Before we get to this week’s Nickels Worth on Writing, I have been told by the U.S. Postal Service that sending me your nickels taped to postcards is not acceptable. Apparently, it really messes with the sorting machines, which mistakenly re-direct them to the “Clothes for Miley Cyrus Fund.” So, until we get this figured out, hold on to your nickels; my NWOW is on the house!
Does that mean my advice, gleaned from 15 years as a columnist and referred to by some of today’s most influential writers as “the fertilizer in the garden of writing,” will be any less insightful?
Of course not.
Money or no money, I promise you my weekly advice could not be any less insightful — which is why authors like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, John Grisham and E.L. James receive this post in their spam email every Friday, and why this weekly feature was recognized by Writers Digest magazine as “One of the few blogs that illustrates, with absolute clarity, why writers such as Hemingway became alcoholics.” Continue reading Zombie apocalypse or writing world: survival skills are essentially the same
The Door: Guardian of historic journalism; protector of commode privacy… It appears Keith Morrison has given up pursuing an exclusive on The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance) here in our newsroom. There were no creepy messages from him on my voicemail this morning and, after throwing his back out lifting a water jug, he is no longer posing as an Arrowhead Springs water delivery guy in order to gain access. In addition, we’ve stopped jumping whenever the fax machine goes off now that Morley Safer has stopped sending booty faxes with the warning You Will Crack! written on them.
Yes, things are quiet here; the calm before the storm.
I say that because today’s post will likely put me in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful men this country has ever purposely been made to forget about. In fact, his systematic disappearance after leaving the White House was so complete that I can’t even remember where I was going with this…
Wait! I remember, thanks to this newspaper clipping, which illustrates the importance of The Door, and why journalistic icon Geraldo Rivera has called it “The Al Capone’s Vault of journalistic treasures. No really, I MEAN it this time!” and why rearviewed… oops, I mean revered… journalist Anderson Cooper has referred to The Door as “A revealing look at journalism, depending on who comes out of the commode.” Continue reading After today, Dick Cheney will probably blow up… The Door
“To all my fans, especially that little sheltie next door.” — Love, Stanley Maybe it’s the strong nose. Or the full lips and scruffy grey beard. Or possibly the big, brown bedroom eyes. Whatever the reason, since Saturday’s post, I have been inundated with requests for “full body” shots…
…of my dog, Stanley.
In fact, within 10 minutes of posting a shot of his nose, my dog surpassed the number of “selfie” requests I have received since joining Twitter three months ago. It doesn’t matter my only request came from a spam link to a senior citizens dating website called “Old Dogs Seeking New Tricks.”
Around here, Sunday mornings are for re-living the past. Not in a Shirley Maclaine past-life kind of way, where we talk about cleaning King Henry’s chamber pots or being a samurai who hated sushi. No, we’re talking about Flashback Sunday, when we dig into the archives and pull random newspaper columns or posts from the distant past, back when the followers of this blog could all fit at our breakfast table. And did each morning before school. (Warning: This week’s Flashback includes strong graphic elements, such as the accompanying image of my actual legs in high heels…)
For men like me who will be participating in this year’s Domestic Violence Awareness “Men’s High Heels Walk,” hitting the disco afterwards is strongly discouraged. Really — don’t even think about it. In preparation for October’s “Walk in My Heels” event, in which men wear high heels to show support for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, my wife talked me into going with her to a fancy shoe store to look for size-12 heels. As I expected, it wasn’t long before women were falling all over me.
That’s because they were all trying on high heeled shoes, some of which were so towering that a special negotiator had to be called in to talk them down. These women apparently loved high heels so much that, once they discovered they couldn’t afford them, chose to end it all by unstrapping their Stilettos and leaping headfirst into the bargain table. Continue reading Most men will never have to butcher a cow while wearing high heels
At three o’clock this morning I propped myself up on my elbows, removed my ear plugs, looked directly at our dog and delivered the following ultimatum:
This has to STOP.
My wife turned to me and quietly said I’d need to speak up if I wanted to be heard over the dog’s snoring. Admittedly, it was my bright idea to have Stanley sleep in our room. That’s because, when he was a puppy, he was prone to chew up things we might leave out overnight.
Such as the living room or kitchen.
However, at nine years old, his snoring now sounds like a 250-pound man sleeping-off a three-day bender. Part of Stanley’s problem is genetics. Being half Shar-pei, he has a lot of loose skin and wrinkles. He essentially looks like a chocolate Labrador in need of ironing. In desperation, we took him to the vet, who told us that the loose skin around his face causes him to snore.
Yep, that’s me, learning about the dangers of smoking . I come from a long line of alcoholics. Truth be told, the roots of my family tree are probably located in a beer garden. For this reason, I was determined to break the cycle and be the first member of my family to remember most of his 20s and 30s, not develop a beer gut and actually know who all of my kids are. I was genuinely frightened of carrying a gene I assumed had its own alcohol content — which is why I didn’t crack open my first beer until I was 20; in a moment of weakness; working under the blistering Texas sun; because there was no water or soda; and I had just read about spontaneous human combustion.
The second drink of my life came a year later when I was given a shot of peach Schnapps on my 21st birthday. It was quick, painless and not noticeable on my breath when I left for my second job. It was also the last drink I had until I was 30, when a friend started making strawberry lemonade spiked with Absolute. It was the third drink of my life, and the first time I had more than one in single night. I went from sitting to crawling, and eventually lying on my back laughing before falling asleep. Looking at the big picture of my life, I can only hope that’s the way things eventually play out for me: Sit, crawl, lie on my back laughing, then just fall asleep.
