, one moment here, next moment gone. That was a good death even though too soon at sixty-eight. My mother lived ninety-four years, taking care of herself even though legally blind for her last decade. She fell and broke a hip, was hospitalized, and never recovered, dying within a week and a half. A good death. Brother Dick drowned in a motel pool at eighty-five. A tragic death, but quick, a good death. You get the idea—the time between relatively good health and death should be short, quick, not agonizingly drawn out in some hospital bed or in a wheelchair in a Golden Bridge assisted living place. “Golden Bridge,” now there’s a misnomer if I ever saw one. A bad death is that one just described, mind and memory gone but blood still pumping. When the quality of life dips below what is acceptable, we should be given the right to say goodbye. My sister-in-law, ninety-two, is presently caught in that awful corridor between acceptable and unacceptable life, for two years gradually succumbing to Alzheimer’s. That’s my idea of a bad death. We should all have an off button somewhere handy, a button we could hit when life is no longer acceptable. I know, I know. What if we no longer have a mind to determine when that time comes? Ay, there’s the rub.

The Mentalist

Like a lot of us who, for five and a half seasons, have faithfully followed The Mentalist’s Patrick Jane in his obsessive quest for Red John, we were pretty sick of all the weekly mention of this badass who not only killed Jane’s wife and daughter but countless others. Finally, finally, even the writers had had enough and decided to let Jane find him and kill him. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in my youth. But the series never made clear how RJ could have enlisted the number of people in his evil doings, never made clear why RJ decided to kill Jane’s wife and daughter, never made clear what would happen to the RJ followers when RJ was gone. And most curious of all, after Jane strangles RJ and calls Teresa to apologize for what he’d gotten her into and to tell her goodbye, suddenly two years have passed. The folks at the CBI have been scattered to the winds: Teresa Lisbon is now in uniform as a police chief; Wayne Rigsby and Grace Van Pelt, now married, are heads of a security firm; Kimball Cho is now in the FBI; and Patrick is now beach bumming on an island somewhere south of the border, sort of just waiting around until he can figure out a way to get back into the U.S. Two years. We went from what we presumed was the present to a time two years in the future. While Jane is bumming, he meets Kim Fischer, a teacher there on the island for a short holiday break. They connect and agree to having dinner together. Then Jane is severely beaten by a local drug dealer’s thugs, after which Kim takes him back to his room and leaves him to return to the U.S. Apparently, Kim (an FBI agent, not a teacher) and Agent Abbott, the FBI agent who’s been tailing Jane for two years, will be recurring characters in the future, and Rigsby and Van Pelt will be shown the door. I’m happy to say that this new plot line is a welcome relief from the old line, almost like starting over with a new series starring Simon Baker as a new Mentalist. And then we’ll have two romantic possibilities the writers can milk for all they’re worth—Teresa Lisbon and Agent Kim Fischer. Should be interesting.

Philomena

We just saw the Judi Dench film called Philomena and were touched by her performance as well as by this story of a woman’s search for a son she’d lost to the Catholic nuns in Ireland fifty years before. The story was touching, maybe a bit tear-jerky, but I don’t mind having a few of my tears jerked or my heart strings plucked. Every now and then, we all need a good cry even if it isn’t for our own problems or heartaches. Dame Judi didn’t do anything phenomenal; she just showed us an older woman who lived a simple life and maintained her faith in God and the Catholic Church despite what they had done to her in her youth. I didn’t realize before seeing this movie that it touched on the reprehensible Magdalene Houses in Ireland in the first half of last century. One of the most vivid film memories I have is of The Magdalene Sisters, a black and white indictment of these Irish places that imprisoned young girls who had “sinned” in the eyes of their parents and the Catholic nuns who ran these houses. The women were kept under lock and key and made to work at chores like doing laundry for townspeople, and they were there for their lifetimes unless they could somehow find someone to bail them out for up to five hundred pounds, usually a sum that was impossible to come by. Philomena Lee had to stay there for four years, able to see her son every now and then as he grew up under the care of the nuns. Aaron, her son, when he was four, was sold to an American couple for a thousand pounds. Now, forty-six years later, she wants to find him, to see how his life has been, maybe to ask him for his forgiveness for having allowed him to be taken from her. She enlists the aid of a journalist, and together, they find him and learn the story of his life. The film may soon be forgotten, but my images of Judi Dench will be with me forever, just as those scenes from The Magdalene Sisters are with me forever. The filmmakers chose to do a lot of full face shots of her as she traveled with Martin in their search.

