Being A Non-Prince In Cleveland Never Felt So Good

What the hell.

I'm watching and reading all the news about Isaac the next big hurricane. Count on it: Every year just around the time football is revving up, there's a news story showing empty shopping market shelves, cars lined up at gas pumps, people boarding up houses, and always the same middle-aged, tanned, guy-who-stepped-out-of-a-Jimmy-Buffett-song talking about riding the storm out and he survived that big one twelve years ago, and four years ago, and by God and whiskey he's gonna survive this one. And every year as I watch all this in Cleveland, where maybe it gets a little too hot, or maybe a little too cold, or maybe there's too much snow for a couple days, I think, how can those people stand it? How can they live there where every year for two or three months they have to live with the imminent possibility of boarding up, packing up, fleeing, losing it all? Don't they ever consider moving, for the mental health benefits, if nothing else? But for the first time last night--call it wisdom with age, maybe--as I watched and listened to Jimmy Buffett guy, I actually stood--if not walked a mile--in his flip flops for a second or two and thought, does he watch ESPN and read the sports pages, and does he ever consider the fans of Cleveland sports teams (the Indians, who've won maybe five games in the last month, or the Browns, who've won no more than five games in a season for just about a generation, and whose fans--two weeks before this season even starts--are already calling sports talk shows and speculating about who the next coach will be and who should be the number one pick in next year's draft) and think to himself, as he places another big piece of ply board over another window, just like he did last month or last year: God, how can those fans in Cleveland stand it year after year--bungling, no-hope teams filled with cast-offs and suspect prospects and chronically injured never weres? Don't they ever consider moving, for the mental health benefits, if nothing else?

And then I flick from The Weather Channel to E!, turn from the front page to the gossip page, and I consider the naked truth about being a globetrotting, whore mongering prince in this day and age. Time was, and was and was, the naked truth about being a globetrotting, whore mongering prince was, no lie, about as good as it could get. For decades, centuries, millennia, princes have had the run of the world's pleasures. Whatever and whomever they wanted to indulge, plunder, pinch, imbibe, was theirs, usually not even for the asking. Royal privilege. And as for word of any indiscretions getting out and round the kingdom, forget it. The four magical, royal words--Off with his head--sufficed to keep a lid on things, so to speak. But now? Oh Lord, randy Prince Harry must be cursing his fate, and thousands and thousands of lascivious ancestors, that his royal playtime comes not just in the world of fiendish paparazzi and cable TV--his poor mother knew all that--but in a world where everybody carries a camera/video recorder. Should we be shocked that a charming prince is rompingly exercising his birthright's pleasures in his royal birthday suit (sorry, but all the crown jewel jokes have been taken) with naked commoners in history's latest Sin City? Hardly. I mean, come on, for a prince like Harry, those not cognizant of history (royals debauching themselves on a royal level) are condemned not to get any. Given the photos available, we might be shocked only at his modesty. But does the guy get a break? Does the world just shrug its common shoulders and say, princes will be princes? Not in this day and age, Harry. Sorry.

And so, today I'm recalculating my dreams. Out is the one about being the Prince of New Orleans, celebrating another Super Bowl victory in the buff with a dozen or score of my drunkest friends. In is the one where it's less than 85 degrees the next time I have to mow the lawn, the Browns and Indians finish .500, and Prince finally puts out another decent album.

What the hell, Cleveland, you're all right.

Unlocking

I don't know about you (well, I do know that presently you have way too much time on your hands), but few things in life give me more pleasure than bringing together two of my friends, who previously had not known each other, and seeing them hit it off and become friends themselves. Santa himself can't know such joy. Anyway.

I've known Leopold for more than thirty years. He's a good guy. We met in high school, in the late 1970s, when our hair grew aggressively. In early 1987, when we were young professionals and our hair was a bit more kempt and less dense, we watched the Cleveland Browns play the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship game. The infamous Drive game, when John Elway drove his Broncos 98 yards in a couple minutes to tie the game and went on to win it in overtime, thus depriving the Browns of their, to date, best chance at reaching a Super Bowl. Any true Clevelander over the age of 28 knows exactly where he or she watched that game. For Leopold, he quite rightly dates his life to pre-Drive and post-Drive. Next time I saw him was two weeks later, when we got together to fulfill our man duties and watch the Super Bowl, as painful as it was that day--even the Broncos' blow-out loss didn't salve too many wounds. Leopold looked awful--in two weeks time he had lost all his once thick mane of hair but for two wispy clumps of dried out, colorless locks, one above his left ear, the other in the back of his head down by his neck.

"It's just fallen out in clumps," Leopold explained to my dumbfounded face, as I fridged the beer and he uncapped two-week-old chip dip, "ever since that night. Elway probably hadn't even dried himself off from that post-game shower before the first handful dropped off my head." By the Pro Bowl the next week, Leopold was completely bald, as he still is, nearly 26 years later. Two marriages come and gone since then, the Browns themselves gone and come back, with nary a Super Bowl even sniffed for 20 years, and Leopold is still bald. Enough time has passed that Leopold's shiny pate doesn't stand out at high school reunions, but the pain is still there. Or really, the pine.

