VARIATIONS ON A THEME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-21-26)

 

      The television industry has gone through a lot of changes since the first nascent broadcasts of the 1930s, including trying to muddle on without me now that I have retired from it. One transformation is the evolution of the television theme song. To accommodate more commercials, the opening songs have lately been reduced to only a few notes, barely long enough to get something unhealthy from the fridge.

     Those catchy jingle-like songs have become anthems to a bygone era. A simpler time, where you could leave things to Beavers, and horses could talk, nuns could fly and you could marry a witch and even mention it to her face, and at the end of 30 minutes, all would be normal again.

     Making up a theme song can't be very easy. You might have to make sense of a show premise that may be ridiculous, like "identical cousins" that are "two of a kind," without going into too many specifics regarding molecular genetic biology.  Or you may be forced to introduce characters who are either uninteresting, like "Potsie" or have a stupid name, like "Potsie." Or you may be faced with the fact that nothing rhymes with "Alf."  

     Often it was up to the writer of these songs to convey the entire arc of a sometimes preposterous plot in under a minute. "Okay. We'll need a 50-second song that explains that a family of Halloween-related nuts and misfits, with a servant who is a disembodied hand, a cousin made up only of talking luxurious hair, a carnivorous creeping vine and a fat kid live in a mansion and are funny. If you get stuck, you can use the word "ookie" if you need to. Where are you going?"

     "We also have a show about a crime-fighting millionaire who lives in a cave powered by a nuclear reactor-type-thing, and he wears a cape and ladies hosiery, but don't worry, it's a flattering color, and he has a youthful ward but in those days that just meant you were unemployed, and he wears tights too and his name is Robin, not too gender-specific but it's okay he wears a mask so he won't die of embarrassment each week, and there's a butler, but he doesn't wear tights, maybe on his own time, and- where are you going?" But the writer returns a few months later with a song that just says "Batman" eight times and YOU figure the damn thing out.

     "Okay. This one's a no-brainer. There's a family of six that plays music together, and they ride around in a school bus and tour in Las Vegas, even though only the Mom is old enough to get in, and the 10 year-old who is the only one who has red hair knows a middle-aged manager with no other clients and no one happens to notice that after three years one of the children is different. You got all that? Hey! Come BACK!"

     You might have to explain the bizarre premise DURING the theme song, so that people know what they're getting into, and leave it for the police to sort out the consequences. "Ma'am, we're responding to a complaint of shots fired at a frozen pizza outside of your home." "Oh, yeah, that was me, trying to see if there was any petroleum reserves on my property, like on the 'Beverly Hillbillies.'" "Ma'am, your home is in Brooklyn." "Yes, but as the theme song said, the poor mountaineer was shooting at some food, and, while I am not poor, I do have some credit card debt, and even though this is not technically a mountain, it is Brooklyn Heights. I never actually saw the show, but I'm exploring alternative avenues of possible revenue."

     You'll have to roll with the punches. You may need to build into the song the sound of Dick van Dyke tripping over an ottoman each week even though it's always in the same place, or you may have to change some lyrics if the Professor and Mary Ann don't want to just be "the rest" anymore, or you may have to figure out an entirely new theme for a show about Americans in a Nazi Germany prisoner-of-war camp during World War Two, because they forgot to tell you it was a comedy.

     Even if you came up with a wonderful theme song, eventually you could count on the suits upstairs to chime in and ruin it. And that's how you end up with phrases like, "who can turn the world on with their smile," or "come on, get happy." If we wanted to be turned on and happy, we'd shut the TV off for four or five minutes.

     So, the next time you're watching "Seinfeld" and you hear that theme song that sounds like popcorn popping, just remember that someone had to write those tunes that make you want to go where everybody knows your name, and it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and your friends will be there for you when the rain starts to pour, and all it takes to get there is the courtesy of Fred's two feet.

