I'M ON FACEBOOK

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-15-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I've been putting off putting myself out there on the net for a long time, since social media often seems so antisocial. There is a lot of political carping, and people saying a lot of dumb stuff just to get a reaction. I know a couple of people who get themselves banned on a regular basis by posting incendiary comments that get flagged by the Facebook police. "Excuse me, officer, what seems to be the trouble?" "Well," Facebook Cop says, "you said a whole bunch of stuff about Trump that, even though it was true, no one would BELIEVE it was true, so I'm going to have to cuff you up." "Okay," I say, "but if you use the pink furry ones again please don't post a picture of it on my timeline." It isn't me posting all the politics, that's not my thing. I don't need a bunch of people gerrymandering me while I'm trying to figure out how to post a video of my dog. By the way, how DO you post a video of my dog? And how did you even get a video of my dog?

     Also I've been afraid of being targeted by advertising bots. These things follow every mouse click and know everything you purchase, and tailor ads that appeal to everything you hate about yourself. I just got a pop-up from Russia: "THAT'S what you bought for your wife's birthday? You should be ashamed of yourself." I know I should be ashamed of myself, I just can't decide which thing to be ashamed for at the moment. And the fact that nefarious geeks are sitting in their basement tracking my every move just so they can make fun of me scares the crap out of me. Hold on, I just got an alert on Facebook Messenger from a North Korean hacker: "Dude, you're going to SEARS?" "Excuse me," I reply, "I have a Kenmore dishwasher from 1993 that is still under warranty." South Korea says, "Hey, I heard Roebuck is back in the picture and they're thinking of renewing their vows." "Ha, ha, ha, emoji, emoji, etc., etc.," I reply. Now that I know other countries are following me I pass right by the erotic bakery, even though there is an exhibitionist doughnut in the window that looks REALLY good, I don't care WHAT it's shaped like. I would have to eat certain parts of it so fast that it's a stomach ache AND a misdemeanor waiting to happen.

     Speaking of emojis, I will admit that I don't know which ones to use, and my reactions on Facebook are usually as inappropriate as they are in real life. The pictures appear so small that I can't really make out what they mean. Is this one laughing at the wrong time or crying on somebody's parade? They have so many different icons it's hard to even decide which one to send. Somebody posted that their Mom was in the hospital and I sent what I thought was a heart, but it turned out to be a half a salami. If you asked the Mom, I bet she would say she would rather have the half a salami than a bunch of hearts any day. There are a couple of emojis that they still haven't added yet, like my boss's boss, who makes a face like he is thinking SO hard that the phone in his office might spontaneously burst into flames. Or the face my cat used to make when he would sniff something really bad, and his face would stay like that for five minutes until he smelled something a little better or a little worse.

     Will you be my friend? I feel like Mr. Rogers asking you that, and it makes me want to take off my suit jacket and put on my sweater, and lace up my sneakers. I forgot to put on pants, I hope this doesn't affect our friendship. I know everybody loves Mr. Rogers, but even when I was a little kid I thought there was something weird about him, explaining everything so damn slowly as if I was a little kid. He seemed like exactly the kind of guy who would offer me candy to get into the car with him. My Mom said absolutely NO getting into the car with strangers. My Dad seemed to encourage it. My main focus was, exactly what kind of candy? I'm not getting into anybody's car for "Good n' Plenty" or "Starbursts" or any crap like that, so actually just toss a "Take 5" bar out the passenger window and be on your way.

     So, I've been on for about a week now, and it's going okay, but I feel like I need that guy on the television commercials who tells you when you're acting like somebody's dad. I raise my hand for a question during the seminar: "If I tag somebody, they are technically 'it,' correct?" Major eye-roll from the instructor. "Also, if somebody likes what I just said I liked, should I like that, too?" Don't worry, I'll get the hang of this.

