HOLIDAY EXHALE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-30-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     As much as I love Christmas (it's my birthday after all), there's a little part of me that's thankful that it's all over. "There's a lot of planning and stress mixed up in one single day," that part of me says, so it must be my mouth. For one thing, exchanging gifts is a two-part process with me. I exchange them once with my recipients, and then they exchange them once more with the store I bought them from so that they can get what they really want, and in their own size, not the insulting size I thought they were. In my defense, something as simple as buying a dress is fraught with confusion and despair, because whoever thought up dress sizing is an idiot. Size zero? An entire person who is not a paramecium with literally NO size? That defies physics. Where would you sew the buttons? I'm revamping the system: Reese Witherspoon would be a size 13 because she's about the size of an average 13-year old. If you're a size 50, that means you're a little bigger here, and a little smaller there than you used to be, and now we all know what size everybody is. No more "plus sizes." Mathematically, how do I know how much you started with, and how much you added to it? From now on, "bootylicious" describes it much better. Sizing solved, you're welcome.

     I'm not so great at decorating for the occasion either. The guy down the street from us has a teeny-tiny yard and a zillion blow-up characters crammed onto it. If I had to blow up that many PSIs worth of crap I'd be in an oxygen tent at the hospital right now. He's got a Santa, some reindeer, a Grinch, a snowman and I think there's some stuff he forgot to take down from Halloween. I have a fantasy that a huge Nor'easter blows in from the Sou'west on Christmas Eve and the Santa and the reindeer go airborne, with all that hot air inside them. They travel for a few hundred miles and end up above a house in the suburbs of Cleveland, and inside the house a husband and wife are trying to break it to their son that Santa Claus is just a story that parents make up to prepare their kids for the many disappointments of life. They're enjoying the reality check a little too much, because the kid is always rubbing it in their faces that they don't understand the first thing about his math homework. But he has the last laugh when he wanders over to the window and points up at the sky, and there's Santa and the reindeer floating along, as plain as the red-nose on my face. Okay this story went on for too long but it has a happy ending when the kid ends up in the military. All because of these lawns full of blow-up dolls. If I ordered a blow-up doll and I couldn't make it explode, I'd send it back.

     When I was a kid we used to set up our tree on Christmas Eve, put the lights on and decorate it. The trick was not to be too heavy-handed with the tinsel. Just a couple strands on each bough should do it. Unfortunately, we always bought the tree from a sale at our church about a month before Christmas, and by the time Jesus was ready to be born there wasn't a needle left on the tree, just the ornaments and tinsel. I asked my Mom if there was something we could put in the water to make the tree last longer, and she told me to bring her six aspirins. Turns out the aspirins were for her and had nothing to do with the tree; she had six children.

     I'm so glad my Mom never made me go sit on a Santa's lap at the mall. Even as a kid I would have found the whole experience demeaning for both of us. What kind of conversation would I have had with him? We have nothing in common, he's just trying to ply me for information so he can tell my parents what gifts I want, but I may have already mentioned it to them in passing two or seven times. They're over there snapping pictures that they can embarrass me with in the future, goading me to do something I'll regret or say something about his breath. I'm trying my best to make small talk about free agents the Yankees might pursue but my mind is already on line at the pizza place in the food court.

     There's also so much pressure to look good. Everything that occurs between parents and children during the holidays is based on capturing a timeless photo of the event. Remember when parents used to take their kids to the portrait studio for photos? Here, sit on the sled in front of the tree and play with the presents, but you're not allowed to open them. It's the perfect way to get wallet sized shots of your kid with a look of abject sorrow on his face. My Dad would take home movies of us Christmas morning, coming down the stairs to open our presents. After staying up all night too amped up to sleep, he'd hit us with about 3 billion lumens of photography lighting, and there I am, immortalized at age six looking like Peter Lorre in "Hotel Berlin."

     Okay, I will confess to being a bit of a Christmas curmudgeon, but the only so I can plead down to a lesser charge. Whenever a Christmas carol plays during a car commercial I run for the remote control mute button, because I don't want to forever associate my love of Subarus with my hatred of "Carol of the Bells." But I still love hearing a choir sing something majestic, and I still love the smell of a real Christmas tree, and I still love getting together with friends and family when we're able to again, and I still love getting a year older. Maybe I should have ended with the family and friends. Happy holidays to everyone, and please stay safe!

A MERRY COVID CHRISTMAS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-23-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     We were longing for just a small taste of a regular Christmas season, so we sat ourselves in the car for a few minutes while we remembered how to work it, forced ourselves out into the cruel world, and headed for Manhattan just like in normal times. And darned if it didn't feel pretty good. To the casual observer (and this is why you should dress for the holidays), it seems as though we're in a bad scene in a bad movie right now, and Owen Wilson is there, and Vince Vaughn is in it and Steven Seagal is directing, and we're already over budget and trying to do re-writes on the fly and Rotten Tomatoes is going to make a salad of it. I wish we were at least getting paid to be in this bomb, but it's the only bomb we have.

     In normal times we'd have tickets to "A Prairie Home Companion," or a holiday-themed show in a tiny theater in the Village, something campy and quirky. But that'll have to wait until next year. So we wandered over to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, and that was a much different experience from previous years. Instead of being packed onto 49th Street wishing you were on the Number 7 train during rush hour because it was less crowded and a more pleasant experience, you could spread out and do a few calisthenics if you so desired. People were keeping their distance from one another, and I had so much space I was thinking of putting in a bocce court. It was almost civilized.

     We took a few selfies of my thumb with the tree in the background. This year's tree is a 75-foot tall Norway spruce from Oneonta. When they unfurled it they found a small owl hiding in the boughs. They named him Rockefeller, so he might one day be heir to a fortune. He had to travel 170 miles to get here, but at least he didn't have to come all the way from Norway like the tree did. The wildlife center nursed him back to health and released him onto Broadway, which had less people than the desolate forest he grew up in. We sometimes see a barred owl that hangs around in a tree in our back yard looking around for prey that he can swoop down and grab. He had his eye on my neighbor Paul, who was feeding branches into his wood chipper. It's possible that he could have made off with Paul, but he never let go of the wood chipper.

     We had reservations at Tony's on 43rd Street, our favorite Italian eatery. Usually you can look inside a restaurant and tell if it's any good by how many patrons are there. Now, it's quite the opposite, and for once, being scared of every living human seemed vaguely heroic. But the tables were properly distanced, and I was able to slide pieces of veal saltimbocca underneath my mask when no one was around. It was somebody's birthday, and they brought out a giant dessert with sparklers in it, blazing away. In normal times it would have brushed past me and almost lit my hair on fire, but neither the sparklers nor my hair had the heart for it these days.

     Ordinarily we'd head over to 9th Avenue and find a place to knock down a couple cocktails, but not this year. Bars are a breeding ground for sloppy behavior and people tend to let down their guard. Most dumb ideas that people regret were born in bars after a few drinks, and often the dumbest idea was that last drink. Peoples inhibitions go haywire. "Hey honey, you got a beautiful bridge of your nose, just let me see what you got under that mask. Just let me see one nostril and I'll guess the other." And who needs a taproom full of drunk covid molecules running amok? A covid molecule that you ordinarily wouldn't give the time of day can look SO CUTE after a Long Island iced tea.

     On the drive back home we saw so many deer on the side of the parkway that it seemed like they were the only ones having any fun. I asked my wife, don't deer hibernate? Shouldn't they be building a burrow underground or something? Not out carousing around in a giant stag party. I guess I'm a little envious- for once humans are the ones who seem like they don't have it together at all.

     Since our little night out, indoor dining has gone on an unfortunate hiatus. If you blame Cuomo, you're still not getting it. Public enemy number one is the relentless, invisible invader. A close second are large swaths of the entitled, the ill-informed, the mask-less. The reason experts exist is to know more than you and I, and now would be a great time to listen to them. Stay safe and let's all get to the other side together.

     We can't do all the things we usually do right now, but we had a really nice evening. We adjusted, we adapted, we accepted. In normal times we'll remember when there was a "new normal." I can't wait until that's the "old normal."
 

WE WENT DARK

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-17-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     In my other, other life, I've been a rock & roll musician for as far back as I can remember. Actually a lot further back than that, because rock & roll musicians can rarely remember back very far. It's been one of the great passions of my life, and as in other forms of art, there is no better way to process the trials and tribulations of life than to create something that says what normal words, such as "pandemics REALLY suck," cannot say. So I wrote a song about it. It's called "We Went Dark (love in the age of the coronavirus)," and I recorded it in my basement on my cheap 8-track digital recorder. I play all of the instruments on the recording, not because I'm such a great musician, but because when you tell your musician friends that you wrote a song about a highly contagious incurable disease and you'd like them to come over to your house and play on it, you might as well write a song about a dialtone.

     Not to be content with that (it's been a long, long quarantine), I decided to make a video to go with it. If you have four minutes to spare you can give it a listen at the YouTube link below, if you can fit it in between cat videos. I probably should have put some cats into the video, now that I think of it, penguins would have been even better. Or put the word "challenge" in the title and thought of something poisonous for people to swallow during the song. That would have increased my hits and made my song a hit. But it's just me, my camcorder and a cheap editing program, and if you want to swallow anything poisonous, that's hopefully not my fault.

