Tiger Woods

I love it when athletes talk about staying in the present, being in the moment and keeping their minds still. These concepts all came from spiritual disciplines, made their way into modern psychology and are now thrown about by jocks with no clue of their origins. Prior to their inclusion in sports vernacular, the closest anyone came to the concept of complete awareness was when they spoke of being in the zone or playing the game in a state of slow motion. The difference is that these last were things that happened to the player as if by accident. Many of today's players now understand these are states of being that can be achieved.

Tiger Woods may be the best example in sports of a competitor who grasps and employs the concept of complete focus on the task at hand. Golf afficianados will tell you he has the strongest mind on the tour. What they are saying is that he is best able to block out distractions that can cause errant shots; the most important and most prevalent of which are the golfer's own thoughts. Think a negative and you will achieve a negative result. Ask any golfer how many times he has hit his ball in the water after thinking don't hit the ball in the water. In team sports a player's mind can wander to the cheerleaders from time to time. His teammates will carry the ball. In golf if you lose your focus you've lost your mind and the game gets away from you in a hurry. Watching Tiger demolish the field at The P.G.A. over the last four days was in some ways like watching a person who has evolved to a higher plane. For the first two days many of the other players were able to match Tiger's intensity and, as a result, his scores, but as the tournament went into the weekend and the pressure to make good shot after good shot grew greater, they all fell away and Tiger was left with what seemed an easy victory. And maybe it was.

Spiritual teachers will tell you that the mind can be trained as well as the muscles. It takes the same discipline, practise and effort a player brings to the training of his body. Tiger, with his part Asian heritage, may have been privy to this wisdom at an earlier age and thus further along in his development. He credits both of his parents for instilling in him the strength of mind and character he brings to the game. But what could they have taught him that other player's parents didn't know and pass along? It would be interesting to find out and perhaps one day Tiger will tell us. He was the first interviewed player I ever heard talk of being present and staying in the moment and maybe that's the complete story. But now, with so many other players expressing, and maybe even grasping, the same concepts, will Tiger be able to maintain his dominance? Time will tell, of course, but I'm guessing there are more wins, more stories and more wisdom to be gleaned from this amazing young man.

The Question of Beloved

Beloved is an interesting word. I'm thinking a thing has to be around for twenty years or so before it can achieve beloved status. I mean you can't have beloved socks, but an old, comfortable robe might qualify.

It was fun sitting around listening to my beloved Denver Broncos whipping up on The Titans last night even if the players were different than the ones I was beloving twenty years ago. I miss watching all the games on television, but listening to them on my computer is a decent second choice. It reminds me of "back in the day" before television, when I listened to just about everything except whatever my parents were trying to tell me. Something about paying attention, I think. That was radio, of course, and in retrospect, it was every bit as beloved as television. Who doesn't remember crowding around the old Philco to listen to "Inner Sanctum" or "The Great Gildersleeve?" Yeah, I know, everybody younger than the pyramids. It was somehow more engaging when it was necessary to let your mind and imagination fill in the visuals. Paying attention -who said that?- was vital to keeping up with the story...or the game.
Last night I tuned in, attentively, as Dave Logan, a former Bronco, gave his listeners down and distance and a nice portrayal of what he was seeing on the field. Give the guy another twenty years or so and he might attain beloved announcer status.

And speaking of beloved, sports and back in the day - I was speaking of those things wasn't I? I'm not really sure myself, I wasn't paying attention. I was trying to remember what my parents told me years ago - I wonder how sports figures achieve beloved status? It can't be just winning. Arnold Palmer won and is beloved. Jack Nicklaus won far more and is not. Michael Jordon is admired, but not particularly beloved. People flat gush overMuhammed Ali these days, but nobody wants to cuddle with Evander Holyfield, a four time champion. Then there is Tiger Woods who usually beats Phil Mickelson like a drum, but it's Phil who gets beloved status. And, back in the day, Joe Dimaggio was beloved and Ted Williams was, apart from Boston fans, not well liked. Of course that may be because Joe never flipped off the crowd. I think the telling factor, along with being a winner, is likableness. If you aren't likable, you aren't going to be beloved. Barry Bonds, for instance, has no shot, while in Boston, Johnny Damon gets cheered by the crowd even when he returns in a Yankee uniform. Johnny's likable, Barry's not.

So, having solved that conundrum, a word I have never used before and will now look up in my Funk and Wagnalls, a reference only my fellow pyramid builders will get, I will now go watch my beloved PGA golf tournament on television. Why? Because golf sucks on radio.

What Goes Down...Should Stay Down

I just hate it when life intrudes on my life. There I was happily annoying my wife with derogatory comments about Phil Mickelson while watching The P.G.A. (Pregnant Girls with Attitude) golf tournament, eating peanuts and sipping a soda when I suddenly became sick. My wife, who is more generous than I, didn't say serves you right for picking on Phil, but I know she was thinking it as I beelined for the bowl. If it was a karmic response to my gentle jokes, "yo Phil, what's with the orange shirt, proof that pumpkins can play too?" and other, er, high quality jibes like that, than I promise to be a Mickelson fan from this day forward, because barfing doesn't rank among my favorite things to do. It ranks, in fact, only a notch or two above choking to death on a chicken bone. Retch is what I did, repeatedly, and wretch is what I was, completely. There are, I'm sure, grosser things that life has to offer and I'll give an example in a moment, but really, is there any less dignified pose than to be on your knees in front of a toilet bowl spewing what seems to be all your insides into a receptacle designed for your backside and not your face? Tough to maintain one's poise and composure. "I say Old Girl, retch puke vomit, sorry about that, heave toss puke, Mickelson thing. Barf spittle bleck. Do hand me the brrrraggghhhhhh towel like a good sport, won't you?

In a way it might have been a good thing. First I've been eating way too many peanuts lately and that had to stop. They had become my snack of choice and, well, they are fattening don't you know. I guarantee it won't be a problem now. If I even see that that Planter's guy with his top hat and stupid glasses - what peanuts have bad eyesight?- I am definetly going to take a poke at him. Secondly, when the golf was ended and the Sox/Yankee game came on, I had nothing left to contribute to the bowl. The Yankees scored twenty five runs in the double header. Ever see a whole team throw up on themselves?

Finally, as proof that life has a theme, at four this morning I was awakened by the sound of my dog tossing his cookies, kibbles and anything else that may have neared his mouth earlier in the day. Not wanting to actually witness this oh so familiar event, I lay back and closed my eyes for what seemed a moment. The moment after that I was reawakened by the dog scratching at the door to go out. I drug my sorry and sick butt out of bed and went down to face the mess and open the door. After doing the latter, I turned to look for the former and there was none, not a spot, a drop or a dribble. Don't think about where it went.

SV 4

This is part 4 of a continuing story.

The lion was, as lions go, not very big, which accounted in part for his traveling alone. Not being able to whip up, as it were, on his fellow pridesmen, he had been relegated to the kitty end of the dining table and the pickings there were usually quite slim; a bit of grizzle, the odd bone and such. He was forced, therefore, to seek out dietary supplements in the form of food he could steal from smaller animals and edibles he found just lying about. The latter, of course, was most in abundance when humans camped in the neighborhood. Leo we’ll call him, because it means lion in one of those everyday African dialects such as Swahili or Zodiaci, didn’t particularly like humans as they smelled ghastly and moved about on their hind legs like bizarre, featherless and flightless birds. A gray-maned old timer had once told him that, in a pinch, men were edible, but not nearly so tasty as warthog. Leo had no desire to find out if this was true, but his growling gut compelled him to push his way through the tent flap and into this odd human cave.

“Shreeeeek” screamed Lady Sackable or rather something like it. The actual sound eludes transcription here as there were high notes available only to dogs and banshees.

“Bloody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell” was Mile’s contribution, one that was admittedly a bit of a broken record at that.

The most startled of all, however, was Leo as the teeming rain had eliminated any warning odors and he had burst into the tent unaware of its peopled condition. Before he had time to think, never his strong point anyway, a short series of loud, frightened roars had forcefully escaped his throat. Animal translators would later determine these sounds to mean either “Oh My God” or in the case of MGM, “Relax and Enjoy the Movie.”

For a brief moment, three lives flashed before six eyes and then Miles, a man of action, acted. He leaped behind Lady Sackable, clutched her by the shoulders and pushed her forward as a human shield. Years later, remembering this day, he would still feel no remorse at his actions, because as he was quick to point out, “Come on! It was a lion!”

Fortunately for Miles, his less than heroic performance went unnoticed by our heroine as at the very moment of the deed, Lady Sackable fainted dead away. The consequence of her leaving the consciousness scene was that Miles was abruptly caught with a dead weight on his hands and, in trying to adjust, stumbled backwards and onto the bed, pulling Lady Ess atop him. They had just hit the mattress when Noblong reentered the room.

To be continued.

Charlie Chan, Bugs and Mel Gibson

"Better to let cat out of bag than to drown same."
"Smart Rats know when to leave ship."
"Owner of face cannot always see nose."
"Shot in dark sometime find eye of bull."

Who needs Rinpoche, when you've got Charlie Chan? Some of the 42 Charlie Chan movies have been showing here on our classic cinema channel. There is even one entitled "Charlie Chan in Panama." It's about a plot to blow up the canal. I've seen Charlie in Panama, Charlie in London, Charlie in Paris, Charlie at the races, Charlie at the opera, Charlie at the circus and Charlie at the wax museum. He gets around. Solves the case every time while expounding ancient Chinese wisdom written by ancient Chinese screen writers in the Thirties and Forties. "Soothing drink like summer shower. Bring grateful relief." Good stuff.

I sat on the balcony and listened to the bugs last night. Their's is a high harmony needing a bass line. It plays in your head steadily and at a set volume so it's easy to consign to white noise. I heard an occassional couterpoint from frogs in baritone, but no real bass to feel in your gut and get your attention. Without that it's tough to dance to.