A LITTLE OFF THE TOP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-08-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     When my hair gets so long that it starts getting caught in the car door, especially if it's not even my car, it's time to go visit my man JD at the unisex hair salon. I know probably no one has used the word "unisex" since the last World's Fair, but using this subterfuge I won't need to adjust any of my pronouns.

     The wash-and-rinse gal asks me how the water temperature is, and I don't want to sound like a sissy so I say it's fine, but it's scalding and my head is starting to feel like a hard-boiled egg. She is assiduously washing every individual hair twice, and then conditioning them. I don't use conditioner myself, but if I did I would want it to smell like mint, so that people would think that my hair is in mint condition. To pass the time they have a television on the wall with a bunch of slinky-looking model babes strutting down the runway as if they have something in their shoe. One is carrying a purse that looks like an adult Pomeranian with a handle on it (I'm not making that up), and it makes me want to go to Pomerania and find out what the hell is going on over there. The girl is still washing, and I don't have the heart to tell her that 95 percent of her good work is going to be on the floor in 15 minutes. I'm definitely not going to bother to ask if I can put the Yankee game on the TV.

     Finally JD got his scissors out and asked me if I want the same thing as usual. Yes of course I do. I'm not one for change, I don't even like having change in my pockets. Who knows, maybe one day I'll try something different, maybe a man-bun or even man-pigtails if it would grow back after that one day. I think I might look good with a shag, just like the carpet we had in our den in the 1970s.

     Women spend much more time worrying about their hair than men. I've often said that 90% of women look best with shoulder-length hair, assuming that she has normal-length shoulders. There are a few women that look good with a "pixie" haircut, but even a pixie looks better when you see her two months later after her hair grows out. I've been to parties where the wife walks in with a new, short style, and all the women in the room coo, "OMIGOD it looks SO amazing!" And all the guys in the room are thinking, "OMIGOD, what did you do to your HAIR?" And the wife says, "OMIGOD, I LOVE it, it's SO low maintenance!" Well, so is changing the oil in your car once  every two years but that doesn't mean it looks good. Sometimes a girl goes better with long hair, the types that have an acoustic guitar and sing folk songs to folks.

     When I was a little kid my Dad used to cut my hair, and if you don't believe what I'm about to tell you I have pictures. He sheared the back with an electric poodle clipper, and cut the bangs in the front on a diagonal bias of about 30 degrees. This made it difficult to see out of one eye, and for years I thought there was only one Bobbsey twin, and I kept colliding into objects on my left. Incidentally my Dad cut our poodle's hair the same way.

     My Dad had some type of goo that he stuck in his hair to affix it into a shape somewhere between a pompadour and a small sand dune. He could find himself in the confluence of a typhoon and a monsoon in a hot air balloon and his hair will not have moved a millimeter. There was a product called "hair tonic," which if you try to mix with gin does not produce memorable results, trust me, and my Dad found some that looked like it came from the bottom of somebody's crankcase. 

     In the meantime JD is manscaping the inside of my ear as if I had a topiary bush in there. Then he starts with the electric razor on the back of my neck, and I'm horribly ticklish, and he starts talking about his cat who is acting strange and he thinks she might be sick, she's very old, and I start laughing hysterically from the tickling. JD ends the conversation and the haircut abruptly, and I think I know how our poodle must have felt.

DOWNHILL FROM HERE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-01-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 

     There's nothing nicer than taking a bicycle ride on a warm March day, because with the leaves off the trees the sun hits you from everywhere, and you can invade peoples' privacy by looking in their windows from miles away. First, you should make sure you are well prepared for the trip. We took along a couple bottles of water, because the electric blender, limes, package of salt and margarita glasses did not fit into my knapsack. I like to bring my own camera instead of just using my phone, in case I need to snap a mug shot and call my lawyer at the same time. Make sure you pump up your bike's tires before you get started. You may be thinking that I'm someone who never runs out of air, but you never know.

