Category Archives: Uncategorized

January 15, 2011 · 11:10 pm

Language of the 10 Year Old

Today was a good “spend time with my kid” day.  This morning my son J and I got up early and spent the morning helping some nice folks at the local historical museum move some boxes and tables and displays they had set up for the Christmas holiday.  I am a Scout leader and we and another family had volunteered to help out for about an hour.  J and I had breakfast beforehand at the local eatery and then went and did our work.  Later in the day we started working on building our pinewood derby cars, another scout activity, for the race that will be held next weekend.  Finally, this evening  J had a flag football game which my wife and I went and watched (and which they won).  So now I sit here, at the keyboard, a glass of wine by my side, feeling like I did, at least in some part, my fatherly duties today and I’m ready to blog a little.

In the truck on the way home tonight, after commending my son for playing a great game, throwing in a little constructive criticism, and talking about football, I mentioned to him that I would need to use the computer tonight when we got home.  He said, “that’s ok Dad, I can watch the two shows that M (sister) recorded for me on the DVR today.  “What are those”, I asked.  He said some word that I didn’t understand, and I just chalked it up to him speaking “language of the 10-year-old” which is some kind of ancient mysterious mythological Japanese influenced futuristic video game language.  I haven’t learned to speak it but there is a lot of talk about Bakugan’s and Pokemon’s and G-Power and battles and HP and dragonoids and other stuff that I haven’t quite figured out how to pronounce or spell.  He speaks it a lot and often because I don’t have any remote clue as to what he is talking about, I stare at him like some kind of simpleton and repeat the following  phrases over and over;  “uh-huh, okay, yeah, uh-huh, that’s really cool.”  Regardless, we drove home, grabbed a bite to eat, I fired up the laptop, he fired up the TV.

Shortly after getting settled I glanced up at the TV and saw these Lego ninja guys running around on the TV screen.  You know those little Lego guys with the yellow heads that are shaped like the propane tanks that are hooked to your gas grill, but whose popped-on hair rivals the best styled guys at a hollywood awards show.  Those little guys whose hands are just a “C” shaped curve so they can carry their little Lego tools. Those guys with their big square legs.  Those guys that hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when you step on them!  There they were, little ninja versions, alive on the screen, moving around with elbows and knees and their mouths moving and their eyes blinking.  I’m gonna tell you, right here, right now, it was a little creepy! It was like some kind of nightmare you might have on a Christmas night, after drinking too much wine and rum-soaked egg-nog and after helping your son build the five or six, 800 piece Lego kits that Santa Claus brought down the chimney.  It was like a 2011 version of the classic Nutcracker Suite, with Lego characters coming to life and battling their enemies with knives and swords rather than the little German girl dreaming of her Nutcracker Prince coming to life and winning that epic battle against the Seven-Headed Mouse King.  Okay, yeah, you’re right, that’s tons more creepy and demented……..

In any case, as I looked over I asked, “Hey, are those Lego guys?”  “Yeah, Dad” he said, why else would it be called Lego Ninjago you dumbass?”  Ah ha!  There was that word that I heard in the truck on the way home, that “language of the 10-year-old” word that I hadn’t understood. Of course he didn’t really say “dumbass” although the intentions were clearly there.  I wanted to say “sorry I don’t speak ‘language of the 10-year-old’ and I didn’t really understand you in the truck, but I didn’t want to make you repeat it like 10-12 times cause I was pretty sure I still wouldn’t understand it and then we would have had one of those conversations where I say, ‘uh-huh, okay, yeah, uh-huh, that’s really cool’.”  But I pretended that it all made perfect sense to me and that I wasn’t creeped out by the little Lego Ninja characters and that I wouldn’t have nightmares about them climbing up the stairs tonight and tying me up like the Lilliputians restraining their giant Gulliver.