It wasn’t until my 30s that I began to understand how, in spite of my efforts to the contrary, alcohol had still become a factor in defining me — through my nearly obsessive efforts to avoid it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I feel like I missed out on something by not becoming an alcoholic. But I’m well aware there is an entire right-of-passage experience I was not a part of and can’t really relate to because of the fear I had of opening Pandora’s six pack. The drunken parties, crazy nights waking up with someone else’s pants on, singles bars and dance clubs, as well as the bonds created through those experiences — I have no frame of reference. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t seen The Hangover and American Pie, but I’m still left with a certain level of naiveté when it comes to conversations of “the old days” among friends, not to mention what to anticipate from my teenaged kids.
God help me.
Or them; I’m not really sure which.
What I do know is that I can hear the “phssst” of a bottled beverage from 50 yards away. So kids: good luck sneaking a Dos Equies out of the fridge. That’s right. I eventually overcame my fear of drinking, right about the time my oldest daughter became a teenager. By then, I had been divorced and a single father for two years; if I hadn’t become an alcoholic by then, I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to. I also recognized that other fears I had carried with me — based on the mistakes of my father — weren’t coming to pass. I don’t smoke or do drugs; I’ve never been to jail; and I’ve never struck my wife or children. It’s with no small sense of irony that, after 47 years, I am becoming the person I hoped to be by following my father’s example… to the contrary.
I honestly can’t say whether my father did things with absolute purpose or recklessness. I can tell you he was a heavy smoker, yet I credit him for being the reason I never picked up the habit. Not because he preached against it, but because he started telling me light his cigarettes for him when I was 11. Admittedly, I thought that was pretty cool at first. And by “at first” I mean the first time I lit one up, inhaled, and then threw up what seemed like everything I’d eaten since graduating to solid foods. He had me light him a few more that day, just for good measure.
I wouldn’t even touch candy cigarettes after that. The illusion of coolness associated with smoking had effectively been snuffed.
Was that his intent… with everything?
I’ll never know for sure; he passed away long before I had the courage to pose the question.
While I spent a long time resenting him, I’ve begun to realize — like my fearful and obsessive avoidance of alcohol — the end result is a two-dimensional life that only offers a reflection of what you don’t want to be. To live three-dimensionally, you have to be more than a reflection: you have to cast your own image.
My alarm clock went off the same as it always did back then, coming to life with the morning news — my preference over the annoying, high-pitched alternative of chatter. Instinctively, I swatted the snooze button and bought myself another seven minutes of sleep.
In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about those seven minutes, and how the simple push of a button postponed a bitter reality for just a little longer. When the news came on again, word of the first airliner crashing into the World Trade Center stopped my hand just short of another seven minutes of blissful ignorance — a time span that now seems like an eternity.
Lying there, listening to the details, I regretted not pushing the button one more time.
The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance) is both sentinel of sacred journalistic history, and protector of commode users. Since last week’s posting of The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance), I have received hundreds of emails from concerned readers asking if we followed up on the tip, which was about a potential murderer staying at a local hotel, brought to us by a woman who said she heard “murdering noises” from the room above her, and that, as our office girl Misty noted: “I think she was hearing them again while standing in our office lobby.”
And as it turns out, all 358 emails were from NBC Dateline’s Keith Morrison who, like countless other television correspondents, is seeking an exclusive to The Door in our newsroom. It was actually Misty who made the realization that Morrison was behind all the emails when, while checking our general voicemail box, she heard the message: Just checking to see if you got all the eeeemails I sent. This is an anonymous call by the wayyyyy.
“Hey,” said Misty, “isn’t that the creepy guy from Dateline Mysteries?”
So as it stands, The Door remains safe from Morrison, as well as Barbara Walters, Geraldo Rivera, Morley Safer and Anderson Cooper, each of whom has taken a crack at getting the exclusive to what Diane Sawyer described as “An awe-inspiring body of journalism… which reminds me, where’s Chris Cuomo?” Continue reading Keith Morrison, Barbara Walters and others continue to seek… The Door
(Because you’re here, I can assume you haven’t woken up in a jail cell, someone’s yard or a truck bed in Tijuana, Mexico. What better way to celebrate than having a flashback? And just because Flashback Sunday is a weekly feature regardless of where you happen to wake up, it does’t make our celebration any less special. As always, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and dig into the archives, back to a time when — in my innocence — I thought “blog followers” was just another name for adult film groupies…)
The typical school lunch … at least in the eyes of your child. Kids today are lucky.
Their school cafeteria experience will never include Mrs. Kidzyak’s “creamed tuna surprise,” which is still sitting in the shape of an ice cream scoop somewhere in my digestive tract.
Thirty years from now, they won’t be getting up from the couch and suddenly burp tuna, peas and what I’m pretty sure was Elmer’s Glue. And they will never have to explain why they can’t go into a deli because of an irrational fear of anyone in a hair net.
The reason today’s kids won’t have to experience these things is because a recent study suggests canned tuna contains traces of mercury, which experts agree is potentially hazardous if consumed in large doses — which is always a concern when it comes to kids and their love of tuna. Continue reading Getting tuna off the school lunch menu is every kid’s dream
Before we get to this week’s Nickels Worth on Writing, I have been told by the U.S. Postal Service that sending me your nickels taped to postcards is not acceptable. Apparently, it really messes with the sorting machines, which mistakenly re-direct them to the “Clothes for Miley Cyrus Fund.” So, until we get this figured out, hold on to your nickels; my NWOW is on the house!
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