     To mix things up a bit I had my two female bandmates sing in the chorus. I've never been in a band with two women before this one and it's a little different than playing with the guys. With the guys, you could drop a ten-foot Steinway grand piano out of a two-storey window straight onto the lead guitarist's head, and once the dust had settled the drummer, completely stunned, would say, "I didn't know we had a piano player." By comparison, when I'm in a band with two girls, I'm the odd man out, because I'm a man, and because I'm a little odd. I'll give you an illustration to show you what it's like: Pretend I just killed someone, like say, the guy who wrote the "Kars for Kids" jingle, and I refused to confess (although in real life I'd be kind of proud of that). The cops say we want you two girls to wear a wire, and  get him to admit it, do you have any questions? And one or the other would ask, "What color is the wire? Because I think I know what I'm going to wear with it."

     I bought a green screen and boned up on my special effects for the video. I'm pretty sure a nine-year old on Tik Tok could have done the same thing in about 15 minutes, but it took me three months. Part of the reason it took me so long was because of the facial hair. I play each instrument wearing different hair, and I remember sitting outside on the deck with my wife after more than two but less than six margaritas, thinking of different types of facial hair every band member could wear. The conversation was over once I realized how inane it was, and that fact that I ran out of margarita mix at the same time was purely a coincidence.

     However, I soon found out that I hate wearing a beard, and I can't believe that there are baseball players and sculptors and psychoanalysts and such that always have one. In fact, during the pandemic, just about everyone I know grew one, even the women. But I couldn't wait to get rid of it. After I took a shower it simply refused to dry, and food would end up in it, not even necessarily my food, and what if I got it caught in a metal lathe or broke off in an ice storm? A life with a wet, frozen beard full of food chewed up by a metal lathe was not for me, so I had some other variations on the theme, but nothing too extravagant. It's not like I could put my hair in a bun or anything, even if I had a bun that could hold all of it, and I limited myself to hairstyles that could be achieved in prison.

     The outtakes at the end of the video prove how valuable it is to have a qualified stunt man to do the things that you should have the common sense not to do. For instance, when I was walking my dog in the woods in back of my house I noticed this Tarzan vine, and I thought, wow, I should videotape myself swinging from this vine, and who knows, maybe it will give health insurance claims adjusters something to think about in their spare time. I don't know how people usually find out that you shouldn't swing from a Tarzan vine after you've had two knee surgeries, but I found out the easy way. Another shot I wanted to get was of me spinning around on a chair with the camera trained on me, so that it would look like the world was spinning around behind me. All of a sudden I'm Stanley Kubrick, only not as easy to work with. So I wedged a swivel chair between two logs in the woods and pointed the camera at my face. It's the type of thing that if your mother caught you doing, she'd say, "Don't do that, you'll break your neck." And if you kept on doing it SHE would break your neck to speed up the process. Long story short, I almost broke my neck.

     In closing, let me just say that as artists, we all suffer for our art. And during a pandemic, we suffer in solitude. So I can't wait until this whole thing is over and I can share my suffering with YOU.

THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-10-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I hope everyone had a small and safe Thanksgiving- good things come in small packages these days. Turkey size is proportionate to gathering size, and even Governor Cuomo had to downscale his dinner after he took some flak about it. He was planning to invite his Mom, who is 89-years old, until people found out and called him a hypocrite for telling everyone else to scale down. I was actually planning to do the same thing as Cuomo, but his Mom wouldn't answer my calls. Everyone's looking for small turkeys this time around, but they're harder to find since they can hide more easily. Ours was sized somewhere between a cedar waxwing and a pileated woodpecker, but it was of impeccable moral character. My sister Diane said she got a 26-pound turkey for $26 dollars, which was quite a bargain. If you got the same deal in British money it would be pound for pound the best deal ever. I know there's a joke there somewhere but I was obviously unable to find it. Anyway, my sister posted a picture of her turkey and I swear it looks like it could bench press about one-fifty straight out of the oven. It had an actual 6-pack.

     I've heard people say that they spatchcocked their turkey, something that it must have taken a lot of guts to admit. To spatchcock a turkey you simply cut it down its back with a pair of scissors, remove its backbone, and, listen, I'm just not cut out for this sort of thing because I'm afraid giblets will be involved, and the thought of it is just offal so you'll have to figure it out yourself. We cook a regular turkey in the oven, just as the Pilgrims would have done it, if they had a regular turkey or an oven. You probably heard about the original Thanksgiving, back at Plymouth Rock. If I was there it would have only been because I mistook it for a rock festival. "Hey," I ask one of the elders (hard to find an elder who is older than me), "one question: why do y'all wear your belt buckles on your hats? The hat stays on fine, but don't your pants fall down?"

     Actually there is quite a rivalry going on between the folks in Plymouth and the Pilgrims down in Virginia, who also lay claim to a Thanksgiving celebration two years before the 1621 affair written about by colonists in Massachusetts. Either way, the English were in charge of the meal, and they are rarely mentioned for their exciting cuisine. If the Italians had popped over on the Mayflower I could be eating Margherita pizza while I watch the football game on TV instead. The traditional accounts tell of the settlers struggling through the long winter, and the Wampanoag native people helping by providing them with turkey seeds, or whatever, but the real story is of a much more complicated and wary alliance between two camps that needed each other to survive.

     There is also a rumor that Benjamin Franklin once proposed the turkey as the national bird, which is false, even though he did once expound on the virtues of the bird as opposed to the bald eagle in a letter to his daughter. Franklin WAS consulted about his thoughts on a national symbol, and his suggestion was a depiction of “Moses standing on the shore, and extending his hand over the sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm pharaoh who is sitting in an open chariot.” Those who were still awake by the end of the sentence immediately bonked themselves on the head with a ball peen hammer to try to induce a coma. I don't think the bald eagle is a bad choice, but the thing is bald, for heaven's sake. Certainly it's less risky to say out loud than "titmouse" or "peacock," and less time consuming than "undulated tinamou," so I guess it's fine. I think the founding fathers wanted a bird that looked like it wasn't going to take any crap, one that looked like it could swoop down and snatch your toupee if you said something unflattering about certain members of Congress, even though it was common knowledge.

     I saw an article in the Times that theorized that the reason Trump wanted to stay in office this badly even though he was so ill-suited for the job was that he loved to do things like pardon turkeys for Thanksgiving. Well in Trump's defense, who WOULDN'T want to do that? The president gets to choose one of them to live while sentencing the other to death, like in an episode of "Wiseguy." I would whisper to the chosen one, "I'm going to let you live for now, but take a good look at what happens to your little friend, and if you breathe one word about this to anybody, it'll be YOU next time. Do we understand each other?" And the turkey says, "We're live on four networks and everyone in America heard you." "In that case things aren't looking so good for you."

     By this time we've finished our tasty dinner, had our walk around the neighborhood and are sitting down to dessert, arguing about whether or not the Felix the Cat balloon once collapsed and killed someone during the parade. I don't know if there is alien life on other planets or not, but in my fantasy they come over to Earth (they don't call it that) and land on 6th Avenue right in the middle of the Thanksgiving parade (they do call it that). When they get on the radio they report back the findings to the home planet: "You can't believe the size of the cats they have here, if one sits on your lap it'll kill you." Happy holidays to you, your family and your cat.

SOCIAL STUDIES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-03-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     If I was a sociologist I'd be saying, "Wow- in these unprecedented times lie a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study a myriad of human behaviors, as the world learns how to survive and thrive while apart from one another. What can we learn from this?" I'd also be saying, "If I had stayed in school another four years, I could have become a psychologist and made $70,000 dollars more a year." One of the few good things about surviving a coronavirus pandemic is that the next time it happens, I won't have to hear the phrase, "In these unprecedented times...." Now they're precedented, and I hope we do learn a few things from them.

     For instance, what are the effects of isolation on the elderly? And before you start talking behind their back I'd like to point out that I'm more or less the elderly, too. I read in an article that grandparents are lying to their children that they've been quarantining so that they can visit their grandchildren. Then they're posting facebook selfies at the bar living it up with no mask. What good is facebook with no face? And what else have our parents been lying to us about? It wouldn't surprise me to find out that vegetables aren't that great for you after all.

     Some couples are holed up 24/7 as they work from home and have no social life anymore. Sociologists are wondering, will this result in a baby boom? Because there's no one you want to get intimate with more than somebody whom you're already with EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF THE DAY. They say "absence makes the heart grow fonder," and I say, "pandemics make the heart want to run itself over with a Subaru." I've been at this quarantine game for eight months now, and I'm even sick of myself. I never knew I had so many bad habits. I've started chewing my nails because I'm so sick of the annoying things I usually do.

     Are there any adverse effects from spending this much time with my brothers and sisters? We spend more time together as a sextet than we ever did, even when we were growing up, via Zoom meetings every other week. I would have suggested it years ago, but I wasn't sure whether "bi-weekly" meant two times a month or two times a week. So far it's been really fun to re-live every embarrassing moment of my youth once each one of them points it out, "not remembering" that the others already mentioned it. I'm trying to use the time as a group therapy session, since we all felt oppressed by my Dad at times. We had a very rough childhood, because my Dad wanted us to do chores sometimes and our homework, and never realized how unrealistic those expectations were. 