"Phantom lock pine," Leopold explained to me, in strict confidence, a few years ago, when I caught him in the middle of a round of golf taking off his cap and running his hand through sweaty hair that wasn't there at all. "It's constant. The yearning to sweep hair off my forehead, tangle and untangle a few strands idly when I'm at work, and, oh, the best, most painful, to do that double-handed, simultaneous quick flick of the hair from off the sideburns to behind the ears. You know that feeling you get when you realize you should have gotten a haircut two weeks ago? Constant. I constantly feel like I need a haircut, but I had a permanent haircut years ago! I need a straitjacket. You cannot believe the strength and willpower it takes for me in public to resist the urge to play and tousle and tease my hair that isn't there, that hasn't been there in decades!"

He was in pain, obviously. "Why don't you--"

"Eighty-five dollars an hour. I did go see someone, a psychiatrist specializing in follicle issues. I was the first male client she had seen in six years. Her advice? Wear a hat and take up smoking. She laughingly dismissed my claim that Phantom Lock Pine was a very real and incapacitating disorder."

I see Leopold about two or three times a year now. At first I was self-conscious, but finally he said, "Go ahead, do what you have to with your hair--you've got a little cowlicky thing going on on the right--I kind of enjoy the vicarious thing." Poor guy.

Then there's Graciola. I met her a year and a half ago. She works the nightshift at a Speedway gas station cum convenience store. We struck up a friendship over our mutual love of Brisk lemonade. One time I stared too awkwardly at her ever-moving hands and fingers as we waited for my debit card to be authorized. "I'm sorry," she said, clearly embarrassed. "I've got this thing about wielding clippers." My debit card cleared and I hastily took my lemonade and Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar with Almonds and drove off. Two nights later, she was waiting for me. She was on break, she had bought me some lemonade, we sat on the sidewalk out near the ice freezer and the propane tanks. She told me her sad story. As near as she could tell, she said it all started in childhood. She always played with dolls in her backyard, and was always hearing it from her mother to pick them up afterward. One day, as she ate her breakfast--Fruit Loops, she's pretty sure--she looked out the window just as the landscaper was mowing the back lawn. A doll, Molly Malarkey, lay face down in some pachysandra, with its red hair spilling over onto the lawn. The landscaper, who it turned out was colorblind, red-green deficiency, didn't see a thing and mowed off Molly's red hair. "Ever since then, I've had this love-hate thing with hair, with the cutting of hair. All I want to do is cut hair, but I have a tremendous, physical aversion to hair, which explains this," she said, and pointed to her own butch-cropped pale brown hair. "I lasted fifteen whole minutes at the beautician academy. Now I'm nothing but an air barber," she said, and quickly clipped her fingers away at the night.

Well, four months after that night, after many calming, delicate conversations--separate--with the two of them, I finally managed to get Leopold and Graciola to meet. What seemed like a disaster the first five minutes, has transformed into a great friendship, the depths of which I know not nor care not; I'm just happy these two forlorn souls have met. Last night, as I plunked down my Brisk and Hershey's on the counter and asked Graciola how it was going (it in the general sense, not necessarily the Leopold sense), she just grinned and said, "Like this," and showed me her phone with the latest text from Leopold: "Big presentation later this week. Think u can take a bit off the top n sides?" I looked up and Graciola smiled, and her hands were peacefully hanging at her sides.

Enough With The Negative Advertising: 10 Things That Take The Perfect Amount Of Time

Holy George McGovern! It's not even Labor Day and we've all had enough of the negative advertising, haven't we? It's bad enough that people running for high office engage in the kind of nasty, distorted mudslinging of one another that directly goes against all their platitudes about a "better America," but now it seems that the negativity is infectious. I ran across this de facto ad on Buzzfeed, one of my favorite sites for finding out all the stupid, must-read crap floating around the internet. Samsung, in an effort to tout the speed of its latest computer, has concocted a list of ten things that "we" wish took less than ten seconds. I flatter Samsung with the word "concoct"; all they did was round up the usual suspects--do we really need somebody else telling us the DMV is a time-killer? It took me about seventeen seconds to scroll through the list; seventeen seconds I'll never get back. So let's get iconoclastically positive here and make a different, more ebullient list.