One of the expressions my wife occassionally uses and most recently did so when talking about Mel Gibson, is "he gives me the creeps." The creeps. I like that. It's so evocative. We all know the feeling. It's an odd spooky tingle that rises on your skin and walks up your arms and the back of your neck. Creeps up, actually. You get it when something or someone you find...off putting, (my wife would say, "causes a negative visceral reaction" but being more British than she is I'm going with off putting) makes an appearance in your world. Other celebs from show biz who give her the creeps are Charlton Heston, Eddie Fisher, Art Linkletter and Bing Crosby. (Bing Crosby?) All creep blasts from the past. Nowadays, most of her creeps inducers are in politics. There's Bush, of course, something reptilian there she says. Rove and Rumsfeld make the list and even Dick Cheney who seldom comes out of his cave these days. Ann Coulter tops the list of women creeps generators and Ralph Nader makes it as the token liberal. If you want to creeps her out, like totally dude, turn on Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. I'm not as creeps sensitive as my wife, but shouters like Bill O'Reilly can get me going. That feeling may be more violent than creepy though. I'm not really creeped out, I just want to pop the guy. Stop him from shouting down his opposition. Something about Condy Rice I find off putting. Her continual locked onto the party line makes her seem like a Stepford Cabinet member. Hilary Clinton weirds me a bit as well. Mostly I get the creeps from creepy things. You know, things that go bump in the night or anything slimy or sticky. Horror movie directors have gone from trying to scare us to grossing us out with goo. It gives me the creeps but it's not as fun as a good adreniline jolt.

So...what gives you the creeps? Inquiring bloggers need to know.

SV 3

Meanwhile, Lord Sackable, the Earl of Erstwhile, head of Sackable Safaris and chair of the Let Them Eat Scones Society, was enjoying his own gin and gin after a long day of beating about the bush. His section of veldt, some twenty miles away, was free of rain and after having cheerfully flogged a porter or two and cursed the rest, he had retired to his tent to await his dinner and the arrival of a village virgin. He had made it a habit of having each of these on a regular basis as he was, after all, very rich.

“Bongo,” he bellowed at his headman, because that’s what he’d heard wealthy Earl’s do, bellow, “Isn’t the blasted dik-dik done yet?” Dik-dik was his favorite and he had been able to shoot one earlier in the day after his bearers had trapped it and tied it to a tree for him. He’d gotten quite a nice photo of himself afterwards, holding the dik-dik’s head and posing triumphantly.

“No Sahib, a few minutes more are required” Bongo shouted back. He called the Earl Sahib because that was his name, Sahib Sackable, and the two were on a first name basis. He rolled the spit a quarter of a turn or so and added a blast of his own saliva to the dik dik browning over a low fire. Bongo, having served a stint with an impoverished and, consequently, mannered Earl, had become accustomed to “I say, would you be so kind as” and hence did not approve of bellowing.

“Well hurry it up then” Sackable bellowed even louder. “I’m quite starving in here.”

Bongo glanced angrily over his shoulder at the Earl’s tent before unzipping his trousers to add a bit more to the dik-dik’s natural juices.

To be cont.

Where's That Time machine When You Need It?

One of my girls, when she was little, used to say she was going to be a psychiatrist when she grew up. When I asked her, some years later, why she had said that, she told me it was the smartest profession she could think of. In other words, she wanted you to know that she was going to be smart. And now she is. She didn't actually become a psychiatrist, of course, but she could frequently use one. (Right here, if she were writing this about me, she would add "hee hee.") Hee hee. I think it was that early declaration and a great deal of determination that made her the smart girl, er, woman she is. Well, that and good genetics, I suppose. So you have to be careful about what you say. You never know what path it may lead you down.

There I was, standing at my locker putting back one book or another or maybe reaching for my sack lunch when a member of the high school yearbook staff came walking up with a pen and pad in hand. "Filling out your profile" she says. "You know, for the yearbook."

"Okay," I responded, smiling goofily. This was a pretty girl I was talking to afterall, and mustering any kind of speech was a small miracle when one of them was looking at you.

"What do you want to know?" was the best I could manage next.

"What are you going to be, like, you know, after this?"

The question took me by surprise. I had never really given it any thought. I wanted to be the next Bob Petit, my favorite basketball player, but he was 6'9", so I figured I'd settle for being the next Bob Cousy. That wasn't the kind of thing you would say out loud though and you definetly didn't want it under your picture in the yearbook. Your buddies would razz you to death. I just stood there kind of blank, not knowing what to say, looking, I'm sure, like the dunce I was certain this real smart girl in front of me thought I was. And then the bell rang giving my sports crazed mind the instant realization that I was saved by it. I bolted for my next class.

"Hey," the yearbook journalist hollered after me, "You gotta give me something."

"Put down" I shouted back. " Put down... writer." It was the smartest thing I could think of.

Well I never did become the next Bob Cousy. Turns out I needed a few more inches of height, about 20 more pounds of weight and a lot better left hand dribble. I could shoot with him though. And I never really wrote much for money, either, just a little here and there. There seldom seemed enough time. What I am certain of now though, certain as death, taxes and my jump shot, is that the reason I'm sitting here putting one word after another on a daily basis, dates back to that impromptu, out of the blue moment back in the halls of LHS. When I go back in my time machine, I'm going to shout, "Rock Star" or "Movie Star" or, wait, I've got it... "Pro Golfer."

That's all for today. I've got to go work on my left hand dribble.

SV Part 2

Lady Sackable said this while leaning back on her pillows and placing a forearm across her brow in a manner that suggested just how distraught she was at the prospect of going much longer without a horn. “Do come sit by me Miles and tell me all your plans.” She added this as an after thought, though it was not quite the thought she was after.

Miles for his part was approaching a state called “all of a tither” and couldn’t believe his good fortune. He did have a plan of course, well not really a plan, more of a vague hope and it had nothing to do with rhinos in the morning though he thought “rhinos in the morning” a catchy sort of phrase. Miles knew that when a swarthy, hairy chested, white hunter enters a woman’s tent on a swell veldt, he does not go there without conquest a forethought. Miles, lacking swarth and sporting but a handful of chest hair, was nevertheless hoping a light embrace might be possible. Something on the order of buck up old girl, I’ll find a horn for you yet, while placing a comforting arm round her shoulders. If luck then held, violin music would swell mysteriously up and there would be locking eyes, trembling lips and passionate words not needing to be said.

Taking the proffered seat next to the object of his desires, Miles was about to employ his ploy when Cynthia quite suddenly took his hands in hers, placed them on her thinly night-gowned lap and looking up at him earnestly, said… “My, your brow actually is quite fevered.”

“It’s nothing, really” Miles shot back. “Touch of Jungle Fever I suspect. Happens all the time” and then something that sounded a lot like “har har, eh what and wouldn’t you know.”

Lady Sackable, gazing at Miles meaningfully, shifted all four of their hands from her lap to his where she hoped to discover a local uprising and was not disappointed as she in turn said, “Yes, I quite understand.” and “I’ve heard it’s really quite common when two people are alone… all alone… in a tent on swell veldt in the dark of the night… and there’s rain shushing all about them… and… the lanterns are glowing softly… and… gin is available in large quantities… to be suddenly stricken with all sorts of tropical fevers. And,” she added, fearing her point was too subtle “the only known cure as far as I can surmise starts like this.” She moved their hands again, this time to her breasts which were not quite heaving yet as heaving is such a tough go when four hands are involved. She removed her own, the top ones, to achieve the proper quota and allow the heaving to commence in earnest. This abrupt departure of her knowing hands left Mile’s uncertain mitts plastered there alone to enjoy the aforementioned heaving which is, as you know, an up and down sort of thing. While he took this simple pleasure, Lady Sackable searched his eyes for signs that he had caught her drift. She found them opened quite wide and unblinking, no sign of life apparent, so she let her gaze slip to his lap where the evidence of his comprehension was becoming clearer. Or, as she was more likely to put it… ever so clear.

It was at this moment, this inevitable moment when hunter and prey come together in that age old joining that symbolizes man’s ultimate destiny, the fate of the world and heaps more poetic blither, that the lion who had been nipping about the camp in search of scraps, handouts or the hands themselves, decided to enter the tent.

To be continued.

A Swell Veldt Part 1

The rain beat down heavily on the African veldt; a swell veldt if I ever saw one. Miles Everhard, the noted Pretty Good White Hunter stood outside the tent of Lady Cynthia Sackable and inquired in a voice loud enough to be heard above the din of the rainfall if Lady Sackable might not care for a spot of company. Shooing Noblong Ndive her personal porter and parasol bearer who at that very moment had been applying insect repellent slowly and diligently to her backside - an area most vulnerable on the veldt or so he had said - out the rear tent flap, Cynthia hailed back at Miles to do come in as she was ever so lonely.

Abandoning his umbrella purchased through the mail order Snobs-Are-Us catalog Whitecrest, U.K. Ltd., to the night, Miles slipped through the tent’s front flap and found Lady Sackable had arranged herself on her cot in a fashion that suggested she had, well, arranged herself on her cot. She was seated directly in its center, nightgown somewhat askew, with bedding pulled to cover this and that, but allowed to show the other thing. Her mosquito net lay tantalizingly open, but she had little fear of the nightly nippers and felt particularly safe on her backside where there were simply oodles of protection.

Positively ravishing, thought Miles as he shook the moisture from his water repellant White Hunter Jungle Garb, the Official garb of the Nairobi Nasties the local futbol club, and the thought was so compelling that he took the next moment to just blurt out the words that had rushed to his suddenly fevered brow. “I say, Lady Ess, beastly night this. Have you got anything for a fevered brow?” Being British, the concept of getting to the point without first mentioning the foul weather had been completely erased from his DNA.

“Would a spot of gin help? There’s some there by my dressing table. And do call me Cynthia” said Cynthia. “And while you’re at it, getting the gin and calling me Cynthia that is, be a dear boy and freshen this as well” She handed Miles her own nearly full glass. “I’ve a bit of fever myself”

Miles strode to the dressing table and poured two healthy droughts from the Deep Rock Gin Dispenser and drank his off in long, full swallows, because that’s how manly white hunters take their spirits. That and furtive swigs from their flasks out in the bush when things large and toothy are about. The gin had the immediate effect of stiffening Miles resolve and reducing the impact of his British reserve to the point where he was able to get beyond both the weather and his fevered brow.

“About tomorrow,” he said, handing over Cynthia’s tumbler of gin, “if this blasted rain – apparently the weather thing was still with him- lets off, I think we will be able to find you your rhino. I know how anxious you are to get the horn.”