ROCKET SCIENCE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-07-26)

 

      Now that the Artemis II spacecraft has safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and thank the crew and NASA for a job well done. What exactly was the job? NASA lists the mission as a "crewed lunar flyby," which is a nice way of saying "sightseeing trip." Of course, I jest. There were important reasons for this flight, mainly testing the capabilities of the Orion spacecraft that is to be used for future adventures. But it seems like NASA has a unique way of adding more syllables to a phrase to make it sound more interesting. For example, a spacewalk is referred to as an "extravehicular activity." Try it yourself: you just take a noun, add a prefix and then a second word that could mean just about anything. So, an Easter egg hunt becomes, say, a "post-ovulation reconnaissance operation."

     Anyway, there are other less tangible benefits to the spaceshot, such as bringing together a deeply divided country to share in the glory of the culmination of decades of scientific advancement. I remember watching the lunar landing of Apollo 11 as an 11 year-old, along with the rest of the world, wide-eyed as Buzz Aldrin saluted a flag with the MTV logo on it while a song by the Buggles played in the background. I might be getting some of the details confused, but it was a long time ago. 

     Those were the days when you were told that in America, you could be anything you wanted to be, if you would only "apply yourself." I'm not sure a generous application of ME would have helped the space program, but I was forced to do my homework anyway. Did I really need to know the value of x to become an astronaut? Y? As long as you trained hard and were in peak physical shape, ANYone could become an astronaut in America. Not if you have bone spurs, of course. In reality, only a select few become astronauts- there were only four missionary positions available on the latest flight, for example. But you never know.

     One exciting thing the Artemis mission has done for the first time is get a good look at the dark side of the moon. And what they found is that it's NOTHING like the Pink Floyd album. It has less light and fewer synthesizer solos than previously thought. What if there are space beings living on the dark side of the moon, and we never knew about them because we never saw the dark side of the moon, and all this time they wondered if there was life on other planets, and they concluded, maybe, but they're never going to find there way here, and then all of a sudden they see this spacecraft go by, a flying object which they can't identify, but the government denies it and tries to cover it up, and then everyone sees that it landed and space aliens come out of it and start shagging golf balls?

     Sound far-fetched? Maybe. I've always said that mathematically there has to be life on other planets, that seems like an easy one. But are they planning a trip to visit Earth? It's probably going to take a long time to get here, so I hope they don't have six kids traveling with them like my parents did. "If you don't cut that out right now I'm going to STOP this car and you can all WALK home." And that's when we were sleeping. My parents could only hope that aliens would come and abduct us, maybe perform a few experiments involving how much pain a human could take after not doing the dishes.

     It seems like NASA could have thought up some other important tasks for this mission, to justify it to those who might say we could have spent some of that 93 billion to fix a few things here on Earth, like maybe health care. I've come up with a few: 1.) From a vantage point in outer space, maybe we could find out what exactly does make the world go 'round? Is it money? Is it love? Is it beer? There were a few times at college where beer made the world go 'round and 'round, and it was tough to get it to stop. 2.) More experiments with weightlessness. I don't know what we might specifically learn from it, but I just love to see stuff floating around the space capsule. Let's see how mayonnaise reacts in a zero-G sandwich. 3.) Can you do anything about the weather while you're up there? I don't want to seem selfish, but if we could agree to stick to one season at a time it would be great. 

     It's not all fun and games up there. Apparently, the toilet failed. I would NOT want to be the astronaut that broke the toilet, and then tried to explain it to the others, while looking a little flushed. There is the boredom factor. Ten days is a long time to be away from decent wi-fi. And there is also that dangerous period where you lose all communication while burning through the Earth's atmosphere, and no way to get yourself out of an emergency situation. It's like driving through Passaic with no cell phone and no car radio.

     And yet, I read that the entire National Science Board has been fired. Let's hope that soon, we'll have leaders that lead the way in knowledge and learning, so we don't find ourselves living on the dark side of the Earth.

WHAT'S LEFT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-26-26)

 

      I've got advanced arthritis in my right wrist, and I think I know what caused it. The same thing that's responsible for everything else that's wrong with every male of the species: saying immediately after we sprained something, "It's probably fine," and then going right back to whatever we were doing that caused it to probably not be fine at all. The lesson here folks, is listen to your body- it's trying to tell you something. It starts with a polite whisper: "You know, it might behoove you to have this checked out," and you think, if my body used the word, "behoove," how serious could it be? And after a few months, your body is hitting you over the head with a crowbar and yelling, "HEY STUPID, I told you before to see a doctor! Now LOOK- your stupid head ruined my crowbar."

