iWrite

Time will tell whether this is a good thing or not, but I am now able to blog from my iPhone. No longer will I have to expend the energy required to pick up and turn on my laptop. Now, I need only to use my thumbs and 2 to 3 calories an hour.
The only thing better would be a personal stenographer who could follow me around, or even better, sit at my bedside and transcribe my blog, while also feeding me grapes and pouring wine into my mouth.
But I digress.

Radar Magazine (I’d make a link but that appears to be more than the iPhone can handle) is publishing it’s “Worst Colleges” list in it’s September issue. I got a sneak peak of it today and I recommend it simply because I believe in supporting people, writers and publications with a sense of humor.
The article makes fun of a college in my city, and that institution is outraged. At my workplace we wanted to do a story on the story and the reaction. This was before we read the article.
When we first heard about it, we were suprised. You see, no one told us it was HUMOR.
I contacted the Senior Editor in charge of the piece and explained the situation. He emailed me a copy of the article, but not before giving a statement in response to the college’s outrage.
For silly professional ethics I won’t reprint that statement here, but to paraphrase, it was basically “lighten the hell up and enjoy the joke.” That is not what people usually say when my station confronts them. I was beginning to think the college was worked up over nothing.
That was confirmed once we read the story. We laughed, a little at the absurdity, a little more by the amusing truths.
We got the joke and decided not to even bother with our story.
I do recommend the article though, especially if you have a friend from Cornell… even better if the friend is female. Any college review that includes the line “sweet release of death” is a winner.

What isn’t a winner is typing this much on a mini glass iPhone keyboard.
But I’m just too tired to roll over to the laptop on the far side of my bed.

By the way, thanks to the Radar Magazine people for being helpful, upfront, and not taking themselves too seriously today.

Dog Gone

Now that I have returned to the world of blogging it has occurred to me that I am not sure that I have anything interesting to write about. It’s not that my life is more boring that it used to be. I just am struggling for that inspiration… my muse.

It used to be that I would come home from work and take Cosmo out for a walk. We would stroll around town for a bit and something would come to me, a rant, a story, an incident, even an emotion. And on those occasions when nothing came to me, I would look at him and he would become the subject of that night’s blog. A 150 pound bull mastiff is always funny and interesting.

But, now Cosmo is gone, he has been gone for 10 months, and those walks with him are now just solo walks through the city at night. They are good for me, but, in the absence of inspiration, there are no funny stories about the solo walk.

And then there is Juliet. The cat. She is a great pet and as dog-like as a cat can be. She comes when I call her, she guards the apartment well (from mice, but still), and she plays fetch better than Cosmo ever did.

Yet she is a cat.

A single 37-year-old man can tell lots of stories about his giant dog. They’re manly tales, and they show that manly, slap-on-the-ass-during-a-sporting-event, cry-at-Brian’s-Song sensitive side.

Once that same 37-year-old starts writing about his cat… well, that’s when it’s time to get 5 more cats, a home-knit blanket and just resign.

So unless she does something… no, forget it.

I will just skip a day or two.

Sorry Juliet.

And He’s Back

“Gosh John,” I know you’re asking, “where have you been all of this time?”

Well, I will spare you the details. I’ve been here and there, doing this and that, dating one woman or another. And I have been busy.

Actually, it’s been more than that, I suppose. Last you heard from me I was wallowing in my sorrow over a woman, and honestly, it was making me annoyed, reading my whining. I can only imagine what the rest of you actually thought. So I stopped writing for a bit, and it was easy to get out of the habit.

I started today by going back and reading myself, because I am my favorite writer, which is good because I am also my most loyal reader. It is great how those things worked out. It was an exercise in inspiration, to get my juices flowing. In the process, I did a little editing and some post removal.

As I said, some of the “woe is me” entries bugged me, so they’re gone from the blog. They still exist, I don’t believe in destruction of writing or of photos. The past happened and we learn from it not by tearing up parts of it. Still, I don’t need to have them right in my face either.