      The bike rack is a source of possible injury before you even mount the bike. Mine has six straps that are supposed to attach to different sides of the car's liftgate. Once you've lifted the liftgate and it's now parallel to the ground, you reach up and lay the bike rack on it, attaching the straps to the top. When you close the gate to attach the sides, the top is no longer still attached and the whole thing falls on your foot. If you try to clip it to the bottom first, the laws of gravity will teach you what you failed to learn in physics class, and it falls on your other foot. It's at least a two man operation, and unlike my last meeting at work, it might finally help to have six people pulling in opposite directions.

 

     We were headed down the North County Trailway towards Yorktown, and I couldn't wait to get out of the parking lot with the bicycles. It turns out that I either gained ten pounds during covid quarantine, or my pants lost ten pounds, because they were a little tight and the key fob in my pocket kept sounding the car alarm every time I bent over. Can someone explain why there is a car alarm on my key fob in the first place? Some automobile executive somewhere thought it would be a great idea for people to be able to alert the authorities if a crime were to be committed near my car. "Help! Someone is trying to steal my Dodge Dart!" I shout, and several alert citizens who live in the area respond, helping the thieves make off with my car so they don't have to listen to that damn beeping anymore. "And do yourself a favor and hit the gym, because those pants are cutting off your circulation."

 

     The bike ride would be a great time to stop and smell the roses, but everything is still kind of dead. Nature is starting to work its Spring magic though, and frogs are croaking in a small puddle of water, relentless in the inexorable march of the cycle of life. Their ceaseless song seems to say to their mate, "We've got to get the hell out of here, this place is going to evaporate in two days, max." Further down the trail a snapping turtle sunned itself on a log, casually snapping its gum. In the trees a pileated woodpecker tapped out a Morse code to say, "Watch out world, I haven't even begun to pileate yet."

 

     Every couple of miles on the trail is an "Emergency Call Box" for your safety, which made me extremely hungry. Why would that make me hungry? Because what if I forgot my cell phone and didn't pack a lunch, would ordering a pizza be considered an emergency? If there were a bigger emergency maybe, like a possible snapping turtle attack, maybe I could just slip the pizza order in as a palliative measure. Who is on the other side of the call box anyway? They would have to come and rescue me on a bicycle, and exactly where are they going to put me? One-Adam-12, one-Adam-12, please bring a bike with a huge basket.

 

     Meanwhile the scenery is flying by me, and it dawns on me that I've been going downhill for the last half hour. It couldn't be more pleasant until I think how horrible it's going to be riding up the hill on the way back. My mood brightens again when I realize that at least I will have lost the ten covid pounds by the time I get back to the car and I won't set off the alarm.

SHOOTING THE BREEZE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-25-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 

     I went skeet shooting last week with my friends Tracie and Brian, and it's just great to get out of the house during a pandemic, at least that's what my wife told me. It's not just a bunch of people shooting at stuff, it's an actual sport. You aim your shotgun at 4 1/2 inch clay discs, standing at different stations around a semi-circle. 25 of these discs, or pigeons, launch from both ends of the semi-circle, one at a time, and you try to shoot them before they hit the ground, and definitely before you do. It's quite loud so it's important to wear earplugs, and if you've invited me along, you might want to wear two pairs.

     There are less challenging sports. It's much easier to shoot a basketball for instance, it's a lot bigger and moves a lot slower. Curling is much easier, you just follow your hair around with a curling iron on a pair of ice skates. I'm actually not very familiar with the sport. Even football is a lot less complicated, you only have to hit another guy, and you have ten other people aiming for him, too. It didn't help matters that we went on one of the windiest days of the year. 25 breezes must have blown my gun just as I was pulling the trigger.