There she was, old face with lines and crags, eyes rheumy, but I could still see the young Judi Dench beneath the mask, the beauty she must have been in her youth. I’ll be pulling for her when the Oscars are announced.

Big Brother

I’ve been gone for a while, taking time out to play with my new toy, the iPad mini. So much to discover, so much to learn, so much to practice. I just can’t believe how complex this thing is. All you Smart phoners already know what these little gadgets can do—access the internet, get breaking news and weather reports, go on Facebook, watch popular YouTube stuff, watch movies and tv series episodes, get weather, financial trends, medical news, and all the porn one could ever desire. Well, I can do all that on my computer but I never thought I could do it on this tiny device. I tried using the on-screen keyboard for writing e-mails, but it was way too slow a process. So I went to the Apple store in our nearby Arrowhead Mall. Mobs of people there, all scrambling for the latest Apple stuff. I wandered, found the rack of keyboards, found an ultrathin keyboard for the iPad mini, tackled one of the very busy Apple nerds to see if this was what I needed. “Oh, sure,” he said. “That’ll work.” I said, “Okay, I’d like to buy it.” “Okay,” he said. “Let me get a sales clerk to check you out.” He handed me off to Carl and his seeing-eye dog Claire Bear, a friendly black lab who was content to be under the counter while his master took care of holiday shoppers. Carl scanned my purchase with his magic wand, then swiped my credit card on a small black device that looked like a cell phone. He asked me for my name and address and my e-mail address. I just had to ask him how he was entering all that info into his sales log without being able to see the keys. He gave me a Stevie Wonder smile and pointed to the ear bud in his ear. “The machine tells me when I pass my stylus over the keys which ones to hit.” Just plain magic, a blind man leading a blind shopper through a sale. I thanked him and hurried out with my booty, eager to get home and try it out. The technological advances, especially those in electronics, have been so sudden and so dramatic that I find myself speculating about the near and distant future. The exponential curve for such advance has become so steep, I think it may simply tip over and fall backwards. I envision a time when science may be able to install a small computer into a contact lens allowing a person to see what’s in front of him and also be able to speech-activate a retinal mini-computer. Or maybe they could simply implant it in the front of the brain. Instead of that bottle in front of me or the frontal lobotomy, a frontal computer. I see a time in our near future when electric autos will drive us to our destinations without our having to drive them. I see houses taking care of themselves without human intervention. I remember Ray Bradbury’s story from 1950, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” in which a house simply died after a nuclear war, with no one to instruct it. These houses of the future will be able to clean themselves, heat and cool themselves, turn lights on and off, play music low or loud, remind us of appointments and schedules, cook for us, do our laundry. All we’ll do is occupy them. Oh, wait, we already have such houses. I see a time when movies and tv shows will no longer need live actors, but will simply use computer processing to digitize characters and settings. Oh, wait, we can already do that. I see the demise of shopping areas, replaced by huge warehouses that take internet orders and deliver them to our doorsteps by tiny delivery drones. Oh, wait, I just saw where Amazon already has such planned for the very near future.

Meanwhile, as we become ever more able to film and save nearly every location and every person in those locations, we will lose any privacy we may have once had. Is this scenario for the future good or bad? I have no idea. But I’m sure Big Brother knows.

Thanksgiving & The Sound of Music

Thanksgiving has come and gone, followed by that silly Black Friday mania. Why would so many people feel so compelled to go out and fight the traffic and stand in line and fight the crowds and spend oodles of cash on stuff they may not even need, just to get those ridiculous discounts? “Tis a mystery. I’m glad I didn’t have to do it. We had a very nice Thanksgiving (or birthgiving, as one of my Facebook friends called it) dinner provided by our local Safeway grocery store—12 pound pre-cooked turkey, corn bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, dozen rolls, and a small pumpkin pie. Perfect for the three of us, my wife and I and daughter Jeri, and it would have easily fed six or seven. Best of all, the prep for it all was simple and the post-dinner cleanup a breeze. Thank you, Mrs. Safeway. We toyed with the idea of sticking a candle on the pie to commemorate my birthday but decided against it. After eating too much, I don’t think I’d have had enough energy to blow out even one candle, let alone eighty. Eighty might have set our house on fire. But now we’re on the eve of December with a short hop to Christmas and then to another new year. Tempus fugit.