So as you go back, trust me, your favorite posts are still there. The ones that were as exciting as a lethal cocktail are not.

You will thank me.

Oh… and I found a random thing I wrote after a concert a couple of months ago. Consider it a bonus.

The Word!

Nick at Nite is playing Grease! tonight. I have seen the movie dozens of times through the years, and I still enjoy every second of it.

It came out in 1978, and I was 7. It was the must see movie of the summer. Every kid at day camp had seen it.

Or at least we thought we’d seen it, but looking back now, I’m not so sure we got much of it at all.

First of all, there is the subplot where Rizzo thinks she’s pregnant. Somehow that went right over my head in 1978. Premarital high school sex. I don’t remember talking about that on the bus to camp.

And then there are some of the lyrics. In Greased Lightning, for example:

You are supreme
the chicks ‘ll cream
for greased lightning.

Huh?

I had the soundtrack, and I sang along at home. At the time, I only knew there was another line with shit in it. I was giggling too hard to realize the rest of that verse also said “we’ll be getting lots of tit.”

I think I sang that song to my grandmother. I hope I never asked her what it meant for a chick to cream.

So there are other questions now:

• Did Danny have sex sometime with Cha Cha?
• Why did Sandy get so mad when Danny touched her breast at the drive-in? It couldn’t have been the first time.
• And did the entire school year last 8 days?

But even tonight as I watch it for the umpteenth time, I feel like I’m watching a kids movie (a good kids movie) and am reminded of the summer of ’78, and being 7-years-old.

Turns Out My Male Friends Can Read

I got an email from a good college friend today. He’d seen my blog, and said he liked it. And that surprised me.

As I thought about why, I realized that it’s because I never expected any male friends of mine to read it. Especially this guy, who, and I now know he’ll read this, was the man’s man of all of my friends in school. He actually carried the title of “Cool Guy” and it wasn’t a joke.

Anytime I ever felt an overwhelming wave of political correctness in school, I went to see him.

If I was trying to make decisions between whether to do the responsible thing or the thing that would make my college years more memorable, I’d ask myself, what would BF do?

Years later, when I went running into a bomb shelter in Kuwait because of an incoming missile in the first weeks of the war, I actually thought, BF would think this was cool.

So, now I think I need to throw in some more macho stuff in here for a few days.

Instead of talking about the day I spent in the park with the woman, talk about how hot she is, and what we did when we weren’t at the park.

Less about the little boys I supervised at day camp, more about the romping in the pool with the girls counselors during the overnights.

Not so much about how I think I’m fat, more about playing hardball in a men’s baseball league, on a team where my nickname is “The White Guy,” because I’m the only one, or how the picture in my profile is me serving time in the penalty box after some sort of heinous attack on an opponent in high school hockey.

Ok boys, I’m ready to be a man.

RIP

My Apple IBook took a tumble off my bed last night.

It was pronounced dead early this afternoon.

The IBook is survived by a 1-month-old backup.

It was 2-and-a-half-years-old.

Autumn

Out in the countryside of New Hampshire, on a cool fall Friday night many years ago, a group of early 20-somethings met for the first time as adults. They were all starting their lives as grown-ups, but they weren’t quite ready, not just yet.

It was the eve of a huge Halloween party on a family farm. Hundreds of people were expected to roll in on Saturday for a bonfire costume bash.

But this was the night before. The people who were there that night were the core friends. And at the core of the core were young women who had known each other since their lower school days. They all brought the men in their lives, men they deemed worthy of a weekend trip in the wilderness.

On that night before the party, there would be perhaps 20 people, the girls who had known each other forever, and the boys who might be in their lives forever.

Two by two, the couples arrived, threw on their fleece jackets and grabbed spots around the fire.

The women picked up where they’d left off years before.