“Oh just ever so eager, Miles. I must get horned before Lord Sackable returns from the bush or I dare say I won’t get horned at all. You know how possessive he gets. He’ll be wanting all the horning for himself.”

To be cont.

Facts, Fiction and Football

There had to come a time when I'd write some fiction, because this telling of the raw, unexpurgated truth day after day is so trying. There are only so many truths to go around and once you've got past The Yankees are evil, Dubya's a dimwit, We are not alone, Halle Berry's hot for me and never cry Wolf in a crowded theatre, there's not much else to tell. Well sure there's war in several places, corrupt politicians (yeah, I know, that's redundant), global warming, AIDS and Paris Hilton, but everybody's writing about those things. This space has always been dedicated to the deeper, more spiritual, universal truths like why dogs will eat vomit and we won't. Not counting Paris, of course. So even though I will continue to post a fresh blog of cold reality on a regular basis, I am going to add a second posting of a continuing story. That way, when I am frustrated by not having anything to say on my regular blog, I can go over to my story blog and be frustrated by not being able to move it along. What more could a blogger ask?

I'm going to begin with a story I started a couple of year's ago but for reasons known only to my psychiatrist who then blabbed to everyone that I just forgot about it, the story went unfinished. I found its small beginning while looking through my files for something else and upon reading it, decided it needed an end. Or, at least, a continuation. Some of you will remember this story's start as I read it aloud a couple of times on our last visit to the U.S.A. (Unruly Surfers Amalgamated). I have recently added a bit and will now be passing it along...in increments.

But now for what I really wanted to talk about. Today is Sunday in the middle of August. The sun is shining, hence the day's name, it's hot and gorgeous outside and we all know what THAT means...It's football season! Well sure it's just preseason, but c'mon, the boys are suited up and tossing it around. Sportcenter is showing highlights and I'm as happy as dog in a bone factory! It's time to ignore the weather and stay indoors watching the tube until your eyes bleed. Anybody know the date of the first triple header?

So... stay tuned to this space for my fearless forecast and the ultimate truth. Go to my other space for what, I hope, might be, could be, may be, an epic adventure on a Swell Veldt.

Oh, and as always, Go Broncos.

Me and Rinpoche

In case you missed it, from the comments this: "Blogging has no object, no purpose, no reference point. One just blogs. One just simply blogs without aim, object, purpose, without anything at all. Nothing whatsoever. One just blogs. Blogging is just being there like a piece of rock or a disused coffee cup sitting on the table. So blogging is just sitting and being, simply." Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

To which I replied: He took the words right out of my mouth, which explains why I didn't say them myself.

What is a disused coffee cup anyway? I prefer sitting and being, complexly. But hey, that's just me. I like Rinpoche's name. It's kind of fun to say. Chogyam. That's a winner. Reminds me of my favorite writer. His name is P.G. Wodehouse. Pelham Grantham Wodehouse. We're talking a mouthful. Maybe Rampincher should shorten his moniker to C.T. Rumpoacher. Hard to give up that Chogyam though. Chog yam. I think those are grown in Tibet.

Not sure I'm really in accord with old Rudepuncher, though admittedly it's hard to disagree with a name like that. I think there's more to blogging than just being. I think, there's creativity, communication, self expression, philosophy and a laugh to pass along. The whole question of "good vibes" saved from The Sixties and reborn in the present. I think blogging has an object and a purpose. Well, mine anyway. Those other guys are just weird. My OBJECT is to put words on paper (which is now a figure of speech what with computers and blackberries and all) with the PURPOSE of entertaining myself and, hopefully from time to time, my readers. So Ringdinger, blogging may not have a reference point, but it does have a point of view. In this case old whatsisname's, me.

Sorry, Chogyam. I apologise for playing with your name. It's just too tempting. I realize you were simply trying to say something profoundly Buddhist about blogging, but to Monkeymind's way of thinking,..... dude, you need to lighten up. Have a beer. Watch a sitcom. Read my blog.

Drug Free Blogging

Most bloggers are once a week-ers or now and then-ers, posting blogs when it suits their fancy. Wimps. We REAL bloggers flex our mind muscles and pump our iron brain cells on a nearly daily basis. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, he's beefed up on steroids, but it's not true. All my tests come back clean. I don't even use The Cream in my coffee or tea. It's my strict workout regimin that gives me the edge and keeps me putting up the big numbers, 75 blogs to date, and the long words, extraordinariamente. (About here, all the non- sportsfans are scratching their head and thinking, what? To them I suggest, remember the words of Winston Churchill, who said when asked why he read the sport section first, "Because there is listed mankind's accomplishments. The rest of the paper recounts its failures." He also said something about fighting them on the shores and in the air and under the bed, but that wasn't about sports so you don't have to remember it.) Yes, every morning like clockwork I roll out of the sack my wife has tied me up in, and - Wait, who is clockwork and why does he roll out of his sack every morning? These are the questions that torment us down through the ages - and throw on my sweats in preparation for my workout. I then stumble down the stairs, open the door to the great outdoors and...let the dog out. For me it's over to the kitchen to brew up something stimulating, because stimulus is not only something fun to say and probably a Greek name, it's needed to be a daily blogger. I then retrace my stumbles back up the stairs to my own personal internet cafe where I spend an hour or so reading first about The Sox latest losing streak and then the recounts of mankind's other failures. There's lots of those, especially since that Bush guy has been around, so this takes awhile. After that workout, jacked up on only natural stimulants like the beans we have found that we can crush into powder and pour scalding water over or the leaves we put in odd little bags to dunk in that scalding water, both in peparation for drinking the stuff! - a perfectly natural thing to do - I take to the playing field and begin to blog. Day after day. Like a REAL blogger. And I do it with a manly voice.

Oh that one about cake baking? Forget it. I was out sick that day. My wife wrote it.

Abogodas and Veterinarias

We descended from our rocky, Panamanian moutain high for a visit to our lawyer Fatima. Can you say Fatima without thinking of desert sands, scorching suns, mirages, camels, tents, an arab with a hookah watching a veiled woman with bloused, see-through pants dance erotically, an oasis in the middle of nowhere sporting a clear, blue water pond, sheiks, arabian horses, the French Foreign Legion, sword fights with curved swords, harems, Bhagdad and Damascus, flying carpets, magic lanterns, Abbott and Costello, Turhan Bey, The Mummy, Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Sabu, and a cast of thousands, most of whom could sing? I can't. But then I saw a lot of movies in the Forties and Fifties in Technicolor, a term that meant technically colored a whole lot brighter than your drab real life.

Our modern day Fatima smacks of none of that. She is a Panamanian professional woman. Okay right there you have learned several things. First off, she's a Panamanian woman which means that she is shorter than you are and has high heels on all her footwear, slippers, sneakers, flip flops, everything, to compensate. Second, being a pro, she wears a suit. I like women in suits. Women bring something to suits that men can't...their bodies. Men in suits? Who cares. Third, and this is what I like best about our abogoda, ( a much more fun word than lawyer) she has a sense of humor in two languages. She does, however, after making a funny in English, say "that's a joke" or "I was kidding." I don't know whether she is not sure she said her wit correctly or if she is afraid we would not "get it" and misunderstand her. No matter, it is very charming.

So I sat there in her Boquete office behind the Mexican joint, holding Gus on his leash, and listened as my smart wife and this smart abogoda exchanged questions and answers about buying property in Panama. It was all kind of pleasant, a thing rarely said about visits to lawyers. I did, however, occasionally think of figs and dates and women gently waving big feathered fans.

After the abogado we took Gus to a vet's office. That's vet as in veterinarian, not When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again kind of vet. He has been scratching himself bare in patches. Gus's Vet is a Brazillian woman- that's not a number George W, that's a nationality- which would ordinarily conjure scantily clad black women dancing wildly at Mardi Gras, but, because Dr.Chelly speaks no English, I was forced to leave my fantasies behind and concentrate solely on understanding her Spanish. No hay problema. Gus has a common dermatological condition easily treated with a salve and a medicinal shampoo for which Dr. C. wrote prescriptions. The charge for the visit...five bucks. I love Panama.

Blogger's Block

Jogging is easier than blogging. All you have to do is lean the top half of your body forward. When you reach the point where gravity wants to pull it down, the bottom half of your oh-my-god-I'm- falling self will spring into action and step forward to prevent your nosedive. Keep leaning, keep stepping and look at you, you're jogging. Piece a cake.

There are no tricks to get blogging. I tried just putting one word after another and it came out bedraggle floor me dangle porche on pretzel high, so that doesn't really work. I also tried leaning my top half forward while sitting down and my nose tapped out a series of n's which, although it is a nice letter, doesn't really say much. No, apparently you have to have a thought in your head to start blogging and that, of course, is one of my three failings. The others are not being tall or born rich. Tall, wealthy people with thoughts in their heads don't feel the need to blog. They pay short people to blog for them. So that leaves me, barring the occasional event that screams write about me, like "101 Hottest Bodies" or a day spent picking a nose, with having to come up with a topic each time I sit to blog. And I have to do this, you will remember, without a thought in my head. This is not an easy task like the aforementioned keeping from falling down. This is Herculean in scope. This is The Jets in '69, The U.S Hockey Team in, you know, whatever year that was, and other grand stuff like the time George W. Bush said something coherent. It's a real challenge.

Did I mentionI hate challenges. There's no need for challenges. Who thought up the idea of challenges anyway? Probably one of those bored old Greeks lying around the hot tub in ancient Athens. "I say Hiccupulus, what about you and me seeing who can throw a spear the farthest?"
"Not now, Dementium, I'm trying to blog."

I'm not complaining, really. I'm just stuck this morning. I could write about the things that are in my head in lieu of thoughts, but then I would be into the realm of space time continuum. Okay, mostly space, but I do know that time continuum one minute after another. Or I could ask my wife. She always has a thought in her head. Unfortunately, before she will tell me what it is, she has to have my full attention which I can't give while blogging or watching Bronco highlights from 1996. So that's out.

All of which leaves me with just one option as far as I can tell. I'll skip today and try again tomorrow.

Best Bods?

My body is far and away the best one I have.

Okay, for all of you people who are without televisions or with good sense and are thus unaware of the much awaited by I can't imagine whom outcome of E!'s 101 Hottest Celebrity Bods, here are the top ten. But first a word from our sponsor.