     What are the effects of watching this much "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch?" I find myself writing dialogue in my head for the cat. This cannot be healthy. Soon I will have seen every episode of every television show made before 1995. I'm waiting for more programs to be produced before 1995, because they don't make 'em like they used to. I'm working on a pilot myself, and I must say, it's diabolically clever. So far I only have one character sketched out, the character of Alexa. She's a bookish nerd girl who's always sitting in front of her laptop computer at the kitchen table. A few times an episode somebody asks really loud, "Alexa, what's the weather today?" or "Alexa, tell me a really bad joke," which sets off the Amazon Echos residing in 50 million very annoyed American homes (wow my sitcom is one of the highest rated in history! Thanks America!). Her sister's name is Siri. 

     As long as we have all this time to study things, I'd like to study why every time I turn around, somebody says they are receiving death threats. Has anyone ever died from a death threat? I've never received a death threat, because I usually don't say anything controversial, just dumb. But all I have to do is say I HATE bananas, and I'll start receiving death threats from some fringe banana supremacy group. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I HATE bananas. I sometimes wonder how it all works: does someone call you up on the phone and say, "By the power vested in me I hereby THREATEN you. To DEATH!" I don't know about you but I have caller ID that even shows your number on my television screen. Sometimes it says "Spam?" next to the number and I have no doubt it would also say, "Possible Death Threat?" Which I would probably pick up thinking that it might be my wife. And if I don't pick up you're going to get so frustrated that you just about want to KILL me. You could send an email I guess, but that's going right to spam, too. When I clean out my spam folder a few months later I'll find out that I was death-threatened, along with my email server being shut down and a $27,800,000.00 business proposal from Chiba, Japan (which I really did receive and I'm following up on that one). You could tell me in person, I guess, but then you run the risk of me counter-death threatening you. "You dare to dost threaten THEE with death? Well, I hereby counter-threaten THOU! Or is it THY?" At which time I get to choose the weapon, and I choose beating you to the death at Scrabble. You'd better get your affairs in order.

A GREAT ESCAPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-26-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Two weeks ago I was feeling the weighty pressure of waiting for the election results, a bunch of last-minute news specials going on the air at the television network where I work, and the two-win Giants back in a tight race for the NFC East, meaning I had to start watching football games again. It all added up to a recipe for stress, and a great excuse to get away for the weekend in the 70-degree November warmth. A last minute expedition to upstate New York seemed just the antidote. We booked an unassuming hotel in Saugerties, near Woodstock, and took our little friend Gidget with us.

     Our hotel was about 2,000 feet from the site of Woodstock '94 rock festival, held on the 25th anniversary of the original ground-breaking rock concert. I was there with my sister Diane and about half a million close friends. We had tickets to the event that my sister won in a radio contest. She had the uncanny knack of being the 35th caller after calling 34 other times. Even though we had tickets, in keeping with tradition of free expression we slipped under the fence.

     The hill was alive with the sound of music, and when we got to the top of it and looked down, there must have been 100,000 tents set up. We walked toward the soundstage, and Melissa Etheridge was KILLING a medley of Janis Joplin favorites. Who else could pull it off? Afterwards we walked to the North Stage (or was it the South Stage? I didn't have a compass) to see Crosby, Stills and Nash perform "Woodstock," which of course wasn't written the last time they were there. Some other artists were also reprising their roles from a quarter century ago. Country Joe McDonald was there, and I wanted to give him an "F" since I wasn't there to give him one the first time, just to see what he would do with it. It started raining pretty hard, and all of a sudden there was a sea of humanity moving east southwest from the Northeast Stage. It would have been a good time to learn how to crowd surf if I had brought a board, and soon everybody was covered in mud, slipping, sliding and frolicking. It looked like fun but I wondered what everybody did with their wallet.

     Everything was so clammy, smelly and gross by the end of the day that it was just as well I didn't bring a tent to stay overnight. Personal hygiene would have been at a premium. "Excuse me, Salt N' Pepa, and am I talking to Salt, Pepa, or N'? Since there are three of you. Anyway, is it okay if I unplug one of your amps to use my electric toothbrush?"

     Back in the present it was warm and sunny, with the exception of night, and at the restaurant we could distance ourselves from others outdoors. Those kerosene lamps are a hot item right now, I'll tell you that. I've been socially distancing myself from others for years, or perhaps it was the other way around, so it's no big deal to me. I flip up my mask when the waitress comes around so we can all feel safe. After I give my order for the cheeseburger, including my footnotes about a separate cup of mayonnaise and no pickle within a five-foot radius and how well-done the French fries should be, I ask her if she's making an exasperated face under her mask, but she says no. In New York you can only drink while you're eating, so there's no sense rushing through the meal. I leave a few seconds in between each word of the conversation and I have plenty of time to gather my thoughts, which seem to have spilled out into the street.

     The next day we unpacked our bicycles and rode the O & W Rail Trail from Kingston. The railroad was de-commissioned in 1957, but it's a good idea to look both ways before riding, since the Ontario and Western railroad was notorious for being late. After a vigorous ride it was time to rest my weary legs for an on-the-trail picnic. I packed sandwiches and some all-natural apple juice boxes to replenish those valuable lost nutrients. I pierced my juice box with the enclosed straw, which formed a siphon and immediately emptied all over my leg. It was certainly a much more efficient way to deliver those much-needed nutrients to my legs than what I had in mind. I assume this kind of thing happens to everyone else but maybe not.

     A ride on the Catskill Mountain Railroad was a relaxing way to end the afternoon. About ten or so open flatcars trailing a locomotive pulled out of Kingston at 3:00. We were socially distanced and cozy in the warm sun. Since I've been working from home so long I've forgotten how to ride a train. Luckily there was a conductor on board for those who can't remember how to conduct themselves. We steamed westward toward the towering Rocky Mountains. Exciting, because I've never been to the Rocky Mountains. We didn't quite make it all the way there since we turned around after 13 miles, but I already had that mile-high feeling. When we got back to the hotel after dinner we turned on the TV to Fox News: "Trump leading Georgia!" And then we switched to CNN: "Biden leading Georgia!" And I guess I knew that no matter how nice my weekend escape was, there was always the chance that I would be recaptured.

 

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-19-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     After this election I'm completely drained and exhausted, and not in the good way like when I say, "wow, that was great," and light up a cigarette even though I don't smoke. It's more like, "wow, I feel cheap and used, and I need a shower right now," even though I don't smoke. It's been four years of utter divisiveness, and I'd like to start liking people again who don't agree with me, and that covers a large swath of humanity. I've never had this problem before. I've never been a political person, and I'd rather not be one now. I've voted for republicans, I don't consider myself particularly liberal, and I have a general distrust of everyone who lies to me, regardless of their party affiliation. But there are some problems with our system of government that have become glaringly apparent, and I'd like to make fun of them now.

     The two-party system of government seems to be kind of a failure. Since the Supreme Court ruling in "Citizens United v the FEC," corporations have been allowed to pour money into our electoral system and cloud the results. MacDonald's could very well be electing our next president, and it could be Mayor McCheese. With only two parties to choose from, issues that I don't espouse are being piled onto the platform way too close to me. What if I'm in favor of fiscal responsibility but not in favor of doing nothing about climate change? What if I don't accept racism but don't like illegal immigration either? It's like choosing from a Chinese restaurant menu where I order General Tso's chicken and have to accept nuts that I never heard of along with it. By the way, if I were a general in an army I wouldn't appreciate everybody knowing I was chicken and hung around with a bunch of nuts. All I'm saying is that If I had only two parties to choose from in college I would have perished 30 years ago.

     Speaking of colleges I couldn't get into, the Electoral College seems like an institution whose time might have come. It was invented to give a bit more weight to less populous states who couldn't compete with big cities in the popular vote. But it's come to bestow outsized powers to rural areas susceptible to nutty theories and fringe groups. I'm not sure I want my president elected by the people who live in Area 51, and I hear the people in Area 52 are sick to death of them, too.

     Remember when Reagan said, "Tear down that wall!" Or George W. Bush said into a bullhorn, "The rest of the world hears you," or when Daniel Day-Lewis said, "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds!" Okay, he wasn't actually a president but he did play Lincoln in a movie. When something bad (or good) happens in America or in the world, I expect the president to stand at the podium and say something intelligent and meaningful. I hope that will happen again.

     Remember when your mother said you had to eat your vegetables and go to the dentist? She didn't do that to make herself popular in the polls. She did it because she loves you, and knew that someday after your braces were off you'd smile straighter at her. That's the same thing leaders do if they're really on their game: they make us do things, like wear a mask in the middle of a pandemic, that might be inconvenient, but have long-term positive consequences beyond this week's news cycle. Maybe the restrictions are going too far, but I can't help thinking that if people embraced the masks in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess. I hate "gaiter-hair" as much as you do, but it's where we are right now.

     Remember when I had my rotator cuff surgery? Yes you do, because you heard me crying in pain all the way inside your house. I'm lucky: I have a good medical plan at work, and I can't complain about my health, although others have complained about it. But when the doctor says you need a test and they send you to the lab, no one can tell you in advance what it's going to cost. And the price varies so widely around the country for the same procedure that you barely know how to proceed. I'm not sure I like the word "socialism," but I don't like the word "bankruptcy" either. I don't know what the answer to health care is, but I know that doing nothing is going to cost us all more in the end, regardless of which end we're paying through.