There’s been a lot of hype recently about the upcoming NBC showing of a live Sound of Music, with Carrie Underwood playing Maria. Last Tuesday we went to the Arizona Broadway Theatre, our nearby dinner theatre, and saw Sound, and let me say that the girl who played Maria, Trisha Hart Disworth, would have made Julie Andrews proud. ABT just keeps getting better and better. The show opened with the seven nuns and the Mother Abbess behind a scrim screen, the abbey and castle and mountains on the scrim, a lighted abbey window behind them, four pillars and a high gated fence in front of them, and they sang the vespers a cappella. Enough to take my breath away. Then the fence and pillars exited left and right, the backdrop went up, the scrim went up, and Maria was there, lying on the stage with the mountains on a backdrop, and we hear the oh so familiar strains of the hills being alive. And what a voice Maria had. The sets and costumes and singing were wonderful. The voices of Maria and the Mother Abbess were fine enough for Broadway. I see that Audra MacDonald is playing the mother superior in the live production, and she has a great operatic voice, but I don’t think she’ll be any better than ABT’s Ariana Valdes. Anyone who might read this who lives in our Valley of the Sun should go see this ABT production. It was spectacular.

SYTYCD

Both of us were still feeling uneasy about our trip into downtown Phoenix for the SYTYCD show. We left at 5:30, assuming about thirty minutes to get to the theatre where we’d park and then find some place nearby for a light dinner. Wrong on almost all counts. It was dark by the time we’d gone only a few miles, and our unfamiliarity with Phoenix made it more like forty-five minutes. Lots of traffic, most of which was going the other way or the trip would have been even longer, but what seemed like an endless line of light in my eyes made the drive difficult. After half an hour, I put aside my male pride in never needing directions and stopped at a Circle K to ask how much farther to Van Buren St. Another mile or two, the clerk told me Middle Easternly. We drove on, found our turnoff, found the parking garage, and got parked by 6:20, with cars and people all over the place. And the people were all streaming to Comerica Theatre. We decided we wouldn’t have time for a cocktail and a bit to eat. Instead, we got in a line of several hundred people waiting to get in. Security guards checked all bags and purses for suspicious stuff like guns and explosives, but I think it was more for spotting forbidden bottles of water and soda. Just like at baseball stadiums, Comerica wanted to sell you five buck popcorn, five buck bottles of water. So I grudgingly bought both as a substitute for dinner. Comerica, like the garage next door, looked brand new—very high ceiling, seating on two levels with a balcony above, and lots of seats, all really small and close together with very little leg room. We found our seats, heaved a sigh, and sat with our bucket of popcorn and one bottle of water. We had nearly an hour before the show was to begin, so we munched and watched people-watched as they come in. Two huge girls sat down two rows in front of us. One of them was so big-butted I didn’t think she had a chance of fitting in one of these tiny seats. But she oozed her way in, flesh sort of flopping out on both sides. I pitied the poor lady who was seated next to her. If the world’s unluckiest person were flying cross country, this girl would be the one who’d be sitting right next to him in the aisle seat with another just like her in the window seat. The people kept coming in and the seats kept filling. I could only guess what the capacity of Comerica would be, but lots and lots of seats. I looked it up this morning, 5,000. Now our seats were dead center, but back so far the stage looked tiny. And I paid $48 apiece. I’m guessing the seats in the lower section nearer the stage would have been quite a bit higher. And when everybody was in and seated, it looked like it was at least 95% filled. That’s a bunch of people and a bunch of money for this show. A very young girl was seated next to Rosalie and another next to me. They had to have been interested in dance to sit so quietly and attentively through the two-hour performance. Finally, Nigel Lythgoe appeared like Oz on a large screen at the back of the stage and got it started, telling us what we were going to see, who all the dancers were. Then the music began and the fourteen dancers all danced down the aisles from the rear and onto the stage, where they did a lengthy number to “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then it was almost an hour of steady dance numbers, mostly doubles, some group stuff, and all ten of the finalists doing a short solo. Choreographers from the show introduced some of the numbers via the big screen—Sonya Tayeh (she of the strange hair styles and body piercing), Tyce Diorio, Tabitha and Napoleon D’umo, Mandy Moore, and Travis Wall. Most of the dance numbers featured the winners from season 10: Amy Yakima and Du-Shaunt Stegal (Fik-shun) as well as the two runnersup, Jasmine Harper (she with the legs that go forever) and Aaron Turner (the husky tapper that learned how to do it all). A short intermission and then another hour before it was over. The only things missing were Mary Murphy and her screaming and Cat Deeley and her blond beauty. It was exciting, it was moving, it was great dancing, with great music and lighting effects. But the performers were so very far away. I found that during the solos, when each dancer was shown on that large back screen, I was watching the screen instead of the live dancer on stage. As with sporting events, watching it on the tube is closer to the action than any seat in the house. So too was this performance. The one thing that sitting in one’s house watching televised football or basketball or So You Think You Can Dance can’t duplicate is the energy of the crowd. We and the other 4500 or so people in the audience cheered and applauded and ooed and aahed together whenever a dancer or dance number did something spectacular. That togetherness felt good. But I’m not sure it was worth the time and money we invested in it. I’m glad we went, but neither of us will make such a trip again.