Rundown? Tired? Overworked? Tense and stressed to the max? Feel depressed, anxious and pushed to the limit? Lost your appetite, your sex drive and your car keys? Is the heartbreak of psoriasis and an outbreak of acne ruining your love life? When you look in the mirror do you see bags under your eyes, lines around your mouth, a sagging chin and dull lifeless hair? Do facelifts, butt lifts, enlargements and enhancements seem like good ideas? Well then my friend, you are a sorry son-of-a bitch. And now back to our regular programming.

First off, what is a celebrity anyway? I always assumed it was someone I had heard of who was not a relative or Champ Bailey. That being the case, how did these people make E!'s top ten list? Aishwara, Chris Evans, Raoul Bova and Monica Belluci. Come on, Aishwara is a car model. You know, test drive the new Nissan Aishwara and you'll be thrilled with the ride. Chris Evans must be related to Dale and Monica Bellucci is the dessert you order at an Italian restaurant. We'll take a single order of the Belluci with two forks please. And a Raoul shouldn't be a top ten of anything other than fun things to say. Raahuuoool. So they're off my list. I've replaced them with the woman who plays Grace on "Will And", "Medium"'s chubby star, I think she's an Arquette, the guy who plays House and Queen whatsername. Real people with real bodies whose names I know but, apparently, not too well. There were also three B's in the top ten, Beckham, Beyonce, and Berry. Beckham's a soccer player married to one of the Spice girls. Nasty Naughty Outrageously Sexy Spice was her name and she didn't make the list. I'm kicking out Beckham and putting in his wife. Haile Berry was number 9. I'm speechless. 9. That's not possible. Especially when you consider that Number1, are your ready for this? Number 1 is Angelina Jolie. Either I have lost touch with reality or E! has. Angelina Jolie. I don't know if you've noticed but she has no booty at all and her lips are kind of overly large. Of course, maybe these are attributes in E!'s world, what do I know. But, really, Angelina over Berry. Not on my planet. Brad Pitt was in there somewhere, you knew he would be and Jessica Alba was Number2. My picks have Jessica at 1 1/2 so I have no quarrel there.

So that's over and now you know and knowledge is a good thing. Tune in tomorrow and I'll give you a sneak preview of E!'s top ten astral bodies. Here's a hint, Earth was disqualified for failing a drug test.

Dog Days of August

I can't get started. I'm brain bricking. There's an idea blocked from escaping. Tear down this wall Mr. Gorbachev!

Maybe what I need is coffee, tea isn't cutting it. Be right back.

There are not that many things in a quiet life to make sport of. Yesterday, for instance, after blogging around the block, I took the dog for a long walk, studied the preterit tense in Spanish, won a Scrabble game from my wife, watched Frazier and 101 Bodies on E!, had dinner and then read for two hours. Did I mention I won a Scrabble game from my wife? Oh, I did mention I won a Scrabble game from my wife. Alrighty then. So you see there's not much here to work with. Nevertheless, (when you can get the more) I'll give it my best shot.

When I was a kid...and we sat around the cave fire listening to the elders tell stories and teach us to make high tech tools like flint knives... dogs used to have dog names. Rover, Fido, Rin Tin Tin, Spot, Wiggles, Lassie and such. Nowadays and even nowanights, dogs have people names. Max, Louie, Homer, Sebastion and Fred for example. I don't know why that is. Woowoo Charly and I decided long ago our pets would be named after literary characters which resulted in cats dogs and birds with names like Cyrano, Watson, Gatsby, Balloo, and Quasimodo. Wait! That last one was a former husband. Our current little red, long eared, sweet faced, bone beggar is named Gustavo. Gus for short. Gustavo is named after Gus, a central character in "Lonesome Dove" whose actual name was Augustus, but we Spanishized it to Gustavo knowing it would come out Gus anyway. Gus is a cocker spaniel. I like to call him a Joe Cocker spaniel, but unless you are old enough to have hunted with a sling, you won't get the joke. Cockers are a short breed so that when they run through high grass, or even when they are just excited, they bound like bunnies and their ears flap wildly as if they are trying to get the whole dog airborne. Gus's ears damn near had him off the ground as we set out on yesterday's walk.

It hadn't rained for a couple of days so we were able to leave the road and wander down an inidan trail that is usually too muddy and too steep to traverse this time of year. The trail takes us past a couple of what were abandoned indian enclosures, shacks really, but now had new occupants doing whatever it is that indians do. Nothing it would seem to our eyes apart from staring at the weird gringo in the jungle walking his dog. I mouthed an "hola" and trucked on by. (If this seems like a dry recitation of less than interesting events, you haven't read anything yet. It gets worse.) The trail ends at the same road we started out on only much further down the mountain. Most mountain roads wind back and forth as the make their slow descent. The ones that don't are called cliffs. Our plan, and it was a plan, Gus and I had settled on it after I vetoed walking until HE was tired and then taking a nap, was to return via the road. We had barely got underway when we passed another indian pile of scavenged building materials shaped into a shelter - how do these people survive? - from which peered two sets of wide, unblinking little kid eyes and the excited, happy, oh my god I'm going to pee, thrilled to see another four legged creature, eyes of a puppy of unknown parentage. In the past, when Gus was a pup himself, this would have meant a fight. Now that he is a wise and mature dog of two, it was a quick minute of sniffing private parts and then some dog code that signals let's play. Suddenly, we were three. I figured the pup would leave us shortly and return to his own home. Wrongo Alpo Breath! The pup, whose ribs looked like a canine xylaphone, figured he'd found a new fat friend who might want to share. He stayed with us all the way back to Gus's house which he allows Charly and I to share. I then tried go away, scram, beat it and get lost in three languages, English, Spanish and Profaneish, but nothing worked. Finally, I locked Gus indoors so he could watch me whup my wife at Scrabble with the hope that while I did so, the pup would get as bored as anyone reading this and would leave, depart, go home. Wrongo again Eukenuba! The pup not only stayed he took the wlecome mat literally and made it his doggie bed. We couldn't open the door without waking him. To make a long story a headache, as a friend of mine used to say and probably still does, as the day wore on and I did all those fascinating other things I've mentioned above, I couldn't forget the haunted looking eyes of the little indian kids in their rundown abode from whence the pup had come. What if he couldn't find his way back? Afterall, we're not talking Lassie here, were talking a dog named Whoknowswhat, which in indian is ...who knows what? So I picked up the mutt and tossed him in the back of The Beast and drove him home. I can't say the kids were thrilled to see him as they just stared at me as before with blank, expressionless eyes. The pup, however, seemed happy to be back and bopped excitedly over to them. I waved at futily at the zombie children and then drove away.

(The joke I want to use here is that I've driven a few dogs home in the past but this was the first one with four legs, but I won't because it's kind of sexist.)

And so ends the dog walking part of my day. Do you want to hear the rest? Me neither.

Did I mention I beat my wife at Scrabble?

Bodies and Birds

For lack of anything else on during that particular time slot, 5 PM, we have been watching an E channel presentation called "The 101 Hottest Celebrities Bodies." I know what you are all thinking, what's my number?, so I'll tell the truth and admit I didn't make the cut. But c'mon, neither did Wilford Brimley and he's hot, right? They said I had to have a six pack to qualify and my Guiness in the fridge didn't count. Tough graders. What are they looking for, Heineken? Anyway, the show is counting down to number one at about twenty hotties a day. Wait, let me amend that. Make it fifteen female hotties and five guys who do a lot of sit ups. We are now committed ( and in my case, as Yoda would say, committed he should be) to watching the next couple of nights to find out who is number one. Five clock, I should also point out, is Happy Hour here in Happy Land which means I am likely to be sipping something alcoholic while Pamela Anderson displays her implants and Matthew McConaheehee does crunches for the camera. I have added this as an after thought only because I want you to know my judgement was clouded when E in general became an option. Should this option persist after I've learned who has the hottest celebrity body, I'm thinking Hemlock will be my drink of choice. Meanwhile, I want to tell Haile Berry yes you have my support, so you can quit calling me everyday. Ever since that one crazy night, she just won't leave me alone.

Back in the day, by the way, hot didn't mean sexy, it meant sexually aroused. To get a girl hot was every teenaged boy's goal. You would never say, she's hot, but you might say she makes ME hot. This message was brought to you by Old Farts R Us. One stop shoping for virtually useless trivia.

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I don't think Andy ever meant to hurt the bird. Being the not particularly selective Romeo that he was, he probably just figured here was a golden opportunity. Hence his mad scramble with bird in mouth to the nearest bedroom. For my part, as I dashed in pursuit, it was pretty much Oh shit oh shit oh shit! I did make a nice head first slide across the - I can't remember, hardwood or tile, something slippery - floor, when I tried to snag the birdnapper before he made it under the bed. Just missed, so the Sportcenter highlight featured the dog going for extra bases and not me making the grab. My flopping and shouting did freak Andy though, and put him off his... game, so to speak. He dropped the bird and ran to daylight. (I know, I'm mixing my sports metaphors.) Free of the dog and any remaining bird sanity, Cyrano resembled the proverbial headless chicken. Catching him was impossible. But I am a wise man don't you know. I fell back on the wisom of the ancients and I channelled the Bird Whisperer. My calmness became truly zen like and Cyrano responded in kind. When his last ruffled feather had returned to its normal place, I made my move. The very slow and deliberate move we had practised every day for weeks on end. I extended my bird flipping digit as carefully and with as little trembling as I could muster. Cyrano then made his move. He took one hop forward and latched onto my finger like a gator on a warthog. I won't say it hurt, because I'm a manly guy who watches E, but I will say that my finger was a gusher and it was my turn to squawk bloody hell. I knew if I tried to grab the bird with my free hand, he'd just find another spot to chomp and if I tried to shake him off I was likely to hurt him. What I did instead, was one of the two brave acts of my life. The other was facing up to the sixth grade bully, which just made her mad so she beat me up worse than usual. I walked as quickly as I could to the bird's cage and put my hand, bird aboard once more...more or less, inside and waited for him to let go. A thing he did, thankfully, almost at once when he realized he was home.

I closed the little door and headed for the bathroom to tend my finger. Andy, of course, boogied for the couch. Afterall, The mail was due.

