THE FALL GUY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-24-24)

     Every fall when I walk outside the house I smell that smell in the air, and I panic for a fleeting moment. It's the smell of overdue homework, of menacing teachers, of disappointed parents. Even after all these years I still feel a twinge of guilt for having made teachers work so hard for such meager results. 

     To my Dad, good grades meant a smooth four years of college, which meant an on-time graduation, resulting in potentially one less kid cluttering up the house. When you have six children, churning out college graduates is like an assembly line, and I was threatening to hold up the works like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.

     Teachers told my parents that I wasn't applying myself. But certainly neither of us would have benefitted by a more liberal application of me. They told me I was a smart-ass, correctly identifying the most intelligent part of myself. They would call my parents in for a conference, and I can only imagine how it went: "Your son is not taking his work seriously," the teacher would say. "Yes, we notice the same thing at home- he does his chores un-seriously." "He's becoming a disruption in class." "There too? He's a disruption around the house also." "At school, he complains about his homework." "Oh really? At home, he complains about his schoolwork." "Well, I'm glad we had this chat, it seems like we're in total agreement."

     My parents, teachers, guidance counselors, all said the same thing in different ways: I was a slacker not living up to my potential. I told them that they couldn't be more wrong, because they had vastly overestimated my potential. So they sent me off to a BOCES vocational testing facility, where I undertook a barrage of tests meant to derive suggestions as to what career path I might undertake, based on my intelligence and interests. I was expecting the results to show that I was best suited to become whatever the opposite of rocket scientist is. I definitely was not expecting the outcome I got, a recommendation of "flower arranger" (I'm not kidding about this). To this day, whenever I see an arrangement of flowers, I think, "Those were probably arranged by someone who did not apply themself in math class."

     I'm not sure where it started to go wrong, since I began as a gifted student. Excelling in blocks, coloring and the alphabet, my academic career was off to a rousing start. In middle school I was a promising pupil, but by high school nobody believed my promises anymore.

     It's too late now, but if I had studied harder in science and mathematics, perhaps I could have become part of the team that developed artificial intelligence. I would have had the most to gain from any intelligence that didn't have to come from me. But I am conceptually retarded in math. I couldn't put two and two together, and what if they don't even want to be together? People assume that traffic and weather want to be together, and both of them keep getting worse, so look how that turned out.

     Finally, just when it seemed like my academic career would come to a grinding halt in the 12th grade, I figured out the key to writing a credible term paper. All this time I had focused on finding a clear-sighted, intelligent thesis and supporting it with dumb analysis. After my moment of awakening, I realized that a ridiculous, far-fetched premise would be much easier to prop up with my fatuous arguments, and I blossomed as an scholar, getting accepted to one of the premier communications schools in the country.

     In college as a serious student, I prepared myself for the first job in my 44-year career at the most famous of the broadcast networks in the world: watching television for eight hours a day. There was never a job more suited to my talents and training. I understood that eventually I would marry an intelligent wife and let her do the thinking.

     And that has worked out spectacularly. My wife is well-read, quick-witted and wise. She provides me with half of an insightful conversation in many subjects. I'm supposed to supply the other half. For my part I like to think of myself as the "yang" to her "yin," a perfect counterpart who provides what she might be lacking at the time: a steady barrage of one-liners during sensitive parts of a movie (which in my defense are the boring parts). 

     And yet, that smell of fall still has the same effect now as it did then, and with a fresh jolt of anxiety I realize why it's so strong: I never handed in my final high school term paper. If my teacher gets a hold of me now, he's going to throttle me within an inch of his life, because he must be really old by now. I bolt back inside the house where the only smell in the air is the cat box, and dealing with that is long overdue also.

A FITTING TRIBUTE

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-10-24)

     This is how I shop for clothes: I bought six pairs of Lee jeans from Amazon, 34 waist, 34 length. Can you believe that after all these years I'm still a 34-inch waist? Okay, 35. 36, but that's my final offer. How do I keep my slim waistline? By tightening my belt with a chain wrench before zipping up my pants. The waist is a terrible thing to mind.  

     The truth is that I don't know much about how to shop for clothing. Manufacturers should realize that most guys don't put a lot of thought into it. They should just decide what we want, produce it, send it to us based on the sizes we tell them (such as, "oh, pretty normal-size I guess," or "just round it off to the nearest whole number"), ship it to us, debit our bank accounts and leave us completely out of the process.

     And do it periodically, because guys never throw out clothing. I have a pair of jeans that has a rip above the knee that's eventually going to go all the way around, and then I'll have to decide if there's such a thing as half a pair of shorts. 

     I ignore terms like "the rise" when shopping for pants, because it sounds like something that's none of my business. "Inseam" I guess is pretty self-explanatory, but I'd like to be able to measure my pants without turning them inside-out. I wear my jeans pretty long, in case I have cowboy boots on, but when I wear sneakers the cuffs scrape along the ground, picking up all kinds of things that may later be introduced as evidence.

     I haven't bought any shirts for a long time, because shirts are hard. Xtra-Large usually means tall and portly, whereas I am not extra-tall but I am extra-whimsical, and that's a very hard size to fit. Tee shirts aren't much easier. If I buy a Large it's sometimes too small. If I buy an Xtra-Large it's usually too large. If I buy a Medium, sometimes it's TOO medium.

     It's even worse for women, where the sizing isn't based on empirical measures, such as inches, but on an inscrutable foundation of magical premises, the most important of which being that no woman is satisfied with her actual size. EVER. So clothes-makers jump through hoops trying to find phrasing that dances around the reality of the facts. When clothing designers coined the term "plus size," they were trying to be sensitive to the idea that it's sometimes hard to lose weight. "Plus size" sounds like an asset: there's just more to love. "Multiplication size," even if often more accurate, would not service this purpose. "Petite" is an honorific that makes an appealing term for women who can't reach any of the kitchen cabinets. Some "petites" are so petite that they end up in the "juniors" department, wearing styles that their Moms wouldn't let them out of the house wearing, except that THEY'RE the Moms now. Shopping in the "Misses" Department at your age tells you up front that you're way off the mark. 

     Confounding it all are the sizes themselves. The numbers are often inconsistent between manufacturers, not to mention internationally. You can still try to force reason upon the issue. To accurately determine your waist, wrap the tape measure around the narrowest part of your torso, just above your belly button. The tape should be snug but not tight. Okay, ease up a bit, you're turning blue. You seem to have keeled over. Let's move on. Numerical sizing for women is supposed to take into account her proportions, and provide a tailored fit, taking into account her various feminine attributes. If, as she ages, there is an  inverse proportion, complicated math may be involved. "Can you believe that after all these years I STILL wear a size zero?!" "Wow, that's  the same size as before you were born!" 

    Some sizes run small. Well, if they were actual inches they'd have no choice but to run in place right where they were. Maybe you want something with a "fuller cut?" Don't overfill it or you might spill something. Maybe you'd like something "curvy" and "off-shoulder?" If so, the road I live on might be perfect for you.

     I've gone shopping with my wife, and it's a very frustrating experience. She wanders from one rack to the next, and picks up each sleeve and rubs it and goes "Hmmm." Women have a special way of divining whether a garment fits/ is the right price/ looks good on her just by touching it once, whereas it might take her several years to figure out that her boyfriend doesn't fit at all.

     I just thought of THE PERFECT THING for you! It's asymmetrical, bat-wing, boat-neck, box-pleated, patch-pocket, notch-collar, puff-sleeved, adjustable-suspension, automatic-transaxle and self-leveling, and you can drive it off the lot today with only 20 percent down! The bottom line, which should fall somewhere near your bottom, is this: If you dress well, and everything fits, you may finally be taken seriously at work. And as a humor writer, that's the last thing I need.

PAST TENSE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-26-24)

     You may say I'm a relic, you may say I'm a troglodyte, you may say I'm a Neanderthal, just because I think that there are some things that are automated that maybe shouldn't be. You may also think I'm a circumlocutionist, but I'd have to look that up before agreeing with you. 

     I'm not saying I want to go back to washing my clothes in the river, because who knows where the guy up the river's clothes have been? I don't want to return to the days before automatic appliances came along to save us so much time that now we were free to go to the gym and work off all the extra pounds we gained when automatic appliances started doing all the work for us. No, I want a refrigerator with a "Shelvador!" I want a dishwasher with "Faucet-Flo!" I want a washing machine with a "Surgomatic" push-button control!

     I'm just saying that automation isn't everything. Did you ever go on the "people mover" at the airport? It's a treadmill-type device that offers you the chance rest your tired feet while it moves you AND your suitcase at a speed somewhere between "mosey" and "inert," for a stretch of distance roughly the equivalent of 20 feet or so. The fact that a snail could beat me to my seat and get slime all over my blanket makes me crazy.

     Music streaming services have taken away the artists right to bury a song in the middle of an album that you hate at first but eventually grow to somewhat tolerate. And because of streaming, nobody makes "mix tapes" any more. That's where I took all the best songs from all my albums and put them all on a tape for you. If I made you a mix tape, that meant that I love you. I love you, but I hate your taste in music, and I'm hoping that you'll play it when I'm around, even though you don't like it, because you think that I will because you love me too, now that you realize how much I love you. Do you think your Spotify algorithm would go through all that? Your Spotify algorithm would dump you for a whole lot less than I've put up with so far. OH, and I want my mix tape back.