When the show ended, J looked over at me and asked, “Hey Dad, you know those Ninjago Spinners that I told you about that if you lose, the guy loses his weapon?”  “OK Steve”, I thought, “don’t panic, search the memory archives, where it is, where’s that conversation, I know it’s in there somewhere, filed along with all the other eight million things you’re trying to remember, filed under “N” for Ninjago Spinners, c’mon buddy, you can do it, it’s  right there, it’s right there….. ”  I visualized my little green “loading” bar, just stuck there, not moving, no longer processing….  “Oh shit, the connection is down….. no it’s not there, it’s lost, its mis-filed, it’s been fed through the early onset memory loss shredder!!!!”  “Uh, yeah, okay buddy, yeah I know, what about that?” I anxiously replied.  “Well” he said, “if you ever buy that for me, get me the red one.”  “Okay buddy, cool” I said, and J walked away satisfied with my response.  Phew!  That was a close call, I was almost discovered as being ignorant and uneducated in “language of the 10 year old”.  That must have been one of those conversations that ended in “uh-huh, okay, yeah, uh-huh, that’s really cool.” 

A few minutes later I turned back to the TV and an episode of Sponge Bob was on.  “Much better”, I thought, “I love Sponge Bob, he speaks English, he makes me laugh and he doesn’t give me nightmares!”

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January 14, 2011 · 11:56 am

This Song’s For You

 I want to write a song.  I have wanted to write a song for years.  I tried writing a song about my Mom when she passed away 8 years ago but I couldn’t find the words.  I want to write a love song for my wife, a song that we can sing together and share for the rest of our lives.  I’d like to write a song about my son, about what a great kid he is and how we are best friends even before being father and son.  Or better yet, I want to write a song for my daughter, a Daddy’s girl song.  I want her to finish growing up and have her own song, written only about her, that she can tell her friends her Dad used to sing to her, that she can sing to herself when she is feeling down, that I can sing to her at her wedding.  She is 13 now and I am running out of time.

I don’t know why songwriting is so difficult.  I can sit here at my keyboard and knock out blog post after blog post about things happening in my life, about humor, about emotions, about happiness and sadness.  I can write about these important people in my life, word after word, line after line, paragraph after paragraph.  I can write about work and play and life and death.  The words emerge easily once I start tapping the keyboard.  Driving home from work a blog post idea will pop into my head and I’ll have it “written” before I even park and get out of the car.  It seems to come naturally and each day I strive to find something interesting to write about, a post better than the day before, a topic that is meaningful to my readers and to my family and especially to myself.

But I haven’t been able to write a song.  I’ve tried… I’ve sat with my guitar and struggled to come up with some basic chord progression and a melody that has some appeal.  I’ve tried to get the lyrics to flow through my head, just like the blog posts do now.  So far it hasn’t clicked.  The inspiration is there but the ability to put it “down on paper” continually eludes me.  Maybe it’s because song lyrics tend to have to be rhythmic and mysterious and vague.  Maybe it’s because I am trying to write the lyrics and the melody at the same time.  Maybe I’m just trying too hard to write that perfect song, to not fail… because the stakes are so high.  It’s like, this is my only shot, this is the song that my daughter will take with her into adulthood, or this is the song that my wife and I will sing to each other as we sit in rocking chairs with gray hair and wrinkled skin and reading glasses perched on our noses.  Damn, that is a lot of pressure!  It has to be right, it’s has to be special, it has to be flawless.

I found this quote from Jackson Browne, my absolute, super-fragilistic, all-time, favorite, hero musician and singer-songwriter.

“Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that’s instructive to yourself – some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn’t have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that’s what’s happening in the song.”

I think what I hear him saying is… don’t try too hard, don’t think too hard about what you are writing, just let the words develop into something magical.  Find the inspiration from the events in your life, the relationships, the experiences, both good and bad, then set them aside and let the lyrics appear on the page.  Maybe it becomes easier with each song that one writes, just as these blog posts have seemingly become easier to write with each passing day.   Maybe I just need to set aside some time, be alone, and try to make it happen. 

You know I’m not one for New Years Resolutions.  Perhaps finally writing a song should be my New Years resolution for 2011.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be from the heart.

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January 13, 2011 · 12:19 pm

Getting Fu…Fu…Freshly Pressed!