     It's been a while since I shot skeet, before my rotator cuff surgery six years ago. The gun has a recoil, so I had to wait to complete my rehab, since you press the butt right up against your shoulder. Or is it the other way around? I tried it both ways when no one was looking. My friends were shooting pretty well, but I had a rougher time of things, and a lot of the pigeons got away, at least for now. I saw where they went and I promised myself I would hunt them down later and run them over with my car. When you get to the end of the semi-circle some of the birds fly right towards you. Under normal circumstances I would consider this brave, possibly heroic. In my case, I considered it taunting and it made me want to get even them in my article. The pen is mightier than the sword; MUCH mightier than my shotgun.

     It's harder than it looks to shoot straight. As you move around the semi-circle you have to aim ahead of the clay pigeons so that the pellets from the shotgun intercept them in mid flight. The instructor said, "You have to lead the bird." I told him I was leading by example. He said, "When you hit something, remember what you did. When you miss, you should forget it." That's fine, but he doesn't know the people I'm shooting with, and I doubt if they're ever going to let me forget it. But it was good advice, and at the end of the day I didn't remember a thing that happened after I parked my car.

     You should clean and lubricate your gun every time you finish shooting. I can break down my weapon with my eyes closed, which is the only way I would even attempt it. You remove the barrel and clean out the inside using a ramrod, then rub some oil on it, massage it in and serve it a nice candlelight dinner. Once I had the gun back together I saw a few pieces that I hadn't noticed when I was taking it apart, but I had the basic parts facing in the right direction.

     There are people who want to take your guns away, and those people are called parole officers. Don't you let them. The constitution guarantees you the right to protect yourself. Who knows where the next threat is coming from? Maybe that guy sitting next to me on the subway is looking to take me OUT. If he knows a decent restaurant and doesn't try to get too fresh, I'm not totally against the idea. I'm not going to stand for an infringement of my Third Amendment rights. Which I looked up and means that I don't have to let soldiers sleep in my house if they don't want to, so that's not the amendment I'm thinking of. I do know that we all have the right to bear arms, and I've seen people with such hairy arms that they must have taken that concept to an art form.

A SHOT IN THE DARK

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-18-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     With a little bit of pre-existing asthma I was able to schedule a coronavirus vaccination for 11:00 at night at the Javits Center in Manhattan, and I was so happy I could have kissed a stranger, if Governor Cuomo hadn't already beaten me to it. I wasn't sure how to dress for the vaccination. It was such a fortuitous occasion that I felt I should wear a suit and tie, but I settled on something in between that and what I usually wear in quarantine, so the compromise was: clothing. It seems like we're getting there. It feels as if soon we will be able to get together, in person, and have such a contentious argument that we storm out in a snit and never speak to each other again. I've been waiting a whole year for this day.

     The Javits Center is a huge convention space, and the whole proceedings had the distinct flavor of being at the airport. There were people dressed in National Guard uniforms, which made me nervous that we might be hijacked. But they were very nice, very calm and very efficient, moving my wife and I from one side of the floor to the other, where we followed a maze of ribbon barriers, different colored tape on the floor, and numbered signs to get us where we needed to go, which looked remarkably like where we started. I began to feel like that one red canvas bag on the luggage carousel, the one that has been there since the Kennedy administration, going around and around waving at you while you're waiting for your own suitcase to appear.

     Centrifugal force threw us off the line in front of a panel of nurses, who were running a quiz show, and if you answered the questions correctly, you got to move on. "Are you feeling sick today?" One asked. I said, "No, my hair always looks like that." "Do you have any underlying conditions?" "No, they're lying right there on the top." "What is your race?" "I am an Earthling." "Are you pregnant?" "No, but the night is young." "Are you an essential worker?" "I work for television- is there anything more essential than that right now?" "Do you pass out after shots?" "Only if I have more than eight of them." And so forth. We got our inoculations, and the nurses had us sit for a while to make sure we didn't have an abnormal reaction. Once they realized that my reaction was as normal as it was going to get, they not only let us go but encouraged it.