     Remember when politicians used to compromise? Neither do I. But they used to at least SAY they did, leading people to believe that conceding a few crumbs to the other side and actually getting something done was a virtue. Imagine that. I know I'm just an average guy, not particularly bright, and that's why I value people who are. Doctors, scientists, physicists, people who spent their life learning about things that make the world run. Even if I'm not the smartest guy in the world, I'm smart enough to know what I don't know.

A HOOTENANNY HOOT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-12-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I'm writing this before the election results are in, but no matter which way it goes, it's been a stressful week. One of the things that can help us cope with life ups and downs is music. My friends Phil and Athina had a small, socially-distanced outdoor hootenanny this year, and it was nice to get (sort of) together, armed with only our guitars, our voices and a guiro, whatever that is. Oh, plus an urn of mulled cider. The most important part of any hootenanny is just enough alcohol to make the rough edges that originate in my guitar smoother by the time they reach your ears. If you're planning to mull anything over, mulled cider probably won't help, but you'll be less likely to notice.

     First we had a lovely harvest supper, with a butternut squash soup for starters. Right away you've already covered three of the major food groups with the butter, the nuts and the squash. But there was also a tasty pot roast, and yummy purple carrots that looked like an eggplant drunk-dialed a chili pepper and had a baby. The feast put me in the mind of a Thanksgiving celebration, except that nobody could think of anything to argue about.

     We sat down to play some rock and roll standards, some Tom Petty, some Stones, some Beatles. We sang "Helplessly Hoping," which seems like a good song to play while I'm waiting for the votes to be counted. We even tackled Bowie's "Space Oddity," which sounds better on acoustic guitars than I thought it would. When I was a kid I thought the lyrics were, "...And the papers want to know who shot you where...." It was a song about a space shot, after all. Why don't I just come out and admit I was not an exceptionally bright child?

     Somebody started to play the Beatles' "All You Need is Love," and the drummer in me had to stop the guitar player in me to ask, what meter are we doing it in? The song was recorded in an abstruse rhythm which sounds to me like two measures of 7/4 time followed by a measure of 4/4 and then another measure of 7/4. Everyone looked at me with a blank expression that seemed to say, "this is the last hootenanny you will ever be invited to." The Beatles wrote the song because they wanted a theme that everyone could understand, and apparently a rhythm that NO one could understand. To play "All You Need is Love," all you need is love, love is all you need. Plus a metronome. And a slide rule.

     If you want everyone to forgive and forget at a jam session, just break into the chords to "Country Roads," and that's exactly what I did. Henry Deutschendorf, better known as John Denver, heard the husband and wife writers of the song play it for him after a concert, and he helped them finish it. It was written along Clopper Road in Maryland, before it was filled with the strip malls that are there now. "Strip Mall Roads" doesn't sound as good. John Denver invited the two songwriters to sing on the version that became a huge hit, and the rest is hootenanny history.

     I launched into a solo on the guiro, which as it turns out is a ribbed hollow gourd. No matter what you do with it, a Santana song automatically comes out, and it's up to everyone else to figure out the rest. I did my part. I helpfully refrain, "Oye como va," and then yell to the guy on my left, "Take it!" leaving him to figure out how to pronounce the rest of the verse, which sounds in English like "Cheetos, where no boingo czar, oy." It makes more sense in print than I thought it would.

     There comes a point in the evening where I know I'm not going to be the designated driver, and that point was when I was unable to figure out how to use the guitar tuner. It's a small electronic device that's supposed to make it easier to tune your guitar, not harder. Luckily, there is an inverse proportion in physics such that, as the amount of available cider decreases, your tolerance for out of tune guitars increases.

     We played well into the evening. Standing around the campfire, I realized that so many ashes had blown onto me I looked like the last days of Pompeii. I sat back down in my chair, lest I cause anything to burst into flames. Due to the mulled cider situation I could legally be identified as an accelerant. We strummed on, democrats and republicans, settling our differences during the chorus of "Friend of the Devil." It can happen.

 

FULL MOON FEVER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-05-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I'm writing this before October 31st, and I know what I'm I going to be for Halloween this year: Safe. I'll be wearing a mask, and for one glorious day, even the people who don't comprehend that there is a health risk out there, the ones who don't believe the warnings of people who are much, much smarter than they are, will be wearing one too. This may be the safest Halloween on record, since people have a tendency to a little nuts on All Hallows' Eve. Over the years there has been tomfoolery, there have been high jinks, there have been shenanigans, anything can happen happens worse on Halloween. Even one shenanigan or a stray high jink can turn dangerous if not properly executed. I once had to resort to violence myself when, ranging out of my own neighborhood, a masked thug tried to take my bag of candy. I must have been 11 or 12 years old, and as I recall, dressed as George Washington with a small billiards stick as my sword. Before the Hershey-hauling hooligan could make off with my booty, I delivered a well-placed combination shot right on cue and high-tailed it back to Valley Lane. Chappaqua was a lawless shanty town back then.

     Saturday is going to be a scaled down affair. One thing's for sure, there will be no toilet-papering of the neighbor's yard this year. No parties, no dropping in on the neighbors, none of those memorable gigs at the local roadhouse where lively ladies with purple hair danced on the bar. Next year.

     The coronavirus has done nothing to curtail the amount of crap people put out on their lawns. It's frightful. You used to see some pumpkins, some corn husks on somebody's front porch, maybe a tombstone on the lawn or two. Now it's a menagerie of overblown inflatable figures. There is a six-foot tall contraption with three large spinning eyes on the road next to mine. I have no idea what it is, but it started to hypnotize me and I had to pull my car over. One house I passed had a skeleton driving a carriage pulled by two horse skeletons, and they looked like they were on their way to someplace really nice. I don't know where skeletons go in their spare time these days, but I hope I'm having that much fun when I'm dead.

     I'll miss half the costumes. Ladies always look really good at the costume party, and guys always look really dumb. That's just the way it is. No guy has ever looked good as a chubby caveman, and no girl has ever NOT looked good dressed as a cat.

     I'm going to miss shopping for parts of my costume at the party store, one of my usual haunts before the big day. "Excuse me Miss, but do you have a skeleton?" "Yes, got one." "What aisle is it in?" "It's inside my body. I don't work here." I head over to the head section to eyeball the eyeball selection. I can't help having the feeling that I'm being watched so I move on to the weapons department. Do I want a plastic knife or a rubber knife? I can't decide witch and I don't want to rubber the wrong way so I choose plastic. Over in the spider section, the irony of paying for new spiders when I have a bunch of perfectly good ones in my garage is not lost on me.

     I'm going to miss the annual ritual of driving computer algorithms berserk with my Halloween costume online orders. One year I went as a Miss Universe contestant from another planet, and I ordered a colored wig, a lovely dress, a sash, plastic flowers, a ray gun, some white gloves and a set of antennae to come out of my head. For the next month I was bombarded with pop-up ads from computer programs trying to figure out exactly what type of consumer I was based on those purchases. A homicidal alien dude in a dress possibly trying to tune in ESPN via his head. Eclectic tastes like mine are not easily satisfied.

     I'll miss all of that, but none of this means there can't be fun. We participated in a "Harvest Hunt" last weekend, an online puzzle-filled treasure quest to benefit the Tarrytown Music Hall. We didn't come too close to winning the contest, but we exercised our brains and had some laughs on a Saturday evening. My company is having a virtual costume contest at work, which I will need to think long and hard about participating in, since I plan to still work there after the holiday is over.

     Halloween falls on a blue moon well, once in a blue moon. That's what they call the second full moon in the same month. My wife is planning an "End of the Driveway Party," at which our neighbors can stroll by and trick-or-treat at a distance of six feet and pour themselves a margarita, and the kids can grab themselves a candy bar. If it's the other way around I probably won't even notice. It's going to be cold as a witch's crypt but we'll think of a way to keep warm. I'm through missing things in the year of the coronavirus. I'm not wasting a minute of it. Fun is not where you find it, it's where you make it. I wouldn't be caught dead in a cemetery on somebody's front lawn when I can sip margaritas under a blue moon at the bottom of my driveway and watch the ghouls go by.

WILD AND RILED

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-29-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Did you happen to see that video by a jogger in Utah who encountered a mama cougar on the trail? The puma had him shaking in his pumas for about six minutes while he filmed the whole thing, not because the mountain lion was so unusual, but because no one would ever believe he could run so fast. The guy taking the video seemed either really brave or really stupid, because if a wild animal is chasing you, and you have no weapon, at least throw the damn camera at it. If you happen to come across a unicorn, go ahead and keep filming, unless he looks like he's going to charge you. In that case, find out how much he's going to charge you but keep filming. He only has that one corn, hence the name, but you might be sitting on a viral video goldmine.