Ten Things That Take The Perfect Amount Of Time

1. Eating a banana: From the sensuous peeling, to the not-at-all-challenging biting and practically-melts-in-your-mouth chewing, is there a more satisfying (and salubrious) mutli-dimensional experience that takes less time than re-booting a frozen Samsung computer than this?
2. Watching a perfect tee shot: Granted, this one comes with qualification. It might take you, as it does me, several frustrating (i.e. sliced, hooked, topped, popped, whiffed, etc.) attempts, but when all the wrong things about your swing somehow harmonically converge to offset one another and you hit the sweet spot and that pale, dimpled nemesis flies high and long and straight and takes a good bounce down the fairway, you feel a little bit like Him/Herself sitting back on that grand Seventh Day and taking in the view, and saying, "Hmmm, not bad." Any longer would border on hubris, any shorter would be not enough.
3. Writing a "back in 5 minutes" post-it: Given the short duration of your absence and the need to inform your audience/customers of your absence, this is perfect. If you're going to be away less time, it's a waste of time to write the post-it; if you're going to be away longer, you got some 'splaining to do.
4. A sneeze: Not the allergen-induced onslaught of rapid ah-choos, nor the three-day phlegm fest of the common cold, but the out of nowhere, here and gone one-off bone-rattling sneeze. When executed to perfection--the instant brain-alert that makes you instantly realize, oh no, everything in life's on hold for the next few seconds, to that glorious intake of breath before lift-off ("ah") to that cathartic, ultimate experience of living in the moment expulsion ("choo") and the quick recovery time of receiving God's blessing--the sneeze is about as close to perfect timing as possible.
5. Napping: Be it a five minute power nod off or a luxurious two-hour asylum snooze, any nap is perfect.
6. Watching a Road Runner cartoon: How long are these things, five, six minutes? An hour? Who knows, but they're perfect. Any longer and your nerves would start to fray and you'd be cursing Road Runner's smugness and Wile E.'s stupidity. Your suspension of disbelief that allows you to believe the rock Wile E. just painted black could grant passage to Road Runner but stop Wile E. dead in his tracks would disintegrate. Your annoyance at the shoddy craftsmanship of the Acme Co. would have you flinging various catalogs at Wile E. You might end up hearing Beep Beep in your head for eternity. But any shorter, and you'd miss the complete arc of the existential story. The transformation of your emotions from glee at Road Runner's insouciance to sympathy for Wile E.'s tortured existence. You'd miss the musing upon the anvil's place in human history that always occurs. You'd stop identifying with Wile E.'s amazing recovery from certain death to attempt another scheme. Come to think of it, the exact duration of a Road Runner cartoon might be the perfect time frame for just about anything in life: X will only take as long as a Road Runner cartoon? I'll endure.
7. "ABC" by the Jackson 5: Pop perfection.
8. Cooking spaghetti: I am certainly no culinary master; food is merely functional, tasty at best. If it takes more time to make it than consume it, I'm skeptical. Spaghetti, given this credo, is perfect (sauce out of a jar, naturally; no simmering, stirring, pinching things into it for hours).
9. Proclaiming, "Ah, go to Hell!": Conversations, dialogues, debates, arguments--all of them can go on much too long, with a whole array of negative consequences. But with one simple--and quick--"Ah, go to Hell" (the "Ah" is essential, and can be accompanied with a rather limp-wristed, dismissive wave of the hand), the stake is decisively driven. The long-time assumed aphorism that the first one to raise his or her voice in an argument loses begs for revision in these crasser, more combative times. I say, the first one to proclaim AGTH wins, no questions asked. (Now's not the time to wax philosophic about the contrasting perfect words Heaven and Hell --Hell with its one-syllable stab, its bombastic and culminating double L; Heaven with its two-syllable elongation, its mighty V; the same Heh- beginning.) In fact, I say whichever candidate is the first to ditch all those despicable negative ads and resorts to a short (and cheap, austere), eight second ad showing five seconds of the opponent's highfalutin' gibberish followed by a quick cut to the candidate simply proclaiming, "Ah go to Hell!" would win in a landslide.
10. Reading my blog posts: What the hell, like Wile E. Coyote, a man can keep on concocting and hoping.

An Oldster Re-Fashions A Youngster's Song

Well, the toe bone is connected to Epsom Salts
And the foot bone is connected to ongoing litigation involving Medicare, the insurance industry, and Payday Loans, Inc.
And the ankle bone is connected to God only knows what.
The shin bone is connected to the slings and arrows of absurd misfortune
And the knee bone is connected to Dial-A-Prayer
While the thigh bone is connected to a heating pad.
The hip bone is connected to Mother Nature's storm center
And the tail bone is connected to this EZ Lift Chair.
The back bone is connected to Edvard Munch's psyche
And the breast bone is connected to the hopes of Ponce de Leon.
The shoulder bone is connected to Advil
All the arm elbow wrist hand and finger bones seem to be connected to someone else's nervous system
And the neck bone is connected to Meyerwitz, Meyerwitz, and Pane and Sons.
The jaw bone is connected to Ensure
The nose bone is connected to a sink of dirty dishes at the moment
The ear bone has been disconnected
And the head bone is looking to connect with a soft pillow.

Or Was It Just A Mirage?

On the average, I would safely surmise, any sentient human over the age of, say, twelve, questions his or her sanity seventeen times a day. Anything below ten, well, you're well on your way. And so it should come as no surprise that less than 24 hours ago I experienced a particularly biting such questioning. Unlike most of these daily self-examinations, though, this one wasn't so fleeting; it's obviously stayed with me some time, and has grown from the usual minuscule pop quiz to a full-blown essay question. Allow me to impinge upon your time to act as my grader.