     We have a water cooler at work that activates by a proximity switch that senses your body heat and emits water into your cup when you get close to it. It was introduced during the pandemic, when people thought you were going to get cooties by touching something that somebody else touched who had cooties. My sister used to wash everything in her grocery bag when she got home because I guess maybe she heard of soup cans dying during the pandemic. Anyway, the fact that the automatic water cooler doesn't work very well is disappointing, because I thought it would be one of the few things that got turned on when I was near it.

     My wife has an automatically adjusting driver's seat in her car. All you do is press a button and PRESTO! About five minutes later, my knees have almost disengaged from the steering wheel. I ask my driver's seat, "Is this going to take much longer?" "Nooooo. This is what I do. It's my jam." "That's okay, I'll just do it myself, I'll just-" "No, no, no, I got this! It'll only take a few more minutes." "Really, I'll just use the lever and-" "Nonsense, now you just sit back and relax." "Those are the only two things I seem not able to do right now."

     And in my car, there's a setting for the headlights that automatically turns on the high beams when I don't need them, and switches to the low beams when I can't see well enough. Someone probably stayed up all night thinking of that, then got into an accident on the way home testing it out.

     My Dad loved gadgets, especially automatic gadgets that would eliminate the drudgery of everyday tasks, such as brushing your hair. If you were to brush your hair 200 or 300 times a day, imagine the time you would save if you had an automatic hairbrush to do it for you? Well my Dad managed to unearth just such a device, and I have four sisters who, when this hair-eating menace yanked out their delicate follicles, barely escaped with their lives. HOWEVER, if you are a brother with four sisters and you pull their hair out 200 or 300 times a day, imagine the time you would save if you had an automatic hairbrush to do it for you?

     Why can't somebody invent something REALLY useful, like a device that senses that a "Kars for Kids" commercial is about to air, and mutes my radio or television automatically for exactly 30 seconds?

     I think the worst offender is the auto-fill function of word processors. All you have to do is start a sentence, and it will figure out what you want to say and say it for you. At least I think that's what it does, I broke it by trying to make it guess what I was going to say.

     I guess I'll never really have a "smart home" as long as I happen to be living in it.

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU ONLY MAKES YOU FATTTER

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-19-24)

     Is it my imagination or is it getting harder and harder just to maintain my current weight? As I get older I have to watch what I eat, because if I don't I might stab my fork into a vegetable by mistake.

     I weigh myself every day before my shower, and I subtract a couple pounds for my pants, a pound for each sock and one for my tee shirt, My hair is long right now so that's another couple pounds, and 50 pounds for my knapsack. If I notice an uptick in my weight, I just take a couple more things out of the knapsack. After the subtraction I weigh 120, which pretty good for a woman my weight.

     I never want to go on a diet because my doctor tells me I have to, especially if he's overweight, too. And if he tells me I need to go on a low sodium diet, I take the advice with a grain of salt. But if it turns out I need to alter my approach at the table, how to go about it?  Each diet has its pros and cons. With the paleo diet you eat the same things someone from the paleolithic era would have eaten, such as vegetables, fruits, possibly a Glyptodon. The pros are, you eliminate all processed foods, and it's simple to follow. The cons? Name me one person from the Paleolithic era who's still alive. Also, Glyptodons are chewy.

     There's the keto diet which, by starving the body of carbohydrates, "tricks" the body into producing ketones, which then fuel the body instead. It may be effective for short-term weight loss, but also has its pros and cons. Pros: You can eat all the Brussels sprouts and cauliflower you want. Cons: You can eat all the Brussels sprouts and cauliflower you want.

     There's the Mediterranean diet, which tries to emulate the eating habits of countries that use olive oil, fish, potatoes, fruits and vegetables. Cons: It's expensive to eat healthy. Pros: The Mediterranean is really nice this time of year.

     There's the Mayo Clinic diet, which is high on foods with a lot of mayonnaise. I didn't actually look that one up but it seems pretty obvious.

     The doctor is just going to tell you not to go in for any fad diets, simply cut down on portions, eat sensibly and exercise more. And you start to think, well, that makes sense, maybe I can do this. Then he says all that stuff that they say really quietly at the end of a commercial, only it's so fast you can't really make it out, and you just hear fleeting snippets, like, "use responsibly," "do not take during pregnancy, or before, or after," "not liable for your problems," "don't be such a baby," "suck it up," "may cause death" and "you do a lot of other even dumber things." And you say, "What?" and he says, "Oh, nothing." Yet they always take your deductible in advance in case you don't make it through the consultation.

     My wife drives me nuts because she can order a salad with just about anything in it, and then rave about how great it was for the rest of the night, and she never puts on any weight. She could order a salad made out of bar bells and never gain a pound.

     I am a hound for chocolate, and I smuggle it away like a dope addict and eat it in private. We had a dinner party and Margaret and Gene brought this great chocolate cake with a ton of chocolate frosting on it. The fact that I could have my cake and eat it too was just the icing on the cake (Okay, I'm done now). When I finished the last crumb there was still icing all over the plate, so I waited until my wife went into the kitchen and started licking the plate. I glanced over at the doorway and there she was, with a smug look on her face where the shocked and disappointed look usually is. She said, "I bet myself five dollars that you would do that and you did." I said, "Well, if you use the money to buy more cake we can do this again and eventually you'll have a million dollars. That's why they describe cake as 'rich.' By the way, exactly which rule of etiquette says that you can't lick icing off a plate?" I doubled down. She said, "The rule of etiquette that says you can't lick icing off a plate."

     I feel like restaurants have my back by making it so expensive to eat out that you could lose a couple quick pounds every time you go, just from your wallet. Recently I ordered a chicken sandwich and asked for extra mayonnaise. They cheerfully provided a tiny cup of it, and even more cheerfully added an extra .75 cents to the bill at the end. If they start charging me when I ask for a straw, that will be the last straw. And in New York there's a bar I go to that when I ask for a beer, they won't tell me how much it is, as if such things aren't discussed among civilized people. Instead they bring the check in a little tray, as if I'm going to try to deduct it on my tax return.  

     That reminds me of the 1040 diet which, every April, when you realize much you're going to lose, spoils your appetite. You think I made that one up? We'll see in seven months.

PLANE TO SEE

  ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-12-24)

     This year we attended an air show over the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. I'd never been to one before, and it was quite spectacular. The hardest thing to get used to at an air show is looking up and noticing a huge A-18 Growler silently flying disturbingly close to you. A second or two later an Earth-shattering noise rolls through, unaccompanied. 

     There were stunts, intricate formations, aviatrics (I made that word up) and a lot of really cool hardware. The dedication and precision of man coming together with machine was awe-inspiring. It's a demonstration, a symbol of and a tribute to the brave men and women working to support us in the air as well as on the ground. Present were aircraft like the F-22 Raptor, a supersonic fighter that went straight up into the air and let out an array of glowing, smoking flares. An A-10C Thunderbolt is a twin-engine jet designed to support ground missions. It can fly with high maneuverability at low speeds and low altitudes. For this particular operation it caused a high degree of anxiety as it buzzed about 200 boats viewing the proceedings from off shore.

     The C-17 Globemaster transport plane is a behemoth that looks like it just came from the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord at Shady Maple, then ate the Shady Maple. It's made to carry people and materiel during combat flights as well as humanitarian missions. The highlight of the event was a performance by the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team of the Italian Air Force. Painting the sky with plumes of red, white and green smoke, they performed tight maneuvers in crowd-pleasing patterns.

     Who exactly is in charge of discovering just how far you can push these nimble giants? I'm glad it's not me. "We tested out some great new stunts at the lab, and I have some good news and some bad news about how it went. First, the good news: There's free coffee at the commissary until 1400 hours. The bad news is we've lost a couple of planes. Fourteen, to be exact. They were flying in formation, but the formation they were flying in was the 'infinity' symbol, which we've never actually tried before. We're pretty sure they're still out there somewhere. They're solar-powered, and it's taking forever to find them."

     I couldn't help fantasizing that I was a stunt pilot in the air show. I'm not sure why I was chosen for this fantasy, someone who is as vehicularly-challenged as I am: when I was younger, in my parents car, I thought we would get in trouble for passing a sign that said, "No Passing." I also suffer from motion sickness. Even if I'm watching a courtroom drama on television and somebody files a motion I get a little queasy. But in a fantasy, you can do a lot of stuff that common sense, law, and the rules and regulations of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleading squad would normally prevent you from doing.

     In the wild blue yonder I perform a perfect "barrel roll." The plane goes up and continues upside down, before righting itself in its original direction. Picture the path of a corkscrew, but don't forget to take the cork out before I do this thing. Next I do an aileron roll, which turns the plane 360-degrees on its lengthwise axis. Then I fly straight up about a thousand feet and go into a stall. That's because the keys fall out of my ignition and land somewhere in the back of the plane, and I have to dig around and find them in the rear. Some of my internal organs are also back there so I collect those, too. I can almost hear the cheers on the ground. Wait until they find out that I did all of this by mistake, trying to land.

     Soon it becomes apparent to Air Control that I don't know how to fly a plane. I should have received at least the bare minimum of training for this fantasy. The boys in the tower are going to have to "talk me down," like they do in the movies. An Air Force colonel grabs the microphone and calls into my earpiece. I had taken off the headphones to listen to my iPod, but now that I hear him chattering away I put them back on. The Colonel yells, "MELÉN: You're too high." I reply, "It only seems that way." "Back off the throttle. NOW." I grab the only two things that move and pull them back. One of them is my knee, so that does nothing. The other, luckily, is the throttle. The Colonel yells, "I don't like the  attitude of your fuselage." "Me neither," I reply, "I'm grounding it for a WEEK if I ever get it on the ground." "Bring your nose up, NOW." "You're right, that's better- now all I can see is the ceiling." 