iPad & Other Stuff

I’m learning. Fighting my way through the intricacies of my new iPad Mini. Saturday I figured out how to get the iPad synched with my computer through iTunes and transferred nearly a thousand music tracks. And I now know how to get on line, where I went to Lulu.com and downloaded all my books at 99 cents apiece. Then on to Amazon where I bought the new one by Sandford, Storm Front, and one I’ve been looking for by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl. And I think I’ve mastered the tiny keyboard even though my fingers seem too large for the tiny keys. Now I have to get acquainted with Siri, the lovely lady that Big Bang Theory's Raj fell in love with. I don’t know what she can do for me, but it will be nice to hear her lovely voice. Then I went to the apps store and downloaded half a dozen, the Weather Channel, a couple of news outlets, and some games (free cell and Sudoku and a few golf). The next thing I have to learn: how to take pictures and videos. Then I’ll have it all and except for the writing I do on Word, I’ll be able to semi-abandon my computer, the beast that keeps getting slower and slower every day.

This past weekend was a really good one for Arizona sports. First, AU simply crushed the Oregon ducks. Then ASU maybe didn’t crush but certainly bruised UCLA. The Cardinals really did crush or maybe even smashed the Colts. And the Suns won their seventh game, this one over Orlando. This may have been the most successful weekend for Arizona sports ever.

Tonight we’re driving in to Phoenix to see the finalists from this season’s So You Think You Can Dance do their stuff. It should be fun to see these kids live and right there in front of us instead on the tube. I must confess, though, that I have some misgivings about getting to the theatre. I’d rather not have to drive into Phoenix simply because it all seems so complicated and somehow threatening. We see on the news these horrific stories about drive-by shootings and accidents and muggings and car-jackings. I know, I know, that’s just the negative news every big city has to show us every night. But still, we’re old, and we worry about such things happening to us. But we’ll be all right, and the show will be spectacular. I’ll let you know how it was tomorrow.

Ipad Magic

On Thursday, I went to Best Buy to get some kind of tablet for my birthday. After all, this year is a major benchmark in my life and I felt that I deserved an expensive present. In the old days, a tablet was a cheap spiral-bound notebook in which one wrote stuff, a quarter or half a buck at most. No longer. Now it’s a really expensive thing one can write in or do all sorts of things, and it costs about one and a half arms and legs. At first I thought I’d like an IPad Air, the latest Apple to fall from the tree, but I changed my mind when I finally found all the tablets on display, about twenty from various IPads to Windows to Samsungs to Kindles to Nooks, all in differing sizes and capabilities. And every one of those had two or three or four people checking them out, everyone looking much smarter in their examinations than I. I’m not a novice when it comes to computers, but I’m less than a child when it comes to these new, tiny things that seem able to perform magic on their tiny screens. I sort of wandered around, trying not to look too stupid, checking prices, reading the descriptive blurbs about each one. I assumed all of them would have a manual that explained how the magic happened. So, since I’ve always been a quick sell, I grabbed a geek and told him I wanted an IPad Mini, 16 gigs, for just over $300, up to about $360 with a leather cover and tax. I wonder how many spiral-bound tablets I might have bought with that much money. About seven or eight hundred. Then I raced home like a little kid with a new toy. But, I discovered, what a really complicated toy, sort of like that piece of elaborate furniture we bring home in a box, umpteen pieces with umpteen different sized screws and bolts and nuts with the directions in Chinese. I found that I first had to hook it up to my computer, then connect to my Qwest broadband and WIFI. But I didn’t have a password that would allow me to continue the setup. Duh! So I called for help. Since Qwest was a part of my Century Link account, I called them, spoke to Edna, who asked me for all my account details and put me on hold for a transfer to the tech squad. Then, after ten minutes, I got through to a technical support geek named Leonard, who asked me all the same questions about my account. I’m not sure what nationality Leonard was or where he was located, but it sure wasn’t anywhere in the U.S. Oddly, though, he didn’t sound Indian. Is it racist of me to say that? Most technical support for electronic gadgets is in India. Are there young men named Leonard in India? So Leonard, way too fast in language I could barely understand, finally managed to give me a password that would work with my Qwest account. What should have been simple became much too complex—a nearly incomprehensible geek spewing way too many words at me, trying to sell me way too many upgrades to my internet service. I finally interrupted him and said, “Thank you, Leonard. Goodbye,” and hung up. Was that rude of me? I hope not. Then it was back to my IPad with my new password. Yay! It worked. And I suddenly had bells and whistles and sleight of hand stuff I couldn’t begin to decipher: a camera, an Apple apps store (475,000 apps to choose from, some to buy and some free, none of which struck me as something I needed), the ITunes store, maps, magazines, free books (none of which I wanted), access to my e-mails, internet access to any site I might want to visit, a tiny keyboard for texting or filling in information requests. Oh, yes, and the manual? I went to the Apple site and downloaded 137 pages of instructions on how to use this magical platter. That’s right, one hundred and thirty-seven pages for this tiny toy. Now I have to figure out how I can transfer some of my music from computer to IPad, how to download e-books, how to transfer photos, how to take pictures and videos. I’ll tackle all that tomorrow.