Monday, while driving the same backroads I usually take to work, I saw a yard sign. Now although it's not quite election season, when lawns everywhere will be dotted and clotted with red and blue signs, lawn signs this time of year are not infrequent sights. Just two weeks ago on one little half mile stretch of road, I counted at least half a dozen garage sale signs. Throw in the flood of For Sale signs, and one more hand-written sign shouldn't cause any concern, let alone a red alert sanity check. But this one was different. I swear on my stack of Bob Dylan CDs, LPs, and cassettes, this particular sign read: Wanted: Men Who Love To Sing, with a phone number below. What the hell is that, I wondered, practically ramming the curb and ricocheting off a USA Mail truck parked on the bend just beyond said house. The notion of a yard sign advertising for singing males intrigued me all day, and I even told Co-Workers about it--which might have been a fatal mistake.

For two whole days I pondered the significance of a yard sign calling for singing-loving men. I was thrilled, though a bit surprised, that in this day of internet access to communities of the most obscure and nicheiest interests, somebody would go the ancient fashioned route to trawl for like-minded fanatics. Could such a sign really pull in interested people located as it was on a not too heavily traveled street, where at most passersby only caught a fleeting glimpse of it? And really, the more I pondered the whole thing, what was the motive behind the sign, the actual motive among the myriad ones my mind kept coming up with: was it just a hopeful plea from some frustrated ex-glee club guy? a weird cult? some kind of cryptic message decipherable only by the erudite in-the-know? an invitation to a gay slumber party? a lonely woman looking for a suitable serenader? Cher looking for back-up singers? the Mormon Tabernacle Choir setting up a satellite Cleveland operation? My mind reeled.

I tossed and turned all Monday night, wondering whether I should take the grand step from being a lazy make-it-up-as-you-go-along blogger to being a full participatory journalist. Damn the fact that I can't sing; by the time they found that out I'd be deep within the fortress of the singing-loving-males club. I'd have a story. I looked ahead to this very blog post with relish--I'd have quite a story to tell. So I used my off day Tuesday preparing myself. I figured I'd get the phone number on my way to work Wednesday--yesterday--make the call, find out the real facts, and regale you all with what I'd discovered about such a strange sign. All day Tuesday I practiced various possible approaches to the phone call. Should I start with a one-man imitation of the Three Stooges' famous "hello, Hello, HELLO!"? Or maybe, more impressively, (singing) "ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A BASSO? or maybe a tenor? in a pinch, or maybe with a pinch, I could even do castrato!"?  Should I take a no nonsense approach and demand immediately, "Look, I don't have time to play around. When do we hit the road, and do I get my own dressing room?" Or do I assume the sign was indeed a cryptic message to some sleeper cell of spies and just say, "Aunt Emma is in the henhouse. Would you like to knit yourself a sweater?" and see if within twelve hours I don't find myself on Cyprus running guns and saving damsels? Good God I barely slept Tuesday night.

And so it was yesterday that I turned onto the street with uncontained excitement. Pen and pad by my side, I slowed the car as I approached the bend. I figured it would take me three seconds to stop, copy the phone number, and be on my way quickly--just in case the Feds had been alerted and were eyeballing any passerby taking a too keen interest in the sign. But. What the hell? Really, where the hell? The sign was gone. Previous to Monday, the last time I had been on the road was last Thursday (community "Home Days" or some such nonsense over the weekend had changed my route)--so the sign couldn't have been up for more than three or four days. Why was it gone? Surely in such a short time with such a crude form of advertising, the person(s) so desperately in need of singing-loving males couldn't have reached his or her or their quota. Had the neighbors revolted, upset that so many cars were doing driveway turn-arounds and lingering on the street, sussing the sign and finding pen and paper to copy the phone number? Had some especially sharp and no-doubt-soon-to-be-promoted cop been alerted by the cryptic message on the sign and had thus busted up whatever shenanigans had been going on inside? Or, God forbid, had that poor person just looking for a little male-singing companionship despaired after a couple of days of no phone calls and given it all up? Once again, the mind reeled.

And reeled and reeled. Or could it all, please no, been nothing? Not real, but imagined somehow in my obviously-now-fer-piece-around-the-bend mind? Was it a mirage? I've never seen a desert; I've never experienced a mirage. Is there a verb form? To mirage? Is this another heinous effect of global warming? That people in areas such as the Great Lakes will now be suffering desert-like mirages? Isn't a mirage basically a good thing--seeing an oasis in the desert where there isn't one? Don't you just mirage things you want, desire? To what has my mind eddied that I'm miraging a sign seeking singing-loving males? What's next, seeing a skywriting plane spelling out in white wisps, "Need an anvil? Call Carl at ... "? Just how comfortable is a straitjacket?

One Bucket Warming, Rep. Ryan: Passing The Hunh? Test

Any casual reader of this little nook on the internet knows that I would much rather be writing whimsical (at my best) gibberish (at my most) than getting all political, but residing (and suffering) as I do in the very county where supposedly more presidential election advertising dollars are being spent than any other place in America, I have the right to be a quasi pundit at least once a month for the next three. Besides, if the vice presidency of the United States doesn't call for a little whimsical gibberish, what does? As one whose relationship with the "mainstream media" (has "stream" ever been used more aptly?) is akin to a rubbernecker on the freeway, I say unequivocally that very little piques my gawking attention more than the quadrennial fuss over a presidential candidate's "choice of a running mate." I mean, just the thrill of hearing and reading the use of the verb "vet" so many times in two or three days is like Christmas in August. Woe to him or her not thoroughly vetted--poor Thomas Eagleton is waiting with your hair shirt.