     But then I land the plane perfectly, and as my fantasy would have it, beautiful actress Catherine Keener is in the tower. I ask her to dinner, and she says, "Thanks anyway, but I have a date tonight with the Colonel. He's quite a man!. OH- also, some other great news! I won your fantasy football pool!" I'm woken out of my daydream by a voice coming over the PA at the Stunt Flight Test Lab- turns out they just invented a new version of the "barrel roll," and this one has poppy seeds AND sesame seeds on it!

THE APPRENTICE

 

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-24-24)

     I guess that when the television industry has had enough of me, I'll need to find something else to do with myself. Maybe I could work in a trade, since I like to work with my hands. Is acupuncture a trade? I think I could kill at that job. Glass blower? How hard could it be? Even if you blow it, things went pretty well. Yoga instructor, as long as I can just explain what to do rather than showing you. When we discuss the cat pose, I demonstrate by sitting on a newspaper and knocking all your pens off the table. Maybe I'll get into consulting, if there's a business model where I ask the questions. How about horse groomer? "You look fine, but you could do with a little horse-scaping. That will be $40.00."

     I had to hire an electrician to come over and re-wire the ceiling fan that I hooked up using a YouTube video, and I realized that being an electrician would be the perfect job for me. Besides electrocution, what's the worst that could happen? My idea was to apprentice at the craft by having him come back several times after I try to fix things. If you watch enough YouTube videos, you feel like you can do anything.

     I was pretty much relegated to setting up the ladder. Let me pick his brain- I need to know more about the business structure. "So is there a corporate ladder or do you need to provide your own? What's the quickest way to get to the top?" "Well, I work for myself and I slept my way to the top. Could you set up the ladder vertically?" I was learning so much already.

     "Is that a jumper wire?" I asked. "Actually, yes it is." "I thought I saw it move." He says he needs to plug in his cordless drill, and this guy is supposedly the expert. "You have an outlet?" "I have an outlet, but I'm not sure we want to get into that here."

     He had his nose inside the circuit box, so I was basically his eyes and ears to the outside world. He said, "Can you find the ground?" I felt this was a test. I said, "Isn't it right down there?" But he was still looking inside the box. While I was thinking, outside the box, he said, "Yup, you're right. There it is. Good! Hand me those pliers?" He was twisting some wires. I thought this was a good time to bond. I said, "If you want to see the ground, come out drinking with me, and you'll see it at about 1:30, 2:00 on a good night, 12:15 on an even better night." "There's a pair of strippers over there." He was pointing somewhere. "Oh, so you know the place? I'm like a fixture there. That's an electrician joke."

     I think I had his attention. I said, "Listen, I've been writing some television scripts. One involves an electrician and an apprentice, and they are also private detectives. The apprentice is actually the smart one, and the electrician is always getting into trouble, and screwing things up, and the apprentice is always talking them out of a jam, but the electrician stumbles upon the answer to the crime without knowing it, and it's the apprentice who actually puts 2 and 2 together, because the police have already zeroed in on the ex-husband, but he didn't do it." "Mmm-hmmm. But if the apprentice was the smarter one why isn't he the electrician? Make 30 dollars more an hour." "I can set it in a post-apocalyptic world, if that makes you feel any better. Wait- you're paying me $40 dollars less than you?"

     I can explain the basics of electricity to you right now, if you'd like to become my apprentice's aide. It's an unpaid position, but people do a lot worse things for a lot more money. You can think of electricity as if it were water. Pretend a wire is the hose. Amperes, named for physicist André-Marie Ampère, represents the amount of water flowing. Voltage, named for Alessandro Volta, is the water pressure. Ohms, named after Georg Ohm, are like a sprinkler at the end of the hose, causing resistance to the water's flow. 

     The rickster, named after myself, is a unit that measures the amount of water you would need to stand in while working on an open circuit before becoming electrocuted. As you can see, everything is named after the guy who invented it. So to solidify my legacy in the field, I need to discover something. What I've discovered is that it seems like a lot of work to be an electrician.

     You need a license, which I already have, with only a few speeding tickets. And you have to be certified in your state. People have often said I am certifiable, so I'm just about ready to go. But I might just become a YouTube electrician instead, and make videos right here at home. I have the camera all set up and ready to go, but I can't get it to play back on the TV, so I'll probably have to call the electrician back.

LEFT OUT TO DRY

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-01-24)

     I was riding my motorcycle the other day, one hand on the throttle, the other hand on the brake (not at the same time), and it dawned on me that an estimated ten percent of all people in the world have to ride a motorcycle the other way around. I guess this means that left-handed motorcyclists stop when they should go, turn to when they should turn fro, go back when they should go forth. Are there motorcycles for left-handed people? Or are they cast adrift, like left-handed Jimi Hendrix playing the National Anthem upside down on a right-handed guitar, proudly hailing at the twilight's last gleaming from the other side of the fretboard?

     I don't want to imply anything about left-handed people that you don't already know, but the word in Latin for "left" is "sinistra," or sinister. Yes, I took two years of Latin in middle school, and if Latin hadn't already been a dead language I would have killed it right where it stood. But even back then, when people were saying things like, "ubi est agricola," they knew southpaws were different, maybe because they had paws.

     There are so many things a left-handed person has to learn to do backwards that the rest of us take for granted. At every meal at the restaurant, their knives and forks are on the opposite sides. So instead of eating what's right, they're stuck with what's left.

     Using a pair of scissors is a frustrating undertaking for left-handed people, and I can only imagine what it was like before they were sold in pairs. Taking a picture with a traditional camera must be a real pain in the aperture for lefties, who have to reach over the lens to push the button. It makes me shutter every time.

     I made the mistake of buying a jacket once in Europe, where the zipper is on the opposite side. This is also true of the buttons on women's blouses, and that's one of the things that makes cross-dressers so cross. I once read that the reason that women's clothing has the buttons on the left side was because it was easier for their dressers to dress them from the front. But what if their dresser was left-handed? You just can't win.

     A tape measure pulled to the left means whatever you're measuring will be calibrated in the metric scale. Objects may be smaller than they appear, apology accepted.

     These days you can thank goodness that Google was invented, so you can order left-handed versions of many things right-handers take for granted. And while you're thanking goodness, thank it for inventing a keyboard to replace an actual typewriter, where the carriage return is on the right.

     Having "two left feet" is considered an insult. It means you can't dance. But really, dancing is actually one of the few things where it doesn't matter if you're right-handed or left. My dog has two left feet, and she can  do the foxtrot if the music is right and there is romance in the air.

     The idea of two distinct hemispheres of the brain came to light in the 1960s, when Nobel winner Roger W. Sperry's research detailed evidence that the right side of the brain controlled artistic functions, while the left side managed the analytic operations. This led to a belief that there were "right-brained" and "left-brained" people. This theory has since been disproven, but if the scientists who published the study were right-brained, who knows how accurate it was.

      Last year I broke my right foot right after we had bought tickets to "Prairie Home Companion," but nothing was going to keep us from that show. Not even my wife injuring HER right foot. So there we were, driving through New York City traffic. My left foot is usually only used for depressing the clutch pedal in my car, but now on my wife's automatic it was called upon to depress the  accelerator AND the brake. Which was much more depressing. All the while my right foot was making smug and unhelpful comments like how "reckless" driving is a malapropism if you get into a wreck.

     How hard could it be to be left-handed in a right-handed world? I got hold of a left-handed guitar and played it right-handed, through a loud amplifier. And the sounds that came out were surprisingly similar to those made if I played it left-handed. Or if I ran over it with my car. While driving with my left foot. My wife said that if I really wanted the true Jimi Hendrix experience I should burn the guitar like he did at the Monterey Pop Festival. "Great idea!" I said. "Maybe after my next-" "I already burned it," she said. Well, I'm sure it was great. Anyway, here's to you, left-handed warriors of the world, you are modern-day heroes. Although that might be a bit of a left-handed compliment.

YOU SHOULD BE IN PICTURES

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-18-24)

 

     Last week was National Camera Day, when cameras get together to celebrate, get drunk, make fools of themselves and promise not to take pictures of each other. I couldn't really call in sick and take the day off work to celebrate, not with all those cameras around. Since hardly anyone even has an camera anymore, I guess you could call it National Phone Day. There's a website that follows all these "National Days," and it offers a timeline of significant events in the history of photography, and invites us all to celebrate the camera as a way to tell our story. You should always tell your "story" while you're living your "truth, especially if you're on a "journey." Usually if I'm telling a story I pretty much made it up, and that's my truth.

     I was always fascinated by photography, starting in my teenage years, and my Dad even bought me a camera for graduating something he was surprised I graduated, like the 8th grade. It was a very nice camera, too, an Olympus SLR. I made a darkroom in my basement and actually printed photographs. I had an enlarger, and all the chemicals in various trays, and a "safe" light, so you couldn't really see how unsafe all of it was. It was definitely much safer than when I had a chemistry set down there. You were supposed to perform experiments like testing for pH or seeing how crystals form. I was focused on mixing the chemicals together to see if I could make them blow up. But I did learn some useful things, like cats hate having their pH taken. My Mom wholeheartedly welcomed the transition to photography, but she did get nervous when I told her was down there blowing up my photographs.