Andy and the Bird

Raucus, that's a good word. We need to use raucus more often.

It's raucus out my door esta manana. My neighbor's parrot has joined his rooster in a an unnerving aria of what sounds like complaint. Separately, neither bird's cry is particularly intrusive during daylight hours, but together they sound like a prison break. I don't speak much bird, but it sounds like they're screeching, "Attica Attica."

I had a bird once that an ex-girlfriend had given me either to remember her by or just to get even, I'm not sure which. It was a cockatiel I named Cyrano. Cyrano had moments of raucus, but mostly he sat on his perch looking out at the world with an expression I judged to mean, "do something." I decided what Cyrano needed was out-of- cage time and to that end I bought a book. I don't remember the actual name of the book, but it was something like, Sigfried and Roy's Tips for Flipping the Bird Or Taming It. Following the instructions in this book I began slowly putting my fist in Cyrano's cage, extending my bird finger horizontally and pressing it gently on Cyrano's lower abdomen just above his feet. The net effect of this was much as you would expect. Cyrano threw himself all over the cage screaming bloody murder in Bird with a few choice English words my sons had taught him thrown in. He wouldn't shut up until I removed my hand from the cage. I am, however, persistent and after several days of trying, I was able to get my feathered friend to step up on to my finger. Several more days of moving him about the cage on my digit, up and down around and around we go Chubby Checker, and I determined it was safe to take my finger with Cyrano aboard and move it to the greater world of my living room. All this without a whip and a chair. I was proud of myself and proud of my bird. We were trainer and trained doing our jobs well. Besides, what could go wrong? Cyrano's wings were clipped so he couldn't fly and if he squawked too much, I'd put him back, get him a cracker, calm him down. The flaw in my well meant plan to give Cyrano more freedom, was the other pet in my household, a half beagle, half dacshaund, silly looking mutt named Andy.

Prior to this moment, Andy's seemingly favorite thing in life, was to perch himself on the upright portion of our sofa. A sofa that's back was pushed up just below the sill of a large picture window. From there Andy could see the world and the world could see Andy. The only problem with this picture is that Andy found the world a very erotic place. Anything that moved beyond the glass - bird, cat, squirrel or mailman - inspired in Andy an almost immediate erection. I don't know to this day whether Andy so loved the world that he would... or if he was just flashing. I do know, he was quite famous in the neighborhood.

Cyrano was thrilled to be outside his cage. So thrilled, in fact, that he did something he had never done before. He hopped from my finger. He hopped boldly off where no bird had hopped before, onto my floor. Of course, being a bird he didn't actually expect to land on the floor, he thought all his mad flapping of wings would give him flight. Silly bird. Cyrano meet Andy.

To be continued.

The Road to Our Place

"We serve hod Licka to hod men who wanna get drunk fast."

That's Sheldon Leonard as the bartender in "It's a Wonderful Life." It popped into my head this morning because my son Todd does a fabulous impression of Sheldon using that very line. I can hear him in my head. Today is Todd's Birthday. Happy birthday buddy. Stay away from the "hod licka."

We hitched up the buckboard...buckboard? That's an interesting euphemism for wagon. Must have had some frisky horses back in the day...and went into town for supplies. You know, sack of flour, dried beans, some gingham for curtains and like that. They're building a new road out to our place on top of our old dirt road in small leaps and even smaller bounds. They being the Panamanians in charge of road building and the strange disappearances of road builders. What happens is, as you wander down the mountain, you pass a crew of 20 or 30 guys working diligentemente - one of my favorite Spanish words - creating gutters, grading, spreading gravel and all the stuff that goes into making roads. When you wander back, they're gone. Sometimes for weeks at a time. They also don t seem to be caught up in that silly start here and go to there concept so prevalent in other countries. You can find them working anywhere along the old road at any given time, so that the effect is stretches of smooth road followed by stretches of whoa Nellie pull back on the reins road followed by more smooth and then I know there is a road here somewhere road. Muy interesante. During the strange disappearances of the road builders the rainy season takes its toll and much of the road returns to where it was before any work had been done at all. I'm thinking job security. And I also know what many of you are thinking. It's a third world country what do I expect, but personally I blame Bush. He wants us to buy four wheel drive buckboards because they use more gas. Definetly a right-wing plot. Like suits and televised dart tournaments.

"Wah Wah Wah Where's the money Uncle Billy, you silly old fool." That's Jimmy Stewart in the same movie. My other son, the skin head, does that one. I can hear him too.

Mostly Sports

My head is in the clouds and so are my feet... and everything else. Couldn't see a thing out-da-windas when I first got up, but now, three cuppas deep, the sky is starting to lift off and an actual horizon is making an appearance.

Horizon is a good word because it has a z in it. I think the z is our most used but least written letter. Think about everytime you write s but say z. Pleaze, for instance. And all our plurals. Catz in the hatz and batz in the belfryz. What'z the deal with that?

You can tell I'm at a loss this morning. There's no subject knocking on my frontal lobes saying let me out, let me out. Unless it's sports. Sports are always there. I started Pat Conroy's "The Losing Season" last night and only managed to put it down when its pages and my eyes slammed shut simultaneously. When a great writer brings his eloquence to my favorite sport, basketball, it's an exquisite pleasure on a par with searching for cameltoe. (Far better actually, but I needed a joke there.) Conroy's prologue by itself is a small masterpiece. The guy is a tormented "Tragic Romantic" and has the verbal skills to make you understand exactly what that is. I plan on spending a large part of today absorbing his "4" point of view on his senior basketball season at The Citadel. A losing season at that. (My senior season at LHS we were 1 win 20 losses. I think I can relate. The team that we beat for that one win went 20 and 1. Their only loss was to us. That's why they play the games. Cool.)

I got to Conroy after I had watched five innings of the Sox/Angels game. Sox got pounded. This was only the second Sox game all year where we here in Panama got an English speaking feed and both times Curt Shilling, who may have to change his name to Half Pence, got spanked like a red headed step child. (I threw in that cliche for my son Roll On Deodorant Head as it is one of his favorites.) And while this was happening the Yankees got Bobby Abreu to sell his soul and join them in New York. Bummer.

A book I read in Spanish earlier this year, "El Demonio and Senorita Prym" has hit No. 22 on the NYTimes Bestseller list in English. The demon in this one, contrary to popular belief, was not George Steinbrenner.

If I quit now, I can catch the second half of Sportscenter.

The Losing Seaon and The Lost World

For those of you worried sick about the disappearance of the rooster, quit it. He's back and he's still lost in his parallel rooster universe where dawn arrives well before dawn arrives.

While Woowoo Charly and pal Victoria prowled the aisles of The Bookmark Bookstore, I leashed up Gus The Wonder Dog and took him for a walk on the sidewalk of Dolega. That's sidewalk, singular. It runs along the road to Boquete and fronts a lot of old Panamanian houses that back up to what appears to be, from the sidewalk, Panamanian jungle. Two lane blacktop in front, Tarzan to the rear. Nice contrast. We ambled amiably along for a half mile or so looking for nothing in particular and finding lots of it until we u-turned and headed back to the bookstore. The point of the walk was merely to give Lady Charles a little time to pick out a book or two. Gus isn't welcome in the store because he doesn't read, has no money and poses a serious threat to the well being of the owner's two rotweilers. Gus comes from a long line of English Cockers, while the Rots roots have them fleeing The Father Land shortly after WW2. There is some tension there. (An aside: I think it was Bill Maher who wondered if the Germans would have been less rigid and authoritarian if Germany had been called The Dad Land. And, for that matter, Russia The Mom Land.) When it was Chuck's turn to keep Gus's 30 pounds away from the 100 pound Rots, I made a beeline to The Dick Francis section and scored four I haven't read. I also found Pat Conroy's "The Losing Season." It's probably the only copy in Panama. Needless to say - I don't NEED to say any of this - but if I don't nobody will - I am now happy as a harp seal hidden out by conservationists.

On the way to the plant place, our next stop, we passed a baseball stadium with a game under way. Gus and I decided we would rather be there oohing and aahing at line drives than tip toeing through the tulips with the mujeres oohing and aahing at lines of lillies, so when we decarred, the mutt and I streaked up the block to the game. We found a nice spot in the bleachers and watched as two teen aged teams took turns making baseball blunders. The stands held mostly player's family members sporting coolers and picnic stuff. Between innings some of the players would come flying up the stairs to grab a sip of coke, juice, water and what have you. It was fun. Gus, of course, was not impressed. He couldn't understand why when someone caught a ball they threw it to someone else. When he catches one, he keeps it.

There was other good stuff between then and the moment later that night when my wife said somethingI had never heard before, but none of it captured my attention like her vaguely sexual, partially, I think obscene though I really don't know for sure as she wouldn't elaborate, comment. Yeah, I know, sexual and obscene and I haven't heard it? Seems unlikely. So what I'm asking is for somebody out there there to enlighten me. I need an explanation. What my constant companion and raison d'etre said, as we watched Jill St. John traipse through the jungle wearing tight, stretchy, pink pants in an old version of "The Lost World," was... "all the money they spent on wardrobe and makeup and she's still got cameltoe." "Cameltoe?" I said. "What the hell is cameltoe" "Just look at her crotch" my wife shot back cryptically. Now when your wife tells you to look at another woman's crotch you might as well take advantage of it and do exactly so, because she is not likely to say that again, ever, but by the time I did, the screen was filled with small lizards blown up to look like large dinosaurs. Bummer. Cameltoe. Give me a clue.

Friday and Saturday

A glorious Saturday morning here in Panama. We've got a blue sky...

Wait! You can't just say a blue sky, everybody's got a blue sky. Either that or grey. You have to be more specific, narrow it down, let the people know what kind of blue you got hovering over your head. Let's get with it.

Well its a, don't rush me I'm thinking, it's a, it's a, "It's A Boy" kind of blue. Now where's my cigar?

That's better. Now what else is happening?

Well not much really. The sun's real bright and...

Hold up, hold up! The sun's real bright? You ever see a dull sun? What do you mean the sun's real bright?

Well it's rays are lighting up the mountain greenery like the kleig lights on an MGM technicolor musical from somewhere in the ninteen fifties. You know, the kind that could make even Gordon McCrea and Kathryn Grayson look good. Everything's all shiny and clean.