And so it has been with glee over the past 48 hours that I have read and listened to all the early returns on Mitt Romney's "tabbing" of Paul Ryan to "join his team." Ah, sly Mitt, though, announcing his choice on a Saturday morning, which has forced the second-line wags to weigh in first, thus allowing the main-line nabobs (hence my two cents here, Monday, rather than then, Saturday) to digest the immediate reaction before thundering forward with the duly considered truth. Everybody's got an angle, everybody's got a theory, not only about why Ryan but about what Ryan means and will mean. Hogwash, I say. Or, more to the point, Sacrifice Bunt. I don't know who said it first, but it's true and it applies here: the sacrifice bunt is the only play in baseball that, when successful, both sides cheer. Which translates into, big deal, let's wait some more and see whose Big Deal it really is--can Romney drive in the run from second, or will Obama pitch his way out of a jam? Who knows? I've read conservatives love the pick and so do liberals, so so what?

So what because we're talking vice president here, maybe the most powerful so what on the planet, but still, at its most fundamental, so what. To me, and I bet most people not getting paid to ruminate, pontificate, and fulminate, the choice of a vice presidential running mate begins and ends with the Hunh? Test. Hunh? in all its wonderful various intonations and connotations (and no doubt, for some, Sarah Palin expanded the range of possible intonations of Hunh? to include breathier ones--Uh Hunh, you can be my Commander-in-Chief any day!). The first part of the two-part Hunh? Test is the immediate Who He/She? part. If that part takes more than a nano-second or two, prepare your concession speech, Mr. Nominee. The second part of the Hunh? Test is more visceral and sadder (and oxymoronic)--can I see this person as my President in the event of an unforeseen tragedy (cue dire music for the "a mere heartbeat away" line)? Now I know that's a loaded question in this time of severe partisanship where the thought of four more years of Obama or at least four years of Romney sends either one half of the country or the other running to the borders screaming Armageddon and the Death of the Constitution, but really, it can be tolerated. President Dole? President Bentsen? President Kemp? President Biden? I will survive. I'll get back to you on President Quayle, President Edwards, and President Palin. But President Ryan? Well, I've never been a Tom Clancy fan, but yes, President Ryan, I can breathe. My first, and thus far only, real reaction to Ryan is that his voice sounds a little too male-cheerleader nagging for me, but really, for the sake of the Union, I can get over that.

So, congratulations Mr. Ryan, you've passed the Hunh? Test. Now what? Well, as history shows, not much, besides a whirlwind, hoarse-inducing (what will that nagging voice sound like come November 6?) few months. On November 7 you'll either become (but for that errant heartbeat, or lack thereof) the most irrelevant person in the country next to Patrick Duffy's (yes, I checked, he's still alive) pr guy, or you'll be the instant frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2016. Because, really, all this nattering nonsense of the last few days and a few more to come notwithstanding, who really cares? Show me eight people, beyond immediate family and friends, who have actually cast (and let's take a moment to hail that great verb--like casting a lonely, worm-wriggling fishing line, in hopes that it might bring in some daily sustenance) their presidential vote based on the vice president, and I'll show you eight people who couldn't spell the term Electrical Collage, let alone define it. Name me one influential vice president in history (okay, fine conspiracy fans, the Johnsons, maybe) other than Darth Dick Cheney (or Duck as his hunting buddies call him). I'll be waiting for your answer until Sasha and Malia are answering to the call of "Grandma!" And please, spare me the usual talk this time every four years of a "shared Presidency." If your ego is big enough to think you should be President, big enough to actually run for President, and big enough to actually be nominated for President, sharing isn't in your lexicon. The semiotics of that picture above are enough to tell you all you need to know about the reality of the kind of sharing that would take place between Romney and Ryan--you wear the jacket, I'll wear the tie. Hey buddy, start practicing that grim look that hides the thought, Who died?, for all the foreign non-major funerals you'll be attending.

Well, there was one influential vice president in history, John Nance Garner IV. Who he? Hunh? FDR's vice president from 1933-1941. He was the one who said the vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." Which in turn made him the only vice president who said anything meaningful enough to be bowdlerized, the more familiar saying being "bucket of warm spit." I give Garner moxie points, but not poetic ones. I actually prefer the spit imagery. Less powerful, more inconsequential. Apt. I ain't going to do the math here, but it seems to me "vice presidential nominee" might be a near-exact anagram of "perceived expediency."

So, Mr. Ryan, have fun, and enjoy the ride for the next few months. Come November 7 you're either looking at four maybe eight years of frustrating boredom with mercury rising saliva all the while thinking nothing but 2020, or you'll be crowned The Next One, in which case, see Giuliani, Edwards, Palin, et al. Fun, hunh?