     I fantasized that my Dad and I would bond through our photography. My Dad had a Nikon, which was considered the Cadillac of cameras, just as Cadillac was considered the Nikon of watches, and Rolex was considered the Dom Pérignon of shoes. We could go out with all our camera gear, automatic winders, extra lenses and batteries, waiting for that once-in-a-lifetime subject to come along. I was nervous about seeing a once-in-a-lifetime subject at my age- what does that say about the length of my lifetime?

     It's just a matter of time before we're going to find something rarely seen in nature to photograph. You have to be patient. I'm very patient, but I'm also getting very hungry. Finally we see it: A woman wearing a shower cap in broad daylight. Dad says, "Let's get a picture of her and put it on Facebook. We'll cube out her identity so she doesn't sue us." "Dad, we're going to put her on Facebook without her face? Also, Facebook is not invented yet." He says, "I know it's not exactly nature, but at least it's human nature." "Cut her a break, Dad, maybe she just came from  baby shower. Hey, Dad! Isn't that a passenger pigeon over there?" "A what?" "It's a bird thought to have been extinct since the year 1900!"

     "Okay, this is good. First, let's figure out your depth of field. Walk off in feet the distance to your subject. Now, adjust your aperture accordingly. What's your F-stop? That was a trick question- aperture's the same as F-stop. Now take a reading on the light meter. What does it say? Really? It must be nighttime. Wait- you have it upside down. Okay, set your shutter speed based on the light reading. Low light, so we'll need the tripod. What's your ASA set at?" "Dad, the bird's been gone about 10 minutes." The passenger pigeon had hopped on the local.

     My friend Georgia is always posting a fantastic photo of an amazing scene, like a beautiful castle at the top of a canyon on top of a mountain, with a sheer 1,000-foot drop on all sides. First of all, I'm not scaling that cliff to come up there and conquer you in your stupid castle.  When you finally come down for pizza, and you will, because the pizza guy's not going all the way up there either, I'll slay you then. I might even smite you also, just out of spite. My point, if there is one, is that I can no longer believe that any photo is real. There is photo-shopping going on, there are filters, there is retouching.

     I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I may be one of the most photographed people in America. That's because I've taken the train into Manhattan for 44 years now. And when I arrive it's like Grand Central Station there, and every tourist is running around with a camera taking pictures, and I must be in the background of quite a few of them. For that reason I'd also like to point out that any photo taken of me may not be real, and may be altered or retouched. And if it is real, please take a few moments to alter it and retouch it, because I'm much better-looking in person. And don't retouch it in an inappropriate place.

BEATING THE HEAT

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-03-24)

 

     It was above 90 degrees for three days in a row last week, and that's the definition of a heat wave. If I could not keep from crying and it was tearing me apart, that's the definition of a heat wave burning in my heart, and luckily it didn't come to that. But it was really hot. The city opened over 500 cooling centers so that people who didn't have air conditioning could get a little cooler. I tried one of these centers, and when I emerged I was into Radiohead, I now never wear Crocs for any reason, I lasered off my tattoo that said "I heart my poodle"  and I no longer own a sweater-vest, so it worked.

     What are the rules at the cooling center? How long can I stay? If I'm visiting New York and I'm too cheap to get a hotel room, can I go to the cooling center for a couple days? Can I bring a date even if her apartment has air conditioning? If I bring a girl who's super hot, what's she going to look like when she comes out?

     I still can't believe that when we moved into our house the previous owners had not installed central air conditioning, and were relying on a hodgepodge of window units of varying effectiveness. I guess they were counting on the pool to lower their body temperatures. That pool in our backyard, oblivious to the hazards of global warming, maintains an average summer temperature of about 40 degrees. I thought it would be warmer if I measured it in Celsius, but it's even worse. "Rick Melén was hospitalized yesterday for hypothermia, and is expected to fully recover, but only to his previous state."

     So we did what anyone with a questionable understanding of geography would do, and that's go south, where it was cooler. Just traveling down the Garden State Parkway is always an experience. My Android Auto GPS map informed me that 10 miles away was a 20 minute slowdown. To me that's not a transportation problem, it's a math problem. How fast to I need to go NOW to make up for the time that the slowdown is going to slow me down? I calculated that If I got to the slowdown in two minutes, I could make up the time. I will need to go 300 miles per hour.

     Let me know if you've seen this: Sometimes the GPS will offer an alternate route: "17 minutes slower, tolls." Are there other fine qualities of the route that they're not telling me? OMG it's SO WORTH IT! Everyone seems like they're in such a hurry I feel like the entire parkway is a race track. People are jockeying for position and even old ladies are cutting me off when I try to enter the fast lane. It's like there's ONE parking space at the end of the parkway and no one can stand the thought of anyone else getting there first. I have to go 78 miles an hour just to gain access into the left lane and immediately people behind me are flashing their lights for me to pull over into the right lane because it's too slow for them. But in doing so I would be aiding and abetting the crime of going 79 miles an hour in a a 65 mile-per-hour zone, and I would have to place myself under citizen's arrest.

     I'm bouncing these ideas off my wife, but she's sound asleep, so I'm bouncing them off parts of her body that I know won't wake up. Should I pivot to the New Jersey Turnpike? Might be faster but there are so many trucks. I feel safer if I get behind one that has a sign that says "How's My Driving?" and a phone number I can call. "I'm behind one of your drivers and he's making a face in the mirror like he's going to cut me off. Could you ask him if that's his regular face?" 

     We finally get to the shore, and I have a few minutes to relax and unwind before I start thinking about how bad the traffic's going to be on the way back. We stroll the boardwalk. The offer of an ice cream is readily accepted. Heroically I only order a kid-sized ice cream cone, but I tell them to make it a fat kid. There's an Escape Room place with a line out front. If it takes that long to get in I'm probably just going to stay there.

     It's Father's Day weekend, and Dads ride free at the amusement park. It's also Pride Month and Juneteenth. If I was a gay, black Dad I bet they would pay ME to ride the rides. There are only a couple I can go on that won't make me sick. There's one with helicopters that roll around slowly on a track with small hills on it. I think I could go on that, but my wife won't let me because she thinks it's for babies. Then why do the helicopters say "POLICE," "RESCUE" and "MARINES" on them? I'm an elite performer in that chopper, in service to my country. Plus there are other Dads riding in it. "They're holding their kids in," my wife points out, so I look around to see if anyone might let me borrow their kid for a few minutes.

     I tell myself that the Garden State Parkway is much more fun than any old ride here, and I keep telling myself that until Juneteenth fades into Julynth.

PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS II

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-13-24)

 
     Madeira is an autonomous Portuguese Island famous for its fortified sweet wine, and a short flight from Lisbon. We strolled to the waterfront area of Funchal, stopping for ice cream along the way, which I was able to convince my wife was an ancient fishing custom. In the evening we ventured out into the Atlantic with 5 or 6 other couples on a sailboat sunset cruise, where we met a pod of dolphins with the same idea. We stopped for a dip in the ocean, which even in May is not bad once you get used to it. I figured I would be used to it by August. The sunset that followed was made even more gorgeous with the flattering effects caused by a potent concoction made readily available on the trip.

     We were up before the crack of dawn the next day to see the sunrise, and the crack of dawn has never been so lovely as it was from where we saw it. We were shuttled by van to the summit of Pico do Areeiro, the second-highest mountain on the island, above the cloud that is forever parked around it. The sun rising from beneath the clouds is an other-worldy experience. While I was there I checked around for my data, which I'm told is somewhere in the cloud. 

     We had signed up for an e-bike tour along the North Coast of the island the next morning. What's impossible to know from a brochure description is that the topography of Madeira has its ups and downs. Mostly ups. The extreme hills of the north make it a pretty but pretty challenging ride, even with a motor-assisted bicycle. Once our motor became angry that we were not assisting it more, we cut our ride short to get some coffee at the local cafe and head back to the scenic overlook to meet up with the others on their return.

     The next day we flew to the island of Sao Miguel. I can now say that I've been to the Azores, but we were really just on this one Azore. Sao Miguel is a lush island, rich with friendly people and beautiful trees and flowers, none of which are original equipment. When the volcanic island was settled in the early 15th century, it was essentially uninhabited and bereft of anything but a subtropical forest of laurel-related shrubs. The beautiful flowering plants you see today were all brought to the island, notably the colorful hydrangeas, whose fast-growing root structures were important in containing erosion as it became more populated. 

     We stayed in the city of Ponto Delgada, which is completely tiled, both streets and sidewalks, with an artistry unknown in America. If my bathroom was in the streets of the city it would be re-tiled by now.

     As we relaxed by the hotel pool we were spoiled by the sunny weather, which comes and goes in the Azores. The next day we embarked on an all day tour in the misty rain that took us to various important locations around Sao Miguel. Our first stop was the Gorreana tea plantation, the oldest in Europe and the only one left on the island from the historic era of tea as one of its major exports. Some of the drying and sorting equipment from the old days is still used today. Which makes me feel pretty good, as I myself am one of the things at my job from the old days of the television industry that is still being used today.

     After stopping at a scenic point overlooking the caldera of Furnas valley, we traveled to the fumaroles, where the Earth blows out plumes of steam as if breathing on a cold day. The bubbling natural cauldrons provide a unique way to cook a lunch. Buried into the ground in a large pot, the traditional meal of Cozido das Furnas is a gigantic stew containing just about every meat and vegetable that could be corralled in a 20-mile radius. It is a hearty repast, but could cause vegetarians to faint. 