     At my age, my body is trying to tell me so many things at once I have to yell, HEY, HEY, HEY- ONE AT A TIME. Meanwhile, I'm one limb short. One hand no longer washes the other. If something costs an arm and a leg I have to pay through the nose. My wrist is in such pain I had to use a pair of Vise-grips to open a bottle of Tylenol (true). It was still hard to do, and I almost plugged in my Milwaukee Sawzall to get the job done, but I felt like I wouldn't have stopped with the bottle once I powered up the saw.

     There are some things I cant do lefty, as a mostly right-handed person. I'm a drummer however, and drummers can do things with their left hand that other people wouldn't even attempt, such as half a paradiddle. But if you're used to paradiddling with your right hand, you might be in for a bitter disappointment.

     Brushing my teeth left-handed is a challenge. It's hard to do without also brushing my nose and my chin. I thought it might help to do it while looking in the mirror, but it was worse since I could the see how stupid I looked. Opening a can of soup is next to impossible using a right-handed can opener. I found out that I could open the can upside down with my left hand using the same can opener, which turned out to be much worse than not opening it at all. I hate to open up a can of worms, so I'm glad that I can't at the moment.

     Trying to open "easy-open" packaging is problematic even with two hands. Once you locate the "easy open" tear tab and pull it, you then try to find the two "easy open" edges of the "easy open" zipper pouch and pull them apart. With only one hand, a bag of grated cheese was all of a sudden Fort Knox. I could have tried to open it with my teeth if I wasn't afraid that I would somehow sprain my tooth. So I grabbed a pair of scissors to simply cut it open, and that's when I realized that trying to use a pair of scissors left-handed is a major cause of mental illness.

     My handwriting has gotten worse and worse throughout the years, since I don't write very much in long hand and care much less about what it looks like. As a result, it appears that I'm trying to disguise my own handwriting to cover up a crime. I can't even make out myself what I wrote on the grocery list. Only my wife can, and if she can't decipher it she just assumes that it says "Kit Kat Bars." Even if it doesn't I'll be much happier with the Kit Kat Bars than whatever it really said. So writing lefty is actually a rare improvement, since I have to do it slower.

     Putting on clothes with buttons is difficult with the wrong hand. I read that women's clothing has buttons on the left side because back in the days when women had dressers, it was easier for right-handed buttoners to button. So maybe it'll be easier if I pick up a couple pretty blouses while I'm waiting for my hand to heal, or maybe I'll bring the tube top back into style. It's also harder to zip your fly left-handed. The bottom part and the top are easy, but the middle is tough. If that's true it may be easier for me to zip your fly, and I hope the opportunity never arises. 

     There are a few things I do better lefty, like making a left-hand turn on the ski slope. I admit I'm not the greatest skier, and I've found that if you make too many left-hand turns you end up facing back up the slope. I can also stand on my left leg longer and steadier than my right, which isn't a particularly impressive skill unless you've been asked to do field sobriety test. I don't drink and drive, but if I do ever get stopped by the cops I intend to show them that I can open a can of soup upside down, as an alternative measure of sobriety.

     The one thing I've always excelled at is left-handed compliments. "This meatloaf is AWFULly good!" "Oh! You really think so?" "Yes! TERRIBLy good! And your new hairdo. It makes you seem like a very highly-paid executive! At the Department of Motor Vehicles!" 

     I've never trusted left-handed people. They don't even have hands, they have paws; a left-handed pitcher is a "south-paw." You never heard of a north-paw, did you? Of course not. Did you know that the Latin word for "left" is "sinistra," or "sinister?" That's right, I took Latin in school after hearing a lot of talk about "Latin lovers" and grossly misunderstanding how to become one.

     Well, I suppose I will have to see somebody about this wrist. And if I do want to see someone, I guess I had better bring my glasses.