Where The Guys Are

So I get a frantic phone call the other night from some other guy named Dan. Unusually for him, he's pretty desperate. He tells me I'm just about his last hope. I argue that I'd feel out of place, don't have anything to wear, need a haircut, my second chin's sporting an eleven-o'clock shadow, I don't wear shoes that don't flaunt my unseemly toes this time of year, I seem to have misplaced my box of Q-Tips for like the last fortnight or so, I haven't tied a tie this decade--the usual--but he's adamant. Offers me a 40% off coupon at a dry cleaner's, says it's time I expand my horizons, there'll be $2 Guinness pints. I say why didn't you say so. He says don't be late. That's how I found myself on the other side of the tracks from the semi-weekly-or-is-it-monthly Oddfellows meeting, way on the other side, at a bar simply called The Bar, at the weekly meeting of the Regular Guys.

Let Me Be Frank About It checks my ID at the door and scoffs. "You should trade names with this guy," and introduces me to Sloppy Joe, who looks like I usually do when I'm not so gussied up. I find a seat at the bar and order a pint from some guy named Moe. Next to me are Yesiree Bob and No Way Jose, carrying on some kind of existential argument that will go on all night; Bob ends up buying all their rounds. By and by the entertainment strikes up--Joe Blow on a solo tuba. No Shit Sherlock drops by to tell me I'm sitting in a bar while You Don't No Jack holds court and whips everybody's ass over at the Trivia Contest. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the place hits up everyone else, asking if they'd like to be the fourth in their golf outing next Tuesday. I spy Tricky Dick pickpocketing Peter and then telling Paul, "Here's that twenty I owe you." Uncle Sam and John Bull are over in the corner arguing about tea while John Q. Public stands in the middle of the joint saying hello to everybody. As the bar clock hits the hour mark Steady Eddie does another shot. Even Steven is here, but nobody can find Waldo. Johnny Boy comes in carrying a surfboard, but Charlie shoos him away and he leaves. We hardly knew him. By this time I have to hit the head and am rather disconcerted that the guy next to me at the urinals seems to have wandering eyes. I close up shop quickly and pass Yesiree Bob on his way in. I hear Bob say, "Hey Tom, how's the squint tonight?" Back at the bar I find Kilroy's been there and all the guys are taking up a collection for Pete's sake. I throw in a couple bucks and get my ass outta there, tearing off my clip-on tie as soon I can.

The Tell-Tale Sign You're An Aged Rock Star

Each generation is presented with new, never experienced before challenges. Think of the cohort who invented the wheel, then had to cope with their teenagers taking the first ever joy rides. Or the first Catholics who suddenly had to get culinarily creative on a Friday night. Or Morse's peers who had to deal with the first prank telegraph messages (just what is the dot-dash configuration of "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"?). Obviously, the daunting, never-before-have-people-had-to-face-this challenge of the present generation is, what to do with aging rock stars. It's amazing to think of it, but many of the Founding Fathers (or Queens, and here's to you, Little Richard) of Rock'n'Roll are still alive--Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the previously mentioned Mr. Penniman. Hell, Elvis would be/is only 77. All hail them and the rest, but still, we as fans are faced with several thorny issues concerning how to deal with these former paragons of youth now that they ain't that young anymore.

For years now we've rather naturally taken in stride the gradual steps of an aging career: the balding, the hearing loss, the myriad "comeback" tours and albums (when you've got at least three of each on your resume, you know you're getting old, Mr. Rock Star), the Rock Hall induction, the Super Bowl gig, the tribute albums and concerts, the third or fourth box sets, the ironic singing of lines penned in youth--and all of that's just the last thirty years of Pete Townshend's life. Like Medicare, senior coffee at McDonald's, and EZ Lift chairs for the rest of us, an entire network of safety nets has been erected to ease the once callow, rebellious rocker into senescence. There's Unplugged, and Storytellers, the duets album, the album of standards, the greatest hits live album, the hook-up with the hip young producer album, the songwriters in the round concerts, the rock cruises, and the inevitable writing of the memoirs (David Ritz thanks you all). Say what you will about Elvis's tragic death, but the man put out a lot of schlock when he was alive, and, all the merchandising since his death notwithstanding, imagine the crap he would have made lo these last 35 years!

But, accustomed as I am--and I'm sure you are--to all of this by now, the question that has bugged me for some time is, what's the Rubicon, what's the jump the shark/couch moment, the definitive dividing line between being an aging rock star--where we can salute the career, bask in past glories, honor, if a bit sadly, the god while he or she is still alive --and being an aged rock star, where the whole thing is just downright depressing and should be kept away from the public? Well, like Steve Jobs must have felt years ago when he realized, "Phones, my God! Who knew? The future is phones!" yesterday I had a eureka moment concerning this aging/aged rock thing. I now know the exact moment when it is clear that our beloved aging rock star, the hero of our youth, has landed at the bottom of the slippery slope and is now not simply completely irrelevant but is dangerous to our collective joie de vire and should be put out to pasture for good--however you want to define that euphemistic idiomatic phrase.