     The highlight of the tour was a dip in the ferrous pool at the lush Terra Nostra Park, a botanical garden brimming with horticultural and arboreal wonders, founded in 1780 by the American Consul to the Azores. The pool is man-made, spring-fed, 108 degrees and completely orange, due to the high iron content of the water. Bathing in it is unique and disturbing at the same time, and not to be missed. Don't wear a light-colored suit, and don't let your president bathe here, as either could be permanently stained orange.

     We left our final day free for a bike ride along the waterfront to the fort of Sao Bras, a 16th-century military installation that also houses a museum containing a collection of World War II Howitzers that would be able to meet your every Howitzing need. We took in the views of the harbor, then returned our bikes.

     Then it was back to New York, due in at work the next day, at least fortified with the memories of having conquered another foreign country....

PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS I

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-30-24)

 
     Part of my services as a respected journalist is to report on experiences I think my readers might themselves enjoy, while trying not to misuse phrases like, "respected journalist." I've had Portugal on my short list of vacation destinations for some time now, so maybe the list was longer than I thought. Lisbon is a great choice for any world traveler. It's clean and safe and there's plenty to do, see and eat. We rented an e-bike on 24-hour hire so we could spend an evening in the Alfama district, which is the soul of Lisbon. Its narrow cobblestone streets and cafes have a strictly European character. They eventually all start to look alike, but we navigated things deftly with only the use of a compass, knowledge of the movement of the stars, our raw courage and of course a Google Map GPS.

     I always recommend seeing a European city by bicycle, as long as you feel like you can find your way around. Once you're on it you don't have to deal with fares, and you can go door-to-door without having to walk to a subway or bus station, or the site itself. All that will turn you into a statue before you see your first statue.

     First we visited the castle of St. George, impenetrable by any force that does not possess 15 euros. It is a formidable Moorish structure whose oldest occupancy dates back to the 2nd century. It has since been used by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Portuguese and now, tourists. Those who scoff at us for not riding a conventional bicycle have not seen the hills you have to go up to get there. If you do conquer them the views are amazing, and you can climb up and around the parapets to see the entire city below from several vantage points. The place is also home to an ostentation of peacocks, which you can hear a mile away, because one sounds like a Siamese cat in heat on steroids that just lost its best friend, amplified through a public address system. We also got to meet some cute baby pea-chicks.

     A miradouro is a Portuguese lookout point, and there are several in the hills of Lisbon. We found the Miradouro da Senhora do Monte, a scenic overlook not to be overlooked. Good views of the castle, the Tagus River and the sea of orange-tiled roofs below make it a selfie wonderland.

     Our dinner reservation was at a famous Fado spot in Alfama. It was worth the wait, and the passionate crooning of the various singers accompanied by the expert picking of the 10-string Portuguese guitarra, bass and guitar were melodic and easy to like. Fado ("fate") music is a traditional genre, with serious themes of melancholy, love, the plight of the poor and the draw of the sea. I pictured myself as a Fado singer, singing sad songs lamenting the loss of the Choco Taco and the cancelling of "Blue Bloods." I might have made a career of it if more things rhymed with "Choco Taco."

     The next day we rode around the city and visited the world-famous tile museum. My favorite exhibit was a large wraparound mural of the city made entirely of tile. It was imposing and beautiful, and showed exactly how we would get lost on the way back to our hotel. We ended up back at the waterfront area of the Tagus River to return our bikes. A ride on the Bica funicular is a colorful way to get you up into the Bairro Alto district, the heart of nightlife in Lisbon. Daylife wasn't bad either, and we stopped for coffee at the historic Luís de Camões plaza to people-watch. 

     It's worth mentioning that you wouldn't stop JUST for the coffee, which is an abstraction they don't understand too well in Portugal, and Europe in general. I don't know what people do to wake up in Portugal, but whatever it is does not involve a decent breakfast or coffee. If you want a perfect fried egg, you may have to wait until somebody sticks it on top of your steak for dinner. French toast, English muffins and Belgian waffles are almost unheard of in France, England and Belgium. I remember that when we ordered coffee in Greece that wasn't espresso we were treated to a muddy solution that looked and tasted like it came from the bottom of the crankcase of a 1968 Ford Fairlane. Anyway, back to the hotel we took the subway, which was clean and easy to navigate, and takes an ordinary credit card, a concept that deserves some credit.

     There was so much more to see, but we had to limit our itinerary to two days before continuing our journey. Fly on with me next time to the scenic islands of Portugal.

MR. MANNERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-16-24)

 

     I was discussing rules of etiquette with reader Maria a little while ago, and I asked her why would you say "bless you" after a sneeze, when a cough seems much more serious? I discourage people from blessing me when I sneeze, and they ask "why?" After the 47th sneeze when there is finally a lull, they say, "Oh, okay."

     The human concept of manners demonstrates our dedication to civilization and separates us from the rest of the living beings on the Earth, who by the way are a bunch of animals. I thought my cat was different, because he waits near the door as I'm walkingto the bedroom, as if to say, "You first, sir, since I see that you are balancing a sandwich, a crossword puzzle and a glass of apple juice." I nod thank you, but the minute my foot crosses the threshold he darts in front of me and I almost trip over him, dropping the sandwich and spilling most of the apple juice. Even though the crossword puzzle is wet, at least now I know a four-letter word meaning "cat."

     I saw a picture of Trump walking in the rain with his wife Melania, holding an umbrella over only himself, and I thought, WOW, this guy is the perfect role-model! If there's only one umbrella, why should I hold half of it over someone else's head, ensuring that both of us will be half soggy? If we're both right-handed one of us will be doing almost everything we do, wet.

     There are a lot of new rules about how you address people. You used to start a letter with "Dear Sir," but then women learned  the complicated secrets of how to open a letter, so we thought "Dear Sir or Madam" might be better, but there turned out folks falling through the cracks, so we said "To Whom it May Concern," but when we found out it may not concern anybody, we went back to sirs and madams but people who identified with other genders or inanimate objects complained, so now I just open my correspondence with "HEY YOU," which seems both inclusive and nice.

     How did all this even start? There some rules of etiquette that are based on common sense. "Save the women and children first" is based on the idea that, if all the boats in the world capsized at the same time, you'll need women to bear children and carry on the human race. "YAY! We are saved! And there are no more men around to bully us about our use of hummus and unattractive sneakers! The first thing I'm going to do is binge-watch 'The Good Witch.' Then I'm going to purge-watch it!" "SO fun! And we can have children whenever WE want to have them! And carry on the human race! All we need is some... Hmmm. I'm not sure we thought this entirely through. But let's see that remote control!!"

     Other rules I would guess are based on human nature. Why is it always "ladies first?" Well, I don't know much about the history of etiquette but I know a whole lot about dudes. Somewhere around the middle ages, a typical middle-aged guy was probably out with his girlfriend and he wanted to keep an eye on her. If you knew her you would agree. The rear-view mirror hadn't been invented yet, so the only way to get the same view was to have her walk in front. 

     Some were based on personal safety. I've read that the custom of clinking glasses during a toast originated with the practice of pouring a little wine into each others' glasses, to prove that it was not poisoned. The bar for drinking buddies was much lower back then.

     Some rules are clearly outdated, such as the direction in an 1883 etiquette book that a man should be expected to choose the woman's horse. I would not want the pressure of having to gauge both the woman's and the horse's personality. The chances of offending both run fairly high, leading to a disparaging phrase regarding me and also the horse I rode in on.

     Etiquette is more confusing now than it ever was, that's for sure. I already covered gender pronouns and their (they/them) use. I understand that I shouldn't wear white after Labor Day, even though I don't understand why. But on what date does after one Labor Day become before the next Labor Day? And what about civil disobedience? Is that good manners or not? An example of civil disobedience might be: "I only wanted to burn down the courthouse, but the fire spread because I was holding the door open for the ladies." 

     I don't know all the rules but I do try to be nice to people, on the off-chance that they might be nice back. It's not good manners to get into an argument with me about manners. "Rick, you shouldn't chew with your mouth open, especially if it is full of lies." "Excuse me, but did I not hold the door for you?" "Yes you did, and it was a revolving door and I banged my knee pretty good."

PRAYER BNB

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-02-24)

 

     After you come to the conclusion that you need to downsize your life, the next logical step is to buy a smaller place to live, which is what we did. And now we have downsized into two houses: mission accomplished! I think we can have the same amount of stuff in the smaller house, if each item was a third of the size that it is now. I can see I'm going to be good at this.

     The place is not far from the beach, so my idea is to rent it out as an Airbnb when we're not there. The place needs a little work. The first thing we did is take down all the signs that were over the doorways to each room. Over the bedroom was a sign that said "Romance," and I am not kidding about this. I guess if you reached that point in your marriage when you wondered where all the romance had gone, you could just follow the signs. You can expect a little more subtlety from me with the signs, like maybe "Merge," or "Yield," or "Slow Men at Work."

     I'm now a home improvement subcontractor. I'm also the contractor, and I'm not thrilled with my work. I may have to say something, but I don't want to come down to hard, because it's hard to get good help these days, and I'd hate for me not to even show up. 

     Things got off to a rocky start. I spent all day fixing up some furniture and I got glue all over my fingers, and when the sun went down I realized the electricity wasn't turned on yet. I forgot to charge my phone, so I had to drive around with it plugged into my car charger, but since I'm unfamiliar with the area I got lost. I have a GPS on my phone, but since I had glue all over my fingers it wouldn't read my security-activated fingerprint. I considered committing a minor felony so that I could get a more accurate fingerprint. That's when I realized I needed a nap.