Alrighty then. What else?

Well Baru is jutting up in sharp relief against the baby blue like a man in profile lying on the beach with a hard on in his swim suit.

I'll be going now.

See ya.

Okay. Now that I have established that it is a nice day...yeah, I know...nice as a nurse with cleavage and pain pills, let's talk about yesterday, which was also a nice day even though I spent part of it with a dentist shoving shiny, silver implements into my mouth. What happened was, I got the back up dentist and the back up dental assistant and they somehow managed to fill my two cavidads while carrying on a conversation, in Spanish of course, which they thought I couldn't understand. They were mostly right. HOWEVER, I did grok about half and although the words were seemingly innocuous, I gathered that there was some double meanings going on and some serious flirting being done. All that and I'm only part way through my Spanish Now Level 2 textbook working on preterito verbs which is one of two past tenses because, apparently, Spanish people have more than one past. I can't wait to go listening in on some other unsuspecting Spanish speakers, but I am hoping that next time they won't be hovering inches above my face with one holding a miniture jack hammer and the other hanging a spit sucker from my lower lip. Makes it hard to concentrate on the eavesdropping.

But back today. If all goes as planned we should be off to the neighboring town of Dolega where we will swap books we've read for some we haven't at the Bookmark used book store within the next couple of hours. Not that we don't have plenty of the unread variety at home, but there's no Dick Francis and I'm jonesing. Jonesing like a jelly doughnut junkie with nothing but cookies in the cupboard.

Dentists and Domes

I have to go to the dentist first thing tomorrow morning, a thing I like about as much as, well, going to the dentist. Since I can't rely on the local rooster to wake me at the crack of, I thought I'd get a word or two in tonight. Problem is, there's a lot of words out there and it's difficult to narrow down the choices. Frock is a good one for example. It sounds like something you'd say after stubbing your toe, but is actually something you wear. That's something YOU wear. Personally I'm thinking there's no frocking way. Still, if you're sitting in the dark looking for words like I am, frock's not a bad starter.

We had a quiet day today, Woowoo Chuck and I. 'Course that's our plan. We're saving loud days for later when we can share. We are headed into Dahvid or Dahveed, we 've heard it pronounced both ways, tomorrow for this, that and the dental thing. I'm looking forward to feeling the wet heat of that tropical city and chewing abstractedly on the inside of my cheek until the novacaine wears off and I realize I've been eating small bits of myself. And that's the fun part. Which is your favorite drill? The low grrrrrrr one or the high weeeeee one? Our dentist, Dr. Arrozmenos is a good guy, but if you break down his name it means less rice. He has a friendly nurse though. Cute too. She holds your hands while Lessrice does his thing. This may just be a way to avoid being struck, but it seems kindly and concerned.

I got an email photo of my oldest son earlier this week. He has a shaven head. Cue balled. Don't know what inspired him, Budweiser, Guiness or Jamison, but as a show of support I rushed right downstairs and drank Budweiser, Guiness and Jamison. Kidding. What I really did was shave off my mustache. It's a radical transition after lo these many years. Not rad like my son Penis Head, but radical nevertheless. Years ago I shaved my dome and the kid said I looked like an extra in Shindler's List. I'm thinking he's in for his share of baldy barbs even if razored pates are more common now than back in the day. He can thank Michael Jordan and Bruce Willis for that. Still, what compels a lad with a thick head of the bushy to whisk it all away? Don't know for sure, but I can tell you one thing. It's better than a sharp stick in your mouth.

Rooster Tales

Our nextdoor neighbor, a man whose house I can just see through the thick greenery between us some hundred or so yards away, has recently added a rooster to his menangerie. Prior to the addition of this manical sleep usurper, the only unwanted noises emanating from that direction were barking dogs and crying children and these were mostly relegated to daylight hours. More welcoming sounds that drift our way from there are those of the same children laughing and the mad cackles of a parrot that our neighbor brings out to his porch on weekend mornings. Both of these quiet interrupters manage to induce our smiles. It's not so with the rooster.

I've never actually seen the foul fowl. His predawn screeches are akin to a ghostly rattling of chains and things that go bump in the night. They're eerie and don't seem to come from any particular spot. I can picture this bad bird strutting around the haunted hen house scaring the... eggs out of his frightened flock. Forget cockadoodledoo. Like too many Spanish speakers, this feathered fiend swallows his vowels and what hits the airways is a screeching oooaaaaooooeloooooh; the last part trailing off like a scream dying on the wind. It's a sound that will wake you and wake us it has, somewhere around four thirty or five in the morning for the better part of the last two weeks. Dawn, I would point out to the bird if I spoke chicken, is over an hour later. But of course you can get used to anything if you hear it long enough. That scratching in the walls isn't really rats, it's just loose insulation flapping on a draft. Those footsteps on the roof are just the wind playing with the tiles. GI's, I'm told, even learn to sleep through shellings. And so, though I never quite snoozed through, I did get to the point where I could access some small consciousness, note the soft breathing of the soft woman beside me and the fussy noises of the dog at my feet and await the morning howl. When it was complete, I'd return to serious sleep.

This morning, wouldn't you know it, there was no howl. Did the bird sleep in? Cat get his tongue? Laryingitis? Or did my neighbor dine on fried roster anoche? Whatever the case, I lay abed listening for the sound that never came. More lost sleep. Fortunately, when you're a jubilado, sleep is found as easily as it's lost. There is always an insurance meeting going on somewhere. But what to do tomorrow morning? Expect the racket and lie awake listening or don't expect it and be startled from a dream. What to do, what to do?

And you think you've got problems.

Life and Laughter

We lasted less than an hour. The speaker at the insurance seminar was painting his picture with broad strokes. We were looking for details. Narrow strokes. Actually, here in hindsightville, no strokes makes the most sense and what with Murphy's Law, Murray's if you're jewish, being what it is, the best way to achieve no strokes is to have insurance for them. Nevertheless we slipped out the back door before the tears of boredom could gather in force.

I've read that it is necessary to shake up your routine from time to time. Give everything a different look, a fresh face. Make your reality new, your perspective altered. Since I believe everything I read except for the stuff in newspapers and nonfiction sources - the people who write in those are really creative - I decided first thing today to give this change-your-habits thing a go and radically rearrange my morning. You know, toss out the old and let the sun shine on a bright new vision. I'm having coffee instead of tea as I write this. Call me a wild man if you want, but hey, you've got to take a risk once in awhile.

And now a word about humor because, afterall, it is a funny subject. I have what may be an overly developed sense of humor. (Note that it IS a sense like touching, smelling, hearing, detecting extraterrestrials disguised as humans and all the others. It doesn't get the press that say, seeing does, because it's the one sense so many people lack.) I laugh at everything except bad slapstick. Bad slapstick: someone slipping on a banana peel. Good slapstick: George W. Bush making an unscripted speech. I particularly like clever word play. "When the president learned that sectarians polled against him, he called for an immediate invasion of Sectaria." That's funny. The buddhist approaching the hot dog vendor and saying, "make me one with everything" is funny too. Most of my life when viewed from my distant perspective - I am within a couple of decades of getting close to old - has been a laugh riot. Too much of it bad slapstick, but lots of straight forward funny as well. What an idiot I've been. Most of your life when viewed from my distant perspective has been a laugh riot as well. What an idiot you've been. And the funniest of all are the people who take themselves seriously. They are seriously idiots, so let's get together and laugh them out of office. How about Seinfeld for president? Robin Williams? Jim Carrey? Hillary Clinton? Now we're talking funny.

Something About Insurance

I am a bit rushed this morning so I'll postpone writing The Great American Blog until another day. We are off to an insurance seminar in a little over an hour and I await that moment with the same thrilled and anxious expectation as my dog Gus exhibits when the word vet is tossed about. When the appointed hour arrives I might, like Gus, have to be lifted into the car. Or maybe coaxed with a cookie. It's not that these things are boring, it's just that they make boring look like a reasonable option. It's little wonder that coffee is the only beverage available when you consider what the average age in the room is likely to be. Panama may not be south Florida yet, but its geriatric quotient is on a steep upward curve. Retirees, Jubilados in Spanish, a much better word, are being beamed down from Bushworld at alarming rates. Since U.S. Medicare doesn't pay here, all the Jubies will be showing up at today's meeting to find out who has the cheapest rates on arthritis creams. We'll be looking for Big C insurance ourselves as our current coverage provides for most of the common complaints like bunny flu and the removal of alien implants, but has no cancer provisions. A further aggravation induced by having to attend this sort of meeting is that here in Boquete the gathering is held in a hotel bar. Note that earlier I said the only liquid available is coffee. That's droll, or once again considering the group's age, drool. Personally I think the hotel and the insurance agents are missing a sure bet by not opening the bar part of the bar when the day's subject matter is as mind numbing as insurance. Might as well numb the bod too. Get a couple of drinks into these old codgers, pass out your pamphlets and sign 'em up. Everybody wins. Why don't people listen to me?

THE Open

You've got to love the British Open, THE Open as the Brits call it. Unless, of course, you have no idea what I'm talking about in which case you're forgiven as I am often esoteric which means abstruse and both of those are excellant words to use when you're trying to convey "known only to a few and unclear to the general public." (A thing I doubt is a good thing for a blogger to be. I am sure, though, it's good thing to loose the monkeymind after a four day hiatus, which, by the way, is not a sexual term but probably should be.) (The girl had a hiatus that just wouldn't quit.) In America land of the free and home of monster truck rallies, golf course designers find a beautiful piece of landscape and make it even more so by putting in acres of really green grass, digging difficult to find holes here and there, and planting ferns and flowers and what not for a small percentage of the overall population to enjoy. On the British Isles, golf course designers find a patch of land where nothing but weeds and gorse and brambles and the like will grow, a patch that is usually windswept, wet and cold and there they dig the same random bunch of holes for a small percentage of the overall population that are both masochists and golfers...to enjoy. When you turn on your television to tune in golf and see brown fairways, lighter brown greens and galleries wearing rain gear and parkas (although this year's weather was unusually clement) (global warming?) you know you've found THE Open. Another good hint is that it's on at seven o'clock in the morning which begs the question, what the hell are you doing watching television at seven in the morning if you're not looking for THE Open?