But first let me qualify things. I love the Rolling Stones. It might be an oldies station playing it, but whenever I hear "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Brown Sugar" or "The Last Time" on the radio, they all still sound like the freshest, nastiest thing on any airwaves. If I were a pugilistic sort, I'm sure by now my oft-repeated, and oft-scoffed at, statement of incontrovertible fact that the Stones were/are/and ever shall be greater than the Beatles would have gotten me engaged in many a fisticuffs over the years. It's such a foundational truth, that I guess only the hoariest, most despicable cliche applies--you look up Rock'n'Roll in the dictionary, and you'll find a picture of the Stones.

Of course, duh, I'm speaking of the Rolling Stones only in the first 20 years of their by now 50 year existence (sic). Go ahead, name three great songs the Stones have made in the past thirty years; here's a hint, I'll be beyond aged by the time you can even muster an argument for the third one. Hell, they've made a grand total of six, 6! albums in the past thirty years. (By the way, the answer is one. One great song in the last thirty years: "The Worst," off Voodoo Lounge; a Keith song, ironically, from 1994!).

Now I won't bother going through yet again the "pathetic parodies of themselves," "only in it for the (huge amount of ) money" arguments. You've read them all before. And will undoubtedly read them again as they mount whatever becomes their 50 Year Celebration, i.e., hopefully, Swan Song, in the next few months. No, my beef at the moment is with Keef. The Human Riff. The alleged poster boy of all things Rock. Mick is Mick, always was, always will be. God save him. Ronnie's just a hired gun. Charlie is irreproachable; always was and always will be the coolest guy Rock has ever created. But Keith. My God. Years ago I thought it, and I still do, now more fervently than ever--every day he lives he gets less cool. For thirty years now he's been trading on the lovable bad guy schtick. Now he's Goofy Grandpa, professionally raconteuring rather than rocking and touring. We love you Keith, always have and always will, but shut up and go away already.

And what has brought me to such apostasy today? What has me so sacrilegiously blaspheming the mighty Keith Richards? The eureka moment I experienced yesterday. The discovery of the tell-tale sign that the aging rocker has become aged. The end of the living rock god's relevant life: At the bookstore where I work, we received two remaindered (duh) copies of Keith's autobiography, Life, IN LARGE PRINT! Trust me, I know the book retailing business. Keith's audience is not the LARGE PRINT audience. Unless he's ditched Patti and is shacking up with Debbie Macomber, Danielle Steel, or Barbara Taylor Bradford, Keith Richards has no place in the LARGE PRINT section of a bookstore. Good God, Keith, I know you've raised reckless nonchalance to an art form, but why in the name of Robert Johnson did you sign a publishing contract that allowed them to print your book in LARGE PRINT? If you do ever tour again, you better have a special ring of seats for AARP members, where earplugs, Depends, and seat cushions are included in the senior discount price. You never even made a standards album, Keith! How can you go LARGE PRINT on us?

R.I.P. KEITH. IT'S ALL OVER NOW.

How To Fabricate Bob: The Fake Spitoutyourgum Interview

I'm sure by now everybody's heard about Jonah Lehrer, the writer who got busted fabricating quotes from Bob Dylan for a book about creativity. The irony is of course multi-leveled. To fabricate quotes from the master fabricator about creativity, while somehow being blind to the fact that in this world a few score people seem to dedicate their lives to poring over every word Dylan utters, or allegedly utters, is flat out dumb. What really irks me about all of this is that the purported quotes, in addition to those poorly cut and pasted from famous Bob musings over the years, are so mundane and uncreative. Any quick perusal of a couple interviews with Bob reveals anything but the mundane. Bob's answers to the same old questions are full of red herrings, obfuscations, verbose shaggy dog meanderings, and not a little seemingly spontaneous poetry. If you're going to make up quotes from Bob, do the man justice and have some fun with the language. Instead, Lehrer has Bob saying this stupid nonsense when supposedly asked about creativity: "It's a hard thing to describe. It's just this sense that you got something to say." Huey Lewis, okay, but not Bob Dylan.

What follows, then, is a truly fabricated interview with Bob Dylan, with enough Bobesque bon mots for lazy writers to fill up several tomes. If Bob didn't say these things (and I can't swear that he didn't anymore than I can swear that he did), he should have, or, much more likely than the quote (sic) above, could have.

"Escargot," he answers when I ask, incredulously, "Bob? Is it really you?" We sit side by side in cars pulled to the side in that no-man's-land in the McDonalds parking lot where they tell you to wait while they process your complex drive-thru order. At first I hadn't thought much of the car in front of me in the line, a fire engine red Reliant with New Mexico plates, but now that I see that Bob Dylan is behind the wheel, I'm intrigued. "Nice car, Bob," I offer. Dylan, dressed in a white sleeveless shirt with either some barbeque or blood stains scattered down the front and a pair of bulky jeans, is on a short hiatus between legs of his Never Ending Tour. "I was in Topeka hunting down an old circus, when this car, this car, full of Mexicans pulled up and asked if I wanted to go for a ride." Four days later, it seems, Bob is driving the car, sans Mexicans, through a McDonalds drive-thru in South Euclid, Ohio. When I mumble a series of how's why's and what happened to the Mexicans, he retorts, "It's a hard thing to describe. Sometimes you just sense that a car has got something to say. So you just put it gear. The Mexicans bailed in Dayton. Hey, you know where I can find Michael Stanley's boyhood home?" For the next twenty minutes I sit shotgun in the red Reliant as Bob and I munch on our burgers--his arrive six minutes before mine--and talk.