     I read that you shouldn't furnish an Airbnb with a kitschy or antique look. Instead of Louis XV furniture, modernize the look with a Louis XVI furniture. All we could really afford was the Louis CK look. Don't fall victim to common decorating mistakes, like hanging your wall art too high, unless it's ugly, then it should be hung from the highest yardarm. Any nudes should be tasteful and well hung.

     I read somewhere that people want to feel like they're staying in a hotel. We found a housekeeper that even put a paper band around the toilet seat and made a little origami flower out of the toilet paper. I realized I had to go to the bathroom, and the housekeeper had already left, so I had to scotch tape the toilet seat band back together, and I made a toilet paper flower that looks like a snapping turtle.

     I guess I'm also technically a businessman now, and I need to pay attention to things that were none of my business before. I was thinking about joining the small businessmen's association, but at six-foot two I'm sure I would not qualify, unless they set a pretty high bar for admission.

     I'll be watching every penny in order to make ends meet. The trick with running your own Airbnb is to advertise a lot of great activities, and then make them almost impossible to actually do, so that it's their own idea to have a lousy time. Save money wherever you can. I'll install one of those motion-detector faucets, so you can't just sit there and wash your hands every time they get dirty. Water doesn't grow on trees, you know, at least I don't think it does. The one in the restroom where I work is perfect, because it only detects the motion of me walking away from it. Nothing will get it to flow. I've tried running in place, spelling the words "I hate you" in semaphore and performing the "Heartland" song from Riverdance. Motion denied. I also tried the paper towel dispenser, which is a motion detector too. I shook my hands underneath it, and the faucet finally went on.

     Don't worry, we'll provide complimentary soap. Complimentary because of the compliments you'll receive after using it. "Wow, what is that smell?" "That's the boutique soap I used at the Airbnb I stayed at. It's 'tree bark and asparagus,' with hints of bacon, motor oil and despair. I should have taken some home with me, because we have raccoons." 

     During your stay I will act as the concierge, if you'll pardon my French. Feel free to ask me anything. At the end of our conversation, I will say, confusingly, "There is nothing more I can do for you, no?" Depending on what your answer is, in either case I will do nothing more for you.
     It all sounds like great fun, especially if you're hard of hearing. See you at the shore!

THE RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (4-24-24)

 

     If I ever meet an alien from another planet, we would have so many questions for each other that it would take a lifetime to ask. And then I would need another lifetime to hear the answers. And I only have 10 minutes till the ballgame comes on, so I narrow it down to three questions for each of us. I'll start: "What do you call that craft you landed in?" "It's identified as a flying object." "Where did you learn to speak English?" "Same place as everyone else: American soap operas." "Out of all the countless number of galaxies, how did you find us?" "Well, after I heard the word 'recalculating' about a million times, I made a right at Jupiter and a left at Uranus. That was a JOKE."

 

     His turn: "Can you take me to your leader?" "I can, but you'll have to trust me on this, our time would be better spent at Dairy Queen." "I've noticed that sometimes when music is played, humans react strangely and gyrate themselves in an attractive or quite unflattering way, depending on their sex. What is that about?" "Well, music triggers a sympathetic reaction in the brain based on the pulse in the bloodstream that causes the super-heating of ions in the body, which are then cooled by moving the limbs through the atmosphere at higher than normal rates of speed. It's called dancing. I made up the thing about the ions. Well, this sure was fun, and there's a DQ three blocks from here." "Don't I get a third question?" "Oh yeah, of course, but I guess that was it."

 

     I think that if I was abducted by aliens, dancing would be harder to explain than that. I also think that if they had seen me dancing, they would not have abducted me. I'd be the first to admit that I am not a good dancer, if so many others had not beaten me to it. The one thing I have going for me is that, as a drummer, I have a very good sense of rhythm. So I simply move whatever still moves to the tempo of the music, and wiggle the rest. If it doesn't wiggle or move, I drink it before it does. As a strategy this has worked quite well, meaning that I am rarely asked to dance.

 

     But I enjoy watching others dance, as a spectator sport. Sometimes I ask a woman if she'd like to dance. Sometimes she says yes. And I say, go right ahead, don't let me stop you. You can learn a lot about a person by how they do it; it's the most basic form of physical expression there is. Some people are very visceral and dance as if they are doing calisthenics. After the first calisthenic it's obvious that they're trying to hard. In the words of the great Bear Bryant, let the game come to you. Bear Bryant was an underrated dancer.

 

     Some say that while Fred Astaire got all the acclaim, Ginger Rogers did everything he did, only backwards and in high heels. And for that reason, in order to make myself a better dancer, I've been practicing doing things backwards and in high heels, and I burned myself on the barbecue. I tried to refine my moves in front of a mirror so that I could learn to "dance as if no one was watching." This was an appropriate idiom, since there were things that went on in that mirror that even I couldn't watch.

 

     If you want to know exactly how men and women are different, you can see it vividly demonstrated on the dance floor. A woman can look around and think, if I had the right shoes right now I would be perfect. A guy taking honest stock of himself might realize, I may have to sell myself cheap to someone that owns a bulldozer. A girl knows all the lyrics to the song, and sings them while performing hand gestures for emphasis. The guy is picturing them the morning after their first night together at an off-brand motel, arguing about which continent a continental breakfast should be from.

 

     Under the disco lights, I've got this: I belt it out with confidence, looking in her eyes, "loud blue whale, stepped on a snail, a can of corn is steamin'." And the girl I'm dancing with stops cold. "What the hell are you singing? The words are, 'Out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreamin’.'" "Really?" I ask. "I was doing the live bootleg version." Luckily she can no longer hear me over her loud smiling as she poses for a selfie.

 

     When our song is over, my girl says, "Wow after seeing that, I'd love to see you REALLY move!" I am beaming with pride; maybe I'm not as bad as I thought. She says, "How long do you think it would take to pack up all your belongings?" I slink out of the dance club, and from the parking lot through the moonbeams I can see the alien waving at me from the spaceship, so I guess I'm stuck here for now.

JUST WRITE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (4-11-24)

 

      I'm approaching my nine year anniversary writing for this paper, and it has been an absolute joy, for one of us at least. Maybe you read this column with your morning coffee, and that's how you were able to quit coffee. Maybe you read this article to find an intelligent take on things you hadn't thought of before, only to find that I haven't thought of it either. Maybe you line your parrot's cage with it, and I'd like to think that it gives him a chuckle once in a while. Whatever the reason that you read a newspaper, please keep doing it, because that's where ideas are exchanged. And if you don't like any of my ideas, you can exchange them for credit.

     It's only fitting that I would take to writing, based on my SAT scores in high school. In the math section I scored a 425, which is about the same score you would get if you dipped your cat's paws in #2 pencil shavings and let him stroll around the pages of the test looking for other pencils to knock off the desk as he filled in the answers. My verbal score wasn't that much better, but when I wrote an essay in my college application, I was quickly accepted merely to prevent me from ever doing it again.

    Sometimes people will ask a writer where he gets his inspiration. For me, thinking of inane things is what I would normally do anyway. When I look at the crazy world around me, it doesn't take much effort to make it a little crazier. It might be an obscure reference, or a play on words, or some goofy dialogue. I carry a pad around me, and if I think of something that doesn't make much sense I write it down. If I think of something intellectually advanced I just chalk it up to bad luck, and don't bother to write it down. Other times idea output is directly proportional to alcohol input. 

     Many clever things I come up never make it into this column, and you'll just have to take my word that they were clever. Because writing a humor column is a lot like having an argument with a bully; you always think of something REALLY GREAT to say well after the opportunity to use it has passed. Another fertile time for the germination of ideas is in bed at night. Many creative people have expressed the same thing. An observation might wander into my brain looking for a place where it won't be disturbed, but I don't jot it down since it was SO GOOD I'll be able to think of it tomorrow. Will I remember what it was after I fall asleep? In my dreams.

     I'm an avid reader of novels, and that's inspiring enough. I don't read a lot of science fiction because I'm afraid that it might not be fiction. I like murder mysteries; I read them for my health. My health, you ask? Yes, because I know every possible way you might try to kill me, and trust me, you won't get away with it. But most of all I like characters, people who do and say things that make you want to get to know them better.

     It's less strenuous for authors than it used to be because there are more words now. This year alone, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word "influencer" to the language. That's fine, but if I get pulled over for driving under the influence of an influencer, I may be the only one not laughing. Merriam Webster admitted "yeet," which means, well, I have no idea what it means even after I read the definition.

     Dictionaries are SO heavy that we could get rid of a bunch of words and no one would miss them. "Hat box," "clothes pin," "toll call," just put them in the dust bin, along with "dust bin." Words we use all the time but have no good reason why, like "okey dokey," you can deep-six those, too. In fact, you can deep-six "deep-six" as well. 

     I sometimes publish these columns in a blog so that people all over the world can see what Americans are like if they were anything like me, and I've recently been logging hundreds of hits a day from the city-state of Singapore. Either Singaporeans have an unusual sense of humor, or they are somehow using it to create spam or sow seeds of chaos somehow. If that's the case, I amuse myself by thinking that my blog is being open-sourced in searches by their artificial intelligence models. I can't wait to see how that comes out.

     Contrary to the way I am in person, in print I have to strive to offend people as seldom as possible- I try not to say anything too racy, make fun of orange-looking presidents, or religions, races, creeds or things that I don't agree with that almost everyone else agrees with. That doesn't leave much to work with, but if it makes me laugh, I'll find it.