The Bad Boys

Remember when your children were still children, going through that awful transition from two to three? Remember those terrible times when your children became little devils just beginning to learn what they could and couldn’t get away with? Well, our two little boys, Tiger and Tuffy, seem to be in the middle of those terrible twos because they’re putting us to the test. Nothing seems to be too high for them to leap onto, no glassware not under lock and key is safe from their inquisitive paws, no artificial flowers can escape their tiny teeth, no window cords or electrical cords or phone cords seem to be out of bounds for their mischief.. They will look us in the eye and give us that two-year-old’s cherubic smile, all the while thinking about what they might next do to bug mom and dad. Our chairs and sofa tremble at their approach for fear of their razor-sharp little claws. Our house is littered with tiny play mice and round plastic balls and yet there are at least five or six that have been shoved under hutch or chairs or stove. And each time after we fish these lost items out from their hiding places, the boys almost immediately knock them under again. Just like Longfellow’s little girl I wrote about a while ago, the one with the curl in the middle of her forehead, the boys, usually when they’re sleeping, can be such good little boys, but when they’re awake, when they’re bad, they’re horrid. Soon, though, too soon, like all two-year-olds, they’ll pass through this phase to kitty adolescence and then to adulthood. And then, like Charlie, they’ll be mostly model citizens. Mostly. That's Tuffy sleeping in his window seat. Doesn't he look angelic? And Tiger is in his favorite chair in the living room. Doesn't he look angelic? Then there's Charlie, now the responsible adult in the trio, looking aloofly innocent, just as he always does, awake or asleep.

ED

A very long time ago, in a country far far away, my wife and others in town were shocked when the 5 & 10 store dared to put a Kotex display in their front window, right out there for the innocent eyes of women and little children to see. Back then discreet men and women never spoke of such things, let alone have them displayed for the whole world to see. How dare the store owners advertise a female product like that, dare to take it out of its brown paper disguise and show it nakedly in a front window. Get out the rails, boys, pluck a few chickens, heat up the tar and ride them out of town.

We’ve come a long way since then. Now we’re bombarded by countless tv ads for ED cures, Cialis and Viagra companies promising aging men that anytime the coital urge hits them they too can sit out in nature in twin bathtubs, basking in the knowledge that they could hump like rabbits with the drop of a little blue pill, warning them with wordy disclaimers that in case their erector sets keep them up for more than four hours they should call a physician. And in case the pills don’t help, they should get a prescription for Axiron or Androgel to increase testosterone. A little dab’ll do ya in each arm pit, and—Voila!—energy and strength and sexual drive like never before. What’s next? Last night we saw an ad for Trojan lubricants. I’m just glad they didn’t show us how and where to apply it. Stay tuned, that’ll soon be on the tube.

The "Esh" Phoneme

When one faithfully keeps a journal for over twenty years, it’s odd how remembered events and thoughts can disappear into the sea of words. I recently mentioned one of my pet English language anomalies—the many different spellings we have for the “esh” phoneme. I know I wrote an essay about it, listing all the words that exemplify the various “esh” spellings. Can I find it? No way. It’s somewhere, but I don’t know where. I’d have to wade through four or five thousand journal pages to find it, and though I’m fond of my own words, I’m not four or five thousand pages fond.