WHY I'M NOT RICH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-09-26)

    I could have been Rich, but instead I'm just Rick. I missed it by one stinking letter. But the real reason I'm not rich is because I don't think I'd enjoy it as much as I think I should. Having all that money never really makes your problems go away, it just makes them more expensive.

     I'm reasonably comfortable, enough to live in Westchester, which ain't cheap. And yet, there's a whole stratosphere of rich out there, people with money to burn. I asked one of them, do you actually incinerate money? And they said yes, of course, but it doesn't stay lit very long and smells like burning fingerprints. So I sometimes just imagine what it would be like to be wealthy. 

     Who are my real friends? Are they just using me? If so, what for? I'd prefer to remain somewhat useless, as I am now. Instead of a bunch of poor friends who like me only for my money, I'd rather have a bunch of rich friends who don't like me at all because I don't have any. I think.

     Sometimes rich people don't seem like they're having as much fun as the rest of us. At nightclubs there used to be a "V.I.P. section" off to the side, far away from the crowded dance floor, separated by a purple velvet rope. There would sit a beautiful blonde girl on a plush couch, next to a big bottle of champagne in a bucket on a stand. She is snapping her gum, her false-eyelashed eyelids losing the struggle to remain open. But she had worked hard to get that seat. On the other side of the champagne bucket is a beautiful dark-haired guy who appears to have no interest in any subject. He's scrolling through his phone, but it's turned off. She seems to ask him a question, maybe, "Can we go outside of the rope sometime?" And shakes his head without looking up from the phone.

     Rich people often have annoying dogs. They are very small and usually unappealing, because rich people don't want to lose your attention to a mammal lower than themselves on the food chain. They want you to SAY they have a cute dog and not mean it at all. The pet is an accessory, a way to own authentic fur without being politically incorrect. The poodle is sporting a diamond-studded collar, a Valentino Garavani dress, two pairs of Christian Louboutin silver pumps and a superior attitude. But you have to admit it looks great.

     I don't like to drink wine. It gives me asthma and intolerable pretension, and both are hard to get rid of once you have them. In my rich fantasy I order a bottle using an Inspector Clouseau accent, and a sommelier comes to tell me my wine will not go with what I ordered. I tell him neither does my date, but neither of them has to be together for very long, and he leaves in a huff. 

     I don't even like the foods that go with wine. Escargot is a dish that rich people order, so I've been practicing eating snails, in case I come into money. I'm using garden snails since I don't have the money yet for escargot. I just wish someone had told me that you should remove the shell. Something a rich person would say at a restaurant is, "That souffle is simply to DIE for!" Whereas something I might be overheard to say is, "What is IN that? Tastes like something I could die from."

     I hope I don't have to walk the red carpet in a custom-made designer outfit. "Here comes Rick Melén, wearing a suit that appears to be made entirely of cat hair. Rick, who are you wearing and what is its story?" "Actually, there is an Armani suit under here somewhere, it's just that my cat sheds a lot." Then I proceed to sneeze 23 times, because I'm allergic to cats. "I promise you, the suit is nothing to sneeze at." The only satisfaction I have at the moment is that I think my cat is also allergic to me.

     The pressure that money brings is unbearable. If I have a party and something isn't right, people will talk about it, and my name will be mentioned in the same sentence as "simply isn't done." Everything has to be spotless and pristine. "So, is this China Chinese?" a woman whom I've never met before asks. "Yes," I say, "It's almost 400 years old, from the Qing Dynasty." "Oh. So, you bought it used?" God forbid something goes wrong with the toilet, or a weird smell comes from someplace that's not the kitchen. 

     Have you ever heard the phrase, "not a hair out of place?" Well, my hair has never really had a place. Sure, it's often right there on top of my head, but each one of my hairs seems to have different aspirations that are inconsistent with being part of a collective unit. Someone once convinced me to have my hair styled at an expensive salon, and when I came out I had the urge to buy Barbra Streisand records. Perhaps I came too far out.

     There are a couple things I wouldn't mind having the money for, like flying first class. As it is, I usually travel in steerage with the hazardous materials. I'd like to have my own limo driver. I don't even need the limo.