     You can sometimes tell if an animal is just about to kill you by reading his body language. I have a cat, so I have some experience with the breed if I might extrapolate a little bit. If he starts licking himself that means he's probably about to fall asleep. By the way ANYTHING my cat does means he's about to fall asleep. Hold on, the mountain lion just lifted his tail. Is that good or bad? Let me consult my Mountain Lion-to-English dictionary. Lifting the tail is good. Now he lowered it, bad. Raised it again, and I'm flipping pages unaware that the mountain lion is sitting with its tail in a pricker bush. Experts always say that the wild animal is more afraid of you than you are of them. Who are the experts that say things like that? Experts who have 1.) never encountered a mountain lion, and 2.) have grossly underestimated how afraid I am of them.

     Sure, open your coat to make yourself look fatter, even though you just suffered on the keto diet for six months to get this thin. "Just to be clear, I am NOT fat, you stupid mountain lion. I am sturdily-boned, which I inherited from my Mom and has nothing to do with ME. I'm using the coat to make me LOOK fatter, so technically the COAT is fat. And there are no mountains around here, so you're just a hillock lion at best." And what is the first thing the mountain lion is going to see when you open your coat? That you're not packing. "No weapon, I see, not even a Swiss Army knife with a pair of tweezers that you can pluck my eyebrows with. Just that cell phone. Maybe you can call your sturdily-boned Mom." Experts say that it's wise not to antagonize a wildcat.

     I read that you're supposed to make eye contact with the mountain lion and stare him down. I also read that if it's a bear, you should NOT make eye contact. I'm never going to remember which to do in the heat of battle so I guess I'll just have to keep an eye on things. I have a "psycho face" that I make if I think someone's going to give me attitude on the subway. I tried it out on my wife and she said I just look like an idiot, but I wasn't fully into character. I have yet to test it on wild animals though.

     You shouldn't underestimate any one of god's creatures, they all have something that they do much better than humans do. My wife has a hummingbird feeder, and they fly at each other and bicker about who hogged the most nectar, all day long. I've thought about going out there to break up the fight, but I'm a little anxious about interfering. What could a hummingbird possibly do to a coward like me? Why don't you let one fly in your ear and hum the "Kars for Kids" jingle for a while and find out.

     And there is a woodpecker attacking our house. There are three reasons a woodpecker taps on your siding: 1.) It's looking for food, 2.) It's making a nesting hole or, 3.) It's learning the drum solo in "Moby Dick." We're empty nesters and the last thing we need is a woodpecker moving in, so I did a little research on how to get rid of them. I read that if you spray the pecking area with hot sauce, they'll toast their little tongues and move on. So I'm out there with a lawn sprayer filled with tabasco sauce hosing my house, and it's just another reason people don't come over.

     The mountain lion was only protecting its young, so don't be too hard on her. In comparison, my Mom told us to go out and play in the streets, and if a jogger had threatened us she would have told him to stay off the lawn. Maybe someday that guy and the mountain lion will get together and watch the video, and have a good laugh over it. "OMIGOD! Look at that face I'm making! And my hair! Jesus, so '20s!" "Nah, you look like a real 'cougar!'" For now, it's a jungle out there, so be safe. I was recently chased by a snail who was protecting its young, and I'll tell you right now, if it ever catches up to me and slugs me, I'm going to video the whole thing. I'll keep you posted.
 

WHAT'S IN A DUMB NAME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-22-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     By the time you read this, the Tampa Bay Rays could be in the World Series, and I'll be left wondering, who the hell would name a sports team THAT? It's not a great name like the New York Yankees, well, isn't either. The truth is that there are a lot of dumb team monikers in the world of professional sports, and I'm just the person to make no sense of it all. There isn't even a city called Tampa Bay. Attendance is so bad at Tropicana Field that the owner may have been open to mollusks and bivalves from the bay buying tickets to the game. The team from Tampa was actually first known as the "Devil Rays," but the owner had some second thoughts, thinking that Satan himself might start showing up at the games, and he'd have to make good on all those deals he made to get the stadium financed.

     The L.A. Dodgers could be their opponent in the Fall Classic. Is there anything lazier than not changing the name of the team you bought, whose name has nothing to do with your town? The "Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers" was their original name, which made a lot more sense in Brooklyn, where 51 people died from being hit by trolleys in 1893. The Los Angeles "Traffic Jam" would be more appropriate; you don't even need to pluralize it, the place is just one big traffic jam from what I've seen. How many lakes would it take to name your team the "Lakers," even if you didn't mind that basketball players don't have much to do with lakes? Would you settle for none? There are plenty of them in Minnesota, and that's probably where the name should have stayed, even if the team didn't.

     I just watched the Buffalo Bills lose tonight on network television, and I thought to myself, even if everyone on the team was an actual buffalo, and its name was Bill, the "Buffalo Bills" would still be a goofy name for a team. I guess you could receive a big bill from a restaurant in Buffalo, and that would be intimidating. You could just as well have named the team the "Buffalo Bobs," given that "The Howdy Doody Show" was at least seen in Buffalo, and "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" was not.

     Who doesn't like red socks? Most people, I'm guessing, but at least you can save some time by writing "Red Sox" instead. Think how much time writing "thanx" instead of "thanks" has saved us over the years. The team from Boston was originally known as the "Red Stockings," which doesn't sound girly to me at all. I seem to be in the minority here, but if I were naming a baseball team, I'd start with some adjectives about how we're going to kick your cotton-picking coccyx, and about the size of our bats as compared to yours, etc. Naming the team based on the color of our undergarments would not have crossed my mind for more than a few moments, and I would not have repeated them to anyone.

     A lot of teams are named after birds: blue jays, orioles, cardinals. In the team logo they look very menacing, as if they might beat the crap out of you in a bar and take your girlfriend. But really, the worst thing a bird has ever done to me was poop on my car, and it was hard to get off. If you want to cow the opposition, call your organization the "St. Louis Cardinal Poops." Less than half the teams in the NFL are even named after anything human, and in the case of the Houston "Texans," the bar for qualifying to make the roster is set pretty low. Most are named for inanimate objects and animals.

     Some franchises had the misguided notion to commemorate a moment in history that no one really cares much about anymore. The "49ers" named their team when they joined the NFL in 1949, but the name refers to the California gold rush, which happened in 1849. and probably won't happen again. A new NBA team named their franchise the "Raptors," two years after a movie came out featuring a bunch of raptors that grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. I'm willing to bet that nobody in management took a timeout to consider that Toronto is not usually known for its dinosaurs, and that in the next few years more movies would come out about other things.

     If you really want to put a scare into your greatest rival, let them think that your experts have crunched every single number on your player, and know every detail about what they intend to do every second of the game. "Keep watching, he's going to scratch himself right in the old end zone. HA! See that?" The rivalry of the future: The New York Statisticians versus the Dallas Data Miners. The geeks shall inherit the Earth.

THE MOON IS IN THE 7TH HOUSE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-15-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     And if Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars, just like the song says. Unfortunately, that won't happen again for another 32,000 years, so somebody else is going to have to steer the stars for a while. But did you know that Mars is going to be closer to the Earth this month than it will be for the next 15 years? You won't even need your glasses like you did when it was 214 million miles farther away. It will look like a red star in the Southern sky because of its large concentration of what is essentially rust. Mars has been left out in the Solar System for a few billion years too long, it seems.

     In fact, there is a rover from NASA on its way to Mars right now, and when it gets there next year it's going to rove around looking for signs of life. There are a bunch of what used to be lakes on Mars, and scientists think that there could be evidence of microbes there underneath the beds. If it's anything like the evidence of microbes underneath my bed, this should be one of the most successful missions ever. Scientists are probably expecting that microbes on Mars will be a lot like they are here on Earth, not exactly the life of the party, usually the butt of a "how many organisms does it take to unscrew a lightbulb" joke, etc. No one has mentioned the fact that, who the hell really knows what to expect? The rover could run into a an angry mob of genius microbes up there, just waiting for a big hunk of raw material that they can turn into their own spaceship, or even better, a huge espresso maker.

     The probe, dubbed Perseverance, will have a microphone on it, so that if any of the microbes want to get up and make a speech or do a little stand up comedy (no one expects the microbes to have feet though), they can feel free to do so. It has a drill that will go down into the surface and suck out samples to bring back to Earth. If there are any earthworms in there then we'll have to rename earthworms I guess. There is more than one camera on board the Perseverance, so scientists at the command center could conceivably experience a rare simultaneous organism.

     If you're as old as I am, you can remember when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with that choppy video that even back then was still better than some talk shows I've seen during the coronavirus age. Who didn't imagine themselves as an astronaut, looking down at that cloudy blue planet Earth? You'd cup your hands over your mouth to simulate a static-y radio transmission. "The Eagle has landed!" A chimpanzee flew a space mission in 1961, so how hard could it be? Then I saw this centrifuge contraption that they use for training that spins you around in a giant circle, even worse than the Black Widow ride at the carnival that I threw up after. At the end they scrape you off the side of the simulator with a spatula and hang you from a clothes line until you're back to normal. I used to get car sick when my Mom parallel parked the car, so that was the end of that dream. I went back to imagining myself enjoying a career in consulting, which has been everything I ever dreamed it would be since no one has ever consulted me.

     I fantasize that it's me stepping down from the Lunar Module, balancing my coffee cup in one hand and holding onto the ladder with the other, and I see that my coffee is dispersing into outer space, and It takes seven hours to prepare one cup, and I lose concentration and trip down three rungs of the ladder. Everyone's waiting for me to say something memorable. "That's one small step for man," I say, "and yet I almost killed myself." I take a couple photos of the place, but there are coffee droplets all over the place ruining the photos, and I have no idea that someday people will think the whole thing was a hoax.