WARNING… R RATED… JUST SAYIN’

I want to be Freshly Pressed!  I want to have my blog on the FRONT PAGE of WordPress.com, like some ROCK STAR on the Marquis at the Detroit Fox Theatre, lit up with neon and bright twinkling lights.  I want to get thousands of hits and comments and have screaming fans like the adolescent girls, pulling out their hair at a late-sixties Beatles concert… or a 2011 Jonas Brothers concert.  I want to be listed there, on the front page, along with the other ten or so FRESHLY PRESSED superstars getting repeatedly clicked, each click like the camera flashes at a celebrity press event!  That’s what I want…

A few weeks ago, when my blog was just starting to put its roots down, I e-mailed the editors at WordPress.com, introducing myself and inquiring about getting FRESHLY PRESSED.  I received a very nice and professional response from WordPress.com that included this line:

“Please note that “bad stuff” also includes offensive language, so unfortunately that would rule out several of your blog posts right off the bat.”

Wow, that fucking sucks is unfortunate!  Those three or four fine folks that have been actively reading my blog know that I occasionally emphasize my writing with some not-so-proper language.  I don’t swear nearly as much as Sara Swears a Lot but I do occasionally throw in a fuck or a shit improper word… you know just to add some exclamation for my loyal readers.  But, truth be told, I don’t really have a mouth like a trucker or a street whore call-girl or even a rum-soaked, shit-faced inebriated pirate.  I’m mostly a pretty clean-cut, respectable guy!  So I figured I’d at least introduce myself to the editors at WordPress.com.  Yeah, I know what your thinking, what are the chances of a fresh virgin rookie writer like myself getting noticed when I only had like four crappy-ass beginner articles on my site.  But I thought, well maybe it would be like that time when I was walking stupid-drunk responsibly through a casino in Vegas, pulled a quarter out of my pocket, jammed it in a slot machine like I was buying some peep-show-sex video at a truck stop porno shop with my fingers crossed and… YEAH BABY, HOT FUCKING DAMN gee whiz… hit like a hundred-dollar jackpot!   That day kicked some serious ass was really special.  Plus, in my e-mail I included a link to my article about finding the idyllic life, which at the time I thought was my best fucking, you’re gonna make a sweet-ass living as a writer most profound article.  Now, since I’ve been busier writing than a one-legged, in-bred redneck in an ass-kicking contest a professional author, I’m starting to think maybe my article about nasty goat shit being a farmer is my best article!  But regardless, a week or so later I received that very pleasant and professional response from WordPress.com.  I’ll be honest, I was totally like fall off the back of my fucking truck surprised astonished to hear back from someone.  No shit Seriously, I mean these poor mother-fuckers loyal WordPress.com employees probably get bombarded every day by douchebags promising writers like me, thinking they’re the next great J.D. Salinger, when their writing probably really sucks as bad as a nasty bitch stripper in a two-bit, run-down titty-bar isn’t that great   But it was a nice response and she gave me several links to articles on how to improve my blog’s readership.  They were some really helpful shit great articles and I’ve started to follow most of the points that were referenced and my readership is growing faster than a flock full of screwing rabbits bumping uglies in their rabbit hole ever.

So, now I don’t know what the fuck to do how to proceed.  If I keep using offensive language I may never live my dream of getting FRESHLY PRESSED.  And that would seriously suck some major ass be so very disappointing.

Editors, can I start over?

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January 12, 2011 · 7:22 pm

“You’re so handsome, I hope you never die!”

OK, I admit it.  I’m a guy that spends too much time in front of the mirror.  There, I said it.  Well, excuse me for being a little vain and wanting to look good and dress well and stay in shape and feel like I’m doing my part for the universal well-being of man-hood.  Is that so wrong?  I also use hair products , okay?  There, I said that too, at least I’m not blow-drying!  Sheesh!  And yeah, I like my clothes to fit, I even iron them sometimes.  Jeez, what’s the big deal with that?  What’s that?  No… no, I definitely don’t like wearing old man jeans that make me look like I have a dump in my pants and t-shirts that are three sizes too big for me.  Sorry, that’s just not my style, you know, t-shirt sleeves really shouldn’t cover your elbows.  Yeah, sure, I know there are a lot of guys that just don’t give a shit about their appearance.  Hey, more power too ‘em, I say!  I guess they save an extra 15-20 minutes of mirror time in the morning that they can cash in for ESPN time.  But I do, to each his own, okay?  Sure, maybe you’re right, maybe I do need to go to a “Guys That Spend Too Much Time in the Mirror Anonymous” meeting.  What?  GQ?  Yeah, okay, you found me out, I admit that too, I have a subscription… and yeah, sure, I really look forward to it coming in the mail, yep, just like a teenage girl getting her Seventeen Magazine…

Let me tell you a story about Don McCook.