     The CDC published a list of things you still can't do after receiving your vaccine. I found, for instance, that after receiving the vaccine I still could not play the piano. What you CAN do is visit your grandchildren, even if they are not vaccinated, as long as they are not exhibiting any signs of being extremely annoying. If you don't have grandchildren, the CDC has said that it is perfectly okay to visit theirs.

     I hear rumblings, and I'm not talking about my stomach right now, that there are people out there that don't want to get the coronavirus vaccine, so I'd like to have a few words with them right now. Are you afraid that it might hurt? It won't hurt nearly as much as me hitting you over the head with a ball peen hammer to knock some sense into you. Are you afraid that it doesn't have decades of track record for you to pore through the data and study? Come on now, you weren't really going to do that anyway, you were going to trust the same authoritative bodies that told you that Skittles were safe to eat. Maybe you've been gleaning your science from the QAnon 6:00 News and you now believe that the "vaccine gives you the virus?" Listen: you probably have a family doctor that you've trusted for years. I'll make you a deal: I won't make fun of you anymore if you promise to ask your doctor what he or she thinks you should do, and then do it.

     I'm ready to get back to real life, a life where people can once again see that I have a pimple on my chin. I've already cancelled my appearance on the masked singer and the masked dancer. And I still might kiss a stranger, so do yourself a favor and don't be too strange.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-11-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     According to a study by a major insurance company, 77 percent of accidents take place within 15 miles of home. I find that it's even more convenient to take care of the whole 77 percent right IN your home. If you hop into your car and drive 15 miles just to have an accident something bad could happen to you along the way. I always seem to pick the most dangerous things to do around the house when my wife is away for the weekend. I know she loves me and if she were here to witness any mishap I believe that she would eventually call the paramedics, after enjoying a nice quiet cup of coffee with the newspaper while I'm unconscious. If the paramedics remember me from last time she might make them a cup too.

     What are you going to do while I'm gone, she asked me, and I told her I'm going to clean my shotgun. She rolled her eyes a few times, because whenever a wife kills her husband on "Forensic Files," she says he was cleaning the shotgun. They're going to be suspicious of her of course, but her lawyer proves that it can be done by pretending to shoot himself by pulling the trigger with his toe. The jury is rooting for the gun. I don't want to anyone to cast a suspicious eye at my wife in case anything happens so I take off my shoes and socks before cleaning the gun.

     I had a some other things to cross off my "honey-do" list. Next was to hang up a new bird feeder. A squirrel had rigged the old one so that bird seeds poured out the side when he stood on the perch. He probably took a chainsaw to it when his wife was away for the weekend. The new feeder had a picture of a squirrel crying on the box (no lie), so I just added him to the list of those who are disappointed by me. I brought out the most rickety wooden ladder you've ever seen, which looks like it was made by a fifth grade shop class right before recess. As I was swinging from side to side near the top of the thing the birds were watching, the squirrels were watching, waiting for me to fail, like when someone hits me an easy lob on the tennis court.

     The most challenging time to change an outdoor lighting fixture is in the rain, but thought I might even up the odds by switching the breaker off first. I flipped the wrong one and the garage lights went off and I couldn't see where it was to turn it back on, so I tried to find a flashlight and by force of habit turned off the light switch on the wall thinking I was turning it on, and when I found the flashlight and turned the breaker back on the switch was still off and when I went over to turn it back on the battery in the flashlight went dead. This went on for quite a while, and thank god no squirrels were around to witness it and laugh at me.

     It's not like I'm a daredevil or anything. Sure, I have a devil-may-care attitude, but then again he may not. Usually I play things pretty safe. I don't interact with dogs that I'm not familiar with; I to try to get to know them a little better by inviting them over to the house to watch the ballgame. I don't drive dangerously. I see drivers do things all the time that I consider absolutely NUTS whenever I'm not doing them myself. "Reckless" is an ironic word for people that get into a lot of wrecks, but it's not me. I don't even eat dangerous foods, like mushrooms for instance, in case they turn out to be poisonous and I don't have the antidote. I don't eat bananas because I read that they are full of plutonium. Or was it potassium? Either way I'm not taking any chances. I don't order swordfish for obvious reasons.