     I have to go now, the paparazzi could be lurking anywhere, waiting for me to do something gross. When do I blow my nose? I have an itch, and it's near enough to my crotch to cause a stir in the society pages.

DNA AND ME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-26-26)

    My sister had her ancestry tested using one of those DNA-based services that compares your sample to millions of users, to uncover secrets about your past that could come back to bite you in the future, such as that you are the illegitimate child of Thomas Jefferson. My family always thought we were of Swedish descent, but it turns out our genetic background is primarily Danish. They use a sample of your saliva to develop a single nucleotide polymorphism, and just saying that left a bad taste in my mouth, so now is not the time for me to swab. Those Denmark genes came from my sister, so perhaps she had a Danish for breakfast that day and it skewed the results.

     23andMe is a genetic testing company named for the fact that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in a human cell (and You). If you send your DNA to them, they will compare it to others of the same genotype in their database of over 3 million applicants. This information can be helpful to those whose family has a history of certain medical conditions that can be proactively treated, such as Parkinson's disease, celiac disease or Alzheimer's disease. Baldness, too is something that is passed down from your mother's side of the family. My own mother wasn't bald, so I should have nothing to worry about. Sometimes I think I might have memory loss due to old age, but usually I just forget about it and it goes away.

     DNA is so much more interesting now than it was when I was in school, and there were things like "endoplasmic reticula" lurking around every corner waiting to jump out at me during a pop quiz. Now DNA actually has practical uses, other than just showing off its polynucleotides. Genetic engineering, for instance, takes the process of animal or plant breeding, which could take generations, and speeds it up so that can be done while you're doing your laundry. 

     I watch a lot of "true crime" shows, and police are always following suspects around waiting for them to throw out their straws, so that they can collect their DNA. Even if I haven't committed any crime, I take a look around after I'm done with my straw, to see if anyone is looking at me holding a Q-tip. But if I HAVE committed a crime I'm much more careful. I don't lick anything even if asked, and if I so much as order an ice cream cone I hold it over my mouth in direct sunlight and wait until it melts, even if I have to wait until spring. I don't secrete ANY bodily fluids, unless I do it in secret. I would like to know what is the grossest thing the police will try to retrieve in order to get my DNA? "Did you see what Melén just threw away there? Go retrieve it, it's gotta have his DNA on it." "I'M not going anywhere near that. YOU go get it." "He's only wanted for jay-walking in a pedestrian zone, so let's just ask him not to do it anymore."

     If the case goes to trial, the DA says, "Mr. Melén's DNA was found at the scene, so he is the bad actor here." "I object," I object. "I was in that scene and there were other actors way worse than I was." And then the DA says, "The presence of that DNA means that Mr. Melén was the only one out of a blahbity-illion people that could have committed the crime. That's a one followed an infinite amount of zeroes." Every time I hear one of those astronomical numbers I wonder whose job is it to actually count to make sure the number is accurate? 

     Advancements in the field have given rise to a new branch of investigation called "forensic genealogy," where even if your third cousin committed a crime, your DNA could identify him. If he was your third cousin once removed though, he might have an alibi depending on when he was removed. The technique is credited with solving the case of the "Golden State Killer," a serial murderer who committed numerous unsolved crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. He was finally identified through DNA samples submitted by his sisters, unrelated to the original investigation. The killer blamed "Jerry," an alter-ego personality, for some of the murders, although it's not clear whether alter-egos have DNA.

     Every time I read that somebody heard a "voice in their head," I wonder why it only ever tells you to kill somebody? It never tells you how to put together the P-trap under your sink, now that you took it apart, for instance. I recently heard a little voice in my head that asked me, "Wouldn't you agree that statistically, the chance of getting a childproof cap open is only slightly higher for adults?" That's when I began to suspect that the little voice in my head was my own.

     Anyway, it's possible that I am biologically related to someone whom I don't even know about, and they're out there, trying to find me, using 23andMe. If it's 23andYou, and you'd like to get in touch, and I don't owe you any money, please feel free to contact me. If it turns out that I am your long lost son, there might be a good reason that you lost me for so long, which you'll find out after I move in with you.