     We're making such a mess of this planet that some people are hitching their star to the stars, and maybe someday we can make a mess of someone else's planet. It's mind boggling to think how much there is up there, and how much we'll never know about it. And so we make up a bunch of stuff and it makes us feel better. I know that there are people who put a lot of stock in their horoscope readings, but I'm not going to change my behavior based on whatever's going on Mars, 38,586,816 miles away on a good day. When the Moon is in the 2nd or 3rd house, I'll start paying more attention.

     And I'll keep an eye out for Asteroid 2018 VP1. It's going to pass very close to Earth the day before the United States election. Hopefully there won't be a monumental disaster. I'm talking about the election, the asteroid is only about six feet long, so worst case scenario it might dent somebody's car. But this month I'm keeping the shades to my house closed, because if there is life on Mars, they're closer than they've been in quite a while, and I don't want them peeking into my living room and making fun of the naked eye I'm watching them with.

BLURRED IMMUNITY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-08-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
Blurred immunity
     Let me be perfectly clear: I'm not a doctor, I didn't play one on TV, and I didn't even play doctor with the nurse down the street when we were little. Actually I do remember having a "doctor's kit," which had several items in it. It had a small plastic hammer that you could test your little sister's reflexes with by hitting her over the head. And it had a plastic stethoscope so you could check if you still had a heartbeat after your little sister grabbed the hammer and hit you over the head with it even harder. And it had little pince-nez plastic glasses with no lenses so you could see what you were doing, but you couldn't smell anything because they pinched your nose shut. And it had a little mirror with a headband on it that you could wear so your patient could see her tonsils and figure out immediately that you overcharged her for taking them out. Everything was made of plastic so that you could learn how to perform plastic surgery and be the darling of your mom's friends when you grew up. My medical career didn't work out but I'd like to play doctor with you now.

     Everyone's doing it. One unfortunate by-product of inept leadership that undermines science and disregards experts is that people start to feel that there are no real answers, and they start making up their own. So everyone has had to educate themselves and come up with their own idea of what is safe and what is not during a pandemic. Is it safe to go to a restaurant? If no one there has covid-19 you could still be killed if a waiter trips while holding a swordfish, so nothing is completely safe. Can I go to church or synagogue? Even if you wear a mask, there's a lot of singing involved, which is not healthy in a pandemic, but there is also a lot of praying, which may be.

     I'd like to know what percentage of people who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic. I'd like to know what the odds are of getting the disease from touching an infected surface as opposed to someone breathing on me. I'd like to know if people who are asymptomatic and contract the disease again after their immunity wears off will be asymptomatic again. I'd like to know dumb-sounding things like, if I blow a fan sideways while I'm talking to someone, will it blow all the little covids away from both of us and out the door into the garage?

     It would be helpful to have some accurate science on the proclivities of the coronavirus so that I can make intelligent decisions, something I probably should do more of. There is a statistic in baseball known as "Value over Replacement Player," or VORP. If I have a slide rule I can figure out your VORP once I replace you. And after you've been replaced with a guy worse than you, I'll have to replace him to find out if you were any good or not. Do you get where I'm going with this? If so, call me when I get there. But my point, if there is one, is that we have plenty of meaningless stats in baseball, where hardly anyone dies, and yet there is seemingly no national database for reliable information about the effects of the coronavirus. It's because everyone in government is so concerned about optics that they are afraid to report the truth.

     I just got my flu shot today- it's free at CVS. Most doctors agree that it's more important than ever to get your flu shot this year to avoid confusion of symptoms. If you find you're short of breath, have no appetite and have a fever, it could be the flu or covid-19, or you might actually be in love. If you get the flu shot and test negative for coronavirus, congratulations, I'm sure you'll be very happy together. You can give me a ring to thank me, and I'll certainly wear it proudly.

     What is the status of medical treatments? Plasma from recovered patients and corticosteroids have shown promise during clinical trials in preventing people from dying of the disease, I guess that's better than nothing. An antiviral called remdesivir was used in previous pandemics and prevented the virus from replicating itself. Those deficient in vitamins C and D have shown increased susceptibility to the disease, so there may be a benefit to them. There are people still running around touting the charms of hydroxychloroquine, even though doctors have said a hundred times that it has no proven benefit with covid.

     Experts warn how easy it is to catch the coronavirus. But in New York we've learned how easy it is NOT to. I never heard the words "hand hygiene" used so often, but it makes washing your hands sound really gross. My own hands have some kind of deal worked out, and one hand washes the other. Until this thing blows away we'll just need to do what the experts say you should do. I'm talking about the people who know what they're talking about. Not the ones who say that they are geniuses, but the ones who NEVER say they are, and yet when they say what they say it's obvious that they are.

THE BEST TO YOU EACH MORNING

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-01-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, although if you're an hour and a half late for dinner you may not live long enough to compare the rankings. There are studies linking breakfast to better concentration, lower incidence of diabetes and less chance of heart disease. Of course, you can find a study linking everything to just about everything else if you look hard enough. You could probably find a study linking the eating of used carburetor parts to lower heart disease, although it could give you gas. I like to eat a hearty breakfast, and I borrow a few calories from lunch to make up for it.

     As a kid I don't remember eating anything but cereal for breakfast, but that might have been because my parents had six children. A balanced meal for us was half a bowl of Sugar Smacks offset by half a bowl of Sugar Pops. To make their brands seem healthier, they've since removed any mention of the word "sugar" from all the cereals we used to love as a kid, although not the sugar itself.

     But now I'm an adult in a pandemic, and one way to make use of the slowdown is to fine-tune my breakfast making skills, so I'm going to let you in on a couple of my Sunday breakfast secrets. Making biscuits from scratch is not as hard as you might think, but it's easier to make them from batter. The batter is better with a lot of butter. Then I cut the biscuit in half, butter it, put a fried egg, some cheese and bacon on it and I save a trip to McDonald's. The same routine on a croissant goes over quite well around here. If I have a hard roll, I'll toast and butter it, insert a scrambled egg and sprinkle some cheddar and Monterey Jack. The best part is a slice of ham from the deli that I pan-fry within an inch of its life, and that goes on top of the cheese.

     Have you heard of a Dutch baby? You mix 3 eggs, 3/4 cup of milk, 3/4 cup of flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. You add them to a pre-heated, liberally-buttered large skillet and bake it at 425 degrees until it puffs up like the surface of Jupiter. If it looks like Uranus you cooked it too long. Some butter and syrup and believe me you will be hailed as a modern-day hero. I've eaten so many Dutch babies that they have zero population growth right now.

     I've been called "The Leonardo da Vinci of breakfast." I invented the "toast omelet," which uses a couple pieces of buttered toast broken into little pieces, some sauteed peppers, cheese and diced tomatoes thrown in with the eggs after they're already cooking. The trick is to let the toast sit around for 15 minutes until it's brittle, and coat it with butter melted in the microwave. Here's one I call the "reverse omelet:" You take a couple tablespoons of margarine and melt it in a non-stick omelet pan, and you add the cheese first, enough cheddar and mozzarella to cover the whole bottom. Once that melts you add the beaten eggs. I like to cover it with a baking sheet to fluff up the eggs, and by that time the cheese is brown underneath. You can thank me later for saving your marriage.

     You don't need to get too fancy with the ingredients as far as I'm concerned. My wife once asked me, did you clarify the butter? No, it seems self-explanatory to me. And I don't mind cheese in a bag from the supermarket, you don't have to import it from Switzerland or anything. You can get day-old bread from the bakery and it will actually improve your French toast. Any loaf old enough to vote and the benefits start to decline. I often use margarine in place of butter, I think it's easier to cook with it and I like the taste. My family grew up using margarine, I think my parents were saving butter for the war effort, in case there was a war that listed it in the ingredients.

     It's impossible to get breakfast in Europe, because they think the concept of eating a big meal so early is vulgar. So when we're in Europe I spend much of the time before noon complaining about how I wish Europeans were as vulgar as I am. English muffins, Belgian waffles, Dutch babies and French toast are some of the great morning meals you can't get in any of those countries. In Paris they eat a baguette with Nutella on it. In Rome you can get a caffe latte with a biscotti. In Madrid they put an egg on top of anything you can order for dinner, but don't bother trying to find one for breakfast. Bacon is a code word that they haven't cracked over there yet. If you want a glass of milk you're going to have to find a willing subject and milk it yourself. None of these things is remotely useful to start your day if you're going to be walking around a museum all day, especially a boring one. Once world travel is back in the game plan I might have to think about packing a waffle iron and some batter, and let the fine folks at the TSA try to figure out what I plan to do with them.

 

THE CAT'S OUT OF THE BAG

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-24-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     You're probably familiar with the cat species from those little videos that show them doing adorable things around the house and playing with each other and chasing their own tails, etc. I saw a video where a cat steals a Swiffer duster from a broom closet, walks across a curtain rod, almost falls off three times, ruins the curtain rod and drags the duster over to the TV shelf. I had to side with the cat on this one, the TV shelf was gross. But it proves that cat burglary goes on all the time. Cats may look harmless but they have an unpredictable and sometimes violent side. A cat, without ever having watched one "mixed martial arts" fight, knows how to hold your arm with his front paws while kicking you with the back ones. Sometimes you'll look over and the cat is sitting there with his tongue out and his mouth closed, like he doesn't know his tongue is aimed right at you.