Here it is again, with most of the examples, but not all. It serves my purpose for showing how agonizingly complex English spelling and pronunciation is.
1. “sh” – devilish. So far, so good, the obvious choice for our “esh” spelling.
2. “s” – sugar, sure. Okay, does the “u” after the “s” cause it to come out as “esh”? What about “nauseous?” Is the “s” acting alone or is it working with the “e”? (This word can be pronounced three ways, but the preferred way is with the “esh.”)
3. “se” – nauseous. One way or the other, “s” alone or “se.”
4. “si” – compulsion, expulsion
5. “sc” – fascist
6. “sch” – (Most borrowed from German, but many also from Yiddish) schist, schilling, schmaltz, schmo, schnooze, schnapps, schmuck (Careful who you call a schmuck; in Yiddish it basically means “penis.”), and a double example, schottische (an “esh” on both ends)
7. “sche” – schottische
8. “ss” – fissure, issue
9. “ssi” – mission. Is the “i’ working with the “ss”? What happens when the “i” is removed? You get “misson,” which loses the “esh”; therefore, the “i” must be working with the “ss” to make the “esh.”
10. “c” – commercial, racial, facial, delicious, atrocious
11. “ch” – chute, chartreuse, champagne, chamois (mostly borrowed from French), , Chinook (an oddity which can be pronounced with hard “ch” when it signifies a native American tribe or as an “esh” when it means a warm wind)
12. “t” – novitiate, Horatio, fellatio
13. “ti” – confidential, exemption, motion, palatial (But isn’t it odd that in “palatial” the “c” from “palace” has changed to a “t”?)
14. “xi” – anxious (But odd that the “x” changes to a “z” sound in “anxiety.”)
15. “chs” – fuchsia (a lone oddity in that it derives from Leonhard Fuchs, a 16th century German botanist)
16. “psh" - pshaw (often mispronounced as “pishaw”)

A few more examples of the way English can mystify people seeking to learn our language. “Sew” and “few” look like they should be pronounced with the same vowel quality, “oo.” But “sew” is like “so” and “few” is with a diphthong that sounds like “eee-uw,” that sound of disgust when we see something yucky. And “gone” and “dawn” rhyme, but their spellings are dramatically different. Then there’s the “mb” problem, words that use this spelling but which choose to make the “b” silent, and each time, the “o” that’s trapped in front of it changes color: “bomb”- “ comb”-“tomb.” How’s that for inconsistency?

Phoenix Sports & Old Hookers

Last weekend was great for Arizona sports. Or maybe I should say for Phoenix sports since AU got busted by UCLA. But the ASU Sundevils squeaked out a win over the Utah Utes, the Cardinals came from behind to squeak it out over the Houston Texans, and the surprising Suns slapped the visiting Pelicans up alongside the head to move to 5-2 and in first place in the Pacific Division. All the talking heads forecast the Suns to win no more than twenty-one or –two all season. Even the Vegas bookmakers had them winning only eighteen. But they seem to be fooling everyone. New coach Jeff Hornacek has to be partly responsible. He’s got them playing tough at both ends, just as he did in his playing days. I hope next weekend sees as many bright spots as this last one did.

Last Saturday I went to my book signing with anxious heart, a little like stage fright. I was afraid it would be a negative repeat of my other failed attempts to attract readers to my books. And it was. I sat there for two hours listening to my fellow book-signer Gale Leach rapturously describe her books to the few people who stopped by. But no one wanted to hear my rapture. Don Rasmussen, a fellow book-signer scheduled for next Saturday, introduced himself, saying he just wanted to see what it was all about. But then he stood there like a book groupie for almost an hour, just aching to talk about his book. H’d written an autobiography about his life in the military and in coaching and the early days of ESPN. I wanted to say to him, “Are you crazy? Who but your children gives a rat’s ass about your life story?” But I didn’t say it, just let him go on and on about it while I pretended to listen. After two hours of sitting on a very hard chair, chatting briefly with my two faithful golf buddies who showed up, I heaved a sigh of relief and left Gifts to Go, swearing never again to put myself up for sale like some cheap hooker under a streetlight, having all potential Johns pull up beside me, take one look, and go screeching away as fast as their wheels would take them. Nope. No thanks. I’m too old and too disheartened about book selling to go through that again. I’ll just squeeze my hooker legs together and close up shop.