OLYMPIC WRAP-UP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-05-26)

    I didn't get to watch much of the Olympics this year, which makes me uniquely qualified to deliver an uniformed yet unbiased account of the major stories. I did manage to see coverage of the curling events almost EVERY time I turned on the television and even every time anyone else turned on a television. That's the sport where you slide a granite tea kettle along a sheet of ice with a bullseye painted into it, while obsessive-compulsive neat freaks Swiffer the area with extreme zeal, when they instead could save time by using a decent vacuum cleaner. In spite of caring very little about it, I learned that it's basically the same as shuffleboard, and the brooms are actually used to abrade the ice to cause the stone to go farther or in a particular direction. A controversy ensued when the Canadian team was accused of "double-touching" their stones, a practice which is apparently every bit as impolite as it sounds.

     I feel sorry for the athletes who train their whole lives for an Olympic moment, and because of an untimely fall or glitch, they are denied a spot on the awards podium. The smallest factor could mean a fraction of a percentage point off your time. Maybe three medals are too few for top finishers separated by only hundredths of a second in the final scoring. In high school I almost dropped a suggestion into the suggestion box that my math teacher shave off all his body hair so that our math class could go a little faster, but I figured they would know who that one was from. Why not just shell out a few more medals? Rhodium is a useful substance with a high corrosion resistance and a high melting point. As an eleventh place finisher, you should be happy that you proved your mettle with a medal of that metal.

     The women's skating events have a "kiss and cry" area, which is such a good idea that it should be offered as an option for home buyers who are having their own homes built. Pays for itself in dinner parties alone: "Jesus, are you guys going to kiss again? You know, we do have a separate area for that, it's down the hall and to the left. Somebody might already be crying in there, but it's kiss AND cry."

     I always enjoy the downhill skiing events, which I find much more exciting than uphill events. This year an amazing comeback attempt by Alpine legend Lindsey Vonn was seemingly foiled when she sustained an ACL injury just days before she was to compete in the Olympics. However, she decided to run the race anyway, which ended moments later when she brushed a gate and crashed out with a new injury. Who on Earth could have predicted how it would all end, besides EVERYBODY. 

     Certainly her bravery is to be admired, especially when I think of the time that I myself sustained an ACL injury on what was then known as "Birch Hill." I'm not sure if it could have been technically considered a "skiing injury," since I'm sure what I was doing was technically "skiing." I more-or-less slid down the hill sideways, hoping to reach the bottom right around the same time as spring thaw. When it was determined that I would have to turn in the other direction, I instead went downward, faithfully obeying the laws of gravity. My left knee, which has always been something of a scofflaw, continued in a different direction. As I lay cursing on the hill, I thought it would be appropriate that I be airlifted by helicopter to a Swiss hospital attended by blonde nurses, which seemed like a colorful way to end the day. Instead, they stuck me on a toboggan and pulled me painfully down the remainder of the slope, unloaded me into my car, and tried to lock my door from the outside. If I had known they had a toboggan I should have went down on that in the first place.

     Some other notes: I don't know if you follow the women's monobob at all, but the USA won a medal in it. So, if you do follow a woman's monobob, you'll have to do so fairly quickly. The men's hockey team won the top medal this year, at the expense of forward Jack Hughes' two front teeth. If he wants to have gold teeth put in, he'll know where to find the gold. He could also try to make some money with the tooth fairy, something that even as a little kid I thought was creepy and weird. What does a fairy really want with all those teeth? A Norwegian Olympian won a bronze medal, and then admitted that he had cheated. Not in the race, but on his girlfriend. He is a biathlete, so I'm unsure of what gender he was even cheating under.