I never knew Don McCook, my grandfather on my mother’s side (in fact, I never knew either of my grandfathers as both passed away before I was born) but I’ve heard the legendary family stories.  Don was a tough, handsome, well-dressed, well-built, fair-skinned mix of Irish and Scottish blood with wiry, reddish-brown hair.  There are stories of him being a drinker and a bar-brawler.  But he was also a teacher, a coach, a poetry writer, a singer, a philosopher and an artist.  In the 1950’s he and my grandmother, Helen McCook, taught at the Solebury School near New Hope, Pennsylvania where my mother and her siblings and my father went to school.  My grandmother was an extremely talented artist who created beautiful oil and watercolor paintings and handcrafted porcelain dolls that she sculpted from clay, fired in a kiln, hand-painted and hand-stitched.  She was the art teacher at Solebury School.  Don McCook taught core subjects like history and English.  He was also the athletic director and the football coach.

Don was a tough coach, a punch ‘em in the mouth kind of coach.  Of course, while he and his family were not wealthy folks, surviving on teacher salaries and living in housing at the school, the kids he was coaching were rich, private school kids, many coming from very wealthy families, but most likely not bound for any careers in professional sports.  But he didn’t care, these kids were going to compete, and compete against whatever level of team they could get to come put an ass-whooping on them.  He “recruited” my father, a New Jersey kid and a reasonably good athlete, from Lambertville, the small blue-collar town across the river, to come to the school and play quarterback for the football team.  They occasionally challenged teams from local public schools that were bigger and stronger and faster and far more talented.  As the story goes, during one tough game when his players were tired and beaten up and demoralized, Don McCook, the coach, uttered the now famous quote, “look down between your legs and see if you’re a man!”  I suspect they still lost that game decisively, but that quote now lives in infamy in my family, like a Paul Bunyon-esqe tall tale, and is frequently repeated when I am together with my brothers or cousins and aunts and uncles from that side of the family and a “man-up” situation presents itself.

In the summers, Don and Helen ran a camp in Maine, a typical camp with lazy days spent in the sun, swimming and canoeing and playing sports and fishing and doing arts and crafts and all the other usual summer camp activities.  They drove an old Willy’s-style army jeep and would pack their stuff in, throw the three kids in the back and drive up to Maine and live at the camp for the summer.  Apparently this jeep did not have working brakes and he would coast it to a stop when necessary.  I still find that hard to believe but this was reiterated to me, once again, this past summer by my uncle (Don’s middle child) so I guess I’ll let the legend live on.  But Don lived in the days before sunscreen and concerns about melanoma. Much too early in life, the sun caught up to him.  My grandfather passed away in 1961 at the age of 44 from skin cancer.

As I said earlier, I never knew Don McCook.  I was born in 1967 and he had died six years before that.  I only know him now from the stories passed down from his children, but I have a deep respect and admiration for this guy who was a man’s man, handsome and rugged and stylish and confident.  A guy who lived life to the fullest, who enjoyed athletics and literature and the arts and music and the outdoors.  A guy who was proud to be who he was and who did his part for the universal well-being of man-hood!

Would Don McCook approve of me putting gel in my hair?  Who knows… back then, they probably used motor oil or something.  Will I ever be as tough as him?  No chance in hell!  I’d run from a bar-brawl like a screaming little girl!  Would I drive around in a brakeless jeep with no protection from the elements.  Nope, I’m a big fan of ABS brakes… and roofs.  What would he think about me spending “too much time in front of the mirror….?”

Ummm… well, about that… there is another storied quote that Don McCook was known to utter.  He would stand in front of the mirror and say, “Don McCook, you’re so handsome, I hope you never die.”  I love that, it’s fucking epic!   At least I have someone to blame my vanity on!

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