     We have these two cats, there may even be more of them, I've only ever seen two at a time but I've never searched particularly hard. They look exactly alike, all black. And one of them has taken to, well, how do I put this politely but, taken to doing a #1 on whatever strikes her mood at the time. If you don't know what #1 is, just go back to the beginning of time and it's the first bodily function done in chronological order after the first human drinks the first six-pack of beer. This cat has destroyed hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of personal property with this one simple act and it's driving us crazy. My wife thinks it's some kind of misguided protest that she hasn't gotten anyone else to go along with just yet. Like one of these dopey boycotts on social media where they get a bunch of people to get back at somebody they don't like by not purchasing something they don't like even more, like Brussels sprouts.

     Anyway, I have a loving relationship with the cat, meaning I stroke her belly which she enjoys for a while until she decides I'm doing it wrong and I come out of the experience with multiple lacerations, so that's obviously not the problem. She has a loving relationship with my wife, which means that my wife strokes her belly and in return she knocks all the salt and pepper shakers and pens off the kitchen table, so that's obviously not the problem either. We feed her every day, which I think is overdoing it, and like every cat we've ever had she's chunkily overweight and "body positive" about it in an unrealistic way.

     I'm not even sure which one is the culprit since they both look exactly alike. They are twins, but I guess all dogs and cats are twins, triplets, quadruplets, sextuplets, whatever. I never heard of a cat being an only child. These two are not the type of twins that finish each others' sentences, or go out on double dates and try to fool each others' boyfriends, or sit in a lump on the bed together that looks like a load of unfolded laundry. In most instances they seem to barely aware of each others' existence, so I find it hard to believe that there is any kind of conspiracy going on.

     I watch a lot of interrogations on TV, and I have a feeling I can pit one against the other by punishing them both, although if I had a better understanding of what they didn't like, maybe they wouldn't be trying to retaliate against me in the first place, if that's what they're even trying to do. It's all so confusing. I used to have an outdoor cat, and he would kill a mouse and leave it on my doorstep. I assumed it was a message, like "YOU'RE NEXT." Remember in "The Godfather," where the guy wakes up and there's a horse head sleeping next to him? Maybe his cat put it there? Then someone told me, no, the cat is giving you a present and you should praise him for it. I told him a card would have sufficed.

     My wife wants to pin down the whens and wherefores of this behavior so that she can psychoanalyze the cat. She thinks the cat is revolting, and I couldn't agree more. She bought an ultraviolet light which detects the presence of pee. It won't help you that much in a murder investigation but you never know. It was only strong enough to detect the presence of teeth, lint and argyle socks, so its application is limited. I considered swallowing it just in case it might protect me from the coronavirus like Trump says, and if I see a Jimi Hendrix poster I can shine at it through my belly button.

     So far none of these things have worked, and I'm entertaining suggestions about what to do in case mine haven't been entertaining enough. And if my cat ends up in a video it's not going to go viral on YouTube, it's going straight into the evidence room, exhibit "P." They say its' bad luck to cross a black cat, well I'm serving notice right here: it might be bad luck for a particular black cat to cross ME.
 

MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-17-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     We were going to stay home this Labor Day weekend, but the more we stayed home, the more work we found that needed to be done around the house, and doing it would have been in direct defiance of the spirit of Labor Day. So instead we pulled together a last minute overnight trip to historic Poughkeepsie, New York, where we could ride our bicycles across the beautiful Walkway Over the Hudson on a glorious holiday Sunday.

     Gidget, the cutest dog in the land, was SO excited that she was going on the trip that she was beside herself and I had to make twice as much room in the car. She launched herself into the back seat at a g-force of about two and almost vaulted out the window on the other side. Once I turned the ignition key, she went immediately into REM sleep and I never heard from her again until we arrived at the hotel. A dog's life is an emotional roller coaster. But once there Gidget attracts children like butterflies, and luckily she has the perfect disposition for it. I've been to dog-friendly hotels that didn't have hotel-friendly dogs.

     The Walkway over the Hudson is about a mile and a third from Poughkeepsie to the town of Highland, 212 feet over the river. It began life as a railroad trestle, put into service in 1889 for trains hauling goods from Hartford to New York markets across the Hudson River. Although at its peak and during World War II the bridge was a major industrial passage, the need for goods to go from Hartford to Maybrook waned, or maybe the goods weren't good enough, and the bridge was decommissioned after a fire in 1974. The Walkway reopened as a state park in 2009, the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's trip up the river. I don't know how goods get across the Hudson these days, but nobody asked me to bring anything either direction.

     We stopped for a selfie, which I always take because I have the longest arms, and my right hand hasn't been seen in a photograph since 2006. We passed a guy on a recumbent bike, that goofy-looking contraption you pedal from a prone position, enjoying all the sights you can see while looking straight up. It seems better suited to changing the oil in your car than for going on a leisurely ride, but who am I to say, other than myself. Imagine the lovely views he had of the majestic Hudson River, or at least of the bottoms of the chins of people who had lovely views of it.

     On the Ulster County side you can bicycle all the way to New Paltz and beyond, and we went a few more miles before turning around. There's a fitness course on the side of the trail, and you can stop at each station for a workout if exercising by bicycle isn't working out. You can do some sit-ups, crunches and chin-ups. I did a few half-knee bends and gave the other half of my knee the day off. Overhead I saw a bridge with more bicyclists pedaling their wares. Is there a walkway over the Walkway Over the Hudson? I'm sure the guy on the recumbent bike saw it right off. Maybe there's a walkway under the Hudson too.

     On the way back we detoured onto Route 44 where all the businesses are. We passed a place called the "Beer Cave," and I wanted to stop and do some spelunking but it was time for lunch so we stopped at the diner instead. Everything is contact-less in the age of the coronavirus, so you just point your phone at this barcode matrix that looks like a computer threw up, and it takes you to the menu, where you can order and pay for your food without ever eating it. Nothing much happened so I went inside and pointed the phone at somebody who was sitting near the counter, and ordered a BLT by contacting his ears. I'm not sure he actually worked there, but we eventually got our food.

     You need to wear a mask while on the Walkway, but compliance was surprisingly low, maybe 50%, and that includes people wearing their mask over their chin, which has been proven to prevent people from transmitting the virus if they breathe through their chin. For those dim bulbs out there who confuse a global health issue with a freedom issue, please feel free to stay home. There's only one way out of this mess and that's to have the smallest iota of common sense.

     On the way home we stopped at DQ for a well-earned Blizzard so we could replenish some of the precious calories we lost on the bike ride. You can ask for just about anything in a Blizzard, except for uninterrupted internet service.

THE CROWD LOVES IT

 

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-10-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     There's a saying in sports: "It's lonely at the top." During a global pandemic, it's lonely at the bottom and both sides, also. It's just lonely out there, period. There are no fans to gauge how things are going for the home team. There's a sound effects guy who controls the crowd noises at the baseball game, but it's not the same. He's only hitting the bare essentials, Cheering home runs, some general hubbub, and sometimes his crowd reactions are inappropriate or awkward, because he can't remember if a ball that hits the foul pole is a home run or a foul ball. Plus, he's not going to boo the home team for striking out three consecutive times in a late-inning close game like a real crowd would, because he just bought a new car and the boss might be watching. He's not going to play the sound of "HEY, BEEAH HEEAH!" 2,143 times on average during the game. He's not going to play a tape of the crowd chanting words about the opposing pitcher you wouldn't want your grandmother to hear, no matter how much truth there is to them.

     Sometimes there are cardboard cutouts in the seats, pictures of people who paid to be represented at the game. One guy even sent a picture of his dog, presumably so he could bark at the umpires and not know what it means. There was supposed to be a "subway series" last week between the Yankees and the Mets, but someone tested positive. Was that player out and about, not wearing a mask, engaging in risky social behavior, or was it something innocent, like sharing a pangolin sandwich with some friends?

     There used to be a lot of rules in baseball, but this is a wild west time in history, and people are so thrilled to have something to watch besides the Hallmark Channel that they don't even care about the rules. Christmas comes at least once a week on the Hallmark Channel, and I'm running out of gift ideas so I'm happy to have baseball back, rules or not. Before the pandemic, If there were two strikes on the batter, and a runner steals home, and the pitch hits the runner in the strike zone, the batter is out. Now, nobody cares. What time should we play? I have a dentist appointment, so how about 4:15? Okay. It's a double-header and we might be tired, so let's just play seven innings, okay? Fine. It's extra innings and I have to get up early, is it okay if we start the inning with a guy on second? Yeah, I'm good with it.