The men cautiously made friends with the other men. They drank beer, talked about their jobs, how they met their girlfriends, how they were selected to make the journey.

When the breeze would pick up, the women would snuggle up next to the men, together they would get warm in the glow of the fire, under their blankets.

The hostess gathered up the crowd after a bit and took everyone on a tour of the farm and into the newly built barn.

Someone found a soccer ball and then the children came out to play.

Teams were formed, positions taken, and a newly invented game of barn-broomball began. Some people used brooms like hockey sticks, some people actually found hockey sticks, one person used an old gardening tool, and some just used their feet.

It seemed like the game lasted forever. The music of the Samples played in the background, barely audible over the sounds of grown-ups yelling like kids on the playground.

No one hit their heads on the low hanging beams, no one was hurt when they ran into each other, or barn equipment.

They kind of kept score, but didn’t really.

And then, after a while, in the wee hours of that perfect fall night, the final buzzer rang. It may have been when the CD player stopped playing, it may have been that the players just knew it was time to call it a night.

The game was not one that could ever be replayed, its joy came from its sudden creation and its sudden end. For the core group, as much fun as the costume party would be the next night, Friday night would be the part of the weekend they would remember forever.

In the years since, time and distance have taken their tolls on the friendships, but those friendships remained. There were other great gatherings, although the same men weren’t always there. Still, on that night the men who met for the first time knew they would always remember each other, call each other friends.

That game, the cool New England breeze, the sounds of the Samples echoing through a big wooden barn left them all with a special bond, one of childlike fun, deep love and affection and the memory of the party before the party, the gathering of the core.

One last night when the kids could leave their newly found adulthood behind and play in the barn.

It’s All About The Comma or It’s All About, The Comma

Today my friends, I present my favorite news story of the week. As I stared at it, I realized it also holds an important lesson for all of you kids who don’t think punctuation matters.

It comes from California, in the form of a 911 transcript.

I’m sure many of you have been following the story of Walter the Wandering Wallaby. He escaped from his wallaby sitter’s home last week and has been surviving the mean streets of Fontana ever since.

Caller: “Yes there is a big kangaroo here on the street.”

911: “I‘m sorry, I need you to… what’s going on there?”

Caller: “A large kangaroo, lady. We are looking at it. He’s right here in our street.”

911: “What do you mean a kangaroo lady? That doesn’t make sense.”

Caller: “It’s large kangaroo in our street, right there.”

Saddly, part of what makes the 911 call so special are the tones of both the caller and the operator. The caller is pissed that she has to keep repeating that it’s a kangaroo (perhaps if she’d recognized it as a wallaby it would have been a smoother conversation.) The operator can’t figure out what the caller is talking about and, because you can’t see a spoken comma floating out there, can’t figure out what a kangaroo lady is.

It reminds me of a written example of why commas are so important. As I recall, this came from one of the strong female teachers in my life:

A woman without her man is nothing. (that’s the wrong, comma free version)

A woman, without her, man is nothing.

See the difference?

It is important, because I’m sure police respond much differently when the call is for a wild kangaroo lady.

Hellooooo Kingston!

I have figured out how to stick a visitor counter on my blog, to see how many people read it and to get a rough idea where they come from.

There have been a couple of interesting discoveries.

The first is that as far as I can tell, my friend Lemon Gloria may very well be the only person who has visited this page more than once.

And that’s fine, because I haven’t told anyone about it; I’m not a link on Drudge or GreatUnheardOfWriters.com. I’m willing to give the magic of the internet time to work.

Another interesting stat is that someone from Kingston, Ontario blew through the page once. I say “blew through” because the person only stayed on for 2 seconds, hardly enough time to digest the weight of my words.

What makes it interesting is that, not only have I been to Kingston, I’ve been to Kingston many times. I actually went through some sort of strange time warp or wormhole there… more on that in a second.