This year's Open was won by Tiger Woods who differed from the Tiger Woods who won last year's Open only in that he was a year older. A thing you couldn't say about his father. OKAY, I TAKE IT BACK. I'M SORRY. I DON'T ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THE MONKEYMIND WILL TAKE ME. Sheesh. Tiger was out there to win for his dad who had died recently and Chris DeMarco was out there to win for his mom who had died recently and Sergio Garcia was out there to win for his taste in clothing which died when he was twelve and his mother stopped dressing him. Sergio was attired in a color described as saffron. If I am ever dressed in a color described as saffron, I better have died recently and the person who dressed me better hope I can't come back. Saffron. Of course, Sergio is from Spain where saffron is pronounced thaffron as well it should be. On this same subject, I have to mention that my favorite comment of the entire four days was by a British announcer who clued us that golfer Aaron Baddely was nicknamed Dressed by the other golfers. For those of you slow on the uptake, that makes him Dressed Baddely which, I guess is better than being nicknamed Played. Aaron and Sergio should swap names.

A Small Conversation

“Happy go lucky” Wilson says to his wife of more years than he can remember, “That’s what everybody always calls me, happy go lucky.”

He turns to the bartender before she can reply and orders another round. “Quisiera Senor, dos mas por favor” His Spanish is uncertain, but he’s pretty sure he’s got that one right.

His wife looks at him a moment wondering where he’s going with this new thought and whether they really need another round. “ Well,”she offers in her always logical straight forward way, “It’s mostly true you know. You usually are happy and of course you’re lucky or you wouldn’t be with me.”

Wilson blurts a “ha” and sprays a little cerveza across the bar. “Yeah and besides that”
he says, smiling at her, “ I’m supposed to be the funny one.”

Wilson’s wife, Emma, still starkly beautiful in her early sixties, gives him an appraising glance and asks, “What’s bothering you?” After thirty-six years she knows this doesn’t come out of the blue, something is on her husband’s mind.

“I don’t want to be mister happy go lucky anymore” he says. “It sounds too flip, too trivial, too, I don’t know, lacking in weight. I mean old happy go lucky is just a sidekick to the dark, brooding, sexy guys. Nobody takes him seriously, he’s just the comic relief. Well, c’mon now, I’ve been working for fifty years and I’ve done good things, important things. I’ve even done serious things, so from now on I want to be thought of as someone with ah, depth and ah…ah, substance.”

Emma points at her husband’s fresh drink. “Substance abuse is more like it.”

Wilson can’t help himself, he laughs again. “And I still want to be the funny one.”

“That’s the point querido mio, most of the time you are the funny one. And you’re good at it. Don’t you think people know you’re smart? Don’t you know that it takes smart to be funny?

Wilson deliberately avoids looking at his wife when he speaks. Even after so many years he knows that if he makes eye contact his current thoughts will dissolve and be replaced by something a whole lot less intellectual and a whole lot more... edgy. She, on the other hand, stares at him like he's the only guy on the planet. Wilson, of course, loves that.

“Well sure I know that and you know that” Wilson says, emphasing the I and the you, “but does anyone else really know ?” Do they know that the life of the party guy may be consciously playing the fool, consciously being the clown, consciously bringing energy to the room? I don’t think so, I really don’t. I think they think he’s just naturally that way.”

“That’s because he is.”

“What?” Wilson says, turning to look at his wife. He hadn’t been expecting this response. He thought maybe something more sympathetic might have come his way, something more supportive. But then, this was Emma talking after all. You are going to get what’s on her mind. “How can you say that?” he says, looking at her, but still dodging her eyes.

“Well, I think it’s like this. You have to be the way you are naturally or it wouldn’t even occur to you that the party needed more energy or laughter or whatever. Even if a few others of us did recognize the need for more juice at the party, we still wouldn’t be compelled to supply it like you are. It's what you do naturally. Myself, I’d fall back in horror if I was just asked to tell a joke while you'd come flying to my rescue and volunteer one.”

Wilson thought a moment then said, “You would, wouldn’t you, withdraw I mean. I guess most people would. Most people are just flat afraid of making a fool of themselves. Bombing as it were. It’s odd when you consider all the hidden fears I live with, that making a fool of myself is not one of them. I gladly risk embarrassment for a good laugh. Hey, if I bomb, I bomb. At least I tried to brighten the moment.”

“And people appreciate that Wilson, they really do. It’s why you get invited in the first place. Besides,” Emma says leaning close to her husband’s ear, “some of us find humor and energy sexy. You can take your dark, gloomy guys some place else. They’re so busy being serious and mysterious they don’t even notice they’re boring you to tears.”

Wilson gives his wife a quick, small kiss. “Thanks” he says. “But c’mon, don’t you ever get weary of your own self, your own schtick, your own big pile of stuff you bring to the world everyday? Doesn’t it just feel old and tiresome sometimes?”

“You mean do I get tired of being the one standing on the sideline looking bored and aloof? Hell yes. But I can’t seem to help it either. It’s my fall-back position. I really don’t know how to be any other way.”

“Well, you’ve got that don’t speak unless you’ve got something to say thing down really well. People respect you for that. But don’t you ever feel uh... uh, carefree or... or frivolous? You know, the I don't give a damn, I'm hell bent for leather kind of thing?

"Well sure“ says Emma, "when I'm suicidal. Or, ah, with you."

“And that" says Wilson, "is redundant! See, I AM the funny one.”

My Bookish Babe and a Short List

My wife like me and three of my four other personalities including the debonair, charming, witty, man-about-town who made only one appearance back in 1972 signing books at The Tattered Cover... while the actual author was on a break... is a reader. I define a reader as someone who, at roughly age ten, read a book and has had one at arm's reach ever since. The difference between she and I is that my wife reads fast and also her arms are shorter so she saves a lot of time that way. Now when I say she reads fast, think of Evelyn Wood on speed. Think of that Japanese kid eating hot dogs at Coney Island on the 4th of July. No don't think of that, that kid's disgusting, just take my word for it, my wife reads fast. She is also not particular about what she reads as long as the book is not horrible. This means, of course, that her reading list is somewhat different than mine. If I had to estimate I would say my wife reads three books for each one I polish off. Maybe three and a half. Okay four, but some of them are real skinny. So when you see my list of 25 completed books at the bottom of this page, you will know that my wife has buzz-sawed through, let me do the calculations here...a lot more. I am a word for word reader which means I read them all, even the little ones. I read at about the same speed as I talk. My wife claims to be a word for worder as well, but if she spoke at the same speed she reads, I'm thinking auctioneers would stand and applaud and drug companies would be knocking down our door to sign her up for those disclaimers they use at the end of their ads. "Side effects may include pain, debilitation, death and please donate to the Republican Party." You know, those. Luckily, for my wife anyway, there are many books to be read. The Library of Congress has at least eleven or twelve she hasn't gotten to yet. And new ones are being written everyday. Hurry up, I say to the book writers. The pile at her arm's reach is getting precariously low.

My wife took a second (literally!) to read this and said, "I am too particular about what I read."
So there you have that.

Here's my list:

Book List 2006


1. The Book of Secrets Deepak Chopra Non Fiction Essays on achieving a spiritual life of peace, free of fear, doubt, uncertainty, anger, etc. This is a book to return to often.

2. On Bullshit Harry G. Frankfurt A 67 page essay on the nature of BS that reads like a doctoral dissertation. Could have been amusing, but wasn’t, isn’t.

3. Horse Heaven Jane Smiley An excellent read that follows six horses and a couple of dozen people through the ins and outs of the thoroughbred racing world.

4. Death In A Strange Country Donna Leon Murder mystery set in Venice, Italy. Compelling characters, well told story, but lacking a satisfying ending.

5. El Demonio and La Senorita Prym Paulo Coelho (In Spanish) A stranger bearing a demon comes to a small town to make a bet and prove a point. Srta. Prym saves the day. I enjoyed this immensely.

6. Dolores Jacquelin Suzanne (In Spanish) I bought this book for a quarter at The Bookmark, a used book store in Dolega. It was worth it…but not much more.

7. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Susanna Clarke A very long book , 781 big fat pages, about magic and magicians in the 19th century. A good read I guess if you like that sort of thing. My wife loved it.

8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon Most books don’t live up to the hype that is plastered all over their covers and early pages by other authors and kind reviewers. This one exceeds everything said.

9. High Lonesome Barry Hannah Stories that aren’t, really, about people who shouldn’t be but probably are, really. Amazing prose. Poetry… really.

10. I Love You More Than You Know Jonathan Ames Humorous Essays about the author’s humorous and overly self examined life.

11. To The Hilt Dick Francis All Francis’ efforts are good and worth a read. This is my favorite so far. An excellent and complex mystery solved by an engaging protagonist.

12. The Weather Makers Tim Flannery A tome on global warming, its causes and consequences. Skimmed most of the book as it was densely fact laden. I get the idea. The world’s in trouble.

13. The Grand Slam Mark Frost Biography of Bobby Jones the great amateur golfer of the Twenties and Thirties. Well written history of Bobby, golf and America. Loved it.

14. Rat Race Dick Francis Francis’ books are the literary equivalent of comfort food. They are always tasty and satisfying. Don’t know what I’ll do when I’ve read his last.

15. White Ghost Girls Alice Greenway American sisters coming of age in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War. This is one of those books that is more about the feelings evoked by the story than the story itself. A “4” read. Emotionally absorbing.

16. By Sorrow’s River Larry McMurtry McMurtry is not always great as he was with Lonesome Dove, but he is always entertaining. This is the third book of a series. Now I have to find the two that preceded it.

17. The Nibble Theory and The Kernel of Power Kaleel Jamison An interesting little book that touches on some of my own unvoiced ideas. “You are who you pretend to be” is one example. In essence the book is a simple guide to personal growth.

18. Whale Season N.M. Kelby On the cover it says “A really good story. And it is.

19. Night Elie Wiesel Brilliant, but horrifying account of the author’s days at Auschwitz and Buckenwald . I was glad when it was over for both him and me.

20. One Liners Ram Dass A little over 200 spiritual observations. Good stuff. I will use many of these.

21. Dressed For Death Donna Leon The kind of mystery where it is not so much who done it as how are they going to be caught.