Insomnia

What does one do in the depth of night when one wakes up and stares in the darkness at the inside of one’s eyelids? Well, old English teachers lie there and obsess on the vagaries of English spelling and pronunciation. How, I ask myself, can any non-English speaking person learn to read, write, or pronounce English when we have so many spelling and pronunciation anomalies? I think of “though” and then add a “t” to make “thought.” Okay, two different vowel sounds for the “ou” (“oh” and “aw”) with the “gh” silent. Then I add an “r” to make “through” and I now have an “oo” sound. Now I find a diphthong in “bough” and “sough” (which can be pronounced as either “sow” or “suff” and is obviously related to “sigh”). I heave a deep sigh and go on to “cough” and “tough,” with vowel sounds like “aw” and “uh” and the “gh” so longer silent but sounding like a rough “eff.” And all this is only the tip of the iceberg of the English spelling conundrum. Don’t even get me started on the “esh” phoneme in English. I tried, successful finally, to get back to sleep. Although it was rough, I thought it through, fought for sleep, and then soughed like a bough in a midnight breeze.

Book Signing

This Saturday, November 9, from 11:30 to 1:30, I'll be at a book signing at a little shop called Gifts to Go. I'd really appreciate it if any of you who live in the area and read this blog could come to it, not necessarily to buy any books, but just to support me in this venture and maybe chat a bit. This place is located directly east of the QT just before you enter Sun City. There are a series of shops facing west, Gifts to Go is the northernmost of these shops. I'll be there signing my golf novel Match Play and the children's book Life in the Arbor. Thanks in advance to any of you who drop in.

Christmas "Stuff"

It’s that time again, time for the Christmas catalogues to start pouring into our mailbox. My wife and I are old enough that we no longer need to fill our house with “stuff.” In fact, we’re sort of in a “getting rid of” mode, either giving away or selling things we no longer have a need for or a special attachment to. I’ve gotten rid of most of my many cd’s (which was easy because I have all the tracks downloaded onto my computer) and a bunch of my books (which wasn’t so easy as I have, all through my life, bonded with books, taking them to my heart, the ugly ones as well as the beautiful). But that still leaves all the knickknacks we’ve bought over the years—the Priscilla Hillman kitty collectibles from Hallmark, the set of Wildflower Angels representing each month, the many glass paperweights, the crystal sets of assorted dishes too good to use but good enough to keep in our dining room hutch, the paintings by Rosalie’s father and my mother and the wooden carvings by Rosalie’s father. Just stuff, but stuff that enriches our lives. But we don’t need to add to that list, and that’s what such Christmas catalogues offer us, entice us into buying. The latest catalogue, and probably the classiest of the lot, is Signals, out of Ohio. Jewelry, wall hangings, music boxes, unusual clocks and watches, wind chimes, etc. All moderately priced and tasteful. For example, there’s a personalized wall hanging portraying a snowy landscape with two parallel rows of winter trees enclosing this saying, “I can’t promise that I’ll be here for the rest of your life, but I can promise that I’ll love you for the rest of mine.” A bit corny, but the price is right and the sentiment is genuine, even though borrowed. They also advertise three music boxes that are tempting: a harp playing “Music of the Night,” a violin playing “Blue Danube,” and a grand piano playing “Für Elise.” Do we need another music box? No, definitely no. There’s also a sign to hang on one’s front door that instructs visitors, “Doorbell Broken. Yell ‘Ding Dong!’ really loud.” Whimsical, but I love whimsy. And then, of course, there are all the t-shirts and sweatshirts with comic sayings. I love the sayings, but I don’t need any more t-shirts or sweatshirts. The old English teacher in me finds the following clever and cute and accurate:
1. Keep clam and proofread. Loose your cool and it’s easy to make misteaks.
2. “I” before “e” except when eight weird, feisty neighbors seize a surfeit of weighty heifers.
3. The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.
4. Seven days without a pun makes one weak.
5. Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
6. A backward poet writes inverse.
7. Her bootlegging was illegal, but I loved her still.
8. A tardy cannibal gets the cold shoulder.
9. Never play cards in the Serengeti—there are too many cheetahs.
10. I regret not developing my photographic memory.
11. And my favorite of all in this age of talkers: Listen and silent have the same letters. Coincidence?

Dental Implants

Yesterday I went to my dentist (a student at Midwestern Dental School) and had four implants placed in my upper jaw. I don't think these young people realize how painful it is to sit in a dental chair for up to three hours straight, especially when the sitter is fast approaching eighty and really really has to pee. So I was there for nearly three hours with four people all having some portion of their hands in my mouth, not necessarily all at the same time, but it seemed like all four had a hand in it--a dental surgeon who was instructing my two students as he cut and hacked and pounded, my head student who was helping by holding my lips open, my secondary student who was manning the water and suction deelybob, and another assistant whose job it was to scrub away the blood on my lips and bottom jaw. I think if one had to devise a method of torture even quicker and more efficient than water-boarding, this might be it. They also did something I wouldn't have dreamed could be part of this procedure, pounding on each implant post with a tiny mallet. The NFL is worried about concussions. Well, dentists who use a tiny mallet on the inside of one's head should also be worried about causing concussions.