     There's always a dustup concerning the judging of events that are not measured objectively, and this year was no exception. In the ice dancing competition, a disparity in the scoring was exposed when the French judge awarded disproportionate points to the French pair, even though there was not as much sizzle in their twizzle sequence. I believe that they should rid the sport of subjective judging entirely. In the biathlon they use guns, and if you notice, there are no French judges anywhere near the place.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-29-26)

    What did you do for Valentine's Day? I hope you took your honey to a romantic spot and wooed her a little bit. Just a little, you don't want to overwoo. A nice restaurant, some flowers, chocolate. That's what I did and it worked like a charm. She fell in love with me all over again. What made her fall in love with me in the first place? That's not an easy one to answer. You know how sometimes a pathetic creature is even more loveable due to his patheticness? And you just want to take it home and put it in a shoebox, punch some holes in it (the shoebox not the creature) with some lettuce leaves, and nurse it back to health? And all the weird things about it you only find more endearing over time? And then your Mom makes you release it back into the wild, where it probably perished due to its lack of natural survival skills? I have to sit for a moment.

     Anyway, Valentine's Day is a chance to rekindle those feelings. Start with the right restaurant. I suggest one that doesn't use a lot of garlic in food preparation. A good atmosphere is key. Mostly nitrogen, some oxygen, a little argon, all that is good. If there is more garlic than romance in the air, enough to repel vampires, for instance, it's counter-productive. You also don't want to take her to a place that's known for Waffle House-type fist fights. An eatery festooned with crime-scene tape may seem lively the time, but use your best judgment. 

     I got my lady love chocolates. "Wow," she said, "a Kit Kat bar 32-pack. You shouldn't have." "Well," I clarify, "they are 'Fun Size.'" "I guess we'll see, won't we," she added cryptically. Chocolate as a Valentine's gift says to a woman, "I love you no matter what size you become," so make sure you will.

     Lighting is important. There used to be something called "dining by candlelight," which has been replaced with, "dining by flickering LEDs made to look like candlelight, but falling far short." Fire marshals are not known for their contributions to ambience. Low lighting is flattering to the female form and conducive to good digestion. If you can see anything you're eating without turning on your cell phone, the lighting is too bright. 

     Music is the lubricant of love, although there are several products available that work even better. If you know the fox trot, that's great, but make sure you practice it in front of the mirror first. Any other animal trotting is borderline-disturbing. A waltz should be in 3/4 time. If you try to waltz to something in 7/4 meter and you break your ankle in two places, don't come crying to me. Hustle dancing on the first date after more than two drinks is not a good idea, because eventually you'll knock a full tray off a waitress's arm. The mood is now set. "Would you like to dance?" I ask. "Of course," she replies. "Great!" I gush. "Go ahead, and I'll stay here and order coffee. It'll be here by the time the song ends." If you're choosing the music yourself, try not to be too obvious about your eventual end game. "Chick-a-boom," by Daddy Dewdrop, is a negative example. Suggesting a tap-dance number should be avoided.

     Should you order for the lady? Very chivalrous, and gives you a chance to minimize the financial exposure without her knowing a thing about it. Choose the wine carefully, based on the entree, the mood and if it has a French-sounding name.

     Ask the waiter to take a snapshot of the two of you to post the special day on social media. Careful: if you smile too much, you'll appear too eager, and if you don't smile enough, you'll appear as though ordering the clams was a mistake. Remember to hand the waiter YOUR phone and not hers, otherwise she's going to post the picture that SHE looks good in, regardless of what a mess you look like.

     You decide to go in for the kiss. Do you know what you're doing? Let's go over it. First, if the lighting is low, locate the exact position of the lips, which may have shifted in transit. She might be looking through her purse for pepper spray, so wait till she's done. Does she wear braces? Good to know. If French kissing, watch out for les dents. Both your and her eyes should be closed. If you open yours to see if hers are open, and they are, you will both bust out laughing and ruin the moment, which will cost you another bottle of wine.

     Let's say the evening is going well. REALLY well. She suggests a massage. Fine, I say, but I'm ticklish everywhere on my body except for three places. I meant on ME, she clarifies. Of course, duh. And use plenty of oil, she instructs. I don't have any massage oil, but I do have a full can of WD-40, and she doesn't seem to know the difference. I hit the doorknob with it while she isn't looking, and that works great now, too.

     So if things didn't go that great this year, make sure to refer to this column next February 14th and let Love conquer All!