     So thank you for reading, and the thought of nine more years of writing gives me the yeets, and that means more than you could possibly know. Or less, I'm not exactly sure which.

HAIR THERE AND EVERYWHERE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (3-14-24)

 
     Nothing says more about your personal style than your hair. I firmly believe that you can track the entire thread of your life by mapping the different stages your hair has gone through. It's like cutting a tree open and counting the rings, only less messy but perhaps more painful. Now that the '80s are long over maybe you wish you had tried the tree method rather than allow yourself to be photographed and run the risk that Facebook Memories may someday be invented.

     My hair has been through many trials and tribulations, and I wish I had been more sensitive to what it was going through. I was bald at a very early age. It made my head look too large for my body, and my self-esteem took a beating. I tried a comb-over for a while, but I didn't even have enough hair for that. I considered plugs, but I was afraid of electrocuting myself. It wasn't until later that I found out that MOST babies are bald. My hair grew in and I felt much better. Then my teeth started falling out, but that's a story for another time. (I did get money for them under my pillow, so I tried acquire more teeth from alternate sources, and put the money into a no-load, tax-deferred vehicle, and I wish I could remember where I parked it.)

     What was your best hair? If you're a woman I don't even have to look at you to know. My theory is that 85 percent of all women look best with shoulder-length hair. Seven percent might look good with long hair, but that's usually because they ALWAYS had long hair, and it's hard to picture them any other way. About 5 percent of girls look good with short hair but would look even better with longer hair. About 3 percent can pull off the bald look, but those are usually model types who could eat you for dinner, so you generally want to pretend you didn't notice they were bald. Another 2 percent are not good with fractions. A girl once told me she used to have long hair all the way down her back, but it's unusual for girls to have such a hairy back.

     If you survived the '80s I bet you teased your hair, possibly in order to save everyone else the trouble. Maybe you lightened it. Maybe you darkened it. Maybe you straightened it, maybe you curled it, maybe you used something called a crimper. But I doubt you just left it alone. I knew a girl who I guess wante

     When I was a kid my Dad used to cut my hair, and he was spectacularly bad at it. He took a little of the top, a little off the sides and then cut my bangs at a 45-degree angle, so I would have had to walk around with my head tilted sideways for it to be straight. He did it for free, so I couldn't even ask for my money back. I later found a book on his bookshelf detailing how you could cut a kid's hair EXACTLY that way, and I realized that that is why children run with scissors.

     These days I only get my hair cut a couple times a year, mostly because I'm too cheap to do it more often. A haircut and a shave isn't two bits anymore, you know. If you're too young to remember, two bits is a quarter, which doesn't seem weird until you consider that one bit must be 12 and a half cents. Anyway, after the haircut, J.D. sometimes asks me if I want product in my hair, but he won't say which product. In case it might cost more I tell him just to use by-products instead.

     It seems like the older you get, the more innovative hair becomes. No longer content with sprouting from your head, it seeks alternate, more adventurous avenues of germination. Your nose, your ears, your neck and other, odder frontiers, places where no human has yet planted the flag of sovereignty. My wife even found a little stray hair sprouting from her chin and claimed that it was mine.

     You always want the hair you don't have. I never liked my super-straight hair, but when I got older it gradually became curly. When I realized it was curly because it went gray, I didn't like that either. I had salt-and-pepper hair, but my cardiologist didn't like THAT. So, even if you're not thrilled with your hair, don't do anything drastic or weird that will make your husband say HOW could you do this to ME? The grass is always greener on the other side, but that's not a good reason to for your hair to be.

CAN AI REALLY SAVE US?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-29-24)

 
     I had a random thought the other day (which I guess technically makes it an accident) that artificial intelligence may never be used for anything useful. I know that sounds cynical, and I want to believe that great things will lie ahead, and that AI won't simply be put to work figuring out new ways to scam us, coming up with fake photos and videos to support goofy conspiracy theories and proliferating content that I'll probably have to delete from my web browser but I swear I didn't look at any longer than was absolutely necessary.

     I came across an article imparting generous qualities to AI, which said that it could "execute plans," "learn and become better" and "predict future outcomes based on historical trends." It was so self-flatteringly like a George Santos job resumé that it must have been written by AI. But we're not at the Saving-The-World stage yet; there are still some bugs to be worked out. "WOW, Watson, I heard that you wrote up a plan that can save our company by predicting future outcomes based on historical trends! That's wonderful!" "Why, thank you. I discovered that your company has always spent more money than it has taken in, and I predict that you will continue to do that." "That is awesome! And I heard that you will keep on learning and getting BETTER!" "Yes, my goal is to be better than Bing. I am already nicer-looking, taller and more modest." "I can't thank you enough for putting together this plan. When will you execute it?" "I already have. That's it in the corner, that pile of dust. I executed it this morning by firing squad."

     Instead of beating around the bush maybe I'll just ask you directly: Hey, Artificial Intelligentsia, if you're such a genius, how about inventing a traffic light that can take a look across the street to see if anyone's coming, and since nobody is, turn itself green? It's lonely sitting there by myself. How about telling us how to manufacture an easy-open package of cheese that opens easily? I recently found myself in a cheese emergency, and comitted a felonious assault on Swiss cheese with a Swiss Army knife.

     Hey AI, maybe you can figure out how to make the Real Housewives look realer? Make them look like they did before they had al that plastic surgery, and charge them for it AGAIN. How about coming up with some better ways to crossbreed animals and plants? Why can't we cross a leek with a seal and cure the problem before it even starts? How can we mate an impala with a jack-in-the-pulpit in case it gets a flat? Okay maybe I should think back inside the box.

     One thing AI should not be used for is creating art. The most interesting thing about art is often not the art itself, but the glimpse into the artist's brain. AI has no artists brain, it just has the ability to take a look at everything that has ever been painted, written or composed, and make up a different version of it. I'll give you an example of how this is bad: Every time I watch a basketball game, since someone decided long ago that Americans can't survive in a quiet surrounding, there comes blaring through the sound system almost ceaselessly something that is not music, not the sounds of the game, not useful information of any kind, but a series of noises accompanied by a loud ticking sound, that I suppose is meant to resemble a percussion instrument. I complain about it every time to my wife, and she agrees that it is annoying and repetitive. Not the noise, but the sound of me complaining. I am convinced that whoever is in charge of music at the arena, being granted a budget of, well, zero, turned to AI to generate an artificial soundtrack that was not subject to music publishing royalties. And so, in its wisdom, AI scoured the internet and learned that at every basketball game, ticking noises were being played, and it assumed that it was because we loved them, and figured out how to generate them louder and more often.

     So I'm hoping that this great tool, which could affect the course of mankind will someday be applied to the grand purpose of solving problems we don't even have yet. Medical science, the planning of cities, manufacturing, finding renewable energy are noble pursuits. But let's start small. First, let's figure out how to stop people from scamming us, how to identify fake political conspiracy theories and how to better hide my browser history.

2023: THE YEAR IN REVIEW- PART II

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-01-24)

 

     Even though 2024 is already up and running, we still have some loose ends to tie up from 2023, and once we tie them up, hopefully they'll stay put. Here are the stories that the fake news media wish they would have thought of first.

STANLEY INSULATED WATER CUPS BECOME MUST-HAVE COMMODITY
In 2023 the item most sought-after by people who go around seeking after stuff was the "Quencher," a 40-ounce Thermos-like drinking flagon from the Stanley Brand drinking cup company, affectionately known as the "Stanley cup." The huge stainless steel vessel is only slightly smaller than the Stanley Cup awarded to the winner of the NHL finals, but if you are ice skating and you happen to run out of ice, this gargantuan stein will hold enough to get you back home. The cup's large capacity also makes it possible to travel in your car for extended periods without stopping, provided the capacity of your bladder is at all comparable. However, drinking 40 ounces of anything on a regular basis may be enough for family members to organize an intervention for you.

SNAKE FALLS OUT OF SKY ONTO WOMAN
In Texas a woman was treated at a hospital for wounds and abrasions after reporting that a snake fell onto her out of the sky and wrapped itself around her arm, whereupon a hawk swooped down and snatched it, in the process jerking her arm in directions that only hawks and snakes would consider normal. It appeared to be a living demonstration of the food chain in action; Had an alert fox been wandering in the area, he might have attacked all three of them, moments before a mountain lion jumped out of nowhere and consumed the terrified tetrad, followed by a lawyer, who eats defendants like that for lunch every day in the courtroom. By the way the next day the lawyer is bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito but recovers, only to die after being stung by criticism.

NEWLY-ACQUIRED FOUR-TIME MVP AARON RODGERS INJURES HIMSELF IN FIRST SERIES WITH JETS
The NFL New York Jets team traded for veteran star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who sustained a season-ending achilles tendon tear just four plays into the first game. This probably occurred right after someone optimistically said, "Wow, it'll be so great to have a completely healthy Aaron Rogers for at least the next 4 minutes!" It was ironic news to opponents of the ten-time Pro Bowler, who spent his first 18 seasons looking for his achilles heel in the completely wrong place. It's also eerily reminiscent of when Achilles himself was drafted into the Army of Agamemnon, and everyone said FINALLY, we have the bravest, strongest, ablest warrior who can throw a spear downfield for 40 yards with ZERO interceptions and we'll finally win a battle, and look what happened. At least Aaron Rodgers damaged the tendon while earning millions of dollars playing a difficult and dangerous sport. By contrast, had it been me, I would have sustained the injury doing something embarrassing like practicing the Electric Slide before a mirror or taking a bath with my cat.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER THAT ANCIENT PEOPLE WHO CAME TO ALASKA FROM SIBERIA SOMETIMES WENT BACK
The earliest Native Americans who crossed the land that now rests underwater sometimes crossed back, according to a study published in Current Biology. This confirms what we know today, which is that promises of great pizza, reliable internet connections, readily available public toilets and convenient parking have gone largely unfulfilled. Making that passage is also much harder now that we installed the Bering Strait and got Mexico to pay for it.