I was reminded of the old Dustin Hoffman movie, Marathon Man, in which Dustin is tortured by Dr. Christian Szell (played by Sir Laurence Olivier at his macabre best), who used his Auschwitz dental training to drill on Dustin’s teeth to get him to reveal the hiding place of some diamonds. I’d have given up the diamonds in a flash. You may be wondering why I was having four implants. They're evenly spaced along my upper gum ridge and will serve as anchors for my upper dental plate, sort of snap-on buttons like shirts and jackets sometimes have. I feel much better today than I did when I came home yesterday. But if I had to do it again, I'd pass.

When She Was Good

When She Was Good is a most unusual novel by Laura Lippman,. Or maybe I should say, it contains a most unusual main character. Helen Lewis is a prostitute who becomes a madam and runs her escort service like a well-oiled machine, making sure her “girls” are protected from disease as well as customers, or “clients” as she likes to refer to them. And she extensively screens the men before accepting them as clients, most of whom are influential movers and shakers in the Baltimore and DC areas. She is almost entirely a self-made woman, never graduating from high school because her abusive father insisted she go to work instead of wasting her time in school. But she reads and reads, thinking if she can’t get a normal education she’ll get one on her own. When she was eighteen, dancing, both pole and lap, she was living with Billy, an addict and a loser, but it’s there that she meets Val Deluca, who takes her in, supposedly only temporarily. But he pimps her out and she works for him until he’s sent to prison for killing Martin, the young man he’d been grooming as his second in command. But since Helen (now renamed Heloise) has such good business acumen, she takes over the business and runs it better and more profitably than Val did. Helen, or Heloise, is a remarkable character in that she’s in a dirty business but she’s such a good and intelligent person who treats both her escorts and the clients with fairness and respect. Lippman is a sneaky good writer, nothing flamboyant about her style but she has her moments. Let me show just a few examples:

“Heloise feels as if she can pinpoint the exact location of her heart. It is like a pigeon caught in a chimney, flapping its wings, desperate to get out, blind in the darkness.”

“She really does look fine. If one didn’t know of Sophie’s former glory, she might even seem reasonably attractive. But the lusciousness is gone. She’s like a piece of fruit on its way to being overripe. There’s no visible decay, but you wouldn’t want to bite into her for fear that the sensation would be mushy and mealy.”

“They were a self-contained unit, together almost sixty years, not even particularly perturbed by the infrequency with which they saw their grown children. They were like two trees that had grown together, and they would probably topple together. “

Anyone who likes well-written thrillers should try some of Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series or any of her stand-alone novels.

Tiger Woods

Forgive me for beating this drum again, just as I have for so many years. All you Tiger haters out there won’t like what I have to say about the man, especially after he showed the world his feet of clay with his infamous sex scandal. In the years since Tiger’s father died, and in these past three years after Tiger’s domestic screw-up, Tiger’s career isn’t as certain as it once seemed to be. Granted, it’s still pretty great, but just think what it might have been, what it still might be. Tiger’s father devoted his son’s life to becoming the best ever, and Tiger went along with it to an unbelievable degree. What must it have been like for the other tour players during that first decade of Tiger’s career? Playing for second place most weeks, I guess. I hope I live long enough to see how it all plays out. By the end of last season, he’s won 79 PGA tour events, only three behind Snead’s 82 (but some of Snead’s are questionable at best), and Snead, like Vijah Singh, played in nearly every tournament that came down the pike, many with weak fields. Tiger plays in only the most prestigious tournaments, with the strongest fields. What if he’d decided to play a thirty or thirty-five week schedule per year? He could easily have won another three more each of the past dozen years, bringing his total to somewhere around 115. The number of records he holds is remarkable—number of years as top money winner, number of cuts made, number of consecutive cuts made (142), number of consecutive weeks ranked as number 1, number of consecutive PGA victories in a row—7 in 2006-07, 6 in 1999-2000 (second only to Byron Nelson’s 11 in a row). He’s won 27.2% of the tournaments he’s entered. His influence on the tour has been tremendous, almost single-handedly increasing the amount of prize money now available to tour players. He played probably the best golf anyone has ever known in that magical year of 2000-2001. He was then king, and his reign continued for nearly the entire first decade of this century. And then he blew it. But maybe he can right the ship and regain his title. He was and still might be the most powerful figure any sport has ever seen. Paul Azinger once said he thought Tiger was the greatest athlete of all-time, an assessment I’d have to agree with.