Didn't they give you a napkin?

I told them to hold the napkin. Always do. Extra ketchup, hold the napkin.

What do you think about all this fuss over the guy who fabricated quotes from you?

I gave up thinking years ago. Along with earrings, Gatorade, and badminton. Thinking's for fools and businessmen and retired hookers. Are your fries cold too?

They haven't brought out my order yet.

Be patient. I learned a long time ago that fast food restaurant delivery systems are all mathematical. And of course, with all things mathematical, truth is the necessary end product. Trust in the mathematical. You won't lose any hair. Or sleep, because you won't need much sleep.

Is math spiritual for you?

Everything 'cept the media, politics, and all-star studded festivals is spiritual. That's not a Happy Meal, is it? I love them toys.

Bob, I gotta ask you. One of my favorite songs of yours is one no one ever asks about. 'Never Say Goodbye.' Where did that come from? How did you create such an amazing, compact tone poem?

I didn't create nothing of that one. Well, one line. I added the "my dreams are made of iron and steel," part. Originally it was 'cotton and silk,' which is understandable, coming from an angel and all.

Angel?

I was in Durango, making that movie. Or was it the other one? Anyway, some nights in Mexico, when it's no longer night but daylight all of a sudden, all you've got is what's left in the bottle, or the angel. That time I chose the angel. Gave me that song complete, 'cept for the iron and steel part. A minor angel, maybe, but at that time, any angel in any dusty town was a gift.

You know angels, personally?

A ton of them. Some of them are my best friends. Never can tell which are the Fallen ones or not. Not that it makes a whole lot of difference. Does it? Angels provide.

Give me an example of a song you wrote that wasn't provided by angels. One you actually worked on, created.

'Sally Sue Brown.'

You didn't write that one, Bob.

I didn't? Well, I should have. Great song. (He hesitates a minute and stares out the windshield.) It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry, I guess.

That wasn't an angel song? You wrote that one from scratch? I love that song.

What? Oh, the song? No, what? I was just stating the obvious. Armageddon and all. I'll give you a harmonica if you let me have half of that apple pie.

E flat?

Whatever. Hmm, apple pie.

We savor our separate halves of that apple pie while watching an old man put money in the newspaper box and then fail to get the thing open. "I could write a double album about that man and that newspaper box, if I wanted to. But I'd rather find a gas station selling gas for less than $3.75," Bob says, and I take that as my cue that my lunch with Bob is over. As I close the passenger side door of the Reliant and thank Bob for his time and company, he kind of winks and says, "I like the way you chew, man." The left he makes onto Mayfield Road in the middle of lunchtime traffic is sublime, and I'd like to think one of the many car horns that follow in its wake is Bob tootin' me goodbye.

The Future Of Crotchety

Call it secular grace. A moment when the cosmos rips itself a tad and permits one a glance beyond the time-space mirage into the future. I'm working the register the other night when a woman comes up with two boys, one about 10 the other about 8. She plunks the pile of books (heavy on Star Wars kids tomes) on the counter and immediately turns her back to peruse the tchotchkes in the queue line along with the older boy. The younger one leans his elbows on the counter and watches as I zap each book with the magic bar-code scanner gun/wand. One of those young boys infinitely curious about the rude mechanics of life. He doesn't say a word, simply watches a guy at work, with all the fascination such a thing conjures for a kid. I finish and wait patiently for the woman and the older boy to pluck one last impulse item. The younger kid just stares at me, no longer full of wonder at my actions. Ten fifteen maybe twenty seconds pass before the little kid has enough. In a wizened tone of voice heavy with years of frustrated waiting no way the kid could have experienced yet, he proclaims, "The guy doesn't have all night, grandma."

Far beyond the somersaults my mind does at being called "the guy," and light years beyond the happy face I put on when grandma turns around, sans tchotchkes, and completes the transaction, my mind dances with delight at meeting a kindred soul--another crotchety middle-aged man, embodied in the soul of this cute little kid. Ah, rest easy, I tell myself. Life as you know it will go on just fine long after you're gone. By the time this kid is my age I'll be six feet under but resting comfortably, definitely not spinning, because I now know my spirit of annoyed frustration at the sundry minuscule nuisances of life will live on. Out of fear at not wanting to creep the kid out and thrust him into full-blown old man curmudgeon on the spot, I restrain my natural instincts to give him a fist bump, wink, and say, with full empathy, "Brother."

But God that kid's put upon declaration to his grandma that I don't have time for all this felt like a warm slap on the back from my guardian angel. I know I know I know.