22. Red Weather Pauls Toutonghi A terrific read. A novel that reads like a memoir, but maintains the drama of a novel. Loved it.

23. Golf Dreams John Updike Golf musings. Some better than others. Some terrific.

24. Street Lawyer John Grishom Entertaining, but his people are never quite real.

25. Harry Potter Y El Caliz De Fuego (In Spanish) The fourth in the series and the best so far. But do they have to be so damn long?

26. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid A Memoire Bill Bryson You wouldn’t think that a childhood in Iowa during the 1950’s would have much to offer, but Bryson proves otherwise. Witty, informative and very well written.

Woowoo Magic 102

I have been asked why I do that do do that I do so...often. Am I just fooling around?

There is a precarious balance in the world between the heavy and dark and the lighthearted and carefree. Picture a teeter-totter which is the same thing as a seesaw only in a different state, both excellant words by the way, and place on one end the heavy and dark. If you need actual people to complete your visualization, go with Cheney and Rumsfeld. That Death guy with the hood and the scythe would be good too. On the other end you will have to put a whole slew (I've got to keep using the word "slew" until its meaning is solidly established as "many" and not, you know, the biblical thing where old Josh used an Ass's jawbone to slew or is it slay, let's see, past tense of the irregular verb to slay is, give me a minute, I've got it, tobaggon, a whole slew of Philistines, whose great grandchildren would go on to be Mickelson fans slewed later by Tigers) of the lighthearted and carefree, because they have barely enough psychic weight to keep them defying gravity on a daily basis. They do this in-your-face take-that gravity by not being, you guessed it, grave, which is another word that conjure's up dire consequences and needs to be put on the end of the seesaw with the those people who see the world as a harsh mistress. (I had a harsh mistress once, but as I said in an earlier bit, I'll get to "Dominated By The Fair Sex" another time.) If you need to put faces to this end of the saw, you can use mine and anyone named Golightly except Holly, who didn't. In the book anyway. It takes a lot, a pile, yes a slew of us to keep the totter from tipping to (where have you heard this before) the dark side where sunshine is just light to find oil and conduct wars by, and not to warm your world and brighten your smile. It is to this end, you know, the whole balance thing, that Woowoos United Ltd., a corporation I think my wife should start, says I am contributing when I send my blogs (although blog sounds like a heavy kind of word) off into cyber space. They don't even need to be read she says. The energy expended towards capturing a chuckle or landing a laugh is energy that finds a home on the light side of the teeter/saw and thereby protects us all from gloom and doom.

And you thought I was just fooling around.

Woowoo Magic 101

Here's how it works. Most of the people on this small blue planet would like world peace. However, that same majority doesn't believe world peace is possible what with terrorism, ignorance, religious disputes, the designated hitter, war mongers, Bushism and the like running amok. What we need, as my man Deeprock Chopsticks - that's Deepak Chopra to those of you who aren't close - said in his recent tome, Peace is the Way, is a "change of consciousness."
This does not mean tequila shots on Friday night. What it does mean, as any woowoo worth their crystals will tell you, is simply that we must start thinking differently.

"HEY! HOW ABOUT AN EXAMPLE."

Okay an example has just been called for, so I'll give you one. Lets go back in time all the way to yesteryear when The Lone Ranger rode the range and Silver too. You are walking along on wooden sidewalks bumping into people and asking them if they knew who that masked man was and did they think space travel was possible. "Why that's The Loooonnne Ranger" they reply, followed by "What's space travel?" and the William Tell Overture getting louder in the background. Ninety nine percent of the people on the planet, Jules Verne and myself being notable exceptions, at that time, believed that flying to the moon was just not possible. So now we fast forward a few years and we find that some people do believe, as Judy Tunuta would say about a date with Brad Pitt, "Hey, it COULD happen." Skipping the light fantasic forward a few more years and we discover that a whole slew of people - slew being a southern word meaning more than two - believe the moon is reachable. They're writings songs about it. "Fly Me To The Moon" is one you will remember if you happen to be as old as dirt. By the time we get to the Ninteen Sixties, the majority of the people, and here is the key, BELIEVE we can get to the moon and jumpin jiminy - I pick up the oddest expressions time traveling- we do. More than once. A whole slew of times, in fact. What has happened is that we have gone from most people NOT believing we can travel in space to most people believing we CAN. And so we do. This was a change of human consciousness that created a change in human reality. Cool.

Now that that's cleared up, all we have to do is start believing that world peace IS possible. And also the decline of The New York Yankees. I believe it and now if you believe it, together we can convince the next guy and pretty soon, what with the accelerated rate of change and all that, we'll have a majority of people believing it and when that happens, holy woowoo smokes, consciousness changes and there's NO MORE WAR.

Piece a cake.

Tomorrow I'll cure cancer.

Taking the Air

Took is an odd word. Considering how the word "too" is pronounced, how do we get tuhk for took? Why isn't it tewk? The same goes for look, book,cook, etc. Who decides this stuff anyway? Whenever I get stumped by these great dilemmas of the ages, I go to the source of the English which is, of course, the English. In England they pronounce took, borrowed.

Last night we watched Latin American Idol. The format is the same as the U.S. version. The judges have somewhat different personalities than Randy, Paula and Simon - the guy in the Randy spot, for instance, breaks out laughing whenever a contestant is really bad - but other than that, the show is much the same. I wish I could say my Spanish was good enough to understand everything that was being said, or sung, but it's not. I get about half, which is enough to make the show watchable. I'm not sure I'll be able to say that when American Somoan Idol airs on cable.

And speaking of air, last night during the set your watch by it 5:15 deluge, it occurred to me that the air in Panama smelled, tasted but mostly felt like the air I remembered as a kid growing up in rural New Jersey. It's wet. I don't think there is a rural New Jersey anymore and if there is air, it probably resembles Campbell's soup, the chunky kind, so I can't go back and compare. I spent most of my adult life, well, adult might be a little flattering, breathing what passes for air in Colorado. It's dry, thin stuff. In fact, Colorado air is dry even when it's raining. It lacks a couple of essential ingredients, moisture being the obvious one, enough oxygen being another and something else I can't put my lungs on. Something like effluents probably, but I'm not really sure what effluents are. It's a funny word though. When someone tells you to take a deep breath in Colorado, what they mean is take two, or three. One won't do it. So it was nice last night inhaling the rich, wet, heavily oxygenated Panama air as I sat out on my balcony watching the rain. The cigar I was smoking didn't hurt either. In fact it added something. I'm thinking effluents.

Women and the Written Word

I've just returned from random readings of other blogs. There are a lot of women bloggers out there. Clicking on neutral sounding blog titles, two of three were penned (that's the literary sense of penned) (as if I had any literary sense) by women. This did not come as a shock to me. I am an inveterate peruser of best seller lists and these are often dominated by the fair sex as well. (Dominated by the fair sex will be a whole nother blog.) (Nother is actually a word, or should be, but don't try to use it in Scrabble.) I'm talking the fiction best seller lists for the most part, although women are also well represented on non-fiction lists. Why, do you suppose, this is? Are women just naturally more inclined to put thought to word to paper? Are they brighter, more artistic, more creative? Or... are there just more of them with free time on their hands? Part of the reason I'm sure - because of my own completely scientific sampling of the general populace, which is to say I asked a few people - is that women read more. More, at least, of non-work related material. They are not quite as big as men on "The Subatomic Analysis of the Quartz Driven Freelinger" or "This Is Your Fuel Injector, Use It Wisely" but scan any magazine section of your neighborhood mom and pop store like Seven Eleven and you will notice that the majority of the titles are geared to women readers. Granted many of the men's mags are behind the counter but still... Pair this with the best seller thing and what I get is that women writers are writing for women readers in larger numbers than men are...well you get the point. It doesn't tell me why though, so I'm going to go with the more time on their, I mean they are smarter, scenario. Another scientific poll I have conducted reveals that the largest percentage of this blog's readers are women. This might be attributed to my having three daughters and only two sons. I'm not great at math, but come on, with three out of five readers being women- that's like, what, I'm thinking three fifths- I should probably reconsider my content. That being said... tomorrow or the next day or someday, when I write Dominated By The Fair Sex, it will feature a lot more silk and a lot less leather than originally intended. If you want the leather version you'll have to go to Seven Eleven. Behind the counter.

Radio Remembered

I caught a glimpse of David Letterman on a news flash of some kind. He looks old. Leno is no kid either. Then I remembered... that I remember... The Tonight Show before Johnny Carson. It starred Jack Paar, an amiable, but not nearly as funny a host as those who would follow. Before Jack, there was radio. I remember that too, but lest you think this is a treatise on aging, let me remind you that I do do time travel. Do do time travel. Alrighty then.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear (there's a good word) when the Lone Blogger (or something like that) blogs again. My favorite all time radio show aired when I was in my teens and television was catching the fancy (and the advertising dollars) of most of the nation. It came on quite late, I'm thinking eleven, and ran for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I don't remember for certain, because good as the program was I almost always fell asleep before it was over. The show was The Gene Sheppard Show - don't fault me if I've spelled the name wrong, I'm talking radio and you can't see the credits - and also I don't do research because that would require from me skills I don't have, among which is not being lazy - and featured Gene just gabbing into the mike about his childhood in Indiana, his army days, his start in show biz and the like. He was brilliant and he was funny and he had, in our town, a strong cult following of two, me and my buddy Denny Dey, pronounced Die, don't ask me why. I remember one show when Gene talked about being on KP duty "kitchen police, there's a misnomer" that was so accurate and funny that a couple of years later, when I was actually on KP, I kept breaking into laughter and my fellow GI's thought I was Section Eight. Gene went on to do many other things including putting some of these same stories in writing and getting them published in Playboy. Don't laugh. If you get published in Playboy, you are A. very good and B. well paid. The stories are among the funniestI have ever read. Gene later scripted a few movies, the best of which is "A Christmas Story" which is now shown during the holidays almost as often as "It's a Wonderful Life." The movie is about a kid who wants a BB Gun for Christmas, but is continually told "no, you'll shoot your eye out." The kid is, of course, drawn from Gene himself and the unseen narrator, the voice over, is the grown up Gene...himself. I watch the movie in part to hear that voice and be reminded of lying in the dark listening to radio. Not a bad way to fall asleep.