     And because I'm so careful I made it through most of the weekend without injuring myself or others, and now I'm going to do something boringly safe and get rid of all that ice and snow around the garage doors. And I have just the 50-foot range industrial flamethrower for the job. Stay safe, people, and don't do anything that I wouldn't not do.
 

A SLIPPERY SLOPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-04-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's a jungle out there- you can strain your elbow playing golf, and you can sprain your knee playing basketball. You can pull your groin playing tennis, or engaging in sports in the comfort of your own home that you thought were relatively safe. But just about any recreational activity these days can land you in the hospital with a deadly virus, and blaming it on your teammates will be less productive than usual.

     One of the safest sports you can engage in during a pandemic is skiing. You're outdoors, you're covered from head to toe, and you control how far away you are from others on the slope. If you're close enough to give me covid on a ski slope, it probably means that you're about to collide into me and cause me serious bodily harm anyway. If it looks like I'm about to collide into you, don't panic- you still have plenty of time to get your affairs in order because I generally go faster on the way up the mountain than on the way down. Anyway, if you have so many affairs that it's hard to keep them in order, you've probably got other things to worry about.

     We traveled to lovely Vernon, New Jersey where, no doubt against state covid protocols, they had sold the mountain to full capacity, but were operating the ski lifts at only half capacity, adhering to random enforcement of health safety measures. So you had about 35 minutes to kill on the lift line, not distanced from others and with haphazard mask enforcement. Those same slipshod policies forbade you from eating or smoking on the line and internet reception was spotty, so if you didn't bring a crossword puzzle or a deck of cards you were out of luck.

     Any covid germs with the kind of work ethic that could penetrate my complicated security system have my undying respect, at least I hope it's undying. I'm wearing long underwear, short underwear, medium underwear, a hoodie, a jacket, goggles, gloves and a scarf. I'm dressed to the nines, and if I had brought a decent necktie I would have worn that too. The most persevering cooties would have to stow away beforehand or procure a VIP pass to get access to me on the ski slopes. I saw people on the lift line who went even farther than I did. Several teenagers had on a turtle-shaped butt protector that looked so incredibly dumb that I had to wonder how many times you would have to fall to justify wearing one, and the number I came up with was 378. One guy was wearing a covid mask shaped like a huge Rip Van Winkle beard, which looked just as annoying as a regular beard and kept getting caught in his jacket zipper.

     You could only ride the gondola with the people you came with, so if you came with someone who has covid, at least be thankful that they didn't also have the bubonic plague. That policy saved me from having to make small talk with strangers, which I can never do normally. I talk about the weather, and how nice it is that it's sunny, or how nice it is that it's not sunny, depending on if it's sunny or not. If it's a slow lift and I get down to a discussion of isotherms and the dew point, the guy next to me is looking around for a second set of ear muffs.

     On the way up the mountain I take a gander at the black diamond slope. I'll warm up on the blue slope then give it a try. What they need is something between a blue square and a black diamond, maybe a purple trapezoid. I'm pretty sure I can handle it, as long as all the inexperienced weekend warriors don't snowplow all the powder off of the top. There might be moguls which could cut down on my speed, so maybe I'll put it off until the beginners even them out. I tell my wife I'm going to give it a try before it gets too icy. Looks like the sun is coming out, so maybe some of that ice will melt. I'll crush it after lunch. We bring our lunch along so we don't have to waste valuable time on the cafeteria line when we could be wasting it on the lift line. After lunch I take another look at the black diamond, but it seems a little crowded. With my skills it should be a piece of cake, but the conversation about it abruptly ends when I almost fall on the the hill at the end of the ski lift, which is harder than it looks.