     There are no fans in the tennis stadium at the U.S. Open either. There were approximately four people in the entire stadium, so few that you could hear the air conditioning system run. The blood-curdling screams that the women make when they hit the ball are so loud it sounds like the ball is hitting THEM rather than the other way around. Tennis fans are notoriously traitorous, so I'm not sorry to see them go. If the crowd favorite starts to run away with the match, they'll turn around and root for the other guy just to prolong the match and get their money's worth. With no crowd noise at Arthur Ashe Stadium, we're left to rely on the announcers to generate excitement, and they have Australian announcers calling the game who are not known for their effervescent personalities. After the greatest point you've ever seen one will flatly note, "Lovely strike!" A work stoppage where everyone is wearing a beautiful brooch is a lovely strike, not the greatest point you've ever seen. The players now have to get their own towels, there are no linesmen on most of the courts, and of course, no fans. When one of the players hits the ball into the net, I sit at home and think, I could just as well be playing at the U.S. Open. I bring my own towel, I have no fans, I call my own lines and I hit the ball into the net. In fact, I can do it a hundred times better than even the best pros.

     I'm just happy to see a live game again, even if everything's weird. The NBA teams are playing in a bubble at the Walt Disney World in Florida. The players live and compete at the complex, and no guests are allowed in. Their fans are visible to the players on a giant television screen. It used to be the other way around, but everything is upside down in the era of the coronavirus. They have use of the park's facilities during their stay, and I sure hope they get to see the Festival of Fantasy Parade with Cinderella and Prince Charming. I don't know what will happen when all the air runs out in the bubble, but by the then the playoffs should be over.

     Players, if you're out there, stay safe. Stay in the game, we're watching at home. And I know you can't hear it, but I'm making noise. In fact, I just dropped a coffee mug and it broke into a million pieces and woke up the dog. But it's better than nothing. And a word of advice for you NBA players: stay away from that damned Space Mountain. That ride made me sicker than I ever would have been from covid-19.

PARTY OF ONE

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-03-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     My wife left for a little vacation last weekend to get away from things, she didn't say exactly what things, but it was probably the cat, sitting on her newspaper incessantly and knocking the pens off the table just for sport, or maybe the dog. How much unconditional love can you take?

     That means I had the whole house to myself, and I had an entire slate of activities planned. I got right down to the first item on my list, which was a nap. When I got up I fed the dog dinner which was actually this morning's breakfast that she didn't eat. I made a nice little charade of breaking an egg into the bowl and cooking a western omelet, but she didn't fall for it because I didn't have any pretend peppers. I wouldn't have eaten it either- imagine having the same thing day after day. I offered to go for take-out, but Gidget almost never has any money. There are a lot of things I'm supposed to do this weekend, and the beauty of it is I can do them whenever I want. I chose to do the laundry AFTER my wife comes home, and when she sees what I have planned for it she'll snatch it out of my hands like a live hand grenade.

     Sorry if I woke you up, that was me mowing the lawn at 12:30 in the morning. That's one of the great things about being on your own schedule. I can mow the lawn whenever I please. It was a little dark and scary out there, and I saw something lunge at me trying to attack, but it turned out to be a toad. It was a large one, though. I have one of those miner's lights that attaches to your head so you can see what you're doing if you find yourself in an either ore situation, and I almost ran over a rock when I was escaping from the toad. I don't know how miners get anything done- I went back inside because I thought I smelled a canary- is that good or bad?

     I'm trying to install this air conditioner that I had sent over from Home Depot, and they should have just delivered it right onto my foot, because I dropped it there anyway. The instructions that were written in Chinese were no harder to understand than the ones in English, which bore little-to-no resemblance to reality. I tried to find a video on YouTube that would help me make sense of the instructions or at least help me learn Chinese. Usually somebody from YouTube has the same problems I do, if not all at the same time. If I had children and I had to give them the talk about the "facts of life" I would probably just tell them to find a video that explains everything on YouTube. I don't remember all the scientific names of everything that I learned in Health Class, even though I remember what everything does, if everything is supposed to do. I remember something about a "vas deferens," but I haven't heard a thing about it since. One of the facts of life is that instructions that come with the thing that you just bought suck, so I've been drilling holes in the side of my house all weekend, and I intend to bolt this air conditioner bracket into one of them.

     I got up bright and early at 11 o'clock the next day for breakfast, and had a hankering for homemade pancakes. The recipe called for double-acting baking soda, but the kind I had in the cabinet was just single-acting, if it was acting at all. It pretty much just sat there, so I put twice as much in. A cup of milk, all I could find was a coffee cup. A couple eggs, some baking powder, a little salt, and bingo! Maybe I should have made the homemade pancakes at somebody else's home, they were not too good. I probably should have cleaned the coffee cup first.

     I smelled like the Dickens all weekend and I didn't even care, no offense to Dickens. That's another great thing about the single life, and also the reason one might still be single. Personal hygiene goes right to hell if you don't have anyone around to wrinkle their nose at you. I started to get a little stir crazy after a while and I was talking to myself about things I wasn't all that interested in. If there were four or five other guys here it would have been like a bad movie in the 1950s where I invite a bunch of dudes over for a bachelor's night, play some poker and smoke cigars, only nobody thought to bring cards. I order some stag films but I order the wrong thing and it's a movie about male deer, etc. So we're just sitting around watching the deer movie which is more interesting than anyone wants to admit, arguing about which are the best potato chips, and thank god no one asks if I have any Streisand records.

     A long weekend is about all I can take of me. Maybe I should get away from things for a while, but my wife won't tell me where she is.

CAPERS FROM THE CAPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-27-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's true that vacations are scaled down these days, and you can't visit everywhere and do everything that a robust agenda might have on it. But that doesn't mean that we can't have a good time. After being cooped up in my house for five months, doing my taxes in a hotel room in Patterson would seem like a romantic getaway. And right now it's important to show that we can wear a mask when we need to, stay apart and work it into the plan without a whole lot of fuss. We rented a house in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a few nights and had a great time.

     It wasn't exactly the same experience as it used to be, when we used to hang out at the Governor Bradford until one o'clock in the morning, listening to the drag queens run Karaoke night. They had some chess boards built into the tables near the window, and we used to play, even though there would always be a piece or two missing. If you happened to capture my queen, there were always plenty more where that came from onstage. Female impersonators have a short fuse for people who can't carry a tune, and they won't let you twist in the wind for too long before they chime in and help you carry it somewhere unharmed.

     About 99 percent of the people walking on Commercial Street were wearing a mask, so it felt very safe to shop and people-watch. I noticed that I couldn't yawn with my mask on, so I made a point of not going anywhere boring. There were a ton of pretty girls and ladies walking around, at least I assume there were, I couldn't see much of their faces. The era of coronavirus has been a boon for girls with nice eyes. I remember back in high school, when one of my girl friends said, "I know the perfect girl for you." Which meant that they knew someone so desperate that they would possibly put up with me for one evening. And I'd shallowly ask if they were good-looking, and my friend would say, "She has great eyes," which meant the rest of her looked like a Goya painting. It was one step up from "She has a fantastic personality," which was a guarantee, if true, that she definitely wouldn't like me.

     When we sat down at the restaurant we could relax and take our masks off so we didn't have to eat through our ears. Like New York, the rule is that you have to eat a convincing amount of food in order to purchase drinks from the bar. I had been fasting since breakfast, knowing that I can only drink as much as I can eat. To my chagrin there was a one-hour table limit, and I almost had a panic attack. What if it's Daylight Savings Time and they set the clocks ahead and I have to leave before I get there? Thankfully no one was keeping 4/4 time, and I ate an entire pizza's worth of beer. Covid-era government is making us fat.

     As we got on our bikes to go home we saw a fox running across the street, of all things. I could see how foxy it was because it wasn't wearing a mask like a racoon does, and you could tell it wasn't a housecat because of the tail. A fox has a tail that looks like it was ordered from Etsy and hastily fastened on with a safety pin. Then we saw another one, so I guess foxes are in and cats are SO last year. In fact we didn't see any cats at all, and usually the place is brimming with them because of all the seafood, but this time there isn't as much Chenin Blanc left over to go with it.

     The next couple days were great for lounging at the shore, and our dog Gidget proved to be a carefree beach bunny. We took a walk along the sand bar at low tide, basking in the frequent praise of dog lovers unfamiliar with her breed. Gidget took it in furry stride, and even dipped her paws into the water (she's fussy about her paws). On the bay beach in Provincetown at low tide you can stroll for 15 minutes into the water and barely get your shins wet. If you keep walking and you see signs for Faneuil Hall, you went too far. There were no lifeguards, but with 80-degree water, no waves, no alcohol, no depth and tiny little fish, you'd really have to expend some effort to get into any trouble. It seemed much more dangerous to check my emails from work. There was a girl who found a nice-sized horseshoe crab, and I told her that an upside down horseshoe is good luck, although maybe not for the crab.

     We got back to our chairs before the tide rolled in and swallowed up the sand bar, and I picked up the crossword puzzle and turned on the AM radio to a country music station. If I listen to country music for too long I start to say "babuh" a lot and talk about my truck, even though I don't own a truck, and it takes two days to get it out of my system. But it sounds good at the beach, and when Gidget settled onto her own towel for a nice nap, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

     The next day it was already time to go home, and before we hit the traffic on Route 6, I wished I could take a piece of paradise with me. And there it was: a rest area with a sign that said, "Adopt Me." Before I could jot the number down we were already into the rotary. It's just as well, we don't have room for it in the garage, but wouldn't it be nice to have an area like that for the rest of the summer.