POLICE USE MAN'S DOG TO SAVE HIM FROM ICY LAKE
In a Lassie-like incident, a man who fell through the ice into a lake in Michigan was pulled out using a disc that was brought to him by his own dog, Ruby. The device, which ironically was shaped like a frisbee, was attached to a rope, by which the officer and firefighter pulled the man to shore. It is not known whether they were then able to rescue the disc from the dog. My own pet, Gidget, while not technically a rescue dog, is extremely smart, and I'm sure she would have devised a plan by herself without any intervention from the fire department, as long as it involved a tennis ball, a cat, a block-and-tackle, a squeakie toy in the shape of a squirrel and cheese. It isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, which is convenient because my dog won't fetch very far.

     Well, that sums up the year 2023 in a nutshell, and judging from these items, it couldn't be more apparent that that's where nuts come from.

2023: THE YEAR IN REVIEW- PART I

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-25-24)

 

     Here is a summary of the stories that you might have missed when you were wasting time reading the New York Times. I have carefully curated the most important stories of 2023, along with some pertinant observations, not unlike the observation that I should probably be under. Here they are, in reverse alphabetical order of appearance.

AUSTRALIAN MEAT START-UP DEVELOPS WOOLLY MAMMOTH MEATBALL
A company named Vow has successfully fashioned a glob of lab-produced meat using a DNA sequence from cells harvested from the long-extinct woolly mammoth species. They're hoping that this discovery will open up a conversation about how we think of meat. No one has invited ME into the conversation I notice, because they're afraid I might suggest that the mammoth meatball could be served with a mole sauce from an actual mole. I'm wondering if the same process can be used to make food out of whatever is in that jar in the back of my refrigerator, that is also long-extinct. I find it fascinating that the future of meat is 15,000 years old, and I guess this proves what I've been saying all along: Just because you CAN eat something doesn't mean you SHOULD. It also proves what saber-tooth tigers have been saying all along: Woolly mammoths require a lot of salt.

POST MALONE BUYS "LORD OF THE RINGS" CARD FOR $2 MILLION
Austin Richard Post, better known as rapper Post Malone, is a big fan of an immersive fantasy game based on Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," which is played using collectible cards. Post Malone located the owner of a special one-of-a-kind issue and bought it from him for two million dollars, and they posed for a picture together after the sale. But I couldn't really concentrate on the magic card because I was mesmerized by Post Malone's face, which, due to a preponderance of tattoos, looked like my notebook during geometry class in high school. Instead of "body art," they appear to be scribbles and doodles, and they made me think that tattoo artists probably know even less about geometry than I do.

AI-GENERATED "SEINFELD" PARODY AIRS ON TWITCH
Imagine a world where "a show about nothing" airs, using no writers, no director and no actors. Well, that world is ours, and it's nothing to laugh about. A show called "Nothing, Forever," debuted on the streaming site Twitch, and it potentially could mirror the evolution of AI itself. The creators used several AI softwares to develop a 24/7 stream based on the characters of "Seinfeld." The result is a somewhat crude and boring entity that feels like the early days of Atari's "Pong," but which could exhibit its own growth as its algorithms become more sophisticated. The fact that the characters are starting to realize that they are computer-generated has some worried that the apocalypse is near. If so, the apocalypse might not be as funny as you'd think.

AIR FORCE SHOOTS DOWN CHINESE BALLOON
A suspected surveillance balloon of Chinese origin was spotted flying over Alaska, possibly sending back the report to China that not much goes on in Alaska. It was deemed a potential threat to other unidentified flying objects that had more important spying to do, and was shot down by the U.S. military several days later. The incident just reaffirms what we've always thought: that the American military is no fun. That's why I never invite them to my birthday party (they probably wouldn't come anyway, for the same reason). "Excuse me, General, but did you just shoot down all our balloons?" "Yes, sir, they were potentially spying." "And what about our piñata? You blew it up." "Yes, sir, an obvious money-laundering operation. Case-in-point: $100,000 bars came out of it." "I saw that you ate several of them. What about our donkey that you chased off? We were going to give rides on it." "Yes, sir, but don't worry, I had it followed." "You put a tail on our donkey?"

DWI SUSPECT TRIES TO SWITCH PLACES WITH DOG
A man in Colorado was stopped by the Springfield Police Department for speeding and possible DWI, and attempted to switch places with his dog, who was in the passenger seat. He insisted he was not driving and attempted to flee but was immediately apprehended. The dog surrendered peacefully. In comparison, my dog, while excelling in extreme cuteness, is not at all skilled in motor functions that require an actual motor, although she is good at parallel barking. The entire episode makes me wonder if this is really the first time they've tried to pull off this stunt, and whose idea it was. Colonoscopies, double dates, bank robberies, obedience training, ventriloquism, they all seem like fair game for the old switcheroo. It also made me thankful that he is not an airline pilot. The man, not the dog.

     Well, I think you'll now agree that knowledge is painful sometimes, and that's why they say, "WOW, that smarts." I'll be back next time with some more stories that I did not make up even if I could have, along with some commentary that I shouldn't have made up even if I didn't.

A TENSION GETTER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-13-24)

     Whenever you see the holidays reflected in art, they usually depict families, together again, laughing, having a grand old time, eating, drinking, and not fighting. That is why we invented art, so that we could picture things the way we want them to be, and give ourselves something to shoot at. I meant to say "shoot for," but that brings me to my point. When reality falls short and it turns out we don't live in a Norman Rockwell painting, it can be a stress-inducing torment. Norman Rockwell himself once said that he painted happiness, but he didn't live it. If I could paint, I would rather live happiness and not paint it. And if I was a sculptor, well then again, no. 

     That's why it's important to take a few moments for yourself, before everyone arrives and takes all your moments for themselves. Everyone has different ways of dealing with trials and errors, and finding the right one for you might be a matter of trial and error.

     Many people like to put themselves in someone else's hands for an hour or so. Massage may be relaxing for some, but not for me; I'm as ticklish as it gets, and massaging me would be like massaging an eel. Even if I wasn't ticklish, I'd be afraid that the therapist would take a look at my body and say, "What's this bone doing here?" And I'd say, "It's probably up to no good, like the rest of them. Can't you massage it over to where it's supposed to be, like a bubble in a hose?" My wife says that she sometimes falls asleep during the massage, and I ask, well then, how do you know it was relaxing?

     There are those who consider yoga to be the way to achieve their best self, through breath control and self-awareness. My friend said she attended a goat yoga session, and the goat was lousy at it. Even when in the dog position, the cat position and the camel position, it still looked like a goat. Then it started to eat the yoga mat. Another girl I know said she attended a hot yoga session, and it wasn't that hot. So I don't think it's for me, because a 6-foot, 2-inch guy in the shape of a pretzel does not sound appetizing. Yes, you say, but have you ever seen a stressed-out pretzel?

     There are people who swear by Transcendental Meditation. You choose a mantra, something easy to remember, like your Social Security number, and repeat it out loud over and over. Your eyes are closed, and 15- 20 minutes later, you transcend something. If my eyes are closed for 15- 20 minutes, I'm either attending a joint session of Congress, presiding over a meeting at work or pretending to be asleep, and I am known for my realistic pretending. I remember when the Beatles went to India to meet with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at an ashram near the Himalayas, to try to achieve the seven levels of consciousness. I can get to the first level of consciousness only after a large cup of coffee, and I cannot achieve the second without being tased.

     My idea of relaxation is to ride my motorcycle on a warm November day when the leaves are off the trees. You can see 180 degrees for miles around, the wind racing you, your body and the machine in a synchronous accord of balance and purpose. There is no radio, no one talking to you, no cellphone ringing. You are alone with your thoughts, which trust me, is better than being alone with mine, especially without a chaperone. The beauty of the occasion lasts as long as the weather holds out, there are no potholes, no deer and no one pulls out quickly in front of you. Nothing is forever.

     I know some people that aren't truly at peace unless they are engaged in battle. This may sound like a paradox, but they crave disorder in the world so that they can tame their own little piece of it. Drama queens, divas, cardiologists, their way of relieving with stress is to cause an equal amount of it in others.

     If you don't shut your brain down once in a while, it's going to take some vacation time at the worst possible moment. So take a few minutes, take a deep breath, and picture how nice it will be when your sister and brother-in-law come home for the holidays and everyone's together at last. And how she still makes fun of the way you make mashed potatoes, and how he still can't stop talking about how much more money he makes than you although he never picks up the check, and how you still have to follow their kid around saying "please don't touch that," because it seems like there are hyenas better trained than he is.

     And then picture how you'll feel when you're waving to their taillights, and you have a sink full of dishes, wrapping paper all over the place, inappropriate gifts to return, and instead of dealing with any of it you decide to get to the bottom of a cup of hot chocolate and the Times crossword puzzle. That moment will make all the stress worth it, and I can't stress that enough.