My family has a cabin on a lake in Ontario, about an hour north of Kingston. For years I only knew of the city because it had the nearest hospital, in case my grandparents ever tumbled down their hill. It’s a long ride from the cottage to the Kingston hospital for an 83-year-old woman, but Mema was fine and able to laugh about it for years afterward.

Once I was old enough to have a car up there, Kingston was a daytrip to get away from the rest of the family for a bit. It has stores and bars and restaurants and a big canon aimed across Lake Ontario. They say the canon was to fend off invaders during the War of 1812. I’m not so sure. We need to watch those Kingstonians to make sure they aren’t priming the guns for a surprise assault on Burnham Point, N.Y.

Shopping in Kingston is interesting, because everything is in Canadian dollars, and it’s easy to forget whether you’re getting a good deal or a terrible one. $15.00 for a paperback seems like a lot, but is it really? No one really knows. Plus, there’s the added value of it being a Canadian paperback as opposed to a regular old American book. That has to be worth something.

They also have a Canadian Tires store in Kingston, which is the single greatest store in the world. Any place that sells car batteries, hockey equipment, linens and DVDs deserves its own blog entry.

Now, the time warp.

One summer I was up at the cottage with friends and we took a daytrip to Kingston. We shopped, ate and drank until dark.

I need you to set up your mental map here…

We were on the EAST side of town. We drove WEST, with the lake to our left and the distinctive domed City Hall to our right.

We continued this way for about 20 minutes, and then turned right, or NORTH. We believe this was the only turn we made.

We didn’t recognize the road, but it was dark, and heading NORTH, as my internal brain compass confirmed, would take us up to the lake.

La la la… so we drove, until one of my passengers said look, that building looks just like the distinctive domed City Hall in Kingston. Why, yes, yes it did.

It was coming up on our right.

There was a large body of water on our left, looking a lot like Lake Ontario.

Lake on the left, City Hall on the right… we were not just in the general area of where we had started. We were at the exact same place where we had started our trip back to the cottage: We were on the EAST side of town, with the lake to our left and the distinctive domed City Hall to our right.

How the f#%k did that happen?

The only explanation was the supernatural.

And that’s another reason to love Kingston.

On The Truth

Off hand, I can really think of only three public figures whom I despise so much, that even my coworkers know my true feelings.

If Ann Coulter appears on a talk show, they know it’s a matter of seconds before I scream obscene things about her. No one at work would even consider letting music by Jewel hit my ears. And when that f*cking liar James Frey comes up in conversation, look out.

Frey, you may recall, is the guy who wrote A Million Little Pieces and the follow-up My Friend Leonard.

I was one chapter away from finishing the first book when it became public that the work of non-fiction was in fact, made up. I went from being riveted by his tale, to refusing to finish it.

People have asked why, if I was so captivated, I stopped reading. It was still a good story, right?

It was a good story, and I’d have been a fan if it had been presented as “inspired by true events.” But it wasn’t. It was a lie.

Jaws is a great movie, but imagine how you would have felt if it were true, if the words “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” had actually been uttered. In addition to being a summer blockbuster it would have been a haunting cautionary tale on the deadly results of ignoring marine biologists.

As a journalist, I find the truth even more important. When I write a story for my profession, it’s true. End of story.

If a book says it’s based on true events, it had better be.

But now we come to this blog, and I think I need to clarify some things.

For example, I didn’t really forget that dogs can’t type. I added that line because, c’mon, it’s funny, right? Right!?

So how are you, the reader supposed to know the truth and know when I’m taking license?

A story that includes animals talking or writing or taking my laundry to the cleaners is probably embelleshed.

If there’s a story about a night out, my family, a woman I might be pining over, that’s at least based on truth.

If the punch line to a story is funny or really funny, it’s true.

If the punch line is really really funny, I made it up… or stole it from someone else.

To make a long story short, go by this: Inspired By True Events… But My Dog Didn’t Really Come Up With An Online Password.